Thus I had to work round these open spaces. I had evidently begun to get a bit careless and having got out of the thicker cover and into some very low bracken and scrub not waist high I had crossed a woodland path, when I happened to look back. My-weak nerves received a severe shock, as only about a quarter of a mile away, bobbing along the path, was a line of those enormous yellow painted villagers' hats, used by many of the brigands as a_ protection against rain. I simply dived into the nearest patch of cover and lay quite still, hardly daring to breathe. must have lain there in the same cramped position for nearly an hour and being soaked to the skin became cramped and stiff although the stu had been up for a long time. I was continually hearing in imagine tion someone creeping toward me, breaking the bushes as he came, but nothing happened, and after a bit I sat up and peered cautiously in every direction, through the bushes. After another half hour or so of hiding I made my way, by creeping to a point near a little clearing, about half a mile from my first position. I selected a place for cover here where I could better stretch my horribly cramped, cold and stiff legs, and waited. Once or twice I heard very distant shouts, but as they did not seem to come nearer I made my way along a faint path through the forest and found an ideal place for cover on a steep bank above the path where a mass of sweet smelling and dead pine branches had long ago been cut and now lay piled together. Here I reclined, well hidden, but in the sun, and my soaking clothes gradually commenced to dry. Feeling in my pockets, I found that only one of the tins of "Essence" remained, the other evidently having fallen -out in my midnight scramble, and though I was badly in need of food, I felt that the great strain being over for the present, I had better reserve the other tin till later, so contented myself with milk tablets. At intervals I thought that I could still hear shouts but - these sounds may possibly have come from labourers on the hill clearings.
About midday I determined to push on to the crest, but as the hillside was fairly open and as I had no doubt the brigands must have had watchers on all the high points of the surrounding hills, it was nervous work. In half an hour I reached the top and there, beyond, away into the haze to the eastward stretched the upper Yangtze valley. some miles from its, mouth with the river showing like shining bits of string in reaches and bends which finally faded from sight in the distance. From this point 1 could hear very far off, the beating-of gongs such as were used by our muleteers on the march, and I came to the conclusion that the band must have set out again on the move. For another hour I kept a careful look out and then seeing nothing, living, at any point in the landscape, I crossed over the ridge, and setting a course southwesterly, I made. the best. time I could along the steep and thickly covered hillside. An hour later I crossed another high ridge and found a beautiful. open pineweed country ahead, over which I think T made very good time. A' path lay roughly in the direction my compass showed that I- should take, but I kept off it, as the recent rains would have left my. hoot prints showing in the sandy loam. About four o'clock Ili came to the edge of an enormous. wide ravine or canyon with vertical limestone cliffs bounding it on either side and leading for several miles in a southerly. dir ection. On the western side of this ravine lay a little hamlet. with a great stretch of open country and hills beyond, toward Talifu. lake.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.