For some time his anxious and puzzled parent could get no satisfactory answer to his inquiries; but at length the poor young man burst out, almost crying from an inexplicable pain: 'Oh, father, that tallest devil! that tallest devil, father!'" Girls for Yunnan City are bought at two chief centres--at Chaotong, as we have seen, and at Bichih.

They are carried to the city in baskets.
They are rarely sold into prostitution, but are bought as slave girls for domestic service, as concubines, and occasionally as wives.

Their great merit is the absence of the "thickneck," goitre.
The morning after my visit, Li sent me his card, together with a leg of mutton and a pile of sweet cakes.

I returned my card, and gave the bearer 200 cash (fivepence), not as a return gift to the mandarin, but as a private act of generosity to his servant--all this being in accordance with Chinese etiquette.
My host in Yunnan, and the actual manager and superintendent of the telegraphs of the two provinces, is a clever Danish gentleman, Mr.
Christian Jensen, an accomplished linguist, to whom every European resident and traveller in the province is indebted for a thousand acts of kindness and attention.

He has a rare knowledge of travel in China.
Mr.Jensen arrived in China in 1880 in the service of the Great Northern Telegraph Company--a Danish company.