138 
DEPARTURE FROM TIEN-SING. 
Leaving Tien-sing on the morning of the 8th of September, we 
quitted the Pei-ho and entered the Eu-ho or imperial river, called also 
the Yun-Leang-ho, or the grain-bearing river. The stream running two 
miles an hour against us, made our progress very slow for several 
days. We were forced against it by trackers who were often deserting, 
and replaced by any passing Chinese whose situation of life did not 
absolutely exempt them from the authority of our attendant Man- 
darins. 
The country on the banks of the river varied much in character, 
but generally exhibited a greater number of highly fertile spots than 
in the same space we had seen on the Pei-ho. The “ tall corn” no 
longer skirted their margin, but was chiefly seen in the back ground. 
Fields of petsai, garlic, and capsicum, gently sloped to the water’s 
edge, in front of houses built of brick, and covered with a roof of clay. 
Buildings half-buried in the shade of trees occasionally variegated 
the distant prospect. 
In visiting the cottages within the reach of my rambles, I was 
much interested by the appearance of the means of independent 
support possessed by many of their inhabitants. Millet, petsai, 
and the oil of sesamum, constitute in a good measure the ordinary 
fare of the lower classes in the north of China. All these were 
frequently growing around small huts, containing a mill for grinding 
the corn and expressing the oil, with all the subsidiary apparatus. 
The mill was put in motion by an ass, yoked to the end of a long 
arm fixed in the uppermost of the two circular stones of which it 
was composed. 
I witnessed the different processes necessary to the preparation of 
the oil going on in different parts of the same cottage at the same 
time. A large quantity of the seed of the sesamum having been put into 
an iron pan, over a small brick furnace, was constantly stirred with an 
iron shovel till the whole had been sufficiently roasted. It was 
then transferred into a conical basket, placed in the centre of the 
upper stone. Shaken from a hole in the side of the basket by the 
motion of the mill, it passed through an aperture in the middle of 
