hed the entrance
to the climb, where I met two Europeans, of the Customs staff at
Tengyueh, who had come down here to camp out for the Chinese New Year
Holiday. I knew that these men were not Englishmen. I was so thirsty,
and the best they could do was to keep a man talking in the sun outside
their well-equipped tent. How I _could_ have done with a drink!

A tributary of the Salwen flows down the ravine. Too terrible a climb to
the top was it for me to take notes. I got too tired. Everything was
magnificently green, and Nature's reproduction seemed to be going on
whilst one gazed upon her. But the natural glories of this beautiful
gorge, with a dainty touch of the tropical mingling with the mighty
aspect of jungle forest, with glistening cascades and rippling streams,
where all was bountiful and exquisitely beautiful, failed to hold one
spellbound. For since I had left Tali-fu I had rarely been out of sight
of some of the best scenery on earth. Yet vegetation was very different
to that which we had been passing. There were now banyans, palms,
plantains, and many ferns, trees and shrubs and other products of warmer
climates, which one found in Burma. What impressed me farther up was the
marvelous growth of bamboos, some rising 120 feet and 130 feet at the
bend, in their various tints of green looking like delicate feathers
against the haze of the sky-line, upon which houses built of bamboo from
floor to roof seemed temporarily perched whilst others seemed to be
tumbling down into the valley. This spot was the nearest approach to
real jungle I had seen in China; but Whilst we were climbing laboriously
through this densely-covered country, over opposite--it seemed no more
than a stone's throw--the hills were almost bare, save for the isolated
cultivation of the peasantry at the base. But then came a division,
appearing suddenly to view farther along around a bend, and I saw a
continuation of the range, rising even higher, and with a tree growth
even more magnificent, denser and darker still.

Here I came upon a party of soldiers with foreign military peak caps on
their heads, which they wore outside over their Chinese caps. In fact,
the only two other garments besides these Chinese caps were the
distinguishing marks of the military. Coats they had, but they had been
discarded at the foot of the climb, rolled into one bundle, and tied
together with a piece of ribbon generally worn by the carrier to keep
his trousers tight.