From Nampoung to Bhamo is an easy walk of thirty-three miles. This is usually done in two stages, the halting place being the military station of Myothit, which is fourteen miles from Nampoung. On leaving Nampoung, an escort of a lance-corporal and two soldiers was detailed to accompany me. They were Punjabis, men of great stature and warlike aspect; but they were presumably out of training, for they arrived at Myothit, limp and haggard, an hour or more after we did. There is an admirable road through the jungle, maintained in that excellent order characteristic of military roads under British supervision. My Chinese from time to time questioned me as to the distance. We had gone fifteen li when Laotseng asked me how much farther it was to Santien (Myothit). "Three li," I said. We walked ten li further. "How far is it now?" he asked. "Only five li further," I replied, gravely. We went on another six li, when again he asked me: "Teacher Mô, how many li to Santien?" "Only eight more li," I said, and he did not ask me again. I was endeavouring to give him information in the fashion that prevails in his own country.
At Myothit we camped in the dâk bungalow, an unfurnished cottage kept for the use of travellers. The encampment is on the outskirts of a perfectly flat plain, skirted with jungle-clad hills and covered with elephant grass. Through the plain the broad river Taiping flows on its muddy way to the Irrawaddy. One hundred sepoys are stationed here under a native officer, a Sirdar, Jemadar, or Subadar (I am not certain which), who called upon me, and stood by me as I ate my tiffin, and, to my great embarrassment, saluted me in the most alarming way every time my eye unexpectedly caught his. I confess that I did not know the gentleman from Adam. I mistook him for an ornamental head-waiter, and, as I regarded him as a superfluous nuisance, I told him not to stand upon the order of his going but go. I pointed to the steps; and he went, sidling off backwards as if from the presence of royalty. Drawing his heels together, he saluted me at the stair-top and again at the bottom, murmuring words which were more unintelligible to me even than Chinese.
During the night our exposed bungalow was assailed by a fearful storm of wind and rain, and for a time I expected it to be bodily lifted off the piles and carried to the lee-side of the settlement. The roof leaked in a thousand places, rain was driven under the walls, and everything I had was soaked with warm water.
Next day we had a pleasant walk into Bhamo, that important military station on the left bank of the Irrawaddy. We crossed the Taiping at Myothit by a bridge, a temporary and very shaky structure, which is every year carried away when the river rises, and every year renewed when the caravans take the road after the rains.
Bhamo is 1520 miles by land from Chungking; and it is an equal distance further from Chungking to Shanghai. The entire distance I traversed in exactly one hundred days, for I purposely waited till the hundredth day to complete it. And it surely speaks well of the sense of responsibility innate in the Chinese that, during all this time, I never had in my employ a Chinese coolie who did not fulfil, with something to spare, all that he undertook to do. I paid off my men in Bhamo. To Laotseng I gave 400 cash too many, and asked him for the change. At once with much readiness he ranged some cash on the table in the form of an abacus, and, setting down some hieroglyphics on a sheet of paper, he worked out a calculation, by which he proved that I owed him 400 cash, and, therefore, the accounts were now exactly balanced. For my own expenses I gave him 1175 cash in Tengyueh and 400 more in Bhamo, so that my entire personal expenses between two points nine days distant from each other were rather more than 3s. My entire journey from Shanghai to Bhamo cost less than £20 sterling, including my Chinese outfit. Had I travelled economically, I estimate that the journey need not have cost me more than £14. Had I carried more silver with me, I would still further have reduced the total cost of my tour. The gold I bought in Yunnan with my surplus silver, I sold in Burma for 20 per cent. profit, the rupees which I purchased in Tengyueh for 11d. were worth 13d. in Bhamo. For some curios which I purchased in the interior for £2 5s. I was offered when I reached civilisation £14. Without doubt the journey across China is the cheapest that can be done in all the world.
I was sorry to say good-bye to my men, who had served me so faithfully. And I cannot speak more highly of the pleasure of my journey than to declare that I felt greater regret when it was finished than I ever felt on leaving any other country. The men all through had behaved admirably, and it is only fair to add that mine was the common experience of travellers in far Western China. Thus a very great traveller in China and Thibet (W. W. Rockhill), writing in the Century, April, 1894, on the discomforts of his recent journey, says:
"But never a word of complaint from either the Thibetans or my Chinese. They were always alert, always good-tempered, always attentive to me, and anxious to contribute to my comfort in every way in their power. And so I have ever found these peoples, with whom I am glad to say, after travelling over 20,000 miles in their countries, I have never exchanged a rough word, and among whom I think I have left not one enemy and not a few friends."
Two days after their arrival in Bhamo my three men started on their return journey to Talifu. They were laden with medicines, stores, newspapers, and letters for the mission in Tali, which for months had been accumulating in the premises of the American Mission in Bhamo, the missionary in charge, amid the multifarious avocations pertaining to his post, having found no time to forward them to their destination to his lonely Christian brother in the far interior. And, had I not arrived when I did, they could not have been sent till after the rains. A coolie will carry eighty pounds weight from Bhamo to Tali for 12s.; and I need hardly point out that a very small transaction in teak would cover the cost of many coolies. Besides, any expenditure incurred would have been reimbursed by the Inland Mission. My three men were pursued by cruel fate on their return; they all were taken ill at Pupiao. Poor "Bones" and the pock-marked coolie died, and Laotseng lay ill in the hotel there for weeks, and, when he recovered sufficiently to go on to Tali, he had to go without the three loads, which the landlord of the inn detained, pending the payment of his board and lodging and the burial expenses of his two companions.