could not get in. But we had a little cocoa, tinned corn beef,
condensed milk, butter and marmalade. Same German soldiers
sent three loaves of coarse bread. Our priestly host added
some Chinese bread, and so had a good supper and afterwards
a sound sleep.

At half-past four the next morning, Mr. Laughlin remarked
in a forty-horse power tone of voice that it was time to get up.
By the time the reverberations had died away, we were so wide
awake that further sleep was out of the question. Our cook
was nowhere in sight, so we prepared our own breakfast from
the remains of last night's meal.

Bidding a grateful farewell to our hospitable priests, we rode
across an ancient lake bottom, low, flat, wheat-covered and hot
enough to broil meat. At half-past ten o'clock, we reached
Fau-chia-chiu, the boundary of the hinterland, where, near a
temple just outside the wall, we found Governor Yuan Shih
Kai's military escort awaiting us. It was after sundown when
we reached Liu-chia-chuang, and we felt half inclined to spend
the night there with some genial German military engineers,
but our party had become separated during the day and as
the others had taken a road that did not pass through Liu-
chia-chuang, we pushed on to Hsi-an-tai, which we reached by
a little after ten o'clock. By that time, it was so dark that it
was impossible to go further and we found lodgment in a good-
sized building which smelled to heaven. The odour was like
that of a decomposing body. However, it was too late and we
were too weary either to hunt up smells or to seek another lodging
place. So after a hasty supper out of our tinned food, we