the Last Town in China III 
sour. The men dress in the skins of animals and huddle 
by day round the fire, sleeping at night on beds of pine- 
branches. An altar is always rigged up at the far end of 
the tent, and here a single butter lamp splutters, faintly 
illuminating small offerings of ¢saméba or barley grains, 
and clay ikons of the crudest form, daubed with pats of 
butter. 
Kin one morning watched a herdsman rush out from 
a tent with his long gun, kneel, and fire at a dark object 
which was moving coolly up the mountain slope with a 
lamb in its mouth. It was a leopard. These marauders, 
which stalk the mountains in broad daylight, are a constant 
source of alarm to the herdsmen, though they never dare 
attack any but isolated animals. At night they descend 
to the lower valleys, several having been reported in the 
neighbourhood of A-tun-tsi while I was there, and in the 
winter they come right down into the village, though 
I never saw one myself. Deer, however, and precipice 
sheep I saw on several occasions, and sometimes when 
camping in the forest I would awake in the dead of night 
to hear Ah-poh barking furiously at the entrance to my 
tent, as some denizen of the mountains prowled by. 
Meanwhile Kin had returned after an absence of exactly 
three weeks. He brought me silver and welcome letters, and 
reported heavy rains in the Mekong valley below Tsu-kou, 
several of the rope bridges being under water and im- 
passable. 
On July 21, a great Mohammedan festival known as 
the ho-pa-hwez was held in A-tun-tsi in honour of a certain 
Ming Emperor, called Pez-wang or the White King, who 
came from Tali-fu. 
Outside many of the houses, torches ten or twelve 
feet high had been built by tying bundles of pine-sticks in 
tiers round a central pole, the entire structure being decorated 
with flowers, branches of green leaves, and paper flags, 
making a gay show. As soon as it was dark crackers 
were fired as a signal for the revels to begin, and imme- 
diately afterwards the big torches were lighted at the top; 
and looking down the street one saw by the light of these 
beacons which smoked and crackled on either side, the black 
figures of people dancing. 
