Chap. VI. 
ICE-HOUSES. 
81 
that a native of Canton and another in the north cannot 
understand each other : and indeed this is so much the 
case, that my Macao servant was almost entirely useless 
to me in the north, in so far as the language was con- 
cerned. In this instance the Chinese word " Ping " 
or I should rather say sound — means both soldier and 
ice, and it immediately struck my servant, who I suppose 
had never seen ice in his life, that the buildings in 
question were soldiers' houses instead of ice-houses. 
I was much struck with the simplicity of the con- 
struction of these ice-houses, and my only doubt about 
them was whether or not the ice would keep well in 
them throughout the hot summer months. The results 
of my investigation I sent in the following letter to 
Professor Lindley, who published it in the ' Gardener s 
Chronicle' for 1845 :— 
" A short time before I left England you published 
in the 'Gardener's Chronicle' a number of letters and 
plans for the construction of ice-houses, but, as far as I 
can remember, nothing at all resembling the Chinese 
one which I shall now describe to you. On the right 
bank of the Ning-po river, above the town and fort of 
Chinhae, and in various other parts of the north of 
Chma, I have met with these ice-houses. When I in- 
spected them for the first time last winter (1843), their 
construction and situation differed so much from what I 
had been accustomed to see at home— differing, too, in 
things which I used to consider as indispensable to an 
ice-house — that I had great doubts regarding their effi- 
ciency ; but at the present time, which is now the end 
of August, 1844, many of these houses are yet full of 
£ 3 
