Soon afterwards, expressing my thanks as well as I could, I left the shed and proceeded on my way towards Lodz. There was sufficient light to enable me to preserve a general direction and to avoid the numerous parties of German cavalry which were patrolling the country, but long before the night was over I had got beyond these. I do not think they extended more than ten or twelve miles beyond the points at which they had invaded Poland.
During the night I met with no adventures more serious than floundering into several water-courses and falling into a couple of ditches in endeavouring to jump them, for the ditches are very wide and deep in this country. To avoid such accidents, I afterwards kept to the roads. These are not bounded by hedges or fences of any kind, and there was nearly an entire absence of bridges. Arriving at a brook, the traveller might or might not find stepping-stones. In the absence of these, one had to wade through the water, which in one case I experienced at this time came nearly up to the knees.
I could not know, of course, if the people knew that a state of war existed, but I saw no watchmen or police about the few hamlets and the villages I passed through. Once I was attacked by a couple of very fierce dogs, and was compelled to kill one of them to get free; but until after four o'clock the next morning no men appeared. A few of those who saluted me seemed surprised that I did not make a reply, but I could only raise my hat, and by doing so I perhaps occasioned greater astonishment than I would have done by entirely ignoring them.
There were hardly any trees in this country. The farms and isolated houses were usually marked by a poplar or two and a clump of willows, and there were some willows along the courses of the streams. The buildings, except the churches, were generally very low-pitched, and there was a singular paucity of chimneys, since stoves were the nearly universal means of warming the rooms; indeed, I saw stoves in this country which were almost rooms in themselves, with sleeping-places above the flues. Turf was the chief fuel used, and the dried droppings of horses and cattle.
There was a shower of rain during the night, but the morning broke clear and bright, and it was daylight long before I was as far beyond the reach of the Huns as I could have wished to be. The country seemed to be very sparsely peopled. The peasantry were early risers, and most of them seemed to be in the fields before five o'clock. The crops were to a great extent cut, and some were in process of cartage in heavy waggons. It was a very hot day.