My journey from Ichang to Wan-hsien occupied eleven days. We started on 20 February, reached Pu-tai K'ou (the boundary wbetween the provinces of Hupei and Szechwan) on the 6th, passed through the Fêng Hsiang gorge- perhaps the grandest of all the defiles- on the 8th, and beached ourselves under the walls of the city of Wan-hsien on the morning of the 12th. Here I paid off my hardy boatmen, and prepared for my overland journey to Ch'êng-tu.

A little pear-grey glove, dropped and abandoned on the floor, may give its owner's sex and chic to the whole room; whilst an entire house-full of so-called womanly trifles will have only a neuter flavour about them, if chic be not there.

He by the heeles him hung upon a tree, / And baffuld so, that all which passed by / The picture of his punishment might see […].

He has cleverly figured out that the deluded pro-priestess faction of the church already has its necessary two-thirds majority and that the time to act is now.