i was to ride a pack-mule. now riding a pack-mule at any time is an unpleasant way of getting along the road. i know no more uncomfortable method. it is not quite as comfortable as sitting upon a table with one's legs dangling, for the table is still, the mule is moving, and one's legs dangle on either side of his neck. there are neither reins nor stirrups, and the mule goes at his own sweet will, and in a very short time your back begins to ache, after a few hours that aching is intolerable. to get over this difficulty the missionary had cut the legs off a chair and suggested that, mounted on the pack, i might sit in it comfortably. i don't know whether i could, for the mule objected.

it was a sunny morning with a bright blue sky above, and all seemed auspicious except my mule, who expressed in no measured language his dislike to that chair. tsai chih fu had no sooner hoisted me into it than up he went on his hind legs and, using them as a pivot, stood on end pawing the air. everybody in the inn-yard shrieked and yelled except, i hope, myself, and then tsai chih fu, how i know not, rescued me from my unpleasant position, and thankfully i found myself upon the firm ground again. he was a true chinese mule and objected to all innovations. he stood meekly enough once the chair was removed.

i wanted to cross asia and here i was faced with disaster at the very outset! finally i was put upon the pack minus the chair, buchanan was handed up to me and nestled down beside me, and the procession started. my heart sank. i don't mind acknowledging it now. i had at least a thousand miles to go, and within half-an-hour of the start i had thoroughly grasped the faet that of all modes of progression a pack-mule is the most abominable. there are no words at my command to express its discomforts.

very little did i see of the landscape of shansi that day. i was engaged in hanging on to my pack and wondering how i could stick it out. we passed along the usual hopeless cart-track of china. i had eschewed peking carts as being the very acme of misery, but i was beginning to reflect that anyhow a cart was comparatively passive misery while the back of a pack-mule was decidedly active. buchanan was a good little dog, but he mentioned several times in the course of that day that he was uncomfortable and he thought i was doing a fool thing. i was much of his opinion.

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the day was never ending. all across a plain we went, with rough fields just showing green on either hand, through walled villages, through little towns, and i cared for nothing, i was too intent on holding on, on wishing the day would end, and at last, as the dusk was falling, the muleteer pointed out, clear-cut against the evening sky, the long wralls of a large town—taiku. at last! at last!

i was to stay the night at a large mission school kept by a mr and mrs wolf, and i only longed for the comfort of a bed, any sort of a bed so long as it was flat and warm and kept still. we went on and on, we got into the suburbs of the town, and we appeared to go round and round, through an unending length of dark, narrow streets, full of ruts and holes, with the dim loom of houses on either side, and an occasional gleam of light from a dingy kerosene lamp or chinese paper lantern showing through the paper windows.

again and again we stopped and spoke to men who were merely muffled shapeless figures in the darkness, and again we went on. i think now that in all probability neither tsai chih fu nor mr wang understood enough of the dialect to make the muleteers or the people of whom we inquired understand where we wanted to go, but at last, more probably by good luck than good management, somebody, seeing i was a foreigner, sent us to the foreigners they knew, those who kept a school for a hundred and twenty-five boys in the lovely flower garden. it certainly was lovely, an old-world chinese house, with little courtyards and ponds and terraces and flowers and trees—and that comfortable bed i had been desiring so long. as we entered the courtyard in the darkness and tsai chili fu lifted me down, the bed was the only thing i could think of.

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and yet next day i started again—i wonder now i dared—and we skirted the walls of taiku. we had gone round two sides and then, as i always do when i am dead-tired, i had a bad attack of breathlessness. stay on that pack i knew i could not, so i made my master of transport lift me down, and i sat on a bank for the edification of all the small boys in the district who, even if they had known how ill i felt, probably would not have cared, and i deeided there and then that pack-mule riding was simply impossible and something would have to be done. therefore, with great difficulty, i made my way baek to the mission school and asked mr wolf what he would recommend.

again were missionaries kindness itself to me. they sympathised with my trouble, they took me in and made me their guest, refusing to take any money for it, though they added to their kindness by allowing me to pay for the keep of my servants, and they strongly recommended that i should have a litter. a litter then i decided i would have.

