FROM PEKIN TO CALAIS BY LAND.

LONDON

PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LIMITED,

ST. JOHN’S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL ROAD.

OUR CARAVAN (GOBI DESERT).——DAWN.

FROM PEKIN TO CALAIS BY LAND

BY

H. DE WINDT.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP.

“Plus Je vis l’étranger, plus J’aimai ma patrie.”——De Belloy.

LONDON—CHAPMAN and HALL,

LIMITED.

1889.

[All rights reserved.]

TO

THE RAJA OF SARAWAK, G.C.M.G.,

IN REMEMBRANCE OF MANY

PLEASANT HOURS OF TRAVEL SPENT IN HIS

DOMINIONS IN THE ISLAND OF BORNEO.

PREFACE.

There are two Englishmen at present living in Shanghai who have travelled overland from Europe to China. I was told, when there, that these gentlemen are continually receiving letters from England asking for information relative to the journey from Petersburg to Pekin and vice versâ, and in the Gobi Desert and Siberia.

It is mainly owing to this circumstance that I publish these pages, for I fear the general reader will find little to interest him in this record of our monotonous pilgrimage through Europe and Asia. I feel that an apology is needed for its publication, and need hardly say that it does not aspire to the title of a book of travel, being merely a record of my impressions in the less civilized parts of China, and in that weird and melancholy country, more perhaps from associations than aspect, Siberia.

The voyage is, though somewhat original, sadly devoid of interest. Urga and Irkoutsk are, no doubt, well worth seeing, but a passing glimpse of these unique cities far from repays the discomfort, not to say hardship, which must be undergone on the caravan route.

I can only trust this book may deter others from following my example, and shall then have some satisfaction in knowing that its pages have not been written in vain.

M. Victor Meignan concludes his amusing work “De Paris à Pekin par terre,” thus:——

“N’allez pas là! C’est la morale de ce livre!”

Let the reader benefit by our experience.

H. de W.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

FROM PEKIN TO CALAIS BY LAND.

CHAPTER I.
GRAVESEND TO PEKIN.

“From China to France overland! Why, surely it’s impossible. I thought one could only get to China by sea!”

Such was the remark made by a young lady whom I had the honour of taking down to dinner a few days previous to embarking upon the voyage of which I am about to narrate my experiences. Although I trust there are not many educated persons who, like my fair friend, are unaware that Pekin and Paris are actually undivided by sea, I imagine there are but few who, if put down at Calais, and told to find their way overland to Pekin, would know how to set about it, fewer still who have any practical knowledge of that vast but comparatively unknown country separating the Chinese Empire from Russia proper, Siberia.

It had been a long-projected voyage. Lancaster, (a fellow-traveller in many lands,) and I had talked it over for at least two years before: in the early spring of 1887, we finally decided to put our project into execution, and start for the great unknown.

Unlike most voyages which in these days of travel are an accomplished fact as soon as decided upon, this one was fraught with innumerable delays and annoyances. Our difficulties commenced at the very outset, for nowhere in London, or indeed anywhere else, could I glean the smallest information respecting the journey; the only book I succeeded in finding on the subject being one written by John Bell, the English traveller, in 1788, but, as may be imagined, the information contained therein was somewhat obsolete.

Nothing more modern, however, could I procure. Jules Verne’s amusing and clever book, “Michel Strogoff,” deals largely with Irkoutsk, Lake Baikal, and other regions we were about to traverse, but I hardly felt justified in taking that versatile author as a travelling-guide. That we landed at Tientsin——China——and saw the sea again at Calais——France——was all we definitely knew; of the time it took to do, or how the journey was to be accomplished, we were quite in the dark.

About a week before our departure, however, I had the good fortune to meet a gentleman connected with the Russian Embassy in London, and to him I confided our difficulties. M. de ———— was indeed a friend in need, for in less than twenty-four hours our difficulties had vanished like snow in the sunshine. Not only was the route from Pekin to Moscow clearly laid down for us, but we were provided, in addition, with a letter of introduction from M. de Staal, the Russian Ambassador in London, to the Russian Minister at Pekin. Had it not been for this, I doubt whether we should ever have got further than the celestial city.

The route (we now found) was as follows: From Shanghai to Pekin by steamer and house-boat, from Pekin to Kalgan (or the Great Wall of China) by mule litter, and thence across the Great Gobi Desert to Kiakhta, the Russo-Chinese frontier, by camel caravan. From Kiakhta to Tomsk, viâ Lake Baikal, Irkoutsk, and Krasnoiarsk by tarantass or Russian post carriage, and thence by steam communication on the Obi and Irtish rivers to Tobolsk and Tiumen. From the latter place our journey was easy enough. Four days’ sail and seven of steam would bring us to Moscow, practically the end of our voyage. As to the time the journey would take, no one, even at the Russian Embassy, seemed to know. So much in this journey depends (as we afterwards found) upon the weather, the facility of obtaining camels at the Great Wall, and last, but not least, the state of the roads in Siberia. We were starting at a good time, however, and with luck might expect to reach Moscow in the early autumn. If detained in Siberia by floods or other casualties, we might not arrive in Europe till the new year. This was all we could ascertain, and with this somewhat scanty information were forced to be content.

The outfit question did not trouble us much. A Terai hat, two or three tweed suits, and an unlimited supply of cigars and tobacco met our requirements. Everything we took went comfortably into two small-sized leather portmanteaus. A rifle, fowling-piece and brace of double-barrelled pistols (not revolvers) were also taken, and this completed our wardrobe and armoury. I often wonder what the West End outfitters would do were it not for the yearly increasing number of Globe-Trotters. Be it understood I mean Globe-Trotters, not travellers, for there is a vast difference between the two. I have often been amused at the utterly useless articles forced upon the unhappy G. T. by the Bond Street or Piccadilly haberdasher, who probably knows rather less of the country his customer is about to visit than the Khan of Khiva does of Pall Mall. The Globe-Trotter pur et simple is seldom (so far as I have seen) of high intellectual attainments, but one I met a few years ago, while on a voyage to Sydney, eclipsed everything. He had provided himself with enough thick clothes and furs to fit out an expedition to the North Pole. On asking him the reason, he replied, “Oh! we shall get to Sydney at Christmas, you know, and it will be so awfully cold after the tropics!”

Our final preparations completed, we took passage for Shanghai, and the rainy, gusty morning of the 7th of April, 1887, saw us steaming down channel with half a gale of wind in our teeth, looking our last on the white cliffs of England, while to our left was just visible the low-lying coast of France, the goal we hoped to reach in safety, before the following winter, and from which we were separated by the length of Europe and Asia.

I will not inflict a description of the voyage out upon the reader. It would be superfluous in these days of travel, when a man secures his berth for Sydney or Yokohama with much the same indifference as twenty years ago he took a ticket for Rome or Vienna. The life on board a P. and O. ship is familiar to most of us. Suffice it to say that our fellow-passengers were of the usual kind: the Colonial bishop, who buried himself in a deep theological work before we had cleared Land’s End, only to emerge from it at Colombo; the Hong Kong merchant and his family living on the usual terms of armed neutrality with the Indian Civil Service official and his wife, an Indian Major-General, a sprinkling of bank clerks and coffee-planters, two or three soldiers rejoining their regiments, and a pretty grass widow, returning to her husband, an Indian Judge. These, with half a dozen more or less uninteresting young ladies “going out to be married,” completed our party. The ages of the latter seemed to increase in proportion to the distance they were going. The one whose fortunate fiancé resided at Hong Kong must have been fifty at the very least. I had almost forgotten a nearly perfect specimen of the Globe-Trotter, who joined us, resplendent in purple and fine linen, at Suez; a young gentleman somewhat inclined to take more wine than was good for him, and who was going abroad for the good of his health——presumably also for that of his friends and relations at home.

There is a very false impression existing among those who have never travelled in one, as to the delights of a voyage in a P. and O., and the endless gaiety and amusement on board these floating hotels. I have made at least a dozen voyages by this particular line, and must confess that the gaiety and amusement, if it ever existed, has escaped my observation. Perhaps I have been unfortunate, but I must own that I have invariably found the life on board these ships deplorably dull. The mere fact of being cabined, cribbed, confined, with three score of one’s fellow-creatures, the majority of whom have not a thought or feeling in common, is surely sufficient to account for a lack of enjoyment. At the same time, to the casual onlooker, who is wise enough to keep out of them, the petty rows and scandals on board ship are amusing enough. How Major-General Jones has had the audacity to take the seat next the captain at dinner, instead of Commissioner Brown, who, as everybody ought to know, if they don’t, always takes precedence of him at Brandypore; and how Mrs. Commissioner Brown has felt compelled to cut Mrs. Major-General Jones in consequence. How the wife of Surgeon Squills, of the Bengal Staff Corps, has forbidden her daughter to speak to the third mate, and that matron’s subsequent mortification on discovering that the tabooed officer is the second son of an Earl. How, in our case, one of the future blushing brides (the Hong Kong one) only wished that poor dear Judge could see how his wife went on, although to unbiassed eyes, that cheery little lady’s sole crime consisted in being more than pretty, and absurdly good-natured. How the Globe-trotter overcome by (let us say) the heat in the Red Sea offered to fight the captain for a dozen of champagne on his own quarter-deck,——all this could I descant upon at length, but fear lest I weary the reader, forgetting that a good joke at sea is but a sorry jest ashore.

Light and favourable winds favoured us to Malta, that shadeless, bustling rock so happily christened by Byron “The little Military Hot-House.” A few hours here allowed of a stroll ashore and a visit to the mess of that cheeriest and best of regiments, the “Black Watch.” Then, after dinner at the club, and a chat over old Cairo-days, off again in the moonlight to the Bombay, and, three days later, Port Said. Here an unexpected delay awaited us. The P. and O. S.S. Rome had gone ashore (the commencement of a series of disasters for the Company:) which meant a detention of five days, at least, at the glary, unsavoury canal port.

Small-pox was raging in this den of publicans and sinners, and several cases having occurred on the homeward-bound P. and O. ships, we were requested by the captain not to land, if we could possibly help it, during our stay. A prospect of five days cooped up in an atmosphere of coal-dust and sand, to say nothing of the noisome odours off the shore, was anything but inviting, and eight o’clock the next evening saw us sitting down to dinner in the cool, comfortable dining-room of Shepherd’s Hotel, Cairo.

There is a charm about Cairo peculiar to itself. Nowhere else do we find that strange mixture of western civilization and eastern barbarism that exists in the Egyptian capital, which seems, by the way, to be yearly increasing in popularity as a winter resort. Everything in the place is original and therefore charming, and, although surrounded with every European luxury and comfort, so utterly unlike Europe.

A telegram was received during our stay here, announcing the total loss of the P. and O. Tasmania, and the drowning, among others, of her captain, poor Perrins, than whom no more popular commander or smarter sailor ever lived. We were continually seeing or hearing of wrecks on our voyage out. Besides passing three lately sunken vessels in the Red Sea, we got news at Colombo of the largest ship in the Nord-Deutscher Lloyd line having gone down off Cape Guardafui; at Shanghai of the sinking of the M.M. Steamer Menzaleh between that port and Japan.

We had a favourable passage through that exaggerated bugbear the Red Sea, which, by the way, I have found cooler three times out of four than the Indian Ocean. Aden was not touched at, and a quick run of nine days brought us to Colombo, where we bade adieu to the Bombay, which was proceeding to Calcutta, and embarked on board the Piacenza, a vessel considerably smaller but as comfortable in every respect as the leviathan we had left.

Twenty-four hours here gave us time for a run out to Mount Lavinia, where we received a hearty welcome from the jovial German Herr (surrounded, as usual, by a menagerie of domestic pets) who manages that picturesque seaside hostelry. A comfortable dinner in the breezy salle à manger in full view of the cool blue sea and yellow sands, coffee and a quiet cigar in the verandah, were a pleasant change from the stuffy saloon of the Bombay. Then back again to Colombo in the moonlight, along the palm-fringed road, heavy with the scent of jungle flowers, refreshed inwardly and outwardly, and ready for the long weary days of sea to Shanghai.

We had the Piacenza pretty well to ourselves. There were but twenty first-class passengers in all, among them two pretty girls fresh from Devonshire, with the good looks, and clear, fresh complexions that county alone seems able to produce. It seemed a sin so to take them to a clime notorious for stealing the roses from the youngest and fairest faces. In the second class were some ten or twelve Protestant female missionaries bound for North China, whose religious zeal was unparalleled. They were for ever hunting up lost sheep among the passengers, hot as it was. I do not fancy, however, that their efforts were very successful. Only one of them made converts. She was eighteen, and very good-looking.

The remainder of our voyage was uneventful and tedious enough. Hot, sleepy little Penang; Singapore a vision of green hills and red dust, a sickly odour of pepper, cocoa, nut-oil, and drains. Hong Kong, for all the world like some Spanish or Italian town with its white terraces, and coloured venetians, nestling in masses of dark green foliage at the foot of the bare rugged peak; all these were passed without incident worthy of mention excepting the meeting of the fifty-year-old bride with her fiancé at the latter port, which was affecting in the extreme. It was a relief to find that, at any rate, the bridegroom was something near her own age. Five days later, on the 21st of May, six weeks to a day since leaving Gravesend, we dropped our anchor in the broad, muddy waters of the Yangzekiang, whence a small tug conveyed us in six hours up the narrower and still muddier Woosung river to Shanghai.

Shanghai cannot be called a picturesque place. Vast alluvial plains of rice and cotton surround it on every side, while the view from the bund or esplanade fronting the river, is not unlike the Thames at Blackwall, with its flat banks, forests of masts, and grey stone wharves and warehouses. The town itself consists of three distinct settlements, English, French, and American, divided one from another by small tributaries of the Woosung river. These settlements, quite distinct from the native Chinese city, were formed by their respective governments in 1846, and occupy a space of ground rather more than a mile square. Shanghai, in 1883, contained a population of four hundred thousand, of whom two thousand were foreign residents, and an idea of its commercial importance may be gained by the fact that its trade in silk, tea, and opium now equals thirty to forty million sterling value of imports and exports.

Were I ever condemned to live in the far East (which Heaven forbid), I should certainly choose Shanghai for a residence, for besides its other advantages, there is a marked absence among its European inhabitants of the ill-nature and scandal that makes anything but a very short stay in other colonial settlements almost intolerable to those whose occupation does not compel them to reside there. Whether it is the effect of the climate on the liver, I know not, but for envy, hatred, and malice commend me to the European communities of China and the Straits Settlements.

There is a capital club (one of the best if not the very best in the East) at Shanghai, of which (thanks to the kindness of Mr. C————, to whom we had an introduction) we were made honorary members, no mean advantage, for the Shanghai hotels are by no means models of comfort or cleanliness. We intended making a stay of at least ten days before going on to Tientsin, the port of Pekin, for many things had to be thought of and procured for the long journey across the Desert of Gobi, which we now ascertained, for the first time, is nearly a thousand miles across.

There seems to be no lack of amusement at Shanghai, and the merchants and other Europeans located there appear to have what Americans would call a “real good time of it” all the year round——so far as regards gaiety and sport. For those who care for it there is any amount of shooting. In winter there is no lack of duck, teal, snipe, and other wild fowl. Indeed from here all the way up to Pekin the country teems with game, big and small, the former including wild boar and deer, while further north in Manchuria are found lion, tiger, and bear. Nor is shooting the only sport, for there is a capital race-course, polo and cricket ground. I attended a match on the latter, in which was playing, in Chinese dress and a pigtail (!) a lately celebrated English cricketer, well known at Lord’s and the Oval, who had adopted the native costume in accordance with the rules of the Mission of which he is now a member. The loose clumsy dress did not seem to interfere with his play much, for he was quite in his old form, and made over a hundred runs first innings.

But the Race week is the real Shanghai carnival. At this festive season offices and warehouses are closed, and everything given up for the business of the meeting. Nearly all the horses engaged are Mongolian ponies, and half the fun of the thing is getting a “hot one” down from its native plains and keeping it dark till the day of its engagement. The figures paid for these little animals are something fabulous. People at home have no idea of how our countrymen live in China. “Light come, light go,” seems to be the motto of the cheery, hospitable Shanghai merchants, who, although they make such enormous fortunes, never seem, to the casual visitor, to have anything to do but entertain the stranger who has the good luck to find himself within their gates. It will be long before I forget the kindness they showed us, although (before we met Mr. C.) we did not know a soul in the place.

It was curious sometimes to cross the iron bridge separating them and take a ramble from the English into the French town. It was like crossing the English Channel——indeed, I doubt if Dover and Calais present a more striking contrast than do the settlements of their respective nations at Shanghai. One left the broad regular roads, asphalte pavements and severe, business-like architecture that the mercantile Briton takes with him wherever he goes, to emerge the other side of the narrow stream on a boulevard, that first thought of every colonizing Frenchman——lined with cafés, gaily striped awnings, and little zinc tables, at which Auguste and Alphonse sat sipping their absinthe or “Mazagran,” waited upon by bustling, white-aproned garçons. The sleepy looking Douanier, with baggy trousers and képi, the grass-grown cobbled streets, the dark blue enamelled plates at the street-corners, with Rue de la Republique, Rue de Paris, &c., thereon in large white letters, the general air of stagnation and idleness among the population, seemed to carry one in a moment over leagues and leagues of land and sea to some quiet provincial town in far-away France. It needed not the tricolor floating from the mainmast of the ironclad anchored mid-stream, off the Consulate, to tell us that we were no longer on English ground.

The Shanghai bund and esplanade on a fine afternoon was amusing enough, and we whiled away many a pleasant half-hour watching the motley crowd that assemble there for a ride or drive in the cool of the evening. Here might be seen every grade of colonial society, from the solemn and portly merchant and his family rolling solemnly along in an English-built landau, to the San Francisco demi-mondaine, all powder and patches, dashing about in a Victoria drawn by a pair of pulling, tearing Mongolian ponies. Europeans in buggies and on horseback, Japanese in rikshaws, Chinese in wheelbarrows (the reader may smile, but this is a public conveyance in Shanghai), crowds of every conceivable nation and colour strolling under the trees by the water’s edge, the esplanade at Shanghai on a fine evening is a sight to see and remember.

At night electric lights every twenty yards or so convert the bund into a perfect fairyland. The inauguration of the Jablokoff system, however, was attended with a slight contretemps. Crowds of natives and Europeans turned out the first night to see the effect, but for a good hour none was apparent. The place was wrapped in total darkness, and the expectant crowd beginning to show signs of impatience, it was found that the engineer had fixed the lights above the trees, whence the dense foliage very naturally obscured it, instead of under. This trifling mistake was, however, soon rectified, and the brilliant illumination so took the fancy of the natives that all the principal Chinese thoroughfares are now lit by it.

The native city of Shanghai, is walled and separated from the French and English settlements by a deep, muddy moat. Some clumsy iron cannon, said to be the oldest in existence, are mounted upon its dilapidated grass-grown battlements. This was our first experience of a celestial city, and we did not, after visiting it, look forward with unalloyed pleasure to the two hundred odd miles of country we were about to traverse between Pekin and the Great Wall of China. But I did not then know that Shanghai is renowned as being the dirtiest city in the Chinese Empire, and certainly we never afterwards came across one to equal it in this respect. Pekin itself was a paradise in comparison.

The streets of Shanghai proper are none of them more than ten feet in breadth. Some are even considerably narrower, and the tottering, tumble-down dwellings, the majority built of wood, bend forward on either side until they nearly touch overhead. The thoroughfares are thus always, even on the brightest day, in a state of semi-darkness. The pavements, rough and uneven, are formed of huge stone slabs, some of them, judging by the characters inscribed thereon, many hundreds of years old. Worn away by time and use, many are broken away in parts, revealing underneath the sewage and filth of years, which, slowly rotting away, infects the whole city with a hot, sickly odour of putrefaction. It was a hot, muggy day when we visited it, and the stench from these places was something beyond description. I was not surprised to hear that cholera and typhus number their victims by thousands at times, and that an epidemic (of some sort or another) always exists.

