LETTER III
Ship Yuen-tse-Fee,
In the Gulf of Pechili,
15th May 1865.
I daresay you will understand that I was rather melancholy at leaving Shanghai. For the first time on all this long journey I was to set out alone, and my hosts, although they were only recent acquaintances, had been so kind to me that I felt as if I were leaving old friends. I took leave of them at half-past eleven on Thursday night, 11th May, for as the ship was to sail at three in the morning I had to sleep on board. The harbour was dark and gloomy, and it was as much as I could do to steer the six-oared gig by the dim light of the lanterns at the various masts’ heads. In short, everything looked black and dismal, and I felt very much like going back to school after the holidays; but it don’t do to give in, and very soon after I got on board I was sleeping as sound as the rats in my cabin and bed, and an army of mosquitoes which had flocked on board, would let me. When I woke next morning we were hard and fast aground in the estuary; a thick fog had come on in the night, and the captain, missing his course, had run upon one of the many treacherous shoals of the great river. The tide took us off again at about eleven, and we went on without further accident.
I had one fellow-passenger, an officer of the purveyor’s department of the army, on his road to Peking to seek employment under the Imperial Government.
We had a strong head wind against us at first and very dirty weather on Friday night. But in spite of wind and weather the little Yuen-tse-Fee justified her name, which a Chinaman interpreted for me as “walkee all the same Fly,” and she kept up a good average of eight knots and a half.
On Sunday morning we were off the Shantung promontory, a fine broad headland with a rough, jagged outline. Notwithstanding the haziness of the atmosphere we had a good view of the coast and of the Rocky Islands which make this sea so dangerous. Passing Cape Cod, we left to the westward the spot where the unlucky Race Horse was lost, and arrived at Chihfu at about five o’clock the same evening.
For a town which really has some little commercial importance, Chihfu is certainly one of the most wretched dens I ever saw. It consists of one long narrow street of untidy stone and brick houses, the peculiarity of which is that they have no apparent front or back, so that it is a mystery how the inhabitants get into or out of them. Two or three European houses, the office of the Chinese officer of Customs, a few godowns more or less empty, and here and there a hovel built up of mud, seaweed, and bamboo matting, complete the town. Its only ornaments are the flags of the consul and of the Chinese officer. It is prettily situated at the foot of a range of low, but picturesquely tossed-about hills, and the harbour with its fleet of junks and ships looks very well from the town. The type of the inhabitants is different from that of the southern Chinese, the Tartar features are very prominent among them, and it seemed to me that they were stronger and finer men. I certainly never saw a better boat’s crew than the six men who rowed me on shore. Whether they would have the pluck to “stay” against an English crew I cannot say, but their short spurt was admirable.
In spite of its mean appearance there is sufficient trade carried on at Chihfu to induce some seventy Europeans to reside there. It is, moreover, likely to become popular as a sea-bathing resort and sanatorium.
In former days it was a great port for the junks, and there are still many of them running there; but the junk trade has been very much knocked on the head by foreign ships and steamers, which the Chinese see the advantage of chartering, although they continue to build their own clumsy and unwieldy craft. The principal exports of Chihfu are peas and bean cake, and a little manufactured silk; there is besides a small import trade of shirtings and opium.
17th May.
The best part of Monday was occupied in discharging our cargo, and we did not get up steam until five o’clock. A strong wind had sprung up from the north-west, and the harbour, which is very much exposed on that side, gave signs and tokens which led us to expect a very squally night outside; however, the wind dropped suddenly and gave place to a thick fog, so we escaped being tossed about, at the expense of a few alarms of running on to the rocks; which is not at all a pleasant look-out, for even if our lives would not have been in actual danger, there was the certainty that if we had struck a rock we should have lost all our baggage, and passed a very uncomfortable night. We took up another passenger at Chihfu, an interpreter, bound for Tientsing—apparently a very popular gentleman, for the captain had to turn out neck and crop a company of friends who had come to see him off, and who were inclined to prolong that ceremony, which involves much sherry and brandy drinking, until long past the hour fixed for our departure.
On Tuesday morning we took up our pilot for the Peiho River. He reported having come across a junk wrecked and without masts—all hands had evidently been lost; and on fishing about the cabin with a boat-hook in order to get the papers if possible, he found two or three dead bodies in a fearful state of decomposition. It is supposed that she must have been wrecked more than a month ago.
We are absolutely suffering from cold here. The thermometer is 55° in my cabin—a serious contrast after the 90° and 95° I have been accustomed to. My warmer clothes are in the hold, so I am forced to wear a greatcoat. We expect to find it warmer at Tientsing.
It was late in the afternoon on Tuesday when we arrived at the entrance of the River Peiho.
