prepared by churning
fresh butter into hot tea until the two have become well mixed. It is then
thickened with finely ground _tsamba_ until a ball is formed which is eaten
with the fingers. The combination is distinctly good when the ingredients
are fresh, but if the butter happens to be rancid the less said of it the
better.

The natives of this region are largely agriculturists and raise great
quantities of squash, turnips, carrots, cabbage, potatoes, onions, corn,
peas, beans, oranges, pears, persimmons and nuts. While traveling we filled
our saddle pockets with pears and English walnuts or chestnuts and could
replenish our stock at almost any village along the road.

Everything was absurdly cheap. Eggs were usually about eight cents
(Mexican) a dozen, and we could always purchase a chicken for an empty tin
can, or two for a bottle. In fact, the latter was the greatest desideratum
and when offers of money failed to induce a native to pose for the camera a
bottle nearly always would decide matters in our favor.

In Li-chiang we learned that there was good shooting only twelve miles
north of the city on the Snow Mountain range, the highest peak of which
rises 18,000 feet above the sea. We left a part of our outfit at Mr. Kok's
house and engaged a caravan of seventeen mules to take us to the hunting
grounds. Mr. Kok assisted us in numberless ways while we were in the
vicinity of Li-chiang and in other parts of the country. He took charge of
all our mail, sending it to us by runners, loaned us money when it was
difficult to get cash from Ta-li Fu and helped us to engage servants and
caravans.

It had rained almost continually for five days and a dense gray curtain of
fog hung far down in the valley, but on the morning of October 11 we awoke
to find ourselves in another world. We were in a vast amphitheater of
encircling mountains, white almost to their bases, rising ridge on ridge,
like the foamy billows of a mighty ocean. At the north, silhouetted against
the vivid blue of a cloudless sky, towered the great Snow Mountain, its
jagged peaks crowned with gold where the morning sun had kissed their
summits. We rode toward it across a level rock-strewn plain and watched the
fleecy clouds form, and float upward to weave in and out or lose themselves
in the vast snow craters beside the glacier. It was an inspiration, that
beautiful mountain, lying so white and still in its cradle of dark green
trees. Each hour it seemed mor