it—three hundred yards or so broad, and ten to fifteen feet deep. Its sides were covered down to the water's edge with forests, and at intervals, where the ground was flatter, were patches of cultivation and a few farmhouses, or meadows covered with flowers of every description—often with masses of stately lilies, some specimens of which measured six inches across, or with waving sheets of purple irises and columbines. Then gliding noiselessly across the scene would come a raft drifting quietly down the river, and sadly tempting us to do the same, instead of laboriously plodding our way through the forest up the stream.
But we were now approaching the Ever-White Mountain, and the interest of getting there would, we well knew, repay all our exertions. As we neared it, however, our difficulties gradually increased. At Mao-erh-shan, on the Yalu, two hundred and eighty miles from Mukden, where we had expected to get all ordinary supplies, we found hardly anything. For a day or two before reaching this place, we had been living upon very short rations, and had been looking forward to getting a good square meal of meat when we arrived there. But only some uneatable pork was to be had, and we were obliged to content ourselves, in the meat line, with an egg curry, made of salted eggs six months old, and only eatable at all with the aid of a very strong curry.
We now had to leave the valley of the Yalu and plunge into the heart of the forest which surrounded the White Mountain. Day after day we ascended the ridges which run down from it—up one side of the ridge and down the other, then up again, and so on unendingly. We never saw anything but the trunks of the trees. Even from the summits of the ridges nothing was to be seen ; we were simply swamped in forest, and could not see out of it. I know of nothing more depressing than this, to struggle on, forcing a way for the mules through the undergrowth, and hauling and shoving them up the slopes and rocky
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