158 Among Men and Horses. 



hearted man, with any amount of life and ' go,' and he is a 

 first-rate loser. While at Hong Kong, I tried him somewhat 

 highly in his last-mentioned character. As I wanted to show 

 my class the easiest manner in which to make a pony lie 

 down, I took one belonging to Mr Humphreys ; selected a 

 soft piece of deep sand on which to conduct the experiment ; 

 tied up one foreleg ; pulled his head gently round to the other 

 side ; and down he went without a struggle, never to get up 

 again ; for he happened in some mysterious way to break his 

 back. Mr Humphreys took the accident in as good part, as 

 if he regarded it as a portion of the programme. I may 

 mention that this is the only accident I have ever had in mak- 

 ing a horse lie down. 



Mr R. Fraser Smith, who, in the beginning of the seventies, 

 was a well-known athlete and member of the London Athletic 

 Club and other metropolitian associations, is a prominent 

 figure in the society of the 'model colony,' as the editor of 

 Hong Kong Telegraph. He is independent, honest, and a 

 good hater ; consequently, he has become, from conducting 

 his own cases, the best authority in the Far East on the law 

 of libel. His experience has been bought not very cheaply, 

 either in the matter of fines or of imprisonment. On one 

 occasion he was sentenced, most unjustly I think, to two 

 months for libelling Bandmann, who, though a great actor, 

 had an extraordinary faculty for getting himself disliked. 

 The last I heard of him was that he was conducting a dime 

 show in New York. Mr Smith seems to have profited by his 

 experience in the cinder path, for he is the best trainer of 

 ponies in Hong Kong. 



A run of a day and a half by steamer took us to Amoy, 

 which in old days was a favourite place of resort for Chinese 

 pirates, who now happily confine their raids to the junks of 

 their own countrymen ; and three days more brought us into 

 the mouth of the Yangtse, which carries into the ocean a 

 larger volume of water than any other river of the Old World. 



During the summer it is navigable for more than 1000 



