Chapter XXVII: Letter XXVI: PEKING, 23rd May 1866 (1)

I returned from my Mongolian expedition last Friday, the 18th, half-starved and burnt to a cinder, but very jolly. I copy my journal for you.

We left Peking, the doctor and I, on the 23rd April. We took with us my servant Chang Hsi, groom, and fat cook. We of course rode our own horses, while five mules carried the servants and baggage. The doctor’s dog Drujok, a half-bred Russian setter, and my Prince, a heavy shambling puppy whom I call a Newfoundland, but whose _seize quartiers_ it would be difficult to prove, made up the party. Our cavalcade made a great sensation in the streets of Peking. “Here’s a game,” shouted the street—arabs, piggish in many respects besides their tails; “look at the devils and the devil dogs!” We went out at the Tê Shêng Mên (Victory Gate). So soon as we had passed the dusty streets and suburbs obstructed by carts and camels, whose bells and dull tramp irritate one’s ears, while the dust they shuffle up blinds and chokes one, the ride became delightful. The fresh green of the budding trees and young spring crops and the tints of the distant hills were new life to eyes tired with the monotonous grays of a Peking winter. It was a lovely day too, bright, sunny, and cooled by a fresh breeze from the mountains.

Former experience of carts had decided me to take mules; but it was out of the frying-pan into the fire. Carts are slow, mules are slower. If one takes carts the servants are sure to stow away one ragamuffin at least to help them with their work and add to the expense. If one takes mules the muleteer is sure to add a number of mules carrying wares for trade at the different towns, which creates endless delays. Besides, the pack-mules cannot keep up with the horses, and it is no joke to arrive at an inn, tired and hungry, with the choice of ordering a bad Chinese dinner, or waiting three hours for the cook to come up and prepare a better one. Being in advance, we always had to find our own way from place to place; easy enough if one could even get a direct answer, but you might as well expect that from a Reading Quaker.

_Englishman_—“I borrow a light from your intelligence.”

_Native_—“Hao shwo! You are very polite.”

_E._—“How far is it from here to Sha-Ho?”

_N._—“How far is it from here to Sha-Ho? Oh! you’re going to Sha-Ho, are you?”

_E._—“Yes! How far is it?”

_N._—“How far from here, eh? What are you going to do at Sha-Ho?”

_E._—“Just going for an excursion. But how far is it?”

_N._—“Just going for an excursion, eh?”

This sort of thing goes on until you thoroughly lose your temper, seeing which an old man in the crowd holds up his forefinger and thumb in an oracular manner. This to the initiated signifies that Sha-Ho is eight (not two) li distant (the li is about one-third of a mile). The Chinese have a way of counting with their fingers, which is as necessary to learn as the numerals of the spoken language. They constantly answer a question of figures by holding up one hand without speaking. Up to five it is all plain sailing, but beyond that it is not so easy. The thumb and little finger mean _six_; thumb and two first fingers, _seven_; thumb and forefinger, _eight_, forefinger crooked, _nine_; second finger doubled over forefinger, or whole hand shown, first palm and then back, _ten_.

We passed our first night at Chang-ping-chou, which was a slight roundabout, but my companion wanted to see the Ming tombs about which I wrote to you last autumn. We found all the inns full, but a small beggar boy, who, possibly with an eye to copper cash, took a great interest in our proceedings, led us to a neat little inn outside the walls where we were quiet and cleanly lodged.

_24th April._

We had all the trouble in life this morning to get the mules to start. Threats of stoppages of pay were the only means of acting on the muleteers. Even so we only got off by eight o’clock. The doctor and I, accompanied by my man Chang Hsi, were to visit the tombs, while the mules, not being supposed capable of deriving either profit or amusement from the sight, were to precede us to Nan-Ko̔u, and there wait our arrival. The valley of the tombs was not so bright and rich as when I saw it with the autumn crops in all their luxuriance, but there were plenty of wild-flowers, dog-violets, wild iris, convolvulus, and others, and the persimmon trees were a mass of bloom. The avenue of monstrous statues appeared tame to me in the glare of day after having seen their weird and ghostly appearance by moonlight, but the site and buildings must always be striking. There are plenty of temples and palaces in and near Peking as large and as magnificent, but none in such good proportion; they all look like “imitation” by the side of the Thirteen Tombs.

We had to ride back to within a few hundred yards of Chang-ping-chou before we could reach the sandy and stony road which leads to Nan-Ko̔u. It was burning hot, but as the Russians say, “Heat breaks no bones,” and with fresh, pure air to breathe it does not much signify how hot it is. In Peking it is another matter. We reached Nan-Ko̔u at 2 P.M. The little town is prettily situated at the bottom of the famous pass to which it gives its name. Steep cliffs enclose it on either side; a stream of clear water—rare sight in these parts—passes through it; and the cottages in the valley are surrounded by trees and corn-fields. The hills are wild and bold, with here and there bits of wall, towers, and perhaps a temple or shrine on the ridges. The constant tinkling of camel and mule bells testifies to the amount of traffic. Every other house is an inn, and all seem bustling and prosperous. There was plenty of movement and plenty of noise in our inn-yard; muleteers, carters, footpads, poultry, and asses kept up a perpetual wrangling, crowing, and braying, while an improvisatore in the kitchen opposite was earning his night’s board and lodging by reciting tales of an unedifying character for the benefit of the host and his guests of lower degree. Although we had arrived so early, we thought it better to stop the night at Nan-Ko̔u and go on in the morning, so we had time for a stroll among the hills after dinner.

