THE “BEYOND”
The scanty hoar frost lay on the ground at five the next morning, and
the sun rose, as he had set, in glory, flooding the canyons with a
deluge of amber light. There was a considerable delay before starting,
and to the last I feared the wiles of Chinese officialism; but it turned
out to be only the usual difficulty of the first start with
animals—weighing and adjusting loads and the like. There were three
strong, whole-backed, pleasant-faced red mules, and the muleteer was
equally pleasant, a Man-tze lama, quite a young man, who proffered
hospitality for the next few days among his friends, inns having ceased.
The thought of “poisoned feasts” never crossed my mind!
The greater part of the bizarre population of the quaint mountain town
escorted us to the gateway. Superb weather favoured our departure. The
heat of the sun melted the snows towards midday, adding volume to the
thunderous roll of the Siao Ho, above which, after descending to the
water’s edge, the bridle track is carried over spurs and abutments of
limestone. There is a decided change in the scenery. The river, no
longer closely hemmed in by the walls of a tremendous cleft, is broader
and stiller; there are shingle banks and stretches of cultivated land,
and it cuts its way through the ranges instead of following their
clefts. A marked feature of this stretch of the Siao Ho is the
extraordinarily abrupt bends which it makes, and that at most of these a
sugar-loaf peak, forest-clothed below, and naked rock above, rises sheer
from the river-bed, possibly to a height of from 2000 to 3000 feet.
Great openings allow of inspiring views of high, conical, snow-clothed
peaks, heavily timbered below the snow; one group, called by the Chinese
“The Throne of Snow,” consisting of a great central peak, with nine
others of irregular altitudes surrounding it.
[Illustration: A SUGAR-LOAF MOUNTAIN, SIAO HO.]
Climbing the Peh-teo-shan spur by a long series of rocky, broken
zigzags, cut on its side through a hazel wood, and reaching an altitude
of about 9270 feet in advance of my men, I felt the joy of a “born
traveller” as I watched the mules with their picturesque Man-tze
muleteer, the eleven men no longer staggering under burdens, but
jumping, laughing, and singing, some of them with leaves of an artemisia
stuffed into their nostrils to prevent the bleeding from the nose which
had troubled them since leaving Weichou, the two soldiers in their rags,
and myself the worst ragamuffin of all. There were many such Elysian
moments in this grand “Beyond.”
The summit is thick with poles, some of them bearing flags inscribed in
Tibetan characters in honour of the Spirit of the Pass, and there is a
large cairn, to which my men added their quota of stones. Fifteen or
sixteen hundred feet below, the river looks like a green silk cord
interwoven with silver. There is a sharp bend and a widening, from which
rise two conical peaks, forest-clothed and craggy. Lateral gorges run up
from the river, walled in by high, frowning, forest-covered mountains,
breaking into grey, bare peaks, and crags gleaming in the sunshine. To
the north-west the canyon broadens. Mountains rise above mountains,
forest-covered, except where their bare ribs and buttresses stand
harshly out above the greenery, and above them great, sunlit, white
clouds were massed, emphasising the blue gloom of pines; and far higher,
raised by an atmospheric effect to an altitude which no mountains of
this earth attain to, in the full sunshine of a glorious day, were three
illuminated snow-peaks, whose height from the green and silver river,
judged by the eye alone, might have been 30,000 feet! They might have
been “the mountains of the land which is very far off,” for the lighted
clouds below separated them from all other earthly things, and their
dazzling summits are unprofaned by the foot of man.
The descent to the river is long and steep, the sun was hot; the aridity
and sparse vegetation of most of the road up to the pass are exchanged
for comparative humidity and a wealth of small trees and flowers; the
river broadens considerably, breaks up into several channels with
shingle beds and tamarisk, till it and the canyon narrow together at a
point where a wooden cantilever bridge is thrown across at a
considerable height from two natural piers of rock.
There, a very dirty Chinese village faces a Man-tze village of towers
and lofty stone houses. After a halt, during which I sat on a stone in
the broiling sunshine, much vexed by dust and the aggressiveness of both
children and pigs, we crossed the bridge and shortly entered Paradise.
There the hideous black pig was left behind! The river divides, each
branch having its own glorious gorge apparently closed by snow-peaks.
There are small fair lawns, on which nature has clumped maples and ilex;
great forest trees coming down to the water, wreathed with roses and
clematis; and a showy, detached temple—the only one in the region—the
household or lama-serai house of worship from thenceforth taking the
place of the public temple. At its entrance are two large prayer-wheels.
[Illustration: REVOLVING PRAYER-CYLINDERS.]
Close beside it the road passes under an arch, on each side of which are
six prayer-cylinders, which revolve on being brushed by the hand; and
near it is a much-decorated “prayer-wheel,” in a house of its own,
bestriding a stream, worked by water power, the lama in attendance
receiving so much for each revolution. This cylinder is twelve feet
high, with a diameter of four feet, and is said to contain 100,000
repetitions of the well-known Buddhist mantra “_Om mani padme hun_.”
Beyond, there was a man engaged in making idols after the fashion
described by Isaiah the prophet, a bridge of uncertain equipoise over
one branch of the river, and a little farther on the main branch of the
Siao Ho, descending from the north-west, is joined by streams of nearly
equal volume from the south and north, coming down through canyons full
of superb vegetation, above which rise, mostly in groups, peaks of
unsullied snow.
The vegetation above this meeting of the waters, and with few breaks for
many a day’s journey, is tropical in its luxuriance. The canyon is very
narrow. On the left the mountains descend to the torrent in a series of
precipices. On the right a space, averaging twenty yards in width, gives
room for the bridle path and for a perfect glory of vegetation. From
this rise forest-clothed precipices and peaks as on the other side.
