ngled vegetation. In an hour
we were breathing the moist warm air of the tropics and riding across a
wide valley as level as a floor. The long stretches of rank grass, far
higher than our heads, were broken by groves of feathery bamboos, banana
palms, and splendid trees interlaced with tangled vines.

Near the base of the mountains a Shan village nestled into the grass. The
bamboo houses, sheltered by trees and bushes, were roofed in the shape of
an overturned boat with thatch and the single street was wide and clean.
Could this really be China? Verily, it was a different China from that we
had seen before! It might be Burma, India, Java, but never China!

Before the door of a tiny house sat a woman spinning. A real Priscilla,
somewhat strange in dress to be sure and with a mouth streaked with betel
nut, but Priscilla just the same. And in his proper place beside her stood
John Alden. A pair of loose, baggy trousers, hitched far up over one leg to
show the intricate tattoo designs beneath, a short coat, and a white turban
completed John's attire, but he grasped a gun almost as ancient in design
as that of his Pilgrim fathers. Priscilla kept her eyes upon the spinning
wheel, but John's gaze could by no stretch of imagination be called ardent
even before we appeared around a corner of the house and the pretty picture
resolved into its rightful components--a surprised, but not unlovely Shan
girl and a well-built, yellow-skinned native who stared with wide brown
eyes and open mouth at what must have seemed to him the fancy of a
disordered brain.

For into his village, filled with immemorial peace and quiet, where every
day was exactly like the day before, had suddenly ridden two big men with
white skins and blue eyes, and a little one with lots of hair beneath a
broad sun helmet. And almost immediately the little one had jumped from the
horse and pointed a black box with a shiny front at him and his Priscilla.
At once, but without loss of dignity, Priscilla vanished into the house,
but John Alden stood his ground, for a beautiful new tin can had been
thrust into his hand and before he had really discovered what it was the
little person had smiled at him and turned her attention to the charming
street of his village. There the great water buffalos lazily chewed their
cuds standing guard over the tiny brown-skinned natives who played
trustingly with the calves almost beneath their feet.

Such was our invasion of the first S