_25th April._

We started at six, riding donkeys in order to spare the ponies the rough work of the pass. The Nan-Ko̔u pass is certainly in its way very fine. The valley, which is a gradual ascent, is bounded on either side by steep, abrupt hills, as barren and wild as a Scotch glen; a few trees stud it at intervals, and a narrow thread of water runs through it. There are plenty of shrines about, and always perched upon cliffs so steep that one is lost in wonder how they ever got there. Amongst these I noticed a form of sacred monument that was new to me, but constantly repeated along this road—five white-washed earthen cones like sugar-loaves, with bats[14] or other emblems rudely painted on them; I guess that they represent the five offerings exposed on Buddhist altars. As an instance of the difficulty of obtaining reliable information, and to show how cautiously travellers’ statements about China must be accepted, I asked three respectable Chinese by the road what was the meaning of these five cones. One said that they were to keep off foxes and wolves, another that they marked every five li along the road, and the third that they were Buddhist emblems, but he did not know what they represented. The pass itself, considering that it is the highway between Mongolia and China, is a very miracle of bad roads. It is as if nature had in some stupendous convulsion burst a passage through the mountains, leaving all the débris in the most glorious confusion, which man has been too idle to reduce to order. Huge boulders of rock at every step obstruct a way which is difficult enough already, and the overhanging cliffs seem as if they were on the point of throwing down more masses to block up the road. Asses are far the best mounts for this work. Ours carried us capitally, urged by constant revilings from their rascally drivers. “Egg of a turtle! what are you stopping for!” is the mildest of their adjurations, the turtle not being used as significative of slowness, but as an euphemism for cuckold. There are plenty of villages in the pass; the inhabitants do a small trade in tea, hard-boiled eggs, and laopings (a sort of girdle-cake), which they sell to wayfarers. There is one very pretty little town, Chu-Yung-Kwan, with a curious old gateway richly carved with quaint figures and inscriptions in Chinese, Manchu, Mongolian, and Thibetan, said to be a relic of the Yuan or Mongol dynasty. At the top of the pass, just before the slight descent which leads to the plateau on the west, is an old ruined fortified enclosure called Pa Ta Ling, “the eight great peaks.” It is a curious place, for the inside is literally a heap of ruins and rubbish, while the walls and fortifications are almost perfect.

We breakfasted at Cha Tao at the end of the pass, some 15 miles, and very tiring miles too, from Nan-Ko̔u. After Cha Tao the road lies along a sandy plain, probably once a lake, to Hwai Lai Hsien, a pretty model of a Chinese town, with crenelated walls and quaint towers. East of the town is a small river, spanned by what once has been a handsome five-arched bridge, now of course falling into ruin and decay. Hard by, on a low hill, stands a temple like an Italian monastery. We put up for the night at Hwai Lai Hsien, having ridden some 35 miles from Nan-Ko̔u. We had some difficulty in finding an inn. The people of the east side of the town sent us to the west, and the people of the west incited us to go back to the east. The mules and servants were behind us, and we were left entirely to our own resources. At last my horse decided the question by bolting down a courtyard, which turned out to be that of the best inn in the place, but which, it having no signboard, I had missed.

_26th April._

We had a dullish ride to-day to Hsin Pao An, passing a few small towns, all fortified, probably against Mongol invasions; at one of these, Tu Mu, we made our mid-day halt. Hsin Pao An is a very pretty little town. One Chinese town is generally so like another that if you have seen one you have seen all. Here, however, there is a very curious building in the middle of the place; it is a sort of compromise between an English town-hall, a mediæval fortress, and a Chinese temple; it gives a distinction to the town. It is so very rare to see a drunken man in China that it is almost worth recording that one rushed into our rooms here, and was proceeding to lay hands on the doctor, who shook him off in great astonishment, when the people of the inn came in and turned him out, with many apologies for the annoyance.

