him in English that I had done nothing
against the law, so far as I knew.

He bowed solemnly, during which time I, attempting the same, had much
trouble from bursting out laughing in his face. He beckoned to me, and
then rushed me bodily into a house, where, in the best room, I found
another official and his two sons. T'ong followed as interpreter. The
mandarin explained that I was wanted to stay the night, that a
theatrical entertainment had been arranged particularly for my benefit,
that he wished I would take their photographs, that one of them would
like a cigarette tin with some cigarettes in it, and that one of them
would like to sell me a thoroughbred, hard-working,
magnificently-shaped, without-a-single-vice black pony, which they would
part with for my benefit for the consideration of one hundred taels down
(four times its value), which awaited my inspection without. I stood up
and fronted them, and replied, through T'ong, that I could not stay the
night, that I would be pleased to tolerate the howling of the theatre
for one half of an hour, that it would have given me the greatest
pleasure to take their photographs, but, alas! my films were not many. I
handed them a cigarette tin, but quite forgot that they asked for
cigarettes as well (I had none), and I explained that horse-riding was
not one of my accomplishments, so that their quadruped would be of no
use to me.

They looked glum, I smiled serenely. This is Chinesey.

CHAPTER VIII

_Szech-wan and Yuen-nan_. _Coolies and their loads_. _Exports and
imports_. _Hints to English exporters_. _Food at famine rates_. _A
wretched inn at Wuchai_. _Author prevents murder_. _Sleeping in the
rain_. _The foreign cigarette trade_. _Poverty of Chao-t'ong_.
_Simplicity of life_. _Possible advantages of Chinese in struggle of
yellow and white races_. _Foreign goods in Yuen-nan and Szech'wan_.
_Thousands of beggars die_. _Supposed lime poisoning_. _Content of the
people_. _Opium not grown_. _Prices of prepared drug in Tong-ch'uan-fu
compared_. _Smuggling from Kwei-chow_. _Opium and tin of Yuen-nan_.
_Remarkable bonfire at Yuen-nan-fu_. _Infanticide at Chao-t'ong_.
_Selling of female children into slavery_. _Author's horse steps on
human skull_.

Were one uninformed, small observance would be necessary to detect the
borderline of Szech'wan and Yuen-nan. The latter is supposed to be one of
the most ill-nurtured and desolate provinces of the Empire, mountainous,