ny valleys,
veritable gems of tropical beauty; you pass with one step from a waste
of rock and sand to a garden-like oasis of soft green and rippling
waters. Yunnan's chequered history is revealed in the varied peoples
that inhabit the deep valleys and narrow river banks. Nominally annexed
to the empire by Kublai Khan, the Mongol, in the thirteenth century,
ever since the Chinese people have been at work peacefully and
irresistibly making the conquest real, and now they are found all over
the province, as a matter of course occupying the best places. But they
have not exterminated the aborigines, nor have they assimilated them to
any degree. To-day the tribes constitute more than one half the
population, and an ethnological map of Yunnan is a wonderful patchwork,
for side by side and yet quite distinct, you find scattered about
settlements of Chinese, Shans, Lolos, Miaos, Losus, and just what some
of these are is still an unsolved riddle. To add to the confusion there
is a division of religions hardly known elsewhere, for out of the
population of twelve millions it is estimated that three or four
millions are Mohammedans. To be sure, they seem much like the others,
and generally all get on together very well, for Moslem pride of
religion does not find much response with the practical Chinese, and the
Buddhist is as tolerant here as elsewhere. But the Mohammedan rebellion
of half a century ago has left terrible memories; then add to that the
ill-feeling between the Chinese and the tribesmen, and the general
discontent at the prohibition of poppy-growing, and it is plain that
Yunnan offers a fine field for long-continued civil disorder with all
the possibility of foreign interference.

The early hours of our first day's march led us along the great western
trade route, and we met scores of people hurrying towards the capital,
mostly coolies carrying on their backs, or slung from a bamboo pole
across their shoulders, great loads of wood, charcoal, fowls, rice,
vegetables. Every one was afoot or astride a pony, for there was nothing
on wheels, not even a barrow. The crowd lacked the variety in colour and
cut of dress of a Hindu gathering; all had black hair and all wore blue
clothes, and one realized at once how much China loses in not having a
picturesque and significant head covering like the Indian turban. But
the faces showed more diversity both in hue and in feature than I had
looked for. In America we come in contact