I was to ride a pack-mule. Now riding a pack-mule at any time is an
unpleasant way of getting along the road. I know no more uncomfortable
method. It is not quite as comfortable as sitting upon a table with
one's legs dangling, for the table is still, the mule is moving, and
one's legs dangle on either side of his neck. There are neither reins
nor stirrups, and the mule goes at his own sweet will, and in a very
short time your back begins to ache, after a few hours that aching is
intolerable. To get over this difficulty the missionary had cut the legs
off a chair and suggested that, mounted on the pack, I might sit in it
comfortably. I don't know whether I could, for the mule objected.
It was a sunny morning with a bright blue sky above, and all seemed
auspicious except my mule, who expressed in no measured language his
dislike to that chair. Tsai Chih Fu had no sooner hoisted me into it
than up he went on his hind legs and, using them as a pivot, stood
on end pawing the air. Everybody in the inn-yard shrieked and yelled
except, I hope, myself, and then Tsai Chih Fu, how I know not, rescued
me from my unpleasant position, and thankfully I found myself upon
the firm ground again. He was a true Chinese mule and objected to all
innovations. He stood meekly enough once the chair was removed.
I wanted to cross Asia and here I was faced with disaster at the very
outset! Finally I was put upon the pack minus the chair, Buchanan was
handed up to me and nestled down beside me, and the procession started.
My heart sank. I don't mind acknowledging it now. I had at least
a thousand miles to go, and within half-an-hour of the start I had
thoroughly grasped the faet that of all modes of progression a pack-mule
is the most abominable. There are no words at my command to express its
discomforts.
Very little did I see of the landscape of Shansi that day. I was engaged
in hanging on to my pack and wondering how I could stick it out. We
passed along the usual hopeless cart-track of China. I had eschewed
Peking carts as being the very acme of misery, but I was beginning to
reflect that anyhow a cart was comparatively passive misery while the
back of a pack-mule was decidedly active. Buchanan was a good little
dog, but he mentioned several times in the course of that day that he
was uncomfortable and he thought I was doing a fool thing. I was much of
his opinion.
[Illustration: 0057]
[Illustration: 0058]
The day was never ending. All across a plain we went, with rough fields
just showing green on either hand, through walled villages, through
little towns, and I cared for nothing, I was too intent on holding on,
on wishing the day would end, and at last, as the dusk was falling, the
muleteer pointed out, clear-cut against the evening sky, the long wralls
of a large town--Taiku. At last! At last!
I was to stay the night at a large mission school kept by a Mr and Mrs
Wolf, and I only longed for the comfort of a bed, any sort of a bed so
long as it was flat and warm and kept still. We went on and on, we got
into the suburbs of the town, and we appeared to go round and round,
through an unending length of dark, narrow streets, full of ruts and
holes, with the dim loom of houses on either side, and an occasional
gleam of light from a dingy kerosene lamp or Chinese paper lantern
showing through the paper windows.
Again and again we stopped and spoke to men who were merely muffled
shapeless figures in the darkness, and again we went on. I think now
that in all probability neither Tsai Chih Fu nor Mr Wang understood
enough of the dialect to make the muleteers or the people of whom we
inquired understand where we wanted to go, but at last, more probably by
good luck than good management, somebody, seeing I was a foreigner, sent
us to the foreigners they knew, those who kept a school for a hundred
and twenty-five boys in the lovely Flower Garden. It certainly was
lovely, an old-world Chinese house, with little courtyards and ponds
and terraces and flowers and trees--and that comfortable bed I had been
desiring so long. As we entered the courtyard in the darkness and Tsai
Chili Fu lifted me down, the bed was the only thing I could think of.
[Illustration: 0057]
[Illustration: 0058]
[Illustration: 0059]
And yet next day I started again--I wonder now I dared--and we skirted
the walls of Taiku. We had gone round two sides and then, as I always do
when I am dead-tired, I had a bad attack of breathlessness. Stay on that
pack I knew I could not, so I made my master of transport lift me down,
and I sat on a bank for the edification of all the small boys in the
district who, even if they had known how ill I felt, probably would
not have cared, and I deeided there and then that pack-mule riding was
simply impossible and something would have to be done. Therefore, with
great difficulty, I made my way baek to the mission school and asked Mr
Wolf what he would recommend.
Again were missionaries kindness itself to me. They sympathised with my
trouble, they took me in and made me their guest, refusing to take any
money for it, though they added to their kindness by allowing me to pay
for the keep of my servants, and they strongly recommended that I should
have a litter. A litter then I decided I would have.
