58 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



resolved to set off in it. As the night was dark, and 

 the junk was lying some way off, we embarked in 

 little sampans under the light of a grass fire, which 

 made the scene look like crossing the Stygian river 

 in Charon's boat ; for our boatmen were sufficiently 

 naked and ugly to have passed in that light for 

 demons ; and as the fire cast its gleams only a short 

 way into the darkness which hung over the water, 

 it looked as if ghostly figures were paddling us away 

 to the very domain of ]STox and Erebus. The cabin 

 of the junk was occupied by two respectable-looking 

 Chinamen, who were smoking opium, and offered us 

 a place beside them but we preferred to stretch our 

 blankets under a sort of shed upon the deck. The 

 night being wet, our coolies and the other passengers 

 pressed in upon us rather inconveniently; and I felt 

 very much as if lying in a coffin in an ancestral vault, 

 with devils moving round, these devils being the 

 boatmen, who were constantly crossing our circum- 

 scribed arc of vision in order to shift the sails. 



A cold grey morning, with heavy mists hanging 

 over the broad waters of Mirs' Bay, roused us from 

 uneasy slumber, and in two or three hours we reached 

 Shoh-ee-choong, or " Saltfish Creek," where there is a 

 fine sandy beach, a station for passage-boats, a narrow 

 picturesque creek running inland between high banks, 

 a small village, and where we went on shore in order 

 to conclude our short journey by land. Here we were 

 accosted by a messenger and two armed retainers, 



