Children lost themselves in
the crush, and went about crying for their mothers. A party of
travelers, newly arrived from the south by caravan route, got wedged
with their worn-out horses and mules in the thick of the mob, and could
not move an inch. As far as the eye could reach the blue-clad throng
heaved restlessly to and fro under the blaze of the brilliant sun which
harassed everyone in the valley, and, moving slowly and majestically in
the midst of them all, came the foreigner. As they caught sight of me,
my sandalled feet, and the retinue following on wearily in the wake, the
populace set up an ecstatic yell of ferocious applause and turned their
faces towards the inn, in the doorway of which one of my soldier-men was
holding forth on points of more or less delicacy respecting my good or
bad nature and my British connection. At that moment, the huge human
mass began to move in one predetermined direction, and then a couple of
mandarins in their chairs joined the swarming rabble. I had to sit down
on the step for five minutes whilst my boy, with commendable energy,
cleared these two mandarins, who had come from Chen-tu and were on their
way to the capital, out of the best room, because his master wanted it.
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