Part 6

We are absolutely suffering from cold here. The thermometer is 55° in my cabin—a serious contrast after the 90° and 95° I have been accustomed to. My warmer clothes are in the hold, so I am forced to wear a greatcoat. We expect to find it warmer at Tientsing.

It was late in the afternoon on Tuesday when we arrived at the entrance of the River Peiho.

Here are the famous Taku Forts, the scene of the disaster of 1859, when Sir Frederick Bruce went up to get the treaty ratified, and our vessels were beaten back with the loss of two gunboats, which were sunk. The two forts stand on either side of the mouth of the river, and are occupied—that on the north by the French, and that on the south by the English. A company of infantry suffices to garrison each. They are about to be evacuated. A little to the east of the British Fort there still lies one of our sunken gunboats; the Chinese have recovered and appropriated her guns. I cannot conceive a more dismal lot than that of garrisoning Taku. Besides the forts, which in themselves are dreary enough, there are but a few Chinese mud huts and an hotel, principally patronised by pilots; and the French are cut off even from these by the Peiho, than which no more filthy little stream ever defiled a sea. Its banks at the mouth are vast plains of mud, lying flush with the water, and so bleak and sad-looking that one almost wonders that the very wild-fowl should be induced to stop there. Mud forts, mud houses, mud fields, and muddy river—everything is mud.

Higher up stream, although the banks are very flat and uninteresting, there is no lack of verdure. The trees are insignificant, but there are green fields and gardens cultivated with vegetables and fruit-trees. The neighbourhood of Tientsing is said to be the garden of China, and in the season a peach only fetches three cash, of which one thousand or more, according to the exchange, go to make up the dollar.

We soon had an experience of the difficulty of navigating the Peiho, which is no broader than the Thames at Eton, and as tortuous as Cuckoo weir. Over and over again we were on the point of running aground, and when on one occasion we did stick, it was a labour of great difficulty to get off again. A boat’s crew had to be landed, and a line fastened to a stout tree on the bank, by which means and by backing with all our force we floated off, the sailors on shore improving the occasion by stealing onions and vegetables from the gardens on the bank. Nor was the shallowness of the water our only impediment, for we did not reach Tientsing without several brushes and collisions with junks, in one of which our screw was broken.

I found Tientsing in a great state of excitement. It was the last day of the races, and to my great joy I found my colleague Saurin staying at the Russian consulate. Of course we agreed to make the journey to Peking together, and the Russian consul, by way of making things pleasant, most kindly volunteered to put me up.

The races really showed some very good sport. Tientsing cannot boast of such a meeting as those of Hong-kong and Shanghai, where English thoroughbreds are run, and for which such horses as “Buckstone,” since dead, and “Sir William” are imported; the horses are but Mongol ponies, the _bona fide_ hacks of their owners and riders, yet they accomplished the three-mile race in seven minutes and forty seconds. They are very plucky, strong little beasts, and run till they drop. The races were an additional stroke of luck for me, for I was able at the end of the day to buy a capital pony for fifty dollars. The Chinese crowd showed the greatest possible interest in all the proceedings, and the course had to be kept _vi et flagellis_, which latter were not spared by the native police. Perhaps they feared spoiling the Chinaman, who is proverbially a child.

_19th May._

I must own that I was agreeably disappointed in Tientsing. So many travellers have abused it, and inveighed against its filth and its beggarly crowd, that I expected to be shocked in one or other of my senses at every step. It certainly is very dirty, but not much more so than other Chinese towns, or, for that matter, than many in Europe; and who that has travelled in the sunny South has not seen rags and tatters, vermin, foul diseases, and deformities paraded as stimulants to charity? There is one drawback to Tientsing which is really insufferable. All the wells are salt, and the inhabitants are obliged to drink the loathsome water of the river. In order to cleanse it, it is first placed in large jars that the impurities may settle at the bottom, and then filtered. But nothing can purge it so as to convince one that the disgusting matter, which forces itself upon one as one sails up the stream, has been entirely got rid of.

