We had all the trouble in life this morning to get the mules to start. Threats of stoppages of pay were the only means of acting on the muleteers. Even so we only got off by eight o’clock. The doctor and I, accompanied by my man Chang Hsi, were to visit the tombs, while the mules, not being supposed capable of deriving either profit or amusement from the sight, were to precede us to Nan-Ko̔u, and there wait our arrival. The valley of the tombs was not so bright and rich as when I saw it with the autumn crops in all their luxuriance, but there were plenty of wild-flowers, dog-violets, wild iris, convolvulus, and others, and the persimmon trees were a mass of bloom. The avenue of monstrous statues appeared tame to me in the glare of day after having seen their weird and ghostly appearance by moonlight, but the site and buildings must always be striking. There are plenty of temples and palaces in and near Peking as large and as magnificent, but none in such good proportion; they all look like “imitation” by the side of the Thirteen Tombs.
We had to ride back to within a few hundred yards of Chang-ping-chou before we could reach the sandy and stony road which leads to Nan-Ko̔u. It was burning hot, but as the Russians say, “Heat breaks no bones,” and with fresh, pure air to breathe it does not much signify how hot it is. In Peking it is another matter. We reached Nan-Ko̔u at 2 P.M. The little town is prettily situated at the bottom of the famous pass to which it gives its name. Steep cliffs enclose it on either side; a stream of clear water—rare sight in these parts—passes through it; and the cottages in the valley are surrounded by trees and corn-fields. The hills are wild and bold, with here and there bits of wall, towers, and perhaps a temple or shrine on the ridges. The constant tinkling of camel and mule bells testifies to the amount of traffic. Every other house is an inn, and all seem bustling and prosperous. There was plenty of movement and plenty of noise in our inn-yard; muleteers, carters, footpads, poultry, and asses kept up a perpetual wrangling, crowing, and braying, while an improvisatore in the kitchen opposite was earning his night’s board and lodging by reciting tales of an unedifying character for the benefit of the host and his guests of lower degree. Although we had arrived so early, we thought it better to stop the night at Nan-Ko̔u and go on in the morning, so we had time for a stroll among the hills after dinner.
25th April.
We started at six, riding donkeys in order to spare the ponies the rough work of the pass. The Nan-Ko̔u pass is certainly in its way very fine. The valley, which is a gradual ascent, is bounded on either side by steep, abrupt hills, as barren and wild as a Scotch glen; a few trees stud it at intervals, and a narrow thread of water runs through it. There are plenty of shrines about, and always perched upon cliffs so steep that one is lost in wonder how they ever got there. Amongst these I noticed a form of sacred monument that was new to me, but constantly repeated along this road—five white-washed earthen cones like sugar-loaves, with bats[14] or other emblems rudely painted on them; I guess that they represent the five offerings exposed on Buddhist altars. As an instance of the difficulty of obtaining reliable information, and to show how cautiously travellers’ statements about China must be accepted, I asked three respectable Chinese by the road what was the meaning of these five cones. One said that they were to keep off foxes and wolves, another that they marked every five li along the road, and the third that they were Buddhist emblems, but he did not know what they represented. The pass itself, considering that it is the highway between Mongolia and China, is a very miracle of bad roads. It is as if nature had in some stupendous convulsion burst a passage through the mountains, leaving all the débris in the most glorious confusion, which man has been too idle to reduce to order. Huge boulders of rock at every step obstruct a way which is difficult enough already, and the overhanging cliffs seem as if they were on the point of throwing down more masses to block up the road. Asses are far the best mounts for this work. Ours carried us capitally, urged by constant revilings from their rascally drivers. “Egg of a turtle! what are you stopping for!” is the mildest of their adjurations, the turtle not being used as significative of slowness, but as an euphemism for cuckold. There are plenty of villages in the pass; the inhabitants do a small trade in tea, hard-boiled eggs, and laopings (a sort of girdle-cake), which they sell to wayfarers. There is one very pretty little town, Chu-Yung-Kwan, with a curious old gateway richly carved with quaint figures and inscriptions in Chinese, Manchu, Mongolian, and Thibetan, said to be a relic of the Yuan or Mongol dynasty. At the top of the pass, just before the slight descent which leads to the plateau on the west, is an old ruined fortified enclosure called Pa Ta Ling, “the eight great peaks.” It is a curious place, for the inside is literally a heap of ruins and rubbish, while the walls and fortifications are almost perfect.
We breakfasted at Cha Tao at the end of the pass, some 15 miles, and very tiring miles too, from Nan-Ko̔u. After Cha Tao the road lies along a sandy plain, probably once a lake, to Hwai Lai Hsien, a pretty model of a Chinese town, with crenelated walls and quaint towers. East of the town is a small river, spanned by what once has been a handsome five-arched bridge, now of course falling into ruin and decay. Hard by, on a low hill, stands a temple like an Italian monastery. We put up for the night at Hwai Lai Hsien, having ridden some 35 miles from Nan-Ko̔u. We had some difficulty in finding an inn. The people of the east side of the town sent us to the west, and the people of the west incited us to go back to the east. The mules and servants were behind us, and we were left entirely to our own resources. At last my horse decided the question by bolting down a courtyard, which turned out to be that of the best inn in the place, but which, it having no signboard, I had missed.
