Page:Through China with a camera.pdf/204

 route could be dignified by such a name, was a broken track over dry hills, constantly interrupted by blocks of hard clay and by pitfalls six or eight feet deep. But these were trifles to what lay before us. Slowly we progressed, now wending our tortuous way along the verge of a clay chasm more than 200 feet deep, now diving down into the recesses of a huge clay pit, where the flat surface was so heated with the sun that it almost blistered the hands when we touched its bare walls. The soil became the more broken the further we progressed inland; the pits, too, grew wider and deeper. At the bottom of some of these we actually found cultivated fields, and traces of the mountain torrents that force a subterraneous passage during the wet season through the soft formation beneath, and thus efl"ect the drainage of the central range of mountains, while at the same time they render farming in this hill region an enterprise full of peril. For the squatter tills the treacherous ground, and is liable to find his fields and his dwelling swept away by the sudden subsidence of the soil. But the Hak-kas, who cultivate this shifting clay, are prepared for such emergen- cies, and are quite accustomed to a hasty change of abode, cheerfully resuming their agricultural labours wherever they may happen to settle. At times, indeed, the sudden disappearance of their whole property may lead to very desirable results. They emigrate to a healthier or more settled neighbourhood, perhaps, or else to one where the trees and debris brought down by the torrents will furnish them with fuel during the winter months. I need hardly say that the Imperial Government has not seen fit to send a geographer to lay down a map of this ever-chang- ing region ; and it will be a matter of difficulty, I should think, for the farmer, at the end of each wet season, to find out exactly where he and his neighbours have settled. Poah-be was