arming
steepness, a road which at home would never be negotiated on foot or on
horseback, but which here forms part of the main trade route. From the
extreme summit one dropped abruptly into a protecting gorge, where
falling cascades, sparkling like crystal showers in the feeble sunlight
occasionally breaking through, danced playfully over the smooth-worn,
slippery rocks; a stream foamed noisily over the loose stones, and leapt
in rushing rapids where the earth had given way; there was no grass, no
scenery, no life, and in the sudden turnings the hurricane roared with
heavenly anger through the long deep chasms, over the
twelve-inch river-beds at the foot.

At Lai-t'eo-p'o accommodation at night was fairly good. Men laughed
hilariously at me when I raved at some carpenters to desist their clumsy
hammering three feet above my head. Hundreds of dogs yelped unceasingly
at the moon, and with the usual rows of the men in mutual invitation to
"Come and wash your feet," or "Ching fan, ching fan," the draughts, the
creaks and cracks, the unintermitting din, and so much else, one was not
sorry to rise again with the lark and push onwards in the cold.

Down below this horrid town there is a plain; in this plain there is a
hole fifty feet deep, and had my pony, which I was leading, not pulled
me away from falling thereinto, my story would not now be telling.

To Kongshan (6,700 feet), past Yei-chu-t'ang (8,100 feet) and
Hsiao-lang-t'ang (7,275 feet), one hundred li away, was a journey
through country considerably more interesting, especially towards the
end of the day, a peculiar combination of wooded slope and rough,
rock-worn pathways.

Hsiao-lang-t'ang, twenty-five li from the end of the stage, overlooks a
wide expanse of barren, uninviting moorland. Deep, jagged gullies break
the uneven rolling of the mountains; dark, weird caverns of terrible
immensity yawn hungrily from the surface of weariest desolation, ever
widening with each turn. Mist hid the ugliest spots high up among the
peaks, whose white summits, peeping sullenly from out this blue sea of
damp haze, told a wondrous story of winter's withering all life to
death, a spot than which in summer few places on earth would be more
entrancing. But these mountains are breathing out a solitude which is
eternal. Man here has never been. Far away beyond lies the country of
the aborigines; but even the Lolo, wild and rugged as the country,
fearless of man and beast, have neve