Here is a heap of the less expensive kind such as the poorer classes can afford to buy. They look like magnified sprats, and a man stands by and continues to sprinkle them with salt water, and he does this in such a deft way that they present a sparkling appearance as though they had just been brought out of the sea and were fresh and full of life. Close by are some splendid mackerel that were caught this morning, and they lie with a stiff and dignified air, as though they resented being laid out here to the public gaze. Some of them have already been cut into slices and customers are trying to beat down the dealer to a more reasonable price. It is noticeable that the most of those who are bargaining for the fish have brought their own steelyards to weigh their purchases, as they evidently have no faith in the honesty of the one belonging to the shop. Further on we notice a young shark, that seems very much out of place, and altogether plays a mean and inglorious part for an animal that takes so conspicuous a place amongst the dwellers in the sea. Close beside it is a native fish that evidently has been too long out of the water to add to its market value, and so it has to be doctored to induce customers to look upon it with favour. To carry out this idea, it has been cut in two, and the ends have been ingeniously smeared with pig's blood to make it appear to the uninitiated that it has only just ceased to live, and the red streaks show where its own life-blood has just ceased to ebb out. Yet this simple and childlike deception is plain to every one that comes to buy, and no one is taken in by it. It is one of the devices of the trade, that some clever scamp invented in the past when the forefathers of the race were more ingenuous and more easily taken in than men are to-day, and so the trick is kept up, in order that the inventor of it, wherever he may be to-day, may not "lose face" in the eyes of his descendants. After we emerge from this busy and unsavoury market, where the odour of decaying fish mingles with the national and purely Chinese exhalations of the drains, which here are peculiarly foul, we turn into a narrow street, where the passengers are few, and the shops have a dull, semi-respectable look about them. They have no counters outside of them, and so the whole street, which is about five feet in width, is entirely available for foot passengers. We discover to our astonishment that every shop in it sells shoes. It is in fact the great centre of the shoe trade for the town, and also for the country districts for many miles outside of it.