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CHARLES WILLIAM WASON

COLLECTION
CHINA AND THE CHINESE

THE GIFT OF
CHARLES WILLIAM WASON
CLASS OF 1876
1918
Travels on horseback

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| yHE JANTHON Piprary.
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COLLECTED BY CHARLES ANTHON,

Professor of Greek and Latin in
Columbia College.

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Purchased by Cornell University, 1868.

 

 

 

 
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TRAVELS ON HORSEBACK

MANTCHU TARTARY.
LONDON
PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND OO,

NEW-STREET SQUARE
“PeWoeT EL ism Wopuoy
“VNIHO 30 TIVM IVAEXD AHL QNOQATG MZIA V_

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TRAVELS ON HORSEBACK

IN

MANTCHU TARTARY:

BEING

A SUMMER’S RIDE BEYOND THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA.

BY

GEORGE FLEMING, Eso.

With a Map and numerous Illustrations,

LONDON:

HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,

SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,
13 GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

1863.

The Right of Translation is reserved,

_
TO

A. MICHIE, ESQ.

OF SHANGHAI,

THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED IN KINDLY
REMEMBRANCE OF HIS PLEASANT AND VALUABLE COMPANIONSHIP DURING

A LONG RIDE IN A _ DISTANT REGION.

Comes jucundus in via pro vehiculo est.
PREFACE.

ARTLY to while away the tedium and monotony of
a long sea voyage from China to England, and partly
to redeem a promise made before leaving that country,
the following narrative of a somewhat novel ride through
one of the most distant regions of the great Chinese

empire was written for publication.

Much as its southern portion has been explored and de-
scribed, little in reality is known regarding the far north,
more especially of those hitherto inaccessible districts
which border on, or lie beyond, that marvellous monument
of human industry—the Great Wall, in its course along

the eastern margin of Old China.

It is therefore hoped that an attempt to describe the
general features of the country, and the special charac-
teristics of the northern Chinese—differing as they do very
widely from their brethren of the south—together with the
incidents inseparable from the wanderings of two adven-
turous Britons travelling in their proper costume, for

nearly seven hundred miles, among a people to whom the
vill PREFACE.

existence of such a place as Great Britain was unknown—
may prove in some degree interesting. It may be a long
time before Europeans will again venture so far as from
the vicinity of Peking to the birthplace of the Mantchu
dynasty, and journey unscathed through the fair pro-
vinces that exist between the two capitals, inhabited by
thousands of an industrious race, to whom rebellion and
its attendant horrors are unknown. So, until a more
leisurely survey can be made of this extensive tract by
those who care to travel such a distance, and do not object
to very unpleasant fare and very bad accommodation—
for the country is not quite adapted to the thousand and
one desires of dilettante tourists—these notes of a holiday
pilgrimage the author hopes will not be unacceptable to

the general reader.

Wootwicu: May 18638.
CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

Summer at Tien-tsin — Extremes of Temperature in North China— Ask
Leave to Travel in the Country—Difficulty of obtaining Permission—Our
Passports — Official and Non-Official — Our travelling Equipment and
‘Mount ’— Dislike of Chinese Interpreters to Travel, and our Juvenile
Bargain . : 2 j ; : . A : 3 . PAGE 1

CHAPTER II.

Fugitive Sinologues —‘ Have Whilo’— Start without Interpreters — Our
Chinese Groom — The ‘ Heavenly Ford’ —Its Streets, Shops, and People
— The Peiho— A melting Sentry—The open Plain—Our First Attempt
at the Flowery Language — ‘Pigeon English’ — Sight of the Western
Mountains — The Village of Te-tau and its Inn — A Restless Night and a
Mosquito Entertainment : : ; : 3 : . . 214

CHAPTER III.
Story of the General Choo iy ; : : 3 : : . 88

CHAPTER IV.

Long Bills — Mosquito Tactics — Raised Villages and lonely Country —A
watery District — Military Station — Chinese Soldiers, their Qualities and
Traditions — Endurance of Pain — The Number one Doctor — Ma-yuen,
a Chinese Warrior — Discipline, Fidelity, Cruelty towards Prisoners —
Death before Dishonour — The Aversion of the People to bear Arms —
Imperial Armies — Military Institutions — Our Co-travellers — Great
Thirst — Heads of the People— Beggardom — Heartless Pilferers . 49

CHAPTER V.

The Hundred-spirited Bird — Ancient Rustic — Inexpensive Costumes —
The Inn at Che-tur— Mid-day Halt — Tartar Ponies— Superiority of
Mules — Mandarin’s travelling Equipage and Escort — Non-observance of
Sunday in China — The Western Mountains . ‘ + j « 8
x CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII.

Village of Tchung-wah-kow — River Pehtang — Unpleasant Reminiscences
—A Disagreeable Immersion — Adventures of a Night— A Dreadful
Dormitory — Hard Times — Town of Qui-toosa — Inn at Fung-tai —

Bad Accommodation — Fellow-Lodger’s excessive Curiosity — Refreshing
Sleep PAGE 89

CHAPTER VIII.

The Town of Fung-tai—An improving Country, and the Thrift of its
Inhabitants — Its Agriculture — Recollections of Home — Grain-fields —
Gardens — Agricultural Industry —The Grave-yards— Wayside Wells
—The Village Patriarchs —The Hamlet of Hanchung— Our Reception

—‘Men of the Great veer Nation’ — a -hunters — Fan-

inscribing 103

CHAPTER IX.

Cultivation of Indigo— Bed of the Tau-hd— Manufacture of Pottery —
A Chinese Doctor — An Orator—New Door-fastening — Efficacy of
Flagellation — A Row — Bad Water and worse Tea —Repulsive mode
of serving up Poultry — Chinese Minstrel — Recollections of Celtic Music
— Chinese Singing — Native Fiddle. ; ‘ 3 a . 119

CHAPTER X.

An Uncivil and Extortionate Landlord —A Row — Presents — Advantages
of being without an Interpreter —TIll-feeling between Northern and
Southern Chinese — Peking and Canton Coolies — Three Roads — The
Happy Medium — Market-day at Coo Yuh — Butcher’s Meat — Pork —
Cattle — Lively Road— Family Groups— ‘A Tien-tsin Merchant —
Poverty in a Sandy Region — pees Recognition — Birds —‘ The
Bird of Joy,’ and its Tradition i - . 3 ‘3 . 187

CHAPTER XI.

The Town of Lanchow — A Natural-footed Beauty — Native Merchant —
Eating-Houses— The Lan-hé— An Arcadia — Beautiful Landscape —
Travelling Soldiers — Greedy Boatmen — A Beau Sabreur — His friendly
Interposition — The Snug Inn at Shih Mun— North China Dwellings,
and their Peculiarities — Gardens — Stone and Brick — Absence of Monu-
ments and Paucity of Sculpture . ‘ : 3 ; ; . 158

CHAPTER XII.

Superstitious Fancies — The Horse-shoe — Words of Good Omen — Chinese
Lares and Penates— Household Furniture — Use of the Kang — Hot
CONTENTS. al

Air — The Domestic Hearth — Preference for an English Fireside — A
Chinese Armoury—Use of the Bow—Muscular Developement—Throwing
the Stone — A Pleasant Reflection — Chinese Respect for Age— A Night
Storm — Our Arms : z PAGE 187

CHAPTER XIII.

A miserable Morning — A Rainy Day in China— Glimpses of Sunshine —
A Thunderstorm and a thorough Soaking — Chinese Thoroughfares after
heavy Showers — Being Half Drowned — Bad Roads— Management of
Animals by the Chinese — Chang-le-tow — Its Defences— Hostile Pre-
parations — Roadside Scenery — The lost Cart— Chinese Sign-board for
an Inn ‘ : : : ; ; : ‘ : é . 209

CHAPTER XIV.

Old-fashioned Town — Mutilated Feet of Chinese Women — An Inspection
and its Result— The Deformity considered a Proof of Gentility — Chinese
Dogs— Town Scavengers — Losing our Way—Change in Costume —
Comfortable Dress— Warm Clothing Enormous Boots— A  China-
man’s Wardrobe — Chinese Pigs and their Treatment — Singular Deli-
cacies— A suspicious Inn, and its Occupants— The Opium-smoker —
Use of that Drug — Its Effects exaggerated . : , : . 227

CHAPTER XV.

Early Rising in Chinese Inns— The Ferry at the Yang-hé — The travelled
Florin — Flooded Roads — Fear and Curiosity — Travellers on the High-
way—Tubercles of the Water-lily, and its Uses — Arrowwort — A
Marshy Region under Cultivation — A Chinese Albino . é . 262

CHAPTER XVI.

Bird Slaughtering— Water Fowl— Masked Batteries — Gathering the
Nelembium Root — Fishing — Roadside Sanctuaries —— The Sea — Sand-
hills — Midday Inn — First Peep of the Great Wall — Village Urchins—
‘No Tails’ — A Female Equestrian — The Gathering at Shan-hai Kwan
— An Inhospitable Hostelry—The Value of our Passports — Sorry
Quarters : ‘ : . : ; 274

CHAPTER XVII.

The Spy System — The Police — The Frontier Guard-room — A Polite Old
Soldier — French Polish at the Great Wall— The Thumb-mometer —
Official Objections to our ascending the Mountains—A Conference —
Woo-shi— A sultry Morning —I attempt the Ascent alone — Staveley
Peak — Taking Bearings — The End of the Great Wall—lIts Present
Condition and Wonderful Course — Accounts of Travellers — A vast Con-
ception and a Monument of Industry . ‘ . : : . 3812
Xil : CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XVIII.

History of the Great Wall of China — Its Character as a worthy National
Trophy compared with some other Works of Antiquity—A hot Descent and
a lost Outlet — Fearful Midday Heat— Impending Sunstroke and its
Sensations— A hard Day’s Struggle — Merciful Fountains— A happy
Resurrection and friendly Peasantry . : : 3 - PAGE 335

CHAPTER XIX.

Accommodation Gratis—Leaving the City— Chinese Civility — Good-bye to
the Hill-sea barrier — The Punishment of the Cangue— The Coreans,
Japanese, and Chinese — Our Consort — Beyond the Great Wall — Coast
Line of Defence and Probable History—Grand View of the Wall —
Father Verbiest — Hunting with Hawk and Hound —Hun-chow—A
Tartar Caravansary — Rustic Theatres — Roadside Companions — The
Village Blacksmith — The Shoeing Smith and Farrier . ; . 3870

CHAPTER XX.

Pastoral Life — Industry — Yellow-skinned Vulcans—M. Abel Rémusat
on the Influence of Asiatic Ingenuity on the Nations of the West—Horse-
shoeing in China—Farrier’s Instruments— The Chinese Veterinary Sur-
geon — Horse-flesh — Chung-hue-soh . : ‘ : . . 3892

CHAPTER XXI.

Sunday Morning — Lonely Scenery — Beggars— Ruins of Ning Yuen Chow
—Grain Wagons— Mantchurian Li— Stupidity of the Country People—
Shin Shan — A Pastoral Picture-— Convoy of Cattle —The Flocks —
Pack Saddle Transport — The Approach to Kin Chow — Kin Chow—The
Market-place — Meat and Fruit — Good Humour of the Chinese . 410

CHAPTER XXII.

Rabid Curiosity — Filthy Habits of the People — Their Indifference to the
Properties of Soap and Water — She-tsou-tang at Tien-tsin — Steaming
Chinese — Cost of Vapour Bath — Physical Superiority cf the Men of
North China — Good Service — Ignorance of the Great English Nation —
Cultivation of Tobacco—Wells of Ta-ling — Mantchu Horses—Suspicious

Characters . 4 ‘ : 2 % ; ‘ ‘ : . 426

CHAPTER XXIII.

Early Hours — Granite Houses — Carriers’ Carts — Fear of Highwaymen —
Marshy Country — Salt Manufactories at Ten-sha-hor — A Funeral Party
—North China Song-birds— Their Capture, Treatment, and Qualities —
Trained Falcons for Bird-catching — The Pe- ere Wha-mi— A
Fixture and its Consequences ; : 5 é , . 448
CONTENTS. xi

CHAPTER XXIV.

Pastoral Country — ‘ Koong-shi’ — Farm-houses — Profitable Employment
of Sewage — Ignorance of Dairy Produce — Humble Dormitory — A
Young Mandarin — Banks of the Liau-hé — Boat Voyage — Arrival at
Newchwang—An unfriendly Reception—Inhospitable Landlord. pacz 463

CHAPTER XXV.

A welcome Halt — Approach to the New British Settlement at Ying-tsze—
Mr. Meadows the English Consul — Enjoyment of English Comforts —
Shock of an Earthquake -- Sentiments of a Comprador respecting the
unprofitableness of British Travellers —Trade at the New Port— Cha-
racter of the People of this portion of China— Native Ships — New
Passports. ‘ : ‘ : ‘ ; : ; : . 480

CHAPTER XXVI.

Our New Attendants — Precautions — Indisposition — Newchwang again —
Our Conductors— ‘Tea is not Tea, and Rice is not Rice’— A ‘Sovereign’
Remedy — The Village School-room— Shu Shan— The Mountains —
A distant View of Liau Yang — Orchards — Harvest-time — Disagree-
able Spectators — The City of Liau Yang in the Early Morning — Trades-
men and Mechanics — Northern and Southern Pagodas— The Taitse-hé
— The Liau — Highways — The People ; ‘ . 493

CHAPTER XXVII.

Elevation of the Land— Town of Pay-ta-pu— Games of Chance — The
Huin-hé — Curious Monument and Llama Priests — Suburbs of Moukden
—The Police and their Commander — Clearing the Way — The Streets
and Trades and the Crowd — A Fat Boniface— Condition of the Capital
— Tartar Traces— A Bird’s-eye View . : 4 : ‘ . 516

CHAPTER XXVIII.

History of Moukden — Account of it by Father Verbiest — Kien-lung’s
Eulogium of the Tartar Capital—The Pen and the Ke — Popular
Excitement at our Appearance — A Moukden Merchant — The Tartars at
a Discount — Our Visit to the Palace prevented — The Water-gun —
Lower Temperature at Moukden — Chinese Artist — Return Journey —
Lord John Hay — Doing the sa cae On Board the ‘Odin’ — Re-
visiting the Wall : : 2 : : z ‘ . 586

CHAPTER XXIX.
A Brief Narrative of a Journey beyond Peking, to the Coal-mines . 557
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

A VIEW BEYOND THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA

A STREET IN TIEN-TSIN . ‘

A CHINESE HORSE-DEALER : :
START FROM TIEN-TSIN ; j
FIRST NIGHT’S HALTING-PLACE 3
COMFORT OF A CHINESE INN—THE COMET
CHINESE GUARD-HOUSE ‘ .

A WARNING TO ROBBERS : ’
CHINESE BEGGARS :

GRASS-CUTTING : ,
MANDARIN’S TRAVELLING CARRIAGE .
FARMER'S TEAM 3 , ‘

A ROADSIDE WELL . ‘ ‘
CLEARING THE ROOM . ‘
WANDERING MINSTRELS : :
PEOPLE RETURNING FROM THE MARKET
VIEW OF LANCHOW  . é at
THE YANG YIN PAH KWA . 2
TARTAR BOW AND ARROW : ‘
STRINGING THE BOW . ‘ :
DINING BEFORE AN AUDIENCE.
EXTREMES OF FASHION ‘ :

A PIG-DRIVER . ; :

THE INN OF YANG-CHOW ‘ 3
GATHERING THE ROOT OF THE WATER-LILY
THE ROADSIDE SANCTUARY i

A LADY ON DONKEY- BACK .

INN AT THE WALL—THE USELESS PASSPORT

A POLITE OLD SOLDIER . .

THE GREAT WALL FROM STAVELEY PEAK TO THE GULF

.

FRONTISPIECE
PAGE

‘ . 2
: ac 1:
: . 22
: . 80
a . 86
; . d4
. . 69
‘ «BL
‘ . 74
7 . 82
, . 85
. 113

. 125

. 129

: . 148
, . 173
7 - 190
: . 199
é 200
. 203
¢ . 229
7 . 245
5 - 251
: . 278
. 282
; . 290
; . 803
: . 317
. » 825
XVi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

SLEEPING IN A SPRING 3

THE GENIL OF THE MOUNTAIN : : ’
TARTAR SHOES. a ; .

TNE PUNISHMENT OF THE CANGUE . .

A HUNTING PARTY (FROM A NATIVE DRAWING) :
A CARAVANSARY BEYOND THE WALL . :
TARTAR LADIES . : . . ‘
A JUGGLER’S CART. : ‘ .
HORSE-SHOEING : ‘ i .
TARTAR HORSE-SHOE . 3 .

THE HORSE DOCTOR . : .
LANDSCAPE IN MANTCHURIA . i ; .
VICTUALLING IN KINCHOW. . ; ;
FAST INTHE MUD. ’ : 3 :
THE MOB AT NEWCHWANG . , 5
FUH. : . : ‘

THE VILLAGE SCHOOL . ;

VIEW OF LIAU-YANG . 5 j

PAGODA OF LIAU-YANG ; : : 4
FERRY BY LIAU-YANG . . : :
TARTAR SOLDIERS :

LLAMA MONUMENT. ; . ; :
ENTRY INTO MOUKDEN : ;

PLAN OF MOUKDEN . ‘ ‘ 3 F
COURT-YARD WALL. . ‘

MAP.

ROUTE FROM TIEN-TSIN TO MOUKDEN.

PAGE

357
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366
374

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ATT

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TRAVELS ON HORSEBACK

IN

MANTCHU TARTARY..

——-0:0¢3 00 ——

CHAPTER I.

SUMMER AT TIEN-TSIN — EXTREMES OF TEMPERATURE IN NORTH CHINA
— ASK LEAVE TO TRAVEL IN THE COUNTRY — DIFFICULTY OF OBTAIN-
ING PERMISSION — OUR PASSPORTS — OFFICIAL AND NON-OFFICIA L—
OUR TRAVELLING EQUIPMENT AND ‘MOUNT’ — DISLIKE OF CHINESE
INTERPRETERS TO TRAVEL, AND OUR JUVENILE BARGAIN.

HE month of July, 1861, was ushered into the distant
supreme province of the Middle Kingdom, as delightful
old Spenser has it, ‘boiling like to fire,’ and with such an
unexpected fierceness and ardent intensity as took everyone
of the foreign community, civil and military, located within
or without the walls of the city of Tien-tsin, by surprise.
It altogether banished from their minds the favourable
opinions they had been forming as to the salubrity of the
climate of North China, as well as smothered the grateful
expressions they were about to pour forth, at their good
fortune in being permitted to spend a whole summer in
the country, and miss the sickly effects of a season always
justly dreaded by Europeans in the southern portions of
the empire.
It seemed but yesterday since we were shivering and
freezing in the glacial temperature of an almost arctic winter,
B
2 INCLEMENT WEATHER.

with sharp-cutting winds sweeping everything animated into
sheltered nooks and recesses, and whirling dust and earth
high up in the air, until the daylight was nearly eclipsed
by a canopy of opaque clouds of as muddy a tinge and
repulsive an appearance as the turbid waters of the Peiho ;

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A Street in Tien-tsin.

while we, muffled in every available shred of woollen stuff,
closely enveloped in furs and sheepskins, and with ears and
noses carefully’ guarded from the ‘wind’s keen tooth,’ by
curious appliances attached to gigantic head-covers of cotton-
quilted pelage, huddled around the feeble fire of mess or’
EXTREMES OF TEMPERATURE. 3

sleeping room, through which the breeze sported in the most
wanton and malignant spirit. It seemed, as I have said, but
yesterday since we were striving to maintain vitality, and
keep noses, ears, and toes safe from the frigid regions of a
Spitzbergen winter ; yet here we were, with unknown, and
therefore unguarded, violence, projected into the warmest
corner of the torrid zone—transported, as if by the influence
of some malevolent genii, from the inhospitable regions of
Greenland to the unwelcome plains of Hindostan. Truly this
is a climate of excess, of rapid transitions from heat to cold,
of dust-storm and cloudless sky, relentless cold and un-
mitigable heat; and its effects require no small amount of
elasticity of constitution, physical tenacity, and mental rigi-
dity, to successfully encounter such strange treatment.

The universal cry, or rather plaintive vapid murmur,
sounded feebly from every tongue, ‘Oh, isn’t it hot!’ ‘ What
blazing weather!’ ‘Never felt it so dreadfully warm in
India!’ ‘I wish we had the winter again!’ with other
interjections, interrogations, and complaints, as pithy and
laconic as strength or resolution would allow. And there
could be no difference of opinion about it, for the weather
was disagreeably hot. No matter whether the thermometer,
suspended in the shade of a brick wall with a northern
aspect, and screened under a roofing of mats, indicated 108°
or 110° at the General Hospital, or, in the deepest shade of a
field-officer’s bedroom, only gave 96° or 98°, everybody
seemed to be satisfied that he had arrived at as near a con-
dition of igneous fusion as it was possible for mortality to
bear without succumbing, or passing entirely into the liquid
or gaseous forms assumed by bodies exposed to a sufficiently
high temperature; and if the thermometers chose to differ by
a few degrees, no one would have the energy or desire left
to discuss the propriety or necessity of exposing the mer-
cury in the light shade out of doors, or of burying it in the
depths of a room, a cellar, or a well. At rest or in motion,

B?
4 MELTING MOMENTS.

in the perpendicular position, or in a state of horizontal
collapse, the perspiration seethed, trickled, eddied, and satu-
rated, until calico, flannel, and kirkee were wringing wet ;
until handkerchiefs and towels had absorbed twice their
own weight of fluid. Complete prostration, we thought,
was almost inevitable to the flaccid, enfeebled British soldier,
forced to swelter away the fiery months of a Chinese summer
in the low-roofed, hampered, and jammed-together dwellings
of a filthy town. Friends and comrades one met with in
the constricted streets, looked like sponges imbibing cease-
lessly large quantities of fluid, and as expeditiously filtering
it through the countless pores that were covered with a
torturing scarlet eruption, inadequately designated ‘ prickly
heat.’ ;

The only winds moving over the city, and now and again
penetrating to our pent-up courtyards, had the suffocating
qualities of the African simoom, combined with the parching
tendencies of the Syrian sirocco. Nothing could escape the
perpendicular radiation of the sun, whose fiery gleams darted
through roof, screen, and shades of reed-mat raised high
ever court and housetop ; and in the streets, like lightning,
it pierced through helmet of pith and head-piece of covered
basket-work, striking in upon the brain until it induced
either vertigo, fever, or deadly sun-stroke.

The solar rays might have been concentrated to the burn-
ing focus just over our heads, so scorching were they, and at
times they felt so unbearable that the enervating breath of
the Harmattan seemed to be fanning them into active flame.
Terrestrial radiation during the night was either altogether
in abeyance, or at best but feebly and almost imperceptibly
maintained in the few long hours intervening between the
rising and setting of the sun; for the baked earth around
and underneath us seemed to have become so thoroughly
surfeited by the great amount of heat upon its surface, as
to have lost the power of cooling down again when the sun
FROZEN PORTER, 5

had left it; so that by night, as well as by day, the atmo-
sphere felt as if it were under the ascendency of some intense
subterranean combustion that threatened to burn up every-
thing above ground. Yet at night the grateful fires blazed
and crackled, and doors were carefully closed to exclude
the bitter night-wind.

A rattling blast of cold air would, in that month of J uly,
have proved more refreshing to our overheated bodies, than
a draught of icy water to the traveller in the Great Sahara,
and the clear, bracing chilliness of a frosty night in Eng-
land, if granted to us but for a few minutes, would have
been equally welcome. How often did the winter, with its
nipping but healthy cold, rise pleasantly beforé us when
some of us threw ourselves on our beds in a state of fever,
while others recklessly wore icy applications to their heads,
or sat for nights in tubs of cold water ; and in those rooms
which day by day appeared to be contracting in size, like the
iron-chamber of the Inquisition, how often did we not strive
to recall the story of the gallant Captain Somebody, of the
th, who, if we can remember aright, in passing through
Charing Cross —for we have a Charing Cross at Tien-tsin,
but, alas! how unlike the original !—wmet a soldier of his regi-
ment with a rather suspicious-looking bag carried on his back.
‘Where are you going with that bag?’ demanded the captain.

‘To the barracks, sir,’ replied the man.

‘What have you got in it?’

‘ Porter, sir.’

‘What! porter in a sack! Oh, nonsense! let me see.’

‘Very well, sir;’ and the bag is heavily, and with no
‘cheerful grace, dropped on the frozen ground, and slowly
opened, when a huge wedge of coffee-coloured stuff, having
the peculiar crystalline fracture of ice, is laboriously ex-
tracted from the depth of the sack and exhibited to the per-
plexed gaze and astonishment of the wondering officer.
‘It’s the ration porter, sir, the exhibitor chuckles, as he

 
6 SUN-STROKES.

shifts the heat-abstracting mass from hand to hand to prevent
his fingers being frost-bitten—‘It’s the ration porter, sir,
only it’s freezed.’

From an early hour in the morning until late in the even-
ing, there was no moving out of doors unless on some very
urgent business, when the shadiest side of each street, house,
or wall, was eagerly sought for and clung to, by the Euro-
pean, as he looked with horror on the infatuated Chinese
who perambulated the streets and went about their every-
day occupations in the full glare of the midday sun, with
the apparently most reckless disregard of consequences.

On one of the earliest days of that month, when fur
busbys were exchanged for iced night-caps, and immersion
in cold water for hours together preferred to heavy winter
clothing, I forwarded an application for leave of absence, that
I might wander into some of those curious nooks and corners
which must, it was predicted, exist somewhere between Tien-
tsin and Moukden—the birth-place and nursery of the
Mantchu dynasty—the distant capital of Mantchu Tartary
—and make a hurried survey of an almost unknown region,
for the satisfaction of a desire that had long haunted me
to learn whether the terms of the Treaty of Tien-tsin,
in so far as they related to British subjects travelling in
China, were understood or known in the numerous towns
and villages supposed to intervene between the Peiho and
the heart of the Mantchu country; and also to prove
whether Europeans, divested of Jesuitical artifice and
Chinese costume, could ride along their roads, refresh them-
selves during the day in their halting-places, and sleep
securely amongst them in the night.

In the more favourable spring months application had been
made on several occasions for a passport and permission to
revisit Peking, and to extend my journey to the mountains
beyond, and even to Inner Mongolia, did time and opportu-
nity favour such a project, but unfortunately with no success.
DESIRE TO TRAVEL, 7

Indeed, with little prospect of any, for the City of the Plain had
become once more a sealed city, the country on the other
side of it forbidden ground; and that article of the Treaty
which stipulates that ‘ British subjects are to be allowed to
travel for their pleasure, or for purposes of trade, to all parts
of the interior,’ was, for the time, set aside in the direction
of Peking, especial care apparently being taken for the ex-
clusion of those annoying intruders from beyond the seas
who would persist in seeking to explore the ruinous streets
and buildings, and filthy purlieus of the far-off, vast, curious
city of Kambalu.

All hopes of passing from the known to the unknown, the
explored to the unexplored, in that quarter were aban-
doned, and I was obliged to surrender myself, very unwil-
lingly, to the baking and stifling atmosphere engendered in
stench, effervescing ditches, and filth-garnished streets, until,
luckily, a Shanghai’ gentleman, accustomed to Sinensian
travel in the South, arrived at Tien-tsin, fully bent on in-
creasing his knowledge, and, perhaps, trade relations with
the dwellers beyond the Great Wall.

No sooner were his plans and projects made known to me
than the scarcely subdued feeling of inquisitiveness was
again roused, and another desperate attempt was resolved
upon to obtain leave, for the purpose of accompanying Mr.
M through all the prospective risks, adventures, and
obstacles incidental to such trips, regardless of the warnings
thrown out about the danger of travelling in a country, the
inhabitants of which had scarcely yet returned to their homes
from the fields where they had met and been defeated by our
troops. They were generally acknowledged to be the most
formidable of all the tribes who muster under the Imperial
standard. The insufferable temperature gave other friends
a rather good reason for plying me with serious advice and
earnest solicitations to await the approach of the autumn,
when the weather might prove more auspicious, and less

 
8 OUR BRITISH PASSPORTS.

danger might be apprehended should we be compelled to
journey in the middle of the day. But I had sternly
resolved to make the venture, and, greatly to my delight,
my leave was at once granted, without a reference to
Peking :—in which case it was, indeed, very question-
able. whether the tour would have been looked upon with
favourable eyes. Major-General Stavely, who commanded
the garrison, was fully impressed with the good results
which would accrue to everyone concerned in our relations
with China, were we allowed, without scruple, freely to
traverse the country in every direction in accordance with
the terms contained in the ninth article of the Treaty.

We had only to wait for the authorised form of passport
from the consul before we were ready to start. This was
procured in two or three days—the shortest space of time
in which the pettifogging, scribbling Chinese officials could
copy out all the particulars from the English paper, then
note those puzzling names of ours, besides inserting num-
bers of their hieroglyphics in vacant lines on the Chinese
portion of the document, and affixing what was said to be a
seal,, but which, in our eyes, bore more resemblance to a
blotch of red-lead and oil.

The English part of the document was singularly brief,
and, as it was somewhat of a novelty in its way, we were
particularly careful to make ourselves thoroughly acquainted
with it.

Passport No. -——
‘ British Consulate, Tien-tsin:
July 3, 1861.

‘The undersigned, Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul at
Tien-tsin, requests the civil and military authorities of the
Emperor of China, in conformity with the ninth article of
the Treaty of Tien-tsin, to allow Mr. , a British subject,
to travel freely, and without hindrance or molestation, in the

 
COMMISSIONER CIIUNG’S LETTER. 9

Chinese empire, and to give him protection and aid in case
of necessity.

* NB, , bemg a person of known respectability, is
desirous of proceeding to Newchwang, and this passport is
given him on condition of his not visiting the cities or
towns occupied by the insurgents’—Signed by the Consul.
A note was appended on the other side, intimating ‘that all
passports must be countersigned by the Chinese authorities
at the place of delivery, and must be produced for exami-
nation on the demand of the authorities of any locality
visited by the bearer. British subjects travelling in China
without a passport, or committing any offence, were there
said to be liable to be arrested and handed over to the nearest
consul for punishment,’ which ominous threat was followed
by ‘Fre One Doar,’ a sum that was not, as I at first
unkindly imagined, to be applied to any other purpose than

 

that of rewarding justice, should the infliction of the menaced
pains and penalties be awarded on conviction, but simply
as a means of defraying the expenses attendant on the
issue of these evidences of our good character and peaceable
intentions.

Through the kind offices of a friend in the Chinese
Customs, a more ostentatious authority was procured for
our service from the Imperial Commissioner at Tien-tsin,
an article got up quite after the time-worshipped fashions
of our co-citizens of the Central Kingdom. It was
mysterious and verbose enough for the most fastidious of
Chinese scholars, inscribed in a running sort of hand,
and confined within certain limits by a kind of magic
square of blue ink, elaborately festooned with crooked
dragons and flowers, and each of the corners defended by
one of those terror-inspiring monsters—a wonderful sort of
hybrid, something between a striped French poodle and a
rabid hippopotamus—which are met with everywhere deli-
neated in stone, wood, or metal, and which seem to be the
10 COMMISSIONER CHUNG’S LETTER.

appointed tutelary mastiffs for guarding all manner of things,
especially those appertaining to the Government.

The words were written on a large sheet of the most
delicate cobwebby paper that could be made, and it required
no small degree of patience and careful manipulation to
unfold it and examine its contents without reducing it to
shreds.

‘Chung,’ it said, ‘Imperial Commissioner and Super-
intendent of Trade for the three, Northern ports, issues a
passport to the two Englishmen F. and M. (names twisted
about in a startling and almost incomprehensible manner to
suit their pronunciation), who propose travelling from Tien-
tsin to Newchwang, lest they should meet with any obstruc-
tions on their way. Therefore, on their presenting this pass,
or order, at places on the route, the local Mandarins are to
aid them and facilitate all matters connected with their
journey.’ ‘A pass issued to the two Englishmen, F. and
M.,’ was subjected to an almost endless number of repe-
titions, and the date, ‘the Eleventh year of the Emperor
Hien-fung, fifth month, and twenty-seventh day,’ concluded
the strange document, which was tattooed in circles and
other figures in red ink at those places where particular
attention was called to certain words or sentences of unusual
import.

We thought ourselves fortunate in being favoured with
this mark of the Imperial Commissioner’s desire to lend his
aid to strangers travelling through his suspiciously-guarded
country, and though we did not then deem the paper of
much importance, seeing we had already a more potent
instrument, yet we surmised that it might prove of value at
some time or other on the way.

It was decided that, in spite of the hot unfavourable
weather, we should travel the whole distance on the backs of
Tartar ponies, as riding was not only more favourable for
exploring, sight-seeing, and speed, but much more compa-
A CHINESE HORSE-DEALER. 11

tible with sound limbs and intact spines than confinement
in the narrow, springless, wooden-axle-treed boxes of native
carts, that were dragged ruthlessly through and over all
sorts of paths and roads.

A single cart was, nevertheless, necessary to carry the
small stock of provisions we considered it advisable to have
with us in ease of need, as we knew nothing of the nature
and resources of the country beyond twenty miles to the
north-east of Tien-tsin, and were unwilling to trust too
much, at first, to the hospitality of the people we ventured
amongst. As M had providently brought with him,
from Shanghai, a tolerable supply of rounds of canister con-
taining the essences and quintessences of everything nutri-
tious to be found at home, and had also speculated largely
in rice as a stand-by when everything else should fail, we
could not begrudge the delay that might attend the progress
of such a vehicle, the more especially as it also carried the
very slender stock of clothing and bedding that could not be
dispensed with, unless we were indeed very hard pressed.

I purchased a rough, raw-boned tyke of a Tartar pony—
whose body was a series of salient angles and ridges, with
unsightly, and by no means symmetrical, protuberances in
the most conspicuous places—from a roguish Chinese horse-
dealer who had all the vices and dodges of his Western con-
freres, without a single redeeming quality, except that of
showing off his stud in a manner that would do infinite
credit toa more enlightened and conscientious trafficker in
the equine species; telling at the same time as many false-
hoods about the age and good traits of his various beasts as
would have ruined the reputation of the most depraved
screw-dealer in London.

Although our purchase looked the most unpromising
to the eye of a casual observer, and was the cheapest of the
lot brought for our inspection, the rascally vendor demanded
forty dollars. We gave twenty. There was a confident look

 
12 SEARCH FOR AN INTERPRETER.

of ‘fair and easy goes far ina day’ about the animal, a sort of
stubborn, never-knock-up expression not only in its dejected
physiognomy, but in its shaggy legs, rotund abdomen, and
unkempt mane and tail; and I felt so satisfied that he
would not deceive my expectations as to his endurance, that
I not only did not trouble myself about investing in a super-
numerary animal for an emergency, but even declined giving

 

 

i
dite
aed

 

A Chinese Horse-dealer.

this one a trial until the very day on which we were actually
mounted to proceed on our road.

Everything was speedily arranged, with the exception of
one important matter, the engagement of an interpreter; and
this was discovered to be the most embarrassing business of
all. M ’s servant, a Shanghai or Cantonese boy, knew
but little of the dialect of North China, and at best bore but
a sorry character as a useful assistant; so it was deemed

 
A DOUBTFUL AGREEMENT. 13

expedient to dispense with his services altogether, and
engage one of the Canton people who were arriving daily,
almost, at Tien-tsin. They can talk and understand the
local patois, and are generally ready, for a high rate of
wages, to lend themselves to the foreigners whom they have
followed from the South. But an overland trip to the oppo-
site side of the Gulf of Pecheli had no attractions for them.
They probably saw nothing in it but starvation and discom-
fort, and perhaps a strong chance of decapitation, should we
be so unfortunate as to draw down upon us the vengeance
or ill-will of the people beyond the wall. After searching
amongst these adventurous exotics, and enduring a good
share of foul odour in the lowly localities in which they stow
themselves, we could only find one boy who showed any
desire to treat with us, and even he would accept nothing
less than thirty dollars a month. To this exorbitant sum
we were obliged to assent as the only means of getting
out of our difficulty. After concluding the bargain, he
shrewdly turned up his childish face, and gave us a cunning
leer from underneath his angular eyelids, with the air of a
veteran diplomatist, enquiring, ‘What pigeon* you wanchee
make so long way?’ He was informed that. we wanted to
make ‘the look see pigeon.’ His countenance dropped at
once, for he knew such business is always hazardous with
such a jealous people. We had then every reason to doubt
his good faith and intention to adhere to the agreement,
and placed no great reliance on his appearing at the rendez-
vous by the appointed hour next day, when we had deter-
mined on commencing our trip.

* Pigeon is the current word for business, and Wanchee to seck or desire.
14

CHAPTER II.

FUGITIVE SINOLOGUES —‘ HAVE WHILO’— START WITHOUT INTERPRETERS
— OUR CHINESE GROOM — THE ‘HEAVENLY FORD °_ ITS STREETS,
SHOPS, AND PEOPLE — THE PEIHO—A MELTING SENTRY — THE OPEN
PLAIN — OUR FIRST ATTEMPT AT THE FLOWERY LANGUAGE — ‘ PIGEON
ENGLISH’ — SIGHT OF THE WESTERN MOUNTAINS— THE VILLAGE OF
TE-TAU AND ITS INN——A RESTLESS NIGHT AND A MOSQUITO ENTERTAIN-
MENT.

Y midday of the 6th we were ready to leave Tien-tsin,
and having collected all our travelling equipment at a
merchant’s house in the main street, and stowed it carefully
away into the cart, with our ponies ready to be mounted, we
only awaited the somewhat doubtful arrival of the Canton
interpreter. But hour after hour passed away, and still he
made no appearance, neither could his whereabouts be dis-
covered, until it was sufficiently obvious that he had shirked
the task, broken the contract, and hid himself; so, chagrined
at having delayed so long on his account, we adopted the
only course left open, which was to take M "3 servant,
who, though he might be no scholar and could scarcely
make himself understood, would prove better than no inter-
preter at all. Accordingly, the youth was sent for; a suspi-
cious interval of time elapsed, and after spending another
impatient period, an old comprador of the house, a Chinese
of business habits, but slow speech, approached us in deli-
berate strides, and, with an expression of countenance worthy
of faithful old Caleb Balderston when he communicated the
woful destruction of the dinner to the Laird of Ravenswood,
announced that ‘that piecey boy have whilo,’* and he couldn’t

 

* Whilo, to run away.
MA-FOO, OUR GROOM. ie

‘savey’ where he had gone. Diligent search was made, but
in vain, for the artful vagabond had removed his goods
and chattels to some other establishment, given his master
a Gallic good-bye, and sallied out to travel on his own
account. This was mortifying in the extreme, and we saw
no chance of finding a substitute for these slippery elves.
But whatever might betide we were obliged to start; indeed,
such trifling impediments to our advance only made us the
more determined to leave at once, and before other and
perhaps more serious mishaps should deter us from proceed-
ing altogether.

My hopes of success were now firmly concentrated
on M , who certainly had the advantage of a long
residence and much travelling in China to initiate him into
the mysterious rudiments of the Hwa Yen or flowery lan-
guage, though he modestly confessed that he had but little
faith in his abilities that way, and expressed misgivings
as to his slight experience in it being of any service what-
ever. As for myself, I only knew a few of the simplest
words of the common form of speech used in the country,
picked up casually in a year’s buffeting about; so I did not
consider myself even competent to assist my companion in
the labour which now devolved upon him. It was, there-
fore, with somewhat gloomy forebodings of being unable to

 

acquire information on the road, and with a dubious termi-
nation to the little expedition looming before us, that we
got under way.

Our suite, in addition to the carter, comprised only one
individual—an atomy of a Peking groom, who was, besides,
a rigid Roman Catholic, and therefore entitled to a greater
share of confidence and trust than one of the common uncon-
verted. M—-— had mounted him on a gaunt great pony,
the better to enable him to lead another, which was reserved:
for a break-down, and the little man thought it but right
that he should make as much of the occasion as possible, so
16 TIEN-TSIN.

he had got himself up in his best—as we surmised his only
—suit of blue cotton; the bottoms of his wide pantaloons
were neatly tucked into the legs of snow-white socks at the
ankle, gaiter fashion, and his feet were encased in carefully-
mended shoes, while his little scraggy head was roofed by a
short conical hat of cane, with a luxuriant tassel of red
silk depending from the apex, and fringing his face, ears, and
tail. Sitting bolt upright in his high-peaked saddle, his feet
entering no further than the ball of the big toe into those
ponderous stirrup-irons with dragons’ heads peering out from
each side, and wearing yet the gilding of other days, Ma-foo,
as he was soon christened, from his occupation as horse-keeper,
looked not at all amiss, and doubtless felt all he looked.

The muleteer having declared, positively, that he was
perfectly acquainted with the road between Tien-tsin and
Newchwang, we began to gather assurances of luck, and
had not proceeded far before misgivings had given place to
feelings of gladness in the prospect of leaving. such a dis-
agrecable place, if only fora day. Even before we had been
many minutes in the saddle we commenced diverting our
minds to other subjects; among them we considered, with a
freedom of thought which we dared not to have assumed on
ordinary days, why the Chinese, with a perversity of purpose
and inconsistency of expression unknown to any other branch
of the human family, should designate such a Babel as this
Tien-tsin—such an agglomeration of everything unnaturally
fantastic and nasty by such a pompously sweet-sounding
name as that of the ‘ Heavenly Spot,’ or ‘ Heavenly Ford,’
for it seems there is a difference of opinion amongst those
most learned in their grotesque calligraphy as to the inter-
pretation of the characters that compose the title — not
that it matters much which of the two may be finally decided
upon as the correct one, for the place by either name, or by
any other that the most devoted Son of Han can confer upon
it, will smell as sweetly to Chinese noses, and as revoltingly
ITS SIGHTS AND SOUNDS. 17

vile to those of Britons. It bears nothing either within
or around it to give the most liberal-minded traveller the
faintest shadow of an excuse for giving it any other cha-
racter than that of a fusty accumulation of low dwellings
and unclean human beings shut in from all sanitary mea-
sures, and perpetually enveloped in an insalubrious atmo-
sphere of unpleasant odours. It is, in truth, the most un-
celestial spot that any rigid materialist could visit.

Here we were moving along sinuous streets, like no other
streets of China, for the largest amount of traffic compressed
into the smallest possible space, our ears assailed by the
stunning din of noisy confabulators and stormy rival traders
who reiterate their numerous cries in the loudest roars
they can fabricate into words bristling with harsh gut-
tural aspirations. On each side, from the old clothes shops,
came a clanging sing-song chorus from boisterous salesmen
who turn out and toss over their soiled and faded frippery
as they bawl to the passers-by an invitation to purchase
such a handsome magwa,* which will be sold for next to
nothing, and there is a pair of inexpressibles to match, fit
fora Mandarin. Now we are stopped by a busy throng of
pedestrians, each bent on business, but who are immediately
sent flying by a gang of shouting, slanging coolies, who com-
pletely sweep the narrow thoroughfare with their ponderous
loads, dissipate crowds as if by magic, and cram the unfor-
tunate individuals into every nook and cranny they can
squeeze in, in their irresistible progress to some European
hong. Again, we obtain an undesirable post on the margin
of a copious cloud of savoury steam issuing from a collec-
tion of bubbling cauldrons and hissing stew-pans, while
endeavouring to steal out of the intolerable sun to ensconce
ourselves under the shadowy recess of a huge square-topped
cotton umbrella and the adjoining wall. We are instantly

$a

* Jacket.

Cc
18 CROWDED STREETS,

and vigorously attacked by a mob of beggars—and such
beggars! who seize the welcome opportunity of leaving the
cooking operations, which they had been watching with the
saliva-excited intentness of starving men, to..besiege us with
their horribly dolesome iterations of ‘ Chow-chow-a,’ the
general word for food, adding, when our hand is slow in
moving towards the pocket, ‘ Shi-lung, shi-lung, cash;’ it is
cold, it is cold; money! This fallacy is usually rewarded
by a trifle, for they who employ it know full well that the
remembrance of a mendicant’s gelid existence during a
North China winter ought to reach the heart of any human
being who has witnessed his sufferings, sooner than any
hot-weather expressions they might insert among their
numerous importunities.

Once more we thread our narrow course, but have
not measured many yards when the cart-wheel upsets two
wooden buckets of indescribable slops which evolve the
most abominably fetid gases possible to conceive. Before
we have time to pull up, the contents of an apple-stall
are mingled with the diabolical débris, to the confusion of
the owner, who, however, saves us any further annoyance
by viewing the accident merely as an accident, and consoles
himself with a philosophical equanimity worthy of admi-
ration, while he sets about repairing the misfortune as best
he may. The tradesmen and stall-keepers show but little
sympathy, and the fowl-sellers lose no time in plying us hard
with their feathered commodities, which they thrust under
our very eyes, persisting in designating their goods as ‘ fish,’
asking us to make an offer to their demand of ‘ My much,’
as they are pleased to interpret ‘how much?’ in their buy-
ing and selling transactions.

We have passed through the market-place, through that
unique nest of tumult and ill-flavoured goods styled Charing
Cross, and with some difficulty have managed to shave the
edge of the narrow earthen pavement that lies before the
CHINESE PASTRYCOOK., 19

shop of the enterprising confectioner and pastrycook for
whom some obliging customer has, with an eye to a world-
famed and a long-established reputation, borrowed the unim-
peachable name of Gunter, and emblazoned it on a respectable
square of dingy pasteboard, with various other notifications
in English of an accommodating nature. The small space
before the counter is, as it always happens to be, crowded
to excess, and the nimble servants behind the high partition
are naked to the waist, as all shopmen are in sudoriferous
weather, busily dispensing the most enticing and agreeable
of comfits and irresistible morsels of pastry to all classes
of the community. ‘How do, come in, tak’ cup tea—
sponge-cak,’ our old friend calls out, with his customary
good-natured smile, and then repeats the invitation in
French to make certain that we understand him, or to show
that he can address himself, with ease, in either of the lan-
guages, for he is studying them both with very laudable
industry, and making wonderful progress too.

We decline the proffered bait, which would subject us to
an hour’s catechising by this erudite student of the allied
tongues, and in a few minutes more of crushing and halting
are at the termination of that long, narrow, devious suburban
lane which constitutes the Regent Street, the Mall, the
Charing Cross, the Fleet Street, and the Billingsgate of
Tien-tsin, but which looks like nothing we ever saw in
the shape of a street or thoroughfare; it seems more like
an unwilling compromise between a Stamboul bazaar, a
decayed and wasted Holywell Street of many years ago, and
an alley in an English country-town during fair time, than
any other locality of which we have any experience.

Turning sharply to the left, we are within a hundred
yards of the bridge of boats across the Peiho, for which we
steer, but intercept the march of a squad of naked urchins,
armed with sticks and reeds got up as imitative firelocks,
who, with mock alacrity and steadiness, form up, as best

c2
20 THE PEIHO.

they can, to give us a military compliment, after the manner
of their invaders. Their pompous ragamuffin of a leader
halloos, in no very despicable fashion, as one of us almost
rides over him, ‘Car’ arms, present arms,’ but before the
salute has been rendered we are rattling along the unequally
undulating planks of the floating communication between
the British and French banks of the river, to the great
hazard of the miscellaneous stalls and baskets of trumpery
goods on each side. It is ebb-tide, and the old turbid mud-
bearing stream—the supposed juata magnum fluvium of
the Latin edition of ‘Marco Polo’ — sweeps with a gurgling
grumble against and through the interspaces of the wooden
barrier, as it bears onwards its earthy burden to the gulf.

The ascent to the opposite side of the bank is a steep one
of loose planks, and the cart mules have enough to do to get
to the top and obtain a footing on the road above, which is
little better than a footpath that has lost itself on the moulder-
ing banks that overhang the waters below. Here we pause
to rest for a few moments, but are made sufficiently wretched
at the sight of a deliquescent French sentry who, on that
afternoon of July 6, when Fahrenheit’s thermometer in-
dicated ninety-seven in the shade, looked sweltered and
fait as he leant on his musket in the same heavy cloak,
coat, wrapper, or whatever other name it may go by, the
same cap and trousers of never-varying hue, and the same
gaitered boots in which it had been ordained that he should
pass the winter’s cold. Poor Jean Rétir! your long blue
coat, diminutive casquet, and flaring red pantaloons, are not
exactly suited to your lively temperament in your present
exposed. situation.

To die for one’s country is the glory of the seldier, and
the greatest sacrifice he can offer on the altar of duty; but
surely the soldier may expect that his life shall be valued
and his comfort considered. It must be just as impossible
for a soldier to do his country that full measure of patriotic
THE FRENCH SENTRY. 21

servitude which it seeks from him, as to be toujours gaie
when on the verge of syncope or coup-de-soleil; and unless
the characteristic and innate vivacity of the Frenchman be
maintained and cared for, we can hardly imagine his meagre
frame holding out long under such an adverse state of
affairs.

How differently does the sentry on the opposite side of
the river look, as he stands in the shade of his box, which,
though only a mat one, is still a protection. He is as suit-
ably clothed as the most serviceable white American drill
will allow, which, for amplitude of coat and trousers, as
well as lightness of texture, would excite the envy and
desire of his fellows at home during the dog days; while his
cerebral circulation is shielded from danger under the exgis
of a helmet fit for an Achilles or an Ajax. And yet—
perfidious climate—not many months ago, we saw him
almost buried under a mass of woollens heaped upon
him, in an external sheep-skin robe large enough to con-
ceal the carcase of a Patagonian, with a fur cap, hot and
heavy enough for a foot guardsman’s bear-skin, stuck as
closely about his head and ears as if it had grown there; and
as he moved quickly about on his post, and stamped his
feet, which were then experiencing that abstraction of
heat peculiar to a temperature below zero, notwithstanding
their concealment in the recesses of his impenetrable, yellow,
elephantine boots, we thought him the queerest-looking
animal in creation.

But he was then, and is now, clothed and cared for as
befits the season; and as his existence is considered valuable
to the nation which sent him on duty to a distant region, he
is vigilantly provided for in all things that can conduce to
preserve him efficient, as no other fighting man, we dare to
say, is cared for in the world; for never was the British
soldier better waited on, nor his requirements so much
attended to, in the almost paternal solicitude manifested
22 LEAVE TIEN-TSIN.

towards him in this the most distant corner of the universe
to which he has yet victoriously carried his arms.

Threading the dirty labyrinthine passage formed by the
crowd of heterogeneous mud and brick dwellings that con-
stitute this suburb —the ‘French side,’ as it ‘is called
since its occupation — and patiently submitting to the bewil-
dering jangle of machines and tongues, the dit donc’s, com-

 

Start from Tien-tsin.

bien’s, sacre’s, and comme ¢a’s of a painfully imitative yellow-
skinned people, we, in process of time, free ourselves of the
environing hovels that fringe the margin of the city, follow
the narrow path which leads through the waste ground
intervening between the houses and the encompassing ‘ San-
ko-lin-tsin’s Folly’—as the twelve miles of gingerbread en- ‘
trenchment is termed, that extends like a great hoop around
the key of Peking, and which was deemed by the valiant

|
GLAD CHANGE TO THE PLAIN. 23

Tartar General a sure defence against us last year—pass
through a breach in its structure, and are in the open plain
beyond. Immediately we can perceive an agreeable dif-
ference in the temperature and in the odoriferous con-
stitution of the atmosphere; we can breathe freely ;
we have left behind us that horribly noisome stench that
permeates everything, and finds its entrance everywhere,
until it rises in almost visible reality before us; and we have
distanced that heavy overpowering sense of suffocation that
anyone may experience when he stands before a blazing
furnace at midsummer.

The wind blows sickly and feverish across the monotonous
unvarying plain, still it lends a refreshing sensation never
experienced within the walls of the densely-packed town; and
though the sun’s rays are launched forth as fiercely as ever, they
are partially mitigated by the green and yellow of the crops,
which wave gently on each side of our path. So that before
we have left Tien-tsin in obscurity, the doubts with which
we started have melted away, and we have put up before
our mental vision the old-fashioned school-boy proverb :—

Superanda omuis fortuna ferendo.

The mule driver seemed anxious to dispel any misgivings
we might have entertained as to the speed of the mules he
drove as we moved through the Tien-tsin streets, for he now
chirruped and tirred in a most inspiriting mamner, as if he
would never stop. The brutes went along with their light
load at an easy pace of five or six miles an hour, with-
out any apparent fatigue or relaxation, while our ponies
shuffled out their uncouth limbs in a measured stride, which
they only interrupted at stray intervals to steal a mouthful of
the tempting herbage that grew in dangerous proximity to
their incisors. We trotted between small fields of hemp
and millet, with now and again maize and melons in small
patches, where mahogany-coloured labourers — naked as
24 WATERING-PLACE.

when they were first ushered into existence—are toiling
and scraping with unwearied industry, their queues concealed
in the shred of blue or white cotton tied round their heads
to protect them from the sun; and through uninteresting
little villages of earthen houses, bearing long unpronounceable
names. The best buildings are the temples with their walls
of blue brick, their roofs of concave and convex tiles lurking
beneath the pleasant shade of old willow trees planted cen-
turies ago.

We are stopped near a ditch, by an old man and two boys,
who significantly point to a small wooden trough and two
buckets, which quickly catch the eyes of our quadrupeds.
Little need is there to cry halt, for without any intimation
from us they pull up, and as soon as water had been carried
from the reservoir to the measure, they plunge their faces deep
in the brackish liquid, from whence they are loth to withdraw
them. The old man, who thinks it not only the convenience,
but the duty, of every passenger to halt and refresh his
animals before proceeding further, surmises we have come to
shoot, and points with his withered old arm to a cluster of
three or four scraggy willows on whose branches a pair of
jabbering magpies and a coterie of unmusical crows have
perched. We shake our heads, and think the opportunity
a good one to take soundings in Chinese, so ask him in
Mandarin speech, with a strong English accent, the name of
the next village. He thinks for a great number of seconds,
with his wrinkled old face, and with eyes and mouth staring
at us fixedly, and at last, with a feeble oscillation of that
venerable cranium, shouts out, loud enough to be heard a mile
off, ‘ Pu-toong-wha.’

He did not understand our language, though we spoke
in his own, and with this early inauspicious attempt to
test our knowledge of the colloquial, we were about to
leave in disgust when the eldest boy, a thorough Flib-
bertigibbet, called out as if in mockery, extending his
OUR FAILURE IN THE FLOWERY SPEECH. 25

little fist at the same time, ‘Fukey, my much, my much,
cash, cash!’ Now although ‘fukey,’ in the vernacular of
the Southern provinces, means ‘friend,’ or, as some say,
‘stranger,’ beyond, and to the north of the Shangtung pro-
montory, it has no meaning, and has on every possible
occasion been applied by saltwater Jack and sod-crushing
John to all Chinese, no matter whether male or female,
quite irrespective of the particular locality or province they
may inhabit, or he may visit, until at length the painfully
popular cognomen has recoiled on the donors, and now
everywhere in and around Tien-tsin, the new terra incognita
of Western wanderers, the vagabond sans-culottes unmer-
cifully pelt the allies with what they may justly consider
an opprobrious or appropriate epithet. ‘My much’ is an
indigenous translation of ‘how much,’ or ‘how sell, how
buy,’ in the slang of the canaille and petty shopkeepers of
that city ; and cash passes current for money, but we
believed that, with the other offensive ingredients of that
abhorred place, we had left behind us the ludicrously dis-
torted collection of words, which the misguided Chinese
belch forth as sownd English, and which the British are
labouring to teach when and wherever they are required to
hold communion with them.

To find such verbal currency in this out-of-the-way
tract surprised and disgusted us more than if we had
run foul of a crocodile in these maize fields. The lively
indignation with which we first listened to it at Singapore
was mollified, to some extent, by the condoling manner in
which we were told that the Chinese could not pronounce
many of our simplest words, and were compelled to sub-
stitute others, as well as to insert some of their own, that
they found pretty nearly agreed with the difficult ones in
sound. Subsequently we found the Northern Chinese not
so backward in making use of English words for which
the Cantonese have exchanged meaningless sounds quite
26 PIGEON ENGLISH.

foreign to either language. To say the least of it, this
is a vile mongrel gibberish, requiring no small amount of
ingenuity and patience to acquire and comprehend at first
starting, especially when mumbled over by an adept Southern
Chinese, by whom each word is rolled out with the same
quiet undistinguishable monotonous drawl, entirely in keep-
ing with the serious countenance he assumes, in his perplex-
ing endeavour to thrust as many words into a sentence as
he can.

Though the language now boasts a grammar and a voca-
bulary, alike necessary for Chinese and Europeans, who
are obliged to acquire it ere they can hold intercourse
with each other, I have always listened to a conver-
sation between representatives of the two continents with
side-splitting mirth, which I could not for the life of me
restrain, even when serious business matters were discussed,
or a grave rebuke was being administered to the Chinaman,
No such emotion overcame me now, as it was apparent
that this young rascal had picked up these fragments of a
base coin somewhere, and was endeavouring to palm them
off on us as the real article of commerce ; so I at first pre-
tended not to understand him, but unavailingly ; he knew
us to be ‘fukeys,’ and repeated his demand in ‘fukey’
speech. Consequently nothing remained but to give him
‘cash,’ and a few words to add to his slender stock.

What a curious and intricate task will the speculative
philologist have in some future age, when not only the
British, but other nations trading with China, have intro-
duced their pet words, and had them twisted into all sorts
of shapes and intonations to suit the unwieldy tongues
of the thirty or forty millions of people, who are anxious to
learn anything strange or uncouth, if so be it answers their
purpose, and possesses simplicity and matter of fact!

As it is, the Anglo-Saxon furnishes by far the largest
instalment of words. They rule paramount in the estimation
ITS OUTLANDISH CHARACTER. 27

of the Chinese whose interest they serve. Jn truth, the
Celestials find English so accommodating and elastic, and the
intellects of their co-citizens and co-traders so acute, that
they can modify, remodify, and introduce an infinity of
words, until, as we remember at Hong Kong, the analogy
between the copy and the original is so far lost, that an
officer of the allied army, who besought the aid of a
friend of ours in some business with a native merchant,
fully believed the conversation that ensued to have been
carried on in Chinese. He even went the length of com-
plimenting the accomplished intermediator as to his fluency
in Celestial phraseology. Not very long ago an amusing
anecdote was told of an English and French rencontre, in
which the parties concerned were unable to fraternise so
fondly as they mutually desired, owing to their limited
knowledge of each other’s language. Nothing abashed at
the shift they were put to, they found a convenient medium
of expression in the new speech; in this they only imitated
the natives, for so different is the patois of the Southerner
to the Northern tongue, that those who employ them are as
much at fault to speak and understand one another’s thoughts
as if they did not belong to the same great family, and fly at
once, and as if by instinct, to ‘pigeon English.’

Still it does not tend to raise the character of the early
traders in an Englishman’s estimation, to think that such
an unpalatable mixture of everything whimsical and obtru-
sively ridiculous should have been introduced and propagated
with better success than things of far greater moment and
worth, until it has taken such deep root, and assumed such a
pseudo-genuine character, that both parents seem to delight
in its practice, and in a display of its especial peculiarities.
Proud of the mess they have made in the well of English
so defiled, they take pains to acquire a sufficiency of the
oglio to carry on trade and communication, improving or
disintegrating as they go on, until the original words are
28 WELCOME THE WESTERN MOUNTAINS.

transmogrified—almost deprived of their etymology, and
launched forth unrecognisable to all but the initiated.
Moving onwards in a north-easterly direction, as the
sun began to descend towards the earth, a dark and faintly
defined haze appeared in the distant west, deeper in some
spots than in others. I at first thought it was nothing but
a bank of clouds, until M , whose well-practised eyes had
not been long out of office, gave it as his opinion that we
were gazing on mountains. Sure enough, as we drew nearer,
and before the daylight had been exchanged for obscurity,
the irregular outlines of two high peaks towered up to a very
respectable height in the dusky sky, and the misty edges of
others in the background became more distinct. With rapture
and delight we welcomed again the ‘Western mountains,’
after a wearisome residence of nearly nine months on a plain
with nothing higher around us on which we could perch our-
selves than the conical mounds of earth that mark the graves
of those who have saluted the world. I recollected well
the last’ time I saw them, on that morning of the 17th
October, when they stood out in such glorious relief from
a sky beautifully covered with cirri, ranged in parallel
bars from south to north, high in the heavens; and how
surprised I was then to notice that their heads and sides
were already dappled and streaked with silvery snow that
had fallen no one knew when. And I also thought what
a strange thing it seemed, when about the middle of that
same day, the hills and the snow were hid in dismal
sombre clouds;—that instead of a bright cheerful sun, we
should have comparative darkness and gloom, with gusts of
wind, cold and biting from the frigid north, sweeping down
the streets of the Peking suburb, and across the large tract of
waste ground over which the funeral cortege of our murdered
men moved slowly in the blinding dust carried by the shiver-
ing blast, until the Russian cemetery was reached. It was a
notable day for all, and the noble hills at whose feet the sad

 
THE VILLAGE OF TE-TAU AND ITS INN. 29

tragedy had been enacted, and whose grey summits frowned
down in silent reproof on the torturers of helpless men,
skulked for very shame behind the opportune gloom that
wrapped all visible nature in a mournful shade.

When the twilight had forsaken us, and everything was hid
in darkness, after groping about to keep on the proper path, we
entered the village, hamlet, or town of Te-taun—distant forty
leagues, or nearly fourteen miles from Tien-tsin—a most
wretched assemblage of earthen burrows huddled up together,
and thrown on the top of an artificial mound. This was
hemmed in on both sides by a canal fed from a small lake
somewhere to the east, spanned over by a couple of primitive
bridges of square stone slabs, by one of which we rattled
into the dark main street, and were conducted to the only
inn in the place, where, passing through a narrow gateway,
we entered as unpromising and neglected an establishment
as civilised man ever ventured into. The most villanous
smells greeted us, accompanied by a flock of unwashed
men, who by their obsequiousness and bawling, and readi-
ness to grapple with everything we possessed, seemed to be
landlords on the verge of bankruptcy, but with very meagre
notions of business and civility. This was our first night’s
halt, and it did not strike either of us as a -place likely
to afford pleasant or even tolerable accommodation ; but
remembering the motto with which we had set out, we
could not well grumble, nor did we feel inclined to do
so. Journeying in a new country brings such an amount of
excitement and expectancy that an uncomfortable night
in perspective has no terrors, though one feels more at ease
when one knows that a quiet chamber, free from nocturnal
small fry, and destitute of gratuitous aromas, awaits the
termination of a glowing day’s ride.

Our ponies were led through a mass of filth to where some
posts were fixed in the ground, with wooden mangers to. each ;
to these they were fastened, and in the mangers they were
30 TREATMENT OF OUR PONIES.

supposed to feed. After this they might go to sleep on their
legs, for, tied up so close to the stakes that their knees could
not reach the ground, it was impossible for them to assume
the recumbent position; indeed, we have always noticed that
the Chinese never allow their ponies or mules by any means
to rest in the natural manner; for what reason we could
not learn, unless it be that forage is too scarce and expen-

|
ma

 

First night’s halting-place.

sive to be made bedding of, and that if the animals lay down
in the mud a great amount of time and labour would be
expended in cleaning them.

Yet the same treatment, unnatural and prejudicial though
it be, is in vogue at Manila—where the ponies are continually
kept standing on wooden platforms, without a chance of
relieving their limbs by a change of position; and where, it
might be supposed, the Spaniards would have inculeated a

”
FOUL ROOMS. 31

better management of the hardy little beasts bred on the
Philippine islands.

It was now our turn to be shown the ‘cribs’ we were to
occupy for the night, and though the general aspect of the
place gave no hopes of anything like luxury, we were not
prepared to adapt ourselves readily to the hovel, the door of
which was ostentatiously flung wide by one of the perfumed
attendants. Opening like a cellar from the courtyard, this
repulsive room exhibited nothing but mud and cobwebs—
mud roof, mud walls, mud floor, and two mud benches, one
on each side, to serve as sitting and sleeping places; with a
bank of mud between, in which was fixed an iron pot that
had been but recently used in the preparation of some non-
descript meal. It had left a most ungrateful taint to mingle
with the damp, earthy emanations from soil, dust, and musty
goods; in truth it was of such a nasty character, that we were
driven out again into the courtyard, before we had time to
examine the means of ventilation afforded by two small
windows covered carefully with oiled paper. The remaining
rooms, which all opened into the courtyard, like so many
pig-styes, were even worse. We had almost given up all
thoughts of sleeping under cover, when a lumber or store
room was discovered and explored. Though it was about
as foul a place as the other, and as exempt from any
claim to cleanliness, it was pronounced just possible that a
few hours might be passed on the stove bed-place at the end
of a small space partitioned off from the larger one. Herme-
tically closed windows, condemned for ages to remain fixed
in their primitive posts, and to moulder there, were uncere-
moniously thrust outwards or inwards, to the great discom-
fiture of mammoth spiders, that had been ousted out of their
retreats and fastnesses, and stood menacingly eyeing us in
secure corners, with the remains of their cunningly-woven
fabrications adhering to their limbs. Other shutters, too
obdurate to relinquish their hold, had great apertures poked
32 AN UNCOMFORTABLE SUPPER,

in them for the admission of air whenever the walls and
frames would admit of our taking such a liberty.

But all to no purpose —the heat was sickening, and more
intensely steamy than we had ever experienced it before; and
with the smells that, pervaded the abode, made us feel un-
comfortable enough. No improvement took place in our
condition when two saucers were. filled with fetid bean oil,
the pith of a small kind of rush immersed in it serving the
purposes of a wick, and combustion sent forth a smoky efflu-
vium partaking largely of the unenviable qualities of asafcetida.

We had nothing to eat but eggs, nor to drink but tea—
brick tea. The former were boiled almost as hard as stones,
their freshness being more than doubtful. I have reason to
believe that the Chinese, with their partiality for everything
bearing the impress of antiquity, are inclined to favour the
quality of staleness in eggs, as well as in other articles of
food ; but hunger made us careless on the subject until a
fair number had been disposed of, and then we were too
tired to reflect on what we had eaten. But the tea was alto-
gether beyond the bounds of toleration after the first dose had
been greedily swallowed, and, had it been taken as a sample,
would for ever have damaged the reputation of China as a
grower of that commodity. It tasted more like a concen-
trated decoction of hay seeds, with a powerful soupcon of the
bitter extract of Socotrine aloes, than an infusion of the
fragrant leaf. The basins, too, out of which we drank were
deeply incrusted with mud and the accumulated dirt of
years, like the dusky hide of the garlic-smelling individual
who acted in the double capacity of hest and waiter. His
curiosity and rudeness were only equalled by the pains he
took to project his physiognomy as near as he could to ours
without actually commg into collision, and by shouting as
loudly as stentorian lungs would enable him, whenever he
volunteered to give information or replied to a question.

We were labouring under a thirst that could not be
UNPALATABLE WATER. 33

quenched by the liquids brought to us. The water was de-
testable and lukewarm, swarming with active little denizens
which, as animalcule, most of us may have admired micro-
scopically. Here they appeared to have increased to a very
unusual size, and were endowed apparently with a corres-
ponding degree of strength and energy to compensate for the
demands made upon them for exertion by the tenacious nature
of the semi-fluid medium in which they were condemned to
exist. The alum-stick was asked for, but though an article
of common utility at Tien-tsin, and other places where the
water contains earthy particles, here it seemed to have been
omitted from their brief register of household necessaries, or
rather luxuries. After a patient search, a small fragment was
procured, and presented to us as a curiosity, while the donors
stood by as we proceeded to test its efficacy in rendering the
liquid drinkable; but, as bad luck would have it, little benefit
resulted from its use—though the quantity of mud, &c., de-
posited was somewhat astounding — for it gave, in return for
what it had removed, a rather potent astringency and gout
of the salt, which, added to the stirring and handling, and
tepid condition of the compound, almost acted on us as an
emetic.

Our evening meal, though what on ordinary occasions
might be called ‘light,’ lay heavy upon us, and to aug-
ment the group of miseries contained in the being ‘out of
sorts,’ myriads of audacious flies, as inquisitive and offensive
as the people of the inn, congregated on our hands and
faces, titillating them to a degree impossible to bear ; ; while, as
a grand finale for the later performance of the evening,
invisible mosquitos and dreaded sand-flies hovered around in
such swarms that the air was filled with the soft thin music
of their wings.

After seeing our ponies fed—that is, entertained—on a
manger-full of chopped straw, a small measure of fine bran,
and another of barley, mixed up into a soft consistency

D
34 DESERTED BY SLEEP.

by water—and after noting that they had obtained a sufii-
ciency of that element, which required that they should be led.
about in order to ‘ warm it, and settle their stomachs’ before
commencing their meal — M went to bed. By which it
will be understood that he retired to the inner apartment,
laid himself down on the brick couch, carefully enveloping
every part of his body—head, feet, and hands included—in a
sheet which he had, with great forethought and luxurious
intentions, brought on the journey.

I, alas! could seek no such mitigation of my woes and
grievances. Somnus had fairly deserted me—been driven
away by the discomforts everywhere around, and the only
resource of which I might avail myself was reading or writing
by the smoky flame of the primitive nauseating lamp. And to
these I applied myself with a desperate determination to
think of nothing about or in the room, but to coerce nature
into a sleepy mood by means of deep thought and physical
fatigue.

No sooner, however, had I settled vigorously to the task,
than ‘ping’ sounded shrilly out a mosquito in dangerous
propinquity to my ear. His war-note is abruptly terminated
by a loud twang, after which he is silent. He has fixed him-
self on the nape of my neck as tenderly as if he had a special
regard for the subject of my studies, and was unwilling to
disturb me; but I know his subtle nature too well, and dis-
lodge him with all speed, though before I can do so he has
left evidence of his visit that will become more conspicuous
by to-morrow morning.- While I am scratching and tearing
at the spot, a goodly company, in skirmishing order, have
safely established themselves over my perspiring face, their
long, thin, angular legs enabling them to alight so gently and
so stealthily that I am totally unconscious of their proximity
until the handkerchief is once more raised to my moist
features, and I can then see their puny bodies, only partially
gorged with thickened blood, wheeling steadily between me

 
A MOSQUITO ENTERTAINMENT. 35

and the lamp, and hear their emphatic clamours at my in-
terruption of their feast.

As the evening wears on, they throw off their timorous-
ness, and boldly advance, heedless of annihilation, to a general
attack on every exposed surface; and the absolute necessity
there exists for acting continually and vigilantly on the
defensive throws me into a feverish deluge of perspiration,
from which I am only able to rescue myself by a walk in
the courtyard.

Presently I return and make another fruitless attempt to
read. I have been studiously endeavouring to peruse the
Chamber of Horrors in Dante’s ‘ Inferno,’ and, finding the
task too great, quietly set myself down to be worried to
sleep, after closing the book and thrusting it out of the way
of the rancid bean oil that appears to burn without any pal-
pable diminution in quantity or improvement in smell.

Scarcely have I adjusted my limbs to the slope of the
table bars on which they rest, and resigned, as nearly as
possible, all external cares, when a large brown member of
the gnat family circles around the light for a few seconds,
keeping up an animated duet with an emaciated grey indi-
vidual of the same species whose movements are less active
and more feeble, and whose tiny voice is of the shrillest treble
imaginable. Soon they are joined by a zebra-striped vete-
ran, and the trio, like the witches in ‘ Macbeth,’ dance
madly around, chanting their baneful maledictions savagely
in my ears, until they are disturbed by a whiff from the
handkerchief, and away they go to swell the ranks of the
throng that make such a formidable din in the vicinity of the
bed-place.

I have hardly time to see them fairly away than a
quartette of the orchestra — hungry and lank as musi-
cians generally are—have, uninvited and unwelcomed,
alighted from their aerial promenade on the back of my hand,
and there they are, busily refreshing themselves after their

D2
36 THE: SAND-FLY.

dulcet performance, greedily sucking up the vital fluid through
their long, sharp trunks. At last they have obtained a suffi-
ciency, and are ungratefully rejecting in its place an irritant
fluid.

Worst of all, only a short distance from these sanguinary
creatures, working silently away on its own account, is
the terrible and much-dreaded sand-fly — an insignificant-
looking emerald-green mite, not one-half the size of the

(lh

f
ah a

|

en

 

Comfort of a Chinese Inn.—The Comet.

mosquito, but possessing ten times its venom. I aim at its
destruction, but it is as quick in retreat as in attack, and
escapes into the darkness.
THE .COMET OF ’61. 37

This torturing attack and defence go on until I am per-
fectly fagged out, and can bear up against it no longer, for
it is a thoroughly exhausting business; and yet J dare not go
to sleep.

I determined on making my couch in the open air—
with all its risks of damp and rain, and danger from some
of the vagabonds whom I saw prowling about as I
entered, and who looked anything but trustworthy. One
of the mouldering half doors is torn from its languishing
supports and dragged to the outside, where it is laid on a
ricketty manger standing on three and a half-legs near the
mules and ponies, who sniff and snort at my appearance.

Without delay, and without any preparatory undressing, I
am, after two or three acrobatic feats over and under it, at
last on its surface, and, stretching gladly out, offer myself
the consolation that at length I have secured a sleeping-place
where the gnats and sand-flies may chance to miss me, and
where I may escape being stifled in heat.

Alas, I am speedily undeceived! The air is so chokingly
warm and heavy, and the ground throws up such reeking
vapours, that the drowsy god remains callous to my appeals.

A long time is spent star-gazing, and following that mys-
terious comet which took us all by surprise a few days
before. What portent of change does it bear to the Chinese
empire? I wonderingly think.
38

CHAPTER III.

STORY OF THE GENERAL CHOO.

IEN-FUNG—the ‘Abundant Plenty’ — has been re-

ported sick and dead times without end within the last

two months. May these reports be incorrect, and may not
some dreadful convulsion shake China to pieces? *

When beggars die there are no comets seen,
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

What intrigue and wickedness may even at this moment
be hatching—set on foot by the presence of the awe-
inspiring meteor through whose ghost-like substance we are
watching the stars? Another comet did so, and we re-
member reading the old-fashioned tale. We endeavour to
recall it.

Nearly a thousand years have been put down to the credit
of the present world, and to the land of Sinim in particular,
since the son of an obscure scribbler and village pedagogue,
too lazy and idle to work in the fields, entered himself on
the muster roll of a horde of freebooters, and soon proved an
able and desperate associate in every perilous enterprise in
which courage and cunning were required. The illustrious
Tang dynasty was drawing near the usual Chinese dynastic
dissolution, with its long list of wise princes, who had ruled
so well, and who had raised the national prosperity to a

* Strange to say, Hien-fung died a few weeks after these notes were
penned, and his son, Key-syang— the ‘ Auspicious Omen ’—now sits on
the Dragon throne.
A PLOTTING PRIME MINISTER. 39

degree before unknown,—as far beyond that of the Western
middle ages as the civilisation of Europe of the present day is
superior to the grovelling semi-barbarism of the modern
Chinese. They were rapidly losing their manly policy and
sage governance in degenerate profligacy and imbecile coun-
sels, though retaining energy enough to crush this and other
gangs of plunderers and cut-throats, who at the present day
would be dubbed rebels and patriots.

Choo, as this promising youth was named, with his accom-
plices in crime, was obliged to sue for mercy, and obtained
it only to become the, in all probability, willing slave and
swashbuckler of the traitorous, plotting, prime minister,
Tsuy-ying, who, to serve a purpose he had in view, procured
for him a high command somewhere towards the frontier of
the empire, and ‘to make assurance doubly sure,’ in winning
him over, bestowed on him many marks of his favour and
condescension. At this time the eunuchs were numerous at
court — probably as many as existed a few years ago, when
their number was said to amount to 5,000. This large estab-
lishment, besides other means of replenishment, was main-
tained by a law passed more than thirty years ago, ordaining
that the sons of murderers who had destroyed the male heirs
of any one should be given over for emasculation and the
service of the palace.

Some of these domestics were men of ability and tact, and
their duties and position around the throne, and in the resi-
dence of the Emperor, gained for them a more than just share
of the Imperial ear and confidence. At least so thought the
minister, and his whole mind was bent on devising the
most efficient and safe means of securing their extirpation.
Therefore, at an early stage of the proceedings, he brought
forward a plea, the necessity of which he had not arguments
sufficient to maintain, and endeavoured to convince the
sovereign that it was essential to the safety of the kingdom
that these men should be destroyed. The Emperor was,
40 AN UNWARY MONARCH.

however, not convinced of their treasonable offences, and
expressed an assurance that they could not all be guilty of
the charges preferred against them, as he knew several who
were fully entitled to his confidence. To prevent the possi-
bility of a conspiracy, he permitted some of the most question-
able characters to be punished as examples for the others.

The intentions of the minister were foiled, and his jealousy
and ambition thwarted by this leniency, but only for a time.
His designs were made more desperate and urgent, by learn-
ing that the eunuchs had become aware of the enmity he
bore towards them, and were counter-plotting his downfall
and destruction. At this crisis, he privately invited the
General Choo to his palace, and by feasting and well-timed
flattery, with a sprinkling of hard wrung tears, he obtained
his promise of assistance in the developement of his plans.
Then pretending to the Emperor that the army under Choo’s
command was necessary in the ¢éapital, to counterbalance
that of another force under a general who had assumed a
haughty and dictatorial manner towards the government,
Choo was summoned to guard the Imperial palace.

Soon after his arrival, sixteen leaders of a party who had
opposed Tsuy-ying in some of his measures were the first
victims sacrificed to ministerial vengeance; and speedily
after, seventy eunuchs were swept from the register of the
living world at a single establishment, and ninety at an-
other. With a clear knowledge of the Emperor’s simplicity
and dulness of perception, the minister attired himself in the
deepest mourning, shed bitter tears when he appeared before
him, and prostrated himself on the ground like a felon, as he
demanded the punishment which he confessed he merited,
for so prematurely dealing out justice without his master’s
sanction. The stratagem was successful. The Emperor
grieved to see the right hand of his empire so stricken and
cast down for this unauthorised, but, no doubt, wise infliction
of the law’s penalties towards conspirators; indeed, was so
THE MASSACRE OF EUNUCHS. 4)

much affected that he wept; and, anxious to condole with
and show his unalterable attachment and confidence in his
counsellor, he took off his girdle and graciously conferred it
upon him — thus elevating Tsuy-ying to the highest dignity
possible.

But the work was only begun; for the minister’s malice
was still but partially appeased, and he was determined to
gratify it to the utmost.

Several hundred of the body guard and palace spies were
yet in the way, and Choo and his bloodthirsty soldiery were
ever ready, only awaiting the signal, to perpetrate any atrocity
required at their hands. The Emperor was again appealed
to to save his throne from the dangerous intrigues of the
eunuchs, who were said to be secretly preparing to murder
him and usurp the government, and it was urged that nothing
short of extermination of the whole body could be recom-
mended to avert a catastrophe which was all but inevitable.
With such ominous reports dinning incessantly in his ears,
from the tongue of such a seemingly faithful servant — and
noticing the altered demeanour of the eunuch guard, the
despot weakly yielded.

Everything having been prepared, the general quietly un-
leashed his bloodhounds at the dead of night, and the miserable
creatures were hunted out of their unguarded sleeping-places,
and despatched in cold blood. ‘Their doleful cries of
murder,’ says the ancient chronicler, ‘and shrieks for aid,
together with yells of indignation and imprecations at the
merciless injustice done to them, extended to every part, and
sounded dolefully far beyond the precincts of the palace.’

For this service, and by Tsuy-ying’s influence and interest,
Choo was ennobled, had the title of king bestowed upon hin,
was invested by Imperial authority with the unimpeachable
designation of Tseun-chung—which signifies the Perfectly
Faithful—and, with the title, the highest post the army could
furnish, corresponding to that of commander-in-chief.
42 MURDER OF THE PRIME MINISTER.

When too late, Tsuy-ying began to perceive that his useful
friend had discovered the value of the powers with which he
had been invested, and that their possession had roused to a
highly hazardous pitch an ambitious spirit of which the
Perfectly Faithful had not previously given any indications.
Alarmed for the consequences — though he still maintained
an external show of friendship~he began to cherish very
different views, and to prepare himself for the worst in the
struggle for domination with a by no means despicable com-
petitor. Unfortunately, he was not quick enough to save
himself; for Tseun-chang, with the capital at his mercy and
the soldiery at his beck and call, observed his precautions,
and, fearing that he might yet possess the means of advan-
tageously opposing him, caused him, with several of his
friends, to be murdered.

To be the ruler of this great, country had been long the
desire of this upstart, but he had the subtlety and patience
to await his opportunity. Having prospered so well in
counter-plotting, and attained the moral and physical force
necessary to enable him firmly to establish his prestige, he
found nothing now remained to delay the realisation of his
most aspiring wishes but the person of the Emperor. As no
obstacle lay in the way of removing him from the throne, it
was boldly determined on that he should at once resign or
abdicate in favour of the Perfectly Faithful; and a written
request to that effect was despatched to His Majesty, accom-
panied by a military force strong enough for any emergency.

An entertainment was being given in the Gallery of Joy
(how very contradictory these names seem to be bestowed!),
at which the Emperor presided, and to this place the mandate
came, and the soldiers. Before His Imperial Majesty had
time to descend from the chair of state, they forcibly ex-
pelled the guests and the spectators, amidst lamentations for
their own fate, and curses on the head of the incautious Tsuy-
ying for recommending to such powerful offices the base,
CHOO’S USURPATION OF THE THRONE. 43

unworthy Tsuen-chung, who was now overturning the throne
and altars of the land. Angry and grieved, they tumul-
tuously crowded the streets, impatiently looking out for some
solution of the mysterious proceedings in the gallery, and
were somewhat relieved when the Emperor arrived amongst
them. Notwithstanding his many great and glaring faults,
the people were strongly attached to him, revering him for
the sake of his dynastic predecessors; so, as he passed through
their ranks, their joyful exclamations rose high and loud, and
a universal benediction pealed out clear and distinctly, ‘Wan
Suy: ten thousand years: live for ever!’

From the mass of unfaithful soldiers that closely hemmed
him in from his devoted subjects, he answered with tears,
‘Say not Wan Suy, for I shall never again be your sovereign!’

He and his queen were conveyed to prison, and strongly
and carefully guarded, only a few servants being permitted
to remain near them. No communication was allowed them
with their friends outside. The sceptre of empire had been
wrested from their hands, and their imprisonment was ren-
dered doubly irksome by the jealous manner in which they
were watched and every movement criticised. Bereaved of
hope, and living in constant dread of death, they gave them-
selves up to grief, and, like many other unfortunate wretches
in more enlightened countries and times, tried to find a
solace for their woes in frequent recourse to intoxication —
the means for which were very readily furnished by the usur-
per’s command. Tsuen-chung, at length becoming tired of
wearing a mask so long and of soothing the alarms of the
populace, availed himself of a favourable opportunity, and
privately ordered two of his officers, with a hundred men, to
the prisoners’ apartments.

After butchering the attendants who were found near the
door, they forced their way into the apartment of the Emperor,
whom they found recovering from a fit of inebriation. The
noise and tumult at the entrance had roused him, and with
44 DEATH OF THE EMPEROR CHAU-TISUNG.

but a single garment thrown around his body, he ran or stag-
gered about a pillar to escape from his unrelenting murderers.
Their footsteps were too steady and fleet, and their hands
too well trained to the work, to suffer him to escape. He
was perforated by a dozen knives, and his pean body
dragged away to a place of concealment.

When tidings of the assassination were brought to Choo,
he artfully broke out into violent demonstrations of rage and
sorrow, throwing himself on the ground and giving way to
floods of tears. ‘ The slaves have disobeyed me,’ he screamed,
‘and will cause my name to be infamous to ten thousand
ages!’ The better to blind the people, he forthwith directed
that his two creatures—the agents in the Emperor’s death—
should be executed.

One of them, Yew Yung, whose dishonourable name has
been committed to history, on going to meet: his death, called
out recriminatingly, ‘I am sold a victim to stifle the re-
proaches of the world—but how will it appear to, the gods?’

The ill-fated Emperor, Chau-tsung, left nine sons, and
these Tsuen-chung soon suspected would become barriers to
his successful progress. He therefore resolved to clear them
from his path, and inviting them to an entertainment at his
residence near the Lake Kew-Ku, he barbarously caused them
all to be strangled and their bodies to be consigned to the
waters of the lake.

He had now reached the summit of despotic power ;
everything likely to interfere with his pleasure or authority
had been sedulously put aside, and he gave himself up to an
existence such as a mind like his could relish, with

His companions unletter’d, rude and shallow :
His hours filled up with riots, banquets, sports.

But one of those strange, unaccounted-for meteors—like

that I had been peering at, as it sped with scarcely percep-
tible velocity on its midnight journey across the heavens,
SUPERSTITIOUS CRUELTY. 45

sprung up suddenly as if to accuse him of his misdeeds, and
every night threw its ghastly, phosphorescent light in pale
yellow vapours far behind it. The eyes of the Chinese in
those troubled days were furtively directed towards the
comet, while omens of bad portent were predicted to the
nations of the world. Tsuen-chung had not yet completed
his amount of crime. The visitation of the comet filled his
mind with dread and apprehensions of misfortune to himself ;
so he suddenly remembered that thirty men still lived, whose
influence at court had long caused him anxiety. They had
ventured to rebuke him sternly for his partiality to one of
his favourites; and the weird-like glare of the celestial appa-
rition impelled him to their destruction, on political grounds
alone. The comet one night witnessed their last breath.
What does it behold now?

A favourite—because a few of the Literati, whose pro-
vince it was to examine candidates and to confer degrees,
would not permit him to attain to scholastic rank in con-
sequence of his unfitness—conceived a violent dislike to them,
and going to Tsuen-chung, said, ‘ These fellows always call
themselves the “pure flow” (a Chinese phrase for persons
who are incorruptible by bribes or undue influence), they
deserve to be thrown into the Yellow river and converted
into the “muddy flow!””’
to, and the tyrant laughed merrily at the joke, while he
vowed that the suggestion should be carried out instantly.
Of course the luckless scholars perished.

The defunct Empéror’s wife was still alive, and to make
more secure for himself the Imperial throne, on which
he yet sat tremblingly, he married her. For some brief
time she contrived to inspire him with a certain degree
of respect and even awe, by her rigid correctness and great
intelligence, qualifying, for a time, his cruel and dissolute
habits; but after her decease he became as abandoned as
before, and allowed his slaves and favourites to commit the

The heartless wag was listened
46 MERITED RETRIBUTION—A WORTHY SON.

greatest atrocities, until his evil actions recoiled upon him-
self. His wicked and unprincipled heart induced him to
perpetrate a diabolical act in his own household, which so
exasperated his son Moo-te, a lad only sixteen years of age,
but in every way worthy of his sire, that while the former
lay ill in bed, he abused him in foul language, murdered him,
and then sent off a messenger to slay his brother, accom-
panied by a document he had forged in his father’s name,
setting forth that his brother, Yew-wan, was a rebellious and
disobedient son, but that Moo-te was faithful and dutiful.
The army was also thereby commanded to destroy Yew-
wan, and to deliver the control of their actions and of the
nation to Moo-te.

In the drawing up of this paper it is supposed that he had
been aided by one of the leading generals. By liberal dona-
tions to the troops, and with the help of this instrument, he
ascended the throne, and then wasted ten years in the most
profligate manner, until, in the twenty-sixth year of his age,
he committed suicide on hearing of the approach of an enemy
who was marching towards his head-quarters to give him
battle for his empire.

Thus terminated the After Liang Dynasty, and with its
memories faded from my mind all external impressions, for
I had launched into and was gently sailing along the margin
of the Lethean Sea, when whirr—

The weak-eyed bat,
With short shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing,

but not without giving me a thorough start-up, which nearly
went to upset bed-board, manger, and occupant; completely
alarmed my equine neighbours, and drew forth a stern round
of grumbling, swearing, and ill-natured remarks from the
Jehu. He sprung out of the cart to secure the animals,
which broke away and went scampering over the place, then
betook himself to the dormitory of the landlord and his

\
CHINESE FONDNESS FOR BATS. 47

assistants in order to obtain the services of a watchman, as
he seemed to dislike being disturbed, and was influenced by
much nervous anxiety on the score of thieves and murderers.

Our nocturnal disturber, the bat, the emblem of longevity,
painted and inscribed on lantern, congratulatory billet,
funebreal garniture and houschold decoration, and entitled
here :—the ‘heavenly mouse’ or ‘rat,’ the ‘fairy’ or ‘ flying
rat,’ the ‘night swallow,’ and the ‘belly wings,’ flies, it is
affirmed, with its head downwards, because its brain is
heavier than its body, and only ventures out when the
cruel hawk it so dreads during the day has gone to its nest :—
this little dusky visitor was but the avant courier of a small
colony of the Vespertilionide, the various members of which
came skimming and fluttering close to my face, and curled
under the eaves of the huts in the most erratic and confused
manner.

I watched them for a long time with sleepy admiration ;
for though the Chinese have given them such fantastic but
not inappropriate names, they have not been made by them
objects of superstitious. reverence, nor have the repulsive
habits of ‘Wandering Willie’ created any feelings of disgust
or disfavour. When the Greeks borrowed their unprepos-
sessing form to represent their terror-inspiring harpies, adding
the demoniacal face of a woman; when, by the Mosaical law,
the bat was classed among the forbidden and unclean ani-
mals; and when, in the middle ages, magicians, wizards,
and ‘ uncanny’ folk were believed to make it their confidant,
and the evil one could not be fitly represented unless he
had borrowed from them a pair of leathern wings, the sons
of Fohi and Han had compassionately taken this harmless
creature under their care. To preserve it from harm they
clothed it in the traditional garb of antiquity, and made it
the type of what is to them, perhaps, the most sacred and
best courted of all other terrestrial, and, maybe, celestial
favours in China—long life.
48 A NOISY NEIGHBOUR.

In spite of the heat, the steam, and the stench, the
flickering motions of my nocturnal visitor became less and
less frequent and interesting; the hollow-sounding click of the
watchman’s bamboo beater, produced by the terrified carter,
grew fainter and less obtrusive; the hum of the mosquitos
became rather pleasant than otherwise ; the comet appeared
to fade into thick fleecy clouds which descended earthwards,
bringing with them a respireable atmosphere and balmy
zephyrs to fan the feverish beings below, and—and I fell
asleep—into a sleep as sound as that enjoyed by either of
the seven noble youths of Ephesus, though not so long.

My repose was not extended to 187 years—or minutes.
An unfriendly Chanticleer, perched on a beam not far from
me, suddenly set up his reveile with most startling effect.
CHAPTER IV.

LONG BILLS — MOSQUITO TACTICS — RAISED VILLAGES AND LONELY
COUNTRY — A WATERY DISTRICT — MILITARY STATION — CHINESE SOL-
DIERS, THEIR QUALITIES AND TRADITIONS —- ENDURANCE OF PAIN —
THE NUMBER-ONE DOCTOR — MA-YUEN, A CHINESE WARRIOR — DISCI-
PLINE, FIDELITY, CRUELTY TOWARDS PRISONERS — DEATH BEFORE
DISHONOUR — THE AVERSION OF THE PEOPLE TO BEAR ARMS —
IMPERIAL ARMIES — MILITARY INSTITUTIONS — OUR CO-TRAVELLERS —
GREAT THIRST — HEADS OF THE PEOPLE — BEGGARDOM — HEARTLESS
PILFERERS.

‘TPVA-MI, ta-mi! Shumah ta-mi?’ M.’s firm decided tone
of voice roused me from as profound a sleep as mortal
man could possibly desire in such an inhospitable hostelry,
and to the consciousness of a stormy debate that was going on
between him and the so2-disant master of the house, regard-
ing the various items in a bill about three feet in length, at
the same time that I became thoroughly aware of the filthi-
ness of my al fresco bed-chamber. Though the daylight, in
a leaden-grey complexion, was struggling hard to obtain an
ascendency over the stubborn gloom of the dawn, and sur-
rounding objects were all but imperceptible, everybody was
astir and busy. M. had been up for a long time, had seen
the ponies fed, and was now beginning fo practise the Man-
darin tongue with a force and intentness of purpose that
would have startled a dormouse. The particular matter
in dispute at that moment seemed to be a novelty to hin, as
he kept repeating and inquiring about it, until I rejoiced
to learn that it was only barley—the barley that had been
given to our four-footed bed-fellows.
Rubbing my eyes, hot and painful as they felt from the
yellow glare and smoky flame of the lamp, and scrambling
E
50 AN EXTORTIONATE HOST.

down from the hard board, booted and spurred, with legs
cramped and head aching, I did not find the prospect of
such an early getting-up at all cheering; but there was no
help for it, and I longed to get a mouthful of good air.
Another violent conflict of tongues ensued, when the total
amount of our charge for the seven hours’ entertainment was
announced. It was the almost fabulous sum of 4,000 cash,
equivalent to four dollars, or sixteen shillings and eightpence
sterling! This was enough to make a small independence
for any frugal Chinese to lend out at interest! So uncon-
scionable a squeeze was not to be submitted to for such
paltry accommodation.

M. was firm ; the host was loquacious, urgent, and stiff-
necked; but the former conquered, and something less than
2,000 of the base coinage sufficed to satisfy all claims. The.
man at length retired with a smiling countenance, no doubt
delighted at having discovered that the outside barbarians
knew the value of tchen as well as himself, and had as much
intelligence given them to guard against rapacious attacks.

There was no breakfast for us, and being as ready for
moving as we were when entering the village the evening
before, we had only to set the cart on its way and depart.
But the shaft mule was as contumacious and spiteful as I
have found the majority of her mongrel race. She had to be
coaxed, scolded, and castigated, and eventually punished by
a gag of thin sharp cord tied across from one cheek of the
bit to the other, and passing below the upper lip to rest
upon the gum, before she could be rendered at all tract-
able. Even then bullying and shouting were required in
addition to drive her under and between the shafts, and
to retain her there until the rude gear was fixed ; after
which a similar procedure had to be enforced against the
little jennet in the traces. All this occupied so much time.
that it was quite daylight before we could start, and the sun
had become fully visible ere we had crossed the stone bridge.
MOSQUITO BITES—A MONOTONOUS LANDSCAPE. 51

that led from the poverty-stricken village down a steep
bank to the low ground beyond.

Once fully awake, we began to feel the dreadfully irritat-
ing effects of the mosquitos’ operations. Every inch of skin
exposed to their venomous bites was raised into numerous
little eminences like ant-hills, or old-fashioned hair trunks
studded with round-headed brass nails. In the middle of
each mark was a semi-pellucid vesicle denoting the spot
where the merciless proboscis had pierced and burrowed.
The tingling, itching, and throbbing sensation that afflicted
face, neck, and hands, was excruciatingly annoying and
painful. The agony I endured for some hours is indescrib-
able, and can be but faintly imagined by those who have
never thoroughly undergone the process of tattooing as prac-
tised by the irresistible and active mosquito of North China.

With the cart in front jogging away at a lively pace, and
Ma-foo on his scragey grey Bucephalus bumping behind, we
moved along in anything but cheerful spirits, feeling as unre-
freshed by our short slumber as if we had never slept at all.
There was nothing in the country through which we rode to
divert our minds from the ‘ out of sorts’ condition we were
in, and the sun already gave tokens of a blistering day, as
it glanced upwards in a hazy flood of light.

Onwards we proceeded over a narrow track, in a great,
flat, and totally unpicturesque plain, with no living or moving
object, save some tiny white sails threading the convolutions
of a hidden canal that in all likelihood opens into the Peiho,
not far from Tien-tsin. Nothing was to be seen as far as
the eye could scan towards the horizon, but a low marshy
waste ; a sea of purplish-green heath, wild and desolate for
the greater part, with here and there some stunted patches
of unhealthy-looking millet and hemp suffering from neglect ;
a moor or heath of the most depressing aspect, worse even
than the Aldershot long valley on a November day. In
this scene there was an absence of trees, hedges, fences, or

E2
52 RAISED VILLAGES AND LOW COUNTRY.

walls, that gave it a monotony quite appalling. Away on
the extremity of the moor we presently distinguish high
mounds of earth, rising like islands at long intervals from
the dead level, and as we approach we perceive that they
are topped by haggard-looking villages of mud and millet-
stalks, with a few sickly willow trees striving to throw their
branches over the lowly dwellings, as if to screen their
poverty from observation.

From the mouth of the Peiho to within forty miles of
Peking, and on both sides of the river for very many miles
inland, the country seems to be generally lower than the
banks. High plots are raised to a height of at least. twelve
feet by. the earth dug out from a series of wide ditches
which always encircle them, and lead, when possible, to lower
levels. On these the villages are perched; such elevation
not only in smaller clusters of dwellings, but in the
towns, is rendered necessary, the natives inform us, in con-
sequence of the Peiho, at lengthened but uncertain periods,
overflowing its banks and inundating the whole country far
and near. It then submerges crops and everything on its
bosom sometimes for weeks together, during which time
great distress and inconvenience are occasioned by the un-
avoidable suspension of labour and loss of property.

Ominous-looking san pans, or flat-bottomed boats, kept
in good repair and preserved from the weather under little
sheds of millet-stalk, are gathered together around those
hamlets that lie far from the river, as well as near those on
its borders. We were at first perplexed as to the use that
could possibly be made of these punts, seeing they were so
numerous and so much cared for, and yet there were no
canals nor sheets of water near on which they could be
serviceable. We afterwards learnt that they formed the sole
means of maintaining a communication between one place
and another during the time the country was laid under
‘water.
TEMPORARY AND PERMANENT LAGOONS. 53

As we rode on, the whole surface of the plain we travelled
over gave more conclusive evidence of the former existence
of a temporary lagoon, in fragments of shells mixed up with
the soil or thinly spread over the fields. Among them
were entire specimens of the lymneus stagnalis, whose pleasure
it is to bask in sunny nooks on the edges of pools, and a
small bivalve shell somewhat resembling the mactra. Nu-
merous saline incrustations and efflorescences met with,
proved that the earth had not been disturbed for some
months.

Not a loose stone was to be found anywhere for miles
around us. Everything went to prove that many inches
thick of mud are deposited over a wide tract of land on
each side of the river when a strong east wind long prevails
in the gulf, and drives the waters up the tributary channels
until they rise beyond the banks. Then the flat nature of
the country offering no impediment to their outward spread,
an inundation takes place, the untoward consequences of
which can only be remedied by the slow process of evapora-
tion, and at its termination a fresh stratum of prolific soil is
found imposed on that left a few years before.

From information picked up among the villagers, one is
led to believe that these floods are becoming less frequent in
occurrence and extent. There is, too, a corresponding dimi-
nution of the damage inflicted. This change is ascribable to
some alteration in the bed of the Peiho, and also to the influ-
ence of the extensive bar at its mouth, as wellas toa general
elevation of the land towards the border of the gulf; for in
the direction of Pau-ting-fu — the capital of the province of
Chili—there is a vast permanent lagoon, thirty or forty miles
in length, intersected by several streams or small rivers;
and many of the people who reside in the Egyptian-looking
huts fixed in the artificially-raised terraces of mud in this
region, gave it as their opinion that the water in their neigh-
bourhood is not so deep as it used to be, because they
é4 A LONELY GUARD-IIOUSE.

could now cultivate the water-lily in places where the flood
was over their heads a few years ago.

In the middle of the loneliest and wildest stretch, the
meagre track led us close to a solitary cottage. We had
noticed its dilapidated condition for some time. It had
been built on the low ground, and showed such visible
neglect, that we supposed it could only be some house of

 

Chinese Guard-house,

refuge for destitute wanderers over the dismal waste in
wintry weather, or a shieling for strayed cattle on tempes-
tuous nights; but we were agreeably surprised to find, on
coming up to it, that it was a guard-room or small military
station occupied by about a dozen soldiers, some of whom we
could see sleeping on a couch inside, while others were
walking about or playing cards on the limited square of
cleared ground in front. A nearer inspection satisfied us
TARTAR SOLDIERS. 55

that the building was not really so bad as it appeared at
a distance. The walls were of the usual materials — mud
and grain stems, the windows were rather small, but the
front was smoothly plastered and white-washed, for the
better display of the arms. These were neatly fastened against
it, and comprised about a dozen handy matchlocks hanging
by their slings at one side of the doorway, and four swords,
two red-plumed spears, and two fourteen or sixteen feet
jingalls reared against the eave at the other side, with their
complement of black bottle-like powder flasks in close
proximity to each fire-arm.

As soon as they noticed us, these pings got up and
made every demonstration of good will, smiling, laughing,
and sawing the air with their clasped hands until we
had passed on; and as often as we looked back we observed
them still watching us in the most friendly manner. As
they stood there, endeavouring to exhibit to us the senti-
ments of welcome and pleasure excited by our presence
among them, we could not help asking ourselves whether
these lusty fellows, whose bare necks and chests testified to
their having attained the very highest physical development,
had fled, fugitives from Enfield rifles, Armstrong guns,
cavalry sabres, and Punjaub lances, but nine short months
ago! Tall, powerful, and symmetrically built, they were
fair specimens of the northern army sent to uphold the
policy of the war party at Peking in 1860, and to resist
the approach of Anglo-French influences and the moral
pressure applied in the direction of the Northern Court. In
spite of numbers, choice of defensible positions, a highly
advantageous country, and brute strength—the quick move-
ments of the invading force, their wonderful arms of pre-
cision, and the lightning darts of Sikhs and dragoons,
proved too much for the bows and arrows of the once-
dreaded Scythians, the light squibby matchlocks and fan-
tastic ‘whingers’ of the so-called cavalry, and the jingalls,
56 THEIR PAST AND PRESENT PRESTIGE.

rude spears, and badly-trained field-guns of the footmen.
What appeared to be a formidable enemy too soon for their
reputation became an ubiquitous one, nearly always in
the right place at the wrong time, until it was acknow-
ledged that catching Tartars was no easy matter. When
caught, the difficulty seemed to be what to do with them.

It was impossible to avoid confessing that they were
by no means destitute of that courage which would have
enabled them to make a stout and a bold stand against an
invading force armed and disciplined in the same manner as
themselves. Their ignorance of our art of war, and the
potent weapons we use, made them poor opponents.

Some of them, perhaps, were in front of the little group that
watched us from the bleak-looking guard-house. They had
been a warlike race in the middle ages, and had gone through
many a stirring campaign in Central Asia under the leader-
ship of the famous Madyes, alias Ogus Khan; they had burst
into Media and slain Cyaxares; they had overrun Poland
and Russia; they had penetrated Silesia, vanquished Duke
Mieczzlaw, and desolated the whole of Hungary — in short,
had considerably alarmed Europe. But in the nineteenth
century the tables were completely turned. Even Genghis
Khan with his innumerable hosts would not have had the
shadow of a chance against the armament the allies brought
into their middle kingdom. The Celestials had not a chance.

Cavalry they would wait for and meet, though they could
not but find themselves wofully at a disadvantage and unable
to inflict any injury: infantry they would slowly retire be-
fore—regardless, apparently, of the not very deadly volleys
poured into their disorderly masses; but those dreadful
cannon — those malignant genii hatched and perfected in
the ‘outer and tributary kingdoms,’ they could not stand
against, and afforded, by the pell-mell retreats they made, a
most unequivocal test of the magical powers those machines
were capable of exercising on the minds, if not the bodies, of
THEIR ADAPTABILITY FOR WARFARE. 57

the valiant ‘braves.’ Possessed of all the qualifications
necessary in the manufacture of first-rate soldiers — limbs
and bodies the very models of health and strength— they
seemed to be endowed with no small degree of patience
under adverse circumstances, while capable of enduring
much hardship without exhibiting its effects. How widely
they contrasted in physique with the long, thin-legged, weak- .
armed, and narrow-chested Hindostanees brought against
them in the field — men, the very feeding of whom requires
a commissariat, a transport, a retinue of servants, and other
complicated arrangements sufficient, one would imagine, to
smother any one department of an army in any country but
their own.

How very differently would these Indians have behaved had
affairs been reversed, and the Chinese been led against them,
officered, drilled, and armed by Europeans! Since October
last I have been strongly impressed with this idea, and am
quite of opinion that the Northern Chinese—Mongols or
Mantchus—are a match for any other Eastern people in war;
and from what I have been able to see of them in the course
of a good deal of rambling, I cannot help thinking that no
better men for soldiers could be found—out of Western
countries of course—were they enlisted young, trained,
rationed, and taught the use of arms in a proper manner.
Fed on coarse rice, the produce of the country, green vege-
tables, and an infinitesimal allowance of salt or fresh pork,
the troops opposed to the allied armies to me looked fit for
anything, could they have the advantages of discipline, good
leading, and instruction in the handling of modern fire-arms.

No men could stand pain better than they did. Many
I saw who had been wounded, and were found lying out
in the fields, days afterwards, in the places where they had
fallen, exposed during the day to the dreadful heat of the
sun, parched and burnt up by thirst and sick from pain, with
no creature near them to afford aid or consolation, held
53 PATIENCE WHILE SUFFERING PAIN AND HARDSHIP.

on to life, and were free from any of those fits of despondency
or grumbling which tend so much to retard recovery from
serious injuries. When at last carried in to the temporary
regimental hospital, not a complaint was made by them; on
the contrary, the calmness and cheerful resignation they
always displayed was most wonderful, and gave us the first
, favourable indications of their robust and hale constitutions
and equable tempers.

Two men in particular I remember well, one of whom —
a fine muscular fellow in the meridian of life and vigour—had
three bullets in his body, and his thigh-bone smashed and
splintered by another. He was discovered in a field at some
distance from our camping-ground after the final contest near
Peking, and though he had been lying out in this maimed
condition for a whole day and night, without a morsel of food
or a draught of water, he expressed no great emotion on
being addressed, but merely signified his desire to indulge in
a pipe of tobacco. While the bullets were being searched for
and extracted from their lodgment—a most tedious, difficult,
and painful operation when they have but recently entered,
but far more so after the wounds have been exposed to the
sun and dust, and the parts have begun to swell— though the.
probing must have caused the poor wretch the most excru-
ciating agony it is possible to conceive, it was all borne with
the greatest manliness, with scarcely a disturbed countenance,
and. without a murmur; and immediately after the necessary,
but torturing work was over, the man looked lively and
happy, and continued so until recovery.

He was a favourite with me, so I was often by the side
of his stretcher: he was such a masculine good-humoured fel-
low, it did one good to see him, and grin and nod with him.
He could not speak half-a-dozen words of our language.
He puffed away at his little brass-bowled pipe, contentment
depicted in every lineament of his bronzed face, and testified
his admiration of the skill and attention of our young doctor
THE ‘NUMBER ONE” DOCTOR. 59

by continually jerking up his thumb, as much as to say he
was a first-rate, or ‘number one’ man, and then pointed with
joyful satisfaction to his rapidly healing limb—kept immove-
able, easy, and comfortable in that wonderful fracture ap-
paratus. An interpreter was sometimes available, and then
interesting dialogues would take place, in which expressions
of gratitude were frequent for the kindness and care shown
him, of fear that he gave too much annoyance, and of a strong
determination not to join the soldiers again, should he ever be
able to return to his wife and children in their little home
near the Great Wall, where one of his first acts, he vowed,
would be to burn incense-sticks in grateful remembrance and
acknowledgment of the benefits he had received from his
thumb-friend, the doctor.

The other case was that of a man who had six lance-wounds
in various places, but the worst, and, as we thought, the
mortal one, was in the back, close to the shoulder-blade, where
the lung had been perforated by the lance-point. Faint and
weak from loss of blood while he spent a day and night in
the sharp and irritating millet stubble, he was as firm and
good-natured as the other sufferer, and whiffed away at the
gently soothing weed as he sat doubled up for many days with
pledgets and bandages to his wounds, constrained to assume
and remain in that position in consequence of the hemorrhage
that took place from the lung on the slightest movement.
He was quite as grateful and pleased as his companion, and
like him he also recovered. Both returned to their homes
from the Tien-tsin hospital, where a subscription had been
thoughtfully got up, and a good round sum in dollars accu-
mulated to pay their travelling expenses. What wonderful
stories they will retail to the inhabitants of the little out-of-
the-world villages they pass through, and how many long
evenings will be spent among their old friends in recounting
their adventures, and the hospitality they met with from the
‘Men beyond the Seas!’ The rations and the medical
60 MA-YUEN, A CHINESE WARRIOR.

comforts in hospital they can speak of, for they were liberally
supplied with everything, and took as kindly at once to beer,
porter, and rum, as if they had been initiated in childhood
into the mysteries of indiscriminate tippling as practised
in English cities. How they will astonish the rural popu-
lation in those lonely spots away towards the border of the
Supreme province, when telling of the manners, customs,
and fighting qualities of the race which was to be decimated
by their old-world tactics, defences, and weapons!

The history of the Empire affords many examples of the
fidelity, wisdom, and courage that animated individuals and
armies in ages gone by, when martial honours and achieve-
ments were held in greater respect and much more highly
valued than in recent years. Some of the finest traits
which ennoble the profession of arms in any age or country
are still dwelt on in the eloquent narratives of historical and
traditional writers, and serve to illustrate a period of chival-.
rous zeal and integrity not much behind that of the brilliant
era of our own knights and crusaders.

Ma-yuen, for instance, who is recorded as having lived
contemporaneously with our Saviour, must have been a
valorous and high-spirited man, and the very model of a
soldier. He displayed the greatest bravery and judgment
in fighting and reducing to subjection the fiery Tartar tribes
who sought to invade and plunder China, then under the
rule of the Eastern Han dynasty, and in quelling the turbulent
and rapacious Cochin-Chinese.

What can be finer or grander in the development of a true
knight’s aspirations than his frequently expressed sentiment,
when entreated to retire from the dangers and fatigues of
the camp and field, that ‘the warrior should die on the
desert battle-field, his noblest pall his saddlecloth ; not in a
chamber amidst weeping women !’

There is an identity of feeling between this Bayard-like
speech and the cavalier turn of mind of one of the greatest
A TRUE SOLDIER'S ASPIRATIONS. 61

of modern novelists, when he says, deeply imbued with the
spirit in which he wrote: ‘It is the memory which the
soldier leaves behind him, like the long train of light that
follows the sunken sun. . . . WhenI think of death,
as a thing worth thinking of, it is in the hope of pressing
one day some well-fought and hard-won field of battle, and
dying with the shout of victory in my ear—that would be
worth dying for; and more, it would have been worth
having lived for !’

The long accounts of Ma-yuen’s expeditions against hordes
of ruffians, and the brilliant acts of valour displayed by him
in suppressing mutinies and rebellions, raised to oppose the
authority of the Emperor Kwang-wu, are recited in thrilling
tales written in fanciful language. One Chinese historian
thus describes him as he appeared before the enemy at
Kwanyang :

‘Ma-yuen rode out dressed in an azure robe, his armour
shining like quicksilver, his head surmounted by pheasant
plumes in a white and costly helmet. His spear was eighteen
feet long. He sat upon a horse with an azure mane, and
thus placed himself in front of the battle.’ How forcibly
does this poetical description remind one of the fine old
national song of ‘Chevy Chase,’ as it pictures the brave
Douglas, whose career was closed in that desperate engage-
ment, on the eve of attack :—

Earl Douglas on a milk-white steed,.
Most like a baron bold,

Rode foremost of his company,
Whose armour shone like gold.

After many long years’ service this warrior at last met.a sol-
dier’s death, and realised his wish; for marching against the
people of Wu-ling, in Hu-Kwang, he got hemmed in amongst
themountains during the severest months of winter byagreatly
superior force, and, with his troops, suffered extreme pri-
vations. Another general was, with all haste, despatched to
62 PARDONABLE DISOBEDIENCE.

his aid, but on inquiring he found the brave Ma-yuen no
more, and his force prostrated with fever. The next Emperor,
Ming-ti, did his memory justice, and rendered his own reign
the more brilliant and happy by marrying the deceased ge-
neral’s daughter, who is celebrated as having been as talented
and virtuous as her parent had been faithful and valiant.

In the ninth century, a Chinese general, Wang-sen, during
the reign of He-tsung of the Suy dynasty, finding provisions
failing him on a march, gave orders that all the old and
feeble should remain behind in order to preserve the efii-
ciency of the troops, and made a declaration that if any
presumed to follow by disobeying this order, they should be
put to death instantly. His aged mother accompanied the
army, and was attended to by the general’s brothers, who
still ventured to carry her with them after the promulgation
of the pitiable but necessary decree. In spite of their efforts
at concealment, and their reliance on their brother’s regard
for his mother’s life to exculpate them from punishment,
Wang-sen found out the attempt to evade his order, and
harshly reprimanded them, saying, ‘Every army possesses
laws; no army can exist without them; not to destroy you
for your disobedience to my order is to render my army
without laws.’ The brothers, to screen themselves, urged the
peculiar case of their mother; but the general was inex-
orable, became enraged, and issued an order to have her head
cut off. The brothers begged to be put to death first, and the
army, being powerfully moved in their behalf, interposed, peti-
tioned, and finally procured a pardon for the three. This
episode is given by the historian as an instance on the one hand
of great fidelity, and on the other of a total want of it. .

Did we wish to give an illustration of staunch adherence
and an inflexible determination to die rather than become a
traitor, we might refer to the fate of Sun-Kwei, a distin-
guished officer of the Emperor Chaou-tsung, who was taken
prisoner by Kih-yung, a rebel and solicited to accept a com:
DEATH BEFORE DISHONOUR. 63

mission or command under him. He promptly refused,
on the ground of its being dishonourable to him, and that
as his troops were defeated, he had no alternative but to
finish his duty—which was to die: for to receive an office
under one opposed to the Emperor was impossible. Bribery
and taunts being of no avail, Kih-yung in a violent passion
gave orders that he should be sawn asunder. The execu-
tioners of this barbarous mandate could not make the saw
enter the flesh. Sun-Kwei, railing, said: ‘You dead dogs and
slaves, if you would saw a man asunder, you should com-
press him between two planks ; but how could you know it?’
They took the hint, and, tying their victim between pieces of
timber, carried out the horrid sentence; but he never re-
lented, and died scornfully scoffing and jeering them.

But throughout the whole Chinese and Tartar history,
even up to the present time, great cruelty appears to have
been exercised towards prisoners ; and it seems to have been
a constant practice to put to death the principal officers
after being captured. If they were able men, and would
serve their captors, they might be spared ; if not, they were
destroyed in the most dastardly manner. Those who chose
to die rather than forsake their party, are mentioned in
history with honour under the appellation of Sze-tse, which
serves to denote dying with an undeviating adherence to the
line of duty.

Brute courage the troops opposed to the Peking expe-
dition most assuredly possessed, and that in no small degree;
for we have never been able to learn that any of the com-
batants made prisoners by the British between Pehtang and
the capital ever made the slightest sign indicative of suing
for mercy; and instances were frequent in which they died
without betraying any signs of submission—even when re-
sistance was perfectly hopeless. Had they done so, in all
probability they would have been spared. At best they must
have been nearly, if not all, conscripts drawn from the towns
64 AVERSION TO MILITARY SERVICE.

and villages within and without the Great Wall—Chinese,
Mongols, and Mantchus—the majority of whom were, doubt-
less, driven away from their homes and occupations to perform
duties and undergo hardships with which they could scarcely
be acquainted. .

Chinese records inform us how unwillingly the people
submitted to this treatment during a more warlike era than
the present, for it is stated that in the reign of Shin-tsung
of the Sung Dynasty, Gan-shih, his minister, formed a kind
of militia, to which the inhabitants had so great an aversion
that many of them cut off their fingers or hands to avoid.
being enrolled in the ranks. As in everything else that
we see around us, the trade of arms in the country
appears in a hopeless stage of antiquity; nothing remains
but a worthless mass of unstable trumpery quite in keep-
ing with the institutions to which it is appended. This
unmistakable decay is not of the last hundred years,
but appears to have commenced long -before the Mantchu
rule, and has been gradually paralysing the by no means bold
attempts of the nation at rejuvenescence. Even in the days
of a vigorous monarch of the present dynasty, famed for
his love of those sports and pastimes which minister to
warlike tastes and requirements, military expeditions
were so promptly and successfully conducted that in his
forty-ninth year he could boast to his friends and visitors:
‘Since I ascended the throne I have directed military
operations to a great extent. I have crushed rebels; I have
taken possession of Formosa; I have humbled the Rus-
sians.’ But a very mediocre testimony to the worth of
the troops in his pay could be given. Kanghi, a Jesuit
missionary, says —and, according to Le Comte, he said
nothing but what was proper, as he did nothing but what
was great—‘ They are good soldiers when opposed to bad
ones, but bad when opposed to good ones.’

The morale of the army, if we can assure ourselves that
IMPERIAL ARMIES. G5

they may lay. claim to anything of the sort, is bad; the
leaders, unlike the gallant and chivalrous Ma-yuen, are
reported to look out for and secure to themselves a good
line of retreat well to the rear, ordering the men of small
confidence and less judgment to the front ; and when re-
verses come upon them, they are ready to lead their command
from danger by a precipitate flight, though they are the
first to receive personal degradation and ignoble punishment;
while both officers and men are rationed and paid on such
a scale as entirely to preclude the possibility of maintaining
that condition and spirit necessary to enable them to cope
with the soldiers of civilised countries.

Discipline they may be said to have none; and, taking
them altogether, they are for service little better than an
unwilling mob of pressed men—good or bad as may be—
fighting ever with disgrace or decapitation before them,
should they fail in obtaining victory; and with but little
hopes of reward should they chance to be successful.
Under a more genial and a more enlightened rule, the
Chinese forces would, it may confidently be predicted, be
very different, and with the immense means of men and
material at the disposal of the empire, they might be
made to offer a very serious obstacle to the operations of
an invading enemy.

We have long since lost sight, however, of our semi-nude
friends—the last peep we managed to catch was of one
brawny rascal who had mounted the thatched roof of the
house to watch the way we went—and the sun is really
consuming us. The past night’s discomforts and unrefresh-
ing sleep have made us feverish and fageed, with an almost
unbearable thirst parching our throats. Not a drop of
water is to be had in the ditches or hollows, and, unsuccess-
fully, we solicit the inmates of the mean habitations scattered
sparsely to the right and left of our route, for a mouthful of
anything to allay the more urgent cravings of our mouths.

F
66 GREAT THIRST.

The long level seems without water of any kind, and how
the dwellers on it manage to exist without that essential of
vitality, was more than we could guess in our dried-up
state. They must have had water somewhere, but pro-
bably in such small quantity that they could not spare as
much as we required. Nor was there anything growing
for many miles but two species of heath—one resembling a
good deal in hue and size our own heather, overtopped by
a taller and more plentiful, but not so brilliant tinted,
a variety. The travellers we met were few, and all bore
some description of weapon, either sword, spear, or match-
lock —whether intended for offence or defence we could
not ascertain.

