For some distance south of the hamlet there was no attempt at cultivation in the stony wilderness; but gradually we found signs of stones having been collected, patches of land dyked, and rivulets diverted for irrigation purposes. Watercress was growing wild in the limpid water. Trees, although not very numerous, were not wanting; the mulberry, orange, red-date, and pear were to be seen. The orange was a tall tree, bearing a small round fruit with a thick wrinkled skin, which reminded me forcibly of a miniature “Buddha’s Hand”—Citrus sacrodactylus. Cotton in small quantities was also growing in this valley. Many of the houses were roofed with thin boards weighted with stones, instead of the usual Chinese tiles, and the graves were covered with mounds of rounded stones carefully whitewashed.
The garrison town of Fu-lin, whence a bridle-path leads over the mountains to Ta-chien-lu, lies at no great distance from the left bank of the Ta-tu River, the southern boundary of the valley. In the immediate neighbourhood of the town were a few cultivated patches; but agriculture, to judge from the precautions taken against inundation from the waters of the Liu-sha, which was hurrying down the valley to join the Ta-tu, would appear to be carried on under difficulties. A line of white shingle, running east and west, backed by rising ground, was the only visible indication of the presence of a watercourse, and it was only on reaching the miserable village of Wa-wa, built on a sandbank held together by bushes of luxuriant cactus, that we were able to espy the green waters of the Ta-tu rushing violently eastward in its pebbly bed, to be quickly lost in a gap in the mountains to the south-east. Several forks, into which the river is divided, unite to the west of Wa-wa.
AN EXCITING SCENE.
Descending to the ferry, we found ourselves face to face with a pure non-Chinese race. The boatmen, who were tall—one was over six feet—wiry fellows, with level grey eyes, at once fraternized with me and took me under their protection. They were Sifans, and spoke Chinese with a decidedly foreign accent. One of them, with a fearlessness impossible in a Chinese, asked me a few questions in a most respectful manner, and answered with readiness and evident pleasure the queries I put to him regarding the river. To a random question as to its breadth, a Chinese by my side at once answered over a hundred ch’ang, or one thousand Chinese feet, but my protector quietly rebuked him, remarking that one should not answer such a question off-hand, and, after some reflection, said the river was six hundred feet broad. I estimated the breadth at nearly two hundred yards; but it was difficult to fix distances with any accuracy in the presence of mountains which threw everything else into insignificance. The Sifans smiled when I tried to ascertain the depth by plunging a bamboo over the side of the boat in mid river.
Owing to numerous falls and rapids, only rafts can be navigated the entire distance to Chia-ting Fu, where the Ta-tu, after its junction with the Ya Ho, enters the Min. Once a year there is a busy scene on the banks of the Ta-tu River. In the end of April, thousands of carriers have to cross the river at this very spot, with their precious loads of white wax insects from the valley of Chien-ch’ang, on their way to the prefecture of Chia-ting. As delay is injurious to their living freight, they haste and race to be first at the ferry. Crossing the Ta-tu as we did on the 9th of March, we were too early to witness the flight of these carriers, which ceases not night or day. Trade, as we saw it, was of a less exciting nature; copper and pine boards from the south, met cotton and salt from the north.
In the walled town of Ta-shu-pao, less than a mile from the south bank of the river, the fine tall men and sprightly women of an alien race, could, without difficulty, be picked out from the Chinese. They wore white turbans jauntily inclined to one side, and carried themselves with a grace that savoured of independence. The Ta-tu River may be looked upon as the southern limit of the region inhabited by Sifan tribes, and the northern boundary of the Lolo country which stretches southwards to the Yang-tsze and east from the valley of Chien-ch’ang towards the right bank of the Min. I found a few Sifans to the south of the Ta-tu, but they were isolated families who had lost touch with their respective tribes. Amongst the Chinese they have an evil repute for immorality; yet my experience of them, limited as it necessarily was, proved that they possessed certain traits of character which are altogether wanting in the Celestial, or, if not altogether wanting, at least existing in a very rudimentary form only.
A “TAME WILD MAN.”
One instance will suffice to explain my meaning. I had expressed a wish for a lengthened interview with a Sifan, and, on arrival at P’ing-pa, the second stage south of the Ta-tu, word was brought to me that there was a “tame wild man” in the village. With some difficulty he was induced to come to our inn, the reason of his hesitancy being, as he explained when alone with me in my room, that the Chinese might treat him badly if they knew that he was talking with me. When I had calmed his fears and elicited from him as much information as I could regarding his language, I asked him before leaving to accept a couple of hundred cash for the trouble I had caused him, and as a reward for the knowledge which he had imparted. This he absolutely declined, saying that he had rendered me no service deserving of reward. As, in the course of conversation, he had informed me that his home was in the hills three miles distant, and that he had come to P’ing-pa to make a few purchases, I pointed out to him that, by accepting this trifling sum, he would be able to secure a small present from me to his family. More argument convinced him that there would be no harm in accepting it on this condition, and he left after profuse thanks on behalf of the other members of his household. Would a Chinese have hesitated? I trow not.
LOLO LANGUAGE.