Upon this assurance of at least official consent to hazard the journey to Peking, a telegram was sent to the chief of police at Tomsk, to whose care we had directed our letters, photographic material, and bicycle supplies to be sent from London in the expectation of being forced to take the Siberian route. These last could not have been dispensed with much longer, as our cushion-tires, ball-bearings, and axles were badly worn, while the rim of one of the rear wheels was broken in eight places for the lack of spokes. These supplies, however, did not reach us till six weeks after the date of our telegram, to which a prepaid reply was received, after a week’s delay, asking in advance for the extra postage. This, with that prepaid from London, amounted to just fifty dollars. The warm weather, after the extreme cold of a Siberian winter, had caused the tires to stretch so much beyond their intended size that, on their arrival, they were almost unfit for use. Some of our photographic material also had been spoiled through the useless inspection of postal officials.
THE FORMER MILITARY COMMANDER OF KULDJA AND HIS FAMILY.
The delay thus caused was well utilized in familiarizing ourselves as much as possible with the language and characteristics of the Chinese, for, as we were without guides, interpreters, or servants, and in some places lacked even official assistance, no travelers, perhaps, were ever more dependent upon the people than ourselves. The Chinese language, the most primitive in the world, is, for this very reason perhaps, the hardest to learn. Its poverty of words reduces its grammar almost to a question of syntax and intonation. Many a time our expressions, by a wrong inflection, would convey a meaning different from the one intended. Even when told the difference, our ears could not detect it.
Our work of preparation was principally a process of elimination. We now had to prepare for a forced march in case of necessity. Handle-bars and seat-posts were shortened to save weight, and even the leather baggage-carriers, fitting in the frames of the machines, which we ourselves had patented before leaving England, were replaced by a couple of sleeping-bags made for us out of woolen shawls and Chinese oiled-canvas. The cutting off of buttons and extra parts of our clothing, as well as the shaving of our heads and faces, was also included by our friends in the list of curtailments. For the same reason one of our cameras, which we always carried on our backs, and refilled at night under the bedclothes, we sold to a Chinese photographer at Suidun, to make room for an extra provision-bag. The surplus film, with our extra baggage, was shipped by post, via Siberia and Kiakhta, to meet us on our arrival in Peking.
VIEW OF A STREET IN KULDJA FROM THE WESTERN GATE.
And now the money problem was the most perplexing of all. “This alone,” said the Russian consul, “if nothing else, will defeat your plans.” Those Western bankers who advertise to furnish “letters of credit to any part of the [pg 154]world” are, to say the least, rather sweeping in their assertions. At any rate, our own London letter was of no use beyond the Bosporus, except with the Persian imperial banks run by an English syndicate. At the American Bible House at Constantinople we were allowed, as a personal favor, to buy drafts on the various missionaries along the route through Asiatic Turkey. But in central Asia we found that the Russian bankers and merchants would not handle English paper, and we were therefore compelled to send our letter of credit by mail to Moscow. Thither we had recently sent it on leaving Tashkend, with instructions to remit in currency to Irkutsk, Siberia. We now had to telegraph to that point to re-forward over the Kiakhta post-route to Peking. With the cash on hand, and the proceeds of the camera, sold for more than half its weight in silver, four and one third pounds, we thought we had sufficient money to carry us, or, rather, as much as we could carry, to that point; for the weight of the Chinese money necessary for a journey of over three thousand miles was, as the Russian consul thought, one of the greatest of our almost insurmountable obstacles. In the interior of China there is no coin except the chen, or sapeks, an alloy of copper and tin, in the form of a disk, having a hole in the center by which the coins may be strung together. The very recently coined liang, or tael, the Mexican piaster specially minted for the Chinese market, and the other foreign coins, have not yet penetrated from the coast. For six hundred miles over the border, however, we found both the Russian money and language serviceable among the Tatar merchants, while the tenga, or Kashgar silver-piece, was preferred by the natives even beyond the Gobi, being much handier than the larger or smaller bits of silver broken from the yamba bricks. All, however, would have to be weighed in the tinza, or small Chi[pg 157]nese scales we carried with us, and on which were marked the fün, tchan, and liang of the monetary scale. But the value of these terms is reckoned in chen, and changes with almost every district. This necessity for vigilance, together with the frequency of bad silver and loaded yambas, and the propensity of the Chinese to “knock down” on even the smallest purchase, tends to convert a traveler in China into a veritable Shylock. There being no banks or exchanges in the interior, we were obliged to purchase at Kuldja all the silver we would need for the entire journey of over three thousand miles. “How much would it take?” was the question that our past experience in Asiatic travel now aided us to answer. That our calculations were close is proved by the fact that we reached Peking with silver in our pockets to the value of half a dollar. Our money now constituted the principal part of our luggage, which, with camera and film, weighed just twenty-five pounds apiece. Most of the silver was chopped up into small bits, and placed in the hollow tubing of the machines to conceal it from Chinese inquisitiveness, if not something worse. We are glad to say, however, that no attempt at robbery was ever discovered, although efforts at extortion were frequent, and sometimes, as will appear, of a serious nature.
OUR RUSSIAN FRIEND AND MR. SACHTLEBEN LOADED WITH ENOUGH CHINESE “CASH” TO PAY FOR A MEAL AT A KULDJA RESTAURANT.