19"] ON CHINESE ADVENTURES 273 



to us. The party started up the Yangtse, travelling from Shang- 

 hai to Hankow and thence to Ichang by steamer then by house- 

 boat towed by coolies through wonderful gorges and one dan- 

 gerous rapid to Chunking and Chengtu. In those parts the 

 travellers always took the three principal rooms of the inn they 

 patronised, the cost 150 cash, something less than fourpence 

 oranges 20 a penny the coolies with 100 lb. loads would cover 

 30 to 40 miles a day salt is got in bores sunk with bamboos 

 to nearly a mile in depth; it takes two or three generations to 

 sink a bore. The lecturer described the Chinese frontier town 

 Quanchin, its people, its products, chiefly medicinal musk pods 

 from musk deer. Here also the wonderful ancient damming of 

 the river, and a temple to the constructor, who wrote, twenty 

 centuries ago, ' dig out your ditches, but keep your banks low.' 

 On we were taken along mountain trails over high snow-filled 

 passes and across rivers on bamboo bridges to Wassoo, a timber 

 centre from which great rafts of lumber are shot down the river, 

 over fearsome rapids, freighted with Chinamen. ' They gener- 

 ally come through all right,' said the lecturer. 



Higher up the river (Min) live the peaceful Ching Ming 

 people, an ancient aboriginal stock, and beyond these the wild 

 tribes, the Lolo themselves. They made doubtful friends with 

 a chief preparing for war. Meares described a feast given to 

 them in a barbaric hall hung with skins and weapons, the men 

 clad in buckskin dyed red, and bristling with arms; barbaric 

 dishes, barbaric music. Then the hunt for new animals; the 

 Chinese Tarkin, the parti-coloured bear, blue mountain sheep, the 

 golden-haired monkey, and talk of new fruits and flowers and 

 a host of little-known birds. 



More adventures among the wild tribes of the mountains; 

 the white lamas, the black lamas and phallic worship. Curious 

 prehistoric caves with ancient terra-cotta figures resembling only 

 others found in Japan and supplying a curious link. A feudal 

 system running with well oiled wheels, the happiest of communi- 

 ties. A separation (temporary) from Brook, who wrote in his 

 diary that tribes were very friendly and seemed anxious to help 

 him, and was killed on the day following the truth hard to 

 gather the recovery of his body, &c. 



As he left the country the Nepaulese ambassador arrives, 

 returning from Pekin with large escort and bound for Lhassa: 



vol. 1 18 



