From Pekin to Calais by Land

by Harry De Windt

They certainly had a very fair idea of making themselves comfortable. The house of our host was especially so, and by no means the kind of dwelling one would expect to find in this out-of-the-way corner of the earth. We had pictured to ourselves a rough wooden shanty——we found a well-built stone house with cool, lofty bedrooms, a pretty drawing-room, with grand piano and bright chintzes, singing-birds, and flowers; and French windows opening on to the creeper-covered verandah, whence one looked on to the beautiful valley of Kalgan. At one’s feet a shady garden wherein roses, Eucharis lilies, jasmine, mignonette, and other flowers grew in wild profusion, though untended and uncared for; while in the far distance the Great Wall of China, now towering on a summit, now lost in a valley, wound like a huge serpent, its course of two thousand miles. Nor were the more substantial things of life uncared for, for our host had an excellent cook, and in this land of milk and honey there was no lack of material for his culinary efforts. The Kalgan mutton is excellent, and potatoes, cauliflowers, cabbages, peas, lettuce, even asparagus, thrive there, all imported from Russia, to say nothing of Chinese vegetables with unpronounceable names, and still more curious taste. Our host’s cook was an artist; his claret undeniable; his cigars good. We had certainly tumbled upon our legs at Kalgan.

The city of Chang-Chia-Kow, or Kalgan, is built on the banks of a broad, swift-flowing river. Running at right angles to this, between two precipitous mountains, is the narrower gorge of Yambooshan, the houses thereof standing outside the gates of the city, and built close into the side of the hills, portions of which in some cases had been blasted away to admit them. There is a reason for this. The dry, shingly road, which in summer serves as highway to thousands of caravans, becomes in winter a roaring torrent, which sweeps down the valley with terrific force to join the larger stream, at times occasioning great loss of life. At the time of our visit, the river-bed was absolutely dry, though the preceding winter had been a severe one, and much damage had been done in the spring.

We spent a good deal of our time watching the caravans as they jingled and rattled along the stony river-bed to or from Pekin. Many were laden with wood cut into logs and brought from the mountains near Ourga, across the desert, for wood is scarce in Northern China, and I do not think we passed more than a dozen trees in all the whole way from the capital to the Great Wall. Between Yambooshan and the city of Kalgan is the “Gap,” where the road narrows to a width of about nine feet. It is from this the city takes its name, the word “Kalga” signifying in the Mongolian tongue a gap or gate. It has been estimated that three hundred and fifty thousand chests of tea pass through here annually, for every caravan is bound to pass Kalgan on its way east or west. There is no other road. Thus about forty million chests of tea pass through annually to Mongolia and Siberia, and Ivanoff (who has much experience in these matters) was of opinion that when the projected line from Irkoutsk to Tomsk is completed, there will be a further increase of a hundred and fifty thousand chests, making in all the enormous total of five hundred thousand chests annually. No railway can ever be made across Gobi. The means of transit must always remain what it has ever been, i.e. by the “Ship of the Desert.”

The best tea never leaves China, and nearly all the next best in quality goes to Russia. Few people in England know what good tea really is. An immense trade in Asiatic Russia is done in what is known as brick tea, an article I shall describe later on, and which is drunk chiefly by the Mongols and lower classes in Siberia. This is pressed into oblong cakes, about two pounds in weight, and is made of tea dust, stalks, and refuse, mixed with bullocks’ blood, to give it a flavour. I never tasted a viler concoction in my life.

“You English boil your tea,” Ivanoff would say, when on his favourite topic. “How can you expect to get it good;” and there is no doubt much in this. I got into a habit in Siberia and Russia of drinking tea at all hours of the day and night, and learnt to make it à la Russe——two teaspoonfuls to each cup; then pour boiling water into the pot, so as just to cover the leaves, and at once pour it out again, afterwards adding the requisite amount of liquid. Let it stand for two or three minutes at most, and drink. The Russians never drink their tea twice over, as we do, but change the leaves and the pot every fresh brew. This makes a good deal more difference than some may think. I have heard English people deny that overland tea is any better than that sent by sea, but I do not think there can be any real doubt about it. As a matter of fact, genuine overland tea very rarely finds its way to England.

The city of Kalgan proper, reminds one more of an Egyptian or Arab town than a Chinese one. The dwellings are of baked mud, unwhitewashed, and flat roofed. Some are ornamented with arabesques, and gaily-striped awnings, many of their façades being half hidden with clustering vines. The “Yamen,” or court-house, is the only building of pure Chinese architecture in the whole place, and one felt, when taking a stroll through its busy streets and covered bazaars, as if one had been suddenly transplanted from the heart of the Chinese Empire to some town in Central Asia. There is more colour, too, than in most Chinese towns, the eternal dark blue or white dress of the natives being relieved by the gaudy dresses and barbaric trappings of the Mongolian Tartar. The very smell of the place, too, was different to those we had passed through, the half fishy, half spicy odour with which every traveller in Northern China is familiar, being superseded by the sickly smell of argol-smoke, old rags, and general filth that clings to the Mongol wherever he goes. They were not reassuring to look at, these Mongols. It was not altogether pleasant to think that a fortnight more would see us consigned to the tender mercies of this wild, nomad race, two solitary Europeans, alone and unprotected in the great desert of Gobi. At first sight the Mongol Tartar decidedly inspired us with respect, not to say mistrust.