The pedestrians were of a very humble class, and car-
ried little, if anything, worth protecting; while the one or
two who passed us on nimble little donkeys could scarcely
require the aid of the defiant-looking, wooden-handled
sword that lay so snugly between the saddle flap and rider’s
thigh on the off-side—as their property consisted only of the
shrivelled, over-weighted asses they bestrode, and a small
bag containing a change of clothing (?), or some very trifling
commodity that could be of no value to any but the most
mercenary footpad in creation. They must be volunteers,
we thought, wending their way to some rendezvous or depét
not far off, whence they would be conveyed, in bodies, to
those provinces where robbery, murder, and devastation were
rampant, there to swell the hosts of lukewarm scatterlings
idling their lives away in frivolous skirmishes under the
Imperial banners. They much resembled the misnamed
troops at Shanghai and other places southward, in dress and
arms; but it might turn out that, they were only going as
Government representatives to levy money from ill-fated
villager or townsman, under instructions from some Mandarin
or official, who had arrogated to himself unlimited powers.

We continue faintly clinging, or rather hanging, to our

 
A DISGUSTING SURPRISE. 67

saddles, gaspingly longing for a deep quaff of some icy
beverage, with the unclouded sky and unmitigated sickly
glare of the sun making more forbidding the landscape
through which we try to push our way. We are guided
only by the scathed stripe of baked earth deeply rutted on
its edges by the narrow rims of native wheels, and turn
at every opportunity into the shrivelled enclosures of the
shreddy earthen tenements to beg or seize upon the first
vessel of water we can discover; but the pauper-looking
occupants seem as if they themselves were dying of thirst,
and had been dried up to imitate mummies. Our eyes are
painful and watery, from constant straining against the
stupefying glare and a wind hot and biting as the Mistral,
and our noses, fierily red, are not to be touched with
impunity.

In all sincerity of spirit, and in far more urgent case, we
exclaim with Cowper:

‘ O for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade!’

What sacrifices would we not have made to have bargained
with some Dryad for a tiny nook in the deepest recess of
sylvan retreat, away from this shadeless tiresome scene!

A high branchless trunk of a tree rises before us like a
lantern-pole, with a little roughly-constructed box, resembling
a hen-cage, fixed at the top. We were about to pass it, in
the conviction that it was intended for a beacon to guide
travellers across the waste by night, and were dutifully
placing such thoughtfulness of the local rulers to their credit,
when, drawing near to its foot, we were disgusted to find
the cage contained a human head—or the remains of one—
black, decomposed, and crow-pecked. The horribly ghastly
face looked directly down upon us through the bottom spars;
for the skull, partially dragged out of the box by the carrion-
birds, still kept hold of the plaited queue which was tied

F2
68 THE GIBBET’S APPEAL.

round the pole to prevent the loathsome kites and crows
tearing it away altogether before it had fallen to pieces.
Awfully hideous was this memento of cruelty and barbarism
— weather-worn, grilled, discoloured, and decayed, and threw
a sullen darkness across the bright light of day as the vacant
orbits seemed to rebuke the heedless travellers in language
like this: ‘For the sake of human nature, for the credit
of those who frame laws, and those who enforce them, be
merciful, and bury me under the earth, or compassionately
hide me amidst the heath from the shuddering gaze of
humanity. The maxims of our country are ever inculcating
commiseration and charity towards our fellow-men: I am
one of the Emperor’s — our father’s — children, and_ his
regard for us is constantly in the mouths of his ministers,
so that we may faithfully serve and duly revere him; our
philosophers wisely and tenderly say, “in enacting laws,
rigour is necessary; but in executing them, mercy.”
Behold!’

We are reminded that we have before us another phase —
a most revolting one—of the strange inconsistencies which
are to be noted by the observant dweller amongst the
people of China, even in the most common-place matters.
The laws—the penal code—are most sagaciously and mer-
cifully framed for the administration of justice, and pro-
vision is made for all possible contingencies that may
arise to retard its course —mildness and equity being ever
paramount. Here justice, and life, and death were con-
cerned, and death triumphed. Why? Because destruction,
cruelty, and torture were, perhaps, more convenient and
better suited to the practice of the magistrates than the
humane but antagonistic theories of the code.

We could not understand why this display of Asiatic law
should have been made in such an obscure place, so we at
once referred to Ma-foo for an explanation. The unfeeling man
must have thought we were joking, for it was some time
THE EXTREME PENALTY OF THE LAW. 69

before his old withered countenance could be brought into a
condition of steadiness sufficient to allow him to chuckle out
that the wretch whose head hung over us had been a Pi-lang—
by which Canton word, that he had picked up somewhere
during’ his missionary rambles, we understood the man to
have been a thief or pirate, as lally loon, another Canton
word for thief, may be derived from the ‘Ladrone’ of

 

A Warning to Robbers.

Portuguese notoriety, and that he had suffered the extreme
penalty of the law for, in all probability, some insignificant
misdemeanour perpetrated near the spot.

We had not gone many hundred yards before we came
on another, and another, each more disgusting than the
other. We appeared to have got on to an old-fashioned
Bagshot or Blackheath, so fearfully did these relics remind
one of highwaymen and gibbets — for Ma-foo declared all to
be the heads of robbers. This attendant of ours, though a
70 HEADS OF THE PEOPLE.

Roman Catholic, and therefore coming under the designation
of Christian, had the same want of sympathy and indifference
to human life as his countrymen generally display. One need
go no further than to the beggar class for proof of this ;
crowds of beings in all the harrowing stages of starvation
throng the streets, dying, and often dead, at the doors in
the busiest thoroughfares, and their fellow-men pass them
by as if they saw them not. Certainly the quality of
mercy is not much strained to economise life—nor, from
what we have witnessed, can we vouch for the existence of
this great attribute in the slightest degree in the leaven of
the Chinese nature; nor is the desire to foster or awaken it
in the hearts of the many who might minister to perishing
creatures at all to be imputed to those who represent the
patriarchal system of government; on the contrary, any
movement to alleviate distress, during the rigours of a
severe winter, we were sorry to observe, obtained little
favour from the authorities.

A superabundant population, teeming in every nook and
cranny, selfishly striving to eke out as comfortable a lifetime
as possible, and to accumulate wealth in the least time com-
patible with security, is always extruding the unlucky and
unthrifty from its mass, and throwing them out to drift about
as they best may. To steal and to beg are the only alterna-
tives left—the former leads to a nearer termination perhaps
than the other. ‘Heads or tails’ is the sentence; the first
most frequently turns up, and the culprit is compelled to
part with his headpiece, tail and all—and is hurried off
to execution a few hours after the decision against him,
without a tithe of the protection or inquiry bestowed on a
pickpocket in England.

When amputation of the tail chances to be the sentence,
the offender is irrevocably fixed in beggardom, far beyond
the possibility of extrication or the reach of sympathy; a
lost man, in fact, shunned by everyone, a wretch to whom
CHINESE BEGGARS. “1

death would be a gladdening relief. A Chinese beggar’s
vocation is not the hale and hearty gaberlunzie inde-
pendency of the English vagrant. From the moment he is
cut off from labour, decapitation and starvation haunt him,
without a prospect of escape, though this he attempts with
desperate cunning and extraordinary boldness, which did
not quite receive our approbation when we happened to
suffer by them. How I beseeched Astrea, the Goddess of

 
72 HEARTLESS PILFERERS.

small amount of labour raised a tall chimney to carry off
the products of combustion into a narrow lane at the gable-
end of the house, I had the chimney knocked down for the
second time, and the bricks carefully removed to some
unknown locality! My astonished servitor reported the
daring conduct of the unknown parties, who afterwards, not
satisfied with what they had already taken, twice emptied
the grate of its burning contents by the aperture leading
to the outside of the room. How many nights did I not
lie awake watching the vacant hole, with all sorts of curious
things rigged up to tumble down at the slightest touch
of the scoundrel, the mean-souled Prometheus, and kept a
revolver near my bed in a state of readiness; but for weeks
neither friend nor pilferer ventured near between the going
down and rising of the sun! A few days afterwards, when
riding through the suburb of the city, I saw three newly-
decollated heads embellishing the roadside, and my heart
relented, for I imagined that they were the remains of our
late visitors, and from that hour the weapon of retribution
appeared no more at my bedside.
CHAPTER V.

THE HUNDRED-SPIRITED BIRD— ANCIENT RUSTIC-——INEXPENSIVE COS-
TUMES — THE INN AT CHE-TUR— MID-DAY HALT — TARTAR PONIES —
SUPERIORITY OF MULES—MANDARIN’S TRAVELLING EQUIPAGE AND
ESCORT — NON-OBSERVANCE OF SUNDAY IN CHINA — THE WESTERN
MOUNTAINS.

BOUT eighteen miles from our last night’s quarters the
country became dotted here and there with meagre
squares of meadow land, on which the diminutive black goat
of the country, or a scraggy, sore-backed donkey, grazed in
peaceful comfort; while sundry hares, smaller and lazier than
our own, scampered with easy pace from the path of the in-
truders to seek a nest in the nearest ling-bush. ‘ Far in the
downy cloud,’ regardless of the sun’s intensity in the fierce-
ness of the July midday, the little North China skylark, the
Pehling, or ‘ Hundred-spirited bird,’ ‘ blithesome and cumber-
less’ as its congener in our own land, though imperceptible
to the eye, inspiringly threw out its gushing song with
the most lively abandon—the thrilling melodious gusts
descending from the heavenly promenade like those of
‘A high-born maiden in a palace tower,

Soothing her love-laden soul, in secret hour,
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower.’

Soon the glad song drives away one-half of our fatigue as
we plod on, eager for the first ‘inn, where breakfast may be
got ready in some way or other.

An old man is at work in a grass-plot cutting the short
thin herbage, and as our road is not altogether well marked.
out, we cross over to inquire. Poor old fellow! he is ina
74 A VENERABLE MOWER.

great state of unfeigned alarm at our sudden appearance,
and makes an attempt to run away, but a second thought
convinces him that his weak limbs could not carry him
beyond the field, so he stands still, ready to supplicate for
pity. He is quite unable to answer the questions put to
him, till reassured by Ma-foo that we intend no harm, and
then he gathers confidence to speak, though still uncertain
as to our motives. Purblind and all but naked, the skin

 

Grass-cutting.

covering the visible skeleton head, gathered in wrinkled creases
around his neck and face, which is of the colour, and not
unlike the texture, of a hard-worn, deeply-stained saddle;
but the dearly-cherished tail, though still pendent from the
crown of his venerable occiput, had dwindled away to the
thickness of .a whip-cord of silvery strands coiled round his
brow. His morning’s work lay near, in little heaps of fodder
placed every ten or twelve yards over half an acre of ground,
INEXPENSIVE CCSTUMES. 75

and the implement employed bore such traces of novelty
in its construction and design that we could not forbear
taking a rough outline of it, and noting its name, which
sounded, as nearly as we could write it, like tsu-sa. Toa
little basket of willow twigs, open at one side, was fixed a
shovel handle with a thin sharp blade of iron along the front
or open side. This handle was held in the left hand, while
the right one swung the basket and blade against the grass,
cutting and carrying it away at the same stroke by means
of two cords tied to the back rim of the tray and looped
round each end of another wooden handle in the right hand.
The expert way in which he wielded this contrivance, and
the quantity of grass cut with it in a few minutes, after
we had overcome his scruples and got him again to work,
showed that the inventor had economy both of time and
labour in view when he introduced it.

Soon after, we saw scattered groups of people toiling
and scraping the crust of the land in an entire state of
nudity—the most humble class of peasantry we had seen
in China, and as we passed close to them, and could not
avoid .gazing at such miserable slaves, they betrayed no
signs of bashfulness, but continued their unprofitable work
as if no strangers had been near. The villages were
becoming more plentiful, but still were raised on tall hillocks,
and as decrepid as any we had seen. The starving inmates
came out to look at us, some of the males and nearly all the
children—if appearances were to be trusted—happily exempt
from tailors’ bills and the fluctuations of fashion, their bodies
unconstrained and without a covering save that afforded
by the thickly-incrusted dirt that had been collecting on
and sheathing their skins since the ceremonious washing
inflicted on them, according to custom, a few days after
birth. Not unfrequently, however, some few could be
observed clad in a quadrangular sort of tucker suspended
around the neck by a cord at one corner, and bound close
76 THE INN AT CHE-TUR.

to the middle by the opposite corners, but barely covering
the front of the half-civilised beings who jumped and
squatted about their doors. In these apologies for a cos-
tume one or two pockets were stuck, in which were car-
tied any trifling necessaries a Chinaman of the lower orders
may require.

About one o’clock exhausted nature felt revived, and
hopes began to be stirred up as we ascended the steep
side of the embankment on which the streaky road stumbled
into the exalted but rough hamlet of Che-tur, where we
found an inn in every respect better than that of last night.
The rooms, though in miserable repair, felt cool and shel-
tered, the thermometer only indicating 96° in the shade.
The domestic arrangements of the establishment were
knocked into endless confusion by our presence, and by the
embarrassment imposed on its servitors through the impe-
tuous crowd of villagers who thronged the place to immo-
bility, and made ingress or egress for any but ourselves all
but impossible. Already we began to be objects of curiosity
and speculation to these simple-minded people, who had
never before seen the face of European, and were lost in
wonder at everything about us. Two willing little boys—
more active and acute than any of their age and class we
ever saw at home, waited upon us, and, by dint of great
exertion and anticipated cumshaw, found us water enough
for a bath, and a half gourd-shell to souse it about with.

This, with copious draughts of hot tea, and a brief nap on
a mat couch, thoroughly refreshed us, and it was an agreeable
addition to our satisfaction to see the animals on which so
much depended digesting large mangers-full of chopped
straw and bran with undiminished spirits or appetites. But
our own meal—our breakfast—was still unapproachable, as
the cuzsine boasted of nothing likely to please our out-
landish palates, except eggs. Not having become sufficiently
accustomed to their pleasing aroma, hunger’s urgent appeals
MIDDAY HALT. ay

failed to entice us to depend on them, inasmuch as we were
cognisant of the existence of a staple commodity, lurking in
a basket which had been carefully packed up for service in
the depths of the travelling cart, and which offered far
stronger attractions to our delicate tastes; so on Frankfort
sausage we fell back, and what with its excellent flavour, its
delectable taste, and its unimpeachably substantial qualities,
aided by capacious bowls of pearly rice—each pellicle as
distinct and clear in outline and individuality as the light
flakes of snow which the wintry sky thinly scatters over this
intemperate region—washed down by repetitions of steaming
cups of the national beverage, such a repast was made as
rather amazed our youthful waiters, who were considerably
bewildered at our foresight and unexampled fastidiousness in
carrying about our own supplies and the articles necessary for
their serving up, refusing the dainty fare of the house, and
objecting even to the assistance that might be found in the
chopsticks which they laid before us. Many visitors ascended
the two little steps at the door to watch the movements of
two such curious mortals, and when the feast had really com-
menced, a rush was made by about a dozen of the most
obtrusive, who could contain their unruly inquisitiveness no
longer, but fairly stuck themselves over the table, staring
into our faces with unwinking eyes, or following the motions
of spoon or fork like starving dogs. The organ of smell
required that they should be expelled without delay, and it
must be told, to their advantage, that after the first inti-
mation of their being unwelcome, they did not again enter the
room, but pertinaciously posted themselves outside in every
corner from whence they could obtain the faintest glance of
ourselves or shadows.

Nature demanded another hour’s rest to overcome the
effects of this unusual repletion; so we stretched out again
on the couch with all the ease and contentment so com-
fortable and simple an entertainment could bestow, under
78 TARTAR HORSES.

the gentle surveillance of sundry primly dignified Tartar
beauties, whose painted faces, surmounted by clusters of
bright-colourea flowers, looked down smilingly on us from
detached scrolls on the wall, as with slender tapering
fingers, armed with the boatswain’s-whistle nail protectors,
they becomingly wave the graceful fan, or with silken cord
restrain the playful gambols of toyish poodles who are bent
on amusing themselves with the gay tassels suspended to the
toes of their thick, narrow-soled canoe-like shoes, quite
unmindful of the interspersed specimens of exquisite calli-
graphy surrounding them, inculcating some trite moral Con-
fucian aphorism, favourite saying, or good wish.

Well restored by four in the afternoon, we again got under
way, and with a long twenty miles before us, and the fag-
end of a hot wind blowing in our faces, left a staring crowd
in the middle of the village street as we descended to the
plain beyond.

Four miles an hour rapidly brought us into a more
fertile country, with large tracts of meadow-land, on which
grazed troops of what are generally called Tartar ponies, but
which are, in all likelihood, bred on this side of the Wall,—
tended by men with long whips, whose business seemed to
be principally confined to smoking, and now and then
adjusting the rope-hobble that bound two or three of each
animal’s legs together to prevent their straying too far.
Among the droves were some of the best ponies we had yet
seen in the North; great, strong, ‘tousey tykes,’ as uncouth
and rugged members of the genus equinum as could well be
found anywhere else in the world; but as hardy, strong, and
handy as they seemed coarse-bred. The so-named Tartar
pony is as unlike that in use in South China, Manila, or
Japan, as can be imagined by those who have not seen it, and
differs as widely from the Amoy and Canton breed as the
rough, old-fashioned farmer’s Galloway does from the Shet-
land or Dartmoor pony; the former of which it certainly
THEIR POWERS OF ENDURANCE, 79

favours in more respects than one. Great, out-of-propor-
tioned head, indicating nothing but the most surly stubborn-
ness or vice, with the eyes almost concealed beneath an
excess of long matted forelock ; a thin neck, roofed by a
tangled mane undisturbed by comb or brush since the animal
first assumed a quadrupedal existence; a low, thick, straight
shoulder, from which extends a lengthy, concave, sharp-
ridged back to the massive bony haunches which stand out
like two buttresses, leaving the loins narrow and yawning,
and a croup salient and rude, reaching to a tail for all the
world like a protracted muddy swab; while the limbs, strong
but rigidly perpendicular to the very ground, are all but hid
in masses of unkempt or untrimmed hair. Beneath this
ungainly and unprepossessing exterior, however, lies the
staunchest spirit and most unflinching endurance that can
belong to the species, and which enables this much-neglected
servant to perform work and achieve long journeys that per-
haps no other animal could accomplish on the same meagre
innutritious food. Many stories are told of them and the
long-continued jog-trot pace they can sustain with a heavy
lumbersome Chinaman on their backs, weighing, perhaps,
sixteen stones, and the pony measuring but from twelve
to fourteen hands high at the utmost. The Russian courier
from Peking to Kiakhta, a frontier town of the Russian
dominions—a distance of about 500 miles—not long ago
used to ride one pony there in twelve days, and, after
two days’ rest, return in fifteen. In getting away through
heavy ground they are decidedly first-rate, and nothing
could exceed the ready way in which they shuffled off with
their riders when chased by our dragoons in the early part
of the campaign. Bearing no visible signs of any attempts
having been made to improve the breed—and it may be
doubted if what we consider improvement would mach
tend to enhance its value for the purposes to which it is made
subservient by the Chinese, and at the same time preserve
80 PREFERENCE GIVEN TO: MULES.

those qualities which endow it with such a remarkable apti-
tude for withstanding fatigue and exposure to the weather
on the most unfavourable sort of forage—we see the little
brute now as it was in all probability in the dreaded days of
the Tartar cavalry, when, becoming too redundant for their
own comfort on the barren steppes or neglected plains, and
dreading famine, or prompted by the prospect of pillage and
the glory of conquest, the equally hardy and obstinate Mongol
or Mantchu, mounted on these ursine solipedes, broke through
all obstacles, and covered countries richer and more civilised
than their own, with havoc and ruin. But though gifted with
so well-adapted and serviceable an animal, the Chinese very
much prefer the hybrid, obtained by crossing the pony with
the never-worn-out ass, and in this they show their usual dis-
crimination in matters pertaining to domestic economy. Not
so tall as the Spanish mule, stronger built than either the
Persian or Turkish, the North China mule is incomparably
better-constitutioned, more robust, and livelier-paced than
either, and in the hands of a Chinese muleteer is as docile
and obedient as a Liverpool dray-horse, without requiring a
tenth part of the care and attention bestowed on the more
favoured breeds ; and their immunity from disease and the
effects of over-work being greater than with the ponies, their
value is considerably increased, sometimes even threefold.
So much, indeed, is this animal preferred for riding purposes,
that Mandarins select mules for ease and convenience rather
than ponies, and scarcely a team of draught cattle can be met
that has not either one or two of these mongrels in the most
important corner of the gear, as a powerful aid and incentive
to the other beasts.

The road or path we were tracking out was still a lonely
one, and did not seem to be much frequented, notwithstand-
ing the little footways that at decreasing intervals led off in
various directions; so that we had but trifling variation.
Sometimes a man would pass us trundling along the peculiar
A FLITTING. 81

tchou-dza, or wheelbarrow, with a load on it large enough
for a one-horse cart, the perspiration rolling off his face and
weather-browned body in mimic streams without affecting
his strength in the most trifling degree, while his tail was
put to a very laudable use in binding a piece of rag around
his forehead and affording support to a browband with a
lot of bristling rushes inserted in its structure immediately
over the eyebrows, to protect his eyes from the sun’s glare.
Sometimes the same kind of vehicle would be wheeled labour-
ingly along by an old faded individual whose worldly all,
consisting of his small-footed wife, and perhaps a child, with
an agglomeration of duds, and fragments of furniture, were
packed on in a manner sufficient to indicate a distant ‘ flit-
ting,’ and two or three young people walking alongside, one
of whom was certain to be carrying arms, gave one an idea
of the strength of his establishment. As the afternoon pro-
gressed the country improved; the villages near us, frequently
shrouded in a whirlwind of dust, exhibited more taste and
care, and away in the far distance, afloat in the drifting sea-
like mirage, they towered up pleasantly among trees at close
intervals, looking green and fresh as islands in a tropical
ocean; but the ready san-pans still hung about them in case
of need. Before the sun had touched the horizon we en-
countered a large convoy of some dozen carts, carrying each
in front a small triangular flag with its wavy border bound
by red, and in the centre an inscription denoting the name
and rank of some mandarin, their interiors crowded with all
sorts of miscellaneous articles; and in some of these rude
conveyances lolled great obese phlegmatic Chinamen, who
slept, ate, and lived in their jarring apartments for very
many days, for they had travelled from a place in Kwantung
(the old name for Liautung), which they informed us was
about 300 miles distant. Goodness only knows how they
contrived to come so far without injury, in such torturing
clumsy carts. Large square blocks of wood coarsely mortised
G
§2 TRAVELLING MANDARIN

and bound together to the unwieldy shafts, formed a body
of some 10 or 12 feet in length, from the sides of which
sprang a semicircular roof of cane matting, to shelter the
occupant from sun, rain, and dust; the whole imposed on a
massive wooden axletree which had low, nail-studded, primi-
tive wheels fixed at each end, and revolved on the springless
body, instead of the wheels on it. Above, below, on the sides
and behind, inside as well as outside, the most outlandish

 

Mandarin’s Travelling Carriage.

things were fastened, and special regard was had to lances,
scimitars, and matchlocks, that’ exhibited their threatening
figures in the most conspicuous and ready places.

A large concourse of brawny equestrians loitered about
while the weary animals in the carts were being refreshed by
a scanty supply of muddy water, a few lazily hanging over the
necks of their ponies, or sartoriously squatted on the ground
watching their steeds as they were trying to rid their mouths
AND ESCORT. Fe

of the sharp-edged bit before cropping the enticing herbage
that encircled the watering-place. To every saddle was
hung its matchlock or sword: the first, with its muzzle
stopped up by a plug of red horsehair, was suspended by the
sling to the high peak of the crupper, while the sabre in a
leathern scabbard depended by two loops from the side, in
which position it might hang without inconvenience to its
proprietor.

These wanderers were the finest men we had seen for a
long time —tall and loosely formed, their muscular bodies
enveloped in the ordinary thin blue or white cotton jacket
and trousers that barely served to cover them; their feet and
ankles buried in wide gaiter-like socks which served also to
contain the lower portion of the legs of their trousers; their
necks were quite exposed, and their heads surmounted by straw
hats wider in the brim than any Spaniard’s sombrero, from
under which their massive faces, covered with dust in patches,
in others as brown as sepia, looked out upon our small party
with an expression of stupid curiosity and wonder quite
characteristic of these country folks, plainly indicating that
though their eyes were sluggishly at work, their minds had
little to do in speculating about us. Their masters in the
waggons, during the whole of our halt and attempted con-
versation with sundry members of the rough-and-ready escort,
never relaxed the rigid twist of stern incognisance into which
they had thrown their physiognomies as soon as we came in
sight, though their smothered inquisitiveness must have
punished them severely. Sometimes we made certain that
a movement was required to ease their tiresome position,
which entailed a sudden projection forward in our direction,
when, perhaps, they may have caught a glimpse of our boots
or a squint at the visible portions of our saddles, though
their stoical full-moon faces betrayed them not. Sometimes
their official, buttoned, extinguisher-looking summer hats
required adjustment either on their heads or the sides of

g 2
84 CHINESE INDIFFERENCE.

the roof, when something very much akin to a furtive stare
at our faces was undoubtedly attempted, though their stolidly
fixed eyes were gazing vacantly before them in less than a
second afterwards. Their arrogant pride would not sanction
their manifesting the faintest approach to civility for the
gratification of their all but irrepressible prying wonder,
and seeing their desire to be left to themselves in the
pseudo-dignity they had borrowed for the nonce, we had no
inclination to thrust ourselves upon their consideration, even
at the expense of losing information that might have been of
some value to us on the unknown road that lay between us
and our destination. The beasts drank their water, the lusty
cavaliers tightened the white leathern thongs that served as
girths, pulled up their socks, and pushed down their panta-
loon legs deeper into them, and the cart teams jerked the
wrenching squeaking wheels, or rather the grating timber
axle, into its wonted circuit ; two or three shouts of encou-
ragement were bellowed at the leaders, and then the whole
caravan was in motion, and the horsemen mounted; so,
without a word of greeting at meeting or parting, we took
our opposite courses — we still to the north-east, they to the
south-west. Their first contact with Europeans was over,
and their interest in the rencontre was wofully damped by
their ignorant vanity, closing their mouths and blinding their
eyes to what they were at perfect liberty, for aught we cared,
to speak of or look at.

Anon we came upon village carts laden with some vege-
table productions, and drawn by asses, oxen, ponies, or mules,
or a member of each class clubbed together in front of the
slow-moving noisy carriage ; and—could it be possible!—
old men in open fields ploughing on Sunday, and ploughing,
too, more frequently with an ox, a pony, and an ass, than any
other species of beast ; the three working away as cheerfully
and earnestly as if the Almighty had never insisted that the
race of man should keep holy the Sabbath day, in the fourth
FARMER’S TEAM. 85

commandment, and as if Moses, in Deuteronomy, twenty-second
chapter and tenth verse, had not declared: ‘Thou shalt not
plough with an ox and an ass together ;’ the latter, perhaps,
furnishing an additional proof that those from whom this
people descended withdrew themselves from the main stock
before the institution of a day of rest by the Prophet in the
wilderness, by which many writers attempt to account for the
non-observance of this day in China.

 

Farmer’s Team. .

Fo-hi, the founder of the empire,—whom some people sup-
pose to be Noah,—they imagine, retired to China in his old
age, and there, divinely begotten as he was, he taught his
subjects to build towns and live in them, giving them prime
ministers and magistrates to manage their affairs and preserve
tranquillity, inventing music and the art of dressing, to make
them happy and comfortable; bestowing on his nameless
people names ; introducing the custom of sacrificing six dif-
ferent kinds of animals at the solstices, in order to ease their
86 YANG AND YIN.

consciences and foster feelings of veneration; giving them also
a symbolical mode of writing for their special edification, and
a code of laws which his clever eyes and pen enabled him to
copy from a tablet on the back of a post-diluvian monster that
he had the good luck to become intimate with for a few seconds,
as it rose to breathe from the bottom of a lake, by the side of
which he chanced to be strolling. We have often wondered
why, when he gave them all this, and made them such an
industrious lot of creatures, he did not allow them an interval
of rest or recreation oftener than once or twice a year ; for
he showed, by his omission of this boon, a total disregard or
unwarrantable ignorance of the truths contained in the pre-
diction that ‘ All work and no play would make John China-
man a dull boy.’

No, he gave them everything else necessary but a proper
day for unbending their bows, though he made a very close
approach to it when he presented them the symbolical diagram
of the ‘ Yang and Yin’—‘darkness and light, rest and activity’
— to portray the reciprocal order of things as they exist in
Nature, —one of these dual principles, the Yang or male,
governing the affairs of Nature for six days, then ceasing
when the Yin or female principle came into operation for the
next six. What a pity he did not allow only one day to
elapse between each change! What a difference it might
have made in the conservative routine habits of the
people!

As the sun began to droop in the west, and to spread
around him the resplendent hues of a summer sunset, the
bold dark outlines of the fine range of mountains we had
caught a transitory glance of yesterday came out in full
prospect, as if produced by the startling agency of a magic-
lantern. We experienced a renewed sense of joy it would
be hard to describe. As the raging orb of day gently slid
down behind them, a heavenly breeze from their majestic
tops stole soothingly and benignantly below into the dark
MOUNTAIN LIFE. 87

glens and the plain beyond, cheering everything animated,
and adding new beauties to the already quiet grandeur of the
gloaming in the ever-varying atmospherical changes attend-
ing the decline of a fine evening.

Black, bare, and rifted into all sorts of jags, pinnacles,
towers, and minarets, hustled in heaps, or regularly posted
in long chains, treeless and heatherless, they held out their
sombre welcome to us, we were certain, after our red-hot and
wearisome life on the most palling of all unrumpled levels,
with more fervour and congenial spirit than we ever expected
from the purple Bens of the Western Highlands. Liberty,
life, light, and strength seemed to revel on the loftiest ridges of
that serrated margin, and looked boldly and defiantly towards
the insipid, sickly earth, spreading out its languid surface far
to the right and behind and before. Surely the uncon-
taminated air that sustains and invigorates the soul of free-
dom, and exalts the nature of man, is concentrated in those
regions that.draw nearest to the clouds, where the enervating
breath of the Mistral and the venomous swelter of the plain
never come; where every movement tends to independence
_ and masculine thought, and every inspiration sends an addi-
tional stream to the river of life!

The distant sight of these revered natural monuments, and
the alternating character of the country between them and us,
seemed to curtail the journey. We were unconsciously passing
through a neat little avenue of willow trees that skirted along
the bank of a newly-made aqueduct, and opened on a pretty,
toyish stone bridge (vide willow-pattern plate), that rose in
a sharp convexity over a pool, in which a number of farmers’
ponies were being watered, — greatly to the discomfort of a
flock of ducks, whose white plumage was undergoing a
thorough soiling from the muddy splashes,—before we became
aware of the presence of a curious crowd that had gathered
on the parapet of the bridge to gossip, after the toils of the
day. They now rapidly fell back as we advanced, and
88 COTTAGES.

allowed us to get a peep of some snug little cottages, with
gardens overhanging the sides of the pond, in which grew a
profusion of pink and red hollyhocks, and the fan-spreading,
lake-coloured amaranth, so much admired by the country
people.
89

CHAPTER VII.

VILLAGE OF TCHUNG-WAH-KOW— RIVER PEHTANG — UNPLEASANT REMI-
NISCENCES —A DISAGREEABLE IMMERSION — ADVENTURES OF A NIGHT
— A DREADFUL DORMITORY — HARD TIMES— TOWN OF QUI-TOOSA —
INN AT FUNG-TAI— BAD ACCOMMODATION — FELLOW-LODGERS’ EXCES-
SIVE CURIOSITY — REFRESHING SLEEP.

E were in the small but well-built village of Tchung-wah-

kow, on the banks of the Pehtang hd, as it is named by
us, but to which the people here give the lengthy title of Che-
tau Yoon-leang hé. Ascending the narrow, steep street, which
was lined by tastefully-finished houses on each side, we descend
again to the little jetty, where the ferry-boat is waiting to
convey us across the sluggish yellow river, flowing noiselessly
and smoothly on, undisturbed by many junks, and between
low clayey embankments here and there, but more often
spreading over a large patch of land, on which grows in thick
luxuriance the tall lazily-swaying reed (Phragmites com-
munis), so useful in this part of the world for the manufac-
ture of matting and in forming an under-thatch on the roofs
of the better classes of houses. As usual, the alarm had been
sounded, and a mob of old and young, males and females,
hurried out to see us,— the most obstreperous of the mascu-
line gender crushing and crowding around ere we had time
to transfer our cart, ponies, and mules, from the ground to
the barge. A goodly number of the unconscionables even
found their way on board and accompanied us across, in spite
of the exertions and protestations of the ferrymen, who were
well aware that remuneration from such a slippery lot they
stood no chance of receiving ; but the latter were so numerous
and so nimble that they escaped through their fingers like
90 UNPLEASANT MEMORIES.

quicksilver; and, as darkness was rolling in upon us, the vaga-
bonds were allowed to have their own way and stare at us
until their eyes ached again, while the boatmen poled the
craft to the other side. The river here runs from north
to south, and is about twenty or twenty-five yards in width,
and only about eight or ten in depth, giving off a branch
to the eastward,— the Hwang-shing hé,— on which, above
the lofty reeds, the slender masts of a few light san-pans
could be observed in the dusk; the course of both being only
visible for a short way in the dense mass of green vege-
tation fringing their sides. As we stood on the shaky
boards, trying to pacify our affrighted ponies and prevent
their breaking off the deck into the current, and as we sur-
veyed the quiet scene in which we were moving,— the lonely
village,— the deep shade of the old willow trees made deeper
by the approaching night,— the delicate rustling of the reeds
as they nodded their heads from the tangled coverts to the
evening wind,—and the stridulous unceasing chirp of the
large green grasshoppers, with the guttural croaking of
toads and frogs from the marshy ground,—we were reminded
of this river where it opens out its mouth to the waters of
the Gulf and the town of Pehtang,— slimy, wretched, and
rotten, the place of abominable smells and Stygian pools,—as
they made our acquaintance not much more than a year ago.

Horrible and unsolicited retroversion of memory! Why
do we find ourselves again endeavouring against our will to
recall to our mind’s eye, and with full olfactory vividness, the
dismal vicissitudes of a night of misery when landing some
time about

‘The wee short hour ayont the twal,’

in the pitchy darkness of a moonless autumnal morning, at that
loathsome accumulation of everything vile, on a sort of jetty
that led from the gun-boats to the miry streets? Amid the glare
of torches, with horses kicking, mules scampering away without
A DISAGREEABLE BATH. 01

their keepers, Japanese ponies engaged in fiendish-like com-
bats with each other in the boats, on shore, or even in the very
bed of the river, and a thundering Babel of sounds, in which
the stentorian voices of tars could be always distinguished
as they shouted in anger or surprise: ‘ Now, Bill, make this
’ere pony fast by an ‘itch round ’is tail, to stop ’is darned
"eadway.’—‘ Oh! blow me if this haint a grampus or a hold
shark that I’ve gettin’.’old on, for he’s been and tuk hold
wi’s teeth on my dickey ; and blow’d if he'll let go on ony
‘count!’ At that hour, one of our party, poor B., was too
much perplexed by the crush and the stunning confusion of
sights and sounds to hear behind him the warning bellow of
a son of Neptune, who was getting the worst of it in a
wrestling encounter with an hysterical bull. Finding his
grip gradually giving way as he was dragged along, he
managed to scream out, ‘ Mind yere starn, sir! Hard a star-
board and make all sail, sir, or—or he’ll run you down,
‘sir!’ My friend found that
‘ All too late the advantage came,
To turn the odds of deadly game,’

for he was without ceremony hurled by the said animal into
the water and semi-glutinous matter that lay near the shore.
This stubbornly refused to give him up until aided by
two brawny mariners, one of whom declared, as they pulled
him out, in a sort of half sympathising, half joking way, that
he looked ‘ more like a dirty night off Cape ’orn than a nice
and the other exclaimed, as the besmeared
and saturated individual gave him a delicate whiff of the
Sinensian bouquet, with which he had been invested in this
inglorious bath: ‘Oh! may I never be piped down to dinner,
Jim, if he don’t smell worse nor the bilge-water of an old

?

sodger officer ;

Indeyman!’

To remedy such a mishap was beyond the present
resources of the bewildered and benighted group, and to
touch even the hem of his garment was to become tainted in
92 SPASMODIC DREAMS.

such a degree that every idea of comfort was banished for
ever after. A random suit, better adapted for the halcyon pro-
menades of Regent Street or the Park, than the turbulent
fagging of service, stuck by the merest chance or oversight
in the corner of a very elfin-like portmanteau, quite up to the
regulated restriction as regarded weight, was donned during
the middle watches of the night; after which installation in
‘ Mufti’ we agreed to go in search .of our, until then, kind
friend and benefactor, Somnus, on the top of what must have
been, at no very remote period in the world’s history, a
Chinese dung-heap, not many yards from the odoriferous
river.

Ugh! shall I ever succeed in forgetting it, or can the
constant use of the most potent disinfecting chemical or
mechanical agents manage to renovate, fumigate, or purify
my sense of smell? I fear not; and, as for sleep, it com-
pletely deserted and betrayed me! The most morbid and
uproarious night-mare that ever punished the indulgence of
a dyspeptic valetudinarian in underdone pork chops, with
heavy plum-pudding and porter as a finishing course at mid-
night, can hardly be compared to the agonies I endured in
my dewy, but far from flowery, bed in the concavities of
two inverted pack-saddles, jammed firmly into the fer-
menting stuff we had congregated on, flanked by a trunk to
keep off the dogs, and with a valise for a pillow to the head,
that rested as uneasily as if it had been wearing half-a-dozen
or a dozen crowns. Spasmodic dreams of descending by
precarious ropes at a terrific rate some one of the deep street
openings into the sewers of London, with the very pressing
and laudable object in view of saving some partially-known
being who had fled there for safety from a mad ox, and of
having a handkerchief tied smotheringly tight round one’s
mouth to prevent suffocation by the poisonous gases usually
generated in these places, were interrupted, as, I was
awakened to a full appreciation of my plight, by two
NIGHT CHARGE. 03

unruly steeds, animated by the most unfriendly sympathies,
engaged in the peculiar attack and defence made use of by
these equine gladiators, and striving to produce the greatest
number of bites and murderous contusions over my prostrate
body.

At another time, it was an unfortunate—or rather
fortunate — pony that had escaped out of the river’s bed to
expel us from ours; and no sooner was it driven away by
huge fragments of hard-baked, strong-scented mud, thrown
with the undeviating precision of desperate men, and we had
again settled down to another incubus, than a string of mixed
animals, led by a liberty-loving mule and pursued by a host
of those nondescript, chupattie-eating ghorrawallahs, would
dash over us in wild disorder, planting their feet under them
so freely and firmly, that to attempt to give anything like an
idea of the impression they made on our minds, as well as on
our limbs and trunks, would be rather a painful waste of
time and feeling.

Suffice it to say that a charge of cavalry in daylight could
never inflict the same amount of mental—not to mention
corporeal— damage that these repeated raids of misguided
quadrupeds did to me while I was in the transition stage
between sleeping and waking,—between the London-sewer
night-mare going on in my disordered brain, and the horror
of being run over, as I still half-dreamily thought on starting
up, by a thundering train of competing City omnibuses. All
this, commingled with a powerful nauseating atmosphere, I
noted down carefully, as I hailed with joy the dawning day,
and added what I thought appropriate to the occasion, —and
something to the effect that the rulers of China were a wise
people in using their artifices and mild persuasions, with,
when required, a more forcible method of argument, to
induce us to visit their capital by the same route as that
followed by the minister of a late great and peace-loving
nation, not many months before; for, truly, if men bent on
94 DISCOMFORTS.

journeying to this land of Goshen,—this land flowing with
silk and money,— can endure such a villanous place and
live, they are not again likely to return, or recommend even
their very worst enemies to make their kow-tow to His Celes-
tial Majesty at Peking. So that their distant metropolis is
tolerably safe from the invasion of intruders, if they have to
pass vid Pehtang. In less than a week after, I annexed an
underlined postscript, conspicuous for the number of its notes
of admiration, which I lavished on the Chinese war-party, who,
I said, are an eminently sagacious clique, and better versed in
strategy than many thought, when this same town was occu-
pied by the Allied Forces without the expenditure of a single
round of ball-cartridge. Surely never was an army so
situated before as this was, on the 10th of August, when the
rain fell in continuous sheets, rendering the whole country
beyond nothing but a great lake, bristling here and there
with sad-looking sugar-loaf mounds, under which departed
mortality lay soaking. Away below the horizon, it was whis-
pered, the Tartars were chuckling for joy, while we looked
wistfully around, and were floundering, like Milton’s Sathanas,
on what was ‘neither sea nor good dry land,’ and saw no
way of getting at them except on punts, or by beseeching
Neptune to convert us into armed Tritons for the time being.
Worse than all, there was nothing to eat but adamantine
rice-flour biscuit — that seemed to have been kneaded by a full
stroke of Nasmyth’s steam-hammer, and baked in some super-
active voleano— in conjunction with salt pork, that might
have been preserved by the original inventor, so desiccative
and indurated was it. In addition, there was water, to allay
its thirst-producing effects, of a very questionable quality,
and with a well-marked brackishness of taste, that was con-
veyed to us at irregular intervals by boats sent in search of
it not far from our present locality.

How many times did we turn our eyes in the direction of
the droves of oxen which huddled up the roads and made
A CHANGE FOR THE BETTER. 95

the scene more forlorn; when it was debated whether or not
it were justifiable and commendable to dine off ox-tail soup
—seeing that the flies had been driven away by the rain,
and the quadrupeds had no very urgent need of their caudal
appendages— indeed would have been better and happier
without them, standing as they were half-drowned in pools
and ditches. Would they not work as well when required,
and in time never miss them, and could we not prolong life
on fresh beef much longer than on pork that hadn’t existed
for at least half a century ?

Shipwrecked mariners could scarcely have suffered more
than we did from the want of fresh water to appease
the raging drought engendered by the undue amount
of salt one was forced to ingest if one ate at all; and I
remember one night, in particular, our having sucked up
all the rain-water to be found near my tent, which I
had pitched in a graveyard. This, too, was saline; and
everything was impregnated with the same seasoning —
even the very animals—bipeds, quadrupeds, solipedes, and
split-pedes—I don’t see how even centipedes could miss it
—were in a state of pickle. A few days more of such
weather in such a slippery basis of operations, and we must
have been much worse off. If we are to coincide in the
assertion when

‘thus the poet sings —

A sorrow’s crown of sorrows is remembering happier things ’—
how much more joyful, in proportion, ought I to be in
looking back on these hazardous days, now the dragons of
Peking have been ‘done’ despite its Cyclopean environing
wall, and I am journeying quietly through a terra incog-
nita, on my way to inspect the second capital of the empire
—the forsaken cradle of the ‘Pure Dynasty.’

These reminiscences came to a sudden conclusion when
the ferry-boat ranged up at the end of a raised narrow road.
The mob of accompanying eye-witnesses split up into two
96 FUNG-TAT.

parties, one remaining on deck, the other disembarking with
us to watch the means we employed to get everything ready
for the road again, and to pass their comments thereon. All
arrangements having been completed, we soon were trotting
along in the dark, leaving ‘the reedy swamp on each side
behind, and entering between rows of stately willows. We
passed along several flat bridges of granite slabs thrown across
wide deep ditches communicating with the tributary stream
the Hwang-shing hé, for the irrigation of the large gardens
that lay on our right. About a mile and a half from the
Pehtang hé, we went through the zig-zag but commodious
streets of the town of Qui-toosa, with its tasteful one-
storied houses of brick,—so remarkably clean outside, and
its handsome temple adding to its appearance of substantial
comfort. Little knots of good townsmen and their wives
were placidly whiling away the evening in homely tattle
and tobacco-smoking at the doors, or lolling on mats spread
at the sides of the road, reciting tales or discussing the busi-
ness of the day in loud voices—the youngest making him-
self as anxious to be heard as the oldest. Before they had
time to rouse themselves for observation, we were out of
their precincts, still keeping to the well cared-for road, which
was, in many places, elevated fifteen and twenty feet above
the low country on each side, and less cut up by wheel-ruts
than any we had yet seen in North China; until at last,
through another avenue of willows, of about a mile in length,
we reached the larger town of Fung-tai, where, notwith-
standing the darkness of the night, before we had got
through one-half of the long main street, the whole of the
population seemed to have got an intimation of our ar-
rival, and turned out. By the time the inn was within
hail, a little effervescing sea of dusky faces dashing about
in white robes followed in our train, or tore away full
speed in front, forming a large circle of ever-increasing
or diminishing extent around the ‘ Tien,’ the gates of which
SCARCITY OF ACCOMMODATION, 97

were now closed. More than knocking was required to
open them to admit us; a purpose no sooner effected than—
before one of our party could push his way through—the
wave rolled in with unlooked-for impetuosity, and the
unlighted courtyard, already crammed with carts and all
sorts of draught animals, was completely blocked up by the
half-frantic people. They swarmed not only every corner
where a footing could be obtained on or in the buildings, but
also the conveyances, greatly to the distress and anxiety of the
owners, whose voices we could hear strangely mingled with.
the other din, pouring out the most voluble supplications or
threatening warnings to the transgressors, and rising in
intensity when a crash proclaimed that some one of the light
passenger cabs, or heavy merchandise carts, had come to
misfortune by an upset or break-down. Into this extensive
scene of confusion nothing remained but to project ourselves
with as much determination as a long fatiguing day’s travel
prompted us to employ, in order to find a bed in some nook
of the low black buildings that surrounded every side of the
capacious square. Shouting and a continual flourishing of
whips cleared a narrow space for our admission and that of
the cart; but Ma-foo, who had gone to reconnoitre the dis-
position and resources of the place—after keeping us standing
in the midst of this overwhelming, strong-flavoured crowd
for what appeared a very long time, during which sundry
charges had to be performed to prevent the press driving us
over altogether—returned with a drooping head and a
desponding whine to tell us that every apartment and bunk
was engaged and occupied by guests, friends, or travellers,
and that we must go somewhere else if we wished to be put
up for the night. Pleasant tidings indeed, in a strange place
reported to have only this house of accommodation, at such
an hour of the evening, and with such a boisterous multitude
of petticoated gentlemen contending in the murky obscurity

with each other for a look at us!
H
98 TWO LODGERS.

Needlessly, and without response, did M. call for the land-
lord. His shout was only echoed back by the bothering
garlic-smelling individuals around, who, delighted with his
unpremeditated outburst of Chinese, giggled and laughed as
they remarked to one another, ‘Shau qwan wha,’ ‘he speaks
our language.’ To have left the place would have been
nothing short of serious blundering, situated, as we were,
among a people of whose friendly or hostile disposition we
had as yet no proofs, and of whose honesty we were any-
thing but satisfied in the ‘head’ spectacles we had not failed
to mark well on the way. So, as much to punish the indif-
ference of the host to the laws of hospitality, and thus to
teach him a lesson for the benefit of those remote wanderers
who might follow us, as to make certain of a refuge until day-
light, we resolved to remain in the courtyard—to sleep in or
under the cart, as might be most convenient and safe for our-
selves and the scanty supply of necessaries we were carrying.
Our companion, who had had ample experience in the
management of such dilemmas, after making a brilliant chevy
against the annoying mass of white and blue, and sending it
flying in wild disorder through every possible aperture
and over every clearable wall or barrier, betook himself
to a snug little room lighted up by two tallow candles
and tenanted by two Chinese—the elder and superior
being a dumpy, diminutive creature, with’a pulpy asthma-
tical face, and with a very prominent convexity over the
region of his stomach, that indicated an advanced stage of
prosperity by no means to be concealed, for he had undressed
the upper half of his sleek, shining little body, and wore
nothing but a pair of strangely-cut grotesque things ga-
thered in great folds around his waist, ungainly and ample
enough for the hinder extremities of a hippopotamus, and
which, by reason of their encasing his short bandy legs,
must here be called trousers. The other was a tall fellow in
drab-coloured cottons. Both these individuals sprang up
AN OPIUM-SMOKER. 99

from the attitudes they had been indolently reclining in as
M. entered, as if astonished and little pleased at the in-
terruption.

The podgy gentleman—at this moment looking for all the
world as if he had sat for all the portraits, ivory, wood, or
jade carvings, of all the patriarchal old men that ever existed
or do exist in the eccentric fancies of native art—had just
left a tiny square couch in the middle of the cramped
room, that seemed adapted to his length and width. It was
covered inside with white cotton and comfortably curtained
over with thin snowy gauze spread on four corner bamboos
to prevent the ingress of any daring gangs of marauding
mosquitos while his serene individuality reposed. He seemed
more taken aback at the occupation in which we found him
engaged than irritated at our unannounced intrusion, for he
had been opium-smoking. There, on the miniature bed,
stood the small stool, with the yet reeking opium pipe—
the smoky deep yellow flame of the lamp dancing on it—and
the thin cane pillow on which his globular head had rested
during the indulgence of his soporific passion, which we had
unwittingly interrupted before the due quantity of the
‘manus dei’ had been consumed; the larger portion yet
remained ia the concavity of the cockle-shell near the lamp,
testifying to the liberal dose he had laid out for himself for
the evening. To M.’s question as to whether he was the
landlord, he could not return an answer for some seconds,
but kept looking timidly at us, until his neighbour, who had
been only inhaling the fumes of the tobacco-pipe, took up
the conversation, and set the old man at his ease. He was
in no way connected with the inn, but only a lodger, a mer-
chant from some sea-port on the south, and had been a
number of years resident in the town.

They could tell nothing about the capabilities of the
house, but kindly requested us to sit down on two of the
three chairs the room boasted, offered us pipes, and, better

H 2
100 LUMBER-ROOM.

and more welcome than all, filled two cups with scalding
weak tea from the inseparable attendant—a large pewter
teapot.

Meantime the crowd became more numerous; the window
we were sitting near had every one of its oil-paper panes
perforated by long-nailed fingers, and eyes darkly sparkling
were behind the gaps. The door was twice or thrice nearly
carried by storm, and nothing but the dashing sorties of the
beleaguered inmates saved the door and window-frame from
being carried out of the range of vision. Our quondam friends
were civil, but uncomfortable, and evidently did not wish or
could not summon courage to smooth the troubled spirits
outside; and the proprietors of the numerous equipages and
beasts of draught there, roared loudly when one of our
irruptions caused a more than usual panic and smashing of
shafts, with breaking away of the live stock. It was therefore
deemed high time that a more isolated and independent
corner should be found, and this M. set himself to seek.
Before long he proclaimed that a somewhat unusual appen-
dage to a Chinese building, a second floor, was unoccupied,
and that to it we must adjourn. A paper lantern is snatched
from the hand of one of our courtyard friends; we scramble
into a dilapidated doorway, through a steamy cookshop sur-
feited with oleaginous odours, and from which the semi-rude
greasy artistes have levanted on the noisy buzz. Without
warning of our approach, we pass to a narrow passage full of
break-shin furniture, from whence we can grapple our way to
the foot of a creaking shaky staircase, and with about twenty
strides reach the landing-place of our wished-for dormitory—
an old lumber-room partially filled with very old, very much
worn-out household chattels, the rafters cobwebby and scor-
pion-haunted. They bore a miscellaneous assortment of fes-
tival paraphernalia, whose faded colours and tattered tawdry
detracted nothing from the general appearance of the place,
and lent an air of melancholy despair to two gigantic butterfly
USE OF THE WHIP. 101

kites with flaccid wings drooping over the mouldy beams
instead of fluttering in the freshening breeze. Without the
slightest demur we are ready to accept the cover of such a
dusky roof.

A man and two or three boys have appeared, as the
representatives of the house; cold water is brought to
assuage our thirst and bathe our feet; hot tea, for which we
have brought sugar, so luxurious are we, reeks in very
common bowls; rice, eggs, and the remains of our sausage
all marshal themselves under the generalship of Ma-foo, who
is now self-dubbed chef de cusine of our peripatetic esta-
blishment; and we eat, drink, and are as merry as many more
fortunately situated for good cheer. The stairs are groaning
and squeaking under their unwonted burden, the floor of
the outer room rocks and reels from the oscillating weight
imposed on it by countless feet; the sanctity of the inner
crib, in which we have cautiously lodged our all, and in
which we are now preparing to sleep, is remorselessly
invaded; youth and old age stand before us in palpable out-
line and substantiality, wondrously gazing; while over their
heads and away in the darkness, eyes twinklingly give out
their lustre like unnumbered stars in the firmament, and the
shuffling din of footsteps and tongues affords us a gratuitous
concert by no means entertainable after such an unpleasant
day. We bore it all, nevertheless, with the greatest patience,
until it could be borne no longer. Even Ma-foo, the most
tolerant of all humanity, began to lose patience, and his thin
shrivelled figure gave tokens of anger. The crush and
hurry-skurry reached its exacerbating maximum when M.
made one of his sallies armed with a riding-whip.

‘ Est modus in rebus will apply to obstreperous curiosity as
well as anything else,’ we could not help muttering as a
dreadful row ensued—pushing, jumping, and gyrations of
the most indescribable kind supervening upon the sudden
apparition of the stranger in such a threatening attitude, until
102 SLEEP.

the whole place was in a state of lively vibration, and nothing
less than a sudden visit to the ground-floor seemed likely to
be the termination of it.

Hard must have been the tumbles, shocking must have
been the squeezes, and heart-rending the rents inflicted on
the flowing robes of the nocturnal visitors by that return
call. Its effects soon wore off, however; before many minutes
a forlorn hope of juvenile desperadoes had once more scaled
the ascent, carefully pushed their way through the long
gallery of a room, and there were their obliquely-curtained
eyes peering wistfully at us from the nearest and safest pomts
of view. They had fairly outstripped us in zeal. Finding
our efforts unavailing to drive them permanently away, we
had nothing else for it, and so surrendered laughingly, lying
down ona very dirty bench. We got the man and boy atten-
dants to open widely the decrepid windows, and make sundry
openings to windward, for the entrance of the fresh north
breeze that immediately began to blow coolly and somno-
lescently around; and under the guardianship of a great
tortoise-looking pasteboard reptile which hung aloft and
gapingly glared below on us with its redundant whitey-
piscine eyes, we, in a very few seconds, were quite for-
getful of the locality we had reached, or of the. spherical
physiognomies that loomed upon us in this new paradise so
far from home.

‘Blessings on sleep! it wraps one round like a mantle,’
gratefully says trite Sancho Panza. Redoubled blessings on
it, we say, when, after a twelve hours’ ride through such a
region, cheerless and waterless, broiling and dusty, it sheds
its favours so assuagingly and without solicitation ; obli-
terating all sense of loneliness or hardship, and -alleviating
the effects of fatigue.
103

CHAPTER VIII.

THE TOWN OF FUNG-TAI— AN IMPROVING COUNTRY, AND THE THRIFT
OF ITS INHABITANTS —ITS AGRICULTURE— RECOLLECTIONS OF HOME
— GRAIN-FIELDS — GARDENS— AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY——-THE GRAVE~
YARDS— WAYSIDE WELLS—THE VILLAGE PATRIARCHS —THE HAMLET
OF HANCHUNG—OUR RECEPTION—‘MEN OF THE GREAT ENGLISH
NATION ’— AUTOGRAPH-HUNTERS— FAN-INSCRIBING,

O sound were our slumbers, as we lay exposed to the
heavenly night wind on the rigid structure that served
us for a bed-place in that airy attic, that—despite the watch-
man’s punctilious chronological registrations on the noisy
gong, the melodious cantillations of the early vendors of
materials for the preparation of the early morning meal,
or the rapid accession to the number of those hapless beings
who, we could not forbear thinking, must have kept watch
over us during the night in order to notify to the out-
siders if anything particularly strange presided over or
influenced us during the dark hours devoted to rest and
peace by themselves, as they crouched down on their hunkers
lost in attention— we did not awake until a late hour,
when the sun had fairly got above the tops of the houses,
throwing his rays in gold and silver gleams, over furrowed
tiles and horned gables,—through the verdant foliage of
the wide-spreading willows that grew in an adjoining garden,
and, in long dazzling white pencils, darted in fitful starts
through our windows and played about our bodies like the
impaling knives hurled from the steady hand of a Chinese
juggler.
We had o’erslept ourselves, and were all the better for
it—if entire riddance from weariness and thirst, hunger
104 THE TOWN OF FUNG-TAL

and scorching, and the substitution of good spirits and
contentment in lieu thereof, were to be accepted as gua-
rantees. The baggage was quickly huddled into the cart,
after a mild form of breakfasting had been rehearsed
on the remains of last night’s feast; the mules were
once more in harness, the ungroomed steeds fixed in their
rusty, dusty saddles and bridles, the saddle-girths barely
clutching each side of the saddles over stomachs filled
to bursting or cerebral apoplexy by unmeasured quantities
of cut straw. Ma-foo is mounted; our last night’s acquaint-
ance, jacketless as usual, protrudes his little fat body with
his little round face, garnished by a long-stemmed pipe, for a
second beyond the cover of the door, and darts back again as
we make as speedy an exit as possible. We are besieged by
the citizens and the scamps of the place, who cling tenaciously
to our skirts as we emerge from the ‘ Tien,’ and they only left
us when speed and distance had vanquished them. The town
of Fung-tai was now visible, and though in the darkness of
our entry we may have missed the best portion, yet we were
pleased with this view of the small place. The houses were
remarkably good, the shops large and cleanly for Chinese
shops, and the main street through which we were passing
tolerably wide, though, like all other streets or roads here,
unpaved and rutted.

An iron-foundry stood on our right as we passed through,
in the courtyard of which we could see pots and cauldrons
and other articles of utility laid out in rows, and smutty faces
and hands moving among them; while on the right—on the
left bank of the Hwang-shing-hé, to which the town seems to
be principally indebted for its trade—were timber-yards and
workshops in abundance, the toiling inmates of which skip
out to have a look at such an unwonted sight. The road
leading for about a mile from the suburbs, is raised many
feet above the level of the plain; and the solid character
of its earthen banks, the width and firmness of the surface,
THE COUNTRY IMPROVING. 165

and the efficiency and neatness of the deep drains on each
side, mark its importance in regard to the communication
maintained between this and the adjacent towns and villages
beyond. Drawing nearer the hills, with their endless variety
of aspect, the country rises in gentle undulations and
in perceptible slope towards their base; great care begins to
be manifested in the cultivation of the land, which is improv-
ing in every possible way. - The region of deluge and pro-
strating monotony, with its vapid sameness and congregated
family arks, has disappeared; all that can please or delight
the eye in rural beauty is before us, and we pass along with a
sentiment and a keener relish for everything Chinese than
had animated us since our arrival in the Flowery Land,—a
condition of happiness, doubtless, owing much to sound
healthful sleep, the salubrity of the locality, and the modi-
fied temperature, with the delightful variation in the land-
scape; but perhaps more to the investment we greedily made
of a few cash in pocketfuls of apricots and peaches, which,
though scarcely ripe, gave sufficient of the aroma and godt of
these fruits to refresh our dusty mouths and throats for
along time. After travelling through many quiet villages
and hamlets standing on the winding road, about ten o’clock
we come upon the first spring well we have seen since leaving
Peking last year. It was in as pretty and as homely a village
as could well be found out of Britain, the name of which
—Ee-ma-tschwan, 30 le from Fung-tai—for the benefit and
regeneration of future summer travellers, we here record; and
10 le further we found another quite as charming and as rich in
the possession of excellent water, with its little cottages built
of brick and whitewashed, their roofs tiled or thatched, and
roomy enclosures also of brick, finished in the most work-
manlike manner, and the attached gardens stocked with
fruit trees and vegetables. Every’ little aggregation of
houses, spread evenly and not too thickly over the country,
was snugly embosomed in genial sylvan shade, from the light
106 HOMELIKE SCENES.

green curtain of which they peeped out lovingly on the
tastefully-planted rows of trees that grew apart from them
like model plantations, for fuel or building purposes. We
were speeding through the most fertile and prosperous
corner of the province of Chili—so far as the scanty infor-
mation gathered from books and people could tell us—and
getting among scenes very different from those met with in
more southern latitudes in regard to the natural pro-
ductions of the district. So much did they resemble many
at home, that, could we only have inserted, in the midst of
those clumps of foliage away to our right, the square sub-
stantial outline of a country mansion, with its large old-
fashioned windows almost invisible through the sweeping
branches, and its chimneys rising skyward from the blue-
slated roof, and been able to dot a church spire towering
above the topmost boughs of the old willows near that
coterie of snowy rustic habitations in the upland before us,
distance might have been annihilated, and we in imagi-
nation travelling along some one of the green lanes in the
grain-bearing quarters of Oxfordshire, Yorkshire, or the
Weald of Kent; or revelling in the contemplation of the
golden crops and the prospect of an abundant harvest in
the unrivalled carses of Gowrie or Stirling. Consentaneously
with the amelioration in the agricultural lineaments of the
neighbourhood we had entered and observed as we passed
along, the dress and well-to-do appearance of the people
improved in a direct proportion; and the purer atmosphere,
with the desirable concomitants of good and plentiful food
and regular living, indicated a much higher degree of robust
health and serene complacency of temper than we could ever
see in or near the pent-up cities left behind us.

Heaved up in a cold grey mass to our left—barren and
naked, with their spiked and corrugated borders projected
into the upper air, barely fined and smoothed down by the
blue veil of aerial gauze delicately intervening between us
CAREFUL CULTIVATION. 107

and them—the hoary mountains of granite look, as they
stretch away into immeasurable distance in front, like a vast
cast-iron barrier erected by Cyclopean hands to repel the
rude north wind in its passage across this fair and fruitful
plain—their forbidding grandeur, undisturbed by the invading
thriftiness of the labourers below only because the stony
surface would allow nothing to live, draped sternly around
them as in primeval ages when they seemed old standing
over a young earth. From their feet, extending away to the
right and right-front, and margined only by the sky, lay a
cosmorama of wavy vegetation, a sea of yellowish green,
placidly sweeping and nodding in every direction, and obey-
ing the light puffy airs from the ravines and gullies. This
is the result of uninterfered-with industry and unwearied
toil; a fair and acceptable specimen of the glory and
pride of the sons of Ham, alike their source of grandeur and
permanency, their populousness and prosperity, uniformity
and cheerful peacefulness as a nation. It is a country cul-
tivated to the utmost degree that mortal man, unaided by
science, could hope to attain.

Not a weed can be detected by the closely scrutinising eye,
nor a waste yard of soil not producing something or other
useful—every inch of ground capable of bearing a stalk has
it; and over the whole expanse of the prolific landscape, not
a hedge, wall, bank, or fence, to steal space from the limits of
unsurpassed frugality, can be descried. The high roads,
reduced to the most attenuated dimensions, and barely wide
enough for the two-wheeled cart to move on, are unenclosed
by anything that might prevent damage being done to the
unprotected plants through which they creep, except at un-
certain intervals, where a short trench is dug near and at an
angle to their margins for the purpose of guarding against
the encroachment of carriages and keeping them in the proper
track; while the friendly regard and courtesy of the eques-
trians and drivers of teams by whom we closely scrape, and
108 GRAIN-FIELDS.

their consideration for the general weal, generously compel
them to fasten over every weary animal’s mouth a muzzle of
basket or rope, to prevent the injurious nibbling of the
unconscious and unscrupulous beasts.

Never by any nation could the gentle Ceres be so devoutly
worshipped as she is by this; and if the inclement North is
less sparing in its gifts, and demands greater sacrifices of
time and patience than in the glowing, hothouse, steady
temperature of the South, the husbandman is not the less
willing to do her due homage for a share of her divine counte-
nance and grace. Those impenetrable jungles of Barbadoes
millet or ‘lofty corn,’ so regularly drilled and so uniform in
their height of twelve or fourteen feet, with their ruddy brown
heads standing heavily over the rustling leaves, though a
casual glance might say otherwise, are yet only a portion of
the gift; for in narrower drills between each of the tall lines
grows the shorter and less bulky, but not much less useful
panicled millet, with its fine yellow seed-topped stalk spring-
ing humbly from the feet of its gigantic companions—alter-
nated, in stray fields, with perhaps wheat in small quantity,
or barley, or the castor-oil plant, which, we have been told,
forms by means of its seeds an article of food—or even a
kind of pulse or bean, climbing and twining around the
strong stems of the high millet for support until its produce
is ripe. Small fields occur frequently where the dusky
olive-green melons lie thick as cannon-balls on a hard-fought
battle-field; where the bright yellow flower of the meagre
dwarfish ‘Ming wha’ or cotton-plant varies the prevailing
hue of the surrounding vegetable world in plots of greater or
less size; and parcels of little squares of the plants cultivated
for the production of the blue colouring matter with which
they dye their cotton fabrics; with sometimes long stretches
of the profitable maize, already nearly ripe, unbendingly
shaking the pinky plume depending from its imbricated crest.

There are the gardens, too, where the art of horticulture,
GARDENS. 109

practised pretty freely abroad, is pushed as far as diligent
hands, old-fashioned heads, and the experience of centuries
can reach, and which contribute their full quota of domestic
beauty to the pleasant picture. Some of the more extensive,
belonging to the wealthier style of houses, we cannot contrive
to see, because of the high stone or brick wall overhung by
the light green drapery of the willow, the primrose-yellow
blossom of the acacia, or the glistening dark green of the
laurel growing within; but the less pretentious enclosures
line the road for some extent through the villages, and over
the low fence or brick barrier they are garnished with, a full
but not crowded assortment of growing materials necessary
for the maintenance and enjoyment of the simple lives
led by the unassuming owners. They are laid out in a
manner that would agreeably astonish enthusiasts in these
pursuits at home; orderly ranks of millet-stalk trellis-work
are covered kindly by flowering creepers which lend their gay
colours for the present and give their seeds into the bargain
afterwards; and numerous varieties of potherbs are spread out
between, in truly economic fashion. The roofs and sides of
cave-like arbours built up of lattice-work, are buried beneath
the leaves and tendrils of the well-trained vine, or the flowers
and heavy fruit of the pumpkin. Neatly trimmed peach,
plum, pear, and apple trees are dotted in the most convenient
and favourable spots; but there are few plants grown merely
for the sake of their flowers, and of these the cockscomb and
honeysuckle predominate. Invariably the sunniest nook of
every one of these pet patches was devoted to the propaga-
tion and nurture of nicotian leaves — very green and graceful
they looked—to be consumed in the ministering pipe; and
all betokened the triumphant success of that unwearied
assiduity which seems to be the natural endowment of the
good folks whom we see leisurely and steadily working around
us, as if their labour, instead of tirmg or making them dis-
contented, only added renewed vigour and unalloyed pleasures
110 AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY.

to the increasing daily routine of duty which they seem to
seek. Hoeing in little gangs, turning up the rich sandy loam,
or ploughing the surface of the soil around the roots of each
row of plants, all the ‘ efficients’ of the villages appear to be
employed, and taking advantage of the auspicious weather to
hasten the approach of the welcome harvest. Even the
children were amusing themselves in assisting the aged and
infirm in garden operations, and learning their great lesson
in life from those whom ripe years, ample experience, and
respected tradition had most fitted for the task. All, from
childhood to adolescence and senile decay, laboured away
as if they had been ants, or as if the words of the poet had
given them energy and resolution to toil in their own peculiar
way for an existence unchequered by ambition or the cares of a
more highly civilized world. Rigidly and undeviatingly they
seem to cling to the injunctions given by the Emperor Kanghi
in the sacred edicts: ‘Give,’ he says, ‘ the chief place to hus-
bandry, and the cultivation of the mulberry-tree, in order to
procure adequate supplies of food;’ and to those of his son,
Yungching, who, actuated by the same feelings, and conscious
that

‘ There is a perennial nobleness and sacredness in work, —
In idleness alone is there perpetual despair,’—

admonishes his subjects thus: —‘ Suffer not a barren spot to
remain a wilderness, or a lazy person to abide in the cities.
Then the farmer will not lay aside his plough and hoe, or the
housewife put away her silkworms and her weaving. Even
the productions of the hills and marshes, of the orchards and
vegetable gardens, and the propagation of the breed of
poultry, dogs, and swine, will all be regularly cherished, and
used in their season to supply the deficiencies of agriculture.’

With the birth of the Empire, the tillage of the ground
has yet as great a hold upon the majority of the northern
population as ever it could have; and though they are, per-
haps, no further advanced so far as regards improving their
GRAVEYARDS. 1

implements and methods of utilising the materials at hand,
than their progenitors were in the days when our ancestors
were roaming through woods and wilds, finding in the chase
the sole means of subsistence—their unclothed bodies smeared
over with azure pigments, and their hirsute breasts, mayhap,
grotesquely adorned with the sun, moon, and stars, delineated
in mystic array—the antiquated air which envelopes every-
thing here, and the testimony of the wonderful industry of
the people, are in point of attraction, in our opinion, worth
anything to be witnessed in their towns or cities.

And we are not surprised to notice that the utilitarian
spirit is carried even beyond the grave, and beyond the vene-
ration which we had understood the Chinese professed for
their departed relations; for in the rural graveyards where,

‘Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep ’—

there is no exemption from the universal ploughing,
scraping, and sowing; and, as no particular place is set
apart apparently for a public burying-ground, nor any
attempts made at walling in those conical earthen tumuli,—
so humble when compared with the elaborate and tastefully
painted horse-shoe or 2 tombs of the south—the latter render
some portion of every landholder’s property a Woking ceme-
tery on a diminished scale. On them time and the weather
produce their usual effects; so that in those fields where at
present the turf heaves in many a mouldering heap, around
each the hoe has been zealously plied,—the plough has passed,
—and the grain droops lazily ; a generation or two will see
them level and undistinguishable from the common earth
around, when the heavy wooden coffins will have crumbled
away, and their contents have subsided into dust and gone to
enrich the ground the deceased so often tilled.

Everywhere on our road we had occasion to observe
this custom,— this payment of the loan former husbandmen
112 LABOURER.

had for so long a term and so repeatedly borrowed from
Mother Earth. Grand or great-grandchildren, when the
season returns, remingle the ashes of their sires with the
kindred dust to which they have been consigned, and erect a
fitting monument to their gone-by habits of industry in well-
tended crops ripening abundantly above them. The maho-
gany-coloured plain countenances, turned towards us in a
half proud, half inquisitive kind of way, when we got near
enough to these sons of the soil, and the free, independent
sort of bearing that each naturally wears when addressed,
betoken the self-satisfied and self-reliant spirit reigning
within, as if they were always about to repeat that rustic
song of theirs which smacks so strongly and vividly: of the
‘ Miller o’ Dee :’—

‘The sun comes forth, and we work:
The sun goes down, and we rest.
We dig wells, and we drink :
We sow fields, and we eat.
The emperor’s power, what is it to us?’

What would our fairies say to those wayside draw-wells
at which we are perpetually stopping to glut our drouthy
desires with the purest and most refrigerating nectar ever
imbibed by unregenerated man, drawn from their dark,
mossy depths by a tiny scooped-out wooden clog, dripping
its icy drops with startling coldness down our necks and
sleeves, as the glorious beverage is gulped over in invigor-.
ating streams; and where our ponies bury all but their eyes
and ears in wide buckets overflowing with such unusual
cheer, or greedily suck up the shallow contents of the half
gourd-shell, and wistfully look for more? If the Oreads find
but a bleak and far from romantic abode in the cold, sombre
mountains frowning above us, and the Dryads have just cause
to grumble at the scanty and often broken repose afforded in
the narrow belts of wood so reluctantly granted them from
the matter-of-fact country around by the most mundane and
WELLS. 113

materialistic of men, how grateful and happy must be
the Naiads; and how blithe must our good little friends
feel, as they gambol and wheel now in the umbrage of
those pendent boughs so thickly foliaged and intertwined,
skimming about the gnarled trunks of emerald-green willows,

 

 

A Road-side Well.

planted centuries ago in half-circles around the health-

giving water, and then in the pale yellow moonbeams

that skip lightly on the shred of grass-plat, allowed to

fringe the fairy circle, unheeding that these resorts are the

work of mortal hands, and are still under their special care.
I
114 AGE AND CHILDHOOD.

If at night we can imagine these places to be so pleasantly
thronged with such felicitous creatures, and envy them their
lot, in the daytime we need no such aid to conjure up
in reality as happy a scene as ever dazzled bewildered
human eyes that chanced to obtain a momentary peep into
fairyland. In the deepest obscurity of those grand old trees,
scarcely interrupted by the filmiest gleam of sunshine, con-
gregated around the wells from whence they have derived so
much life, are the village patriarchs, met in quiet concord to
discuss the unchronicled gossip and tittle-tattle of their little
world,— to guard their tottering grandchildren from harm,
—to smoke their pipes, and wear through the twilight of
their halcyon days.

They are tall, hale sexagenarians and octogenarians, with
long, thin, flowing grey beards and moustaches, weak, tearful
eyes, wrinkled faces, and scalps entirely destitute of hair,
save the half-dozen shrivelled silvery filaments so care-
fully preserved on their old crowns, and plaited up with
black silken thread to serve as an apology —a very slender
one— for the fashionable innovation of Tartar origin, and
a submission to the acquired taste, for this most dis-
tinguishing mark of all, of the power of a dominant race.
They form a suitable accompaniment to the other elements
of rural grandeur and simplicity in which we wander,
and are types of the paternal worthies the Chinese so much
love to depict, allied as they are with those tiny lumps of
good-natured childhood, which they nurse and amuse with
such sapient drollery,— oleaginous little sprouts scarcely able
to creep and crawl around the knees that are almost too stiff
and feeble to keep pace with their infantile strides, with
round, colourless faces, noses barely elevated above the flat,
uninteresting surface, and black eyes, jetty and glistening as
those of a mouse, looking out on the world. The convex
surface of their germinating craniums is shaven, and decked
with erectile tufts of soft, raven-coloured hair, in the most
HAN-CHUNG. 115

arbitrary and fantastic way,— sometimes a stumpy tail on
both sides of the crown,— sometimes only one on the right
or left side, and sometimes as many as four or five rise up in
stiff twists in an indefinite array of paint-brushes, with their
nether extremities duly clothed in bags, that are facsimiles
on a proportionate scale to those worn by adolescence, which
are suspended from the naked shoulders by wide braces.

For nearly fifteen miles our path lay in the midst of this
abundant grain-producing country, and led us through these
domestic and prosperous scenes. We quitted them with
hearty regret when the cart began to trundle from the scrimp
to a wider road, descending from the fertile slope to the
unpretending roomy main street of the little town or vil-
lage of Han-chung. Our entrance having been both rapid
and abrupt, the people were thrown into a lively state of
confusion, rushing out of doors, hurriedly banging-to doors
and gates, flying gladly out to meet, and flying with terror
away from us—the gentler portion of the community in-
volving themselves in the mélée in a very ungraceful and un-
feminine manner. Luckily, a grey-bearded old countryman,
leading a horse with a pair of panniers on its back, pulled
up at one side of the road to make way for us, and, after a
friendly stare and gape, throwing his rugged umber-shaded
features into the most agreeable and welcome contortions, he
bawled out his sentiments of admiration to the throng in an
unmistakeable volley of ‘How can — how can!— beautiful
sight, grand sight!’ This certainly allayed the fears and
commotions of the more terrified. The midday halt was in
the only auberge the place could boast ; and in a primitive
‘bothy’ in the courtyard we were content to refresh and
rest ourselves as best we might.

Cold water from the best tap, warm tea, rice, and
eggs, constituted our déjeuner in Han-chung, and a mid-
day nap would have been a sine quad non after the ride
and the soporific tendencies of the mountain air; but to do

12
116 THE GREAT ENGLISH NATION.

more than wink was out of the usual course of events now-
a-days in these outlandish regions, where foreigners had
never been seen before, and the inhabitants of which seldom,
if ever, travelled many li from their own door-posts. The
inn, all the entrances thereto, with the court-yard and our
own door-posts and window, were carried by the rustics
without a show or feint of opposition from the proprietors,
and every paper pane, wooden or mat screen or partition,
capable of penetration, was bored and rent by finger or
instrument for the scrutiny and information of the hungry
lot outside. Those wedged and woven nearest us were too
much afraid, too intent on keeping their ground, or too much
amazed, to talk; but many were the questions and remarks
bandied about by those pressing and jostling in the rear.
Ma-foo was, as on all other occasions, the vehicle for the
transmission of their inquiries, as he was the willing
medium of communication between us and the natives, and
though every one of the outside candidates pinned them-
selves on to him whenever circumstances required that he
should break his way through, yet he was uniformly civil,
and answered their interrogations as if he had been on the
most intimate and friendly terms with them for years.
The question unceasingly poked at him by every fresh arrival
was in some way connected with our nationality. That
appeared to be the foundation from which they were to raise
their ideas and historical deductions, and to confirm or era-
dicate previous suppositions. ‘What manner of men are
those?’ always met with the unvarying response, ‘Ta ying-
kwoh yins,’ men of the great English nation. Finding we
did not murder and eat them, they soon became confident
enough, and two or three even ventured within the doorway,
through which they were, requested to retire again, as their
tobacco fumes were anything but aromatic: while those who
saw everything distinctly, passed on descriptions, with
their own comments, of our marvellous costume, ways of

 
AUTOGRAPH-HUNTERS. 117

eating, and general inexpressibly odd appearance. A perfect
fermentation in the whole mass arose when they began to
describe the curious style in which we wrote, our pens, and,
above all, the pencils, which they evidently believed to be
something miraculous in being capable of writing over whole
pages without ink. One spectacled respectable old man fairly
pushed his way to where I sat, and only stayed his inquisi-
tiveness when the goat-like beard of his was sweeping over
my book, and I could contain my laughter no longer. Not
in the least ashamed or daunted at the length to which his
unmanageable curiosity had carried him, he began to turn
over the leaves, examining the quality of the paper, and
especially admiring its glossiness, and then, after chuckling
and nodding his delight—he must have been a paper manu-
facturer or a schoolmaster—he presented us with his fan for
our worshipful autograph to be inscribed thereon by such a
mysterious stylet.

Already one side was figured over with inscriptions—
black, clear, and very neatly painted—probably it was the
gage @amitié of some cherished friend who had sought to per-
petuate a mutual regard by an impromptu verse in his own
style of writing; so, fancying ourselves highly honoured by
this compliment, we felt bound to propitiate a short-lived
friendship by complying with his reasonable demand, and on
the other side penned a regular chronological detail of our
names, date of our departure from Tien-tsin, arrival at the
village, and probable destination. Before we had finished
our job, half a dozen worthies, with a like number of fans,
were in upon us for the same token of our condescension and
esteem ; and too highly flattered by the civil reception and
attention paid us, it was only a pleasant though imperative
duty to repeat the history with some slight variations to
please their eyes, for they could no more understand the
meaning of the characters in which we wrote, than we did
those of their language, and it would have been useless to
118 FAN-INSCRIBING.

attempt their interpretation. While we were at work, lo!
the onlookers outside had scuttled off and returned, each
possessed of a new fan, destined to become a family curto
for the future. Our personal description having been worn
threadbare, and events, past, present, and to come, penned
out, we had recourse to as much as our memories retained of
the popular songs of the day ; and making up a medley from
the first lines of each ditty, furnished an expansive collection
of materials sufficient to startle the editorial staff of all the
penny warblers and comic song-books of the day — greatly
to the delight of the unenlightened but highly flavoured
beings who honoured us with their sociable presence in such
a rest-dispelling manner during the heat of the day.
119

CHAPTER IX.

CULTIVATION OF INDIGO—BED OF THE TAU-HG—MANUFACTURE OF POT-
TERY—A CHINESE DOCTOR—AN ORATOR—-NEW DOOR-FASTENING—
EFFICACY OF FLAGELLATION—A ROW—BAD WATER AND WORSE TEA—
REPULSIVE MODE OF SERVING UP POULTRY—-CHINESE MINSTREL—RE-
COLLECTIONS OF CELTIC MUSIC—CHINESE SINGING—NATIVE FIDDLE,

UR short halt had expired; we had still our twenty
miles to ride before night. The novelty excited by

our stay had been slightly worn off, our bill was paid, and
all that was necessary to transact before we bade good-
bye to the secluded town, accomplished. We moved out
into the streets again, through the lanes of upturned faces
on each side; and were soon in the country, plodding and
ploughing through sandy roads, sometimes uphill, sometimes
downhill ; into villages and out again, nearing the mountains
one half-hour, and leaving them the next; buried in the
surging seas of millet, disentombed in speckled fields of
melons or auriferous cotton shrubs ; half swamped amongst
Indian corn, gliding through arcades of sylvan architecture
bidding defiance to the thoroughfare of the sun, or across
encaustic squares of dye-plants and brown earth ; on to
roads divergent, convergent — everything but straight, and
irregular, heavy, and shifting, inconsistent and unendurable,
in their general character, were it not for the mellow
temperature of the afternoon and the agreeable diversity of
everything coming within the range of vision. A large piece of
ground is passed which is solely given up to the cultivation
of the greenish-purple indigo, among the even lines of which
hoers are industriously turning over and breaking up the
earth. Two wide cisterns of white cement, some eight or
120 BED OF THE TAU-HO.

ten feet in breadth, and four or five in depth, are in the
middle of the crop for the maceration or fermentation of the
plants which are not yet in flower.

Notwithstanding the ups and downs,— the tortuous fickle
track,—we were gaining the grizzly hills. Unhandy knobs
of rock burst through the sand, the first specimens we had
to stumble over for many a day. Here it would be a series
of points and nodules of granite, over which our ponies had
to step carefully and gingerly ; there, a stiff ridge of hard
dark grey limestone intruding itself on the toilsome road
with a thin crust of calcareous conglomerate overlapping it,
and more rarely a soft friable light-coloured sandstone crop-
ping in round masses from the bed of the cart path.

The arable land began to forsake us and to subside into
the distance, and the villages to become more widely sepa-
rated, and hid in depressions and gaps. Thin withered
herbage lay on the elevations, scantily clothing their naked-
ness and preventing their carrying a chilly aspect, but away
towards the nerth and south are the verdant blooming
straths and plains, with their ripening harvests gleaming
in serried gradations of colour, until they become blended
with the deep blue of the cloudless sky. The little stone
cabins were not so tightly jammed together, but sought to
secure themselves from exposure and bleakness in choice
spots that afforded in many cases but slender room for a few,
so that they were devoid of that regularity and compactness
which gave the more fortunately situated dwellings in the
fertile localities an aspect of comfort and prosperity ; and the
peculiarities of situation, with the measures taken to remedy
them, caused a departure from the ordinary style of building
that lent a curious appearance to the sparsely distributed
houses on which we looked down every now and again from
the tops of high banks and ridges.

The bed of the Tau-hé, an inconsiderable stream lying at
the bottom of a narrow gully whose sides were wrapped in
POTTERY. 121

the brightest emerald vegetation, was easily crossed at the
ford, the long drought having considerably diminished its
volume. This must at times be somewhat’ large, judging
from the high-water lines it has left on each steep bank,
beyond which it opens out abruptly over an oozy tract
furnished with random willows along its course.

Soon after our road led between three bald hills; on one
of them, the highest, was a wild lonely temple, standing like
a ruined German chateau, on the most inaccessible point, a
very conspicuous landmark ; and a bold spur of brownish
grey that had started from the long chain. of mountains on
the left to join its isolated fellows on the right. Not far from
this, and probably to gain the advantage of the breeze always
sweeping about the high ground, three dome-shaped kilns
for the manufacture of coarse pottery, like our own in outline,
were reared on an elevated ridge. The ware, consisting
chiefly of huge vats glazed inside and outside, all except the
rim, was of a formidable thickness, and wide and deep enough
to have concealed in each of them two of Ali Baba’s forty
thieves whom Morgiana disposed of. The demand for these
articles must be somewhat great if the numerous rows of
them piled up ready to be taken away for service be any
criterion, and a busy throng of soiled workmen were active
in the various stages of production, and adding to the col-
lection; pulverising, kneading, and tempering the blackish
coally-looking coarse clay, in colour like the Stourbridge clay,
and which burns like it white in the furnace—by the aid of
ponies and asses, and simple but effective contrivances ; mould-
ing and finishing the plastic material by hand, and conveying
the vessels to the bottom aperture of the kilns where they are
to be baked by those heaps of small coal of tolerable quality,
brought, they tell us, from some coal-pit in the neighbouring
hills.

The transportation of such heavy brittle ware from such
an excluded manufactory, over such bumping rough roads,
122 A CHINESE DOCTOR.

must tend to increase its value; but the situation has been
evidently chosen in consequence of its geological advantages,
all the necessary ingredients being found within a small
radius—a fortuitous circumstance which we could not again
record on the whole of our route.

Near the end of our day’s journey, another stream, the Tang-
yau, was forded; and long before daylight had vanished we
were in the main suburban street of Kai-ping, in which we
halted for a few minutes to make some purchases opposite an
apothecary’s door. Inside his shop we could remark pendulous
bunches of dried herbs around the walls, drawers and pots,
and cupboards ranged on the sides and back of the dimly
lighted abode. The vendor of rhubarb and ginseng, simples
and plaisters, we could barely discern behind a long counter,
artistically wielding a pestle in a brass mortar—one of many
such in which are manipulated the bitter treasures collected
within the ever-dreaded sanctum of the country doctor, who
is as much an institution here as in the most sickly country
in Europe.

The town was enclosed within an indefensible wall much in
need of repair—crumbling as it was to the very gate through
which we had to pass before an inn could be found, - but
bearing traces of having seen better and more important days,
in its paved roadways beneath arches of tolerable width, but
now highly dangerous to the feet and knees of the quadrupeds,
as well as to the efficiency of the wheels and axletree of
the cart. This sustains a round of disjointing concussions
before we are in the leading thoroughfares, where we have
reason to believe a brick either fell from some invisible
source, or was hurled as a peace-offering by one of a group
of shopkeepers who lounged about the entrance to a store—
and some of whom wore looks that did not belie their
intentions. The salute did not meet with any amount
of attention; indeed, M., at whose feet the missile dropped,
only casually noticed the occurrence. Soon after we were
AN ORATOR. 123

in the yard of our hotel, with as rude a rabble of scatter-
lings and frantic busy-bodies as had yet pestered us in China.
The building was bad and dirty even for China, but was
in keeping with the general condition of the neglected
town, with its old houses decaying for lack of spirit—wide
street, gutterless, and nothing better than a sloppy cesspool,
more useful for the reception of the odds and ends and
vile garbage ejected by the filth-cherishing inmates of the
creaky dens on each side, than as a way for the conve-
nience of tramps or traffic. It strongly reflected the image |
of some towns we have seen in an island not far from Great
Britain, where the introduction of railways and the abolition
of stage-coaches have left the halts and coaching places—never
in a very lively stage of sanitary reform, or celebrated for
habits of cleanliness—in a chronic state of mud and ruin.
Where everything was so pitiably dirty and neglected, we
had not much to choose in the matter of apartments, our noses
generally deciding which could be rendered endurable for the
longest space of time if by opening door and windows, and
exterminating all the live stock that could be found on the
premises, the more objectionable effluvia and vermin could
be dispelled; and having seized upon a corner distant from
all other inhabited rooms, with a low shaky brick wall
enclosing a little space in front of the door, we fondly
but vainly flattered ourselves we could shut ourselves in and
perform our ablutions without hindrance from the presence
of the clamorous mob. The landlord was in an unenviable
plight — ill-natured and morose he seemed to be at the best of
times—for, without showing us the least consideration, and
leaving Ma-foo to conduct us through his piggeries of sleeping
apartments as best he might, he applied himself to the crowd,
beginning in a most lugubrious inconsistent whine as he saw
the sacredness of the choicest rooms invaded, and things
thrown topsy-turvy, gradually rising to the most inspiriting
harangue as the outer gates, which had been closed on our

t
124 DOOR-FASTENING.

arrival, were forced—and bursting, con amore, into a far
more natural whirlwind of deadly invective as the flood came
rolling onwards, threatening to overwhelm him and squash,
beyond the reach of redemption, the fowls and pigs exposed
to its rush.

Bolts or fastenings there were none on the narrow doors
of room and enclosure. The former had a contrivance for.
pulling it to, far behind the elegantly-designed springs of
Western lands, but yet as serviceable, and certainly less clumsy
than those cords and weights we have often been baffled with
at home. It was nothing more than a bow made from a strip
of bamboo and tightly bent by a leathern thong, fastened to
the inside of the door; from the thong ran a thin leather
strap, the end of which was firmly attached to the door-post;
thus, by the elasticity of the bamboo and the tension of the
strap, the door is kept closed, and when opened has the greater
tendency to close again because of the bow being more bent.
This was but a sorry security against intruders, and was
shortly to be curved to its utmost limits; for we had no sooner
taken possession, than the small private allotment without
was crammed, and a mass of yellow skins were competing for
the best sight-seeing places in the tainted domicile, with the
howling, helpless old landlord behind venting imprecations
on his agitated townsmen. Firm steps were necessary; half
measures would have made things worse. M. was deputy
Minister for War; but gifted to an admirable degree with senti-
ments of peace and goodwill towards all men, and the Chinese
in particular, and impressed with the necessity of preserving
the juste maliew between truckling to their curiosity on the one
hand from fear of offending them, and using harsh measures
to keep them in awe, he applied the mollifying suaviter in
modo with becoming grace and tact—but with no other effect
than to set one-half of his audience laughing and grinning in
derision, and inducing further symptoms of disturbance.

With a promptness and vigour of attack worthy of the best
CLEARING THE ROOM. 125

cause, he now brought into the arena the invincible fortiter in
re of a determined Briton; and never did magic wand, plied
by the hand of Bosco, Houdin, or Anderson, induce such
apparent miracles as did that flexible riding-whip in the
hand of my companion. The room was cleared as if all had
disappeared in the ground (good job if they had), but the
courtyard was wedged with all sorts and sizes, and those
from the room falling back on those in a perfect state of panic

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Clearing the Room.

—an ebullition, as hard to look on with equanimity as to
delineate in words. Then the most crushing struggle began
for the narrow aperture by which they had entered, but in
which two or three globular citizens had, at the very com-
mencement, managed, in their terror and haste, to get irre-
movably jammed, and these all the mad press behind utterly
failed to stir. It now became apparent that something must
give way, and though the warlike demonstrations had ceased,

ie
126 A ROW.

the unbridled strength of the outside pests became aug-
mented, until each of the adipose bolsters so mysteriously
and skilfully compressed into such a meagre slit, looked as if
about to burst before it would give way. Their individual
faces disclosed the ticklish position in which they but too
well knew they had got themselves. They looked at us
with the most abject ‘funk,’ and then at those who laboured
and heaved against them like battering-rams, as if each one
said, in anything but a defiant spirit,

Come on, come all, this wall shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I!

But the wall, luckily for them, had not a firm base ; and just
before they came to the collapsing point, a throe which must
have accelerated, if it did not effect, that catastrophe, was
exerted by the whole, and down came the wall, doors, and
doorposts. All were mingled in a regular scramble, from
which they picked themselves up in half-time and fled routed,
leaving their vanquisher in full possession of the field.
The scrambling, grappling, and sprawling, resembled the
clown’s ‘row’ scene in a good Christmas pantomime, and
afforded as merry a laugh as ever was elicited in boyhood
by those seasonable holiday performances. When the dis-
comfited fugitives halted beyond the limits of the court, and
found that the terrible strangers had not slain one-half of
their number, they enjoyed the fun as heartily as ourselves ;
laughing and holding their sides in splitting roars, greatly
to the chagrin of our host, who strutted, danced, and shouted,
until nothing but a well-timed fit of apoplexy could have
saved him from absolute madness. He was, we can unhesi-
tatingly aver, the most outrageously demonstrative and rabid
Chinaman it has been our misfortune to be within hail of.
We felt relieved on his account, and also on our own, when
the irritable man was driven by excess of bile to the shelter
of his particular den, from which he did not again show coun-
BAD FARE. 127

tenance that evening, greatly to the comfort of his guests.
Not so, however, the industrious knaves maneuvring with-
out. They betrayed no symptoms of succumbing to the
fright they had received, or yielded to their incessant dodging
from one place to another for the gratification of their eye-
sight, but gained confidence from our peaceable attitude,
which arose from an unfeigned desire to preserve the mise-
rable posada from wreck and ruin. They gained the doors
and windows once more, but from these they were moved
with the utmost alacrity on the slightest motion inside.

The bill of fare was as little adapted to‘our tastes as were
the other accommodations of the place. The water was bad,
and the tea was worse. Indeed, nothing could exceed the
badness of the water but the worthlessness of the tea; and
their combination was an abomination no amount of thirst
could have tolerated. The liquid could not have come from
the springs we had passed; whence came the leaves we could
not ascertain. We suspected very strongly that they bore a
more natural claim to the stem of the Chinese buckthorn
(Rhamnus Theezans) than to that of the Thea viridis or
genuine tea-plant. Harsh and bitter did the scalding abomi-
nation cling to our tongues. But, with the exception of a
bony fowl, nothing else could be had to satisfy our by no
means fastidious European wants and fancies. Ultimately
our bag of rice was opened, a tin of soup emptied, and another
sausage driven out of its hermetical fortress.

Ma-foo had been pursuing to the death, aided and
supported by two scullions, all the winged denizens of the
locality, and now came in with two cackling victims for
approval, whose only recommendations were the enormous
development of bones, tendons, and feathers, and parsi-
monious portion of muscle with which nature had endowed
them. Our necessities, but not our wills, consented, and
they were hurried off, amid screeches and screams, to an
untimely death. They were scalded in a greasy cauldron
128 COOKED FOWLS.

of water in the twinkling of an eye, from whence, after a
hurried boil, they were withdrawn, and laid before us, in
all the pomp and pride of intact heads and legs, even to
the very claws, combs, and bills. The fellow who officiated
as cook, thrifty to a disgusting degree (else he could never
have left these mementoes of recent murder to disfigure the
objects of his solicitude), actually brought in the whole of the
intestines, as well as about half a dozen shelless gamboge-
coloured ova in an oily basin, to ask whether we should
prefer having them fried in pig fat, or dressed @ la mode,
and served up after his own approved style with chopped
pork and. garlic. Dreadfully dissatisfied he seemed when
we expressed our sincere wish that he would immediately
leave the room, and take with him the nauseous trash.

A vigorous, healthy appetite, the invariable companion of
my life, ever willing to step forward when called upon,
and but too often over-zealous in appearing at the im-
proper time, was in readiness as usual, without any arti-
ficial promptings, and I made a regular feast of the good
things set before me, demolishing the rice and fowls in an
appalling manner, and at an unprecedented rate of speed,
by the light of two semi-fluid tallow dips stuck on the
spike of a wooden stand by means of a thin reed thrust into
the bottom end of the flavoury grease.

-The sorry remains had scarcely been cleared away by that
worthy factotum of ours when, as luck would have it, the
wandering minstrel of the town, led by a boy (for that
almost universal curse of the Chinese poor — ophthalmia—
had robbed him of sight), took up his ground in the door-
way and began first to tune and then to play on the three-
stringed ‘San hien’ or banjo of his country —an instru-
ment with a long neck traversed at one end by three pro-
jecting pegs, and a diminutive body at the other—of a
cylindrical shape, covered with dusky brown and yellow-
striped snake-skin, on which lay the dwarfish bridge sup-
CHINESE MINSTREL. 129

porting the strings. He had well chosen his time and the
hamour of his audience; for, had he begun his strum-
ming before, instead of after dinner, his entertainment would,
a thousand chances to one, have got a somewhat unpro-
mising reception. There he stood now, like a David
harping before King Saul of the troubled mind, the long,
well-shapen fingers of his left hand stretched over the thin
silken cords of the antiquated construction that lay across his

 

Wandering Minstrels.

body ; pressing them nimbly and gently at one extremity,
or sliding upwards and downwards on the thin neck with the
practised experience and grace of an artiste, while the right
hand, with the end of the striking finger protected by a thin
slip of bamboo, was busy plying the strings. ‘This, of all the
popular musical instruments in ordinary use amongst the
Chinese, pleases me best; and though the airs the present per-
former treated us to were novel, and he was unacquainted
K
130 CHINESE MUSIC.

with those we asked him to play, and which are so much in
vogue southwards, yet he managed to get through his solo in
an unobjectionable, if not in a scientific manner. He acted
the part of a musical physician in good earnest, introducing
simple melodies with an unaffected execution as he beat time
with his foot, bringing out the low notes clear and soft,
slurring the short quick notes in the allegretto movements in
a tremulous series of shakes, and with decided effect, darting
his left hand from one end of the neck to the other in pleasant
cadences, pauses, and fitful starts, and yet all in measured
beat, ‘ putting the soul in tune,’ and getting what he thought
a good reward for his skill when he had finished.

The music of our friends is certainly curious and whimsical,
and to a stranger very often sounds discordant, jerking, and
disagreeable in the extreme—appearing as grotesque, but at
the same time as indigenous to the natale solum of the black-
haired race, as are their architecture, their garb, their manners
and their shaven heads and pigtails; yet that they are a
musical people, few who have mixed much among them, and
patiently listened to a good performer on one of their most
harmoniously attuned instruments, will deny. Almost every
house we entered in North China boasted of its amateur and
its weapon of torture, as some non-lovers of the dulcet-tones
have termed the favourite article, in some shape. or another;
and in passing through the dark narrow streets in the even-
ings, one is sure to hear from the dimly-lighted houses the
squealing, incoherent, and distorted vibrations tumbling out
on the night air with a spasmodic reality and a foreignness of
style that at once remind the listener of the outlandish
country he is in. I remember one night, shortly after my
arrival in Hongkong, listening in the almost silent street to a
peripatetic musician, whom I thought — though it is but a
hasty opinion at that early period of my sojourn in the land
—a master of this three-stringed lute. I had never heard
anything half so curious and wild as the sound of those shrill,
THE BAGPIPES. 131

thrilling, weird-like notes echoing strangely in the vacant
thoroughfare. There is a plaintive melancholy often per-
meating and controlling the more lively element in some of
their airs which is peculiar as well as impressive, and touches
somehow or other our most pleasant souvenirs of days gone by,
particularly when played on the ‘Shu tih,’ a sort of clarionet
—or rather, from its sharp and loud peals of ear-plercing
intensity, anear approximation to the chanter of the Scottish
bagpipe. At the funeral processions, the clang and din of
the assembled gongs, blowing of horns, and bumping of tom-
toms, cannot drown the long-drawn, half-savage sad melody
poured out from the reed, around which the greater portion
of the attendants and onlookers gather as they would around
the narrator of a tale of woe, such a powerful ascendency does
it exert over them; and I must confess it threw a spell over
me, every tune becoming more and more potent.

None of those grand conceptions bestowed on the world
by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Donizetti, Hummel, Handel, or
Beethoven, to nearly all of whose masterpieces I have lent
my enraptured attention, ever produced in me such unspeak-
able emotions of tenderness and plaintive melancholy as
those which arose as I sat one midnight long ago on the
banks of a Highland loch during the fishing season, when all
nature seemed to be lulled to rest under the burnished silvery
light of a summer moon. The finely-stippled surface of the
bright expanse of water was only stained far out from the shore
by sooty specks and streaks where the hardy fishermen had
settled to their nocturnal occupation, and I dreamily gazed
on the enchanting scene, where there was scarcely a sound
except in the low and nearly inaudible sleepy murmur of
the fretful surf, expecting — nay, looking—to see the fairest
glades and moss-covered banks thronged by the benignant
subjects — the etherealised heroes and heroines of many a
Gaelic fairy tale: when, breaking through the nearly palpable
stillness and hush of the hour, at first faintly palpitating on

K 2
132 CELTIC MUSIC.

the motionless air, as solemn and slow-paced it stole towards
us across the loch, came a sorrowful dirge-like chant from one
of the lonely fishing-boats, and as it thrilled far and wide
through the tiny glens, crept wearily up the heathery hills,
and returned again over the lustrous placid waters, it rose
and fell in intensity as the taste and fancy of the piper led
him in his appreciation and love of the theme on which he
lavished so much expression. I at the time felt as if the
notes could have proceeded only from the upper world, and
when the air dwindled softly down to the saddest piano, it
might have been the solitary complaint of some bereaved
spirit in Hades; or when it swelled out in dismal pealing
reverberations, I seemed to be hearing the agony-stricken
wail of the Coronach, or the warning song of grief of
the legendary Dhuan Shee boding death or misfortune to
the clan or family to which it had clung for generations ;
and when it finally died away as tenderly as it had begun,
and my entranced ear was disenthralled from the tem-
porary spell, I was some time in believing that I was
really awake, and had only been charmed into forgetful-
ness by a ‘sprig’ on Frank M‘Callum’s pipes. But though,
before and since those happy days, I have been dinned,
delighted, and distracted by pibrochs, strathspeys, and all the
variations which can be appended to the entire catalogue of
Celtic music, the air which threw me into an almost cataleptic
state on that night, remains preserved in my memory in
all its original simplicity and unalloyed genuineness of half-
civilised natural expression, as told in pure pathos by a few
notes on a simple instrument. Mackrimmon’s Lament, ‘We
return no more,’ continually interposes between my judgment
and the favourable verdict I might give in regard to any
modern symphony or elaborate production of a civilised and
cultivated mind.

For many years I had not heard again my melancholy
favourite, and little expected to do so until I revisited
PATHETIC AIRS. 133

‘The land of brown heath and shaggy wood;’

when one spring afternoon, riding along the banks of the
Peiho above Tien-tsin, the old sound suddenly overwhelmed
me, and, though the notes I anxiously sought to catch
were not exactly the same, and did not succeed each other
in quite the identical rhythmical order, yet the resemblance
was sufficiently startling and complete to accomplish the
return of the spell. Stir I could not until the long cere-
monious train of weeping relatives, sympathising friends,
and curious spectators in robes of white, blue, or grey, with
the emblematic banners and garish paraphernalia of a Chinese
funeral, and the heavy encasement of the departed, who had
saluted the world, and ‘returned no more,’ had vanished on
the opposite side, over the plain, and away to some one of
the countless burying-places spread everywhere in the vicinity
of that city.

Music is said to have been invented by the versatile
monarch who first reigned over the Sine, and to have for
numerous centuries maintained a healthy sway over the
minds and social virtues of the people — to such a degree,
indeed, as to give origin to the saying, ‘ Would you know if
a country is well governed or not, and whether the morals
are good or bad, you have only to consider how music is
cultivated in it.’ It cannot have made much progress,
nor can the culture to which it has been subjected have
advanced it much beyond the limits of barbarianism,
though the various contrivances devised for the propagation
of the dulcet undulations betray no mean knowledge of its
rudiments. Having gained this stage, however, there it
was condemned to stick. If a Westerner applied his own
thaxim, the well-known quotation respecting * He that hath
no music in his soul,’ to the dreadful caterwauling skirl
that sets one’s teeth on edge, and makes the hair-roots on

one’s scalp feel quite cold, scraped and tickled out of the
134 CHINESE SINGING.

two-stringed ‘urh heen’—the probable prototype of the
violin — he would undoubtedly come to the conclusion that
the moral chords in such a country must be very inhar-
monious, and that the Government was most atrociously out
of tune. Let no one who has feasted his ears with the per-
formances of an Ernst or a Sivori seek to be hurled from the
sublime to the ridiculous while desiring to find music from
such an instrument in the hands of a Chinese. I have
hunted out the most likely performers in a large city, and
have essayed, again and again, to bear with them while
they were operating, but to no purpose. My sympathies
were decidedly of the canine order, for I always felt inclined
to how] at the entertainment.

It is even worse than when an unmusical, earless amateur
commences to teach himself the principles of harmony on
some tuneless cracked fiddle; and as for their vocal music,
O infant Sapphos, past, present, and to come! O enchanting
sirens! O matchless prima donnas, who nightly lead the
hearts of men by their ears! permit us not to dignify such
barbarous maltreatment of the human voice divine, by such
a designation. Some one has said—I think it must be
Williams in his ‘Middle Kingdom’ — that no European
can imitate a Chinese warbler with any likelihood of suc-
cess; but if North China furnishes any good vocalists —
and we are certain it does—I beg most respectfully to
dissent from this opinion, and to declare that, after a month’s
not very close application under the tuition of a ‘native,’
anyone furnished with lungs and a larynx sufficiently
powerful to mimic cleverly the crowing of a robust dunghill
cock, can sing a love romance & la Chinoise to perfection; for
neither the finer organ nor the refinement of civilisation is
needed to give the desired effect; but it would be unpardon-
able cruelty on my part to recommend anyone who has the
quality of mercy about him, to ask to be initiated into such
a dolesomely stridulous method, and one requiring such an
CHINESE AND ENGLISH MUSIC. 135

indubitably unedifying comportment. A Chinaman re-
hearsing a song looks and gives utterance to such goat-
like bleats, that it is impossible to avoid the conclusion
that he is labouring under a violent attack of chronic
hooping-cough, combined with intermittent seizures of hic-
cup—the ‘ dying falls’ of the inhuman falsetto at the end of
each verse finishing off in the most confounding hysterical
perturbations of the vocal chords. It is but reasonable to
suppose, from what we know of the character of the people,
that their predilection for their native cranky music must be
unbounded, and completely blinds them to the merits of that
of other countries, in the which, if they accord to it any good
at all, they certainly can never bring themselves to see any
superiority.

Of this there was an instance told at Tien-tsin, where
the servant of a missionary used often to attend the regi-
mental bands when they performed at the Embassy, until
his master, perhaps thinking that the congenial strains of
other lands had after all some real attraction for the man
of the Central Empire, one day .quizzed him about his
musical ideas and opinions, especially as to whether Chinese
music was less pleasing to him than the harmony and skill
exhibited by the British performers, and asking which he would
prefer. He characteristically answered that both kinds of
music were good, and bore a great similarity to each other,
but that his own, having slightly the advantage, pleased him
best.

Their turn for imitation, however, serves them well in
this as in many other things, and where a few cash can be
earned, the itinerant professors of Apollo’s art are not slow to
attempt the production of select pieces which they may have
picked up from the French or English bands. In one of
the most thronged streets [ was, on an afternoon elbowing
my way along, exploring the ‘Heavenly Ford,’ when the
sound of a violin playing a well-known waltz fixed my
136 NATIVE FIDDLE.

attention in a by-lane, and there, instead of a hairy Briton
flourishing a bow over a Cremona, was a blind beggar eliciting
these pleasant notes with as great precision and tone from
the rude and unsightly mallet-shaped urh heen, as if he had
been all his public life first violin at the Opera ballet.

‘Dulcis seepe ex asperis,’ but we could never have been
otherwise than incredulous if told that such an acidulous in-
strument, when giving forth the ordinary airs to please Coolie
ears, could, from two strings, a piece of bamboo, and a bit.
of rough stick with a few horsehairs attached, compete with
almost perfect instruments.
137

CHAPTER X.

AN UNCIVIL AND EXTORTIONATE LANDLORD — A ROW — PRESENTS —
ADVANTAGES OF BRING WITHOUT AN INTERPRETER — ILL FEELING BE-
TWEEN NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN CHINESE—-PEKING AND CANTON
COOLIES—— THREE ROADS—THE HAPPY MEDIUM — MARKET-DAY AT
coo YUH—BUTCHER’S MEAT — PORK — CATTLE — LIVELY ROAD —
FAMILY GROUPS —A TIEN-TSIN MERCHANT — POVERTY IN A SANDY
REGION — RESPECTFUL RECOGNITION — BIRDS —‘THE BIRD OF JOY,’
AND ITS TRADITION.

HERE was a regular fracas. We had made certain of our
‘morning’ of cold fowl, rice, and the flavoury decoction ;
anathematised the mule-driver for his tardiness, and showered
a hail-storm of harsh-sounding phrases on the bristly head
of the groom, intended considerably to sharpen his. sight
and intellect, both of which, we had very good cause to sus-
pect, had been materially affected by a night’s gambling, and
by potations of warm Samshu—alas! his Roman Catholic
principles and religious education had not done much to
correct these flaws in Chinese human nature.

The bill was produced, read, and negatived, to the intense
disgust of the saturnine old crab-apple of a host, who had
been lurking in a recess, watching us like a spider for a fly,
and pounced out at the last moment with a miserable shred
of common paper, on which was a cramped, confused, and
botched list of all sorts of things, put down at four times the
price we had paid at the other houses: this he unblush-
ingly held up for M. to examine.

The craft of the man was sufficiently evident; he was clearly
endeavouring to make us pay for the destruction of his in-
firm courtyard wall, levelled the evening before by the now
138 MORE EXTORTION.

circumspect populace, who formed a wide circle around us while
the question was being discussed whether one-half of the ex-
tortionate charge would suffice, or whether we must refer the
whole businessto a mandarin. He was also no doubt striving to
obtain some compensation for the fright and rage he had been
thrown into when the said structure toppled down, the conse-
quences of which were yet apparent in his thin lips, scowling
eyes, heaving breast, and sharp garrulous voice. —

One might as well have reasoned with the winds as tried to
convince him that his overcharge was unfair, and that we
were not to be knowingly cheated. As little to the purpose
was it to threaten the ill-tempered body with an appeal to a
higher authority, for we were told that there was no mandarin
or other functionary in the town, to whom we might resort for
justice. A strong feeling of ‘ not to be done’ caused one-half,
nay, even two-thirds of the whole sum to be offered, if'merely
to show the bystanders that their townsman was not altoge-

ether what he ought to be, and that we, conscious of the fraud,
were willing to make every concession in order to settle the
dispute amicably ; but the fellow was as obdurate as Shylock.
The cables of cash were returned to the cart, and we began to
move away.

This brought the business to a crisis: with a spring, the
reins of Ma-foo’s pony are clutched, and luckless Ma-foo is a
prisoner in the grasp of the remorseless landlord, notwith-
standing his noisy expostulations and fiery language. All
along he had been demurring loudly against the imposition,
and, like a faithful adherent who was not going to allow his
masters to be cheated, advised us against giving any more
than we had offered.

The bickering was now becoming serious, the morning was
far advanced, and more brickbats might be mysteriously
dropped in our vicinity, for I must confess candidly that I
had no great amount of faith in the friendly disposition of
the people we were wandering among; so, very reluctantly
ANTAGONISM OF NORTH AND SOUTH. 139

indeed, the bill was paid in full, Ma-foo was released, and in
a few minutes more we had left landlord, crowd, and town,
never to see either of them again.

We now and often afterwards found reason to congratulate
ourselves on what we at the time thought our bad luck in
losing the services of the Canton interpreter at Tien-tsin—as
he must have been a responsibility and incumbrance. I
have often thought that a small party travelling through a
strange country has a better chance of proceeding without
mishap, than a large one, consisting chiefly of individuals who
are rather clogs than aids. We should have had his quarrels
to adjust whenever he, relying on his own superiority and
acuteness, and the real or fancied invulnerability of the egis
under which he acted, presumed to dictate to the people with
whom he came in contact, involving himself and us in needless
squabbles, and bringing, perhaps, our trip to an abrupt and
troublesome termination.

With this bumptious Boniface we should certainly have
had a conflict that must have ended in bloodshed, had the
volatile southern temperament come into play, for, from what
transpired during and after the operations towards Peking, I
should say that the feelings of animosity between the northmen
and southmen were as bitter and malignant as could possibly
exist between two portions of a great empire not quite at open
war with each other: hence a Cantonese, instead of being,
like ourselves, a source of curiosity and speculation, would be
an object of dislike and alarm to the dwellers in every town
and village in which we chanced to stay. Whether it is from
the almost complete isolation of the two ends of this vast
country from each other, and the stay-at-home nature of
the race, generally engendering that narrowmindedness and
supercilious vanity so noticeable among them, or from tra-
ditional antagonism of which we know nothing, there need be
no hesitation in saying that they are as opposed to each
other as the poles of a galvanic battery —as difficult to
140 ‘THE BAMBOO RIFLES.’

mingle as oil and water, and, like the elements of gunpowder,
need but a little spark to cause a violent separation.

The meridional Chinaman is far more than a match in
force of intelligence, knavery, and artfulness in everything
pertaining to mischief, than the native of higher latitudes and
more limited intercourse with other nations. No sooner
does he make his advent at Tien-tsin, or Shanghai, than the
eyes and doubts of the comparatively simple-minded but sus-
pecting natives are on the qui vive.

Every arrival is carefully noted and made known to the
authorities, each new acquisition, or rather interloper, is
viewed as a dangerous person, whom it is necessary to watch
over and pounce upon, should robbery or riot disturb the
every-day routine of the magisterial existence — and not un-
deservedly in many instances. The southern, in return,
holds his more impassive rival in thorough contempt, and,
dignifying him with the scornful appellation of ‘ stupid cow,’
is always ready and willing to take advantage of his stupidity
or simplicity, thinking it no sin to plunder and rob, whenever
a favourable chance can be seized.

Could anything more forcibly exhibit this unbrotherly, un-
patriotic tendency than the conduct of the rapscallions enlisted
about Hongkong, Canton, and Whampoa, for the invasion
of their own capital city? They were dubbed for the nonce
the ‘Coolie corps,’ or more appropriately the ‘ Bamboo Rifles,’
in compliment, probably, to the expert and effective manner
in which they handled and loaded those very sturdy and
becoming weapons, with which they were armed; perhaps,
also, to the care bestowed in teaching them to perform one or
two very becoming but very elementary fragments of drill by
Europeans from line regiments. They wore a uniform almost
rivalling, in the luxuriance of its gaily-corded tunic and
double-striped trousers, that of a light dragoon!

They were crafty slaves, within whose breasts hung hearts
RENEGADE SOUTHERNS. 141

that beat only when spoil was in view, and they possessed
souls so dead to love of country and natural feeling, that
they exulted in seeing and assisting in the defeat of their
country’s armies. It was generally believed that they pos-
sessed in an eminent degree the quality of ferreting out the
recesses in which were concealed the little wealth of sycee
silver, furs, or other valuables, secreted by their brethren
before they fled from their homes; and that they were as ready
to lend their assistance to those who were moved by a similar
desire for ‘loot,’ as pillage is sometimes called, as if China
was not their native land, and the trinkets and garments
plundered were not those belonging to the people of the same
blood and flesh with themselves! How cuttingly, too, did
these renegades renounce all sympathy for the Pekinese and
the peasantry around the capital in their scoffs and jeers and
trenchant remarks—towards men, too, far their superiors in
manliness, each able to vanquish in fair fight any two of their
number !

These deserters from the paternal roof came as conquerors,
of course, and while they showered their pungent sarcasms
on their compatriots, they borrowed whatever might be use-
ful or profitable to themselves without the slightest reference
to the owners. For the amusement or advantage of their
employers, who were unacquainted with the amount of slang
and opprobrium the flowery language is capable of affording,
some of these recreants laboured hard to express their sen-
timents in unobjectionable English, generally mingling their
vituperations with sly hints as to their own desires. How far
they succeeded we could never learn, though we remember
a species of cantata, adapted to a thin quavering air—a
favourite — which, like many songs I have heard elsewhere,
afforded me but little chance of understanding anything
beyond the music, and that was difficult enough. The words
of the refrain — rendered intelligible to ‘outside’ ears
142 THREE ROADS FROM KIA-PING.

by their continual repetition—were exceedingly popular
among the minor Celestials, who could acquire nothing more

than —
‘Peking coolie no can do,

Canton coolie no samshu.’

This, while it indicated the scarcity of the fiery spirit that
was needed to cheer and inebriate them at times, was launched
out as a cowp-de-grdce to the reputation of not only the
Peking men in particular, but those who were impressed for
service on the march from Tien-tsin. The latter, it must be
admitted, at that time, were either very averse or very much
afraid to give the army their labour, even on payment, and
lost no advantage in ‘ whilo-ing,’ as the -phrase went, when
they left unceremoniously: hence their additional unworthi-
ness in the estimation of the ballad-mongers. They required
a respectable guard of grey-turbaned Punjaubees to protect
them from external dangers and guard them against those
inconvenient eccentricities which were so often at work in
forcing them to deviate from the proper track. So that the
loss of one, who, by his greater or less proficiency in the
language of the districts we had to pass through, might have
served us in obtaining much more information than we could
hope to guess at by our own efforts, was quite counter-
balanced by the advantage of not being made accountable
for his actions, and embroiled in the disturbances likely to
arise from party animosity.

From Kia-ping—as we discovered, after having been made
mystified about their direction—three roads diverge to the
Great Wall, and to the only gate near the waters of the
Gulf through which access can be had to the province of
Liautung beyond: the upper one, the ‘ Shan ta-tau,’ or Hill
high road, running to Funing and Yung-ping, the depart-
mental city of the most eastern portion of the province of
Chihli, south of the Wall, bearing the same name as the city ;
the middle road, the ‘ Chung ta-tau,’ which is the most direct,
COO-YUEH. 143

leading through Lanchow; and the ‘ Toong hi-tau,’ the
eastern ocean road, sweeping away down the low land
encircling the bay.

Each of these highways has its advantages, according to
the season of the year and the state of the weather—the Hill
road, though more circuitous, and perhaps more uneven,
being passable at all times; the middle one tolerably so on
fine days; but the Gulf one is always uncertain, except when
the long severe winters have frozen lake, marsh, and pool
into a firm consistency; then travellers and traffic may
make it preferable to the others, because of its being more
level and less stony.

Our cartman—who was engaged for the journey, not by
the number of days—chose the centre road, the ‘Chung
yung’ or Happy Medium, this suiting his disposition and
pocket better than the high or the low routes: though my
disappointment was considerable when I found that the city
of Yung-ping would not come within twelve or thirteen miles
of the nearest part of this track.

The road was none of the easiest or best, sometimes winding
quite close to the foot of the hills and climbing over ledges of
rock, which threatened wheels and axletree with immediate
dislocation or fracture, and taxing to the utmost the en-
durance and strength of the mules; at others ploughing away
round the protruding angle of an erratic spur down into great
hollows, where mud and water lay deep, or thumping over
the stony shelves that stood across the path, denuded of earth,
and slippery.

At thirty li from Kia-ping we reached the cosy little town
of Coo-yuh, and on a market-day; for at its busiest hour we
found ourselves struggling through a crowd of agriculturists
and traders. They occupied every crammable corner, and
wedged each other so tightly into the middle of the narrow
street that they could scarcely extricate themselves from the
stalls, from the piles of goods heaped up on each side of the
144 A MARKET-DAY.

thoroughfare, and from the live stock kicking, squealing,
bleating, lowing, and neighing on every hand.

Here business was being transacted by staid, bargain-
making, healthy old men, clad in sober homespun ‘blue or
white cotton stuff, and the great brimmed straw hat scarcely
attached to their venerable heads by bands of black tape.
They were buying or selling to the best advantage, without
much talk or display: their sonsy brown faces, looking as if
they had never known care, poverty, or deceit, were set off
by long thin silvery moustaches and beards; and their erect
figures, broad chests, and square shoulders, betrayed no mark
of city depravity, and gave promise of many long years of
useful toil.

Speculations and questionable ventures were sparkling in
the eyes of the younger negotiators, who, attired in their best
outfits — consisting of a maximum of silk, and a minimum of
the less pretentious material, with clean-shaven heads, and
long, well-plaited, glistening queues, too elaborate to be pro-
tected from the great heat by any sort of covering— talked
loudly and long, and strutted around their customer, or
around the stock in which they were about to invest their
capital, using their fans in the most coquettish manner, far
more for display than for any real benefit to their olive com-
plexions.

The more wealthy farmer, the owner of but a small plot,
and the day labourer, all mingled and bargained, bought and
sold, in the quietest and readiest manner possible, without
disturbance, and, so far as we could see in such a dense crowd,
without those preservers of the peace in Hesperian markets
and fairs—the lynx-eyed policemen.

