outside the gates; so we had all the advantage of the fine view over
the Great Wall of China, with pure air to breathe, instead of the
garlic and muck-stained atmosphere of the town.
During the whole of our journey from Llama Miao to Ku Pei Ko̔u we did
not see a single Mongol, much less a camp. The ground is not suited
to their nomad and pastoral habits; it is colonised exclusively by
Chinese, principally farmers from the province of Shantung. Europeans
have very rarely followed this route; so far as I can make out they
have been seen here once, or at most twice.
_15th May._
This day week we were shivering in furs at Llama Miao. To-day a gauze
shirt was too much; the flies were a perfect pest. It was too hot to
do anything but sleep, which they put out of the question. It was not
until after dinner that we could venture out. We went up a hill behind
the inn, from which we had a fine view of the sun setting behind the
heights which the Great Wall scales. In the valley beneath wayfarers
were hurrying to reach the town before the closing of the gates;
the rear was brought up by a herd of about a hundred pigs, the last
travellers who entered China this night by the gates of Ku Pei Ko̔u.
About Ku Pei Ko̔u and the road back to Peking I wrote to you last year,
and this letter is too long already. Three days brought us home to the
Legation.
_P.S._—By the bye, although the part of Mongolia we visited is set down
on the maps as belonging to the province of Chi Li, which it is so far
as its government is concerned, I have spoken of _China_ as bounded by
the Great Wall. No Mongol living beyond it would consider himself as
an inhabitant of China, and the Chinese themselves speak of the places
which are “Ko̔u-wai,” outside the mouth or frontier, as Mongolia. In
Stamford’s large map of China and Japan you will see how Chang Chia
Ko̔u, Dolonor or Llama Miao, and Ku Pei Ko̔u are placed—some of our
other halting-places are also given, but you would hardly recognise
them from their spelling.
_May 20th—Sunday._—Went round some of the curiosity shops, where I was
shown, among other things, a wonderful ewer and cover of rock crystal,
about a foot high. I have seen nothing finer of its kind than the
carving. In the days of Chien Lung the Magnificent, himself a great
patron of art, when a fine piece of rock crystal, jade, or cornelian
was brought in from the western mountains as tribute, a committee of
taste decided the shape to be given to it, and fixed upon the artist to
whom it should be entrusted by Imperial Command.
_May 21._—The pious Chinese are all off these days making a pilgrimage
to a holy shrine among the hills, called Miao Fêng Shan, to burn
joss-stick as a sovereign prophylactic against disease and misfortune
of all kinds.
_May 22._—The thermometer standing at 100° in the shade. The heat
frightfully oppressive. Happily on the following day there came a great
thunderstorm, with hailstones as big as pigeon’s eggs. This cooled
the air. The formation of the hailstones was curious: a nodule of ice
surrounded by a coating of frozen snow, which in its turn was encased
in ice. Bad for heads!
_May 27._—An outbreak of the “Heavenly Flowers,” or smallpox, causes
general consternation and vaccination. Any one who is opposed to
vaccination had better see the ravages of this horrible disease in
an Eastern city; so common is it that no Chinaman who has not “put
forth the heavenly flowers” is considered quite complete. It is like
distemper with dogs in Europe.
_May 29._—Dined with Dr. and Mrs. Wells Williams at the American
Legation, a handsome and delightful couple now entering middle age.
Dr. Williams, the author of a Chinese dictionary, and that most
encyclopædic book _The Middle Kingdom_, is one of the most learned
of sinologues. He began his career in China as a missionary in the
south, but his great talents rendered him necessary to the American
Government, and he is now _chargé d’affaires_ here. He was very
interesting, talking, among other subjects, on the paper currency.
Bank-notes, it seems, were first introduced in the days of the Sung
dynasty, during the reign of Shao Hsing (A.D. 1170). At that time
copper was scarce, so the Government issued great notes (Ta Chao) of
the value of 1000 to 5000 copper cash, and small notes (Hsiao Chao)
worth from 100 to 700 cash. Officers were appointed everywhere to issue
and receive these notes. They were to be renewed within seven years,
and fifteen cash in every thousand were deducted for the expense of
making them. They were said to be “kung ssŭ pien,” “convenient both for
the public and for private individuals.” Marco Polo mentions them with
praise.
