as in charge of the oven, and toddled
about on her deformed feet as if she were walking on her heels. Her
husband, the innkeeper, brought us hot water every few minutes to keep
our tea basins full. "_Na kaishui lai_" (bring hot water), you heard on
all sides. A heap of bedding was in one corner of the room, in another
were a number of rolls of straw mattresses; a hollow joint of bamboo was
filled with chopsticks for the common use, into another bamboo the
innkeeper slipped his takings of copper cash. Hanging from the rafters
were strings of straw sandals for the poor, and hemp sandals for moneyed
wayfarers like the writer. The people who stood round, and those seated
at the tables, were friendly and respectful, and plied my men with
questions concerning their master. And I did hope that the convert was
not tempted to backslide and swerve from the truth in his answers.

My men were now anxious to push on. Over a mountainous country of
surpassing beauty, I continued my journey on foot to Fan-yien-tsen, and
rested there for the night, having done two days' journey in one.

On March 24th we were all day toiling over the mountains, climbing and
descending wooded steeps, through groves of pine, with an ever-changing
landscape before us, beautiful with running water, with cascades and
waterfalls tumbling down into the river, with magnificent glens and
gorges, and picturesque temples on the mountain tops. At night we were
at the village of Tanto, on the river, having crossed, a few li before,
over the boundary which separates the province of Szechuen from the
province of Yunnan.

From Tanto the path up the gorges leads across a rocky mountain creek
in a defile of the mountains. In England this creek would be spanned by
a bridge; but the poor heathen, in China, how do they find their way
across the stream? By a bridge also. They have spanned the torrent with
a powerful iron suspension bridge, 100 feet long by ten feet broad,
swung between two massive buttresses and approached under handsome
temple-archways.

Mists clothe the mountains--the air is confined between these walls of
rock and stone. Population is scanty, but there is cultivation wherever
possible. Villages sparsely distributed along the mountain path have
water trained to them in bamboo conduits from tarns on the hillside.
Each house has its own supply, and there is no attempt to provide for
the common good. Besides other reasons, it would interfere with the
trade