“If I wanted to die,” said one woman, meeting me as I was going round the compound one day in the early spring of 1914, “I would choose some easier way.”
But the doctor there was keenly interested. He would have liked to have gone himself, but his duty kept him alongside his patients and his hospital in Pao Ting Fu, and though he pulled himself up every now and then, remembering I was only a woman and probably couldn't do it, he could not but take as great an interest in that map and ways and means as I did myself. Then there was Mr Long, a professor at the big Chinese college in the northern suburb—he was young and enthusiastic and as interested as Dr Lewis.
He too knew something about travel in unknown China, for he had been one of the band of white men who had made their way over the mountains of Shansi and Shensi in the depths of winter to go to the rescue of the missionaries in Sui Te Chou and all the little towns down to Hsi An Fu at the time of the Revolution. Yes, he knew something of the difficulties of Chinese travel, and he thought I could do it.
“The only danger would be robbers, and—well, you know, there mightn't be robbers.”
But Peking—the Peking of the Legations—that, I knew, held different view's. I wrote to an influential man who had been in China over ten years, who spoke the language well, and he was against it.
“I was very much interested” (wrote he) “to read of your intention to do that trek across country. You ask my opinion about it, but I can only give you the same advice that Punch gave many years ago, and that is, don't. You must realise that the travelling will be absolutely awful and the cost is very great indeed. You have not yet forgotten your trip to Jehol, I hope, and the roughness of the road. The trip you contemplate will make the little journey to Jehol look like a Sunday morning walk in Hyde Park, particularly as regards travelling comfort, to say nothing about the danger of the journey as regards hostile tribes on the southern and western borders of Tibet. You will be passing near the Lolo country, and I can assure you that the Lolos are not a set of gentlemen within the meaning of the Act. They are distinctly hostile to foreigners, and many murders have taken place in their country that have not been published because of the inability of the Chinese troops to stand up against these people. What the peoples are like farther north I do not know, but I understand the Tibetans are not particularly trustworthy, and it will follow that the people living on their borders will inherit a good many of their vices and few of their virtues.
“If you have really made up your mind to go, however, just let me know, and I will endeavour to hunt up all the information that it is possible to collect as to the best route to take, etc., though I repeat I would not advise the journey, and the Geographical Society can go to the deuce.”
This not because he despised the Geographical Society by any means, but because I had advanced as one reason for going across Asia the desire to win my spurs so and be an acceptable member.
“My dear,” wrote a woman, “think of that poor young Brooke. The Tibetans cut his throat with a sharp stone, which is a pleasant little way they have.”
Now the man's opinion was worth having, but the woman's is a specimen of the loose way people are apt to reason—I do it myself—when they deal with the unknown. The “poor young Brooke” never went near Tibet, and was murdered about a thousand miles distant from the route I intended to take. It was something as if a traveller bound to the Hebrides was warned against dangers to be met upon the Rhone.