We left Tali Fu on a stormy-looking morning, accompanied by the usual windy gusts, and after about a couple of miles we reached the famous temple of the goddess of mercy, the Buddhist Kwanyin. Our coolies went in to offer incense and to invoke the goddess, as they did on their arrival at Tali Fu; for she is a great favourite with the coolie class. There is a beautiful little shrine perched on a big rock in a sort of small tank, which the goddess (under the guise of an old woman) is supposed to have brought here. In the courtyard beyond is a Buddhist temple, and in one of the side courts a temple to a famous general, containing a statue of him much more life-like than any we have yet seen. The head coolie took this opportunity of consulting the goddess as to his mother’s welfare—he has not seen her for over ten years—but the answer was both unsatisfactory and vague! Our head coolie is a quaint individual, but decidedly attractive. When we gave him a tael for a pork-feast for the men he kept back part of it, and they were extremely angry. In order to appease them, he not only had to pay up, but also to give them a pork-feast on his own account. He wears a most beautiful jade bangle, and is always immaculately clean to look at, however dust-stained the rest of us may be. Some Chinamen have that delightful quality of always looking clean and keeping tidy.

When we were ready to start again the rain came down in torrents, so the men put on their hats and every one demurred to going on. There was no time to waste, however, so we insisted on setting out, and after a time the rain stopped and the wind soon dried our wet clothes. Turning down the valley after passing through Siakwan, we entered the defile through a heavy gateway, which is part of the fortifications, through which the wind tore like a hurricane, snatching off the black scarf I had wound round my hair in Chinese fashion, for it was impossible to keep on our gigantic hats. We made our way through an impressive gorge, following the river till we came to our halting-place at night. We had learnt at Tali that the official rest-houses are open to travellers when not occupied by officials, so we sent on to engage rooms in one, and certainly gained both in quality and quantity, as we occupied a sort of large barn with pillars in it, which looked as if it had formerly been used as a stable. The next night we were not so lucky, and had the most riotous party of rats in the loft above us that I have ever encountered. Their revels brought down no inconsiderable portion of the ceiling on our heads, and finally the rats themselves came down in a sort of stampede upon us, showing no respect whatever for the British face or form. The early dawn was further made hideous by a chorus of geese, pigs, fowls, and mules, a horrid discord from which we hurried away into the lovely dew-drenched country. Crossing a suspension-bridge, we began a long, steep climb through the pine woods, and the miseries undergone were soon forgotten in the ever fresh beauties of the day. The long range of snow-capped mountains lay behind us, and for three hours we mounted higher and higher, coming to large trees of brilliant crimson rhododendrons, and various kinds of roses climbing high up amongst them.

As we sat in the shade near our coolies, taking a little rest, a stranger coolie came and sat down in his hat beside us, to the great indignation of one of our men, who promptly administered a kick in the rear. He returned the kick as soon as our man turned his back, but otherwise quite acquiesced in his dislodgment. A much dirtier man of our own then came and occupied the seat, perhaps in order to prevent any other intruder from doing so. The journey from Tali to Bhamo was one, if possible, of more beauty than any former day’s travel of this beautiful tour. The hedges were ablaze with blossom, and the Pyrus japonica was wonderful. The size and colour of the blossom astonished us, and also the size of the plant, which is more like a tree than a shrub. The air was sweet with jasmine and orange blossom and other shrubs of which we did not know the names. The ascents and descents grew longer and more precipitous. We saw a new variety of bridge of great interest, entirely composed of creeper. The bridge was like a hammock, but fully a hundred feet long, and very loosely woven together; the only part of it not made of creeper was a narrow plank along the centre for walking on, and the upright poles at each end. There was a creeper hand-rail, but it would have been of very little use to hold on to it, as it was only attached at the ends.

