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64 from Chinese yarn, consisting of fifty wooden hand-looms imported from Japan, and superintended by a manager of the same nationality. But for the rest Ichang holds out no great attraction, and we lost little time in stowing our possessions into the two kuadzas, or three-room native passenger junks, kindly engaged for us by the British consul, and effecting a start. "We" consisted of two white men,—Mr F. W. Belt, an Australian who for many years had found wandering in many lands the most satisfactory method of—as he expressed it—killing time, and myself; two Chinese servants picked up by Belt at Hankow; Mr Chou, commonly known as "Joe," my faithful and accomplished interpreter; and Peter, my Chinese cook and body-servant, equipped to a remarkable degree with all the virtues and most of the vices common to his kind.

The passenger junk is a long, narrow, shallow-draught boat fitted with mast and sail. Aft a