Frenchmen pleasant travelling companions--Their limitations--Vicomte
de Vogue--The innkeeper and the ikon--An early oil-burning steamer--A
modern Bluebeard--His "Blue Chamber"--Dupleix--His ambitious scheme
--A disastrous period for France--A personal appreciation of the
Emperor Nicholas II--A learned but versatile Orientalist--Pidgin
English--Hong-Kong--An ancient Portuguese city in China--Duck junks--A
comical Marathon race--Canton--Its fascination and its appalling
smells--The malevolent Chinese devils--Precautions adopted
against--"Foreign devils"--The fortunate limitations of Chinese
devils--The City of the Dead--A business interview 

CHAPTER IV 

The glamour of the West Indies--Captain Marryat and Michael
Scott--Deadly climate of the islands in the eighteenth century--The
West Indian planters--Difference between East and West Indies--"Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow we die"--Training-school for British
Navy--A fruitless voyage--Quarantine--Distant view of Barbados--Father
Labat--The last of the Emperors of Byzantium--Delightful little Lady
Nugent and her diary of 1802--Her impressions of Jamaica--Wealthy