June 1.—My new colleague, Sir Eric Farquhar, arrived from England. An old schoolfellow. He was accompanied by Mr. Brenchley, a most accomplished traveller, who seems to have been all over the world, and being a great naturalist and profound observer, is a charming companion to boot.
June 10.—The last few days have been occupied in showing Brenchley the lions of Peking. To-day we went to breakfast at a fashionable Chinese restaurant, “The House of Eternal Prosperity,” in the Ta Shih La Erh, which we call Curio Street. In order that we might make a genteel appearance and observe the ten thousand proprieties, my servant Chang Hsi insisted on our going in carts. Walking is so vulgar! We were jolted and bruised over the indescribable ruts and paving-stones to a horrible degree, but our dignity was kept up. We found the House of Eternal Prosperity very shabby and dirty, and we should have had a much better breakfast at home.
June 15–20.—Two more parties of travellers arrived. More work as “intelligent guide.”
LETTER XXVII
Ta-chio-Ssŭ,
The Temple of Great Repose,
23rd July 1866.
The last mail took you no letter from me because I was far away in Mongolia. My first intention had been merely to go as far as Chang Chia Ko̔u, to accompany Brenchley and make the arrangements for his journey across Siberia to Russia. Ultimately, however, the party increased to four, of whom one was a lady, and our programme grew in proportion. We started on June the 21st. We were detained four or five days at Chang Chia Ko̔u, owing to the chicanery of a faithless Mongol camel-owner who did not keep faith with us. However, it is a bright, cheerful little town, so I did not much mind. It was gayer than ever too, for on account of the great drought, morning, noon, and night, the town was being paraded by processions of distressed agriculturists praying for rain. Preceded by squeaky clarionets, drums, and gongs, a crowd of men and boys with wreaths of willow round their heads and middles, above which their sunburnt bodies were naked, some wearing fillets of red paper, others doing penance with their necks enclosed in the heavy board used as a punishment for prisoners, escorted a sedan chair with a tiny god in it to the Lung Wang Miao, the Temple of the Dragon Prince, whom, being a water-god, it is well to propitiate in cases of drought.[16] Some of the votaries were armed with spears and rude guns, which from time to time they fired off, and altogether there was din and clatter enough even to please a Chinese crowd. “Ah! these agriculturists!” said a Chinese gentleman who was looking on with the most supreme contempt, and whom I asked for an explanation of the affair; “they are never content! It’s always too much rain or too little, or something the matter. Unsurpassable!” The prayers of the worthy people were heard, however, and the Dragon Prince took a favourable view of their case, for the first day of my stay at Chang Chia Ko̔u there came a thunderstorm, with a downfall of rain, such as one seldom sees out of the tropics, and there was more or less rain all the time we were there. The coincidence will not improve the chances of an American missionary who has been physicking the natives of Chang Chia Ko̔u for rather more than a year, but in spite of the drastic arguments of blue pill and black dose, has not yet made a convert.
There are three main passes leading from China into Mongolia, Chang Chia Ko̔u, Ku Pei Ko̔u, and between them Tu Shih Ko̔u, which is smaller and less important, but which I had not seen. The plan which I proposed, and which my companions accepted, was to make a tour of the three, following a line outside, but in some parts parallel with the Great Wall.
We left Chang Chia Ko̔u on the 30th of June. It was frightfully hot, but I had provided a refuge against the scorching sun, which at mid-day would have been unbearable. We each had with us a mule litter, a sort of long carriage in which a single person can almost lie at full length, with shafts behind and before which are borne on mules’ backs. This sounds rather a comfortable and luxurious way of travelling, seeing that one’s bed and pillows are placed inside. As a fact it is horridly jolty and sea-sicky; then no sooner has one established one’s self in a tolerably easy position and dozed off (which is inevitable, and makes one very hot and uncomfortable), than one is called upon by the muleteer to trim the boat: “Your Excellency! please sit a little more to the south. Your Excellency’s weight is all to the north! The north side of that mule’s back is becoming terribly galled.” My muleteer was a very original character. He had a prodigious talent for screaming out Chinese anacreontics at the top of his voice, and for dramatic recitations and imitations of popular actors. He was always the last of the muleteers to get up in the morning, and when at last I took to waking him with the crack of a hunting-whip, he only grumbled good-humouredly and said the “old lord,” meaning me, was very hard upon him, but none the more did he get up to feed his mules. He had been to Mongolia once with Sir Frederic Bruce, to whom he applied the most glowing eulogy that a Chinaman can bestow, holding up his thumb; words could go no further. Altogether Cha Mai Chu—that is his name—was the merriest, grinningest, and most laughable devil that I have ever come across here. When we arrived at the inn, and the six muleteers, having acquiesced in the landlord’s civil proposal, “You six gentlemen” (if you could but see the six gentlemen!) “will dine together, I suppose,” had sat down to the coarse fare, a sort of macaroni with garlic and pickles, which they allow themselves, Cha Mai Chu used to keep the other five in a roar of laughter, and I rather think that by that means he contrived to suck up the lion’s share of the white strings.