Stalls, shaded by square-topped white cotton umbrellas,
which nearly knocked our heads off in consequence of our
not stooping low enough to pass beneath them, were shaking
beneath every kind of native produce; and long rows of
sacks stood on end with open mouths, exhibiting their
BUTCHERS’ STALLS. 145

contents, perfectly lined each side of the way. Beans, pease,
wheat, barley, and millet, were the staple articles exposed
for sale. Baskets full of fresh and salted vegetables ; stands
laden with home-made cotton cloth, coarse, but thick and
durable; or great bundles of the white flocculent material
ready for spinning ; little stores of alum or sal-ammoniac ;
all sorts of hardware and, pottery of native manufacture ;
tailoring and shoemaking booths ; while harness and saddlery
hung over all the poles and pegs of the saddlers’ compart-
ment. There were tempting displays of large-sized, well-
coloured, but very deceptive flavourless apples, and hard,
watery pears, with an abundant and more acceptable assort-
ment of peaches, apricots, and nectarines, in which we
indulged greatly, and filled pockets and saddlebags.

There were butchers cutting and chopping at the legs and
bodies of well-dressed pigs, slain for the occasion; and, better
than all, a sight which made our gustatory nerves fairly
tingle: there were delicious legs of the ‘yang row’—the
mutton, about which we had enquired, fruitlessly, at every
halting-place, fresh and glowing in its delicate tints of white
and red.

At these we make a dead set. We leave Ma-foo to purchase
the choicest ribs and cutlets he can see, for really we can
stand the rushing and crushing no longer. Having become
the focus and centre of attraction to everybody, all trade is
suspended, stalls deserted, and we are hemmed in by a
heaving herd of pragmatical creatures, who almost devour
us with anxious curiosity and wonderment; threatening
impending overthrow to all movables in the vicinity, and
terrifying the keepers of sundry cooking and eating establish-
ments, where square fids of cheesy-looking bean curd, and
tremulous milky-coloured slices of starch jelly, are enticingly
laid out ready for the hissing, spluttering pan; piquant
spreads of the most savoury combinations are also waiting to
be served up to the hungry dealers, who now entirely forget
L
146 HORSE AND CATTLE MARKET.

the danger to which they expose them, in their mad hurry to
get a peep at us.

So we move along, as civilly and politely as the heat and
press will admit, noticing here and there that behind the
stalls are good shops and houses, with clean exteriors; high
stone walls, enclosing some residences of a superior class;
while, conspicuous over all the sign-boards, is that of the
pawnbroker.

At the end of the street, on one side, lie, as still as if dead,
scores of tender porklings and mature porkers, their loco-
motion prevented by their fore legs having been tied back
over their shoulders securely enough to forbid their using
them ever so little; while a tall, almost black, drover —a
very model of a pork-eater—in the meanest costume,
tends the bristly flock with a long whip, which however
seems to be but little required.

At the other side is the pony, mule, and donkey market,
and, perchance, that also for cattle, where the knowing ones
are showing off the animals they are disposed to part with,
while the buyers are carefully examining, in the sunshine and
in the shade, the eyes of their intended purchases, attentively
handling the limbs of their beasts, running them up and
down the rough street, with and without a rider, wheeling
and twisting and flogging them about, or gagging the vicious,
in order to scan their teeth and learn their age.

The spots where the smaller articles are sold become
fewer ; the wares are more promiscuous and less in demand;
wedges of dye-stuff are mixed with thread and tinware, and
even confectionary ; the houses have gaps of garden between,
and become scarce; until, in a few minutes more, we are
again in the country.

We have passed through a town strikingly resembling one
of our own, in some of our more remote rural districts during
market day. Under some spacious trees I await the arrival
of the groom with the provisions for our midday treat ; but,
PLEASURE PARTIES. 147

when he appears, the silly fellow brings nothing, having
forgotten that the money was in the cart, and that this was
now a good mile ahead, with no chance of its being overtaken
until it had gone half a mile farther.

Grievously bemoaning our disappointment, and trying to
suppress a feeling of resentment towards the cause of it, we
hurried on.

For some distance the road was lively enough — strings
of carts laden with marketable stuff, and long single files of
pack-ponies, going to or returning from the town, creaked
and clattered along. Presently one or two long, stiff,
lumbering platforms on wheels rumbled slowly by, freighted
with family traps. Yellow and wrinkled matrons were
perched on bundles of straw, and mindfully shielded from jar
or shock by pillows and cushions disposed around them.
They were out for the day, and were evidently got up in
their best style; dear old creatures! looking as cheerful as
if their lives had ever been all sunshine, and chatting in a
vivacious vein, smirking towards their husbands or friends,
who may have been flattering their little vanities, as
they cuddled near them. With the most seductive grace
imaginable, they sat in the jolting cart stiffly done up in
their blue silk pelisses or jackets, with wondrous long wide
sleeves, disclosing bare necks, large earrmgs pendent from
the small, well-shapen ears, and hair gathered up on the crown
like the handle of a shovel. It was perforated by silver
skewers, and gaily decked out with complimentary-coloured
flowers.

A daughter or young wife would sometimes be of the
party; but, alas! her natural beauty must needs be eclipsed
by the employment of most unsightly cosmetics, though her
coiffure might display more taste than that of the elderly
ladies, in having, instead of the shovel handle, a long scoop
like a shoe-lift, done up from before and behind on the top

L2
148 RETURNING FROM MARKET.

of the head, and two winglike expansions gummed out in the
finest cohesiveness on each temple.

These little family groups were pleasant to meet, they
seemed so light-hearted; and we could not but regret that
our uncouth presence startled them into the gravest pro-
priety; even so far as to make the younger and fairer Hebes
avert their painted faces in the most tantalising manner,
and to transmute the loquacious, sprightly old dames into

 

People returning from the Market.

severely demure grandmothers. They dared not turn
their countenances in our direction while we looked at
them; though their quick dark eyes were busy enough
wheeling outwards and inwards, squinting violently, as our
position or the irregularities of the road required. When
their backs were turned on us, as often as we chanced to
look after them, their countenances displayed an irrepressible
longing to see what was behind them.
AN EQUESTRIAN TRAVELLER. 149

Then would come a gang of male travellers trudging
under little loads, with rush or cane hats partially concealing
their faces; then a troop of donkey-riders scudding along at
a furious rate, on the smallest but hardiest of native Jeru-
salems, to the jingling music of fancy bell-collars, with
which those willing little long-hoofed animals are furnished;
their great fat bodies swaying backwards and forwards, and
the extensive flexible straw brims of their hats flapping up
and down like the sails of a windmill in an unsteady breeze.

Alone, further away from the noise and bustle, a stray
Chinaman proceeded, sliding along easily on the shadiest side
of the road, the pony he bestrides never advancing beyond a
mild dog trot. This the solid even-minded rider could
endure for hours, day after day; and perhaps such may be his
present intention, for he is in what we might term complete
marching order, that is, he is dressed in the ordinary way
with the umbrageous hat, a fan—the never absent attendant
—stuck behind his neck, and the cool white cotton jacket
and trousers. In addition, there is a sword and avery large
dark-painted paper umbrella secured under one thigh; behind
him, rolled up into a sort of valise, is a large sheet of yellow
waterproof paper or cotton for a rainy day.

He straddles widely over the pyramid formed by the
saddle and the carpet rug, which by day accommodates, in.
two immense pouches on each side, all his bulky travelling
equipment. This now incommodes those cleanly-attired legs
very much, but at night it gives him a soft bed in the roadside
inn, when without it he would have to rest uneasily upon the
bricks. Mounted on this pillion, with a well-filled tobacco-
pouch, from the neck of which sticks out the long black stem
of the pipe dangling at his side, he looks a very happy
pilgrim indeed.

Another town with an almost unpronounceable, and cer-
tainly unwriteable name, is passed through without dis-
playing anything to commend it to our notice. We here had
150 A WELCOME RECOGNITION.

a rencontre with a Tien-tsin merchant on a small scale, who
had, strange to say, found his way to such a far-off place. As
soon as the alarm of our approach was raised, he bounced out
of a shop, stopped and saluted us with the familiar ‘ chin
chin,’ as if glad to see us, and made one or two abortive
attempts to get up a conversation in the diabolical Canton-
English. He produced an effect on the spectators very
different to that he intended, for, in reply to all the questions
we asked him, he could only muster the monosyllable ‘ yes,’
and looked very confused and silly. Notwithstanding, we
were right glad to observe that he was neither ashamed
nor afraid to acknowledge his acquaintanceship with the
strangers, and this so far augured well for our enter-
prise.

The incomprehensible road again bent away round towards
the hills, rising higher and changing the character of the
scenery; but to its disadvantage. The sand becomes finer
and deeper, and invades the fields; the crops become stunted
and thin, and cultivation is on the wane everywhere. As an
inevitable concomitant, the villages begin to lose their bright
aspect; the houses showing too frequently neglect and in-
difference in the unsightly blocks of undressed stones heaped
on each other, without any regard to building or plastering;
and on these rude walls rested roofs quite flat or but
slightly concave—a proof of the dryness of the climate, at
any rate.

The people, too, are very poor and squalid, and the naked
children encased in layers of mud and dirt. Yet, in this un-
likely place, attention is paid to education, and there are schools
in the poverty-haunted temples, through the open doors of
which little soiled faces and ragged suits can be discerned,
and humdrum sing-song infantile voices send out their
lessons in chorus—as we remember they did some years
ago, and may do now, in infant schools at home.

The sand reached its limit at last on the outskirts of a
A LAND FENCE. 151

straggling hamlet, and before us there scarcely appeared
anything but a rusty-coloured sheet of crunching sand,
denying sustenance to every living thing; fortunately for
our little party, now lying treacherously still; but only
awaiting the slightest puff of a north-east wind to whirl up
into the air, and cover everything within miles of its present
bed with a coverlet of siliceous dust.

When the breeze wantonly shakes the tree-tops around
the homesteads away down in the rich plain, the heavier
substratum of angular chips and pebbles will be scattered
with violence against the badly-built tenements up here, and
cut, damage, and ruin the sickly fields of millet or maize.

But on the edge of this waste, just where the red fiery
hue begins to change into a warm yellow, and that again to
melt into a cool faint green, long strips of shrivelled willows
have been planted, and between their supporting stems thick
rows of hardy shrubs, in which the drifting grit has found a
lodgement, and formed banks of a sufficient height to offer a
tolerably secure impediment to the incursions of the devas-
tating shoals. This allows the ground behind them to be re-
claimed and stocked with such plants as it may for the time
be capable of bearing. How exactly in this device the
Chinese have imitated Nature in making use of the only
vegetation that would live in and bind together the fickle
material into a stationary soil! On our own east coast we
have seen the useful sea reed, or marrun grass, perform the
same office unaided by man, and cementing the drifting
sand into immovable banks, which sheltered the country
beyond. Here the farmer had an advantage, though in all
likelihood he never saw the plan adopted by Nature, for he
had so arranged his nursery that the whole of the growing
fence faced the impelling wind, and made every bush service-
able in meeting it and entangling its burthen.

No one was stirring on the road save odd, gipsy sort of
men, who may have been looking for employment at some
152 DIVERSIFIED LANDSCAPE.

one of the farms, or biding their time to purloin the where-
withal to furnish a meal. Once we dropped on a dusty
soldierlike young man, hobbling away on a pony, who
unfolded his tail from around his head and jerked it down
between his shoulders when he saw us,— the second mark of
respectful recognition we had met during the day; at
another time a passenger cart passed us, of the ordinary
workhouse-hearse shape; and, on the driver giving the
signal, the front screen was raised, and a snuffy-nosed old
gentleman, wearing a monstrous pair of spectacles, stuck out
his head like a Jack-in-the-box, and took full advantage
of the few seconds allowed him to view the strangers,
barbarians, whatever he chose to consider us.

The landscape did not gain much in beauty as we toiled
slowly on. The irregularity of the country gave the mules
more collar and breeching work than they seemed to appre-
ciate, the driver requiring to use rather frequently his stinging
whip, and tur-r-r and chuck, to incite their dormant energies
to action. Often the narrow road dipped low between deep
cuttings in the high sand-banks, and then stood almost erect
over the sloping side of a granite or limestone ridge, from
which the great wide plain became discernible, with pretty
valleys, perfect gardens of verdure, lying softly far down to
the south ; carpets of harvest, toning from the golden yellow
through every gradation down to the darkest green, streaked
in lengthy bands by the russet-brown beds of rivers and
streams now dry and bare, that intersected the rich
expanse.

At one part of the way, where the humblest cottage could
not be ventured upon as a building,— so bleak and exposed
was it between two high hills,—a good number of gloomy
pines grew, throwing up flat circular tops like nothing else I
can think of but a round table; and a scattered tithe of
cypress and elm. On the velvety grass beneath them ran and
fed an uncommonly large flock of crested larks, so pertina-
THE BIRD OF JOY. 153

ciously keeping to the ground that, do all we could, they
would scarcely take wing. Here also the pied and the
scarlet-headed woodpecker flitted quickly from tree to tree
as they were roused by our footsteps; the extremely elegant
little hoopoe, with its arched crest of ruddy-buff feathers and
long curved bill, coquetted with us as we tried to obtain a
nearer look at it, alighting on the ground and commencing to
toy with some juicy sod until we had got to within a short
distance, then playfully perching on the branch of a tree
when the prescribed interval between us had been reached.

More numerous than any other of the winged stock of North
China (though they can scarcely be so plentiful as in Ireland),
there were numbers of the cunning, disreputable, white-
scapulared magpies sagely eyeing our movements from every
branch of nearly every tree, and leisurely calculating their
chance of being disturbed before fluttering a feather. We
have always held the saucy fellow in great esteem, for does
not his chattering remind us that the accomplished daughters
of Pierus were, by the offended Muses, metamorphosed into
the social but songless ‘ Pica Caudata,’ for no other reason
than that they challenged the tuneful Nine to a vocal com-
petition; and have we not all sorts of superstitions about
him as a bird of omen?

Among the people through whose country we are seeking
to travel a few hundred miles, he is no less a favourite ; and,
as well as being ominous of good or evil, he is supposed to
be and is named the ‘ Bird of Joy,’—a designation that may
have come in with the present dynasty, who have, if the
legend in which this bird plays such a prominent part is to
have any weight, very much to thank it for.

Can we offer any reason why we should doubt the
truth of the tradition, when the liberal and enlightened
Emperor Kien Lung, of Lord Macartney’s time,— the scholar
sovereign of the Mantchu race,— believed and asserted that
the Kin,— the ‘ golden tribe ’— a savage and illiterate horde,
154 THE MANTCHU ORIGIN.

—the ancestors of the Mantchus, and who, between the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, expelled the Leang dynasty *
from the northern provinces of China, and with the Sung
dynasty divided the sway of the empire, from which they
were driven before the conquering Mongols, and chased into
the recesses and fastnesses of the wild Songari and Usuri
valleys, where they must have suffered greatly—owed their
origin to one Kioro—a wonderful character —who was
born of a celestial virgin in the mystic shades of their
unknown country ?

When North China was contemptuously said by the early
and then comparatively refined Chinese to be tenanted by
‘demons and devils,’ as many years before the Christian era
as have elapsed since, the traditional genealogy wanders
back, and it is thus recorded in their chronology. The first
supernatural intimation of the subsequent glory of the family
was given at Chang pih Shan,—the ‘ Long White Mountain,’
—which is alleged to be more than 250 li, or upwards of
sixty miles high! On the summit of this very lofty moun-
tain was a lake twenty-seven miles in circumference, from
which sprung three rivers; and near this lake it was inti-
mated by an unearthly voice that ‘This land will produce a
holy man, who shall unite in one all nations!’

At the foot of the mountain was a pool of water, to which,
the story says, three divine females came to bathe. One day,
after the customary ablution (what a pity the modern Celes-
tials do not follow the cleanly example thus set them), a
spiritual bird,—the enchanted magpie,— with a peculiar sort
of fruit in its bill, flew towards them, and, with a sapient
eye for beauty, selected the loveliest damsel, named Ke, and
slyly smuggled the gift it bore into her garments, where she
soon discovered it. Presently, unable to resist its tempting

* In the books of whose reign it is mentioned that an extraordinary
custom prevailed which excited great attention, ‘that people sat with their
legs hanging down,’ that is, they began to sit on chairs or stools.
THE BIRTH OF KIORO. 155

appearance, she consigned it to her mouth, and thence to: her
stomach; but with the most unlooked-for and disastrous
results, for, instead of being affected by the unhealthy fruit,
as we have been by what we have purchased and devoured in
the market town, she immediately brought forth a son, who
could speak as soon as he was born!

In this respect he far excelled the third patriarchal
emperor of the ‘distant country of the Seres,’ who is re-
ported to have been able to talk as soon as he was weaned
from the breast—was elected to the throne at twelve years

of age, and soon after discovered the invaluable properties
of —
‘That trembling vassal of the Pole,
The feeling compass, Navigation’s soul ;’

and whose person and figure were beyond all parallel.

To this precocious prodigy Kioro, the same mysterious voice
that had prognosticated his birth said, ‘Heaven has borne
you to tranquillise disordered nations.’

After his birth his deified, but rather heartless mother
disappeared, and the boy, having strong inclinations towards
self-preservation, constructed a barque, in which he placed
himself, and, like another Moses, was floated down by the
current of a certain river to a distant shore. He ascended
the bank, broke off willows, with which he framed a seat,
and when it was finished, having nothing else to do, he sat
down in the wilderness, where he might have remained
to this day, had it not happened that in the new land
there were contending chieftains, who fought, and, as a
natural and inevitable sequence, hurt and killed to a large
extent.

One of these sanguinary savages went to the river to draw
water, and on the way beheld our hero calmly surveying, from
his willow throne, all the country around, to which he had,
no doubt, in his own opinion, an indisputable right. Hurry-
ing back, he lost no time in spreading the marvellous news,
156 THE GUARDIAN MAGPIE.

and: described the astonishing appearance of the stranger.
The people speedily mustered and marched down to interro-.
gate the marvellous child as to his name and surname,
pedigree, and intentions towards them: to all of which
queries he said, ‘I was born of the Celestial female, Foo-koo-
lun (was he ashamed of his parent’s original name? or had
he forgotten it ? or had she, in order the better to escape
justice, given him a fictitious one?), and am ordained by
Heaven to settle your disordered state.’

‘Heaven has brought forth a holy one,’ they exclaimed ;
and forthwith endowed him with the dignity and attributes
of a sovereign.

Under his auspices and guidance they fixed their abode at
the city of Go-to-le, in the uninhabited wilderness of Go-han-
hwuy, to the east of the Long White Mountain; from
whence they named their country Man-chow.

But it seems that the tutelary magpie’s functions were
not to be dispensed with for some time to come; for it
happened after this that the people of Man-chow rebelled,
reversed and smashed the constitution, and in their violence
slew all the members of the reigning family with the ex-
ception of one boy, who was named Fan-cha-kin. He fled
into the forests to save his life. He was closely pursued by
the destroyers, who would soon have settled his claims, had
not the bird of good omen, in the nick of time, alighted on
his devoted head, and sitting there, as audaciously cool as
he now does on that ragged pine branch, deceived the
anxious eyes of the hunters. They, spying his black head,
neck, and breast—so richly glossed with green, purple, and
blue—and the unsullied white portions of his breast and
wings, resting motionless on an old rotten trunk of a tree—
as they believed —went off in another direction.

In this way the original family was preserved from
* extinction, and the lustrous-plumaged, mischievous magpie
is honoured with the happy appellation, and humoured in its
RESPECT PAID TO IT. 157

wanton freaks instead of being destroyed, while the Tartars
are said to commemorate on the spot the incident in which
it so seasonably averted the entire destruction of the Pure
Dynasty.*

* Morrison’s Chronology.
158

CHAPTER XI.

THE TOWN OF LANCHOW —A NATURAL FOOTED BEAUTY — NATIVE MER-
CHANT — EATING HOUSES —THE LAN-HO— AN ARCADIA — BEAUTIFUL
LANDSCAPE — TRAVELLING SOLDIERS—-GREEDY BOATMEN —A _ BEAU
SABREUR —HIS FRIENDLY INTERPOSITION—- THE SNUG INN AT SHIH
MUN — NORTH CHINA DWELLINGS, AND THEIR PECULIARITIES — GARDENS
— STONE AND BRICK — ABSENCE OF MONUMENTS AND PAUCITY OF
SCULPTURE.

NCE more the road takes a dive downwards towards
a better class of houses, set off by a group of fine old
weeping willows, wheels round them—again ascends, and
behold, far before us, and rather to our right on the very
top of a commanding hill, rising high above the surrounding
level, stands nobly out from the sky the Pharos-like pagoda
of Lanchow, very much resembling indeed, from our point
of view, a majestic lighthouse perched on-a bold headland,
with its closely-aggregated, projecting eaves stuck out from
its sides as if it were the petrified body of a mammoth
centipede. This edifice was an excellent landmark, as our
course lay through the town of Lanchow, and nothing further
was required but to take the first by-lane or path that led off
in its direction. It proved a good two hours’ ride, through,
at first, segregated farm steadings, slowly improving the
farther we bent into the plain—then neat cottages gathered
between them, and at last orchard, garden, paddock, and
village entirely supplanted the wide fields—becoming tree-
shaded lanes wound out and in, doubled back and twisted
forward, until extrication from the pleasant maze looked all
but feasible.
A greater turn than usual carried us within sight of a
A NORTH CHINA BEAUTY. 159

high parapeted brick wall, with two-storied towers at each
angle, almost hid in the foliace of massive old willows
growing within the enclosure. Between us and the wall was
a wide strip of bare shingly ground, that might have been
the old bed of a river, and in front, in the middle of the
crenelated wall, was the gateway. This we made for, fully
resolved to inspect the interior of the town, in spite of
mobbing and dust raising. As everything was externally
tranquil—indeed, we saw no one stirring —our apprehensions
were not strong on these points.

Scarcely had we crossed the open and reached the entrance
when a good-looking young woman, leading a little boy,
emerged from the archway. Too late to turn back without
betraying alarm or fear, and too modest to advance until we
had passed beyond, she undecidedly took up her stand on
the narrow ledge of stonework that served as a foundation to
the heavy mass of the wall, and gave us the undeniable
pleasure of her countenance with the most imperturbable
self-possession and yet inquisitive timidity. She must have
been a ‘ Tartar,’ or a violent innovator on the prevailing
customs and costumes, or offender against the sumptuary laws
that sway the feminme as well as the masculine tastes of the
Chinese, for she infringed the first in undauntedly , yet not
indelicately, turning her face full on us, and half-smilingly
ogled us in fair return for the stare we could not help
being guilty of under such dazzling temptation. Oh, those
glancing orbs! no other eyes could compare with them in
brightness, and no words could express their splendour. It
is needless to say that —

‘Her eye’s dark charm ’twere vain to tell,
But gaze on that of the gazelle,
It will assist thy fancy well,
As large, as languishingly dark,
But soul beamed forth in every spark,
That darted from beneath the lid,
Bright as the jewel of Giamschid.’
160 SAILING UNDER FALSE COLOURS.

The description is inadequate. All I can say is, that the
fascination of those dark twinklers exceeded anything I
had beheld in the East —it was something more splendid
and gloom-dispelling than ‘wavy ripples.’ In addition to
such attraction, were cheeks like the almond flower, lips
like the peach’s bloom, eyebrows as the willow leaf;
and, when she moved to a more comfortable standing-
place, footsteps like the lotus flower. The contour
of the face was slightly oval, the features regular and
pleasing, with no tendency to the pug nose and coarse
lips one sees every day in the streets. There was, too,
such a sweet dimpled chin! But, greatly to our chagrin,
it wore a glaring mask of paint and powder — sailing
ambitiously under false colours. That comely face and
faultlessly chiselled neck, and the womanly brow that must
have been fair before, are all grievously soiled with gypsum
or some other blanching substance spread over them; a
rather strong and irregular tinge of carnation ornaments
each cheek, and the small mouth is made a little too con-
spicuous by the large daub of crimson placed on the middle
of the pouting underlip ; the eyebrows are gracefully em-
bowed into a thin crescentic line of intense black, that
overhung lids not deformed by too much of the almond-
shaped slit between them; at their inner corners on the
base of the nose is a small circular patch of vermilion, and
a larger one on each temple.

From each of the exquisitely moulded ears hung a heavy
ring of jade-stone of the real ‘fait-sooay’ colour. The hair—
sleek and dark — is gathered up in two bows on each side,
and the back hair hangs in a long plait down the back,
while between the bows flutters a large blue butterfly on the
slightest movement of her head, setting off this style of
wearing the hair in quite an artful way.

The neck was uncovered—unless by the paint—and the
whole of the figure, except just the bottoms of a pair of
STAINED FINGER-NAILS. 161

light pink trousers, was hid by a long wide robe of figured
blue silk, bound with white, on which a perfect menagerie
of birds and beasts was embroidered. The cuffs of the
very roomy sleeves were turned up with the same material,
on which a landscape of some kind or other was delineated
by the same laborious method.

The little feet—thanks be to fate—were natural, and
nicely exhibited in a pair of shoes that, for brightness
of hue and elegance of design in the flowers that covered
them, might have been borrowed from the choicest collec-
tion in the Sultan’s harem; though the clumsy addition of
a thick white cloggy sole, in shape like a small inverted
pyramid, did not quite satisfy us in the hasty survey we
were making.

The only hand we could see was that by which she led
the child — who watched us uneasily, lolling a finger about
in its mouth—but that was a perfect model of beauty, and
white as beauty could require, though the nails —we could
notice — were perhaps a trifle too long, and moreover were
dyed a brownish-yellow by the red Fungseén flower —a
little piece of vanity, by the bye, introduced during the
Sung dynasty, some eight or nine centuries ago—and
to which, if we are not mistaken, the Turkish ladies at Con-
stantinople.and the Tartar girls in the Crimea are rather
partial. The wrist was encircled by a white jade-stone
bracelet.

The costume struck us as an easy and a graceful one —
barring those thick soles to the handsome slippers — with
the colours well assorted as to harmony. Nor was the get-
up of the hair to be cavilled at; it must have cost an
infinity of time and patience. In brief, those magnificent
eyes and that softly-elegant cast of features, constituted a
peculiar kind of beauty, of which in China we had hitherto
met no example.

The havoc created in our susceptible hearts would have

M
162 LANCHOW.

been all but irreparable had that vile abomination of paint
been removed, and the natural tint of the complexion
been allowed to enhance the lady’s other charms :

“Tf ladies be but young and fair,
They have the gift to know it.’

Our bella donna was no exception to the rule, for with an
arch smile and a pert toss of the head, and another bewilder-
ing glance from the eyes, she enlightened her admirers as to
her own opinion of her attractions.

The high gateways, by which it was necessary we should
pass before getting into the town, were in perfect condition.
They had been built with an eye to durability; and the thick
nail-studded gates that opened on little wooden wheels, and
were now fastened by bolts to the cheeks of the arches,
showed no marks of decay. Like many, if not all, of the
walled towns of the north, Lanchow is encompassed by a
nearly square wall, each side of which faces one of the car-
dinal points, and is furnished with a double gateway. The
outer one pierces the side of a wide, semicircular, crenelated
bastion, and leads to a partially paved court, from which
the inner one led, at an acute angle to the other, through the
straight line of wall into a principal street. The usual two-
storied rampart towers, with their picturesque curled-up
gables to each story, though untenanted and slightly in want
of repair, were not in ruins.

Within the inner gate, at the commencement of the street
in which we found ourselves, was a small wooden house,
before which an old man sat betattered and dreamy, smoking
—the guard of the city gate—and, in all human probability,
the sole representative of what may once have been a garrison
—the only tangible relic of a mythical ten thousand—looking
as sorry, and rust-eaten, and inefficient as the half-dozen
lances, pikes, halberds, and grappling hooks reared in ter-
rorem in a shaky wooden stand near him on the roadside.
A TIEN-TSIN MERCHANT. 163

Though belonging to a second-rate city or town, the
square enceinte did not appear to be more than one and a
half or one and three-quarters of a mile in circumference, and
Lanchow, unlike every other town we have seen similarly
fortified, possessed no suburb—all trade and stir was within
the embrace of the lofty structure, which seemed degraded and
out of harmony with the interior, and must have been erected
for the protection of better houses and more valuable property
than now meet the eye on the sides of the wide street.

Its commercial transactions can only be insignificant, for
the shops, though tolerably large and good, and the shop-
keepers generally well-dressed and fat—an infallible index
of their prosperous condition—were few, and the counters
and shelves displayed nothing but native goods.

This may not be the case long, however, for one of the mob
of spectators who thronged from every lane and door to stare
at us, advanced frankly from among his neighbours and told
us, in as much of the lingua franca as his business vocations
had permitted him to pick up from the British, that he was
a ‘Tien-tsin merchant.’ He was glad to enter into a brief
conversation, in which both parties endeavoured to serve
themselves—the one in discovering our object in travelling
such a great distance from the Tien-tsin garrison, and the other
in ascertaining the most convenient resting-place for the
night, which was approaching rapidly.

It sounded strange to hear this fellow attempting to con-
verse in English in this place, where Briton never had been
before, and to watch the avidity with which those who clung
to his skirts listened and tried to repeat the words after him,
as if they had found the key to a new puzzle, highly amusing
and curiously wonderful—but such incongruous sounds were
more likely to excite mirth than meditation.

Lanchow is great in its kitchens and eating-houses, if it
does not boast of an extensive trade; and the exhibition the
citizens make by their ample preparations for a numerous

M 2
164 KITCHENS AND EATING-HOUSES.

dining-out population impresses us as novel. There were
spacious apartments crowded with little tables and stools
arranged for parties of four or five. Independent family
coteries were assembled for the purpose of drinking tea, and
chewing the seeds of the water-lily, which a lad is anxiously
employed in roasting at one of the outside stove-pans, tossing
and turning them over the hot metal and mixing them with
a coarse meal or sawdust to prevent their being unequally
done—others were waiting for the highly-seasoned olios and
powerfully aromatic stews that were squealing, bubbling, and
boiling, in every row of cauldrons on the earthen pavement,
over which the fat blue-aproned cooks stood steaming and
blowing in the vapoury but delectable clouds, while little
urchins pulled and pushed the horizontal bellows-handles to
accelerate the speed of the culinary operations. In some
these were only beginning, in others they were drawing to an
embarrassing close—if the frequent tastings, and lip-smack-
ings, and supervening cogitations are symptomatic of that
epoch in the life of a maitre de cuisine in other countries—but
all went on out of doors and in the unmitigated sunny glare.
It did not take long to leave the east gate of the city
behind us—we had entered by the west—and we were
again among the pleasant gardens and whirling under the ar-
borescent shade, where old and young were scraping, picking,
and irrigating so assiduously as not to heed our intrusion.
After about half a mile’s marching and countermarching,
seemingly to no ‘purpose, the leafy intricacy was penetrated,
and we got a full view of the lovely plain through which the
Lan-hé river flows. It was a highly gratifying sight, that right
well repaid us for the little hardships we had encountered,
and was worthy of the praises bestowed on it; willingly indeed
we declared that it far excelled all those snatches of pleasant
scenery to be met with around Peking, on which we had
lavished eulogiums of a very exalted character, after the
dismal muddy days we had passed at the mouth of the Peiho.
THE LAN-HO. 165

This river, the Lan-hé, may yet be remembered as figuring
among the minor incidents of the war just terminated. By
pointing out its proximity to Zehol to the late Emperor, Hien
Fung, before he fled to that obscure imperial residence beyond
the Great Wall, the less influential, but possibly better dis-
posed, portion of the community at Peking tried to dissuade
His Majesty from flight. They used their best arguments
to induce the frightened monarch to await among them the
progress of events, alleging that in the capital there would be
no more risk than at the Tartar palace. Our gun-boats, they
declared, could easily find their way from the Eastern Sea
up the Lan-hé, to the very walls of the refuge, which they
would be sure to knock about his ears with shot and shell.

In. the early days of Jesuit pioneering at the Chinese
court, Du Halde mentions that Father Gerbillon, in the com-
pany of ambassadors and princes, in a journey far to the
northward of our present position, crossed and recrossed it,
and several times encamped on its banks. It is described as
a stream, or very small river, traversing a somewhat poor
country, scantily inhabited and as sparely cultivated.

But at Lanchow no such complaint could be preferred
against either the river or the adjacent country. Here was
in the lower ground

‘ A soft landscape of mild earth,

Where all was harmony, and calm, and quiet,

Tuxuriant, budding.’
Away some four or five miles to the north, grey hills,
extending in serried pinnacles and jags east and west into
cloudland, rose, assuming all sorts of phantom forms through
the fleecy mists of the far-distant space. Through what
looks like a narrow gorge or cleft in the bosom of these
giants,— fringed for some way up their sides by noble trees,
—jissues the sleepy river, flowing in an easy curve towards
its by no means tortuous channel southwards. White cot-
tages wander along its course far up the gorge, now nearly
166 PAGODA AND TEMPLE.

enclosed in a delicious setting of varied green, there heaped
on a low mound, the front or gable end becomes conspicuous ;
the first, with a door in the middle and a window on each
side, stare down the cleft as if they were the ocular and
olfactory features of a pallid, lurking Cyclops; the latter, with
a single black aperture in their pearly surface, like the
entrance to a tunnel ina chalk cliff; presently other dwellings
glint out in the sunshine from the jasper-and-gold coloured
mass, like snowflakes.

Everything in this unexpected Arcadia was a sheet, a
clump, or a tuft of emerald and olive green, near the low
banks of the water, and in the full bloom of an advanced
summer. To our left, between the town and the hills, from
the middle of the highly-cultivated level in that direction
springs an abrupt and rather stately hillock, on which the
‘eye rested with curious delight, for it was decked and
capped by groups of those pretty little temples that form
such a distinctive feature in Chinese scenery. They were
perched in the most arbitrary manner around a larger struc-
ture of the stereotyped religious style of architecture, and
embellished by harsh, bristly, gloomy fir trees—favoured
emblems of long life to the imaginations of our friends, but
symbols of grief and loneliness to ours, and very much out
of keeping, too, with such a glad scene.

On our right, to the south of the town, rich sweeps of
green millet and maize roll.and heave in long lines, without
break or interruption, until they impinge against the blue
horizon. Then comes a hill more than five hundred feet in
height,— the Pagoda hill. The summit is crowned not only
by the peculiar building of that name and shape, that stands
so near the brink of the steepest face of the precipitous crag
as to appear ready to topple over, were it not maintained in
situ by some invisible power, but also by a neat little house
of the dovecot fashion,— probably another temple,— peeping
over into the cheerful picture below from between two or
TRAFFIC ON THE LAN-HO. 167

three aged pines standing within a tiny palisade of millet
stalks.

On the opposite side of the river, about half a mile from it,
and running from the hills parallel to its left bank, descends
an abrupt ridge, densely clothed with trees, until it gra-
dually smooths down into the universal level, dotted along
its sides and crest with many a flat-roofed cottage, half
buried in luxuriant vegetation. Ornamental trees, orchards,
and cereals, rested as securely in their undisturbed paradise,
as if their owners knew nothing of the internecine feuds that
were destroying the nation.

It was impossible to look on such a beautiful picture, now
in its fairest and most felicitous colouring, without fervently
wishing it might never be changed into a landscape of ruin
and sorrow, made up of burning roof-trees, forsaken fields
sprinkled with the blood of their tillers, and broken-hearted
beggars haunting the devastated spots on hill and in valley!

But a few minutes’ ride was required to bring us alongside
of the Lan-hé, the muddy waters of which it was necessary
to ferry, the width at present being not much less than two
hundred yards, but, by the broad sandy beach on the other
side, at certain seasons it must be at least two hundred more.
There was some little life and motion going on on the right
bank, caused by the boat traffic passing up and down, as
well as by the presence of the ferry-boats poling and pushing
their promiscuous loads about from side to side. A minia-
ture fleet of tiny, long, narrow, canoe-like lighters, without
keels, and alike square at stem and stern to admit of their
being lashed to each other in strings, are moored to the low
alluvial bank, on which their crews are hurriedly preparing
the evening meal, or are hard at work transferring to the
shore the cargoes of rice, salt, and other native produce
brought up by these craft of light draught from the junks
which had penetrated from the Gulf up the river, until the
shallowness of the water stopped their farther advance.
168 BOAT TRACKING.

Various detachments, consisting each of half a dozen or
more .boats, joined bow to stern, filled with merchandise of
some kind or other, were pulled up against the stream —
which must have been running down at the rate of a mile
and a half an hour — by nude gaunt figures, tanned to the
deepest brown by the hot rays of the sun; their bram-pans
being alone shielded from its frizzling effects by a blue sort
of turban. Their bodies were nearly bent double by the
heavy strain put upon them, and their chests were deeply
indented by the bamboo which passes diagonally across the
breast, and to which is tied the long end of the tracking-cord
attached to the slender mast of the leading boat — the only
mast in the fleet.

Wearily they plod on, two or three to a line, keeping step,
and each pulling his just share of the burden, never talking,
and but rarely hiccuping a low monotonous melody; while
the dark-faced fellow who crouches down in the stern of the
last skiff with a clumsy oar keeps the flotilla clear of the
sides and from shoals, as it floats away towards the mountains
on its passage perhaps to Zehol, far beyond their impracti-
cable heights.

Some of these dusky slaves came to look at us in the most
irreverent and shameless manner, evidently thinking no
more of exhibiting themselves before strangers without a
garment than we would of appearing before them without
gloves.

A large square enclosure of the never-failing millet straw,
with a range of bothies at one side of the same material
daubed with mud, is nearly filled by teams of quadrupeds
eating out of mangers, with their carts, owners, and drivers,
all awaiting their turn to cross by the busy ferry.

We were obligingly permitted to avail ourselves of the
first boat coming alongside, by those who were ready for
embarkation,—so, after the indispensable amount of difficulty
and delay consequent on unyoking the skittish mules, wheel-
THE FERRY ON THE LAN-HO. 169

ing the cart up a narrow wooden inclined plane to the flush
deck, jumping the animals on board from the shore, when
everything else had been stowed away, the cranky vessel
was pushed off, and we were vigorously engaged in soothing
or coercing the more alarmed quadrupeds on their departure
from the shore.

The depth of the river here was in no part more than
eight feet, with in some places a rocky bottom, in others
sand or alluvium. Below, and not far from the ferry track,
a small dry shoal, covered with rushes and tenanted by
various members of the gull family, lay in the middle of the
stream, offering an insurmountable obstacle to the passage
of anything through the remaining navigable portions, save
the light skiffs employed by the natives.

On the opposite side a large convoy of heavy country
carts, covered with the mud of many days’ travel, was
halted for the arrival of boats to convey them across.

They were transporting a number of soldiers towards the
west, and were encumbered by a very promiscuous stock of
baggage, packed and slung below and above the semicircular
neat roof, leaving only room sufficient for one or two
passengers to lie on the boards. Muzzles of matchlocks,
tufted heads of spears, leathern quivers filled with arrows,
and heavy swords, were artfully displayed under cover, to
show the warlike mission of their wearers.

While the mules were being disembarked and harnessed
again on the shingly beach, several of these eastern warriors
collected around us and were intensely curious about all they
saw, especially admiring our saddles and bridles, and our
boots; even going so far as to apply the sense of touch to the
cloth of our coats and trousers—extolling loudly the quality
and fashion of our apparel and equipment.

One, who appeared to be the leader, and who certainly
exhibited more intelligence and address than any of his
fellows, made himself very busy, and had apparently more
170 A TIMID WARRIOR.

purpose in his inquiries; and with him, until the tardy cart
was ready, we sought to fraternise.

With much of the dare-devil revealed in his youthful
but hard features, and as much swagger and style in his
carriage and bearing as a newly-promoted French sous-
officier, he was as timid and scared as any schoolboy when
we began to talk to him. He was tall and well proportioned,
and as erect as if he had been all his days in the hands of a
Western drill sergeant; his glossy well-plaited queue was
wound jauntily round his head — and with it worn in this
way every Chinaman looks well—the end of the heavy
black silk cord with which it was incorporated dangling
saucily over the right shoulder ; his figure was well set off
by the loose white jacket partially covering his arms and
chest; and a thick blue cotton sash was around his waist, in
which were stuck two long wooden-handled dirks, bound
together for some mysterious purpose by leathern thongs.

He wore a pair of wide-legged blue cotton trousers, tied
round the ankle by a broad white bandage, and ornamented
from thence to the knee with a profusion of wreaths and
swirls in black velvet, until in front of the knee the character
‘Shau’—meaning longevity—terminated the gay embroidery.
By this he was distinguished from his brother soldiers, who
were but coarsely clad. The nails on his delicate fingers
were long enough to serve as marrow-spoons, and his shoes,
though dust-stained, were superior to the cobbled-up old
sandals of his comrades.

In short, our youthful friend was nothing less, in our eyes,
than a beau sabreur of a peaceful nation; a dandy swinge-
buckler or sworder among unarmed villagers, and a veritable
Mars when gallantly endeavouring to storm the hearts of
the dark glancing beauties by whose homes he passed.

Jn return for the close inspection he had made of us, we
imagined we were fairly entitled to ask him some little ques-
tions, and to request a look at his side-arms, but he quickly
UNSCRUPULOUS BOATMEN. 171

retired beyond our reach, and eyed us for a few minutes
rather doubtingly, until, struck with the ridiculous idea of
such a valiant-looking person going to fight the battles of
his country with ‘longevity’ on his legs, we laughingly
enquired the meaning of such a whimsical device. He
skulked away out of sight among the waggons, evidently
taken aback at such unwonted liberties.

When we were ready to resume our journey, the groom
was told to pay the ferrymen some small sum for their
trouble, but the two rascals—ereat, ill-favoured individuals—
would take nothing less than their demand of one thousand
cash, and looked in every way ready to make a row of it.
Ma-foo fruitlessly exerted his persuasive eloquence ; in vain
M. threatened to re-cross to Lanchow, there to protest before
a mandarin his determination not to pay between four
and five shillings for what, at most, cost no more than a few
cash to an ordinary traveller.

Things were in a fix, words were running high, a
boisterous altercation was imminent — for both sides seemed
resolved not to surrender the slightest tithe of their claims—
and the evening was approaching—at this crisis the bashful
soldier came up, listened for a few moments to the dispute,
and then took the elder of the boatmen aside. He plied the
fellow with such irresistible reasoning, that presently we were
immensely astonished by an announcement that all had been
settled! There was nothing to pay, and we had permission
to depart.

The would-be extortioners at once betook themselves to
their boat, and were soon aiding the tired waggon conductors
to get their loads on board. Our amiable friend having
accomplished this essential service, modestly maintained a
distant position, where he kept posturing gracefully at the
bow of the boat, out of reach of our thanks. We made no
attempt to alter this arrangement, as we were confident that
this was one of those ferries maintained in lieu of a bridge
172 BEAUTIFUL EVENING.

by the Chinese government for the public service, and for
the gratuitous passage of wayfarers across the river. The
fellows had tried to extort this large sum, presuming on our
ignorance and inability to resist, as we were travelling
without the slightest semblance of protection or authority
from their officials.

Upon leaving the dry sand and shingle of the now attenuated
river’s bed, the road ascended the abrupt heights in a rather
disagreeable uphill fashion, that tried the strength and
endurance of our team, and the tough texture of the gear
and traces of twisted thongs. But the summit was gained
without any mishap, after a short though active spurt for
four or five hundred yards, during which the mules had
exhibited such decided symptoms of fatigue, that it was as
much a matter of necessity as of humanity to give them a
sufficient rest.

It was but doing simple justice to ourselves and the
landscape we had quitted, to bestow on it another survey
before bidding adieu to one of the prettiest prospects it had
been our good fortune to meet in this land, for down in that
valley, spread out under that intensely blue sky that was
undiscoloured by cloud, lay as serene a picture of beauty
and rural tranquillity as the heart of man could desire to
find in any quarter of the world.

We halted in a little village surrounded by orchards and
great wide-spreading walnut trees, that threw dark masses of
foliage over cottage and garden; and near us stood a rude
Artesian well, from which the good folks drew deliciously cool
and sweet water.

The afternoon was so clear, that the eye could scan for
many miles over the country through which we had traversed.
Almost at our feet, the Lan-hé meandered gently along the
edge of the plain, like a wide streak of black paint, until lost
in the corn-land a long way south, and in the gully between
those towering peaks in the opposite direction. On its
CHARMING LANDSCAPE. 173

surface men and boats appeared like so many water-scorpions
leisurely swimming about or asleep under the tiny trees
overhanging the water.

Thence the plain rolled away in verdant sheets until
stopped by the microscopic roofs of houses among the
willows and fruit trees; then the fantastic turrets of the
Lanchow wall threw up their sharp: dark edges over all;
beyond to the left, the Pagoda hill uplifted its bluish-grey

 

View of Lanchow.

structure as boldly as does Ailsa Craig from the Frith of
Clyde.

On the other side, a confused array of jags and pinnacles,
regular in height as the teeth of a saw, looking as if they
would disappear altogether in the golden-and-violet sky, so
sharp seemed their points, while in the gathering haziness of
the evening, the temple hill—a Mons Paradisea fit for the
gods—-softly reclined at the base of the mountains, as if it
174 THE SHIH MUN.

had never been touched by the profane hand of Buddha’s
followers.

Long did we gaze across the pleasant expanse until the
golden light of the sun followed him down behind the
dusky-blue chain of rocks, and the rosy hues were quickly
flymg beneath the irregular horizon, thiming away in
intensity as they sank; then we somewhat unwillingly
turned our faces towards the lonely stretch of unknown road
yet to be got over.

Every variety of British landscape had been stored away
_in the treasure-house of memory, but none made so pleasant
an impression, nor came to our recollections afterwards,
clothed in so many charms, as the view just described.

The narrow road wound and twisted over all sorts of
outrageous heights and hollows; at one time doubling round
the advanced end of a bank, at another over crumbling stony
fragments thrust through its face; more frequently burrowing
through deep cuttings, where the labour that had been be-
stowed on them evinced the value put by the people of these
parts on opening a means of communication with the river.

Millet, and orchards, and willows were everywhere, prying
faces of all ages stared down on us from the edges of the
banks above, until, im the grey twilight, the straggling
residences of stone or mud began to assume something like
order, and formed themselves up in two long lines, between
which we rattled over sundry stones, serving as an irregular
pavement, and were pleased to be told that our destination
for the night had been reached.

We were in the town at the distance we had proposed at
starting in the morning, and there was the inn—the ‘Shih
Mun,’ or Rocky Portal, in which we might put up. Neither
the disconsolate-looking tenements, standing as if hopelessly
vacant, with their dull doors and windows unoccupied, nor
the outside of the auberge, at the gate of which the muleteer
halted, gave tokens of any uncommon degree of comfort or
COMFORTABLE INN. 175

amity. To say the least of it, the locality bore a very sus-
picious aspect, notwithstanding the combined protestations
of Ma-foo and the carter to the contrary, and their bold and
loud testimonies as to the excellences of the ‘Tien.’ J
was at all times a little inclined to suspect the conduct
and feelings of the natives, among whom chance ordained
that I should trust myself during the watches of the night—
not that I was afraid of them, or of any damage they might
have inflicted, but I habitually kept a sharp look-out, so
as not to be thrown off my guard. My misgivings were
increased when, on making the customary survey before
turning in, I discerned, a few dozen paces from the house,
nailed high up against the grey corticose trunk ‘of an old
willow, one of those horrid wooden golgothas, through the
spars of which might be seen the revolting, corroded, black
‘caput mortuum’ of some unfortunate wretch, who, by com-
mitting murder or robbery, had incurred the popular penalty
of beheading. :

Small time, however, was there for consideration. The
cart and its attendants had passed the portal, and it was
incumbent on us to follow suit. Our ponies needed no in-
centive, but rushed eagerly into the quadrangle, where our
unpleasant feelings ceased. We found ourselves in one of
the snuggest little places we had yet seen in China, which
indicated a nearer approach to civilisation than any of the
hovels designated ‘inns’ occupied by us since our departure
from Tien-tsin. The servants, far from manifesting those
signs of fear or curiosity that had rendered their office a
sinecure, came forward with alacrity. With as much ob-
sequiousness as distinguishes the Johns and Thomases of
Western lands, they took our ponies by the bridles while we
dismounted, as if they had been all their lives accustomed
to foreigners, and assisted the carter in unharnessing his
fatigued pair of mules as if he had been an old acquaintance.

The landlord, a fine, stately, strapping, middle-aged man,
176 A HEALTHY SITUATION.

with as well-formed and good-humoured a set of features as
host could wish to be furnished with—and a jolly countenance
should be a speciality in a Boniface—came towards us
streaking his thin moustache and giving one or two jerks of
his head to adjust the luxurious plaited appendage between
his shoulders, bestowing on us our guest rite in a very grace-
ful genuflexion; his open face betraying not the slightest
vestige of surprise, but rather pleasure at the rencontre, as if
it said—
‘Sirs, you are very welcome to our house :

It must appear in other ways than words,
Therefore I scant this breathing courtesy.’

In a word, the greeting was of so warm a nature, that on
the spot we found, as it were, a home; and we were domiciled
for the next eight or nine hours of the twenty-four as
securely and satisfactorily under the roof and auspices of
this sober-complexioned worthy as if some twenty thousand
miles, more or less, did. not intervene between us and the
most commendable family hotel within the precincts of the
world’s metropolis. There we remained, inhaling the pure
invigorating mountain air, and delighting in as pleasant a
hostelry, consistent with Chinese taste and ideas of accom-
modation, as anyone, under the circumstances, could desire.

At what must have been a very respectable elevation above
the sea level, the temperature felt agreeably cool and even
bracing. There needed no better proof of the sanitary con-
dition of the place than the evidence of our own senses, when
we had the opportunity of examining the healthy bloom on
the cheeks of a crowd of robust individuals, who began to
straggle into the enclosure as soon as they heard of our
arrival.

It was just the sort of place medical men would select as a
sanatorium for people worn out by the sultry, relaxing heat
of the plain; and it would have done credit to their
choice.
AN INN KITCHEN. 177

On two sides of the spacious yard, built up against the
high stone walls, were numerous sheds and troughs for the
ponies ; in front, facing the street, and communicating with
the yard and that thoroughfare by two wide doors, were the
servants’ hall, the kitchen, the public salle-d-manger, the
dormitory for the reception of the humbler and less ostenta-
tious class of wayfarers, and the general rendezvous for
everybody,—saving and except the more aristocratic visitors,
—all in one.

From this sallied forth, when required, the host, the cook,
the accountant, the scullion, the man-of-all-work,— we never
in the whole course of the journey saw a female in one of
these higgledy-piggledy abodes,—and the eager crowd, after
they had discussed the best mode of paying us a visit; and
into it our two followers were only too ready to dive when-
ever our backs were turned, coming out again highly im-
pregnated with the heavy alcoholic effluvium of Samshu,
which acquisition led us to believe that the inn added dram-
shop to its other functions.

It was a low, murky, single-storied den, redolent of the
powerful fumes of all sorts of volatile ingredients; therefore,
keeping it at a respectful distance, we faced about. Beyond
it, there was a temporary roof of fir-branches, raised on poles
in the middle of the yard, with tables and chairs underneath
for the use of those who preferred a shady retreat in the open
air at midday to the sudorific indoors, and where the bona-
Jide travellers took up their quarters.

A regular series of one-storied stone-and-brick buildings
stood at the bottom of a grassy knoll, on which the never-
absent willow and pine-tree waved thickly and darkly against
the sides of the precipitous mountains that rose immediately
in their rear: their spinous ridges, now ominously wrapped
in dense white clouds, indicated anything but fine weather.

Under the leadership of our long white-robed cicerone, we
were conducted to these neat little refuges, and indulged in

N
178 THE INN COURTYARD.

a peep at our apartment. The inspection was in every way
calculated to please ; no difficuity was experienced in recon-
ciling ourselves to such good luck, or in laying ourselves out
for a night of supine enjoyment, as a sort of sequel to so many
days’ saddle work.

But, while preparations are being made for dinner, after
we have imbibed the habitual quantity of pure cold water and
a small basin of hot tea, according to Ma-foo’s prescription,
let us take a look at the outside, and then at the inside, of
this model habitation.

Walking in the courtyard, we discover that our civil land-
lord isa family man, and that his private quarters stand behind
the other buildings, quite out of the way of ordinary traffic.
We cast our eyes that way ; but not a creature is moving.
The windows are completely hid by a low wall thrown up
before them, which is whitewashed and covered with black
.characters, expressing, or asking for, all sorts of good things.
Finding nothing in this direction, we betake ourselves again
to an examination of the skill and taste expended on the
ground in front of our apartments, and find occupation
enough.

From one end of the range to the other, which is raised
three or four steps above the level of the court, a wide space
is partitioned off by an ingeniously plaited fence of millet
stalk, and cut out in miniature terraces for the reception of
plants in pots,—chiefly three varieties of hollyhock, the China
aster, and some kinds of roses in full flower, that threw
out a sweet perfume to the dewy night,—with an abun-
dance of creepers clinging to the fence and festooning the
front of the house,—crimson amaranths lending their gay
colours to blend with the hues of the evergreen shrubs inter-
spersed among them.

At each side of the doorway, resting on rugged pillars of
rockwork, are immense glazed vases filled with water, on the
surface of which float fine specimens of the almost idolised
NORTH CHINA DWELLINGS. 179

water lily—just on the point of blooming, with black and
red gold fish swimming around the stems, and sporting under
the great palmate leaves—curious-looking animals, with an
extraordinary developement of the caudal fin, and eyes
protruding far beyond their heads. In one corner are some
dwarf fruit trees, the most notable of which is the species of
citron called the ‘fingers of Buddha’—from the digitated
manner in which the fruit grows—the plum-tree, and the
peach, the double blossoms of which, in the early spring
months, form such a beautiful spectacle in northern gardens.

These signs of attention to embellishment and neatness
gave quite a charm to the whole of the place, and tended
more to please one with the establishment, than if it had
been a great deal more pretending. The rooms, too, were
fair models of the North China dwellings, and showed the
same regard for the just disposition of the minor details.
The entire building had been erected in the undeviating
style of architecture of the country, embracing nothing
either of grandeur or splendour, and scarcely boasting any-
thing more than a series of roofs supported by plain walls,
such as would mark the earliest attempts of a people re-
linquishing the tents of a nomadic life. From the palace
to the temple, and from the temple through all the different
classes of tenement down to the lowest hovel of mud,
the same primitive elements prevail, and are retained
in what must be nearly all their early simplicity ; the only
attempts at ornamentation being chiefly lavished on the
roofs. In the south of China, and more especially in the
larger cities—not excepting the more northern city of
Shanghai—very many of the houses are two-storied, and
furnished with a small wooden staircase inside ; in the north
not a dwelling could we see of more than one story, save the
larger temples at Peking and Tien-tsin, where a row of
musty rooms were sometimes piled on the lower tier.

The ground floor seems to be all that is necessary or

x2
180 DISREGARD FOR STONE.

desirable, in a land where cultivation demands so much space
for the maintenance of the inhabitants, though for what
reason it would be hard to discover, unless it be true that no
structures are permitted to be raised higher than the temples,
or that the female portion of the community, in consequence
of their distorted feet, are considered unable to ascend or
descend stairs; so that a wasteful extent of ground is covered
by low buildings, and occupied by extravagantly proportioned
courtyards, without any commensurate advantage.

There is a sense of littleness in the general conception,
of triviality and toyishness in all the details, that is imme-
diately impressed upon the stranger, somehow or other, at
first unfavourably. In time, however, he perceives a happy
mixture of simplicity, and even elegance, in the light. and airy
mansions, sufficient to demand some amount of admiration.

The general absence of stone blocks in buildings of any
height, the substitution for these of brick in thin weak walls,
and a predominance of timber in the composition of all
dwellings and public edifices, tend to early decay—a result
very much accelerated by the heavy overdone roofs ; so that,
like many things one sees, reads, and hears about in China,
the national architecture presents a tottering, dilapidated
appearance everywhere, even within the sacred precincts of
the Imperial residence at Peking.

Tt seems strange, that though the Chinese have an
abundance of excellent granite and other stone, perhaps more
easily wrought, in the lofty but accessible ranges of hills
bordering the greater portion of the rich alluvial plain in
which their principal cities and towns are situated, with
rivers, streams, and canals on which to transport them, yet,
except for some unimportant purpose, such as paving streets
with slabs here and there, forming foundations for city walls,
building bridges, or steps for doorways, they do not avail
themselves of the advantage. They prefer the employment of
brick and wood chiefly, if not altogether, in the erection of
SCARCITY OF MONUMENTS. 181

public and private edifices, contrasting in this respect with
the ancient Egyptians, who quarried and conveyed to great
distances the indestructible granite rock wherewith to build
and adorn those wondrous structures, those enduring remains
of departed magnificence, which remain marvels to the
traveller who rides among them for hundreds of miles in the
valley of the Nile.

Despising or fearing all without her wide boundaries—a
comparatively refined nation when other countries were
almost totally uncivilised, rendered independent by her
immense wealth and wide range of climates, as well as by
the industry of her peaceful subjects, of the kingdoms
around— China has exercised but little influence in modify-
ing or directing the progress of either the antique or modern
world.

Nevertheless, by maintaining an isolated self-reliant
position, and inhibiting all intercourse with other peoples—
building, inventing, labouring, and regulating after her own
fashion, more for the present than the future—she has,
according to Chinese notions, done all that was required to
constitute her a great empire; while the Egyptians and
Assyrians have been swept away, leaving nothing but their
indelible traditions and fancies figured on the desolate
fragments of grand temples and cities; and Greek and Roman
have faded away, endowing, however, the art of our day with
unrivalled models. With convenient materials well adapted
for carving in plenty, with the use of which for other pur-
poses Chinamen seem to be well acquainted, it is astonishing
that they did not avail themselves of their aid to perpetuate
the memories of their divinities, emperors, heroes, or scholars
—the more especially as all their oldest mythological
allegories represent Pwanku, the first man, chiselling the
heavens out of chaos, and images were introduced at no
very remote date for purposes of worship, nearly all of which

are formed from wood or mud.
182 RELICS OF THE MING DYNASTY.

They have a cupola-shaped monument in the Lama temple,
at the northern suburb of Peking,—a curious erection, of
white marble, covered with elaborately-cut historical or alle-
gorical subjects in basso and alto-relievo. It was built to
commemorate the death of Pan-Shen Lama, who, in the
forty-fourth year of Kieng-lung, came to Peking, and ‘ went
to rest’ in the temple, from whence His Majesty sent him
back to Thibet in a golden pagoda or mausoleum. Some
graveyards also contain a few laboriously-wrought, but
unique specimens of carving, all of modern production, and
in all probability the result of Jesuit instruction ; but there
is scarcely any proof that sculpture, as an art, has been
recognised in the empire.

I discovered some old figures in the fields near Tien-tsin,
half buried in the soil, disfigured, and otherwise neglected,
of men — priests and warriors they appeared to be —and.
women, wearing strange costumes, with horses ready saddled,
and cattle, sheep, and dogs, all of life size, and hewn out of
the common, greyish-blue, compact limestone, found in the
neighbouring hills.

Without the Shanghai city walls, in a little garden, I
met with fac-similes of these, but generally defaced and
without dates, though they are sometimes asserted to belong
to the early days of the Ming dynasty,—no farther back
than six centuries, —and are supposed to be fragments of
the tombs of high personages, each group doing duty as
attendants to serve in Hades.

Too much engaged in their easy work-a-day world, un-
mindful of the future, and ever looking back towards their
ancient customs and institutions, instead of forward to a
higher state of civilisation, all their actions biassed by their
rigidly economical and calculating minds, the men of the
Middle Kingdom are not likely to sacrifice time and labour in
what does not possess the recommendation of present utility.

One might have concluded that a difference of climate,
THE ‘SPRING DAMP.’ 183

from a pretty equable southern temperature to one of wide
and severe extremes, would have caused the Northern Chinese
to modify their tastes in regard to the construction of their
dwellings, and meet the requirements of the seasons by suit-
able arrangements within doors ; but no—each house is made
as open, airy, and summer-like, and yet as confined, as if the
tropical heat never disappeared, and its inmates were con-
demned. to an unvarying round of hot days and years.

No provision is made for the bitter winter, —when an in-
tensely chilly gale from the Gulf drives the blood into the
innermost recesses of the body, leaving every exposed
surface liable to frost-bite, except the oven couch that
adorns every apartment, and which I thought such a sin-
gular contrivance the first time I saw it in a rude hovel at
Talien-whan Bay.

The walls are—underneath those climbing plants —built
of the blue bricks in universal use, north and south, and
which are here, like the men who employ them, larger and of
more substance than those seen at Shanghai or more
southerly ; and in very workmanlike style are laid in even
courses, with no stone foundation, as such a substantial sub-
structure is rare. But in every house in and around Tien-
tsin, and along the whole route, when formed of bricks, there
is a peculiarity I have never observed elsewhere. About two
or three feet from the ground, separating one tier of bricks
from that above, is a layer of coarse straw, laid transversely
and closely, and trimly cut off to a level with the wall, in the
face of which it looks rather odd.

To our enquiries as to the beneficial effects expected from
this infirm introduction, the only reasonable reply has been
that it prevents the soo-chee, or ‘Spring-damp,’ from rising
and diffusing itself within the building, where it would remain
until the winter, when, becoming frozen, it would expand and
throw asunder the bricks, and be very likely to cause the
downfall of the whole fabric. Whether this be true or not,
184 ENCLOSED COURTYARDS.

without more experience it would be rash for me to say; but
certain it is, that, either owing to this precaution, or to the
dry state of the atmosphere throughout the year, damp and
its results are never discernible in the exteriors or interiors
of the houses so prepared.

The Chinese have so long dwelt in raised dwellings of this
description, and their powers of observation are so keen in
such matters, that a knowledge of their habits predisposes
one to believe their explanation, and give them credit for
their acuteness.

All the first and middle-class houses I have seen were
enclosed within high walls of brick or mud, and the veriest
plebeian, the poorest rag or paper-gatherer, or the almost out-
cast proprietor of a den under a city wall, contrives to appro-
priate a scrap of ground,—a sort of neutral territory, hemmed
in from public intrusion,—after the manner of their superiors.
These better houses are often situated in the strangest out-
of-the-way nooks and narrow lanes ; and, when they chance
to be in a trading thoroughfare, the appearance of the gloomy
wall gives no token of what may be within, though it imparts
a miserable character to what might otherwise be a cheerful
street ; so that when the European traveller ascends the few
low steps that lie before the narrow doorway of a tolerably
well-to-do Chinaman’s private abode, and, bent on paying a
‘chin-chinning,’ or domiciliary visit to the good man, passes
between two conical stone guardians, something like rabid
dogs, with fierce, open mouths, protruded tongues, and dumb-
bells round their necks, he is surprised to find a spacious
courtyard, paved with bricks or tiles, leading perhaps to
several others, and summer-house-like, self-contained build-
ings for every purpose of domestic life, methodically, though
sometimes intricately, arranged.

A wall is now and then found in the yard facing the outer
door, on one side of which is a little niche with the joss
shrine —a smoky little idol with a pot before it, in which the
LONGEVITY. 185

propitiary incense-sticks are to be burnt*—and on the other,
flowery inscriptions in puzzling characters of great. size,
which, translated into our plain language, signify the most
ardent invocations to their gods, or desires for the usual good
fortune of a Chinese; profuse sentiments, such as ‘ May the
beautiful stars of heaven shine continually on this door,’ or
‘May the moon with its heavenly light shed eternal beams
of felicity on this house,’ &c.

The chief point of attraction for displaying their peculiar
tastes, as I before remarked, seems to be on the roof, which
is heavily overdone with all kinds of ridges and furrows,
curved and straight lines, and layers of ponderous blue tiles
arranged in a grotesque fashion—the large semi-cylindrical
ones at the corners being deeply indented with the character
that indicates or expresses ‘longevity’—perhaps the most
popular in the language, figuring as it does not only on the
ends of the tiles, but in some conspicuous place on almost
every article—on their coffins, their chairs, caps, and shoes,
on articles of ornament as well as those of utility, in the
ceremonies at birth, marriage, and burial. It was not thought
out of place on the nimble legs of our soldier-friend at the
Lan-hé ferry, and, indeed, in some form or another—for it is
written in about fifty different ways, and nearly every one
at all educated can read the whole of them—it meets the eye
everywhere.

The main courtyard of large houses, has a very lofty
structure of poles and laths covered by matting—this our
intelligent landlord has copied in his own rustic way in that
cool shed before us—during the hot summer months; and
these tall fabrics form very striking and prominent features
in towns, where all the buildings are about the same height.

* Just as the Greeks had an altar to Apollo, their tutelary divinity,
the sacred laurel tree, or a head of Hermes or Mercury, in the same
situation.
186 SUN-SHADES.

But the quarters for domestics, and especially for the porter,
near the street-entrance are left to broil in the sun, while
it is only the more dignified and select portions of the
habitation remotest from the front—those kept secluded from
the ken of the world—that participate in the deep shelter
thus afforded.
187

CHAPTER XII.

SUPERSTITIOUS FANCIES — THE HORSE-SHOE — WORDS OF GOOD OMEN —
CHINESE LARES AND PENATES — HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE — USE OF THE
KANG -— HOT AIR—THE DOMESTIC HEARTH — PREFERENCE FOR AN
ENGLISH FIRESIDE — A CHINESE ARMOURY — USE OF THE BOW — MUS-
CULAR DEVELOPEMENT — THROWING TIE STONE —A PLEASANT REFEC-
TION — CHINESE RESPECT FOR AGE—A NIGHT STORM — OUR ARMS.

BSURD superstitious practices, and the effects of idle
fancies, nurtured and strengthened by a false religion—
a religion nothing better than a tissue of incongruous fables
and puerile delusions—run riot everywhere in the public
gaze; and sorcerers, necromancers, and soothsayers are ever
in request to help those ignorant people who, haunted by
bad fortune, malignant spirits, or unpropitious influences, are
ready to come down handsomely to induce the sorcerer to
ward off real or prospective disasters, by incantations, phil-
ters, or timely notice of the impending calamity.

This state of mind is more noticeable in large cities, such
as Tien-tsin, than in the country, and though it jars very
much on one’s feelings, and excites a sincere pity, it cannot
be forgotten that the most refined nations of antiquity shared
similar delusions, and that even in our own land—not many
generations ago—they flourished as luxuriantly.*

Looking at the two half-doors near which I am standing,
I see what corresponds to a superstitious safeguard yet to

* It is impossible to forget that by order of a papal bull, the Inquisition
hunted out and destroyed 100,000 victims for witchcraft in Germany ; that
30,000 people suffered execution for the same in England ; and about the
year 1515, 500 witches were burnt in three months at Geneva.
188 ‘TAU-FOO.’

be found on barn-doors and stables in England—the lucky
horse-shoe. This is sometimes transferred to floating habi-
tations, such as fishing-boats, and even, if I remember
right, to more formidable craft—and -had not the immortal
Nelson a rusty symbol of this description nailed to the main
or mizen-mast of his invulnerable flag-ship? In Gay’s
humorous fable of the old woman and her cats, he makes

her complain that

‘ Straws laid across, my path retard,
The horse-shoe nail'd, each threshold’s guard.’

And so might the witches, warlocks, and foul spirits in North
China grumble at similar agencies for their discomfiture; for
in addition to the remarkable way in which the builders have
endeavoured to avoid placing doorways so as to face each
other, believing that it prevents the ready exit or entrance
of the mauvais gens from place to place—two deities, one
pasted against each half of the door, keep watch and ward
over the portal intrusted to their supervision.

Chinese history declares that a spell or charm, consisting
of the words ‘Mun-tee’ or ‘ Tau-foo,’ specially devised for
the subjugation or banishment of such baneful incorporeal
beings, was introduced for the protection of the liege subjects
who might be troubled by such visitants, and that it con-
sisted of the four words Shin-tu and Yuh-li, which are the
names of these gods. There they are, more ferocious and
terror-inspiring than any of the bugbears of the nursery, in
menacing postures, flourishing clubs and swinging great
swords. One is a white King of Hearts’ face, the other a
thorough grim-griffin-hoof—a sort of salamander, with a
Gorgon expression of countenance, and a complexion of a
strong brick-red, from out of which large black and white
crab-eyes are jumping in quite a demoniacal fashion, suffi-
ciently horrible to send any number of children into con-

vulsions of fright.
SUPERSTITIOUS NOTIONS. 189

Sometimes, and more particularly in Tien-tsin, the silly
notions of the people show themselves in a slightly different
form. These are less easily noticed by the careless observer
in the thronged and narrow streets, but are novel, if not
iteresting, when discovered. If a house abuts upon or
stands before the end of a lane or passage, the side looking
towards that passage almost invariably has a small tile or
slab of stone let into it, with an inscription which varies
with the fancy of the owner, the opinion of the fortune-telling
sage, or the locality from whence the tablet may have been
procured.

An inscription of this kind on a large slab of blue slate,
neatly cut and painted, as if it demanded care and attention,
I saw in the wing of a brick building at the foot of a by-
lane, not far from the banks of the Peiho; and, curious to
know its meaning, I obtained a translation of it. It was simply
to the effect that ‘This stone was brought from the province
of Shantung, and placed here to prevent the evil influences of
the lane coming near this house.’

This inscription is likely to excite a lively degree of in-
terest in the scholar, from its similarity to those of a like
nature preserved among the remains of Roman signs and
pavements brought to light in England and elsewhere, where
invocations to the genius loci for good fortune, frequently con-
cluded with a desire to be spared from misfortune and
malign influences. For example, on the shattered surface of
a tesselated pavement found in the ruins of what had been
a Roman private house at Salzburg, in Germany, an almost
effaced writing has become apparent, but in a fragmentary
condition, signifying —

¢,... (Name of the person is lost) Hic habitat :
Nihil intret mali!’ *

 

* «(-_—) dwells here—may nothing evil enter!’ The Celt, the Roman,
and the Saxon, by T. Wright, Esq., London.
190 THE PAH-KWA.

At other times, instead of the written character, I have ob-
served the Yang yin pah kwa—a species of religious ‘mystic
cabala,’ made up of combinations of the monad and duad

 

 

PEE Lee ae ee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

principles of Chinese philosophy, with eight tables arranged
in circles around the.tadpole-like symbol, which is illustrative
of the reciprocal state of everything in the Celestial’s material
world.

But I have remained long enough outside; it is almost
dark, and the atmosphere feels rather damp, in consequence
of the descent of the heavy clouds within a very short dis-
tance of the house: so I will go in for the night.

The door opens on an apartment which we may suppose
is the hall or ante-room, and from which an inner room
branches off to the right and left. The floors, both of inner
and outer rooms, are of square tiles, and look cool enough
for summer, but very shivery for winter. The walls are
covered with a white satin or silvery paper, and are adorned
with scrolls and labels. On a table in the centre stands, ,
wonderful to behold, a very common glass globe — the most
important curiosity in the house — set off as it is on a very
THE LARES AND PENATES. 191

presuming stand of walnut wood, and placed in the situation
where it can be most advantageously seen by the patronisers
of the inn, when they seek the hospitality of the ‘Shih
Mun.’

I can scarcely do less than salute the Lares and Penates,
who are worshipped in a little red-painted box, with a row of
gilt attributes on each side, on the wall, facing the door.

There are two household gods sitting, in the dull light of
two vermilion-coated candles, with legs crossed, and one hand
admonishingly uplifted, as if giving a lecture on the nature
and properties of the varied assortment of vegetable and
animal messes laid before them in little cups, or rebuking
their Pagan supporters for some neglect of religious rite or
ordinance. The strong camphorous smell of the burning
incense-sticks pervades every corner.

The landlord is anxious that we should take the right-
hand room, but we prefer the left, because it affords us a
chance of ventilating the place by throwing the window
open — an operation that could not have been performed for
many years before. The people wonder at our exhibiting
such a liking for fresh air, but are not displeased, as it gives
the outside folks an opportunity of observing our doings
within, for the windows all look into the courtyard, and that
is pretty well crowded by a very orderly congregation of vil-
lagers, who look and smoke, but are sparing of noise or talk.
The frames, though stoutly made, stand great risk of being
smashed in the efforts made to throw them outwards; and
the paper panes do not escape unscathed ; but this does not
much matter; they are easily repaired. It is only in some
of the better class houses, near Tien-tsin, that one or two
panes of glass to a window are to be seen — that luxury
never extending itself to the common dwellings, where the
use of thin white paper— sometimes oiled to increase its
translucency — calico, or occasionally ground oyster-shells,
makes everything without undistinguishable, while throwing
192 CHINESE FURNITURE.

an opaqueness over the interior of the houses not at all
pleasant. Skylights, which would tend so much to lighten
up these single-storied rooms, was glass procurable, are
unknown; but the calico and paper would be useless in
excluding rain or snow in bad weather.

The furniture of the Chinese household is heavy, clumsy,
and inelegant, according to our ideas of cabinet-work, though
not devoid of skill and workmanship in its construction. It
comprises but few articles besides tables, chairs, and low
stools, with ponderous cupboards and screens. Many intro-
duce large arm-chairs, which are as uncomfortable as they
are unwieldy.

As I before remarked, the houses are not adapted for
winter use. A trial quickly showed that they were very de-
ficient in comfort and cheerfulness, particularly by the
absence of fire-places or grates, for which, in the eyes of a
Briton, there can be no compensation. The inmates have
done their best, and done very well too, in devising means
whereby they might be able to palliate the cold by the an-
tagonistic properties of heat, and without all that dust,
smoke, cinders, and suffocation that in nearly every case
attended the process of combustion as extemporised in
the Tien-tsin quarters at the insetting of the cold weather,
according to scientific rule, by amateurs in the arts of warming
and ventilation.

Besides the little braziers and stoves, more inconvenient
and productive of headaches than the fire-place, that are in
general use during the cold months, every dwelling-house as
far as I have travelled has one or two rooms, which, in the
majority of instances, are engaged for sleeping as well as
sitting apartments, when warmth becomes necessary ; these
contain a hollow couch, kang, or bed-place, built of brick,
extending along the whole of one side ofthe apartment. It is
five or six feet wide, and raised about two feet from the
ground. This is a very near approach to the Roman hypo-
THE KANG. 193

caust, though it does not bear the same tokens of skill and
refinement that can be traced in recently disinterred villas.

Outside the apartment, and below the level of the floor,
is a small cavity where the fire is kindled and attended to
by the domestics, who do not require to enter the house for
this purpose. From this little pit flues spring upwards, and
proceed in a divergent manner under the stove-bed until
they gain the farther extremity, when they converge to meet
in the chimney, which rises through the gable-end of the
house and carries off the smoke. In summer or winter it is
never slept on, unless prudently covered by thick felt and
rush matting: the people say it is productive of bad effects if
used without these adjuncts, and they cite a maxim of theirs—
sure to be derived from that invaluable monitor, experience
—to the effect, ‘that it is safer and always more preferable
to lie on a cold bed,’ that is on an ordinary wooden bed,
‘than on a cold furnace,’ meaning the unheated bare bench.
These coverings modify and retain for a long time the trans-
mitted heat when the apparatus is in play; and if a Chinese
servant manages the fire below, and does not allow it to burn
too fiercely until the mass has reached the proper tempera-
ture, the bed made on it is not at all to be cavilled at, but
is really very cosy and soporific, when the mercury of the
thermometer in the open air has fallen below zero.

As far as fuel is concerned, the thing is economical in the
extreme —a great object where this very essential ingredient
of winter comfort is so scarce and dear—because the strong
current of air set in motion by the flame accelerates the
burning of the wood or millet-stems im the fire-pit—the
native coal is too hard and stony for such a purpose-—and
the blaze is carried for a considerable distance through the
brick-partitioned flues; consequently it often happens that
the end of the fabric most remote from the fuel is sooner
warm than the other portions. A moderate fire burning for
two hours before going to bed will impart heat enough to

O
194 ITS DRAWBACKS.

make the structure agreeable until the morning. When
kept going in the day-time, ifthe doors are closed and the
seams protected by the thick quilted mats, for whose
suspension we see those metal hooks stuck in the lintel ‘of
our present bedchamber door, life is supportable.

On such elevations the northern Chinese appear to spend
the greater part of their indoor time during winter, and all
the members of the family huddle on them instead of the
floor when occupied in play, sewing, or reading ; indeed, it is
the only endurable part of the establishment during rigorous
weather, as the cold-blooded folks seldom think of putting
carpets or matting on the chilly flags composing the floor, and
every other nook and cranny is as open as a cow-shed.

The arrangement, however, has serious drawbacks. Mud
and earth enters so largely into the composition of the
stove inside and out, that when really hot, the room becomes
filled with asickly effluvium as if from the mould of a newly
dug grave ; and the air feels so warm and dry, that nobody
but a Chinaman can keep his health init. There are also
the risks of a conflagration and a scorching to the sleeper,
for at Tien-tsin European servants did not prove very trust-
worthy observers sometimes of the regulated amount of fire
required to produce an equable and moderate temperature in
the oven. Woe betide the luckless wight who yielded to its
premature but fascinating seductions, and consigned his .
senses to oblivion with the fierce flame whisking and roaring
underneath !

Early trials, for alas! we speak feelingly — sufficed to con-
vince some hapless experimentalists that such outlandish
contrivances were not for them, nor for their comfort. The
eyelids could not be allowed to drop a few minutes, from
apprehensions of an accidental and complete cremation
without the slightest warning; or they would be startled
out of their nap by the sensation of intense local heat acting
on their bodies, when they would find their rugs and
blankets reduced to soot.
OPEN FIRES PREFERRED. 195

It was plain enough that terrible disasters might occur,
unless very particular care was taken by the domestics. The
latter were never happy unless their masters were exceed-
ingly cosy, and could not believe that they could be made
too warm on a howling cold night; consequently it did
sometimes happen that the poor ‘governor’ got roasted as
expeditiously as a joint in a London kitchen.

It was like tempting fate by sleeping in a charged mine,
or on the edge of the crater of an active volcano; there was
the furnace outside, and nothing in the world to hinder any
mischievously-disposed person from seizing the opportunity
to perpetrate a practical joke. These grave defects pre-
judiced me so strongly against the kang, that it was either
pulled down or disused before many days of the winter had
been got over, and notwithstanding all cavils, I resolved upon
having the cheerful twinkling of a visible fire. The change
proved as pleasant as it was reasonable,and much comforted me
during my isolated situation for many months without letter
or newspaper, by suggesting recollections of the happy scenes
witnessed in my distant home at this time of the year.

Economists may preach and lecture about the thrift of
other countries, and laud their ingenious stoves and furnaces
made to evolve the maximum of caloric with the minimum
of fuel, as if heat was the only desideratum in a room where
people were obliged to spend the greater portion of the day
and night; and they may complain loudly of the recklessness
with which coal is consumed at home; but, after two or
three winters of a comfortable British fireside, let them try
these pet inventions in strange lands, and if they do not
return with vastly augmented fondness to the open grate,
they are not to be classed among those who would see happy
homes and smiling faces throughout the three kingdoms.
Has not the author of ‘Pelham’ made the accomplished
Vincent ask, ‘How can the private virtues be cultivated
without a coal fire? Is not domestic affection a synonymous

02
196 AN ENGLISH HEARTII.

term with domestic hearth? and where do you find either
except in honest old England?’

Let the Northern nations—the semi-dormant Russian, the
lethargic Swede, and the slow Dane or Finlander — creep
around their stoves, and wonder how we can, with such a
waste of fuel, keep ourselves so miserably uncomfortable ;
and let the frozen-in Chinese loll and smoke in their baking
reclination without a thought as to the world beyond their
own doors; but give me the ‘blithe sunny blink o’ our ain
fireside,’ with its pictures of felicity such as never can be
found anywhere else.

Never mind if our faces are roasted and our backs
frozen — we can stand all that, and are sure, at the same
time, that fresh air is about us. We would rather endure
these trifling discomforts than be enveloped, day after day, and
night after night, in stagnant, relaxing, and stewing hot air.

Our coal —dealt out to us by Providence with such an
unsparing hand — and our open coal fires, are as much ours
as the great political privileges and the strong sense of
happiness we possess.

‘Blest be the spot where cheerful guests retire

To pause from toil, and trim their evening fire.’
And steaming stove or fervid kang could never reconcile such
groups to the loss of the blessings they know so well how to
appreciate.

The Chinese labourer no doubt works well and patiently
in the fields, or.in the crowded marts; and betrays no
symptom of discontent, or of longing for anything better ;
yet his endeavours are not sustained by the prospect that
cheers the heart of the English cottager—

‘His wee-bit ingle blinkin bonnilie,
His clean hearthstane, his thrifty wifie’s smile,
The lisping infant prattling on his knee.’

Wherever we are, and in whatever humour we may be,
we like to indulge in whatever reminds us of home:

‘ Around our evening fire an evening group to draw.’
ITS COMFORTS. 197

This seems the very essence of enjoyment, and then, the
genial flame tends to heighten the merriment of the joke,
and deepen the interest of the tale. And for the contem-
plative man’s recreation under difficulties, could we desire
any place better adapted than the silent room, the shaded
lamp, and the glowing fire ?

Coleridge paints beautifully the effects of the midnight
flicker on the solitary thinker, when he tells us that, alone,

in pensive disposition
‘ The thin blue flame

Lies on my low burnt fire, and quivers not,
Only that film which fluttered in the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling spirit
By its own moods interprets, everywhere
Kcho or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of thought.’

No; we cannot afford to dispense with our grand expo-
sitor of social science— our universal panacea against
nostalgia. The reflection of the firelight sparkling from
eye to eye, and the sense of comfort it distributes, is
heightened by the chant of the kettle on the hob, or the
almost as musical breathings of the domestic pet that
occupies the rug. Perhaps such blessings are in store for
our Celestial friends, when they become satisfied as to the
superiority and the good intentions of the honourable nations
they have hitherto classed as outside barbarians ; and then
they may be willing to receive suggestions from our engineers
and travellers, and bring into use those great coal-fields that
underlie the enormous empire. Their miners, instead of
burrowing for a few crumbs of coal down in their badly-
constructed pits, shall be taught to pierce through the
incombustible shale for the valuable mineral.

The stuff they now procure as coal is economised to the
best advantage, and made to yield every atom of its slender
198 NORTH CHINA FUEL.

heat-giving proportions in a way that seems to show the
high degree of attention paid to its utilisation ; and yet it is
deemed difficult to ignite, and still more so to keep burning in
their stoves or open braziers. When prepared as a fuel, it
is minutely pulverised by hammers and mallets, saturated
with water, then mixed up thoroughly with clay or mud in
a definite quantity, and kneaded into brick or ball-shaped
pieces. These, when kindled by a thin layer of charcoal,
become of a dull-red colour, burn slowly, give a mild degree
of heat—with heavy sulphurous fumes, too—and entirely
consume the carbonaceous elements of the coal; thus obviat-
ing the unpleasantness and loss that would be incurred by
the escape of smoke.

Very many of the more opulent class of houses which we
visited at Tien-tsin and Peking had their outhouses stored
with these fire-bricks and balls, just as a Westerner would
have his coal-cellars ready for the winter’s consumption.
But in the country, wood and millet-stalks and roots are cut,
and gleaned, and hoarded up with the utmost frugality, even
within a few miles of almost endless strata of undisturbed coal.
At the end of our present quarters is a stack quite sufficient
to indicate, by the assemblage of all sorts of incendiary odds
and ends from the field, the plantation, and the house, and
the manner in which they are preserved — the necessity our
host sees for a well-heated fireplace for his own people and
the half-frozen guests who visit him in cold weather.

The room we have chosen possesses other attractions
besides those of the ordinary commonplace scrolls and
pictures, in the form of a well-assorted collection of bows
standing in a frame in the corner behind the door;. and
peculiar holster-pipe shaped leathern quivers filled with long
beautifully feathered arrows, nearly all of which are tipped
with a square iron spike three or four inches in length. We
examined the bows, and found them of various sizes and
of as various degrees of strength, but all unstrung.
BENDING THE BOW. 199

The landlord, who may at first have doubted the judicious-
ness of letting us sleep in his armoury, now appeared de-
lighted with our attention, pulled off his long dress, and draw-
ing out one of the bows, the resiliency or strength of which,
he told us, was equal to forty catties of one and a half pounds
each — with his great wide chest and long muscular arms—
began to string it. After our awkward attempts, with him
this was but the work of a second, for throwing it behind the
right thigh and in front of the left, and catching the right end,
he slightly stooped, and with a sudden jerk the bend was re-
versed, and the loop of the thick string slipped into its notch.

The next bow — equal to sixty or seventy catties — he as
quickly bent in the same way, though it was a pretty hard
task not only to ourselves, but to the iron-armed Chinese

 

 

 

Tartar Bow and Arrow.

Alcon, who was not backward in applauding or expressing
surprise when we came near him in strength, and succeeded
in making the obdurate weapon crack and bend until it des-
cribed a full semicircle. Our friend’s manner of handling
it displayed as much ease as could be attained by constant
practice; and no doubt he was an enthusiastic amateur in the
science of arms.

We had noticed on entering the room, that from one of
the varnished cross-beams of the roof, two articles, like the
handles of those elastic chest-expanders used at home, were
suspended by cords with small pieces of perforated wood at
each end, into the holes of which the two handles were
fastened by means of two straps. We could not divine the
use of such an unusual piece of mechanism dangling about
the height of a man’s elbows in the middle of the apartment,
200 STUDIES IN SHOOTING.

unless it were for the developement of the chest or some
other gymnastic exercise; so after the arrows had been
handled and the bows had been strung, bent, and again
unbent, we asked our instructor to satisfy us as to the modus
operandi of the strange implements. We ascertained that

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Stringing the Bow.

they were rests for practising the use of the bow —but not as
we use rests for the rifle, by laying the weapons on them.

Our host adjusted their length by moving them to a lower
or higher hole, put his hands through them a3 far as the
wrists, then threw his figure into a statuesque posture,
planting his legs widely and firmly on the ground, bracing
up the well-knit body, while the arms were disposed in the
suspenders as if about to shcot an arrow, and remaining in
this state of immobility for some seconds. This was to
give steadiness and precision in taking aim, and to acquire
the habit of drawing the bow without jerking or shaking,
until it had attained its greatest curvature.
TRAINING SOLDIERS. 201°

He was no Tartar, and yet seemed as devoted and eager
as if he were obeying the commands of a Mantchu soldier
when he said :—

‘To know how to shoot an arrow is the first and most
important knowledge for a Tartar to acquire, for though
success therein seems an easy matter, yet it is of rare occur-
rence. How many are there who sleep with the bow in
their arms ?—and, after all, how few are there who have made
themselves famous? How few are there whose names are
proclaimed at the matches? Keep your frame straight and
firm ; avoid vicious postures ; let your shoulders be immova-
ble, and shoot every arrow into its mark; then you may
be satisfied with your skill.’

What a different impression would this manly fellow have
made on us had a rifle been substituted for each bow, and
had cartridge pouches been hanging where those nonsensical
arrow-cases are placed. It is almost to be regretted that
such an amount of time, skill, and patience should be thrown
away upon an obsolete arm, on which he had to defend his
life against an enemy possessed of the most destructive
weapons. Of these he evidently knew nothing, though they
had been employed effectually against his countrymen only
a few months before, and was thoroughly satisfied with the
national favourite ; I did not think it necessary to undeceive
him, and left him as strongly embued with convictions of
the importance of practising archery, as were our forefathers
in the times of Edward III. and Henry V. after their
victories at Crescy, Poictiers, and Agincourt.

Of the beneficial tendencies of the art, in a physiological
point of view, and the physical developement produced by
the severe training of those who would excel in it, there can
be no doubt. The only active exercise we ever saw in China,
was ina court in the Tartar portion of Peking, where four
men were going through a course of arm-strengthening play,
for the purpose of passing their examinations as soldiers.
202 GYMNASTIC EXERCISES.

They were naked to the waist, and though young, possessed
chests and arms the very models of sound health and
muscular strength, while their legs were anything but feeble,
to judge by the liberties they took with them.

Their training consisted in throwing the ‘Suay tau,’ or
‘Ta shih,’ a nearly square stone—weighing about fifty-six
pounds, with a handle cut in its substance like one of our
heavy metal weights at home—from one to another, as they
stood at the corners of a square marked in lines on the
ground, without allowing it to fall or touch the earth. And
cleverly the game was gone through. ‘

Each man as he caught the block by the handle, which
always came down with the cavity uppermost, and was made to
receive the hand easily, swinging round once or twice as if he
were tossing the caber. He then launched it, like a catapult
or balista, high into the air, and it descended into the hand
of the next athlete with a hurl sufficient to shake the nerves
and astonish the eyes of a good number of muscular Chris-
tians, allowing them very little chance of catching it.

But the ground was never indented; the stone passed
quietly from corner to corner with the smooth regularity of
a machine so long as we remained—a period of about ten
minutes; and the performers thought no more of the feat
than we should have done had the object been a cricket-ball.

At Tien-tsin we have seen the same practice; heavy
bags of sand being substituted for the stone—very much to
the injury of finger ends and nails, we should think—but
with no diminution of the exertion, nor lack of the accom-
panying increase of muscle, and expansion of chests. Every
bundle of fleshy fibre on the trunk stood out during the
exercise as if carved in bronze against a wall of bone.

But our supper is ready, and amply repays us for the delay
we have suffered, and was wonderfully refreshing after eight
hours passed in the saddle.

Hot soup was served up in the first clean basins we
ASTONISHMENT OF OUR AUDIENCE. 203

have seen for some days; and there was rice in an enormous
heap, as white as an avalanche. Then came eggs, boiled
rather hard, it is true, but they were perfectly fresh. Our
olfactory organs could not discern the slightest approach to
that union between sulphur and hydrogen which, even in
certain mineral water, is scarcely endurable. A tin of haricot

 

Dining before an Audience.

mutton, so the label said, had been unmercifully hacked and
ripped, and was now produced as a sort of third course—a
glorious finish to the feast. We were doomed to a cruel
disappointment, however, for the mutton turned out to be
beef, hard and indigestible. After a copious drenching
204 DECOROUS BEHAVIOUR.

with tea, minus sugar, the good people of the inn were warned
that we required rest, and must be left alone.

Nothing could exceed the decorousness of the behaviour of
the crowds who came into the apartment and stood watching
us; the quaint unsophisticated way in which they went
about the examination of our kit, and the astonishment of the
very old men when they saw us eating with knives, forks,
and spoons, was very amusing. In their excitement they
could scarcely refrain from taking them out of our hands
while we used them, and pert questions to Ma-foo came
belching out with endless volubility. The sight of two wine-
glasses almost electrified them; nothing would satisfy them
but a minute scrutiny and handling. They passed them
from one to another, setting them on their bottoms, and went
through the form of drinking out of them with the greatest
ecstacy. The groom was interrogated in volleys and file-
firing from mouth to mouth; but, though ever polite and civil
towards his countrymen, and willing to concede to them
every favour—a great deal too much so in many instances—
he now changed his demeanour a good deal, answering their
questions only when they suited him, and gratifying their
curiosity in a very homeopathic fashion, as if unwilling to
surfeit their inquisitiveness, or to destroy the favourable
prestige we had created.

‘Hungry people must be slowly nurst,
And fed by spoonfuls, else they ’re sure to burst.’

Ma-foo seemed aware of this when he gave his compatriots
curt and half-evasive answers, and sometimes a mild snarl
when they pressed him too hard.

One thing was particularly noticeable here—and, indeed,
everywhere else on our road, when we happened to stop for
the night, or but a short time at a town or village—and that
was the respect paid to age.

Nothing could be more marked than the deference with
which some infirm father of the hamlet was received when he
REVERENCE FOR OLD AGE. 205

entered the room, tottering towards us to gaze with open
mouth on the strangers. Every available article that could
afford support was converted into a seatby those whose limbs
were tired of standing, and all were so well conducted that
no reason could be given for turning them out.

Yet whenever one of these patriarchs introduced himself,
there was a movement among the spectators; everyone
who was seated got up and welcomed him by a nod, a kind
word, or a more formal waving of the joined hands and a
slight inclination of the body forwards; while those who
were standing, in addition to the salute, made room for him,
or advanced to help him to the best place among them, where
he was made a sort of centre for their regards and admiration.
Every word that fell from his mouth was listened to with a
grave or joyful interest until a more reverend visitor arrived,
and then the first would be as ready to get up and testify his
respect for his senior as his juniors had been to respect him.

Juvenal tells us, that in his day —

‘’?T was impious then—so much was age rever’d,
For youth to keep their seats when an old man appear’d.’

The Chinese, along the five hundred miles of our ride, could
yield in nothing to the Romans of the vivacious poet’s time,
in their regard for this sentiment. In every mob or throng,
in courtyard, or within doors, the wrinkled face, the snowy
beard, and equally white moustache, that scarcely concealed
the lips, was always there and cared for, no matter how
uproarious the majority of the people might be.

In return, the old men seemed to esteem childhood, and
seek its companionship at all times, as if it was not only their
delight, but their duty, to regard the young with the ten-
derest care. The extremes of existence were often met with
together in these groups —a hoary grandsire with a prattling
youngster — dressed in every way alike.

We were glad to be able to find, in such out-of-the-way
places, characteristics of a higher state of civilisation, and
206 TIONESTY OF THE PEOPLE.

one of the essential attributes of Christianity, especially after
what we had so often read concerning infanticide and child
desertion in the South. It was pleasant to witness such
happy testimony to the truth of the proverb of the Wise
King, ‘ Children’s children are the crown of old men; and
the glory of children are their fathers.’

Another gratifying feature was the decent attire in which
everybody who came to see us appeared. Though all their
clothes were made of the homespun blue, white, or drab-
coloured cotton, not a tatter or unseemly patch could be
remarked. Everything, from the crown of the head to the
shoes, was neat and tidy — much to the credit of an agri.
cultural town in a secluded district, but two days’ journey
from the Great Wall.

After dinner, we allowed our visitors to look at and finger
our dinner service, under the surveillance of Ma-foo. We
had at first some doubts as to their honesty ; but we
wronged them. At the end of our journey not an article
was missing of the equipment with which we started from
Tien-tsin, though they were all exceedingly valuable in their
eyes, and likely enough to excite their cupidity.

The landlord had waited on us himself, and hurried the
servants out and in when we required anything, anticipating
our wants as well as he could, and showing the greatest
anxiety to make us comfortable ; so we treated him to a look
at a thermometer, barometer, and a pair of binocular glasses,
explaining their uses as best we could.

The glasses pleased him and the others most; and, with
the right or the wrong end, they imagined that they could
see any distance by going to the door and merely looking
through the lenses. They saw so many things about us so
interesting, so mysterious, and so wonder-exciting, that it
was with reluctance they left when we expressed our desire
to be alone. Long after the doors were closed, every chink
had its persistent peering eyes and audible whisperings, to
A STORMY NIGHT. 207

tell us that we were as closely watched, and our actions as
eagerly criticised, as when we had but commenced the
evening among them.

Our beds were made down on the kang—a cane mat
and a railway-wrapper did not seem much of a bed—and
we went to sleep under the watchful stare of many faces,
doomed, it was apparent, to idle away the night by their
inquisitive wonder and excitement; for, though it is a fact
that the knowledge of strange people being about me, and
within grappling distance, during the most helpless hours,
did not dispose to feelings of security or to deep slumbers,
yet I had been so pleased with the evening’s halt, and found
the couch so grateful — ye sleepers on feather beds lose the
greatest luxury the traveller in this region of the globe
enjoys, a brick-bottomed dormitory, after a fair day’s
exercise — that nothing but real danger could have kept me
awake for many minutes.

But a storm was brewing without: murky clouds, that
gathered around the mountain tops, commenced to roll in
heavy folds down the hill-sides, and some time about mid-
night resolved themselves into rain over the ‘Shih-Mun.’
Everything seemed blown about by the gusty wind ; thick
drops pattered with a loud rattle against the paper-panes,
and flew in a shower-bath through the open window above
our heads; the thunder cracked and crashed with a din
loud enough to awaken a man from the deepest trance;
and the lurid lightning fizzed and darted about the room,
making its minutest article of furniture as visible as if it
had been bright daylight.

We started up, still half asleep, and closed the window ;
but the lightning continued to zigzag and frisk about in a
very unusual and menacing way. Suddenly it was remem-
bered that we were armed — that we each had a revolver —
and that M had fortified himself besides with a Japanese
short-sword, handy for close fibbing, and with an edge as

 
208 PRECAUTIONS AGAINST LIGHTNING.

. thin as a razor. These things had been taken with us merely
as a means of defence against robbers or thieves ; and, if the
worst came to the worst, as a protection, should we be
attacked in the places we might have to visit.

Taking arms into the country was not countenanced, it
was understood, after the winter had disappeared; but a
revolver under one’s head, or in a saddle-bag, need trouble
nobody but the owner, if he is unmolested, and gives him a
wonderful amount of confidence while trusting to the humane
intentions and friendly feelings of a strange people, not con-
sidered altogether trustworthy in other parts of the Empire.
Those who never sleep away from their homes or dwellings,
and think that a five or six-shooter is unnecessary, when
wandering among all sorts of unknown folks, and meeting
with signs of their morality by the head-posts on the road-
sides, we refer to Corporal Nym who avers that —

‘Things must be as they may :
Men may sleep, and they may have their throats about them at that time;
and some say knives have edges.’

When the lightning gave us the benefit of a more intense
flash than we had yet been favoured with, and went darting
in angles round the walls with a spluttering sort of noise, as
we thought, we recollected a similar storm at Tien-tsin,
where the electric fluid struck down the gable of a temple in
which there were some soldiers, entered the room, singed a
fur cap as if it had been on a blazing fire, and fused the steel
hilt of a sword-bayonet, leaving its track on the scabbard, as
though it had been streaked with aqua regia, besides alarming
everyone in the building. The Japanese sword, it was
thought, might attract the fluid in the same manner; so
M—— was prevailed upon to put it as far out of the way
as possible, while the revolvers were thickly done up in rags.

We again composed ourselves to sleep, but not without
half-apprehensions as to the difficulty of moving through the
fields in the morning.

 
209

CHAPTER XIII.

A MISERABLE MORNING——A RAINY DAY IN CHINA— GLIMPSES OF SUN-
SHINE—A THUNDERSTORM AND A THOROUGH SOAKING — CHINESE
THOROUGHFARES AFTER HEAVY SHOWERS—BEING HALF DROWNED —
BAD ROADS — MANAGEMENT OF ANIMALS BY THE CHINESE—CHANG-LE-
TOW — ITS DEFENCES — HOSTILE PREPARATIONS — ROADSIDE SCENERY
— THE LOST CART — CHINESE SIGN-BOARD FOR AN INN.

Y the dead, leaden light of the morning we were aroused
from as cosy a nap as tired travellers could desire, by a
mournful sound — a reveillé of rain-drops, beating with mo-
notonous clearness on window and wall, with a soprano and
ground-bass accompaniment made by the streams from the
roof furrows and the distant roll of the thunder, and a parti-
cularly dismal obligato pitter-pitter, patter-pattering in the
pools all over the courtyard, that did not in the least add
to the concordia discors of the unpropitious weather.

Staring out of the window, the picture was still more
dismal. Nothing looked as we saw it last evening, save the
water-lilies — but they are aquatic. The only animals stirring
were the ducks, provokingly enjoying the calamity in their
own silly way, and bubbling and billing at the water and
mud as if their lives depended on its presence and thorough
mixture — they also were aquatic.

The ponies and mules stood downcast and woe-begone,
their ears and tails drooping, and their pendent heads
showing a very rueful expression, in the damp-bottomed
shed that was without a particle of bedding. They seemed
as if a day’s rest would have been more fitting in their
depressed state than a resumption of labour.

Not an inmate of the house moved out; but, savegnteed

a
210 A GLOOMY MORNING.

below the most trivial cover, were the dotard old men with
children, and the madcaps of other ages waiting for our
levée with the soberest and most imperturbable equanimity
possible, never moving to the right or left, seldom stirring a
limb, and always keeping their faces towards the window,
from which they were stayed only by the drenching rain.
How people could ever be so extravagantly curious about
two fellow-creatures remaining near them for but a night, was
more than we then cared about discussing; but the sight
was amusing enough, and, had we not been too much en-
grossed by the more important consideration of a start,
and its likelihood of proving successful, we should have soon
got the room filled again with these infatuated beings, many
of whom looked as if they had lodged outside all the night.

Ma-foo and the mule-driver were ousted from their lairs, and
reported themselves in our presence, in no inspiriting or
affable humour, the one muttering, in reference to the
weather, the guttural ‘pu-how, pu-how,’ bad, bad; and the
other grunting and hiccuping his displeasure in no measured
terms. The host appeared, and is asked if the weather
would relent and give us a fine day; but a doubtful shake
of the head and the negative mé-yo settles it. We must
trudge and drag our way in the rain and sludge as best we
may; and, if we can get no farther, put up at some other
village for the time, as there is no telling when the rain may
cease, and the longer it continues the worse will the roads
have become.

There was no help for it but to get off at once; so the
drowsy mules are stirred up, after the wonted coercion of
other mornings, and the ponies, with their hair bristling up
on end, and their skins shivery and unclean, are fastened
within the saddle girths, apparently much to their disgust,
and dragged forth to be mounted, showing every symptom
of aversion. ;

The hotel bill—a very mild one—was discharged with a
GOOD-BYE TO THE SHIH MUN. 211

round of cash; breakfast was deferred until a more convenient
occasion, and after vainly looking out for a few minutes to
discover if there were any indications of a break in the clouds,
we issued into the plashy puddles with the intention of
outbraving the spiteful elements—albeit the feat must be
accomplished in thin cotton ‘karkee,’ made only for the hot
weather, and a pair of long riding-boots; for we had taken
but two suits of clothes with us, and they were both of this
matcrial—waterproofs being out of the question when we
started in such a good season from Tien-tsin.

Bidding our respectable landlord good-bye, or rather a
hearty farewell, we presented him with one of a small parcel
of Bibles in Chinese —the gift of a Tien-tsin missionary, that
we had contrived to stow away in a corner of the portmanteau.

He received it with the most jubilant surprise imaginable.
The cart was once more transferred to the street, and we
were hobbling after it—a forlorn procession of tempest-
defying mortals, through the sadly changed street, which was
now amass of mire. There was not a creature to follow us
for a few yards, and only a face here and there at a door or
a half-open window watched our departure.

Rainy weather in the fairest western city is a sad curtailer
or rather vanquisher of out-door pleasure and convenience,
notwithstanding all the aids and appliances brought to
counteract its effects; but in a northern Chinese town it is a
perfect calamity, and a plague for many days after, completely
putting an end to what little comfort people may have enjoyed
from pedestrian or equestrian exercise. The wide streets
that may have struck the observer as a grand improvement
on the narrow alleys of the south, are found to be, unlike them,
unpaved, and converted into sloughs of despond, through
which it is sheer madness to attempt to pass, unless prompted
by the most urgent duty; you must then remain utterly
indifferent to a covering of highly-scented black diluvium,
picked up in viscid splashes, as well as to sundry immersions

P2
212 STREETS IN RAINY WEATHER.

in treacherous pits, caused by the gentle somersaults, ‘ crop-
pers’ and ‘ headers’ innumerable from the sides of slippery
ridges and banks, set up generations ago as an apology for a
trottoir. These, from the decaying nature of their principal
constituents, quickly become a series of villanously-smelling
man-traps, offering less security to the foot than the surface
of a glacier, and challenging the virtues of the most potent
detergents to remove their traces from the apparel.

Locomotion of all kinds for the timid is in abeyance.
Horses are as much at their wits’-end, and as unsteady to
ride, as they would be were they ascending step-ladders or
trying to amble along a tight-rope. Chairs are not much
better, and are hazardous enough from the shuffling and
painful tumbling about of the coolies, who are ready to drop
under you in the first ditch they meet, if they are much
embarrassed. Under such circumstances a dull spell within
the house is one’s only resource until the sun has steamed
off the abundant fluid, and walking may be resumed with
thigh boots.

But if you compel yourself to scramble and jump, wade
and plunge when the streets are flooded, running against
and grappling with the natives in a wild effort to maintain
the dignified position assigned to your species, and the
purity of your garments, there is but little to reward you
for your pains. Of troubles, however, you may have
abundance. For example, a young jackanapes standing
knee-deep in filth—they are here as fond of dabbling in
dirt as Europeans of their years and class—lazily plastering
a dike before a shopkeeper’s door, to avert an internal inun-
dation, will, unintentionally of course, deposit a full shovel
of the compound in the leg of your boot, and grinningly
shout ‘Ey-yah’ to express contrition.

There is no use seeking for redress on the spot; you must
carry your wrongs about with you until you get home, and
you go on picking your steps as tenderly as if treading on a
MUD BOOTS. 213

fathomless quagmire, and making but a few yards when you
come to a place deeper than usual.

You reach the middle of it attentive to soundings, hope
telling the flattering tale that you may pass it safely. Sud-
denly an elephantine Chinaman approaches with his petticoats
closely tucked up about him, and grasped with both hands,
as those of an old woman would be in similar circumstances;
he wears nice white stockings and soft shoes, a kind of
chaussure for such roads that makes one feel dreadfully
catarrhish to look at; and unable longer to contain himself he
comes hurling down from one of the afore-mentioned banks,
on which he has been needlessly puffing and blowing in
endeavouring to creep along without soiling himself. He
descends like a great landslip towards you, and though self-
preservation may be your dominant impulse, the fickle
ground you cling to will not render you any assistance in
getting out of his way.

Slush-h-h he glides to your feet, and there suddenly
brought-up, he flops on his heavy back, sending a mud
shower over your head, face, and body, that envelopes you as
accurately as if it were a mould of plaster of Paris. In his
distress he clutches at your legs, and away you go also; and
lucky will you be if one or more of the slippery passengers
don’t lend their bodily influence to keep you down.

Sometimes the streets are so flooded that coolies make a
very good trade in carrying passengers through the impass-
able parts on their shoulders—a nice state of affairs for the
Commissioners of Public Works.

The few Chinese who have much street walking in bad
weather, are generally provided with long boots, the legs of
which are waterproof cotton, and the soles furnished with
great spike-headed nails to penetrate the mud; bad indeed
must be the condition of the European who gets one of these
soles planted at a street corner on a tender instep or inflamed
toe-nail. His yell of agony would startle the entire city.
214 BAD ROADS.

Such are the streets of North China, and such are those of
the great capital itself, when a heavy shower has passed over
them. They then become a mixture of water and mud,
slippery mounds and dirty pits, stagnant ponds and open
ditches in which men and animals, carts and wagons,
flounder and float distractedly, and in which all that is
interesting and pleasurable appears to be submerged in
filth. So it was with this town and with some others
during the day’s journey. The houses looked cheerless
and neglected, and the few people seemed wandering about -
without occupation of any kind.

The road still lay for some way among the hills, which
expand without apparent limitation to the northward, forming
a dense gloomy wall, the lower peaks and ridges only visible
now and again in the grey drizzling clouds. Whip and spur
did their work, and the animals bravely did their share in
pushing on; but the more the pace was increased, the more
bitterly the rain pelted us. The roads became more adhesive
as the narrow wheels cut deeper into the loosened sandy
soil. Still we proceeded uphill and downhill, through
villages surrounded by water, and through fields of millet
and maize, and along by-paths behind hamlets to avoid
the chances of drowning altogether.

The rain ceased for a short space in the forenoon as we
left the higher ground, and struck out into the plain, still
beautifully green and luxuriant; then the lower masses of
cloud cleared away as if by magic—great rifts revealed
themselves in those heavenward fleeces, and the glorious sun
came out again among the proudest needle points of the
sierra, throwing his richest golden lustre over those imme-
diately exposed beneath him, lighting up with sprightly rays
the greenish-grey of their sides, the far-off clefts, the wild
gullies, and the drenched valleys, dispersing the mist wreaths
that yet obscured some sweet spot on the upland, and bringing -
it out to the partially unfolded landscape, that now smiled
GLEAMS OF SUNSHINE. 215

though yet in tears, as if bidding it to smile also after the
discouraging weather of the morning.

As the rifts, became wider, or the vapoury shreds sped
across his face, their margins were lit up with a fiery
suffusion of surpassing splendour that would have gladdened
the hearts of a Turner, a Stanfield, and a Pyne. It
gladdened ours, for it gave us promise of a fine afternoon.

The dwellings, grouped as they were in their random
fashion, and so shone upon, looked exceedingly attractive,
especially those which stood on the banks of streams now
foaming, sparkling, and noisy as they rushed over the
obstacles in their pebbly beds, and glimmered and glinted
under rustic bridges, beyond which they were eclipsed by an
expanse of drooping crops.

This effect, however, though very fine, was but of short
duration. The road made a wide detour upwards towards
the foot of the hills again, though for what reason we could
not see —and as we drew nigh, the mist began to gather
itself into a dark canopy of increasing density and sombre
aspect. The sun retired suddenly behind it, and the wind
commenced to agitate the trees and whistle about us dis-
mally. We indulged the faint hope that it might be only
a passing shower. Unconsciously, almost, we repeated
Thomson’s lines :—

‘ Along the woods, along the moorish fens,
Sighs the sad genius of the coming storm ;
And up among the loose disjointed cliffs
And fractured mountains wild, the brawling brook
And cave, presageful, send a hollow moan
Resounding long in listening fancy’s ear.’

We were not kept long in suspense as to the nature of
the tempest. The performance commenced with a most
disenchanting overture; from out of the centre of a great
gathering of crape-coloured clouds, hanging a short distance
over our heads, streamed a sheet of lightning so vivid that
216 A HEAVY STORM.

our eyes were blinded for some seconds, and this was quickly
followed by a stunning crash of thunder that seemed to
shake the ground beneath us. It was like the explosion of a
large powder magazine, and at its conclusion we involuntarily
looked to see if either of the hills had been cleft in two by
the concussion.

Suddenly the rain came streaming down, not in discern-
ible heavy drops, nor yet in ‘torrents,’ but in tangible
sheets that almost beat us out of the saddles. Peal suc-
ceeded peal, and flash followed flash, without intermission ;
while the reverberations were carried backwards and_ for-
wards, and repeated times out of number among the glens
and rocks, until they subsided, miles and miles away, to the
weakest, that rumbled like a wagon over a hollow causeway.

We need not assert that our soaking was a complete one.
Shelter of any description could not be got at, so away we
ploughed and toiled, drenched to the skin, the superfluous
water welling out at our boot-tops every time our legs were
moved to take a fresh hold of the slippery saddle, while the
thumping and clashing of the tempestuous shower against
the steaming roads forbade all attempts at conversation had
it been necessary, and almost blinded us.

Not a word was spoken for some miles—all the talk
seemed completely washed out from us, as well as the dust
and mud,—and more like shipwrecked voyagers, just landed
from the surf of a heavy sea, than overland travellers, we
hurried on with heads down and backs well arched, the
chilly streams playfully cascading around our shoulders, and
dripping in a heavy fringe from the most dependent corners
of coat-skirts or sleeves.

Poor Ma-foo stood it out like a strong-minded martyr ;
though, as we glanced at him, if we knew that drowning
awaited us the next moment, we could not have repressed
our laughter. There he sat rolled up as tightly as amummy
on that eccentric crooked-legged old grey of his,— now
MA-FOO’S PLIGHT. 217

changed to a pale-blue,—nothing was to be seen of him but
his conical straw hat, that, like the nose of a watering-can,
carried the collected water in transparent jets around its
brim. It gave him the appearance of a popular fountain,
such as our holiday folk are familar with at the Sydenham
Crystal Palace.

Long tags of disordered blue drapery drooped loosely
from the little bundle sticking so closely to its perch, and
that contained the sediment of his mortality. The tempest
had deprived him of the greater part of his apparel, and
what was left of his personality bore no resemblance to any-
thing save a ship’s swab that had been accidentally dropped
on the back of a superannuated steed fresh from Neptune’s
stable.

Bravely he bore his condition; indeed, the ablution had a
most wholesome effect, not only on his clothes but on his
person, by scouring out the furrows on his wrinkled coun-
tenance, and carrying away the incrustation that had almost
obliterated the original outlines and colour of his face and
skin.

The roads became more and more heavy for the mules,
and many times threatened the cart with a complete dead-
lock in the mud and sand, not likely to be overcome in a
hurry. The willing brutes, however, strained their harness
in a way we have never seen equalled out of China without
an expenditure of whipcord.

The driver was a very inferior specimen of his class,
still he was an excellent manager of what are supposed
generally to be a most headstrong and stupid breed of
animals.

The Chinese muleteer has obtained an influence over
these hybrids by patient perseverance, and by a sort of
intuitive knowledge of their nature and disposition. This
is quite astonishing to those who have seen Spaniards, Turks,
and Indians handle mules of a much more docile turn than
218 KINDNESS TO ANIMALS.

those bred here; by means of such gentle persuasions as a
few words express, they can bring them hearty and fresh
from a long day’s work in a manner that would gratify the
disciples even of Mr. Rarey.

No Europeans, we think, could get the same amount of
labour out of them as their Chinese masters, on the same
miserable provender. This arises, I have been assured, from
the absence of all disheartening punishment, and the liberal
use of ‘moral suasion.’ Hence a mule that, in the hands of
a foreigner, would be not only useless but dangerous to
every one about it, becomes in the possession of a Chinaman
as quiet as a lamb and as tractable as a dog. We never
beheld a runaway, a jibbing, or a vicious mule or pony in a
Chinaman’s employment; but found the same rattling cheer-
ful pace maintained over heavy or light ground by means of
a turr-r or cluck-k, the beast turning to the right or left and
stopping with but a hint from the reins. This treatment
is extended to all the animals they press into their service.
Often have I admired the tact exhibited in getting a large
drove of frightened sheep through narrow crowded streets
and alleys, by merely having a little boy to lead one of the
quietest of the flock in front; the others steadily followed
without the aid either from a yelping cur or a cruel goad.
Cattle, pigs, and birds are equally cared for.

The mutual confidence existing between the mule-driver
and his team seems to exist in the relationship between man
here and other domesticated creatures, equally to the benefit
of bipeds and quadrupeds. No punishing spur disfigures
the heel of the equestrian, who rides his forty or fifty miles
in a few hours, armed with a very mild whip only to assist
him in emergencies, and using a primitive bridle furnished
with the softest of ‘bits.’ |

How much does he differ in this respect from the
Mexican, the Turk, the Hindostanee, and other peoples we
could name! The Chinese courier will get over the ground
OUR AUTOMATIC MULETEER. 219

as quickly, and with much less injury to his steed than any
other equestrian; and a larger proportion of horses and
mules, double and sometimes treble the average age of those
less mercifully dealt with in other lands, is to be found
about Peking and Tien-tsin. An animal under five years
and at work is quite an exceptional case; and horses are as
sound and healthy at fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, or thirty
years, as the great majority of our five and six year-olds,—at
least, a pretty wide experience has shown this.

Away strained our team, steaming and smoking through
mud and mire, as honestly bearing their drudgery as if
they were to be rewarded with the best of oats in unli-
mited quantity, trusses of aromatic hay, and a snug stall
knee-deep in soft straw, instead of being housed, as they
really will, for a few hours in a cold wet shed, and put be-
fore a great wooden trough—realising the ancient standard
Dunfermline pint: .

‘A big dish, and little in ’t.’

And that little molto di hard straw, poco di as hard
barley.

The Jehu has worn out the only pair of shoes he started
with,—and a Chinaman, though ever so poor, objects to

‘Exposing God’s leather to God’s weather ;’

he has therefore swung himself on the near-side shaft, where
he is thoroughly saturated, and keeps up an incessant tur-r-r
and cluck-clucking, varied only by a small shout now and then
to re-animate the energies of the fagging pair, beating with
sad rhythm the left hand on the corresponding thigh, and
swinging the remainder of the shoeless limb with the rigid
monotonous regularity of a pendulum. This was a con-
firmed habit of his, and mile after mile, during many days, he
practised this movement as if it formed the principal part
of his duty. Not often did anything go wrong with the
220 CHANG-LE-TOW.

harness; but when it did the mules stopped of their own
accord, and if it was only the leader getting over or entangled
in the traces, no help was needed to put her right again.

A little after midday it cleared up a trifle, and close to
the foot of the misty hills we came in sight of the walled
town of Chang-le-tow, a rather welcome haven after the storm.

On reflection it was thought unadvisable to halt inside
the walls, in consequence of the excitement and furore our
presence was sure to create; and the condition in which the
place appeared favoured this conclusion. In addition to the
questionable nature of the reception to be met with within
the high gloomy walls that rose at the termination of the
gravelly road at the west side, there was an outer defence of
mud, in the ordinary Chinese system of fortification, and with
the carefully smoothed face and the elaborately notched edge
for small arms, that characterised the works around Tien-tsin
on our arrival at that place; the whole apparently of quite
recent date. There was a narrow postern-gate and bridge of
planks only, for an entrance across the ditch to the inside of
the work.

The whole looked as if an enemy was momentarily expected,
though we could not perceive a single soldier moving within.

Rather suspicious than otherwise, we thought it but wise to
reconnoitre before going farther and thrusting our heads into
a net; so cantering round towards the northern side of the
town, leaving the cart and Ma-foo to follow, we had time
to take a leisurely survey unmolested by anyone.

Chang-le-tow might have been prepared, or was preparing,
for a seven years’ war, so formidable were the works, and so
inaccessible were they to the fury of the enemy who might set
himself down before them, and go through all the interesting
formalities of a Chinese siege.

The embattled walls looked tolerably sound,—that is, they
were not in ruins, and to my surprise showed marks of the
trowel in sundry white lines of plaster in various places,
NEW FORTIFICATIONS. 221

which, however, may have been more intended to deceive the
outsider than a sincere attempt at repair.

Our eyes ran along the whole line of parapet, and peeped
enquiringly through those medieval-looking embrasures; but
with the exception of a sort of sentry-box, without a sentry,
standing drearily at each corner, nothing denoted immediate
action. Such was my impression, but I was wrong. A more
careful scrutiny made me detect three lilliputian guns over a
gateway, evidently laid to surprise assailants should they
venture so far from their own lines. So artfully were they
concealed that, dismounted from their carriages, supposing
they had ever been mounted, nothing but their muzzles
showed above the sole of the embrasure. They looked like
the mouths of so many decapitated soda-water bottles.

This northern gate faces the hills, which from their
proximity to the town are here designated ‘ Chang-le-Shan,’
and rise in sterile grandeur to a height of about 2,000 feet.
It has also an outwork of plaster, ditched and bridged on the
most narrow scale, and possesses a considerable number of
temporary millet and mud huts inside for the reception of
the ‘ braves’ who are to hold this post of honour, but who
have not yet arrived in their new quarters.

More formidable than all this is that flanking or detached
demi-bastion, for it is hard to get a technical name in our lan-
guage for things which we never saw or heard of before. It is
perched on a low hill with remarkable sagacity. The front
might take some active Britons in light marching order a little
trouble to climb over, were a few stout Chinese with long
poles able to stand on the rampart and push them down; but
the clumsiest troops in the world would enter it in a few
minutes by making a small round-about to the left.

