It is surprising how few of the mechanic arts are here practised, excepting those which are connected with the building of junks and boats; and in this case, strickly speaking, there are but two or three employed. The carpenter, who builds the vessel, makes the masts and wooden anchors, and the very few blocks that are used; pumps are not known, for the water is bailed out from vessels of one thousand tons burden. They go to market and buy their mats to make sails, which are spread out on the ground within certain pegs, which give the proper dimensions and shape; the bolt-rope is then sowed on, being made of a species of very coarse strong grass, abounding every where; and the sailmakers, being the sailors of the vessel, make the cordage generally, and assist in making the immense cables. Blacksmiths are necessarily employed to make bolts, and calkers are indispensable. [Sidenote: CHINESE JUNKS.] A true Chinese junk is a great curiosity; the model must have been taken originally from a bread-trough, being broad and square at both ends--when light, (I speak of a large one,) it is full thirty feet from the surface of the water to the tafferel, or the highest part of the poop. Forward, a wide clear space intervenes, where the cable is worked, there being a stage erected, some twelve or fifteen feet above the forecastle, on which they help to work and keep a lookout for sail. The mainmast is a most enormous stick of teak or other hard wood, big enough for a line-of-battle ship, on which they hoist an enormous sail, which generally takes all the crew, consisting of at least a hundred or a hundred and fifty men; when they wish to lower it, it is necessary to send a number of men on the bamboo poles, which stretch from side to side, to assist in its descent. A small mast, the after or mizen mast, is placed on one side, not in the centre as in other vessels, but stepped or secured on the deck. The enormous cable is hove up by a common windlass, without the assistance of pauls, stretching from side to side of the vessel, through the bulwarks. The centre of the vessel is at least fifteen or twenty feet lower than the tafferel, open for the most part amidships, planks being placed here and there to step on. There is tier upon tier of cabins aft. The hold is divided into compartments and made water proof; these are hired or owned by the shippers, so that each one keeps his goods separately; and in case the vessel spring a leak, in any particular part, it is more easily repaired. The caboose is on one side; and their meals, as at home, are made of rice and salt or fresh vegetables, and perhaps a little fish, and of every cheap article, however unsavoury, served up in a great number of small saucers.