I
PEKIN, Friday, April 26, 1901.
At last the day has come for my departure for the sacred wood which
encloses the imperial tombs.
At seven o'clock in the morning I leave the Palace of the North, taking
with me my last autumn's servants, Osman and Renaud, as well as four
African riflemen and a Chinese interpreter. We start on horseback on
animals chosen for the journey, which will be transported by rail
whenever we are.
First, two or three kilometres across Pekin in the beautiful morning
light, along great thoroughfares magnificent in their desolation,
the route of pageants and of emperors; through the triple red gates,
between lions of marble and obelisks of marble, yellow as old ivory.
Now the railway station--it is in the centre of the city at the foot
of the wall of the second enclosure, for the Western barbarians dared
to commit the sacrilege of piercing the ramparts in order to introduce
their submersive system.
Men and horses go aboard. Then the train threads its way across the
devastated Chinese City, and for three or four kilometres skirts the
colossal gray wall of the Tartar City, which continues to unfold
itself, always the same, with the same bastions, the same battlements,
without a gate, without anything, to relieve its monotony and its
immensity.
A breach in the outer wall casts us forth at last into the melancholy
country.
And for three hours and a half it is a journey through the dust of
the plain, past demolished stations, rubbish, ruins. According to the
great plans of the allied nations, this line, which actually goes to
Pao-Ting-Fu, is to be extended several hundred leagues, so as to unite
Pekin and Hang-Chow, two enormous cities. It would thus become one of
the great arteries of new China, scattering along its way the benefits
of Occidental civilization.
At noon we alight at Tchou-Tchou, a great walled city, whose high
battlemented ramparts and two twelve-storied towers are perceived as
through a cloud of ashes. A man is scarcely recognizable at twenty
paces, as in times of fog in the north, so filled with dust is the
air; and the sun, though dimmed and yellow, reflects a heat that is
overpowering.
The commandant and the officers of the French port, which has occupied
Tchou-Tchou since the autumn, were kind enough to meet me and to take
me for breakfast to their table in the comparative freshness of the big
dark pagodas where they with their men were installed. The road to the
tombs,[3] they tell me, which latterly has seemed quite safe, has been
less so for a few days, a band of two hundred marauding Boxers having
yesterday attacked one of the large villages through which I must pass,
where they fought all the morning,--until the appearance of a French
detachment who came to the aid of the villagers sent the Boxers flying
like a flock of sparrows.
"Two hundred Boxers," continued the commandant of the post, making a
mental calculation; "let me see, two hundred Boxers: you will have to
have at least ten men. You already have six horsemen; I will, if you
wish, add four more."
I felt that I ought to make some suitable acknowledgment, to reply that
it was too much, that he overpowered me. Then under the eyes of the
Buddhas, who were watching us breakfast, we both began to laugh, struck
all at once by the air of extravagant bluster in what we were saying.
In truth it had the force of
"Paraissez, Navarrois, Maures et Castillans;"
and yet, ten men against two hundred Boxers are really all that are
necessary. They are tenacious and terrible only behind walls, those
fellows; but in a flat country--it is highly probable, moreover, that I
shall not see the queue of one. I accept the reinforcement,--four brave
soldiers, who will be delighted to accompany me; I accept so much the
more readily, since my expedition will thus take on the proportions of
a military reconnaissance, and this, it appears, will be a good thing
just now.
At two o'clock we remount our horses, for we are to sleep in an old
walled town twenty-five kilometres farther on, called Laï-Chow-Chien
(Chinese cities seem to claim these names; we know of one called
Cha-Ma-Miaou, and another, a very large, ancient capital, Chien-Chien).
We make a plunge and disappear at once in a cloud of dust which the
wind chases over the plain,--the immense, suffocating plain. There is
no illusion possible; it is the "yellow wind" which has arisen,--a wind
which generally blows in periods of three days, adding to the dust of
China all that of the Mongolian desert.
No roads but deep tracks, paths several feet below the surface, which
could only have been hollowed there in the course of centuries. A
frightful country, which has, since the beginning of time, endured
torrid heat and almost hyperborean cold. In this dry, powdery soil how
can the new wheat grow, which here and there makes squares of really
fresh green in the midst of the infinite grays? There are also from
time to time a few sparse clumps of young elms and willows, somewhat
different from ours, but nevertheless recognizable, just showing their
first tiny leaves. Monotony and sadness; one would call it a poor
landscape of the extreme north, lighted by an African sun,--a sun that
has mistaken the latitude.
At a turn of the crooked road a band of laborers who see us suddenly
spring up, are frightened, and throw down their spades to run away. But
one of them stops the others, crying, "Fanko pink" (French soldiers).
