A SUMMER TRIP TO CHINESE TIBET.[2]
Drying Prayerbooks Mountain.--Boys' Paradise.--Lolo
Women.--Salt-carriers.--Great Rains.--Brick-tea
Carriers.--Suspension Bridge.--Granite
Mountains.--Tibetan Bridge.--Lamas.--Tibetan
Women.--Caravanserai at Tachienlu.--Beautiful Young
Men.--_Lamaserai._--Prayers?--Fierce
Dogs.--Dress.--Trying for a Boat.
There are many summer trips that are a joy in the remembering, but a
trip to Chinese Tibet had never fallen to the lot of any European
woman before. And it was the more delightful, perhaps, because we
never thought of anything of the kind when we started. But there is a
drawback to living on a mountain-summit that it is such a climb to
come back again when you go out; and our quarters on Mount Omi were
not too comfortable! Only one small room for living and sleeping in,
like a back room in a Canadian log-hut, and without a window to open,
makes one restless after a time. So we thought we would gently stroll
on to another sacred mountain, whose flat top was a very striking
feature in the landscape. And we went down into what is called the
Wilderness, where there are wild cattle and wild men, and for about a
week wandered on, passing along by the boundary of the unconquered
Lolos, and up the most magnificent ravine I have seen or can imagine,
down which a torrent had swept but a week before from the Sai King, or
Drying Prayerbooks Mountain, to which we were bound, drowning
twenty-six people in one hamlet alone.
[Illustration: SACRED SAI KING MOUNTAIN.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
Climbing the Sai King was rather a formidable affair. But for the
guidance of a young priest, returning from one of those begging
excursions by means of which he had bought the whole mountain-summit,
we never should have reached the top before darkness set in; and in
the dark no man would dare to move upon the Sai King. For not only are
there all manner of wild beasts, but the path leads along the narrow
edge of a _col_, and then up staircases, till at last you arrive at
three ladders, one of twenty-seven rungs, before you find yourself at
the top of the awful precipices that girdle it all round, in a sort of
park with firs and rhododendrons, the latter at least twenty feet
high, moss hanging from them in garlands, as well as a foot deep upon
the ground. It is a veritable boys' paradise (and as such I have
described it at length in the _Nineteenth Century_ of January, 1896),
with squirrels and deer and birds innumerable, large very sweet white
strawberries in the greatest profusion, raspberries abundant, currants
plentiful, mushrooms in bushels. There are glorious views from the
brink of precipices, when you can break your way through the
rhododendrons and look over, hearing the rivers murmuring some five or
six thousand feet below, and seeing the Tibetan summits like a sea of
mountains.
But I have mentioned nearly all there was to eat on the Sai King Shan,
and our room was almost more cracks than room, so that we shivered
inside it even when almost blinded by wood smoke. And when the wind
howled and the rain poured in like a waterspout, it did occur to us to
wonder what we should do if one of the ladders were carried away.
Besides, by dint of thinking about it, the going down those ladders
became increasingly terrible. I had paused in the middle of coming up,
and, looking between my feet, had seen the mists moving and the
cataract falling four thousand feet sheer below me, and through a rift
in the clouds had caught a sight of the great precipice to the north,
greater even than that on Omi. We found ourselves wondering whether it
would be wise to look down and gaze on everything, if clear, when
descending. When we had got as far as that, it seemed more prudent to
go down at once. And it was then we saw from the bottom the great
north precipice, that is the most glorious east end of a world's
cathedral. Looked at from where one will, one could not but feel in
comparison how poor was a temple made with hands. Yet there in the
valley six thousand feet below was the chapel and priests' house,
built by their own hands with their own money by the people of the
wholly Christian village of Tatientze. And here, close to the summit
of the mountain, where a cord used to hang over the precipice to get
down by, was the cave where two Buddhist sisters, till last year,
lived seven years "to purify their souls." There was a little platform
in front of the cave where they could stand and look out upon the
glories of the Creator's handiwork, if so minded. Did they stand
there, those two sisters? Did they worship there? Did they in the end
purify their souls? Or did they find it was a mistake, thus retiring
from their kind? Their father used to send them rice, which was let
down to them by the cord, and a stream poured over the precipice in a
sort of waterfall hard by. And they only went away the year before
because the tidings had come of their mother's death.
