rast with the surrounding hills, bare and barren save
where the presence of a temple has preserved the forest.

Yunnan-fu, with a population of some eighty thousand, seems a fairly
prosperous town. Copper is found on the neighbouring hills, and the
metal-work of the place is famous, although by law all copper mined must
be sent to Peking. But the importance of the city depends mainly upon
its trade. It is the centre of a large though rather scantily populated
district abounding in the great staples, rice, beans, and millet, as
well as in fruit and vegetables. Formerly Yunnan stood in the forefront
of opium-producing provinces, but when I was there not a poppy-field was
to be seen. The last viceroy, the much respected Hsi Liang, the one
Mongol in the Chinese service, himself not an opium smoker, had shown
great determination in carrying out the imperial edicts against its use
or production, and rather unwillingly Yunnan was brought into line with
the new order. Under his successor, Li Ching Hsi, a man known to be
given over to the use of the drug, unwilling converts hoped for better
days, only to be disappointed. After a more or less serious effort to
reform, he announced that he was too old to change, but the province had
a long life before it, and must obey the law. So he made amends for his
own short-comings by enforcing the restrictions almost as vigorously as
his predecessor had done. What was true at that time in Yunnan was also
the case in Szechuan. Although always on the watch for the poppy,
nowhere did I see it cultivated. Probably in remote valleys off the
regular trails a stray field might now and then have been found,
innocently or intentionally overlooked by the inspector, but in the main
poppy-growing had really been stamped out; and this where a generation
ago that careful observer, Baber, estimated that poppy-fields
constituted a third of the whole cultivation. Credit where credit is
due. Manchu rule may have been weak and corrupt, but at least in respect
of one great popular vice it achieved more than any Western power ever
thought of attempting. Certainly not last among the causes for its
overthrow was the discontent aroused by its anti-opium policy. And now
it is reported that individualism run mad among the revolutionary
leaders has led to a slackening in the enforcement of the rules, and the
revival of poppy cultivation.

For half a century Yunnan has known little peace. Twenty years long the
terrib