etiquette of the chinese cart—ruined city—the building of the wall—the advice of a mule—a catastrophe—the failing of the peking cart—beautiful scenery—industrious people—the posters of the mountains—inn yards—the heads of the people—mountain dogs—wolves—a slum people—artistic hands—“cavalry”—the last pass.
and now we were on the very borders of china proper. the road was simply awful, very often just following the path of a mountain torrent. always my cart went first, and however convenient it sometimes seemed for the other cart to take first place, it never did so. suppose we turned down a narrow path between high banks and found we were wrong and had to go back, the second cart would make the most desperate effort and get up the bank rather than go before me. such is chinese etiquette, and like most rules and customs when one inquires into the reason of them, there is some sense at the bottom of it. a chinese road is as a rule terribly dusty and the second cart gets full benefit of all the dust stirred up.
the day after we had been to the nine dragon temple we passed through the great wall at hsing feng k'ou, another little walled city. we had spent the night just outside the ruined wall of an old city, a city that was nearly deserted. there were 228the old gateways and an old bell tower, even an old cannon lying by the gate, but more than half the people were gone, and those who remained were evidently poor peasants, living there i should say because building material was cheap, and eking out the precarious existence of the poor peasant all over china. the hills were very close down now and the valleys very narrow, and on a high peak close to the crumbling walls was the remains of a beacon tower. here by the border they had need to keep sharp watch and ward. i suppose they have nothing to fear now, or perhaps there is nothing to take, but in one ruined gateway i passed through they were tending swine, and in another they were growing melons. at least it would never be worth the raiders while to gather and carry away the insipid melon of china.
the wall is always wonderful. it was wonderful here even in its decay. the country looked as if some great giant had upheaved it in great flat slabs, raising what had been horizontal almost into the perpendicular. it would have been impossible i should have thought for any man, let alone an invading army, to cross there; there were steep grassy slopes on one side, on the other the precipice was rough and impassable, and yet, on the very top of the ridge, ran the wall, broken and falling into decay in some places. i do not wonder that it has not been kept in repair, what i wonder is that it was ever built. tradition says they loaded goats with the material and drove them to the top of the hills, but it seems to me more likely they were carried by slaves. all the strenuous past lived for me again as the sunlight touched the tops of the watch-229towers and i saw how carefully they were placed to command a valley. and that life is past and gone, the manchus have conquered and passed away, and the mongols—well the mongols they say, when they come in contact with the chinese, always beat them, and yet it is the chinese who, pushing out beyond the wall, settle on and till the rich mongol pasture lands. there is now no need of the wall, for the chinese, the timid chinese have gone beyond it.
inner mongolia they call this country beyond the wall, and worse and worse got the road, sometimes it was between high banks, sometimes on a ledge of the hills, sometimes it followed the course of a mountain torrent, but always the general direction was the same, across or along a valley to steep and rugged hills, hills sterile, stony, and forbidding, and through which there seemed no possible way. there was always a way to the valley beyond, but after we passed the wall i considered it possible only for a peking cart, and by and by i came to think it was only by supreme good luck that a peking cart came through. there was a big brown mule in the shafts of my cart, and the fawn mule led, so far away that i wondered more than once whether he had anything to do with the traction at all, or whether it was only his advice that was needed. he was a wise mule, and when he came to a jumping-off place, with apparently nothing beyond it, he used to pause and look round as much as to say:
“jeewhicks!” you couldn't expect much refinement from a chinese mule, “this is tall no can do.” 230the carter would jump down from his place on the tail of the shaft. he would make a few remarks in chinese, which, i presume, freely translated were:
“not do that place? what 're yer givin' us? do it on me 'ed.”
then the fawn-coloured mule would return to his work with a whisk of his tail which said plainly as words:
“oh all serene. you say can do. well, i ain't in the cart, i ain't even drawing the cart, and i ain't particular pals with the gentleman in the shafts, so here goes.”
