writes:--

"The people of this town are particularly conservative and exclusive.
They have such an objection to strangers that no inn is allowed within
the city walls, and no one from any other town is allowed to establish a
shop.... When the telegraph line was first taken through here there was
much commotion, and so determined was the opposition of the townspeople
to this new-fangled means of communication that the telegraph office had
to be put inside the colonel's yamen, the only place where it would be
safe from destruction."

The proprietor of the inn in which I stayed was a man of about fifty, of
goodly person and somewhat corpulent, comely presence, good humor, and
privileged freedom. He had a pretty daughter. He was an exception to the
ordinary father in China, in the fact that he was proud of her, as he
was of his house and his faring. But in all conscience he should have
been abundantly ashamed of his charges, for my boy said I was charged
three times too much, and I have no cause for doubting his word either,
for he was fairly honest. I once had a boy in Singapore who acted for
three weeks as a "ganti"[AK] whilst my own boy underwent a surgical
operation, and between misreckonings, miscarriages, misdealings,
mistakes and misdemeanors, had he remained with me another month I
should have had to pack up lock, stock and barrel and clear.

I stayed here a day in the hope of getting my mail, but had the
pleasure of seeing only the bag containing it. It was sealed, and the
postmaster had no authority to break that seal.

There were no telegraph poles in the district through which I was
passing; the connections were affixed to the trunks of trees. The
telegraph runs right across the Ch'u-hsiong-fu plain, on entering which
one crosses a rustic bridge just below a rather fine pagoda, from which
an excellent view is obtained of the old city. The wall up towards the
north gate, where there is another pagoda, is built over a high knoll.
Inside the wall half the town is uncultivated ground. Four youngsters
here were having a great time on the back of a lazy buffalo, who,
turning his head swiftly to get rid of some irritating bee, dislodged
the quartet to the ground, where they fought and cursed each other over
the business.

Everything that one sees around here is particularly "Chinesey." It may
be supposed that I am not the first person who has gone through town
after town and found in all that he looks at, part