BOOK II.

ACROSS CHINA ON FOOT

_By_

EDWIN JOHN DINGLE

1911

IN GRATEFUL ESTEEM

DURING MY TRAVELS IN INTERIOR CHINA I ONCE

LAY AT THE POINT OF DEATH. FOR THEIR UNREMITTING

KINDNESS DURING A LONG ILLNESS, I

NOW AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBE THIS VOLUME TO

MY FRIENDS, MR. AND MRS. A. EVANS, OF TONG-CH'UAN-FU,

YÜN-NAN, SOUTH-WEST CHINA, TO

WHOSE DEVOTED NURSING AND UNTIRING CARE

I OWE MY LIFE.

CONTENTS

BOOK I.

FROM THE STRAITS TO SHANGHAI--INTRODUCTORY

FIRST JOURNEY.

CHAPTER I. FROM SHANGHAI UP THE LOWER YANGTZE TO ICHANG

SECOND JOURNEY--ICHANG TO CHUNG-KING THROUGH THE YANGTZE GORGES.

CHAPTER II. THE ICHANG GORGE

CHAPTER III. THE YANGTZE RAPIDS

CHAPTER IV. THE YEH T'AN RAPID. ARRIVAL AT KWEIEU

THIRD JOURNEY--CHUNG-KING TO SUI-FU (VIA LUCHOW).

CHAPTER V. BEGINNING OF THE OVERLAND JOURNEY

CHAPTER VI. THE PEOPLE OF SZECH'WAN

FOURTH JOURNEY--SUI-FU TO CHAO-T'ONG-FU (VIA LAO-WA-T'AN).

CHAPTER VII. DESCRIPTION OF JOURNEY FROM SUI-FU

CHAPTER VIII. SZECH'WAN AND YÜN-NAN

THE CHAO-T'ONG REBELLION OF 1910.

CHAPTER IX.

THE TRIBES OF NORTH-EAST YÜN-NAN, AND MISSION WORK AMONG THEM.

CHAPTER X.

FIFTH JOURNEY--CHAO-T'ONG-FU TO TONG-CH'UAN-FU.

CHAPTER XI. AUTHOR MEETS WITH ACCIDENT

CHAPTER XII. YÜN-NAN'S CHECKERED CAREER. ILLNESS OF AUTHOR

BOOK II.

FIRST JOURNEY--TONG-CH'UAN-FU TO THE CAPITAL.

CHAPTER XIII. DEPARTURE FOR BURMA. DISCOMFORTS OF TRAVEL

CHAPTER XIV. YÜN-NAN-FU, THE CAPITAL

SECOND JOURNEY--YÜN-NAN-FU TO TALI-FU (VIA CH'U-HSIONG-FU).

CHAPTER XV. DOES CHINA WANT THE FOREIGNER?

CHAPTER XVI. LU-FENG-HSIEN. MOUNTAINOUS COUNTRY. CHINESE

UNTRUTHFULNESS

CHAPTER XVII. KWANG-TUNG-HSIEN TO SHACHIAO-KA

CHAPTER XVIII. STORM IN THE MOUNTAINS. AT HUNGAY

CHAPTER XIX. THE REFORM MOVEMENT IN YÜN-NAN. ARRIVAL AT

TALI-FU

THIRD JOURNEY--TALI-FU TO THE MEKONG VALLEY.

CHAPTER XX. HARDEST PART OF THE JOURNEY.HWAN-LIEN-P'U

CHAPTER XXI. THE MOUNTAINS OF YÜN-NAN. SHAYUNG. OPIUM

SMOKING

FOURTH JOURNEY--THE MEKONG VALLEY TO TENGYUEH.

CHAPTER XXII. THE RIVER MEKONG

CHAPTER XXIII. THROUGH THE SALWEN VALLEY TO TENGYUEH

CHAPTER XXIV. THE LI-SU TRIBE OF THE SALWEN VALLEY

FIFTH JOURNEY--TENGYUEH (MOMIEN) TO BHAMO IN UPPER BURMA.

CHAPTER XXV. SHANS AND KACHINS

CHAPTER XXVI. END OF LONG JOURNEY. ARRIVAL IN BURMA

_To travel in China is easy. To walk across China, over roads

acknowledgedly worse than are met with in any civilized country in the

two hemispheres, and having accommodation unequalled for crudeness and

insanitation, is not easy. In deciding to travel in China, I determined

to cross overland from the head of the Yangtze Gorges to British Burma

on foot; and, although the strain nearly cost me my life, no conveyance

was used in any part of my journey other than at two points described in

the course of the narrative. For several days during my travels I lay at

the point of death. The arduousness of constant mountaineering_--_for

such is ordinary travel in most parts of Western China_--_laid the

foundation of a long illness, rendering it impossible for me to continue

my walking, and as a consequence I resided in the interior of China

during a period of convalescence of several months duration, at the end

of which I continued my cross-country tramp. Subsequently I returned

into Yün-nan from Burma, lived again in Tong-ch'uan-fu and

Chao-t'ong-fu, and traveled in the wilds of the surrounding country.

Whilst traveling I lived on Chinese food, and in the Miao country, where

rice could not be got, subsisted for many days on maize only.

My sole object in going to China was a personal desire to see China from

the inside. My trip was undertaken for no other purpose. I carried no

instruments (with the exception of an aneroid), and did not even make a

single survey of the untrodden country through which I occasionally

passed. So far as I know, I am the only traveler, apart from members of

the missionary community, who has ever resided far away in the interior

of the Celestial Empire for so long a time.

Most of the manuscript for this book was written as I went along>--a

good deal of it actually by the roadside in rural China. When my journey

was completed, the following news paragraph in the North China Daily

News (of Shanghai) was brought to my notice:--

"All the Legations (at Peking) have received anonymous letters from

alleged revolutionaries in Shanghai, containing the warning that an

extensive anti-dynastic uprising is imminent. If they do not assist

the Manchus, foreigners will not be harmed; otherwise, they will be

destroyed in a general massacre.

"The missives were delivered mysteriously, bearing obliterated

postmarks.

"In view of the recent similar warnings received by the Consuls,

uneasiness has been created."

The above appeared in the journal quoted on June 3rd, 1910. The reader,

in perusing my previously written remarks on the spirit of reform and

how far it has penetrated into the innermost corners of the empire,

should bear this paragraph in mind, for there is more Boxerism and

unrest in China than we know of. My account of the Hankow riots of

January, 1911, through which I myself went, will, with my experience of

rebellions in Yün-nan, justify my assertion.

I should like to thank all those missionaries who entertained me as I

proceeded through China, especially Mr. John Graham and Mr. C.A.

Fleischmann, of the China Inland Mission, who transacted a good deal of

business for me and took all trouble uncomplainingly. I am also indebted

to Dr. Clark, of Tali-fu, and to the Revs. H. Parsons and S. Pollard,

for several photographs illustrating that section of this book dealing

with the tribes of Yün-nan.

I wish to express my acknowledgments to several well-known writers on

far Eastern topics, notably to Dr. G.E. Morrison, of Peking, the Rev.

Sidney L. Hulick, M.A., D.D., and Mr. H.B. Morse, whose works are

quoted. Much information was also gleaned from other sources.

My thanks are due also to Mr. W. Brayton Slater and to my brother, Mr.

W.R. Dingle, for their kindness in having negotiated with my publishers

in my absence in Inland China; and to the latter, for unfailing courtesy

and patience, I am under considerable obligation. "Across China on Foot"

would have appeared in the autumn of 1910 had the printers' proofs,

which were several times sent to me to different addresses in China, but

which dodged me repeatedly, come sooner to hand_.

[Signature: Edwin Dingle]

HANKOW, HUPEH, CHINA.

Across China on Foot

_From the Straits to Shanghai_

INTRODUCTORY

_The scheme_. _Why I am walking across Interior China_. _Leaving

Singapore_. _Ignorance of life and travel in China_. _The "China for the

Chinese" cry_. _The New China and the determination of the Government_.

_The voice of the people_. _The province of Yün-nan and the forward

movement_. _A prophecy_. _Impressions of Saigon_. _Comparison of French

and English methods_. _At Hong-Kong_. _Cold sail up the Whang-poo_.

_Disembarkation_. _Foreign population of Shanghai_. _Congestion in the

city_. _Wonderful Shanghai._

Through China from end to end. From Shanghai, 1,500 miles by river and

1,600 miles walking overland, from the greatest port of the Chinese

Empire to the frontier of British Burma.

That is my scheme.

* * * * *

I am a journalist, one of the army of the hard-worked who go down early

to the Valley. I state this because I would that the truth be told; for

whilst engaged in the project with which this book has mainly to deal I

was subjected to peculiar designations, such as "explorer" and other

newspaper extravagances, and it were well, perhaps, for my reader to

know once for all that the writer is merely a newspaper man, at the time

on holiday.

The rather extreme idea of walking across this Flowery Land came to me

early in the year 1909, although for many years I had cherished the hope

of seeing Interior China ere modernity had robbed her and her wonderful

people of their isolation and antediluvianism, and ever since childhood

my interest in China has always been considerable. A little prior to the

Chinese New Year, a friend of mine dined with me at my rooms in

Singapore, in the Straits Settlements, and the conversation about China

resulted in our decision then and there to travel through the Empire on

holiday. He, because at the time he had little else to do; the author,

because he thought that a few months' travel in mid-China would, from a

journalistic standpoint, be passed profitably, the intention being to

arrive home in dear old England late in the summer of the same year.

We agreed to cross China on foot, and accordingly on February 22, 1909,

just as the sun was sinking over the beautiful harbor of Singapore--that

most valuable strategic Gate of the Far East, where Crown Colonial

administration, however, is allowed by a lethargic British Government to

become more and more bungled every year--we settled down on board the

French mail steamer _Nera_, bound for Shanghai. My friends, good

fellows, in reluctantly speeding me on my way, prophesied that this

would prove to be my last long voyage to a last long rest, that the

Chinese would never allow me to come out of China alive. Such is the

ignorance of the average man concerning the conditions of life and

travel in the interior of this Land of Night.

Here, then, was I on my way to that land towards which all the world was

straining its eyes, whose nation, above all nations of the earth, was

altering for better things, and coming out of its historic shell.

"Reform, reform, reform," was the echo, and I myself was on the way to

hear it.

At the time I started for China the cry of "China for the Chinese" was

heard in all countries, among all peoples. Statesmen were startled by

it, editors wrote the phrase to death, magazines were filled with

copy--good, bad and indifferent--mostly written, be it said, by men

whose knowledge of the question was by no means complete: editorial

opinion, and contradiction of that opinion, were printed side by side in

journals having a good name. To one who endeavored actually to

understand what was being done, and whither these broad tendencies and

strange cravings of the Chinese were leading a people who formerly were

so indifferent to progress, it seemed essential that he should go to the

country, and there on the spot make a study of the problem.

Was the reform, if genuine at all, universal in China? Did it reach to

the ends of the Empire?

That a New China had come into being, and was working astounding results

in the enlightened provinces above the Yangtze and those connected with

the capital by railway, was common knowledge; but one found it hard to

believe that the west and the south-west of the empire were moved by the

same spirit of Europeanism, and it will be seen that China in the west

moves, if at all, but at a snail's pace: the second part of this volume

deals with that portion of the subject.

And it may be that the New China, as we know it in the more forward

spheres of activity, will only take her proper place in the family of

nations after fresh upheavals. Rivers of blood may yet have to flow as a

sickening libation to the gods who have guided the nation for forty

centuries before she will be able to attain her ambition of standing

line to line with the other powers of the eastern and western worlds.

But it seems that no matter what the cost, no matter what she may have

to suffer financially and nationally, no matter how great the obstinacy

of the people towards the reform movement, the change is coming, has

already come with alarming rapidity, and has come to stay. China is

changing--let so much be granted; and although the movement may be

hampered by a thousand general difficulties, presented by the ancient

civilization of a people whose customs and manners and ideas have stood

the test of time since the days contemporary with those of Solomon, and

at one time bade fair to test eternity, the Government cry of "China for

the Chinese" is going to win. Chinese civilization has for ages been

allowed to get into a very bad state of repair, and official corruption

and deceit have prevented the Government from making an effectual move

towards present-day aims; but that she is now making an honest endeavor

to rectify her faults in the face of tremendous odds must, so it appears

to the writer, be apparent to all beholders. That is the Government

view-point. It is important to note this.

In China, however, the Government is not the people. It never has been.

It is not to be expected that great political and social reforms can be

introduced into such an enormous country as China, and among her four

hundred and thirty millions of people, merely by the issue of a few

imperial edicts. The masses have to be convinced that any given thing is

for the public good before they accept, despite the proclamations, and

in thus convincing her own people China has yet to go through the fire

of a terrible ordeal. Especially will this be seen in the second part of

this volume, where in Yün-nan there are huge areas absolutely untouched

by the forward movement, and where the people are living the same life

of disease, distress and dirt, of official, social, and moral

degradation as they lived when the Westerner remained still in the

primeval forest stage. But despite the scepticism and the cynicism of

certain writers, whose pessimism is due to a lack of foresight, and

despite the fact that she is being constantly accused of having in the

past ignominiously failed at the crucial moment in endeavors towards

minor reforms, I am one of those who believe that in China we shall see

arising a Government whose power will be paramount in the East, and upon

the integrity of whose people will depend the peace of Europe. It is

much to say. We shall not see it, but our children will. The Government

is going to conquer the people. She has done so already in certain

provinces, and in a few years the reform--deep and real, not the

make-believe we see in many parts of the Empire to-day--will be

universal.

* * * * *

Between Singapore and Shanghai the opportunity occurred of calling at

Saigon and Hong-Kong, two cities offering instructive contrasts of

French and British administration in the Far East.

Saigon is not troubled much by the Britisher. The nationally-exacting

Frenchman has brought it to represent fairly his loved Paris in the

East. The approach to the city, through the dirty brown mud of the

treacherous Mekong, which is swept down vigorously to the China sea

between stretches of monotonous mangrove, with no habitation of man

anywhere visible, is distinctly unpicturesque; but Saigon itself, apart

from the exorbitance of the charges (especially so to the spendthrift

Englishman), is worth the dreary journey of numberless twists and quick

turns up-river, annoying to the most patient pilot.

In the daytime, Saigon is as hot as that last bourne whither all

evil-doers wander--Englishmen and dogs alone are seen abroad between

nine and one. But in the soothing cool of the soft tropical evening,

gay-lit boulevards, a magnificent State-subsidized opera-house, alfresco

cafés where dawdle the domino-playing absinthe drinkers, the

fierce-moustached gendarmes, and innumerable features typically and

picturesquely French, induced me easily to believe myself back in the

bewildering whirl of the Boulevard des Capucines or des Italiennes.

Whether the narrow streets of the native city are clean or dirty,

whether garbage heaps lie festering in the broiling sun, sending their

disgusting effluvia out to annoy the sense of smell at every turn, the

municipality cares not a little bit. Indifference to the well-being of

the native pervades it; there is present no progressive prosperity.

Every second person I met was, or seemed to be, a Government official.

He was dressed in immaculate white clothes of the typical ugly French

cut, trimmed elaborately with an _ad libitum_ decoration of gold braid

and brass buttons. All was so different from Singapore and Hong-Kong,

and one did not feel, in surroundings which made strongly for the

_laissez-faire_ of the Frenchman in the East, ashamed of the fact that

he was an Englishman.

Three days north lies Hong-Kong, an all-important link in the armed

chain of Britain's empire east of Suez, bone of the bone and flesh of

the flesh of Great Britain beyond the seas. The history of this island,

ceded to us in 1842 by the Treaty of Nanking, is known to everyone in

Europe, or should be.

Four and a half days more, and we anchored at Woo-sung; and a few hours

later, after a terribly cold run up the river in the teeth of a terrific

wind, we arrived at Shanghai.

The average man in Europe and America does not know that this great

metropolis of the Far East is far removed from salt water, and that it

is the first point on entering the Yangtze-kiang at which a port could

be established. It is twelve miles up the Whang-poo. Junks whirled past

with curious tattered brown sails, resembling dilapidated verandah

blinds, merchantmen were there flying the flags of the nations of the

world, all churning up the yellow stream as they hurried to catch the

flood-tide at the bar. Then came the din of disembarkation. Enthusiastic

hotel-runners, hard-worked coolies, rickshaw men, professional Chinese

beggars, and the inevitable hangers-on of a large eastern city crowded

around me to turn an honest or dishonest penny. Some rude, rough-hewn

lout, covered with grease and coal-dust, pushed bang against me and

hurled me without ceremony from his path. My baggage, meantime, was

thrown onto a two-wheeled van, drawn by four of those poor human beasts

of burden--how horrible to have been born a Chinese coolie!--and I was

whirled away to my hotel for tucker. The French mail had given us coffee

and rolls at six, but the excitement of landing at a foreign port does

not usually produce the net amount of satisfaction to or make for the

sustenance of the inner man of the phlegmatic Englishman, as with the

wilder-natured Frenchman. Therefore were our spirits ruffled.

However, my companion and I fed later.

Subsequently to this we agreed not to be drawn to the clubs or mix in

the social life of Shanghai, but to consider ourselves as two beings

entirely apart from the sixteen thousand and twenty-three Britishers,

Americans, Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Danes, Portuguese, and other

sundry internationals at that moment at Shanghai. They lived there: we

were soon to leave.

The city was suffering from the abnormal congestion common to the

Orient, with a big dash of the West. Trams, motors, rickshaws, the

peculiar Chinese wheelbarrow, horrid public shaky landaus in miniature,

conveyances of all kinds, and the swarming masses of coolie humanity

carrying or hauling merchandise amid incessant jabbering, yelling, and

vociferating, made intense bewilderment before breakfast.

Wonderful Shanghai!

FIRST JOURNEY

FROM SHANGHAI UP THE LOWER YANGTZE TO ICHANG

CHAPTER I.

_To Ichang, an everyday trip_. _Start from Shanghai, and the city's

appearance_. _At Hankow_. _Meaning of the name_. _Trio of strategic and

military points of the empire_. _Han-yang and Wu-ch'ang_. _Commercial and

industrial future of Hankow_. _Getting our passports_. _Britishers in the

city_. _The commercial Chinaman_. _The native city: some impressions_.

_Clothing of the people_. _Cotton and wool_. _Indifference to comfort_.

_Surprise at our daring project_. _At Ichang_. _British gunboat and early

morning routine_. _Our vain quest for aid_. _Laying in stores and

commissioning our boat_. _Ceremonies at starting gorges trip_. _Raising

anchor, and our departure_.

Let no one who has been so far as Ichang, a thousand miles from the sea,

imagine that he has been into the interior of China.

It is quite an everyday trip. Modern steamers, with every modern

convenience and luxury, probably as comfortable as any river steamers in

the world, ply regularly in their two services between Shanghai and this

port, at the foot of the Gorges.

The Whang-poo looked like the Thames, and the Shanghai Bund like the

Embankment, when I embarked on board a Jap boat _en route_ for Hankow,

and thence to Ichang by a smaller steamer, on a dark, bitterly cold

Saturday night, March 6th, 1909. I was to travel fifteen hundred miles

up that greatest artery of China. The Yangtze surpasses in importance to

the Celestial Empire what the Mississippi is to America, and yet even

in China there are thousands of resident foreigners who know no more

about this great river than the average Smithfield butcher. Ask ten men

in Fleet Street or in Wall Street where Ichang is, and nine will be

unable to tell you. Yet it is a port of great importance, when one

considers that the handling of China's vast river-borne trade has been

opened to foreign trade and residence since the Chefoo Convention was

signed in 1876, that Ichang is a city of forty thousand souls, and has a

gross total of imports of nearly forty millions of taels.

Of Hankow, however, more is known. Here we landed after a four days'

run, and, owing to the low water, had to wait five days before the

shallower-bottomed steamer for the higher journey had come in. The city

is made up of foreign concessions, as in other treaty ports, but away in

the native quarter there is the real China, with her selfish rush, her

squalidness and filth among the teeming thousands. There dwell together,

literally side by side, but yet eternally apart, all the conflicting

elements of the East and West which go to make up a city in the Far

East, and particularly the China coast.

Hankow means literally Han Mouth, being situated at the juncture of the

Han River and the Yangtze. Across the way, as I write, I can see

Han-yang, with its iron works belching out black curls of smoke, where

the arsenal turns out one hundred Mauser rifles daily. (This is but a

fraction of the total work done.) It is, I believe, the only

steel-rolling mill in China. Long before the foreigner set foot so far

up the Yangtze, Hankow was a city of great importance--the Chinese used

to call it the centre of the world. Ten years ago I should have been

thirty days' hard travel from Peking; at the present moment I might

pack my bag and be in Peking within thirty-six hours. Hankow, with

Tientsin and Nanking, makes up the trio of principal strategic points of

the Empire, the trio of centers also of greatest military activity. On

the opposite bank of the river I can see Wu-ch'ang, the provincial

capital, the seat of the Viceroyalty of two of the most turbulent and

important provinces of the whole eighteen.

Hankow, Han-yang, and Wu-ch'ang have a population of something like two

million people, and it is safe to prophesy that no other centre in the

whole world has a greater commercial and industrial future than Hankow.

Here we registered as British subjects, and secured our Chinese

passports, resembling naval ensigns more than anything else, for the

four provinces of Hu-peh, Kwei-chow, Szech'wan, and Yün-nan. The

Consul-General and his assistants helped us in many ways, disillusioning

us of the many distorted reports which have got into print regarding the

indifference shown to British travelers by their own consuls at these

ports. We found the brethren at the Hankow Club a happy band, with every

luxury around them for which hand and heart could wish; so that it were

perhaps ludicrous to look upon them as exiles, men out in the outposts

of Britain beyond the seas, building up the trade of the Empire. Yet

such they undoubtedly were, most of them having a much better time than

they would at home. There is not the roughing required in Hankow which

is necessary in other parts of the empire, as in British East Africa and

in the jungles of the Federated Malay States, for instance. Building the

Empire where there is an abundance of the straw wherewith to make the

bricks, is a matter of no difficulty.

And then the Chinese is a good man to manage in trade, and in business

dealings his word is his bond, generally speaking, although we do not

forget that not long ago a branch in North China of the Hong-kong and

Shanghai Bank was swindled seriously by a shroff who had done honest

duty for a great number of years. It cannot, however, be said that such

behavior is a common thing among the commercial class. My personal

experience has been that John does what he says he will do, and for

years he will go on doing that one thing; but it should not surprise you

if one fine morning, with the infinite sagacity of his race, he ceases

to do this when you are least expecting it--and he "does" you. Keep an

eye on him, and the Chinese to be found in Hankow having dealings with

Europeans in business is as good as the best of men.

We wended our way one morning into the native city, and agreed that few

inconveniences of the Celestial Empire make upon the western mind a more

speedy impression than the entire absence of sanitation. In Hankow we

were in mental suspense as to which was the filthier native city--Hankow

or Shanghai. But we are probably like other travelers, who find each

city visited worse than the last. Should there arise in their midst a

man anxious to confer an everlasting blessing upon his fellow Chinese,

no better work could he do than to institute a system approaching what

to our Western mind is sanitation. We arrived, of course, in the winter,

and, having seen it at a time when the sun could do but little in

increasing the stenches, we leave to the imagination what it would be in

the summer, in a city which for heat is not excelled by Aden.[A] During

the summer of 1908 no less than twenty-eight foreigners succumbed to

cholera, and the native deaths were numberless.

The people were suffering very much from the cold, and it struck me as

one of the unaccountable phenomena of their civilization that in their

ingenuity in using the gifts of Nature they have never learned to weave

wool, and to employ it in clothing--that is, in a general sense. There

are a few exceptions in the empire. The nation is almost entirely

dependent upon cotton for clothing, which in winter is padded with a

cheap wadding to an abnormal thickness. The common people wear no

underclothing whatever. When they sleep they strip to the skin, and wrap

themselves in a single wadded blanket, sleeping the sleep of the tired

people their excessive labor makes them. And, although their clothes

might be the height of discomfort, they show their famous indifference

to comfort by never complaining. These burdensome clothes hang around

them like so many bags, with the wide gaps here and there where the wind

whistles to the flesh. It is a national characteristic that they are

immune to personal inconveniences, a philosophy which I found to be

universal, from the highest to the lowest.

Everybody we met, from the British Consul-General downward, was

surprised to know that my companion and I had no knowledge of the

Chinese language, and seemed to look lightly upon our chances of ever

getting through.

It was true. Neither my companion nor myself knew three words of the

language, but went forward simply believing in the good faith of the

Chinese people, with our passports alone to protect us. That we should

encounter difficulties innumerable, that we should be called upon to put

up with the greatest hardships of life, when viewed from the standard to

which one had been accustomed, and that we should be put to great

physical endurance, we could not doubt. But we believed in the Chinese,

and believed that should any evil befall us it would be the outcome of

our own lack of forbearance, or of our own direct seeking. We knew that

to the Chinese we should at once be "foreign devils" and "barbarians,"

that if not holding us actually in contempt, they would feel some

condescension in dealing and mixing with us; but I was personally of the

opinion that it was easier for us to walk through China than it would be

for two Chinese, dressed as Chinese, to walk through Great Britain or

America. What would the canny Highlander or the rural English rustic

think of two pig-tailed men tramping through his countryside?

We anchored at Ichang at 7:30 a.m. on March 19th. I fell up against a

boatman who offered to take us ashore. An uglier fellow I had never seen

in the East. The morning sunshine soon dried the decks of the gunboat

_Kinsha_ (then stationed in the river for the defense of the port) which

English jack-tars were swabbing in a half-hearted sort of way, and all

looked rosy enough.[B] But for the author, who with his companion was a

literal "babe in the wood," the day was most eventful and trying to

one's personal serenity. We had asked questions of all and sundry

respecting our proposed tramp and the way we should get to work in

making preparations. Each individual person seemed vigorously to do his

best to induce us to turn back and follow callings of respectable

members of society. From Shanghai upwards we might have believed

ourselves watched by a secret society, which had for its motto, "Return,

oh, wanderer, return!" Hardly a person knew aught of the actual

conditions of the interior of the country in which he lived and labored,

and everyone tried to dissuade us from our project.

Coming ashore in good spirits, we called at the Consulate, at the back

of the city graveyard, and were smoking his cigars and giving his boy an

examination in elementary English, when the Consul came down. It was not

possible, however, for us to get much more information than we had read

up, and the Consul suggested that the most likely person to be of use to

us would be the missionary at the China Inland Mission. Thither we

repaired, following a sturdy employé of Britain, but we found that the

C.I.M. representative was not to be found--despite our repairing. So off

we trotted to the chief business house of the town, at the entrance to

which we were met by a Chinese, who bowed gravely, asked whether we had

eaten our rice, and told us, quietly but pointedly, that our passing up

the rough stone steps would be of no use, as the manager was out. A few

minutes later I stood reading the inscription on the gravestone near the

church, whilst my brave companion, The Other Man, endeavored fruitlessly

to pacify a fierce dog in the doorway of the Scottish Society's

missionary premises--but that missionary, too, was out!

What, then, was the little game? Were all the foreigners resident in

this town dodging us, afraid of us--or what?

"The latter, the blithering idiots!" yelled The Other Man. He was

infuriated. "Two Englishmen with English tongues in their heads, and

unable to direct their own movements. Preposterous!" And then, making an

observation which I will not print, he suggested mildly that we might

fix up all matters ourselves.

Within an hour an English-speaking "one piece cook" had secured the

berth, which carried a salary of twenty-five dollars per month, we were

well on the way with the engaging of our boat for the Gorges trip, and

one by one our troubles vanished.

Laying in stores, however, was not the lightest of sundry perplexities.

Curry and rice had been suggested as the staple diet for the river

journey; and we ordered, with no thought to the contrary, a picul of

best rice, various brands of curries, which were raked from behind the

shelves of a dingy little store in a back street, and presented to us

at alarming prices--enough to last a regiment of soldiers for pretty

well the number of days we two were to travel; and, for luxuries, we

laid in a few tinned meats. All was practically settled, when The Other

Man, settling his eyes dead upon me, yelled--

"Dingle, you've forgotten the milk!" And then, after a moment, "Oh,

well, we can surely do without milk; it's no use coming on a journey

like this unless one can rough it a bit." And he ended up with a rude

reference to the disgusting sticky condensed milk tins, and we wandered

on.

Suddenly he stopped, did The Other Man. He looked at a small stone on

the pavement for a long time, eventually cruelly blurting out, directly

at me, as if it were all my misdoing: "The sugar, the sugar! We _must_

have sugar, man." I said nothing, with the exception of a slight remark

that we might do without sugar, as we were to do without milk. There was

a pause. Then, raising his stick in the air, The Other Man perorated:

"Now, I have no wish to quarrel" (and he put his nose nearer to mine),

"you know that, of course. But to _think_ we can do without sugar is

quite unreasonable, and I had no idea you were such a cantankerous man.

We have sugar, or--I go back."

* * * * *

We had sugar. It was brought on board in upwards of twenty small packets

of that detestable thin Chinese paper, and The Other Man, with

commendable meekness, withdrew several pleasantries he had unwittingly

dropped anent deficiencies in my upbringing. Fifty pounds of this sugar

were ordered, and sugar--that dirty, brown sticky stuff--got into

everything on board--my fingers are sticky even as I write--and no less

than exactly one-half went down to the bottom of the Yangtze. Travelers

by houseboat on the Upper Yangtze should have some knowledge of

commissariat.

Getting away was a tedious business.

Later, the fellows pressed us to spend a good deal of time in the small,

dingy, ill-lighted apartment they are pleased to call their club; and

the skipper had to recommission his boat, get in provisions for the

voyage, engage his crew, pay off debts, and attend to a thousand and one

minute details--all to be done after the contract to carry the madcap

passengers had been signed and sealed, added to the more practical

triviality of three-fourths of the charge being paid down. And then our

captain, to add to the dilemma, vociferously yelled to us, in some

unknown jargon which got on our nerves terribly, that he was waiting for

a "lucky" day to raise anchor.

However, we did, as the reader will be able to imagine, eventually get

away, amid the firing of countless deafening crackers, after having

watched the sacrifice of a cock to the God of the River, with the

invocation that we might be kept in safety. Poling and rowing through a

maze of junks, our little floating caravan, with the two magnates on

board, and their picul of rice, their curry and their sugar, and

slenderest outfits, bowled along under plain sail, the fore-deck packed

with a motley team of somewhat dirty and ill-fed trackers, who whistled

and halloed the peculiar hallo of the Upper Yangtze for more wind.

The little township of Ichang was soon left astern, and we entered

speedily to all intents and purposes into a new world, a world

untrammelled by conventionalism and the spirit of the West.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: This was written at the time I was in Hankow. When I

revised my copy, after I had spent a year and a half rubbing along with

the natives in the interior, I could not suppress a smile at my

impressions of a great city like Hankow. Since then I have seen more

native life, and--more native dirt!--E.J.D.]

[Footnote B: The _Kinsha_ was the first British gunboat on the Upper

Yangtze.]

