CHAPTER XXII

Summary

EMERGING from the gate we had entered by, we passed eastward through another portion of the suburb, where we found the cart and our driver working up the minds of the groundlings to a pitch of rabid curiosity rather annoying than otherwise. But the Yung-ro—Sinensian for sheep's flesh—was safely deposited in the coolest and roomiest corner of the vehicle, the vegetables were hung from the frame of the cover, and guarding our treasures with an unusual degree of attention, we scrambled out of the uncomfortable locality, which possessed some large buildings we took, or mistook, for potteries.

All the womenkind were out to scrutinise us, and we had ample opportunity afforded to enable us to surmise that the morality of the place was not of the highest order, nor the feminine beauty or modesty other than of a very low type.

Meretricious looking Messalinas jeered and smiled wantonly towards us from beneath their indecorous masks of paint, as they uneasily tried to maintain themselves erect on their fashion-nipped feet, or leant against the walls or the shoulders of some debauched Lothario. It was, perhaps, as well that we did not understand much, if anything, of their language. Everybody was piggishly dirty, and carried about an alluvial deposit of such a thickness, that one could scarcely forbear wondering they did not become fossilised within the muddy encasement daily and hourly accumulating about their persons.