and the result justified the opinion of both. we did get down, but it seemed to me a mighty narrow squeak, and i was breathless at the thought that the experience must be repeated in the course of the next hour or so. at first i was so terrified i decided i would walk, then i found it took me so long—one mountain pass finished off a pair of boots—and there were so many of them i decided i had better put my faith in the mules if i did not wish to delay the outfit and arrive at jehol barefoot. but i never went up and down those passes without bated breath and a vow that never, never again would i trust myself in the mountains in a peking cart. still i grew to have infinite faith in the peking cart. i was bruised and sore all over, and i found the new nightgowns and chemises in my box were worn into holes with the jolting, but i believed a peking cart could go anywhere, and then my confidence received a rude shock.
we came to a stony place, steep and stony enough in all conscience, but as nothing to some of the places we had passed over, where there had been a precipice on one side and a steep cliff on the other, and where to go over would certainly have spelled grave disaster, but here there was a bank at either side and the fawn-coloured mule never even looked round before negotiating it. up, up went one side of the cart, but i was accustomed to that by this time, up, up, the angle grew perilous, and then over we went, and i was in the tilt of the cart, almost on my head, and the brown mule in the shafts seemed trying to get into the cart backwards. i didn't see how he could, but i have unlimited faith in the powers of a chinese mule, so, amidst wild yells from tuan and the carters, i was out on to the hillside before i had time to think, and presently was watching those mules make hay of my possessions. they didn't leave a single thing either in or on that cart, camera, typewriter, cushions, dressing-bag, bedding, all shot out on to what the chinaman is pleased to consider the road, even the heavy box, roped on behind, got loose and fell off, and the mule justified my expectations by, in some mysterious way, breaking the woodwork at the top of the cart and tearing all the blue tilt away. it took us over an hour to get things right again, and my faith in the stability of a peking cart was gone for ever.
0332
we were right in the very heart of the mountains now, and the scenery was magnificent, close at hand hills, sterile and stony, and behind them range after range of other blue hills fading away into the bluer distance. day after day i looked upon a scene that would be magnificent in any land, and here in china filled me with wonder. could this be china, practical, prosaic china, china of the ages, 232this beautiful land? and always above me was the blue sky, always the golden sunshine and the invigorating, dry air that reminded me, as i have never before been reminded, of australia.
but, however desolate and sterile the hills, and they seldom had more than an occasional fir-tree upon them, in the valleys were always people and evidences of their handiwork in the shape of wonderfully tilled fields. there are no fences, the chinaman does not waste his precious ground in fences, but between the carefully driven furrows there is never a weed, and all day long the people are engaged turning over the ground so that it will not cake, and may benefit by every drop of moisture that may be extracted from the atmosphere. a little snow in the winter, a shower or two in april, and the summer rains in july or august, are all this fruitful land requires for a bountiful harvest, but i am bound to say it is fruitful only because of the intense care that is given to it. no one surely but a chinese peasant would work as these people work. in every valley bottom there is, according to its size, a town, perhaps built of stones with thatched roofs, a small hamlet, or at least a farmhouse, enclosed either behind a neat mud wall or a more picturesque one of the yellow stalks of the kaoliang. and the people are everywhere, in the very loneliest places far up on the hills i would see a spot of blue herding black goats or swine, and on parts of the road far away from any habitation, when i began to think i had really got beyond even the ubiquitous chinaman, we would meet a forlorn, ragged figure, an old man past other work or a small boy with a bamboo across his shoulders and slung 233from it two dirty baskets. with scoop in hand he was gathering the droppings of the animals with which to make argol for fuel, for enough wood is not to be had, and in this respect so industrious are the chinese that their roads are really the cleanest i have ever seen.
there were strangely enough here, in the heart of the mountains, signs of foreign enterprise, for however desolate the place might seem, sooner or later we were sure to come across the advertisements of the british american tobacco company. there they would be in a row great placards advertising rooster cigarettes, or peacock cigarettes or purple mountain cigarettes, half a dozen pictures, and then one upside down to attract attention. i never saw the men who put them there, and i hate the blatant advertisement that spoils the scenery as a rule. here i greeted them with a distinct thrill of pleasure. here were men of my race and colour, doing pioneering work in the out-of-the-way corners of the earth, and i metaphorically made them a curtsy and wished them well, for no one knows better than i do the lonely lives they lead. but they are bringing china in touch with the outside world.
