Northern China offers the best opportunities, and while from Mongolia to Ningpo game is plentiful enough, the mighty River Yangtse is _par excellence_ the sportsman's elysium. Of course, one must have good dogs and know the country, or go with someone who does, otherwise the most ardent spirit would soon be cooled to freezing point and disgust instead of delight would be the result of his endeavours. Along the banks of this noble river, from the sea for hundreds of miles into the interior, I have enjoyed as good sport as lies within reach of only the very rich in western countries. The Chinese are not often sportsmen, and away from foreign influence but rarely molest wild animals of any kind. Owing, however, to the increasing European colony at Shanghai and the numerous mail steamers which daily arrive there, a profitable market for game has sprung up during the past few years, to supply which there are now a number of native gunners who, as a means of livelihood, scour the country with foreign breech-loaders in search of pheasants, wildfowl, etc., so that, being capital shots, within a considerable distance of this port the shooting is not so good as formerly, although in all other parts of the Empire it still remains practically untouched until the advent of Europeans. That there are not more aboriginal sportsmen is partly due to a law which forbids the people to possess firearms, though this law has not been rigidly enforced, and partly due to the primitive construction and consequent unreliability of the few native fowling-pieces which do exist. Well away from beaten tracks I have occasionally met local sports carrying guns together with slow-matches of smouldering brown paper. They are remarkable weapons, with single iron barrels some four feet and a half long, about twenty bore and without stocks, but having pistol handles. There are no locks or springs, the hammer and trigger being in one piece, working through the handle on a rivet. The hammers have slits in them as if to hold flints, but which really are intended for the slow-match. Sometimes these men had good bags of snipe, but only once have I seen such a gun fired, which was at a pigeon sitting about fifteen yards high in a tree. The gunner blew his slow-match into a glow and pressed it into the slit in the hammer, placed the pistol handle to his hip and pulled the trigger, which brought the hammer slowly forward until the slow-match rested on the powder in the pan, when the gun went off and the pigeon fell dead. Whether birds are shot on the wing with these guns I cannot say, but remembering that a hundred and fifty years ago it was accounted an extraordinary thing to attempt flying shots even in this country, I should think probably not. Old muzzle-loading rifles of European make, striking either flints or percussion caps, are also in occasional use as shot-guns, in preference to native weapons.