Part 18

The beauty of the morning made up for yesterday. We were up by 3 A.M. The vapours of the night before had settled down in dew on the ground, the sun was rising brilliantly among fleecy clouds, which continued all day to throw over the hills lights and shades such as one sees in Europe—never at Peking, where the sky must either be black with storm, or deep blue without a speck upon it. We stopped to breakfast at a Mongol encampment, on the near side of an immense plain. I never saw so many horses at one time in my life—the plateau was literally alive with them; they were very shaggy in their winter coats, and did not show to advantage on the poor commons they had had to put up with during the winter; but some of them were well built for strength and endurance, with deep chests, strong quarters, and big barrels. We were received in the yurt of a widow, named Apakwai, a most ill-favoured dame; however, her tent was the best in the place, and the cleanest, which is not high praise. She was rich in furniture, skins, and felt mats, and there was even some little attempt at decoration about her habitation, a few Chinese prints of the rudest kind and most defiant of perspective being pasted on the trellis walls; they were coloured in the garish style so pleasing to Mongols, who are far more Oriental in this respect than the sober Chinese. A Mongol swell, riding over the plain, gorgeous in yellow and vermilion, and with his jolly moon face beaming out of a yellow cap, red-buttoned and trimmed with sables, is a sight to see. The ladies are great customers with the Peking jewellers for coral, pearls, and jade ornaments. A woman, be she never so poor, is sure to have some piece of finery in the way of ear-rings or head-dress from Peking. If she cannot afford real jewellery she buys sham.

The widow Apakwai could speak no Chinese, but as every one about the 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._