SECOND JOURNEY

ICHANG TO CHUNG-KING, THROUGH THE YANGTZE GORGES

CHAPTER II.

_Gloom in Ichang Gorge_. _Lightning's effect_. _Travellers' fear_.

_Impressive introduction to the Gorges_. _Boat gets into Yangtze

fashion_. _Storm and its weird effects_. _Wu-pan: what it is_. _Heavenly

electricity and its vagaries_. _Beautiful evening scene, despite heavy

rain_. _Bedding soaked_. _Sleep in a Burberry_. _Gorges and Niagara

Falls compared_. _Bad descriptions of Yangtze_. _World of eternity_.

_Man's significant insignificance_. _Life on board briefly described_.

_Philosophy of travel_. _Houseboat life not luxurious_. _Lose our only

wash-basin_. _Remarks on the "boy." A change in the kitchen:

questionable soup_. _Fairly low temperature_. _Troubles in the larder_.

_General arrangements on board_. _Crew's sleeping-place_. _Sacking makes

a curtain_. _Journalistic labors not easy_. _Rats preponderate_. _Gorges

described statistically_.

Deeper and deeper drooped the dull grey gloom, like a curtain falling

slowly and impenetrably over all things.

A vivid but broken flash of lightning, blazing in a flare of blue and

amber, poured livid reflections, and illuminated with dreadful

distinctness, if only for one ghastly moment, the stupendous cliffs of

the Ichang Gorge, whose wall-like steepness suddenly became darkened as

black as ink.

Thus, with a grand impressiveness, this great gully in the mountains

assumed hugely gigantic proportions, stretching interminably from east

to west, up to heaven and down to earth, silhouetted to the north

against a small remaining patch of golden purple, whose weird glamour

seemed awesomely to herald the coming of a new world into being, lasting

but for a moment longer, until again the blue blaze quickly cut up the

sky into a thousand shreds and tiny silver bars. And then, suddenly,

with a vast down swoop, as if some colossal bird were taking the earth

under her far-outstretching wings, dense darkness fell--impenetrable,

sooty darkness, that in a moment shut out all light, all power of sight.

Then from out the sombre heavens deep thunder boomed ominously as the

reverberating roar of a pack of hunger-ridden lions, and the two men,

aliens in an alien land, stood beneath the tattered matting awning with

a peculiar fear and some foreboding. We were tied in fast to the

darkened sides of the great Ichang Gorge--a magnificent sixteen-mile

stretch, opening up the famous gorges on the fourth of the great rivers

of the world, which had cleaved its course through a chain of hills,

whose perpendicular cliffs form wonderful rock-bound banks, dispelling

all thought of the monotony of the Lower Yangtze.

Upstream we had glided merrily upon a fresh breeze, which bore the

warning of a storm. All on board was settling down into Yangtze fashion,

and the barbaric human clamor of our trackers, which now mutteringly

died away, was suddenly taken up, as above recorded, and all

unexpectedly answered by a grander uproar--a deep threatening boom of

far-off thunder. In circling tones and semitones of wrath it volleyed

gradually through the dark ravines, and, startled by the sound, the two

travelers, roused for the first time from their natural engrossment in

the common doings of the _wu-pan_,[C] saw the reflection of the sun on

the waters, now turned to a livid murkiness, deepening with a

threatening ink-like aspect as the river rushed voluminously past our

tiny floating haven. Strangely silenced were we by this weird terror,

and watched and listened, chained to the deck by a thousand mingled

fears and fascinations, which breathed upon our nerves like a chill

wind. As we became accustomed then to the yellow darkness, we beheld

about the landscape a spectral look, and the sepulchral sound of the

moving thunder seemed the half-muffled clang of some great iron-tongued

funeral bell. Then came the rain, introduced swiftly by the deafening

clatter of another thunder crash that made one stagger like a ship in a

wild sea, and we strained our eyes to gaze into a visionary chasm

cleaved in twain by the furious lightning. Playing upon the face of the

unruffled river, with a brilliancy at once awful and enchanting, this

singular flitting and wavering of the heavenly electricity, as it

flashed haphazardly around all things, threw about one an illumination

quite indescribable.

For hours we sat upon a beam athwart the afterdeck, in silence drinking

in the strange phenomenon. We watched, after a small feed of curry and

rice, long into the dark hours, when the thunder had passed us by, and

in the distant booming one could now imagine the lower notes streaming

forth from some great solemn organ symphony. The fierce lightning

twitched, as it danced in and out the crevices--inwards, outwards,

upwards, then finally lost in one downward swoop towards the river,

tearing open the liquid blackness with its crystal blade of fire. The

rain ceased not. But soon the moon, peeping out from the tops of a

jagged wall above us, looking like a soiled, half-melted snowball, shone

full down the far-stretching gorge, and now its broad lustre shed

itself, like powdered silver, over the whole scene, so that one could

have imagined oneself in the living splendor of some eternal sphere of

ethereal sweetness. And so it might have been had the rain abated--a

curious accompaniment to a moonlight night. Down it came, straight and

determined and businesslike, in the windless silence, dancing like a

shower of diamonds of purest brilliance on the background of the placid

waters.

Very beautiful, reader, for a time. But would that the rain had been all

moonshine!

Glorious was it to revel in for a time. But, during the weary night

watches, in a bed long since soaked through, and one's safest

nightclothes now the stolid Burberry, with face protected by a

twelve-cent umbrella, even one's curry and rice saturated to sap with

the constant drip, and everything around one rendered cold and

uncomfortable enough through a perforation in its slenderest part of the

worn-out bamboo matting--ah, it was then, _then_ that one would have

foregone with alacrity the dreams of the nomadic life of the _wu-pan_.

Our introduction, therefore, to the great Gorges of the Upper

Yangtze--to China what the Niagara Falls are to America--was not

remarkable for its placidity, albeit taken with as much complacency as

the occasion allowed.

I do not, however, intend to weary or to entertain the reader, as may

be, by a long description of the Yangtze gorges. Time and time again

have they fallen to the imaginative pens of travelers--mostly bad or

indifferent descriptions, few good; none better, perhaps, than Mrs.

Bishop's. But at best they are imaginative--they lack reality. It has

been said that the world of imagination is the world of eternity, and as

of eternity, so of the Gorges--they cannot be adequately described. As I

write now in the Ichang Gorge, I seem veritably to have reached

eternity. I seem to have arrived at the bosom of an after-life, where

one's body has ceased to vegetate, and where, in an infinite and eternal

world of imagination, one's soul expands with fullest freedom. There

seems to exist in this eternal world of unending rock and invulnerable

precipice permanent realities which stand from eternity to eternity. As

the oak dies and leaves its eternal image in the seed which never dies,

so these grand river-forced ravines, abused and disabused as may be, go

on for ever, despite the scribblers, and one finds the best in his

imagination returning by some back-lane to contemplative thought. But as

a casual traveler, may I say that the first experience I had of the

gorges made me modest, patient, single-minded, conscious of man's

significant insignificance, conscious of the unspeakable, wondrous

grandeur of this unvisited corner of the world--a spot in which

blustering, selfish, self-conceited persons will not fare well? Humility

and patience are the first requisites in traveling on the Upper Yangtze.

Reader, for your sake I refrain from a description. But may I, for

perhaps your sake too, if you would wander hither ere the charm of

things as they were in the beginning is still unrobbed and unmolested,

give you some few impressions of a little of the life--grave, gay, but

never unhappy--which I spent with my excellent co-voyager, The Other

Man.

It is a part of wisdom, when starting any journey, not to look forward

to the end with too much eagerness: hear my gentle whisper that you may

never get there, and if you do, congratulate yourself; interest yourself

in the progress of the journey, for the present only is yours. Each day

has its tasks, its rapids, its perils, its glories, its fascinations,

its surprises, and--if you will live as we did, its _curry and rice_.

Then, if you are traveling with a companion, remember that it is better

to yield a little than to quarrel a great deal. Most disagreeable and

undignified is it anywhere to get into the habit of standing up for what

people are pleased to call their little rights, but nowhere more so than

on the Upper Yangtze houseboat, under the gaze of a Yangtze crew. Life

is really too short for continual bickering, and to my way of thinking

it is far quieter, happier, more prudent and productive of more peace,

if one could yield a little of those precious little rights than to

incessantly squabble to maintain them. Therefore, from the beginning to

the end of the trip, make the best of everything in every way, and I can

assure you, if you are not ill-tempered and suffer not from your liver,

Nature will open her bosom and lead you by these strange by-ways into

her hidden charms and unadorned recesses of sublime beauty, uneclipsed

for their kind anywhere in the world.

Think not that the life will be luxurious--houseboat life on the Upper

Yangtze is decidedly not luxurious. Were it not for the magnificence of

the scenery and ever-changing outdoor surroundings, as a matter of fact,

the long river journey would probably become unbearably dull.

* * * * *

Our _wu-pan_ was to get through the Gorges in as short a time as was

possible, and for that reason we traveled in the discomfort of the

smallest boat used to face the rapids.

People entertaining the smallest idea of doing things travel in nothing

short of a _kwadze_, the orthodox houseboat, with several rooms and

ordinary conveniences. Ours was a _wu-pan_--literally five boards. We

had no conveniences whatever, and the second morning out we were left

without even a wash-basin. As I was standing in the stern, I saw it

swirling away from us, and inquiring through a peep-hole, heard the

perplexing explanation of my boy. Gesticulating violently, he told us

how, with the wash-basin in his hand, he had been pushed by one of the

crew, and how, loosened from his grasp, my toilet ware had been gripped

by the river--and now appeared far down the stream like a large bead.

The Other Man was alarmed at the boy's discomfiture, ejaculated

something about the loss being quite irreparable, and with a loud laugh

and quite natural hilarity proceeded quietly to use a saucepan as a

combined shaving-pot and wash-basin. It did quite well for this in the

morning, and during the day resumed its duty as seat for me at the

typewriter.

Our boy, apart from this small misfortune, comported himself pretty

well. His English was understandable, and he could cook anything. He

dished us up excellent soup in enamelled cups and, as we had no

ingredients on board so far as we knew to make soup, and as The Other

Man had that day lost an old Spanish tam-o'-shanter, we naturally

concluded that he had used the old hat for the making of the soup, and

at once christened it as "consommé à la maotsi"--and we can recommend

it. After we had grown somewhat tired of the eternal curry and rice, we

asked him quietly if he could not make us something else, fearing a

rebuff. He stood hesitatingly before us, gazing into nothingness. His

face was pallid, his lips hard set, and his stooping figure looking

curiously stiff and lifeless on that frozen morning--the temperature

below freezing point, and our noses were red, too!

"God bless the man, you no savee! I wantchee good chow. Why in the name

of goodness can't you give us something decent! What on earth did you

come for?"

"Alas!" he shouted, for we were at a rapid, "my savee makee good chow.

No have got nothing!"

"No have got nothing! No have got nothing!" Mysterious words, what could

they mean? Where, then, was our picul of rice, and our curry, and our

sugar?

"The fellow's a swindler!" cried The Other Man in an angry semitone. But

that's all very well. "No have got nothing!" Ah, there lay the secret.

Presently The Other Man, head of the general commissariat, spoke again

with touching eloquence. He gave the boy to understand that we were

powerless to alter or soften the conditions of the larder, that we were

victims of a horrible destiny, that we entertained no stinging malice

towards him personally--but ... _could he do it?_ Either a great wrath

or a great sorrow overcame the boy; he skulked past, asked us to lie

down on our shelves, where we had our beds, to give him room, and then

set to work.

In twenty-five minutes we had a three-course meal (all out of the same

pot, but no matter), and onwards to our destination we fed royally. In

parting with the men after our safe arrival at Chung-king, we left with

them about seven-eighths of the picul--and were not at all regretful.

I should not like to assert--because I am telling the truth here--that

our boat was bewilderingly roomy. As a matter of fact, its length was

some forty feet, its width seven feet, its depth much less, and it drew

eight inches of water. Yet in it we had our bed-rooms, our

dressing-rooms, our dining-rooms, our library, our occasional

medicine-room, our cooking-room--and all else. If we stood bolt upright

in the saloon amidships we bumped our heads on the bamboo matting which

formed an arched roof. On the nose of the boat slept seven men--you may

question it, reader, but they did; in the stern, on either side of a

great rudder, slept our boy and a friend of his; and between them and

us, laid out flat on the top of a cellar (used by the ship's cook for

the storing of rice, cabbage, and other uneatables, and the

breeding-cage of hundreds of rats, which swarm all around one) were the

captain and commodore--a fat, fresh-complexioned, jocose creature,

strenuous at opium smoking. Through the holes in the curtain--a piece of

sacking, but one would not wish this to be known--dividing them from us,

we could see him preparing his globules to smoke before turning in for

the night, and despite our frequent raving objections, our words ringing

with vibrating abuse, it continued all the way to Chung-king: he

certainly gazed in disguised wonderment, but we could not get him to say

anything bearing upon the matter. Temperature during the day stood at

about 50 degrees, and at night went down to about 30 degrees above

freezing point. Rains were frequent. Journalistic labors, seated upon

the upturned saucepan aforesaid, without a cushion, went hard. At night

the Chinese candle, much wick and little wax, stuck in the center of an

empty "Three Castles" tin, which the boy had used for some days as a

pudding dish, gave us light. We generally slept in our overcoats, and as

many others as we happened to have. Rats crawled over our uncurtained

bodies, and woke us a dozen times each night by either nibbling our ears

or falling bodily from the roof on to our faces. Our joys came not to

us--they were made on board.

The following are the Gorges, with a remark or two about each, to be

passed through before one reaches Kweifu:--

NAME OF GORGE LENGTH REMARKS

Ichang Gorge 16 miles First and probably one

of the finest of the

Gorges.

Niu Kan Ma Fee 4 miles An hour's journey after

(or Ox Liver coming out of the

Gorge) Ichang Gorge, if the

breeze be favorable;

an arduous day's

journey during high

river, with no wind.

Mi Tsang (or Rice 2 miles Finest view is obtained

Granary Gorge) from western extremity;

exceedingly

precipitous.

Niu Kou (or Buffalo --- Very quiet in low-water

Mouth Reach) season; wild stretch

during high river.

At the head of this

reach H.M.S.

_Woodlark_ came to

grief on her maiden

trip.

Urishan Hsia (or --- Over thirty miles in

Gloomy Mountain length. Grandest

Gorge) and highest gorge

_en route to_ Chung-king.

Half-way

through is the

boundary between

Hu-peh and Szech'wan.

Fang Hsian Hsia --- Last of the gorges;

(or Windbox Gorge) just beyond is the

city of Kweifu.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote C: A _wu-pan_ (literally _wu_ of five and _pan_ of boards) is

a small boat, the smallest used by travelers on the Upper Yangtze. They

are of various shapes, made according to the nature of the part of the

river on which they ply.--E.J.D.]

CHAPTER III.

THE YANGTZE RAPIDS

The following is a rough list of the principal rapids to be negotiated

on the river upward from Ichang. One of the chief discomforts the

traveler first experiences is due to a total ignorance of the vicinity

of the main rapids, and often, therefore, when he is least expecting it

perhaps, he is called upon by the _laoban_ to go ashore. He has then to

pack up the things he values, is dragged ashore himself, his gear

follows, and one who has no knowledge of the language and does not know

the ropes is, therefore, never quite happy for fear of some rapid

turning up. By comparing the rapids with the Gorges the traveler would,

however, from the lists given, be able easily to trace the whereabouts

of the more dangerous rushes; which are distributed with alarming

frequency on the river between Ichang and Kweifu.

TA TONG T'AN (OTTER CAVE RAPID)

Low water rapid. Swirling volume of coffee and milk color; round about a

maze of rapids and races, in the Yao-cha Ho reach.

TONG LING RAPID

At the foot of the Ox Liver Gorge. An enormous black rock lies amid

stream some forty feet below, or perhaps as much above the surface, but

unless experienced at low water will not appeal to the traveler as a

rapid; passage dangerous, dreaded during low-water season. On Dec. 28th,

1900, the German steamer, _Sui-Hsiang_ was lost here. She foundered in

twenty-five fathoms of water, with an immense hole ripped in her bottom

by the black rock; all on board saved by the red boats, with the

exception of the captain.

HSIN T'AN RAPIDS (OR CHIN T'AN RAPIDS)

During winter quite formidable; the head, second and third rapids

situated in close proximity, the head rapid being far the worst to

negotiate. On a bright winter's day one of the finest spectacles on the

Upper Yangtze. Wrecks frequent. Just at head of Ox Liver Gorge.

YEH T'AN (OR WILD RAPID)

River reduced suddenly to half its width by an enormous detritus of

boulders, taking the form of a huge jagged tongue, with curling on

edges; commonly said to be high when the Hsin T'an is low. At its worst

during early summer and autumn. Wrecks frequent, after Mi Tsang Gorge is

passed, eight miles from Kwei-chow.

NIU K'EO T'AN (BUFFALO MOUTH RAPID)

Situated at the head of Buffalo Mouth Reach, said to be more difficult

to approach than even the Yeh T'an, because of the great swirls in the

bay below. H.M.S. _Woodlark_ came to grief here on her maiden trip up

river.

HSIN MA T'AN (OR DISMOUNT HORSE RAPID)

Encountered through the Urishan Hsia or Gloomy Mountain Gorge,

particularly nasty during mid-river season. Just about here, in 1906,

the French gunboat _Olry_ came within an ace of destruction by losing

her rudder. Immediately, like a riderless horse, she dashed off headlong

for the rocky shore; but at the same instant her engines were working

astern for all they were worth, and fortunately succeeded in taking the

way off her just as her nose grazed the rocks, and she slid back

undamaged into the swirly bay, only to be waltzed round and tossed to

and fro by the violent whirlpools. However, by good luck and management

she was kept from dashing her brains out on the reefs, and eventually

brought in to a friendly sand patch and safely moored, whilst a wooden

jury rudder was rigged, with which she eventually reached her

destination.

HEH SHÏH T'AN (OR BLACK ROCK RAPID)

Almost at the end of the Wind Box Gorge.

HSIN LONG T'AN (OR NEW DRAGON RAPID)

Twenty-five miles below Wan Hsien. Sometimes styled Glorious Dragon

Rapid, it constitutes the last formidable stepping-stone during low

river onward to Chung-king; was formed by a landslip as recently as

1896, when the whole side of a hill falling into the stream reduced its

breadth to less than a fourth of what it was previously, and produced

this roaring rapid.

This pent-up volume of water, always endeavoring to break away the rocky

bonds which have harnessed it, rushes roaring as a huge, tongue-shaped,

tumbling mass between its confines of rock and reef. Breaking into swift

back-wash and swirls in the bay below, it lashes back in a white fury at

its obstacles. Fortunately for the junk traffic, it improves rapidly

with the advent of the early spring freshets, and at mid-level entirely

disappears. The rapid is at its worst during the months of February and

March, when it certainly merits the appellation of "Glorious Dragon

Rapid," presenting a fine spectacle, though perhaps a somewhat fearsome

one to the traveler, who is about to tackle it with his frail barque. A

hundred or more wretched-looking trackers, mostly women and children,

are tailed on to the three stout bamboo hawsers, and amid a mighty din

of rushing water, beating drums, cries of pilots and boatmen, the boat

is hauled slowly and painfully over. According to Chinese myths, the

landslip which produced the rapid was caused by the following

circumstance. The ova of a dragon being deposited in the bowels of the

earth at this particular spot, in due course became hatched out in some

mysterious manner. The baby dragon grew and grew, but remained in a

dormant state until quite full grown, when, as is the habit of the

dragon, it became active, and at the first awakening shook down the

hill-side by a mighty effort, freed himself from the bowels of the

earth, and made his way down river to the sea; hence the landslip, the

rapid, and its name.

FUH T'AN RAPID (OR TIGER RAPID)

Eight miles beyond Wan Hsien. Very savage during summer months, but does

not exist during low-water season. Beyond this point river widens

considerably. Twenty-five miles further on travelers should look out for

Shïh Pao Chai, or Precious Stone Castle, a remarkable cliff some 250 or

300 feet high. A curious eleven-storied pavilion, built up the face of

the cliff, contains the stairway to the summit, on which stands a

Buddhist temple. There is a legend attached to this remarkable rock that

savors very much of the goose with the golden eggs.

Once upon a time, from a small natural aperture near the summit, a

supply of rice sufficient for the needs of the priests flowed daily into

a basin-shaped hole, just large enough to hold the day's supply.

The priests, however, thinking to get a larger daily supply, chiselled

out the basin-shaped hole to twice its original size, since when the

flow of rice ceased.

KWAN ÏN T'AN (OR GODDESS OF MERCY RAPID)

Two miles beyond the town of Feng T'ou. Like the Fuh T'an, is an

obstacle to navigation only during the summer months, when junks are

often obliged to wait for several days for a favorable opportunity to

cross the rapid.

CHAPTER IV.

_Scene at the Rapid_. _Dangers of the Yeh T'an_. _Gear taken ashore_.

_Intense cold_. _Further preparation_. _Engaging the trackers_. _Fever

of excitement_. _Her nose is put to it_. _Struggles for mastery_.

_Author saves boatman_. _Fifteen-knot current_. _Terrific labor on

shore_. _Man nearly falls overboard_. _Straining hawsers carry us over

safely_. _The merriment among the men_. _The thundering cataract_.

_Trackers' chanting_. _Their life_. _"Pioneer" at the Yeh T'an_. _The

Buffalo Mouth Reach_. _Story of the "Woodlark."_ _How she was saved_.

_Arrival at Kweifu_. _Difficulty in landing_. _Laying in provisions_.

_Author laid up with malaria_. _Survey of trade in Shanghai and

Hong-Kong_. _Where and why the Britisher fails_. _Comparison with

Germans_. _Three western provinces and pack-horse traffic_. _Advantages

of new railway_. _Yangtze likely to be abandoned_. _East India Company.

French and British interests_. _Hint to Hong-Kong Chamber of Commerce._

Wild shrieking, frantic yelling, exhausted groaning, confusion and

clamor,--one long, deafening din. A bewildering, maddening mob of

reckless, terrified human beings rush hither and thither, unseeingly and

distractedly. Will she go? Yes! No! Yes! Then comes the screeching, the

scrunching, the straining, and then--a final snap! Back we go, sheering

helplessly, swayed to and fro most dangerously by the foaming waters,

and almost, but not quite, turn turtle. The red boat follows us

anxiously, and watches our timid little craft bump against the

rock-strewn coast. But we are safe, and raise unconsciously a cry of

gratitude to the deity of the river.

We were at the Yeh T'an, or the Wild Rapid, some distance on from the

Ichang Gorge, were almost over the growling monster, when the tow-line,

straining to its utmost limit, snapped suddenly with little warning, and

we drifted in a moment or two away down to last night's anchorage, far

below, where we were obliged to bring up the last of the long tier of

boats of which we were this morning the first.

And now we are ready again to take our turn.

Our gear is all taken ashore. Seated on a stone on shore, watching

operations, is The Other Man. The sun vainly tries to get through, and

the intense cold is almost unendurable. No hitch is to occur this time.

The toughest and stoutest bamboo hawsers are dexterously brought out,

their inboard ends bound in a flash firmly round the mast close down to

the deck, washed by the great waves of the rapid, just in front of the

'midships pole through which I breathlessly watch proceedings. I want to

feel again the sensation. The captain, in essentially the Chinese way,

is engaging a crew of demon-faced trackers to haul her over. Pouring

towards the boat, in a fever of excitement that rises higher every

moment, the natural elements of hunger and constant struggle against the

great river swell their fury; they bellow like wild beasts, _they are

like beasts_, for they have known nothing but struggle all their lives;

they have always, since they were tiny children, been fighting this

roaring water monster--they know none else. And now, as I say, they

bellow like beasts, each man ravenously eager to be among the number

chosen to earn a few cash.[D] The arrangement at last is made, and the

discordant hubbub, instead of lessening, grows more and more deafening.

It is a miserable, desperate, wholly panic-stricken crowd that then

harnesses up with their great hooks joined to a rough waist-belt, with

which they connect themselves to the straining tow-lines.

And now her nose is put into the teeth of this trough of treachery--a

veritable boiling cauldron, stirring up all past mysteries. Waves rush

furiously towards us, with the growl of a thousand demons, whose anger

is only swelled by the thousands of miles of her course from far-away

Tibet. It seems as if they must instantly devour her, and that we must

now go under to swell the number of their victims. But they only beat

her back, for she rides gracefully, faltering timidly with frightened

creaks and groans, whilst the waters shiver her frail bulwarks with

their cruel message of destruction, which might mean her very

death-rattle. I get landed in the stomach with the end of a gigantic

bamboo boat-hook, used by one of the men standing in the bows whose duty

is to fend her off the rocks. He falls towards the river. I grab his

single garment, give one swift pull, and he comes up again with a jerky

little laugh and asks if he has hurt me--yelling through his hands in my

ears, for the noise is terrible. To look out over the side makes me

giddy, for the fifteen-knot current, blustering and bubbling and foaming

and leaping, gives one the feeling that he is in an express train

tearing through the sea. On shore, far ahead, I can see the

trackers--struggling forms of men and women, touching each other,

grasping each other, wrestling furiously and mightily, straining on all

fours, now gripping a boulder to aid them forward, now to the right, now

to the left, always fighting for one more inch, and engaged in a task

which to one seeing it for the first time looks as if it were quite

beyond human effort. Fagged and famished beings are these trackers,

whose life day after day, week in week out, is harder than that of the

average costermonger's donkey. They throw up their hands in a dumb

frenzy of protest and futile appeal to the presiding deity; and here on

the river, depending entirely upon those men on the shore, slowly, inch

by inch, the little craft, feeling her own weakness, forges ahead

against the leaping current in the gapway in the reef.

None come to offer assistance to our crowd, who are now turned facing

us, and strain almost flat on their backs, giving the strength of every

drop of blood and fibre of their being; and the scene, now lit up by a

momentary glimmer of feeble sunlight, assumes a wonderful and terrible

picturesqueness. I am chained to the spot by a horrible fascination, and

I find myself unconsciously saying, "I fear she will not go. I fear--"

But a man has fallen exhausted, he almost fell overboard, and now leans

against the mast in utter weariness and fatigue, brought on by the

morning's exertions. He is instantly relieved by a bull-dog fellow of

enormous strength. Now comes the culminating point, a truly terrifying

moment, the very anguish of which frightened me, as I looked around for

the lifeboat, and I saw that even the commodore's cold and

self-satisfied dignity was disturbed. The hawsers strain again. Creak,

crack! creak, crack! The lifeboat watches and comes nearer to us. There

is a mighty yell. We cannot go! Yes, we can! There is a mighty pull, and

you feel the boat almost torn asunder. Another mighty pull, a tremendous

quiver of the timbers, and you turn to see the angry water, which sounds

as if a hundred hounds are beating under us for entry at the barred

door. There is another deafening yell, the men tear away like frightened

horses. Another mighty pull, and another, and another, and we slide over

into smooth water.

Then I breathe freely, and yell myself.

The little boat seems to gasp for breath as a drowning man, saved in the

nick of time, shudders in every limb with pain and fear.

As we tied up in smooth water, all the men, from the _laoban_ to the

meanest tracker, laughed and yelled and told each other how it was done.

We baled the water out of the boat, and one was glad to pull away from

the deafening hum of the thundering cataract. A faulty tow-line, a

slippery hitch, one false step, one false maneuver, and the shore might

have been by that time strewn with our corpses. As it was, we were safe

and happy.

But the trackers are strange creatures. At times they are a quarter of a

mile ahead. Soft echoes of their coarse chanting came down the confines

of the gully, after the rapid had been passed, and in rounding a rocky

promontory mid-stream, one would catch sight of them bending their

bodies in pulling steadily against the current of the river.

Occasionally one of these poor fellows slips; there is a shriek, his

body is dashed unmercifully against the jagged cliffs in its last

journey to the river, which carries the multilated corpse away. And yet

these men, engaged in this terrific toil, with utmost danger to their

lives, live almost exclusively on boiled rice and dirty cabbage, and

receive the merest pittance in money at the journey's end.

Some idea of the force of this enormous volume of water may be given by

mentioning the exploits of the steamer _Pioneer_, which on three

consecutive occasions attacked the Yeh T'an when at its worst, and,

though steaming a good fourteen knots, failed to ascend. She was obliged

to lay out a long steel-wire hawser, and heave herself over by means of

her windlass, the engines working at full speed at the same time. Hard

and heavy was the heave, gaining foot by foot, with a tension on the

hawser almost to breaking strain in a veritable battle against the

dragon of the river. Yet so complete are the changes which are wrought

by the great variation in the level of the river, that this formidable

mid-level rapid completely disappears at high level.

After we had left this rapid--and right glad were we to get away--we

came, after a couple of hours' run, to the Niu K'eo, or Buffalo Mouth

Reach, quiet enough during the low-water season, but a wild stretch

during high river, where many a junk is caught by the violently gyrating

swirls, rendered unmanageable, and dashed to atoms on some rocky

promontory or boulder pile in as short a space of time as it takes to

write it. It was here that the _Woodlark_, one of the magnificent

gunboats which patrol the river to safeguard the interests of the Union

Jack in this region, came to grief on her maiden trip to Chung-king. One

of these strong swirls caught the ship's stern, rendering her rudders

useless for the moment, and causing her to sheer broadside into the

foaming rapid. The engines were immediately reversed to full speed

astern; but the swift current, combined with the momentum of the ship,

carried her willy-nilly to the rock-bound shore, on which she crumpled

her bows as if they were made of tin. Fortunately she was built in

water-tight sections; her engineers removed the forward section,

straightened out the crumpled plates, riveted them together, and bolted

the section back into its place again so well, that on arrival at

Chung-king not a trace of the accident was visible.

* * * * *

Upon arrival at Kweifu one bids farewell to the Gorges. This town,

formerly a considerable coaling center, overlooks most beautiful

hillocks, with cottage gardens cultivated in every accessible corner,

and a wide sweep of the river.

We landed with difficulty. "Chor, chor!" yelled the trackers, who marked

time to their cry, swinging their arms to and fro at each short step;

but they almost gave up the ghost. However, we did land, and so did our

boy, who bought excellent provisions and meat, which, alas! too soon

disappeared. The mutton and beef gradually grew less and daily

blackened, wrapped up in opposite corners of the cabin, under the

protection from the wet of a couple of sheets of the "Pink 'Un."

From Kweifu to Wan Hsien there was the same kind of scenery--the clear

river winding among sand-flats and gravel-banks, with occasional stiff

rapids. But after having been in a _wu-pan_ for several days, suffering

that which has been detailed, and much besides, the journey got a bit

dreary. These, however, are ordinary circumstances; but when one has

been laid up on a bench of a bed for three days with a high temperature,

a legacy of several years in the humid tropics, the physical discomfort

baffles description. Malaria, as all sufferers know, has a tendency to

cause trouble as soon as one gets into cold weather, and in my case, as

will be seen in subsequent parts of this book, it held faithfully to its

best traditions. Fever on the Yangtze in a _wu-pan_ would require a

chapter to itself, not to mention the kindly eccentricities of a

companion whose knowledge of malaria was most elementary and whose

knowledge of nursing absolutely _nil_. But I refrain. As also do I of

further talk about the Yangtze gorges and the rapids.

