Yee-chow-lee a village of 150 families;—Yat-tow-lee again, a fine village of 300 families, being only a quarter of a lē or so from Kan-se-chee of 100 families.
The pretty manner in which children dress their hair with natural flowers among these villages is very pleasing, and the inhabitants, generally, unused to sight or speech of foreigners, whilst curious are not obtrusive, and are exceedingly kind in their deportment. It is not an unusual thing for the foreign traveller in this quarter to be politely asked to get out of his chair to be looked at;—every article of dress and foreign manufacture being scrutinized with prying eyes. To pilfer or cheat appears foreign to their composition;—and loudly indeed may the foreign missionary declaim against opium smoking, for, on a cursory glance at the habits of the people, it appears to be the only vice to which they are addicted. Of lewdness, drunkeness, quarrelsomeness, or any thing but what is pleasing in the eyes of an impartial lover of his species, nothing is seen;—nought besides opium smoking, and a want of cleanliness, is found to reform but the inclination to idolatry;—and, whilst pitying, the truly charitable can but reflect on the purit yof the source from which such propensity proceeds,—the desire to pay homage to the Supreme Being after that fashion which progenitors have taught to be the best.
Cleanliness being next to Godliness, Christianity when introduced will be a great boon. Idolatry, then, and the absence of a taste for cleanliness in their domestic arrangements, appear to be the great—almos tthe only—sins with which Chinese away from towns,have to be taxed;—the indulgence in opium smoking being seldom entered on 'till disease,
