At the scattered town of Kwanyintang the railway abandoned us to our own devices. Fortunately the Tuchun of Honan Province, China’s far-famed “Christian General,” did not. All the way from Kaifeng, where the major had gone to visit him, he had sent one of his aides to smooth the way for us. This handsome and intelligent fellow, still in his quilted silky-gray uniform, had once been a lieutenant-colonel but had given up his rank in order to work for social welfare among the soldiers. He carried several bundles of Chinese pamphlets in hectic covers, which turned out to be translations of various books of the Bible, to be distributed among the country people. What distinguished him still more from the mass of China’s swarming soldiers was the fact that he insisted on paying his fare. Had not this idiosyncrasy of the “Christian General’s” troops already been familiar to the officials of the Lunghai Railway, it is quite possible that we should have seen a pair of them faint away with astonishment at the door of our unupholstered compartment.
In the far reaches of China there is a comradeship among all foreigners—perhaps the word “European” or “Caucasian” would be more exact—stronger than that between fellow-countrymen in many parts of the world. Let a rumor drift to a traveler’s ears that there is a wai-guo-ren in town, or indeed within reasonable striking distance of his route, and he feels it as much his duty to call, quite irrespective of the stranger’s particular nationality, as the latter does immediately to offer him hospitality. There was nothing unusual, therefore, in the fact that we were met at the present end of the line by an Armenian, a Greek, and a Rumanian, all members of this Belgian-French railway concession, who at once turned their office over to us as a lodging. Nor was there any reason to be surprised when a Russian Jew, who had just ridden down from Chinese Turkestan in record time, turned up there hoping to sell us his horses. He was true to his race, however, when the question of price came up, and we were not seriously tempted to alter our original plan to leave Kwanyintang in mule-litters.
It is proof that our aide from Kaifeng was something more than Christian that he had the expedition we required gathered, signed, and sealed before nightfall. The usual system in such cases is to leave the whole matter to some responsible innkeeper. He sets the price, engages mules and whatever conveyances are necessary, and assumes responsibility for the proper carrying out of the contract. In this case, as is also usual, he came bringing a great sheet of flimsy paper daubed with Chinese characters in red—the contract in question—and decorated with several red “chops,” the personal seals of responsible residents of the town, which serve as a cross between recommendations and sureties. He had also come to ask for three fourths of the sum agreed upon, which was sixteen “Mex” dollars per litter for the journey of 280 li to the first town over the Honan-Shensi border. Ten Chinese li, it may be as well to specify once for all, make approximately three miles, though in practice there are “small li” and “large li,” in mountainous country two or three times as many li going as coming, or vice versa, and occasionally a complete unintelligence as to road measurements. The innkeeper must have expected that we had taken the trouble to inform ourselves and were aware that at most only half the amount involved is advanced, but the Chinese never risk losing an opportunity to profit by the possible ignorance of a foreigner. When we declined even to pay the customary half until we could inspect the mules next morning, we ran some risk of undoing all the labor of our more than Christian aide; for the sons of Han hate even more to make the slightest rebate on custom than they do not to be able to overreach it a few points. Had we been Chinese, probably negotiations would have halted then and there until the money was forthcoming; but foreigners still have some of their old prestige and reputation in the Chinese Republic.
Our precaution really was hardly worth the trouble, for the night was too black when we began to load to tell a mule from a corpse or a litter from a lumber-pile. A Chinese mule-litter consists of two pieces of telegraph-pole some ten feet long, which are fastened together at either end with a crosspiece that sets into a pack-saddle, and beneath which are two straddling wooden legs to keep the contrivance high enough off the ground when the two animals are taken from beneath it. Between the two poles is looped a network of ropes covered with a straw mat, with sag enough in them to hold the traveler’s baggage and leave him room to spread his bedding and to sit or stretch out at full length upon it. Over all this there is an arched roof of straw matting, not dissimilar in appearance to that of a “prairie-schooner.” My own custom of living on the country during my travels had become so fixed that I had still not adjusted myself to the major’s notions of a proper equipment. We had two army-trunks, one of them very full of canned foods. Folding cots, bedding-rolls, spare garments sufficient even for the wintry weather we expected before the journey was over, and a small mule-load of merely personal conveniences were enough to render speechless a wanderer long accustomed to carry all his possessions on his own back. When to all this was added a “boy” and a cook, and all the equipment necessary for them to function in a fitting manner, I felt more as if I had again joined the army than as though we were merely setting off on a little personal jaunt. It will not be unduly anticipating, perhaps, if I mention now that, while my companion sometimes realized he was not living at home, and solicitous persons back in Peking fancied we were roughing it, memory of many another cross-country tramp made this one seem to me like traveling in extreme luxury; and the worst of it is that I thoroughly enjoyed the change.
