absolutely necessary. The trade of Tientsin is not great when compared with the other treaty ports. Nearly all the tea exported thence goes to Russia and Siberia——occasionally by way of Pekin——but in most cases viâ Kalgan and district across the Gobi Desert to Kiakhta, without touching at the capital. The Russian merchants are therefore nearly as numerous as the English at Tientsin.

The settlement boasted of but two hotels, and these of a very fifth-rate description. Small-pox having broken out in one, our choice was limited, for we did not care to run the risk of being laid up for three or four weeks in the native hospital at Pekin. Bidding adieu to our genial skipper, who cheerfully expressed a hope that he might see us again one day, though he very much doubted our ever leaving Siberia, we made our way, accompanied by a yelling crowd of half-naked coolies bearing our luggage, to the American Hotel, an uninviting, dilapidated-looking hostelry enough. In the verandah, reclining on many chairs, and at intervals refreshing himself from a huge beaker of brandy and soda, was an individual pointed out to us as the proprietor (a fat, sleepy-looking Yankee), whose welcome was hardly encouraging.

“Can we have rooms here?”

“Sure I don’t know, you’d better ask.”

“But you’re the manager, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I’m the manager.”

A pause, during which our friend takes a long pull at the brandy, and, emerging considerably refreshed, composes himself calmly to slumber.

“Who are we to ask?”

“Who are you to ask?” half opening his eyes; “Oh! I don’t know, you will see some of the China boys about. How should I know who you’re to ask?” is his parting shot as we leave him and cross the dirty sanded billiard-room, hung with tawdry prints, and redolent of stale tobacco and spirits, that precedes the entrance to the “bar.”

Here we glean from a dishevelled, greasy German in shirt-sleeves, who looks as if he slept among the sawdust and empty whisky bottles that litter the floor, that no rooms are to be had that night, or for the next week to come, for love or money. A huge travelling circus belonging to an Italian, one Chiarini, has taken every available room in the place. “Then could we have the billiard-table?” “No, we could not possibly have the billiard-table, for the ‘gentlemen’ connected with the circus always played till three or four in the morning. Still, we could have it then, if we liked, on payment of a small remuneration to him (the occupant of the bar), but we must keep it dark from the boss.”

Our experience of the “boss” did not quite justify our taking this course, and we left the hotel, sadly and slowly followed by our string of sympathizing coolies, utterly at a loss to know what to do till the bright thought struck Lancaster of at once hiring the house-boat which was to take us to Tungchow (the landing-place for Pekin), and living on board her till we left for the capital. We managed this, not without some difficulty, for we had to get the boat through our friend the sleepy Yankee. He woke up a little, however, at the prospect of swindling two helpless and friendless fellow-creatures, and by sundown we had everything on board, and the boat snugly moored off the hotel wharf. We were alongside a large open drain, with a most abominable stench, and there was always the possibility of being run down in the night by a passing ship, but one could not afford to be particular. The sight, however, of a large passenger steamer bound for Japan which passed close to us towards sundown was depressing in the extreme, the cleanliness and luxury on board contrasting so painfully with our own surroundings. For a few moments we almost regretted (by no means for the last time) that we had ever undertaken this voyage, the discomforts and difficulties of which now seemed to increase with every day.

Early next day we presented our letters to Mr. S., the Russian tea merchant, who was to provide us with letters of credit for his agents at Irkoutsk and Tomsk in Eastern and Western Siberia. Mr. S. did not give us a very favourable account of the journey before us. Like almost every other Russian we met, first question was “Mais que Diable allez-vous faire en Sibérie?” We got into the way at last of never arguing this question. In the first place it was useless, and only caused waste of time; in the second we had literally no reason to give, except perhaps the one so dear to most Englishmen: “The country had been crossed by so few travellers before!”

Among other pleasant and encouraging items of news, we now heard that we should probably meet with serious delay, not only at Kalgan, the Mongolian frontier, but also at Pekin. “You had better not think,” said Mr. S., “of making any definite plans till you arrive at Kalgan. This is the worst time of year you could have chosen. It is not the caravan season; the camels are all out on the plains. It may be two or three months before you are able to cross the Gobi, and then you will get into Siberia at the very worst time of year, when the roads are next to impassable from rains and floods. Any day you may be detained by a broken bridge or a landslip, and have to wait in some dreary, wretched village in the wilds of Siberia, till the snow sets, and enables you to finish your journey in sleighs. You cannot, I feel sure, have rightly estimated the difficulties before you. Why go to Siberia at all, when that earthly paradise Japan is so near?” &c., &c.

We at last succeeded in making Mr. S. understand that we were determined to get as far as Pekin at any rate; and, our interview over, had nothing but the purchase of some provisions for our river journey (our Shanghai store was not opened till we reached the desert) to detain us in Tientsin. Nor were we sorry to get away, for the dust and filth of this city were almost unbearable. We had not then experienced the odours of Pekin, which would accustom one to cheerfully live in a main drain.

Our second night here was not so pleasantly passed as the first. A shower of rain at sunset brought out legions of mosquitoes, from which, not having brought curtains, we suffered a good deal of annoyance, and the intolerable stench of the drain near which we lay was so increased by the rain that we had to smoke incessantly till past 3 a.m., almost regretting we had not accepted the barkeeper’s offer of the billiard-table for a bed. Even the “circus gentlemen” would have been preferable to the sewer. We got to sleep about 4 a.m., only to be awoke at daybreak by a crashing sound and to find the water rushing into the boat, with an unpleasant conviction that our craft was heeling over at a very uncomfortable angle. We had become entangled in the hawser of a large ocean-steamer, which, had it not been let go in the nick of time, would have upset us altogether. We escaped with a ducking, however, and soon got the boat righted and baled out again.

The distance from Tientsin to Pekin is rather under eighty miles overland, that by river one hundred and forty, viz. one hundred and twenty miles to Tungchow, and twenty miles thence by road to the capital. Although it takes two days longer (sometimes three), we chose the water route in preference to the other. We should, we thought, have quite enough land-travelling during the next five months; besides which, the Chinese inns between Tientsin and the capital are even filthier than those between Pekin