waddling back over a plank to their junks at night. At sunset, one of
the most comical sights in the world can be witnessed. A Chinese boy
comes ashore from each junk with a horn, which he blows as a signal to
the ducks that bedtime has arrived. In his other hand the boy has a
rattan cane, with which he administers a tremendous thrashing to the
last ten ducks to arrive on board. The ducks know this, and in that
singular country their progenitors have probably been thrashed in the
same way for a thousand years, so they all have an inherited sense of
the dangers of the corporal punishment threatening them. As soon as
the horn sounds, thousands of ducks start the maddest of Marathon
races back to their respective junks, which they never mistake, with
such a quacking and gobbling and pushing of each other aside, as the
ungainly fowls waddle along at the top of their speed, as must be
witnessed to be credited. The duck has many advantages: in his wild
state, his extreme wariness and his powerful flight make him a
splendid sporting bird, and when dead he has most estimable qualities
after a brief sojourn in the kitchen. Domesticated, though he can
scarcely be classed as a dainty feeder, he makes a strong appeal to
some people, especially after he has contracted an intimate alliance
with sage and onions, but he was never intended by Nature for a
sprinter, nor are his webbed feet adapted for rapid locomotion.
Sufferers from chronic melancholia would, I am sure, benefit by
witnessing the nightly football scrums and speed-contests of these
Chinese ducks, for I defy any one to see them without becoming
helpless with laughter.

The river in the neighbourhood of Canton is so covered with junks,
sampans, and other craft, that, in comparison to it, the Thames at
Henley during regatta week would look like a deserted waste of water.
One misses at Canton the decorative war-junks of the Shanghai River.