_27th April._

The main feature in the plain on leaving Hsin Pao An is a steep mountain, or rather precipitous and jagged rock, perhaps 800 or 1000 feet high, called Nei Nei Shan. It stands at the western end of the plain, immediately to the east of the Yang Ho, “sheep river,” which winds beneath it. On the very summit of this rock is a temple, about which there is a legend which reminds one of Rolandseck and Nonnenwerth. A prince of these parts had engaged to throw a bridge over the river in a single night, or forfeit his life. He set about his task, but when the sun rose in the morning the work was unfinished, so in despair and in fulfilment of his vow he threw himself into the river and was drowned. His widow erected this temple that she might pass her life in mourning in constant sight of the spot where her husband had disappeared. I have the very worst authority for this legend, of which, by the bye, Bell gives another version quoted by Michie. The Chinese about the place have never heard of it; however, I dare say it is as true as most other legends; at any rate there stand the hill and the temple, and there live (heaven knows how) five priests, exposed to the full glare of the sun, and to every cold wind that blows, and obliged to fetch even the water they drink up an almost inaccessible height from the plain below. This day’s journey, following the Yang Ho in a north-westerly direction, was very picturesque and varied, but often rocky to a degree. However, our little Mongol horses behaved like goats; they never stumble except on a flat road, where they get careless and lazy. There is plenty of coal in these hills, which is worked in the meanest manner and sent to Peking on camels. A geologist who has examined this part of China, and especially the mountains to the west, affirms it to be the richest coalfield in the world, but the Chinese do not take advantage of it. We met plenty of travellers of all degrees, the richer ones travelling in mule litters, a mode of conveyance which looks to me as if it might bring on sea-sickness; and numberless caravans laden with tea for Russia.

We rested at a poor little town called Hsiang Shui Pu, and put up for the night at Hsuan Hua Fu, a large district city. Here in the suburbs we found an inn which was a palace compared with those we had put up in hitherto, though an English labourer’s cottage would not suffer by contrast with the room I slept in. A certain amount of new paper in the windows gave a promise of cleanliness and decency within that was not fulfilled by the broken brick floor and musty tables and benches; however, there were plenty of shabby, tawdry lanterns, and if characters of good omen could give appetite and a good night’s rest, we ought to have eaten like ogres and slept like the Seven Sleepers. We were a good deal lionised here; indeed, the inquisitiveness of the people was very troublesome. As I was lathering my face before dinner, trying to get rid of the deposit of two or three sandstorms, the curse of travellers in North China, a carter walked coolly into my bedroom smoking his pipe, and went into fits of laughter at the sight. I, irritated by the intrusion, flung the contents of my soapy sponge into his face—which must have very much astonished it, for it was much in the same state as the fists of the Irish boatman two years after he had shaken hands with the Lord Lieutenant; and my enemy fled howling. Presently another gentleman appeared who addressed me as “Venerable Teacher”—a high compliment—and informed me that his name was Ma, and that he was a merchant of caps travelling from west to east; after which he retired, but shortly put his head in again to ask my honourable name and nation, and I heard him afterwards in the yard explaining to a knot of carters, muleteers, and loungers, that I was the English teacher Mi, that I understood good manners, that my body was all over pockets, and that my years were not few; which statements the auditors received with many grunts and eructations and repeated several times, afterwards one by one sauntering up to judge for themselves. I happened to be emptying my pockets at the time of Ma’s visit. Pockets are not used by the Chinese; they have, it is true, purses or pouches at their girdle, but they are very small. The chief receptacle for miscellaneous articles is the boot. My first teacher used to pull writing materials and sugar-plums indiscriminately from his boot, and always politely offered me the latter before tasting them himself. Old Hêng-Chi, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is _malade imaginaire_ and always dosing himself, constantly pulls pills or other pet remedies out of his boot. European pockets are always provocative of wonder. The noises of the inn-yard made sleep out of the question till long past midnight. The worst of all was an old carter wrapped up in his sheepskin, sitting on the shaft of his cart and beating a sort of death-watch with a stick on a piece of hollow bamboo, like a ghoulish old woodpecker. I went out and tried to chaff him out of his performance, but he took my irony for high praise, which so delighted him that he every now and then burst into snatches of song in a high squeaky falsetto, never stopping his eternal devil’s tattoo. Mules, asses, horses, and quarrelling Chinamen made up a fitting chorus.

_Saturday, 28th April._

Rode through the town of Hsuên Hwa Fu, which, for China, is in tolerable repair. Though small as “Fu’s” go, it is pretty enough. There are plenty of trees, chiefly huge willows and poplars, and a great variety of quaint towers, pagodas, and other buildings. The plain below is busily tilled, and, I should think, must be fertile; but the crops are far behind those of the Peking plain, and the first sowings have not yet put out shoots. Here amongst the numerous by-roads and water-courses we lost our way, being, as usual, far ahead of our mules. Seeing a group of boys working a few fields off I rode across to ask the way; their backs were turned to me, and it was only when I jumped over a low mud wall into the midst of them that they perceived me. A shark appearing in Cuckoo weir while the Eton boys are bathing, could not have produced a greater panic. With one consent the urchins shouted out, “The Devil! The Devil!” and bolted for dear life. At last I succeeded in capturing and calming one of them, sufficiently to discover that we were about an hour and a half’s ride out of the right road (no joke to men fasting and under such a sun). The deviation from the regular route accounted for the terror caused by my appearance; the boys had probably never seen a foreigner before.

