was partially retilled, and one or two villages, re-established among ruins, stood prettily embowered among trees. The semi-civilised border-tribes seem to trade occasionally in the province. They wore coloured, embroidered garments, and presented other peculiarities which I had not time to notice in passing.

The road, on the 5th, has outdone everything hitherto encountered in utter badness. In addition to its natural imperfections, I believe the retreating Mahomedans purposely destroyed the pavement in order to throw difficulties in the way of the Imperial troops. There is scarcely any level ground in the whole length of this tedious stage of 75 li to Lu-fêng Hsien. It is full of steep passes, the chief of which rises to 3500 feet (by my aneroid), and the track by which it is surmounted is simply a chaos of deep ruts and broken stones, offering the acme of dangerous footing to animals as well as carriers. On arriving at Lu-fêng Hsien, I was greeted outside the city by the Magistrate's card-bearer, who knelt according to custom, holding up his master's card, and politely informed me that the official travelling quarters were ready for my reception.

On the 6th we started at an early hour, the thermometer at 46°. The stage was the longest we have yet accomplished, being 90 li, and much of it over steep passes. The mountains were thickly covered with pine. All the villages were in ruins, and the valleys, of which we crossed three or four, are sparsely inhabited. One very heavy pass, involving several li of a severe incline, intervenes in the long march, and by a steep descent leads to the town of Shê-tzu.

The temperature was 42° at starting next morning, but before very long the sun shone out strong, and by sunset the thermometer had risen 20°. The road was still full of difficult passes and deserted_villages. If only an easy road lay_ready between Yun-Nan Fu and Bhamo, a perfect flood of British goods would be swallowed up at once for the Kwei-Chou and Sze-Ch'uen markets. The merchants of the latter province would naturally prefer to buy at Yun-Nan, and float their goods down the Yang-tsze, to the risk and expense of the difficult ascent from Hankow up the I-ch'ang gorge. Native cloth is so dear in Kwei-Chou and Yun-Nan, that the people cannot afford to buy it, and their ragged appearance is due not so much to poverty as to the price of cloth being beyond their means. There would be an immense sale if only Manchester goods could be cheaply conveyed. Watches are wanted badly by the rich classes, and there is a great eagerness to know the price of most of my foreign productions. Cutlery and ordinary crockery excite admiration, and almost anything foreign would speedily

entice buyers, if I may judge by the high appreciation and unfeigned coveting displayed by the few who examined my possessions. Kuang-t'ung Hsien, our destination, lay in a fine valley, which sadly wanted inhabitants to recultivate its broad acres. I was exceedingly well received by the Magistrate, who was a young Kwei-Chou man, and before leaving we became great friends.

8th.-Left Kuang-t'ung. The road was far better to-day, and only two insignificant passes had to be crossed. Lunched at a town called Yao-chan, which lies in a fine valley watered by a good-sized stream, and contains some inns. The road followed the banks of this river for the latter half of the stage almost up to the prefectural city of Ch'u-hsiung, where we stopped. Some peasants were engaged in floating timber down the stream. It was all cut into small lengths, and myriads of these covered the face of the river, part in swift motion with the main current, and part lazily floating down the sluggish flow, while a quantity remained jambed in an immovable mass. The wood-cutters running along the banks with poles seemed to have no easy task in hand to keep their straggling property together. The villagers appeared to be better off, and more comfortably clad, in the Ch'u-hsiung district. Those of them who hailed from Yung-ch'ang Fu or T'êng-yueh Chou, on the borders, showed a decided predilection for colour and embroidery about their persons. Several individuals wore scarlet jackets of a ribbed cloth, which I am told is a product of T'êngyueh Chou, and I noticed how many of the wayfarers who met us on the road were becomingly decked with waist-bands or cummerbunds of pale pink or yellow. This taste for colour is, no doubt, derived from the example of their nomadic neighbours on the borders of Yun-Nan, and presents a very agreeable contrast to the uniform dark-blue which otherwise prevails throughout China as the national dress.

