Little Li-Hu cracked his long whip, which, by the by, looked more like a fishing rod than a whip. And indeed, I might have amused myself with some angling on the way, for the mules were up to their fetlocks in chocolate-coloured liquid mud. The first sight which attracted my attention on the road was a one-storeyed building, used as barracks and occupied by Cossacks. I learnt that it served as an encampment for the protection of the railway station. Then followed a long stretch of road without anything remarkable to be seen. [Illustration: FROM MUKDEN FLATS ON TO THE TOWN AFTER A WATER-COLOUR DRAWING BY THE AUTHOR "Then followed a long stretch of road without anything remarkable to be seen" To face page 80] There were fields on both sides of the way, but they could not be seen because all the land was entirely submerged as in Egypt at the rising of the Nile. I presumed that we were on a road, for we advanced between two rows of irregularly planted trees; I also concluded that at one time this road had been paved, perhaps centuries ago, but it was decidedly bumpy now. These speculations were presently confirmed when we arrived at a bridge delicately arching a creek. It was a very fine structure, carved in Chinese fashion, and of great architectural beauty. I left my carriage to examine it more closely, and when I had scraped off some of the mud with which it was encrusted, I found that it was entirely built of white marble. After crossing the river the road became still worse. I was jolted up and down, thrown from side to side, my head was knocked against the wooden frame of the hood, and after a mile or so of this torture I could bear it no longer and decided to try the back of one of the mules. Riding without a saddle on the back of a thin Manchu mule cannot be said to be a comfortable mode of travelling, and my agonies are better imagined than described. Here was I, in an unknown country, surrounded by a desert which seemed more desolate than ever in its flooded condition, the rain coming down as if all the sluices of heaven had been opened, while the tiny driver at whose mercy I was, might, for all I knew, be a cut-throat. My vocabulary was as yet limited to two words, _how-di_ and _poo-how_. Perhaps they are written quite differently, but this is how they sound. The former stands for everything that is good, pretty, pleasant (I have never had occasion to use it); the other expresses the reverse, and I was quite tired of saying it, because it never proved to be of the slightest effect.