Late in the afternoon we reached Chang Chia Ko̔u, which the Mongols call Khalgan, the frontier town between China and Mongolia. It is the first great halting-place on the road from Peking to Moscow. Formerly, when the importation of tea into Russia by sea was forbidden, the whole of the tea-supply passed from Tientsing through Chang Chia Ko̔u, and there is still a great traffic, but, of course, it is much diminished. The Russians have no important export trade to China. They have a small export trade in cloth, which they manufacture, of a kind and at a cost with which other producers cannot compete, for their cloth exactly suits the Chinese, being of pure wool, very broad, and cheap; but they cannot send it in any large quantity. At Peking, Tientsing, and some of the large towns in North China, there are also to be found miscellaneous articles of Russian manufacture, such as samovars, knives, prints, looking-glasses, etc., but, as a rule, Siberia being a non-manufacturing country and too short-handed to become one, goods have to come from too far for their transport to pay. I believe that the Russians have found their connection with China to be, on the whole, a losing business. They have to pay silver—paper roubles will not pass—for their tea, and must continue to do so as long as they cannot establish an export trade; they are trying to obtain certain rights of trading in Mongolia, but the Chinese cannot be persuaded of the justice of transferring a monopoly of their own merchants to a powerful neighbour. In the far north they have obtained certain harbours which open the Chinese seas and the Pacific to them; but the harbours are frozen for several months, and the advantage has saddled them with huge tracts of country which it is hard for them to rule, and still harder for want of manual labour to turn to profit. Russia looks to the days of railways and telegraphs through Siberia, which are probably not very far distant,[15] to balance the account. The truth is that the English and Americans are the only people who have a real commercial interest in China. The Russian interest is at present simply one of boundaries. With the French the Chinese question is one of missionaries and jealousy of the _interests_ of other nations in the Far East,—_interests_ being with French alarmists synonymous with _influence_. The German nations cannot as yet be said to have any great stake here, though they have plenty of subjects in China, principally clerks in great houses or small merchants. Portugal has a very cleverly worded treaty with the Chinese, who will not ratify it because it would cede to her the sovereignty of Macao, where she has a flourishing trade, under the name of Chinese coolie emigration. Spain has a treaty in an embryo state, and conterminal interests on account of her Philippine Islands; and Belgium has a treaty, one resident subject, and a ship trading here once in three years or so. The Danes have a treaty, but little commerce. Italy two or three years ago planned a mission hither, but it broke down. Even should the Russians succeed in obtaining the privileges they are working for in Mongolia, their Chinese trade would be but a drop in the ocean compared with our immense commercial interests.

_29th April._

In spite of the remonstrances and even tears of our head muleteer, who predicted certain starvation for ourselves and our mules, we decided on pushing as far as Llama Miao, the great horse-fair in Mongolia, and returning home _via_ Ku Pei Ko̔u to vary the journey. We accordingly resolved to stop a day at Chang Chia Ko̔u to rest the horses and lay in rice, flour, and other provisions, with provender for the cattle. The delay gave us time to see the bustling little town which trade has redeemed from the dulness of its neighbours. The streets are full of animation. Fortune-tellers, improvisatori, and a company of strolling actors who, gorgeous in stage dresses and burlesque “makes up,” have taken possession of a small temple, attract crowds of gaping Mongols and Chinamen. The main street of the suburb resembles a great fair, lined with stalls like cheap-jack’s booths, at which every conceivable sort of rubbish is sold. Pipes, rings, ear-rings, sham jewelry and jade, Mongol knives, purses, cutlery professing to be made by Rodgers and Son, lucifer matches from Vienna, kaleidoscopes, stereoscopes, musical boxes and looking-glasses, with reverses quite unfit for publication, are the chief wares. There is a capital seven-arched bridge, adorned with lions and apes, across the almost dry river; and wonderful to say, it is kept in repair, so you may judge how prosperous the place is and looks. Foreigners excite little attention, for European travellers are often passing; and besides, there are two or three resident agents for Russian houses who superintend the loading of the tea-caravans for Siberia.

