cross quietly over Western China, the
Chinese Shan States, and Kachin Hills to the frontier of Burma. The
ensuing narrative will tell how easily and pleasantly this journey,
which a few years ago would have been regarded as a formidable
undertaking, can now be done.

The journey was, of course, in no sense one of exploration; it consisted
simply of a voyage of 1500 miles up the Yangtse River, followed by a
quiet, though extended, excursion of another 1500 miles along the great
overland highway into Burma, taken by one who spoke no Chinese, who had
no interpreter or companion, who was unarmed, but who trusted implicitly
in the good faith of the Chinese. Anyone in the world can cross over to
Burma in the way I did, provided he be willing to exercise for a certain
number of weeks or months some endurance--for he will have to travel
many miles on foot over a mountainous country--and much forbearance.

I went to China possessed with the strong racial antipathy to the
Chinese common to my countrymen, but that feeling has long since given
way to one of lively sympathy and gratitude, and I shall always look
back with pleasure to this journey, during which I experienced, while
traversing provinces as wide as European kingdoms, uniform kindness and
hospitality, and the most charming courtesy. In my case, at least, the
Chinese did not forget their precept, "deal gently with strangers from
afar."

I left Shanghai on Sunday, February 11th, by the Jardine Matheson's
steamer _Taiwo_. One kind friend, a merchant captain who had seen life
in every important seaport in the world, came down, though it was past
midnight, to bid me farewell. We shook hands on the wharf, and for the
last time. Already he had been promised the first vacancy in Jardine
Matheson's. Some time after my departure, when I was in Western China,
he was appointed one of the officers of the ill-fated _Kowshing_, and
when this unarmed transport before the declaration of war was destroyed
by a Japanese gunboat, he was among the slain--struck, I believe, by a
Japanese bullet while struggling for life in the water.

I travelled as a Chinese, dressed in warm Chinese winter clothing, with
a pigtail attached to the inside of my hat. I could not have been more
comfortable. I had a small cabin to myself. I had of course my own
bedding, and by paying a Mexican dollar a day to the Chinese steward,
"foreign chow," was brought me from the saloon. The traveller who cares
to tra