When we were well out of the valley and at an altitude of 6,000 feet, we arrived at a Chinese town. Its dark evil-smelling houses, jammed together in a crowded mass, and the filthy streets swarming with ragged children and foot-bound women, were in unpleasant contrast to the charming little Shan villages which we had seen in the low country. The inhabitants themselves appeared to no better advantage when compared with their Shan neighbors, for their stares and insolent curiosity were almost unbearable.
The region between the Salween River at Changlung and Lung-ling is as uninteresting to the zoölogist as it could possibly be, for the hills are dry and bare and devoid of animal life. Lung-ling is a typical Chinese town except that the streets are wide and it is not as dirty as usual. The mandarin was a jolly rotund little fellow who simulated great sympathy when he informed me that he had received no mail for us. We had left directions to have a runner follow us from Yung-chang and in the event that he did not find our camp to proceed to Lung-ling with the mail. We learned some weeks later that the runner had been frightened by brigands and had turned back long before he reached Meng-ting.
We had heard from our mafus and other natives that black monkeys were to be found on a mountain pass not far from the village of Ho-mu-shu, on the main Yung-chang-Teng-yueh road and, as we were certain that they would prove to be gibbons, we decided to make that our next hunting camp. It was three stages from Lung-ling and, toward evening of the second day, we again descended to the Salween River.
The valley at this point is several miles wide and is so dry that the few shrubs and bushes seem to be parched and barely able to live. At the upper end a picturesque village is set among extensive rice fields. Although a few Chinese live there, its inhabitants are chiefly Shans who are in a transitory state and are gradually adopting Chinese customs. The houses are joined to each other in the Chinese way and are built of mud, thatched with straw. In shape as well as in composition they are quite unlike the dwellings of the southern Shans. The women wore cylindrical turbans, about eighteen inches high, which at a distance looked like silk hats, and the men were dressed in narrow trousers and jackets of Chinese blue. I believe that some of the Shan women also had bound feet but of this I cannot be certain.
We camped on a little knoll under an enormous tree at the far end of the village street, and a short time after the tents were up we had a visit from the Shan magistrate. He was a dapper energetic little fellow wearing foreign dress and quite au courant with foreign ways. He even owned a breech-loading shotgun, and, before we left, sent to ask for shells. He presented us with the usual chickens and I returned several tins of cigarettes. He appeared to be quite a sportsman and directed us to a place on the mountain above the village where he said monkeys were abundant.
We left early in the morning with a guide and, after a hard climb, arrived at a little village near the forest to which the magistrate had directed us. Not only did the natives assure us that they had never seen monkeys but we discovered for ourselves that the only water was more than a mile away, and that camping there was out of the question.
The next day, April 1, we went on to Ho-mu-shu. It is a tiny village built into the mountain-side with hardly fifty yards of level ground about it, but commanding a magnificent view over the Salween valley. Although we reached there at half past two in the afternoon the mafus insisted on camping because they swore that there was no water within fifty li up the mountain. Very unwillingly I consented to camp and the next morning found, as usual, that the mafus had lied for there was a splendid camping place with good water not two hours from Ho-mu-shu. It was useless to rage for the Chinese have no scruples about honesty in such small matters, and the head mafu blandly admitted that he knew there was a camping place farther on but that he was tired and wanted to stop early.
As we gained the summit of the ridge we were greeted with a ringing "hu-wa," "hu-wa," "hu-wa," from the forest five hundred feet below us; they were the calls of gibbons, without a doubt, but strikingly unlike those of the Nam-ting River. We decided to camp at once and, after considerable prospecting, chose a flat place beside the road. It was by no means ideal but had the advantage of giving us an opportunity to hunt from either side of the ridge which for its entire length was scarcely two hundred feet in width. The sides fell away for thousands of feet in steep forest-clad slopes and, as far as our eyes could reach, wave after wave of mountains rolled outward in a great sea of green.
Our camp would have been delightful except for the wind which swept across the pass night and day in an unceasing gale. My wife and I set a line of traps along a trail which led down the north side of the ridge, while Heller chose the opposite slope. We were entranced with the forest. The trees were immense spreading giants with interlaced branches that formed a solid roof of green 150 feet above the soft moss carpet underneath. Every trunk was clothed in a smothering mass of vines and ferns and parasitic plants and, from the lower branches, thousands of ropelike creepers swayed back and forth with every breath of wind. Below, the forest was fairly open save for occasional patches of dwarf bamboo, but the upper canopy was so close and dense that even at noon there was hardly more than a somber twilight beneath the trees.
Our first night on the pass was spent in a terrific gale which howled up the valley from the south and swept across the ridge in a torrent of wind. The huge trees around us bent and tossed, and our tents seemed about to be torn to shreds. Amid the crashing of branches and the roar of the wind it was impossible to hear each other speak and sleep was out of the question. We lay in our bags expecting every second to have the covering torn from above our heads, but the tough cloth held, and at midnight the gale began to lull. In the morning the sun was out in a cloudless sky but the wind never ceased entirely on the pass even though there was a breathless calm among the trees a few hundred feet below.