30 On the Li-ti-ping 
strip of forest into an open grassy hollow surrounded by 
woody hills, and there stood an old sheep-pen. I had 
passed that sheep-pen on the previous day just before the 
first path came to an end and I plunged into the brake. 
I was all right. 
In the red mud of the path I could just distinguish my 
footprints of the previous day, now almost obliterated by 
the rain; but there were also clearly visible the footprints 
of two other men which certainly were not there before, 
probably those of soldiers who had tracked me thus far, 
and I shouted several times without, however, obtaining 
any answer. 
The revulsion of feeling would have been greater but 
for the fact that I knew it would take me some time to 
reach the pass from here, and several hours to get thence 
~ to Wei-hsi. Nevertheless I set out with a light heart and 
a feeling as of a great load lifted off my mind, tried a 
short cut but lost my bearings, returned on my tracks, and 
at last found myself back on the main road, near the pass. 
There was no mistaking it this time, for the mule-tracks 
showed plainly enough that it swung away to the west 
across the valley I had so persistently followed southwards 
and eastwards. 
A long climb over the plateau, splashing through the 
most appalling mud and_half-melted snow, thoroughly 
ploughed up by mule traffic, brought me at last to a second 
pass, and now the forested plateau fell away abruptly below 
me, and tailed out in high spurs to a broad flat valley. 
The rain had ceased, and to cheer me up the sun 
flashed out from beneath a bank of clouds for a few minutes 
before sinking down behind a high range just across the 
valley ; and far below, Wei-hsi glistened in the golden light 
of the setting sun. It is to be noted that the first pass we 
crossed was that over the main watershed between the 
Kin-sha and the Mekong river systems; the second and 
higher pass, on the other hand, separates the waters flowing 
past Wei-hsi from those which, gathered throughout the 
length and breadth of the Li-ti-p’ing, flow out at Ka-ka- 
tang to join the Wei-hsi river fifteen miles below the city. 
Had I continued down those seemingly endless valleys, 
therefore, I must eventually have come out at Ka-ka-t’ang, 
