The above notes and remarks, full of hope, were written with a little impatience to be "on the water." Now, after two hours scrambling through jungle to and from the river, I've less hope and an empty basket. It was hot and still down in the glen, like the vale wherein sat grey-haired Saturn, and—

"Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer's day
Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest."

and fruit and flowers too lay sodden under foot. It was tough work getting through the few hundred yards of jungle of creeper thorns and boulders to the river's edge. I fished two or three sheltered runs, and came back soaking from within and without from the heat and wet foliage, scratched by thorns, with ears drumming from the noise of many waters, and no basket, and the river not down two inches and muddy as could be!

We must be off again now—or at least let the pack ponies and servants go.

12th, Monday.—Nampoung, after two hours on our little gees, two hours that seemed days! Hot and stuffy down in the glens in the din and roar of the Taiping in spate, climbing up for a thousand feet, a hundred yards on the level, twisting round corries—such fascinating corries, stuffed with every sort of tropic growth, like the pictures one saw in stories of Jules Verne, but in such rich varied colouring! I vow I saw creepers of two hundred feet, wild plantains with fruit, and great ferns, heavy-leaved dark foliage and feathery bamboos, the leaves yellow and dropping and covering our path with a crisp brown carpet.

We rode generally in single file, our right sides against rocks or cuttings in the yellow earth bank, and every here and there were views through the foliage, sometimes almost straight down below us a thousand feet, where we could catch a glimpse of foaming river and hear its roar coming up to us.

The sowars cut branches for us to hold over our shoulders to keep the heat of the afternoon sun off neck and back—Birnam woods a deux, and Nampoung fort instead of Macbeth's castle.

Nampoung—the edge of the Empire!—We are now well into the Kachin Highlands, 6000 to 7000 feet above the sea, and the air is delicious. The last part of our ride here was very steep. G. and her pony were only just able to scrape up together. I and the sepoys had to walk. Almost in the steepest part some sixty Chinese mules and ponies came down, and we pulled aside at a bit of the path where two could barely pass. It was a cheery sight, the long line of ponies and the blue coats and mushroom hats, jogging, slipping, and jangling down the zigzag path, with an occasional cheery shout to the beasts as they disappeared round corners, appeared again, and finally showed a mile below, when only the sound of their bells came up to us faintly from the tropic woods in the bottom of the Nampoung Valley.

I am not sure that having reached a point within pistol-shot of the back of China fills one with any enormous sense of accomplished endeavour. What strikes me mildly is the feeling of being at the present extremity of British possessions, and we speculate where the March may be in years to come—East or West? The tiny little frontier fort we have arrived at is on a saddle-back hill, and overlooks the angle of China between two valleys, that of the Taiping and its tributary, the Nampoung. As we passed through the wire entanglements on the summit, after our climb up, the Indian sentinel facing China across the glen struck me as being rather a suggestive figure, so here he is.

"Capin Kurruk" was our effective password. Kirke I suppose, had heliographed our arrival, and the Subadar and the native doctor met us. The Subadar, a Sikh, I think, had almost the only Indian face I have seen so far that I liked—big, potent, and with the appearance of a sportsman and gentleman. The doctor was of rather an opposite type, though clever-looking, and spoke a little English.

The dark bungalow was a few hundred yards down the hill from the fort looking down the valley we had come up into the sunset. On these higher hills I see more Kachin clearings, and with the glass make out their sturdy little figures in the tracks leading from one clearing to the other, interminable bamboo jungle above and below them. They certainly have a splendid country to hold. They are said to have come into Burmah with the great Mogul invasion; and when the Northerners retreated, the Kachins stayed and took up their quarters in the hill tops, and have raided the low countries since.

The cut of their women's dress resembles the reindeer skin dress of the Laps in north of Norway, and the geometric ornaments are similar, and the torque or heavy penanular necklet of silver has ends like the druidical serpents head.

12th February.—Down at Kulong Cha the night was warm and stuffy! last night up here at Nampoung it was precious cold. We could hardly sleep, though we had on our whole wardrobe. The weak point was our having only two thin quilts underneath on the charpoys. As these bungalows are all made after one design on the principle of a meat-safe, to keep you cool in the low hot levels, they are only too effective up here. So we turned out very early to find a spot where the sun shone hot on the Empire's wall. In an hour or two we will be down to the Nampoung River, and it will be hot there as an oven.