up at the village inn. A small Chinese inn is not what we Europeans generally consider luxurious, as the guest accommodation more often than not consists of a single room with a mud floor, which, of course, is not possible to wash, and through which liquids soak when spilt; there are no win dows and chimneys, but holes in the roof and walls serve at once to let in plenty of fresh air and light, and let out the smoke of the fire, which is on the floor in the middle of the room. Every Chinaman clears his throat and expectorates on the walls and floor, and they all seem to have colds in winter. As every Chinaman snores, and the animals which belong to the household all sleep under the same roof, and as furthermore the big wooden bolts of the front door are being perpetually slid backwards and forwards to let men in or out, needless to say the night is not very still. Pigs, dogs, cats, goats, ducks, and fowls, each have their own little ways of letting the weary Britisher know that they are pretty handy and keeping him company, and there is no fear of his feeling lonely.

The next day it snowed hard, and we had an uphill tramp up miles of stone steps, but in the clearer intervals the scenery was very fine, high-peaked hills with bush and trees in the hollows up the craggy sides. I saw no game, but one golden pheasant skin was hanging on a string as a scarecrow in a garden.

I met several lots of pigs

being driven down at the rate of one mile per hour, with one man walking in front with a basket at each end of a long pole over his shoulder, in which he put any little pigs which fell out from being over-tired, and he chanted a dull monotonous funereal dirge to encourage them, while a man behind drove the bigger laggards on with a switch. There were also bands of small ponies hopping gaily down the steep steps, and some goats and small cattle, all bound for the Ichang market, thence to be shipped down the river.

We passed through several villages, where our arrival was heralded by all the dogs, or "wonks" as they are called; and although they make a tremendous noise, and threaten to tear us and my two dogs to pieces, they are quite harmless; and it was really very amusing to see the contempt with which my dogs treated them, not even deigning to look round at them when they were barking within a few inches of their ears. word "wonk" is a corruption of the Chinese word "wong," which means "yellow," and most of the "wonks" are yellow, or white and yellow.

The men with the pigs were not hillmen, as their having baskets at the end of long poles showed. For the coolies on the hills carry their loads in baskets or on baskets, called "pei-tse,' on their backs, and not on bamboo poles called "pien tang," as they do on the plains: of course wheel-barrows on the hills would be useless. Babies, pigs, and in fact everything which can be put into a basket,

are carried in this way, and I have seen old men and women in "pei-tse"; but big fat pigs, eight to ten score pounds in weight, and large white blocks of vegetable tallow, are carried on boards on the top of the baskets across men's backs, and I also saw trains of men carry. ing indigo, maize, furniture, and coffins down from the hills to Ichang.

I slept well the second night, as the cock that crowed incessantly close to my head the night before had not come on with us.

The next day was a long one, and the coolies did very well, as we marched 70 li (23 miles) and got in at six o'clock to Pusi-li, dead tired. I found my companion in a nice inn, and he had just got his first cock reeves pheasant, 6 ft. 1 in. long, and also several small birds which he wanted. We had only stopped once on the way, for the men to get their lunch of rice and beans. The price of rice at an inn is twelve cash per bowl, and four cash for a bowl of beans, which is a sort of white porridge often eaten with the rice. A hungry man can eat three or four bowls at a sitting, but probably a coolie eats about that quantity in a day.

My companion had a room to himself, and I got one opposite to him; there were no windows, but the light came in through paper on the doors. Chinese houses are not built with the idea of making the most use of the ground covered, and in winter there is far too much exposure to the air, as

was at

they generally have an open court in the middle. In the centre of the court is an open pit, which catches the water off the roof; and the only fires are charcoal or wood braziers, or an open wood fire in the centre of the room. We each paid 500 cash (about eighteenpence) per night for our rooms, and our landlord was a cheery old fellow, and often came to have a chat with us. He was delighted when I said that, as his name was Lee-wong, he must be a relation of mine, as all Lees must be related, although it may have been a bit remote. He thought it a splendid joke; and I furthermore trouble to explain to him my hair was so precious that I kept my tail at home, for fear of its being lost. Next day and for several days we shot the woods on the hillsides, using the coolies as beaters, and being much helped by my two dogs, a German pointer and a retrieving spaniel. We got reeves, golden and ringless or common hill pheasants with dark tops to their heads, and not grey like the ringed pheasant. We also got a forked-tail pheasant (Pukrasi Darwini), a pretty, short, grey bird with a dark green head and a long crest and a silver - spangled breast.

One day we arranged with some Chinese sportsmen to have a deer drive, and the shooters, we two, and five men who were armed with matchlocks with pistol grip, were all posted up a very steep mountain side, on bush - covered ledges, while several men with

seven dogs drove the ledges round to us. The beat took two hours, and nothing came, but the view was glorious; and although rather cool, I enjoyed sitting up there in my shirtsleeves, as my coolie, who had my coat, either could not or would not follow me up.

