What would the canny Highlander or the rural English rustic
think of two pig-tailed men tramping through his countryside?
We anchored at Ichang at 7:30 a.m. on March 19th. I fell up against a
boatman who offered to take us ashore. An uglier fellow I had never seen
in the East. The morning sunshine soon dried the decks of the gunboat
_Kinsha_ (then stationed in the river for the defense of the port) which
English jack-tars were swabbing in a half-hearted sort of way, and all
looked rosy enough.[B] But for the author, who with his companion was a
literal "babe in the wood," the day was most eventful and trying to
one's personal serenity. We had asked questions of all and sundry
respecting our proposed tramp and the way we should get to work in
making preparations. Each individual person seemed vigorously to do his
best to induce us to turn back and follow callings of respectable
members of society. From Shanghai upwards we might have believed
ourselves watched by a secret society, which had for its motto, "Return,
oh, wanderer, return!" Hardly a person knew aught of the actual
conditions of the interior of the country in which he lived and labored,
and everyone tried to dissuade us from our project.
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