We were now a party of nine—­my own three men, an extra coolie I had engaged to rush Tengyueh in three days from Yung-ch’ang, four soldiers, and the paymaster of the crowd.  We still had ninety li to cover, so that when we left the shade of two immense trees which sheltered me and my perspiring men, one of the soldiers agreed that everyone had to clear from our path.  We brooked no interception until we reached the entrance to the climb, where I met two Europeans, of the Customs staff at Tengyueh, who had come down here to camp out for the Chinese New Year Holiday.  I knew that these men were not Englishmen.  I was so thirsty, and the best they could do was to keep a man talking in the sun outside their well-equipped tent.  How I could have done with a drink!

A tributary of the Salwen flows down the ravine.  Too terrible a climb to the top was it for me to take notes.  I got too tired.  Everything was magnificently green, and Nature’s reproduction seemed to be going on whilst one gazed upon her.  But the natural glories of this beautiful gorge, with a dainty touch of the tropical mingling with the mighty aspect of jungle forest, with glistening cascades and rippling streams, where all was bountiful and exquisitely beautiful, failed to hold one spellbound.  For since I had left Tali-fu I had rarely been out of sight of some of the best scenery on earth.  Yet vegetation was very different to that which we had been passing.  There were now banyans, palms, plantains, and many ferns, trees and shrubs and other products of warmer climates, which one found in Burma.  What impressed me farther up was the marvelous growth of bamboos, some rising 120 feet and 130 feet at the bend, in their various tints of green looking like delicate feathers against the haze of the sky-line, upon which houses built of bamboo from floor to roof seemed temporarily perched whilst others seemed to be tumbling down into the valley.  This spot was the nearest approach to real jungle I had seen in China; but Whilst we were climbing laboriously through this densely-covered country, over opposite—­it seemed no more than a stone’s throw—­the hills were almost bare, save for the isolated cultivation of the peasantry at the base.  But then came a division, appearing suddenly to view farther along around a bend, and I saw a continuation of the range, rising even higher, and with a tree growth even more magnificent, denser and darker still.

Here I came upon a party of soldiers with foreign military peak caps on their heads, which they wore outside over their Chinese caps.  In fact, the only two other garments besides these Chinese caps were the distinguishing marks of the military.  Coats they had, but they had been discarded at the foot of the climb, rolled into one bundle, and tied together with a piece of ribbon generally worn by the carrier to keep his trousers tight.  We were now in summer heat, and this military quintet made a peculiar sight in dusty trousers, peak caps and straw sandals,