We went to see some of the curiosity shops. There was a great deal of porcelain to which the dealers and local connoisseurs assigned wonderful dates and fine titles, but nothing that would be cared for in England; and the prices were simply outrageous, for the merchants will pay any mad sum that is asked by the rascally dealers. There were some very fine specimens of cloisonné enamel, but if the sums demanded for the porcelain were high, the enamels were ten times dearer. I saw a quantity of Chinese picture-books; they were not fit to buy, although some had great merit for delicacy of drawing. They each represented a story, generally the “Harlot’s Progress,” from a Chinese point of view, very coarse, and without Hogarth’s grim retribution at the end. Of course, where such drawings are openly exposed for sale there is no great strictness of morals, and Tientsing is famous, or rather infamous, even in China, for every bestial and degrading vice.

The European settlement of Tientsing is about two miles distant from the Chinese city. There are some fairly good houses built by the side of a broad bund or quay, and they command fabulous rents. The same municipal system which obtains at Shanghai has been established here; and, on the whole, the community shows signs of prosperity, although the port has been a disappointment to those who expected that it would reach an importance such as to crush Shanghai and its other rivals, or, at all events, to divert a considerable portion of their trade. For the first year or two after its establishment the business done was very great, and large fortunes were made; one merchant, for example, is just retiring with a fortune of £5000 a year, accumulated since 1861. But the Chinese, cunning in trade, very soon found out that it answered their purpose better to charter steamers, and have consignments made to themselves directly, than to buy from the agents of the great houses; consequently, as the trade is entirely import, the Europeans are finding less and less to do. The _Yuen-tse-Fee_, although she hails from Glasgow, and is nominally owned by Messrs. Trautmann and Co., a German firm, is in reality chiefly, if not entirely, the property of a dirty little Chinese comprador, whom I saw, and to whom the whole of her cargo was consigned.

LETTER IV

PEKING, _23rd May 1865_.

We left Tientsing early on Friday morning the 19th, by which means we had the tide in our favour, and were able to get quicker clear of the hideous sights and smells of the river as it runs through the town. We each had a boat; Saurin’s was the drawing-room, mine the dining-room, and his servant occupied the third as kitchen. They were capital roomy boats, covered in with hoods of bamboo and rattan matting, and with a sort of dresser in each upon which we spread our beds. Each had a crew of three men, and in Saurin’s, which was the biggest, there was a boy besides. They were very cheery, hard-working fellows, and indeed they had no sinecure, for although the wind was ostensibly in our favour, still the river winds round such sharp twists and elbows that in every other reach it was dead against us, and we had to proceed laboriously by dint of towing and punting. But the harder they worked the better humoured the crew seemed to be, and the boy especially distinguished himself by zeal equalling that of an unpaid attaché. The shoals are innumerable, and we were constantly crossing the river backwards and forwards, along a course marked out by twigs stuck in the mud. There is no scenery to enjoy, nothing but interminable fields of millet, and here and there a little wood. There is not a hillock to be seen, and we were lucky in being as short a time as possible over what must be a very dull journey. We reached Tungchou at three o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Here we found our horses, with an escort which had been sent down with them to meet us.

Tungchou was very busy. A fleet of junks had come in with grain, and the quay was alive with crowds of coolies, many of them as naked as they were born, discharging cargo, sifting corn, and carrying it into granaries. Our appearance produced some astonishment, for “foreign devils” are hardly yet quite familiar objects so far north. Tungchou was the place where the unfortunate English prisoners were taken in 1860, and where Wade and Crealock, carrying a flag of truce and demanding to parley with the commander, were fired upon and narrowly escaped with their lives. It is fortified, as all the northern cities are, but its walls would only be a security against native warriors. The roads in this part of the world are miracles of badness, and it is not difficult to conceive the tortures that the English prisoners must have suffered when they were conveyed along them in native carts without springs, and having their hands and heels tied together behind them with cords tightened by water. Every inch of the road to Peking is famous from the events of that time. Some way outside Tungchou we rode over the bridge of Palikao,[5] where the Chinese crossed their spears with the French bayonets, and held their own for half an hour. From this bridge the Général de Montauban takes his title. Its kylins and stone flags still bear traces of shot and shell. Riding through dust over one’s pony’s hocks, and raising a cloud at every step, is very dry work, and I was glad when we struck off the main road, and, coming upon a tea-house in a shady nook, stopped to rest and refresh. The people received us with the utmost _bonhomie_ and civility, and brought us delicious tea, without milk or sugar, in bowls, hard-boiled eggs, and a sort of roll-twist fried instead of baked. We soon had ten or twelve yellow gentlemen round us, eagerly asking all sorts of questions about ourselves, our ages, and belongings. Murray talks Chinese fluently, and Saurin has also some knowledge of it, so we got on capitally. Our ages always puzzle Chinamen. They neither wear beard nor moustache until they have reached the age of forty, so they think that all Europeans who wear such appendages must have passed that age. A single eye-glass is, however, the possession which commands the most astonishment. They are familiar with spectacles and double eye-glasses, for they themselves wear them of portentous size, and mounted in thick brass or tortoise-shell rims. But a single glass is indeed a marvel, and provokes much laughter. Though the peculiarities of foreigners amuse the Chinese as much as theirs do us, it is singular how their natural courtesy prevents their showing it in the offensive manner that every Englishman has experienced in some foreign countries. I had expected to find the country on this side of Peking flat, ugly, and barren. Flat it certainly is, but there are plenty of trees and rich fields, and it cannot be called ugly. The villages and graves argue an immense population. It is not till one is under the very walls of the town that one sees Peking. The walls are high, ruinous, battlemented, and picturesque, of a fine deep gray colour. They are capped at intervals by towers of fantastic Chinese architecture, and, with their lofty gates, make a strange and striking picture. As a means of defence against modern artillery the walls of Peking are probably absurd. However, before I tell you anything about Peking I had better know something myself. At present I only know that I was very hot, very tired, and as dusty as the oldest press in the Record office, when I rode into the court of Her Majesty’s Legation, where I received the warmest welcome from Wade, the _chargé d’affaires_.