From Kweifu to Wan Hsien is a tedious journey. The country opens out,

and is more or less monotonously flat. The majority of the dangers and

difficulties, however, are over, and one is able to settle down in

comparative peace. Fortunately for the author, nothing untoward

happened, but travelers are warned not to be too sanguine. Wrecks have

happened within a few miles of the destination, generally to be

accounted for by the unhappy knack the Chinese boatman has of taking all

precautions where the dangerous rapids exist, and leaving all to chance

elsewhere. Some two years later, as I was coming down the river from

Chung-king in December, I counted no less than nine wrecks, one boat

having on board a cargo for the China Inland Mission authorities of no

less than 480 boxes. The contents were spread out on the banks to dry,

while the boat was turned upside down and repaired on the spot.

* * * * *

A hopeless cry is continually ascending in Hong-Kong and Shanghai that

trade is bad, that the palmy days are gone, and that one might as well

leave business to take care of itself.

And it is not to be denied that increased trade in the Far East does not

of necessity mean increased profits. Competition has rendered buying and

selling, if they are to show increased dividends, a much harder task

than some of the older merchants had when they built up their businesses

twenty or thirty years ago. There is no comparison. But Hong-Kong, by

virtue of her remarkably favorable position geographically, should

always be able to hold her own; and now that the railway has pierced the

great province of Yün-nan, and brought the provinces beyond the

navigable Yangtze nearer to the outside world, she should be able to

reap a big harvest in Western China, if merchants will move at the right

time. More often than not the Britisher loses his trade, not on account

of the alleged reason that business is not to be done, but because,

content with his club life, and with playing games when he should be

doing business, he allows the German to rush past him, and this man, an

alien in the colony, by persistent plodding and other more or less

commendable traits of business which I should like to detail, but for

which I have no space, takes away the trade while the Britisher looks

on.

The whole of the trade of the three western provinces--Yün-nan,

Kwei-chow and Szech'wan--has for all time been handled by Shanghai,

going into the interior by the extremely hazardous route of these

Yangtze rapids, and then over the mountains by coolie or pack-horse.

This has gone on for centuries. But now the time has come for the

Hong-Kong trader to step in and carry away the lion share of the greatly

increasing foreign trade for those three provinces by means of the

advantage the new Tonkin-Yün-nan Railway has given him.

The railway runs from Haiphong in Indo-China to Yün-nan-fu, the capital

of Yün-nan province. And it appears certain to the writer that, with

such an important town three or four days from the coast, shippers will

not be content to continue to ship via the Yangtze, with all its risk.

British and American merchants, who carry the greater part of the

imports to Western China, will send their goods direct to Hong-Kong,

where transhipment will be made to Haiphong, and thence shipped by rail

to Yün-nan-fu, the distributing center for inland trade. To my mind,

Hong-Kong merchants might control the whole of the British trade of

Western China if they will only push, for although the tariff of Tonkin

may be heavy, it would be compensated by the fact that transit would be

so much quicker and safer. But it needs push.

The history of our intercourse with China, from the days of the East

India Company till now, is nothing but a record of a continuous struggle

to open up and develop trade. Opening up trade, too, with a people who

have something pathetic in the honest persistency with which their

officials have vainly struggled to keep themselves uncontaminated from

the outside world. Trade in China cannot be left to take care of itself,

as is done in Western countries. However invidious it may seem, we must

admit the fact that past progress has been due to pressure. Therefore,

if the opportunities were placed near at hand to the Hong-Kong shipper,

he would be an unenterprising person indeed were he not to avail himself

of the opportunity. Shanghai has held the trump card formerly. This

cannot be denied. But I think the railway is destined to turn the trade

route to the other side of the empire. It is merely a question as to who

is to get the trade--the French or the British. The French are on the

alert. They cannot get territory; now they are after the trade.

It is my opinion that it would be to the advantage of the colony of

Hong-Kong were the Chamber of Commerce there to investigate the matter

thoroughly. Now is the time.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote D: _Cash_, a small brass coin with a hole through the middle.

Nominally 1,000 cash to the dollar.]

THIRD JOURNEY

CHUNG-KING TO SUI-FU (VIA LUCHOW)

CHAPTER V.

_Beginning of the overland journey_. _The official halo around the

caravan_. _The people's goodbyes_. _Stages to Sui-fu_. _A persistent

coolie_. _My boy's indignation, and the sequel_. _Kindness of the people

of Chung-king_. _The Chung-king Consulate_. _Need of keeping fit in

travelling in China_. _Walking tabooed_. _The question of "face" and

what it means_. _Author runs the gauntlet_. _Carrying coolie's rate of

pay_. _The so-called great paved highways of China, and a few remarks

thereon_. _The garden of China_. _Magnificence of the scenery of Western

China_. _The tea-shops_. _The Chinese coolie's thirst and how the author

drank_. _Population of Szech-wan_. _Minerals found_. _Salt and other

things_. _The Chinese inn: how it holds the palm for unmitigated filth_.

_Description of the rooms_. _Szech-wan and Yün-nan caravanserais_. _Need

of a camp bed_. _Toileting in unsecluded publicity_. _How the author was

met at market towns_. _How the days do not get dull_.

In a manner admirably befitting my rank as an English traveler, apart

from the fact that I was the man who was endeavoring to cross China on

foot, I was led out of Chung-king _en route_ for Bhamo alone, my

companion having had to leave me here.

It was Easter Sunday, a crisp spring morning.

First came a public sedan-chair, bravely borne by three of the finest

fellows in all China, at the head of which on either side were two

uniformed persons called soldiers--incomprehensible to one who has no

knowledge of the interior, for they bore no marks whatever of the

military--whilst uniformed men also solemnly guarded the back. Then

came the grinning coolies, carrying that meager portion of my worldly

goods which I had anticipated would have been engulfed in the Yangtze.

And at the head of all, leading them on as captains do the Salvation

Army, was I myself, walking along triumphantly, undoubtedly looking a

person of weight, but somehow peculiarly unable to get out of my head

that little adage apropos the fact that when the blind shall lead the

blind both shall fall into a ditch! But Chinese decorum forbade my

falling behind. I had determined to walk across China, every inch of the

way or not at all; and the chair coolies, unaware of my intentions

presumably, thought it a great joke when at the western gate, through

which I departed, I gave instructions that one hundred cash be doled out

to each man for his graciousness in escorting me through the town.

All the people were in the middle of the streets--those slippery streets

of interminable steps--to give me at parting their blessings or their

curses, and only with difficulty and considerable shouting and pushing

could I sufficiently take their attention from the array of official and

civil servants who made up my caravan as to effect an exit.

The following were to be stages:--

1st day--Ts'eo-ma-k'ang 80 li.

2nd day--Üin-ch'uan hsien 120 "

3rd day--Li-shïh-ch'ang 105 "

4th day--Luchow 75 "

5th day--Lan-ching-ch'ang 80 "

6th day--Lan-chï-hsien 75 "

7th day--Sui-fu 120 "

In my plainest English and with many cruel gestures, four miles from the

town, I told a man that he narrowly escaped being knocked down, owing to

his extremely rude persistence in accosting me and obstructing my way.

He acquiesced, opened his large mouth to the widest proportions, seemed

thoroughly to understand, but continued more noisily to prevent me from

going onwards, yelling something at the top of his husky voice--a voice

more like a fog-horn than a human voice--which made me fear that I had

done something very wrong, but which later I interpreted ignorantly as

impudent humor.

I owed nothing; so far as I knew, I had done nothing wrong.

"Hi, fellow! come out of the way! Reverse your carcass a bit, old chap!

Get----! What the---- who the----?"

"Oh, master, he wantchee makee much bobbery. He no b'long my pidgin,

d---- rogue! He wantchee catch one more hundred cash! He b'long one

piecee chairman!"

This to me from my boy in apologetic explanation.

Then, turning wildly upon the man, after the manner of his kind raising

his little fat body to the tips of his toes and effectively assuming the

attitude of the stage actor, he cursed loudly to the uttermost of

eternity the impudent fellow's ten thousand relatives and ancestry;

which, although it called forth more mutual confidences of a like

nature, and made T'ong (my boy) foam at the mouth with rage at such an

inopportune proceeding happening so early in his career, rendering it

necessary for him to push the man in the right jaw, incidentally allowed

him to show his master just a little that he could do. The man had been

dumped against the wall, but he was still undaunted. With thin mud

dropping from one leg of his flimsy pantaloons, he came forward again,

did this chair coolie, whom I had just paid off--for it was assuredly

one of the trio--leading out again one of those little wiry, shaggy

ponies, and wished to do another deal. He had, however, struck a snag.

We did not come to terms. I merely lifted the quadruped bodily from my

path and walked on.

Chung-king people treated us well, and had it not been for their

kindness the terrible three days spent still in our _wu-pan_ on the

crowded beach would have been more terrible still.

At the Consulate we found Mr. Phillips, the Acting-Consul, ready packed

up to go down to Shanghai, and Mr. H.E. Sly, whom we had met in

Shanghai, was due to relieve him. Mr. J.L. Smith, of the Consular

Service, was here also, just reaching a state of convalescence after an

attack of measles, and was to go to Chen-tu to take up duty as soon as

he was fit. But despite the topsy-turvydom, we were made welcome, and

both Phillips and Smith did their best to entertain. Chung-king

Consulate is probably the finest--certainly one of the finest--in China,

built on a commanding site overlooking the river and the city, with the

bungalow part over in the hills. It possesses remarkably fine grounds,

has every modern convenience, not the least attractive features being

the cement tennis-court and a small polo ground adjoining. I had hoped

to see polo on those little rats of ponies, but it could not be

arranged. I should have liked to take a stick as a farewell.

People were shocked indeed that I was going to walk across China.

Let me say here that travel in the Middle Kingdom is quite possible

anywhere provided that you are fit. You have merely to learn and to

maintain untold patience, and you are able to get where you like, if you

have got the money to pay your way;[E] but walking is a very different

thing. It is probable that never previously has a traveler actually

walked across China, if we except the Rev. J. McCarthy, of the China

Inland Mission, who some thirty years or so ago did walk across to

Burma, although he went through Kwei-chow province over a considerably

easier country. Not because it is by any means physically impossible,

but because the custom of the country--and a cursed custom too--is that

one has to keep what is called his "face." And to walk tends to make a

man lose "face."

A quiet jaunt through China on foot was, I was told, quite out of the

question; the uneclipsed audacity of a man mentioning it, and especially

a man such as I was, was marvelled at. Did I not know that the foreigner

_must_ have a chair? (This was corroborated by my boy, on his oath,

because he would have to pay the men.) Did I not know that no traveler

in Western China, who at any rate had any sense of self-respect, would

travel without a chair, not necessarily as a conveyance, but for the

honor and glory of the thing? And did I not know that, unfurnished with

this undeniable token of respect, I should be liable to be thrust aside

on the highway, to be kept waiting at ferries, to be relegated to the

worst inn's worst room, and to be generally treated with indignity? This

idea of mine of crossing China on foot was preposterous!

Even Mr. Hudson Broomhall, of the China Inland Mission, who with Mrs.

Broomhall was extremely kind, and did all he could to fit me up for the

journey (it is such remembrances that make the trip one which I would

not mind doing again), was surprised to know that I was walking, and

tried to persuade me to take a chair. But I flew in the face of it all.

These good people certainly impressed me, but I decided to run the

gauntlet and take the risk.

The question of "face" is always merely one of theory, never of fact,

and the principles that govern "face" and its attainment were wholly

beyond my apprehension. "I shall probably be more concerned in saving my

life than in saving my face," I thought.

Therefore it was that when I reached a place called Fu-to-gwan I

discarded all superfluities of dress, and strode forward, just at that

time in the early morning when the sun was gilding the dewdrops on the

hedgerows with a grandeur which breathed encouragement to the traveler,

in a flannel shirt and flannel pants--a terrible breach of foreign

etiquette, no doubt, but very comfortable to one who was facing the

first eighty li he had ever walked on China's soil. My three

coolies--the typical Chinese coolie of Szech'wan, but very good fellows

with all their faults--were to land me at Sui-fu, 230 miles distant

(some 650 li), in seven days' time. They were to receive four hundred

cash per man per day, were to find themselves, and if I reached Sui-fu

within the specified time I agreed to _kumshaw_ them to the extent of an

extra thousand.[F] They carried, according to the arrangement, ninety

catties apiece, and their rate of pay I did not consider excessive until

I found that each man sublet his contract for a fourth of his pay, and

trotted along light-heartedly and merry at my side; then I regretted

that I had not thought twice before closing with them.

It is probable that the solidity of the great paved highways of China

have been exaggerated. I have not been on the North China highways, but

have had considerable experience of them in Western China, Szech'wan and

Yün-nan particularly, and have very little praise to lavish upon them.

Certain it is that the road to Sui-fu does not deserve the nice things

said about it by various travelers. The whole route from Chung-king to

Sui-fu, paved with flagstones varying in width from three to six or

seven feet--the only main road, of course--is creditably regular in some

places, whilst other portions, especially over the mountains, are

extremely bad and uneven. In some places, I could hardly get along at

all, and my boy would call out as he came along in his chair behind me--

"Master, I thinkee you makee catch two piecee men makee carry. This

b'long no proper road. P'raps you makee bad feet come."

And truly my feet were shamefully blistered.

One had to step from stone to stone with considerable agility. In places

bridges had fallen in, nobody had attempted to put them into a decent

state of repair--though this is never done in China--and one of the

features of every day was the wonderful fashion in which the mountain

ponies picked their way over the broken route; they are as sure-footed

as goats.

As I gazed admiringly along the miles and miles of ripening wheat and

golden rape, pink-flowering beans, interspersed everywhere with the

inevitable poppy, swaying gently as in a sea of all the dainty colors of

the rainbow, I did not wonder that Szech'wan had been called the Garden

of China. Greater or denser cultivation I had never seen. The

amphitheater-like hills smiled joyously in the first gentle touches of

spring and enriching green, each terrace being irrigated from the one

below by a small stream of water regulated in the most primitive manner

(the windlass driven by man power), and not a square inch lost. Even the

mud banks dividing these fertile areas are made to yield on the sides

cabbages and lettuces and on the tops wheat and poppy. There are no

fences. You see before you a forest of mountains, made a dark leaden

color by thick mists, from out of which gradually come the never-ending

pictures of green and purple and brown and yellow and gold, which roll

hither and thither under a cloudy sky in indescribable confusion. The

chain may commence in the south or the north in two or three soft,

slow-rising undulations, which trend away from you and form a vapory

background to the landscape. From these (I see such a picture even as I

write, seated on the stone steps in the middle of a mountain path), at

once united and peculiarly distinct, rise five masses with rugged

crests, rough, and cut into shady hollows on the sides, a faint pale

aureola from the sun on the mists rising over the summits and sharp

outlines. Looking to the north, an immense curved line shows itself,

growing ever greater, opening like the arch of a gigantic bridge, and

binding this first group to a second, more complicated, each peak of

which has a form of its own, and does in some sort as it pleases without

troubling itself about its neighbor. The most remarkable point about

these mountains is the life they seem to possess. It is an incredible

confusion. Angles are thrown fantastically by some mad geometer, it

would seem. Splendid banyan trees shelter one after toiling up the

unending steps, and dotted over the landscape, indiscriminately in

magnificent picturesqueness, are pretty farmhouses nestling almost out

of sight in groves of sacred trees. Oftentimes perpendicular mountains

stand sheer up for three thousand feet or more, their sides to the very

summits ablaze with color coming from the smiling face of sunny Nature,

in spots at times where only a twelve-inch cultivation is possible.

A dome raises its head curiously over the leaning shoulder of a round

hill, and a pyramid reverses itself, as if to the music of some wild

orchestra, whose symphonies are heard in the mountain winds. Seen nearer

and in detail, these mountains are all in delicious keeping with all of

what the imagination in love with the fantastic, attracted by their more

distant forms, could dream. Valleys, gorges, somber gaps, walls cut

perpendicularly, rough or polished by water, cavities festooned with

hanging stalactites and notched like Gothic sculptures--all make up a

strange sight which cannot but excite admiration.

Every mile or so there are tea-houses, and for a couple of cash a coolie

can get a cup of tea, with leaves sufficient to make a dozen cups, and

as much boiling water as he wants. Szech'wan, the country, its people,

their ways and methods, and much information thereto appertaining, is

already in print. It were useless to give more of it here--and, reader,

you will thank me! But the thirst of Szech'wan--that thirst which is

unique in the whole of the Empire, and eclipsed nowhere on the face of

the earth, except perhaps on the Sahara--one does not hear about.

Many an Englishman would give much for the Chinese coolie's thirst--so

very, very much.

I wonder whether you, reader, were ever thirsty? Probably not. You get a

thirst which is not insatiable. Yours is born of nothing extraordinary;

yours can be satisfied by a gulp or two of water, or perhaps by a

drink--or perhaps two, or perhaps three--of something stronger. The

Chinese coolie's thirst arises from the grilling sun, from a dancing

glare, from hard hauling, struggling with 120 pounds slung over his

shoulders, dangling at the end of a bamboo pole. I have had this thirst

of the Chinese coolie--I know it well. It is born of sheer heat and

sheer perspiration. Every drop of liquid has been wrung out of my body;

I have seemed to have swum in my clothes, and inside my muscles have

seemed to shrink to dry sponge and my bones to dry pith. My substance,

my strength, my self has drained out of me. I have been conscious of

perpetual evaporation and liquefaction. And I have felt that I must stop

and wet myself again. I really _must_ wet myself and swell to life

again. And here we sit at the tea-shop. People come and stare at me, and

wonder what it is. They, too, are thirsty, for they are all coolies and

have the coolie thirst.

I wet myself. I pour in cup after cup, and my body, my self sucks it in,

draws it in as if it were the water of life. Instantly it gushes out

again at every pore. I swill in more, and out it rushes again, madly

rushes out as quickly as it can. I swill in more and more, and out it

comes defiantly. I can keep none inside me. Useless--I _cannot_ quench

my thirst. At last the thirst thinks its conquest assured, taking the

hot tea for a signal of surrender; but I pour in more, and gradually

feel the tea settling within me. I am a degree less torrid, a shade more

substantial.

And then here comes my boy.

"Master, you wantchee makee one drink brandy-and-soda. No can catchee

soda this side--have got water. Can do?"

Ah! shall I? Shall I? No! I throw it away from me, fling a bottle of

cheap brandy which he had bought for me at Chung-king away from me, and

the boy looks forlorn.

Tea is the best of all drinks in China; for the traveler unquestionably

the best. Good in the morning, good at midday, good in the evening, good

at night, even after the day's toil has been forgotten. To-morrow I

shall have more walking, more thirsting, more tea. China tea, thou art a

godsend to the wayfarer in that great land!

I endeavored to get the details of the population of the province of

Szech'wan, the variability of the reports providing an excellent

illustration of the uncertainty impending over everything statistical in

China--estimates ranged from thirty-five to eighty millions.

The surface of this province is made up of masses of rugged mountains,

through which the Yangtze has cut its deep and narrow channel. The area

is everywhere intersected by steep-sided valleys and ravines. The

world-famed plain of Chen-tu, the capital, is the only plain of any

size in the province, the system of irrigation employed on it being one

of the wonders of the world. Every food crop flourishes in Szech'wan, an

inexhaustible supply of products of the Chinese pharmacopoeia enrich the

stores and destroy the stomachs of the well-to-do; and with the

exception of cotton, all that grows in Eastern China grows better in

this great Garden of the Empire. Its area is about that of France, its

climate is even superior--a land delightfully _accidentée_. Among the

minerals found are gold, silver, cinnabar, copper, iron, coal and

petroleum; the chief products being opium, white wax, hemp, yellow silk.

Szech'wan is a province rich in salt, obtained from artesian borings,

some of which extend 2,500 feet below the surface, and from which for

centuries the brine has been laboriously raised by antiquated windlass

and water buffalo.

The best conditions of Chinese inns are far and away worse than anything

the traveler would be called upon to encounter anywhere in the British

Isles, even in the most isolated places in rural Ireland. There can be

no comparison. And my reader will understand that there is much which

the European misses in the way of general physical comfort and

cleanliness. Sanitation is absent _in toto_. Ordinary decency forbids

one putting into print what the uninitiated traveler most desires to

know--if he would be saved a severe shock at the outset; but everyone

has to go through it, because one cannot write what one sees. All

travelers who have had to put up at the caravanseries in Central and

Western China will bear me out in my assertion that all of them reek

with filth and are overrun by vermin of every description. The traveler

whom misfortune has led to travel off the main roads of Russia may

probably hesitate in expressing an opinion as to which country carries

off the palm for unmitigated filth; but, with this exception, travelers

in the Eastern Archipelago, in Central Asia, in Africa among the wildest

tribes, are pretty well unanimous that compared with all these for dirt,

disease, discomfort, an utter lack of decency and annoyance, the Chinese

inn holds its own. And in no part of China more than in Szech'wan and

Yün-nan is greater discomfort experienced.

The usual wooden bedstead stands in the corner of the room with the

straw bedding (this, by the way, should on no account be removed if one

wishes to sleep in peace), sometimes there is a table, sometimes a

couple of chairs. If these are steady it is lucky, if unbroken it is the

exception; there are never more. Over the bedstead (more often than not,

by the way, it is composed of four planks of varying lengths and

thickness, placed across two trestles) I used first to place my oilskin,

then my _p'u-k'ai_, and that little creeper which rhymes with hug did

not disturb me much. Rats ran round and over me in profusion, and, of

course, the best room being invariably nearest to the pigsties, there

were the usual stenches. The floor was Mother Earth, which in wet

weather became mud, and quite a common thing it was for my joys to be

enhanced during a heavy shower of rain by my having to sleep, almost

suffocated, mackintosh over my head, owing to a slight break in the

continuity of the roof--my umbrella being unavailable, as one of my men

dropped it over a precipice two days out. For many reasons a camp-bed is

to Europeans an indispensable part of even the most modest traveling

equipment. I was many times sorry that I had none with me.

The inns of Szech'wan, however, are by many degrees better than those of

Yün-nan, which are sometimes indescribable. Earthen floors are saturated

with damp filth and smelling decay; there are rarely the paper windows,

but merely a sort of opening of woodwork, through which the offensive

smells of decaying garbage and human filth waft in almost to choke one;

tables collapse under the weight of one's dinner; walls are always in

decay and hang inwards threateningly; wicked insects, which crawl and

jump and bite, creep over the side of one's rice bowl--and much else.

Who can describe it? It makes one ill to think of it.

Throughout my journeyings it was necessary for my toileting, in fact,

everything, to be performed in absolute unalloyed publicity. Three days

out my boy fixed up a cold bath for me, and barricaded a room which had

a certain amount of privacy about it, owing to its secluded position;

but even grown men and women, anxious to see what _it_ was like when it

had no clothes on, came forward, poked their fingers through the paper

in the windows (of course, glass is hardly known in the interior), and

greedily peeped in. This and the profound curiosity the people evince in

one's every action and movement I found most trying.

It was my misfortune each day at this stage to come into a town or

village where market was in progress. Catching a sight of the foreign

visage, people opened their eyes widely, turned from me, faced me again

with a little less of fear, and then came to me, not in dozens, but in

hundreds, with open arms. They shouted and made signs, and walking

excitedly by my side, they examined at will the texture of my clothes,

and touched my boots with sticks to see whether the feet were encased or

not. For the time I was their hero. When I walked into an inn business

brightened immediately. Tea was at a premium, and only the richer class

could afford nine cash instead of three to drink tea with the bewildered

foreigner. The most inquisitive came behind me, rubbing their unshaven

pates against the side of my head in enterprising endeavor to see

through the sides of my spectacles. They would speak to me, yelling in

their coarsest tones thinking my hearing was defective. I would motion

then to go away, always politely, cleverly suppressing my sense of

indignation at their conduct; and they would do so, only to make room

for a worse crowd. The town's business stopped; people left their stalls

and shops to glare aimlessly at or to ask inane and unintelligible

questions about the barbarian who seemed to have dropped suddenly from

the heavens. When I addressed a few words to them in strongest

Anglo-Saxon, telling them in the name of all they held sacred to go away

and leave me in peace, something like a cheer would go up, and my boy

would swear them all down in his choicest. When I slowly rose to move

the crowd looked disappointed, but allowed me to go forward on my

journey in peace.

* * * * *

Thus the days passed, and things were never dull.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote E: This refers to the main roads There are many places in

isolated and unsurveyed districts where it is extremely difficult and

often impossible to get along at all--E.J.D.]

[Footnote F: This rate of four hundred cash per day per man was

maintained right up to Tong-ch'uan-fu, although after Chao-t'ong the

usual rate paid is a little higher, and the bad cash in that district

made it difficult for my men to arrange four hundred "big" cash current

in Szech'wan in the Yün-nan equivalent. After Tong-ch'uan-fu, right on

to Burma, the rate of coolie pay varies considerably. Three tsien two

fen (thirty-two tael cents) was the highest I paid until I got to

Tengyueh, where rupee money came into circulation, and where expense of

living was considerably higher.--E.J.D.]

CHAPTER VI.

_Szech-wan people a mercenary lot_. _Adaptability to trading_. _None but

nature lovers should come to Western China_. _The life of the Nomad_.

_The opening of China, and some impressions_. _China's position in the

eyes of her own people_. _Industrialism, railways, and the attitude of

the populace_. _Introduction of foreign machinery_. _Different opinions

formed in different provinces_. _Climate, and what it is responsible

for_. _Recent Governor of Szech-wan's tribute to Christianity_. _New

China and the new student_. _Revolutionary element in Yün-nan_. _Need of

a new life, and how China is to get it_. _Luchow, and a little about

it_. _Fusong from the military_. _Necessity of the sedan-chair_. _Cost

of lodging_. _An impudent woman_. _Choice pidgin-English_. _Some of the

annoyances of travel_. _Canadian and China Inland missionaries_.

_Exchange of yarns_. _Exasperating Chinese life, and its effects on

Europeans_. _Men refuse to walk to Sui-fu. Experiences in arranging

up-river trip_. _Unmeaning etiquette of Chinese officials toward

foreigners_. _Rude awakening in the morning_. _A trying early-morning

ordeal_. _Reckonings do not tally_. _An eventful day_. _At the China

Inland Mission_. _Impressions of Sui-fu. Fictitious partnerships_.

The people of Szech'wan, compared with other Yangtze provinces, must be

called a mercenary, if a go-ahead, one.

Balancing myself on a three-inch form in a tea-shop at a small town

midway between Li-shïh-ch'ang and Luchow, I am endeavoring to take in

the scene around me. The people are so numerous in this province that

they must struggle in order to live. Vain is it for the most energetic

among them to escape from the shadow of necessity and hunger; all are

similarly begirt, so they settle down to devote all their energies to

trade. And trade they do, in very earnest.

Everything is labeled, from the earth to the inhabitants; these

primitives, these blissfully "heathen" people, have become the most

consummate of sharpers. I walk up to buy something of the value of only

a few cash, and on all sides are nets and traps, like spider-webs, and

the fly that these gentry would catch, as they see me stalk around

inspecting their wares, is myself. They seem to lie in wait for one, and

for an article for which a coolie would pay a few cash as many dollars

are demanded of the foreigner. My boy stands by, however, magnificently

proud of his lucrative and important post, yelling precautions to the

curious populace to stand away. He hints, he does not declare outright,

but by ungentle innuendo allows them to understand that, whatever their

private characters may be, to him they are all liars and rogues and

thieves. It is all so funny, that one's fatigue is minimized to the last

degree by the humor one gets and the novel changes one meets everywhere.

Onward again, my men singing, perhaps quarreling, always swearing. Their

language is low and coarse and vulgar, but happily ignorant am I.

The country, too, is fascinating in the extreme. A man must not come to

China for pleasure unless he love his mistress Nature when she is most

rudely clad. Some of her lovers are fascinated most in by-places, in the

cool of forests, on the summit of lofty mountains, high up from the

mundane, in the cleft of cañons, everywhere that the careless lover is

not admitted to her contemplation. It is for such that China holds out

an inviting hand, but she offers little else to the Westerner--the

student of Nature and of man can alone be happy in the interior.

Forgetting time and the life of my own world, I sometimes come to

inviolate stillnesses, where Nature opens her arms and bewitchingly

promises embraces in soft, unending, undulating vastnesses, where even

the watching of a bird building its nest or brooding over its young, or

some little groundling at its gracious play, seems to hold one charmed

beyond description. It is, some may say, a nomadic life. Yes, it is a

nomadic life. But how beautiful to those of us, and there are many, who

love less the man-made comforts of our own small life than the

entrancing wonders of the God-made world in spots where nothing has

changed. Gladly did I quit the dust and din of Western life, the

artificialities of dress, and the unnumbered futile affectations of our

own maybe not misnamed civilization, to go and breathe freely and

peacefully in those far-off nooks of the silent mountain-tops where

solitude was broken only by the lulling or the roaring of the winds of

heaven. Thank God there are these uninvaded corners. The realm of

silence is, after all, vaster than the realm of noise, and the fact

brought a consolation, as one watched Nature effecting a sort of

coquetry in masking her operations.

And as I look upon it all I wonder--wonder whether with the "Opening of

China" this must all change?

The Chinese--I refer to the Chinese of interior provinces such as

Szech-wan--are realizing that they hold an obscure position. I have

heard educated Chinese remark that they look upon themselves as lost,

like shipwrecked sailors, whom a night of tempest has cast on some

lonely rock; and now they are having recourse to cries, volleys, all the

signals imaginable, to let it be known that they are still there. They

have been on this lonely isolated rock as far as history can trace. Now

they are launching out towards progress, towards the making of things,

towards the buying and selling of things--launching out in trade and in

commerce, in politics, in literature, in science, in all that has spelt

advance in the West. The modern spirit is spreading speedily into the

domains of life everywhere--in places swiftly, in places slowly, but

spreading inevitably, _si sit prudentia_.

Nothing will tend, in this particular part of the country, to turn it

upside down and inside out more than the cult of industrialism. In a

number of centers in Eastern China, such as Han-yang and Shanghai,

foreign mills, iron works, and so on, furnish new employments, but in

the interior the machine of the West to the uneducated Celestial seems

to be the foe of his own tools; and when railways and steam craft

appear--steam has appeared, of course, on the Upper Yangtze, although it

has not yet taken much of the junk trade, and Szech'wan has her railways

now under construction (the sod was cut at Ichang in 1909)[G]--and a

single train and steamer does the work of hundreds of thousands of

carters, coolies, and boatmen, it is wholly natural that their imperfect

and short-sighted views should lead them to rise against a seeming new

peril.

