Note 217 — Chapter XI

I travelled up the valley of this river in 1902, and heard much of its deadliness. Rocher, in his excellent history of Yunnan, remarks that the only people who could live on the banks of the Red River with comparative immunity were some indigenous non-Chinese tribes and Cantonese merchants. As regards the Cantonese, the jealous Yunnanese supposed that their immunity was derived from the fact that they possessed a sovereign remedy for the disease, but kept the secret of it to themselves so that they alone should obtain the benefit. Some of the Yunnanese told Rocher that they would go into battle rather than brave a visit to the banks of the Red River.—(La Province Chinoise du Yunnan, vol. i. pp. 229, 230, and 286.)