ls which often assume alarming importance when an expedition is
in the field and defects cannot be remedied. All food and commissary
supplies were purchased in Hongkong (_see_ Chapter IX).

* * * * *

When the announcement of the Expedition was made by the American Museum of
Natural History it received wide publicity in America and other parts of
the world. Immediately we began to discover how many strange persons make
up the great cities of the United States, and we received letters and
telegrams from hundreds of people who wished to take part in the
Expedition. Men and boys were the principal applicants, but there was no
lack of women, many of whom came to the Museum for personal interviews.

Most of the letters were laughable in the extreme. One was from a butcher
who thought he might be of great assistance in preparing our specimens, or
defending us from savage natives; another young man offered himself to my
wife as a personal bodyguard; a third was sure his twenty years' experience
as a waiter would fit him for an important position on the Expedition, and
numerous women, young and old, wished to become "companions" for my wife in
those "drear wastes."

Applicants continued to besiege us wherever we stopped on our way across
the continent and in San Francisco until we embarked on the afternoon of
March 28 on the S.S. _Tenyo Maru_ for Japan.

Our way across the Pacific was uneventful and as the great vessel drew in
toward the wharf in Yokohama she was boarded by the usual crowd of natives.
We were standing at the rail when three Japanese approached and, bowing in
unison, said, "We are report for leading Japanese newspaper. We wish to
know all thing about Chinese animal." Evidently the speech had been
rehearsed, for with it their English ended abruptly, and the interview
proceeded rather lamely, on my part, in Japanese.

Japan was reveling in the cherry blossom season when we arrived and for a
person interested in color photography it was a veritable paradise. We
stayed three weeks and regretfully left for Peking by way of Korea. But
before we continue with the story of our further travels, we would like
briefly to review the political situation in China as a background for our
early work in the province of Fukien.

CHAPTER II

CHINA IN TURMOIL

During the time the Expedition was preparing to leave New York, China was
in turmoil. Yuan Shi-kai was president of the Republ