Yet it seemed a busy, bustling place, and we could scarcely make our way along the sloppy streets for the continuous stream of traffic. It was exactly like a human bee-hive, and we should very soon have lost ourselves without a guide in the crooked, tortuous streets that ran in all directions like a maze, without any regard to regularity or order. We came suddenly in the very heart of the city, upon an oasis in this desert of filth and squalor, a space about a quarter of a mile square. A large circular lake overhung with weeping willows occupied the centre. Great white and yellow lilies lay here and there on the surface of the smooth clear water, in which one could see the gold fish swimming lazily to and fro about the thick green weeds and stems, ten or fifteen feet deep. About fifty yards from the shore, and connected with it by a light bamboo bridge, stood a large pagoda gorgeous in vermilion and gold, with countless little gilt bells hung around the roof, which, with every breath of air gave out a sweet, musical jangle. Seated in this were a crowd of men and women, talking, laughing, and drinking tea. All were dressed in the richest silks, the men in dark blue or plum colour, the women in lighter shades of green, heliotrope, or orange, their necks and arms loaded with heavy gold ornaments, their quaint, impassive, doll-like faces thickly smeared with paint. On the banks around the lake were booths for the sale of sweetmeats, fans, silks, cigarettes, and jewellery, while jugglers and acrobats plied their trade among the busy crowd, or at the little tables set out by the waterside and occupied by noisy chattering tea-drinkers. I stood for some time watching the curious scene, which was for all the world like a bit broken out of a willow-pattern plate. It seemed so odd to walk suddenly out of the filthy, sewage-laden streets into this hidden corner of cleanliness and picturesque revelry. But China is full of such contradictions. I afterwards discovered that we had strayed into a tea-garden (there are a dozen such in the city) and that the pretty pagoda was used as a kind of private box for the better classes, just as our own smart people at home occasionally patronize the Alhambra and other music-halls to gaze at a respectful distance on the manners and customs of the “Oi Polloi.”

The Chinese, I found, are great believers in the art of fortune-telling. We passed on our way homewards many of the shops, or rather boxes, in which the professors of the art received their subjects. They seemed to have many methods, but the favourite one consists in dipping the thumb into a piece of hot, soft, black wax, and then impressing it firmly upon a piece of parchment or white wood. The lines thus obtained are supposed to predict the future. The professors seemed to be doing a roaring trade. Their fees were not extortionate; a couple of cash (about ½d.) each consultation.

The most important thing we now had to consider was the purchase of stores for our journey over the “Great Hungry Desert,” as Gobi is called by the Chinese. It was by no means easy to decide how much or how little to take, for no one in Shanghai seemed to know whether in the eight hundred odd miles lying between the Great Wall of China and Ourga food of any sort or kind was procurable. However, hearing that everything in the way of provisions was outrageously dear at Tientsin, and unprocurable at Pekin, we decided to lay in our stock at Shanghai, and curiously enough furnished ourselves with exactly the right amount, for our stores failed the very day before we reached Kiakhta. The claret, whisky, and soda-water gave out some time before, but we had plenty of lime-juice, which made the brackish desert water drinkable.

Were I to do this journey again, I should certainly send everything of this kind straight out from England, for the camp furniture, saddlery, and stores we bought at Shanghai were, besides being outrageously dear, of very inferior quality. On opening the cases in the desert, we found at least a quarter of the provisions uneatable. The American firm who furnished us must make a good thing of it if they do business with all their customers on the same terms.

The operation of packing was by no means easy. As the reader is perhaps aware, the weight on a camel’s back must be quite equally distributed on either side, otherwise (in Mongolia at least) the animal lies down and utterly declines to move a step. Eight strong wooden chests, with padlocks, met all our requirements, and having made our adieus to our hospitable friends, we embarked, the 31st of May, on the coasting-steamer Tungchow for the port of Pekin, Tientsin.

We were presented before leaving Shanghai with a so-called itinerary on the journey we were taking, written by an Englishman resident in China, who had travelled the caravan route from Pekin to Europe in 1872. Things must have changed considerably, both in Mongolia and Siberia, since those days, for almost all the book contained, including distances, was so inaccurate and misleading that we discarded its use long before we reached Kiakhta.

The “Tungchow” was more like a yacht than a cargo boat, and the run up coast was delightful; with bright sunshine and light cool breezes, exactly like Mediterranean weather in early spring, though the nights were very cold, and one was glad of an overcoat. We passed daily numbers of fishing junks, their dark brown mat-sails and bright red and yellow banners standing out in picturesque contrast to the clear blue sea, which often for miles round us was dotted with net corks and men in small canoes. A gale springs up in a few minutes in these latitudes, and during the typhoon season many of these poor fishermen, unable to get back to the junks, are blown out to sea and drowned, their companions on the huge, swirling craft, being, of course, unable to render them any assistance. The captain of the Tungchow told us that many lives are lost annually in this manner.

We reached Chefoo late at night, and were therefore unable to land, as we were off again at daybreak. This is the Brighton of Shanghai and Pekin. There is capital bathing here, and many good hotels, which are crowded to overflowing in the summer months by Europeans escaping from the damp, steamy heat of Shanghai, and the no less disagreeable odours, and “dust fogs” (I can call them nothing else) of the capital.

The coast lying between Chefoo and the mouth of the Peiho river is strikingly like parts of Devonshire. But for the absence of houses and bathing machines, one might have been off Torquay or Dawlish. Precipitous red cliffs, with smooth green sward growing to their very edges, met by broad smooth yellow sands, while here and there great masses of rock run out for a considerable distance into the clear blue water. Further inland neatly trimmed hedges, clumps of fir-trees, and snug-looking farm-houses surrounded with orchards and gardens, recalled visions of clotted cream, and pretty peasant girls in that loveliest of all English counties, the true garden of England: Devonshire.

At daybreak on the 3rd of June we passed the celebrated Taku forts and entered the Peiho river. It was a bright lovely morning, and as a bend of the river hid it from our sight, and we looked at the blue sunlit ocean for the last time, it was not without some misgivings at the long land journey before us. The thought that when next we saw the sea, it would be at Calais, made us realize, perhaps more than we had as yet done, the difficulty and length of the voyage we had undertaken across the breadth of Europe and Asia.

Unlike most rivers, the Peiho seems to widen as you ascend it, being considerably narrower at the mouth than at Tientsin, thirty miles inland. The town of Taku, a wretched-looking place, built for the most part of mud houses, is by water inaccessible for five months of the year, on account of the ice in the Peiho and Gulf of Pechili. It is a curious fact that although Taku is so cold in winter, it never snows, and there is usually a bright, cloudless sky and cutting north-easter blowing. Wretched as is its appearance, Taku looks a busy place, and contains a Chinese naval dockyard. The Taku forts commanding the entrance to the river have been greatly strengthened during the last ten years, the work being carried on under the personal supervision of German officers.

We were rather puzzled, on first entering the Peiho, at what appeared in the distance like a number of large merry-go-rounds scattered over the flat swampy plain surrounding the town, and revolving without cessation. It was only by the aid of glasses that we made them out to be salt-mills worked by huge mat sails. The sea-water is pumped into the vats by the aid of this irrigation and allowed to evaporate in the sun. The salt which remains is then piled into large stacks and covered with thick matting. The effect at a distance of these dozens of huge mills revolving on the bare desolate plain with not a living object near them, was curious in the extreme. The river scenery from Taku to Tangchow very much resembles that of the Nile, the houses of dried mud, with their flat roofs and terraces, the absence of trees except occasional palms, remind one not a little of an Egyptian landscape, while the uniform dark blue garb of the peasantry, of exactly the same shade as that worn by the Fellaheen, heightens, at a distance, the illusion.

Although only thirty miles distant as the crow flies, Tientsin is quite eighty by river from Taku, for the Peiho is, towards the mouth, the most tortuous river in the world. It is not unusual to steam steadily on for an hour, and find yourself, at the expiration of that time only a few hundred yards from where you started. The effect produced by the shipping ascending and descending the river is very odd, the intricate bends of the river giving the steamers the appearance of moving about on dry land. The marshes I have mentioned do not extend for more than about ten miles inland. They are then succeeded by rich fertile plains of rice and cotton irrigated in the Egyptian manner by means of “shadoofs” from the waters of the Peiho. The country seemed pretty thickly populated. Some of the mud villages by the water side must have contained quite a thousand inhabitants, but in China, where the population is so enormous, this is looked upon as a small hamlet!

There is a large coal-wharf a short distance from Taku, where the coal from the Kai Ping mine, fifty miles distant, is brought by means of a small railway and barges. The coal, though rather dusty, is excellent for steamer purposes, and the private company working it make a very fair percentage. It has always seemed curious to me that coal is not more extensively worked in the Chinese Empire, when there are more than four hundred thousand square miles of it! There are, however, but very few mines in existence.

Tientsin, which has a population of about nine hundred and fifty thousand stands at the junction of the Grand Canal with the Peiho river. It is not a prepossessing place at first sight, nor did its dusty, bustling quays, warehouses, and noisy, perspiring coolies, make us at all anxious to prolong our stay longer than was absolutely necessary. The trade of Tientsin is not great when compared with the other treaty ports. Nearly all the tea exported thence goes to Russia and Siberia——occasionally by way of Pekin——but in most cases viâ Kalgan and district across the Gobi Desert to Kiakhta, without touching at the capital. The Russian merchants are therefore nearly as numerous as the English at Tientsin.

The settlement boasted of but two hotels, and these of a very fifth-rate description. Small-pox having broken out in one, our choice was limited, for we did not care to run the risk of being laid up for three or four weeks in the native hospital at Pekin. Bidding adieu to our genial skipper, who cheerfully expressed a hope that he might see us again one day, though he very much doubted our ever leaving Siberia, we made our way, accompanied by a yelling crowd of half-naked coolies bearing our luggage, to the American Hotel, an uninviting, dilapidated-looking hostelry enough. In the verandah, reclining on many chairs, and at intervals refreshing himself from a huge beaker of brandy and soda, was an individual pointed out to us as the proprietor (a fat, sleepy-looking Yankee), whose welcome was hardly encouraging.

“Can we have rooms here?”

“Sure I don’t know, you’d better ask.”

“But you’re the manager, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I’m the manager.”

A pause, during which our friend takes a long pull at the brandy, and, emerging considerably refreshed, composes himself calmly to slumber.

“Who are we to ask?”

“Who are you to ask?” half opening his eyes; “Oh! I don’t know, you will see some of the China boys about. How should I know who you’re to ask?” is his parting shot as we leave him and cross the dirty sanded billiard-room, hung with tawdry prints, and redolent of stale tobacco and spirits, that precedes the entrance to the “bar.”

Here we glean from a dishevelled, greasy German in shirt-sleeves, who looks as if he slept among the sawdust and empty whisky bottles that litter the floor, that no rooms are to be had that night, or for the next week to come, for love or money. A huge travelling circus belonging to an Italian, one Chiarini, has taken every available room in the place. “Then could we have the billiard-table?” “No, we could not possibly have the billiard-table, for the ‘gentlemen’ connected with the circus always played till three or four in the morning. Still, we could have it then, if we liked, on payment of a small remuneration to him (the occupant of the bar), but we must keep it dark from the boss.”

Our experience of the “boss” did not quite justify our taking this course, and we left the hotel, sadly and slowly followed by our string of sympathizing coolies, utterly at a loss to know what to do till the bright thought struck Lancaster of at once hiring the house-boat which was to take us to Tungchow (the landing-place for Pekin), and living on board her till we left for the capital. We managed this, not without some difficulty, for we had to get the boat through our friend the sleepy Yankee. He woke up a little, however, at the prospect of swindling two helpless and friendless fellow-creatures, and by sundown we had everything on board, and the boat snugly moored off the hotel wharf. We were alongside a large open drain, with a most abominable stench, and there was always the possibility of being run down in the night by a passing ship, but one could not afford to be particular. The sight, however, of a large passenger steamer bound for Japan which passed close to us towards sundown was depressing in the extreme, the cleanliness and luxury on board contrasting so painfully with our own surroundings. For a few moments we almost regretted (by no means for the last time) that we had ever undertaken this voyage, the discomforts and difficulties of which now seemed to increase with every day.

Early next day we presented our letters to Mr. S., the Russian tea merchant, who was to provide us with letters of credit for his agents at Irkoutsk and Tomsk in Eastern and Western Siberia. Mr. S. did not give us a very favourable account of the journey before us. Like almost every other Russian we met, first question was “Mais que Diable allez-vous faire en Sibérie?” We got into the way at last of never arguing this question. In the first place it was useless, and only caused waste of time; in the second we had literally no reason to give, except perhaps the one so dear to most Englishmen: “The country had been crossed by so few travellers before!”

Among other pleasant and encouraging items of news, we now heard that we should probably meet with serious delay, not only at Kalgan, the Mongolian frontier, but also at Pekin. “You had better not think,” said Mr. S., “of making any definite plans till you arrive at Kalgan. This is the worst time of year you could have chosen. It is not the caravan season; the camels are all out on the plains. It may be two or three months before you are able to cross the Gobi, and then you will get into Siberia at the very worst time of year, when the roads are next to impassable from rains and floods. Any day you may be detained by a broken bridge or a landslip, and have to wait in some dreary, wretched village in the wilds of Siberia, till the snow sets, and enables you to finish your journey in sleighs. You cannot, I feel sure, have rightly estimated the difficulties before you. Why go to Siberia at all, when that earthly paradise Japan is so near?” &c., &c.

We at last succeeded in making Mr. S. understand that we were determined to get as far as Pekin at any rate; and, our interview over, had nothing but the purchase of some provisions for our river journey (our Shanghai store was not opened till we reached the desert) to detain us in Tientsin. Nor were we sorry to get away, for the dust and filth of this city were almost unbearable. We had not then experienced the odours of Pekin, which would accustom one to cheerfully live in a main drain.

Our second night here was not so pleasantly passed as the first. A shower of rain at sunset brought out legions of mosquitoes, from which, not having brought curtains, we suffered a good deal of annoyance, and the intolerable stench of the drain near which we lay was so increased by the rain that we had to smoke incessantly till past 3 a.m., almost regretting we had not accepted the barkeeper’s offer of the billiard-table for a bed. Even the “circus gentlemen” would have been preferable to the sewer. We got to sleep about 4 a.m., only to be awoke at daybreak by a crashing sound and to find the water rushing into the boat, with an unpleasant conviction that our craft was heeling over at a very uncomfortable angle. We had become entangled in the hawser of a large ocean-steamer, which, had it not been let go in the nick of time, would have upset us altogether. We escaped with a ducking, however, and soon got the boat righted and baled out again.

The distance from Tientsin to Pekin is rather under eighty miles overland, that by river one hundred and forty, viz. one hundred and twenty miles to Tungchow, and twenty miles thence by road to the capital. Although it takes two days longer (sometimes three), we chose the water route in preference to the other. We should, we thought, have quite enough land-travelling during the next five months; besides which, the Chinese inns between Tientsin and the capital are even filthier than those between Pekin and the Great Wall——which is saying a good deal.

It was about ten o’clock, on a bright, clear morning, that we hoisted the huge mat-sail, and, with a favourable breeze, soon left the bustling city and its high cathedral towers (where the Catholic nuns were so brutally murdered in 1870) low on the horizon.

The traffic on the Peiho river for some miles above Tientsin is enormous. We must have counted at least four hundred boats and barges in the space of an hour the afternoon of the day we left, while the whole way to Tungchow the river was alive with boats of every description whenever we passed a village, from huge junks to tiny sampans. At times, near Tientsin, one could have crossed the river, or walked three hundred or four hundred yards up it, dry shod on the boats.

A Chinese house-boat, though comfortable enough for all practical purposes, must not be confounded with the luxurious, flower-bedecked craft that line the banks of the Thames in summer time. The Chinese house-boat resembles the English only in name, for there was no attempt at decoration, and very little at cleanliness. About forty-five feet long, it was decked completely over, except in the centre, where a sort of well covered with planks, with space enough for two to lie or sit in, formed the cabin.

Our crew, five in number, slept in a kind of hutch under the deck forward. How they all managed to stow themselves there at once was a mystery to me, for they were great, tall, hulking fellows. We sailed, as a rule, our broad mat-sail sending the old tub along at an incredible speed with the lightest breeze. When the wind dropped, the men rowed incessantly, day and night, till it rose again. The amount of work they got through was simply marvellous. Nothing seemed to tire them; morning, noon, and night they plied the heavy, awkward sweeps without cessation, except to eat a dish of rice and fish and take a drink of cold tea once every twelve hours. Cheery, good-tempered fellows they were too, considering the small wages they got. The fare, including everything, was only $13, and our Yankee friend must have got at least two-thirds of this sum as his own share of the transaction.

The first two days of our river journey were enjoyable enough, save for such small annoyances as rats and cockroaches, which latter took forcible possession of our cabin at night-time. But the delightful weather and novel scenery amply atoned for such small discomforts as these. The Peiho is a thick, muddy stream. Its banks are continually slipping down and being dammed up by the natives, which accounts in a great measure for the dirty pea-soup colour of the water. These landslips are not of weekly or even daily occurrence. They occur incessantly, and it was curious to watch, as we ascended the river, the continual dropping away of the land on either side, while, here and there, gangs of men repaired the damage by means of cemented bamboos. The riverside villages were like human beehives, so crowded and dense did the population of them appear, even at midday, when so many of the inhabitants must have been out at work in the fields. One could not help wondering how even such an enormous country as China can support such a dense population, numbering, by the last census, some 400,000,000. And yet, from the time we left the coast till we reached the Mongolian border, there was always vegetation of some kind or other to be seen, and vast fertile plains of corn, barley, and millet stretched away on every side to the horizon. Everything in North China is on such a large scale that for a few days one scarcely realized how enormous the population and fertilization of this huge empire really are, how great its resources and demands.

Our days on the Peiho were amusing enough. There was always something to look at on the bank, and a capital towing-path to walk on when one’s legs got tired and cramped in the boat, so that we had nothing to complain of in the way of variety, and the first two days, bright and sunny, wore away as idly and pleasantly as summer days up the Thames or Wye in England. It was pleasant to sit out in the evening in the cool, clear moonlight, on the little deck, the silence unbroken save by the regular plash of the oars, or twang of Chinese fiddle or guitar, as we passed some lonely, riverside cottage, the arms of the solitary, half-naked musician gleaming white in the moonlight, as he rose and waved a good-night to our crew. When we passed a village after dark it was like some weird transformation scene, for up to midnight these waterside settlements appeared, from the river at least, to be given up to revelry. We never, however, ventured into one, preferring to gaze from a respectful distance upon the flaring torches throwing counter effects of light and shade over the quaint, picturesque houses and pagodas, the hurrying crowds on the banks; while the clashing of gongs and cymbals from the joss-house or theatre heightened the effect of the strange scene. Then on again along the silent moonlit stream, with its low sedgy banks; nothing to mar the flat, monotonous outline of the moonlit landscape, but, here and there, a huge square mound of earth, the tomb of some departed mandarin or village magnate.

But the morning of the third day looked dull and overcast, and by ten o’clock the rain was pouring down in torrents. There was no keeping dry, for the ramshackle roof leaked like a sieve, and the floor of our cabin was in a very few minutes almost ankle-deep in water. About midday a terrific thunderstorm broke over us. The lightning was so vivid that although every nook and cranny of our dilapidated hutch was tightly closed, and the place in semi-darkness, it almost blinded one. I have never, even in the tropics, heard the thunder so loud and continuous. One peal lasted quite a minute without cessation.

I have seldom passed a more miserable day than that one moored by the muddy banks of the Peiho, for progress was impossible. Cooking or lighting a fire, too, was out of the question. Everything, including matches and fuel, was sopping through and through. Looking out of our wooden prison, nothing met the eye but grey, driving mist, and steady, unceasing rain, falling with a persistence and violence that lashed the brown muddy waters around us into a sheet of grey foam. The men forward were battened down, and seemed unconcerned enough, as snatches of song rising from below and occasional whiffs of smoke emerging through the chinks in the deck testified. We almost envied them their warmth, shivering as we were like half-drowned rats. About five o’clock a break in the grey, misty sky appeared, and half an hour later the sun was shining in a sky of cloudless blue, while we rapidly cut our way through the water before a light but piercingly cold breeze, so sudden and complete are the changes of weather in these latitudes.

