Travels in north and central China . studded withfarms (many of them growing opium), small andlarge villages, crowded market-towns, and bigprefectural walled cities or hsien. Along themain provincial road passed swarms of foot-passengers, chair-passengers, coolies with loads ofpaper, salt, pottery, and mule trains laden withsilk piece-goods. Coal was abundant everywhere,and near every town we met numbers of packanimals and coolies carrying loads of it. Steep mountain ranges of no great width riseout of the plain, but soon disappear. All have anorth to north-easterly trend and lie parallel with
Travels in north and central China . studded withfarms (many of them growing opium), small andlarge villages, crowded market-towns, and bigprefectural walled cities or hsien. Along themain provincial road passed swarms of foot-passengers, chair-passengers, coolies with loads ofpaper, salt, pottery, and mule trains laden withsilk piece-goods. Coal was abundant everywhere,and near every town we met numbers of packanimals and coolies carrying loads of it. Steep mountain ranges of no great width riseout of the plain, but soon disappear. All have anorth to north-easterly trend and lie parallel withone another. Twenty li over easy but gently undulatingground brought us at to San-fou-tang ; thenwe travelled 60 li slowly verging towards a mountainrange, which we at length crossed through a low gapcrowned with a fine pagoda and with picturesquepaitans at the entrance to the big walled town ofLung-chang. It was dark when, 20 li further on,we reached Ying-hsiang-kai, where I had to dis-possess a party of Chinese of the room I. ONE OF MY SOLDIER GUARD. CHUNG-KING TO CHENG-TU. 311 obtained. Another room would have served meequally well, but had I not taken the principalroom, word would have been passed round thetown that the foreigner was a very low-down sortof person, and one has to be on ones guard toprevent such misconceptions. Next morning we reached Sheng-feng-yi afterdoing 30 li. To pass the time I conversed with thesoldier who had accompanied me from Cheng-tuto Ya-chau, a big, good-natured young fellow, withhis wits about him. His pay he told me was three taels per month(under nine shillings), with uniform, and he had tokeep himself. He only, however, received about aquarter of his pay monthly, the balance being paidthree times a year. He said that there were fivecompanies of soldiers in Chung-king, each about300 strong and that they were drilled twice a day,in the morning in Chinese fashion, in the afternoonin foreign fashion, , German, though the instructorswer
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectchinade, bookyear1902
