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And now we come to Mrs Chinaman. Of all the oddities in the world she is one. She wears a coat and trousers like the men, and you cannot tell them apart, except by the pigtail, which of course she does not possess. Her hair is combed back over the forehead, and all is twisted up in a great knot behind, which sticks out like a handle. Her pretty little feet however are the chief beauty. They very much resemble the hoof of a horse. Imagine the elegance of her gait. The first one I saw I mistook for an old sailor on wooden legs, in the distance, and wondered he did not get a pair of crutches to get on faster with. They move of course very slowly. Running is impossible. John Chinaman shows his wisdom in this particular. Without this restriction she would be quite unmanageable, and to live with her would be quite out of the question. If she does not behave herself, she gets a thrashing; and she cannot run away, or walk far, to go and gossip with neighbours. She just hobbles about the house, and that is all. The lower orders however do not carry it to quite such an extreme. Among them the women work like the men. In the boats you see the women sitting and rowing with perhaps only a loose pair of trousers upon them. They are not at all particular about decency. Twice I took a boat and went out to the ship, to bring my own and the Bishop's boxes: and the crew were mostly women that pulled the boat.
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she knows better
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Mrs Chinaman has a very shrill voice; in fact she is always a little piece of goods; but she is very quarrelsome, not however with the husband but with some others or men at all of her own sex. One of those little exchanges of compliments between them is enough to make anybody roar with laughter to see it, but the language they use, if any one understands it, is obscene and revolting in the extreme. The quarrel between them, as is the case with all the softer sex, generally springs from circumstances the most trivial. But at last they begin and the height of the engagement is only to be discerned by the height of the pitch of their melodious voices. You can hear them a quarter mile off distinctly. It is like a chorus of cats, at a nocturnal serenade, only ten times louder, and perhaps the music is conducted in rather quicker time. What surprises me is to hear how long the strain is kept up. If you pass the same place in an hour's time, you find the chorus still sustained in full vigour. To see them however is the best fun. They never look at one another, but always turn round, as if talking to a great audience, and though they toss their arms wildly about, and look like the incarnation of fury, they never so much as touch one another; and the quarrel always ends at last without a blow. They cannot swear, because their religion acknowledges no God whose name they