[217] I travelled up the valley of this river in 1902, and heard much of its deadliness. Rocher, in his excellent history of Yunnan, remarks that the only people who could live on the banks of the Red River with comparative immunity were some indigenous non-Chinese tribes and Cantonese merchants. As regards the Cantonese, the jealous Yunnanese supposed that their immunity was derived from the fact that they possessed a sovereign remedy for the disease, but kept the secret of it to themselves so that they alone should obtain the benefit. Some of the Yunnanese told Rocher that they would go into battle rather than brave a visit to the banks of the Red River.—(La Province Chinoise du Yunnan, vol. i. pp. 229, 230, and 286.)
[218] See below, pp. 305 seq.
[219] གའུ་
[220] Tibetan brTen (སྲུང་བ་) pronounced ten, or Srung-ba (སྲུང་བ་) pronounced sung-wa, the original meaning of which is simply "protection."
[221] The reader will not, I hope, require to be reminded of "The Bad Child's Book of Beasts," in which the poem to which I refer finds an honourable place.
[222] It would appear from the recent Indian Survey map prepared by Major H. R. Davies, that this must be the Litang River, and therefore starts its course much further north.
[224] Ruskin, Proserpina, II. IV.
[225] Spelt in Tibetan mCh'od-rTen.
[226] See illustration, p. 207.