9th. We started early this morning in order to accomplish a very long stage to reach the city of Chên-nan Chou. The road was good, and the bearers were able to keep up a fast pace throughout. After passing through the rich valley of Ch'uhsiung Fu, we crossed a series of low, easy passes, always leading to a valley, with the surrounding hills prettily covered with young pine-trees. The country was less and less inhabited as we proceeded, and the people more miserably clothed; often wide flats appeared, given up to rank grass, and occasionally the road crossed a desert of brambles and wild bushes growing on a hard bed of clay. There was a quantity of pure white clay fit for porcelain, and different-coloured mounds of Lias gave a strange as the ground. Coal cropped out at one spot,

and a shaft was actually being worked higher up on the hill. Buffalo-carts reappeared on the plains, and a river frequently had to be crossed over good stone bridges. In the earlier part of the stage a good deal of building was being carried on by rich proprietors, and I noticed one example of the way they construct the massive earth-walls so characteristic of the district round about. The mud was thrown in between planks of wood, and battened down with clubs. Each layer became hardened in the sun, and the wall had the appearance of being built in strata of about a foot thick.

Next day we reached the town of Sha-ch'iao, and on December 11th had to rise early in the morning as 95 li lay between us and the next resting-place, a town called Pû-p'êng by the natives, but which is entered in the Chinese map as Lien-p'êng. The first 30 li of the way skirted the well-cultivated valley of Sha-ch'iao. Then followed 20 li of steep climbing up a narrow ravine, which was full of trees and shrubs, and contained a brook of clear mountain-water, tumbling down at a great velocity. It was a beautiful piece of natural scenery, but the dangers of the rough and tortuous track, by which we had to thread our way, marred the pleasure which it excited. It was disturbing to be hung over a precipice at an angle of about 30°, while the bearers were turning a sharp corner, and to feel the slips which they could scarcely avoid on the loose red sand which thinly covered the rock under foot. It was one long ascent every inch of the way until we reached a village at the summit, which was the halfway-rest. The remainder of the road was tolerably good. It first descended a ravine slightly, and then followed a high level overhanging a deep precipice well veiled with trees. This debouched at length on to an arid, uncultivable plateau of red sandstone, undulating, and sparsely covered with shrubs and a few stunted trees. Along this desert we were on a level with the tops of a mass of hills, stretching away before us as far as the eye could see. A little cultivation was carried on in terraces, but otherwise it seemed to be a red sand waste far and wide. I was surprised to see quite a large town in the midst of this wild plateau, and still more to find that it contained a yamên, in which we were soon very comfortably settled and fed by the hospitality of the Prefect of Yao-chou, in whose jurisdiction the town lay, and who had actually sent down his servants a distance of 180 li, or two days' journey, from the city to provide for us. Such incomparable civility proves how thoroughly the Viceroy is to be relied on. His career has been marked by "thoroughness." I listen daily' to stories of his remarkable campaigns against the Miautsze in Kwei-Chou, and the Mahomedans in Yun-Nan, which the old

soldier Yan loves to dilate upon after dinner. But as his accent is provokingly provincial, Í unfortunately cannot keep pace with his rapid utterance, but I hope to know all about this hero before returning to Yun-nan Fu, where I have been promised the honour of an interview. The Ta-li Fu people are troublesome and dangerous. I was told so by the Chên-Nan Magistrate, and it was for this reason that the Viceroy sent two mandarins with me. We are four stages from that city, and I am to remain a whole day at the previous stage, while Chou and Yang go ahead to ensure arrangements for my comfort and safety.

[Notwithstanding the reports of the turbulence of the population of Tali-fu, subsequent letters of Mr. Margary spoke of his kind reception in that city on the 17th of December. His route then led via the city of Yung-chang to Momien and Manwyne, on the frontiers of Burmah. At the latter place, where he was subsequently murdered, he was also very well received by the local authorities. He joined Colonel Browne's party at Bhamo on the 15th of January; having thus accomplished a journey through the South-western Provinces of China, which no European had succeeded in doing since the Jesuit missionaries in the early part of the eighteenth century. Mr. Margary, as stated in the prefatory Note, was assassinated at Manwyne on his return to that place, in advance of Colonel Browne's Expedition, on the 21st of February, 1875.]

VI.-A Visit to the Valley of the Shueli, in Western Yunnan, February 1875. By N. ELIAS, Gold Medallist R.G.S.

[Read, February 28th, 1876.]

THE following note on the Shueli Valley, and the route between it and Bhamo, was written as an Appendix * to a detailed Report of my proceedings while detached from the main body of the late ill-fated Expedition to Yunnan. No more of those proceedings, however, need be given here than is sufficient to show the circumstances under which the journey was made, and the causes of its untimely termination.

Two journeys through the hills of the Lenna Kakhyens are alluded to in the note, for it so happened that before the departure of the main body of the Expedition from India I had been ordered to Bhamo to prepare the means of transporting the

of reasons it was never appended to the Report.