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THE AQUARIUS COMPANY'S STEAM FACTORY AND WATER DISTILLERY.

and Distillery are under experienced European control, and they avail themselves of the advice of a leading local medical man, to whose approval and inspection all their waters are submitted. The Company's waters have already become so well known that there is no need for us to dilate upon the inestimable advantages of having such pure waters at our command at a very reasonable price, and in a place like Shanghai, where in Summer cholera sometimes assumes a serious aspect, it is a matter of the greatest importance that the Public should be able to obtain absolutely pure drinking water. No filter will ever make impure water pure. Distillation alone has that power, and the Treble Distilling Process adopted by the Aquarius Company is the most perfect existing at the present time. Boiling does not free water from inorganic matter, such as silica, lime, and other Mineral substances held in solution, and therefore invisible to the eye. This inorganic or stony substance, however, is precipitated by Treble Distillation or in other words, is left behind in the stills when the water which contained it has passsed into steam. The work undertaken by the Aquarius Company has proved to be one of the benefits of our East. The Company have produced the first drinkable and pure water ever seen in Shanghai. The Registered Trade Mark of this Company is a most appropriate one as it is the sign of the Zodiac representing the water bearer.

GAMBLING IN CHINA.

HE greatest evil which afflicts the Chinese people is not their fondness for the soothing papaver somniferum, but their ineradicable passion for gambling. In China, it is hardly necessary to point out how wide-spread and universal is the habit, neither class nor sex, nor age being free from the vice, which enters everywhere-into the guild-houses and tea-houses of the men and the inner apartments of the women. We see it on all sides, and the disastrous effects of the habit come under our notice every day. Chance is invited more largely into the affairs of men in China, we venture to say, than in any other country in the world, and it is perhaps this constant permeation of the air with the gambling spirit that makes the residents from the West when in China amongst the most insanely speculative species of their race. Association with a nation of gamblers like the Chinese must exercise in the long run an appreciable effect upon the minds and habits and mode of thought of other people who dwell amongst them. Nor is the passion for gambling more encouraged by the laws of China than it was by the laws of Rome in the early days of its decline, or, say, of England in the period immediately preceding the Reformation. Perhaps it is that the effeminacy and want of martial spirit, which are the most distinctive characteristics of the Chinese to-day, are due to their inordinate and universal passion for dice and cards and hazard games of all kinds. HENRY VIII passed an act for "maintaining archery and debarring unlawful games of chance," for he saw in the increasing skill of his people in casting dice a growing clumsiness and falling off in their expertness with the "yew bow," and he directed stringent legislation against the former practice. China's decadence in the martial arts must in some measure be ascribed to the same cause, for in a country where the whole year is one long saturnalia, in which gambling may be indulged in with immunity from legal penalty, the people have no time or inclination for martial or ruder exercises. Not only does the rich man in China strive with dice and cards to add to his wealth, but take a walk through any Chinese city or through any Chinese street in our own Foreign Settlements, and you can see the poor coolie wooing the fickle goddess with equal fevour, but on a smaller scale. Even the toddling children are taught to gamble with a cash or two with some itinerant and sporting restaurateur, for a few sweetmeats or cakes, instead of making their purchases direct. The sweetmeat merchant has affixed to his paraphernalia a rude and miniature roulette board, with a revolving hand, which his youthful customer tempts to let stand on a lucky number, when he gets twice or thrice the value of his money, or if the fates are adverse, the spindle tops an unluckly figure and he loses his cash. Yet he loses it like a little philosopher and accepts the results with the nonchalance and suavity of the most confirmed punter at Monte Carlo or Monaco. The tired workman, instead of buying his evening meal, prefers in the same way. to gamble for it with the owner of the travelling cook-shop. He draws a stick from a bundle, and according to its number wins or loses his bread or rice-cake. If gambling were confined