Whilst in the end the Empire will profit greatly by the inventions of

the Occident, the period of transition in Szech'wan, especially if

machines are introduced too rapidly and unwisely, is one that will

disturb the peace. It will be interesting to watch the attitude of the

people towards the railway, for Szech'wan is essentially the province of

the farmer. Szech'wan was one of the provinces where concessions were

demanded, and railways had been planned by European syndicates, and

where the gentry and students held mass meetings, feverishly declaring

that none shall build Chinese lines but the people themselves. I have no

space in a work of this nature to go fully into the question of

industrialism, railways, and other matters immediately vital to the

interests of China, but if the peace of China is to be maintained, it

is incumbent upon every foreigner to "go slowly." Machines of foreign

make have before now been scrapped, railways have been pulled up and

thrown into the sea, telegraph lines have been torn down and sold, and

on every hand among this wonderful people there has always been apparent

a distinct hatred to things and ideas foreign. But industrially

particularly the benefits of the West are being recognized in Eastern

China, and gradually, if foreigners who have to do the pioneering are

tactful, trust in the foreign-manufactured machine will spread to

Western China, and enlarged industrialism will bring all-round

advantages to Western trade.

Thus far there has been little shifting of the population from hamlets

and villages to centers of new industries--even in the more forward

areas quoted--but when this process begins new elements will enter into

the Chinese industrial problem.

As we hear of the New China, so is there a "new people," a people

emboldened by the examples of officials in certain areas to show a

friendliness towards progress and innovation. They were not friendly a

decade ago. It may, perhaps, be said that this "new people" were born

after the Boxer troubles, and in Szech'wan they have a large influence.

Cotton mills, silk filatures, flour and rice mills employing western

machinery, modern mining plants and other evidences of how China is

coming out of her shell, cause one to rejoice in improved conditions.

The animosity occasioned by these inventions that are being so gradually

and so surely introduced into every nook and cranny of East and North

China is very marked; but on close inspection, and after one has made a

study of the subject, one is inclined to feel that it is more or less

theoretical. So it is to be hoped it will be in Szech'wan and Far

Western China.

Readers may wonder at the differences of opinions expressed in the

course of these pages--a hundred pages on one may get a totally

different impression. But the absolute differences of conditions

existing are quite as remarkable. From Chung-king to Sui-fu one breathed

an air of progress--after one had made allowance for the antagonistic

circumstances under which China lives--a manifest desire on every hand

for things foreign, and a most lively and intelligent interest in what

the foreigner could bring. In many parts of Yün-nan, again, conditions

were completely reversed; and one finding himself in Yün-nan, after

having lived for some time at a port in the east of the Empire, would

assuredly find himself surrounded by everything antagonistic to that to

which he has become accustomed, and the people would seem of a different

race. This may be due to the differences of climate--climate, indeed, is

ultimately the first and the last word in the East; it is the arbiter,

the builder, the disintegrator of everything. A leading writer on

Eastern affairs says that the "climate is the explanation of all this

history of Asia, and the peoples of the East can only be understood and

accounted for by the measuring of the heat of the sun's rays. In China,

with climate and weather charts in your hands, you may travel from the

Red River on the Yün-nan frontier to the great Sungari in lusty

Manchuria, and be able to understand and account for everything."

However that may be, traveling in China, through a wonderful province

like Szech'wan, whose chief entrepôt is fifteen hundred miles from the

coast, convinces one that she has come to the parting of the ways. You

can, in any city or village in Szech'wan--or in Yün-nan, for that

matter, in a lesser degree--always find the new nationalism in the form

of the "New China" student. Despite the opposition he gets from the old

school, and although the old order of things, by being so strong as

almost to overwhelm him, allows him to make less progress than he

would, this new student, the hope of the Empire, is there. I do not wish

to enter into a controversy on this subject, but I should like to quote

the following from a speech delivered by Tseh Ch'un Hsüan, when he was

leaving his post as Governor of Szech'wan:--

"The officials of China are gradually acquiring a knowledge of the great

principles of the religions of Europe and America. And the churches are

also laboring night and day to readjust their methods, and to make known

their aims in their propagation of religion. Consequently, Chinese and

foreigners are coming more and more into cordial relations. This fills

me with joy and hopefulness.... My hope is that the teachers of both

countries [Great Britain and America] will spread the Gospel more wisely

than ever, that hatred may be banished, and disputes dispelled, and that

the influence of the Gospel may create boundless happiness for my people

of China. And I shall not be the only one to thank you for coming to the

front in this good work.... May the Gospel prosper!"

There are various grades of people in China, among which the scholar has

always come first, because mind is superior to wealth, and it is the

intellect that distinguishes man above the lower order of beings, and

enables him to provide food and raiment and shelter for himself and for

others. At the time when Europe was thrilled and cut to the quick with

news of the massacres of her compatriots in the Boxer revolts, the

scholar was a dull, stupid fellow--day in day out, week in week out,

month in month out, and year after year he ground at his classics. His

classics were the _Alpha_ and _Omega_; he worshipped them. This era has

now passed away.

At the present moment there are upwards of twenty thousand Chinese

students in Tokyo[H]--whither they went because Japan is the most

convenient country wherein to acquire Western knowledge. The new

learning, the new learning--they _must_ have the new learning! No high

office is ever again likely to be given but to him who has more of

Western knowledge than Chinese knowledge. And mere striplings, nursed in

the lap of the mission schools, and there given a good grounding in

Western education, these are the men far more likely to pass the new

examinations. In Yün-nan, where little chance exists for the scholars to

advance, the new learning has brought with it a revolutionary element,

which would soon become dangerous were it by any means common. I have

seen an English-speaking fellow, anxious to get on and under the

impression that the laws of his country were responsible for keeping him

back, write in the back of his exercise book a phrase against the

imperial ruler that would have cost him his head had it come to the

notice of the high authorities.

One will learn much if he travels across the Empire--facts and figures

quite irreconcilable will arise, but even the man of dullest perception

will be convinced that much of the reforming spirit in the people is

only skin-deep, going no farther than the externals of life. It is at

present, perhaps, merely a mad fermentation in the western provinces,

wherefrom the fiercer it is the clearer the product will one day evolve

itself. Such transitions are full of bewilderment to the

European--bewildering to any writer who endeavors to tackle the Empire

as a whole. Each province or couple of provinces should be dealt with

separately, so diverse are the conditions.

But if China, from the highest to the lowest, will only embrace truth

and love her for her own sake, so that she will not abate one jot of

allegiance to her; if China will let truth run down through the

arteries of everyday commercial, social, and political life as do the

waterways through her marvelous country; if China will kill her

retardative conservatism, and in its place erect honesty and conscience;

if China will let her moral life be quickened--then her transition

period, from end to end of the Empire, will soon end. Mineral,

agricultural, industrial wealth are hers to a degree which is not true

of any other land. Her people have an enduring and expansive power that

has stood the test of more than four thousand years of honorable

history, and their activity and efficiency outside China make them more

to be dreaded, as competitors, than any race or any dozen races of

to-day.

But New China must have this new life.

Commerce, science, diplomacy, culture, civilization she will have in

ever-increasing measure just in so much as she draws nearer to western

peoples. But the new life can come from whence? From within or from

without?

Luchow, into which I was led just before noon on the fourth day out of

Chung-king, is the most populous and richest city on the Upper Yangtze.

Exceedingly clean for a Chinese city, possessing well-kept streets lined

with well-stocked emporiums, bearing every evidence of commercial

prosperity, it however lacks one thing. It has no hotel runners! I

arrived at midday, crossing the river in a leaky ferry boat, under a

blazing sun, my intention being to stop in the town at a tea-house to

take a refresher, and then complete a long day's march, farther than the

ordinary stage. But owing to some misunderstanding between the

_fu-song_, sent to shadow the foreigner on part of his journey, and my

boy, I was led through the busy city out into the open country before I

had had a drink. And when I remonstrated they led me back again to the

best inn, where I was told I should have to spend the night--there being

nothing else, then, to be said.

May I give a word of advice here to any reader contemplating a visit to

China under similar conditions? It is the custom of the mandarins to

send what is called a _fu-song_ (escort) for you; the escort comes from

the military, although their peculiar appearance may lead you to doubt

it. I have two of these soldier people with me to-day, and two bigger

ragamuffins it has not been my lot to cast eyes on. They are the only

two men in the crowd I am afraid of. They are of absolutely no use, more

than to eat and to drink, and always come up smiling at the end of their

stage for their _kumshaw_. During the whole of this day I have not seen

one of them--they have been behind the caravan all the time; it would be

hard to believe that they had sense enough to find the way, and as for

escorting me, they have not accompanied me a single li of the way.[I]

Another nuisance, of which I have already spoken, is the necessity of

taking a chair to maintain respectability. These things make travel in

China not so cheap as one would be led to imagine. Traveling of itself

is cheap enough, as cheap as in any country in the world. For

accommodation for myself, for a room, rice and as much hot water as I

want, the charge is a couple of hundred cash--certainly not expensive.

In addition, there is generally a little "cha tsien" (tea money) for the

cook. But it is the "face" which makes away with money, much more than

it takes to keep you in the luxury that the country can offer--which is

not much!

After I had had a bit of a discussion with my boy as to the room they

wanted to house me in, a woman, brandishing a huge cabbage stump above

her head, and looking menacingly at me, yelled that the room was good

enough.

"What does she say, T'ong?"

"Oh, she b'long all same fool. She wantchee makee talkee talk. She have

got velly long tongue, makee bad woman. She say one piecee Japan man

makee stay here t'ree night. See? She say what makee good one piecee

Japan man makee good one piecee English man. See? No have got topside,

all same bottomside have got. Master, this no b'long my pidgin--this

b'long woman pidgin, and woman b'long all same fool." T'ong ended up

with an amusing allusion to the lady's mother, and looked cross because

I rebuked him.

Gathering, then, that the lady thought her room good enough for me, I

saw no other course open, and as the crowd was gathering, I got inside.

Before setting out to call upon the Canadian missionaries stationed at

the place, I held a long conversation with a hump-backed old man, an

unsightly mass of disease, who seemed to be a traditional link of

Luchow. I might say that this scholastic old wag spoke nothing but

Chinese, and I, as the reader knows, spoke no Chinese, so that the

amount of general knowledge derived one from the other was therefore

limited. But he would not go, despite the frequent deprecations of T'ong

and my coolies, and my vehement rhetoric in explanation that his

presence was distasteful to me, and at the end of the episode I found it

imperative for my own safety, and perhaps his, to clear out.

* * * * *

The Canadians I found in their Chinese-built premises, comfortable

albeit. Five of them were resident at the time, and they were quite

pleased with the work they had done during the last year or so--most of

them were new to China. At the China Inland Mission later I found two

young Scotsmen getting some exercise by throwing a cricket ball at a

stone wall, in a compound about twenty feet square. They were glad to

see me, one of them kindly gave me a hair-cut, and at their invitation I

stayed the night with them.

What is it in the nature of the Chinese which makes them appear to be so

totally oblivious to the best they see in their own country?

It is surely not because they are not as sensitive as other races to the

magic of beauty in either nature or art. But I found traveling and

living with such apparently unsympathetic creatures exasperating to a

degree, and I did not wonder that the European whose lot had been cast

in the interior, sometimes, on emerging into Western civilization,

appears eccentric to his own countrymen. But this in passing.

I duly arrived at Lan-chï-hsien, and was told that Sui-fu, 120 li away,

would be reached the next day, although I had my doubts. A deputation

from the local "gwan" waited upon me to learn my wishes and to receive

my commands. I was assured that no European ever walked to Sui-fu from

Lan-chï-hsien, and that if I attempted to do such a thing I should have

to go alone, and that I should never reach there. I remonstrated, but my

boy was firm. He took me to him and fathered me. He almost cried over

me, to think that I, that I, his master, of all people in the world,

should doubt his allegiance to me. "I no 'fraid," he declared. "P'laps

master no savee. Sui-fu b'long velly big place, have got plenty

European. You wantchee makee go fast, catchee plenty good 'chow.' I

think you catchee one piecee boat, makee go up the river. P'laps I think

you have got velly tired--no wantchee makee more walkee--that no b'long

ploper. That b'long all same fool pidgin."

And at last I melted. There was nothing else to do.

That no one ever walked to Sui-fu from this place the district potentate

assured me in a private chit, which I could not read, when he laid his

gunboat at my disposal.

This, he said, would take me up very quickly. In his second note,

wherein he apologized that indisposition kept him from calling

personally upon me--this, of course, was a lie--he said he would feel it

an honor if I would be pleased to accept the use of his contemptible

boat. But T'ong whispered that the law uses these terms in China, and

that nobody would be more disappointed than the Chinese magistrate if I

_did_ take advantage of his unmeaning offer. So I took a _wu-pan_, and

the following night, when pulling into the shadows of the Sui-fu pagoda,

cold and hungry, I cursed my luck that I had not broken down the useless

etiquette which these Chinese officials extend towards foreigners, and

taken the fellow's gunboat.

The _wu-pan_, they swore to me, would be ready to leave at 3:30 a.m. the

day following. My boy did not venture to sleep at all. He stayed up

outside my bedroom door--I say bedroom, but actually it was an apartment

which in Europe I would not put a horse into, and the door was merely a

wide, worm-eaten board placed on end. In the middle of the night I heard

a noise--yea, a rattle. The said board fell down, inwards, almost upon

me. A light was flashed swiftly into my eyes, and desultory remarks

which suddenly escaped me were rudely interrupted by shrill screams. My

boy was singing.

"Master," he cried, pulling hard-heartedly at my left big toe to wake

me, "come on, come on; you wantchee makee get up. Have got two o'clock.

Get up; p'laps me no wakee you, no makee sleep--no b'long ploper. One

man makee go bottomside--have catchee boat. This morning no have got

tea--no can catch hot water makee boil."

And soon we were ready to start. Punctually to the appointed hour we

were at the bottom of the steep, dark incline leading down to the river

bank.

But my reckonings were bad.

The _laoban_ and the other two youthful members of the half-witted crew

had not yet taken their "chow," and this, added to many little

discrepancies in their reckoning and in mine, kept me in a boiling rage

until half-past six, when at last they pushed off, and nearly capsized

the boat at the outset. The details of that early morning, and the

happenings throughout the long, sad day, I think I can never

forget--from the breaking of tow-lines to frequent stranding on the

rocks and sticking on sandbanks, the orders wrongly given, the narrow

escape of fire on board, the bland thick-headedness of the ass of a

captain, the collisions, and all the most profound examples of savage

ignorance displayed when one has foolish Chinese to deal with. We

reached half-way at 4:30 p.m., with sixty li to do against a wind. Hour

after hour they toiled, making little headway with their misdirected

labor, wasting their energies in doing the right things at the wrong

time, and wrong things always, and long after sundown Sui-fu's pagoda

loomed in the distance. At 11:00 p.m., stiff and hungry, and mad with

rage, I was groping my way on all fours up the slippery steps through

unspeakable slime and filth at the quayhead, only to be led to a

disgusting inn as dirty as anything I had yet encountered. It was hard

lines, for I could get no food.

An invitation, however, was given me by the Rev. R. McIntyre, who with

his charming wife conducts the China Inland Mission in this city, to

come and stay with them. The next morning, after a sleepless night of

twisting and turning on a bug-infested bed, I was glad to take advantage

of the missionary's kindness. I could not have been given a kindlier

welcome.

Sui-fu has a population of roughly 150,000, and the overcrowding

question is not the least important. It is situated to advantage on the

right bank of the Yangtze, and does an immense trade in medicines,

opium, silk, furs, silverwork, and white wax, which are the chief

exports. Gunboats regularly come to Sui-fu during the heavy rains.

Just outside the city, a large area is taken up with grave

mounds--common with nearly every Chinese city. Mr. McIntyre and Mr.

Herbert, who was passing through Sui-fu _en route_ for Ta-chien-lu,

where he is now working, showed me around the city one afternoon, and

one could see everything typical of the social life of two thousand

years ago. The same narrow lanes succeed each other, and the conviction

is gradually impressed upon the mind that such is the general trend of

the character of the city and its people. There were the same busy

mechanics, barbers, traders, wayside cooks, traveling fortune-tellers,

and lusty coolies; the wag doctor, the bane of the gullible, was there

to drive his iniquitous living; now and then the scene's monotony was

disturbed by the presence of the chair and the retinue of a city

mandarin. Yet with all the hurry and din, the hurrying and the scurrying

in doing and driving for making money, seldom was there an accident or

interruption of good nature. There was the same romance in the streets

that one reads of at school--so much alike and yet so different from

what one meets in the Chinese places at the coast or in Hong-Kong or

Singapore. In Sui-fu, more than in any other town in Western China which

I visited, had the native artist seemed to have lavished his ingenuity

on the street signboards. Their caligraphy gave the most humorous

intimation of the superiority of the wares on sale; many of them

contained some fictitious emblem, adopted as the name of the shop,

similar to the practice adopted in London two centuries ago, and so

common now in the Straits Settlements, where bankrupts are allowed

considerable more freedom than would be possible if fictitious

registration were not allowed. I refer to the Registration of

Partnerships.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote G: I inspected the railway at Ichang in December, 1910, and

found that a remarkable scheme was making very creditable progress.

Around the main station centre there was an air of bustle and

excitement, some 20,000 coolies were in employment there, all the

buildings and equipment bore evidences of thoroughness, and the scheme

seemed to be going on well. But in January of this year (1911) a meeting

was held at Chen-tu, the proposed destination of the line, and the

gentry then decided that as nothing was being done at that end the

company should be requested to stop work at Ichang, and start laying the

line from Chen-tu, at the other end. "All the money will be spent," they

cried, "and we shall get nothing up this end!" If the money ran out and

left the central portion of the line incomplete, it did not matter so

long as each city had something for its money!--E.J.D.]

[Footnote H: This is not true to-day. There has been a great falling off

in numbers.--E.J.D., February, 1911.]

[Footnote I: This should not be taken to apply to the _fu-song_

everywhere. I have found them to be the most useful on other occasions,

but the above was written at Luchow as my experience of that particular

day.--E.J.D.]

FOURTH JOURNEY.

SUI-FU TO CHAO-T'ONG-FU (VIA LAO-WA-T'AN).

CHAPTER VII.

_Chinese and simplicity of speech_. _Author and his caravan stopped_.

_Advice to travelers_. _Farewell to Sui-fu_. _The postal service and

tribute to I.P.O._ _Rushing the stages_. _Details of journey_.

_Description of road to Chao-t'ong-fu_. _Coolie's pay_. _My boy steals

vegetables_. _Remarks on roads and railways_. _The real Opening of

China_. _How the foreigner will win the confidence of the Chinese_.

_Distances and their variability_. _Calculations uprooted_. _Author in a

dilemma_. _The scenery_. _Hard going_. _A wayside toilet, and some

embarrassment_. _Filth inseparable from Chinese humanity_. _About

Chinese inns_. _Typewriter causes some fun_. _Soldiers guard my

doorway_. _Man's own "inner room."_ _One hundred and forty li in a day_.

_Grandeur and solitude_. _Wisdom of traveling alone_. _Coolie nearly

cuts his toe off_. _Street scene at Puérh-tu_. _The "dying" coolie_. _A

manacled prisoner_. _Entertained by mandarins_. _How plans do not work

out_.

He who would make most abundant excuses for the Chinese could not say

that he is simple in his speech.

That speech is the chief revelation of the mind, the first visible form

that it takes, is undoubtedly true: as the thought, so the speech.

All social relations with us have their roots in mutual trust, and this

trust is maintained by each man's sincerity of thought and speech.

Apparently not so in China. There is so much craft, so much diplomacy,

so much subtle legerdemain that, if he chooses, the Chinese may give you

no end of trouble to inform yourself on the simplest subject. The

Chinese, like so many cavillers and calumniators, all glib of tongue,

who know better than any nation on earth how to turn voice and pen to

account, have taken the utmost advantage of extended means of

circulating thought, with the result that an Englishman such as myself,

even were I a deep scholar of their language, would have the greatest

difficulty in getting at the truth about their own affairs.

As I was going out of Sui-fu my caravan and myself were delayed by some

fellow, who held the attention of my men for a full quarter of an hour.

I listened, understanding nothing. After another five minutes, by which

time the conversation had assumed what I considered dangerous

proportions, having the safety of my boy at heart, I asked--

"T'ong, what is it?"

"Half a sec.," he replied (having learnt this phrase from the gunboat

men down the river). He did not, however, take his eyes from the man

with whom he was holding the conversation. He then dived into my

food-basket, wrenched off the top of a tin, and pulled therefrom two

beautifully-marked live pigeons, which flapped their wings helplessly to

get away, and resumed the conversation. Talk waxed furious, the birds

were placed by the side of the road, and T'ong, now white with seeming

rage, threatened to hit the man. It turned out that the plaintiff was

the seller of the birds, and that T'ong had got them too cheap.

"That man no savee. He thinkee you, master, have got plenty money. He

b'long all same rogue. I no b'long fool. I know, I know."

As the cover of the food-basket was closed down I noticed a cooked fowl,

two live pheasants with their legs tied together, a pair of my own muddy

boots, a pair of dancing pumps, and a dirty collar, all in addition to

my little luxuries and the two pigeons aforesaid. Reader, if thou

would'st travel in China, peep not into thy _hoh shïh lan tsï_ if thou

would'st feed well.

T'ong, laughing derisively, waved fond and fantastic salutations to the

disappointed vendor of pigeons, and moved backwards on tiptoe till he

could see him no more; then we went noiselessly down a steep incline out

into an open space of distracted and dishevelled beauty on our way to

Chao-t'ong-fu.

From Chung-king I had stuck to the regular stages. I had done no

hustling, but I decided to rush it to Chao-t'ong if I could, as the

reports I heard about being overtaken by the rains in Yün-nan were

rather disquieting. I had taken to Sui-fu three times as long as the

regular mail time, the service of which is excellent. Chung-king has no

less than six local deliveries daily, thus eliminating delays after the

delivery of the mails, and a daily service to the coast has also been

established. A fast overland service to Wan Hsien now exists, by which

the coast mails are transmitted between that port and Chung-king in the

hitherto unheard-of time of two days--a traveler considers himself

fortunate if he covers the same distance in eight days. There are fast

daily services to Luchow (380 li distant) in one day, Sui-fu (655 li) in

two days, Hochow (180 li) in one night, and Chen-tu (1,020 li) in three

days. It is creditable to the Chinese Imperial Post Office that a letter

posted at Sui-fu will be delivered in Great Britain in a month's time.

It was a dull, chilly morning that I left Sui-fu, leading my little

procession through the city on my way to Anpien, which was to be reached

before sundown. My coolies--probably owing to having derived more

pecuniary advantage than they expected during the journey from

Chung-king--decided to re-engage, and promised to complete the

fourteen-day tramp to Chao-t'ong-fu, two hundred and ninety miles

distant, if weather permitted, in eleven days. We were to travel by the

following stages:--

Length of Height above

stage sea

1st day--Anpien 90 li ----

2nd day--Huan-chiang 55 li ----

3rd day--Fan-ïh-ts'uen 70 li ----

4th day--T'an-t'eo 70 li ----

5th day--Lao-wa-t'an 140 li 1,140 ft.

6th day--Teo-sha-kwan 60 li 4,000 ft.

7th day--Ch'i-li-p'u 60 li 1,900 ft.

8th day--Ta-wan-tsï 70 li ----

9th day--Ta-kwan-ting 70 li 3,700 ft.

10th day--Wuchai 60 li 7,000 ft.

11th day--Chao-t'ong-fu 100 li 6,400 ft.

I knew that I was in for a very hard journey. The nature of the country

as far as T'an-t'eo, ten li this side of which the Szech'wan border is

reached, is not exhausting, although the traveler is offered some rough

and wild climbing. The next day's stage, to Lao-wa-t'an, is miserably

bad. At certain places it is cut out of the rock, at others it runs in

the bed of the river, which is dotted everywhere with roaring rapids (as

we are ascending very quickly), and when the water is high these roads

are submerged and often impassable. In some places it was a six-inch

path along the mountain slope, with a gradient of from sixty to seventy

degrees, and landslips and rains are ever changing the path.

Lao-wa-t'an is the most important point on the route. One of the largest

Customs stations in the province of Yün-nan is here situated at the east

end of a one-span suspension bridge, about one hundred and fifty feet in

length. No ponies carrying loads are allowed to cross the bridge, the

roads east of this being unfit for beasts of burden. There is then a

fearful climb to a place called Teo-sha-kwan, a stage of only sixty li.

The reader should not mentally reduce this to English miles, for the

march was more like fifty miles than thirty, if we consider the

physical exertion required to scale the treacherous roads. Over a broad,

zigzagging, roughly-paved road, said to have no less than ninety-eight

curves from bottom to top, we ascend for thirty li, and then descend for

the remainder of the journey through a narrow defile along the northern

bank of the river, the opposite side being a vertical sheet of rock

rising to at least a thousand feet sheer up, very similar to the gorges

of the Mekong at the western end of the province, which I crossed in due

course.

To Ch'i-li-p'u, high up on the mountain banks, the first twenty-five li

is by the river. At the half-way place a fearful ascent is experienced,

the most notable precipice on the route between Sui-fu and Yün-nan-fu,

up a broad zigzag path, and as I sat at dinner I could see neither top

nor bottom owing to the overhanging masses of rock: this is after having

negotiated an ascent quite as steep, but smaller. To Ta-kwan-hsien a few

natural obstacles occur, although the road is always high up on the

hill-sides. I crossed a miserable suspension bridge of two spans. The

southern span is about thirty feet, the northern span eighty feet; the

center is supported by a buttress of splendid blocks of squared stone,

resting on the rock in the bed of the river, one side being considerably

worn away by the action of the water. The longer span was hung very

slack, the woodwork forming the pathway was not too safe, and the

general shaky appearance was particularly uninviting.

From Ta-kwan-hsien to Wuchai is steady pulling. Once in an opening in

the hill we passed along and then ascended an exceedingly steep spur on

one side of a narrow and very deep natural amphitheatre, formed by

surrounding mountains. We then came to a lagoon, and eventually the brow

of the hill was reached. Thus the Wuchai Valley is arrived at, where,

owing to a collection of water, the road is often impassable to man and

beast. Often during the rainy season there is a lagoon of mud or water

formed by the drainage from the mountains, which finds no escape but by

percolating through the earth and rock to a valley on the east of, and

below, the mountains forming the eastern boundary of the Wuchai Valley.

To Chao-t'ong is fairly level going.

Considering the road, it was not unnatural that my men gibbed a little

at the eleven-day accomplishment. I had a long parley with them,

however, and agreed to reward them to the extent of one thousand cash

among the three if they did it. Their pay for the journey, over

admittedly some of the worst roads in the Empire, was to be four hundred

cash per man as before, with three hundred and thirty-three cash extra

if the rain did not prevent them from getting in in eleven days. They

were in good spirits, and so was I, as we walked along the river-bank,

where the poppy was to be seen in full flower, and the unending beds of

rape alternated with peas and beans and tobacco. T'ong would persist in

stealing the peas and beans to feed me on, and for the life of me I

could not get him to see that he should not do this sort of thing. But

how continually one was impressed with the great need of roads in

Western China! It is natural that, walking the whole distance, I should

notice this more than other travelers have done, and, to my mind, roads

in this part of the country rank in importance before the railways.

To the foreign mind it is more to the interests of China that railways

should be well and serviceably built than that the money should be

squandered to no purpose. If the railway has rails, then in China it can

be called a railway, and China is satisfied. So with the roads. If there

is any passage at all, then the Chinese call it a road, and China is

satisfied.

As one meanders through the country, watching a people who are equalled

nowhere in the world for their industry, plodding away over the worst

roads any civilized country possesses, he cannot but think, even looking

at the question from the Chinese standpoint so far as he is able, that,

were free scope once given for the infusion of Western energy and

methods into an active, trade-loving people like the Chinese, China

would rival the United States in wealth and natural resources. The

Chinese knows that his country, the natural resources of the country and

the people, will allow him to do things on a scale which will by and by

completely overbalance the doings of countries less favored by Nature

than his own. He knows that when properly developed his country will be

one of the richest in the world, yet even when he is filled with such

ideas he is just as cunctative as he has ever been. He has the idea that

he should not commence to exhaust the wealth of his country before it is

absolutely necessary.

Above all, he has now made up his mind that he himself, unaided by the

foreigner, is going to develop it just as he likes and just when he

likes.

The day of the foreign concession is gone. The Chinese now is paddling

his own canoe, and it is only by cultivating his friendship, by proving

to him by acts, and not by words, that the intrusion of privileged

enterprises--such as great mining concessions and railway concessions,

in which the foreigner demands that he be the only principal--is no

longer contemplated, that the day will be won. But it is equally true

that only by combining European and Chinese interests on the modern

company system, the real Opening of China can be effected.

* * * * *

Distances are as variable as the wind in the Middle Kingdom.

The first forty li on this journey were much shorter than the last

thirty, which took about twice as long to cover. I dragged along over

the narrow path through the wheat fields, and, making for an old man,

who looked as if he should know, I asked him the distance to my

destination. His reply of twenty li I accepted as accurate, and I

reckoned that I could cover this easily in a couple of hours. But at the

end of this time we had, according to a casual wayfarer, five more li,

and when we had covered at least four another rustic said it was "two

and a bit." This answer we got from four different people on the way,

and I was glad when I had completed the journey. One does not mind the

two li so much--it is the "bit" which upsets one's calculations.

The following day, on the road to Huan-chiang, I lost myself--that is, I

lost my men, and did not know the road. I got away into some quaint,

secluded garden and sat down, tired and hot, under a tree in the shade,

where a faint wind swung the heavy foliage with a solemn sound, and the

subdued and soothing music of a brook running between two banks of moss

and turf must have sent me to sleep. It was with a dreary sense of

ominous foreboding that I woke, as if in expectation of some disaster.

Not a living creature was visible, and I doubted the possibility of

finding anyone in such a spot. Never, surely, was there a silence

anywhere as here! Seized with a solemn fear, my presence there seemed to

me a strange intrusion. I looked around, moved forward a little,

hastened my steps to get away, but whence or how I knew not. I knew this

was a country of erratic distances--it was now getting on for

sunset--and the continuous toiling up and down the sides of the

difficult mountains had tired me. All of a sudden I heard a noise, heard

someone fall, looked round and beheld T'ong, perspiration pouring down

his back and front.

"Oh, master, this b'long velly much bobbery. I makee velly frightened. I

think p'laps master wantchee makee run away." And then, after a time:

"You no wantchee catch 'chow'?"

"Chow?"

No, I could easily have gone without food for that night. I was lost,

and now was found. I had no money, could not speak the language, was

fatigued beyond words. What would have become of me?

Miniature turret-like hills hemmed us in as in a huge park, with a

narrow winding pathway, steep as the side of a house, leading to the top

of the mountain beyond, and then descending quite as rapidly to

Fan-ïh-ts'uen. The coolies told me the next day the road would be worse,

and so it turned out to be.

