The landlord of my house was the t'u pai hu,[206] and he was evidently a devout Buddhist, or rather lamaist. The room in which I was quartered was a kind of private chapel, containing a small library of Tibetan books grimy with age. More numerous than the books were bundles of charms supposed to ward off disease and ill-fortune. They consisted of small stiff cards, not unlike playing-cards in size and appearance, covered with writing on one side, and crudely-painted pictures of horses and other animals on the other.
On the eve of my departure from Pa-U-Rong I gave my returning guide a letter in which I informed the king of my safe arrival at the limits of his territory. The lack of startling adventures was perhaps a little disconcerting after all that I had been told of the perils of the way, but I was glad to know that I had not contributed to the collapse of that amiable monarch's already rather insecure throne.
ROPE-BRIDGE
I made my exit from the kingdom of Chala by the undignified expedient of sliding down a rope. The Yalung[207] is one of the greatest tributaries of the Yangtse, but it is full of rapids and cascades, and is unnavigable. At Pa-U-Rong it is about 70 or 80 yards broad, and the current is very swift and strong. I heard that till recently it could at the season of slack water be crossed by a raft;[208] but at the time of my visit there was no raft or boat of any kind on the river (the last one had been wrecked and lost), and a single stout cable of twisted bamboo, stretched from bank to bank, afforded the only means of crossing. The frontispiece to this book, which reproduces a photograph taken by myself, shows one of my followers in the act of making the passage. Bridges of this kind are common in Tibet, and in the Himālayan gorges, but it is not often that the stream to be crossed is so wide as the Yalung. The main roads—such as the highroad from Tachienlu to Lhasa—are generally provided with good bridges or ferries; and, as a rule, it is only when travelling by the "small roads" and by-ways of Tibet that one is compelled to cross rivers and gorges by single ropes. The abbé Huc admits that in the course of his long journey to Lhasa and back he never ventured on bridges of this kind, though he frequently saw them. Captain Gill[209] remarks that "this is a method of crossing a river that must require a considerable amount of nerve"; but he too, apparently, evaded the necessity of putting the matter to personal test. In my case there was no possibility of evasion.
The first view of this primitive substitute for a bridge certainly does not inspire one with confidence. There is one rope for crossing from the left to the right bank, and another—some 30 yards off—for the reverse proceeding. The banks on either side are high and steep, and each rope-end is firmly bound round an immovable rock or boulder. The arrangement is shown in the accompanying diagram.
CROSSING THE YALUNG
On crossing from the left bank (Pa-U-Rong side) one starts at the point A, reaching the right bank at the point B. Crossing in the opposite direction one starts at C, reaching the left bank at D. The points A and C are about 120 feet above the level of the water. B and D are about 40 feet lower. The native of the district, when about to cross the river, places a semicircular piece of tough wood, with two grooves for the fingers, on the bamboo rope, clutches it with both hands and lets himself go. He is not tied to the movable cylinder or to the rope, and he has nothing to sit on. He simply holds on with his hands, his legs hanging in the air. He descends with terrific speed to the point where the rope sags or hangs lowest (the points E and F); and having safely arrived there, he is only a few yards from the further bank, and quickly hauls himself along the remaining distance. In this manner the crossing is only a matter of a few exhilarating seconds. With us, however, the operation was a longer one. Unfortunately, the proper rope for leaving the left bank was old, and had been condemned as unsafe; all my party, therefore, were obliged to use the rope that was only intended for crossing in the opposite direction. The rope-end at the point C, however, had been temporarily brought down to the point G, as it would otherwise have been necessary for us to haul ourselves along nearly the whole length of the rope in an ascending direction, which would have been a task requiring great strength and endurance. Even as it was, instead of a rapid rush through the air across almost the whole width of the river, the weight of our bodies only took us about two-thirds of the total distance, and from that point we had to proceed by throwing our legs over the rope and pulling ourselves upwards inch by inch, hand over hand. The work was exceedingly laborious. All my party went across in this manner one by one, starting at D and arriving at G. The point H represents the place at which we had to commence hauling. In view of the fact that we were all novices at rope-climbing, each of us submitted, before starting, to having a leather thong tied under the arms, and made fast to the sliding cylinder, so that if loss of nerve or other cause had made us let go we should not have fallen into the river, but hung limply on the rope until rescued. There was, therefore, no actual danger provided that nothing gave way. In some places where these primitive bridges are in use, passengers are provided with a swinging rope-seat which hangs from the cylinder. This, of course, must relieve the strain on hands and arms very considerably. But we were furnished with no such luxury. My dog Jim was sent across by himself, his body being firmly tied up with strips of cloth suspended from the cylinder, from which the unhappy beast hung like a squirming fish at the end of a line. When he reached the point at which upward hauling became necessary, one of the natives—who seemed to delight in performing acrobatic feats above the swirling waters of the Yalung—clambered along from the right bank with an extra rope and tied it round him. He did this while he was hanging upside down with his legs round the rope-bridge. The loose end of the spare rope he took back with him to the right bank, and the dog was safely pulled by several willing hands along the remaining distance. My baggage was sent across in the same manner. I found the experience interesting and somewhat exciting. The whole village turned out to watch us cross the river, and I must confess that when I was being trussed up with the leather thong my feelings were perhaps only comparable to those of a condemned criminal who is being pinioned before execution. A fall into the river would mean almost certain death. The water seethes and bubbles in innumerable whirlpools, and is nearly as cold as ice, for it largely consists of frozen snow.
YALUNG RIVER
I never heard the Yalung given that name by the natives. The word is a Chinese approximation to the Tibetan Nya Rong ("Valley of the Nya"). The Tibetans all know the river as the Nya Ch'u or Nya river; but the Chinese, so far as my experience goes, never give it any other name than Kin [Chin] Ho, which means "Gold River,"—so that "Yalung" is really only a book-word. The number of rivers in western China, of which the word "Gold" forms part of the Chinese name, might almost fill a page. The Ta Tu river above Wa Ssu Kou[210] is the Chin Ch'uan ("Gold Stream"), the Yangtse for hundreds of miles of its course is the Chin Sha Chiang [Kin Sha Kiang], or "River of Golden Sand," and many streams of less importance bear similar names. The reason of the popularity of the name is not far to seek, for gold in larger or smaller quantities is well known to exist in nearly all the rivers that take their rise in eastern and northern Tibet, and the Tibetans—especially the lamas—derive therefrom a very considerable profit.