Furthermore, it was out of the question for the French colonial regime itself, already challenged •by a growing resistance movement in Cochinchina, to undertake the "pacification" of the huge Yunnan territory. Rather anticlimactically, towards the end of the expedition-that is, the first half of 1S68-Garnier's views of China began to change: it was, he now wrote, an "exhausted, sick civilization," stricken by "lethargy and immobility.