The family in this particular craft consists of an elderly fisherman and his wife, a grown-up son with his wife and two little ones, six people in all, and as though the space were too ample for these, they have improvised at the extreme bows a small pigsty, where a pig that will add to the comforts of the home when it is ready for the market, lies apparently contented with its narrow and confined surroundings. It will never move from its home till it is carried to the butcher. The old couple are weather-beaten and their faces are covered with the wrinkles that advancing age has put into them, but they are perfectly content with their life, and though they take a ramble now and again on shore when they wish to buy anything or when they want to look at some theatricals, they return to their home with as much zest as though it were a spacious house in which every accommodation was provided for their comfort. [Illustration: A BOAT CARRYING A SEDAN CHAIR.] [Illustration: A PASSENGER BOAT. _To face p. 126._] There is really, after all, no mystery in this. Fifty or sixty years ago they were both born upon a boat of the precise size and shape of the one they are now living in. The old lady with the wrinkled features, and the eyes of which the flash and the sparkle have died out, and with the raven locks that have turned to grey, came here forty years ago as a bride, from a neighbouring boat, amid the sounds of fire-crackers and the chorus of congratulations that the Chinese are always prepared to give the newly-made wife. The young fellow that received her then as his future wife was the pick out of all the fisher lads in the fishing fleet of that time, but he, too, is old now. Yet both husband and wife are content, for their home is a happy one. Have they not their own son to care for them in their declining years, and to save them from sorrow and hunger now that their strength is not what it used to be?