FROM PEKIN TO CALAIS BY LAND.
LONDON
PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LIMITED,
ST. JOHN’S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL ROAD.
[Illustration: OUR CARAVAN (GOBI DESERT).——DAWN.]
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FROM PEKIN TO CALAIS BY LAND
BY
H. DE WINDT.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP.
“Plus Je vis l’étranger, plus J’aimai ma patrie.”——_De Belloy._
LONDON—CHAPMAN AND HALL,
LIMITED.
1889.
[All rights reserved.]
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TO
THE RAJA OF SARAWAK, G.C.M.G.,
IN REMEMBRANCE OF MANY
PLEASANT HOURS OF TRAVEL SPENT IN HIS
DOMINIONS IN THE ISLAND OF BORNEO.
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PREFACE.
———————
THERE are two Englishmen at present living in Shanghai who have
travelled overland from Europe to China. I was told, when there, that
these gentlemen are continually receiving letters from England asking
for information relative to the journey from Petersburg to Pekin and
_vice versâ_, and in the Gobi Desert and Siberia.
It is mainly owing to this circumstance that I publish these pages, for
I fear the general reader will find little to interest him in this
record of our monotonous pilgrimage through Europe and Asia. I feel that
an apology is needed for its publication, and need hardly say that it
does not aspire to the title of a book of travel, being merely a record
of my impressions in the less civilized parts of China, and in that
weird and melancholy country, more perhaps from associations than
aspect, Siberia.
The voyage is, though somewhat original, sadly devoid of interest. Urga
and Irkoutsk are, no doubt, well worth seeing, but a passing glimpse of
these unique cities far from repays the discomfort, not to say hardship,
which must be undergone on the caravan route.
I can only trust this book may deter others from following my example,
and shall then have some satisfaction in knowing that its pages have not
been written in vain.
M. Victor Meignan concludes his amusing work “De Paris à Pekin par
terre,” thus:——
“N’allez pas là! C’est la morale de ce livre!”
Let the reader benefit by our experience.
H. DE W.
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CONTENTS.
———————
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
GRAVESEND TO PEKIN 1
CHAPTER II.
PEKIN 60
CHAPTER III.
PEKIN TO KALGAN 115
CHAPTER IV.
KALGAN, OR CHANG-CHIA-KOW 147
CHAPTER V.
THE DESERT OF GOBI 187
CHAPTER VI.
OURGA TO KIAKHTA 268
CHAPTER VII.
KIAKHTA TO IRKOUTSK 322
CHAPTER VIII.
IRKOUTSK 385
CHAPTER IX.
IRKOUTSK (continued) 422
CHAPTER X.
IRKOUTSK TO TOMSK 471
CHAPTER XI.
TOMSK 573
CHAPTER XII.
PERM TO CALAIS 626
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
A Caravan Frontispiece
A Street in Tartar City——Pekin 110
A Mule Litter 140
Da-Hun-Go 184
Ourouni 214
My Camel Cart 222
An awkward Moment 252
A Street Prayer-wheel at Ourga 288
Our Tarantass with “Troika” 352
A Village Ostrog——Convicts on the March 409
A Siberian Criminal Convict 448
A Night in a Post-house 478
The Post-house at Rasgonnaia 493
A Siberian Village Street 496
A Prison Barge on the Obi River 614
MAP.
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FROM PEKIN TO CALAIS BY LAND.
CHAPTER I.
GRAVESEND TO PEKIN.
“FROM China to France overland! Why, surely it’s impossible. I thought
one could only get to China by sea!”
Such was the remark made by a young lady whom I had the honour of taking
down to dinner a few days previous to embarking upon the voyage of which
I am about to narrate my experiences. Although I trust there are not
many educated persons who, like my fair friend, are unaware that Pekin
and Paris are actually undivided by sea, I imagine there are but few
who, if put down at Calais, and told to find their way overland to
Pekin, would know how to set about it, fewer still who have any
practical knowledge of that vast but comparatively unknown country
separating the Chinese Empire from Russia proper, Siberia.
It had been a long-projected voyage. Lancaster, (a fellow-traveller in
many lands,) and I had talked it over for at least two years before: in
the early spring of 1887, we finally decided to put our project into
execution, and start for the great unknown.
Unlike most voyages which in these days of travel are an accomplished
fact as soon as decided upon, this one was fraught with innumerable
delays and annoyances. Our difficulties commenced at the very outset,
for nowhere in London, or indeed anywhere else, could I glean the
smallest information respecting the journey; the only book I succeeded
in finding on the subject being one written by John Bell, the English
traveller, in 1788, but, as may be imagined, the information contained
therein was somewhat obsolete.
Nothing more modern, however, could I procure. Jules Verne’s amusing and
clever book, “Michel Strogoff,” deals largely with Irkoutsk, Lake
Baikal, and other regions we were about to traverse, but I hardly felt
justified in taking that versatile author as a travelling-guide. That we
landed at Tientsin——China——and saw the sea again at Calais——France——was
all we definitely knew; of the time it took to do, or how the journey
was to be accomplished, we were quite in the dark.
About a week before our departure, however, I had the good fortune to
meet a gentleman connected with the Russian Embassy in London, and to
him I confided our difficulties. M. de ———— was indeed a friend in need,
for in less than twenty-four hours our difficulties had vanished like
snow in the sunshine. Not only was the route from Pekin to Moscow
clearly laid down for us, but we were provided, in addition, with a
letter of introduction from M. de Staal, the Russian Ambassador in
London, to the Russian Minister at Pekin. Had it not been for this, I
doubt whether we should ever have got further than the celestial city.
The route (we now found) was as follows: From Shanghai to Pekin by
steamer and house-boat, from Pekin to Kalgan (or the Great Wall of
China) by mule litter, and thence across the Great Gobi Desert to
Kiakhta, the Russo-Chinese frontier, by camel caravan. From Kiakhta to
Tomsk, _viâ_ Lake Baikal, Irkoutsk, and Krasnoiarsk by tarantass or
Russian post carriage, and thence by steam communication on the Obi and
Irtish rivers to Tobolsk and Tiumen. From the latter place our journey
was easy enough. Four days’ sail and seven of steam would bring us to
Moscow, practically the end of our voyage. As to the time the journey
would take, no one, even at the Russian Embassy, seemed to know. So much
in this journey depends (as we afterwards found) upon the weather, the
facility of obtaining camels at the Great Wall, and last, but not least,
the state of the roads in Siberia. We were starting at a good time,
however, and with luck might expect to reach Moscow in the early autumn.
If detained in Siberia by floods or other casualties, we might not
arrive in Europe till the new year. This was all we could ascertain, and
with this somewhat scanty information were forced to be content.
The outfit question did not trouble us much. A Terai hat, two or three
tweed suits, and an unlimited supply of cigars and tobacco met our
requirements. Everything we took went comfortably into two small-sized
leather portmanteaus. A rifle, fowling-piece and brace of
double-barrelled pistols (not revolvers) were also taken, and this
completed our wardrobe and armoury. I often wonder what the West End
outfitters would do were it not for the yearly increasing number of
Globe-Trotters. Be it understood I mean Globe-Trotters, not travellers,
for there is a vast difference between the two. I have often been amused
at the utterly useless articles forced upon the unhappy G. T. by the
Bond Street or Piccadilly haberdasher, who probably knows rather less of
the country his customer is about to visit than the Khan of Khiva does
of Pall Mall. The Globe-Trotter _pur et simple_ is seldom (so far as I
have seen) of high intellectual attainments, but one I met a few years
ago, while on a voyage to Sydney, eclipsed everything. He had provided
himself with enough thick clothes and furs to fit out an expedition to
the North Pole. On asking him the reason, he replied, “Oh! we shall get
to Sydney at Christmas, you know, and it will be so awfully cold after
the tropics!”
