ed, and he retained his engagement as
Manager of the Flotilla Company; but he lost his appointment as the
Representative of Italy--an honourable post with a dignified salary paid
by the Italian Government in I.O.U.'s.

Chungking is an enormously rich city. It is built at the junction of the
Little River and the Yangtse, and is, from its position, the great river
port of the province of Szechuen. Water-ways stretch from here an
immense distance inland. The Little River is little only in comparison
with the Yangtse, and in any other country would be regarded as a mighty
inland river. It is navigable for more than 2000 li (600 miles). The
Yangtse drains a continent; the Little River drains a province larger
than a European kingdom. Chungking is built at a great height above the
present river, now sixty feet below its summer level. Its walls are
unscalable. Good influences are directed over the city from a lofty
pagoda on the topmost hill in the vicinity. Temples abound, and spacious
yamens and rich buildings, the crowning edifice of all being the Temple
to the God of Literature. Distances are prodigious in Chungking, and the
streets so steep and hilly, with flights of stairs cut from the solid
rock, that only a mountaineer can live here in comfort. All who can
afford it go in chairs; stands of sedan chairs are at every important
street corner.

[Illustration: A TEMPLE THEATRE IN CHUNGKING.]

During the day the city vibrates with teeming traffic; at night the
streets are deserted and dead, the stillness only disturbed by a
distant watchman springing his bamboo rattle to keep himself awake and
warn robbers of his approach. In no city in Europe is security to life
and property better guarded than in this, or, indeed, in any other
important city in China. It is a truism to say that no people are more
law-abiding than the Chinese; "they appear," says Medhurst, "to maintain
order as if by common consent, independent of all surveillance."

Our Consul in Chungking is Mr. E. H. Fraser, an accomplished Chinese
scholar, who fills a difficult post with rare tact and complete success.
Consul Fraser estimates the population of Chungking at 200,000; the
Chinese, he says, have a record of 35,000 families within the walls. Of
this number from forty to fifty per cent. of all men, and from four to
five per cent. of all women, indulge in the opium pipe. The city abounds
in opium-shops--shops, that is, where the little opium-lamps and the