Tang-Keou-Eul, in consequence of its dirt and its excessive population, is a very unwholesome place to live in. There is an universal odour of grease and butter about, that is enough to make you sick. In certain quarters, more particularly where the especial poor and the especial vagabonds congregate, the stench is insupportable. Those who have no house wherein to shelter themselves, collect in the nooks of streets and squares, and there they lie, higgledy-piggledy, and half naked, upon filthy straw, or rather, dung-heaps. There are stretched together the sick young, and the infirm old, the dying man, sometimes the dead, whom no one takes the trouble to bury, until, at length, putrefaction manifesting itself, the bodies are dragged into the middle of the street, whence the authorities remove them, and have them thrown into some general pit. From amid this hideous misery there pullulates into the bosom of the population, a crowd of petty thieves and swindlers, who, in their address and audacity, leave far behind the Robert Macaires of the western world. The number of these wretched creatures is so great, that authority, weary of contending with them, has left them to take their own course, and the public to guard their own sapeks and goods. These worthies work, as a matter of preference, in the houses of repose and the inns. Their _modus operandi_ is this: Two of them, associated together for the purpose, hawk about various articles of merchandise, boots, skin-coats, bricks of tea, and what not. They offer these for sale to travellers. While one of them engages the attention of the destined victim, by displaying his goods and bargaining, the other ferrets about and pockets whatever he can lay his hands on. These rascals have inconceivable skill in counting your sapeks for you, in such a way as to finger fifty or a hundred or more of them without your having the slightest notion as to what is going on. One day, two of these little thieves came to offer for our purchase a pair of leathern boots. Excellent boots! said they; boots such as we could not find in any shop in the whole town; boots that would keep out the rain for days; and as to cheapness, perfectly unexampled. If we missed this opportunity, we should never have such another. Only just before they had been offered 1200 sapeks for them! As we did not want boots, we replied that we would not have them at any price. Thereupon the acting merchant assumed a lofty tone of generosity. We were foreigners; we should have them for 1000 sapeks, 900, 800, 700. “Well,” said we, “we certainly don’t want any boots just now, yet, doubtless, as you say, these are very cheap, and it will be worth while to buy them as a reserve.” The bargain was accordingly concluded; we took our purse, and counted out 700 sapeks to the merchant, who counted them over himself, under our very eyes, pronounced the amount correct, and once more laid the coin before us. He then called out to his companion who was poking about in the court-yard: “Here, I’ve sold these capital boots for 700 sapeks.” “Nonsense,” cried the other, “700 sapeks! I won’t hear of such a thing.” “Very well,” said we; “come, take your boots and be off with you.” He was off, and so quickly, that we thought it expedient to count our sapeks once more; there were a hundred and fifty of them gone, and that was not all; while one of these rascals had been pocketing our money under our very nose, the other had bagged two great iron pins that we had driven into the court-yard for the purpose of our camels. Therefore we took a resolution—better late than never—to admit, in future, no merchant whatever into our room.