Page:Glimpses into Chinese homes.djvu/13

Rh and harbors are crowded with little crafts, from twenty to thirty feet in length, containing but a single room, roofed with straw matting.

House-boats are under the supervision of water police, who grant them a location. Many of them are permanently moored. When they become unseaworthy, they are sometimes lodged upon the bank, and still used as residences.

A Dominican Friar, in 1830, described boat-life to a correspondent in the following quaint and graphic language :

"The realm of Cathay is peopled passing well ****** There be many great sheets of water throughout the Empire j insomuch that a good half of the realm and its territory is under water. And on these waters dwell great multitudes of people, because of the vast population there is in the said realm. They build wooden houses upon boats, and so their houses go up and down upon the waters, and