396 SCOTTS LAST EXPEDITION [August 
Last night Mcarcs told us of his adventures in and about 
Lolo land, a wild Central Asian country nominally tributary 
to Lhassa. He had no pictures and very makeshift maps, 
yet he held us really entranced for nearly two hours by 
the sheer interest of his adventures. The spirit of the 
wanderer is in Meares' blood : he has no happiness but 
in the wild places of the earth. I have never met so 
extreme a type. Even now he is looking forward to 
getting away by himself to Hut Point, tired already of 
our scant measure of civilisation. 
He has keen natural powers of observation for all 
practical facts and a quite prodigious memory for such 
things, but a lack of scientific training causes the accept- 
ance of exaggerated appearances, which so often present 
themselves to travellers when unfamiliar objects are first 
seen. For instance, when the spoor of some unknown 
beast is described as 6 inches across, one shrewdly guesses 
that a cold scientific measurement would have reduced 
this figure by nearly a half ; so it is with mountains, 
cliffs, waterfalls, &c. With all deduction on this account 
the lecture was extraordinarily interesting. Meares lost 
his companion and leader, poor Brook, on the expedition 
which he described to us. The party started up the 
Yangtse, travelling from Shanghai to Hankow and thence 
to Ichang by steamer — then by houseboat towed by coolies 
through wonderful gorges and one dangerous rapid to 
Chunking and Chengtu. In those parts the travellers 
always took the three principal rooms of the inn they 
patronised, the cost 150 cash, something less than four- 
pence — oranges 20 a penny — the coolies with 100 lb. 
