At that farm the skipper brought a quantity of rice for his family, and by a lovely moonlight we sailed over the drowned country to his village. The flood currents were strong, and when we got there we were driven against two undermined houses and knocked them down, afterwards drifting into a road with fine trees which entangled the mast and sail, and our stern bumped down the wall of the road, and the current carried us into a square of semi-submerged houses, and eventually we got into the skipper’s garden, and saw his family mounted on tables and chairs on the top of the kang.
Two uneventful days followed. The boatmen were in ceaseless dread of pirates, and I was so ill that I felt I would rather die than make another effort.
Arriving within 3 miles of Mukden, Wong engaged a passenger cart, a conveyance of the roughest description, which is only rendered tolerable by having its back, sides, and bottom padded with mattresses, and I was destitute of everything! Nothing can exaggerate the horrors of an unameliorated Chinese cart on an infamous road. Down into ruts 2 feet deep, out of which three fine mules could scarcely extricate us, over hillocks and big gnarled roots of trees, through quagmires and banked ditches, where, in dread of the awful jerk produced by the mules making a non-simultaneous jump up the farther side, I said to myself, “This is my last hour,” getting a blow on my head which made me see a shower of sparks—so I entered the gate of the outer wall of beaten clay 11¹⁄₂ miles in circuit which surrounds the second city of the empire. Then, through a quagmire out of which we were dragged by seven mules, I bruised, breathless, and in great pain, and up a bank where the cart turned over, pulled the mules over with it, and rolled down a slight declivity, I found myself in the roof with the cameras on the top of me and my right arm twisted under me, a Chinese crowd curious to see the “foreign devil,” a vague impress of disaster in my somewhat dazed brain, and Wong raging at large! Then followed a shady compound ablaze with flowers, a hearty welcome at the house of Dr. Ross, the senior missionary of the Scotch U.P. Church, sweet homelike rooms in a metamorphosed Chinese house, a large shady bedroom replete with comforts, the immediate arrival of Dr. Christie, the medical missionary, who pronounced my arm-bone “splintered” and the tendons severely torn, and placed the limb in splints, and a time of kind and skilled nursing by Mrs. Ross, and of dreamy restfulness, in which the horrors of the hold of the “pea-boat” and of the dark and wind-driven flood only served to emphasize the comfort and propitiousness of my surroundings.
PASSENGER CART, MUKDEN.
CHAPTER XVI
MUKDEN AND ITS MISSIONS
Mukden stands at an altitude of 160 feet above the sea, in Lat. 41° 51´ N. and Long. 123° 37´ E., in the centre of an immense alluvial plain, bearing superb crops and liberally sprinkled with farming villages embowered in wood, a wavy line of low blue hills at a great distance limiting the horizon. It is 3 miles from the Hun-ho, a tributary of the Liau, and within its outer wall idles along the silvery Siao-ho or “small river,” with a long Bund affording a delightful promenade and an airy position for a number of handsome houses, the residences of missionaries and mandarins, with stately outer and inner gates, through which glimpses are obtained of gardens and flowering plants and pots. This city of 260,000 inhabitants, owing to its connection with the reigning dynasty, is the second city officially in the empire, and the Peking “boards” with one exception are nominally duplicated there. Hence it not only has an army of Chinese and Tartar officials of all grades, but a large resident population of retired and expectant mandarins, living in handsome houses and making a great display in the streets. There is an incessant movement of mule carts, the cabs of Mukden, with their superb animals and their blue canopies covering both mule and driver, official mule carts driven at a trot, with four or more outriders with white hats and red plumes, private carts belonging to young mandarin swells, who give daily entertainments at a restaurant on the Bund, mandarins on horseback with runners clearing the way, carts waiting for “lotus viewers,” tall, “big-footed” women promenading with their children, their hair arranged in loops on silver frames and decorated with flowers, hospital patients on stretchers and in chairs, men selling melons and candies, and beggars who by blowing through a leaf imitate the cry of nearly every bird. Then in the summer evenings, when the mercury has fallen to 80°, the servants of rich men bring out splendid ponies and mules and walk them on the Bund, and there come the crowds to stare at the foreigners and hang round their gates. The presence of well-dressed women is a feature rare in the East. Up to the war people were polite and friendly, but progress was difficult and the smell of garlic strong. At night the dogs bark, guns are fired, drums and gongs are beaten, and the clappers of the watchmen rival each other in making night hideous.
All this life lies between the outer wall and the lofty quadrangular inner wall, 3 miles in circuit, built of brick, flanked by lofty towers, and pierced by eight gates protected by lofty brick bastions. This wall, on which three carriages could drive abreast, protects the commercial and official part of the city, which is densely crowded, Mukden, besides being a great grain emporium, being the centre of the Chinese fur trade, which attracts buyers from all parts of the world. Fine streets, though full of humps and quagmires, divide the city into nine wards or quarters, the central quarter being Imperial property, and containing a fine palace with much decorative yellow tiling, the examination hall, and a number of palaces and yamens, all solidly built. To my thinking no Chinese city is so agreeable as Mukden. The Tartar capital is free from that atmosphere of decay which broods over Peking. Its wide streets are comparatively clean. It is regularly built, and its fine residences are well kept up. It is a busy place, and does a large and lucrative trade, specially in grain, beans, and furs. It has various industries, which include the tanning and dressing of furs and the weaving of silk stuffs; its bankers and merchants are rich, and it has great commercial as well as some political importance.
TEMPLE OF GOD OF LITERATURE, MUKDEN.