CHAPTER XXIII
The End of the Wilderness
| Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre? Have I kept one single nugget (barring samples)? No, not I. Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker. But you wouldn’t understand it. You go up and occupy. —The Explorer. |
The victory at Yang-Tsun had come with a tremendous loss of life. To go on now promised the cutting to pieces of the entire army. To stay here and await reinforcements would mean the slaughter of all the foreigners in Peking. In a council of war the next day English and Indian, Russian, German, Japanese, Italian, and French, general after general declared for the wisdom of waiting at Yang-Tsun for reinforcements.
Up spoke then General Chaffee of the American command:
“I will not wait while the Boxers massacre the helpless Christians. Stay here or go back to your own countries, as you please. My army will go on to Peking, if it must go alone.”
And his will prevailed.
Followed then a memorable march, with the Stars and Stripes ever leading the line. The strength of the force was thirteen thousand now and one thousand of these fell by the way before the end of the journey. 380
After Yang-Tsun, for the only time in this ten days’ campaign, the soldiers undressed and bathed themselves like Christians in the unchristian Peiho, and on the next day, which was the Sabbath, they listened to the military chapel service. Six days they forged onward with the same cruel heat, and scalding air, and alkali dust, and poison water, over dreary plains, through deserted villages, twenty, twenty-five, and even thirty miles a day, they pushed on toward the Chinese capital.