nce the man was prompt to notice--setting to at once, with
infinite pains, to make a tear of a similar size and shape in the new
coat, and to re-sew it with the exact number of stitches as in the
original."

The old stories we have heard at home about a Chinaman's tail being
designed that by it he may be hoisted to heaven, and that if he lose it
he may never hope to reach that desirable altitude, have really no
foundation in fact, nor is it a fact, as sailors are apt to believe,
that it is nurtured for their special benefit as a convenient handle for
playing off practical jokes on the luckless possessors; the truth being
that the "queue," now so universally prized amongst them, is a symbol of
conquest forced upon them by their hated Tartar-masters. Previous to the
seventeenth century the inhabitants of the middle kingdom wore their
hair much after the style of the people of Corea, but after the Manchu
conquest they were compelled to adopt the present mode.

The city of Victoria is very prettily situated on the slopes of an
eminence which culminates in a peak at an altitude of 1300 feet, and
from which a most charming and cheerful view of the sea on the one side,
and the harbour and the yellow sand-stone hills of China on the other.

It is allowed to be the most cosmopolitan city in the world.
Representatives of races far in excess of the Pentecostal catalogue, may
be encountered in its streets in any hour's walk; men of all shades of
colour and of every religious creed live here side by side in apparent
perfect harmony. The Chinese who form the bulk of the population live
entirely apart from the "_Ung-moh_" (red hair devils) as they
flatteringly term us. English manners and customs do not seem to have
influenced the native mind in the smallest degree, in spite of our
charities and schools--a fact we cannot wonder at, taking into account
our _diabolical_ origin.

The town--by which I mean the European part of it--possesses many public
and private buildings of almost palatial grandeur. Of these, Government
house, the City hall--including the museum and reading room, the
cathedral and college, the various banks, and the residences of the
great merchants may be cited as examples. There is also a fine botanical
garden, not nearly so large as that at Singapore, but perhaps scarcely
less beautiful, and an extensive recreation and drill ground, where one
may see curious sights! pigtailed, loose-robed Chinamen wielding the
c