536 
PKOCEEDINGS OF SECTION E. 
Such a comparatively short distance from its source we should 
expect its variations of level to change with frequency and rapidity, 
with the rain-storms and snow-meltings among the northern moun- 
tains, as happens in short rapid rivers. But I am not aware that 
this is included among the many obnoxious qualities attributed to 
the river, although between Sukat and Tacaw it has a rise of 95 feet 
after the rainy season. It seems no better loved by the Yunnanese 
caravan men on the northern road than it is bv the Was and Shans 
further south, and they all give its gorges as wide a berth as they can 
from fear of its malarial fevers. All the people along its course 
regard it as a stricken zone ; and if they must pass it, they do so at the 
best speed they may, and would no more think of sleeping a night in 
the valley than of permanently settling there. 
Besides fevers of a malarial kind, it seems, like other parts of 
Yunnan, to be cursed with the plague, and the upper valley is prac- 
tically uninhabited. 1 need hardly enumerate all the other horrors 
connected with it, which lose nothing in the mouths of talkative 
Shans who feel themselves well out of its reach, with two or three 
hill ranges between them and it. Altogether it is probably the most 
generally unpopular river that ever flowed from hill to sea. 
Mekong, below Chiamdo . — To return to the Mekong, Captain 
Bower is the last man who has crossed it at Chiamdo ; and in his 
chart he shows the road, as it comes southward into Batang, to be 
surrounded with snowy ranges, all well sprinkled with a community 
chiefly remarkable for dirt, lying, and thieving, who are independent 
of either China or Lhasa. 
At G art ok the southern road comes in from Dayul, and at the 
ferry the height above sea-level is probably not much below that at 
Chiamdo. Between the 24th and 26th parallels there is much very 
interesting work for future explorers, and we can only conjecture 
what the Mekong Yallev must be — a wild gorge of foaming cataract, 
with here and there deep, sombre reaches of still water. 
Tradition makes the Yang Pi Kiver, which flows into the great 
Tali lake, a bifurcation of the Mekong at Hsiaotien. If true — which in 
such a mountainous country seems unlikely — it will hardly surprise 
anyone who knows the perverse, obstinate, and eccentric character of 
the “Meinam Kong.” 
Tali-Mamo Road . — Thus far down we are in Yunnan, and again 
in the neighbourhood of a great main east and west road — that from 
Talifu to Bhamo. Mr. Colborne Baber has given an account of his 
journey along this route, which to readers of travel has become a 
classic ; and he has shown the extreme difficulties of the route for 
trade purposes, passing as it does athwart the gorges of the Mekong, 
Salween, and Shwali, and up over passes, of which one is over 9,000 
feet above sea-level. 
The heights he gives for the three rivers are 4,700 feet, 2,670 
feet, and 4,300 feet respectively, and these are taken as correct in 
Colquhoun’s book. In the case of the Mekong at least one might 
doubt the accuracy of the figure, seeing that at Chieng Sen Mr. 
McCarthy, during his triangulation survey, made the river 1,300 feet, 
and Chieng Boong is generally put down at about 2,000 feet. But, 
on the other hand, Mr. Baber w r as a man whose observations could be 
