Splendid weather favoured our journey. Though the heat at mid-day was intense, and the fierce sun compelled us to seek shelter in the litters, the mornings and evenings were cool and delicious. We left Koo-ash the following day at five a.m. Our bill for the night was certainly not ruinous eighty cash, or something under 7d., for the whole party.
The road ceases after leaving Koo-ash, and our way the second day lay through a succession of small paths or raised footways running in all directions through rice and cotton-fields. How the muleteers kept on the right track is a mystery to me, for there was apparently nothing to guide them. The paths or boundaries of the fields seemed to have been constructed with a view to leading wayfarers astray, like the maze at Hampton Court. There seemed to be no lack of water, the plains being cut up into squares of various sizes, and the water brought by means of small canals or ditches from the nearest stream or river. The method of pumping is the same as in Egypt: a couple of buckets worked by a swing beam handled by one or two men. A sheet of water some inches deep, is by this means kept over the surface of the rice-fields, which are so numerous in parts as to give the country the appearance of being in a state of inundation.
We reached the city of Nankow at mid-day, but did not halt there, preferring to go straight through and take our mid-day meal (if a piece of chocolate and a biscuit can so be called), in the open country. A large wall runs through Nankow, often regarded by tourists as the Great Wall of China. Many Europeans are brought here from Pekin, and return thoroughly satisfied in their own minds, that they have seen the Great Wall, when, in fact, they have done nothing of the kind. The wall at Nankow is simply an offshoot of the real thing, and runs at right angles to it; moreover, the former is not so high, and its stones are cemented, which those of the Great Wall are not. I trust I am not a kill-joy to those who, reading these pages, have seen the Nankow wall, but as a matter of fact, the two are as different, both in construction and appearance, as black to white.
We were forced to take refuge in our litters traversing the city (which is one of some fifty thousand inhabitants), for the unwonted sight of Europeans in their midst, appeared to give the Nankowites great umbrage for some reason or other. Indeed, this was the sole instance of our being treated with anything but courtesy and good temper. The streets were so crowded as to make our progress extremely difficult, for it was market-day, and half the roadway was taken up with canvas booths and stalls for the sale of silks, tea, crockery, and hardware, or fish, vegetables, and fruit, while every fifty yards or so, the fumes from “Kabob” stalls poisoned the air with a sickly, greasy odour. We were not sorry to get within sight of the outer gate. Near here was an open-air theatre in full swing, adding its quota of drums, clashing cymbals, and squeaky reed-pipes, to the general din. Some two or three hundred struggling men and women occupied the partition in front of the stage, meant to hold about half the number. No attempt had been made to shelter the audience from the blazing sun, and the smell that arose from this human cattle-pen, beggars description. Some six or seven performers in grotesque garments and hideous masks, were twisting their bodies about, singing through their noses, and endeavouring by their united efforts to drown the instruments at the back of the stage, in which they were only partly successful. The play, Jee Boo informed us, had been going on for a week, and was only half over. We stopped for a few minutes to watch the performance, the audience being too much engrossed with it to pay any attention to us. Most of the action seemed to consist exclusively of fighting and love-making. The scenes dealing with the latter, were certainly more realistic than refined. There was no scenery, and apparently no dressing-rooms. One of the performers, after being slain by his adversary, got up again in a few seconds, and retiring to the back of the stage, changed all his clothes in full view of the audience, an operation that necessitated his appearing in a state of complete nudity, after which he calmly returned to the front to represent another part. There is apparently no Chinese Lord Chamberlain.
It took us nearly two hours to get clear of the city. Shortly afterwards, we entered the Nankow Pass, one of the most beautiful bits of scenery we passed through. The going was terribly rough, so much so that we had to dismount and lead the ponies, while the mule-litters plunged and rolled about among the boulders like ships in a storm. The road is simply formed by a kind of water-bed, about 150 yards across, which is in summer rendered almost impassable by the huge rocks and boulders that bar the way at every step. In winter it becomes a raging torrent, sweeping all before it, and after heavy rains does considerable damage to life and property. The pass (which is a gradual ascent the whole way, and about thirteen miles long) compares very favourably with some of the grandest scenery in Switzerland or the Tyrol. Rugged, precipitous rocks overhang the defile on either side, great crags of granite that look as if a touch would send them crashing into the valley a hundred feet below. Although not a leaf or tree is visible, the different shades of colour taken by the rocks are even more beautiful than any vegetation could make them. As we neared the end of the pass, little bits of verdure became visible: oases of rich grass and cultivated flower-gardens banked round with bamboos, looking almost as if they were hanging perpendicularly on the steep grey walls; while tiny streamlets seemed to spring up from under our very feet to lose themselves a few yards lower down among the crevices formed by the huge rocks and boulders. After two hours’ hard work, we emerged on a vast plain again, a plain of waving corn and barley, relieved here and there by brown villages and gaily coloured temples, while a glance behind showed us the city of Nankow spread out like a map at our feet, the rice and cotton plains we had passed through, and the distant village of “Koo-ash,” its temples and pagodas sparkling like diamonds on the far horizon.
