National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

of the drowned, who have great difficulty in finding their way to re-birth, and who hunger in their ghostly existence.

We now arranged to spend the evening in a couple of boats on the lake at the Summer Palace; and in these we had a picnic supper, while the boats were gently punted along over the glittering surface of the lake, whose light-reflexes of the full moon were multiplied by the tapers floating about on their lotus-leaves, to the comfort of the drowned.

To round off the evening, the Chinese at midnight served tea on the crown of the magnificent marble bridge that spans its seventeen arches over the lake to the island; and in the stillness of the balmy and illuminated night all the atmosphere of refinement, romance and fairyland that hovers from the vanished court of the Imperial Summer Palace was brought to life again.

On our return to Peking our cars were stopped at the city gates, for they were closed. Martial law had not yet been suspended, and it took three-quarters of an hour and much telephoning to all sorts of municipal authorities before we got permission to pass through the gates with our prince.

STAFF OF MOTOR-EXPEDITION COMPLETE

On one of the last days of September IRVING C. YEW, one of the engineers appointed by The Ministry of Railways as a member of the road-expedition, presented himself at our headquarters; and a few days later his colleague, C. C. KUNG, appeared. The next arrivals at Sweden House were PARKER C. CHEN from Nanking, DAVID HUMMEL, our surgeon, and GEORG SÖDERBOM, The latter two came together from Sweden.

GEORG, who was to be our chief mechanic and bear the responsibility for all technical details in the motor-column, engaged two Mongol drivers, our old servant DONGORA and another Chakhar-Mongol named JoMCHA. Chinese servants were to be engaged in Kuei-hua.

We now thought that our company was complete, but at the last moment HUANG WEN-PI, the archaeologist who had taken part in our great expedition, also turned up. Despite the fact that he had really nothing to do with a motor-expedition, that was organized by the Ministry of Railways, he had with the help of the Minister of Education managed to get permission to accompany us.

What rather annoyed us was the circumstance that he had got permission to carry on archaeological excavations, whereas we had been forbidden to do this in a special clause! But the official version of the matter was that he had been sent out by the Minister of Education to inspect the school-system in Sinkiang. This task could scarcely be very arduous in a province in which schools were practic-

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