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116 MY LODGINGS. [Cuar. VII. 
I visited this place for the first time at the end 
of 1843, as soon as the port was opened by Her 
Majesty’s Consul, Captain Balfour, and took up my 
quarters in a kind of bank or government shroft 
establishment, in company with two or three gen- 
tlemen who were here for purposes of trade. As 
none of us carried a cooking establishment with us, 
our meals were necessarily of the roughest descrip- 
tion, neither exactly Chinese nor English, but 
something between the two. Our bed-rooms were 
miserably cold: often, in the mornings, we would 
find ourselves drenched in bed with the rain; and 
if snow fell, it was blown through the windows and 
formed “ wreaths” on the floor. Nevertheless, the 
excitement produced on our minds by every thing 
around us kept us in excellent health and in good 
spirits, and we made light of many things which 
in other circumstances we might have considered — 
as hardships. Whenever we moved out of the | 
house hundreds of people crowded the streets, 
and followed in our wake, as anxious to catch a 
glimpse of us as the crowds in London are to see 
the Queen. Every door and window was crammed 
with men, women, and children, who gazed upon us 
with a kind of stupid wonder, as if we had been 
inhabitants of the moon, and not the ordinary sons 
of earth. The children more particularly looked 
upon us with a kind of fear and dread, doubtless 
implanted in their young minds by their parents, 
who had less or more of the same feelings themselves. 
The name we bore— Kwei-tsz, or devil’s child— 