We have received bad Chinese news. Sangkolinsin, the Mongol chief who commanded at the Peiho in 1859, and was temporarily disgraced for not being able to beat off the allies in 1860, has been killed by the rebels in the province of Shantung, some 400 miles hence. He was reputed a brave soldier and an honest man. Although the Chinese affect to disregard the importance of the intelligence, there is no doubt that it is very serious. The fire is burning everywhere, and they cannot or will not take the proper means to put it out.

_Note._—I should wish to add here one word of admiration and respect for the memory of Sir Thomas Wade, my first chief in China. He had been Lord Clyde’s adjutant, but gave up the army for diplomacy. A great student and master of many languages, his Chinese scholarship won the admiration even of the learned mandarins with whom he had to deal. During the two Chinese Wars he distinguished himself, not only by his great abilities as a negotiator, but also by the most dauntless courage. Generous and self-sacrificing to a fault, he was one of the greatest gentlemen I ever met.—1900.

LETTER V

PEKING, _1st June 1865_.

When Wade was in England last year Lord Stanley said to him: “Peking’s a gigantic failure, isn’t it? not a two-storied house in the whole place, eh?” To Lord Stanley’s practical eye, no doubt, it might be a failure, but an artist would find much to admire and put on paper.

Pe-king, which means the northern capital, as Nan-king means the southern, consists of two cities, the Chinese and the Tartar, and within this latter, again, is the Imperial city, which contains the palace and precincts of the court. Both cities are surrounded by walls of dark-gray brick; those of the Tartar city are fifty feet high, forty feet wide at the top, and about sixty feet below; the walls of the Chinese city are less important, being only thirty feet high. These walls have battlements and loop-holes for guns. That of the Chinese city has fallen into decay, but that of the Tartar is more carefully repaired. At intervals are lofty watch-towers standing out against the sky. High towers stand also above the gates, which are closed at sunset, after which time ingress and egress are forbidden.