26th April.
We had a dullish ride to-day to Hsin Pao An, passing a few small towns, all fortified, probably against Mongol invasions; at one of these, Tu Mu, we made our mid-day halt. Hsin Pao An is a very pretty little town. One Chinese town is generally so like another that if you have seen one you have seen all. Here, however, there is a very curious building in the middle of the place; it is a sort of compromise between an English town-hall, a mediæval fortress, and a Chinese temple; it gives a distinction to the town. It is so very rare to see a drunken man in China that it is almost worth recording that one rushed into our rooms here, and was proceeding to lay hands on the doctor, who shook him off in great astonishment, when the people of the inn came in and turned him out, with many apologies for the annoyance.
27th April.
The main feature in the plain on leaving Hsin Pao An is a steep mountain, or rather precipitous and jagged rock, perhaps 800 or 1000 feet high, called Nei Nei Shan. It stands at the western end of the plain, immediately to the east of the Yang Ho, “sheep river,” which winds beneath it. On the very summit of this rock is a temple, about which there is a legend which reminds one of Rolandseck and Nonnenwerth. A prince of these parts had engaged to throw a bridge over the river in a single night, or forfeit his life. He set about his task, but when the sun rose in the morning the work was unfinished, so in despair and in fulfilment of his vow he threw himself into the river and was drowned. His widow erected this temple that she might pass her life in mourning in constant sight of the spot where her husband had disappeared. I have the very worst authority for this legend, of which, by the bye, Bell gives another version quoted by Michie. The Chinese about the place have never heard of it; however, I dare say it is as true as most other legends; at any rate there stand the hill and the temple, and there live (heaven knows how) five priests, exposed to the full glare of the sun, and to every cold wind that blows, and obliged to fetch even the water they drink up an almost inaccessible height from the plain below. This day’s journey, following the Yang Ho in a north-westerly direction, was very picturesque and varied, but often rocky to a degree. However, our little Mongol horses behaved like goats; they never stumble except on a flat road, where they get careless and lazy. There is plenty of coal in these hills, which is worked in the meanest manner and sent to Peking on camels. A geologist who has examined this part of China, and especially the mountains to the west, affirms it to be the richest coalfield in the world, but the Chinese do not take advantage of it. We met plenty of travellers of all degrees, the richer ones travelling in mule litters, a mode of conveyance which looks to me as if it might bring on sea-sickness; and numberless caravans laden with tea for Russia.
We rested at a poor little town called Hsiang Shui Pu, and put up for the night at Hsuan Hua Fu, a large district city. Here in the suburbs we found an inn which was a palace compared with those we had put up in hitherto, though an English labourer’s cottage would not suffer by contrast with the room I slept in. A certain amount of new paper in the windows gave a promise of cleanliness and decency within that was not fulfilled by the broken brick floor and musty tables and benches; however, there were plenty of shabby, tawdry lanterns, and if characters of good omen could give appetite and a good night’s rest, we ought to have eaten like ogres and slept like the Seven Sleepers. We were a good deal lionised here; indeed, the inquisitiveness of the people was very troublesome. As I was lathering my face before dinner, trying to get rid of the deposit of two or three sandstorms, the curse of travellers in North China, a carter walked coolly into my bedroom smoking his pipe, and went into fits of laughter at the sight. I, irritated by the intrusion, flung the contents of my soapy sponge into his face—which must have very much astonished it, for it was much in the same state as the fists of the Irish boatman two years after he had shaken hands with the Lord Lieutenant; and my enemy fled howling. Presently another gentleman appeared who addressed me as “Venerable Teacher”—a high compliment—and informed me that his name was Ma, and that he was a merchant of caps travelling from west to east; after which he retired, but shortly put his head in again to ask my honourable name and nation, and I heard him afterwards in the yard explaining to a knot of carters, muleteers, and loungers, that I was the English teacher Mi, that I understood good manners, that my body was all over pockets, and that my years were not few; which statements the auditors received with many grunts and eructations and repeated several times, afterwards one by one sauntering up to judge for themselves. I happened to be emptying my pockets at the time of Ma’s visit. Pockets are not used by the Chinese; they have, it is true, purses or pouches at their girdle, but they are very small. The chief receptacle for miscellaneous articles is the boot. My first teacher used to pull writing materials and sugar-plums indiscriminately from his boot, and always politely offered me the latter before tasting them himself. Old Hêng-Chi, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is malade imaginaire and always dosing himself, constantly pulls pills or other pet remedies out of his boot. European pockets are always provocative of wonder. The noises of the inn-yard made sleep out of the question till long past midnight. The worst of all was an old carter wrapped up in his sheepskin, sitting on the shaft of his cart and beating a sort of death-watch with a stick on a piece of hollow bamboo, like a ghoulish old woodpecker. I went out and tried to chaff him out of his performance, but he took my irony for high praise, which so delighted him that he every now and then burst into snatches of song in a high squeaky falsetto, never stopping his eternal devil’s tattoo. Mules, asses, horses, and quarrelling Chinamen made up a fitting chorus.