We can see no cannon—probably they are still at the
foundry, or the carpenter in the town may be making a
few ‘dummies’ to soothe the alarms of the trading citizens
until the blacksmith has forged as many as will make a
222 A MOUNTAIN TEMPLE.

satisfactory noise and burn priming in dry weather. The
fort is unoccupied except on the parapet, where two roguish-
looking magpies are doing garrison duty until they have
exhausted their chatter and pe eened their feathers for the
next shower of rain.

What had been the cause of all this hostile preparation we
were thoroughly at a loss to divine;-and in our wet state,
with vacant stomachs and tired nags, we did not particularly
press ourselves to enquire. It was a source of congratulation
to us that there was no strife, no attack or defence, or other
game going on, likely to throw an obstacle in our flooded
path or cause us to get into trouble, and we were content
to forego the knowledge of what had created this additional
proof of the military genius of the country. Possibly such
bride’s-cake structures were reared to train the bodies and
improve the minds of Chinese military engineers, or teach
militia how to defend themselves behind a lofty parapet a
few inches in thickness, and explode flaky gunpowder with
the loudest report without burning out their eyes. Perhaps
they were raised to satisfy the inspector of fortifications that
praiseworthy efforts were being made to add to the security
of the empire—or mayhap to protect themselves from some
offshoot of the rebellion raging not very far off, but of whose
outbreak in this direction we have not heard.

Hungry men have no ears for anything but what relates to
present internal wants; so we betook ourselves back again to
meet the cart, which it was dreaded had come to grief on the
road, it had been so long in trying to overtake us.

In returning we noticed what, in our attention to these
non-picturesque matters, we had missed coming up—another
of those little snatches of roadside scenery that are always
acceptable, even in the most unfavourable weather. It looked
pretty, even under such a pall-like sky as that we then had—
deadening everything beneath it. A long way up, on the
steep face of a granite hill, a flight of steps, diminished by
THE LOST CART. 223

distance to the size of the cutting ridges on the edge of a
fine file, ascends to a toy-gateway, and then, becoming more
perpendicular, runs up—a black line—to a narrow terrace
enclosed by a low stone wall, on each side of which are two
temples with red pillars, in style something between the
Swiss chalet and the Turkish kiosk. They were set off by
flat-topped fir-trees, whose dark green shade contrasts well
with the dusky blue hill and the red hue of the pillars;
another flight of invisible steps, through a number of tiny
gates up to another terrace with curious atoms of buildings,
intended possibly for dwelling-houses for the priests, who,
like their fellows in other parts of the empire, and like the
monks of the West, past and present, have the happy knack
of combining religion with comfort, beauty, and salubrity of
location in the most inviting spots of nature, and adding
other trifles that help to prolong and render felicitous such
valuable lives.

The picture was an agreeable one, and set in that wide frame
of everlasting rock was striking enough ; but where was the
tardy cart and its attendants all this time ? We rode back
to the spot where we left it, but not a trace could the rutted
and flooded road give of its whereabouts. I galloped round
three sides of the walls, but could not discover anything of
the missing vehicle. Enquiries are made of several coun-
trymen, but they hopelessly shake their heads and give
a grunt, and stupidly avow they do not understand what
we say.

We rush up roads among the hills where wheel tracks
and fresh prints of shod hoofs make us believe they have
gone. But, no; they are lost. The dilemma is a serious
one. All we possess is in the cart; money—everything.
In vain we dash towards a circle of children who are play-
ing at some game in the middle of the way, sure that if our
servants have interrupted their sport they must remember
it, and be able to tell which way they have gone — they fly
224 A FILTHY TOWN.

before us, screaming as if we were savages or wild beasts,
and in a trice are hid from our sight.

Anxiety, anger, and mortification, now gave way to
despair. We must enter the town—chance our reception
there—and search through the streets for the vagrants,
though they must know that we did not intend to go
through the place, and ought to have followed on our
steps. |

We cross the drawbridge — the three sides of the town,
we have remarked, are defended by these extra precautions,
but the ditch could be jumped by an active schoolboy — we
pass through a wide space filled with empty huts, and come
to the brick wall surrounded by a wide moat filled with
water and filth of such an offensive quality, that for defence
it must be unequalled—nothing living, I am confident, could
exist near it for a few hours but Chinese and cesspool rats.
Not a single soldier was to be seen either at the gateways or
in the streets. :

The town was mucid and quaggy in the extreme; once
or twice we found the thoroughfares unfordable, and had to
make a bend round to avoid total loss, not only of our
ponies but ourselves. True, we saw the place under dis-
advantageous circumstances; but when are you to see a
Chinese town to advantage ? In fair weather and in foul ;
at sunrise, midday, and sunset, and at all seasons of the
year, have we watched but never caught the happy moment
for seeing such sights favourably. This period some people
say never was and never will be. Perhaps it never can be
while our friends wear their diminished locks twisted down
their backs —they must ever be going farther and farther
to the rear of those civilised nations who impersonify Time
as an old gentleman wearing a forelock on his brow in-
stead of a tail behind, by which they are keeping him
from leaving them altogether, as had happened to these
Celestials.
A WELCOME DISCOVERY. 225

On we went, up one street and down another, followed by
the idle mob who care not for the difficulties attending the
navigation of their town but steer direct in our wake; in
doing which they splash many a white-skirted shopkeeper
who, having been warned of our approach, had rushed to his
low door to mark the peculiarities of two half-drowned
strangers.

Galling do we find it to ask anyone questions; for no
sooner do the roystering young imps hear our voices, than
with one accord they raise a shout of mirth, in which the
elders — childish as they are—take part; we are, there-
fore, forced to remain speechless in the midst of our afflic-
tion.

The town has been crossed ; the trying ordeal of another
ditch has been overcome, and we are in a suburb dirtier,
and consequently busier, than the town. Here the people
received us in a calmer and a more obliging manner.

Seeing us look to the right and left—up every lane and
round every corner— they at once divined the cause, and
pointed a long way in front. There, encompassed by a rout
of eager folks, we at last come upon the vexatious vehicle,
with Ma-foo, miserable tissue-paper atomy that he was, stand-
ing at his ease, looking carelessly about him. As soon as
he perceived us, he scrambled up into his saddle, and hailed
us with a grin and a salute, indicative of his pleasure and
his anxiety on our account.

To improve our condition another outbreak of the storm
overtook us, and as no inn in the locality could entertain us,
we had to sally out into the road again, thumped heartily
by the heavy rain-drops.

After passing two or three miles along a sandy road, close
to the foot of the hills, with the land in some places covered
by great boulders of granite, and stray cottages of a very
poor description, we reach a wretched hovel at the village of
Chow-foo, where the hills have been named Chow-foo Shan—

Q
226 A LATE BREAKFAST.

with nothing to distinguish its character from the other
dwellings save the sign-board of an inn in these parts —
viz., five red hoops and a scoop of basketwork suspended
from a pole. At four o’clock in the afternoon we were
preparing our breakfasts, and we required no tonic to give
us an appetite.
227

CHAPTER XIV.

OLD-FASHIONED TOWN—MUTILATED FEET OF CHINESE WOMEN —AN
INSPECTION AND ITS RESULT — THE DEFORMITY CONSIDERED. A PROOF
OF GENTILITY — CHINESE DOGS— TOWN SCAVENGERS — LOSING OUR
WAY — CHANGE IN COSTUME — COMFORTABLE DRESS— WARM CLOTHING
— ENORMOUS BOOTS —A CHINAMAN’S WARDROBE — CHINESE PIGS AND
THEIR TREATMENT — SINGULAR DELICACIES —A SUSPICIOUS INN, AND
ITS OCCUPANTS — THE OPIUM-SMOKER— USE OF THAT DRUG—HITS
EFFECTS EXAGGERATED.

NLY one brief hour was allowed us to recruit; at its
termination, without changing our costume, we started
off again to make another score of miles.

The time we had purposed accomplishing the journey in
was very limited ; we knew not what was before us, and the
means of returning to Tien-tsin again were very doubtful.
We wavered between taking the chance of meeting a small
trading vessel ready to start from New-Chwang— one of
the five northern ports opened to our trade — chartering
there a junk, and trusting to wind and weather to find our
way across the Gulf in about a fortnight, or having to ride
back the way we were now going. We were afraid of over-
staying our leave, and therefore thought it best to hurry on
while progress was possible.

The way was dull enough and the evening was lowering;
the villages looked very triste and lonely in the midst of so
much water and sloppy ground, but in fine days they must
have worn a much merrier aspect.

A large old-fashioned town—all Chinese towns are old-
fashioned, but this one appeared more so than any we had
yet seen — was passed through.

It looked as quiet as if all the inhabitants had gone to

Q2
228 AN OLD-FASHIONED TOWN.

bed, but possessed good houses built of stone and_ brick,
neatly finished off, and the almost flat roofs tiled or thatched
with straw. Lots of courtyards, gardens, and trees, with
wide uncared-for streets dividing them, threw the houses
rather out of the way, so that few of the inmates saw us pass.
There were some large shops, but no business was being
transacted, owing perhaps to the wet; this had also sus-
pended the labours of the workmen at an open-air theatre,
that was in process of being rigged up and fitted out by
the aid of a cart propped horizontally on two legs in the
centre of an open space. A few boards were laid across its
sides for the struts and strides of the wandering wearers of
the sock and buskin, and a millet-stalk framework screened
three sides of the stage from view, whereon a table and two
stools did duty as stage furniture.

Where a group of willows grew before a wide doorway,
and partially formed an arbour, shielded from the rain by
their overlapping branches, a female assembly was being
held. It was our bad fortune to render its dissolution
necessary, and to scare the blooming maids and withered
matrons almost into hysterics—if such a civilised complaint
has yet made its appearance in the flowery land —as they
waddled off their several ways on their pettitoes with the
most lamentable stumpiness.

Here is another of those morbid fancies that, balanced
against the more reasonable fashions and tastes of the people
of this country, far outweighs them all, and outrages the
common sense of every rational foreigner. Give them credit
to the full for the good traits they possess; call them the
most industrious of beings on the globe, the most promising
and improvable of all eastern nations; laud to the utmost
those institutions which, we are told to believe, have guided
them through long ages, and permitted them to see the
glimmer of a modern world and a new civilisation, and to
hold intercourse with a new race of men some twenty
MUTILATED FEET OF CHINESE WOMEN. 229

centuries younger and yet more advanced in whatever
pertains to human greatness, and then show us_ these
Aigipanes —these females with the mutilated feet, who walk
as we used to imagine ‘ puss in boots’ must have done; and
our admiration is suspended.

We can hardly say a word in favour of any people, who
would, for an hour even, force the tenderest and fairest of
creation into such an appalling amount of suffering, deformity,
and inconvenient helplessness. Look at these poor creatures

 

Extremes of Fashion.

now scuttling away in as bad plight as if some inhuman
monster had amputated their feet from the ankles, balancing
themselves with extreme difficulty, supported by the walls,
or clinging to anything that may in the least aid them in
progression and prevent their downfall; while they move
their stiffened legs and plant their wasted heels and crushed
toes, which are hid in doll-like shoes, smaller than any we
ever saw at Canton, Shanghai, or even Peking, just as a
230 A BARBAROUS CUSTOM.

Chelsea pensioner would do if he tried to walk with two
wooden substitutes for his nether limbs, without a staff,—
then say what any other family of the human species could
show to equal such a sight.

We drop civilisation and turn to Savagedom, but can find
no equivalent wilful barbarity. The flattened head, the sawn
or chipped teeth, the nose or lips deformed by heavy rings,
or the ear-lobes pierced and widened to such dimensions that
they serve as wallets, cannot fitly be compared to this fashion
in the sad spectacle it affords, and the utterly abject condition
of the women who are subjected to it.

Some people may point to the stays of occidental lands,
but the very worst cases of tight-lacing can never induce
effects so deplorable as those which astonished us for many
months after our arrival in the country. It is impossible to
look at a crippled woman treading on the very extremity of
the dwarfed heels of her shoes, with the atrophied ankles and
instep wound up in stripes of cotton cloth, making only a few
inches at a step, with the arms swaying and body ungracefully
erect, without a strong feeling of pity for her misfortune,
and without showering maledictions on the heads of those
wretches who introduced the villanous practice, and those
rulers who permit it to be perpetuated.

Ah, Le-how-choo, a heavy load of blame lies at your tomb-
stone, if what tradition says be true, that you, in the early
days of the Five Dynasties, commanded your beautiful con-
cubine and slave, Yaou, to tie up her feet in unyielding rolls
of silk, so that their natural perfections might be obliterated
to suit your depraved wish, and the matchlessly formed
instep and toes be transformed into a repulsive stump, sup-
posed to vie in shape with the new moon!

Curiosity impelled me once to be one of a party in
examining an uncovered foot. The young woman was not
at first very ready to remove the shoe and the collection of
bands around the limb, to satisfy the strange request we
AN INSPECTION AND ITS RESULTS. 231

made, but a few dollars quickly dissipated her reticence,
and also induced another to increase the exhibition. It was
no treat. The removal of the bandages was like the exhu-
mation of a half-decomposed body, and made our party close
their mouths and hold their nostrils, much to the augmented
astonishment of the young ladies, while we stretched our
necks to see all as quickly as possible.

No toe was visible but the big toe; the others had been
doubled under the sole, with which, after weeks of suffering
and excruciating pain, they had become incorporated, and
were not to be distinguished from it, except by the number
of white seams and scars that deeply furrowed theskin. The
instep was sadly marked by the vestiges of large ulcers that
had covered its surface, consequent on the violence used to
bend it up into a lump; and, in form as well as colour, was
like a dumpling; while the limb from the foot to the knee
was withered and flaccid as that of one long paralysed. The
disp lay was repugnant in every way—we fled, and have been
careful ever since to be absent when any more of these
living mummies were about to be unrolled.

It is an extraordinary circumstance that the further north
one goes, the more universal the odious fashion becomes. At
Tien-tsin, in the Chinese portion of Peking, and in some of
the larger towns we have visited, a woman or a female child
with unmutilated feet was never seen, unless by some very.
rare chance, and then they were supposed to be Tartars (as
the diamond eyes at Lanchow for example). But the
amazing thing is, the devotion of the fair sex in the rural
districts to the disabling custom. Everyone had the Pandean
hoof as scrimply developed as if she were competing for the
leadership of the beau ton in this respect, regardless of the
state of inefficiency into which she was thrown. She is unfit
to work out of doors or in the courtyard without some prop,
and must manage household affairs in a very unbecoming
and toddling way—evidence sufficient, one would be inclined
232 THE DEFORMITY A PROOF OF GENTILITY.

to say, to open the eyes of the frugal toiling husband to the
vanity and vexation, besides loss, caused by his wife’s pride.

From the merchant’s favourite dame to the old beggar-
woman and her child in the reeking purlieus of the lowest
parts of the town, where a trifle must be hard to gain, all bow
to the self-imposed punishment, though for what reason they
know not. It is the fashion—their mothers and grand-
mothers did it, and so must they; did they leave their feet
untampered with and unswathed, they would be like the
outside barbarians. In short they look upon it as the mark
of a polished nation, and those who have it not are held in
low esteem.

A lady at Hongkong informed me that once she had two
native female domestics, one with cramped, the other with
natural feet, and that they were always quarrelling about
these articles. She who was able to move about her work
readily grumbled at the other because she had in consequence
more than her share of labour, and hesitated not to tell the
other that her lame toes were the cause; the fashionable
sister, who always assumed haughty airs towards the plebeian
because of the ‘ golden lilies,’ * would effectually silence her
for a few minutes by declaring in the sweet-sounding lingo,
‘Ah, why for you so talkee me? My mudda (mother)
number one woman: hab makee me alla plopa (all proper).’

I cannot understand why, when the conquering Tartars
introduced, or rather stuck on the Chinese heads the stamp of
their potency, in the whimsical tail or tress which they them-
selves wore, they did not abolish the thoroughly Chinese
institution of the small foot, or make their own women adopt
it. In all likelihood their acute judgment at that time
showed them the deteriorating effects of a practice that
would soon reduce the robust and active female population
of their clans into weak silly toys, fit only to be nursed, and
therefore unworthy of such a manly race.

* The name for crippled feet.
CHINESE DOGS. 233

=

If the one extremity of the body is held sacred to an
inviolable and unalterable custom, its antipodes at any rate
is not; for just as two of the alarmed gossips limp through a
door in front of us, we see that their manner of twisting up
the hair differs widely from that followed in the country we
have passed through. Here it is dressed and gummed in
the form of an ingot of sycee silver, which is something in
shape like a cream jug, or an oval cup wide at top and narrow
at the bottom, with a piece scooped out of the edge at each
side, and with bright-coloured flowers fastened by, or stuck
about skewers and pins, that stand out like porcupine quills.
Though their necks be ever so dirty, and their faces not
much better, yet the hair must be as exquisitely trimmed
and plastered, according to the local rage, as that on a wax
model seen in a London barber’s shop window.

It was a great relief to pass quietly through a town, and
miss the clatter and din that had attended our progress
hitherto. If the rain had made us unhappy one way and
retarded our advance, it at any rate drove the mob from
our path and allowed us to pass on much more pleasantly
than if the brawling voices of countless throats had gathered
behind and before us.

Only a troop of the common dogs of the country — outcast
wanderers that they are—gave us a parting salute of savage
barkings before the last houses in the outskirts had been
passed, and then tore away into the lanes and fields when a
whip was shaken at them.

It is somewhat curious to find this breed of the Canis
familiaris so widely diffused over the world, and abounding
in every corner in China that one chances to put foot in.
Closely allied to the Pariah dog of India, the savage pests of
Cairo and Egypt generally, those of Syria, and those snarling
droves which we have been so often obliged to pelt off with
stones by moonlight, in the narrow streets of Stamboul,—the
Pariah dog of North China is, like them, allowed to breed
234 TOWN SCAVENGERS.

and to infest the towns and villages free from disturbance, to
congregate on the plains or in the fields during the day, or
to kennel in the graveyards; while at night they prowl
about the streets like our scavengers at home, sweeping off
the quantities of filth and trash that strew the thoroughfares.
Though the Chinese have no religious scruples with regard
to the dog, like the Hindoos and Mohammedans, yet the
animal is neglected by them, and neither made a com-
panion of, nor yet employed in any capacity, unless as a
watch-dog, or in a very mild kind of sport which I may
speak of hereafter. It is slightly different from the southern
Chinese nomad, which White, in his ‘Natural History of
Selborne,’ describes very accurately ; bearing an outward
likeness to the Highland sheep-dog of Scotland, and to those
painted on the tomb of Roti at Beni Hassan twenty-three
centuries before the Christian era. It is surprising that the
breed should so long retain its characteristic form and
peculiarities amid the vicissitudes of climate and neglect,
and the introduction of other varieties, to which at Tien-tsin
and Peking a free intermixture of other races had given birth.

Uncared for by the Chinese, hunted by Europeans, to
whom it proves an endless source of annoyance by its
nocturnal howlings, barkings, and noisy fights, and covered
with mange and sores, the service it renders is yet great ; for
without it and the pig, as sanitary agents, heaven only knows
what the Central Flowery Land would become in a short
time. Its mission is a most disgusting one, and we would
rather see this faithful and devoted friend of man cared for
by the family, than find it the devourer of their filth, and the
object of their disregard.

The work is gone through in a systematic manner ; every
dog having its allotment in a certain district of a town from
which it must not intrude upon that of others, without the
penalty of being half worried. Their tastes, as may be
inferred, are not over nice, for they hesitate at no kind of diet.
DIFFERENT BREEDS OF DOGS. 235

Can anyone who has seen these canine vultures in the
deserted villaves in the neighbourhood of Peking a few days
after an engagement, forget the sensation of horror he
experienced, when inadvertently he startled a swarm of
them from feasting on the body of a dead Chinaman in some
lonely spot ?

The streets and the houses contain mongrels as innume-
rable as those of any English town. We have seen dogs
lodged and fed with some care, probably in consequence of
their scarcity and value as pets. Among these the turnspit,
the pugheaded lap-dog, and the delicate toyish Japanese
poodle have been recognised; but more interesting than all,
is the Shantung terrier from the province of that name, and
which, for affection, tender sagacity, and purity of breed, is
equal to the finest Skye terrier, to which it bears a very
striking, if not complete resemblance.

These latter are very scarce and dear, and when obtained
a European has great difficulty in gaining their friendship.
From the long soft bluish-white hair that conceals their
bodies and almost obscures their eyes, the Chinese call them
the ‘silken-haired dogs.’ There is another variety brought
from Mantchuria for hunting purposes—a sort of hybrid
hound as tall as our greyhound, and in some points re-
sembling it, but so deficient in the sense of smell, and so
slow-paced, as to be almost useless to Europeans.

On departing from this town, the roads, which lay in
many places very low, were like mill-dams, and entirely
precluded any hopes of getting through them without some
accident ; so we struck off into bypaths and devious tracks,
with our faces still determinedly looking to the north-east —
our course for that part of the Great Wall we must pene-
trate, if we are to reach it at all—trusting to our driver to
find gaps in the millet through which he might get our
humble equipage. The two mules tore at their work, the
driver shouted and turr-ed, our ponies shuffled away, and we
236 LOSING OUR WAY.

covered four or five miles in as wild a storm of wind and
rain, thunder and lightning, as the most ardent lover of
nature in her angry moods could seek for.

We had been plashing half stupefied through bewildering
thickets of tall-stalked grain that did not shelter us in the
least from the torrents that fell, and had got far into the
wide plain, without a single landmark or prospect of a
village. Seeing beyond as much of what lay before us as a
twelve feet wall would permit, we were satisfied that if a
night in such a situation was to be spared us, it was high
time to enquire for some place where we might lay our
heads. But not a soul was to be seen. The attendant
Ma-foo was inconsolable ; and the carter incomprehensible.
After wheeling down footpaths to the right and left, our guide
grew confused and pulled up, confessing that he did not know
the way. He had led us into an inextricable wilderness of
green crops, where we stood completely puzzled and lost ;
there was no obliging divinity to help us out of the labyrinth,
and a canopy above showered down never-ceasing water-
spouts from a source as black as Lucifer’s dress waistcoat.

A brief consultation was held ; a dive was made by one of
us through the water-laden barrier towards where the main
road ought to be; and about half a mile’s pursuit of the trea-
cherous strip of brown earth, led to a group of huts. A long
series of interrogations was necessary before our latitude and
longitude could be fixed, and in an hour afterwards we were
picking and plunging along what was said to be the main
road. It might have been an aqueduct or a canal in ruins for
anything we saw to the contrary. I resolved never again to
forsake the genuine line of country, let it be ever so hazardous.

The floods from the mountains rushed across us like mill-
streams, gurgling over the thick rocky débris, like the
bubbling gasp of dozens of drowning men; the roadside
houses standing lonely and closed, looked so many morgues
or haunted buildings; and the people striding past in the
CHEERFUL TRAVELLERS. 237

gloom, without condescending to proffer a nod, a smile, or
even a stare, but rather averting their heads, might readily
have been mistaken for ghosts; while every tree seemed to
have a head-cage lashed round its trunk under the dripping
bowed-down branches that mourned for the fate of the
victims.

"Twas a dismal evening, with the whole of visible nature
gasping under an acute dropsy and all but moribund.
Never did I feel less sentimental, seldom more destitute.
At last the rain almost ceased as a better sort of a ditchy
road opened up—though the sky was still inky — and
peasants and tramps began to come out and resume their
toil or travel. Some of the latter appeared to be nearly as
saturated as ourselves, and a few were miserable in the
extreme, so far as outward signs went, but were lively
enough, at times cackling out a cheerful snatch of some old-
world ditty, and shouldering their meagre all on the shaft of
a lance, a hoe, or a walking-stick, as if they were supremely
happy, paddled on, they reminding us that

‘¢ The needy traveller, serene and gay,
Walks the wide heath, and sings his toils away.’

An odd change has taken place in the clothing department
of the better class of wayfarers and villagers, which we
cannot omit jotting in our note-books, as, if not smacking
keenly of novelty, it certainly does of economy.

Almost everybody out of China knows how a Southern
Chinaman is dressed ; how his long flowing and wide robes,
though of a different cut rather, are after the fashion of the
East Indians, the Turks, Persians, and Egyptians, and all
those people who, inhabiting warm relaxing regions, require
room and freedom in their apparel during the indolent and
sedentary lives they pass for so many months in the year.
And we have all had our laugh at the ridiculously-shaped
bedgownish coat that almost sweeps the ground, the dang-
238 EUROPEAN AND CHINESE COSTUMES.

ling sleeves which hide the hands and slovenly depend about
a foot beyond the finger-ends, and the clumsy shoes that
look more like coal-scuttles than articles to protect the feet
and allow of free locomotion.

After a few months-in the country, however, our precon-
ceived notions suffered greatly from the daily attacks made
on them, and before a winter had quite passed away we saw
cause to alter them altogether. I now think that, with all
our modern civilisation and advancement, the Chinese are
more appropriately dressed, so far as ease, comfort, and
necessity are concerned, than the Western nations, and that
their fashions are founded on a wiser philosophy and a
sounder reasoning than our own. .

In his ordinary or holiday suit of the lightest cotton,
crépe, or silk materials, made up loosely, and without im-
posing any restraint on the movements of the body or on
the free circulation of air beneath its ample width, the
Chinaman looks a far less uncomfortable being than the
Englishman who, in summers scarcely less oppressive than
those of China, condemns himself to imprisonment in a
cloth garment of the scantiest proportions, in which he
performs nearly all the duties of life.

Induce a Chinaman if you can to sheath his limbs and
body in a rig-out of black buckskin, cut, buttoned, and
braced so tight that he can scarcely move or breathe ; wedge
his faultless small feet into a pair of black leather boots,
thrown two or three inches off the natural horizontal level
of the sole by high heels; put his liberty-loving neck in
unrelenting limbo bya stiffened band of linen, over which
you must wind another starched bandage as closely and as
securely tied in front of his windpipe as if he had suffered a
fracture of some one of the cervical vertebre ; carefully fit
on his long taper fingers and over his perspiring palms, the
dressed epidermis of a rat, a cat, or a kid, so prepared as to
be impervious to the air; then launch him into a ball-room
COMFORTABLE DRESS. 239

on a sultry July evening, cause him to jump, wheel, and
skip over the slippery floor at the rate of ten miles an hour
in near approximation to an elderly lady, rather stout and
calorific, whom he must aid in going ‘the pace,’ and if you
are not directly guilty of the poor mortal’s death, never
man was. ‘Tortured to death’ would assuredly be the
verdict of a jury of his countrymen, and that, too, by savages
or madmen.

The adaptability of the Chinese costume for summer wear
is no less so for the severe cold of northern winters. Its
essential parts in hot weather are a loose jacket, or long
gown, worn over a pair of lower limb covers,—a little wider
than knickerbockers to be sure, but made on the same prin-
ciples of freedom and comfort,—the bottoms are confined by
stockings or socks, and the legs extend from the ankle to
the knee (for how many centuries have.our friends worn
this new and most commendable fashion of other lands ?),
and the feet wear the damp-repelling thick-soled cool
shoes.

In winter when the thermometer falls below zero, and
the wind is bitingly sharp, a great change takes place in
the character and quality of these garments, and though
their houses are not at all adapted for this season, by their
devices in the way of clothing, they manage to maintain an
agreeable and healthy warmth and defy the chilly rigours of
the day or night.

With the richer classes this is done by means of expensive
furs brought from the mountains and forests of Mongolia,
Mantchuria, and Siberia ; and if one can judge by the ex-
hibitions of these luxuries in the shops of Tien-tsin and
Peking, the supply must be a large and profitable one. Of
these the sable appears to be the most highly prized, as it is,

_perhaps, the most valuable ; but a good deal of patience
and skill is shown in making up the superior robes from
several kinds of fur of various colours into fantastic patterns;
240 WARM CLOTHING.

while the more abundant grey squirrel and ermine are also
favourites, though used more to line female dresses.

The silver fox, deer, and antelope tribes furnish a large
proportion of the soft skins worn by the middle classes, all
being beautifully prepared and quite equal to those exported
to England and sold in the best shops.

But the great flocks of sheep and lambs beyond the Wall
give by far the largest share of warm apparel to the poorer
people, in the unlimited supply of perfectly preserved black
or white wool-covered skins: even the meagrely haired pelt
of the unborn lamb is pressed into use and forms one of the
dressiest, as it is one of the highest-priced, articles of winter
attire. The robes and tunics of the wealthier portion of the
community are either made of satin, silk, or Russian cloth,
and lined with these heat-retaining mediums, or are alto-
gether composed of furs, inside as well as out.

The satin is more generally preferred, and one long vest-
ment of this, called the ‘ Pou-dza,’ with its heavy lining,
reaches almost to the heels, and is fastened over the right
breast by buttons and loops. It has several long slits in the
skirt at the sides and back, to give room in walking in the
bulky clothing underneath, or to allow of the tails being
tucked up in riding or sitting. It is the gala toga of the
well-to-do man, only to be used on grand occasions, when
his arms will be flourished about in the long sleeves, and the
unsightly cuffs trimmed so elaborately with brown sable, and
which contain the usual pocket equipment of a European,
will be flapping about below his hands, protecting them from
the cold. Outside of this, in very cold days, is the ‘ Tou-
dza,’ a shorter and wider covering, lined or composed alto-
gether of a more weighty fur, with wide sleeves barely
reaching beyond the elbows.

The head is covered by a quilted satin cap witha wide everted |
brim, which is faced with sable, the pelage of the sea-otter, or
that of the premature lamb, the crown being surmounted by
HEAD-DRESS. 241

silk fringe, and, if an official, the button or ball. At other
times a small satin skull-cap is worn with a red ball of silk
on the top, and a pendent tassel of the same, with a large
pearl, a coloured stone, or the character for longevity worked
in gold thread, in front; and sometimes a turn-down collar
of velvet or fur lies low on the neck of the dress.

With the exception of the ‘Shua-dza,’ or large black satin
boots with massive whitened soles, which encase the feet and
legs, this is all that can be seen of a Tien-tsin worthy as he
walks along, or is carried in his chair on a winter’s day, the
very picture of contentment and good nature. When com-
pelled to move about on very cold days, another sort of
cap, thickly quilted, is used; and as it is furnished with a
fur-covered lap, this is folded down over the brow and ears
in a very shug way: and we know that underneath their
outer clothing, many jackets may lurk comfortably, and that
at least one pair of voluminous silk trousers—thickened to
the size of bolsters by a cotton wadding—are doing their
duty.

The middle classes, that is those who are dressed in an
intermediate style as regards quality of materials, do not
differ much in the cut of their over-coats from the higher
ranks; but the satin is often exchanged for cloth, or even
cotton, in everyday wear; and the costly furs for cheaper
ones, or for fine sheepskins, while the Tou-dza of the mandarin
is curtailed in its proportions to become the ‘ Ma-gwa’ of the
inferior.

Poor people, such as those we are now among, are glad to
take any warm clothing they can get, and their ingenuity
provides them with habiliments qualified to meet all
emergencies. They have recourse to the skins of sheep, dogs,
wolves, and even of cats, but place their chief reliance on the
thickly quilted blue cotton ‘ meannow,’ coats and trousers of
the same material increased to bulky dimensions by being
padded loosely about the body, while the legs are additionally

R
242 A CHINAMAN’S WARDROBE.

fortified by the ‘tau-koo’ or leggings of thick stuff pulled on
over the trousers ; as they wrap tightly round the ankles, and
reach nearly to the body, and are secured by tapes to the
sash round the waist, which sash sufficiently holds jacket
and trousers close to the person without restraining or con-
fining the movements of body or limbs, at the same time
that it adds much to the comfort of the wearer.

It would be difficult to guess the number of suits of clothes
covering the exterior of an out-of-doors Chinese during one of
the severest days in January; but it must be something
extraordinary, and in many cases consists of the whole of
his wardrobe. A certain old fellow not far from our quarters
in Tien-tsin, who made a small fortune by selling charcoal,
coal-dust balls, and warm water to the servants, assumed an
alarming size in the depth of winter. From being a spare sort
of chap he had suddenly reached the dimensions of a Falstaff
around his corporation, until at last he could scarcely get in
at_ the door of the booth he had fitted up for himself. In
February the weather began to be less severe; the sun made
itself slightly felt at midday; the ice on the river was
becoming ‘slushy,’ and the stout old gentleman then began
the slow process of collapse, becoming small by degrees, if
not beautifully less, as the temperature increased. Before
the ice had quite disappeared from the shady recesses of the
Peiho’s banks the sun came out in a blaze, and one hot
morning in March we found that he had regained his modest
outline, and was once more equipped with but a pair of
ordinary blue bags on the nether limbs. The superfluous
garniture, instead of being left on the ground near his haunts,
like the exuvice of the serpent, was intrusted to the custody
of his uncle at the sign of the Dragon’s Head.

All endeavour to protect the head during the winter by
some means or other, and generally employ felt-caps of
various shapes for that purpose; and thick felt or sheepskin
socks to guard their toes are in constant use. The felt made
IMMUNITY FROM CONSUMPTION. 243

by the Northern Chinese is excellent. Besides its employ-
ment in this way as an article of dress by the lower orders,
it is universally prized as matting for the ‘kangs,’ both in
summer and winter: so far as we could learn, indeed, this is
the only material to the manufacture of which the wool of
the sheep is devoted.

Immense sheepskin cloaks—the woolly side in—are also
worn when occasion requires, either as an invulnerable outer
defence in the streets, or asa blanket by night. People from
the country, bringing in produce to Tien-tsin, present a very
primitive, almost savage, appearance muffled up in these
coarse wraps ; with a great: dog, goat, or wolf-skin cap burying
their heads and three-fourths of their faces in its shaggy
depths, leaving scarcely anything else to be seen but a
dense fringe of icicles depending from their moustaches.

One thing worthy to be remembered, with regard to the
northern costume, is this—that however much the body and
limbs may be wrapped up in clothes and warm materials, the
neck is always—according to our observation—left exposed
to the weather, no matter how cold it may be. This apparent
neglect seems to be the means of keeping them free from
coughs and colds during a very inclement season, and may
also secure them a tolerable immunity from ‘ Lou-peng,’ or
phthisis, which, in answer to our enquiries, we were told is
known here, though somewhat rare. The ears of all classes
are especially defended from the risk of frost-bite by curious
little capsular appliances of silk or cotton, neatly embroidered
and fitting exactly on the auricular conch, called ‘ urh-tau,’ or
ear covers, lined with squirrel or rabbit-skin, and retained in
their places by a thin connecting cord that passes round the
chin or the upper lip.

The aim of every Chinaman, in summer, is to keep himself
as cool and unhampered by clothing as possible. In this he
succeeds admirably, and in a way that would excite the envy
of the inhabitants of other countries. In winter his whole

R2
244 COOL UNDER-CLOTHING.

attention is devoted to maintaining the limbs and body in a
genial temperature, by means of the materials so bountifully
to be found near them.

He seems to attach far more importance to keeping the
body warm by judicious clothing than by heated apartments
or stoves; and in this way possibly escapes those annoying
influenzas and catarrhs so prevalent in countries where warm
air is adopted, and where less attention is paid to the evil
effects of high temperatures within doors and low without.
People who remain for hours in a superheated apartment,
and then sally out inadequately fortified by non-conducting
wrappers against a rigorous degree of cold, must greatly
disarrange the circulatory system.

The Chinaman feels changes of weather as much as any
other man, perhaps more so, but he has the wisdom to watch,
and be prepared for them. For instance, in hot weather the
labourers are obliged to toil as at any other time, during
which they perspire copiously. Under their thin cotton
jackets they wear a capital sort of reticulated shirt, made
either of cord alone, wrought something like a fishing net, or
with portions of the smooth stem of a fine grass strung on the
cord, to make it pleasanter to, and less apt to be moistened
by, the skin. Over this the cotton covering lies, but it never
touches the body; while the air passes readily through,
evaporation goes on naturally, the surface is kept in its
normal condition, and the dangers of a saturated vestment
are obviated. What a quaint yet simple design, one too that
the thoughtful European has not imagined! Perhaps it may
follow the use of knickerbockers.

In this neighbourhood the inhabitants appear to have
discarded all the silks, cottons, and cunning webs, and move
about as if they challenged the densest thunder shower that
ever poured from the sky, with nothing over their yellow
skins but a mantle—a regular thatch—a first-rate water-
proof of rushes—more homely and primitive, but more suited
WATERPROOF COATS. 245

to such a country than any that Mackintosh could turn out—
plaited so artfully, and so neatly, that not a drop of moisture
can get through.

There they go, with great-brimmed straw hats on their
heads, and these bristly envelopes over their backs, like
so many porcupines walking on their hind-quarters, with
their legs bare, and only a pair of straw sandals to preserve
their soles from the sharp stones. In the south, the

 

A Pig-driver.

poor make a cloak from the bracts of the palm, and it
does tolerably well; but here there is no palm, only rushes
and straw. Though the Northerners don’t care for, or
dread, the rain half so much as the Southerners, their fabrics
are better made, and more convenient than those of palm
leaves.

Working onwards, we came across some strangely clad
Gurths—thralls of some Sinensian Cedric—walking at the
246 NORTH CHINA PIGS.

rate of about a mile an hour behind large droves of pigs, but
without a dog, and armed only with a long whip, that always
lay at rest over their shoulders, their charge being lean and
willing enough to get along without: any need of a stimulus
from behind. These lusty drovers had also divested them-
selves of the cottons wherewith they had left their last
night’s quarters, rolled them up in a bundle slung over
the shoulder, and looked cool and dry underneath a great
yellow square of oiled paper pulled about them.

What can I say concerning those porkers waddling
through the mire in black lines on their way to fair or
market, except that they are average samples of the North
China pig? They can have but a remote relationship to
the Oriental wild boar, said to be the progenitor of the
domestic hog of China, or to that dainty little, obese, white
or black, fine-skinned animal of the South, which has been
bred and eaten by the son of Ham for the last forty-nine
centuries! There is as great a difference between them as
exists between the savage unreclaimed boar of the forest, and
the agricultural pets of prize notoriety. If they were seen
in an out-of-the-way wilderness or jungle, grubbing at the
roots of trees, nothing could save them from instant immo-
lation by the hunter, who would pronounce them very ugly
specimens of wild pig. They are as gaunt as a hungry
wolf; of a bluish-black colour; wearing an arched back,
sharp as the keel of a clipper ship; sides as flat as a door,
with hip bones projecting from them like the eaves: of a
house; long lanky legs, too short to keep the pendulous
belly from the ground; and a long tapering snout of the
most formidable dimensions, corresponding with the great,
unsightly, slouching ears that conceal their little eyes stuck
almost at their roots. These brutes are as ferocious to meet,
and as disagreeable to look at, as any member of the family
to which they belong ; and when they elevate the tapir-like
mane of strong bristles, with which they are plentifully
THEIR TREATMENT. 247

provided all over the body, it is difficult to make oneself
believe that they have been more than a few months removed
from their native wilds.

They are much in want of a foreign alliance, and a proper
amount of care in breeding to remedy the defective forms
they have acquired, or retained. They lead degenerate lives
everywhere here, nothing is done in the way of improving
or ameliorating their condition, and assuredly their habits
are, even for pigs, most degradedly filthy.

A good constitution they must possess, or else they never
could sustain the harsh treatment and neglect they meet
with during their lives. The starvation, worrying from
competitive dogs, the kicks and blows of passengers, and the
summers’ meltings succeeded by the winters’ freezings, have
all to be undergone before the great angular spaces about
their ribs have collected a little fat, and their huge bones
have attracted a minimum proportion of muscle. The
butcher then interposes, and puts an end to their miserable
career.

There is no danger of their skins being inflamed and
blistered by the sun, as we have seen those of some little
nurslings at home, who had incautiously left their styes at
midday when it was a little warm, and suffered for their
indiscretion. The cuticle, besides being black, is as thick
almost as that of the hippopotamus or rhinoceros, and ren-
dered quite impregnable under their thicket of bristles to
any assaults from the hot rays. In winter, nature has not
forgotten them, for in addition to the coarse capillary covering,
a thick undergrowth of fine hair grows close to the body, and
acts the part of a hair shirt during the whole season: we .
have seen this even in the autumn.

I cannot forget the embarrassment and surprise into
which a pig, that had been brought by a native to sell,
threw a group of soldiers and sailors on the beach at Talien-
whan Bay, as the troops were disembarking. It was a very
248 A STRANGE ANIMAL.

small one, and far from handsome. It lay in the sand with
its legs thrust out in a state of trepidation at the strange
and rather noisy crowd that knelt about it, quizzed it, and
fingered its external organs unmercifully. For a minute
or two I was rather perplexed with the novelty, but made
out what it was at last. The majority of the spectators
called it all kinds of odd and rather impressive names. One
said it was a ‘ young hant-eater, the same wot he ’ad seen
once t’ at some unpronounceable place in South America.
Another declared it was a sort of ‘ porkypine,’ and brushing
his hair the wrong way, referred to Johnny, the pig’s
guardian, if that was n’t the way it went. Another declared
it to be a rough-haired badger.

When told that it was a pig, and when a smart tap
on its nose had elicited a squeal and a grunt, there was
great laughing at the expense of the naturalists. One of
them, however, had presence of mind enough to draw atten-
tion to the soft hair I have just mentioned. ‘If that there
hanimal wor a pig,’ he observed, sagaciously, ‘there could
be no use sayin’ “ All cry and no wool,” as the d—l said
when he wor a shearin’ the sow.’

Happy must be the lives of these rambling country
erubbers, with gardens and fields to steal through now and
then, where a sumptuous meal of fresh vegetables may give
them a welcome change of diet, contrasted with the hard
fate of their town congeners, who live from snout to mouth
day after day without an opportunity of obtaining a morsel
beyond the allotted quantity and quality found in the ditches,
cesspools, and sinks of garbage and nastiness belonging
to the public and private promenades of a town. Every
street and corner has its due complement of these labourers
scouring about for the public good, barking, grunting,
snarling, and squealing the livelong day, and even going so
far as to dispute the right of way through their beat, or their
claim on the pickings to be cleared away, with the men who,
SINGULAR DELICACIES. 249

armed as they are with a long-handled three-pronged fork,
and a creel behind their backs, gather from before the noses
of their rivals the ‘sordida rura,’ the flowery symbols of a
flowery land, strewn everywhere in wanton luxuriance.

How, in the name of Epicurus, the Chinese can eat such
foul-feeding pigs is incomprehensible. I remember reading
some years ago, in a book on China by a naval officer, some-
thing to the effect that a Chinaman will eat everything but
his own father, and while highly amused at their going so
far and stopping at that trifling obstacle, I was rather incre-
dulous. Readily now would I endorse his statement, after
only having seen them masticate with fond delight their
beloved scavengers.

I was once taken to a street in Canton by a crafty young
elf, where I was shown a shop, the window of which was
hung round and across with cooked animals in sufficient
abundance to prove that a good trade was not incompatible
with a secluded situation. I was rather exultingly told that
one lot of the nicely browned morsels was cat, and another
opposite, split up and skewered with an eye to effect, was
‘number one’ dog.

I had not been many days in China before I vowed to
abstain from sausages, pork chops, even roast legs, bodies,
heads or tails, or any single fragment of the terribly unclean
animal, so long as I remained in the country ; and every
day’s experience has strengthened instead of weakened my
resolution, until now I am become as rigid a pig-hater as
Jew or Mussulman, though I see that the Chinese live and
thrive on such flesh.

Towards dusk, when it was almost necessary to grope for
the path, we fell amongst a drove of these brutes lying all
about the banks and raised places, and to escape getting a
tumble over some of them, we had almost planted our pony’s
feet on the body of the straw-coated driver, who rose up in
alarm, and when he beheld us, stared as if about to scream.
250 A SUSPICIOUS INN.

His excitement calmed down at length, and he was able to
tell us that there was an inn a few liahead. He was going to
sleep on the ground with his pigs until morning; no great
hardship apparently for the hardy fellow..

The inn was like one of those establishments so often
described in books of highway exploits as existing in the
desolate places of England in the last century. It stood alone
on a high bank, apart from a group of little houses. The
latter looked up from the stagnant lakes of water encircling
them like the heads of so many alligators. They formed the
village of Yang-chow. Our hostel was a long low building,
with a very low gateway to the courtyard, very small
windows in front, and a narrow entrance to the visitors’
portion of the house.

It was dark, yet there was noise enough for a riotous
meeting of fake-away gentlemen, and there was also an
impregnation of Samshu that tainted the air. It made the
doubtful exterior seem more suspicious. In we must go,
however, for we were saturated with water; while fatigue
inadequately expressed the general aching we experienced,
and our feet felt as if they were in poultices.

Ma-foo, muleteer, mules and: ponies looked, as doubtless
they were, done up for the day, and needing all the rest they
could get to re-invigorate them for the morning. They had
hada heavy day of it; indeed they must have thought it was
never to terminate, while threading all manner of mystifying
roundabouts, so they shouted and neighed until the landlord
appeared with a train of waiters behind him. Joyfully
surrendering the halffamished nags to the groom, we
entered the house.

It consisted of one narrow dingy passage not less than
fifty-seven feet in length, and far more like a robbers’ cave,
suchas that described by Gil Blas, than a respectable resting-
place for honest wayfarers. A large lamp, smoking and
flaring, swung high up from the middle of the roof, and only
ITS OCCUPANTS. 251

made the darkness at both ends more profound. But after
a time our eyes got accustomed to the obscurity, and to the
flickering light, and then it was partly possible to make out
the dubious shelter to which our good fortune had guided us.

On each side of the long apartment stretched the usual
mud and brick kangs covered with cane matting, on which
reposed or squatted in all kinds of attitudes the nude figures
of some forty or fifty travellers of a very humble degree in

 

The Inn of Yang-chow.

life, each with his journeying gear and his equipment safely
packed up alongside of him, and his sword, matchlock, or
lance within easy reach of his hand. <A row of posts sup-
porting the roof ran along the front of each couch, and on
these hung saddles, bridles, and draught harness in orderly
confusion, making the shade over the prostrate individuals
more irregular and mysterious as they lay or reclined in
twisted forms, their dark yellow skins showing anything but
pleasant in the interrupted gloom that pervaded the place.
252 AN APPRECIATED DORMITORY.

Fantastic piles of goods were huddled up among the rafters,
while the earthen floor was encumbered with pack-saddles,
panniers, and bags of grain.

At one end of the long shed was the kitchen in which
moved the cook and his azdes, busily engaged frizzling, fry-
ing, and stewing strong-smelling pork and stronger-smelling
compounds fried in oil, with a sickly effluvium of garlic
predominating. The evening was not, very warm, yet the
chef perspired and blew as he stirred, and tasted, and served
out the odorous viands in little basins and bowls to the
greasy urchins who were waiting to distribute them over the
room.

This was not a very desirable performance to have under
one’s nose all night. Our host did not look the least put out
of his way by the great omniwm gatherum assembled under
his roof, but flitted everywhere like a thorough man of
business, with overwhelming suavity of manner for such an
unpretending mansion. He carried us to the very opposite
_extremity from the cook-shop, and gratified us exceedingly
by ushering us into two little rooms partitioned off from the
main one, fitted with well-barred doors and windows, and
tolerably clean. Into these first-class apartments the few
things we had were carried, and gathered in a corner after the
fashion of our fellow-guests, who were only separated from us
by a very thin and fragile division of boards. When this
was done came the cold water, then the tea, then dinner of
the usual fare gladdened our eyes about nine p.M.; but during
its preparation a most satisfactory change had taken place—
our well-washed habiliments were flung aside, and replaced
by a dry suit.

Scarcely ever was a hard bed so attractive, never came
sleep so willingly, but many of the unthoughtful yellow-
skins without had awakened from their first nap, gorged
their paunches, and set to work to amuse themselves accord-
ing to their wonted custom. Some smoked tobacco; others
AN OPIUM-SMOKER. 253

played dominoes and cards, by the help of the faint light
emitted from the saucer lamps; a few rattled dice out of a
bowl within a few feet of us. Their earnest grunting voices
sang out as each gambler dashed the cubes on the matting
or a little stool, ‘ Hi yo le-o’—there is another lot of sixes.
This medley disturbed our rest; and we sat a long time
gazing out on the strange scene, and watching a sensual-
looking young man indulging himself in the opium-pipe
close to our door, regaling our sense of smell with the not
disagreeable fumes of the burnt narcotic. He could not fail
to see that his nocturnal orgie was the principal attraction in
the room for the eyes of the strangers, though he proceeded
to satisfy his craving for the drug with the greatest un-
concern. Since we had entered the house, not an inmate of
it appeared moved by sufficient curiosity to raise himself
from his lair to visit us.

The opium-smoker lay with his face in our direction, his
_ head raised a little by a wooden pillow, and his whole mind
given up to the inhalation of the vapour, and replenishment
of the bowl by small doses of the drug picked up and stuck
on the pipe from time to time. As the quantity he had
smoked began to act upon his system, his features kindled
up from the solid composed state they had been in previously.
After each instalment there was a longer interval, as if he
wished to prolong the process; and he muttered away in a
low tone to himself, while his black eyes sparkled vividly,
and the heavings of his naked chest denoted increased
breathing. Still he lay tranquilly in the same posture with-
out any symptoms of uneasiness.

The prescribed quantity, to our gratification, was nearly
expended. Once more he stretched out his strong muscular
arm towards a little tray, on which were the implements
employed to charge the ‘smoking-pistol’—the long needle
or wire with which the opium is lifted was again in requi-
sition—the almost empty ‘ka lan’ or shell was hurriedly
254 EFFECTS OF THE DRUG.

scraped by it, and its contents, now changed from a treacly
colour and consistency to that of a crumb of gingerbread,
steadily carried to the ‘yen-tau’ or cup of the pipe, which
bore a decided resemblance to a magnified gas-burner in
shape, and in the small perforation in the centre of its top.
The opium is placed on this little aperture, into which the
needle is pushed to establish an opening between the interior
of the vessel and the external air, then the skewer is thrown
away, the open end of the ‘yen-ti’—pipe-stem—is taken
between the lips, the cup is carried down to the flame of the
lamp, and the opium becomes faintly red as the deep in-
spirations of the now drowsy-looking man drew air and
smoke into the lungs with a weak sputtering noise.

Suddenly it ceases; the pipe and the hand that held it
drop together; the solitary carouse is over; the man of
pleasure is overcome, and the object is attained, if not
already passed by; for he lies so still that it would be
difficult to believe that he was in anything but a profound
trance or sleep, one so deep that the shouts and quarrels of
those within a few inches of him fail to disturb the vision or
rouse his stupefied senses.

He looked a sad strange figure in the foreground of that half-
wild and novel tableau, stretched out on his back as if dead,
the scarcely moving ribs testifying that he was not really so.
The hand and the ‘ pistol’ were still together where they had
fallen, and the head resting on the stool showed the deep
yellow features but imperfectly by the partial gleam of the
half-extinguished lamp that stood near, illuminating but
obscurely the corner where the victim reposed. It revealed
the saddle and its load of effects laid up against the wall;
the journeying wardrobe, wet and soiled, close to our
partition; and the heavy odd-shaped sword within easy grasp
of the nerveless hand; while the strong flaring blaze of the
large lamp in the background threw marvellously weird-like
lights and shadows through the long vista, and brought out
ITS EVILS EXAGGERATED. 255

in grotesque relief the nude beings coiled up and laid out in
sleep; the boisterous gamblers dressed and undressed, en-
grossed with their play, squatting or reclining in every
conceivable way, as well as the miscellaneous agglomeration
of all sorts of uncouth articles on beams, posts, and beds; all
this gave one a vivid impression of a robbers’ den, though the
lingering aroma of the poppy’s juice was rather out of place.

This was the first time I had seen the beginning and
ending of an opium-smoker’s orgie, and watched the gradual
change throughout the whole of the stages, from excitement
to stupefaction and somnolency. I was satisfied that it was a
very quiet and unobtrusive way of getting dead drunk,
however injurious it might be in the long run; and was
productive of but little annoyance to the lookers-on.

At Singapore, at Hongkong, but more particularly at
Tien-tsin, [ had often peeped into the interiors of the opium-
shops, fully prepared to meet with some of those fearful
wrecks of humanity that rouse the sympathies and curdle
the blood of our people at home, when described in pro-
China speeches and books; but I beheld nothing more than
what I have just described—in fact not so much, for the dens
were seldom so agreeable as to be supportable for a period
long enough to enable a visitor to see a votary take his
allowance out—-and everything, as orderly and peaceably as
the most sober race of people could desire.

At Tien-tsin I made many enquiries, and haunted for some
time a number of the shops in our vicinity, and gathered as
much information as any stranger could well do under the cir-
cumstances. The number of the‘ Yai-pian yan-pu’ or opium-
smoke shops then was about 300. These are places where
opium can be purchased, seethed and prepared for immediate
use, in small quantities, by people who use it in their own
homes, and where it can be consumed on benches built up in
the room usually set apart for that purpose in all these places.
There are, besides, many wholesale establishments for the sale
256 OPIUM-SMOKING SHOPS.

of this article to the retail shops, but where it is not per-
mitted to be used on the premises by customers.

The smoking-shops are generally in low, dirty, out-of-the-
way streets and back alleys, and are kept concealed from
view as much as may be compatible with the trade carried
on in them. Ruinous hovels, regular dens, a degree or two
more forbidding than our dram-shops in the ‘slums’ and
lanes of large towns, and without sign-boards—for the vice,
one would think, is tried to be kept a hidden one—‘ cribs’
which would be passed without any suspicions as to their
character by those who had not been told, are met with in
every part of the Tien-tsin city and suburbs. You are
threading your way through some sickening passage formed
by gables and fronts, backs and corners of runagate and
advancing houses, handkerchief to nose and mouth in one
hand, and a strong stick for the benefit of the swarming curs
in the other. You are exploring, looking out for novelty and
adventure in any shape, but chicfly to study the manners and
customs of the people. Every open door has had its share of
your attention, every courtyard its scrutiny. Workshops have
been entered, the mechanical operations criticised, and the
salient characteristics noted. You leave, perhaps wiser, per-
haps gratified ; and continue your route with the usual dis-
agreeables, until you come to a corner where a great round
piece of brown paper clings to the wall, so like the colour of
the wall itself, that you may have passed a dozen such
without your eye catching their outline. You are on the
trail; the scent is strong. You may be as certain of what is
about the vicinity of that brown paper, as the North
American Indian used to be when he saw a twig snapped
from a bough, or a scrap of dress fixed on a thorny bush.

A ‘howff’ is near, and you search. There is no corre-
sponding paper on any of the doors, and you penetrate
farther into the maze, when you remember that a courtyard
full of rubbish was passed, at the top of which stood a riddled
STAMBOUL OPIUM-CHEWERS. 257

sort of bothy with the windows thickly patched with paper,
and the door, well fitting, closed. You turn back, peep
behind the courtyard gate, and discover another disc of
whitey-brown.

Without any warning to those who may be inside, you
advance to the door, and shove it boldly open. -You will
find a darkened room as soon as you close it behind you
again, with a couple or so of tiny lamps burning in various
places, making the darkness darker still, and reminding you of
those lamps which superstition says are ever faintly gleaming
in the old Roman sepulchres, and are only extinguished
when these are opened to the light of day. You stand at the
door-post for a minute or two, during which vision is slowly
returning, and the proprietor or manager—though he would
rather not see strangers enter his secluded abode—makes you
welcome. Three or four dark masses are laid on the ever-
lasting benches. They are labourers or some such members
of a poor class taking their daily or afternoon dose, after
the benefit of the morning one has passed off. Three have
just begun, and the fourth is resigning himself to the dreamy
sleep. That is all you can see; and you stay in the mixed
flavoured dungeon for a few minutes, just to assure the
landlord that you intended him a friendly visit.

The sight is a pitiable one—a sad one, but not so repulsive
nor so heart-rending as that I once witnessed in what might
be called a public-house on a summer’s afternoon in Stam-
boul, where the opium-chewers were at work and going on
like men possessed with demons, until they subsided into
lumps of paralytic imbecility, fagging a year of nature in an
hour; neither does it affect one half somuch as the glare and
the misery, the garish display and the ragged brutalised mob,
the stir and commotion, the ribald and profane language, or
the indecent quarrel and the savage bull-dog-like fight, that
may, alas, too often be observed by the stranger who traverses
our own land, and, who, at a distance—for we would advise

8
258 EUROPEAN MISTAKES.

him not to enter—surveys the ‘life’ at the gin-palaces, the
taverns, public-houses, dram-shops, and tap-rooms, decorated
by their gay luminous show and superb fittings, to be found
in all our great thoroughfares in manufacturing towns and
cities, and providing plenty of occupation for the policeman,
the jailer, and the hangman.

If opium-smoking is a great evil among the Chinese people
—as it is, no doubt, yet they endeavour to hide it—they are
ashamed of it—and it offends neither the eyes nor the hearing
by obtrusive publicity. It is not made a parade of by night
and by day; neither does it give rise to mad revels and
murderous riots. Its effects on the health may be more
prejudicial than our habits of alcohol-drinking, but yet it is
hard to see any of these broken-down creatures that one reads
about.

A strong opponent of opium-smoking, and a man who spoke
the Chinese language thoroughly, took me to an opium-shop to
see some of these examples, but the exhibition was what we
should call a failure so far as the exposure of the unhealthy
effects of the drug might be considered.

The room was filled with men of nearly all ages, and as
robust-looking as the majority of their townsmen. They
freely answered all questions, and the result was not par-
ticularly unfavourable to the reputation of the habit,
compared with the number of lives sacrificed every year
by the use of alcoholic liquors and the number of strong
constitutions sapped by them in other countries.

We can recall to mind one old fellow, fifty-two years of
age, who confessed that he indulged himself as often as he
could afford it, which was always twice, often thrice a-day.
His earnings daily were about two hundred and fifty cash as
a coolie, and out of this he spent one hundred in opium.
This man had taken it for twenty-two years, and left it off
twice during that period—once voluntarily—when he was
induced to begin it again at the instigation of his friends (?),
OPIUM-SMOKING CARICATURES. 259

and the second time to allay the pangs of hunger after he
had abstained from smoking for some months. Two boys—
his sons—usually accompanied him, and remained in the
shop while he was engaged with his pipe. How like the
gin-shop family meetings!

On being asked why he smoked opium, he could not give
any satisfactory answer; and his sensations, while under the
effects of it, were vaguely described as strength imparted to
him, and the production of happiness to a degree he could
not find words to express. When he required opium he did
not feel well, and experienced a sensation as if his breast was
being torn open. If it were possible, he said that he would
gladly abstain from it, though he feared he could not volun-
tarily do so; but if confined in a room for several days, and
plenty of food allowed him, he supposed he could then do
without the smoke.

Another of my friends, also an anti-smoker, used to select
cases of infirm-looking Chinese in the streets as objects who
were succumbing to the narcotic; but unfortunately for his
judgement, the greater portion of these disavowed having
anything to do with the drug, and gave positive reasons for
their sickness. If an impartial observer were to go the rounds
of the three kingdoms, and direct his attention to the effects
of strong drink and the spectacles it affords, and then do
the same in China—of course I speak of the North more
particularly, as I have had more ample opportunities of in-
vestigating this matter there than in the South, with regard
to the opium question—I can almost safely predict at what
conclusion he would arrive.

One occasionally meets with pictures for sale in the streets,
in which are caricatures of emaciated creatures with terrible
eagerness clutching the pipe as they lie in a dilapidated
house, their clothes in rags, and their toes protruding through
their worn-out shoes. And in one of the temples at Tien-tsin,
where the Buddhistic pandemonium was represented in all

s 2
260 BAD EXAMPLE.

its horrors, and the punishments to be awarded the trans-
gressors of Fo’s precepts pourtrayed by plastic models with
an almost supernatural talent in devising infernal tortures,
the opium-inhaler is there represented awaiting his doom;
yet in spite of these illustrations the custom is on the
increase. It is a hidden vice, but Chinamen will tell you
that every shop ought to or does pay a secret tax—a
‘squeeze’—to the mandarins, and that the latter are kept
well informed as to the number of new openings which take
place, consequent on the flourishing state of business in the
drug that briefly cheers, but deeply enervates.

A slave to the narcotic is perfectly well aware of his danger,
and the enormity of the offence he is committing against his
family and relations—in starving the one, and disgracing the
other—but he looks with fear and contempt on a drunken
European who reels and tumbles about in the street, kicks up
brawls, and sheds blood, and wonders why, if the foreigner is
determined to get rid of his senses for a time, he does not do
so pleasantly and peaceably, instead of acting like a wild
beast.

There is little use in a missionary preaching to the China-
man about his evil propensity, when the man can point to
the preacher’s countrymen and ask if the ‘samshu’ is not
worse than the opium; and if you showed him a print of
Cruikshanks’ Bottle, he would tell you—-and perhaps you
wouldn’t quite disagree with him—that opium could never
produce such a tableau. It is a vexed subject, as is tee-
totalism to many people elsewhere, and, as Chinese gambling
might be, if viewed in the same light.

Let us quit the midnight amusements of a strange inn,
and bolting with some care the passage door, seek our room.
Before consigning ourselves, however, to repose, with the
clatter outside still strong in our ears, the expediency of
inserting five bullets in each of our revolvers was not over-
looked, and the Japanese chopper was placed in the most
NIGHT PRECAUTIONS. 261

advantageous position under M.’s pillow, ready for a half-
asleep hack and thrust; for we reasoned that since the
Chinese showed such a fancy for lethal weapons, and
manifested so much prudence in their disposal at night,
there could be surely no valid objections to our doing
the same.

The house was an odd one, and quite out of the usual
style we had as yet been accustomed to; the locality was
not assuring, to say the least of it; and our fellow-guests
were ten to one against us, should they turn out, as they
undeniably appeared to be, rough and ready adventurers.

How futile it was, though, trying to keep awake! Despite
all the banditti, highwaymen, robbers, and cut-throats—
despite all imaginings of the little games the fleeced gamblers
might be up to when they could play no longer; and in
opposition to the thousands of mosquitos who did their best
on the fresh rations they sung so lovingly over—with a bump
at intervals from headstrong beetles who found their way in
by the half-open window, and seemed anxious to share our
bed—we forgot everything in the mysterious phenomena into
which mind and body was gently drifted.
262

CHAPTER XV.

EARLY RISING IN CHINESE INNS— THE FERRY AT THE YANG-HO — THE
TRAVELLED FLORIN — FLOODED ROADS —FEAR AND CURIOSITY — TRA-
VELLERS ON THE HIGHWAY —TUBERCLES OF THE WATER-LILY, AND
ITS USES —ARROWWORT —A MARSHY REGION UNDER CULTIVATION —
A CHINESE ALBINO.

ee thunder had been heard during the night, and
never-ceasing flashes of lightning had glared over the
room, without disturbing me ; neither did the suspected ones
in the hall of innocence and peace maraudingly drive us
from our rest; but the rain, whisking and dropping with
weary beat, was more effectual about five or six o’clock next
morning, when all objects beyond the paper window looked
cast down and carried a tearful expression about them, as
they lay bathing and floating in the wet under an angry
sky. A nice prospect, certainly!

The doors were released from their bolts, and a glance out
at the long public room told nothing but that everybody had
left long ago — even our vitiated opium-eater had rallied
from his lethargic inebriation, and was off. The place where
they had been, which looked so dramatic last night, was all
but unrecognisable. It was as different as seeing the pit of
a theatre when lighted up and crowded with a moving noisy
audience, and viewing it again empty, dismal, and cold, in
the starved daylight. There were the posts, the benches,
the stools, and the wooden pillows; but all naked, bare, and
dirty, with the black spider and scorpion-haunted beams
above them, surrounded by mud-plastered walls, earthy, and
not improved by some immoral illustrations — fit accompa-
niments to gambling and opium-smoking. The jailish-looking
THE FERRY AT THE YANG-HO. > 263

windows levied a heavy tax on the light as it struggled to
force its way through the blackened sheets of paper, and
scarcely reached the unsightly hillocks on the unswept
earthen floor.

The weather was vexatious, and the sun more so; but we
were fain to be content and to wait the clearing up of the
sky, which began about seven o’clock. Then we were ready
to start, but not in the best humour exactly, as the Great
Wall was yet a long day’s journey from us, and it was
to be reached before night. The bill was paid, the ponies
saddled, and the luggage packed firmly in the cart, with the
mules fidgetting to be on their way, when the grinning land-
lord, who expected to make sure of his paying customers
for another day and night, obligingly broke the afilicting
intelligence to us, in a straightforward way, that the Hd,
or river, had risen to such a height that boats would be
required before we could cross. We ascertained that we
could entertain but faint hopes of transport for some hours. |

Riding down to the foot of the steep bank on which the
inn and the village stood, we found the Yang-hé foaming
and tearing past us in a yellow flood, increased in dimensions
from a fordable stream in fine weather to a torrent, through
which it would have been folly to attempt to force our
ponies.

But affairs did not look so desperate or hopeless as our
host had represented them ; for, at the other side and pad-
dling about for hire, we discovered a washing-tub of a boat,
moved and piloted by two men, who sculled across on our
hailing them. How much would they ask to carry us to the
opposite bank, with our baggage, and swim the ponies be-
hind the skiff? A long deliberation ensued between the
two men —§in which all the villagers who had turned out
busied themselves in giving an opinion. Their fare was only
six thousand cash for the job — about thirteen shillings for
ferrying us across a river no wider than the Peiho! They
264 THE TRAVELLED FLORIN.

seem determined to make their money while the stream is at
the flood, and to take advantage of our haste to get away;
but they must receive their lesson. We make an offer of one
thousand cash — which, as all the current cash is now about
the thickness and breadth of an old sixpence, and go two
thousand to the dollar — is half a dollar. They would not
listen to the proposal, but jumped into their boat again,
wonderfully irate at the small value we set on their
labours.

We mounted, and made as though to ride towards a deep
ford, where a number of people were toiling in the bubbling
water, immersed to their shoulders, with their clothes in a
bundle on their heads. The elder Charon gave in; he could
not suffer such generous souls to plunge and battle in the
seething river when he could ferry them across, sure of
gaining the thousand cash. He loudly shouted to us to
come, and that he would be content with our offer.

The cart was emptied of its load, which, with the saddles,
was put in the bottom of the boat, and then sent some way
down the stream to get a place where it could pass in safety
—vwe crouching down in the leaky craft to ballast it, while
the ponies were swam across by naked Chinamen, who
seemed accustomed to the work — they showed such tact —
though it could not be very remunerative to such a number
of strong fellows.

There were many pedestrians sitting and standing on the
grassy bank when we got out of the impromptu barge, nearly
all of whom were in the thatch coats, and appeared as if
they had already been some hours on the road. Their
astonishment at our presence was fairly eclipsed by that of
our boatman, who almost screamed for joy, when, being
rather scarce of the base and bulky coin of the country, we
gave him a new florin. Such a silvery gleam had, perhaps,
never before gladdened those unnaturally exposed eyeballs
of his — much less had ever been in his possession as lawful
FLOODED ROADS. 265

property. He ran off from the crowd with it stuck out in
his open palm to admire it alone, but the excited fellows
followed like a lot of rats after a piece of cheese, and gathered
round him as if he had obtained a gift of the elixir vite, in
which they desired to participate.

It seemed too good to be real, however; and to the surprise
and delight of a few seconds before, succeeded suspicions
and doubts as to its quality. The man came up to usagain,
weighing the coin in his fingers and testing its genuineness
as well as he could, looking very business-like and very
serious during the scrutiny, and, pointing to the obverse,
wished to know what the Queen’s head signified. The reply
that the likeness was that of the grand lady who ruled the
great English nation, though it caused some wonder, and
perhaps a grin or two from some rustic wretch whose ideas of
the estimation in which the sex ought to be held were not of
a very exalted or noble kind, did not. content the shrewd
countryman until he believed that the cross on the reverse
was Her Majesty’s mark ; then did he fully understand the
importance of the bargain he had made, and the lucky
windfall he had obtained by a few minutes’ work.

The ominous weather had by this time vanished; the
-hills came out with their keen upper ridges only marred by
misty exhalations from below; and the July sun shone down
hot and strong from a sky unruffled by the thinnest cloudlet,
sending the water lying everywhere about us in steaming
vapours over the ground, until we were well-nigh suffocated
and parboiled, in the bright hot light, with the moisture and
perspiration.

The only tracks we saw having any pretensions to a high
road were at every few yards regular lakes and dams of
reeking rain-water, from which no cart could come un-
scathed, and through which it would have been fatal to our
prospects to have urged the mules. The sole alternative,
therefore, was still to cling to the north-east horizon, while
266 FEAR AND CURIOSITY.

we sought lanes and paths through the millet and maize
sweeps. We were often bafiled, but always came to some
little village. Rather poor they were, perhaps, at times ;
but the people looked healthy and happy. Here we found
some part of the drowned main road, which gave us a clue
to our position. The labourers in the gardens, or in the
rows of grain, did not bustle or stir themselves much about
our presence among them; and the passengers on the move—
whom we were often obliged to brush against, as they made
way for us in the contracted passages, where there was no
ditch or bank to protect the crops, and where everyone was
solicitous to avoid damaging them— unscared, just favoured
us with a sly squint, as they strove to soothe their far more
alarmed steeds, should they happen to be mounted. After
proceeding for a bit, and before the opportunity could be
lost, they would give us a little more of their attention, and
cogitate on the extraordinary sight of two strange men —
the likes of whom, in such a novel garb, had never been seen
there before— moving through the country as if they had
been in it all their lives, and were familiar with every inch.
of its perplexing mazes.

But two or three old worthies in the course of the day
were not so courageous, and showed the unmistakable im-
pulses of childish timidity or fear ; for, catching a glimpse of
us in time for a retreat, they hastily dismounted from the
animals they bestrode, and, with the alacrity of a startled
fawn, darted in among the thick screening jungle of stalks,
dragging their ‘mounts’ with them, and were not seen
again, being probably too much overpowered by the distant
glance to try a nearer one.

Travellers were pretty numerous in some places, where the
independent and circuitous thready ways converged on the
lowland, nearly all of whom were equestrians, who rode well-
conditioned ponies, or sleek, tall mules; and not a man of
them but looked well fed and well clothed. The latter was,
TRAVELLERS ON THE HIGHWAY. 267

if not a picturesque, a certainly very decent outfit of spotless-
white homespun cotton, with long, wide thigh gaiters of silk,
faultlessly-bleached socks in the black or blue shoes; the
wearers’ sonsy faces tantalised, hid, and fanned by the
flapping yard of brim that spread out from the flat-topped
straw hat, so tightly bound to their round heads by the tape
across, and the tape below the chin.

There was also a sprinkling of those who in every country
must always ‘ pad the hoof’— the less comfortable members
of the peasant class who move about in search of employ-
ment, trudge to other localities on friendly visits, or plod to
towns in the vicinity for the few necessaries they require.
Straggling wheel-barrow men, who throw themselves in
before us, with the straw face-shade tied over the brow by
the useful tail; plying their weight and strength to the ,
utmost between the shafts of their carriage; but what they
conveyed was too well wrapped up by covers to allow any-
one to guess it correctly. They had an arduous job
propelling such heavy loads on the thin wheel in such
muddy ground, but they went at it with such determi-
nation and goodwill that they kept away fatigue and
despondency. ;

The crops have not varied in kind along the whole of our
track from Tien-tsin; there is just as much diligence and
regard to be remarked in reference to the sedulous appli-
cation of the hoe or the plough in turning up the soil about
the roots of the plants, the manner in which these are sown,
and the non-existence of a bare spot where a seed-topped
stem can wave. Here and there in certain places, the ground
was broken a little into narrow, but deep, gullies, from
which the water could not be drained ; and in these grew in
abundance the ‘ Lien wha ’— the much-prized and sanctified
lotus or water-lily —the faba digyptica, or Pythagorean
bean, the symbol of creative power and fertility, continually
represented in the images and pictures of the Buddhistic
268 ATTRIBUTES OF THE WATER-LILY.

religion. As in Egypt it was the emblem of fecundity, or
power of the world from water; and, as it was consecrated
to Isis and Osiris, so is it in China to F6. As it is not in
flower so far north until the end of July or beginning of
August, it was not in perfection when we saw it; but even
then it looked graceful and pretty, with its closed pink or
carnation-and-green calyx, growing like that of the tulip
before it blooms, and rising up from amid the great concave
round leaves, so green and glossy after the genial rain, as
they swim on the clear pools.

It can scarcely surprise anyone, who looks at these beau-
tiful herbaceous plants, growing as they now do, with their
gorgeous double flowers only in the bud, that such a people
as the Chinese, as well as other eastern nations among
whom Buddhism prevails, should entertain a preference for
this above all other flowering plants. They accept it as a
type of the most mysterious operations in Nature, and have
assigned to it a prominent place in the Eden promised by
F6—whose image they place on a dais of lotus flowers —
that land of supreme happiness, where his votaries are taught
that there is but one sex, and that the masculine. The
women admitted will be desexualised, and the bodies of
those who have obeyed the precepts of this false religion,
‘reproduced from the lotus, are to be pure and fragrant —
their countenances fair and well formed — their hearts full
of wisdom and without vexation.’ It is there also where
‘they dress not, and yet are not cold; they dress, and yet
are not made hot; they eat not, and yet are not hungry;
they eat, and yet are not satiated. They are without pain,
irritation, and sickness, and become not old. They behold
the lotus flowers and trees of gems delightfully waving, like
the motion of a vast sheet of embroidered silk. On looking
upwards, they see the firmament full of the “ To-lo” flowers,
falling in beautiful confusion like rain. ‘The felicity of that
kingdom may justly be called superlative, and the age of its
TUBERCLES OF THE WATER-LILY. 269

inhabitants without measure. This is the place called the
Paradise of the West.’

But the Chinese, who seem ever striving to blend the
beautiful or pretty with economy and utility, venerate the
water-lily as much for the material service it renders
them on earth in sustaining life, as for the part it plays in
their popular creed; so that, while admiring it, dedicating
its virtues to their highest spiritual creation, and lavishing
florid encomiums on its beauty, they do not forget to culti-
vate it, and use it as an esteemed article of food. In the
market-places of towns and villages in and about Tien-tsin,
quantities of green capsules, shaped like the rose of a
watering-can, or the head of a gun-rammer, are exposed
for sale in August and September. This is the torus or
ovary from the top of the stalk, containing the numerous
seeds or nuts in cavities on its surface, which are said to
be excellent when eaten raw, or after being boiled and
preserved in syrup.

In March and April, and also in May, strange-looking
rootstacks make their appearance on the stalls, of a white
colour, and resembling somewhat three or four of those
incomplete divisions of a large pork sausage, such as are sold
in England. This is the root of the water-lily, and if one of
the elongated tubercles be cut across, it will be found full of
holes running lengthways like the strands of an electric
cable. This is a most useful and healthy esculent, and is
eaten in a variety of ways. Many of the country people
prefer it raw, when it tastes not unlike a coarse chestnut or
an uncooked potato; but it is best boiled, and furnishes a
very nutritious meal, with the other triflmg adjuncts of a
humble dinner; tasting somewhat between a potato and a
turnip, palatable enough for any hungry stranger. It is
also salted, pickled in vinegar, and preserved in sugar;
and where very plentiful, besides these methods, it is
converted into flour, which, when mixed with a proportion
270 MARSHY REGION.

of sugar and baked into bread, the Chinese describe as
first-rate.

These small ditches and pools of what would otherwise be
lost ground, but which are so favourably situated for the
growth of the nelembium, and also for a few yards here and
there of the arrowwort (Sagittw folia), the root of which is
also eatable, but is not so pleasant as the other—would
scarcely be worth noticing, did they not remind us that land
above and land below water are alike seized upon and forced
to yield their share of support to the people who so thickly
crowd them. So skilfully and earnestly is a marsh or shallow
fresh-water lake, which would be reckoned next to useless in
other countries, hunted, fished, and gardened, that it would
be difficult to pronounce with any degree of certainty which
is most productive, or on which the inhabitants appeared to
thrive best.

To the westward of Tien-tsin, and between that city,
Peking, and Pauting-fu—the capital of the province—there
is an extensive swampy marsh, in many places deep enough
to be considered a lake, where a continual war is waged
against the stubbornness and perversity of nature, and where
what might fitly be called an irreclaimable morass is made
not only habitable, but very pleasant, to multitudes of in-
dustrious people by the exercise of ingenuity and indomitable
patience, such as would astonish the dwellers near the bogs
of Ireland, the moors of Scotland, or the fens of England.
Not only do the natives there supply the greater share of
their own wants by their own handicraft and devices, but they
can spare an abundance of their produce to towns in their
vicinity; for they supply largely the markets with fish,
vegetables, and wild fowl, in return for the commodities of
the dry land.

To this great basin, which is only bounded by a high wide
bank of earth that separates it from the Grand Canal and the
low country to the south, and the higher land that rises
ITS CULTIVATION. 271

towards Peking and the mountains to the westward, I sailed
in a river-boat from the Peiho in the month of March, with
the intention of visiting the chief provincial city some eighty
miles off, and though I found so many obstacles and
difficulties as to be unable to reach that place in the limited
time allowed, yet the strange and curious scenes, and the
congenial pleasures of a sort of gondola life and similar
novelties, gave me great satisfaction for five days, the remem-
brances of which one would be sorry to lose.

Passing up the ‘Shang-see hé,’ or upper western river—a
small tributary of the Peiho—through a strip of country
flat as Holland, and from which the river is banked in, a day’s
sail brought me to the region of wide waters, bulrush, and
bindweed, where white sails were scudding on in every
direction through myriads of occult clearings, like cotton
sheets hung up to dry on a grassy plain. Here the silent
highways were as clear as crystal, when compared with the
Peiho’s ochrey tint. So complicated did the various tracks
appear, that in the middle of a beautiful sheet of translucent
water, extending far beyond the horizon, there was a little
house erected, with the names of the places to which they
led, painted on its sides for the accommodation of day
passengers, while those who sailed by night were guided by
a beacon-light in a large paper lantern hoisted on a tall
pole.

For the whole distance I went—which was some forty or
fifty miles—the shallower waters were mapped out by weirs
—Elizabethan mazes made of reeds artfully disposed. The
fish were not only prevented from wandering up or down the |
rivers and streams, but were let into the narrow crooked
passages, that gradually contracted until there was not room
for them to turn, and they were conducted then at last into
a circular space, a cul-de-sac or regular trap, so arranged that
egress was impossible. The open streams and the deeper
bottoms gave lots of occupation to the throng of net skiffs,
272 A CHINESE ALBINO.

and to the fishing cormorants. There were numerous boats
with rows of these birds perched in sable majesty on a frame-
work over the gunwales—like plumes on a hearse—looking
as serious as if they were cognisant of the great responsibility
of their functions, and the benefits they confer on their
employers.

Presently I came to villages, numerous and well-built, as
thickly peopled as those we were now passing, gathered on
mounds in the middle of the lagoon, and shaded from the ~
sun by great willow-trees that flourished in an appropriate
soil, surrounded by stacks of reeds and bulrushes. A variety
of the latter was very common—the Scirpus tuberosus—the
root of which is the edible water-chestnut; from the stalks
were made those great boat-loads of mats I had often passed,
and which appear to be the staple manufacture of the
district. The people eat the roots, weave the stems, and
make tinder of the seeds.

Near, was an odd little town, as old-fashioned as any I
ever beheld, built on an earthen foundation that had been
dragged up from the muddy depths. The naine, at this
moment, I have forgotten, for it is a difficult task to re-
member such names, but it signified that its beauty ex-
ceeded its fragrance, which is a vast deal to say for a
Chinese town.

Here I saw the first and only Albino I have met in the land,
in a dense sloping wall of heads that lined the banks of the
town stream to obliteration on each side of the boat. For
here the crowd made a little stone bridge fairly totter
again, as I was the first European to visit the unfragrant
Venice.

Poor little fellow, his chalk-white skin and flaxen hair
made him so conspicuous in the crush, that I looked and
looked again, and yet could not understand what the
phenomenon was, until the impetuous crowd near him,
watching my every movement of eye or limb, discovered
PINK EYES. 273

that I regarded him as a curiosity, as they themselves
appeared to do. Quickly they carried or pushed him down
towards us, almost close to the water’s edge, all the while
joking and making fun of the little unfortunate, whose
reddish or pink eyes, and golden eyelashes, could ill bear
the sunshine, or even the daylight.
CHAPTER XVI.

BIRD SLAUGHTERING — WATER FOWL — MASKED BATTERIES — GATHERING
THE NELEMBIUM ROOT — FISHING — ROADSIDE SANCTUARIES — THE SEA
— SANDHILLS — MIDDAY INN—FIRST PEEP OF THE GREAT WALL —
VILLAGE URCHINS—‘NO TAILS’ —A FEMALE EQUESTRIAN — THE
GATHERING AT SHAN-HAI KWAN—AN INHOSPITABLE HOSTELRY — THE
VALUE OF OUR PASSPORTS — SORRY QUARTERS.

EAR this town we spent an entire day among the out-

of-doors people, as it was better situated than other places
we had sailed by, similarly located on muddy mounds. There
were patches of wheat for home consumption ; tolerably
large rice fields, loved haunts of the snipe—made and in
process of manufacture by scores of naked men who stole
and scooped the slimy earth from below the water, and
bound it with bundles of reeds, flags, or millet-stalk; there
were good gardens admirably cultivated, and stocked with
those vegetables and fruits that grow best in this almost
tropical summer ; and there were also good houses of brick,
and fine healthy immates to look at.

There was some sport going on—for away at least a mile or
two the dull booming of heavy firearms was incessant, as if an
active engagement was being fought ; so to observe it better,
if not to share in it, we had to hire asmall shallop, poled by
a rusty-moustached old man who knew the country well,
like an old huntsman, and who could make his rounds to the
easiest fences of reeds or rushes, and by a dexterous push
and a jerk of the skiff, clear them cleverly. We were
amazed.

Every foot of swamp was converted into something or
another more mysterious, more fantastic, and more unmean-
WATER FOWL. 275

ing, as we went on poling and paddling over all kinds of
infernal machines and comical contrivances reared up from
the water, lying in the water, or fixed in the weedy bottom.
But the burning of gunpowder in the distance was too
enticing and too indicative of potent amusement for us to
linger long among these plots and puzzles, which we left for
the afternoon’s solution, to afford us more surprise and more
food for curiosity and investigation after we had reached the
shooting ‘ round.’

Flocks of bald cootes, dab-chicks, water hens, and other
waders, swimmers, and divers innumerable, as if there had
been an ordained muster of the families of the Orders Gralle
and Anseres ; with — treasures to the eyes of the sports-
man—scores of the mathematically flying birds winged
rapidly over our heads in lines and angles; duck, teal,
widgeon, and even geese hurried on or settled cunningly in
places where they could not be disturbed without a timely
alarm. Vainly we tried to outflank them, or creep along
through the weeds—lying close down with only the
boatman’s arms exposed above the sides of the coracle: in
vain we tried long shots, too long to be effective, for they
whirred and flapped their wings away to some more secure
retreat, leaving us to follow if we thought fit.

The only birds we could deceive and kill were the cootes
and dab-chicks, and a few specimens of the grebe, one of
which was very like, though about half the size of the
tippet grebe, the gannet of Lincolnshire; and we ungallantly
made war on them with excitement enough. Our com-
petitors, the Chinese, who all this time have been blazing
away for miles, and scarcely permitting the birds to rest for
a minute anywhere, have not been so unsuccessful, but have
beaten us into shame with their clumsy unsightly weapons,
notwithstanding our quick loading and double barrels, at —
least two centuries ahead of the matchlock. So well had they
studied the habits of the game, and so craftily had they masked

r2
276 MASKED BATTERIES.

their presence and laid their plans, that .they were circum-
vented and shot before they knew that murderous man was
within a mile of them.

Let us skim over quietly to that intent fowler, who, with
a frame like a Hercules, a skini naked as that of a scalded
pig, and broiled black as that of a Hottentot from daily
exposure to the heat, is squatted in his low light punt
hastily loading for another addition to the pile of slaughtered
birds heaped up in a corner. He does no more than give
you a good-natured smile as he pours out the cakey powder
from a leathern bottle-shaped flask, into a bamboo measure
that serves also as a stopper to the precious receptacle, and then
drops it into the muzzle of one of the two very large match-
locks. It might be truly called a full charge. Then without
minding your presence at all, he liftsa great handfull of cast-
iron shot of as many sizes as the metal may have chosen to
assume when dropped at random into cold water, and, ignorant
of the benefit of a wadding, trickles them down the thick
barrel where they lie heavily on the powder.

The same form is gone through with the other, and then
they are firmly lashed fore and aft on the punt—one hori-
zontal to send its contents over the surface of the water, and
the other slightly elevated to sweep the air some feet higher.
Pole round his vessel. The bows and a portion of the sides
are so hidden by carelessly-tied bundles of reeds or straw,
that at a few feet you would think it a little heap of dead
vegetation, and rather tempting to the birds than otherwise:
in fact it is a masked battery done to perfection, and ex-
hibiting far more knowledge of bird nature, than did those
who inserted painted gun muzzles in the wall towers of
Peking, of western human nature.

A low loose screen of rushes stands in front, through
which the ends of the barrels protrude, and an apparently
accidental sort of a hole is made about the middle of it for
the use of the sportsman, or rather tradesman, who is now all
BIRD SLAUGHTERING. 277

ready for any large collection of birds; but it must be a large
congregation, for it would not pay to spend so much shot
over a few, and the Chinese are not capricious or fastidious
in their tastes, and will eat a coote with, perhaps, as much
gusto as they would a teal or a widgeon.

He has not long to wait where such swarms abound, for
he sees in an open piece of water.in the centre of sedges and
young rushes, a group of natatorials darkening the surface
and floating suspiciously about.

‘ How’—good, he mutters, as he jumps out behind the
punt, and sinks to his shoulders in the tepid liquid, standing
in which he takes the flint, steel, and tinder from a small bag
at hand in the boat, strikes a light, ignites the end of the coil
of the twisted slow match that is fixed in the split of the
springless hammer, and coiled round the short curved stock.
Then with an anxious look at you, as much as to say, ‘ Please
remain where you are, and let me follow my trade when I
get an opportunity,’ he walks or swims away, noiselessly and
stealthily pushing on his gunboat, with his head scarcely
above water, until he has got within twenty or twenty-five
yards of the beguiled fowls, when a thumping bang scatters
the shot among them like a hail shower, and sends about
half a dozen flutterers struggling about, and nearly as many
lying immovable on the smooth face of the pool.

Another bang in rapid succession to the first, and those
who were flying away terrified are sadly pelted, some four
of them descending lifeless to the spot they had just quitted.
This is a wholesale butcher, but he sells cheaply the results
of a day’s work, and must do the best he can.

Where reeds are growing any height above the water,
there is another kind of tradesman who pursues a mild
business with as much skill as the other. Kneeling down in
a small flat, with a light but very long gun, and peeping
through a minute division in a screen of straw hung in front,
this humble adventurer poles himself along after a crowd of
278 GATHERING THE NELEMBIUM ROOT.

decoy ducks which he feeds from time to time. As soon as
he hears the slightest sounds, or sees the wild fowl within
range, he selects the best situation whence he can do the
most damage; then he moves like a cat after a mouse, an
inch at a time, and, lighting his match, fires his fusil from
the hip, when a cloud of small iron pellets and baked millet-
seed is hurled into the game. He seldom misses, though he
does not take good aim, for he judges the distance so exactly
that the bird or birds are in the centre of the discharge.

 

Gathering the Root of the Water-lily.

But what strange animals are those struggling or
maneuvring in such a remarkable way ? the stranger is
likely to ask, as dark-coloured bodies go bobbing up and
down in the largest open space, looking like nothing you
have seen on earth, sea, or lake, either of fish, flesh, or fowl.
Your boatman propels you, according to instructions, right
in among them, and you are astonished to find that they are
CURIOUS APPLIANCES. 279

men, seemingly making awkward attempts at escape from
some monster of the water, which has seized on their legs.

A glance at the floating tray of reeds at once relieves you:
these nondescripts are gathering up the roots of the water-
lily, and many of them have their trays nearly full of them.
They are strangely dressed for their work, and have a very
uncouth appearance, with nothing but their dark brown faces
to be seen, and their heads wrapped up in a blue turban to
prevent their brains being thoroughly baked by the March
sun. Around each of their necks is a wide circular collar of
the same shape, and about the same size, as the ordinary life-
buoy, and almost as light. To this is attached a waterproof
bag of sheepskins with the wool off, about one half as long
again as their bodies, in which they live and move many
hours every day, as dry as if they were on dry land. To
this buoy, which keeps open the mouth of the sack, and
admits the air around the body without allowing the water
to enter, is fastened the raft on which the day’s store is
carried.

There go the amphibious labourers, jumping and sinking,
moving to one side and then to another, sometimes disap-
pearing altogether below the floating ring, which then looks
like the entrance to a pit or well, as they scrape and rub off
the mud by their toes, in the corners of the bag, from each
segment of the root which runs along in the tenacious
bottom ; and then, having exhumed the hidden treasure, all
but an obstinate bundle of fibres that grow at the end, and
retain a firm hold of their native earth, the operation is soon
finished. One of the hands holds, with the side of the bag
between, a pole armed with a hook. This divides or tears
away the fibrille; the precious esculent is liberated and
quickly transferred to the depository, and another is
attacked.

This is, we were told, the great nelembium-growing
country; and, to judge by the number of men burrowing
280 CATCHING FISH.

and floundering, and the quantity of these roots they can
scrape up in a few hours, the acres of flowers cultivated
must be very large. In no place where they grow did the
depth exceed six feet. When covered with full flowers, the
Chinese described the appearance of this wide lagoon as
something magnificent — like a great carpet of red, white,
and yellow or pink gems, that diffused a delicious fragrance
for miles around. One of these Tritons gave us a freshly
excavated tubercle, and nothing’but tea could have been
more refreshing in the prevailing heat and steam.

We remained a considerable time watching them, and then
betook ourselves to the fishermen, where we were amused
for as long a period in looking at their efforts to secure the
carp and eels that breed and thrive in the marsh, and for
whose capture every possible device is had recourse to.
Small hillocks and long banks of straw are thrown up all
over the country. In these the fish take refuge, and about
them boatmen hover, spearing, netting, and trapping the
finny fugitives they have just: started out with long sticks.
Nets are contrived in all sorts of shapes to drop down on
the confused fish. Conical baskets, open at both ends, are
expertly launched over them, and the captives are taken out
alive with the net or the hand by the top, and put in a tub of
water for the Tien-tsin epicures. Reed baskets, about two
and a half feet long, in form like an hour-glass, and open at
both ends by the reeds being bent inwards, leaving only a
small tapering aperture for the fish to enter by, something
like a wire mouse-trap, are strewn everywhere over the
bottom, waiting for the entrance of some old carp who soon
will discover that getting out is a much more difficult matter.

Old men continually thrust hand nets into the mud;
baskets of all shapes and sizes are planted wherever a fish
may venture; weirs, the jagged tops of which can be seen,
like white spikes, pierce the water far and near. These
plans, such as only Chinamen could suggest and act on for
ABSENCE OF LARGE TEMPLES. 281

the preservation of their species, filled us with a high sense
of Chinese thrift and ingenuity. .
* * * * *% *

Towards midday we got up high on the hill-sides again,
where the soil began to get light and scanty ; and masses of
granite, with thick veins of quartz, and jags of blue lime-
stone, impeded our progress a good deal. The country
around us was not very attractive, and looked as bare and
sterile as some of the mining or pottery districts of
Staffordshire.

The hamlets assumed the dimensions of little towns ; the
roads became wider and more traffic-worn; the roadside
inns, though very rough and untidy, had more of a business
air about them, and occurred at every half a mile or so, with
their signs of hoops and scoops dangling on the opposite side
of the way; but the usual temples, built on the choicest
spots and of the best materials, were not now to be seen.

Either the people were too poor to maintain the trains of
idle priests who loiter about these comfortable institutions, or
are too wise to tolerate them; and instead thereof, in the out-
skirts of every little town or village, we saw diminutive toys
set up, something in the temple style, in the most sequestered
nooks, and under the oldest and widest spreading willows,
with the tiny censer standing in the dwarfish doorway —
which is placarded on both sides with inscriptions; and the
great old bell, roughened by devices and figures, suspended
from the limb of a tree to call Joss’s attention to the stereo-
typed prayers, prostrations, and reiterations, as well as
incense burnings, of the rustic devotees.

Some of these altars displayed a good deal of taste and
care, and, besides being situated in the best places, where the
villagers went to smoke and rest in the hot afternoons, were
neatly decorated and painted. Two we observed with the
ends made of sandstone slabs, marked by black wavy lines,
like a water ripple — probably brought from near some coal
282 ROADSIDE SANCTUARIES.

bed — traces of this mineral being apparent in the beds of
the streams running from the hills, of the blocks of which
the foundations of the houses are built, and in the half-burnt
stones lying near the doors.

Here and there we pick up pieces of iron clay-slate on
the path, and sometimes pass between banks, red as blood

 

The Roadside Sanctuary.

almost, from ferruginous impregnation. The crops are
weak and thin, and more space appears to be given up to
pasturage than millet growing. One advantage of sowing
light-stemmed cereals between alternate ridges of the strong-
stalked millet, is witnessed in the undamaged condition of
THE SEA. 283

the former, notwithstanding the beating-down showers and
heavy gusts of yesterday, owing, no doubt, to the support
and protection they received from the lofty tough screens on
each side.

As we descended again from the heights, we discerned the
rusty outlines of a series of sandhills, which we knew must
be near the sea; and about an hour afterwards we heard its
sullen roar thundering over the sandy beach, as if it bid us
once more welcome after our long absence.

I know not whether the pleasing sensations I then expe-
rienced quite equalled those felt as we drew near the moun-
tains the second day after our departure from Tien-tsin, for
they were of such a joyful nature on both occasions that I am
not certain which gladdened me most—the hoary hills in
the distance — so very like the Grampians — or the surging
waters of the Gulf of Liatung, still lashing and writhing
about after the storm in a grand fury, and madly hurling
tons of sand per minute up on the shingly shore. M
declares that he was certain he heard the low murmur of the
waves between the awfully loud peals of thunder during the
night in that curious inn; but such a declaration does not
lessen our admiration now. We dismounted to let our
angular-sided quadrupeds, on whose backs we had hitherto
stuck as tenaciously as did the Old Man of the Mountain to
Sinbad’s, share in our joy, while we stood exultingly

 

‘Watching the waves with all their white crests dancing,
Come, like thick-plum’d squadrons to the shore
Gallantly bounding ;’

faintly trymg to realise the raptures of any one individual
in the van of Xenophon’s Ten Thousand Greeks, on that day
when the summit of the Sacred Mountain was attained;
when the enemy’s country had been traversed, and the
Persians — with the redoubtable Tissaphernes at their head
—out-marched; when the piercing winds and deep snows of
284 SAND HILLS.

Armenia were left behind, with the barbarians who harassed
them by night and by day; and the deep-blue waters of the
Euxine lay slumbering beneath, and Greek towns, with
open doors, were ready to receive them, after toiling over
many hopeless parasangs and overcoming innumerable
difficulties.

We did not shout, but never felt so much inclined to do
so. The memorable cry of ‘the sea! the sea!’ seemed to
ring in clear peals over the shore as we listened to the stern
breakers crashing inland.

We mounted again after the first burst of welcome had
been got over, and rode down towards the sandhills or
dunes, through fine yellow sand, with, at intervals, a point
of hard rock throwing itself in the way. Nearly everything
was sand and shingle. Few trees grew within two miles of
voleano-shaped, ever-changing, grit hills, and vegetation
dared not linger where it would be buried many feet from
the air and light, when the next storm that blew up the gulf
carried tons and tons of seawater and dusty sand far over it.
The highest of these dunes, standing about a mile from the
sea, did not rise more than forty or fifty feet above the level of
the beach; and while those in front, facing the gulf, were more
generally detached from each other, those on the land side
were in almost continuous ridges, running nearly north-east
of the coast line. Though the northernly gales of winter may
—nay must—add to the height and volume of these shifting
barriers, and carry the materials of which they are composed
far inland, yet as they don’t seem to encroach further on the
shore, and we could see no traces of seareed to bind the
particles into a firm mass, we presumed that the fierce winds
of summer sweeping down from the mountains threw the
sea’s discharged burden back again to the waters, and with
it a vast quantity of sand from the plain.

A little shieling of millet-stalks stood far out, almost among
the heavy rollers, and we could notice a few men, fishermen,
MIDDAY INN. 285

probably, doing something to their boats, which may have
been damaged in the foul weather of last night and yesterday.
Three or four miles farther on, we passed within two miles
of a high point jutting out into the gulf, on which stood a
temple and a few houses, looking very forlorn, though the
sun gleamed brightly on them.

We were informed, on good authority, that in the old
Chinese maps this little peninsula is marked as an island,
and that the land has been gaining gradually on the sea all
along the coast, a fact of which we had abundant proof before
our journey was concluded.

Proceeding onward we cross one or two trifling streams,
and thread through a bogey swamp, until we halt to break-
fast at a large inn flanking an ancient village. It was
a new erection, on a, to us, new principle, profusely done up
in paint, and with many fringed triangular flags hung on the
roof, in token, I suppose, of the happy termination of the
builder’s contract. A long building of the unchangeable blue
brick, the plaster lines of which, between each layer, were
agreeably whitened, while along the entire front a series of
wide open windows, to be closed when needed by black
shutters, made the place appear cool and airy beyond any
houses we had seen before. The interior had the whole of
one side snugly fitted up into neat little rooms, the small
doors of which opened into the public hall. We supposed
the other side to be arranged in the same manner from the
number of tables and stools ranged along the earthen floor.
The place looked secluded and cosy.

There was a little, quite a little, fuss when we entered,
and the inmates scarcely knew what to do for a few minutes
—whether to run for it by the back-door, or to yield to their
fate. They soon recovered from their bewilderment, and
did their best to satisfy our hunger, by boiling and steaming
whatever could be found in the caldrons and stewpans that
stood in the brick furnaces in the middle of the long room.
286 PLOUGHING BY HAND.

Our small quarter in a miniature quadrangle of the place
was not to be despised, for the woodwork was clean and new,
the window was as wide as one side of the apartment, and
the ‘kang’ on which it looked was covered with freshly
woven reed matting. Besides, there was the seabreeze,
healthful and strengthening, smelling strongly of iodine, salt,
bromine, and those other chemical elements that impart such
a bitter and brackish taste to the air which was rolling in
delicious zephyrs about us, making amends for the bad water
they gave us to drink.

A travelling breakfast, half-an-hour’s winks, with no one
to rouse us, and we were in the saddle again, greatly to the
disappointment of the poor people, who had deserted their
homes and occupations for a peep; and scarcely got the
opportunity before we were out of their sight.

The barren land was got rid of; trees, and gardens, and
houses lined the road; and for the first and only time, in the
light soil of a field of maize, we saw the plough—that
primitive wooden implement of Chinese husbandry, con-
structed by the traditional Shin-nong, the second Chinese
emperor, some two and a half thousand years before the
Christian era—and probably as simple and rude as he left it
—with the beam and single handle or shaft, the wooden
share, and the narrow, nearly horizontal light iron coulter,
that performs the functions of a mould as well as making a
scratchy furrow but a few inches deep. It was drawn by a
man at the end of the beam, the ploughman putting his
shoulder to the perpendicular bar placed for that purpose,
besides guiding the direction of the machine. Surely this is
the reverse of ploughing by steam,—the very earliest effort of
the human mind to abridge Agrarian toil.

We were about seven or eight miles from the hills, which
now began to circle round before us, as if making towards
the coast instead of proceeding parallel to it. Shan-hai
Kwan, the town or fort in or at the Great Wall, was only
FIRST PEEP OF THE GREAT WALL. 287

six miles oft, we were told, and yet we could distinguish
nothing of the world-famed barrier whose wonders have been
sounded for centuries in the West; though, full of expectancy
and eagerness, our eyes were strained to the very utmost in
scanning the mountair-tops and sides, each of us fully bent
on obtaining the first view.

Not a peak, pinnacle, or point presented the slightest
hopes of being capable of transformation, by the most ardent
observer or searcher, into a tower; and not a rift, an exposed
line of granite, or natural escarpment on their sides could
honestly be pronounced a wall built by the hands of man.
Were we mistaken? had we come the wrong way ? or, did
the structure exist at all here? I felt inclined to ask, as we
were passing through a village, and just clearmg a clump of
trees that grew near the village sanctuary. Another look in
front made me aware of a long steep ridge ascending from
the plain to the higher acclivities, and, near its upper edge,
what might have been a long twisted streak in the side of a
sandstone hill, otherwise covered with dark vegetation. It
looked tolerably like the stone fences one often sees on hill-
tops and sides in the highlands of Scotland or England, for
dividing lands or enclosing cattle or sheep. Could this be
the object so anxiously looked forward to? We were
dubious, in truth somewhat desponding. Suddenly, on the
border of the ridge, in clear relief against the intensely
blue sky, a little square tower started out from the dark-grey
background of granite, as if it had been a sentry-box for
some lonely watcher on the heights; then another shred of
brown line crept up to meet it, and down to join the piece
we had first seen, and this curved gently towards the lower
earth, hiding itself at last behind the trees and houses that
intervened.

There could be no hesitation now in consoling ourselves
for the suspense we had endured. The old frontier of Serica
had been gained, and its ancient line of demarcation and
288 A JOYFUL MOMENT.

defence — a mighty work of human industry — stood above
us with its twenty centuries of byegone years lying ap-
parently lightly upon it, as it mounted with unbroken and
flexible outline the irregular ascent. It was impossible to
resist the enthusiastic impulses that gathered thickly in my
breast. To meet my old and genial friend, the sea, once
more, and to make the acquaintanceship of one of the
world’s greatest and, perhaps, most distant wonders all in
one day, was a compensation I could never have anticipated
aweek ago. M was not behind in submitting to the bliss:
ful agitation of mind inseparable from such an occasion :—

 

‘ Joy had the like conception in our eyes,
And, at that instant, like a babe sprung up.’

Another large village was entered, with a very wide level
road passing through; and the houses, good sized and of
brick, were standing on banks on each side. The inmates,
male and female, were sitting under the trees or at their
doors smoking the afternoon calamut, which they hastily
dropped to run to the nearest and most convenient spots
where they might stare at us, calling loudly to those within
to hurry out and look at the strange men. Of course, un-
controllable curiosity was the predominant characteristic of
all their sayings and doings. Exclamations and low whisper-
ings of astonishment were in every corner. All was won-
derful about us; all was incomprehensible on which they
rested their vision.

In common courtesy we were bound to indulge them, and
were pleased to observe that the ladies stood the test of our
approach with the greatest nonchalance, sometimes merging
into good-natured nods and bland smiles from their not at all
disagreeable little faces. Those who had been rather slow
or late in coming out made the most marvellous ia to
overtake our party with their Pandean feet.

O thgse village urchins! those breeched, tailed, and
‘NO TAIL.’ 289

Jacketed sprouts of manhood, figments of humanity, molecules
of mischief and uproarious riot, whose smallest ration of
existence seemed tainted with the largest adulteration of
jocular precocity and playful annoyance! They buzzed about
us like hives of bees, tiring us out a thousand times more by
their importunities, remarks, shouts, and bodily obstructions
than all our other ordeals of travel. They were the first to
notice and attack us, the nimblest to follow on our track, to
outflank us, to form a howling vanguard as we entered a
town, and a yelling rearguard when quitting it; and were in
full force here. What aggravated the case, the old and adult
population were certain to lend them their countenance and
applause, when they made any laughable remarks.

We bore it all with the fortitude of martyrs, not quite
oblivious to the fact that we were once young ourselves, and
would have madly entered the ranks of any mob to hoot
and cry, did two North American Indians chance to patrole
the streets of our boyhood’s city in their war paint ; but we
made a point of never encouraging them in their hobgob-
linish freaks by speaking or sharing in their merriment.
Nevertheless, the most austere individual must have shaken
the reefs out of his sides with mirth, had he heard the ring-
ing peals of derisive laughter that broke out from these
small fry, re-echoed by the parents on the banks, when
I removed my turban to dry the perspiration, that never
ceased rolling down forehead and face. One of the ring-
leaders caught a sight of my short-cropped hair, and bawled
out, in his most humorous vein—‘ Look! look, ha, ha! The
funny stranger has got no tail, he has got no tail!’ and he
tumbled and jumped like a mad elf.

About’ a mile beyond this hornet’s nest we met a fair
damsel, astride upon a donkey, led by a youth about twelve
years of age who might either be son or brother to the gentle
creature. She was masked by the disgusting paint that
glares out everywhere on the faces of these women, though

u \

‘

\
290 A FEMALE EQUESTRIAN.

their necks may have been innocent of water for months, and
as filthy as a beggar’s. There was a most imposing get-up
of the hair, in another style to any we had seen; a round
ball on the top, shoe-horn behind, and wings on each side,
with long silver transverse skewers sticking out about a foot

 

 

A Lady on Donkey-back.

from her head, and terminated by a button of: red silk, and
one or two little pennons waving behind. Enclosed in the
capacious blue silk pelisse, no more of her could be seen than
the lower part of her pink trousers, and the stumpy em-
broidered shoes, scarcely touching the stirrups.

The path was not a wide one, so we had to draw near each
other in order to pass; but she never gave any external
token of alarm, and faced us with an unmoved countenance,
which she maintained until we had passed, though her sloe-
black eyes,—dull beads compared to those at Lanchow,—were
skimming busily over us the whole time. A very exagge-
rated specimen of the masculine gender, who may have been
A DISAPPOINTMENT. 291

husband or cicisbeo to the smooth-featured equestrian,
walked after her with a ponderous lance, and looked rather
jealous when we turned round to see how this mixture of
filth and finery appeared from behind.

The highway widened suddenly into a level plain covered
with broken stones and pebbles to a very inconvenient
degree, and with but few houses to mar the view for two or
three miles. On this the public road from Peking through
Yung-ping opened to our left, and to our front we beheld
what seemed an immense battlemented wall stretching from
that on the elevated ground far away towards the sea, with
some four towers quite new, the middle as massive looking
and standing nearly as high and grand as those of Peking.
A little farther on, and we came to an inn on somewhat of a
grand scale, into the courtyard of which our gyp led the way.
The small rooms on two sides of the quadrangle were
externally clean and tidy, and the open doors were furnished
with cane screens, that gave one a promise of fresh air and a
cool bedroom. The yard itself was not very sweet in its
trodden and unswept surface, but the numberless wooden
troughs that almost filled it showed that it had often many
occupants.

The landlord came out and civilly saluted us, and Ma-foo
had even gone so far as to engage a room for our reception,
when we were told that the town at the Wall was still four
miles a-head ; and as we considered it expedient to spend as
much of our limited time as could be spared nearer that
structure, we could not stay here, so thanked the disappointed
proprietor for his politeness, and left. Afterwards, we re-
gretted that we had not remained.

Our approach to the square bastions indicated the town of
Shan-hai-Kwan. On the new map of the north-east provinces
of China this town is named Ning-hai, but here it was only
known by this name. We were much retarded by loose
stones, and sunset was drawing near; after which we knew

v2
292 THE SHIH-HO.

that all communication with the place would be suspended by
the closing of the gates.

On an upland near the foot of the hills, in the enclosure of
an earthen bank, was a vacant camp of about a mile in length,
composed of huts in rows and blocks, not unlike those of
Aldershot, but perhaps more comfortable, because built of
stone and mud. The strange feature of this plain was its
stillness. Scarcely a creature was to be seen stirring for miles
around, and there was this large and important city close
by, as hushed and lifeless without its gates as if the people
had all been dead, or hunted. away by some fearful plague.
There was the wall of ages, too, looking as old-fashioned,
dreary, and obsolete as if it was standing ruinous in the valley
of Mesopotamia, sole witness of the old world that had passed
from before it like a shadow. Confronted by this venerable
edifice in such a lonesome situation, it was impossible not to
feel a tumult of indescribable sensations crowding in one’s
mind as we slowly approached its antiquated precincts, and I
made a profound salaam to a monument that had survived
the troubles and turmoils of barbarism and primeval civili-
sation, the rattling storms and tempests, arctic and antarctic
extremes of temperature, changes of dynasties, and the ever
transforming and demolishing fingers of Time.

We encountered nothing, with the exception of a row of
open-fronted houses like inns, and a temple in ruins that
stood in the way, and was inhabited by a single priest, ragged
and dirty as any mendicant, of whom we enquired the easiest
road to the gate. About sunset we crossed a fordable
stream, the Shih-hé, or Stony river, on whose banks lay some
rotting flats, deprived of occupation by the shallowness and
rocky nature of the noisy foaming torrent. We were then
close to a newly-raised plaster-work intended for defence, and
spreading out in a wide semicircle to the city wall. Creeping
through the constricted wooden gateway, we were once more
launched into the Augean streets of a foul suburb, through
A GRATUITOUS HERALD. 293

which we waded and sprawled, until M., who was riding
the freshest pony, apprehensive of the gates being closed,
hurried on in front with Ma-foo as interpreter, leaving me to
bring on the half-foundered cart as best I could, and run the
gauntlet in slow time of hundreds of people, who assembled
on every available dry spot (they were scarce), and on the
roofs of the houses, to look at the far-travelled strangers.

We profited by the exertions of a waggish Chinaman in a
broad-leaved straw hat, who bestrode a jackass that was en-
dowed with the faculty of tossing its rider over its ears when-
ever it had a mind to get rid of him. This man, by his
good humour, had so far ingratiated himself into our groom’s
favour as to elicit all the necessary information about us.
We soon had an audience increasing in numbers like a pack
of jackalls round a piece of carrion, as he went in front
trumpeting out, in his sonorous voice, ‘Ta ying-kwoh li,’
‘the great English nation comes ’—a most unpardonable, as it
was a most arrant exaggeration, to which, however, his
hearers did not subscribe any great degree of credit or even
attention, so wrapt up were they in the contemplation of the
solitary and dusty ‘ English nation,’ carried on the back of a
tired pony through their unmerciful streets.

The suburb was only about half a mile in width, yet,
before I had got half way through it, the thoroughfare that
looked so vacant and dull but a few minutes before, was a
moving causeway of animation and tumult. Like an old
Highland pibroch or gathering, the movement was at first
slow and distinct. A family would start out from a door
here, another would sally out from a door there ; a little
shop ejected both owner and customers ; a store would send
forth a swarm of coolies, proprietor, and proprietor’s sons.
The buzz and commotion gradually increased as the move-
ment quickened—doors opened everywhere—lanes and pas-
sages vomited crowds of crushing individuals ; old and young
hurry on faster and faster; decrepit old men, with a degree
294 A HURRIED GATHERING.

of agility which must be not only unusual but unnatural to
their physical condition, take extraordinary flying leaps
across the puddles that separate them from us; the young
and middle-aged race through them as if mad, or like the
swine of Gergesenes, possessed of evil spirits, who would
eventually drown them in their own ditches.

Away they tear, their tails behind,

‘Like streamers flying in the wind,’

unheeding alike the mud, the tumbles, jostles, and tramp-
lings, but forcing, squeezing, crushing, and urging on their
way in the most ridiculous and outrageous manner, as the
sounds of the said pibroch when it has gained its most viva-
cious prestissimo of commingling notes. Scouts flew in ad-
vance, like bearers of the fiery cross, who roused the sober
tenants to the utmost verge of wonderment and excitability
by their inflaming tidings, and gave the crippled, the old and
young, the maids and matrons, an opportunity of contributing
to the press and clamour, and the pestilential youngsters full
time to brace themselves for the row and riot. So much
‘bobbery,’ so much rushing to and fro, perfectly upset me
in the speedily-darkening mélée, in which I was struggling
to shake myself free ; and had not the city gate been reached,
and had I not perceived M. standing there to guide me
through, I almost think I should have missed the way.
Fortunately, he had arrived just as the massive leaves of
the gate were being closed, and contrived to get them kept
open for me; and with as many of the rout and rabble as
could force their active bodies through, I passed into the
town. Under such circumstances, to examine the quality or
extent of the place might well be put at the head of a
list of impossible things. Our determination to overleap the
banks, walls, and seas of heads, and obtain as much infor-
mation as could be gained in a four-miles-an-hour pace
through deviously tracked streets, was completely baulked.
THE GATES OF SHAN-HAI KWAN. 295

We could only notice that the western gate, by which we
entered, was like all other gates of Chinese towns we have
seen here, in being double —the one at an angle to the other.
This was done, the Tien-tsin lower orders say, because,
besides being more difficult for the assault of a temporal
enemy, this disposition of the entrances affords a far more
safe and certain protection from the wily and subtle efforts
of the fire-devil to effect an ingress, as his course is so
straight, or his body is so unwieldy, that the sudden bend
frustrates his incendiary propensities towards the interior
economy of walled cities, as witches were imagined to be
unable to cross a running stream in the superstitious days of
England and Scotland. Thus are the houses guaranteed
against fire by an insurance, that, to say the least of it, costs
little beyond the faith necessary to rely on its efficacy.

This being one of the chief entrances to the ‘ Hill Sea
Barrier,’ as the title of the town implies, as well as one of
the principal points of exit towards Old China from Mant-
churia, it is strong and well cared for, being in height and
width little inferior to the gates of the Chinese capital, and
having on its summit one of those enormous ark-like struc-
tures that gives them such a massive appearance, with tiers
of closely-set embrasures blocked by shutters with painted
gun muzzles looking out on the passengers below.

The outer gate faced to the east, and a wretchedly
smashed-up stone pavement, apparently of granite slabs,
filled up the short space that led from it to the mner or
western one. The houses and shops were old-looking, and
all single-storied, and, as they had begun to light up for the
evening, the feeble opaqueish illumination rendered by stray
lanterns of paper, horn, or oiled silk, only made their ever-
lastingly dusky interiors the more sombre and forbidding,
and lent a more unfavourable shade to what must be at best
but a mediocre Chinese town. The streets were small deltas
thrown up by Niles whose sources were not difficult to trace,
296 A PANIC.

and which were continually overflowing their borders, and
leaving deposits of organic and inorganic matter quite incon-
ceivable, in a nasal sense, out of China. It required a good
bridle hand, an active pair of heels, and some severe olfac-
tory stifling, to wend a zigzag course that was at all bear-
able ; though our ponies were either so tired or so attached
to the grateful perfumes as to incur some punishment, rather
than forsake these luxuriantly balmy pools of their native
land.

As the distance from the gate lengthened, so the excite-
ment strengthened: the place was in a furore of unalloyed
curiosity, of such a fervent quality that it should not be men-
tioned in the same breath with any marks of that feeling we
had: ever before witnessed. It was curiosity untarnished
and unblemished by the humblest speck of surface refinement
or shams at concealment, that made the surprised citizens
look really as they felt, and that drove them to little acts
unbecoming such a sedate people.

We used to think that M‘Crie’s description of ‘John
Knox is come,’ in his Life of that worthy, was the best picture
of astonishment and doubt we had read anywhere; and we
remembered Shakespeare’s delineation of a people in the
same state, when he makes one of his characters declare
that—‘ There was speech in their dumbness, language in
their very gesture ; they looked, as they had heard of a world
ransomed, or one destroyed ; a notable passion of wonder ap-
peared in them ; but the wisest beholder, that knew no more
but seeing, could not say if the importance were joy or
sorrow.’

But we could not have formed a proper estimate of what
a regular panic of amazement and feverish inquisitiveness
was, until now. Burgher and boy, maid and matron, were
alike infected. Everything was neglected for the time
being ; the entire population seemed to have gathered about
us, and knew not what to think or do, except rush about
THE MANDARIN’S INN. 997

and make a confused din. They bore no resemblance to a
people gifted with the slightest modicum of what we gave
them credit for in a moderate degree, common sense. They
acted
‘ Like to a sort of steers,
*Mongst whom some beast of strange and foreign guise

Unawares has chanced, far straying from his peers:
So did their ghastly gaze betray their hidden fears.’

By the time we had reached the centre of the city, where
stood a brick tower out of repair, and with four low arches
to the cardinal points of the compass, through which ran the
four main streets, each of them more slovenly looking than
the one we were in, the thoroughfare was crammed with the
crowd, and we were bothered by conflicting reports from a
hundred throats as to the whereabouts of the best, or even
any, inn at which we might put up, and thus escape from the
jangling concourse.

Ma-foo had been sent to discover one down some unfathom-
able higgledypiggledy lane, and we, to save ourselves from
instant ‘squash,’ had to keep moving on, until we nearly
traversed the breadth of the city,—which might be a half or
three-quarters of a mile,—and were near the wall on the
opposite side from that we entered by, when some one in
the crowd called out, ‘There is the mandarin’s inn.’ Sure
enough there was the gate of an inn, flanked by good-looking
houses, being hurriedly closed on our approach, and barred
within by somebody whose fears made him very clumsy at
the job.

Our prospects of rest for the night were desperate—and
desperate cases require desperate remedies. We thought
wistfully of the comfortable quarters forsaken a few miles
off, where we might then have been enjoying the very few
comforts that go to make up the sum total of a Chinese inn.
But no time was to be lost in vain regrets. It was dark,
and the town gates before and behind were shut and bolted,
298 THE BRAVE GATE-KEEPER.

and nothing would cause them to be opened again before
daybreak next morning. This was the only house of refuge
for us, and it must be undauntedly tried.

M. rode up to the doors, which the trembling hands of
the craven mortal behind had not yet fastened; and first
knocking, then inserting the end of his riding-whip between
their gaping edges, with a gentle push it opened, and we
rode in amid the crush of people who thronged around us,
and who were deaf to all entreaties or commands of ours to
stay behind. Seeing the necessity of clearing them out
again, and keeping them out, I rode up to a terror-stricken
person who I thought was the brave Horatius, the keeper of
the gate, and called to him to close it quickly and send
away the crowd. He gave me one look—only one—of the
intensest horror and dismay I ever saw depicted on the coun-
tenance of man, and fled as if pursued for his life, turning
neither to the right nor left until he had reached the top of the
courtyard, where he jumped at a bound a flight of four or five
steps, and disappeared, like a harlequin, through the doorway
of a little building. Thither we were bound to follow him,
as the only means of settling the question as to whether
accommodation was to be given us in this establishment or
not, or where we were to go for the night.

Accordingly dismounting, and making strong demonstra-
tions to the foremost of the multitude with whips and fists,
we struggled into what did not give us the idea of being either
inn, shop, office, or private dwelling-house, but a lively mix-
ture or combination of all four. One room, partially lighted
up by a large square glass lantern, profusely covered with
painted flowers and birds that looked particularly unhealthy
and hectic above the weak glow of the flickering tallow dips
within, contained a counter on the right with a long form in
front of it. Before us was another counter or table, behind
which, in the farthest corner of the room, sat a dumpy,
TERRIFIED DOMESTICS. 299

excessively nervous-looking little man, with a very round
face, a very globular head, and a very flat physiognomy,
twirling his thumbs in a frenzy of agitation and dread, and
wearing such a profoundly comical expression of seriousness
about his puffy little eyes and superboiled dumpling coun-
tenance—he might have been sitting for a portrait of Mr.
Pickwick in one of his dilemmas—that, if it had been to
save the night’s lodging, we could not forbear laughing
heartily.

