The following is a tolerably correct account of the mode of life pursued by the Europeans settled here.  As soon as they are up, and have drunk a cup of tea in their bed-room, they take a cold bath.  A little after 9 o’clock, they breakfast upon fried fish or cutlets, cold roast meat, boiled eggs, tea, and bread and butter.  Every one then proceeds to his business until dinner-time, which is generally 4 o’clock.  The dinner is composed of turtle-soup, curry, roast meat, hashes, and pastry.  All the dishes, with the exception of the curry, are prepared after the English fashion, although the cooks are Chinese.  For dessert there is cheese, with fruit; such as pine-apples, long-yen, mangoes, and lytchi.  The Chinese affirm that the latter is the finest fruit in the whole world.  It is about the size of a nut, with a brown verrucous outside; the edible part is white and tender, and the kernel black.  Long-yen is somewhat smaller, but is also white and tender, though the taste is rather watery.  Neither of these fruits struck me as very good.  I do not think the pine-apples are so sweet, or possessed of that aromatic fragrance which distinguishes those raised in our European greenhouses, although they are much larger.

Portuguese wines and English beer are the usual drinks—­ice, broken into small pieces, and covered up with a cloth, is offered with each.  The ice is rather a costly article, as it has to be brought from North America.  In the evening, tea is served up.

During meal-times, a large punkah is employed to diffuse an agreeable degree of coolness through the apartment.  The punkah is a large frame, from eight to ten feet long, and three feet high, covered with white Indian cloth, and fastened to the ceiling.  A rope communicates, through the wall, like a bell-pull, with the next room, or the ground floor, where a servant is stationed to keep it constantly in motion, and thus maintain a pleasing draught.

As may be seen from what I have said, the living here is very dear for Europeans.  The expense of keeping a house may be reckoned at 30,000 francs (6,000 dollars—­1,200 pounds) at the lowest; a very considerable sum, when we reflect how little it procures, neither including a carriage nor horses.  There is nothing in the way of amusement, or places of public recreation; the only pleasure many gentlemen indulge in, is keeping a boat, for which they pay 28s. a-month, or they walk in the evenings in a small garden, which the European inhabitants have laid out at their own cost.  This garden faces the factory, surrounded on three sides by a wall, and, on the fourth, washed by the Pearl stream.