A day’s rest having sufficiently repaired our strength, we quitted Djaya. It is unnecessary to add that the Chinese were obliged to pay, and in ready money, for the hire of the oulah. The Thibetians of the country were too ferocious to furnish us gratuitously with oxen and horses. We travelled for two days, through a country extremely low, where we frequently found small villages and black tents grouped in the valleys. We were often obliged to traverse wooden bridges, in order to cross sometimes calm and quiet streams, and at other times torrents, the impetuous waters of which rolled on with a terrible noise. Shortly before our arrival at the station of Adzou-Thang, we overtook the party which was accompanying the coffin of the deceased Liang-Tai to Bagoung. The son also had just died in a black tent, after a few hours’ frightful agony. The caravan, having no chief, was in a complete state of disorganisation; most of the soldiers of the escort had dispersed, after pillaging the baggage of their Mandarin; three only had
remained, who were devising the best means of effecting the conveying of the two bodies to China. They despaired of being able to continue their journey in so small a number; so that the arrival of our caravan extricated them from a great difficulty. The conveyance of the father’s body had been arranged at Bagoung; that of the son remained unsettled. The carriers of his palanquin had refused to undertake the carriage, for they foresaw that there would not be money enough to pay them for their trouble. To place the coffin on an ox was impracticable; there was no inducing a Thibetian guide to allow one of their animals to carry a corpse, much less the corpse of a Chinese. We were obliged to have recourse to stratagem. The body of the last deceased Mandarin was secretly cut into four pieces, and then packed in a box, which we put among the general luggage, making the Thibetians believe that in honour of filial piety, the body of the son had been laid beside that of his father, in the same coffin.
The two corpses, that had become our fellow-travellers, communicated to the caravan a mournful aspect, which had great influence upon the Chinese imagination. Ly, the pacificator of kingdoms, whose strength decreased daily, was particularly alarmed by the circumstance; he would fain have removed the sad spectacle, but this he could not effect without exposing himself to the terrible accusation of having impeded the sepulture of two Mandarins, who had died in a foreign country.
From Adzou-Thang, we went on to sleep and change oulah in a small village of the valley of Che-Pan-Keou (Valley of Slates). According to the testimony of the Chinese Itinerary, the inhabitants of this valley are a rude, wicked, and obstinate people; that is to say, in other words, they do not fear the Chinese, and are in the habit of making them pay a good price for the yaks and horses with which they furnish them.
The valley of Che-Pan-Keou, as its name indicates, abounds in quarries of argillaceous schist. The Thibetians of these countries raise from them beautiful slate, which they use in tiling their houses; they also raise very thick pieces, upon which they engrave images of Buddha with the form, “Om mane padme houm.” This slate is of very fine texture. The small portions of mica or talc which they contain, give them a brilliant and silky lustre.
The stream which flows through the centre of the valley, contains a large quantity of gold dust, which the natives do not neglect to collect and refine. As we walked along the stream, we found fragments of crucibles, to which were still attached a few particles of gold; we showed them to the Pacificator of Kingdoms, and this sight seemed to reanimate his strength, and to
renew the bonds which attached him to life. The blood suddenly rushed into his face, his eyes, which had been almost extinct, shone with an unwonted fire. One would have said that the sight of a few grains of gold had made him completely forget both his malady and the two corpses which accompanied him.
Musk deer abound in this schistous valley. Although that animal, addicted to cold climates, is met with on almost all the mountains of Thibet, nowhere, perhaps, is it seen in such large numbers as in the neighbourhood of Che-Pan-Keou. The pines, cedars, hollies, and cypresses, which cover this country, contribute, no doubt, a good deal to attract these animals thither, peculiarly fond, as they are, of the roots of these trees, which have a strong aromatic perfume.
The musk deer is of the height of a goat; it has a small head; its nose is pointed, and ornamented with long white mustachios; its legs are small, its haunches large and thick; two long crooked teeth, which grow out of the upper jaw, enable it to tear up from the ground the odoriferous roots, upon which it subsists; its hair is generally from two to three inches long, and is hollow, like that of almost all the animals which live north of the Himalaya mountains; extremely rough, and always bristling; its colour is black below, white in the middle, and inclining to grey above. A bladder, suspended from the belly, near the navel, contains the precious substance, the musk.
The inhabitants of the schistous valley capture in the chase such a number of these musk deer, that you see nothing in their houses but the skins of these animals, hung on the walls by pegs. They use the hair to stuff the thick cushions, on which they sit during the day, and the sort of mattress which serves them for a bed; they have in the musk the source of a very lucrative trade with the Chinese.