we had unpacked it and hauled it up on to the road again, we found no serious damage done to either it or the mules. The top covering of the cart was rather knocked about, but the main part of it was still all sound ; and the mules merely shook themselves and then stared stonily ahead, as if it were all in the day's work and not to be wondered at. Both Chinese carts and Chinese mules are astonishing products. The carts are beautifully built, and made strong without being too heavy ; and the mules are as hard as can be, and as a rule really very docile. A Chinese carter seldom drives them by the reins, but guides them entirely by voice and cracks of the whip. In this way they struggle along till the cart bumps up against some very big rock, and then they roll, cart and all, down the hillside, or until they run into a mass of bog and quagmire, when an additional team is harnessed on from the cart behind. Even in this latter case the fate of these mules is not always a happy one ; and on one occasion when, after struggling vainly with a single team to pull a cart through, we had harnessed on another team and then set to work, the shaft mule managed in some way to get clear of the shafts, and got under the wheels• of the cart, and in this position was dragged along for a hundred yards or so before the other mules could be stopped. We thought he must be dead—suffocated with mud if nothing else. But he got up, shook himself, stared stolidly about with an aggrieved expression, as if it were really rather harder luck than usual, and then allowed himself to be put in the shafts again and go on with the rest of the day's work. These bogs occurred constantly in the hollows between the spurs, and we had frequently immense difficulty in getting through them. Small villages were only occasionally met with, and the country was far less well populated than that we had recently come through. The hills were covered with woods of oak and birch, and their summits with pines. Amongst them, it was
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