THE YELLOW LAND.
The turbid orange-coloured waters of the great Yangtze are around
us--"the river of the golden sands," far too poetical a name for the
muddy waters, that with a strong current swish and eddy against the
ship's side.
The spirit of travel that rises strong within you as you approach the
landing to a new country, is discouraged by that thin line of flat,
ugly land, which is all we see on that dull October morning, through a
mist of rain, of the coast of China.
The Yellow Land! Rightly named, indeed. The sea is yellow, the rivers
are yellow, the land is yellow, the people, too, are yellow--and the
Dragon Flag is yellow. Yellow, too, might China be with gold if only
her rulers, the mandarins, would let her people give scope to their
abilities, develop the rich resources of an as yet barely touched
country, and strike ahead among the nations of the world.
We had anchored at the Saddles, some little Islands with a fancied
resemblance to that equine article, and then moved up with the tide,
opposite to the fleet of sampan masts at Woosung; but still the water
on the bar is too low, and they whistle for a steam tug to take us
off the Saikio Maru, and up fifteen miles of the deadly uninteresting
reaches of the Wung-Poo--the last tributary of the Yangtze--to Shanghai.
What a mighty river this Yangtze is. The name signifies the Child
of the Ocean, and the Chinese have various others for it, such as
"The Father of Rivers," "The Girdle of China." "It is the richest
river in the world--richest in navigable waters, in mighty cities, in
industrious human beings, in affluent tributaries, in wide margins
of cultivated lands of inexhaustible fertility. This vast expanse of
turpid fresh water is saturated with the loam of fields 1500 miles
away." The Yangtze rises in Central Asia, and drains an area of 600,000
square miles of Midland China.
We pass hundreds of junks, the quaintest ships afloat in the world,
with their sides decorated with brilliant blue and red frescoes, and
sails of bamboo matting; the all-seeing black and white eye is in the
bow of the boat, for no Chinese junk would sail without this occult
protection.
Lost to us are the beauties of the palm and flower-covered Bund, the
pride of Shanghai (on this first occasion), for we land in a drenching
rain, and seek shelter in a dirty jinrikisha lined with green and red
oilskin, and drawn by a feeble coolie--and this began the first of
our disadvantageous comparisons between China and Japan. By all means
let everyone visit China first, with its dirty mud villages, devoid
ever of picturesqueness, its swarming, grasping, sullen people, and
leave Japan--dear, clean, little Japan, with its picturesque streets,
and charming, willing little fairies to the last. From that moment of
landing I took a repugnance to China, and the more I saw of it the more
the dislike grew.
An hour after reaching Shanghai, we were told of a steamer leaving for
Tientsin immediately--a cargo boat, it was true, but the captain was
willing to take us. The last bale of goods was being lowered into the
hold, the Blue Peter flying at her masthead; a hasty decision being
necessary without more reflection, and, being most anxious to push on
to Peking, we embarked on board.
The _Chïng Ping_ is a Chinese collier of 500 tons, trading between the
coast ports, and with a single cabin for a chance passenger. A glance
was sufficient to show us the fate in store for us for the next few
days, but it was then too late. As we scudded out into the Yellow Sea,
in a storm of wind and rain we began to suffer. The horrors of that
long night are yet like a bad dream. We heard bell after bell strike,
and thought that dawn would never break, for the _Chïng Ping_ rolled to
desperation, shipping heavy seas, whilst the wind blew like a hurricane
through the "alloway" under which was our cabin, blowing showers of
spray in at the door, while on closing it we were suffocated. We were
unable to move, for it was impossible to stand, and in total darkness,
for the matches had early disappeared amid the chaos of articles on the
floor, which we helplessly heard rolling about and bounding against
the walls. Nor was this the worst; for the rain and spray leaked
through the woodwork of the cabin, and soon our berths and clothes were
saturated, and deadly sick, with no dry place in which to place our
heads, we lay drenched through the weary hours of that dreadful night.