The streets are broad roads, in most cases unpaved, and in all uncared for. They are flanked on each side by shops and low houses, but their breadth is lessened by the countless stalls and stands of hucksters of all sorts that take them up often in quadruple rows. In this region of dust and dirt the streets are equally filthy summer and winter. Both in the Chinese and Tartar cities there are large open spaces and buildings standing in their own grounds, covering areas of many acres. In the former city these are the temples of the Buddhist and Taoist religions, in the latter they are the palaces of the Emperor and persons of distinction. These grounds, planted as they are with lofty trees, give a great beauty to the town, and often in the heart of either city there are spots which are pictures of village life. Standing among these groves of trees the brilliant colours and fantastic designs of the Chinese architecture have a wonderfully pleasing effect. The wall of the imperial palace, covered with highly glazed yellow tiles, with towers at the corners shining like gold in the sun, is especially striking. Whichever way one turns there is something grotesque and barbarous to be seen, and the signs of decay and rot do not detract from the picture. In fact Peking is like a vast curiosity shop, with all the dust and dirt which are among the conditions of bric-à-brac. It would be pleasant-looking and admiring were it not for the difficulties of riding through the city owing to the enormous crowds which block the way—carts, porters, camels, chairs, pedlars, beggars, lamas, muleteers, horse-copers from Mongolia, archers on horseback, mandarins with their suites, small-footed women, great ladies in carts, closely veiled to keep off the gaze of the profane vulgar. In short, every variety of yellow and brown humanity, not to speak of dogs and pigs, get into one’s path at every moment, and raise clouds of dust, which fill eyes, ears, hair, mouth, and nose, and temporarily destroy every sense save that of touch. It is as if the dust of all the Derby days since the institution of that race (by the bye I wonder what horse has won it this year) had been borne by the winds to find a permanent home here. A dust-storm in the north of China is a natural phenomenon. Clouds draw over the sky as if a thunderstorm was going to burst. In my inexperience the first time I saw this I expected rain to fall, but instead of rain there came a fine dust penetrating everything and not to be shut out by door or window. This nuisance, which comes to us from the great Mongolian deserts, besides hurting the eyes as common dust by filling them with extraneous matter, has chemical properties which produce a smarting and burning pain. Dust-storms are sometimes so thick that men lose their way as in a London fog. It is indeed “a darkness that may be felt.”

The distance round the walls of Peking is something like twenty-three miles, of which fifteen must be given to the Tartar city, which is square in shape and lies to the north of the oblong Chinese city. Tradition, and the mystery which for so many years hung over the capital, have assigned to it an exaggerated population. The Chinese affected to believe it contained two million souls, and that no capital in the world could compete with it. This may have been the case in the time of the Emperor Chien-Lung, who reigned from 1736 to 1795 a.d. But nowadays, judging from the enormous empty spaces, and from the gardens and courtyards, which no gentleman’s residence is without, and even allowing for the dense crowding of some quarters, it probably does not reach a million. It is impossible to form any precise estimate of the numbers of the “Doors and Mouths.” Doctors disagree, and I have heard the people of Peking reckoned at various figures, from six hundred thousand to a million and a half. Until Peking was opened to Europeans the southern Chinese used to stick at no lie about it. For instance, if they were told of some great scientific invention such as railways, the electric telegraph, or the like, they would say at once with the utmost coolness, “Have seen! Have seen! Have got plenty Peking side!” And in like manner they lied about its size and population. The country round about Peking seems to be very thickly peopled. I was prepared to find it so, but nevertheless I had hardly expected to see so many human beings and their traces, which are often very unpleasant, especially in China.

Our Legation is situated in the southern part of the Tartar city. We occupy a most picturesque palace called the Liang Kung Fu, or Palace of the Duke of Liang, which, like all Chinese buildings of importance, covers an immense space of ground. There are courtyards upon courtyards, huge empty buildings with red pillars, used as covered courts, state approaches guarded by two great marble lions, and a number of houses with only a ground floor, each of us inhabiting one to himself. When the Legation first came to live here the whole place was put into repair, and redecorated in the Chinese fashion with fluted roofs of many colours, carved woodwork, kylins of stone and pottery, and all the thousand and one fancies with which the Chinese cover their buildings. Unfortunately the repairs were badly executed, and nothing further has been done to keep matters straight, so the Legation, which ought to be as pretty as possible, is really a disgrace to us. The gardens are a wilderness, the paving of the courts is broken, the walls are tumbling down, and the beautiful place is going to rack and ruin. In this climate of extreme heat and cold a stitch in time saves ninety-nine.[6] Fancy a residence in the heart of a great and populous city where foxes, scorpions, polecats, weasels, magpies, and other creatures that one expects to find in the wild country, abound. That will give you an idea of how space is wasted in Peking. The great drawback to our palace is its situation. We have more than an hour’s ride before we can escape from the city and its stinks, to breathe a breath of fresh air. It requires an immense exercise of energy to face an hour’s ride through the streets of Peking in order to get a canter in the open; and I am often half tempted to sell my pony and dismiss my groom, but this would be tantamount to shutting myself up for good in the Legation, for walking at Peking is even more disagreeable than riding.

His Imperial Highness the Prince of Kung, President of the Council, Chief of the Board of Foreign Affairs, Prime Minister, and what not besides, sent his card yesterday to announce to Wade that he would pay him an official visit. I enclose you his visiting card.