ladies of rank; herbalists, apothecaries, and
quack medicine vendors; musical instrument
makers, bankers and money-changers; fashionable
tailors, letter-writers, matrimony brokers,
conjurors; ambulatory barbers, with painted
seats for the accommodation of their customers,
and instruments for cleaning and beautifying the
heads and tails of those to be operated on;
fish-sellers, carrying in large tubs their live
merchandise, to be killed only when they are
purchased, and if not purchased, to be brought still
living into the market at some future day; news-
men, who sell for the fifth part of a farthing the
printed announcement of the hour; soups, cakes,
fruits, sweetmeats, and a variety of viands are
vended in great quantities in the streets and
open places. All sorts of public cries are heard,
and the beggars are among the most vociferous.
One is pretty certain to be molested by water-
carriers, whose buckets, hung from the two ends
of a dancing bamboo borne on the shoulders,
sway to and fro in the rapid progress of the
bearer, and spill a portion of their contents over
the garments of the passenger before the warning
" Wai-ló" is heard. The Chinaman lives in an
atmosphere of noise; the clang of multitudinous
gongs fills the air from the rising to the setting
sun. If a great man comes forth, vociferous
shoutings herald his way. Loud and discordant
music is the accompaniment alike of the bride
who is led to her future domicile, and the corpse
that is deposited in its final home. It is through
the street just spoken of that the way is found
to the execution place, close to the river, where
Commissioner Yeh frequently caused many
hundreds of men to be decapitated in a day, where
the crosses for strangling are always exposed to
the public gaze, close to heaps of human heads
festering in foul corruption, and defiling the
atmosphere with pestilential noisomeness.

Not far from this spot is the Ma-tow (Horsehead)
quay. As we get near, there is a gathering
and thickening of the crowd, among whom
the smaller Kwan, or mandarins, are seen, having
gold balls, with flowers in relief or engraved on
their caps. These are the lowest functionaries.
A smaller number with plain gold balls, the men
of the next rank; then, the wearers of transparent
and of opaque glass; then,ever diminishing in
number, the dark blue and light blue balls; then,
in the higher orders, the ornamented; and, highest
of all, the plain red coral. The dresses of the
mandarins are gorgeous, according to their rank.
The most elevated have the stork and the
peacock splendidly embroidered on the breast and
the back of their rich garments. They wear
black silk boots with high white soles, and have
a chaplet of large beads round the neck. Some
have plumes from eagles' wings, some foxes'
brushes, a very few have peacocks' tail-feathers
hanging behind from their caps. Great is the
clamour of music, immense the assemblage of
flags, painted dragons, and other grotesque
devices: the shouts of the chair-bearers, the confusion
of sedans, the demands for precedence, the
cries and the wranglings—what does it all mean?

It all means that the barges are approaching
which convey the imperial commissioner, who
arrives from Peking to superintend the triennial
examinations. The procession has to make its way
through the innumerable boats which cover the
stream. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese
have no domicile on the solid land. They are as
aquatic as the ducks, their house companions
and their favourite aliment, and generally repose
under the same shelter. In their boats they
are born, in their boats they marry, in their
boats they die. The river population of China
is the result of that redundancy of the human
race for which the land furnishes an inadequate
resource. These boats represent the greater or
less opulence of the owners. From the San-pan
(three planks) up to the Hwa-chuen (the flower
boat), painted in gaudy green and gold, with
decorated halls and swinging lamps, and orchestra,
and theatricals, and gaming-tables, and frail
ones with crushed feet—every gradation will be
found. The humbler boats send forth the diligent
coolies to their hard labour by day; the
more ostentatious receive the do-nothing gay
livers by night.

The sedan of the Ta-jin (his excellency)
arrives. He is locked in when he leaves the
capital, in order that he may hold no
intercourse with any person likely to pervert his
mind by suggestions, or to influence his
decisions by bribes. He is to be delivered in his
long progress from one authority to another,
to be conducted to their Ya-muns (offices or
palaces), and they are to be responsible for
his being kept from any of the seductions to
which he might be exposed. It is he who is
charged with the selection of the great men of
the future to whom the administration of the
country will hereafter be transferred. It is he
who may elevate the meanest to become the
mightiest, and who holds in his hand that ladder
from whose steps the poorest scholar may ascend
to be the ruler of millions. From that body of
candidates whose acquirements he is about to
investigate, there will be chosen those who are
to be the generals, the admirals, the governors,
the viceroys, the censors, the cabinet councillors,
to whom will be confided authority over more
than four hundred millions of men.

As the sedan in which the high functionary was
seated, uncovered, with his fan in his hand, was
placed upon the quay, the governor of the
province and the principal officials came forward to
welcome him; but he received them with the
ordinary Chinese salutation, the two hands touching
one another, the head very slightly bent, but
the countenance wholly unmoved. There are
in everv province seven officers who take the
highest title, Great man: the Chi-tai (governor-
general), Fu-tai (governor), Fan-tai (head of
finance), Nie-tai (provincial judge), Yun-tai (salt
collector), Leang-tau (grain collector), Tau-tai
(circuit intendant). The superintendent of
customs, known to us generally under the title of
the Hoppo, is also a Ta-jin, ranking far beneath
the other officers as regards his nominal salary,
which is about one-tenth of that of the governor-
general (he has eight thousand pounds a year),