usand places, rain was driven under the walls, and everything I had
was soaked with warm water.

Next day we had a pleasant walk into Bhamo, that important military
station on the left bank of the Irrawaddy. We crossed the Taiping at
Myothit by a bridge, a temporary and very shaky structure, which is
every year carried away when the river rises, and every year renewed
when the caravans take the road after the rains.

Bhamo is 1520 miles by land from Chungking; and it is an equal distance
further from Chungking to Shanghai. The entire distance I traversed in
exactly one hundred days, for I purposely waited till the hundredth day
to complete it. And it surely speaks well of the sense of responsibility
innate in the Chinese that, during all this time, I never had in my
employ a Chinese coolie who did not fulfil, with something to spare, all
that he undertook to do. I paid off my men in Bhamo. To Laotseng I gave
400 cash too many, and asked him for the change. At once with much
readiness he ranged some cash on the table in the form of an abacus,
and, setting down some hieroglyphics on a sheet of paper, he worked out
a calculation, by which he proved that I owed _him_ 400 cash, and,
therefore, the accounts were now exactly balanced. For my own expenses I
gave him 1175 cash in Tengyueh and 400 more in Bhamo, so that my entire
personal expenses between two points nine days distant from each other
were rather more than _3s._ My entire journey from Shanghai to Bhamo
cost less than _L20_ sterling, including my Chinese outfit. Had I
travelled economically, I estimate that the journey need not have cost
me more than _L14_. Had I carried more silver with me, I would still
further have reduced the total cost of my tour. The gold I bought in
Yunnan with my surplus silver, I sold in Burma for 20 per cent. profit,
the rupees which I purchased in Tengyueh for _11d._ were worth _13d._ in
Bhamo. For some curios which I purchased in the interior for _L2 5s._ I
was offered when I reached civilisation _L14_. Without doubt the journey
across China is the cheapest that can be done in all the world.

I was sorry to say good-bye to my men, who had served me so faithfully.
And I cannot speak more highly of the pleasure of my journey than to
declare that I felt greater regret when it was finished than I ever felt
on leaving any other country. The men all through had behaved admirably,
and it is only fair to add that mine was the common experience