IN THE HEART OF UNKNOWN CHINA
That Rob accepted Mr. Bishop's proposition goes without saying, for he
was an American boy, and, as such, was filled to the brim with a genuine
love of the adventure and excitement attending explorations in strange
countries. Thus, two days after the offer was made, he found himself
a very important member of an expedition setting forth from the great
southern city of Canton and bound for the far north. Two months later,
a junk, flying the American flag and having on board our travellers,
drifted with the tawny flood of the mighty Yang-tse-kiang (Son of the
Sea River) along the crowded water-front of Hankow, a city of such
commercial energy that it is known as the Chicago of China.
During the weeks that had elapsed since they left the last traces of
Western civilization at Canton, they had seen no white man nor heard
a word of English, except such as they spoke to each other. They had
travelled by sampan up the North River and the Wu Shin, across the
province of Kwang-tung, to the head of navigation at Ping-Shih. Here
they had engaged coolies to transport their luggage, camp outfit, and
provisions over the "carry," thirty miles long, across the Nan-Ling
Mountains, to Chen-Chow, a quaint, old, walled town, marking the
head of navigation on the Yu-tan River, a branch of the Sian Kiang,
which in turn flows northward into the Yang-tse. There they had once
more chartered a junk; and, always accompanied by a couple of slim,
light-draught Chinese guard-boats, had sailed, poled, or drifted across
the great inland province of Hu-nan, which is half again as large as the
State of New York.
Although always using their boat as headquarters and for the
transportation of supplies, the two Americans had travelled most of the
way by land, on foot, on pony-back, or in sedan-chairs borne by coolies.
They had slept in temples, examination-halls, tea hongs (warehouses), in
official yamens, and occasionally, but never when they could help it,
in crowded, vermin-infested taverns, always surrounded by throngs of
excited spectators, who poked holes through the paper windows or widened
cracks in the floors of overhead rooms to gratify their curiosity by
peering at the ridiculous-looking barbarians.
While crossing the Nan-Ling Mountains they had traversed a portion
of one of China's great national highways, constructed thousands of
years ago, and apparently never since repaired. Originally fifteen
feet of its width was paved with large, flat stones, four feet square,
and from one foot to eighteen inches thick. Many of these stones had
disappeared, no one could tell how, nor where to, leaving gaping and
bottomless mud-holes to entrap the unwary. The remaining blocks were
deeply hollowed by the bare feet of millions of burden-bearing coolies
and scored with wheelbarrow grooves. This great highway was formerly
lined along its hundreds of miles of length with temples, tea-houses,
rest-houses, and shops; but such of these as have not disappeared are
now in ruins, and serve only as haunts for highwaymen, lepers, and
beggars.
In the remote past the several states or provinces of China were
independent kingdoms, waging war upon one another; and even to this day
the inhabitants of each province regard the people of those adjoining
as "foreigners." So they fortified themselves against one another,
and our explorers were so fortunate as to come across one of these
fortifications. It was a high and very thick wall of masonry, having
battlements and massive gateway, surmounted by a watch-tower, built on
a boundary-line across the highway, where the latter occupied a narrow
valley. The hills on either hand were low enough to be easy of ascent,
but the impregnable wall reached only from side to side of the valley.
"What's the matter with walking around an end of it?" asked Rob, staring
at this triumph of defensive architecture.
"Nothing at all, that I can see," replied the engineer. "Only, I
suppose, no Chinese ever would think of doing so."
Again the road led over a high, arched bridge that once had crossed
a stream; but the stream had altered its course and gone elsewhere,
perhaps hundreds of years ago, since no trace even of its bed now
remained. But because the road went over the bridge the cargo coolies,
grunting beneath their burdens, continued to toil up the steep ascent
and down the other side, without ever a thought of making a new path
around it.
"I won't climb over it, at any rate," declared Rob. So he and the
engineer walked around; their own coolies followed them like a flock of
sheep, and those on the bridge stared in amazement at the barbarians who
thus dared depart from established custom.
Although other American engineers had preceded our travellers through
this country, the foreigner was still such a novelty that they were
viewed by thousands of people who never before had seen one, and who
crowded about them in embarrassing throngs. At the same time they never
were ill-treated nor even molested; for the Chinese, unless roused to
a blind fury by wrongs, real or fancied, are the most peaceable and
courteous of people. To be sure, our friends nearly always were spoken
of and addressed as "fan kwei" (foreign devils); but this was because
the natives never had heard foreigners called anything else.
To Mr. Bishop's surprise he discovered, or rather Rob discovered for
him, that many of the Hu-nan people, instead of being opposed to the
construction of a railway through their country, were desirous for its
coming. Not on account of the facilities it would offer for travel and
the transportation of their products, but because it was rumored far
and wide that it would pay liberally for such graves as must be removed
from its right-of-way. Formerly, and even now in certain districts,
the grave problem was, and is, one of the most serious encountered by
the projectors of Chinese railways. Finally it was made a commercial
proposition, and the railway companies agreed to pay for such graves as
came within their lines at a rate of eight taels (about eleven dollars)
apiece. Now, such of the Chinese as understand this arrangement are more
than willing thus to turn their ancestors to profitable account.
