The following day our road lay over more grassy plains, in which were herds of antelope—called by the Chinese the "yellow sheep"—some sand-grouse, and a few great bustards, none of which we shot. There were several Mongol encampments, with their neat little circular dwelling-places and sheep-folds, much more civilized than those we had seen in the far west.
That evening we left the Mongol country, possibly for ever, and got into the cultivated district again. The change was very sudden, and showed us admirably how the Chinese are slowly, but surely, encroaching upon the country of their pastoral neighbours. Cha-Ha-La-Po, our home for the night, was an insignificant little place, and chiefly to be remembered for the fact that we there managed to get rid of some six hundred very inferior cash, brought from Shih-Tsui-Tsi.
At noon the next day we had to change our axles, the roads from here being much narrower than they had hitherto been; and while doing so we had a row with the carters. A crowd promptly assembled, but Rijnhart soon managed to get them on our side, and we gained our point. We were now well within our time, and the carters knew that they could fulfil their contract without difficulty, so they loitered over the axle changing and made a very short march to a brand-new inn, where we put up in an excellent, clean, and airy room. There was still plenty of daylight left, of which we took advantage to have a real good wash in warm water.
MONGOL ENCAMPMENT.
As if to make up for this early halt, we were awakened soon after midnight, and started about 1 a.m.; but this energy, we had every reason to believe, was owing to a desire on the part of our jehus to pass through the next village in the dark, owing to monetary or some other form of trouble they were in there. At first it was very dark, and as our road was very rough we went stumbling along till the moon came out from behind some heavy clouds. Rising rapidly, we were soon on a small pass, where some pious individual, in hopes of future reward, had built a neat little temple. The descent on the far side was steep, and the rocky gorge through which our road lay was very picturesque in the brilliant moonlight.
About daylight we got down to the bed of a stream, which we crossed and recrossed several times till we arrived at the small town of Hsing-Ping-Ho, the gate of which forms part of the Great Wall of China. We had already seen the Great Wall, near Chong Wei, where, however, it is little more than a turf embankment, but as we approached the capital we saw how it gradually improves, both in its original construction and its later preservation; but even now we were very much disappointed, and were unable to realize how it ever managed to gain its world-wide reputation.
At Hsing-Ping-Ho the wall is of earth, faced with brick, generally not more than eight to ten feet high, and quite narrow, very different from the imposing structure one had always pictured it to be, and which we were yet destined to see. But although we could not yet look upon the wall with the respect one had hoped to feel for it, neither of us could help admiring the dogged perseverance with which it has been carried over mountain tops and down valleys, the most forbidding natural obstacles being treated as nought in comparison with the orders of the emperor.
After breakfast our road ran parallel to the stream we had crossed in the morning, which had now grown to a considerable size, and was called the Wo-Ku-Shan-Ho. Every few miles we passed a large walled city, evidently very old, and now almost entirely deserted; they must all have seen better times and been places of importance—probably about the time that the Great Wall was being built. I photographed the walls of one of these cities, and the temple outside tenanted by some wooden figures. The name of the city was Si-Yang Ho.