either in
Chungking or Ichang. From one to the other, with boathooks and paddle,
we crept past the outer wings of their balanced rudders till we reached
the landing place. On the rocks at the landing a bevy of women were
washing, beating their hardy garments with wooden flappers against the
stones; but they ceased their work as the foreign devil, in his uncouth
garb, stepped ashore in their midst. Wanhsien is not friendly to
foreigners in foreign garb. I did not know this, and went ashore dressed
as a European. Never have I received such a spontaneous welcome as I did
in this city; never do I wish to receive such another. I landed at the
mouth of the small creek which separates the large walled city to the
east from the still larger city beyond the walls to the west. My laoban
was with me. We passed through the washerwomen. Boys and ragamuffins
hanging about the shipping saw me, and ran towards me, yelling: "_Yang
kweitze, Yang kweitze_" (foreign devil, foreign devil).

Behind the booths a story-teller had gathered a crowd; in a moment he
was alone and the crowd were following me up the hill, yelling and
howling with a familiarity most offensive to a sensitive stranger. My
sturdy boy wished me to produce my passport which is the size of an
admiral's ensign, but I was not such a fool as to do so for it had to
serve me for many months yet. With this taunting noisy crowd I had to
walk on as if I enjoyed the demonstration. I stopped once and spoke to
the crowd, and, as I knew no Chinese, I told them in gentle English of
the very low opinion their conduct led me to form of the moral
relations of their mothers, and the resignation with which it induced me
to contemplate the hyperpyretic surroundings of their posthumous
existence; and, borrowing the Chinese imprecation, I ventured to express
the hope that when their souls return again to earth they may dwell in
the bodies of hogs, since they appeared to me the only habitations meet
for them.

But my words were useless. With a smiling face, but rage at my heart, I
led the procession up the creek to a stone bridge where large numbers
left me, only to have their places taken on the other bank by a still
more enthusiastic gathering. I stopped here a moment in the jostling
crowd to look up-stream at that singular natural bridge, which an
enormous mass of stone has formed across the creek, and I could see the
high arched bridge beyond it, which stretches from bank to bank in one
n