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[[underlined]] Chapter IX. [[/underlined]] 189.

(see plan, Fig. 46) revealed nothing new; so at dusk of June 4th we closed our work at the Lei Ku T'ai.  The following day was the 4th of the Fifth Moon according to the old Chinese calendar, still followed in country districts.  The entire community was busy with preparations for the Midsummer Festival, [[superscript]] (176) [[/superscript]] to begin next day, and we could not have found
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[[superscript]] (176) [[/superscript]] Commonly called by foreign residents the "Dragon-boat Festival", because in central and southern China (those parts of the country first reached by Europeans arriving by sea) it is marked by races of the so-called "dragon-boats"---long narrow canoes with (detachable) carved and colored heads and tails of dragons at bow and stern, and manned by large crews of paddlers (see Fig. 55, from a photograph).  Undoubtedly a very ancient rain-making rite, it was until recently observed over a wide area in southeastern Asia and the adjacent islands.  Now, however, it is falling into disuse, and is in some places even prohibited by law, on account of the free fights to which it is apt to give rise.
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men willing to work for us even had we wished.  We occupied out time with preparations for our departure and in scouting the neighboring country-side for mounds which looked as though they might repay investigation at some later time.  In the course of these explorations we visited a hill south of the Yu Ho crowned with one of those "cities of refuge" so common in Chinese rural districts---a low and roughly circular wall of dry rubble without a gateway, where the peasantry of the locality might congregate to defend themselves in time of danger; but the place showed no signs of any very early or prolonged occupancy.
  Thus our stay in the Yu Ho Chên region drew to a close.  Throughout it, in spite of my earlier fears and though the weather had in general been hot, humid and threatening, there had been not a single shower.  Sometime later, Mr. Tung admitted to me how he^[[,]] in a spirit of jest, had told the local peasants that in reality I was the God of Drought, near whom rain never fell; and how they, believing him in view of the lateness of the monsoon that year (see p. 146 and note 147-a), had expressed a fervent hope that I might soon betake myself