To an accompaniment of barbarous noises the actors stepped out one after another and began to spin around with immense swiftness and vigor and violence, chanting the while, and soon the whole troupe would be spinning and chanting and raising the dust.

They were performing an ancient and celebrated historical play, and a Chinaman explained it to me in pidjin English as it went along.

The play was obscure enough without the explanation; with the explanation added, it was (opake).

As a drama this ancient historical work of art was defective, I thought, but as a wild and barbarous spectacle the representation was beyond criticism.
Far down the mountain we got out to look at a piece of remarkable loop-engineering--a spiral where the road curves upon itself with such abruptness that when the regular train came down and entered the loop, we stood over it and saw the locomotive disappear under our bridge, then in a few moments appear again, chasing its own tail; and we saw it gain on it, overtake it, draw ahead past the rear cars, and run a race with that end of the train.

It was like a snake swallowing itself.
Half-way down the mountain we stopped about an hour at Mr.Barnard's house for refreshments, and while we were sitting on the veranda looking at the distant panorama of hills through a gap in the forest, we came very near seeing a leopard kill a calf .-- [It killed it the day before.] -- It is a wild place and lovely.