, although a small payment, usually five cents gold, is the rule
for each day of halt for your convenience. So I felt that my only check
upon the men was to hold out a reward. Accordingly I offered them a
definite tip and a good one, if they would get me to Ning-yuean-fu at a
certain day, which they did, making the journey, as I learned later,
simply in the ordinary time. I was advised not to pay them the sum
promised, as they were profiting by my ignorance, and it might make me
trouble afterwards. But I reasoned that my ignorance was my own fault;
they had not asked, I had offered the reward, and I was sure the evil of
a broken promise was greater than any bad precedent. So the men got
their tip, and I am certain I gained by the reputation I thus acquired
of keeping my word. I never again gave such rewards, but I always had
good service.

I was sorry to see the Yunnan men go; they were sturdy, willing fellows,
quick to learn my ways. In particular, one of my chair coolies, the big
fellow called Liu, I should have been glad to keep on, in spite of
unexpected revelations at Ning-yuean. He had made the trip from Yunnan
with Mr. Wellwood a few weeks earlier, behaving well, but after
receiving his pay he got gloriously drunk and was expelled from the inn,
whereupon he turned up at the mission, still drunk. As he was not taken
in, he proceeded to tear up the chapel palings and make himself a
nuisance. So after repeated warnings he was turned over to the police,
who shut him up for a night and then gave him a whipping. Probably he
had learned a lesson, for he made me no bother. This was the only case
within my own knowledge of a coolie's giving trouble through drinking.
Out-of-the-way travel in the East is much simpler for being among
non-drinking people. Years ago I made a canoeing trip in northern Maine
with two friends. Almost we were forced to rob the traditional cradle
and grave to secure guides warranted sober--the only sort safe for a
party of women; but in the East that question is scarcely considered,
and personally I have never had any difficulty.

The men that I took on at Ning-yuean were on the whole younger and
smaller than the Yunnan men, but they too did their work well. The new
fu t'ou was a Chengtu man of a type quite unlike the others, tall,
slender, well made, and with decidedly good features. He seemed young
for his post, but soon showed himself quite equal to the task of keeping
the men up to the mark, a