A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 31 



On the third day the agony box limped along until 

 noon, but when we reached a well in the midst of the 

 great plain south of Turin it had to be abandoned, while 

 we went on to Ude, the telegraph station in the middle 

 of the desert, and wired Mamen to bring a spare wheel 

 from Urga. 



The fourth day there was more trouble with the con- 

 necting rod on my car and, we sat for two hours at a 

 well while the motor was eviscerated and reassembled. 

 It had ceased to be a joke, especially to Coltman 

 and Guptil, for all the work fell upon them. By this 

 time they were almost unrecognizable because of dirt 

 and grease and their hands were cut and blistered. But 

 they stood it manfully, and at each new accident Gup 

 rose to greater and greater heights of oratory. 



We were halfway between Ude and Panj-kiang when 

 we saw two automobiles approaching from the south. 

 Their occupants were foreigners we were sure, and as 

 they stopped beside us a tall young man came up to my 

 car. "I am Langdon Warner," he said. We shook 

 hands and looked at each other curiously. Warner is 

 an archaeologist and Director of the Pennsylvania Mu- 

 seum. For ten years we had played a game of hide and 

 seek through half the countries of the Orient and it 

 seemed that we were destined never to meet each other. 

 In 1910 I drifted into the quaint little town of Naha 

 in the Loo-Choo Islands, that forgotten kingdom of the 

 East. At that time it was far off the beaten track and 

 very few foreigners had sought it out since 1854, when 

 Commodore Perry negotiated a treaty with its king in 