One thing necessary before leaving Chang Chia Ko̔u was to get the seal of the military authorities attached as a _visa_ to my passport. As I told you last year, the petty provincial officers snap their fingers at the seal of the Peking yamêns (public offices), but they respect that of their own immediate chief, whose arm is long enough to reach them. In the event of meeting with any difficulty on the road I could not count on getting any official assistance without this seal. Accordingly, early this morning I sent my passport to the general’s office, with the request that it might be returned _visé_. At five o’clock no passport was forthcoming, so I sent to say that I would go in person to fetch it, and requested an interview with his Excellency. When I arrived at the Yamên I was told that the great man himself was ill—the usual excuse—but I was civilly received by his subordinate, a greasy little blue-buttoned mandarin named Pao, and two others. I repeated my request to see his Excellency Ah (that is his name), as I knew how futile it is to treat with subordinate Chinese officials; but _his_ Excellency only renewed his regrets that he could not see _my_ Excellency, which he hoped was pretty well. As he might be smoking opium and really unpresentable, I thought it better not to press the matter further, but attacked Pao on the subject of the seal, which he fought off granting me on the ground that there was nothing in the passport saying that I was entitled to it. I answered that the passport entitled me to expect every aid from him, and that last year the Ti-tu of Ku Pei Ko̔u had granted us his seal; threatened him with the thunders of the Prince of Kung’s wrath, and told him (Heaven forgive me!) how angry our Queen would be if she heard that a member of her Legation, carrying the passport of the Legation, had been snubbed the very first time he asked for assistance from a Chinese official. “Would I like something to eat?” “I was much obliged, but I was not hungry; I wanted the seal.” “At least a little jam?” “Many thanks, no jam, but the seal.” “But the seal was really such an unimportant matter.” “Then why not give it at once as the Ti-tu had done.” (Which, by the bye, he had not done without a fight.) “Oh, but the Ti-tu lived at Ku Pei Ko̔u and this was Chang Chia Ko̔u. How could it be done?” “Where there’s a will there’s a way”—which is an excellent Chinese proverb. My interlocutors doubled at every moment like hares, now offering tea, now dinner, now tobacco, anything but the seal. They constantly consulted together in Manchu, of which of course I did not understand a word. Every now and then one went out to report, as I imagine, to the shamming chief what I had said. How obstinate the barbarian was, and how suspicious, for I took care to let them know that I was not gulled by the very stale sick dodge. We were more than an hour marching and countermarching over the same ground. I stuck out for my seal; they persisted in eluding the question. At last I told Pao that I would either accept the seal or a separate pass from his Excellency Ah to his subordinates, but that if they refused to give me one or other I would write to Peking and complain of their want of courtesy. After some difficulty they agreed to furnish me with a pass, and even gave orders for a draft to be written and sent to the hotel for my approval. I then left them, but with such manifest disgust that they were probably afraid that I might complain of their conduct, for immediately I reached the inn a messenger made his appearance, saying that Pao hoped I was pretty well (which, considering we had just parted, was an excess of courtesy), and had not quite read my passport to his satisfaction; would I let him have it back for a few minutes. Ten minutes after this it was in my hands with the seal attached.

In the meantime our lachrymose muleteers had made off to Peking with their mules, abandoning their pack-saddles and ropes, and forfeiting all their earnings, save an advance which I had made them, rather than face the imaginary horrors of the road to Llama Miao. Here was a pretty kettle of fish! All hopes of an early start completely bowled out; and really Chang Chia Ko̔u is a very nice place, but one day is enough of it.

_30th April._

The whole of this morning was wasted in fruitless endeavours to get mules or carts. The carters and muleteers, knowing our anxiety to be off, demanded fabulous prices, and absolutely declined to start until to-morrow; we were as determined to make a move to-day. At last, in despair, the doctor rode off to the Russian agents to see whether they could not do something to help us. It is no use applying to the authorities, for their practice in such cases is to be extremely civil and obliging, at once procure the worst and cheapest beasts in the place, arrange for a high price, and pocket the difference; and then when the traveller is a hundred miles or so away from all help a horse or mule dies of a ripe old age, and the others are so feeble and decrepit that he does not reach his destination until his stock of provisions has long been exhausted, and himself has had to suffer days of needless privation and discomfort. During the doctor’s absence Chang Hsi, who had gone out as plenipotentiary in another direction, came back with a treaty for ratification between himself, under the style of “Chang the great Lord,” and a hirer of carts, who was willing to convey our baggage to Llama Miao for rather more than double the proper fare. The doctor’s negotiations were more successful, for he returned with a wild-looking ruffian, with whom we finally made almost satisfactory arrangements, though neither promising, coaxing, nor threatening would induce him to start until the next day.

_1st May._

A short time since a missionary presented me with a copy of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ translated into Chinese, and adorned with pictures, in which Christian and the other characters appear with long tails _à la Chinoise_. If any one will produce a similar edition of _Don Quixote_ for the benefit of the mandarins, I shall recommend our carter as model for the portrait of the knight. His prominent nose, lantern jaws, and tall, thin, ungainly figure exactly fit the character; it is a type I never before saw in China. Any one of his horses would make a capital Rosinante. We made a late start of it, not getting off until eight o’clock, and even then our people lagged behind in the town to buy things. At the gate of the town, where the Great Wall of China is the frontier mark, we met with no difficulties, our passports were not examined, and the officials only took down our names and the number of our party. The day’s march was dull and monotonous; it lay along a continuously ascending pass, winding between barren hills, which bounded the view. We met strings of camels, mules, and bullock-carts, all laden with tea for Russia and Mongolia. The tea that is imported by the Mongols is of the coarsest quality, and pressed into large bricks, which look something like cavendish tobacco, only coarser, and with stronger fibres to bind them together. These bricks are in some parts the current coin of the country: large transactions are settled for so many bricks of tea, while smaller payments are made by cutting pieces off the block as the Chinese cut fragments of silver. The infusion made from brick tea is coarse and nasty; it often has a musty taste owing to the damp confined in the cakes, which prevents their transport by sea.

We breakfasted at Tu-ting, a miserable little village of mud hovels which at a little distance look like mere holes in the hill; the place reminded me of a colony of fever-stricken Circassians whom I saw during their exodus two years ago, burrowing like rabbits in a bank near Tchernavoda. Barring the fever there was not much choice in appearance between the two. After Tu-ting the ascent becomes so steep that horses are kept by the wayside, as on the St. Gothard, to draw up heavy carts to a ledge on which stands a temple in honour of Kwan Ti, the god of war, whither pious carters repair to deposit an offering on having successfully made the ascent. Pa Ta, where we passed the night at the sign of the “Ten Thousand Perfections,” was hardly richer than Tu-ting. Our beds were made in the kitchen amid flour-bins, jars of oil, pots of stinking cheese, and odds and ends of all sorts. It was the best room of the inn, which was a low hut built of mud and chopped straw, roofed over, but with the bare ground for a floor. This is not comfort, but _à la guerre comme à la guerre_.

