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+Project Gutenberg's An Australian in China, by George Ernest Morrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An Australian in China
+       Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma
+
+Author: George Ernest Morrison
+
+Release Date: September 4, 2006 [EBook #19172]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AUSTRALIAN IN CHINA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                        |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in        |
+    | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of   |
+    | this document.                                             |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Macrons are shown as [=o] and [=u]                         |
+    |                                                            |
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: THE AUTHOR IN WESTERN CHINA.]
+
+
+AN AUSTRALIAN IN CHINA
+
+BEING THE NARRATIVE OF A QUIET JOURNEY ACROSS CHINA TO BURMA
+
+BY GEORGE ERNEST MORRISON M.D. EDIN., F.R.G.S.
+
+
+_THIRD EDITION_
+
+LONDON: HORACE COX WINDSOR HOUSE, BREAM'S BUILDINGS E.C.
+
+MDCCCCII
+
+
+TO
+
+JOHN CHIENE, M.D.,
+
+F.R.C.S.E., F.R.S.E., ETC.,
+
+PROFESSOR OF SURGERY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH,
+
+WHO GAVE ME BACK THE POWER OF LOCOMOTION.
+
+I GRATEFULLY
+
+INSCRIBE THIS VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.                                              PAGES
+  INTRODUCTORY--MAINLY ABOUT MISSIONARIES AND THE CITY
+  OF HANKOW                                                1-11
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+  FROM HANKOW TO WANHSIEN, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF
+  CHINESE WOMEN AND THE RAPIDS OF THE YANGTSE             12-23
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+  THE CITY OF WANHSIEN, AND THE JOURNEY FROM WANHSIEN
+  TO CHUNGKING                                            24-34
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+  THE CITY OF CHUNGKING--THE CHINESE CUSTOMS--THE
+  FAMOUS MONSIEUR HAAS, AND A FEW WORDS ON
+  THE OPIUM FALLACY                                       35-49
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+  THE JOURNEY FROM CHUNGKING TO SUIFU--CHINESE INNS       50-62
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+  THE CITY OF SUIFU--THE CHINA INLAND MISSION, WITH
+  SOME GENERAL REMARKS ABOUT MISSIONARIES IN CHINA        63-75
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+  SUIFU TO CHAOTONG, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE
+  PROVINCE OF YUNNAN--CHINESE PORTERS, POSTAL
+  ARRANGEMENTS, AND BANKS                                 76-96
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+  THE CITY OF CHAOTONG, WITH SOME REMARKS ON ITS
+  POVERTY, INFANTICIDE, SELLING FEMALE CHILDREN
+  INTO SLAVERY, TORTURES, AND THE CHINESE INSENSIBILITY
+  TO PAIN                                                97-106
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+  MAINLY ABOUT CHINESE DOCTORS                          107-114
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+  THE JOURNEY FROM CHAOTONG TO TONGCHUAN                115-124
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+  THE CITY OF TONGCHUAN, WITH SOME REMARKS UPON
+  INFANTICIDE                                           125-134
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+  TONGCHUAN TO YUNNAN CITY                              135-147
+
+  CHAPTER XIII.
+  AT YUNNAN CITY                                        148-157
+
+  CHAPTER XIV.
+  GOLD, BANKS, AND TELEGRAPHS IN YUNNAN                 158-170
+
+  CHAPTER XV.
+  THE FRENCH MISSION AND THE ARSENAL IN YUNNAN CITY     171-182
+
+  CHAPTER XVI.
+  THE JOURNEY FROM YUNNAN CITY TO TALIFU                183-201
+
+  CHAPTER XVII.
+  THE CITY OF TALI--PRISONS--POISONING--PLAGUES AND
+  MISSIONS                                              202-217
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII.
+  THE JOURNEY FROM TALI, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE
+  CHARACTER OF THE CANTONESE, CHINESE EMIGRANTS,
+  CRETINS, AND WIFE-BEATING IN CHINA                    218-232
+
+  CHAPTER XIX.
+  THE MEKONG AND SALWEEN RIVERS--HOW TO TRAVEL
+  IN CHINA                                              233-243
+
+  CHAPTER XX.
+  THE CITY OF TENGYUEH--THE CELEBRATED WUNTHO
+  SAWBWA--SHAN SOLDIERS                                 244-259
+
+  CHAPTER XXI.
+  THE SHAN TOWN OF SANTA, AND MANYUEN, THE SCENE
+  OF CONSUL MARGARY'S MURDER                            260-269
+
+  CHAPTER XXII.
+  CHINA AS A FIGHTING POWER--THE KACHINS--AND THE
+  LAST STAGE INTO BHAMO                                 270-281
+
+  CHAPTER XXIII.
+  BHAMO, MANDALAY, RANGOON, AND CALCUTTA                282-291
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+_Mostly from Photographs by_ MR. C. JENSEN _of the Imperial Chinese
+Telegraphs._
+
+
+  THE AUTHOR IN WESTERN CHINA                    _Frontispiece._
+
+  THE AUTHOR'S CHINESE PASSPORT                        _page_ 8
+
+  ON A BALCONY IN WESTERN CHINA                              14
+
+  THE RIVER YANGTSE AT TUNG-LO-HSIA                          34
+
+  MEMORIAL ARCHWAY AT THE FORT OF FU-TO-KUAN                 34
+
+  CHUNGKING, FROM THE OPPOSITE BANK OF THE YANGTSE           38
+
+  A TEMPLE THEATRE IN CHUNGKING                              44
+
+  ON THE MAIN ROAD TO SUIFU                                  52
+
+  CULTIVATION IN TERRACES                                    58
+
+  SCENE IN SZECHUEN                                          58
+
+  OPIUM-SMOKING                                              72
+
+  A TEMPLE IN SZECHUEN                                       84
+
+  LAOWATAN                                                   84
+
+  THE OPIUM-SMOKER OF ROMANCE                                93
+
+  PAGODA BY THE WAYSIDE, WESTERN CHINA                      118
+
+  THE BIG EAST GATE OF YUNNAN CITY                          146
+
+  VIEW IN YUNNAN CITY                                       156
+
+  SOLDIERS ON THE WALL OF YUNNAN CITY                       168
+
+  THE PAGODA OF YUNNAN CITY, 250 FEET HIGH                  174
+
+  THE VICEROY OF TWO PROVINCES                              180
+
+  THE AUTHOR'S CHINESE NAME                                 182
+
+  THE GIANT OF YUNNAN                                       184
+
+  THE "EAGLE NEST BARRIER," ON THE ROAD TO TALIFU           192
+
+  SNOW-CLAD MOUNTAINS BEHIND TALIFU                         204
+
+  MEMORIAL IN A TEMPLE NEAR TALIFU                          220
+
+  THE DESCENT TO THE RIVER MEKONG                           232
+
+  INSIDE VIEW OF A SUSPENSION BRIDGE                        236
+
+  THE RIVER SALWEEN                                         240
+
+  THE RIVER SHWELI AND ITS SUSPENSION BRIDGE                242
+
+  THE SUBURB BEYOND THE SOUTH GATE OF TENGYUEH              250
+
+  CHINESE MAP OF CHUNGKING                                  292
+
+  ROUGH SKETCH-MAP OF CHINA AND BURMA                  _at end._
+
+
+
+
+AN AUSTRALIAN IN CHINA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTORY--MAINLY ABOUT MISSIONARIES AND THE CITY OF HANKOW.
+
+
+In the first week of February, 1894, I returned to Shanghai from Japan.
+It was my intention to go up the Yangtse River as far as Chungking, and
+then, dressed as a Chinese, to cross quietly over Western China, the
+Chinese Shan States, and Kachin Hills to the frontier of Burma. The
+ensuing narrative will tell how easily and pleasantly this journey,
+which a few years ago would have been regarded as a formidable
+undertaking, can now be done.
+
+The journey was, of course, in no sense one of exploration; it consisted
+simply of a voyage of 1500 miles up the Yangtse River, followed by a
+quiet, though extended, excursion of another 1500 miles along the great
+overland highway into Burma, taken by one who spoke no Chinese, who had
+no interpreter or companion, who was unarmed, but who trusted implicitly
+in the good faith of the Chinese. Anyone in the world can cross over to
+Burma in the way I did, provided he be willing to exercise for a certain
+number of weeks or months some endurance--for he will have to travel
+many miles on foot over a mountainous country--and much forbearance.
+
+I went to China possessed with the strong racial antipathy to the
+Chinese common to my countrymen, but that feeling has long since given
+way to one of lively sympathy and gratitude, and I shall always look
+back with pleasure to this journey, during which I experienced, while
+traversing provinces as wide as European kingdoms, uniform kindness and
+hospitality, and the most charming courtesy. In my case, at least, the
+Chinese did not forget their precept, "deal gently with strangers from
+afar."
+
+I left Shanghai on Sunday, February 11th, by the Jardine Matheson's
+steamer _Taiwo_. One kind friend, a merchant captain who had seen life
+in every important seaport in the world, came down, though it was past
+midnight, to bid me farewell. We shook hands on the wharf, and for the
+last time. Already he had been promised the first vacancy in Jardine
+Matheson's. Some time after my departure, when I was in Western China,
+he was appointed one of the officers of the ill-fated _Kowshing_, and
+when this unarmed transport before the declaration of war was destroyed
+by a Japanese gunboat, he was among the slain--struck, I believe, by a
+Japanese bullet while struggling for life in the water.
+
+I travelled as a Chinese, dressed in warm Chinese winter clothing, with
+a pigtail attached to the inside of my hat. I could not have been more
+comfortable. I had a small cabin to myself. I had of course my own
+bedding, and by paying a Mexican dollar a day to the Chinese steward,
+"foreign chow," was brought me from the saloon. The traveller who cares
+to travel in this way, to put his pride in his pocket and a pigtail down
+his back, need pay only one-fourth of what it would cost him to travel
+as a European in European dress.
+
+But I was, I found, unwittingly travelling under false pretences. When
+the smart chief officer came for my fare he charged me, I thought, too
+little. I expressed my surprise, and said that I thought the fare was
+seven dollars. "So it is," he replied "but we only charge missionaries
+five dollars, and I knew you were a missionary even before they told
+me." How different was his acuteness from that of the Chinese compradore
+who received me on the China Merchants' steamer _Hsin Chi_, in which I
+once made a voyage from Shanghai to Tientsin, also in Chinese dress! The
+conversation was short, sharp, and emphatic. The compradore looked at me
+searchingly. "What pidgin belong you?" he asked--meaning what is your
+business? Humbly I answered, "My belong Jesus Christ pidgin"; that is, I
+am a missionary, to which he instantly and with some scorn replied, "No
+dam fear!"
+
+We called at the river ports and reached Hankow on the 14th. Hankow, the
+Chinese say, is the mart of eight provinces and the centre of the earth.
+It is the chief distributing centre of the Yangtse valley, the capital
+city of the centre of China. The trade in tea, its staple export, is
+declining rapidly, particularly since 1886. Indian opium goes no higher
+up the river than this point; its importation into Hankow is now
+insignificant, amounting to only 738 piculs (44 tons) per annum. Hankow
+is on the left bank of the Yangtse, separated only by the width of the
+Han river from Hanyang, and by the width of the Yangtse from Wuchang;
+these three divisions really form one large city, with more inhabitants
+than the entire population of the colony of Victoria.
+
+Wuchang is the capital city of the two provinces of Hunan and Hupeh; it
+is here that the Viceroy, Chang Chi Tung, resides in his official yamen
+and dispenses injustice from a building almost as handsome as the
+American mission-houses which overlook it. Chang Chi Tung is the most
+anti-foreign of all the Viceroys of China; yet no Viceroy in the Empire
+has ever had so many foreigners in his employ as he. "Within the four
+seas," he says, "all men are brothers"; yet the two provinces he rules
+over are closed against foreigners, and the missionaries are compelled
+to remain under the shelter of the foreign Concession in Hankow. With a
+public spirit unusual among Chinese Viceroys he has devoted the immense
+revenues of his office to the modern development of the resources of his
+vice-kingdom. He has erected a gigantic cotton-mill at Wuchang with
+thirty-five thousand spindles, covering six acres and lit with the
+electric light, and with a reservoir of three acres and a half. He has
+built a large mint. At Hanyang he has erected magnificent iron-works and
+blast furnaces which cover many acres and are provided with all the
+latest machinery. He has iron and coal mines, with a railway seventeen
+miles long from the mines to the river, and specially constructed
+river-steamers and special hoisting machinery at the river-banks. Money
+he has poured out like water; he is probably the only important official
+in China who will leave office a poor man.
+
+Acting as private secretary to the Viceroy is a clever Chinese named Kaw
+Hong Beng, the author of _Defensio Populi_, that often-quoted attack
+upon missionary methods which appeared first in _The North China Daily
+News_. A linguist of unusual ability, who publishes in _The Daily News_
+translations from Heine in English verse, Kaw is gifted with a rare
+command over the resources of English. He is a Master of Arts of the
+University of Edinburgh. Yet, strange paradox, notwithstanding that he
+had the privilege of being trained in the most pious and earnest
+community in the United Kingdom, under the lights of the United
+Presbyterian Kirk, Free Kirk, Episcopalian Church, and _The_ Kirk, not
+to mention a large and varied assortment of Dissenting Churches of more
+or less dubious orthodoxy, he is openly hostile to the introduction of
+Christianity into China. And nowhere in China is the opposition to the
+introduction of Christianity more intense than in the Yangtse valley. In
+this intensity many thoughtful missionaries see the greater hope of the
+ultimate conversion of this portion of China; opposition they say is a
+better aid to missionary success than mere apathy.
+
+During the time I was in China, I met large numbers of missionaries of
+all classes, in many cities from Peking to Canton, and they unanimously
+expressed satisfaction at the progress they are making in China.
+Expressed succinctly, their harvest may be described as amounting to a
+fraction more than two Chinamen per missionary per annum. If, however,
+the paid ordained and unordained native helpers be added to the number
+of missionaries, you find that the aggregate body converts nine-tenths
+of a Chinaman per worker per annum; but the missionaries deprecate their
+work being judged by statistics. There are 1511 Protestant missionaries
+labouring in the Empire; and, estimating their results from the
+statistics of previous years as published in the _Chinese Recorder_, we
+find that they gathered last year (1893) into the fold 3127 Chinese--not
+all of whom it is feared are genuine Christians--at a cost of _£350,000_,
+a sum equal to the combined incomes of the ten chief London hospitals.
+
+Hankow itself swarms with missionaries, "who are unhappily divided into
+so many sects, that even a foreigner is bewildered by their number, let
+alone the heathen to whom they are accredited." (Medhurst.)
+
+Dwelling in well-deserved comfort in and around the foreign settlement,
+there are members of the London Missionary Society, of the Tract
+Society, of the Local Tract Society, of the British and Foreign Bible
+Society, of the National Bible Society of Scotland, of the American
+Bible Society; there are Quaker missionaries, Baptist, Wesleyan, and
+Independent missionaries of private means; there are members of the
+Church Missionary Society, of the American Board of Missions, and of the
+American High Church Episcopal Mission; there is a Medical Mission in
+connection with the London Missionary Society, there is a flourishing
+French Mission under a bishop, the "_Missions étrangères de Paris_," a
+Mission of Franciscan Fathers, most of whom are Italian, and a Spanish
+Mission of the Order of St. Augustine.
+
+The China Inland Mission has its chief central distributing station at
+Hankow, and here also are the headquarters of a Scandinavian Mission, of
+a Danish Mission, and of an unattached mission, most of the members of
+which are also Danish. Where there are so many missions, of so many
+different sects, and holding such widely divergent views, it is, I
+suppose, inevitable that each mission should look with some disfavour
+upon the work done by its neighbours, should have some doubts as to the
+expediency of their methods, and some reasonable misgivings as to the
+genuineness of their conversions.
+
+The Chinese "Rice Christians," those spurious Christians who become
+converted in return for being provided with rice, are just those who
+profit by these differences of opinion, and who, with timely lapses from
+grace, are said to succeed in being converted in turn by all the
+missions from the Augustins to the Quakers.
+
+Every visitor to Hankow and to all other open ports, who is a supporter
+of missionary effort, is pleased to find that his preconceived notions
+as to the hardships and discomforts of the open port missionary in China
+are entirely false. Comfort and pleasures of life are there as great as
+in any other country. Among the most comfortable residences in Hankow
+are the quarters of the missionaries; and it is but right that the
+missionaries should be separated as far as possible from all
+discomfort--missionaries who are sacrificing all for China, and who are
+prepared to undergo any reasonable hardship to bring enlightenment to
+this land of darkness.
+
+I called at the headquarters of the Spanish mission of Padres Agustinos
+and smoked a cigarette with two of the Padres, and exchanged
+reminiscences of Valladolid and Barcelona. And I can well conceive,
+having seen the extreme dirtiness of the mission premises, how little
+the Spaniard has to alter his ways in order to make them conform to the
+more ancient civilisation of the Chinese.
+
+In Hankow there is a large foreign concession with a handsome embankment
+lined by large buildings. There is a rise and fall in the river between
+summer and winter levels of nearly sixty feet. In the summer the river
+laps the edge of the embankment and may overflow into the concession; in
+the winter, broad steps lead down to the edge of the water which, even
+when shrunk into its bed, is still more than half a mile in width. Our
+handsome consulate is at one end of the embankment; at the other there
+is a remarkable municipal building which was designed by a former City
+constable, who was, I hope, more expert with the handcuffs than he was
+with the pencil.
+
+[Illustration: THE AUTHOR'S CHINESE PASSPORT.]
+
+Our interests in Hankow are protected by Mr. Pelham Warren, the Consul,
+one of the ablest men in the Service. I registered at the Consulate as a
+British subject and obtained a Chinese passport in terms of the Treaty
+of Tientsin for the four provinces Hupeh, Szechuen, Kweichow, and
+Yunnan, available for one year from the date of issue.
+
+I had no servant. An English-speaking "boy," hearing that I was in need
+of one, came to me to recommend "his number one flend," who, he assured
+me, spoke English "all the same Englishman." But when the "flend" came I
+found that he spoke English all the same as I spoke Chinese. He was not
+abashed, but turned away wrath by saying to me, through an interpreter,
+"It is true that I cannot speak the foreign language, but the foreign
+gentleman is so clever that in one month he will speak Chinese
+beautifully." We did not come to terms.
+
+At Hankow I embarked on the China Merchants' steamer _Kweili_, the only
+triple-screw steamer on the River, and four days later, on February
+21st, I landed at Ichang, the most inland port on the Yangtse yet
+reached by steam. Ichang is an open port; it is the scene of the
+anti-foreign riot of September 2nd, 1891, when the foreign settlement
+was pillaged and burnt by the mob, aided by soldiers of the Chentai
+Loh-Ta-Jen, the head military official in charge at Ichang, "who gave
+the outbreak the benefit of his connivance." Pleasant zest is given to
+life here in the anticipation of another outbreak; it is the only
+excitement.
+
+From Ichang to Chungking--a distance of 412 miles--the river Yangtse, in
+a great part of its course, is a series of rapids which no steamer has
+yet attempted to ascend, though it is contended that the difficulties of
+navigation would not be insuperable to a specially constructed steamer
+of elevated horse-power. Some idea of the speed of the current at this
+part of the river may be given by the fact that a junk, taking thirty to
+thirty-five days to do the upward journey, hauled most of the way by
+gangs of trackers, has been known to do the down-river journey in two
+days and a half.
+
+Believing that I could thus save some days on the journey, I decided to
+go to Chungking on foot, and engaged a coolie to accompany me. We were
+to start on the Thursday afternoon; but about midnight on Wednesday I
+met Dr. Aldridge, of the Customs, who easily persuaded me that by taking
+the risk of going in a small boat (a _wupan_), and not in an ordinary
+passenger junk (a _kwatze_), I might, with luck, reach Chungking as soon
+by water as I could reach Wanhsien at half the distance by land. The
+Doctor was a man of surprising energy. He offered to arrange everything
+for me, and by 6 o'clock in the morning he had engaged a boat, had
+selected a captain (_laoban_), and a picked crew of four young men, who
+undertook to land me in Chungking in fifteen days, and had given them
+all necessary instructions for my journey. All was to be ready for a
+start the same evening.
+
+During the course of the morning the written agreement was brought me by
+the laoban, drawn up in Chinese and duly signed, of which a Chinese
+clerk made me the following translation into English. I transcribe it
+literally:--
+
+Yang Hsing Chung (the laoban) hereby contracts to convey Dr. M. to
+Chungking on the following conditions:--
+
+     1. The passage-money agreed upon is 28,000 cash (_£2 16s._),
+     which includes all charges.
+
+     2. If Chungking is reached in twelve days, Dr. M. will give
+     the master 32,500 cash instead; if in thirteen days 31,000,
+     and if in fifteen days 28,000.
+
+     3. If all goes well and the master does his duty
+     satisfactorily, Dr. M. will give him 30,000 cash, even if he
+     gets to Chungking in fifteen days.
+
+     4. The sum of 14,000 cash is to be advanced to the master
+     before starting; the remainder to be paid on arrival at
+     Chungking.
+
+               (Signed)     YANG HSING CHUNG.
+
+  Dated the 17th day of the 2nd moon,
+          K, shui 20th year.
+
+The Chinaman who wrote this in English speaks English better than many
+Englishmen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+FROM ICHANG TO WANHSIEN, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF CHINESE WOMEN AND THE
+RAPIDS OF THE YANGTSE KIANG.
+
+
+The agreement was brought me in the morning; all the afternoon I was
+busy, and at 8 p.m. I embarked from the Customs pontoon. The boat was a
+wupan (five boards), 28 feet long and drawing 8 inches. Its sail was
+like the wing of a butterfly, with transverse ribs of light bamboo; its
+stern was shaped "like a swallow's wings at rest." An improvised
+covering of mats amidships was my crib; and with spare mats, slipt
+during the day over the boat's hood, coverings could be made at night
+for'ard for my three men and aft for the other two. It seemed a frail
+little craft to face the dangers of the cataracts, but it was manned by
+as smart a crew of young Chinese as could be found on the river. It was
+pitch dark when we paddled into the stream amidst a discharge of
+crackers. As we passed under the _Kweili_, men were there to wish me
+_bon voyage_, and a revolver was emptied into the darkness to propitiate
+the river god.
+
+We paddled up the bank under the sterns of countless junks, past the
+walled city, and then, crossing to the other bank, we made fast and
+waited for the morning to begin our journey. The lights of the city were
+down the river; all was quiet; my men were in good heart, and there was
+no doubt whatever that they would make every effort to fulfil their
+contract.
+
+At daylight we were away again and soon entered the first of the great
+gorges where the river has cleft its way through the mountains.
+
+With a clear and sunny sky, the river flowing smoothly and reflecting
+deeply the lofty and rugged hills which fall steeply to the water's
+edge, a light boat, and a model crew, it was a pleasure to lie at ease
+wrapped in my Chinese pukai and watch the many junks lazily falling down
+the river, the largest of them "dwarfed by the colossal dimensions of
+the surrounding scenery to the size of sampans," and the fishing boats,
+noiseless but for the gentle creaking of the sheers and dip-net,
+silently working in the still waters under the bank.
+
+At Ping-shan-pa there is an outstation of the Imperial Maritime Customs
+in charge of a seafaring man who was once a cockatoo farmer in South
+Australia, and drove the first team of bullocks to the Mount Brown
+diggings. He lives comfortably in a house-boat moored to the bank. He is
+one of the few Englishmen in China married in the English way, as
+distinct from the Chinese, to a Chinese girl. His wife is one of the
+prettiest girls that ever came out of Nanking, and talks English
+delightfully with a musical voice that is pleasant to listen to. I
+confess that I am one of those who agree with the missionary writer in
+regarding "the smile of a Chinese woman as inexpressibly charming." I
+have seen girls in China who would be considered beautiful in any
+capital in Europe. The attractiveness of the Japanese lady has been the
+theme of many writers, but, speaking as an impartial observer who has
+been both in Japan and China, I have never been able to come to any
+other decision than that in every feature the Chinese woman is superior
+to her Japanese sister. She is head and shoulders above the Japanese;
+she is more intellectual, or, rather, she is more capable of
+intellectual development; she is incomparably more chaste and modest.
+She is prettier, sweeter, and more trustworthy than the misshapen
+cackling little dot with black teeth that we are asked to admire as a
+Japanese beauty. The traveller in China is early impressed by the
+contrast between the almost entire freedom from apparent immorality of
+the Chinese cities, especially of Western China, and the flaunting
+indecency of the _Yoshiwaras_ of Japan, with "their teeming, seething,
+busy mass of women, whose virtue is industry and whose industry is
+vice."
+
+The small feet of the Chinese women, though admired by the Chinese and
+poetically referred to by them as "three-inch gold lilies," are in our
+eyes a very unpleasant deformity--but still, even with this deformity,
+the walk of the Chinese woman is more comely than the gait of the
+Japanese woman as she shambles ungracefully along with her little bent
+legs, scraping her wooden-soled slippers along the pavement with a noise
+that sets your teeth on edge. "Girls are like flowers," say the Chinese,
+"like the willow. It is very important that their feet should be bound
+short so that they can walk beautifully with mincing steps, swaying
+gracefully, and thus showing to all that they are persons of
+respectability." Apart from the Manchus, the dominant race, whose women
+do not bind their feet, all chaste Chinese girls have small feet. Those
+who have large feet are either, speaking generally, ladies of easy
+virtue or slave girls. And, of course, no Christian girl is allowed to
+have her feet bound.
+
+[Illustration: ON A BALCONY IN WESTERN CHINA.]
+
+Leaving Ping-shan-pa with a stiff breeze in our favour we slowly stemmed
+the current. Look at the current side, and you would think we were doing
+eight knots an hour or more, but look at the shore side, close to which
+we kept to escape as far as possible from the current, and you saw how
+gradually we felt our way along.
+
+At a double row of mat sheds filled with huge coils of bamboo rope of
+all thicknesses, my laoban went ashore to purchase a towline; he took
+with him 1000 cash (about two shillings), and returned with a coil 100
+yards in length and 600 cash of change. The rope he brought was made of
+plaited bamboo, was as thick as the middle finger, and as tough as
+whalebone.
+
+The country was more open and terraced everywhere into gardens. Our
+progress was most satisfactory. When night came we drew into the bank,
+and I coiled up in my crib and made myself comfortable. Space was
+cramped, and I had barely room to stretch my legs. My cabin was 5 feet 6
+inches square and 4 feet high, open behind, but with two little doors in
+front, out of which I could just manage to squeeze myself sideways round
+the mast. Coir matting was next the floor boards, then a thick Chinese
+quilt (a _pukai_), then a Scotch plaid made in Geelong. My pillow was
+Chinese, and the hardest part of the bed; my portmanteau was beside me
+and served as a desk; a Chinese candle, more wick than wax, stuck into a
+turnip, gave me light.
