The buffalo is the most peaceful animal I know in China.  Miniature belfries were attached to the wooden frames on the backs of carrying oxen, and were it not for the huge tenor bell and its gong-like sound keeping the animal in motion, the slow pace would be slower still.

Turning suddenly and abruptly to the left, we commenced a cold journey over the mountains, although the sun was shining brightly.  A goitrous man came to me and waxed eloquent about some uncontrollable pig which was dragging him all over the roadway as he vainly tried to get it to market.  Some dozen small boys, with hatchets and scythes over their shoulders for the cutting of firewood they were looking for, laughed at me as I ploughed through the mud in my sandals.  We had been going for three hours, and when, cold and damp, we got inside a cottage for tea, I found that we had covered only twenty li—­so we were told by an old fogey who brushed up the floor with a piece of bamboo.  He was dressed in what might have been termed undress, and was most vigorous in his condemnation of foreigners.

Leng-shui-ch’ang we passed at thirty-five li out, and just beyond the aneroid registered 7,000 feet; Yung-ch’ang Plain is 5,500 feet; Pu-piao Plain-is 4,500 feet.  The range of hills dividing the two plains was bare, the clouds hung low, and the keen wind whistled in our faces and nipped our ears.  Ten li from Pu-piao, on a barren upland overlooking the valley, a mere boy had established himself as tea provider for the traveler.  A foreign kerosene tin placed on three stones was the general cistern for boiling water, which was dipped out and handed round in a slip of bamboo shaped like a mug with a stick to hold it by.  Farther on, sugar-cane grew in a field to the left, and near by a man sat on his haunches on the ground feeding a sugar-grinding machine propelled by a buffalo, who patiently tramped round that small circle all day and every day.

Turning from this, I beheld one of the worst sights I have ever seen in China.  Seven dogs were dragging a corpse from a coffin, barely covered with earth, which formed one of the grave mounds which skirt the road.  No one was disturbed by the scene; it was not uncommon.  But the foreigner suffered an agonizing sickness, for which his companions would have been at a loss to find any possible reason, and was relieved to reach Pu-piao.

Market was at its height.  It was warm down here in the valley.  The streets were packed with people, many of whom were pushed bodily into the piles of common foreign and native merchandise on sale on either side of the road.  A clodhopper of a fellow, jostled by my escort, fell into a stall and broke the huge umbrella which formed a shelter for the vendor and his goods, and my boy was called upon to pay.  Fifty cash fixed the matter.  I walked into a crowded inn and made majestically for the extreme left-hand corner.  Everybody wondered, and softly asked his neighbor what in the sacred name of Confucius had come upon them.