These war-junks, though perfectly useless either for defence or
attack, are gorgeous objects to the eye, with their carving, their
scarlet lacquer and profuse gilding. A Chinese stern-wheeler is a
quaint craft, for her wheel is nothing but a treadmill, manned by some
thirty half-naked coolies, who go through a regular treadmill drill,
urging the boat along at perhaps three miles an hour. In addition to
their deck passengers, these boats have rows of little covered niches
for superior personages, and in every niche sits a grave, motionless
Chinaman, looking for all the world like those carved Chinese cabinets
we sometimes see, with a little porcelain figure squatting in each
carved compartment.

We had a naval interpreter on board, a jovial, hearty, immensely fat
old Chinaman. Our destroyer had four funnels, but as we were going up
the river under easy steam, only the forward boilers were going, so
that whilst our two forward funnels, "Matthew" and "Mark," were
smoking bravely, the two after ones, "Luke" and "John," were unsullied
by the faintest wisp of a smoke pennant trailing from their black
orifices. Our old interpreter was much distressed at this, for, as far
as I could judge, his countrymen gauged a vessel's fighting power
solely by the amount of smoke that she emitted, and he feared that we
should be regarded with but scanty respect.

The British and French Consulate-Generals at Canton are situated on a
large artificial island, known as Sha-mien. Here, too, the European
business men live in the most comfortable Europe-like houses,
surrounded with gardens and lawn-tennis courts. Here is the
cricket-ground and the club. Being in the Far East, the latter is, of
course, equipped with one of the most gigantic bar-rooms ever seen.
The British Consul-General had ordered chairs for us in which to be