Straightway I fell again into sun-dreams with the yellow man near by whose mouth was wide, for it was my first experience with the God of Fire in his hell-hot Eastern home, and I strayed in them until I was shaken into consciousness by a white man with a beer-bottle in his hand. I remember a garden and trees next, a Chinese room with mats, a Chinese woman--the first I had seen--with a sad, pretty face, who rose, when I came to the door, and stalked into a house as though she were walking on deer-hoofs (every step she took on her tiny, misshapen feet made me shudder), and then the sound of Davis's guitar and Lewis's voice on the soft night air and under a Manchurian moon soaring starward above the Eastern city-wall. ... It is noon of the second day now and we sit in the shade of willow-trees. We left that first Chinese town of Kinchau and its dirty natives this morning at eight. The dragon's tail again had been drawn ahead through a narrow valley, rich in fields of millet and corn, from which on either side a bleak, hilly, treeless desert ran desolately to a blue mountain chain. Now, still on its trail, we sit in a green oasis, on real grass and under sheltering willows. A lot of little Chinese boys are around us, all naked except for a little embroidered varicolored stomacher which hangs by a cord from the neck of each--for what purpose I know not--and their elders are bringing water for us and sheaves of millet-blades for the menagerie of beasts we ride. They seem a good-natured race--these Manchurian farmers--genuine, submissive, kindly, but genuine and human in contrast, if I must say it, with the Japanese. Who was it that said the Chinese were the Saxons of the East and the Japanese the Gauls? I know now what he meant. Lewis, in a big white helmet, has just ridden in on a diminutive white jackass. I envy the peace and content of both of them, for Fuji was particularly bad this morning. Again he passed everything on the road, and as we swept the length of a cavalry column, I saw a soldier leading a puny stallion a hundred yards ahead. When he heard us, he shouted a warning: "Warui desu!" At the same time the beast he was leading turned, with ears laid back and teeth showing, and made for us, dragging the soldier along. I was greatly pleased. "Here, Fuji," I said, "is where my revenge comes in. You are going to get it now and, if I mistake not, literally in the neck."