y argued at
a terrible speed as to the rate of exchange in the Szech'wan large and
the Yuen-nan small cash, and this was only interrupted when a poor man,
deaf and dumb, and of hideous appearance, seeing the foreigner in his
contemptible town, rushed in with a carrying pole and felled his
grumbling townsman at my feet.

My intervention probably averted murder--at any rate, it seemed as
though murder would have taken place very soon but for my interference.
The whole populace gathered, of course, and the fight waged fiercely
until well on into the night. But wrapping myself in my mackintosh, and
putting my paper umbrella at the right angle, I went to sleep with the
rain dripping on me as they were indulging in final pleasantries
regarding each other's ancestry.

The first thing I saw at Chao-t'ong the next day was the foreign
cigarette, sold at a wayside stall by a vendor of monkey nuts and marrow
seeds. No trade has prospered in Yuen-nan during the past two years more
than the foreign cigarette trade, and the growing evil among the
children of the common people, both male and female, is viewed with
alarm. From Tachien-lu to Mengtsz, from Chung-king to Bhamo, one is
rarely out of sight of the well-known flaring posters in the Chinese
characters advertising the British cigarette. Some months ago a couple
of Europeans were sent out to advertise, and they stuck their poster
decorations on the walls of temples, on private houses and official
residences, with the result that the people were piqued so much as to
tear down the bills immediately. In Yuen-nan, especially since the exit
of opium, this common cigarette is smoked by high and low, rich and
poor. I have been offered them at small feasts, and when calling upon
high officials at the capital have been offered a packet of cigarettes
instead of a whiff of opium, as would have been done formerly. One is
not, of course, prepared to say whether such a trade is desirable or
not, but it merely needs to be made known that towards the middle of the
present year (1910) a proclamation was issued from the Viceroy's _yamen_
at Yuen-nan-fu speaking in strongest terms against the increasing habit
of smoking foreign cigarettes, to show the trend of official opinion on
the subject. After having referred to the enormous advances made in the
imports of cigarettes, the proclamation deplored the general tendency of
the people to support such an undesirable trade, and exhorted the
citizens