lly, when I bade the chair-men stop for a smoke at a rest-house,
knowing they could easily overtake my slow-moving vehicle, he too
disappeared, and only took up his station again at the head of the
procession when I went back to my chair after dismissing the barrow with
a payment of eighty cash for a ride of twenty-five li. Barrow travelling
is not as bad as it seems, for there is a chair-back, and rests for the
feet are fixed on either side of the wheel. But in spite of the
dexterity with which the coolie trundled me over the rough places and
through the deep ruts, an upset into an unsavoury rice-patch seemed
unpleasantly possible, and more than all, you can never lose
consciousness of the straining man behind.

I thought the last stage into Chengtu would never end; the passing of
people became more and more incessant and tiring, while the hot-house
temperature of this rich lowland was most exhausting, and the occasional
downpours only made the roads more impassable without cooling the air.
My coolies, coming from higher altitudes, were almost used up. They
stopped often to rest, and hardly one was doing his own work, making an
exchange with another man, unless he had given up entirely, sweating out
his job to some one hired on the way. So we straggled along, a
disorderly, spiritless crowd, showing a little life only when Jack, whom
nothing daunted, created a diversion by chasing the village dogs along
the narrow earth balks between the fields, their favourite
resting-places. Then the whole party waked up, cheering the little dog
on with gay cries, and laughing impartially when hunter or hunted
slipped into the muck of a rice-patch, while the toilers by the roadside
thought we had all gone mad until they saw what it was, and then they
too joined in with chuckles of delight. There is something quite
childlike in the way in which this old Chinese people welcomes any
little break in the grey days of grinding drudgery.

As the day wore on, one could guess that a great centre of government
and trade was near at hand; the traffic was continuous,--coolies bent
almost double under their heavy burdens, laden barrows creaking
dolefully as they moved, foot travellers plodding wearily along, groups
of wild Tibetans from the distant frontier, gorgeous mandarins returning
from an inspection tour, all were hurrying towards the capital. Yes, we
were nearing Marco Polo's "large and noble" city of Sindin-fu and it is
to-day again a "la