170 THE HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF KWEICHOW 



pressing danger to incite the worshippers to- devotion. The 

 crops in the district were practically nothing but opium 

 poppies. 



An eight-hour stage brought us to the village of Ch'i- 

 tien, were the inn was poorer than usual and our tiny room 

 faced the street, so that we had a large and interested 

 audience gazing at us all the time. The small fry soon 

 discovered a place of observation which was quite unique : 

 there was a hiatus at the bottom of the woodwork of the 

 wall about a yard long and six inches deep, and by lying 

 with their faces flat on the ground they could get a fair 

 view of our doings. The row of bright eyes and gleaming 

 teeth was quite uncanny. The temperature was 66, so> that 

 we felt the lack o<f air particularly trying. During the day 

 we had passed most attractive-looking newly-built houses 

 in lath and plaster. The ornamental windows in their gable 

 ends were different from any we had yet seen. 



Next day, April 22, we travelled through most miser- 

 able-looking villages, with almost naked inhabitants, wearing 

 the filthiest rags I have ever seen. The degraded look of 

 the people was very striking. All the cultivable land was 

 covered with opium poppy. There is surface coal in great 

 abundance, and the inhabitants have only to shovel it up 

 and make it into cakes mixed with a little earth and water; 

 so they have an easy source of revenue close at hand. 

 Along the reads and at the entrance to every village are 

 wayside shrines, the latter have generally a god and goddess 

 sitting side by side; but in this neighbourhood we noticed 

 a good many shrines without images. They had inscriptions 

 instead, such as "The only true God from ancient to present 

 times. " They looked usually very neglected, and one hardly 

 ever saw a newly-erected one. 



Our next stopping place was Ch'a Tsang, were the inn 

 was embellished with a highly decorated wall, facing the 

 guest rooms. There was a large parti-coloured mosaic at the 

 top, made out of broken crockery in the usual Chinese style, 

 below which were two hares rampant in stucco, supporting 

 .a shield between them : they are flanked by ornamental 

 plants in pots. It was interesting to find so elaborate a 

 decoration in quite a humble inn, but that is one of the 

 charms of being on the road, even in the byways of China. 



Next day we reached Tatingfu, where we had already 

 written to ask the missionaries in charge to summon as many 

 different tribespeople as they could for the week end, and 

 they assembled in good numbers from a radius of about forty 

 miles. They have a flourishing school at Tating, where the 



