The over-density of China's populations is sure to be one of the first facts which strike the traveller, and the words “Yellow Peril” to form the first jotting in his notebook. From his earliest days, he has been taught to realise that “if the inhabitants of China could be made to march before us at the rate of sixty per minute every day and night, under the sunlight and the solemn stars, the endless procession would move on for twelve years and eight months,” and that the fact of the Chinese nation being estimated at four hundred millions involves a death-rate of a million per month. And here he sees it all before him in sample, and instinctively recalls a picture of “Over-population” in Cruikshank's Comic Almanac. But being of a thoughtful turn of mind, it is not the comicality of the scene before him, but the peril of it all to the world in years to come which impresses him. He can well believe that the Chinese are likely to overrun the world in time, that “twenty millions or more of Boxers … will make residence in China impossible for foreigners … and will carry the Chinese flag and Chinese arms into many a place that even fancy will not suggest to-day, thus preparing for the future upheavals and disasters never even dreamt of.”