most intelligent, faithful, and altogether charming natives
whom we met in all Yuen-nan. He was an uncouth savage when he first came to
us, but in a very short time he had learned our camp ways and was as good a
servant as any we had.

CHAPTER XXI

TRAVELING TOWARD TIBET

Since the hunters at the "Windy Camp" had proved so worthless and the traps
had yielded no small mammals new to our collection, we decided to cross the
mountains toward the Chung-tien road which leads into Tibet.

The head _mafu_ explored the trail and reported that it was impassable but,
after an examination of some of the worst barriers, we decided that they
could be cleared away and ordered the caravan to start at half past seven
in the morning.

Before long we found that the _mafus_ were right. The trail was a mass of
tangled underbrush and fallen logs and led straight up a precipitous
mountain through a veritable jungle of dwarf bamboo. It was necessary to
stop every few yards to lift the loads over a barrier or cut a passage
through the bamboo thickets, and had it not been for the adjustable pack
saddles we never could have taken the caravan over the trail.

Late in the afternoon the exhausted men and animals dragged themselves to
the summit of the mountain, for it was not a pass. In a few hours we had
come from autumn to mid-winter where the ground was frozen and covered with
snow. We were at an altitude of more than 15,000 feet and far above all
timber except the rhododendron forest which spread itself out in a low gray
mass along the ridges. It was difficult to make the slightest exertion in
the thin air and a bitterly cold wind swept across the peaks so that it was
impossible to keep warm even when wrapped in our heaviest coats.

The servants and _mafus_ suffered considerably but it was too late to go on
and there was no alternative but to spend the night on the mountain. As
soon as the tents were up the men huddled disconsolately about the fire,
but we started out with a bag of traps while Heller went in the opposite
direction. We expected to catch some new mammals during the night, for
there were great numbers of runways on the bare hillsides. The ground was
frozen so solidly that it was necessary to cut into the little _Microtus_
tunnels with a hatchet in order to set the traps and we were almost frozen
before the work was completed. The next morning we had caught twenty
specimens of a new white-bellied meadow vole and a rem