Nevertheless the trip was a delightful one owing to the "fine senary everywhere, and the continuous interest of each phase of our journey. One paid on the tain, and as the ticket collector found us standing up in a presumably "unauthorized" place he charged us only third class fare—twenty ents each, It was the cheapest pleasure trip, considering all things, which either of us had ever had.
Presently we passed the Shautook police station, and knew we were approaching our destination. This is one of the lonely posts which our police hold all along the frontier, with wire fencing all round and a machine-gun on the Aoorstep of most of them. We observed with much interest the place was garrisoned by Indian {ovstation Weihaiwei constables. jaligemen. The practice has been
these frontier places, but the ravages of an unaccustomed climate have wrought havoc both with their discipline and morale. Only recently one of these Northerners committed suicide by taking a lange quantity of opium, and this week-fend one of them has hanged himself. But Cam digressing.
Emerging from a small cutting, we were greeted with as fine stretch of landscape ax one can find out here, In the distance was the British section of Shautokok, clustering by the shore of a' small:
with the multi-coloured Chinese national flag uttering over a house on the frontier line a little further away. In a few minutes we were lighting in the village, which had its inevitable "pawnshops," two square towers ornamented with fish and monkey gargoyles. There was a stone marking the Anglo-Chinese boundary, and a Customs man, in a Jeoat with the nature of his business embroidered on it in Chinese characters, searched the people who were carrying bundles. He let us pass without question, and seeming indifference.
We had nearly two hours before the train was due to commence its return journey, and immediately struck out for Chinese territory, making for the non-British portion of Shautokok, which lay more than a mile away, Our route lay along the coast, and we walked by a beach stretching for miles, with white sand covered with shells, and pro~ tected by a ridge of water-worn stones carried down through ages from the mountains by streams, now dry, but raging torrents in the wet seaton. On the line of march we found much of interest. At one spot there was an old graveyard, nearly engulfed by the encroaching sea. At another were two ancient, overgrown, and ruined kilns, where vestigation disclosed lumps porcelain glaze, evidently kilned all those years' ago and thrown down amid the embers, to give a jelue of the industry which the place had once known.
Our destination proved further away than we had thought, and ax time was passing there was no opportunity for much investigation. So we contented ourselves with a cursory observation of affairs as they appeared to us. The Chinese lagers seemed mildly curious about our intentions, and fisher~ folk, boat-people, or tillers of the fields, all went about their' avocations' as if perfect peace reigned throughout their land. There was no sign of even one soldier—the "tide of war" had passed, and left the peasantry as indifferent to who ruled them as they always are, and probably always will be.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.