it is, i should think, the very earliest form of human conveyance. it consists of two long poles laid about as far apart as the shafts of an ordinary cart, in the middle is hung a coarse-meshed rope net, and over that a tilt of matting—the sort of stuff we see tea-chests covered with in this country. into the net is tumbled all one's small impedimenta—clothes-bags, kettles, anything that will not conveniently go on mule-back; the bedding is put on top, rugs and cushions arranged to the future inmate's satisfaction, then you get inside and the available people about are commandeered to hoist the concern on to the backs of the couple of mules, who object very strongly. the head of the one behind is in the shafts, and the ends rest in his pack-saddle, and the hind quarters of the one in front are in the shafts, just as in an ordinary buggy. of course there are no reins, and at first i felt very much at the mercy of the mules, though i am bound to say the big white mule who conducted my affairs seemed to thoroughly understand his business. still it is uncomfortable, to say the least of it, to find yourself going, apparently quite unattended, down steep and rocky paths, or right into a rushing river. but on the whole a litter is a very comfortable way of travelling; after a pack-mule it was simply heaven, and i had no doubts whatever that i could comfortably do the thousand miles, lessened now, i think, by about thirty, that lay before me. if i reached lan chou fu there would be time enough to think how i would go on farther. and here my muleteers had me. when i arranged for a litter, i paid them, of course, extra, and i said another mule was to be got to carry some of the loads. they accepted the money and agreed. but i may say that that other mule never materialised. i accepted the excuse when we left taiku that there was no other mule to be hired, and by the time that excuse had worn thin i had so much else to think about that i bore up, though not even a donkey was added to our equipment.

money i took with me in lumps of silver, sycee—shoes, they called them—and a very unsatisfactory way it is of carrying cash. it is very heavy and there is no hiding the fact that you have got it. we changed little bits for our daily needs as we went along, just as little as we could, because the change in cash was an intolerable burden. on one occasion in fen chou fu i gave tsai chih fu a very small piece of silver to change and intimated that i would like to see the result. that piece of silver i reckon was worth about five shillings, but presently my master of transport and one of the muleteers came staggering in and laid before me rows and rows of cash strung on strings! i never felt so wealthy in my life. after that i never asked for my change. i was content to keep a sort of general eye on the expenditure, and i expect the only leakage was the accepted percentage which every servant levies on his master. 'when they might easily have cheated me, i found my servants showed always a most praiseworthy desire for my welfare. and yet mr wang did surprise me occasionally. while i was in pao ting fu i had found it useful to learn to count in chinese, so that roughly i knew what people at the food-stalls were charging me. on one occasion i saw some little cakes powdered with sesame seed that i thought i should like and i instructed mr wang to buy me one. i heard him ask the price and the man say three cash, and my interpreter turned to me and said that it was four! i was so surprised i said nothing. it may have been the regulation percentage, and twenty-five per cent is good anywhere, but at the moment it seemed to me extraordinary that a man who considered himself as belonging to the upper classes should find it worth his while to do me out of one cash, which was worth—no, i give it up. i don't know what it was worth. 10.53 dollars went to the pound when i was in shansi and about thirteen hundred cash to the dollar, so i leave it to some better mathematician than i am to say what i was done out of on that occasion.

there was another person who was very pleased with the litter and that was james buchanan. poor little man, just before we left the flower garden he was badly bitten by a dog, so badly he could no longer walk, and i had to carry him on a cushion alongside me in the litter. i never knew before how dearly one could love a dog, for i was terrified lest he should die and i should be alone in the world. he lay still and refused to eat, and every movement seemed to pain him, and whenever i struck a missionary—they were the only people, of course, with whom i could converse—they always suggested his back was broken.

i remember at ki hsien, where i was entertained most hospitably, and where the missionary's wife was most sympathetic, he was so ill that i sat up all night with him and thought he would surely die. and yet in the morning he was still alive. he moaned when we lifted him into the litter and whined pitifully when i got out, as i had to several times to take photographs.