At 5:00 a.m. a thick drizzly rain was falling, just sufficient to make

the flagstones slippery as ice, and the European contrivances which

covered my feet stood no chance at all compared with the straw sandals

of the native. I could not get any big enough around here to put over my

boots. My carriers had gone ahead, and as I was passing a paddy field

one leg went from under me, and I was up to my middle in thin wet mud.

In this I had to trudge seven miles before I could get other garments

from the coolie, changing my trousers behind a piece of matting held up

in front of me by my boy! All enjoyed the fun--except myself. Little

boys tried to peer around the side of the matting, and, as T'ong tried

to kick them away, the matting would drop and expose me to public view.

But I had to change, and that was most important to me.

Later on, my ugly coolie--the ugliest man in or out of China, I should

think, ugly beyond description--dropped my bedding as he was crossing

the river, and I had the pleasure of sleeping on a wet bed at T'an-teo.

I must ask the reader's pardon for again referring to Chinese inns. I

should not have made any remark upon this awful hovel had not the man

laid a scheme to charge me three times as much as he should--a scheme,

be it said, in which my boy took no part. It was truly a fearful den,

where man and beast lived in promiscuous and insupportable filth. The

dung-heap charms the sight of this agricultural people, without in the

slightest wounding their olfactory nerves, and these utilitarians think

there is no use seeking privacy to do what they regard as beneficial and

productive work. The bed here was the worst I had had offered me. The

mattress, upon which every previous traveler for many years had left his

tribute of vermin, was not fit for use, there were myriads of filthy

insects, and I found myself obliged to stop and have some clothes

boiled, and for comfort's sake rubbed my body with Chinese wine. Filth

there was everywhere. It seemed inseparable from the people, and a total

apathy as regards matter in the wrong place pervaded all classes, from

the highest to the lowest. The spring is opening, and my hard-worked

coolies doff their heavy padded winter clothing, parade their naked

skin, and are quite unconscious of any disgrace attending the exhibition

of the itch sores which disfigure them.

I remember, however, that I am in China, and must not be disgusted.

And should any reader be disgusted at the disjointed character of this

particular portion of my common chronicle, I would only say in apology

that I am writing under the gaze of a mystified crowd, each of whom has

a word to say about my typewriter--the first, undoubtedly, that he has

ever seen. This machine has caused the greatest surprise all along the

route, and it is on occasions when the Chinese sees for the first time

things of this intimate mechanical nature that he gives one the

impression that he is a little boy. The people crowd into my room; they

cannot be kept out, although at the present moment I have stationed my

two soldiers in the doorway where I am writing, so as to get a little

light, to keep them from crowding actually upon me.

It has been said that all of us have an innermost room, wherein we

conceal our own secret affairs. In China everything is so open, and so

much must be done in public, that it would surprise one to know that the

Chinese have an inner room. The European traveler in this region must

have no inner room, either, for the people seem to see down deep into

one's very soul. But it is when one wanders on alone, as I have done

to-day, doing two days in one, no less than one hundred and forty li of

terrible road through the most isolated country, that one can enjoy the

comfort of one's own loneliness and own inner room. The scenery was

picturesque, much like Scotland, but the solitude was the best of all. I

had left office and books and manuscripts, and was on a lonely walk,

enjoying a solitude from which I could not escape, a reverie which was

passed not nearly so much in thinking as in feeling, a feeling to

nature-lovers which can never be completely expressed in words. It was

indeed a refuge from the storms of life, and a veritable chamber of

peace. And this, to my mind, is the way to spend a holiday. Robert Louis

Stevenson tells us in one of his early books what a complete world two

congenial friends make for themselves in the midst of a foreign

population; all the hum and the stir goes on, and these two strangers

exchange glances, and are filled with an infinite content Some of us

would rather be alone, perhaps; for on a trip such as I am making now,

in order to be happy with a companion you must have one who is

thoroughly congenial and sympathetic, one who understands your unspoken

thought, who is willing to let you have your way on the concession of

the same privilege. Selfishness in the slightest degree should not enter

in. But such a man is difficult to find, so I wander on alone, happy in

my own solitude. Here I have liberty, perfect liberty.

I was stopped on my way to Lao-wa-t'an at a small town called Puêrh-tu,

the first place of importance after having come into Yün-nan. A few li

before reaching this town, one of my men cut the large toe of his left

foot on a sharp rock, lacerating the flesh to the bone. I attended to

him as best I could on the road, paid him four days' extra pay, and then

had a bit of a row with him because he would not go back. He avowed that

carrying for the foreigner was such a good thing that he feared leaving

it! Upon entering Puêrh-tu, however, he fell in the roadway. A crowd

gathered, a loud cry went up from the multitude, and in the

consternation and confusion which ensued the people divided themselves

into various sections.

Some rushed to proffer assistance to the fallen man (this was done

because I was about; he would have been left had a foreigner not been

there), others gathered around me with outrageous adulation and seeming

words of welcome. Meanwhile, I thought the coolie was dying, and,

fearful and unnatural as it seems, it is nevertheless true that at all

ages the Chinese find a peculiar and awful satisfaction in watching the

agonies of the dying. By far the larger part of the mob was watching him

dying, as they thought. But no, he was still worth many dead men! He

slowly opened his eyes, smiled, rose up, and immediately recognized a

poor manacled wretch, then passing under escort of several soldiers, who

stopped a little farther down, followed by a mandarin in a chair.

On this particular day, more than a customary morbid diversion was thus

apparent among the motley-garbed mass of men and women, and the

ignominious way in which that prisoner was treated was horrible to look

upon. The perpetual hum of voices sounded like the noise made by a

thousand swarming bees. The band of soldiers guarding the prisoner

suddenly halted, whilst the mandarin conferred with the chief, after

which he advanced slowly towards me.

I was on the point of telling him in English that I had done nothing

against the law, so far as I knew.

He bowed solemnly, during which time I, attempting the same, had much

trouble from bursting out laughing in his face. He beckoned to me, and

then rushed me bodily into a house, where, in the best room, I found

another official and his two sons. T'ong followed as interpreter. The

mandarin explained that I was wanted to stay the night, that a

theatrical entertainment had been arranged particularly for my benefit,

that he wished I would take their photographs, that one of them would

like a cigarette tin with some cigarettes in it, and that one of them

would like to sell me a thoroughbred, hard-working,

magnificently-shaped, without-a-single-vice black pony, which they would

part with for my benefit for the consideration of one hundred taels down

(four times its value), which awaited my inspection without. I stood up

and fronted them, and replied, through T'ong, that I could not stay the

night, that I would be pleased to tolerate the howling of the theatre

for one half of an hour, that it would have given me the greatest

pleasure to take their photographs, but, alas! my films were not many. I

handed them a cigarette tin, but quite forgot that they asked for

cigarettes as well (I had none), and I explained that horse-riding was

not one of my accomplishments, so that their quadruped would be of no

use to me.

They looked glum, I smiled serenely. This is Chinesey.

CHAPTER VIII

_Szech-wan and Yün-nan_. _Coolies and their loads_. _Exports and

imports_. _Hints to English exporters_. _Food at famine rates_. _A

wretched inn at Wuchai_. _Author prevents murder_. _Sleeping in the

rain_. _The foreign cigarette trade_. _Poverty of Chao-t'ong_.

_Simplicity of life_. _Possible advantages of Chinese in struggle of

yellow and white races_. _Foreign goods in Yün-nan and Szech'wan_.

_Thousands of beggars die_. _Supposed lime poisoning_. _Content of the

people_. _Opium not grown_. _Prices of prepared drug in Tong-ch'uan-fu

compared_. _Smuggling from Kwei-chow_. _Opium and tin of Yün-nan_.

_Remarkable bonfire at Yün-nan-fu_. _Infanticide at Chao-t'ong_.

_Selling of female children into slavery_. _Author's horse steps on

human skull_.

Were one uninformed, small observance would be necessary to detect the

borderline of Szech'wan and Yün-nan. The latter is supposed to be one of

the most ill-nurtured and desolate provinces of the Empire, mountainous,

void of cultivation when compared with Szech'wan, one mass of high hills

conditioned now as Nature made them; and the people, too, ashamed of

their own wretchedness, are ill-fed and ill-clad.

The greater part of the roads to be traversed now were constructed on

projecting slopes above rivers and torrents, affluents of the Yangtze,

and cross a region upon which the troubled appearance of the mountains

that bristle over it stamps the impress of a severe kind of beauty. Such

roads would not be tolerated in any country but China--I doubt if any

but the ancient Chinese could have had the patience to build them. One

could not walk with comfort; it was an impossible task. Far away over

the earth, winding into all the natural trends of the mountain base, ran

the highway, merrily tripping over huge boulders, into hollows and out

of them, almost underground, but always, with its long white extended

finger, beckoning me on by the narrow ribbon in the distance. True,

although I was absolutely destitute of company, I had always the road

with me, yet ever far from me. I could not catch it up, and sometimes,

dreaming triumphantly that I had now come even with it where it seemed

to end in some disordered stony mass, it would trip mischievously out

again into view, bounding away into some tricky bend far down to the

edge of the river, and rounding out of sight once more until the point

of vantage was attained. Its twisting and turning, up and down, inwards,

outwards, made humor for the full long day. With it I could not quarrel,

for it did its best to help me with my weary men onwards over the now

darkened landscape, and ever took the lead to urge us forward. If it

came to a great upstanding mountain, with marked politeness it ran round

by a circuitous route, more easily if of greater length; at other times

it scaled clear up, nimbly and straight, turning not once to us in its

self-appointed task, and at the top, standing like some fairy on a

steeple-point, beckoned us on encouragingly. At times it became

exhausted and stretched itself wearisomely out, measuring in width to

only a few small inches, and overlooked the river at great height,

telling us to ponder well our footsteps ere we go forward. To part

company with the road would mean to die, for elsewhere was no foothold

possible. So in this narrow faithful ledge, torn up by the heavy tread

of countless horses' feet beyond Lao-wa-t'an (where horse traffic

starts), we carefully ordered every step. Looking down, sheer down as

from some lofty palace window, I saw the green snake waiting, waiting

for me. Slipping, there would be no hope--death and the river alone lay

down that treacherous mountain-side. And then, at times, pursuing that

white-faced wriggling demon which stretched out far over the mist-swept

landscape in incessant writhing and annoying contortions, we quite gave

up the chase. It seemed leading me on to some unknown destiny. I knew

not whither; only this I knew--that I must follow.

And so each hour and every hour was fraught with peril which seemed

imminent. But He who guards the fatherless and helpless, feeds the poor

and friendless, guarded the traveler in those days. Mishaps I had none,

and when at night I reached those tiny mountain seats, perched

majestically high for the most part and swept by all the winds of

heaven, I seemed to be the lonely spectator and companionless watcher

over mighty mountain-tops, which appeared every moment to be hesitating

to take a gigantic dive into the roaring river several hundred feet

below our lofty resting-place.

Some of the larger villages had the arrogant look of old feudal

fortresses, and up the paths leading to them, cut out in a defile in the

vertical cliffs, we passed with difficulty coolies carrying on their

backs the enormous loads, which are the wonder of all who have seen

them, their backs straining under the boomerang-shaped frames to which

the merchandise was lashed. Hundreds passed us on their toilsome journey

with tea, lamp-oil, skins, hides, copper, lead, coal and white wax from

Yün-nan, and with salt, English cotton, Chinese porcelain, fans and so

on from Szech'wan. One false step, one slight slip, and they would have

been hurled down the ravine, where far below, in the roaring cataract,

dwarfed to the size of a toy boat, was a junk being cleverly taken

down-stream. And down there also, one false move and the huge junk would

have been dashed against the rocks, and banks strewn with the corpses of

the crew. As it was, they were mere specks of blue in a background of

white foam, their vociferating and yelling being drowned by the roar of

the waters. On the road, passing and re-passing, I saw coolies on the

way to Yün-nan-fu with German cartridges and Japanese guns, the packing,

so different generally to British goods which come into China, being

particularly good. This is one of the cries of the importer in China

against the British manufacturer; and if the latter knew more of Chinese

transport and the manner in which the goods are handled in changing from

place to place, one would meet fewer broken packages on the road in this

land of long distances.

A friend of mine, needing a typewriter, wrote home explicit instructions

as to the packing. "Pack it ready to ship," he wrote, "then take it to

the top of your office stairs, throw it down the stairs, take machine

out and inspect, and if it is undamaged re-pack and send to me. If

damaged, pack another machine, subject to the same treatment until you

are convinced that it can stand being thus handled and escape injury."

This is how goods coming to Western China should be sent away.

Gradually the days brought harder toil. The mountains grew higher, some

covered with forests of pine trees, which natural ornament completely

changed the aspect of the country. Torrents foamed noisily down the

gorges, veiled by the curtain of great trees; sometimes, on a ridge, a

field of buckwheat, shining in the sun, looked like the beginning of the

eternal snows.

Food was at famine rates. Eggs there were in abundance, pork also; but

it was not to be wondered at that the traveler, having seen the

conditions under which the pigs are reared, refrained from the luxury of

Yün-nan roast pig. My men fed on maize. The faces of the people were

pinched and wan, unpleasant to look upon, bearing unmistakable signs of

poverty and misery, and they seemed too concerned in keeping the wolf

from the door to attend to me. At Ta-kwan they treated themselves to a

_sheng_ of rice apiece--here the _sheng_ is 1.8 catties, as against 11

catties in the capital of the province.

At Wuchai, the last stage before reaching Chao-t'ong-fu, the room of the

inn had three walls only, and two of these were composed of kerosene

tins, laced together with bamboo stripping. (Probably the oil tins had

been stolen from the mission premises at Chao-t'ong.) Through the whole

night it rained as it had never rained before, but, instead of feeling

miserable, I tried to see the humor of the situation. One can get humor

from the most embarrassing circumstances, and my chief amusement arose

from a small business deal between one of my coolies, who had sublet his

contract to a poor fellow returning in the rain, who had arranged to

carry the ninety catties ninety li for a fourth of the original price

arranged between my coolie and myself. For one full hour they argued at

a terrible speed as to the rate of exchange in the Szech'wan large and

the Yün-nan small cash, and this was only interrupted when a poor man,

deaf and dumb, and of hideous appearance, seeing the foreigner in his

contemptible town, rushed in with a carrying pole and felled his

grumbling townsman at my feet.

My intervention probably averted murder--at any rate, it seemed as

though murder would have taken place very soon but for my interference.

The whole populace gathered, of course, and the fight waged fiercely

until well on into the night. But wrapping myself in my mackintosh, and

putting my paper umbrella at the right angle, I went to sleep with the

rain dripping on me as they were indulging in final pleasantries

regarding each other's ancestry.

The first thing I saw at Chao-t'ong the next day was the foreign

cigarette, sold at a wayside stall by a vendor of monkey nuts and marrow

seeds. No trade has prospered in Yün-nan during the past two years more

than the foreign cigarette trade, and the growing evil among the

children of the common people, both male and female, is viewed with

alarm. From Tachien-lu to Mengtsz, from Chung-king to Bhamo, one is

rarely out of sight of the well-known flaring posters in the Chinese

characters advertising the British cigarette. Some months ago a couple

of Europeans were sent out to advertise, and they stuck their poster

decorations on the walls of temples, on private houses and official

residences, with the result that the people were piqued so much as to

tear down the bills immediately. In Yün-nan, especially since the exit

of opium, this common cigarette is smoked by high and low, rich and

poor. I have been offered them at small feasts, and when calling upon

high officials at the capital have been offered a packet of cigarettes

instead of a whiff of opium, as would have been done formerly. One is

not, of course, prepared to say whether such a trade is desirable or

not, but it merely needs to be made known that towards the middle of the

present year (1910) a proclamation was issued from the Viceroy's _yamen_

at Yün-nan-fu speaking in strongest terms against the increasing habit

of smoking foreign cigarettes, to show the trend of official opinion on

the subject. After having referred to the enormous advances made in the

imports of cigarettes, the proclamation deplored the general tendency of

the people to support such an undesirable trade, and exhorted the

citizens to turn from their evil ways. We cannot stop the importation of

cigarettes, it read, but there is no need for our people to buy.

* * * * *

At Chao-t'ong I stayed with the Rev. Dr. Savin, and spent a very

pleasant two days' rest here in his hospitable hands. It was in this

district I first came across goitre, the first time I had seen it in my

life. It is a terrible disfigurement.

Poor indeed is the whole of this neighborhood. Poverty, thin and wanting

food to eat, stalks abroad dressed in a rag or two, armed with a staff

to keep away the snarling dogs, and a broken bowl to gather garbage.

Even the better class, who manage to afford their maize and bean curds,

are to be praised for the extreme simplicity which everywhere vividly

marks their monotonous lives. Indeed, this is true of the whole area

through which I have traveled. No furniture brings confusion to their

rooms, no machinery distresses the ear with its groaning or the eye with

its unsightliness, no factories belch out smoke and blacken the beauty

of the sky, no trains screech to disturb sleepers and frighten babies.

The simplest of simple beds--in most cases merely a few boards with a

straw mattress placed thereon--the straw sandal on the foot, wooden

chopsticks in place of knives and forks, the small variety of foods and

of cooking utensils, the simple homespun cotton clothing--much of this

finds favor in the eye of the English traveler. The Chinese, of all

Orientals, teach us how to live without furniture, without impedimenta,

with the least possible amount of clothing in the case of the poorer

classes, and I could not fail to be impressed by the advantage thus held

by this great nation in the struggle of life. It may serve them in good

stead in the struggle of the Yellow Man against the White Man, to which

I refer at a later period in this book; also does it incidentally show

up the real character of some of the weaknesses of our own civilization,

and when one is in China, living near the people, one is forced to

reflect upon the useless multiplicity of our daily wants. We must have

our daily stock of bread and butter and meats, glass windows and fires,

hats, white shirts and woolen underwear, boots and shoes, trunks, bags

and boxes, bedsteads, mattresses, sheets and blankets--most of which a

Chinese can do without, and indeed is actually better off without.[J]

This is not true in every class, however; for whilst there is no denying

the charm of the simpler civilization, many of the Chinese of Szech'wan

and Yün-nan glory in goods of foreign manufacture, no matter if to them

is not disclosed the proper purpose of any particular article adopted.

Rice will not grow here in great quantities, owing to the scarcity of

water; therefore the people feed on maize, and are thankful to get it.

Chao-t'ong is the centre of a large district devastated by recurring

seasons of plague, rebellion and famine, when thousands die annually

from starvation in the town and on the level uplands surrounding it. The

beggars on one occasion, becoming so numerous, were driven from the

streets, confined within the walls of the temple and grounds beyond the

South Gate, and there fed by common charity. Huddled together in disease

and rags and unspeakable misery, they died in thousands, and the Chinese

say that of five thousand who crossed the temple threshold two thousand

never came out alive.

This happened some twenty years ago. The unfortunate victims had for

their food a rice porridge, mixed with which was a subtance alleged to

have been lime, the common belief being that the majority of those who

perished died from the effect of poisoning. Outside the city boundary

hundreds of the dead were flung into huge pits, and even now the

inhabitants refer to the time when children were exchanged _ad libitum_

for a handful of rice or even less.

During my stay in this city, I heard on all hands some of the most

blood-curdling stories of the dire distress which, like a dark cloud,

still menaces the people, some of which are too dreadful for public

print.

But I suppose these poor people are content. If they are, they possess a

virtue which produces, in some measure at all events, all those effects

which the alchemist usually ascribes to what he calls the philosopher's

stone; and if their content does not bring riches, it banishes the

desire for them. Years ago the people could entertain some small hope

of prosperity now and again. If the opium crop were good, money was

plentiful. But now no opium is grown, and the misery-stricken people

have lost all hope of better times, and seem to have sunk in many

instances to the lowest pangs of distressful poverty.[K]

Reader, alarm not yourself! I am not here to lead you into a long

harangue on opium--it presents too thorny a subject for me to handle. I

am not a partisan in the opium traffic; my mission is not essentially to

denounce it; I am not impelled by an irresistible desire to investigate

facts and put them before you. There is practically no opium in Yün-nan

to talk about.

This is absolute fact--not a Chinese fact, but good old British truth

(although British truth when it touches upon opium has been very, very

perverted since we first commenced to transact opium trade with this

great country). With the exception of one small patch, some ten miles

away from the main road between Yün-nan-fu and Tali-fu, I saw no poppy

whatever in the province. This does not mean, however, that no opium is

to be had.

During the past three weeks[L] no less than five cases of attempted

suicide by opium poisoning have come under my personal notice in the

town in which I am residing, and there have doubtless been fifty more

which have not. If there is no opium, where do the people so easily

secure it in endeavors to take their lives upon the slightest

provocation? Last year the price of opium here on the streets, although

its sale was "illegal," was over three tsien (about nine-pence) the

Chinese ounce of prepared opium. At the present time, in the same city,

many men would be willing to do a deal for any quantity you like for

less than two tsien. Cases of smuggling are frequent. One gets

accustomed to hear of large quantities being smuggled through in most

cunning ways, and it all goes to show that the _people_ of Yün-nan are

not, as some of China's enlightened statesmen and some of the ranting

faddists of England and America would have us believe, falling over one

another in their zeal to free the province from the drug.

The other day some men passed through several towns, on the way to the

capital, carrying three coffins. In the first was a corpse, the other

two were packed with opium. Being suspected at Yün-nan-fu, the first

coffin was opened, and the carriers, making as much row as they could

because their coffin had been burst open, secured a fair "squeeze" to

hold their tongues, and the second and third coffins were passed

unexamined. Quite common is it for men to travel in armed bands from the

province of Kwei-chow, traveling by night over the mountains by

lantern-light, and hiding by day from any possible official searchers.

Opium, which is and always has been so heavily taxed, does not in

general follow the ordinary trade routes on which _likin_ stations are

numerous, but is carried by these armed bands over roads where the

native Customs stations are few, and so poorly equipped as to yield

readily to superior force, where the men are compelled to accept a

composition much below the official rate.

Opium smoking is still common in Western China among people who can

afford it. At the time of the crusade against it, wealthy people laid

in stocks enough to last them for years; and, so long as there is

smuggling from other provinces, which do grow it, into those which do

not, there will be no danger of the absolute extermination being carried

successfully into effect. Kwei-chow, in common with the western

provinces, has undeservedly secured the credit for having practically

abolished the poppy; but at the present moment (December, 1909) she is

at a loss to know what to do with her supply, and that is the reason why

people of Yün-nan are making bargains in opium smuggled over the border.

Much has yet to be done. To prevent the growth of a plant which has been

in China for at least twelve centuries, which has had medicinal uses for

nine, and whose medicinal properties have been put in the capsule for

six, is not an easy matter, far more difficult, in fact, than the

average Englishman and even those who rant so much about the whole

business upon little knowledge can imagine. Opium has been made in China

for four centuries, and although used then with tobacco, has been smoked

since the middle of the seventeenth century.[M]

A few years ago Yün-nan had only two articles of importance with which

to pay for extra provincial products consumed, namely, opium and tin.

The latter came from a spot twenty miles from Mengtsz, and the value of

the output now runs to approximately three million taels. Opium came

from all parts of the province and went in all directions, that portion

sent to the Opium Regie at Tonkin sometimes being close to three

thousand piculs, and the quantity going by land into China being very

much greater. Yün-nan opium was known at Canton and Chin-kiang in 1863.

In 1879, the production was variously estimated at from twelve thousand

to twenty-two thousand piculs; in 1887 it had risen to approximately

twenty-seven thousand piculs, and since then to the time of the reform

no less certainly than thirty thousand piculs.

One afternoon, in November of 1909, the execution ground of Yün-nan-fu

was the scene of a remarkably daring proceeding by the officials in the

campaign for the total suppression of opium in the province. No less

than 20,040 ounces of prepared opium were publicly destroyed by fire in

the presence of an enormous crowd of people. The officials of the city

were present in person, and everywhere the event was looked upon as the

greatest public demonstration that the people had ever seen.

The missionary of whom I inquired denied that the infanticide at

Chao-t'ong was very great--things must be improving!

Previous to my arrival at the city I had instructed my English-speaking

boy to make inquiries in the city, and to let me know afterwards,

whether girls were still sold publicly.

"Have got plenty," he exclaimed, in describing this wholesale selling of

female children into slavery. "I know, I know; you wantchee makee buy.

Can do! You wantchee catch one piecee small baby, can catchee two, three

tael. Wantchee one piecee very much tall, big piecee, can catch fifty

dollar."

Continuing, he told me that prices were fairly high, a girl who could

boast good looks and who had reached an age when her charms were

naturally the strongest fetching the alarming amount of three hundred

taels. This was the highest figure reached, whilst small children could

be had for anything up to twenty. This wholesale disposal of young

girls, although the traffic was in some quarters emphatically denied to

exist--a denial, however, which was all moonshine--is one of the chief

sorrows of the district. And well it might be; for thousands of children

are disposed of in the course of a year for a few taels by heartless

parents, who watch them being carried away, like so much merchandise, to

be converted into silver, in many cases in this poverty-stricken

district merely to satisfy the craving for opium of some sodden wretch

of a man who calls himself a father. Time and time again, long after I

myself passed through Chao-t'ong, did I see little girls from three to

ten years of age being conveyed by pack-horse to the capital, balanced

in baskets on either side of the animal. This and the terrible

infanticide which exists in all poor districts of China menaces the

lives of all well-wishers of the entire province of Yün-nan.

In the particular district of which I speak it is not an uncommon sight

to see little children being torn to pieces by dogs, the scavengers of

the Empire, perhaps by the very dogs that had been their playmates from

birth. I have been riding many times and found that my horse had stepped

on a human skull, and near by were the bones the dogs had left as the

remains of the corpse.

* * * * *

NOTE.--I should mention that, since the above was written, I have lived

and travelled a good deal around Chao-t'ong-fu, being the only European

traveller who has ever penetrated the country to the east of the main

road, by which I had now come down.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote J: Anyone who contemplates a tramp across China must not get

the idea that he can still continue the uses of civilization. For the

most part he will have to live pretty well as a Chinese the whole time,

and he will find, as I found, that it is easy to give up a thing when

you know the impossibility of getting it.--E.J.D.]

[Footnote K: This was written later. I have altered my views since I

have traveled from end to end of Yün-nan. The disappearance of opium, on

the contrary, apart from the moral advantage to the people, has done

much to place them in a better position financially. In Tali-fu I found

not a single shop on the main street "to let," and the trade of the

place had gone ahead considerably, and this was a city which people

generally supposed would suffer most on account of the non-growth of

opium.--E.J.D.]

[Footnote L: May, 1910. As a matter of fact the date makes no

difference, because unfortunately the number of suicides from opium does

not seem to have decreased materially in Western China since the opium

crusade was started. Upon the slightest provocation a Chinese woman in

Yün-nan will take her life, and it is probable that for the five cases

which came to my notice through the mission house there were treble that

number which did not--E.J.D.]

[Footnote M: This was written at the end of 1909 Now, in July, 1910,

things are changed wonderfully. The rapidity with which China is driving

out the poppy from province after province is truly remarkable. In

Szech'wan, in April, 1909, I passed through miles and miles of poppy

along the main road--to-day there is none to be seen It is to be hoped

that Great Britain will do her part as faithfully as China is doing

hers.]

CHAPTER IX.

THE CHAO-T'ONG REBELLION OF 1910

_Digression from travel_. _How rebellions start in China_. _Famous Boxer

motto_. _Way of escape shut off_. _Riots expected before West can be won

into the confidence of China_. _Boxerism and students of the Government

Reform Movement_. _Author's impressions formed within the danger zone_.

_More Boxerism in China than we know of_. _Causes of the Chao-t'ong

Rebellion_. _Halley's Comet brings things to a climax_. _Start of the

rioting_. _Arrival of the military_. _Number of the rebels_. _They hold

three impregnable positions, and block the main roads_. _European ladies

travel to the city in the dead of night_. _A new ch'en-tai takes the

matter in hand_. _Rumors and suspense_. _Stations of the rebels_. _A

night attack_. _Sixteen rebels decapitated_. _Officials alter their

tactics_. _Fighting on main road_. _Superstition regarding soldiers_.

_One of the leaders captured by a headman_. _Chapel burnt down and

caretaker rescued by military_. _Li the Invincible under arms_. _Huang

taken prisoner_. _Two leaders killed_. _Rising among the Miao_. _Mission

work at a standstill_. _Child-stealing, and the Yün-nan Railway rumor_.

_Barbaric punishment_. _Tribute to Chinese officials_. _British

Consul-General_. _Résumé of the position_. _An unfortunate incident_.

Despite the fact that this chapter was the last written, it has been

thought wise to place it here. It deals with the Chao-t'ong Rebellion,

of which the outside world, even when it was at its height, knew little,

but which, so recently as a couple of months prior to the date of

writing, threatened to spell extermination to the foreigners in

North-East Yün-nan. And the reader, too, may welcome a digression from

travel.

In spite of all that has been written in previous and subsequent

chapters, and in face of the universal cry of the progress China is

speedily realizing, of the stoutest optimism characteristic of the

statesman and of the student of Chinese affairs, a feeling of deep gloom

at intervals overcomes one in the interior--a fear of some impending

trouble. There is a rumor, but one smiles at it--there are always

rumors! Then there are more rumors, and a feeling of uneasiness pervades

the atmosphere; a local bubble is formed, it bursts, the whole of one's

trust in the sincerity of the reform of China and her people is brushed

away to absolute unbelief in a few days, and it means either a sudden

onrush and brutal massacre of the foreigners, or the thing blows over

after a short or long time of great strain, and ultimately things assume

a normality in which the detection of the slightest ruffle in the

surface of social life is hardly traceable.

Such was the Chao-t'ong Rebellion, luckily unattended by loss of life

among the foreigners. It is not yet over,[N] but it is believed that the

worst is past.

At the end of 1909 probably no part of the Empire seemed more peaceful.

Two months afterwards the heads of the Europeans were demanded;

missionaries were guarded by armed soldiers in their homes inside the

city walls, and forbidden to go outside; native Christians were brutally

maltreated and threatened with death if they refused to turn traitor to

their beliefs; thousands of generally law-abiding men, formed into armed

bands, were defiantly setting at naught the law of the land, and the

whole of the main road over which I had passed from Sui-fu to

Tong-ch'uan-fu (a distance of over four hundred miles) was blocked by

infuriated mobs, who were out to kill,--their motto the famous

ill-omened Boxer motto of 1900: "Exalt the dynasty; destroy the

foreigner."

"Kill, kill, kill!" ran the cry for miles around the countryside, and a

fearful repetition of the bloody history of ten years ago was daily

feared. Providential, however, was it that no foreigner was traveling at

the time in these districts, and that those who, ignorant of the

troubles, desired to do so were stopped at Yün-nan-fu by the Consuls and

at Sui-fu by the missionaries. It is a matter for gratitude also that

throughout the riots, specially safeguarded by the great Providence of

God, no lives of Europeans were lost; and owing to the praiseworthy and

obvious attitude of the missionaries in this area in endeavoring to keep

the thing as quiet as possible, and the notoriously conservative manner

in which consular reports upon such matters are preserved in

Governmental lockers, practically nothing has been heard of the

uprising.