It is, I should think, the very earliest form of human conveyance. It
consists of two long poles laid about as far apart as the shafts of an
ordinary cart, in the middle is hung a coarse-meshed rope net, and over
that a tilt of matting--the sort of stuff we see tea-chests covered
with in this country. Into the net is tumbled all one's small
impedimenta--clothes-bags, kettles, anything that will not conveniently
go on mule-back; the bedding is put on top, rugs and cushions arranged
to the future inmate's satisfaction, then you get inside and the
available people about are commandeered to hoist the concern on to the
backs of the couple of mules, who object very strongly. The head of the
one behind is in the shafts, and the ends rest in his pack-saddle, and
the hind quarters of the one in front are in the shafts, just as in an
ordinary buggy. Of course there are no reins, and at first I felt very
much at the mercy of the mules, though I am bound to say the big white
mule who conducted my affairs seemed to thoroughly understand his
business. Still it is uncomfortable, to say the least of it, to find
yourself going, apparently quite unattended, down steep and rocky paths,
or right into a rushing river. But on the whole a litter is a very
comfortable way of travelling; after a pack-mule it was simply heaven,
and I had no doubts whatever that I could comfortably do the thousand
miles, lessened now, I think, by about thirty, that lay before me. If I
reached Lan Chou Fu there would be time enough to think how I would go
on farther. And here my muleteers had me. When I arranged for a litter,
I paid them, of course, extra, and I said another mule was to be got to
carry some of the loads. They accepted the money and agreed. But I may
say that that other mule never materialised. I accepted the excuse when
we left Taiku that there was no other mule to be hired, and by the time
that excuse had worn thin I had so much else to think about that I bore
up, though not even a donkey was added to our equipment.
Money I took with me in lumps of silver, sycee--shoes, they called
them--and a very unsatisfactory way it is of carrying cash. It is very
heavy and there is no hiding the fact that you have got it. We changed
little bits for our daily needs as we went along, just as little as
we could, because the change in cash was an intolerable burden. On one
occasion in Fen Chou Fu I gave Tsai Chih Fu a very small piece of silver
to change and intimated that I would like to see the result. That piece
of silver I reckon was worth about five shillings, but presently my
master of transport and one of the muleteers came staggering in and
laid before me rows and rows of cash strung on strings! I never felt
so wealthy in my life. After that I never asked for my change. I was
content to keep a sort of general eye on the expenditure, and I expect
the only leakage was the accepted percentage which every servant levies
on his master. 'When they might easily have cheated me, I found my
servants showed always a most praiseworthy desire for my welfare. And
yet Mr Wang did surprise me occasionally. While I was in Pao Ting Fu I
had found it useful to learn to count in Chinese, so that roughly I knew
what people at the food-stalls were charging me. On one occasion I saw
some little cakes powdered with sesame seed that I thought I should like
and I instructed Mr Wang to buy me one. I heard him ask the price and
the man say three cash, and my interpreter turned to me and said that
it was four! I was so surprised I said nothing. It may have been the
regulation percentage, and twenty-five per cent is good anywhere, but
at the moment it seemed to me extraordinary that a man who considered
himself as belonging to the upper classes should find it worth his while
to do me out of one cash, which was worth--no, I give it up. I don't
know what it was worth. 10.53 dollars went to the pound when I was in
Shansi and about thirteen hundred cash to the dollar, so I leave it to
some better mathematician than I am to say what I was done out of on
that occasion.
There was another person who was very pleased with the litter and that
was James Buchanan. Poor little man, just before we left the Flower
Garden he was badly bitten by a dog, so badly he could no longer walk,
and I had to carry him on a cushion alongside me in the litter. I never
knew before how dearly one could love a dog, for I was terrified lest he
should die and I should be alone in the world. He lay still and refused
to eat, and every movement seemed to pain him, and whenever I struck
a missionary--they were the only people, of course, with whom I could
converse--they always suggested his back was broken.
I remember at Ki Hsien, where I was entertained most hospitably, and
where the missionary's wife was most sympathetic, he was so ill that I
sat up all night with him and thought he would surely die. And yet in
the morning he was still alive. He moaned when we lifted him into the
litter and whined pitifully when I got out, as I had to several times to
take photographs.
