After a considerable discussion and beating down of prices, it was finally settled that we were to pay for one chair with its two bearers at the rate of about five pence a league,[8] with a specified sum for the days when we rested by the way, either because it was Sunday or for any other special reason that might induce us to loiter on the journey. As we were anxious to start early in order to reach a certain stopping-place where there was a well-known Chinese inn, we stipulated that the bearers with their chairs should appear next morning at daylight, when we would have everything ready to make an immediate start. True to this arrangement we had packed up and had breakfasted before any sign of the coming sun could be seen in the eastern sky, and we kept looking out to see when the dawn would disperse the darkness that lay on the earth, and we could start on our journey. By and by the great banyan-tree near by that looked like a weird and uncanny mass of shadow, denser and blacker than those that concealed everything from view, suddenly and as if with the touch of an enchanter's hand began to assume a tangible shape, and great boughs swung into view, and countless branches with their evergreen leaves came out of the night as if to greet the day with their smiles. Soon the light had flashed across the fields and on to the tops of houses, and had touched the summits of the hills with its glory and had driven away the last lingering shadows from the landscape, and another day had broken on the world. Impatiently we waited for the coming of the chairs, but the minutes passed by, and the sun rose higher and higher, and his rays flashed amongst the forest of leaves that sprung from boughs and branches of the venerable banyan, but still no sign of them or the bearers. We had been long enough in China to realize that time to a Chinaman is of no importance whatever, and that the difference of an hour or two in any engagement that is made is a matter so trifling as not to be considered worthy of mention. Still with true Occidental pertinacity and training we clung to the idea that because the daylight had been mentioned and had been agreed to as the time when the men should put in an appearance, the men, of course with the same exact ideas of time that we had, would promptly appear as soon as the first flush tinged the sky in the east. The foreigner in dealing with the Chinese always forgets that they are usually accustomed to look at things from a different standpoint from ourselves, and that their minds are more turbid and less keen than ours. Daylight, for example, with us has a definite meaning, but with a Chinaman represents a time that begins with the dawn and with the indolence of the East may extend to seven or eight o'clock.