52 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



poisonous snake glided over the cold stone floors ; 

 and on the hills behind might have been heard the 

 rattling matchlocks of scarce tamer men of Affghans 

 and Rohillas who had descended from their native 

 mountains to batten on the falling Nizam and his 

 dominions. 



The tower in which I spent the six weeks of Avhich 

 I have now to give some account, was also in a rather 

 out-of-the-way corner of the world, into which it is 

 not likely that any copies of ' Maga ' will soon pene- 

 trate. It was in the Kwang-tung or " Broad East " 

 province of China, and in the district Kwei-shin, 

 which lies on the Tung-kiang or " East River," one 

 of the large streams which form the Pearl or Canton 

 Eiver. Only about a hundred miles distant from 

 Canton on the west, and from Hong-Kong on the 

 south, it was nevertheless a far-off place, in a wild 

 tract of country unknown to Europeans, and in the 

 midst of a peculiar people called the Hakka, who are 

 rather at variance with the other inhabitants of the 

 south of China, and sometimes not particularly peace- 

 ful among themselves. As there was nothing from 

 the outer barbaric world to disturb our meditations, 

 I had an opportunity of observing closely the life of 

 that section of the Chinese ; and as the Chinese New 

 Year passed during the period of our residence there, 

 I was able to see a little of their domestic happiness 

 and glory. 



China is very generally supposed to be the most 