Our final preparations completed, we took passage for Shanghai, and the
rainy, gusty morning of the 7th of April, 1887, saw us steaming down
channel with half a gale of wind in our teeth, looking our last on the
white cliffs of England, while to our left was just visible the
low-lying coast of France, the goal we hoped to reach in safety, before
the following winter, and from which we were separated by the length of
Europe and Asia.
I will not inflict a description of the voyage out upon the reader. It
would be superfluous in these days of travel, when a man secures his
berth for Sydney or Yokohama with much the same indifference as twenty
years ago he took a ticket for Rome or Vienna. The life on board a P.
and O. ship is familiar to most of us. Suffice it to say that our
fellow-passengers were of the usual kind: the Colonial bishop, who
buried himself in a deep theological work before we had cleared Land’s
End, only to emerge from it at Colombo; the Hong Kong merchant and his
family living on the usual terms of armed neutrality with the Indian
Civil Service official and his wife, an Indian Major-General, a
sprinkling of bank clerks and coffee-planters, two or three soldiers
rejoining their regiments, and a pretty grass widow, returning to her
husband, an Indian Judge. These, with half a dozen more or less
uninteresting young ladies “going out to be married,” completed our
party. The ages of the latter seemed to increase in proportion to the
distance they were going. The one whose fortunate fiancé resided at Hong
Kong must have been fifty at the very least. I had almost forgotten a
nearly perfect specimen of the Globe-Trotter, who joined us, resplendent
in purple and fine linen, at Suez; a young gentleman somewhat inclined
to take more wine than was good for him, and who was going abroad for
the good of his health——presumably also for that of his friends and
relations at home.
There is a very false impression existing among those who have never
travelled in one, as to the delights of a voyage in a P. and O., and the
endless gaiety and amusement on board these floating hotels. I have made
at least a dozen voyages by this particular line, and must confess that
the gaiety and amusement, if it ever existed, has escaped my
observation. Perhaps I have been unfortunate, but I must own that I have
invariably found the life on board these ships deplorably dull. The mere
fact of being cabined, cribbed, confined, with three score of one’s
fellow-creatures, the majority of whom have not a thought or feeling in
common, is surely sufficient to account for a lack of enjoyment. At the
same time, to the casual onlooker, who is wise enough to keep out of
them, the petty rows and scandals on board ship are amusing enough. How
Major-General Jones has had the audacity to take the seat next the
captain at dinner, instead of Commissioner Brown, who, as everybody
ought to know, if they don’t, always takes precedence of him at
Brandypore; and how Mrs. Commissioner Brown has felt compelled to cut
Mrs. Major-General Jones in consequence. How the wife of Surgeon
Squills, of the Bengal Staff Corps, has forbidden her daughter to speak
to the third mate, and that matron’s subsequent mortification on
discovering that the tabooed officer is the second son of an Earl. How,
in our case, one of the future blushing brides (the Hong Kong one) only
wished that poor dear Judge could see how his wife went on, although to
unbiassed eyes, that cheery little lady’s sole crime consisted in being
more than pretty, and absurdly good-natured. How the Globe-trotter
overcome by (let us say) the heat in the Red Sea offered to fight the
captain for a dozen of champagne on his own quarter-deck,——all this
could I descant upon at length, but fear lest I weary the reader,
forgetting that a good joke at sea is but a sorry jest ashore.
Light and favourable winds favoured us to Malta, that shadeless,
bustling rock so happily christened by Byron “The little Military
Hot-House.” A few hours here allowed of a stroll ashore and a visit to
the mess of that cheeriest and best of regiments, the “Black Watch.”
Then, after dinner at the club, and a chat over old Cairo-days, off
again in the moonlight to the _Bombay_, and, three days later, Port
Said. Here an unexpected delay awaited us. The P. and O. S.S. _Rome_ had
gone ashore (the commencement of a series of disasters for the Company:)
which meant a detention of five days, at least, at the glary, unsavoury
canal port.
Small-pox was raging in this den of publicans and sinners, and several
cases having occurred on the homeward-bound P. and O. ships, we were
requested by the captain not to land, if we could possibly help it,
during our stay. A prospect of five days cooped up in an atmosphere of
coal-dust and sand, to say nothing of the noisome odours off the shore,
was anything but inviting, and eight o’clock the next evening saw us
sitting down to dinner in the cool, comfortable dining-room of
Shepherd’s Hotel, Cairo.
There is a charm about Cairo peculiar to itself. Nowhere else do we find
that strange mixture of western civilization and eastern barbarism that
exists in the Egyptian capital, which seems, by the way, to be yearly
increasing in popularity as a winter resort. Everything in the place is
original and therefore charming, and, although surrounded with every
European luxury and comfort, so utterly unlike Europe.
A telegram was received during our stay here, announcing the total loss
of the P. and O. _Tasmania_, and the drowning, among others, of her
captain, poor Perrins, than whom no more popular commander or smarter
sailor ever lived. We were continually seeing or hearing of wrecks on
our voyage out. Besides passing three lately sunken vessels in the Red
Sea, we got news at Colombo of the largest ship in the Nord-Deutscher
Lloyd line having gone down off Cape Guardafui; at Shanghai of the
sinking of the M.M. Steamer _Menzaleh_ between that port and Japan.
We had a favourable passage through that exaggerated bugbear the Red
Sea, which, by the way, I have found cooler three times out of four than
the Indian Ocean. Aden was not touched at, and a quick run of nine days
brought us to Colombo, where we bade adieu to the _Bombay_, which was
proceeding to Calcutta, and embarked on board the _Piacenza_, a vessel
considerably smaller but as comfortable in every respect as the
leviathan we had left.
Twenty-four hours here gave us time for a run out to Mount Lavinia,
where we received a hearty welcome from the jovial German Herr
(surrounded, as usual, by a menagerie of domestic pets) who manages that
picturesque seaside hostelry. A comfortable dinner in the breezy _salle
à manger_ in full view of the cool blue sea and yellow sands, coffee and
a quiet cigar in the verandah, were a pleasant change from the stuffy
saloon of the _Bombay_. Then back again to Colombo in the moonlight,
along the palm-fringed road, heavy with the scent of jungle flowers,
refreshed inwardly and outwardly, and ready for the long weary days of
sea to Shanghai.
We had the _Piacenza_ pretty well to ourselves. There were but twenty
first-class passengers in all, among them two pretty girls fresh from
Devonshire, with the good looks, and clear, fresh complexions that
county alone seems able to produce. It seemed a sin so to take them to a
clime notorious for stealing the roses from the youngest and fairest
faces. In the second class were some ten or twelve Protestant female
missionaries bound for North China, whose religious zeal was
unparalleled. They were for ever hunting up lost sheep among the
passengers, hot as it was. I do not fancy, however, that their efforts
were very successful. Only one of them made converts. She was eighteen,
and very good-looking.
The remainder of our voyage was uneventful and tedious enough. Hot,
sleepy little Penang; Singapore a vision of green hills and red dust, a
sickly odour of pepper, cocoa, nut-oil, and drains. Hong Kong, for all
the world like some Spanish or Italian town with its white terraces, and
coloured venetians, nestling in masses of dark green foliage at the foot
of the bare rugged peak; all these were passed without incident worthy
of mention excepting the meeting of the fifty-year-old bride with her
fiancé at the latter port, which was affecting in the extreme. It was a
relief to find that, at any rate, the bridegroom was something near her
own age. Five days later, on the 21st of May, six weeks to a day since
leaving Gravesend, we dropped our anchor in the broad, muddy waters of
the Yangzekiang, whence a small tug conveyed us in six hours up the
narrower and still muddier Woosung river to Shanghai.
