The Chinese of my train, ragged and sordid, receive me with profound bows. One takes the rudder, the others jump onto the bank, where they harness themselves to the end of a long line attached to the mast of the junk--and we are off, being towed against the current of the Pei-Ho, a heavy poisonous stream in which, here and there amongst the reeds on the banks, parts of human bodies appear. The soldier I have kept is named Renaud, and he tells me he comes from Calvados. He and my servant Osman, both happy to be going to Pekin, vie with one another in gaiety and good-will and in comical ingenious inventions to make our lodging more convenient. The trip, in spite of unpleasant surroundings, begins to the sound of their merry childlike laughter. We depart in the full morning light, under the rays of a deceptive sunshine which pretends it is summer although an icy wind is blowing. The seven allied nations have established military posts from point to point along the Pei-Ho, to insure communication by way of the river between Pekin and the gulf of Petchili, where their ships come in. Toward eleven o'clock I stop the junk near a large Chinese fort from which floats the French flag. It is one of our posts occupied by Zouaves; we get out to get our rations, enough bread, wine, preserves, sugar, and tea for two days. We shall receive no more now until Tong-Tchow (City of Celestial Purity), which we shall reach day after to-morrow in the evening, if nothing untoward prevents. Then the towing of our junk begins again; slowly and monotonously we move between gloomy devastated banks. The country around us remains unchanged. On both sides as far as the eye can reach are fields of "sorghos"--which is a kind of giant millet much taller than our maize. The war prevented its being harvested in season, and so it stands reddened by the frost. The monotonous little tow-path, a narrow strip on the grayish soil, is on a level with the cold fetid water, at the foot of the eternal dried sorghos, which forms an endless curtain all along the river. Sometimes a phantom village appears on the horizon; as one approaches it, it proves to be only ruins and the bodies of the dead. I have a mandarin's arm-chair in my junk on which to enthrone myself when the sun shines and the wind is not too cutting. More frequently I prefer to walk along the shore doing my miles in company with our towers, who plod along bending over like beasts of burden, with the rope passed over the shoulders. Osman and Renaud peer out of a port-hole after me as we walk along the track of gray earth shut in by the uninterrupted border of sorghos and by the river, the wind blowing sharply all the while. We are often obliged to step aside suddenly because of a dead man--with one leg stretched out across the path--looking slyly up at us.