After being pestered by the mob for about two hours and a half we got away from Fu at 1·25 P.M. on the same day that we arrived, the 24th of April; we were forced, however, to stop again before we had gone more than a mile and a quarter, to allow of some of our hands coming up who had gone ashore at the town, and there was a good deal of hammering of brass gongs before they all made their appearance. Our crew was a very mixed lot, with some curious characters among them. There were about five-and-twenty to the large boat, but at different places where we stopped a good many of them changed; so that by the time we gave up these Sz'chuan boats there were very few of the original hands remaining. Among those who kept by us was an inveterate opium-smoker; indeed many of them, from the cheapness of the drug, used opium more or less. He was a tall, well-built, but rather slender fellow, and had evidently been good-looking; but the continued sucking at the opium-pipe had given his mouth a screwed-up and parched appearance, and his eyes were constantly bloodshot, and of that yellowish fishy appearance consequent on a life of debauchery. He was still a young man, and not a bad worker when he was at it, and I often thought of his case, and reflected how sad a thing it was to see a young fellow in the prime of life destroying himself day by day through this vile infatuation.