An additional escort of Lolos joined us at Hai-t’ang. They wore their national dress, and the petty officer in command was further ornamented with a thin oval brass plate, fixed in his left ear by a brass ring. We left our comfortable quarters to face a snowstorm, and plodded all day through snow and slush half a foot in depth. Garrisons, each supposed to be thirty strong, lined the road at intervals of a mile with guard-houses between. This part of the country, skirting as it does the western border of independent Lolodom, is the scene of frequent Lolo raids, whole caravans—goods, animals, and men—being swept off, and carried into the inaccessible mountains to the east.
Our escorts were now relieved at each garrison, and the men were armed with swords. Just before entering the Yüeh-hsi plain, a soldier pointed out the spot where, a few years previously, an army of five thousand men had invaded Lolodom to punish marauders, and he added that not a man had returned to tell their fate. The buildings on the plain, which runs north-east and south-west, are more like watch-towers than dwelling houses; they have two storeys, but no windows on the ground floor. We saw numbers of Lolos in the city of Yüeh-hsi T’ing, many of them nominally in official employ, though, in reality, salaried hostages for the good behaviour of their tribes. Here our escort was again strengthened, and, when we left the city on the morning of the 15th of March, we were preceded by an army of gaily-dressed soldiers armed with flags, pikes, and halberts. The south of the plain is divided into two valleys by a range of hills; that to the south-east leads to independent Lolodom, where no Chinese dare venture; through the other to the south-west runs the road to Ning-yuan Fu and Yün-nan.
The latter gradually narrows, being bounded on the east by precipitous rocky cliffs, and on the west by sloping heights to a certain extent amenable to cultivation. In the bed of the valley, which is rough and stony, were garrisons and guardhouses fully tenanted. Treble stockades of wooden piles were thrown up round them, but they would be perfectly useless against a determined raid, there being no escape in case of defeat except by steep paths leading up the mountain sides into the country of the Lolos.
During our stay at the small town of Hsiao-shao, which lies at the end of the valley and at the northern entrance of a narrow pass, many of my followers were struck down by fever, and I passed a most uncomfortable night amidst their groans—hardly a suitable preparation for the morrow, when the Hsiao Hsiang Ling Pass had to be surmounted. Here I found that there were rogues even among the Lolos. Soon after our arrival, four ruffian-looking fellows turned up, and announced that they had been deputed to form my Lolo escort next day. I told them that I was much gratified at the forethought of their officials, and asked them to come on the morrow; but they were persistent in their demands for a gratuity beforehand. This I declined, until their persistence became an absolute nuisance, when I was weak enough to make them a small present and trust to their word. Needless to say, they broke it.
Having mounted my sick on ponies, we passed through the south gate of Hsiao-shao and entered the pass, our approach being heralded by a musket-shot from the sentry of the Chinese and Lolo guardhouses, which mark the entrance. A couple of guardhouses could be made out on rocky heights up the pass to the south-west, and their sentries, warned by the report of the musket-shot, could be seen standing out darkly against the snowy mountain behind. The same signal was given by each sentry as we advanced.
ASCENT OF HSIAO HSIANG LING.
Turning south-west, we soon began the actual ascent of the Hsiao Hsiang Ling, which, though less precipitous than the Ta Hsiang Ling, was somewhat troublesome, owing to the greater depth of snow. On the summit, which is 9800 feet above the level of the sea, we were shrouded by a white gloom which entirely hid the surrounding country from our view. The southern slope is gentle, the path, after a short descent, entering a gorge which leads to the garrison town of Têng-hsiang, lying at the feet of lofty mountains and occupying the head of a narrow valley running north and south. Here the soldiery were busy strengthening the walls at the north gate. When we left by the south gate next morning, accompanied by an additional escort of bearers of flags, spears, swords, tridents, and muskets, the peaks of the mountains bounding the valley on the west side were lit by the rising sun, throwing the steep pine-clad sides of the eastern range into gloom. The bed of the valley was wild and uncultivated, but the full bloom of some wild fruit trees helped to brighten the scene and the silence was broken only by the humming of bees in search of food. A range running east and west soon blocks the valley, and the road goes west through the sub-district of Mien-shan till again intercepted, when it turns south-west along the left bank of a branch of the An-ning River. A rocky gorge, with just sufficient room for the stream, then supervenes, and the road is cut out of the solid rock to within a short distance of the town of Lu-ku, which lies close to the north-eastern corner of the great plain of Ning-yuan.
While we were watching the cormorant fishers at the point where the stream leaves the gorge, a bevy of Lolo women, who had been marketing at Lu-ku, came up, and afforded us the rare opportunity of a close inspection. They were chatting and laughing on the way back to their mountain homes. They wore large round caps of black cloth, à la “Tam O’ Shanter,” short jackets, and petticoats just long enough not to conceal their bare feet. A pink strip let into the skirt in front from waist to foot seemed to be the fashion. Their bodices were fastened at the neck by embroidered collars decked with silver ornaments and clasps. Most of them were pretty, but some suffered from loss and decay of the front teeth. They might, without any great stretch of the imagination, have been taken for a group of Italian peasant women.
ENTRY INTO NING-YUAN.
On the morning of the 18th of March we left Lu-ku, and, ascending a low plateau, found ourselves on an immense plain stretching southwards. The stream which flows by the town is joined, a little to the west, by another from the north, and the two combined form the An-ning River, which goes south down the plain and enters the Ta-ch’ung or Ya-lung, a large tributary of the Yang-tsze, or, as it is here called, the Chin Chiang—the “Golden River.” Only about twenty miles now separated us from the prefectural city, but, owing to the sickness of my followers, who were happily beginning to recover in the face of the southern breezes blowing the very breath of life into their fevered and toil-worn frames, we had to divide the distance over a couple of days. Early in the afternoon of the 19th of March, we crossed the last spur which projects into the plain from the hills which form its eastern boundary and, passing through the beautifully cultivated and well-wooded gardens in the suburbs and then through a busy thoroughfare alive with pack-animals laden with long hollow cones of salt, we entered the west gate of Ning-yuan, more generally known in Western China as Chien-ch’ang Fu.