“Don't leave me, don't leave me to the mercy of the Chinese,” he said,
and greeted me with howls of joy when I returned. It was a great day for
both of us when he got a little better and could put his pretty little
black and white head round the tilt and keep his eye upon me while I
worked. But really he was an ideal patient, such a good, patient little
dog, so grateful for any attention that was paid him, and from that time
he began to mend and by the time I reached Fen Chou Fu was almost his
old gay happy little self again.
Taiku is a dying town over two thousand years old, and I have before
seen dead towns in China. Fewer and fewer grow the inhabitants, the
grass grows in the streets, the bricks fall away from the walls, the
houses fall down, until but a few shepherds or peasant farmers dwell
where once were the busy haunts of merchants and tradesmen.
From Taiku I went on across the rich Shansi plain. Now in the springtime
in the golden sunshine the wheat was just above the ground, turning the
land into one vivid green, the sky was a cloudless blue, and all was
bathed in the golden sunshine of Northern China. The air was clear and
invigorating as champagne. “Every prospect pleases,” as the hymn says,
“and only man is vile.” He wasn't vile; really I think he was a very
good fellow in his own way, which was in a dimension into which I
have never and am never likely to enter, but he was certainly unclean,
ignorant, a serf, poverty-stricken with a poverty we hardly conceive of
in the West, and the farther away I found myself from T'ai Yuan Fu the
more friendly did I find him. This country was not like England, where
until the last four years has been in the memory of our fathers and our
fathers' fathers only peace. Even now, now as I write, when the World
War is on, an air raid is the worst that has befallen the home-staying
citizens of Britain. But Shansi has been raided again and again. Still
the land was tilled, well tilled; on every hand were men working hard,
working from dawn to dark, and working, to a stranger's eyes, for the
good of the community, for the fields are not divided by hedge or fence;
there is an occasional poplar or elm, and there are graves everywhere,
but there is nothing to show where Wang's land ends and Lui's begins.
All through the cultivated land wanders, apparently without object, the
zigzag track of sand and ruts and stones known as the Great South
Road, impossible for anything with wheels but a Chinese cart, and often
impossible for that. There are no wayside cottages, nothing save those
few trees to break the monotony, only here and there is a village
sheltering behind high walls, sometimes of mud, but generally of brick,
and stout, substantial brick at that; and if, as is not infrequent,
there is a farmhouse alone, it, too, is behind high brick walls, built
like a baronial castle of mediaeval times, with a look-out tower and
room behind the walls not only for the owner's family even unto the
third and fourth generation, but for all his hinds and his dependents
as well. The whole is built evidently with a view to defence, and built
apparently to last for hundreds of years. For Shansi is worth raiding.
There is oil and there is wheat in abundance. There is money too, much
of which comes from Mongolia and Manchuria. The bankers (the Shansi men
are called the Jews of China) wander across and trade far into Russian
territory while still their home is in agricultural Shansi, and certain
it is that any disturbances in these countries, even in Russia, affect
the prosperity of Shansi. I wonder if the Russian Revolution has been
felt there. Very probably.
Shansi is rich in other things too not as yet appreciated by the
Chinaman. She has iron and copper and coal that has barely been touched,
for the popular feeling is against mining. They say that no part of the
globe contains such stores of coal. I hesitate about quoting a German,
but they told me that Baron Reichthoffen has said that this province has
enough coal to supply the world for two thousand years at the present
rate of consumption. I haven't the faintest notion whether the Baron's
opinion is worth anything, but if it is, it is no wonder that Germany,
with her eye for ever on the main chance, has felt deeply being thrust
out of China.
With ample coal, and with iron alongside it, what might not Shansi be
worth to exploit!
Ki Hsien is a little walled town five _li_ round. Roughly three _li_
make a mile, but it is a little doubtful. For instance, from Taiku to Ki
Hsien is fifty li, and that fifty _li_ is sixteen miles, from Ki Hsien
to Ping Yao is also fifty li, but that is only fourteen English miles.
The land, say the Chinese, explaining this discrepancy, was measured in
time of famine when it wasn't of any value! A very Chinese explanation.
The city of Ki Hsien is very, very crowded; there were hundreds of tiny
courtyards and flat roofs. In the picture of the missionary's house I
have not been able to get the roof in because the courtyard--and it
was a fairly large courtyard as courtyards in the city go--was not
big enough. I stood as far away as I possibly could. Mr and Mrs Falls
belonged to the Chinese Inland Mission and the house they lived in was
over three hundred years old. Like many of the houses in Shansi, it
was two storeys high and, strangely enough, a thing I have never seen
anywhere else, the floors upstairs were of brick.
