_Remarkable bonfire at Yuen-nan-fu_. _Infanticide at Chao-t'ong_.
_Selling of female children into slavery_. _Author's horse steps on
human skull_.
Were one uninformed, small observance would be necessary to detect the
borderline of Szech'wan and Yuen-nan. The latter is supposed to be one of
the most ill-nurtured and desolate provinces of the Empire, mountainous,
void of cultivation when compared with Szech'wan, one mass of high hills
conditioned now as Nature made them; and the people, too, ashamed of
their own wretchedness, are ill-fed and ill-clad.
The greater part of the roads to be traversed now were constructed on
projecting slopes above rivers and torrents, affluents of the Yangtze,
and cross a region upon which the troubled appearance of the mountains
that bristle over it stamps the impress of a severe kind of beauty. Such
roads would not be tolerated in any country but China--I doubt if any
but the ancient Chinese could have had the patience to build them. One
could not walk with comfort; it was an impossible task. Far away over
the earth, winding into all the natural trends of the mountain base, ran
the highway, merrily tripping over huge boulders, into hollows and out
of them, almost underground, but always, with its long white extended
finger, beckoning me on by the narrow ribbon in the distance.
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