mony. A draught of cold water should have been, according to our
previous plan, the complement of our feast; but the only water attainable
on this mountain was affected with an insupportable stench. We were
fain, therefore, to have recourse to the decoction of baked beans, a
dreadfully insipid fluid, but for which, notwithstanding, we were charged
extortionately.

The cold was by no means so severe as we had expected from the season of
the year and the great elevation of the mountain. In the afternoon,
indeed, the weather was quite mild; by-and-by, the sky was overcast, and
snow fell. As we were obliged to descend the mountain on foot, we soon
got absolutely hot, in the perpetual struggle, of a very laborious kind,
to keep from rolling down the slippery path. One of our camels fell
twice, but happily in each instance he was stayed by a rock from tumbling
over the mountain's side.

Having placed behind us the formidable Ping-Keou, we took up our lodging
in the village of the Old Duck (_Lao-Ya-Pou_). Here we found a system of
heating in operation different from that of Ho-Kiao-Y. The kangs here
are warmed, not with dried horse-dung, but with coal-dust, reduced to
paste, and then formed into bricks; turf is also used for the purpose.
We had hitherto imagined that knitting was unknown in China; the village
of the Old Duck removed this misconception from our minds, and enabled
us, indeed, to remove it from the minds of the Chinese themselves in
other parts of the empire. We found here in every street men, not women,
occupied in this species of industry. Their productions are wholly
without taste or delicacy of execution; they merely knit coarse cotton
into shapeless stockings, like sacks, or sometimes gloves, without any
separation for the fingers, and merely a place for the thumb, the
knitting needles being small canes of bamboo. It was for us a singular
spectacle to see parties of moustachioed men sitting before the door of
their houses in the sun, knitting, sewing, and chattering like so many
female gossips; it looked quite like a burlesque upon the manners of
Europe.

From Lao-Ya-Pou to Si-Ning-Fou was five days march; on the second day we
passed through Ning-Pey-Hien, a town of the third order. Outside the
western gate, we stopped at an inn to take our morning meal; a great many
travellers were already assembled in the large kitchen, occupying the
tables which were ranged along the walls; in the centre of t