+
+This, our first day's journey, brought us to within sound of the worst
+rapid on the river, the Hsintan, and the roar of the cataract hummed in
+our ears all night.
+
+Early in the morning we were at the foot of the rapid under the bank on
+the opposite side of the river from the town of Hsintan. It was an
+exciting scene. A swirling torrent with a roar like thunder was frothing
+down the cataract. Above, barriers of rocks athwart the stream stretched
+like a weir across the river, damming the deep still water behind it.
+The shore was strewn with boulders. Groups of trackers were on the bank
+squatting on the rocks to see the foreign devil and his cockleshell.
+Other Chinese were standing where the side-stream is split by the
+boulders into narrow races, catching fish with great dexterity, dipping
+them out of the water with scoop-nets.
+
+We rested in some smooth water under shelter and put out our towline;
+three of my boys jumped ashore and laid hold of it; another with his
+bamboo boat-hook stood on the bow; the laoban was at the tiller; and I
+was cooped up useless in the well under the awning. The men started
+hauling as we pushed out into the sea of waters. The boat quivered, the
+water leapt at the bow as if it would engulf us; our three men were
+obviously too few. The boat danced in the rapid. My men on board
+shrieked excitedly that the towrope was fouling--it had caught in a
+rock--but their voices could not be heard; our trackers were brought to
+with a jerk; the hindmost saw the foul and ran back to free it, but he
+was too late, for the boat had come beam on to the current. Our captain
+frantically waved to let go, and the next moment we were tossed bodily
+into the cataract. The boat heeled gunwale under, and suddenly, but the
+bowman kept his feet like a Blondin, dropped the boat-hook, and jumped
+to unlash the halyard; a wave buried the boat nose under and swamped me
+in my kennel; my heart stopped beating, and, scared out of my wits, I
+began to strip off my sodden clothes; but before I had half done the
+sail had been set; both men had miraculously fended the boat from a
+rock, which, by a moment's hesitation, would have smashed us in bits or
+buried us in the boiling trough formed by the eddy below it, and, with
+another desperate effort, we had slid from danger into smooth water.
+Then my men laughed heartily. How it was done I do not know, but I felt
+keen admiration for the calm dexterity with which it had been done.
+
+We baled the water out of the boat, paid out a second towrope--this one
+from the bow to keep the stern under control, the other being made fast
+to the mast, and took on board a licensed pilot. Extra trackers, hired
+for a few cash, laid hold of both towlines, and bodily--the water
+swelling and foaming under our bows--the boat was hauled against the
+torrent, and up the ledge of water that stretches across the river. We
+were now in smooth water at the entrance to the Mi Tsang Gorge. Two
+stupendous walls of rock, almost perpendicular, as bold and rugged as
+the Mediterranean side of the Rock of Gibraltar seem folded one behind
+the other across the river. "Savage cliffs are these, where not a tree
+and scarcely a blade of grass can grow, and where the stream, which is
+rather heard than seen, seems to be fretting in vain efforts to escape
+from its dark and gloomy prison." In the gorge itself the current was
+restrained, and boats could cross from bank to bank without difficulty.
+It was an eerie feeling to glide over the sunless water shut in by the
+stupendous sidewalls of rock. At a sandy spit to the west of the gorge
+we landed and put things in order. And here I stood and watched the
+junks disappear down the river one after the other, and I saw the truth
+of what Hosie had written that, as their masts are always unshipped in
+the down passage, the junks seem to be "passing with their human freight
+into eternity."
+
+An immensely high declivity with a precipitous face was in front of us,
+which strained your eyes to look at; yet high up to the summit and to
+the very edge of the precipice, little farmsteads are dotted, and every
+yard of land available is under cultivation. So steep is it that the
+scanty soil must be washed away, you think, at the first rains, and only
+an adventurous goat could dwell there in comfort. My laoban, Enjeh,
+pointing to this mighty mass, said, "_Pin su chiao_;" but whether these
+words were the name of the place, or were intended to convey to me his
+sense of its magnificence, or dealt with the question of the
+precariousness of tenure so far above our heads, I had no means to
+determine.
+
+My laoban knew twelve words of English, and I twelve words of Chinese,
+and this was the extent of our common vocabulary; it had to be carefully
+eked out with signs and gestures. I knew the Chinese for rice,
+flourcake, tea, egg, chopsticks, opium, bed, by-and-by, how many,
+charcoal, cabbage, and customs. My laoban could say in English, or
+pidgin English, chow, number one, no good, go ashore, sit down,
+by-and-by, to-morrow, match, lamp, alright, one piecee, and goddam. This
+last named exotic he had been led to consider as synonymous with "very
+good." It was not the first time I had known the words to be misapplied.
+I remember reading in the _Sydney Bulletin_, that a Chinese cook in
+Sydney when applying for a situation detailed to the mistress his
+undeniable qualifications, concluding with the memorable announcement,
+"My Clistian man mum; my eat beef; my say goddam."
+
+There was a small village behind us. The villagers strolled down to see
+the foreigner whom children well in the background called "_Yang
+kweitze_" (foreign devil). Below on the sand, were the remains of a
+junk, confiscated for smuggling salt; it had been sawn bodily in two.
+Salt is a Government monopoly and a junk found smuggling it is
+confiscated on the spot.
+
+Kueichow, on the left bank, is the first walled town we came to. Here
+we had infinite difficulty in passing the rapids, and crossed and
+recrossed the river several times. I sat in the boat stripped and
+shivering, for shipwreck seemed certain, and I did not wish to be
+drowned like a rat. For cool daring I never saw the equal of my boys,
+and their nicety of judgment was remarkable. Creeping along close to the
+bank, every moment in danger of having its bottom knocked out, the boat
+would be worked to the exact point from which the crossing of the river
+was feasible, balanced for a moment in the stream, then with sail set
+and a clipping breeze, and my men working like demons with the oars,
+taking short strokes, and stamping time with their feet, the boat shot
+into the current. We made for a rock in the centre of the river; we
+missed it, and my heart was in my mouth as I saw the rapid below us into
+which we were being drawn, when the boat mysteriously swung half round
+and glided under the lee of the rock. One of the boys leapt out with the
+bow-rope, and the others with scull and boat-hook worked the boat round
+to the upper edge of the rock, and then, steadying her for the dash
+across, pushed off again into the swirling current and made like fiends
+for the bank. Standing on the stern, managing the sheet and tiller, and
+with his bamboo pole ready, the laoban yelled and stamped in his
+excitement; there was the roar of the cataract below us, towards which
+we were fast edging stern on, destruction again threatened us and all
+seemed over, when in that moment we entered the back-wash and were again
+in good shelter. And so it went on, my men with splendid skill doing
+always the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, with
+unerring certainty.
+
+At Yehtan rapid, which is said to be the worst on the river in the
+winter, as the Hsintan rapid is in summer, three of the boys went
+ashore to haul us up the ledge of water--they were plainly insufficient.
+While we were hanging on the cataract extra trackers appeared from
+behind the rocks and offered their services. They could bargain with us
+at an advantage. It was a case well known to all Chinese "of speaking of
+the price after the pig has been killed." But, when we agreed to their
+terms, they laid hold of the towrope and hauled us through in a moment.
+Here, as at other dangerous rapids on the river, an official lifeboat is
+stationed. It is of broad beam, painted red. The sailors are paid eighty
+cash (_2d._) a day, and are rewarded with 1000 cash for every life they
+save, and 800 cash for every corpse.
+
+Wushan Gorge, the "Witches' Gorge," which extends from Kuantukou to
+Wushan-hsien, a distance of twenty miles, is the longest gorge on the
+river.
+
+Directly facing us as we emerged from the gorge was the walled town of
+Wushan-hsien. Its guardian pagoda, with its seven stories and its
+upturned gables, like the rim of an official hat, is down-stream from
+the city, and thus prevents wealth and prosperity being swept by the
+current past the city.
+
+Beyond there is a short but steep rapid. Before a strong wind with all
+sail set we boldly entered it and determined which was the stronger, the
+wind or the current. But, while we hung in the current calling and
+whistling for the wind, the wind flagged for a moment; tension being
+removed, the bow swung into the rocks; but the water was shallow, and in
+a trice two of the boys had jumped into the water and were holding the
+boat-sides. Then poling and pulling we crept up the rapid into smooth
+water. Never was there any confusion, never a false stroke. To hear my
+boys jabber in their unintelligible speech you pictured disorder, and
+disaster, and wild excitement; to see them act you witnessed such
+coolness, skill, and daring as you had rarely seen before. My boys were
+all young. The captain was only twenty, and was a model of physical
+grace, with a face that will gladden the heart of the Chinese maiden
+whom he condescends to select to be the mother of his children.
+
+Junks were making slow progress up the river. The towpath is here on the
+left bank, sixty feet above the present level of the river. Barefooted
+trackers, often one hundred in a gang, clamber over the rocks "like a
+pack of hounds in full cry," each with the coupling over his shoulder
+and all singing in chorus, the junk they are towing often a quarter of a
+mile astern of them. When a rapid intervenes they strain like bondmen at
+the towrope; the line creaks under the enormous tension but holds fast.
+On board the junk, a drum tattoo is beaten and fire-crackers let off,
+and a dozen men with long ironshod bamboos sheer the vessel off the
+rocks as foot by foot it is drawn past the obstruction. Contrast with
+this toilsome slowness the speed of the junk bound down-stream. Its mast
+is shipped; its prodigious bow-sweep projects like a low bowsprit; the
+after deck is covered as far as midships with arched mat-roof; coils of
+bamboo rope are hanging under the awning; a score or more of boatmen,
+standing to their work and singing to keep time, work the yulos, as
+looking like a modern whaleback the junk races down the rapids.
+
+Kweichou-fu, 146 miles from Ichang, is one of the largest cities on the
+Upper Yangtse. Just before it is the Feng-hsiang Gorge the "Windbox
+Gorge" where the mountains have been again cleft in twain to let pass
+the river; this is the last of the great gorges of the Yangtse.
+
+We had left the province of Hupeh. Kweichou is the first prefectural
+city that the traveller meets in Szechuen; for that reason my laoban
+required me to give him my passport that he might take it ashore and
+have it viséed by the magistrate. While he was away two Customs
+officials searched my boat for contraband goods. When he returned, he
+had to pay a squeeze at the Customs station. We clawed with our hooked
+bamboos round the sterns of a hundred Szechuen junks, and were again
+arrested at a likin boat, and more cash passed from my laoban to the
+officials in charge. We went on again, when a third time we came face on
+to a likin-barrier, and a third time my laoban was squeezed. After this
+we were permitted to continue our journey. For the rest of the day
+whenever the laoban caught my eye he raised three fingers and with a
+rueful shake of the head said "Kweichou haikwan (customs) no good"; and
+then he swore, no doubt.
+
+My little boat was the smallest on the river. In sailing it could hold
+its own with all but the long ferry boats or tenders which accompany the
+larger junks to land the trackers and towline. These boats carry a huge
+square sail set vertically from sheer legs, and are very fast. But in
+rowing, poling, and tracking we could beat the river.
+
+Anping was passed--a beautiful country town in a landscape of red hills
+and rich green pastures, of groves of bamboo and cypress, of pretty
+little farmhouses with overhanging eaves and picturesque temples in
+wooded glens.
+
+At Chipatzu there are the remains of a remarkable embankment built of
+huge blocks of dressed stone resting upon a noble brow of natural rock;
+deep Chinese characters are cut into the stone; but the glory is
+departed and there are now only a few straggling huts where there was
+once a large city.
+
+The river was now at its lowest and at every point of sand and shingle,
+meagre bands of gold puddlers were at work washing for gold in cradle
+rockers. To judge, however, from the shabbiness of their surroundings
+there was little fear that their gains would disturb the equilibrium of
+the world's gold yield.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE CITY OF WANHSIEN, AND THE JOURNEY FROM WANHSIEN TO CHUNGKING.
+
+
+At daylight, on March 1st, we were abreast of the many storied pagoda,
+whose lofty position, commanding the approach to the city, brings good
+fortune to the city of Wanhsien. A beautiful country is this--the
+chocolate soil richly tilled, the sides of the hills dotted with
+farmhouses in groves of bamboo and cedar, with every variety of green in
+the fields, shot through with blazing patches of the yellow rape-seed.
+The current was swift, the water was shallow where we were tracking, and
+we were constantly aground in the shingle; but we rounded the point, and
+Wanhsien was before us. This is the half-way city between Ichang and
+Chungking. My smart laoban dressed himself in his best to be ready to go
+ashore with me; he was jubilant at his skill in bringing me so quickly.
+"Sampan number one! goddam!" he said; and, holding up two hands, he
+turned down seven fingers to show that we had come in seven days. Then
+he pointed to other boats that we were passing, and counted on his
+fingers fifteen, whereby I knew he was demonstrating that, had I gone in
+any other boat but his, I should have been fifteen days on the way
+instead of seven.
+
+An immense number of junks of all kinds were moored to the bank, bow on.
+Many of them were large vessels, with hulls like that of an Aberdeen
+clipper. Many carry foreign flags, by which they are exempt from the
+Chinese likin duties, so capricious in their imposition, and pay instead
+a general five per cent. _ad valorem_ duty on their cargoes, which is
+levied by the Imperial Maritime Customs, and collected either in
+Chungking or Ichang. From one to the other, with boathooks and paddle,
+we crept past the outer wings of their balanced rudders till we reached
+the landing place. On the rocks at the landing a bevy of women were
+washing, beating their hardy garments with wooden flappers against the
+stones; but they ceased their work as the foreign devil, in his uncouth
+garb, stepped ashore in their midst. Wanhsien is not friendly to
+foreigners in foreign garb. I did not know this, and went ashore dressed
+as a European. Never have I received such a spontaneous welcome as I did
+in this city; never do I wish to receive such another. I landed at the
+mouth of the small creek which separates the large walled city to the
+east from the still larger city beyond the walls to the west. My laoban
+was with me. We passed through the washerwomen. Boys and ragamuffins
+hanging about the shipping saw me, and ran towards me, yelling: "_Yang
+kweitze, Yang kweitze_" (foreign devil, foreign devil).
+
+Behind the booths a story-teller had gathered a crowd; in a moment he
+was alone and the crowd were following me up the hill, yelling and
+howling with a familiarity most offensive to a sensitive stranger. My
+sturdy boy wished me to produce my passport which is the size of an
+admiral's ensign, but I was not such a fool as to do so for it had to
+serve me for many months yet. With this taunting noisy crowd I had to
+walk on as if I enjoyed the demonstration. I stopped once and spoke to
+the crowd, and, as I knew no Chinese, I told them in gentle English of
+the very low opinion their conduct led me to form of the moral
+relations of their mothers, and the resignation with which it induced me
+to contemplate the hyperpyretic surroundings of their posthumous
+existence; and, borrowing the Chinese imprecation, I ventured to express
+the hope that when their souls return again to earth they may dwell in
+the bodies of hogs, since they appeared to me the only habitations meet
+for them.
+
+But my words were useless. With a smiling face, but rage at my heart, I
+led the procession up the creek to a stone bridge where large numbers
+left me, only to have their places taken on the other bank by a still
+more enthusiastic gathering. I stopped here a moment in the jostling
+crowd to look up-stream at that singular natural bridge, which an
+enormous mass of stone has formed across the creek, and I could see the
+high arched bridge beyond it, which stretches from bank to bank in one
+noble span, and is so high above the water that junks can pass under it
+in the summer time when the rains swell this little stream into a broad
+and navigable river.
+
+Then we climbed the steep bank into the city and entering by a dirty
+narrow street we emerged into the main thoroughfare, the crowd still
+following and the shops emptying into the street to see me. We passed
+the Mohammedan Mosque, the Roman Catholic Mission, the City Temple, to a
+Chinese house where I was slipped into the court and the door shut, and
+then into another to find that I was in the home of the China Inland
+Mission, and that the pigtailed celestial receiving me at the steps was
+Mr. Hope Gill. It was my clothes I then learnt that had caused the
+manifestation in my honour. An hour later, when I came out again into
+the street, the crowd was waiting still to see me, but it was
+disappointed to see me now dressed like one of themselves. In the
+meantime I had resumed my Chinese dress. "Look," the people said, "at
+the foreigner; he had on foreign dress, and now he is dressed in Chinese
+even to his queue. Look at his queue, it is false." I took off my hat to
+scratch my head. "Look," they shouted again, "at his queue; it is stuck
+to the inside of his hat." But they ceased to follow me.
+
+There are three Missionaries in Wanhsien of the China Inland Mission,
+one of whom is from Sydney. The mission has been opened six years, and
+has been fairly successful, or completely unsuccessful, according to the
+point of view of the inquirer.
+
+Mr. Hope Gill, the senior member of the mission, is a most earnest good
+man, who works on in his discouraging task with an enthusiasm and
+devotion beyond all praise. A Premillennialist, he preaches without
+ceasing throughout the city; and his preaching is earnest and
+indiscriminate. His method has been sarcastically likened by the
+Chinese, in the words of one of their best-known aphorisms, to the
+unavailing efforts of a "blind fowl picking at random after worms."
+Nearly all the Chinese in Wanhsien have heard the doctrine described
+with greater or less unintelligibility, and it is at their own risk if
+they still refuse to be saved.
+
+During the cholera epidemic this brave man never left his post; he never
+refused a call to attend the sick and dying, and, at the risk of his
+own, saved many lives. And what is his reward? This work he did, the
+Chinese say, not from a disinterested love of his fellows, which was his
+undoubted motive, but to accumulate merit for himself in the invisible
+world beyond the grave. "Gratitude," says this missionary, and it is the
+opinion of many, "is a condition of heart, or of mind, which seems to be
+incapable of existence in the body of a Chinaman." Yet other
+missionaries tell me that no man can possess a livelier sense of
+gratitude than a Chinaman, or manifest it with more sincerity. "If our
+words are compared to the croaking of the frog, we heed it not, but
+freely express the feelings of our heart," are actual words addressed by
+a grateful Chinese patient to the first medical missionary in China. And
+the Chinaman himself will tell you, says Smith, "that it does not follow
+that, because he does not exhibit gratitude he does not feel it. When
+the dumb man swallows a tooth he may not say much about it, but it is
+all inside."
+
+Since its foundation in 1887, the Inland Mission of Wanhsien has been
+conducted with brave perseverance. There are, unfortunately, no
+converts, but there are three hopeful "inquirers," whose conversion
+would be the more speedy the more likely they were to obtain employment
+afterwards. They argue in this way; they say, to quote the words used by
+the Rev. G. L. Mason at the Shanghai Missionary Conference of 1890, "if
+the foreign teacher will take care of our bodies, we will do him the
+favour to seek the salvation of our souls." This question of the
+employment of converts is one of the chief difficulties of the
+missionary in China. "The idea (derived from Buddhism) is universally
+prevalent in China," says the Rev. C. W. Mateer, "that everyone who
+enters any sect should live by it.... When a Chinaman becomes a
+Christian he expects to live by his Christianity."
+
+One of the three inquirers was shown me; he was described as the most
+advanced of the three in knowledge of the doctrine. Now I do not wish to
+write unkindly, but I am compelled to say that this man was a poor,
+wretched, ragged coolie, who sells the commonest gritty cakes in a
+rickety stall round the corner from the mission, who can neither read
+nor write, and belongs to a very humble order of blunted intelligence.
+The poor fellow is the father of a little girl of three, an only child,
+who is both deaf and dumb. And there is the fear that his fondness for
+the little one tempts him to give hope to the missionaries that in him
+they are to see the first fruit of their toil, the first in the district
+to be saved by their teaching, while he nurses a vague hope that, when
+the foreign teachers regard him as adequately converted, they may be
+willing to restore speech and hearing to his poor little offspring. It
+is a scant harvest.
+
+After a Chinese dinner the missionary and I went for a walk into the
+country. In the main street we met a troop of beggars, each with a bowl
+of rice and garbage and a long stick, with a few tattered rags hanging
+round his loins--they were the poorest poor I had ever seen. They were
+the beggars of the city, who had just received their midday meal at the
+"Wanhsien Ragged Homes." There are three institutions of the kind in the
+city for the relief of the destitute; they are entirely supported by
+charity, and are said to have an average annual income of 40,000 taels.
+Wanhsien is a very rich city, with wealthy merchants and great salt
+hongs. The landed gentry and the great junk owners have their town
+houses here. The money distributed by the townspeople in private charity
+is unusually great even for a Chinese city. Its most public-spirited
+citizen is Ch'en, one of the merchant princes of China whose
+transactions are confined exclusively to the products of his own
+country. Starting life with an income of one hundred taels, bequeathed
+him by his father, Ch'en has now agents all over the empire, and
+mercantile dealings which are believed to yield him a clear annual
+income of a quarter of a million taels. His probity is a by-word; his
+benefactions have enriched the province. That cutting in the face of the
+cliff in the Feng-hsiang Gorge near Kweichou-fu, where a pathway for
+trackers has been hewn out of the solid rock, was done at his expense,
+and is said to have cost one hundred thousand taels. Not only by his
+benefactions has Ch'en laid up for himself merit in heaven, but he has
+already had his reward in this world. His son presented himself for the
+M.A. examination for the Hanlin degree, the highest academical degree in
+the Empire. Everyone in China knows that success in this examination is
+dependent upon the favour of Wunchang-te-keun, the god of literature
+(Taoist) "who from generation to generation hath sent his miraculous
+influence down upon earth", and, as the god had seen with approbation
+the good works done by the father, he gave success to the son. When the
+son returned home after his good fortune, he was met beyond the walls
+and escorted into the city with royal honours; his success was a triumph
+for the city which gave him birth.
+
+A short walk and we were out of the city, following a flagged path with
+flights of steps winding up the hill through levelled terraces rich with
+every kind of cereal, and with abundance of poppy. Splendid views of one
+of the richest agricultural regions in the world are here unfolded. Away
+down in the valley is the palatial family mansion of Pien, one of the
+wealthiest yeomen in the province. Beyond you see the commencement of
+the high road, a paved causeway eight feet wide, which extends for
+hundreds of miles to Chentu, the capital of the province, and takes rank
+as the finest work of its kind in the empire. On every hill-top is a
+fort. That bolder than the rest commanding the city at a distance of
+five miles, is on the "Hill of Heavenly Birth." It was built, says
+Hobson, during the Taiping Rebellion; it existed, says the missionary,
+before the present dynasty; discrepant statements characteristic of this
+country of contradictions. But, whether thirty or two hundred and fifty
+years old, the fort is now one in name only, and is at present occupied
+by a garrison of peaceful peasantry.
+
+Chinamen that we met asked us politely "if we had eaten our rice," and
+"whither were we going." We answered correctly. But when with equal
+politeness we asked the wayfarer where he was going, he jerked his chin
+towards the horizon and said, "a long way."
+
+We called at the residence of a rich young Chinese, who had lately
+received it in his inheritance, together with 3000 acres of farmland,
+which, we were told, yield him an annual income of 70,000 taels. In the
+absence of the master, who was away in the country reading with his
+tutor for the Hanlin degree, we were received by the caretakers, who
+showed us the handsome guest chambers, the splendid gilded tablet, the
+large courts, and garden rockeries. A handsome residence is this,
+solidly built of wood and masonry, and with the trellis work carved with
+much elaboration.
+
+It was late when we returned to the mission, and after dark when I went
+on board my little wupan. My boys had not been idle. They had bought new
+provisions of excellent quality, and had made the boat much more
+comfortable. The three kind missionaries came down to wish me Godspeed.
+Brave men! they deserve a kinder fortune than has been their fate
+hitherto. We crossed the river and anchored above the city, ready
+against an early start in the morning.
+
+The day after leaving Wanhsien was the first time that we required any
+assistance on our journey from another junk; it was cheerfully given.
+Our towrope had chafed through, and we were in a difficulty, attempting
+to pass a bad rapid among the rocks, when a large junk was hauled bodily
+past us, and, seeing our plight, hooked on to us and towed us with them
+out of danger. On this night we anchored under the Sentinel Rock
+(Shih-pao-chai), perhaps the most remarkable landmark on the river. From
+two hundred to three hundred feet high, and sixty feet wide at the base,
+it is a detached rock, cleft vertically from a former cliff. A
+nine-storied pagoda has been inset into the south-eastern face, and
+temple buildings crown the summit.
+
+It was surprising how well my men lived on board the boat. They had
+three good meals a day, always with rice and abundance of vegetables,
+and frequently with a little pork. Cooking was done while we were under
+way; for the purpose we had two little earthenware stoves, two pans, and
+a kettle. All along the river cabbages and turnips are abundant and
+cheap. Bumboats, laden to the rail, waylay the boats _en route_, and
+offer an armful of fresh vegetables for the equivalent in copper cash of
+three-eighths of a penny. Other boats peddle firewood, cut short and
+bound in little bundles, and sticks of charcoal. Coal is everywhere
+abundant, and there are excellent briquettes for sale, made of a mixture
+of clay and coal-dust.
+
+All day long now for the rest of our voyage we sailed through a
+beautiful country. From the hill tops to the water's edge the hillsides
+are levelled into a succession of terraces; there are cereals and the
+universal poppy, pretty hamlets, and thriving little villages; a river
+half a mile wide thronged with every kind of river craft, and back in
+the distance snow-clad mountains. There are bamboo sheds at every point,
+with coils of bamboo towrope, mats, and baskets, and huge Szechuen hats
+as wide as an umbrella.
+
+On the morning of March 5th I was awakened by loud screaming and yelling
+ahead of us. I squeezed out of my cabin, and saw a huge junk looming
+down upon us. In an awkward rapid its towline had parted, and the huge
+structure tumbling uncontrolled in the water, was bearing down on us,
+broadside on. It seemed as if we should be crushed against the rocks,
+and we must have been, but for the marvellous skill with which the
+sailors on the junk, just at the critical time, swung their vessel out
+of danger. They were yelling with discord, but worked together as one
+man.
+
+In the afternoon we were at Feng-tu-hsien, a flourishing river port, one
+of the principal outlets of the opium traffic of the Upper Yangtse. Next
+day we were at Fuchou, the other opium port, whose trade in opium is
+greater still than that of Feng-tu-hsien. It is at the junction of a
+large tributary--the Kung-t'-an-ho, which is navigable for large vessels
+for more than two hundred miles. Large numbers of the Fuchou junks were
+moored here, which differ in construction from all other junks on the
+river Yangtse in having their great sterns twisted or wrung a quarter
+round to starboard, and in being steered by an immense stern sweep, and
+not by the balanced rudder of an ordinary junk.
+
+The following day, after a long day's work, we moored beyond the town of
+Chang-show-hsien. Here I paid the laoban 2000 cash, whereupon he paid
+his men something on account, and then blandly suggested a game of
+cards. He was fast winning back his money, when I intervened and bade
+them turn in, as I wished to make an early start in the morning. The
+river seemed to get broader, deeper, and more rapid as we ascended; the
+trackers, on the contrary, became thinner, narrower, and more decrepit.
