Through the Lutzu Country to Men-kong 85 
would not go into Tsa-riing ‘‘as the road was very bad "— 
the usual formula of every official who politely deters one 
from making a journey—and he would be happy to provide 
me with an escort to see me safely back. 
Of course I acquiesced, so next morning, we continued 
our journey up the valley with an escort of two soldiers. 
Looking westwards, I noticed for the first time that a 
big valley here slits open the Salween-Irrawaddy divide, and 
subsequently I was told that by following up this valley, 
the Irrawaddy might be reached in four days, though the 
journey was described as one of great difficulty and danger. 
It was some months later that I met in A-tun-tsi the former 
official of that place, a man named Hsia-fu, who had him- 
self two years previously made the journey across from the 
Salween to the borders of India by this very route, and 
had subsequently been dismissed from office. At the same 
time I met ‘Joseph, who in 1895 had guided Prince 
Henri from Tali-fu to India; but their route lay to the 
south of T‘sam-p‘u-t‘ong. Both men were disposed to 
make the most of their hardships, which were certainly 
severe, since the journeys were undertaken during the 
rainy season, when mosquitoes and leeches were at their 
worst, every river a roaring torrent, and the vegetation so 
dense that it made progress terribly slow. 
Some of my porters having returned to Tsu-chung, 
three of the loads were now carried from village to village 
by relays of Lutzu, usually women, frequently dwarfish or 
deformed people, who were possibly slaves. 
Immediately above T‘sam-p‘u-t‘ong we entered a mag- 
nificent limestone gorge, and here the results of the heavy 
rainfall in the Salween valley were fully displayed. 
The narrow path through the gorge was shaded by a 
great variety of tall, straight-limbed trees, including several 
Asclepiadaceae and some species of /zcus with flowers 
borne directly on the old wood, their straight unbranched 
trunks frequently supported by feebly-developed plank 
buttresses. A great variety of lianas such as Rhaphido- 
phora, and creepers, made the jungle still more dense, and 
amongst an array of epiphytes I noted, besides numerous 
orchids, a fern which I could not distinguish from the 
tropical A splenium nidus-avis, though I have never before 