Early the next day a chain of precipitous mountains broke the horizon. Beyond them lay our destination, Pekin. We were, however, still two days off, for the river here shallows considerably, and we frequently stuck hard and fast during the day. At these times the whole crew would divest themselves of their clothes, and, fastening a couple of stout ropes to the bows of the boat, tow us off again into deep water. Landing here was impossible, for one could not get within ten yards or so of the bank. Some of the larger junks were being towed by as many as thirty or forty men. On the deck of one a huge deal case bearing the name of Maple and Co., London, in large black letters, looked strangely out of keeping with the uncivilized surroundings.

It was only the fifth morning after leaving Tientsin that we hove in sight of Tungchow, a “village” of something over one hundred thousand inhabitants. This was our first experience of a real Chinese town, far from European influence; and we were rather agreeably disappointed, for at a distance, it looked clean and inviting. A closer acquaintance, alas! somewhat modified first impressions.

Moored alongside the flat muddy banks were a perfect colony of junks, two thousand or three thousand in number; an interval of flat boggy ground cut up by innumerable cesspools, open drains and dust-heaps divided these from the town wall, which, standing back about a couple of hundred yards from the water’s edge, hid the town from view, except where, at intervals, a tower or pagoda overtopped the loopholed brick battlements. Although the sun had but just risen, the banks were crowded with people, and the keepers of hundreds of stalls and booths were already doing a brisk trade in the sale of cloths, pigtails, tea, sweetmeats, and fans to the junk population, while here and there a barber plied his trade, which in North China is anything but an appetizing one to look upon. Dirty as the place and people were, the bright, cloudless sky and sunshine lent a gaiety to the scene, which for colour and animation I have seldom seen equalled in the most picturesque Turkish cities or bazaars of the far East.

We were ready to start at midday, and had all the baggage safely stowed away in Pekin carts, a more dirty or uncomfortable vehicle than which does not exist. As it is of the same construction, although smaller than the carts in which we crossed the desert, I will leave the description of these “torture-boxes” to a future chapter. Seeing with the naked eye whole regiments of vermin crawling over the one destined for our reception, we preferred to ride ahead, on donkeys, under the guidance of a small boy, whose powers of conversation were limitless, and who talked incessantly the whole way, frequently interlarding his conversation with the words “Yang Qweitze” (Foreign Devil), the uncomplimentary title bestowed on every European, of whatever nationality, in the less civilized parts of China. Nor was the filthy state of the carts our only reason for riding. We had serious misgivings as to whether the clumsy, heavily-laden conveyances would reach Pekin before nightfall, in which case we should have had to pass the night in the open outside the walls. The gates of the city are shut at sundown, and no human power (short of the emperor’s special command) will open them till sunrise the following day.

It took us nearly an hour to get clear of Tungchow and into the open country. The town is (for China) fairly clean, though the streets are narrow, tortuous and ill paved, and in some places there were holes two or three feet deep in the centre of the roadway.

The natives in this part of China present a striking contrast to their countrymen at Shanghai and further south; whereas the latter are for the most part puny, pasty-faced creatures, these were fine, strapping, broad-shouldered men, with healthy, ruddy faces. The women too were better-looking, though doll-like and thickly painted, with the baggy, shapeless figures, deformed feet, and stoop peculiar to their race. Many of the shops were devoted to the sale of Manchester goods and cheap cutlery, which find great favour among the people in this part of China. Here and there a large tea-house, gorgeously decorated, was filled with customers taking their morning draught of the cup that cheers. The tea drunk by the Chinese is as different to our idea of that beverage as it can well be, and is, to a European palate, utterly flavourless. “Chacun à son goût.” Many Russians say that real, unadulterated tea never finds its way to England, nor would the English drink it if it did.

It took us quite an hour to get clear of Tungchow, for the streets were crowded to overflowing. Although so few Europeans are seen here, the people took very little notice of us, excepting the juvenile population, ragged little wretches, a crowd of whom pestered us for cash, which, when refused, drew down upon us yells of derision and curses on the “Yang Qweitze” in general.

The road from Tungchow to Pekin lies through a fertile, well-wooded country, and is for the first three or four miles raised some ten feet from the ground on either side, and paved with huge stone slabs, apparently of great antiquity. Although now in a very dilapidated condition, this must in former times have been a splendid thoroughfare. It reminded one of one of the old Roman roads, some of the slabs being quite ten feet long by five feet broad and two thick. The going was very bad in places where these stones had fallen away. Turning away to admire the scenery, I was somewhat suddenly recalled to the situation by finding that my donkey had slipped into one of these chasms about four feet deep. We got out, however, with nothing worse than a few bruises. This road is said at one time to have extended as far as Pekin, but, with characteristic carelessness, the Chinese have allowed it to become so dilapidated, that after two miles or so it ceases altogether, and our way lay along narrow, raised paths, running through millet and barley fields. Eight li from Tungchow, we passed the picturesque bridge of “Palikao,” from which the French general takes his name. Hard by a little tea-house clustering in the shade of willow-trees afforded us grateful shelter for half an hour, and we dismounted and took a few cups of the cool refreshing drink, for the road was dusty, and the sun very powerful.

As we sat on mats, enjoying the cool breeze from the river, half a dozen soldiers rode by with a prisoner, whom they were taking to Tungchow, to undergo sentence of death by the “Ling Chi.” The poor wretch looked ghastly pale, and well he might, for this is perhaps the most barbarous and revolting of all Chinese punishments. The word “Ling Chi” means literally to be cut in ten thousand pieces. As the reader may care to know how the operation is performed, I will give a brief account of an execution of this kind which took place at Canton only last year.

“As soon as the signal was given the victim was stripped of his clothing——the process of binding and gagging being made unnecessarily long. By the time it was over the poor wretch was almost fainting with terror. Previous to the commencement of the operation a draught of arrak was given him, and then commenced the work of butchery.

“Two deep cuts over each eye commenced the operation. Gashes which turned great pieces of flesh over, and left the bone exposed. Then a cut down each cheek, and a deeper one across each shoulder, nearly but not quite severing the arm from its socket. A circular cut to the bone in each upper arm and fore-arm followed, and then, stepping back to get more scope, the executioner hacked off the right hand with one blow. A large piece of flesh was then cut or rather dug out of each thigh, and from over each knee, and the flesh torn off both kneecaps. The calves of the legs were then cut off.

“Up till now a straight heavy sword had been the weapon used. The human devil who acted as executioner wielding it with as much ease and dexterity as if he had been carving a fowl. The sword was now put aside, and a thin-bladed knife, about a foot long, driven in to the hilt, under the right breast-bone, the executioner working it slowly round and round while his assistant fanned the victim with a large palm-leaf fan for the double purpose of keeping the flies off, and hiding the contortions of the poor wretch’s face, who was not yet dead, as evinced by the twitching of the fingers of his remaining hand. Ten or twelve seconds more of this diabolical torture, and the victim was cut down from the cross, to fall, inert and helpless, on his knees and face. He was then decapitated and the sentence completed.”

These barbarous and disgusting proceedings seem the more awful when we consider that the poor wretch whose execution I have described was not the actual author of the crime for which he suffered. He was what is known in China as a “substitute.” There are many in this strange land, who for a small sum of money will cheerfully die for the pleasure of two or three days spent in dissipation and riot. The murderer himself was probably looking on with the crowd, unmoved at what should by rights have been his own execution.

There are other Chinese punishments quite as revolting as the Ling Chi, which do not, however, necessarily end in death. A very common one (to be seen almost daily in the streets of Pekin) is the “Cangue,” two large pieces of wood, each with a semicircular hole in the middle, which are worn round the neck. The hands are placed at right angles through other holes in the board, which weighs from sixty to two hundred pounds according to circumstances. This is worn from three days to two, or even three, months according to the nature of the crime. The “Cage” is another very common punishment, and is used for minor offences. The wretched occupant of this can neither sit, stand, nor lie down. Prisoners are kept in this position for a period varying from a week to a month. In the latter case they are usually rendered cripples for life. Another favourite punishment (often used to punish adultery) is pulling out the hand and toe nails, teeth, eye-lashes, and nostrils; but perhaps the most painful of any is the “Wire Shirt,” a thin wire garment made to fit the body so tightly that small pieces of skin are pressed through every aperture. A sharp razor is then passed over these outside, so that when the shirt is removed the victim from head to waist is one piece of raw quivering flesh.

Many others could I cite, but enough of this unsavoury subject. China is full of contradictions, and none are more striking than the cruelty and kindness of its population, for there exists no kinder-hearted or more liberal being than the Chinaman. There are, of course, exceptions; the rebel Yeh, for instance, who was degraded by the Emperor for treachery in 1857, when brought to Calcutta, where he died, confessed to having executed more than 70,000 souls while he was in office.

We rode slowly on the whole afternoon through fields of grain, pretty villages asleep in the sun, with no sign of life in them but beggars and dogs lying huddled in the dusty road, under the shade of wall or shed, sleeping away the hot, silent hours in indolent content. It seemed at times as if we should never reach Pekin, though the mountains beyond it looked provokingly close in the bright clear atmosphere. The heat was intense, but a cool breeze now and then sprung up, and made it not unpleasant travelling as we rode through some of the prettiest scenery it has ever been my lot to look upon. The golden fields of oats and barley, the pretty villages dotted here and there over the plain, the ruddy, healthy-looking peasantry at work gathering in the harvest, and, here and there, the country-seat of some wealthy Mandarin, with its broad avenues, willow-fringed lake, and deer park, wore a happy, civilized look strangely at variance with one’s preconceived notions of the remoter parts of the Celestial Empire. Had it not been for the quaint pagodas and temples resplendent in crimson and gold carvings that we passed every mile or so, one might have fancied oneself in some picturesque corner of far away England.

One circumstance alone considerably marred our enjoyment of the lovely scenery——to wit, the streams of beggars who towards evening came out by hundreds from the holes and corners in which they had been lying during the heat of the day. A more importunate or determined set of wretches I never saw. Ranging from the ages of five to fifty, half naked and covered with sores, the wretches refused to be driven off, and insisted on accompanying us in unpleasant proximity——some of them for miles. Now and anon one would run forward, and kneeling, beat his head upon the ground——an operation called in China the “Koo-Too.” Passing through one of the villages, I fairly lost my temper, and turning round, shook my stick at the yelling, dancing ruffians, who, much to the amusement of the villagers, almost barred our progress. The effect was magical. In a second their demeanour changed, and what had been a crowd of cringing, supplicating wretches turned to a hooting, menacing crowd. Things looked awkward at first, and I thought, for a few moments, we were in for an ugly row. Mud and stones were showered on us freely, and one gaunt leprous-looking individual, half naked, ran up on his crutches and seized my donkey’s bridle. Seeing from the indifferent and half-amused expression on the bystanders’ faces that we should get no help from them, I thought discretion the better part of valour, and scattered a handful of cash among our persecutors, which had the effect of slowly dispersing them. This contretemps, trivial as it was, showed the danger of ever for a moment annoying the people in the country we were about to travel through. Though good-tempered and hospitable, the Northern Chinaman has but a very poor idea of a European, English or otherwise. Indeed, I doubt if the majority of the peasantry had ever heard of England.

The approach to Pekin from Tungchow is anything but imposing, and we were rather disappointed at our first sight of the celestial city. The country for a mile or so before reaching the gates is so densely wooded that we did not know we had reached the capital till we found ourselves actually under its massive crenellated walls. The latter are surmounted by lofty square towers which, with their bright apple-green porcelain roofs and gaudy façades relieve to a certain extent the barren appearance of the sandy waste that surrounds Pekin. Not a roof or tower of the city is visible from here, nothing but the high rugged walls which, notwithstanding their great age, are in good repair. There was nothing to tell one that on the other side of these there lay a place almost as large as Paris in area and population. Nothing but the hoarse, subdued murmur, confused and indistinct, that hangs over every great city.

A few hundred yards brought us to the gate of the Tartar city, and, ye gods! what a city! Upon first entering, it seemed as if a dense fog had suddenly descended upon one, but a look back at the bright sunshine outside the gates soon dispelled the illusion, and explained the mystery: it was nothing but dust, the black, fine, and searching dust, for which Pekin is famous. Everything was coated with it. One breathed it in with every inhalation, till eyes, mouth, and nose were choked up, and breathing became almost an impossibility. No one seemed to mind it much, though our donkeys laboured through it nearly knee-deep.

We rode for some distance along the filthy, dusty streets. There is no rule of the road in Pekin, and it took one all one’s time to steer safely through the carts, sedans, mule litters, and camel caravans which thronged the streets. At length we turned into the principal thoroughfare, a broad unpaved street, raised in the centre, on either side of which one saw a long vista of low roofed houses, scrubby trees, and gaudy shop-signs, lost in the distance in a cloud of dust. We were in Pekin at last.

In Pekin, but apparently a long way yet from our destination, the Hôtel de Pékin; and judging from our small guide’s very erratic movements, we were not likely for some time to reach that friendly hostelry, which is kept by an enterprising Frenchman, M. ————. The disagreeable suspicion that our guide had lost his way became a certainty, when turning down a narrow by-lane, he brought us up all standing at the door of a filthy tea-house. It was not a pleasant predicament. Imagine a Central African suddenly turned loose in the streets of London, and you have our position——with this difference, that the African would have had the pull over us in the shape of a friendly policeman to take him to the station. Here, in this city of nearly two million inhabitants, it seemed unlikely enough that we should come across any of the English-speaking inhabitants, who number fifty to sixty at the most.

Threats of punishment and vengeance on the small boy were useless. He simply seated himself, and calling for a cup of tea, informed us we must find our way ourselves, he did not know it——at least that is what we inferred from his gestures, which were disrespectful in the extreme. With a lively recollection of our escape of the afternoon, we did not care to risk another disturbance, so, resigning ourselves to circumstances, dismounted and called for tea.

It was not a pleasant half-hour, for we were surrounded in less than five minutes by a crowd of the most insolent, dirtiest ruffians imaginable. We had evidently been brought to one of the very lowest quarters of the town, and were not sorry to have left our watches in the carts. With the exception of our revolvers and a few cash they would not have been much the richer for robbing us. I should be sorry to have much to do with the inhabitants of the Chinese capital. There is no more obliging and hospitable being than the Chinese peasant, no more insolent, arrogant thief than the lower order of Pekinese. The victory of the imperial troops over the French in Tonquin is, in a great measure, responsible for the insolence displayed by the inhabitants of Pekin towards Europeans. Insults are perpetrated almost daily, and in the open streets, for which there is no redress, and it is only necessary to go for a very short walk in the streets of the capital to see that the lesson taught the Celestials by the allied troops in 1860 has long since been forgotten.

We should probably have had to pass the night in this unsavoury den, had not a European passed and by the greatest luck caught sight of us through the narrow gateway. Our deliverer, Mr. P., an American missionary, himself escorted us through a labyrinth of crowded streets and squares to Legation Street. We should certainly never have found our way otherwise, for there were no outward and visible signs even here of European inhabitants, till just before reaching the hotel, we passed the French Embassy, and saw, through an open gateway, a spacious shady garden with smooth-shaven lawns, cedars, and fountains, while over the doorway, in large gold letters on a vermilion ground, were the words “Légation de France.” A couple of hundred yards further on we pulled up at the door of our caravanserai. Thanking and taking leave of our friend, we entered the building, and were not sorry to find ourselves in the cool, grey-tiled, flower-bordered courtyard of the hotel; where a whisky and soda with plenty of ice washed the dust out of our throats and refreshed us not a little after our long and somewhat eventful ride.

The baggage arrived an hour after, and after a bath and change we felt well disposed to do justice to the excellent dinner provided for us by M. ————, the repast being graced by the presence of his wife, pretty Madame ————, and her sister. Sitting out after dinner in the little moonlit courtyard redolent of heliotrope and mignonette, one might have fancied oneself hundreds of miles from the dusty, ill-smelling city, and its barbaric population. The smells did not, thank goodness, penetrate here; and for the first time since leaving Tientsin, we thoroughly enjoyed an after-dinner cigar, not a little relieved that the starting-point, at any rate, of our long land journey had been safely reached.

CHAPTER II.
PEKIN.

It was only in the year 1421 that Pekin became the capital of the Chinese Empire. It was up to that period merely the chief town of Northern China, as its name “Pe,” north, “Ching,” city, denotes; but when Nankin, the ancient capital, was abandoned, the seat of government was transferred to its present situation. A worse site for a capital, both commercially and socially, can scarcely be imagined, for although connected by canal with the Peiho river, and thus in summer with the rest of the civilized world, the ice in winter entirely suspends water communication. It is, therefore, for five months of the year, practically a prison for the fifty or sixty Europeans located within its grass-grown walls, for few are rash enough to attempt a journey overland to Chefoo or Shanghai.

There is little or no foreign trade with Pekin, and with one exception no European merchants live there. The embassies of various nations, English and American missions, and professors connected with the college form the majority of the European population. A good deal of difference of opinion exists as to the native population of the capital. Some say it is a million and a half, others not more than nine hundred thousand. In the opinion of Professor P————, who has resided for over twenty years in the place, and is well up in Chinese matters, it is considerably over a million, of whom two-thirds inhabit the Tartar city. The remainder are Chinese, who yearly increase, while their Tartar neighbours are diminishing in number.

In shape Pekin may be roughly described as a square within an oblong, the former standing for the Tartar city, the latter for the Chinese. The outer walls, which are about sixty feet high and of immense thickness, stand about a hundred and fifty yards from the city itself, the space between being occupied by barren sandy waste, along which in the season hundreds of caravans may be seen daily wending their way to or from the Mongolian Desert and Manchuria. Inside this, again, are two smaller walls, also, however, of considerable height, enclosing the imperial and forbidden cities, that enclosing the latter being surmounted with bright yellow tiles, the imperial colour, which none but the Emperor or Queen Regent are permitted to make use of. A Roman Catholic church was built not far from the walls of the Imperial Palace two or three years since, and, in ignorance presumably, the European architect was commencing to roof it over with tiles of the sacred colour, when luckily warned of the risk he was running by one of the European residents; not, however, before it had come to the Emperor’s ears, and since then the poor priests connected with the building are given no peace. The two high western towers which flank the building are visited night and day by a mandarin, to see that no steps have been built up them by the foreign devils, whence they may survey the palaces and gardens of the imperial city. Latterly, to make assurance doubly sure, the walls of the latter have been raised to the height of the church towers at the point where the latter face them.

There are nine gates in all in the outer wall, situated in various parts of the city, and called after the points of the compass at which they stand; viz., the North Gate, South Gate, North-west Gate, and so on. These are closed at seven in summer, and six in winter, and woe to the luckless wretch who is locked out, for the guard dare not open under pain of death till sunrise the following morning, be it in the height of summer or the thermometer below zero. The inhabitants cannot complain of due notice not being given. For full half an hour before closing time there is at every guard-house or gate a beating of gongs and clashing of cymbals that would awaken the dead. Then at the hour to a second the guard give one long unearthly yell, and the ponderous iron-bound gates are thrown together with a crash till six or seven the next morning.

All the walls are built facing the four points of the compass, and the principal thoroughfares and streets run parallel to them. Notwithstanding this apparent regularity and simplicity of construction, the Chinese capital is the easiest place in the world to lose yourself in, as we frequently found; so much so, that after the first time we always employed a guide when we took our walks abroad.

Our first impressions of Pekin were not favourable, for a dustier, noisier, dirtier place it has never been my lot to visit. Upon entering the Hat Ta Men Gate the city presents more the appearance of a huge fair than anything else, for the crowded streets are lined with canvas booths and tents as well as houses. The roads are very broad, some so much so as to dwarf the low rickety dwellings, gaudy with gold and crimson signs and waving banners, into insignificance. The streets are unpaved and raised in the centre to a height of three or four feet for carriage traffic, the space on either side being reserved for foot-passengers, though there did not seem to be any marked distinction, the carts using both ways as they liked.

In dry weather the streets of Pekin are over ankle-deep in dust, in wet weather are simply a morass. Being worn away in places into holes of two or three feet deep, the effects of the clouds of dust or showers of water that every cart-wheel throws up and around may be imagined. At intervals of about fifty yards along the footway are holes eight or nine feet deep. These are receptacles for every species of filth; in fact, serve the purpose of stationary sewers (for Pekin is not drained), and are only cleaned out when quite full (about once a week). In very dry weather, when water is scarce, the dust is laid with the liquid filth they contain, an operation hardly tending to cool or purify the atmosphere!