+
+On March 8th, our fourteenth day out, disaster nearly overtook us when
+within a day's sail of our destination. Next day we reached Chungking
+safely, having done by some days the fastest journey on record up the
+Yangtse rapids. My captain and his young crew had finished the journey
+within the time agreed upon.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIVER YANGTSE AT TUNG-LO-HSIA.]
+
+[Illustration: MEMORIAL ARCHWAY AT THE FORT OF FU-TO-KUAN.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CITY OF CHUNGKING--THE CHINESE CUSTOMS--THE FAMOUS MONSIEUR HAAS,
+AND A FEW WORDS ON THE OPIUM FALLACY.
+
+
+After passing through the gorge known as Tung-lo-hsia ten miles from
+Chungking, the laoban tried to attract my attention, calling me from my
+crib and pointing with his chin up the river repeating "Haikwan one
+piecee," which I interpreted to mean that there was an outpost of the
+customs here in charge of one white man; and this proved to be the case.
+The customs kuatze or houseboat was moored to the left bank; the
+Imperial Customs flag floated gaily over an animated collection of
+native craft. We drew alongside the junk and an Englishman appeared at
+the window.
+
+"Where from?" he asked, laconically.
+
+"Australia."
+
+"The devil, so am I. What part?"
+
+"Victoria."
+
+"So am I. Town?"
+
+"Last from Ballarat."
+
+"My native town, by Jove! Jump up."
+
+I gave him my card. He looked at it and said, "When I was last in
+Victoria I used to follow with much interest a curious walk across
+Australia, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Melbourne done by a namesake.
+Any relation? The same man! I'm delighted to see you." Here then at the
+most inland of the customs stations in China, 1500 miles from the sea,
+I met my fellow countryman who was born near my home and whose father
+was a well-known Mayor of Ballarat City.
+
+Like myself he had formerly been a student of Melbourne University, but
+I was many years his senior. What was his experience of the University I
+forgot to inquire, but mine I remember vividly enough; for it was not
+happy. In the examination for the Second-year Medicine, hoping the more
+to impress the Professors, I entered my name for honours--and they
+rejected me in the preliminary pass. It seems that in the examination in
+Materia Medica, I had among other trifling lapses prescribed a dose of
+Oleum Crotonis of "one half to two drachms _carefully increased_." I
+confess that I had never heard of the wretched stuff; the question was
+taken from far on in the text book and, unfortunately, my reading had
+not extended quite so far. When a deputation from my family waited upon
+the examiner to ascertain the cause of my misadventure, the only
+satisfaction we got was the obliging assurance "that you might as well
+let a mad dog loose in Collins Street" as allow me to become a doctor.
+And then the examiner produced my prescription. But I thought I saw a
+faint chance of escape. I pointed a nervous finger to the two words
+"carefully increased," and pleaded that that indication of caution ought
+to save me. "Save _you_ it might," he shouted with unnecessary
+vehemence; "but, God bless my soul, man, it would not save your
+patient." The examiner was a man intemperate of speech; so I left the
+University. It was a severe blow to the University, but the University
+survived it.
+
+My countryman had been five years in China in the customs service, that
+marvellous organisation which is more impartially open to all the world
+than any other service in the world. As an example, I note that among
+the Commissioners of Customs at the ports of the River Yangtse alone, at
+the time of my voyage the Commissioner at Shanghai was an Austrian, at
+Kiukiang a Frenchman, at Hankow an Englishman, at Ichang a Scandinavian,
+and at Chungking a German.
+
+The Australian had been ten months at Chungking. His up-river journey
+occupied thirty-eight days, and was attended with one moving incident.
+In the Hsintan rapid the towline parted, and his junk was smashed to
+pieces by the rocks, and all that he possessed destroyed. It was in this
+rapid that my boat narrowly escaped disaster, but there was this
+difference in our experiences, that at the time of his accident the
+river was sixty feet higher than on the occasion of mine.
+
+Tang-chia-to, the customs out-station, is ten miles by river from
+Chungking, but not more than four miles by land. So I sent the boat on,
+and in the afternoon walked over to the city. A customs coolie came with
+me to show me the way. My friend accompanied me to the river crossing,
+walking with me through fields of poppy and sugarcane, and open beds of
+tobacco. At the river side he left me to return to his solitary home,
+while I crossed the river in a sampan, and then set out over the hills
+to Chungking. It was more than ever noticeable, the poor hungry
+wretchedness of the river coolies. For three days past all the trackers
+I had seen were the most wretched in physique of any I had met in China.
+Phthisis and malaria prevail among them; their work is terribly arduous;
+they suffer greatly from exposure; they appear to be starving in the
+midst of abundance. My coolie showed well by contrast with the trackers;
+he was sleek and well fed. A "chop dollar," as he would be termed down
+south, for his face was punched or chopped with the small-pox, he swung
+along the paved pathway and up and down the endless stone steps in a way
+that made me breathless to follow. We passed a few straggling houses and
+wayside shrines and tombstones. All the dogs in the district recognised
+that I was a stranger, and yelped consumedly, like the wolfish mongrels
+that they are. From a hill we obtained a misty view of the City of
+Chungking, surrounded on two sides by river and covering a broad expanse
+of hill and highland. I was taken to the customs pontoon on the south
+bank of the river, and then up the steep bank by many steps to the
+basement of an old temple where the two customs officers have their
+pleasant dwelling. I was kindly received, and stayed the night. We were
+an immense height above the water; the great city was across the broad
+expanse of river, here more than seven hundred yards in width. Away down
+below us, moored close to the bank, and guarded by three Chinese armed
+junks or gunboats, was the customs hulk, where the searching is done,
+and where the three officers of the outdoor staff have their offices.
+There is at present but little smuggling, because there are no Chinese
+officials. Smuggling may be expected to begin in earnest as soon as
+Chinese officials are introduced to prevent it. Chinese searchers do
+best who use their eyes not to see--best for themselves, that is. The
+gunboats guarding this Haikwan Station have a nominal complement of
+eighty men, and an actual complement of twenty-four; to avoid, however,
+unnecessary explanation, pay is drawn by the commanding officer, not for
+the actual twenty-four, but for the nominal eighty.
+
+[Illustration: THE CITY OF CHUNGKING, AS SEEN FROM THE OPPOSITE BANK OF
+THE RIVER YANGTSE.]
+
+My two companions in the temple were tidewaiters in the Customs. There
+are many storied lives locked away among the tidewaiters in China. Down
+the river there is a tidewaiter who was formerly professor of French in
+the Imperial University of St. Petersburg; and here in Chungking,
+filling the same humble post, is the godson of a marquis and the nephew
+of an earl, a brave soldier whose father is a major-general and his
+mother an earl's daughter, and who is first cousin to that enlightened
+nobleman and legislator the Earl of C. Few men so young have had so many
+and varied experiences as this sturdy Briton. He has humped his swag in
+Australia, has earned fifteen shillings a day there as a blackleg
+protected by police picquets on a New South Wales coal mine. He was at
+Harrow under Dr. Butler, and at Corpus Christi, Cambridge. He has been
+in the Dublin Fusiliers, and a lieutenant in Weatherby's Horse, enlisted
+in the 5th Lancers, and rose from private to staff-sergeant, and ten
+months later would have had his commission. He served with distinction
+in the Soudan and Zululand, and has three medals with four clasps. He
+was present at El Teb, and at the disaster at Tamai, when McNeill's
+zareeba was broken. He was at Tel-el-kebir; saw Burnaby go forth to meet
+a coveted death at Abu-klea, and was present at Abu-Kru when Sir Herbert
+Stewart received his death-wound. He was at Rorke's Drift, and appears
+with that heroic band in Miss Elizabeth Thompson's painting. Leaving the
+army, C. held for a time a commission in the mounted constabulary of
+Madras, and now he is a third class assistant tidewaiter in the Imperial
+Maritime Customs of China, with a salary as low as his spirits are high.
+
+Chungking is an open port, which is not an open port. By the treaty of
+Tientsin it is included in the clause which states that any foreign
+steamer going to it, a closed port, shall be confiscated. Yet by the
+Chefoo Convention, Chungking is to become an open port as soon as the
+first foreign steamer shall reach there. This reminds one of the
+conflicting instructions once issued by a certain government in
+reference to the building of a new gaol. The instructions were
+explicit:--
+
+     Clause I.--The new gaol shall be constructed out of the
+     materials of the old.
+
+     Clause II.--The prisoners shall remain in the old gaol till
+     the new gaol is constructed.
+
+In Chungking the Commissioner of Customs is Dr. F. Hirth, whose Chinese
+house is on the highest part of Chungking in front of a temple, which,
+dimly seen through the mist, is the crowning feature of the city. A
+distinguished sinologue is the doctor, one of the finest Chinese
+scholars in the Empire, author of "China and the Roman Orient," "Ancient
+Porcelain," and an elaborate "Textbook of Documentary Chinese," which is
+in the hands of most of the Customs staff in China, for whose assistance
+it was specially written. Dr. Hirth is a German who has been many years
+in China. He holds the third button, the transparent blue button, the
+third rank in the nine degrees by which Chinese Mandarins are
+distinguished.
+
+The best site in Chungking has been fortunately secured by the Methodist
+Episcopalian Mission of the United States. Their missionaries dwell with
+great comfort in the only foreign-built houses in the city in a large
+compound with an ample garden. Their Mission hospital is a well-equipped
+Anglo-Chinese building attached to the city wall, and overlooking from
+its lofty elevation the Little River, and the walled city beyond it.
+
+The wards of the hospital are comfortable and well lit; the floors are
+varnished; the beds are provided with spring mattresses; indeed, in the
+comfort of the hospital the Chinese find its chief discomfort. A
+separate compartment has been walled off for the treatment of
+opium-smokers who desire by forced restraint to break off the habit.
+Three opium-smokers were in durance at the time of my visit; they were
+happy and contented and well nourished, and none but the trained eye of
+an expert, who saw what he wished to see, could have guessed that they
+were addicted to the use of a drug which has been described in
+exaggerated terms as "more deadly to the Chinese than war, famine, and
+pestilence combined." (Rev. A. H. Smith, "Chinese Characteristics," p.
+187.)
+
+Not long ago three men were admitted into the hospital suffering, on
+their own confession, from the opium habit. They freely expressed the
+desire of their hearts to be cured, and were received with welcome and
+placed in confinement. Every effort was made to wean them from the habit
+which, they alleged, had "seized them in a death grip." Attentive to the
+teacher and obedient to the doctor, they gave every hope of being early
+admitted into Church fellowship. But one night the desire to return to
+the drug became irresistible, and, strangely, the desire attacked all
+three men at the same time on the same night; and they escaped together.
+Sadly enough there was in this case marked evidence of the demoralising
+influence of opium, for when they escaped they took with them everything
+portable that they could lay their hands on. It was a sad trial.
+
+Excellent medical work is done in the hospital. From the first annual
+report just published by the surgeon in charge, an M.D. from the United
+States, I extract the two following pleasing items.
+
+_Medical Work._--"Mr. Tsang Taotai, of Kuei-Iang-fu, was an eye witness
+to several operations, as well as being operated upon for Internal
+Piles" (the last words in large capitals).
+
+_Evangelistic Work._--"Mrs. Wei, in the hospital for suppurating glands
+of the neck, became greatly interested in the truth while there, left a
+believer, and attends Sunday service regular (_sic_), walking from a
+distant part of the city each Sunday. We regard her as very hopeful, and
+she is reported by the Chinese as being very warm-hearted. She will be
+converted when the first vacancy occurs in the nursing staff."
+
+During my stay in Chungking I frequently met the French Consul "_en
+commission_," Monsieur Haas, who had lately arrived on a diplomatic
+mission, which was invested with much secrecy. It was believed to have
+for its object the diversion of the trade of Szechuen from its natural
+channel, the Yangtse River, southward through Yunnan province to
+Tonquin. Success need not be feared to attend his mission. "_Ils
+perdront et leur temps et leur argent._" Monsieur Haas has helped to
+make history in his time. The most gentle-mannered of men, he writes
+with strange rancour against the perfidious designs of Britain in the
+East. In his diplomatic career Monsieur Haas suffered one great
+disappointment. He was formerly the French Chargé d'Affaires and
+Political Resident at the court of King Theebaw in Mandalay. And it was
+his "Secret Treaty" with the king which forced the hand of England and
+led to her hasty occupation of Upper Burma. The story is a very pretty
+one. By this treaty French influence was to become predominant in Upper
+Burma; the country was to become virtually a colony of France, with a
+community of interest with France, with France to support her in any
+difficulty with British Burma. Such a position England could not
+tolerate for one moment. Fortunately for us French intrigue outwitted
+itself, and the Secret Treaty became known. It was in this way. Draft
+copies of the agreement drawn up in French and Burmese were exchanged
+between Monsieur Haas and King Theebaw. But Monsieur Haas could not read
+Burmese, and he distrusted the King. A trusted interpreter was
+necessary, and there was only one man in Mandalay that seemed to him
+sufficiently trustworthy. To Signor A---- then, the Italian Chargé
+d'Affaires and Manager of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, Monsieur Haas
+went and, pledging him to secrecy, sought his assistance as interpreter.
+
+As Monsieur Haas had done, so did his Majesty the King. Two great minds
+were being guided by the same spirit. Theebaw could not read French, and
+he distrusted Monsieur Haas. An interpreter was essential, and, casting
+about for a trusted one, he decided that no one could serve him so
+faithfully as Signor A----, and straightway sought his assistance, as
+Monsieur Haas had done. Their fates were in his hands; which master
+should the Italian serve, the French or the Burmese? He did not
+hesitate--he betrayed them both. Within an hour the Secret Treaty was in
+possession of the British Resident. Action was taken with splendid
+promptitude. "M. de Freycinet, when pressed on the subject, repudiated
+any intention of acquiring for France a political predominance in
+Burma." An immediate pretext was found to place Theebaw in a dilemma;
+eleven days later the British troops had crossed the frontier, and Upper
+Burma was another province of our Indian Empire.
+
+Monsieur Haas was recalled, and his abortive action repudiated. He had
+acted, of course, without orders, he had erred from too much zeal.
+Signor A---- was also recalled, but did not go because the order was not
+accompanied with the customary cheque to defray the cost of his passage.
+His services to England were rewarded, and he retained his engagement as
+Manager of the Flotilla Company; but he lost his appointment as the
+Representative of Italy--an honourable post with a dignified salary paid
+by the Italian Government in I.O.U.'s.
+
+Chungking is an enormously rich city. It is built at the junction of the
+Little River and the Yangtse, and is, from its position, the great river
+port of the province of Szechuen. Water-ways stretch from here an
+immense distance inland. The Little River is little only in comparison
+with the Yangtse, and in any other country would be regarded as a mighty
+inland river. It is navigable for more than 2000 li (600 miles). The
+Yangtse drains a continent; the Little River drains a province larger
+than a European kingdom. Chungking is built at a great height above the
+present river, now sixty feet below its summer level. Its walls are
+unscalable. Good influences are directed over the city from a lofty
+pagoda on the topmost hill in the vicinity. Temples abound, and spacious
+yamens and rich buildings, the crowning edifice of all being the Temple
+to the God of Literature. Distances are prodigious in Chungking, and the
+streets so steep and hilly, with flights of stairs cut from the solid
+rock, that only a mountaineer can live here in comfort. All who can
+afford it go in chairs; stands of sedan chairs are at every important
+street corner.
+
+[Illustration: A TEMPLE THEATRE IN CHUNGKING.]
+
+During the day the city vibrates with teeming traffic; at night the
+streets are deserted and dead, the stillness only disturbed by a
+distant watchman springing his bamboo rattle to keep himself awake and
+warn robbers of his approach. In no city in Europe is security to life
+and property better guarded than in this, or, indeed, in any other
+important city in China. It is a truism to say that no people are more
+law-abiding than the Chinese; "they appear," says Medhurst, "to maintain
+order as if by common consent, independent of all surveillance."
+
+Our Consul in Chungking is Mr. E. H. Fraser, an accomplished Chinese
+scholar, who fills a difficult post with rare tact and complete success.
+Consul Fraser estimates the population of Chungking at 200,000; the
+Chinese, he says, have a record of 35,000 families within the walls. Of
+this number from forty to fifty per cent. of all men, and from four to
+five per cent. of all women, indulge in the opium pipe. The city abounds
+in opium-shops--shops, that is, where the little opium-lamps and the
+opium-pipes are stacked in hundreds upon hundreds. Opium is one of the
+staple products of this rich province, and one of the chief sources of
+wealth of this flourishing city.
+
+During the nine months that I was in China I saw thousands of
+opium-smokers, but I never saw one to whom could be applied that
+description by Lay (of the British and Foreign Bible Society), so often
+quoted, of the typical opium-smoker in China "with his lank and
+shrivelled limbs, tottering gait, sallow visage, feeble voice, and
+death-boding glance of eye, proclaiming him the most forlorn creature
+that treads upon the ground."
+
+This fantastic description, paraded for years past for our sympathy, can
+be only applied to an infinitesimal number of the millions in China who
+smoke opium. It is a well-known fact that should a Chinese suffering
+from the extreme emaciation of disease be also in the habit of using
+the opium-pipe, it is the pipe and not the disease that in ninety-nine
+cases out of a hundred will be wrongly blamed as the cause of the
+emaciation.
+
+During the year 1893 4275 tons of Indian opium were imported into China.
+The Chinese, we are told, plead to us with "outstretched necks" to cease
+the great wrong we are doing in forcing them to buy our opium. "Many a
+time," says the Rev. Dr. Hudson Taylor, "have I seen the Chinaman point
+with his thumb to Heaven, and say, 'There is Heaven up there! There is
+Heaven up there!' What did he mean by that? You may bring this opium to
+us; you may force it upon us; we cannot resist you, but there is a Power
+up there that will inflict vengeance." (_National Righteousness_, Dec.
+1892, p. 13.)
+
+But, with all respect to Dr. Hudson Taylor and his ingenious
+interpretation of the Chinaman's gesture, it is extremely difficult for
+the traveller in China to believe that the Chinese are sincere in their
+condemnation of opium and the opium traffic. "In some countries," says
+Wingrove Cooke, "words represent facts, but this is never the case in
+China." Li Hung Chang, the Viceroy of Chihli, in the well-known letter
+that he addressed to the Rev. F. Storrs Turner, the Secretary of the
+Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, on May 24th, 1881, a
+letter still widely circulated and perennially cited, says, "the poppy
+is certainly surreptitiously grown in some parts of China,
+notwithstanding the laws and frequent Imperial edicts prohibiting its
+cultivation."
+
+Surreptitiously grown in some parts of China! Why, from the time I left
+Hupeh till I reached the boundary of Burma, a distance of 1700 miles, I
+never remember to have been out of sight of the poppy. Li Hung Chang
+continues, "I earnestly hope that your Society, and all right-minded
+men of your country, will support the efforts China is now making to
+escape from the thraldom of opium." And yet you are told in China that
+the largest growers of the poppy in China are the family of Li Hung
+Chang.
+
+The Society for the Suppression of Opium has circulated by tens of
+thousands a petition which was forwarded to them from the
+Chinese--spontaneously, per favour of the missionaries. "Some tens of
+millions," this petition says, "some tens of millions of human beings in
+distress are looking on tiptoe with outstretched necks for salvation to
+come from you, O just and benevolent men of England! If not for the good
+or honour of your country, then for mercy's sake do this good deed now
+to save a people, and the rescued millions shall themselves be your
+great reward." (_China's Millions_, iv., 156.)
+
+Assume, then, that the Chinese do not want our opium, and unavailingly
+beseech us to stay this nefarious traffic, which is as if "the Rivers
+Phlegethon and Lethe were united in it, carrying fire and destruction
+wherever it flows, and leaving a deadly forgetfulness wherever it has
+passed." (The Rev. Dr. Wells Williams. "The Middle Kingdom," i., 288.)
+
+They do not want our opium, but they purchase from us 4275 tons per
+annum.
+
+Of the eighteen provinces of China four only, Kiangsu, Cheh-kiang,
+Fuhkien, and Kuangtung use Indian opium, the remaining fourteen
+provinces use exclusively home-grown opium. Native-grown opium has
+entirely driven the imported opium from the markets of the Yangtse
+Valley; no Indian opium, except an insignificant quantity, comes up the
+river even as far as Hankow. The Chinese do not want our opium--it
+competes with their own. In the three adjoining provinces of Szechuen,
+Yunnan, and Kweichow they grow their own opium; but they grow more than
+they need, and have a large surplus to export to other parts of the
+Empire. The amount of this surplus can be estimated, because all
+exported opium has to pay customs and likin dues to the value of two
+shillings a pound, and the amount thus collected is known. Allowing no
+margin for opium that has evaded customs dues, and there are no more
+scientific smugglers than the Chinese, we still find that during the
+year 1893 2250 tons of opium were exported from the province of
+Szechuen, 1350 tons from Yunnan, and 450 tons from Kweichow, a total of
+4050 tons exported by the rescued millions of three provinces only for
+the benefit of their fellow-countrymen, who, with outstretched necks,
+plead to England to leave them alone in their monopoly.
+
+Edicts are still issued against the use of opium. They are drawn up by
+Chinese philanthropists over a quiet pipe of opium, signed by
+opium-smoking officials, whose revenues are derived from the poppy, and
+posted near fields of poppy by the opium-smoking magistrates who own
+them.
+
+In the City Temple of Chungking there is a warning to opium-eaters. One
+of the fiercest devils in hell is there represented gloating over the
+crushed body of an opium-smoker; his protruding tongue is smeared with
+opium put there by the victim of "_yin_" (the opium craving), who wishes
+to renounce the habit. The opium thus collected is the perquisite of the
+Temple priests, and at the gate of the Temple there is a stall for the
+sale of opium fittings.
+
+Morphia pills are sold in Chungking by the Chinese chemists to cure the
+opium habit. This profitable remedy was introduced by the foreign
+chemists of the coast ports and adopted by the Chinese. Its advantage
+is that it converts a desire for opium into a taste for morphia, a mode
+of treatment analogous to changing one's stimulant from colonial beer to
+methylated spirit. In 1893, 15,000 ounces of hydrochlorate of morphia
+were admitted into Shanghai alone.
+
+The China Inland Mission have an important station at Chungking. It was
+opened seventeen years ago, in 1877, and is assisted by a representative
+of the Horsburgh Mission. The mission is managed by a charming English
+gentleman, who has exchanged all that could make life happy in England
+for the wretched discomfort of this malarious city. Every assistance I
+needed was given me by this kindly fellow who, like nearly all the China
+Inland Mission men, deserves success if he cannot command it. A more
+engaging personality I have rarely met, and it was sad to think that for
+the past year, 1893, no new convert was made by his Mission among the
+Chinese of Chungking. (_China's Millions_, January, 1894.) The Mission
+has been working short-handed, with only three missionaries instead of
+six, and progress has been much delayed in consequence.
+
+The London Missionary Society, who have been here since 1889, have two
+missionaries at work, and have gathered nine communicants and six
+adherents. Their work is largely aided by an admirable hospital under
+Cecil Davenport, F.R.C.S., a countryman of my own. "Broad Benevolence"
+are the Chinese characters displayed over the entrance to the hospital,
+and they truthfully describe the work done by the hospital. In the
+chapel adjoining, a red screen is drawn down the centre of the church,
+and separates the men from the women--one of the chief pretexts that an
+Englishman has for going to church is thus denied the Chinaman, since he
+cannot cast an ogling eye through a curtain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE JOURNEY FROM CHUNGKING TO SUIFU--CHINESE INNS.
+
+
+I left the boat at Chungking and started on my land journey, going west
+230 miles to Suifu. I had with me two coolies to carry my things, the
+one who received the higher pay having also to bring me my food, make my
+bed, and pay away my copper cash. They could not speak a single word of
+English. They were to be paid for the journey one _4s. 10d._ and the
+other _5s. 7d._ They were to be entitled to no perquisites, were to find
+themselves on the way, and take their chance of employment on the return
+journey. They were to lead me into Suifu on the seventh day out from
+Chungking. All that they undertook to do they did to my complete
+satisfaction.
+
+On the morning of March 14th I set out from Chungking to cross 1600
+miles over Western China to Burma. Men did not speak hopefully of my
+chance of getting through. There were the rains of June and July to be
+feared apart from other obstacles.
+
+Père Lorain, the Procureur of the French Mission, who spoke from an
+experience of twenty-five years of China, assured me that, speaking no
+Chinese, unarmed, unaccompanied, except by two poor coolies of the
+humblest class, and on foot, I would have _les plus grandes
+difficultés_, and Monsieur Haas, the Consul _en commission_, was equally
+pessimistic. The evening before starting, the Consul and my friend
+Carruthers (one of the _Inverness Courier_ Carruthers) gave me a lesson
+in Chinese. "French before breakfast" was nothing to this kind of
+cramming. I learnt a dozen useful words and phrases, and rehearsed them
+in the morning to a member of the Inland Mission, who cheered me by
+saying that it would be a clever Chinaman indeed who could understand
+Chinese like mine.
+
+I left on foot by the West Gate, being accompanied so far by A. J.
+Little, an experienced traveller and authority on China, manager in
+Chungking of the Chungking Transport Company (which deals especially
+with the transport of cargo from Ichang up the rapids), whose book on
+"The Yangtse Gorges" is known to every reader of books on China.
+
+I was dressed as a Chinese teacher in thickly-wadded Chinese gown, with
+pants, stockings, and sandals, with Chinese hat and pigtail. In my dress
+I looked a person of weight. I must acknowledge that my outfit was very
+poor; but this was not altogether a disadvantage, for my men would have
+the less temptation to levy upon it. Still it would have been awkward if
+my men had taken it into their heads to walk off with my things, because
+I could not have explained my loss. My chief efforts, I knew, throughout
+my journey would be applied in the direction of inducing the Chinese to
+treat me with the respect that was undoubtedly due to one who, in their
+own words, had done them the "exalted honour" of visiting "their mean
+and contemptible country." For I could not afford a private sedan chair,
+though I knew that Baber had written that "no traveller in Western China
+who possesses any sense of self-respect should journey without a sedan
+chair, not necessarily as a conveyance, but for the honour and glory of
+the thing. Unfurnished with this indispensable token of respectability
+he is liable to be thrust aside on the highway, to be kept waiting at
+ferries, to be relegated to the worst inn's worst room, and generally to
+be treated with indignity, or, what is sometimes worse, with
+familiarity, as a peddling footpad who, unable to gain a living in his
+own country, has come to subsist on China." ("Travels and Researches in
+Western China," p. 1.)
+
+Six li out (two miles), beyond the gravemounds there is a small village
+where ponies are kept for hire. A kind friend came with me as far as the
+village to act as my interpreter, and here he engaged a pony for me. It
+was to carry me ten miles for fourpence. It was small, rat-like and
+wiry, and was steered by the "mafoo" using the tail like a tiller.
