Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/163

Rh another, and for plain unadulterated truth give me the description of the admirable Abbé Hue, who found "the effect of the scene, dimly exhibited by an imperfect wick floating amid thick, dirty, stinking oil, whose receptacle is ordinarily a broken tea-cup, to be fantastic, and to the stranger fearful"!

The "everything that can be wanted" of Marco Polo is summed up by a wooden trestle-bed and a wisp of straw, a wooden table and stool, boiled rice and hot water. The rooms open on to a stone or mud courtyard, which is a receptacle for the accumulated filth of the establishment; the windows and doors are of paper, pasted on to a wooden framework, square feet of which are usually missing, and on all sides arises what Trinculo would describe as "a very ancient and a fishlike smell."

At night the inn becomes a scene of lively animation. The coolies troop in by degrees, and after disposing of their loads, shout noisily for food and hot water. To the European, whose organs appear to be more highly developed than those of the Ssŭch'uan coolie, this