The seventh day after leaving Tali Fu, we crossed the Mekong, a most picturesque river sunk in a narrow gorge and spanned by a fine suspension-bridge. As I sat and sketched it in the early morning the air was fragrant with wild orange blossom and jessamine, and handsome plants of orange-coloured abutilon reared themselves by the roadside. My sketching of the suspension-bridges might naturally strike the eye of the engineer as incorrect, owing to the slightness of the curve; but the fact is that they are tightened up after construction with very great labour, by means of windlasses, till they are (comparatively speaking) horizontal. On the board above the entrance of the bridge was inscribed, “Built by the god.”

The mountains are part of the great Himalayan range, and the spurs run almost directly from north to south, so that our road from east to west was always up and down. On reaching our halting-place for the night we found all the inns occupied, except one where there was a room but no beds. After much altercation, they agreed at one of the inns to turn out some of the coolies and to give us their room; but on inspection the look of it was so unalluring that I went to see what the bedless room was like, and found a large barn over a stable, which contained nothing but a family altar and some fodder. This seemed infinitely preferable to us, especially as it had two large windows looking on to the mountains. We spread our oilcloth on the floor and our mattresses on it, and passed a far more comfortable night than many that we had had, being undisturbed by cats or rats. Only a night or two before, a cat had raided our larder, which we thought we had made quite secure, overturning the pan, getting the lid off, and departing with our tender young chicken, of which one leg only was left in the pan. We always had to be very careful in packing up all food before going to bed, but that mattered little, as we took none in the morning before starting. Indeed, we found we required much less food on this journey than elsewhere, and two light meals a day were amply sufficient for our needs. At midday we always lunched al fresco, being set down outside the village where the men were to get their meal.

The next day after the theft we were unable to get a chicken of any sort, and the following day we had to put up with a prehistoric beast. In fact, our hands became horny from wrestling with tough fowls. Sometimes unexpected dainties turned up, and certainly we had a novel surprise on arriving at the town of Yung Chang Fu. While sitting at supper, a visiting-card was brought in from the magistrate, with a tray containing two fine ducks, two tins of sardines, and a bottle of House of Commons whisky; two lively fowls also were deposited on the floor. We sent our thanks to the magistrate for his kindness, and accepted the fowls, but returned the remainder of his gift according to custom. Our servant had vainly been trying to get a chicken for us, so the gift was most opportune, and we should have liked to thank the polite magistrate in person.

After dinner we sent for the head coolie, as this was one of the places where we paid the wages, and were amused to see him secrete thirty-six ounces of silver up his sleeve as if it were nothing. The total cost of hire for eighteen coolies from Yünnan to Bhamo, a journey which occupied thirty-three travelling days, was a little under £34.

For the first and last time in the whole of our six months’ journey, we met a European on the road, and he kindly gave us permission not only to stay at his house at Teng Yueh, but gave us the keys of his store-room; having heard previously of our coming, he had given instructions to the caretaker to be on the look-out for us. In any case, we should not have been likely to miss him on the high-road, except at a spot where they have made a new road to shorten the distance, and where Liu took the opposite road from the one we did when he went ahead to get rooms.

Three days after we had crossed the Mekong, we had a stiffer climb down to the Salween, which is 2300 feet above sea-level. It has a shocking reputation for malaria, but at this season there was nothing to fear. However, I offered a dose of quinine to whoever wished to have it, and every one eagerly applied. The only member of the party who was unable to take quinine tried what is frequently found to be a good alternative, cinnamon. The Salween has a two-span bridge, connected in the centre by a fine block of masonry. The village close by seems to be inhabited by Shans, and the coolies took a long rest before beginning the toilsome ascent. We climbed up for about two hours, and were thankful for a night’s rest before climbing the remaining three. We had sent one of our escort ahead in good time to secure the only inn, which was of primitive construction, and of which, as not infrequently happens, the partitions were so flimsy as to allow of a fairly good view from one room into another.

The scenery next day was particularly fine, and from this point the vegetation became semi-tropical. The monkeys barked and chattered, but kept out of sight, and we spent a long day in climbing down from the eight-thousand-foot elevation to which we had climbed so laboriously on the previous evening. The following day we reached Teng Yueh in a tearing wind. In fact, we have found the wind the most fatiguing element in our travels.

