Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 095.djvu/450

Rh fro, and all engaged in active business. Its fields were green, and were watered by numerous canals ; while in the background to this beautiful picture were hills nearly as high as Koo-shan, from amougst which the river runs, and where it is lost to the eye.

The gates of the city are always locked soon after dark; but this does not prevent ingress and egress, for ladders are placed against the walls, up which men arc seen ascending and descending like a hive of bees, and the guards reap a rich harvest, each man having to pay a few cash for the use of the ladder.

The chief drawback at Amoy has been the comparative poverty of the population, and smallness of the trade; but the latter is improving. The harbour, which is safe and easy of access, has long rendered it a market for the Straits' produce of the Malay Islands; and this trade, and that with Singapore, is, according to the latest information, increasing. Sir John Davis describes the town and citadel as built on low ground, exceedingly dirty, but populous, and bearing a busy appearance. He says that no doubt this port w'ill be second only to Shanghae among the new ones.

Ningpo is a place of considerable importance, by its situation. The people arc also favourably disposed towards Europeans. The near neighbourhood of the preferable emporium of Shanghae alone interferes with its success; and at the time of Sir John Davis's visit only one merchant had arrived. The embroidered silks, celebrated for their beauty, are sold in the best streets of the city. The furniture-shops compete, in size and richness, with those of our upholsterers. A kind of highly varnished inlaid work is peculiar to this city, and beautifully carved bedsteads arc manufactured, as large as a little room or tabernacle. Mr. Fortune does not say much of this city, whither he arrived from his visit to the tea districts of Hwuy-chow, and whence he proceeded on his still more interesting journey to the Bohea mountains, in both cases disguised as a Chinaman. As these journeys comprise much that is new and curious, both with regard to tea-cultivation and manufacture and also to Chinese geography, we propose to follow our intelligent and intrepid traveller through some of the more striking episodes of those journeys.

The tea district of Hwuy-chow, not yet familiarised to our western ears like Bohea, lies about 200 miles inland from Shanghae and Ningpo, and has been hitherto a sealed country to Europeans. Mr. Fortune procured two men of the country—and great rascals they turned out to be—to act as servants and guides. These men played him false at the onset, having betrayed the secret of his intentions to the boatmen. The shaving that is necessary in adopting the Chinese costume was, in the hands of these servants, an operation entailing no slight suffering. "He did not shave," Mr. Fortune relates, "he actually scraped my poor head until the tears came running down my cheeks, and I cried out with pain. All he said was 'Hai—yah,' 'very bad, very bad,' and continued the operation. To make matters worse, and to try my temper more, the boatmen were peeping into the cabin, and evidently enjoying the whole affair, and thinking it capital sport."

The whole country to the westward of Shanghae, it must be understood, is intersected with rivers and canals, so that the traveller can visit by boat almost all the towns and cities in that part of the province.