Here are the famous Taku Forts, the scene of the disaster of 1859, when Sir Frederick Bruce went up to get the treaty ratified, and our vessels were beaten back with the loss of two gunboats, which were sunk. The two forts stand on either side of the mouth of the river, and are occupied—that on the north by the French, and that on the south by the English. A company of infantry suffices to garrison each. They are about to be evacuated. A little to the east of the British Fort there still lies one of our sunken gunboats; the Chinese have recovered and appropriated her guns. I cannot conceive a more dismal lot than that of garrisoning Taku. Besides the forts, which in themselves are dreary enough, there are but a few Chinese mud huts and an hotel, principally patronised by pilots; and the French are cut off even from these by the Peiho, than which no more filthy little stream ever defiled a sea. Its banks at the mouth are vast plains of mud, lying flush with the water, and so bleak and sad-looking that one almost wonders that the very wild-fowl should be induced to stop there. Mud forts, mud houses, mud fields, and muddy river—everything is mud.
Higher up stream, although the banks are very flat and uninteresting, there is no lack of verdure. The trees are insignificant, but there are green fields and gardens cultivated with vegetables and fruit-trees. The neighbourhood of Tientsing is said to be the garden of China, and in the season a peach only fetches three cash, of which one thousand or more, according to the exchange, go to make up the dollar.
We soon had an experience of the difficulty of navigating the Peiho, which is no broader than the Thames at Eton, and as tortuous as Cuckoo weir. Over and over again we were on the point of running aground, and when on one occasion we did stick, it was a labour of great difficulty to get off again. A boat’s crew had to be landed, and a line fastened to a stout tree on the bank, by which means and by backing with all our force we floated off, the sailors on shore improving the occasion by stealing onions and vegetables from the gardens on the bank. Nor was the shallowness of the water our only impediment, for we did not reach Tientsing without several brushes and collisions with junks, in one of which our screw was broken.
I found Tientsing in a great state of excitement. It was the last day of the races, and to my great joy I found my colleague Saurin staying at the Russian consulate. Of course we agreed to make the journey to Peking together, and the Russian consul, by way of making things pleasant, most kindly volunteered to put me up.
The races really showed some very good sport. Tientsing cannot boast of such a meeting as those of Hong-kong and Shanghai, where English thoroughbreds are run, and for which such horses as “Buckstone,” since dead, and “Sir William” are imported; the horses are but Mongol ponies, the bona fide hacks of their owners and riders, yet they accomplished the three-mile race in seven minutes and forty seconds. They are very plucky, strong little beasts, and run till they drop. The races were an additional stroke of luck for me, for I was able at the end of the day to buy a capital pony for fifty dollars. The Chinese crowd showed the greatest possible interest in all the proceedings, and the course had to be kept vi et flagellis, which latter were not spared by the native police. Perhaps they feared spoiling the Chinaman, who is proverbially a child.
19th May.
I must own that I was agreeably disappointed in Tientsing. So many travellers have abused it, and inveighed against its filth and its beggarly crowd, that I expected to be shocked in one or other of my senses at every step. It certainly is very dirty, but not much more so than other Chinese towns, or, for that matter, than many in Europe; and who that has travelled in the sunny South has not seen rags and tatters, vermin, foul diseases, and deformities paraded as stimulants to charity? There is one drawback to Tientsing which is really insufferable. All the wells are salt, and the inhabitants are obliged to drink the loathsome water of the river. In order to cleanse it, it is first placed in large jars that the impurities may settle at the bottom, and then filtered. But nothing can purge it so as to convince one that the disgusting matter, which forces itself upon one as one sails up the stream, has been entirely got rid of.
We went to see some of the curiosity shops. There was a great deal of porcelain to which the dealers and local connoisseurs assigned wonderful dates and fine titles, but nothing that would be cared for in England; and the prices were simply outrageous, for the merchants will pay any mad sum that is asked by the rascally dealers. There were some very fine specimens of cloisonné enamel, but if the sums demanded for the porcelain were high, the enamels were ten times dearer. I saw a quantity of Chinese picture-books; they were not fit to buy, although some had great merit for delicacy of drawing. They each represented a story, generally the “Harlot’s Progress,” from a Chinese point of view, very coarse, and without Hogarth’s grim retribution at the end. Of course, where such drawings are openly exposed for sale there is no great strictness of morals, and Tientsing is famous, or rather infamous, even in China, for every bestial and degrading vice.
The European settlement of Tientsing is about two miles distant from the Chinese city. There are some fairly good houses built by the side of a broad bund or quay, and they command fabulous rents. The same municipal system which obtains at Shanghai has been established here; and, on the whole, the community shows signs of prosperity, although the port has been a disappointment to those who expected that it would reach an importance such as to crush Shanghai and its other rivals, or, at all events, to divert a considerable portion of their trade. For the first year or two after its establishment the business done was very great, and large fortunes were made; one merchant, for example, is just retiring with a fortune of £5000 a year, accumulated since 1861. But the Chinese, cunning in trade, very soon found out that it answered their purpose better to charter steamers, and have consignments made to themselves directly, than to buy from the agents of the great houses; consequently, as the trade is entirely import, the Europeans are finding less and less to do. The Yuen-tse-Fee, although she hails from Glasgow, and is nominally owned by Messrs. Trautmann and Co., a German firm, is in reality chiefly, if not entirely, the property of a dirty little Chinese comprador, whom I saw, and to whom the whole of her cargo was consigned.