ks
along the stone-paved roadway, the timber swerving dangerously from side
to side as the heavy animals pursued their painful plodding. To the
Chinese the buffalo is the safest of all quadrupeds, if we perhaps
except the mule, which, if three legs give way, will save himself on the
remaining one. But it is certainly the slowest. I am here reminded that
when I was starting on this trip a journalistic friend of mine, who had
spent some years in one of the coast ports, tried to dissuade me from
coming, and cited the buffalo as the most treacherous animal to be met
on the main road in China. He put it in this way:

"Well, old man, you have evidently made up your mind, but I would not
take it on at any price. The buffaloes are terrors. They smell you even
if they do not see you; they smell you miles off. It may end up by your
being chased, and you will probably be gored to death."

The buffalo is the most peaceful animal I know in China. Miniature
belfries were attached to the wooden frames on the backs of carrying
oxen, and were it not for the huge tenor bell and its gong-like sound
keeping the animal in motion, the slow pace would be slower still.

Turning suddenly and abruptly to the left, we commenced a cold journey
over the mountains, although the sun was shining brightly. A goitrous
man came to me and waxed eloquent about some uncontrollable pig which
was dragging him all over the roadway as he vainly tried to get it to
market. Some dozen small boys, with hatchets and scythes over their
shoulders for the cutting of firewood they were looking for, laughed at
me as I ploughed through the mud in my sandals. We had been going for
three hours, and when, cold and damp, we got inside a cottage for tea, I
found that we had covered only twenty li--so we were told by an old
fogey who brushed up the floor with a piece of bamboo. He was dressed in
what might have been termed undress, and was most vigorous in his
condemnation of foreigners.

Leng-shui-ch'ang we passed at thirty-five li out, and just beyond the
aneroid registered 7,000 feet; Yung-ch'ang Plain is 5,500 feet; Pu-piao
Plain-is 4,500 feet. The range of hills dividing the two plains was
bare, the clouds hung low, and the keen wind whistled in our faces and
nipped our ears. Ten li from Pu-piao, on a barren upland overlooking the
valley, a mere boy had established himself as tea provider for the
traveler. A foreign kerosene tin placed on three stones was the general
c