The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1894-01-17

objects, religious symbols or reasons
for most habits, ways and customs, they
seemed densely ignorant. shall IN
this writing give without close con-
nection, or in the sequence as / saw
them, some interesting points.
The pawnshops are striking fea!
ture in the architecture of the city.
They are lofty (seventy feet or so),
about fifty feet square, brick, with
but few and small windows, and those
high up; large doorway in one front
corner-six feet-a strong wooden
partition, q barred opening in this
about five feet from the floor, behind
which Chinese clerks receive the
bundles of clothing or other things
which are offered in pawn for money.
These pawnshops exist under imperial
licenses of sixty years, for which a
large price is paid, as well as mo6er-
ate annual tax. These places charge
from one and half to three per cent.
per month interest on the money
loaned on things in pawn, the limit
being two years. The city treasurer
loans money to the pawnbrokers at
twelve per cent. per annum, which
aids them in ready money capital. If
one pawnshop fails the rents are re-
quired to make good the Government
loan at least. Some bad years, late in
the season, when the distressed poor
need the winter clothing and bedding
placed in pawn in the previous spring,
the Government interferes and COM
pels the pawnbrokers to reduce the
interest, so that really the system is
under some sort of control. In Can
ton there are over hundred of these
pawnshops; in the province over a
thousand.
The Touring mills are common and
primitive enough. One-Hop Sings
"a narrow but deep building, in one
lofty story, has twelve run of stone,
not cased in at all, each about thirty
inches in diameter; the lower stone
fixed, the upper one revolving, the
grain fed in q centre hole in the up
per stone; scoopful at intervals runs
as coarse meal from the middle Of the
edge. The power was in shape of
blindfolded oxen, blinded so that the
short circle they tread, going round
md round for hours, would not make
them dizzy. To keep the droppings
of the animals from communicating the
-four and mill, tubs were tied under
them. The sitting of the -four from
the bran was done by simple sieve
or bolt.
One whole street is devoted to pre-
serving eggs, mostly rather small
ducks eggs, which, as offered for sale,
look like Jumps of soft mud. The pro-
cess, I understand, consists of pick
ling them in paste of wood ashes,
common salt and lime, wet with water
aromatised by boiling cedar or fir
leaves in it; after some days of this
they will keep almost indefinitely.
Near this is poultry street, where
fowls-ducks, geese, as well as many
kinds of game birds, including owls
and storks-are sold alive, with eyel1ds
sewed up to keep them. quiet; and
here I should mention that enormous
quantities of ducks eggs are Matched
by artificial means by special persons,
who sell the young as soon as out to
certain boatmen, whose business 1t is
to feed and raise the ducklings. These
boatmen have broad, very low boats,
on each side of which are bamboo
coops to accommodate sometimes
5000 birds. At first they are fed with
boiled rice and similar food, but they
soon get SO as to forage for themselves
These duck villages float around the
shallow places, where at low tide they
are let ont on to the fiat and where
they find abundant food in the mud
and shallow water, and from which