After two hours of
slow progress in carrying-chairs, through this congeries of narrow,
unsavoury alleys, now jostled by coolies carrying bales of merchandise
suspended from long bamboos resting on their shoulders (exactly as
they did in the pictures of a book, called _Far Off_, which I had
as a child), now pushed on one side by the palanquin of a mandarin, we
hungered for fresh air and open spaces, less crowded by yellow
oblique-eyed Mongolians; still, though we all felt as though we were
in a nightmare, we had none of us ever seen anything like it, and in
spite of our declarations that we never wished to see this
evil-smelling warren of humanity again, somehow its uncanny
fascination laid hold of us, and we started again over the same route
next morning. The small midshipman had to be restrained from indulging
in his yearning to dine off puppy-dog in a Chinese restaurant, in
spite of the gastric disturbances occasioned by his precocious
experiments with cheroots.
I imagine that every Chinaman liable to zymotic diseases died
thousands of years ago, and that by the law of the survival of the
fittest all Chinamen born now are immune from filth diseases; that
they can drink sewage-water with impunity, and thrive under conditions
which would kill any Europeans in a week.
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