FRIDAY, December 6.

In our stroll to-day Vandy and I came upon one of the gates of the old city, of which there are six in a wall three miles in circumference, and entered. It contains 300,000 people. We walked some distance through its filthy, narrow alleys, and saw the poor wretches in their dens working at all kinds of trades, from the forging of iron to the production of Joss-money, but the villainous smells soon overpowered me, and I had to get Vandy to escort me out. He can go through anything of this kind without flinching, and means to return; but I have seen enough of it, and am sorry that human beings have to exist under such conditions. The Chinese have no coined currency except a small bronze piece worth one-tenth of a cent, called "cash." It has a hole in the centre, and when a native goes to market he puts several lots of them on strings, fifty or a hundred on each string, and throws them round his neck; think of it, one thousand pieces, ten strings of one hundred each, to make a dollar! Sometimes they are carried in the market-basket. In larger operations Mexican and American dollars are used, but away from the coast people decline to take even these, insisting upon silver cast in the form of a horseshoe and called "sice." This silver is hoarded here, and also in India, and were it not for this its value would probably fall to a point which would rule it out of the list of precious metals. The evils of a silver currency are obvious to all here. Its value has changed three times in one day since we have been in the country. Business is seriously disturbed, and suffers from this cause, and it is to such a plight that our misled silverites at home would reduce us!

       * * * * *