to a class of people who do not risk their all in winning or losing stakes, it would be bad enough; but in China, not only the beggars gamble away their few cash bestowed on them by charitable people, but the very prisoners in their bamboo cages gamble with the scanty scraps of food or the few rags of clothing they get from the compassionate. In short, all would rather starve than forego the pleasures of the game, and the fact we think is demonstrable that it is only when he has nothing more to lose or stake that the Chinaman ever commits suicide. Outside the Tartar City of Peking, to the south and at the entrance to the Chinese City, is a bridge colloquially called "The Beggars' Bridge," the true "bridge of sighs," for here may be seen the most abject poverty and human misery,-sights pitiful enough to draw tears from the eyes of the gorgeous granite-stone dragons who watch the passing, living stream of wretchedness. The deformed, the leprous, the blind, and the most hideous and disgusting semblance of humanity squat in rows and knots along the sides of this bridge, soliciting, with horrid wails, the charity of the passers-by, and forthwith venturing the scanty results of their begging in gambling. As inevitably as the stakes are lost and won, quarrels between the miserable gamblers make the scene more frightful. No private gaming houses are found in the Celestial capital, but in almost every street or lane there are private resorts open to their habitues all night. In the vicinity of the Foreign Legations and in the street commonly called Taichi-chang, not far from the Customs residences, the high and long walls of a ducal palace may be seen on the east side of the road. The entrance is on the north side, in a street running parallel with Legation Street. This is the residence of one of the great men of Peking; yet even this place is used as a common gambling-house, while the gate-houses of the Foreign Legations are surreptitiously converted by the Native staffs into gambling dens. In the residences and grounds of the high Peking officials and aristocracy gambling is more or less openly carried on, entrance being regulated by the watchmen who admit only the initiated. Sometimes the gendarmerie of the city make a half-hearted attempt to catch the denizens of these resorts at their game, but the system of signals is so perfect that, as we know in Shanghai even our own police are seldom able to catch the offenders in flugarante delicto. The arm of the law in China is too short and too puny to deal with the evil that is eating the hearts out of the people, and that does more harm than all the opium that was ever imported from Malwa, Patna, and Benares put together. Mandarins, merchants, compradors, shroffs, tradesmen, and domestic servants all alike enjoy a little flutter with the cards or dice, and each province and every district of each province has its own peculiar form of gambling. Even in the everyday experience of the Foreigner in China,and he hears or knows but little of the domestic or social life of the Natives,-the subject of Chinese gambling is one that is constantly cropping up. One day it is a bank comprador who bolts with a few lakhs of dollars in consequence of a big gamble going wrong, next day it is one's own house-boy or cook who has got caught in the toils, owing to a little miscalculation or misfortune in fan-tan or po-tsze. Everywhere it is the same story, and of all the evils that China is afflicted with the inveterate attachment of the people, from the highest to the lowest, for games of chance and gambling in all its forms is the worst, and does more to sap the life-blood of the nation and divert their energies from more legitimate and, in the long run, more certain roads to profit than all the drowsy drugs in the world.

THE CELESTIAL "BOULEVARDS" OF SHANGHAI, OR FOOCHOW

ROAD BY DAY AND NIGHT.

LESTERN civilization probably never encounters a greater stumbling-block in the Celestial

Empire than when it attempts to bear upon the social institutions of the Chinese; and this is not to be wondered at, for all of us know how reluctantly we are persuaded to adopt customs and manners at variance with those to which we have been used from our earliest childhood, and which we have always looked upon as an inheritance from our forefathers. How much the more difficult must it prove to revolutionize-for in the present instance it means nothing less-the inner life of a nation claiming to be the most ancient and populous in the world, and which, by its ineradicable superstitious beliefs, presents so powerful an anti-lever that all attempts of "Western barbarians" to put out of its track the primæval form of its social institutions and inaugurate a reform, appear to be almost a "dream of the sweetly impossible!" The Chinese claim that their usages originated at a date anterior to that assigned to the Deluge, and they are attached to them with a tenacity perhaps greater than that of any other Asiatic nation for its ancient customs.

