foreign to the Chinese language), and a good many of the
men are sufficiently educated to read the Chinese character even if they
do not write it. The forward racial condition of the Lolo people in this
district is far greater than that of the people of the same tribe to the
west of Tali-fu, and in latitudes where their language and customs of
life and dress are more or less maintained. The women are generally of
better physique than the Chinese, principally on account of the fact
that their work is almost exclusively outdoor; but as they begin to copy
the Chinese, and live a more sedentary life, this fine physique will
probably gradually disappear. A good many already bind their feet.

When I came out in the early morning the thermometer was twenty degrees
below zero, and my nose was red and without feeling. _Feng-mao_[AQ] and
great coat were required, but I was totally oblivious of the hour's
stiff climbing awaiting me immediately outside the town, to reach the
highest point in which bathed me in perspiration as if I had played
three sets of tennis in the tropics.

Mountains were wild and barren, with nothing in them to enable one to
forget in natural beauty the fatigues of a toilsome ascent. Villages
came now and again in sight, stretched out at the extremity of the plain
before my eyes, with their white gables, red walls, and black tiled
roofs, but during the day we passed through two only. The first was a
little place where decay would have been absolute had it not been for
the likin[AR] flag, which enables "squeezes" to be extorted ruthlessly
from the muleteer and conveyed to the pockets of the prospering customs
agent. It boasted only ten or twelve tumbling lean-to tenements, where
my sympathy went out to the half-dozen physical wrecks of men who came
slowly and stared long, and wondered at the commonest article of my
meager impedimenta. They seemed poorer and lower down the human scale
than any I had yet seen. On one of the ragged garments worn by a man of
about twenty-five I counted no less than thirty-four patches of
different shapes, sizes and materials, hieroglyphically and skillessly
thrown together to hide his sore-strewn back; but still his brown
unwashed flesh was visible in many places.

Looking upon them, one did not like to think that these beings were men,
men with passions like to one's own, for all the interests, real and
imaginary, all the topics which should expand the mind of man, and
connect