Shanghai cannot be called a picturesque place. Vast alluvial plains of
rice and cotton surround it on every side, while the view from the bund
or esplanade fronting the river, is not unlike the Thames at Blackwall,
with its flat banks, forests of masts, and grey stone wharves and
warehouses. The town itself consists of three distinct settlements,
English, French, and American, divided one from another by small
tributaries of the Woosung river. These settlements, quite distinct from
the native Chinese city, were formed by their respective governments in
1846, and occupy a space of ground rather more than a mile square.
Shanghai, in 1883, contained a population of four hundred thousand, of
whom two thousand were foreign residents, and an idea of its commercial
importance may be gained by the fact that its trade in silk, tea, and
opium now equals thirty to forty million sterling value of imports and
exports.
Were I ever condemned to live in the far East (which Heaven forbid), I
should certainly choose Shanghai for a residence, for besides its other
advantages, there is a marked absence among its European inhabitants of
the ill-nature and scandal that makes anything but a very short stay in
other colonial settlements almost intolerable to those whose occupation
does not compel them to reside there. Whether it is the effect of the
climate on the liver, I know not, but for envy, hatred, and malice
commend me to the European communities of China and the Straits
Settlements.
There is a capital club (one of the best if not _the_ very best in the
East) at Shanghai, of which (thanks to the kindness of Mr. C————, to
whom we had an introduction) we were made honorary members, no mean
advantage, for the Shanghai hotels are by no means models of comfort or
cleanliness. We intended making a stay of at least ten days before going
on to Tientsin, the port of Pekin, for many things had to be thought of
and procured for the long journey across the Desert of Gobi, which we
now ascertained, for the first time, is nearly a thousand miles across.
There seems to be no lack of amusement at Shanghai, and the merchants
and other Europeans located there appear to have what Americans would
call a “real good time of it” all the year round——so far as regards
gaiety and sport. For those who care for it there is any amount of
shooting. In winter there is no lack of duck, teal, snipe, and other
wild fowl. Indeed from here all the way up to Pekin the country teems
with game, big and small, the former including wild boar and deer, while
further north in Manchuria are found lion, tiger, and bear. Nor is
shooting the only sport, for there is a capital race-course, polo and
cricket ground. I attended a match on the latter, in which was playing,
in Chinese dress and a pigtail (!) a lately celebrated English
cricketer, well known at Lord’s and the Oval, who had adopted the native
costume in accordance with the rules of the Mission of which he is now a
member. The loose clumsy dress did not seem to interfere with his play
much, for he was quite in his old form, and made over a hundred runs
first innings.
But the Race week is the real Shanghai carnival. At this festive season
offices and warehouses are closed, and everything given up for the
business of the meeting. Nearly all the horses engaged are Mongolian
ponies, and half the fun of the thing is getting a “hot one” down from
its native plains and keeping it dark till the day of its engagement.
The figures paid for these little animals are something fabulous. People
at home have no idea of how our countrymen live in China. “Light come,
light go,” seems to be the motto of the cheery, hospitable Shanghai
merchants, who, although they make such enormous fortunes, never seem,
to the casual visitor, to have anything to do but entertain the stranger
who has the good luck to find himself within their gates. It will be
long before I forget the kindness they showed us, although (before we
met Mr. C.) we did not know a soul in the place.
It was curious sometimes to cross the iron bridge separating them and
take a ramble from the English into the French town. It was like
crossing the English Channel——indeed, I doubt if Dover and Calais
present a more striking contrast than do the settlements of their
respective nations at Shanghai. One left the broad regular roads,
asphalte pavements and severe, business-like architecture that the
mercantile Briton takes with him wherever he goes, to emerge the other
side of the narrow stream on a boulevard, that first thought of every
colonizing Frenchman——lined with cafés, gaily striped awnings, and
little zinc tables, at which Auguste and Alphonse sat sipping their
absinthe or “Mazagran,” waited upon by bustling, white-aproned garçons.
The sleepy looking Douanier, with baggy trousers and képi, the
grass-grown cobbled streets, the dark blue enamelled plates at the
street-corners, with Rue de la Republique, Rue de Paris, &c., thereon in
large white letters, the general air of stagnation and idleness among
the population, seemed to carry one in a moment over leagues and leagues
of land and sea to some quiet provincial town in far-away France. It
needed not the tricolor floating from the mainmast of the ironclad
anchored mid-stream, off the Consulate, to tell us that we were no
longer on English ground.
The Shanghai bund and esplanade on a fine afternoon was amusing enough,
and we whiled away many a pleasant half-hour watching the motley crowd
that assemble there for a ride or drive in the cool of the evening. Here
might be seen every grade of colonial society, from the solemn and
portly merchant and his family rolling solemnly along in an
English-built landau, to the San Francisco _demi-mondaine_, all powder
and patches, dashing about in a Victoria drawn by a pair of pulling,
tearing Mongolian ponies. Europeans in buggies and on horseback,
Japanese in rikshaws, Chinese in wheelbarrows (the reader may smile, but
this is a public conveyance in Shanghai), crowds of every conceivable
nation and colour strolling under the trees by the water’s edge, the
esplanade at Shanghai on a fine evening is a sight to see and remember.
At night electric lights every twenty yards or so convert the bund into
a perfect fairyland. The inauguration of the Jablokoff system, however,
was attended with a slight _contretemps_. Crowds of natives and
Europeans turned out the first night to see the effect, but for a good
hour none was apparent. The place was wrapped in total darkness, and the
expectant crowd beginning to show signs of impatience, it was found that
the engineer had fixed the lights _above_ the trees, whence the dense
foliage very naturally obscured it, instead of under. This trifling
mistake was, however, soon rectified, and the brilliant illumination so
took the fancy of the natives that all the principal Chinese
thoroughfares are now lit by it.
The native city of Shanghai, is walled and separated from the French and
English settlements by a deep, muddy moat. Some clumsy iron cannon, said
to be the oldest in existence, are mounted upon its dilapidated
grass-grown battlements. This was our first experience of a celestial
city, and we did not, after visiting it, look forward with unalloyed
pleasure to the two hundred odd miles of country we were about to
traverse between Pekin and the Great Wall of China. But I did not then
know that Shanghai is renowned as being the dirtiest city in the Chinese
Empire, and certainly we never afterwards came across one to equal it in
this respect. Pekin itself was a paradise in comparison.
The streets of Shanghai proper are none of them more than ten feet in
breadth. Some are even considerably narrower, and the tottering,
tumble-down dwellings, the majority built of wood, bend forward on
either side until they nearly touch overhead. The thoroughfares are thus
always, even on the brightest day, in a state of semi-darkness. The
pavements, rough and uneven, are formed of huge stone slabs, some of
them, judging by the characters inscribed thereon, many hundreds of
years old. Worn away by time and use, many are broken away in parts,
revealing underneath the sewage and filth of years, which, slowly
rotting away, infects the whole city with a hot, sickly odour of
putrefaction. It was a hot, muggy day when we visited it, and the stench
from these places was something beyond description. I was not surprised
to hear that cholera and typhus number their victims by thousands at
times, and that an epidemic (of some sort or another) always exists.
Yet it seemed a busy, bustling place, and we could scarcely make our way
along the sloppy streets for the continuous stream of traffic. It was
exactly like a human bee-hive, and we should very soon have lost
ourselves without a guide in the crooked, tortuous streets that ran in
all directions like a maze, without any regard to regularity or order.
