The next day I began more carefully to look out for a boarding-house, but it was all one. There were enough of them indeed, but in all there was not one which did not to my mind look more like a rabbit warren than a "home" or a "rest," or whatever the name might be that was put over the door. A couple of places were kept by Chinamen. They at least seemed more honest, because they made no pretence of offering their guests what they had not got. All the accommodation they offered was a shelf for each man, and there seemed to be an air of "take it or leave it alone" about them which I liked. But none of these suited me, and so I went to the hotels, and for one pound ten shillings per week I got white man's accommodation: a room for myself and every civility. How anybody like my two grandly-dressed countrymen could, if they earned four pounds a week, prefer the other place to this, I did not understand. I might now with much satisfaction have finished my writing here by telling the reader how I obtained work the next day for fourteen shillings per day, and how I saved and persevered until I myself became a contractor--if such had been the case. But the truth must be told, and that is that I kept delaying day by day to ask any one for a job. Every day I would walk about the town, and passed and re-passed houses under erection, but I could not bring myself to go and speak to any one for fear of meeting the same fate that befell me the day I arrived. When I came home to the hotel from such an expedition, I would console myself by recounting my money and reckoning up how many Danish dollars it was. That seemed to reassure me. Certainly it went fast, but on the whole I was in no way alarmed over myself, because I knew very well that when the necessity came a little nearer I should easily get something to do. Meanwhile I could go out every day shooting, fishing, and enjoying myself as best I could.