That evening Mr. Bishop, whom our lad regarded at once as friend and employer, found leisure for a long conversation with him, during which he said:
"As you probably know, one of the most valuable railway concessions in China, that for a line from this city to Hankow, on the Yang-tse-kiang, nearly a thousand miles due north from here, has been granted to an American syndicate. Another concession, for a line from Hankow to Pekin, was granted a year earlier to the Belgians. These two railways, meeting at the metropolis of Central China, will form a grand trunk-line, extending nearly two thousand miles north and south through the very heart of the empire. The Belgians already are at work on the construction of their line, while the Americans have made their surveys and are ready to begin construction. I am an American engineer, employed by the syndicate, and, as a preliminary step to my further work, I am about to undertake a journey of investigation from here to Hankow, and, possibly, on to Pekin. My plans for this journey are so nearly completed that I could start to-morrow; but I have not as yet secured a satisfactory interpreter. Will you accept the position? The trip will be long, and to a certain extent dangerous, but the pay will, I think, be sufficient to carry you from Shanghai to America after our journey is completed. What do you say? Are you ready to plunge into the heart of China, and bury yourself from the world for the next two or three months, or do you prefer to remain here and look for some easier job?"
[CHAPTER XV]
IN THE HEART OF UNKNOWN CHINA
That Rob accepted Mr. Bishop's proposition goes without saying, for he was an American boy, and, as such, was filled to the brim with a genuine love of the adventure and excitement attending explorations in strange countries. Thus, two days after the offer was made, he found himself a very important member of an expedition setting forth from the great southern city of Canton and bound for the far north. Two months later, a junk, flying the American flag and having on board our travellers, drifted with the tawny flood of the mighty Yang-tse-kiang (Son of the Sea River) along the crowded water-front of Hankow, a city of such commercial energy that it is known as the Chicago of China.
During the weeks that had elapsed since they left the last traces of Western civilization at Canton, they had seen no white man nor heard a word of English, except such as they spoke to each other. They had travelled by sampan up the North River and the Wu Shin, across the province of Kwang-tung, to the head of navigation at Ping-Shih. Here they had engaged coolies to transport their luggage, camp outfit, and provisions over the "carry," thirty miles long, across the Nan-Ling Mountains, to Chen-Chow, a quaint, old, walled town, marking the head of navigation on the Yu-tan River, a branch of the Sian Kiang, which in turn flows northward into the Yang-tse. There they had once more chartered a junk; and, always accompanied by a couple of slim, light-draught Chinese guard-boats, had sailed, poled, or drifted across the great inland province of Hu-nan, which is half again as large as the State of New York.
Although always using their boat as headquarters and for the transportation of supplies, the two Americans had travelled most of the way by land, on foot, on pony-back, or in sedan-chairs borne by coolies. They had slept in temples, examination-halls, tea hongs (warehouses), in official yamens, and occasionally, but never when they could help it, in crowded, vermin-infested taverns, always surrounded by throngs of excited spectators, who poked holes through the paper windows or widened cracks in the floors of overhead rooms to gratify their curiosity by peering at the ridiculous-looking barbarians.
While crossing the Nan-Ling Mountains they had traversed a portion of one of China's great national highways, constructed thousands of years ago, and apparently never since repaired. Originally fifteen feet of its width was paved with large, flat stones, four feet square, and from one foot to eighteen inches thick. Many of these stones had disappeared, no one could tell how, nor where to, leaving gaping and bottomless mud-holes to entrap the unwary. The remaining blocks were deeply hollowed by the bare feet of millions of burden-bearing coolies and scored with wheelbarrow grooves. This great highway was formerly lined along its hundreds of miles of length with temples, tea-houses, rest-houses, and shops; but such of these as have not disappeared are now in ruins, and serve only as haunts for highwaymen, lepers, and beggars.
In the remote past the several states or provinces of China were independent kingdoms, waging war upon one another; and even to this day the inhabitants of each province regard the people of those adjoining as "foreigners." So they fortified themselves against one another, and our explorers were so fortunate as to come across one of these fortifications. It was a high and very thick wall of masonry, having battlements and massive gateway, surmounted by a watch-tower, built on a boundary-line across the highway, where the latter occupied a narrow valley. The hills on either hand were low enough to be easy of ascent, but the impregnable wall reached only from side to side of the valley.