As the first part of our road, as far as Chang-Ma-Tzŭ-Chin, was but a repetition of the same journey which I wrote about in my last long letter describing my expedition to Llama Miao, I spare you the repetition. Farther on we followed a route new to me, and in some places not visited before by foreigners. This may interest you. After leaving Chang-Ma-Tzŭ-Chin on the 3rd July, instead of pushing on northwards across Mongolia, which at this season is far more worthy of its Chinese name, “The Land of Grass,” than it was two months ago, we steered south-east back towards China, across a sandy plain, richly cultivated with potatoes and other crops. In the midst of this sandy tract stands a little tumble-down Chinese village called Lien Hwa Tan, “the lotus-flower fountain,” from an old tradition that there once stood there a temple in which was a fountain flourishing with lotus-flowers. Now it is a case of lucus a non, for temple, fountain, and flowers have all faded away together, and as for anything flourishing, there was barely a roof for us to eat our breakfasts under. We were making for a ridge of green hills, from the top of which I expected to come in sight of the Great Wall, which, however, did not appear until we had reached the bottom of an emerald-green valley, with luxuriant vegetation, lying between rugged and bare rocks. Hard by Tu Shih Ko̔u the great brick monster showed itself again, but in ruins, undermined and sapped by continual watercourses. The rocks here are very fine, picturesque and astonishing in their shapes. Tu Shih Ko̔u itself is a queer little old town. The fortifications and walls are falling into decay, uncared for and unrepaired. In a few years, I should think, its quaint gables and towers and useless fortifications will have crumbled away; but on the other hand, inside the walls there are shops, neat and tidy, and houses showing signs of some prosperity. Perhaps, after all, there is some method in the apparent madness of letting the old remains of protection against border warfare go to the dogs. I have often told you how bothered travellers are here on arriving at an inn by gapers and starers. The nuisance was multiplied a hundred-fold on this excursion by the fact of our having a lady with us. I was armed with special letters of recommendation from the Ministers of Foreign Affairs to the high mandarins along the road, and as soon as these last heard that we were annoyed, they hastened to send us “po-po” (sweetmeats) and protection, but before this arrived I had been obliged to take the law into my own hands, for three dirty, old, gray blackguards had actually, using their wet thumbs as centre-bits, made holes in one of our paper windows, at which they were playing peeping Tom, and so interested by what they saw that they did not hear Retribution stealing up on tiptoe armed with a hunting-whip. Retribution, that is myself, tied their three nasty old tails together and packed them off howling, to the great delight of their friends and relations, who quite recognised the breach of Tao Li of which they had been guilty. An appeal to Tao Li, good manners, or propriety, is always a trump card to play when in difficulties with a Chinese crowd.
We only stayed one night at Tu Shih Ko̔u, and then rode back through another pass to the fresh air of the steppe. We passed the night at a little hamlet called Chang Leang. There was but one inn, and that was full, and we should have had to pass the night al fresco if a good-natured Bachelor of Arts returning from Llama Miao to Tu Shih Ko̔u had not consented to push on and give us up his room for the lady of our party. The rest of us managed to huddle up somehow. Never in all my wanderings here have I had to sleep in such queer places as I did on this journey. The villages were poor, the inns worse; and instead of having the high place, we males were bound to put up with holes such as the very beggars in England would back out of. However, the game was worth the candle so far as scenery was concerned, and then the air of Mongolia makes up for everything. Even the Alpine Club do not know what fresh air is; they must come to the steppes.