the following day, and then, thirty li further on, the gracious
hospitality of the main station at Chou-ping. Only three men
were present of the regular station force of seven families and
two single women, but they gave us all the more abundant
welcome in their isolation and loneliness. Of the 2,577
Chinese Christians of this station, 132 were murdered by the
Boxers and seventy or more died from consequent exposure and
injuries.

A vast, low lying plain begins forty li north of Chou-ping
and extends northeastward as far as Tien-tsin. This plain is subject
to destructive inundations from the Yellow River and the
scenes of ruin and suffering are sometimes appalling. Our unattractive
inn the next night was a two-story brick building
with iron doors, stone floors, walls two and a-half feet thick and
rooms dark, gloomy, ill-smelling as a dungeon and of course
swarming with vermin, as savage bites promptly testified. My
missionary companion said that it was probably an old pawnshop.
Pawnbroking is esteemed an honourable, as well as
lucrative, business in China, and the brokers are influential
men and often have considerable property in their shops. The
people are so poor that they sometimes pawn their winter clothes
in summer and their summer ones in winter.

At noon the next day, we reached Chinan-fu, having made
seventy li in six hours over muddy roads. Dr. James B. Neal
of the Presbyterian mission was alone in the city and gave us
hospitable welcome to his home and to the splendid missionary
work of the station, though he rather suggestively stopped our
coolies when they were about to carry our bedding into the