168 Over the Riin-tsi-la ; 
flowers were over, Kin having wound up the list with a 
delightful gentian (G. Georg7z), and only the seeds remained 
to be harvested. I climbed the mountains as usual, but not 
so eagerly as of yore. Sometimes I went out early in the 
morning with my gun, but though I occasionally saw the 
common pheasant, I rarely shot anything larger than a 
pigeon. The more interesting forms of game, such as 
snow pheasant and other kinds, grouse, partridges and so 
on, I invariably came across when I had no gun with me. 
M. Perronne however, who had with him an excellent 
pointer, was more successful and shot a good many 
pheasants, several of which he sent round to me from time 
to time, and I found them a very pleasant change of diet. 
Then came wild rumours from Ssu-chuan. Runners 
had arrived from Batang with news of a big rising in that 
province, but previous to this there had been several un- 
authorised versions of the story going about in the village. 
Kin told me that a lot of Chinese soldiers had deserted 
and taken to the mountains; later I was told that the 
Tibetans and Chinese were fighting again; and now on 
October 12 we had the first news of the great revolution in 
China, though even then we did not realise what it meant. 
The merchants told us that the reform party had risen in 
Ssu-chuan, that 3000 of them had sacked Ya-chou-fu, that 
the Europeans were all leaving China, and finally that 
Chung-king, the great river port on the Upper Yang-tze, 
had been destroyed. 
There was of course likely to be some foundation of 
truth in these vague reports, but the extent and the signi- 
ficance of the reform movement were quite misunderstood 
in the poor little village of A-tun-tsi, which, being off the 
line of the posts and telegraph, remains in complete igno- 
rance of what is going on beyond, unless of course the 
interests of the community are directly threatened. More- 
over the official being away, we could get no information 
from that source either, and meanwhile I was chafing for 
action. I had harvested most of my seeds, and was restless 
to be up in the mountains again, partly in the hope of 
securing seeds of plants I had seen on my travels which 
did not, so far as I knew, grow in the neighbourhood of 
A-tun-tsi, and partly in order to secure seeds of some of 
