The Call of the Red Gods 7 
the morning and leaving the mules to follow at leisure, 
I dashed off alone and lost the way. However, after 
following devious paths somewhere south of the main pack- 
road, I ultimately reached the city late in the afternoon, 
though not before my mule had thrown me three times, 
and I was thoroughly hot and exasperated. Curiously 
enough, though starting on the right road at the other end, 
I lost my way again on this very same stage from T’eng- 
yueh ten months later, finding yet a third route with con- 
siderable success—of a sort; so that I have still to discover 
the proper road over this section. 
Arrived at the city, I marched straight into the Con- 
sulate and surprised almost the entire European population 
of six having tea with Consul Rose, who, in spite of my 
dishevelled appearance, gave me a very warm welcome. 
While it is undoubtedly true that I had come into 
Yunnan during a period of stress, the continued forays 
over the frontier into the Kachin country of Upper Burma 
having led to a British expedition in that direction, things 
were not so hopeless as the Deputy Commissioner in 
Bhamo had painted them. But in any case I now had the 
Consul at my back, and a short chat with him was enough 
to dispel any suspicion of gloom which might have tended 
to come over me when [ reviewed the prospects of 
success. Mr Rose suggested A-tun-tsi as likely to prove 
an excellent centre for my work, promising that if I found 
any difficulty in getting there, he would take the necessary: 
steps on my behalf. The Taotai, indeed, was an altogether 
wretched person, anti-foreign by nature and furious with 
the British on account of the frontier trouble; but his 
position between the devil and the deep sea was by no 
means an enviable one, for Mr Rose had already brought 
pressure to bear on him owing to a local boycott of British 
goods. The consequence of this, as he informed the 
Consul with a wry smile, was that people from all over 
the province had written to him, cursing him for showing 
favour to the British, and no doubt he would have liked to 
stop me from going further into Yunnan. Realising that 
the futility of such an action would have been made abun- 
dantly clear to him, however, he took a safe line and gave 
me permission to go to Lichiang-fu, questioning the Consul 