+Mounted then on this small beast, which carried me without wincing, I
+jogged along over the stone-flagged pathway, down hill and along valley,
+scaling and descending the long flights of steps which lead over the
+mountains. The bells of the pony jingled merrily; the day was fine and
+the sun shone behind the clouds. My two coolies sublet their contracts,
+and had their loads borne for a fraction of a farthing per mile by
+coolies returning empty-handed to Suifu.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE MAIN ROAD TO SUIFU.]
+
+Fu-to-kuan four miles from Chungking is a powerful hill-fort that guards
+the isthmus where the Yangtse and the Little River come nearly together
+before encircling Chungking. Set in the face of the cliff is a gigantic
+image of Buddha. Massive stone portals, elaborately carved, and huge
+commemorative tablets cut from single blocks of stone and deeply
+engraved, here adorn the highway. The archways have been erected by
+command of the Emperor, but at the expense of their relatives, to the
+memory of virtuous widows who have refused to remarry, or who have
+sacrificed their lives on the death of their husbands. Happy are those
+whose names are thus recorded, for not only do they obtain ten thousand
+merits in heaven, as well as the Imperial recognition of the Son of
+Heaven on earth; but as an additional reward their souls may, on
+entering the world a second time, enjoy the indescribable felicity of
+inhabiting the bodies of men.
+
+Cases where the widow has thus brought honour to the family are
+constantly recorded in the pages of the _Peking Gazette_. One of more
+than usual merit is described in the _Peking Gazette_ of June 10th,
+1892. The story runs:--
+
+"The Governor of Shansi narrates the story of a virtuous wife who
+destroyed herself after the death of her husband. The lady was a native
+of T'ienmen, in Hupeh, and both her father and grandfather were
+officials who attained the rank of Taotai. When she was little more than
+ten years old her mother fell ill. The child cut flesh from her body and
+mixed it with the medicines and thus cured her parent. The year before
+last she was married to an expectant magistrate. Last autumn, just after
+he had obtained an appointment, he was taken violently ill. She mixed
+her flesh with the medicine but it was in vain, and he died shortly
+afterwards. Overcome with grief, and without parents or children to
+demand her care, she determined that she would not live. Only waiting
+till she had completed the arrangements for her husband's interment, she
+swallowed gold and powder of lead. She handed her trousseau to her
+relatives to defray her funeral expenses, and made presents to the
+younger members of the family and the servants, after which, draped in
+her state robes, she sat waiting her end. The poison began to work and
+soon all was over. The memorialist thinks that the case is one which
+should be recorded in the erection of a memorial arch, and he asks the
+Emperor to grant that honour to the deceased lady." ("_Granted._")
+
+Near the base of the rock upon which the hill-fort is built, and between
+it and the city, the Methodist Episcopalian Mission of the U.S.A.
+commenced in 1886 to build what the Chinese, in their ignorance, feared
+was a foreign fort, but what was nothing more than a mission house in a
+compound surrounded by a powerful wall. The indiscreet mystery
+associated with its erection was the exciting cause of the anti-foreign
+riot of July, 1886.
+
+From the fort the pathway led us through a beautiful country. We met
+numbers of sedan chairs, borne by two coolies, or three, according to
+the importance of the traveller. There were Chinese gentlemen mounted on
+ponies or mules; there were strings of coolies swinging along under
+prodigious loads of salt and coal, and huge bales of raw cotton.
+Buffaloes with slow and painful steps were ploughing the paddy fields,
+the water up to their middles--the primitive plough and share guided by
+half-naked Chinamen. Along the road there are inns and tea-houses every
+mile or two, for this is one of the most frequented roadways of China.
+At one good-sized village my cook signed to me to dismount; the mafoo
+and pony were paid off, and I sat down in an inn, and was served with an
+excellent dish of rice and minced beef. The inn was crowded and open to
+the street. Despite my Chinese dress anyone could see that I was a
+foreigner, but I was not far enough away from Chungking to excite much
+curiosity. The other diners treated me with every courtesy; they offered
+me of their dishes, and addressed me in Chinese--a compliment which I
+repaid by thanking them blandly in English.
+
+Now I went on, on foot, though I had difficulty in keeping pace with my
+men. Behind the village we climbed a very steep hill by interminable
+steps, and passed under an archway at the summit. Descending the hill,
+my cook engaged in a controversy with a thin lad whom he had hired to
+carry his load a stage. The dispute waxed warm, and, while they stopped
+to argue it out at leisure, I went on. My cook, engaged through the kind
+offices of the Inland Mission, was a man of strong convictions; and in
+the last I saw of the dispute he was pulling the unfortunate coolie
+downhill by the pigtail. When he overtook me he was alone and smiling
+cheerfully, well satisfied with himself for having settled _that_ little
+dispute. The road became more level, and we got over the ground quickly.
+
+Late in the evening I was led into a crowded inn in a large village,
+where we were to stay the night. We had come twenty-seven miles, and had
+begun well. I was shown into a room with three straw-covered wooden
+bedsteads, a rough table, lit by a lighted taper in a saucer of oil, a
+rough seat, and the naked earth floor. Hot water was brought me to wash
+with and tea to drink, and my man prepared me an excellent supper. My
+baggage was in the corner; it consisted of two light bamboo boxes with
+Chinese padlocks, a bamboo hamper, and a roll of bedding covered with
+oilcloth. An oilcloth is indispensable to the traveller in China, for
+placed next the straw on a Chinese bed it is impassable to bugs. And
+during all my journey in China I was never disturbed in my sleep by this
+unpleasant pest. Bugs in China are sufficiently numerous, but their
+numbers cannot be compared with the gregarious hosts that disturb the
+traveller in Spain.
+
+My last night in Spain was spent in Cadiz, the most charming city in
+the peninsula. I had lost the last boat off to the steamer, on which I
+was a passenger; it was late at night, and I knew of no inn near the
+landing. At midnight, as I was walking in the Plaza, called after that
+revered monarch, Queen Isabel II., I was spoken to at the door of a
+fonda, and asked if I wanted a bedroom. It was the taberna "La
+Valenciana." I was delighted; it was the very thing I was looking for, I
+said. The innkeeper had just one room unoccupied, and he showed me
+upstairs into a plain, homely apartment, which I was pleased to engage
+for the night. "_Que usted descanse bien_" (may you sleep well), said
+the landlord, and left me. Keeping the candle burning I tumbled into
+bed, for I was very tired, but jumped out almost immediately, despite my
+fatigue. I turned down the clothes, and saw the bugs gathering in the
+centre from all parts of the bed. I collected a dozen or two, and put
+them in a basin of water, and, dressing myself, went out on the landing
+and called the landlord.
+
+He came up yawning.
+
+"Sir," he said, "do you wish anything?"
+
+"Nothing; but it is impossible, absolutely impossible, for me to sleep
+in that bed."
+
+"But why, señor?"
+
+"Because it is full of bugs."
+
+"Oh no, sir, that cannot be, that cannot be; there is not a bug in the
+house."
+
+"But I have seen them."
+
+"You must be mistaken; it is impossible that there can be a bug in the
+house."
+
+"But I have caught some."
+
+"It makes twenty years that I live in this house, and never have I seen
+such a thing."
+
+"Pardon me, but will you do me the favour to look at this basin?"
+
+"Sir, you are right, you are completely right; it is the weather; _every
+bed in Cadiz is now full of them_."
+
+In the morning, and every morning, we were away at daylight, and walked
+some miles before breakfast. All the way to Suifu the road is a paved
+causeway, 3 feet 6 inches to 6 feet wide, laid down with dressed flags
+of stone; and here, at least, it cannot be alleged, as the Chinese
+proverb would have it, that their roads are "good for ten years and bad
+for ten hundred." There are, of course, no fences; the main road picks
+its way through the cultivated fields; no traveller ever thinks of
+trespassing from the roadway, nor did I ever see any question of
+trespass between neighbours. In this law-abiding country the peasantry
+conspicuously follow the Confucian maxim taught in China four hundred
+years before Christ, "Do not unto others what you would not have others
+do unto you." Every rood of ground is under tillage.
+
+Hills are everywhere terraced like the seats of an amphitheatre, each
+terrace being irrigated from the one below it by a small stream of
+water, drawn up an inclined plain by a continuous chain bucket, worked
+with a windlass by either hand or foot. The poppy is everywhere abundant
+and well tended; there are fields of winter wheat, and pink-flowered
+beans, and beautiful patches of golden rape-seed. Dotted over the
+landscape are pretty Szechuen farmhouses in groves of trees. Splendid
+banyan trees give grateful shelter to the traveller. Of this country it
+could be written as a Chinese traveller wrote of England, "their fertile
+hills, adorned with the richest luxuriance, resemble in the outline of
+their summits the arched eyebrows of a fair woman."
+
+The country is well populated, and a continuous stream of people is
+moving along the road. Grand memorial arches span the roadway, many of
+them notable efforts of monumental skill, with columns and architraves
+carved with elephants and deer, and flowers and peacocks, and the
+Imperial seven-tailed dragon of China. Chinese art is seen at its best
+in this rich province.
+
+[Illustration: CULTIVATION IN TERRACES. In the foreground the poppy in
+bloom.]
+
+[Illustration: SCENE IN SZECHUEN.]
+
+I lived, of course, in the common Chinese inn, ate Chinese food, and was
+everywhere treated with courtesy and good nature; but at first I found
+it trying to be such an object of curiosity; to have to do all things in
+unsecluded publicity; to have to push my way through streets thronged by
+the curious to see the foreigner. My meals I ate in the presence of the
+street before gaping crowds. When they came too close I told them
+politely in English to keep back a little, and they did so if I
+illustrated my words by gesture. When I scratched my head and they saw
+the spurious pigtail, they smiled; when I flicked the dust off the table
+with my pigtail, they laughed hilariously.
+
+The wayside inns are usually at the side of an arcade of grass and
+bamboo stretched above the main road. Two or three ponies are usually
+waiting here for hire, and expectant coolies are eager to offer their
+services. In engaging a pony you make an offer casually, as if you had
+no desire in the world of its being accepted, and then walk on as if you
+had no intention whatever of riding for the next month. The mafoo
+demands more, but will come down; you stick to your offer, though
+prepared to increase it; so demand and offer you exchange with the mafoo
+till the width of the village is between you, and your voices are almost
+out of hearing, when you come to terms.
+
+Suppose I wanted a chair to give me a rest for a few miles--it was
+usually slung under the rafters--Laokwang (my cook) unobserved by anyone
+but me pointed to it with his thumb inquiringly. I nodded assent and
+apparently nothing more happened and the conversation, of which I was
+quite ignorant, continued. We left together on foot, my man still
+maintaining a crescendo conversation with the inn people till well away.
+When almost out of hearing he called out something and an answer came
+faintly back from the distance. It was his ultimatum as regards price
+and its acceptance--they had been bargaining all the time. My man
+motioned to me to wait, said the one word "_chiaodza_" (sedan chair) and
+in a few moments the chair of bamboo and wicker came rapidly down the
+road carried by two bearers. They put down the chair before me and bowed
+to me; I took my seat and was borne easily and pleasantly along at four
+miles an hour at a charge of less than one penny a mile.
+
+My men received nearly 400 cash a day each; but from time to time they
+sweated their contract to unemployed coolies and had their loads carried
+for so little as sixty cash (one penny halfpenny), for two-thirds of a
+day's journey.
+
+At nightfall we always reached some large village or town where my cook
+selected the best inn for my resting place, the best inn in such cases
+being usually the one which promised him the largest squeeze. All the
+towns through which the road passes swarm with inns, for there is an
+immense floating population to provide for. Competition is keen. Touts
+stand at the doorway of every inn, who excitedly waylay the traveller
+and cry the merits of their houses. At the counter inside the entrance,
+piles of pukais (the warm Chinese bedding), are stacked for hire--few of
+the travellers carry their own bedding. The inns are sufficiently
+comfortable. The bedrooms are in one or two stories and are arranged
+round one or more, or a succession of courts. The cheapness is to be
+commended. For supper, bed, and light, tea during the night and tea
+before starting in the morning, and various little comforts, such as hot
+water for washing, the total charge for the six nights of my journey
+from Chungking to Suifu was 840 cash (_1s. 9d._).
+
+Rice was my staple article of diet; eggs, fowls, and vegetables were
+also abundant and cheap; but I avoided pork which is the flesh
+universally eaten throughout China by all but the Mohammedans and
+vegetarians. In case of emergency I had a few tins of foreign stores
+with me. I made it a point never to drink water--I drank tea. No
+Chinaman ever drinks anything cold. Every half hour or hour he can reach
+an inn or teahouse where tea can be infused for him in a few minutes.
+The price of a bowl of tea with a pinch of tea-leaves, filled and
+refilled with hot water _ad lib_, is two cash--equal to the twentieth
+part of one penny. Pork has its weight largely added to by being
+injected with water, the point of the syringe being passed into a large
+vein; this is usually described as the Chinese method of "watering
+stock."
+
+On the third day we were at Yuenchuan, sixty-three miles from Chungking.
+On the 5th, we passed through Luchow, one of the richest and most
+populous cities on the Upper Yangtse, and at noon next day we again
+reached the Yangtse at the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy, two miles
+down the river from the large town of Lanchihsien. According to my
+interpretation of the gesticulations of Laokwang, we were then forty
+miles from Suifu, and a beautiful sunny afternoon before us, in which to
+easily cover one half the distance. But I must reckon with my guide. He
+wished to remain here; I wished to go on; but as I could not understand
+his Chinese explanation, nor advance any protest except in English, of
+which he was innocent, I could only look aggrieved and make a virtue of
+a necessity. He did, however, convey to me his solemn assurance that
+to-morrow (_ming tien_) he would conduct me into Suifu before sunset. An
+elderly Chinaman, who had given us the advantage of his company at
+various inns during the last three days, here entered into the
+conversation, produced his watch, and, with his hand over his heart,
+which, in a Chinaman, is in the centre of the breast-bone, added his
+sacred asseveration to my guide's. So I stayed. We were quite a friendly
+party travelling together.
+
+In the middle of the night a light was flashed into our room and a voice
+pealed out an alarm that awoke even my two Chinese, who always
+obligingly slept in the same room with me. I had protested against their
+doing so, but they mistook my expostulation for approbation. We rose at
+once, and came down the steep bank to a boat that was lying stern to
+shore showing a light. I was charmed to get such an early start, and
+construed the indications into a ferry boat to take me across the river,
+whence we would go by a short route into Suifu. The boat was loaded with
+sugar and had a crew of two men and three boys. There was an awning over
+the cargo, but most of the space under it was already occupied by twelve
+amiable Chinese, among whom were six promiscuous friends, who had kept
+with us for several stages, and had, I imagine, derived some pecuniary
+advantages from my company. Yet this was not a ferry boat, but a
+passenger boat engaged especially for me to carry me to Suifu before
+nightfall. The Chinese passengers had courteously projected their
+companionship upon the inarticulate stranger. An elderly gentleman, with
+huge goggles and long nails, whose fingers were stained with opium, was
+the pacificator of the party, and calmed the frequent wranglings in
+which the other eighteen Chinese engaged with much earnestness.
+
+Well, this boat--a leaky, heavy, old tub that had to be tracked nearly
+all the way--carried me the forty miles to Suifu within contract time.
+The boatmen on board worked sixteen hours without any rest except at two
+hasty meals; the frayed towrope never parted at any rapid, and only once
+did our boat get entangled with any other. Towards sundown we were
+abreast of the fine pagoda of Suifu, and a little later were at the
+landing. The city is on a high, level shelf of land with high hills
+behind it. It lies in the angle of bifurcation formed by the Yangtse
+river (here known as the "River of Golden Sand"), going west, and the
+Min, or Chentu river, going north to Chentu, the capital city of the
+province. I landed below the southern wall, and said good-bye to my
+companions. Climbing up the bank into the city, I passed by a busy
+thoroughfare to the pretty home of the Inland Mission, where I received
+a kind welcome from the gentleman and lady who conduct the mission, and
+a charming English girl, also in the mission, who lives with them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE CITY OF SUIFU--THE CHINA INLAND MISSION, WITH SOME GENERAL REMARKS
+ABOUT MISSIONARIES IN CHINA.
+
+
+At Suifu I rested a day in order to engage new coolies to go with me to
+Chaotong in Yunnan Province, distant 290 miles. Neither of my two
+Chungking men would re-engage to go further. Yet in Chungking Laokwang
+the cook had declared that he was prepared to go with me all the way to
+Talifu. But now he feared the loneliness of the road to Chaotong. The
+way, he said, was mountainous and little trodden, and robbers would see
+the smallness of our party and "come down and stab us." I was then glad
+that I had not paid him the retaining fee he had asked in Chungking to
+take me to Tali.
+
+I called upon the famous Catholic missionaries, the Provicaire Moutot
+and Père Béraud, saw the more important sights and visited some
+newly-arrived missionaries of the American Board of Missions. Four of
+the Americans were living together. I called with the Inland missionary
+at a time when they were at dinner. We were shown into the drawing-room,
+where the most conspicuous ornament was a painted scroll with a well
+executed drawing of the poppy in flower, a circumstance which would
+confirm the belief of the Chinese who saw it, that the poppy is held in
+veneration by foreigners. While we waited we heard the noise of dinner
+gradually cease, and then the door opened and one of the single ladies
+entered. She was fierce to look at, tall as a grenadier, with a stride
+like a camel; she was picking her teeth with a hairpin. She courteously
+expressed her regret that she could not invite us to dinner. "Waal now,"
+she said, looking at us from under her spectacles, "ahm real sorry I
+caan't ask you to have somethin' to eat, but we've just finished, and I
+guess there ain't nothin' left."
+
+Fourteen American missionaries were lately imported into Suifu in one
+shipment. Most of them are from Chicago. One of their earliest efforts
+will be to translate into Chinese Mr. Stead's "If Christ came to
+Chicago," in order the better to demonstrate to the Chinese the lofty
+standard of morality, virtue, probity, and honour attained by the
+Christian community that sent them to China to enlighten the poor
+benighted heathen in this land of darkness.
+
+Szechuen is a Catholic stronghold. There are nominally one hundred
+thousand Catholics in the province, representing the labours of many
+French missionaries for a period of rather more than two hundred years.
+Actually, however, there are only sixty thousand Chinese in the province
+who could be called Catholics. To use the words of the Provicaire, the
+Chinese are "_trôp matèrialistes_" to become Christian, and, as they are
+all "liars and robbers," the faith is not easily propagated amongst
+them. Rarely have I met two more charming men than these brave
+missionaries. French, they told me, I speak with the "_vrai accent
+parisien_," a compliment which I have no doubt is true, though it
+conflicts with my experience in Paris, where most of the true Parisians
+to whom I spoke in their own language gave me the same look of
+intelligence that I observe in the Chinaman when I address him in
+English. Père Moutot has been twenty-three years in China--six years at
+the sacred Mount Omi, and seventeen years in Suifu; Père Béraud has been
+twenty-three years in Suifu. They both speak Chinese to perfection, and
+have been co-workers with the bishop in the production of a
+Mandarin-French dictionary just published at Sicawei; they dress as
+Chinese, and live as Chinese in handsome mission premises built in
+Chinese style. There is a pretty chapel in the compound with scrolls and
+memorial tablets presented by Chinese Catholics, a school for boys
+attended by fifty ragamuffins, a nunnery and girls' school, and a fit
+residence for the venerable bishop. When showing me the chapel, the
+Provicaire told me of the visit of one of Our Lord's Apostles to Suifu.
+He seemed to have no doubt himself of the truth of the story. Tradition
+says that St. Thomas came to China, and, if further proof were wanting,
+there is the black image of Tamo worshipped to this day in many of the
+temples of Szechuen. Scholars, however, identify this image and its
+marked Hindoo features with that of the Buddhist evangelist Tamo, who is
+known to have visited China in the sixth century.
+
+In Suifu there is a branch of the China Inland Mission under an
+enthusiastic young missionary, who was formerly a French polisher in
+Hereford. He is helped by an amiable wife and by a charming English girl
+scarcely out of her teens. The missionary's work has, he tells me, been
+"abundantly blessed,"--he has baptised six converts in the last three
+years. A fine type of man is this missionary, brave and self-reliant,
+sympathetic and self-denying, hopeful and self-satisfied. His views as a
+missionary are well-defined. I give them in his own words:--"Those
+Chinese who have never heard the Gospel will be judged by the Almighty
+as He thinks fit"--a contention which does not admit of dispute--"but
+those Chinese who have heard the Christian doctrine, and still steel
+their hearts against the Holy Ghost, will assuredly go to hell; there is
+no help for them, they can believe and they won't; had they believed,
+their reward would be eternal; they refuse to believe and their
+punishment will be eternal." But the destruction that awaits the Chinese
+must be pointed out to them with becoming gentleness, in accordance with
+the teaching of the Rev. S. F. Woodin, of the American Baptist Mission,
+Foochow, who says:--"There are occasions when we must speak that awful
+word 'hell,' but this should always be done in a spirit of earnest
+love." (_Records_ of the Shanghai Missionary Conference, 1877, p. 91.)
+It was a curious study to observe the equanimity with which this
+good-natured man contemplates the work he has done in China, when to
+obtain six dubious conversions he has on his own confession sent some
+thousands of unoffending Chinese _en enfer bouillir éternellement_.
+
+But, if the teaching of this good missionary is unwelcome to the
+Chinese, and there are hundreds in China who teach as he does, how
+infinitely more distasteful must be the teaching of both the Founder and
+the Secretary of the Mission which sent him to China.
+
+"They are God's lost ones who are in China," says Mr. C. L. Morgan,
+editor of _The Christian_, "and God cares for them and yearns over
+them." (_China's Millions_, 1879, p. 94.) "The millions of Chinese,"
+(who have never heard the Gospel,) says Mr. B. Broomhall, secretary of
+the China Inland Mission, and editor of _China's Millions_, "where are
+they going, what is to be their future? What is to be their condition
+beyond the grave? Oh, tremendous question! It is an awful thing to
+contemplate--but they perish; that is what God says." ("Evangelisation
+of the World," p. 70.) "The heathen are all guilty in God's eyes; as
+guilty they perish." (_Id._, 101.) "Do we believe that these millions
+are without hope in the next world? We turn the leaves of God's Word in
+vain, for there we find no hope; not only that, but positive words to
+the contrary. Yes! we believe it." (_Id._, p. 199.)
+
+The Rev. Dr. Hudson Taylor, the distinguished Founder of the Mission,
+certainly believes it, and has frequently stated his belief in public.
+Ancestral worship is the keystone of the religion of the Chinese; "the
+keystone also of China's social fabric." And "the worship springs," says
+the Rev. W. A. P. Martin, D.D., LL.D., of the Tung Wen College, Peking,
+"from some of the best principles of human nature. The first conception
+of a life beyond the grave was, it is thought, suggested by a desire to
+commune with deceased parents." ("The Worship of Ancestors--a plea for
+toleration.") But Dr. Hudson Taylor condemned bitterly this plea for
+toleration. "Ancestral worship," he said (it was at the Shanghai
+Missionary Conference of May, 1890), "Ancestral worship is idolatry from
+beginning to end, the whole of it, and everything connected with it."
+China's religion is idolatry, the Chinese are universally idolatrous,
+and the fate that befalls idolaters is carefully pointed out by Dr.
+Taylor:--"Their part is in the lake of fire."
+
+"These millions of China," I quote again from Dr. Taylor, "These
+millions of China" (who have never heard the Gospel), "are unsaved. Oh!
+my dear friends, may I say one word about that condition? The Bible says
+of the heathen, that they are without hope; will you say there is good
+hope for them of whom the Word of God says, 'they are without hope,
+without God in the world'?" (Missionary Conference of 1888, _Records_,
+i., 176.)
+
+"There are those who know more about the state of the heathen than did
+the Apostle Paul, who wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,
+'They that sin without law, perish without law,' nay, there are those
+who are not afraid to contradict the revelation of Jesus Christ, which
+God gave unto Him to shew unto His servants, in which He solemnly
+affirms that 'idolators and all liars, their part shall be in the lake
+that burneth with fire and brimstone.' Such being the state of the
+unsaved of China, do not their urgent needs claim from us that with
+_agonising eagerness_ we should hasten to proclaim everywhere the
+message through which alone deliverance can be found?" (_Ut supra_, ii.,
+31.)
+
+Look then at the enormous difficulty which the six hundred and eleven
+missionaries, of the China Inland Mission, raise up against themselves,
+the majority of whom are presumably in agreement with the teaching of
+their director, Dr. Hudson Taylor. They tell the Chinese inquirer that
+his unconverted father, who never heard the Gospel, has, like Confucius,
+perished eternally. But the chief of all virtues in China is filial
+piety; the strongest emotion that can move the heart of a Chinaman is
+the supreme desire to follow in the footsteps of his father. Conversion
+with him means not only eternal separation from the father who gave him
+life, but the "immediate liberation of his ancestors to a life of
+beggary, to inflict sickness and all manner of evil on the
+neighbourhood."
+
+I believe that it is now universally recognised that the most difficult
+of all missionary fields--incomparably the most difficult--is China.
+Difficulties assail the missionary at every step; and every honest man,
+whether his views be broad or high or low, must sympathise with the
+earnest efforts the missionaries are making for the good and advancement
+of the Chinese.
+
+Look for example at the difficulty there is in telling a Chinese, who
+has been taught to regard the love of his parents as his chief duty, as
+his forefathers have been taught for hundreds of generations before
+him--the difficulty there is in explaining to him, in his own language,
+the words of Christ, "If any man come to Me and hate not his father, he
+cannot be My disciple. For I am come to set a man at variance against
+his father."
+
+In the patriarchal system of government which prevails in China, the
+most awful crime that a son can commit, is to kill his parent, either
+father or mother. And this is said to be, though the description is no
+doubt abundantly exaggerated, the punishment of his crime. He is put to
+death by the "_Ling chi_," or "degrading and slow process," and his
+younger brothers are beheaded; his house is razed to the ground and the
+earth under it dug up several feet deep; his neighbours are severely
+punished; his principal teacher is decapitated; the district magistrate
+is deprived of his office; and the higher officials of the province
+degraded three degrees in rank.
+
+Such is the enormity of the crime of parricide in China; yet it is to
+the Chinese who approves of the severity of this punishment that the
+missionary has to preach, "And the children shall rise up against their
+parents and cause them to be put to death."
+
+The China Inland Mission, as a body of courageous workers, brave
+travellers, unselfish and kindly men endowed with every manly virtue
+that can command our admiration, is worthy of all the praise that can
+be bestowed on it. Most of its members are men who have been saved after
+reaching maturity, and delicately-nurtured emotional girls with
+heightened religious feelings.
+
+Too often entirely ignorant of the history of China, a mighty nation
+which has "witnessed the rise to glory and the decay of Egypt, Assyria,
+Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and still remains the only monument
+of ages long bygone," of its manners and polity, customs and religions,
+and of the extraordinary difficulties in the acquirement of its
+language, too often forgetful that the Chinese are a people whose
+"prepossessions and prejudices and cherished judgments are the growth of
+millenniums," they come to China hoping that miraculous assistance will
+aid them in their exposition of the Christian doctrine, in language
+which is too often impenetrable darkness to its hearers.
