138
W. J. HINTON
from the wells, in the ubiquitous kerosene tin. A pig or two investigate the gutters with deliberation, and entire disregard of anyone's convenience. Dogs prowl everywhere, mostly "chows," but here and there evidences may be seen of deplorable inter-racial amours by the terriers of the Europeans. And everywhere there are children. In the shops, on the floor, on the counters, in their fathers' and grandfathers' arms, on their mothers' backs. They walk, run, and crawl in the streets—and those too small to do any such thing are tied in a great kerchief on their sisters' backs, their solemn sleepy little heads lolling and shaking over the edge of the red cloth. No race suicide here—but what is the infant mortality? No one knows, but it is probably very high for the average ratio of inhabitants to family in China seems to be about five, and there must be a fearful infant mortality to keep it at so low a figure, when so many children are born. However, they seem happy and well fed, these people, and healthy enough, though somewhat dirty. Not so the dogs and cats who seem starved and diseased almost without exception.
This is a tinsmith's shop, where kerosene tins undergo reincarnation as lamp, or dipper at the skilful hand of the craftsman. Outside the next shop is a block on which a boy makes fish hooks from wire with a deft twist and a couple of blows, passing the rough hook to a companion to be barbed and tanged. The fisherman before us picks one up and looks it over with an eye of infinite experience and he and the maker speak as one expert with another. A few steps on and there is an idol shop. Little clay images for the shrines on the junks—larger images, all ready with the hole through which some small living creature is to be introduced and sealed up. Models which can be set to sail away from a junk beset by wind or tide or cursed with ill luck and so bear off the evil with them. There are charms and paraphernalia in plenty, but it is all a hidden and mysterious business to us. More's the pity. Now we come to a cross street continually wet and slippery from the salt which is carried in baskets by women, their necks bowed under the burdens, but their bodies moving strongly resilient beneath the load. What a glorious column of rippling muscle must be then so modestly hidden beneath the blue coat. But we shall not see it, for, however hard they work, the women of China keep themselves covered. Only when they wade in the ricefields planting the small shoots in the soft mud, or weeding between the plants