Having purchased this tea-brushwood, the manufacturers proceed to make it up for the ignorant Tibetan, The leaves and twigs, already sun-dried, are steamed ina cloth suspended over a boiler. The mould stands close by. four stout boards set on end and secured with bitts, the interior having section of nine inches by three and w half. Inside it is placed a neatly woven mat basket, somewhat smaller in section than the mould; the steamed and softened twigs and leaves are dropped into the cavity by small quantities at_a time, and a little rice water being aided to agglutinate the mass, it is consolidated, layer after layer, by forcible blows from the wooden rammer shod with heavy iron shoe. The coarser sticks are dried and ground ty powder, and inter-sparsed act Libitem among the conglomerate of leaves and twigs. The cake, with its envelope of bamboo matting, is then thoroughly dried over a fire, the ends are closed up and it is made into a puo, which at Yachow measures about three fort in length and weighs fifteen catties. On arrival at Tachienly, these cakes are cut into portions termed cliran or bricks.
The packages are conveyed to Tachienlu by tea-porters or on mule back. porter carries twice as much as a mule, but a mule travels more than twice as fast as a porter. The man's burden is arranged o" a light wooden framework disposed along the whole of his back, and rising in a curve over his shoulders and high above his head, the structure being supported by a couple of slings, generally made of coir, through which his arms are passed. The great weights that can be cartied in this manner are certainly astonishing. As Richthofen writes: There is probably no road in the world where such heavy loads are carried by man across high mountains. I was assured thst some men carry eighteen pao—324 catties." (We ourselves counted several loads of this number, but the usual quantity was twelve to fourteen; and Baber men-
706 four pounds, sells in Tachienlu for two A Dick of common tou weighing about
for one rupoe—nearly double; and, by the mace, and in Batang, ates: days further, time it reaches Lhassa the price is said to be nearly doubled again. With this ratio of geometrical progression, if tea was ever carried overland to Europe, it must have been literally invaluable by the time it reached there. But the above figures do show that the taxation derived from the trade by. the Chinese government a most moderate one. In fact, compared with the exactions of European or American Customs and excise, all likin and Customs duties throughout the Chinese Empire are iuposetl most modest scale.
There is one most useful product of Tibet we have omitted to mention, and that is sealing wax, of which we laid in a stock at Tachienlu; this wax softens at a very much higher temperature than European stalin, wax and so can be used freely in tropical countries. The Tibetans apply seals to alli their boxes and packets and seem all supplied with this wax. In this connection it may be mentioned that their method of writing is much the same as ours, and tras vellers can hardly make them more valurjq stall presents than steel pens, peubol? ors, and English paper, Sunday, 18th September.—Yecnow we made to be 1,700 feet above the soa, and Kiating 1,050. Thus the fal', in the Ya between these two pointy, is about 650 feet, in a distance of sume eighty or ninety miles, or, roughly, seVen feet per mile. Compare this with the fall from Chungking to the sea,—630 fort, for a distance of fifteen hundred wiles, and it will be seen that we must have had a fine current to carry us on our homeward journey. And indeed, we found the river a succession of turbulent rapids, with huge breaking waves, far fiercer than any of the famous rapids of the navigable portion of the Yangtze. There were, however, numerous reaches where the river widened out into comparatively calm stretches of deep transparent water, flowing gently between tree-lined banks, most delightful to float down in the balmy summer' air. The Grand Highway, uniting Tibet with the capital, here crosses the river by a raft ferry, and continues overland in a north-easterly direction, whereas our course was now south-east, at right angles to the road we had been' traversing since quitting the banks of the Tung. The body of water was about half, or perhaps two-thirds, that.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.