Asiatic astuteness, they
therefore conceived and carried out the brilliant idea of decorating all
Celestial warriors with bull's-eyes, front and rear, as a measure of
protection against the bullets of the Fankwae soldiers in battle.

Ah Sum becomes sick and weary at noon and is taken aboard, Tung Po and
his better half taking alternate turns at the line. Toward evening the
river makes a big sweep to the southeast, bringing the prevailing north
wind round to our advantage; if advantage it can be called, in blowing us
pretty well south when our destination lies north. The sail is hoisted,
and the crew confines itself to steering and poling the boat clear of
bars.

Poor Ah Sum is subjected to further clinical maltreatment this evening as
we lay at anchor before No-foo-gong; while we are eating rice and pork
and listening to the sounds of revelry aboard the big passenger junks
anchored near by, he is writhing and groaning with pain.

He is too stiff and sore and exhausted to do anything in the morning; the
woman goes out to pull, and the babe makes Rome howl, with little
intermission, till she comes back. The boat-woman seems an industrious,
wifely soul; Yung Po probably paid as high as forty dollars for her; at
that price I should say she is a decided bargain. Occasionally, when Yung
Po cruelly orders her overboard to take a hand at the tow-line, or to
help shove the sampan off a sand ridge, she enters a playful demurrer;
but an angry look, an angry word, or a cheerful suggestion of "corporeal
suasion," and she hops lightly into the water.

A few miles from No-foo-gong and a rocky precipice towers up on the west
shore, something like a thousand feet high. The crackling of
fire-crackers innumerable and the report of larger and noisier explosions
attract my attention as we gradually crawl up toward it; and coming
nearer, flocks of pigeons are observed flying uneasily in and out of
caves in the lower levels of the cliff.

In the course of time our sampan arrives opposite and reveals a curious
two-storied cave temple, with many gayly dressed people, pleasure
sampans, and bamboo rafts. This is the Kum-yam-ngan, a Chinese Buddhist
temple dedicated to the Goddess of Mercy. It is the home of flocks of
sacred pigeons, and the shrine to which many pilgrims yearly come; the
pilgrims manage to keep their feathered friends in a chronic state of
trepidation by the agency of fire-crackers and miniature bombs. Outside,
under the shel