The Last of the Mekong 231 
annoying since he came purposely to invite me to the 
yamen, where he had at short notice prepared an excellent 
breakfast for me. However I soon discovered my mistake, 
and feeling more expansive after I had made a good meal 
of pork fat, cabbage, rice, and one or two other dishes, and 
drunk a flagon of wine, I chatted intermittently with him 
for an hour and took my leave with more ceremony. 
The Salween is extremely narrow at Lu-k‘ou, scarcely 
thirty yards across, flowing quietly between high sand- 
banks, but though the river was already fifteen or twenty 
feet below its summer level, the olive green water seemed 
to be of great depth. Immediately beyond the ferry it 
broadened out again, maintaining an average width of fifty 
or sixty yards. My aneroid registered 27°08 inches in the 
river bed, equivalent to an altitude of about 3000 feet. 
We crossed the Salween in a big scow and presently 
found ourselves on a good path through the jungle, which 
fringed the right bank above a rock-bound shore. Strange 
fruits dangled above our heads, fantastic creepers wrapped 
themselves about the trees, and occasionally a bright flower 
shone out amongst the sombre vegetation of leaves. But 
if the right bank of the river presented a tropical aspect, 
it was well balanced by the left, which emphatically did 
not. 
It was but a short distance to Pai-lou, and continuing 
down the valley till dusk we reached a miserable Shan hut, 
situated at a point where the river, divided by an island of 
shingle, plunged with a thunderous roar over an enormous 
rapid. Although the Salween valley, with its narrow belts 
of jungle, its innumerable rice-terraces where the buffaloes 
browsed lazily, its spreading /7zcus trees standing in splendid 
isolation, its villages sheltered beneath palms and banana 
leaves, had the seal of the tropics plainly set upon it, the 
nights were as a matter of fact bitterly cold, for the radiation 
into this air, very clear towards morning after the precipi- 
tation of the heavy dew, was intense; it was indeed a 
climate of extremes, hot by day and cold by night, drench- 
ing rain throughout the summer, halcyon days in winter. 
As night came on I was extremely thankful to sit by 
a roaring fire, for the cold readily penetrated the flimsy log 
hut, and, remembering my experience of the night before, 
