Some Of The Rich Merchants Invited Us To Go In And Drink Champagne, But We Declined Everything But Tea, Which Is Ready All Day Long In Tea-Pots Kept Hot In Covered Baskets Very Thickly Padded, Such As Are Known With Us As "Norwegian Kitchens."

In the middle of the village there is a large, covered, but open-sided building like a market, which is

Crowded all day - and all night too - by hundreds of these poor, half-naked creatures standing round the gaming tables, silent, eager, excited, staking every cent they earn on the turn of the dice, living on the excitement of their gains - a truly sad spectacle. Probably we were the first European ladies who had ever walked through the gambling-house, but the gamblers were too intent even to turn their heads. There also they are always drinking tea. Some idea of the profits made by the men who "farm" the gambling licenses may be gained from the fact that the revenue derived by the Government from the gambling "farms" is over 900 pounds a year.

Spirits are sold in three or four places; and the license to sell them brings in nearly 700 pounds a year, but a drunken Chinaman is never seen. There are a few opium inebriates, lean like skeletons, and very vacant in expression; and every coolie smokes his three whiffs of opium every night. Only a few of the richer Chinamen have wives, and there are very few women, as is usual in a mining population.

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