Again we wandered on, or rather walked hard, for one day across the
mountains, till we came to a village full of conquered Lolos, women
fearless and frank as American girls, riding and walking with a grace
I have never seen equalled; their men with elaborate ceremonial of
politeness, but, alas! too much given to the delights of drink. We
would gladly have learned more about them. But now we heard six days
more would bring us to Tachienlu, in Chinese Tibet, and all our
following were wild to get there, and to get fur coats, the Chinaman's
ambition. As for ourselves, we wondered if it were worth while to go
on, but we were certainly in no hurry as yet to get back to Chungking.
Our last news from there was that it was 100° in the shade, and
cholera worse than ever. Thirty thousand people, we learnt afterwards,
died of it in the course of the summer, and it was worse still at
Chengtu, the capital of the province, by which we had purposed
returning.
Not at all particularly anxious for fur coats, not at all distinctly
remembering what we had read of Tachienlu, we decided to go on if we
could get ponies, and thus decide for ourselves if it were worth
while. But now came the difficulty. With ponies grazing all round, we
never could succeed in hiring one. Certainly they were very small, and
we very big by comparison. Every one told us we must get ponies at
Fulin. So to Fulin we pushed on. But this was thirty-six miles, over
any number of passes, one seven thousand feet high, so we were obliged
to stop a little short of it that night. Next day, however, we got
there for breakfast. We had formed high expectations with regard to
Fulin. For six days we had seen men staggering along under crushing
weights of salt, two hundred pounds to each man, too much exhausted by
their burdens even to look up. And they had all been bound for Fulin.
People may not want to be missionaries in China, but I do not think
any European could travel there and not wish to undo the heavy
burdens, and I have seen no beasts of burthen whose sufferings have so
moved my heart to pity as these salt-carriers. Salt is such a hard,
uncompromising load, and it was so pitiful to notice how they had to
protect it from being melted by the sweat that streamed down their
poor backs. Then the passes were so high, and the paths so narrow and
so wild, and the heat so great. It seemed as if any human heart must
break, if it contemplated beforehand all it would have to undergo to
carry one load of salt from Kiating to Fulin. Then, however often we
calculated it, what they were paid, how many days they spent upon the
journey, how many days going empty-handed back, we never could make
out that the poor carriers were any the better off at the end of all
their exertions. Of course they must be, or they would not make them;
but it must be by a miserable pittance indeed. It appeared now, too,
that Fulin, though well-to-do enough, was but the distributing centre
for two very rich prosperous valleys and the country beyond, and there
were no ponies to be had there. Later on in the day, however, when we
really did succeed in hiring capital ponies, we no longer wondered
that it had been difficult to get any for such a journey as we were
undertaking. For what road there had ever been had been carried away
in several places, and so had the bridges. The mountains looked
exactly as if, according to the Chinese saying, a dragon had really
turned round at the top, and clawed and scored and gashed the
mountain-sides. All the people were going to market, as they always
are in Szechuan, and in one place was a crowd busy remaking a bridge
in order to get over, whilst farther on three of the strongest men of
the company had stripped, and, holding hands, were cautiously trying
fording. Then the others followed their example, and for a moment or
two were carried off their legs by the furious stream. The hills were
terrible, and, clambering up one, a mule in our company failed to
establish its footing, and, turning over and over, reached the bottom
dead. Just the moment before I had been wondering whether my tiny pony
could make the final effort necessary to attain the top of that hill.
