154 Mountain and Monastery ; 
11,000 feet; this also was a twiner with flowers like the 
last-mentioned species and the same disgusting odour. 
One day we made the complete circuit of the high 
mountainous ridge to the west, Kin having discovered 
what he considered a practicable route. However, before 
I knew what was coming he had led me to the brink of a 
clear drop of some thirty feet high, with a steeply-shelving 
scree below, and down this he coolly climbed gun in hand, 
though what he held on to puzzled me. In my descent 
I stuck half way down in fear of my life; while Kin, 
standing on the screes below, encouraged me with shouts 
of “Don’t be afraid! Don’t be afraid!” Finally I got 
down, feeling very uncomfortable, whereupon Kin remarked 
quite casually: ‘I was afraid when I came here a few days 
ago that if I fell no one would find me!” for he had pros- 
pected this hazardous route alone. 
The Chinaman does not seem to be troubled with nerves 
in these matters, not, I think, because he has any less in- 
stinctive objection to death or mutilation than the generality 
of mankind, but because it does not readily occur to him 
that he might fall off a ledge of rock a hundred feet high, 
any more than he might if it was only two feet above the 
level. 
In spite of frequent showers the weather on the whole 
remained very good till the end of the month, though heavy 
storms regularly passed over the Mekong valley from 
K‘a-gur-pu to Pei-ma-shan, distant about five miles from 
A-tun-tsi as the crow flies. Frequently we heard thunder 
from that direction, and one night a heavy thunderstorm 
with brilliant flashes of lightning and drenching rain passed 
over the village. Towards evening, when bright sunshine 
prevailed at A-tun-tsi, we would sometimes see vivid rain- 
bows thrown against the heavy blue-black skies over Pei- 
ma-shan, and as early as August 28, the lower slopes of the 
mountain right down to the pass at 15,800 feet were white 
with snow, but it did not last out the day. This was the 
first snow we saw on the Mekong-Yang-tze divide, though 
already it must have been snowing frequently at this altitude 
on the Mekong-Salween divide. 
One day Sung came to me weeping and asked if he 
might go back to Tali. On pressing him for particulars 
