thing eatable will grow is allowed to remain idle: the care with which each little plant is watered and manured would be an excellent object-lesson for our agriculturists. Not only is the most made of dry land, but water also is turned to account, small fields after the crop is off being dammed up and fish turned in to fatten. On one occasion when after snipe, I happened to see a big fish show itself in a flooded field and shot it, also two or three more before it struck me why they were there. I paid the owner their value and also left him the fish (some kind of carp), so he at least was well satisfied. Manure (town and village sewage) is a valuable article in China, and most carefully preserved; but so fond are the Chinese of practical jokes, -a middy who can quietly tie the ends of the tails of two swell Chinamen together when they are engaged talking, instantly has the whole sympathies of a crowd on his side, who simply roar with laughter when the heads are jerked backwards, that when one of our men-of-war was lying just below Wampoa some Chinamen, for the sake of a startling practical joke, did not scruple to expend the very valuable cargoes of two large manure-boats. The men were all on deck at divisions, and it being unfortunately Sunday, they had their best clothes on. Two boats a little apart came down on the tide towards the (even now it does not do to mention names), a rope connecting them fouled the moorings, and the boats swung on to the ship, one on each side. There was a double explosion from well-arranged powdercharges concealed in the boats, and then a perfect shower of the most horrible filth descended on the ship. Not only had the clothing of the officers and

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men all to be destroyed, but it was a long time before the ship could be thoroughly cleansed from smell, and still longer before it was safe even to innocently use a pocket handkerchief in the presence of any one belonging to the

As ingenious workmen, more particularly in carving and carpentry, where fine detail is required, the Chinese can have few equals. Even an itinerant carver with a barrow-stall in the street, if given a dry peach-stone, will, while you wait, carve it beautifully. Another special curiosity was to break a wine-glass into several pieces, and then give it to a glass- and china-mender to rivet : the work was simply perfect. The Chinese can apply this careful attention to details in everything. On becoming a staff officer I required a staff cap with gold-lace of a particular pattern. A Chinese tailor looked at the pattern I gave him, then said, "Ten day, ten dollar, can do." In ten days a perfect staff cap arrived, and wore extremely well, descending to another officer, a brigadier - general, after I left. The colonel commanding the artillery was not so fortunate. He ordered a supply of coal-a a rare commodity in Southern China: when tried some time afterwards, the whole turned out to be carefully painted stones!

The struggle for existence being so hard, it is not to be wondered at that infanticide is in time of famine rather too frequent. In consequence of this, some benevolent Chinese had in former days endowed a foundling asylum at Canton, and doubtless similar institutes exist in other Chinese towns; but, as far as I could gather, most of the funds intended to save infant life had gone into the pockets of those

whose special duty it was to look after the place, much in the same way as some of the educational and other charities in the United Kingdom have gone off the rails, as mentioned in the records of the Charity Commissioners. The general idea in this country is that the Chinese have no more affection for each other than ants or bees, and that when an individual can no longer work, they allow him or her to die. No greater mistake could possibly be made, and it is curious how it could have originated. Some forms of their punishments are brutal, but when one comes to think of it, they are not really so horrible as our own judicial executions only some 150 years ago. The most severe execution in China, slicing to death, dreadful as it sounds, is rapidly done with twelve regulation cuts. Compare this with the execution of the unfortunate Jacobites in 1746 at Carlisle and on Kennington Common, when after being suspended for a minute on the gallows, they were lowered down, their stomachs cut open, and their entrails torn out and burnt before their faces whilst the sufferers were still alive. Even as late as 1727 a woman was burnt alive in London, surrounded by a brutal crowd enjoying the spectacle. Fortunately the shrieks of the woman happened in this case to be heard by royal ears, and death by roasting alive ceased to be a form of legal execution in England; but the hanging, not only of men, but of women and children, for offences which would now be considered sufficiently punished by a few weeks' imprisonment or a birching, a birching, continued well into the nineteenth century. We can therefore hardly be surprised at what still exists in China. Such specu

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lations, however, hardly come within service recollections, but from my personal observations, living as I did amongst the Chinese for nearly a year, I consider it my simple duty to state my own experiences, and to say that I believe that Europeans who behaved themselves properly and did not offensively push their own religions or interfere in political matters, could live in China, and would be welcomed by the ordinary traders and peasants. The officials whose peculations and robberies are interfered with, naturally do not like Europeans, and when they can, make the country too hot for them. At Canton, where the allied commissioners kept the Chinese city mandarins in order with an iron hand inside a velvet glove, trade and business went on perfectly in a marvellously short time after we occupied Canton. The departure of the garrison doubtless well pleased the mandarins, but many thousands of citizens unquestionably would have preferred our remaining.

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CHAPTER VI.

PEIHO.

BUT to return to my own particular line. News arrived one day which caused the garrison to stand to its arms, and consider whether we had a sufficient supply of ammunition and food for a siege. A terrible disaster had occurred to our arms in the north. In 1858, when the Chinese opposed our going up the Peiho to Tientsin to make the final arrangements about the treaty which had been agreed on, our gunboats forced a passage past the Taku Forts, and getting above them so enfiladed the works that the expedition got up the river with but little loss. The following year the treaty was to be ratified at a grand meeting of politicians at Pekin. As a matter of precaution, a battalion of marines and a company of Royal Engineers went to the north with the fleet escorting the Ministers; but on arrival at the mouth of the Peiho it was found that the Chinese had immensely strengthened the Taku Forts since the previous year, and placed in the river huge iron stakes on tripod legs, and a strong boom composed of heavy spars arranged parallel to the banks a few feet apart, and connected by three rows of sunken chains. There was also a great raft of timber above the boom. When requested to remove these so as to allow the diplomatic represen