Page:Across Thibet Vol. 2.djvu/225

212 enter the village you see figures of gods painted in bright colours but crumbling to pieces, and then comes a sort of triumphal arch on which are inscribed moral phrases like those of schoolchildren's copy-books. The streets are infested by yelping curs and dirty pigs wallowing in the mud; by children as dirty as the animals; by women with legs the size of a chair rail, and feet like snuff-boxes, and by porters or mules carrying heavy loads. The inns are horrible dens impregnated with the most varied odours, that of opium not being the least unpleasant. These inns have the most pompous names, such as the "Polar Star," the Chinese having a great weakness for the four cardinal points. The staple articles of food are rice and pork, and eggs and chickens are to be had in villages, omelettes being made with the former, and soup with the latter; and fish is also eaten, caught with the aid of cormorants, which, flung into the water from a boat, catch the fish and bring them to the fisher after the manner of a retriever.

We cannot but be struck by the economy of the people, their parsimony, their avarice, their art in turning literally everything to account. Thus they make lamp wicks out of the heart of a certain kind of rush, and they also use this for cupping. They have a way of supplying what is wanting in the products of industry wnth a skill of hand and a patience beyond all belief, and if they did not smoke they would not indulge in a single superfluity. It might even be argued that the opium-smoker does not indulge in a superfluity, since he eats and drinks less than the non-smoker. In this land of hunger, where the struggle for existence renders people so ferocious and pitiless, the essential thing is to keep body and soul together, and I have seen men dropping from inanition on the roadway and the Chinese stepping over them without offering to give them assistance. The famishing wretch might die, and his body would lie there without anyone taking notice of it.

In the regions we traversed before reaching Yunnan, we