16 THIRTY THOUSAND MILES IN CHINA 



with the officials secured reprimand for the carters, but were 

 forced to agree to the payment of another allotment on the 

 contract. This was a mistake, as was afterward proved, for 

 it only made the carters that much worse. 



The magistrate furnished us a supposed military guard 

 of two men to see that the carters behaved themselves during 

 the rest of the journey, but as a matter of fact, this guard 

 was of very little use and were nearly quite as bad as the 

 carters themselves. The carters would not start early in the 

 morning, sometimes not before 8 or 10 o'clock, and then 

 would wish to stop for the day at 4 or 5 p.m. and not proceed 

 any further, in spite of the fact that they were being paid 

 more than double the proper rate. Matters went from 

 bad to worse on this section of the trip, until finally when we 

 knew that we were within one day's march of another magis- 

 trate, we secured the soldiers' acknowledgement that they 

 were in charge of the expedition and charging them to take 

 care of our things, we hastened on on foot, covering some 

 25 miles by two in the afternoon. 



We laid our complaint before the magistrate and were 

 very courteously received. We were utterly exhausted by 

 our rapid march and evidently our looks bore witness to* this 

 fact. For without any preliminary enquiries or warning, the 

 servants began bringing in plateload after plateload of fried 

 eggs and bowl after bowl of tea. We did more than justice 

 to this simple but ample fare. I'm sure that I ate between 

 ten and twenty eggs and drank at least six bowls of tea ! 

 Between bites and sips we explained our plight. A deputy 

 on horseback was sent to secure the carters and bring them in 

 and they were questioned separately and then severely re- 

 primanded and lightly beaten. They were not allowed any 

 further pay and we were advised to take carrying coolies from 

 this point on, which we did, and in a forced march of 24 hours 

 we reached Tsining on the Grand Canal. Here, through the 

 magistrate, we hired another team, this time of two mules in 

 tandem, which guaranteed to make the trip to Kufu, the birth 

 and burial place of Confucius, in three days for a price way 

 below what we had been paying the previous carters. 



In February, 1916, we reached Lungan in Northern Sze- 

 chwan and desiring to cross the Snow Pass to Sungpan we 

 found that it would be impracticable to take our pack-mules 

 over this route because of its elevation and the narrowness of 

 the trail which in many places is cut out of the face of a 

 rock wall. So my student-assistant, Ip, and I accompanied 

 by one coolie to carry a minimum of cooking gear and food, 

 together with four others to carry the observing tent and 

 instruments and our two cots and blankets, proposed to nego- 