_June 1._—My new colleague, Sir Eric Farquhar, arrived from England.
An old schoolfellow. He was accompanied by Mr. Brenchley, a most
accomplished traveller, who seems to have been all over the world, and
being a great naturalist and profound observer, is a charming companion
to boot.
_June 10._—The last few days have been occupied in showing Brenchley
the lions of Peking. To-day we went to breakfast at a fashionable
Chinese restaurant, “The House of Eternal Prosperity,” in the Ta Shih
La Erh, which we call Curio Street. In order that we might make a
genteel appearance and observe the ten thousand proprieties, my servant
Chang Hsi insisted on our going in carts. Walking is so vulgar! We were
jolted and bruised over the indescribable ruts and paving-stones to a
horrible degree, but our dignity was kept up. We found the House of
Eternal Prosperity very shabby and dirty, and we should have had a much
better breakfast at home.
_June 15–20._—Two more parties of travellers arrived. More work as
“intelligent guide.”
LETTER XXVII
TA-CHIO-SSŬ,
THE TEMPLE OF GREAT REPOSE,
_23rd July 1866_.
The last mail took you no letter from me because I was far away in
Mongolia. My first intention had been merely to go as far as Chang
Chia Ko̔u, to accompany Brenchley and make the arrangements for his
journey across Siberia to Russia. Ultimately, however, the party
increased to four, of whom one was a lady, and our programme grew in
proportion. We started on June the 21st. We were detained four or five
days at Chang Chia Ko̔u, owing to the chicanery of a faithless Mongol
camel-owner who did not keep faith with us. However, it is a bright,
cheerful little town, so I did not much mind. It was gayer than ever
too, for on account of the great drought, morning, noon, and night,
the town was being paraded by processions of distressed agriculturists
praying for rain. Preceded by squeaky clarionets, drums, and gongs,
a crowd of men and boys with wreaths of willow round their heads and
middles, above which their sunburnt bodies were naked, some wearing
fillets of red paper, others doing penance with their necks enclosed
in the heavy board used as a punishment for prisoners, escorted a
sedan chair with a tiny god in it to the Lung Wang Miao, the Temple of
the Dragon Prince, whom, being a water-god, it is well to propitiate
in cases of drought.[16] Some of the votaries were armed with spears
and rude guns, which from time to time they fired off, and altogether
there was din and clatter enough even to please a Chinese crowd. “Ah!
these agriculturists!” said a Chinese gentleman who was looking on
with the most supreme contempt, and whom I asked for an explanation
of the affair; “they are never content! It’s always too much rain or
too little, or something the matter. Unsurpassable!” The prayers of
the worthy people were heard, however, and the Dragon Prince took a
favourable view of their case, for the first day of my stay at Chang
Chia Ko̔u there came a thunderstorm, with a downfall of rain, such as
one seldom sees out of the tropics, and there was more or less rain all
the time we were there. The coincidence will not improve the chances
of an American missionary who has been physicking the natives of Chang
Chia Ko̔u for rather more than a year, but in spite of the drastic
arguments of blue pill and black dose, has not yet made a convert.
There are three main passes leading from China into Mongolia, Chang
Chia Ko̔u, Ku Pei Ko̔u, and between them Tu Shih Ko̔u, which is
smaller and less important, but which I had not seen. The plan which I
proposed, and which my companions accepted, was to make a tour of the
three, following a line outside, but in some parts parallel with the
Great Wall.
We left Chang Chia Ko̔u on the 30th of June. It was frightfully hot,
but I had provided a refuge against the scorching sun, which at
mid-day would have been unbearable. We each had with us a mule litter,
a sort of long carriage in which a single person can almost lie at full
length, with shafts behind and before which are borne on mules’ backs.
This sounds rather a comfortable and luxurious way of travelling,
seeing that one’s bed and pillows are placed inside. As a fact it is
horridly jolty and sea-sicky; then no sooner has one established one’s
self in a tolerably easy position and dozed off (which is inevitable,
and makes one very hot and uncomfortable), than one is called upon by
the muleteer to trim the boat: “Your Excellency! please sit a little
more to the south. Your Excellency’s weight is all to the north!