Above his head was the household tablet in the form of a
small temple, with a glass front, in which dwelt the little
idol—a model to the life of the distressed mortal below—
before whom glimmered and smoked a few attenuated cinna-
mon-coloured incense-sticks. To the left was a small room, so
well supplied with lamp and candles, that every nook and niche
was seen to be covered and clothed and filled with all sorts
and conditions of books and papers, which for length and
size looked ominously like hotel-keepers’ bills, with the
leading characteristics of which we had already become
sufficiently familiar.

In this place, guarded as it was from that we were in by a
low half door, the majority of the dwellers had taken refuge
—inhived themselves in the innermost crannies, and behind
tables, stools, and chairs, hiding their heads as if from
damage or sudden death. Such a set of fools the world
never before produced.

We stood in the middle of the floor near to a large brass
brazier, with a charcoal fire striving to burn itself out of our
presence, below an assemblage of kettles, pots, and other
tea-making apparatus, wondering how long this shock was to
last, and unable to make any breach in the absurdity of the
chicken-hearted bumpkins, who seemed not to hear a word
addressed to them by us. Our minds were made up to stay
until they either complied with our wishes, or made them-
300 A DOUBTFUL LANDLORD.

selves complaisant enough to direct us elsewhere, so we
quietly and coolly seated ourselves on the form until Ma-foo
should return from his search.

Not: many minutes elapsed before he did show himself,
and apprised us that there was no other inn in the town (?),
and he did not know what we were to do. He was told to
enquire, once for all, if the people of this house would oblige
us by letting us have a room and forage for our ponies on
payment, and to inform them that we were travellers, and
not wild beasts or savages at large. On hearing M. talk in
this strain to their countrymen, the cravens picked up a few
grains of courage, and risked themselves in an upright
posture behind their respective bulwarks, though their fid-
gety movements betrayed the uneasiness they felt at heart
when we looked at them.

Ma-foo advanced to my acquaintance, whose pigmy
features had undergone a change from the workings of the
diluted dregs of evanescent spirits he had managed to retain
in their small abode, and enquired as he was bid. The little
man, who, we surmised, was the landlord, screwed his lips
into a purse mouth, elevated his scrubby eyebrows until
they almost ran foul of the blue shaven crown, and bringing
out his body—so nicely swaddled and swathed-up in the
softest and whitest of cottons, and his answer at the same
time, leant on the table with his plump childish paws to give
dignity and force to his sentiments, which were compressed
into a stern ‘mae-yo,’ and seemed resolved to adhere to
his negative decision, so long as his adherents and supporters
showed front, and no injury was done to his rotund carcase.

Our groom remonstrated and argued; little pig-tail was
unmercifully obstinate, and growing quite imperious. Every
word was echoed in the courtyard by the fagging mob, now
so surcharged with presuming boldness and unbearable in-
quisitiveness, arismg from the position assumed by their
compatriot within, as to enter the house and gather round us
EXACTED RESPECT. 301

with the greatest audacity and brusqueness, until we were
almost suffocated.

When M. requested them to leave, and not obstruct the
entrance of the air we so much required, they began to laugh
and giggle, and showed no disposition to move, except farther
into the room. Their esteem or awe, it was plain, had
vanished, and we were to be the subjects of their mirth and
ridicule, unless these were to be restored to them again by
the sole measure at our disposal. Respect us they must,
and that attribute, in the words of Greville, ‘is better pro-
cured by exacting than soliciting it.’

A charge is made among them with a riding-whip, and,
without a blow being inflicted on their backs, they flee as
would a crowd at a fair, did a lion or a tiger escape from its
den and spring among the horrified spectators.

But this suspended all diplomatic correspondence between
our zealous representative and the head of the house. Little
man and nearly all the others look aghast and relapse into
their abject terror again. One droll old fellow we had not
noticed before, with an orbicular laughing face, a pair of keen
glancing eyes, and a large balloon paunch, gets himself on the
other side of the counter a good way off, and grins and chuckles
the whole evening, as if he saw something very funny in our
perplexing situation, or in the terror and drivelling of his
co-mates.

In a few minutes our host stealthily beckons over, and is
seen whispering to, a long, bow-legged Chinese, who is
dressed in white with large dark brown thigh-reaching
gaiters, and this party moves quietly towards the door,
keeping the hot brazier between himself and our side of the
room. Atanother signal a domestic comes out of his lurking-
place and proceeds to give us tea from one of the kettles,
for which we try to feel grateful, though we know it is given
only to keep us in play until something turns up, as we
would have baited and fed a wild beast until a servant had
302 WORTHLESS PASSPORTS.

time to bring us a gun for its destruction. The groom is
sent off once more on a survey for a house of any sort that
will admit us for a few hours.

In the meantime a mandarin’s clerk or lictor, a strong
bouncing fellow with a good deal of false authority hanging
stiffly about his thick neck and wide shoulders, comes in, and.
after a small confabulation with his unserene majesty, begins
to reason with us, telling what we are sorry to believe to be a
small narrative of fibs and crammers about the want of room,
every place occupied, and the impossibility of giving us
any assistance.

For the first time since leaving we must have recourse to
our passports, and demand as a right that aid which they
refused. The papers were produced, and evidently surprised
the whole of the inmates, who thronged round to read them.
The big man shakes his head, and the others retire unmoved.
I wonder what they thought !

Ma-foo comes back again with the same old story and the
same old repulsive expression about his features that they
wore whenever he was unfortunate.

Almost at the same time a great bustle was heard
outside: a lot of people rushed in, and as quickly rushed
out. One of us got up and looked at them: there was
a good deal of confusion and shouting and rumbling;
all in the room, ourselves among the number, looked as if
they expected something wonderful. At last, relief came —
the mountain brought forth, not a mouse, but a mandarin—
a tall, bony apparition of a man, in a long white robe, that lay
on his beefless framework like a winding sheet, with deep-
set eyes in a Dante-shaped head, and an aquiline nose, long,
thin, and rather hooked, above a scanty moustache of about
a dozen lengthy black hairs on each side that grew from the
narrow upper lip of a large mouth. His face was so
European, and so unlike the general run of Chinese faces,
that, in the middle of the sensation created by his entrance, I
A MAGNATE. 303

could scarcely take my eyes from it. He was also pale and
thoughtful-looking, I imagined, as he walked in with an easy
dignified air, carrying a fan, which the sultriness of the night
caused him to use vigorously, in a long skeleton hand, the
thumb of which was encircled by a wide heavy ring of
greenish-white jade stone.

 

Inn at the Wall—the useless Passport.

This official was accompanied by a small army—a perfect
posse comitatus of retainers and ragamuffins, bearing huge
lanterns of oiled paper covered with mystic characters, and
wearing conical straw hats to distinguish them from their
scampish brethren outside. They also strode in with a
304 CHINESE DANDIES.

freedom and a mock military bearing, that would at other
times have excited our risibility. But this was no moment
to indulge in humour. All the Chinese in the establishment
rise to their feet, look profound, and salute the great man by
joined hands in front, which he returns, then gives us, en
passant, several jerks of his almost fleshless head and neck,
and with such violence that we fear the osseous structure
will snap and tumble the skull at our feet. He at once
enters into business with the little host, who is now himself
again, and is very active in helping the big lean man
to a cup of scalding tea; all the others join in the conver-
sation unasked. ‘The lictor has got rid of a good quantity
of the pompous display he made before the arrival of his
superior, and now speaks in a servile tone: several young
dandies, evidently swells and men about town, come skipping
in noiselessly in their white-soled shoes, with dazzling white
socks forming a distinct stratum between the black uppers
of the shoes and the bottoms of their blue or brown silk
bandage-tied leggings, and white silken coats. Their queues
are faultlessly plaited, and with the long embraided plaits of
black silk cord that form a tassel at the end, are almost
sweeping the ground. Everything about them bears the
impress of dollishness and affectation as they swagger, strut,
or skip up to where the mandarin sits, make a deep but
somewhat offhand bow to that personage and to the elders
of the party, and then, with a good amount of levity, betake
themselves to the office, from whence they can drawl or lisp,
if their dandyism carries them so far into civilisation, and
have a satisfactory look at us; the jabbering members of the
congregation outside, meanwhile, making tenfold more noise
than they had yet done, and striving to press themselves
through the heterogeneous body-guard of the ‘ Ta-yin.’

We had read in a translation of an old Chinese record an
amusing account, which we then thought a burlesque or
satire, of the first appearance in modern times of Europeans
UNACCOUNTABLE CURIOSITY. 305

in the ‘Empire of the Centre,’ in which it was stated
that—

‘ During the reign of Ching-ti (1506), foreigners from the
West, called Fa-lan-ki, or Franks, who said they had tribute,
abruptly entered the Bogue,* and, by their tremendously loud
guns, shook the place far and near. This was reported at
Court, and an order returned to drive them away immediately,
and stop the trade. At about this time also, the Hollanders,
who in ancient times inhabited a wild territory, and had no
intercourse with China, came to Macao in two or three large
ships. Their clothes and their hair were red, their bodies
tall; they had blue eyes deep sunk in their heads. Their
feet were one cubit and two-tenths long, and they frightened
the people by their strange appearance.’

But that was a long time ago; and the Chinese, in every
part of China, ought to have become tolerably familiar with
the likenesses and characters of the various nations who had
traded, and fought, and travelled among them since then.

Even of Lord Macartney’s visit, the chronicler used mild
language when he said that, ‘in the fifty-eighth year of
Kien-lung, the English, from the north west extremity of the
world, and who from ancient times to the present had never
reached the Middle Land, passed over an immense ocean, and
came to the Court of the Universal Sovereign.’

Here we were within two hundred miles of that Court,
and yet were looked upon with as much amazement, curiosity,
and terror, as if we had been the primal Dutchmen or Franks
who gave them such an outrageous opinion of Hesperians in
general by their loud guns and owtré figures. Our hair was
neither red, nor our eyes blue; our noses might be a little
longer than theirs, but were not so odd as the hawk-beak of
that mandarin who sat discussing our fate with so much
gravity. The garb we wore might be dusty and weather-

* The chief embouchure of the Canton river.
x
306 STRANGE OPINIONS.

stained, but it was not a flaming red; and our boots, in
which we did not stand very tall, though of a strange
material, did not come quite up to the cubit and two-tenths
in length of foot. So, what in the name of wonder did they
behold in us to excite them so rabidly?

Even at Talien-whan bay, during the encampment of the
army there, when we happened to ride a long way into the
country, and through populous villages, we found the simple-
minded rustics far more decorous in their behaviour towards
us, and reasoning far more sensibly than these mad towns-
people at our appearance among them. ‘They said we were
‘Yang-yin,’ or Men of the Sea; that we lived always on
those ships which they saw in the bay, leading in them a
nomadising, seaweedy existence; and that when our legs
were cramped by long confinement, we stopped at the nearest
land, and lived in the white canvas houses until well again.
With this, they seemed to rest content. Not so these Shan-
hai-kwanites. Nothing would tranquillise them, and they
made themselves very bothersome and nonsensical about us.

Negotiations were going on meanwhile; the matter had
been formally explained to the magistrate by some of those
about him; and Ma-foo was called up, and underwent a
rather close examination, after arranging his tail down his
back, and making a half-curtsey, half-bow to his worship.

The mandarin, having seen and scrutinised our passports
with no evident satisfaction, endeavoured to elicit all sorts of
information from our servant, merely for the sake, we thought,
of asking questions and doing something—such as enquiring
if there were any more Englishmen at Tien-tsin when we
left? were we really going to Newchwang? what were we,
and where did we come from? and so on.

This over, M. got into conversation with the functionary,
and was particularly asked why he came such a long, weary
distance overland to Newchwang, when he might so much
more comfortably and readily have gone by sea: all the time
TSUNG’S LETTERS. 307

shirking the main point—the matter of lodgings—which was
still as much in abeyance as on our arrival. M. mentioned
this; but the man of probity, alas! commenced shuffling and
prevaricating in a very undignified way. He was gently
reminded that the passport contained a request that the civil
and military authorities should give us protection and aid, in
case of necessity ; and that this was a case in which we required
aid. He, however, continued to demur and hang fire, until
the order given to us by Tsung, the Imperial Commissioner
at Tien-tsin, happened to be pulled out of its bag. This was
greedily laid hold of, and appeared to have far more effect
than the harsh, stiff, unpalateable paper of the English pass-
port; for no sooner had his quick eye ran over its contents
than a change became visible. Our names were written
down on a sheet of whitey-brown tissue paper, obsequiously
brought in with the writing-slab and brush by the little
landlord; this was put in the hands of an attendant, and the
business of the Court was over—we were to be accommodated.

Things now wore quite another aspect, through the talis-
manic spell wrought by the potent fingers of Tsung. We
were friends, and for the first time began to interchange
civilities. M.’s silver snuff-box was unpocketed and handed
round, much to the admiration of everybody within and
without; the snuff was plastered in brown layers about
nostrils and upper lips; and after having well scalded our
tongues with boiling water, the Ta-Yin took his leave, with
the same clash of chair-bearers and bustle of lantern-carriers
with which he had made his advent in less auspicious moments,
bestowing on us a majestic bow, and another twist of the
mummified neck and skull before he departed, which formality
we took care to return with as much grace as ‘ barbarians’
could be supposed to possess.

Lanterns were procured by the domestics, and we were
shown our apartments, which we soon perceived were not in
the most favoured portions of the house, but at the bottom of

x 2
308 ANNOYING FUNCTIONARIES.

a back court-yard, crowded with mules, ponies, and donkeys.
A little wall enclosed the dwarfish space in front of the
outer door, leading to as filthy a kennel as we had been in
since the night we left Tien-tsin. Musty, dusty, and foul, it
had not been occupied for years. The walls were black and
bare, and gave ample refuge and a permanent home to hundreds
of gigantic spiders, whose extensive meshes did not suffice to
thin the numbers of the thousands of flies who swarmed
about our heads, buzzing and droning, delighted with the
new arrivals.

The room contained nothing but old lumber and rubbish,
and the windows were falling to pieces; and altogether we
were as heartily disgusted at our treatment by these officials
and noddies of landlords as we could well be. Their object,
we had too much reason to believe, was to humbug us in
every possible way, and in this particular instance they were
successful ; for finding that they might not turn us out of
the house with impunity, they gave us the most disgraceful
pigstye in the place; aware that we had no alternative but
to remain and do as best we might until the morning.

Though we exhibited no acerbity or bitterness at such
conduct, but plainly and dispassionately told those who
lighted us down how very unkind it was to treat tired
strangers so badly, we felt angry at being so duped and
tricked. While we were at dinner, and trying to compen-
sate for the fatigues and fasts of a long day, and the
vexations of a hambugging evening, under the surveillance of
countless eyes glaring everywhere around us, a small military
mandarin —in so far as wearing alow grade brass button
made him small—for he was as tall as most men, as scraggy
as any man could be, and had shocking bad teeth, entered
the room without any ceremony, followed by all the tag-rag
and bob-tail these petty officials collect round them, and
these again backed by masses of people of nearly all ages.

He was a vulgar-looking man, and made a slight’ genu-
INSPECTION OF PASSPORTS. 309

flexion as he sat down unbidden on the edge of the brick
oven-bed on which we were to sleep. His business was
quizzing, and as we paid him no very marked attention, but
thought him rude and officious in disturbing us at that late
hour, Ma-foo was again subjected to the tearing and rending
operation. When this was effected he began on us. My
companion, who, doubtless, thoroughly appreciates the
Chinese character for what it is worth, and could see as far
as many into the deceitful motives that too often govern
their acts of intercourse with foreigners, treated him very
coolly and indifferently as he deserved. He wished to see
our passports, and when he had got them tried to copy out
some of the Chinese words, but either from excitement or
timidity he could not write, and a young scribe in his pro-
miscuous suite stepped forward to the rescue and copied
what he desired. He then asked to see Tsung’s missive, but
this was too much of a good thing to be allowed.

M. told him that the production of that private document
was neither necessary nor justifiable so long as we possessed
those ordained by the Treaty (a single copy of which we did
not see in any town or village along the whole of our
journey), and that they alone must suffice to carry us to our
destination ; at the same time—bringing out the manuscript in
question—to show what value we placed upon it, we threatened
to tear it up into fragments before his face, and ended by
asking the astounded brass button if the authorised document
was good or bad ? if it was the former, why did they wish to
see Tsung’s? if the latter, we would return to Peking or
Tien-tsin in the morning, and complain of the unfriendliness,
stupidity, or perversity of the officials at the Great Wall.

The fellow felt he dared not ignore the printed form, and
said it was good, but asked if we would oblige him with a look
at the other, as he must see it before going away. Nothing
but our tired condition, the tempestuous crowd surging out-
side, that excluded every breath of air from us, and the
310 DESIRE TO ASCEND THE HILLS.

sense of heart-sickness that arose from these annoyances,
induced us to lend him the coveted paper, which, having
perused, he returned. Some sherry was offered, but he
would not touch it; and in return he presented his snuff
bottle or bottles — two curious china affairs fastened back to
back like the Siamese twins—but we also declined.

Thus ended the passport business for the night. We
prepared to go to sleep, and the boorish mandarin took the
hint ; but before he went, M. enquired if we could ascend
the hills in the morning. This we were anxious to do,
because our route hitherto between this place and the
Pehtang-hé had been somewhat enigmatical, because of some
great inaccuracies in the most recent maps which we had
provided ourselves with; and as the end of the Great Wall
abutting on the Gulf had been properly fixed as to latitude
and longitude in the surveys made by our navy, we had
only to take the bearings of several important and con-
spicuous landmarks that we had passed and noted, with
the wall, to enable us to form some idea of the progress we
had made.

Perhaps there was also a latent desire to scramble to the
tops of those great peaks over which the Titanic fence wan-
dered, and to judge for ourselves whether the wonder on
the heights was as wonderful as it appeared to be on the
plain and the lower levels of the sloping hills. We longed
once more, in fact, to bend a willing knee against the side
of the steepest mountain we could find, and where so con-
venient? where could the exertion serve so many purposes
as here? The modern Excelsiors had climbed the highest
peaks all over the world almost, and why should these rugged
and eld steeps, so long locked up in inaccessible restrictions,
escape ?

We thought there could not be the slightest shadow of an
objection to such a proposal, but we were wrong, for to our
astonishment the mandarin was as ready with a No, as if it
MIDNIGHT VISITORS. 311

had been in his mouth when he was born. Why could we
not go to the hills? Because there were no roads, and the
hills were difficult of access, and many things might happen
—and every obstacle will be thrown in your way, he might
have said; but we wished to hear no more. So long as the
difficulty rested with ourselves we were content to risk the
absence of roads, and to rely on limbs that had been pliant
enough over heather and steep rock not many years ago.

We were visited no more that night by officials or
myrmidons of the local government to visé our passports, but
we were pestered by relays of scouts from the crowd, who
kept continually labouring to fill the room with their bodies
and stench, notwithstanding they saw others expelled in a
rather ignominious manner. The people behaved not
violently, certainly, but like spoilt children. No matter
whether we were eating, writing, or. sleeping, enter they
would, though they knew they were forbidden to do so, and
then commence handling the various things that lay about the
room or on the ricketty table with the prying rudeness of a
lot of boobies. Others would come, pull their pipes out of
the leather bags, fill them, and having ignited the tobacco
at the candle, seat themselves down deliberately on our bed
without seeking permission or consulting our tastes.

When we unfortunate travellers were not sharp in turning
them out they would fill the apartment full of smoke, and puff
it into our faces until the cloudy atmosphere is almost unfit for
purposes of respiration. A lot more would draw near to look
at us, and cough and spit as if they had swallowed a gross
of fish bones, and one half of them had lodged about the
ticklish nooks in their throats. Presently we would be treated
to an emission of all sorts of ventriloqual sounds, unpleasant
to listen to, being intensely suggestive of bad manners and
garlic; and they do all this with the most unblushing
effrontery. Finally we drove them out and bolted the

door.
312

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SPY SYSTEM—THE POLICE—-THE FRONTIER GUARD-ROOM — A
POLITE OLD SOLDIER— FRENCH POLISH AT THE GREAT WALL — THE
THUMB-MOMETER — OFFICIAL OBJECTIONS TO OUR ASCENDING THE
MOUNTAINS — A CONFERENCE — WOO-SHI—A SULTRY MORNING —I
ATTEMPT THE ASCENT ALONE — STAVELY PEAK — TAKING BEARINGS
—THE END OF THE GREAT WALL—JITS PRESENT CONDITION AND
WONDERFUL COURSE— ACCOUNTS OF TRAVELLERS —A VAST CONCEP-
TION AND A MONUMENT OF INDUSTRY.

E got up about five o’clock next morning, and found to
our annoyance and vexation that a system of espionage
had .been established on our’special behoof; and that some
spies, in the shape of great big Chinamen, cleanly dressed,
with the semi-official conical hat and red silk crown fringe,
were comfortably seated in the passage outside the door, where
probably they had passed the night. As soon as one of them
saw M., he came forward and demanded to be shown Tsung’s
passport again, saying that the others were of no value,
and that we could not be permitted to go up the hills. He
had been taught his lesson very well, but his peremptory
audacity met with no response of any kind, as M. simply
refused'to have anything to do with him. We proceeded to
dress, and get ready for our expedition as quickly as pos-
sible, in order to have it over, and depart from such a trou-
blesome region about midday —firmly resolved never to have
anything more to do with such officials, if we could help it.
We were in such a hurry that we took but one cup of tea
each, and a small biscuit, intending to breakfast when the
work was done, which, we fancied, would not take more than
three or four hours at the utmost. But in this we deceived
ourselves.
THE POLICE. 318

We were determined to attempt the ascent of the nearest
peak, to measure its height, and to get the bearings of the
various places we were about to pass; and for these purposes
we took with us a rather large Aneroid barometer, and a very
clumsy iron thermometer—the only one we could procure at
Tien-tsin—with a small pocket compass. Though so bent
on this project, however, we were not the less ready to desist
from this or any other transaction that might be wrong, be
regarded as offensive to the authorities, or give rise to
troublesome after-consequences. We moved with the spirit
of the Treaty ever before us, and a desire.to conciliate, rather
than squabble with the people we met on the way; and if
they gave us any sufficient reason why we should not do
this or that, we would have gladly reconciled ourselves to
their wishes. Such, I am sure, were the feelings that influ-
enced my companion, as well as myself, that morning, and
the line of conduct that was to guide us in our dealings with
the equivocating mandarins.

One of the runners had watched our preparations, and
though we were but a few minutes in putting on the lightest
suit we possessed, and in drawing on -the lightest -pair of
boots of our small assortment—never expecting that we
should have a difficult task in climbing what did not appear
to be very lofty mountains—the man had vanished before
we left the room. The others preceded and followed us, as
much to observe our movements as to keep off the people.
They were waiting in hundreds at that early hour outside
the inn, and were with difficulty kept in check by these
shouting Goliaths. The streets were wide and roomy for
ordinary traffic; but like those of large European cities,
Rome excepted, before the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
they were unpaved, and impassable in very many places
from the lodgement of rain and surface water. The shops
looked as if they drove some trade, and were numerous
enough in proportion to the number of dwellings.
314 THE FRONTIER GUARD-ROOM.

Near the inn was a government building, with glaringly
painted gates, and two great guardian dog-monsters, covered
with black and brown circular spots, defending the doorway.
A few paces further on was another door, garnished in the
same grotesque manner, which was supposed to belong to
the Custom-house, as this town, we were told, levies a tax
on the exports and imports that pass through to or from
Mantchuria. Not far from this we came to an archway
that had once been substantial and strong, but was now in a
fissured and tottering condition, and supported below by a
semicircular wooden structure, propped up by beams of
timber. This was one of the venerable arches of the wall
which bisected this, the eastern,’side of the town in its
course to the beach and the mountains.

On the other side we entered another portion of the town
enclosed on the east side by its own wall, and containing a
continuation of the chief thoroughfare, with many houses and
shops; and, most important of all, on the left hand, as we
passed along, there was the guard or garrison-room near the
outer gate. At that hour we were surprised to find it clus-
tered with soldiers—or rather unarmed attendants—clothed
in long skirts of white, primrose-coloured, or blue, gauze and
brocades, with a variety of coloured buttons on their hats, and
apparently looking out for us rather anxiously. As we ap-
proached, they one and all made way for us, and pointed to
the guard-room door. We could not at first comprehend their
meaning, and thought for a moment that all our prospects of
getting up to the hills were at an end; but on looking towards
the few steps that raised the floor from the ground, we saw
an old blue-button mandarin, surrounded by a small host of
officers, waving his hand to us, and looking remarkably kind
and civil.

This augured well for us; the old fellow’s smile was like
an oasis in the Sahara, after so much tantalising and thwart-

ing ; and as he beckoned us in, I thought of a traveller who
A POLITE OLD SOLDIER. 315

had not journeyed quite so far out of the way, and yet had
cause to exclaim, ‘ Hail! ye small sweet courtesies of life, for
smooth do ye make the road of it.’

We ascended the steps at once, and as our unknown friend
was evidently above the rank of those we had been contend-
ing with, and saluted us most cordially with hands clasped
before his breast, as did the others, we made the best attempt
to reciprocate the welcome thus unexpectedly given to us ;
and were then conducted into the room—a very naked col-
lection of boards and bricks, with a sort of raised couch or
platform, on which the commandant of the garrison—for
such he turned out to be—seated himself, after he had seen
us seated by him on another couch. I wondered if the
Chinese general who commanded the troops in this then
important town, and who first called in the wild Tartars of
Liau-toong to assist him—thus giving them an opportunity
of usurping the government —had sat in that nicely cush-
ioned seat when the fierce.Mantchus were hovering without
the wall, ready to pounce upon anything that would forward
their schemes—rob, murder, assault, storm the bastions, or
batter the trusty gates!

The national beverage was brought in by a waiter, and
everyone was supplied with a quantum of the hot infusion,
a stimulant to conversation, and a generator of kindly
sympathies. M. did his utmost to get up and carry on a
chat with the old soldier—and if I could dispose myself to
be a judge on that occasion, I should say he was eminently
successful, and acquitted himself in the enunciation of the
appalling smashing up of sounds that follows a most active
series of lingual and laryngeal gymnastics in a way that
must have astonished himself. Ma-foo, our interpreter-in-
chief, had been left at the inn to superintend the cooking of
mutton-chops, sweet potatoes, and vegetables, ad libitum, for
breakfast, therefore my companion was driven on his own
316 FRIENDLY QUESTIONS.

resources, which appeared, by the way, to become augmented
and more useful every day.

While the gossip was going on, I had time enough to
jot down our entertainer’s likeness in my memory, and
without staring at him too markedly, to observe that
underneath the beautifully-wrought and bleached straw
hat, surmounted by the deep blue glass ball, and thatched
by a long layer of red floss silk, there was a perfect set
of Mongolian features. His age might be about fifty-eight,
though he looked older, and his brow and cheeks were a
good deal wrinkled; but the agreeable face was sadly marred
on a near scrutiny, by a shocking set of carious front teeth,
which the thick averted lips, or the straggling hairs of the
moustache, could not hide. This is a common enough defect
among the lower orders in the north, who never clean their
teeth from youth to old age; but in the upper classes, it
looks much worse and creates unpleasant feelings.

There was a kingly dignity about him that was winning,
and his address was free and easy while talking to men of
another country for the first time. Unlike the others, he
wore a long robe of light-blue figured silk, confined around
the waist by a narrow plaited belt, with two buckles of
cornelian in front, and a pair of enormous black satin boots,
with canoe toes and ponderous soles—doubtless his best
summer suit donned for our reception.

The complimentary questions were first exchanged.
Ages were requested, in which he could not understand
why one of us being the same age as the other should wear
a longer beard, as it was the sign of a greater number
of years.

What was our destination, and how did we propose to
return, by sea or by land?

By sea.

At this he affected to be very sorry that he should not.
have the honour of inviting us to dine with him, and
FRENCH POLISH. 317

mimicked weeping so very well, that we could not forbear
being amused, and showing that we were so. As he went
on, his gestures got stronger in their significance, and his
pantomimic expressions more ludicrous; but if clever in
this department, he was much more so in displaying every
moment the most flattering daubs of French polish, and
HN (i Wil

Win
a Mh
] ii
i

tT i

 

A polite old Soldier

trying to excel in giving us a high opinion ot ourselves
by very windy words.

Everything was good that we had; even the passports—
which he prayed might be shown him, in order that he
might register our worshipful names—were acknowledged
to be good ; and all good things were indicated at once, as
such, by his holding up a thumb with a very long nail and
a very expensive jade ring on it. When he felt the leather
of our boots, up went the thumb; when he fingered the cloth
of our trousers up went the thumb; when told that we had
travelled so many li for so many days, the thumb was
318 CHINESE SNUFF-TAKING.

cocked very high; indeed the thumb-mometer seemed ever
to be on the ascendant, until M. mentioned our going up
the hill; then the little finger went up. It was bad.

Was there any particular objection, or any particular
order prohibiting strangers from going up there?

No.

Then why could we not go up?

The thin horny-tipped little finger was elevated like a
jack-in-the-box, while he told us that the sun was very hot,
there were no roads, the hills were a long way off, and
covered with stones, and the Chinese never went up there.

There were no other objections?

- No.

Then we were inclined to attempt the ascent, as we did not
much mind the sun, and stones and hills were familiar to us.

A little more talk, and M.’s snuff-box was honoured by
an upright thumb, and the abstraction of a small shovelful
of snuff. Then the little china bottles were drawn out
from their recesses and passed to us. These toyish sneeshin-
mulls had a neat little stopper of cork or wood, topped by
jade or rose-quartz, in which was fastened a regular bone or
ivory spoon, exactly like some we have seen in Scotland;
but the Chinese did not carry their pungent dose to the
nostrils by it, but only used it to transfer a little heap of
the light brown over-dried nose provender to the back of
their hand, and then from this to press it over the nasal ex-
tremity and lip, with a chance of a fraction of it penetrating
to the excitory nerves only by the ordinary act of inspira-

tion. I never yet saw a snuffer sneeze, though the social
pinch is with them notorious ; so that when my unaccustomed
organ of smell rebelled at the unsavoury introduction, and
repetitions of sneezing yells made the walls ring again,
they all laughed, and the thumb-mometer again rose in
praise.

But the morning was wearing on, and we had tarried
IN MANTCHU TARTARY. 319

among them long enough, so we rose to take our leave, and
the general, or whatever his rank might be, accompanied us
to the door with great politeness.

The other officers about him were really fine men-—tall,
strong, and well-proportioned as the sons of Anak, with
some very jovial cheerful faces among them. All (had
rigged themselves out in modest-coloured summer crape
or muslin gowns, the low conical hat, and black satin
boots, and with the dress bound easily round the middle,
they looked comfortable and cool as they fanned themselves,
and toyed with these feminine appendages, which they know
so well how to use in sultry weather. Those who were
mounted at times—the cavalry men—had the slide slits in
skirts very long, and tags and twisted buttons stitched on
in various places, to tuck them up by when in the saddle.
Not a single man was armed with anything beyond his
fan, neither did we see a weapon about the room save two
or three sabres: a rather singular circumstance, we thought,
considering that this was a large town—in a comparative sense
only, for few of the northern towns we have seen come at
all near the populousness or size of what are called large
towns in the South—and a very important pass, in a Chinese
point of view.

When we left, three or four of these gentlemen escorted
us, but at a very respectful distance, and without speaking,
except to the crowd. Walking through the gateway, which
was not bastioned in the ordinary manner—as the Great
Wall, passing but ashort distance within it, obviated the
necessity for such a work—we are beyond the artificial
boundaries, on the Mantchu side of the country, and
turning suddenly northward, speed alongside the Great
Wall, as near as the narrow footpath will permit. .

We walked sharply and hurriedly — for it was past six
o’clock —and our guard behind did the same, conversing
in a gay undertone at first, bttt soon dropping this for a
320 WANT OF CANDOUR.

detached remark at lengthening intervals, growing fainter
and fainter, until they were puffing and struggling, and as
uncomfortable as stranded whales, the ground between us
increasing with every stride. They must have given in at
about a mile, for when we had got about two miles up
towards the foot of the range, and were still pursuing a
narrow track through low crops of wheat, we heard some one
shouting loudly after us that there was no road, and, looking
back, discovered that the bulky men had been beaten off, and
that there was a.young understrapper with a brimmed-up hat,
and lots of red cord dancing about its top, running after us
as hard as he could. He was telling us a manifest story, and
violating the integrity of his countrymen by a statement
slightly incorrect in point of fact, as we at once proved to him
by a reference to the road we were then on. He asked if we
were determined to proceed, and was answered that we
were ; and, to convince him of this, we resumed our gentle
promenade — at which token of our resolution he turned
back.

There was no accounting for this species of want of candour
on the part of the authorities, and we were a little puzzled in
what light to view it, considering that they had already
admitted the absence of orders or cogent reasons to intercept
us, except in those little impediments which Nature offered,
and which we were content to surmount, if practicable, at
our own risk, Yet here was a squad of gens d’armes dodging
and bawling about, and all but ordering us. back, acting,
without a doubt, under instructions from our courteous
friend in the. guard-house, whose motives for not telling us
in plain language that we were about to do wrong, we could
not even guess at for some time.

There is a sentence in the Chinese vocabulary — a sort of
idiomatic expression, for which those who have read Mrs.
Hamilton’s homely Scotch tale of the ‘Cottagers of Glen-
burnie,’ would find an equivalent in Mrs. McClartey’s
‘WOO-SHI.’ 321

inevitable answer to every suggestion for the improvement
of her slatternly household —‘I canna be fashed; it will be
weel enough in time;’ and the too familiar sentiment of
to-day, ‘I can’t be bothered; do anything you like, if it
doesn’t trouble me,’ would be found an approximation to it
in sense as it would in deed.

This shibboleth of negligence and procrastination is ‘ Woo-
shi ;’ and only to its employment by the military governor,
when we asked for information and permission, and his
deputing these small fry to act in accordance therewith, and
to do as best they might without disturbing him, could we
attribute the annoyance we encountered.

When within about a mile of the mountains, M. could go
no farther with safety, for the morning had turned out so
very unusually sultry and oppressive, and the heat so stifling
and distressing, that he felt its effects far more than he had
done since we left Tien-tsin ; and, I must confess, I felt sick
a little and rather fatigued. There is something particularly
morbid and malevolent in the summer-morning’s sun of
North China, before it has reached very high in the
heavens, and just when its beams are sweeping horizontally
or obliquely about the neck and body ; and at these times,
when exposed, I have always experienced sensations of giddi-
ness and sickly heaviness, unknown at other periods of the
day ; and I was not alone in this respect. To those who
would sanction the imprudences of ordinary travellers, and
encourage their erratic wanderings in this direction, we
would parody Lord Chesterfield’s advice about the evening
dews, and say —

‘ The rays of the morning most carefully shun,
They’re the sickliest darts thrown out by the sun.’

I volunteered to go alone, though, had I been certain that
remaining on the plain without venturing on the achieve-
ment of what we had promised or threatened, would be

¥
322 DIFFICULTY OF ASCENT.

construed to our disadvantage, I should not have done so.
Taking the bulky instruments, which I was obliged to carry
in my hands, and leaving M. in a shady clump of fir trees
near some cottages, I started off. I had not gone many
yards before two mandarins, mounted on ponies, came
rattling up, and called out some indistinguishable jargon ;
but my companion justly divined their intentions, and bade
me take no notice of them, while he kept them in play
below.

Presently the base of the mountains was gained, but so
precipitous and rugged were they in every aspect, that the
difficulty was where to select a place from which to com-
mence the ascent. The ravines between the advanced
spurs were so narrow and steep, and so thickly strewn with
rough masses of rock, that to walk through them to a more
favourable side was impossible with the light boots I had on ;
and the sides of the heights before me were so savagely per-
pendicular to climb, even for a person with both hands at
liberty, that I avow, though I had already done my share of
craggy rocks and steep hills, I was now rather taken aback. I
looked wistfully towards that moderately-sloping chine, some
mile or so off, up which the wall rose from the plain to its
loftiest elevation; but the ground between was so broken
that a long time would have been consumed in getting to it,
and then it was problematical enough if the pinnacles
overhanging it would have been more easy of access.

Topped they must be, however, and that without delay,
or the Philistines will be upon me, and deter me for an
indefinite time. As tlie very conspicuous tower of the
wall on the loftiest peak, over which that barrier wends, and
which is almost the loftiest peak in the range from whence we
are looking at it, is beetling immediately overhead, and was
the one fixed upon for our observations, I at once face the
difficulty by taking a zigzag course up the side of what I
imagined to be the least formidable of the nearest mountains.
GAIN THE PEAK. 323

The massy angular débris of unknown centuries overcome,
the clambering process commenced in earnest.

Searching around before rising, not a mark of a path to
indicate the direction — not a sheep or a goat track even —
is to be scanned; so I have to stretch out as best I may,
fighting up against pieces of slope, carpeted with a thin,
short grass, that to the soles of my boots feels like smooth
ice, and is almost incapable of affording a foothold. After,
perhaps, two or three hundred yards of this, bare vertical
sheets of rock would suddenly meet me and bar further
advancement that way, necessitating retrogression and fresh
trials in different directions, until, after an hour and a half’s
as hard work as the best-trained mountaineer could encounter
— over obstructions and wearying impediments, more harass-
ing to the mind than those of the Aonian mount, and more
leg-tiring than I found the more than 3,000 feet of stony ravine
that conducted me to the top of the Table Mountain at Cape
Town, on a South African midsummer’s day —I won the
coveted peak, and completed the ascension by toiling into
the summit of the little ruined tower that had seemed so far
above my strength from the plain below.

Unmingled pleasure, and I fear a large instalment of
vanity, were uppermost in my breast as I stood on that pinna-
cled mountain-top where the foot of European had never
before trodden, where the most adventurous of the dwellers
beneath would never dream of coming, and where, perhaps,
the presence of man had been unknown for long centuries.
Hastily throwing open the lid of the barometer case, and
planting it and the thermometer in the best nooks I could
reach, I sat down among the bricks of the ruinous tower—
much in need of a rest, and overpowered with thirst, for I
had taken no flask, and not a drop of water was to be had on
the way up—to take the bearings of the landmarks, which
were just becoming visible in the steamy haze of the morning,
and to leisurely survey the country around. As I shrink

x2
324. VIEW FROM THE MOUNTAINS.

beneath a corner of the crumbling masonry that yet interposes
_ between me and the scorching sun, let me try to describe,
however confusedly and imperfectly, the novel panorama as
it unrolls its wide scene before me; and dwell especially on
what forms its strongest attraction, its most fascinating em-
bellishment,—its world-renowned monument.

Away before me to the far south, unbounded by any visible
land, without a dimple or a break to blemish its surface after
the storm, and engirded on the edge nearest me by a crescentic
border or socket of yellow glistering sand, lay the waters of
the Gulf or Eastern Sea in a dazzling blaze of white light.
It lies like a silver mirror in a partial frame of gold, with the
faintly brown sails of three junks standing immoveable, as it
were, on the distant expanse, like so many nocturnal moths
surprised by the dawn of day and enchanted, with their
wings folded back, by the magical reflection of the brilliant
looking-glass. To the middle of the slightly convex edge of
the golden crescent or frame, curiously and cunningly wrought
and adorned by man’s hand, and securely fastened to it by a
massive clamp of dark stone, is wedded a fitting and proper
handle to such a glorious natural mirror, the Wang-li Chang-
ching, or wall of ten thousand li.

From the sea to where I am ensconced, a distance of about
eight or nine miles, and from that away among the hills,
where I can only catch a glimpse of the interminable line of
fortification here and there, I must have a range of prospect
of about twenty miles or more.

Where it commences by a bold abutment through the
sandy beach into the gulf there is a large black mass of
building like a fortress, with a temple roof scarcely dis-
cernible amidst the pile; and continuing from this—wide, high,
and solid, apparently with square towers, at first hard to be
distinguished from the body of the work, but soon coming out
in trenchant outline as they face the Mantchu country,—it
creeps on, a bold fence across the level landscape, which is, at.
COMMENCEMENT OF THE GREAT WALL. 325

this distance inland, and far east and west, variegated by all
manner of lively colours, from the ochrey red of sand and

 

 

 

 

The Great Wall from Stavely Peak to the Gulf.

soil to the deep green of tiny plantation, and limited coppice,
or millet and maize field, and interspersed with cottage and
326 ITS COURSE.

hamlet; while running parallel with the wall on the China
frontier, darts the limpid Shi-ho, like a streak of moving
quicksilver, with an easy bend or swerve until it reaches the
sands, when it throws out three fairy fingers to grasp the
skirt of the sea.

At a little place burrowing among trees, which is perhaps
Ning-hai, if makes an acute wheel inwards, until it touches the
side of the group of buildings that dot the border of the
town. Starting off again on its almost direct road, with the
wide-based and battlemented towers courageously standing out
at equal distances apart, that give it a very symmetrical and
warlike front, it makes a dash through one side of the quad-
rangular wall of Shan-hai Kwan, about four or five miles
from its starting-point, and separating a portion of the city,
bursts out with larger looking towers and a broader parapet,
steering its leviathan proportions in my direction with only
one trifling deflection outwards. It bears no marks of decay
from where I am tracing it, until it gets about a mile on this
side of the town, when fissures and flaws blur its face at times
here and there. At one place a portion of the parapet has
given way, and left a ghastly void in the notched and cre-
nelated ridge; at another, nearer still, a larger piece has
tumbled down and exposed a deep gash in the parapet ;
there, the thickness of the building itself has suffered, and
its width dwindles down considerably ; here, a damaging
breach gapes in its face, and the warrior bastions themselves
are trembling in dilapidation and decay, and seem as if they
were about to part from the great embankment that had
supported them so long. :

Presently, alas! the eye alights all at once on a deadly
lane torn across its stately array to the very ground, and
where an arch had once bridged some petty streamlet, long
since dried up.

‘The sweeping sword of Time
Has sung its death dirge.—
ITS CHARACTER ON THE MOUNTAINS. 327

And there lies a scattered heap of rubbish about an
opening extensive enough to allow of a column of men march-
ing through. This is a veritable break-down, and detracts
very much from the expectations I had entertained of its
entireness and durability. But the structure rallies quickly,
and soon after raises itself on the low-angled spur that
is covered with a dusky herbage, and with more or less
of cracks, gaps, and chasms, it comes up with an easy grace
to the middle of a bald declivity which it deftly tops and
deposits a tower thereon, in good preservation, but a few
hundred yards from my place of vantage. Having done this
it suddenly changes its mind (for I feel as if looking at some
vast monster since it began its heavenward rise), as if it saw
me, and flies off at a tangent to the east—from the sea it has
been progressing from south to north—down and up a flat-
sided gulley to my peak, amalgamating itself with the partially
demolished turret and disjointed brickwork that can but
scrimply contain itself, the rocky space is so small and uneven.
Then it sweeps away from me with a dive below the projecting
crag where the eyes can but strain themselves after it, till
the gorge of a black ravine has been met, when its height,
which has been gradually decreasing since it began its
vagaries, is somewhat increased, and lasts only so long as it
has had time to traverse the bottom and begin another abrupt
flexure. There it contracts its bulk as it scales impetuously
one peak more cloud-rifting than the one I am in possession of,
dotting little square towers closely together where the passes
between the rough steep mountains might be accessible;
which it no sooner accomplishes than it is flung wildly again
down the concave spine of the slippery mountain, only to be
thrust up an adjoining one.

And thus it continues to wander for miles and miles,
retreating and advancing, bending up and doubling down,
now lost altogether, now starting at once from the side of a
cliff which it has wound itself round, in a manner almost
328 - A WONDERFUL STRUCTURE.

surpassing belief, planting tiny square towers closely together
where the clefts and passes between the rough steep moun-’
tains indicate a possibility of their being practicable; and
throwing out one, two, or even three additional barriers or ra-

mifications to aid that in front across, those constricted valleys

where a few men might be able to scramble; posting odd

turrets in the strangest places where the wall zigzags to and

fro, and erecting castellated towers on the spiked points of
the lordly mountains, like aerial donjon-keeps of the feudal

ages. More wonderful and Cyclopean is it to behold, even

from my eyrie in mid heaven, than the ancient castles of the

Pelasgi could have been to the credulous Greeks.

As a general rule, however, it does not always mount the
grandest peaks, but only here and there, for some eccentric
and not very obvious reason of the architects; standing gene-
rally outside, and afew feet below, rather than above the very
topmost pinnacles of the mountains it overruns. So much
for the general outline and direction of the colossal monu-
ment, as I have anxiously sought to trace it from its origin
away on the tempest-beaten shore up to my retreat; and
from thence as it goes away bounding magnificently up hill
and down dale, giving one the idea of an exciting steeple-
chase, with tower after tower flying up into the unclouded
sky,—like the body of a rider when his horse is clearing a
succession of stiff fences on the opposite side of the field,—
until it has vanished among the multitudinous grey moun-
tain summits that recede into blue space.

Now for the scanty details that I contrived to put to-
gether on my way from the town.

At Shan-hai Kwan, I noticed that the arch passed under was
propped up by a timber framework, and looked unsafe; and
when I walked along through the fields adjoining the town
—where the wall is exactly the same in construction, height,
and width as that of the town itself, though very much
older looking—I saw the marks of many recent repairs on
ITS STATE OF REPAIR. 329

the outside, as if the maintainance of it in a respectable, if
not a defensible, condition was believed to be still of some
moment to the reputation and safety of the Custom-house
city. In all respects, on the plain, it differs little, if anything,
from the ordinary enclosing walls of Northern Chinese
towns; and if anyone could imagine such a defence stretch-
ing out in an almost straight line for eight or nine miles,
he would have some idea of the Great Wall on the lowland,
as it yet frowns towards Mantchuria.

I have remarked that at little more than a mile or so
on this side of the ‘Kwan’ it was ruinous in more places
than one, and that there was no symptom of its having been
otherwise than neglected in this part for many generations.
Its occupation there was gone—the enemy it had awed and
challenged without was now, for two hundred and eighteen
years, within; and the only purpose it served was diverting
the produce of the two countries through the gates of the
Hill-sea barrier, where taxes might be levied, and goods and
passengers scrutinised.

At the town, and until it nears the hills, its total height
may range from thirty to forty feet, including five or six
feet for a crenelated parapet on the eastern side; and the
width of its rampart twenty or twenty-five feet at most;
while the eye-delighting towers are about ten feet higher
than the parapet, are at the base thirty or forty feet square,
gradually narrowing as they ascend, and are from one
hundred and fifty to two hundred yards apart. They, with
the walls, have been admirably built to withstand the devas-
tations of ages of exposure in such a climate. The base-
ment or foundation for the whole is widely and compactly
formed for bearing the weight of such a load of matter, by
imperishable granite blocks imposed on each other to an
elevation of six or eight feet from the ground. On this the
body of the building is reared, consisting of an internal
bank of earth tightly rammed and packed, and encased in a
330 LARGE BRICKS.

sloping brick shell of no great thickness, embedded very
firmly in mortar of ‘great apparent strength and hardness
—consisting, so far as I can judge, of a large proportion of
remarkably white lime, similar to the chunam of India,
mixed with sand and pebbles in very small quantity. The
courses of the brickwork were regular and well pointed,
and in working up the wall the observer could scarcely fail
to notice that it had only been laid in layers six or eight feet
deep at a time; leading him to suppose that the builders had
been fully alive to the necessity of allowing one part to
settlé down and solidify before building any higher, in order
to prevent displacement and speedy demolition from prema-
ture shrinking.

The bricks are of the usual large description employed in
the city walls of this part of China, and are sharp and.
evenly moulded, measuring nine inches in length, four and
a half in width, and two and a half in thickness—much less
in size, certainly, than those of some of the smaller pyra-
mids of Egypt—as in that of Howara, for instance, the
bricks of which measure seventeen and a half inches long by
eight and three-quarters in width, and five-and-a-half inches
thick. They seem very hard and tough, and appear to be
made of a light sandy clay, thoroughly well tempered, with
a good number of quartz chips in their substance, but
whether purposely or accidentally introduced it would be
unsafe to say. From their colour and consistency, I am in-
clined to believe that they have been slowly burnt in kilns
supplied with an insufficiency of air, by which the smoul-
dering heat and smoke of the wood or straw used to bake
them has imparted to the clay the characteristic bluish-grey
or dark slate colour they now wear.

Did the traveller penetrate along its course no farther
than from the sea to the town, he would be apt to conclude
that the myriad li wall was the same in size and preservation
throughout its erratic incurvations, angles, and Pegasus-like
NO PARAPET. 331

flight over the Chinese Grampians, and would begin to
calculate and theorise accordingly. I should, I fear, have
done so, its appearance from below is so deceptive, had I not
climbed to the vertex of the stateliest peak on which there is
a tower, and been made aware of the difference.

Whenever the wall begins to seek the mountains it becomes
less in bulk and more decrepid. The height is reduced; the
breadth of rampart melts away; the vigilant and stern towers
sink into very mediocre stature, and their adamantine sides
collapse into most modest proportions; so that the Great Wall
on the dangerous plain is not the Great Wall on the impregna-
ble heights. The tower on which I am seated, registering these
notes, is a little less than six feet square, and occupies every
available inch of the cliffs crown. What its altitude may
have been I cannot be certain, for either from decay, lightning-
stroke, or thunder-bolt, or the hurricanes of winter, de-
struction has swept it down to within eight feet of the base.
It is, or has been, built of brick, but the rampart diverging
from it, which is no more than eight feet in width, is of the
unhewn loose stones lying in such abundance everywhere
about, and bound together with the same hard cement as
that used for the bricks. In many places among the hills
this wall of stones is thrown down, or rased to the naked
rock, and nothing denotes its existence or the line of its
ambitious career, save little collections of rubble or a thin
ridge of stones marking its basement breadth.

Nowhere here can I detect the slightest semblance of a
parapet; indeed, from the appearance of the best preserved
portions, there does not seem any likelihood of the barrier
among the mountains ever having had such an addition, or
ever being anything else but a strong stone wall, furnished
only with turrets at unequal intervals for its defence. These
turrets, from the manner and the excellent materials of which
they are built, are nearly all in an admirable condition, and
look as if they had not been many years from the hands of
332 EXAGGERATED ACCOUNTS.

the builder; but my pervading idea in surveying all the
extensive work that now comes within my range of vision, is
that of desolation and decay ; the more salientand broad features
of the fabric alone standing—as they will do for many, many
centuries to come—to commemorate an era in Chinese history,
and the Herculean efforts of a great nation in byegone ages to
preserve itself from invasion and subjection.

Such is the Great Wall at, and near, the Eastern Sea. To
the north and westward, however, it must have been con-
structed on a grander and more substantial scale, if the
accounts of visitors in that direction are to be credited; and
may have been kept in repair from time to time, when this
portion of the unassailable mountain-line has been allowed to
stand or fall as it might chance, without the needful inter-
vention of those for whom it had been erected. Some of
these accounts, notwithstanding, are doubtful enough, and,
to say the least of them, rather overdrawn. For example
the Jesuit Missionary, Kircher, says :—

‘This work is so wondrous strong, that it is for the greatest
part a source of admiration to this day; for, through the
many vicissitudes of the empire, changes of dynasties,
batteries and assaults, not only of the enemy, but of violent
tempests, deluges of rain, shaking winds and wearing weather,
yet it discovers no signs of demolishment, nor is it cracked
or crazed with age, but appears almost as in its first strength,
greatness, and beauty; and well it may be, for whose solidity
whole mountains, by ripping up their rocky bowels for
stones, were levelled, and vast deserts, buried with deep and
swallowing sand, were swept clean to the firm ground.’

A statement that does not tally with what is to be found
here. The more trustworthy Father Gerbillon had such
exaggerations in his mind when he declares that ‘it is, indeed,
one of the most surprising and extraordinary works in the
world; yet it cannot be denied that those travellers who have
mentioned it have over-magnified it, imagining, no doubt,
A TREMENDOUS UNDERTAKING. 333

that it was in its whole extent the same as they saw it in those
parts nearest Peking, or at certain of the most important
passes, where it is, indeed, very strong and well-built, as also
very high and thick.’

Still, in spite of all these little inaccuracies, for the age in
which it was designed and executed, it is beyond belief a
great conception—an enterprise that makes one feel astonished
by the immensity of its extent. Even to a Westerner,
who has seen some of the triumphs of nineteenth century
engineering, and undertakings such as the old world never
dreamt of, it seems all but impossible that any people could
set themselves down to the performance of so monstrous a
difficulty. There is no great amount of skill; there is little,
if anything, of ingenuity displayed in its erection, so far as I
can see; but there is work—there is labour for giants—in
the structure, and this character appears in every brick that
goes to make up the solid outline of its towers. The latter
are only within the scope of the most practised climber, and
intrude themselves so menacingly into the upper world, that
one almost expects to see them thronged by rebellious Titans
aspiring to make war with Heaven.

In every stone of that rampart embankment that embraces
with a petrous girdle the confines of far off Cathay, there is
a tale of toil and fatigue such as, perhaps, the modern world
never knew, silently told in the computed one thousand two
hundred and fifty miles of the country, from east to west,
over which it wanders.

Surely the king and the people who lived a little more
than two thousand years ago: who have left their memories
and their autographs written in such a bold hand over such
a great tract of the world’s uneven surface: and who have
submitted to the scrutiny and criticism of innumerable gene-
rations such an astounding trophy of human industry and
patience, were very different men to those of the present
day, and had very much higher incentives to the achievement
334 ITS BUILDERS.

of greatness and the maintenance of national independ-
ence, than the apathetic fratricides and blasphemous robbers
of eighteen hundred and sixty-one !

It is true that a diversity of opinions exists, both among
Europeans and Chinese, as to the public and private character
of the prince under whose auspices the Great Wall was
built, and the motives that swayed him in this, as in other
acts; and there is much difficulty in acquiring any reliable
information that might lead us to look with favourable eyes
on the career of such a despotic Eastern potentate. He
appears to have had—like other monarchs who might be
selected from the annals of the world—a mixture of good
and bad qualities; but, for a Chinese emperor, the good
probably more than compensated for the bad.
335

CHAPTER XVIII.

HISTORY OF THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA — ITS CHARACTER AS A WORTHY
NATIONAL TROPHY COMPARED WITH SOME OTHER WORKS OF ANTIQUITY
—A HOT DESCENT AND A LOST OUTLET— FEARFUL MIDDAY HEAT —
IMPENDING SUNSTROKE AND ITS SENSATIONS — A HARD DAY’S STRUGGLE
— MERCIFUL FOUNTAINS—A HAPPY RESURRECTION AND FRIENDLY
PEASANTRY.

OW that I have got thus far into the bowels of the Celes-
tial land, and have carefully observed its greatest marvel,
let me brush away the cobwebs and dust that shroud its
paternity, and glean all the information respecting it, here
accessible ; for I am bound to acknowledge that I can hardly
agree with those who assert that the erection of such a safe-
guard, by a peaceable and rather timid people, was the whim
of a tyrant, and the gravest act of despotism, as well as of
folly, that an autocrat could be guilty of.

Chinese history is abstruse and oftentimes perplexing, but
I will consult only the best authorities.

It is known that, for many centuries before the Christian
era, China was divided into a number of feudal states, in
something the same way that Europe was twelve or thirteen
hundred years ago, and that the same amount of turbulence
and disputation was prevalent among the chiefs or princes
_ that we find recorded in Western history. The number and
power of these states was in proportion to the physical
strength and political influence, or the weakness and temerity
of the reigning monarch, who might sometimes be able to
reduce them to complete subordination, and at other times
rule only by their sufferance.

Under the Chow dynasty, which terminated in B.c. 249,
336 THE GREAT TSIN DYNASTY.

having lasted for 873 years,—the longest period of any reign
mentioned in history,—the feudal house or state of Tsin, in
the North-west, had long been the most formidable from
the bold and arrogant character of its princes, its extent of
territory, and the number of retainers it could send into the
field.

One of these leaders, Chau-Siang Wang, carried his en-
croachments into the acknowledged imperial possessions, and
compelled the sovereign, Tungchau Kiun, the last of the
line, to humble himself at his feet, and surrender his crown ;
then content with what he had effected, he deputed his son
to finish the work and reap the reward. As brave and
politic, or as cunning as his parent, the son was not long
in reducing the six states, which then formed the bulk of the
empire, and in bending them to his sway ; and the better to
prevent their ever becoming again a source of trouble or
uneasiness, he divided them into thirty-six provinces, prin-
cipalities or ‘keun,’ which he placed in the hands of respon-
sible governors. He at the same time sought to establish
his authority, and reconcile his subjects to their change of
rulers, by reforming abuses that had existed in the late
government, and by remedying as far as he could the
injurious effects of the feudal usages. He made progresses
and inspections in great state throughout his dominions, to
ascertain that his orders were obeyed, and that no injustice
was done to the people. Moreover, he furthered their
interests and welfare by opening canals and public roads to
promote intercourse and trade over the country, by superin-
tending and aiding the building of public edifices and other .
works, and by enlarging and improving the cities and towns,
until he had consolidated the empire into one great nation.
He took the title of Tche-hwangti, or first emperor of the
Ta Tsin, or Great Tsin dynasty—from which name the
people of the West are supposed to have derived the term
China, and not from the mongrel Chin-Chin, the seimi-
ACTS OF TYRANNY. 337

Anglicised welcome, or ‘how @’ ye do,’ that amateur philo-
logists — fresh arrivals in the land — are ready to declare
is the origin of the popular appellation.

So successful and rapid was the advancement of the
empire, and such lustre did the rule of this emperor bring
upon it, that he has been styled the Napoleon of China.
One European historian, Klaproth, has conferred on him
high praise as a man of wisdom and resolution ; but the
native annalists, for some reasons, abhor his name and his
reign. Perhaps one of these reasons arose from his having
built an immense palace, or collection of palaces, adjoining
each other, at the new capital he had founded, in imitation
of those of the princes whom he had overcome; and to the
apartments of this residence he commanded that all the
valuable fittings and furniture belonging to the originals,
with all the people who inhabited them, should be brought,
and that everything should be arranged as it had been in
the different dwellings.

This was certainly a very mild act of tyranny, after what
the historical student has been told about some of the despots
of other nations; but his next recorded deed of shame, if
true (for some believe it to be a fable to serve the ends of
certain Chinese historians), was undoubtedly a very heinous
and barbarous one; for, through insatiable vanity in desiring
to be considered by succeeding generations the first emperor
of the Chinese race —or, as others say, at the instigation of
a worthless minister — he ordered the destruction of all the
histories and classics extant, not even sparing the labours of
the idolised Confucius and Mencius, only exempting for
some strange reason the books on law and physic. To be
certain that no copy should be reproduced, nor any account
of his rash action transmitted to posterity, he caused all the
scholars and learned men, to the number of four hundred
and sixty, to be thrown into pits or buried alive. But as a
set-off against these registered cruelties and despotic whims,

zi
338 ERRATIC TRIBES.

he valiantly encountered the Tartars, who were then the
terror of the Chinese, as they were subsequently that of the
civilised nations of the West, and drove them out of the
country beyond the frontiers, into the steppes and wilds of
Mongolia.

These Mongol Tartars, northern erratic tribes, wandering
nations, ‘Huen-hoo’ or clamorous slaves, or ‘ Hoo-yin,’
for by all these names they have been called at various times
—were as intractable, as wild, and as great scourges to the
Chinese of these and later days, as were the Caledonii and
Meete to the Romans, or the Picts, Scots, and Attacotti to
the Britons; figuring, as they do, in almost every page of
Chinese history, because of the excesses they committed, and
keeping the harmless inhabitants of the border provinces
harassed and poor; while the unsettled population on the
skirts of the frontier, driven from their homes, and plun-
dered by these pastoral warriors, were obliged from necessity,
or perhaps choice, to perpetrate all sorts of depredations to
ward off starvation: for we all know that—

‘Near a border frontier in the time of war,
There’s ne’er a man but he’s a freebooter.’

The estimation in which the Mongols were held by the
Chinese may be gleaned from the fact, that a general, who
is immortalised for having invented hair-pencils, was des-
patched with 300,000 troops to reduce the Huen-hoo,
and to expel them from the country; after which Hwangti
caused all the large towns to be enclosed within walls, and
to keep the invaders for ever beyond the boundary, and stop
their disastrous incursions, he conceived the idea of extend-
ing and uniting the walls which the princes of the northern
states had before built to protect their kingdoms, into one
grand wall stretching around the land from the sea to the
desert. The great barrier was begun and_ successfully
completed in ten years; during which time, however,
TARTAR ASCENT OF THE WALL. 339

Tche-hwangti had died; and his son, unable to repress
the machinations of the feudal chiefs, who had again ac-
quired strength, was deposed and supplanted by a soldier
of fortune, who began the celebrated Han dynasty.

One account states that the realisation of the magnificent
conception of Hwangti was accomplished in five years, by
many millions of labourers, and that three men out of
every ten were impressed for the task; others say that it
cost 200,000 lives from exhaustion and fatigue. But the
ten years is more probably nearer the truth, and the fact
of its being continued and finished after the death of the
originator, and the extinction of his family, goes far to
prove ‘that this mode of protecting the empire from the
fierce savages commended itself to the nation at large,
which joined heartily in it, and that this stupendous work
was not forced out of the labour of unwilling subjects.’”*

The fact of its being thrown over a vast natural barrier,
by which an enormous amount of toil was required beyond
that necessary had it been built on the plain, furnishes
additional proof of the almost supernatural dread which
influenced the builders, and the daring attributes with
which they invested the predatory nomads. The latter
would have laughed at a wall on the low country, when
defended by unwarlike Chinese. Indeed, it is related that
the Mantchus once entered China by the mountains on
the east, ‘having amused the numerous garrisons of the
forts (on the Wall), by which alone the Chinese thought
it possible to pass; then the Tartars left their tents and
baggage over against the intrenchments (at the forts) as
though they intended to force a passage through; but they
secretly marched in the night over the hills, and surprised a
city at the foot of them called Chang-ping chew.’

Taking history, and the appearance of the strong line

* Williams’ Middle Kingdom. { Father Gerbillon.
zZ2
340 ROMAN WALLS.

of circumvallation together, one is prompted to believe
that the Great Wall of China is far more likely to have
been the cherished desire of the people, than the odd fancy
of a cruel king—a noble effort towards self-preservation
rather than a monstrous freak of tyranny. Though it was
impotent against such intrepid barbarians—the object being
frustrated by craft on their part, and faction quarrels on
that of the Chinese—the intention remains, and its reali-
sation is unquestionably one of the wonders of the world.

We must not forget that the military Romans did not
disdain the services to be derived from stone walls when
fighting with savages, or striving to keep them within bounds.
Agricola, about two hundred years after the Chinese had
completed their huge rampart, threw up a chain of forts
between the estuaries of the Forth and the Clyde, to check
the indomitable Caledonians ; which forts were afterwards
renewed and connected with each other by a great bank
of earth, under the superintendence of Lollius Urbicus.
Also, the Emperor Hadrian found it incumbent on him to
erect a monstrous fortification of towers and stone wall
of seventy miles in length, between the Solway and the
Tyne, as well as others on the threatened frontiers of
Germany.

The Chinese wall was probably about as useful to the
frightened Chinese as was the Roman wall to the helpless
Britons; for when the eagles of the disciplined Roman legions
had disappeared in haste to meet barbarian hordes at home,
the perpetual surge that had been incessantly beating at its
base, and sometimes, even with the hardy trained bands on
the top, breaking over it, the torrent of Picts and Scots
burst beyond it into the guarded territory.

‘Throwing up hooks, they pulled the Britons down from
the top of their wall, and slew them, and then passing the
wall, they destroyed the cities and murdered the inha-
bitants.’
POLICY OF THE CHINESE. 341

Nothing but the firmness and military prowess of the
Romans could guard the southern division of Britain from
the fiery invaders who rushed from their unconquered wilds;
and this discipline and firmness the sons of Han did not seem
to possess.

From the ninth year of the dynasty succeeding the Great
Tsin, the Tartars again began to disturb the country, and
to appease them—as the Roman governor of Britain, Virius
Lupus, was obliged to buy over the turbulent tribes with
gold—the daughters of the emperor were given in marriage
to the Tartar kings. ‘From this day,’ writes the native re-
corder, ‘China lost her honour and respectability, and the
disgrace brought upon her was never greater.’ The chief
minister of state, through whose fears and wishes this
detested measure was brought about, excused himself by
saying that the Tartars were such barbarians it was im-
possible to reason with them; moreover, as they had no
permanent habitations, it was extremely difficult to carry
on war with them. They were here to-day, and a month
hence hundreds of miles distant.*

And well the men of the middle kingdom might dread
the almost invincible savages—who afterwards, as Mongols
and Mantchus, ruled portions, and then the whole of the
empire, and finding stone walls along an immense frontier
inadequate for their protection, began trying these political
blandishments. The invaders would have infused a good
deal of awe into any nation had they murdered its king,
and then made a drinking cup of his head, as it is written
they served a Chinese monarch who had fallen into their hands.

I have experienced very different sensations of wonder
and admiration, when endeavouring thus to follow out the
aim and construction of the Ta-Tsin Wall, than would
have been produced had I stood before those melancholy

* Morrison’s Chronology.
342 THE COLISEUM OF VESPASIAN.

evidences of despotism that yet stand exultingly over the ruins
of Memphis—the unmeaning, I had almost said unsightly,
Pyramids of Jizeh. Of the largest, Diodorus says, that
the unremitting labour of 366,000 men was required for
twenty years, before its apex was reared above the sandy
plain; and Pliny stigmatises the whole as an idle and foolish
ostentation of royal wealth. Chance, the latter historian
adds, has most justly obliterated the remembrance of their
various founders.

Even had I now before me that unmatchable ruin of
antique regality and grandeur, the magnificent amphitheatre
of Rome’s best days—the Coliseum of Vespasian, I could
not help reflecting that its magnificence and grandeur was
wrung, in one year, out of the compulsory toil of 12,000
Jews and Christians; that its eighty stately arcades
were designed to contain 100,000 spectators assembled to
witness and gloat over cruelty in its most depraved and
repulsive form; to see captives, slaves, and malefactors
fighting and slaying each other in cold blood, for life or
liberty, and for the gratification of the civilised Romans;
men worried and torn by wild beasts, and the beasts hacked
and mangled by the men: that its columned walls had
echoed and re-echoed the applauding shouts, the ‘ Habets’
of the excited and heartless audience, when prisoner after
prisoner, criminal after criminal, or slave after slave, as
might be—to whom, if not killed outright—life was yet dear,
had fallen, covered with blood and wounds, before his vic-
torious opponent, and his valueless panting body lay waiting
for the finishing thrust or slash, while his fast glazing eyes
wandered desperately through the haze of exhaustion towards
the blood-thirsty people for the death-warrant or reprieve—
the pollicem premere, or the pollicem vertere—the clenched
hands and upright thumbs of mercy, or the fatal thumbs
bent back in disapproval.

I might prefer this as a national and a more creditable
A CHANGED LANDSCAPE, 343

work, because built with nobler intentions, and devoted to
a more patriotic purpose. The mighty maze of stone that
constitutes the old barricade of China, though it does not
boast of a trace of beauty—save that which accidentally
belongs to its austerely uniform towers and parapet, and
the wild sublimity of its situation—is doubtless preferable to
the vast details and architectural magnificence that glorified
the Roman shambles for two and a half centuries later date.

But I have lingered too long in my refuge among the
wreck of bricks, bare slabs of rock, and ledges of crumbling
rampart. The sun is getting higher and higher, and hurling
down with momentarily increasing rage the intensest shower
of burning rays I have yet been exposed to; and an urgent
feeling of thirst has been rapidly gaining on the pleasurable
and reflective senses since the heat became so great.

The scenery around has altered a good deal, too. The sea
that had shone like a shield of polished steel or silver but
a short while ago, now seems a dense sheet of talc, from which
the junks have been swept: the golden sand is a ruddy blaze
of flickering fire, almost too powerful for the shaded eyes.
Every tint has changed ; everything wears an altered appear-
ance; and the far-off objects that I could clearly discern
when I sat down barely an hour ago, are now leaping and
quivering in a hazy tremor of scorching light.

Though late in the morning, there is not a single being of
any description stirring in the plain below me. The silence
and deathly stillness everywhere is quite mystifying when
one thinks of the mobs of howling and worrying people that
beset us last night.

Surely they cannot live eternally within those walls, and
haunt for ever those regular rows of houses I can just see
the roofs of in long lines intersecting each other, without
coming out into the plain on either side. Shan-hai Kwan is
there, like a desolate ghost-ridden house that has been to let
for years, and which no creature will venture near. The
344 THE GREAT PLAIN OF CHINA.

high road to, and the high road from it, stretch east and west
for miles, and yet they are vacant by all save the beating
rays. Never in daylight was such a large piece of culti-
vated country, with populous villages and a closely-packed
town, occupied by an industrious lot of inhabitants, so
wanting in life.

Up among the clouds to the north-west, north, and north-
east, soar the tops of the granite hills in the quickening
glare, treeless and verdureless— thick as pins stuck in a
pin-cushion by a careless hand—and with all the multiform
outlines of mountains composed of this igneous extrusion
rising so majestically that they look as if they were curious
stalactites hung or growing from the vault of heaven. It is
only among them that one can discover

‘ The negligence of nature, wide and wild,
Where undisguised by mimic art she spreads
Unbounded beauty to the roving eye.’

Tam on the most advanced of these monarchs of the world’s
agony. They extend from far beyond Peking, margining,
as it were, what is called the Great Plain of China, with tall
sierras of fine-grained, hard, and beautiful grey granite, with
low knolls of compact semi-crystalline limestone, of a brown-
ish-grey colour, exhibiting thin veins of quartz in its fracture,
flanking these, with a deep cave in one or two places; and
are chiefly remarkable for the great uniformity they have pre-
sented along the whole track, in running towards the road
from the long range in spurs inclining from north-east to
south-west. This may be said to be the narrowest portion
of the rich alluvial plain which spreads out from this wall to
the junction of the river Kan with the Yangtsz "Kiang in
Kiangsi, in latitude 30° north; * for the mountains separating
China from Mongolia and Mantchuria here take a bend round
to the eastward, and terminate in the peak on which this

* Williams’ Middle Kingdom.
HEIGHT OF THE MOUNTAINS. 345

tower is situated, about eight miles from the little headland
that carries the Great Wall into the gulf.

In the most recent maps their height, at this part, is given
as four or five thousand feet, but this is probably over-
estimated, as my observations now only place the tower at
1,556 feet above the level of the town, and that cannot be
more than 200 feet above the level of the sea. Immediately
behind this, belonging, in fact, to the same mountain, is
another peak about twenty feet higher than the tower,
which looks almost as lofty as any of the others; so that
at the very utmost none of the mountains in my vicinity
can, I think, exceed 3,000 feet. To the eastward they
seem to dwindle down in a very gradual manner, until
lost in the fervent glitter; but to the north they spread
away in limitless profusion, and over them bounds the ten
thousand li defence, with towers and brown stone wall,
like a long narrow skiff with square sails rising and falling
on the waves of a heavy sea.

Holding on by a thin ledge of rock, I can look below and
mark the two ponies of our mandarin friends, no larger than
two white dots, standing at the edge of the fir clump, which
looks scarcely bigger than a gorse bush. M. and the prying
officials are under its shelter, but I wave a handkerchief,
nevertheless, to let them know that I have gained the
summit; and then finish the bearings, and the measurement
indicated by the instruments.

It is insufferably hot, and a mouthful of water would be
worth any price. Looking about, I find a wet streak,
scarcely more than damp, on the face of a piece of rock;
this I carefully soak up for a few minutes with the end of my
turban, and then keep the moist cloth in my lips to allay the
horrid craving; but it tastes very bitter—for the stone was
covered with a thin mossy coat—and does nothing to pal-
liate the drought. My handkerchief is wrapped around my
head as an extra protection, and the ends are allowed to
346 DESCENT TO THE PLAIN.

crop down and cover my temples and neck, but it does not
mitigate the fierceness of the sun.

The way I ascended looks ten times more difficult for
descent, and highly dangerous, as I can only employ one
hand to cling with, the other being engaged in carrying the
inconvenient barometer, which I must either leave behind,
or carry and seek a more facile route to the rear of the
mountain, from whence a gully or ravine may lead me out
to the plain.

Deciding on the latter course, I began to move down as
well as the harsh declivities and the care necessary to pre-
vent a downfall—which would have been a most serious
affair here, as I was alone—would allow me; but not before
I had with, I hope, pardonable vanity, and the licence of a
first explorer, scratched on the solid part of the tower wall
in very transient lines, ‘ Staveley Peak,’ as a landmark and
a trace to any future venturer. The thin smooth soles of
my boots glanced off the mossy slopes and ridges of the
living rock, as if they had been planted on sheet ice, when I
wound round on narrow crags, shelves, and _hair’s-breadth
projections that would have bothered the sure eyesight and
surer footfalls of the chamois—slipping, tripping, and re-
covering again, times without end, until about half way
down, when greater difficulties presented themselves in the
form of immense irregular masses of rock—clay iron-stone
it appeared to be—strewn thickly about, as they had been
split, hurled, and rifted in great flakes and blocks by the
expansive force of the moisture imbibed during wet weather,
and frozen much beyond its liquid bulk in the severe frosts
of winter.

To get over these was both vexatious and injurious; they
were sometimes so loose and disjointed, that no sooner had
I put foot on what was to all appearance a trusty piece, than
away it would slide, crashing over the smaller fragments,
and throwing me ten or fifteen feet below; at other times,
FEARFUL MID-DAY HEAT. 347

the deep chasms between the sharp jagged edges would be
treacherously filled up, and covered over by the wild vine
or creeping weeds, like a masked trow de loup, so that before
I could make up my mind whether to yield my weight to
it or not—so headlong was my course at intervals, I was
fairly trapped, and contused and shaken beyond all belief,
until limbs, body, and. brain were alike paralysed and
jumbled about by the inavertible collisions. The stem of
the vine, too, even where the descent was not bad, often
proved a regular gin; for lying concealed from view in
wily nooses, it inveigled toe or ankle into the mesh, and a
heavy fall downwards was the consequence.

When I got to the bottom, which must, with the turn-
ings and windings, and these bothering accidents, have
been nearly two hours from the time I left the peak, the
sun was above the mountain ridges, and a perfect globe of
incandescent fire looked and felt as if but a few hundred
yards above my head. Oh, how hot, how scorching, how heart-
quickening and brain-melting was that forenoon sun at the
Great Wall, on the eleventh of July! Had all the hot days I
ever encountered ; had all the fiery suns that ever beat upon
my head, and struck their red-hot rays into my back, been col-
lected into that narrow shadowless furnace, I could not have
been more quickly conquered, more thoroughly overcome.

The feeble flutter that still moved in the air when I
was on that tower, which now seemed hanging at an im-
measurable elevation in the clouds of polished tin, had long
since been excluded by the giant rim of vertical rocks that
intervened between me and the plain; and the reflection—
quintessence of the sun’s furious power—from the naked crags
on every side, had so driven out or so rarefied the lower
atmosphere, that breathing became a series of convulsive
gasps, executed with an agonising effort only less painful
than the outrageous thirst I endured.

Resolutely I followed the ravine for about a quarter of a
348 A LOST OUTLET.

mile, I think, climbing, jumping, and eagerly scrambling over
the obstructive beds of débris, round to the eastward; and
then, oh! how bitterly I was disappointed, when it ran to
the left, to the north of the base of a scar cliff, instead of, as
I had hoped, to the plain on the south! Like the starling of
the Bastille, I was caged. I could not get out; not a single
chance remained for me but to clamber up the nearest
mountain as rapidly as possible, and escape from the unre-
lenting sun, that, like some foul fiend, crept more above and
closer to me the less I felt able to resist it. A wild species
of determination suddenly seized upon me, as I strained my
eyes to measure the distance and the quickest way to the
crest of the heaven-rending mountains. A mad desperation,
mental and physical, urged me on to hurry recklessly over
all kinds of obstacles, to struggle against precipitous walls
of rock like a maniac, and to tear blindly upwards, as if for
life, to that summit which I knew must overlook the plain,
and which I frantically rebuked myself for ever losing
sight of on such a fearfully dangerous day.

I can remember that I many times fell back from the
unfriendly steep that denied me foothold or handhold; I
also remember that I scaled the Great Wall where it in
solitude bent over a deep fissure: that the stones felt like
glowing coals, and that I wondered if the Chinese had reared
it under such a liquifying sun, when I easily got down from
the top of it. But I remember far better that, hand over
hand, I got to the top of that weary mountain, with the per-
spiration running through my skin like water through a
colander, stupefied and exhausted, with legs so tired that,
though aching violently, they would not obey me further,
and with feet cut and bruised through the rents and gashes
in the flimsy boots.

Most appalling of all, the horrible sun had begun to affect
me in an unusual and indescribable manner ; for in spite of
all my conscious attempts to suppress it, every inspiration I
IMPENDING SUNSTROKE. 349

made was accompanied by an involuntary jerking sigh,
alarmingly loud. It sounded in my ears not unlike a hiccup,
though far more distracting, and more resembling the deep
sigh of grief, perhaps, than anything else of the kind; and
with this, there was violent and tumultuous beating of the
heart—its thumps dinning strangely and vehemently in the
awful quiet of nature, as if it would break its way free; and
there was the bursting throb of the carotid arteries, and the
distended strain of the jugulars in the neck, as if I was
being effectually strangled; with a faint blowing or ringing
in the ears, like the sound of a far-distant railway-whistle.
My eyes were so heavy that vision became an irksome task,
but yet they were able enough to tell me that another dreadful
range of precipices was in front, instead of the tree and crop-
covered level I had striven for; and that another descent to a
forbidding valley—it might be the valley of the shadow of
death, it glared so repulsively and yawned so demoniacally in
the full light of day—and another almost hopeless contention
with sixteen hundred feet of upright stone, that stood a
mocking partition between me and life, was an inevitable
trial, if escape from such a den, such an inquisitorial torture-
prison, was ever to be effected.

The terrifying stillness that haunted this perdulous spot
was not among the least of my visitations, as I dropped down
on the scraggy verge, imagining that a brief rest would lull
or ameliorate the symptoms of exhaustion I laboured under.
The total absence of everything animated, of everything that
would stimulate one to exertion, to increased hopefulness, or
even lend a transient gleam of life to the deathless solitude,
and convince the desperate and all but despairing stranger
that he was not entirely lopped off from the moving and
sentient world, made the most sedative and dismal impres-
sion upon me.

Presently, however, a gorgeously-enamelled and emblazoned
butterfly would lazily flaunt its gaudy figure past me—a
350 INTENSE THIRST.

brilliant temptation which I could not have resisted at other
times—and alight on some lichen-coloured stone near where I
sat. Then a hawk ora falcon would poise itself on oscillating
or fixed outstretched wing, as it scanned the crevices and
corners where prey might be found; and anon a small bird’s
note would sound sweetly, but sorrowfully low, far up some
lone valley. Even these were companionable and enlivening,
and for the moment I felt thankful; but more gratefully did
I hail a thready streak of water that just oozed from a mossy
filter, like a black me down a brown splinter, within a few
yards of me. The turban was rolled and steeped in it until
it was almost swabbed dry, and then wrapped around my
brow, with the end in my mouth. This served me as a re-
servoir for a very limited period; and though dreadfully bitter
the tepid water tasted, it moistened my parched mouth until
I had made another essay at the life or death struggle; for
there was now no shirking the unwelcome thought that I had
lost my way, and that, if I by a miracle managed to evade
sunstroke or a broken neck, hunger and weakness would be a
slower but no less malignant antagonist.

Every twenty or thirty yards forced me to rest on some
projection, or hang on by my hands while I rallied for some
seconds; and the most wonderful escapes from falls over per-
pendicular cliffs were matters of ordinary occurrence, before
I found myself in a circular caldron-like dell, which the
blazing sun above seemed to enclose from the world
without, as it lay over its mouth like a Titanic dish-cover of
burnished metal. The vertical fire struck through me as
lightning would have done, in that amphitheatre in which
nothing vital but salamanders could live; the invisible
elastic air felt like a Dead Sea of molten lead—the place was
a pandemonium of vivid incendiarism. Pluto might have
revelled in the congenial element with his court, where
everything seemed molten but the obdurate rocks.

To reach the foot of the mountain that I had purposed
TIMELY SHELTER. 351

climbing, was beyond my strength. A vague notion that
shelter from the sun was the swmmum bonum of existence,
and all that 1 must now seek for, took hold upon me; but
through the glare and blaze of midday, when the unde-
viating luminary, in the glory of meridian, forbade the most
trifling object its attendant shadow of other hours, I could
see nothing but a group of shrubby bushes growing in an
angular nook; and to them I staggered, giddy as a man
inebriated, with that awful sense of bursting and throbbing
from heart to brain, that mysterious sighing that would not
cease, and the accompanying darkness and tintinnabulary
ringing becoming more and more overwhelming.

Once or twice, I think, I fell; but recollection, as well as
vision, became obscure. At last I reached the last hope—
the only balm now left in Gilead: the miserable stunted
handful of scrub seemed a heaven-endowed forest—a sanc-
tuary and a refuge. ‘Better a wee bush than nae bield,’
says the Scottish proverb, and never did it receive such a
verification before. As I sank through the thin foliage,
which was hardly broad enough to cover my head and
breast, I felt water trickling about my shoulders with inex-
pressible coolness, and soon it flowed around my face and
splitting head. I had been guided to a spring of the tiniest
dimensions; and yet, oh! how delicious was its little musical
tinkle, and its merciful temperature, in that fairy pool—
scarcely wider than two hands-breadths—as I immersed
face and mouth in it, and almost drained it.

There was a renewal of life for a few moments; the weak
bushes that grew on the only crumb of soil I had seen since
early morning, and that sheltered so cunningly my fountain
of a thousand blessings, my unexpected preserver, threw
off the hotter rays, and allowed me to breathe a little freer.
For a very short time I lay comparatively easy in this para-
dise; for

‘It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile
Even in the lap of horror.’
352 TERRIBLE SITUATION.

But there was so much confusion in my head, such an incon-
gruous mingling of ideas of the oddest description, that
memory does not serve me much further. A dark curtain
appeared to be drawn over everything ; a stinging pain shot
through my temples at times; and I felt as if the destroying
angel Azrael hovered above me. The daughter of night and
sleep had come to woo me lovingly; the distaff had been laid
aside; the wheel was about to cease rotating; and the black-
robed Atropos, whose trenchant fangs were those everlasting
peaks that stood in grim grandeur around me, appeared to
draw near with the dreaded scissors to divide my scanty
thread of life.

I know not, nor can I guess, how long I Jay thus; but it
could not have been above an hour, as the sun had scarcely,
to my thinking, stirred, and burned with its effulgent lustre
as wildly as ever. I was conscious enough to appreciate the
full danger of my situation, and the many chances I had to
combat with before the evening should relieve me of my
implacable enemy. Thanks to the perpetual drip, drip of
the water on my head, and the complete soaking of every
part of my body in the petty flood, I had got rid of the most
urgent and prostrating symptoms, and could gather wits
enough to reason on what was best to be done; for make one
more dash at freedom I must, as my legs and feet, stuck all
this time beyond the bushes, were almost broiled and be-
numbed, and the wounds ached very much—to such a
degree, in fact, that I doubted if I could stand at all.

When I thought of the mistake I had made in not leaving
the troublesome instruments at the tower, and arriving where
I had parted from M. by the known path I had scaled,
instead of losing my way, and them, too, in some forgotten
place, and getting the hard knocks of rocks and sun, with
starvation and excessive weakness to the bargain, I was
madly chagrined ; and the ever-recurring idea of dying in
such a wilderness, hemmed in by untrodden hills, on which
TROUBLESOME REFLECTIONS. 353

I had not seen the minutest trace of a human being having
ever been among them, was, I thought, intolerable. There
was little certainty of one’s body being disturbed, when I
calculated the miles and miles that I must have travelled,
up and down valleys and over arduous hills, into this utterly
forsaken place— where searchers, if bold enough to seek so
far, would pause long before they came to the conclusion
that I might be here. I thought, too, how I had neglected
the advice given by the mandarins as to there being no
roads, and the heat of the weather. Whenever I fancied the
exultation and arrogance they would undoubtedly indulge
in, and the unfavourable light a fatal termination of my dis-
regard of their counsels would place foreigners, I was
pressed on by a decided determination not to give in, I
would not forsake hope so long as I could move, though it
seemed as if I could never again rise ten feet up an ascent
unaided. Then my companion, what could he be doing all
this time? Surely he must have surmised what had hap-
pened, from my many hours’ absence, and done something in
the way of getting the country people to examine about the
hills! It is singular that I was then more uneasy on his
account than on my own; and at the dilemma I had got him
into such a weary way from Tien-tsin; and how he would be
able to act in it. The agony of mind I suffered was truly
excruciating, and half hoping, half despairing, I sought to
drive it away by action.

The weak rushing din of a remote stream had caught my
attention more than once since I recovered my senses, for
the ringing and deafness I had felt before going to sleep
had blunted every sound, and I reasonably concluded that if
I could only track it out it would conduct me to the outside
of the barrier by some easy passage— once there, I was safe.
Unfortunately, I had lost my cap and handkerchief, and
almost everything but a note-book, out of my pockets. I
daresay I had thrown them away. Indeed, Lam not quite

AA
354 A LONELY STREAM.

certain if, in that awful sun delirium, I was not walking
with my cap in my hand; and the only article remaining
was the long cotton scarf I had worn as a turban outside the
cap, and which I now found on my shoulders.

Once more a quantity of the grand elixir was imbibed,
and, with the new fashioned head-dress wringing wet, I reso-
lutely set off to hunt up the prospective stream. Heavens
and earth, how hot it was when I got again among the
angry black rocks: every one of those I touched might have
answered admirably for an over, rather than an under-heated
gridiron! An atmosphere fit to breathe there was none ;
but there was an aerial substitute of diabolical flame drawn
in with every inspiration, that felt as if dissolving and vola-
tilising every atom of fibre—every drop of blood.

Undergoing much torture from my damaged feet, but,
worst of all, a sprained ankle, I managed to hobble and
crawl for about a quarter of a mile to the eastward, gasping
like a stranded fish, and steaming and perspiring like a race-
horse after the race, and nobly faced a low fragment of cliff
that had been separated and thrown down from the mountain
side, until I had got a short way from the river. Alas! it,
too, was one of my disappointments in China ; a picture of so
many things met with daily. It was perversely running the
wrong way—against nature, and against reason, it splashed
and rioted away among the crooked passages to the west,
skipping idly over its rock-strewn bed with aggravating
liberty and ease. The strong desire to drink, roll, and lave
in it could not be gratified, owing to the space between us
being jammed up with surly blocks and flakes, quite
enough to prevent any prospect of ever getting away from
them, if once I trusted myself inside—I was so done up, so
cramped, and so unhinged. Yet, like a caged lion, I was
determined to bounce and spring at the unyielding bars until
the last.

Turning away from the tantalising stream, whose echoing
A DISAPPOINTMENT. 355

babble had derisively lured me so far, I dragged on to the:
eastern peaks, again to wage a contest with them from, as it
seemed, the bowels of the earth. Nerved to the utmost limit
of desperation, a few hundred feet of seemingly interminable
intermural ascent was won at an almost superhuman effort of
strength and mind, and a sudden circle round the mountain
brought me into a more favourable position for shelter;
because the laminar nature of the overlaying stone that
imposed itself on the granite was more irregular and dis-
rupted than any I had met before, and was heaved up into
all sorts of caves, and niches, and columns, gladly provoca-
tive of rest in case of need. An abrupt twist round a corner,
demanded by the violent divergence of a great angular pro-
jection, showed me, about five hundred feet higher, a tower
of the great wall, on the crest of the very cliff I was toiling
on, which I knew, from the view I had obtained in the
morning, must overlook the country below. Another hour’s
holding out, and I must be there.

Merciful powers! how closely I hugged and fought with
that iron-hearted precipice; and with what a distracting
sense of destitution did I gripe and clutch at every tuft of
weeds—every point, chip, and crumb of stone that lay
about, to support or aid me on! And what a feeling of
maddening despondency took possession of me, as a fragile
or fretted hand or foot-purchase deccitfully gave way when
depending on it, and I was launched back again many yards!

The scorching influences again begun to play their part,
after too short a respite, and I was attacked with the old
dreadful sensations more virulently than ever. To maintain
the struggle until the tower was reached, I could not, with
the fiery sunbeams enveloping me as with an atmo-
sphere of flame, making the soul sick, and the brain quiver.
A few yards to the right, I noticed a cave. It lay between
two tall ledges that formed its sides and back; with a mas-
sive splinter which had toppled from above, and been

AA2
356 A BENIGNANT FOUNTAIN.

stopped in its course by the inequalities around, to form an
impenetrable roof over a cascade that came welling from the
dark interior in a feathery jet. For this I hastened with
unutterable anxiety to avoid total annihilation by the heat.
At nearly every stride a rest was demanded—not to recover
consciousness or strength, which were fast giving in—but
to relax the cramped muscles of my legs, now so acutely
painful and almost useless. These intermissive struggles
lasted for a long time, and the den seemed ever receding
from me, until I had fairly thrown myself into its deep
shade, so overcome and prostrated by the day’s conflict that
something kept telling me I had finished, and that this was
the end. ;

The last thing I did was to throw my coat on a little.
upright block at the mouth of this chamber of grey rock, to
attract the attention of any men who might be sent in quest
of-me. A little sloping trough, very jagged, and very shal-
low, received the thin spout of water from the step above,
and conveyed it to the almost subterranean gutter among
the crags below. Into this I plunged at once, and with the
dark deep shadow of the rock overhead, and the icy chill of
the benignant cascade fluttering about face and temples, and
soothing the boiling brain, I fell into a lethargic state.
Incapable of thought, like another Alastor, I passed into a
blissful sleep—

‘Lone as incarnate death
On the smooth brink of that obscurest chasm.’

It was late in the afternoon when I awoke with a fright
from some incoherent and fantastic dream of monstrous in-
congruities, to the somewhat romantic and startling, but by
no manner of means pleasant realities of the natural hydro-
pathic establishment I had so opportunely discovered. For
some minutes I lay completely at a loss what to think of the
strange adventure. Why had I been transported to this
WAKENING SENSATIONS. 357

wizard-like retreat, and how could it have happened that I
should be nearly afloat in a sitting posture in a dam of water,
with a perpetual fountain gushing and spluttering but a few
inches above my heated cranium, and laving and titillating
me so agreeably. Surely the age of magic, sorcery, and
incantations had gone by, and Aladdin lamps, rings, and
charms had all been worn out since my nursery days had ex-
pired. For the life of me I could not fathom the mystery,

   
  
  

  

ly

1

i

 
 
 
 

ee
i
ANS

     
   

   
 
 

<a SV

ee RK (Nea
a WN We epee
Re § ies Wer

AN’ E

Sleeping in a Spring.

nor believe that I was not yet in the embarrassing and hair-
moving crisis of a nightmare dream. I felt like one con-
tending with a gloomy phantasm, from which he endeavours
to escape, though aware of its character: so dull and torpid
were my faculties. But they gained their natural elasticity
with a thrill, when I tried to raise myself from the watery.
depths, and was assailed by a host of unpleasant sensations,
ranging from the toes upwards; the principal of which, such
358 FOUNTAIN WORSHIP.

as stiffnesses, cramps, numbness, and dull and shooting pains,
were more than sufficient to convince me of my mortal
state. Then the whole of the day’s adventures thronged
thick upon me, and so wonderful did they seem that I
could scarcely believe in them—so confused had my thoughts
become.

All around was as still as the grave; yet I listened with
strained attention for the approach of investigators headed,
as I felt sure they must be, by M., and, as minute after
minute rolled by, became grievously annoyed that he had -
not come to my help. Before the night set in I felt assured
that some one must find a clue to my hiding-place, and bring
me succour of some description; for, physically, I was in-
capable of putting a foot to the ground. My brain was
still whirling and throbbing, and there was a sickness and
lack of energy about the heart that forbade exertion for some
time to come. I must have swallowed an enormous quantity
of the contents of this crystal well before my parching
thirst had abated, and a welcome relief the voracious draught
afforded; for I dropped off into a hazy slumber, lulled and
refreshed by the most delicate of shower baths.

Oh! those grateful feasts and festivals of the old Romans!
those glorious and sanctified Fontinalia on the thirteenth of
October, when the chaste nymphs of wells and fountains—fair
maids with rush-bound locks, elegant conceptions of grace,
sweetness, and amiability—were dutifully honoured and
worshipped by the religious devotees who had shared their
favours throughout the year; and presented for acceptance
with the loveliest and most fragrant of all the gifts that
Mother Earth can yield; with the loveknots and nosegays,
wreaths and coverlets of flowers, culled from’the brightest and
most fragrant spots! How ardently do I at this moment wish
that those twin preservyers of life, to whom, through a kind
Providence, I owe existence, and regard more fondly than,
perhaps, ever did a son of Rome his mossy repository of Agua
INCENTIVES TO EXERTION. 359

fontana—but which are now lost for ever in those trackless
chasms and tortive mountain walls of Mantchuria—were
brought within the ken of man, and tended with that respect
and affection their presiding deities deserve.

One almost feels as if a pilgrimage to the most remote
verge of Cathay with the dutiful love-offering of flowers to
the sweet-handed goddess of these prattling rock-bound founts
would be but doing justice to one’s conscience. Neverthe-
less, if such be necessary, let the distant pilgrimage be on a
favourable day, and not in the zenith of sun and summer.

Suddenly a long, clear whistle echoed and re-echoed from
slab to crag, and from crag to cliff, breaking the muteness of
the weird solitude, and infusing hope into an almost hopeless
mind. ‘Joy! joy!’ I cried, ‘at last they are there, for that
is M.’s call. Iam safe!’

I roused up, and shouted and bawled until I could make
no more noise; then fell back exhausted. The whistle,
unvaried in compass or strength, was continued monotonously,
until I was compelled to believe that it was but the warbling
of some lonely bird in the coolness of the evening; and felt
vexed. Two or three times I heard a rustling murmur, as
if somebody was trundling loose stones down the mountains a
little way off, in his descent towards me; but no one came.
It was only the evening wind brushing through a couple of
dried-up bushes near the cave.

But these trifling indications of life and motion were not
lost upon me. I fairly got up to test my utmost abilities to
move into the daylight. Thank heaven! the flaring, blinding,
and grilling beams of the rather too glorious orb were trans-
ferred to some other region of coups de soleil and frost-bite ;
and with the exception of some confusion, vertigo, and sting-
ing darts, my head did not seem so much the worse as I had
expected to find it. Creeping to the aperture of my cell,
the scene was found to be entirely changed from what I had
conceived it to be. Instead of the infernal white heat, the
360 PREPARATIONS FOR AN ASCENT.

untouchable stones, and the aqua fortis atmosphere, there was
a comparative Eden; though

‘On every side now rose ~

Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms,

Lifted their black and barren pinnacles
In the light of evening ’—

to bar the footsteps of the intruder. There was a silky
breeze that would scarcely have altered the course of a falling
rain-drop, it waved so finely, but oh! so gently soothing.

I felt a new-created being, though in honest truth I badly
wanted repairs. Then there was the Great Wall tower
standing with its grim visage hundreds of feet above me, as
if it overhung the world. That was the height of my
ambition, and might be achieved before dark. There was
plenty of time, for the sun’s slanting beams yet rose lively
enough above the westerly peaks. The gnawing effects of
nearly twenty-four hours’ fasting began now to press un-
pleasantly, and they alone were ample to stir me to action.

Not without much pain did I get rid of the remains of the
boots from my swollen feet, as progression in them was out
of the question, and my almost naked toes, though much
hurt, and all but dislocated, were far safer in that state on the
slippery sheets of rock I had to cross than under the ragged
leather. The out-lying coat was drenched in the pool, and
tied about my crown and neck to keep up the refrigerating
process. In such circumstances one is obliged to be one’s
own medical adviser, and I was apprehensive of a relapse of
the heart-beating, sighing, and disturbed cerebral symptoms,
as I issued from the primitive hospital with many hearty
benisons in my breast and on my tongue, for its salvatory
goodness to, perhaps, the first mortal who had ever faintingly
sought its precincts, or reclined—

‘Lulled by the fountain in the summer tide.’

} then thought that if ever fate should carry me within
A JOYFUL SIGHT. 361

hundreds of miles of the possibility of such a thing being
realised—

‘Tl build a pleasure house upon this spot,
And a small arbour made for rural joy ;
*T will be the traveller’s shed, the pilgrim’s cot,
And place of love for damsels coy.’

And

‘A cunning artist will I have to frame.
A basin for that fountain in the dell.’

This was wild speculation, and the stern business of
grovelling at a snail’s pace up towards Cloudland shattered
all other thoughts, and necessitated a calm survey of both
ends of mortality, in favour of which, life or death, the
chances were now about equal. Carefully, tenderly, and
slowly, without once looking up, I went on, glad that I was
retrieving something towards an escape from that saturnine
crater—that midday voleano—than which—

‘The sun on drearier hollow never shone.’

Long and wearily appeared every yard, for a hundred feet
were more tedious and difficult to be got over than a thousand
would have been at other times. Another range of peaks
beyond this, and the hunt was up; I should have no longer
power to move, and might as well resign myself quietly to
the impending finish, when a myriad of ecstatic raptures
flooded reason, and almost carried me headlong over the
thin-edged ridge.

There was the plain lying before me far below, wearing
the sober beauties of a magnificent sunset, but as petrified in
its life as when I last looked on it so early in the morning.
The Crusader’s first view of J erusalem, the travel-weary
pilgrim’s first peep of Mecca, or the exile’s earliest glimpse
of his native shore, could not compare with the joy I experi-
enced as I scrutinised every morsel of the declivity, and
362 FINAL DESCENT.

traced out each path and village for signs of movement. But
no; all that bore the quickening impulse was the fresh breeze
from the gulf, and the tags of weeds waving their blasted
leaves and heads listlessly from it.

I was free! and though many many hundreds of feet of
almost sheer descent had yet to be accomplished, I was out of
the pit, and for very gladness would have hugged and squeezed
the square hard-featured old tower that had so generously
served me as a finger-post in that never-to-be-effaced moment,
and would have scaled its battlemented crown, and exultingly
waved my wet coat as a signal of triumph, had I not been so
leg weary and spirit worn.

Halting but a few minutes to recruit from this tardy and
desperately fought resurrection, and more and more perplexed
at the non-appearance of friends or mandarins, I began to
glide down the weather-beaten mountain, which stands a
good deal more to the north than the one I had ascended in
the morning. Meeting with the dry bed of a torrent, I had
plain sailing for a long way over the boulders and water-
worn stones, sledging down on a flag or block whenever I
could.

Once only on the passage I came across a wild raspberry-
bush with but a few berries on its delicate twigs, and lost no
time in stripping it of the unripe but luscious fruit, which
tasted like the essence of everything grandly nutritive.

When near the foot, I heard with unqualified delight the —
voices of men during one of my long pauses, and was
sharply made aware of their whereabouts and vocation, as
they sung and talked in a very loud key, while they cut the
scanty grass and weeds from the sides and bottom of a
scraggy valley.

Now I was in the land of the living, and might consider
myself as quite rescued; for these hardy countrymen could
not refuse to do what was needful, even though I was a
stranger, and would readily assist me in getting to the town.
A STRANGE APPARITION. 363

For the purpose of asking them I turned off my course, and
got quite near before they noticed me.

Good gracious! what a shout of terror they gave when
a big stone, uptorn by my weight, went thundering by them,
and caused them to look up smartly to see from whence it

 

The Genii of the Mountain.

came. There were only six, and four of these threw down
their reaping hooks and fled, bawling stertorously as they
leaped and tumbled over the irregular ground. Had their
national dragon suddenly alighted in the grass they were
mowing, they could not have exhibited greater fear and
consternation.

One old man stood stockstill and speechless, unable to
move his eyes from the dreadful apparition ; but the other,
a strong young fellow, with his head wrapped in a blue
turban, hooted and howled as he brandished a long knife in
one hand, and his implement of husbandry in the other,
364 - A PERPLEXING MEETING.

loudly commanding me to go back —to go, quickly back to
the mountains again !

This was another strange turn of affairs; no sooner
escaped from a rather fierce frying-pan, than I am to be
immolated by a fiery native. Certainly these romantic
adventures were crowding rather quickly into one day’s
catalogue to be kindly appreciated; and, though it might
make a thrilling finale to the exciting tale of a day at the
Great Wall to wind up by a throat-cutting scene, yet for
the Chinaman’s sake, and the matter of conscience troubling
him afterwards, I was loath that he should commit murder,
after the maltreatment I had already received from his
sterile mountains and treacherous sun.

I sat down and beckoned him to me, telling him who I
was, and where I had been as well as I could; but for a
minute or so he vociferated more loudly and tried to look
more menacing, until I remembered the unearthly guise I
was in, and the scarecrowish head-dress I wore. In a
moment these were regulated or removed, and I must have
appeared somewhat less like a bogle or a warlock, for he
then commenced to advance carefully, making sure of a.
good line of retreat, however, and keeping an eye on his
old friend behind, who had got out of his cataleptic seizure,
and supported the fighting man with great courage and
tact.

A few words, signs, and gestures made us friends; the
Damoclean whittle was returned to a more fitting and
congenial sheath than it could have found in my con-
tused body, and the reaping hooks were agreeably reversed
and laid down on the bloodless grass; while the valorous
youth escorted me to a village we had passed in the morn-
ing, near the clump of firs to which my companion had
resorted with the mandarins when I began the heavy day’s
work.

Just as I stopped at one of the cottages to obtain a drink
FRIENDLY PEASANTRY. 365

of water and wait the despatch of a messenger to M., I
chanced to glance at this little grove, and was rather
astonished to see one of two men mount a pony in hot haste
and ride off in the direction of the town. As soon as I had
imbibed such a quantity of water as made the old fellow
who fetched it stare, I made towards the remaining mes-
senger or spy, intending to have sent him to the inn with
tidings of my arrival in the lower world, and with a request
that a cart be sent for me—as walking some two or three
miles was rather impracticable considering I had no boots,
and was nearly minus toes and shins; but the strange
fellow was mounted and away at a- brisk trot before I got
near ; so I had to hire one of the villagers, who made such
good use of his legs, that he overtook the hurried equestrian
and gave him the note.

Meanwhile I reclined under the pleasant firs, and thought
how much I would have given for.their deep umbrage four
or five hours before, when faltering under those agonising
symptoms—more racking a hundred-fold than those which
precede insensibility in drowning, and reflected what a stiff job
J had to get out of danger on those glib escarpments, shadeless
pits, and horrid chasms. I soon had a group of villagers of
all ages around me, and in the distance, at every door or
garden wall, the little round faces of the, as inquisitive, but
more bashful, dear creatures peered out. The old men sat
down and smoked, and made their remarks, while the juniors
stood outside the circle, and all were remarkably civil—even
polite, in their way. Numbers of questions were asked by
them, but I fear my very slight knowledge of their language
and dialect did not go far to enlighten them on the subjects
they were so anxious to learn something; still, however, we
managed to maintain an animated conversation, in the which
my desperate ascent of the ‘ bad’ or difficult mountains, and
the ruinous condition of my travelling-suit, furnished no small
item. JI was given to understand that they never by any
366 TARTAR SHOES.

means attempt to go beyond a certain height, and that their
shoes even then are always spoiled by the stones.

These people were the first Chinese, by the by, I had
seen wearing leather shoes in China, though farther in
Mantchuria we met them frequently in use. ‘They were
made of the brown soft leather I had seen prepared at
Tien-tsin, where the hides, after being steeped until the hair
is easily removed, are smoked or cured over the wide flue

 

Tartar Shoes,

of a low furnace in the open air; the tanner manipulating
the pelt over the cloud of dense smoke which rises from the
burning straw introduced below, so that every portion is
equally permeated by the preservative ingredients given out
from the smothered combustion, and the operation of tan-
ning, as thus practised, requires but a few hours in the
Chinaman’s hands; but the material is soft and thin and
cannot stand wear well. In shape they were not unlike the -
Roman sandal or caliga, and each was formed of the one
piece of skin moulded to the desired form when soft, and,
without any additional sole but the smooth surface of the
leather, which, rising above the heel, the sides of the foot
and the instep, was drawn into puckers around the mouth
by a thong, and furnished with a tongue or lip of more
pliable stuff to cover the front of the foot.
A WELCOME ARRIVAL. 367

On my enquiring their name for the Great Wall, they
gave me a local appellation of wonderful import, and then
asked if the English had a great myriad li wall, manifesting
some surprise when told that we did not require such a
fabric ; and so on with other matters. They were a strong
healthy contented lot of people, fair specimens of the,
I should think, finest peasantry in the world. Though they
had never before seen the: face of a foreigner it was very
remarkable how kindly they were disposed towards me.

Two chubby little boys—ruddy cheeked and manly little
chaps—sought to fraternise with me at once, and brought
me basin after basin of water — for I was ‘ Danish or Dutch
with thirst’ in earnest—and gathered me bouquets of wild
flowers, while the old men eagerly enquired if I wanted
anything to eat.

The fan inscribing was a great amusement when I hap-
pened to pull out my note-book—the only thing, I think,
left in my pockets—and began to write with the ‘ everlasting
pencil.” But the interesting ¢ée-d-téte was happily broken
by the arrival of M. in our stiff chariot, bumping along
at a spanking pace over the untutored path, and the rencontre
was a most satisfactory one for both of us, as a world of
anxiety and trouble was at that moment thrown to the
winds. Interchanging adieus with my simple-hearted enter-
tainers, who had made themselves so affable, we mounted
the churning machine and sped off to the town. A few
words sufficed to account for my absence, and the non-
appearance of M.

He had waited until nearly the middle of the day at the
halting-place among the trees with the two officers sent to
keep a watch on us, one of whom turned out to be a first-
rate good-humoured fellow, who had collected about a dozen
words of English from some of our naval people when they
were surveying on the coast, where he was commandant of a
seaward town, and they used to visit him—vwhich words he
368 MUTUAL EXPLANATIONS.

was very proud of showing off on all occasions, and this made
him friendly and confident.

Finding I did not return in a reasonable time, my com-
panion became so apprehensive of an accident having
befallen me, that he attempted the ascent of the mountains,
followed, but for a very little way, by the two fat warriors,
whose plethoric condition did not give them any great
advantage in climbing. He could only reach half way,
when the sun drove him back, and then, with the mandarins,
he returned to Shan-hai Kwan to procure assistance from
the authorities in searching me out.

In this Ma-foo was prime mover, for he started off at once
to some high personage, obtained twelve men, and, regard-
less of age and infirmities, accompanied them as a volunteer,
gallantly leading the way. But he was not long in return-
ing with bad tidings, of course; as his party could not have
waddled more than half way to the peak, and the exertion
was sure to throw the poor fellow into a desponding turn
of mind. M. gave me up as lost as the hours flew by, and
made every preparation for the worst, getting fifty men from
the commandant of the garrison, who were sent off to trace
my steps, but who, in all probability, never got any farther
than the first—for the Chinese have an antipathy to clam-
bering up these nearly inaccessible rocks—and came back
without a word of tidings. He was just about organising
another search, to be superintended by himself, and was
bent on despatching our factotum back to Tien-tsin with
the bad news, when my note reached him.

His anxiety must have been greater than mine; for at
such a distance from Europeans, in a town where foreigners
had never appeared before—at least in foreign costume, and
among a people whose friendly countenance was matter for
doubt—he would have spent a most wretched time alone,
until somebody from that place had come to aid him, had I
not returned.
THE CLOSE OF A HARD DAY. 369

A close surveillance had been kept up all day by the
Jealous magistrates, and two spies were seated in the outer
room of our quarters at the inn when we entered. Raven-
ously I satisfied the hunger that had so tightly wrung me
for hours, by an extraordinary onslaught on the mutton-
chops promptly prepared by Ma-foo—whose old parchment
countenance was pinched into acute smiles at the prospect of
our journey being renewed without further trouble—and
drinking a shameful quantity of sherry, with oceans of
water.

Just as I had come in—without washing my face, or
changing my clothes, so sleepy and fatigued did I feel—I
threw myself on the hard kang, and almost before my head
had touched the cane mat, was off into a profound slumber
—so profound that I did not hear the jabber and row of
some more of the passport gentry, who wished another copy
of Tsung’s paper, without which, they said, we would not be
allowed to leave in the morning. I think M. held out
against this trifling with, or ignoring of, the legalised pass-
port, and wished them again to say if it was inert and void;
but they were guarded enough.

BB
370

CHAPTER XIX.

ACCOMMODATION GRATIS — LEAVING THE CITY—~ CHINESE CIVILITY—
GOOD-BYE TO THE MHILL-SEA-BARRIER —-THE PUNISHMENT OF THE
CANGUE — THE COREANS, JAPANESE, AND CHINESE — OUR CONSORT —
BEYOND THE GREAT WALL—COAST LINE OF DEFENCE AND ITS PROBA-
BLE HISTORY—GRAND VIEW OF THE WALL —FATHER VERBIEST —
HUNTING WITH HAWK AND HOUND — HUN-CHOW —A TARTAR CARA-
VANSARY — RUSTIC THEATRES— ROADSIDE: COMPANIONS— THE VILLAGE
BLACKSMITH — THE SHOEING SMITH AND FARRIER.

HEN the day broke next morning, we were up and
preparing to depart from the dirty rooms and the
mandarinish town of the Great Wall. Innumerable damages,
over and above those felt yesterday, made themselves trouble-
some, and much in the way, and my head still swam a little
and ached; but my eyes were the most painful, and fiery
hot from the inflaming glare of the rocks. Otherwise, there
was nothing serious to remind me of the exposure and buf-
feting about that had formed such a prominent episode in
our quiet trip, and I relied on the excitement and exercise
of a day beyond the Wall to put me on the high road to
convalescence.

As we were ready to set off, and one of the spies in wait-
ing had already started on his mission to inform the mag-
nates of our intentions, the bill was sent for, and we fully
expected to have something tremendous, if the charges were
to be in proportion to the attentions we had received; but
an answer came that there was nothing to pay but homage,
for that. the inn was a mandarins’, kept up by government
for the convenience of these worthies when travelling to and
from Mantchuria ; and all that was expected from us as we
left was a formal obeisance to the absent son of heaven.
LEAVING THE CITY. 371

Certainly a very moderate demand for such villanous and
miserly accommodation, which reflected no great amount of
credit on the Emperor’s generosity to his servants, nor on
the management of the home department.

When passing out of the main courtyard, I could not help
glancing towards the building where the comptrollers of the
imperial household held out so manfully two nights before ;
and there, sure enough, I saw the finikin, pot-bellied little
man of many terrors, the grinning man who delighted in
dilemmas when he knew he was safe from peril, the young
bucks who smirked and swaggered from the inner room, and
all the other members of the establishment who had suffered,
more or less, from fright or confusion of mind, looking out
.from doors and windows with evident glee.

In the streets a greater crowd tossed and tumbled about,
and a stronger body of un-civil servants had to perpetuate
the blessings of peace by unmerited castigation, than awaited
us yesterday; but we steered in tranquillity through them
until the military guard-house was neared, when we found
the same decent display of. clean well-dressed officials stand-
ing in the way, and the old blue-button on the steps
beckoning us in. We dismounted, and our ponies were held
by ready attendants, while the operation of real hand-
shaking —which the fat ‘English’ gentleman, I suppose, had
told them was the proper thing to do—was gone through,
and the cementing beverage was handed round within doors.

The thumb was in great request in the conversation that
ensued, and the gesticulations particularly affecting and
comical by turns, as the proceedings of yesterday were re-
viewed and commented on. The Bluebutton was one of those
who made sure I would return all right from the stony moun-
tains—‘woo-shi’ and ‘I canna be fashed thinking otherwise’
flashed through one’s mind on this declaration ; but as he
had been instrumental in sending out the impotent searchers
to the foot of the mountains on’ both occasions, and seemed

BRB2
372 CHINESE CIVILITY.

lavishly gratulatory on our good luck in getting back, he
was impressively thanked for his kindness to us unworthy
strangers, and regrets were expressed that we could not
show our appreciation of his supreme regard in any other
way than by words.

This put him in a lively state of body, if not of mind, for
he struck his breast as if about to displace his sternum and
fracture all his ribs. He then grasped at something there,
which we were to understand was his heart, and which after
a tearing struggle he proffered to us with the fiercest self-
abnegation. All he possessed was ours; but surely we would
return again and dine with him? No! Then his sorrow is
so bitter that he must cry; and he actually went through the
motions and expressions of sorrow very cleverly, wiping his
eyes with a closely folded pad of dusky cotton stuff, which
he drew from the long sleeve of his coat, and throwing him-
self into a loud fit of superficial emotion. But would we
show him Tsung’s passport again to read—only for a
minute, and we would get it back?

There was no understanding this excessive desire to be
continually handling, and reading, and copying the Tien-
tsin Commissioner’s useful favour; for, to speak candidly, it
was childish and supererogative to a most exalted degree, and
inexcusable on any pretence; but as he had admitted the
validity of the proper documents, there could be no great
harm in letting him have a farewell peep after the amuse-
ment he had afforded us. A pair of goggling spectacles of
large dimensions were adjusted on the nose, after a pinch of
snuff; a very grave look was suddenly assumed, and he read
the paper for the second time with a good deal of byeplay
which seemed to take well; then it was given over to be
again copied, more for the sake of display and manufacturing
business, it struck us, than anything else. A little more
talk followed, in which we were surprised to be informed
that he was a Chinaman, and not a Tartar, as we had sup-
A GOOD-BYE. 373

posed; and that he knew the capital of Mantchuria by its
geographical or Mantchu name of Moukden,—being the only
man we met on the long ride who did so, and then the
audience was finished with another round of strong scented
snuff.

When we had once more shaken the long-fingered and
long-nailed hands, the big man of a dozen words, who had
all along been very jocose, got up and said with strongly
marked emphasis, ‘Go?— good-bye!’ at which great effort he
laughed immoderately. It sounded strange, and not un-
pleasant, to hear a mandarin at the Great Wall use such
words, and with some degree of pride too. They all fol-
lowed us to the street, and in another minute we were out
of their sight. The police cleared away the crowd until we
were in a busy suburb outside the east gate, where num-
bers of men and boys were fishing with rods in the wall
moat; the sides of the street lined with stirring little shops
and stalls, containing all the animal and vegetable necessa-
ries of Chinese life, and a stroke of trade dwiving on, rather
unexpected after the sepulchral look the place bore from the
hills; and then they too fell behind.

We noticed a melancholy-looking fellow seated on the
border of the active thoroughfare undergoing the punishment
of the cangue—a public exhibition much more fatiguing and
obnoxious to the prisoner than our obsolete stocks could have
been—in the hot morning sun. Poor wretch! he appeared
very helpless and forlorn as he leant forward on the edge of
the great square board fastened round his neck, and through
the centre of which his head protruded in a somewhat
laughable fashion—as a little child fed him from a basin, and
a watchful guardian stood by to overlook the integrity of the
wooden collar.

Out in the open country it was rather astonishing to dis-
cover a mounted man riding behind us, for the very ostensible
purpose of guiding our steps, but in reality to watch us—an
374 THE CANGUE.

extension of magisterial solicitude and thoughtfulness that
we unkindly believed we could have dispensed with, for of
all things in travel nothing feels more galling than to be
dogged by spies and haunted by reporters. However, we
never spoke to the individual, but pushed on in front,
confident of having his company for many days, seeing that

 

The Punishment of the Cangue.

he bestrode two well-filled carpet saddle-bags, and that his
large yellow waterproof coat was rolled like a valise behind
the wooden saddle to be ready for a rainy day.

We had now passed from the most important of the
eighteen provinces of China—that of Chili, signifying Direct
Rule, because in it is the capital, Peking, from whence the
Emperor issues his mandates and proclamations to the great
empire he reigns over—and beyond the eastern limits of
China proper, into the south-west boundary of what is called
the Mantchu country, or Mantchuria, through a portion of
THE COREANS. 375

one of the three provinces of which—that of Shinking—it
was necessary for us to move in our way along the head of
the gulf. Under the Ming dynasty this part of the trans-
mural territory was named ‘ Tunking,’ or the Eastern
capital, from the chief town in it; but in our European maps
it now figures by the ancient title of Liautung—east of the
river Liau—at one time applied only to the country lying
between the Corea, the Sea of Japan, and that large river;
and also as ‘Kwantung,’ or the region east of the Pass or
Great Wall, a name better known by the people among whom
we travelled than any other.

We were also on the track of the Coreans, who, issuing
at a certain period of the year from the Fung-whang-ting—a
town at the gate of that name in the palisade which separates
the Corea from Eastern Mantchuria, and through which
everything must pass between the two countries—traverse
this province, and enter Heaven’s Empire by the gate we had
just left, on their mission to pay tribute and homage to the
once mighty Autocrat, and transact other political business
at Peking. The road, still continuing to the north-east, was
wide and firm, though unmade, and may be busy enough at
some other time of the year, but now it was almost lonely,
and ran away over gently undulating ground, flanked on the
left-hand side for many miles by quiet little villages, and on
the right by fields and sandy patches extending down to the
waters of the Gulf of Liautung.

At about a mile from the gate of the custom-house town,
and but a short distance from the highway, stood a massive
square embattled tower,—something after the fashion of the
old Peel houses, or castles on the Scottish border, built of
brick, and about eighty feet high, but without any outward
sign of defence beyond that of its own height and solidity.
This, we had been told by the commander of Shan-hai, was
the real boundary between China and Mantchuria in this
direction; but in all likelihood he had been in error, as the
376 COAST DEFENCE.

Wall must have been intended to limit the confines of both
countries.

On the other side of this building, at intervals of what was
said to be three If, or a mile, began a series of circular forts,
also of brick, and furnished with a crenelated parapet; but
they were neither so wide nor so tall as the square one, and
altogether in outline resembled lofty martello towers placed
on commanding positions, sometimes on the right, sometimes
on the left of the road, and following the coast line for a
stretch of about fifty miles.

Many were in a good state of repair—or rather pre-
servation—and had resisted the weather so well that no signs
of decay could be perceived; but others were rent, cracked,
and shaky, and several had been stripped of the external
casing of brickwork by the villagers. They showed their
compact interiors of mud and lime so plainly that there could
be no doubts as to these mile forts having been erected as
places of temporary defence only from their summits, and not
as habitations for garrisons, or places to which to fly for sup-
port or shelter in case of attack; as their structure was solid
throughout, and the walls were a uniform blank, displaying
neither door to enter by, nor window to light up a room or
staircase within, thereby leading one to surmise that they
must have been accessible only by means of ladders or some
such contrivance.