If we, in England, must eat, according to the proverb, a peck of dirt before we die, I feel convinced that the inhabitants of Pekin swallow at least a hundredweight before their last hour. The dust of Pekin is, next to its smells, undoubtedly its greatest curse. There is no escaping from the fine, brown powder that chokes up eyes, nose and mouth, and finds its way into everything——your food, your clothes, your very boots. There is a saying among the Chinese, that it will worm its way into a watch-glass. Not only is it productive of considerable physical discomfort and annoyance, but it gives a depressing, gloomy look to everything, which on a really dusty day makes it impossible to discern objects one hundred yards off. The sun may be shining brightly outside the city walls, when within all is dark and murky as a thick November fog in London could make it. Indeed it is far worse than the latter, which you can, at any rate, shut out to a certain extent with closely drawn curtains and brightly-lit rooms.

Pekin is by no means an unhealthy city, notwithstanding the disgusting and uncleanly habits of its population, and its low situation (only one hundred and twenty feet above sea level). Strange to say, the good health of its inhabitants is attributed in a great measure to the dust, which acts as a deodorizer and disinfectant to the heaps of filth and garbage one encounters at every turn bleaching and rotting in the sunshine. The climate is, on the whole, good, the only really unhealthy months being those of July, August and September, when the rainfall is excessive. The extremes of temperature, however, are somewhat trying to Europeans of weak constitution. For instance, in July the thermometer is often up to over 100° in the shade, while in winter it frequently falls to below zero. When an epidemic does occur, it is severe, for the Chinese are much prone to fright and panic during these visitations. Cholera broke out only four or five years since, and carried off an average of twelve hundred daily. The two greatest scourges are small-pox and diphtheria, and an enormous number of deaths occur annually from the latter disease in early spring. Typhoid fever and ophthalmia (from the dust) are also prevalent at times, but small-pox is the commonest disease among the Chinese themselves, who look upon it very much as we do upon measles, although it is none the less fatal for all that. As a prevention, the native doctors inoculate by blowing a quantity of the virus of the actual disease up the nostrils. I was made unpleasantly aware of this fact by one of the hotel servants, who spoke a few words of English. Noticing that one of his nostrils was stopped up with a dirty piece of cotton wool, I inquired if he had hurt his nose. “Oh, no,” was the reply, “smol-pok!” This habit has, no doubt, a great deal to do with the spread of the disease, which is always more or less prevalent in Pekin; and I was not sorry we had taken the precaution of being vaccinated in Shanghai.

All susceptibility and refinement must be cast aside when walking in the streets of Pekin. I could not attempt to describe one quarter of the disgusting sights and outrages on decency that continually met the eye in this unfragrant city, even in broad daylight. I was not surprised to hear that no European resident ever dreams of walking about the streets of the capital if he can possibly avoid it. No lady could possibly do so. As any one who has ever visited it must know, there exists no dirtier city in the world than Pekin, no filthier individual, both morally and physically, than the Pekinite. Cleanliness and decency are words unknown in his vocabulary. As for washing, he never dreams of it. In winter he puts on five or six layers of clothes, taking them off by degrees as the weather gets warmer, until he is reduced to the white linen shirt and trousers that he wore the preceding summer. With the approach of the cold weather he gradually resumes his winter garb.

Being provided with letters of introduction to the British and Russian ministers, we made our way to the former legation the morning after our arrival. With the exception of Belgium, whose minister had been recalled about two months before we arrived, nearly every nation in the world has its representative at Pekin. The English Embassy is a perfect palace and stands apart from the other legations on the banks of the Grand Imperial Canal, a stream once fringed by handsome stone banks or quays, which, like everything else in Pekin, have long fallen into ruin and decay. The half-dry canal now presents more the appearance of a dirty ditch of stagnant water than what it once was, an important waterway.

It was quite a relief to get out of the dusty, ill-smelling street, as passing a smart, white-clad English sentry, we entered the cool, shady grounds of the Embassy. The building was formerly the palace of the Duke Liang (a relation of the former Emperor), but was ceded to the British after the campaign of 1860. Probably in no other part of the world does the English Government possess a representative building so thoroughly typical of the country it is in. The pavilions of Chinese architecture, intricate carvings of roof and cornice, vermilion and gold pillars that form the entrance contrasted strangely with the interior where the cool, dimly-lit rooms, fresh with the scent of flowers and replete with every European luxury and comfort, bore witness to the good taste and refinement of the charming “Ambassadrice,” who, fresh from Paris, and clad in one of Worth’s chefs-d’œuvre, looked strangely out of place in dirty, dusty, semi-savage Pekin!

“You will never,” said Sir John W————, “get through to Kiakhta without an interpreter. I could not allow you to attempt it, so I fear you must make up your minds to remain in Pekin for at least a week. By that time I shall have got you your Chinese passports, and I hope an interpreter to accompany you as far as the Russian frontier. I must tell you that it is not easy, for the Chinese have an unaccountable aversion to crossing the desert of Gobi.”

Our next visit was to the Russian minister, M. Coumany, to whom we had letters of introduction from M. de Staal, the Russian minister in London. He was (as are most Russians) kindness itself, but met us with the invariable question, “Why Siberia?” The picture M. Coumany drew of the overland journey was certainly not pleasant or encouraging. “Here are letters,” said he, “for the commissioner of Kiakhta and governors of Tomsk and Nijni Novgorod. General Ignatieff of Irkoutsk is now away on leave. But let me ask you to think twice before attempting this voyage. You will experience nothing but annoyance and privation, the whole way to Nijni Novgorod. You will find the monotony and fatigue almost unbearable,——and with Japan so close!” he added, using the well-known formula.

But we managed to convince our host, before leaving, that nothing would deter us from at least making the attempt to reach Moscow by land. “Like all Englishmen,” he said, smiling, “you are obstinate; and as you are determined to go, let me give you a word of advice: Get off as soon as you can, and out of Asia by October at latest. Siberia in autumn is a hell upon earth.”

We returned to our hotel somewhat discouraged, for we had hoped that three or four days at the most would suffice for our preparations. However, there was no help for it, so to lose no time we set about getting mules and litters for the four days’ journey to the Great Wall, the first stage of our voyage, and trusted to Providence that “the Boy” (as every Chinese servant from eighteen to eighty is called in China) would arrive in a week or ten days at the latest.

There is much to do and see in Pekin, but the heat, dust and smells detract considerably from the pleasures of a walk through the city. Moreover, the Chinese, since their Tonquinese victories have become so arrogant and insolent that many of the most interesting temples are now closed to Europeans. Our favourite walk was on the summit of the outer wall, where one could enjoy the cool evening breeze out of the dust and stenches for a while. The Tartar or outer wall is a wonderful piece of masonry about sixty feet high by as many broad, and, considering the hundreds of years it has braved wind and weather, in a wonderful state of repair. It is moss-grown on the summit, and the wild tangled herbage grows knee deep. Were it not for the conservatism, to use no stronger term, of the Chinese Government it would make a splendid drive or ride, for it extends unbroken and in an excellent state of repair for upwards of twenty-two miles. To show the jealousy of this strange race, a European minister at Pekin once remarked to a mandarin what a pleasant drive it would make, adding that it was really the only place in Pekin where he could ever walk with any pleasure. “Oh! you walk there, do you?” was the reply, and the very next afternoon, on arriving for his daily constitutional, he found the gate closed, and an order posted forbidding all Europeans to ascend the wall. This order was, however, cancelled a year after, fortunately for us, and we enjoyed our evening strolls undisturbed, for we seldom saw a soul besides ourselves. It was pleasant enough here in the cool of the evening, out of the dust which on still days hung over the great city like a huge funeral pall. When clear the view was lovely, the rugged, precipitous chain of hills in the background, the densely packed, dwarfish-looking dwellings, and rays of the setting sun flashing brightly on the green porcelain roofs and lofty pagodas of the temples, and bright yellow tiles of the Imperial Palace, composed a picture as unique as, on bright, clear evenings, it was beautiful. As a rule, however, the dust obscured everything.

There is an observatory on this wall which was erected as far back as A.D. 1279. In 1674 a Jesuit priest (one Father Verbest) superintended its restoration, and from that day to this it has remained intact. On a kind of platform above the level of the wall, and reached by an iron staircase, are a quantity of bronze instruments——sextants, globes, quadrants, &c, mounted on massively wrought stands representing strange birds and beasts. Of enormous size, and some from twelve to fourteen feet high and of immense weight, they looked a little distance off as if a single man could lift them, so beautiful and delicate is their moulding and workmanship, and though of great value, were left untouched when the allies entered Pekin in 1860, probably by direction of the commanders-in-chief. It seemed strange that although they have stood in the open for so many hundred years, uncared for and uncleaned, they bore not the slightest traces of decay from time or weather——one especially, a huge globe of the heavens in bronze with the constellations thereon in gold and silver, looked as if it had been placed there but yesterday.

From the summit of the observatory one may look down into the Board of Examinations, a walled space of some eighty acres, with rows of queer-looking little boxes or cells for students. Competitive examinations for Government appointments are held here every three years, and so severe are the subjects that many of the candidates go mad. During the examinations, which last three days, no one is allowed to enter or leave the building. On one occasion two students died, but the doors were not opened. Their bodies were hoisted over the wall, and carried to the burial-ground by the friends awaiting them outside.

We occasionally returned from these expeditions along the pieces of waste land, sandy and sterile, which bound the city walls, and frequently came upon groups or squads of Manchu soldiery at target practice with the bow and arrow. The men are fine strapping fellows and well set up, but their weapons wretched, clumsy things, carrying barely thirty yards. The greater portion of the Chinese army consists of these Manchu Tartars. A force of eighty thousand quartered in Manchuria under the command of Germans, forms the backbone of the Chinese army, and consists of cavalry, artillery, and infantry, the latter armed with the new Berdan rifle. Nearly the whole of the remainder of the Imperial army use the old bow and arrow of their ancestors, and I do not think I exaggerate when I say that there is not a rifle among the soldiery in Pekin.

The Chinese are, indeed, a strange and unaccountable race. It is hard to credit that a nation possessing ironclads and the latest improvements in light and heavy guns at the mouth of the Peiho river still clothes its soldiers at the capital in tiger-skins, and instructs them in the art of making faces to frighten the enemy.[^[1]] Clever and civilized as he is in many things, the Chinaman’s forte clearly does not lie in firearms. A German officer of one of the Imperial gunboats told me that a consignment of three hundred Martini-Henry rifles was one day received on board his ship, with one hundred rounds of ammunition to each. A short time after, returning from a week’s leave, he found that by order of the Chinese commander they had all been thrown overboard. The ammunition was exhausted, argued the latter, what was the use of keeping the rifles!

We made but two excursions into the city itself the whole time we remained in Pekin, and after the first time on foot. I only rode in a Pekin cab once. They are not pretty conveyances to look at, being a sort of box, four feet long by three feet broad, fastened to two long poles or beams, and supported by a pair of clumsy ponderous wooden wheels in iron tires. The roof is of thick dark blue cloth, with two little gauze-covered windows on either side. Most of them are drawn by mules, an animal which is looked upon in Pekin as of far greater value than a horse or pony, and fetches far higher prices. T do not think I have ever seen finer mules, even in Spain, than in North China.

To describe the celestial capital is not difficult. One street is so exactly like another, that when you have seen a bit of the place you have seen the whole of it. The principal street of the Tartar city may be described in very few words. A broad straggling thoroughfare, knee deep in dust, with low, tumble-down houses on either side, hidden at intervals by dirty canvas booths, wherein fortune-tellers, sellers of sweetmeats, keepers of gambling-hells, and jugglers ply their trade. Deep open cesspools at every fifty yards; crowds of dirty, half-naked men and painted women; mandarins and palanquins preceded by gaudily-clad soldiers on horseback and followed by a yelling rabble of men and boys, armed with flags, spears, and sticks, on foot; Tartar ladies in mule litters, hung with bells and bright cloths; dark, savage-looking Mongolians from the desert, leading caravans of camels; Chinamen in grey, green, or heliotrope silk, Chinamen in rags, and Chinamen in nothing at all; water-carriers, soldiers, porters, sellers of fruit and ice, the latter coated with dust, like everything else, and looking singularly uninviting; Chow-chow and sweetmeat sellers; camels, mules, ponies, oxen carts thronging the ruined roadway; a deafening noise of bells, cymbals, shouting and cursing; indecency and filth everywhere, with a dusty, gloomy glare over everything, even on the brightest day, while the air everywhere around is poisoned with the hot, sickly smell peculiar to Pekin. Such was the impression one usually retained of a walk through the capital on a summer’s day. We saw many curious sights, but most were of such a nature that I cannot describe them. A Chinese funeral we passed one day is perhaps worth mention. An enormous procession, nearly a mile long, bore witness to the fact that the deceased was a man of some rank. A number of relations clad in white (Chinese mourning), preceded the catafalque, strewing flowers and burning incense before it. Every hundred yards or so a halt was made, and a huge white sheet spread upon the ground on which the mourners lay flat on their breasts and stomachs, repeatedly beating their heads against the ground. Immediately in front of the coffin was the deceased’s property, his horse, hat, pipe, &c, and sedan. The latter startled one somewhat, for seated in it was a figure which, on closer inspection, we discovered to be a waxen effigy of the dead man himself, clad in the clothes he had worn just before death. The huge oaken coffin was so heavy that it took sixty or seventy men to carry it. At the end of the procession of relatives and friends came the rabble and “followers” of the deceased. The Chinese custom is to set the coffin down on reaching the burial-ground with a light layer of earth over it till the wood begins to rot. It is then covered thickly with earth, but not buried. The dead in China are never put underground.

The quieter and less frequented streets of the city were not so bad; narrow, unpaved byways fringed on either side with high white walls of brick and plaster, enclosing the houses of well-to-do merchants, or the better class of tradesmen; quaint little dwellings, curiously carved and gorgeous with blue, vermilion, and gold façades, having neat flower-gardens in front, and willow-fringed ponds. One occasionally caught a glimpse, through an open porch, of the proprietor, his day’s work over, clad in a light and airy costume consisting of a pair of drawers, lazily watching the gold fish in the clear lily-covered water, or studying his Pekin Gazette, the oldest daily paper, by the way, in existence. Occasionally Madame was visible sharing the joys of her lord and master’s leisure-hours, but not often; for when you visit a Chinaman he seldom presents you to his wife, although the latter is not kept at all secluded or under lock and key. A Chinese woman has as much liberty as an English one, maritally speaking, though, as I have said, one does not often meet them. Most are said to make very good wives; unlike most eastern and other nations, they have not the love of intrigue so inherent as a rule in the female sex. A Chinaman may have, if he will, one hundred concubines, but only one wife, who is the ruler and head of his household.

One is much struck with the good looks of the Pekin women when compared with those of Southern China. Those most frequently met with are Tartars, who do not, as a rule, contract and deform their feet. It is only in the Chinese city that one meets poor creatures rolling about the streets with their arms extended, like ships in distress. In some parts of China a bride’s value is reckoned by the smallness of her foot. The operation of contracting it, which is performed in early youth, is not painful. Four of the toes are bent under the sole of the foot, to which they are firmly pressed, and to which they grow together, the great toe being left in its natural state. The fore part of the foot is then compressed with strong bandages so that it shoots upwards and appears like a large lump at the instep, where it forms as it were part of the leg. The lower part of the foot is sometimes not more than four inches long by one inch broad! This practice is, however, said to be dying out, even among the Chinese.

The ornament of which the Celestial is so proud, his pigtail, was in reality introduced into China by the Tartars, who as Mahometans tried to force the Koran on to the whole of China at the commencement of their Dynasty. To this the Chinese would not submit, but an edict was promulgated by the first Tartar ruler that every subject should shave his head in Mahometan fashion, leaving only the small tuft of hair by which the Faithful are supposed to be drawn up to Heaven when they die. The Chinese, artistic in all they do, converted the ridiculous and shaggy tuft of hair into a thick tail, the careful plaiting of which is now the Chinaman’s greatest delight and pride. It is, moreover, a very suitable head-dress for Pekin. We found brushing the head even twice a day quite useless, for the hair was thick with dust ten minutes after the operation.

The coinage current in Pekin is to a stranger more than confusing, consisting as it does of “cash” and bar silver. With the former, small coins of which about fifty go to a halfpenny, one has little to do. A hole is stamped through the middle for greater convenience, and one frequently sees in Pekin two or three necklaces of these worthless, but weighty, pieces slung round a man’s neck, who is struggling along under the value of perhaps eightpence or ninepence, English money. The silver is in bars, and cut off as wanted. The tael is not a coin, but a weight of silver made up in paper packets of one, three, or four taels. A mint has, I believe, been opened in Pekin since our visit, and a proper coinage will be issued in a few months——no small advantage to future visitors, for the difficulty of obtaining “change” at present is somewhat great.

It is curious how little attention a European attracts when walking in the streets of Pekin. Although there are many probably in that great city who have never seen a white face, they evinced but little curiosity when we visited the gambling-hells, opium-shops, and other dens of a like description, and we passed through them unmolested, if not unobserved. Here and there in the lower quarters of the capital, however, the natives evidently preferred our room to our company. The words “Yang Qweitze” fell with uncomfortable frequency upon the ear, and on one occasion a shower of stones and mud hastened our retreat from a house in the slums which our guide had imprudently allowed us to enter and take stock of. As a general rule, however, the natives were civil and obliging enough, and in the more aristocratic eating and tea-houses we were frequently invited to partake of a cup of tea free gratis by the proprietor.

The “Jeunesse Dorée” of Pekin are gay dogs. Theatres, restaurants, and tea-houses abound, and the more populous quarters of the city are alive with revelry, not to say riot, till four or five o’clock a.m. A good deal more champagne and other alcoholic liquors are consumed than the cup that is popularly supposed to cheer without inebriating. Intoxication is a vice to which the Chinese masher (if I may so call him) is particularly prone, although a very wrong impression exists in Europe as to the disgusting animal food Chinamen are said to be in the habit of eating. Cats, dogs, and even rats are, by many in England, supposed to be devoured promiscuously, but this is not the case. Dogs and rats are eaten, no doubt; in fact I have myself seen the dishes in question, and very good they looked! But it must be remembered that the rats are fed solely on farinaceous food, and carefully brought up by hand. They are in reality far cleaner than our domesticated English pig. The “chow” dog is a race of itself, and the only one ever eaten by the better classes. The lower orders of course have to put up with what they can get. A good dog or rat is as expensive a luxury in Pekin as venison or turtle at home!

Strong drink leads to high play, and gambling in various forms is much in vogue among the gilded youth of Pekin. Cards are the general mode, but a sport at which enormous sums are won and lost is cricket-fighting. The greatest care is lavished on these little animals, and large sums of money paid for them. The trainers are brought up to the profession, and, strange as it may seem, a good cricket in Pekin is almost as valuable to his owner as a useful racehorse in England. The insects are fought in little boxes like miniature rat pits. There is sometimes intense excitement for weeks before an event in which two well-known crickets are to compete. Game-cocks, pigeons, and even quail are also fought, but the most popular sport is undoubtedly cricket-fighting. It is probably also the most ancient of them all.

We strolled into a doctor’s shop one evening in the slums——a dirty, gloomy little den——its grimy walls covered with phials of strange shapes and cruel-looking instruments, while suspended from the ceiling hung a number of dried reptiles and animals which looked weird and uncanny in the dim, uncertain light. In a dark recess, and almost invisible in the gloom, sat the doctor, a large book before him, his wizened old face just visible in the rays of a flickering oil wick at his side. It reminded one of the first act in “Faust,” and one instinctively looked around for Mephistopheles. Though our guide informed us that this was one of the most successful physicians in Pekin, his practice did not seem extensive. I procured with difficulty the following Chinese prescription, though for what ailment it is intended I am ignorant:——

Decoction of centipedes, one frog and three cockroaches, ten grains calomel, three grains morphia, fifteen grains quinine!

Alas! for the poor patient who had to swallow it. Surely the deadliest disease would be preferable to a mixture of cockroach and calomel!

