Soon
I was gazing down upon the tiny patches of light green and a few
solitary cottages, resembling a little beehive, and one could imagine
the metaphorical wax-laying and honey-making of the inhabitants. These
people were away from all mankind, living in life-long loneliness, and
all unconscious of the distinguished foreigner away up yonder, who
wondered at their patient toiling, but who, like them, had his
Yesterday, To-day and To-morrow. There they were, perched high up on the
bleak mountain sides, with their joys and sorrows, their pains and
penalties, struggling along in domestic squalor, and rearing young
rusticity and raw produce.
On these mountains in Yuen-nan one sees hundreds of such little
encampments of a few families, passing their existence far from the road
of the traveler, who often wished he could descend to them and quench
his thirst, and eat with them their rice and maize. Most of them here
were isolated families of tribespeople, who, out of contact with their
kind, have little left of racial resemblance, and yet are not fully
Chinese, so that it is difficult to tell what they really are. Most were
Lolo.
Walking here was treacherous. A foot pathway was the main road, winding
in and out high along the surface of the hills, in many places washed
away, and in others overgrown with grass and shrubbery.
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