Few men in China, I think, could be more curiously constructed than this coolie.

He was all neck; his chin was simply an upward prolongation of his neck like a second "Adam's apple." Both were very pleasant companions.

They were naturally in good humour, for they were well paid, and their loads, as loads are in China, were almost insignificant; I had only asked them to carry sixty-seven pounds each.
We, who live amid the advantages of Western civilisation, can hardly realise how enormous are the weights borne by those human beasts of burthen, our brothers in China.

The common fast-travelling coolie of Szechuen contracts to carry eighty catties (107lbs.), forty miles a day over difficult country.

But the weight-carrying coolie, travelling shorter distances, carries far heavier loads than that.