THINGS CHINESE.

ABACUS.--The abacus, or counting-board. is as much a necessity in a merchant's office, or shroff's counting-room, as his account-books: without the abacus he would be at a complete loss to make up his accounts, and his books would therefore be unnecessary. Arithmetic forms no part of a school-boy's work: no little heathen Chinee ever has to sing— 'The rule of three it bothers me,

And fractions drive me mad,'

as both the one and the other are utterly unknown to him. Not even the simplest knowledge of arithmetic will ever be learned by him as a lesson, unless he is destined for a mercantile life, or to be a tradesman, or hawker, &c.; and then he learns as much or as little as it is absolutely necessary for him to know as a part of his business training.

What little idea of figures he possesses, he picks up when bargaining for food or toys, or when staking a few cash for sweetmeats at the wayside stall. The ordinary Celestial is content to get through life with as little knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division as would serve an English youngster of six or eight years of age.' A very little goes a long way with him, but nearly every man can finger the abacus to a greater or lesser extent; and those who have much to do with accounts get very dexterous in the use of it, going through the calculations most rapidly. We once had the curiosity to time a Chinese accountant from a native shipping office when turning

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different items expressed in taels and their decimals--itemsof four, five, and six figures-into dollars and cents, and we found he worked these sums out in from ten to fifteen seconds.

The modus operandi is as follows:-Putting his abacus down on the table before him, and his books a trifle more to the left, the accountant commences his calculations, using the thumb and forefinger of his right hand to flick the little balls up or down as he requires, only using his other three fingers, when, his sum done, he sweeps the upper balls to the top of the board, and the lower ones down to the bottomthe positions they occupy when not in actual use. The principle is simply that of the framework of wires with coloured beads used in England to teach children to count. With the Chinese, however, it is an oblong tray with bars running from top to bottom, and a transverse partition running from one side to the other, dividing the board into two unequal divisions. On each bar are seven balls, two in the upper division and five in the lower, each of those below stands for one, each of those above, for five; so, if one is to be represented, one of the lower ones is pushed up against the cross-bar, if two, two are pushed up, and so on till four. after which all the lower balls are pushed back again, and one of the upper ones is pushed down to the middle partition to stand for five. If six is to be represented, one of the lower balls is pushed up to the cross-bar, on the other side of which is the upper ball, for five and one make six. The other lower balls are added one after the other torepresent seven, eight, and nine respectively, and for ten one on the next bar to the left is used, and the calculation goes on in the same way as before. The operator fixing then on one of the upright bars as representing units, the next bar to the left stands for tens, the next one for hundreds, the next for thousands, and so on, while in the opposite direction, to the right hand, the decimals-tenths, hundredths. thousandths, and so on-are represented on the consecutive bars.

The great defect of the abacus is that it simply represents the process of calculation as it proceeds, for, as

can readily be understood, each step in the calculation calls new combinations of balls into play, and has the effect of obliterating the previous step; so that, if a mistake has been made, the whole process has to be gone over again.

It is amusing to see the utter helplessness the Chinese often display in trying to add two simple numbers together without an abacus.

When, at daylight, the shutters are taken down from the shop-fronts in Canton, the shopman ensures, as he thinks, good luck for the day by shaking the balls of the abacus to and fro; at first slowly, but gradually increasing in speed until finally a continuous sharp clicking sound is produced.

ABATEMENT.-Nearly every Chinese tradesman, or merchant, states the price of his goods with a view to an abatement being made. The only exceptions amongst purely native shops are Tea, Cake, and Druggists' shops. At such places there is no need for haggling over prices. Exception must also be made in favour of the shops dealing almost exclusively with Europeans, where many are beginning to conform to foreign customs and have a fixed price.

