The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-06-21
A Chinese Landscape.

It was a charming sight of nature at
 her happiest that met the eyes raised
 toward the first view of the interior of
 China. Before me was seemingly
 endless expanse of pea-green rice-felds;
 spring-green grassy meadows they
 might have been. Ahead of the Swal- low a fence of light yellow bamboo rods,
 laced together with bamboo, started to
 cross the creek from one clump of
 young willows. to another. At the
 creeks middle the fence was cut down
 to the waters edge, where it's palings
 were just barely in sight, like teeth that
 had been worn down to the gum in long-sustained effort to eat up the nyr- fad boats that bore down upon them and dragged their bottoms over them. Then the neat yellow fence rose again high out of the water, and climbed the farther bank beside a curving purse-net of woven bamboo; for all this was the great net of a fisherman, who lived near by, and made that monopolistic use of the stream which every China man seems able to make of every stream and road and bridge and public place-even the most sacred--in the en- pire Abaft the boat rose the broken ruins of an aged pi-lo, or honorable
 arch" erected, the Lord knows when,
 to the sainted memory of He alone
 knows whom. A terrace of granite
 steps led from the ruins to the water,
 and, just beyond, little side creek, the
 only sort of true road in most of China,
 went green and placid and straight
 among the thatch-roofed stone one-sto-
 ry houses of a little farm village.
 Thither I followed 1t; but had only
 time to notice that the village street
 was but four or five feet wide and
 paved with cobbles, that there were
 many blue figures in two tea-houses
 that gaped at the street like parched
 clans, that the funny betrousered chill
 dren followed us close behind, and that
 the women scuttled away at sight of us as fiddler-crabs hustle to their holes when you trespass upon their mud. remember that 1t seemed like Sunday there, as it was, and yet there is no Sunday until New-Year's, when fifteen Sundays occur in a bunch. I recollect, too, that the men all grinned when they saw us, and that we were parked at by many wolfish dogs, who every where and always scent white man perhaps because, as the Chinese de- clare, we all smell like sheep. What ever be the truth about us, I afterward discovered time and again that the scent of a white person will wake a Chinese dog out of a sound sleep. I reason it out that we appeal to the dogs neglected stomach, that his stom- ach notifies his head, and that he barks, as he always does, because he expects to dine on mutton and finds himself fooled.
 Beyond the village we climbed sky ward, and found the ascending earth no different from any treeless, grass-coat- ed hill in Pennsylvania or in England It was Uttered with familiar wild flow CTS, strewn with gray stones, and criss- crossed here and there by narrow twist ed paths. One of the humpbacked cows of China, that would pass for the "sa- cred cows of India" In Central Park or Barnum's show, stared at us out of a gentle, placid face, and then moved l along upon the slender, sleek | coated legs of a deer. Fitting like a l woven cap upon the uneven skull of the l next hill was a considerable Catholic | mission building, which We would have | visited had we not found that both of | us had left all our money aboard the !