Romantic Adventures in Tibet and Chiva While the posters in the London streets were asking in plating letters, "Is there too much education the Royal Geographical Society was answering the question in the person of Mr. F. Kingdon Ward, who recently told a mixed audience of children and grown-ups at the elian Hall, Bond Street, some of his adventures while travelling as a plant collector on the borders of China.
It_was like a fairy tale and a G. A. Henry story rolled into one, with a dash of Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir James Barrie thrown in to add to the flavour.
The blue poppies and giant lilies, the miles of flowering, multi-coloured rhododendrons, the waving forests of bluebells veined with purple, the bridal wreaths clematis, and the golden cowslips, which the travellers sought, were to be found in those parts of Tibst and the hinterland of China which could only be reached with most perilous adventures.
We were told of climbs up perpendicular rocks by means of frail bamboo ladders, of shooting rapids, of water journeys in canoes which threatened every second to turn turtle, of men and beasts conveyed across immense rivers on slung ropes, trussed up to the sliders (which usually went wrong) as helpless as any fowl.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.