Wo started down the wide and fertile cradle of the Tao river for} some two "hours before turning [south-westward into the beauties of the lower 'Pa-I-Kah valley. This is, the direct highway into the granite fortresses of the interior but, as we leave the larger river and follow up the lesser stream, there is no sug' gestion of what lies boyang. For before us is a fair wide valley through which the—Ta-I-Kuh canders to the soft music of surging and rippling waters, giving no bint of the wild tumult of some few hours before when the same waters, boiled in impotent fury through the narrow confining gorges 30. miles above. And on cither side the high hills, clad in an evergecen mantle of pine and fur, descend in gentle and graeaful slopes to the valley below, extending their rich foliage, in places, to the very water's edge.
Hero is indeed a peaceful paradise, but as we continue to wind upward, each turn, presents a new scene -of higher and steeper slopes gradually cramping the valley jan ever tighter embrace, while the velvet surface of dense dwarf evergreens gives place to larger but less crowded and regular tree growth with occasional open spaces from the surface of which protrude jagged spines of the solid rock beneath. The path follows up the right bank of the stream, in a fairly straight romance.
Choni is no more than a town, and the only one within the whole principality, Enclosed on three sides by high hills and on the fourth by, the valley of the river, the surrounding wall straggles up hill sides and down into ravines, with Only one level stretch on the river side into which is built the principal gate, On the level space in tthe centre of the basin thus enclosed are the houses of the town, While to one side, fronting on the ingle main afreet and backed Against " steep incline, lie the wal grounds and buildings of the prince's palace. They cover some fourth of the whole built up space and: the roofs are sloping and tiled, fatter the style of temples, but all the other houses are the typically Tibetan, square, two storied, flat rooted blocks of mud and plaster, built around an open, unroofed court in the centre. 'They are mostly lighted through the central court and, by way of windows, have but few' amall, square openings facing outward, and altogether the town Presents the appearance of a group Of. small fortresses.
In the one} Principal street there is mo such Scene of busy animation as one otices in the market centres of Chinese towns. The shops, with their half-caste Cinese proprietors, fare few and contain but little in the Way of merchandize, for the sturdy customers who come down through the mountain gorges to trade find use for little that they cannot provide for themselves from the natural resources among which they' live, and the "shops" of Choni are more in the nature of trading. posts for the buying up of the skins, furs and musk that the hunters and trappers bring to them.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.