Beyond “Dry Straw Hotel”—most Chinese place names are quaint and simple if you translate them—where we made the noonday halt on the next to the last day of the journey, the hills were no longer terraced, perhaps because they were too steep, but lay piled up in a thousand folds and wrinkles that made them even more beautiful. Wheat was flowing the other way now, toward Lanchow, mainly on donkeys. There was much stone in the soil of the great plain across which we jogged with a growing sensation of eagerness that afternoon, and to the left, hazy under the low sun, the beginning of the high ranges bordering Tibet. Large towns were frequent, though there was no decrease in dirt and poverty.
Kansu earlaps are very gaily embroidered in colored designs of birds, flowers, and the like. Pipes are smaller than their “ivory” mouthpieces
It is a common sight in some parts of Kansu to see men knitting, and still more so to meet little girls whose feet are already beginning to be bound
The village scholar displays his wisdom by reading where all can see him—through spectacles of pure plate-glass
A Kirghiz in the streets of Lanchow, where many races of central Asia meet
Toward sunset we were accosted at the beginning of a defile by two Chinese on sleigh-bell-jingling horses, one of whom handed us a letter. It was from the chief Protestant missionary of Lanchow, a friend of the major’s, to whom he had written from Sian-fu announcing our coming. Rapidly as we had traveled, the coolie-borne fast mail had so far outstripped us that here was the reply, welcoming us to the city and regretting that, since we were to arrive on a Sunday, services made it impossible for the writer to come out and meet us in person. To be met thirty miles out by a host, even by proxy, struck us as real hospitality; and the fact that the messengers had no difficulty in identifying us is all that need be said as to the scarcity of Caucasian travelers in Kansu. Even had they missed us among the labyrinthian paths and gullies, they would not have gone far before some one would have told them that the two foreigners had already passed. In all the sixteen days we saw on the road two pairs of Russian Jews and two Dutch Catholic priests, and had spent the night with two sets of missionaries and dined with a third. One of the messengers was to return to Lanchow post-haste with news of our arrival, and the other was to serve us as guide. They do some things in a regal fashion in the far interior of China.