212 The Revolutionist Occupation of La-chi-mt 
the yamen; on the roof a tame monkey was disporting 
itself at the end of a long chain. 
I noticed with a vague sense of surprise, without attach- 
ing any particular importance to the fact, that the courtyard 
and surrounding rooms were full of armed soldiers, thirty 
or forty of them, big men dressed, not in the ragged official 
jacket characteristic of the Yunnan ‘brave,’ but in stout 
blue cloth with turban to match; and every man carried a 
bandolier and magazine rifle. 
The official received me kindly, taking both my hands 
in his as he had perhaps seen the Europeans in Yunnan-fu 
doing, but I remarked that he seemed greatly agitated. 
However, he promised to find the requisite men to accom- 
pany me on the morrow, and I returned to the inn, puzzled. 
Here I learnt that the revolutionists had that very 
morning occupied La-chi-mi, and furthermore that the main 
body, comprising about 250 men, were to enter the village 
next day. This, then, was the meaning of that strange flag 
over the yamen which I had seen the men gazing at from 
the hill top, and of the armed soldiers in the courtyard, 
the advance guard of a flying column. 
In the afternoon I decided to pay a visit to the salt 
mine, which was not at this season in operation for reasons 
which will presently appear; the only available salt now 
being that which had crystallised on the numerous gutters 
and their supports used for the purpose of conducting the 
brine to the huts where evaporation is carried on; and a 
number of men were busily engaged in chiselling off these 
incrustations. While following up the gutters with a view 
to finding the position of the mine a friendly operator hailed 
me, and fetching a lamp from an adjoining hut, offered to 
act as guide, a proposition to which I gladly assented. 
Proceeding up a narrow gulley just clear of the village 
we came upon the entrance to the cave high up on one 
bank, and lighting his oil lamp, my guide opened the doors 
and led the way into the cliff. The tunnel was about five 
feet high, in width rather less, and between the baulks of 
timber, like railway sleepers, with which the sides were 
shored up, an efflorescence of salt glistened on the moist 
red clay. 
These side timbers, which occurred every yard, sloped 
