However, the longest delays come to an end at last, and at 11 A.M. on the 14th November we started on the last stage of our journey. The missionaries walked some little way with us to the outskirts of the east suburb, and before leaving they insisted on our promising to visit their countrymen in the various stations we should pass through.
That evening we stopped at a very comfortable inn in a little town called Salaki. Everywhere were signs that we were approaching the capital; the streets were better looked after, and the inn was quite the best we had yet seen.
All Chinese inns seem to be built on the same principle. One passes through a wide entrance, on one side of which is the kitchen, on the other a sort of eating-house, into the courtyard, which varies in size according to the traffic. Opposite the entrance are the best rooms, kept for distinguished guests, and all round are smaller rooms for people of less importance, carters and servants. Every room is furnished with a k'ang or stove bed, and the better class inns have cupboards, tables, and chairs, but only in the best rooms. As long as one can get into these one can make oneself fairly comfortable, but should they be occupied one's lot is not an enviable one. Perhaps the most noticeable sign of civilization was glass windows, which we saw for the first time in Pao T'eo, and always daily afterwards. It was no longer necessary to carry large stores of provisions—these were obtainable everywhere; but in their place we had to carry an almost equal weight of cash, fifteen thousand of which, weighing no less than ninety pounds, we brought from Pao T'eo.
[Illustration: ON THE ROAD FROM PAO T'EO TO PEKIN.]
Next morning we started soon after sunrise. The shopkeepers were just taking down their shutters as we left the inn, and the city was waking up to its daily life; most of the people appeared to be engaged in the silk trade, so I suppose the worm is cultivated somewhere in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately, as we strolled on ahead of the carts we took a wrong turning, and had to retrace our steps almost to the inn before we found out where we had made the mistake. We then hurried after the carts, only to find that their road and ours joined almost at the very spot from which we had turned back. A stern chase is proverbially a long one, and this was no exception to the rule.