If these are steady it is lucky, if unbroken it is the
exception; there are never more. Over the bedstead (more often than not,
by the way, it is composed of four planks of varying lengths and
thickness, placed across two trestles) I used first to place my oilskin,
then my _p'u-k'ai_, and that little creeper which rhymes with hug did
not disturb me much. Rats ran round and over me in profusion, and, of
course, the best room being invariably nearest to the pigsties, there
were the usual stenches. The floor was Mother Earth, which in wet
weather became mud, and quite a common thing it was for my joys to be
enhanced during a heavy shower of rain by my having to sleep, almost
suffocated, mackintosh over my head, owing to a slight break in the
continuity of the roof--my umbrella being unavailable, as one of my men
dropped it over a precipice two days out. For many reasons a camp-bed is
to Europeans an indispensable part of even the most modest traveling
equipment. I was many times sorry that I had none with me.
The inns of Szech'wan, however, are by many degrees better than those of
Yuen-nan, which are sometimes indescribable. Earthen floors are saturated
with damp filth and smelling decay; there are rarely the paper windows,
but merely a sort of opening of woodwork, through which the offensive
smells of decaying garbage and human filth waft in almost to choke one;
tables collapse under the weight of one's dinner; walls are always in
decay and hang inwards threateningly; wicked insects, which crawl and
jump and bite, creep over the side of one's rice bowl--and much else.
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