tances, carries far heavier loads than that. There are
porters, says Du Halde, who will carry 160 of our pounds, ten leagues a
day. The coolies, engaged in carrying the compressed cakes of Szechuen
tea into Thibet, travel over mountain passes 7000 feet above their
starting place; yet there are those among them, says Von Richthofen, who
carry 324 catties (432lbs.). A package of tea is called a "_pao_" and
varies in weight from eleven to eighteen catties, yet Baber has often
seen coolies carrying eighteen of the eighteen-catty _pao_ (the "_Yachou
pao_") and on one occasion twenty-two, in other words Baber has often
seen coolies with more than 400lbs. on their backs. Under these enormous
loads they travel from six to seven miles a day. The average load of the
Thibetan tea-carrier is, says Gill, from 240lbs. to 264lbs. Gill
constantly saw "little boys carrying 120lbs." Bundles of calico weigh
fifty-five catties each (73-1/3lbs.), and three bundles are the average
load. Salt is solid, hard, metallic, and of high specific gravity, yet I
have seen men ambling along the road, under loads that a strong
Englishman could with difficulty raise from the ground. The average load
of salt, coal, copper, zinc, and tin is 200lbs. Gill met coolies
carrying logs, 200lbs. in weight, ten miles a day; and 200lbs., the
Consul in Chungking told me, is the average weight carried by the
cloth-porters between Wanhsien and Chentu, the capital.

Mountain coolies, such as the tea-carriers, bear the weight of their
burden on their shoulders, carrying it as we do a knapsack, not in the
ordinary Chinese way, with a pliant carrying pole. They are all provided
with a short staff, which has a transverse handle curved like a
boomerang, and with this they ease the weight off the back, while
standing at rest.

We were still ascending the valley, which became more difficult of
passage every day. Hamlets are built where there is scarce foothold in
the detritus, below perpendicular escarpments of rock, cut clean like
the facades of a Gothic temple. A tributary of the river is crossed by
an admirable stone bridge of two arches, with a central pier and
cut-water of magnificent boldness and strength, and with two images of
lions guarding its abutment. Just below the branch the main stream can
be crossed by a traveller, if he be brave enough to venture, in a bamboo
loop-cradle, and be drawn across the stream on a powerful bamboo cable
slung from bank to bank.

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