by and by we came to a place where carts were not seen, the people were wiser than i, but there was a constant stream of laden mules and donkeys bringing grain inside the wall. long before i could see them i could hear the jingling of the collar of bells most of them wore, and in an inn yard we always met the train and saw them start out before us in the morning, though we were early enough, i saw to that, often have i had my breakfast before five o'clock, or coming in after we did in the 234dusk of the evening. i objected to travelling in the dusk. i felt the roads held pitfalls enough without adding darkness to our other difficulties.
the inns grew poorer and poorer as we got deeper into the mountains but always i found in those inn yards something interesting to look at. by night i was too weary to do anything but go to bed, but i generally had my tiffin in a shady spot in a corner of the yard and watched all that was going on. the yard would be crowded with animals, mules, and donkeys, and always there were people coming and going, who thought the foreign woman was a sight not to be missed. there have been missionaries here or in chihli for the last hundred years, so they must have seen foreign women, but the sight cannot be a common one judging by the way they stared. there would be well-to-do chinamen riding nice-looking donkeys, still more prosperous ones borne in litters by a couple of protesting mules, and in every corner of the yard would be beasts eating. and all these beasts of burden required numerous helpers, and the hangers-on were the most dilapidated specimens of humanity i have ever seen, not nearly so sure of a meal, i'm afraid, as the pigs and hens that wandered round scavenging. there would be an occasional old woman and very, very seldom a young one with large feet marking her as belonging to the very poorest class, but mostly they were men dressed in blue cotton, faded, torn, ragged, and yet patched beyond recognition.
“patch beside patch is neighbourly,” says an old saw, “but patch upon patch is beggarly.” the poor folks in the inn yards not only had patch upon patch, but even the last patches were torn, and they 235looked far more poverty-stricken than the children who played about this pleasant weather wearing only their birthday dress. but they all had something to do. an old man whose bald head must have required little shaving and whose weedy queue was hardly worth plaiting, drew water from the well, another who had adopted the modern style of dressing the hair gathered up the droppings of the animals, a small boy with wild hair that no one had time to attend to, and clad in a sort of fringe of rags, drove away the hideous black sow and her numerous litter when she threatened to become a nuisance, and from earliest dawn to dark there were men cutting chaff. the point of a huge knife was fixed in the end of a wooden groove, one man pushed the fodder into its position and another lifted the knife by its wooden handle and brought it down with all his strength. then he lifted it, and the process was repeated. i have seen men at work thus, in the morning before it was light enough to see, i have seen them at it when the dusk was falling. there do not seem to be any recognised hours for stopping work in china. and all the heads of these people were wild. if they wore a queue it was dirty and unplaited, and the shaven part of their heads had a week's growth of bristles, and if they were more modern in their hair-dressing, their wild black hair stuck out all over the place and looked as if it had originally been cut by the simple process of sticking a basin on the head and clipping all the hairs that stood out round it. but untidy heads of hair are not peculiar to the inn yard, they are common enough wherever i have been in china. there were always innumerable children in the yard, too, with heads 236shaven all but little tails of hair here and there, which, being plaited stiffly, stood out like the headgear of a clown, and there were cart men and donkey men, just peasants in blue, with their blouses girt round their waists. there were the guests, too, petticoated chinese gentlemen, squires, or merchants, or well-to-do farmers, standing in the doorways looking on, and occasionally ladies, dressed in the gayest colours, with their faces powdered and painted, peeped shyly out, half secretively, as if they were ashamed, but felt they must take one look at the foreign woman who walked about as if she were not ashamed of the open daylight, and was quite capable of managing for herself. sometimes i was taken to the women's quarters, where the women-folk of the innkeeper dwelt, and there, seated on a k'ang, in a room that had never been aired since it was built, i would find feminine things of all ages, from the half-grown girl, who in england would have been playing hockey, to the old great grandmother who was nursing the cat. they always offered me tea, and i always took it, and they always examined my dress, scornfully i am afraid, because it was only of cotton, and wanted to lay their fingers in the waves of my hair, only i drew the line at those dirty hands coming close to my face. at first it all seemed strange, but in a day i felt as if i had been staying in just such inns all my life. the farther one wanders i find the sooner does novelty wear off. as a little girl, to go fifty miles from my home and to have my meals off a different-patterned china gave me a delightful sense of novelty, and to sleep in a strange bed kept me awake all night. now in an hour—oh far less—nothing feels new, not even the courtyard of a chinese mountain inn.
