or eight miles across the country join the boat again, the bend
rendering it necessary for her to go around some thirty or forty miles.
This we gladly assented to, and taking my gun, in hopes of meeting with
some snipe in the paddy-fields, and with Aling and a coolie for
interpreters, we landed.

Charley and I both experienced a rather queer sensation as we watched
the boat sail off, and found ourselves with no other white man within a
hundred or more miles. The country ahead was one immense rice-field,
divided by dykes or banks paved with stones and forming paths for
walking. At some distance we saw a large clump of bamboos with tall
elms beyond, indicating a village, called, as a coolie at work in a
ditch informed us, Fi-Loong. Soon we saw a broad creek with a handsome
stone bridge over it, and on the other side an unusually large house of
two stories, which turned out to belong to the Te-poy, or local
magistrate of the place. The old gentleman himself was sitting outside
of the house having his head shaved by the village barber. He politely
invited us to wait, and after the shaving was over regaled us with a
cup of tea,--rather weak, but refreshing,--and after chin-chin-ing we
resumed our journey.

Can you see our party trudging along? Beyond the village were more
paddy-fields, from which occasionally a great white paddy-bird arose. I
shot one of them, to the great delight of our coolie, who pronounced it
No. 1 good chow-chow; but Charley and I were much more pleased at the
sight of several English snipe. Reaching an old lotus-pond, a shot
scared up these birds almost in myriads, and a good bunch of them
promised a very welcome addition to our dinner. Meanwhile we had been
following a creek, which we now needed to cross. But before long Aling
espied a man in the distance at work with a huge buffalo, and