Frenchmen pleasant travelling companions--The limitations--Vicomte de
Vogue, the innkeeper and the Ikon--An early oil-burning steamer--A
modern Bluebeard--His "Blue Chamber"--Dupleix--His ambitious scheme--A
disastrous period for France--A personal appreciation of the Emperor
Nicholas II--A learned but versatile Orientalist--Pidgin
English--Hong-Kong--An ancient Portuguese city in China--Duck junks--A
comical Marathon race--Canton--Its fascination and its appalling
smells--The malevolent Chinese devils--Precautions adopted
against--"Foreign Devils"--The fortunate limitations of Chinese
devils--The City of the Dead--A business interview.


M. Des Etangs, the French traveller to whom I have already alluded,
agreed to accompany me to the Far East, an arrangement which I
welcomed, for he was a very cultivated and interesting man.
Unexpectedly he was detained in Ceylon by a business matter, so I went
on alone.

I regretted this, for on two previous occasions I had found what a
pleasant travelling companion an educated Frenchman can be. I do not
think that the French, as a rule, are either acute or accurate
observers. They are too apt to start with preconceived theories of
their own; anything which clashes with the ideas that they have
already formed is rejected as evidence, whilst the smallest scrap of
corroborative testimony is enlarged and distorted so that they may be
enabled to justify triumphantly their original proposition, added to
which, Frenchmen are, as a rule, very poor linguists. This, of course,
is speaking broadly, but I fancy that the French mind is very definite
and clear-cut, yet rather lacking in receptivity. The French suffer
from the excessive development of the logical faculty in them. This