camp came in to idle away an hour, we had no lack of interpreters.
The chief personage spoke Chinese fluently. Apakwai lost her husband
in the war of 1860, where the Mongols were always sent to the front
to be shot at, and really, with such a wife, he was lucky to get out
of the world. She had a most villainous expression of countenance,
only exceeded in ugliness by her familiar spirit, a little dog of
preternatural hideousness, with a hunch on his back and a revolting
human face. I tried to conciliate him with “po-po,” Chinese cakes,
which he accepted with avidity, and even condescended to sit up and
beg for like a Christian dog, but so soon as my store was exhausted he
snapped at me as spitefully as ever. The old lady had other familiar
spirits even more disgusting, of whose presence she gave evidence by
much unbuttoning of robes and scratching. The widow was very eager for
cigars and white sugar, which we could not spare her, and as she sat
smoking her pipe and grumbling over the money our servants had paid her
for the use of her yurt, she was the picture of greed and avarice. I
added to her gains, but even that did not satisfy her. Altogether, if
I had a pound of cigars, a loaf of sugar, and a purseful of money, I
should be sorry to sleep alone in her yurt. I should dream of Jael and
Sisera all night.
At about two or three miles, at a guess, N.W. of the camp stands a
large temple, Ma Shên Miao, the temple of the horse spirit, most
appropriately placed and dedicated; with my field-glass I could see
large trees, leafless as yet, in its enclosure, the only trees that
we have seen since Chang Chia Ko̔u. Their size shows that the temple
is old, for of course they must have been planted there by the monks.
Between the camp and Shang-tu-ho, where we slept, the plain was
boundless in length, and confined at the sides by picturesque heights
coloured by every variety of light and shade. The distance gave us the
most perfectly deceptive mirage I ever saw. It was exactly like a vast
lake, the hill spurs running out into it like promontories, and forming
bays and creeks. Near Shang-tu-ho we passed by the roadside four stakes
driven into the ground, to each of which was attached a cage containing
the head of a man in a frightful state of decomposition. The tail of
one had escaped from between the bars of the cage, and was dangling to
and fro mournfully in the wind. They were the heads of four Chinese
highwaymen, once the terror of the road; now, poor wretches, they can
only frighten the horses, who may well shy at so ugly a sight. We saw
large flocks of Hwang-yang antelopes, but they disappear like white
clouds into space, and there is no chance of getting a shot at them.
_6th May._
By way of a change, and to spare my old pony Kwandu, whose turn it
was for duty, I walked the first stage, some sixteen miles or more,
to Ta Liang Ti. Two miles to the west of the road we passed the
Wang-ta-jên-Miao, the temple of his Excellency Wang, the burial-place
of a Mongol chieftain of that name, where, as the carter told me,
reside the officers in charge of an Imperial establishment for breeding
horses. A little excitement was added to the second half of the day
by our being warned of a band of “chi-ma-tseih,” horse brigands, who
infest the neighbourhood. The Mongols of a large encampment near Ta
Liang Ti have been waging war against them; yesterday they caught
four, the day before eight, all of whom will be sent to Chang Chia
Ko̔u for trial. The heads we saw yesterday belonged to four of their
troop. The ground is admirably adapted for their operations. The track
skirts a number of low hills, among which they hide, pouncing out upon
travellers who are too weak in numbers to offer resistance. The people
about are really panic-stricken, and no single cart ventures on the
road. An additional cause of fear is that these brigands are Shantung
men, who have the reputation of being very terrible. The deuce a tail
of a robber did we see, but we met a Mongol armed to the teeth and
carrying his long pole and rope for horse-catching—a most powerful
engine against a mounted robber—who asked me, in what the Mrs.
Malaprop of Peking used to call “broken china,” whether I had seen any
brigands, saying that he was one of a party out on the war-trail after
them. I could only wish him “good luck with his fishing.” We slept at
Ha Pa Chiao, where, as at Ta Liang Ti, the people were especially civil.
_7th May._
To-day we “received bitters unsurpassable,” as the Chinese say when
they come to grief—thirty-five miles’ ride at a foot-pace, for we
could not leave the baggage in a storm of wind, rain, thunder and
lightning, which regularly pursued us. The sandy soil was so heavy that
the cart-wheels could hardly turn; the horses were quite exhausted.