It was a sorry sight, a scene of wreckage and despair, that good
Captain Crowlie looked in upon the next morning, when we begged to be
put ashore anywhere, at any cost, rather than spend such another night
on board. He was so kind to us, taking us up and establishing us in his
own cabin on the hurricane deck, where we passed the remainder of the
voyage.
For the past few days we had been crossing the stormy Gulf of Pechele,
with the now grey, now purple, coast-line of the great province of
Chihli to port. It is late on the fourth afternoon that we are on the
bridge with the captain, all anxiety to know whether we shall cross the
bar at the mouth of the Peiho to-night, for he fears that we are just
two hours too late to catch the flood tide.
The entrance to the Peiho is most extraordinary; for there is no sign
of land, no banks visible to indicate that it is a river, but only the
bulbous buoy of the lighter opposite the bar, rising above the horizon,
growing clearer every minute. It is determined to make a desperate
effort, and everybody is on the alert; officers at their various posts,
the engineer putting on all steam, the steering-gear connected to the
upper bridge, whilst the leadsman, a quaint Chinese figure perched out
on an overhanging gangway, is set to work. At each call the water gets
shallower, and decreases at every throw from fifteen feet to thirteen
feet down to nine, and then the flat bottom of the _Chïng Ping_
ensconces itself comfortably on the bed of mud, and the fatal "Let go
anchor" sounds from the bridge. We stay there for the night, a sudden
silence falling on the ship in the silver moonlight, save for the
convulsive sobbing of the engines, giving forth their last oppression
of steam. Alas! we shall not sleep in Tientsin to-night.
At 2 o'clock in the morning the commotion, as we get under weigh,
begins afresh, and no sleep is possible after that, for there is the
frantic whirring of the steering-gear just outside the cabin, as the
sharp commands from the bridge, make the wheel race from port to
starboard. We stop opposite the Taku Custom House, and whistle ever
louder and more angrily for the sleeping officer, who eventually
comes reluctantly on board. And then in the moonlight we glide by the
crumbling banks, past mud villages, silent as the grave, lying in deep
shadows, until morning glimmers in the purple red of the sky, and we
pay our morning orisons to the rising sun, in its glory, over the
well-cultivated, intensely flat plains, and the cracked mud banks of
the great Peiho.
The navigation of this river is the most wonderful series of nautical
evolutions. The steamers are especially built with flat bottoms for
the service, and must not draw more than ten feet of water. It is
without exception the most exasperating bit of navigation, calling
forth the anathemas alike of captain and passengers. There is first
of all the bar, where at high water there is often only from ten to
eleven feet. Here it is possible to wait for several days before there
is enough water for a steamer to cross, and in most cases the cargo
has to be taken out to lighten the ship on one side, and replaced on
the other, or again sometimes it may be too rough for the lighters to
come alongside. Then commence the windings, so sharp that steam is shut
off, whilst the bows of the ship are across the stream, and the stern
is all but on the bank, the dangers of going aground being considerably
increased by the shallowness of the water. To give an idea of the
serpentine course of the river--a steamer which we passed in a bend on
the port side, two hundred yards further on will be to starboard. The
effect produced by this is, that the large sails of the sampans are a
succession of ships sailing inland, in contrary directions.
We pass the mud forts of Taku, where the great battle of 1860 took
place, when the allied forces were on their march to Peking. The
Chinese idea of fortifications, as a rule, consists largely of walls
of mud with a hard battened surface, and these forts are intended for
the protection of the Peiho, but really their best one rests in the bar
at its mouth. There is the embankment yonder of China's only railway.
It runs from Taku to Tientsin. Fancy a country of four million square
miles, with a population of as many millions as there are days in the
year, with but one single railway of a few miles! Yet such is the case;
China is still in the shadow of the dark ages.
The morning mists gather into a thin vapour and roll upwards, showing
miles of fields, cultivated like kitchen gardens, interspersed with
mud villages, where the houses are made of wattles plastered over with
the earth they stand on, with chimneys formed of a cone of mud, and
paper windows. In wet weather and floods these houses often partially
dissolve, or subside altogether. But then they are so easily rebuilt.
