Chapter Thirty Two.
On the Road to Pekin.
As we got further up the countryside, we saw numbers of gardens full of peach trees, the fruit of which was plentiful enough, with an occasional poplar grove, the usual decoration of a cemetery; while the villages became more frequent, too, and more populous, one meeting us almost at every mile.
The people that we met, however, received us in a very puzzling fashion, coming round our cages to look at us, as if we were so many wild animals, and roaring with laughter at our appearance; even the very babies crowing with merriment on our being pointed out to them by their fond parents, much to Ned’s disgust, although I joined in with their hilarity, it was really so hearty and catching!
That night we all slept together in one of the inns along the road, where, although the bed-place was fixed, it had plenty of moving tenants before our arrival; and, I’m sorry to say, we carried off a few of them when we went away in the morning, and suffered in consequence.
But beyond this little personal matter, which is a mere detail to anyone travelling in China, and the staring of the inhabitants, we did not suffer much inconvenience during our journey, the old fellow in charge of us giving us the best food he could get, in the shape of rice and eggs, the latter of which were sometimes in such a state of perfection that they deserved to have been promoted to the rank of poultry; and, on the third day after leaving Tientsin, although the distance between the two places must be eighty or ninety miles, we saw the walls of Pekin in front of us.
So our guide, the old chap, told us, at least; but, although the sight of this celestial city is asserted by the Chinese to “strike awe” into the beholder on first sighting it, we should not have known we were gazing on such an imposing object as the capital of China undoubtedly is!
On closing up with the town, we passed a collection of tombs with stone tortoises carrying memorial tablets on their backs, and other signs of mourning, and a josshouse; and we soon after this entered Pekin by a granite causeway over a tumble-down bridge, passing for some distance along, the massive walls, which were some fifty feet in height and of equal thickness.
“Yellow hat” was evidently anxious to keep us as private as possible; for, he hurried the bearers through the streets, which, though dirty, were wide, and the buildings on either side, with their roofs of glazed yellow tiles and fronts all carved and gilded, looked showy enough in the sunshine.
It was like a panorama, being thus carried through these strange streets, with the people stopping to look at us, but not behaving at all rudely, although our army must have been known to be marching on the capital; and Ned and I absolutely enjoyed it, noting as we sailed past the temples and curio shops and pagodas and all, the constant stream of umbrella-bearing passers-by and the fact that nearly all the old men held birds in their hands tied on to sticks, looking just like those wooden monkeys which pedlars hawk about at home for the delectation of rustic juveniles.