en up. At
six o'clock, however, when we had covered about twelve miles and it
was quite dark, the boats suddenly crashed into a barrier of ice,
which had but just formed, effectually stopping our further progress.
By frantic efforts and with great shoutings both craft were warped to
within a few feet of the bank, and there we lay, each moment becoming
more firmly wedged in by fresh ice hurrying down with the stream, and
which, driven by pressure of the frozen impact, piled up against us
with a horrid grinding noise until large sheets an eighth of an inch
thick and as clear as crystal came gliding, as though alive, on to our
decks.

There being no likelihood of our release I presently sent one of the
crew back to Tungchow for carts with which to continue the journey,
but to my dismay he returned at two in the morning with the
intelligence that no carts could be hired.

The position was a disagreeable one, as it was imperative that I
should reach Tientsin in time to catch a steamer for Shanghai before
the close of navigation, so I started off the boy, accompanied by
another boatman, with instructions to get a conveyance of some sort
and at any cost. This attempt was more successful, for at ten o'clock
they returned with a farmer and his truly wonderful cart, drawn by a
pony, a cow and a donkey, but which they had only been able to hire
for the exorbitant sum of forty dollars.

My goods and chattels were again transferred, and after making a
present of five dollars to the disconsolate boatmen, we started off at
something less than two miles an hour.

If I rode on the piled-up baggage I was quickly numbed by the cold. If
I walked I soon left the cart far behind, yet dared not lose sight of
it for fear of its taking another route, so that my time was spent in
walking ahead and then retracing my steps to meet the cart.

Long after dark we halted at one of the usual wayside inns, a
collection of hovels built round a dirty, open yard, filled with carts
and animals, and the home of pigs and fowls, while I found
accommodation on a brick bed in a comfortless room, or rather shed,
with torn paper windows and uneven mud floor.

Swallowing some cold food by the light of a tallow candle guttering in
the draught, I was too tired and too disgusted not to sleep, and by
three o'clock next morning we were again crawling on our way beneath
the blazing stars and chilled by a piercing wind.

All things have an end, and so after four