The ninety li to Che-chi was mostly along narrow paths by the sides of river-beds, the intermediate plains having upturned acres waiting for the spring.  At Ta-chiao (7,500 feet), where I stayed for my first alfresco meal at midday, the man—­a tall, gaunt, ugly fellow, pockmarked and vile of face—­told us he was a traveler, and that he had been to Shanghai.  This I knew to be a barefaced lie.  He voluntarily explained to the visitors, gathered to see the barbarian feed, what condensed milk was for, but he went wide of the mark when he announced that my pony,[Z] hog-maned and dock-tailed (but Chinese still), was an American, as he said I was.  A young mother near by, suffering from acute eye inflammation, was lying in a smellful gutter on a felt mat, two pigs on one side and a naked boy of eight or so on the other, whilst she heaped upon the head of the innocent babe she was suckling curses most horribly blood-curdling.  Dogs—­the universal scavengers of the awakening interior, to which merest allusion is barred by one’s Western sense of decency—­just outside Che-chi, where I stayed the night, had recently devoured the corpse of a little child.  Its clothing was strewn in my path, together with the piece of fibre matting in which it had been wrapped, and the dogs were then fighting over the bones.

To Lai-t’eo-p’o was a day that men might call a “killer.”

It is a dirty little place with a dirty little street, lying at the foot of a mountain known throughout Western China as one of the wildest of Nature’s corners, nearly ten thousand feet high, a terrific climb under best conditions.  A clear half-moon, and stars of a silvery twinkle, looked pityingly upon me as I started at 3 a.m., ignorant of the dangerously narrow defile leading along cliffs high up from the Yili Ho.  In the dark, cautiously I groped along.  Not without a painful emotion of impending danger, as I watched the stellular reflections dancing in the rushing river, did I wander on in the wake of a group of pack-ponies, and took my turn in being assisted over the broken chasms by the muleteers.  Two fellows got down below and practically lifted the tiny animals over the passes where they could not keep their footing.  Gradually I saw the nightlike shadows flee away, and with the dawn came signs of heavy weather.

Snow came cold and sudden.  As we slowly and toilsomely ascended, the velocity of the wind fiercely increased; down the mountain-side, at a hundred miles an hour, came clouds of blinding, flinty dust, making the blood run from one’s lips and cheeks as he plodded on against great odds.  With the biting wind, howling and hissing in the winding ravines and snow-swept hollows, headway was difficult.  Often was I raised from my feet:  helplessly I clung to the earth for safety, and pulled at withered grass to keep my footing.  The ponies, patient little brutes, with one hundred and fifty pounds strapped to their backs, came near to giving up the ghost, being swayed hopelessly to and fro in the fury.  For hours we thus toiled up pathways seemingly fitter for goats than men, where leafless trees were bending destitute of life and helpless towards the valley, as the keen wind went sighing, moaning, wailing through their bare boughs and budless twigs.