_2nd May._

A couple of hours more uphill and we were fairly on the Mongolian plateau. A branch of the Great Wall runs along the mountains; but here it is a mere heap of stones thrown together, a wonderful work of patience, it is true, but lacking the grandeur of the brick-built wall at Ku Pei Ko̔u; at intervals are rude turrets fallen or falling into utter decay.

The plateau itself is a vast sea of downs bounded only by the horizon. It is difficult to conceive anything more desolate; there is neither tree nor shrub, nothing taller than a few dwarfish buttercups and campanulas; there is not so much as a stone to sit down upon; for miles and miles there is no trace of human habitation or handiwork; for miles and miles one travels without meeting a soul, except by chance a stray Mongol lumbering heavily along on his camel, or a bullock-cart carrying tea; of beasts we saw a flock of Hwang-yang antelopes, that scampered off almost before there was time to recognise them; the dogs started a fox; a raven was feeding on a dead dog, and a solitary vulture followed in our wake for hours, as if he expected one or other of us to come to grief, but for to-day he was disappointed. We rested at Shi Pa Li Tai, having made an absurdly short day’s journey, but it was impossible to stir our Don Quixote into anything like activity.

_3rd May._

We rose long before sunrise, intending to make up for lost time. The early morning on the steppes is something beautiful. Flocks of larks, mocking and other birds are singing away as if their throats must burst, the air is as keen and fresh as possible, and there is just a sparkling of dew on the ground. On such a morning and on such ground our little horses, in spite of the journey before them—of which they always seem to have a sort of instinctive knowledge, for when the holsters and headstalls are put on, the very worst of them sober down and behave well—cannot resist a gallop. They lift their heads, and turning towards the breeze sniff it in by long draughts with a zest that it is good to see, and spin away like mad things over the steppe on which they were born and reared. The dogs catch the infection, and are in the most tearing spirits, careering away far out of sight; Drujok, whose sporting education has been sadly neglected, setting a bad example in a wild lark chase, which my puppy Prince is not slow to follow. Roads across the plateau there are none; and we soon raced away from all sign of the (at best) puzzling tracks of rare carts and horses. Here was a pretty mess! Lost on the steppe like sailors at sea in a cock-boat without a compass! not a landmark of any sort; a boundless plain with a round horizon! After some while spent in fruitless consultation, to our joy a speck began to rise on the horizon; bigger and bigger it grew, until at last it defined itself into the figure of a very jolly, fat, yellow-robed priest,—a sort of Mongol Friar Tuck riding on his camel,—who could fortunately speak a little Chinese. The good-natured fellow, shaking his sides with laughter at our mischance, put his helm about and rode a mile or two out of his own way to steer us into ours, so that in the end we found ourselves at Pan Shan Tu a couple of hours before our people. As we had started at three in the morning on the strength of a cup of tea and a couple of eggs, and had been eight hours in the saddle, it was rather trying to wait until past one o’clock for a meal. Still more trying was it as the evening closed in, and the gathering clouds warned us that there would be no moonlight to guide us, to find ourselves 25 miles from our destination, in the middle of the wilderness, and the cart-horses hardly up to 3 miles an hour. Happily we came upon a group of Mongol yurts (huts or tents), and their uncouth owners were willing and able to take us in. Indeed, as I found out afterwards, the huts on this track are almost available as inns for travellers. We were, as usual, in advance of our party and unable to speak a word of Mongol; however, from the yurts there appeared a wild, gaunt figure, which from its wearing ear-rings and long hair, and from no other sign, I knew to be a woman; in the kindliest but roughest manner she seized the horses and led them to a post, to which she tied them, and then opening one of the yurts, beckoned us to go in and warm ourselves, for it was very chilly. In this hut were crowded a few men, women, and naked children, a calf and several lambs, all huddling together round the fire: what an etching Rembrandt would have made of it! The air was stifling; between smoke and strong smells it was almost impossible to breathe; however, the good lady cleared out another hut, which by the time our servants came up was ready for us.