Here the urchins come out and revel in the murky wash in our wake,
whilst the sampan propellers push hurriedly off from the bank, lest
we land them, as indeed we did one, high and dry after our swell
had subsided. Hundreds of coolies are trudging along, with their
bamboo poles slung across their shoulders, whilst others squatted
on the ground occupied with that B.C., or ancient Eastern method of
irrigation, the automatically worked water-wheel.
We now have the disagreeable excitement of going aground, a gentle
bump on a flat bank, where we stick fast, and recall all the stories
which we have been hearing, of steamers staying aground for a week or
ten days. Meanwhile the screw churns away at the liquid mud, and a
crowd collects on the causeway above, and yet we remain fast. It is
after half an hour's manœuvring that we get off and proceed through
the few more perilous bends still left, with a few more hair-breadth
escapes. We see the tall chimneys, covering a large area, of the
Arsenal, and then the Pagoda, with its white umbrellas, overlooking
the fort and military exercise ground for the troops, and then we are
nearing Tientsin. It is pleasant in the first view of Tientsin to
be greeted by a familiar remembrance of England, in the towers of a
miniature Windsor Castle, the Victoria Hall of the English Settlement,
that tower above the dust-coloured hovels. It is in strange contrast
to the two cages on the banks, fixed on the top of tall bamboo poles,
where are seen the heads of two criminals. Doubtless they were executed
on the spot where the crime was committed, as is the Chinese custom.
We anchor in the river, and amid a deafening roar, and the shoving,
scraping and pushing of hundreds of filthy sampans, we land on the Bund
of Tientsin, and are settling into the somewhat uninviting quarters of
the Astor House, when Mr. Byron Brennan, H. M.'s Consul, kindly sends
for us, and in an hour we are installed in luxury, and have washed away
the unpleasant reminiscences of our journey across the Yellow Sea in a
collier.
The English Consulate looks out over the Bund, but it is such a
different Bund to the usual one of handsome houses and gardens touching
the water's edge. This one is piled up with merchandise; great bales
of goods, covered with matting, are stacked under the trees or strewn
about the ground, and through the wide-opened windows come all day
the shouts and cries of the strong-limbed coolies, as they lade and
unlade the ships. A strange silence falls over the busy scene of the
day, at night. But in another month or two the Bund will be a model
of neatness, swept and clean, and all this bustling scene will be
hushed under the spell of winter, for the Peiho freezes in the end of
November or beginning of December. Merchants are now hurrying to send
away the last of their merchandise, and residents are receiving their
last supplies before the river is closed. During those winter months
Tientsin is entirely cut off from the outer world, save for the mails
which are brought overland. No one can enter or leave the town to go
south, and business is at a standstill until spring breaks up the ice.
This isolation comes suddenly, for we heard of a steamer that went
aground below Tientsin, and in one night was frozen in by a coat of
ice a foot thick. A British gunboat is anchored under the Consulate,
sent up since the late riots at Wuhu, and it is a great comfort to the
English residents to feel that she is to spend the winter here.
We passed a quiet forenoon with a regular feast of the _Times_ and of
home news. Then in the evening Mrs. Brennan took me for a walk round
the European Concession, down Consulate Road, where the consulates
of the various nations are situated, to the Gordon Hall and Victoria
Gardens. Five years ago this was a mud-dried waste--strange contrast to
these pretty zoological gardens, with its tennis courts, and well laid
out paths, and Chinese band playing. The Hall is the centre of social
life, where dances and public entertainments are held, and it has a
capital Library and Reading-room. At the entrance are stands of guns,
belonging to the Volunteer corps of foreign gentlemen, who are ready to
come to arms should necessity arise.
Like so many other places of this kind, Tientsin has but one drive out
into the country, and along this we go up on to the city wall. We stand
on the high elevation of the deeply arched bridge, and look out on the
flat swamps of mudland, on the surrounding marshy and unhealthy pools.