Most of our waste time in Pekin (and we had plenty) was spent in the numerous porcelain shops with which the city abounds. It was curious to walk out of the squalid, filthy streets, knee-deep in dust and reeking with sewage, into the cool, luxurious rooms with their tesselated pavements, fountains, and flowers, and hundreds of pounds’ worth of beautiful wares laid out invitingly before one in cloisonné, jade, and porcelain. We found it hopeless as a rule, to think of getting anything at a reasonable price. Japan itself can produce nothing so beautiful and graceful as true Pekin work, though, like everything else, it is imitated, and there has been, of late years, a quantity of worthless trash in the market. Like most eastern nations, the dealers “see a European coming” and raise their prices accordingly. Unfortunately also, unlike other eastern nations, they steadily refuse to lower them, bargain he never so wisely. It made one’s mouth water to look round the shelves of one of these shops, groaning with thousands of pounds’ worth of treasure in porcelain and jade, and to think of the looting of the Summer Palace in 1860.

I had always imagined the latter to be a building of Chinese architecture, a great rambling place all domes, towers, and pagodas, but found it more like a very perfect imitation, in miniature, of the Tuileries. The morning of our visit one might have been standing on the banks of the Seine and looking on the charred and blackened ruins of Napoleon’s beautiful palace after the fatal September, 1870, had not the red and yellow temples dotted at intervals round the sunlit plains, and Chinese character of the landscape recalled us to a sense of the situation, and reminded us of the distance we were from Fair France! Anything less Chinese than the architecture of the Summer Palace I never saw. It is in pure French style and was designed by Jesuits at a time when they were more popular in China than at present. Standing in the midst of such picturesque scenery, surrounded by such beautiful gardens, park, woodland, and lakes, it seems a sin to have ever destroyed a building which, with its characteristic indolence, the Imperial Government has never attempted to restore. There it stands just as the allies left it in 1860, even to the very names scrawled by Tommy Atkins and the French “Piou-Pious” on its smoke-blackened walls and terraces, and embellished here and there with verses, the work of some French or English canteen poet, containing language more forcible than polite as to the ways and customs of John Chinaman. To say nothing of the enormous value of the objets-d’art and furniture, over 32,000l. in solid ingots of gold were found at the looting of the Palace, and a quantity of valuable china and porcelain cloisonné wantonly destroyed and left on the spot by the troops. The Emperor in those days was a liberal and merry monarch. The Summer Palace was before the war more like a miniature Compiègne than anything else, with its theatricals, hunting-parties, concerts, and revelry of other and less sober kinds, in which the Emperor himself used freely to join; a very different existence to that led by his harassed and melancholy descendant of the present day.

The now reigning sovereign, “Kwang-Su,” is eighteen years of age, and by the time these pages are in print will have taken unto himself a wife, or rather one will have been taken for him by his aunt the Queen Regent who, though her nephew has come to years of discretion, has even now a good deal more to do with the management of affairs than the Emperor. She is an arbitrary, ambitious woman, and, rumour has it, knows considerably more about the death of the late Emperor than she cares to own. “Kwang-Su,” cannot, like the Pope, be said to lead a happy life. As a matter of fact, it is literally not his own. Everything must be done by rule and under supervision of the court officials, even to eating and sleeping. The poor boy gets little of the latter luxury, as frequent cabinet councils are held at four in the morning, the Chinese ministers averring that the head is clearer at that hour of the day than at any other. I hardly think this plan would always succeed in Europe.

One can scarcely wonder that “Kwang-Su” is ill-tempered, morose, and subject to fits of passion, during which he defies his aunt, destroys everything within his reach, and declares he will not be Emperor, but will escape and go and work in the fields, anything rather than be shut up like a dog in the Forbidden City. And truly it must be a wretched existence. Every day is planned out beforehand. Not a detail is omitted, even to the very clothes he wears. It must be more than annoying to be given, say a mutton chop, when one particularly wants a beefsteak, champagne when you know it disagrees with you, and you much prefer claret, or a thin suit of clothes when you feel cold and require a thick one. The Emperor’s studies take up about nine hours of the day. His great joke when we were at Pekin, was to beg his tutors, the constant relays of whom annoyed him to desperation, to let him look at their watches. No sooner were they handed to him, than they were violently dashed on the ground and stamped upon. By this means, Kwang-Su argued, they would not know what time to come another day. Since his Majesty’s new “game,” however, most of the professors sent to Shanghai for Waterbury watches. Gold and silver ones became expensive.

Riding or walking, hunting in the green fields and shady forests, or fishing in the blue willow-fringed lakes of the Forbidden City, although as far removed from the turmoil and foul smells of Pekin as the desert of Gobi itself, the Emperor is never alone. There is always a retinue following him to tell him what to do and when to do it: to remind him, for instance, when at four o’clock he is enjoying his favourite pastime of fishing, and has forgotten for a brief period the caring cares of monarchy, that at 4.15 he must abandon the pursuit for a deer-hunt, or a walk (always accompanied by a suite), in a specified part of the grounds of the city. The latter must be a curious place, for the eye of the white barbarian is never allowed to look within its walls, save when, at very rare intervals, the European ministers are admitted to audience in a particular part of the palace.

It was in 1873 that the Great Audience question was finally settled to the satisfaction of all the European powers, and their representatives presented to the Emperor “Tung Che” in the European manner. It had been argued ever since the mission of Lord Amherst in 1814, and unsuccessfully. On that occasion the envoy returned without seeing the Emperor, the latter insisting that he could only do so on condition that he prostrated himself, but this, as the king of England’s representative, Lord Amherst declined to do, and returned to England.

Even at the present time audiences are extremely rare, and only occur, if at all, on the most important occasions. Even the Duke of Edinburgh, when he visited Pekin in 1869, was refused one. The Chinese ministers themselves are not allowed to approach the imperial presence nearer than a distance of about sixty or seventy yards. The Emperor sits at the end of a long, narrow, funnel-like passage, while his ministers prostrate themselves in a small apartment at the end of it. The Empress Regent is still more unapproachable, for when she holds a reception, it is from behind a large screen. On one occasion she became so excited during an argument, that her head appeared over the top, and the ministers were able to gaze (if for an instant only) on the sacred features. The Emperor is the sole male inmate of the Forbidden City, a gigantic harem, beside which even the seraglios of Stamboul pale into insignificance, for the moon’s cousin is surrounded within his golden tiled walls by a population of no less than three thousand women and eunuchs.

Kwang-Su has very little notion of what his capital is like. When he is taken for a drive, it means weeks of careful preparation, the sums of money devoted to patching up the streets through which he passes are fabulous. Were one half of the millions which are supposed to be expended on the keeping in order of the city honestly laid out, Pekin would be a very different place to what it is. But so long as the filching and robbery carried on by the mandarins and others in office continue, the Chinese capital must always remain the dirty dust-heap it now is. A case in point came under my notice while in Pekin, and is one illustration of the enormous sums that yearly find their way into the pockets of the mandarins. A drain had to be built from the French Embassy to the Imperial canal, a distance of about three hundred yards. For this the Government was charged twenty-three thousand taels, the European contractor being paid three thousand five hundred taels. The mandarins pocketed the balance!

When Kwang Su takes an airing all European residents are warned by their ministers to remain within doors, or at any rate away from that part of the city through which the Emperor is to pass, and the most stringent precautions are taken that no man, European or native, may look upon the features of the sovereign. The doors and windows of the houses are closed, and rich silks and tapestries hung from their walls, the streets are carefully swept and watered, every hole carefully filled up, every scrap of litter or offal carried away far from where, at a stated hour, and punctual to the moment, the royal train rolls slowly along through the empty, deserted streets. The Emperor must, therefore, have very different ideas of Pekin from the ordinary run of mankind. Save for the dust, which is of course unavoidable, it must seem a fair place enough to Kwang-Su. Could he but see it as we did, I doubt if he would ever again wish to leave the palaces and gardens, the deer-parks and lakes of his beautiful prison.

The preliminaries for Kwang-Su’s nuptials were being carried out when we were at Pekin. They are curious enough. The bridegroom is, or ought to be, the chief party concerned in the choosing of a wife; not so the wretched Kwang-Su. The sharer of his joys and sorrows is chosen by the Empress Regent out of some three hundred or four hundred girls (daughters of mandarins and others of high position), sent up to Pekin from all parts of China for the purpose. Nor is the Emperor allowed to see his fiancée’s face even for a moment till the evening of the wedding day. Though the Emperor is allowed but one actual wife, he can make his choice and select as few or many concubines as he pleases, four hundred or five hundred of the latter being sent to the capital on the occasion of an Imperial marriage. The majority of them are women of low birth, though some of the higher officials who wish to curry favour at court also occasionally send their daughters.

It seems scarcely probable that China will become civilized for many, many years to come, as long as the Emperor and his ministers continue to set their faces against improvement of any kind, especially if it be what they regard as an innovation of the “foreign devils.” For instance: a company was formed a few years since to construct a railway from Tientsin to the capital——a line which would have enormously improved and benefited the trade of the latter, but the Government would not hear of its construction. Permission was, however, granted to carry a line from Shanghai to Woosung on the Yantzekiang river in 1877, an enterprise which under European management, succeeded admirably till when one fine day, not a year after its completion, an order came down from Pekin for its immediate removal——and this command the unfortunate share-holders were of course compelled to comply with.

The Emperor’s father was lately induced to make a trip to Tientsin at the invitation of the European merchants living there. It was hoped that seeing something of the outside world might open his eyes to the foolish and lamentable practices of the Imperial Court. Every honour was shown him——a salute fired from the French and English gunboats. Balls, parties, receptions, dinners were given——everything in short, that money could buy was procured to fête him, and it was confidently hoped, so agreeable and pleasant did he make himself, that his week’s visit would send him back to Pekin a wiser man——also that some of this wisdom would be imparted to his son the Emperor. But it was all in vain. All he did on his return to the capital was to set to work and write a number of satirical poems in Chinese, descriptive of his trip, and anything but complimentary to his hosts, the White Barbarians. These poems were published, and had an enormous sale in Pekin.

The long sunny days dragged wearily by. A week, a fortnight elapsed, and still no boy. Our passports for China and Mongolia were in order, mules and litters procured for the journey to the Great Wall——everything in readiness for a start, which, however, Sir John W. would not hear of our making without an interpreter. It was tedious work waiting. We seldom left the hotel after the first week, except to dine at the Embassy, or spend the afternoon in its cool, shady grounds, where one could while away the weary hours with books and papers from the well-stocked library. We did not often dine out, but when we did, preferred ploughing through the dust or mire, on foot, to going in a Pekin cab, a circumstance our neighbours at dinner ought to have been grateful for, for these vehicles are crawling with vermin. It was necessary to take lamps on these occasions, for the less frequented streets of the city are unlit, and to be well armed with thick sticks for protection against the dogs, whose name is legion, and who prowl about the city at night in large numbers in search of food. Although of great size, they are mangy, wretched-looking creatures. In gangs they are dangerous, and frequently attack solitary and unarmed wayfarers; but, like the Turks at Constantinople, the Pekinese do not harm them, for they are capital scavengers, though the din they make at night is very trying to a nervous constitution, and sleep in Pekin for the first two or three nights is an impossibility.

I have said much against Pekin in this chapter, enough, perhaps, to deter the reader from ever wishing to pay it a visit. I must at the same time give it its due, for it is undoubtedly exempt from many of the pests and annoyances of other Eastern cities. There are no mosquitoes to speak of, nor sandflies, nor does that most irritating plague of all, the common fly, torment you day and night as it does in other hot climates. Indeed, it is not, on the whole, such a bad residence for Europeans as many places I could name in India and other parts of the East. The life is, of course, frightfully monotonous during the summer months, when those connected with the Legations who can spare the time betake themselves to the hills, some fifteen miles distant, where some old temples have been fitted up to form rough though comfortable summer retreats for those who are compelled to inhabit the dusty, stench-ridden capital in the hot season.

The European population of Pekin is, as I have said, a very small one, probably not more than sixty or seventy in all. It consists exclusively of the various Legations, Missionary Houses and College. There is but one mercantile establishment: the agency of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.

In winter there are many worse places in the world than this. It is only then, indeed, that the European community ever make any effort to rouse themselves. Sleighing and skating-parties, lawn tennis, by day——and theatricals, dances, and dinner-parties by night, are the order of the day.

Pekin is fairly healthy, even in summer, for Europeans, except for those inclined to be nervous. In such cases the extremely rarified atmosphere often precludes sleep and induces insomnia and other nervous diseases. The sun, too, is more dangerous here than in any place (including Borneo) that I have ever visited in the East. It knocks you over in a second, and deaths from sunstroke, even among the natives, are frequent.

Living in Pekin though dear is excellent, and our host gave us little dinners that would not have disgraced a Paris restaurant. Although not manufactured, that greatest luxury of the East, ice, is cheap and abundant. It is cut (out of the canals) in winter in huge blocks and stored in early spring in large caves just outside the city walls. Fresh fruit is also stored and preserved in the same manner, and I have eaten a bunch of grapes in the month of July that had been stored the previous October as fresh as if they had just been cut from the vine.

We resolved, after a weary fortnight of waiting, to take matters more philosophically. It was useless chafing and worrying, either the boy would come or he wouldn’t. “Tout vient à point à celui qui ‘sait’ attendre,” was a proverb we were always quoting with an assumed calmness we were far from feeling. It was no great hardship waiting with such comfortable quarters, we argued, but the time, that seemed to crawl unless our thoughts turned to Siberia, when it flew with the speed of lightning, was what daily and nightly harassed and worried us. Our host and his pretty wife, however, did all they could to make us comfortable, and thoroughly succeeded. Sitting out after dinner with a cigar in the cool moonlit courtyard, redolent of verbena and mignonette, staring up at the patch of starry heaven overhead, and listening to the distant and soothing tinkle of madame’s piano, things would have seemed pleasant enough had we not known that every day, every hour was of the utmost importance. The Russian minister’s words, too, would keep cropping up, spoiling one’s digestion and upsetting patience and equanimity: “Get off as soon as you can; Siberia in early autumn is a hell upon earth.” Alas! we now began to realize that another month of delay would land us there at this very season.

We spent Jubilee Day at Pekin. A full-dress reception was held at the British Embassy in the afternoon, while at night the gardens were illuminated with hundreds of coloured lamps, the two entrance pavilions turned into reception-rooms, and a ball given to the European community. It was hard to realize that one was really in this hidden corner of the earth. With so many smart gowns and pretty faces around, one might have been in a London or Paris ball-room, and though the number was very limited, the evening was none the less agreeable for that, for Pekin has, or had at the time of our visit, more than its fair share of female beauty when compared with Shanghai or Hong Kong.

The dancing wound up with a display of fireworks (Pekin made) in the grounds, and though of native manufacture the most loyal English subject could not have found fault with the excellent portrait of her Majesty (in fireworks) that drew forth enthusiastic applause from the crowd of natives at the gates and wound up the proceedings. Though day was dawning, dancing was still in full swing when we left the Embassy and took leave of our kind host and charming hostess, without whose kindly aid and hospitality we should indeed have felt lost those long weary days of delay and ennui in the dusty capital.

Though advised not to attempt it, we resolved to ride as much as possible across the Gobi Desert. We had not yet seen a camel cart, but had heard quite enough of its miseries to determine us never to occupy it longer at a time than was absolutely necessary. So having taken the trouble to bring saddles out with us, we resolved to chance the loss of the ponies, and managed to get two strong wiry-looking Mongolian ones, about fourteen hands high, for 8l. English apiece. We tried many before pitching on the right sort. Lancaster’s first attempt at a purchase was not a lucky one. The brute lay on its side the moment he mounted, and resolutely refused to move, much to the delight of the crowd who had assembled to see what the “Yang Qweitze” were about. However, after many and varied experiences he managed to pick up a smart-looking bay pony only four years old. Mine was considerably older, but they were both sturdy, plucky little beasts; looked up to any amount of fatigue——and as we afterwards found by no means belied their appearance.

Our host rushed in one bright sunny morning with a beaming countenance, before we were out of bed. “Courage, messieurs, your boy has arrived,” at the same time handing me a blue envelope containing a note from the Embassy. “Boy will arrive to-day from Tientsin.” This was welcome news indeed, and I turned round for another snooze with a blessed feeling of relief and gratitude. All would now be well. To-morrow morning would see us en route for the Great Wall. We had saved, by the skin of our teeth, detention in Siberia. With any luck November would see us in Moscow.

At 5.30 “the boy” arrived; a tall, forbidding-looking Chinaman, with a sullen, hang-dog expression that inspired but little confidence. I saw in five minutes the kind of gentleman we had to deal with. Sulky, obstinate, and as sly as a fox, with a shifty, restless eye that could not look you in the face for two seconds together.

“Well, so you’ve come at last! What has kept you so long at Tientsin?”

“Jubilee!”

The bare idea of this human scarecrow assisting at a festival of any sort was too funny. But I knew the man lied.

“Will you come with us to Kiakhta?”

“All depend what get. No can go for less than $300. If no take me, master get no one. All afraid go desert. Afraid Mongol man.”

The insolent, swaggering tone of the man annoyed, nearly as much as the exorbitant price he asked surprised, me. I knew it was out of all reason. But the wretch was well aware of our helpless position, and all my hopes of a speedy start for the desert sank below zero. To give the price he named would have been not only absurd but fatal. We should have been mercilessly swindled at every village we came to, if not attacked by robbers, when the news of our liberality and wealth became known, as things do in China in an incredibly short space of time. We had besides this reason, a far better one; we could not afford it.

“It is for you to accept an offer, not for you to make one,” I replied, placing $6 on the table. “Now listen. Here are $6 for your fare back to Tientsin if you do not come to my terms; and you must decide at once. I will give you exactly $120, and not one cash more, to accompany us to Kiakhta and find your own way back. Accept or refuse; and if the latter, make yourself scarce, for I shall not change my mind.”

My sulky friend’s only reply was to carelessly take up the money, pocket it, and without another word calmly leave the room. I watched him slink slowly down the little courtyard and out of the gate, half hoping he would think better of it; but no! He never even once looked behind him, and as I watched his tall, gaunt form vanish slowly in the dusk, I felt that now, indeed, our last hope was gone, and retiring to my room, threw myself on the bed in despair, and wondered what on earth we were going to do next.

To reach Siberia by way of the Gobi Desert was obviously impossible, for, judging by past experience, we could not reasonably expect to find another English-speaking boy, under another month or so. It would then be too late to attempt the journey viâ Mongolia, that is, without risking imprisonment of a couple of months in some lonely Siberian village——hardly a pleasant prospect, judging from all we had heard of that melancholy country.

There was now but one course to pursue——to return to Tientsin, and embark thence on the first vessel for Nicolaiefsk at the mouth of the Amour River, thus altogether avoiding the Mongolian desert, and gaining Irkoutsk by way of Khabarofka, Stratensk, and Chita, instead of Urga and Kiakhta.

It was a great disappointment. We had looked forward to the desert journey far more than to any other part of the voyage. There would have been some novelty and excitement in crossing the wild desolate plains lying between the Great Wall of China and Siberia, but none whatever in the cut-and-dried route from Nicolaiefsk, from which port a comfortable and well-found steamer takes the traveller a distance of about fifteen hundred miles up the Amour river to Stratensk. From here he proceeds by tarantass or sleigh (according to season) to Verchui Udinsk and across Lake Baikal (by steamer if in summer) to Irkoutsk, which city is distant about one thousand odd versts from Stratensk. There is but one main post-road across Siberia from Irkoutsk to Tomsk. But the come down from a journey in a camel caravan across the great Gobi Desert to an ordinary steamer and posting carriage along a dull, uninteresting river and monotonous road with a post-house every twenty versts,[^[2]] was a severe blow to one’s feelings and anticipations.

Dinner that night was a sad meal; even the champagne, which our host insisted upon producing, failed to enliven it. Our party was increased by three Russians from Shanghai, who were on their way to Manchuria for a month’s shooting. One of them had done the Amour journey, and devoutly hoped he might never have to do it again. For monotony and lack of interest that great river was (according to his account) unrivalled. But we had made up our minds, and it must be done. Fortunately enough, a vessel would be leaving Tientsin for Nicolaiefsk in four or five days’ time, which would give us plenty of time to retrace our steps to Tientsin and embark. To bemoan one’s fate under such circumstances is worse than useless, and we retired to rest resigned, if not cheerful. The Gobi was impossible, “Vogue pour ‘l’amour’!”