There are few noisier and busier places than Kalgan. The row in the middle of the day was deafening, and the clouds of black dust, raised by the perpetual traffic, unbearable. It was amusing sometimes to walk in the busiest part of the day, to the market-place, in the middle of the city, where the great horse, or rather pony mart is situated. There must have been some three or four hundred ponies the morning we were there, being trotted and galloped up and down for sale——for export to Pekin and other parts of China. It was exciting, not to say dangerous, work, apparently, for the wild desert horsemen tore hither and thither, utterly regardless of where they went, or whom they knocked down or collided with. I saw half a dozen falls in less than half an hour; but the riders did not seem to mind, nor did it occasion any chaff or merriment among the crowd of bystanders, as would have been the case in England. The riders merely got up, and with a shake of the shoulders waited till the yelling, chattering crowd had caught and restored the runaway! Though the ground was rough and flint-strewn, no one seemed to mind a fall. Round the square were a number of tea-houses and sheds for the sale of “Airak” (native brandy), where the wily Pekin Chinaman might be seen hobnobbing with the swarthy Tartar over a “deal.” I fancy the latter usually got the worst of the bargain. The ponies were beautifully shaped, wiry little animals, about thirteen to fourteen hands. I saw one, a chestnut, sold for eight dollars, which would have fetched thirty or forty guineas in England. At mid-day it became almost impossible to make one’s way through the crowds of people that thronged the narrow streets, and crowded the canvas booths for the sale of iced drinks, tea, tobacco, and other refreshments erected along the foot-paths. At such moments, on a fine day, the bright sunshine, gaudy dresses of the Mongols, white and blue of the Chinese, thronging the streets of the huge walled city, with its amphitheatre of rugged, precipitous hills, made a picture as unique as it was interesting. The whole place looked like a gigantic fair. Street tumblers, jugglers, and fortune-tellers plied a brisk trade in the middle of the roadway, heedless of yelling, wild-looking Mongols galloping madly about on ponies, while the shopkeepers at the top of their voices cried out from their doors the excellence of their wares, each trying to outyell his neighbour. Add to this the clashing of cymbals and beating of gongs from a theatre hard by, and you have a faint idea of a street in Kalgan at midday.

Here, as in Pekin, the dust acts as a disinfectant, and Kalgan is by no means an unhealthy place, though the heat in summer is as severe as in winter the cold is intense. I know no place so inspiriting on a fine day, so depressing on a dull one, as Kalgan. In the former case all was animation, life, and colour. The sky of Mediterranean blue, and the verdant, smiling hills and gaily-coloured verandahs and dresses of the natives, coupled with the keen, inspiriting air, enlivened the spirits like a glass of champagne; but on a dull or rainy day everything around looked dark and depressing. A kind of fog hung over everything, over the mountain tops wreathed in dank, white mist, the grey, lowering sky, and brown, mud-coloured dwellings, while the white wooden crosses in the Russian cemetery, just to the right of our house, stood out with uncomfortable prominence. It was on days like this that one realized how far one was from England, how many thousand leagues of unknown country lay between us and home.

Dull days were in the minority, however, and our time passed pleasantly enough, if somewhat uneventfully, at Kalgan. There were but eleven European residents in all, five of them belonging to the two Russian tea firms, the remainder to an American Mission established here ten years ago. “We are like the rival editors in Peek-Veek,” said Ivanoff one day, alluding to himself and his confrère in the tea-trade. “We do not speak; and have not for some years.” I was not a little surprised to find our host so well up in English literature, till I heard that Dickens, as well as many other standard authors, has been largely translated into Russian, and has an enormous sale at Irkoutsk (our friend’s native place), and other parts of Siberia.

We called on the mission one day, whose headquarters are in a substantially stone-built house standing in beautiful gardens on the outskirts of the city. One might almost have imagined oneself in some country parsonage in England, drinking tea in a cool, pretty drawing-room, while a fresh, sweet smell stole in through the French windows from the hay and clover fields. Four were lady missionaries, two of whom were certificated doctors, who had, Ivanoff told us, done wonders in the epidemic of typhus, that had visited Kalgan two years previously, and by their untiring efforts and wonderful cures had made many converts. We were welcomed, on entering the house, by a pretty little Chinese lady, unaccountably so, as we thought, for one of her race. The mystery was explained when she invited us to be seated, in our own language, and further told us that although she had adopted Chinese costume, she was an American. Mrs. S———— had only been married three months, and had come straight from New York to Kalgan, to share her husband’s fortunes in the wilds, for she was about to leave for a mission four hundred miles from Kalgan, situated in one of the most dangerous districts of the Chinese empire. Her husband came in shortly after, also in Chinese costume, with the addition of a pigtail! It is a rule that every one connected with this society shall wear native dress; and when at their posts in Central China the missionaries are expected to eat like the natives. I could not help pitying the pretty, delicate-looking little woman when I thought of the trials and dangers she was embarking on. She seemed quite undismayed, however, and laughed and prattled away about the career she had chosen like a child——indeed she was little more than one in years.