Between them thunders the small river, narrower, but much fuller in
volume than below, green with a greenness I have never seen before or
since, and white with foam like unto driven snow, booming downwards with
a fall of over sixty feet to the mile, its brilliant waters hasting to
lose themselves 2000 miles away in the turbid Yellow Sea.
Mosses and ferns soften the outlines of boulders and drape the trunks of
fallen trees. Tree-stems are nearly hidden by ferns and orchids, only
one of the latter, a purple and brown spotted _dendrobium_, being in
blossom. A free-flowering, four-leaved white clematis, arching the road
with its snowy clusters, looped the trees together, and a white daphne
filled the air with its heavy fragrance. Large white peonies gleamed in
shady places. White and yellow jasmine and yellow roses entwined the
trunks of trees, and the flowering shrubs, mostly evergreens, were
innumerable. Ivies and varieties of the _ampelopsis_ lent their familiar
grace. Spring is fantastic there, and in freaks of colouring mimics the
glories of autumn. Maples flaunt in crimson and purple, in pale green
outlined in rose-red; the early fronds of the abundant hare’s-foot fern
crimson the ground; there were scarlet, auburn, and “old gold” trees;
and as to greens, there were the dark greens and blue-greens of seven
varieties of pines, the shining dark greens of ilex, holly, and yew, the
dull, dark greens of cedar and juniper, the shining light greens of
birch and beech and many another deciduous tree, and the almost
translucent pea-green of the feathery maple—red, purple, and green,
alike admitting the vivid sunshine as through stained glass.
The ground, concealed by mosses in every shade of green, gold, and
auburn, by a crimson-cupped lichen, and the crimson of the young
hare’s-foot fern, was starred with white and blue anemones, white and
blue violets, yellow violas, primulas and lilies, white and yellow
arabis, and patches of dwarf blue irises, while our own lily of the
valley looked out modestly from under the shrubs, and I recognised
lovingly among the beautiful exotic ferns our own oak and beech—our
_filix mas_ and _Osmunda Regalis_, at no disadvantage among their
foreign associates.
So exquisitely beautiful were the details that it was hard to look up
and take in the broader features of the unrivalled witchery of the
scene, where the foliage of the maple lighted up the gloom of holly and
ilex with its spring pinks and reds, where a species of poplar rivalled
it in lemon-yellow, where the delicate foliage of the golden-barked
birch was copper-red, and every shade approaching green was represented,
from the glaucous blue of the balsam pine, and the dark blue-green of
its coniferous brethren, to the pale _aqua marine_ of deciduous trees in
clumps among the pine woods below the snow.
For, piled above the forest-clothed cliffs and precipices which wall in
the river, and blocking up every lateral opening, were countless peaks
or splintered ranges, cleaving the blue sky with an absolute purity of
whiteness. High up, in extraordinary situations of dubious access, are
Man-tze villages, much like fortifications, their suggestion of human
interests and flutter of prayer-flags giving life to the scene. The
river sympathetically adapts itself to its changed surroundings. Its
colouring is a vividly transparent green, to which it would be an
injustice to liken an emerald. Over it drooped, from the contorted stems
of trees covered with ferns, orchids, and trailers, long sprays of red
and white climbing roses, and within the cool toss of its spray, film
ferns and the beautiful _trichomanes radicans_ flourished in boundless
profusion, almost transparent under the trickling sunshine. The river
descends in falls and cataracts, in sheets and glints of foam, under
bending trees, and trails of clematis and roses, pausing now and then in
deep green pools in whose mirrors roses, clematis, and snow-peaks meet;
but, its thunder-music, echoing from gorge and precipice, pauses never.
[Illustration: BRIDLE TRACK BY THE SIAO-HO.]
For hours we passed through this fairyland of beauty and fragrant and
aromatic odours, which it is a luxury to recall; then the odorous air
grew damp, the peaks flushed, the shadows on the road deepened, the
canyon “swung open to the light,” through the great gates of the west
the sunset glory rolled in waves of red and gold, and on a low hill
bearing the name of Chuang-fang, and a few traces of cultivation, there
was a lonely Man-tze dwelling.
The host, as a relation of our intelligent and courteous young lama,
made us very welcome, but his wife, a very handsome woman, on coming in
from the hill with a load of wood, looked astonished to find a foreign
woman and twelve men in possession of her house. That dwelling, typical
of the poorer class of Man-tze houses, has two roofs, each reached by a
deeply-notched tree-trunk, exactly like those used by the Ainu of Yezo.
It has an entrance-chamber common to men, mules, and fowls, an inner
room or kitchen, scarcely lighted, with a fire and “cooking range” on a
raised hearth in the centre, from which the stinging wood smoke finds
various outlets in the absence of a chimney. In the better houses, a
hole in the roof into which a hollow log is cemented offers a more
conventional exit. The fire is the place of family gathering and eating,
and man, wife, and children eat together. These people possess the term
“hearth-side.” The woman, though not young, was really beautiful, after
a European type, and had very fine teeth, but her rich complexion was
somewhat dulled by dirt; for these people, like the Tibetans, wash only
“once a year”—_i.e._, very rarely.
With much politeness I was escorted by her up the notched timbers to a
first and then to a second roof, which, being the threshing-floor, was
swept very, clean. At one end there was a high frame for drying maize
upon, and at the other a roof supported on four posts, but with an open
front, which is the granary. This space was divided by a great grain
tray and my curtains, I occupying one end, and the servants, soldiers,
and some of the coolies the other. The sharp frosty air was elixir, and
the redgold of sunset and the rose-pink of sunrise on the snows which
enclose the valley made a night in the open air very delightful.
