By land it was twenty-eight miles to Chefoo, instead of the short distance supposed by the men who started to walk, but they had persisted; and at their instigation the gunboat had come to relieve the party left behind. After some failures the gunboat succeeded in pulling the “Swatow” into water where she again floated safely. The party out at the village returned, and the goods were brought back and put on board the gunboat, Mateer remaining over night with the steamer and coming up the next day to Chefoo. He notices in his Journal that although Corbett was in a very weak state, he seemed to suffer little or no bad effects from the first terrible night on shore; nor were the ladies apparently any the worse for their exposure. He mentions also that while some of the natives at the village were disposed to annoy them as much as possible, others of them were very kind, and he adds, “Never before did I feel my helpless condition so much as among those natives, with whom I could not speak a single word.” Of course, they received a hearty welcome from the missionaries at Chefoo. On the following Wednesday they started for Tengchow, fifty-five miles away, traveling by shentza—a mode of travel peculiar to China, and developed largely because of the almost complete absence of anything like good wagon roads. It is simply a sort of covered litter, sustained between two mules, one in advance of the other; in it one reclines, and is jolted up and down by the motion of the animals, each going after his own fashion over rough paths which lead without plan across the plains and hills. Mateer’s Journal says of that trip: We rode about fifteen miles and stopped for the night at a Chinese inn. We had brought our eatables along, and, having got some tea, we made a very good supper, and we went to bed all together on a Chinese kang heated up to keep us warm. Next morning it was bitter cold, and we did not get started until about ten o’clock. I made them turn my shentza and Julia’s around [that is, with the open front away from the wind] or I do not know what we should have done. About five o’clock our cavalcade turned into an inn, and we soon found to our chagrin and vexation that we were doomed to spend another night in a Chinese inn; which, by the way, is anything but a comfortable place on a cold night. We made the best of it, however, and the next morning we were off again for Tengchow, where we arrived safely about two o’clock. At last our journeying was over,—set down on the field of our labor. They had reached the front. This was early in January, 1864. V THE NEW HOME