At the station, where I arrive at sunrise, I find again all yesterday's Zouaves, their knapsacks on their backs. No tickets are necessary for this railway, everything military is carried by right of conquest. Along with Cossack and Japanese soldiers a thousand Zouaves pile into carriages with broken panes through which the wind whistles. I find a place with their officers, and very soon we are calling up memories of Africa, where they have been, and longing for Tunis and Algeria the White.
We are two hours and a half on the road across the mournful plain. At first it was only gray earth as at Taku; then there were reeds and herbage touched with frost. On all sides are immense splashes of red, like blood stains, due to the autumn flowering of a kind of marsh plant. On the horizon of this desert myriads of migratory birds may be seen, rising like clouds, eddying and then falling. The north wind blows and it is very cold.
Soon the plain is peopled with tombs,—tombs without number, all of the same shape,—each one a kind of cone of earth piled up and surmounted by a ball of faience,—some small, like little huts, others as large as camping tents. They are grouped according to families and they are legion. The entire country is a burial-place with a gory look resulting from the splashes of red to which I have referred.
At the stopping-places where the ruined stations are occupied by Cossacks, there are calcined cars—damaged by fire—and locomotives riddled with balls. At other places we do not stop because there is nothing left; the few villages which mark this vicinity are all destroyed.
Tien-Tsin! It is ten o'clock in the morning. Pierced by the cold, we step down amid the clouds of dust which the north wind perpetually scatters over this dried-up country. We are taken in hand by Chinese scouts, who, without even knowing where we want to go, trot off, at full speed, with us in their little carriages. The European streets along which they are running (here called "concessions"), seen through a cloud of blinding dust, have the look of a big city, but the almost luxurious houses are riddled with shells, literally ripped open and without roofs or windows. The shores of the rivers, here as at Taku, are like a fevered babel; thousands of junks lie there, unloading troops, horses, guns. In the streets where Chinese workmen are carrying enormous loads of war supplies, one meets soldiers of all the nations of Europe, officers in every sort of uniform, on horseback, in chairs, or on foot. And there is of course a perpetual interchange of military salutes.
Where are we to lay our heads? Really, we have no idea, in spite of our desire for a shelter from the icy wind and dust. However, our Chinese runners keep on like rolling balls.
We knock at the doors of two or three hotels which have risen up among the ruins out of a confusion of broken furniture. Everything is full, full to overflowing; gold will not buy a loft with a mattress.
Willy-nilly we must beg our board and lodging from unknown officers, who give us the most friendly hospitality in houses where the holes made by shot and shell have been hastily stopped up so that the wind may no longer enter.
Saturday, October 13.