A strange apparition appeared as we ate our solitary meal by the roadway. A tall gaunt European, bestriding an attenuated-looking mule, an individual who by his dress might have been anybody. A rough grey coat with yellow facings, a red handkerchief tied round the head, a pair of short thin cotton drawers reaching to the knee, and bare legs and feet, is hardly the costume with which we are wont to associate a courier of the Czar! but such the stranger proved to be. He eyed our whisky bottle wistfully as he passed us, and reined up the melancholy mule with a jerk. “Kouda?” (“whither?”) he asked. “Moscow,” we replied, at the same time filling him a bumper of Glenlivat, a proceeding that seemed to interest him much more than our probable destination. “Franzouski?” (French). “Niete: Anglis-ki.” “Ah,” he replied, with a shrug of the shoulders, and, tossing off the tumbler of raw whisky without a wink, rode off again, with the remark, “Ya Pekin” (I am for Pekin), but not a word of thanks. This was our first experience of the Russian Cossack, and I was afterwards glad to find this rude boor an exception even to the lowest orders of that cheery, hospitable race,——better fellows than whom it would, as a rule, be hard to meet.
The country towards evening became flatter; the rice and cotton having given way to a bare sandy plain, stretching away on either side as far as the eye could reach without a break. The glare of the sun became very painful after the first hour or two, and we suffered a good deal that day from our eyes, a complaint that seems very prevalent among the inhabitants of the villages in this sterile region. The people, too, seemed very different in appearance and manner to those we had left in the plains below Nankow. Instead of the cheery “good-day” and smile with which many of the latter had greeted us, we were now looked upon only with a sullen stare: a kind of ocular “What do you want here?” This was all, however, for after Nankow we experienced no incivility whatsoever up to the Great Wall.
This was perhaps the hardest day’s work we experienced throughout the whole voyage. Leaving Koo-ash at 5 a.m., we travelled incessantly, save for a halt of twenty minutes at mid-day, till eight at night. Over fourteen hours’ hard work on a stick of chocolate and a glass of whisky and water is not calculated to raise one’s spirits under ordinary circumstances; but had we known what was before us we should have been even more depressed than we were, when, towards seven o’clock the towers and battlements of Kwi-La-Shaï appeared on the horizon, and we knew that our day’s journey was nearly over.
The sun was setting as, crossing the river that flows past the walls of Kwi-La-Shaï, we drew up at the eastern gate of the city and awaited the permission of the guard to enter. But for fatigue and stiffness, I would willingly have remained outside the walls till the sun had disappeared. I have seldom seen a lovelier picture. It was like a scene from fairyland. The broad, swift stream at our feet had caught the reflection of the western sky, which, one glow of rose colour, brought out the frowning walls and battlements of the city black and distinct as a pen-and-ink drawing. The whole vault of heaven was one flush of ever-changing hue, varying almost imperceptibly from the faintest shades of pink and gold in the west to where in the east stars were already glimmering in the steel-blue horizon. The black, frowning walls, the desolate landscape around us, the confused and indistinct murmur of the huge population of which one could see nothing, made one almost wonder whether one was not dreaming and would not presently awake in a comfortable bed resolving never again to commit the imprudence of a late supper. It was not without a weird feeling that we rode into the city and heard the heavy iron gates close with a crash behind us. One felt so utterly at the mercy of the inhabitants of these remote cities, who, as they have so often shown, are angels one minute and devils the next.
The streets were, as usual, crowded, for the night was hot, and the population had apparently turned out en masse to take the air, and what air! Like many other beautiful things in this world, Kwi-La-Shaï is best seen at a distance, for we found it on closer acquaintance worse even than Pekin in point of stenches and filth. It is called in China a “village,” which means that it is rather larger both as regards size and population than Birmingham. Though the streets were unlit, we managed to get to the inn by the aid of a guide, and once there, found no lack of light——indeed the courtyard was one blaze of Chinese lanterns——nor of society either, for there must have been at least fifty men crowded into the small guest-room, to say nothing of camels, oxen, ponies, and carts, that crowded the muddy courtyard.