It was too windy for a candle, and my food, prepared in the smoke below,
was eaten by the light of a nearly full moon in the delicious
temperature of 30°. To be away from crowds, rowdyism, unmannerly
curiosity, rice-fields, stenches—from slavery to custom, enforced by
brutality, and from many a hateful thing—to be out of China proper, to
be among mountains whose myriad snow-peaks glitter above the blue gloom
of pine-filled depths, to breathe the rarer air of 8000 feet, to be
free, and in a new uplifted world of semi-independent tribes, and fairly
embarked on a journey, with Chinese officialism apparently successfully
defied, and last, but not least, the complete disappearance of
rheumatism from which I had suffered long and badly, made up an
aggregate of good things. Anything might happen afterwards, but for that
one day I had breathed the air of freedom, and had obtained memories of
beauty such as would be a lifelong possession.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM CHUANG FANG.]
Sleep came in the middle of these pleasant thoughts, and I did not wake
till sunrise, with its waves of rosy light rolling up the glen, began to
take the chill off the frosty air. There was additional snow on the
mountains, and the higher pine woods were hoary.
These hospitable people do not receive payment for their hospitality,
nor do they use money—silver being only appreciated for its use in
jewellery, and copper not at all. The roof, or the guest-room, if there
be one, is at the disposal of any reputable wayfarer; but he must bring
his own food, for they have none to sell. Fortunately, I had needles,
scissors, and reels of silk with me, which there and elsewhere made the
hearts of many women glad.
The scenery the following day was, if possible, more glorious than
before, and the intense blue and singular _glitter_ of the sky. The road
still pursues the right bank of the river, the canyon is slightly wider,
and for most of the way seven snow-peaks are an apparent barrier. In the
forests near the road there were nine species of pines and firs, and
eight of maples, besides cedars, yew, juniper, elm, holly, oak, poplar,
alder, ilex, plane, birch, pear, etc. A white honeysuckle added its
exquisite fragrance to the aggregate of sweet odours. The woods were
full of white peonies, sky-blue larkspur and aconite abounded, and
yellow roses revelled in the sunshine on the smooth lawns by the river
on which the Tibetan traders camp in the season. My coolies, having no
loads to carry, were much excited about the peonies. The roots are an
expensive drug in China, and the men said they could get a dollar each
for them, so there was a great raid upon them.
After crossing and recrossing the Siao Ho on wooden cantilever bridges,
we reached Ku-erh-kio, a purely Man-tze village, piled on an abrupt
height where a lateral gorge with a tributary stream debouches on the
river. This was the last point to which I was attended by Chinese
officialism, and the first where there was a representative of the
_Tu-tze_ of Somo, the territory on which I then entered. There the
soldiers from Tsa-ku-lao, jolly young fellows, delivered the mandarin’s
letter to the _T’ou-jen_, or headman, and returned.
A Man-tze official escort was at once provided, consisting not of armed
and stalwart tribesmen, but of two handsome laughing girls, full of fun,
who plied the distaff as they enlivened our way to Chu-ti. Nor was this
fascinating escort a sham. Before starting each of the girls put on an
extra petticoat. If molestation had been seriously threatened, after
protesting and calling on all present to witness the deed, they would
have taken off the additional garments, laying them solemnly (if such
laughing maidens could be solemn) on the ground, there to remain till
the outrage had been either atoned for or forgiven, the nearest man in
authority being bound to punish the offender. Mr. Baker mentions a
nearly similar custom among the Lolos of Yunnan. _En route_ we passed
several Man-tze villages, and at each the people came out and brought us
wooden cups of cold water, indulging in much fun with my men, as several
of them could speak Chinese. Nearly all the women were handsome. They
were loaded with silver and coral ornaments, plied the distaff as they
joked, and were free, not to say bold, in their manners.
[Illustration: CASTLE AT CHU-TI.]
Chu-ti consists of two Chinese houses, a bridge, and a large Man-tze
house, with some cultivation round it, on the left bank. There we were
hospitably received by our muleteer’s elder brother, though when he saw
the army of coolies he said he did not keep an inn, and begged that
nothing might be stolen. I was at once provided with a clean room on the
roof, “the best guest-room,” with a window-frame, in which was fixed a
prayer-cylinder revolved by the wind, which whirred monotonously by day
and night. Many of the people from a village on a height, which is only
accessible by a series of ladders, spent the evening on the roof with
much frolic and merriment. Of the foreigner they have no notion, and as
I was clothed in brown wool they thought I was a Man-tze of another
tribe. Some of the women were beautiful, and even in middle life they
retain their good looks and fine complexions.
[Illustration: HEADMAN’S HOUSE, CHU-TI.]
[Illustration: ALTAR OF INCENSE ON MAN-TZE ROOF.]
