CHAPTER VII—ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD
Courteous Americans—Nankou Pass—Beacon towers—Inaccessible hills—“Balbus has built a wall”—Tiny towns—“Watchman, what of the night?”—Deserted watch-towers—-Thoughtful Chinese waiter—Ming Tombs—Chinese carrying chair—Stony way—Greatest p'ia lou in China—Amphitheatre among the barren hills—Tomb of Yung Lo—Trunks of sandal-wood trees—Enterprising Chinese guard.
Wherever I might wander in China, and with the rumours of war that were in the air, it looked as if my wanderings were going to be somewhat restricted, to one place I was bound to wander, and that was the Great Wall of China. Even in the days of my grandmother's curios, I had heard about that, one of the wonders of the world, and I could never have left China without seeing it.
“You can do it in a couple of days,” said the young man, who had chastened me gently when first I entered Peking. “I'm going up on Tuesday, You'd better come along. The poet's coming too,” he added.
The poet, a real live poet, who thought a deal more about his binding than his public, was like me I think, he did not like seeing places in crowds, and at first he did not give us much of his society. There was also a millionaire, an American millionaire, his little wife, his big daughter, and his angular maiden sister. They had an observation-car fixed on to the train, and the guard came along and said that if we ordinary travellers, who were not millionaires, cared to come in the car, the millionaire would be very pleased.
I have travelled so much by myself that the chance of congenial company once in a way was delightful, but I did feel we ought not to have taken the train to the Nankou Pass. A mule litter, or a Peking cart would have been so much more suitable. However, it is as well to be as comfortable as possible.
From the north came China's foes, the sturdy horsemen from Mongolia, the mountain men from the Manchurian Hills, and because the peaceful, industrious inhabitants of the rich; alluvial plains feared greatly the raiders, they, just at the Nankou Pass, where these inaccessible hills might be passed, built watch-towers and kept ward. There they stand, even to this day, upon jutting peaks where the pass opens into the plain, grey stone watch-towers with look-outs and slits for the archers, and beacon-towers which could flash the fiery warning that should rouse the country to the south. For thirteen miles we went up the pass, the cleft that the stream, babbling cheerfully now in April over its water-worn rocks, has carved for itself through the stony hills, and its weird beauty never palls.
Always there were the hills, broken to pieces, tossed together by the hand of a giant, there were great clefts in them, vistas looking up stony and inaccessible valleys, gullies that are black as if a burning fiery furnace had been set in their midst, little pockets where the stream widened and there was a patch of green pasture, some goats grazing, a small, neat farm-house and fruit-trees, pink and white, almond, peach, or pear, a wealth of blossom. On every patch of those barren hill-sides where a tree might grow, a tree—a fruit-tree—because the Chinaman is strictly utilitarian, had been planted; only here and there, over the sacred graves of China, there was a patch of willow, tender with the delicate dainty green of early spring.