The system of binding the feet of the women is by no means so universal as we have been led to believe, and we must confess to having been deceived in this matter; we all thought, probably, to have seen _all_ the women with that useful member reduced to the dimensions of a baby's foot--instead of which, what do we really see? scarce one deformed woman in all our walks. Yet this nation considers this cramped, tortured lump (it has lost all semblance to a foot) an index of beauty. Their hair is by far their finest possession, which, with their large almond-shaped eyes, is invariably of a black color. I once saw a Chinaman with _red_ hair, and you cannot think how ludicrous his queue looked beside the sable tails of his brethren. The manner in which the women dress their hair is most wonderful, and materially helps to give them their uninviting appearance. They have a fashion of sticking it out around the head in the shape of a teapot, stiffened with grease and slips of bamboo. That this style of head-dress enhances their ugliness very few Europeans I think will deny; for some women whom we have seen, with their hair combed neatly back over their heads and coiled up in a trace behind, looked not altogether uncomely. The head is dressed but once in ten days; and as the people sleep in their day clothes, the possibility is they entertain about their persons a private menagerie of those interesting creatures whose name looks so vulgar in print. It is one of the commonest scenes in the streets to see a Chinaman squat on the kerb-stone and turn up a fold or two of his trousers to manipulate these little pests; and even the high officials and well-to-do people look upon it as no outrage to the proprieties, to be seen removing one of "_China's millions_" from the garment of a friend or guest. CHAPTER VIII. ----"All the deep Is restless change." * * * PREPARATIONS FOR THE NORTH.--AMOY.--WUSUNG, AND WHAT BEFELL US THERE. Whatever pretensions to beauty our ship may have possessed on leaving England--and that she possessed some it is but fair to add--have been greatly marred by the late voyage, and especially by the washing down we encountered on the trip from Manilla. The effect has been to reduce our once fairy and glistening hull to a jaundiced mass of rust and stains. Therefore are we to go into "weeds." Black certainly gives an iron-clad a more man-of-war look, and a more war-like effect, to say nothing of the superior ease with which it can be kept clean.