0340
i have never seen so many people with goitres. the missionaries at jehol told me it was very much dreaded, and that the people brought the affliction upon themselves by flying into violent passions. i doubt very much whether that is the origin of the goitre; but that it is very much dreaded, i can quite believe. for not only does a goitre look most unsightly, but the unfortunate possessor must always keep his head very straight, for if he lets it drop forward, even for a moment, he closes the air passages, and is in danger of suffocating. i have heard it is brought on by something in the water. water, of course, i never dared drink in china. i saw very pleasant, clear-looking, liquid drawn up from the wells in those inn courtyards in closely plaited buckets of basket-work, but i never ventured upon it. i always remembered aunt eliza:
“in the drinking well
which the plumber built her,
aunt eliza fell.
we must buy a filter.”
aunt eliza's cheerful, if somewhat callous, legatees had some place where they could buy a filter, i had not, besides, i am sure, all the filters in the world could not make safe water drawn from a well in a chinese inn yard, so i drank tea, which necessitates the water being boiled.
the chinese build their wells with the expectation of someone, not necessarily aunt eliza, coming to grief in them. on one occasion a man of my acquaintance was ordering a well to be made in his yard, and he instructed the well-sinker that he need 238not make it, as the majority of chinese wells are made, much wider at the bottom than at the top. but the workman shook his head.
he must make it, he said, wide enough at the bottom for a man—or woman, they are the greatest offenders—to turn round if he flung himself in. he might change his mind and want to get out again, and if a body were found in a well not roomy enough to allow of this change of mind, he, the builder, would be tried for murder.
this thoughtful consideration for the would-be suicide, who might wish to repent, is truly chinese. personally i doubt very much whether anyone would take the trouble to investigate the bottom of a well. there might easily be something very much worse than aunt eliza in it. presumably she was a well-to-do, and therefore a clean old lady, while the frequenters of those yards were beyond description.
the people in the little towns, and more especially those in the lonely farm-houses which looked so neat and well-kept in contrast with the ragged, dirty objects that came out of them, kept a most handsome breed of dogs. sometimes they were black and white, or grey, but more often they were a beautiful tawny colour. they were, apparently, of the same breed as the wonks that infest all chinese towns, but there was the same difference between these dogs and the wonks as there is between a miserable, mangy mongrel and the pampered beast that takes first prize at a great show. indeed, i should like to see these great mountain dogs at a show, i imagine they would be hard to beat. they looked very fierce, whether they are or not i don't know, because i always gave them a wide berth, and 239tuan, the cautious, always shook his head when one came too close, called to someone else with a stick to drive it away, and murmured his usual formula: “must take care.” they told me there were wolves among these mountains, and i can quite believe it, though i never saw one. in the dead of winter they are fierce and dangerous, and much dreaded. they come into the villages, steal the helpless children, will make a snap at a man in passing and inflict terrible wounds. a chinaman will go to sleep in all sorts of uncomfortable spots, and more than one has been wakened by having half the side of his face torn away. of such a wound as this the man generally dies, but so many are seen who have so suffered, and gruesome sights they are, that the wolves must be fairly numerous and exceedingly bold. they take the children, too, long before the winter has come upon the land. there was a well-loved child, most precious, the only son of the only son, and his parents and grandparents being busy harvesting they left him at home playing happily about the threshold. when they came back, after a short absence, they found he had been so terribly mauled by a wolf that shortly after he died, and the home was desolate. and yet these wolves are very difficult to shoot.
