There were only 9 ft of water on the bar, though it was high tide, and the Shengking needed more, so we were shipped off onto a dancing launch and bustled away lest we should miss the tide. We passed an unfortunate Jap which had just got onto the bar and stuck there and an Englishman which had been there for 4 days. It was strewn with a plentiful allowance of round grave mounds like big molehills. We got to Tientsin about 12 and had 3 hours there - quite enough, for a dustier arider town it would be difficult to imagine. The sun was very hot and we were baked in our thick sea clothes.
Hot weather is so much hotter in cold countries than in warm.
They are building like mad in the foreign quarters, banks, shops, the arl sarts. After lunch we rickshawed out to the French Cathedral which was burnt in '70, restored and reburnt in 1900. We lost our way and a kind English doctor got off his bicycle and came to our help, we not being able to communicate with the Chinese gnomes. The English guns were there and there were wire entanglements all across. The Boxers came pouring down that road.