At times during the four slow-moving months, however, the situation

became, as I shall endeavor to show, complicated in every way. The

escape of the foreigners was made absolutely impossible by the fact that

the whole of the roads, even those over the rough mountains leading

south, were blocked successfully by the rebelling forces, and, when the

deep gloom settled finally over the city, the fate of the Westerners

seemed sealed and their future hopeless. All round the foreigners'

houses the people, infected with that strange, unaccountable, national

hysteria, so terrible in the Chinese temperament, rose up to burn and

kill. Mayhap it means little to the man who reads. Massacres have always

been common enough in China, he will say; and there are thousands of

people in Europe to-day who know no more about China than what the

telegrams of massacres of European missionaries have told them. Years

ago one almost expected this sort of thing; but at the present day, when

China is popularly supposed to be working honestly to gain for herself

an honorable place among the nations, it is surely not to be expected in

the ordinary run of things in days of peace.

But we know that such visions are common to every European in Inland

China, and even at the coast men talk continually of and believe that

riots are going to happen in the near future. Merchant, missionary,

traveler and official all agree that there is yet more trouble ahead

before the West will be won into the confidence of China and _vice

versa_. The people who are studying the Reform Movement of the Young

China, however, and who stolidly refuse to study with it the general

attitude of the common people, laugh and dismiss with contempt the

subject of the possibility of further outbreaks of Boxerism in the

outlying parts of the Empire. But they should not laugh. The European

cannot afford to laugh, and, if he be a sensible fellow, knows that he

cannot afford to treat with contempt the opinions of the people who

know. The more we understand the vast interior of China and the

conservatism and peculiarities of character of the people of that

interior, the less disposed shall we be to jest, the less disposed to

ridicule, what I would characterize as the strongest and most deadly of

the hidden menaces of the Celestial Empire.

One does not wish to be pessimistic, but it is foolish to close one's

eyes to bare fact.

At the moment I am writing, in the middle of China, I know that I am

safe enough here, but I do not disguise from myself that the wildest

reports are still current within a quarter of a mile from me about me

and my own kind in this peaceful city of Tong-ch'uan-fu. And it takes

very little to light the fuse and to cause a terrible explosion here, in

common with other places in this province. A man might be quite safe one

day and lose his head the next if he did not, at times when the

rebellious element is apparent, conform strictly to the general wishes

and accepted customs of the people among whom he is living.

No, we cannot afford to laugh. We must seek the opinion of those people

who were confined within the walls of Chao-t'ong city--the silence of

their own homes broken up by the distant uproar of a frantic chorus of

yells and angry disputations, sounding, as it were, their very

death-knell, as if they were to form a manacled procession dragging

their chains of martyrdom to their own slow doom--before we show

contempt for the opinion of those who would tell the truth. There is

more of Boxerism in the far-away interior parts of China than we know

of.

Even as late as the middle of January of the year 1910 there was no

rumor of any uprising. About this time, however, to supply a serious

deficiency in the revenue caused by the dropping of the opium tax, since

that drug had ceased to be grown, a general poll-tax was levied, which

the people refused to pay, and at the same time they demanded that they

be allowed again to grow the poppy. Among the population of

Chao-t'ong-fu, or more particularly among the people around the city,

especially the tribespeople, this additional tax was supposed to have

been caused by the Europeans, and other wild rumors concerning the

Tonkin-Yün-nan Railway (to be opened in the following April), which

gained currency with remarkable rapidity, added to the unrest. It

required only that brilliant phenomenon of the heavens, with its

wonderful tail--none other than Halley's Comet--to bring the whole to a

climax. This was altogether too much for the superstitious Chinese, and

he looked upon the comet as some evil omen organized and controlled by

the foreigner especially for the working of his own selfish ends in the

Celestial Empire; and a number believed it to be a heavenly sign for the

Chinese to strike.

That the riot was being started was plain, but the first definite news

the foreigners received was on February 5th, when an I-pien (one of the

tribes), whose little girl attended the mission school, was captured

and compelled to join the rebelling forces between T'o-ch-i (on the

River of Golden Sand[O]) and Sa'i-ho, in a westerly direction from the

town. A march would take place on the fifteenth of that month, the

Europeans would be assassinated, their houses would be burned and

looted--so ran the rumor. By this date, for two days' march in all

directions from Chao-t'ong, the rebels had camped, and a motley crowd

they were--Mohammendans, Chinese, I-pien, Hua Miao, and other hooligans.

Mobilization was effected by spies taking round secret cases (the

_ch'uandan_) containing two pieces of coal and a feather--a simile

meaning that the rebels were to burn like fire and fly like birds.

Meanwhile, military forces had been dispatched from Yün-nan-fu, the

capital (twelve days away), and from Ch'u-tsing-fu (seven or eight days

away), and these, to the strength of a thousand, now came to the city,

and it was thought that the brigadier-general would be able to cope with

the trouble now that he had so many armed troops. Soldiers patrolled the

city walls (which, by the way, had to be built up so that the soldiers

might be able to get decent patrol), more were stationed on the premises

of the Europeans, and every defensive precaution was taken. The

officials were in daily communication by telegraph with the Viceroy, and

at first the riot was kept well in hand by Government authorities.

But the rebels had by this time got together no less than three thousand

men, and were holding three impregnable positions on the adjacent hills,

and had effectually cut off communication by the main road. Despite

their numbers, they were afraid to strike, however, and lucky it was for

the city that the leaders were not sufficiently trusted by their

followers, many of them pressed men--men who had joined the rebelling

ranks merely to save their own necks and their houses. At this time the

_pen-fu_ (a sort of mayor of the city) demanded that the missionaries

working among the Hua Miao, and two lady workers paying a visit to that

place, should return from Shïh-men-K'an (70 li away), as he could not

protect them in the country. A special messenger was dispatched,

demanding instant departure, and in the dead of night--a bitter wintry

night, icy, dark, slippery, and cold--these ladies came under cover to

the city.

They reached the mission premises without molestation.

By this time a new _ch'en-tai_ (brigadier-general) had arrived from the

capital, having been sent as a man who could handle the situation

successfully. He was a Liu Ta Ren, who had previously held office in the

city, and whose cunning a Scotland Yard detective might envy.[P]

Rumors grew more and more serious; the mandarins went all round the

countryside endeavoring to pacify the people, and the foreigners could

do nothing but "sit tight" through these most trying days. The suspense

of being shut up in one's house during a time of trouble of this nature,

hearing every rumor which lying tongues create, and unable to get at the

facts, is far worse than being in the thick of things, although this

would have at once been fatal. But one needs to have lived in China

during such a time to understand the awful tension which riots

occasion.

The rioters were stationed as follows:--

1. Weining, in Kwei-chow, to the southeast 1,000 men

2. Kiang-ti Hill, in Yün-nan, to the south 1,000 men

3. Several places around the city, to the west as far as the River

of Golden Sand 1,000 men

On March 13th a night attack was expected. Breathless, the foreigners

waited in their suspense, but it passed off without serious damage being

done. On the Sunday, the missionaries, almost at their wits' end with

mingled fear and excitement, occasioned by the strain which weeks of

anxiety must bring to the strongest, feared whether their services would

be got through in peace.

Meetings were being held all around the city, and gradually the

mandarins gained small successes. Prisoners--miserable specimens of men

fighting for they hardly knew what--were captured and brought to the

city, and, on March 16th, sixteen human heads, thrown in one gruesome

mass into a common basket, with upturned eyes gaping into the great

unknown, hideous-looking and bearing still the brutish stare of

hysterical craving and morbid rage, were carried by an armed squad of

military to the _yamen_.

They made a ghastly picture when hung over the gate of the city to put

the fear of death into the hearts of their brutal compatriots. The

officials, hard-worked and themselves feeling the strain of the whole

business, and incidentally fearful for the safety of their own heads,

were perturbed all this time by rumors coming from Weining, the

mutineers of which were alleged to be the fiercest of the three bands.

Up to now the officials had been playing a conciliating game. They had

been trying vainly to pacify, but now they found that they had to prove

their energies and their benevolence by acting the part of tyrants

rather than of administrators of mercy, by warring rather than by

peace-making, by fighting and forcing rather than by conciliating and

persuading.

On Easter Tuesday, fighting took place on the main road to the north,

when the _pen-fu_ and his men achieved a creditable success. The rebels

almost to a man were taken, and among the prisoners was a girl who had

been distributing the beans, a lovely damsel of eighteen, said to have

been the fiancée of the leader of that band. Both her legs were shot

through and she was considerably mutilated; but although the _pen-fu_

thought this sufficient punishment, instructions came from the capital

that she must die. She was accordingly taken outside the city and

beheaded. This caused some consternation among the rebels, as the death

of the girl was looked upon as an omen of direct misfortune.

For a very long time she had been going around the country dropping

beans into the ground outside any houses she came across, the

superstition being that wherever a bean was dropped there in the very

spot, perhaps at the very moment, for aught that we know, an invincible

warrior would spring up. She had dropped some millions of beans, but the

ranks were not swelled as a consequence.

The _ch'en-tai_ had also been out all night, and as men were captured so

they were beheaded on the spot without mercy and their heads

subsequently hung outside the city gates. The headman of a small

village--some forty li from the city--succeeded in capturing one of the

leaders, and great credit was due to him; but soon the leader was

rescued again by his followers, who then brutally killed and mutilated

the body of the headman, causing him to undergo the ignominy of having

his tongue and his heart cut out. Fighting was going on everywhere, and

by the end of March things were at their height. The fact that rain was

badly needed tended only to aggravate the situation, and that lustrous

comet made things worse. Day by day miserable processions brought the

wounded into the city, and the last day of the month, taken by sudden

fright and almost getting out of hand, the panic-stricken people raised

the cry that the rebels were marching direct for the city gates. Through

the capital tactics adopted by the mandarins, however, this was

prevented; but, on the following day, the chapel belonging to the United

Methodist Mission at an out-station was burnt to the ground and the

houses of the people razed and looted. The caretaker, a faithful Hua

Miao convert, was taken, stripped of his clothing, and threatened with

an awful death if he did not betray the foreigners. He refused manfully

to divulge any information whatsoever, and was on the point of being

sacrificed, when the _ch'en-tai_ came unexpectedly upon the scene with

his military. He released the Miao, captured thirty-six rebels, killed

sixteen more where they stood, and carried away many of their horses and

the dreaded Boxer flag around which the men rallied.

And now comes the smartest thing I heard of throughout the rebellion.

A man named Li was the most dreaded of the trio of rebel chiefs, a man

of marvelous strength, and who seemed to be able to fascinate his men

and get them to do anything he wished--and Liu, the _ch'en-tai_, set

himself the task of capturing him. Disguising himself in the garb of a

pedlar, Liu went out towards Li's camp, and met three spies on the

look-out for a possible clue to the foreigners; they asked him where the

_ch'en-tai_ was and all about him, declaring that if he did not tell

them all he knew they would take him to Li, and that he would then lose

his head. Just behind were a few of Liu's best soldiers. Strolling up

quite casually as if they knew least in the world of what was going on,

they made their arrest, and clapped the handcuffs on them before their

captives knew it. Liu ordered that two be beheaded immediately, which

was done, and the other man was kept to show where Li's camp was and

where Li himself was hiding.

And in this way Li the Invincible was captured also. This was the

master-stroke of the situation. Li was brought back to the city with

many other prisoners and a few heads, guarded by a strong body of the

military.

Almost simultaneously, Huang, one of the other rebel chiefs, was

captured; and at dusk one evening Li was put to death by the slow

process. Afraid that if he were taken outside the city his followers

might possibly re-capture him, he was murdered outside the chief

_yamen_, about ten hacks being necessary by process adopted to sever the

head from the body. Only two men have been put to death inside the walls

since the city of Chao-t'ong was built, over two hundred years ago.

After death had taken place, Li was served in the same way as he had

served the village headman, and his heart and his tongue were taken from

his body. Huang was killed in the usual way, and his head placed in a

frame on the city gate.

And so there died two of the bravest men who have headed rebellions in

this part of country of late years. Both were handsome fellows, of

magnificent physique and undaunted courage, worthy of fighting for a

better cause. It seemed so strange that two such men should have had to

die in the very bloom of life, when every strong sinew and drop of blood

must have rebelled at such premature dissolution, and by a death more

hideous than imagination can depict or speech describe, just at a time

in China's awakening when such fellows might have made for the uplifting

of their country. And they died because they hated the foreigner.

After further desultory fighting, the remaining leader, losing heart,

fled into Kwei-chow province, and for a time was allowed to wander away;

but later, a sum of a thousand taels was offered for him, dead or alive,

and I have no doubt of the reward proving too great a bait for his

followers. He has probably been given up.[Q] In the month of May the

Miao people rose to prolong the rioting, but their efforts did not come

to much, although guerilla warfare was prolonged for several weeks, and

British subjects were not allowed to travel over the main road beyond

Tong-ch'uan-fu for some time after; indeed, as I write (July 1st, 1910),

permission for the missionaries to move about is still withheld.

Then, following the rebellion, rumors spread all over the province to

the effect that the foreigners were on the look-out for children, and

were buying up as many as they could get at enormous prices to _ch'i_

the railway to Yün-nan-fu, which by this time had been opened to the

public. Daily were little children brought to the missionaries and

offered for sale. Child-stealing became common; the greatest unrest

prevailed again. Members of the Christian churches suffered persecution,

and adherents kept at a safe distance. Scholars forsook the mission

schools. Foreigners cautiously kept within their own premises as much as

they could. Mission work was at a standstill, and all looked once more

grave enough. Two women, caught in the act of stealing children at

Chao-t'ong, were taken to the _yamen_, hung in cages for a time as a

warning to others, and then made to walk through the streets shouting,

"Don't steal children as I have; don't steal children as I have." If

they stopped yelling, soldiers scourged them.

A man was lynched in the public streets in that city for stealing a

child, and only by the adoption of the most stringent measures, which in

England would be considered barbaric, were the mandarins able

successfully to deal with the rumors and the trouble thereby caused.

Even far away down on the Capital road, children ran from me, and

mothers, catching sight of me, would cover up their little ones and run

away from me behind barred doors, so that the foreigner should not get

them.

This latter trouble was felt pretty well throughout the length and

breadth of Yün-nan, and it must have been very disappointing to

Christian missionaries who had been working around the districts of

Tong-ch'uan-fu and Chao-t'ong-fu for over twenty years, and had got into

close contact with scores of men and women, to see these very people

taking away their children so that they should not be bought up by the

very missionaries whose ministrations they had listened to for years.

In course of time, things settled down again, but at the time my

manuscript leaves me for the publisher the danger zone has not been

greatly reduced.

In concluding my few remarks on this serious outbreak, the like of which

it is to be hoped will not be seen again in this province, it is only

fair to chronicle the excellent behavior of the Chinese officials and of

the Viceroy of Yün-nan in dealing with the situation. Although he is

not, I believe, generally liked by the people as their ruler, Li Chin

Hsi did all he could to quell the riots speedily, and saw to it that all

the officials in whose districts the rebellion was raging, and who made

blunders during its progress, were degraded in rank. It is difficult for

Europeans thoroughly to grasp the situation. From Chao-t'ong to

Yün-nan-fu, the viceregal seat, is twelve days' hard going, and all

communication was done by telegraph--seemingly easy enough; but one must

not discount the slow Chinese methods of doing things. Most of the

troops were twelve days away, and in China--in backward Yün-nan

especially--to mobilize a thousand men and march them over mountains a

fortnight from your base is not a thing to be done at a moment's

notice. By the time they would arrive, it might have been possible for

all the foreigners to have been massacred and their premises demolished,

especially as the exits were blocked on all sides. But no time was lost

and no pains were saved; and although the Chao-t'ong foreign residents,

who suffered in suspense more than most missionaries are called upon to

suffer, may differ with me in this opinion, I believe that not one of

the officials who took part in endeavors to keep the riots from assuming

more actually dangerous proportions could have done more than was done.

If a man neglected his duty he lost his button, and he deserved nothing

else.

In Mr. P. O'Brien Butler, the able British Consul-General, the British

subjects had the greatest confidence. He might have erred in having

declined from harassing the Chinese Foreign Office to grant permission

and protection to Britishers who wished to travel after the leaders of

the rebellion had been captured, but he undoubtedly erred on the right

side.

An unfortunate incident for the United Methodist missionaries was the

fact that the Rev. Charles Stedeford, who was sent out by the Connexion

to visit the whole of the mission fields, was able to come only so far

as Tong-ch'uan-fu, and was forced to return to Europe without having

seen any of the magnificent work among the Hua Miao.

After my manuscript went forward to my publishers, permission to travel

and protection were granted to British subjects again on the main road

leading up to the Yangtze Valley. The author was the first Britisher to

go from Tong-ch'uan-fu to Chao-t'ong-fu, and as I write, as late as the

middle of July, 1910, I am of the opinion that it is unwise to travel

over this road for a long time to come, unless it is absolutely

imperative to do so. At Kiang-ti I had considerable trouble in getting

a place to sleep, and I was glad when I had passed Tao-üen.

At the invitation of missionaries working among them, I then spent some

months in residence and travel in Miaoland, and only regret that an

extended account of my experiences is not possible.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote N: July, 1910.]

[Footnote O: The local name for the Yangtze.]

[Footnote P: This Liu was a remarkable man, quite unlike the average

mandarin. He got the name of Liu Ma Pang, a disrespectful term, meaning

that he was fond of using the stick. On a journey towards Chao-t'ong,

some years ago, he went on ahead of his retinue of men and horses, and

arriving at an inn at Tong-ch'uan-fu, asked the _ta si fu_--the general

factotum--for the best room, and proceeded to walk into it. "No you

don't," yelled the _ta si fu_, "that's reserved for Liu Ma Pang, and

you're not to go in there." After some time Liu's men arrived, and

calling one or two, he said, "Take this man" (pointing to the surprised

_ta si fu_) "and give him a sound thrashing." He stood by and saw the

whacking administered, after which he said, "That's for speaking

disrespectfully of a mandarin." Then, "Give him a thousand cash,"

adding, "That's for knowing your business."

Some years ago Liu was the means of saving the life of the late Mr.

Litton (mentioned later in this book), at the time he was British Consul

at Tengyueh, when there was fighting down in the south of Yün-nan with

the Wa's.--E.J.D.]

[Footnote Q: He was captured some months afterwards, I believe, at

Mengtsz.--E.J.D.]

CHAPTER X.

THE TRIBES OF NORTH-EAST YÜN-NAN, AND MISSION WORK AMONG THEM

Men who came through Yün-nan twenty years ago wrote of its doctors and

its medicines, its poverty and its infanticide. There seemed little else

to speak of.

Although the tribes were here then--and in a rawer state even then than

they are at the present time--little was known about them, and men had

not yet developed the cult of putting their opinions upon this most

absorbing topic into print. To-day, however, scores of men in Europe are

eagerly devouring every line of copy they can get hold of bearing upon

this fascinating ethnological study. Missionaries are plagued by

inquiries for information respecting the tribes of Western China, and it

is a curious feature of the situation that, with each article or book

coming before the public contradiction follows contradiction, and very

few people--not even those resident in the areas and working among the

tribes--can agree absolutely upon any given points in their data. The

numerous non-Chinese tribes I met in China formed one of the most

interesting, and at the same time most bewildering, features of my

travel; and I can quite agree with Major H.R. Davies,[R] who tackles the

tribe question with considerable ability in his book on Yün-nan, when he

says that it is safe to assert that in hardly any part of the world is

there such a large variety of languages and dialects as are to be found

in the country which lies between Assam and the eastern border of

Yün-nan, and in the Indo-Chinese countries to the north of that region.

The reason for it is generally ascribed to the physical characteristics

of the country, the high mountain ranges and deep, swift-flowing rivers,

which have brought about the differences in customs and language and the

innumerable tribal distinctions so perplexing to him who would put

himself in the position of an inquirer into Indo-Chinese ethnology. I

know more than one gentleman in Yün-nan at the present moment having

under preparation manuscript upon this subject intended for subsequent

publication, and I feel sure that their efforts will add valuable

information to the all too limited supply now obtainable. In the

meantime, I print my own impressions.

I should like it to be known here, however, that I do not in any way

whatsoever put myself forward as an authority on the question. I had

not, at the time this was written, laid myself out to make any study of

the subject. But the fact that I have lived in North-East Yün-nan for a

year and a half, and have traveled from one end of the province to the

other, in addition to having come across tribes of people in Szech'wan,

may justify me in the eyes of the reader for placing on record my own

impressions as a general contribution to this most exciting discussion.

I also lived at Shïh-men-K'an (mentioned in the last chapter), among the

Hua Miao for several months, traveled fairly considerably in the

unsurveyed hill country where they live, and am the only man, apart from

two missionaries, who has ever been over that wonderful country lying to

the extreme north-east of Yün-nan. One trip I made, extending over three

weeks, will ever remain with me as a memorable time, but I regret that I

have no space in this volume for even the merest reference to my

journey.

Some of my friends in China might say sarcastically that mankind is

destined to arrive at years of discretion, and that I should have known

better than to include in my book anything, however well founded, of a

nature tending to continue the wordy strife touching this vexed question

of Mission Work, and that no matter how strikingly set forth, this is an

old and obsolete story, fit only to be finally done with. It is for such

to bear with me in what I shall say. There are thousands of men in the

West who are entirely ignorant of men in China other than the ordinary

_Han Ren_, and if I enlighten them ever so little, then this chapter

will have served an admirable end.

In North-East Yün-nan the tribes I came most in contact with were:--

(i) The Miao or Miao-tze, as the Chinese call them; or the Mhong or

Hmao, as they call themselves.

(ii) The I-pien (or E-pien), as the Chinese call them; or the Nou Su (or

Ngo Su), as they call themselves.

Probably the Nou Su tribes are what Major Davies calls the Lolo Group in

his third division of the great Tibeto-Burman Family; but I merely

suggest it, as it strikes me that the other branches of that group,

including the Li-su, the La-hu, and the Wo-ni, seem to be descendants of

a larger group, of which the Nou Su predominate in numbers, language,

and customs. However, this by the way.

It may not be common knowledge that in most parts of the Chinese Empire,

even to-day, there are tribes of people, essentially non-Chinese, who

still rigidly maintain their independence, governed by their own native

rulers as they were probably forty centuries ago, long before their

kingdoms were annexed to China Proper. There are white bones and black

bones, noses long and flattened, eyes straight and oblique, swarthy

faces, faces yellow and white, coal-black and brown hair, and many

other physical peculiarities differentiating one tribe from another.

In many instances, these tribes, conquered slowly by the encroaching

Chinese during the long and tedious term of centuries marking the growth

of the Chinese Empire to its present immensity, are allowed to maintain

their social independence under their own chiefs, who are subject to the

control of the Government of China--which means that excessive taxation

is paid to the _yamen_ functionary, who extorts money from anybody and

everybody he can get into his clutches, and then gives a free hand.

Others, in a further state of civilization, have been gradually absorbed

by the Chinese and are now barely distinguishable from the _Han Ren_

(the Chinese). And others, again, adopting Chinese dress, customs and

language, would give the traveler a rough time of it were he to suggest

that they are any but pure Chinese. To the ethnological student, it is

obvious that so soon as the Chinese have tyrannized sufficiently and in

their own inimitable way preyed upon these feudal landlords enough to

warrant their lands being confiscated, reducing a tribe to a condition

in which, far removed from districts where co-tribesmen live, they have

no _status_, the aboriginals throw in their lot gradually with the

Chinese, and to all intents and purposes become Chinese in language,

customs, trade and life. This absorption by the Chinese of many tribes,

stretching from the Burmese border to the eastern parts of Szech'wan,

whilst an interesting study, shows that the onward march of civilization

in China will sweep all racial relicts from the face of this great

awakening Empire.

But at the same time there are many branches of a tribal family, some

found as far west as British Burma and all more or less scattered and

disorganized as the result of this silent oppression going on through

the years, who still are ambitious of preserving their independent

isolation, particularly in sparsely-populated spheres far removed from

political activity. So remote are the districts in which these

principalities are found, that the Chinese themselves are entirely

ignorant of the characteristics of these tribes. They say of one tribe

which is scattered all over China Far West that they all have tails; and

of another tribe that the men and women have two faces! And into the

official records published by the Imperial Government the grossest

inaccuracies creep concerning the origin of these peoples.

Yün-nan and Szech'wan--and a great part of Kwei-chow in the main still

untouched by the increased taxation necessary to provide revenue to

uphold the reforms brought about by the forward movement in various

parts of the Empire--are where the aboriginal population is most

evident. This part of the Empire might be called the ethnological garden

of tribes and various races in various stages of uncivilization. These

secluded mountain areas, their unaltered conditions still telling forth

the story of the world's youth, have been the cradle and the death-bed

of nations, of vigorous and ambitious tribes bent on conquest and a

career of glory.

THE MIAO

Of the Miao, with its various sections, we know a good deal. Their real

home has been pretty finally decided to be in Kwei-chow province, and

they probably in former times extended far into Hu-nan, the Chinese of

these provinces at the present time having undoubtedly a good deal of

Miao blood in their veins. They are comparatively recent arrivals in

Yün-nan, but are gradually extending farther and farther to the west,

maintaining their language and their dress and customs. I personally

found them as far west as thirty miles beyond Tali-fu, a little off the

main road, but Major Davies found them far up on the Tibetan border. He

says: "The most westerly point that I have come across them is the

neighborhood of Tawnio (lat. 23° 40', long. 98° 45'). Through Central

and Northern Yün-nan they do not seem to exist, but they reappear again

to the north of this in Western Szech'wan, where there are a few

villages in the basin of the Yalung River (lat. 28° 15', long. 101°

40')."

The Major was evidently ignorant of this Miao district of Chao-t'ong, to

the north-east of the province. Stretching three days from

Tong-ch'uan-fu right away on to Chao-t'ong, in a north line, Miao

villages are met with fairly well the whole way; then, three days from

Tong-ch'uan-fu, in a north-westerly direction, we come to the Miao

village of Loh-Ïn-shan; and then, striking south-west, through country

absolutely unsurveyed part of the way, Sa-pu-shan is met. This last

place is the headquarters of the China Inland Mission, where, at the

present rate of progress, one might modestly estimate that in twenty

years there will be no less than a million people receiving Christian

teaching. These are not all Miao, however; there are besides La-ka,

Li-su, and many other tribes with which we have no concern at the

present moment.

So that it may be seen that from Yün-nan-fu, the capital, in areas on

either side of the main road leading up to the bifurcation of the

Yangtze below Sui-fu, in a long, narrow neck running between the River

of Golden Sand and the Kwei-chow border, Miao are met with constantly.

And then, of course, over the river, in Szech'wan, they are met with

again, and in Kwei-chow, farther west, we have their real home.

It is a far cry from Miao-land to Malaysia, but as I get into closer

contact with the Miao people, the more do I find them in many common

ways of everyday customs and points of character akin to the Malays and

the Sakai (the jungle hill people of the Malay Peninsula), among whom I

have traveled. Their modes of living contain many points in common.

Ethnologists probably may smile at this assertion, the same as I, who

have lived among the Miao, have smiled at a good deal which has come

from the pens of men who have not.

In this area there are two great branches of the Miao race:--

(i) The Hua Miao--The Flowery (or White) Miao.

(ii) The Heh Miao--The Black Miao.

(Many photographs of the Hua Miao are reproduced in this volume.)

The latter are considered as the superior of the two sections, speak a

different tongue, and differ more or less widely in their methods, dress

and customs, a study of which would lead one into a lifetime of

interminable disquisitions, at the end of which one would be little more

enlightened. Those who wish to study the question of inter-racial

differences of the Miao are referred to Mr. Clarke's _Kwei-chow and

Yün-nan Provinces_, Prince Henri d'Orleans' _Du Tonkin aux Indes_, and

Mr. Baber's works. Major Davies also gives some new information

concerning this hill people, and is generally correct in what he says;

but in his, as in all the books which touch upon the subject, the

language tests vary considerably. In Chao-t'ong and the surrounding

districts, for instance, the traveler would be unable to make any

progress with the vocabulary which the Major has compiled. I was unable

to make it tally with the spoken language of the people, and append a

table showing the differences in the phonetic--and I do it with all

respect to Major Davies. I ought to add that this is the language of the

north-east corner of Yün-nan; that of Major Davies is taken from page

339 of his book. He says that the words given by him will not be found

to correspond in every case with those in the Miao vocabulary in the

pocket of the cover of his book, and some have been taken from other

Miao dialects!. However, the comparison will be interesting:--

N-E. Yün-nan

English Word Major Davies's Miao Miao

Man (human being) Tan-neng, Tam-ming Teh-neh.

Son To, T'am-t'ong Tu.

Eye K'a-mwa, Mai A-ma.

Hand Api Tee.

Cow Nyaw, Nga Niu.

Pig Teng Npa.

Dog Klie, Ko Klee.

Chicken Ka, Kei Ki.

Silver Nya Nieh.

River Tiang Glee.

Paddy Mblei Nglee.

Cooked Rice Mao Va.

Tree Ndong Ntao.

Fire To Teh.

Wind Chwa, Chiang Chta.

Earth Ta Ti.

Sun Hno, Nai Hnu.

Moon Hla Hlee.

Big Hlo Hlo.

Come Ta Ta.

Go Mong Mao.

Drink Ho Hao.

One A, Yi Ih.

Two Ao Ah.

Three Pie, Po Tsz.

Four Pei, Plou Glao.

Five Pa Peh.

Six Chou Glao.

Seven Shiang, I Shiang.

Eight Yi, Yik Yih.

Nine Chio Chia.

Ten Ch'it Kao.

The Miao language was until a year or two ago only spoken; it was never

written, and no one ever dreamed that it could be written. At the time

of the great Miao revival, when thousands of Miao made a raid on the

mission premises at Chao-t'ong, and implored the missionaries to come

and teach them, it was found absolutely necessary that the language

should be reduced to writing, and the whole of this extremely creditable

work fell to the Rev. Samuel Pollard, who may be characterized as the

pioneer of this Christianizing movement in North-East Yün-nan.

In reducing the language to writing, however, considerable difficulty

was complicated by the presence of "tones," so well known to all

students of Chinese, itself said to be an invention of the Devil. Tones

introduce another element or dimension into speech. The number of

sounds, not being sufficient for the reproduction of all the spoken

ideas, has been multiplied by giving these various sounds in different

tones. It is as if the element of music were introduced according to

rule into speech, and as if one had not only to remember the words in

everything he wished to say, but the tune also.

The Miao people being so low down in the intellectual scale, and having

never been accustomed to study, it was felt by the promoters of the

written language that they should be as simple as possible, and hence

they looked about for some system which could be readily grasped by

these ignorant people. It was necessary that the system be absolutely

phonetic and understood easily. By adapting the system used in

shorthand, of putting the vowel marks in different positions by the side

of the consonant signs, Mr. Pollard and his assistant found that they

could solve their problem. The signs for the consonants are larger than

the vowel signs, and the position of the latter by the side of the

former gives the tone or musical note required.

