ABSTRACT
A s early as 1620, Xu Xiake had dismissed his wanderings in Zhejiang and Fujian as his former travels and professed his desire to visit
Guilin, Mount Heng, the southern Sacred Mountain, and Mount Emei, the great Buddhist mountain in Sichuan province (XXKYJ 33). Xu's visit to the southwest, however, did not represent solely the achievement of a longstanding desire but can be seen as a culmination of his life's work. After all, his diaries end abruptly during his second stay on Mount Chickenfoot and he was to die a few months later, shortly after his return to Jiangyin.