[Illustration: BRICK-TEA CARRIERS ON THE GREAT BRICK-TEA ROAD.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
After Nitou, which proclaims on a stone tablet that it is the western
boundary of the black-haired or Chinese race, Tibet seems to begin. We
climbed a pass nine thousand feet high, then descended again for five
miles, always in uninhabited country, full of flowers. Especially
lovely in that September weather was the small but very luxuriant
deep purple convolvulus twining round the acacia mimosas. Just as we
passed out of the mist--it was unfortunately always misty at the tops
of the passes--we met a Lama quite resplendent in crimson and old
gold, and then passed troops of men carrying brick tea. One man
carried seventeen bars, each weighing twenty pounds; others fifteen,
thirteen, or eleven. A boy of fourteen, of ten, even one of seven, was
carrying, the latter four half-bars, poor wee child! Just as we were
sorrowing over the children, trees glorious with coral flowers flashed
upon our sight. And on the second day after leaving Nitou we once more
came upon the great Tung river, by the side of which we had before
travelled for one whole afternoon, separated only by it from the
unconquered Lolo country. Never a boat nor raft upon the Tung, except
one to take people back into Lololand from a great theatrical
performance, at which all the countryside had mustered. And once we
saw a boat by the side of it, but hauled up high and dry. It was a
round skin-boat, for all the world just like the coracles the ancient
Britons used. We came also upon a terrible gully, descending by a
severe slant directly into the river. A shower of stones was almost
continuously rattling down, mixed with a little water; every now and
then the shower slackened somewhat, and then first one and then
another large stone would come down, wildly bounding from side to
side; after that, the shower would be stronger than ever. When the
erratic blocks came bounding down, no one put his feet in the
footprints left by some one else across the shifting torrent of
stones, that here constituted the whole of the great brick-tea road,
the great main road between Peking and Lassa. At other times they
paused behind a projecting rock, to watch for a good opportunity, and
then ran for it. And the usual thing seemed to be to laugh. Our little
dog had its misgivings in the middle, and paused, to be half kicked,
half thrown across. For it was an anxious moment for our carrying
coolies and the heavily laden brick-tea men. Meanwhile, our cook
amused himself by pitching stones into the air, and it was eerie to
observe that, wherever thrown, and however often they bounded, they
all ended by falling into the deep, swift waters of the unnavigable
Tung.
The next wonder was the celebrated bridge, three hundred feet long,
and with hardly any drop in the nine iron chains of which it is
composed. Planks were laid loosely upon the chains, starting up at
each of the ponies' steps, and the whole bridge swayed like a ship at
sea. Two guardians of the bridge at once rushed forward, and placed
their arms under mine to support me across, taking for granted that I
should be frightened. But looked upon as a yacht pitching and tossing,
the bridge really did not make bad weather of it, so I preferred to
walk alone and to notice how sea-sick our coolies looked. Just at that
point the Tung vividly recalled the Rhine at Basle, but with probably
a greater volume of water. That afternoon the scenery began to be as
wild and gloomy as we had anticipated, granite mountains increasing in
size and narrowing in upon us, the road taking sudden drops down
precipitous gorges of four or five hundred feet, and then at once up
again. There were prickly pears all about, and pomegranate-trees in
hedges, the air full of thyme and peppermint and aromatic scents.
Tibetan villages, just like the pictures, were visible on the far left
bank of the Tung,--two-storied houses, with tiny holes for windows,
and door uncomfortably high up, so that no one could get in, if once
the entrance ladder were drawn up; roofs set so as apparently to let
in a free current of air. Not a tree visible, not a man moving: there
never is in the pictures! Impossible, however, to get across the Tung
to look at them; and when isolated houses were visible on our side, it
was always in inaccessible eyries.
The little pony I rode, not one of those excellent ponies we hired the
first day for a few hours only, had come down twice on both knees with
me on its back. It was evident its little legs might have been
stronger. And as I rode along these granite precipices, my hands were
hot with terror, until at last I could bear no more. For some time
beforehand I had been looking at the road in front, curving round two
headlands--granite precipice above, granite precipice below--the road
overarched by the rock, and had wondered how all our party would get
by. "We met one hundred and fifty people coming from that direction
before our luncheon," I said to myself. "I know it because I counted
them. And if anything, I left out some, when the road was too
alarming. They must all have got by alive! And all these brick-tea men
now coming along with us, of course they are all intending to get by
alive. It can't be so bad!" But it was of no use! I could not ride
along that road, with the pony slipping and stumbling among the
stones, and sliding down the little descents at the corners with both
its hind feet together. Yet the road was good for those parts, being
all of granite and painfully chiselled out; so the pony-boy, a most
lively youth of fifteen, was greatly shocked at my dismounting.
We slept that night where the Lu joins the Tung, cutting a granite
mountain in half to do so, the half that is left standing towering
some three or four thousand feet above our heads. The Lu is the
fullest glacier stream I have ever seen. It has a great deal more
water to carry than the Thames at Richmond, and sometimes it is
compressed into a width of six yards, with a tremendous fall, coming
straight, we are told, from a lake at the foot of the great glacier
we saw first with such delight from the summit of sacred Omi, about a
hundred miles away as the crow flies. All day we rode or walked up the
defile, that would have been too solemn but for this rollicking
glacier stream tumbling head over heels all the way down it, with side
cataracts leaping down, equally overfull of foaming water, equally in
hot haste to reach the Tung. The road was all the way so bad that at
last my only surprise was to find that there were places the ponies
could not manage, and that on one occasion they had, twice in five
minutes, to ford a stream with the water well up to my feet, as they
stumbled among the big boulders in order to avoid a bit of road that
all the heavily laden brick-tea men had managed. It seemed too absurd
that those ponies could not, they had done so much already. But at
last the pony-boy waved his arm, as if to say, "There's Tachienlu!
