e arouses a natural pride, has grown so unpleasant that decent
Americans have chafed under the insult. To-day it is best not to use the
phrase "American girl" on the China Coast.

Of the other and less vicious sorts of adventurers who turn up like bad
pennies at Shanghai, the beach-comber is easily the most picturesque. Many
writers, notably Robert Louis Stevenson, have employed him as a character
in fiction. The majority of the beach-combers probably are or have been
seafaring men. Next in numerical order, probably, come the discharged
soldiers and the deserters. It takes either a certain amount of money or
a certain amount of ability for any unattached American or European to get
out to the China Coast, and an equal amount for him to get back. Therefore
the stranded soldiers and sailors, brought out there at the cost of nation
or ship owner, beating their way from port to port, drinking, gambling,
starving, ready for any dubious enterprise that promises quick returns on
a small investment, are a sorry lot. The sharps, swindlers, and shadowy
promoters, on the other hand, are men necessarily possessed either of
money or wit sufficient to get them out to China, and not unnaturally they
represent the higher grades of their various crafts. From Peking to
Hongkong, the coast is infested with these gentlemanly rascals, each with
impressive garments and a convincing story. Josiah Flynt once wrote a tale
of some enthusiastic young promoters who undertook, at a considerable
outlay in capital and in personal risk, to sell a steam calliope to the
Grand Lama of Thibet. After a brief acquaintance with the diverse and
ingenious schemes that sprout, flower, and go to seed on the China Coast,
this tale seems not nearly so improbable as it perhaps sounds to the
casual reader.

Other, and more recent, types of adventurers are the stranded free-lance
journalist and camp-followers who were lured Eastward by the prospect of
pickings along the trails of the Japanese and Russian armies during the
late war, and who later found themselves unable to get back home. In 1906,
Consul-General Rodgers, of Shanghai, reported as follows on the subject of
unscrupulous Americans who have been imposing on the Chinese to the
detriment of American trade:

"There are many things which can be given as current reasons for retarding
American trade in the Orient. The advent of a class of Americans, like
those who came from Manila after a brief experience there,