+
+"They are God's lost ones who are in China, and God cares for them and
+yearns over them," and men who were in England respectable artisans,
+with an imperfect hold of their own language, come to China, in response
+to the "wail of the dying millions," to stay this "awful ruin of souls,"
+who, at the rate of 33,000 a day, are "perishing without hope, having
+sinned without law."
+
+Six months after their arrival they write to _China's Millions_: "Now
+for the news! Glorious news this time! Our services crowded! Such bright
+intelligent faces! So eager to hear the good news! They seemed to drink
+in every word, and to listen as if they were afraid that a word might be
+lost." Five years later they write: "The first convert in Siao Wong Miao
+was a young man named Sengleping, a matseller. He was very earnest in
+his efforts to spread the Gospel, but about the beginning of the year
+he became insane. The poor man lost his reason, but not his piety."
+(_China's Millions_, iv., 5, 95, and 143).
+
+A young English girl at this mission, who has been more than a year in
+China, tells me that she has never felt the Lord so near her as she has
+since she came to China, nor ever realised so entirely His abundant
+goodness. Poor thing, it made me sad to talk to her. In England she
+lived in a bright and happy home with brothers and sisters, in a
+charming climate. She was always well and full of life and vigour,
+surrounded by all that can make life worth living. In China she is never
+well; she is almost forgetting what is the sensation of health; she is
+anæmic and apprehensive; she has nervous headaches and neuralgia; she
+can have no pleasure, no amusement whatever; her only relaxation is
+taking her temperature; her only diversion a prayer meeting. She is
+cooped up in a Chinese house in the unchanging society of a married
+couple--the only exercise she can permit herself is a prison-like walk
+along the top of the city at the back of the mission. Her lover, a
+refined English gentleman who is also in the mission, lives a week's
+journey away, in Chungking, a depressing fever-stricken city where the
+sun is never seen from November to June, and blazes with unendurable
+fierceness from July to October. In England he was full of strength and
+vigour, fond of boating and a good lawn-tennis player. In China he is
+always ill, anæmic, wasted, and dyspeptic, constantly subject to low
+forms of fever, and destitute of appetite. But more agonising than his
+bad health is the horrible reality of the unavailing sacrifice he is
+making--no converts but "outcasts subsidised to forsake their family
+altars;" no reward but the ultimate one which his noble self-devotion
+is laying up for himself in Heaven. No man with a healthy brain can
+discern "Blessing" in the work of these two missionaries, nor be blind
+to the fact that it is the reverse of worshipful to return effusive
+thanks to the great Almighty, "who yearns over the Chinese, His lost
+ones," for "vouchsafing the abundant mercies" of a harvest of six
+doubtful converts as the work of three missionaries for three years.
+
+There are 180,000 people in Suifu, and, as is the case with Chinese
+cities, a larger area than that under habitation is occupied by the
+public graveyard outside the city, which covers the hill slopes for
+miles and miles. The number of opium-smokers is so large that the
+question is not, who does smoke opium, but who doesn't. In the mission
+street alone, besides the Inland Mission, the Buddhist Temple,
+Mohammedan Mosque, and Roman Catholic Mission, there are eight
+opium-houses. Every bank, silk shop, and hong, of any pretension
+whatever, throughout the city, has its opium-room, with the lamp always
+lit ready for the guest. Opium-rooms are as common as smoking rooms are
+with us. A whiff of opium rather than a nip of whisky is the preliminary
+to business in Western China.
+
+[Illustration: OPIUM-SMOKING.]
+
+An immensely rich city is Suifu with every advantage of position, on a
+great waterway in the heart of a district rich in coal and minerals and
+inexhaustible subterranean reservoirs of brine. Silks and furs and
+silverwork, medicines, opium and whitewax, are the chief articles of
+export, and as, fortunately for us, Western China can grow but little
+cotton, the most important imports are Manchester goods.
+
+Szechuen is by far the richest province of the eighteen that constitute
+the Middle Kingdom. Its present Viceroy, Liu, is a native of Anhwei; he
+is, therefore, a countryman of Li Hung Chang to whom he is related by
+marriage, his daughter having married Li Hung Chang's nephew. Its
+provincial Treasurer is believed to occupy the richest post held by any
+official in the empire. It is worth noticing that the present provincial
+Treasurer, Kung Chao-yuan, has just been made (1894) Minister
+Plenipotentiary to Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Sweden and
+Norway, and one can well believe how intense was his chagrin when he
+received this appointment from the "Imperial Supreme" compelling him, as
+it did, to forsake the tombs of his ancestors--to leave China for
+England on a fixed salary, and vacate the most coveted post in the
+empire, a post where the opportunities of personal enrichment are simply
+illimitable.
+
+In Suifu there are two magistrates, both with important yamens. The Fu
+magistrate is the "Father of the City," the Hsien magistrate is the
+"Mother of the City;" and the "Mother of the City" largely favours the
+export opium trade. When Protestant missionaries first came to the city
+in 1888 and 1889 there was little friendliness shown to them. Folk would
+cry after the missionary, "There goes the foreigner that eats children,"
+and children would be hurriedly hidden, as if from fear. These taunts
+were at first disregarded. But there came a time when living children
+were brought to the mission for sale as food; whereupon the mission made
+formal complaint in the yamen, and the Fu at once issued a proclamation
+checking the absurd tales about the foreigners, and ordering the
+citizens, under many pains and penalties, to treat the foreigners with
+respect. There has been no trouble since, and, as we walked through the
+crowded streets, I could see nothing but friendly indifference.
+Reference to this and other sorrows is made in the missionary's report
+to _China's Millions_, November, 1893:--
+
+"Soon after this trial had passed away (the rumours of baby eating),
+still more painful internal sorrow arose. One of the members, who had
+been baptised three years before and had been useful as a preacher of
+the Gospel, fell into grievous sin, and had to be excluded from Church
+fellowship. Then a little later a very promising inquirer, who had been
+cured of opium-smoking and appeared to be growing in grace, fell again
+under its power. While still under a cloud he was suddenly removed
+during the cholera visitation."
+
+The China Inland Mission has pleasant quarters close under the city
+wall. Their pretty chapel opens into the street, and displays
+prominently the proclamation of the Emperor concerning the treaty rights
+of foreign missionaries. Seven children, all of whom are girls, are
+boarded on the premises, and are being brought up as Christians. They
+are pretty, bright children, the eldest, a girl of fourteen,
+particularly so. All are large-footed, and they are to be married to
+Christian converts. When this fact becomes known it is hoped that more
+young Chinamen than at present may be emulous to be converted. All seven
+are foundlings from Chungking where, wrapped in brown paper, they were
+at different times dropped over the wall into the Mission compound. They
+have been carefully reared by the Mission.
+
+At the boys' school fifty smart boys, all heathens, were at their
+lessons. They were learning different subjects, and were teaching their
+ears the "tones" by reading at the top of their voices. The noise was
+awful. None but a Chinese boy could study in such a din. In China, when
+the lesson is finished, the class is silent; noise, therefore, is the
+indication of work in a Chinese school--not silence.
+
+The schoolmaster was a ragged-looking loafer, dressed in grey. He was
+in mourning, and had been unshaven for forty-two days in consequence of
+the death of his father. This was an important day of mourning, because
+on this day, the forty-second after his death, his dead father became,
+for the first time, aware of his own decease. A week later, on the
+forty-ninth day, the funeral rites would cease.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+SUIFU TO CHAOTONG, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE PROVINCE OF YUNNAN--CHINESE
+PORTERS, POSTAL ARRANGEMENTS, AND BANKS.
+
+
+I engaged three new men in Suifu, who undertook to take me to Chaotong,
+290 miles, in thirteen days, special inducement being held out to them
+in the shape of a reward of one shilling each to do the journey in
+eleven days. Their pay was to be seven shillings and threepence each,
+apart from the bonus, and of course they had to find themselves. They
+brought me from the coolie-hong, where they were engaged, an agreement
+signed by the hong-master, which was to be returned to them in Chaotong,
+and remitted to their master as a receipt for my safe delivery.
+
+Every condition detailed in the agreement they faithfully carried out,
+and they took me to Chaotong in ten days and a half, though the ordinary
+time is fourteen days.
+
+One of the three was a convert, one of the six surviving converts made
+by the aggregate Inland Mission of Suifu in six years. He was an
+excellent good fellow, rather dull of wits, but a credit to the Mission.
+To him was intrusted the paying away of my money--he carried no load.
+When he wanted money he was to show me his empty hands, and say "_Muta
+tsien! muta tsien!_" (I have no money! I have no money!).
+
+I knew that perfect confidence could be placed in the convert, apart
+from the reason of his conversion, because he had a father living in
+Suifu. Were he to rob me or do me a wrong and run away, we could arrest
+his father and have him detained in the yamen prison till his son
+returned. Nothing in China gives one greater protection against fraud
+and injury than the law which holds a father responsible for the
+wrongdoing of his son, or, where there is no father, an elder son
+culpable for the misdeed of the younger.
+
+On the morning of March 22nd we started for Chaotong in Yunnan province.
+The Inland Missionary and a Brother from the American Baptist Mission
+kindly came with me for the first thirteen miles. My route lay west on
+the north bank of the Yangtse, but later, after crossing the Yangtse,
+would be nearly south to Chaotong.
+
+Shortly before leaving, the _chairen_ or yamen-runner--the policeman,
+that is to say--sent by the Magistrate to shadow me to Tak-wan-hsien,
+called at the Mission to request that the interpreter would kindly
+remind the traveller, who did not speak Chinese, that it was customary
+to give wine-money to the chairen at the end of the journey. The request
+was reasonable. All the way from Chungking I had been accompanied by
+yamen-runners without knowing it. The chairen is sent partly for the
+protection of the traveller, but mainly for the protection of the
+Magistrate; for, should a traveller provided with a passport receive any
+injury, the Magistrate of the district would be liable to degradation.
+It was arranged, therefore, with the convert that, on our arrival in
+Tak-wan-hsien, I was to give the chairen, if satisfied with his
+services, 200 cash (five pence); but, if he said "_gowshun! gowshun!_"
+(a little more! a little more!) with sufficient persistence, I was to
+increase the reward gradually to sevenpence halfpenny. This was to be
+the limit; and the chairen, I was assured, would consider this a
+generous return for accompanying me 227 miles over one of the most
+mountainous roads in China.
+
+It was a pleasant walk along the river-bank in the fertile alluvial,
+where the poppy in white flower and tobacco were growing, and where
+fields of yellow rape-seed alternated with beds of rushes--the rape-seed
+yielding the oil, and the rushes the rushlights of Chinese lamps. Flocks
+of wild geese were within easy shot on the sandbanks--the "peaceful
+geese," whose virtues are extolled by every Chinaman. They live in
+pairs, and, if one dies, its mate will be for ever faithful to its
+memory. Such virtue is worthy of being recorded on the arch which here
+spans the roadway, whose Chinese characters, _Shen_ (holy), _Chi_
+(will), show that it was erected by the holy decree of the Emperor to
+perpetuate the memory of some widow who never remarried.
+
+As we walked along the missionary gave instructions to my men. "In my
+grace I had given them very light loads; hurry and they would be richly
+rewarded"--one shilling extra for doing fourteen stages in eleven days.
+
+At an inn, under the branches of a banyan tree, we sat down and had a
+cup of tea. While we waited, a hawker came and sat near us. He was
+peddling live cats. In one of his two baskets was a cat that bore a
+curious resemblance to a tortoise-shell tabby, that till a week ago had
+been a pet in the Inland Mission. It had disappeared mysteriously; it
+had died, the Chinese servant said; and here it was reincarnated.
+
+At the market town the missionaries left me to go on alone with my three
+men. I had seventeen miles still to go before night.
+
+It was midday, and the sun was hot, so a chair was arranged for to take
+me the seventeen miles to Anpien. It was to cost 320 cash (eightpence),
+but, just before leaving, the grasping coolies refused to carry me for
+less than 340 cash. "Walk on," said the missionary, "and teach them a
+Christian lesson," so I walked seventeen miles in the sun to rebuke them
+for their avarice and save one halfpenny. In the evening I am afraid
+that I was hardly in the frame of mind requisite for conducting an
+evangelical meeting.
+
+Anpien is a considerable town. It is on the Yangtse River just below
+where it bifurcates into two rivers, one of which goes north-west, the
+other south-west. Streets of temporary houses are built down by the
+river; they form the winter suburb, and disappear in the summer when the
+river rises in consequence of the melting of the snows in its mountain
+sources. At an excellent inn, with a noisy restaurant on the first
+floor, good accommodation was given me. No sooner was I seated than a
+chairen came from the yamen to ask for my Chinese visiting card; but he
+did not ask for my passport, though I had brought with me twenty-five
+copies besides the original.
+
+At daybreak a chair was ready, and I was carried to the River, where a
+ferry boat was in waiting to take us across below the junction. Then we
+started on our journey towards the south, along the right bank of the
+Laowatan branch of the Yangtse. The road was a tracking path cut into
+the face of the cliff; it was narrow, steep, winding, and slippery.
+There was only just room for the chair to pass, and at the sudden turns
+it had often to be canted to one side to permit of its passage. We were
+high above the river in the mountain gorges. The comfort of the
+traveller in a chair along this road depends entirely upon the sureness
+of foot of his two bearers--a false step, and chair and traveller would
+tumble down the cliff into the foaming river below. Deep and narrow was
+the mountain river, and it roared like a cataract, yet down the passage
+a long narrow junk, swarming with passengers, was racing, its oars and
+bow-sweep worked by a score of sailors singing in chorus. The boat
+appeared, passed down the reach, and was out of sight in a moment; a
+single error, the slightest confusion, and it would have been smashed in
+fragments on the rocks and the river strewn with corpses.
+
+We did a good stage before breakfast. Every few li where the steepness
+of the valley side permits it, there are straw-thatched, bamboo and
+plaster inns. Here rice is kept in wooden bins all ready steaming hot
+for the use of travellers; good tea is brewed in a few minutes; the
+tables and chopsticks are sufficiently clean.
+
+Leaving the river, we crossed over the mountains by a short cut to the
+river again, and at a wayside inn, much frequented by Chinese, the chair
+stage finished. I wished to do some writing, and sat down at one of the
+tables. A crowd gathered round me, and were much interested. One elderly
+Chinese with huge glasses, a wag in his own way, seeing that I did not
+speak Chinese, thought to make me understand and divert the crowd by the
+loudness of his speech, and, insisting that I was deaf, yelled into my
+ears in tones that shook the tympanum. I told the foolish fellow, in
+English, that the less he talked the better I could understand him; but
+he persisted, and poked his face almost into mine, but withdrew it and
+hobbled off in umbrage when I drew the attention of the bystanders to
+the absurd capacity of his mouth, which was larger than any mule's.
+
+I must admit that my knowledge of Chinese was very scanty, so scanty
+indeed as to be almost non-existent. What few words I knew were rarely
+intelligible; but, as Mrs. General Baynes, when staying at Boulogne,
+found Hindostanee to be of great help in speaking French, so did I
+discover that English was of great assistance to me in conversing in
+Chinese. Remonstrance was thus made much more effective. Whenever I was
+in a difficulty, or the crowd too obtrusive, I had only to say a few
+grave sentences in English, and I was master of the situation. This
+method of speaking often reminded me of that employed by a Cornish lady
+of high family whose husband was a colleague of mine in Spain. She had
+been many years in Andalusia, but had never succeeded in mastering
+Spanish. At a dinner party given by this lady, at which I was present,
+she thus addressed her Spanish servant, who did not "possess" a single
+word of English: "Bring me," she said in an angry aside, "bring me the
+_cuchillo_ with the black-handled heft," adding, as she turned to us and
+thumped her fist on the table, while the servant stood still mystified,
+"D---- the language! I wish I had never learnt it."
+
+The inn, where the sedan left me, was built over the pathway, which was
+here a narrow track, two feet six inches wide. Mountain coolies on the
+road were passing in single file through the inn, their backs bending
+under their huge burdens. Pigs and fowls and dogs, and a stray cat, were
+foraging for crumbs under the table. Through the open doorways you saw
+the paddy-fields under water and the terraced hills, with every arable
+yard under cultivation. The air was hot and enervating. "The country of
+the clouds," as the Chinese term the province of Szechuen, does not
+belie its name. An elderly woman was in charge of the oven, and toddled
+about on her deformed feet as if she were walking on her heels. Her
+husband, the innkeeper, brought us hot water every few minutes to keep
+our tea basins full. "_Na kaishui lai_" (bring hot water), you heard on
+all sides. A heap of bedding was in one corner of the room, in another
+were a number of rolls of straw mattresses; a hollow joint of bamboo was
+filled with chopsticks for the common use, into another bamboo the
+innkeeper slipped his takings of copper cash. Hanging from the rafters
+were strings of straw sandals for the poor, and hemp sandals for moneyed
+wayfarers like the writer. The people who stood round, and those seated
+at the tables, were friendly and respectful, and plied my men with
+questions concerning their master. And I did hope that the convert was
+not tempted to backslide and swerve from the truth in his answers.
+
+My men were now anxious to push on. Over a mountainous country of
+surpassing beauty, I continued my journey on foot to Fan-yien-tsen, and
+rested there for the night, having done two days' journey in one.
+
+On March 24th we were all day toiling over the mountains, climbing and
+descending wooded steeps, through groves of pine, with an ever-changing
+landscape before us, beautiful with running water, with cascades and
+waterfalls tumbling down into the river, with magnificent glens and
+gorges, and picturesque temples on the mountain tops. At night we were
+at the village of Tanto, on the river, having crossed, a few li before,
+over the boundary which separates the province of Szechuen from the
+province of Yunnan.
+
+From Tanto the path up the gorges leads across a rocky mountain creek
+in a defile of the mountains. In England this creek would be spanned by
+a bridge; but the poor heathen, in China, how do they find their way
+across the stream? By a bridge also. They have spanned the torrent with
+a powerful iron suspension bridge, 100 feet long by ten feet broad,
+swung between two massive buttresses and approached under handsome
+temple-archways.
+
+Mists clothe the mountains--the air is confined between these walls of
+rock and stone. Population is scanty, but there is cultivation wherever
+possible. Villages sparsely distributed along the mountain path have
+water trained to them in bamboo conduits from tarns on the hillside.
+Each house has its own supply, and there is no attempt to provide for
+the common good. Besides other reasons, it would interfere with the
+trade of the water-carriers, who all day long are toiling up from the
+river.
+
+The mountain slope does not permit a greater width of building space
+than on each side of the one main street. And on market days this street
+is almost impassable, being thronged with traffickers, and blocked with
+stalls and wares. Coal is for sale, both pure and mixed with clay in
+briquettes, and salt in blocks almost as black as coal, and three times
+as heavy, and piles of drugs--a medley of bones, horns, roots, leaves,
+and minerals--and raw cotton and cotton yarn from Wuchang and Bombay,
+and finished goods from Manchester. At one of the villages there was a
+chair for hire, and, knowing how difficult was the country, I was
+willing to pay the amount asked--namely, _7d._ for nearly seven miles;
+but my friend the convert, who arranged these things, considered that
+between the _5d._ he offered and the _7d._ they asked the discrepancy
+was too great, and after some acrimonious bargaining it was decided
+that I should continue on foot, my man indicating to me by gestures, in
+a most sarcastic way, that the "_chiaodza_" men had failed to overreach
+him.
+
+[Illustration: A TEMPLE IN SZECHUEN.]
+
+[Illustration: LAOWATAN.]
+
+At Sengki-ping it rained all through the night, and I had to sleep under
+my umbrella because of a solution in the continuity of the roof
+immediately above my pillow. And it rained all the day following; but my
+men, eager to earn their reward of one shilling, pushed on through the
+slush. It was hard work following the slippery path above the river. Few
+rivers in the world flow between more majestic banks than these,
+towering as they do a thousand feet above the water. Clad with thick
+mountain scrub, that has firm foothold, the mountains offer but a poor
+harvest to the peasant; yet even here high up on the precipitous sides
+of the cliffs, ledges that seem inaccessible are sown with wheat or
+peas, and, if the soil be deep enough, with the baneful poppy. As we
+plodded on through the mud and rain, we overtook a poor lad painfully
+limping along with the help of a stick. He was a bright lad, who unbound
+his leg and showed me a large swelling above the knee. He spoke to me,
+though I did not understand him, but with sturdy independence did not
+ask for alms, and when I had seen his leg he bound it up again and
+limped on. Meeting him a little later at an inn, where he was sitting at
+a table with nothing before him to eat, I gave him a handful of cash
+which I had put in my pocket for him. He thanked me by raising his
+clasped hands, and said something, I knew not what, as I hurried on. A
+little while afterwards I stopped to have my breakfast, when the boy
+passed. As soon as he saw me he fell down upon his knees and "kotow'd"
+to me, with every mark of the liveliest gratitude. I felt touched by the
+poor fellow's gratitude--he could not have been more than fifteen--and
+mean, to think that the benefaction, which in his eyes appeared so
+generous, was little more than one penny. There can be no doubt that I
+gained merit by this action, for this very afternoon as I was on the
+track a large stone the size of a shell from a 50-ton gun fell from the
+crag above me, struck the rock within two paces of me, and shot past
+into the river. A few feet nearer and it would have blotted out the life
+of one whom the profession could ill spare. We camped at Laowatan.
+
+A chair with three bearers was waiting for me in the morning, so that I
+left the town of Laowatan in a manner befitting my rank. The town had
+risen to see me leave, and I went down the street amid serried ranks of
+spectators. We crossed the river by a wonderful suspension bridge, 250
+feet long and 12 feet broad, formed of linked bars of wrought iron. It
+shows stability, strength, and delicacy of design, and is a remarkable
+work to have been done by the untutored barbarians of this land of
+night. We ascended the steep incline opposite, and passed the likin
+barrier, but at a turn in the road, higher still in the mountain, a
+woman emerged from her cottage and blocked our path. Nor could the chair
+pass till my foremost bearer had reluctantly given her a string of cash.
+"With money you can move the gods," say the Chinese; "without it you
+can't move a man."
+
+For miles we mounted upwards. We were now in Yunnan, "south of the
+clouds"--in Szechuen we were always under the clouds--the sun was warm,
+the air dry and crisp. Ponies passed us in long droves; often there were
+eighty ponies in a single drove. All were heavily laden with copper and
+lead, were nozzled to keep them off the grass, and picked their way down
+the rocky path of steps with the agility and sureness of foot of
+mountain goats. Time was beaten for them on musical gongs, and the
+echoes rang among the mountains. Many were decorated with red flags and
+tufts, and with plumes of the Amherst pheasant. These were official pack
+animals, which were franked through the likin barriers without
+examination.
+
+The path, rising to the height of the watershed, where at a great
+elevation we gain a distant view of water, descends by the counterslope
+once more to the river Laowatan. A wonderful ravine, a mountain riven
+perpendicularly in twain, here gives passage to the river, and in full
+view of this we rested at the little town of Taoshakwan, with the roar
+of the river hundreds of feet below us. Midway up the face of the
+precipice opposite there is a sight worth seeing; a mass of coffin
+boards, caught in a fault in the precipice, have been lying there for
+untold generations, having been originally carried there by the "ancient
+flying-men who are now extinct."
+
+A poor little town is Taoshakwan, with a poor little yamen with
+pretentious tigers painted on its outflanking wall, with a poor little
+temple, and gods in sad disrepair; but with an admirable inn, with a
+charming verandah facing a scene of alpine magnificence.
+
+We were entering a district of great poverty. At Tchih-li-pu, where we
+arrived at midday the next day, the houses are poor, the people
+poverty-stricken and ill-clad, the hotel dirty, and my room the worst I
+had yet slept in. The road is a well-worn path flagged in places,
+uneven, and irregular, following at varying heights the upward course of
+the tortuous river. The country is bald; it is grand but lonely;
+vegetation is scanty and houses are few; we have left the prosperity of
+Szechuen, and are in the midst of the poverty of Yunnan. Farmhouses
+there are at rare intervals, amid occasional patches of cultivation;
+there are square white-washed watch towers in groves of sacred trees;
+there are a few tombstones, and an occasional rudely carved god to guard
+the way. There are poor mud and bamboo inns with grass roofs, and dirty
+tables set out with half a dozen bowls of tea, and with ovens for the
+use of travellers. Food we had now to bring with us, and only at the
+larger towns where the stages terminate could we expect to find food for
+sale. The tea is inferior, and we had to be content with maize meal,
+bean curds, rice roasted in sugar, and sweet gelatinous cakes made from
+the waste of maize meal. Rice can only be bought in the large towns. It
+is not kept in roadside inns ready steaming hot for use, as it is in
+Szechuen. Rarely there are sweet potatoes; there are eggs, however, in
+abundance, one hundred for a shilling (500 cash), but the coolies cannot
+eat them because of their dearness. A large bowl of rice costs four
+cash, an egg five cash, and the Chinaman strikes a balance in his mind
+and sees more nourishment in one bowl of rice than in three eggs. Of
+meat there is pork--pork in plenty, and pork only. Pigs and dogs are the
+scavengers of China. None of the carnivora are more omnivorous than the
+Chinese. "A Chinaman has the most unscrupulous stomach in the world,"
+says Meadows; "he will eat anything from the root to the leaf, and from
+the hide to the entrails." He will not even despise the flesh of dog
+that has died a natural death. During the awful famine in Shansi of
+1876-1879 starving men fought to the death for the bodies of dogs that
+had fattened on the corpses of their dead countrymen. Mutton is
+sometimes for sale in Mohammedan shops, and beef also, but it must not
+be imagined that either sheep or ox is killed for its flesh, unless on
+the point of death from starvation or disease. And the beef is not from
+the ox but from the water buffalo. Sugar can be bought only in the
+larger towns; salt can be purchased everywhere.
+
+Beggars there are in numbers, skulking about almost naked, with unkempt
+hair and no queue, with a small basket for gathering garbage and a staff
+to keep away dogs. Only beggars carry sticks in China, and it is only
+the beggars that need beware of dogs. To carry a stick in China for
+protection against dogs is like carrying a red flag to scare away bulls.
+Dogs in China are lowly organised; they are not discriminating animals;
+and, despite the luxurious splendour of my Chinese dress--it cost more
+than seven shillings--dogs frequently mistook my calling. In Szechuen,
+as we passed through the towns, there was competition among the inns to
+obtain our custom. Hotel runners were there to shout to all the world
+the superior merits of their establishments. But here in Yunnan it is
+different. There is barely inn accommodation for the road traffic, and
+the innkeepers are either too apathetic or too shamefaced to call the
+attention of the traveller to their poor, dirty accommodation houses.
