Salt was everywhere, much more like coal than salt, certainly as black.
The blocks were stacked up by the sides of inns ready for transport,
carried on the backs of a multitude of poor wretches who work like oxen
from dawn to dusk for the merest pittance, on the backs of droves and
droves of ponies, scrambling and spluttering along over the slippery
once-paved streets.
All day long, with the exception of two or three easy ascents, we were
travelling in pleasantly undulating country of park-like magnificence.
My men dallied. I tramped on alone; and sitting down to rest on the
rocks, I realized that I was in one of the strangest, loneliest, wildest
corners of the world. Great mountain-peaks towered around me, white and
sparkling diadems of wondrous beauty, and at my feet, black and
stirless, lay a silent pool, reflecting the weird shadows of my coolies
flitting like specters among the jagged rocks of these most solitary
hills.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote AD: Hsiakwan would be supplied by a branch line of the main
railway in the Kunlong scheme advocated by Major H.R. Davies, leaving at
Mi-tu, to the south of Hungay.--E.J.D.]
[Footnote AE: The written language was framed and instituted by the Rev.
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