c stories almost beyond belief; I hope
that the grand workers in that field are supplied with all they need
in the way of money.

Servants seldom remain at night in the house of their employers or
partake of the food that is prepared for the household. The rich enjoy
pleasure trips on the house-boats; they take their servants, horses,
and carriages with them, and leaving the river at pleasure they journey
up through the country to the inland towns. One cannot understand
how the poor exist as they do on their house-boats. Of course,
those hired by the Americans and English are well appointed, but a
large proportion of the inhabitants are born, live, and die on these
junks which do not seem large enough to hold even two people and yet
multitudes live on them in squalor and misery. I have a great respect
for the determination of Chinese children to get an education. It
is truly wonderful that with more than fifty thousand characters to
learn, they ever acquire any knowledge. Some of the scholars study
diligently all their lives, trying to the last to win prizes.

HONG KONG TO MANILA.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

From Hong Kong to Manila we were fortunate in being upon an Australian
steamer which was very comfortable, indeed, with Japanese for
sailors and attendants. At last I was in the tropics and felt for the
first time what tropical heat can be; the sun poured down floods of
intolerable heat. The first feeling is that one can not endure it;
one gasps like a fish out of water and vows with laboring breath,
"I'll take the next steamer home, oh, home!" It took four days to reach
Manila. The bay is a broad expanse of water, a sea in itself. The city
is a magnificent sight, its white houses with Spanish tiled roofs,
its waving palms, its gentle slopes rising gradually to the mountains
in the back ground.

The waters swarmed with craft of every fashion and every country. How
beautiful they looked, our own great warships and transports! No large
ship can draw nearer to shore than two or three miles. All our army
supplies must be transferred by the native boats to the quartermaster's
department, there to be sorted for distribution to the islands where
the troops are stationed. This necessitates the reloading of stores on
the boats, to be transferred again to medium sized vessels to complete
their journey. A volunteer quartermaster told me, that, on an average,
every seventh box was wholly empty and the contents of the oth