The foreign residents, including consuls of all nationalities, missionaries, and merchants, live well out of the city on a hilltop.  Their houses are built with very high ceilings and bare interiors, and as the occupants seldom go into the city except in a sedan chair and have “punkahs” waving day and night, life is made possible during the intense heat of summer.

A telegram was awaiting us from the Reverend Harry Caldwell, with whom we were to hunt, asking us to come to his station two hundred miles up the river, and we passed two sweltering days repacking our outfit while Mr. Kellogg scoured the country for an English-speaking cook.

One middle-aged gentleman presented himself, but when he learned that we were going “up country,” he shook his head with an assumption of great filial devotion and said that he did not think his mother would let him go.  Another was afraid the sun might be too hot.  Finally on the eve of our departure we engaged a stuttering Chinese who assured us that he was a remarkable cook and exceptionally honest.

If you have never heard a Chinaman stutter you have something to live for, and although we discovered that our cook was a shameless rascal he was worth all he extracted in “squeeze,” for whenever he attempted to utter a word we became almost hysterical.  He sounded exactly like a worn-out phonograph record buzzing on a single note, and when he finally did manage to articulate, his “pidgin” English in itself was screamingly funny.

One day he came to the sampan proudly displaying a piece of beef and, after a series of vocal gymnastics, eventually succeeded in shouting:  “Missie, this meat no belong die-cow.  Die-cow not so handsome.”  Which meant that this particular piece of beef was not from an animal which had died from disease.

The first stage of our trip began before daylight.  We rode in four-man sedan chairs, followed by a long procession of heavily laden coolies with our cameras, duffle-sacks, and pack baskets.  The road lay through green rice fields between terraced mountains, and we jogged along first on the crest of a hill, then in the valley, passing dilapidated temples with the paint flaking off and picturesque little huts half hidden in the reeds of the winding river.  It was a relief to get into the country again after passing down the narrow village streets and to breathe fresh air perfumed with honeysuckle.

A passenger launch makes the trip to Cui-kau at the beginning of the rapids, but it leaves at two o’clock in the morning and is literally crowded to overflowing with evil-smelling Chinese who sprawl over every available inch of deck space, so that even the missionaries strongly advised us against taking it.  The passengers not infrequently are pushed off into the water.  One of the missionaries witnessed an incident which illustrates in a typical way the total lack of sympathy of the average Chinese.