communication to Burmah markets. I counted in the day several flocks of over 100 sheep and several heads of over 50 ponies. The mutton and beef of Yunnan is almost as good as at home. Mules are bred in the hills north of Teng Yueh, but the sires are very small jackasses, and saw none but the ordinary small transport mule, which does the Bhamo carrying trade. Many of the people here are solely occupied in tending flocks and herds; but there is also a good deal of cultivation in the uplands---buckwheat, maize, wheat, and opium in sheltered spots being the chief crops. The land is prepared by a sort of skinning process, 4 to 6 inches of soil, containing all the roots of the grasses, being stripped off the land and piled in heaps over its face. These piles are then set on fire, and allowed to smoulder, the ashes serving as manure.
On the afternoon of our march from the Hsiang Yang Bridge we descended from 8,400 feet by a very steep path from the downs to the Valley of Ta Hsi Lienu, near its chief market town, Ku Tung Kai. Near Ku Tung there are several large and flourishing villages, All the country, indeed, between Ku Tung and the Ta Ying Shan north of Teng Yueh presents a most pleasing appearance, the villages being surrounded with ample orchards and pastures. The excessive droughts of the winter and spring in Central Yunnan are here tempered by local spring rains, which is a great boon to the shepherd folk, who have no difficulty in finding grass for their herds.
Near Ku Tung I halted a day, at the request of the villagers, to shoot wild (bar-heads), which do great harm by browsing on the young opium and wheat shoots, and I disposed of fifteen of these marauders. We then marched west from Ku Tung up a lateral valley and over a pass 8,500 feet, leaving the Shweli Basin, and passing into the Valley of Ku Yung, which belongs to the Taiping system. This track is so narrow as to be impassable at some places for mules laden, and the packs have to be carried, but a little spade work is all that is required to broaden it out. The chief botanical features of this and of the other neighbouring ranges which I traversed are rhododendron trees, sometimes growing to a height of 30 feet, and covered in March with masses of rich red blossoms, a small lilac-coloured oxslip, which fills, not unworthily, the place of the home primrose, and in high, damp, sheltered spots a small and graceful primula of a delicate mauve colour. The folds and summits of these ranges are still covered with dense forest, but there is little timber of much value. Teng Yueh is, however, supplied with wood from these hills. The Kalej pheasant is by no means rare, and on the lower slopes the common pheasant of the country (Stone's, or Phasianus elegans) is frequently met with.
The country through which I passed is a country in compartments, consisting of valleys divided from each other by broad mountain ranges. The further north-east the nearer to the headwaters of the Taiping and Shweli Valleys-I was able to penetrate, the narrower and smaller were the valleys, and the more extensive and complicated was the mountain system; but a description of one of the passes from valley to valley would apply to nearly all the others.
Ku Yung is a market of fifty houses in a long and narrow but fertile and populous valley about 10 miles by 1 mile. It is the starting-point of the main track to the Upper Irrawadi, Mytkina, and the Burmah jade mines via the Kao Liang Pass (10,000 feet), and a number of the Ku Yung people are in the habit of going over into Burmah on petty trading expeditions. The pass is still infested by robbers, though there are supposed to be 200-and really are some 90-soldiers at Ku Yung, and a post of 15 men at Tatto, where the ascent of the Kao Liang commences. There is also a Lisan headman, the agent of the "Fu yi," or Lisaw Chief of Tan Tsa-Lan Ma, but hitherto we have quite failed to get redress for robberies committed on this part of the frontier.
On the 5th March we moved up the Ta Ho, at the junction of the Ka Yang stream with the Taiping River, which here runs through wild country over a rocky course (20-25 yards wide in March) with some fine pools; it is almost like a salmon stream at home, but though there are salmon in Monmouth and in Macedon, there are none in Yunnan, and in the upper waters of the Taiping mahseer are very difficult to catch.
