On January 8th, a short fifteen miles across level plain brought me to the hamlet of Tao Yuan, or "the spring among the peach-trees,"—an attractive but singularly delusive title. Indications of famine, which had recently laid a heavy hand upon the province, were to be seen in a series of proclamations which warned the people, under pain of severe punishment, to save up their grain, and not to waste it in the making of spirit.
I had now travelled for two days over the so-called Yün-nan plateau, and for these two whole days I was happy in my belief that the journey before me was to consist of a succession of pleasant marches over a comparatively level table-land, with an average altitude of from 6000 to 7000 feet. It was on January 9th that this illusion began to be dispelled. During the morning we climbed steadily up-hill to the summit of a pass 8000 feet above sea-level, and then dropped headlong some 3600 feet to the bottom of a wild and desolate valley, along which brawled and bubbled the Niu-lan river on its way to join the Yang-tsze to the north-west,—a rise and
