52 overstarts for a trip into the interior. Saturday was a lovely day, a pouring rain and freezing cold. The streets were rivers and lakes it must have been. The landlord of the inn had promised to obtain a cart & riding ponies but said none were far away coming. He kept assuring me that they would arrive soon at any moment but at noon when I finally pinned him down he admitted that he had made no efforts to obtain any. "It is raining too hard" was his excuse. -The usual thing- instead of telling me that he did not want to bother, he had to do about it, typically Chinese! So we started out to dig up the animals for ourselves. We finally found three riding ponies which we purchased for 100 after two hours of hard haggling. They were not bad animals but of course we had to pay more than they were worth. We expected that if a Chinaman knows you want anything in a hurry, it is not too bad. But there he does not differ much from other races! The horsemen agreed to have a cart with 3 mules ready for us at 10 next morning. We were to pay $3.50 per day. I knew of course that they would not arrive at the hour agreed upon & was equally surprised when they turned up at 1:30 P.M., But they had those 'claws'! Then I had an hour's chat & around up them for the afternoon, so we did not get away till 4 P.M. until bad, considering