Chinese woman is more comely than the gait of the
Japanese woman as she shambles ungracefully along with her little bent
legs, scraping her wooden-soled slippers along the pavement with a noise
that sets your teeth on edge. "Girls are like flowers," say the Chinese,
"like the willow. It is very important that their feet should be bound
short so that they can walk beautifully with mincing steps, swaying
gracefully, and thus showing to all that they are persons of
respectability." Apart from the Manchus, the dominant race, whose women
do not bind their feet, all chaste Chinese girls have small feet. Those
who have large feet are either, speaking generally, ladies of easy
virtue or slave girls. And, of course, no Christian girl is allowed to
have her feet bound.

[Illustration: ON A BALCONY IN WESTERN CHINA.]

Leaving Ping-shan-pa with a stiff breeze in our favour we slowly stemmed
the current. Look at the current side, and you would think we were doing
eight knots an hour or more, but look at the shore side, close to which
we kept to escape as far as possible from the current, and you saw how
gradually we felt our way along.

At a double row of mat sheds filled with huge coils of bamboo rope of
all thicknesses, my laoban went ashore to purchase a towline; he took
with him 1000 cash (about two shillings), and returned with a coil 100
yards in length and 600 cash of change. The rope he brought was made of
plaited bamboo, was as thick as the middle finger, and as tough as
whalebone.

The country was more open and terraced everywhere into gardens. Our
progress was most satisfactory. When night came we drew into the bank,
and I coiled up in my crib and made myself comfortable. Space was
cramped, and I had barely room to stretch my legs. My cabin was 5 feet 6
inches square and 4 feet high, open behind, but with two little doors in
front, out of which I could just manage to squeeze myself sideways round
the mast. Coir matting was next the floor boards, then a thick Chinese
quilt (a _pukai_), then a Scotch plaid made in Geelong. My pillow was
Chinese, and the hardest part of the bed; my portmanteau was beside me
and served as a desk; a Chinese candle, more wick than wax, stuck into a
turnip, gave me light.

This, our first day's journey, brought us to within sound of the worst
rapid on the river, the Hsintan, and the roar of the cataract hummed in
our ears all night.

Early in the morning we were at the foot of the rapid u