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Page 2, letter to Col. Hecker dated Peking Nov 21 1910.

soldiers to guard me.  The soldiers were not only guards, but also eventually, friends, guides and servants.  I was charged nothing for their services but was allowed to furnish them food and to make each one a present of one Mexican dollar when bidding them good bye.

My last night at Lung-men was celebrated by the soldiers killing one of the brigands and I enclose a kodak I snapped on the chap about an hour after his death.  He was one of several, (three one night) they roped in during my stay.  They hate to kill them.  The Lt. Governor who visited me every other day, told me he liked to catch them alive, get from them names of others belonging to the crew and them by slow degrees, torture the confessors to death.

But enough of the bandits - only to add that I quickly learned the officials at Honan Fu and not put a single line of decoration in their first statement.  When I left Honan Fu the officials, a superb body of highly intelligent gentlemen, gave me the finest dinner of my life, in the Yamen- (Government Palace.) More style, more elegance, and greater refinement than I have ever seen anywhere before.  And because of the mud, water, and filth in the streets of this ancient city, all of the guests had to be carried in chairs on top of poles carried on mens shoulders some of whom waded to their thighs in mud.

This city is walled and is about one mile square, containing 300,000 people.  In the early centuries the first walls were 60 li on four sides - nearly 25 miles each way - ruins and one pagoda intact erected before Christ, still remain.  Lung-men a gorge between two mountains is about 10 miles away from Honan Fu - a garden of farms the entire way - then the hundred of cave temples containing thousands of Buddhistic figures, all stone, running from 1 inch to 60 ft high.  But these I must not try to describe in this already ridiculously long screed.  i have piles of photographs in process of development and over fifty different rock rubbings of details beyond the power of camera - made by experts of my little expedition, which I hope some day will help some struggling student to find his way and amuse my friends in the meantime.

The places I have seen have furnished me mort light than I dreamed could be seen anywhere.  There is one more spot in China which some day I must visit.  You will find it on our map - Ta Tung-fu - very near the outer Great Wall in the province of Shanai.  Now, this place is snow-buried, but late March and early April is the proper time to go, and if I can get the right sort of a gang to accompany me, I shall go nest year before returning home.  My photographer and the two rubbers of inscriptions have volunteered - for a consideration.  But Nan, my interpreter - my cook and servant, all three have deserted the good cause - The latter named three say emphatically No - never again!  They have had their fill!

Sinan Fu in Shenai, a point we had hoped to reach after Lung-men, we could not get to because of floods, but that place, to me, is unimportant compared with what I have already seen and Ta Tung,fu which I hope to see.  Then too, Sian Fu within five years can be reached by railroad and the, if alive, and still vigorous, I may worship at its temples.

Ta Tung-fu has early Wei Buddhistic sculpture done during a lull at Lung-men - in fact, a second and the only other Lung-men on earth.

If I can see that and some day Angkor Wat in Cambodia, I can feel that I have seen all of the best Buddhistic sculpture in the great centers where it exists and form whence the best can never be removed - a case of going to the mountain.  I shall remain here two or three weeks longer to finish the details of my little trip, then Mukden for three of four days, then Shanghai and vicinity for a couple of weeks.  Afterward, probably Hong Kong and Canton, and then if time permits possibly to Bankok and if possible from there to Angkor Wat - but this latter scheme now in my heart, is may be, only a dream.

During my interior trip I was perfectly well; to bed at 8.30 every evening but two - up at five every morning - always working happily and without interruptions - and in one month under such conditions, heaps can be accomplished.