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180 A COLLECTING TRIP 
Chinese passengers and their baggage. The Captain 
iold me that thousands of people live in these sampans 
all their lives and never go ashore. We secured a 
gvood guide at nine o’elock and started off in sedan 
chairs through the city. The European quarter, with 
its clean, broad streets, was soon passed and we found 
ourselves in the heart of the city with streets not 
more than seven feet wide. Down these narrow lanes 
with matting awnings overhead, between swinging 
black, gold, blue and red signboards, the people 
swarm. Two chairs can barely pass and in order to 
turn a sharp corner the poles of the chairs are run 
far into the shops. Every house you see is an open 
shop and each street has certain kinds of shops on it; 
for instance, silk shops, rows and rows of nothing but 
silk shops with magnificent silks of all colors in every 
stage of manufacture, jade and jewellers’ shops, 
weavers’ dens, cabinet shops and, worst of all, meat 
and cook shops. Such smells as issued forth from 
those places ! Smelling salts of the strongest kind did 
no good. Unknown cookery simmers, sputters and 
scents the air and I saw even Chinese women hold their 
noses when they walked by; so you will perceive it 
must have been pretty dreadful. Dried ducks hang- 
ing up by their necks and covered with flies, roasted 
pigs which should have been eaten years ago and duck 
eggs that have been buried for ten years, dried fish 
of all kinds and rats, are a few of the many things 
that adorn the meat shops. The rat is in the market 
everywhere, alive in cages, freshly killed or dried. 
Likewise the cat and kitten. But it is all most inter- 
esting to see. We went to an embroidery shop where 
beautiful old Mandarin coats and all kinds of em- 