I've got you there at last! You can't get into trouble now, I think,
along what we call the bit of smooth road in front. And I wash my
hands of you!"
We rode on, past our last Tibetan bridge. How often they had haunted
my childhood's dreams! And now I saw a woman seat herself astride the
stick hanging from the cord drawn taut across the stream, and, resting
one arm upon a very smooth piece of bamboo that runs along the cord,
hold with the other hand a series of loops of cords hanging from it,
and allow herself to be pulled across. I longed to do likewise, and
went the length of seating myself on the stick; but the foaming
torrent below meant certain death if one could not hold on, nor did I
know at all what reception the Tibetan men on the other side might
give me, so I got off again. People say it is easy enough to go as far
as the slope of the cord is downwards, but very hard to pull oneself
up the other side, and that just at the centre the impulse to let go
is almost overmastering. We passed flagstaffs with lettered pieces of
cloth hanging from them inscribed with prayers, passed rocks with
prayers chiselled on their smooth surfaces, into the little frontier
town at the junction of three valleys, with granite mountains hemming
it in all round, one terminating in a sharp little granite pyramid,
quite a feature in the view, and in what looked exactly like a
fortress with three big cannon pointed in different directions.
We had already met one most exciting party of Tibetans, the men
fine-looking, one even more than that, the women rosy and
pleasant-faced and very short-skirted, but evidently all thinking it
an excellent joke not to let me look at them, and such fleet
mountaineers that, though I ran, I could not keep up with them, and
they were all out of sight, merrily laughing, before we had half seen
them. But now at Tachienlu far more wonderful people became visible.
It was as if every wild tribe on the borders of China were
represented, and a piece of the garment of each patched into the
garment of every other. And in and out among them strode the Lamas,
right arm and shoulder bared, like Roman senators in dull-red togas,
their arms folded and their attitude defiant. A beggar passed
singing, with a face like Irving's, only glorified. He had bare feet,
but his face was sublime. Then strode by what looked like a tall
Highlander, with a striped garment of many colours draped round him,
boots of soft woollen coming to the knee, and edged with a coarse
stuff of brilliant red and yellow. Next, two wild-looking men, with
blue hats, that were hats and hoods all in one, slouched upon their
heads, a red disc in the centre of each, their most luxuriant hair, in
innumerable very fine plaits, twisted round and round, and fastened at
one side with large red and yellow rings. Tibetan women, with fine,
rather Irish features, black eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, were
smiling on us from the doorsteps, their hair plaited with a red cord,
and twisted in a most becoming coronal round their heads. They had
large silver earrings with red coral drops, red cloth collars fastened
by large silver clasps, always a lump of coral in the centre of the
middle one, and a large turquoise in that on either side. They had
silver châtelaines hanging from their waists, though often only a
needlebook on the châtelaine, large silver bracelets and strings of
coral beads on their arms, and their fingers covered with enormous
rings.
Every one looked at us and smiled. Could anything be more different
from the reception we were accustomed to in a Chinese city? Every one
looked at us as if to say, "Are not you glad to have got here?" We
felt more and more glad every minute, but a little bewildered too. It
was all so strange; the streets were so full of corners and of
strange-looking people, all looking and smiling at us. And they seemed
to go on for ever. When were we going really to arrive?
[Illustration: CARAVANSERAI AT TACHIENLU.
_By Mrs. Archibald Little._]
But when we reached the caravanserai, or inn, where Baber stayed and
Mr. Rockhill and all the foreigners, where Prince Henry of Orleans and
Mr. Pratt were shut up as it were, the place looked so forbidding we
hesitated to enter, till reassured by hearing the strident tones of
our Chinese butler inside. The rooms actually upstairs--after we had
gone up the staircase, embedded in filth and hair--were a most
agreeable surprise, almost as good as an attic in a London East-End
lodging-house at first sight. Buttered tea was served at once, and
before many minutes were over the lady of the inn, a very handsome
Tibetan, had invited me to a little repast in her private room: tea
buttered, of course--and really very good--Tibetan cheese like very
fresh cream-cheese, and _tsamba_, a kind of barley-meal, and
excellent when kneaded into a ball with buttered tea. Lamas strode in
and out of the courtyard, and stared, swinging praying-wheels. All
manner of men and women looked in. It was quite enough to sit at the
window and look down at the kaleidoscope below, for every one came in
and gave us a glance. And that was just what we wanted to do to them.
