of opium,
at my expense, and turning up in the morning in anything but fit
condition for the road. Putting this and that together, I conclude that
we have not yet readied Kan-tchou-foo; but the carriers have developed
into an insufferable nuisance, a hinderance to progress, rather than a
help, so I determine to take them no farther.

I tell them nothing of my intentions until we reach a lonely spot a mile
from the city. Here I tender them suitable payment for their services and
the customary present, attach my loose effects to the bicycle and about
my person, and motion them to return. As I anticipated, they make a
clamorous demand for more money, even seizing hold of the bicycle and
shouting angrily in my face. This I had easily foreseen, and wisely
preferred to have their angry demonstrations all to myself, rather than
in a crowded city where they could perhaps have excited the mob against
me.

For the first time in China I have to appeal to my Smith & Wesson in the
interests of peace; without its terrifying possession I should on this
occasion undoubtedly have been under the necessity of "wiping up a small
section of Kiang-se" with these two worthies in self defence. In the
affairs of individuals, as of nations, it sometimes operates to the
preservation of peace to be well prepared for war. How many times has
this been the case with myself on this journey around the world!

The barometer of satisfaction at the prospect of reaching Kui-kiang
before the appearance of old age rises from zero-level to a quite
flattering height, as I find the pathways more than half ridable after
delivering myself of the dead weight of native "assistance." Twelve miles
farther and I am approaching the grim high walls of a large city that
instinctively impresses me as being Kan-tchou-foo. The confused babel of
noises within the teeming wall-encompassed city reaches my ears in the
form of an "ominous buzz," highly suggestive of a hive of bees, into the
interior of which it would be extremely ticklish work for a Fankwae to
enter. "Half an hour hence," I mentally speculate, "the pitying angels
may be weeping over the spectacle of my seal-brown roasted remains being
dragged about the streets by the ribald and exultant rag, tag, and
bobtail of Kan-tchou-foo."

Reflecting on the horrors of cotton, peanut-oil, and fire, I sit down for
half an hour at a peanut-seller's stall, eat peanuts, and meditatively
argue the situation of whether it woul