e of the Tibetan range from which
I had just come, but now more than a hundred miles away. Every inch of
land that could be irrigated was under cultivation, save where a
substantial looking farmhouse set in groves of fine trees, bamboos,
cypress, and namti, occupied a little knoll laboriously built up above
the encircling marsh. Last year their crumbling walls testified to the
security of the country, but I wonder what has been the fate of these
solitary houses in the recent months of lawlessness. Toward the end of
the day a soft mist settled down upon the earth, outlining the nearer
hills and throwing up against the sky the distant peaks.

[Illustration: A FARMHOUSE IN CHENGTU PLAIN]

We had tiffin at the little town of Ming Shan-hsien. About five miles
west of here rises from the plain the Ming Shan, a small mountain famous
throughout China for its tea, which is grown by the priests of a
Buddhist temple on the summit. According to tradition the seeds from
which this tea is produced were brought centuries ago from India by a
Chinese pilgrim. Only a few pounds are gathered annually and these are
always sent as tribute to Peking for the use of the imperial household.
To whom will they now fall? There is a saying current in China that to
make a first-rate cup of tea you must take "leaves from the Ming Shan
and water from the Yangtse." No one believes for a moment that the
turbid water of the Great River is meant here, and yet no one could
explain what it did mean. But De Rosthorn, in his interesting pamphlet
on "Tea Cultivation in Szechuan," gives what seems to him the true
explanation. Crossing the bay at Chen-kiang he saw men in boats filling
buckets with water. Asking what they were doing, he was told that there
was a famous spring at the bottom of the river well known from the time
when the riverbed was dry land. Here, then, was the Yangtse water which,
combined with leaves brought from Ming Shan two thousand miles away,
made the best tea in the world.

We stopped for the night at the village of Pai-chang, where I spent a
tiresome evening trying to arrange for a pony to take the place of
mine, left behind at Ya-chou, as he seemed in need of a longer rest. The
weather was now too hot for walking, but all day in the chair was
unendurable, so I hoped here to hire a pony for half a stage. I refused
to engage one without seeing its back, but nothing appeared to be
inspected, why, I could not tell. The shifts and turns of