A -tun-tsi 51 
At a signal from the men waiting on the other side the 
animal was pushed over the edge of the platform and, 
clawing desperately at the ground as he felt himself slipping 
into space, shot off in a cloud of dust. It was comic to 
see the poor animals dangling limply over the river, kicking 
ineffectually at nothing. But all went safely across to the 
other side, and as they felt solid ground within reach again, 
they clawed desperately at the steep bank once more, two 
men standing ready with leather thongs twisted round the 
rope to stop the slider and untie the animals—a dangerous 
game sometimes, for the frightened brutes lashed out in- 
discriminately till their feet were firmly planted on the 
bank once more. 
Slinging a number of animals across these rope bridges 
wears them hard, and Gan-ton told me that the Tsu-kou 
ropes are renewed three times a year. If we allow that 
on the average five men cross every day, then in round 
numbers the passage of six hundred men represents the 
life of a rope, though I doubt very much if it is really as 
much as this. On the other hand a score of men will 
change the ropes in the course of a morning, and since a 
pair of them cost only Taels 2:50 (seven shillings), each 
village paying for the upkeep of its own ropes, it does not 
represent a very serious outlay. When the big Lama 
caravans from Chinese Tibet visit Lhasa, they often carry 
their own rope bridge with them, a necessary precaution in 
view of the fact that these caravans sometimes comprise 
more than a hundred animals and twenty or thirty men. 
On the Mekong the Tibetans have found another use 
for the rope bridge, namely as a means of measuring time. 
The day is divided into four periods, the first period while 
the sun is below the eastern ridge, the second from the 
time it tops the ridge till mid-day, the third from mid-day 
till it tops the western ridge, and finally from the time the 
sun disappears below the western ridge till dark. The 
second and third periods are further subdivided according 
to the apparent height of the sun between the zenith and 
the eastern or western ridges, this distance being described 
as so many lengths of the rope bridge, and, rough as the 
method sounds, it is surprising how accurately a Tibetan 
who understands European methods will tell the time by 
4—2 
