where the heights were bleakest and most barren. A twist in the broad valley which our road traversed limited the prospect, but the direction lay beneath the shadows of those distant peaks, and the perspective already compensated for the precipitous climb.
Indeed, from a few li beyond Chyök-syöng, a magistracy of the fourth class, where the houses are roofed with thick slabs of slate supported by heavy beams, where the streets are clean, and where road and river alike make a détour, the views by the wayside became increasingly impressive. For mile upon mile we saw no wayfarers. The villages were widely distant; fertile valleys gave place to green-black gorges, without cultivation, peaceful, grandly beautiful, and uninhabitable. The perfect stillness and the wonderful magnificence of the panorama held one spell-bound. There was no change in the character of the scenery until, riding slowly forward, the road dropped from the comfortable shade of a mountain temple into the blazing sunshine of the plain. Pushing forward, the rice and cornfields receded, giving place to the ranges, whose lofty peaks, dressed with their mantling clouds, had been already dimly discerned. Throughout the journey of the next two days the road rose and fell, winding in a steady gradient across the mountain sides.
The march to Tong-ko-kai was laborious, and one day, when within easy distance of the concession in a tiny hamlet, the colour of the slate and granite boulders, nestling among waving bushes, almost unconscious of the outer world and hardly alive to its own existence, an ideal spot in which to pitch the evening camp was found. It was early in the afternoon, but the road ahead looked rough and stony. Our horses were fatigued, the ford had been troublesome and we were wet, cold and hungry. Within the bush
