a second Journey to the YVang-tze 165 
the men, two Tibetans advanced, one of whom, with never 
a smile or a bow, caught my pony by the bridle and thrust 
into my face a wine bottle, requesting me, in violent lan- 
guage as it seemed, to drink. Raw spirit however is not 
at all to my liking, and when I politely refused, showing 
none of those qualms I was really feeling, he became still 
more aggressive, fumbling inside his voluminous cloak for 
something—a sword I began to suspect! Anyway I thought 
it best to humour him and sipped at the ice cold spirit, 
which made me gasp and choke. Finally I handed back 
the bottle, refusing to drink more, and the stranger, letting 
go of my bridle, departed as he had come, shouting rather 
than saying things over his shoulder as he went. 
Above Tung-chu-ling pine-trees were scattered amongst 
the limestone rocks as at Tsu-kou, and as always where 
pines occurred, flocks of green parrots darted screeching 
from tree to tree. They come after the red berries of a 
semi-parasitic shrub belonging I believe to the order 
Santalaceae, or perhaps a Vzscum, and I often watched 
them rubbing their beaks on the branches to get rid of 
the viscid seeds, even pulling them out of each other’s 
mouths, a most droll performance. Under some of the 
trees one could frequently pick up dozens of these seeds 
and half-devoured berries. 
It had been my intention to start at the first sign of 
day and climb Pei-ma-shan before the clouds rose out of the 
valleys; for this reason I had pitched camp near the pass, 
though our exposed position made it miserably uncomfort- 
able. However in the night I had a violent attack of sick- 
ness, and being scarcely able to touch any breakfast, all ideas 
of mountaineering had to be given up. I therefore gave 
the order to return to A-tun-tsi, and though racked with 
horrid pains so that I found some difficulty in clinging to 
my pony, we reached our base camp in the evening and 
I soon felt better. On the way down I found masses of 
a most brilliant blue trumpet-shaped gentian (G. orxaza), 
a typical limestone plant, just coming into bloom at the end 
of September. 
The first news I heard on my arrival was that my land- 
lord’s small daughter, a merry little girl of twelve, had fallen 
off the roof and been killed, a disaster which so overcame 
