Then with immense toil we climbed up the mountain path by a rocky staircase of thousands of steps, till, worn out, and with "Bones" nearly dead, we at length reached the narrow defile near the summit, whence an easy road brought us in the early evening to Shuichai (6700ft.).
In the course of one afternoon we had descended 2000ft.

to the river (4250ft.

above the sea), and had then climbed 2450ft.

to Shuichai.

And the ascent from the river was steeper than the descent into it; yet the railway which is to be built over this trade-route between Burma and Yunnan will have other engineering difficulties to contend with even greater than this.
My soldier to-day was a boy of fifteen or sixteen.