en murdered in civilised foreign countries?
An anti-foreign riot in China--and at what rare intervals do
anti-foreign riots occur in its vast empire--may cause some destruction
of property; but it may be questioned if the destruction done in China
by the combined anti-foreign riots of the last twenty-three years
equalled the looting done by the civilised London mob who a year or two
ago on a certain Black Monday played havoc in Oxford-street and
Piccadilly. "It is less dangerous," says one of the most accurate
writers on China, the Rev. A. H. Smith, himself an American missionary,
"for a foreigner to cross China than for a Chinese to cross the United
States." And there are few who give the matter a thought but must admit
the correctness of Mr. Smith's statement.

On May 17th I was on the road again. The fort of Manyuen is outside the
town, and some little distance beyond it the dry creek bends into the
pathway at a point where it is bordered with cactus and overshadowed by
a banyan tree. This is said to be the exact spot where Margary was
killed.

CHAPTER XXII.

CHINA AS A FIGHTING POWER--THE KACHINS--AND THE LAST STAGE INTO BHAMO.

We now left the low land and the open country, the pastures and meadows,
and climbed up the jungle-clad spurs which form the triangular dividing
range that separates the broad and open valley of the Taiping, where
Manyuen is situated, from the confined and tropical valley of the
Hongmuho, which lies at the foot of the English frontier fort of
Nampoung, the present boundary of Burma. Two miles below Nampoung the
two rivers join, and the combined stream flows on to enter the Irrawaddy
a mile or two above Bhamo.

No change could be greater or more sudden. We toiled upwards in the
blazing sun, and in two hours we were deep in the thickest jungle, in
the exuberant vegetation of a tropical forest. We had left the valley of
the peaceful Shans and were in the forest inhabited by other "protected
barbarians" of China--the wild tribes of Kachins, who even in Burma are
slow to recognise the beneficent influences of British frontier
administration. Nature serenely sleeps in the valley; nature is
throbbing with life in the forest, and the humming and buzzing of all
insect life was strange to our unaccustomed ears.

A well-cut path has been made through the forest, and caravans of mules
laden with bales of cotton were in the early stages of the long
overland journey to Yunnan. Their bells t