I do not know how I would like to live in such a crowded community, but
it has its advantages on occasion. At the time of the revolution,
when those missionaries who had come through the Boxer times were all
troubled and anxious about their future, the Falls decided to stay on
at their station, and a rich native doctor, a heathen, but a friend, who
lived next door, commended that decision.
“Why go away?” said he. “Your courtyard adjoins mine. If there is
trouble we put up a ladder and you come over to us.”
And there was hint of trouble then. As we sat at supper there came in
the Chinese postman in his shabby uniform of dirty blue and white, with
his large military cap pushed on the back of his head, and he brought
to the Falls a letter from Dr Edwards, the missionary doctor all foreign
T'ai Yuan Fu thought I ought to meet.
When I was within reach of the Peking foreign daily papers they
mentioned Pai Lang as one might mention a burglar in London, sandwiching
him in between the last racing fixtures or the latest Cinema attraction,
but from a little walled town within a day's march of Hsi An Fu the
veteran missionary wrote very differently, and we in this other little
walled town read breathlessly.
White Wolf had surrounded Hsi An Fu, he said; it was impossible to get
there and he was returning.
The darkness had fallen, the lamp in the middle of the table threw a
light on the letter and on the faces of the middle-aged missionary
and his wife who pored over it. It might mean so much to them. It
undoubtedly meant much to their friends in Hsi An Fu, and it meant much
to me, the outsider who had but an hour ago walked into their lives.
For I began to fear lest this robber might affect me after all, lest in
coming north I was not going to outflank him. According to Dr Edwards,
he had already taken a little walled city a hundred li--about a day's
journey--north-west of Hsi An Fu, and when 'White Wolf took a town it
meant murder and rapine. And sitting there in the old Chinese room these
two people who knew China told me in no measured terms what might happen
to a woman travelling alone in disturbed country.
Missionaries, they said, never left their stations when the country was
disturbed, they were safer at home, surrounded by their friends. Once
the country is raided by a robber band--and remember this is no uncommon
thing in China--all the bad characters in the country come to the fore,
and robber bands that have nothing to do with the original one spring
into existence, the cities shut their gates to all strangers, and
passports are so much waste paper. Between ourselves, I have a feeling
they always are in China. I could hardly tell the difference between
mine and my agreement with my muleteers, and I have an uneasy feeling
that occasionally the agreement was presented when it should have been
the passport.
Now no one could be certain whether Pai Lang intended to take Lan Chou
Fu, but it looked as if that were his objective. If he took the city
it would not be much good my getting there, because the bankers would
certainly not be able to supply me with money; even if he only raided
the country round, it would be so disturbed that my muleteers would be
bound to take alarm. If they left me, and they certainly would leave me
if they thought there was a chance of their mules being taken, I should
be done. It would spell finish not only to the expedition but to my
life. A foreigner, especially a woman without money and without friends,
would be helpless in China. Why should the people help her? It takes
them all they know to keep their own heads above water. And Kansu was
always turbulent; it only wanted a match to set the fire alight. Air and
Mrs Falls--bless them for their kindness and interest!--thought I should
be mad to venture.
[Illustration: 0068]
[Illustration: 0069]
[Illustration: 0070]
So there in the sitting-room which had been planned for a merchant
prince and had come into the possession of these two who desired to
bring the religion of the West to China I sat and discussed this new
obstacle. After coming so far, laying out so much money, could I turn
back when danger did not directly press? I felt I could not. And yet my
hosts pointed out to me that if danger did directly threaten I would not
be able to get away. If Pai Lang did take Lan Chou Fu, or even if he
did not, it might well be worth his while to turn east and raid fertile
Shansi. In a little town like Ki Hsien there was loot well worth having.
In the revolution a banker there was held to ransom, and paid, as the
people put it, thirty times ten thousand taels (a tael is roughly three
shillings, according to the price of silver), and they said it was but
a trifle to him--a flea-bite, I believe, was the exact term--and I
ean well believe, in the multitude of worse parasites that afflict the
average Chinaman, a flea-bite means much less than it does in England.
However, I didn't feel like giving up just yet, so I decided to go on to
Fen Chou Fu, where was a big American mission, and see what they had to
say about the matter. If then I had to flee, the missionaries would very
likely be fleeing too, and I should have company.
And the very next day I had what I took for a warning.
