rich Chinaman thinks more of his coffin than he does of his house. He
often buys it years before he has occasion to use it, and keeps it,
taking better care of it than he does of his female children. Wherever a
Chinaman dies, he must be sent home to be buried; and many of them come
here from America, taken up from the earth even a year or more after
death."

At this point the party came to an open place where there were all the
different vehicles used in the city waiting to be employed; and as it
was nearly time for the lunch, they decided to ride to the hotel. Louis
took a rickshaw, as it is called here; Scott and Morris preferred a
wheelbarrow, and Felix took another, balanced by the guide. They were
novel conveyances to the boys, and they enjoyed the ride very much. The
rest of the parties returned to the hotel about the same time. There
were Chinese dishes on the table; and those who had tried some of them
before ordered them, especially the bird's-nest soups. The hams were
very nice, and the captain hoped that Mr. Sage had procured some of them
for the ship.

The afternoon was spent as the forenoon had been, but the party found
little to interest them. The next day the tourists made an excursion up
the Yang-tsze-Chiang, and enjoyed it very much. They saw a little of the
farming operations, as a man ploughing with a buffalo, which looked more
like a deer than a bovine; others carrying bundles of grain, one at each
end of a pole on their shoulders; another threshing by beating a bunch
of the stalks on a frame like a ladder or clothes-horse; but what
pleased them most were the fishermen. One had a net several feet square,
suspended at the end of a pole. It was sunk in the water, and then
hauled up. Any fish that happened to be over it then was brought up with
it; but Scott declared that this device was an old story, and they were
used in the United States, though an iron hoop was the frame of the net.

They were more interested in the fishing with cormorants. A man with a
dip-net in his hand stood on a bamboo raft, on which was a basket like
those the snake-charmers use in India, to receive his fish. The birds
were about the size of geese. They dived into the water, and brought up
a fish every time. They have a ring or cord on their necks so that they
cannot swallow their prizes, and they drop them into the dip-net.

They went up as far as Taiping, where they took a returning steamer, and
that night slept on board