The green hill slopes are dotted over with sheep and lambs nibbling away at their morning meal, kitchened with blabs of sparkling dew, and higher up the mountain side we hear the cootie moorcock's coothy craw.

One his first assignments was to age the accounts receivable.

The hounds were Indian, Cretan or Locrian; there were also Molossians (mastiffs) and Spartans (big greyhounds).

Above Yibin, the river is the River of Golden Sands, the Jinsha Jiang, a tumultuous thousand-mile-long tributary whose wild waters reflect the bandit-ridden heritage of its remote tribes. When it reaches into Qinghai Province and the Tibetan Plateau, the Jinsha Jiang becomes known as the Tongtian Ho — the River to Heaven, whose crystalline waters nourish the nomads at the farthest reach of the Celestial Kingdom.