The north side of that mule’s back is becoming terribly galled.” My
muleteer was a very original character. He had a prodigious talent for
screaming out Chinese anacreontics at the top of his voice, and for
dramatic recitations and imitations of popular actors. He was always
the last of the muleteers to get up in the morning, and when at last I
took to waking him with the crack of a hunting-whip, he only grumbled
good-humouredly and said the “old lord,” meaning me, was very hard
upon him, but none the more did he get up to feed his mules. He had
been to Mongolia once with Sir Frederic Bruce, to whom he applied the
most glowing eulogy that a Chinaman can bestow, holding up his thumb;
words could go no further. Altogether Cha Mai Chu—that is his name—was
the merriest, grinningest, and most laughable devil that I have ever
come across here. When we arrived at the inn, and the six muleteers,
having acquiesced in the landlord’s civil proposal, “You six gentlemen”
(if you could but see the six gentlemen!) “will dine together, I
suppose,” had sat down to the coarse fare, a sort of macaroni with
garlic and pickles, which they allow themselves, Cha Mai Chu used to
keep the other five in a roar of laughter, and I rather think that
by that means he contrived to suck up the lion’s share of the white
strings.
As the first part of our road, as far as Chang-Ma-Tzŭ-Chin, was but
a repetition of the same journey which I wrote about in my last
long letter describing my expedition to Llama Miao, I spare you the
repetition. Farther on we followed a route new to me, and in some
places not visited before by foreigners. This may interest you. After
leaving Chang-Ma-Tzŭ-Chin on the 3rd July, instead of pushing on
northwards across Mongolia, which at this season is far more worthy
of its Chinese name, “The Land of Grass,” than it was two months
ago, we steered south-east back towards China, across a sandy plain,
richly cultivated with potatoes and other crops. In the midst of this
sandy tract stands a little tumble-down Chinese village called Lien
Hwa Tan, “the lotus-flower fountain,” from an old tradition that
there once stood there a temple in which was a fountain flourishing
with lotus-flowers. Now it is a case of _lucus a non_, for temple,
fountain, and flowers have all faded away together, and as for anything
flourishing, there was barely a roof for us to eat our breakfasts
under. We were making for a ridge of green hills, from the top of which
I expected to come in sight of the Great Wall, which, however, did not
appear until we had reached the bottom of an emerald-green valley,
with luxuriant vegetation, lying between rugged and bare rocks. Hard
by Tu Shih Ko̔u the great brick monster showed itself again, but in
ruins, undermined and sapped by continual watercourses. The rocks here
are very fine, picturesque and astonishing in their shapes. Tu Shih
Ko̔u itself is a queer little old town. The fortifications and walls
are falling into decay, uncared for and unrepaired. In a few years, I
should think, its quaint gables and towers and useless fortifications
will have crumbled away; but on the other hand, inside the walls there
are shops, neat and tidy, and houses showing signs of some prosperity.
Perhaps, after all, there is some method in the apparent madness of
letting the old remains of protection against border warfare go to
the dogs. I have often told you how bothered travellers are here on
arriving at an inn by gapers and starers. The nuisance was multiplied
a hundred-fold on this excursion by the fact of our having a lady
with us. I was armed with special letters of recommendation from the
Ministers of Foreign Affairs to the high mandarins along the road, and
as soon as these last heard that we were annoyed, they hastened to send
us “po-po” (sweetmeats) and protection, but before this arrived I had
been obliged to take the law into my own hands, for three dirty, old,
gray blackguards had actually, using their wet thumbs as centre-bits,
made holes in one of our paper windows, at which they were playing
peeping Tom, and so interested by what they saw that they did not
hear Retribution stealing up on tiptoe armed with a hunting-whip.
Retribution, that is myself, tied their three nasty old tails together
and packed them off howling, to the great delight of their friends and
relations, who quite recognised the breach of Tao Li of which they had
been guilty. An appeal to Tao Li, good manners, or propriety, is always
a trump card to play when in difficulties with a Chinese crowd.