This stone dwelling, arranged, as are all the better class of houses,
apparently for defence, has three floors, reached by steep, wide step
ladders inside. Cattle, mules, fodder, and agricultural implements
occupy the first, the family the second, and on two sides of its flat
roof, which is protected by a parapet two feet high, are the family
temple and guest-rooms. This flat roof, which is also the
threshing-floor, is the general gathering-place, the wrestling-ground,
and the place where the women weave their woollen stuffs on their
portable looms. On the roofs of the temple and guest-rooms, which are
partially covered for use as granaries, the men play cards, chess, and a
game resembling _Go_. On all roofs, even of the poorest class, there is
at the eastern corner a small clay furnace with a chimney, called “the
altar of incense.” In this at sunrise, the householder, man or woman,
looking eastwards, burns a bundle of the green twigs and foliage of the
yew, of which two species are accessible. This may possibly be a relic
of a nature-worship anterior to Buddhism. All well-to-do persons have a
temple on the roof, as in Tibet, with images of the Buddhist triad
against the wall, an altar with the usual emblems and offerings, a drum,
gong, horn, and cymbals, and as many of the insignia of Buddhism as
their means allow them to obtain. The householder can act as priest, and
every man or woman can present his or her invocations and offerings, and
in Man-tze homes there is scarcely an hour from sunrise to sunset in
which the dull beat of the drum and “_Om mani padme hun_,” reiterated in
a high-pitched monotone, are not heard.
Snow-peaks above, and snow-peaks below, reddened gloriously at sunset
and sunrise, the view from the roof was absolutely entrancing, and the
first half of the next day’s march was even lovelier than before. At one
of the finest parts some tribesmen were building a bridge, and from it
some muleteers, chiefly girls, with much laughter, were driving some
unladen mules through a very rough ford. Many of the men crossed, and
asked for help in building their bridge, which I would willingly have
given them, but that my silver was far behind on the mules. They became
very obstreperous, and one put his arm across the road to prevent my
chair from passing. We got on, however, for a few _li_, and waited there
for the mules. _Chai-jen_ had ceased at Chu-ti.
On the same morning the bearer who had always been unfit for his work,
and who denied himself food in order to get opium, for he was an
immoderate smoker, collapsed and fell by the roadside with a fluttering
pulse and a temperature of 104°. I put him in my chair and walked as
long as I could, and then he had to lie down, and I paid a man to stay
with him. An hour passed, and no mules; and I was so afraid that the men
at the bridge had robbed the muleteer, for they were a rough lot, that
Mr. Kay went back. Another hour passed, and then the mules came all
right, and the sick man, moaning and breathless, supported along by Mr.
Kay, who is both strong and kind.
Higher up the canyon opens out into a valley of divided streams and
shingle beds, either absolutely bare, or covered with the _Hippophæ
rhamnoides_ and a species of tamarisk. The receding mountain-sides are
gashed by summer torrents, and the vegetation is scanty. There was a
broad camping-ground among trees, and the coolies made fires and cooked
their rice, a number of Somo women from a village on a height—nearly all
of them handsome, in the Meg Merrilees style—looking timidly on.
[Illustration: SICK UNTO DEATH.]
The sick coolie was laid under a tree, and I put a wet
pocket-handkerchief on his burning brow. Then latent Chinese brutality
came out, showing that on these men the popular cult of Kwanyin, who is
really a lovable creation, had no influence. There were five baggage
coolies carrying nothing, and when I proposed that they should divide
one mule’s load among them and let him ride, they refused. He had been
working, sleeping, and eating with them for twelve days, yet when I
asked if they were going to leave him there to die, they laughed and
said, “Let him die; he’s of no use.” Though the water he craved for was
only a few yards off they did not care to give him any. When appealed to
again they said, “No matter; Mr. Kay can look after him.” And so he did,
for when I had walked till I was exhausted that he might be carried, Mr.
Kay nearly carried him for the remaining distance, and slept without his
wadded gown in the keen frosty air, that he might have it. The others
laughed at his sufferings, at me for bathing his head, and, above all,
at my walking to let him ride.
After we crossed to the right bank of the dwindling river a great number
of Man-tze men and women met us, and escorted us up steep stony slopes
to the large village of Mia-ko, with its many-storeyed houses, a feudal
castle, and a lama-serai like an ugly factory, with 150 monks. We were
received in the house of the _T’ou-jen_, the father of our muleteer, who
has a patriarchal household of married sons and daughters with their
children, and farms on a large scale.
[Illustration: LAMA-SERAI AND HEADMAN’S HOUSE, MIA-KO.]
The great treeless hillsides are well suited for agriculture, and though
the altitude of Mia-ko is nearly 10,000 feet, wheat ripens in July. At
that height, the Dover’s powder with which I dosed the coolie failed to
produce its usual effect, nor was any other sudorific more successful.
In the dry, rarefied air my umbrella split to pieces, shoes and other
things cracked, screws fell out of my camera (one of Ross’s best), my
air-cushion collapsed, a horn cup went to pieces spontaneously, and
celluloid films became electric, and emitted sparks when they were
separated!
The soil of the mountain-sides is sandy, and potatoes, which have only
lately been introduced, do well. There are many large villages scattered
over these slopes, and the people have great flocks of brown goats and
sheep, the latter a flop-eared, hornless, long-woolled breed, with fat
tails weighing from three to six pounds. They also breed herds of _dzo_,
a very valuable hybrid between the yak and cow, and capable of carrying
80 lbs. more than either the horse or mule. The male is used for
ploughing, and the female gives more milk than any other of the bovine
race. Of it they make butter, which, as in Tibet, appears to become more
valuable with years, and which is largely used, along with salt and
soda, in the preparation of tea, which is churned in a wooden churn till
it is as thick as chocolate. From the hair of the _dzo_ and yak the
Man-tze make a heavy felt, used for cloaks in cold and wet weather, and
for boots. As far as the divide, snow only lies for a few days at a
time, and judging from description, the frost is never severe.
Man-tze cultivation is rough and untidy as compared with Chinese.
Indigenous flowers muster strong among the crops, and irrigation is not
understood. Drought is the great enemy of agriculture, and the crops in
this great valley were in urgent need of rain.