On the 6th March, in heavy rain succeeding nocturnal thunderstorms, we marched up the Ta Ho gorge in a northerly direction, and then turned east up a stiff ascent to 7,800 feet, whence there was a good view of the precipitous mountains whence the Taiping River takes its source. San Cha Ho, 5 miles north of Ta Ho, and consisting, like it, of a few scattered Lisaw huts, is the junction of the three head-waters of the Taiping River, which are:-
1. The Ta Ho, which springs from the mountains not far from the sources of the Shingaw River, which flows into the N'maikha (the eastern branch of the Irrawadi);
2. The Tan Tsa stream which comes in from the north; and
3. The Lun Ma stream which comes from the east of San Cha Ho. There is a route over into the Shingaw Valley from Ku Yung, viâ San Cha Ho, by which the N'maikha can be reached in four days. By this pass, the watershed is crossed close to the mountain Manung Pum, which is the most northerly point of the demarcated frontier. This track was reported to me as not being passable for mules, and as being used only by a few Lisaw porters. There is also stated to be a route into the N'maikha Basin from Tan Tsa over a snow mountain, which is difficult, and in bad weather impassable even for porters; this track would, after passing into the N'maikha Basin, strike the head-waters of its tributary the Tummaw. The population in these hills round the head-waters of the Taiping is very scanty, and so far as I could find out, the Chinese have at this point no pretensions to any jurisdiction in the N'maikha Basin.
The little Plain of Lun Ma, which we reached in five hours' rough mountain march from Ta Ho, is only 2 miles by a mile, and contains only two villages, one Chinese and one Lisaw. The Plain of Tan Tsa is situated about 5 miles to the north of and is even smaller than Lun Ma, but it is the residence of the local Lisaw "fu yi," or hereditary Chief.
As we entered the Lisaw country near Ta Ho, I may give a few notes on these people. They chiefly inhabit the higher valleys and slopes at an altitude above the Kachin villages on the N'maikba side, and above the Chinese villages on the Yunnan side. They are mostly scattered about in small hamlets of three to five families; they have been expelled from most of the padi lands which they once possessed, and now live chiefly on maize and buckwheat. The commercial activity chiefly consists in bringing down hemp, firewood, wheat, and the bark of the Koutree (Edgeworthia Gardneri), from which paper is made, to the Chinese hazaars in exchange for salt, cotton, clothing, rice, and opium. They mostly grow their own tobacco; their houses are of bamboo wattles, and divided into three partitions and thatched with dried grass. In the Kuyang Lun Ma district they claim to have come from either Pa Chiao or Sima, near the British frontier, and they assert that their principal Chief used to reside at Meng Ka, near Sima, in the old days before the appearance of the Kachins; but their real origin must be looked for elsewhere. It is almost certainly to be found in the valley of the Upper Salwen, where the bulk of the population is still Lisaw. The Lisaw race is probably, like the Kachins, an offshoot from the south-eastern edges of the Thibetan plateau. About Meng Ka and Lun Ma there is obviously a strong strain of Chinese blood in the Lisaws, but on nearing the Upper Salwen the Thibetan type and physique is strongly marked. It does not appear that there is any tradition of the Lisaws ever having been in possession of any of the main valleys; indeed, they themselves state that they put in an appearance in these parts after the Chinese, but before the Kachins. The Lisaws near Ku Yung have adopted Chinese habits and language to such an extent that they can hardly understand their cousins from the Salwen, but even those who have adopted Chinese dress preserve the hempen gaiters, tightly bound under the knee and falling loosely to the ankle, which are a characteristic feature of their national dress. Cotton garments are an innovation. The "black," or wild Lisaw of the Upper Salwen, of whom I saw a few specimens, were entirely clad in coarse hemp, and wore rude turbans of the same material; the gaiters, the long robe and short trousers completed the costume, while their ornaments consisted of light silver bracelets and necklets of plaited straw, from which hung small shells, pebbles, and bits of silver. The Lisaw always goes about armed with his heavy, broadsword in a univalve wooden scabbard, and with his crossbow and bundle of hardened bamboo-arrows, which will penetrate an inch of deal at a distance of 30 yards. Some part of his person, the strap of his sword, or even his pigtail, if he has one, is invariably adorned with small shells, though in other respects he may be a "short coat," i.e., if he is dressed in Chinese fashion and has discarded the hempen or "long coat" of his ancestors. The women dress very differently in nearly every community which I visited, but their heads and bodies are always adorned with shells, bits of deers' horns, and odds and ends of silver and pebbles. The real Lisaw female dress is a hempen kilt and short hemp jacket, with a cap encrusted with shells, but in Upper Ming Kwang the kilt has become a tightish petticoat worn under a long cotton robe, with a broad cotton belt adorned with patchwork of red, green, and white.
The Lisaw coolie carries 50 lbs. on his back, and is a good porter in difficult country.
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