SIX WEEKS IN A TOWER. 105 



before we could get a boat, and at last had to content 

 ourselves with the ordinary passage-junk, which was 

 small, rotten, had a hole in its side, and was crowded 

 with twenty-four bullocks, and one hundred and three 

 Chinese passengers ! All the space below deck was 

 occupied by the bullocks, and how the passengers 

 managed to dispose of themselves above, so as to 

 leave room for the sailors to move, was one of those 

 mysteries which it is impossible to understand with- 

 out visiting the East. We established ourselves in a 

 covered place on deck, something like the half of a 

 barrel cut longitudinally, with the convex side upper- 

 most. Anticipating what would happen at night, I 

 placed the patient in the inner side of this den, and 

 fortified the outside with our luggage and my own 

 body. But unfortunately the barrel was capable of 

 elongation by a cover which drew out, and when it 

 came on heavy rain during the night, the passengers 

 crowded under this cover, half suffocating us, and 

 dispersing the most fearful odours from their damp 

 dirty clothes. My poor companion was in a fainting 

 condition till we got a board opened, which gave him 

 some air. These hundred passengers added to the 

 unpleasantness of the situation, by hustling and talk- 

 ing loudly and angrily among themselves, Avhile a 

 quarrel broke out among the sailors, in which some 

 very bad language was used, as to whether they should 

 stop or go on. The steersman, a rough character, 

 swore he would go on even if Mirs' Bay were choked 