It is mud in some shape or form whichever way you look, it is seen
alike in houses, walls and roads, and it is certainly very like what I
pictured China from reading books of travel.
The Europeans on their small spotty Chinese ponies, or driving in
their cabriolet carriages, are returning from their evening exercise.
Tientsin seems to be a pleasant place socially, particularly in the
cold though bright winter, when business is slack on account of
the frozen river, and the little community join together to amuse
themselves with skating and sailing of ice-boats. And so soon as the
first dust storm spoils the river ice, they enclose this pond we are
passing, and make a covered skating rink.
My husband has just returned from a visit to the great Viceroy, Li
Hung Chang, who sent soon after our arrival to say that he would be
glad to see him. So at five o'clock he and Mr. Brennan started out in
state-green palanquins, the official colour being green in distinction
to the ordinary blue, with a numerous retinue and an outrider on a
white horse to clear the way, and present the Chinese card, a single
sheet of long pink paper. On arrival at the Viceregal Yâmen, exterior
and surroundings of which were little in keeping with the high offices
of state held by His Excellency, the chairs were carried into an inner
courtyard, flanked by wooden shields, bearing all the titles of the
Viceroy. The visitors were conducted to the small foreign reception
rooms, where His Excellency immediately joined them.
Li Hung Chang is a tall handsome man of seventy, six feet four inches
high, and was dressed in a grey plush robe. He is frequently styled the
Bismarck of China, and is certainly the most prominent and influential
statesman of this vast Chinese Empire. For many years Li, the Viceroy,
has held his present post of Governor-General of the large Province of
Chihli, and unites with it that of Grand Secretary, Guardian of the
Heir Apparent, and what is most important of all to us, Commissioner
for Trade, in which capacity all Foreign Affairs are referred to him
from Peking. In the conversation, His Excellency placed great stress
upon his sincere desire to develop closer trade relations with England,
and took great interest in the details of the trade of the British
Empire which C. gave him. The interview lasted about an hour, the
Viceroy conducting his guests back to their chairs, and sending me his
photograph.
[Illustration: A Chinese Street.]
There are two ways of reaching Peking. You may ride or drive in those
terrible country carts the eighty miles, staying one or two nights in
an indescribably dirty Chinese inn, or go, as we decided, in a house
boat, 120 miles up the Peiho.
At two o'clock the next afternoon, we drove in jinrikishas for an
hour through the heart of the native quarter. This is my first view
of a real Chinese city, and my early impressions are comprised in
the all-pervading, all-powerful, smothering filth and dirt, in the
revolting smells and disgusting sights; my next, in the jostling of
crowds of coolies wheeling enormous iron-bound bales on wheelbarrows,
of carts drawn by teams of mules, donkeys or oxen, of equestrians,
pedestrians, jinrikishas, and sedan chairs, crowded into a six-foot
wide street, curtained with bamboo mats above, producing a bewildering
pandemonium. Passing the particularly squalid corner where is situated
the Yâmen, we see the twin towers of the Roman Catholic Cathedral. They
stand there as a solemn reminder of the dangers which yet threaten the
Settlement, and of the fanatical people they are surrounded by, for it
was here in 1870 that there was that awful massacre of Roman Catholic
nuns, followed by the pillage of the Convent and Cathedral.
On arrival at the bridge of boats, we find our house-boat, Chinese boy,
provisions, luggage and crew of coolies safely on board, and after many
objurations from the delayed passengers, a passage by the removal of
one of the boats is made for us, and we begin our long journey up the
Peiho.
This house-boat is very comprehensive on a small scale, for we have a
sitting-room and bed-room and kitchen. There is a tiny promenade deck
in the bows, then down two steps and you are in a room with a bench,
a table and two stools, the door being formed of movable planks of
wood. Through an elegant arabesque of woodwork, screened with paper, we
can see the raised floor on which are spread our mattresses with red
quilts. Behind a similar screen is the kitchen, a few square inches,
under the shadow of the helm, where our clever "Boy," who is cook,
valet and interpreter in one, turns out the most deliciously cooked
and varied dishes, with a _batterie de cuisine_, consisting of a few
tin saucepans and an iron brazier of charcoal. As for the crew, they
sleep on deck anywhere, and keep their provisions in the hold. The
flat-bottomed boat has an arched roof of matting laid on bamboo sticks.