“i have never seen one,” a man told me. “again and again, when i was in the mountains, the villagers would come complaining of the depredations of a wolf. i could see for myself the results of his visit, but never, never have i found the wolf. it seems as if they must smell a gun.”
when first i heard of the wolves i laughed. i was so sure no beast of prey could live alongside 240a chinaman, the chinaman would want to eat him.
“they would if they could catch him,” said my friend, “but they can't, though the majority of the population are on the look-out for him. there is nothing of the hunter about the chinaman.”
“meat!” said a wretched farmer once, rubbing his stomach, when the missionaries fed him during a famine. he couldn't remember when he had tasted meat, and not in his most prosperous year had he had such a feast as his saviours had given him then.
“how much do you make a year?” asked the missionary.
he thought a little and then he said that, in a good year, he perhaps made twelve dollars, but then, of course, all years were not good years. but we, on our part, must remember that these people belong to another age, and that the purchasing power of the dollar for their wants is greater than it is with us.
very, very lonely it seems to me must these mountain villages be when the frost of winter holds the hills in its grip, very shut out from the world were they now in the early summer, and very little could they know of the life that goes on within the wall, let alone in other lands. indeed there are no other lands for the chinese of this class, this is his country, and this suffices for him, everybody else is in outer barbarism.
steeper and steeper grew the hills, more and more toilsome the way, and the people, when we stopped, looked more and more wonderingly at the stranger. at one place, where i had tiffin, i shared the room and the k'ang, the sun was so hot and there was no shade, so i could not stay outside, with six women 241of all ages, two had babies that had never been washed, two had hideous goitres, and all had their hair gathered into long curved horns at the back. there was also on the floor, a promising litter of little pigs, and three industrious hens. the women's blue coats were old, torn, patched, soiled, and yet——oh the pity of it, these women, who had to work hard for their living, work in the fields probably, had their feet bound. one had not, but all the rest were maimed. two of them had their throats all bruised, and i wondered if they had been trying to hang themselves as a means of getting away from a life that had no joy in it, but i afterwards found that with two coins, or anything else that will serve the purpose, coins are probably rather scarce, they pinch up the flesh and produce these bruises as a counter-irritant, and, ugly as it looks, it is often very effective.
these should have been country people, if ever any people belonged to the country, and then, as i looked at them, the truth dawned on me. there are no country people in the china i have seen, as i from australia know country people, the men of the bush. they—yes—here in the mountains, are a people of mean streets, a slum people, decadent, the very sediment of an age-long civilisation. i said this to a man who had lived long in china and spoke the language well, and he looked at me in surprise.
“why,” he said, “they all seem to me country people. the ordinary people of the towns are just country yokels.”
but we meant exactly the same thing. i looked at the country people i had known all my life, the capable, resourceful pioneers, facing new conditions, 242breaking new ground, ready for any emergency, the men who, if they could not found a new nation, must perish; he was looking at the men from sleepy little country villages in the old land, men who had been left behind in the race. and so we meant exactly the same thing, though we expressed it in apparently opposing terms. these people are serfs, struggling from dawn to dark for enough to fill their stomachs, toiling along a well-worn road, without originality, bound to the past, with all the go and initiative crushed out of them. as their fathers went so must they go, the evils that their fathers suffered must they suffer, and the struggle for a bare existence is so cruelly hard, that they have no hope of improving themselves.
it was all interesting, wonderful, but i do not think ever in the world have i felt so lonely. i longed with an intense longing to see someone of my own colour, to speak with someone in my own tongue.
i don't know that i was exactly afraid, and yet sometimes when i saw things that i did not understand, i wondered what i should do if anything did happen. considering the way some people had talked in peking, it would have been a little surprising if i had not. once we came upon a place where the side of the road was marked with crosses in whitewash and i wondered. i remembered the stories i had heard of the last anti-christian outbreak, and i wondered if those crosses had anything to do with another. it all sounds very foolish now, but i remember as cross after cross came into view i was afraid, and at last i called tuan and asked him what they meant.