“don't leave me, don't leave me to the mercy of the chinese,” he said, and greeted me with howls of joy when i returned. it was a great day for both of us when he got a little better and could put his pretty little black and white head round the tilt and keep his eye upon me while i worked. but really he was an ideal patient, such a good, patient little dog, so grateful for any attention that was paid him, and from that time he began to mend and by the time i reached fen chou fu was almost his old gay happy little self again.

taiku is a dying town over two thousand years old, and i have before seen dead towns in china. fewer and fewer grow the inhabitants, the grass grows in the streets, the bricks fall away from the walls, the houses fall down, until but a few shepherds or peasant farmers dwell where once were the busy haunts of merchants and tradesmen.

from taiku i went on across the rich shansi plain. now in the springtime in the golden sunshine the wheat was just above the ground, turning the land into one vivid green, the sky was a cloudless blue, and all was bathed in the golden sunshine of northern china. the air was clear and invigorating as champagne. “every prospect pleases,” as the hymn says, “and only man is vile.” he wasn't vile; really i think he was a very good fellow in his own way, which was in a dimension into which i have never and am never likely to enter, but he was certainly unclean, ignorant, a serf, poverty-stricken with a poverty we hardly conceive of in the west, and the farther away i found myself from t'ai yuan fu the more friendly did i find him. this country was not like england, where until the last four years has been in the memory of our fathers and our fathers' fathers only peace. even now, now as i write, when the world war is on, an air raid is the worst that has befallen the home-staying citizens of britain. but shansi has been raided again and again. still the land was tilled, well tilled; on every hand were men working hard, working from dawn to dark, and working, to a stranger's eyes, for the good of the community, for the fields are not divided by hedge or fence; there is an occasional poplar or elm, and there are graves everywhere, but there is nothing to show where wang's land ends and lui's begins. all through the cultivated land wanders, apparently without object, the zigzag track of sand and ruts and stones known as the great south road, impossible for anything with wheels but a chinese cart, and often impossible for that. there are no wayside cottages, nothing save those few trees to break the monotony, only here and there is a village sheltering behind high walls, sometimes of mud, but generally of brick, and stout, substantial brick at that; and if, as is not infrequent, there is a farmhouse alone, it, too, is behind high brick walls, built like a baronial castle of mediaeval times, with a look-out tower and room behind the walls not only for the owner's family even unto the third and fourth generation, but for all his hinds and his dependents as well. the whole is built evidently with a view to defence, and built apparently to last for hundreds of years. for shansi is worth raiding. there is oil and there is wheat in abundance. there is money too, much of which comes from mongolia and manchuria. the bankers (the shansi men are called the jews of china) wander across and trade far into russian territory while still their home is in agricultural shansi, and certain it is that any disturbances in these countries, even in russia, affect the prosperity of shansi. i wonder if the russian revolution has been felt there. very probably.

shansi is rich in other things too not as yet appreciated by the chinaman. she has iron and copper and coal that has barely been touched, for the popular feeling is against mining. they say that no part of the globe contains such stores of coal. i hesitate about quoting a german, but they told me that baron reichthoffen has said that this province has enough coal to supply the world for two thousand years at the present rate of consumption. i haven't the faintest notion whether the baron's opinion is worth anything, but if it is, it is no wonder that germany, with her eye for ever on the main chance, has felt deeply being thrust out of china.

with ample coal, and with iron alongside it, what might not shansi be worth to exploit!

ki hsien is a little walled town five li round. roughly three li make a mile, but it is a little doubtful. for instance, from taiku to ki hsien is fifty li, and that fifty li is sixteen miles, from ki hsien to ping yao is also fifty li, but that is only fourteen english miles. the land, say the chinese, explaining this discrepancy, was measured in time of famine when it wasn't of any value! a very chinese explanation.

the city of ki hsien is very, very crowded; there were hundreds of tiny courtyards and flat roofs. in the picture of the missionary's house i have not been able to get the roof in because the courtyard—and it was a fairly large courtyard as courtyards in the city go—was not big enough. i stood as far away as i possibly could. mr and mrs falls belonged to the chinese inland mission and the house they lived in was over three hundred years old. like many of the houses in shansi, it was two storeys high and, strangely enough, a thing i have never seen anywhere else, the floors upstairs were of brick.

i do not know how i would like to live in such a crowded community, but it has its advantages on occasion. at the time of the revolution, when those missionaries who had come through the boxer times were all troubled and anxious about their future, the falls decided to stay on at their station, and a rich native doctor, a heathen, but a friend, who lived next door, commended that decision.