We came suddenly in the very heart of the city, upon an oasis in this
desert of filth and squalor, a space about a quarter of a mile square. A
large circular lake overhung with weeping willows occupied the centre.
Great white and yellow lilies lay here and there on the surface of the
smooth clear water, in which one could see the gold fish swimming lazily
to and fro about the thick green weeds and stems, ten or fifteen feet
deep. About fifty yards from the shore, and connected with it by a light
bamboo bridge, stood a large pagoda gorgeous in vermilion and gold, with
countless little gilt bells hung around the roof, which, with every
breath of air gave out a sweet, musical jangle. Seated in this were a
crowd of men and women, talking, laughing, and drinking tea. All were
dressed in the richest silks, the men in dark blue or plum colour, the
women in lighter shades of green, heliotrope, or orange, their necks and
arms loaded with heavy gold ornaments, their quaint, impassive,
doll-like faces thickly smeared with paint. On the banks around the lake
were booths for the sale of sweetmeats, fans, silks, cigarettes, and
jewellery, while jugglers and acrobats plied their trade among the busy
crowd, or at the little tables set out by the waterside and occupied by
noisy chattering tea-drinkers. I stood for some time watching the
curious scene, which was for all the world like a bit broken out of a
willow-pattern plate. It seemed so odd to walk suddenly out of the
filthy, sewage-laden streets into this hidden corner of cleanliness and
picturesque revelry. But China is full of such contradictions. I
afterwards discovered that we had strayed into a tea-garden (there are a
dozen such in the city) and that the pretty pagoda was used as a kind of
private box for the better classes, just as our own smart people at home
occasionally patronize the Alhambra and other music-halls to gaze at a
respectful distance on the manners and customs of the “Oi Polloi.”
The Chinese, I found, are great believers in the art of fortune-telling.
We passed on our way homewards many of the shops, or rather boxes, in
which the professors of the art received their subjects. They seemed to
have many methods, but the favourite one consists in dipping the thumb
into a piece of hot, soft, black wax, and then impressing it firmly upon
a piece of parchment or white wood. The lines thus obtained are supposed
to predict the future. The professors seemed to be doing a roaring
trade. Their fees were not extortionate; a couple of cash (about ½_d._)
each consultation.
The most important thing we now had to consider was the purchase of
stores for our journey over the “Great Hungry Desert,” as Gobi is called
by the Chinese. It was by no means easy to decide how much or how little
to take, for no one in Shanghai seemed to know whether in the eight
hundred odd miles lying between the Great Wall of China and Ourga food
of any sort or kind was procurable. However, hearing that everything in
the way of provisions was outrageously dear at Tientsin, and
unprocurable at Pekin, we decided to lay in our stock at Shanghai, and
curiously enough furnished ourselves with exactly the right amount, for
our stores failed the very day before we reached Kiakhta. The claret,
whisky, and soda-water gave out some time before, but we had plenty of
lime-juice, which made the brackish desert water drinkable.
Were I to do this journey again, I should certainly send everything of
this kind straight out from England, for the camp furniture, saddlery,
and stores we bought at Shanghai were, besides being outrageously dear,
of very inferior quality. On opening the cases in the desert, we found
at least a quarter of the provisions uneatable. The American firm who
furnished us must make a good thing of it if they do business with all
their customers on the same terms.
The operation of packing was by no means easy. As the reader is perhaps
aware, the weight on a camel’s back must be quite equally distributed on
either side, otherwise (in Mongolia at least) the animal lies down and
utterly declines to move a step. Eight strong wooden chests, with
padlocks, met all our requirements, and having made our adieus to our
hospitable friends, we embarked, the 31st of May, on the
coasting-steamer _Tungchow_ for the port of Pekin, Tientsin.
We were presented before leaving Shanghai with a so-called itinerary on
the journey we were taking, written by an Englishman resident in China,
who had travelled the caravan route from Pekin to Europe in 1872. Things
must have changed considerably, both in Mongolia and Siberia, since
those days, for almost all the book contained, including distances, was
so inaccurate and misleading that we discarded its use long before we
reached Kiakhta.
The “_Tungchow_” was more like a yacht than a cargo boat, and the run up
coast was delightful; with bright sunshine and light cool breezes,
exactly like Mediterranean weather in early spring, though the nights
were very cold, and one was glad of an overcoat. We passed daily numbers
of fishing junks, their dark brown mat-sails and bright red and yellow
banners standing out in picturesque contrast to the clear blue sea,
which often for miles round us was dotted with net corks and men in
small canoes. A gale springs up in a few minutes in these latitudes, and
during the typhoon season many of these poor fishermen, unable to get
back to the junks, are blown out to sea and drowned, their companions on
the huge, swirling craft, being, of course, unable to render them any
assistance. The captain of the _Tungchow_ told us that many lives are
lost annually in this manner.
We reached Chefoo late at night, and were therefore unable to land, as
we were off again at daybreak. This is the Brighton of Shanghai and
Pekin. There is capital bathing here, and many good hotels, which are
crowded to overflowing in the summer months by Europeans escaping from
the damp, steamy heat of Shanghai, and the no less disagreeable odours,
and “dust fogs” (I can call them nothing else) of the capital.
The coast lying between Chefoo and the mouth of the Peiho river is
strikingly like parts of Devonshire. But for the absence of houses and
bathing machines, one might have been off Torquay or Dawlish.
Precipitous red cliffs, with smooth green sward growing to their very
edges, met by broad smooth yellow sands, while here and there great
masses of rock run out for a considerable distance into the clear blue
water. Further inland neatly trimmed hedges, clumps of fir-trees, and
snug-looking farm-houses surrounded with orchards and gardens, recalled
visions of clotted cream, and pretty peasant girls in that loveliest of
all English counties, the true garden of England: Devonshire.
At daybreak on the 3rd of June we passed the celebrated Taku forts and
entered the Peiho river. It was a bright lovely morning, and as a bend
of the river hid it from our sight, and we looked at the blue sunlit
ocean for the last time, it was not without some misgivings at the long
land journey before us. The thought that when next we saw the sea, it
would be at Calais, made us realize, perhaps more than we had as yet
done, the difficulty and length of the voyage we had undertaken across
the breadth of Europe and Asia.
Unlike most rivers, the Peiho seems to widen as you ascend it, being
considerably narrower at the mouth than at Tientsin, thirty miles
inland. The town of Taku, a wretched-looking place, built for the most
part of mud houses, is by water inaccessible for five months of the
year, on account of the ice in the Peiho and Gulf of Pechili. It is a
curious fact that although Taku is so cold in winter, it never snows,
and there is usually a bright, cloudless sky and cutting north-easter
blowing. Wretched as is its appearance, Taku looks a busy place, and
contains a Chinese naval dockyard. The Taku forts commanding the
entrance to the river have been greatly strengthened during the last ten
years, the work being carried on under the personal supervision of
German officers.
We were rather puzzled, on first entering the Peiho, at what appeared in
the distance like a number of large merry-go-rounds scattered over the
flat swampy plain surrounding the town, and revolving without cessation.
It was only by the aid of glasses that we made them out to be salt-mills
worked by huge mat sails. The sea-water is pumped into the vats by the
aid of this irrigation and allowed to evaporate in the sun. The salt
which remains is then piled into large stacks and covered with thick
matting. The effect at a distance of these dozens of huge mills
revolving on the bare desolate plain with not a living object near them,
was curious in the extreme. The river scenery from Taku to Tangchow very
much resembles that of the Nile, the houses of dried mud, with their
flat roofs and terraces, the absence of trees except occasional palms,
remind one not a little of an Egyptian landscape, while the uniform dark
blue garb of the peasantry, of exactly the same shade as that worn by
the Fellaheen, heightens, at a distance, the illusion.
