SIX WEEKS IX A TOWER. 55 



emigration agent passed beyond the Sun-on and Toong- 

 koon districts into that of Kwei-shin, which was still 

 more turbulent, and knew foreigners almost entirely 

 by report, he very soon came to grief, and narrowly 

 escaped with his life. 



On his first visit to Tam-shui, a town not far 

 from our tower, the mandarin declined to give him 

 any countenance, and directed him to an inn in the 

 lowest part of the town, where a crowd fell upon 

 him and took away his baggaga Kot judging it 

 exactly expedient to remain there; he set off for one 

 of the villages in the neighbourhood; but on his 

 way thither he was attacked by a band of men, 

 who suddenly knocked him into a ditch before he 

 had time to use his revolver, and then confiscated 

 his money, his hat, and all his clothes, with the ex- 

 ception of his nether garments. On rising when the 

 plunderers left, he found that his Chinese followers 

 were nowhere, and he nearly perished from hunger 

 and exposure. The first village he came to afforded 

 a bitter illustration of the opinion formed of those 

 who are down in the world. The villagers came out 

 with their bamboos and drove him away not, be 

 it noted, because he was poor and had no money to 

 give them, but because, as they said, he was a bad 

 man ; for none but bad men went about in that style 

 at night. Xor is China the only country where such 

 judgments are passed. Further on he found a cold 

 Samaritan in the shape of the keeper of a temple, 