I have made every enquiry possible, both at the time of our
journey and since, regarding the history and uses of these
isolated works of other days, but without much success. Their
object was evidently to protect the coast against invasion
from some sea-going enemy, so that they can hardly be.
considered as supplementary to the Great Wall, or as an
auxiliary means of repelling the audacious Mantchus in their
attacks on that extensive line of defence; and from their
integrity and general appearance appear to have been thrown
up many centuries subsequently to the reign of the Ta Tsin
PROBABLE HISTORY. 77

dynasty. It is well known, however, that the intrepid
Mongol, Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuen dynasty, in
1280 despatched a great army to attack Japan, and subjugate
the high-spirited Japanese, who had refused to acknowledge
his supreme sway and to render the customary tribute exacted
from neighbouring states as a token of submission. The
expedition met the merited fate of the Spanish Armada, for
the troops were wrecked and slaughtered, and scarcely a man
returned to China.

‘The Land of the Day-dawn,’ elated and emboldened by
the defeat of the arrogant Chinese, took the initiative in a
long list of retaliatory measures, and its predatory bands
harassed the sea-board of China by plunder and desolation,
and making dire inroads on the unfortunate country, which
its rulers vainly endeavoured to remedy and avert. From
the beginning of the thirteenth century up to the end of the
sixteenth did the unconquered race sweep the coast and
pillage every place they set foot in; especially in 1388, in
the twenty-second year of Hung-woo of the Ming dynasty,
when they caused that monarch much uneasiness by their
wholesale devastations and piratical seizures, and drove him
to all kinds of shifts without avail.

At last he solicited the counsel of a minister, who, from
his knowledge of nautical matters, the emperor thought would
be a fitting person to give advice. In reply to His Majesty,
this man gave it as his opinion, that as the Japanese came by
sea, by sea they must be repelled. He said, ‘ Let there be
built along shore, at certain intervals, places of defence,
occupied by land troops; and between them let vessels of
war be stationed. Thus in all probability the Japanese will
be unable to land, or if they do, it will be impossible for them
to spread themselves. Further, instead of oppressing the
coast with troops brought from a distance, let every fourth
man of the inhabitants be required to bear arms.’

To this proposal the Emperor assented, and fifty towns
378 JAPANESE INVASION.

(or towers ?) were built near the sea, each of them defended
by a thousand men.* But the Chinese annalists tell us
how ineffectual even this strong measure was to stop the
ravagers’ hands, for they record nothing but misfortunes and
tales of sacking and conflagration for nearly two hundred
years after, and relate how these irresistible reivers fought
their way up the Yang-tsze-Kiang at last as far as Nanking,
clearing all before them, and killing all who opposed
their onward sweep and fell into their hands. This last
event occurred in the middle of the sixteenth century, and
the historian informs us that about the same time lead
bullets were first used, and muskets first introduced by
Japanese, who entered the country and were captured ; and
their lives were only spared on the plea that they were required
to teach the Chinese the use of these arms, as their own were
exceedingly inefficient and rude ;* an example of liberality
and willingness to borrow, even from an enemy, very dif-
ferent to the close conservatism and blind policy of the
present Mantchu dynasty, which succeeded that of the
troubled Mings.

May we not then suppose that these guardian edifices
have been a portion of the minister’s proposed bulwark
against the buccaneers from Zipangu, and for some reason
or other raised here to defend the most vulnerable corner of
the province, as well as to be a line of outworks in advance
of the Great Wall itself?

Between ten and twenty miles from Shan-hai Kwan, when
the country becomes wider, and the high road winds over
rough knolls and through broken ground, among the luxu-
riant crops, and often between thick rows of willow trees,
the higher mountains to the north and north-west as-
sume an almost Alpine grandeur in stateliness and outline;
and here it is that the Wall shows out to most advantage
in the brilliancy and glow of the morning sunshine. The

* Chinese Chronology: Morrison.
VIEW OF THE WALL. 379

pleasant old Scotchman, John Bell, of Antermony, who
travelled from Russia to Peking, in the suite of a Russian
diplomatic mission under Ismailoff, in the reign of the
Emperor Kang-hi, 142 years ago; and who has left us a
lucid and veracious account of the journey, breaks out into
a burst of astonishment and delight when describing the part
of the Wall through which they entered China away to the
north-west. He tells us, it is commonly designated the ‘end-
less wall’ by the people, and expatiates on the magnificence and
wonder of its situation as it skirts from rock to rock, with its
square turrets here and there; but certain I am that nowhere
could it be more grandly viewed, nor at any other place
could such a peculiarly apposite and majestic a range of
cliffs and peaks be found to display so well this grand work
of man’s hands, than in this eastern corner of the empire.

There is a something closely allied to a sense of sublimity
that takes possession of the mind when the delighted eye is
made to wander quietly along that magnificent range, where
many a grim crag is undergoing transfiguration in the
trembling saffron-and-blue aerial haze of the young morning,
and where the acicular jags, harsh and threatening in the
foreground, are softened and toned down by the far distance
into velvety regularity.

One sees those cloud-capped towers extending away over the
declivities in single files, until dwarfed by miles and miles of
skyward perspective, they dwindle into microscopical minute-
ness, yet stand with the solemn dignity belonging to ghosts of a
giant creation long gone by, as if they were condemned to look
out on the march of time; while the brown-and-black dike at
their feet hurries on with many a twist and throe across
gorge, defile, and ravine,—now buried in fissure and chasm,
then with brobdingnagian spring tearing up the unmeasured
height as if in wanton turbulence, altering the outline of the
rocky pinnacles which in high air it surmounts, or stealing
along the sometimes comparatively smooth margin of the
380 FATHER VERBIEST.

most soaring of all the range, it looks like a great pucker on
the mountains’ noble brow, speeding along until in the misty
neutral tint it appears but a filmy scratch on a sandstone
hill —a slender brown thread fluttering in easy undulations
around the mountain tops a great way off as it fines down
to a shadowy hair’s-breadth on its longsome journey to
remote Kansu—the Province of profound Peace! It would
be difficult to find, in any other part of the world, a spectacle
so full of admiration and so wonder-raising, as this monstrous
achievement of other days unfolds itself to the traveller who
rides along the pleasant road which conducts him into the
Tartar land from the boundaries of old China.

It is about this part of the country that we come upon
the footsteps of the early Jesuit father, Paul Verbiest, the
priestly mathematician and artillerist; he who wrote treatises
and cast cannon for his imperial master, and left behind him
an enduring monument of European ingenuity and skill in
those astronomical instruments of the most exquisite work-
manship and design, which yet stand on that neglected weed-
grown wall tower at the south-east angle of the Tartar city
of Peking; and whose grave in the Portuguese cemetery, to
the westward of the capital, still indicates where he sleeps
under a monument with an imperial epitaph. This worthy
missionary, I find in Du Halde, accompanied the. Emperor
Kanghi in his progress into Eastern Tartary in the beginning
of 1682, after a serious rebellion of seven years’ duration had
been suppressed by the execution of three kings or princes,
one of whom was strangled in the province he had con-
quered, another was conveyed to Peking, with his chief
partisans, and was there cut to pieces in open court by the
mandarins, in revenge for the barbarous murder of their
relatives ; and the third, who was the ringleader, had com-
mitted suicide in order to escape punishment. His Majesty
started from Peking at a more favourable season of the year
than we did—on the 23rd of March—with the intention of
AN IMPERIAL PILGRIMAGE. 381

visiting Liautung, the country of his ancestors, and doing
homage at their sepulchres.

He took with him his eldest son of ten years, and three
wives, each in a gilt chariot, and was attended by the chief
minister, the members of his Court, and the most influential
mandarins of all orders, with a retinue so great that it
numbered more than 70,000 persons. The accomplished
Father was ordered to accompany the magnate, and be always
near his person, in order to take observations in his presence
of the disposition of the heavens, the height of the pole, the
declination of each country (oblique situation on the globe),
and to take with instruments the heights of the mountains
and distances of places, His Majesty desiring to be informed
about meteors and other matters in physics and mathe-
matics.

The account is brief, and almost devoid of interest or
assistance to the modern excursionist; for the Father tells us
that the road from Peking to Liautung is pretty level, and that
the four hundred miles in that province are much more uneven
on account of hills. He mentions arriving at Shan-hai
Kwan, which he describes as a fort situated between the
South Sea and the Northern Mountains, and that here
begins the famous wall that separates Liautung from Pechili,
and extends a vast way along the northern side over the
highest mountains.

As soon as the Imperial cortége entered the province, the
Emperor and his nobles quitted the main road and took that
of the hills, where they spent some days in hunting.

Paul then briefly sketches out how these sports were
managed, and how the emperor, choosing some 3,000 men
of his guard armed with bows and darts, dispersed on every .
side so as to surround the mountains, making a circle of at
least three miles.

In this small narrowing space, such a brisk chase was kept
up that the unfortunate game, spent with running, lay down
382 HUNTING.

at the hunters’ feet, and suffered themselves to be taken up
without resistance. He mentions having seen two or three
thousand hares thus taken in less than a day, besides a vast
number of wolves and foxes. A most ignoble way of
conducting sport, certainly, but a method not altogether
incompatible with the easy turn of mind in which a
Chinaman usually seeks amusement and excitement, without
incurring an unpleasant or fagging amount of exertion.*

It was but last winter that we saw the Tien-tsin salt

   

A Hunting Party (from a Native Drawing).

merchant, as the wealthy magnifico of our garrison town
was styled, hunting poor puss on the dead flat beyond the
town walls, with a pair of slow-running ‘noseless’ Tartar

* This mode of hunting game is very like the ‘ Tinchel’ of the Scottish
Highlanders, where a circle of sportsmen, by surrounding a-great space of
country and gradually narrowing, brought immense quantities of deer to-
gether, which usually made desperate efforts to break through the ring or
‘Tinchel.’
MILD SPORT. 383

hounds, from which the hare could easily have escaped had
it not been also pursued by a couple of hawks—carried to
the ground on the wrist of the shaven-headed falconers, who
managed them with the tact of sportsmen, and had them
confined, wings and legs, with very British-looking brails
and jesses, and hoods with scarlet plumes quite after the
fashion of two centuries ago. The hunt was a short one,
for the prey had no sooner evaded the dogs and was getting
into its steady stride for a good run, than swoop went the
falcons, and if they did not strike they drove back the poor
animal on the dogs, which it could barely circumvent, until
another swoop sent it into their very jaws, and the game
was over.

The slow sport was watched by the gentle-paced merchant
and his guests on ponies, without his betraying any visible
marks of exhilaration, or moving many yards from the
starting-place. But, in all probability, there are some men
in North China who go on foot to hunt their game with
matchlock, hawk, and hound, as the annexed copy from a
Pekingese drawing will testify ; in which a regular encamp-
ment has been formed in the snow, and the party is returning
to the tented ground, laden with the results of the battue,
and ready for the evening meal, now in process of cooking.
To hunt as we do, and gallop on swift horses over every
obstacle, would be nothing short of furious madness in the
estimation of our quiet friends, who cannot understand why
we should be so possessed and value our lives so cheaply.
Even swimming in the Peiho in moderately warm weather
took them all by surprise, and one old fellow, after watching
the frolics of some hundred of our men in the refreshing
waters, could not refrain from exclaiming, that truly the
English were a hardy but a strange people.

When the road became rough and wavy and the day was
near its meridian, we lost sight of the Wall in the dim
distance, and the pensile turrets sank lower and lower as
384 HUN-CHOW.

they and the pre-eminently lofty vantage-ground on which
they were posted, subsided behind the lower hills skirting
the gulf to the north-east. JI then began to think of the
feat I had achieved, and the out-of-the-way corner of the
globe we were so auspiciously venturing our heads into,
without the shadow of a chance of.danger; living among
and trusting to the good faith and friendship of simple-
hearted creatures, whose only fault—which they were power-
less to remedy—was unaffected wonderment and curiosity.
It may yet be a long time before the foot of the Briton,
roaming from Dan to Beersheba, again seeks out those lone- .
some, but far from unpleasant, paths in this ultra-mundane
region, and longer still before we can —

‘Flying to the Eastward, see
Some Mrs. Hopkins taking tea
And toast upon the Wall of China.’

When that enterprising and venturesome lady, imbued
with the Quixotic spirit of the nation in worming out every
notable nook and difficult journey in creation, does arrive at.
the Hill-sea barrier, let her profit by our hard day’s fight for
life among the mountains, and be content to refresh -herself
with the Sinensian brew on the rampart near the town,
instead of a more aspiring situation.

We passed through a number of small hamlets and what
would, perhaps, be called towns—one of which, Hun-Chow,
a walled town, and apparently of some importance at a
period somewhat distant from the present, was in dismal
ruins and filthy in the extreme.

The midday halt, after twenty miles of a journey, was
in the bustling village of Cow-chow-wah, where there was
a regular caravansary for the benefit of travellers, got up in
a Inanner new to us.

A long one-storied house built of brick,—the entire front
of which had been devoted to yawning windows and door
TARTAR CARAVANSARY. 385

open to the roadside, was nearly concealed by an almost
equally long shed made of slender tree-stems, and roofed in
by dry, russet-coloured fir branches, beginning from the
half-concave tiles and running out on the path for a con-
siderable number of feet. Underneath this numbers of
ponies and mules fed in mangers, and others stood saddled
and bridled ready for moving off. Inside the building little
parties of dusty individuals were comforting themselves on
the best cheer the place could afford; and others sipped tea,

 

 

A Caravansary beyond the Wall.

or sent out rolling clouds of smoke from the over-dried
tobacco continually undergoing a cloudy change in the little
bowls of homely pipes. The sign-post, henceforward to be
met by the half dozen in every town, was characteristic of
people with odd fancies. Topped by a tiny conical orna-
ment, it had, not far from the end, a sickly-looking wooden
fish pinned across, with a ring in its mouth—fish and ring
cc
386 BULKY LANDLORDS.

strongly recalling to our memories the emblematical salmon
or trout represented in the Glasgow coat of arms as gliding
across the stem of a tree—from which hung a line having at
intervals brown hoops with a fancy paper fringe.

We had scarcely time to note these, as we steered past a
footman and an equestrian who were anxiously guessing
what we could be, and endeavoured to escape damage
from a mule cart that was going eight miles an hour, when
four men hustled out of the doorway, and another uncoiled
himself from an easy position in which he was snoring out
the lazy hours under the shady outwork, to gather about
us. They were a band of swag-bellied brothers, each of
whom, for size and weight, must have eclipsed all other
men I have seen among a people whose principal indi-
cation of prosperity in mind, body, and worldly estate is
the being preposterously fat and in good case. The senior
of these portly youths advanced with a rolling gait a pace or
two, and reclining his folded hands over the amplitudinous
corporation that bulged out balloon-like in front, gave a
guffaw that rumbled sonorously from the lower regions of
his immense body, and shook the yellow integument hanging
in unctuous folds around his shining face; and then in a suc-
cession of satisfactory grunts managed to enquire, ‘ Do you
come from Ta-tsin?’ To which we, translating the ‘ Ta-
tsin’ as the old name for China, or perhaps the more modern
one for Peking, answered with another grunt, signifying
‘ Yes,’ and were soon breakfasting under the attentive aus-
pices of the bulky family, and the observant eyes of the
temporary inmates.

In the afternoon—such a beautiful afternoon it was,
though overheated rather—we were more than ever pleased’
with the country, and the journey yet before us. The road,
though lonely and dull, was by no means bad, and some-
times led us through a well-cultivated district with dainty
little hamlets sparsely spread among the tilled fields, or vil-
CHILDREN’S GAMES. 387

lages at. pretty regular intervals by the wayside, which, from
the disproportionate number of inns and fish sign-posts dis-
played, might lead one to infer’were solely maintained for
the convenience of wayfarers like ourselves. At the out-
skirts of some were the same description of little temples,
covered in by old willows, which we had noticed on the
other side of the Wall; and now and then, in some favourite
strip of open ground, a lot of children would be playing at
shuttlecock with their feet, or romping about at a more bois-
terous game—one party, in particular, we saw amusing
themselves at blind man’s buff, in which the blindfolded
urchin and his tormentors acted just as they would have
done had they shared our own school-day freaks.

It was somewhat satisfactory to be enabled to remark that
not very unfrequently blooming girls with uncramped feet
oftentimes joined in these merry pastimes, and gave a more
lively aspect to the game; and that in sundry cottages, strong
countrywomen ventured beyond their thresholds, busying
themselves in outdoor labour, or strolled comfortably in
natural-sized shoes with high clog soles.

We set these down as Mantchus; but I am not certain
whether we were correct. At any rate, they looked dif-
ferent beings to the usual run of sheep-footed Chinese women
we had hitherto seen, and were doomed to meet everywhere
in our peregrinations in the land; for their hair was quietly
smoothed down about their heads, or in the younger females
gathered up in bows, without all that extravagant amount
of gumming and skewering so indulged in by the vain little
bodies of China; and they were taller, stronger, and more
independent-looking in the long blue cotton gowns which they
wore, and which hung loosely about them, like a chemisette,
from their shoulders almost to the ground, hiding the out-
lines of their figures, and leaving us only a few inches of
their homespun trousers to look at, before these were tucked,
in a masculine manner, into the legs of white socks. Their

cc2
388 TARTAR LADIES.

faces, too, were round and heavy, and their features were
less pleasing, and did not evince so much intelligence or

vivacity as those of the crippled wives on the other side of
the Wall.

 

‘Jartar Ladies.

Nearly every aspiring little town or larger-sized village
had its temple to Thalia rigged up in the public road, or in
a shady bye-lane, and primitive to a degree beyond Western
belief. These rustic theatres offered no more pretensions to
convenience or effect than did the creaky four-wheeled
wagon on which Susarion and Dolon first exhibited their in-
vention —the original comedy —in the streets of Athens, for
a cask of wine and a basket of figs. There was a shaky old
cart, with more frequently two wheels than four, and minus
the ordinary sides, made safe for the agile footsteps of the
strolling Thespis by a very limited platform of boards fixed
on the warped and cracked shafts—a very small table and
two very decayed chairs, to serve as stage furniture, disposed
RUSTIC THEATRES. 389

towards the back of the conveyance, and a millet-stalked
framework propped up on supports and thatched with rushes
to screen the actor’s head fromthe sun; while sometimes a
form or two would flank each side for the accommodation of
the discordant orchestra and the teapots.

There was not much to enliven us for a long part of the
way, though the scenery was as varied as our proximity to
the mountains on the one hand, and to the shores of the gulf
on the other, would admit. There was still, to the left, the
same kind of rugged grandeur hanging about the lonely
mountain tops, and the same charming peeps of green vallies
and tilled fields occurring at their base which we had before
admired; and on the right the yellow shingle, with the dis-
tant waters of the eastern sea, unspecked by any sail of mat
or calico, smoothed out in an unlimited surface of silvery
white.

A peasant’s cart sometimes made us move to one side of
the dusty road, but this was seldom. Once we passed
a rumbling old car, grunting and squealing through. lack
of repair and lubrication, drawn by a sorry mule, in which
was the earthly all of a peripatetic juggler or acrobat ;
consisting of unassuming but inscrutable bags and boxes
of leather, wooden swords and sham spears, basins and
bottles of stone, and the little ornamented stand, on which
was secured the tinkling brass gongs and small drum, used
to give a theatrical effect to the open-air performance, as well
as to stimulate the eye and hand of the hard-up, weary-look-
ing man who strode at the head of the half-starved beast,
urging it on with a cluck or a turr as if anxious to reach some
town before the night set in. _

A ragged body in female guise—probably his consolation
—squatted on a bundle of odds and ends over the axletree,
suckling one child and affording a pillow for the heads of two
others, that were too young to follow the footsteps of two or
three old-fashioned imps who, almost shoeless, laboured along
390 ROADSIDE COMPANIONS.

the side path. The rear was brought up by an undersized
Bruin which came limping along footsore, and hanging
heavily on the chain that bound him to the wandering house-
hold. He was nearer the colour of a Siberian wolf—thanks
to the incessant dredging to which he was subjected in the
impalpable dust—than a black-furred bear, and showed him-
self all the worse for hard feats and harder fare.

 

A Juggler’s Cart.

Rather more frequently than we desired, we came across
sundry stragglers, whose appearance, to say the best for them,
was suspicious. A few. wore desperate hazards stamped on
their faces, while all bore some kind of weapon, oftener than
otherwise a spear, but with what object we could not glean.
There must have been some cause for the constancy with.
which every man, young and old, stuck to his arms in this
part of the country. Even the poor old wretch who drove
his donkey along the road, flourished a rusty lance over the
SUSPICIOUS CHARACTERS. 391

load of firewood that was piled on its back, as if he appre-
hended an attack. We were afterwards told that this fashion
or necessity arose from the frequency with which wolves left
their lairs and secluded haunts among the mountains, to avail
themselves of the dense cover afforded by the far-extending
crops of millet in the autumn, and pounced upon travellers
and dwellers near the borders of these cereal jungles; but
the cadaverous heads displayed so often by our path rather
tended to confirm us in our opinion, that man was more to
be dreaded than wild beasts.
392

CHAPTER XX.

PASTORAL LIFE — INDUSTRY — YELLOW-SKINNED VULCANS — M. ABEL
REMUSAT ON THE INFLUENCE OF ASIATIC INGENUITY ON THE NATIONS
OF THE WEST—HORSE-SHOEING IN CHINA—FARRIER’S INSTRUMENTS—
THE CHINESE VETERINARY SURGEON—HORSE-FLESH—CHUNG-HUE-SOH.

HE dry beds of many rivers and streams unknown to
song were crossed, a few of them during some portion of

the year washing over a wide space of pebbly ground; and
we forded others whose volume had very much contracted
during the summer drought. For some distance here and
there the soil was poor, and afforded only a thin dry herbage
for the sustenance of flocks of diminutive black goats, and
scragey ponies and asses, which were tended by wild un-
kempt urchins, who roved listlessly around their herds, or lay
in the full face of the cauterising sun, crooning snatches of
unearthly-sounding ditties. These were the first glimpses I
had as yet obtained of a pastoral life in a region where we
certainly expected to find Tartar nomads, sauntering behind
browsing swarms of cattle and sheep, or dwelling in black
felt tents—for the purchase of which, as curios, we had so
many commissions imposed upon us before leaving Tien-tsin
—and drinking mares’ milk, fermented or unfermented, as
may have suited their palates or desires. But everywhere
else beyond these uncultivated pasturages, congregations of
erratic tribes would have been as much out of place, and as
much bewildered, as butterflies in Fleet Street; for all was a
great grain-field and a great forest of strong stems, more

thickly planted and nearly more difficult of penetration than
a backwoods forest.
INDUSTRY. 393

In all the villages something was going on—fathers, wives,
sons, and daughters, were, in many houses, or out of doors,
spinning cotton by very antediluvian-like wheels; and grand-
fathers and grandmothers twined the same material, or silk,
into cord by means of an iron weight set twisting round at
the end of the string. The tramping crockeryware-mender
assiduously drilled-holes in the cracked and broken pots and
basins, and bound the divided edges together with artful
little clamps of iron or copper. The indefatigable son of
Crispin seated himself at the family doorway, and soled or
patched the fronts of those easy wearing shoes of blue or
_ white cotton stuff, which for comfort we have often thought
far more civilised-like than our own toe-squeezers. And the —
barber lathered and shaved the heads and faces of his dusty
customers, or scraped the inner sides of their eyelids, and
trifled with their tympanums with his hooks, pickers, and
brushes, greatly to the gratification of the individuals so
operated on, who appeared quite happy while undergoing
these injurious ticklings.

Above all the stir and bustle of business, the whizzing of
saws, or the clanking of copper and tinsmiths,—with the more
subdued hum of less noisy avocations, the rat-tat tittle-tat of
the blacksmith rung out as cheerfully and harmoniously as if
it were being rehearsed for the adaptation of another Handel
—the two strokes of the heavy sledge on the iron, and the
one rhythmically struck in by the smaller hammer, blending
in symphonious vibrations with the intermediate jingling tap
on the hard-faced anvil, as the perspiring Cyclops, Arges,
and Brontes fashioned and formed the rude implements of
husbandry used in the fields.

One could scarcely forbear smiling at the odd resemblance
of these yellow-skinned Vulcans to their co-artisans of the
West, as they swung their weighty hammers overhip with a
vigorous grunt, and wore the unimpeachable trade-mark
stamped in a smutty daub on each side of their undeveloped
394 YELLOW-SKINNED VULCANS.

noses. Little scraps and shreds of iron were carefully welded
into serviceable bars in the blaze of a fire scantily supplied
with coal, but made more effective in its work by being
covered over with a piece of earthen pot, which threw back
the flame on the metal, and the heat was intensified by the
regularly intermittent blast of air from a wooden box, some-
thing like a small travelling trunk, in which an azde slowly
pushed and drew the wooden piston that served as a propeller
of air through the nozzle of this very simple and efficient
bellows. —

Occasionally in the smaller, but more frequently in the
larger, towns, one lights upon a sedulous lot of Chinese
Wayland Smiths — characters seldom, if ever, seen in the
South—moiling away at their humble occupation of assisting
nature to sustain the tear and wear imposed on the hoofs of
the ponies, mules, and oxen so much employed in a tract of
country without canals, and with but roughly constructed
roads, and pursuing that lowly art with care and tact; an
art unknown to antique civilisation, and which is only dis-
covered in the modern world after the wild hordes had made
their inroads, overrun and transmogritied the older nations
of the West; perhaps in the same manner that their
barbarous predecessors in Asia may have done to facilitate
their rapid advance towards the wealthy capitals of these
nations, when the dwellers in the terror-stricken towns
through which they passed were unconscious of the utility
of iron as a means of protecting the hoofs of their steeds —
for we may presume that the Romans knew nothing of this
most useful art, which has so altered the nature and
character, and enhanced the value of our willing beasts of
draught and burthen, enlarged the ways of commerce, and
benefited mankind: when in Italy alone they laid several
thousand miles of paved road at an enormous cost of time
and labour, and which have withstood the trials of 2,000
years, with the object, among other things, of preserving
M. ABEL REMUSAT. 395

their horses’ feet; and we also know that they had to borrow
other motive powers than animal strength to move their
heavy wagons along these roads, because they did not
know how to shoe their horses; and this, in all likelihood,
when the Chinese or Tartars were fully cognisant of the
principles and practice of this species of handicraft, — for
with them it bears evident signs of a venerable existence.

And yet it is strange to find these ultra-mundane shoeing-
smiths acting in their way much as our own artisans do,
and deftly using tools which, if not quite identical with those
handled in the London forges, betray, one could almost
vouch, a common origin.

And so it is with many other cognate arts you can daily
see followed in the workshops of the towns of North China,
where the analogy between the manufacturing, preparing,
and applying different articles, as well as the instruments
required in the processes, of the remote East and West are
surprising and perplexing to the stranger, whose first
thoughts are whether we have borrowed from this people
or they from us; or whether there has been a spontaneity of
origin or invention at the extreme ends of the earth, when
the wants of man compelled him to seek new means of pro-
duction or utilisation.

Cogitations lead to nothing, and enquiries go no farther ;
but M. Abel Rémusat gives us a little matter for speculation
when he alludes to this affinity in his Memoirs. Speaking
of the Mongol hordes who had swarmed into Western Asia
and began to exert a panic pressure on Europe, and the
treaties and overtures that succeeded between the Tartar
princes and Western kings, especially towards the termina-
tion of the Crusades, he says: ‘The series of events which
are connected with these negotiations serves to complete
the history of the Crusades; but the part they may have
had in the great moral revolution, which soon followed the
relations which they occasioned between people hitherto
396 WANDERERS IN CENTRAL ASIA.

unknown to each other, are facts of an importance more
general and still more worthy of our particular attention.
Two systems of civilisation had become established at the
two extremities of the ancient continent, as the effect of
independent causes, without communication, and conse-
quently without mutual influence.

‘ All at once the events of war and political combinations
bring into contact these two great bodies, long strangers to
each other. The formal interviews of ambassadors are not
the only occasions which brought them together. Other
occasions more private, but also more efficacious, were
established by imperceptible, but innumerable ramifications,
by the travels of a host of individuals, attracted to the two
extremities of the earth, with commercial views, in the train
of ambassadors or armies.

‘The irruption of the Mongols, by throwing everything
into agitation, neutralised distance, filled up intervals, and
brought the nations together ; the events of war transported
millions of individuals to an immense distance from the
places where they were born. History has recorded the
voyages of kings, of ambassadors, of missionaries. Sempad,
the Orbelian ; Hayton, king of Armenia; the two Davids,
kings of Georgia; and several others were led by political
motives to the depths of Asia. Yeroslaf, grand duke of
Sousdal, and vassal of the Mongols, like the other Russian
princes, came to Kara-Koroum, it was said, administered by
the empress herself, the mother of the Emperor Gayouk.
Many monks, Italians, French, and Flemings, were charged
with diplomatic missions to the grand khan. Mongols of
distinction came to Rome, Barcelona, Valencia, Lyons, Paris,
London, Northampton; and a Franciscan of the kingdom of
Naples was Archbishop of Peking. His successor was a
professor of theology of the Faculty of Paris.

‘But how many others, less celebrated, were led in the train
of those men, either as slaves, or impelled by the desire of
INTERCHANGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 397

gain, or by curiosity, to countries hitherto unexplored.
Chance has preserved the names of a few. The first envoy
who came on the part of the Tartars to the King of
Hungary was an Englishman, banished from his country for
certain crimes, and who, after having wandered through
Asia, had finally taken service among the Mongols. A
Flemish cordelier met, in the depths of Tartary, a woman of
Metz, named Paquette, who had been carried away from
Hungary; a Parisian goldsmith, whose brother was esta-
blished in Paris on the Grand Pont; and a young man from
the environs of Rouen, who had been present at the capture
of Belgrade. He saw there also Russians, Hungarians, and
Flemings.

‘A singer, named Robert, after travelling through the
whole of Eastern Asia, returned to find a grave in the
Cathedral of Chartres. A Tartar was a helmet-maker in the
armies of Philip the Fair.’

After enumerating a number of travellers and adventurers
who penetrated this dark region, he goes on to say :—

‘ Many of these adventurers must have established them-
selves, and died in the countries they went to visit. Others
returned to their country as obscure as when they left it;
but with their imaginations full of what they had seen,
relating it all to their families and friends, and doubtless
with exaggerations; but leaving around them, amidst ridi-
culous fables, a few useful recollections and traditions pro-
ductive of advantage. Thus were sown in Germany, in
Italy, in France, in the monasteries, among the nobility, and
even in the lowest grades of society, precious seeds destined
to bud at a later period.

‘ All these obscure travellers, carrying the arts of their
native country to distant lands, brought back other infer-
mation about these no less precious; and thus effected, uncon-
sciously, exchanges more productive of good than all those
of commerce. By this means not merely the traffic in silks,
398 EFFECTS OF WESTERN CONTACT.

in porcelains, in commodities from Hindostan, was made
more extensive and more practicable, opening new routes to
industry and commerce; but that which was far more valu-
able, foreign manners and customs of before unknown
nations, confined since the fall of the, Roman empire within
too narrow a circle. Men began to have an idea that, after
all, there was something worthy of notice in the finest, the
‘most populous, and the most anciently civilised of the four
quarters of the globe. People began to think of studying
the arts, the religions, the languages of the nations who
inhabited it ; and there was even a proposition to establish a
professorship of the Tartar language in the University of
Paris.

‘Before the establishment of the intercourse which first
the Crusades, and then later the irruption of the Mongols,
caused to spring up between the nations of the East and
those of the West, the greater part of those inventions which
distinguished the close of the middle ages had been known to
the Asiatics for centuries. All’— speaking of a number of
discoveries and inventions, such as gunpowder, the polarity
of the loadstone, playing cards, printing, &c.—‘ all were made
in Eastern Asia; all were unheard of in the West. Com-
munication took place ; it was continued for a century and a
half; and, ere another century had elapsed, all these inven-
tions were known in Europe. Their origin is veiled in
obscurity. The region where they manifested themselves—
the men who produced them—are equally a subject of
doubt. Enlightened countries were not their theatre. It
was not learned men who were their authors ; it was common
men, obscure artisans, who lighted up, one after another,
these unexpected flames.

‘Nothing can better demonstrate the effects of a com-
munication ; nothing can be more in accordance with what
we have said above as to those invisible channels — those
imperceptible ramifications — whereby the science of the
THE HORSE-SHOER. 399

eastern nations penetrated into Europe. The greater part
of these inventions appear at first in the state of infancy
in which the Asiatics have left them; and this circum-
stance alone almost prevents our having any doubts as to
their origin. Some are immediately put in practice; others
remain for some time enveloped in obscurity, which conceals
from us their progress, and they are taken, on their appear-
ance, for new discoveries. All are soon brought to perfec-
tion, and, as it were, fecundated by the genius of Europeans
operating in concert, thus communicating to human intelli-
gence the greatest impulse known to history.’

You cannot help bestowing a passing glance at the opera-
tions of the Zing-chang-ta, as the shoer of hoofs is denomi-
nated, for you may require his assistance frequently during
your travel to secure your ponies’ clanking shoes, or to
adjust a new pair; and you are certain to find him busy in
the most crowded thoroughfare, or in the most. stirring
corner of the market-place.

He is not, generally, a very bold man in his calling, nor has
he much patience with skittish or unmanageable solipedes ;
for he too often makes it his practice to secure the unruly
or vicious brute in the old-fashioned trevises or stocks —
exact counterparts of those employed by country farriers
in Britain and on the continent half a century ago — where it
is firmly bound and wedged in by ropes and bars, and
a twitch —an instrument of punishment still tolerated
and favoured in other lands —twisted to agony round the
under-lip of the subdued beast, until its extremities have
been iron-clad. The more docile and submissive animal
is less harshly dealt with, for it is allowed to stand untied,
with one of its feet flexed on a low three-legged stool, while
the workman shaves off great slices of superfluous horn from
the thick soles, by a weapon which differs in no particular
that we can see from the now obsolete buttress of England,
or the present boutoir of the French Maréchal. Perhaps a
400 MANNER OF SHCEING.

fidgetty draught animal does not quite relish the idea of
parting from its worn-out shoes, and the squeamish shoer,
to avoid sundry uncomfortable contusions on his shins, stands

   
  

    

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THAT

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Me

 

 

 

Horse-shoeing.

some distance away, as he hammers at the end of a long thin-
pointed poker, inserted between the useless plate of iron and
the hoof, to twist it off.

Whether aware of it or not, like the French, the Chinese
seem to prefer the foot in process of
shoeing being held up by an assistant, ‘in-
stead of courageously grasping it between
their knees or laying it on the outside of
the thigh, as our farriers do, and dis-
pensing with this auxiliary and oftentimes

Tartar Horseshoe. needless help. The Tartar ponies being
light-paced and small, and the roads not very stony, the
shoe is light, thin, and narrow, and quite ductile. It
is, in fact, nothing more than a slight rim of tough iron,

 
SHOEING BULLOCKS. 401

pierced by four nail-holes, with a groove for the reception
of each nail-head; and the heels are drawn so thin that,
when the shoe is nailed on the foot, they are bent inwards
to catch each angle of the hoof and thus support the
nails. . Altogether, it is far more like one of our own horse-
shoes than those of the Affghans, the Arabian or Barbary, or
the Persian and Turkish curiosities, and certainly very far
before the straw sandal everywhere used in Japan to protect
the horses’ feet.

There is little care and a great deal of dexterity exhibited
in nailing on one of these iron plates. The excellent strong
feet of the ponies afford every facility for a rough and ready”
job—the overgrown horn is shaved away to a level surface: a
single blow makes the shoe wider or narrower without
. heating: it is applied to the solid crust, and one by one the
unbending nails are sent through the whole thickness of the
insensitive part of the foot with a few sharp taps, the tips of
the nails being only simply twisted and hammered close to
the face of the hoof; and the Wayland Smith has earned his
silver groat. At odd intervals one comes upon a group of
these tinkers arming the hot, painful, road-worn toes of
prostrate struggling bullocks with a nearly semicircular
plate of metal on the outer margin of the hoof; and so
smartly, that the bellowing creatures have hardly been thrown
on the ground and secured than they are up again, proof
against the hard, sun-baked roads.

There is yet another novel institution, connected with the
utilisation and preservation of domestic animals, to be found
in the larger towns of North China, which is, perhaps, alto-
gether unknown in the South, where canals, rivers, and
streams, and the tightly-packed character of the tilled fields,
forbids the expenditure of land in wide highways, and con-
sequently abolishes to a very great degree the necessity of
employing animal labour for purposes of traffic.

This is the ‘ Yi-ma,’ or horse doctor, a rather well-to-do

DD
402 THE HORSE DOCTOR.

and intelligent personage oftentimes, who pushes at seasons
a lively business. He visits his dumb patients fan in hand,
and ministers to their ailments with the dignity and self:
possession of a skillful practitioner, and a useful member of
society. He is most frequently seen about the public ways
in the forenoon, hurrying on behind a coolie or servant, who
carries, suspended from each end of a bamboo pole, the trays
containing his implements and drugs. You may here and
there meet with traces of his handiwork in grotesque-looking
punctures on the bodies of sickly nags, or hocks grooved and
blemished by the too free application of the actual cautery.
"Make the acquaintance of the first good-natured Vespasian
you meet, and if the rencontre be ever so brief—if you are”
curious and humour him, and can talk to him on his profes-
sional mysteries, you will be sure to leave him a little »
enlightened ; for he is not backward in imparting information,
. perplexing and ridiculous though it may seem to many
Britons. He will tell you, in all likelihood, about the Yang
and Yin, or the male and female principles, and how these
have produced the celestial and material worlds; and, if he be
a scholar, he may quote the opinion of Choo-tsze, a venerated.
sage, and say ‘that the Celestial principle in the beginning
was male, the terrestrial female; that all animate and inani-
mate nature may be divided into masculine and feminine,
and nothing can exist independent of the Yang and Yin.’
This doctrine of materialism being so widely extended is,
of course, in its dual capacity, rigidly applied to everything
connected with the lower animals, as well as man. Your
informant may cite the words of the learned author of a
work on Chinese Veterinary Medicine, published more than
five generations ago, which are to the effect, ‘that though
the forms and natures of the horse, ox, and camel’—the
animals of which he specially treats—‘be so dissimilar, and
-so different from man, yet are they all equally amenable to the
influences of the Yin and Yang; for, as in him, it is only by
FARRIERY INSTRUMENTS. 403

a harmonious and due union of them in their proper propor-
tions and qualities, that those sanative conditions on which
utility so much depends can be developed and maintained;
when this is departed from, disease is the result.’

You will soon discover that this man, like our own empi-
rical farriers, has had a lot of idle notions, vague traditions,
and mouldy recipes, as well as the most approved modes of
performing operations, handed down from the accumulated
experience of generations in the ancestral line; with, in addi-
tion to the few stereotyped facts swamped in the middle of
silly whimsies, instruments in a case carefully treasured,
and bearing inscriptions which tell of their great age. This
instrument-case and its contents is certain to be a wonderful
curiosity. It is made of a brown kind of leather, something
in the form of the pipe and tobacco pouch carried by almost
every individual, with too long thongs to suspend it to the
girdle. This is the operating receptacle, and the first article
he will show you may possibly be a small round peg of iron,
not unlike a skewer, which he uses when a horse is lame
from cold (rheumatism?) by making it red-hot, wrapping it
round with tow and oil, and then—having incised the skin
in several places over the diseased textures, with an arrow-
headed lancet—thrusting it two or three inches deep among
the muscles,

The next may chance to be a slender iron hook with a
sharp point, to seize and drag out the useful membrane at
the inner corner of the horse’s eye, for the purpose, he will
aver, of dividing a small tumour which forms on it some-
times, and which causes the animal to ‘leave its grass,’ and
be dull and heavy. If you hint that he must be mistaken,
and that the tumour he imagines to have grown there is not
only natural, but of the highest service, he will incredulously
smile, and withdraw a tube from its corner, made like a sur-
geon’s canula, but of a thick goose or eagle’s quill, having a
number of small holes in its circumference near the round

Dp 2
404 VENESECTION.

end. With this in his hand, he will boast of the number of
ponies’ lives he has saved when, at a certain season of the
year, they have been allowed to eat too much grass, and
death from suffocation is imminent by the distension of the
abdomen diminishing the capacity of the chest; and if a
pony or mule be near, he will obligingly indicate the exact
spot over the large intestine where he makes a cut and a
puncture for the introduction of the tube and the escape of
the dangerous gas.

In this wonderful wallet he also carries a small punch to
expel the deciduous incisors in young animals, when they
are loose, or when it is fancied that they prevent mastication.
He will go through the operation of venesection if you
desire it; and, rendering the jugular vein turgid by pressure
at the lower part of the neck, apply the point of his barb-
shaped lancet to the skin over that vessel, then drive it in by
a little wooden mallet. But he does not approve much of
bleeding, and nearly agrees with a popular Chinese physician *
as to the little benefit to be derived from the abstraction of
blood in fever.

‘A fever,’ writes this medical authority, ‘is a boiling
pot; it is requisite to reduce the fire and not diminish the
liquid in the vessel if we wish to cure the patient.’

After making you acquainted with a number.of peculiar
articles, each of which has its own allotted share in surgical
demonstrations, he will choose a seton needle, in shape the
fac-simale of a sailmaker’s, to finish his catalogue; ‘and, as he
carefully puts them all in their places again, takes the
opportunity of dilating on the wonderful cures he has made
with this needle, in reducing tumours and opening abscesses,
by passing it through their substance and leaving in a
medicated thread of hemp for an indefinite period. His
knowledge of anatomy is rather crude and confused, though

* Williams’ Middle Kingdom,
KNOWLEDGE OF ANATOMY. 408

he is perfectly aware of the existence of an arterial pulse in
several superficial parts of the body; but if you place his
finger on the temporal artery, you will undoubtedly be de-
lighted with the joyous grin that overspreads his face at the
discovery of another pulse; and when he begins to enlighten
you on the vast importance to be attached to the frequency
and force of the arterial contractions, he looks grave and
learned.

He has the whole surface of the body mapped out into
gates of access, such as the ‘golden gate,’ the ‘gate of
hfe,’ &c. These lead to internal organs, and when one of
these organs is supposed to be in a morbid state, a plaister or
some other application is stuck over the gate, and, if very
serious, a small quantity of medicine is given by the mouth.
By the latter method of curing the disease, more particularly
when the beast out-of-sorts is fretful and unwilling to be
coaxed to swallow unpalateable stuffs, he uses gentle
measures at first, and finding these not succeed proceeds
to more potent inducement. Over the branch of a neigh-
bouring tree he flings a sort of head collar, with a species of
bent gag iron bit, called ‘ Tiaw chiau’—literally ‘Hanging
bit’—-which, when put on the invalid, answers admirably
the double purpose of elevating the head to a proper height,
by pulling the end of the rope downwards, and keeping
open the mouth. If still refractory in spite of patting and
mild expostulations, the ‘ Nyng-tsz’ or ‘ twister,’ as they dub
the twitch, is screwed on the upper or under lip, and the
unpleasant medicine, in a semi-fluid mass, is poured down
the rebellious throat by means of a drenching-horn, identical
with our own equine medicine administrator, and with a
tact and neatness quite his own.

He appears to be familiar with a pretty large class of
diseases, and talks as if he were very confident of being
competent to contend successfully with them, especially with
that scourge of the equine race—glanders. From what he .
406 ADMINISTERING MEDICINES.

says, you may gather that the Chinese have no schools for
the teaching of veterinary science in any part of the Empire;
though at Peking there is a Medical Hall, which, however,
does not bear the character of being invested with any great
degree of influence in disseminating or advancing the very

 

 

The Horse Doctor.

elementary, and often preposterously erroneous state of
medical knowledge found among the quack and legitimate
practitioners in Chinese towns. Indeed, when we visited
the Hanlin Yuen or Imperial Academy at Peking—at which,
we were informed, besides other sciences taught there, that
EFFICACY OF HORSE-FLESH. 407

of medicine was inculcated—we found the building as
ruinous and as lonely as the sheep-pens of a market are
when unoccupied. So that, it would appear, the healing art
exists and is taught only by the peripatetic quacksalvers.

In small towns and villages there are none of these; so
when an animal is sick, or any epizootic makes its appear-
ance, there is a consultation among the owner’s friends or
the sages of the place to devise the best means of cure ;
and when anything very serious occurs, entailing great loss
of property, incense is burnt to exorcise the evil spirits or to
appease the wrath of the angry god—for they seldom, if ever,
think of conciliating the good-will of their idols until they
find themselves in trouble.

Our veterinary friend has faith in the efficacy of horse-
flesh in certain of the ils which prey on mankind, and
besides is rather inclined to hippophagy when an accidental
death gives him a good carcase. His ideas concerning the
noble steed in life or in death are odd enough, and he would
have no scruples in subscribing to such freaks of fancy as
the following, which are written in a celebrated Chinese
work, the Pun Tsaw or ‘ Herbal,’ published three or four
centuries ago.

‘The best kind of horse for medical purposes (says this
standard authority) is the pure white. Those found in the
south and east are small and weak. The age is known by
the teeth. The eye reflects the full image of aman. If he
eats rice his feet become heavy; if rats’ dung, his belly will
grow long; if his teeth be rubbed with dead silkworms or
black plums he will not eat, nor will he feed if the skin of a.
rat or wolf be hung in his stable or manger. He should not
be allowed to eat from a hog’s trough lest he contract disease ;
and if a monkey be kept in the stable he will not fall sick.
The flesh is a good article of food; that of a pure white
stallion is the most esteemed and healthy.’

One author recommends eating almonds and taking a meal
408 NIGHT EYES.

of rush broth if the person feels uncomfortable after a meal
of horse-flesh. ‘It should be roasted and eaten with ginger
and pork; and to eat the flesh of a black horse and not drink
wine with it, will surely produce death. The fat of the
crown of the horse is sweet, and good to make the hair grow
and the face to shine.’

The milk, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, placenta, teeth,
bones, skin, mane, tail, brains, blood, perspiration, &c., are
all lauded as remedies, or articles of diet in various diseases.

‘When eating horse-flesh do not eat the liver, because of
the absence of a gall-bladder in that organ, which renders it
poisonous.’ ‘The heart of a white horse, or that of a cow,
hog, or hen, when dried and rasped into spirit, and so taken,
cures forgetfulness; if the patient hears one thing he knows
ten.’ ‘ Above the inside of the knees and below the hocks
the horse has y2-yan, or ‘“‘night-eyes” (the horny excrescences
growing in these situations), which. enable him to go in the
dark and by night; these are useful in toothache.’ ‘Ifa man
be restless or hysterical when he wishes to sleep, and it is
requisite to put him to rest, let the ashes of a horse’s skull
be mingled with water and given him, and let him have
another skull for a pillow, and it will cure him.’*

It was dusk when we entered one of the long suburban
streets of Chung-hue-soh—a street with high embankments
on each side, and with large business-like shops, built of brick,
perched thereon.

Passing through the ruts and puddles, with lots of eager
spectators on every hand, we reached the town walls, which
were lofty and apparently in good repair; and, though the
temptation was strong within us to explore the interior, as a
gateway opened before us, yet bearing still in lively remem-
brance the infelicitous reception and unnecessary trouble we
had. been subjected to in our last halting-place for the night,

* Williams’ Middle Kingdom.
CHUNG-HUE-SOH. 409

we thought it most advisable to keep clear of the public
functionaries for the future. We determined to take up our
quarters in one of the outside inns, where we should stand a
better chance of passing the dark hours unnoticed, and of
departing on the morrow without a watch on our movements,
like the one who had followed us nearly all day, and whom
we had parted with just before nightfall, when he silently
dropped behind, and was then hurrying back to Shan-hia
Kwan to give an account of our doings to the fussy magis-
trates.

Chung-hue-soh gave every token of being the largest and
busiest town on the way since we left Tien-tsin. The main
thoroughfare running parallel with the wall was nothing but
shops, and though they were all closed, or the doors but slightly
ajar, revealing a very scantily-lighted range of interiors, yet
the tenants were thickly grouped in front laughing, chatting,
playing at some game, or making music of a mumpish
hypochondriacal character to the strumming of the three-
stringed banjo.

We had nearly a mile to walk before a house of entertain-
ment was found, and it was none of the cleanest ; for as soon
as our evening meal was concluded, to the intense relief of
the hundreds who had been bewildering their eyes at our
unheard-of manners, M. felt the rooms so hot and dusty that
he was fain to make himself a shake-down outside. I gave
chase to sundry scorpions which were moved by curiosity
and the odorous fumes of the food to leave their hiding-places
and approach my kang. Then we went to sleep for the
night, but not till after several failures, as some donkeys in
the courtyard proved more than usually kind in the exercise
of their vocal organs for our amusement, and more than
once prompted us to speak of them harshly.
410

CHAPTER XXI.

SUNDAY MORNING LONELY SCENERY — BEGGARS — RUINS OF NING YUEN
CHOW — GRAIN WAGONS —MANTCHURIAN LI— STUPIDITY OF THE
COUNTRY PEOPLE — SHIN SHAN— A PASTORAL PICTURE——CONVOY OF
CATTLE — THE FLOCKS — PACK SADDLE TRANSPORT — THE APPROACH
TO KIN CHOW—KIN CHOW — THE MARKET-PLACE —MEAT AND FRUIT
— GOOD HUMOUR OF THE CHINESE,

 

HE morning of the 13th July was a Sunday morning,
and was ushered in by as lovely a sunrise as could be
desired in any part of the world. We were early afoot, and
soon receiving the full benefit of a good start from our place
of temporary sojourn, where we had slept well, despite the
stenches and noise.

Our rides had been long and without intermission since we
began the journey; our ponies looked none the worse,
certainly, for their exertions, though each day had seen us
eight and ten hours in the saddle; but we were apprehensive
of overtaxing their strength and remarkable endurance, as
well as fatiguing ourselves unnecessarily by these forced
journeys of forty or forty-five miles a day. So prudence
dictated—and perhaps the remaining sensations of our diver-
tissement at the Great Wall recommended —a Sunday’s rest,
on which occasion we made up our minds to be satisfied with
half a day’s travelling, should suitable accommodation offer.

It took us a little time to get clear of the town, for its
environs assumed comparatively large proportions, besides
carrying a very creditable appearance of business, notwith-
standing the early hour; and then we had to cross a fordable
river, undisturbed by any kind of craft, but which might at
other times greatly aid the commercial transactions of the
LONELY SCENERY. 411

mercantile community of Chung-hue-soh. The road or track
ran up from the hot and air-stagnated plain to the higher
land edging the waters of the gulf, giving us in exchange for
sandy roads and shingly streams, undulating stretches of
green sward or rocky paths, over acclivities and down in easy
curves, where, if the soil could not be forced to carry its
allotment of grain, cattle and ponies grazed in small troops.
From the most elevated knolls we occasionally caught a peep
of the scalloped shore, and the unrufiled sea looking smoky
in the early morning haze.

But all was so unaccountably lonely, and so Sabbath-like
on this morning and forenoon, that it would have needed
more than an ordinary degree of self-persuasion to induce
ourselves to believe that we were wandering among such a
toiling, work-a-day people who have no holy day of rest, or
that we were in the vicinity of busy towns and striving
villages doomed to the unremitting din and motion of traffic
and labour. In the universal hush of nature, when such a
tranquil and glad quiet reigned over a fair expanse of diversi-
fied country, Sabbath thoughts certainly came thickly upon
us, and as we leisurely moved along, with nothing but the
sunlit scenery around to awaken reflection, the day of rest
and Christian thankfulness conjured up home scenes, and we
had almost looked to the little clumps of trees for a tapering
spire, and strained our hearing to seize the faintest echo

of the

‘Village bells
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet !”

But no; the revered memory of such scenes and sounds had
no realisation here, and it was somewhat sorrowful to think
that
‘The sound of the church-going bell,
These valleys and rocks never heard ;

Never sigh’d at the toll of a knell,
Or smiled when a Sabbath appeared.’
412 BEGGARS.

After winding about a good deal, and meeting only one
pedestrian, we descended again into the lower ground, where
we passed a sort of Madge Wildfire—a raving dementit old
body with uncrippled feet, in dirty rags, and with a garland
of wild flowers stuck on her head, who laughed, sang, and
cried, by turns, as she allowed us to ride by her unsolicited
for charity. Farther on we came across many other beg-
gars—old men and old women, blind or lame—the women
with natural sized feet, kneeling by the roadside and suppli-
cating alms as earnestly from us as if they had been quite
familiar with the presence of foreigners for years; one old
croon even going out of her way so far as to slang and
curse us like an Irish hag, because we did not satisfy her
demands.

At length we drew rein at the diminutive hamlet of
Wang-hia-tyer, where there was an inn more inviting and
secluded than any we had inspected in the nicely situated
villages in the neighbourhood; and opposite which we saw a
large harbour protected seaward by two islands, and though
apparently very shoal on the land side, yet affording refuge
and an anchorage to a number of junks brought up strag-
glingly to their hawsers. On the thick felt mats spread over
the ‘kang’ we spent the afternoon and the night, and,
thoroughly rested, began our onward course early next
day.

In Du Halde’s ‘China’ the worthy father, Verbiest, in
describing his travels in Mantchu Tartary, mentions the
state of decay in which he found the places he saw there.
‘ All the cities and towns I saw in Liautoong,’ he says, ‘ and
which are pretty numerous, lie in ruins, everywhere appear-
ing nothing but heaps of stones, bricks, and old rubbish.
Some few houses have been lately built within the enclo-
sures of these cities—some of earth, others of remains of the
old buildings, but few of brick, most thatched, and in no
order. There remains not the least mark of a multi-
NING YUEN CHOW. 413

tude of towns and villages that stood before the war
(the period when the Mantchus succeeded to the imperial
rule); for this petty Tartar king (Tientsung, the father of
the first Mantchu emperor), who began these wars with
very small forces, recruited them with the inhabitants of
these places, which he afterwards destroyed to deprive
his soldiers of the hopes of returning to their native
country.’

That was two centuries ago, and shortly after Tienming
—the first redoubtable chief of the Mantchus, who caused
the last emperor of the Ming dynasty to feel his power
and tremble at his revengeful manifestos—had by levies,
conscriptions, imposts, and unbearable exactions, reduced
the people of this province to a pitiable condition.

We could see nothing of these dilapidated tenements and
cities then reduced to rubbish, until after passing the two vil-
lages of Twso-chang and To-tia-dsa, about five miles from the
coast, where there was a large and lofty island bristling up
near the shore, we came to Ning Yuen Chow, once a walled
town of the second order, agreeably situated a short distance
from a good level road, and among trees, but where at
present everything was lonely and desolate, as we peeped
within the gateway of the crumbling brick enclosure. Not
a living thing stirred; the houses were roofless, and the
walls of the greater number thrown down; while the central
street up which we glanced was untrodden, and monopolised
by weeds or green-scummed pools. The grey havoc of age,
and apparent wanton destruction, seemed to point to this
period of Chinese history, when quiet citizens were deprived
of their homes and forced to bear arms under the impetuous
Mantchus, and afforded us the only example or proof of the
probability of such an occurrence as that mentioned by the
worthy Jesuit.

The country did not improve on this day’s ride, as the
houses became less and less tasteful, and the people dirtier
414 GRAIN WAGONS.

and lazier-looking than those we had hitherto fraternised
with.

We passed many wagons laden with agricultural pro-
duce, in the shape of bags of pulse or millet, some of them
with as many as twelve mules or ponies dragging them
along over the uneven ground, to the stimulating chirrup of
a great sun-burnt wagoner in a straw hat and light garb,
who, with legs extended, like another Colossus. of Rhodes,
from one shaft to the other, tugged his reins, or artistically
cracked a long whip, with a report as loud as a pistol, to stir
up the struggling team, always disposed in two lines of three,
and one of two, in front of the strongest beast yoked in the
shafts. Right well they responded to the incentive, and
moved the stiff machine through the most disheartening of
tracks with a willingness quite wonderful; their rude hames,
and cane or hempen traces, passing through wide harness
and shaft-rings to be attached to the axletree, standing the
fierce tugs or steady strain remarkably well.

Otherwise, the way was silent and dreary, and the absence
of lively passengers or crowded towns made the day’s dis-
tance long and monotonous. The remains of the round
towers we had noted as we left the Great Wall still accom-
panied us, as they showed their more or less shattered struc-
tures perched on plain or height; and between Sai-miau and
Cow-chow—two little bourgs of an unpretending aspect, a fine
bay, about five miles in width, swept round to within two
miles of the road, the entrance to it being protected by a
high island; while on the western side, the spur of a moun-
tain running at an acute angle from the seemingly intermi-
nable chain, swept across our path, and stopping suddenly
when it had gained the sea, formed a bold promontory on
one corner of the little frith, and gave a stronger contrast to
the softly-sloping shallow beach.

The dullness of the journey was much aggravated by the
uncertainty of the number of li we had to travel before
MANTCHURIAN LI. 415

coming to a suitable resting-place. Since leaving the Wall
we had reason to believe that instead of three li to a mile,
as on the Chinese side, the inhabitants counted only two,
and as this made a material difference where the road was
parcelled out by us into so many stages each of 120 li—
three of these to a mile—enquiries were frequent when
the long day’s allotment seemed never likely to be overcome
by any amount of trotting and urging onward.

To our query of how many li it still was to such and such
a place, which we had resolved to make our evening’s halt,
some dotard old villager would look at us bewildered, with
eyes staring and mouth a-gape, and unable to utter a word.
‘Shin Shan, toh-sha li lu?’ would be repeatedly dinned into
his venerable ears, until one almost gave up the attempt to
make him understand his own language, and inform us how
many li it was to Shin Shan; and when about to leave in
despair and vexation at the stupidity of the amazed bumpkin,
there was little consolation or benefit to be derived from his
suddenly coming to himself, and bawling out in an off-hand
way, as he wheeled on his heel, ‘Shin Shan is twenty li, or
more.’

The six-and-a-half miles would be carefully computed by
the time it would takeus totraverse a rugged patch of country.
Mayhap a dreamy sort of a little village would lead us to
hope that our day’s toil was over, and that the inn about
which we had been told at our last night’s quarters, was
ensconced somewhere in the short, tree-shaded street before
us. ‘Shumah te fang?’ one of us would call to a browned
son of toil enviously reclining on a rest-inviting natural
couch near his cottage door, pretty confident that we had at
last attained Shin Shan, and that the inn was ready to
receive us. In vain, however. The never-absent pipe
was unremittingly puffed away at as he listlessly looked
at us and tried to think, and the question would be re-
peated again and again, each time more distinctly, slowly, and
416 STUPID COUNTRY PEOPLE.

emphatically, and each time with a larger admixture of
that piquant grasseyement and profound, guttural enunciation
that I believed the perfection of the spoken mandarin
tongue.

Banishing to unmentionable regions such a stupid race of
people—for who so irritable and uncivil as a hungry and
fatigued traveller—we would set ponies and cart in motion
again, and when we had got almost beyond hail of our
taciturn friend, would hear him halloo ‘Shin Shan-a, it is
more than twenty li.’

‘Kippletringan was distant at first a ‘“ gey bit,” then the
gey bit was “aiblins three miles; ” then the three miles into
‘like a mile and a bittock,” then into “four mile or
thereawa.” But it was a weary lang gate yet to Kipple-
tringan, and unco heavy for foot passangers.’ So we rehearsed,
as we thought of Guy Mannering and his weary ride, when
our distance seemed ever to be the twenty li and more; and
surely the vagueness of a dozen miles in Scotland or Ireland
was never so tantalisingly manifested as in this day’s ferret-
ing out of Shin Shan beyond the Great Wall.

So it was long after dark, and some time had elapsed
since we had seen the last ploughman in the fast vanishing
twilight wending homeward with his plough, carried on a
little wooden wheelless platform—dragged by his mixed
string of animals, to preserve it from the wear of the road;
before this distant ‘fang’ with its never-to-be-discovered
house of entertainment was hailed, and our half-famished
party joyfully put up in tolerable cleanliness and quiet.

Kinchow fu, the departmental town of one of the two
divisions of the province of Shinking, and a town of the first
order, was said to be only thirty li, or about twelve miles
distant from Shin Shan; though to the northward, and con-
siderably off the direct course we had deemed it best to
pursue. Still we had reasons strong enough to induce us to
sacrifice half-a-day’s time and labour to obtain some notion
A PASTORAL PICTURE. 417

of what is erroneously stated in a recent work on China to
be the port of Moukden—the capital of Mantchuria—and,
still greater mistake, only fifteen leagues from that city.
Our carman heard the intimation with a frowning counten-
ance and a very sluggish gait, and Ma-foo seemed more than
usually put about; but there was no help for it on their
side. Before the sun had time to show itself above the
horizon, we were ascending the highland to the northward

 

Landscape in Mantchuria.

again, and climbing over rocky hills, and scampering over
fields almost impassable by ruts and gaps, until at length we
lighted upon what we were disposed to solace ourselves with
as a real bit of Tartar scenery.

A fine piece of pasture land extends for somewhat about
ten miles to the north and north-east, consisting of a long
strip of level ground, with richly-green low sloping hills rising
evenly to the foot of the lofty mountains about fifteen miles

EE
418 PASTURE LAND.

off. It was speckled with large flocks and herds of cattle,
ponies, sheep, goats, mules, donkeys, and pigs going to the
hillsides and to the plain; producing a variety of sights and
sounds quite pastoral and unique in this grain and vegetable
growing land. When farm-houses with their low flat roofs
almost screened by trees, and walls built of the stone cut
from the neighbouring quarries, all but concealed by fences
and stacks, peered out from some cheerful seclusion and sent
their thin lines of blue smoke curling up into the cool
morning sky, one could not help being reminded of the
more fertile portions of the fells of Yorkshire and Lan-
cashire.

Yet there was the peculiarly wild and inimitable song of
the solitary herdsman sounding strangely, but by no manner
of means unpleasantly, in his retired post as he leant on his
crutch-shaped stick; and the shrill squeak of a juvenile rustic
who was lazily spreading himself out on the bare back of a
shaggy pony which is attentively eyeing the movements of
the erratic members of the herd, and the rider listlessly whiles
away the early hours with this burlesque concordia discors.
Healthy-looking but rather dirty men go skirling about as
they with painful care gather up the much-prized fructifying
element from behind the heels of the grazing quadrupeds,
and deposit it in wicker baskets; the gowan and the butter-
cup spring up among the short herbage, and the smell of the
meadow plants is extremely refreshing after a close night in
a closer inn.

High up in the clouds, the lark circles and sings gushingly
to the melancholy pe-weet of the startled lapwing, while the
neighing of the ponies or the bleating of the sheep trans-
ports me once more to the island of the West. These ponies
are larger-than those I usually see, standing thirteen or
fourteen hands high and well-proportioned; their colours are
various, the lighter ones, especially white with bay, brown,
or black spots, appear to be preferred. The cattle are not so
A CONVOY. 419

much amiss for a non-improving people, and are mostly of a
light-red or bay colour, tolerable-sized but rather bony; they
are not unlike the Irish breed of cattle, though finer skinned ;
and yet do not exhibit a tendency either to fatten, nor seem
likely to prove good milk-givers, should their owners ever
chance to test them in this quality, as they are generally
flat-sided, light-bellied brutes, apparently bred only for pur-
poses of draught. The sheep were the white-wooled, broad-
tailed animals of the same stamp as those of the Cape of Good
Hope and the Asiatic Steppes—excellent mutton, and as
savoury as the tenderest rib of our own black-faced treasures.
The goats differed in nothing from the shrivelled dwarfish
toys we had met on our first day this side of the Wall; the
pigs were as repulsively black and ugly as elsewhere; and
the asses and mules in as good condition and well-cared-for
trim as we found them everywhere.

We fell in with a long convoy going towards Shin Shan,
composed of ponies, mules, and sturdy little donkeys, all
carrying their loads on their backs, as the country was too
heavy for wheeled vehicles; and no animals could get along
better under the weight they carried than they did. The
pack-saddles were worthy models for any director-general
of army transport, and the packages were so carefully
adjusted on each side of them that girths or surcingles were
unnecessary. Some of the donkeys had as many as half-a-
dozen half-empty bags of grain lying across their unprotected
backs.

Turning to the eastward again—for we had been going
almost due north—a fine prospect opened before us of a well-
wooded plain stretching far away below, and in the middle,
the notched walls of a city, and the prevalent well-defined wall-
towers standing high above the trees. This was Kinchow—
or as the natives pronounce it, Chin-chow, the second city in
importance beyond the Wall. The view from the higher
ground, just as the outline of the city is sighted, we thought

EE 2
420 APPROACH TO KINCHOW.

specially commendable, and would have been very guilty of
an injustice to ourselves and to it, had we not drawn rein
and indulged our vision for a few minutes.

Regaining the level, we soon found ourselves in the midst
of cultivated fields in a forward state for an early harvest.
Their banks — for here the fields were banked in from the
road — were overspread with wild-flowers, among which we
gladly single out the thistle, the wild-lavender, the sunflower,
and the little blue forget-me-not sparkling here and there in
the rank grass. The roadsides are thickly planted with old
willows, laurels, and stray elms, and a large partially enclosed
park of closely-set trees on our left was perhaps a promenade
or pleasure resort for the townspeople, as we saw several
well-dressed women stumping along with their arms in full
swing to preserve their equilibrium, while they took their
airing, and others were seated on low forms, having their
forenoon’s on dit or ramble into the murky precincts of the
Hyrcynian wood. They were but slightly disturbed by our
startling appearance so near them, for they scarcely yielded
so much to fear or curiosity as to give our turbaned heads
and black hairy faces more than a momentary squint before
they resumed their tale.

The houses improved in exterior and size, the passengers
along the side-paths became more numerous and better clad,
kitchen gardens took the place of maize and millet, and
everything foretold our approach to a large town. These
were all in turn left behind; a wide waste of black quag-
mirish ground lay between us and the south side of the city,
with a rather broad, but now very shallow river—the Siau-ling-
hé —running through it, but destitute of everything except
some two light ferry boats in an, ineffective state, and a long
plank bridge laid on trestles spanning the sleepy waters for
about 200 feet. This Ad is easily forded, and in a few
minutes, despite the awfully deep cesspools that forbade our
advance, and nearly poisoned us when the wagon wheels
KINCHOW. 421

stirred them up, we were in the rancid tumbled-up suburb
which we can unflinchingly pronounce to be, if possible,
worse than any other suburb we have been inveigled into, for
foul gases, fermenting filth, and muddy confusion.

Having got thus far, it became a serious question whether
we could go on at all, as the ways were deadly sloughs more
than axletree deep, and the news of our arrival having already
been bruited abroad, the entire population seemed to have
thought it their duty to leave everything to look and talk
about us.

‘What strange men!’ ‘what wonderful clothes!’ ‘what as-
tonishing boots!’ and ‘what marvellous saddles and bridles!’
were trifling exclamations compared to others ringing in our
ears. There was no help for it but to send the cart on by an
easier street to the opposite side of the town where we could
meet it, and then make a hurried sally into the city.

The walls were in good repair, and offered nothing to
our notice we had not already seen. The gates were wide
and strong, but the great granite flags paving the way that
led through them were sadly in need of repair or renewal.
The city appeared to be nearly of a square form, and each
side about half a mile in length. The guard-room was on our
right immediately within the inner gate, and it exhibited a
little more care and a better attempt at display than any other
place of the kind we have yet seen in the land. It was raised
three or four feet above the level of the street, and railed
in front with gaudily painted spars and arm-racks, in which
were a profusion of large bows and cases full of arrows, with
swords and all varieties of ludicrously-shaped lances, bill-
hooks, pole-axes, and pikes done up in brilliant colours.
Within the little apartment some half dozen men, like field
labourers or coolies, were so intent on gambling that they
did or would not observe our entrance.

The street was moderately wide for a Chinese thorough-
fare, and clean too; and the shops erected on each side of the
422 GUARD ROOMS.

channeled way were many of them large and tidy. Those
of most ample dimensions and business appearance were
appropriated for the storing and sale of grain — the staple
commodity ; while the smaller tenements furnished the
ordinary daily necessaries and luxuries consumed by the
citizens. We penetrated as far as the centre of the town,
where a lofty tower perforated by four gateways brought us
to the junction of the four main streets, and to a point where
as much of the place was visible as we cared about seeing.
Close by was a main guard-room with a-few unsoldier-like
loons hanging about the door, and a snuffy-nosed petty
officer anxiously awaiting our departure to mount a scraggy
caparisoned galloway that snorted and plunged when we
approached. This domestie warrior eyed us suspiciously,
and rather ill-naturedly, I thought, but we were so busy in
the crowd about us that we had no time to care much for his
favour or displeasure.

There was a far greater attraction for us in an assemblage
of stalls rigged up on the pavement under the archways.
We made for them at once, as our ordinary every-day fare
was becoming irksome, and the country inns afforded nothing
beyond the detestable pig, garlic, and fowls in a state of:
marasmus, with eggs at times in the finishing stage of chemical
metamorphosis. Gladdening to the eyes, and consoling to
an often insulted stomach, was the sight of tastefully-arrayed
quarters, legs, and loins of mutton suspended and laid out
on the blue-cottoned butcher’s temporary shop-front; and
pregnant with savoury and nutritive reminiscences in the
memory of a north-countryman was that display of neatly
and well-singed sheeps’ heads, ranked up on the narrow
benches for the selection of customers. But most alluring of
all were the baskets of peaches, nectarines, apples, and grapes
displayed on every side on that hot forenoon.

We had scarcely time to cast our eyes up each street,
THE MARKET PLACE. 423

and to note that the one to the east was crossed by lines
from every shop, on which were fastened little triangular
flags of various and bright colours, inscribed with the
owners’ names and occupations, giving the long vista quite
a gala appearance. That to the west was inhabited by the
poorer portion of the population, and contained what must
have been at one time a splendid specimen of the North
China pagoda, but which was now ruinous, having been
stripped of the external covering of brickwork,—the internal
foundation of earth and wooden transverse beams were alone
remaining; while the street to the north was little better
than a dirty lane through squalid cottages and smallware
dealers’ hovels.

We came to the conclusion that Kinchow was not the
trading place we had been led to believe it was, but that it
must rely for its business character on its port, which we
inferred must be near the mouth of the river, some ten or
twelve miles off. We gave, however, but little time for
considering the subject, being rigorously intent on the pur-
chase of fruit enough to fill every pocket and saddle-bag,
and mutton-chops sufficient to give us a reparatory feast in
the evening. The vendors of these goods were never, per-
haps, more readily or liberally paid—though we could not
complain of their charges, considering that mutton was sold
to us for something less than a penny a pound, and fruit
enough in quantity and quality to invalid half a regiment
for about sixpence.

An immense concourse of people swarmed around us
while we were initiating the butcher into the art of cutting
mutton-chops, but they were remarkably civil, and said or
did nothing that could give us the slightest offence. As
they gathered in behind, they thrust those in front forward,
and these resented the inconvenient pressure or crowding-in
upon us, by setting up a counter squeeze, during which a
424 MEAT AND FRUIT.

decently-clad young fellow was shoved over a bucket of
water and got himself slightly saturated. Enraged at this,
he vented his wrath on those immediately in his rear by
scolding and dashing the water in handfulls over them, very
much to the mirth and laughter of not only the bystanders
but the sufferers themselves, who, instead of seeking repara-
tion by a game of fisticuffs as an English rabble of the same

 

Victualling in Kinchow.

class would have done, seemed to enjoy the fun, and per-
mitted us, the unwitting cause of the mishap, to depart in
peace and plenty.

At some of the shop-doors, we saw what was, to us, a new
variety of the lark species confined in cages, but as all
were moulting, and the owners were removing them out of
the way of the crowd, we had no chance of examining them.
We could only discover that the people called this variety the
NEW SPECIES OF LARK. 425

San-ma-chow, that the plumage on its back resembled very
closely in markings that of the button quail, and that over
each eye was an elliptical lemon-coloured line. Bird-
collecting being then our favourite hobby, we were vexed
that fortune had not favoured us here in obtaining a victim
feathered sufficiently to warrant us in purchasing and pre-
serving it for future comparison.
426

CHAPTER XXII.

RABID CURIOSITY — FILTHY HABITS OF THE PEOPLE — THEIR INDIFFER-
ENCE TO THE PROPERTIES OF SOAP AND WATER — SHE-TSOU-TANG AT
TIEN-TSIN — STEAMING CHINESE — COST OF VAPOUR BATH — PHYSICAL
SUPERIORITY OF THE MEN OF NORTH CHINA —GOOD SERVICE — IGNO-
RANCE OF THE GREAT ENGLISH NATION — CULTIVATION OF TOBACCO
— WELLS OF TA-LING — MANTCHU HORSES — SUSPICIOUS CHARACTERS.

MERGING from the gate we had entered by, we passed
eastward through another portion of the suburb, where
we found the cart and our driver working up the minds of
the groundlings to a pitch of rabid curiosity rather annoy-
ing than otherwise. But the Ywng-ro—Sinensian for sheep’s
flesh—was safely deposited in the coolest and roomiest corner
of the vehicle, the vegetables were hung from the frame of
the cover, and guarding our treasures with an unusual
degree of attention, we scrambled out of the uncomfortable
locality, which possessed some large buildings we took, or
mistook, for potteries.

All the womenkind were out to scrutinise us, and we had
ample opportunity afforded to enable us to surmise that the
morality of the place was not of the highest order, nor the
feminine beauty or modesty other than of a very low
type.

Meretricious looking Messalinas jeered and smiled wan-
tonly towards us from beneath their indecorous masks of
paint, as they uneasily tried to maintain themselves erect on
their fashion-nipped feet, or leant against the walls or the
shoulders of some debauched Lothario. It was, perhaps, as
well that we did not understand much, if anything, of their
FILTHY HABITS. 427

language. Everybody was piggishly dirty, and carried about
an alluvial deposit of such a thickness, that one could scarcely
forbear wondering they did not become fossilised within the
muddy encasement daily and hourly accumulating about
their persons.

The people of North China are certainly not addicted to
tubbing, and of all of the Eastern races the Chinese in
general are surely the most indifferent. to personal cleanli-
ness. At every step in one of their towns this is more and
more apparent, and examine and enquire where and when
you may, you can never discover at what time or where a
Chinese performs his ablutions.

In the towns and villages I had passed through, especially
in those situated on the banks of rivers, I looked in vain for
wash-houses or yellow skins being scrubbed in the fresh
flowing water; and since leaving the banks of the Peiho,
had not been able to discover the faintest clue to lead me to
suppose that they were at all cognisant of the properties
of water and the virtues of soap.

Before my reaching so far northwards as Tien-tsin I
undoubtedly thought so; and no account of bath-houses
having been given in any books on China that had then
fallen into my hands, and Europeans long residents in the
country, of whom I enquired, having expressed their
ignorance of, or unbelief in, the existence of any such estab-
lishments, it was with some degree of pleasurable surprise
that I became aware of their presence in that city, and in
good numbers, too; for—and I confess it with all due
sincerity and humility—I had given up our garlic-eating
friends, unconditionally, to be an uncleanly race, not only
from what I had been told and had read about them, but
from what J had observed of their habits; and I was fully
‘prepared to affirm that the assertion made by physiologists
regarding the renewal of the body in general, and the
skin in particular every seven years, did not apply to any
428 INDIFFERENCE TO SOAP AND WATER.

of the citizens of the Central Empire, who seemed to me
to possess a most remarkable antipathy to the practical study
of the lavatory process, in relation to its effects on the cuticle.
In short I had viewed them, after a due amount of con-
sideration, as a very large portion of the human family
afflicted with a marked hereditary hydrophobic tendency.’ I
could not avoid coinciding in the opinion expressed by the
poet, when he says that—

‘Even from the body’s purity, the mind
Receives a secret sympathetic aid.’

So I determined to institute a full investigation into the
matter without delay, and if I found that I had wronged
the Chinese in this respect, and that the people who dwell
‘outside’ had done them no greater justice, to make all the
amends in my power and give the results of my researches
to the world. Yet I could not banish from my recollection
the case of a certain domestic at Hong-Kong, whose facial
pores during the summer weather appeared to be always
undergoing the most active process of distillation, and
whose lavations, so far as I could witness—and sometimes
I could not avoid being spectator of them—were confined
to the almost circular patch of senna-coloured cuticle that
covers the queer assemblage of organs constituing a China
boy’s face. Unless, too, my eyes were deceived, this act.
was perpetrated in a well-known cooking utensil containing
steaming hot, and probably greasy water, into which was
dipped several times an article noted down in the maid-of-
all-work’s inventory as a dish-cloth, but which, in this
instance, was made to serve as a swab. My note-book
also mentions my having encountered, even in the streets of
Peking, worthy dignitaries, wearers of high class buttons,
who had, contrary to what is usually observed in those parts
exposed and those hidden from the effects of sun and wind,
a tolerably white face and an intolerably dirty neck.
‘WASH-BODY HOUSE.’ 499

It was not difficult to find many houses on the banks of
the Peiho with flaunting advertisements in large black
characters painted on the white-washed walls, extolling the
clear and unpolluted quality of the water used within;
though it was derived from a musty river, the common
receptacle for every species of garbage. The first She-tsou-
tang or ‘Wash-body house’ I sought to make the subject
of enquiry, was standing in a busy alley above as nasty a
cloaca as ever graced any part of the stream, and within the
ordinary enclosing wall of brick. Entering by the narrow
doorway from the street, I found myself in a little courtyard
strewn about with tubs, and wood, millet-stalk fuel, and
rubbish, and garnished with sundry sets of Chinese costume
hung to dry or be aired on lines intersecting the limited
space at*various angles.

A small door, with a very small sign-board, between two
others that flanked each end of a one-storied building, was
pitched upon as the one to introduce myself by, and I pulled
it rather suddenly open without any premonitory knock—
for I fear such an obliging intimation was rare at Tien-tsin,
when the men from beyond the seas wished to make an irrup-
tion into the abodes of the natives—to the no small surprise
of the occupants, who jumped to their feet and stared.
I was justly punished for’ my uncivil rashness by a simul-
taneous, and almost overwhelming attack on my visual and
olfactory nerves—those salient and most vulnerable points
so difficult to defend when assailed by Chinese smells and
sights—as well as the sudden inhalation of a moist hot air,
not at all agreeable to the lungs after leaving the cold dry
atmosphere of a winter’s day.

Yet I did not effect the hasty retreat that prudence and
my outraged feelings dictated, but clung to my resolve with
a desperation anything but worthy of the cause. After clos-
ing the door there, I was standing alone in a long narrow
room—a companion who often assists in my explorations
430 A DRESSING ROOM.

having fairly ran away at the first sniff when the door was
opened —that appeared to answer many purposes in this
maison de.bains, but principally those of a dressing and
shaving-room. It was occupied at this time by about
fifteen individuals, men and boys, nearly all of whom were
in a state of impuris naturalibus, which condition they
seemed to regard as quite a matter of course. Some were
seated on narrow forms quietly looking about them, while
their wet skins were being slowly and spontaneously dried
by evaporation, for there seemed to be few if any towels in
use, or even in the apartment. Others were having their
setaceous scalps and tails operated upon by the household
barbers, and one or two had surrendered themselves to the
soporific influences of heat and exhaustion—influences more
or less perceptibly at work on all of them.

On one side of the long building was a large piece of fur-
niture with two rows of apertures, in which were placed the
clothes of the customers, many of whom were earnestly
intent in hunting for entomological specimens thereon. Two
or three tables afforded accommodation for the perpetually
at-work teapot, from which was poured into moderately-sized
cups a small quantity of the grateful infusion, to be drank
leisurely by the washed beings who smoked or reclined pre-
vious to going away, or to be gulped down by the reeking and
panting men who issued from a room at the other end of the
one J had entered in, and to which my attention was now
directed.

T had not much time to remain in the establishment, how-
ever, for my heart was fast sinking within me; though I
tried strongly to get over the repugnant sensations, and
imagined I should become so soon accustomed to the mal-
odorous interior as to stay in it long enough to see all. I
was quickly undeceived; for when I made a dash for this
chamber, and removing my fingers froin the closed nostrils in
order to drag open the door,—which was heavily weighted to
STEAMING CHINESE. 431

keep it shut, I found myself repulsed in the utmost trepida-
tion by a cloud of steam of such an emetical flavour that all
my firmness gave way. The door was banged to; and yet
the heat, the steam, and the stench that had escaped in the
brief lapse of time were of such a dreadfully penetrating and
disagreeable character, that no amount of resolution could
induce me to look within again.

I had, however, seen enough to enable me to make out a
small room about twelve feet square, the floor of which was
excavated and filled with very warm water to the height of
the elbows of the crowd of men who, parboiled, gasping, and
perspiring, were steeping themselves in the soupy ammoni-
acal fluid. It was a regular Piscinwm, or plunge-bath full
of vapour and fetid water, and strong-scented human bodies,
raised to a temperature far above blood-heat, and which to
me would have been quite insupportable.

Even the strong Chinese who had but just emerged from
it were prostrated, and for some time they suffered a good
deal from lassitude. Their faces were highly flushed, their
hearts palpitated violently, and their pulse was nearly twice
the natural number as they lay motionless in the cooling
room. This plunge-bath was only for the poorer people,
who could afford to pay no more than a few cash for their
soaking and simmering; but at the opposite end was another
little chamber, less obnoxious than the other, and paved
with brick. This was maintained at a high temperature by
flues underneath the floor, and these, with the steaming
watery vapour, caused the perspiration to trickle down my
face as I tried to watch the manipulations of a light-fingered
chiropodist, who, with a mysterious collection of small tools,
was doctoring the toes of a fat old tradesman in a gradual
state of melting-down.

This was, without doubt, a better attempt at a bath-room,
but still was very imperfect, and the whole thing was so
utterly devoid of the luxuriousness and enjoyment that
432 COST OF VAPOUR BATH.

must have attended the old Roman bath, or that follows the
Turkish refreshening one gets in the bath-houses at Constan-
tinople, that the wonder was why the place was patronised at
all—the more especially as it possessed all the disadvantages
of a bad vapour-bath in saturating the air with moisture, and
giving rise to great derangement of the circulation and fever-
ishness.

At the best, the bath in China is certainly not looked
upon as a social or religious institution, as we see it among
other nations of the East, and those who were now employ-
ing it perhaps did so more to pass away an idle hour, secured
from the cold without, than from any motives of cleanliness.

Before decamping, which I was glad to do after about ten
minutes martyrdom, the landlord politely offered me tea
from the public teapot, and the sole use of the heated room
I had last seen at any time I chose—both of which invita-
tions I declined as mildly as my nauseated stomach would
permit. But before hurrying out, I gleaned from him that
there were no fewer than thirty-two such bath-houses at
Tien-tsin; that they were tolerably well frequented; that the
charge for the lower orders in the scalding-room at the
upper end was three cash for bathing, and three for shaving
the head and combing and plaiting the queue, or about one-
third of a penny for each visitor.

He also showed me a man suffering from rheumatism
who was being shampooed by a professor of that treatment;
the latter played a most wonderful fantasia in good time,
and with every modification of sound, by means of palms,
knuckles, thumbs, and sides of the hands, on the poor wretch’s
naked back. Following me to the grateful atmosphere of the
courtyard, the proprietor led me to an underground cellar,
where two men fed the fires with fuel that blazed away imme-
diately beneath the reeking caldron overhead. I did not again
risk my health in such buildings; and yet, after the unscoured
mob that at Kinchow surrounded us, and whose skins were
DIVERSITY OF PEOPLE. 433

but too frequently covered with all sorts of loathsome dis-
eases, one could not but in charity regret that the like was
not to be observed in some part of their town.

Getting clear of the large suburb and its murderous roads,
we got on one of the nicest highways we had yet traversed,
with good villages at frequent intervals.

The farther we passed to the north-east, the more, I think,
the character of the people—physically, and perhaps also
mentally—changed for the better. The men became finer,
more stalwart, and more manly looking than they of the
south; and though like the ‘ Achaian chief, for bulk con-
spicuous,’ they were lusty and inclined to bea little plethoric
and flabby, they carried themselves well; and their tall
upright figures (some of them could not measure less than
six feet two or three inches) their properly formed and
graceful limbs and wide flat backs bespoke hale constitutions,
a good climate, and immunity from those hereditary and
acquired diseases, the effects of which one notices so often
in the districts of the south.

Besides the height and corresponding muscular growth,
their features differed much from those of the people about
Canton, along the coast, and even up to Shanghai. It isa
mistake to suppose that the Chinese physiognomy bears the
same invariable monotony of outline and expression every-
where, that there is no appreciable difference between one
Chinaman’s face and another, and that a Coolie from the
banks of the Canton river, the Yang-tsze-kiang, or the Peiho
must needs be identical in form and feature; ever the same
plenilune face, the same inelegant arrest of nasal develope-
ment, the unvarying and characteristic width across the
level-topped nose-bridge, and the willow-leaf slits, through
which the sparkling jet-black eyes can be seen glistening and
dancing.

This popular error is quite on a par with that of the
Peking and Tien-tsin artists, who represented or caricatured

FF
434 NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PHYSIOGNOMIES.

all Europeans as beings with vehemently florid complexions,
hooked noses, sky-blue eyes, and hair—oh travestied tran-
scription !—of the most atrocious brick-red colour imaginable ;
and owes much, doubtless, to the great sameness with which
the nation is costumed, the perpetual and universal mode of
wearing the hair parted behind, shaving the front of the head
and the eyebrows, and depriving the face of all its capillary
growth, as well as to their rigid adherence to all outward forms
and fashions the traveller observes, no matter in what part of
the long narrow fringe of the empire he may be wending his way.

In reality, the physiognomical characteristics are perhaps
as diverse, and as strictly localised—I only speak from my
limited experience, but somewhat attentive observation—as
we find them in Britain. This may be attributable in a very
great measure to the difference in the habits of the people,
rendered necessary by the nature of the climate, and the soils
of the country, as well as to the stationary and quiescent
tastes of the sons of Han, who seldom travel, and as seldom
marry beyond their own district, or town.

In a southern city no two faces can be met in the crowded
streets exactly alike, but the multitudes who throng back-
wards and forwards, from day-dawn until sunset, present as
wide a contrast in their individual visages as could be found
in Fleet Street or Cheapside.

And so it is in the north; but the faces there are inclining
to oval; the orbicular outline disappears as one goes towards
colder latitudes; the features become more and more aquiline,
the eye-fissures less oblique and narrow, the mouths are
better formed, and the cheekbones, the maxillary bones, or
the teeth do not project to such an unsightly degree; while
their skins are fairer and more like those of Southern
Europeans, and can often be perceived to have a faint tinge
of rosiness mantling out about the cheeks.

Contrary to the generally received opinion, we have many
times about Peking, and all along our route, seen men who
HONESTY AND SIMPLICITY. 435

had not attended to the calls of the barber so regularly as is
the fashion, endowed with the rudiments of more than
averaged sized whiskers of a few days’ growth, and have
met with others who had not only rusty or reddish-tinted
moustaches, but queues also of the same colour, as well as
eyes very closely approaching to hazel; and these exceptional
departures from the natural standard were not considered as
at all wonderful or extraordinary by the possessors or their
friends.

Small hands and feet are the attributes of the men of the
north, as well as those of the south; but the former would
obtain the first rank should there be any dispute about supe-
riority in this respect; while the other external traits are so
marked that the latest new arrival in the country could with
ease single out a Canton or Shanghai man in a crowd of Pe-
kingese. If their mental faculties are less acute, and they be not
gifted with so large an amount of intrepidity, low cunning,
or stirring business minds, they are undoubtedly blest with a
greater simplicity of heart, honesty of purpose, and a kindly
straightforwardness almost unknown beyond the Shantung
promontory. Their stupidity—as we were pleased to term
their bluntness—and ignorance of our habits and tastes
could be tolerated or remedied by patience and a little
trouble, but the wily deceit of the southern kept us ever on
the watch.

The ignorance of the country people we were now among
certainly overwhelmed us altogether, and might have led us
to form a very low estimate of their acquirements, especially
concerning the worlds beyond their own remote province,
had we not been aware of the torpidity of the Chinese mind
in acquiring knowledge about affairs in which they could not
look for profit, and the slow way in which information was
spread when it became essential for the government to keep
its own secrets or conceal its misfortunes.

For example, when passing along this fine wide road, our

FF2
486 ‘WHAT AND WHERE IS ENGLAND.’

driver, who was becoming very indifferent to everything save
cash and a comfortable quarter for the night, carelessly drove
one of the wheels of the cart over a big stone, which resulted
in the vehicle’s being thrown over and our party brought toa
standstill, they being unable to get it righted again. This was
near a large village, where the wonderful sight of such astound-
ing mortals, who seemed to have dropped from the clouds,
brought out the inmates of the tidy houses to look and gape.

We were in a difficulty—the cart was on its side, the mules
were entangled in the harness and long traces, and our carter
was raving and dancing about in the most helpless manner ;
so the strongest and youngest of the spectators were requested
to assist in getting the machine adjusted. At first they were
too much bewildered, looking at us, to heed any request or
supplication, but this over, when they satisfied themselves
that we were really flesh and blood and mortals like them-
selves, they stepped forward and soon the mishap was con-
verted into an interesting chat with the big powerful fellows
who had seized mules and carriage and put them in the way
of going on in a few seconds.

One old gentleman with a sadly diminished tail, and white
flowing moustache and beard, and who was evidently the
man of the village, took the liberty to enquire what manner
of men we were and where we came from. As on other
occasions, the answer was that we were ‘Men of the Great
English Nation.’

Imagine our littleness, the diminution our British heads
suffered, when the crowd stretched out their necks and
opened their mouths wide to hear the answer to the old
fellow’s stupefying interrogation. ‘What is the great English
nation? Where is it?’

Could anyone conceive the existence of such ‘crass ig-
norance’ in any part of a civilised country, where a sharp and
short war had brought a moiety of this English nation to
within three hundred miles of the hamlet we now were in,
LANGUAGE. 437

and had laid their own nation helpless, and at its mercy!
Not to know, or have felt in some way or other, or even
have heard of the presence of that ‘little body with the
mighty heart;’ that small but invincible polypus, whose
vigorous tentacles grapple the nearest and most distant corners
of the earth; not to have listened to a whisper regarding the
merits or defects of that ‘precious stone set in the silver
sea’ of the Far West, was ignorance, to us, indeed, and
at that time particularly humiliating; and never before
did we experience such a sensation.

If other proofs were needed, surely this was sufficient to
convince us that we had at last got beyond the beaten track,
the invincible reputation, and the universal homage that we
flattered ourselves was the Briton’s own right all over the
globe. It would have been a loss of time to attempt the
enlightenment of such lost creatures; so, I think, after telling
them that England was a country lying in the great ocean
far, far under the Western Heavens, where the sun was then
fast sinking, we left them, shorn of a good part, we are free
to confess, of our national vanity.

There was a great change in the demeanour and physical
qualities of these people, and a very peculiarly marked
difference in the language spoken by them, with regard to
its harsh-sounding words and altered intonation—so closely
indeed it resembled our own, that when two or three persons
were talking in a loud voice a little way off one could
scarcely dispel the thought that we were listening to some
of our own countrymen, or were travelling in some of the
more remote parts of Scotland where the guttural chi’s, gh’s,
the tirling r’s, never heard in the south of China, and the
rugged aspirates with which the consonants are wrapped up
in the north country patois were still familiar to us.

All this, we thought, must prove that we had at last got
amongst the Tartars, and that any little approximation they
might bear to the polished individuals on the China side of
438 NO TARTARS.

the Wall was owing to their intercourse with each other,
and to the insidious power of Chinese commerce and Chinese
industry. But no; everywhere we enquired the Mantchu-
rin*—the r substituted for the y in use on the west side of
the ‘ Barrier’ —was unknown; each villager seemed rather to
think we were joking him, or trying to depreciate his social
status when we blandly asked him if he was a Tartar, or if
any Tartars dwelt in his village. He was a ‘Chung-kwoh-
rin’—a ‘Middle Kingdom man’—and did not know any-
thing about ‘ Mantchu-rins,’ and shaking his head as if he
were rather disgusted with our civil query, would resume his
elaborate scrutiny of our persons.

We had not yet reached the conquerors of the Great
Kingdom; we were still amongst the Chinese, who had
absorbed all the wealth, all the influence, and all the country
even, in the land of the conqueror. Surely in the capital of
the Mantchu race we should find them dominant, and after
all our labour and fatigue be able to satisfy ourselves that
such a people really held sway in their own country! The
Chinese could surely not be the same brisk business mer-
chants, the same indefatigable toilers, the same controlling
element everywhere, we were fondly hoping—for we were
quite willing to exchange them for another race, and, were
ready for almost any extreme, so long as we could lead
ourselves to believe that we had left China behind, and were
in reality beyond the Great Wall.

What struck us everywhere was the large per centage
of very old men lingering on the outskirts of their homes,
and looking as if life had not yet become tiresome to them,
nor its cares and toils an insupportable burden ; their ages
we did not seek to know, nor yet those of the many old
women who tottered about the doorways, some of them very
much disfigured by that unsightly enlargement of the thyroid
gland of the neck, called govtre, which they took no pains to

* Mantchu-man.
TOBACCO SMOKING. 439

conceal, and from which the male sex appeared to be exempt,
for we remembered the rhyme—

‘The age of man is threescore years and ten,
But that of an old woman nobody knows when.’

And another thing that attracted our attention very much
was the all-prevalent habit of tobacco smoking, indulged in
by everybody, at all hours, and in all situations. From the
child scarcely yet beyond the threshold of infancy to the
young maid, the mother and the grandmother, in the
feminine; and from the toddling boy of four or five years old
to the great-grandfather verging on a century in the mas-
culine gender, all use the tobacco-pipe constantly. Every
garden has its allotted space for the growth of the plant, no
duty is imposed on its consumption, and no preparation, save
drying carefully, is needed to render it fit for smoking ; and
the population takes so early and so kindly to the influence
of the gentle weed, that it looks rather fightig against
inward belief to suppose that the custom was introduced
from beyond China.

In truth, the people look as if they had been smoking
since the far back times of the fabulous Fohi. If we are to
credit some authors, the Chinese must have known tobacco
long before it was first observed at St, Domingo in a.p. 1496,
for the word tobacco is its ancient name used by them to
express the idea of tobacco; and the Chinese characters
signifying this article have been found in a book which
has been in existence more than a thousand years. Even
now in Mongolia there-is no other name for the narcotic ;
so that when the blustering Spaniard was getting over his
nausea, and beginning to relish the agreeable sensations of
the new luxury at Yucatan in the commencement of the
sixteenth century, and Hawkins, Raleigh, and Drake were
introducing it to the notice of their countrymen, and
throwing out wondrous clouds of smoke in a semi-torpid
440 ENJOYMENT OF THE WEED.

state of novel enjoyment, our mild Chinaman, his wife, and
the youngest of his progeny, were thoroughly seasoned to its
use, had been so for generations past, and had smoked the
finely powdered leaf in these dwarf-headed pipes which give
but two or three whiffs before they require replenishing.

So fixed and constitutional has the habit become, that we
should not wonder to hear that it would require many royal
counterblasts from the ruler of the Empire, and volumes of
servile satirical poems from pet poets of royalty, with the ex-
communications and persecutions of pope, peer, and autocrat,
to prohibit a usage which appears to have become a necessary
function of life with all classes of the people. The tinder,
the flint, and the steel, with the pipe and tobacco-pouch, are
an essential and never absent addition to every man’s costume ;
and even the nobility, when they are carried out in their
chairs, have these implements suspended near them. The
first thing in the morning and the last act at night; the
earliest mancuvre on entering a room, and the finishing one
in quitting it, is to fill the everlasting calamut, and smoke
it with as staid and contented an air as possible.

Truly it seems with them that—

‘To rich or poor, in peace or strife,
It smooths the rugged path of life.’

Did it not destroy their teeth, and by the prejudicial way in
which they inhale the smoke and expel it through their nos-
trils, cause them to make such abominable noises at the back
part of their throats, one could scarcely find fault with the
practice, which appears moreover to be quite in keeping with
the lymphatic temperament of the smoke-makers.

Nothing seemed so odd and yet so natural as to witness a
whole household—men, women, and children—seated before
their door, and looking quite sedate as they sent out the
quickly succeeding jets of reek, without attempting to break
WELLS OF TA-LING. 441

the dead silence that the social indulgence needed to produce
its harmonising effect.

Towards evening we were passing over high ground
again, and felt relieved when the excellent water drawn from
the wells of Ta-ling—a very large village or small town
situated in a most agreeable locality—had been swallowed
by the half-gallon. Some of the inns were good, and looked
inviting, but we had still some four or five miles of the day’s
forty-five to finish before we could rest ourselves. We,
therefore, reluctantly left them behind. At the door of one
of them stood three remarkably fine ponies—one, a chestnut,
was particularly neat and active looking.

We descended to the plain once more, about a mile from
the town, and came to the Ta-ling hé, a dull muddy river
running through a marshy melancholy waste, where the
scanty fields of grain on either side were highly banked up with
earth to keep out the water during the flood seasons. There
was nothing at all in the place to deserve attention; but in
the palmy days of the Mantchus, some two centuries ago, in
the neighbourhood of this river, and in that of the Liau hé,
which we were approaching day by day, there were more
than forty establishments or studs for breeding horses, then
the greatest riches of the Tartars, and for which a Mantchu
had more care than for himself.

In a somewhat rare and curious book* published in Paris,
in 1770, containing an eulogistic poem on the capital city of
Mantchuria and its neighbourhood, composed by the learned
Emperor Kienloong, printed in sixty-four different forms of
Chinese writing, and translated from the Mantchu language
by the father Amiot, his Majesty says, ‘the pleasant banks of
the Ta-ling hé, and the great country that it waters, are the
places most suitable for the location of studs. The mildness
of the climate, added to the good qualities of the water,

* Eloge de la Ville de Moukden et de ses environs; Poeme composé
par Kienlung. Traduit par Amiot. Paris, 1770.
442 MANTCHU HORSES.

renders the pasturage fattening and of a most agreeable
quality. In the beginning of the spring, the underground
sources of the river commence to rise and spread, and acce-
lerating the growth of the grass, covering it always with a
genial dew which keeps it tender. In the hottest time of
summer, there reigns in this region a perpetual salutary
freshness that banishes from it those annoying insects so
common in the low and damp districts.

‘Tt is here, in these delicious prairies, where can be multi-
plied to an infinite degree the superb races of the different
kinds of sorrel-coloured steeds, the graceful light bays, the
golden bays, and the deep brown shades, with the piebalds
and other mixtures. Is it then a matter of surprise that we:
should have horses without number, of all kinds and of all
qualities? If those which are for racing purposes have a
swiftness without comparison; if those which are for parade
have a step so majestic, an expression so noble and charac-
teristic; if those which are destined to draw our chariots and
to bear our burthens, or to perform our heaviest labours, are
most vigorous and indefatigable? No; we are not telling
an untruth when we aver that the Mantchu horses are, in
every respect, the first and best horses in the universe.
Assuredly the attention paid to preserve them from all
deteriorating influences; the multiplied cares taken to pro-
cure for them at all seasons good pasturage; and the rest
and the freedom we leave them to enjoy at certain times for
the reparation of their strength, or to refresh them after
their fatigues, ought to render them such.’

This rather highflown effusion was written in those days
when the Mantchus were formidable; when entire villages
were given up to the soldiers of Mantchuria, in which they
exercised their military evolutions with perfect freedom,
and always with the advantage of having good forage for
their horses—for the Mantchu army was almost, if not
entirely, composed of cavalry. Nowadays, however, the
 

NEW FRIENDS. 443

face of the country must have become altered very much,
and those agricultural, or rather pastoral, warriors have
either died out, or betaken themselves to some other distant
province, for we could never catch the slightest clue to any
of them or their haunts.

It was necessary for us to look out for a ford, as the river
and its banks looked suspiciously deep and soft; so we bent
our way a little southward where a small house, like a ferry
station, promised us something of the kind. The locality
was very lonely and bleak, and though in other places,
throughout the day’s journey, the population appeared to be
pretty well diffused, and somebody was always on the move,
here all seemed deserted. ,

Looking back towards the village, we were rather sur-
prised to find three horsemen coming rapidly behind us,
mounted on the ponies we had so much admired at the inn
door. When they saw that we had noticed them, one of
the three wheeled suddenly round and galloped off in the
opposite direction, leaving the two to overtake us, which
they certainly were not long in doing. I, being the hinder-
most of our little train, came first in contact with them, and
had but brief space allowed me to scrutinise their exteriors
before a conversation was attempted by the one who was the
best mounted, and on the good-looking chestnut too.

He was well—even stylishly—dressed in a long robe of
light-blue figured silk, spotlessly-white socks and faultlessly-
shaped shoes. This man had a peculiarly southern look
about him, quite uncommon on the eastern side of the Wall.
His head was carefully shaved, and his tail hung down
between the shoulders in a long glossy plait, much too fine
for such a rude district ; while his features were thoroughly
those of Canton, and covered by a thin translucent skin of a
yellow beeswaxy tinge, quite foreign to the North. There
was a very peculiar glance of cunning and deceit in the
ever-moving black eyes, as they darted over me and my
444 DOUBTFUL CURIOSITY.

horse, and settled at last on the saddle and saddle-bags ;
but his voice puzzled me altogether as he came close up and
brusquely addressed some question—it was so thin and
shrill, and so very distinct in its every tone, and yet so very
strange sounding that I could not comprehend a word of the
tongue or dialect in which he spoke.

His companion was a jolly-looking fellow with lots of dash
about him, though he was rather stout, and kept aloof from
us. He was not so well dressed as our guwasi friend, and
wore a blue turban twisted round the upper part of his
great swarthy bullet head, after the fashion of the Fuhkienese
—who to this day hide their badge of submission to the
Mantchu rule by concealing their shorn scalps and crinal
appendages with a covering of this description. He tried
to look indifferent to us, and yet I caught him several times
scanning minutely ourselves and cart. He of the gay coat
put a question to me which I could not make out—for the
accent was altogether mystifying, and the sounds nasal and
unpleasant in my ears.

I told him I did not understand his speech, though
I partly guessed he wished to know where we came from.
Still he repeated the question several times with a forward-
ness and pertinacity I did not like. At last he left me, and
passing the cart—into which he very impudently peered—
he rode up to M., who was leisurely riding on before, and
began the same obtrusive enquiry. M. understood him a
little, though his confidence in the man was far from being
great. Abruptly he asked ‘Where did we come from, and
where were we going to? What had we in the cart, and
how many dollars did we carry?’

Unconsciously I caught my hand unbuckling the retaining
strap of the right-hand saddle-bag, in which the dispeller of
six nestled securely, and already grasped the comfortable
butt of the weapon—‘ and what might I have in the bag he
saw me opening?’ M. was very cool and civil, and tried to
A BOLD STEP. 445

answer him as well as he could, though cautiously and
slowly, as if he had a difficulty in comprehending his mean-
ing—which, perhaps, he had.

‘ Had we any more men, and how many?’ he finally queried,
as he looked away up the road seemingly expecting some
more of us to make their appearance. Now the similarity in
sound between the words yin, man, and tien, days, perplexed
M., who luckily thought it was days he meant, and answered
twelve—as that was the time we had been on the road.

' The stranger’s face betrayed instant disappointment, and he
addressed Ma-foo—the groom —in a diminished air of
haughtiness, though yet in a somewhat rude manner. Seeing
he could elicit no satisfactory information from him—for the
crafty little man was evidently strongly suspicious of the
character and occupation of his interrogator, and parried his
questions very adroitly—he started off with his silent friend
towards the ferry-house near which we now were, shouting
out that the river was too deep and dangerous to ford, and
that there were no boats.

Curiously enough, about a dozen scampish-looking rascals
appeared all at once around the doorway. The inquisitive
gentlemen halted and dismounted among them, and began a
lively discussion concerning something of importance, which
evidently did not please them. There was no ferry-boat,
and nothing was left to us but either to stand the chances of
an encounter with this gang, or swamp, swim, or ford the
river as well as we could.

It did not require a second’s consideration to choose the
latter, and in a very few minutes we had plunged through
the deepest part, and were gaining shallow ground on the
opposite side.

The boldness of our resolve quite astonished the raga-
muffins we had left behind, for they stood looking after us a
long time, until the tall millet of the tilled ground hid us
from their gaze. Still we looked wistfully up and down
446 DECORATIVE ART.

every narrow lane, and behind the houses and fences of the
villages we came to, ready for any sudden emergency—for
the place was so suitable for an attack, and the whole busi-
ness wore such a dubious character, that we were constrained
to be on our guard, and to exhibit as much discretion and
self-command as possible.

The darkness that set in soon after did not reassure us,
and we toiled on across another small stream, and through a
murky chaos of broken ground and fields that set our means
of keeping on the path almost at defiance, momentarily
expecting some alarm, when, heartily tired, we found a large
inn under the lee of a long ridge of sandhills; and making
sure that it contained no vestige of our enterprising friends,
or anything on which we could ground a doubt, we sought
its shelter for the night. The courtyard was a very large
place, surrounded on three sides by the ordinary small single-
storied rooms appropriated by numerous travellers, with very
showy fronts, and dusty interiors strongly impregnated with
the villanous smell of the native spirit, samshu.

The yard was filled with some score teams of pack-
mules and ponies, feeding out of huge stone troughs, and
dozens of dusty men smoking or eating their evening meal,
seated on the ground out of doors; as well as with heavy and
light carts strewn and blocked up in every corner.

We, of course, tried to get the best unoccupied rooms in
the establishment, but officials and travelling merchants had
arrived before us, and our choice was limited to three vile
places into which fresh air had not been admitted for years.
Fixing on one of them, the walls of which showed tasteful
designs in China ink by some amateur, and verses of poetry
illustrating the beauties of little cottages built in rice swamps
under the leaves of willows and surrounded by bamboos,
we thrust open the windows, much to the dismay of the
attendants, who must have thought we were mad, and began
slaying all the lively spiders and scorpions found out of their
A QUIET NIGHT. 447

dens in the ledges and crevices. We soon had dinner, and
then, preparing for any unwelcome visit from without during
the night, laid ourselves out to sleep.

The thunder and lightning during many hours was quite
appalling, and kept us awake for a long time, but sleep came
at last. The weariness induced by our long seats in the
saddle sent us into a blissful oblivion, undisturbed by any
thieves or cut-throats who might have made the village of
To-lo-po-tenza their lurking-place.
448

CHAPTER XXIII.

EARLY HOURS — GRANITE HOUSES—~ CARRIERS CARTS — FEAR OF HIGH-
WAYMEN — MARSHY COUNTRY — SALT MANUFACTORIES AT TEN-SHA-HOR
—A FUNERAL PARTY—NORTH CHINA SONG-BIRDS — THEIR CAPTURE,
TREATMENT, AND QUALITIES — TRAINED FALCONS FOR BIRD-CATCHING —
THE PE-LING — THE WHA-Mi— A FIXTURE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

O matter however early in the morning we contrived to
get up, our fellow-travellers were sure to be away on
their journey long before us, and with so little sound of
preparation as scarcely to disturb our repose. This morning
the yard was quite untenanted when four o’clock found us
getting ready to depart, and rather ashamed at being the
last to leave, we were more so when six o'clock saw us only
moving through the gateway: this was partly owing to the
sulkiness of the carman, who was in a shocking bad temper
because he had prematurely insisted upon, but did not obtain,
the second half of the contract-hire agreed to be paid to him
on reaching our journey’s end, and partly to the rebellious
dispositions of the two mules, who behaved themselves so
badly when being harnessed and put in the traces,-that the
cross-grained driver was nearly worried out of his senses.
Not many miles after leaving this village with the unpro-
nounceably long name, we came to another one, that had been
erected with taste and a view to durability, as well as with a
strong leaning to the curious and fanciful — for every house
and garden wall was strongly built of cream-coloured granite,
in which the feldspar was nearly, if not altogether absent, and
the larger pieces of which, disposed to face the outer courses,
were covered with beautifully distinct arborescent markings
CARRIERS’ CARTS. 449

of black oxide of manganese delineated exactly like a fossil
plant.

I had the good fortune to pick up two or three specimens
lying in the road, and of course a rush of surprised villagers
was made towards me, as I dismounted to pack them in my
saddle-bags, to see whatever I was going to do with the
useless pieces of stone. Their observations to each other
were possibly laughable enough, and perhaps the conversion
of the petrous materials into medicine was not at all beyond
their imaginings.

A few miles farther on, we had some intricate piloting to
steer safely through the long single street of another village
—Shin-shan Shan—where a crowd of carriers’ carts laden
with large bales of goods, which one of the drivers told us
was yang pu, or ‘foreign cloth,’ were halted to refresh the
already tired horses on their way towards the Great Wall.

At this place, where the long range of mountains (our
constant and yet ever-varying companions since leaving
Tien-tsin) terminates by a very lofty needle-like scar of
greyish-blue rock, standing a little apart from the main
chain, the road divides into two branches. One circling away
to the northwards was the highway to the capital city of
Mantchuria; the other, bending a little to the south-east, led
to Newchwang, the new treaty port of the distant north, as
we believed and relied on as the place where we were again
to see Europeans, and rest ourselves before going farther on.
As luck would have it, our blundering carter selected the
wrong road of the two, and took us along that to Moukden
half a dozen miles before we thought of enquiring; and then
to gain a shorter way back to the proper track we floundered
about for nearly two hours among the fields and mazy little
lanes.

Since our adventure with the two mysterious strangers at
the Ta-ling hé the previous evening, Ma-foo had been rather
fussy and odd in his speech and behaviour, and when we

GG
450 HIGHWAYMEN.

were riding at a quickened pace on a very lonesome part of
the way indeed, he, half in dread, whispered to us to get our
arms ready quickly, as the country thereabouts was infested
by wicked robbers, who were mounted on the tallest and
fleetest horses, and were very bold. There was little getting
ready needed, as our revolvers were always at hand. My
companion released the very reliable cut-and-thrust Japanese
short sword from the rug it was wrapped in all day, and
disposed it in a most. convenient fashion in front of the cart.

The country was becoming so bare and miserable, and so
barren in interest, that a romantic tussle with a manageable
number of Chinese Turpins would have been rather a
desideratum than otherwise, and we almost began to long for
a sight of such formidable marauders; but our taste for
excitement was, fortunately, perhaps, not indulged by any
such meetings, and we had to move along drearily through a
long low marsh, as level as a bowling-green, with slimy pools
of brackish water tenanted by curlews and gulls, the spotted
red-shank, the night-heron, the bar-tailed godwit, the water
rail, and the funny little green dwarf bittern (Botaurus
minutus), and on seemingly endless acres of blackish bog —
quaggy and treacherous, often, for our ponies and the cart —
covered with heath, over which isolated droves of ponies
wandered, and the plover sent out its melancholy wail.

The hamlets were few and far between, and boasted of
nothing but mud walls and misery. Sometimes we were
enlivened by a few yards’ ride after a small hare, or took a
revolver pot-shot at odd collections of wild geese or ducks,
but without inflicting any serious bodily harm on them. The
few people we saw were very poor and awfully dirty, yet the
females clung to the extremity of fashion and limped about
on the small feet as if they were determined to brave even
poverty to maintain their deformed notion.

Since leaving the hills we found the humblest houses built
of mud, mixed with chopped straw to hold it together; and
MARSHY COUNTRY. 451

others, a degree better, were rigged up with the unbaked, or
rather sun-dried bricks one saw so frequently laid out where
they had been manufactured—just as the houses of Mesopo-
tamia are at the present day, and as they were in ancient
Babylonia. Occasionally we see a muddy being tempering
the clay and mixing it with chopped millet-straw—quite after
the manner of the aboriginal Syrian—before he moulded it into
the large flat bricks so easily built and cemented together.

The ground at last even began to lose its covering of
heath, wide stretches of land lay before us quite imprac-
ticable for man and beast; and bottomless quagmires, into
which we might at any moment have been plunged and lost,
were on either hand—so that we had long détours to make, and
great semicircles to describe, in following the right direction.

The vegetation disappeared altogether, and the brown
earth became encrusted with a thick efflorescence of salt.
Here the preparation of this useful condiment began, and
near the villages immense rectangular stacks, about twelve
or eighteen feet high, were reared in lines, consisting of a
thick covering of smoothly-plastered mud enclosing the
much-prized article of commerce. This might be, we calcu-
lated, about thirty miles from the waters of the gulf.

We were much annoyed at having made so little progress
before the midday breakfast-hour, and yet we had much to
be thankful for, as had the weather broken, and a heavy
shower of rain come down, we should have been worse off.
Never was a poorer collection of inns or houses anywhere,
for they could scarcely afford accommodation to the veriest
beggar. Often and over again we went out of our way to
reach a village where we might halt for two hours, but
each time without a chance of getting a house fit to put a
donkey in.

One place larger than the rest—Ten-sha-hor—with acres
of salt stacks ranged out like burial-mounds, gave us the
only opportunity, though a pitiable one. But there was a

«@@2
452 A FUNERAL PARTY.

funeral going on, and howls and lamentations, outrageous
and derisive enough for an Irish wake, bellowed out from a
house opposite the dirty hostel. Numbers of women and
children in white, with white bands round their heads and
artificial white flowers fastened on them, thronged outside
the door of the house of mourning, and shrill music not at
all unlike that from the Irish bagpipe, with the doleful half-
-dozen notes of the flute and tomming of the little drums,
sounded strangely so near the dead. The procession issued
from the house of mourning, and the poor lame women
limping painfully over the uneven ground proceeded to a
little altar in which a boy, smiling and playful, was lighting
some incense sticks to propitiate Foh. All the way they
sobbed and howled in the greatest tribulation, until reaching
the steps of the small edifice, they knelt down and knocked
heads several times against the bricks, then got up and
began to laugh and titter as if nothing had been the matter.

At first we felt inclined to respect their grief and sympa-
thise with their bereavement, but seeing that it was but the
semblance of sincerity and a mere fashion, we thought no
more about them. We might have remembered reading in
their records of how in the time of the Luh Chaou (.p. 552),
there were persons to assist to weep at funerals ; but finally
the bereaved came to the disgraceful practice of hiring cer-
tain people to weep for them. Something of the sort was
evidently going on here.

We breakfasted in a back kitchen foul and filthy, and
with an atmosphere made so heavy by the pungent sickly
smell of the native spirit, samshu, as to be barely respirable.
The wretched landlord was a dealer in all kinds of stomach-
ruining goods, and greatest of all in the fiery alcohol, that
he kept in vats carefully fastened against the wall, and sur-
rounded with the small pewter measures in which he served it.
We did not stay long here, but just sufficient time to enable
Ma-foo, the good Catholic, to imbibe—along with the driver
SONG-BIRDS. 453

—enough of the brain-bewildering stuff to set them both
maudlin and forgetful of everything save more liquor.

In the afternoon the roads became dreadful, and the
whole country low and wet. Where they were all but
impassable, some attempts were made to drain off a portion
of the water into wide ditches, which were bridged over by
felled trees, and paved by bundles of the all-subservient millet-
stalk. We crossed several small streams, and a pretty con-
siderable river, almost as wide as the Peiho, and apparently
subjected to the influence of the tides. There were no boats
on it, however, though the high wide-spanning wooden bridge,
constructed of strong beams of timber, along which we
passed, would have allowed moderately-tall junk-masts to go
underneath.

It was in vain that we tried to get the designations of these
hé’s; for the natives were so dull and stupid as not to be
able to tell us what names they bore, or even those of the
half-immerged villages, where poverty and neglect were only
too conspicuous.

Yet in these hovels the great fancy of the Northern
Chinese for song-birds prevailed ; and in the most degraded
den of mud, plastered up like a martin’s nest, where the
occupants, one would be inclined to say, could not find
accommodation or food enough for themselves to keep nature
together, the cage and the warbler would almost as certainly
be met with as the inevitable destitution and dirt. No other
people could be fonder of, more attentive to, or understand
better the habits and the treatment necessary for the pre-
servation in health of cage-birds, as well as the way to
domesticate them, so as to make them retain their un-sad-
dened song when caught wild. This is a pleasant trait to
observe, and the more so as kindness is the prevailing ingre-
dient in the work; and the little favourites always look as
happy and gay in their bondage as if they never had known
liberty. There is such a great variety of birds whose song is
454 BIRD-CATCHING.

fine and varied, that the Chinese have an abundance to choose
from, and always select what we should consider the best.

Canaries are unknown, and many of our birds are not to
be found, but there is a remarkable mixture of Himalayan,
tropical, and Japanese specimens which arrive when the cold
winter has passed away. These remain for a brief space,
until the heat of the plain becomes too intense for them, and
then they wing their flight towards the mountains and the
more temperate provinces, returning in the autumn, when the
fierce summer has passed, and before the very cold weather
sets in. These are the busy times for the bird-dealers; and
the markets are literally crowded with the baskets and cages
full of the captured victims, as well as with dozens of choice
specimens carried about for sale on perches.

Boys and men go off to the woods to pursue their brief
vocation, armed with long bamboo rods, fitting into each
other, and the ends smeared over with a kind of gum, more
tenacious than bird-lime. Taking post alongside the trunk
of a tree under the wide branches, they wait until they see
an unwary warbler perch itself fearlessly on a twig. No
sooner has it done so than it receives a gentle tap on the
shoulder, and, ere a minute has elapsed, it. is transferred to a
wide basket covered with cotton stuff.

But the most expert and artful bird-catchers are they who
employ the yellow-footed or peregrine faleon (Falco vespert-
inus), and the hobby (Falco subbuteo)—which was formerly
used to hunt small birds in our own country. These hawks
are hooded, and their wings are confined by the brail until
the very moment they are wanted. On the left wrist of the
hunter is strapped a neat reel filled with fine but strong
twine, one end of which is tied to one of the falcon’s legs.
Whenever the quick eye of the dealer sees a bird on the
ground the brail is removed, the hood slipped off, and the
bird’s head being turned in the direction of the prey, a jerk
of the arm sends him off, the reel spins round, and before the
TREATMENT OF BIRDS. 455

incautious feeder has time to move a wing it is prostrate, and
the hawk standing proudly above, holding it down to the:
ground with the extended claws of one foot, while the skillful
man runs towards the spot, reminding the victor by a gentle
tug of the string, as he approaches, that in his victory he is
to be merciful to the vanquished. Not so much as a feather
is damaged by these well-trained birds; indeed, the most
perfect ornithological specimens to be procured in the markets
are those caught by falcons.

Jt is astonishing the number of birds a boy with one hawk
will capture ina day. He has a lot of little bags, with a
square bit of wood in the bottom, into which he thrusts the
seizures as soon as he has made them; and at the end of his
day’s labour you may see him coming into the town sur-
rounded by these receptacles slung to his waistband.

When brought to the market, if to be kept or sold on a
perch, and made pets of, the terrified unfortunates are seized
in the gentle grasp of their owner, and plunged into a bucket
of cold water once or twice. This Rareyfying is successful ;
the bird, instead of being frightened to death by such an
apparently cruel ordeal, calms down rapidly, looks stupid for
a little bit, and then settles on a perch without any signs of
alarm or timidity. In a day or two it will recognise the call
of its favourite master; will have permission to fly away for
a short distance, and then return to the wrist or the spar on
being called, and do other little feats rather surprising for
the short time it has been in training.

All the cage-birds are, I think, caught in the fields and
woods by glue and hawk, for I never could discover if the
Chinese practised, or were acquainted with, the breeding and
rearing small birds in confinement.