In the late afternoon of our arrival Mia-ko was deserted, and a long
procession of men and women, each carrying a heavy burden on the back,
wound slowly up the hill to a point where it was reinforced by a
similarly burdened company from our village, and the united force was
met by a large body of lamas, including our muleteer, in their sacred
vestments, chanting Sanskrit prayers. The burdens under which the people
bent were the Buddhist scriptures, which, when complete, weigh 90 lbs.,
and to carry this sacred load is regarded as an acceptable act of merit.
Before the prolonged service ceased there was “a sound of abundance of
rain,” the wind rose, the rain fell in torrents, and the soil of
disintegrated granite imbibed it as if it never could be satisfied.
Mia-ko is a noisy and cheerful village, and after Tibetan fashion, very
religious. There is a low building on the hillside containing a number
of revolving prayer-cylinders, ranged round it at a convenient height.
Round this in the early morning the villagers go in procession turning
the cylinders. With brief intervals all day long in my host’s family
temple one or another repeated prayers in a monotone. On the roofs are
tall poles, each surmounted by a trident, or a ball and crescent, or
bearing narrow, white prayer-flags of their own length. Groups of poles
with similar flags are erected in memory of the dead, whose ashes often
rest below in small cinerary urns. It is “merit” to make clay
medallions, with which portions of these ashes are frequently mixed, and
to stamp them with Sakyamuni’s image, or to finger the clay deftly into
models of _chod-tens_.
We had any number of these jovial, laughing, frolicking people on the
roof at night, men and women on terms of equality. They drink _chang_, a
turbid barley beer, as the Tibetans do. We were detained for some days
at Mia-ko. The mules were lost on the hills, and stories were current of
two mighty robbers, who were making a part of the road dangerous, and
were keeping the country in alarm, and who successfully evaded capture,
though a reward of sixty taels (£9) was offered for them dead or alive.
The _T’ou-jen_ was averse to our taking that route without an escort of
ten spearmen, who had to be hunted up in the adjacent villages, and this
took time. Into the midst of this detention dropped down a Chinese
mounted officer, “a captain of a thousand,” with baggage and a mounted
servant, and orders to keep me in view, whether to help or hinder I knew
not, but strongly suspected the latter. Both carried swords and
revolvers. This was most unwelcome, and the delicious sense of freedom
in which I had been revelling vanished.
The food question caused me uneasiness, though I was always assured that
“everything was to be got at Somo.” The people would not sell us so much
as an egg, and the detention made such a serious inroad on our supplies
that I reduced myself to tea, and damper baked in the ashes and pullable
into long strings.
After the first curiosity, which was never vivid, was over the people
pursued their usual avocations on the roof, reciting prayers, weaving,
and making clothes in the day, and wrestling, fencing, and making a
general frolic in the evening. Mia-ko is a very well-to-do village, and
both sexes were loaded with silver jewellery.
The Siao Ho makes a preposterous turn above it, and we took a short cut
over the pass of Shi-Tze-Ping (10,917 ft.), rejoining the river twenty
_li_ later. Heavy snow fell on the mountains during the previous night,
whitening many of the lower hills, turning their shaggy pines into grey
beards, and lying heavily on the superb coniferæ of the pass, where red
and white rhododendrons and a large pink azalea were blooming profusely.
At that elevation the mercury was 26° at 6 a.m., and as a strong
north-east wind was blowing the cold was intense. At noon one thousand
feet lower the mercury stood at 72°.
From the summit there is a distant view of a long, snowy range, with a
blunt and wavy outline, on which five peaks, evidently of great
altitude, are superimposed. Hitherto the mountains, at least near the
river, though dazzling white, had not reached the majesty of eternal
snow, but on this range the guide said “it was always as it was then,”
that the peaks were known as “the Snowy Mountains,” that the highest was
called Tang-pa (sacred), and that the Great Gold River (Chin-shuan) rose
among them. It was a pass of that range that we afterwards crossed, and
it is probably identical with that mass of peaks and ranges marked on
the Chinese maps as “Snowy Mountains,” running on the whole in a
south-western direction between 29° and 32° N. lat. and 101° to 103° E.
long. It is only possible to make a rough guess at the altitude of those
peaks. In May Captain Gill found the snow line three degrees to the
eastward of this point at an altitude of 13,000 feet, and estimates the
limit of perpetual snow as at least 14,000 or 15,000 feet, which,
allowing for the steady rise in temperature of every degree west in that
latitude, would give a snow line of 15,000 or 16,000 feet above the sea
level. Taking the snow line in the middle of May as a rough basis for
calculation, I should estimate the height of the timber line at nearly
13,000 feet, and the height of Tang-pa as 5000 feet above that.
A steep descent of three hours through an entrancing forest brought us
back to the Small River, there a full-watered, clear, green torrent,
about forty yards wide, compressed within a narrow canyon, tumbling
among gigantic boulders in glorious cataracts, forest trees of larger
size than had been seen before bending over it, festooned with climbing
roses and white and sulphur-yellow clematis, while all lovely things
which revel in moisture and warmth—ferns, mosses, selaginellas, and the
exquisite _Trichomanes radicans_—flourished along the margin of its
turbulent waters. It was grander and far more beautiful than ever, and
absolutely solitary.
One feature of the vegetation west of Mia-ko is a pea-green trailer
(possibly _Lycopodium Sieboldi_) with pendants eight and ten feet long,
which takes possession of coniferous trees, dooming them to a slow
death, but replacing their dark needles by a tint which in masses is
very attractive. These trailers are used by the Man-tze for hats, much
worn by lamas. Some of the red trunks of the conifers, branchless for
fifty feet and more, measure from nineteen to twenty-one feet in
circumference six feet from the ground, hollies seven feet, yew eleven,
twelve, and even thirteen feet, and an umbrageous and very beautiful
species of poplar from seventeen to twenty feet. Occasionally the canyon
widens for a short distance, and there are smooth lawns, on which nature
has planted artistically clumps of pines and birches, the latter,
instead of white, with “old gold” bark, which they shed in spring.
