What we did briefly I will more briefly tell.
There is an outer town and an inner one. No ruins this time. A very lively city, population swarming like ants and very active, familiarized by the railway with the presence of strangers whom they do not follow about with indiscreet curiosity as they used to do. Huge quarters occupy the right of the Hoang Ho, two kilometres wide. This Hoang Ho is the yellow river, the famous yellow river, which, after a course of four thousand four hundred kilometres, pours its muddy waters into the Gulf of Petchili.
“Is not its mouth near Tien Tsin, where the baron thinks of catching the mail for Yokohama?” asks the major.
“That is so,” I reply.
“He will miss it,” says the actor.
“Unless he trots, our globe-trotter.”
“A donkey’s trot does not last long,” says Caterna, “and he will not catch the boat.”
“He will catch it if the train is no later,” said the major. “We shall be at Tien Tsin on the 23d at six o’clock in the morning, and the steamer leaves at eleven.”
“Whether he misses the boat or not, my friends, do not let us miss our walk.”
A bridge of boats crosses the river, and the stream is so swift that the footway rises and falls like the waves of the sea. Madame Caterna, who had ventured on it, began to turn pale.