words. What would have become of me?

Miniature turret-like hills hemmed us in as in a huge park, with a
narrow winding pathway, steep as the side of a house, leading to the top
of the mountain beyond, and then descending quite as rapidly to
Fan-ih-ts'uen. The coolies told me the next day the road would be worse,
and so it turned out to be.

At 5:00 a.m. a thick drizzly rain was falling, just sufficient to make
the flagstones slippery as ice, and the European contrivances which
covered my feet stood no chance at all compared with the straw sandals
of the native. I could not get any big enough around here to put over my
boots. My carriers had gone ahead, and as I was passing a paddy field
one leg went from under me, and I was up to my middle in thin wet mud.
In this I had to trudge seven miles before I could get other garments
from the coolie, changing my trousers behind a piece of matting held up
in front of me by my boy! All enjoyed the fun--except myself. Little
boys tried to peer around the side of the matting, and, as T'ong tried
to kick them away, the matting would drop and expose me to public view.
But I had to change, and that was most important to me.

Later on, my ugly coolie--the ugliest man in or out of China, I should
think, ugly beyond description--dropped my bedding as he was crossing
the river, and I had the pleasure of sleeping on a wet bed at T'an-teo.

I must ask the reader's pardon for again referring to Chinese inns. I
should not have made any remark upon this awful hovel had not the man
laid a scheme to charge me three times as much as he should--a scheme,
be it said, in which my boy took no part. It was truly a fearful den,
where man and beast lived in promiscuous and insupportable filth. The
dung-heap charms the sight of this agricultural people, without in the
slightest wounding their olfactory nerves, and these utilitarians think
there is no use seeking privacy to do what they regard as beneficial and
productive work. The bed here was the worst I had had offered me. The
mattress, upon which every previous traveler for many years had left his
tribute of vermin, was not fit for use, there were myriads of filthy
insects, and I found myself obliged to stop and have some clothes
boiled, and for comfort's sake rubbed my body with Chinese wine. Filth
there was everywhere. It seemed inseparable from the people, and a total
apathy as regards matter in the wrong place pervaded all classes, from
the hi