Almost the only flowers at that altitude were a dandelion, with a stalk
an inch long, and a lovely, short-stalked, mauve primula, which in
places carpeted the ground. Some of the canyon walls, rising
forest-covered tier above tier, cannot be less than 3000 feet in height,
and at that season their luxurious covering embraced every tint of
yellow, red, and green.
After fully forty _li_ the canyon broadens into a luxuriant valley,
apparently closed at its western end by one of the great Tsu-ku-shan
ranges, and the yak and _dzo_ fed in large numbers on the rich
pasturages which confer prosperity on the Man-tze hamlet of Hang-Kia.
This should have been the halting-place, and though there was apparently
no accommodation the Chinese officer intended it to be so. High words
were exchanged between him and Mr. Kay, who went back to hurry up the
mules, while I sat in the roadway watching the snow which was then
obviously falling on the pass, while it was raining below. To make a
long story short, owing to unpropitious circumstances not worth
narrating, and a loss of heads and tempers, my better judgment was
overborne, and against it, and in spite of my showing that Matang could
not be reached anyhow in less than eight hours, the order to start on
this most foolhardy venture was given, and we left Hong-Kia at 3.15, the
coolies and I not having fed since eleven, and reached the foot of the
pass at 6.30. A few _li_ higher this branch of the Min rises as a
vigorous spring under a rock.
We ascended to a considerable height by a number of well-engineered
zigzags, meeting Man-tze travellers armed with lances and short swords,
and journeying in companies from dread of the notorious banditti. Some
of my men had armed themselves with lances. As darkness came on the
coolies were scared, and begged me to have the mule bells taken off.
They started at every rock, and asked me to have my revolver ready!
Their noses had been bleeding at intervals for some days, and at the
altitude we had attained the hemorrhage in some cases was profuse, and
was accompanied by vertigo, vomiting, and some bleeding from the mouth,
and the baggage coolie who had most unwillingly taken the sick bearer’s
place was at best a malcontent. When we got into mist, and broken shale,
and snow, after stumbling and falling one after the other, they set the
chair down, very reasonably I thought, and no arguments of Mr. Kay’s
addressed either to mind or body induced them to carry it another step.
It was then 8.30 and very dark. A snowstorm came on, dense and blinding,
with a strong wind. I was dragged rather than helped along, by two men
who themselves frequently fell, for we were on a steep slope, and the
snow was drifting heavily. The guide constantly disappeared in the
darkness. Be-dien, who was helping me, staggered and eventually fell,
nearly fainting—he said for want of food, but it was “Pass Poison,” and
he was revived by brandy. The men were groaning and falling in all
directions, calling on their gods and making expensive vows, which were
paid afterwards by burning cheap incense sticks, fear of the bandits
having given way to fear for their lives—yet they had to be prevented
from lying down in the snow to die.
[Illustration: ELEPHANTIASIS.]
_See page 442._
Several times I sank in drifts up to my throat, my soaked clothes froze
on me, the snow deepened, whirled, drifted, stung like pin points. But
the awfulness of that lonely mountain-side cannot be conveyed in words:
the ghastly light which came on, the swirling, blinding snow-clouds, the
benumbing cold, the moans all round, for with others, as with myself,
every breath was a moan, and the certainty that if the wind continued to
rise we should all perish, for we were on the windward slope of the
mountain. After three hours of this work, the moon, nearly at her full,
rose, and revealed dimly through the driving snow-mist, the round,
ghastly crest of the pass, which we reached and crossed soon after
midnight, when the snow ceased. I have fought through severe blizzards
in the Zagros and Kurdistan mountains, but on a good horse and by
daylight, and not weakened by a blow. On the whole this was my worst
experience of the kind.
An hour’s descent in deep snow on the edge of a precipice, from below
which came up the boom of tumbling water, brought us to a forest of the
straightest and tallest pines I ever saw, glorious in the moonlight, and
vocal with the crash of waters. Then I became aware that Mr. Kay, who is
very absent, and the guide had disappeared. The coolies declined to
carry me, and wanted to leave me there, and it was only after half an
hour’s altercation between them and my servant, during which my wet
clothing froze hard, that they took up the chair. The forest tracks were
baffling, and the true track was soon lost in the snow, not to be
recovered till at 2 a.m. we emerged on great, grassy slopes, and an hour
later, my party, exhausted, shivering, starving, drenched to the skin,
and all alike in frozen clothes, found a wretched shelter in the one
room of a Chinese hovel with a sloping floor on the bleak,
boulder-strewn hillside on which the forlorn village of Matang huddles
at an altitude of over 9000 feet.
The Pass of Tsu-ku-shan, which we had crossed, is the great water
parting of that region, the waters on the east seeking the Min, and
those on the west the Chin-shuan or Ta-kin Ho, both meeting in the
Yangtze at Sui-fu, this glorious region being geographically in the
Yangtze Valley. When I recrossed the pass, a very easy one, one hundred
and twenty-four snow-peaks were visible from its summit. Its approximate
altitude is 11,717 feet. It is a long, bare, unimpressive mountain wall.