“why go away?” said he. “your courtyard adjoins mine. if there is trouble we put up a ladder and you come over to us.”

and there was hint of trouble then. as we sat at supper there came in the chinese postman in his shabby uniform of dirty blue and white, with his large military cap pushed on the back of his head, and he brought to the falls a letter from dr edwards, the missionary doctor all foreign t'ai yuan fu thought i ought to meet.

when i was within reach of the peking foreign daily papers they mentioned pai lang as one might mention a burglar in london, sandwiching him in between the last racing fixtures or the latest cinema attraction, but from a little walled town within a day's march of hsi an fu the veteran missionary wrote very differently, and we in this other little walled town read breathlessly.

white wolf had surrounded hsi an fu, he said; it was impossible to get there and he was returning.

the darkness had fallen, the lamp in the middle of the table threw a light on the letter and on the faces of the middle-aged missionary and his wife who pored over it. it might mean so much to them. it undoubtedly meant much to their friends in hsi an fu, and it meant much to me, the outsider who had but an hour ago walked into their lives. for i began to fear lest this robber might affect me after all, lest in coming north i was not going to outflank him. according to dr edwards, he had already taken a little walled city a hundred li—about a day's journey—north-west of hsi an fu, and when 'white wolf took a town it meant murder and rapine. and sitting there in the old chinese room these two people who knew china told me in no measured terms what might happen to a woman travelling alone in disturbed country.

missionaries, they said, never left their stations when the country was disturbed, they were safer at home, surrounded by their friends. once the country is raided by a robber band—and remember this is no uncommon thing in china—all the bad characters in the country come to the fore, and robber bands that have nothing to do with the original one spring into existence, the cities shut their gates to all strangers, and passports are so much waste paper. between ourselves, i have a feeling they always are in china. i could hardly tell the difference between mine and my agreement with my muleteers, and i have an uneasy feeling that occasionally the agreement was presented when it should have been the passport.

now no one could be certain whether pai lang intended to take lan chou fu, but it looked as if that were his objective. if he took the city it would not be much good my getting there, because the bankers would certainly not be able to supply me with money; even if he only raided the country round, it would be so disturbed that my muleteers would be bound to take alarm. if they left me, and they certainly would leave me if they thought there was a chance of their mules being taken, i should be done. it would spell finish not only to the expedition but to my life. a foreigner, especially a woman without money and without friends, would be helpless in china. why should the people help her? it takes them all they know to keep their own heads above water. and kansu was always turbulent; it only wanted a match to set the fire alight. air and mrs falls—bless them for their kindness and interest!—thought i should be mad to venture.

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so there in the sitting-room which had been planned for a merchant prince and had come into the possession of these two who desired to bring the religion of the west to china i sat and discussed this new obstacle. after coming so far, laying out so much money, could i turn back when danger did not directly press? i felt i could not. and yet my hosts pointed out to me that if danger did directly threaten i would not be able to get away. if pai lang did take lan chou fu, or even if he did not, it might well be worth his while to turn east and raid fertile shansi. in a little town like ki hsien there was loot well worth having. in the revolution a banker there was held to ransom, and paid, as the people put it, thirty times ten thousand taels (a tael is roughly three shillings, according to the price of silver), and they said it was but a trifle to him—a flea-bite, i believe, was the exact term—and i ean well believe, in the multitude of worse parasites that afflict the average chinaman, a flea-bite means much less than it does in england.

however, i didn't feel like giving up just yet, so i decided to go on to fen chou fu, where was a big american mission, and see what they had to say about the matter. if then i had to flee, the missionaries would very likely be fleeing too, and i should have company.

and the very next day i had what i took for a warning.

