a month or so afterwards, and am
convinced that at the time I wrote the above there must have been
something radically wrong with my liver. Had it been in Killarney in
summer, nothing could have been more entrancing than the two lakes
midway between Yuen-nan-i and Hungay. Patches of light green vegetation,
interspersed with brown-red houses, skirting the lake-shore in pleasant
contrast to the green of the water, which, bathed in soft sunshine,
lapped their walls in endless restlessness. Of that delicate blue which
is indescribably beautiful, the morning sky looked down tranquilly upon
the undulating hills of grey and brown, which seemed to hem in and guard
a very fairyland. Geomancers of the place did not go wrong when they
suggested the overlooking hill-sides as suitable resting-places for the
departed. All was ancient and primitive, yet simple and glorious, and as
one of my followers called my attention to the telegraph wires, I was
struck by the fact that this alone stood as the solitary element of what
we in the West call civilization. Yet nothing bore traces of gross
uncivilization; the people, hard workers albeit, were happy and quite
content, with their slow-moving caravan, which we would, if we could,
soon displace for the railway engine. Ploughmen with their buffaloes and
their biblical ploughshare, raked over the red ground; women, with
babies on their backs, picked produce already ripe; children played
roundabout, and those old enough helped their fathers in the fields;
coolies bustled along with exchanges of merchandise with neighboring
villages, quite content if but a couple of meals each day were earned
and eaten; the official, the ruler of these peaceful people, passed with
old-time pomp--not in a modern carriage, not in a modern saloon, but in
the same way as did his ancestors back in the dim ages, in a sedan-chair
carried by men. There was plenty of everything--enough for all--but all
had to contribute to its getting. There was no greed, their few wants
were easily satisfied, and here, as everywhere in my journeyings, I have
noticed it to be the case among the common people, there was no desire
to get rich and absorb wealth. They wanted to live, to learn to labor as
little as the growth of food supplies demanded, to become fathers and
mothers, and, to their minds, to get the most out of life. And who will
contradict it? They do not see with the eyes of the West; we do not, we
cannot, see with their eyes.