med into a frame; then, in a little
space just large enough for work,--for the printer has no immense
establishment with signs on the outside of "Book and Job Printing,"--a
Chinaman will sit down, snatch up a paper in one hand, and stamp it
instantly with the wooden block letters, moistened with the coloring
mixture used in printing.

When the teas are fairly ready to be conveyed to the ships, heavy
cargo-boats are moored at the foot of the hong, their crews prepare
for the chop, and the coolies within the hong stand ready to carry the
chests. Every box is properly weighed, papered, and bound with split
ratan, the bill of the purchase has gone duly authenticated to the
foreign factory, and the teas bid farewell to their native soil. The
word is given, and each cooly, placing his two chests in the ropes
swinging from his shoulder-bar, lifts them from the ground, and with a
brisk walk conveys them on board the chop-boat, where they are carefully
stowed away. As they are carried out of the hong, a fellow stands ready,
and, as if about to stab the packages, thrusts at each one two sharp
sticks with red ends, leaving them jammed between the ratan and the
tea-box. One of these sticks is taken out when the chest leaves the
chop-boat, and the other when it reaches the deck of the vessel; and
as soon as one hundred chests are passed into the ship, the sticks
are counted and thus serve as tallies. Should the two bundles not
correspond, a chest is missing somewhere, and woe betide the blunderer!

In the busy season the chop-boats are seen pushing down the river with
every favorable tide. As for pushing against the tide, no Chinaman ever
thinks of such a thing, unless absolutely compelled, the value of time
being quite unknown in China. Coolly anchoring as soon as the tide is
adverse, the crew fall to playing cards until it is time to get under
way again. Nearly every chop-boat contains a whole family, father,
mother, and children,--sometimes an old grandparent, also, being
included in the domestic circle,--and all assist in working. At the
stern of the boat the wife has a little cooking-apparatus, and prepares
the cheap rice for the squad of eager gormandizers, who bolt it in huge
quantities without fear of indigestion. The family sit down to their
repast on the deck; the men keep an eye to windward and a hand on the
tiller; the mother knots the cord that goes around the baby's waist
into an iron ring, and, feeling secure against