Every mile or so there are tea-houses, and for a couple of cash a coolie can get a cup of tea, with leaves sufficient to make a dozen cups, and as much boiling water as he wants.  Szech’wan, the country, its people, their ways and methods, and much information thereto appertaining, is already in print.  It were useless to give more of it here—­and, reader, you will thank me!  But the thirst of Szech’wan—­that thirst which is unique in the whole of the Empire, and eclipsed nowhere on the face of the earth, except perhaps on the Sahara—­one does not hear about.

Many an Englishman would give much for the Chinese coolie’s thirst—­so very, very much.

I wonder whether you, reader, were ever thirsty?  Probably not.  You get a thirst which is not insatiable.  Yours is born of nothing extraordinary; yours can be satisfied by a gulp or two of water, or perhaps by a drink—­or perhaps two, or perhaps three—­of something stronger.  The Chinese coolie’s thirst arises from the grilling sun, from a dancing glare, from hard hauling, struggling with 120 pounds slung over his shoulders, dangling at the end of a bamboo pole.  I have had this thirst of the Chinese coolie—­I know it well.  It is born of sheer heat and sheer perspiration.  Every drop of liquid has been wrung out of my body; I have seemed to have swum in my clothes, and inside my muscles have seemed to shrink to dry sponge and my bones to dry pith.  My substance, my strength, my self has drained out of me.  I have been conscious of perpetual evaporation and liquefaction.  And I have felt that I must stop and wet myself again.  I really must wet myself and swell to life again.  And here we sit at the tea-shop.  People come and stare at me, and wonder what it is.  They, too, are thirsty, for they are all coolies and have the coolie thirst.

I wet myself.  I pour in cup after cup, and my body, my self sucks it in, draws it in as if it were the water of life.  Instantly it gushes out again at every pore.  I swill in more, and out it rushes again, madly rushes out as quickly as it can.  I swill in more and more, and out it comes defiantly.  I can keep none inside me.  Useless—­I cannot quench my thirst.  At last the thirst thinks its conquest assured, taking the hot tea for a signal of surrender; but I pour in more, and gradually feel the tea settling within me.  I am a degree less torrid, a shade more substantial.

And then here comes my boy.

“Master, you wantchee makee one drink brandy-and-soda.  No can catchee soda this side—­have got water.  Can do?”

Ah! shall I?  Shall I?  No!  I throw it away from me, fling a bottle of cheap brandy which he had bought for me at Chung-king away from me, and the boy looks forlorn.

Tea is the best of all drinks in China; for the traveler unquestionably the best.  Good in the morning, good at midday, good in the evening, good at night, even after the day’s toil has been forgotten.  To-morrow I shall have more walking, more thirsting, more tea.  China tea, thou art a godsend to the wayfarer in that great land!