leaving the mob to wait till dark for our exit from the front.

[Illustration: A BANK IN URUMTSI.]

The restaurant or tea-house in China takes the place of the Western
club-room. All the current news and gossip is here circulated and
discussed over their eating or gambling. One of their games of chance,
which we have frequently noticed, seems to consist in throwing their
fingers at one another, and shouting at the top of their voices. It is
really a matching of numbers, for which the Chinamen make signs on their
fingers, up to the numeral ten. Our entry into a crowded _dungan_, or
native Mohammedan restaurant, the next morning, was the signal for
exciting accounts of the events of the previous day. We were immediately
invited to take tea with this one, a morning dish of _tung-posas_, or nut
and sugar dumplings, with another, while a third came over with his can of
_sojeu_, or Chinese gin, with an invitation "to join him." The Chinese of
all nations seem to live in order to eat, and from this race of epicures
has developed a nation of excellent cooks. Our fare in China, outside the
Gobi district, was far better than in Turkey or Persia, and, for this
reason, we were better able to endure the increased hardships. A plate of
sliced meat stewed with vegetables, and served with a piquant sauce,
sliced radishes and onions with vinegar, two loaves of Chinese _mo-mo_, or
steamed bread, and a pot of tea, would usually cost us about three and one
quarter cents apiece. Everything in China is sliced so that it can be
eaten with the chop-sticks. These we at length learned to manipulate with
sufficient dexterity to pick up a dove's egg--the highest attainment in the
chop-stick art. The Chinese have rather a sour than a sweet tooth. Sugar
is rarely used in anything, and never in tea. The steeped tea-flowers,
which the higher classes use, are really more tasty without it. In many of
the smaller towns, our visits to the restaurant would sometimes result in
considerable damage to its keepers, for the crowd would swarm in after us,
knocking over the table, stools, and crockery as they went, and collect in
a circle around us to watch the "foreigners" eat, and to add their opium
and tobacco smoke to the suffocating atmosphere.

A visit to the local mint in Urumtsi revealed to us the primitive method
of making the _chen_, or money-disks before mentioned. Each is molded
instead of cut and stamped as in the West. By its superintendent we w