which gradually drew nearer. One hundred and ten li from
Ku-fu, we stopped for the night at Pien-kiao, a small city with
an unusually poor inn but a magnificent spring. It gushed up
over an area twenty-five feet square and with such volume that
the stream ran away like a mill-race. The Emperor Kien Lung
built a retaining wall about the spring and a temple and summer-
house adjoining. The wall is as solid as ever, but only a
few crumbling pillars and fragments remain of the temple and
pavilion. The Emperor affirmed that he was told in a vision
that if he would build a stone boat, the waters of the spring
would float it to Nanking whither he wished to go. So he
built the boat of heavy cut stone, with a twelve-foot beam and
a length of fifty-five feet. It is still there with the prow five
feet above the ground, but the rest of the boat has sunk almost
to the level of the earth about it. Is the old Emperor's idea any
more absurd to us than our iron boats would have been to him?

The sun struggled long with heavy mists the following morning
and the air was so cool that I had to wrap myself in a
blanket in the shendza. By eight, the sun gained the victory
and we had another breezy, perfect June day. But the road
was stony and trying beyond anything we had yet seen. The
villages were evidently poorer, as might be expected on such a
rocky soil. The people stared silently and did not so often return
my smiles. Whether they were sullen or simply boorish
and unaccustomed to foreigners I could only conjecture. Few
white men had been seen there.

A hard day's journey of 140 li through a rocky region
brought us to Fei-hsien. Rain was falling the next morning