The next day's stage, to Lao-wa-t'an, is miserably
bad. At certain places it is cut out of the rock, at others it runs in
the bed of the river, which is dotted everywhere with roaring rapids (as
we are ascending very quickly), and when the water is high these roads
are submerged and often impassable. In some places it was a six-inch
path along the mountain slope, with a gradient of from sixty to seventy
degrees, and landslips and rains are ever changing the path.
Lao-wa-t'an is the most important point on the route. One of the largest
Customs stations in the province of Yuen-nan is here situated at the east
end of a one-span suspension bridge, about one hundred and fifty feet in
length. No ponies carrying loads are allowed to cross the bridge, the
roads east of this being unfit for beasts of burden. There is then a
fearful climb to a place called Teo-sha-kwan, a stage of only sixty li.
The reader should not mentally reduce this to English miles, for the
march was more like fifty miles than thirty, if we consider the
physical exertion required to scale the treacherous roads. Over a broad,
zigzagging, roughly-paved road, said to have no less than ninety-eight
curves from bottom to top, we ascend for thirty li, and then descend for
the remainder of the journey through a narrow defile along the northern
bank of the river, the opposite side being a vertical sheet of rock
rising to at least a thousand feet sheer up, very similar to the gorges
of the Mekong at the western end of the province, which I crossed in due
course.
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