, thinking: 'When shall
I find my way out of these jungles and vastnesses?' For I was where no
paths were, and had lost myself in deeps where the lure of the earth is
too strong and rank for a single man, since in such places, I suppose, a
man would rapidly be transformed into a tree, or a snake, or a tiger. At
last, however, I found the place, to my great joy, but I would not shew
that I was glad, and to hide it, fell upon a front wheel of the car with
some kicks. I could not make out who the people were that lived here:
for the relics of some seemed quite black, like New Zealand races, and I
could still detect the traces of tattooing, while others suggested
Mongolian types, and some looked like pigmies, and some like whites. But
I cannot detail the two-years' incidents of that voyage: for it is past,
and like a dream: and not to write of that--of all that--have I taken
this pencil in hand after seventeen long, long years.

* * * * *

Singular my reluctance to put it on paper. I will write rather of the
voyage to China, and how I landed the motor on the wharf at Tientsin,
and went up the river through a maize and rice-land most charming in
spite of intense cold, I thick with clothes as an Arctic traveller; and
of the three dreadful earthquakes within two weeks; and how the only map
which I had of the city gave no indication of the whereabouts of its
military depositories, and I had to seek for them; and of the three
days' effort to enter them, for every gate was solid and closed; and how
I burned it, but had to observe its flames, without deep pleasure, from
beyond the walls to the south, the whole place being one cursed plain;
yet how, at one moment, I cried aloud with wild banterings and glad
laughters of Tophet to that old Chinaman still alive within it; and how
I coasted, and saw the hairy Ainus, man and woman hairy alike; and how,
lying one midnight awake in my cabin, the _Speranza_ being in a still
glassy water under a cliff overhung by drooping trees--it was the
harbour of Chemulpo--to me lying awake came the thought: 'Suppose now
you should hear a step walking to and fro, leisurely, on the poop above
you--_just suppose'_; and the night of horrors which I had, for I could
not help supposing, and at one time really thought that I heard it: and
how the sweat rolled and poured from my brow; and how I went to
Nagasaki, and burned it; and how I crossed over the great Pacific deep
to Sa