Although only thirty miles distant as the crow flies, Tientsin is quite
eighty by river from Taku, for the Peiho is, towards the mouth, the most
tortuous river in the world. It is not unusual to steam steadily on for
an hour, and find yourself, at the expiration of that time only a few
hundred yards from where you started. The effect produced by the
shipping ascending and descending the river is very odd, the intricate
bends of the river giving the steamers the appearance of moving about on
dry land. The marshes I have mentioned do not extend for more than about
ten miles inland. They are then succeeded by rich fertile plains of rice
and cotton irrigated in the Egyptian manner by means of “shadoofs” from
the waters of the Peiho. The country seemed pretty thickly populated.
Some of the mud villages by the water side must have contained quite a
thousand inhabitants, but in China, where the population is so enormous,
this is looked upon as a small hamlet!
There is a large coal-wharf a short distance from Taku, where the coal
from the Kai Ping mine, fifty miles distant, is brought by means of a
small railway and barges. The coal, though rather dusty, is excellent
for steamer purposes, and the private company working it make a very
fair percentage. It has always seemed curious to me that coal is not
more extensively worked in the Chinese Empire, when there are more than
four hundred thousand square miles of it! There are, however, but very
few mines in existence.
Tientsin, which has a population of about nine hundred and fifty
thousand stands at the junction of the Grand Canal with the Peiho river.
It is not a prepossessing place at first sight, nor did its dusty,
bustling quays, warehouses, and noisy, perspiring coolies, make us at
all anxious to prolong our stay longer than was absolutely necessary.
The trade of Tientsin is not great when compared with the other treaty
ports. Nearly all the tea exported thence goes to Russia and
Siberia——occasionally by way of Pekin——but in most cases _viâ_ Kalgan
and district across the Gobi Desert to Kiakhta, without touching at the
capital. The Russian merchants are therefore nearly as numerous as the
English at Tientsin.
The settlement boasted of but two hotels, and these of a very fifth-rate
description. Small-pox having broken out in one, our choice was limited,
for we did not care to run the risk of being laid up for three or four
weeks in the native hospital at Pekin. Bidding adieu to our genial
skipper, who cheerfully expressed a hope that he might see us again one
day, though he very much doubted our ever leaving Siberia, we made our
way, accompanied by a yelling crowd of half-naked coolies bearing our
luggage, to the American Hotel, an uninviting, dilapidated-looking
hostelry enough. In the verandah, reclining on many chairs, and at
intervals refreshing himself from a huge beaker of brandy and soda, was
an individual pointed out to us as the proprietor (a fat, sleepy-looking
Yankee), whose welcome was hardly encouraging.
“Can we have rooms here?”
“Sure I don’t know, you’d better ask.”
“But you’re the manager, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes, I’m the manager.”
A pause, during which our friend takes a long pull at the brandy, and,
emerging considerably refreshed, composes himself calmly to slumber.
“Who are we to ask?”
“Who are you to ask?” half opening his eyes; “Oh! I don’t know, you will
see some of the China boys about. How should I know who you’re to ask?”
is his parting shot as we leave him and cross the dirty sanded
billiard-room, hung with tawdry prints, and redolent of stale tobacco
and spirits, that precedes the entrance to the “bar.”
Here we glean from a dishevelled, greasy German in shirt-sleeves, who
looks as if he slept among the sawdust and empty whisky bottles that
litter the floor, that no rooms are to be had that night, or for the
next week to come, for love or money. A huge travelling circus belonging
to an Italian, one Chiarini, has taken every available room in the
place. “Then could we have the billiard-table?” “No, we could not
possibly have the billiard-table, for the ‘gentlemen’ connected with the
circus always played till three or four in the morning. Still, we could
have it then, if we liked, on payment of a small remuneration to him
(the occupant of the bar), but we must keep it dark from the boss.”
Our experience of the “boss” did not quite justify our taking this
course, and we left the hotel, sadly and slowly followed by our string
of sympathizing coolies, utterly at a loss to know what to do till the
bright thought struck Lancaster of at once hiring the house-boat which
was to take us to Tungchow (the landing-place for Pekin), and living on
board her till we left for the capital. We managed this, not without
some difficulty, for we had to get the boat through our friend the
sleepy Yankee. He woke up a little, however, at the prospect of
swindling two helpless and friendless fellow-creatures, and by sundown
we had everything on board, and the boat snugly moored off the hotel
wharf. We were alongside a large open drain, with a most abominable
stench, and there was always the possibility of being run down in the
night by a passing ship, but one could not afford to be particular. The
sight, however, of a large passenger steamer bound for Japan which
passed close to us towards sundown was depressing in the extreme, the
cleanliness and luxury on board contrasting so painfully with our own
surroundings. For a few moments we almost regretted (by no means for the
last time) that we had ever undertaken this voyage, the discomforts and
difficulties of which now seemed to increase with every day.
Early next day we presented our letters to Mr. S., the Russian tea
merchant, who was to provide us with letters of credit for his agents at
Irkoutsk and Tomsk in Eastern and Western Siberia. Mr. S. did not give
us a very favourable account of the journey before us. Like almost every
other Russian we met, first question was “Mais que Diable allez-vous
faire en Sibérie?” We got into the way at last of never arguing this
question. In the first place it was useless, and only caused waste of
time; in the second we had literally no reason to give, except perhaps
the one so dear to most Englishmen: “The country had been crossed by so
few travellers before!”
Among other pleasant and encouraging items of news, we now heard that we
should probably meet with serious delay, not only at Kalgan, the
Mongolian frontier, but also at Pekin. “You had better not think,” said
Mr. S., “of making any definite plans till you arrive at Kalgan. This is
the worst time of year you could have chosen. It is not the caravan
season; the camels are all out on the plains. It may be two or three
months before you are able to cross the Gobi, and then you will get into
Siberia at the very worst time of year, when the roads are next to
impassable from rains and floods. Any day you may be detained by a
broken bridge or a landslip, and have to wait in some dreary, wretched
village in the wilds of Siberia, till the snow sets, and enables you to
finish your journey in sleighs. You cannot, I feel sure, have rightly
estimated the difficulties before you. Why go to Siberia at all, when
that earthly paradise Japan is so near?” &c., &c.
We at last succeeded in making Mr. S. understand that we were determined
to get as far as Pekin at any rate; and, our interview over, had nothing
but the purchase of some provisions for our river journey (our Shanghai
store was not opened till we reached the desert) to detain us in
Tientsin. Nor were we sorry to get away, for the dust and filth of this
city were almost unbearable. We had not then experienced the odours of
Pekin, which would accustom one to cheerfully live in a main drain.
Our second night here was not so pleasantly passed as the first. A
shower of rain at sunset brought out legions of mosquitoes, from which,
not having brought curtains, we suffered a good deal of annoyance, and
the intolerable stench of the drain near which we lay was so increased
by the rain that we had to smoke incessantly till past 3 a.m., almost
regretting we had not accepted the barkeeper’s offer of the
billiard-table for a bed. Even the “circus gentlemen” would have been
preferable to the sewer. We got to sleep about 4 a.m., only to be awoke
at daybreak by a crashing sound and to find the water rushing into the
boat, with an unpleasant conviction that our craft was heeling over at a
very uncomfortable angle. We had become entangled in the hawser of a
large ocean-steamer, which, had it not been let go in the nick of time,
would have upset us altogether. We escaped with a ducking, however, and
soon got the boat righted and baled out again.