We only stayed one night at Tu Shih Ko̔u, and then rode back through
another pass to the fresh air of the steppe. We passed the night at
a little hamlet called Chang Leang. There was but one inn, and that
was full, and we should have had to pass the night _al fresco_ if a
good-natured Bachelor of Arts returning from Llama Miao to Tu Shih Ko̔u
had not consented to push on and give us up his room for the lady of
our party. The rest of us managed to huddle up somehow. Never in all my
wanderings here have I had to sleep in such queer places as I did on
this journey. The villages were poor, the inns worse; and instead of
having the high place, we males were bound to put up with holes such
as the very beggars in England would back out of. However, the game was
worth the candle so far as scenery was concerned, and then the air of
Mongolia makes up for everything. Even the Alpine Club do not know what
fresh air is; they must come to the steppes.
The next day we breakfasted at a felt manufactory, at a village called
Ta Tan. The way the Chinese make their felt is very rude and primitive,
but the result beats Manchester and cogwheels. A quantity of wool
is carded and weighed and scattered evenly over a rush mat. When a
sufficient quantity has been laid, the wool is carefully flattened
down with a sort of wickerwork fan and sprinkled with boiling water;
the mat and wool are then rolled up and tied, and the roll being laid
on the ground is kicked backwards and forwards by six men from foot
to foot for five minutes. A second layer completes the felt, which is
excellent. I wish I could give you an idea of the extreme beauty of
our afternoon’s ride. After we had left our felt manufactory, the road
lay through low hills, along a valley that was perfectly enamelled
with wild-flowers, principally yellow ones, a real blaze of gold—wild
roses, ranunculus, amaryllis, peony, daphne, potentilla, pinks, purple
iris, gorgeous tiger and Turk’s cap lilies, and poppies which pay the
Emperor of China the compliment of wearing his colours, besides a host
of others—a mass of beauties. A violent contrast to the richness of the
pasture are the herds of camels, who at this time of year, coatless,
mangy, emaciated, and so weak as hardly to be able to move along, are
turned out to get rid of the sores on their backs and recruit for
their hard work in autumn, winter, and spring. Poor brutes! pitiable
as they look, this must be the happiest season of their year; they
well earn their rest. Along this wild garden we gradually ascended—so
gradually that it was not until we had reached the top of the pass
that opens out between two rocks on a panorama of high hills, range
upon range lying at our feet, that we had any idea how high we were.
I think this view as I saw it, with the sun setting in the distance
and the remains of a storm rolling away over the mountains, is one
of the finest I have ever seen. The mountains themselves are savage
and barren, and in the valleys clusters of trees mark where Chinese
homesteads stand, so poor that not even eggs are to be bought there.
In one of these, at a place called Pa Ti, half farmhouse, half inn, we
slept, I in a sort of barn, my bed on the ground, my dressing-table a
nether millstone, and my washhand-stand the carcase of an old cart. The
sun was rising when we started down the valley, which really is the
grandest thing I have seen in China, and barring the attractions of
snow and ice, it seems to me the Alps have nothing finer to show. Rocks
more grim and uncouth there cannot be. They take every conceivable
shape—men’s heads, tigers, lions, citadels with turrets and battlements
of living rock, are easily conjured up. Then there are huge boulders
that look as if a breath would blow them down, so delicately are they
poised upon points apparently quite unfit to bear their weight. It is
a valley which makes one think of old fairy tales about giants and
dwarfs and ogres’ castles. The poor commonplace Chinese drudges who
inhabit it are ill-suited to their home. The best part of the scenery
ends some fifteen miles down the valley, at a hill called Llama Shan
(“The Llama’s Hills”)—two enormous pyramidical rocks, at the foot of
which is a village to which they give their name. On one rock, high
upon a flat surface hard to climb to, is painted a rude picture of
Buddha, with a glory round his head and his finger and thumb held up
in orthodox form. The painting is of old date, but pious hands have
recently restored it. In the other rock is a cave in which a rather
hazy tradition says that in old times a llama or llamas used to retire
from the world, and pass their time in the pious contemplation of their
own navels. Their reverences showed their taste in the choice of their
abode, for it is a lovely spot. We were spoilt for the lower half of
the valley by the beauty of the upper half, but we had still before us
a fine jagged hill, at the foot of which is Ta Kao, our halting-place,
a largish town, rich in gardens. And what would Exeter Hall say if it
heard that there are places in these parts which actually cultivate
their own poppies? We found a famous inn at Ta Kao, with large rooms
freshly papered; but strange to say, on the 6th of July, the stove-beds
or kangs were all heated. We, coming from the cool mountain breezes,
found the atmosphere of itself close and stuffy, though in comparison
with Peking it was freshness itself; the heated kangs were perfectly
insupportable. We wound up a long day with the usual exhibition to a
rather tiresome crowd.
