and deepens.  And in China—­of the Chinese this is true to-day as in other spheres of the Far East—­the native is there to do the donkey work, and does it contentedly and for the most part cheerfully.  But he will not always be so content and so cheerful.  He will not always suffer a leathering from a man whom he knows he dare not now hit back.[AI] Some day he may hit back.  We have seen it before, how at some moment, by some interior force making a way to the light, an explosion takes place:  there is an upheaval, all sorts of grave disorders, and because some Europeans are killed the Celestial Government is called upon to pay, and to pay heavily.  Indemnities are given, but the Chinese pride still feels the smart.

[1 Pulling away up the sides of barren, sandy hills in my lonely pilgrimage, I could see wide, fertile plains sheltered in the undulating hollows of mountains, over which in arduous toil I vanished and re-appeared, how or where I could hardly calculate.  Suddenly, rounding an awkward corner, a magnificent panorama broke upon the view in a rolling valley watered by many streams below, all green with growing wheat.  A high spur about midway up the rolling mountain forms a capital spot for wayfarers to stop and exchange travelers’ notes.  A couple of convicts were here, their feet manacled and their white cotton clothing branded with the seal of death; by the side were the crude wooden cages in which they were carried by four men, with whom they mixed freely and manufactured coarse jokes.  In six days bang would fall the knife, and their heads would roll at the feet of the executioners at Yuen-nan-fu.

Coming into Ch’u-hsiong-fu[AJ]—­the stage is what the men call 90 li, but it is not more than 70—­I was brought to an insignificant wayside place where the innkeeper upbraided my boy for endeavoring to allow me to pass without wetting a cup at his bonny hostelry.  Had I done so, I should have avouched myself utterly indifferent to reputation as a traveler.

But I did not stay the night here.  I passed on through the town to a new building, an inn, into which I peered inquiringly.  A well-dressed lad came courteously forward, in his bowing and scraping seeming to say, “Good sir, we most willingly embrace the opportunity of being honored with your noble self and your retinue under our poor roof.  Long since have we known your excellent qualities; long have we wished to have you with us.  We can have no reserve towards a person of your open and noble nature.  The frankness of your humor delights us.  Disburden yourself, O great brother, here and at once of your paraphernalia.”

I stayed, and was charged more for lodging than at any other place in all my wanderings in China.  My experience was different from that of Major Davies when he visited this city in 1899.  He writes:—­

“The people of this town are particularly conservative and exclusive.  They have such an objection to strangers that no inn is allowed within the city walls, and no one from any other town is allowed to establish a shop....  When the telegraph line was first taken through here there was much commotion, and so determined was the opposition of the townspeople to this new-fangled means of communication that the telegraph office had to be put inside the colonel’s yamen, the only place where it would be safe from destruction.”