be found on all the great highways of China, and which run with
unerring accuracy from one station to another, unaccompanied by any
one except the hirer. There is little danger of the donkeys being
stolen, unless carried off bodily, for heaven and earth could no more
move them from their beaten track than the traveller who, desirous of
making two stages without halting, could induce them to pass the door
of the station they have just arrived at. Carrying about eighty or
ninety pounds weight of mail matter, these men trudge along some five
miles an hour till they reach the extent of their tether; there they
hand over the bag to a fresh man, who starts off, no matter at what
hour of the day or night, and regardless of good or bad weather alike,
till he too has quitted himself of his responsibility by passing on
the bag to a third man. They make a point of never eating a full meal;
they eat themselves, as the Chinese say, six or seven tenths full,
taking food as often as they feel at all hungry, and thus preserve
themselves from getting broken-winded early in life. Recruited from
the strongest and healthiest of the working-classes, it is above all
indispensable that the Chinese letter-carrier should not be afraid of
any ghostly enemy, such as bogies or devils. In this respect they must
be tried men before they are entrusted with a mail; for an ordinary
Chinaman is so instinctively afraid of night and darkness, that the
slightest rustle by the wayside would be enough to make him fling down
the bag and take to his heels as if all the spirits of darkness had
been loosed upon him at one and the same moment.

The scale of charges is very low. The cost of sending a letter from
Peking to Hankow--650 miles, as the crow flies--being no more than
eight cents, or four pence. About thirty per cent. of the postage is
always paid by the sender, to secure the office against imposition and
loss; the balance is recoverable from the person to whom the letter is