As we proceed down the street my appearance seems to stir the population up to a pitch of wild excitement.  Merchants dart in and out of their shops, people in rags, people in tags, and people in gorgeous apparel, buzz all about me and flit hither and thither like a nest of stirred-up wasps.  If curiosity has seemed to be rampant in other cities it passes all the limits of Occidental imagination in Ki-ngau-foo.  Upon seeing me everybody gives utterance to a peculiar spontaneous squeak of surprise, reminding me very much of the monkeys’ notes of alarm in the tree-tops along the Grand Trunk road, India.

One might easily imagine the very lives of these people dependent upon their success in obtaining a glimpse of my face.  Well-dressed citizens rush hastily ahead, stoop down, and peer up into my face as I trundle past, with a determination to satisfy their curiosity that our language is totally inadequate to describe, and which our temperament renders equally difficult for us to understand.

By the time we are half-way along the street the whole city seems in wild tumult.  Men rush ahead, peer into my face, deliver themselves of the above-mentioned peculiar squeak, and run hastily down some convergent alley-way.  Stall-keepers quickly gather up their wares, and shop-keepers frantically snatch their goods inside as they hear the tumult and see the mob coming down the street.  The excitement grows apace, and the same wanton cries of “Fank-wae.  Fankwae!” that followed me through Kan-tchou-foo are here repeated with wild whoops and exultant cries.  One would sometimes think that all the devils of Dante’s “Inferno” had gotten into the crowd and set them wild with the spirit of mischief.

By this time the yameni-runners are quaking with fear; he of the paper parasol and jade-stone pipe walks beside me, convulsively clutching my arm, and with whiningly anxious voice shouts out orders to his subordinate.  In response to these orders the advance-guard now and then hurries forward and peeps around certain corners, as though expecting some hidden assailants.

Thus far, although the symptoms of trouble have been gradually assuming more and more alarming proportions, there has been nothing worse than demoniacal howls.  The chief reason of this, however, it now appears, has been the absence of loose stones, for no sooner do we enter an inferior quarter where loose stones and bricks are scattered about, than they come whistling about our ears.  The poor yameni-runners shout deprecatingly at the mob; in return the mob loudly announce their intention of working destruction upon my unoffending head.  Fortunately for me that head is pretty thoroughly hidden beneath the thick pith thatch-work of my Indian solar topee, otherwise I should have succumbed to the first fusillade of stones at the instance of a cracked pate.  Stones that would have knocked me out of time in the first round rattle harmlessly on the 3/4-inch pith helmet, the