At the present time there are thousands of Miao now able to read and

write, and the work of this enterprising missionary has conferred an

inestimable boon upon this people. When I went among the Miao I was

able, after ten minutes' instruction, to stand up and sing their hymns

and read their gospels with them. Miao women, who heretofore had never

hoped to read, are now put in possession of the Word of God, and the

simplicity of the written language enables them almost at once to read

the Story of the Cross. Surely this is one of the outstanding features

of mission work in the whole of China. I hope at some future date to

publish a work devoted exclusively to my travels among the Hua Miao, for

I feel that their story, no matter how simply written, is one of the

great untold romances of the world. As a people, they are extremely

fascinating in life and customs, emotional, large-hearted, and

absolutely distinct from, with hardly a manner of daily life in common

with, the Chinese.

MISSION WORK AMONG THE MIAO

Whilst referring to mission work, it is a great privilege for the writer

to add a word of most deserved eulogy of the United Methodist Mission at

Chao-t'ong and Tongi-ch'uan-fu, and to the kindness shown by the

missionaries towards me when I came, an absolute stranger, among them in

May, 1909. It is to two members of this Mission that I owe a life-long

debt of gratitude, for it was Mr. and Mrs. Evans, of Tong-ch'uan-fu, who

saved my life, a week or two after I left Chao-t'ong, as is recorded in

a subsequent chapter.

It was in the old days of the Bible Christian Mission--than which the

individual members of no mission in the whole of China worked with more

zeal and lower stipends--that a most interesting development in the

mission took place.

The mass of the Miao are the serfs of the descendants of their ancient

kings, who are large landowners, and the Miao are tenants. In 1905 the

Miao heard of the Gospel, and came to listen to the preaching, and

thousands came in batches at one time and another to the mission house.

Their movements thus aroused suspicion among the Chinese, there was a

good deal of persecution and personal violence, and at one time it

looked as if there might be serious trouble. But the danger quieted

down. The chieftain gave land, the Miao contributed one hundred pounds

sterling, and themselves put up a chapel large enough to accommodate six

hundred people. A year later, a thousand at a time crowded their simple

sanctuary, and in 1907 nearly six thousand were members or probationers,

and the work has steadily progressed ever since.

I am indebted to the Rev. H. Parsons, who had charge of the work at the

time I passed through this district, and whose guest I was for several

months, for the following interesting details regarding the methods

adopted in the running of this enormous mission field. Mr. Parsons is

assisted in his work by his genial wife, who is a most ardent worker,

and a capable Miao linguist. Mrs. Parsons regularly addresses

congregations of several hundreds of Miao, and has traveled on journeys

often with her husband; and such work as hers, with several others in

this mission, is a testimony to the wisdom of a system advocating the

increase of the number of lady workers on the mission field in China.

THE NOU-SU (OR I-PIEN)

There is a class of people around Chao-t'ong who are called Nou-su, a

people who, although occupying the Chao-t'ong Plain at the time the

Chinese arrived, are believed not to be the aboriginals of the district.

What I actually know about this people is not much. I have heard a good

deal, but it must not be understood that I publish this as absolutely

the final word. People who have lived in the district for many years do

not agree, so that for a mere traveler the task of getting infallible

data would be quite formidable.

No tribe is more widely known than the Nou-su, with their innumerable

tribal distinctions and hereditary peculiarities so perplexing to the

inquirer into Far Western China ethnology.

The Nou-su are a very fine, tall race, with comparatively fair

complexions, suggesting a mixture of Mongolian with some other

straight-featured people. Of their origin, however, little can be

vouched for, and with it we will have nothing to do here. But at the

present time the Nou-su provide a good deal of interest from the fact

that their power as tyrannic landlords and feudal chiefs is fast dying,

and it may be that in a couple of decades, or a still shorter time, a

people who, by obstinate self-reliance and great dislike to the Chinese,

have remained unaffected by the absorbing spirit of the arbitrary

Chinese, will have passed beyond the vale of personality. Even now,

however, they own and rule enormous tracts of country (notably that part

lying on the right bank of the River of Golden Sand) in north-east

Yün-nan. Some are very wealthy. One man may own vast tracts bigger than

Yorkshire. In this tract there may be one hundred villages, all paying

tribute to him and subject to the vagaries of his vilest despotism. From

his tyranny his struggling tenantry have no redress. So long as the

I-pien (the local name of the Nou-su) greases the palm of the squeezing

Chinese mandarin in whose nominal control the district extends, he may

run riot as he pleases. Social law and order are unknown, justice is a

complete contradiction in terms, and whilst one is in the midst of it,

it is difficult to realize that in China to-day--the China which all the

world believes to be awakening--there exists a condition of things which

will allow a man to torture, to plunder, to murder, and to indulge to

the utmost degree the whims of a Neronic and devilish temperament.

Slave trading is common. If a tenant cannot pay his tribute, he sells

himself for a few taels and becomes the slave of his former landlord,

and if he would save his head treads carefully.

In the early days, when different clans were driven farther into the

hills, they each clinched as much land as they could. In course of time,

by petty quarrels, civil wars, and common feuds, the Nou-su were

gradually thinned out. The Miao-tsi--the men of the hills and the serfs

of the landlords, who four thousand years ago were a powerful race in

their own kingdom--became the tenants of the Nou-su, whose rule is still

marked by the grossest infamy possible to be practiced on the human

race. All the methods of torture which in the old days were associated

with the Chinese are still in vogue, in many cases in an aggravated

form. I have personally seen the tortures, and have listened to the

stories of the victims, but it would not bear description in print.

It must not, however, be understood that to be a Nou-su is to be a

landlord. By no means. For in the gradual process of the survival of the

fittest, when the weaker landlords were murdered by their stronger

compatriots and their lands seized, only a small percentage of the tribe

in this area have been able to hold sway. However, wherever there are

landlords in this part of the country, they are always Nou-su or

Chinese. The Miao--or, at least, the Hua Miao, own no lands, and are

body and soul in the tyrannic clutch of the tyrannic I-pien. Then,

again, in the Nou-su tribe there are various hereditary distinctions

enabling a man to claim caste advantage. There are the Black Bones, as

they style themselves, the aristocrats of the race, and the White Bones,

the lower breeds, who obey to the letter their wealthier brethren--or

anybody who has authority over them.

The Nou-su, who are a totally different race and a much better class

than the Miao, are believed to have been driven from the Chao-t'ong

Plain, preferring migration to fighting, and many trekked across the

Yangtze (locally called the Kin-sha) river into country now marked on

good maps as the Man-tze country. It appears that the following are the

two important branches:--

(i) The Black (Na-su)--Farmers and landowners.

(ii) The White (Tu-su) Generally slaves.

Other minor classes are:--

(i) The Lakes (or Red Nou-su)--Mostly blacksmiths.

(ii) The A-u-tsï Mostly felt-makers, who rightly or wrongly claim

relationship with the Chinese.

(iii) Another class, who are mostly basket-makers.

The two great divisions, however, are the White and the Black. The

latter class, themselves the owners of land, claim that all the White

were originally slaves, and that those who are now free have escaped at

some previous period from servitude. Men, as usual among such tribes,

are scarcely distinguishable from the ordinary _Han Ren_. It is the

women, with their peculiar head-dress and picturesque skirts, who

maintain the distinguishing features of the race. For the most part, the

Nou-su are not idolaters; no idols are in their houses. That portion of

the tribe which migrated across the Yangtze, secure among the mountains,

has never ceased to harass the Chinese, who now dwell on land which the

Nou-su themselves once tilled, or at least inhabited; but they have been

driven into remoter districts, and are only found away from the highways

of Chinese travel. The race, too, is dying out--in this area at all

events--and the Nou-su themselves reckon that their numbers have

decreased by one-half during the last thirty years. This is one of the

saddest facts. The insanitation of their dwellings, their rough diet,

and frequent riotings in wine, opium and other evils, are quickly

playing havoc in their ranks, giving the strong the opportunity of

enriching themselves at the expense of the weak, with frequent fighting

about the division of land.

Europeans who can speak the language of the Nou-su are numbered on the

fingers of one hand.

To one who has traveled in this neighborhood for any length of time, it

must be apparent that the unique method generally adopted by the Nou-su,

that is, the landlord class, to get rich quickly is to kill off their

next-door neighbor. The lives these men live with nothing but scandal

and licentiousness to pass their time, are grossly and horribly wicked

when viewed by the broadest-minded Westerner. They all live in fear of

their lives, and are each afraid of the others, all entertaining a

secret hatred, and all ever on the alert to devise some safe scheme to

murder the owner of some land they are anxious of annexing to their

own--and in the doing of the deed to save their own necks. If they

succeed, they are accounted clever men. As I write, I hear of a man,

quite a youngster, himself an exceedingly wealthy man, who killed his

brother and confiscated his property with no compunction whatever. When

tackled on the subject, he said he could do nothing else, for if he had

not killed his brother his brother would have killed him

Yet there is no sense of crime as we of the West understand it, and

nothing is feared from the Chinese law. A man kills a slave, tortures

him to death, and when the Chinese mandarin is appealed to, if he is at

all, he looks wise and says, "I quite see your point, but I can do

nothing. The murdered man was the landlord's slave," and, with a gentle

wave of his three-inch finger-nail, he explains how a man may kill his

slave, his wife, or his son--and the law can do nothing. That is, if he

compensates the mandarin.

A Nou-su looked upon a girl one day, when he was out collecting tribute.

She was handsome, and he instructed his men to take her. She refused. A

sum of one hundred ounces of silver was offered to anyone who would

kidnap her and carry her off to his harem. Eventually he got the girl,

and had her father tortured and then put to death because he would not

deliver his daughter over to him. Yet there is no redress.

Nou-su women, their feet unbound, with high foreheads and well-cut

features, with fiery eyes set in not unkindly faces, tall and healthy,

would be considered handsome women in any country in Europe. They rarely

intermarry with other tribes. A good deal of affection certainly exists

sometimes between husband and wife and between parents and children, but

the looseness of the marriage relation leads to unending strife.

Many Europeans, travelers and missionaries, have been murdered in the

country inhabited by the independent Lolo people. Although I have not

personally been through any of that country, I have been on the very

outskirts and have lived for a long time among the people there. I found

them a pleasant hospitable race, fairly easy to get on with. And it must

not be averred that, because they consider their natural enemy, the

Chinese, the man to be robbed and murdered, and because they kill off

their fellow-landlords in order the more quickly to get rich, that they

treat all strangers alike. Among the Europeans who have suffered death

at their hands, it is probable that in some way the cause was traceable

to their own bearing towards the people--either a total lack of

knowledge of their language or an attitude which caused suspicion.

Among the Nou-su, strong as this feudal life still is, the Chinese are

fast gaining permanent influence. Their dissolute and drunken and

inhuman daily practices are tending to work out among this people their

own destruction, and in years to come in this neighborhood the traveler

will be perplexed at finding here and there a fine specimen of an

upstanding Chinese, with clean-cut face, straight of feature and

straight of limb, with a peculiar Mongol look about him. He will be one

of the surviving specimens of a race of people, the Nou-su, whose

forgotten historical records would do much to clear up the doubt

attaching to Indo-China and Tibet-Burma ethnology.

The first Nou-su chieftain to come to Chao-t'ong, a man who was renowned

as a tryannical brute, was one Ien Tsang-fu, who frequently gouged out

the eyes of those who disobeyed his commands; and his descendants are

said to have inherited a good many of this tyrant's vices. The landlords

prey upon their weaker brethren, and at last, with infinite sagacity,

the Chinese Government steps in to stop the quarrels, confiscates the

whole of the property, and thus reduces the Nou-su land to immediate

control of Chinese authorities.

"The Nou-su are, of course, entirely dependent upon the land for their

living. They till the soil and rear cattle, and the greatest calamity

that can come upon any family is that their land shall be taken from

them. To be landless involves degradation as well as poverty, and very

severe hardship is the lot of men who have been deprived of this means

of subsistence. For those who own no land, but who are merely tenants of

the Tu-muh,[S] there seems to be no security of tenure; but still, if

the wishes and demands of the landlords are complied with, one family

may till the same farm for many successive generations. The terms on

which land is held are peculiar. The rental agreed upon is nominal.

Large tracts of country are rented for a pig or a sheep or a fowl, with

a little corn per year. Beside this nominal rent, the landlord has the

right to make levies on his tenants on all special occasions, such as

funerals, weddings, or for any other extraordinary expenses. He can also

require his tenants with their cattle to render services. This system

necessarily leads to much oppression and injustice. It is also said that

if a family is hard pressed by a Tu-muh and reduced to extreme poverty,

they will make themselves over to him on condition that a portion of his

land be given them to cultivate. Such people are called caught slaves,

as distinguished from hereditary, and the eldest children become the

absolute property of the landlord and are generally given as attendants

upon his wife and daughters.

"Every farmer owns a large number of slaves, who live in the same

compound as himself. These people do all the work of the farm, while the

master employs himself as his fancy leads him. Over these unfortunate

people the owner has absolute control. All their affairs are managed by

him. His girl slaves he marries off to other men's slave boys, and

similarly obtains wives for his male slaves. The lot of these

unfortunate people is hard beyond description. Being considered but

little more valuable than the cattle they tend, the food given to them

is often inferior to the corn upon which the master's horse is fed. The

cruel beatings and torturings they have been subject to have completely

broken their spirit, and now they seem unable to exist apart from their

masters. Very seldom do any of them try to escape, for no one will give

them shelter, and the punishment awarded a recaptured slave is so severe

as to intimidate the most daring. These poor folk are born in slavery,

married in slavery, and they die in slavery. It is not uncommon to meet

with Chinese slaves, both boys and girls, in Nou-su families. These have

either been kidnapped and sold, or their parents, unable to nourish

them, have bartered them in exchange for food. Their purchasers marry

them to Tu-su, and their lot is thrown in with the slave class. One's

heart is wrung with anguish sometimes as he thinks of what cruelty and

wretchedness exist among the hills of this benighted district. Even

here, however, light is beginning to shine, for some adherents of the

Christian religion have changed their slaves into tenants, thus showing

the way to the ultimate solution of this difficult problem.

"The life in a Nou-su household is not very complex. The cattle are

driven out early in the morning, as soon as the sun has risen. They

remain out until the breakfast hour, and then return to the stables and

rest during the heat of the day, going out again in the cool hours. The

food of the household is prepared by the slaves, under the direction of

the lady of the house. There is no refined cooking, for the Nou-su

despises well-cooked food, and complains that it never satisfies him. He

has a couplet which runs: 'If you eat raw food, you become a warrior; if

you eat it cooked, you suffer hunger.' No chairs or tables are found in

a genuine Nou-su house. The food is served up in a large bowl placed on

the floor. The family sit around, and each one helps himself with a

large wooden spoon. At the present time the refinements of Chinese

civilization have been adopted by a large number of Nou-su, and the

homes of the wealthier people are as well furnished as those of the

middle-class Chinese of the district. The women of the households also

spend much time making their own and their children's clothes. The men

have adopted Chinese dress, but the women, in most cases, retain their

tribal costume with its large turban-like head-dress, its plaited skirt

and intricately embroidered coat. All this is made by hand, and the

choicest years of maidenhood are occupied in preparing the clothes for

the wedding-day.

"The Nou-su, it would seem, used not to beg a wife, but rather obtained

her by main force. At the present day, while the milder method generally

prevails, there are still survivals of the ancient custom. The betrothal

truly takes place very early, even in infancy, and at the ceremony a

fowl is killed, and each contracting party takes a rib; but as the young

folk grow to marriageable age, the final negotiations have to be made.

These are purposely prolonged until the bridegroom, growing angry,

gathers his friends and makes an attack on the maiden's home. Arming

themselves with cudgels, they approach secretly, and protecting their

heads and shoulders with their felt cloaks, they rush towards the house.

Strenuous efforts are made by the occupants to prevent their entering,

and severe blows are exchanged. When the attacking party has succeeded

in gaining an entrance, peace is proclaimed, and wine and huge chunks of

flesh are provided for their entertainment.

"Occasionally during these fights the maiden's home is quite dismantled.

The negotiations being ended, preparations are made to escort the bride

to her future home. Heavily veiled, she is supported on horseback by her

brothers, while her near relatives, all fully armed, attend her. On

arriving at the house, a scuffle ensues. The veil is snatched from the

bride's face by her relatives, who do their utmost to throw it on to the

roof, thus signifying that she will rule over the occupants when she

enters. The bridegroom's people on the contrary try to trample it upon

the doorstep, as an indication of the rigor with which the newcomer will

be subjected to the ruling of the head of the house. Much blood is shed,

and people are often seriously injured in these skirmishes. The new

bride remains for three days in a temporary shelter before she is

admitted to the home. A girl having once left her parent's home to

become a wife, waits many years before she pays a return visit.

Anciently the minimum time was three years, but some allow ten or more

years to elapse before the first visit home is paid. Two or three years

are then often spent with the parents. Many friends and relatives attend

any visitor, for with the Nou-su a large following is considered a sign

of dignity and importance. When a child is born a tree is planted, with

the hope that as the tree grows so also will the child develop.

"The fear of disease lies heavily upon the Nou-su people, and their

disregard of the most elementary sanitary laws makes them very liable to

attacks of sickness. They understand almost nothing about medicine, and

consequently resort to superstitious practices in order to ward off the

evil influences. When it is known that disease has visited a neighbor's

house, a pole, seven feet long, is erected in a conspicuous place in a

thicket some distance from the house to be guarded. On the pole an old

ploughshare is fixed, and it is supposed that when the spirit who

controls the disease sees the ploughshare he will retire to a distance

of three homesteads.

"A fever called No-ma-dzï works great havoc among the Nou-su every year,

and the people are very much afraid of it. No person will stay by the

sick-bed to nurse the unfortunate victim. Instead, food and water are

placed by his bedside and, covered with his quilt, he is left at the

mercy of the disease. Since as the fever progresses the patient will

perspire, heavy stones are placed on the quilt, that it may not be

thrown off, and the sick person take cold. Many an unfortunate sufferer

has through this strange practice died from suffocation. After a time

the relatives will return to see what course the disease has taken. This

fever seems to yield to quinine, for Mr. John Li has seen several

persons recover to whom he had administered this drug. When a man dies,

his relatives, as soon as they receive the news, hold in their several

homes a feast of mourning called by them the Za. A pig or sheep is

sacrificed at the doorway, and it is supposed that intercourse is thus

maintained between the living persons and the late departed spirit. The

near kindred, on hearing of the death of a relative, take a fowl and

strangle it; the shedding of its blood is not permissible. This fowl is

cleaned and skewered, and the mourner then proceeds to the house where

the deceased person is lying, and sticks this fowl at the head of the

corpse as an offering. The more distant relatives do not perform this

rite, but each leads a sheep to the house of mourning, and the son of

the deceased man strikes each animal three times with a white wand,

while the Peh-mo (priest or magician) stands by, and announcing the

sacrifice by calling 'so and so,' giving of course the name, presents

the soft woolly offering.

"Formerly the Nou-su burned their dead. Said a Nou-su youth to me years

ago, 'The thought of our friends' bodies either turning to corruption or

being eaten by wild beasts is distasteful to us, and therefore we burn

our dead.' The corpse is burnt with wood, and during the cremation the

mourners arrange themselves around the fire and chant and dance. The

ashes are buried, and the ground leveled. This custom is still adhered

to among the Nou-su of the independent Lolo territory or more correctly

Papu country of Western Szech'wan. The tribesmen who dwell in the

neighborhood of Weining and Chao-t'ong have adopted burial as the means

of disposing of their dead, adding some customs peculiar to themselves.

"On the day of the funeral the horse which the deceased man was in the

habit of riding is brought to the door and saddled by the Pehmo. The

command is then given to lead the horse to the grave. All the mourners

follow, and marching or dancing in intertwining circles, cross and

recross the path of the led horse until the poor creature, grown frantic

with fear, rushes and kicks in wild endeavor to escape from the

confusion. The whole company then raise a great shout and call, 'The

soul has come to ride the horse, the soul has come to ride the horse.' A

contest then follows among the women of the deceased man's household for

the possession of this horse, which is henceforth regarded as of extreme

value. It is difficult to discover much about the religion of the

Nou-su, because so many of their ancient customs have fallen into disuse

during the intercourse of the people with the Chinese. At the

ingathering of the buckwheat, when the crop is stacked on the threshing

floor, and the work of threshing is about to begin, the simple formula,

'Thank you, Ilsomo,' is used. Ilsomo seems to be a spirit who has

control over the crops; whether good or evil, it is not easy to

determine. Ilsomo is not God, for at present, when the Nou-su wish to

speak of God, they use the word Soe, which means Master.

"In the independent territory of the Nou-su, to the west of Szech'wan,

the term used for God is Eh-nia, and a Nou-su who has much intercourse

with the independent people contends that there are three names

indicative of God, each representing different functions if not persons

of the Godhead. These names are: Eh-nia, Keh-neh, Um-p'a-ma. The Nou-su

believe in ancestor worship, and perhaps the most interesting feature of

their religion is the peculiar form this worship takes. Instead of an

ancestral tablet such as the Chinese use, the Nou-su worship a small

basket (lolo) about as large as a duck's egg and made of split bamboo.

This 'lolo' contains small bamboo tubes an inch or two long, and as

thick as an ordinary Chinese pen handle. In these tubes are fastened a

piece of grass and a piece of sheep's wool. A man and his wife would be

represented by two tubes, and if he had two wives, an extra tube would

be placed in the 'lolo.' At the ceremony of consecration the Pehmo

attends, and a slave is set apart for the purpose of attending to all

the rites connected with the worship of the deceased person. The 'lolo'

is sometimes placed in the house, but more often on a tree in the

neighborhood or it may be hidden in a rock. For persons who are

short-lived, the ancestral 'lolo' is placed in a crevice in the wall of

some forsaken and ruined building. Every three years the 'lolo' is

changed, and the old one burnt. The term 'lolo,' by which the Nou-su are

generally known, is a contemptuous nickname given them by the Chinese in

reference to this peculiar method of venerating their ancestors.

"Hill worship is another important feature of Nou-su religious life.

Most important houses are built at the foot of a hill and sacrifice is

regularly offered on the hill-side in the fourth month of each year. The

Pehmo determines which is the most propitious day, and the Tumuh and his

people proceed to the appointed spot. A limestone rock with an old tree

trunk near is chosen as an altar, and a sheep and pig are brought

forward by the Tumuh. The Pehmo, having adjusted his clothes, sits

cross-legged before the altar, and begins intoning his incantations in a

low muttering voice. The sacrifice is then slain, and the blood poured

beneath the altar, and a handful of rice and a lump of salt are placed

beneath the stone. Some person then gathers a bundle of green grass, and

the Pehmo, having finished intoning, the altar is covered, and all

return to the house. The Pehmo then twists the grass into a length of

rope, which he hangs over the doorway of the house. Out of a piece of

willow a small arrow is made, and a bow similar in size is cut out of a

peach tree. These are placed on the doorposts. On a piece of soft white

wood a figure of a man is roughly carved, and this, with two sticks of

any soft wood placed cross-wise, is fastened to the rope hanging over

the doorway, on each side of which two small sticks are placed. The

Pehmo then proceeds with his incantation, muttering: 'From now,

henceforth and for ever will the evil spirits keep away from this

house.'

"Most Nou-su at the present time observe the New Year festival on the

same date and with the same customs as the Chinese. Formerly this was

not so, and even now in the remoter districts New Year's day is observed

on the first day of the tenth month of the Chinese year. A pig and sheep

are killed and cleaned, and hung in the house for three days. They are

then taken down, cut up and cooked. The family sit on buckwheat straw in

the middle of the chief room of the house. The head of the house invites

the others to drink wine, and the feasting begins. Presently one will

start singing, and all join in this song: 'How firm is this house of

mine. Throughout the year its hearth fire has not ceased to burn, My

food corn is abundant, I have silver and also cash, My cattle have

increased to herds, My horses and mules have all white foreheads K'o K'o

Ha Ha Ha Ha K'o K'o, My sons are filial, My wife is virtuous, In the

midst of flesh and wine we sleep, Our happiness reaches unto heaven,

Truly glorious is this glad New Year.' A scene of wild indulgence then

frequently follows.

"The Nou-su possess a written language. Their books were originally made

of sheepskin, but paper is now used. The art of printing was unknown,

and many books are said to have been lost. The books are illustrated,

but the drawings are extremely crude."[T]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote R: _Yün-nan, The Link between India, and the Yangtze_, by

Major H.R. Davies, Cambridge University Press.]

[Footnote S: Literally "Eyes of the Earth"--the landlords.]

[Footnote T: A good deal of information in this chapter was obtained

from an article by the Rev. C E Hicks, published in the _Chinese

Recorder_ for March, 1910. The portion quoted is taken bodily from this

excellent article.]

FIFTH JOURNEY.

CHAO-T'ONG-FU TO TONG-CH'UAN-FU.

CHAPTER XI.

_Revolting sights compensated for by scenery_. _Most eventful day in the

trip_. _Buying a pony, and the reason for its purchase_. _Author's pony

kicks him and breaks his arm_. _Chastising the animal, and narrow escape

from death_. _Rider and pony a sorry sight_. _An uneasy night_.

_Reappearance of malaria_. _Author nearly forced to give in_. _Heavy

rain on a difficult road_. _At Ta-shui-tsing_. _Chasing frightened pony

in the dead of night_. _Bad accommodation_. _Lepers and leprosy_.

_Mining_. _At Kiang-ti_. _Two mandarins, and an amusing episode_.

_Laying foundation of a long illness_. _The Kiang-ti Suspension Bridge_.

_Hard climbing_. _Tiffin in the mountains_. _Sudden ascents and

descents_. _Description of the country_. _Tame birds and what they do_.

_A non-enterprising community_. _Pleasant travelling without perils_.

_Majesty of the mountains of Yün-nan_.

Whilst in this district, as will have been seen, one has to steel

himself to face some of the most revolting sights it is possible to

imagine, he is rewarded by the grandeur of the scenic pictures which

mark the downward journey to Tong-ch'uan-fu.

The stages to Tong-ch'uan-fu were as follows:--

Length of Height above

stage sea level

1st day T'ao-üen 70 li. ---- ft.

2nd day Ta-shui-tsing 30 " 9,300 ft.

3rd day Kiang-ti 40 " 4,400 "

4th day Yi-che-shïn 70 " 6,300 "

5th day Hong-shïh-ai 90 " 6,800 "

6th day Tong-ch'uan-fu 60 " 7,250 "

The Chao-t'ong plateau, magnificently level, runs out past the

picturesquely-situated tower of Wang-hai-leo, from which one overlooks a

stretch of water. A memorial arch, erected by the Li family of

Chao-t'ong-fu, graces the main road farther on, and is probably one of

the best of its kind in Yün-nan, comparing favorably with the best to be

found in Szech'wan, where monumental architecture abounds. Perhaps the

only building of interest in Chao-t'ong is the ancestral hall of the

wealthy family mentioned above, the carving of which is magnificent.

At the end of the first day we camped at the Mohammedan village of

T'ao-üen, literally "Peach Garden," but the peach trees might once have

been, though now certainly they are not.

It was cold when we left, 38° F., hard frost. All the world seemed

buttoned up and great-coated; the trees seemed wiry and cheerless; the

legs of the pack-horses seemed brittle, and I felt so. Breath issued

visibly from the mouth as I trudged along. My boy and I nearly came to

blows in the early morning. I wanted to lie on; he did not. If he could

not entertain himself for half an hour with his own thoughts, I, who

could, thought it no fault of mine. I was a reasoning being, a rational

creature, and thought it a fine way of spending a sensible, impartial

half-hour. But I had to get up, and then came the benumbed fingers, a

quivering body, a frozen towel, and a floor upon which the mud was

frozen stiff. Little did he know that he was pulling me out to the most

eventful and unfortunate day of my trip.

At Chao-t'ong I had bought a pony in case of emergency--one of those

sturdy little brutes that never grow tired, cost little to keep, and are

unexcelled for the amount of work they can get through every day in the

week. Its color was black, a smooth, glossy black--the proverbial dark

horse--and when dressed in its English saddle and bridle looked even

smart enough for the use of the distinguished traveler, who smiled the

smile of pleasant ownership as it was led on in front all day long,

seeming to return a satanic grin for my foolishness at not riding it.[U]

The first I saw of it was when it was standing full on its hind legs

pinning a man between the railings and a wall in a corner of the mission

premises. It looked well. Truly, it was a blood beast!

On the second day out, whilst walking merrily along in the early

morning, the little brute lifted its heels, lodged them most precisely

on to my right forearm with considerable force--more forceful than

affectionate--sending the stick which I carried thirty feet from me up

the cliffs. The limb ached, and I felt sick. My boy--he had been a

doctor's boy on one of the gunboats at Chung-king--thought it was

bruised. I acquiesced, and sank fainting to a stone. On the strength of

my boy's diagnosis we rubbed it, and found that it hurt still more. Then

diving into a cottage, I brought out a piece of wood, three inches wide

and twenty inches long, placed my arm on it, bade my boy take off one of

my puttees from one of my legs, used it as a bandage, and trudged on

again.

Not realizing that my arm was broken, in the evening I determined to

chastise the animal in a manner becoming to my disgust. Mounting at the

foot of a long hill, I laid on the stick as hard as I could, and found

that my pony had a remarkable turn of speed. At the brow of the hill was

a twenty-yard dip, at the base of which was a pond.

Down, down, down we went, and, despite my full strength (with the left

arm) at its mouth, the pony plunged in with a dull splash, only to find

that his feet gave way under him in a clay bottom. He could not free

himself to swim. Farther and farther we sank together, every second

deeper into the mire, when just at the moment I felt the mud clinging

about my waist, and I had visions of a horrible death away from all who

knew me, I plunged madly to reach the side.

With one arm useless, it is still to me the one great wonder of my life

how I escaped. Nothing short of miraculous; one of the times when one

feels a special protection of Providence surrounding him.

Pulling the beast's head, after I had given myself a momentary shake, I

succeeded in making him give a mighty lurch--then another--then another,

and in a few seconds, after terrible struggling, he reached the bank. We

made a sorry spectacle as we walked shamefacedly back to the inn, under

the gaze of half a dozen grinning rustics, where my man was preparing

the evening meal.

In the evening, on the advice of my general confidential companion, I

submitted to a poultice being applied to my arm. It was bruised, so we

put on the old-fashioned, hard-to-be-beaten poultice of bread. Whilst it

was hot it was comfortable; when it was cold, I unrolled the bandage,

threw the poultice to the floor, and in two minutes saw glistening in

the moonlight the eyes of the rats which ate it.

Then I bade sweet Morpheus take me; but, although the pain prevented me

from sleeping, I remember fainting. How long I lay I know not.