About two miles from Llama Miao, where the storm had lashed itself to
its greatest fury, we came to a small plateau surrounded by low hills.
Here we witnessed a phenomenon, new to me, and which I certainly never
wish to see again. The thunder, which seemed to circle round the hills,
roared savagely and cracked with deafening peals, while the lightning
ran along the ground criss-crossing in every direction until the
little plain was covered with a perfect network of blue liquid flames,
from the meshes of which escape seemed impossible. The effect on the
horses was indeed electric. Mine stood still and shivered with fear,
breaking out into a white lather of sweat, while the doctor’s, with
a scream, bolted madly into space, fortunately taking the direction
of the town. It was a weird scene, befitting a witch’s Sabbath. A
thunderstorm in Mongolia is indeed a trial to one’s nerves. To put the
finishing touch to our misery, when we arrived at Llama Miao drenched,
cold, and hungry, inn after inn refused to take us in, and we were for
near an hour riding through the wet streets, the people howling at us,
and a whole pack of curs yelping and snapping at our dogs. At last we
found an asylum in a large but wretched inn; the last tenants of the
rooms we occupied had been horses, and my bedroom was also used as a
cart-house. We were a good deal mobbed; a foreigner here is a _rara
avis_, and we created no small sensation, every dirty ragamuffin in the
place crowding into the yard. What excites the greatest astonishment is
that we are travelling for no business. To leave all one’s comforts
and ride four hundred miles for pleasure beats their comprehension, and
the Chinese are convinced that the barbarian has a bee in his bonnet.
_8th May._
Llama Miao is a large Chinese colony in the midst of a sandy desert,
four or five thousand feet above the level of the sea. The Mongols call
it Talonoru, which the Russians have softened into Dolonor. The Chinese
name, which means “llama’s temple,” is taken from two huge monasteries
of llamas, “the old temple” and “the new temple,” which stand by the
side of a small stream outside the town. They are rather villages than
temples, however, and contain, as the landlord and other natives told
me, several thousand llamas. We were unable to go into them, for the
river, swollen by the rain, was impassable; but we did not much regret
this, for all the temples have a strong family likeness, and we have
both had our fill of big Buddhas and dirty shaven monks with idiotic
faces (the llamas are by far the lowest type in China), out of whom
there is not even any information about their fraternity to be got,
for if you ask them some question touching their order, it is ten to
one that they will reply by another about your clothes. We contented
ourselves with a distant view of the Miao. In size, but in nothing
else, they reminded me of the Troitzkaia Lavra near Moscow, which is
also quite a small city.
The Mongols flock to Llama Miao to sell their horses, cattle, wool,
and raw hides to the Chinese, who, in return, supply them with corn
of all kinds, and such simple manufactured necessaries as the Mongols
require for their camps, at between three and four times Peking prices.
A measure of corn, which costs 100 cash in Peking, costs 3½ times that
amount here. This trade, for the landlord says there is no other, has
been sufficiently attractive to convert Llama Miao into a town, 6 li
(2 miles) long by 4 li (1⅓ mile) broad, and densely peopled. We passed
a dreary day, shivering in our fur coats. We saw no good horses for
sale, but one fine little gray pony, private property, was brought to
a farrier’s opposite, and bled in the street. I have since heard that
there is a great business done in bronze idols.
_9th May._
We had a better chance of seeing the town and horse-fair as we rode
through to-day. Yesterday the rain had made business dull, but to-day
there were hundreds of little horses for sale; their owners were
leading them about, strung together in packs, or galloping them madly
about, to show off their paces, to the great danger of the mob, and
especially of the small boys, who were scattered from under one horse’s
feet to another’s, but always escaped by a miracle. The show was bad
in quality, for the best horses are not brought in until the summer or
autumn. Our horses, from their superior grooming and feeding, were much
admired, but our saddlery received an ovation. “Ai ya!” said an old
Chinese horse-dealer, passing a dirty thumb over my saddle, “a man may
grow old in these parts over the border, and never see such a saddle as
that! Unsurpassable!” Besides the horsey gentlemen, there is a large
population of craftsmen, such as ropemakers, basketmakers, shoemakers,
and the like. With the exception of a few large well-built places of
business, which have even some pretension to ornamental architecture,
the houses are small and poor. Altogether, Llama Miao is not a place
worth a visit on its own account; we merely took it as a good point to
reach and turn back from. If it had not been for the fact that we were
riding back to Peking, I should not have been sorry to leave it.
