After about twenty days of incessant toil in tracking, poling and yulowing along the tortuous and mud-bound channel of the Kan, where sailing, owing to the low water and consequent towering banks which shut off the wind, was seldom possible, the small fleet emerged on the Poyang lake. Not, however, the magnificent sheet of water which is found there in summer, but the lake as it is in winter, contracted to one tenth of its maximum size, and little more than a wide and sluggish river flanked by boundless mud tracts swarming with snipe and wildfowl. Another few days' sailing, for the breeze could now be felt across the wide marshland, and Hukow (mouth of the lake) was reached, where the merchandise in the four small lake boats was transferred to a large and stately junk destined to carry it far up-river towards the West, while good accommodation was found on board both for Chin and his assistant. As soon as the transhipment of cargo had been completed, and Chin had written a letter for transmission to his wife by the boats returning to Kanchow, sail was made on the junk, and passing out of the tranquil waters of the lake she was seen to shape an up-river course reefed close before a rising gale, until lost to sight in the rain and gathering darkness. The empty boats arrived in due course at Kanchow, when the letter was faithfully delivered, and this being the last communication that would be received from her husband prior to his return, Mrs Chin resigned herself to many weeks of dreary loneliness. Weeks lengthened into months, and the waiting woman began to feel anxious as to the well-being of her lord. The stifling, burning summer came and went, and still there was neither sign nor tidings of the absent one. Inquiries made of passing junks, to the crews of many of which Chin was well-known, ever elicited the invariable reply that nothing had been seen or heard of him. Autumn and winter still brought no tidings, and the poor, saddened woman yielded to the conviction that some disaster had overtaken her husband and that she would see him no more. Early Chinese marriages are almost invariably arranged by the parents, the young folks, even if old enough, having no voice in the matter. Later on, plurality of wives, though far from universal, is also quite common and of good repute. The lower orders generally have only one wife, not being able to afford more, although as soon as a man commences to prosper and rise in the social scale his first thought is to procure by contract or by purchase an additional helpmeet, who, however, ranks far below the _first_ or _No. 1_ wife. Similarly _No. 2_ ranks before _No. 3_, and so on. Four or five wives is a common number in well-to-do households, though one old friend of mine, since dead, had taken to himself sixteen.