Ella J. Sheldon


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The family always takes the occasion of a fare for an excursion, they cannot be blamed for that as they are at home where they live, born, married, die on the sampan, cook, eat, sleep, no other home. The family usually is large and assist in pulling the oars very young, in fact that is play to them before it becomes work.

A young baby is fastened to its mothers back, while she works regardless of its presence, when it falls asleep she throws a little clothe over its head, the corners of which are tied around her own neck by means of strings


and there it sleeps and bobs [ ] its head about as she moves at her work with the oar. A creeping child has a lariatt [lariat] string tied about its waist and fastened to the mast, giving it the range of the boat; Little two years old toddlers have a small float tied to them so if they fall overboard they can be seen and recovered and so they are free to run about as they please without being worried into [ ] by mothers anxieties as American children come near being.

When the hour for banquetting [banqueting] arrives the woman lifts off the forward hatch and discloses the

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Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library

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