it was a gorgeous day, a cloudless blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and i passed too many things of interest worth photographing. there were some extraordinary tombs, there was a quaint village gateway—the gate of everlasting peace they call it—but i was glad to get back into my litter and hoped to stay there for a little, for getting out of a litter presents some difficulties unless you are very active indeed. it is a good long drop across the shafts on to the ground; the only other alternative is to drop down behind the mule's hind quarters and slip out under those shafts, but i never had sufficient confidence in my mule to do that, so that i generally ealled upon tsài chih fu to lift me down. i had set out full of tremors, but taking photographs of the peaceful scenes soothed my ruffled nerves. i persuaded myself my fears had been born of the night and the dread of loneliness which sometimes overtakes me when i am in company and thinking of setting out alone, leaving kindly faces behind.

and then i came upon it, the first sign of unrest.

the winding road rose a little and i could see right ahead of us a great crowd of people evidently much agitated, and i called to mr wang to know what was the matter.

“repeat, please,” said he as usual, and then rode forward and came baek saying, “i do not know the word.”

“what word?”

“what is a lot of people and a dead man?”

“ah!” said i, jumping to conclusions unwarrantably, “that is a funeral.”

“a funeral!” said he triumphantly. “i have learned a new word.”

mr wang was always learning a new word and rejoicing over it, but, as i had hired him as a finished product, i hardly think it was unreasonable of me to be aggrieved, and to feel that i was paying him a salary for the pleasure of teaching him english. however, on this occasion his triumph was short-lived. .

“would you like to see the funeral?” he said.

i intimated that i would. my stalwart master of transport lifted me down and the crowded people made a lane for me to pass through, and half of them turned their attention to me, for though there were missionaries in the big towns, a foreigner was a sight to these country people, and, mr wang going first, we arrived at a man with his head cut off! mercifully he was mixed up with a good deal of matting and planks, but still there was no mistaking the poor dead feet in their worn chinese shoes turned up to the sky.

considering we are mortal, it is extraordinary how seldom the ordinary person looks upon death. always it comes with a shock. at least it did. i suppose this war has accustomed some of us to the sight, so that we take the result of the meeting of mortal man with his last friend on earth more as a matter of eourse, as indeed it should be taken. of course i know this is one of the results of the war.

my sister's son, staying with me after six months in hospital, consequent upon a wound at gallipoli, came home from a stroll one day and reported that he had seen nothing, and then at dinner that night mentioned in a casual manner that he had seen two dead men being carried out of a large building and put in a motor ear.

i said in astonishment:

“they couldn't have been dead!”

“of course they were. do you think i don't know dead men when i see them? i've seen plenty.”

so many that the sight of a couple in the streets of a quiet little country town seemed not even an occasion for remark.

but i was not even accustomed to thinking of dead men and i turned upon mr wang angrily:

“but that isn't a funeral. that's a corpse,” and once more to my irritation he rejoiced over a new word.

“who killed him?” i asked.

“they think an enemy has done this thing,” said he sententiously and unnecessarily, as, ignorant as i am of tilings chinese, i should hardly think even they could have called it a friendly action. the body had been found the day before, and the people were much troubled about it. an official from ping yow—a coroner, i suppose we should call him—was coming out to inquire about it, and because the sun was already hot the people had raised a little screen of matting with a table and chairs where he could sit to hold inquiry.

and here was the thing the missionaries had warned me against. trouble, said they, always begins by the finding of dead bodies that cannot be accounted for, and this body was on the great south road. it might be only a case of common murder such as one might perchance meet in piccadilly, possibly it was due to the bands of soldiers that were pouring into the country—to defend the crossings of the yellow river, some people said—but it was to me an emphatic reminder that the warnings of mr and mrs falls had not been given lightly, and i meditated upon it all the way to ping yow.