CHAPTER XIX
WESTWARD THROUGH LOESS CAÑONS
We were off at six, with the night still black about us. But that did not mean that we actually got started so early, for it would be a strange Chinese journey that began without a hitch. This time it was one of the mules which we had been unable to examine in the darkness. He turned out to be small, gaunt, and ratty, and long before we had passed through straggling Kwanyintang he became so lame and wabbly that there seemed no possibility of his even lasting out the day. Fortunately we were in a position to have our desires heeded. By order of his chief, our aide from Kaifeng had instructed the local commander to furnish us an escort of ten soldiers. We were quite familiar with the ancient jest that having a guard of Chinese soldiers is worse than falling into the hands of bandits; but at least, if they did not succeed in outsprinting the brigands in case of an attack, they could assure them that we were not worth the robbing or holding for ransom. Besides, were we not out mainly if not exclusively for experience? Now the escort proved its worth at the very outset; for even though it may have little influence over large bands of outlaws, such a Chinese guard is useful in prodding simple citizens into prompt action when those they are escorting express a wish. Ours was barely mentioned to the lieutenant in charge of the detail when he slipped off into the darkness as if he meant to make it so “snappy” that even Americans would applaud. That did not prevent the sun from peering with a red and swollen face up over the uneven pile of tile roofs to the southeast of us before he gave any sign of continued existence. But when he did come back there came with him a larger, sturdier mule than any of those already in our service, with its old-fashioned owner—who still wore a cue, which was turning iron-gray—ambling a bit sullenly, we thought, beside him. The transfer was made, and we were soon off in earnest, in a cavalcade that left the throngs of passers-by invariably staring after us.
The lieutenant, it gradually transpired, having found the innkeeper who had contracted to furnish us transportation unable to replace the ailing animal at once, had calmly commandeered the first likely one he came upon. This being the chief worldly asset of the helpless owner, he had been forced to come along, to set off on a week’s journey on extremely short notice. Being mere Americans, we could not see why one of the other drivers, of whom there was one to each litter, could not have been intrusted with this extra mule, particularly as they all lived in the same town and were under bond, so to speak, through the innkeeper. But one soon learns that it is far the best plan to let the Chinese get their results in their own time-honored way, and not to peep too much behind the scenes, nor conclude that what is absurd, or unjust, or even cruel to the Western mind is necessarily so to the people of the Middle Kingdom. Each litter and pair of mules, we found in time, without openly showing curiosity, belonged to one man, either the driver who plodded all day long in the dust beside it, constantly quickening the pace of his two animals with an explosive “Ta! Ta!” and a few choice Chinese “cuss-words” which there is no call to add to our Western stock, or to a man who stayed at home and hired some one to muleteer for him. Naturally our declining the lame mule and the substitution of another divided the sum that was paid for that litter, and there was bad blood evident between the two men who trotted beside it as long as the journey lasted.
A summery autumn spread over the land, and the ten soldiers who deployed on either side of us soon asked permission to toss their cotton-padded overcoats into the litters. Their low cloth shoes and wrapped trouser-legs, Chinese fashion, were well suited to tramping, especially in the flour-like loess. Besides his fairly modern Mauser rifle and at most a dozen cartridges, each seemed to have a few small personal possessions tucked away about his person, and one middle-aged fellow with a face worthy a “hard-boiled” American “top sergeant” of the old school carried a hooded falcon seated on his crooked arm for the whole thirty sometimes hot and often laborious miles. Merely another example, we supposed, of the Chinese fear of trusting one’s belongings out of sight. Except for one long and somewhat stony ridge, the loess formation was unbroken, and dust swirled to the ears at every step. Beggars, often in a horrible state, rolled in it at the roadside, not only in the towns but at most unlikely spots in the open country. Surely their gleanings could not have totaled even a modest meal a day, and it was this working of such unlikely territory which impressed one particularly with the depths of Chinese poverty.