A Mongol yurt is of the simplest construction. A round, raised floor, from twelve to fifteen feet in diameter, is made of mud and chopped straw; round this is built a wall of trellis-work of laths about four feet high, from which a number of sticks radiate to a point at the top; a thick covering of pieces of felt tied on with strong cord completes the hut; even the trellis-work is fastened by thongs of leather passed through holes made at the point where the laths cross one another. The whole can easily be taken to pieces and packed on a camel’s back. The furniture of the interior is not more luxurious than the exterior: in the centre is an iron fireplace, in which is burnt a fire of horse- or cow-dung, which is the only fuel to be procured, and is collected with great pains on the plateau; the smoke, so much at least as does escape, finds its way through a hole in the middle of the roof; four iron bars support over the fire the single pan in which all the cooking of the family is done; round the tent are a few chests and presses of the rudest Chinese manufacture, and the homeliest of brass pots and pans from Peking; a few sheep-skins and calf-skins and pieces of felt represent bed, sofa, and chair; the whole is blackened by much smoke like a cutty-pipe. A flap of felt serves as door; the hole in the roof is chimney and window in one, and if it rains that must be covered in. Perhaps the quaintest thing about the place, and the strongest sign of the poverty of the land, was the kitchen garden inside the yurt. A basket or pan and a broken teacup, into which a little mould had been placed, were beds in which half a dozen carefully-tended heads of garlic were sprouting! There were no stables; the Mongols do not use them. When they want a horse they go and catch one out of the herd. Our horses were tied up to stakes outside. The cattle keep near the camp of their own accord; the sheep are packed under a shed, so they enjoy a covering; but the young things—calves, lambs, and kids—are carried into the yurts and sleep with the other children. Such was our lodging for the night, and, tired as we were, it did well enough for us. Our dinner was a more difficult matter; our cook did his best for us, but he was sorely put to it for saucepans and other requisites. As I said above, the pan or caldron over the dung-fire is the whole Mongol _batterie de cuisine_. Into it is thrown a quantity of millet or other grain and a few lumps of fat mutton or beef, which is stewed in water. When the solid part of this has been taken out, the greasy water which remains serves to make the infusion of brick tea. Even the lowest Chinese cannot stomach this nasty mess, and speak of it with the greatest disgust. In some parts of Mongolia an infusion of brick tea is made with boiling milk and salt, and always kept ready in the yurt. This is said to be very good. I had been looking forward to getting a drink of fresh milk, but the Mongols all say that their cows have died. Calves a few days old, and in very good condition, tell another story.

When we had established ourselves in the yurt, the head of the encampment, introduced by the Meg Merrilies who had taken us in and done for us, and whom I imagine to have been his wife, came to visit us. He spoke a little Chinese, which is necessary to him when he goes to Chang Chia Ko̔u to sell his cattle. He told us he was a military officer, but without soldiers to command. Of the world beyond Chang Chia Ko̔u on one side and Llama Miao on the other he knew nothing. His flocks and his tents were his whole life. The women, young and old, had no objection to showing themselves; they came to look at us, and brought their children, whom we made happy with cakes and white sugar. Round-faced, flat-featured, healthy, dirty, and ugly are the women; as for the men, sun, wind, and weather have burnt and hardened them to a degree in comparison with which the most weather-beaten old sea-dog at Portsmouth or Plymouth is satin-skinned. Men and women alike are dressed in long sheep-skin robes, with the wool worn inwards, and round fur caps. Their shapeless dresses and round head-pieces remind one of the family in the Noah’s arks. The people appear very jolly and simple, which they are, and very honest, which report says they are not. Small articles to which they may take a fancy are said to disappear mysteriously. The Mongolian dogs, several of whom guard each encampment, to the great discomfiture of Drujok and Prince, who, on the prowl after water, are constantly attacked by them, are fine beasts—huge, shaggy fellows, mostly black-and-tan, with glorious tails curling over their backs; they must be awkward customers. In spite of the squalor in which our hosts live, they are rich people in their way, and well-to-do; dirt and wretchedness must be with them a matter of choice, not necessity, for their thriving flocks find a ready market at Chang Chia Ko̔u for the supply of Peking. Things which are of the most ordinary necessity to the poorest Chinaman these comparatively prosperous people do without. They have not even a teapot or teacup; and when we suggested washing our faces a rusty old iron basin was dragged out of some corner where it must have lain unused and forgotten for months.

It blew a gale of wind in the night, and rain came on, so we were able to test the comfort of the tent. We suffered neither from cold nor rain; in fact, nothing could be better adapted than these huts for the extreme weather of the steppe. If it is fine you can sleep with the sky above you. If it is cold the felt is a sufficient protection. It was bitterly chilly outside, but within, although we could not bear a fire on account of the smoke, we were as warm as toasts.

_4th May._

A pelting wet morning. We took leave of our friends the Mongols, and rode to Chang-ma-tsze-chin, a Chinese colony, some twenty miles off, it being too bad weather to push farther. We made friends with the whole village through its children. A pedlar happened to be passing that way, and by investing a few pence in small looking-glasses and such toys, we made the little boys and girls very happy. To these the pedlar’s pack of rubbish contained all the wonders of Aladdin’s palace, for had he not come all the way from Peking? Our door at the inn was thronged with jolly little urchins for the rest of the day, and we amused ourselves and them by showing them our watches, pencil-cases, etc. The plains or valleys here are narrower and surrounded by hills. I climbed one height, from which I had a fine view over the steppe.

