SHANGHAI AND HONG-KONG.
We left Peking at dawn. Through the silent streets of the Tartar
City we drove, passing for the last time through the Gate of Sublime
Learning on to the sandy waste outside, jolting along under the great
Walls, with the sun rising to meet us.
We are returning to Tungchau by the Canal, and so saving the penalties
of the road and the dust, but owing to the numerous locks, we have
to transship no less than five times from one boat to another. This
waterway is in connection with the great Imperial canal, another,
like the Great Wall, of those time-enduring monuments of the industry
of a great people--and serves to transport the tribute of rice from
the south to Peking. The locks are very picturesque, being built of
yellow blocks of stone, over which the running water forms a waterfall
overshadowed by trees. It is a quaint slow mode of travelling, gently
rippling along over the mirror surface of the water, past great
rustling beds of pampas grass twelve feet high, opposite one of which
some Chinese sportsmen, with their matchlocks and lighted fuses, are
crouched ready to fire at the wild ducks that abound in these watery
marshes. Amongst the groves of trees, which look golden in their autumn
foliage against a clear blue sky, we see many memorial peilaus, and
those other monuments of stone pyramids springing from the back of a
huge tortoise. The air is still and clear as early autumn, and the
sounds from the mud villages we pass, are borne clearly to us. The
walls of Peking, with their crenellated gateways, are just fading away
into the blue haze.
Five hours of tedious progress makes our eyes glad to see the beautiful
carved bridge of Palikiao, where the combat in 1860 took place, and
the damage then done to the bridge has never been repaired. In a few
minutes more the pagoda of Tungchau looms up, and the canal rapidly
narrows.
We reach Tungchau in a veritable dust-storm, that blows the loose sand
by the banks into spiral columns and pillars, and embark once more
on the house-boat. It seems quite like coming home. Then we begin
the Peiho's weary succession of winding reaches, with the endless
continuation of mud banks and yellow water.
The prospect next morning was disheartening. The wind was strong and
dead ahead, and though our men had worked all night, certain landmarks
told us that our progress was far from satisfactory. All through that
long day we crawled along; weary work it was for our poor tired crew.
As bend after bend opened out before us and receded, each one so
exactly like the other, we registered a hope that we might never more
see the Peiho. Evening closed in, night succeeded, and we yet vainly
looked for the lights of Tientsin. As so often happens after a long
watching, we seemed to arrive suddenly. Our plank door was removed, and
we found ourselves at Tientsin and the Bridge of Boats, and amid the
grateful "kotows" of our men for a gratuity well earned by such patient
toil, we sped in jinrikishas through the dimly-lighted city, where
everyone carries his own swinging coloured lantern, to the Consulate
once more.
We found a China Merchant's steamer, the _Shin Sheng_, leaving
Tientsin the next morning, and embarked at once. Two unsuccessful
attempts at turning the steamer opposite the wharf we made; the third
succeeded, but when she was broadside across the stream, stem and stern
touched the banks. We passed safely through the perilous bends of the
river, only grounding occasionally, but once the bows of the _Shin
Sheng_ ran up on to the bank, and cut clean away quite ten feet of it.
A little mud-house stood on the angle, and the old village harpy to
whom it belonged, came out and shook her fist at the captain on the
bridge, showering imprecations on his head, and small wonder, for some
time previously the bows of his ship had gone _into_ her house and
wrecked it! We breathed more freely when the forts of Taku passed, the
Bar, or "Heaven-sent Barrier," crossed, and the pilot left behind, we
emerged without mishap into the Yellow Sea.
We had a fearful tossing in the Gulf of Pecheli. At Chefoo we called
for cargo. It is a pretty seaside place, with a splendid beach and
bathing sands, a boon to the residents of Shanghai, who either come
here or go to Japan for the summer months. It was too rough for the
lighters to come off, so we anchored for the night. The next morning
a gale was blowing in the roadstead--the breaking of the north-east
monsoon--and we had to move round under the lea of the bluff. Our
hearts sink within us, and we despair of catching the French mail,
which means waiting at Shanghai a week for the P. and O. Returning when
the gale moderated, the agent sent off to say that we were to start
at once and not wait for the cargo, so we have wasted eighteen hours
rolling and knocking about for nothing.
We had not gone more than two miles out, when the engineer sent to say
that a valve was leaking; this necessitated putting back again, and a
further delay. At last we get really off. Certainly we have endured
much to see Peking. Two days afterwards we are in the mouth of the
Yangtze, anxiously looking for the black funnels of the _Messageries_
boat. We know she should have left at noon to-day, and it is just that
hour. Yes, it is all right. She is still there, surrounded by lighters,
and we steam close to find out that she sails in twenty hours. There
has been a delay of one day, luckily for us.
