They took as little baggage as possible, leaving everything superfluous at Tien-tsin; six horses were sufficient for all the wants of the party--four for themselves and the guide, and two for the baggage. It was necessary to carry the most of the provisions needed for the journey to Pekin, as the Chinese hotels along the route could not be relied on with any certainty. No rain had fallen for some time, and the way was very dusty; but this circumstance only made it more amusing to the boys, though it was not so pleasing to the Doctor. Before they had been an hour on the road, it was not easy to say which was Fred and which Frank, until they had rendered themselves recognizable by washing their faces. Water was scarce, and not particularly good, and, besides, the operation of washing the face was an affair of much inconvenience. So they contented themselves with the dust, and concluded that for the present they wouldn't be particular about names or identity. At noon they had gone twenty-five miles through a country which abounded in villages and gardens, and had a great many fields of wheat, millet, cotton, and other products of China; the fields were not unlike those they had seen on their voyage up the Yang-tse; and as for the villages, they were exactly alike, especially in the items of dirt and general repulsiveness. The modes of performing field labor were more interesting than the villages; the most of the fields were watered artificially, and the process of pumping water attracted the attention of the boys. An endless chain, with floats on it, was propelled through an inclined box by a couple of men who kept up a steady walk on a sort of treadmill. There were spokes in a horizontal shaft, and on the ends of the spokes there were little pieces of board, with just sufficient space for a man's foot to rest. The men walked on these spokes, and steadied themselves on a horizontal pole which was held between a couple of upright posts. Labor is so cheap in China that there is no occasion for employing steam or wind machinery; it was said that a pump coolie was able to earn from five to ten cents a day in the season when the fields needed irrigation, and he had nothing to do at other times. [Illustration: MODE OF IRRIGATING FIELDS.]