THE HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS OF KWEICHOW 181 



many others. There has been as yet no book written on 

 the singularly beautiful and varied vegetation of the province, 

 and I envy the man who undertakes such a task. Our 

 coolies saw how we were always gathering flowers, and they 

 used to bring anything that caught their eye to put in the 

 various receptacles we tied up in our chairs to receive them, 

 so that often by the end of the day we were enshrined in a 

 perfect bower of ferns and flowers. One of the most brilliant 

 flowers was a cassia — canary-yellow coloured, of which the 

 blossom stood up erect like torches from the prickly stem : 

 it is used as a hedge on account of its prickliness. Then 

 there was a sweet-scented orange blossom, agle sepiaria, 

 with curious divided leaf, and the pretty akebia lobata with 

 its male and female blossoms. The hedges were a continual 

 joy to us, with their scented loveliness of roses, and sweet- 

 briar and honeysuckle. There are strawberries, raspberries 

 and blackberries growing by the roadside : the strawberries 

 are sometimes poisonous, but we found them merely 

 tasteless. 



We set off from Kweiyang, accompanied by thirty 

 armed soldiers (seme of those- we had had previously were 

 not armed, and few had any ammunition even when they 

 carried rifles) and three policemen under the command of a 

 captain, who certainly was a pattern of inefficiency and 

 slovenliness, his puttees usually wreathed loosely round his 

 fat calves. He kept no discipline, and when we neared the 

 most dangerous part of the road he had a chair, so as to be 

 thoroughly rested before a possible attack ! The men carried 

 with them a banner, with which they go into* battle, and we 

 had a little flag to set outside the inns where we stayed at 

 night : the soldiers were a noisy cheerful crew and rather 

 spoilt the comfort of our journey, but probably saved us 

 from having our belongings looted, if from nothing worse. 

 We heard from a reliable source that there had been not 

 a few murders on that road recently, and were told that 

 two men had been killed shortly after we had passed a 

 certain spot. We saw the openings of caverns in the hills 

 at various places, and one was said to be able to> contain 

 two thousand men and to have been used by the Miao. 

 They have a series of beacon turrets on the hill tops, of 

 which we saw a large number. We crossed many bridges, 

 varying considerably in architecture and design — one a 

 curious twisted shape, crossing a narrow valley and leading 

 to a long flight of stone steps up a steep hillside. This was 

 near Weng Ch'eng Ch'iao; just outside this town is a fine 

 five-arched bridge, roofed in, and containing quite a number 

 of coffins. Indigo is much grown in the neighbourhood. 



