The keynote of any sketch of Kansu must be strength. To the European this is wholesome, but the Chinese resent strength and fear it, so they characterize Kansu as barbarous and uncouth. The Chinese from the coast is not welcome there, He.is held to be finicky and womanish. He cannot ride, and all Kanou is astride something. He eats rice and pork, and Kansu de-yours wheat and mutton. He abhors a fight and carries on his feuds with a deal of chattering and squealing, while Kansu goes about goodnatured and even-tempered, but primed with stave and sheath knife, and matchlock for its occasional bickerings.
Lanchow is a strong town. Compact in its four stout stands on the very brink Yellow River where it runs about are high hills with defensible passes and a few formidable fortifications. In the road parlance of the west it is a town of antitheses: Town small, suburbs large, banks narrow, river broad, doors small, windo large, even small carts large, and so on through an endless series which happen to be rhythmical and rhyming in Chincee.
The little city is the nucleus of a great web of extensive suburbs. Its streets were, until very recently, exceedingly bad highways. In the summer of 1913 it rained for 2% days in Kansu and the Lanchow streets stood a foot deep in mire. Along the shop fronts are narrow herbs, at most 18 inches wide, and the entire pedestrian traffic of this very busy market elbowed its way along these narrow paths. No cart ventured into town unless it must. In front of a Turki shop on the great West Street I saw a mule fall in the mire and go completely out of sight. The animal's best efforts to rise only brought ite ears above water. What few carts there were made more: splash than progress, and the mud flinging horsemen and carters were vociferously cursed by whole choruses of mired pedestrians. Those were the days when we sat cross-legged on our kangs, sipping tee and smoking our water pipes from dawn till dark, exchange
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.