the
stifling heat and dust that she at last succeeded in exposing all her
plates. Her patience and determination were really wonderful and I am quite
sure that I should not have obtained half her results.

The Kachin women were extraordinary looking individuals. They were short,
and strongly built, with a mop of coarse hair cut straight all around, and
thick lips stained with betel nut. Their dress consisted of a short black
jacket and skirt reaching to the knees, and ornamented with strings of
beads and pieces of brass or silver. This tribe forms the largest part of
the population in northern Burma and also extends into Assam. Yuen-nan is
fortunate in having comparatively few of them along its western frontier
for they are an uncivilized and quarrelsome race and frequently give the
British government considerable trouble.

There were only a few Burmans in the market although the border is hardly a
dozen miles to the west, but the girls were especially attractive. Their
bright pretty faces seemed always ready to break into a smile and their
graceful figures draped in brilliant _sarongs_ were in delightful contrast
to the other, not over-clean, natives.

The Burma girls were not chewing betel nut, which added to their
distinction. The lips of virtually every other woman and man were stained
from the red juice, which is in universal use throughout India, the Malay
Peninsula, and the Netherlands Indies. In Yuen-nan we first noted it at the
"Good Hope" camp, and the Shans are generally addicted to the practice.

The permanent population of Meng-ting is entirely Shan, but during the
winter a good many Cantonese Chinamen come to gamble and buy opium. The
drug is smuggled across the border very easily and a lucrative trade is
carried on. It can be purchased for seventy-five cents (Mexican) an ounce
in Burma and sold for two dollars (Mexican) an ounce in Yuen-nan Fu and for
ten dollars in Shanghai.

Opium is smoked publicly in all the tea houses. The drug is cooked over an
alcohol lamp and when the "pill" is properly prepared it is placed in the
tiny bowl of the pipe, held against the flame and the smoke inhaled. The
process is a rather complicated one and during it the natives always
recline. No visible effect is produced even after smoking several pipefuls,
but the deathly paleness and expressionless eye marks the inveterate opium
user.

There can be no doubt that the Chinese government has been, and is,
genuinely anxi