The hovel allowed of my pitching my camp bed behind a cambric screen,
but there was no room for the wretched coolies to lie down, so they sat
round a big, log fire, cooked their food, talked, and thawed and dried
their frozen clothes. I thawed mine by rolling myself up in a blanket,
but unlike them was unable to eat, or even drink tea for many hours, and
lay there much stupefied until noon the next day, when we moved to what
posed as an inn, a wooden stable ninety feet long, with stalls seven
feet high for human beings on both sides, in one of which I was thankful
to find solitude, a fire-bowl, and necessary rest for some days.
The innkeeper and his wife, Kansuh Mohammedans, were kind. They gave me
an egg, and took me to sit by their big log fire in their horrible
kitchen, on the ground that we were worshippers of the same God. The
fire was welcome, for there were heavy snowstorms, and on one day the
mercury fell to 29°. Whether in storm or sunshine Matang, “out of the
season,” is a ghastly place, a forlorn, unpicturesque village of low
stone cabins, with rough, timber roofs kept down by stones. It is
bisected by a torrent of the same name, a feeder of the Chin-shuan,
rising on the pass above. There is a very good cantilever bridge. Its
population of 170 includes a number of Chinese who have married Man-tze
women. Snow lies there for six weeks.
In July and August the scene changes, and Matang becomes a great
international market. The inn is crammed with men and horses. Yaks and
Tibetan tents cover the grassy slopes, Chinese dig on the mountains for
medicinal roots, which are also brought from Tibet in incredible
quantities, and are bought up chiefly by Mussulman traders, broken
silver, the only currency accepted, passes freely from hand to hand,
goods are bartered, and for two months the Chinese and Tibetan traders
do a very large trade in cattle, horses, wool, hides, sheep, musk,
rhubarb, hartshorn, and much besides.
Some of the Matang Man-tze women were extremely beautiful, after the
Madonna type. I twice secured a giggling group in front of my camera,
but I no sooner put my head under the focussing cloth than there was a
stampede, and partly in fun and partly in fear the laughing beauties
fled like hares, so the reader must take their good looks on trust.
Outside a hole near the roof, which served for a window, a genuine
Tibetan dog was chained, as big as a small bear, with rusty brown wool,
four inches long, and a superb face. His voice was more like a roar than
a bark, and his growl was portentous. These dogs are very savage, and
his owner said that he could kill a man by tearing open his throat,
which is their method of attack. I got his owner, on whom he fawned
foolishly, to measure him, and from the root of his bushy tail to his
nose he measured four feet three inches. He kept a malignant watch on
me, and I could not move in my room without provoking his fierce,
resonant growl. These dogs shed their fur in the summer.
[Illustration: CHINESE OFFICER AND SPEARMEN, MIA-KO.]
After a detention, owing to snowstorms and difficulties of transport,
which made a further serious inroad on the stores, we left Matang early
in May, accompanied by the Chinese officer, who had wisely remained in
the Hang-Kia valley, and ten stalwart spearmen from Mia-ko. I started on
foot, accompanied by this escort, leaving the others to follow at their
leisure; some of the baggage being on _yaks_, which having been as usual
lost on the mountain, caused considerable delay. When our force was
mustered it numbered twenty-five men. Two of the wild-looking tribesmen
rode big yaks, monstrous in their winter coats; all were armed with
lances, and short, broad-bladed swords, and a few carried long and
much-decorated matchlock guns. Of course we saw nothing of the bandits,
and when we had passed their beat the spearmen quietly disappeared,
apparently ignorant of their right to _baksheesh_. The ghastly, grinning
head of a third bandit hung in a cage in the village.
The road, which is a singularly good one, crosses the Matang river by a
good bridge, near its junction with a vigorous stream descending from
the north-west, and then follows their united course in a southerly
direction for forty _li_ to their union with the Rong-kia.
The scenery on that day’s journey is the loveliest of all. This Matang
river whose birth we had seen on that awful night on the pass, raging in
cataracts, and great drifts of sunlit foam, and slowing at times into
deep green eddies, makes the most abrupt and extraordinary turns, each
one giving a new and glorious view. The canyon reminds me of some of the
finest parts of the Rocky Mountains, but the abundance of deciduous
trees and flowering shrubs, trailers, and plants, and the aquamarine
“Fairy Moss,” hanging in five-feet streamers from the trees, give it an
added beauty. Everything was draped in auburn, gold, and green. The pine
forests are vast and magnificent, and through the purple madder of the
leafless birches their terra-cotta stems gleamed. The dark, evergreen
ilex and holly contrasted with the brilliant spring green of the
elæagnus, hawthorn and willow; primulas, narcissus, and _scillae_
starred the mossy ground, maidenhair and other ferns flourished on the
tree trunks, trailers of a pure white clematis hung over the path,
mosses and film ferns draped every harsh angle and every boulder out of
sight, and gorgeous butterflies and dragonflies glanced like “living
flashes of light.” Every vista at every turn above the dark pine forests
is blocked by peaks, then in the dazzling purity of new-fallen snow.
[Illustration: VILLAGE OF RONG-KIA.]
Our course consisted of constant climbing over high steep spurs, which
descend on the right bank of the river. There is one fine waterfall. In
the afternoon a long and very severe ascent terminated at the top of a
spur crowned by a village and a lama-serai above the confluence of four
valleys and three streams, the Matang from the north, the Rong-kia from
the east, and the Kin-ta from the south. These unite to form a broadish,
full-watered river, very green, to which the Man-tze give the name,
which I reproduce as Rong-kia, or “Silver Water,” but which the Chinese
along its banks call the Ta Chin or Ta Kin-Shuan (Great Gold River),
which, if they are correct, is the upper portion of the Tatu or Tung
River.
[Illustration: CANYON OF THE RONG-KIA.]