But the proverb that it is ever “darkest before dawn,” was exemplified next morning when, about ten o’clock, and on the eve of departure for Tientsin, the welcome news was brought us that a boy had been found! and by whom but our good angel, M. Tallien, who, moved to compassion by our woe-begone faces the previous evening, had himself searched Pekin high and low, and run the article to earth within the very walls of the Russian Embassy. No ordinary “boy” was this either, but an excellent cook, speaking English, Russian, and Mongolian fluently, and who, best of all, was willing to go to Kiakhta and find his own way back again for $100 all found. I could have fallen into Tallien’s arms and embraced him. Perhaps, being a Frenchman, he would have taken such a proceeding as a matter of course.

Our new acquisition, Jee Boo by name, a nice, quiet-looking fellow of about 30, had been cook and servant to Prince ————, one of the Russian attachés, for some time. Under ordinary circumstances we should perhaps have asked for his character, but dreading another delay we determined to chance it, take him as he was, and ask no questions. We were armed and he was not, which is always satisfactory in case of a disagreement. He was, at any rate, a very different stamp of man to our Tientsin friend, who, it now appeared, had taken the trouble to find him out and advise him to have nothing to do with us, for if he did he would never get paid. We should be sure to repudiate our debt on arrival at Kiakhta and leave him stranded in a foreign land without friends or money. That was why he had himself refused to entertain our offer, &c., &c.

We soon convinced Jee Boo, however, of the honesty of our intentions by making M. Tallien his banker for the amount of $80, the remaining $20 to be paid him on arrival at Kiakhta, with an additional $20 if he behaved himself. Having thus arranged things to everybody’s satisfaction, we gave Jee Boo leave to absent himself for the day, and (not without misgivings of another disappointment) made preparations for a start at six the following morning.

The same afternoon, while we were busily engaged fixing our heavy baggage to the mule packs, two of the most extraordinary beings I ever beheld rode up to the hotel gate. Both might have been any age from nineteen to ninety, and were dressed in suits of loud tartan check (not unlike that worn by Jack Spraggon in that best of sporting novels “Soapy Sponge”), enormous pith sun-hats with long, flowing puggarees and green spectacles. We put them down at a glance for what they unmistakably were, “globe-trotters,” sent out by their mammas (or mamma, for they were like as two peas), to see the world and improve their mind (if they had any). How they had drifted to Pekin, goodness only knows. It is not a city much affected by the genus. The comforts are not up to their standard.

They had ridden from Tungchow under a burning sun and at full gallop, and their weedy, miserable-looking ponies looked ready to drop. The latter evidently only yearned (like the Irishman’s horse), for a wall to lean up against and think, and looked almost as disconsolate as their riders, which is saying a good deal.

They stood for some time without making a remark. Then, dismounting slowly and cautiously, one of them approached Tallien, who was assisting us with the packs, and in a mild and quavering voice inquired if he was manager of the hotel; and on receiving a reply in the affirmative, if he and his friend could have a bedroom, and whether there were any objects of interest to be seen in the neighbourhood?

“The Great Wall of China, messieurs,” replied Tallien; “but you’ll find it rather a long ride in one day.”

A STREET IN TARTAR CITY——PEKIN.

“Oh, never mind! we must go and see it. Can you get us a guide at once? We have to be in Tientsin again the day after to-morrow, to sail for Japan.”

It was only with the greatest difficulty that they were persuaded to defer their visit to “the Great Wall” till next day.

At dinner that evening, they were great on the subject of their travels; had been, they informed us, to Gibraltar, Malta, Port Said, Cairo, Suez, Aden, Colombo, Singapore, and Shanghai, giving us their impressions and ideas of each port, and the customs of its inhabitants, in a manner which, in more ways than one, was highly entertaining. They were now going to see the “Great Wall of China,” because their mamma had written to say that the Times said there was none, and she was sure there was, because her grandfather (who was a sailor) had told her so, and he had seen it. Then they were going to Japan, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and New York, then to Liverpool and then London; “and I don’t think,” said the elder of the two sadly and wearily, “we shall ever care to go abroad again!”

Judging from the ideas this youth formed of the countries he visited, one could not help thinking he would not lose very much by this determination.

They were up and away next morning long before we were stirring, on the same wretched animals that had brought them from Tungchow, and with a guide of their own finding, a rascally Pekinese, who probably made a good thing out of them. Where the scamp took them remains a mystery. I have since heard, they returned the next day quite proud of their achievement, remarking at dinner that evening, that the “Wall was a fine sight.” The fact that it is a long five-days’ journey from the capital never occurred to them, and they left Pekin quite satisfied, having probably been shown the ramparts of some suburban town or village. I have often wondered since if they wrote to that long-suffering paper the Times.

It was past seven o’clock, and the sun was high in the heavens before we had completed our preparations, saddled the ponies, and packed the luggage and provisions into the litters. Our party consisted of but three mule-litters, and our two ponies. The heavy baggage had preceded us the day before, and we did not expect to come up with it till we reached Kalgan, the last Chinese city on the borders of Mongolia. Two Chinese muleteers accompanied us, also Jee Boo, who bustled about and made himself generally useful in a way that augured well for the future.

A final café au lait and “chasse” with our host, who was almost as keen about the expedition as we were (indeed, where should we have been, had it not been for his timely aid?), and we were ready to start. Early as it was, madame and her sister were at the gate to bid us farewell and wish us a prosperous journey. One could not help thinking, as one looked at their pretty French faces and neatly clad figures, how long it might be ere one would look upon their like again!

A few moments more and we had taken leave of our friends, and were riding down the narrow dusty street for the last time, half sorry (so perverse is man) to leave the place we had been for three long weeks moving heaven and earth to get away from. The feeling of regret did not last long, however, and before we had crossed the stone bridge over the Imperial canal no one would have recognized in us the despairing wretches of two days ago. We left Pekin a quarter of an hour later by the Anting Gate, and for the following three hours skirted closely along the sandy plains that bound the city walls. Here we passed some three or four hundred camels, a caravan inward bound from the desert, going at a pace of about a mile and a half an hour. The Tartars in charge were all asleep, but the camels seemed to know their way; indeed the track here is pretty clearly laid down, being in the direct route to and from Kalgan. An hour later we had entered a fertile plain of millet, corn, and rye, interspersed with huge fields of pasture, and bounded on the horizon by a rugged, precipitous chain of hills, partly covered with forest, from which brightly coloured temples and pagodas stood out here and there in bright relief, glittering in the sunshine. All was life and animation; our very ponies seemed to rise in spirits, and plunged and danced about under the influence of the keen air and bright sunshine, to say nothing of the unusually large feeds of corn they had been given of late.

An hour later we stopped to look back across the emerald green plain to where, on the horizon, a thin brown line, faint and indistinct, broke the bright blue sky-line. We were looking our last on the walls of Pekin: the long land journey across Europe and Asia had commenced in real earnest.

[1]. A fact.

[2]. A verst is about three-quarters of a mile.

CHAPTER III.
PEKIN TO KALGAN.

We had decided, upon leaving Pekin, to spend the greater part of the day in the sedans. The very name of this vehicle has a luxurious sound, and we looked forward to pleasant hours of travel at any rate as far as the Great Wall of China. But man is doomed to disappointment. For fatigue and discomfort, amounting at times to sheer physical pain, commend me to a Chinese mule litter, which is simply a kind of box or covered chair, hung on two long and slender poles. To it are harnessed, before and behind, two mules gaily caparisoned with feathers, highly-coloured trappings and bells. The latter, which keep up a loud and incessant jingle, are supposed to relieve the monotony of the journey. To the Chinese mind, perhaps, they do. The motion, to those not subject to sea-sickness, is not disagreeable, nor would it be tiring, had not the occupant to keep constantly in the same position, as in a canoe or outrigger, for the slightest movement to the right or left overturns the whole concern. Also, should the leading mule fall, a not unfrequent occurrence, the passenger is almost certain to get a nasty fall; should the hind one make a false step, he finds himself helpless, with his feet in the air and at the mercy of the leader’s heels, for the front and sides of the litter are open. With these trifling exceptions, the mule litters have no discomforts, always excepting the vermin that infest them.

We halted about two o’clock in the afternoon, at a wayside inn, on the banks of a clear pebbly stream. In front of the inn, under the shade of some willow-trees, were some twenty or thirty men and women, seated at marble tables, drinking tea and a kind of white compound, in which floated huge lumps of ice, out of pretty transparent porcelain cups. Curiosity prompted me to taste the latter, which I found simply delicious, and not unlike French “orgeat” or barley water. A troop of cavalry passed while we were discussing our frugal meal, a little way apart from the noisy, chattering crowd, who, after the usual inspection of our clothes and arms, left us in peace. On the arrival of the soldiers, tall, swarthy fellows, clad in dark blue uniform, flat round hats, with streaming peacock feathers, and armed with rusty old flintlocks, we prepared to start without delay. We had been warned at Pekin and Shanghai against the Chinese military, had been told that they invariably insulted and sometimes outraged Europeans, when out of the protection of their legations. If so, these were a decided exception to the rule, for not only would they not hear of our proceeding on our journey till we had “chin-chind” with their officer, a cheery, nice-looking lad of eighteen or twenty, but as we left, all shook hands, Chinese fashion (clasping the hands and lifting them up and down in front of the breast), and gave us rendezvous at Kalgan, whither they, as well as we, were bound.

We were away again before four o’clock, by which time the heat had lessened and the fierce heat of the sun somewhat decreased in power. A ride of half an hour in the litters had convinced us that anything, even walking, was preferable to those cranky conveyances; though, thanks to our sturdy little steeds, we were never driven to take to Shank’s mare. One of the pleasantest recollections I have retained of that weary journey is that of the little beast who carried me so pluckily across a third of Asia! I verily believe, had it been a question of stamina and endurance, and not of time, I could have ridden him to Moscow in eight months, or even less. Good as “Karra”[^[3]] was in other ways, he was not what is called a pleasant hack, having, like most Mongolian ponies, but two paces: a walk and a canter, or rather gallop, for the instant he broke into a canter he would take the bit in his teeth and bolt. It was sheer fun, however, for unlike most of his breed, he had not an atom of vice in his composition.

I have seldom seen lovelier scenery than we rode through that day. The dark wooded mountains in the distance standing out in striking contrast to the green plains of maize and barley, the clear sparkling streams, spanned by picturesque bridges glittering with enamel and porcelain. The park-like domain of some mandarin, fringed with belts of dark forest, and relieved by patches of light green sward, on which the deer and cattle were browsing, composed a very different picture to that with which we had always associated these so-called uncivilized regions. The country in North China is densely populated. The whole way from Pekin to Kalgan one was never out of sight of human beings. We must have ridden through at least twenty villages the first day——villages only in name——for each must have contained quite four or five thousand souls, though deserted when we passed through them, for the men and women were out at work in the fields and the narrow streets given up to dogs and naked children rolling about together promiscuously in the dusty roadway. It was only towards sunset that we passed through avenues of happy, contented-looking peasants, sitting at their doorways discussing tea and iced drinks, and dreaming the hours away till bedtime, after the heat and labour of the day. The agricultural labourer in China is better off than his European brother.

The natives evinced but little surprise at our appearance the first day. All seemed good tempered, friendly fellows, but (at the same time) not at all the kind of people to stand any nonsense. They were the finest-built men, physically speaking, I have ever seen, excepting perhaps in parts of European Russia.

Towards the latter part of our first day’s journey, a great portion of the road or pathway was paved with enormous blocks of granite in much the same way as that on the outskirts of Tungchow, and described in a former chapter. Here, however, it was in better repair——and presumably not so old——for the road in parts was as smooth and unbroken as asphalte. Bell, the traveller (1720), narrates that some eight hundred years since, a terrible earthquake occurred here and laid waste the whole of the country lying between Pekin and the Great Wall of China, occasioning great loss of life. It seems curious that no shocks of earthquake have ever been felt since in these latitudes, though they are of frequent occurrence in other parts of the Chinese Empire, as many as seven shocks having occurred at Shanghai alone in 1847.

It was past seven o’clock and nearly dark when we reached “Koo-ash,” our first resting-place, a pretty Alpine-looking village nestling under a chain of hills, about four hundred feet high, bare of trees and vegetation, and composed of huge granite boulders. The heat of the day and fatigue of a ten hours’ ride made the shelter of even a Chinese inn acceptable, though the stench of the place was awful, and the flies positively maddening. (The latter, though of the common household kind, were the largest I have ever seen.) Floor and walls were black with them, and one crushed them as one turned on the stone slab that did duty for a bed. It may be as well to give the reader a brief description of the hostelry in which we took our first night’s rest——for one native inn is precisely like another throughout the Chinese Empire. The inn at “Koo-ash” was, luckily for us, the best that exists on the road to the Great Wall. Had it been as bad as the one we reached the next night at “Kwi La Shaï,” I verily believe we should have turned tail, and returned to Pekin without setting eyes upon that euphoniously named city. Coming, so to speak, into shallow water before we tried deep, saved us from ignominious defeat.

A Chinese inn, then, is usually constructed of dried mud, whitewashed, and built round three sides of an open courtyard, as a rule knee deep in filth and garbage, in which pigs, sheep, cows, and poultry roam about at leisure. An open cesspool usually occupies the centre. The buildings on the right and left are the kitchen, innkeeper’s room, cart-shed, stables, &c., that at the farthest end, and facing you on entry, is that set apart for the guests. It is usually a bare dirty room, about eighteen feet by eighteen, a third of which is separated by a bamboo screen or partition, four or five feet high, for more favoured guests who wish to be separated from the common herd. Sometimes the screen is dispensed with, and the partition made by a chalk mark on the floor! This cheerless apartment is devoid of furniture save for a “K’ang” or stove bed, a broad ledge of brick covered with matting. In winter a fire is lit under the “K’ang,” which is built to accommodate ten to twelve sleepers. The flooring of the room is of uncarpeted brick, and there is no furniture of any kind. At Koo-ash, however, there were two inlaid chairs of the most delicate and beautiful workmanship I have ever seen. They would have fetched 50l. or 60l. in England. Most of these gruesome apartments swarm with rats, a circumstance that annoyed me more than all other discomforts put together, for I have always had a loathing for this animal. But I had not then been to Siberia.

We had our own food, of course. No European stomach could stand the cuisine in these parts. Tea was the only thing drinkable——sweet, washy stuff, as unlike our idea of that beverage as can well be, and drunk out of tiny cups holding about a couple of tablespoonsful. Our greatest difficulty was to obtain permission to use the kitchen in these caravanserai to cook ourselves a tin of soup or preserved meat. It was somewhat disheartening to have to put up with a biscuit smeared over with a spoonful of jam after a hard day’s work in the blazing sun——but this was often the case. There is no race in the world so obstinate as the northern Celestial; and in these parts, unlike in the south, even filthy lucre will not tempt them.

Still we had nothing to complain of on this score at Koo-ash. The proprietor, a big, burly Chinaman, clad in a pair of short white drawers (and nothing else), superintended our culinary arrangements himself, and turned us out a smoking dish of Irish stew in no time, served upon plates that would not have disgraced a dinner-table in the height of the London season. I tried to buy one of them, of transparent, violet porcelain of the most delicate tint imaginable. But mine host would not part with it on any consideration. It was an heirloom. “Drop it on the floor and break it,” whispered Jee Boo. “He will sell it you then, and you can get it mended in England.” I admired the astuteness of the Pekinite, but did not feel justified in risking the experiment. To say nothing of my scruples, we were no longer within reach of English protection!

A couple of glasses of whisky and water revived the inner man, and we clambered into the “K’ang,” where, in spite of the hardness of this novel kind of bed, we were soon in oblivion and back again in our dreams to less desolate regions. I was somewhat startled in the middle of the night by a dark, cold mass being thrust into my face until by the dim light of the moon struggling in through the paper window, I realized what the intruder was——a calf from the cattle-shed next door, who was making a nocturnal expedition in search of food. I lay awake the remainder of that night, for the enemy were upon me, and had evidently been for some hours, judging from the intense irritation and itching of my face and hands. Had it not been for them, however, I should have been equally wakeful; for the cheering spectacle of a couple of large rats disporting themselves on the further corner of the “K’ang” successfully murdered sleep till the morning.

Splendid weather favoured our journey. Though the heat at mid-day was intense, and the fierce sun compelled us to seek shelter in the litters, the mornings and evenings were cool and delicious. We left Koo-ash the following day at five a.m. Our bill for the night was certainly not ruinous eighty cash, or something under 7d., for the whole party.

The road ceases after leaving Koo-ash, and our way the second day lay through a succession of small paths or raised footways running in all directions through rice and cotton-fields. How the muleteers kept on the right track is a mystery to me, for there was apparently nothing to guide them. The paths or boundaries of the fields seemed to have been constructed with a view to leading wayfarers astray, like the maze at Hampton Court. There seemed to be no lack of water, the plains being cut up into squares of various sizes, and the water brought by means of small canals or ditches from the nearest stream or river. The method of pumping is the same as in Egypt: a couple of buckets worked by a swing beam handled by one or two men. A sheet of water some inches deep, is by this means kept over the surface of the rice-fields, which are so numerous in parts as to give the country the appearance of being in a state of inundation.

We reached the city of Nankow at mid-day, but did not halt there, preferring to go straight through and take our mid-day meal (if a piece of chocolate and a biscuit can so be called), in the open country. A large wall runs through Nankow, often regarded by tourists as the Great Wall of China. Many Europeans are brought here from Pekin, and return thoroughly satisfied in their own minds, that they have seen the Great Wall, when, in fact, they have done nothing of the kind. The wall at Nankow is simply an offshoot of the real thing, and runs at right angles to it; moreover, the former is not so high, and its stones are cemented, which those of the Great Wall are not. I trust I am not a kill-joy to those who, reading these pages, have seen the Nankow wall, but as a matter of fact, the two are as different, both in construction and appearance, as black to white.

We were forced to take refuge in our litters traversing the city (which is one of some fifty thousand inhabitants), for the unwonted sight of Europeans in their midst, appeared to give the Nankowites great umbrage for some reason or other. Indeed, this was the sole instance of our being treated with anything but courtesy and good temper. The streets were so crowded as to make our progress extremely difficult, for it was market-day, and half the roadway was taken up with canvas booths and stalls for the sale of silks, tea, crockery, and hardware, or fish, vegetables, and fruit, while every fifty yards or so, the fumes from “Kabob” stalls poisoned the air with a sickly, greasy odour. We were not sorry to get within sight of the outer gate. Near here was an open-air theatre in full swing, adding its quota of drums, clashing cymbals, and squeaky reed-pipes, to the general din. Some two or three hundred struggling men and women occupied the partition in front of the stage, meant to hold about half the number. No attempt had been made to shelter the audience from the blazing sun, and the smell that arose from this human cattle-pen, beggars description. Some six or seven performers in grotesque garments and hideous masks, were twisting their bodies about, singing through their noses, and endeavouring by their united efforts to drown the instruments at the back of the stage, in which they were only partly successful. The play, Jee Boo informed us, had been going on for a week, and was only half over. We stopped for a few minutes to watch the performance, the audience being too much engrossed with it to pay any attention to us. Most of the action seemed to consist exclusively of fighting and love-making. The scenes dealing with the latter, were certainly more realistic than refined. There was no scenery, and apparently no dressing-rooms. One of the performers, after being slain by his adversary, got up again in a few seconds, and retiring to the back of the stage, changed all his clothes in full view of the audience, an operation that necessitated his appearing in a state of complete nudity, after which he calmly returned to the front to represent another part. There is apparently no Chinese Lord Chamberlain.

It took us nearly two hours to get clear of the city. Shortly afterwards, we entered the Nankow Pass, one of the most beautiful bits of scenery we passed through. The going was terribly rough, so much so that we had to dismount and lead the ponies, while the mule-litters plunged and rolled about among the boulders like ships in a storm. The road is simply formed by a kind of water-bed, about 150 yards across, which is in summer rendered almost impassable by the huge rocks and boulders that bar the way at every step. In winter it becomes a raging torrent, sweeping all before it, and after heavy rains does considerable damage to life and property. The pass (which is a gradual ascent the whole way, and about thirteen miles long) compares very favourably with some of the grandest scenery in Switzerland or the Tyrol. Rugged, precipitous rocks overhang the defile on either side, great crags of granite that look as if a touch would send them crashing into the valley a hundred feet below. Although not a leaf or tree is visible, the different shades of colour taken by the rocks are even more beautiful than any vegetation could make them. As we neared the end of the pass, little bits of verdure became visible: oases of rich grass and cultivated flower-gardens banked round with bamboos, looking almost as if they were hanging perpendicularly on the steep grey walls; while tiny streamlets seemed to spring up from under our very feet to lose themselves a few yards lower down among the crevices formed by the huge rocks and boulders. After two hours’ hard work, we emerged on a vast plain again, a plain of waving corn and barley, relieved here and there by brown villages and gaily coloured temples, while a glance behind showed us the city of Nankow spread out like a map at our feet, the rice and cotton plains we had passed through, and the distant village of “Koo-ash,” its temples and pagodas sparkling like diamonds on the far horizon.