_5th May._

The beauty of the morning made up for yesterday. We were up by 3 A.M. The vapours of the night before had settled down in dew on the ground, the sun was rising brilliantly among fleecy clouds, which continued all day to throw over the hills lights and shades such as one sees in Europe—never at Peking, where the sky must either be black with storm, or deep blue without a speck upon it. We stopped to breakfast at a Mongol encampment, on the near side of an immense plain. I never saw so many horses at one time in my life—the plateau was literally alive with them; they were very shaggy in their winter coats, and did not show to advantage on the poor commons they had had to put up with during the winter; but some of them were well built for strength and endurance, with deep chests, strong quarters, and big barrels. We were received in the yurt of a widow, named Apakwai, a most ill-favoured dame; however, her tent was the best in the place, and the cleanest, which is not high praise. She was rich in furniture, skins, and felt mats, and there was even some little attempt at decoration about her habitation, a few Chinese prints of the rudest kind and most defiant of perspective being pasted on the trellis walls; they were coloured in the garish style so pleasing to Mongols, who are far more Oriental in this respect than the sober Chinese. A Mongol swell, riding over the plain, gorgeous in yellow and vermilion, and with his jolly moon face beaming out of a yellow cap, red-buttoned and trimmed with sables, is a sight to see. The ladies are great customers with the Peking jewellers for coral, pearls, and jade ornaments. A woman, be she never so poor, is sure to have some piece of finery in the way of ear-rings or head-dress from Peking. If she cannot afford real jewellery she buys sham.

The widow Apakwai could speak no Chinese, but as every one about the camp came in to idle away an hour, we had no lack of interpreters. The chief personage spoke Chinese fluently. Apakwai lost her husband in the war of 1860, where the Mongols were always sent to the front to be shot at, and really, with such a wife, he was lucky to get out of the world. She had a most villainous expression of countenance, only exceeded in ugliness by her familiar spirit, a little dog of preternatural hideousness, with a hunch on his back and a revolting human face. I tried to conciliate him with “po-po,” Chinese cakes, which he accepted with avidity, and even condescended to sit up and beg for like a Christian dog, but so soon as my store was exhausted he snapped at me as spitefully as ever. The old lady had other familiar spirits even more disgusting, of whose presence she gave evidence by much unbuttoning of robes and scratching. The widow was very eager for cigars and white sugar, which we could not spare her, and as she sat smoking her pipe and grumbling over the money our servants had paid her for the use of her yurt, she was the picture of greed and avarice. I added to her gains, but even that did not satisfy her. Altogether, if I had a pound of cigars, a loaf of sugar, and a purseful of money, I should be sorry to sleep alone in her yurt. I should dream of Jael and Sisera all night.

At about two or three miles, at a guess, N.W. of the camp stands a large temple, Ma Shên Miao, the temple of the horse spirit, most appropriately placed and dedicated; with my field-glass I could see large trees, leafless as yet, in its enclosure, the only trees that we have seen since Chang Chia Ko̔u. Their size shows that the temple is old, for of course they must have been planted there by the monks. Between the camp and Shang-tu-ho, where we slept, the plain was boundless in length, and confined at the sides by picturesque heights coloured by every variety of light and shade. The distance gave us the most perfectly deceptive mirage I ever saw. It was exactly like a vast lake, the hill spurs running out into it like promontories, and forming bays and creeks. Near Shang-tu-ho we passed by the roadside four stakes driven into the ground, to each of which was attached a cage containing the head of a man in a frightful state of decomposition. The tail of one had escaped from between the bars of the cage, and was dangling to and fro mournfully in the wind. They were the heads of four Chinese highwaymen, once the terror of the road; now, poor wretches, they can only frighten the horses, who may well shy at so ugly a sight. We saw large flocks of Hwang-yang antelopes, but they disappear like white clouds into space, and there is no chance of getting a shot at them.

_6th May._

By way of a change, and to spare my old pony Kwandu, whose turn it was for duty, I walked the first stage, some sixteen miles or more, to Ta Liang Ti. Two miles to the west of the road we passed the Wang-ta-jên-Miao, the temple of his Excellency Wang, the burial-place of a Mongol chieftain of that name, where, as the carter told me, reside the officers in charge of an Imperial establishment for breeding horses. A little excitement was added to the second half of the day by our being warned of a band of “chi-ma-tseih,” horse brigands, who infest the neighbourhood. The Mongols of a large encampment near Ta Liang Ti have been waging war against them; yesterday they caught four, the day before eight, all of whom will be sent to Chang Chia Ko̔u for trial. The heads we saw yesterday belonged to four of their troop. The ground is admirably adapted for their operations. The track skirts a number of low hills, among which they hide, pouncing out upon travellers who are too weak in numbers to offer resistance. The people about are really panic-stricken, and no single cart ventures on the road. An additional cause of fear is that these brigands are Shantung men, who have the reputation of being very terrible. The deuce a tail of a robber did we see, but we met a Mongol armed to the teeth and carrying his long pole and rope for horse-catching—a most powerful engine against a mounted robber—who asked me, in what the Mrs. Malaprop of Peking used to call “broken china,” whether I had seen any brigands, saying that he was one of a party out on the war-trail after them. I could only wish him “good luck with his fishing.” We slept at Ha Pa Chiao, where, as at Ta Liang Ti, the people were especially civil.

_7th May._