Shuddering in every limb with pain and chilly fear, I at length awoke

from a long swoon. Something had happened, but what? There was still the

paper window, the same greasy saucer of thick oil and light being given

by the same rush, the same rickety table, the same chair on which we had

made the poultice--but what had happened? I rubbed my aching eyes and

lifted myself in a half-sitting posture--a dream had dazzled me and

scared my senses. And then I knew that it was malaria coming on again,

and that I was once more her luckless victim.

Malignant malaria, mistress of men who court thee under tropic skies,

and who, like me, are turned from thee bodily shattered and whimpering

like a child, how much, how very much hast thou laid up for thyself in

Hades!

Thank Heaven, I had superabundant energy and vitality, and despite

contorted and distorted things dancing haphazard through my fevered

brain, I determined not to go under, not to give in. My mind was a

terrible tangle of combinations nevertheless--intricate, incongruous,

inconsequent, monstrous; but still I plodded on. For the next four days,

with my arm lying limp and lifeless at my side, and with recurring

attacks of malaria, I walked on against the greatest odds, and it was

not till I had reached Tong-ch'uan-fu that I learnt that the limb was

fractured. Men may have seen more in four days and done more and risked

more, but I think few travelers have been called upon to suffer more

agony than befell the lot of the man who was crossing China on foot.

From T'ao-üen there is a stiff ascent, followed by a climb up steep

stone steps and muddy mountain banks through black and barren country.

The morning had been cold and frosty, but rain came on later, a thick,

heavy deluge, which swished and swashed everything from its path as one

toiled painfully up those slippery paths, made almost unnegotiable. But

my imagination and my hope helped me to make my own sunshine. There is

something, I think, not disagreeable in issuing forth during a good

honest summer rain at home with a Burberry well buttoned and an umbrella

over one's head; here in Yün-nan a coat made it too uncomfortable to

walk, and the terrific wind would have blown an umbrella from one's

grasp in a twinkling. If we are in the home humor, in the summer, we do

not mind how drenching the rain is, and we may even take delight in

getting our own legs splashed as we glance at the "very touching

stockings" and the "very gentle and sensitive legs" of other weaker ones

in the same plight. But here was I in a gale on the bleakest tableland

one can find in this part of Yün-nan, and a sorry sight truly did I make

as I trudged "two steps forward, one step back" in my bare feet, covered

only with rough straw sandals, with trousers upturned above the knee,

with teeth chattering in malarial shivers, endeavoring between-times to

think of the pouring deluge as a benignant enemy fertilizing fields,

purifying the streets of the horrid little villages in which we spent

our nights, refreshing the air!

Shall I ever forget the day?

Just before sundown, drenched to the skin and suffering horribly from

the blues, we reached one single hut, which I could justly look upon as

a sort of evening companion; for here was a fire--albeit, a green wood

fire--which looked gladly in my face, talked to me, and put life and

comfort and warmth into me for the ten li yet remaining of the day's

hard journey.

And at night, about 8:30 p.m., we at last reached the top of the hill,

actually the summit of a mountain pass, at the dirty little village of

Ta-shui-tsing. Not for long, however, could I rest; for I heard yells

and screams and laughs. That pony again! Every one of my men were afraid

of it, for at the slightest invitation it pawed with its front feet and

landed man after man into the gutter, and if that failed it stood

upright and cuddled them around the neck. Now I found it had

run--saddle, bridle and all--and none volunteered to chase. So at 9:30,

weary and bearing the burden of a terrible day, which laid the

foundation of a long illness to be recorded later, I found it my

unpleasant duty to patrol the hill from top to bottom, lighting my

slippery way with a Chinese lantern, chasing the pony silhouetted on

the sky-line. Ta-shui-tsing is a dreary spot with no inn accommodation

at all,[V] a place depopulated and laid waste, gloomy and melancholy. I

managed, however, after promising a big fee, to get into a small

mud-house, where the people were not unkindly disposed. I ate my food,

slept as much as I could in the few hours before the appearing of the

earliest dawn on the bench allotted to me, feeling thankful that to me

had been allowed even this scanty lodging. But I could not

conscientiously recommend the place to future travelers--a dirty little

village with its dirty people and its dirty atmosphere. At the top of

the pass the wind nearly removed my ears as I took a final glance at the

mountain refuge. Mountains here run south-west and north-east, and are

grand to look upon.

The poorest people were lepers, the beggars were all dead long ago. In

Yün-nan province leprosy afflicts thousands, a disease which the

Chinese, not without reason, dread terribly, for no known remedy exists.

Burning the patient alive, which used often to be resorted to, is even

now looked upon as the only true remedy. Cases have been known where the

patient, having been stupefied with opium, has been locked in a house,

which has then been set on fire, and its inmate cremated on the spot.

Mining used to be carried on here, so they told me; but I was not long

in concluding that, whatever was the product, it has not materially

affected the world's output, nor had it greatly enriched the laborers in

the field. When I got into civilization I found that coal of a

sulphurous nature was the booty of ancient days. There may be coal yet,

as is most probable, but the natives seemed far too apathetic and weary

of life to care whether it is there or not.

Passing Ta-shui-tsing, the descent narrows to a splendid view of dark

mountain and green and beautiful valley. We were now traveling away from

several ranges of lofty mountains, whose peaks appeared vividly above

the drooping rain-filled clouds, onwards to a range immediately

opposite, up whose slopes we toiled all day, passing _en route_ only one

uninhabited hamlet, to which the people flee in time of trouble. After a

weary tramp of another twenty-five li--the Yün-nan li, mind you, the

most unreliable quantity in all matters geographical in the country--I

asked irritatedly, as all travelers must have asked before me, "Then, in

the name of Heaven, where is Kiang-ti?"[W] It should come into view

behind the terrible steep decline when one is within only about a

hundred yards. It is roughly four thousand feet below Ta-shui-tsing.

Kiang-ti is an important stopping place, with but one forlorn street,

with two or three forlorn inns, the best of which has its best room

immediately over the filthiest stables, emitting a stench which was

almost unbearable, that I have seen in China. It literally suffocates

one as it comes up in wafts through the wide gaps in the wood floor of

the room. There are no mosquitoes here, but of a certain winged insect

of various species, whose distinguishing characteristics are that the

wings are transparent and have no cases or covers, there was a

formidable army. I refer to the common little fly. There was the house

fly, the horse fly, the dangerous blue-bottle, the impecunious blow fly,

the indefatigable buzzer, and others. One's delicate skin got beset with

flies: they got in one's ears, in one's eyes, up one's nose, down one's

throat, in one's coffee, in one's bed; they bade fair to devour one

within an hour or two, and brought forth inward curses and many swishes

of the 'kerchief.

The village seemed a death-trap.

Glancing comprehensively at one another as I entered the higher end of

the town, a party of reveling tea-drinkers hastily pulled some cash from

their satchels to settle accounts, and made a general rush into the

street, where they awaited noisily the approach of a strangely wondrous

and imposing spectacle, one that had not been seen in those parts for

many days. The tramper, tired as he could be, at length approached, but

the crowd had increased so enormously that the road was completely

blocked. Tradesmen with their portable workshops, pedlars with their

cumbersome gear and pack-horses could not pass, but had to wait for

their turn; there were not even any tortuous by-streets in this place

whereby they might reach their destination. Children lost themselves in

the crush, and went about crying for their mothers. A party of

travelers, newly arrived from the south by caravan route, got wedged

with their worn-out horses and mules in the thick of the mob, and could

not move an inch. As far as the eye could reach the blue-clad throng

heaved restlessly to and fro under the blaze of the brilliant sun which

harassed everyone in the valley, and, moving slowly and majestically in

the midst of them all, came the foreigner. As they caught sight of me,

my sandalled feet, and the retinue following on wearily in the wake, the

populace set up an ecstatic yell of ferocious applause and turned their

faces towards the inn, in the doorway of which one of my soldier-men was

holding forth on points of more or less delicacy respecting my good or

bad nature and my British connection. At that moment, the huge human

mass began to move in one predetermined direction, and then a couple of

mandarins in their chairs joined the swarming rabble. I had to sit down

on the step for five minutes whilst my boy, with commendable energy,

cleared these two mandarins, who had come from Chen-tu and were on their

way to the capital, out of the best room, because his master wanted it.

As he finished speaking, there came a loud crashing noise and a

shout--my pony had landed out just once again, and banged in one side of

a chair belonging to these traveling officials. They met me with noisy

and derisive greetings, which were returned with a straight and

penetrating look.

No less than fifty degrees was the thermometrical difference in

Ta-shui-tsing and Kiang-ti. Here it was stifling. Cattle stood in

stagnant water, ducks were envied, my room with the sun on it became

intolerable, and I sought refuge by the river; my butter was too liquid

to spread; coolies were tired as they rested outside the tea-houses,

having not a cash to spend; my pony stood wincing, giving sharp shivers

to his skin, and moving his tail to clear off the flies and his hind

legs to clear off men. As for myself, I could have done with an iced

soda or a claret cup.

Very early in the morning, despite malaria shivers, I made my way over

the beautiful suspension bridge which here graces the Niu Lan,[X] a

tributary of the Yangtze, up to the high hills beyond.

This bridge at Kiang-ti is one hundred and fifty feet by twelve,

protected at one end by a couple of monkeys carved in stone, whilst the

opposite end is guarded by what are supposed to be, I believe, a couple

of lions--and not a bad representation of them either, seeing that the

workmen had no original near at hand to go by.

From here the ascent over a second range of mountains is made by

tortuous paths that wind along the sides of the hills high above the

stream below, and at other times along the river-bed. The river is

followed in a steep ascent, a sort of climbing terrace, from which the

water leaps in delightful cascades and waterfalls. A four-hour climb

brings one, after terrific labor, to the mouth of the picturesque pass

of Ya-ko-t'ang at 7,500 feet. In the quiet of the mountains I took my

midday meal; there was about the place an awe-inspiring stillness. It

was grand but lonely, weird rather than peaceful, so that one was glad

to descend again suddenly to the river, tracing it through long

stretches of plain and barren valley, after which narrow paths lead up

again to the small village of Yi-che-shïn, considerably below

Ya-ko-t'ang. It is the sudden descents and ascents which astonish one in

traveling in this region, and whether climbing or dropping, one always

reaches a plain or upland which would delude one into believing that he

is almost at sea-level, were it not for the towering mountains that all

around keep one hemmed in in a silent stillness, and the rarefied air.

Yi-che-shïn, for instance, standing at this altitude of considerably

over 6,000 feet, is in the center of a tableland, on which are numerous

villages, around which the fragrance of the broad bean in flower and the

splendid fertility now and again met with makes it extremely pleasant to

walk--it is almost a series of English cottage gardens. Here the weather

was like July in England--or what one likes to imagine July should be in

England--dumb, dreaming, hot, lazy, luxurious weather, in which one

should do as he pleases, and be pleased with what he does. As I toiled

along, my useless limb causing me each day more trouble, I felt I should

like to lie down on the grass, with stones 'twixt head and shoulders for

my pillow, and repose, as Nature was reposing, in sovereign strength.

But I was getting weaker! I saw, as I passed, gardens of purple and gold

and white splendor; the sky was at its bluest, the clouds were full,

snowy, mountainous.

Then on again to varying scenes.

Inns were not frequent, and were poor and wretched. The country was all

red sandstone, and devoid of all timber, till, descending into a lovely

valley, the path crossed an obstructing ridge, and then led out into a

beautiful park all green and sweet. The country was full of color. It

put a good taste in one's mouth, it impressed one as a heaven-sent means

of keeping one cheerful in sad dilemma. The gardens, the fields, the

skies, the mountains, the sunset, the light itself--all were full of

color, and earth and heaven seemed of one opinion in the harmony of the

reds, the purples, the drabs, the blacks, the browns, the bright blues,

and the yellows. Birds were as tame as they were in the Great Beginning;

they came under the table as I ate, and picked up the crumbs without

fear. Peasant people sat under great cedars, planted to give shade to

the travelers, and bade one feel at home in his lonely pilgrimage. Then

one felt a peculiar feeling--this feeling will arise in any

traveler--when, surmounting some hill range in the desert road, one

descries, lying far below, embosomed in its natural bulwarks, the fair

village, the resting-place, the little dwelling-place of men, where one

is to sleep. But when towards nightfall, as the good red sun went down,

I was led, weary and done-up, into one of the worst inns it had been my

misfortune to encounter, a thousand other thoughts and feelings united

in common anathema to the unenterprising community.

Tea was bad, rice we could not get, and all night long the detestable

smells from the wood fires choked our throats and blinded our eyes;

glad, therefore, was I, despite the heavy rain, to take a hurried and

early departure the next morning, descending a thousand feet to a river,

rising quite as suddenly to a height of 8,500 feet.

Now the road went over a mountain broad and flat, where traveling in the

sun was extremely pleasant--or, rather, would have been had I been fit.

Pack-horses, laden clumsily with their heavy loads of Puerh tea,

Manchester goods, oil and native exports from Yün-nan province, passed

us on the mountain-side, and sometimes numbers of these willing but

ill-treated animals were seen grazing in the hollows, by the wayside,

their backs in almost every instance cruelly lacerated by the continuous

rubbing of the wooden frames on which their loads were strapped. For

cruelty to animals China stands an easy first; love of animals does not

enter into their sympathies at all. I found this not to be the case

among the Miao and the I-pien, however; and the tribes across the

Yangtze below Chao-t'ong, locally called the Pa-pu, are, as a matter of

fact, fond of horses, and some of them capable horsemen.

The journey across these mountains has no perils. One may step aside a

few feet with no fear of falling a few thousand, a danger so common in

most of the country from Sui-fu downwards. The scenery is

magnificent--range after range of mountains in whatever direction you

look, nothing but mountains of varying altitudes. And the patches of

wooded slopes, alternating with the red earth and more fertile green

plots through which streams flow, with rolling waterfalls, picturesque

nooks and winding pathways, make pictures to which only the gifted

artist's brush could do justice. Often, gazing over the sunlit

landscape, in this land "South of the Clouds," one is held spellbound by

the intense beauty of this little-known province, and one wonders what

all this grand scenery, untouched and unmarred by the hand of man, would

become were it in the center of a continent covered by the ubiquitous

globe-trotter.

No country in the world more than West China possesses mountains of

combined majesty and grace. Rocks, everywhere arranged in masses of a

rude and gigantic character, have a ruggedness tempered by a singular

airiness of form and softness of environment, in a climate favorable in

some parts to the densest vegetation, and in others wild and barren. One

is always in sight of mountains rising to fourteen thousand feet or

more, and constantly scaling difficult pathways seven or eight or nine

thousand feet above the sea. And in the loneliness of a country where

nothing has altered very much the handiwork of God, an awe-inspiring

silence pervades everything. Bold, grey cliffs shoot up here through a

mass of verdure and of foliage, and there white cottages, perched in

seemingly inaccessible positions, glisten in the sun on the colored

mountain-sides. You saunter through stony hollows, along straight

passes, traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rocks, now

winding through broken, shaggy chasms and huge, wandering fragments, now

suddenly emerging into some emerald valley, where Peace, long

established, seems to repose sweetly in the bosom of Strength.

Everywhere beauty alternates wonderfully with grandeur. Valleys close in

abruptly, intersected by huge mountain masses, the stony water-worn

ascent of which is hardly passable.

Yes, Yün-nan is imperatively a country first of mountains, then of

lakes. The scenery, embodying truly Alpine magnificence with the minute

sylvan beauty of Killarney or of Devonshire, is nowhere excelled in the

length and breadth of the Empire.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote U: The incredulous of my readers may question, and rightly so,

"Then where did he get his saddle?" So I must explain that I met just

out of Sui-fu a Danish gentleman (also a traveler) who wished to sell a

pony and its trappings. As I had the arrangement with my boy that I

would provide him with a conveyance, and did not like the idea of seeing

him continually in a chair and his wealthy master trotting along on

foot, I bought it for my boy's use. He used the saddle until we reached

Chao-t'ong.]

[Footnote V: A new inn has been built since.--E.J.D.]

[Footnote W: Pronounced Djang-di. Famous throughout Western China for

its terrible hill, one of the most difficult pieces of country in the

whole of the west.]

[Footnote X: This river, the Niu Lan, comes from near Yang-lin, one

day's march from Yün-nan-fu. It is being followed down by two American

engineers as the probable route for a new railway, which it is proposed

should come out to the Yangtze some days north of Kiang-ti.]

CHAPTER XII.

_Yün-nan's chequered career_. _Switzerland of China_. _At

Hong-sh[=i]h-ai_. _China's Golden Age in the past_. _The conservative

instinct of the Chinese_. _How to quiet coolies_. _Roads_. _Dangers of

ordinary travel in wet season_. _K'ung-shan and its mines_.

_Tong-ch'uan-fu, an important mining centre_. _English and German

machinery_. _Methods of smelting_. _Protestants and Romanists in

Yün-nan_. _Arrival at Tong-ch'uan-fu_. _Missionaries set author's broken

arm_. _Trio of Europeans_. _Author starts for the provincial capital_.

_Abandoning purpose of crossing China on foot_. _Arm in splints_. _Curious

incident_. _At Lai-t'eo-po_. _Malaria returns_. _Serious illness of

author_. _Delirium_. _Devotion of the missionaries_. _Death expected.

Innkeeper's curious attitude_. _Recovery_. _After-effects of malaria.

Patient stays in Tong-ch'uan-fu for several months_. _Then completes his

walking tour_.

Yün-nan has had a checkered career ever since it became a part of the

empire. In the thirteenth century Kublai Khan, the invincible warrior,

annexed this Switzerland to China; and how great his exploits must have

been at the time of this addition to the land of the Manchus might be

gathered from the fact that all the tribes of the Siberian ice-fields,

the deserts of Asia, together with the country between China and the

Caspian Sea, acknowledged his potent sway--or at least so tradition

says. She is sometimes right.

My journey continuing across more undulating country brought me at

length to Hong-shïh-ai (Red Stone Cliff), a tiny hamlet hidden away

completely in a deep recess in the mountain-side, settled in a narrow

gorge, the first house of which cannot be seen until within a few yards

of entry. Inn accommodation, as was usual, was by no means good. It is

characteristic of these small places that the greater the traffic the

worse, invariably, is the accommodation offered. Travelers are

continually staying here, but not one Chinese in the population is

enterprising enough to open a decent inn. They have no money to start it,

I suppose.

But it is true of the Chinese, to a greater degree than of any other

nation, that their Golden Age is in the past. Sages of antiquity spoke

with deep reverence of the more ancient ancients of the ages, and

revered all that they said and did. And the rural Chinese to-day says

that what did for the sages of olden times must do for him to-day. The

conservative instinct leads the Chinese to attach undue importance to

precedent, and therefore the people at Hong-shïh-ai, knowing that the

village has been in the same pitiable condition for generations, live by

conservatism, and make no effort whatever to improve matters.

Fire in the inn was kindled in the hollow of the ground. There was no

ventilation; the wood they burned was, as usual, green; smoke was

suffocating. My men talked well on into the night, and kept me from

sleeping, even if pain would have allowed me to. I spoke strongly, and

they, thinking I was swearing at them, desisted for fear that I should

heap upon their ancestors a few of the reviling thoughts I entertained

for them.

I should like to say a word here about the roads in this province, or

perhaps the absence of roads. They had been execrable, the worst I had

met, aggravated by heavy rains. With all the reforms to which the

province of Yün-nan is endeavoring to direct its energies, it has not

yet learned that one of the first assets of any district or country is

good roads. But this is true of the whole of the Middle Kingdom. The

contracted quarters in which the Chinese live compel them to do most of

their work in the street, and, even in a city provided with but the

narrowest passages, these slender avenues are perpetually choked by the

presence of peripatetic vendors of every kind of article of common sale

in China, and by itinerant craftsmen who have no other shop than the

street. In the capital city of the province, even, it is a matter of

some difficulty to the European to walk down the rough-paved street

after a shower of rain, so slippery do the slabs of stone become; and he

has to be alive always to the lumbering carts, whose wheels are more

solid than circular, pulled by bullocks as in the days long before the

dawn of the Christian Era. The wider the Chinese street the more abuses

can it be put to, so that travel in the broad streets of the towns is

quite as difficult as in the narrow alleys; and as these streets are

never repaired, or very rarely, they become worse than no roads at

all--that is, in dry weather.

This refers to the paved road, which, no matter what its faults, is

certainly passable, and in wet weather is a boon. There is, however,

another kind of road--a mud road, and with a vengeance muddy.

An ordinary mud or earth road is usually only wide enough for a couple

of coolies to pass, and in this province, as it is often necessary

(especially in the Yün-nan-fu district) for one cart to pass another,

the farmer, to prevent trespass on his crops, digs around them deep

ditches, resembling those which are dug for the reception of gas mains.

In the rainy season the fields are drained into the roads, which at

times are constantly under water, and beyond Yün-nan-fu, on my way to

Tali-fu, I often found it easier and more speedy to tramp bang across a

rice field, taking no notice of where the road ought to be. By the time

the road has sunk a few feet below the level of the adjacent land, it is

liable to be absolutely useless as a thoroughfare; it is actually a

canal, but can be neither navigated nor crossed. There are some roads

removed a little from the main roads which are quite dangerous, and it

is not by any means an uncommon thing to hear of men with their loads

being washed away by rivers where in the dry season there had been the

roads.

The great lines of Chinese travel, so often impassable, might be made

permanently passable if the governor of a province chose to compel the

several district magistrates along the line to see that these important

arteries are kept free from standing water, with ditches in good order

at all seasons. But for the village roads--during my travels over which

I have come across very few that could from a Western standpoint be

called roads--there is absolutely no hope until such time as the Chinese

village may come dimly to the apprehension that what is for the

advantage of the one is for the advantage of all, and that wise

expenditure is the truest economy--an idea of which it has at the

present moment as little conception as of the average thought of the

Englishman.

A hundred li to the east of Hong-shiïh-ai, over two impassable mountain

ranges, are some considerable mines, with antiquated brass and copper

smelting works, and this place, K'ung-shan by name, with Tong-ch'uan-fu,

forms an important center. As is well known, all copper of Yün-nan goes

to Peking as the Government monopoly, excepting the enormous amount

stolen and smuggled into every town in the province.[Y]

The smelting is of the roughest, though they are at the present moment

laying in English machinery, and the Chinese in charge is under the

impression that he can speak English; he, however, makes a hopeless

jargon of it. This mining locality is sunk in the deepest degradation.

Men and women live more as wild beasts than as human beings, and should

any be unfortunate enough to die, their corpses are allowed to lie in

the mines. Who is there that could give his time and energy to the

removal of a dead man? Tong-ch'uan-fu should become an important town if

the rich mineral country of which it is the pivot were properly opened

up. Several times I have visited the works in this city, which, under

the charge of a small mandarin from Szech'wan, can boast only the most

primitive and inadequate machinery, of German make. A huge engine was

running as a kind of pump for the accumulation of air, which was passed

through a long thin pipe to the three furnaces in the outer courtyard.

The furnaces were mud-built, and were fed with charcoal (the most

expensive fuel in the district), the maximum of pure metal being only

1,300 catties per day. The ore, which has been roughly smelted once, is

brought from K'ung-shan, is finely smelted here, then conveyed most of

the way to Peking by pack-mule, the expense in thus handling, from the

time it leaves the mine to its destination at Peking, being several

times its market value. Nothing but copper is sought from the ore, and a

good deal of the gold and silver known to be contained is lost.

I passed an old French priest as I was going to Tong-ch'uan-fu the next

day. He was very pleased to see me, and at a small place we had a few

minutes' chat whilst we sipped our tea. In Yün-nan, I found that the

Protestants and the Romanists, although seeing very little of each

other, went their own way, maintaining an attitude of more or less

friendly indifference one towards the other.

The last day's march to Tong-ch'uan-fu is perhaps the most interesting

of this stage of my journey. Climbing over boulders and stony steps, I

reached an altitude of 8,500 feet, whence thirty li of pleasant going

awaited us all the way to Lang-wang-miao (Temple of the Dragon King).

Here I sat down and strained my eyes to catch the glimpse of the compact

little walled city, where I hoped my broken arm would be set by the

European missionaries. The traveler invariably hastens his pace here,

expecting to run down the hill and across the plain in a very short

space; but as the time passed, and I slowly wended my way along the

difficult paths through the rice fields, I began to realize that I had

been duped, and that it was farther than it seemed. Two blushing

damsels, maids goodly to look upon, gave me the sweetest of smiles as I

strode across the bodies of some fat pigs which roamed at large in the

outskirts of the city, the only remembrance I have to mar the

cleanliness of the place.

At Tong-ch'uan-fu the Rev. A. Evans and his extremely hospitable wife

set my arm and did everything they could--as much as a brother and

sister could have done--to help me, and to make my short stay with them

a most happy remembrance. It was, however, destined that I should be

their guest for many months, as shall hereinafter be explained.

* * * * *

A trio of Europeans might have been seen on the morning of Monday, May

10, 1909, leaving Tong-ch'uan-fu on the road to Yün-nan-fu, whither the

author was bound. Mr. and Mrs. Evans, who, as chance would have it, were

going to Ch'u-tsing-fu, were to accompany me for two days before turning

off in a southerly direction when leaving the prefecture.

It was a fine spring morning, balmy and bonny. It was decided that I

should ride a pony, and this I did, abandoning my purpose of crossing

China on foot with some regret. I was not yet fit, had my broken arm in

splints, but rejoiced that at Yün-nan-fu I should be able to consult a

European medical man. Comparatively an unproductive task--and perhaps a

false and impossible one--would it be for me to detail the happenings of

the few days next ensuing. I should be able not to look at things

themselves, but merely at the shadow of things--and it would serve no

profitable end.

Suffice it to say that two days out, about midday, a special messenger

from the capital stopped Mr. Evans and handed him a letter. It was to

tell him that his going to Ch'u-tsing-fu would be of no use, as the

gentleman he was on his way to meet would not arrive, owing to altered

plans. After consulting his wife, he hesitated whether they should go

back to Tong-ch'uan-fu, or come on to the capital with me. The latter

course was decided upon, as I was so far from well--I learned this some

time afterwards. And now the story need not be lengthened.

At Lai-t'eo-po (see first section of the second book of this volume),

malaria came back, and an abnormal temperature made me delirious. The

following day I could not move, and it was not until I had been there

six days that I was again able to be moved. During this time, Mr. and

Mrs. Evans nursed me day and night, relieving each other for rest, in a

terrible Chinese inn--not a single moment did they leave me. The third

day they feared I was dying, and a message to that effect was sent to

the capital, informing the consul. Meanwhile malaria played fast and

loose, and promised a pitiable early dissolution. My kind, devoted

friends were fearful lest the innkeeper would have turned me out into

the roadway to die--the foreigner's spirit would haunt the place for

ever and a day were I allowed to die inside.

But I recovered.

It was a graver, older, less exuberant walker across China that

presently arose from his flea-ridden bed of sickness, and began to make

a languid personal introspection. I had developed a new sensitiveness,

the sensitiveness of an alien in an alien land, in the hands of

new-made, faithful friends. Without them I should have been a waif of

all the world, helpless in the midst of unconquerable surroundings,

leading to an inevitable destiny of death. I seemed declimatized,

denationalized, a luckless victim of fate and morbid fancy.

It was malaria and her workings, from which there was no escape.

Malaria is supposed by the natives of the tropic belt to be sent to

Europeans by Providence as a chastening for the otherwise insupportable

energy of the white man. Malignant malaria is one of Nature's

watch-dogs, set to guard her shrine of peace and ease and to punish

woeful intruders. And she had brought me to China to punish me. As is

her wont, Nature milked the manhood out of me, racked me with aches and

pains, shattered me with chills, scorched me with fever fires, pursued

me with despairing visions, and hag-rode me without mercy. Accursed

newspapers, with their accursed routine, came back to me; all the

stories and legends that I had ever heard, all the facts that I had ever

learnt, came to me in a fashion wonderfully contorted and distorted;

sensations welded together in ghastly, brain-stretching conglomerates,

instinct with individuality and personality, human but torturingly

inhuman, crowded in upon me. The barriers dividing the world of ideas,

sensations, and realities seemed to have been thrown down, and all

rushed into my brain like a set of hungry foxhounds. The horror of

effort and the futility of endeavor permeated my very soul. My weary,

helpless brain was filled with hordes of unruly imaginings; I was

masterless, panic-driven, maddened, and had to abide for weeks--yea,

months--with a fever-haunted soul occupying a fever-rent and weakened

body.

At Yün-nan-fu, whither I arrived in due course after considerable

struggling, dysentery laid me up again, and threatened to pull me nearer

to the last great brink. For weeks, as the guest of my friend, Mr. C.A.

Fleischmann, I stayed here recuperating, and subsequently, on the advice

of my medical attendant, Dr. A. Feray, I went back to Tong-ch'uan-fu,

among the mountains, and spent several happy months with Mr. and Mrs.

Evans.

Had it not been for their brotherly and sisterly zeal in nursing me,

which never flagged throughout my illness, future travelers might have

been able to point to a little grave-mound on the hill-tops, and have

given a chance thought to an adventurer whom the fates had handled

roughly. But there was more in this than I could see; my destiny was

then slowly shaping.

Throughout the rains, and well on into the winter, I stayed with Mr. and

Mrs. Evans, and then continued my walking tour, as is hereafter

recorded.

During this period of convalescence I studied the Chinese language and

traveled considerably in the surrounding country. Tong-ch'uan-fu is a

city of many scholars, and it was not at all difficult for me to find a

satisfactory teacher. He was an old man, with a straggly beard, about 70

years of age, and from him I learned much about life in general, in

addition to his tutoring in Chinese. I had the advantage also of close

contact with the missionaries with whom I was living, and on many

occasions was traveling companion of Samuel Pollard, one of the finest

Chinese linguists in China at that time. So that with a greatly

increased knowledge of Chinese, I was henceforth able to hold my own

anywhere. During this period, too, many days were profitably passed at

the Confucian Temple, a picture of which is given in this volume.

END OF BOOK I.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote Y: In the capital there is a street called "Copper Kettle

Lane," where one is able to buy almost anything one wants in copper and

brass. Hundreds of men are engaged in the trade, and yet it is

"prohibited." These "Copper Kettle Lanes" are found in many large

cities.--E.J.D.]

BOOK II.

The second part of my trip was from almost the extreme east to the

extreme west of Yün-nan--from Tong-ch'uan-fu to Bhamo, in British Burma.

The following was the route chosen, over the main road in some

instances, and over untrodden roads in others, just as circumstances

happened:

Tong-ch'uan-fu to Yün-nan-fu (the capital city) 520 li.

Yün-nan-fu to Tali-fu 905 li.

Tali-fu to Tengyueh (Momien) 855 li.

Tengyueh to Bhamo (Singai) 280 English

miles approx.

I also made a rather extended tour among the Miao tribes, in country

untrodden by Europeans, except by missionaries working among the people.

FIRST JOURNEY

TONG-CH'UAN-FU TO THE CAPITAL