We stopped at a small roadside inn for breakfast. The people were
such a contrast to the town-folk, who are always impertinent and
obstructive. The villagers are simple creatures, and so civil and
obliging. Sitting on a bench outside the inn was a very small boy,
dirty to a degree, but excessively pretty, feeding his younger brother
of three years old with a sort of macaroni, which he was stuffing down
his throat with chop-sticks; the father, a good-humoured countryman,
was sitting hard by, resting and smoking his pipe. I gave the little
fellow a sixpence, which he so sweetly made over to the younger child.
As I sat chatting with these people up rode a well-dressed Chinese,
followed by his servant also on horseback. He stopped, called for a cup
of tea, drank it, and went off without paying. I saw that my friends
loved him as a mouse does a cat, and asked who he was. He turned out
to be a customs officer. “A terrible fellow,” said one; “if travellers
don’t bribe him, he stops them, and takes their luggage, swearing that
they are smuggling.” The respect which the Chinese have for their
rulers is truly touching. Our charioteer made me promise to-day to give
him a pass from the Legation when we reach Peking, without which, and
perhaps in spite of which, he, being a countryman, would be mulcted at
the gate on his return home.
About twenty miles from Llama Miao, at a place called Shui-Hsien-Tszŭ,
the sandy plain ends, and the character of the scenery changes
completely.
The road winds down a steep ravine between hills and rocks of every
variety of shape; a tiny torrent follows the same line. There are a few
trees, leafless as yet, and here and there the lower hills are tilled.
Cottages are plentiful, and the number of travellers shows that we are
on the high-road to Peking. We passed the night at Kou Mên Tzŭ. The
people were as civil as possible, but very inquisitive, examining all
our belongings with childish curiosity. They were above all delighted
with my field-glass, through which they begged to be allowed to look.
They took the greatest care of it, and if any one was too eager the
others shouted, “Don’t snatch, don’t snatch.” It was given back to
me by the elder of the party, who said with the greatest gravity,
“Venerable teacher, you have opened our eyes,” and then proceeded to
lecture upon us for the benefit of a party of new-comers. “What are
you come to sell?” said one, interrupting the lecture. “Sell things!”
shouted my exhibitor indignantly; “what thing are you? He don’t sell
things; he’s an officer like our chih hsien!”—which office is promotion
for a brass-buttoned mandarin of a rank about equal to a parish beadle.
Popular enthusiasm reached its height when I pulled out an old number
of the _Saturday Review_ and began to read. I can now realise the
feelings of a giant in a caravan, travelling from place to place and
being shown wherever he goes.
_10th May._
Below Kou Mên Tzŭ runs a mountain stream, over which there is a rude
bridge supported on fascines filled with rubbish and loose stones. The
village, from the left bank of the river, looks very picturesque,
and there is a temple on the hillside that is a little gem in its
way. After ascending the river for some little distance we dived into
another mountain gorge, more beautiful and wild than that of yesterday.
The rocks are bolder and more striking, and the hillsides are covered
with a dwarf wild fruit tree bearing a pink flower as brilliant as the
wild rhododendron of the Alps. There are a few tender shoots, too,
on the stunted trees and shrubs, which, with the mosses and lichens
covering the different strata of rocks, add colour to the landscape.
As the road is a perpetual zigzag one is constantly coming upon fresh
surprises and new forms. To-day’s ride would have been perfect had it
not been for a storm of wind and sand which destroyed our pleasure. We
rested at Hung Tu̔ng Tien, and our abode for the night was at Lao Wo
Pu̔, a quiet little place, where the inn, which stands at a turn of
the road, is perfectly circled by hills, as if it were in a devil’s
punch-bowl. As we sat in the pretty inn-yard we agreed that in spite
of bad weather and cold (we had found ice in several places) we had
seldom enjoyed a day more. One advantage gained over our previous days
was that by loitering on the way and stopping to “sit a sit and rest
a rest” in different cottages, where we were always made welcome, we
managed to arrive at the inn after our servants instead of before. It
is such a bore having to look after the cleaning of the rooms and the
stabling of the horses in the midst of a gaping crowd of wonderers.
