In the daytime, Saigon is as hot as that last bourne whither all
evil-doers wander--Englishmen and dogs alone are seen abroad between
nine and one. But in the soothing cool of the soft tropical evening,
gay-lit boulevards, a magnificent State-subsidized opera-house, alfresco
cafés where dawdle the domino-playing absinthe drinkers, the
fierce-moustached gendarmes, and innumerable features typically and
picturesquely French, induced me easily to believe myself back in the
bewildering whirl of the Boulevard des Capucines or des Italiennes.
Whether the narrow streets of the native city are clean or dirty,
whether garbage heaps lie festering in the broiling sun, sending their
disgusting effluvia out to annoy the sense of smell at every turn, the
municipality cares not a little bit. Indifference to the well-being of
the native pervades it; there is present no progressive prosperity.
Every second person I met was, or seemed to be, a Government official.
He was dressed in immaculate white clothes of the typical ugly French
cut, trimmed elaborately with an _ad libitum_ decoration of gold braid
and brass buttons. All was so different from Singapore and Hong-Kong,
and one did not feel, in surroundings which made strongly for the
_laissez-faire_ of the Frenchman in the East, ashamed of the fact that
he was an Englishman.

Three days north lies Hong-Kong, an all-important link in the armed
chain of Britain's empire east of Suez, bone of the bone and flesh of
the flesh of Great Britain beyond the seas. The history of this island,
ceded to us in 1842 by the Treaty of Nanking, is known to everyone in
Europe, or should be.

Four and a half days more, and we anchored at Woo-sung; and a few hours
later, after a terribly cold run up the river in the teeth of a terrific
wind, we arrived at Shanghai.