r dared to ascend these heights.
They are mournful, cheerless, devoid of a single smile from the common
mother of us all, lacking every feature by which the earth draws man
into a spirit of unity with his God. Horrid, frowning waste and aimless
discontinuity of land, harbinger of loneliness and of evil! People, poor
struggling beings of our kind, here seemed mocked of destiny, and a hot
raging of misery waged within them, for all that the heart might desire
and wish for had to them been denied. If, indeed, the earth be the home
of hope, and man's greatest possession be hope, then would it seem that
these poor creatures were entirely cut off, shut out from life,
wandering wearisomely through the world in one long battle with Nature
whereby to gain the wherewithal to live in that grim desert. There were
no exceptions, it was the common lot. Each day and every day did these
men and women, with a stolidity of long-continued destitution, and
temporal and spiritual tribulation, gaze upon that bare, unyielding
country, pregnant only with aggravation to their own dire wretchedness.

In such spots, unhappily in Yuen-nan not few, does the mystery of life
grow ever more mysterious to one whom distress has never harassed. A
great pity seized my heart, but these poor people would probably have
laughed had they known my thoughts.

As I passed they came uninterestedly to look upon me. They watched in
expressive silence; they were silent because of poverty. And I, too,
kept a seal upon my lips as I ate the good things here provided under
the eyes of those to whom hunger had given none but a jealous outlook.
Pitiful enough were it, thought I, merely to watch without allowing
speech to escape further to taunt them. So I ate, and they looked at me.
I came and went, but never a word was uttered by these men and women, or
even by the children, whose most painful feeling seemed that of their
own feebleness. They were indeed feeble units standing in a threatening
infinitude of life, and their thoughts probably dwelt upon my luxury
and wealth as mine could not help dwelling upon their hungry town of
hungry men and famished children. Words cannot paint their poverty--men
void of hope, of life, of purpose, of idea. Happy for them that they had
known no other.

We ascended over a road of unspeakable torture to one's feet. Gazing
down, far away into a seemingly bottomless abyss, we could faintly hear
in the lulling of the wind the rush of a torr