The country round Ichang has always some special beauty, and in autumn it is the tints, shown to especial advantage on the tallow-trees. But one day we gathered by the wayside lovely anemones, still lingering on in sheltered spots; large gentians, with their edges picked out into delicate feathery streamers such as one finds in picotees, the little yellow originator of all the garden chrysanthemums; China asters; China daisies; the cunningly placed red berries of the spindletree; and branches crowded with the fairylike red berries of the Chinese hawthorn. And yet we were in the weird, arid, conglomerate region, where, as the botanist of the party said, no flower would dream of growing that could grow anywhere else. The Cherokee roses were no longer in bloom. Are these innocent, white, large roses at the bottom of the American horror of Chinese immigration? It may be remembered that, originating from China, they spread over America with such rapidity that it was assumed they must be of native origin, and from their aggressive nature they were given the name, by which they are still known, of Cherokee.

We made our way to my first monastery, so conspicuous an object to every visitor to these regions, planted on a rocky spur of about fifteen hundred feet high, that not only overhangs precipitously the country beneath, but is separated by a chasm of some one thousand feet from the adjoining hills.