Leaving the poor upland behind us, we descended to a broad and fertile plain where the travelling was easy, and passed the night in a large Moslem inn in the town of Iangkai.
All next day we pursued our way through fertile fields flanked by pretty hills, which it was hard to realise were the peaks of mountains 10,000 to 11,000 feet above sea-level. Before sundown we reached the prosperous market town of Yanglin, where I had a clean upstairs room in an excellent inn. The wall of my bedroom was scrawled over in Chinese characters with what I was told were facetious remarks by Chinese tourists on the quality of the fare.
In the evening my mule was sick, Laohwan said, and a veterinary surgeon had to be sent for. He came with unbecoming expedition. Then in the same way that I have seen the Chinese doctors in Australia diagnose the ailments of their human patients of the same great family, he examined the poor mule with the inscrutable air of one to whom are unveiled the mysteries of futurity, and he retired with his fee. The medicine came later in a large basket, and consisted of an assortment of herbs so varied that one at least might be expected to hit the mark. My Laohwan paid the mule doctor, so he said, for advice and medicine 360 cash (ninepence), an exorbitant charge as prices are in China.
On Friday, April 13th, we had another pleasant day in open country, leading to the low rim of hills that border the plain and lake of Yunnan city. Ruins everywhere testify to the march of the rebellion of thirty years ago—triumphal arches in fragments, broken temples, battered idols destroyed by Mohammedan iconoclasts. Districts destitute of habitations, where a thriving population once lived, attest that suppression of a rebellion in China spells extermination to the rebels.
On the road I met a case of goitre, and by-and-by others, till I counted twenty or more, and then remembered that I was now entering on a district of Asia extending over Western Yunnan into Thibet, Burma, the Shan States, and Siam, the prevailing deformity of whose people is goitre.
Ten miles before Yunnan my men led me off the road to a fine building among the poplars, which a large monogram on the gateway told me was the Catholic College of the Missions Étrangères de Paris, known throughout the Province as Jinmaasuh. Situated on rising ground, the plain of Yunnan widening before it, the College commands a distant view of the walls and turretted gateways, the pagodas and lofty temples of the famous city. Chinese students are trained here for the priesthood. At the time of my visit there were thirty students in residence, who, after their ordination, will be scattered as evangelists throughout the Province. Père Excoffier was at home, and received me with characteristic courtesy. His news was many weeks later than mine. M. Gladstone had retired from the Premiership, and M. Rosebery was his successor. England had determined to renew the payment of the tribute which China formerly exacted by right of suzerainty from Burma. The Chinese were daily expecting the arrival of two white elephants from Burma, which were coming in charge of the British Resident in Singai (Bhamo), M. Warry, as a present to the Emperor, and were the official recognition by England that Burma is still a tributary of the Middle Kingdom. I may here say that I often heard of this tribute in Western China. The Chinese had been long waiting for the arrival of the elephants, with their yellow flags floating from the howdahs, announcing, as did the flags of Lord Macartney's Mission to Peking, "Tribute from the English to the Emperor of China," and I suppose that there are governments idiotic enough to thus pander to Chinese arrogance. No doubt what has given rise to the report is the knowledge that the Government of India is bound, under the Convention of 1886, to send, every ten years, a complimentary mission from the Chief Commissioner of Burma to the Viceroy of Yunnan.
It was late when I left Jinmaasuh, and long after sundown before I reached the city. The flagged causeway across the plain was slippery to walk on, and my mule would not agree with me that there was any need to hurry. He knew the Chinese character better than I did. Gunfire, the signal for the closing of the gates, had sounded when we were two miles from the wall; but sentries are negligent in China and the gates were still open. Had we been earlier we should have entered by the south gate, which is always the most important of the gates of a Chinese city, and the one through which all officials make their official entry; but, unable to do this, we entered by the big east gate. Turning sharply to the right along the city wall we were conducted in a few minutes to the Telegraph Offices, where I received a cordial welcome from Mr. Christian Jensen, the superintendent of telegraphs in the two great provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow. These are his headquarters, and here I was to rest a delightful week. It was a pleasant change from silence to speech, from Chinese discomfort to European civilisation. Chinese fare one evening, pork, rice, tea, and beans; and the next, chicken and the famed Shuenwei ham, mutton and green peas and red currant jelly, pancakes and aboriginal Yunnan cheese, claret, champagne, port, and cordial Medoc.