old times--pityingly because he knew I could not
understand. All I could tell was that the place dressed by America--from
the hair-cutters' saloons to the liquor-bars. The faces of men were
turned to the Golden Gate even while they floated most of the Singapur
companies. There is not sufficient push in Singapur alone, so Hong-Kong
helps. Circulars of new companies lay on the bank counters. I moved amid
a maze of interests that I could not comprehend, and spoke to men whose
minds were at Hankow, Foochoo, Amoy, or even further--beyond the Yangtze
gorges where the Englishman trades.

After a while I escaped from the company-floaters because I knew I could
not understand them, and ran up a hill. Hong-Kong is all hill except
when the fog shuts out everything except the sea. Tree ferns sprouted on
the ground and azaleas mixed with the ferns, and there were bamboos over
all. Consequently it was only natural that I should find a tramway that
stood on its head and waved its feet in the mist. They called it the
Victoria Gap Tramway and hauled it up with a rope. It ran up a hill into
space at an angle of 65 deg., and to those who have seen the Rigi, Mount
Washington, a switchback railway, and the like would not have been
impressive. But neither you nor I have ever been hauled from Annandale
to the Chaura Maidan in a bee-line with a five-hundred-foot drop on the
off-side, and we are at liberty to marvel. It is not proper to run up
inclined ways at the tail of a string, more especially when you cannot
see two yards in front of you and all earth below is a swirling cauldron
of mist. Nor, unless you are warned of the opticalness of the delusion,
is it nice to see from your seat, houses and trees at magic-lantern
angles. Such things, before tiffin, are worse than the long roll of the
China seas.

They turned me out twelve hundred feet above the city on the military
road to Dalhousie, as it will be when India has a surplus. Then they
brought me a glorified dandy which, not knowing any better, they called
a chair. Except that it is too long to run corners easily, a chair is
vastly superior to a dandy. It is more like a Bombay side _tonjon_--the
kind we use at Mahableshwar. You sit in a wicker chair, slung low on ten
feet of elastic wooden shafting, and there are light blinds against the
rain.

"We are now," said the Professor, as he wrung out his hat gemmed with
the dews of the driving mist, "we are now on a pleasure trip. This is
the