To pass the valley and go to Kan-lan-chi (4,800 feet), passing the
highest point at nearly 9,000 feet--140 li distant from
Fang-ma-ch'ang--was our ambition for the day.
Starting in the early morning, I had a pleasant walk over an even road
leading to a narrowing gorge, through which a heart-breaking road led to
the valley beyond. Two and a half hours it took me, in my foreign boots,
to cover the twenty li. I fell five times over the smooth stones. The
country was bare, desolate, lonely--four people only were met over the
entire distance. But in the dreaded Valley several trees were ablaze
with blossom, and oranges shone like small balls of gold in the rising
sun. Children playing in between the trees ran away and hid as they saw
me, although I was fifty yards from them--they did not know what it was,
and they had never seen one!
Farther down I caught up my men, Lao Chang and Shanks, and pleasant
speculations were entered into as to what Singai (Bhamo) was like. They
were particularly interested in Singapore because I had lived there, and
after I had given them a general description of the place, and explained
how the Chinese had gone ahead there, I pointed out as well as I could
with my limited vocabulary that if the people of Yuen-nan only had a
conscience, and would only get out of the rut of the ages, they, too,
might go ahead, explaining incidentally to them that as lights of the
church at Tong-ch'uan-fu, it was their sacred duty to raise the standard
of moral living among their countrymen wherever they might wander.
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