THE road was shockingly bad, and our leg and spirit-worn ponies floundered about in the holes in a very jeopardising style, until some time near one o'clock in the morning we came to a roadside halting-house, and knocking up the inmates got them to give the animals some hay, while we lay down in our travelling costume on a dry bit of ground outside to rest until daylight broke, when we might finish so much of our enterprise and be again among countrymen.

We were so thoroughly beaten by fatigue, that I much doubt if even the threats and fierce hullaballoos of the Newchwang rabble would have readily roused us. We obtained at least three hours' sleep before we were disturbed by the villagers getting ready to go to their fields, the clattering of ponies' hoofs, and the teeth-tingling screed of the plough-cradle along the dusty way.

‘Merry larks are ploughmen's clocks’ applies as truly to the Chinese tiller of the soil as to the more scientific furrowmaker under the Western heavens; for the lark and the ploughman must have left their beds nearly together that morning, and were both hastening to their chosen scene of industry—the one in cloud-land, the other in the parched-up glebe or fallow field.

We hurled ourselves rapidly along a tolerably good and wide highway, with, on each side, a well-cultivated country, but as the sun got higher and higher the heat became very intense and stupefying, and in our famished state we felt it more than we had done for some days.

SINCE leaving Newchwang, the country appeared to be rising, yet so gradually as almost to be imperceptible; and it still bore the same well-tilled agreeable aspect it had done, with some few exceptions, all along our ride. Harvest operations had just commenced; the weather was lovely; and there seemed to be nothing wanting to complete the happiness of the peasantry, who thronged in the fields singing and toiling. Everywhere, the land — which was light — looked to be productive and rich in all the elements necessary for the culture of the plants grown upon it, without requiring a very great amount of manure or labour; and the neighbourhood of the hills, with the prevalence of sea breezes, must have greatly favoured the abundance and quality of the cereals so largely dealt in.

As we advanced, we got glimpses of never-tiring scouts galloping a long way ahead, who did us no manner of service, so far as we could see; but who, on the contrary, collected all the idle and curious of all the hamlets and villages near by their reports, and we found these assembled at some convenient spot close to which we must pass, where they pryed, joked, and speculated regarding us.

The people were, however, to all intents and purposes—considering the wonderful sight of two such mortals as we must have appeared to them — civil and well-behaved, and not a fault could we find with their conduct in any way.

ABSURD superstitious practices, and the effects of idle fancies, nurtured and strengthened by a false religion—a religion nothing better than a tissue of incongruous fables and puerile delusions—run riot everywhere in the public gaze; and sorcerers, necromancers, and soothsayers are ever in request to help those ignorant people who, haunted by bad fortune, malignant spirits, or unpropitious influences, are ready to come down handsomely to induce the sorcerer to ward off real or prospective disasters, by incantations, philters, or timely notice of the impending calamity.

This state of mind is more noticeable in large cities, such as Tien-tsin, than in the country, and though it jars very much on one's feelings, and excites a sincere pity, it cannot be forgotten that the most refined nations of antiquity shared similar delusions, and that even in our own land—not many generations ago—they flourished as luxuriantly.

Looking at the two half-doors near which I am standing, I see what corresponds to a superstitious safeguard yet to be found on barn-doors and stables in England—the lucky horse-shoe. This is sometimes transferred to floating habitations, such as fishing-boats, and even, if I remember right, to more formidable craft—and had not the immortal Nelson a rusty symbol of this description nailed to the main or mizen-mast of his invulnerable flag-ship?

BY the dead, leaden light of the morning we were aroused from as cosy a nap as tired travellers could desire, by a mournful sound — a reveillé of rain-drops, beating with monotonous clearness on window and wall, with a soprano and ground-bass accompaniment made by the streams from the roof furrows and the distant roll of the thunder, and a particularly dismal obligato pitter-pitter, patter-pattering in the pools all over the courtyard, that did not in the least add to the concordia discors of the unpropitious weather.

Staring out of the window, the picture was still more dismal. Nothing looked as we saw it last evening, save the water-lilies — but they are aquatic. The only animals stirring were the ducks, provokingly enjoying the calamity in their own silly way, and bubbling and billing at the water and mud as if their lives depended on its presence and thorough mixture — they also were aquatic.

The ponies and mules stood downcast and woe-begone, their ears and tails drooping, and their pendent heads showing a very rueful expression, in the damp-bottomed shed that was without a particle of bedding. They seemed as if a day's rest would have been more fitting in their depressed state than a resumption of labour.

Not an inmate of the house moved out; but, ensconced below the most trivial cover, were the dotard old men with children, and the madcaps of other ages waiting for our levée with the soberest and most imperturbable equanimity possible, never moving to the right or left, seldom stirring a limb, and always keeping their faces towards the window, from which they were stayed only by the drenching rain.