Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/190

134 millions of the dead." How then (asks Dr Smith), while the people are content to exist solely for the benefit of the dead, is it possible for them to lift themselves out of the slough of stagnation which has clogged their limbs for countless generations? Perhaps the white races, or some of them, have something to be thankful for on this very score. In Australia and America the pinch of Chinese competition has already made itself felt. How infinitely greater would have been the pinch had not the extraordinary "thirst for decomposing under the immediate feet of their posterity" chained the Chinese race to their own soil!

A long march of twenty-five or twenty-six miles through driving rain brought us to Cha-tien-tzu, a small town situated near the summit of a mountain-pass, on December 9th, and early the next morning we found ourselves gazing down over the wide and intensely fertile Ch'êngtu plain from the summit of the range. A long descent, and then a walk of about ten miles across the level of the plain, dotted with farmsteads and clumps of bamboo, brought us to the suburbs of the capital. After walking for