Our ignorance of the language was another great hindrance to us, especially at the stations where we wanted something to eat. Fortunately, I had written down at Kalgan the names of some Chinese dishes which served as our menu to Peking. I do not know how others may like the taste of Chinese cookery, with its flavour of sesamum oil and garlic; but, as for us, the messes in the inns were simply disgusting — the more so because we saw haunches of asses' meat in the butchers' shops, and always had well-grounded suspicions that we were fed on the same. The Chinese themselves show no repugnance to any kind of nastiness, and will even eat dogs' flesh. On our second visit to Kalgan we saw some Chinese butchers buy a camel suffering from the mange so badly that its whole body was one mass of sores, and then and there cut it up and sell the meat. Any animal that has died is eaten, as a matter of course, and the asses sold in the meat shops have never come by their death in a violent manner, for such is the meanness of this people that they will never willingly kill a beast of burden for the sake of its meat, if it has any work left in it. The reader can now form an idea of the relish with which Europeans, fully aware of the coarse gastronomical tastes of their hosts, partake of the dishes served in Chinese inns.
On leaving Kalgan, and turning his back on the border range, a wide, thickly-populated, and highly cultivated plain lies before the traveller. The cleanly appearance of the villages affords a striking contrast to the towns. The road is very animated;
