Last year, not twenty li from Chaotong, a little girl of four, the only child of the mission cook, was killed by a wolf in broad daylight before its mother's eyes, while playing at the cabin door.
Again, to-day, I passed a humpbacked dwarf on the hills, making his solitary way towards Tongchuan, and I afterwards saw others, an indication of the prosperity that had left the district, for in time of famine no child who was badly deformed at birth would be suffered to live.
We stopped the night at Leitoupo, and next day from the bleak tableland high among the mountains, where the wind whistled in our faces, we gradually descended into a country of trees and cultivation and fertility.

We left the bare red hills behind us, and came down into a beautiful glade, with pretty streams running in pebbly beds past terraced banks.

At a village among the trees, where the houses made some pretension to comfort, and where poppies with brilliantly coloured flowers, encroached upon the street itself, we rested under a sunshade in front of a teahouse.

A pretty rill of mountain water ran at our feet.
Good tea was brought us in new clean cups, and a sweetmeat of peanuts, set in sugar-like almond toffee.

The teahouse was filled.