After an ascent, and a halt at an extraordinary village of square
towers, from each of which a single, brown wood room projected at the
top, another steep ascent took us to the top of a spur, from which we
looked down on the valley of the Rong-kia below its junction with the
other streams, there a broad, swift river, free from rapids and
cataracts, and bridged in several places.
The first view of it sleeping in the soft sunshine of a May noon was one
never to be forgotten. The valley is fully one mile wide, and nine miles
long, and snow peaks apparently close its western extremity. All along
the “Silver Water” there were wheat fields in the vivid green of spring;
above were alpine lawns over which were sprinkled clumps of pine and
birch, gradually thickening into forests, which clothed the skirts of
mountains, snow-crested, and broken up here and there into pinnacles of
naked rock. At short distances all down the valley are villages with
towers and lama-serais on heights—villages among the fair meadows by the
bright, swift river, with houses mounted on the tops of high towers,
which they overhang, their windows from thirty to fifty feet from the
ground—and stretching half-way across, a lofty, rocky spur, then violet
against a sky of gold, developed into a massive, double-towered castle,
the residence of the _Tu-tze_ of Somo, the lord of this fair land. In
the late afternoon it looked like that enchanted region—
“Where falls not rain or hail or any snow,
Or ever wind blows loudly.”
The warm spring sunshine blessed it, the river flashed through it in
light, the sunset glory rolled down it in waves of gold, its beauty left
nothing to be longed for.
The Chinese officer rode up saying, “There is now no more fright,” (who
was frightened I know not), and passed on to Somo, saying he was “going
to make things smooth for us,” but, as I think, carrying orders to the
_Tu-tze_ from headquarters to bar my further progress. The castle gained
rather than lost, as we approached it by a bridge over a lateral stream
near a fine specimen of an ancient tower, about eighty feet high. It
occupies the greater part of a rocky spur or bluff, rising 390 feet
above the river. A few mean houses cluster on ledges outside the castle
wall.
The spur is so precipitous on the east side as to look inaccessible, and
is climbed with difficulty by anyone carrying a burden. At the foot of
the rock there is a covered, open gateway, with revolving
prayer-cylinders on both sides. The ascent is by steep zigzags, which we
were an hour in climbing. The climb brought us into the centre of a
Man-tze crowd, and of a cluster of mean and dirty Chinese hovels,
huddling against the rocks, in which we were told that the _Tu-tze_ “had
provided lodgings.” This was an insult. The lodging for the whole party
was one small, dark, dirty room, filled with stinging wood smoke from a
fire on the floor.
[Illustration: SQUARE TOWER, SOMO.]
I sat outside in the midst of a crowd which had no rudeness in it, while
Mr. Kay, with sanguine impetuosity, went up “to see the _Tu-tze_” and
claim fitting accommodation. He found both doors barred in his face, and
two savage dogs on guard. Nothing daunted, he climbed a wall and dropped
down into the outer court of the castle, and in the lion’s den itself
obtained a good room for me on the roof of a Man-tze house within the
great gate, high and breezy, and looking both up and down the valley.
[Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF SOMO.]
“Passports and recommendations are no use here,” replied the haughty
ruler to a request for furtherance, and when a polite message was sent
asking at what hour Mr. Kay might have the honour of an audience, the
proposal was rudely negatived. The Chinese officer, who was entertained
in the castle, had obviously done his work efficiently.
Though Somo was nominally the goal of my journey, and I was more than
satisfied to have reached it, I cherished a project of getting down to
Ta-tien-lu (Darchendo) from Cho-ko-ki by a route only traversed
previously, so far as Europeans are concerned, by Mr. von
Rosthorn—involving a journey of twenty-one days. On making careful
inquiries, however, I learned that a tribal war had broken out, and that
the bridges over the Rong-kia had been destroyed, a fact which Mr. Kay
verified by a long day’s journey of investigation. This involved two
long days’ march on foot over a difficult mountain, and I was much
prostrated, and also suffering from my heart from the severities of the
night on the Tsu-ku-shan pass. In addition, the coolies, the bane of the
journey, were breaking down from fever one after another, the stock of
rice was nearly exhausted, and an order had been given that supplies and
transport southwards were to be refused. I was too weak to make a
resolute attempt to overcome these difficulties, which probably, as in
the case of other would-be Tibetan travellers, were insurmountable, and
every reader who is also a traveller will understand the indescribable
reluctance with which I abandoned the Ta-tien-lu project. After it was
given up, the _Tu-tze_ sent a present of salted goat, flour, honey, and
ancient and hairy butter, which enabled me to give my men a good meal.
The days passed quickly in learning as much as I was able to extract
from the Man-tze elders regarding their customs. The _Tu-tze_ sent
several times for my watch, and eventually sent a very big man with his
own, a valuable old thing, with many rubies, which had stopped for
years, and asked me to repair it! It was a very simple derangement, and
I put it right, when he sent again asking if I could mend pianos, as he
had one with broken strings! Then he sent for Be-dien, to whom he put
many questions, and fascinated him. He told him that he could only
protect us for forty _li_ farther, when we should reach the territory of
the Cho-ko-ki, a hostile tribe. At one time Be-dien came into my room
with an avalanche of “savages” behind him, one handsome young woman
clinging to his arm, to his great annoyance, for he was a “very proper
young man,” or posed as such.
Throughout the Man-tze villages the absence of any painfully disfiguring
diseases, goitre excepted, had been remarkable. In Somo, however, there
was one Chinese with a tumour on his jaw as large as a supplementary
head, and another suffering from severe elephantiasis, of which
distressing malady an illustration is given on page 427.