It was a gorgeous day, a cloudless blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and
I passed too many things of interest worth photographing. There were
some extraordinary tombs, there was a quaint village gateway--the Gate
of Everlasting Peace they call it--but I was glad to get back into my
litter and hoped to stay there for a little, for getting out of a litter
presents some difficulties unless you are very active indeed. It is
a good long drop across the shafts on to the ground; the only other
alternative is to drop down behind the mule's hind quarters and slip out
under those shafts, but I never had sufficient confidence in my mule to
do that, so that I generally ealled upon Tsài Chih Fu to lift me down.
I had set out full of tremors, but taking photographs of the peaceful
scenes soothed my ruffled nerves. I persuaded myself my fears had been
born of the night and the dread of loneliness which sometimes overtakes
me when I am in company and thinking of setting out alone, leaving
kindly faces behind.
And then I came upon it, the first sign of unrest.
The winding road rose a little and I could see right ahead of us a great
crowd of people evidently much agitated, and I called to Mr Wang to know
what was the matter.
“Repeat, please,” said he as usual, and then rode forward and came baek
saying, “I do not know the word.”
“What word?”
“What is a lot of people and a dead man?”
“Ah!” said I, jumping to conclusions unwarrantably, “that is a funeral.”
“A funeral!” said he triumphantly. “I have learned a new word.”
Mr Wang was always learning a new word and rejoicing over it, but, as I
had hired him as a finished product, I hardly think it was unreasonable
of me to be aggrieved, and to feel that I was paying him a salary for
the pleasure of teaching him English. However, on this occasion his
triumph was short-lived. .
“Would you like to see the funeral?” he said.
I intimated that I would. My stalwart master of transport lifted me down
and the crowded people made a lane for me to pass through, and half of
them turned their attention to me, for though there were missionaries in
the big towns, a foreigner was a sight to these country people, and, Mr
Wang going first, we arrived at a man with his head cut off! Mercifully
he was mixed up with a good deal of matting and planks, but still there
was no mistaking the poor dead feet in their worn Chinese shoes turned
up to the sky.
Considering we are mortal, it is extraordinary how seldom the ordinary
person looks upon death. Always it comes with a shock. At least it did.
I suppose this war has accustomed some of us to the sight, so that we
take the result of the meeting of mortal man with his last friend on
earth more as a matter of eourse, as indeed it should be taken. Of
course I know this is one of the results of the war.
My sister's son, staying with me after six months in hospital,
consequent upon a wound at Gallipoli, came home from a stroll one day
and reported that he had seen nothing, and then at dinner that night
mentioned in a casual manner that he had seen two dead men being carried
out of a large building and put in a motor ear.
I said in astonishment:
“They couldn't have been dead!”
“Of course they were. Do you think I don't know dead men when I see
them? I've seen plenty.”
So many that the sight of a couple in the streets of a quiet little
country town seemed not even an occasion for remark.
But I was not even accustomed to thinking of dead men and I turned upon
Mr Wang angrily:
“But that isn't a funeral. That's a corpse,” and once more to my
irritation he rejoiced over a new word.
“Who killed him?” I asked.
“They think an enemy has done this thing,” said he sententiously and
unnecessarily, as, ignorant as I am of tilings Chinese, I should hardly
think even they could have called it a friendly action. The body had
been found the day before, and the people were much troubled about it.
An official from Ping Yow--a coroner, I suppose we should call him--was
coming out to inquire about it, and because the sun was already hot the
people had raised a little screen of matting with a table and chairs
where he could sit to hold inquiry.
And here was the thing the missionaries had warned me against. Trouble,
said they, always begins by the finding of dead bodies that cannot be
accounted for, and this body was on the Great South Road. It might
be only a case of common murder such as one might perchance meet in
Piccadilly, possibly it was due to the bands of soldiers that were
pouring into the country--to defend the crossings of the Yellow
River, some people said--but it was to me an emphatic reminder that the
warnings of Mr and Mrs Falls had not been given lightly, and I meditated
upon it all the way to Ping Yow.
