POPULOUS AND BEAUTIFUL SZECHUAN 
Photo by Rollin T. Chamberlin 
AN ENTRANCE TO A VILLAGE 
city gate, the coolies laid down the chairs 
and demanded one-third of their day’s 
wages. Warned that this would happen, 
a few pounds of copper cash were ready 
for them, but to apportion this among 
fourteen coolies, with much talk and 
argumentation, consumed valuable time. 
The coolies also found it necessary to 
eat a bowl of rice apiece to fortify them- 
selves against the hard day’s work ahead. 
All this added to the delay, and it was 
freely predicted that we would never 
cover the 35 miles to Kuan Hsien before 
the gates of that city closed for the 
night. . 
But the initial troubles of transporta- 
tion rapidly faded before the amazing 
beauty of the Chengtu plain. I think I 
have nowhere witnessed a moving scene 
more consistently charming, more sus- 
tained in its fascination, or firmer in its 
hold on the mind’s fancy than the suc- 
cession of vistas of rura! Szechuan as 
they greeted us in succession on this per- 
fect April day. Vast quantities of rape 
were in bloom, giving a mosaic of a 
bright yellow and green to the landscape. 
Though only early April, the air was 
balmy and genial. It was even a trifle 
too warm to please the hard-working 
coolies on the road. 
We passed an almost continuous pro- 
cession of half naked, perspiring men, 
pushing sacks of grain on wheelbarrows 
toward Chengtu. Other wheelbarrows 
were loaded with large cakes of coke 
from the mines and coke ovens along the 
Min River, near Kuan Hsien. Other 
wheeled loads and occasional fine ponies 
and, rarer still for central China, nice 
cattle gave variety to the highway pro- 
cession. The extent of this road traffic 
implied great industrial activity on the 
part of the people of this portion of 
China. 
All day long we hurried over the well- 
traveled road, upon what appeared to the 
eye to be a nearly level plain. In reality 
it steadily rose in altitude, if the barome- 
ter spoke truly, as it surely did; indeed 
the aneroid indicated a rise of 700 feet 
between Chengtu and Kuan Hsien. At 
