SPORT AND SCIENCE ON THE 
was effected some considerable distance down 
stream. 
Continuing westward over barren wind-swept 
loess ridges for two days, we reached a busy little 
town named Sui-té Chou. Thence we travelled 
southward for four days along a splendid road, 
which had recently been cut by the Yii-lin Fu 
garrison. This country was very desolate, con- 
sisting as it did at that season of bare loess hills 
inhabited only by occasional coveys of partridges 
and a few foxes and eagles. 
At a place called Yen-ch’uan Hsien, not far 
from some recently opened oil wells, we turned 
westward, and after crossing a steep loess pass, 
entered the valley of the Yen-shui, the river on 
whose banks is situated the old town of Yen-an 
Fu. All the towns and villages we passed were 
in a sad state of ruin, while the inhabitants were 
terribly poverty-stricken. The country has not 
yet recovered from the devastating effects of the 
great Mohammedan rebellion of the sixties, fol- 
lowed in 1887 by a protracted famine. It is true 
that the greater part of the loess hills is under 
cultivation, but years must elapse before the 
country regains its former prosperity.! 
1 In the winter of 1911, the writer again visited this 
district, as leader of the Shensi Relief Expedition. 
The effects of the Revolution, which has been described 
as being “synonymous with anarchy in Shensi,” were only 
too painfully evident. The year’s crops were still standing. 
ro 
