Through the Land of the Cross-bow 205 
making a journey of four or five days duration over the 
mountains to the east; but having politely absolved him 
from the necessity of guaranteeing my safety, I adhered to 
my original plan, observing that if he could not give me a 
passport I would go without. The official, full of alarms, 
still hesitated, but on my rising to intimate that the interview 
was at an end, he now begged me to be seated again, and 
ordered his writer to make out a passport for La-chi-mi, at 
the limit of administered territory southwards. Becoming 
quite affable once the Rubicon was crossed, he took me out 
to admire his pony, shelved the matter which was worrying 
him, and spoke of the weather. 
So much time had been wasted already, that by the 
time we had refreshed ourselves and started once more the 
sun was sinking behind the mountains. It was indeed nine 
o'clock before we reached Shi-teng, but the moon, seven 
days old, gave us sufficient light to see the road save in the 
deep ravines, and we found comfortable quarters at an inn. 
I had hoped that the business of interviewing officials 
was now at an end, though I must confess to have always 
enjoyed these social engagements, which I regarded in the 
light of gratuitous Chinese lessons. It was always a relief 
to hear an educated Chinaman speak after wrestling with 
the streams of patois poured forth from the mouth of 
the ordinary coolie or clodhopper, and though of course no 
mandarin ever dreamed of speaking slowly simply because 
I prefaced the conversation by saying I did not understand 
Chinese very well, yet I generally managed to understand 
the drift of his remarks, and in any case always got what 
I went for, which was the chief thing. 
The Chinese rustic is an absurd person, with the pre- 
valent idea of his class in all lands that if you do not 
understand what he is saying, he only has to say it a little 
louder and you cannot fail to comprehend ; consequently 
if you intimate that the full purport of his remarks has 
been lost on you, he immediately begins to bellow like a 
bull of Bashan, confident that you are only a little deaf, 
not ignorant of his language; and since in his eagerness 
he pours out the verbiage faster than ever, inoffensive 
people trying to get a cheap lesson in the language are 
apt to suffer. 