A strange apparition appeared as we ate our solitary meal by the roadway. A tall gaunt European, bestriding an attenuated-looking mule, an individual who by his dress might have been anybody. A rough grey coat with yellow facings, a red handkerchief tied round the head, a pair of short thin cotton drawers reaching to the knee, and bare legs and feet, is hardly the costume with which we are wont to associate a courier of the Czar! but such the stranger proved to be. He eyed our whisky bottle wistfully as he passed us, and reined up the melancholy mule with a jerk. “Kouda?” (“whither?”) he asked. “Moscow,” we replied, at the same time filling him a bumper of Glenlivat, a proceeding that seemed to interest him much more than our probable destination. “Franzouski?” (French). “Niete: Anglis-ki.” “Ah,” he replied, with a shrug of the shoulders, and, tossing off the tumbler of raw whisky without a wink, rode off again, with the remark, “Ya Pekin” (I am for Pekin), but not a word of thanks. This was our first experience of the Russian Cossack, and I was afterwards glad to find this rude boor an exception even to the lowest orders of that cheery, hospitable race,——better fellows than whom it would, as a rule, be hard to meet.

The country towards evening became flatter; the rice and cotton having given way to a bare sandy plain, stretching away on either side as far as the eye could reach without a break. The glare of the sun became very painful after the first hour or two, and we suffered a good deal that day from our eyes, a complaint that seems very prevalent among the inhabitants of the villages in this sterile region. The people, too, seemed very different in appearance and manner to those we had left in the plains below Nankow. Instead of the cheery “good-day” and smile with which many of the latter had greeted us, we were now looked upon only with a sullen stare: a kind of ocular “What do you want here?” This was all, however, for after Nankow we experienced no incivility whatsoever up to the Great Wall.

This was perhaps the hardest day’s work we experienced throughout the whole voyage. Leaving Koo-ash at 5 a.m., we travelled incessantly, save for a halt of twenty minutes at mid-day, till eight at night. Over fourteen hours’ hard work on a stick of chocolate and a glass of whisky and water is not calculated to raise one’s spirits under ordinary circumstances; but had we known what was before us we should have been even more depressed than we were, when, towards seven o’clock the towers and battlements of Kwi-La-Shaï appeared on the horizon, and we knew that our day’s journey was nearly over.

The sun was setting as, crossing the river that flows past the walls of Kwi-La-Shaï, we drew up at the eastern gate of the city and awaited the permission of the guard to enter. But for fatigue and stiffness, I would willingly have remained outside the walls till the sun had disappeared. I have seldom seen a lovelier picture. It was like a scene from fairyland. The broad, swift stream at our feet had caught the reflection of the western sky, which, one glow of rose colour, brought out the frowning walls and battlements of the city black and distinct as a pen-and-ink drawing. The whole vault of heaven was one flush of ever-changing hue, varying almost imperceptibly from the faintest shades of pink and gold in the west to where in the east stars were already glimmering in the steel-blue horizon. The black, frowning walls, the desolate landscape around us, the confused and indistinct murmur of the huge population of which one could see nothing, made one almost wonder whether one was not dreaming and would not presently awake in a comfortable bed resolving never again to commit the imprudence of a late supper. It was not without a weird feeling that we rode into the city and heard the heavy iron gates close with a crash behind us. One felt so utterly at the mercy of the inhabitants of these remote cities, who, as they have so often shown, are angels one minute and devils the next.

The streets were, as usual, crowded, for the night was hot, and the population had apparently turned out en masse to take the air, and what air! Like many other beautiful things in this world, Kwi-La-Shaï is best seen at a distance, for we found it on closer acquaintance worse even than Pekin in point of stenches and filth. It is called in China a “village,” which means that it is rather larger both as regards size and population than Birmingham. Though the streets were unlit, we managed to get to the inn by the aid of a guide, and once there, found no lack of light——indeed the courtyard was one blaze of Chinese lanterns——nor of society either, for there must have been at least fifty men crowded into the small guest-room, to say nothing of camels, oxen, ponies, and carts, that crowded the muddy courtyard.

We rode into the yard and waited while Jee Boo went to interview the proprietor of this den, which for squalor and filth I have never seen equalled in the worst slums of London or Paris. We soon saw by the light of the lanterns that our fellow-lodgers were not Chinamen. Their quaint barbaric dress, to say nothing of swarthy flat faces and beady black eyes, at once proclaimed them Mongols. Twenty or thirty of them were round us, in less than five minutes after our arrival, squatting on their hams in the mud and passing their opinions on our appearance. Many of them, Jee Boo said, had never seen a European before. They annoyed us not a little, too, by continually feeling our clothes, boots, and even faces, with their hot grimy hands, a proceeding that, tired and hungry as we were, with no prospect of rest or food, did not tend to improve the temper. A pair of velvet cord breeches that Lancaster wore came in for the greater share of their attention, which I was (selfishly, I own) not sorry for.

Two half-naked men, who had been attending to a couple of large cauldrons in a kind of outhouse, now summoned our inquisitive friends, much to our relief. We saw them enter the shed, where each man having produced a wooden platter they set to and left us in peace, at any rate, for a time.

Jee Boo returned soon after.

“Big caravan from Mongolia. No can have room,” was his first remark. “Money no good,” he added, on my suggesting a few dollars as bribery; anything for a fairly clean place to lay our weary bones. What was to be done? We could not sleep in the courtyard, that was very certain, when a bright thought suddenly struck me——the litters.

Alas! they, too, were gone, and the muleteers with them, in quest of lodgings elsewhere. They had fortunately omitted to take our box of provisions with them. Jee Boo had meanwhile disappeared, but soon after returned with the information that on payment of $8 we could have the room of the chief of the caravan. “A very good place,” urged our interpreter, who, was evidently standing in with the Mongol. However, we should have been only too glad to pay double the price for a dog-kennel that night. Anything to lie down upon, and get away from the attentions of the Mongols, who had by this time finished their meal, and were again issuing from the kitchen, lighting their pipes, and preparing for another examination of the “White Devils.”

It was only after a good deal of demur that the good gentleman I have mentioned turned out of his lair——a place about nine feet square, with a raised wooden platform upon which he had been reclining, and upon which he was thoughtful enough to leave us several souvenirs which I need not mention. To say the place was dirty conveys but a very poor impression of the filth that lay thickly on the walls, and the nameless abominations that strewed the sleeping-place——half a dozen rough boards about a foot from the floor. There were luckily two large holes in the rafters which would give us, at any rate, some ventilation, for the glazed paper window was not made to open. Cooking was, of course, out of the question, but we managed to boil some water in the spirit-lamp, and get a basin of Liebig. Our Valentine meat-juice had, unluckily, gone on with the other stores. It would have been priceless that night, and never again will I embark on a journey of this kind without it.

We had reckoned without our host when we thought that bolting and barring the door would ensure us privacy. First a finger, then a thumb, then a whole hand was pushed through the paper window, notwithstanding all our protestations. We did not like to use threats, or show firearms, for an Englishman more or less would have been of little moment to the good people of Kwi-La-Shaï. So we had to sit and suffer in silence, until one of our tormentors, more pushing than the rest, who had climbed upon the roof to obtain a bird’s-eye view, came crashing through the rickety rafters on to our heads. We certainly did bundle him out with scant ceremony, and banging the door after him, blew out the light and composed, or tried to compose ourselves, to slumber.

But no sooner was the light out than we were attacked by vermin in myriads. A quarter of an hour of it nearly drove us mad, and we resolved to strike a light, rising only to find that we had no matches, and that all in the yard was now dark and silent as the grave. So, resigned to our fates, we lay still, and, like the shipwrecked mariner, prayed for dawn! Tired and worn out as we were, five minutes’ sleep was out of the question. We had good cause to remember Kwi-La-Shaï; indeed, it was a good three weeks before we were entirely free from the animal nocturnal visitors of that unsavoury city.

The caravan had already started on its way to Pekin when we set off at six the next morning. Our mule-driver and Jee Boo had evidently made a night of it on the proceeds of their bargain, for the former only arrived on the scene five minutes before the hour fixed for departure, and our interpreter turned up hopelessly fuddled just as we were getting the mules in and ponies saddled. We were amply avenged, though, for the day was the hottest we had yet experienced, and Jee Boo suffered the tortures of mal de mer in a litter the greater part of it!

The road now lay through deep sand, in which, however, the caravan track was distinctly discernible. A boisterous and hot wind made it very unpleasant travelling, and we were not sorry to reach the village of Tchuan-Ha-Ho at midday, where we insisted on a halt of five hours at least, for the purpose of indulging in a “square meal,” as Americans say, and a rest, of which we were much in need. Just before reaching the town, we passed a string of over two hundred camels laden with Siberian furs for Pekin. Also a drove of some three hundred or four hundred Mongolian ponies. Some of the latter, though small, were remarkably well-shaped and good-looking.

Tchuan-Ha-Ho is the only place I retain a pleasing recollection of, lying between Pekin and the Great Wall of China. The inn was fairly clean, and the proprietor not only suggested, but cooked us a dish of excellent poached eggs. Rarely have I enjoyed a meal as I did that. One must have fasted for nearly thirty-six hours as we had, to really appreciate food. It is worth all the tonics in the world. We felt much tempted to stay here the night, but our mule-drivers were inexorable. They had contracted to get us to Kalgan by a certain date, and at Kalgan, on that date, dead or alive, we must be!

The sandy desert ceased after leaving Tchuan-Ha-Ho, and we again entered a fertile country, set apart apparently for the exclusive cultivation of the poppy. White, red, and blue——poppies were everywhere——the plain presenting a succession of waves of colour as far as the eye could reach. Beyond this lay Ching-Ming-Ying, lying under a perpendicular rock about 800 feet high. This village, which contains seven thousand inhabitants, is strongly walled and fortified. The rock or mountain is on three sides sheer precipice. Notwithstanding this, there are some twenty or thirty houses on the extreme summit, built so near the edge that their sides actually form part of the precipice. Seventy or eighty human beings live on this eminence, though the path up is dangerous to any but experienced mountaineers, and the area of the summit but three hundred yards square. This was undoubtedly one of the most interesting and curious sights of the whole voyage, for there are men and women over forty years of age living upon this mountain that have never descended to the plains below. Supplies and stores are taken up by men kept specially for the purpose.

A MULE LITTER.

Coal is worked out of the base of the Ching-Ming Ying mountain by the Chinese Government, to whom the mines belong. It seemed to be put out in a very desultory sort of way. Some thirty men only were engaged in the mines, though with their usual contradictory spirit the Government had provided the manager or overseer with a palatial residence at the foot of the mountain, embowered in bright flower-gardens and willow-trees.

The weather, which had up till now been bright and clear, now grew overcast, and, shortly after leaving Ching-Ming-Ying the rain came down in torrents, rendering travelling very unpleasant, not to say dangerous. Our way now lay along a road hewn out of the solid rock, by the banks of a foaming torrent some hundred yards broad, which we followed the course of till we reached our destination for the night——Tsiang-Shui-Poo. Here we rode along now a foot or so above the water’s edge, anon at least fifty feet above the water, in places where a false step or slip would have sent one flying into the torrent below, for there was no guard-rail, and the path, broken and rugged, was at times scarcely three feet wide. I thought discretion the better part of valour after a time, and led Karra till we got on to terra firma again in the shape of a broad stretch of sand, which brought us to the village of Tsiang-Shui-Poo, wet through, and without any means of changing, but at the same time relieved that the next day with any luck would see us at Kalgan.

The village of Tsiang-Shui-Poo was really a village, for it boasted of some hundred inhabitants and thirty or forty houses. The inn (an open shed in which cattle and men slept promiscuously) was at any rate clean, and we managed to get a good sleep on a wisp of straw free from the stench of sewage that had annoyed us so much everywhere else. Some of the inhabitants came to look at us as we discussed the evening meal. The men were cheery, good-looking fellows, and the women far prettier than any I had yet seen, for their faces were devoid of paint——and they had almost European complexions. Tsiang-Shui-Poo was to us an Elysium——a haven of rest——which reminded one for all the world of the lovely Kentish village of Farningham, which is no doubt known to many of my readers. There was the trout stream at the bottom of the garden, the clover meadows with their fresh, sweet scent, the corn ripening for the sickle on the hill behind the inn——although, to be sure, two stunted willows had to do duty for the famous chestnut-tree in front of that cosy old inn, the “Red Lion;” and, I fancy, even the genial host of that celebrated hostelry would have lost his temper at the fare set before him by Boniface of the “Cattle-Shed Hotel” at Tsiang-Shui-Poo!

By next morning the rain had entirely disappeared, and with a blue sky and cool breeze we left Tsiang-Shui-Poo, invigorated in mind and body by a good long sleep. I cannot pronounce, much less write, the name of the village we halted at at mid-day. It was evident we were nearing Kalgan, for we passed at least a dozen large caravans during the morning, to say nothing of carts, litters, and stray horsemen. The poppy-fields were now superseded by rice-plains, irrigated as before by “shaloofs,” and interspersed with enclosures of corn and maize.

We lunched in a fairly clean room of the inn at the town with the unpronounceable name. Many Russians appeared to have visited it, for their names (in Russian characters) were scrawled all over the place. In one corner, in small capitals, we read:——“Bordeaux à Pekin par terre. Sep. 4th, 1870.” Shortly before five o’clock a low chain of hills appeared on the horizon. Had it not been specially pointed out to me, I should never have noticed the thin serpentine thread winding its course along their summit——an irregular white line lost to sight at times, in places where it was broken into by forest or undergrowth: a very different edifice from one’s preconceived ideas of the Great Wall of China.

We entered Kalgan at half past six o’clock. It will give the reader some idea of the size of the place when I say that it took us nearly two hours to ride from the southern gate to the suburb of Yambooshan, where the Russian tea-merchants lived, to whom we were provided with a letter of introduction. The population of Kalgan is estimated at over one hundred and fifty thousand.

Our mule-drivers suggested an immediate adjournment to the inn, for the Russians, they said, lived outside the gates of Kalgan, at Yambooshan. The gate was shut at seven, after which hour, no one, European or otherwise, was permitted to enter or leave the city; but we stuck to our determination of seeing M. Batouyeff before nightfall. Riding out of the southern gate, we emerged on to a dry river-bed, on either banks of which stood several substantial and well-built houses of Chinese architecture. At the head of the valley stood apart from the others a single dwelling à l’Européenne——a pretty two-storied house with verandah and gaily coloured Venetians, standing in a spacious garden, down the centre path of which, as soon as we came in sight, two white-clad Europeans hurried to meet us.

One of these proved to be M. Ivanoff——partner of M. Batouyeff, who was, he explained, at that time away at Chefoo for a couple of months, enjoying the sea breezes after a residence of five years here without a break. Luckily for us M. Ivanoff spoke English fluently, having spent several years at Tientsin. He laughed outright when we asked him to direct us to the inn. “Ah, gentlemen, I hope you have not such a poor opinion of Russian hospitality as that,” said our friend, as he led the way up the neat gravel walk, lined with rose and geranium beds, to the house——where we found two large airy bedrooms, a sitting-room, and, best of all, a large bath-room placed at our disposal. “I do not live here myself, but my clerk will do anything for you. You have but to call ‘Michailof.’ He lives next door. Dinner will be served at eight o’clock. Gentlemen, I wish you good evening, and will do myself the pleasure of calling upon you again to-morrow.”

Here was luxury indeed. The sight of the bed was almost too much for me. I felt inclined to forego dinner altogether, jump in, and revel in its clean, soft sheets and white dainty curtains! A delicious warm bath, a change of clothes, and we found ourselves seated at an open window, looking down upon the moon-bathed valley of Yambooshan, enjoying an excellent dinner à la russe, washed down by a still more excellent bottle of Chateau Lafitte. “Here’s to the Russians,” said Lancaster, as we tossed off for the first time a glass of that insidious though delicious liqueur “Vodka.” “How the English do misunderstand them,” I echoed: a sentiment I had occasion to repeat more than once during our weary pilgrimage through the Asiatic realms of the White Czar.

[3]. Mongol for black.

CHAPTER IV.
KALGAN, OR CHANG-CHIA-KOW.

We had intended making a stay of four or five days, at the most, at Kalgan. This, we thought, would give us ample time to get carts, camels, and men for the crossing of the Great Gobi Desert; for, we had been led to believe, when at Tientsin, that there would not be the slightest necessity for remaining more than a day or so at the frontier city, unless we particularly wished to do so. But, alas! as at Pekin, fresh difficulties cropped up hourly; and when we broached to M. Ivanoff our intention of leaving for Ourga in three or four days’ time, he simply laughed in our faces.

“You must recollect you are not in Europe,” said the hospitable Russian, “and also that Mongols are worse even than Chinamen in the matter of delay. Moreover, I shall have to get your carts built, a question of ten days at the very least. The camels, too, are all out on the plains. No, gentlemen; I fear you must make up your minds to at least a fortnight’s imprisonment in Kalgan!”

There was nothing for it under the circumstances but to smile and look pleasant, thanking Providence, meanwhile, for giving us such comfortable quarters, and not cooping us up in a Chinese inn. Considering everything, we had by no means a bad time of it with the Russian tea-merchants at Kalgan.

They certainly had a very fair idea of making themselves comfortable. The house of our host was especially so, and by no means the kind of dwelling one would expect to find in this out-of-the-way corner of the earth. We had pictured to ourselves a rough wooden shanty——we found a well-built stone house with cool, lofty bedrooms, a pretty drawing-room, with grand piano and bright chintzes, singing-birds, and flowers; and French windows opening on to the creeper-covered verandah, whence one looked on to the beautiful valley of Kalgan. At one’s feet a shady garden wherein roses, Eucharis lilies, jasmine, mignonette, and other flowers grew in wild profusion, though untended and uncared for; while in the far distance the Great Wall of China, now towering on a summit, now lost in a valley, wound like a huge serpent, its course of two thousand miles. Nor were the more substantial things of life uncared for, for our host had an excellent cook, and in this land of milk and honey there was no lack of material for his culinary efforts. The Kalgan mutton is excellent, and potatoes, cauliflowers, cabbages, peas, lettuce, even asparagus, thrive there, all imported from Russia, to say nothing of Chinese vegetables with unpronounceable names, and still more curious taste. Our host’s cook was an artist; his claret undeniable; his cigars good. We had certainly tumbled upon our legs at Kalgan.

The city of Chang-Chia-Kow, or Kalgan, is built on the banks of a broad, swift-flowing river. Running at right angles to this, between two precipitous mountains, is the narrower gorge of Yambooshan, the houses thereof standing outside the gates of the city, and built close into the side of the hills, portions of which in some cases had been blasted away to admit them. There is a reason for this. The dry, shingly road, which in summer serves as highway to thousands of caravans, becomes in winter a roaring torrent, which sweeps down the valley with terrific force to join the larger stream, at times occasioning great loss of life. At the time of our visit, the river-bed was absolutely dry, though the preceding winter had been a severe one, and much damage had been done in the spring.

We spent a good deal of our time watching the caravans as they jingled and rattled along the stony river-bed to or from Pekin. Many were laden with wood cut into logs and brought from the mountains near Ourga, across the desert, for wood is scarce in Northern China, and I do not think we passed more than a dozen trees in all the whole way from the capital to the Great Wall. Between Yambooshan and the city of Kalgan is the “Gap,” where the road narrows to a width of about nine feet. It is from this the city takes its name, the word “Kalga” signifying in the Mongolian tongue a gap or gate. It has been estimated that three hundred and fifty thousand chests of tea pass through here annually, for every caravan is bound to pass Kalgan on its way east or west. There is no other road. Thus about forty million chests of tea pass through annually to Mongolia and Siberia, and Ivanoff (who has much experience in these matters) was of opinion that when the projected line from Irkoutsk to Tomsk is completed, there will be a further increase of a hundred and fifty thousand chests, making in all the enormous total of five hundred thousand chests annually. No railway can ever be made across Gobi. The means of transit must always remain what it has ever been, i.e. by the “Ship of the Desert.”

