of bamboo and "feathered" with a triangular piece
of the same wood. Those for shooting birds and squirrels were sharpened to
a needle point, but the hunting darts were tipped with steel or iron. The
poison they extracted from a plant, which I never saw, and it was said that
it takes effect very rapidly.

The muntjac which the Lisos killed had been shot in the side with a single
arrow and they assured us that only the flesh immediately surrounding the
wound had been spoiled for food. These natives like the Mosos, Lolos, and
others carried their darts in a quiver made from the leg skin of a black
bear, and none of the men wished to sell their weapons; I finally did
obtain a crossbow and quiver for six dollars (Mexican).

Two days before we left Tai-ping-pu, three of the Lisos guided my wife and
me to a large cave where they said there was a colony of bats. The cavern
was an hour's ride from camp, and proved to be in a difficult and dangerous
place in the side of a cliff just above a swift mountain stream. We strung
our gill net across the entrance and then sent one of the natives inside to
stir up the animals while we caught them as they flew out. In less than
half an hour we had twenty-eight big brown bats, but our fingers were cut
and bleeding from the vicious bites of their needle-like teeth. They all
represented a widely distributed species which we had already obtained at
Yuen-nan Fu.

From Lung-ling I had sent a runner to Mr. Evans at Ta-li Fu asking him to
forward to Teng-yueh the specimens which we had left in his care, and the
day following our visit to the bat cave the caravan bearing our cases
passed us at Tai-ping-pu. We, ourselves, were about ready to leave and two
days later at ten o'clock in the morning we stood on a precipitous mountain
summit, gazing down at the beautiful Teng-yueh plain which lay before us
like a relief map. It is as flat as a plain well can be and, except where a
dozen or more villages cluster on bits of dry land, the valley is one vast
watery rice field. Far in the distance, outside the gray city walls, we
could see two temple-like buildings surrounded by white-walled compounds,
and Wu told us they were the houses of the Customs officials.

Teng-yueh, although only given the rank of a "ting" or second-class Chinese
city, is one of the most important places in the province, for it stands as
the door to India. All the trade of Burma and Yuen-nan flows back and forth
through the gates