144 Through the Yang-tse Gorges 



We retired at nine, the hours from dusk to bedtime being 

 most uncomfortably passed sitting about on hard, high, 

 square chairs in a state of darkness made visible by a dim 

 oil-lamp, consisting of a tilted greasy saucer, on a high stand, 

 filled with oil, from the edge of which a smoking pith 

 wick protrudes. There being no privacy in China, I held 

 a lev& in my earth-floored bedroom, furnished with a 

 gorgeously carved and heavily gilt bedstead, and rows of 

 red, lacquered, brass-locked wardrobes, and the usual stiff 

 chairs at httle tea-poys. Here I was carefully put to bed 

 on a mattress of plaited straw, with a not very clean cotton 

 quilt, and exceedingly dirty flowered-silk bed-curtains. The 

 Chinese, like our own ancestors, dress in magnificent silks 

 and satins, their underclothing being often filthy in the 

 extreme. Though they acknowledge the value of clean- 

 liness theoretically, their whole life, public and private, is an 

 almost total negation of it. Rich and poor are all alike, nor 

 do I find the Szechuan people one whit better than their 

 y neighbours in this respect. Coming up, every man of our 

 crew was covered with itch-sores, and some ointment I 

 offered them they would not take the trouble to apply. 

 There can be no doubt that the Chinese possess a much less 

 highly developed organization than do the Caucasian races, 

 and hence their indifference to discomfort and suffering. 

 They seem, too, nowadays to be quite wanting in the 

 imaginative faculty, and have long since ceased to invent 

 anything new ; and while doubtless they are thus spared 

 many of the pains that a superior development of this 

 faculty afflicts us with, they lose nearly all the highest 

 pleasures which our more sensitive organization affords us. 

 Like the animals to a great extent, their procedures follow 

 instinct or hereditary tendencies rather than reason, and 

 their ambition seems limited to the gratification of the senses. 



