The French mail had given us coffee
and rolls at six, but the excitement of landing at a foreign port does
not usually produce the net amount of satisfaction to or make for the
sustenance of the inner man of the phlegmatic Englishman, as with the
wilder-natured Frenchman. Therefore were our spirits ruffled.
However, my companion and I fed later.
Subsequently to this we agreed not to be drawn to the clubs or mix in
the social life of Shanghai, but to consider ourselves as two beings
entirely apart from the sixteen thousand and twenty-three Britishers,
Americans, Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Danes, Portuguese, and other
sundry internationals at that moment at Shanghai. They lived there: we
were soon to leave.
The city was suffering from the abnormal congestion common to the
Orient, with a big dash of the West. Trams, motors, rickshaws, the
peculiar Chinese wheelbarrow, horrid public shaky landaus in miniature,
conveyances of all kinds, and the swarming masses of coolie humanity
carrying or hauling merchandise amid incessant jabbering, yelling, and
vociferating, made intense bewilderment before breakfast.
Wonderful Shanghai!
FIRST JOURNEY
FROM SHANGHAI UP THE LOWER YANGTZE TO ICHANG
CHAPTER I.
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