At the Consulate we found Mr. Phillips, the Acting-Consul, ready packed up to go down to Shanghai, and Mr. H.E.  Sly, whom we had met in Shanghai, was due to relieve him.  Mr. J.L.  Smith, of the Consular Service, was here also, just reaching a state of convalescence after an attack of measles, and was to go to Chen-tu to take up duty as soon as he was fit.  But despite the topsy-turvydom, we were made welcome, and both Phillips and Smith did their best to entertain.  Chung-king Consulate is probably the finest—­certainly one of the finest—­in China, built on a commanding site overlooking the river and the city, with the bungalow part over in the hills.  It possesses remarkably fine grounds, has every modern convenience, not the least attractive features being the cement tennis-court and a small polo ground adjoining.  I had hoped to see polo on those little rats of ponies, but it could not be arranged.  I should have liked to take a stick as a farewell.

People were shocked indeed that I was going to walk across China.

Let me say here that travel in the Middle Kingdom is quite possible anywhere provided that you are fit.  You have merely to learn and to maintain untold patience, and you are able to get where you like, if you have got the money to pay your way;[E] but walking is a very different thing.  It is probable that never previously has a traveler actually walked across China, if we except the Rev. J. McCarthy, of the China Inland Mission, who some thirty years or so ago did walk across to Burma, although he went through Kwei-chow province over a considerably easier country.  Not because it is by any means physically impossible, but because the custom of the country—­and a cursed custom too—­is that one has to keep what is called his “face.”  And to walk tends to make a man lose “face.”

A quiet jaunt through China on foot was, I was told, quite out of the question; the uneclipsed audacity of a man mentioning it, and especially a man such as I was, was marvelled at.  Did I not know that the foreigner must have a chair? (This was corroborated by my boy, on his oath, because he would have to pay the men.) Did I not know that no traveler in Western China, who at any rate had any sense of self-respect, would travel without a chair, not necessarily as a conveyance, but for the honor and glory of the thing?  And did I not know that, unfurnished with this undeniable token of respect, I should be liable to be thrust aside on the highway, to be kept waiting at ferries, to be relegated to the worst inn’s worst room, and to be generally treated with indignity?  This idea of mine of crossing China on foot was preposterous!

Even Mr. Hudson Broomhall, of the China Inland Mission, who with Mrs. Broomhall was extremely kind, and did all he could to fit me up for the journey (it is such remembrances that make the trip one which I would not mind doing again), was surprised to know that I was walking, and tried to persuade me to take a chair.  But I flew in the face of it all.  These good people certainly impressed me, but I decided to run the gauntlet and take the risk.