280 SHOOTING IN CHINA 



days, would have been laughed to scorn at 

 the present time. There was no stove in the 

 boat, and our washstand was but a pewter 

 basin dumped down upon the deck. Fagged 

 out after a hard day's tramp our first care 

 was to pump out our muzzle-loading guns 

 with ice cold water, a very dirty operation ; 

 and the second to clean ourselves, also in 

 cold water, before getting into our thick 

 flannel dressing gowns and drawing on our 

 skin-lined mandarin boots. Kashing, I 

 remember, was our centre of operations, all 

 amongst the ruins around the city walls, 

 before the tens of thousands of tons of 

 rubble were thought of for macadamizing 

 the roads of the Settlement of Shanghai. 

 It snowed hard during the week of our 

 short trip, and the innumerable ponds were 

 alive with wild fowl on such ice free water 

 as could be found. There was nothing very 

 remarkable about our sport for our bag 

 rarely exceeded double figures per gun per 

 day, but there was a keenness, an enthusiasm, 

 a je ne sais qnoi about the outing which, I 

 take it, scarcely exist to-day. Perhaps I 

 may explain what keenness meant. I had 

 just arrived from home with no shooting 

 boots, of course, but only some half dozen 



