DESERTED BY MUTINOUS COOLIES--DANGEROUS JOURNEY AFOOT TO CHUNG
KING--THE MOST MYSTIFYING CONJURER OF THEM ALL.
Once well under way, our rebellious gang traveled peaceably, making
good time, possibly because we would not permit them to stop for
rest or a few whiffs of opium in any of the larger villages, thus
frustrating all attempts they would be certain to make in endeavoring
to enlist the sympathy of their fellows. The miserable gang, however,
went upon another strike when at dusk we halted in the village of
Huei Sung Chang. The village inn was dirty, as usual, and no more a
fit place for an invalid than any of the other wretched quarters we
had previously occupied. When we awoke in the morning of Aug. 31,
Leo apprised us of the fact that rebellion had once more broken
loose. The coolies refused emphatically to proceed without more
cash. The first excuse was that they wanted food, but we had furnished
that; the second they wanted opium, but the soldiers supplied them;
the third, they wanted rice wine, and they had been given that also;
and now they demanded cash. Nothing would satisfy them but good,
copper hard cash. The soldiers threatened and argued in vain. The
coolies knew that I had none of the little copper coins with me,
my funds consisting only of large silver pieces. Their demand for
cash was working both ways. If I did not give it them they had an
excuse for leaving. If I did give it them they were just that much
more ahead. I was about to repeat the object lesson of the day before
when the boy Leo offered a solution to the difficulty by volunteering
to proceed to the next city on foot, a distance of twenty-five miles,
and exchange one of my silver pieces for the required coin. I accepted
the proposition, and at 7 o'clock the next morning the faithful little
fellow arrived with 5,000 cash. Two thousand cash were given the
coolie gang and I demanded a completion of the journey and met with
refusal. A squabble ensued and then the storm broke. About thirty
coolies assembled in the front part of the inn and more filled the
streets. With the aid of the one coolie, upon whom I could depend,
I brought out our bicycles and luggage, lifted Mrs. McIlrath in my
arms and placed her in the vehicle. This action was the draught of
wind which fanned the spark into a flame. My own men took their
positions silently and the little procession started through the
long lines of humanity. The natives cursed, gesticulated wildly,
some striking at us, and others threateningly displaying clods and
stones in their hands. One villainous-featured old man followed us,
talking confidentially to our men and slipping some article into
their hands. This overt act, carried on through the medium of the
long flowing sleeves, aroused my suspicion, and at the first village
I stopped the outfit and investigated. Illicit opium selling was
the meaning of the old fellow's sly actions, and I could but submit
and allow the gang to fill their little tin boxes with the low grade
"dope" and push on.
I have never seen outside of hospitals and museums such looking
creatures as my gang of coolies were, when stripped. They were
attenuated to such a degree that they were nothing less than breathing
skeletons. Opium was responsible for it all. Yet there are men who
profess to have traveled in China who deny that opium is the curse
that missionaries claim it to be. I am positive that such men are
either Englishmen protecting the infamy of their own land, which is
largely an exporter of the drug, or else the remarks are made by men
who frequent only the hotels and clubs at Shanghai, Hong Kong, Canton
and Pekin, writing letters concerning a people the true character
of whom it is as impossible to learn at any open port as it is to
learn of Mormons, Indians or Indiana White Caps in Chicago or New
York City. I have seen the opium fiend in all stages, from the novice
to the exhausted hulk, who, paralyzed in every nerve, sits gaunt in a
temple doorway, his sightless eyes staring with fixed glare from deep,
dark-circled sockets. Every rib, every bone, even to those in his
feet, could be seen, and were it not for the odor of the drug which
permeates every fibre of clothing, they might be considered starved to
death. Starvation really is the cause, for the devotee has no appetite
only for the poppy drug. We employed coolies to carry burdens for us,
who, in traveling one hundred miles, consumed only two bowls of rice
during the four days spent in negotiating the distance. The rice
and tea accompanying it cost 48 cash. The remainder of their wages,
which amounted to 800 cash, was expended in opium. We have experienced
the annoyance of waiting a half hour for men who had been smoking
for four. Boatmen on the river, and laborers in the cities do not
show the ravages of the drug as a class, for as soon as they become
actual fiends they disappear from the busy arteries of commerce,
just as drunkards do from active business circles in other lands.