But they would not sell their praying-wheels, and the Lamas would not
let me look at the amulets which they carry on their breasts in square
cases, sometimes crusted with turquoises. Surely never was there a
people more bejewelled. The dirtiest man we saw would have a jewel or
two stuck in his hair, and as likely as not a huge ring on his finger.
There were five flagstaffs hung with prayers on our inn, besides a
long cord, hung with them, stretched across the roof. People were
muttering "Om Mani Padmi Hum" as they passed along the street; and as
the last sound at night was the Lamas' trumpets calling to prayers, so
we were roused before dawn by the men in the room below us reciting
continuously "Om Mani Padmi Hum" over and over again for two hours at
least. One began to say it oneself: "The jewel is in the lotus,"--a
pretty saying enough, which might mean anything. But, alas! we could
see no more of the Tibetans at their devotions. At the first
_lamaserai_ we visited the temple doors were closed, and the Lamas
signified by gestures that no key could be found to open them. They
were not uncivil there, although rather peremptorily forbidding me to
use my eyeglass till they had themselves examined it, to see what
effect it might have on the brilliantly coloured pictures in the
temple porch. They also forbade me to photograph, yet allowed me to do
so in the end, and acquiesced in my going upstairs to get a better
place for the camera. There I saw that the door of each Lama's room,
giving on the colonnade running round the courtyard, was locked and
padlocked with a padlock of such portentous size as to suggest many
thoughts. Only one door downstairs had been open, where a very small
Lama was repeating his lessons out of what looked like a most
beautifully written and illuminated book; for, the paper in the window
being torn out, we could see all over the room, which looked like a
particularly dirty, dilapidated little stable. But when I asked the
small boy's leave to go in, wishing to examine his book, he sprang to
the doorway, and the attitude into which he threw himself, forbidding
me to enter, was superb. It said "Avaunt, Satanas!" and indicated that
all the lightnings of heaven would fall, if I took but one step
forward. And, though amused, I could not but admire the little boy for
so pluckily standing his ground. But when another little Lama, on our
coolies somewhat roughly ordering him to keep clear of the camera,
threw himself into an attitude of boxing, it seemed so ridiculous
that, just to test him, I laughed, then clenched my fist, and made as
if I would fight too; on which he laughed heartily, showing he could
quite understand a joke.
Most of the buildings at Tachienlu appeared in the last stage of
decay, especially the temples. One was so full of birds' droppings
that we imagined they could never have been cleared away since the day
it was built. Two fierce dogs were chained across the threshold; and
though I found I could just squeeze myself in out of reach of either,
I noticed none of our Chinese coolies cared to follow. Tibetan dogs
are noted for their fierceness, and are one of the great difficulties
of travel in Tibet. There were boys burning something that had a
horrible smell in the great incense-burner in front, while a priest,
attended by a boy, was beating a gong and chanting within. This was
the only sign of worship we came across. But the passageway between
the back and front temple was all hung with oblong bits of paper, on
which prayers were written. One day we met two very wild-looking
Tibetans, each bent under a load of three huge pieces of slate
inscribed with prayers; and presently we met a string of Tibetan
women, bent more than double under loads of five, six, or even as many
as seven bars of brick tea, each weighing twenty pounds. The world
often seems rather topsy-turvy to a traveller.
A dark door like a house door, a dark passage merely partitioned off
from a shop, then an alley-way that seemed to be used as a
slaughter-house, led up to Kwanyin's temple, a very conspicuous and
rather coquettish building on a hill overlooking the town. When we got
there, followed by a crowd of the usual tiresome little Chinese boys,
and also by two most beautiful Tibetans, on pushing open the door we
found numbers of neglected prayers hanging from the rafters, old
broken beams lying in a heap, a staircase so rickety that no one liked
to go up it, and, at the top of it, a barred door, sufficiently saying
"Not at home." One of the Tibetans had such a quantity of hair, and
such ringlets, that one of our coolies, with Chinese insolence,
touched it to see if it was real. The Tibetan was elderly, and
evidently well seasoned to the world, and only laughed at the liberty.
