the Last Town in China 123 
Presently our soldier, who had slept like a Trojan, came in 
rubbing his eyes, thoroughly disgusted at the early start 
contemplated, but like the good fellow he was, he made 
himself useful and we started once more at five o’clock. 
The misfortunes on the third day had lost us a lot of 
time and it was now impossible to reach Batang in five 
days, but a big effort might bring us there on the sixth day, 
which was good travelling, for it is eight mule stages from 
A-tun-tsi by this road. 
We found it bitterly cold as we scampered over the 
plateau on that raw misty morning of July 31, 14,000 feet 
above sea-level. To the west, the low rolling hills stretched 
away as far as the eye could reach, brilliant green turf, red 
sandstone cropping out here and there, and patches of vivid 
blue where some Boraginaceous flower grew in dense masses. 
Hundreds of little pikahares darted into their burrows as 
we rode along, and, in spite of the severe cold, the day pro- 
mised to be fine. Down in the valley below were meadows 
of flowers—blue salvias, monkshoods, and borages, crimson 
and yellow Scrophulariaceae, and various other plants, but 
I saw nothing exceptional here. 
We changed animals no less than five times in the course 
of the day, wasting a considerable amount of time, but 
nevertheless we rode on till nine o’clock at night, by which 
time we had reached the Kin-sha, or Yang-tze. Never shall 
I forget the first view of that noble river as we climbed 
the last spur and looked northwards over the trees towards 
Batang. The sun was down, and over the purple moun- 
tains great puffs of radiant cloud rested, scattering the dying 
light ; for miles we could follow every twist of the valley, 
marked by a ribbon of flashing silver, which had still 3000 
miles to flow before it reached the ocean. The descent 
occupied two hours, and the abrupt change from the bitter 
cold of the rain-swept plateau which we had experienced 
in the morning to the hot breath of the wind blowing up 
this gutter, was one of the many extraordinary things in 
this extraordinary country. 
On the way down to the Yang-tze I came across the 
beautiful scarlet Androsace Bulleyana with dense heads of 
flowers, growing in the very driest places, and the rocks 
of the main valley were covered with the lovely asphodel, 
