g the Chinese. On all sides one encounters the horrible
deformity, among all classes, of all ages. The disease early manifests
itself, and I have often seen well-marked enlargement in children as
young as eight. Turn any street corner in any town of importance in
Western Yunnan and you will meet half a dozen cases; there must be few
families in the western portion of the province free from the taint.

On a day, for example, like this (May 5th), when the road was more than
usually mountainous, though that may have been an accident, my chairen
was a "thickneck" and my two soldiers were "thicknecks." At the village
of Huanglien-pu, where I had lunch, the landlady of the inn had a
goitrous neck that was swelled out half-way to the shoulder, and her son
was a slobbering-mouthed cretin with the intelligence of an animal. And
among the people who gathered round me in a dull, apathetic way every
other one was more or less marked with the disease and its attendant
mental phenomena. Again, at the inn in a little mountain village, where
we stopped for the night, mother, father, and every person in the house,
to the number of nine, above the age of childhood was either goitrous or
cretinous, dull of intelligence, mentally verging upon dementia in three
cases, in two of which physical growth had been arrested at childhood.

Rarely during my journey to Burma was I offended by hearing myself
called "_Yang kweitze_" (foreign devil), although this is the universal
appellation of the foreigner wherever Mandarin is spoken in China.
To-day, however, (May 6th), I was seated at the inn in the town of
Chutung when I heard the offensive term. I was seated at a table in the
midst of the accustomed crowd of Chinese. I was on the highest seat, of
course, because I was the most important person present, when a
bystander, seeing that I spoke no Chinese, coolly said the words "_Yang
kweitze_" (foreign devil). I rose in my wrath, and seized my whip. "You
Chinese devil" (_Chung kweitze_), I said in Chinese, and then I assailed
him in English. He seemed surprised at my warmth, but said nothing, and,
turning on his heel, walked uncomfortably away.

I often regretted afterwards that I did not teach the man a lesson, and
cut him across the face with my whip; yet, had I done so, it would have
been unjust. He called me, as I thought, "_Yang kweitze_," but I have no
doubt, having told the story to Mr. Warry, the Chinese adviser to the
Government of Burma, t