"Then you pretty well know where they are?" said Mr Brooke. "No; far uppee liver; in cleek." "I suppose this is right?" said Mr Brooke to me. "Yes, quite light. Ching likee see Queen Victolia ship killee catch pilate." "Give way, my men," said Mr Brooke, and the boat shot forward, while, relieved for the moment from the task of scanning the different boats, I sat gazing at the beautiful panorama of quaint houses, narrow streets debouching on the river, and the house-boats all along the edge of the river, while smaller boats were swinging here and there wherever there was room. It was a wonderfully interesting sight, for, in addition to the curious shapes of the buildings, there was plenty of brilliant colour, and every now and then patches of brightest blue and vivid scarlet were heightened by the glistening gilding which ornamented some particular building. Then there were temples dotted about amongst the patches of forest, which fringed the high ground at the back of the city, and away beyond them the steep scarps of rugged and jagged mountains, which stood up looking of so lovely a pinky-blue, that I could for the moment hardly believe they were natural, and was ready to ask whether it was not some wonderful piece of painting. The house-boats took my fancy greatly, for, in endless cases, they were of a variety of bright colours, pretty in shape, and decorated with showy flowers in pots and tubs; some had cages containing brightly-plumaged birds, and in most of them quaint bald-headed little children were playing about or fishing. Higher up we saw men busy with nets which were attached to the end of a great bamboo pole, balanced upon a strong upright post fixed in the river's bottom, and by means of this balanced pole the net was let down into the depths of the river, and hoisted from time to time, sometimes with a few glittering little fish within the meshes, sometimes having nothing but weed. "Yes, catchee fish; catchee velly big fish some time." About ten minutes after, Ching pulled my sleeve and pointed to the other side of the river, where I caught sight of a very familiar old friend sitting in his boat, just as I had seen him in an old picture-book at home. There he sat with a big umbrella-like sunshade fixed up over him on a bamboo pole, in front of him a kind of platform spread across the front of his moored boat, and upon it sat perched eight or nine of my old friends the cormorants, one of which dived into the river from time to time, and soon after emerged and made its way back to the boat with a fish in its beak. "See that, Mr Brooke?" I cried eagerly. "I suppose we can't stop to watch them?"