day's work, ascending the bed of a stream covered with loose shingle. We got the cart along by a succession of rushes—the carter on one side and the boy on the other, urging the animals for a short time, then stopping, then making another spurt, and so on. We should have thought nothing of this in Manchuria, but there the mules had less to pull. The stream, like others in these mountains, has a peculiar course. At the lower end of the gorge no stream was visible. As we ascended, a small trickle appeared, which gradually increased in size to a small stream, and then suddenly disappeared again beneath the gravel. We halted for a couple of hours where it was last visible, twelve miles from the inn, and fed the animals. In the afternoon we had the same hard pull up the gorge. On either hand were bare precipitous hills, eighteen hundred or two thousand feet high.
We halted at 6 p.m., at a spring of clear cold water at the base of a cliff. It came on to rain heavily later, but I was snug inside the cart, the boy slept underneath it, and the carter in a hollow of the cliff. One can make one's self very comfortable in the cart, with a mattress spread over the baggage and a waterproof sheet hung across the front.
Weather to-day cool ; rain in the evening.
July 2 t.—We had now a very nasty piece to cross. A landslip had fallen right across the stream, which was blocked by huge boulders. We unloaded the cart, and put the baggage on the mules' backs and took it across to the other side. This they did in two or three trips, and then returned for the empty cart, which the two mules, two ponies, and two men managed with the greatest difficulty to get over the boulders. The cart was then reloaded, and we set off again, ploughing through the shingle, but not for long, for another landslip blocked the way, and the cart had to be unloaded again. We finally reached an inn, only one and a half mile from our camping-place of last night, in seven and a half hours. In
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