Of the pitilessness of it we had had an impressive example before leaving Kwanyintang. In a dust-deep gutter beside its most densely thronged thoroughfare lay, the afternoon before, a boy of perhaps sixteen, a single filthy rag covering him merely from shoulders to navel, several immense surfaces of his exposed body eaten away by some loathsome disease. Evidently he was writhing in real pain instead of more or less pretending it for sympathy’s sake, as did so many of his rivals along the way, for several men had paused to talk with him, and that is an extraordinary mark of solicitude in China toward roadside mendicants. But evidently no one did anything else for him; for as we rode by the spot before daylight next morning, while the night was still bitter cold, there he still lay in the same all but naked state, powdered over with dust, and evidently dead—at least we sincerely hoped so. The poverty of China is so general, and native charity and compassion so slight—for even the minority who are above suffering cannot but be more or less constantly obsessed with the dread of themselves falling into beggary—that even what we would call “very deserving cases” must put forth great efforts to attract attention to their needs. Some of these are so ingenious as to be humorous, as well as pathetic, which may be intentional, for no one on earth enjoys humor more or responds to it more quickly than a Chinese. In one of the deep loess cañons through which we passed, a man whose feet seemed to have rotted away knelt close up against the precipitous earth wall in a spot which gave him just room enough to keep from under the hoofs of animals and the feet of pedestrians passing in such constant droves that he seemed to be bathing in dust. Through this rose his raucous voice in the monotonous sameness of some phrase of distress, accompanied by the ringing of a hand-bell. At regular intervals of at most thirty seconds he ended these sounds by fetching his head down with a terrific wallop on a big stone that lay in the road before him. Pausing to wonder why he did not crack his skull, I gradually became aware of the fact that he always struck the bell in his right hand into the dust in exact synchronization with the blow of his head, thereby of course cleverly increasing the apparent thud and at the same time inconspicuously breaking the blow. But, for all that, his forehead was almost raw with the constant pounding, and the exercise alone must have proved a real day’s work before the day was done. Yet the passing throng, being itself by no means affluent, seldom gave him more than a casual glance. The wicker farm scoop that lay beside him had barely half a dozen “cash” scattered about it, and this was typical of all the roadside beggars we passed for days to come. Whenever one of us tossed a copper into such a receptacle amazement overcame even the bystanders; for a copper is worth ten whole “cash,” though it is about the equivalent of one fourth of an American cent!
For the first few miles there was an endless string of coolies carrying bags of cement and of flour, and less evident supplies for the railway construction-camps farther on. A tunnel a mile long was nearing completion, and grading and cutting continued for some distance. Within a year, optimistic officials hoped, trains would be running to the Shensi border, and in two or three would reach at last the famous old western capital, Sian-fu. Then there were quantities of cotton coming in from the west, and every other imaginable thing bobbing at the ends of those springy poles across coolie shoulders which are so often miscalled bamboos, since they are more nearly hickory, polished and varnished to a mahogany brown. Itinerant craftsmen of every sort, peddlers of anything there is a chance of selling, portable restaurants for the feeding of all this multitude, hundreds of jogging coolies carrying their beds and their few belongings on their quest for work, all use this pole for bearing their burdens, so that the vista as far as the eye can reach was like a river of undulating men and things. Much of the way lay high, and gave us splendid views off across mountainous country fantastically broken as only loess can break, terraced on a hundred different levels, ever falling away at the edges, a world, as it were, that was wearing out. Or again the road, which never for an instant was worthy of any such name, would plunge into one of the chasms it had worn for itself during centuries of plodding through this friable soil, chasms a hundred, two hundred, in places surely three hundred feet deep, which might continue for many miles before there came another glimpse of the surrounding country. To walk in these is like shuffling through a cement-factory; let the least breath of wind blow, and one heartily longed again for a gas-mask. The walls being absolutely sheer and the sunken roads very rarely wider than a single cart, let one of these get ahead of us and we must inhale and swallow its dust for many weary li; while the tasks of passing those constantly appearing from the opposite direction required the patience and the profanity of a Chinese muleteer. Of the joys of fetching up in one of these endless channels at the rear of a camel caravan, probably at least a hundred strong, and many times more famous for raising dust than speed, no mention shall be permitted to sully the pages of what aims to be the veracious story of a perfectly respectable journey.