Several other lodgers occupy the room in common with myself; some are smoking tobacco, and others are industriously “hitting the pipe.”  The combined fumes of opium and tobacco are well-nigh unbearable, but thera is no alternative.  The next bench to mine is occupied by a peripatetic vender of drugs and medicines.  Most of his time is consumed in smoking opium in dreamy oblivion to all else save the sensuous delights embodied in that operation itself.  Occasionally, however, when preparing for another smoke, he addresses me at length in about one word of pidgin-English to a dozen of simon-pure Cantonese.  In a spirit of friendliness he tenders me the freedom of his pipe and little box of opium, which is, of course, “declined with thanks.”

Long into the midnight hours my garrulous companions sit around and talk, and smoke, and eat peanuts.  Mosquitoes likewise contribute to the general inducement to keep awake; and after the others have finally lain down, my ancient next neighbor produces a small mortar and pestle and busies himself pounding drugs.  For this operation he assumes a pair of large, round spectacles, that in the dimly lighted apartment and its nocturnal associations are highly suggestive of owls and owlish wisdom.  The old quack works away at his mortar, regardless of the approach of daybreak, now and then pausing to adjust the wick in his little saucer of grease, or to indulge in the luxury of a peanut.

Such are the experiences of my first night at a Chinese village hittim; they will not soon be forgotten.

The proprietor of the hittim seems overjoyed at my liberality as I present him a ten-cent string of tsin for the night’s lodging.  Small as it sounds, this amount is probably three or four times more than he obtains from his Chinese guests.

The country beyond Chun-Kong-hoi is alternately level and hilly, the former highly cultivated, and the latter occupied mostly with graves.  Peanut harvest is in progress, and men, women, and children are everywhere about the fields.  The soil of a peanut-bed to the depth of several inches is dug up and all passed through a sieve, the meshes of which are of the proper size to retain the nuts.  The last possible grain, nut, or particle of life-sustaining vegetable or insect life is extracted from the soil, ducks and chickens being cooped and herded on the fields and gardens after human ingenuity has reached its limit of research.

Big wooden pails of warm tea stand about the fields, from which everybody helps himself when thirsty.  A party of peanut-harvesters are regaling themselves with stewed turnips and tough, underdone pieces of dried liver.  They invite me to partake, handing me a pair of chopsticks and a bowl.

Gangs of coolies, strung in Indian file along the paths, are met, carrying lacquer-ware from some interior town to Fat-shau and Canton.  Others are encountered with cages of kittens and puppies, which they are conveying to the same market.  These are men whose business is collecting these table delicacies from outlying villages for the city markets, after the manner of egg and chicken buyers in America.