If I rode on the piled-up baggage I was quickly numbed by the cold. If I walked I soon left the cart far behind, yet dared not lose sight of it for fear of its taking another route, so that my time was spent in walking ahead and then retracing my steps to meet the cart. Long after dark we halted at one of the usual wayside inns, a collection of hovels built round a dirty, open yard, filled with carts and animals, and the home of pigs and fowls, while I found accommodation on a brick bed in a comfortless room, or rather shed, with torn paper windows and uneven mud floor. Swallowing some cold food by the light of a tallow candle guttering in the draught, I was too tired and too disgusted not to sleep, and by three o'clock next morning we were again crawling on our way beneath the blazing stars and chilled by a piercing wind. All things have an end, and so after four days of absolute misery I arrived at noon, hungry, footsore and unwashed, at a friend's house in Tientsin and in time to catch the last steamer, which was sailing that night. After a hot bath and a good tiffin I retired gratefully to bed, but, such is the callousness of human nature, only to be routed out at three o'clock to play in a football match, which, the Fates be praised, our side lost. FOOTNOTES: [1] Pe = North. Nan = South. King = Capital City. CHAPTER VIII HERE AND THERE Of the three routes to China: 1. The overland, by rail through Europe and Siberia; 2. The westerly, across the Atlantic, North America and the Pacific; 3. The easterly, _via_ the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Red Sea and Indian Ocean, the last is perhaps the most interesting and in many ways the most comfortable, for it is possible to take a magnificent mail steamer at an English port and remain on board, surrounded by as much comfort and luxury as is to be found in a first-class hotel, until you land in either Hongkong or Shanghai. The finest of these vessels are veritable floating palaces, the saloons of which are gilded and decorated regardless of expense, richly carpeted, illuminated with electric light, cooled by electric fans, and where meals are served which would not demean any restaurant in London or Paris. Music-room, library, smoking-room and bar, laundry, barber's shop and delightful marble baths all find place. On the crack German boats a band plays at frequent intervals, while I have actually seen cold stoves in some of the cabins, so that when passing through great heat in the Red Sea or elsewhere you could close your cabin door, draw up your chair and have a good cool. I am not sure how these stoves are worked, but believe they are connected in some way with the refrigerator, which makes ice for use on board and provides cold storage for meat and fruits, and that a current of ether or cold air is pumped through them.