Tchuan-Ha-Ho is the only place I retain a pleasing recollection of, lying between Pekin and the Great Wall of China. The inn was fairly clean, and the proprietor not only suggested, but cooked us a dish of excellent poached eggs. Rarely have I enjoyed a meal as I did that. One must have fasted for nearly thirty-six hours as we had, to really appreciate food. It is worth all the tonics in the world. We felt much tempted to stay here the night, but our mule-drivers were inexorable. They had contracted to get us to Kalgan by a certain date, and at Kalgan, on that date, dead or alive, we must be!
The sandy desert ceased after leaving Tchuan-Ha-Ho, and we again entered a fertile country, set apart apparently for the exclusive cultivation of the poppy. White, red, and blue——poppies were everywhere——the plain presenting a succession of waves of colour as far as the eye could reach. Beyond this lay Ching-Ming-Ying, lying under a perpendicular rock about 800 feet high. This village, which contains seven thousand inhabitants, is strongly walled and fortified. The rock or mountain is on three sides sheer precipice. Notwithstanding this, there are some twenty or thirty houses on the extreme summit, built so near the edge that their sides actually form part of the precipice. Seventy or eighty human beings live on this eminence, though the path up is dangerous to any but experienced mountaineers, and the area of the summit but three hundred yards square. This was undoubtedly one of the most interesting and curious sights of the whole voyage, for there are men and women over forty years of age living upon this mountain that have never descended to the plains below. Supplies and stores are taken up by men kept specially for the purpose.
A MULE LITTER.
Coal is worked out of the base of the Ching-Ming Ying mountain by the Chinese Government, to whom the mines belong. It seemed to be put out in a very desultory sort of way. Some thirty men only were engaged in the mines, though with their usual contradictory spirit the Government had provided the manager or overseer with a palatial residence at the foot of the mountain, embowered in bright flower-gardens and willow-trees.
The weather, which had up till now been bright and clear, now grew overcast, and, shortly after leaving Ching-Ming-Ying the rain came down in torrents, rendering travelling very unpleasant, not to say dangerous. Our way now lay along a road hewn out of the solid rock, by the banks of a foaming torrent some hundred yards broad, which we followed the course of till we reached our destination for the night——Tsiang-Shui-Poo. Here we rode along now a foot or so above the water’s edge, anon at least fifty feet above the water, in places where a false step or slip would have sent one flying into the torrent below, for there was no guard-rail, and the path, broken and rugged, was at times scarcely three feet wide. I thought discretion the better part of valour after a time, and led Karra till we got on to terra firma again in the shape of a broad stretch of sand, which brought us to the village of Tsiang-Shui-Poo, wet through, and without any means of changing, but at the same time relieved that the next day with any luck would see us at Kalgan.
The village of Tsiang-Shui-Poo was really a village, for it boasted of some hundred inhabitants and thirty or forty houses. The inn (an open shed in which cattle and men slept promiscuously) was at any rate clean, and we managed to get a good sleep on a wisp of straw free from the stench of sewage that had annoyed us so much everywhere else. Some of the inhabitants came to look at us as we discussed the evening meal. The men were cheery, good-looking fellows, and the women far prettier than any I had yet seen, for their faces were devoid of paint——and they had almost European complexions. Tsiang-Shui-Poo was to us an Elysium——a haven of rest——which reminded one for all the world of the lovely Kentish village of Farningham, which is no doubt known to many of my readers. There was the trout stream at the bottom of the garden, the clover meadows with their fresh, sweet scent, the corn ripening for the sickle on the hill behind the inn——although, to be sure, two stunted willows had to do duty for the famous chestnut-tree in front of that cosy old inn, the “Red Lion;” and, I fancy, even the genial host of that celebrated hostelry would have lost his temper at the fare set before him by Boniface of the “Cattle-Shed Hotel” at Tsiang-Shui-Poo!
By next morning the rain had entirely disappeared, and with a blue sky and cool breeze we left Tsiang-Shui-Poo, invigorated in mind and body by a good long sleep. I cannot pronounce, much less write, the name of the village we halted at at mid-day. It was evident we were nearing Kalgan, for we passed at least a dozen large caravans during the morning, to say nothing of carts, litters, and stray horsemen. The poppy-fields were now superseded by rice-plains, irrigated as before by “shaloofs,” and interspersed with enclosures of corn and maize.
We lunched in a fairly clean room of the inn at the town with the unpronounceable name. Many Russians appeared to have visited it, for their names (in Russian characters) were scrawled all over the place. In one corner, in small capitals, we read:——“Bordeaux à Pekin par terre. Sep. 4th, 1870.” Shortly before five o’clock a low chain of hills appeared on the horizon. Had it not been specially pointed out to me, I should never have noticed the thin serpentine thread winding its course along their summit——an irregular white line lost to sight at times, in places where it was broken into by forest or undergrowth: a very different edifice from one’s preconceived ideas of the Great Wall of China.
We entered Kalgan at half past six o’clock. It will give the reader some idea of the size of the place when I say that it took us nearly two hours to ride from the southern gate to the suburb of Yambooshan, where the Russian tea-merchants lived, to whom we were provided with a letter of introduction. The population of Kalgan is estimated at over one hundred and fifty thousand.