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the freshness, the cleanness, the splendour constrain them; they seem like fish which, from a dirty, marshy river have been transferred to an ornamental pond filled with clear water: nowhere to hide, to shelter, to filch, to swindle, to get oneself dirty or to get one's neighbour dirty.
Having quickly walked round the whole quarter, we struck the mountain, which at this point was artificially cut away and consisted of a smooth, sheer wall; a new road was planned here. A whole regiment of labourers crowded around; they dug the earth, hewed stones, carted debris away. These were all immigrants from the Portuguese colony of Macau. No sooner had the English conceived the idea of a settlement here, and sent out a call, than Macau became almost deserted. Work, and consequently bread and money, lured up to thirty thousand Chinese over here. Instead of poverty in Macau, they preferred the endless labour and inexhaustible payment here. They were not frightened off by the epidemic fevers that raged in the beginning. Under the supervision of the English they began clearing and draining the soil: the epidemics abated and the migration increased.
We came down from the rise and entered the Chinese quarter again, passing, incidentally, a house where a bare-chested young Chinese stood in front of a window, strumming a meagre and monotonous tune on an instrument resembling a guitar. A number of women peered out of the window. However not all Chinese wander around the town near naked: it is only porters, manual labourers and shopmen. The higher classes are dressed decently; there are even dandies, in snow-white coats and wide satin trousers, in heavy-soled shoes and with a thick black shiny pigtail down to their feet, with a fine fan with which they cover their heads from the sun.
The more ordinary women walk around the town themselves whereas those who are richer or more important are led arm-in-arm. Their feet are all more or less maimed; and those who "through ill-breeding, through parental negligence" remained as nature had intended, fabricate another artificial foot under their real one, but one so small that they definitely cannot step on it and hence walk with the assistance of servant girls. In spite of the long garments in which Chinese women are wrapped from top to toe; I accidentally, with the aid of a puff of wind, discovered a bit of guile... Olive-skinned women with black, slightly narrowed eyes dress predominantly in dark colours. With hair-dos à la chinoise, and a splendid mass of black hair fastened at the back with a large gold or silver pin, they are not dis-