398 SPORTING IN BOTH HEMISPHERES. 



tables of all kinds, including excellent potatoes, are culti- 

 vated with care, and arrive at great perfection in China, 

 and most European horticultural specimens, as well as a large 

 assortment of tropical ones, are served up at the tables of 

 these merchant princes. Fruits, including a great proportion 

 of those indigenous to England, such as the pear, peach, 

 plum, strawberry, &c., are grown in and near Shanghai, and 

 all the most delicious products of the tropics are conveyed 

 thither by the steamers which are continually arriving from 

 the south of China. Ice is always procurable, and in great 

 abundance during the hot weather; and Tortoni himself 

 would not be disgraced by many a Chinaman's achievements 

 as a glacier. Wines and liqueurs of the finest quality are 

 not wanting to add their genial influence to the festive 

 board. 



Our vessel had now nearly completed her cargo of tea and 

 silks, and preparations were made for our departure, although 

 the monsoon (we were now at the latter end of July) was 

 dead against us, and our prospects of working up against it 

 in the China seas were anything but encouraging. The 

 snipes had departed, and the summer season had set in with 

 an intensity of heat and glare that no one who has not felt 

 it can very well imagine, and no European appeared in the 

 open air until the evening. Under these circumstances I 

 was not sorry once more to " brave the dangers of the sea," 

 and upon the 24th of July, 1856, we dropped down the 

 Shanghai river on our homeward-bound passage. x 



THE END. 