The distance from Tientsin to Pekin is rather under eighty miles
overland, that by river one hundred and forty, viz. one hundred and
twenty miles to Tungchow, and twenty miles thence by road to the
capital. Although it takes two days longer (sometimes three), we chose
the water route in preference to the other. We should, we thought, have
quite enough land-travelling during the next five months; besides which,
the Chinese inns between Tientsin and the capital are even filthier than
those between Pekin and the Great Wall——which is saying a good deal.
It was about ten o’clock, on a bright, clear morning, that we hoisted
the huge mat-sail, and, with a favourable breeze, soon left the bustling
city and its high cathedral towers (where the Catholic nuns were so
brutally murdered in 1870) low on the horizon.
The traffic on the Peiho river for some miles above Tientsin is
enormous. We must have counted at least four hundred boats and barges in
the space of an hour the afternoon of the day we left, while the whole
way to Tungchow the river was alive with boats of every description
whenever we passed a village, from huge junks to tiny sampans. At times,
near Tientsin, one could have crossed the river, or walked three hundred
or four hundred yards up it, dry shod on the boats.
A Chinese house-boat, though comfortable enough for all practical
purposes, must not be confounded with the luxurious, flower-bedecked
craft that line the banks of the Thames in summer time. The Chinese
house-boat resembles the English only in name, for there was no attempt
at decoration, and very little at cleanliness. About forty-five feet
long, it was decked completely over, except in the centre, where a sort
of well covered with planks, with space enough for two to lie or sit in,
formed the cabin.
Our crew, five in number, slept in a kind of hutch under the deck
forward. How they all managed to stow themselves there at once was a
mystery to me, for they were great, tall, hulking fellows. We sailed, as
a rule, our broad mat-sail sending the old tub along at an incredible
speed with the lightest breeze. When the wind dropped, the men rowed
incessantly, day and night, till it rose again. The amount of work they
got through was simply marvellous. Nothing seemed to tire them; morning,
noon, and night they plied the heavy, awkward sweeps without cessation,
except to eat a dish of rice and fish and take a drink of cold tea once
every twelve hours. Cheery, good-tempered fellows they were too,
considering the small wages they got. The fare, including everything,
was only $13, and our Yankee friend must have got at least two-thirds of
this sum as his own share of the transaction.
The first two days of our river journey were enjoyable enough, save for
such small annoyances as rats and cockroaches, which latter took
forcible possession of our cabin at night-time. But the delightful
weather and novel scenery amply atoned for such small discomforts as
these. The Peiho is a thick, muddy stream. Its banks are continually
slipping down and being dammed up by the natives, which accounts in a
great measure for the dirty pea-soup colour of the water. These
landslips are not of weekly or even daily occurrence. They occur
incessantly, and it was curious to watch, as we ascended the river, the
continual dropping away of the land on either side, while, here and
there, gangs of men repaired the damage by means of cemented bamboos.
The riverside villages were like human beehives, so crowded and dense
did the population of them appear, even at midday, when so many of the
inhabitants must have been out at work in the fields. One could not help
wondering how even such an enormous country as China can support such a
dense population, numbering, by the last census, some 400,000,000. And
yet, from the time we left the coast till we reached the Mongolian
border, there was always vegetation of some kind or other to be seen,
and vast fertile plains of corn, barley, and millet stretched away on
every side to the horizon. Everything in North China is on such a large
scale that for a few days one scarcely realized how enormous the
population and fertilization of this huge empire really are, how great
its resources and demands.
Our days on the Peiho were amusing enough. There was always something to
look at on the bank, and a capital towing-path to walk on when one’s
legs got tired and cramped in the boat, so that we had nothing to
complain of in the way of variety, and the first two days, bright and
sunny, wore away as idly and pleasantly as summer days up the Thames or
Wye in England. It was pleasant to sit out in the evening in the cool,
clear moonlight, on the little deck, the silence unbroken save by the
regular plash of the oars, or twang of Chinese fiddle or guitar, as we
passed some lonely, riverside cottage, the arms of the solitary,
half-naked musician gleaming white in the moonlight, as he rose and
waved a good-night to our crew. When we passed a village after dark it
was like some weird transformation scene, for up to midnight these
waterside settlements appeared, from the river at least, to be given up
to revelry. We never, however, ventured into one, preferring to gaze
from a respectful distance upon the flaring torches throwing counter
effects of light and shade over the quaint, picturesque houses and
pagodas, the hurrying crowds on the banks; while the clashing of gongs
and cymbals from the joss-house or theatre heightened the effect of the
strange scene. Then on again along the silent moonlit stream, with its
low sedgy banks; nothing to mar the flat, monotonous outline of the
moonlit landscape, but, here and there, a huge square mound of earth,
the tomb of some departed mandarin or village magnate.
But the morning of the third day looked dull and overcast, and by ten
o’clock the rain was pouring down in torrents. There was no keeping dry,
for the ramshackle roof leaked like a sieve, and the floor of our cabin
was in a very few minutes almost ankle-deep in water. About midday a
terrific thunderstorm broke over us. The lightning was so vivid that
although every nook and cranny of our dilapidated hutch was tightly
closed, and the place in semi-darkness, it almost blinded one. I have
never, even in the tropics, heard the thunder so loud and continuous.
One peal lasted quite a minute without cessation.
I have seldom passed a more miserable day than that one moored by the
muddy banks of the Peiho, for progress was impossible. Cooking or
lighting a fire, too, was out of the question. Everything, including
matches and fuel, was sopping through and through. Looking out of our
wooden prison, nothing met the eye but grey, driving mist, and steady,
unceasing rain, falling with a persistence and violence that lashed the
brown muddy waters around us into a sheet of grey foam. The men forward
were battened down, and seemed unconcerned enough, as snatches of song
rising from below and occasional whiffs of smoke emerging through the
chinks in the deck testified. We almost envied them their warmth,
shivering as we were like half-drowned rats. About five o’clock a break
in the grey, misty sky appeared, and half an hour later the sun was
shining in a sky of cloudless blue, while we rapidly cut our way through
the water before a light but piercingly cold breeze, so sudden and
complete are the changes of weather in these latitudes.
Early the next day a chain of precipitous mountains broke the horizon.
Beyond them lay our destination, Pekin. We were, however, still two days
off, for the river here shallows considerably, and we frequently stuck
hard and fast during the day. At these times the whole crew would divest
themselves of their clothes, and, fastening a couple of stout ropes to
the bows of the boat, tow us off again into deep water. Landing here was
impossible, for one could not get within ten yards or so of the bank.
Some of the larger junks were being towed by as many as thirty or forty
men. On the deck of one a huge deal case bearing the name of Maple and
Co., London, in large black letters, looked strangely out of keeping
with the uncivilized surroundings.
It was only the fifth morning after leaving Tientsin that we hove in
sight of Tungchow, a “village” of something over one hundred thousand
inhabitants. This was our first experience of a real Chinese town, far
from European influence; and we were rather agreeably disappointed, for
at a distance, it looked clean and inviting. A closer acquaintance,
alas! somewhat modified first impressions.
Moored alongside the flat muddy banks were a perfect colony of junks,
two thousand or three thousand in number; an interval of flat boggy
ground cut up by innumerable cesspools, open drains and dust-heaps
divided these from the town wall, which, standing back about a couple of
hundred yards from the water’s edge, hid the town from view, except
where, at intervals, a tower or pagoda overtopped the loopholed brick
battlements. Although the sun had but just risen, the banks were crowded
with people, and the keepers of hundreds of stalls and booths were
already doing a brisk trade in the sale of cloths, pigtails, tea,
sweetmeats, and fans to the junk population, while here and there a
barber plied his trade, which in North China is anything but an
appetizing one to look upon. Dirty as the place and people were, the
bright, cloudless sky and sunshine lent a gaiety to the scene, which for
colour and animation I have seldom seen equalled in the most picturesque
Turkish cities or bazaars of the far East.
