The people of Szech’wan, compared with other Yangtze provinces, must be called a mercenary, if a go-ahead, one.

Balancing myself on a three-inch form in a tea-shop at a small town midway between Li-shih-ch’ang and Luchow, I am endeavoring to take in the scene around me.  The people are so numerous in this province that they must struggle in order to live.  Vain is it for the most energetic among them to escape from the shadow of necessity and hunger; all are similarly begirt, so they settle down to devote all their energies to trade.  And trade they do, in very earnest.

Everything is labeled, from the earth to the inhabitants; these primitives, these blissfully “heathen” people, have become the most consummate of sharpers.  I walk up to buy something of the value of only a few cash, and on all sides are nets and traps, like spider-webs, and the fly that these gentry would catch, as they see me stalk around inspecting their wares, is myself.  They seem to lie in wait for one, and for an article for which a coolie would pay a few cash as many dollars are demanded of the foreigner.  My boy stands by, however, magnificently proud of his lucrative and important post, yelling precautions to the curious populace to stand away.  He hints, he does not declare outright, but by ungentle innuendo allows them to understand that, whatever their private characters may be, to him they are all liars and rogues and thieves.  It is all so funny, that one’s fatigue is minimized to the last degree by the humor one gets and the novel changes one meets everywhere.

Onward again, my men singing, perhaps quarreling, always swearing.  Their language is low and coarse and vulgar, but happily ignorant am I.

The country, too, is fascinating in the extreme.  A man must not come to China for pleasure unless he love his mistress Nature when she is most rudely clad.  Some of her lovers are fascinated most in by-places, in the cool of forests, on the summit of lofty mountains, high up from the mundane, in the cleft of canons, everywhere that the careless lover is not admitted to her contemplation.  It is for such that China holds out an inviting hand, but she offers little else to the Westerner—­the student of Nature and of man can alone be happy in the interior.