When we were last there, a dainty-looking Chinese dinner was laid out in one of the pavilions; and before the guests sat down, girls arrived to make merry with music. For studying Chinese manners and customs, there could hardly be a more convenient place. Every one seemed very smart and very friendlily disposed towards the foreigner. Those who care for local colour can find it in this garden quite as well as in the China town; and, after all, when one can find local colour without local odours, it is a thing to make note of in China. It is true to get there one must not only drive down the Fukien Road, with its quaint dyers' drying-sheds high up against the sky, their blue draperies streaming from them picturesquely, then across that very fascinating bridge choked underneath with highly polished boats, piled with all manner of merchandise, but also, alas! through a local Covent Garden, full of colour enough, like its prototype in London, but, like that, not smell-less. Once arrived, however, a bewildering sense comes over one of having left prosaic Shanghai very far away, and of having at last arrived at a bit of the _romantic East_!
Boat-travel.--Vegetation.--Trackers.--Terrace of the Sun.--Gold Diamond Mountain.--Meng Liang's Ladder.--Great Szechuan Road.--Steamer Voyage.--Chinese Hades.--Caves.
Of all ways of travel, surely boat-travel is the most luxurious. For one thing, it is accounted roughing it; and that means that there is no bother about toilets: the easiest boots and gloves, the warmest and most comfortable of clothes, are the appropriate wear. But that seems to be the whole of the roughing of it. For naturally each boat-traveller takes care to start with a favourite chair and a comfortable bed; and it is his cook's business to provide the most _recherché_ of little repasts whenever wanted. What else is he there for? Nor do _soufflés_ and pheasants taste any the worse because the supply of fresh air is unlimited, and the cabin as cosy as nothing but a perfectly well-built house, or a boat floating in water warmer than the surrounding air, can be. The first time we went up to Chungking, we had a sleeping-cabin and sitting-cabin, each 9 ft. 4 in. by 7 ft. 7 in., the former well warmed by a most conveniently arranged kitchen adjoining, with a plentiful supply of warm water for our travelling-bath. Thus our only drawback was that the wind was always favourable; and whereas our captain had been bound over to pay us six shillings a day for every day over the agreed-upon twenty-two between Ichang and Chungking, we were equally bound to pay him six shillings a day extra for every day under.