so love the orange-scented traces of it on my
hair-brush, that I knock out myriads as I rap the
brush in horror on the table. The shock starts a
cockroach from under the looking-glass; and
causes him rashly to commit suicide in the basin.

My bath and my beer are disposed of; and
now, in a few minutes, I pay for the indulgence.
A copper-coloured rash begins to cover my neck,
chest, and arms. I next see it about my ankles,
and I know it is on my back. This is the
terrible 'prickly heat' of the tropics— a
combination of pins and needles and stinging-
nettles. It is bad enough in itself; but, when
you are congratulated upon having it, it is
maddening. " All right, old fellow," they say; " the
best thing that can happen to you. You're
safe not to have anything else, while that's well
out."

I play with my breakfast, dwelling on the
charms of a cold raw November day in our own
climate, and then crawl up-stairs again to pack
up my portmanteau. My impedimenta are very
well condensed, and the portmanteau is under
overland size: but the labour is so excessive I
am glad, once or twice, to sit down on my
bamboo chair, panting with exertion. A-Pow
cannot help me. I point to my things and the
compartmented trunk:; but he says, "No can
savey that pigeon so fashion," with a hopeless
expression of obtuseness.

A little steamer, built at Whampoa, by Mr.
Cooper, and called the Fei-maa, or Flying Horse,
runs between Hong Kong and Canton about
twice a week, stopping for the night at Macao.
It is to start at twelve this day, according to
announcement-bills in English and Chinese, on the
walls: and it is for Canton I am bound.

Leaving the club, I find the heat of my room
is nothing to that of Queen's-road— the main
artery of Hong Kong circulation. The
Europeans, in their white jackets and trousers and
round pith hats, are driven under the shade of the
shop colonnades and thick-leaved trees, to talk.
The Sou'-west monsoon is blowing freely out at
sea; but, as Hong Kong—or rather Victoria—
was built, with a noble disregard of position, on
the north-eastern side of Victoria Peak (which
is not a peak at all, but a rounded hill), not one
breath of summer or autumnal air ever reaches
it, except that which " cannons" off the hills, at
an angle against you. But this moist, stifling
heat, so terrible to us, is evidently healthy and
bracing to the Chinese. They revel in it, and
stretch themselves out to enjoy its fiercest rays
like cats in a window; or toil with heavy stones
slung on a bamboo, or chairs containing fourteen-
stone Britons, up the steep paths to the bungalows,
with their closely shaven heads unsheltered
by anything except their pigtails twisted round
them, until their brains must dry up and rattle in
their skulls, like a preserved lychee.

Queen's-road is all alive, and the natives are
running up and down like ants. Nobody remains
where he is but the barbers, who place their little
stools under the shade of a clump of trees near
the club, and keep up a noise all day long, which
almost out-clamours the crickets above them.
Sometimes the travelling cook-shop keeper pauses
here for a minute. His entire establishment is
slung over his shoulder, and it consists of two
bamboo frames, about three feet high by two
square. When he stops, he connects them by a
board forming a sort of counter, or table. One
frame holds his kitchen, which is chiefly a
copper heated by charcoal, and containing
"stock." The other has his materials in
drawers and on shelves; and, on the top, his
spoons and little basins, with saucers full of
picked shrimps, wheaten paste, small oysters,
fowls' entrails, pork fat, fish, and long onions.
From a string, he now and then hangs a rat or a
large fat frog: and out of these specimens of
food he compounds more dishes, by artful
combinations, and provides a more varied carte, than
any two-franc restaurateur, with " quatre plats
au choix" in the Palais Royal. A potage he
vends at " two cash a cup" is inscrutable: but
as twenty-five cash go to a penny, it cannot be
dear whatever it is.

Then people go by with large flat baskets
containing what looks like squares of yellow
soap, marked with a red Chinese character.
This is their substitute for cheese. Nothing
will induce them to touch milk in any shape;
and this article, called "taou," is made from beans
—a species of curd precipitated by an acid. I do
not care much about the fruits which they wish
me to buy. The Chinese gooseberry is over
three inches long, and, when cut through, its
section forms a perfect star. The persiman is
like a large egg-plum, but containing half a
dozen stones; the pear is as hard as a potato,
quite round, and tastes of nothing; bananas I
abominate, reminding me of cotton wool and
bear's grease mixed together; and I cannot
agree with Mr. Wingrove Cooke, that the Amoy
pomelo is the finest fruit in the world. Be
assured, all over the globe, there is no garden
like the centre avenue of Covent-garden; no
fruit so fine as our strawberry, peach, and hot-
house grape. People say to me, " Ah ! but you
should be here in (some other month) and taste
our (some other fruit)." I always want to hit
these folks. They are of those who, when you
say you have been to Chamounix, always reply,
"All! but you should have gone to Zermatt."

Amidst the restless, hurrying crowd of the
Hong Kong main street— coolies, naked to the
waist, carrying enormous weights; merchants,
in bamboo chairs, braving coup de soleil, fever,
and dysentery, everything, for the almighty
dollar; clerks and tea-tasters, busying, like
ants, in and out of their " go-downs," or ware-
houses; sleek, sly-eyed Parsees, able to cope
even with the Yankees; oily compradors bearing
bags of Mexican dollars to the banks; boat-
girls in their coquettish handkerchief head-
dresses; toddling women with little feet; babies
in pigtails gravely basking in sunny gutters—
through all this mingled action and still life, we
come down to Pedder's Wharf, and embark in a
little boat, covered with arched matting, and
pull off to the Fei-maa.

There were seventy or eighty Chinese already