Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/296

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226
ACROSS THE HEART OF CHINA.

small garrison and a few moderate shops, in which I was unable to find anything of foreign manufacture. The military officer, a man of inferior rank, called to pay his respects, and provided me with a fresh escort of four soldiers, those who had accompanied me from the capital returning to their homes the happy possessors of 1200 cash (about 3s.) apiece.

For the next two days we passed through a less impossible country. Well-cultivated valleys, with fields of rape, wheat, and poppy, were intersected by pine-clad ridges of no very great height, our stages being the villages of Lü-ho and Sha-chiao on the nights of the 4th and 5th respectively. During the 6th and 7th we were again marching over interminable mountains, spending the night of the 6th at the poverty-stricken village of Pu P'eng, and dropping on the afternoon of the 7th to a large level plain over 7000 feet above sea-level, well cultivated and dotted with villages, at one of which, Yün-nan-yi, we spent the night.

Immediately after leaving Yün-nan-yi on the