a second Journey to the YVang-tze 157 
Meanwhile the rains, which should have come in August 
and been over before this, continued with unabated vigour, 
and climbing the mountains in the gales which frequently 
blew was astonishingly cold work. Sometimes I would wake 
up in the morning and find my room flooded, water dripping 
through the roof in a dozen places, my blankets, plants, 
seeds, books, and everything else wet. 
One evening I was in the forest later than usual, and 
as dusk fell the gloom greatly increased owing to the clouds 
which had descended into the valley and enveloped every- 
thing in a cold drizzle. Suddenly I heard a snorting noise 
not far away, and peering through the trees I saw a large 
black animal advancing towards me with an odd gait, his 
nose close to the ground. At that moment he reared up 
on his hind legs not a dozen yards from me, and I saw that 
it was a black bear, about four feet high as he stood. I was 
too astonished to do anything but stand and gape at him, 
as for some seconds he stared at me ; then with a particularly 
loud snort of disgust he dropped down and shuffled rapidly 
away into the forest. It was a surprise to me to see a bear 
within half-an-hour’s walk of A-tun-tsi, and havingno weapon 
of any kind I was glad he had run away, though annoyed 
that I had not been able to bag him. The black bear must 
be fairly common in these mountains, for all the tribes in 
the Salween and Mekong valleys use arrow-cases made of 
bear-skin, just as they have saddle-bags made from the skin 
of the ‘precipice sheep,’ as the Tibetans call it, though what 
this animal is I am unable to say, never having secured one. 
Shooting bears with a cross-bow sounds exciting. 
This was not the only big game we came across, for 
besides Kin’s leopard, I twice saw deer above A-tun-tsi, 
and we had watched precipice sheep scrambling up the 
limestone cliffs in the Salween valley. Sometimes Ah-poh 
would stop suddenly on the edge of the forest and bark 
furiously for some minutes, turning round now and again 
to look at us, and again turning his attention to something 
we could not see, reluctant to leave the spot. On one such 
occasion we heard a heavy body crashing through the thick 
scrub. The hunter ought to get some good sport in this 
region with the above-named animals and takin (Ludorcas) 
at the headwaters of the Irrawaddy. I once saw the 