_11th May._
Descending the pass the valley widens; the mountain streamlet becomes
quite a river, which we have to cross over and over again; it is very
rapid, and at the fords the water reaches to the horses’ girths. The
ground here is carefully tilled, and well irrigated as it is, must
be fertile. I saw a jolly old couple cultivating their little field
together: the old man was painfully working out furrows with a hoe,
while his wife, stumping along on her small feet, sowed the seed out
of a wooden vessel, with a spout like a watering-pot, which she tapped
with a stick to let the grain fall out by degrees. I hope they may have
a good harvest. Our two resting-places were Kwa Ti Erh and Kwo Chia
Tu̔n, a large village with particularly disagreeable inhabitants,
whose practice it is to eat much garlic and then breathe in the face of
travellers. The sand-storm this afternoon was one of the worst I have
seen. It blinded us and threw a yellow pea-soup fog over scenery that
is as beautiful as mountains and river can make it.
_12th May._
We were warned last night to be on our guard and look out for brigands,
but nothing came of it. This morning we turned off into another pass
steering south-west. Here we had a change in the landscape, for the
hills were covered with trees and brushwood, showing more green as we
got farther south. The people cried wolf again about robbers, but they
do not seem to fancy attacking Europeans; the bore of it is that we
are bound to do escort duty and stick to the cart, which would not be
safe without us and our revolvers. The Chinese are in mortal terror
of them, so a bumbailiff from the Chih-hsien’s yamên at Fêng Ming
Hsien begged us to let him travel with us for company and protection.
He had been all the way to Kou Mên Tzŭ on foot to claim a debt of
six taels (£2). He told me he was between fifty and sixty years old,
and had been a confirmed opium-smoker for twenty years and more,
smoking regularly twice a day, once after each meal. He was as hale
and hearty as need be, walking his thirty miles a day with a heavy
pack on his back, for, with an eye to the main chance, he was going to
combine with his official business a little peddling trade on his own
account—a fresh proof that opium if not taken in large quantities is
not so enervating after all. As for its effect on the mind, some of the
cleverest Chinese are habitual smokers. I must say that I have never
seen anything which bears the faintest resemblance to the horrors of
opium-smoking described in books. This man told me that opium still
gave him delicious dreams, but said he regretfully, “It’s all folly,
they never come true.” Our first fifteen miles lay along very broken
ground—terrible work for the horses—but so picturesque, that if any
brigands had appeared I should have expected them to come out decked
in ribands and tall hats like Mr. Tupman. A common crowd of Chinese
ragamuffins would have been sadly out of tune. One descent that we
had to make was so abrupt that I fully expected our heavy baggage-cart
to come down with a run; however, the carter showed his ingenuity,
and improvised a drag with a huge log of wood which he lashed behind
the cart, fastening it to the axletree with a tourniquet; this made
an effective but not very lasting break; as the wheels wore through
the wood he tightened the tourniquet, and so brought the cart safe to
the bottom. From the top of the pass we had a magnificent panorama of
mountains, range rising above range, north and south, in huge fantastic
masses, with dark foreground and melting blue distances. Beneath us
to the south lay a little hill-girt valley green with young wheat and
trees almost in full leaf, a little Eden in the wilderness. At the
farther end of this valley is a pretty hamlet called Niu Chuên Tzŭ,
where we breakfasted in a clean, tidy inn. We had now travelled over
a hundred miles through narrow mountain passes, but soon after we had
left Niu Chuên Tzŭ our road opened out into a valley so broad as to
be almost a plain. The sun was setting and lighting up the mountains
that separated us from China as we rode into Fêng Ming Hsien, a
pleasant town to look at, but to us very inhospitable; the best inns
rejected us, and we were so mobbed and persecuted after we had found a
resting-place, that I was obliged to appeal to the executive to get the
inn-yard cleared. The executive made its appearance in the shape of a
large and very dirty gentleman with an unkept tail, who by dint of a
deal of threatening and bad language procured for us peace and quiet.
_13th May._
Of course, because our inn was particularly dirty and bad, the
innkeeper was proportionately extortionate. He was evidently a bad
character and rather fallen in the world, and had taken us in, in spite
of prejudices which he shared with the rest of his fellow-townsmen,
in order to make a profit out of us. We were glad to be quit of him,
the inn, and the town. Our mid-day halt was at a very different sort
of place, a little village called Shou Hu Ying, which takes its name
from a tradition that the famous Emperor, Káng Hsi, once came here
a-hunting, and killed a tiger on the spot where the village now
stands. There was only one inn, humble enough, but very clean, and a
few pots of flowers in the principal room gave it an air of smartness.
