Technical

Ron Kaulback was a man of many parts (a botanist, surveyor and cartographer in his earlier expeditions, for example), and this was not simply a zoological enterprise but a geographical and meteorological one as well. And inevitably, there is a certain amount of that kind of detail in this narrative, but it's of interest only to specialists. You might care to vault effortlessly over it, and proceed straight to where the adventure began.

Or might not...

• In his geographical reckonings, he mostly used fractions (¼, ½, ¾) in preference to decimals, but in his meteorological and other readings he used decimals.
• His smaller units of length and distance were (eg) 6" = 6 inches, 6' = 6 feet, 6x = 6 yards, but for longer distances he used miles, written in full as "miles". His usage of feet was variable, sometimes using superscript, sometimes "feet".
• Temperatures used Fahrenheit degrees, eg 60° (implicit unit).
• Angles used degrees of arc, eg 160° (but herein "deg" used in preference to superscript "o" to avoid occasional confusion with temperature).
• Wind directions used N, S, E, W; NE, SE, SW, NW.
• Wind strengths used the Beaufort scale (0-12).
• Barometer readings used decimal inches of mercury (implicit unit).
• Time of day used the 12 hour clock, a.m. or p.m.
• Date used the old-fashioned date format of month, day and year.
• Burmese currency at that time was the (Burmese) Rupee (eg Rs 50) one of many SE Asian variants then and probably now, subdivided into annas (16 to the rupee). Goodness knows what the exchange rate was with GBP£ at that time.
• Burma is now known as Myanmar of course, and quite possibly many place-names have been modified or altered beyond recognition since Ron's time there. As noted above we have tried to stick with the names and spellings he used – he was already fluent in Tibetan, and rapidly became conversant with Kachin, the prevailing Burmese dialect in that area.