together with a vegetable oil extracted
from a ground nut. When dried it becomes excessively hard; it never
starts, and the seams thus secured are perfectly safe and water-tight.
All the work about her is of the roughest kind. The trees when found
of a suitable size are cut down, stripped of their bark, and sawn into
convenient lengths; the sides are not squared, but left just as they
grew. No artificial means are resorted to for any bends; a tree or
branch of a tree is found with the requisite natural curvature. There
is not in the building, rigging, or fitting-up of a Chinese junk one
single thing which is similar to what we see on board a European
vessel. Everything is different; the mode of construction; the absence
of keel, bowsprit, and shrouds; the materials employed; the mast, the
sails, the yard, the rudder, the compass, the anchor--all are
dissimilar.

The vessel in which I now found myself, the _King-Shing_, was of
about seven hundred tons. She was built entirely of teak, and her skipper,
or Ty Kong, as he is called, alleged that she was more than a hundred
years old, and said that one of her crew who had recently died, had
served in her for fifty years. Her extreme length was one hundred and
sixty feet; breadth of beam, twenty-five feet and a half; depth of
hold, twelve feet; height of poop from the water, thirty-eight feet;
height of bow, thirty feet. Her most attractive portion was the
saloon, or state cabin, the beauty of whose furniture and decorations
formed a curious contrast to the rude and rough workmanship of the
cabin itself. Its carved and gilded entrance was protected by a sort
of skylight, the sides of which were formed of the prepared
oyster-shells so commonly used in China instead of glass, the latter
being too expensive for general purposes. The enclosure was thirty
feet long, twenty-five broad, and eleven in height. From the beams
overhead were suspended numbers of the different kinds of lanterns
used in China. They were of every imaginable form, size, and variety
of material. The sides and deck-roof were of a yellow ground, and
covered with paintings of flowers, leaves, fruit, insects, birds,
monkeys, dogs, and cats; some of those latter animals were what in
heraldic language would be called _queue-fourchee_. The place was
filled with a vast assortment of curious and beautiful articles,
gathered together during the long existence of the vessel. To give a
list of them would require pages; b