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Then fell in with our servants, camped in flickering shadows under bamboos beside the yellow surging Taiping, the fire going and the air redolent with an appetising smell of roast duck; our last dear duck, whose fellow ducks and hens had accompanied us in the baskets at either end of a pole across a coolie's back from Bhamo.
I was feeling now the return effects of my blow on the coolie's chin. I felt too much in fault myself to call my attendants very sharply to task. It was through me that Luella had come into danger, and I had to confess that I had failed in prudence and had come near to paying dear for it. "I don't understand this, Mr. Wilton," said Corson in confidential perplexity.
The rest of our train consisted of the faithful Rajoo, who came entirely at his own request to see a new country, the two servants, the sepoy, and the coolie's mate, who was to act as guide, carry small matters, and make himself generally useful. After a most affectionate parting with our boatmen, Messrs.
Advice to travelers. Farewell to Sui-fu. The postal service and tribute to I.P.O. Rushing the stages. Details of journey. Description of road to Chao-t'ong-fu. Coolie's pay. My boy steals vegetables. Remarks on roads and railways. The real Opening of China. How the foreigner will win the confidence of the Chinese. Distances and their variability. Calculations uprooted. Author in a dilemma.
Yours is born of nothing extraordinary; yours can be satisfied by a gulp or two of water, or perhaps by a drink or perhaps two, or perhaps three of something stronger. The Chinese coolie's thirst arises from the grilling sun, from a dancing glare, from hard hauling, struggling with 120 pounds slung over his shoulders, dangling at the end of a bamboo pole.
He is now extending philosophic advice to them all, based on a knowledge of the coolie's life; the little meeting breaks up, good feeling prevails, and the loads carried on merrily. I still linger, sipping my tea. But wrangling about payment prevails always where Chinese congregate. In China, by high and low, lies are told without the slightest apparent compunction.
I was a dyer's helper in Pyonhan, a gold- miner in the placers of Kang-wun, a rope-maker and twine-twister in Chiksan. I plaited straw hats in Padok, gathered grass in Whang-hai, and in Masenpo sold myself to a rice farmer to toil bent double in the flooded paddies for less than a coolie's pay.
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