+
+In Szechuen, one of the most flourishing of trades is that of the
+monumental mason and carver in stone. Huge monoliths are there cut from
+the boulders which have been dislodged from the mountains, dressed and
+finished _in situ_, and then removed to the spot where they are to be
+erected. The Chinese thus pursue a practice different from that of the
+Westerns, who bring the undressed stone from the quarry and carve it in
+the studio. With the Chinese the difficulty is one of transport--the
+finished work is obviously lighter than the unhewn block. In Yunnan, up
+to the present, I had seen no mason at work, for no masonry was needed.
+Houses built of stone were falling into ruin, and only thatched,
+mud-plastered, bamboo and wood houses were being built in their places.
+
+At Laowatan I told my Christian to hire me a chair for thirty or forty
+li, and he did so, but the chair, instead of carrying me the shorter
+distance, carried me the whole day. The following day the chair kept
+company with me, and as I had not ordered it, I naturally walked; but
+the third day also the chair haunted me, and then I discovered that my
+admirable guide had engaged the chair not for thirty or forty li, as I
+had instructed him in my best Chinese, but for three hundred and sixty
+li, for four days' stages of ninety li each. He had made the agreement
+"out of consideration for me," and his own pocket; he had made an
+agreement which gave him wider scope for a little private arrangement of
+his own with the chair-coolies. For two days I was paying fifteen cash a
+li for a chair and walking alongside of it charmed by the good humour of
+the coolies, and unaware that they were laughing in their sleeves at my
+folly. Trifling mistakes like this are inevitable to one who travels in
+China without an interpreter.
+
+My two coolies were capital fellows, full of good humour, cheerful, and
+untiring. The elder was disposed to be argumentative with his
+countrymen, but he could not quarrel. Nature had given him an
+uncontrollable stutter, and, if he tried to speak quickly, spasm seized
+his tongue, and he had to break into a laugh. Few men in China, I think,
+could be more curiously constructed than this coolie. He was all neck;
+his chin was simply an upward prolongation of his neck like a second
+"Adam's apple." Both were very pleasant companions. They were naturally
+in good humour, for they were well paid, and their loads, as loads are
+in China, were almost insignificant; I had only asked them to carry
+sixty-seven pounds each.
+
+We, who live amid the advantages of Western civilisation, can hardly
+realise how enormous are the weights borne by those human beasts of
+burthen, our brothers in China. The common fast-travelling coolie of
+Szechuen contracts to carry eighty catties (107lbs.), forty miles a day
+over difficult country. But the weight-carrying coolie, travelling
+shorter distances, carries far heavier loads than that. There are
+porters, says Du Halde, who will carry 160 of our pounds, ten leagues a
+day. The coolies, engaged in carrying the compressed cakes of Szechuen
+tea into Thibet, travel over mountain passes 7000 feet above their
+starting place; yet there are those among them, says Von Richthofen, who
+carry 324 catties (432lbs.). A package of tea is called a "_pao_" and
+varies in weight from eleven to eighteen catties, yet Baber has often
+seen coolies carrying eighteen of the eighteen-catty _pao_ (the "_Yachou
+pao_") and on one occasion twenty-two, in other words Baber has often
+seen coolies with more than 400lbs. on their backs. Under these enormous
+loads they travel from six to seven miles a day. The average load of the
+Thibetan tea-carrier is, says Gill, from 240lbs. to 264lbs. Gill
+constantly saw "little boys carrying 120lbs." Bundles of calico weigh
+fifty-five catties each (73-1/3lbs.), and three bundles are the average
+load. Salt is solid, hard, metallic, and of high specific gravity, yet I
+have seen men ambling along the road, under loads that a strong
+Englishman could with difficulty raise from the ground. The average load
+of salt, coal, copper, zinc, and tin is 200lbs. Gill met coolies
+carrying logs, 200lbs. in weight, ten miles a day; and 200lbs., the
+Consul in Chungking told me, is the average weight carried by the
+cloth-porters between Wanhsien and Chentu, the capital.
+
+Mountain coolies, such as the tea-carriers, bear the weight of their
+burden on their shoulders, carrying it as we do a knapsack, not in the
+ordinary Chinese way, with a pliant carrying pole. They are all provided
+with a short staff, which has a transverse handle curved like a
+boomerang, and with this they ease the weight off the back, while
+standing at rest.
+
+We were still ascending the valley, which became more difficult of
+passage every day. Hamlets are built where there is scarce foothold in
+the detritus, below perpendicular escarpments of rock, cut clean like
+the façades of a Gothic temple. A tributary of the river is crossed by
+an admirable stone bridge of two arches, with a central pier and
+cut-water of magnificent boldness and strength, and with two images of
+lions guarding its abutment. Just below the branch the main stream can
+be crossed by a traveller, if he be brave enough to venture, in a bamboo
+loop-cradle, and be drawn across the stream on a powerful bamboo cable
+slung from bank to bank.
+
+We rested by the bridge and refreshed ourselves, for above us was an
+ascent whose steepness my stuttering coolie indicated to me by fixing my
+walking stick in the ground, almost perpendicularly, and running his
+finger up the side. He did not exaggerate. A zigzag path set with stone
+steps has been cut in the vertical ascent, and up this we toiled for
+hours. At the base of the escalade my men sublet their loads to spare
+coolies who were waiting there in numbers for the purpose, and climbed
+up with me empty-handed. At every few turns there were rest-houses where
+one could get tea and shelter from the hot sun. The village of
+Tak-wan-leo is at the summit; it is a village of some little importance
+and commands a noble view of mountain, valley, and river. Its largest
+hong is the coffin-maker's, which is always filled with shells of the
+thickest timber that money can buy.
+
+Stress is laid in China upon the necessity of a secure resting-place
+after death. The filial affection of a son can do no more thoughtful act
+than present a coffin to his father, to prove to him how composedly he
+will lie after he is dead. And nothing will a father in China show the
+stranger with more pride than the coffin-boards presented to him by his
+dutiful son.
+
+Tak-wan-leo is the highest point on the road between Suifu and Chaotong.
+For centuries it has been known to the Chinese as the highest point;
+how, then, with their defective appliances did they arrive at so
+accurate a determination? Twenty li beyond the village the stage ends at
+the town of Tawantzu, where I had good quarters in the pavilion of an
+old temple. The shrine was thick with the dust of years; the three gods
+were dishevelled and mutilated; no sheaves of joss sticks were
+smouldering on the altar. The steps led down into manure heaps and a
+piggery, into a garden rank and waste, which yet commands an outlook
+over mountain and river worthy of the greatest of temples.
+
+[Illustration: THE OPIUM-SMOKER OF ROMANCE.]
+
+On March 30th I reached Tak-wan-hsien, the day's stage having been
+seventy li (twenty-three and one-third miles). I was carried all the way
+by three chair-coolies in a heavy chair in steady rain that made the
+unpaved track as slippery as ice--and this over the dizzy heights of a
+mountain pathway of extraordinary irregularity. Never slipping, never
+making a mistake, the three coolies bore the chair with my thirteen
+stone, easily and without straining. From time to time they rested a
+minute or two to take a whiff of tobacco; they were always in good
+humour, and finished the day as strong and fresh as when they began it.
+Within an hour of their arrival all these three men were lying on their
+sides in the room opposite to mine, with their opium-pipes and little
+wooden vials of opium before them, all three engaged in rolling and
+heating in their opium-lamps treacly pellets of opium. Then they had
+their daily smoke of opium. "They were ruining themselves body and
+soul." Two of the men were past middle age; the third was a strapping
+young fellow of twenty-five. They may have only recently acquired the
+habit, I had no means of asking them; but those who know Western China
+will tell you that it is almost certain that the two elder men had used
+the opium-pipe as a stimulant since they were as young as their
+companion. All three men were physically well-developed, with large
+frames, showing unusual muscular strength and endurance, and differed,
+indeed, from those resurrected corpses whose fleshless figures, drawn by
+imaginative Chinese artists, we have known for years to be typical of
+our poor lost brothers--the opium-smoking millions of China. For their
+work to-day, work that few men out of China would be capable of
+attempting, the three coolies were paid sevenpence each, out of which
+they found themselves, and had to pay as well one penny each for the
+hire of the chair.
+
+On arriving at the inn in Tak-wan-hsien my estimable comrade, one of the
+six surviving converts of Suifu, indicated to me that his cash belt was
+empty--up the road he could not produce a single cash for me to give a
+beggar--and pointing in turn to the bag where I kept my silver, to the
+ceiling and to his heart, he conveyed to me the pious assurance that if
+I would give him some silver from the bag he would bring me back the
+true change, on his honour, so witness Heaven! I gave him two lumps of
+silver which I made him understand were worth 3420 cash; he went away,
+and after a suspicious absence returned quite gleefully with 3050 cash,
+the bank, no doubt, having detained the remainder pending the
+declaration of a bogus dividend. But he also brought back with him what
+was better than cash, some nutritious maize-meal cakes, which proved a
+welcome change from the everlasting rice. They were as large as an
+English scone, and cost two cash apiece, that is to say, for one
+shilling I could buy twenty dozen.
+
+Money in Western China consists of solid ingots of silver, and copper
+cash. The silver is in lumps of one tael or more each, the tael being a
+Chinese ounce and equivalent roughly to between 1400 and 1500 cash.
+Speaking generally a tael was worth, during my journey, three shillings,
+that is to say, forty cash were equivalent to one penny. There are
+bankers in every town, and the Chinese methods of banking, it is well
+known, are but little inferior to our own. From Hankow to Chungking my
+money was remitted by draft through a Chinese bank. West from Chungking
+the money may be sent by draft, by telegraph, or in bullion, as you
+choose. I carried some silver with me; the rest I put up in a package
+and handed to a native post in Chungking, which undertook to deliver it
+intact to me at Yunnan city, 700 miles away, within a specified time. By
+my declaring its contents and paying the registration fee, a mere
+trifle, the post guaranteed its safe delivery, and engaged to make good
+any loss. Money is thus remitted in Western China with complete
+confidence and security. My money arrived, I may add, in Yunnan at the
+time agreed upon, but after I had left for Talifu. As there is a
+telegraph line between Yunnan and Tali, the money was forwarded by
+telegraph and awaited my arrival in Tali.
+
+There are no less than four native post-offices between Chungking and
+Suifu. All the post-offices transmit parcels, as well as letters and
+bullion, at very moderate charges. The distance is 230 miles, and the
+charges are fifty cash (_1-1/4d._) the catty (1-1/3lb.), or any part
+thereof; thus a single letter pays fifty cash, a catty's weight of
+letters paying no more than a single letter.
+
+From Chungking to Yunnan city, a distance of 630 miles, letters pay two
+hundred cash (fivepence) each; packages of one catty, or under, pay
+three hundred and fifty cash; while for silver bullion there is a
+special fee of three hundred and fifty cash for every ten taels,
+equivalent to ninepence for thirty shillings, or two-and-a-half per
+cent., which includes postage registration, guarantee, and insurance.
+
+Tak-wan-hsien is a town of some importance, and was formerly the seat of
+the French missionary bishop. It is a walled town, ranking as a Hsien
+city, with a Hsien magistrate as its chief ruler. There are 10,000
+people (more or less), within the walls, but the city is poor, and its
+poverty is but a reflex of the district. Its mud wall is crumbling; its
+houses of mud and wood are falling; the streets are ill-paved and the
+people ill-clad.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE CITY OF CHAOTONG, WITH SOME REMARKS ON ITS POVERTY, INFANTICIDE,
+SELLING FEMALE CHILDREN INTO SLAVERY, TORTURES, AND THE CHINESE
+INSENSIBILITY TO PAIN.
+
+
+By the following day we had crossed the mountains, and were walking
+along the level upland that leads to the plain of Chaotong. And on
+Sunday, April 1st, we reached the city. Cedars, held sacred, with
+shrines in the shelter of their branches, dot the plain; peach-trees and
+pear-trees were now in full bloom; the harvest was ripening in the
+fields. There were black-faced sheep in abundance, red cattle with short
+horns, and the ubiquitous water-buffalo. Over the level roads primitive
+carts, drawn by red oxen, were rumbling in the dust. There were mud
+villages, poor and falling into ruins; there were everywhere signs of
+poverty and famine. Children ran about naked, or in rags. We passed the
+likin-barrier, known by its white flag, and I was not even asked for my
+visiting card, nor were my boxes looked into--they were as beggarly as
+the district--but poor carriers were detained, and a few cash unjustly
+wrung from them. At a crowded teahouse, a few miles from the city, we
+waited for the stragglers, while many wayfarers gathered in to see me.
+Prices were ranging higher. Tea here was 4 cash, and not 2 cash as
+hitherto. But even this charge was not excessive. In Canton one day,
+after a weary journey on foot through the crowded streets, I was taken
+to a five-storied pagoda overlooking the city. At the topmost story tea
+was brought me, and I drank a dozen cups, and was asked threepence in
+payment. I thought that the cheapest refreshment I ever had. Yet here I
+was served as abundantly with better tea at a charge compared with which
+the Canton charge was twenty-five times greater. Previously in this
+province the price I had paid for tea in comparison with the price at
+Canton was as one to fifty.
+
+Early in the afternoon we passed through the south gate into Chaotong,
+and, picking our way through the streets, were led to the comfortable
+home of the Bible Christian Mission, where I was kindly received by the
+Rev. Frank Dymond, and welcomed as a brother missionary of whose arrival
+he had been advised. Services were ended, but the neighbours dropped in
+to see the stranger, and ask my exalted age, my honourable name, and my
+dignified business; they hoped to be able to congratulate me upon being
+a man of virtue, the father of many sons; asked how many thousands of
+pieces of silver I had (daughters), and how long I proposed to permit my
+dignified presence to remain in their mean and contemptible city.
+
+Mr. Dymond is a Devonshire man, and that evening he gave me for tea
+Devonshire cream and blackberry jam made in Chaotong, and native oatmeal
+cakes, than which I never tasted any better in Scotland.
+
+Chaotong is a walled Fu city with 40,000 inhabitants. Roman Catholics
+have been established here for many years, and the Bible Christian
+Mission, which is affiliated to the China Inland Mission, has been
+working here since 1887.
+
+There were formerly five missionaries; there are now only two, and one
+of these was absent. The missionary in charge, Mr. Frank Dymond, is one
+of the most agreeable men I met in China, broad-minded, sympathetic and
+earnest--universally honoured and respected by all the district. Since
+the mission was opened three converts have been baptised, one of whom is
+in Szechuen, another is in Tongchuan, and the third has been gathered to
+his fathers. The harvest has not been abundant, but there are now six
+promising inquirers, and the missionary is not discouraged. The mission
+premises are built on land which cost two hundred and ninety taels, and
+are well situated not far from the south gate, the chief yamens, the
+temples, and the French Mission. People are friendly, but manifest
+dangerously little interest in their salvation.
+
+At Chaotong I had entered upon a district that had been devastated by
+recurring seasons of plague and famine. Last year more than 5000 people
+are believed to have died from starvation in the town and its immediate
+neighbourhood. The numbers are appalling, but doubt must always be
+thrown upon statistics derived from Chinese sources. The Chinese and
+Japanese disregard of accuracy is characteristic of all Orientals.
+Beggars were so numerous, and became such a menace to the community,
+that their suppression was called for; they were driven from the
+streets, and confined within the walls of the temple and grounds beyond
+the south gate, and fed by common charity. Huddled together in rags and
+misery, they took famine fever and perished by hundreds. Seventy dead
+were carried from the temple in one day. Of 5000 poor wretches who
+crossed the temple threshold, the Chinese say that 2000 never came out
+alive. For four years past the harvests had been very bad, but there was
+now hope of a better time coming. Opportune rains had fallen, and the
+opium crop was good. More than anything else the district depends for
+its prosperity upon the opium crop--if the crop is good, money is
+plentiful. Maize-cobs last harvest were four times the size of those of
+the previous harvest, when they were no larger than one's finger. Wheat
+and beans were forward; the coming rice crop gave every hope of being a
+good one. Food was still dear, and all prices were high, because rice
+was scarce and dear, and it is the price of rice which regulates the
+market. In a good year one sheng of rice (6-2/3lbs.) costs thirty-five
+cash (less than one penny), it now costs 110 cash. The normal price of
+maize is sixteen cash the sheng, it now cost sixty-five cash the sheng.
+To make things worse, the weight of the sheng had been reduced with the
+times from twelve catties to five catties, and at the same time the
+relation of cash to silver had fallen from 1640 to 1250 cash the tael.
+
+The selling of its female children into slavery is the chief sorrow of
+this famine-stricken district. During last year it is estimated, or
+rather, it is stated by the Chinese, that no less than three thousand
+children from this neighbourhood, chiefly female children and a few
+boys, were sold to dealers and carried like poultry in baskets to the
+capital. At ordinary times the price for girls is one tael (three
+shillings) for every year of their age, thus a girl of five costs
+fifteen shillings, of ten, thirty shillings, but in time of famine
+children, to speak brutally, become a drug in the market. Female
+children were now offering at from three shillings and fourpence to six
+shillings each. You could buy as many as you cared to, you might even
+obtain them for nothing if you would enter into an agreement with the
+father, which he had no means of enforcing, to take care of his child,
+and clothe and feed her, and rear her kindly. Starving mothers would
+come to the mission beseeching the foreign teachers to take their babies
+and save them from the fate that was otherwise inevitable.
+
+Girls are bought in Chaotong up to the age of twenty, and there is
+always a ready market for those above the age of puberty; prices then
+vary according to the measure of the girl's beauty, an important feature
+being the smallness of her feet. They are sold in the capital for wives
+and _yatows_; they are rarely sold into prostitution. Two important
+factors in the demand for them are the large preponderance in the number
+of males at the capital, and the prevalence there of goitre or thick
+neck, a deformity which is absent from the district of Chaotong.
+Infanticide in a starving city like this is dreadfully common. "For the
+parents, seeing their children must be doomed to poverty, think it
+better at once to let the soul escape in search of a more happy asylum
+than to linger in one condemned to want and wretchedness." The
+infanticide is, however, exclusively confined to the destruction of
+female children, the sons being permitted to live in order to continue
+the ancestral sacrifices.
+
+One mother I met, who was employed by the mission, told the missionary
+in ordinary conversation that she had suffocated in turn three of her
+female children within a few days of birth; and, when a fourth was born,
+so enraged was her husband to discover that it was also a girl that he
+seized it by the legs and struck it against the wall and killed it.
+
+Dead children, and often living infants, are thrown out on the common
+among the gravemounds, and may be seen there any morning being gnawed by
+dogs. Mr. Tremberth of the Bible Christian Mission, leaving by the south
+gate early one morning, disturbed a dog eating a still living child
+that had been thrown over the wall during the night. Its little arm was
+crunched and stript of flesh, and it was whining inarticulately--it died
+almost immediately. A man came to see me, who for a long time used to
+heap up merit for himself in heaven by acting as a city scavenger. Early
+every morning he went round the city picking up dead dogs and dead cats
+in order to bury them decently--who could tell, perhaps the soul of his
+grandfather had found habitation in that cat? While he was doing this
+pious work, never a morning passed that he did not find a dead child,
+and usually three or four. The dead of the poor people are roughly
+buried near the surface and eaten by dogs.
+
+An instance of the undoubted truth of the doctrine of transmigration
+occurred recently in Chaotong and is worth recording. A cow was killed
+near the south gate on whose intestine--and this fact can be attested by
+all who saw it--was written plainly and unmistakably the character
+"_Wong_," which proved, they told me, that the soul of one whose name
+was Wong had returned to earth in the body of that cow.
+
+I stayed two days in Chaotong, and strolled in pleasant company through
+the city. Close to the Mission is the yamen of the Chentai or
+Brigadier-General, the Military Governor of this portion of the
+province, and a little further is the more crowded yamen of the Fu
+Magistrate. Here, as in all yamens, the detached wall or fixed screen of
+stone facing the entrance is painted with the gigantic representation of
+a mythical monster in red trying to swallow the sun--the Chinese
+illustration of the French saying "_prendre la lune avec les dents_." It
+is the warning against covetousness, the exhortation against squeezing,
+and is as little likely to be attended to by the magistrate here as it
+would be by his brother in Chicago. We visited the Confucian Temple
+among the trees and the examination hall close by, and another yamen,
+and the Temple of the God of Riches. In the yamen, at the time of our
+visit, a young official, seated in his four-bearer chair, was waiting in
+the outer court; he had sent in his visiting card, and attended the
+pleasure of his superior officer. China may be uncivilised and may yearn
+for the missionaries, but there was refined etiquette in China, and an
+interchange of many of the pleasantest courtesies of modern
+civilisation, when we noble Britons were grubbing in the forest, painted
+savages with a clout.
+
+As we went out of the west gate, I was shown the spot where a few days
+before a young woman, taken in adultery, was done to death in a cage
+amid a crowd of spectators, who witnessed her agony for three days. She
+had to stand on tiptoe in the cage, her head projecting through a hole
+in the roof, and here she had to remain until death by exhaustion or
+strangulation ensued, or till some kind friend, seeking to accumulate
+merit in heaven, passed into her mouth sufficient opium to poison her,
+and so end her struggles.
+
+On the gate itself a man not so long ago was nailed with red-hot nails
+hammered through his wrists above the hands. In this way he was exposed
+in turn at each of the four gates of the city, so that every man, woman,
+and child could see his torture. He survived four days, having
+unsuccessfully attempted to shorten his pain by beating his head against
+the woodwork, an attempt which was frustrated by padding the woodwork.
+This man had murdered and robbed two travellers on the high road, and,
+as things are in China, his punishment was not too severe.
+
+No people are more cruel in their punishments than the Chinese, and
+obviously the reason is that the sensory nervous system of a Chinaman is
+either blunted or of arrested development. Can anyone doubt this who
+witnesses the stoicism with which a Chinaman can endure physical pain
+when sustaining surgical operation without chloroform, the comfort with
+which he can thrive amid foul and penetrating smells, the calmness with
+which he can sleep amid the noise of gunfire and crackers, drums and
+tomtoms, and the indifference with which he contemplates the sufferings
+of lower animals, and the infliction of tortures on higher?
+
+Every text-book on China devotes a special chapter to the subject of
+punishment. Mutilation is extremely common. Often I met men who had been
+deprived of their ears--they had lost them, they explained, in battle
+facing the enemy! It is a common punishment to sever the hamstrings or
+to break the ankle-bones, especially in the case of prisoners who have
+attempted to escape. And I remember that when I was in Shanghai, Mr.
+Tsai, the Mixed Court Magistrate, was reproved by the papers because he
+had from the bench expressed his regret that the foreign law of Shanghai
+did not permit him to punish in this way a prisoner who had twice
+succeeded in breaking from gaol. The hand is cut off for theft, as it
+was in England not so many years ago. I have seen men with the tendon of
+Achilles cut out, and it is worth noting that the Chinese say that this
+"acquired deformity" can be cured by the transplantation in the seat of
+injury of the tendon of a sheep. One embellishment of the Chinese
+punishment of flogging might with good effect be introduced into
+England. After a Chinese flagellation, the culprit is compelled to go
+down on his knees and humbly thank the magistrate for the trouble he has
+been put to to correct his morals.
+
+There is a branch of the _Missions Étrangères de Paris_ in Chaotong. I
+called at the mission and saw their school of fifteen children, and
+their tiny little church. One priest lives here solitary and alone; he
+was reading, when I entered, the famous Chinese story, "The Three
+Kingdoms." He gave me a kindly welcome, and was pleased to talk in his
+own tongue. An excellent bottle of rich wine was produced, and over the
+glass the Father painted with voluble energy the evil qualities of the
+people whom he has left his beautiful home in the Midi of France to lead
+to Rome. "No Chinaman can resist temptation; all are thieves. Justice
+depends on the richness of the accused. Victory in a court of justice is
+to the richer. Talk to the Chinese of Religion, of a God, of Heaven or
+Hell, and they yawn; speak to them of business and they are all
+attention. If you ever hear of a Chinaman who is not a thief and a liar,
+do not believe it, Monsieur Morrison, do not believe it, they are
+thieves and liars every one."
+
+For eight years the priest had been in China devoting his best energies
+to the propagation of his religion. And sorry had been his recompense.
+The best Christian in the mission had lately broken into the mission
+house and stolen everything valuable he could lay his impious hands on.
+Remembrance of this infamy rankled in his bosom and impelled him to this
+expansive panegyric on Chinese virtue.
+
+Some four months ago the good father was away on a holiday, visiting a
+missionary brother in an adjoining town. In his absence the mission was
+entered through a rift made in the wall, and three hundred taels of
+silver, all the money to the last sou that he possessed, were stolen.
+Suspicion fell upon a Christian, who was not only an active Catholic
+himself, but whose fathers before him had been Catholics for
+generations. It was learned that his wife had some of the money, and
+that the thief was on his way to Suifu with the remainder. There was
+great difficulty in inducing the yamen to take action, but at last the
+wife was arrested. She protested that she knew nothing; but, having been
+triced up by the wrists joined behind her back, she soon came to reason,
+and cried out that, if the magistrate would release her hands, she would
+confess all. Two hundred taels were seized in her house and restored to
+the priest, and the culprit, her husband, followed to Tak-wan-hsien by
+the satellites of the yamen, was there arrested, and was now in prison
+awaiting punishment. The goods he purchased were likewise seized and
+were now with the poor father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MAINLY ABOUT CHINESE DOCTORS.
+
+
+Chaotong is an important centre for the distribution of medicines to
+Szechuen and other parts of the empire. An extraordinary variety of
+drugs and medicaments is collected in the city. No pharmacopoeia is more
+comprehensive than the Chinese. No English physician can surpass the
+Chinese in the easy confidence with which he will diagnose symptoms that
+he does not understand. The Chinese physician who witnesses the
+unfortunate effect of placing a drug of which he knows nothing into a
+body of which he knows less, is no more disconcerted than is his Western
+brother under similar circumstances; he retires, sententiously observing
+"there is medicine for sickness but none for fate." "Medicine," says the
+Chinese proverb, "cures the man who is fated not to die." "When Yenwang
+(the King of Hell) has decreed a man to die at the third watch, no power
+will detain him till the fifth."
+
+The professional knowledge of a Chinese doctor largely consists in
+ability to feel the pulse, or rather the innumerable pulses of his
+Chinese patient. This is the real criterion of his skill. The pulses of
+a Chinaman vary in a manner that no English doctor can conceive of. For
+instance, among the seven kinds of pulse which presage approaching
+death, occur the five following:--
+
+"1. When the pulse is perceived under the fingers to bubble irregularly
+like water over a great fire, if it be in the morning, the patient will
+die in the evening.
+
+"2. Death is no farther off if the pulse seems like a fish whose head is
+stopped in such a manner that he cannot move, but has a frisking tail
+without any regularity; the cause of this distemper lies in the kidneys.
+
+"3. If the pulse seems like drops of water that fall into a room through
+some crack, and when in its return it is scattered and disordered much
+like the twine of a cord which is unravelled, the bones are dried up
+even to the very marrow.
