vel in this way, to put his pride in his pocket and a pigtail down
his back, need pay only one-fourth of what it would cost him to travel
as a European in European dress.

But I was, I found, unwittingly travelling under false pretences. When
the smart chief officer came for my fare he charged me, I thought, too
little. I expressed my surprise, and said that I thought the fare was
seven dollars. "So it is," he replied "but we only charge missionaries
five dollars, and I knew you were a missionary even before they told
me." How different was his acuteness from that of the Chinese compradore
who received me on the China Merchants' steamer _Hsin Chi_, in which I
once made a voyage from Shanghai to Tientsin, also in Chinese dress! The
conversation was short, sharp, and emphatic. The compradore looked at me
searchingly. "What pidgin belong you?" he asked--meaning what is your
business? Humbly I answered, "My belong Jesus Christ pidgin"; that is, I
am a missionary, to which he instantly and with some scorn replied, "No
dam fear!"

We called at the river ports and reached Hankow on the 14th. Hankow, the
Chinese say, is the mart of eight provinces and the centre of the earth.
It is the chief distributing centre of the Yangtse valley, the capital
city of the centre of China. The trade in tea, its staple export, is
declining rapidly, particularly since 1886. Indian opium goes no higher
up the river than this point; its importation into Hankow is now
insignificant, amounting to only 738 piculs (44 tons) per annum. Hankow
is on the left bank of the Yangtse, separated only by the width of the
Han river from Hanyang, and by the width of the Yangtse from Wuchang;
these three divisions really form one large city, with more inhabitants
than the entire population of the colony of Victoria.

Wuchang is the capital city of the two provinces of Hunan and Hupeh; it
is here that the Viceroy, Chang Chi Tung, resides in his official yamen
and dispenses injustice from a building almost as handsome as the
American mission-houses which overlook it. Chang Chi Tung is the most
anti-foreign of all the Viceroys of China; yet no Viceroy in the Empire
has ever had so many foreigners in his employ as he. "Within the four
seas," he says, "all men are brothers"; yet the two provinces he rules
over are closed against foreigners, and the missionaries are compelled
to remain under the shelter of the foreign Concession in Hankow. With a
public spirit unusual