Rob heard rumors of these things, but, believing them to be exaggerated, refused to turn back. So he pushed doggedly ahead, ever nearing the storm-centre. Finally, late one day, as he approached a walled town in which he expected to obtain lodging for the night, he suddenly found himself beset by a mob of frantic rain-dancers, who rushed upon him from a sacred grove by the road-side. The slender escort of soldiers that had thus far accompanied our lad instantly took to their heels, leaving him alone to face the hundreds of yelling demons, who firmly believed that, if they could take his life, the act would be pleasing to their insulted gods.
[CHAPTER XVI]
"FISTS OF RIGHTEOUS HARMONY"
The people of China have suffered much at the hands of foreigners, and, in their ignorance of everything beyond their own line of vision, imagine many grievances that really do not exist. Once China was the foremost nation of the earth in arts, literature, commerce, and all that goes to the making of what we call civilization. She invented, used, and forgot a thousand things that the Western world is only now discovering. She was sufficient unto herself, and desired only to be let alone.
But the Western nations would not let her alone. They insisted upon forcing their unwelcome trade into the country; and, moreover, upon conducting it themselves, according to their own ideas. When she resisted their demands they took possession of her seaports, destroyed her forts and war-ships, placed their own steamers, protected by gun-boats, on her rivers, monopolized her coasting trade, and even appropriated as their own, large slices of her territory.
Thus, while England holds the island of Hong-Kong, together with two hundred square miles of the opposite mainland, Shanghai, and Wei-hai-Wei, besides controlling the trade of the great Yang-tse Valley, Russia, on the north, has seized Manchuria, Germany occupies the province of Shan-tung, Portugal has for three hundred years been established at Macao, and France, the chief aggressor, already in possession of Anam and Tonquin, is making insidious but certain progress northward through Yunan, with covetous eyes cast in the direction of Canton, where she already has gained a foothold. Japan owns the great Chinese island of Formosa, and only awaits a favorable opportunity for seizing the opposite mainland province of Fu-Kien, while even Italy has laid claim to a Chinese port and "sphere of influence."
All these foreign nations, together with Americans and Belgians, are building, or are proposing to build, railways in China, and all of them, with the further additions of Canada and Sweden, are overrunning the bewildered country with missionaries of clashing denominations, each one of which teaches that it only is right, while all the others are wrong. Some of these foreign teachers even go so far as to interfere with local governments, taking upon themselves the office of magistrate, administering the laws according to their own interpretation, and always in favor of their own converts, and at the same time demanding to be accorded all outward forms of respect due only to mandarins.
On the other hand, the great mass of Chinese, groping in the darkness of the Middle Ages, burdened by densest ignorance, steeped in superstition, robbed by their rulers to the extreme of poverty, and forced to unceasing toil from long before daylight until long after dark every day of the week throughout every year of their joyless lives, are taught by their priests, and by others of their own race to whom they look for guidance, that all their sorrows, including floods, famines, and plagues, are caused by the foreigners who are spreading over their country with the ultimate intention of seizing it and subjecting its people to their own barbarous customs. They are told that these same foreigners sweep the rain-clouds from one portion of the sky to cause droughts, and gather them at another to produce devastating floods, and that they poison wells to bring on plagues. They are made to believe that the "foreign devils" collect Chinese children in asylums, homes, and hospitals for the sole purpose of extracting their eyes, to be used in enchantments; that every railway-sleeper, and the foundations of every Christian edifice, are laid upon living human bodies; and a thousand other tales, equally monstrous but equally terrifying.
To remedy these evils the people are invited to form themselves into associations, and thus gain strength for the destruction of the hated foreign devils, or at least to drive them back into the sea, whence they came. For the benefit of those who can read, pamphlets setting forth these views are written, printed by the million, and distributed throughout the land; while the minds of the more ignorant are inflamed by pictured posters illustrating the horrors perpetrated by foreigners, and posted broadcast in every direction.