The native matchlock is a wonderful weapon: the barrel is iron, and tapers towards the muzzle like the original chokebore gun. The Chinese sportsman has his own system of loading this weapon,-simple, perhaps, but hardly to be reoommended for imitation. In the first place, the powder is poured into the barrel, the quantity used varying according to the taste, discretion, or ambition of the loader. Whether the powder reaches one, two, three, or four inches up the barrel is a matter of minor importance. No wad is used, but on to the top of the powder three oblong slugs are dropped if deer or goats are to be attacked; where birds only are the destined prey, a modicum of iron shots is substituted for the slugs. Again no wad, with the result that the gun must always be held with the muzzle pointing upwards, and that shooting downhill is out of the question. A small hole punched in the barrel connects the powder inside with a pan outside, into which another small stock of powder is put. And the latter is ignited by a piece of rope which is always kept glowing, and is attached to the iron hammer, which the shooter, at what we will hope to be the extreme

on

psychological moment, presses with his thumb on to the powder-pan. There is a slight fizz and the gun goes off with a terrific noise, and so much recoil that all the sportsmen have deep deep indentations their noses and cheeks from the shock. As in the place of a shoulder-stock there is only a pistol-handle to the gun, it may readily be gathered that the recoil must be fairly potent, and that Mr Tupman's laudable ambition "to discharge his piece without injury to himself" is seldom realised. With such a weapon, however, the Chinaman often shoots pheasants flying, although he prefers them sitting or running. Still, no doubt, he must be written down a fine sportsman, as although he sometimes shoots from his hip without putting up the gun at pheasants, he always puts it up to his nose to aim at a deer, and, as he does not waste many shots, he has to get within twenty or twenty-five yards of his deer before he shoots. We found a cave on the face of a huge rock, with ladders up to it, and on inquiry were told that this place was used as a retreat by the villagers when an enemy came, and that on one occasion 3000 people had saved themselves by staying in it for weeks.

The people we met were all very nice and polite, though very poor as a rule; and whenever we asked the way they insisted on coming with us to show us, and never had any idea of being rewarded for coming. In passing some of

the houses I sometimes accepted their invitation to go in, when we would all sit round the fire, and they would make a place for the dog to come too, and sit on his haunches with his chest to the warmth; and they then would prepare tea and the best provender that they had, generally a white sticky sort of sweetmeat made of beans and sugar; and the dog always had some maize cooked for him.

We had a chat about ordinary everyday topics, all by sign-talking, at which they are adepts. For they are great travellers, and talk a different language at intervals of every 200 or 300 miles, and so get lots of practice. When I thought that I had stayed long enough, I would produce a couple of little ten-cent pieces, which I gave to two of the small children. These would be handed round and examined by every one, as being great curios; and I would tell them that it was Shanghai money, and the father would return them to me, and it would be a matter of some difficulty to persuade him to let the children keep them. We invariably parted great friends, and the whole family would come out to see me off, although it was bitterly cold. In fact, they were a charming and simple people, infinitely more intelligent than the same class of rustics would be in England, and much more pleasant to the foreigner who came to visit their country. The Chinese mind could not grasp the Englishman's reason for com

ing so far to shoot the pheasant, or wild chicken as they call it. One tame fowl is worth about twopence up there, and as they think a wild fowl is not worth nearly so much, they decide that the Englishman must either be going to sell the fowl at an enormous profit when he gets home, or else must be a lunatic, as certainly no reasonable man would go to so much expense and trouble unless he was sure of making a lot of money. The result of this way of settling the question was that one man brought me a live golden pheasant in a long funnel-shaped basket made to fit the pheasant, with its head sticking out of a hole at one end and its tail through a hole at the other end. In this way they often keep a pheasant for weeks, and when let out, of course the bird cannot walk at all from being so cramped. The would-be vendor asked 2400 cash-about a fortnight's pay for an ordinary coolie-for his bird, and was much surprised when I declined to buy it. Another man asked 2400 cash for each of three little fox-skins, which, needless to say, we did not buy.

On 15th January we moved about 50 li to a farmhouse, 1500 feet higher, and found it quite nice, and cleaner than the inn; it was from here that I got the little tufted deer. I was out with one coolie looking for pheasants one very cold morning, when the snow was quite deep on the hillsides and the streams all frozen over, and on walking down a ridge and looking into the scrub on

the opposite side of the valley, I saw a small beast distinctly against the white snow in the bushy undergrowth. As I had only my gun with me, I went back to the farm for my Mannlicher rifle, and on my return saw the little deer in the same place. There was no chance of getting nearer, as if I had crossed into the scrubby bush where the deer was harbouring I certainly could not have seen it. Accordingly I took a longish shot and missed, but with the second shot I hit it. It did not fall dead immediately, but gradually slid down the steep bank for 500 yards into the valley, and on going down to it we found it quite dead. We carried it home and skinned it, leaving the shin-bones in the skin. My old coolie no doubt very much exaggerated the distance of the shot, as it soon grew from the original 250 yards or thereabouts to several li-nay, even a few miles; and I had the gratification of seeing my attitude, both in squatting and in the act of aiming, in fact the whole performance, being graphically reproduced to an admiring audience of rustics, who kept shouting with delight.

Another day I was fortunate in getting two yellow-throated goral, which are also rather rare. As on returning to England I found there was no specimen in the Natural History Museum, I presented one of my own.

Evidently people do not often shoot them up where we were; of course Europeans never, as no European sportsmen visit this spot. When the villagers heard that my coolies were carrying these two little Chinese chamois home, they crowded out to meet us, and expressed great admiration at the rifle, which I graciously permitted them to inspect.

My barometer at the last place we stopped at, Quam Pau, registered 4800 feet, and the highest pass we crossed to come back was 5800 feet above the sea, so no wonder it was cold in the middle of winter.

We got back to Ichang on 28th January, or twenty-five days' trip, the whole trip having cost £20, and our bag of 105 head, including Sclater's muntjac, Ichang tufted deer, yellow-throated goral, Swinhoe's hare, reeves, golden, pukras, and common pheasant, quail, and pigeon.