e out of the way in obedience to my gestures when I tried to take
some pictures, not too successfully. Here for a moment I was again in
touch with my own world, as a runner, most thoughtfully sent by Mr.
Stevenson with the morning's letters, overtook me. According to
arrangement he had been paid beforehand, but not knowing that I knew
that, he clamoured for more. The crowd pressed closer to listen to the
discussion, and grinned with a rather malicious satisfaction when the
man was forced to confess that he had already received what they knew
was a generous tip. Chinese business instinct kept them impartial, even
between one of their own people and a foreigner.

That night we stopped, after a stage of some sixty li, about nineteen
miles, at Erh-tsun, a small, uninteresting village. The inn was very
poor, and I would have consoled myself by thinking that it was well to
get used to the worst at once, only I was not sure that it was the
worst. My room, off the public gathering place, had but one window
looking directly on the street. From the moment of my arrival the
opening was filled with the faces of a staring, curious crowd, pushing
each other, stretching their necks to get a better view. My servants put
up an oiled cotton sheet, but it was promptly drawn aside, so there was
nothing for me to do but wash, eat, and go to bed in public, like a
royal personage of former times.

It was a beautiful spring morning when we started the next day. We were
now among the mountains, and much of our way led along barren hillsides,
but the air was intoxicating, and the views across the ridges were
charming. At times we dropped into a small valley, each having its
little group of houses nestling among feathery bamboos and surrounded by
tiny green fields. Dogs barked, children ran after us, men and women
stopped for a moment to smile a greeting and exchange a word with our
coolies. As a rule, the people looked comfortable and well fed, but here
and there we passed a group of ruined, abandoned hovels. The explanation
varied. Sometimes the ruin dated back more than a generation to the
terrible days of the Mohammedan rebellion. In other cases the trouble
was more recent. The irrigating system had broken down, or water was
scant, or more frequently the cutting-off of the opium crop had driven
the people from their homes. But in general there was little tillable
land that was unoccupied. In fact, the painstaking effort to utilize
every bit