ys with their tinkling bells, and began a journey on foot across
the dusty plain. Road there was none: merely an ill-defined track
presented itself, along which all the ministers and secretaries of the
great nations of the world walked, ankle-deep in dust.

But something had gone wrong with the weather. Our pleasant day, on
which we had staked our hopes, had somehow disappeared. We had noticed,
as the train moved along, that clouds of dust seemed to be rising; but
we laid this to the speed of the train, fully twelve miles an hour. But
once outside the shelter of our carriage, it was impossible to deceive
ourselves any longer. The wind was rising, and the dry dust of many
rainless months was rising with it, flying in dense, enveloping clouds.
It was a curious sight that presented itself: a long, straggling
procession of two or three hundred men and women, beating their way,
heads downward, across the plains of Chili in what turned out to be a
dust-storm of colossal proportions. Presently the Chinese band passed
us, its members mounted on donkeys, galloping by with their drums and
horns bumping up and down behind them. We were glad when they
disappeared over a knoll on the horizon.

We finally reached the club-house, a simple, unpretentious little
building, with wide, open verandas in front, which afforded no shelter
from the biting wind. The whole procession staggered in, a choking,
coughing, sputtering crowd, and from one end of the line to the other
rose imprecations on the weather, in every language known to Europe. As
E---- and I stood there, beating the dust off our clothes and looking
for some sign of S----, one of the foreign ministers came up to us,
raising an immaculate gray hat, in sharp contrast to a very dusty
overcoat. "Have you an invitation to tiffin?" he asked, as he shook
hands. We hastily said we had, were expecting our host any minute. We
don't know what his intentions were. These are war times, and Peking is
surging with furious suspicions. He may have meant to ask us to lunch
with him, or he may have meant to put us out as intruders. Fortunately,
at that minute S---- appeared round the corner, wiping his face and
eyes; he claimed us and all was well.

Two or three races were to be run before tiffin, and we went out to have
a look at the ponies, little Mongolian ponies with short, clipped hair.
They were the same breed as the shaggy little animals one sees
everywhere in Peking. E---- and I know noth