No other treaty port in China offers such a rich field for research with regard to the gradual adoption of Western social manners by the Chinese as Shanghai, which may be termed the pioneer city in the social reform movement. The reasons are obvious: not only is our port one of those which were opened to foreign trade immediately after the treaty of Nanking in 1842, but Shanghai has also been raised, within less than half a century, from the insignificant rank of a third-class Chinese city to the fame and wealth of one of the chief commercial emporia of the world, in which concentrate all the riches of a province emphatically called the "Garden" of the Middle Kingdom. The wealth which lies accumulated within the boundaries and jurisdiction of our port may be termed enormous; and luxury, the natural offspring of opulence, has found here a homestead which forms an interesting counterpart to the outward splendour of Western "high life" of which our settlements have a right to boast. That the Chinese have adopted some of our social institutions must be evident to even a superficial observer. Slowly but surely the "Heathen Chinee" moves along the high road of progress, and the roar of the mighty wave of civilization, rolling onward from the West, is already distinctly audible in almost every part of the greatest empire that the sun shines upon.

The street which, from a Chinese point of view, forms the public thoroughfare of our settlements, is Foochow Road, which may be rightly styled

THE CELESTIAL "BOULEVARDS" OF SHANGHAI.

The surprise and bewilderment of an English country lad who for the first time finds himself in one of the principal thoroughfares of the great British metropolis, cannot be greater than what the Celestial peasant experiences who for the first time visits our settlements and, naturally, is piloted into the fashionable avenue of the Celestial quarter-Foochow Road.

True, there is no more resemblance between the last-named street and the Boulevards of Paris than there is between the "Front Street" of a mushroom city of the Far West and the "Strand" on the Thames, as far, at least, as the buildings are concerned; but then, what the houses lack in outward appearance they make up for in their interior arrangements; at least to a Celestial's way of thinking. Foochow Road possesses but very few fair specimens of semi-Chinese architecture, considering its length. It is as narrow as the average of the roads in Shanghai, being just about wide enough to permit two carriages to pass each other; but, on the other hand, it possesses the great advantage, rarely found in our settlements, of being almost as straight as an arrow. An occasional visitor will be struck by the great number of Chinese hotels, some of which bear, besides their names in Chinese, English designations, such as "Bowling Alley," "Billiard Rooms," &c.; then there are a number of Chinese confectionery shops, displaying in their windows the most "highly praised" dainties of Western confiseurs; stores which deal in edibles such as decorate the tables of Western gente decente; several livery stables, letting out on hire vehicles of all possible descriptions, and numerous other establishments which will be described later on, and which, could a bird's-eye view be taken of them, would form a most varied and interesting panorama.

London Bridge, with its myriads of people daily crossing, can hardly present a more striking picture than the

TRAFFIC IN FOOCHOW ROAD.

Just post yourself, for about half an hour, between the hours of 5 and 6 in the afternoon, alongside the celebrated "Louen Yuen" Billiard Saloon, and the panorama which unfolds itself before you will copiously repay your trouble. You will stare, and perhaps not get tired of the curious sight. As in the wedding procession of some distinguished nobleman, carriage after carriage comes driving along. The sedan-chair, which at one time monopolised street traffic as a means of personal conveyance, has become conspicuous by its absence during the daytime; however, when the shades of evening are beginning to fall fast, and during the hours of night when the roll of the carriages dies away, you will see innumerable palanquins making their way hither and thither; their occupants are mostly almond-eyed beauties in the gayest and richest attire. Where they are bound to, is one of the mysteries of Foochow Road.

It takes a strong physical constitution to stand, for any length of time, the deafening noise these carriages make. Yet how picturesque are the groups of passengers which they carry! And what

CURIOUS SPECIMENS OF VEHICLES

these avail themselves of! There is, for instance, a species of carriage which I would call the Celestial "droska;" to all appearance it is a morphodite product of Western and Eastern cartwright's work. This "cab," which can accommodate about four persons, has spread over. its frame-work a cover made of coloured cotton stuff, shaped much like an umbrella, but of somewhat gigantic dimensions; this can be opened and shut at pleasure. The principal advantage which this vehicle offers is its cheapness; for a few cash the Celestial can enjoy a ride of a mile or more. Of course, it will be obvious that only "second-hand gentry" avail themselves of these carriages. The Mongolian chargers yoked to the shafts would form, as to their condition, not a bad counterpart to the lean kine of King Pharaoh. The poor animals