ks. I kicked
at a couple of mongrels under the rude form on which I sat--they fought
for the skins of those potato-like pears which grow here so
prolifically. The person announced that they were dogs, and that an
idiosyncrasy of Chinese dogs was to fight. Several wags joined in, and
all appeared, through the traveling nincompoop, to know all about my
past and present, lapsing into a desultory harangue upon all men and
things foreign. The street reminded me of Clovelly--rugged and
ragged--and the people were wrinkled and wretched; and, indeed, being a
Devonian myself by birth, I should be excused of wantonly intending to
hurt the delicate feelings of the lusty sons of Devon were I to declare
that I thought the life not of a very terrible dissimilarity from that
port of antiquity in the West.

Salt was everywhere, much more like coal than salt, certainly as black.
The blocks were stacked up by the sides of inns ready for transport,
carried on the backs of a multitude of poor wretches who work like oxen
from dawn to dusk for the merest pittance, on the backs of droves and
droves of ponies, scrambling and spluttering along over the slippery
once-paved streets.

All day long, with the exception of two or three easy ascents, we were
travelling in pleasantly undulating country of park-like magnificence.
My men dallied. I tramped on alone; and sitting down to rest on the
rocks, I realized that I was in one of the strangest, loneliest, wildest
corners of the world. Great mountain-peaks towered around me, white and
sparkling diadems of wondrous beauty, and at my feet, black and
stirless, lay a silent pool, reflecting the weird shadows of my coolies
flitting like specters among the jagged rocks of these most solitary
hills.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote AD: Hsiakwan would be supplied by a branch line of the main
railway in the Kunlong scheme advocated by Major H.R. Davies, leaving at
Mi-tu, to the south of Hungay.--E.J.D.]

[Footnote AE: The written language was framed and instituted by the Rev.
Sam. Pollard, of the Bible Christian Mission (now merged into the United
Methodist Mission).--E.J.D.]

[Footnote AF: The marriage laws were instituted by the China Inland
Mission at Sa-pu-shan, where a great work is being done among the Hua
Miao. A good many more stipulations are embodied in the excellent rules,
but I have no room here to detail.--E.J.D.]

[Footnote AG: The Chinese have the crudest ideas of the age of
foreigners. Among