Teng Yueh (or Momein, as it was formerly called) boasts an English consulate, and we were kindly entertained there by the Consul’s arrangement, although he himself was absent. His delightful Chinese major-domo received us with his best English welcome, and delighted us by at once asking “Missee want hot bath?” “Other Missee want hot bath?” and promptly went to get them ready. He proved to be the most attentive of servants, and told us we were to ask for whatever we wanted. Naturally, the first requisite seemed a washerwoman, and he promised to send “catchee female,” and the next morning he introduced an elegant native laden with jewelry. To a further request that he would procure a small piece of mutton for us to take on our journey, he said, “No can catchee mutton, but goat very good.”

The neighbourhood of Teng Yueh is picturesque, surrounded by mountains, and the town itself is more open and clean than most. The people have pleasant manners and are friendly to the foreigner. There is a new Custom House and post-office, and houses for the European staff, which are not yet all completed. These stand out conspicuously, surrounded by their walls, and we saw them many miles away as we descended from the mountains. We felt that this was our last chance of getting Chinese things, so we spent the afternoon shopping, but were not altogether successful. The jade for which the place is celebrated we found more expensive than we had expected, and there did not seem much choice. The threatening look of the sky made us procure waterproof hat-covers at one penny apiece, and they proved quite efficacious in dispersing the clouds. There were pine-apples, bananas, tomatoes, and various vegetables in the market; and we also succeeded in buying postage-stamps, of which we had found the post-office of Tali Fu practically empty. We had some difficulty, in fact, in getting them at most of the post-offices in the province of Yünnan.

And now we started on our last Chinese journey, after one day’s rest, feeling each day more regretful at the thought that it would so soon be ended. The days grew hotter and the wind stronger, and the road not nearly so beautiful, and the inns decidedly worse, yet still we looked back with wistful eyes to the “Flowery Land” (so justly named) we had passed through. The country seemed mainly inhabited by Shans, a fine, well-built race, very clean-looking, and the women picturesquely dressed. Most of them were entirely dressed in black, with large silver ornaments, and they looked very attractive with jaunty bunches of jasmine stuck in their tall black turbans. Their villages looked quite different from the Chinese villages. The inns look miserable, but are less abject than they appear; and when, to my surprise, in the dim light I saw through the airy bamboo screen (which formed the wall) a portly pig arise from my side, I thought how often one had passed much less comfortable nights in pleasanter surroundings! I think the pig must have taken up her residence there when I was asleep.

From Teng Yueh to Bhamo the route lies all the way along the river-side of the Taping, and the first part of it is most tiresome, as it is constantly in the shingly bed of the river itself, where the heat of the sun is reflected from the stones. Our coolies’ clothing grew daily less, and even the chilly creature who wore an eighteenpenny skin coat discarded it. In fact, the coolies began to look like the conventional pictures of John the Baptist with one bare arm exposed to view. One of our attentive boys always presented us with our hats when he thought it time to put them on in the morning on account of the heat. We tied them very securely to our chairs ever since one of the coolies thought fit to carry my friend’s hat on his own head.

There was an amusing theatrical performance of an elementary kind held close to our inn in a small village. It was a sort of votive offering as a thanksgiving for the recovery of a sick person. The stage was in the middle of the road. It consisted in a table and a small bench in front of it, on which stood the principal figure, representing the Emperor. He recited a good deal under the large flowing beard which covered his mouth, and which he occasionally pretended to pull. As it was attached with string round his ear, a slight tweak would have detached it. Before him stood three gaudily dressed figures, who made a few dance steps at intervals, and turned round; they also recited now and then. Their main occupation, however, seemed to be fanning themselves and expectorating. When they got tired they withdrew behind the table for tea, and the Emperor twitched off his beard and imperial clothes in the twinkling of an eye, with an air of infinite relief. The clothes were thrown into a large basket which seemed to contain all the stage properties. The spectators were really the most interesting part of the show, as several of the women had evidently got on their best clothes, and fine silver ornaments all over their high turbans, and massive necklaces and bangles. We were beginning at last to get away from the prevalent plague of goitre, and it was a relief to see clean, healthy people again.