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Rh prevented from falling asleep by any external circumstances. As Dr Smith has said, "It would be easy to raise in China an army of a million men—nay, of ten millions—tested by competitive examination as to their capacity to go to sleep across three wheelbarrows, with head downwards, like a spider, their mouths wide open and a fly inside!"

The last stage in Chinese territory is Manshien, a collection of a score or so of huts of bamboo matting plastered with mud. Across the river to the north the houses of Manwyne are visible among a grove of trees—the scene of the murder of Augustus Margary. The old road passes through Manwyne, and is still largely used by caravans owing to the better accommodation and supplies which it provides. But on the south bank, from Manshien onwards, the new road becomes a wide and well-graded mountain path, recently constructed by British engineers,—at China's expense, as far as it lies in her territory,—and it is borne pleasantly in upon the traveller, surfeited with the vileness of Chinese tracks, that he is at last within reach of a civilising Power.