OUR SLOW PROGRESS 239 



use of travellers gives the following table of 

 distances : — 



To recapitulate in detail our slow and halting 

 progress for the next few months would not only 

 prove wearisome and tedious to the reader but 

 would serve no good purpose. All I can hope to 

 do is to give some idea of the stupendous natural 

 features of the country through which we travelled, 

 of the impressions which were left on me, and 

 of the minor incidents of the journey. These, 

 occupying as they do so much of one's mind at the 

 actual time, sink into comparative insignificance if 

 not oblivion afterwards. And yet it is these minor 

 details w^hich focus one's thoughts. " Trifles make 

 the sum of life." The Chinese Empire may be 

 tottering to its fall, but unless pinned beneath its 

 ruins it is of abstract importance to the individual. 



Of the many roads radiating from Lanchow that 

 on which we found ourselves on the morning of 

 December 2nd is not the least important. Before 

 reaching Suchow it passes I^iangchow and Kanchow, 

 both prefectural or "fu" cities; afterwards, tlirough 

 the Kia-yii-kwan Gate of the Great Wall to the 

 oasis of Hami, at the eastern end of the Tian-Shan 

 range. Here it forks into two branches, one, the 

 Tian-Shan Nan-lu, following the southern, and the 

 17 



