A short time since a missionary presented me with a copy of the Pilgrim’s Progress translated into Chinese, and adorned with pictures, in which Christian and the other characters appear with long tails à la Chinoise. If any one will produce a similar edition of Don Quixote for the benefit of the mandarins, I shall recommend our carter as model for the portrait of the knight. His prominent nose, lantern jaws, and tall, thin, ungainly figure exactly fit the character; it is a type I never before saw in China. Any one of his horses would make a capital Rosinante. We made a late start of it, not getting off until eight o’clock, and even then our people lagged behind in the town to buy things. At the gate of the town, where the Great Wall of China is the frontier mark, we met with no difficulties, our passports were not examined, and the officials only took down our names and the number of our party. The day’s march was dull and monotonous; it lay along a continuously ascending pass, winding between barren hills, which bounded the view. We met strings of camels, mules, and bullock-carts, all laden with tea for Russia and Mongolia. The tea that is imported by the Mongols is of the coarsest quality, and pressed into large bricks, which look something like cavendish tobacco, only coarser, and with stronger fibres to bind them together. These bricks are in some parts the current coin of the country: large transactions are settled for so many bricks of tea, while smaller payments are made by cutting pieces off the block as the Chinese cut fragments of silver. The infusion made from brick tea is coarse and nasty; it often has a musty taste owing to the damp confined in the cakes, which prevents their transport by sea.
We breakfasted at Tu-ting, a miserable little village of mud hovels which at a little distance look like mere holes in the hill; the place reminded me of a colony of fever-stricken Circassians whom I saw during their exodus two years ago, burrowing like rabbits in a bank near Tchernavoda. Barring the fever there was not much choice in appearance between the two. After Tu-ting the ascent becomes so steep that horses are kept by the wayside, as on the St. Gothard, to draw up heavy carts to a ledge on which stands a temple in honour of Kwan Ti, the god of war, whither pious carters repair to deposit an offering on having successfully made the ascent. Pa Ta, where we passed the night at the sign of the “Ten Thousand Perfections,” was hardly richer than Tu-ting. Our beds were made in the kitchen amid flour-bins, jars of oil, pots of stinking cheese, and odds and ends of all sorts. It was the best room of the inn, which was a low hut built of mud and chopped straw, roofed over, but with the bare ground for a floor. This is not comfort, but à la guerre comme à la guerre.
2nd May.
A couple of hours more uphill and we were fairly on the Mongolian plateau. A branch of the Great Wall runs along the mountains; but here it is a mere heap of stones thrown together, a wonderful work of patience, it is true, but lacking the grandeur of the brick-built wall at Ku Pei Ko̔u; at intervals are rude turrets fallen or falling into utter decay.
The plateau itself is a vast sea of downs bounded only by the horizon. It is difficult to conceive anything more desolate; there is neither tree nor shrub, nothing taller than a few dwarfish buttercups and campanulas; there is not so much as a stone to sit down upon; for miles and miles there is no trace of human habitation or handiwork; for miles and miles one travels without meeting a soul, except by chance a stray Mongol lumbering heavily along on his camel, or a bullock-cart carrying tea; of beasts we saw a flock of Hwang-yang antelopes, that scampered off almost before there was time to recognise them; the dogs started a fox; a raven was feeding on a dead dog, and a solitary vulture followed in our wake for hours, as if he expected one or other of us to come to grief, but for to-day he was disappointed. We rested at Shi Pa Li Tai, having made an absurdly short day’s journey, but it was impossible to stir our Don Quixote into anything like activity.
3rd May.
We rose long before sunrise, intending to make up for lost time. The early morning on the steppes is something beautiful. Flocks of larks, mocking and other birds are singing away as if their throats must burst, the air is as keen and fresh as possible, and there is just a sparkling of dew on the ground. On such a morning and on such ground our little horses, in spite of the journey before them—of which they always seem to have a sort of instinctive knowledge, for when the holsters and headstalls are put on, the very worst of them sober down and behave well—cannot resist a gallop. They lift their heads, and turning towards the breeze sniff it in by long draughts with a zest that it is good to see, and spin away like mad things over the steppe on which they were born and reared. The dogs catch the infection, and are in the most tearing spirits, careering away far out of sight; Drujok, whose sporting education has been sadly neglected, setting a bad example in a wild lark chase, which my puppy Prince is not slow to follow. Roads across the plateau there are none; and we soon raced away from all sign of the (at best) puzzling tracks of rare carts and horses. Here was a pretty mess! Lost on the steppe like sailors at sea in a cock-boat without a compass! not a landmark of any sort; a boundless plain with a round horizon! After some while spent in fruitless consultation, to our joy a speck began to rise on the horizon; bigger and bigger it grew, until at last it defined itself into the figure of a very jolly, fat, yellow-robed priest,—a sort of Mongol Friar Tuck riding on his camel,—who could fortunately speak a little Chinese. The good-natured fellow, shaking his sides with laughter at our mischance, put his helm about and rode a mile or two out of his own way to steer us into ours, so that in the end we found ourselves at Pan Shan Tu a couple of hours before our people. As we had started at three in the morning on the strength of a cup of tea and a couple of eggs, and had been eight hours in the saddle, it was rather trying to wait until past one o’clock for a meal. Still more trying was it as the evening closed in, and the gathering clouds warned us that there would be no moonlight to guide us, to find ourselves 25 miles from our destination, in the middle of the wilderness, and the cart-horses hardly up to 3 miles an hour. Happily we came upon a group of Mongol yurts (huts or tents), and their uncouth owners were willing and able to take us in. Indeed, as I found out afterwards, the huts on this track are almost available as inns for travellers. We were, as usual, in advance of our party and unable to speak a word of Mongol; however, from the yurts there appeared a wild, gaunt figure, which from its wearing ear-rings and long hair, and from no other sign, I knew to be a woman; in the kindliest but roughest manner she seized the horses and led them to a post, to which she tied them, and then opening one of the yurts, beckoned us to go in and warm ourselves, for it was very chilly. In this hut were crowded a few men, women, and naked children, a calf and several lambs, all huddling together round the fire: what an etching Rembrandt would have made of it! The air was stifling; between smoke and strong smells it was almost impossible to breathe; however, the good lady cleared out another hut, which by the time our servants came up was ready for us.
