p your banks low.' On we were taken
along mountain trails over high snow-filled passes and across rivers
on bamboo bridges to Wassoo, a timber centre from which great rafts of
lumber are shot down the river, over fearsome rapids, freighted with
Chinamen. 'They generally come through all right,' said the lecturer.

Higher up the river (Min) live the peaceful Ching Ming people,
an ancient aboriginal stock, and beyond these the wild tribes, the
Lolo themselves. They made doubtful friends with a chief preparing
for war. Meares described a feast given to them in a barbaric hall
hung with skins and weapons, the men clad in buckskin dyed red,
and bristling with arms; barbaric dishes, barbaric music. Then the
hunt for new animals; the Chinese Tarkin, the parti-coloured bear,
blue mountain sheep, the golden-haired monkey, and talk of new fruits
and flowers and a host of little-known birds.

More adventures among the wild tribes of the mountains; the white
lamas, the black lamas and phallic worship. Curious prehistoric caves
with ancient terra-cotta figures resembling only others found in
Japan and supplying a curious link. A feudal system running with well
oiled wheels, the happiest of communities. A separation (temporary)
from Brook, who wrote in his diary that tribes were very friendly and
seemed anxious to help him, and was killed on the day following--the
truth hard to gather--the recovery of his body, &c.

As he left the country the Nepaulese ambassador arrives, returning
from Pekin with large escort and bound for Lhassa: the ambassador
half demented: and Meares, who speaks many languages, is begged by
ambassador and escort to accompany the party. He is obliged to miss
this chance of a lifetime.

This is the meagrest outline of the tale which Meares adorned with a
hundred incidental facts--for instance, he told us of the Lolo trade
in green waxfly--the insect is propagated seasonally by thousands of
Chinese who subsist on the sale of the wax produced, but all insects
die between seasons. At the commencement of each season there is a
market to which the wild hill Lolos bring countless tiny bamboo boxes,
each containing a male and female insect, the breeding of which is
their share in the industry.

We are all adventurers here, I suppose, and wild doings in wild
countries appeal to us as nothing else could do. It is good to know
that there remain wild corners of this dreadfully civilised world.

We have had a bright fi