THE HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF KWEICHOW 167 



was the case the year before last. The women do all the 

 work, and are proportionately strong. They rent their land 

 from the Chinese to a large extent, and with the re- 

 crudescence of opium poppy growing, are compelled to 

 cultivate a certain proportion of the land with poppy. This 

 of course has aggravated the dearth and the Miao Christians 

 have been severely persecuted when they refused to do it, 

 even to the extent of being turned off the land. Another 

 cause of trouble has been their refusal to propitiate the 

 spirits who control the crops. There is not much land 

 suitable for cultivation, as far as we saw, for it is amazingly 

 mountainous and there is little water. From the summit 

 of the hill above Tenten, to which we scramhled up a 

 most precipitous trackless bluff, one can count no less than 

 fourteen ranges of hills — the height of the hill was 5,100 ft. 



Our friends had had a nasty experience in climbing it a 

 fortnight earlier. Mr. S. cut a stout stick for his wife from 

 a tree, and after a short time she noticed that it made her 

 hand very black. Soon after she began to feel terrible pains 

 in the head, lost her sight, and became very ill indeed. The 

 cause of it was that the stick had been cut from a varnish 

 tree, and it is so poisonous that it sometimes causes death. 

 Mrs. S. was very ill for a week, and when we arrived her 

 hands were still swollen and covered with sores, so that 

 she could only just begin to use them. The varnish 

 trees (Rhus vernicifera) grow all through this district, and 

 itinerant tappers travel round to hire their services to the 

 owners of the trees, as the varnish is of commercial value. 

 Another interesting plant much seen in these parts is the 

 spindle cactus, used for hedges to enclose gardens, and even 

 in so out of the way a village as Tenten the coir palm is 

 grown. 



We had some difficulty on leaving Tenten to find anyone 

 able to guide us across the mountains to Tating, and the 

 path was not only precipitous and rough, but also* the lanes 

 were so narrow and the hedges so> overhanging, that it was 

 no' easy matter to get the chairs through them, without their 

 being torn to pieces. Our interpreter had requested per- 

 mission to exchange the three-bearer mountain chair with 

 which I provided him for a "paper box," and certainly it 

 was sadly unsuitable to withstand the tangle of thorns and 

 brambles through which it had to be dragged ! I was brushing 

 off the twigs that had caught on my coat, when I noticed 

 that one was a stick insect. We found it decidedly preferable 

 to walk, and thoroughly enjoyed the glorious scenery up hill 

 and down dale, the air scented with roses and sweetbriar, 



