WANG-YEH-FU AND NING-SHA 1241 
villages and cultivated fields, to the lonely guest-house 
of Jo-jeh-teh-shang, which the Mongols call Yikeh- 
bashingto. During the night I was awakened by the 
house creaking fearfully, whilst showers of sand and 
rubbish rained down all over me, and the dust whirled 
in giddy eddies round the hut. It was blowing a violent 
gale from the south. Nevertheless the two Mongols 
whom Norvo sent me from his yamen, to act as my 
escort, voted for making a start. They rode mules, and 
w'ere both pleasant fellows, in spite of their decidedly 
cut-throat appearance, for one of them had a nose like 
a potato, whilst the other had no nose at all. We 
travelled south with the storm dead in our faces. At 
two o’clock the weather underwent an extraordinary 
change. The wind suddenly moved round to the north, 
and we were enveloped in a thick blinding snowstorm. 
I was very glad to have my sha-lo to warm my hands 
in, perched as I was high up on the back of a camel. 
When we reached Jo-wa (the Mongol Torgon) camels, 
riders, and packages — all were smothered with snow. 
Beyond that point the road curved gradually to the 
south-east, keeping alongside the brook of Toli. Then 
we entered a wide gap in the Ala-shan Mountains, and 
ascended by long easy gradients to the insignificant pass 
of Tomur-oden, and descended on the other side down 
an equally gentle slope to the guest-house of Da-ching. 
Thence the country fell away at the same easy slope all 
the way to the Hwang-ho (Yellow River), whilst the 
road inclined towards the north-east, so that we now 
had the Ala-shan Mountains on our left hand. After 
spending the night in the Manchu town of Ning-sha, 
which was just like any ordinary Chinese town, except 
that the women were somewhat differently dressed, and 
had their feet undistorted, we went on, on January i8th, 
to the Chinese town of Ning-sha, where I steered my 
course straigfht for the house of the Swedish missionaries. 
It was a real pleasure to meet my own countrymen — 
Mr. and Mrs. Pilqvist, and three assistants, two of them 
young men, the other a young lady, as well as to rest two 
”•-37 