We proceed up the Woosung tributary of the Yangtze. It is a glorious
morning. The junks, painted in gaudy colours, with the all-seeing,
staring white and black eye, glide past us. The banks are lined with a
fort, factories, dock and ship-building yard, a gay scene of thriving
commercial activity. Before us now opens out the bright green lawn of
the Bund, of Shanghai, with its blue-roofed pagoda for the band, backed
by a row of handsome oriental-looking houses and "hongs," with green
blinds and deep verandas. There is the buff and grey of the German
consulate, and the grey and red of the Japanese, whilst the French
tricolour flies over, and indicates the French settlement, and in the
far corner, to the right, is the British flag over our own consulate
and garden. The numerous tributaries of the Yangtze are bridged over,
and join the quay together.
One of the prettiest sights in coming up to Shanghai, or "upper Sea,"
is to see the men-of-war and gun-boats of all nations, lying side by
side in the river before the Bund. There are English, American, French,
German, Spanish, and Japanese men-of-war and a Chinese gunboat, each
floating their star and stripes, tricolour, Union Jack, Black Eagle,
red ball on a white ground (Japanese) and the Imperial Dragon.
Shanghai is a gay, bright clean place, where upwards of 4000 Europeans
reside, the majority being British. These claim for it the title of
the Paris of the East, and the shops and broad well-kept streets make
it worthy of the name. You have, too, the picturesque element of
Chinese life without the accompanying dirt and squalor, for the typical
Chinese town with its filthy narrow streets is relegated to the back
of the settlement. All life centres on the Bund, which we and everyone
else are always passing up and down; and here amongst the smart
little broughams, that are like Indian gharries, and the Victorias,
dog-carts, and phaetons, with their scarlet-clad mafoos and syces,
mingle the sedan-chairs of magnates, the Chinese wheelbarrow, with the
passengers balancing on either side, and the brightly lined green and
red jinricksha. There is the same cosmopolitan crowd on the pavements
overflowing into the road, for the white "ducks" and flannels of the
Europeans, mingle with the bright blue, green, maroon, crimson, brown
and yellow coats of the merchants and compradores. For many of the
hongs (as the places of business are called) are on the Bund--whilst
the loose coats and shiny trousers of the Chinese ladies, with their
smooth coils of black hair interlaced with green jade hair-pins and
long pendant earrings, are seen side by side with the flowing robes and
turbaned heads of an Indian.
We called at the British consulate, which lies in an enclosure of
spacious green lawn with palms and flower-beds. There stands here a
superb granite cross erected to the memory of the five victims, and
companions of Sir Harry Parkes, and to avenge whose murder, the Summer
Palace was burnt and looted by the French. Further along, on the Bund,
is the statue to Sir Harry Parkes, a little man with large whiskers,
but a very able diplomatist, whose death was universally mourned by
the Europeans in China. The English cathedral and deanery lie at the
back of the Bund. The streets are so broad and clean, the roads so
firm, that it is a pleasure to be on them, particularly after those
of Peking. It is because they are under the supervision of an English
Municipal Council, and they deserve for them the greatest credit.
At four o'clock we went to a meet of the Tandem Club, the last of the
season, held in front of the bank. There are fifteen members, but ten
only turned out, and were led off by the only tandem of horses. The
other teams were all of the short-necked, thick-set, Chinese ponies
driven in a modified dog-cart. Then we strolled along on the grass
under the trees to the gardens, to listen to the Manila band. These
gardens slope with green lawns to the water's edge, and the wandering
paths lead by beds, bright with heliotrope, geraniums, chrysanthemums,
and tropical growths of banyan trees, palms, magnolias, indiarubber
and castor-oil plants, amidst which pale-faced children are playing in
charge of their Chinese amahs. In the evening we dined with Mr. and
Mrs. Robert Little. He is the able editor of the _North China Daily
News_.
On a lovely Sunday morning we embark on the steam tug, and once more,
for the third and last time, go down to Woosung. In an hour we are
on board the Messageries Maritime's s.s. _Calédonien_, critically
surveying our home for the next five weeks.
The Messageries line has the advantage of the P. and O. in that they
are more generous in giving separate cabins, the cuisine is said to be
better, and indeed they take trouble to make it so, sending the cooks
every two years back to a restaurant in Paris. It is also an immense
boon (which everybody who has travelled much will appreciate) to have
fixed places for dinner only, and at the other meals a free choice of
companions. The saloon is spacious, and there is a splendid promenade
deck, which is, however, somewhat spoilt by the influx of too numerous,
second-class passengers, who share the privilege of using it.
[Illustration: Harbour of Hong-Kong.]
The north-east monsoon is with us, and in two days and a half from
leaving Shanghai, and after passing through the Straits of Formosa,
between the mainland of China and the island of that name, past Foochow
and Amoy, which are too far distant to be seen, we anchor at Hong Kong
at midnight. Though dark, it is a starlight night. Hong Kong, or "Good
Harbour," presents itself to us in bright electric arches of light,
thrown far up on the sides of the peak, whilst its beautiful harbour
is traced out for us by the twinkle of lights from the sampans, moored
in hundreds along the wharf, by the swiftly moving jinricksha lights
coursing along the road of the sea-shore, and the dots of lights on the
rocking masts or the gleaming eyes of steam-tugs in the harbour.
