248 Back to Burma 
Would he miss the only landing place? No! making a 
brave effort, his feet touched bottom, and he struggled up 
the bank. 
It may easily be imagined then that I was thoroughly 
wet through half-way above my knees, and prospects for 
the night jeopardised in consequence. Moreover the 
wretched inn people, instead of having a blazing fire on 
the floor in the middle of the room, had practically no fire 
at all, and that skilfully hidden within the depths of a mud 
cooking range, and my powers of persuasion were heavily 
taxed before they would consent to go out and buy damp 
wood to make me a special smoky fire of my own; nor did 
they show that enthusiasm to dry my wet clothes that the 
Tibetans would have displayed. However, I had supper 
with some young blades who were going down to Bhamo, 
borrowed a pair of Chinese trousers, begged a quilt, and 
rolling myself up, slept with more success than I could have 
hoped for considering that I lay on a straw pallet. Next 
morning it was necessary to decide on a plan of action in 
view of the possibility that the mules, having waited for 
me on the previous day, were still some distance behind; 
wherefore advance rather than retreat was evidently my 
only plan, and my clothes having been dried in the mean- 
time, I started after breakfast on the second stage of the 
journey, reaching Kan-ngai at sunset. Evidently the mules 
were not in front of me now. 
When I came through Kan-ngai early in March the 
people had absolutely refused to take me in—the Pien-ma 
incident was apparently rankling—and it will be remembered 
I had sought shelter in the village schoolhouse. I was now 
for the second time refused admittance at two consecutive 
inns, and in no honeyed phrases either, the excuses given 
being calculated to annoy rather than to propitiate. Evi- 
dently Europeans were not in demand in this village. 
I have remarked the same independence more than once 
in different parts of China—an insignificant village in a 
region outwardly friendly will preserve ex d/oc an attitude of 
bitter hostility towards the European for no apparent reason. 
Such a thing is scarcely to be accounted for on the assump- 
tion that a single European has behaved indiscreetly in the 
past for, unless he had made matters wonderfully warm, 