We were ready to start at midday, and had all the baggage safely stowed
away in Pekin carts, a more dirty or uncomfortable vehicle than which
does not exist. As it is of the same construction, although smaller than
the carts in which we crossed the desert, I will leave the description
of these “torture-boxes” to a future chapter. Seeing with the naked eye
whole regiments of vermin crawling over the one destined for our
reception, we preferred to ride ahead, on donkeys, under the guidance of
a small boy, whose powers of conversation were limitless, and who talked
incessantly the whole way, frequently interlarding his conversation with
the words “Yang Qweitze” (Foreign Devil), the uncomplimentary title
bestowed on every European, of whatever nationality, in the less
civilized parts of China. Nor was the filthy state of the carts our only
reason for riding. We had serious misgivings as to whether the clumsy,
heavily-laden conveyances would reach Pekin before nightfall, in which
case we should have had to pass the night in the open outside the walls.
The gates of the city are shut at sundown, and no human power (short of
the emperor’s special command) will open them till sunrise the following
day.
It took us nearly an hour to get clear of Tungchow and into the open
country. The town is (for China) fairly clean, though the streets are
narrow, tortuous and ill paved, and in some places there were holes two
or three feet deep in the centre of the roadway.
The natives in this part of China present a striking contrast to their
countrymen at Shanghai and further south; whereas the latter are for the
most part puny, pasty-faced creatures, these were fine, strapping,
broad-shouldered men, with healthy, ruddy faces. The women too were
better-looking, though doll-like and thickly painted, with the baggy,
shapeless figures, deformed feet, and stoop peculiar to their race. Many
of the shops were devoted to the sale of Manchester goods and cheap
cutlery, which find great favour among the people in this part of China.
Here and there a large tea-house, gorgeously decorated, was filled with
customers taking their morning draught of the cup that cheers. The tea
drunk by the Chinese is as different to our idea of that beverage as it
can well be, and is, to a European palate, utterly flavourless. “Chacun
à son goût.” Many Russians say that real, unadulterated tea never finds
its way to England, nor would the English drink it if it did.
It took us quite an hour to get clear of Tungchow, for the streets were
crowded to overflowing. Although so few Europeans are seen here, the
people took very little notice of us, excepting the juvenile population,
ragged little wretches, a crowd of whom pestered us for cash, which,
when refused, drew down upon us yells of derision and curses on the
“Yang Qweitze” in general.
The road from Tungchow to Pekin lies through a fertile, well-wooded
country, and is for the first three or four miles raised some ten feet
from the ground on either side, and paved with huge stone slabs,
apparently of great antiquity. Although now in a very dilapidated
condition, this must in former times have been a splendid thoroughfare.
It reminded one of one of the old Roman roads, some of the slabs being
quite ten feet long by five feet broad and two thick. The going was very
bad in places where these stones had fallen away. Turning away to admire
the scenery, I was somewhat suddenly recalled to the situation by
finding that my donkey had slipped into one of these chasms about four
feet deep. We got out, however, with nothing worse than a few bruises.
This road is said at one time to have extended as far as Pekin, but,
with characteristic carelessness, the Chinese have allowed it to become
so dilapidated, that after two miles or so it ceases altogether, and our
way lay along narrow, raised paths, running through millet and barley
fields. Eight li from Tungchow, we passed the picturesque bridge of
“Palikao,” from which the French general takes his name. Hard by a
little tea-house clustering in the shade of willow-trees afforded us
grateful shelter for half an hour, and we dismounted and took a few cups
of the cool refreshing drink, for the road was dusty, and the sun very
powerful.
As we sat on mats, enjoying the cool breeze from the river, half a dozen
soldiers rode by with a prisoner, whom they were taking to Tungchow, to
undergo sentence of death by the “Ling Chi.” The poor wretch looked
ghastly pale, and well he might, for this is perhaps the most barbarous
and revolting of all Chinese punishments. The word “Ling Chi” means
literally to be cut in ten thousand pieces. As the reader may care to
know how the operation is performed, I will give a brief account of an
execution of this kind which took place at Canton only last year.
“As soon as the signal was given the victim was stripped of his
clothing——the process of binding and gagging being made unnecessarily
long. By the time it was over the poor wretch was almost fainting with
terror. Previous to the commencement of the operation a draught of arrak
was given him, and then commenced the work of butchery.
“Two deep cuts over each eye commenced the operation. Gashes which
turned great pieces of flesh over, and left the bone exposed. Then a cut
down each cheek, and a deeper one across each shoulder, nearly but not
quite severing the arm from its socket. A circular cut to the bone in
each upper arm and fore-arm followed, and then, stepping back to get
more scope, the executioner hacked off the right hand with one blow. A
large piece of flesh was then cut or rather dug out of each thigh, and
from over each knee, and the flesh torn off both kneecaps. The calves of
the legs were then cut off.
“Up till now a straight heavy sword had been the weapon used. The human
devil who acted as executioner wielding it with as much ease and
dexterity as if he had been carving a fowl. The sword was now put aside,
and a thin-bladed knife, about a foot long, driven in to the hilt, under
the right breast-bone, the executioner working it slowly round and round
while his assistant fanned the victim with a large palm-leaf fan for the
double purpose of keeping the flies off, and hiding the contortions of
the poor wretch’s face, who was not yet dead, as evinced by the
twitching of the fingers of his remaining hand. Ten or twelve seconds
more of this diabolical torture, and the victim was cut down from the
cross, to fall, inert and helpless, on his knees and face. He was then
decapitated and the sentence completed.”
These barbarous and disgusting proceedings seem the more awful when we
consider that the poor wretch whose execution I have described was not
the actual author of the crime for which he suffered. He was what is
known in China as a “substitute.” There are many in this strange land,
who for a small sum of money will cheerfully die for the pleasure of two
or three days spent in dissipation and riot. The murderer himself was
probably looking on with the crowd, unmoved at what should by rights
have been his own execution.
There are other Chinese punishments quite as revolting as the Ling Chi,
which do not, however, necessarily end in death. A very common one (to
be seen almost daily in the streets of Pekin) is the “Cangue,” two large
pieces of wood, each with a semicircular hole in the middle, which are
worn round the neck. The hands are placed at right angles through other
holes in the board, which weighs from sixty to two hundred pounds
according to circumstances. This is worn from three days to two, or even
three, months according to the nature of the crime. The “Cage” is
another very common punishment, and is used for minor offences. The
wretched occupant of this can neither sit, stand, nor lie down.
Prisoners are kept in this position for a period varying from a week to
a month. In the latter case they are usually rendered cripples for life.
Another favourite punishment (often used to punish adultery) is pulling
out the hand and toe nails, teeth, eye-lashes, and nostrils; but perhaps
the most painful of any is the “Wire Shirt,” a thin wire garment made to
fit the body so tightly that small pieces of skin are pressed through
every aperture. A sharp razor is then passed over these outside, so that
when the shirt is removed the victim from head to waist is one piece of
raw quivering flesh.
Many others could I cite, but enough of this unsavoury subject. China is
full of contradictions, and none are more striking than the cruelty and
kindness of its population, for there exists no kinder-hearted or more
liberal being than the Chinaman. There are, of course, exceptions; the
rebel Yeh, for instance, who was degraded by the Emperor for treachery
in 1857, when brought to Calcutta, where he died, confessed to having
executed more than 70,000 souls while he was in office.
