For into his village, filled with immemorial peace and quiet, where every day was exactly like the day before, had suddenly ridden two big men with white skins and blue eyes, and a little one with lots of hair beneath a broad sun helmet.  And almost immediately the little one had jumped from the horse and pointed a black box with a shiny front at him and his Priscilla.  At once, but without loss of dignity, Priscilla vanished into the house, but John Alden stood his ground, for a beautiful new tin can had been thrust into his hand and before he had really discovered what it was the little person had smiled at him and turned her attention to the charming street of his village.  There the great water buffalos lazily chewed their cuds standing guard over the tiny brown-skinned natives who played trustingly with the calves almost beneath their feet.

Such was our invasion of the first Shan village we had ever seen, and regretfully we rode away across the plain between the walls of waving grass toward the Nam-ting River.  Two canoes, each dug out of a single log, and tightly bound together, formed the ferry, but the packs were soon across the muddy stream and the mules were made to swim to the other bank.  Shortly after leaving the ferry we emerged from the vast stretches of rank grass on to the open rice paddys which stretched away in a gently undulating plain from the river to the mountains.  Strangely enough we saw no ducks or geese, but three great flocks of cranes (probably Grus communis) rose from the fields and wheeled in ever-widening spirals above our heads until they were lost in the blue depths of the sky.

Away in the distance we saw a wooded knoll with a few wisps of smoke curling above its summit, but not until we were well-nigh there did we realize that its beautiful trees sheltered the thatched roofs of Meng-ting.  But this was only the “residential section” of the village and below the knoll on the opposite side of a shallow stream lay the shops and markets.

We camped on a dry rice dyke where a fringe of jungle separated us from the nearest house.  As soon as the tents were up I announced our coming to the mandarin and requested an interview at five o’clock.  Wu and I found the yamen to be a large well-built house, delightfully cool and exhibiting several foreign articles which evinced its proximity to Burma.

We were received by a suave Chinese “secretary” who shortly introduced the mandarin—­a young Shan not more than twenty years old who only recently had succeeded his late father as chief of the village.  The boy was dressed in an exceedingly long frock coat, rather green and frayed about the elbows, which in combination with his otherwise typical native dress gave him a most extraordinary appearance.

We soon discovered that the Chinese secretary who did all the talking was the “power behind the throne.”  He accepted my gift of a package of tea with great pleasure, but the information about hunting localities for which we asked was not forthcoming.  He first said that he knew of a place where there were tiger and leopard, but that he did not dare to reveal it to us for we might be killed by the wild animals and he would be responsible for our deaths; bringing to his attention the fact that tigers had never been recorded from the Meng-ting region did not impress him in the slightest.