All day long the soldiers had been pouring through Ki Hsien, all night
long they poured through the suburbs of Ping Yow. Not through the town
itself--the townspeople were not going to allow that if they could help
themselves; and as it was evidently a forced march and the regiments
were travelling by night, they could help themselves, for every city
gate is shut at sundown. The China Inland Mission had a station at an
old camel inn in the eastern suburb, and there the missionary's young
wife was alone with five young children, babies all of them, and there I
found her. I think she was very glad to see me, anyhow I was someone to
discuss things with, and we two women talked and talked over our evening
meal. She was a tall, pretty young woman--not even the ugly Chinese
dress and her hair drawn back, not a hair out of place, Chinese fashion,
could disguise her pathetic beauty. And she was a countrywoman of mine,
born and brought up in the same state, Victoria, and her native town was
Ararat, green and fresh among the hills. And how she talked Australia!
What a beautiful land it was! And the people! The free, independent
people! The women who walked easily and feared no man! To thoroughly
appreciate a democratic country you should dwell in effete China.
But she feared too, this woman, feared for herself and her five tiny
children. It would be no easy job to get away. I told her of the dead
man I had seen--how should I not tell her?--and she trembled.
“Very likely it is the soldiers,” she said. “I am afraid of the Chinese
soldiers.” And so am I in bulk, though taken singly they seem sueh
harmless little chaps.
“When the willow is green and the apricot yellow in the fifth moon,”
said a metrical inscription on a stone dug up at Nankin in that
year--the fatal year 1914--“terrible things will happen in the land of
Han.” Terrible things, it seems to me, always happen in the land of Han;
but if it spoke for the great world beyond, truly the stone spoke truth,
though we did not know it then.
In the evening back from the country where he had been preaching for the
last day or two came my Australian's husband, and there also came in to
see the stranger two missionaries from the other side of the town.
They sat there, these men and women of British race, dressed in the
outlandish costume of the people around them--a foolish fashion, it
seems to me, for a European in unadulterated Chinese dress looks as ugly
and out of place as a Chinese in a stiff collar and a bowler hat. And
all the evening we discussed the soldiers and the dead man I had seen,
and opinions differed as to the portent.
It is true, said one of them who had been in the country many years, and
was a missionary pure and simple, with eyes for nothing but the work he
had in hand--which is probably the way to work for success--that a
dead body, particularly a dead body by the highroad, is often a sign of
unrest, but again, quite as often it means no more than a dead body
in any other place. If he had turned back for every dead body he had
seen----
Well, I thought I would not turn back either. Not yet, at least.
Never was I sorrier for missionaries, I who have always written against
missionaries, than I was for this young countrywoman of mine who never
thought of being sorry for herself. It was a big ugly mission compound,
the rooms, opening one into another, were plain and undecorated, and the
little children as a great treat watered the flowers that struggled up
among the stones of the dusty courtyard, and the very watering-can was
made with Chinese ingenuity from an old kerosene tin. It seemed to me
those little children would have had such a much better chance
growing up in their mother's land, or in their father's land--he was a
Canadian--among the free peoples of the earth. But who am I, to judge?
No one in the world, it seems to me, wants help so much as the poorer
Chinese, whose life is one long battle with disease and poverty; and
perhaps these poorer missionaries help a little, a very little; but the
poorer the mission the poorer the class they reach, and the sacrifice,
as I saw it here, is so great.
Next morning we arose early, and I breakfasted with my host and hostess
and their five children. The children's grace rings in my ears yet,
always I think it will ring there, the childish voices sung it with such
fervour and such faith:
“Every day, every day, we bless Thee, we bless Thee,
We praise Thy Name, we praise Thy Name,
For ever and for ever!”
There in the heart of China these little children, who had, it seemed to
me, so very little to be grateful for, thanked their God with all their
hearts, and when their elders with the same simple fervour went down on
their knees and asked their God to guide and help the stranger and set
her on her way, though it was against all my received canons of good
taste, what could I do but be simply grateful.
Ping Yow is a large town set in the midst of a wheatgrowing country, and
it is built in the shape of a turtle, at least so I was told. I could
see for myself that its walls were not the usual four-square set to the
points of the compass, but seemed irregular, with many little towers
upon them. These towers, it seems, were built in memory of the teachers
of Confucius--this is the only intimation I have had that he
had seventy-two; and there were over three thousand small
excrescences--again I only repeat what I was told; I did not count them,
and if I had I would surely have counted them wrong--like sentry-boxes
in memory of his disciples. I do not know why Ping Yow thus dedicates
itself to the memory of the great sage. It needs something to commend
it, for it remains in my mind as a bare, ugly, crowded town, with an
extra amount of dust and dirt and heat, and no green thing to break the
monotony.
And I set forth, and in spite of all I still faced West.
[Illustration: 0079]
[Illustration: 0080]