We rode slowly on the whole afternoon through fields of grain, pretty
villages asleep in the sun, with no sign of life in them but beggars and
dogs lying huddled in the dusty road, under the shade of wall or shed,
sleeping away the hot, silent hours in indolent content. It seemed at
times as if we should never reach Pekin, though the mountains beyond it
looked provokingly close in the bright clear atmosphere. The heat was
intense, but a cool breeze now and then sprung up, and made it not
unpleasant travelling as we rode through some of the prettiest scenery
it has ever been my lot to look upon. The golden fields of oats and
barley, the pretty villages dotted here and there over the plain, the
ruddy, healthy-looking peasantry at work gathering in the harvest, and,
here and there, the country-seat of some wealthy Mandarin, with its
broad avenues, willow-fringed lake, and deer park, wore a happy,
civilized look strangely at variance with one’s preconceived notions of
the remoter parts of the Celestial Empire. Had it not been for the
quaint pagodas and temples resplendent in crimson and gold carvings that
we passed every mile or so, one might have fancied oneself in some
picturesque corner of far away England.
One circumstance alone considerably marred our enjoyment of the lovely
scenery——to wit, the streams of beggars who towards evening came out by
hundreds from the holes and corners in which they had been lying during
the heat of the day. A more importunate or determined set of wretches I
never saw. Ranging from the ages of five to fifty, half naked and
covered with sores, the wretches refused to be driven off, and insisted
on accompanying us in unpleasant proximity——some of them for miles. Now
and anon one would run forward, and kneeling, beat his head upon the
ground——an operation called in China the “Koo-Too.” Passing through one
of the villages, I fairly lost my temper, and turning round, shook my
stick at the yelling, dancing ruffians, who, much to the amusement of
the villagers, almost barred our progress. The effect was magical. In a
second their demeanour changed, and what had been a crowd of cringing,
supplicating wretches turned to a hooting, menacing crowd. Things looked
awkward at first, and I thought, for a few moments, we were in for an
ugly row. Mud and stones were showered on us freely, and one gaunt
leprous-looking individual, half naked, ran up on his crutches and
seized my donkey’s bridle. Seeing from the indifferent and half-amused
expression on the bystanders’ faces that we should get no help from
_them_, I thought discretion the better part of valour, and scattered a
handful of cash among our persecutors, which had the effect of slowly
dispersing them. This _contretemps_, trivial as it was, showed the
danger of ever for a moment annoying the people in the country we were
about to travel through. Though good-tempered and hospitable, the
Northern Chinaman has but a very poor idea of a European, English or
otherwise. Indeed, I doubt if the majority of the peasantry had ever
heard of England.
The approach to Pekin from Tungchow is anything but imposing, and we
were rather disappointed at our first sight of the celestial city. The
country for a mile or so before reaching the gates is so densely wooded
that we did not know we had reached the capital till we found ourselves
actually under its massive crenellated walls. The latter are surmounted
by lofty square towers which, with their bright apple-green porcelain
roofs and gaudy façades relieve to a certain extent the barren
appearance of the sandy waste that surrounds Pekin. Not a roof or tower
of the city is visible from here, nothing but the high rugged walls
which, notwithstanding their great age, are in good repair. There was
nothing to tell one that on the other side of these there lay a place
almost as large as Paris in area and population. Nothing but the hoarse,
subdued murmur, confused and indistinct, that hangs over every great
city.
A few hundred yards brought us to the gate of the Tartar city, and, ye
gods! what a city! Upon first entering, it seemed as if a dense fog had
suddenly descended upon one, but a look back at the bright sunshine
outside the gates soon dispelled the illusion, and explained the
mystery: it was nothing but dust, the black, fine, and searching dust,
for which Pekin is famous. Everything was coated with it. One breathed
it in with every inhalation, till eyes, mouth, and nose were choked up,
and breathing became almost an impossibility. No one seemed to mind it
much, though our donkeys laboured through it nearly knee-deep.
We rode for some distance along the filthy, dusty streets. There is no
rule of the road in Pekin, and it took one all one’s time to steer
safely through the carts, sedans, mule litters, and camel caravans which
thronged the streets. At length we turned into the principal
thoroughfare, a broad unpaved street, raised in the centre, on either
side of which one saw a long vista of low roofed houses, scrubby trees,
and gaudy shop-signs, lost in the distance in a cloud of dust. We were
in Pekin at last.
In Pekin, but apparently a long way yet from our destination, the Hôtel
de Pékin; and judging from our small guide’s very erratic movements, we
were not likely for some time to reach that friendly hostelry, which is
kept by an enterprising Frenchman, M. ————. The disagreeable suspicion
that our guide had lost his way became a certainty, when turning down a
narrow by-lane, he brought us up all standing at the door of a filthy
tea-house. It was not a pleasant predicament. Imagine a Central African
suddenly turned loose in the streets of London, and you have our
position——with this difference, that the African would have had the pull
over us in the shape of a friendly policeman to take him to the station.
Here, in this city of nearly two million inhabitants, it seemed unlikely
enough that we should come across any of the English-speaking
inhabitants, who number fifty to sixty at the most.
Threats of punishment and vengeance on the small boy were useless. He
simply seated himself, and calling for a cup of tea, informed us we must
find our way ourselves, he did not know it——at least that is what we
inferred from his gestures, which were disrespectful in the extreme.
With a lively recollection of our escape of the afternoon, we did not
care to risk another disturbance, so, resigning ourselves to
circumstances, dismounted and called for tea.
It was not a pleasant half-hour, for we were surrounded in less than
five minutes by a crowd of the most insolent, dirtiest ruffians
imaginable. We had evidently been brought to one of the very lowest
quarters of the town, and were not sorry to have left our watches in the
carts. With the exception of our revolvers and a few cash they would not
have been much the richer for robbing us. I should be sorry to have much
to do with the inhabitants of the Chinese capital. There is no more
obliging and hospitable being than the Chinese peasant, no more
insolent, arrogant thief than the lower order of Pekinese. The victory
of the imperial troops over the French in Tonquin is, in a great
measure, responsible for the insolence displayed by the inhabitants of
Pekin towards Europeans. Insults are perpetrated almost daily, and in
the open streets, for which there is no redress, and it is only
necessary to go for a very short walk in the streets of the capital to
see that the lesson taught the Celestials by the allied troops in 1860
has long since been forgotten.
We should probably have had to pass the night in this unsavoury den, had
not a European passed and by the greatest luck caught sight of us
through the narrow gateway. Our deliverer, Mr. P., an American
missionary, himself escorted us through a labyrinth of crowded streets
and squares to Legation Street. We should certainly never have found our
way otherwise, for there were no outward and visible signs even here of
European inhabitants, till just before reaching the hotel, we passed the
French Embassy, and saw, through an open gateway, a spacious shady
garden with smooth-shaven lawns, cedars, and fountains, while over the
doorway, in large gold letters on a vermilion ground, were the words
“Légation de France.” A couple of hundred yards further on we pulled up
at the door of our caravanserai. Thanking and taking leave of our
friend, we entered the building, and were not sorry to find ourselves in
the cool, grey-tiled, flower-bordered courtyard of the hotel; where a
whisky and soda with plenty of ice washed the dust out of our throats
and refreshed us not a little after our long and somewhat eventful ride.
The baggage arrived an hour after, and after a bath and change we felt
well disposed to do justice to the excellent dinner provided for us by
M. ————, the repast being graced by the presence of his wife, pretty
Madame ————, and her sister. Sitting out after dinner in the little
moonlit courtyard redolent of heliotrope and mignonette, one might have
fancied oneself hundreds of miles from the dusty, ill-smelling city, and
its barbaric population. The smells did not, thank goodness, penetrate
here; and for the first time since leaving Tientsin, we thoroughly
enjoyed an after-dinner cigar, not a little relieved that the
starting-point, at any rate, of our long land journey had been safely
reached.
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