CUAPTER CI 
THE CALL OF THE RED GODS 
On my return from Western China in September, 1910, 
I settled down to humdrum life with every prospect of 
becoming a quiet and respectable citizen of Shanghai. 
But in vain; travel had bitten too deeply into my soul, 
and I soon began to feel restless again, so that when after 
four months of civilised life something better turned up, 
I accepted with alacrity. This was none other than the 
chance of plant-collecting on the Tibetan border of Yunnan, 
and though I had extremely vague ideas about the country, 
and the method of procedure, I had mentally decided to 
undertake the mission before I had finished reading the 
letter in which the offer was set forth. 
Three weeks later, on the last day of January, 1911, 
I bade farewell to my friends in Shanghai and started once 
more on my travels, sailing on the ill-fated De¢hz, destined to 
make her last voyage just a year later. Soon we exchanged 
the bitter snow-storm which beat in our faces as we steamed 
out of the boundless Yang-tze for the warmth of the tropics, 
and I saw again the far-flung outposts of our eastern 
Empire, strung like gems at either end of that magic tiara 
of the Indies, which guard the approaches to the South 
China Sea. However fully the guardian islands of Hong- 
Kong and Singapore may satiate the inhabitants with their 
undoubted distempers, to the traveller at least they are 
never anything but charming. 
At Penang, which in the business part of the city boasts 
nothing of beauty save an occasional Traveller's palm 
spreading its great fan over temple or hong—surely, as 
indeed the name suggests, one of the most remarkable of 
W. T. I 