+
+"4. Likewise if the motion of the pulse resembles the pace of a frog
+when he is embarrassed in the weeds, death is certain.
+
+"5. If the motion of the pulse resembles the hasty pecking of the beak
+of a bird, there is a defect of spirits in the stomach."
+
+Heredity is the most important factor in the evolution of a doctor in
+China, success in his career as an "hereditary physician" being
+specially assured to him who has the good fortune to make his first
+appearance in the world feet foremost. Doctors dispense their own
+medicines. In their shops you see an amazing variety of drugs; you will
+occasionally also see tethered a live stag, which on a certain day, to
+be decided by the priests, will be pounded whole in a pestle and mortar.
+"Pills manufactured out of a whole stag slaughtered with purity of
+purpose on a propitious day," is a common announcement in dispensaries
+in China. The wall of a doctor's shop is usually stuck all over with
+disused plasters returned by grateful patients with complimentary
+testimonies to their efficiency; they have done what England is alleged
+to expect of all her sons--their duty.
+
+Medicines, it is known to all Chinamen, operate variously according to
+their taste, thus:--"All sour medicines are capable of impeding and
+retaining; bitter medicines of causing looseness and warmth as well as
+hardening; sweet possess the qualities of strengthening, of harmonising,
+and of warming; acids disperse, prove emollient, and go in an athwart
+direction; salt medicines possess the properties of descending; those
+substances that are hard and tasteless open the orifices of the body and
+promote a discharge. This explains the use of the five tastes."
+
+Coming from Szechuen, we frequently met porters carrying baskets of
+armadillos, leopard skins, leopard and tiger bones. The skins were for
+wear, but the armadillos and bones were being taken to Suifu to be
+converted into medicine. From the bones of leopards an admirable tonic
+may be distilled; while it is well known that the infusion prepared from
+tiger bones is the greatest of the tonics, conferring something of the
+courage, agility, and strength of the tiger upon its partaker.
+
+Another excellent specific for courage is a preparation made from the
+gall bladder of a robber famous for his bravery, who has died at the
+hands of the executioner. The sale of such a gall bladder is one of the
+perquisites of a Chinese executioner.
+
+Ague at certain seasons is one of the most common ailments of the
+district of Chaotong, yet there is an admirable prophylactic at hand
+against it: write the names of the eight demons of ague on paper, and
+then eat the paper with a cake; or take out the eyes of the paper
+door-god (there are door-gods on all your neighbours' doors), and devour
+them--this remedy never fails.
+
+Unlike the Spaniard, the Chinese disapproves of blood-letting in fevers,
+"for a fever is like a pot boiling; it is requisite to reduce the fire
+and not diminish the liquid in the vessel, if we wish to cure the
+patient."
+
+Unlike the Spaniard, too, the Chinese doctors would not venture to
+assert, as the medical faculty of Madrid in the middle of last century
+assured the inhabitants, that "if human excrement was no longer to be
+suffered to accumulate as usual in the streets, where it might attract
+the putrescent particles floating in the air, these noxious vapours
+would find their way into the human body and a pestilential sickness
+would be the inevitable consequence."
+
+For boils there is a certain cure:--There is a God of Boils. If you have
+a boil you will plaster the offending excrescence without avail, if that
+be _all_ you plaster; to get relief you must at the same time plaster
+the corresponding area on the image of the God. Go into his temple in
+Western China, and you will find this deity dripping with plasters, with
+scarcely an undesecrated space on his superficies.
+
+At the yamen of the Brigadier-General in Chaotong, the entrance is
+guarded by the customary stone images of mythical shape and grotesque
+features. They are believed to represent lions, but their faces are not
+leonine--they are a reproduction, exaggerated, of the characteristic
+features of the bulldog of Western China. The images are of undoubted
+value to the city. One is male and the other female. On the sixteenth
+day of the first month they are visited by the townspeople, who rub them
+energetically with their hands, all over from end to end. Every spot so
+touched confers immunity from pain upon the corresponding region of
+their own bodies for the ensuing year. And so from year to year these
+images are visited. Pain accordingly is almost absent from the city,
+and only that man suffers pain who has the temerity to neglect the
+opportunity of insuring himself against it.
+
+I was called to a case of opium-poisoning in Chaotong. A son came in
+casually to seek our aid in saving his father, who had attempted suicide
+with a large over-dose of opium. He had taken it at ten in the morning
+and it was now two. We were led to the house and found it a single small
+unlit room up a narrow alley. In the room two men were unconcernedly
+eating their rice, and in the darkness they seemed to be the only
+occupants; but, lying down behind them on a narrow bed, was the dim
+figure of the dying man, who was breathing stertorously. A crowd quickly
+gathered round the door and pent up the alley-way. Rousing the man, I
+caused him to swallow some pints of warm water, and then I gave him a
+hypodermic injection of apomorphia. The effect was admirable, and
+pleased the spectators even more than the patient.
+
+Opium is almost exclusively the drug used by suicides. No Chinaman would
+kill himself by the mutilation of the razor or pistol-shot because awful
+is the future punishment of him who would so dare to disturb the
+integrity of the body bequeathed to him by his fathers.
+
+China is the land of suicides. I suppose more people die from suicide in
+China in proportion to the population than in any other country. Where
+the struggle for existence is so keen, it is hardly to be wondered at
+that men are so willing to abandon the struggle. But poverty and misery
+are not the only causes. For the most trivial reason the Chinaman will
+take his own life. Suicide with a Chinaman is an act that is recorded in
+his honour rather than to his opprobrium.
+
+Thus a widow, as we have seen, may obtain much merit by sacrificing
+herself on the death of her husband. But in a large proportion of cases
+the motive is revenge, for the spirit of the dead is believed to "haunt
+and injure the living person who has been the cause of the suicide." In
+China to ruin your adversary you injure or kill yourself. To vow to
+commit suicide is the most awful threat with which you can drive terror
+into the heart of your adversary. If your enemy do you wrong, there is
+no way in which you can cause him more bitterly to repent his misdeed
+than by slaying yourself at his doorstep. He will be charged with your
+murder, and may be executed for the crime; he will be utterly ruined in
+establishing, if he can establish, his innocence; and he will be haunted
+ever after by your avenging spirit.
+
+Occasionally two men who have quarrelled will take poison together, and
+their spirits will fight it out in heaven. Opium is very cheap in
+Chaotong, costing only fivepence an ounce for the crude article. You see
+it exposed for sale everywhere, like thick treacle in dirty besmeared
+jars. It is largely adulterated with ground pigskin, the adulteration
+being detected by the craving being unsatisfied. Mohammedans have a holy
+loathing of the pig, and look with contempt on their countrymen whose
+chief meat-food is pork. But each one in his turn. It is, on the other
+hand, a source of infinite amusement to the Chinese to see his
+Mohammedan brother unwittingly smoking the unclean beast in his
+opium-pipe.
+
+On our way to the opium case we passed a doorway from which pitiful
+screams were issuing. It was a mother thrashing her little boy with a
+heavy stick--she had tethered him by the leg and was using the stick
+with both hands. A Chinese proverb as old as the hills tells you, "if
+you love your son, give him plenty of the cudgel; if you hate him, cram
+him with delicacies." He was a young wretch, she said, and she could do
+nothing with him; and she raised her baton again to strike, but the
+missionary interposed, whereupon she consented to stay her wrath and did
+so--till we were round the corner.
+
+"Extreme lenity alternating with rude passion in the treatment of
+children is the characteristic," says Meadows, "of the lower stages of
+civilisation." I mention this incident only because of its rarity. In no
+other country in the world, civilised or "heathen," are children
+generally treated with more kindness and affection than they are in
+China. "Children, even amongst seemingly stolid Chinese, have the
+faculty of calling forth the better feelings so often found latent.
+Their prattle delights the fond father, whose pride beams through every
+line of his countenance, and their quaint and winning ways and touches
+of nature are visible even under the disadvantages of almond eyes and
+shaven crowns" (Dyer Ball).
+
+A mother in China is given, both by law and custom, extreme power over
+her sons whatever their age or rank. The Sacred Edict says, "Parents are
+like heaven. Heaven produces a blade of grass. Spring causes it to
+germinate. Autumn kills it with frost. Both are by the will of heaven.
+In like manner the power of life and death over the body which they have
+begotten is with the parents."
+
+And it is this law giving such power to a mother in China which tends,
+it is believed, to nullify that other law whereby a husband in China is
+given extreme power over his wife, even to the power in some cases of
+life and death.
+
+The Mohammedans are still numerous in Chaotong, and there are some 3000
+families--the figures are Chinese--in the city and district. Their
+numbers were much reduced during the suppression of the rebellion of
+1857-1873, when they suffered the most awful cruelties. Again, thirteen
+years ago, there was an uprising which was suppressed by the Government
+with merciless severity. One street is exclusively occupied by Moslems,
+who have in their hands the skin trade of the city. Their houses are
+known by a conspicuous absence from door and window of the coloured
+paper door-gods that are seen grotesquely glaring from the doors of the
+unbelievers. Their mosque is well cared for and unusually clean. In the
+centre, within the main doorway, as in every mosque in the empire, is a
+gilt tablet of loyalty to the living Emperor. "May the Emperor reign ten
+thousand years!" it says, a token of subjection which the mosques of
+Yunnan have especially been compelled to display since the insurrection.
+At the time of my visit an aged mollah was teaching Arabic and the Koran
+to a ragged handful of boys. He spoke to me through an interpreter, and
+gave me the impression of having some little knowledge of things outside
+the four seas that surround China. I told him that I had lived under the
+shelter of two of the greatest mosques, but he seemed to question my
+contention that the mosque in Cordova and the Karouin mosque in Fez are
+even more noble in their proportions than his mosque in Chaotong. In
+some of the skin-hongs that I entered, the walls were ornamented with
+coloured plans of Mecca and Medinah, bought in Chentu, the capital city
+of the province of Szechuen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE JOURNEY FROM CHAOTONG TO TONGCHUAN.
+
+
+In Chaotong I engaged three new men to go with me to Tongchuan, a
+distance of 110 miles, and I rewarded liberally the three excellent
+fellows who had accompanied me from Suifu. My new men were all active
+Chinamen. The headman Laohwan was most anxious to come with me.
+Recognising that he possessed characteristics which his posterity would
+rejoice to have transmitted to them, he had lately taken to himself a
+wife and now, a fortnight later, he sought rest. He would come with me
+to Burma, the further away the better; he wished to prove the truth of
+the adage about distance and enchantment. The two coolies who were to
+carry the loads were country lads from the district. My men were to
+receive _4s. 6d._ each for the 110 miles, an excessive wage, but all
+food was unusually dear, and people were eating maize instead of rice;
+they were to find themselves on the way, in other words, they were "to
+eat their own rice," and, in return for a small reward, they were to
+endeavour to do the five days' stages in three days. I bought a few
+stores, including some excellent oatmeal and an annular cake of that
+compressed tea, the "Puerh-cha," which is grown in the Shan States and
+is distributed as a luxury all over China. It is in favour in the palace
+of the Emperor in Peking itself; it is one of the finest teas in China,
+yet, to show how jealous the rivalry now is between China tea and
+Indian, when I submitted the remainder of this very cake to a well-known
+tea-taster in Mangoe Lane, Calcutta, and asked his expert opinion, he
+reported that the sample was "of undoubted value and of great interest,
+as showing what _muck can be called tea_."
+
+We left on the 3rd, and passed by the main-street through the crowded
+city, past the rich wholesale warehouses, and out by the west gate to
+the plain of Chaotong. The country spread before us was smiling and
+rich, with many farmsteads, and orchards of pears and peaches--a pretty
+sight, for the trees were now in full blossom. Many carts were lumbering
+along the road on their uneven wheels. Just beyond the city there was a
+noisy altercation in the road for the possession apparently of a blunt
+adze. Carts stopped to see the row, and all the bystanders joined in
+with their voices, with much earnestness. It is rare for the disputants
+to be injured in these questions. Their language on these occasions is,
+I am told, extremely rich in allusions. It would often make a _gendarme_
+blush. Their oaths are more ornate than the Italians'; the art of
+vituperation is far advanced in China. A strong wind was blowing in our
+faces. We rested at some mud hovels where poverty was stalking about
+with a stick in rags and nakedness. Full dress of many of these beggars
+would disgrace a Polynesian. Even the better dressed were hung with
+garments in rags, tattered, and dirty as a Paisley ragpicker's. The
+children were mostly stark-naked. In the middle of the day we reached a
+Mohammedan village named Taouen, twenty miles from Chaotong, and my man
+prepared me an _al fresco_ lunch. The entire village gathered into the
+square to see me eat; they struggled for the orange peel I threw under
+the table.
+
+From here the road rises quickly to the village of Tashuitsing (7380
+feet above sea level), where my men wished to remain, and apparently
+came to an understanding with the innkeeper; but I would not understand
+and went on alone, and they perforce had to follow me. There are only
+half-a-dozen rude inns in the village, all Mohammedan; but just outside
+the village the road passes under a magnificent triple archway in four
+tiers made of beautifully cut stone, embossed with flowers and images,
+and richly gilt--a striking monument in so forlorn a situation. It was
+built two years ago, in obedience to the will of the Emperor, by the
+richest merchant of Chaotong, and is dedicated to the memory of his
+virtuous mother, who died at the age of eighty, having thus experienced
+the joy of old age, which in China is the foremost of the five measures
+of felicity. It was erected and carved on the spot by masons from
+Chungking. Long after dark we reached an outlying inn of the village of
+Kiangti, a thatched mud barn, with a sleeping room surrounded on three
+sides by a raised ledge of mud bricks upon which were stretched the
+mattresses. The room was dimly lit by an oil-lamp; the floor was earth;
+the grating under the rafters was stored with maize-cobs. Outside the
+door cooking was done in the usual square earthen stove, in which are
+sunk two iron basins, one for rice, the other for hot water; maize
+stalks were being burnt in the flues. The room, when we entered, was
+occupied by a dozen Chinese, with their loads and the packsaddles of a
+caravan of mules; yet what did the good-natured fellows do? They must
+all have been more tired than I; but, without complaining, they all got
+up when they saw me, and packed their things and went out of the room,
+one after the other, to make way for myself and my companions. And,
+while we were comfortable, they crowded into another room that was
+already crowded.
+
+Next day a tremendously steep descent took us down to Kiangti, a
+mountain village on the right bank of a swift stream, here spanned in
+its rocky pass by a beautiful suspension bridge, which swings gracefully
+high above the torrent. The bridge is 150 feet long by 12 feet broad,
+and there is no engineer in England who might not be proud to have been
+its builder. At its far end the parapets are guarded by two sculptured
+monkeys, hewn with rough tools out of granite, and the more remarkable
+for their fidelity of form, seeing that the artist must have carved them
+from memory. The inevitable likin-barrier is at the bridge to squeeze a
+few more cash out of the poor carriers. That the Inland Customs dues of
+China are vexatious there can be no doubt; yet it is open to question if
+the combined duties of all the likin-barriers on any one main road
+extending from frontier to frontier of any single province in China are
+greater than the _ad valorem_ duties imposed by our colony of Victoria
+upon the protected goods crossing her border from an adjoining colony.
+
+[Illustration: PAGODA BY THE WAYSIDE, WESTERN CHINA.]
+
+Leaving the bridge, the road leads again up the hills. Poppy was now in
+full flower, and everywhere in the fields women were collecting opium.
+They were scoring the poppy capsules with vertical scratches and
+scraping off the exuded juice which had bled from the incisions they
+made yesterday. Hundreds of pack horses carrying Puerh tea met us on the
+road; while all day long we were passing files of coolies toiling
+patiently along under heavy loads of crockery. They were going in the
+same direction as ourselves to the confines of the empire, distributing
+those teacups, saucers, and cuplids, china spoons, and rice-bowls that
+one sees in every inn in China. Most of the crockery is brought across
+China from the province of Kiangsi, whose natural resources seems to
+give it almost the monopoly of this industry. The trade is an immense
+one. In the neighbourhood of King-teh-chin, in Kiangsi, at the outbreak
+of the Taiping rebellion, more than one million workmen were employed in
+the porcelain manufactories. Cups and saucers by the time they reach so
+far distant a part of China as this, carried as they are so many
+hundreds of miles on the backs of coolies, are sold for three or four
+times their original cost. Great care is taken of them, and no piece can
+be so badly broken as not to be mended. Crockery-repairing is a
+recognised trade, and the workmen are unusually skilful even for
+Chinese. They rivet the pieces together with minute copper clamps. To
+have a specimen of their handiwork I purposely in Yunnan broke a cup and
+saucer into fragments, only to find when I had done so that there was
+not a mender in the district. Rice bowls and teacups are neatly made,
+tough, and well finished; even the humblest are not inelegantly
+coloured, while the high-class china, especially where the imperial
+yellow is used, often shows the richest beauty of ornamentation.
+
+Inns on this road were few and at wide distances; they were scarcely
+sufficient for the numbers who used them. The country was red sandstone,
+open, and devoid of all timber, till, descending again into a valley,
+the path crossed an obstructing ridge, and led us with pleasant surprise
+into a beautiful park. It was all green and refreshing. A pretty stream
+was humming past the willows, its banks covered with the poppy in full
+flower, a blaze of colour, magenta, white, scarlet, pink and blue picked
+out with hedges of roses. The birds were as tame as in the Garden of
+Eden; magpies came almost to our feet; the sparrows took no notice of
+us; the falcons knew we would not molest them; the pigeons seemed to
+think we could not. All was peaceful, and the peasants who sat with us
+under the cedars on the borders of the park were friendly and
+unobtrusive. Long after sundown we reached, far from the regular stage,
+a lonely pair of houses, at one of which we found uncomfortable
+accommodation. Fire had to be kindled in the room in a hollow in the
+ground; there was no ventilation, the wood was green, the smoke almost
+suffocating. My men talked on far into the night until I lost patience
+and yelled at them in English. They thought that I was swearing, and
+desisted for fear that I should injure their ancestors. There was a
+shrine in this room for private devotions, the corresponding spot in the
+adjoining room being a rough opium-couch already occupied by two lusty
+thickset "slaves to this thrice-accursed drug." My men ate the most
+frugal of suppers. Food was so much in advance of its ordinary price
+that my men, in common with thousands of other coolies, were doing their
+hard work on starvation rations.
+
+On the 5th we did a long day's stage and spent the night at a bleak
+hamlet 8500 feet above sea level, in a position so exposed that the
+roofs of the houses were weighted with stones to prevent their being
+carried away by the wind. This was the "Temple of the Dragon King," and
+it was only twenty li from Tongchuan.
+
+Next day we were astir early and soon after daylight we came suddenly to
+the brow of the tableland overlooking the valley of Tongchuan. The
+compact little walled city, with its whitewashed buildings glistening in
+the morning sun, lay beyond the gleaming plats of the irrigated plain,
+snugly ensconced under rolling masses of hills, which rose at the far
+end of the valley to lofty mountains covered with snow. All the plain is
+watered with springs; large patches of it are under water all the year
+round, and, rendered thus useless for cultivation, are employed by the
+Chinese for the artificial rearing of fish and as breeding grounds for
+the wild duck and the "faithful bird," the wild goose. A narrow dyke
+serpentining across the plain leads into the pretty city, where, at the
+north-east angle of the wall, I was charmed to find the cheerful home of
+the Bible Christian Mission, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Sam Pollard and
+two lady assistants, one of whom is a countrywoman of my own. This is, I
+believe, the most charming spot for a mission station in all China. Mr.
+Pollard is quite a young man, full of enthusiasm, modest, and clever.
+Everywhere he is received kindly; he is on friendly terms with the
+officials, and there is not a Chinese home within ten miles of the city
+where he and his pretty wife are not gladly welcomed. His knowledge of
+Chinese is exceptional; he is the best Chinese scholar in Western China,
+and is examiner in Chinese for the distant branches of the Inland
+Mission.
+
+The mission in Tongchuan was opened in 1891, and the results are not
+discouraging, seeing that the Chinaman is as difficult to lead into the
+true path as any Jew. No native has been baptized up to date. The
+convert employed by the mission as a native helper is one of the three
+converts of Chaotong. He is a bright-faced lad of seventeen, as ardent
+an evangelist as heart of missionary could desire, but a native preacher
+can never be so successful as the foreign missionary. The Chinese listen
+to him with complacency, "You eat Jesus's rice and of course you speak
+his words," they say. The attitude of the Chinese in Tongchuan towards
+the Christian missionary is one of perfect friendliness towards the
+missionary, combined with perfect apathy towards his religion. Like any
+other trader, the missionary has a perfect right to offer his goods,
+but he must not be surprised, the Chinese thinks, if he finds difficulty
+in securing a purchaser for wares as much inferior to the home
+production as is the foreign barbarian to the subject of the Son of
+Heaven.
+
+There is a Catholic Mission in Tongchuan, but the priest does not
+associate with the Protestant. How indeed can the two associate when
+they worship different Gods!
+
+The difficulty is one which cannot be easily overcome while there exists
+in China that bone of contention among missionaries which is known as
+the "Term Question."
+
+The Chinese recognise a supreme God, or are believed by some to
+recognise a supreme God--"High Heaven's ruler" (_Shangtien hou_), who is
+"probably intended," says Williams, "for the true God." The Mohammedans,
+when they entered China, could not recognise this god as identical with
+the only one God, to whom they accordingly gave the Chinese name of
+"true Lord" (_Chên Chu_). The Jesuits, when they entered China, could
+not recognise either of these gods as identical with the God of the
+Hebrews, whom they accordingly represented in Chinese first by the
+characters for "Supreme Ruler" (_Shang ti_), and subsequently by the
+characters for "Lord of Heaven" (_Tien Chu_). The Protestants naturally
+could not be identified with the Catholics, and invented another Chinese
+name, or other Chinese names, for the true God; while the Americans,
+superior to all other considerations, discovered a different name still
+for the true God to whom they assigned the Chinese characters for "the
+true Spirit" (_Chên Shên_), thereby suggesting by implication, as Little
+observes, that the other spirits were false. But, as if such divergent
+terms were not sufficiently confusing for the Chinese, the Protestants
+themselves have still more varied the Chinese characters for God. Thus,
+in the first translation of the Bible, the term for God used is the
+Chinese character for "Spirit" (_Shên_); in the second translation this
+term is rejected and "Supreme Ruler" (_Shang ti_), substituted; the
+third translation reverts to the "Spirit"; the fourth returns to the
+"Supreme Ruler"; and the fifth, by Bishop Burdon of Hong Kong, and Dr.
+Blodget of Peking, in 1884, rejects the title that was first accepted by
+the Jesuits, and accepts the title "Lord of Heaven" (_Tien Chu_), that
+was first rejected by the Jesuits.
+
+"Many editions," says the Rev. J. Wherry, of Peking, "with other terms
+have since been published." "Bible work in particular," says the Rev.
+Mr. Muirhead, of Shanghai, "is carried on under no small disadvantage in
+view of this state of things." "It is true, however," adds Mr. Muirhead,
+"that God has blest all terms in spite of our incongruity." But
+obviously the Chinese are a little puzzled to know which of the
+contending gods is most worthy of their allegiance.
+
+But apart from the "Term Question" there must be irreconcilable
+antagonism between the two great missionary churches in China, for it
+cannot be forgotten that "in the development of the missionary idea
+three great tasks await the (Protestant) Church.... The second task is
+_to check the schemes of the Jesuit_. In the great work of the world's
+evangelisation the Church has no foe at all comparable with the
+Jesuit.... Swayed ever by the vicious maxim that the end justifies the
+means, he would fain put back the shadow of the dial of human progress
+by half a dozen centuries. Other forms of superstition and error are
+dangerous, but Jesuitism overtops them all, and stands forth an
+organised conspiracy against the liberties of mankind. This foe is not
+likely to be overcome by a divided Protestantism. If we would conquer in
+this war we must move together, and in our movements must manifest a
+patience, a heroism, a devotion equal to anything the Jesuit can claim."
+(The Rev. A. Sutherland, D.D., Delegate from Canada to the Missionary
+Conference, 1888, _Records_, i., 145.)
+
+And, on the other hand, the distracted Chinese reads
+that:--"Protestantism is not only a veritable Babel, but a horrible
+theory, and an immoral practice which blasphemes God, degrades man, and
+endangers society." (Cardinal Cuesta's Catechism cited in "China and
+Christianity," by Michie, p. 8.)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE CITY OF TONGCHUAN, WITH SOME REMARKS UPON INFANTICIDE.
+
+
+When I entered Tongchuan the town was in commotion; kettledrums and
+tomtoms were beating, and crackers and guns firing; the din and clatter
+was continuous and deafening. An eclipse of the sun was commencing--it
+was the 6th of April--"the sun was being swallowed by the Dog of
+Heaven," and the noise was to compel the monster to disgorge its prey.
+Five months ago the Prefect of the city had been advised of the
+impending disaster, and it was known that at a certain hour he would
+publicly intervene with Heaven to avert from the city the calamity of
+darkness. I myself saw with my own eyes the wonderful power of this man.
+The sun was darkened when I went to the Prefect's yamen. A crowd was
+already gathered in the court. At the foot of the steps in the open air,
+a loosely built framework of wood ten feet high was standing, displaying
+on its vertex a yellow disc of paper inscribed with the characters for
+"voracity."
+
+As we waited the sun became gradually clearer, when, just as the moon
+was disappearing across its edge, the Prefect in full dress, stepped
+from his yamen into the court, accompanied by the city magistrate and a
+dozen city fathers. Every instrument of discord was still clanging over
+the city. Then all these men of weight walked solemnly three times
+round the scaffold, and halted three times, while the Prefect went down
+on his knees, and did obeisance with nine kotows to the rickety frame
+and its disc of yellow paper. There was almost immediate answer to his
+prayer. With a sigh of relief we saw the lingering remnant of darkness
+disappear, and the midday sun shone full and bright. Then the Prefect
+retired, his suite dividing to let him pass, and we all went home
+blessing the good man whose intercession had saved the town from
+darkness. For there can be little doubt, I hope, that it is due to the
+action of this Prefect that the sun is shining to-day in Tongchuan. The
+Chinese might well ask if any barbarian missionary could do as he did.
+
+Eclipses in China are foretold by the Government almanac published
+annually in Peking by a bureau of astrology attached to the Board of
+Rites. The almanac is a Government monopoly, and any infraction of its
+copyright is a penal offence. "It monopolises the management of the
+superstitions of the people, in regard to the fortunate or unlucky
+conjunctions of each day and hour. No one ventures to be without it,
+lest he be liable to the greatest misfortunes and run the imminent
+hazard of undertaking important events on blackballed days."
+
+The Chinese almanac is much more comprehensive than ours, for even
+eclipses are foretold that never happen. Should an error take place in
+their almanac, and an expected eclipse not occur, the royal astronomers
+are not disconcerted--far from it; they discover in their error reason
+for rejoicing; they then congratulate the Emperor that "the heavens have
+dispensed with this omen of ill-luck in his favour." For eclipses
+forebode disaster, and every thoughtful Chinaman who has heard of the
+present rebellion of the Japanese must attribute the reverses caused by
+the revolt to the eclipse of April 6th, occurring immediately before the
+insurrection.
