The trade between Burmah and China, which had ceased almost entirely during the long years of the rebellion, again sprang into activity, and once more the attention of the Indian government was attracted to it. In 1874 a new expedition of exploration was prepared and placed under the command of Colonel Browne. The consent of the King of Burmah was obtained, and the British minister in Peking, Mr. Thomas Wade, was instructed to explain the object of the mission to the Chinese government, so that it might receive no opposition upon crossing the Chinese frontier. It was also arranged that a special messenger should be despatched from Peking across China to the frontier to act as interpreter to the expedition, and to prepare the mandarins along the route for its approach. For this responsible and dangerous service, Augustus Raymond Margary was selected—a young man attached to the English consular department, a perfect master of the Chinese language and customs, and a fine type of the best class of young Englishmen.
Provided with the necessary passports from the British minister, countersigned by the Tsung-li-yamen, the Chinese foreign office, Mr. Margary started on his journey. He went up the Yangtsze river as far as Hankow in one of the huge American steamers of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company. At Hankow, on September 4, 1874, he bade good-by to Western civilization, and, with a Chinese teacher and two or three Chinese attendants, began his trip through a vast and populous country, a terra incognita to Europeans.
His diary of this journey has recently been published. It is interesting in the extreme, though devoid of those startling episodes that generally give charm to accounts of travels in unexplored lands.
He has no old theories to prove and no ambition to start new ones, but simply jots down his impressions of people and things with no attempt at elaboration. The result is, we have a plain, faithful, unvarnished picture of Chinese life and manners, as seen by an intelligent, unprejudiced man. Upon the whole, we think this picture most decidedly favorable to the Chinese character.
Did space permit, we should like to follow Mr. Margary, stage by stage, through his long journey of 900 miles. The first part, through the provinces of Yunnan and Kwei-chow as far as the city of Ch'en-yuan-fu, was made by boat—a long and monotonous trip of four weeks, through a country so picturesque that the "sight was at last completely satiated with the perpetual view of the most glorious scenery that ever made the human heart leap with wonder and delight."
At Ch'en-yuan-fu he exchanged his boat for a chair, in which he completed his journey; traversing Kwei-chow and Yunnan, and the debatable hill land that lies between the latter province and Burmah; arriving in Bhamo, on the Burmese side of the border, on January 17, 1875, where he joined the expedition of Colonel Browne that was advancing to meet him.
Except in two or three instances, he was treated with courtesy by the people and respect by the officials. In the exceptional cases a display of his Chinese passports sufficed to quickly change the demeanor of the mandarins; while a few calm words of rebuke upon their want of politeness generally caused popular mobs to disperse abashed. An instance of this is given by him in his account of his stay at Lo-shan, a small naval station on the Yangtsze. In returning from a visit to the mandarin of the place, he was surrounded by a dense crowd of street rabble, leaping and screaming like maniacs, and shouting to one another: "I say! Come along. Here's a foreigner. What a lark! Ha, ha, ha!" Margary descended from his chair and delivered a short address:
"Why do you crowd round me in this rude manner? Is this your courtesy to strangers? I have often heard it said that China was of all things distinguished for civility and courtesy. But am I to take this as a specimen of it? Shall I go back and tell my countrymen that your boasted civility only amounts to rudeness?" "I was astonished," he adds, "at the effect this speech produced. They listened with silence, and when I had done walked quietly back quite abashed. Only a few remained; and over and again after this many an irrepressible youngster was severely rebuked for any sign of disrespect by his elders."
Contrast this with the effect which such a speech as that of Margary's, delivered by a Chinaman, would have had upon an English or American mob, and we cannot repress a slight feeling of sympathy with the natives of the Flowery Kingdom when they call us "outside barbarians."
His Chinese letters of recommendation, given him by the Tsung-li-yamen to the viceroys of the three great provinces through which he passed, proved of inestimable value. In the viceroy of Yunnan especially he found an unexpected ally and friend, who issued instructions to the officials all along the road to receive the foreigner with the utmost respect. The extent to which these instructions were carried out depended, of course, very largely on the temperament of the local mandarins. "Some were obsequious, others reserved, but most of them met me with high bred courtesy worthy of praise, and such as befits a welcome from man to man."