The pork peddler, as already intimated, is known by the powerful blasts that he blows from a sea shell. His outfit is of the simplest. It consists of two baskets, on one of which a board is spread, and the pork is laid out in a dainty fashion so as to tempt the intending purchasers to buy what they want. In the other are thrown odds and ends, for the peddler has really no need for it, as its main idea is to form a kind of balance so that he may be able to carry his load with comfort from the bamboo pole that rests on one of his shoulders. Lying beside the pork is a large chopper, with which he cuts off the pieces that his customers may desire, and a steelyard for weighing his sales. As he rests his apparatus in front of some houses, he is soon surrounded by a little knot of people, some of them with private steelyards of their own, in order to test whether the peddler's has not been doctored, so as to cheat them of their due weight. Sometimes when the peddler has had his pork watered there is great dissatisfaction, and no one will buy from him unless he sells at a considerably reduced price. This watering is a vicious custom that prevails largely amongst all butchers, and is intended to make it possible to sell the meat at a lower rate to the very poor. The way it is managed is to pump a quantity of water down the main arteries of the animal immediately after it is killed until the whole animal is saturated with it. As this injection of water drives out the blood, the flesh has a pale, anaemic look that tells the secret, and the aim of the peddler is to conceal this from the public by plastering the flesh over with the blood that flowed from the body when the animal was killed. This is the universal practice of the trade, though it does not deceive a single person, nor can it give the healthy look to the pork that the unwatered meat has. No doubt this wretched system exists because the peddler can sell cheaper, and as cash are few and precious amongst the poor, the national delicacy would certainly be less attainable by large numbers of them were they to have to pay the higher price that is demanded for the unwatered article.