DIFFICULTIES OF DIALECT 17 



they abound, for when the steamer drew up along- 

 side the hulks which long ago were the P. ^^ O. 

 liners Bombay and Ganges, dirty sampans came 

 shooting to us. From each a long basket- topped 

 bamboo projected which swayed to the intermin- 

 able, supplicating whine of those who held them. 

 China is so vast a country, and its eighteen pro- 

 vinces so diversified, that there is considerably more 

 difference between the dialects than between broad 

 Scots and Somerset. There were three Chinamen 

 on board who had to converse in English to 

 make themselves understood ! Two spoke broken 

 Enghsh, the third Mandarin, which one of the 

 others understood but could not speak. They 

 could not talk together in Chinese, for they could 

 not understand each other's dialect : consequently, 

 if the one who spoke Mandarin wished to speak 

 to the first Chinaman, he had to say it in Man- 

 darin to the second, who translated it in broken 

 English. 



We had but few fellow passengers, though the 

 engineer was a great character. He had fought in 

 the Matabele war of 1896, and been through a 

 South American revolution. On the Yangtse 

 itself some years before, river pirates had attacked 

 the ship he was on. He was in Peking in 1900, 

 where, so far as I could ascertain, he spent most of 

 his spare time removing superfluous idols from the 

 temples which he subsequently retailed at five 

 dollars apiece in Shanghai. Considering that had 

 he been caught he would most certainly have died 

 a very painful death, the price does not seem 

 excessive. 



Four and a half days after leaving Shanghai 



