There is an easy-going live-and-let-live character about the Chinese, which makes them very pleasant employers, as all steamship captains will testify, and which, perhaps, accounts for their not hurrying off the face of the earth the rats that are such a great pest in a Chinese city. An English Consul, on undoing a not yet used camera, found that to get at the gum used they had eaten through each fold of its dark chamber. One year in Chungking they made a hole through a strong wooden case we thought safely closed down, opened the tins of milk just as we should have done ourselves, and evidently dipped their tails in, and fished out all the milk those tails could reach. We have often thought this worthy to be a Spectator story. But, however incredible it may sound, it is true; and when we opened the case, we found all the top layer out of two dozen tins of milk opened and half emptied in this way. Worse still, that same year—there was famine in the land, and human beings were dropping down dead of hunger every day by the river-side—there was a hole one morning in our dear little pony's back, said to be caused by the wicked rats.
The Chinese easy-going liberal disposition and sense of justice have been immortalised in The Rat's Plaint, translated by my husband, where the poor rat's case is made out as I never saw it till I read it there; though in the end the rat is awarded punishment, and pussy-cat installed in her high place as favoured friend in every homestead. And so herewith an end of Chinese sentiment.
BRIDGE AND CAUSEWAY ON WEST LAKE.
CHAPTER XXI.
A SUMMER TRIP TO CHINESE TIBET.[2]
Drying Prayerbooks Mountain.—Boys' Paradise.—Lolo Women.—Salt-carriers.—Great Rains.—Brick-tea Carriers.—Suspension Bridge.—Granite Mountains.—Tibetan Bridge.—Lamas.—Tibetan Women.—Caravanserai at Tachienlu.—Beautiful Young Men.—Lamaserai.—Prayers?—Fierce Dogs.—Dress.—Trying for a Boat.
There are many summer trips that are a joy in the remembering, but a trip to Chinese Tibet had never fallen to the lot of any European woman before. And it was the more delightful, perhaps, because we never thought of anything of the kind when we started. But there is a drawback to living on a mountain-summit that it is such a climb to come back again when you go out; and our quarters on Mount Omi were not too comfortable! Only one small room for living and sleeping in, like a back room in a Canadian log-hut, and without a window to open, makes one restless after a time. So we thought we would gently stroll on to another sacred mountain, whose flat top was a very striking feature in the landscape. And we went down into what is called the Wilderness, where there are wild cattle and wild men, and for about a week wandered on, passing along by the boundary of the unconquered Lolos, and up the most magnificent ravine I have seen or can imagine, down which a torrent had swept but a week before from the Sai King, or Drying Prayerbooks Mountain, to which we were bound, drowning twenty-six people in one hamlet alone.