lages one hears constantly, "Yu ti kou yao!"—"There is a dog on the road,"—with the response, "Han lao-pan lai chi tao!"—"Call the owner to chain it"; or else, "Tso shou wahwah keo!"—"A child on the left hand,"—and then comes the answer, "Han ta ma lah pao!"—"Call his mother to tend him."[1]
Every hundred yards or so on the road comes the cry, "Fan keo!"—"Change shoulders!"—followed by a momentary stop to shift the pole. And you always cross a town to the tune of "Pei-a, pei-a, pei-a!"—"Mind your back, mind your back, mind your back!" And if a man does not mind, he is likely to get a poke in the back from the chair pole.
The next day's journey was much the same thing as the preceding. We started in the grey morning, and I and my two companions of the day before had soon distanced the others. At first the trail was rough and slippery, and all ups and downs. The vegetation was of almost tropical density, and the moisture underfoot and overhead was so great that it seemed to me I had never been wetter except in a bathtub. As we descended to lower levels the valley broadened out, and the going improved so that we
- ↑ An apology is due to those wise in Chinese for the blunders that must be found in this attempt by an American who knows no word of the vernacular and a Kiangsi man having a limited command of English to catch and translate the "dirt talk" of Szechuan coolies.