"They are French, do not be afraid." Then they bend again over the
burning earth, and peaceably continue their work, looking at us as we
pass by from the corners of their eyes. Their confidence speaks volumes
on the somewhat exceptional kind of "barbarians" our brave soldiers
have known how to be, in the course of a European invasion.
[Illustration: CHINESE VILLAGE CARTS, THE ONLY VEHICLE USED IN THE
NORTH OF CHINA]
The few clumps of willows scattered over the plains almost always
shelter under their sparse foliage the villages of tillers of the
soil,--little houses of clay and of gray brick, absurd little
pagodas, which are crumbling in the sunshine. Warned by watchmen,
men and children come out as we pass to look at us in silence with
naïve curiosity; bare to the waist, very yellow, very thin, and very
muscular; pantaloons of the ever similar dark blue cotton. Out of
politeness each one uncoils and allows to hang down his back his long
plaited hair, for to keep it on the crown of the head would be a
disrespect to me. No women; they remain concealed. These people must
have much the same impression of us that the peasants of Gaul had when
Attila, chief of the army, passed with his escort, except that they are
less frightened. Everything about us is astonishing,--costumes, arms,
and faces. Even my horse, which is an Arabian stallion, must seem to
them a huge, unusual, superb animal beside their own little horses,
with their big rough heads.
The frail willows, through which the sunlight sifts upon the houses and
tiny pagodas of these primitive lives, scatter over us their blossoms,
like tiny feathers or little tufts of cotton-wool, which fall in a
shower, and mingle with the never-ending dust.
On the plain, which now begins again, level and always the same, I keep
two or three hundred metres in advance of my little armed troop, to
avoid the excessive dust raised by the trot of the horses' feet; a gray
cloud behind me when I turn around shows me that they are following.
The "yellow wind" continues to blow; we are powdered with it to such an
extent that our horses, our moustaches, our uniforms have become of the
color of ashes.
Toward five o'clock the old walled town where we are to pass the night
appears before us. From afar it is almost imposing in the midst of the
plain, with its high crenellated ramparts so sombre in color. Near by,
no doubt, it would show but ruin and decrepitude, like the rest of
China.
A horseman, bringing along with him the inevitable cloud of dust,
comes out to meet me. It is the officer commanding the fifty men of
the marine infantry who have occupied Laï-Chou-Chien since October. He
informs me that the general has had the kindly thought of having me
announced as one of the great mandarins of Occidental letters, so the
mandarin of the town is coming out to meet me with an escort, and he
has called together the neighboring villages for a fête which he is
preparing for me.
In fact, here the procession comes, from out the crumbling old gates,
advancing through the wasted fields, with red emblems and music.
Now it stops to await me, ranged in two lines on each side of the
road. And following the usual ceremonial, some one, a servant of the
mandarin, comes forward, fifty feet in advance of the others, with a
large red paper, which is the visiting-card of his master. He himself,
the timid mandarin, awaits, standing, with the people of his house,
having come down from his palanquin out of deference. I extend my hand
without dismounting, as I have been told to do, after which, in a cloud
of gray dust, we make our way toward the great walls, followed by my
cavaliers, and preceded by the procession of honor with music and
emblems.
At the head are two big red parasols, surrounded with a fall of silk
like the canopies in a procession; than a fantastic black butterfly,
as large as an owl with extended wings, which is carried at the end
of a stick by a child; then two rows of banners; then shields of red
lacquered wood inscribed with letters of gold. As soon as we begin to
march gongs commence to sound lugubriously at regular intervals as for
a military salute, whilst heralds with prolonged cries announce my
arrival to the inhabitants of the village.
Here we are at the gate, which seems like the entrance to a cavern; on
each side are hung five or six little wooden cages, each one containing
a kind of black beast, motionless in the midst of a swarm of flies;
their tails may be seen hanging outside the bars like dead things. What
can it be that keeps itself rolled up like a ball, and has such a long
tail? Monkeys? Ah, horrors, they are heads that have been severed from
their bodies! Each one of these pretty cages contains a human head,
beginning to grow black in the sunshine, with long, braided hair which
has been intentionally uncoiled.
We are swallowed up by the big gate, and are received by the inevitable
grinning old granite monsters which at right and at left raise their
great heads with the squinting eyes. Motionless, against the inner
wall of the tunnel, the people press to see me pass, huddled together,
climbing one upon the other,--yellow nakedness, blue cotton rags, ugly
faces. The dust fills and obscures this vaulted passage where men and
horses press, enveloped in the same gloom.
We have entered old provincial China, belonging to another era entirely
unknown to us.
[Illustration:
_Copyright, 1901, by J. C. Hemment_
NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS AND MEN OF FRENCH ARTILLERY AND MARINES]