we reach Sin-kiang, and repair to the yamen. A large crowd, however,
gather and follow us from the market-place, swelling gradually by
reenforcements to a multitude that surges in and out of the shanty-like
office in such swarms that the frail board walls bulge and crack with the
pressure. When the crowd overwhelm the place entirely, the officials
clear them out by angry gesticulations and moral suasion, sometimes
menacingly shaking the end of their own queues at them as though they
were wielding black-snake whips. Having driven them out, no further
notice is taken of them, so they immediately begin swarming in again,
until the room is again inundated, when they are again driven out.

The permitting of this ebbing and flowing of the multitude into the
official quarters is something quite incomprehensible to me; the mob is
swayed and controlled--as far as they are controlled at all--without any
organized effort of those in authority; when the officials commence
screaming angrily at them they begin moving out; when the shouting ceases
they begin swarming back. Thus in the course of an hour the room will,
perchance, be filled and emptied with angry remonstrance half a dozen
times, when, from our own stand-point, a couple of men stationed at the
door with authority to keep them out would prevent all the bother and
annoyance. Sure enough the Chinaman is "a peculiar little cuss," whether
seen at home or abroad.

If the inhabitants of Ki-shway are scrofulous, sore-eyed, and mangy, they
are at least an improvement on the disgusting state of the public health
at Sin-kiang, as revealed in the lamentable condition of the crowd at the
yamen and in the markets. Scarcely is it possible to single out a human
being of sound and healthful appearance from among them all. Everybody
has sore eyes, some have horribly diseased scalps, sores on face and
body, and all the horrible array of acquired and hereditary diseases.
One's hair stands on end almost at the thought of being among them, to
say nothing of eating in their presence, and of their own cooking. Of my
new escort from Sin-kiang all three have dreadfully sore eyes, and one
wretched mortal is as piebald as a circus pony, from head to foot, with
the leprosy. Added to these recommendations, they have the manners and
instincts of swine rather than of human beings.

The same sampan is re-engaged to convey us farther down stream; beneath
the housing of bamboo-mats, the rice-chaff leaves