Foremost of all the captive minstrels, for the loudness and
surprising melody pealed forth from its little throat, in re-
sounding,—almost uproarious, bursts of glee, is the North
China lark—the Pe-ling—the ‘ hundred-spirited bird’ (Mela-
456 THE PE-LING.

nocorypha Mongolica), undoubtedly the most industrious
vocalist, as it is the cheeriest of all Chinese birds. On it is
lavished the greatest amount of admiration and tender care;
and the poorest householder thinks himself well provided
when he can sit and listen to the inspiriting chaunt of his
own Pe-ling.

Right well and gratefully it repays the esteem manifested
towards it, and the watchful solicitude with which its wants
are all anticipated by its enraptured guardians; for surely
never did feathered minnesinger, pent within a tiny circular
apartment with a low roof, and surrounded by closely-set bars
of bamboo laths, warble such a pleasant ditty or carol such
ravishing concord. To see the little creature in a perpetual
state of motion, circling round, now on one side,—with his
yellowish-white breast barred by a black collar fully exposed
to view ; then on the other—showing his rusty-coloured back ;
upon the miniature circular platform raised for it in the middle
of the floor, or springing up with joy against the tassels of red
silk, charitably suspended from the roof of the cage to warn
the heedless musician of danger in his impassioned gestures
and dulcet flights, and then going down again, and round
and round; one can but say that the ‘ hundred-spirited’ bird
is worthy of the title, for its legs and wings appear never to
be tired; and to hear its everlasting lay launched out in
every street with undiminished vigour and harmony, from
sunrise until after sunset, in that limited space, the inclination
is strong to believe that the happy creature is still singing
over its nest in the fields, and has never been subjected to
the spirit-breaking sadness of such an unnatural round-house.

It is difficult to purchase a good Mongolian lark in any of
the towns—their proprietors sometimes refusing altogether
to sell their pets—and when it is a good imitator, and can be
bought, it will bring a large price. The market value of a
lark that will imitate the mewing of a cat nine times—and
the imitation is often so complete as to defy the criticism
THE WHA-MI. 457

of the most sensitive ear, is thirty dollars—over six pounds.
And there is, next in value, the brownish-yellow Crying
Thrush, with the white eyebrow,—the Wha-mi, or ‘ pictured
eyebrow’ (Garrulax Sinensis), one of the state prisoners to
be found at nearly every door, and a bird of some price
when in good voice. This thrush the Chinese are very fond
of, and its mellifluous notes, so full and free, like those of
our own song thrush, trilled con amore after the heat of the
hot summer day has passed, when it seems to exult in the
diminished temperature, possesses something like enchant-
ment for our celestial friends.

It is richest in sweet melody in the gloaming, its few notes
ringing out with startling beauty at that time, and its society
is then most courted. An aged Chinese friend of mine, who
had kept a wha-mi in perfect song for some years, used to be
visited towards sunset by a tottering old man, who carried
his pet thrush in its cage for a distance of some two miles,
catching for it grasshoppers and insects by the way, merely
for the sake of hearing its voice in competition with that of
the other bird.

No sooner were the two brought near each other in the
open air, than the first note from either of them excited the
most active musical tussle, which would continue for half an
hour or more in the centre of a crowd of admiring Chinese,
who would never be tired listening to their vocal exertions.
Other members of the thrush family are domesticated, such
as the Blue Rock Thrush (Petrocincla cyanus), the Pallid
Thrush (Turdus pallidus), and the Siberian Thrush (Turdus
Sibericus), all of which are numerous around Tien-tsin and
Peking;* but they all yield in estimation to the Crying
Thrush.

* T must not forget to include another beautiful Thrush—the first per-
fect specimen brought to England being found by me near Tien-tsin,
which has been described as a new variety by Mr. Swinhoe in the Ibis,
and named by him Orcetes gularis.
458 ° FAVOURITE WARBLERS.

The gaudy Golden Oriole (Oriolus Sinensis), with its bril-
liant orange or primrose-coloured body, fantastically barred
in various ways with streaks of the deepest black, is also a
candidate for favour; but it does not succeed to any great
extent; for it is only when at large, in the coolest time of the
day, and in the thickest woods, that its fine flutina-like aria
seizes on the willing ear in pleasant snatches, now and again;
differing but little from that of its European congener, which
the Italian agriculturist fancies to be the bearer of the
pleasing intelligence that the figs are ripe, by its chaunting
something resembling the words — ‘ Contandino é maturo lo
fico.’

It is indeed delightful to hear this bird’s song when the
eye is at the same time charmed by those exquisite and
singular little denizens of the trees, the Paradise Fly-catchers
(Muscipeta Paradisi)—delicate and lovely enough, assuredly,
for that supernal region, as they twirl and flutter about on
the branches, or dart off gaily in pursuit of insects. So
handsome is the little steel-blue head, adorned with an ever-
rising and falling crest, the grass-green mouth, the eyelids
and bill tinted like the bloom on the grape, the snow-white
body and surprisingly long tail, with each milky feather
trimmed by such a delicate border of black, that my eyes
were almost dazzled when I first saw these sylvan beauties
fluttering about, interspersed at odd times with the chocolate-
coloured variety (Muscipeta Ince/).

Other favourites are numerous; but of these the Gorget
Warbler, or Hoong-bwa, Red-throat (Calliope Lathamiz), and
the Blue-throated Warbler (Phenicura Suecica), are the
tamest, though their note is low and plaintive, like that of
the Robin Redbreast. They stand any amount of handling,
for I have seen their attendants wash them in weak tea,
when their plumage was soiled or the birds were sickly,
and wrap them up in a comfortable bandage without in-
jury; but I always liked the little green Pye-yur —
A FIXTURE. 459

‘White Eye’—(Zosterops japonica), with its pearly specta-
cles and humble twitter. So do the Chinese; for it is
such an affectionate and sociable little fairy, that in pairs
it will live a long time quite happily, but alone it soon pines
and dies.

At the end of one of our dullest day’s marches through a
most desponding region, seven-eighths of which must have been
mud and morass, we were not very exacting in our selection
of a quarter for the night, and fixed on the roadside caravan-
sary of Tu-kia-tai. The host and his numerous servants did
all in their power to make us snug for the night. A herd
of donkeys in a shed not far from our room seemed to be of
a different mind, for during the long hours of darkness they
kept up a truly heartrending concert of braying quite beyond
the powers of human endurance. It was with no small
delight that, about three o’clock, we hailed the earliest
streaks of dawn, and began to pack up once more, little
refreshed by the five or six hours’ rest. We were desirous
of reaching Newchwang by the evening, as we were only
about fifty miles from it.

As usual in all such cases, the cart was not movable until
nearly six. The carter muddles about as if he had not slept
for a fortnight, and Ma-foo is horribly redolent of decayed
samshu, while his brain must be quite addled by the large
doses he has swallowed before going to sleep, as he always
did, in his clothes—for he was barely conscious of what he
was about when he poured some scalding tea into the carter’s
shoe, and sent him limping and howling into a corner, where
he all but took leave of his senses.

No sooner had we emerged from the gate of the inn, and
got on the pathway, than the stupid fellow, who would do
nothing but sit on the shaft when the roads were bad, to save
his nearly worn-out shoes, allowed the mules to take the
muddiest part of the road. Before we could call or stop
them, the cart was buried over the axletree in the most
460 IN A SLOUGH.

adhesive compound imaginable, and the mules standing up
to the necks and hocks, unable to stir. All the tah, tahs,
and chur, churs, of the agitated Jehu were unavailing, except
when the shaft beast, at the first sound of his voice, made a
bound, sunk on its knees, and would have been suffocated
had I not rushed to the rescue, at the imminent risk of
losing my riding-boots — the only pair I had —and got its
head raised above the mess.

The weather promised well, and the sun had not yet

>

 

Fast in the mud.

become too warm for us; but here were all our hopes of a
good morning’s work shattered by the blundering and inat-
tention of this Chinese booby. We might as well have tried
to carry one of our ponies on our backs as to have moved
that cart an inch out of the slough ; so, after making our-
selves as disgustingly dirty as the brats who burrow for coin
in the Thames filth, we despatched Ma-foo back to the village
to obtain the assistance of the labourers, who were assembled
AN UPSET. 461,

in groups around the farm-houses, not yet having begun their
work in the fields.

Two or three came rather reluctantly, and were slow in
aiding us. Shovels were had recourse to to clear a way for
the long-projecting end of the axletree, and to make a some-
what firm track to more favourable ground. But this was
no trifling matter; and the Chinese were loath to enter the
mud after they had seen our driver make a spring towards
the middle of it and sink to the thighs, where, with a most
determined struggle, he had enough to do to release himself,
with the loss of his blue soft-soled shoes, left at the bottom.

After a long struggle, in which we had all to put our
hands and shoulders to work, we were just on the point of
making a determined effort for the emancipation of the
vehicle, when the leading mule, which had remained attached
by its traces to the axletree, and was standing to one side,
suddenly bolted across to the other, and before anyone had
time to guard against the etaanopie the unfortunate
driver, who had been tugging and grappling at the shafts,
was lying deeply in the mud with one of them on his
stomach, and looking as helpless and terrified as if in the
agonies of death. This accident, occasioned as it was by his
own mule tripping up his heels by the traces, caused a most
painful fit of laughter impossible for some minutes to
repress, which drove the object of it, when at last he was
dragged up, into a flaring rage, and to the utterance of all
kinds of strange expressions.

After an hour’s very hard work we got the cart removed
out of present difficulties, and on to a sound scrap of ground.
We offered our valuable assistants some money for the good
service they had done us, and as a recompense for the soiling
their clothes had undergone, but strange enough they would
take no reward from us except thanks. When they were
told that we were far-travelled strangers, and found us ready
to laugh and joke with them, they seemed to change their
462 OBLIGING PEASANTRY.

manner altogether, and from a cold unwillingness to come
near us at first, they were ready to do any service we might
have desired.

It was of no use pressing them to accept of the trifle—
take it they would not, though silver must have been rather
a rarity among them. So after warmly thanking them we
got on the move again, through awful sloughs and deep ruts,
apparently specially selected by the begrimed conductor in
the perversity of his disposition, or from an irremediable
stupidity natural to him, but characteristic of his country-
men in general, in preferring the sloughs and ruts of antiquity,
whether leading to interminable disaster or irremovable
obstacles. If only two roads presented themselves before
him, either from blunted sagacity or a stupid tenacity of
purpose, he was sure to take the wrong one. On he pro-
ceeded, sitting on the front part of the wagon, eternally
chucking to his team, and wagging his thin legs, which are
but scantily encased in dirty blue-cotton bags that serve the
purpose of, but can never be designated as trousers; or
drumming his thigh continually with the only hand left at
liberty, he jogged along as he best could, leaving a good
deal to the instinctive faculties of the quadrupeds in advance,
who, long trained to pursue the beaten path, maintained
the most rigid adherence to it.
463

CHAPTER XXIV.

PASTORAL COUNTRY — ‘ KOONG-SHI’— FARM-HOUSES — PROFITABLE EM-
PLOYMENT OF SEWAGE—IGNORANCE OF DAIRY PRODUCE — HUMBLE
DORMITORY — A YOUNG MANDARIN— BANKS OF THE LIAU-HO—BOAT
VOYAGE — ARRIVAL AT NEWCHWANG— AN UNFRIENDLY RECEPTION —
INHOSPITABLE LANDLORD.

ENDING a little northwards, the country commenced
raising itself from the marsh and mud, and the salt
efflorescence on the sun-baked crust of earth began to be suc-
ceeded by grass as the road became firmer and our progress
accelerated ; while the light-green foliage of the graceful willow
interposed itself between us and the sun at short intervals,
and here and there formed diminutive avenues of shade, as
refreshing to the sight as they were grateful to the feelings.
Farm-houses, from being isolated and scarce, began to
congregate in gradually increasing numbers on the most
favoured situations, and to exchange the millet-stalk and
poverty-stricken earthen structures for those of brick and
wood; and the fields put forth their improving aspects in
the same manner, showing how eagerly the inhabitants
seized on the slightest approach of amendment in the soil to
bring it under the sway of cultivation. The ditches were
cut with more skill; attempts had been made to raise the
general level, and where this had not succeeded, the land
was banked round with wide ridges to keep out the water ;
—in short, the desolate country was being rapidly redeemed
by the efforts of scrupulous industry.
The gardens displayed a little more vitality, and some of
them a fair amount of taste in the matter of flowers and
464 ‘ KOONG-SHI!’

vegetable beds, and every one had its two or three vines
neatly trellised over the little square bower that served for
their support, as well as a cool shady recess for the inmates
of the houses.

It was necessary to pass through several villages. The
accustomed amount of reckless curiosity was duly excited
by an individual who, discarding all self-gratification,
seemed determined that every human being within the reach
of his limbs or voice should participate in the unwonted
sight, as he gave warning of our approach. ‘Their
greeting and civility was of the passive kind,—limited to
absurd remarks on our costumes, beards, eyes, and saddlery,
and the absence of fails on us; and with vacant stares that
plainly told how little their minds were really engaged in
trying to understand anything about us: they looked, as
they thronged together, like so many young children, whose
eyes and mouths mechanically follow whatever is presented
to them for the first time, but whose intellects are not
yet able to appreciate the nature or functions of these
objects.

The only active demonstration of welcome that we received
was bestowed on us by a somewhat intelligent-looking old
man, who stood before his little gate with pipe and tobacco-
pouch in hand, and the end of his fan peeping over the
right shoulder. As soon as we came near, this venerable
gentleman brought his closed hands in contact before him,
and made a profound vertical sweep of the air with them;
following the salute with a kindly ‘ Koong-shi! Koong-shi!’
— Hail, hail!’ To which we replied by saying, ‘Ne how, ne
how-a’—equivalent to hoping he was well.

After many devious turns and wanderings over unknown
and almost trackless ground, and crossing another river
apparently of a good depth, and subject to the rise and fall
of the tide, we emerged for awhile from the grain-bearing
country. We now found ourselves traversing the richest
FARM-HOUSES. 465

meadow-land we, in the gladness of our hearts, thought
could possibly exist anywhere. It was quite different from
any other portion of the country we had travelled through.
Large tracts of land were enclosed, divided, and subdivided
by high earthen banks, on which were planted young willow
trees; and a deep ditch on each side of these drained off the
superfluous moisture. A second crop of fine grass was in
process of being mown, and the strong perfume of the sweet-
scented vernal grass mixed with it, and the wild lavender,
sometimes gave these rich meadows quite an English atmo-
sphere. The farm-houses bore a great resemblance, in many
respects, to those of middle and third-class agriculturists in
Britain. Dispensing with the intricacies and mysterious
disposition of passages and apartments found towards Tien-
tsin, they consisted only of a quadrangular courtyard. On
the upper side was the dwelling-house, with large open win-
dows on each side of the doorway, through which we could
see the female portion of the family at work, spinning cotton
or renovating the household apparel.

Mules and ponies were busy in the courtyard threshing
the wheat grown on fields separated from the grass land.
This was a very simple operation, and consisted merely in
dragging a heavy stone roller over the heads—for the stalks
had all been cut off to within a few inches of the heads—or
treading out the grain by the feet of oxen and mules on a
prepared space of ground, where lime appeared to be com-
bined with the earth or clay to form a compact level surface.
This method appeared as wasteful and slow as it was primi-
tive; and the winnowing was little better, for the short
stems of the straw having been removed, the wheat was
gathered on to another plastered space, and men were busy
with shovels throwing it up against the feeble wind that
moved across the country at that hot time.

Little groups, presided over by a mother or grandmother,
attended to the grinding of the millet or wheat for the

HH
466 EMPLOYMENT OF SEWAGE.

dinner, and carefully brushed it under the stone roller that
was made to revolve on a pivot at one end by the younger
branches of the family.

The crops were all stacked, and the stacks and haycocks
stood around after the fashion of our own, but they were
better made, I think, for more pains appeared to have been
taken to preserve them. Their conical tops had a roofing of
sun-baked mud to render them completely waterproof; while,
to prevent their being blown down by the severe gales that
visit this exposed part of the country, thick ropes were
passed through and over the stacks, to which heavy stones
were hung. Great square harrows with long iron teeth, and
curious sowing machines, seemingly but little used, lay in
corners, and the rude carts for farming purposes, and the
round-topped hearse-like vehicle for family excursions, were
ensconced in outhouses near where the spare beasts of
draught were tied, heads up, to posts before wooden or stone
troughs.

Some wagons had the sides and ends enclosed by closely-
woven screens of millet-stalk, and were employed in carting
the powdery manure from the places set apart for its prepa-
ration to the fields. We had every reason for seeking to
avoid these, or at least to get to windward of them; for if
the strong bouquet of the precious load did not repel us, the
cloud of fetid dust that covered all who might be anywhere
near, was quite unbearable.

To increase the fertility of the soil, the Northern Chinese
have only recourse, so far as we could observe, to animal
manure, which is gathered and scrupulously hoarded up
until winter sets in, and then prepared by admixture with
the ooze of ditches, the dust of streets, or the earth of plains.
After drying for a short period, it is pulverised into a fine
powder, which is easily spread over the fields by sieves, or
even by the hand. This is a less offensive mode than that
im vogue in the South, where the sordida rura is collected
MEADOW-LAND. 467

for months in huge earthenware pots, clustered around every
village, and which prove heart-sickening objects to every
European. Every such traveller gladly notes that the North
is, if not so economical in these details, at any rate less
offensive in its small open-air depdts. Nothing can be more
disagreeable to him than running against those human ferti-
lisers of the Flowery Land, who wander about, baskets over
backs, handling three-pronged forks, with which they gather
up the perfumed materials so essential to fructification.

Male and female labourers were busy in the fields mowing
or cutting the grass with short-bladed, almost straight sickles,
set at an acute angle in wooden handles; but we could not
see a scythe anywhere. At one place we saw some women
reaping wheat, with a small blade of metal strapped in front
of the fingers, and a pad of tough stuff laid in the palm of
the same hand, against which the blade was pressed to cut
the few stalks grasped each time.

The grassy perfume was so exhilarating, the morning
was so beautiful, though very warm, the country was
so delightful, and the water in the deep wells so cool
and delicious after that we had been drinking in the salt
marsh (especially when we drank it under the shelter of
those glorious old trees), that we were in raptures with
our morning’s ride, and many times thought of similar
scenes at home; but somehow or another those yellow
faces and long tails would spring up and destroy the
kindly illusion. Had it not been so reekingly hot, these
green meads would have been our halting-place for some
time, for we were really enchanted by such a homely and
congenial locality —the favourite resort of the skylark,
whose numbers and endless warblings filled the ear, while in
the clumps of willows various songsters were busy swelling
the grand melodies of nature. Such retreats were very
tempting when we were broiled and blistered by the sun; but
we had a long distance before us, midday was nigh, and

HH 2
468 NO MILK.

inns were so scarce that we scarcely knew when we might
have an opportunity of breakfasting.

We reached a sort of half lodging, half farm-house, at an
angle of one of the numerous fenced-in fields through which
we were confusedly trying to track the way, and we endea-
voured to make a halt of it; but the building, besides being
shockingly dirty, even for a Chinese house, was well crowded
by a lot of unclean wretches, who squatted on the benches near
the windows and looked at us in a rather repulsive fashion.
It had also the great disadvantage of providing nothing
better for our wearied beasts than hay; so we made up our
minds to go fifteen li ahead to a village where our disturbed
landlord told us there was a tien. Close by the house we
saw several fine but small cows, with calves following them,
and our desire to obtain a copious draught of milk became so
powerful that we were compelled to ask for it of this man,
who we guessed was their owner.

At first he did not understand us, then he wondered, then
laughed, but observing that we were serious he assented,
and said we might try any one of the herd. He at once
fetched what may have been the most docile; but neither he
nor any of his neighbours had ever heard of or seen such a
strange feat as milking a cow, and would not be taught how
to do it. We therefore dismounted, and, having procured a
basin, set to work in as business-like a manner as could be
expected from amateurs in dairy matters; but the brute,
though docile and quiet enough to handle elsewhere, seemed
mad when touched near the udder. She bellowed, kicked,
and jumped in a most outrageous manner. We then blind-
folded her and held up one of her forelegs, but after an
ineffectual struggle the proprietor objected to our using any
more restraint, and intimated that we could not have any
ngow-yur, as he termed milk.

We had no alternative but, parched and hungry as we
were, to course through the fragrant meadow-land, skirting
HUMBLE DORMITORY. 469

.

by tree-hid villages and willow hedge-row, until we came
to a larger aggregation of dwellings than usual, and of a
decidedly English type, with a good wide road flanked by a
high fence on each side. We soon discovered what was once
an inn, but the sign-post, with gasping fish and hoops, had
been removed from the roadside; and though the courtyard
contained one passenger cart, the long building in front was
occupied by a large array of strong-smelling half-naked men,
who tumbled about or slept on the kangs ranged on two sides
of the house, and who, by the implements lying near them, were
tillers of the soil resting during the heat of the day. From
these and the stacks of grain piled in the yard, we concluded
that this was a farmer’s dwelling; and a very civil man who
came out to meet us, and whom we supposed to be the land-
lord, confirmed our opinion, for he said he was not in the
habit of entertaining travellers, and feared we could not be
accommodated, as his house was full of workmen. We saw
no earthly reason why we should thrust ourselves in the
midst of such a crowd, and told him that we would rather
go in another portion of his establishment which we indicated.
It was his store and labourer’s sleeping-room, but he offered
no objections to our breakfasting in it. Our famished ponies —
were stabled and fed with all alacrity, and we were soon busily
engaged in clearing out a space in the large room for our
reception.

Amidst a most promiscuous collection of oddities — huge
mat-baskets, filled with millet and Indian corn, stuck in the
narrow strip of room left between brick winter-beds, on which
were spread the only: mats and clothes belonging to the
nightly occupants—narrow forms, boxes, sieves, rolls of
cane-matting, articles of saddlery, jars of bean oil, a few
warlike weapons, wheelbarrows, &c.—we broke our fast.
The place was crowded with great swarthy men, who
annoyed us very much by their spitting and smoking, until
we were, in self-defence, obliged to turn them away.
470 A YOUNG MANDARIN.

There was much, even in this humble dormitory, to re-
mind one of similar lodging-houses attached to farms at
home. At the head of every mat whereon some tired indi-
vidual stretched his limbs at night, hung the little bundle of
well-mended duds — the entire wardrobe of some unaspiring
slave—the neatly hung-up boots, so often cobbled; ‘the little
trinkets of other days, carefully hid away in minute niches
scooped out in the wall; the cracked bamboo flute, the
screeching old fiddle, or the three-stringed guitar, to while
away the dull evenings spent near the rays of the soft tallow-
candle, whose traces we can plainly discern on little wooden
blocks near the bed’s head; and there was a gigantic bamboo
skip-jack, the same in form almost, and identical in principle,
with those we were wont at school to manufacture out of the
breast-bone of a goose; with all kinds of rude and childish
contrivances for the elicitation of amusement aftet the day’s
work was over.

The passengers’ cart was got ready before ours, and a tall
young fellow with a very pale face, a light gauze dress, and
a conical straw hat surmounted by a white button, got inside
and was driven away. We soon followed, and passing for a
‘ mile or two through a green lane, luxuriously roofed in by
willows, we left the enclosed country behind as we came
upon a great open plain covered with high-standing and
almost ripe crops, breached in places by wide gaps of
meadow-land, in which the people were working in black
patches like so many ants. Threshing and other agricul-
tural operations were busily going on in the hamlets we
passed, and everybody looked busy, making the most of the
lovely weather.

Our servants had been again imbibing the cursed samshu ;
the carter was hopelessly imbecile, and Ma-foo had enough
to do to keep on his pony’s back. The paths became more
numerous, and crossed each other ; the carter had forgotten
all about the directions he picked up at the farm-house,
THE BANKS OF THE LIAU HO. 471

and wheeled abruptly into a road that we were certain could
not be the proper one. In this fix we rode back to the
young mandarin, whom we had passed notwithstanding his
start, and he very obligingly told us our way.

Soon, high mountains began to be shadowed out dimly far
away to the southward, in which direction we were tending ;
and we knew that these must be a part of the long range
beyond Newchwang. By-and-by we see white sails moving
swiftly among the trees and along the ground, like spectres,
to the right and to the left, near us and a long way off. This
part of the route was remarkably pretty, and so un-Chinese-
like that we seemed to have got into a new country at last.

In a short time, and quite suddenly, we gain the right
bank of that important river, the Liau hé, and find it as
busy with all kinds of large and small craft as the Peiho in
the spring season. The smaller junks of a light draught are
scudding swiftly northward, wind and tide in their favour ;
and those bound for the gulf are securely moored inshore,
waiting for the change in the current. The river is here of
a considerable width, and divides into two branches — one
running to the north-west, the San-fun river; and the other,
the principal, bending acutely to the southward, and, farther
on, to the north-east. As far as we could see, north and
south, its course is extremely tortuous; and it twists and
bends about in such a snake-like fashion over the land, that
white square sails can be seen in every direction ploughing
on in the middle of harvest fields, through dwarfish planta-
tions, round villages, up bright-green meadows, and down
again through reedy swamps, until one’s head is completely
turned watching the progress of boats seen but a few minutes
before bowling smartly up at the rate of ten miles an hour,
and now circling round and backwards and up and down, as
if condemned never to leave the spot.

The water is very tawny and very muddy. The banks
are undergoing a continual sweeping away and building up,
412 BOAT VOYAGE.

and suffering incessantly a greater amount of distortion and
deformity, from the impinging and the earthy burden of the
swift-running waters. Where the banks were being rapidly
undermined by the former, the trunks and branches of trees
were staked, or allowed to float a short distance above; and |
these broke the force of the stream, as well as caused a depo-
sition of the earthy matter suspended in the water. But
there appeared to be no remedy for the shelving deposits
always being made where the banks projected into the river.
The whole country on both sides looked rich and thriving as
a grain-growing locality, and the scene was not without a
good deal of beauty.

Newchwang was not a port, nor were there any Europeans
residing there; but at a port situated near the mouth of the
river, named Ying-tzse, our merchants had taken up their
quarters, so to this place we must go.

We made every effort to procure a boat to carry us down
—we embarking here, and sending the ponies and cart on by
road — but without avail. We must needs rest at New-
chwang for the night, and start for the new foreign settlement.
in the morning; and as that town is situated some two or
three miles beyond the opposite bank of the Liau hé, we hired
a large swing-shaped ferry-boat, impelled by huge wooden
oars, curved and widened like a scimetar, and managed by two
groaning fellows, that plied backwards and forwards for the
transportation of travellers and carriages, under the guidance
of a tall gaunt knock-kneed Chinaman (the knock-knees a
novelty) —strikingly bearing the outward semblance of a
Yankee skipper—in an enormous-brimmed straw hat, lashed
to his pockpitted face and jaws by a network of hempen
cord, who steered the slow-moving barge by a very unwieldy
oar-rudder.

After a deal of delay in bringing this cumbersome vessel
alongside the shallow bank, and after nearly knocking up the
two oarsmen, who jumped overboard and tugged it with
JUNK TRAFFIC. 473

might and main against the tide to where we were waiting,
we, with our white-buttoned friend, get on board, and with-
out any accident embark ponies, mules, and cart. The
young mandarin is loquacious enough, and readily enters
into conversation—though there is a certain reserve about
him that considerably detracts from his friendly bearing, and
would lead one to think he was suspicious of our character
and unobtrusive mission. After all the time we were together
—having to be pulled a long way down against the tide,
and then allowed to drift up to the landing-place—we could
elicit nothing from him that was worth remembering. He
was not to be put off his guard during this long half-hour;
and when we had gained the land again, and were beginning
our progress towards Newchwang, we parted as if we never
had met.

A little booth stood on the tracking-path, in which eatables
of various kinds were displayed for the inspection of the
sailors who ventured ashore. Here we were delighted to
regale ourselves with several basins of warm muddy water,
for which the stall-keeper charged us a rather large number
of cash, considering he had but a few yards to carry it from
the river.

For about two miles we kept following the contorted
course of the Hé, the banks of which were in many places
very lofty, and watching the little fleets of junks making
their way towards Moukden; some with a favourable puff of
wind gliding smoothly in mid-channel, others at the bends
and reaches tacking, and some, tired of wooing the inconstant
Zephyrus and circling in the giddy maze of the crooked
waterway, were being hauled along by long strings of
men.

When the Liau at length began to incline to the north,
we left it, and proceeded easterly for some five miles in as
fine a piece of country as any one need desire to see so far
northwards, and where closely-gathered farm-houses with
474 NEWCHWANG.

well-thatched roofs, and ample yards stocked with grain and
forage in abundance, testified to the thriving character of the
locality, and the well-dressed, hale-and-hearty looks of the
people we met on the road, spoke eloquently in favour of the
climate and the comforts spread around. ‘Trees grew every-
where, and their light foliage and tall trunks, flinging shade
and variety over the scene, afforded all that was necessary to
relieve the very flat country, and redeem from monotony the
almost wearying repetition of corn and millet crop, standing
with such rigid regularity on all sides.

At intervals the booming sound of firearms in the dis-
tance startled otherwise unmolested herons, cranes, and wild
ducks, from their feeding-places by the side of green-banked
pools of stagnant water.

It was after sunset when the large straggling town of
Newchwang was entered; and as we passed by what may
have been the remains of a mud and brick enclosing wall, as
well as some large respectable-looking houses, with numbers
of shops, profusely ornamented with painting and gilding-—
particularly the pawnbroking establishments—we felt glad;
for here, we thought, we should meet with a good reception,
as our merchants must be well known, and be in constant
intercourse with the inhabitants of a town such as this, for it
is not twenty miles from our new treaty port. This feeling
was the more powerful from the fact that we had been thir-
teen hours in the saddle, though we had only travelled
forty-five miles, and had met with but very ordinary
accommodation for the last two or three days.

So, as soon as we had gained the precincts of the, town,
Ma-foo was sent on before to secure quarters in the best
inn, and prepare to get us a good dinner while we at our
leisure threaded the principal streets, intending to have a
gratifying inspection of what we were led to infer was a
highly important town for trade—the Liverpool or London
of Mantchuria.
AN UNFRIENDLY RECEPTION. 475

We had scarcely, however, got through one or two pave-
mentless thoroughfares, before we were beset by as noisy,
tumultuous, and ill-conditioned a rabble as I had yet been
entangled in during my stay in the land, and which received
a rapid accession of numbers from every alley and dwelling
on the way. From a few dirty strapping-looking fellows,
who at first turned out and jeered at us when they were at
a safe distance, the crowd became a mob, and the compara-
tively mild taunts were quickly exchanged for very oppro-
brious epithets and indecent expressions, as these unfriendly
wretches clung closer and closer to our ponies’ heels. Amid
tumultuous howls and shouts, there was no difficulty in dis-
tinguishing words which by their import made us once more
unstrap our holsters, and look anxiously from time to time
at the handle of our friend-in-need. One, especially, sounded
in such a lively spirit-stirring strain, that it recalled the emo-
tions with which we first read of the deeds enacted during
the Reign of Terror, with its yells, & la lanterne! a la machine!
This was the word Sha or Shat, which being interpreted
means ‘cut their heads off;’ and it decidedly looked as if
such was the aim and determination of the base cretatt who
were so liberal with their threats; for they became bolder
and bolder as we flogged and spurred through them. We
had no option at last but to leave the streets and seek refuge
in the courtyard of a large hostelry that stood near, until
the arrival of Ma-foo.

The place was filthy and desolate. The yard, containing
troughs and mangers, was a perfect Augean stable; and as
we dismounted and entered the yawning hovel called the
inn, a stench met our noses sufficient, at any other crisis, to
have driven us back to the outer air again. The mingled
odours of that pungent sickly millet-spirit—samshu, rancid
bean-oil, garlic, filth and fustiness, assailed our collapsed
stomachs in a most uncomfortable, hunger-annihilating way
—yet face them and breathe them we must. The courtyard
476 ‘CUT THEIR HEADS OFF!’

was crammed with the riotous fww populi, mounted on
mangers, troughs, boxes, and carts, to carry out their mis-
chievous projects, and who, when we turned upon them to
order them away, boldly faced us, and did not move a jot.
This was the worst symptom we had yet observed, as at all
the other places where we chanced to be annoyed, whenever
we made a demonstration, or showed a resolute front, the
people gave way at once, and fled.

Inside the building, which was like all the others of this
class in having two immense stove bed-places running on
each side for nearly the whole length of the building, and
some small rooms at one end in which we saw a plentiful
supply of bows and arrows, we were not more fortunate, for
the door was at once the scene of a most uproarious crush
and struggle for admission. The paper panes of the windows,
and even the window-frames, were quickly smashed in, and
the more active of the scamps even mounted on the roof and
began pulling up the thatch in a most ruffianly fashion. The
landlord stood at first behind a kind of counter, saying
nothing during all this row, but eyeing his unfortunate
customers with a very malignant countenance that far from
favoured our anticipations of assistance from him. Though
he had. no lodgers and his house was empty, as he acknow-
ledged when we inquired, still he vowed he would not let us
remain under his fast-disappearing roof for love or money.
When we showed him our passports he shook his hand before
his face and averted his eyes, as much as to declare that he
cared nothing for them.

All persuasions having signally failed, we tried a bolder
course, and, sitting down on one of the beds, told our in-
hospitable host that we would remain there until the
morning, as it was his duty and business to afford accom-
modation and food to travellers. This only made things
worse, for he stepped back among the crowd and left the
vagabonds composing it to do as they liked. They—strong
A CATHOLIC CHINESE. 477

as officious, but not valiant —else we might have been over-
powered—soon brought their unclean bodies into very close
approximation to ours. There might quickly have been a
collision, had not our christianised Ma-foo edged his thin
carcase through the unruly mass, and stood there before us
‘ drunk as fifty pipers.’

Embarrassing and trying as was our plight at this moment,
and dangerous as was our position,—because we were at the

' = Ty,

 

The Mob at Newchwang.

mercy of a rude and hostile gang, the most nervous indi-
vidual who ever found himself in the presence of a multitude
of willing headsmen, could not have resisted the intensely
comical appearance of the intoxicated little man. All but
speechless; his face so distorted and queer that we thought
he had been attacked by partial paralysis which had drawn
one corner of his mouth up almost to an eye that remained
spasmodically closed, while the other one twinkled like a
478 A SERIOUS FIX.

flickering taper ; his legs kicked about with a St. Vitus’
uncertainty, and his right arm bent at an acute angle (the
fingers pointing upwards) might have been fixed in that
position. Seldom—very seldom indeed —has it been our
lot to behold a drunken Chinese, but this one exhibited so
ludicrous and melancholy a figure that, after our first burst
of merriment, I think we had no desire to see another
inebriated celestial.

Poor Ma-foo’s crossings and devoutness, and reported long
apprenticeship to the congenial forms and absolutions of a
religion that did not cost him much in the way of conscience,
could scarcely tend to give us a very vivid impression of the
character of a Chinese convert, or of the trust that one might
place in him merely because he was a Roman Catholic. At
the time of all others, when his services as an interpreter
and intermediator were most required, and we relied most
upon them, this was his condition.

With the greatest amount of patience, and an infinite
number of hiccups and breakdowns, he contrived to make us
understand that no house in the town would receive us for
any amount of money. Their friendship or their love we cer-
tainly never depended upon for aid, but we always flattered
ourselves that money would have proved a more potent
pick-lock to their mercenary hearts. Not so, however;
and here we were on the verge of a scufile, everybody against
us, and in momentary expectation of some outrageous
provocation that would entail a serious retaliation and
damaging ulterior consequences to a good number of those
concerned.

It was nearly ten o’clock, and the twilight was vanishing,
while the interior of the inn looked more foreboding; so,
leaving the tipsy groom and carter to fight their own way
out, we got on our ponies with some little trouble, and were
soon in the street, where, as good luck would have it, a boy
was found who was bribed with a florin to put us on the
A TIMELY RETREAT. 479

road to Ying-tsze, some thirty miles off; and with all kinds of
bitter defiances and some few stones hurled after us, at that
late hour, tired, hungry, baked, and thirsty, we, with no
reluctance, left a place where a few minutes’ longer stay
might have seen bloodshed, and began a dark and dreary
journey towards the sea.
480

CHAPTER XXYV.

A WELCOME HALT — APPROACH TO THE NEW BRITISH SETTLEMENT AT
YING-TSZE— MR. MEADOWS, THE ENGLISH. CONSUL —- ENJOYMENT OF
ENGLISH COMFORTS — SHOCK OF AN EARTHQUAKE — SENTIMENTS OF
A COMPRADOR RESPECTING THE UNPROFITABLENESS OF BRITISH TRA-
VELLERS — TRADE AT THE NEW PORT—CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE
OF THIS PORTION OF CHINA — NATIVE SHIPS — NEW PASSPORTS.

HE road was shockingly bad, and our leg and spirit-worn
ponies floundered about in the holes in a very jeopard-
ising style, until some time near one o’clock in the morning
we came to a roadside halting-house, and knocking up the
inmates got them to give the animals some hay, while we lay
down in our travelling costume on a dry bit of ground
outside to rest until daylight broke, when we might finish
so much of our enterprise and be again among countrymen.
We were so thoroughly beaten by fatigue, that I much
doubt if even the threats and fierce hullaballoos of the
Newchwang rabble would have readily roused us. We
obtained at least three hours’ sleep before we were disturbed
by the villagers getting ready to go to their fields, the
clattering of ponies’ hoofs, and the teeth-tingling screed of the
plough-cradle along the dusty way.

‘Merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks’ applies as truly to
the Chinese tiller of the soil as tothe more scientific furrow-
maker under the Western heavens; for the lark and the
ploughman must have left their beds nearly together that
morning, and were both hastening to their chosen scene of

industry—the one in cloud-land, the other in the parched-up
glebe or fallow field.
HURRIED REPAST. 481

We hurled ourselves rapidly along a tolerably good and
wide highway, with, on each side, a well-cultivated country,
but as the sun got higher and higher the heat became very
intense and stupefying, and in our famished state we felt it
more than we had done for some days. Not a puff of air
passed over the land, but the heated atmosphere flickered in
tremulous undulations near the ground, and the crows, drop-
ping languidly on the most open places they could find,
turned their breasts seaward, and, expanding their wings,
waited to catch the slightest intimation of the gulf breeze.

About eight o’clock we entered a small grocer’s shop, and
without very much ceremony walked into a back apartment,
told the terrified owner that we were hungry, and wanted
something to eat; and sitting down on a bench, tarried until
he had made us some tea and furnished us with about a
dozen cakes, very palatable indeed to such ravenous mortals.
We were not a long time in soothing the fears of the small
dealer, who did not forget to charge us comfortably for the
passover.

Gulfwards, the country became more and more sterile—
though the beautiful range of distant hills parallel to our
course redeemed it a good deal—and unpromising enough;
yet we passed on ata lively pace where we could, for the road
was broken up into a number of narrow paths with earthen
banks and ditches, in passing over one of which our shaft
mule got fast, and was nearly strangled by the collar. After
catching a glimpse of some junk-sails on the right, which told
us of our proximity to the Liau hd, and to our front a patch
of bristling junk-masts projected from the face of the country
like the quills of irascible poreupine—with the tall tapering
masts and heavy spars of an English gunboat and some
European trading vessels, we are satisfied that our new port
is before us. We therefore leave the slow toiling cart to its
fate, and hurry on to ascertain what refuge may be there
in store for us,

II
482 APPROACH TO YING-TSZE.

We are soon on an open plain nearly denuded of crops—
the black muddy ground evenly powdered with a hoary
layer of salt and lying very low, especially where it is covered
with pools of water. Slush and mud everywhere,—a congenial
home for myriads of crustaceans, who dart about and rush
for safety to countless perforations where they may hide
themselves. The river is neared; and its extravagant wind-
ings, bends, and doubles, are really perplexing. Almost as
wide as the Thames near Gravesend, and like it in many
respects, it flows through a wretched tract of land lower in
level than the Essex marshes, the inhabited side almost a
waste of shallow pools and black saline earth, parched and
submerged by turns during the summer, and frozen into a
stony solidity during the rigours of winter.

The opposite shore is covered only by long dense thickets
of reeds, which grow in wild luxuriance in the dangerous
mud, and so great a circle does the Liau here make round
a large extent of the land, that if the traveller did not know
beforehand he would certainly pronounce it to be an island,
for there are the steadily moving sails of junks completely
surrounding it, and looking as if ever condemned to revolve
—satellite-like—round this unattractive centre. The Thames
as seen from Shooter’s Hill, or the Forth from Stirling Castle,
could not present anything nearly so flexuous as this.

The first huts we came to were of mud, and of the poorest
description; while their occupants were squalid in the
extreme. In the foul black slush of a wide ditch, which
had been but recently deserted by the tide, a squabbling
crowd of naked children of both sexes are immersed, who are
as actively engaged in the capture of some unfortunate
decapodous animals left behind, as if their existence depended
on them. This ditch margins a plot of aguish-looking semi-
aqueous ground on the river’s bank, only partially reclaimed
from the tide; with six platforms, and as many gaping em-
brasures commanding the approach from the sea. We learned
THE BRITISH CONSUL. 433

with something akin to horror and pity, that this unpleasant
spot has been fixed upon as the site for the new British
settlement, and it is here that a very unpromising Shanghai
is to be founded on as barren and deadly a soil as could be
picked out in any other quarter of the globe. It is im-
possible to look at it without commiserating those who have
to build and reside upon that foundation, even though the
buildings be raised, drained, paved, and patched after a
design as perfect as only British enterprise can afford or
execute.

Yet, as we draw nearer the town, we are impressed with the
idea that this is the most favourable and judicious selection
that could have been made in a place where the general level
seems to be below that of the water; for besides its being at
that proper and not inconvenient distance above Ying-tsze,
which will admit of its extension—should that ever happen
—seawards, and its more complete isolation from the dis-
agreeables that invest and sicken Chinese towns, it stands on
a wide reach of the river where there is space and depth
enough to contain a fleet of such European vessels as are
employed in the coasting trade.

A few yards farther, and at the gate of a rather com-
fortable new temple, we see some white faces—a gladdening
sight after our long ride of twelve days—and are told that
this is the temporary abode of Mr. Meadows, the English.
Consul. We enter the courtyard and are introduced to the
notice of that gentleman, who rather astonished us by saying
that he knew of our being at Newchwang the previous
evening—word to that effect having been transmitted to him
by the authorities there, though we had never seen or heard
of a single mandarin in that town, else we would have
strongly appealed against the treatment to which we had
been subjected.

The Consul seemed surprised when we told him our
adventure, and, with a business determination, wrote off at

112
484 ENGLISH COMFORTS.

once a strong remonstrance to the presiding functionary of
that town for his neglect of common courtesy to strangers,
and his infraction of the articles of the treaty of 1860. Ifa
large display of revolvers, rifles, and guns, ready to hand,
around Mr. Meadows’s room and bed-head, could be taken as
any criterion of his faith in the peaceful character of the
Chinese in this region, it was decidedly less than our own ;
and this was not increased when he told us how, a day or
two before, his assistant was just rescued from assassination
by some of the townsfolk for attempting to save a woman
from ill-treatment.

One of his messengers conducted us into the town in
which we had so much to expect; though on the way to our
friend’s quarters we saw little, save a long narrow street,
paved with stone flags after the manner of Southern seaport
towns; shops lining each side of this street of a very inferior
style; great stacks of circular matting, containing beans and
various kinds of pulse, in many courtyards ; bean-crushing
mills hard at work expressing the rank oil that so annoyed
our sense of smell in every house, and which seems to be
quite an important article of trade here; stalls lining this
street, principally occupied by quack doctors, who mustered
largely in stag’s horns, bear’s paws, foetal animals, snake
skins and live snakes, or, when dead, preserved in tar.

This was all that could be seen of our treaty-port ; and
the first and subsequent impressions were decidedly against
it as a part of the world to make a livelihood or a fortune
in, such as our Hong Kong and Shanghai merchants would
seek. There is nothing about the trade or the situation of
the place to commend it to speculators, and we shall be glad
to learn if it ever pays a modest interest on any moneys that
may be invested in its commerce.

Ere long we were at home in the society of countrymen,
and received a welcome and hospitality such as amply made
amends for the rough existence we had led since leaving
AN EARTHQUAKE. 485

Tien-tsin ; and joyful it was to share in the good things
which civilisation contrives to send to this very distant nook.
A bath was an inexpressible luxury after the dusty days and
fusty nights in the various inns; and who can express the
grateful feelings that seized us when swallowing deeply of
Bass’s Pale Ale, the only true nectar, wherever it is found?

Just at the moment we sat down to dinner, a strange sen-
sation was experienced, that for the time nearly deprived me
of breath, and completely took away all my self-possession.
A tremulous vibration rattled for about a minute through
the room, shaking us and everything in it as if we had been
in a railway carriage when, at a moderate speed, it was being
shunted suddenly from one line of rails to another. So con-
fusing was the shock, and so unsophisticated were we in these
sensations, that neither of us could tell in what direction it
came or went. It was over so quickly that the opportunity
of ascertaining anything exact about it was lost. From the
undisturbed manner in which the Chinese took it, these sub-
terranean perturbations cannot be of very rare occurrence on
this side of the gulf; and in all probability the Japanese
Sacred Mountain—the volcano Fusi-yama —has something
to do with them and their production.

Our arrival overland from the Peking side of the gulf
created quite a furore, not only among those of the natives
who saw us enter the town, but particularly among that
strange class of beings who have made a transition step
towards Western civilisation and Western ideas — the genus
Southern comprador — the real bargain-driver and business-
transactor in the European hongs. Some of these men are a
study in themselves; and I have never met with one who did
not either instruct or amuse me. The object of our under-
going so much risk and fatigue was astutely canvassed ; for
the Chinese have no idea of what can possess a man beyond
trade, or the prospect of making dollars, when they see him
riding through their country jaded and dusty, stopping
456 IDEAS OF TRAVEL.

frequently to dismount and anxiously examine every herb,
flower, leaf, and stone he finds about, and carefully gathering
and putting them away; or ascending almost inaccessible
heights, to chip off a fragment of rock, which is diligently
scanned, and then transferred to a secure receptacle. Travel
with them is synonymous with trade, and trade is the realisa-
tion and accumulating of money, which is the only real pass-
port to aggrandisement in this land after all. Utilitarian
in the most rigorous acceptation of the term, they are unable
to understand why men should expose themselves to the
weather, and undergo all kinds of unnecessary exertion and
fatigue, with the risks and chances of a wandering life, for
the mere satisfying of an extravagant curiosity, which their
old-fashioned materialism no doubt attributes to some erratic
tendency in the minds of the wanderers, something akin to
harmless insanity or highly-developed eccentricity.

The Chinaman rarely, if ever, leaves his home and the ‘ shrine
of his household gods’ to explore other countries, or even to
journey into an adjoining province, unless his cupidity has
been strongly roused by the prospect of acquiring wealth.
When that has been attained in abundance sufficient for the
maintenance of himself and family, he settles down quietly
to spend the remainder of his life near the tombs of his
fathers. Such is essentially the nature or the custom of the
land population; and doubtless it exists to as great an extent
among those who pass their years on the water, in trading
along the coast, and up the rivers from one town to another.

This being the case, it was not to be wondered at that M.’s
old and shrewd friends in tails and long skirts, should marvel
at an English merchant neglecting business and riding
for days and days together through a country where he
could not traffic, and could scarcely even speak the language.
No one could blame his old familiar comprador when he took
his protégé aside, and gravely lectured him on his apparently
objectless trip all the way from Shanghai to this lonely place,
TRADE OF YING-TSZE. 487

and the light in which his fellows viewed those rambles, in
something like the following oration : —

‘ What for you so muchee walkee walkee? You Shanghai
have got largee housey. More better you stop Shanghai.
No ’casion you so trub (trouble) walkee walkee every
country. Chinaman no custom walkee walkee.’

Ying-tsze, at the time of our visit, was not a very enviable
place to pitch one’s tent in. The half-dozen merchants, or
their starless representatives, who sweltered and swore out
the summer in close airless dens called dwelling-houses,
hired at a remorseless rent from fleecing owners, had nothing
in life to enliven them beyond the expanse of landscape
running out seawards: where a few conical tumuli, a narrow
edging of melancholy sedges, a boundless vista of yellow
water, and a few dreary ships of too great burden to cross the
bar at the mouth of the river, stood high above the low shore,
and gave a dismal picture of this penal settlement. There
was scarcely any trade, and the little that was transacted at
uncertain periods scarcely deserved the name. There was
nothing to export, for the only native production — pulse —
was not allowed by treaty to be carried in English ships;
and the limited importation of cottons and opium, when
disposed of, could hardly pay the expenses of storage, in con-
sequence of the predominance of that ignoble institution here,
as at every other trading port in the land, the—‘ squeeze.’

‘No can do that pigeon (business); that man he wanchee
(wants) make too muchee squeezy,’ was the almost constantly
iterated complaint of some comprador trying hard to dispose
of his employer’s goods to some intermediate dealer, who
nefariously wished to line his own pocket at somebody’s
expense.

But there was much to worry and alarm these pilgrims of
commerce in the great want of fresh water, which had to be
carried in. boats from a long way up the river; so that they
were entirely at the mercy of those uncivil villagers towards
488 BOLD PEOPLE.

Newchwang, who might at any moment forbid the passage of
the water-carriers ; in their banishment for an indefinite
time from all civilisation and society, and the non-receipt of
papers or letters for months together; and among the last,
but not the least of the worries, in the killing swarms of flies
ever buzzing and crowding within doors.

Then there was the prospective danger of massacre ever
before them, for the roystering sailors who infested the banks
of the river were not slow to express their displeasure at
the presence of the British traders and those sea-worthy
ships which damaged their freightage and diminished their
numbers; and there were cliques of ruffians existing in the
town going by the names of sword and lance-racks, consisting
of fellows who would not hesitate to stand as bullies for any
Chinaman who felt himself aggrieved, and had money enough
to pay for the murder of those who had offended him, if so
be they were weak enough as to be easily overcome in
an unwary manner.

The hard-visaged people one met in the streets were not
so civil or so mindful of the presence of strangers as those
we had been accustomed to see on the opposite side of the
gulf; for whereas, at Peking or Tien-tsin, a Chinese who met
you in a narrow way would do his utmost to make room for
you passing him, here he would make a point of putting you
to as much inconvenience as he could, without showing the
slightest deference for your presence. Brush against him,
or unknowingly give him a push, and ten to one he would
return it, while his eyes and angry countenance gleamed
upon you and said as plainly as need be: —

‘You must not think

That we are made of stuff so flat and dull,

That we can let our beard be shook with danger,
And think it pastime.’

So that in reality there was but little safety in venturing out
alone for a ramble, and nobody could tell when some one of
WHITE-BAIT. 489

their little number might not be sacrificed ; for human life
could have but small value in a place where you might see
a countryman carrying a covered basket, and if you re-
moved the cloth to see what it contained, half a dozen heads
with hacked necks and smeared with blood would meet
your gaze, as the bearer told you that they were lately the
property of robbers, and he was bringing them in to claim
some reward. If you were so bold as to roam through the
long single street, you could find little to divert your atten-
tion for even an hour. The fish-stalls might merit a passing
glance if you cared about ichthyology. At times they
contribute some curious specimens, and among some good
table varieties you could distinguish the tiny Lupea alba (or
something so closely allied to it that neither a close inspection
nor a pretty sharp taste could establish a difference )-—the
white-bait of Western countries selling for almost nothing,
and a most delicious little fish (Leucosoma sinensis), slender
as an eel and clear as gelatine, in great abundance; with
large piles of shell-fish, principally in a brownish bivalve
shell covered with angular lines (Circe castrensis).

You might dwell on the outskirts of the large crowd
always assembled before the open-air theatre, where the
actors appear never to have got more than half-way through
some drama of a hundred acts—each act requiring a month
to finish; and where the jingling orchestra seem to have been
engaged by the lifetime to play each his own composition;
or you might ascend the look-out station not far from this
show, and strain your sight a few miles further over the
wearying gulf, or walk to the other end of the town and
scrutinise, until your eyes were painful, the gaudily-painted
and gilded temple dedicated to the Goddess of Mercy, or
some other saint, in an elaborate style of architecture, which
is made to serve as a place of worship and an archway for
the many passengers who enter and leave the town.

None of the by-lanes you would mind about exploring,
490 NATIVE SHIPS.

for Europeans who have penetrated a short way through
the squalor and stench will have already initiated you into
their mysteries, and given you a few of their new names,
which are more expressive than delicate. The river may be
the only attraction, and for a few minutes it is interesting;
for there are moored in rows, four and five abreast, junks
from nearly every port in China, whose forms, though based
on the same principles of naval architecture, are as diversified
as the places they sail from. A tutored eye would permit
its owner no hesitation in guessing correctly, by their lines,
and sails, and rig, their distant homes; for each owner
prides himself on its style, though this may be as stupid
and defective as the reckless beings who navigate them.

Shanghai has its immense ship, with square, acutely-sloping
bows, and long verandah-like stern, a massive tall mast
amidships, and a diminutive one fore and aft, a great eye on
each side of the bows, and a number of the same on each
quarter. Ningpo shows an unwieldy lugger, clumsy as a
whale to look at, with but one mast in the middle, and a
meagre spar at the bows. Chefoo sends a craft all concave
and convex lines, smart as a Chinaman’s dress shoe, and with
three sails to drive it across from the Shantung promontory ;
while Tien-tsin marshals a fair crowd of two-masted arks,
less bedaubed with paint, and more working-like than any of
the others.

The groups of mariners on the highly-concaved decks are
not without some claim. on curiosity, but the insufferable
effluvia springing up in dense volumes from the vile garbage
on the crumbling bank, will effectually deprive the traveller
of any romantic prying; and, longing for some other scene, he
will seek temporary shelter, but little edified by the ramble.
One thing he may have noticed, and that is the prevalence of
the word FuH, which means, as an intelligent comprador tells
us, ‘plenty son, plenty dollar, and number two mandarin
(or middle rank),’ and is here substituted for the SHav
‘ FUH.’ 491

(longevity) of Tien-tsin and Pekin; written as it is in all
kinds of fanciful ways, but more frequently as two birds
pecking each other.

    
      

   
   

7 52

a8,

5

K
AY

We could never understand what delight this people could
take in throwing the saltatorial propensities of the great
green grasshopper (Phasgonura viridissima) in abeyance by
confining it in a tiny cage, where it night and day emits the
most heart-breaking stridulous scraping possible. In the
courtyard, around which the rooms we occupied were ranged,
a number of these petulant males nearly drove me mad by
their never-ending questions and replies, trios and quartets,
throughout the whole night; the agonising bites of the
mosquitos seemed as nothing to this hideous rasping. Every
house, every shop-door, and every courtyard, had its full
complement of these insects, and the din made by them
was really intolerable. Added to this, was the nocturnal
screeching of a music-ridden wight of a petty dealer, who
made up for the dullness of trade by a traffic in the most
discordant squeaking ever tickled out of the three-stringed
native fiddle. My attempts to sleep therefore were profitless.

So after a day or two of Ying-tsze, it afforded us no mean
pleasure to receive fresh passports from Mr. Meadows, enabling
492 NEW PASSPORTS.

us to begin anew our wanderings in the direction of Moukden.
With a liberality of mind and spirit worthy of the author of
‘The Chinese and their Rebellions,’ these documents were
made not only useful to the Mantchu capital, but might have
carried us through the whole of Mantchuria and Eastern
Mongolia, had time and opportunity allowed us such an inter-
esting peregrination. Through -his kind offices, and the
strong complaints he forwarded to the magistrates of New-
chwang, assurances were sent to us that a timely notice of our
approach to every town and city on the route would be des-
patched, if we only named the day we purposed starting.
This was assuring. Having taken into consideration the
nature of the roads, and the trouble we had already expe-~
rienced with our carter, we discharged him. We trusted to
a pack-pony to carry all our necessaries to the metropolis
and back, taking as few things as we possibly could, and
avoiding all attempts at display.
493

CHAPTER XXVI.

OUR NEW ATTENDANTS — PRECAUTIONS — INDISPOSITION —- NEWCHWANG
AGAIN — OUR CONDUCTORS —‘ TEA IS NOT TEA, AND RICE IS NOT RICE’
— A ‘SOVEREIGN’ REMEDY — THE VILLAGE SCHOOL-ROOM — SHU SHAN
— THE MOUNTAINS—A DISTANT VIEW OF LIAU YANG-— ORCHARDS
— HARVEST-TIME — DISAGREEABLE SPECTATORS — THE CITY OF LIAU
YANG IN THE EARLY MORNING — TRADESMEN AND MECHANICS — NORTH-
ERN AND SOUTHERN PAGODAS— THE TAITSE HO — THE LIAU — HIGH-
WAYS —THE PEOPLE.

HOUGH informed from a very good source that, a rebel-
lion was on foot but a little way beyond the city for
which we were preparing to start, and though warned that
there might be danger in trusting ourselves near it, we
could not afford to lose an opportunity then within the reach of
so very few travellers; and, danger or no danger, we braced
our minds for the undertaking as resolutely as we could,
resolved not to return without seeing the capital of an exten-
sive region—the metropolis so much vaunted by the dilet-
tante Emperor, whose ancestors had founded it, and whose
principal literary merit rests on the eulogy he composed for
the purpose of exhibiting his scholarship, and bringing this
remote home of his fathers into notice.

According to preconcerted arrangement, when we were
ready to begin our travel one sultry morning, a remarkably
fine-looking young man, becomingly attired in a clean white
cotton suit and an over-waistcoat of blue silk, with the
official hat and red-silk plume, waited upon us to show us
the road, and give notice of our presence to the mandarins
when we neared the towns. Though well mounted, he kept
an easy pace behind, and left us to push on as hard as we
494 NEWCHWANG AGAIN.

might, always certain of overtaking our party by near cuts,
which his familiarity with the country enabled him to do.

Besides this man, and Ma-foo—whom despite his inebriety
we could not get on without—another native of the seaport
town was engaged for the expedition by a comprador, as a
person who thoroughly knew the road, and had several times
been in the large city. He was willing to lead our lightly-
equipped pack-pony there and back, as well as provide for
his own conveyance on the top of a tough old galloway that
he rode with his heels instead of his toes in the stirrups, out
of the comparatively small fee he had required for his hire.
M. and myself were rather indisposed at starting, and we did
not improve during the day. Prudence would have dictated
our remaining until quite well; but time was becoming
short, and the future movements connected with a return to
Tien-tsin were yet somewhat obscure and uncertain.

Having made a start from shores rendered friendly by
British hospitality, we made a good forenoon’s work, though
our sickness was so great that we had to stop for some time
at a roadside hotel to procure a short sleep. In the after-
noon Newchwang was entered, the scene of our late tanta-
lising and dangerous reception. There our dandy follower
disappeared, I suppose to give intimation of our presence,
for before a crowd had time to gather, two or three ragged
old men rushed down a street, flourishing sticks and bellow-
ing loudly enough to keep back the suspicious characters,
who would not have hesitated long in making themselves as
disagreeable to us as they had done before. There was a
better chance for seeing more of the town than on that occa-
sion, because we had to pass right through it, and in broad
daylight; but there was nothing to give it any claim to
attention. The number of ‘antiquated streets we traversed,
though wide, dirty, and dusty, could exhibit only one
tolerable house for every half-dozen in ruins, or nearly so;
and the majority of the little shops contained nothing but
OUR CONDUCTORS. 495

coarse native cotton stuffs, and wares manufactured in China.
Pawnshops were numerous enough, and they formed by far
the best class of building in the place.

We crossed what must have been a wide tributary of the
Liau hé at no distant period, by a seven-arch bridge of wood
and stone, and observed another spanning the nearly dry bed
of this river a short way off. From the manner in which the
town is built on both sides of this defunct water-way, there is
no difficulty in concluding that its present almost lifeless state
arises from the shoaling of its highway, for there was scarcely
water enough in mid-channel to float a gig. The same causes
which were, and are now in operation, in raising the land
gulfwards, and elevating the beds of northern rivers, had
converted what was at one time an important town into a
straggling, languid mass of decaying shops and houses,
tenanted by idle-looking people.

The road was excessively heavy to the northward of
Newchwang, and we had abundant reason to congratulate
ourselves on the good hit we had made in leaving the cart
behind and resorting to pack transport; otherwise we should
not certainly have accomplished the forty-two miles we did
that day.

Not farther than two miles had we got from Newchwang,
when our party was joined by another attendant—a bare-
headed elderly man, but meanly dressed, riding a good bay
pony, whose forelock was twisted into two upright horns by
red tape, and its mane and tail plaited and knotted up ina
fashion peculiar to this part of the country. The two
emissaries kept a good deal aloof from each other and spoke
little, if at all, the whole time I saw them; but as they
never put up with us when we halted, they may have frater-
nised when the weight of our presence was removed from
them.

An old house with the hoop and fish signpost was very
thankfully hailed before darkness set in, for I really felt so
496 ‘TEA IS NOT TEA, AND RICE IS NOT RICE.’

unwell and unfit for riding, that nothing but the most urgent
determination to reach Moukden could have prevented my
returning to the foreign settlement. Our usual excessive
appetites failed us, and the most tempting of viands would have
stood untouched before us, as we lay down on the hard kang
to sleep that evening. Yet we thought that an effort must
be made towards recovery, and that we must assist nature to
reassume her sway by some means or other. We had no
medicines, but we had a popular tradition, the essence of
which, we thought, would be as effectual as, and far less
unpleasant than, any unpalatable stuff compounded in rhu-
barb-smelling shops.

Some venerated philosopher or. profound classical manipu-
lator—it may have been the Emperor Kien-loong himself—
had a favourite child lying ill—dying. In vain were all
remedies prescribed and administered: in vain were all sorts
of tempting and nutritious dainties coaxingly offered. The
boy would not eat. Nothing would he manifest the
slightest inclination for. All hope had nearly fled. The
grieving parent suddenly bethought him of something that
would excite a momentary desire, or perhaps a favourable
issue to the case. It was Tra. A thimble-sized cup of the most
fragrant infusion was immediately brought to the sick boy’s
bed. He pitifully averted his eyes and shook his head. The
last remedy had failed: there was no chance now.

Yes! there was another. The most carefully selected
grains of the choicest rice were tenderly boiled until they
were like granulated snowflakes, and with loving hands
presented to him. Loathingly the child turned his head
away. ‘Ah!’ mournfully sighed the desponding parent as
he saw these last sovereign remedies fail, ‘ Tza pu-sa tza;
fan pu-sa fan ’—Tea is not tea; Rice is not rice.

We ordered tea, but it had little of the bouquet or any-
thing else of that plant’s good qualities to recommend it;
while Ma-foo superintended the boiling of rice, which cer-
A HAPPY SENSATION. 497.

tainly came nearer our expectations; and conquering our
apathy with all our might, we took a little of both.

Our situation was not so desperate as that of the youth’s,
for these staple commodities still retained their virtues and
their enticingness, and contributed not a little, perhaps, to
make us sleep soundly. At any rate we got up in the
morning very early, and much better, to find that there had
been a regular rain-storm, which had flooded all the roads—
but that we did not mind—and that Ma-foo had prepared us
a good breakfast of tea, rice, and eggs.

Our line of country was a difficult one, for the low-lying
roads were nothing but canals, where carts could never go:
so our guides put us into byepaths through the crops—paths
made by some earlier travellers who had made lanes through
the heart of the sturdy millet-fields. There was not much to
cheer us, but luckily the day was beautifully cool, and felt
home-like in temperature—the first time we had experienced
such a happy sensation in the Central Empire. The further
we advanced northerly the more marked this became.

When twenty miles had been put behind us a rest was
ordered, and preparations for a midday repast began. The
crowds were quite as great, and their uncontrollable curiosity
quite as, if not more, lively as at the places along the gulf.
One of the windows of our room looked into a small court-
yard belonging to a village school, where we could plainly
see the old dominie hard at work teaching a number of boys
to handle the pen—or rather the brush. There was little dif-
ference between these studious youngsters and similar anxious
little chaps in our agricultural villages. Here were pale little
faces and anxious black eyes, lips covered with ink—left there
when they were trying to screw fine points on their pencils—
tiny fingers no better, and many a daub on the sleeves and
cuffs of the long robe. The furtive glances thrown at us from
the window were numerous, but often checked by a mild
rebuke from the garrulous old master, who tried to be as

K K
498 THE VILLAGE SCHOOL-ROOM.

indifferent to our presence as if he had seen us all his life-
time. Occasionally we caught a sight of him slyly looking
over his glasses—such gigantic things they were—and peep-
ing at us, but he slipped out of sight as soon as detected, and
began to lecture some elder boys who were rhyming away at
a lesson in the middle of the room.

 

The Village School.

When we got away again, no escort was visible, nor did
we afterwards see either of the two men who had convoyed
us thus far; but a ragged, ill-to-do fellow, who lay in a field
watching a pony grazing, Jumped up as we drew near, and
VIEW OF LIAU-YANG. 499

catching the roaming animal, mounted it, and cantered over
tous. He introduced himself by a loud laugh, and then, in
the most loquacious manner, commenced to tell his history,
concluding with the news that he had been sent twenty miles
to conduct us to Liau-yang —a large town. This man was
not only talkative but useful, and stopped in every village

y= ha Sy

AES
San
SDAIN

SES F
Who Ss
‘ eS TSR VAN

 

View of Liau-yang.

to procure us water to drink. But after sixteen or seventeen
miles, he too vanished most mysteriously, and left us to
ferret out our road as well as we could.

In the afternoon we were quite close to the foot of the

KK 2
500 ORCHARDS.

high range of mountains, which, beginning at the gulf, runs

in a direction from south to north, intersecting the little

peninsula of Liautung, and extending as far as the palisade

which separates the Corea from Mantchuria. They were

jagged and lofty, and the lower peaks were rendered more
gloomy in their greyish nakedness by scattered pines clinging

here and there on their summits. _

The An-shan river was forded, and an old-fashioned
tumble-down sort of town—Shu-shan— with nothing better
than a gaily-painted temple to look at, and streets belly deep
in mud and water to plunge through, was passed, and then
the narrow roads began to ascend and descend over an
irregular country. About two miles beyond the last town, a
very lofty hill of the same name rises up like a skittle-pin,
with a little house on the top. From this a pretty view
is obtained of the surrounding locality, and a far prospect of
the green crop-covered plain westwards, with distant hills—
the rough mountains before noticed, to the eastward; and
towering, like an old-fashioned pepper-box, the pagoda of
Liau-yang stands to the north in a perfect den of trees and
verdure, where the higher country smooths down into a fine
open landscape.

On the banks of the Sa-hé—another tributary of the
great Liau—a good orchard of pear, apple, and walnut-
trees was rigorously guarded by an old man, who politely
warned us that we were not to trespass within the limits of
the little boundary ditch, for fear of damaging the apple-
trees, many of whose branches were so heavily laden with fruit
that they were propped up by poles. The gardens here, too,
were nicely laid out, and not a few of them were tenanted by
sly-looking jetty-eyed young Hebes, with good-humoured
nut-brown faces, and their gummed and plaited hair encircled
by a garland of well-assorted flowers. They were not at all
bashful; and, finding themselves safe behind the fences and
palings, did not manifest any dislike to our presence amongst
HARVEST-TIME. 501

them. Many had natural feet, and knew how to use them in
climbing over obstacles to have a look and a laugh.

The fields of grain were rapidly ripening, and the care of
the proprietors was extended to the erection of mat and pole
structures, some feet above the general level, in which men
were housed, whose duty seemed to be to keep a sharp look-
out for thieves, and, assisted by exceedingly European-like
scarecrows, to frighten away feathered marauders, now
hovering about in clouds. Almost every field of any size
had a little temple placed in it to propitiate the favour, as
we supposed, of some god or goddess in the completion of an
abundant harvest.

True to our resolve of not dwelling in any large town for
the night, we stopped at an inn near Liau-yang, agreeing to
pass through that town by the early dawn and before the
citizens had time to get notice of ourapproach. Our experi-
ment of travelling through such populous places in British
costume, our very small number, and without anyone to offer
us advice or protection in case of need, made us all the more
wary and disposed to incur as little risk as possible; for it
was difficult to guess whether our visits would be viewed in
a hostile or friendly light, and the example of Newchwang
rather tended to shake our confidence in the behaviour of
the people towards two solitary strangers, who bore with
them no imperial mandate to ensure respect. Besides, the
city gates were closed, for it was long after sunset. Even had
they been opened on our demand, the infrequency of such
an occurrence would most certainly have attracted an
undesirable amount of attention.

Our quarters were not good, and we were so besieged by
a gaping crowd, that, summoning the host, we threatened to
leave at once, unless he cleared out his premises, and per-
mitted us to retain our room in peace. Poor man, he did
all he could in the way of expostulating and reasoning, but
to no purpose. Nearly all the mob listened and remained
502 DISAGREEABLE SPECTATORS.

where we were, and we fed, washed, wrote, and conversed
before them—the subjects of many a strangely-ludicrous
remark. Their society was, to say the least of it, un-
pleasant. The night was hot, and perspiring Chinese are no
treat to the olfactories at any time; but when they come
from their meals, additionally perfumed with onions, garlic
and tobacco, they are offensive in the extreme.

Every act of ours was noted and commented on, and
nowhere could we go that we were not followed by an inqui-
sitive mass of busybodies. When we lay down to rest, the
paper frames of the window immediately above our heads
~ were simultaneously perforated by countless fingers, as if a
cloud of grape-shot had been poured into them.

Five o’clock in the morning is generally, in other countries,
a very early hour to find a large city fully awake and stir-
ring ; in China it is an advanced hour, for, get up when we
might after day-dawn, everybody was at work, all looking as
if they had been so for hours. In the suburb we found a
great crowd awaiting our arrival, and, as we went on, this
swelled to gigantic dimensions. Where we expected to see
only a few people moving about, we were surrounded by a
countless sea of heads. Entering the city of Liau-yang by
the western gateway, we found ourselves in one of the prin-
cipal streets, and at liberty only to glance for a few minutes
at the interior as we passed through.

One great disadvantage we laboured under, was in having
no itinerary or guide-book to refer to for historical or de-
scriptive information regarding the towns and the districts
we were wandering through; and in a city like this we felt
that we should have lost much of the interest which must have
attached to our brief visit, had we been in possession of any
such aid. We could: only glean from various sources that,
during the reign of the Chow dynasty — some hundreds of
years before the Christian era—the dominions of the Coreans
extended as far as this city of the second order; that in the
THE CITY OF LIAU-YANG. 503

time of the Tang dynasty, when China was the most enlight-
ened country on the face of the earth, it was called ‘ The
City of the Coreans in Liautung;’ and that during the rule
of the great monarch, Tai-tsong, of the same dynasty, the
people of Sin-lo, being attacked by the half-savage Coreans,
implored his assistance and protection, and he, marching to
invade the Corean territory, got as far as Liau-yang, when
he died ; but his son finished the expedition by subjugating
the enemy.

In the native geography of this province, published some
two hundred years ago, it is noted that, as the city is of
great importance, there is always maintained in it a good
garrison. Of this we saw no signs, and even the guard-room
at the gate was without a single individual who might be
supposed capable of bearing arms. The wall was in decay,
and in one place the greater part of the rampart had disap-
peared, portions of the parapet had crumbled down, and
deep rents and fissures disfigured the face of this ancient
fortification. In its best days, it could not have been more
than thirty feet high, and must certainly have been less sub-
stantial than any other wall I have seen girding Chinese
towns.

We had scarcely got within it, when two red-topped mes-
sengers, mounted on ponies which had been in waiting close
to the gate, and our ragged friend of yesterday, sprung out
from some corner, and saluted us with a series of grins and
shouts not at all in consonance with our peaceful imtentions.
They fell into our train, and in less than a minute there was a
procession behind us of everybody within hail. As we rode
rapidly through the town, we were satisfied that Liau-
yang was the most business-like place we had seen since we
first began our journey. The'streets were very wide, and
flanked by large shops for selling all kinds of native wares.
Every place looked as busy at that early hour as if it had
been midday. There was an air, if not of wealth, at least
504 EARLY MORNING.

of active trade quite gratifying, but at the same time sur-
prising at sucha time in the morning. Wheelbarrows of goods
were being shoved along by panting labourers; the spa-
cious tea and eating-houses were crowded by those oily, lazy-
looking occupants, who seem always to be eating, drinking,
and smoking; fat semi-nude shopmen sat at their doors or
behind their counters, as brisk as if they had not been, or
did not require to go, to bed; or noisily bargained with
wide-awake customers, so intent on making the most of their
speech that they scarcely noticed us; while, in the workshops,
the joiner was sawing and planing after his own fashion,
finishing off excellent furniture, beautifully varnished or
polished, or measuring and fixing up the massive planks of
timber which Chinese undertakers believe to be necessary
for the protection of their dead.

The blacksmiths, with unwashed faces, pelted away lustily
at the molten iron, which fizzed and threw out ruddy sparks
against leathern aprons, wooden walls, or the legs of passers-
by. The barbers scraped, plaited, and steeped the stubbly
heads of their early-rising patrons, or twirled their gigantic
vibrating tweezers as a signal of their whereabouts.

The flour-sifter was heard with the pulsating beat of his
rocking sieve, sifting the fine from the coarse flour. The
weaver, after an obsolete fashion, could be seen assiduously,
but with painful slowness, throwing the shuttle from hand to
hand through his weft; and perhaps next door to -him the
shrill twanging strum of the cotton cleaner’s bow, would fall
‘smartly on the ear. Cooks puffed and blew over cakes,
dumplings, and stews, and potages of nondescript quality ;
and hawkers of vegetables, bread, or nutritious compounds,
bawled out the names of their commodities in quite a musical
cadence. The samshu shops, too, drove a little trade by
selling their perniciously strong spirits to dissipated wretches,
who begin the natural day by an unnatural stimulus. These
shops have an interior not at all unlike that of an apothe-.
INTERNAL RESOURCES. 505

cary’s, with jars all round and great labels on them, and
numbers of little square leaden measures placed in order on
shelves. Strange to remark, on the street face of their
counters they have painted in their most elaborate style the
character ‘ Shau’—longevity — which our teetotallers might
think as inappropriately placed there as on the coffins exhi-
bited for sale at the undertaker’s.

There were many large houses by the way, with wide
courtyards well stocked with merchandise; but we had little
opportunity of examining these, for the street had by this
time become so densely crowded by people who gathered to
see us pass, that our conductor, who understood our anti-
pathy to mix much in these mobs, suddenly wheeled up
another street—-a bye one—where nobody was waiting, and
so disappointed the expectant multitudes.

We were not long in getting beyond the region of shops
and traffic, and into the quieter parts of the town where gar-
dens abounded. Here, as within the walls of nearly all the
northern cities of China, as it used to be in the old cities of
Assyria, and as it is in many Eastern walled towns at the
present day, there were large spaces of ground at each angle
of the quadrilateral enceinte laid out as kitchen gardens or
orchards, and nooks channeled out into ditches and pits for
the reception of rain water—at Peking there is even pasture
land within the enclosure—this being the only provision, I
suppose, made to supply the wants of the people when closely
besieged by an enemy. ‘These gardens were perfect models
of neatness, and their proprietors were busily displaying
their skill and care in those horticultural pursuits for which
they are so famous.

From a house not far off the road we were being led
through, and which had a temporary roof of matting raised
over it, like the roof of a temple, came the clanging of cym-
bals, gongs, and tom-toms, sounding the crankiest funereal
music ever listened to, and celebrating the noisy obsequies
506 PAGODAS.

of some defunct townsman in an everlasting allegretto move-
ment, having almost as much pretension to be called music
as the clank and jar of a fire-engine over a rough pavement.

The majestic pagoda we had noticed yesterday as we
approached the city, was now within three or four hundred
yards of us, and as we had freed ourselves almost entirely
from the crush of spectators by the sudden détour our guide
had made, there were a few minutes left to admire and

 

Pagoda of Liau-Yang.

sketch it. From where we saw it, its proportions seemed
very perfect, and to it the town owed all it possessed in the
way of novelty; for reared toa height of eighty or ninety
feet above the plain roofs of the single-storied houses, and
the low garden walls, it looked noble and imposing only by
contrast, and carried novelty with it in its strangely-fantas-
tical shape and adornments.

If any feature is more unique and characteristic than
THEIR FEATURES. 507

another in a Chinese picture, as painted by Europeans, it is
the pagoda of Southern China, which is ever in the fore
or background, and is deemed the only fitting accompani-
ment to the flat features, long robes, and plaited locks of the
groups of celestials introduced to give life to the landscape,
and to add variety to the odd-fashioned boats, fir-clad hills,
or rice-covered plains ; so that a drawing intended to repre-
sent Chinese scenery, Chinese industry, customs, costumes,
or national eccentricity, would lack one of its best orna-
ments did the draughtsman omit to introduce one of these
structures.

When the traveller arrives in the land, and begins to look
about for these architectural vagaries of his new friends, he
finds himself as familiar with their lineaments as he is with
the figure of his parish steeple. The little octagonal houses,
piled one upon another from the ground high up in the air
—some of them elevated enough for an eagle’s nest—until
they form a sort of Cleopatra’s needle, with long projecting
eaves over every tiny chamber hung round with bells, to be
climbed only by some Jack of the Bean-stalk, are scarcely a
wonder to him; but when he comes to know more of the
people, and finds them in ideas, fashions, and prejudices, so
unlike every other nation now existing, and nearly realising
what he has read of the old Egyptians, Assyrians, and other
nations passed away, the pagoda is invested with a certain
degree of interest which is inseparable from everything
really Chinese.

But the northern pagoda is as different from that of the
south, as are the two peoples from each other. At Tungchow,
near Peking, I beheld the first example; to the western side
of that capital I discerned two more, and again near the Liau-
hé river on our journey, another had been remarked, built on
a high hill; this of Liau-yang was the best by far. The
form of a pepper-box will give a tolerable idea of its shape;
but all the equidistant curved eaves of the Canton pagoda have
508 THE TAITSE HO.

in this been compressed into one-half the space they there
occupy, thus leaving the lower half of the eight-sided structure
bare and blank,—with the exception of a gothic-shaped blind
window, and the upper half closely garnished with bristling
ridges, from each corner of which faintly-sounding bells were
suspended; while the whole was surmounted by a black convex
metal roof, with a long barbed spike rising from it, having
lines of wire or rope passing from the very apex to the body
of the edifice.

Turning to the eastward angle of the walls—here in a good
state of preservation, though the parapet was very narrow
and irregular, we came to a rather narrow and low arch-
way, which our guide told us was named the ‘Gate of the
Coreans.’ It was that by which the Coreans were allowed to
enter the city at fixed periods of the year. ;

We left Liau-yang by this gate, and all at once came in sight
of a nicely-wooded plain, with rugged hills in the distance, and
a wide river—the Taitse HO—winding silently towards us.
The early morning sun gave all the charm and freshness to
the scene that it was possible to impart, and the dewy mist
rolling upwards from the low ground lent an air of coolness
and freshness quite unknown at that time of the year nearer
the gulf.

We were obliged to ride some little way along the river’s
bank in order to reach the ferry, and in doing this we met
several families out for an airing before the sun became too
warm. The women were well-dressed, with their hair done up
with flowers, in the double smoothing-iron handle shape; and
their movements were not disordered by the cramped feet,
though they might have been more pleasing had they not worn
such thick-soled shoes. The children rolled and tumbled in
great glee, or gathered wild flowers at the foot of a very old
high earthen embankment running parallel with the river for
nearly half a mile.

Crossing a small divergent stream, we came upon a great
ITS SHIPPING. 509

number of boats of very light burthen, lashed together and
moored to the bank. The largest of these could not be
capable of carrying more than two or three tons, and doubt-
less they were well adapted for transporting goods up and
down such a tortuous watercourse as the Liau-hé. Nearly
all of them were laden with beans and pease, which appeared
to be the sole articles of export everywhere in this district,
lying in a loose state in the bottom of the skiffs and ready to be
transferred to the heavier coasting junks at Ying-tsze. Many
of the crews lived in temporary mat dwellings on shore, and
were intently engaged in preparing their breakfasts when we
surprised them. Beyond a doubt they were a turbulent lot
of burly fellows.

There was quite a crowd waiting for the ferry-boat, which
was slowly emptying itself of a large cargo on the opposite bank.

Pedestrians who had been a long time on the road, and
were armed with spears, reclined on the grassy bank;
mounted men dismounted, and taking their packs off their
saddles, spread them out and squatted down on them. There
was a blind, venerable-looking, old man led by a boy, who
was describing us to him in the best way he could; and there
were passenger: cabs, bullock wagons, wheelbarrows, and all
sorts of conveyances, heaped together to be carried across.
There, too, stood two lanky saffron-complexioned scouts sent
to note our arrival, and see us fairly on board beyond the
jurisdiction of the Liau-yang magistrates.

The way which these fellows sprung up in all sorts of odd
corners and out-of-the-way places—the unceremonious manner
in which they attached themselves, barnacle-like, to our per-
sons without speaking a word or changing countenance in the
slightest degree, and vanishing again at uncertain places
without being noticed, was something marvellous. Assuredly
the solicitude of the local authorities on our behalf made us
feel rather constrained and annoyed sometimes, and I fear we
did not so fully appreciate their kind motives as we ought to
510 A BUSY FERRY.

have done. We were courteously allowed to embark about
the beginning of the crush for the boat, and got good places
to stand on while we held our ponies quietly by the head.
From the close proximity of the Taitse H6 to the town of
Liau-yang, it must afford a valuable means of carrying on a
brisk trade between that place, all the other towns on the
Liau-hé and its tributary streams, and those beyond the
Gulf of Pechili. Undoubtedly to this advantageous circum-

 

Ferry by Liau-yang.

stance Liau-yang owes its existence as an important grain
emporium; for a Chinese city without a canal or river
transport, is hke a limb in which the principal artery has
been tied —it quickly withers and dies.

Tts width could not have been more than 120 or 140 yards,
and its greatest depth 8 or 10 feet—quite sufficient, certainly,
for the fleets of lighters employed. Its velocity may be about
four or five miles an hour, as it flows from east to west
THE LIAU. 51I

through a muddy strip of land, with a high bank here and
there, but generally with low sides, which it often overflows
and denudes entirely of vegetation.

From its size, it might be inferred that this was one of the
largest tributaries of the Liau; and we find in an old native
geography of this province, that one branch of this river is
described as rising beyond the frontier on the north-west, in a
distant region; and another, having its source to the eastward,
is formed by the different streams which flow to the north-
west of Chang-pe-shan, the classical mountain of Mantchuria.
This on its way receives other minor rivers, until it separates
into two branches that travel onwards until they rejoin and
form one which bears the Chinese name of Coo-Liau-hd,
signifying the ‘ great river whose course is very rapid.’ This
passes the town of Hai-cheng-hien, where it forms a junction
with the one here—the Taitse H6, which in other days used to
bear the Mantchu name of Tiger river—it is then called the
Santcha-hé, or river of three branches. A little lower it is
designated the Liau—in Tartar it used to be named the
Sira-Muren river—and passes to the sea.

It was now only 120 li, or about 50 miles, to Moukden,
and we were not, therefore, much surprised to find ourselves
passing along a fine wide road, with grand old trees on each
side, and with a somewhat lively concourse of passengers on
foot or on horseback, going to and from the river; for here is
the character of these highways written by an emperor more
than a century ago: ‘The roads which traverse it (Moukden),’ .
says Kienlung, ‘are straight, spacious, even, and well dis-
tributed; the pathways which border them are commodious,
useful, and agreeable.’

Perhaps they may have been allowed to remain without
much repair since that time, for we could see nothing of
footpaths, and in the hollows ruts were heavy and deep, and
anything but even. ‘Travellers’ carts found some difficulty
in getting through them; and produce wagons, piled up with
512 HIGHWAYS.

sacks of grain, were very laboriously pulled along by their
teams of twelve or sixteen animals, notwithstanding the
sonorous wo’s, turr’s, and ta’s, and the startling detonations
from the gigantic whips plied by the brawny arms of the
drivers at almost every stride.

If the Chinese are ready to take advantage of water as a
medium of communication and traffic, and show some skill
in their manner of doing so, on land they signally fail; and
though possessing the necessary materials for the formation
and repair of the important roads which lead from one large
town to another, in an abundance of stone of excellent
quality found in the immediate vicinity, yet they never avail
themselves of the opportunity, but leave the rain and wind
to gradually fill up the breakages caused by the narrow-
rimmed wheels. What achange macademised roads would
effect in such a richly agricultural country !

Little towns and villages were frequent, and though they
were inferior to those we had ‘seen on the other side of the
Wall, still they were busily thronged by people at work in
gardens or farm-yards, who were sure to be ungraciously
surprised by some busybody announcing the approach of two
strangers. The men differed but little from those westward,
but all the women were taller, more robust than the average
of Chinese females, and walked on natural feet. Their faces
were pleasanter, I think, than those of the Chinese, all the
more so for the ruddy brown complexions they wore, and the
wreaths of red and white flowers around their hair. They
looked a strong healthy race, and we found it a great relief
to get away from painted skins, dwarfish figures, and crippled
feet. Some of these bouncing ladies we observed hard at
work threshing wheat with flails, and using the spade and
hoe like men.

We were not a little amused when, at a sudden turn of the
road, we came upon a valiant petty mandarin of the military
type, who bestrode a large mule equipped for a long journey,
THE PEOPLE. 513

if one could judge by the accumulation of gear about his
saddle, the presence of an oiled paper coat, and a grandly-
ornamented sword of a decidedly theatrical appearance, minus
a guard, stuck under his left saddle-flap. Two attendants
similarly got-up rode in advance, and, as we almost bumped
against them, they were thrown into a most unmilitary state
of confusion and panic, and fell back on the brave gentleman.
He was obliged to make way for them by retiring on that
precipitate mule of his; and, ensconcing himself between two
cavaliers who rode behind, and who managed to rally the
others when they found we were really peaceable mortals, he
waited until we had passed. Then we left them worrying
each other by all sorts of hard questions as to who or what
we were, and whither we were going.

The better class of wayfarers whom we met, still carried
their weapons of offence or defence; and though these were
not very formidable, yet one would have supposed they were
often effectual enough for the intimidation of robbers, two or
three of whose heads we noticed hanging up in cages to the
trees. Even the pedlars mounted arms; and it was impos-
sible to forbear smiling when a slim young scion of that
branch of industry—like anything but a fighting man—
passed. us with a rusty scabbardless sword of most portentous
breadth, and twice the length of his pack, stuck between the
cords which bound his small fortune. He seemed a veritable
Corporal Nym, and the very man to exclaim, when pushed to
extremities —

‘I dare not fight, but I will wink, and hold out mine iron. It is a
simple one; but what though ? It will toast cheese, and it will endure
cold as another man’s sword will ; and there’s the humour of it.’

Once we met an old man and a young woman astride
of a gaily-caparisoned little donkey, that trudged along and
was apparently nowise loath to carry the loving couple; and
at the door of a village caravansary, we found two cavalry

LL
514 TARTAR SOLDIERS.

soldiers resting from some long journey. Broad-set strapping
fellows they were, with the ruddiness on their cheeks trying
to make itself manifest through their deeply-tanned skin.
Their clothes were none of the best, even for Chinese sol-
diers; their heads had not come under the barber’s hands for
some time, and they looked fatigued and hungry; yet they
had a free-and-easy rough-and-ready bearing about them

 

Tartar Soldiers,

which rather prepossessed me in their favour as soldiers,
and they seemed to have lots of stamina for many a long
ride, little to eat, and bad weather, as well as for the more
serious concomitants of war. Their ponies were very small,
but wiry, with their long tails and manes tied securely in
rough plaits and knots, and their forelocks bound up in tufts
like horns. The dusty saddles were worn-out, and very old,
and had the antiquated sword slung on one side, and the
THEIR EQUIPMENT. 515

small matchlock, ornamented with red horse-hair at the stock
and muzzle, on the other. They scarcely bestowed on us
one or two furtive glances, when they resumed the animated
conversation with the other travellers, which we had rather
suddenly interrupted.

LL2
516

CHAPTER XXVII.

ELEVATION OF THE LAND— TOWN OF PAY-TA-PU— GAMES OF CHANCE
— THE HUIN-H6 — CURIOUS MONUMENT AND LLAMA PRIESTS —- SUBURBS
OF MOUKDEN —THE POLICE AND THEIR COMMANDER — CLEARING THE
WAY — THE STREETS AND TRADES AND THE CROWD —A FAT BONIFACE
—cCONDITION OF THE CAPITAL —TARTAR TRACES —A BIRD’S-EYE
VIEW.

INCE leaving Newchwang, the country appeared to be

rising, yet so gradually as almost to be imperceptible;
and it still bore the same well-tilled agreeable aspect it had
done, with some few exceptions, all along our ride. Harvest
operations had just commenced; the weather was lovely ;
and there seemed to be nothing wanting to complete the
happiness of the peasantry, who thronged in the fields
singing and toiling. Everywhere, the land—which was
light — looked to be productive and rich in all the elements
necessary for the culture of the plants grown upon it, with-
out requiring a very great amount of manure or labour; and
the neighbourhood of the hills, with the prevalence of sea
breezes, must. have greatly favoured the abundance and
quality of the cereals so largely dealt in.

As we advanced, we got glimpses of never-tiring scouts
galloping a long way ahead, who did us no manner of service,
so far as we could see; but who, on the contrary, collected
all the idle and curious of all the hamlets and villages near
by their reports, and we found these assembled at some con-
venient spot close to which we must pass, where they pryed,
joked, and speculated regarding us.

The people were, however, to all intents and purposes—con-
PAY-TA-PU. 517

sidering the wonderful sight of two such mortals as we must
have appeared to them — civil and well-behaved, and not a
fault could we find with their conduct in any way. Their
bewilderment was sometimes beyond all description. I think
I shall never forget the eager anxiety of two blind villagers,
who knelt in front of one of these congregations, with their
arms clasping young boys, to know all about what we were
like, and everything concerning our appearance that could be
conveyed to them by words.

In a pretty little stretch of rural beauty, but where the
road was a complete canal and forbade a passage to our
ponies, we were obliged to pass round a village through a
narrow path between hedgerows, in order to gain a more
secure footing and a readier highway. While doing this
we heard the mumbling of a voice as if a person was reading,
and, glancing over the fence, saw a good-looking country-
woman in her garden perusing a book. Some remark we
made disturbed her, and darting at us but one brief and
terrified squint, she sprung up from her seat, took to her
heels like a startled hare, and bounded over the lower
shrubs and furrows, swift paced as Atalanta, the daughter of
Scheneus. Unluckily—and before we had time to assure
her of our innocuousness and mortality—something tripped
her up, and she sustained a heavy full on the hard ground ;
but this little diminished her alacrity, for she was up and
away again in a twinkling, until concealed by the trees.
Her ideas must have been rather deranged for some time
afterwards.

Towards nightfall we reached the neat little town of Pay-
ta-pu, where there was a very picturesque pagoda rather the
worse for wear, built in the South China fashion. Here our
Ying-tsze conductor wished us to remain for the night, as
we had been a long day in the saddle; but being some eight
or ten miles from Moukden, we were intent on pushing as
518 GAMES OF CHANCE.

near to that place as possible, so as to get in at a good hour
next day.

After a deal of murmuring we resumed our course, and
sprawling about in the dark, through long fields tenanted
only by black pigs, and frogs, and toads, whose croakings
were awfully dismal, we were compelled to halt in a very
wretched assemblage of hovels boasting of two inns, one of
which was occupied by ragged men gambling by very dim
lights.

‘The great Khan,’ says Marco Polo, ‘has prohibited all
gambling and other species of fraud to which this people are
addicted beyond any other upon earth ;’ but the great and
little khans who have succeeded Kublai do not seem to have
understood the proper means for the suppression of games of
chance, for in everyone of these places, whenever two or
three men got together, the dice bowl and cards formed the
only amusement. In this case the accommodation was so
bad, and landlord and guests were so deeply engaged in
their game, that we were driven to an opposition hostelry:
where the proprietor, after the surprise we caused in his
bosom had subsided, received us with more attention, and
rather unceremoniously ejected a number of questionable
individuals who had been staking their cash, smoking their
tobacco or opium, and drinking their samshu. The long
room was awfully dirty, dusty, and cobwebby, and the
hurried brushing of it by-two or three imps nearly stifled
us; yet glad were we to find a place to rest and sleep in,
though surrounded by filth and breathing an almost pesti-
lential atmosphere.

The strip of country we passed through before reaching
the Huin Hé, or Muddy River, was not particularly in-
teresting ; and there was nothing to betoken the vicinage of
a large city in the universal hush and stillness around us.
This river, another tributary of the Liau, was of a good
width, and the few clusters of masted lighters gathered at
THE HUIN HO. 519

odd bends of its course, proved that it was navigable thus
far. The current ran fast over a shingly bottom, and as it
was unfordable, rafts—consisting of a platform lashed on
two small boats—were plying across with passengers. The
scenery on the banks and away beyond, was not unpleasant.
The mountains were toned down by distance into a bluish-
grey as they receded towards the east; before us was a
closely-wooded level ; and to the right and left, gardens and
fields. Wherever a foot of ground could be cultivated, there
stood its allotment of millet, beans, or wheat; and when it
proved obdurate, there was the labourer at work trying to
improve it. The high ground and the northerly direction
we had pursued, ensured us the benefit of a climate, than
which nothing, we thought, could be finer. The sun had
lost much of its intensity ; the sickliness of the lower land to
the west and south had vanished, and we felt that we
breathed a respirable and enjoyable atmosphere.

The last three mornings had been indeed delightful, and
the beneficial change the weather had wrought in us, con-
spired to make our trip an exceedingly happy one.

We ferried across the stream. We discovered it to be of
variable depth, from the fact of our ponies—which were being
towed behind the ratt—finding bottom twice or thrice before
we got to the opposite side. It was now only a mile to the
capital we had so ardently longed to reach, and to visit
which we had ventured so much.

We climbed the gentle ascent from the Huin Hé, and were
much gratified to find ourselves in a regular park of old willows,
gnarled and hoary, growing at random over a large expanse
of ground. The coolness of their shade was delicious, and it
was a treat to feel the elastic turf spring under one again,
and to inhale the air that hung about the pendent branches
so lightly. It was singularly pleasant to revel in the mingled
light and darkness caused by the early morning sun flashing
through the gaps in the leafy canopy, and to know by the
520 CHINESE MONUMENT.

undisturbed nature of the ground, and the venerable appear-
ance of the timber, that this small forest was

‘Not by art,
But of the trees’ own inclination made’—

for everywhere else on our journey the hand of man had
fashioned the landscape, and a patch of ground left untouched
for a few years was indeed a novelty.

There was a good wide road on one side of this park, and
across it stood a curious Za, or pagoda monument, with the
remains of which we were particularly interested, as it formed
a strange feature in the foreground of a picture made by
the trees, a high brick wall, and the yellow-tiled, curved
roofs, of a Llama temple, which bore the title of Wang yi-tang
—meaning the temple of the ten thousand beatitudes or
felicitous transformations of the Buddhistic faith.

This structure may have been about fifty or sixty feet high,
and many, many years ago have been a somewhat handsome
monument of the kind, but now it was fast falling to decay.
The plaster which had once covered it was altogether removed
in many places, and the bricks composing its interior were
here and there abstracted, leaving unsightly deficiencies in its
outline. In shape it was not very unlike one of those immense
glass bottles used to contain vitriol at home, mounted as it was on
a wide pedestal, ornamented with the tutelary dogs, elephants,
and other Buddhic symbols, and its top set off with a copper
curtain fringed by bells, on which was fixed a crescent. The
form of this antiquated variety of religious architecture was
not quite unknown to me, for I had often remarked drawings
of similar edifices in paintings connected with the Llama
doctrinal creed. In a large niche in front, surrounded by
lotus leaves, or something intended to represent flames, there
was a character inscribed in red paint, but it was so effaced
by time as to be ulegible.

Plants grew thickly on every place that could give them a
hold, and a young tree had fixed itself in a very conspicuous
LLAMA PRIESTS. 521

situation, while the snowy whiteness of the lime that had in :
byegone days deeply coated this monument, was soiled and
furrowed by the weather. As we were attempting to make
a hasty sketch of it, a little host of Llama priests, in their
yellow robes and cleanly-shaven heads, closed around us, and

 

!

i

Ti

Nya
ea

cull, ih

 

 

 

Llama Temple.

they, with a crowd of stragglers, entirely frustrated our pur-
pose; for in their irresistible desire to see what was doing,
and to watch the movements of the wondrous pen that re-
quired no ink—as they styled the pencil—they brought their
faces and unpleasant breath into such near contact, that we
522 SUBURBS OF MOUKDEN.

were glad to bid them an abrupt good morning, after they
had informed us that there was a pagoda like this one on
each side of the capital.

The road led us into a suburb with but ordinary houses,
at first scattered, then drawing closer and closer on both
sides, until we reached a low narrow gateway—which might
have been the entrance to a garden or small courtyard, in a
mud wall that stretched away on either side, about the height
and width of what could be cleared by an ordinary hunter,
and covered with grass and young willows.

This, which we had nearly passed without noticing, we
afterwards discovered was the outer wall of the city of
Moukden, and enclosed what might be called the suburban
or commercial portion of the Tartar capital. Entering this
gateway, and passing a small hut on our left, before which
sat two snuffy old carles, blinking at some four useless spears
in a rack, we were in the south street of the outer city,
within sight of the towers and. parapet of the imperial
enclosure, which are not unlike those of Peking; and in the
midst of a bustling, yet orderly crowd, that kept rapidly
augmenting as the buzz of surprise and excitement drew the
more industrious from their labours or occupations within
doors.

The street was wide—almost as wide as any we had seen
at Peking — and a great deal better to ride in, for there were
no ruts or holes to break one’s horse’s legs in, or pools of
stinking water to avoid, though there was a good deal of
dust. The shops and houses, still single-storied, were regu-
larly built; and the unsightly inequalities on the sides of
this and the narrower streets which branched off from it,
caused by some disreputable hovel standing forward half-a-
dozen feet in front of the others, were very few and almost
exceptional.

Before we had ridden a hundred yards through the
running and shouting crowds, we were made aware of the
ITS POLICE. 523

presence of a posse of the guardians of the peace, who
seemed to have sprung out of the ground, under the leader-
ship of a valiant superintendent. This responsible com-
mander was a little withered old man mounted on a very
diminutive donkey, and almost hidden from observation by a
great conical summer hat, far too large for his minute skull,
covered as it was, too, by a tremendous red official fringe
that made it look like an enormous scarlet flower, the calyx
of which had been reversed — extinguisher-fashion — and
lashed to his chin. A pair of glistering mouse-eyes peered
out at times when a’ sudden movement threw the silken
curtain to one side, and then we could see they were busy
enough looking out for offending small boys and easily-
terrified young men.

The quadruped he bestrode was scarcely larger than a
middle-sized Newfoundland dog, but it was fairly buried
between a gigantic pair of black satin boots with canoe-shaped
toes and clog soles of unimpeachable whiteness, thrust as far
as they could go into a ponderous pair of brass dragon-
mouthed stirrups.

There he darted about like a firefly, with his meagre
body badly done up in white cotton and primrose-coloured
gauze, and with boots and hat almost touching each other,
giving his orders in a torrent of squeaking aspirations, against
the mirthful character of which there was no use attempting
resistance.

He was as closely attended as might be expected from
a man of his active habits, by a great fat fellow, evidently a
subordinate, who sat perched upon the croup of an ass,
anything but up to its work, and wriggling along at a very
uncomfortable pace. This was possibly a deputy-inspector
of the Moukden police, as our shrimpy little friend was
visibly a full-blown inspector, from the great deference paid
to him by the inferiors of that respectable force, who marched
so closely about us as nearly to blind and suffocate us with
524 A CHIEF CONSTABLE.

dust. Poor little man! the officious and very conspicuous
zeal with which he headed the efforts of these constables to
conduct the intrusive strangers within the walls of the city
were strikingly comical. Like the law-serjeant of Chaucer's
satirical sketch in the ‘ Canterbury Tales ’—

‘ Nowhere so busy a man as he there.n’as,
And yet he seemed busier than he was.’

Pouncing from one side with a great-small shout, he would
stoutly charge a flying body of ragged urchins, ably seconded

 

Entrance in Moukden.

in his daring deed by the animal he held within his knees:
for between them there must have been some sort of sympa-
thetic communication, matured through long years of con-
tact, and during which the hair of both had become silvery
grey, as the donkey required no urging or tugging, but intui-
tively made for the tiniest and slowest-going boy, because he
CLEARING THE WAY. 525

was easiest reached or followed; and when the regulated
number of whacks from the short-lashed whip had fallen
with due precision on the bare head or shoulders of the grin-
ning vagabond, the two would return to their post again,
followed: by the stout aide, who had some difficulty in
managing his long-eared steed, and was continually puffing,
blowing, and perspiring from the unwonted exertion.

Though busy enough looking about for something novel
in this newly-discovered city, our attention was distracted
every few minutes by these over-prudent servants of justice,
who evidently thought they had a good job and were deter-
mined to make the most of it. Whenever the amazed people
began to show a little more anxiety or curiosity than was
thought judicious or respectful, or when a few impulsive
beings stuck themselves in the middle of the road, at a
squeak from the chief, a bellow from the second in command,
and a general shout from the ‘force,’ cuts of whips and lively
jumps enveloped us in clouds of dust.

One of these fellows pointed out a lane to our conductor,
who immediately wheeled down, and led the way until we
came to an inn, where in the courtyard the landlord was
found meditating amid heaps of bricks and mortar. A con-
fused jabber and clatter of tongues was at once set up, which
at length ended by our being informed that there was no
suitable accommodation for us—a mild way of announcing
that we were not wanted on the premises: so a prolonged
conversation between another functionary and our guide
ensued, when it was settled that we should go to an hotel
within the imperial wall.

Houses, stores, and workshops ran up to the very base of
this wall, and in many of the latter we saw armourers at
work manufacturing matchlocks, and bows and arrows in large
quantities. From the external gate in the external earthen
bank to this inner gate, the length of the street may have
been fully three-quarters of a mile, and all along it was
526 THE STREETS AND THE CROWD.

crowded with tradespeople and artizans, who looked both
healthy and happy.

That was indeed a proud and joyful moment when we
gained the large bastion—which differed from all others
we had yet entered, by having two archways, one on each
side—and, rattling over the granite slabs that paved the
intervening space between it and the inner city, found
ourselves within the real limits of the Mantchu metropolis.
What less could I do than doff my turban and reverentially
salute the grim walls which then contained two Britons, for
the first time known as such here, and concealed by no
native artifice or borrowed costume? We had gained our
cherished object at the end of a long journey, the termi-
nation of which no one could prognosticate without some
feeling of doubt or alarm when it was begun.

Small space was given to see where we were, for the
crowd, though a stationary one, extended in every direction,
and precluded all chances of examining the houses or cha-
racter of the wide thoroughfare into which we were now
launched. Fortunately the promised inn was near, and we
made a kind of triumphal entry into the neat courtyard,
where another body of police armed with huge whips like
the Russian knout stood ready to receive and to guard us.
An active red-faced little mandarin stepped forward and took
our party in charge at once, without giving us the slightest
verbal intimation to that effect.

An order to his men to clear the square of the mob that
had burst past our late escort outside, was but partially
successful, though cuts and shouts were freely used to
enforce it.

The host, or manager, or whoever he was, came to the
front, and tried to be as amiable and talkative as an under-
sized man can be who is labouring under a strong sense of
asphyxia from fatty accumulations everywhere—but more
especially in the region of the face and throat—and is
A FAT BONIFACE. 527

quaking from a great dread of our presence. He introduced
us to one room, which had been a lumber store previous to
our arrival. We, without delay or scruple, objected to the
insult. He strove to remonstrate, but made such tedious
and painful efforts to speak through his constricted windpipe
that we had no patience, and, we fear, as little sympathy
for his corpulence : so we rushed out of the detestable apart-
ment, fully impressed with the idea that the people wished
to degrade us by lodging us in the filthiest rooms in the
house.

Another hovel was then thrown open to us, worse if pos-
sible than the last, as it was in a state of thorough dilapida-
tion. We would not look at it, and loudly protested against
such uncourteous treatment of far-travelled strangers, who
civilly claimed their hospitality and were willing to pay
for it.

The mandarin commenced a long harangue with the
asthmatical host, who would maintain that his house was
engaged, and there was nowhere else he could put us; but
when he saw that we were not to be imposed upon, he
suddenly remembered there was one room yet unoccupied,
and with no good grace he took us to it.

Enclosed within a little brick wall fancifully built with
lots of crucial spaces in it, this chamber was certainly better
than the others, though it was dark and dirty: so, being
tired with bothering, and nearly choked with dust and thirst,
we consented to take it. A few minutes’ rest sufficed to
refresh ourselves sufficiently to think of moving out to see
how the population and their rulers stood affected towards
our perambulating the streets, and visiting whatever might
be worth looking at; and as the larger portion of the vast
assemblage of Moukdenites had been driven or talked away
from the courtyard by the police, the opportunity promised
well for a ride, as our ponies were still saddled and ready.
The guide whom we had brought from Newchwang said he
528 PAINFUL CURIOSITY.

knew the city well, and gave us reason to hope that we
should be amply repaid for our trouble, as there were many
things of great interest in the place.

There were a number of well-dressed people loitering
about outside expecting to get a look at us, and as soon as
we launched among them another buzz and tumult of wonder
and astonishment burst out from them, as well as from the
throng held back in the street by the merciless thongs of
the guard. To them everything about us was dumb-
foundering, inexplicable, or marvellous, and the manifesta-
tions of their emotions were as various as in any western
crowd—though, perhaps, our friends were more polished and
civil in their behaviour than the generality of mobs we have
seen nearer home.

Some were rather apt to giggle and titter at our un-
shaven heads and faces, and to crack facetious jokes at our
expense; others were lost in admiration with the leather of
our boots and the cloth of our coats; some would persist
in doing nothing but stare intently in our faces, as if they
expected us to turn them upside down; two or three looked
astounded and perplexed, apparently, at our audacity and
independence in venturing so far alone, and the cool easy
manner with which we moved and conducted ourselves;
while others, scarcely satisfied with looking freely, used their
sense of touch, and laid inquisitive fingers upon us—one in
particular was found with his hands in the bottom of one of
M.’s coat pockets. A shriek of agony and alarm broke from
an old man who, on hands and knees was squatted behind me
to inspect more closely my hunting-spurs, when I unwit-
tingly stept back and sent the sharp rowels into his nose
and thigh.

Just as we were about to mount, and M. was giving
directions to the guide, a petty official, many of whom were
dodging about and watching our movements, stepped up and
whispered loud enough for M. to hear him, that the man
CONDITION OF THE MANTCHU CAPITAL. 529

was not to go. This advice or counsel to our conductor at
this early period of our visit was not to be borne, and my
companion at once hunted the fellow off.

As soon as we emerged from the gateway of the inn,
some eight or ten lusty guardians on foot attached them-
selves to us, and by their noisy demonstrations were speedily
attracting that attention far and near that would have put
an end to our explorations, when we started off at a smart
trot northwards. In afew minutes they and the multitude ©
were out-distanced, and we were at comparative liberty to
move about where we liked, so long as we did not stop at
any one place and give the people time to collect.

If Peking was a disappointment to those of us .who,
in the preceding year, had expected to see a great and
a grand city —a capital with superb palatial buildings,
streets unsurpassed for width and cleanliness, and crowded
with triumphal arches, where all the wealth and magni-
ficence of a rich and mighty empire had been stored —
and if we had found it as unpleasant as opening a
musty old tome that has been lying covered with mildew
in some mouldering ruin for centuries, and in which moth
and maggot have done their work, leaving only the massive
buildings which envelope the decayed leaves intact — then
Moukden could indeed lay claim to having excited in us a
degree of pleasurable surprise, until then unknown in our
rambles in the land.

The great regularity of the streets—the ample breadth
of the principal ones—the absence of filthy and indecent
displays at their sides, such as everywhere offend the
eyes and nose in Peking; the uniform height and frontage
of the shops, and their respectable, though far from gaudy
appearance, and the total absence of tumble-down wooden
arches, or Pai-lus, such as in almost every other town
obstructed the way or marred the prospect; quite took our
good opinions by storm, because the change was unexpected,

MM
530 TIDY STREETS.

for we had long ceased to imagine that a tolerable city
existed in the country.

Moukden, so far as dur experience went, was pronounced
to be the Edinburgh of the Middle Kingdom. The people
were well, though not. luxuriantly, dressed, and I do not
think during our stay we noticed a beggar or a ragged
individual within its walls. There were large stands of
cart-cabs with excellent mules in them, superior to those of —
Peking. There were capital shops with large open windows,
in which were counters for the sale of furs, native cottons,
dye-stuffs, grain, and medicines, as well as ready-made.
clothing ; but we could perceive nothing European, save a
couple of boxes of German lucifer matches which we saw
when we afterwards had an investigation on foot. A good
proportion of these shops were kept for the manufactory and
sale of bows and arrows, and in some of them there were
splendid specimens of the skins of eagles and vultures.

We passed several large Yamuns or government buildings,
before which were drawn up dozens of cabs, and crowds of
attendants awaiting the convenience of their several owners
who were within, probably discussing questions con-
cerning the management or mismanagement of a province
the length and breadth of which is estimated at 700,000
square miles. Each of these public offices was guarded by
rows of high black chevaux de frise. The great number of
officials— whether mandarins, servants, or soldiers we could
not always distinguish in the crowds and dust we often got
involved in, struck us as extraordinary for such a small city,
and such a comparatively unimportant capital of a province
beyond the Great Wall.

Booths and stalls there were none, and even the nomadic
vendors of eatables, and the peripatetic craftsmen of all
grades and trades who roam freely elsewhere, were here
invisible. We looked closely for some indications of Tartar
existence, but without success, except in some streets where
TARTAR TRACKS. 531

shops were devoted to the fabrication of figures or effigies
made of reeds and covered with paper to represent men and
women servants bearing cups of tea and other things neces-
sary for a feast; and in addition, horses and stags, modelled
and painted in a sporting style, such as we could fancy the
Mantchus—as we had read of them—might appreciate, and
desire to have burnt at their graves to do them service in
the next world.

Something of this kind is mentioned by Marco Polo as
taking place at the funerals of Tartar princes in his day, but
the victims were living beings. He says, after speaking of
the invariable custom of interring the bodies of the grand
khans and chiefs of the race of Ghengis Khan at a certain
lofty mountain, no matter where they may have died —‘It
is likewise the custom, during the progress of removing the
bodies of these princes, for those who form the escort to
sacrifice such persons as they may chance to meet on the
road, saying to them, “ Depart for the next world, and there
attend upon your deceased master,” being impressed with
the belief that all whom they: thus slay do actually become
his servants in the next life. They do the same also with
respect to horses, killing the best of the stud in order that
he may have the use of them. When the corpse of Mongu,
the fifth Tartar monarch, and grandson of the great Kublai
Khan, was transported to this mountain, the horsemen who
accompanied it, having this blind and horrible persuasion,
slew upwards of twenty thousand persons who fell in their
way.’ And in the year 1661, Shun-chi, one of the early
emperors of the Mantchu dynasty, perpetrated the dreadful
atrocity of ordering a human sacrifice on the decease of a
favourite mistress ; but one of his ancestors, Tien-Ming—so
writes the Jesuit Martinius in his account of the conquest of
China by the Mantchus—vowed, when invading China to
avenge the death of his father, that he would celebrate the

MM 2
532 THE IMPERIAL WALL.

burial of the murdered king by the slaughter of two hundred
thousand Chinese.*

These figures seemed to us to be the only relics of this
custom, and the sole testimony of the existence of the
Mantchu nation, for we could gather nothing else concerning
them.

Near the end of the long street we had first hurried along
was a low archway, over which there was a bell-tower or
chang-lu in a yvather shaky condition. Speeding through
this we reached the wall, and soon were in the outer city
again; but as there was nothing to be seen here except a
shattered pagoda, we returned again to the wall and entered
by a west gate. This was a quiet part of the town, and as
everybody had been outstripped except a few wild young
scamps, who managed to keep pace with our ponies, and a
small wicket was hard by that opened on the steps leading
up to the top of the brick wall, the temptation was too
strong to be resisted. A momentary glance over the city
from such an elevation would tell us more than days of
painful search, and was indeed the only apparent means of
arriving at any sort of correct idea of the plan and dimen-
sions of a large city like this, standing as it did upon a
level plain.

Bacon’s advice to those who were about to make the
grand tour in his time seemed now to be for once in our
excursion followed. ‘They are,’ says he, so far as memory
serves us, ‘to set forth on their journey under some tutor
or grave servant, and their objects should be the courts of
princes, churches, fortifications, cities, gardens of state.’
Here was our grave servant ready to afford us any assist-
ance or information that could come from within his narrow
limits, and there was a fortification—the only one the place
could boast of, and from which we were to have a prospect

* Travels of Marco Polo. Edited by T. Wright, M.A.
PLAN OF THE CITY. 533

of the other details mentioned. The idea was at once acted
on, and leaving our ponies to shift for themselves, we opened
the wicket, ascended about a dozen steps to a small square
landing of brickwork, and then mounted the inclined plane
that led to the rampart, where we were exceedingly
gratified to find the city mapped out for us below in a far
more satisfactory way than if we had traversed the streets
one by one.

The wall itself exhibited little to make it different from
other city walls, and, so far as we had time to notice, it was
a fac-simile of the Peking fortification on a smaller scale.
Its height might be about thirty-five or forty feet, its width
at the base about twenty-five, and the top fifteen feet,
and everywhere it was in good order. The towers, twelve
in number, were intact, and those nearest us had good
doors firmly locked. The single parapet was crenelated in
the ordinary way, but at its junction with the rampart were
numbers of small apertures inclining obliquely downwards,
for the purpose possibly of pouring a vertical fire or boiling
water on the heads of the assailants immediately beneath.
The boundary of the outer wall may have been from ten to
twelve miles. The inner or imperial had a circuit of about
three or four miles.

The outer city contained the largest warehouses and the
working classes, but a large portion of its extent towards
each angle was either taken up by gardens or lying waste.
The outer as well as the inner wall had eight corresponding
gates called great and little, though there appeared to be no
difference in their size—from which the eight principal
streets ran, and intersected each other towards the middle
of the imperial town, giving an appearance of regularity and
convenience to the whole rather pleasing to the eye.

An ancient Chinese authority mentions with regard to these
eight gates, that they correspond to the eight principal winds.
In the book of customs of the Ta-tsin (the present)
534 A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW.

dynasty it is said, ‘ The city of Moukden has eight gates—
two to the south, one of which is termed the doorway for
the introduction of the numerous virtues, and the other the
entrance gate for the admission of the Protection of Heaven
(one of the early Mantchu emperor’s titles); two to the
east — one named the gate of attentions for those who are

DUQUUUUDALEDAUE Up

 

 

Plan of Moukden.

1, Mantchu Palace. 2, 2, 2.2. Wall Towers. 3. 3. Principal Streets in the
Imperial and External Cities. 4.5.6.7. 11. 12. 13.14. Main thorough-
fares. 15. 15. 15. 15. 15. 15. 15. 15. Entrance Gates in the External Wall.
16. External Wall. 17. Internal, or Imperial Wall. 9. Ku-lu,or Drum Tower.
10. Chang-lu, or Bell Tower. 8. Streets into which the Palace has private
entrances. 18. Pagoda. 19. Llama Pagoda and Temple. 20. 20. 20. 20.

External City, composed of dwelling-houses, artificers’ shops, stores, and at
each angle waste ground.
NATIVE GEOGRAPHER. 535

near, the other the portal which guards the interior; two to
the west, of which the first is the gate of affection for those
who are afar off, and the second, the way by which the
strangers and tribute-bearers come to pay homage; of two
to the north, one is called the gate of victories which brings
back good-fortune and power, and the other the honourable
gate of the earth.’ |

Conspicuous above the ‘other buildings in the city stood
two towers named the Ku-lu and the Chang-lu or drum and
bell towers, and between them and the south side of the
city, exactly in the centre, was a mass of yellow-tiled roofs
of various heights and forms, with trees interspersed, which
we at once set down, and correctly, as the old palace of the
Tartar sovereigns.

Elsewhere there was little to be seen but the tidy streets
alive with passengers, crowds of housetops, temple roofs,
and green trees. According to E-toong-tche, a native
geographer, Moukden is a city of the first order, and is
placed on an elevation; while the country which surrounds
it is watered by a number of rivers which renders it very
fertile. There is to the east the great white mountain—
Chang-pi-Shan; to the west the country of E-hi; to the
south the river Ya-lu; to the north the river Hoontoung
(obsolete names).
536

CHAPTER XXVIII.

HISTORY OF MOUKDEN — ACCOUNT OF IT BY FATHER VERBIEST — KIEN-
LUNG’S EULOGIUM OF THE TARTAR CAPITAL—- THE PEN AND THE KE
— POPULAR EXCITEMENT AT OUR APPEARANCE — A MOUKDEN MER-
CHANT — THE TARTARS AT A DISCOUNT —OUR VISIT TO THE PALACE
PREVENTED — THE WATER-GUN—-LOWER TEMPERATURE AT MOUKDEN
—CHINESE ARTIST—-RETURN JOURNEY— LORD JOHN HAY — DOING
THE DRAGONS— ON BOARD THE ‘ODIN’ — REVISITING THE WALL.

HE place wherein Moukden now stands is the same which

in the almost traditionary times of Yau (2357 B.c.)

bore the name of Tsing-chow; in his successor’s time, Eng-

chow; in the time of Han (206 3.c.), Liau-toong-kiun ; and

under the brilliant Tang dynasty (A.D. 618), Nan-tong-tau-

hau-fou, that is to say, ‘the place which guarantees rest and
tranquillity to the eastern people.’

Under the Tartar houses of Liau and Kiu, in the 13th
century, it was sometimes called Tunking, or the Eastern
Court, and at others Liau-yang, or the Sun of the Liau.
Under the Mongol or Yuen dynasty, it was commonly called
Shin-yang-lou, signifying properly ‘ the path of the sun;’ and
under the Mings, the affix low was changed to that of ‘ wi,’
city or burgh, and it was then Shin-yang-wi, the city or
burgh of the sun ; but the Mantchu warrior, Tien-ming, the
‘ Providence of Heaven,’ having made himself master of the
country to the east of the Great Wall, some years before his
death deliberated with his friends on the choice which he
ought to make of a situation for his court. It was concluded
that this ought to be in a city, purposely built. The city was
HISTORY OF MOUKDEN. 537

accordingly founded, and received the designation of the
Eastern Court; but when his authority and influence began to
extend itself to the Chinese side of the Wall, he did not hesi-
tate to remove his residence to Shin- Yang.

