ed and ninety miles
distant, if weather permitted, in eleven days. We were to travel by the
following stages:--

Length of Height above
stage sea

1st day--Anpien 90 li ----
2nd day--Huan-chiang 55 li ----
3rd day--Fan-ih-ts'uen 70 li ----
4th day--T'an-t'eo 70 li ----
5th day--Lao-wa-t'an 140 li 1,140 ft.
6th day--Teo-sha-kwan 60 li 4,000 ft.
7th day--Ch'i-li-p'u 60 li 1,900 ft.
8th day--Ta-wan-tsi 70 li ----
9th day--Ta-kwan-ting 70 li 3,700 ft.
10th day--Wuchai 60 li 7,000 ft.
11th day--Chao-t'ong-fu 100 li 6,400 ft.

I knew that I was in for a very hard journey. The nature of the country
as far as T'an-t'eo, ten li this side of which the Szech'wan border is
reached, is not exhausting, although the traveler is offered some rough
and wild climbing. The next day's stage, to Lao-wa-t'an, is miserably
bad. At certain places it is cut out of the rock, at others it runs in
the bed of the river, which is dotted everywhere with roaring rapids (as
we are ascending very quickly), and when the water is high these roads
are submerged and often impassable. In some places it was a six-inch
path along the mountain slope, with a gradient of from sixty to seventy
degrees, and landslips and rains are ever changing the path.

Lao-wa-t'an is the most important point on the route. One of the largest
Customs stations in the province of Yuen-nan is here situated at the east
end of a one-span suspension bridge, about one hundred and fifty feet in
length. No ponies carrying loads are allowed to cross the bridge, the
roads east of this being unfit for beasts of burden. There is then a
fearful climb to a place called Teo-sha-kwan, a stage of only sixty li.
The reader should not mentally reduce this to English miles, for the
march was more like fifty miles than thirty, if we consider the
physical exertion required to scale the treacherous roads. Over a broad,
zigzagging, roughly-paved road, said to have no less than ninety-eight
curves from bottom to top, we ascend for thirty li, and then descend for
the remainder of the journey through a narrow defile along the northern
bank of the river, the opposite side being a vertical sheet of rock
rising to at least a thous