But his companion--a beautiful youth, with a face of that feminine
type that one only sees now in old books of beauty, arched eyebrows
delicately pencilled, aquiline nose, features all too delicate for
this workaday world--blushed vividly, and looked so unutterably pained
that I longed to apologise, only we lacked a mutual language. He had
himself a yet more inordinate quantity of hair, some of which must
have been horse-hair, frizzed and raised so as to simulate the high
pompadour style; but I think the ringlets that shadowed his
translucent complexion must have been his own.
Then we went on to the great _lamaserai_, some distance from the town
upon the Lassa road. We walked between walls of prayer-slates on
either hand, with prayers streaming to the wind on all the hilltops
and on every point of vantage; and having crossed the Chinese
parade-ground, with a very beautiful weeping-willow and an avenue of
specially fine alders of a local variety, saw a temple all golden
points and golden balls outside, and attached to it a long melancholy
building rather like a workhouse, but for tall, narrow baskets in all
the windows ablaze with Tibetan Glory--a brilliant orange marigold.
Several little boy Lamas sat on the doorstep playing with a dead rat,
which they were pulling about by a string, one little crimson-clad boy
screaming with delight at the dead creature's antics. We had just been
warned to take up our little dog because of the fierce dogs inside,
and the little Lamas now laughed and cried out at the sight of a dog
being carried.
There were many coloured cylinders on each side of the entrance
gate--prayer-wheels--and it was curious to notice the expression of
one of these children, when, thinking I was imitating him, I turned
one of the cylinders the wrong way. He shrieked, and the expression of
concentrated rage in his knotted eyebrows was a revelation to me. I
hastened to turn the cylinder the right way with a smile, and the
little fellow was pacified, while all the children set off running--as
it appeared afterwards--to announce our coming, and have their own
fierce dogs shut up.
We found ourselves in a very large courtyard--a long
parallelogram--handsomely, indeed gorgeously, painted. Opposite to the
entrance gate were the closed doors of the temple, with no way of
opening them visible, brilliantly coloured pictures on either side of
them. The summits of the temple were so heavily gilded as to look like
solid gold, so also were two deer about the size of collie dogs,
sitting one on each side of a large golden disc, curiously worked,
placed on the temple front above the door. On the top of the temple
were several of those curious Tibetan ornaments of which I neither
know the name nor the purpose. Two looked like very tall, narrow,
golden flower-pots, handsomely ornamented; two like sticks with ropes
hanging down all round them, girt transversely with white paper bands.
Could they possibly be meant for state umbrellas? The cords were
black, and looked as if made of hair. The front of the temple was of
stone, painted red, but the top of it looked as if it consisted of
billets of wood all laid close together, of a dull red-brown. There
was a brilliantly painted colonnade, with outside staircase leading at
intervals to an upper verandah, all round the courtyard, excepting
just where stood the temple; and to its left a specially gaudy house.
In front of this latter was again a collection of black hanging ropes,
and on the top of this a _human skull_!
While I was noticing all these details, Lamas all in crimson, each
with the right arm bare, continued to troop into the courtyard and
into the verandah above, from which at first they looked down, making
eyes and smiling the Lama's smile upon a woman. But suddenly, as a
loud voice, with the tone of authority, became audible in the
distance, the smiles vanished, and the Lamas stood round quite
expressionless with folded arms. I had just stepped forward to examine
more carefully that human skull, startled by the horror of it amidst
all the gorgeous colouring around, when the blood rushed to my heart,
as there came a sound, and close upon the sound two large Tibetan
dogs sprang out through an inner gateway and made straight for me.
It passed through my mind at once, that it was useless to try to quell
Tibetan dogs, as one so often quells Chinese dogs. I remembered that
they are said never to let go, and I knew now at once that voice in
authority had been ordering the dogs to be loosed. Sick with terror, I
yet thrust the iron point of my alpenstock into the jaws of the
foremost dog; but the fierce creature, although with such tremendous
leverage against it, tore it from my grasp, and shook the long stick
in its teeth as if it had been a straw. My husband sprang forward to
the rescue, though still holding our own little dog in his arms. One
of our coolies, a really brave, strong ex-soldier, followed him, and
together the two managed somehow to beat off the dogs, and then we all
ran for it. My recollection is that to the last not a Lama--and there
must have been at least forty of them standing round, all draped in
crimson--moved a muscle even of his countenance. We had bowed politely
on entering, and asked leave; but we did not bow as we came away thus
hurriedly to the sound of more and more dogs baying in the distance.
