f our fourth day in Ma-li-pa a heliograph from Rangoon
announced that "The Asiatic Zooelogical Expedition of the American Museum of
Natural History is especially commended to His Majesty's Indian Government
and permission is hereby granted to carry on its work in Burma wherever it
may desire." This was only one of the many courtesies which we received
from the British.

The morning following the receipt of the heliogram we broke camp at
daylight. When the last mule of the caravan had disappeared over the brown
hills toward China we regretfully said farewell and rode away. If we are
ever again made "prisoners of war" we hope our captor will be as delightful
a gentleman as Captain Clive.

CHAPTER XXXIII

HUNTING PEACOCKS ON THE SALWEEN RIVER

From Ma-li-pa we traveled almost due north to the Salween River. The
country through which we passed was a succession of dry treeless hills,
brown and barren and devoid of animal life. On the evening of the third day
we reached the Salween at a ferry a few miles from the village of Changlung
where the river begins its great bend to the eastward and sweeps across the
border from China into Burma.

The stream has cut a tremendous gorge for itself through the mountains and
the sides are so precipitous that the trail doubles back upon itself a
dozen times before it reaches the river 3,500 feet below. The upper half of
the gorge is bare or thinly patched with trees, but in the lower part the
grass is long and rank and a thin dry jungle straggles along the water's
edge. The Salween at this point is about two hundred yards wide, but
narrows to half that distance below the ferry and flows in a series of
rapids between rocky shores.

The valley is devoid of human life except for three boatmen who tend the
ferry, but the deserted rice fields along a narrow shelf showed evidence of
former cultivation. On the slopes far up the side of the canon is a Miao
village, a tribe which we had not seen before. Probably the valley is too
unhealthy for any natives to live close to the water's edge and, even at
the time of our visit in early March, the heated air was laden with
malaria.

The ferrymen were stupid fellows, half drugged with opium, and assured us
that there were no mammals near the river. They admitted that they
sometimes heard peacocks and, while our tents were being pitched on a steep
sand bank beneath a giant tree, the weird catlike call of a peacock echoed
up the valley. It