The first two days passed uneventfully. I was set down to be stared at seven times a day, but the village people were inoffensive. We passed through rich and cultivated country, with many noble farmhouses with six or eight irregular roofs, handsome, roofed, entrance gates, deep eaves, and many gables of black beams and white plaster, as in Cheshire. Next pine-clothed hills appeared, and then the grand pass of Shen-kia-chao (2900 feet) lifted us above habitation and cultivation into a solitary mountain region of rock, scrub, torrents, and waterfalls. The road ascends the pass by 1140 steps on the edge of a precipice, which is fenced the whole way by granite uprights two feet high, carrying long granite rails eight inches square. Two chairs can pass along the whole length. The pass is grand and savage. There were brigands on the road, and it was patrolled by soldiers, small bodies of whom I met in their stagey uniforms, armed with lances with long pennons and short bows and arrows. These bows need a strong man's strength to string them, and bow-and-arrow drill is a great military exercise. The price of rice had risen considerably, cash was scarce, and as in some parts even of this prosperous province men do little more than keep body and soul together by their labour, even a slight rise means starvation and death, and it is fierce, cruel want which turns men into robbers in China, many of the stouter spirits preferring to prey on their neighbours in this fashion to depending on their charity.