70 A Journey to the Salween 
Patches of scrub showed up below, and the gullies were 
choked with dense forest. From time to time the sun 
broke through, and gleamed on a high yellow cliff far 
below us, which looked strangely small against the dark 
range behind. This limestone bluff marked the position 
of T‘sam-p‘u-t‘ong. 
The valley immediately below us was not that in which 
the Salween flowed, for there was still another barrier 
ridge to cross. I do not quite understand the conditions 
necessary for the formation of these parallel barrier ridges— 
spurs from the main divide—but they are probably due in 
part to the arrangement of the rocks, though, as previously 
suggested, the distribution of rainfall may also have some- 
thing to do with it. I never saw a mountain stream flowing 
parallel to the main river in the arid regions, though in the 
rainy regions of both the Mekong and Salween it is the 
normal thing. 
In the evening we reached Bahang, or, as the Chinese 
call it, Pei-han-lo, a small Lutzu village perched on the 
side of the mountain more than a thousand feet above the 
valley. There is a French Catholic priest stationed here, 
but he was away; also a posse of Chinese soldiers not very 
far from the village. 
No sooner was my tent up than it began to rain, and 
continued all night and all next morning. Accordingly it 
was impossible to start in the morning, and when we did 
get off in the afternoon the clouds were very low and it was 
still drizzling, so that we only descended to the valley, and 
continuing up it for a mile or two, took shelter in a Lutzu 
hut in the village of Mu-la-tong just as the rain began 
again. Gan-ton said it rained every day in the Salween 
valley, and so far I had had no occasion to disbelieve him. 
No sooner were we in our new quarters than a woman 
came to me for ‘foreign medicine,’ and it was now that 
I congratulated myself on having brought my tabloid 
medicine chest with me, for here was an opportunity to 
get on a friendly footing with these shy natives, though it 
was unfortunate that the patient was another baby. I 
always found babies the most unsatisfactory patients, for 
they could not themselves say what was the matter with 
them and their mothers didn’t know, which left the amateur 
