IGNORANCE AND CREDULITY 51 



inquiries and remarks which Dr. Smith trans- 

 lated were a never-faihng source of interest. 

 One man wanted our field-glasses — the thousand- 

 mile glass, he called it — to find his wife, who 

 had run away. He quite thought that with 

 their aid he would be able to see through the 

 mountains and intervening obstacles which separ- 

 ated them. 



A popular belief is that foreigners have the 

 power of looking into the ground, and seeing 

 what minerals lie below the surface. 



Of their ideas concerning geography I have 

 already spoken. We were frequently taken for 

 Japanese, with whom they apparently see no 

 resemblance to themselves. We were informed 

 that from islands adjoining our own, of course at 

 the mouth of the Yangtse, came men with holes 

 through their middles, who, when they went on a 

 journey, slipped a pole through their centres and 

 were borne comfortably by two carriers. Another 

 was inhabited entirely by the fair sex. 



The crowds were nearly always decorous, quiet, 

 and not obtrusively rude. It was very unpleasant, 

 after a long, hot, dusty ride, to sit down at a 

 table in the open and be instantly surrounded by 

 a crowd of half-naked Chinese and that peculiar 

 unmistakable odour which emanates from Eastern 

 humanity. Still, it might have been a great deal 

 worse ; and a few words from Dr. Smith usually 

 relieved the situation when it began to get un- 

 bearable. In Africa and India it is possible to 

 travel, even if one can speak nothing but one's 

 own language, with a native interpreter, and get 

 along fairly well ; in China there is one absolute 



