* * * * *

Distances are as variable as the wind in the Middle Kingdom.

The first forty li on this journey were much shorter than the last thirty, which took about twice as long to cover.  I dragged along over the narrow path through the wheat fields, and, making for an old man, who looked as if he should know, I asked him the distance to my destination.  His reply of twenty li I accepted as accurate, and I reckoned that I could cover this easily in a couple of hours.  But at the end of this time we had, according to a casual wayfarer, five more li, and when we had covered at least four another rustic said it was “two and a bit.”  This answer we got from four different people on the way, and I was glad when I had completed the journey.  One does not mind the two li so much—­it is the “bit” which upsets one’s calculations.

The following day, on the road to Huan-chiang, I lost myself—­that is, I lost my men, and did not know the road.  I got away into some quaint, secluded garden and sat down, tired and hot, under a tree in the shade, where a faint wind swung the heavy foliage with a solemn sound, and the subdued and soothing music of a brook running between two banks of moss and turf must have sent me to sleep.  It was with a dreary sense of ominous foreboding that I woke, as if in expectation of some disaster.  Not a living creature was visible, and I doubted the possibility of finding anyone in such a spot.  Never, surely, was there a silence anywhere as here!  Seized with a solemn fear, my presence there seemed to me a strange intrusion.  I looked around, moved forward a little, hastened my steps to get away, but whence or how I knew not.  I knew this was a country of erratic distances—­it was now getting on for sunset—­and the continuous toiling up and down the sides of the difficult mountains had tired me.  All of a sudden I heard a noise, heard someone fall, looked round and beheld T’ong, perspiration pouring down his back and front.

“Oh, master, this b’long velly much bobbery.  I makee velly frightened.  I think p’laps master wantchee makee run away.”  And then, after a time:  “You no wantchee catch ’chow’?”

“Chow?”

No, I could easily have gone without food for that night.  I was lost, and now was found.  I had no money, could not speak the language, was fatigued beyond words.  What would have become of me?

Miniature turret-like hills hemmed us in as in a huge park, with a narrow winding pathway, steep as the side of a house, leading to the top of the mountain beyond, and then descending quite as rapidly to Fan-ih-ts’uen.  The coolies told me the next day the road would be worse, and so it turned out to be.