Among the Celestials : vol.1 / Page 29 (Color Image)

0029	Among the Celestials : vol.1

CHAP. i.] CHINESE TRAVEL. 9

farmhouses, not unlike those which one sees in

England. We travelled in carts the small

carts so often described in books on China

with two mules each, driven tandem, the

baggage piled up inside and behind, and our-

selves seated at the base of the shafts alongside

the drivers, with our legs dangling over the

side. In the summer months, when the roads

are soft and muddy, the pace is not rapid, and

the traveller can jump off, walk alongside, and

jump on again as he likes. But in the winter,

when the roads are frozen and worn down

by the heavy traffic almost as smooth as an

asphalte roadway, these carts trundle along at

a good five or six miles an hour, and with a

thousand or twelve hundred pounds of goods

will do their thirty miles a day without any

difficulty.

Everywhere along the road are found inns

where accommodation for man and beast can

be obtained. The first plunge from European

civilization which in our case was represented

by the house of Mr. Allen, the British Consul

at Newchwang into a Chinese inn is not

agreeable, and the dirt inside and out seems

insupportable. But on settling down to the

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