The scenery of the Peiho is repelling in its ugliness, and wearisome from its extreme monotony. The country is absolutely flat, and there is nothing, now that the harvest is carried in, but a parched saline plain, of mud and yellow grass, extending for hundreds of miles all around.
Our Home on the Peiho.
The only hills are those of the graves—these unwieldy mounds of battened earth, that stand in rows along the bank, or are collected in a field—a family burial place, with mounds of varying sizes. The greater the man, the larger is the tumulus raised over him. Then there are other and more disagreeable ones, where the coffin has been temporarily earthed above ground, awaiting perhaps a favourable moment for burial, or sufficient funds to take the deceased back to the place of his birth; for this is the dearly cherished hope of every Chinaman, and often, when old age approaches, he returns to his native place to be ready to die there. An even more objectionable custom is that of putting coffins down in open fields, or along the roads. We saw one covered in red standing like this, just outside a village, and you find them in the same way all over China. There is a superstition that it is lucky to bury within sight of water or in a place which commands a view, and that is why we see such rows of graves for miles and miles by the river bank. To the Chinese their burial is the most important thing of life. They prepare their coffins and keep them in their houses for years beforehand, though their unwieldy size and solidity take up much ill-spared space, and the object of every woman of the poorest class is to save enough for her grave-clothes. It has been truly said that the whole face of China is burrowed under by these graves.
The turpid yellow waters of the Peiho swirl against our boat, particularly at the reaches, where the current is strongest. The harvest is over, the poppy fields are bare, and there are only a few tall straggly castor-oil plants along the banks. A few, very few coolies, in loose blue cotton garments, are at work, ploughing with ancient and rude ploughshares. The teams they use are delightfully mixed. You may often see an ox and horse, a donkey and a mule all pulling together. And the same useful mixture is seen in the carts that resemble old Roman chariots, crawling along the towing path, where a bull with a tandem donkey is a favourite team. These donkeys are beautiful animals; small, but with sleek grey, brown and black coats, with the well-marked neck rings, and line down the centre of the back. We meet solitary pedestrians trudging along with their heads down against the wind, and we wonder whence they came and whither they are going, for we are now only passing isolated villages at great distances. In some of the few we sail by, the mud walls surrounding the villages have a graceful openwork arabesque at the top, and in one, to the sound of much tom-tomming, a festival was progressing, at which all the inhabitants (as there were none to be seen) are evidently assisting.
The windings described by the Peiho are aggravating. The actual distance traversed, after a series of bends, being equal to about half a mile as the crow flies. Again and again we see the extraordinary phenomenon of a row of sails walking inland; and how picturesque these brown-patched sails look, as extended by the wind they glide in single file against the sky line. The wind is a subject of great anxiety on the Peiho, because if it is ahead one the crew make fast to the bank at once, and await a favourable change; and even if it is, as to-day, behind us, the river winds so much that we box every point of the compass, and so it is not always to our advantage. We watch our progress with great interest; and now we are scudding gaily before a lovely fresh breeze, with the pleasant sound of rushing water under the keel, whilst the big sail overhead balloons out and swells hopefully. To this succeeds a calm, when a little punting with the long poles is necessary, or a deep bend when the wind and stream are ahead of us, and which means a painful slow bit of tacking, when the men strain the whole weight of their bodies against the tow line, to progress at all. Again a pleasant rush, the puff of wind catching our ponderous sail, and we scud merrily past the banks. And how our coolies enjoy this; stretching themselves out, and, sunning on the deck, smoke their pipes. So it goes on all day.
We passed several gaily-decorated junks belonging to a great mandarin with the peacock's feather over the door, generally accompanied by another with the household; also the ex-French Chargé d'Affaires, Monsieur Ristelhueber, and his family, returning to France from Peking, and with whom we afterwards had the pleasure of travelling homewards for a month on the French mail.
The approach to Peking, which signifies the "Gate of Heaven," is indeed synonymous with the biblical definition in one particular, for it is narrow. This morning the Peiho has dwindled into a ditch between extensive mud flats, and we are constantly aground, our five brown coolies struggling and sweating in the quagmire of soft mud under a broiling sun. It is weary, weary work this slow progress, and we chafe at all the delays of crossing the tow line from one bank to another, to avoid the now continuous succession of sampans, many of which are in worse condition than ourselves, for the men have to get out into the water to push the boat along; for should we not arrive at Tungchau by noon, we must abandon all hope of reaching Peking to-night, as the gates close at sunset. There is a head wind, with a strong current racing down the narrow channel against us, and we sadly mark how crawling is our progress by the landmarks on the bank. And so the long hours of morning pass, and, just as we are losing hope, we see the blue tower of the pagoda at Tungchau, rising up from the plain, and there are only seven miles more with an hour to do it in, and we shall be at our journey's end. We afterwards found that, favoured by the wind, we had made almost, if not quite, a record passage of forty-six hours, and that many boats take from four to five days in coming up from Tientsin.