FIFTH JOURNEY--TENGYUEH (MOMIEN) TO BHAMO IN UPPER BURMA.

CHAPTER XXV. SHANS AND KACHINS
CHAPTER XXVI. END OF LONG JOURNEY. ARRIVAL IN BURMA



_To travel in China is easy. To walk across China, over roads
acknowledgedly worse than are met with in any civilized country in the
two hemispheres, and having accommodation unequalled for crudeness and
insanitation, is not easy. In deciding to travel in China, I determined
to cross overland from the head of the Yangtze Gorges to British Burma
on foot; and, although the strain nearly cost me my life, no conveyance
was used in any part of my journey other than at two points described in
the course of the narrative. For several days during my travels I lay at
the point of death. The arduousness of constant mountaineering_--_for
such is ordinary travel in most parts of Western China_--_laid the
foundation of a long illness, rendering it impossible for me to continue
my walking, and as a consequence I resided in the interior of China
during a period of convalescence of several months duration, at the end
of which I continued my cross-country tramp. Subsequently I returned
into Yün-nan from Burma, lived again in Tong-ch'uan-fu and
Chao-t'ong-fu, and traveled in the wilds of the surrounding country.
Whilst traveling I lived on Chinese food, and in the Miao country, where
rice could not be got, subsisted for many days on maize only.

My sole object in going to China was a personal desire to see China from
the inside. My trip was undertaken for no other purpose. I carried no
instruments (with the exception of an aneroid), and did not even make a
single survey of the untrodden country through which I occasionally