246 Back to Burma 
On December 27 my caravan arrived, and Kin reported 
that he had reached Tali without accident; further, however, 
the revolutionists forbade him to proceed, and it was not 
till two weeks later that the road was open again, all traffic 
and mails having been suspended in the meantime. How- 
ever, I was greatly relieved to learn that all was well, and 
on December 29 we continued our journey to Bhamo. 
One might reasonably have expected—certainly I myself 
expected—that a fortnight of civilised life in T‘eng-yueh 
following immediately on the discomforts of a long tramp 
through tribal China, would prove the climax to my wan- 
derings; that eight easy stages to Bhamo, with plenty to 
eat and nothing to do except read up back newspapers in 
a frantic endeavour to get abreast of the times, would be 
but a trivial interlude between disporting myself on the 
outskirts of civilisation at T‘eng-yueh and an uninterrupted 
life of plenteous ease to follow. But I was premature. As 
a matter of fact the very comforting halt at T‘eng-yueh 
proved but a sorry anti-climax, and having appeared un- 
expectedly at that city, like a strange and ragged comet 
out of the northern firmament into the light of day, I 
burst still more noisily on my friends in Bhamo—an 
entirely unrehearsed effect. 
The immediate cause of my discomfiture was Ah-poh, 
who having curled his tail tightly over his back and made 
incomprehensible overtures to every dog he met without 
obvious success, disappeared entirely before we had pro- 
ceeded two miles. We spent some time scouring the 
hollows for him, but since it was only too evident he had 
been fatally attracted by the glories of city life, it was no 
use wasting further time, and telling Kin to go on ahead 
and catch up the mules, I rode back to the Consulate to 
report the lugubrious news. My mules I did not see again 
till they arrived in Bhamo, eight days later; Kin I saw for 
half-an-hour on the third morning, under circumstances 
about to be recorded. 
By the time I set out again it was nearly mid-day, and 
travelling as fast as I could over the hills and across the 
stiffened lava beds of the old T‘eng-yueh volcano which 
loomed up to the north, I mistook the road just as I had 
done ten months previously in another direction, and 