Five years later (1630), his successor, Tai-tsoung, pulled
down the walls of the city, and rebuilt them on a larger scale
than before, as well as improving the buildings generally.
From this time it was called Moukden, a word derived from the
Mantchu, signifying ‘to grow,’ ‘to rise,’ ‘to augment in wealth
and honours,’ ‘ to flourish.’ This monarch gave to his reign the
title of Tien-tsoung, meaning ‘ by the palpable manifestation
of Heaven,’ or ‘ the light of Heaven,’ because he believed he had
been called by the Divine Will to rule over China. His son
reigned here in that orange-tiled palace, but his grandson,
the conqueror of the Chinese Empire, preferred the court of
Peking.

In the 10th year of Kanghi (1681) the walls were repaired,
and two years later the towers above the gates added, about
which time Father Verbiest came in the suite of his imperial
master, and in the course of his narrative—to be found in Du
Halde—he merely says of it, ‘Shin- Yang, the capital of Liau-
toong, is a pretty and complete city, and shows the remains
of an old palace. Latitude, 41° 50’. The needle has no’
variation here. Some Coreans having presented the Emperor
with a sea-calf, he showed it me, asking whether Europeans
mentioned it. I told him we had a book in our library at
Peking that treated of its nature, and had a cut of it. He
longed to see it, and immediately despatched a courier to the
Fathers at Peking, who brought it me in a few days. He
was pleased to find the description in the book answer to
what he saw, and ordered the fish to be sent to Peking and
kept as a rarity.’

The enthusiastic Kienlung, a century later, exhausts his
scholarly energies in eulogising this city, first in the Mantchu
language, and then in some sixty-four different forms of
538 KIENLUNG’S EULOGIUM.

Chinese writing.* Before visiting the native place of his
fathers, he begins at Peking his poetical chef-d’@uvre, by an
appeal to their virtues and exalted qualities, though perhaps
forgetful that the ancestral princes immediately preceding the
noted Tien-Ming were nothing better than marauding chief-
tains of a petty Tartar horde residing in this neighbourhood.

‘The Empire,’ the old translation runs, ‘being trans-
mitted to my humble care, I ought to leave nothing undone
to keep alive or to follow the virtues of my ancestors; but I
justly fear that I shall never be able to equal them. Every
day I meditate profoundly on the means which I ought to
adopt to aid me in feebly imitating them, and to render them
a tithe of my gratitude—every day I prostrate myself before
their portraits, and I render them the most sincere homage.
It is at these times above all that I am transported in mind
to Moukden—to those venerable places, the most illustrious,
the most glorious, in my opinion, of all those which the
heavens has formed.’ ;

Soon after, he reaches this city, and continues: ‘ Arrived at
this place, where my ancestors in other days held their court,
I found my heart overflowing with filial piety, and I ex-
hibited all the proofs of it of which I was capable. I

“worshipped the smallest things that might represent the
slightest vestiges of my fathers.

‘T saw with a lively and inexpressible joy those mountains
covered with verdure (a mild draw on his imagination),
those rivers where rolls a pure flood (now they are strongly
tainted by mud), that fertile country, and those enchanting
places which seem yet to feel the presence of their ancient
masters.

‘ Above everything else, I admired the people, so sincere
and good, who live happily because they are content
with their lot, and who live without fear because they live
in the honest abundance of all things.

* In the poem before mentioned, as translated by Father Amiot.
PEN AND KE. 539

‘Behold, said I to myself in a transport of delight, behold
really a kingdom that Heaven favours! It is now I am
penetrated by that satisfaction and bliss, which makes the
true happiness of a sovereign. It is now I can praise myself
for seeking those sanctified places, which have been the
nursery of those only whom we can regard as veritable
kings.

‘Yes, it is of these spots that the most remote antiquity
has spoken with so much praise under the names of Pen and
of Ke.* It is sufficient to have been reared in Pen or in Ke,
or only to have dwelt in the country for some time, to be
acknowledged fit to govern men! You, whose position
to the north of the waters of Simia (called in Chinese
Shin-shuay, probably a general name for the waters of
Shin-yang), insures to the atmosphere surrounding you a
constant salubrity; you, that the grand rivers and the lofty
mountains render a fitting bulwark to protect the world :—
illustrious city of Moukden, you are distinguished from every
other city in all the other countries of the universe, as much
as the tiger and the dragon are from all other animals. It
is on you that the great empire of Ta-tsin (the Mantchu
dynastic title) has laid the solid foundation on which it is
reared. The deep ditches that have been dug around your
walls—your walls themselves, which are so strong and so
high —guard you from all surprise and all danger. You are
at once the heavens and the earth. You represent the two
all-potent principles—the Yang and the Yin.

‘It is within your walls that we distinguish and appre-
ciate everything; it is there where the nine descriptions of
markets are found (disposed according to the old Chinese
custom, one in each quarter of the principal winds, and one
in the centre —devoted to the sale of different commodities),

* The Pen and Ke of the reign of Chow, and the Foong and Pe of Han,
are the old poetical names for this country. *
540 HIGH-FLOWN LANGUAGE.

and the warehouses of five classes; it is there that the real
doctrine of Kings—so far as being taught to govern men
well applies —is found in all its vigour, and it is from thence
that this knowledge is spread to enlighten the rest of the
world. You are, O Moukden! the’ Pen and the Ke of Chow.
You are the Foong and the Pe of Han! Better than the
village of Pe-shuay; better than the Palace of King-chang,*
you are the proper place to prepare and to produce Kings.
The heavens which canopy us, shine with nine kinds of rays
(in allusion to an old poem which says, “the red light that
margins the horizon exhibits nine colours”); the earth that
bears us contains in its bosom the chief of all treasures; it
throws them open to us,—it brings them to perfection, —it
distributes them liberally according to our wants or our
desires. Do we cultivate it in order to gain from that which
in itself would produce nothing? Then it gives us always a
hundred-fold of what we have confided to it, and this of the
best.

‘The mountain of Chang-pe-Shan that stands near you, and
conspicuously towers, above all the other mountains (it was
invisible from our part of the Wall, as was the entire range of
mountains), shelters you on one side, while an arm of the
Great Sea guarantees you from danger on the other. Your
situation—which is of the most secure and commanding —
your form and disposition—indeed, all that which constitutes
you a city, gives us cause to hope that to the most distant
generations you will preserve the pre-eminence you have ac-
quired above all other places on the earth.

‘It is already more than a hundred years since you began
to be the mother of those without as well as within. You
nourish both; you maintain them: you enable them to live
in tranquillity, in abundance, and in joy. When these reflec-

* The village of Pe-shuay and the palace of King-chang are both cele-
brated places in Chinese history.
POPULAR EXCITEMENT. 54

tions present themselves to my mind, I feel myself actuated
by a stronger impulse to perform my duty, and render myself
worthy of the throne which I have inherited.’

This rather vain and high-flown language was scarcely ap-
plicable to Moukden as we now looked at it; and ‘the fitting
bulwark to protect the world’ appeared but an ordinary north
China city; though cleaner, in better preservation, and laid out
with more regularity, certainly, than any other we had visited.
Hastily making a rude map to enable us to find the cele-
brated palace at some other time, we dismounted from our
lofty stand and found that a crowd had in the meantime
gathered round our ponies. It did not take long to get clear
of it and pass through the streets again to the inn, where we
breakfasted and performed our ablutions in the best way we
could.

The excitement in the street and courtyard was quite
extraordinary, after what we had already encountered. The
noise and commotion, the scaling of roofs and walls, the inces-
sant attempts of infatuated men to obtain access to our room
despite warnings and ignominious expulsions, the cat-like
agility of many who clambered over the high wall that en-
closed a small courtyard behind our apartment in order to
puncture the paper panes of the back window — all this was
for a short time amusing and comical enough, but it soon
became tiresome, and gave us little hope of being allowed to
walk far in the city. The open brick-work in front was
literally plastered with human faces, divided and sub-divided
by the intervening bricks into countless fragments; but some-
how or other there was always a very large proportion of
glancing eyes seen through the cross-shaped apertures.

We had taken a letter of introduction with us from a
Comprador at Ying-tsze to a general merchant in Moukden,
and it was deemed most advisable to send for this man, and
make him useful to us either in the way of gathering infor-
mation from him, or getting him to act as a conductor; for
542 A MOUKDEN MERCHANT.

we were given to understand that he was a personage of some
importance in the trading world.

He came, a thorough specimen of the thriving Chinaman,
fat, phlegmatic, snuffy, and well garbed in summer clothing,
with fan, pipe, and tobacco-pouch. On entering he made a
half curtsey, and gave us a nod or two, as did also two rather
swaggering friends of his, who proceeded without a moment’s
delay to handle and examine all our things.

ce Hl a
mi is val

Se fit
ce cn
DE aS SE ,
Se
Ee Vi
al, il ah ies

 

 

Courtyard Wall.

Our business with him was briefly told. We had come to
see Shin Yang—for such we must now designate Moukden,
as that name was all but unknown among the people of the
towns and villages on our way, and in the city itself it was
not recognised, while its other names—Shinking—the ‘ affluent
capital,’ which was at one time the title of the present seat
of government as well as of the whole Mantchu territory ;
and Fung-tien-fu—the ‘city of the heavenly. wind,’—was
only understood by a few intelligent Chinese, so that the
UNDESIRABLE SOCIETY. 543

famed Tartar capital is now only known by the Mongol or
Ming appellation of Shin Yang. We asked was there much
to see, and how long would it take us to visit everything?
He answered, ‘Oh, there was a great deal to see, and at the least
it would take us three days to look at everything properly.’

This certainly put us on the tip-toe of expectation, and as
the man was civil and obliging, and thought himself rather
patronised by our inquisitiveness, it was agreed that we should
walk out in the afternoon to begin our inspections with
a pilgrimage to the palace. Until then, the tobacco-pouch
was constantly appealed to, and in a room besieged by
the restless crowd without, clouded by dense fumes of
smoke, and covered by our travelling kit strewn about
the floor, we chatted away with our oily-skinned guests as
well as our meagre stock of Chinese would permit—though
oftentimes we wished them far enough when we were made
sick at heart by those never-to-be-got-accustomed-to emana-
tions of: garlic and onions—those volcanic rumblings pre-
saging a fearful eruption which every well-bred Chinese
takes care to display after meals, with the inevitable coughing
and spitting that with these people is the loved accompani-
ment of smoking. We found cause afterwards, when we
began to collect and handle the various articles scattered
within their range, to lament that the fashion of carrying
spittoons did not extend beyond the imperial reception-room
at Peking to the circles in which we were obliged to move on
our journey.*

The first important question we propounded to the friendly
trader, who had forsaken his shop to do us. so much service,
was concerning the whereabouts of the Mantchu people, and

* Strange it is that Marco Polo should mention this courtly use of a
partial remedy for a filthy habit in his day. ‘Every man of rank carries
with him into the hall of audience, a vessel into which he spits, that he
may not soil the floor ; and having done so, he replaces the cover, and
makes a bow.’
544 TARTARS AT A DISCOUNT.

if any were really to be seen in the town ; or if they had
become so denationalized, so incorporated with the Chinese
element, and swayed by the invincible powers of Chinese
civilization as to be unrecognisable in the ever-changing
crowds about us.

The novelty, and, perhaps, the boldness of the question
seemed to startle and then amuse the Middle Kingdom exotic,
for, looking at his interrogators with some surprise, and then
with a smile and a grunt of disdainful indifference, he replied
in a careless tone, ‘The Tartars are cows’—a figurative
expression for the extreme of uselessness and stupidity —
‘there are a few Mantchu merchants, some mandarins, and a
small number of soldiers in Shin Yang, but the poor men
(a scornful grunt) live away in the wild country there’—
giving his head a nod northwards in the direction of Kirin
and the Songari valley.

‘That is a Mantchu man, at the door,’ he said, as he indi-
cated a tall skinny old man with large prominent features,
who in light gauze stuff, and a straw hat with a low-rank button,
was at that moment striving to obtain a good view of us. The
merchant evidently thought him something of a curiosity
from the way in which he drew our attention towards this
solitary specimen of the almost obliterated race.

By dint of their extraordinary industry, thrifty habits, an
unceasing desire to accumulate wealth by any amount of
plodding, cunning, or hardship, the Chinaman has wormed
himself beyond the Great Wall, built towns and villages,
cultivated every rood of land, and is at once the farmer and
trader everywhere. He claims the best portion of Mant-
churia as his own, and dares even to scandalize the Tartar
race in their own capital, though it is barely two centuries
since that race filed in long cavalry troops through those gates
at Shan-hia-Kwan, and were introduced by an indiscreet
Chinese general to the vast empire which they soon con-
quered and sternly governed. Now, the Chinese seem the
CHINESE AGGRESSION. 545

conquerors ; for they have not only obtained possession of
the land, and converted it into a region thoroughly Chinese,
but they have imposed their language, their habits and cus-
toms, and every trait belonging to them on those of the
original occupants who chose to mix with them, and ousted
out every grim old bannerman who would not condescend to
shop-keeping or handling the spade or plough.

There is not the most trifling Mantchu word to designate
town, hamlet, mountain, or river, in use among the people
now-a-days, and anything that might at all tell of the char-
acter and power of the original proprietors is entirely effaced.
If the Mantchus obtained possession of the Dragon Throne at
Peking partly by force of arms and military prowess, and
partly by perfidy, aided by rebellions amongst the Chinese
themselves ; and if they compelled the hundreds of millions,
over whom they found cause to rule, to alter their dress, wear
tails, and, perhaps, smoke tobacco, the people thus subjugated
have made ample retaliation by wiping out every trace of their
invaders in their own country, and leaving the existence of
the usurpers all but traditionary in the metropolis where,
two hundred years ago, they held their court, and where
one of their kings boldly vowed revenge for seven great
grievances that he imagined had been brought on him by the
Chinese Emperor.

Nothing prevents the invasion of the Corea by these won-
derful Chinese, but the high palisade that keeps them within
the limits of Mantchuria ; for if once they managed to get a
footing in that country the Coreans would suffer the same
fate as the Mantchus, and there is no telling where the sons of
Ham would finally stop in their bloodless aggrandizement and
territorial acquisitiveness. But the merchant told us that the
Chinese are never allowed to pass beyond this palisade, though
the Coreans are permitted to enter Tartary by one gate—
the Fung-whang — with their merchandise thrice a year.

Having rested ourselves sufficiently, it was considered

NN
546 A DISAPPOINTMENT.

best to delay no longer in proceeding to the palace, as it would
require much time to go through all the rooms, and we must
be back by sun-down. So the three Chinese led the way
and we followed ; but the police tried very hard to dissuade
them from going beyond the inn gate, until we interposed,
and the merchant finding himself thus supported, pushed on.
The sun was very warm, the crowd half-frantic and pressing
in upon us closely, and almost heedless of the tremendous
whacks dealt amongst them by the ugly whips ; so that it
was out of our power to see anything except dust and sky.
Half smothered, we left the principal street and turned down
a half-deserted sort of lane with a chain across as a barrier.
‘While this was being unfastened, we saw before us an old
wooden gateway, and a portion of a paved courtyard. This
was the palace entrance, and in a few seconds more we would
be within the shelter of its doors. Sad delusion! for as we
were congratulating ourselves, a betattered soldier rushed
out from a half-ruinous guard-house on the right, and with a
piece of string began to tie the two half-leaves together to
prevent our admission. He had a difficult task, and I much
- doubt if he could have succeeded—for the whole fabric
looked as if it would tumble down upon him, when about
half-a-dozen officers came out in procession, and as soon as
they saw us they all, with one exception, retired precipitately
again.

This exception was a middle-rank military man—a good-
looking fellow with red cheeks and a European face, who
stepped forward to speak with the puzzled friend of ours,
while a few dirty soldiers grouped behind him. There was
an animated conversation carried on for a brief space, and we
remarked that our friend was nothing backwards in urging
our claim to be allowed within the palace. The official said
we could not go unless we were prepared to pay homage —
do the Ko-tau—before a portrait of the emperor in one of
the halls. To this we did not give any very decided answer ;
THE EMPEROR SHUN-CHI. 547

all we cared about was seeing the courtyard, and perhaps we
might make our obeisance to his Majesty afterwards. This did
not suit him, and our party of guides, seemingly resolute on
going in, alarmed the magistrate, who took us into the guard-
room, where, seated on the dirty kang, with a lot of bows
and arrows in front of us, he reasoned civilly enough with
the tradesman; and not without effect, for we were informed,
at last, that it would be necessary to apply to the Mayor
or Prefect, whose yamuns we had passed on the way, before
we could be favoured with admission.

There was no alternative but to do so, or leave Shin Yang
without seeing this imperial residence, and as we were not in
quite presentable trim for a visit to either of these great
worthies, and had but little desire to make their acquaintance,
we gave up our pursuit, satisfied that there was not much to
attract us, after all.

In returning, and but a short distance from the shaky gate,
we saw a long court branching off to one side, at the top of
which was an octagonal peristyled building of wood, with a
heavy roof of yellow tiles, and dragons twining around the
pillars. Though very much gone to decay, there was yet
enough left to show that it must have been an elegant
building of its kind about a century since. In two rows on
each side of the edifice were ten smaller structures built in
the same style. The large one, we were informed, was the
Imperial reception room, and the others were erected for the
Emperor Shun-chi’s brothers. This emperor, who is ‘re-
garded as the first of the dynasty, held his court here about
220 years ago, but when he had made secure his hold upon
the great empire of China, he removed to Peking, since which
time this regal dwelling has not been occupied for any length-
ened period by his successors, and it has been only used by
some princes of the yellow girdle who have no great claim
to higher consideration.

The sum of two thousand dollars is granted annually to

NN 2
"+ 648 OBSTRUCTIVE OFFICIALS.

keep the place in repair, but, said our informant—a Shanghai
Comprador at Ying-tsze—with a knowing look, ‘all that dollar
go big mandarin ; he think it all same cumshaw (present or
gift),’ certainly a mild way of looking at such a fraudulent
misappropriation of public money.

We saw nothing anywhere to confirm, or at all substantiate
the belief so popular in some of the Chinese communities,
that the Emperor of China remits every year such sums as he
may be able to collect in Peking to Shin Yang, there to be
kept for emergencies ; and doubtless the report is without
foundation.

The merchant seemed greatly chagrined at the uncourteous
reception we had received from the dignitaries, and could
not satisfy himself why, when respectable Chinese were given
admission to the palace at any time during the day, two
strangers who had travelled so far, and provided themselves
with passports too, should not be shown every civility. Igno-
rant man! he little knew that the only obstructions Europeans
generally have thrown in their way in his country are the
work of officials, and that the safest course to adopt when
wandering through the land is to avoid them and their
myrmidons whenever practicable. But he tried to compen-
sate us for our disappointment by leading the way through
several streets — all better than any of those we have waded
through in Peking—and provided with good shops; though the
crush and crash were so great, the heat and the dust so suffo-
cating, and the policemen’s whips so busy, that the whole
party of us gladly turned towards the inn.

We were anxious to have purchased some little souvenir of
our visit, and saw some shops where trifles, such as we fancied,
were sold; but to have entered them was to threaten or sub-
ject the proprietors to actual ruin, for the crowd would have
swept everything before them in their headlong madness.
We reached our room looking like millers or dustmen, and
our perspiring companions would have been all the better for
THE ‘WATER-GUN,’ 549

a sousing under a pump. This was the termination of the
promised three days’ sight-seeing, and we could not but feel
a little mortified, though we had much to be thankful for, and
could find no great cause for complaint.

So we tried to put on the best face we could, and to con-
sole ourselves by a half-European, half-Chinese dinner done
in Ma-foo’s best style. Thanks to the diffusion of Western
civilization and Western luxuries, we could not only muster
a Frankfort sausage, a tin of questionable hotch-potch, but
also, O ye erratic epicures who cannot travel fifty miles
unless certain that your dinner bill of fare includes the
choicest delicacies! Paté de Foie gras ad’ Oie preserved to per-
fection.

Never had Moukden received such an importation, and
great was the excitement and consternation elicited among
our friends and spectators when one tin-canister after another
suffered a hurried autopsy, and our meal began; but their
wonder reached its culminating point when the first bottle of
Schweppe’s soda water was opened with a bang that made
them jump and change countenance, and the resuscitating
draught was quaffed off. How they stared and gaped to see
what effect the explosive compound would produce on the
grateful imbiber! And how they struggled and fought, old
with young, mandarin with manure-gatherer, when the empty
bottle—a perfect marvel to them, and which an observant
patriarch aptly, and without hesitation, christened a chang
suay, or ‘water-gun’ — was thrown beyond the doorway!

Our three friends remained with us until a late hour,
endeavouring to conceal, under a badly-assumed znsouciance,
the intense surprise our acts caused them. At last they left,
and the door was barred inside to keep out the restless people
whom we had robbed of their sleep. Before we lay down
on the hard bed-place, however, we had to frighten away
some half-dozen wretches who had climbed walls and _per-
formed wondrous feats of agility in getting to the window
550 LOW TEMPERATURE.

immediately above our dormitory, and riddling its oiled
paper panes with their fingers.

Sometime towards the morning we awoke shivering with
cold; for as the nights nearer the gulf had been so oppressively
sultry and unpleasant that a Chinese suit of the thinnest
cotton was the only covering that could be tolerated when
we left Ying-tsze, no blanket or rug formed a portion of our
necessaries on starting ; and now we were obliged to get up,
dress in the few articles of wardrobe we possessed, and walk
about the room smartly to keep up a comfortable degree of
warmth. The difference in temperature between Shin Yang
and the new foreign settlement, or Tien-tsin, at this season of
the year was truly astounding, and quite accounted for the
healthy fresh complexions and hardy-looking men we had
noticed during the day. The clear atmosphere; the very
warm, but never prostrating sun—the delightfully cool
nights, and the general salubrity of Moukden, must render
it a most delectable refuge for those unfortunate countrymen
of ours, who come to extend the commerce of Britain by:
dwelling on the banks of the Liau H6, and fidget body
and mind in the prosecution of trade.

Next day we were somewhat undecided how to spend the
time, because the annoyance and hubbub continually attendant
on our moving out of doors made us averse to seek the
streets, and the attentive merchant, who had taken up his
abode with us again at an early hour, did not offer much
encouragement, or induce us to prolong our stay. At first,
we thought that it might be possible to ride seventy or eighty
miles farther to visit the graves or tombs of the Mantchu
princes, termed Yoong lng, or ‘ Tombs which ought never to
perish,’ and which are three, built on mountains to the north-
west of Shin Yang; but as our friend could give us no infor-
mation about them, or even indicate the way to the town
near which they are situated ; and as there was every proba-
bility of our being prevented from seeing them, if we suc-
CHINESE ARTIST. 551

ceeded in reaching the locality, by some jealous, narrow-
minded, buttoned men, the idea was given up.

The next project was to send our ponies back to the British
settlement by road, and hire boats at the Huin H6 in order
to sail down the Liau, and, as this would offend none of the
authorities, it was agreed upon. The Chinaman civilly sent
one of his shopmen to engage the boats, but he soon came
back with the unwelcome tidings that there was a breeze
blowing, and the river was so disturbed that no San-pans
or tschwans could venture on it. So, foiled in all our attempts,
there was nothing for us but to return as we came.

In the forenoon, an artist, whom the merchant recommended,
was sent for, with a request to bring some specimens of his
handiwork in drawing, as we were bent on purchasing some
memento of the Mantchu metropolis. He came—a Chinaman,
of course—and brought several books for which he demanded
extravagant prices, and stuck to his demands as tenaciously as
if these fantastic daubs had been of far more value to us than
to his countrymen. One curious sketch-book, made up of
odds and ends, was at last bought by me for a sum I should
be almost afraid to name when showing the work to my
western friends, and I have no doubt the painter would gladly
have welcomed the presence of strangers more frequently, did
they all pay him as handsomely for his somewhat clever etchings.

It was with some regret that we mounted into our saddles
again in the afternoon, and bidding the amicable fellow who
had sacrificed so much time, and exposed himself to such a
mobbing on our behalf, a long good-bye, turned our backs to
the north, and to the only respectable city we had seen in
China.

We ardently wished to penetrate far beyond its walls, and
into that unknown country of which Father Du Halde, recoun-
ting Verbiest’s travels, says : ‘ Beyond Liautoong the road is
difficult ; the hills are covered on the east side with huge
oaks and forests uncut for ages past. All the country is like
552 RETURN JOURNEY.

a wilderness. You see nothing around but hills, vales, and
dens of bears, tigers, and other savage beasts; scarce a house,
but some pitiful huts by the sides of rivers and torrents.’
Our passports offered us aid; but time was getting scarce,
and the great uncertainty of finding our way again to Tien-
tsin prevailed, and debarred us from the attempt. The same
bevy of policemen, headed by the little man on the donkey,
were in waiting, and almost the same performance was enacted
as on our arrival.

When we got beyond the town, a solitary horseman fol-
lowed us; but he, too, left when we had embarked on the
ferry-boat at the Huin Hé; and, after a lovely evening’s ride
almost alone on the road, we slept for the night in a good inn,
satisfied with our visit to Moukden; which visit we were
never again to repeat.

Favoured by fine weather, we made a rapid journey down-
wards, and without any particular incident until we got near
Newchwang, when, on a quiet road, we beheld a most un-
wonted sight—a long string of carts, a large escort, and a tall
figure in a blue jacket and white trowsers, making long strides
to keep pace with quick-stepping mules, in a quite un-Chinese
fashion. As they neared us, we discovered the stalking
gentleman to be a British tar, and when alongside, found
Lord John Hay, R.N., and two officers of his ship, doubled
up in a tailoring posture, and looking everything but com-
fortable in their jolting conveyance. The ‘ Odin’ had arrived
at the Ying-tsze anchorage a day or two after we departed,
and Lord John hearing of our project, got passports, carts,
conductors, cutlasses, and two live mandarins to do them the
honours in every town and halting-place on their way, and to
overtake our unostentatious little party. It was pleasant
once more to see English faces and to hear English voices in
such an unexpected situation; and though we had but little
incentive in the shape of novelty to hold out to them in the
outlandish city they were bound for, there was nothing but
‘DOING THE DRAGONS.’ 553

the conduct of the magistrates towards us that could dis-
courage them in our account.

Anticipating every assistance, however, from the spectacled
white and red buttons they had brought with them to exhibit
the dragons of Moukden, they felt confident of seeing the
interior of the palace, and many other things we had not
been able to achieve.

But alas for the confiding nature of Britons, and the
deceit of mercenary mandarins! When they returned to the
settlement some six days afterwards, they had a very
indifferent tale to tell. The small officials had fleeced, or
rather, in the pigeon-English vernacular, ‘ squeezed,’ them
whenever they got the least chance, and they had carried them
on to Shin Yang, and there decamped ; leaving the unlucky
men to grope about the city without a guide, thwarted by
the police when they assayed to get on the wall, and altogether
ignorant of the situation of the palace.

At Newchwang the people were as uncivil and rude as
ever, but we got through all right, and after journeying at the
rate of fifty-five miles a day, on those trusty ponies of ours,
we were safely housed among Europeans, grasshoppers and
larks, and in full receipt of the uncongenial odours that hang
about that putrescent cesspool, Ying-tsze.

Our steeds had actually improved in performing what must
have been well nigh seven hundred miles over a rough country,
at nothing less of an average than forty miles a day, and on
such miserable fare, too, as bran and chopped straw; so that
it was not to be wondered at that they should realise more
at Ying-tsze than they cost at Tien-tsin. We felt it a little
trying to part with such hardy servants, on whose gaunt frames
we had passed some long weary days; but there was no al-
ternative. Mafoo, a thorough citizen of the world, did not care
about going back to Tien-tsin again, so took service with one
of the newly-settled merchants, stronger than ever in his pre-
dilections for Samshu.
554 H. M. SHIP ‘ ODIN.’

The early sailing of the ‘ Odin’ for the mouth of the Peiho
gave us an excellent and fortuitous opportunity of returning
to our garrison and duty again ; and through the courtesy of
Lord John Hay, and the sailorly kindness of the ward-room
officers, we were favoured with a passage across the Gulf, and
the best cheer the mess could afford.

The weather was so delightful and the yellow waters so
tranquil that it was considered but little out of the ship’s
course to touch at the termination of the Great Wall, where
it abuts on the sea. Strange sensations were recalled when
the shore was sighted, and the Scottish-like mountains stood
there, grand in their heavenward ruggedness, but divested of
the savage majesty which so ennobles the Grampians, by that
tremendous crowning effort of human labour and endurance
seen in lines of masonry and fearless towers, binding and
manacling the riotous peaks, until nature seems to succumb
to the power and perseverance of man; for the giant cliffs
sink into insignificance, as the eye courses for miles, and
without interruption, along their loftiest borders, and finds
the mammoth barrier exultingly overleap them all.

As we drew closer to the land, the quiet road along which
we had passed many days before, full of uncertainty and
hope, became visible; the old battlemented towers stood
along its margin, like antiquated men-at-arms, frowning sea-
wards; and the yellow sand, the green millet, and shreds of
inhabited land were all that met the searching gaze. It was
necessary, for several reasons, to anchor at some distance
from the shore; so we had a long pull to reach the wall,
which, as it finishes its prolonged march in a junction with the
eastern sea, resembles very much some old Rhenish castle.
Imagine our astonishment to find the brickwork face of its
foundation daubed with white paint in large letters, and in
German, testifying that the Prussian Frigate ‘ Arcona’ had
visited this place on the 16th of July, four days after our
departure from Shan-hai-kwan. However remarkable it may
REVISITING THE WALL. 555

have been for one of the few Prussian war-ships to stray so
far from Fatherland, it certainly did not add much to the
renown of the Kaiser, whose title was stumped up in the
lonely placard, or of those who had indulged in this repre-
hensible habit, and we were pleased to observe that no traces
could be found of any such silly vanity in our countrymen,
though many ships had touched here belonging to Britain,
since 1841.

What struck everybody was the great solidity of the wall,
standing as it does on a low rocky promontory, and the
little damage time has been able to inflict upon it in two
thousand years.

We walked some distance along its parapet, and with no
small emotion singled out that tower-mounted peak, then
becoming gradually imperceptible in the approaching dusk of
evening—where, on that fearful 12th of July, I had begun
my hard day’s struggle for life with the furious sun, and
behind which, in some of thé never-to-be-sought chasms, lay
our thermometer and aneroid.

A number of poor villagers came to look at the strangers, and
they were no ways backward in lending themselves to carry
away a few of the splendid, but rather cumbersome bricks, as
trophies of the call we had made:—trophies which, I fear,
were not carried many thousand miles before they were
discarded.

The lateness of the hour did not admit of our walking so
far as Shan-hai-kwan, so content with having done the ten
thousand li barrier a second time, we sought the ship. In
three days more we were navigating the perplexing links of
the Peiho, and had launched into the furnace-heat and
foulness of Tien-tsin; where, during our absence, sickness
had been playing havoc among the troops, and had been
changing some of the bronzed faces of friends and brother
officers into yellow and pale physiognomies, very unlike their

home hue.
556 RETURN TO TIEN-TSIN.

Our successful journey had been quite a feat, and our safe
arrival within the walls of a British garrison town again,
without having lost by stealth the smallest article of the
equipment we had started with, redounded greatly to the
credit of the Chinese; indeed everything conspired to leave
upon. our minds a delightful recollection of our travel
through this truly wonderful country.
557

CHAPTER XXIX.

A BRIEF NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY BEYOND PEKING, TO THE COAL-MINES.

HE list of my school-day books, besides the other varied
accounts of travel by land and sea, penned by writers
and travellers of near and remote ages, all quoted the then, to
me, wondrously curious narrative of the unfortunate Vene-
tian, Marco Polo; and though many years have passed away
since I admiringly lingered over the perusal of his seemingly
fabulous recital of the extent and peculiarities of the strange
land in which he had so long been a dweller, yet, by oft-
repeated readings and a natural taste for remarkable tales,
every page left its due impression on a mind fully awakened
in after-years to the truth of what the honest Polo had
vouched for, when on a visit to the land of Sinim; and more
especially to the city of Cambalu, the abode of the Grand
Khan.

The long strings of tawny funereal-paced camels, begrimed
with the carbonaceous loads they bore with such melancholy-
looking fortitude, conducted by sooty Sinensians through the
wide dusty streets of Peking; the sonorous tinkling of the
heavy brass bells suspended to the lower part of their acutely
bent-up necks, and the frequent shrill discordant scream of
anger or fatigue emitted by these slow but patient creatures,
told of the neighbourhood of coal, and the statement made by
the protégé of Kublai Khan, was immediately recalled to my
memory.

‘ Throughout the whole province of Cathay, there are a kind
558 PEKING.

of black stones cut from the mountains in veins, which burn
like logs. They maintain the fire better than wood. If you
put them on in the evening they will preserve it the whole
night, and will be found burning in the morning.’

So a strong desire to visit the source of this mineral wealth,
excited by last year’s stay at Peking, mainly prompted me to
travel from Tien-tsin to the capital in the fiery heat of August
1861, and to undergo the pleasant hardships of a river trip
of six days’ duration. After revisiting the various sights of
the great metropolis, and experiencing the usual amount of
fatigue in threading the long, wide, hovel-margined streets,
to get a peep at the external walls of some Imperial build-
ing—like all the others, in a state of uninterrupted decay ; or
to obtain the dusty scrutiny of a neglected park or garden
through the mouldering bars of a tumble-down gate, I de-
termined that a trip to the hills should be had recourse to, in
order to indulge my desire to examine the coal mines beyond
Peking, as well as to get rid of the feeling of dreariness and
desolation that made itself evident after two days’ rambling
through the vast labyrinths on every side, notwithstanding
the kind attentions of Her Majesty’s representative, and the
almost regal splendour and hospitality to be found in the
ambassadorial residence of Liang-koong-fu.

So on a lovely morning, and before the sun had begun to
fulfil his broiling functions, a small party of us mounted a
somewhat disreputable-looking stud of mules in the courtyard
of our host. Accommodating the inferior end of our spinal
columns, and twisting our legs into the intricacies of rickety
wooden saddles, we were soon in motion and threading the
busy streets in the vicinity of the Chinese city. We passed
through a narrow dirty lane, not far from the middle wall,
one side of which was lined by a collection of mouldy old
houses or dens and squalid occupants.

‘There,’ said our guide, pointing to one more venerable and
repulsive than the others, ‘is the inn for tribute bearers in
LORD MACARTNEY. 559

general, and the Coreans in particular, when these half
savages come to Peking to settle accounts with the Son of
Heaven, and do the homage of a tributary people.’

As I almost loathingly cast my eyes over its mean exte-
rior, and the vilely odorous neighbourhood in which it is
situated, I was horrified when told that ‘in this inn for
tribute bearers, one of our Ambassadors, with his suite, was
obliged to live during his stay and attendance on the haughty
court;’ but now, within five hundred yards of the place, the
British ensign flies over the princely residence of another
minister, who, I hope, is viewed in a very different light
to that of a tribute bearer by the functionaries who surround
the Dragon Throne.

An hour’s ride carries us from the stenches and puddles of
the uncomfortable streets to the open country. Fine roads,
dry and level, shaded by old trees, and skirted by neat-
looking villages embosomed in leafy solitude, remind me of
some of the pleasantest nooks in England, and certainly give
one a favorable impression of the rural beauty that encircles
the City of the Plain. Fantastic temples covering great
spaces of ground, and in good repair, are here and there
exchanged for a tall ridge-ribbed pagoda, or ruinous struc-
tures, the yellow-tiled roofs of which, gaping and rent and
tottering on walls or pillars, seem to be the remains of former
imperial magnificence, and, like everything else within the
city, indicate a state of prosperity and wealth gone by, a state
very unlike the present.

About 20 li from Peking, in a south-west direction, we
leave the cultivated country behind us, and emerge on an
open sandy plain, quite devoid of interest and of life; for,
until we reach Loo-gu-chow, five li a-head, we only meet with
a petty cavalry mandarin, escorted by two tatterdemalions on
gaunt semi-domesticated ponies.

Loo-gu-chow, standing on the left bank of a tolerably wide
river, the Huin Hé, is a walled town of a very antiquated
560 BRIDGE AT LOO-GU-CHOW.

type, and apparently in a state of collapse, despite the spas-
modic efforts half-a-dozen workmen were making to improve
the appearance of one of the hemiplegic wall towers by
whitewash—possibly to deceive the eye of some corrupt sub-
inspector of Celestial fortifications. The wall, once strong
and high, was in many places parapet-less, and, with the
ditch, was rapidly hiding itself under high banks of drift sand
that had scaled to the top of the north side.

Here we breakfasted; but as neither the hostel nor mine
host could gain any credit by a description of the strong-
smelling compounds set before us in a thoroughly character-
istic manner, in a room which, we could safely say, was never
troubled by the profane touch of a brush or invaded by the
faintest trace of pure air, we need not recommend the place
to any future traveller; more especially as the charges made
far exceeded the value of our entertainment.

Nowhere in China have we seen a finer stone bridge than
that which spans the rusty-coloured mud-laden river close to
the town, built, as it is, in the most substantial manner, and
yet with an elegance of outline and justness of proportion
quite surprising to those who fancy that these structures are
only to be found in perfection in Western countries.

I can specially commend this pons elegans to the favorable
consideration of wandering artists, and think that, with the
two or three peristyled buildings containing the mythical
sea-horse bearing Fohi’s stone tablets, at one extremity of
the bridge, the wide and graceful expanse of the foot and
carriage ways, and the handsome stone parapet surmounted
by no less than 280 tutelary lions, a worthy and, perhaps,
unique picture would be given of this species of architecture,
which is certainly curious.

The left bank of the Huin H6, which flows in a winding
manner from the western mountains and in a south-easterly
direction, is faced and well built, up to a height of twelve or
fourteen feet, for several miles, with blocks of granite, with
COAL-LADEN CAMELS. 561

the object, apparently, of preventing its overflow, and sub-
merging the country in the direction of Peking.

On the right bank, and away beyond to the undulating
ground at the foot of the hills, the Jand is low and sandy;
and as we approached Wool-an-gan, a village 43 li from
Peking, we found it becoming thickly covered with water-
worn pebbles and boulders—the débris carried from the
mountains by the river, the bed of which had now become
much more limited and defined.

About mid-day the foot of the hills is reached, and in the
village of Le-end-tswang we avail ourselves of the cordial
hospitality offered by the chief priest of the clean, tidy
temple of Foong-foo-tsza. We are n®ar the coal mines; for
in the distance, passing along a road pretty well cleared of
stones, we can see the sombre ‘ships of the desert,’ stalking
in solemn array in single files, preceded or followed by
sturdy, quick-stepping ponies laden, like the camels, with
the ‘black stones from the mountains,’ whith are stowed in
bags, and fastened on serviceable pack saddles instead of
pads. In answer to our enquiries, the priests inform us that
the largest mae-shan or coal hill, is fifty li off, but that a
small one is now before us, and within six li; so, as quickly
as we can lodge our mules in the airy stables maintained for
the accommodation of equestrians, we set out for the long-
desired survey.

Everywhere we meet with the utmost civility, though the
people were moved by the most unmistakeable symptoms of
curiosity, oftentimes, indeed, unmitigated by the filmiest
polish of civilization; yet their remarks and their conduct
were in every respect inoffensive, and they showed themselves
always ready to oblige us when the fear, inspired by the
ta hoosas or great beards, as they called us, had passed away.
In the village, we were surprised to find the houses slated
after the European fashion, and an abundance of slate of a
bluish-yellow tinge, with as perfect a cleavage as the best

00
562 ROAD TO THE COAL-HILLS.

Welsh. Though the principal use to which the rock is put
is as roofing: yet large square slabs are found in readiness to
serve as tables, or as the material for enclosing the small plots
of ground in front of every house, wherein the vegetables
required for family use are preserved from the inroads of
dogs or pigs.

As we begin to ascend the low rounded hills which contain
the coal we find that their structure is essentially slaty ;
large masses of the finest slate rock, torn and rifted here and.
there, as if nature had purposely split up and laid bare this
great deposit of compact stratified rock for the special use of
man, who, however, is slow to avail himself of the oppor-
tunity; as in no other village did we see this most useful
article pressed into the list of necessaries required for domestic
purposes, though the labour entailed would have been
insignificant.

A narrow gorge leads from the road in a tortuous manner
up the sides of the hills; and where it presents difficulties in
the way of ascent, steps of mica-slate or gneiss are made to
facilitate the transport of baskets of coal from above, by men
and boys. A mountain stream affords water to, the clusters
of mean cottages grouped along the narrow track, and smutty
men are removing the dust accumulated during the day at a
pool which has been dammed up in its course.

The smooth round surface of the higher hills is thinly
covered with a peculiar variety of oak —a dwarfish scrubby
tree of little beauty — yet affording an agreeable contrast to
the sterile grey mountains of granite beyond, which throw
up their jagged fantastic margins to the clouds in an unin-
terrupted line, far as the eye can reach.

The presence of coal in the rocky regions we are now
traversing is made more manifest by the abundance of clay
slate strewing the track, in which is thickly disseminated
fragments of iron stone; while thin streaks of coaly matter
are observable wherever the road has been cut deeply through
A CHINESE MINER. 563

the shoulder of a bank. At length, after half-an-hour’s
toiling upwards, we arrive at a coal yard. Unluckily we are
too late, for the workmen are preparing to go home for the
day, and the small collections of coal, heaped up in several
places, are being carefully streaked or dribbled over with
whitewash, to mark whether any one may attempt to disturb
or borrow from the lots durmg the night—a practice which,
if we remember aright, is in vogue in our own coal depits.
We enquire for the pit, and are conducted to a little shed,
built over a small perforation in the ground, which seems to
us little larger than a rabbit-burrow, and with wooden bars
or steps fixed in the earth for the purpose of ascent or descent
on the rather steep slope which leads into Cimmerian
obscurity below. We notify that we are anxious to go
down, but no volunteer will accompany us. We are referred
to the proprietor of a mine, a long way higher up; so we
have no alternative but to withdraw, after remarking that the
only means of ventilation consists in the use of a small
primitive-looking fanner driven by one man.

We were more fortunate at the other establishment; for,
after grappling with the difficulties of the way, we find that,
though rather late, the master civilly allows one of his men
to show us the mouth of the pit, which is a new one, and
built over, like the one below, by a small shed in which a
large coal fire is kept burning, probably to cause a draught to-
wards the interior excavation, and thus aid in ventilating the
work, for we can see nothing of fanners here. We desire to
penetrate to its hidden recesses, but the Chinese say it is
very unpleasant, because it is steep, wet, and dirty. These
objections we care nothing for; and, at last, the guide puts on
his head a closely-fitting old cap, over which he slips the
string of a lamp—the very fac-simile of those used in going up
and down pits at home—then puts on a suit of coaly clothes,
and when ready to go below is the exact picture of a
Lancashire or Newcastle miner. We pull off cap, coat, and

oo 2
564 A COAL-PIT.

braces, and turning our faces towards the steps, as if about
to climb or descend a ladder, we stoop very low in order to
enter the constricted circular opening, which leads to im-
penetrable darkness and unknown depths.

The guide goes first, and is very fidgetty, as he looks
upwards and finds us making a very clumsy beginning,
clinging to the rude wooden bars, which are fixed, like the
rounds of a ladder, in the damp ground. His cautions are
numerous, and we are soon able to avail ourselves of his
directions and stride slowly backwards and downwards into
the realms below, like an earthworm, with the faint glimmer
of the lamp barely revealing the features of the narrow
passage we are creeping through. At an angle of about
45°, or even less, this hole is drilled through a thick stratum
of what seems to be mica-schist, loose and soft in texture,
and necessitating the témbering of the roof with rude frames of
the stunted, but apparently durable oak, to prevent its falling
in. Every fourteen or fifteen feet of this shaft, we calculated,
possessed a gradual turn or twist, so that this highly inclined
subterranean way worms its road down through the rock in a
spiral direction. Passing through the beds of softer rocks,
which allow the water to permeate their substance, and drip
in icy globules on our heads and on the floor of the shaft, we
come to a very deep layer of what must be a blue compact
limestone, which must have cost a vast amount of labour and
patience to penetrate, and which the guide calls bad rock.
Still downwards, until we have counted a hundred and
twenty long strides, and until our heads are becoming stupid,
and our arms and legs well tired with the dark uncertain
path and the irregular way in which the steps are fixed.

When we have half repented of our anxiety to explore a
Chinese coal-pit, and have fully realised the danger that
might result did we lose our hold, or did some of those huge
blocks of hard stone, sustained overhead by such slender
props, happen to fall in, we are glad to find the lamp and its
RAISING THE COAL. 565

bearer brought to a standstill, and to hear the voice of the
gnome calling to us to stop and look. We have reached a
gallery, narrow and wet, running along the surface of the
coal, which some excavators have been digging up from the
floor. We goto the end, which is about twenty feet from the
shaft; and then the cicerone telling us that this is not a good
place for coal, beckons us to follow him back to the shaft,
where he removes a small trap-door from another passage—
which door, he tells us, is to divert the air from one gallery
to another—and we once more commence a march downwards
for thirty strides, until we are again brought to a halt bya series
of branching galleries running to the right and left, which
are the seat of more active operations. The place is now
lonely and still, however, for the people have gone home, with
the exception of one boy, whose twinkling lamp comes across
us quite unexpectedly at a turn of the passage. He is also
leaving, but he carries with him, or rather drags behind him,
the proceeds of his mining, in a long shallow basket mounted
on two wooden skids. This truck is painfully and laboriously
dragged up the circling foramen, until it gets to the surface,
by means of a rope band passed over the shoulder and
allowed to play between the legs, while the bearer is puffing
and blowing with the light draught of about twenty-five
pounds of coal behind him.

Remarking that, though no means of ventilation exists, the
pit nevertheless feels cool, and the air is not unpleasant;
the man, who is very intelligent and communicative, informs
us that it is a new pit; but that in the old pits accidents are
frequent from the entrance of bad wind, the want of drain-
age, and the giving way of the roof; and that when this
happens, the work is deserted, and an opening is made in
fresh ground.

Having stretched our backs in the somewhat lofty passage,
and finding myself perfectly satisfied with what T had seen of
the very imperfect way in which the black stones are procured |
566 IMPERTINENT QUESTIONS.

from the mountains,— but which has probably not been
improved since the days when Polo looked upon their use as
something marvellous, we retrace our steps, and after a long
toil emerge once again to the fast-fading daylight.

I could not leave the place, however, without asking why
our Chinese friends did not quarry the coarse stony anthra-
cite from the side of the hill, instead of beginning on its apex,
and burrowing through beds and strata of tough unmanage-
able rocks, from the bowels of which they are obliged to carry
up the sought-for treasure, without the means of supplying
fresh air, or draining off the water that quickly accumulates
in troublesome quantity. But they grinned, and did not care
about answering such impertinent interrogations, which had
for their object only puzzling surmises and unfeasible propo-
sitions, quite incompatible with the stereotyped notions and
rules of Chinese antiquity.

It was dusk when we reached our temple, where hunger
made us right willing to appease its demands on savoury
viands strongly redolent of pork fat.

The priests did their best to furnish amusement, and more
especially one little man, who appeared to be deemed a pro-
ficient on the flute: for aught I know his solos extended
far into the night, as I soon went to sleep, and only awoke
when warned that it was high time to start for Peking.
Missing Page
Missing Page
INDEX.

ALB

Fi are an, the only one seen by
the author in China, 272
ate neatly painted and decorated,

Alum-stick, the, a household necessary
in China, 33

Amaranth, the, a kind admired by the
country people, 88

Animals, kindness of the Chinese to, 218

An-shan, the, a river of Mantchuria,
forded by the author, 500

Architecture, Chinese, tottering and
dilapidated appearance of, 180

Arrows, Tartar, tipped with square iron
spikes, 198

Arrowwort, Sagitte Foliwm, the edible
root of, 270

Artist, a Chinese, extravagant demand
made for some clever etchings by,
551

Author, the, travelling equipment of,
1

Autograph-hunters in Han-chung, 117

ANKS, river, effects of ferruginous
impregnation on, 282
Baskets, made of reed, for entrapping
fish, 280
Baths, Chinese, a disagreeable one, 19;
an account of, with a description of
the operations performed in, 429, eé

seq. ;

Here, nocturnal disturbance caused by,
46; fondness of the Chinese for, 47 ;
regarded as the type of longevity, 2b.

Beans, the oil of, used for lighting
apartments, 32 me

Beauty, a Chinese, natural and artificial
adornments of, 160; costume of, 161.

Beggars, Chinese, importunity of, in
Tien-tsin, 18; uncomfortable position
of, 70; amputation of the tail of, 7.

Bell, John, of Antermony, allusion to his
visit to China in the suit of a Russian
diplomatic mission, 379

 

CEN

Bill, tavern, a Chinese landlord’s, 49

Bird-catching, the process adopted
the Chinese in, 454; use of train
hawks in, 2.
Bird-slaughtering, extent to which ci
ried by Chinese tradesmen, 277
Blacksmith, Mantchu, simple and e:
cient bellows of, 394

Blue-button, a, friendly conduct of, 1

Boatmen, Chinese, attempted extorti
of exorbitant fares by, 171

Bogue, the river, first entrance of j
reigners into, 305

Bow, the Tartar, our landlord’s skill a
strength in bending, 199; pecul
rests for practising the use of, 200

Braves, Celestial, their qualifications
soldiers, 56; their inability to sta
the sound of cannon, 57 ; power of €
durance displayed by two wounded,

Buckthorn, Chinese, or Rhamr
Theezans, 127

Buddha, Fingers of, the, a species
citron, 179

Bullocks, the operation of shoeing, 4(

eS used in conveying co:
from the mines to Peking, 561

Cangue, the, a peculiar Chinese punis
ment, 373

Carp, contrivances for catching, 280

Carriage, a Mandarin travelling, 82

Carts, with triangular flags, convoy
81; description of village, 84

Castor-oil plant, the seeds of, used as
article of food, 108

Cavalry, Chinese, the long gowns we
by, 319

Cave, a mountain, near the Great We
welcome rescue from the murderc
heat of the sun in, 356

Cement, white, cisterns of, for the mac
ration or fermentation of indigo plai
not yet in flower, 120

Centre, Empire of the, Chinese accot
568 INDEX.

CER

of the first appearance of foreigners
in, 305

Cereals, light-stemmed, advantage of
sowing alternately with strong-stalked
millet, 282

Chang-le-Shan, the, a range of hills
near the town of Chang-le-Tow, 221

Chang-pih-Shan, the ‘Long White
Mountain, report regarding the great
lake on the summit of, 154

Chang-le-Tow, a city, fortifications of,
220; the Northern gate of, 221;
speculations regarding the hostile
preparations displayed on the em-
battled walls of, 222 ; beautiful moun-
tain temple near, 223; disappearance
of our travelling cart near the walls
of, 2.; filthy appearance of the in-
terior of, 224; our search for Mafoo
and the missing cart through the
streets of, 223-225

Chautsung, Emperor of China, murder
of, by Choo, 44; assassination of the
nine sons of, 2b.

Che-tur, the hamlet of, our arrival at,
71; curiosity of the inhabitants of,
2b.; inquisitive visitors during break-
fast at, 77; portraits of Tartar beau-
ties in the inn of, 78

Children, village, strange appearance of,
114; fantastic arrangement, in tufts
and tails, of the hair of, 115

Chili, province of, general appearance
and purer atmosphere of, 106; im-
proved condition and living of the
people in, 7b.; view of the hoary
mountain barriers of granite on the
confines of, and beautiful cosmorama
of wavy vegetation in, 107; extent
to which the cultivation of the soil is
carried in, 2b.; cultivation of melons,
ming-wha, maize, and plants affording
a blue dye in, 108; description of the
gardens of, 109; our departure from,
374

China, our first unsuccessful attempt in
the language of, 24 ; chivalrous period
in the history of, 60; decline of the
military art in, 64; strange incon-
sistencies among the people of, 68;
antagonistic theories of the legal code
of, 2b. ; superabundant population of,
70; mountain scenery of, 87; way-
side draw-wells in, 111; an unusually
demonstrative native of, 126; small
influence, in modifying or directing
the progress of other nations, exerted
by, 181; scarcity of monuments, and
neglect of the arts of sculpture and
carving in, 181-182; a rainy day in,
212; use of expensive furs in, 239;

 

CHI

warm clothing used in, 240; compo-
sition of the mountains on the margin
of the Great Plain of, 844; the pre-
Christian history of, 335; origin of
the name of, 836; allusion to the
devastations caused by the Japanese
in, 377; diversity in the race and ap-
pearance of the population of, 433;
stereotyped representations of Euro-
peans by the artists of, 434; physiog-
nomical peculiarities of the natives
of the North and South of, 434;
necessity of caution while travelling
in British costume in the large towns
of, 501; early hours of business ob-
served by the inhabitants of the large
commercial cities of, 502; obstinate
obstructiveness of government offi-
cials in, 548

China, North, extremes of temperature
experienced in, 2,3; the bitter night
winds of, 5; leave granted to the
author to travel in, 8; preparations
for an expedition to the northern con-
fines of, 10, e¢ seg.; conduct of the
British and French soldiers in, 21-2 ;
use and abuse of the English language
in, 25; the music and musical ama-
teurs of, 130; musical funeral pro-
cessions in, 131; antagonism of
Southern China to, 187; attention to
education manifested in, 150; land-
fence to protect the fields and gardens
against the drifting grit of the sand-
wastes in, 151; diversified landscape,
with granite or limestone ridges, in,
152; an Arcadia in, 166; a comfort-
able inn occupied by the author in,
177; the houses, and their arrange-
ment, in, 179—83 ; prevalence of ab-
surd superstitions in, 187; spells for
the subjugation of evil spirits used by
the natives of, 188; a peculiar prepa-
ration used as fuel in, 198; travelling
in rainy weather on the roads of, 214;
the author caught by a heavy storm
while travelling in, 216; an open-air
theatre frequented by the natives of,
228; great prevalence of the custom
of cramping and confining the feet in,
231; manner of dressing the hair fol-
lowed by the natives of, 233; the
Pariah dog of, 2b.; cheerful travellers
encountered in, 237; the author and
his companion lose their way while
travelling in, 247; difficulties of tra-
velling over the flooded roads of, 266 ;
timidity occasionally displayed by the
natives of, 7b.; equestrian travellers
encountered in, 267; the straggling
wheel-barrow men of, 7b.; inaccuracy
INDEX.

CHI

in recent maps of, 310; morbid influ-
ence produced by the summer morn-
ing’s sun of, 321; resemblance, to
those of Europe, of the instruments
used in the workshops of, 395

China, South, character of the inhabit-
ants of, 140; renegade natives of 141.

Chinese, the, cruel treatment of prisoners
by, 683; the brute courage of, 2b.;
characteristic indifference of, 84; the
agricultural industry of, 110; perse-
vering curiosity of, 124, e¢ passim;
general decent attire and honesty of,
206; kindness displayed to animals
by, 218; the costume of, 240; cool
underclothing worn by, 244; illus-
tration of the wonderful ingenuity
and industry of, 270; knowledge of
the use of fire-arms said to have been
received from captured Japanese by,
378; mild field-sport of, 383; ancient
use of tobacco, and disagreeable me-
thod of smoking by, 439; the utilita-
rian sentiments of, 486 ; allusion to the
abominable habits of, 548

Chinese, Northern, the reverence for old
age manifested by, 205; comfortable
clothing worn by, 241; quantity of
suits of clothes worn in winter by,
242; important point in the laws of
health attended by, 244; indifference
to personal cleanliness manifested by,
427; fondness for song-birds univer-
sally exhibited by, 453; skill in
teaching birds to perform various
vocal feats displayed by, 455

Choo, General, the history of, 38 ;
usurpation of the throne by, 43;
cruelty, under the influence of super-
stition, exercised by, 45; murder of
Chinese literati by, 7b.; the murder
of, by his son Moo-te, 46

Chow-foo-Shan, a range of hills, 225

Chow-foo, the village of, signboard of
an inn in, 226

Chung-hue-soh, a large and busy town,
408; uncomfortable night at an inn
outside the walls of, 409; extensive
environs of, 410

Chung ta-tau, the, or Middle Road from
Kai-ping to the Great Wall, 142

Chung-Yung, the, or the Happy Me-
dium, the road selected by our cart-
man for travelling to the Great Wall
by, the difficulties of, 143

Clay-slate, iron, 282 .

Coal, in the beds of mountain streams,
traces of, 282 :

Coal-mines, the, beyond Peking, the
author’s determination to visit, 558 ;
slaty structure of the hills containing,

 

569
DRA

562; mountain steps of mica slate or
gneiss to assist in conveying baskets
of coal from, 2b.; objections made to
granting us permission to descend
into, 563; thick layer of blue com-
pact limestone observed in one of,
564; dangerous means of descent
into, 2b. ; accidents in the galleries of,
565 ; impertinent questions regarding
the method of working in, 566

Comet, the, surprised by the unexpected
appearance of, 37; old-fashioned tale
regarding one, 38

Commissioner, Imperial Chinese, leave
to travel obtained from, 10

Confucius, reported destruction, by the
Emperor Tche-hwane-ti, of the wri-
tings of, 337

Cookery, Chinese, a disgusting specimen
of, 128

Cook-shop, a Chinese, singular delicacies
displayed in, 249

Coolies, Chinese, in Tien-tsin, 17

Coo-yah, the town of, author’s arrival
at, 183; market-day scenes in, 134;
display of Yang-row at the butchers’
stalls of, 135; articles prepared in
the cooking and eating establishments
of, 145; pony, mule, and donkey
market at, 146; parties of donkey-
riders returning from market at, 147

Corea, the palisade preventing the Chi-
nese invasion of, 545

Coreans, the, course of the author on
the track of, 375

Cormorant, the fishing, 272

Costume, the Chinese, curiosities of,
75; ease and comfort of, 238; sum-
mer and winter forms of, 239, et seq.

Cotton-plant, See Ming-wha.

Courier, Russian, from Peking to Khe-
ata, astonishing ride on a Tartar pony
by, 79

Cow-chow-wah, a bustling village, mid-
day halt at, 884; caravansary for the
benefit of travellers at, 385

Cows, beautiful small, amusement of
the Chinese in witnessing our at-
tempts to milk, 468

Curiosity, Chinese, amusing instance of,
206, et passim

pe a singular Chinese, 10.

Dogs, Chinese, race and appearance
of, 263-4; human flesh sometimes de-
voured by, 205; different breeds of,
2b.; Mantchurian hunting, 2d.

Doors, a curious contrivance for closing,
124

Draw-wells, wayside, amid half circles
570 INDEX.

DU

of emerald green willows, 112; pleas-
ing assembly of the gossiping village
patriarchs around, 114.

Du Halde, Father, account of the coun-
ae lying beyond Liautoong given by,

ELS, contrivances for catching, 280.
Ee-ma-tschwan, the pretty village of,
spring well at, 105
England, Chinese ignorance of, 436
English, Chinese, specimens of, 25.
English, the, strange opinions of the
Northern Chinese regarding, 306
Eunuchs, Chinese, the number and cha-
racter of, 89; Choo’s massacre of,
41

Ye a Mantchu boy of
royal descent, tradition of, 156

Fan-inscribing, a day’s labour at, 118

Farmhouse, a, contents of a humble
dormitory in, 469

Felt, an excellent kind made by the
Northern Chinese, 242

Females, Chinese, disturbance caused
among, by the sudden appearance of
the author and his travelling com-
panion, 228

Ferries, over rivers, maintained in lieu
of bridges by the Government, 172

Firebricks, Chinese, preparation of,
198

Fireside, the English, disquisition on,
196

Fish, ingenious method employed by
the Chinese in catching large quan-
tities of, 271, 280

Florin, an English, exaggerated delight
of a Chinese ferryman on receiving,
264

Fily-catchers, Paradise, an exquisite and
singular little bird, 458

Fé, the God, Chinese Paradise pro-
mised by, 268

Fohi, traditions of, 85

Fontinalia, the, the truly grateful and
sanctified festivals of, 358

Forts, circular, of Mantchuria, the sup-
posed object and probable history of,
376-

Franks, the, or Fa-lan-ki, first appear-
ance of, in China, 305

Fung-tai, the larger town of, turn-out
of the population on our arrival at,
96; the houses and shops of, 104;
manufacturing industry of, 7b.; de-
scription of the road leading from
the suburbs of, 2.; improved ap-

 

HAN

pearance of the country after pass-
‘ing, 105 :

Fungseén, the flower from which the
brownish-yellow dye for colouring
the nails is obtained, 161

Fung-whang-ting, a town at the gate of
the same name in the palisade se-
parating Corea from Mantchuria,
375

Fung-whang, the gate by which the
Coreans are admitted into Tartary,
545

Furs, various expensive kinds of, used
in China, 239-40

GAS minister of the Emperor
Shin-tsung, the unpopular militia
of, 64

Gardens, Chilian, description of, 109

Gnats, a night concert of, 35

Goat, a diminutive black kind of, pecu-
liar to the country, 73

Gods, Chinese household, description
of, 191

Gold-fish, a curious-looking kind of,
179

Golgothas, horrid Chinese, 175

Granite, mountains of, in the province
of Chili, 107 ; abundance of, in China,
180; limited use of, in building, 2. ;
our journey impeded by masses of,
281; a beautiful cream-coloured kind
occasionally used in building, 448;
mountains of grey-coloured, 562

Grasshopper, the Great Green, confined
in cages by the inhabitants of Ying-
tsze, 491

Graveyards, Chinese industry in plough-
ing, scraping, and sowing, 111

Grocer, a Chinese, our unceremonious
intrusion into the back parlour of,

Guardhouse, Chinese, lonely situation
of, 54; display of arms on the walls
of,

Gulf, the, or Eastern Sea, view of, from a
as peak near the Great Wall,
324

Gymnastics, Tartar, military training
in, 202

AIR-DRESSING, fantastic North
Chinese methods of,
Halting-place, our first night’s, 30
Hanchung, commotion of the natives
on our unexpected arrival at, 115;
comments on our appearance, cos-
tume, and mode of writing, made by,
inhabitants of, 116; amusing inquisi-
INDEX.

HAR

tiveness of a respectable spectacled
old gentleman at, 117; autograph
hunters of, 7b.

Hares, practice of hunting, with hawks
and dogs, 382-3

Hay, Lord John, unexpected meeting
with, in North China, 552

Heat, solar, in Northern China, oppress-
sive effects of, 1, et seg.

Heath, a wild and desolate, our progress
over, 51

Hien-Fung, the ‘Abundant Plenty,’
the death of, 38

Hollyhocks, pink and red, 88

Hong-kong, a peripatetic musician in,
130; quarrels among the female do-
mestics of a lady at, 188

Hoopoe, the, amusing coquetry of, 153

Horse-dealer, a roguish Chinese, pur-
chase of a Tartar pony from, 11

Horse-doctor, the, or Yi-ma of North
China and Tartary, appearance and
conversation of, 401; the case of
instruments used by, 403; vene-
section, and other operations, as
performed by, 404; knowledge of
anatomy possessed by, 405 ; method
of administering medicine followed
by, 7.; belief in the efficacy of
horse-flesh as a remedy for many
human ills maintained by, 407

Horse-shoe, the Tartar, description of,
400

Horse-shoe, the lucky, use of, in North
China, 188

Horse-shoeing, method of, and instru-
ments used in, 400

Houses, first and middle class, court-
yards, and internal arrangements of,
184; grotesque display of Chinese
taste in the roofs of, 185 ; lofty struc-
ture of poles and lath in the main
courtyards of, 7b.; quarters for do-
mestics in, 186; use of calico and

aper in the windows of, 191-2;

feaceis and stoves used for warming
the apartments of, 192; sleeping
rooms in, 2b. ;

Huin-hé, the Muddy River, a tributary
of the Liau, scenery on the banks of,
518; substantial stone bridge over,
and granite facing of the left bank
of, 560; appearance of the country
on the right bank of, 561

Hun-Chow, a walled town in Mant-
churia, author’s arrival at, 384

Hwang-shing-hé, the, river, a branch
of the Pehtang-hé, 90

Hwa-Yen, the flowery language, Mr.
M.’s misgivings as to his knowledge
of, 15

 

571
KAL

DOL, the household, incense sticks
burnt before, 299 ;

Indifference, Chinese, characteristic il-
lustration of, 84

Indigo, greenish pak, cultivation of,
119; cisterns for the maceration of,
120

Inns, Chinese, the pests of, 33; scene of
confusion, and scarcity of accommo-
dation at one, 97; disturbance in, 98 ;
description of lumber-room occupied
by author in, 100; the door-fasten-
ings of, 124; scene of fun in, 126;
the tea served to guests in, 127; dis-
gusting dishes served up in, 128 ; un-
civil and extortionate landlord of,
187; floors aud walls of apartment
in, 190; increase as we approach the
Great Wall, in the number of, 281;
arrival at, and interior of, one newly
erected, 285-6

Inn, a mandarin’s, homage to the absent
Son of Heaven the only payment ex-
pected at, 370

Inscription, interesting, on a slab of
blue slate, translation of, 189

Interpreters, Chinese, engagement of,
12; the dislike to travel manifested
by, 18; compelled to start on our
journey without, 14; engagement of
one, whose services we had the good
fortune to lose, 189

Inundations, river, the causes and con-
sequences of, 53; less frequency, and
minor extent of, 26.

Tron-stone, clay, author’s difficult pro-
gress over rifted blocks of, 346

ADE-STONE, heavy ear-ring of,
worn by a Chinese beauty, 161
Japanese, the, invasions of China by, 377
Joss-shrine, the, position of, in a Chinese
house, 184

Juggler, a peripatetic Tartar, the tra-
velling cart, companions, and para-
phernalia of, 389

Junk, the Chinese, varieties of, 490

Ce the town of, internal ap-
pearance of an apothecary’s shop in,
122; suspicious salute by a group of
shop-keepers of, 2b.; dilapidated and
neglected appearance of, 123; commo-
tion on our arrival at the inn of, 124;
how geese were sent up to table by the
cook of the inn at, 128 ; entertainment
after dinner by a wandering minstrel
of, 128; advantages of the different
roads to the Great Wall from, 142-3
572
KAN

Kang, the, a brick stove-bedplace in
Chinese apartments, 192; the fuel
and pit-filues for heating, 193; dis-
advantages and risks of, 194

Kanghi, the Emperor, magnificent. pil-
grimage of, 380; Father Verbiest’s
account of the progress of, 381;
ignoble way of conducting sport by
the followers of, 382

Kansu, the Province of Profound Peace,
progress of the Great Wall to, 380

Ke, a lovely damsel, tradition of, 155

Key-siang, the ‘Auspicious Omen,’
ascent of the Dragon throne by, 38

Kien Lung, the scholar sovereign of the
Mantchu race, tradition believed by,
153

Kih-yung, a Chinese rebel, cruel action
committed by, 63

Kin, the Golden Tribe, ancestors of the
Mantchus, tradition respecting the
origin of, 154

Kinchow, the second city beyond the
Great Wall, erroneously said to be
the port of Moukden, 416; signs of
our approach to, 420; the filthy
suburbs, 421; the walls, gates, and
guard-room of, 2b.; streets and shops
of, 422; gala appearance of one of
the streets of, 423; cheap purchases
made in, 7b.; characteristics of the
female inhabitants of, 426

Kioro, a wonderful character, ancestor
of the Kin, tradition respecting, 154

'

eS amphibious, 279

Lady, a Chinese, living near the
Great Wall, peculiar head-dress of, 290

Lagoon, a temporary, evidence of the
former existence of, at Tien-tsin, 53

Lakes, shallow fresh-water, hunting,
fishing, and gardening in, 270

Lamp, a, of primitive construction, used
in North China, 82

Lanchow, the town of, Pharos-like
pagoda at, 158; wall and towers of,
159; thick nail-studded gates of,
162; the commercial transactions of,
163; amusing attempts at English
conversation by the inquisitive inha-
bitants of, 163; novel kitchens and
eating houses of, 2b.; the Pagoda Hill
and little temples in the neighbour-
hood of, 166

Land, fact illustrative of the gradual
advance made on the sea by, 285

ce extortionate and uncivil,

Language, the native, disadvantages of
travelling in China without a know-
ledge of, 15

 

INDEX.

MAC

Lan-hé, the river, beautiful plain
watered by, 164; incidents of the last
Chinese war connected with, 165;
remarkable hilly landscape on the
banks of, 2b.; boat traffic on, 167 ; the
ferry over, 169; charming landscape
on the banks of, 173 .

Lares and Penates, the North Chinese,
191

Larks, crested, large flocks of, 152

Law, a strange old, alluded to in the
story of General Choo, 39 :

Le-end-tswang, the village of, hospi-
tality of the Chief Priest of the
Temple of Foong-foo-tsza in, 561 ;
the slated roofs of the houses of, 562

Le-how-choo, tradition relating 10, 230

Li, the different estimation of, in North
and South China, 415

Liatung, Gulf of, owr sensations on
hearing the surging waters of, 283.

Liau, the river, and its tributaries,
statements in old native geographers
regarding, 511

Liau-hé, the river, the tortuous course
of, 471; rich grain-growing country
on the banks of, 472: a cumbersome
ferry-boat on, 7b.; circuitous course
of, 482

Liau-yang, a city of Mantchuria, our
meeting with the guide appointed to
conduct us to, 498; troublesome
curiosity of the mob at an inn near,
501; scant historical information to be
gleaned respecting, 502; busy trading
and commercial aspect of, 503-4; the
samshu shops of, 504; gardens within
the walls of, 505 ; the pagoda of, 506 ;
departure by the gate of the Coreans
from, 508

Lilies, golden, a Chinese name for
cramped feet, 232

Longevity, universal use of the Chinese
character expressing, 185

Loo-gu-chow, an antiquated walled town
beyond Peking, 559

Lotus, or Water-lily, the Faba Agyp-
tiaca, abundant growth of, 267 ; pre-
ference entertained by the Chinese
for, 268; sale of the edible seeds, or
nuts, and the tubercles of, 269

Lou-peng, or consumption, immunity of
the Chinese from, 243

Lymneus Stagnalis, specimens of, seen
by the author, 53

AM first appearance of Hol-
landers at, 305

Macartney, Lord, Chinese chronicles of
the visit of, 305
INDEX.

MAC

Mactra, the, small bivalve shells re-
sembling, 53

Mafoo, our Chinese groom, dress and
appearance of, 16; dubbed our chef
de cuisine, 101; ludicrous aspect of,
in a thunder-storm, 216 ; fondness for
samshu manifested by, 459; comical
appearance, in an intoxicated state, at
the inn of Newchang, put in by, 477

Magpies, the white-scapulared, in North
China, the numbers of, 153; the
honours paid to, 156

Ma-gwa, the, a peculiar Chinese gar-
ment, 241

Maize, in Chili, the profitable culti-
vation of, 108

Mandarin, the travelling carriage of a,
82; amusing interview with a friendly
old, 315, e¢ seg.; conversation with a
loquacious but reserved young, 473;
gue of the military type on a journey,

Mandarins, an escort of, 83; general
want of candour exhibited by, 320;
Lord John Hay’s experience of the
deceitful ways of, 553

Mandarins, the Inn of the, uncertainty
and alarm caused by our appearance
at, 299; the internal arrangements
of, 298-9; the landlord’s refusal to
receive us in, 300; ludicrous and
amusing scenes at, 301; examination
of Mafoo at, 306

Mantchuria, origin of the name of, 156;
our entrance from the province of
Chili into, 374; Father Verbiest’s
allusion to the decay of various towns
in, 412; description of the grain-
laden wagons seen when travelling
in, 414; our unsuccessful attempts
to make their own language intelli-
gible to the natives of, 415; a farm-
house and pasture land in, 418; the
roadsides and embanked fields of,
420; superior appearance of the po-
pulation of, 433; a mishap while
travelling in, 436; gradual change of
the language in, 437; domination of
the Chinese in, 438; prevalence of
goitre among the females of, 2.;
growth of tobacco, and unusual pre-
valence of smoking in, 439; birds
tenanting the slimy pools of a bare
and miserable district of, 450; the
houses and marshes of the salt pro-
ducing portion of, 451; farm-houses,
and remarks on agricultural operations
in, 465-6; picture of a village school
in, 497-8; harvest time in, 501;
universal habit of wearing arms in,
513 ; bewilderment and curiosity even

 

573
MOU

of civil and well-behaved natives of,
517; indulgence in games of chance
by the natives of, 518; extent of
Chinese influence in, 544

Mantchus, the, traditional genealogy of,
154; tradition relating to the royal
race of, 156; a bulky family of, 386;
the children’s games prevalent among,
387 ; appearance and costume of the
women of, 2b.; the rustic theatres of,
388; weapons universally carried by,
390; first glimpses of the pastoral
life of, 892; the village industry of,
393; aversion to be regarded as
Tartars manifested by, 438

Manure, North and South Chinese
methods of preparing, 466

Marco Polo, erroneous statement of
(note), 543; boyhood recollections of
the wonderful narrative of, 557

Marsh, swampy, west of Tien-tsin, re-
claimed by Chinese industry, 270

Matchlocks, Chinese, the process of
loading, 276

Ma-yuen, a model Chinese warrior,
warlike sentiment of, 60; Chinese
historian’s description of the appear-
ance exhibited before the enemy by, 61

Meannow, a kind of thickly quilted
blue cotton, much used for clothing
by the poor Chinese, 241

Melons, dusky olive green, abundance
of, in Chili, 108

Mencius, reported destruction of the
writings of, 337

Militia, the, tricks of the Chinese pea-
santry to escape service in, 64

Millet, impenetrable jungles of, 108 ; the
stalks of, used with wood as a fuel, 198

Miners, remarkable resémblance be-
tween those in the coalpits of China,
and of Lancashire and Newcastle, 563

Ming-wha, the dwarfish, or cotton
plant, plots of in Chili, 108

Minstrels, wandering, 129

Mongol Tartars, the, or Mantchus, the
military qualities and power of en-
during pain exhibited by, 57; the
various names, and the character of,
838 ; policy of the Chinese in buying
over, 341

Moo-te, murder of his father, the Em-
peror Choo, by, and suicide of, 46

Mosquitoes, the night attentions of, 34 ;
agony caused by the bites of, 51;
gauze curtains used as a protection
against, 99 :

Moukden, the capital of Mantchuria,
Bacon’s advice to those about to make
the grand tour followed at, 532;
walls, parapet, and towers of, 533;
574
MOU

the eight gates, bird’s-eye view, and
plan of, 5384; the drum and bell
towers of, 535; the ancient palace of
the Tartar sovereigns in, 2b.; the
history of 536; the enthusiastic Kien-
lung’s eulogies of, 538; unparalleled
excitement in the streets, and in the
courtyard of the inn, on our arrival
at, 541; the names of, 542; inter-
course with a friendly merchant of,
541, e seg.; information regarding
the real Mantchu inhabitants of, 544 ;
disappointment in not obtaining ad-
mission to the palace of, 546; re-
ception room of the Emperor Shun-
che, and structure for his brothers
at, 547; popular report regarding the
transmission of money from Peking
to, 548; amusing excitement caused
by the sight of a European dinner at,
549; the temperature and salubrity
of, 550; extortionate demands of a
Chinese artist for a memento of, 551

Mountains near the Great Wall, ascent
of, and the bearings of various land-
marks taken from a peak of, 323 ; the
author loses his way among, 348 ; his
descent of, by the dry bed of a torrent,
362; alarm caused among certain
countrymen by his sudden appearance
on descending from, 362; party or-
ganized by Mafoo to search for him
when lost among, 368

Mower, a Chinese, venerable appear-
ance of, 74

Mule, a, difficulties and delay caused
by the obstinacy of, 50; the service-
able qualities exhibited by, 80

Music, the, of North China, 130; a sign
of good government exhibited by
the cultivation of, 133; comparative
merits of English and Chinese, 135 ;
Chinese funeral, 505

ELEMBIUM, the growth of, in
small ditches and pools, 270;

curious appliances used in gathering
the root of, 278

Newchang, our entrance into the large
straggling town of, 474; unfriendly
reception at, and hostile demonstra-
tions in, 475; our enforced departure
from the abominable inn of, 479;
our return to, 494; declining appear-
ance, and cause of the decay of, 495

Ning-hai, or Shan-hai-Kwan, the town
of, our approach to, 291

Ning Yuen Chow, a city of Mantchuria,
a and desolate appearance of,

 

INDEX.

PEH

AK, the, a peculiar dwarfish variety
of, near the coal mines, 562

‘Odin,’ the, passage across the Gulf in,
554

Officer, a young Chinese, uniform and
appearance of, 170; important ser-
vice rendered by, 171

Ophthalmia, very prevalent among the
Chinese poor, 128

Opium-shops, the, at Tien-tsin, the
great number of, 255; the appear-
ance of, 256

Opium-smokers, interruption of one in
the enjoyment of his luxury, 99;
appearance of, compared with that of
the Stamboul opium-chewers, 257 ;
exaggerated street pictures of, 259

Opium-smoking, process of, 254; effect
produced on the system by, 2b.; ex-
aggerated representations of the evil
consequences of, 255; a confirmed
votary of, 258-9; increase of, 260;
the effect of alcoholic liquors com-
pared with that of, 2d.

Oriole, the Golden, a beautiful Chinese
song-bird, 458

ee the peculiar appearance of,

and interest attaching to, 507;

difference between the North and
South Chinese, 2d.

Paradise, the Chinese, 268

Passports, travelling, delay of Chinese
officials in preparing, 8; penalties for
British travelling in India unprovided
with, 9; form of Chinese, 10; little
attention paid by Chinese officials to
the English authorities, 307 ; Chinese
trifling with the legalised forms of, 369

Patois, Northern and Southern Anglo-
Chinese, 27

Patriarchs, village, pleasing description
of, 114

Pau-ting-fu, capital of the province of
Chili, vast permanent lagoon in the
direction of, 53

Pay-ta-pu, a town of Mantchuria, the
author’s arrival at, 517

Peasantry, Chinese, conversation with
favourable specimens of, 365-367 ;
refusal to accept payment for services
by, 461

Pehling, the, or the Hundred-Spirited
Bird, 73; the beautiful melody, and
astonishing vocal effects of, 456 ; great
prices given for, 2d.

Pehtang, a town of North China, dis-
agreeable memories of, 96; position
of the allied army during the occu-
pation of, 94,
INDEX. 575

PEH

Pehtang-hé, the, a river, the native
name of, 89

Peiho, the, inundations of, 52 ; supposed
alteration in the bed of, 53; surprise
excited by a party of English swim-
ming in, 383

Peking, a rigid Roman Catholic Chinese
groom obtained from, 15; the Lama
temple in the Northern suburb of,

“182; allusion to the Medical Hall at,

406; revisit to, 558; mean exterior

of the Tribute Bearer’s Inn, formerly

appropriated to a British ambassador

a8 rural beauty of the environs,
5

Phenomenon, a geological, 285

Philology, Anglo-Chinese, 26

Phragmites Communis, a useful species
of reed, 89

Physiognomy, Chinese, varieties of, and
exceptional departures from the stan-
dard of, 434

Pig-drivers, Chinese, remarkable ap-
pearance of, 246; a rencontre with
one, 249

Pigeon, a current Anglo-Chinese word
for business, 13

Pigs, the North China, description of,
246; amusing speculations of English
soldiers and sailors regarding, 248;
foul feeding, when kept in towns, of,
248-9

Pi-lang, a robber, exposure in a cage of
the head of, 68

Pines, with flat circular tops, growth of,
152; birds observed among, 153

Pings, Chinese, demonstrations of good-
will made by, 55 ; the former warlike
reputation of, 56 :

Plants, producing blue-colouring matter
for dyeing, cultivation in Chili of,
108

Ponies, Tartar, for the use of travellers,
10; description of, 78; power of en-
durance possessed by, 79 ice

Porter, the ration, frozen, and carried in
a sack, 5 :

Pottery, coarse, visit to the kilns for the
manufacture of, 121; advantageous
position for the production of, 122 —

Pou-dza, the, a peculiar robe worn in
China, 240 ;

Priests, Chinese, kind hospitality exhi-
bited to the author by, 566

Processions, funeral, the musical accom-

animents of, 131; pathetic airs
eard at, 133 :

Psun-tsau, or Herbal, a Chinese work,
quotation from, 407 .

Pulse, or bean, cultivation of a species

 

SCI
Ge errang round the stems of millet,

Pwanku, the first man, Chinese repre-
sentations of, 181

Pye-ywr, the, a beautiful bird, much
esteemed by the Chinese, 458

Ce a town of North China,
the pleasant and animated appear-
ance of, 96

ASPBERRY-BUSH, wild, luscious
cen on the unripe berries of,

Remusat, Abel, his remarks on the mu-
tual influence exercised by the inter-
course of the East and West, and on
the effects of the Crusades, and of
Mongol irruptions, 385, et seq.

Rhamnus Theexans, or the Chinese buck-
thorn, 127

Rivers —An-shan, 500; Bogue, 305;
Huin-hé, 218; Hwang-shing-hé, 218 ;
Lau-hé, 169; Liau, 511; Liau-hé,
471; Peiho, 52; Sa-hé, 500; San-
fun, 471; Shang-se-hé, 271; Shih-
hé, 326; Siau-ling-hé, 420; Taitse-
ho, 508; Ta-ling-hé, 441; Tang-yau,
122; Tau-hé, 120; Yang-hé, 263

Robbers, a ghastly warning to, 67

Rushes, waterproof overcoats made of,
244-5

A-HO, the, a tributary of the Liau,
orchards and Hebe-tenanted gardens

on the banks of, 500

Samshu, a Chinese alcoholic liquor,
shops in Liau-yang for the sale of, 504

Sand-bags, gymnastic exercises with,
202

Sandfly, the, sanguinary nocturnal at-
tacks of, 36

Sandhills, our vicinity to the sea an-
nounced by a series of, 283; the
height, volume, and shifting of, 284

San-fun, the river, a branch of the
Liau-hé, 471

San-hien, the, a Chinese banjo, descrip-
tion of, 128

San-ko-lin-tsin’s Folly, 22

San-ma-chow, a peculiar species of lark,

San-pans, ominous looking flat-bottomed
boats, the use of, 52

Scirpus Tuberosus, edible water chestnut,
the stalks of, used in the construction
of mats, 272
576

scU

Sculpture, the art of, neglected in China,
182
Shanghai, the town of, fragments of the
tombs of high personages found in a
garden beyond the walls of, 182
Shang-se-hé, or Upper Western River,
the author’s passage up, 271
Shan-hai-Kwan, or Hill Sea Barrier, a
town of North China at the Great
Wall, 286; a gratuitous herald an-
nounces our approach to, 293; un-
bounded curiosity manifested by the
inhabitants of the suburb of, 294;
the gates of, 295; evening illumina-
tion of the shops of, 7b. ; our annoying
and ridiculous position in the centre
of, 297; reception at the mandarin’s
inn in, 298; picture of a mandarin of,
302; young dandies of, 304; diffi-
culties of obtaining lodgings in, 307 ;
filthy kennel into which we were
thrust at the inn of, 308; annoying
attention of a military mandarin in,
309; midnight visitors at the inn of,
311; persevering espionage by certain
authorities of, 312; great stir of the
population on our departure at an
early hour from, 313 ; glaring govern-
ment buildings of, 314; intersection,
by the Great Wall, of the eastern
side of, 7b.; guard-room near the
outer gate of, 314; friendly inter-
view with the garrison commandant
of, 315; fine-looking officers in the
guard-room of, 319; appearance of
the Great Wall at ten or twenty
miles distance from, 378
Shan ta-tau, the, or Hill high road from
Kai-ping to the Great Wall, 142.
Shau, a character meaning longevity,
rofusely used in the adornment of a
hinese officer, 170
Shih-hé, or Stony River, a river on the
Chinese frontier, running parallel with
the Great Wall, 326
Shih-Mun, the, or Rocky Portal, an inn,
author's arrival at, 174; unexpected
comforts found in, 175; our warm
greeting by the Boniface of, 175;
healthy situation of, 176; the various
servants and buildings belonging to,
177; miniature terraces for the recep-
tion of plants in pots, arranged around,
178 ; curiosity and honesty of the peo-
ie who pressed about us at, 206;
hinese Bible thankfully accepted by
the landlord of, 211; moderate bill,
and our departure from, 210-11
Shinking, a province of Mantchuria, our
entrance into, 375; the former names
of, 2.; old embattled tower in, said

 

INDEX.

SUA

to mark the real boundary between
China and Mantchuria, 375; series of
circular crenelated forts in, and their
supposed object, 376 a

Shin-nong, Chinese Emperor, tradition
that the plough was invented and
dneiuicted by, 286

Shin Shan, a city beyond the Great
Wall, tantalizing inquiries for, 416;
author’s rencontre with a convoy pre-
ceeding to, 419 AS

Shin-shan Shan, a village, intricate
piloting through the streets of, 449;
termination of the range of mountains
extending from Tien-tsin, at, 2b.

Shoes, Tartar, description of, 366

Shua-dsa, black satin boots, with
whitened points, worn by the Chinese,
241

Shu-shan, a lofty hill, prospect, with
view of the Pagoda of Liau-yang,
from, 500

Shu-shan, the town of, 500

Shu-tih, the, a sort of clarionet,the music
of, 131

Siau-ling-hé, a river of Mantchuria, a
long plank bridge over, 420

Sierra, the, view of the needle points
of, lighted up by the rays of the sun,
214

Signpost, a curious, common in Tartar
towns and villages, 385

Sine, the, music said to have been in-
vented by the first monarch of, 133

Singing, Chinese, peculiarities of, 1384

Skins, variety of, used by the poorer
Chinese as clothing, 241-243

Skylark, the North Chinese, 73

Slate-rock, torn and rifted masses of,
near Le-end-tswang, 562

Snuff-bottles, a curious pair of, belong-
ing to a Mandarin, 318

Soldiers, Chinese, arms and equipments
of a party of, 169; admiration of our
equestrian equipment expressed by,
zb.; description of the young officer
in command of, 170; appearance and
arms of Tartar cavalry, 514

Soldiers, British, enfeebled condition of,
from excessive heat, in North China, 4

Soochee, or spring damp, in buildings,
plan adopted to prevent the rising and
diffusion of, 183

Spell, a curious, practised by the natives
of China, 188

Sportsmanship, Chinese, 276

Staveley Peak, the name given to aland-
mark left by the author for future
adventurers, 346

Suay-tau, or Ta-shih, the, a square
stone used in gymnastic exercises, 202
INDEX. BIT

SUN

Sun, the heat of, alarming cerebral
symptoms caused by, 360

Sun-kwei, a distinguished officer, faith-
fulness to the Emperor Chaou-Tsung
a by, 62; the horrible death
0. 2

Sunstroke, impending, alarming sensa-
sations caused by, 349

Supper, an English, at a Chinese inn,
astonishment created by the vessels,
&c., used at, 204

Symbol, remarkable Chinese, 190

‘A, the, or Pagoda monument, inte-
resting remains of, 520

Tail, a Chinaman’s, laudable use of, 81;
ludicrous aspect, in the eyes of the
Chinese, of one going without, 289

Taitse-h6, the, a wide river of North
China, appearance of families enjoying
the air on the banks of, 508; crowds
waiting for the ferry-boat to cross,
509; unexpected appearance of offi-
cial scouts at, 2b.; advantages of its
as to the town of Liau-yang,
510

Ta-ling, a small town of Mantchuria,
indulgence in the excellent water of,
441; followed by suspicious-looking
individuals on leaving, 443

Ta-ling-hé, a dull muddy river of Mant-
churia, 441; success of a bold attempt
to ford, 445

Tangyau, the, a stream of North China,
forded by the author, 122

Tanning, description of the Chinese
method of, 366

Tartars, the, travelling capacities of the
ponies trained by, 10; Marco Polo’s
account of the sacrifice of human
beings at the funerals of the princes
of, 531

Tau-hé, the, an inconsiderable stream,
the bed of, 120

Tau-koo, the, a kind of leggings, of thick
stuff, pulled over the trowsers, 242

Tche-hwangti, the first emperor of the
great Tsm dynasty, 336; victories
over the Tartars gained by, 338 ; first
idea of the Great Wall attributed to, 1b.

Tchou-dza, the, a peculiar kind of
wheelbarrow, 81

Tchung-wah-kow, the village of, 89

Tea, brick, the abominable flavour of,
32

Team, a Chinese farmer’s, 84 =f

Tea-plant, the genuine, Thea ridis,
127

Temples, Chinese, one pitched on an
almost inaccessible peak, 121; com-

 

TOW

fortable dwelling-houses, for the
pues surrounding, 223; the taste-
ul altars of, 281

Ten-sha-hor, a hamlet of Mantchuria, a
funeral party at, 452

Teprier, the, or Shantung, the Silken-
haired dog, highly valued in China,
235

Te-tau, a village or hamlet, our entrance
into, 29; the foul chambers of the
only inn at, 2,

Theatre, an open air, the construction
of, 228

eee Viridis, the genuine tea-plant,
12

Thrush,” the, varieties of, famed for
their mellifluous notes, 457; a new
species of, brought by the author to
England, 7d.

Thumb, the holding up of, approval inti-
mated by, 317

Tien-tsin, extreme heat of summer in,
1; suffocating winds blowing through,
4; appearance of Europeans and
Chinese in the streets of, 6; the title
of the Heavenly Spot or Ford inap-
plicable to, 16; scenes, sounds, and
smells in the streets of, 17; buying
and selling transactions in, 18; mili-
tary honours rendered by a squad of
naked urchins in the streets of, 20;
French and British sentries in, 7b. ;
departure from, 22; country and
people in neighbourhood of, 238;
poverty-stricken villages near, 52;
rencontre in the north with a mer-
chant from, 150; discovery of old
figures in fields near, 182; mode of
building the housewalls in, 2.; su-
perstitious practice of the inhabit-
ants of, 189; recollections of a storm
at, 208; number of opium shops in,
255; our return to, 555

Tien-tsin, the treaty of, an article in, af-
fecting British travellers to Peking,
set aside, 7

Ting-chang-ta, the, or horse-shoer, a
glance at the operations of, 399

Tobacco, the cultivation of, by the
Chinese, 439 ‘ .

To-lo-po-tenza, a quiet night in the
inn of, 447

Toong-hi-tau, the, or Eastern Ocean
road from Kai-ping to the Great
Wall, 143 ; :

Tou-dza, the, a peculiar robe worn in
China, 240

Towns, villages, and hamlets:—Chang-
le-tou, 220; Che-tur, 71; Coo-yah,
133; Cow-chow-wah, 384; Ee-ma~-
tschwan, 105; Fung-tai, 96; Fung-

PP
578 INDEX.

TOW

whan-ting, 375; Hanchung, 115;
Kai-ping, 122; Kinchow, 416; Le-
end-tswang, 561; Liau-yang, 498;
Loo-gu-Chow, 559; Lanchow, 158 ;
Moukden, 582; Newchang, 474;
Ning-hai, 291; Ning-Yuen-Chow,
413; Pau-ting-fu, 53; Pay-tu-pu,
517; Peh-tan, 90; Peking, 559;
Qui-toosa, 96 ; Shanghai, 182 ; Shan-
hai-Kwan, 286; Shin-Shan, 416;
Shin-shan Shan, 449; Ta-ling, 441;
Tchung-wah-kow, 89; Ten-sha-hor,
452; Te-tau, 29; Tien-tsin, 1; To-
lo-po-tenza, 447; Tu-kia-tai, 460;
Wang-hya-tyer, 412; Yang-chow,
250; Ying-tsze, 482

Towns, Chinese, scenes in, on a rainy
day, 212; dogs the only scavengers
of, 284; the odd characteristics of
one, 272

Travellers, arms universally worn by,
66 ; an equestrian one, 149

Tseun-chung, the Perfectly Faithful, a
Chinese designation, 41

Tain, the, a powerful feudal house under
the Chow dynasty, 336

Tsung, Chinese commissioner at Tien-
tsin, immediate respect paid to an
order of, 807; excessive desire of
town cfficials to peruse the passport
signed by, 872

Tsu-sa, a Chinese agricultural imple-
ment for cutting grass, 75

Tsuy-ying, a traitorous, plotting prime
minister, picture of, 39.

Tu-kia-tai, a night in the caravansary
re ; stuck fast in the mud near,

U RH-HEEN, the, a two-stringed in-
strument, the barbarous music of,
184; a waltz played in excellent style
on, 136

Urh-tau, the, a peculiar kind of ear-
covers worn by the Chinese, 243

7 ERBIEST, Paul, the Jesuit, in
attendance on the Emperor Kanghi

on his progress into Eastern Tartary,
380; his allusion to the decay of
places in Mantchu Tartary, 412

Vespertilionide, a colony of, 47

Village, a, near the Great Wall, our
entranceinto, 288; marvellous attempt
to overtake us made by the ladies of,
ab.; annoyance caused by the urchins
of, 289

Villagers, Chinese, theintrusive curiosity
of, 124, e¢ passim.

 

WaT
AG, a heartless, 45 .
Waiter, a Chinese, the disagree-
able services of, 32

Wall, the Great, our first sight of, 287 ;

arrival at a good inn four miles from,
991; a vacant camp. near, 292,
curiosity excited by the presence of
the far-travelled strangers in a town
close to, 293; latitude and longitude
of the end abutting on the Gulf pro-
perly fixed by English naval surveyors,
310; difficulties thrown in our way
by the native officials of the districts
near, 311; opposition of the autho-
rities to our mounting to the top of the
hills in the neighbourhood of, 320;
unexpected difficulties in the ascent
of the mountains near, 324; magni-
ficent view from the mountain range
at, 324; description of the ever-
changing line and appearance of, 823;
rogress over the mountains towards,
327; width and height of, 329; the
structure, building, and repair of, 2d.
330; composition of the bricks used
in building, 330; the turrets and
towers of, 831-833; Kircher and
Gebillon’s notices of, 332; labours
undergone in building, 333; the
builders of, 834; origin of the idea
of, 838; period occupied in erecting,
339; Tartar ascents of, 7b.; labours
expended on other great erections of
antiquity compared with those on,
842; height of mountains in the
vicinity of, 8345; tremendous heat of
the sun, and perilous position of the
author in descending a mountain peak
near, 347; cerebral excitement of the
author while wandering among the
hills around, 359; impression pro-
duced by an English ‘farewell’ ut-
tered by a Mandarin near, 873; our
departure from the Mandarins’ Town
at, 2b.; remarkable appearance of the
mountain towers of, 379; the end
abutting on the Gulf touched at, 554;
reprehensible memorial of the visit
of the Prussian frigate ‘ Arcona’ to
the Eastern Sea termination of, 2d.

Wang-hai-tyer, a diminutive hamlet, a

night passed at, 412

Wang-li-Chang-chin, or the Wall of

the Ten Thousand Li—see Wall, the
Great

Warblers, the Gorget, Red-throat, and

Blue-throat, favourite song-birds, 458

Water, for drinking, the animalcule in,

33
Water-fowl, the, a day’s warfare against,

275
INDEX

WAT

Water-lily, the seeds of, roasted’ and
chewed by the natives of North China,
164; beautiful specimens of, at a
Chinese inn, 179

Weather, the changes of, carefully ob-

served, for sani oses, by the
nes ee

Wheat, the Chinese method of thresh-
ing, 465

‘Willows, emerald green, village draw-
wells, amid half-circles of, 118

‘Women, Chinese, alarm caused by the
author and his travelling companion
in an assembly of, 228 ; suffering and
inconvenience caused by the mutila-
tion of the feet of, 229; repulsive
appearance presented by the bandaged
feet of, 231

Woodpecker, the pied and scarlet-
beaded, 153

Yo G and YIN, the, symbolical dia-
gram of, 86; information derived

from a Chinese horse-doctor concern-
ing, 402

Yang-yin, or men of the sea, Chinese
appellation for the English, 306

Yang-yin-pah-kwa, the, a species of
religious cabala, 190

‘Yang-chow, a village, suspicious-looking
hostel at which we put up in, 250;
internal arrangements of, 251; cooking

LONDON

 

579
YUN
operations in, 252; astonishingly little
curiosity evinced on our appearance
by the inmates of, 253; night pre-
cautions observed in, 261
Yang-hé, the, a river, the ferry over,
263; extortionate demand made by
the boatmen at, 264
Yew-wan, a Chinese prince, murdered
by order of his brother, 46
Ying-tsze, a city of Mantchuria, the
new British port, approach to, 482;
interview with the British Consul at,
483; warlike preparations to guard
against the restless and bold popula-
lation of, 484; our unfavourable
opinion of, 2b.; friendly reception by
our countrymen at, 485; experience
of an earthquake at, 2b, ; furore excited
by our adventures among the Compra-
dors and other inhabitants of, 7.;
insignificant trade of, 487; uncom-
fortable position of the European
pilgrims of commerce at, 2b.; charac-
teristics of the population of, 488 ; fish
sold at, 489; the open-air theatre of,
wb.; use of the word ‘Fuh’ at, 490;
departure, with an official guide and
another new attendant, from, 492
Yoong-ling, the, or tombs of the Tartar
princes, our desire to visit, 550
Yungching, son of the Emperor Kanghi,
the wise injunctions of, 110

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titled to be considered as a man of genius. He has wonderful poetical power, and he
has the faculty, which hardly any other French novelist possesses, of drawing beautiful
as well as striking pictures. Another feature for which Victor Hugo’s book deserves
high praise is its perfect purity. Any one who reais the Bible and Shakspeare may
read * Les Misérables,’ The story is admirable, and is put together with unsur-
passable art, care, life, and simplicity. Some of the characters are drawn with con-
summate skill."—Datly News.

«Les Misérables ’ is a novel which, for development of character, ingenuity of con-
struction, beauty of language, and absorbing interest of situation, is approached by
very tew. Having carefully examined Mr. Wraxall’s translation of this celebrated
work, we can conscientiously recommend it to the public as a perfectly faithful version,
retaining, as nearly as the characteristic difference between the two languages admits of,
all the spirit and point of the original. In its present form ‘Les Misérables’ stands a
very fair chance of having as wide a sale as the French edition." —Axaminer.

‘There is much to admire in ‘Les Misérables,’ There are passages breathing the
noblest spirit with a sustained loftiness of tone. There are others full of touching
pathos. M. Hugo is one of the keenest observers and most powerful delineators of the
human soul in all its various phases of emotion. Nor is it the fiercer gusts alone that
he can portray. His range is wide, and he is equally masterly in analysing the calmer
but more subtle currents which stir the heart to its very depths.”"—Saturduy K-vrew.

ITALY UNDER VICTOR EMMANUEL. A

Personal Narrative. By Count CHARLES ARRIVABENE. 2 vols.
8vo, with charts, 30s.

“A bright and cheery book. A piece of history like the aspect and fortunes of the
Jand it describes so well, to freshen the memory and make glad the !eart. Count
Arrivabene 's a true artist. The -un shines on his pag: , and a youthful spirit glows in
his style. And then what a story he has to tell!—one that will interest the passions
of men and the sympathies of women to the end of time."—Atheneum.

“ Whoever wishes to gain an insight into the Italy of the present moment, and to
know what she is, what she has done, and whut she has to co, shonld consult Count
Arrivabene's ample volumes, which sre written in a style singularly vivid and
dramatic.”"— Diriens’s All the Year Round,

HISTORY OF ENGLAND, FROM THE
ACCESSION OF JAMES I. TO THE DISGRACE OF CHIEF
JUSTICE COKE. By Samvunt Rawson Gagpiner, late Stu-
dent of Christchurch. 2 vols. 8vo. 30s.

‘We thank Mr. Gardiner much for his able, intelligent, and interesting book. We
will not do him the injustice to say it is tne best history of the period which it covers:
it is the only history."—Spe tator,

“Mr Gardiner's history is a very good one. It is both full and fair, planned and
written in a manly spirit, and with diligent use of the materials within reach."— Reader.

THE PRIVATE DIARY OF RICHARD, DUKE
OF BUCKINGHAM AND CHANDOS, K.G. 38 vols. post
8vo, with Portrait, 3ls. 6d.

“ A very amusing chronicle. That it will be read with curiosity we cannot doubt.”
—Atheneum.

 

 

 
 

 

13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET,

MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT’S
NEW WORKS—Continued. —

FIFTY YEARS’ BIOGRAPHICAL REMINIS-
CENCES. By Lord Wittiam Pirr Lennox. 2 v., 8vo. (In June.)

GREECE AND THE GREEKS. Being the

Narrative of a Winter Residence and summer Travel in Greece
and its Islands. By Freprixa Bremer. Translated by Mary
Howirt. 2 vols., 21s.

“ The best book of travels which this charming authoress has given to the public.”"—
Athenaeum.
__‘* Miss Bremer's work is full of the most vivid and picturesque descriptions of Greek
life and scenery. 1t cannot fail to delight a!l into whose hands it may fall." —Sun.

POINTS OF CONTACT BETWEEN SCIENCE

anp ART. By His Eminence Carpinat WISEMAN. 8vo. 5s.

HEROES, PHILOSOPHERS, AND COURTIERS
of the TIME of LOUIS XVI. 2 vols. 21s.

“This work is full of amusing and interesting anecdote, and supplies many links in
the great chain of events of a most remarkable period which hitherto have been over-
looked." — kraminer.

as peek which no one can read without interest. It is well written, animated, and
vivid."—Star.

MEMOIRS OF CHRISTINA, QUEEN OF
SWEDEN. By Henry WoonuHEaD. 2 vols. with Portrait, 21s.

“An interesting and accurate book.”——Ezaminer.
“ An impartial history of the life of Queen Christina and portraiture of her character
are placed before the public in these valuable and interesting volumes."—Press,

LIFE AMONG CONVICTS. By the Rev. C. B.
Gipson, M.R.I.A., Chaplain in the Convict Service. 2 vols. 21s.

“All concerned in that momentous question—the treatment of our convicts—may
peruse with interest and benefit the very valuable information and the very useful sug-
gestions laid before them by Mr. Gibson in the most pleasant and lucid manner pos-
sible."—Sun

DRIFTWOOD, SEAWEED, AND FALLEN
LEAVES. By the Rev. Jonn CumMInG, D.D. 2 vols., 21s.

“In these volumes the social, literary, moral, and religious questions of the day are
treated with much clearness of perception and great liberality of sentiment.”— Observer.

FEMALE LIFE IN PRISON. By a Prison Ma-
TRON. THIRD EpITION, WITH ADDITIONS. 2 vols., 21s,

“There are many obvious reasons why records of prison life should prove an attrac-
tive department of literature, though ordinarily they are more welcome than deserving
of encouragenient, because they minister to the cravings of our curiosity only. The
present volumes have at least this higher pretension, that while they satiate our in-
terest in pet murderesses and other prison monstrosities, they aim at affording us a
fuller view of the working of a retired and special department of State administration,
The authoress, who has herself been a prison matron, writes throughout with good
sense, good taste, and good feeling. The phenomena of female prison life which she
describes are most curious, and we consider her book to be as authentic as it is new in
the form and details of its information.”— he Times.

“This is one of the most genuine books—probably the best woman's book of the
year. It is full of living interest. It is the genuine and simple utterance of ex-
periences, interesting, touching, and useful to be known. It contains, besides the
details of prison life, a series of sketches of prison characters, various and curious,
which are vivid and interesting as the liveliest inventions of the novelist.”—
Examiner,

 

 
 

13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

MESSRS. HURST AND BLACKETT’S
NEW WORKS—Continued.

ENGLISH WOMEN OF LETTERS. By Jura
Kavanacu, Author of “ Nathalie,” “ Adele,” “ French Women of
Letters,” &c. 2 vols., 21s. eae .

“This work of Miss Kavanagh’s will be a pleasant contribution to the literature of
the times, and in raising a shrine to the merits of some of the leading English women of
literature, Miss Kavanagh has also associated her own name With theirs. The work
comprises a biography of eacl: authoress (all women of renown in their day and genera-
tion), and an account and analysis of her principal novels. To this task Miss Kavanagh
has brought knowledge of her subject, delicacy of discrimination, industry, and a genial
humour, which makes her sketches pleasant to read.”—Atheneeum.

THE LIFE OF J. M. W. TURNER, R.A., from
Original Letters and Papers furnished by his Friends, and
Fellow Academicians. By Watrer THorNnpury. 2 vols. 8vo.

with Portraits and other Illustrations. : .

“Mr, Thornbury has had every possible advantage for the accomplishment of this
biography—a personal acquaintance with Turner, the advice of Mr. Ruskin, and the
ready assistance of all Turner's friends. Of the immense mass of materials brought
together Mr. Thornbury has made skilful use, and constructed an honest memorial of
the great painter. He has done his part ably. The artist will refer to these volumes
for authentic information regarding the great modern master and his works, and the stu-
dent of life and manners will find in them a rich store of entertainment.”—Dazly News,

TRAVELS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA; with the
Narrative of a Yacht Voyage Round Vancouver’s Island. By

Captain C. E. Barrett Lennarp. 1 vol. 8vo.
“A most valuable accession to our Colonial literature. Captain Lennard gives a
vast amount of information respecting the two colonies, of that kind which an intend-
ing emigrant would be most glad to receive.’'—Daily News.

THE CHURCH AND THE CHURCHES; or,
THE PAPACY AND THE TEMPORAL POWER. By Dr.

Déxiucer. Translated, by W. B. Mac Case. 8vo.
“This volume is the most important contribution to the Roman question, and will
long remain the greatest authority upon it,”—Athenceum.

THIRTY YEARS’ MUSICAL RECOLLEC-

TIONS. By Henry F Cuortszy. 2 vols., with Portraits, 21s.
“Every page of these volumes offers pleasant reminiscences of some thirty
years’ experience No one singer of merit, or pretension to it, no distinguished
composer of the period, is without his or her portrait,""— Atheneum.

THE OKAVANGO RIVER; A NARRATIVE OF
TRAVEL, EXPLORATION, AND ADVENTURE. By
Cares Jonn AnpDERsson, Author of “Lake Ngami.” 1 vol.,
with Portrait and numerous Illustrations.

“Mr. Andersson's book, from the number of well-told adventures, its rich fund of
information, and spirited illustrations, will command a wide circle of readers. The
interest of his story never flags for a moment.”"—Acheneum.

TRAVELS IN THE REGIONS OF THE
AMOOR, anp THE RusstIaAN ACQUISITIONS ON THE CONFINES OF
Inpia anp Cuina.” By T. W. Arxinson, F.G.S., F.R.G.S.,
Author of “ Oriental and Western Siberia.” Dedicated, by per-
mission, to Her Masesty. Second Edition. Royal 8vo., with
Map and 83 Illustrations. Elegantly bound.

TRAVELS IN THE HOLY LAND. By Frep-

RIKA Bremer. Translated by Mary Howirr. 2 vols., 21s.
__ ‘A good specimen of what travels should be—intelligent, unaffected, and giving exact
impressions." — Atheneum.

 

 

 

 
 

Ander the Espectal Patronage of Her Atajesty.

Published annually, in One Vol., royal 8v0, with the Arms beautifully
engraved, handsomely bound, with gilt edges, price 31s. 6d.

LODGES PEERAGE

AND BARONETAGE,
CORRECTED BY THE NOBILITY.

THE THIRTY-SECOND EDITION FOR 1863 IS NOW READY.

Lopes's Pesrace anp Baronetacs is acknowledged to be the most
complete, as well as the most elegant, work of the kind. As an esta-
blished and authentic authority on all questions respecting the family
histories, honours, and connections of the titled aristocracy, no work has
ever stood so high. It is published under the especial patronage of Her
Majesty, and is annually corrected throughout, from the personal com-
munications of the Nobility. It is the only work of its class in which, the
type being kept constantly standing, every correction is made in its proper
place to the date of publication, an advantage which gives it supremacy
over all its competitors. Independently of its full and authentic informa-
tion respecting the existing Peers and Baronets of the realm, the most
sedulous attention is given in its pages to the collateral branches of the
yarious noble families, and the names of many thousand individuals are
introduced, which do not appear in other records of the titled classes. For
its authority, correctness, and facility of arrangement, and the beauty of
its typography and binding, the work is justly entitled to the place it
occupies on the tables of Her Majesty and the Nobility.

LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL CONTENTS,

 

Historical View of the Peerage.

Parliamentary Roll of the House of Lords.

English, Scotch, and Irish Peers, in their
orders of Precedence.

Alphabetical List of Peers of Great Britain
and the United Kingdom, holding supe-
rior rank in the Scotch or Irish Peerage.

Alphabetical List of Scotch and Irish Peers,
ho'ding superior titlea in the Peerage of
Great Britain and the United Kingdom.

A Collective List of Peers, in their order of

Precedence.

Table of Precedency among Men.

Table of Precedency among Women.

The Queen and the Royal Family.

Peers of the Blood Royal.

The Peerage, alphabetically arranged.

Families of such Extinct Peers as have left
Widows or Issue.

Alphabetical List of the Surnames of all the |

Peers.

The Archbishops and Bishops of England,
Ireland, and the Colonies.

The Baronetage, alphabetically arranged.

Alphabetical List of Surnames assumed by
members of Noble Families.

Alphabetical List of the Second Titles of
Peers, usually borne by their Eldest
Sons.

Alphabetical Index to the Daughters of
‘Dukes, Marquises, and Earls, who, hav-
ing married Commoners, retain the title
of Lady before their own Christian and
their Husbands’ Surnames.

Alphabetical Index to the Daughters of
Viscounts and Barons, who. having mar-
ried Commoners, are styled Honourable
Mrs.; and, in case of the husband being
a Baronet or Knight, Honourable Lady.

Mottoes alphabetically arranged and trans-
tated.

ee

“ Lodge’s Peerage must supersede

3 it is better executed. We can salely P
on a better plan; and secondly, it is b ee one alien Pion

readiest, the most useful, and exactest of mo

“ A work which corrects all errors of former wo
“ As perfect a Peerage as we are ever likely to see pu!

all other works of the kind, for two reasons: first it is

fely pronounce it to be the

rks. Itis a most usful publication “Times,
ylished.”"—Herald.

 
 

 

Now IN CouRsE OF PUBLICATION. EacH Work COMPLETE IN A SINGLE VOLUME,
illustrated by Mitats, Homan Hunt, Leecu, Birkxer Foster, JouNn GILBEBT,
TenniEL, &c., elegantly printed and bound, price 5s,

Hurst and Blackets Standard Pibrary

OF CHEAP EDITIONS OF
POPULAR MODERN WORKS.

 

‘VOL I.—SAM SLICK’S NATURE & HUMAN NATURE.

“The first volume of Messrs. Hurst and Blackett's Standard Library of Cheap Edi-
tions of Popular Modern Works formsa very good beginning to what will “oubtless be
a very successful undertaking. ‘Na'ure and Human Nature’ is one of the best of Sam
Slick’s witty and humorous productions, and well cntitled to the large circulation which
it cannot fail to attain in its present convenient and cheap shape. ‘The volume com-
bines with the great recommendations of a clear bold type and good paper, the lesser,
but still attractive merits, of being well illustrated and elegantly bound.”—Post.

VOL. IL—JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN.

“This is a very goodand a very interesting work. It is designed to trace the career
from boyhood to age of a perfect man—a Christian gentleman, and it abounds in inci-
dent both well and highly wrought. Throughout it is conceived in a high spirit, and
written with great ability. This cheap and handsome new edition is worthy to pass
freely from hand to hand, as a gift-book in many households."—Zzaminer.

VOL. I0.—THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS.

BY ELIOT WARBURTON.
“Independent of its value as an original narrative, and its useful and interesting
information, this work is remarkable for its reverent and serious spirit.”—Quarterly
Review.

VOL. IV.—NATHALIE. BY JULIA KAVANAGH.
‘“ ‘Nathalie’ is Miss Kavanagh's best imaginative effort. Its manner is gracious and
attractive, Its matter is good."— Athenceum.
VOL. V.—A WOMAN’S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN.”
“A book of sound counsel. It is one of the must sensible works of its kind, well
written, true-hearted, and altogether practical."—Examiner.

VOL. VI.—_ADAM GRAEME OF MOSSGRAY.

BY THE AUTHOR UF “MARGARET MAITLAND.”
“* Adam Graeme’ is a story awakening genuine emotions of interest and delight by
its admirable pictures of Scottish lite and scenery.” Post.

VOL. VII.—SAM SLICK’S WISE SAWS
AND MODERN INSTANCES.

“The best of all Judge Haliburton’s admirable works. It is one of the pleasantest
books we ever read, and we earnestly recommend it."—Standard.

VOL VIIL—CARDINAL WISEMAN’S POPES.

‘‘A picturesque book on Rome and its ecclesiastical soverei igns.”"—Athenwum,

VOL. IX.—A LIFE FOR A LIFE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN.”
“In ‘A Life for a Life’ the author is fortunate in a good subject, and she has produced
awork of strong effect."—A theneum,

VOL. X—THE OLD COURT SUBURB. BY LEIGH HUNT,

“A delightful book; that will be welcome to all readers, and most welcome to
those who have a love for the best kinds of readin g."—Examiner.

VOL. XI—MARGARET AND HER BRIDESMAIDS.

““We recommend all who are in search of a fascinating story to read this work for
themselves. They will find it well worth their while.\—dthenaum,

 

 
 

Hurst and Blachett’s Standars Library

(CONTINUED).

VOL. XII.—THE OLD JUDGE. BY SAM SLICK.

“This work is redolent of the hearty fun and strong sense of our old friend
‘Sam Slick.’ Every page is alive with fresh sketches of character, droll, quaint, racy
sayings, good-humoured practical jokes, and capitally told anecdotes.” —Chronicle,

VOL. XIII—DARIEN. BY ELIOT WARBURTON.
“This last production, from the pen of the author of ‘The Crescent and the Cross,’

has the same elements of a very wide popularity. It will please its thousands."—@lobe.

VOL. XIV.—FAMILY ROMANCE; OR, DOMESTIC

ANNALS OF THE ARISTOCRACY.
BY SIR BERNARD BURKE.
__ “It were impossible to praise too highly as a work of amusement this most interest-
ing-book, It ought to be found on every drawing-room table."—Standard.
VOL. XV.—THE LAIRD OF NORLAW.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “MRS. MARGARET MAITLAND.”
“* Scottish life and character are here delineated with true artistic skill."—Herald,

VOL. XVI—THE ENGLISHWOMAN IN ITALY.

“ Mrs, Gretton’s work is interesting, and full of instruction."— Zhe Times.

VOL. XVIIL—NOTHING NEW.

BY THE AUTHOR OF “JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN.”
“We cordially commend this book. The same graphic power, deep pathos, health-
ful sentiment, and masterly execution, which place that beautiful work ‘John
Halifax,’ among the English classics, are everywhere displayed.""—Chronicle,

VOL. XVIII.—THE LIFE OF JEANNE D’ALBRET,

“Nothing can be more interesting than Miss Freer's story of the life of Jeanne
d’Albret, and the narrative is as trustworthy as it is attractive.”"—Post.

VOL. XIX.—THE VALLEY OF A HUNDRED FIRES.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “MARGARET AND HER BRIDESMAIDS.”

“Tf asked to classify this work, we should give it a place between ‘John Halifax,’
and ‘The Caxtons.’"—Herald.

VOL. XX.—THE ROMANCE OF THE FORUM.

BY PETER BURKE, SERJEANT AT LAW.
“A work of singular interest, which can never fail to charm, The present cheap
and elegant edition includes the true story of the Colleen Bawn."—ZJilustrated News.

VOL. XXI.—ADELE. BY JULIA KAVANAGH.

“ Addle is the best work we have had by Miss Kavanagh, it is a charming story.
The interest kindled in the first chapter burns brightly to the close." —Atheneum.

VOL, XXII. STUDIES FROM LIFE.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN.”

“These ‘ Studies from Life ' are remarkable for graphic power and observation. The
book will not diminish the reputation of the accomplished author. ’"—Saturday Review.

VOL. XXUI.—GRANDMOTHER'S MONEY.
“ A good novel. The most interesting of the author's productions.”—A theneum,

VOL. XXIV.—A BOOK ABOUT DOCTORS.
BY J. C. JEAFFRESON ESQ.
“A delightful book "—dtheneum, ‘A book to be read and re-read; fit for the study
as well as the drawing-room table and the circulatiny library.”—Lancet.

VOL. XXV.—NO CHURCH.
“We advise all who have the opportunity to read this book. It is well worth the
study.""—Altheneum

 

 

 

 
 

 

THE NEW AND POPULAR NOVELS,
PUBLISHED BY HURST & BLACKETT.

 

LOST AND SAVED. By Tue Hon. Mrs. Norton.

Second Edition. 3 vols.

HEART AND CROSS. By the Author of “Mar-
garet Maitland.” 1 vol.

“A delightful work. The interest of the narrative is preserved from the opening to
the closing page. It cannot fail to add to the reputation of the author, and is in many
respects so charming that it would in itself suffice to make a reputation for any writer.
—Post.

RESPECTABLE SINNERS. By Mrs. BrorHer-

ton, Author of “ Arthur Brandon.” 3 vols.

CHURCH AND CHAPEL. By the Author of “ High
Church,” “No Church,” and “ Owen: a Waif.” 3 v. (In June.)

LIVE IT DOWN. By J. C. Jearrreson, Third

Edition. Revised. 3 vols.

“This story will satisfy most readers; it is full, well considered, and well worked
out. The plot is broad, and the interest goes on increasing to the last page. It is by
far the best work of fiction Mr. Jeaffreson has yet written. The episode of little Fan,
une physician’s daughter, may take its place beside Little Dombey for its pathos.”—
Atheneum.

TRUE AS STEEL. By Wattrer THORNBURY. 3 v.

“This story is interesting. Mr. Thornbury has skill in writing pictures; there is
scarcely a page in which some stirring scene is not thrown into a clear, well-defined
shape, set forth in well-chosen words,”—Atheneum,

CECIL BEAUMONT. By Tue How. C. 8. SaviLez.

“A pleasant, well-written book. The style throughout is animated, and the scenes
and characters described are full of freshness and vigour.”"—Sun.

MISTRESS AND MAID. By the Author of

“Joun Hatirax, GENTLEMAN.” 2 vols.
‘*A good, wholesome book, gracefully written, and as pleasant to read as it is in-
structive."—A ‘henwum.
“The first of these volumes is as good as ‘John Halifax,’ and written with the same
true-hearted earnestness. The spirit of the whole book is excellent.”"—Zzaminer.

THE DESERTED HOUSE or HAWKSWORTH.

“A novel of absorbing intercst, closed by a denouement as unexpected as it is elabo-
rate and consistent. The work is valuable as vividly illustrating female character and
passion; and it everywhere presents indubitable traces of a highly cultivated intellect,
united with subtle powers of reflection and analysis, and with the skill of a well-prac-
tised pen.” —Post.

DAVID ELGINBROD. By Grorez MacDonaxp,

M.A. Awhor of “ Within and Without,” “‘ Phantastes,” &e. 3 vols.
“There are many beautiful passages and descriptions in this book."—~Atheneum.

A POINT OF HONOUR. By the Author of “The

Morals of May Fair,” &c. 2 vols.
“A book which exceeds in truth and beauty all the author's former works." —Post.

EVELINE. By the Author of “Forest Keep.” 3 vols.
BEATRICE SFORZA. By Dr. Brewer. 3 vols.

“ A highly interesting story."—Observer.

SLAVES OF THE RING; or, Before and After.
By the Author of “ Grandmother’s Money,” &c. 3 vols.

 

 
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
DEPT. OF PRES. & CONSERVATION

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