It is clean, for I only saw one black-beetle, but is only moderately
air and water-tight. Our tiny domicile is dominated by an enormous sail
which is hoisted up and down on running strings. We either tow or pole,
or sail, according to the wind and stream.
The vast and varied river life is before us. The banks for some miles
above Tientsin are lined with these ugly sampans, their tattered
sails hanging in ribbons, their decks strewn with _débris_ where the
naked children disport themselves, and the women steer at the helm;
for in these sampans generations are born, live, and die, and they
are coated too with the dirt of many decades. There are fishermen on
the bank where, projecting out of the little hut which he inhabits,
is a net stretched wide on bamboo poles, baited with the white of egg
spread on the meshes. He lowers it slowly up and down, and at each
dip we see the little silver-scaled fish jumping about in the net.
There are children dabbling in the mud, true mud-larks, and women
washing their clothes. We espy a bridge over a tributary, with a
single graceful arch, so curved as to be half an oval, and with some
houses, a willow tree and pig-tailed Chinaman, calling to remembrance
the willow-patterned plate of our childhood. We pass several covered
Chinese gun-boats,--war-junks,--with their blue and white striped
awnings, and a Maxim gun in the bows kept for the defence of the Peiho,
and the patrolling of the river.
We get out into the country at length, between high mud banks, and by
a continuous succession of villages, their brown dusty walls abutting
on to the hard-trodden towing path, whilst around is that careful
cultivation resembling a succession of kitchen gardens, with its plots
of lettuces of enormous size, of cabbages, turnips and onions; and
the vertical pole of the water tank is always amongst them. A place
is hollowed out in the bank, where, from a cross plank, the bucket
attached to the pole is pulled down to the water, when the weighted
end bears the bucket up and the water is emptied into the channels
that surround each plot. Morning and evening you see hundreds of these
automatically-working figures, thus irrigating their fields. The
population appear ill-disposed towards foreigners, they collect in the
villages and on the sampans and point and jeer at me, for the Chinese
keep their women at home, and are shocked at the way "Barbarians," as
they call us, travel with their wives.
After punting for a little while, three of the coolies begin to tow,
but it is tedious work, as our line has constantly to be undone or
passed round the masts of other sampans. Indeed, all the way there are
processions of these vessels crawling up the river heavily laden with
cargoes of rice, salt, camels' hair, sheep's wool, and vegetables, with
their four or six towers, whose brown figures are bent double against
the line, patiently staggering along for mile after mile against the
current. Our coolies are very willing and cheerful, springing ashore
to begin that weary work of tacking against stream, and subsisting on
scanty meals of rice, cabbage and maccaroni, which we watch them, at
midday and sunset, tucking rapidly into their mouths with chop sticks.
Sometimes they sing in chorus to encourage themselves, with a soft
crooning chant.
As evening approaches, columns of smoke rise from the stern of the
sampans, showing the preparation of the evening meal, and the mists
gather low over the villages. We see the great high road to Peking,
raised on a mud embankment, that now and again keeps company with the
river; it is bordered here with an avenue of whispering willows, and
against the orange sunset come such picturesque figures along it. Now a
little lady, with her pantaloons reaching to her little feet, tippeting
along as if she must fall at every step, a horseman on a shaggy
white pony, _running_ along without rising in the saddle, a big man
overshadowing a tiny donkey, a jinrikisha, a country cart with oxen, or
one of those ancient wooden cabriolets, all outlined in black relief
against the yellow sky.
We go to sleep with the sound of the water gently gurgling against the
bottom of the boat, the croaking of the frogs on the banks, whilst our
patient coolies plod automatically along. They anchor for a few hours
in the middle of the night opposite a large village, whence the regular
muffled tom-tom of the watchman, a deep and solemn tone, is wafted
across to us. At three in the morning there is a rushing sound as of
wind and water, and to our great joy we find that we are sailing before
a brisk wind.