The guest-room also served as village school, of which all the
paraphernalia were scattered about. There was the magisterial chair and
scholars’ stools covered with bits of felt or sheep-skin,—more luxury
than we had at Eton,—well-thumbed copies of the San-tzŭ-ching,—three
character classic,—the Chinese boy’s primer, a few cheap
writing-materials, and a copy-book in which some little urchin had been
making laborious attempts at copying the numerals and other simple
characters. By way of ornament there was a picture of four little boys
representing the seasons, dancing round a basket of impossible flowers
with the most grotesque contortions, with the superscription, “The
four seasons when prosperous beget riches.” In the cause of letters it
was satisfactory to know that we were not interrupting studies, for
the dominie had given himself and the boys a holiday, and had betaken
himself to a fair at the neighbouring village of Po Li Nao, in order to
go to the theatre. It is very funny to hear a class of little fellows
droning out the classics, of which they don’t understand a word,
in chorus, the tones of the language making a sort of cadence. The
system of teaching a boy a lot of characters without their sense, each
character simply representing a meaningless sound to him, could only
exist in China. We passed Po Li Nao, some fifteen li farther on, and to
the great astonishment of the sightseers did not stop to hear a play by
a troupe of poor strollers. “What! been to Po Li Nao and didn’t go to
see the theatre! Ai ya! that’s strange!” said a footpad of whom I asked
the way. At any rate we saw what was better, Po Li Nao itself, one of
the most picturesquely situated little places I have seen in China. It
stands at the foot of a bend of low hills, above which rises a towering
range of dark, jagged peaks, and beside it winds a clear pebbly stream,
breaking here and there against large stones; add to this a few quaint
Chinese buildings, plenty of trees, and all the bustle of the fair. We
had a difficult sandy track again for the heavy cart; we were 13½ hours
on the road, stopped two hours at noon, and only accomplished about
thirty miles. We put up at Kwa Yo Erh, where, as at all small places,
the people were civility itself, our landlord even turning his family
out of his own house in order to lodge us comfortably.
_14th May._
We took care that our host, who combined the profession of military
officer with that of innkeeper, should not lose by his civility, and
we parted with mutual expressions of goodwill. We had a climb of it up
a steepish hill, on the top of which is a temple to the god of war,
and then descended on to the valley of Ku Pei Ko̔u by a winding road
cut in stages over a precipice such as one finds on a large scale in
Switzerland and the Tyrol. More than once on our journey through these
mountains I have been put in mind of the Alps, not only by the scenery
which, if it were not for the absence of snow and glaciers, would stand
the comparison well, but also by the goitres and cretinism which seem
to be the curse of mountainous districts. The other day at a cross-road
I asked the way of a man who was collecting dung for fuel; he turned
round and said very simply, “I know nothing, I’m only an idiot; ask
him,” pointing to a man ploughing, “he knows everything.” Deafness,
too, seems rather common, probably owing to the very hard weather which
prevails during some seven months of the year. The old people seem
hearty enough, barring their hearing. I came across none of a very
advanced age, but one old fellow of seventy-nine was very hearty, and
to all appearance likely to remain so, but he was by many years the
_doyen_ of all I met, and anything past seventy seems to be looked upon
as extraordinary.
We had a scorching ride to-day: there was a good deal of electricity in
the air, which told upon us when we had been some hours in the saddle.
As we were a full hour ahead of our baggage we turned the horses to
graze, and sat down by a brook to smoke a cigar. As luck would have
it we had no matches; however, there was a house not far off, so the
doctor volunteered to go and beg a light. On arriving at the cottage
he found forty or fifty people engaged in a “white affair,” which is
the euphemism for a funeral, because white is the colour of mourning. A
dozen or so of the relations, friends, and neighbours were seated round
a bier weeping and crooning officially, while the others, waiting
till their turn came for grief, were smoking their pipes and retailing
country gossip. They were very civil, and presently—for apparently the
attraction of seeing the foreigners was superior to that of mourning
by commission for a poor old woman—all, except those actually on duty
round the coffin, were crowding about us as merry as possible; even
the women with their heads bound up in white cloth as if they had
the face-ache turned out to have a peep at us from behind the house,
grinning and giggling as if they were assisting at a marriage.