There were shrines full of little clay pyramids covered with images of
Buddha; there were more and finer prayer-slates by the principal
entrance, by which we came out. But whether the Lamas ever pray, God
knows, I don't!
As we passed back into the town again, from the shop from which a
handsome woman, beautifully bejewelled, had gone out that morning with
her handmaid to do her own washing in the pure glacier stream, we
heard a jolly laugh ring out from the same jovial Lama we had left
there talking to my handsome friend as we passed out.
The Roman Catholic priests here say that the people believe in nothing
except their Lamas, and we feel a little inclined to think, if they
believe in them, it is no wonder that they believe in nothing else.
Whatever any one may think of missions in China--and I am grieved as
well as greatly surprised to find how little interest people generally
take in them--every one must wish well to missionaries to Tibet; for
the priesthood must have an extraordinarily paralysing effect, that
this physically gifted people, still with princes of their own, should
have sunk under Chinese control, in spite of the impregnable natural
fastnesses of their mountains, and the defence established by their
climate. Whilst we were there, in September, the thermometer varied
from 56° to 60°, but the winds blew so keenly off the glaciers that
many people were wearing heavy furs, and the price of them had already
gone up.
Buying, indeed, we found most exhausting work at Tachienlu. At home,
when one feels like buying, one goes to the shops; but the people who
have anything to sell drop in at Tachienlu from early morning till
late, late at night, merry rosy little maidens with a keen eye to
business, or wonderfully withered old crones. They ask any price at
first; then just as they are going away say quietly, "What would you
like to give?" after which they stand out by the hour for an
additional half-rupee for themselves, to give which a rupee has to be
carefully cut in two. An aged chieftain, with a most beautiful
prayer-wheel and rosary, both of which, he says, are heirlooms and
cannot be sold, brings a beautifully embroidered red leather
saddle-cloth for sale; while a Tibetan from the interior brings first
a Lama's bell, then cymbals, then woollen clothes of soft, rich
colours, and little serving-maids appear with cast-off clothes,
expecting us to buy them all. It is interesting to notice how very
fashionable is a Tibetan lady's dress--a sleeveless gown, that opens
down the front like a tea-gown, a skirt with box pleats so tiny and so
near together as to be almost on the top of one another, carefully
fastened down so as to lie quite flat, and lined at the bottom with a
broad false hem of coarse linen, so as to avoid unnecessary weight.
Yet even as it is, the weight of this silk skirt is prodigious. Over
this is worn a jacket, and over this an apron girt round rather below
the waist with a variety of girdles. But it is hard to say what a
Tibetan girl really does wear, for the seventeen-year-old daughter of
the inn, finding herself rather coming to pieces, began rectifying her
toilette in my presence, and I lost count of the garment below garment
that appeared in the process, all girdled rather below the waist. The
finish of the toilette, even in ordinary life, seems to be an
unlimited supply of jewellery and dirt, the finger-nails, besides
being deeply grimed, being also tinged with red. The men wear
turquoises in their hair, and often one gigantic earring, besides
rosaries and big amulet-cases. And the general effect is so brilliant
one rather loses sight of the dirt. But indeed, after travelling
through China, it would be difficult to be much struck by dirt
anywhere.
It is very trying that they have such a very quick perception of a
camera. I have spent hours with a detective half hidden behind a pile
of woollens at our window, and tried every expedient. But they are
said to think the photographer gets their soul from them, and then has
two to enjoy, whilst they themselves are left soulless. At last,
however, after a great deal of coaxing, six Tibetan women stood up in
a row, encouraged to do so by the elder daughter of the inn, who is
married--though probably after the Tibetan fashion--to a rich Yunnan
merchant, who occupied one wing of the courtyard, filling it with
beautiful wild men, but himself absorbed in his opium-pipe. I was
afraid to place them, or do anything beyond asking the aged chieftain
to leave off turning his prayer-wheel for the one second while I took
them, although I longed to arrange them a little, and was disappointed
that the daughter of the inn had not put on any of the grand clothes
and jewellery she had exhibited to me.
The last day or two the yaks were coming into town in droves to fetch
the brick tea away. All those we saw were black, although the yaks'
tails for sale were white. They were rather like Highland cattle for
size, and seemed very quiet, although looking so fierce, with long
bushy manes and tails, and long shaggy hair down their front legs. The
last day we were at Tachienlu we got a perfectly clear view of the
snowy mountains and glacier to the south, as we stood outside the
north gate beyond the magnificent alders there. All that day we rode
down the narrow granite defile that leads up from the Tung, and then
we heard it really would be possible to cross the river and see the
Tibetan villages on its left bank, if we could walk for two miles
higher up to where there was a boat.