The scenery of the Peiho is repelling in its ugliness, and wearisome
from its extreme monotony. The country is absolutely flat, and there
is nothing, now that the harvest is carried in, but a parched saline
plain, of mud and yellow grass, extending for hundreds of miles all
around.
[Illustration: Our Home on the Peiho.]
The only hills are those of the graves--these unwieldy mounds of
battened earth, that stand in rows along the bank, or are collected
in a field--a family burial place, with mounds of varying sizes. The
greater the man, the larger is the tumulus raised over him. Then
there are other and more disagreeable ones, where the coffin has been
temporarily earthed above ground, awaiting perhaps a favourable moment
for burial, or sufficient funds to take the deceased back to the place
of his birth; for this is the dearly cherished hope of every Chinaman,
and often, when old age approaches, he returns to his native place to
be ready to die there. An even more objectionable custom is that of
putting coffins down in open fields, or along the roads. We saw one
covered in red standing like this, just outside a village, and you find
them in the same way all over China. There is a superstition that it
is lucky to bury within sight of water or in a place which commands a
view, and that is why we see such rows of graves for miles and miles by
the river bank. To the Chinese their burial is the most important thing
of life. They prepare their coffins and keep them in their houses for
years beforehand, though their unwieldy size and solidity take up much
ill-spared space, and the object of every woman of the poorest class is
to save enough for her grave-clothes. It has been truly said that the
whole face of China is burrowed under by these graves.
The turpid yellow waters of the Peiho swirl against our boat,
particularly at the reaches, where the current is strongest. The
harvest is over, the poppy fields are bare, and there are only a few
tall straggly castor-oil plants along the banks. A few, very few
coolies, in loose blue cotton garments, are at work, ploughing with
ancient and rude ploughshares. The teams they use are delightfully
mixed. You may often see an ox and horse, a donkey and a mule all
pulling together. And the same useful mixture is seen in the carts
that resemble old Roman chariots, crawling along the towing path,
where a bull with a tandem donkey is a favourite team. These donkeys
are beautiful animals; small, but with sleek grey, brown and black
coats, with the well-marked neck rings, and line down the centre of
the back. We meet solitary pedestrians trudging along with their heads
down against the wind, and we wonder whence they came and whither they
are going, for we are now only passing isolated villages at great
distances. In some of the few we sail by, the mud walls surrounding the
villages have a graceful openwork arabesque at the top, and in one, to
the sound of much tom-tomming, a festival was progressing, at which all
the inhabitants (as there were none to be seen) are evidently assisting.
The windings described by the Peiho are aggravating. The actual
distance traversed, after a series of bends, being equal to about half
a mile as the crow flies. Again and again we see the extraordinary
phenomenon of a row of sails walking inland; and how picturesque these
brown-patched sails look, as extended by the wind they glide in single
file against the sky line. The wind is a subject of great anxiety
on the Peiho, because if it is ahead one the crew make fast to the
bank at once, and await a favourable change; and even if it is, as
to-day, behind us, the river winds so much that we box every point of
the compass, and so it is not always to our advantage. We watch our
progress with great interest; and now we are scudding gaily before a
lovely fresh breeze, with the pleasant sound of rushing water under the
keel, whilst the big sail overhead balloons out and swells hopefully.
To this succeeds a calm, when a little punting with the long poles is
necessary, or a deep bend when the wind and stream are ahead of us,
and which means a painful slow bit of tacking, when the men strain the
whole weight of their bodies against the tow line, to progress at all.
Again a pleasant rush, the puff of wind catching our ponderous sail,
and we scud merrily past the banks. And how our coolies enjoy this;
stretching themselves out, and, sunning on the deck, smoke their pipes.
So it goes on all day.
