foot long, and very fragrant. The
Chinese use it for sweet-meats." (_Bretschneider, Hist. of Bot. Disc._ I.
p. 2.)--H.C.]

As regards the "yellow and white" peaches, Marsden supposes the former to
be apricots. Two kinds of peach, correctly so described, are indeed common
in Sicily, where I write;--and both are, in their raw state, equally good
food for _i neri_! But I see Mr. Moule also identifies the yellow peach
with "the _hwang-mei_ or clingstone apricot," as he knows no yellow peach
in China.

NOTE 6.--"_E non veggono mai l'ora che di nuovo possano ritornarvi;_" a
curious Italian idiom. (See _Vocab. It. Univ._ sub. v. "_vedere_".)

NOTE 7.--It would seem that the habits of the Chinese in reference to the
use of pepper and such spices have changed. Besides this passage, implying
that their consumption of pepper was large, Marco tells us below (ch.
lxxxii.) that for one shipload of pepper carried to Alexandria for the
consumption of Christendom, a hundred went to Zayton in Manzi. At the
present day, according to Williams, the Chinese use little spice; pepper
chiefly as a febrifuge in the shape of _pepper-tea_, and that even less
than they did some years ago. (See p. 239, infra, and _Mid. Kingd._, II.
46, 408.) On this, however, Mr. Moule observes: "Pepper is not so
completely relegated to the doctors. A month or two ago, passing a
portable cookshop in the city, I heard a girl-purchaser cry to the cook,
'Be sure you put in _pepper and leeks!_'"

NOTE 8.--Marsden, after referring to the ingenious frauds commonly related
of Chinese traders, observes: "In the long continued intercourse that has
subsisted between the agents of the European companies and the more
eminent of the Chinese merchants ... complaints on the ground of
commercial unfairness have been extremely rare, and on the contrary, their
transactions have been marked with the most perfect good faith and mutual
confidence." Mr. Consul Medhurst bears similar strong testimony to the
upright dealings of Chinese merchants. His remark that, as a rule, he has
found that the Chinese deteriorate by intimacy with foreigners is worthy
of notice;[3] it is a remark capable of application wherever the East and
West come into habitual contact. Favourable opinions among the nations on
their frontiers of Chinese dealing, as expressed to Wood and Burnes in
Turkestan, and to Macleod and Richardson in Laos, have been quoted by me
elsewhere in reference to the old classical repu