We have decided to give up Canton, see what we can of Hong Kong in the
time the steamer stays, and not wait a week for the next mail.
I was once told that no one has ever done justice to the beauties of
Hong Kong, and as we landed at sunrise on the quay I was inclined to
agree to this. The deep verandas of the Eastern-looking houses, with
their pale pink and drab tints, the cool arcades, and above all the
tropical wealth of vegetation, makes Hong Kong the prettiest of Eastern
cities.
Leaving Queen's Road, we are carried up in chairs under a lovely
overhanging avenue of banyan trees, whose huge knotted roots lie round
the path, whilst from the grateful shade of their thick leaves above,
depend the long thread-like tendrils, forming a transparent curtain.
Past the grey, weather-stained cathedral we go, hidden away in a little
recess under the hills, past the barracks, whence sound the bagpipes of
Princess Louise's Highlanders, to the station of the mountain railway
up the peak. "The Peak"--what would Hong Kong be without this prominent
feature? True, by keeping off the sea-breezes and by penning the town
in the narrow strip between the harbour and the mountain, it makes
it steamy, unhealthy, fever-stricken and well-nigh uninhabitable in
summer, but then it provides a sanatorium on the many summits of its
heights, where every available platform is occupied by a house.
Unflinchingly straight up runs the line of the railway, and as we
ascend, we look down on the roofs of the houses, perched without any
sequence, up and down the side of the hills, into gardens and tennis
courts, and the green waters of a reservoir below; over the black
and white speckled mass that stands for the town, further out to the
harbour, a blue pond studded with black spots by the steamers, whilst
the sampans are brown dots. The range of barren rocky mountains close
round the harbour, and there is Koolong, with its wharves and godowns,
on the Chinese mainland, whilst we are on the Island of British soil.
It is a beautiful view, this bird's-eye panorama of the town and
harbour, from Victoria gap.
You must see the Peak to realize its real height, its scarcely sloping
shoulders, covered with tropical growth in the valley, growing scantier
and scantier, until you reach the summit, bare and rocky. Two enormous
hotels, and many houses, populate the spacy crest. And the peep over
the other side of green rounded hills, running down to the sea, is
simply lovely, whilst the views from every point are far-reaching and
exhaustive. We take chairs and go to the point, but one degree lower
than the topmost one, where stands the signal station, to the bungalow
of Government House. Early as it is, and late in the season, we find
the heat terrific. Everyone is obliged to come and live up here in the
summer, the nights in Hong Kong bringing no relief, and the difference
in the temperature is often as much as 9°. As we return we meet all the
business men, in the coolest of white costumes, being carried in chairs
by coolies in smart uniforms of white with blue or scarlet sashes, to
the station, going down to town for the day's work.
In descending, we return to the main thoroughfare of Queen's Road,
and after some shopping, go to the City Hall, and the marble palace
of the Shanghai and Hong Kong bank, where I wait outside to watch
the ever-varying stream of passers-by. Chinamen in their cool cotton
jackets and glazed pantaloons, coolies with their bamboo-slung burdens,
sedan-chairs, jinrickshas, wheelbarrows, chairs, Sikh policemen with
their scarlet turbans, Cinghalese, Parsees, mingling with our own
officers and soldiers, under the shadow of the trees.
And then we drive out to the Happy Valley, and come suddenly upon that
beautiful green lawn, lying so naturally in the midst of luxuriantly
wooded hills. It is truly a felicitous little spot, with its racecourse
marked out by white railing and its Grand Stand. But it is the cemetery
which fills us with admiration, and one would fain that the Happy
Valley were not desecrated by the racecourse, but rather consecrated to
the peaceful repose of the dead. They are separated only by the breadth
of the road.
Of all the God's acres in all parts of the world, including the
beautiful one of Mount Auburn, at Boston, but perhaps excepting the
English cemetery on the heights of Scutari, at Constantinople, or
that at Cannes, this one of the Happy Valley is the most perfect.
Entering by a gate in the walls, you find yourself in a tropical
garden, skilfully laid out, and growing around you in profuse
luxuriance,--palms with graceful waving arms, mighty clumps of
feathery bamboos, delicate spreading tree ferns, crotons of orange
and yellow and variegated green, hibiscus with their single blood-red
blossom, colias, camellia and azaleas, bushes of flowering wax-like
alamanders, trailing masses of purple buganvillea, all the hot-house
flowers we prize at home, and that grow so unwillingly with us, when
compared to this almost oppressive wealth of nature. Amongst the bright
gravel paths and green lawns, rise massive pillars, granite crosses
and cenotaphs, memorials erected by soldiers and sailors to their
comrades--to many who, alas! have perished from the deadly effects of a
climate which yet produces all this beauty that is around us.
We return to luncheon at Government House, on the kindly invitation of
General and Mrs. Barker, the acting-governor until Sir William Robinson
arrives next month. With a scramble, and the aid of the Government
steam-launch, we just catch the _Calédonien_ as she weighs anchor. We
passed out through the southern passage of the Island, on our way to
Saigon, the capital of French Cochin China.