We passed several gaily-decorated junks belonging to a great mandarin
with the peacock's feather over the door, generally accompanied by
another with the household; also the ex-French _Chargé d'Affaires_,
Monsieur Ristelhueber, and his family, returning to France from Peking,
and with whom we afterwards had the pleasure of travelling homewards
for a month on the French mail.
The approach to Peking, which signifies the "Gate of Heaven," is
indeed synonymous with the biblical definition in one particular, for
it is narrow. This morning the Peiho has dwindled into a ditch between
extensive mud flats, and we are constantly aground, our five brown
coolies struggling and sweating in the quagmire of soft mud under a
broiling sun. It is weary, weary work this slow progress, and we chafe
at all the delays of crossing the tow line from one bank to another,
to avoid the now continuous succession of sampans, many of which are
in worse condition than ourselves, for the men have to get out into
the water to push the boat along; for should we not arrive at Tungchau
by noon, we must abandon all hope of reaching Peking to-night, as the
gates close at sunset. There is a head wind, with a strong current
racing down the narrow channel against us, and we sadly mark how
crawling is our progress by the landmarks on the bank. And so the long
hours of morning pass, and, just as we are losing hope, we see the blue
tower of the pagoda at Tungchau, rising up from the plain, and there
are only seven miles more with an hour to do it in, and we shall be at
our journey's end. We afterwards found that, favoured by the wind, we
had made almost, if not quite, a record passage of forty-six hours, and
that many boats take from four to five days in coming up from Tientsin.
We find an anchorage at Tungchau among fleets of sampans, and in
half an hour our boy has procured three carts, packed in our luggage,
and we are ready to begin the fifteen miles journey to Peking. Let
me describe these carts. The body is formed of a few planks of wood,
with a hood covered in blue or black stuff. The wheels are of circular
pieces of wood, they are guiltless of springs, and are drawn by mules.
They resemble an old mediæval chariot, and indeed they date from and
are exactly the same as were in use in the tenth century. There is no
seat inside, and instead of sitting on the floor, it is easiest to
ride on the shaft, with your legs hanging over; but I did not know
this in time. Before you have been half an hour in this vehicle you
cry out for mercy--for an instant's cessation of this agonizing mode
of progression, from the unbearable bumping and concussion. And when
at length you become numbed by the pain and discomfort, the intense
weariness that succeeds, makes you sure that another jolt will be
unbearable, until at last you close your eyes, feeling that nothing
but the end of the journey is of the remotest consequence. The roads
are somewhat softened by the loose dust. Still, when you tumble into
a ditch on one side, with a jar that is felt to your most internal
depths, and are then run up on to a bank on the other, you can have
some idea of what we suffered during that journey from Tungchau to
Peking. What must have been the agonies endured by Sir Harry Parkes,
and our old friend Sir Henry Loch, as they journeyed in these same
springless carts to Peking, but with their hands bound behind them and
over _the stone road_ that takes a more circuitous route!
[Illustration: How I went to Peking.]
We passed through the outskirts of Tungchau, through some blind lanes
of mud walls, with doors in them leading to the courts, round which the
houses are built. Soon we are out on the road--no, it is not a road,
but a rough track with several trails, and made of millions of tons
of dust, that rise in impenetrable clouds by the passing of a single
donkey--dust that smells and tastes of the garbage of China proper,
that envelops everything in a white mist, that, easily raised, subsides
as lingeringly. The embankments are crumbling into dust, as are the
numerous walls of these hideous earth villages which line the road, and
are perched on the top of them. The whole face of the land is parched
and burnt. The willows are streamers of dust, and the other trees are
coated grey with the same. And the road: it is a succession of deep
gutters, of holes, of upheavals of sandbanks, running in the middle or
across the road, scarcely defined from the surrounding fields--and this
is the great highway to the Great City of the unknown Emperor.
