On the Li-ti-ping 23 
cotton in particular doing badly, and there can be little 
doubt that the poppy is more suited to the climate than 
almost any other economic plant. Consequently the greater 
part of the opium had in the past been sold to Cantonese 
and Hunnanese merchants, cotton cloth from Ssu-chuan 
and Kwei-chow being bought with the silver so obtained. 
The reckless extermination of the poppy had therefore 
involved the province in serious financial difficulties, the 
shortage of silver and the fallow fields—for it was then too 
late to plant anything else—creating much misery. 
Again, in the deep valleys of the plateau malaria is rife 
during the rainy season, and the Shans and other tribes 
who inhabit these valleys use opium as a prophylactic; for 
it must not be forgotten that, except along the main roads, 
there are very few Chinese in Western Yunnan, and though 
many of the tribes have been more or less absorbed into 
the dominant race, such fundamental customs as the eating 
of opium to insure immunity against fever are not easily 
shaken. It was so used in the Cambridgeshire fens until 
quite recently. Western Yunnan probably received opium 
from India long before the poppy was grown in China. 
Finally, opium being extremely light, and at the same 
time acceptable to almost everybody, it forms a convenient 
medium for exchange in a sparsely populated country of 
immense distances and few roads, and is commonly used as 
such in place of silver. Bearing all these things in mind 
then, it will readily be admitted that the Yunnanese had a 
grievance when the extermination of a plant which meant 
clothes and medicine to them was attempted. How the 
present revolution will affect poppy cultivation in the more 
populous and accessible provinces it is difficult to say, but 
it is a foregone conclusion that with the setting up of a 
powerful local authority, there will be another large increase 
in the cultivation of opium in Yunnan this year. 
The journey westwards from the Kin-sha over the 
Mekong watershed to Wei-hsi-t’ing, whither we were now 
bound, takes two days under ordinary circumstances. 
Leaving Chi-tien, we ascended a small valley, cultivated 
below, but presently forested, the stream being in many 
places jammed with logs which had been cut in the forests 
above and slid down the steep slopes to make the best of 