“some man,” said he, “give monies mend road, 243puttee white so can see where mend it.” and that was all! but what that road was like before it was mended i cannot imagine!
at last, after a wearying day's journey of one hundred and twenty li, or forty miles, over the roughest roads in the world, we came in the evening sunlight upon a long line of grunting, ragged camels just outside a great square gate enclosed in heavy masonry, and we were at pa kou, as it is spelt by the wisdom of those who have spelled chinese, but it is pronounced ba go. it is a city or rather a long street, twenty li or nearly seven miles long, and the houses were packed as closely together in that street as they are in london itself. the worst of the journey, tuan told me, was over. there was another range of mountains to cross, we had been going north, now we were to go west, it would take us two days and we would be in jehol.
and here, for the first time, the authorities took notice of me. the first inn we stopped at was dirty, and tuan went on a tour of inspection to see if he could not find one more to his missie's liking, and i sat in my cart and watched the crowded throng, and thought that never in my life had i been so tired—i ached in every limb. if the finding of an inn had depended on me i should simply have gone to sleep where i was. at last it was decided there was none better, and into the crowded and dirty yard we went, and i, as soon as my bed was put up, had my bath and got into it, as the only clean place there was, besides i was too tired to eat, and i thought i might as well rest.
but i had been seen sitting in the street, and the tutuh of the town, the chief magistrate, sent his 244secretary to call upon the “distinguished traveller” and to ask if she, tuan, who never could manage the pronouns, reported it as “he,” had a passport. the “distinguished traveller” apologised for being in bed and unable to see the great man's secretary, and sent her servant—i noticed he put on his best clothes, so i suppose he posed as an interpreter—to show she had a passport all in order. he came back looking very grave and very important.
“she say must take care, plenty robber, must have soldier.”
here was a dilemma. i had heard so much about the robbers of china, and the robbers of china are by no means pleasant gentlemen to meet. a robber band is not an uncommon thing, but is more dangerous probably, to the people of the land than to the foreigner, for here in the north the lesson of 1900 has been well rubbed in. it is a dangerous thing to tackle a foreigner. dire is the vengeance that is exacted for his life. still i wasn't quite comfortable in my own mind. i thought of the mighty robber white wolf, who ravaged honan, of whom even the missionaries and the british american tobacco company are afraid. on one occasion two missionaries were hunted by his band and driven so close that, as they lay hidden under a pile of straw, a pursuer stood on the shoulder of one of them. he lay hardly daring to breathe and the robber moved away without discovering their hiding-place. afterwards, however, they did fall into the hands of white wolf, who, contrary to their expectations, courteously fed them and set them on their way. of course, they had nothing of which to be despoiled, and it was their good-fortune to fall into 245the hands of the leader himself, who knows a little of the world, and something of the danger of attacking a foreigner. the danger had been that they might fall into the hands of his men, his ignorant followers, who, in their zeal, would probably kill them, perhaps with torture, and report to the chief later on. this happened after i had been to jehol, but, of course, i had heard of white wolf. i knew his country was farther to the south in the more disturbed zone, and i did not expect to meet robbers here. still i had the tutuh's word for it that here they were.
if you are going to have any anxiety in the future, i have come to the conclusion it is just as well to be dead tired. i couldn't do anything, and i was utterly tired out. i had been in the open air all day since five o'clock in the morning, i was safe, in all probability, for the night, and robbers or no robbers, i felt i might as well have a sound night's rest and see what the situation looked like in the morning. i heard afterwards there were missionaries in the town, and had i known it, i might have sought them out and taken counsel with men of my own colour, but i did not know it.