all day long the soldiers had been pouring through ki hsien, all night long they poured through the suburbs of ping yow. not through the town itself—the townspeople were not going to allow that if they could help themselves; and as it was evidently a forced march and the regiments were travelling by night, they could help themselves, for every city gate is shut at sundown. the china inland mission had a station at an old camel inn in the eastern suburb, and there the missionary's young wife was alone with five young children, babies all of them, and there i found her. i think she was very glad to see me, anyhow i was someone to discuss things with, and we two women talked and talked over our evening meal. she was a tall, pretty young woman—not even the ugly chinese dress and her hair drawn back, not a hair out of place, chinese fashion, could disguise her pathetic beauty. and she was a countrywoman of mine, born and brought up in the same state, victoria, and her native town was ararat, green and fresh among the hills. and how she talked australia! what a beautiful land it was! and the people! the free, independent people! the women who walked easily and feared no man! to thoroughly appreciate a democratic country you should dwell in effete china. but she feared too, this woman, feared for herself and her five tiny children. it would be no easy job to get away. i told her of the dead man i had seen—how should i not tell her?—and she trembled.

“very likely it is the soldiers,” she said. “i am afraid of the chinese soldiers.” and so am i in bulk, though taken singly they seem sueh harmless little chaps.

“when the willow is green and the apricot yellow in the fifth moon,” said a metrical inscription on a stone dug up at nankin in that year—the fatal year 1914—“terrible things will happen in the land of han.” terrible things, it seems to me, always happen in the land of han; but if it spoke for the great world beyond, truly the stone spoke truth, though we did not know it then.

in the evening back from the country where he had been preaching for the last day or two came my australian's husband, and there also came in to see the stranger two missionaries from the other side of the town. they sat there, these men and women of british race, dressed in the outlandish costume of the people around them—a foolish fashion, it seems to me, for a european in unadulterated chinese dress looks as ugly and out of place as a chinese in a stiff collar and a bowler hat. and all the evening we discussed the soldiers and the dead man i had seen, and opinions differed as to the portent.

it is true, said one of them who had been in the country many years, and was a missionary pure and simple, with eyes for nothing but the work he had in hand—which is probably the way to work for success—that a dead body, particularly a dead body by the highroad, is often a sign of unrest, but again, quite as often it means no more than a dead body in any other place. if he had turned back for every dead body he had seen——

well, i thought i would not turn back either. not yet, at least.

never was i sorrier for missionaries, i who have always written against missionaries, than i was for this young countrywoman of mine who never thought of being sorry for herself. it was a big ugly mission compound, the rooms, opening one into another, were plain and undecorated, and the little children as a great treat watered the flowers that struggled up among the stones of the dusty courtyard, and the very watering-can was made with chinese ingenuity from an old kerosene tin. it seemed to me those little children would have had such a much better chance growing up in their mother's land, or in their father's land—he was a canadian—among the free peoples of the earth. but who am i, to judge? no one in the world, it seems to me, wants help so much as the poorer chinese, whose life is one long battle with disease and poverty; and perhaps these poorer missionaries help a little, a very little; but the poorer the mission the poorer the class they reach, and the sacrifice, as i saw it here, is so great.

next morning we arose early, and i breakfasted with my host and hostess and their five children. the children's grace rings in my ears yet, always i think it will ring there, the childish voices sung it with such fervour and such faith:

“every day, every day, we bless thee, we bless thee,

we praise thy name, we praise thy name,

for ever and for ever!”

there in the heart of china these little children, who had, it seemed to me, so very little to be grateful for, thanked their god with all their hearts, and when their elders with the same simple fervour went down on their knees and asked their god to guide and help the stranger and set her on her way, though it was against all my received canons of good taste, what could i do but be simply grateful.

ping yow is a large town set in the midst of a wheatgrowing country, and it is built in the shape of a turtle, at least so i was told. i could see for myself that its walls were not the usual four-square set to the points of the compass, but seemed irregular, with many little towers upon them. these towers, it seems, were built in memory of the teachers of confucius—this is the only intimation i have had that he had seventy-two; and there were over three thousand small excrescences—again i only repeat what i was told; i did not count them, and if i had i would surely have counted them wrong—like sentry-boxes in memory of his disciples. i do not know why ping yow thus dedicates itself to the memory of the great sage. it needs something to commend it, for it remains in my mind as a bare, ugly, crowded town, with an extra amount of dust and dirt and heat, and no green thing to break the monotony.

and i set forth, and in spite of all i still faced west.