The Last of the Mekong 225 
Happy people! What do they know of the strife and 
turmoil of the western world? We wear ourselves out 
saving time in one direction that we may waste it in another, 
hurrying and ever hurrying through time as if we were 
disgusted with life, but these people think of time not 
in miles an hour but according to the rate at which their 
crops grow in the spring, and their fruits ripen in the 
autumn. They work that they and their families may have 
enough to eat and enough to wear, living and dying where 
they were born, where their offspring will live and die after 
them, as did their ancestors before them, shut in by the 
mountains which bar access from the outer world. 
From Shui-kin we ascended the western range by one 
of the ridge-like spurs which stand boldly up between the 
deeply furrowed ravines, where the torrents thunder long 
and loud throughout the summer, only to die impotently 
away in winter. Forests of pine clothed the lower slopes, 
but higher up a little cultivation was carried on by a few 
scattered families who lived the simple life two or three 
thousand feet above the river. Flocks of green parrots 
darted, screaming shrilly, from one point to another, and 
once a wolf crossed the path within easy gunshot, stopped 
to look at me, and fled incontinently on catching sight of 
Ah-poh ; otherwise animals and birds were as rare as men. 
Towards the summit the vegetation became richer and 
more varied, the ascent steeper, till finally, after toiling up 
innumerable roughly-laid steps, we reached the summit of 
the pass shortly after mid-day. 
The Mekong, as we know, flows into the China Sea; 
the water which trickled down the slope in front of us was 
bound for the Indian Ocean, so that we stood once more at 
the parting of the waters. Do we realise what it means, 
this paltry barrier of rock separating the waters of two 
oceans, gradually wasting away under the assaults of the 
south-west monsoon? Some day when we ourselves have 
crossed the Great Divide, the torrents flowing to the 
Salween, having cut their way further back into this rugged 
wall, will tap the water on the other side, and the Mekong 
will be no more. Already the Salween flows from 1500 to 
2000 feet below the level of the Mekong; already the much 
greater rainfall in the former valley has caused the water- 
5 et 15 
