IS THIRTY THOUSAND MILES IN CHINA 



would be required to get me and my small party and light 

 equipment to Chengtu than to transport two whole families 

 and their gear. So they managed to put thirty dollars at my 

 disposal and I undertook on reaching Chengtu to send back 

 to them three hundred. 



Mr. Edgar in his wholehearted manner accompanied us 

 some ten li on the road and directed us where to look for the 

 castles of the independent Tibetan lord high up on a bluff 

 on the opposite bank of the stream. We had journeyed only 

 an hour or two after he left us,, when we met coming north- 

 ward our long-lost mules who should have been travelling 

 southward. The cook's arm was in a sling and with much 

 weeping he related how the caravan five days before had been 

 attacked by a large number of armed bandits (50 he said; 

 ex-soldiers of Szechwan, I suspect) at about nine in the 

 morning at a point some 15 li north of Mienchuhsien where 

 two small houses stood, one on either side of the road. As 

 the caravan came opposite the farther end of these houses 

 the bandits without warning' opened fire and began by killing 

 one of the military escort of eight who were accompanying our 

 train of mules, and who had no chance to put up a defence. 

 Two of them were taken prisoners and have never been heard 

 of since, while the other five with the cook and the four 

 muleteers made good their escape, the cook injuring his arm 

 badly in falling from his perch on top of a pack saddle. From 

 a safe distance our men watched the robbers and later re- 

 turned to gather up the fragments that remained ! Every 

 box had been smashed in with stones and the contents of all 

 thrown out. All money, various small articles of value (such 

 as my safety razor, cuff-links, etc., and all Chinese clothing 

 were taken, but none of the foreign style clothes of Ip and 

 myself. All my records of observations for several months 

 back were thmwn out, but thanks to the diligence of the 

 cook and the muleteers on their return to the scene of the 

 encounter every sheet was recovered though many were 

 crumpled and muddy. You can imagine how anxious and 

 even ill I felt until I reached Chengtu and had an opportunity 

 to go carefully over everything and how relieved I was to 

 find no essential sheet of observation missing ! I did, how- 

 ever, lose the photographic negatives of a month's taking and 

 one of the chronometers, which since it needed repairing had 

 been discarded and was to be returned to Washington from 

 Chengtu. All the other instruments, fortunately, were with 

 me on the more western road.' It has been suggested that if 

 I had been with my caravan probably it would not have been 

 attacked; as foreigners, in recent years at any rate, have 

 very rarely been subject to attack in Szechwan, and that my 



