Ime traveller who reaches China vid the huge steamers which come through the Canal, or even by the lines which cross the Pacific, is compelled at Shanghai to change into vessels which in comparison seem small. If on his way to what is now termed North China, and bound beyond Tientsin, until within a few months ago he was obliged at that point to change into either the unspeakable Chinese cart, or to enter one of the countless house-boats which throng all the numerous rivers of that aquatic region, lo such visitors these craft have fow attractions, In spite of all efforts to fit them up in a way to make the Occidental comfortable, it is impossible for the most optimistic person to avoid a sense of the accommodation being limited in amount and poor in quality. Many years ago a lady connected with one of the Legations, for whom a large boat had been fitted up as attractively as possible, remarked upon being introduced to her new quarters: " Well, you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, no matter what you do." This view is probably shared by all but a small percentage of those who use a northern house-boat for the first time. But time, which ameliorates almost everything, has a most.mollifying effect upon this method of Chinese transport tation, 'I'he traveller whose errands compel him to visit any: part of the interior, finds himself looking forward most wistfully to the day when he shall strike some stream large enough to admit of his abandoning his cart, or his litter, for the once despised house-boat, When that has at length been accomplished, he begins to feel once mora at his ease as itin his own inn. Tha all-pervasive boy now has room to prepare the meals of which he knows his master to be fond, but which in the average inn must be too often abridged for lack of material or for concomitant causes beyond the traveller's control. Pho latter is glad to miss the shrill voice of the carter summoning bim to arise and dress long before daylight, in order that the mules may got into their next night's harbour about the middle of the afternoon. Long experience has taught the traveller, however, that it is best to let the carter have his way, as otherwise ho will make it nasty for the inflexible Occidental in a great variety of other ways. But on the restful house-boat the patient boatmen will start as early us the carter ever did, and will go much later, and with the inestimable advantage of not disturbing the fare in the process, except by the sories of mild yells necessary to clear the craft of obstructions, and by the weird chant kept up by the trackers going up stream, or by the rowers when going down, Yo all these it is easy to grow accustomed, and there is the glad consciousness that at any moment one can shut himself in from that unsympathetic observation which Mra. Browning declared to be "torture," and can be as much secluded as if in his cabin on an Atlantic liner, and perhaps, on the whole, almost as comfortable. 'I'o this appreciation of. the house-boat he does not, it is true arrive at a bound, but by a slow process of evolutionary environment. Yet once arrived there, he feels that it is a luxury from which he would not willingly part. But here we are, on the apparent edge of a revolution that is to deprive us of the peaceful enjoyment of out little craft, and thrust us back into the whirl of the distracted civilisation from which we have so long been partly free, 'I'he scream of the locomotive is heard in the land, and threatens to be heard'yet more loudly and more widely. If there is anything in Egypt, South Africa, India, or Tim: buctoo more disagreeable than a Chinese railway, we do not know what it is, If all-the Imperial Edicts are to be trusted, we are on the eve of finding our pleasant waterways paralleled by
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.