“must have soldier,” repeated tuan emphatically, standing beside my camp bed. “how many soldier missie want?”
i had heard too many stories of chinese soldiers to put much reliance on them as protectors. i didn't know offhand how many i wanted. i was by no means sure that i wouldn't be just as safe with the robbers. one thing was certain, i couldn't go back within two days of my destination, besides for all i knew, the robbers were behind me.
i put it to tuan. 246"suppose i have no passport, what the tutuh do then?”
“then,” said my henchman emphatically, “he no care robber get missie.”
evidently the tutuh meant well by me, so i said they might send a soldier for me to look at, at six o'clock next morning and then i would decide how many i would have, and feeling that at least i had eleven hours respite, i turned over and went to sleep.
punctually the soldier turned up. he was a good-tempered little man, all in blue a little darker than the ordinary coolie wears, over it he had a red sleeveless jacket marked with great black chinese characters, back and front, a mob cap of blue was upon his head, over his eyes a paper lampshade; he had a nice little sturdy pony, and, for all arms, a fly whisk!
i didn't feel i could really be afraid of him, and i strongly suspected the robbers would thoroughly agree with me.
“what's he for?” i asked tuan.
that worthy looked very grave. “must take care,” he replied with due deliberation. “plenty robber. she drive away robber. how many soldier missie have?”
well there was nothing for it but to face the danger, if danger there was. i don't know now if there was any. it is so difficult to believe that any unpleasant thing will happen to one. again i reflected that there is no danger in china till the danger actually arrives, and then it is too late. what my guardian was to drive away robbers with i am sure i don't know, for i cannot see that the fly whisk would have been very effective. the “cartee men” were perfectly willing to go on, so i said i thought this warrior would be amply sufficient for all purposes, and we started.
0352
everybody in pa kou keeps a lark, i should think, and every one of those larks were singing joyously as we left the town. never have i heard such a chorus of bird song, and the morning was delightful. my guardian rode ahead, and for three hours as we jolted over the track, i kept a look-out for robbers, wondered what they would be like, and what i should do when we met, but the only things i saw were bundles of brushwood for the kitchen fires of pa kou, apparently walking thitherward on four donkey legs. they reassured me, those bundles of brushwood, they had such a peaceful look. somehow i didn't think we were going to meet any robbers.
evidently tuan and the “cartee men” came to the same conclusion, for, at the end of three hours, they came and said the soldier must be changed, did missie want another? missie thought she didn't, and the guard was dismissed, his services being valued at twenty cents. it was plenty, for he came, with beaming face, and bowed his thanks.
that was the only time i had anything to do with soldiers on the journey, and i forgot all about him, hieroglyphics, lampshade, fly whisk, and all, till i found entered in the accounts, tuan was a learned clerk and kept accounts: “cavalry, twenty cents.”
then i felt i had had more than my money's worth.
the last night of my journey i spent at liu kou, the sixth valley, and the next morning the men made 248tremendous efforts to hide all trace of the disaster that had befallen us on the way. i said it didn't matter, it could wait till we got to jehol, but both tuan and the “cartee men” were of a different opinion. apparently they would lose face if they came to their journey's end in such a condition, and i had to wait while the cloth was taken off the back of the cart, and carefully put on in front, so that the broken wood was entirely concealed. then, when everybody was satisfied that we were making at least a presentable appearance, we started. you see, i never appreciated the situation properly. to travel in a cart seemed to me so humble a mode of progression, that it really did not matter very much whether it were broken or not, indeed a broken cart seemed more to me like going the whole hog, and roughing it thoroughly while we were about it. but with the men it was different, a cart was a most dignified mode of conveyance, and to enter a big town in a broken one was as bad as travelling in a motor with all the evidences of a breakdown upon it, due to careless driving. and when i saw their point of view, of course i at once sat down on some steps and watched an old man draw water, and a disgusting-looking sow, who made me forswear bacon, attend to the wants of her numerous black progeny.