We pass cavalcades of carts, and the gaudily-dressed and painted
Chinese women inside peer out curiously at us; bullock carts laden with
merchandise, parties of horsemen, a caravan of camels, and endless
strings of donkeys, bearing away the last of the students from the
late annual examinations at the capital. Many of these wear goggle
spectacles, the glasses of which are at least four inches in diameter,
and enclosed in broad tortoiseshell rims. With their loose coats they
tower over and bulge out above their tiny quadrupeds, but these sleek,
good-looking little donkeys go cheerfully jig-jogging along, with
their blue-coated owners urging them from behind. In the oasis of a
few trees, the mules are occasionally watered from the tubs that stand
ready filled, for the traffic along this highway is ceaseless.
The sun, as it got lower, scorched mercilessly into the hood, and the
dust in its parching aridity became still more trying. The mule began
to tire, and the driver cruelly flogged it, while the monotonous waste
seems endless.
Absolute indifference, with a deadly weariness, had long since taken
possession of me. The clammy chill of sunset was of no consequence,
though I tried to huddle something round me. I was only roused by the
sight, over some tree tops, of a little bit of black crenellated wall.
The approach to Peking is thus an absolute disappointment, for, instead
of seeing the grand walls from afar standing up out of the yellow
plain, here we were creeping round a corner to them. In a few minutes
we were under the gloom and darkness of this vast mass of stones, piled
up on high centuries ago. But, alas! that at such a moment imagination
and sentiment, increased by the difficulties and tediousness of the
journey, should succumb before an increased ordeal of pain, as we
now join the stone road, and jar over the great crevasses the paved
way. At last, turning the corner, we enter under the massive arch or
gateway, deep with many feet of thickness, called by the poetical name
of Hatamen, or the "Gate of Sublime Learning." We are within the outer
walls of The Forbidden City.
Then we find ourselves in a sandy waste, bordered by the wall of the
Tartar City on one side and the canal on the other. Little clouds
of dust rising in the distance tell of some cart or donkey, and we
ourselves continue enveloped in the same as we choose any track we
please, for there is, of course, again no road for another weary mile
or so. Some flag-poles in the distance bring a ray of comfort, for I
shrewdly hope that they mean the quarter of the Legations. Nor is my
hope ill-founded, for, passing through a dirty passage, we emerge into
the moving streets and are soon in Legation Street, so called from
the lion-guarded entrances of the various legations, for the French,
the American, the German, and the Russian Envoys are grouped here. We
find accommodation in one of the numerous courts of the French hotel
in this aristocratic street. The sense of comfort of sitting still and
not momentarily expecting a concussion is simply delicious. We are
full of admiration for the physical bravery and endurance of the many
travellers, who for two days or for eighty miles go in these carts from
Tungchau to Peking, through such a prolonged torture.
The British Legation is over the bridge with an entrance off the Yu-ho
canal. And here, the next morning, Sir John and Lady Walsham sent for
us and received us most hospitably.
This beautiful Legation was formerly a Palace belonging to a member
of the Imperial Family, as is shown by its green roof. The approach
to the entrance is through an aisle and raised pavement, formed by
two magnificent open gateways supported by pillars, and gorgeously
decorated in gold, scarlet, green, and blue. The palace wanders round
the spacious enclosure of a courtyard; and the reception-rooms, with
their lofty ceilings inlaid like a temple in green and gold squares,
with their hanging screens of that beautiful Chinese black oak carving,
are magnificent. The walls are of open work filled in with dull gold
papers, and furnished, as these rooms are, with handsome brocades, soft
carpets, and rich hangings, chosen to harmonize with the surroundings,
the whole is truly regal.
The compound is large, and contains the bungalows and houses of
the Legation Staff, and the separate apartments of the Student
Interpreters, of whom there are six. And a very happy little community
of twenty-two persons they appear to be, led by Lady Walsham, who is
most hospitably inclined, and living their life within the four walls
of the compound, which they rarely leave, except for social duties, to
pass into the outside filth and dust.
From the windows of our rooms, overshadowed by the deep eaves
supported on enormous red wooden pillars, we look out on a succession
of peaked roofs, inlaid with green tiles and blue decorations, with
rows of pretty little green dragons perched on the ridges, whilst
crescent-shaped ornaments depending from the roof, wave with each
breath of wind.