A Mongol yurt is of the simplest construction. A round, raised floor, from twelve to fifteen feet in diameter, is made of mud and chopped straw; round this is built a wall of trellis-work of laths about four feet high, from which a number of sticks radiate to a point at the top; a thick covering of pieces of felt tied on with strong cord completes the hut; even the trellis-work is fastened by thongs of leather passed through holes made at the point where the laths cross one another. The whole can easily be taken to pieces and packed on a camel’s back. The furniture of the interior is not more luxurious than the exterior: in the centre is an iron fireplace, in which is burnt a fire of horse- or cow-dung, which is the only fuel to be procured, and is collected with great pains on the plateau; the smoke, so much at least as does escape, finds its way through a hole in the middle of the roof; four iron bars support over the fire the single pan in which all the cooking of the family is done; round the tent are a few chests and presses of the rudest Chinese manufacture, and the homeliest of brass pots and pans from Peking; a few sheep-skins and calf-skins and pieces of felt represent bed, sofa, and chair; the whole is blackened by much smoke like a cutty-pipe. A flap of felt serves as door; the hole in the roof is chimney and window in one, and if it rains that must be covered in. Perhaps the quaintest thing about the place, and the strongest sign of the poverty of the land, was the kitchen garden inside the yurt. A basket or pan and a broken teacup, into which a little mould had been placed, were beds in which half a dozen carefully-tended heads of garlic were sprouting! There were no stables; the Mongols do not use them. When they want a horse they go and catch one out of the herd. Our horses were tied up to stakes outside. The cattle keep near the camp of their own accord; the sheep are packed under a shed, so they enjoy a covering; but the young things—calves, lambs, and kids—are carried into the yurts and sleep with the other children. Such was our lodging for the night, and, tired as we were, it did well enough for us. Our dinner was a more difficult matter; our cook did his best for us, but he was sorely put to it for saucepans and other requisites. As I said above, the pan or caldron over the dung-fire is the whole Mongol batterie de cuisine. Into it is thrown a quantity of millet or other grain and a few lumps of fat mutton or beef, which is stewed in water. When the solid part of this has been taken out, the greasy water which remains serves to make the infusion of brick tea. Even the lowest Chinese cannot stomach this nasty mess, and speak of it with the greatest disgust. In some parts of Mongolia an infusion of brick tea is made with boiling milk and salt, and always kept ready in the yurt. This is said to be very good. I had been looking forward to getting a drink of fresh milk, but the Mongols all say that their cows have died. Calves a few days old, and in very good condition, tell another story.
When we had established ourselves in the yurt, the head of the encampment, introduced by the Meg Merrilies who had taken us in and done for us, and whom I imagine to have been his wife, came to visit us. He spoke a little Chinese, which is necessary to him when he goes to Chang Chia Ko̔u to sell his cattle. He told us he was a military officer, but without soldiers to command. Of the world beyond Chang Chia Ko̔u on one side and Llama Miao on the other he knew nothing. His flocks and his tents were his whole life. The women, young and old, had no objection to showing themselves; they came to look at us, and brought their children, whom we made happy with cakes and white sugar. Round-faced, flat-featured, healthy, dirty, and ugly are the women; as for the men, sun, wind, and weather have burnt and hardened them to a degree in comparison with which the most weather-beaten old sea-dog at Portsmouth or Plymouth is satin-skinned. Men and women alike are dressed in long sheep-skin robes, with the wool worn inwards, and round fur caps. Their shapeless dresses and round head-pieces remind one of the family in the Noah’s arks. The people appear very jolly and simple, which they are, and very honest, which report says they are not. Small articles to which they may take a fancy are said to disappear mysteriously. The Mongolian dogs, several of whom guard each encampment, to the great discomfiture of Drujok and Prince, who, on the prowl after water, are constantly attacked by them, are fine beasts—huge, shaggy fellows, mostly black-and-tan, with glorious tails curling over their backs; they must be awkward customers. In spite of the squalor in which our hosts live, they are rich people in their way, and well-to-do; dirt and wretchedness must be with them a matter of choice, not necessity, for their thriving flocks find a ready market at Chang Chia Ko̔u for the supply of Peking. Things which are of the most ordinary necessity to the poorest Chinaman these comparatively prosperous people do without. They have not even a teapot or teacup; and when we suggested washing our faces a rusty old iron basin was dragged out of some corner where it must have lain unused and forgotten for months.
It blew a gale of wind in the night, and rain came on, so we were able to test the comfort of the tent. We suffered neither from cold nor rain; in fact, nothing could be better adapted than these huts for the extreme weather of the steppe. If it is fine you can sleep with the sky above you. If it is cold the felt is a sufficient protection. It was bitterly chilly outside, but within, although we could not bear a fire on account of the smoke, we were as warm as toasts.