We travelled next day along a poverty-stricken but picturesque valley,
through which flows a mountain torrent swelled almost to a river by
the recent rains. We had to ford it twenty-two times in the course
of the day. At one ford one of the mule litters broke down and was
smashed to pieces. No great damage was done, and the mule litter was
patched together with bits of string and an old nail or two. The way
in which the muleteer abused his beasts for the mishap was very funny.
Treating the mule as if it had been a human creature, he proceeded
in his wrath to take away its younger sister’s character. Be it man
or mule, horse or pig, or what not, that sins against a Chinese, he
immediately tramples on the fair fame of the younger sister of the
offender, heaping upon her every foul abuse that he can lay his tongue
to. Mingled with his revilings, the muleteer addressed the most humble
petitions to me not to dock his pay, passing from prayer to abuse with
wondrous facility. If that mule’s younger sister was guilty of one-half
the enormities ascribed to her, the punishment has not yet been devised
which would be equal to the occasion. The list of her crimes is not
fit for publication. When we arrived at Chai Ling the only room that I
could have was perfectly untenable from stuffiness and a hot kang which
took up a good half of it, so I slept in my litter in the inn-yard,
_sub Jove_, which was very cool and pleasant.
The following morning, 8th July, we were awakened by a most glorious
sunrise; it was so fresh and nice that I walked the greater part
of the day’s journey, to the undisguised wonder of the muleteers,
who could not in the least understand it. They hold up their thumbs
in admiration, and loudly express their high respect for such
prowess. “See the old lord! how he walks!” “He has obtained to walk
unsurpassably.” “This body! Our lords here have not such bodies!”
It was but a ten-mile walk; but no Chinese gentleman would dream of
attempting such a feat. We all went beetle-mad this day, one of our
party being an entomologist. Under one jujube-tree we found so many
varieties of insects of different kinds that it became perfectly
exciting; even the muleteers caught the fever and began to take a
certain interest in the hunt, but were rather afraid of the quarry. At
the end of a very pretty mountain walk we found the “Inn of Flourishing
Righteousness,” with a large yard full of picturesque groups of
half-naked drovers and muleteers. We were well lodged and very
comfortable.
The next morning we came down the pass on to Ku Pei Ko̔u, which I
found as attractive as ever. I put up at my old quarters outside the
town. Of course we rested a day to let the travellers have a ramble
on the Great Wall. While they were busy picking up bricks and ferns
and other souvenirs of the Great Wall, I fell in with a curious
character. He was an old Chinaman, by name Li, by trade a herbalist
and naturalist, by adoption a poultry-fancier, and by inspiration a
professor of palmistry. He began by telling me a lot of curious facts
and properties about different plants and roots, but as their English
names were unknown to me I cannot repeat them. Certain of them were to
cure the hot, others to repel the cold influence. Lizards he pointed
to as a deadly poison (internal) to horses and cattle. After he had
discoursed to me some time, he asked to look at my hand; and then he
really surprised me. He told me things about myself and family which
are certainly known to few people but ourselves; that they should have
become known to a poor cottager living on a hillside near a little
out-of-the-way town at the farther extremity of Asia is impossible.
We shall see if what he said about the future is equally correct. The
lines in the hand from which he gathered his auguries were different
from those which used to be read in Europe; he explained his science
to me, but as he did so in verse, and in the jargon of the trade, I
could not make much of it. He invited me afterwards to his cottage—such
a pretty little spot, with a glorious vine trained so as to make a
covered Pergola in front of it. He passes his life here contentedly,
seldom going to the town but when he needs to sell his herbs or his
chickens. As soon as he made his appearance with me a whole pack of
dirty little brats, all stark naked, came trooping out to welcome him
and salute their father’s guest according to manners.
I had hoped to have pushed so far as Jo Hol, the imperial palace and
hunting forest, but one of my companions struck work, and I was obliged
to return to Peking, having been within two days of my goal, which I
hope, however, to reach another time.
LETTER XXVIII
TA-CHIO-SSŬ, _4th August 1866_.