1214 
THROUGH ASIA 
in every village we came to, they either had something to 
say to an acquaintance or they wanted to buy a piece of 
bread, which they subsequently ate on the way. We 
started very early in the morning, generally soon after 
midnight, and took a rest during the middle of the day, 
when we baited the animals ; after that we did another 
short spell of travelling in the afternoon. It was bitterly 
raw and cold driving in the middle of the night ; in spite 
of furs and felts I was always frozen through when we 
stopped. Islam rode on horseback, until he nearly got 
his feet frost-bitten ; after that he preferred to walk. The 
drivers of the carts kept themselves beautifully warm 
running beside their animals; and my faithful Yolldash 
fared first-rate. Two or three times it snowed, and the 
wind blew icy-cold out of the north-west. In this way we 
journeyed for six days along the great highroad that skirts 
the Great Wall north-north-westwards to Liane-chow-fu, 
passing on the way the villages of Wo-shing-yi, Tha-ku-yi, 
Lung-go-po, Go-lan-chow, and Cho-dung-po. These were 
the places we stopped at for the night; between them there 
were strings of other villages. 
We travelled in company with two Chinese, who were 
taking two cart-loads of miscellaneous wares to Liang- 
chow-fu. It is a great advantage to travel as large a 
company as possible on these highways of Northern 
China ; for it is an established rule of the road, that when 
two parties meet in a deep narrow passage such as I 
have already described, the smaller party has to give way 
to the more numerous ; also if anything goes wrong with 
any of the vehicles or animals, all the drivers of the 
party are expected to lend a hand in righting them. 
We experienced the advantage of these arrangements 
at daybreak on the morning of December loth, when 
we reached the Shi-ming-ho, which flowed through a 
wide fertile valley and entered the Ping-fan-ho, making 
an acute angle with it. The river serpentined backwards 
and forwards in a broad stony channel, and, with the 
exception of a few narrow strips of water where the 
current ran swiftest, was sheeted with ice. But at the 
