w men wander with their loads, and
then I led Rusty in. Whilst the stream washed his legs, I sat dangling
mine until called upon to make way for another party of travelers.
Remarkable is the agility of these men. They swing along over eight
inches of wood as if they were in the middle of a well-paved road.

Ch'u-tung is a Mohammedan town. There are a few Chinese only--Buddhists,
Taoists and other ragtags; although when the follower of the Prophet has
his pigtail attached to the inside of his hat, as it not unusual when he
goes out fully dressed, there is little difference between him and the
Chinese.

Pigs here are conspicuously absent. People feed on poultry and beef. I
rested in this city some month or so after my first overland trip whilst
my man went to convert silver into cash, a trying ordeal always. Whilst
I sipped my tea and ate a couple of rice cakes, I was impressed, as I
seldom have been in my wanderings, with the remarkable number of people,
from the six hundred odd houses the town possesses, who during that
half-hour found nothing whatever to do to benefit themselves or the
community, as members of which they passed monotonous lives, but to
stare aimlessly at the resting foreigner. The report spread like
wildfire, and they ran to the scene with haste, pulling on their coats,
wiping food from their mouths, scratching their heads _en route_, one
trouser-leg up and the other down, all anxious to get a seat near the
stage. A river flows down the center of the street, and into this a
sleepy fellow got tipped bodily in the crush, sat down in the water,
seemingly in no hurry to move until he had finished his vigorous
bullying of the man who pushed him in. Those who could not get standing
room near my table went out into the street and shaded the sun from
their eyes, in order that they might catch even a glimpse of the
traveler who sat on in uncompromising indifference.

Several old wags were there who had witnessed the Rebellion--at the
moment, had I not become callous, another might have seemed
imminent--and were looked up to by the crowd as heroes of a horrid past,
being listened to with rapt attention as they described what it was the
crowd looked at and whence it came. Had I been a wild animal let loose
from its cage, mingled curiosity and a peculiar foreboding among the
people of something terrible about to happen could not have been more
intense.

But I had by this time got used to their crowding, so tha