It was past seven o’clock, and the sun was high in the heavens before we had completed our preparations, saddled the ponies, and packed the luggage and provisions into the litters. Our party consisted of but three mule-litters, and our two ponies. The heavy baggage had preceded us the day before, and we did not expect to come up with it till we reached Kalgan, the last Chinese city on the borders of Mongolia. Two Chinese muleteers accompanied us, also Jee Boo, who bustled about and made himself generally useful in a way that augured well for the future.
A final café au lait and “chasse” with our host, who was almost as keen about the expedition as we were (indeed, where should we have been, had it not been for his timely aid?), and we were ready to start. Early as it was, madame and her sister were at the gate to bid us farewell and wish us a prosperous journey. One could not help thinking, as one looked at their pretty French faces and neatly clad figures, how long it might be ere one would look upon their like again!
A few moments more and we had taken leave of our friends, and were riding down the narrow dusty street for the last time, half sorry (so perverse is man) to leave the place we had been for three long weeks moving heaven and earth to get away from. The feeling of regret did not last long, however, and before we had crossed the stone bridge over the Imperial canal no one would have recognized in us the despairing wretches of two days ago. We left Pekin a quarter of an hour later by the Anting Gate, and for the following three hours skirted closely along the sandy plains that bound the city walls. Here we passed some three or four hundred camels, a caravan inward bound from the desert, going at a pace of about a mile and a half an hour. The Tartars in charge were all asleep, but the camels seemed to know their way; indeed the track here is pretty clearly laid down, being in the direct route to and from Kalgan. An hour later we had entered a fertile plain of millet, corn, and rye, interspersed with huge fields of pasture, and bounded on the horizon by a rugged, precipitous chain of hills, partly covered with forest, from which brightly coloured temples and pagodas stood out here and there in bright relief, glittering in the sunshine. All was life and animation; our very ponies seemed to rise in spirits, and plunged and danced about under the influence of the keen air and bright sunshine, to say nothing of the unusually large feeds of corn they had been given of late.
An hour later we stopped to look back across the emerald green plain to where, on the horizon, a thin brown line, faint and indistinct, broke the bright blue sky-line. We were looking our last on the walls of Pekin: the long land journey across Europe and Asia had commenced in real earnest.
[1]. A fact.
[2]. A verst is about three-quarters of a mile.
CHAPTER III.
PEKIN TO KALGAN.
We had decided, upon leaving Pekin, to spend the greater part of the day in the sedans. The very name of this vehicle has a luxurious sound, and we looked forward to pleasant hours of travel at any rate as far as the Great Wall of China. But man is doomed to disappointment. For fatigue and discomfort, amounting at times to sheer physical pain, commend me to a Chinese mule litter, which is simply a kind of box or covered chair, hung on two long and slender poles. To it are harnessed, before and behind, two mules gaily caparisoned with feathers, highly-coloured trappings and bells. The latter, which keep up a loud and incessant jingle, are supposed to relieve the monotony of the journey. To the Chinese mind, perhaps, they do. The motion, to those not subject to sea-sickness, is not disagreeable, nor would it be tiring, had not the occupant to keep constantly in the same position, as in a canoe or outrigger, for the slightest movement to the right or left overturns the whole concern. Also, should the leading mule fall, a not unfrequent occurrence, the passenger is almost certain to get a nasty fall; should the hind one make a false step, he finds himself helpless, with his feet in the air and at the mercy of the leader’s heels, for the front and sides of the litter are open. With these trifling exceptions, the mule litters have no discomforts, always excepting the vermin that infest them.