My husband was suffering from neuralgia, but he very heroically
consented to my going without him, a proceeding which our Chinese
servant so highly condemned, that he became almost violent before I
started early next day with all four of the _yamen_ runners, sent by
the Chinese Government to protect us, and one of our soldier coolies
to protect me from the _yamen_ runners. As the Tung would not be
passable again till we reached the city of the great chain bridge, I
had thus a long day to look forward to through unknown country; and
knowing how the Tibetans feel about photography, there was a certain
amount of anxiety about the proceeding. But what a disappointment
awaited me! We walked the longest two miles ever human being walked,
till we came to the place where the boat was on the _other_ side of
the river. The coolie had run on ahead to hail it. But in spite of his
shouting no one moved in the village opposite. We had been warned that
nothing would induce the people to come across with the boat till
they had breakfasted, so we sat down and waited.
We saw a man and boy come out to till the ground. The boy lay on his
back, and looked at us and sang to himself. All four _yamen_ runners
shouted, and waved strings of cash. A shepherd came out with a herd of
goats, another with cows and goats. We judged by the smoke that
breakfasts were preparing. We even saw one man come out upon his flat
roof with what we decided to be an after-breakfast pipe. We thought he
must come now. Yes! Surely there was some one coming to the boat! No,
it was a man with a basket on his back, evidently wanting to cross to
our side. He sat down and waited. Presently another man came out and
sat down beside him. They became quite happy, those two--setting to at
once in what probably is a never-ending occupation for them, hunting
'mid their rags for vermin! Two other moving bundles of rags came
slowly down and joined them--one apparently a man, the other looking
rather like a woman. They also sat and hunted! At last the boy moved;
he went to the village, we thought, to call some one. Our hopes rose.
All my men shouted together. A man came to the water's edge! Another!
They looked at us. They looked at the boat. They felt the boat, but
they did not push it into the water; and they went away. We were in
despair. We made feints of going, and then came back again. At last
there was nothing for it but to go really. The beggars in their rags
on the other side got uneasy then. They even shouted to us, begging
us to stop; but it was of no use. Hours afterwards, as we coasted a
granite headland, we saw that boat still high and dry. I would so
gladly have risked my life in it.
But now, besides retracing our long two miles--now under a burning
sun--we had twenty-two miles to get over in order to join the rest of
our party and get shelter for the night. It was a comfort to find some
more coolies with lanterns sent to meet us before we had to cross the
chain bridge, for there are often planks missing in it and others with
great holes in them. We went across in a phalanx. I held on to the
coolie on my left, he reached an arm out to secure the man with the
light, and the coolie on my other side supported my elbow. It seemed
we got on best when we all went in step together, although I should
not have thought so. On arriving, we found that, when our carrying
coolies had crossed, some _yamen_ runners had attacked them, and in
the scuffle that ensued the fur coat of the coolie, who had gone with
me, had been stolen out of a basket. So my husband was just starting
for the _yamen_ to tell the tale. "I know all about it," said the
magistrate, "and it is quite true they were _yamen_ runners, who acted
very wrongly. You want them punished? Behold!" And the curtain behind
him was drawn back, and there were two men with their heads in
_cangues_. But the coolie from whom the coat had been stolen stood up
before the magistrate, and stoutly maintained those were not the men.
"How could you know in the confusion?" asked the magistrate. "Can you
identify the men? If so, and these are not the right ones, I will
punish the others also."
So there we were, but not the fur coat! What a comfort it was, though,
to rest after that long, hot day! And how luxurious to be carried next
day in a sedan-chair along the beautiful banks of the swift-flowing
Tung! Then six days' travelling, against time now, along the great
brick-tea road, through scenes of varying beauty, among gigantic ferns
and waxen begonias nestling into the walls, past long ranges of
black-and-white farm-buildings, shadowed by large, beautiful
shade-trees; a day and a half on a bamboo raft down the exceedingly
pretty but turbulent Ya, with the waves washing up to our knees at all
the bad rapids; after which five days down the conjoined rivers Ya,
Tung, and Yangtse; and then home in Chungking again, after the most
adventurous and by far the most varied and interesting summer outing
that it has yet fallen to my lot to make.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Reproduced from the _Cornhill Magazine_ by the kind permission of
the Editor.