As the dead are not collected in regularly established burying-grounds,
but are scattered about in fields, gardens, or wherever it is most
convenient to place them, and as the entire country is thickly sown
with these precious relics, no line can be so run as to avoid them.
Consequently they must be bought up and removed. For some time Rob
could not account for the great anxiety shown by the natives to learn
the exact location of the line. Finally, however, he discovered that
those persons having graves known to be on the line could raise money on
them in advance, while such as had none proposed to borrow or purchase
a few ancestors at places so remote as to be beyond a possibility of
disturbance and rebury them in more profitable locations.
In the cities of Siang-tan and Chang-sha, both on waters navigable
by large Yang-tse junks, our travellers found shops equipped with
foreign goods, and notably with American flour, prints, and canned
foods, though they did not meet an American nor a European in either
place. This discovery was of particular interest to Mr. Bishop, as the
appearance in those remote localities, and under existing conditions, of
these goods promised a vast extension of similar trade upon completion
of the railway he was about to build.
Thus the entire trip had proved intensely interesting, and its results
were so highly satisfactory that, as it drew to a close with their near
approach to Hankow, our explorers already were preparing for another
journey from that point to Pekin.
Much as they had enjoyed the one just ending, they were not sorry to
see European buildings in the mission compounds and along the bund at
Hankow, and it was good to hear their own speech once more. It also was
good to sit down to an American table, eat home-cooked food, and, above
all, to sleep between sheets in American beds. But with all these things
to be enjoyed came two disappointments. Rob's lay in the entire absence
of the letters that he had hoped to find awaiting him at this point.
From Canton he had written both to his uncle and his parents at Hatton,
requesting answers to be sent to Hankow, but the eagerly expected
letters had not appeared. A number awaited Mr. Bishop, and in them lay
his disappointment, for certain of them contained news that rendered it
necessary for him to return at once to Canton. Thus he must give up the
proposed overland journey to Pekin.
"It is too bad!" he exclaimed. "There is so much I want to find out
about that northern line, its construction, the nature of the country
it traverses, the feeling of the people regarding it, and a dozen other
things. Now I must indefinitely postpone the trip, and so remain in
ignorance of many things most important for me to know."
"I wish I could go for you," suggested Rob.
"That is an idea worth considering!" exclaimed the engineer. "And I
don't see why you shouldn't collect the very information I want. You are
pretty well broken into the work by this time. But would you dare travel
another thousand miles through China, alone, and in view of the rumors
of trouble that we have been hearing lately?"
"Of course I would," replied Rob, scornfully. "I can't see but what it
is just as safe to travel here as in any other country, especially when
one knows the ways of the people and their language as well as I do."
The conversation on this subject was long and earnest, but at its
conclusion it had been decided that Rob Hinckley, provided with ample
funds, should travel as special commissioner of the American railway
syndicate from Hankow to Pekin. From the latter city he would return by
rail and sea to Hong-Kong, where Mr. Bishop would meet him and receive
his report.
"By that time," said the latter, "your pay surely will amount to enough
to carry you to America, with a substantial surplus besides."
The only condition made by our lad was that, upon his arrival in
Shanghai, Mr. Bishop should cable to the States for information
concerning Rob's parents, and should transmit the same to Pekin, there
to await the latter's arrival.
A couple of days later the companions who had travelled so far and
endured so much together separated, the engineer to proceed by steamer
down the Yang-tse-kiang to Shanghai, and thence by ship to Hong-Kong,
and Rob, so confident in his own resources as not to dream of dangers
that he could not overcome, taking train for the north over the short
section of Belgian railway already constructed. It carried him to the
border of the province of Ho-nan. Across this province and to the
Hoang-ho, or Yellow River, he made his way successfully, though not
without encountering many difficulties during the following month. Then
his real troubles began, for no sooner had he crossed the great river,
which, on account of its frequent devastating floods, is called "China's
Sorrow," than he found himself on the edge of a fierce "storm of wrath"
that threatened to sweep over the entire empire.
An almost unprecedented drought had prevailed over the whole of the vast
plain of northern China for nearly three years. For two years there had
been no crops, and now the same dreadful condition was promised for
the third. Everywhere were starving, desperate people, who, in their
ignorance, attributed their woes to the evil influence of foreigners,
and especially to the missionaries, who sought to overthrow the gods of
the country.
The priests taught that the angry gods thus were punishing the unbelief
of the people, and that prosperity never would return to their land
until every foreigner was driven from it. Thus it happened that the
inhabitants of three provinces were rising against missionaries and
railway-builders, robbing and killing all who did not fly in time,
burning and destroying their property, as well as that of all native
converts to the new religion. At the same time they were making
pilgrimages to the shrines of their own gods, and imploring them to once
more send the life-giving rains.
Rob heard rumors of these things, but, believing them to be exaggerated,
refused to turn back. So he pushed doggedly ahead, ever nearing the
storm-centre. Finally, late one day, as he approached a walled town in
which he expected to obtain lodging for the night, he suddenly found
himself beset by a mob of frantic rain-dancers, who rushed upon him from
a sacred grove by the road-side. The slender escort of soldiers that had
thus far accompanied our lad instantly took to their heels, leaving him
alone to face the hundreds of yelling demons, who firmly believed that,
if they could take his life, the act would be pleasing to their insulted
gods.