is a second story opening into a gallery.
Here are kitchens and sleeping-rooms, while store-rooms and stables are
tucked in anywhere. In the largest inns there is often an inner court
into which open the better rooms.

While the cook bustled about to get hot water, and the head coolie saw
to the setting-up of my bed, I generally went with the "ma-fu," or horse
boy, to see that the pony was properly cared for. Usually he was handy,
sometimes tethered by my door, often just under my room, once overhead.
Meanwhile the coolies were freshening themselves up a bit after the
day's work. Sitting about the court they rinsed chest and head and legs
with the unfailing supply of hot water which is the one luxury of a
Chinese inn. I can speak authoritatively on the cleanliness of the
Chinese coolie, for I had the chance daily to see my men scrub
themselves. Their cotton clothing loosely cut was well ventilated, even
though infrequently cleansed, and there hung about them nothing of the
odour of the great unwashed of the Western world. I wish one could say
as much for the inns, but alas, they were foul-smelling, one and all,
and occasionally the room offered me was so filthy that I refused to
occupy it, and went on the war-path for myself, followed by a crowd of
perplexed servants and coolies. Almost always I found a loft or a
stable-yard that had at least the advantage of plenty of fresh air, and
without demur my innkeeper made me free of it, although I expect it cut
him to the heart to have his best room so flouted.

Generally I went to bed soon after dinner; there was nothing else to do,
for the dim lantern light made reading difficult, and anyway my books
were few. But while the nights were none too long for me, the Chinese,
like most Asiatics, make little distinction between day and night. They
sleep if there is nothing else to do, they wake when work or pleasure
calls, and it was long after midnight when the inn settled itself to
rest, and by four o'clock it was again awake, and before seven we were
once more on the road.

In Yunnan, or "South of the Clouds," as the word signifies, you are in a
land of sunshine, of wild grandeur and beauty, of unfailing interest.
Its one hundred and fifty-five thousand square miles are pretty much on
end; no matter which way you cross the country you are always going up
or going down, and the contrasts of vegetation and lack of it are just
as emphatic; barren snow-topped mountains overhang ti