A Chinese will take as much as he can get, but as a general rule it is quite safe to suppose that he is asking a quarter or a third more than he expects to receive; consequently offer him half of what he asks, then, while he gradually falls in his price, as gradually rise in the offer made to him until neutral ground is reached, when split the difference and he will probably be glad to take what you give him. But this must all be done with a perfect nonchalance: no eagerness to obtain the object must be shown; no words of praise must fall from your lips; any little defects in it must be pointed out:-It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer: but when he is gone his way then he boasteth.'

When in doubt as to the value of anything, a very good plan is to go about beating down the price in several different shops. A pretty shrewd guess may then be made as to what is a fair price for the article; for when a shopman sees a customer

on the point of leaving his shop, he will come down to nearly, if not quite, as low a figure as he is prepared to accept.

A Chinaman dearly loves a bargain, and he finds a positive pleasure in chaffering over the price, which the foreigner (to whom time is money) can scarcely appreciate. Looked at from a Western standpoint, it is simply appalling to think of the hours, days, weeks, months, and years, which must be wasted in the aggregate in China over the carrying out of this Eastern trait of character.

There is an amusing skit, translated by Giles in his Historic China and other Sketches,' which is an admirable parody on the language of the market and the shop, and holds up this custom of the Chinese to ridicule. It is styled The Country of Gentlemen,' and represents an ideal state of society where the tables are turned-the buyer cracking up the goods he is purchasing, and offering and insisting on the seller taking a higher price than is demanded for them, while the latter depreciates his wares, asking far too little for them, the two haggling over the price at great length, as in the every-day world in China, the only difference being that buyer and seller have changed places.

ABORIGINAL TRIBES. The present race of Chinese is supposed to have come into the country some four thousand years ago. They were not the first occupiers, however, and it has only been very gradually that they have succeeded in driving out the Aborigines. They are still slowly doing this in some parts of the Empire, as for instance in Formosa ; but large tracts of country in the south and south-west of the eighteen provinces are still possessed by the former inhabitants, who hold their own against the Chinese, and are reported in some parts to even have thousands of Chinese as slaves in their inaccessible fastnesses, thus retaliating on the Chinese, who, some centuries since, exposed them to the same treatment.

The provinces in which these representatives of former races are found, are Kwei-chau, Sz-chuen, Yun-nan, Kwangtung, and Kwang-si, and the Islands of Formosa and Hai-nan.

In Sz-chuen a considerable portion of the west and southwest of the province is sparsely inhabited by some forty or fifty native tribes, of which little is known: some are very warlike, and constant depredations are committed by them. They have their own chiefs, languages, customs, and manners. The late Mr. Colborne Baber, of the Consular Service, obtained a specimen of the written language of the Lolos-one of these tribes. It is a most peculiar sort of caligraphy, and presents no point of resemblance to the Chinese language or any other that one is familiar with.

In Kwei-chau province they appear to be scattered all over the province; and the same in Yun-nan, where about two-thirds of the inhabitants consist of various tribes of Lo-lo, Li-su, Mu-su, Man-tzu, and Miao-tzu.' In Kwang-tung they are located in the north-west of the province, and in Kwang-si, in the north-east.

The eastern half of the large island of Formosa is occupied by numerous tribes of more or less savage natives, whose country is almost inaccessible, and who are continually making sorties on the settled Chinese from their mountain recesses, where they are secure from molestation. The object of many of these raids is head-hunting. They speak different, but allied, languages, tattoo their bodies, and are called Che-whan (ie. wild fán). Besides these, there are the ancient inhabitants of the western half, who where driven from the rich coast lands by the Chinese about two hundred years ago, and are now scattered through the length of the island, generally settled on the hilly land at the foot of the mountain ranges. Some even, annoyed by the attacks of the wild tribes mentioned above, as well as by the oppression of the Chinese, have settled in the eastern part of the island. These civilised Aborigines are called Pepo-whan, those who still speak their native language are called Sek-whan (ie. civilised fán), while the others speak Chinese. The Pepowhan are a large and well-formed race.' With the exception of the women, they now dress nearly like the Chinese, and their dialects have been dropped for Chinese. Their language is similar to that of the savage inhabitants, and would

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