The best tea never leaves China, and nearly all the next best in quality goes to Russia. Few people in England know what good tea really is. An immense trade in Asiatic Russia is done in what is known as brick tea, an article I shall describe later on, and which is drunk chiefly by the Mongols and lower classes in Siberia. This is pressed into oblong cakes, about two pounds in weight, and is made of tea dust, stalks, and refuse, mixed with bullocks’ blood, to give it a flavour. I never tasted a viler concoction in my life.

“You English boil your tea,” Ivanoff would say, when on his favourite topic. “How can you expect to get it good;” and there is no doubt much in this. I got into a habit in Siberia and Russia of drinking tea at all hours of the day and night, and learnt to make it à la Russe——two teaspoonfuls to each cup; then pour boiling water into the pot, so as just to cover the leaves, and at once pour it out again, afterwards adding the requisite amount of liquid. Let it stand for two or three minutes at most, and drink. The Russians never drink their tea twice over, as we do, but change the leaves and the pot every fresh brew. This makes a good deal more difference than some may think. I have heard English people deny that overland tea is any better than that sent by sea, but I do not think there can be any real doubt about it. As a matter of fact, genuine overland tea very rarely finds its way to England.

The city of Kalgan proper, reminds one more of an Egyptian or Arab town than a Chinese one. The dwellings are of baked mud, unwhitewashed, and flat roofed. Some are ornamented with arabesques, and gaily-striped awnings, many of their façades being half hidden with clustering vines. The “Yamen,” or court-house, is the only building of pure Chinese architecture in the whole place, and one felt, when taking a stroll through its busy streets and covered bazaars, as if one had been suddenly transplanted from the heart of the Chinese Empire to some town in Central Asia. There is more colour, too, than in most Chinese towns, the eternal dark blue or white dress of the natives being relieved by the gaudy dresses and barbaric trappings of the Mongolian Tartar. The very smell of the place, too, was different to those we had passed through, the half fishy, half spicy odour with which every traveller in Northern China is familiar, being superseded by the sickly smell of argol-smoke, old rags, and general filth that clings to the Mongol wherever he goes. They were not reassuring to look at, these Mongols. It was not altogether pleasant to think that a fortnight more would see us consigned to the tender mercies of this wild, nomad race, two solitary Europeans, alone and unprotected in the great desert of Gobi. At first sight the Mongol Tartar decidedly inspired us with respect, not to say mistrust.

There are few noisier and busier places than Kalgan. The row in the middle of the day was deafening, and the clouds of black dust, raised by the perpetual traffic, unbearable. It was amusing sometimes to walk in the busiest part of the day, to the market-place, in the middle of the city, where the great horse, or rather pony mart is situated. There must have been some three or four hundred ponies the morning we were there, being trotted and galloped up and down for sale——for export to Pekin and other parts of China. It was exciting, not to say dangerous, work, apparently, for the wild desert horsemen tore hither and thither, utterly regardless of where they went, or whom they knocked down or collided with. I saw half a dozen falls in less than half an hour; but the riders did not seem to mind, nor did it occasion any chaff or merriment among the crowd of bystanders, as would have been the case in England. The riders merely got up, and with a shake of the shoulders waited till the yelling, chattering crowd had caught and restored the runaway! Though the ground was rough and flint-strewn, no one seemed to mind a fall. Round the square were a number of tea-houses and sheds for the sale of “Airak” (native brandy), where the wily Pekin Chinaman might be seen hobnobbing with the swarthy Tartar over a “deal.” I fancy the latter usually got the worst of the bargain. The ponies were beautifully shaped, wiry little animals, about thirteen to fourteen hands. I saw one, a chestnut, sold for eight dollars, which would have fetched thirty or forty guineas in England. At mid-day it became almost impossible to make one’s way through the crowds of people that thronged the narrow streets, and crowded the canvas booths for the sale of iced drinks, tea, tobacco, and other refreshments erected along the foot-paths. At such moments, on a fine day, the bright sunshine, gaudy dresses of the Mongols, white and blue of the Chinese, thronging the streets of the huge walled city, with its amphitheatre of rugged, precipitous hills, made a picture as unique as it was interesting. The whole place looked like a gigantic fair. Street tumblers, jugglers, and fortune-tellers plied a brisk trade in the middle of the roadway, heedless of yelling, wild-looking Mongols galloping madly about on ponies, while the shopkeepers at the top of their voices cried out from their doors the excellence of their wares, each trying to outyell his neighbour. Add to this the clashing of cymbals and beating of gongs from a theatre hard by, and you have a faint idea of a street in Kalgan at midday.

Here, as in Pekin, the dust acts as a disinfectant, and Kalgan is by no means an unhealthy place, though the heat in summer is as severe as in winter the cold is intense. I know no place so inspiriting on a fine day, so depressing on a dull one, as Kalgan. In the former case all was animation, life, and colour. The sky of Mediterranean blue, and the verdant, smiling hills and gaily-coloured verandahs and dresses of the natives, coupled with the keen, inspiriting air, enlivened the spirits like a glass of champagne; but on a dull or rainy day everything around looked dark and depressing. A kind of fog hung over everything, over the mountain tops wreathed in dank, white mist, the grey, lowering sky, and brown, mud-coloured dwellings, while the white wooden crosses in the Russian cemetery, just to the right of our house, stood out with uncomfortable prominence. It was on days like this that one realized how far one was from England, how many thousand leagues of unknown country lay between us and home.

Dull days were in the minority, however, and our time passed pleasantly enough, if somewhat uneventfully, at Kalgan. There were but eleven European residents in all, five of them belonging to the two Russian tea firms, the remainder to an American Mission established here ten years ago. “We are like the rival editors in Peek-Veek,” said Ivanoff one day, alluding to himself and his confrère in the tea-trade. “We do not speak; and have not for some years.” I was not a little surprised to find our host so well up in English literature, till I heard that Dickens, as well as many other standard authors, has been largely translated into Russian, and has an enormous sale at Irkoutsk (our friend’s native place), and other parts of Siberia.

We called on the mission one day, whose headquarters are in a substantially stone-built house standing in beautiful gardens on the outskirts of the city. One might almost have imagined oneself in some country parsonage in England, drinking tea in a cool, pretty drawing-room, while a fresh, sweet smell stole in through the French windows from the hay and clover fields. Four were lady missionaries, two of whom were certificated doctors, who had, Ivanoff told us, done wonders in the epidemic of typhus, that had visited Kalgan two years previously, and by their untiring efforts and wonderful cures had made many converts. We were welcomed, on entering the house, by a pretty little Chinese lady, unaccountably so, as we thought, for one of her race. The mystery was explained when she invited us to be seated, in our own language, and further told us that although she had adopted Chinese costume, she was an American. Mrs. S———— had only been married three months, and had come straight from New York to Kalgan, to share her husband’s fortunes in the wilds, for she was about to leave for a mission four hundred miles from Kalgan, situated in one of the most dangerous districts of the Chinese empire. Her husband came in shortly after, also in Chinese costume, with the addition of a pigtail! It is a rule that every one connected with this society shall wear native dress; and when at their posts in Central China the missionaries are expected to eat like the natives. I could not help pitying the pretty, delicate-looking little woman when I thought of the trials and dangers she was embarking on. She seemed quite undismayed, however, and laughed and prattled away about the career she had chosen like a child——indeed she was little more than one in years.

Another missionary, Mr. C————, had arrived that morning from his post five hundred miles off, a hazardous and fatiguing journey, which he had made in under six weeks, bringing his little son, under two years old, with him, notwithstanding that some of the journey over the passes had to be done on foot. The natives of the regions through which he had passed, had, he told us, insisted upon it, that the little fellow was an old man, for he had very light, almost white hair. Most of them were “Tow-ists.” The founder of this sect is believed by its followers to have been born at the age of eighty-three, with grey hair. Hence their refusal to be persuaded, notwithstanding Mr. C————’s most earnest assurance that his son was not an old man! “Kalgan,” said Mr. C————, “is, in the eyes of Mahometans, the Bokhara of China, and there are large colleges here, where the teachers of the Mahometan faith are educated. Although the three great Chinese religions are Confucianism, Buddhism, and Tow-ism, there are many more Mahometans existing in China than is generally supposed; their faith in the Celestial Empire is governed by a consistory of as many as seventy persons.”

We stayed to dinner, and bade adieu to our hosts at sundown, having to be outside the city gates before seven o’clock. Mr. T————, the head of the mission, expressed a hope, before we left, that we should not follow the example of the last travellers (a German and a Frenchman), who had attempted the transit of Gobi, armed with a perfect arsenal of firearms and escorted by a large caravan. Ten days from the start they were back again in Kalgan, having fallen out on the way. That was their excuse; but I doubt, from subsequent experience, if the dreary monotony of the desert had not more to do with it, for they were good friends enough, when, after two days’ rest at the mission, they set off for Japan.

Arrived at the Great Gate of the city, on our homeward way, we found ourselves, together with some dozen other unfortunate beings, locked out, or rather in, for the night. All our efforts to induce the gatekeeper to let us out were fruitless, for he simply responded to our frantic signs and gestures with a grin and shrug of the shoulders, and crawled back into his foul-smelling den, to discuss the mess of pigs’ entrails, slugs, or some Chinese delicacy of a like description, which constituted his evening meal. The position was awkward. To climb the walls was out of the question. Their height precluded that, for the city walls of Kalgan are at this point actually part of the Great Wall of China itself. The only way out of the dilemma was to drop a distance of thirty feet or so on to some rocks at a point about three hundred to four hundred yards from the gate, but we preferred even a night in a tea-house, to a sojourn of a month or two at Kalgan, tied down with a broken leg. There was nothing for it but to sit down patiently and trust to Ivanoff’s coming to release us, though that seemed unlikely enough, seeing that he lived some distance from Batouyeff’s house, and never visited it after nightfall. Matters were not improved by a thin drizzling rain which began to fall after we had waited nearly an hour, and drove us to seek refuge in a crowded tea-house close by the gates, the resort of the gay dogs of Kalgan who are locked out of their homes for the night. The stench and smoke, though, soon drove us out again, to say nothing of the aggressive curiosity of the inmates, the greater part of whom were Mongols. Nine o’clock, ten, eleven o’clock passed, and yet no Ivanoff, or signs of a rescue from our awkward situation. We should long before have tried an expedient that seldom fails in any country, never in China, but alas! we had no cash. At one o’clock, a.m., we gave it up as a bad job, and had resolved to get what sleep we could on the ground, wet and miry as it was, when, in searching for a light, I came upon a hard round substance in my waistcoat pocket, and found a dollar that had reposed there ever since the day I last wore the garment, six weeks ago, in Shanghai. Armed with this, I entered the old janitor’s den. He was still awake, smoking and crooning over the dying embers of an argol fire. The effect was instantaneous. In less than five minutes the mercenary old wretch had summoned help from the tea-shop, which was still blazing with light, and crowded with people. After much difficulty and labour, unbolting and unbarring, the heavy gates, guided by the efforts of six men, swung slowly back upon their hinges and let us out, stiff, cramped, and in a fiendish temper, but free, and followed by the ragged rabble who had been our fellow-captives, and who luckily for us led us direct for Batouyeff’s house, for we should never have found our way alone. An excellent supper soon made amends for our discomfort. All had retired to rest, thinking we had slept at the Mission-house.

An extraordinary being called upon us next morning, and one looked upon as a character by the European population of Kalgan. The visiting-card which announced him told us but little; a piece of flimsy red paper about eight inches long by five broad covered with Chinese characters; and we wondered what the caller could possibly want, not without grave doubts that an order might have come from Pekin to stop us. Our visitor was then shown in, a short, intelligent-looking man of about fifty, who, to our astonishment, spoke English perfectly. We had a long chat (and many successive ones) with Captain Lew Buah (for such was the stranger’s name), of the Chinese Navy, who entertained the usual liking of his profession for cold brandy and water, and delighted in nothing more than in coming to spend the afternoon to fight his battles over again, rather to the detriment of our small stock of spirits. He had been exiled to Kalgan, he told us, for five years, in consequence of being the only man who had saved his ship from the French at Foochow. Ten other Chinese men-of-war were sunk on this occasion, but Lew Buah, seeing defence was useless, had run his steamer, a gunboat of three hundred tons, up a small creek of the river, and so saved her from the enemy. For this he was, unjustly enough, condemned to death, a sentence afterwards commuted to five years’ exile on the Mongolian border. If the captain’s yarn was true, he was certainly to be pitied, for his other exploits (which I have since ascertained were not exaggerated) make him out anything but a coward.

One of them was amusing enough. Having run the blockade of Formosa three times, he was on the fourth occasion, when carrying a cargo of soldiers, captured by a French man-of-war, the commander of which had for some time been trying in vain to catch him. Luckily for our friend, however, the soldiers were sent from Manchuria unarmed and disguised as peasants, and neither the captain nor officers of the Frenchman knew him by sight. He was, however, taken on board at once, and examined by a Chinese interpreter in presence of the French commander. Oddly enough the former was an old friend of Lew Buah’s, and intimated by a wink as soon as his countryman came on board that all would be right. Nothing suspicious was found on board Lew Buah’s ship, and he was allowed to depart in peace, the French captain observing as he left, “If you see that d————d scoundrel Lew Buah, tell him from me I’ll hang him to my main yard-arm whenever he crosses my path.” The telling of this yarn was the old gentleman’s greatest delight, and he would return with fresh vigour to the brandy bottle after telling us how he had done the foreign devil in the eye. The old fellow’s life had been a somewhat chequered one. It commenced at Canton where his father had been a street fruit-hawker, carrying his wares in two baskets slung across his shoulders by a bamboo; in one basket was the fruit, balanced by little Lew Buah in the other! An English lady who happened to meet the strange couple, took a violent fancy to the fat, chubby-cheeked baby, and having no children of her own, prevailed upon his father, nothing loth, to sell her his son for the modest price of ten dollars. He thus, at the early age of two years, fairly lit on his legs, and, after a residence of fifteen years with his benefactress, returned to China and obtained a commission in the Imperial Navy, in which, up to the time of the unfortunate contretemps at Foochow he had greatly distinguished himself. Though the captain spoke English fluently, some of his expressions were at times very original. We asked him one day if there was any sport to be got round Kalgan, upon which he informed us that the hills around abounded with “Scotch woodcock.” Still, for a Chinaman, the old fellow had charming manners, and was a thorough gentleman in thought and feeling.

As I have said, a bitter feud existed between Ivanoff and his confrère; but the postmaster, M. Kolestnikoff, and our host were firm friends. Both, too, were ardent sportsmen, and invited us one morning to join them in a day’s shooting in the hills and ravines round Kalgan. Ivanoff’s costume was somewhat singular, consisting of a suit of spotless white canvas, silk socks and dancing-pumps, while round his neck was slung an enormous field-glass. Politeness forbade my making inquiries till we got to the shooting-ground. I imagined, at least, that we were going deerstalking, judging from the caution our Russian friends displayed in climbing about the crags and peaks. It was terribly hard climbing, and our hands were torn and bleeding when we reached the summit of the mountain, about a mile from the house, where the day’s sport was to commence. Here I was somewhat surprised to see Ivanoff lay down his gun, and, gravely unslinging his huge pair of glasses, intently scan the rocks of a mountain separated from us by a narrow ravine. Evidently they are after deer, I thought, thankful that I had brought some bullet cartridges with me, when suddenly our host dropped the glasses and seized my arm. Following the direction in which he was pointing, I made out, with some difficulty, what looked like a covey of partridges sunning themselves on the plain eighty or a hundred feet below us. “Will you shoot first?” said Ivanoff, cocking a huge muzzle-loader almost the size of a duck gun. “But are we not going to walk them up?” asked Lancaster, who, like myself, was somewhat bewildered at their strange proceedings. “Walk them up?” inquired the Russian, with a puzzled look, “walk them up? what do you mean? No, no, shoot from here, I will show you,” and lying flat on his stomach, he took deliberate aim at the unconscious victims. Bang went the old field-piece with a report that woke a thousand echoes from the hills around, and must have been heard distinctly at Kalgan, over a mile off. When the thick white smoke had cleared away, there was but one little brown body lying extended on the ground, a sight which was received with rapturous applause by the postmaster, who was watching the proceedings from a rock higher up. We shot, or rather climbed and fell about, till mid-day, but saw no more birds. If the sport was not first-class, the excitement was intense. In some of the places we literally had to hold on by our eyelids, and squeeze past sheer falls of two hundred or three hundred feet, on to the sharp, rugged rocks below. Ivanoff afterwards told us that a brace is accounted a good bag at Kalgan, which seems curious when the desert hard by teems with game of all kinds. Perhaps, though, the method practised by our Kalgan friends had something to do with the small bags.

We could have had plenty of fun with the pigeons, which flew about in huge flocks in the mountain-paths about Kalgan; but as we were the guests of a Russian we did not like to shoot them.[^[4]] We saw many hundreds of specimens of a peculiar kind of beetle in the lower and swampy grounds, an animal rather larger than a mouse, with a long whip-tail, and short broad black body, covered with bright red bands. I was unable to discover its name. They do no harm to the crops, Ivanoff said, living chiefly on smaller insects, and are largely eaten by the natives, who consider them a great delicacy.

We crossed the Great Wall of China on our way home, or rather a portion of it that had broken away and left a mass of shapeless stone and rubble. Its height is wonderfully deceptive. Seen from the valley it looked five or six feet high at the very most, but on taking the trouble to measure its dimensions we found it to be twenty-three feet in height, about twelve feet wide at the base, and seven at the top. It has a tumble-down, dilapidated appearance, for, saving the square battlemented towers that are built in it at every four hundred yards or so, it is uncemented, and composed of huge loose stones gradually decreasing in size as they near the coping. Though the stones have rolled away in places and left great gaps in the structure, one only realizes on approaching it close——at Kalgan no easy matter——what a herculean work the building of this barrier two thousand miles long must have been. The stones of which it is composed are so time-worn and moss-covered that it is almost impossible to say to what species they belong; they seemed mostly of one kind, and extremely heavy. I managed to secure three small ones for paper weights, while Ivanoff and Kolestnikoff “kept cave,” the Mongols and Chinese being very jealous of any interference with their property or institutions. At the same time no one ever dreams of repairing the gaps, though it would be easy enough. As the reader is probably aware, the Great Wall of China was built about 300 B.C. by the Chinese, as a defence against the Tartar hordes who were then ravaging the countries bordering on their frontier.

We had now been at Kalgan nearly ten days, and our carts were approaching completion, but there were as yet no signs of the camels. Two suspicious-looking gentlemen (a Mongol and a Chinese) called on us one evening with a plausible tale of being able to bring us eight camels on the morrow, and, that we might be delayed no longer, themselves undertook to guide us across the desert to Ourga. Ivanoff was then away for two days, and on my replying that I could give no definite answer without consulting him, the faces of our visitors lengthened considerably. Their intention was probably to rob and desert us, for on seeing that we were determined to await our host’s return before closing with them, they vanished to return no more. A more villainous-looking couple I have seldom seen, and, if appearance goes for anything, there is no doubt they meant mischief.

Comfortable as were our quarters and host, we were getting a little tired of Kalgan, for besides strolling about the streets and loafing about on the caravan track, there was absolutely nothing to do. Our chief occupation of a morning was to ramble round the city, whiling away an hour or two at the Chinese theatre, booths or shops. In the afternoon it was amusing to watch the long strings of wood-carts come jingling and rattling along the stony river-bed from Mongolia, and lazy, sleepy-looking camel caravans crawling along under their burdens of furs and other products of Siberia. Some were a hundred and fifty to two hundred strong, and one wondered why, when there were so many of them about, they could not afford to let us have half a dozen or so to fit out our modest expedition across the Great Hungry Desert, as it is called by the Chinese. We had learnt by now, however, that suggestions do not hurry this journey, but retard it, however feasible the project, so wisely held our peace.