Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/283

 and sampans. On these were washerwomen, many of whom were young and pretty, and venders of all conceivable goods; soft-tack, fresh eggs of different sizes,  a reddish-colored milk, chickens, cockerells, and ducks,  both cooked and alive, various kinds of pies, cakes, and  puddings, carved fowl, and fish, fruits and vegetables,  mats, shells, birds of paradise, pigeons, various parrots, cockatoos, monkeys, singing and talking birds, beautiful  specimens of corals, and many other curiosities too numerous to mention. All the venders pleaded piteously for us to buy, declaring that everything was very  cheap.

We were homeward bound, so our stay here was short, yet in rowing the officers up to town we had a chance to  see the sights of the place. On either side of the river we saw the floating homes of the Chinese, called sampans. They were covered with women and children. The children were all naked, frolicking in the water, and apparently happy as ducks. But what took the wind out of our sails was to see guards of swarthy, brown sepoys,  dressed up as English soldiers, in close-bodied, red coats, while the thermometer stood at nearly one hundred. Besides Europeans, we saw many Hindus, Dutch, Chinese, Jews, Malays, Parsees, Armenians, and Buddhists. There was a jargon of languages, but all seemed to understand one another.

Most of the trades were carried on in the streets. Here we found umbrellas and fans for sale, coffin-makers, and money changers whose smaller coins were pieces of  melted silver, several copper coins tied on a string, a  peculiar kind of fish scales, and small cowry shells.