"There," said the interpreter, with a wave of his hand toward the stretching prospect of beautiful valleys, low broad hills and mountain side, "there is the Hunting Park of Jehol." Then, turning complacently to the Director of Mines, he asked, simply: "Is there gold beneath it?" And interpreter and guide, and later, even more important officials, were stupefied to learn that the wonderful imported man who knew all about gold could not say offhand, from his vantage point, miles away, whether there was gold under the Park or not. And, more disturbing still, that he probably could not say anything about it at all without actually tramping over the sacred soil and perhaps sacrilegiously digging into it. Such occasionally necessary confessions of incompetence made a little trouble, but only a little. However much the under men lacked knowledge about minerals and mines and how to find out about them, the head of the Department, Chang, knew enough to know that if his young Director confessed inability to meet certain demands it was because there was more wrong with the demands than with the engineer. But the real fly in the ointment soon began to make itself visible. It was not a disillusionment on the part of the Chinese officials in connection with their foreign expert, but a disillusionment on his part in regard to his real position and opportunities for accomplishing something for China. He began more and more clearly to realize that he could investigate and advise as much as he liked but that he could really do, in his understanding of doing, comparatively little. The modern West cannot make over the immemorial East in a day or even a year. Gradually the young engineer came to realize that while his examinations and reports were all very welcome, and whatever he could suggest for improvement in technical detail, resulting in immediate greater output of the mines already working, was gladly accepted, there was no willingness to accept advice leading to changes in administrative and general organization matters. And to the modern engineer efficiency in these matters is as much a part of successful mining as skilled digging and good metallurgy. Suggestions looking toward getting more work out of the men, or cutting down the payrolls by removing the thirty per cent of the names on them that seemed to have no bodily attachments, were frowned on. These things interfered with "squeeze," and "squeeze" was a traditional part of Chinese mining. Foreign advisors and helpers were all very well when they found gold, but not so well when they found graft. A crisis was visible in the offing. But this particular crisis did not arrive, for another larger and more serious one came more swiftly on and arrived almost unheralded. It was the Boxer Uprising.