tuan passed the time by having a heated argument with the landlord. the fight waxed furious, as i was afterwards told, regarding the hot water i had required for my bath, which was heated in a long pipe, like a copper drain-pipe, that was inserted in a hole by the k'ang fire. fuel is scarce, and stern necessity has seen to it that these people get the 249most they possibly can out of a fire. i hope than paid him fairly, but of course i do not know, i parted with a dollar for the night's lodging and the little drop of hot water, for otherwise we carried our own fuel—charcoal—bought our provisions and cooked for ourselves, but we left that landlord protesting at the gate that he would never put up another foreigner.
that last day's journey was, i think, the hardest day of all, or perhaps it was that i was tired out. there was a long, long mountain to be got over, the hung shih la, the red stone rock, and we crossed it by a pass, the worst of many mountain passes we had come across. we climbed up slowly to the top and there was a tablet to the memory of the man who had repaired the road. what it was like before it was repaired i can't imagine, or perhaps it was not done very recently, say within a couple of hundred years, for the road was very bad. there is only room for one vehicle, and the carters raised their voices in a loud singsong, to warn all whom it might concern that they were occupying the road. what would happen if one cart entered at one end and another at the other i am sure i cannot imagine, for there seemed to be no place that i could see where they could pass each other, and i think it must be at least three steep miles long. i did not trust the carts. i walked. my faith in a peking cart and mule had gone for ever, and if we had started to roll here, it seemed to me, we should not have stopped till we reached america or siberia at least. so every step of the way i walked, and tuan would have insisted that the carts come behind me. but here i put my foot down, etiquette or no etiquette i insisted they should go in front. i felt 250it would be just as bad to be crushed by a falling cart as to be upset in it, so they went on ahead, and when we met people, and we met a good many on foot, tuan called out to them and probably explained that such was the foolish eccentricity of his missie that, though she was rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and always travelled with two carts, she yet insisted upon walking down all the passes.
it was worth it too, for the view was glorious, the sunlight, the golden sunlight of a chinese afternoon, fell on range after range of softly rounded hills, the air was so clear that miles and miles away i could see their folds, with here and there a purple shadow, and here and there the golden light. and over all was the arc of the blue sky. beautiful, most beautiful it was, and i was only regretful that, like so many of the beautiful things i have seen in life, i looked on it alone. i shall never look on it again. the journey is too arduous, too difficult, but i am glad, very glad indeed, that i have seen it once.
but it was getting late. at the bottom of the pass i got into my cart, and was driven along a disused mountain torrent that occupied the bed of the valley under a line of trees just bursting into leaf. the shadows were long with the coming night, and at last we forded a shallow river and came into the dusty, dirty town of cheng teh fu, an unwalled town beyond which is jehol, the hunting palace of the manchu emperors.
here there were thousands of soldiers, not like my “cavalry,” but modern, khaki-clad men like those in peking, gathered together to go against the mongols, for china was at war, and apparently was 251getting the worst of it, and the air was ringing with bugle calls.
and then tuan and i had an argument. he wanted me to go to an inn. the streets were dusty, dirty, evil-smelling, i was weary to death, my dress had been rubbed into holes by the jolting of the cart, and my flesh rebelled at the very thought of a chinese inn. but what was i to do? there were no europeans in jehol save the missionaries, and i was so very sure it was wasted labour to try and convert the chinese it seemed unfair to go to the mission station.
and then i suddenly felt i must speak to someone, must hear my own tongue again, must be sympathised with, by a woman if possible, and in spite of the protests of tuan who saw all chance of squeeze at an end, i made them turn the mules' heads to the mission.
there a sad, sweet-faced woman gave me, a total stranger, the kindest and warmest of welcomes, and i paid off the “cartee men.” for sixty dollars they had brought me two hundred and eighty miles, mostly across the mountains, they had been honest, hard-working, attentive, patient, and good-tempered, and for a cumshaw of five dollars they bowed themselves to the ground. i know they got it, because i took the precaution to pay them myself, and as i watched them go away down the street i made a solemn vow that never again would i travel in the mountains, and never, never again would i submit myself to the tender mercies of a peking cart. it is one of the things i am glad i have done, but i am glad also it is behind me with no necessity to do again.