There is a belt existing for a distance of 600 miles along the lower
end of the Yang-Tse-Kiang where, at certain seasons of the year,
principally September, October and November, the sun never shines,
and if rain inaugurates the initial month a daily precipitation may be
counted upon. We were in the center of this belt Sept. 3, and our own
experiences gave evidence to the phenomenon. It rained steadily since
our departure from Wan Shen, Aug. 26, and when we resumed our journey
on Sept. 3, the roads and bridges rendered testimony to the effect of
constantly rushing waters. Journeying under such conditions was not
alone dangerous, but monotonous. One of the happiest moments of our
tour was when we ascertained that Chung King was but little more than
a hundred miles away. Several days drearily spent in climbing hills,
wading small streams and skating through mud ankle deep, brought us
within about five miles of Tu To. There we were met by a detachment
of soldiers from Chung King. We learned from them that they had been
dispatched by the Shen of Chung King to escort us to the city. We
had lost so much time through bad roads and inclement weather that
the officials of Chung King, who had been notified of our coming,
had grown anxious and had sent out troops to guide us in safety. On
Monday, Sept. 7, we obtained an early start, reaching a small village
on the Yang-Tse-Kiang by noon. In small boats we embarked for the
city, half a dozen miles above and across the river, arriving at
3 o'clock at the metropolis of Western China, a city situated on a
point of land formed by the junction of the Yang-Tse-Kiang and Min
rivers. Though Chung King has a greater population of foreigners than
any other city on the river, excepting Hankow, we were astonished,
upon arrival, to pass through miles of business streets without a
glimpse of settlements of foreign houses.
It took much diligent inquiry for us to find the residence of
Dr. J. H. McCartney, surgeon in charge of the American Methodist
Hospital. We were a dirty, mud-stained pair when we at last ascended
to the veranda of the doctor's comfortable home, but the kindly surgeon
had heard of the Inter Ocean's enterprise, and he bade us enter before
inspecting our condition. It would have made little difference had
we been two-fold more dilapidated in appearance, for I never met a
missionary surgeon in China who did not entertain us royally, even at
the sacrifice of his own comfort. As he sat over dessert, discussing
our journey, tasting the first genuine American pie we had eaten since
leaving San Francisco, I learned with strangely mixed feelings that the
district we had just traveled was the most dangerous in China. Only a
few weeks prior to our arrival the imperial mail, carried overland,
was robbed. I could then understand the significance expressed in
the remark of a certain Shen when he said, "You will have plenty
to cause you fear before reaching Chung King." I had told him that
Mrs. McIlrath and I had no misgivings as to the trip, but had I known
that mail carriers were assassinated monthly, and that commissioners,
traveling under protection of one of the great power's flags, were
robbed and maltreated, our answer would have been different.
The interior cities of the Chinese Empire are similar in every respect;
see one of them and you have seen them all. A visitor to Ngau-King
need not go to Shaze, the man who has seen Shaze need not travel in
search of fresh sights to Chung King, and one who has seen the native
city of Shanghai has literally seen the great aggregation. Chung
King, situated 160 miles from the sea, differed only from the others
in that the shops of the various trades were grouped, each industry
occupying a section of the street. The only absolutely new features of
the town appeared to be the climate, which is delightful for duck and
pneumonia propagation, an old conjurer, and the industries established
by Mr. Archibald Little. The climate is first and most important,
since it exists in humid, opaque quantities upon all occasions,
except perhaps when the sun does not happen to be busy elsewhere;
then only does the sun shine in Chung King. Pig bristles are the
fundamental property of the establishment of Mr. Little, and Uncle
Sam's people are the chief patrons of it. After the porker has been
despoiled of his hirsute trimmings, the bristles, sorted into bunches
of three, four and five inch lengths, are wrapped and shipped to the
United States for use in brushes. The remaining great attraction of
Chung King, namely, the conjurer, we met on one of the quadrangles
of a temple, and for a performance conducted in the open air, by a
necromancer stripped from waist to crown of head, without apparatus
or appliance, he was marvelous. In a circle formed by the crowd,
the stone pavement serving as table and stage, the scrawny, wrinkled
old magician produced from space a curved sword, iron rings, hardwood
balls, clam shells and bowls. The performance opened with contortions
of the legs and back, and a dislocation and replacement of the various
joints of the body. The wizard then swallowed a hardwood ball two
inches in diameter, following this with a few clam shells and poking
the whole mass down his elastic gullet with a curved sword. Famous
sword swallowers of the vaudeville stage of our own country may use
longer instruments, and swallow equally large objects, but they always
leave enough of the swallowed article outside their internal grottos
to withdraw the obstruction. Our Chinese entertainer disdained these
sensible precautions, and after we had felt through the abdominal
walls the point of the curved sword, the ball and the clam shells,
he removed them in a style which was distinctively all his own. To
remove the sword, he contracted his waist by pressure of both hands,
gave a convulsive upheaval and the weapon glided upward until just
an inch or two remained in the throat. Then one of the spectators
removed the blade at the conjurer's request. The clam shells and ball
were brought to light in a simple manner, the conjurer not touching
his hands to his mouth, but spitting them on the ground as soon as
they appeared between his teeth.