The plain was
low and damp and the paths and roads lay deep in mud. They had a
long toilsome walk between the rice-fields until they came to the
first village of these barbarians of the plain. It was very much
like a Chinese village,--dirty, noisy, and swarming with
wild-looking children and wolfish dogs.
The visitors were received with the utmost disdain. The Chinese
students were of course well known, for these aborigines had long
ago adopted their customs and language. But the Chinese visitors
were in company with the foreigners, and all foreigners were
outcaste in this eastern plain. The men shouted the familiar
"foreign devil" and walked contemptuously away. The dirty women
and children fled into their grass huts and set the dogs upon the
strangers. They tried by all sorts of kindnesses to gain a
hearing, but all to no effect. So they gave it up, and plodded
through the mud and water a mile farther on to the next village.
But village number two received them in exactly the same way.
Only rough words and the barks of cruel dogs met them. The next
village was no better, the fourth a little worse.
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