The present western terminus of the great projected railway from east to west across North China is wt Kuanyintang, in Honan, Kuanmintang is\ really only a small market town and is quite unfitted for its present important status. Its inns are of the poorest and, despite a certain pretence towards modern methods, I do not know of more verminous inns anywhere in the whole northwest. Besides, the inn-keepers are out to defraud the unwary traveller, and, as all the muleteers have to apply to them for their custom, they are able to squeeze on every transaction that passes through their hands.
But enough of the nightmare of Kuanyintang. We were glad to leave it, and to get on the road again. ' People have written often of the roads in north China, but, with the drawbacks and inconveniences, there grows on one a love for the bumpy, dusty pathways, and the little villages and the warm friendly smell of a straw fire. To those who would travel, as we are called upon to do, for weeks or a month at a stretch, I would advise nothing so much as to learn to love the people, and their queer little ways, even though, like us, you may be trying to change some of them.
Now, to be comfortable on the road, it is not necessary, or even perhaps desirable, to have a tent and European cooking utensils and tinned foods without number. Rather it is to be sought after, to travel light, and eat the food that each city provides in its markets, at a ridiculously low figure. In general, there is much to be said fo; the humble pack mule, who will carry 100 Ib. of baggage for you and your bedding on top of it, neatly {put away in a bed bag that only costs a few shillings. On top of your belongings, on the pack mule, is a seat for yourself. There you may jog along from morning till night, along the flats, up the slopes, down the hills, or in deep loess cuttings, with time to look about you, to think, and to enjoy the glorious] jova
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.