A few rainy days advanced me well on the way, but at the expense of my boots, whose soles had been calculated for Count Peter, and not for the pedestrian laborer.  I was already barefoot and had to procure a pair of new boots.  The next morning I transacted this business with much gravity in a village where a wake was being held, and where in a booth old and new boots were sold.  I selected and bargained long.  I was forced to deny myself a new pair, which I would gladly have had, for the extravagant price frightened me.  I therefore contented myself with an old pair, which were yet good and strong, and which the handsome, blond-haired boy who kept the stall, for present cash payment handed to me with a friendly smile and wished me good luck on my journey.  I put them on at once, and left the place by the northern gate.

I was deeply absorbed in my thoughts and scarcely saw where I set my feet, for I was pondering on the mine which I hoped to reach by evening, and where I hardly knew how I should introduce myself.  I had not advanced two hundred strides when I observed that I had gone out of the way.  I therefore looked round me, and found myself in a wild and ancient forest, where the axe appeared never to have been wielded.  I still pressed forward a few steps, and beheld myself in the midst of desert rocks which were overgrown only with moss and lichens, and between which lay fields of snow and ice.  The air was intensely cold; I looked round—­the wood had vanished behind me.  I took a few strides more—­and around me reigned the silence of death; the ice whereon I stood boundlessly extended itself, and on it rested a thick, heavy fog.  The sun stood blood-red on the edge of the horizon.  The cold was insupportable.

I knew not what had happened to me.  The benumbing frost compelled me to hasten my steps; I heard only the roar of distant waters; a step, and I was on the icy margin of an ocean.  Innumerable herds of seals plunged rushing before me in the flood.  I pursued this shore; I saw naked rocks, land, birch and pine forests; I now advanced for a few minutes right onward.  It became stifling hot.  I looked around—­I stood amongst beautifully cultivated rice-fields, and beneath mulberry-trees.  I seated myself in their shade; I looked at my watch; I had left the market town only a quarter of an hour before.  I fancied that I dreamed; I bit my tongue to awake myself, but I was really awake.  I closed my eyes in order to collect my thoughts.  I heard before me singular accents pronounced through the nose.  I looked up.  Two Chinese, unmistakable from their Asiatic physiognomy, if indeed I would have given no credit to their costume, addressed me in their speech with the accustomed salutations of their country.  I arose and stepped two paces backward; I saw them no more.  The landscape was totally changed—­trees and forests instead of rice-fields.  I contemplated these trees and the plants which bloomed around me, which I recognized as the growth of southeastern Asia.  I wished to approach one of these trees—­one step, and again all was changed.  I marched now like a recruit who is drilled, and strode slowly and with measured steps.  Wonderfully diversified lands, rivers, meadows, mountain chains, steppes, deserts of sand, unrolled themselves before my astonished eyes.  There was no doubt of it—­I had seven-league boots on my feet.