This strip of land, 300 li wide, is a miserable district with Japanese, mercenaries, guerillas, Communist and bandit hordes marauding and foraging among the luckless and flooded inhabitants, and specially taking toll of those Chinese merchants who continually try making the dash across with everything from petrol and bicycles, to opium and soap. In this area much opium is being grown, whereas in free China never a plant—now this is sad, how much land has been lost, and helps besides to make for less and less safety for travellers.
Starting off with 20 carts, stopping at every tea shack and at every half-mile, for broken spokes (and plenty of spoke' in Chinese) we only made 30 li the first day, slept in a church and, setting off by moonlight, managed 60 li the second day. We passed plenty of Japanese soldiers returning from chasing Communist troops out of Mengchang—we were questioned but allowed to pass.
The next day was bad over recently flooded ground which was inundate ed in July 1940 washing over thousands of homes and it took us the whole morning to do 15 li to the Ku" River. The boatmen wanted $600— we laughed at this price as preposterous and offered them $100; they scoffed at our sum as absurd.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.