On the streets, especially during festival days, one may see young people and others in social intercourse, busying their fingers and their teeth eating cooked snails or often watermelon seeds, which are extensively sold and thus eaten.  This custom we saw first in the streets of a city south of Kashing on the line of the new railway between Hangchow and Shanghai.  The first passenger train over the line had been run the day before our visit, which was a festival day and throngs of people were visiting the nine-story pagoda standing on a high hill a mile outside the city limits.  The day was one of great surprises to these people who had never before seen a passenger train, and my own person appeared to be a great curiosity to many.  No boy ever scrutinized the face of a caged chimpanzee closer, with purer curiosity, or with less consideration for his feelings than did a woman of fifty scrutinize mine, standing close in front, not two feet distant, even bending forward as I sat upon a bench writing at the railway station.  People would pass their hands along my coat sleeve to judge the cloth, and a boy felt of my shoes.  Walking through the street we passed many groups gathered about tables and upon seats, visiting or in business conference, their fingers occupied with watermelon seeds or with packages of cooked snails.  Along the pathway leading to the pagoda beggars had distributed themselves, one in a place, at intervals of two or three hundred feet, asking alms, most of them infirm with age or in some other way physically disabled.  We saw but one who appeared capable of earning a living.

Travel between Shanghai and Hangchow at this time was heavy.  Three companies were running trains, of six or more houseboats, each towed by a steam launch, and these were daily crowded with passengers.  Our train left Shanghai at 4:30 P. M., reaching Hangchow at 5:30 P. M. the following day, covering a distance along the canal of something more than 117 miles.  We paid $5.16, gold, for the exclusive use of a first-cabin, five-berth stateroom for myself and interpreter.  It occupied the full width of the boat, lacking about fourteen inches of footway, and could be entered from either side down a flight of five steps.  The berths were flat, naked wooden shelves thirty inches wide, separated by a partition headboard six inches high and without railing in front.  Each traveler provided his own bedding.  A small table upon which meals were served, a mirror on one side and a lamp on the other, set in an opening in the partition, permitting it to serve two staterooms, completed the furnishings.  The roof of the staterooms was covered with an awning and divided crosswise into two tiers of berths, each thirty inches wide, by board partitions six inches high.  In these sections passengers spread their beds, sleeping heads together, separated only by a headboard six inches high.  The awning was only sufficiently high to permit passengers to sit erect.  Ventilation was ample but privacy was nil.  Curtains could be dropped around the sides in stormy weather.