Some dozen small boys, with hatchets and scythes over their
shoulders for the cutting of firewood they were looking for, laughed at
me as I ploughed through the mud in my sandals. We had been going for
three hours, and when, cold and damp, we got inside a cottage for tea, I
found that we had covered only twenty li--so we were told by an old
fogey who brushed up the floor with a piece of bamboo. He was dressed in
what might have been termed undress, and was most vigorous in his
condemnation of foreigners.
Leng-shui-ch'ang we passed at thirty-five li out, and just beyond the
aneroid registered 7,000 feet; Yung-ch'ang Plain is 5,500 feet; Pu-piao
Plain-is 4,500 feet. The range of hills dividing the two plains was
bare, the clouds hung low, and the keen wind whistled in our faces and
nipped our ears. Ten li from Pu-piao, on a barren upland overlooking the
valley, a mere boy had established himself as tea provider for the
traveler. A foreign kerosene tin placed on three stones was the general
cistern for boiling water, which was dipped out and handed round in a
slip of bamboo shaped like a mug with a stick to hold it by. Farther on,
sugar-cane grew in a field to the left, and near by a man sat on his
haunches on the ground feeding a sugar-grinding machine propelled by a
buffalo, who patiently tramped round that small circle all day and every
day.
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