a pound.
At Batang the price is doubled, and at Lhasa quadrupled. Thus the stuff
bought as tea by the Tibetans can scarcely be called cheap, and yet they
consume great quantities of it. To them it is not a luxury, but a real
necessity.

[2] An apology is due to those wise in Chinese for the blunders
that must be found in this attempt by an American who knows no word of
the vernacular and a Kiangsi man having a limited command of English to
catch and translate the "dirt talk" of Szechuan coolies.

CHAPTER VIII

ACROSS CHENGTU PLAIN

Thoroughly set up by the day's rest in Ya-chou, my men were on hand at
five o'clock on the morning of May 24, in good spirits for the rest of
the trip. Even the ma-fu, whom we had left behind at Hua-lin-ping,
turned up with the coolie and pony sent round from Lu Ting.

Two missionaries going down the river to Chia-ting, at the junction of
the Min and the Ta Tu invited me to take a turn at rafting, and I was
glad to go with them for a few li. The Ya Ho joins the Ta Tu just west
of Chia-ting, the fall from Ya-chou being about six hundred and fifty
feet in a distance of ninety miles. So swift is the current and so
tortuous and rocky the bed of the stream that the only navigation
possible is by means of bamboo rafts fifty or sixty feet long, with a
curled prow. Amidships is a small platform partly roofed over with
matting. In spite of the rapids, which at times make the trip vastly
exciting, there is no danger save the certainty of getting wet. The
scenery on either hand is very beautiful; the great mountains recede in
the distance, fading out in the soft light, but the fine red sandstone
cliffs, alternating with the brilliant green of bamboo groves and
rice-fields on the lowland, afforded a charming picture at every turn.

My men were waiting for me at the appointed place, and ten minutes'
precarious scrambling along the narrow dykes between the fields brought
me to the great highway leading to the capital, four days' march away.
All this day and the three succeeding ones we were travelling through a
district park- or garden-like in its exquisite artificial beauty. The
trail, which was at first fairly good, ran now along the top of an
embankment some six feet broad constructed across the swimming paddy
fields, then dropped into a little valley shaded with fine "namti"
trees, and again it wound along a low ridge. Far off against the western
horizon stretched the splendid snow-lin