+
+Tongchuan is one of the most charming towns I have ever visited; it is
+probably the cleanest city in China, and the best governed. Its prefect
+is a man of singular enlightenment, who rules with a justice that is
+rarely known in China. His people regard him as something more than
+mortal. Like Confucius "his ear is an obedient organ for the reception
+of truth." Like the Confucian Superior Man "his dignity separates him
+from the crowd; being reverent he is beloved; being loyal he is
+submitted to; and being faithful he is trusted. By his word he directs
+men, and by his conduct he warns them."
+
+For several years he was attached to the Embassy in Japan, and he boasts
+that he has made Tongchuan as clean a city as any to be found in the
+empire of the Mikado. The yamen is a model of neatness. Painted on the
+outflanking wall there is the usual huge representation of the fabulous
+monster attempting to swallow the sun--the admonition against
+extortion--and probably the only magistrate in China who does not stand
+in need of the warning is the Prefect of Tongchuan.
+
+Prices in Tongchuan at the time of my visit were high and food was
+scarce. It was difficult to realise that men at that moment were dying
+of starvation in the pretty town. Rice cost 400 cash for the same
+quantity that in a good season can be bought for 60 cash; maize was 300
+cash the sheng, whereas the normal price is only 40 cash. Sugar was 15
+cash the cake instead of 6 cash the cake, and so on in all things. Poppy
+is not grown in the valley to the same extent as hitherto, because
+poppy displaces wheat and beans, and the people have need of all the
+land they can spare to grow breadstuffs. In the other half of the year,
+rice, maize, and tobacco are grown together on the plain, and at the
+same season potatoes, oats, and buckwheat are grown in the hills.
+
+Part of the plain is permanently under water, but it was the drought in
+the winter and the rains in the summer of successive years that caused
+the famine. There are no Mohammedans in the town--there have been none
+since the rebellion--but there are many small Mohammedan villages across
+the hills. No district in China is now more peaceful than the Valley of
+Tongchuan. The Yangtse River--"The River of Golden Sand"--is only two
+days distant, but it is not navigable even by Chinese boatmen. Sugarcane
+grows in the Yangtse Valley in little pockets, and it is from there that
+the compressed cakes of brown sugar seen in all the markets of Western
+Yunnan are brought. Coal comes from a mine two or three days inland;
+white-wax trees provide an important industry; the hills to the west
+contain the most celebrated copper mines in the empire.
+
+The cash of Tongchuan are very small and inferior, 2000 being equivalent
+to one tael, whereas in Chaotong, 110 miles away, the cash vary from
+1260 to 1640 the tael. Before the present Prefect took office the cash
+were more debased still, no less than 4000 being then counted as one
+tael, but the Prefect caused all these cash to be withdrawn from
+circulation.
+
+Unlike Chaotong, no children are permitted to be sold in the city, but
+during last year no less than 3000 children (the figures are again
+Chinese) were carried through the town on their way from Chaotong to the
+capital. The edict of the Prefect which forbids the selling of children
+increases the cases of infanticide, and in time of famine there are few
+mothers among the starving poor who can truthfully assert that they have
+never abandoned any of their offspring.
+
+The subject of infanticide in China has been discussed by a legion of
+writers and observers; and the opinion they come to seems to be
+generally that the prevalence of the crime, except in seasons of famine,
+has been enormously overstated. The prevalent idea with us Westerns
+appears to be, that the murder of their children, especially of their
+female children, is a kind of national pastime with the Chinese, or, at
+the best, a national peculiarity. Yet it is open to question whether the
+crime, excepting in seasons of famine, is, in proportion to the
+population, more common in China than it is in England. H. A. Giles of
+H.B.M. Chinese Consular Service, one of the greatest living authorities
+on China, says "I am unable to believe that infanticide prevails to any
+great extent in China.... In times of famine or rebellion, under stress
+of exceptional circumstances, infanticide may possibly cast its shadow
+over the empire, but as a general rule I believe it to be no more
+practised in China than in England, France, the United States and
+elsewhere." (_Journal, China Branch R.A.S._, 1885, p. 28.)
+
+G. Eugène Simon, formerly French Consul in China, declares that
+"infanticide is a good deal less frequent in China than in Europe
+generally, and particularly in France." A statement that inferentially
+receives the support of Dr. E. J. Eitel. (_China Review_, xvi., 189.)
+
+The prevailing impression as to the frequency of infanticide in China is
+derived from the statements of missionaries, who, no doubt
+unintentionally, exaggerate the prevalence of the crime in order to
+bring home to us Westerns the deplorable condition of the heathen among
+whom they are labouring. But, even among the missionaries, the
+statements are as divergent as they are on almost every other subject
+relating to China. Thus the Rev. Griffith John argues "from his own
+experience that infanticide is common all over the Empire," the Rev. Dr.
+Edkins on the other hand says that "infanticide is a thing almost
+unknown in Peking." And the well known medical missionary, Dr. Dudgeon
+of Peking (who has left the London Mission), agrees with another medical
+missionary, Dr. Lockhart, "that infanticide is almost as rare in China
+as in England."
+
+The Rev. A. H. Smith ("Chinese Characteristics," p. 207) speaks "of the
+enormous infanticide which is known to exist in China." The Rev. Justus
+Doolittle ("Social Life of the Chinese," ii. p. 203) asserts that "there
+are most indubitable reasons for believing that infanticide is tolerated
+by the Government, and that the subject is treated with indifference and
+with shocking levity by the mass." ... But Bishop Moule "has good reason
+to conclude that the prevalence of the crime has been largely
+exaggerated." (_Journal, China Branch R.A.S._, _ut supra_.)
+
+One of the best known Consuls in China, who lately retired from the
+Service, told the writer that in all his thirty years' experience of
+China he had only had personal knowledge of one authentic case of
+infanticide.
+
+"Exaggerated estimates respecting the frequency of infanticide," says
+the Rev. Dr. D. J. MacGowan, "are formed owing to the withholding
+interment from children who die in infancy." And he adds that "opinions
+of careful observers will be found to vary with fields of observation."
+(_China Review_, xiv., 206.)
+
+Whatever the relative frequency of infanticide in China and Europe may
+be, it cannot, I think, admit of question that the crime of infanticide
+is less common among the barbarian Chinese than is the crime of
+foeticide among the highly civilised races of Europe and America.
+
+There are several temples in Tongchuan, and two beyond the walls which
+are of more than ordinary interest. There is a Temple to the Goddess of
+Mercy, where deep reverence is shown to the images of the Trinity of
+Sisters. They are seated close into the wall, the nimbus of glory which
+plays round their impassive features being represented by a golden
+aureola painted on the wall. The Goddess of Mercy is called by the
+Chinese "_Sheng-mu_," or Holy Mother, and it is this name which has been
+adopted by the Roman Catholic Church as the Chinese name of the Virgin
+Mary.
+
+There is a fine City Temple which controls the spirits of the dead of
+the city as the yamens of the magistrates control the living of the
+city. The Prefect and the City Magistrate are here shown in their
+celestial abodes administering justice--or its Chinese equivalent--to
+the spirits who, when living, were under their jurisdiction on earth.
+They hold the same position in Heaven and have the same authority as
+they had on earth; and may, as spirits, be bribed to deal gently with
+the spirits of departed friends just as, when living, they were open to
+offers to deal leniently with any living prisoner in whose welfare the
+friends were prepared to express practical sympathy.
+
+In the Buddhist Temple are to be seen, in the long side pavilions, the
+chambers of horrors with their realistic representations of the torments
+of a soul in its passage through the eight Buddhist hells. I looked on
+these scenes with the calmness of an unbeliever; not so a poor woman to
+whom the horrors were very vivid truths. She was on her knees before
+the grating, sobbing piteously at a ghastly scene where a man, while
+still alive, was being cast by monsters from a hill-top on to red-hot
+spikes, there to be torn in pieces by serpents. This was the torture her
+dead husband was now enduring; it was this stage he had reached in his
+onward passage through hell--the priest had told her so, and only money
+paid to the priests could lighten his torment.
+
+Beyond the south gate, amid groves of lofty pine trees, are the temple
+and grounds, the pond and senior wrangler bridge, of the Confucian
+Temple--the most beautifully-finished temple I have seen in China. We
+have accustomed ourselves to speak in ecstacies of the wood-carving in
+the temples of Japan, but not even in the Sh[=o]gun chapels of the Shiba
+temples in Tokyo have I seen wood-carving superior to the exquisite
+delicacy of workmanship displayed in the carving of the Imperial dragons
+that frame with their fantastic coils the large Confucian tablet of this
+temple. Money has been lavished on this building. The inclined marble
+slabs that divide the terrace steps are covered with fanciful tracery;
+the parapets of the bridge are chiselled in marble; sculptured images of
+elephants with howdahs crown the pillars of the marble balustrades; the
+lattice work under the wide eaves is everywhere beautifully carved.
+Lofty pillars of wood support the temple roofs. They are preserved by a
+coating of hemp and protected against fire by an outer coating of
+plaster stained the colour of the original wood. Gilding is used as
+freely in the decoration of the grand altar and tablets of this temple,
+as it is in a temple in Burma.
+
+On a hill overlooking the city and valley is the Temple to the God of
+Literature. The missionary and I climbed to the temple and saw its
+pretty court, its ancient bronze censer, and its many beautiful flowers,
+and then sat on the terrace in the sun and watched the picturesque
+valley spread out before us.
+
+As we descended the hill again, a lad, who had attached himself to us,
+offered to show us the two common pits in which are cast the dead bodies
+of paupers and criminals. The pits are at the foot of the hill,
+open-mouthed in the uncut grass. With famine in the city, with people
+dying at that very hour of starvation, there was no lack of dead, and
+both pits were filled to within a few feet of the surface. Bodies are
+thrown in here without any covering, and hawks and crows strip them of
+their flesh, a mode of treating the dead grateful to the Parsee, but
+inexpressibly hateful to the Chinese, whose poverty must be overwhelming
+when he can be found to permit it. Pigtails were lying carelessly about
+and skulls separated from the trunk. Human bones gnawed by dogs were to
+be picked up in numbers in the long grass all round the hill; they were
+the bones of the dead who had been loosely buried close to the surface,
+through which dogs--the domestic dogs one met afterwards in the
+street--had scraped their way. Many, too, were the bones of dead
+children; for poor children are not buried, but are thrown outside the
+wall, sometimes before they are dead, to be eaten perhaps by the very
+dog that was their playmate since birth.
+
+I called upon the French priest, Père Maire, and he came with much
+cordiality to the door of the mission to receive me. His is a pretty
+mission, built in the Chinese style, with a modest little church and a
+nice garden and summer-house. The father has been four years in
+Tongchuan and ten in China. Like most of the French priests in China he
+has succeeded in growing a prodigious beard whose imposing length adds
+to his influence among the Chinese, who are apt to estimate age by the
+length of the beard. Only three weeks ago he returned from the capital.
+Signs of famine were everywhere apparent. The weather was very cold, and
+the road in many places deeply covered with snow. Riding on his mule he
+passed at different places on the wayside eight bodies, all recently
+dead from hunger and cold. No school is attached to the mission, but
+there is an _orphèlinat_ of little girls, _ramassées dans les rues_, who
+had been cast away by their parents; they are in charge of Chinese
+Catholic nuns, and will be reared as nuns. As we sat in the pavilion in
+the garden and drank wine sent to him by his brother in Bordeaux--true
+French wine--the priest had many things to tell me of interest, of the
+native rebellion on the frontier of Tonquin, of the mission of Monsieur
+Haas to Chungking, and the Thibetan trade in tea. "The Chinese? ah! yes.
+He loves the Chinese because he loves all God's creatures, but they are
+liars and thieves. Many families are converted, but even the Christians
+are never Christian till the third generation." These were his words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+TONGCHUAN TO YUNNAN CITY.
+
+
+From Tongchuan to Yunnan city, the provincial seat of Government and
+official residence of the Viceroy, whither I was now bound, is a
+distance of two hundred miles. My two carriers from Chaotong had been
+engaged to go with me only as far as Tongchuan, but they now re-engaged
+to go with Laohwan, my third man, as far as the capital. The conditions
+were that they were to receive _6s. 9d._ each (2.25 taels), one tael
+(_3s._) to be paid in advance and the balance on arrival, and they were
+to do the distance in seven days. The two taels they asked the
+missionary to remit to their parents in Chaotong, and he promised to
+receive the money from me and do so. There was no written agreement of
+any kind--none of the three men could read; they did not even see the
+money that the missionary was to get for them; but they had absolute
+confidence in our good faith.
+
+I had a mule with me from Tongchuan to Yunnan, which saved me many miles
+of walking, and increased my importance in the eyes of the heathen. I
+was taking it to the capital for sale. It was a big-boned rough-hewn
+animal, of superior intelligence, and I was authorised to sell it,
+together with its saddle and bridle, for four pounds. Like most Chinese
+mules it had two corns on the forelegs, and thus could see at night.
+Every Chinaman knows that the corns are adventitious eyes which give the
+mule this remarkable power.
+
+We were on our way early in the afternoon of the 7th, going up the
+valley. Below the curiously draped pagoda which commands Tongchuan we
+met two pairs of prisoners, who were being led into the city under
+escort. They were coupled by the neck; they were suffering cruelly, for
+their wrists were so tightly manacled that their hands were
+strangulated, a mode of torture to which, it will be remembered, the
+Chinese Government in 1860 subjected Bowlby, the _Times_ correspondent,
+and the other prisoners seized with him "in treacherous violation of a
+flag of truce," till death ended their sufferings. These men were
+roadside robbers caught red-handed. Their punishment would be swift and
+certain. Found guilty on their own confession, either tendered
+voluntarily to escape torture, or under the compulsion of torture,
+"self-accusation wrested from their agony," they would be sentenced to
+death, carried in baskets without delay--if they had not previously
+"died in prison"--died, that is, from the torture having been pushed too
+far--to the execution ground, and there beheaded.
+
+We stopped at an inn that was not the ordinary stage, where in
+consequence we had few comforts. In the morning my men lay in bed till
+late, and when I called them they opened the door and pointed to the
+road, clearly indicating that rain had fallen, and that the roads were
+too slippery for traffic. But what was my surprise on looking myself to
+find the whole country deeply under snow, and that it was still snowing.
+All day, indeed, it snowed. The track was very slippery, but my mule,
+though obstinate, was sure-footed, and we kept going. We passed a huge
+coffin--borne by a dozen men with every gentleness, not to disturb the
+dead one's rest--preceded, not followed, by mourners, two of whom were
+carrying a paper sedan chair, which would be burnt, and so, rendered
+invisible, would be sent to the invisible world to bear the dead man's
+spirit with becoming dignity. All day we were in the mountains
+travelling up the bed of a creek with mountains on both sides of us. We
+passed Chehki, ninety li from Tongchuan, and thirty li further were glad
+to escape from the cold and snow to the shelter of a poor thatched mud
+inn, where we rested for the night.
+
+A hump-back was in charge. The only bedroom was half open to the sky,
+but the main room was still whole, though it had seen better days. There
+was a shrine in this room with ancestral tablets, and a sheet of
+many-featured gods, conspicuous amongst them being the God of Riches,
+who had been little attentive to the prayers offered him in this poor
+hamlet. In a stall adjoining our bedroom the mule was housed, and
+jingled his bell discontentedly all through the night. A poor man,
+nearly blind with acute inflammation of the eyes, was shivering over the
+scanty embers of an open fire which was burning in a square hole scooped
+in the earthern floor near the doorway. He ate the humblest dishful of
+maize husks and meal strainings. That night I wondered did he sleep out
+in the open under a hedge, or did the inn people give him shelter with
+my mule in the next room. My men and I had to sleep in the same room.
+They were still on short rations. They ate only twice a day, and then
+sparingly, of maize and vegetables; they took but little rice, and no
+tea, and only a very small allowance of pork once in two days. Food was
+very dear, and, though they were receiving nearly double wages to carry
+half-loads, they must needs be careful. What admirable fellows they
+were! In all my wanderings I have never travelled with more good-natured
+companions. The attendant Laohwan was a powerful Chinese, solid and
+determined, but courteous in manner, voluble of speech, but with an
+amusing stammer; he had a wide experience of travel in Western China. He
+seemed to enjoy his journey--he never appeared lovesick; but, of course,
+I had no means of asking if he felt keenly the long separation from his
+bride.
+
+At the inn there was no bedding for my men; they had to cover
+themselves, as best they could, with some pieces of felt brought them by
+the hunchback, and sleep all huddled together from the cold. They had a
+few hardships to put up with, but their lot was a thousand times better
+than that of hundreds of their countrymen who were dying from hunger as
+well as from cold.
+
+On the 9th, as I was riding on my mule up the mountain road, with the
+bleak, bare mountain tops on every side, I was watching an eagle
+circling overhead, when my men called out to me excitedly and pointed to
+a large wolf that leisurely crossed the path in front of us and slunk
+over the brow. It had in its mouth a haunch of flesh torn from some poor
+wretch who had perished during the night. This was the only wolf I saw
+on my journey, though they are numerous in the province. Last year, not
+twenty li from Chaotong, a little girl of four, the only child of the
+mission cook, was killed by a wolf in broad daylight before its mother's
+eyes, while playing at the cabin door.
+
+Again, to-day, I passed a humpbacked dwarf on the hills, making his
+solitary way towards Tongchuan, and I afterwards saw others, an
+indication of the prosperity that had left the district, for in time of
+famine no child who was badly deformed at birth would be suffered to
+live.
+
+We stopped the night at Leitoupo, and next day from the bleak tableland
+high among the mountains, where the wind whistled in our faces, we
+gradually descended into a country of trees and cultivation and
+fertility. We left the bare red hills behind us, and came down into a
+beautiful glade, with pretty streams running in pebbly beds past
+terraced banks. At a village among the trees, where the houses made some
+pretension to comfort, and where poppies with brilliantly coloured
+flowers, encroached upon the street itself, we rested under a sunshade
+in front of a teahouse. A pretty rill of mountain water ran at our feet.
+Good tea was brought us in new clean cups, and a sweetmeat of peanuts,
+set in sugar-like almond toffee. The teahouse was filled. In the midst
+of the tea drinkers a man was lying curled on a mat, a bent elbow his
+pillow, and fast asleep, with the opium pipe still beside him, and the
+lamp still lit. A pretty little girl from the adjoining cottage came
+shyly out to see me. I called her to me and gave her some sweetmeat. I
+wished to put it in her mouth but she would not let me, and ran off
+indoors. I looked into the room after her and saw her father take the
+lolly from her and give it to her fat little baby brother, who seemed
+the best fed urchin in the town. But I stood by and saw justice done,
+and saw the little maid of four enjoy the first luxury of her life-time.
+Girls in China early learn that they are, at best, only necessary evils,
+to be endured, as tradition says Confucius taught, only as the possible
+mothers of men. Yet the condition of women in China is far superior to
+that in any other heathen country. Monogamy is the rule in China,
+polygamy is the exception, being confined to the three classes, the
+rich, the officials, and those who can by effort afford to take a
+secondary wife, their first wife having failed to give birth to a son.
+
+It is impossible to read the combined experiences of many missionaries
+and travellers in China without forming the opinion that the condition
+of women in China is as nearly satisfactory as could be hoped for, in a
+kingdom of "civilised and organised heathenism," as the Rev. C. W.
+Mateer terms it. The lot of the average Chinese woman is certainly not
+one that a Western woman need envy. She cannot enjoy the happiness which
+a Western woman does, but she is happy in her own way nevertheless.
+"Happiness does not always consist in absolute enjoyment--but in the
+idea which we have formed of it."
+
+There was no impertinent curiosity to see the stranger. The people in
+Yunnan seem cowed and crushed. That arrogance which characterises the
+Chinese elsewhere is entirely wanting here. They have seen the horrors
+of rebellion and civil war, of battle, murder and sudden death, of
+devastation by the sword, famine, ruin, and misery. They are resigned
+and spiritless. But their friendliness is charming; their courtesy and
+kindliness is a constant delight to the traveller. At meal time you are
+always pressed to join the table in the same manner, and with the
+identical phrases still used by the Spaniards, but the request is one of
+politeness only, and like the "_quiere Vd. gustar?_" is not meant to be
+accepted.
+
+We continued on our way. Comparatively few coolies now met us, and the
+majority of those who did were travelling empty-handed; but there were
+many ponies and mules coming from the capital, laden with tea and with
+blocks of white salt like marble. Every here and there a rude shelter
+was erected by the wayside, where a dish of cabbage and herbs could be
+obtained, which you ate out of cracked dishes at an improvised bench
+made from a coffin board resting on two stones. Towards sundown we
+entered the village of Kong-shan, a pretty place on the hill slope, with
+views across a fertile hollow that was pleasant to see. Here we found an
+excellent inn with good quarters. Our day's journey was thirty-seven
+miles, of which I walked fifteen miles and rode twenty-two miles. We
+were travelling quickly. Distances in China are, at first, very
+confusing. They differ from ours in a very important particular: they
+are not fixed quantities; they vary in length according to the nature of
+the ground passed over. Inequalities increase the distance; thus it by
+no means follows that the distance from A to B is equal to the distance
+from B to A--it may be fifty per cent. or one hundred per cent. longer.
+The explanation is simple. Distance is estimated by time, and, speaking
+roughly, ten li (3-1/3 miles) is the unit of distance equivalent to an
+hour's journey. "Sixty li still to go" means six hours' journey before
+you; it may be uphill all the way. If you are returning downhill you
+need not be surprised to learn that the distance by the same road is
+only thirty li.
+
+To-night before turning in I looked in to see how my mule was faring. He
+was standing in a crib at the foot of some underground stairs, with a
+huge horse trough before him, the size and shape of a Chinese coffin. He
+was peaceful and meditative. When he saw me he looked reproachfully at
+the cut straw heaped untidily in the trough, and then at me, and asked
+as clearly as he could if that was a reasonable ration for a
+high-spirited mule, who had carried my honourable person up hill and
+down dale over steep rocks and by tortuous paths, a long spring day in
+a warm sun. Alas, I had nothing else to offer him, unless I gave him the
+uncut straw that was stitched into our paillasses. What straw was before
+him was Chinese chaff, cut into three-inch lengths, by a long knife
+worked on a pivot and board, like the tobacco knife of civilisation. And
+he had to be content with that or nothing.
+
+Next day we had an early start soon after sunrise. It was a lovely day
+with a gentle breeze blowing and a cloudless sky. The village of
+Kong-shan was a very pretty place. It was built chiefly on two sides of
+a main road which was as rugged as the dry bed of a mountain creek. The
+houses were better and the inns were again provided with heaps of
+bedding at the doorways. Advertisement bills in blue and red were
+displayed on the lintels and doorposts, while fierce door-gods guarded
+against the admission of evil spirits. Brave indeed must be the spirits
+who venture within reach of such fierce bearded monsters, armed with
+such desperate weapons, as were here represented. I stood on the edge of
+the town overlooking the valley while my mule was being saddled. Patches
+of wheat and beans were scattered among fields of white-flowered poppy.
+Coolies carrying double buckets of water were winding up the sinuous
+path from the border of the garden where "a pebbled brook laughs upon
+its way." Boys were shouting to frighten away the sparrows from the
+newly-sown rice beds; while women were moving on their little feet among
+the poppies, scoring anew the capsules and gathering the juice that had
+exuded since yesterday. Down the road coolies were filing laden with
+their heavy burdens--a long day's toil before them; rude carts were
+lumbering past me drawn by oxen and jolting on wheels that were solid
+but not circular. Then the mule was brought to me, and we went on
+through an avenue of trees that were half hidden in showers of white
+roses, by hedges of roses in full bloom and wayside flowers, daisies and
+violets, dandelions and forget-me-nots, a pretty sight all fresh and
+sparkling in the morning sun.
+
+We went on in single file, my two coolies first with their light loads
+that swung easily from their shoulders, then myself on the mule, and
+last my stalwart attendant Laohwan with his superior dress, his huge sun
+hat, his long pipe, and umbrella. A man of unusual endurance was
+Laohwan. The day's journey done--he always arrived the freshest of the
+party--he had to get ready my supper, make my bed, and look after my
+mule. He was always the last to bed and the first to rise. Long before
+daybreak he was about again, attending to the mule and preparing my
+porridge and eggs for breakfast. He thought I liked my eggs hard, and
+each morning construed my look of remonstrance into one of approbation.
+It is very true of the Chinaman that precedent determines his action.
+The first morning Laohwan boiled the eggs hard and I could not reprove
+him. Afterwards of course he made a point of serving me the eggs every
+morning in the same way. I could say in Chinese "I don't like them," but
+the morning I said so Laohwan applied my dislike to the eggs not to
+their condition of cooking, and saying in Chinese "good, good," he
+obligingly ate them for me.
+
+Leaving the valley we ascended the red incline to an open tableland,
+where the soil is arid, and yields but a reluctant and scanty harvest.
+Nothing obstructs the view, and you can see long distances over the
+downs, which are bereft of all timber except an occasional clump of
+pines that the axe has spared because of the beneficial influence the
+geomancers declare they exercise over the neighbourhood. The roadway in
+places is cut deeply into the ground; for the path worn by the
+attrition of countless feet soon becomes a waterchannel, and the roadway
+in the rains is often the bed of a rapid stream. At short intervals are
+vast numbers of grave mounds with tablets and arched gables of well
+dressed stone. No habitations of the living are within miles of them, a
+forcible illustration of the devastation that has ravaged the district.
+This was still the famine district. In the open uncultivated fields
+women were searching for weeds and herbs to save them from starvation
+till the ingathering of the winter harvest. Their children it was
+pitiful to see. It is rare for Australians to see children dying of
+hunger. These poor creatures, with their pinched faces and fleshless
+bones, were like the patient with typhoid fever who has long been
+hovering between life and death. There were no beggars. All the beggars
+were dead long ago. All through the famine district we were not once
+solicited for either food or money, but those who were still living were
+crying for alms with silent voices a hundred times more appealing. When
+we rested to have tea the poor children gathered round to see us,
+skeletons dressed in skins and rags, yet meekly independent and
+friendly. Their parents were covered with ragged garments that hardly
+held together. Many wore over their shoulders rude grass cloths made
+from pine fibre that appear to be identical with the native petticoats
+worn by the women of New Guinea.
+
+Leaving the poor upland behind us, we descended to a broad and fertile
+plain where the travelling was easy, and passed the night in a large
+Moslem inn in the town of Iangkai.
+
+All next day we pursued our way through fertile fields flanked by pretty
+hills, which it was hard to realise were the peaks of mountains 10,000
+to 11,000 feet above sea-level. Before sundown we reached the prosperous
+market town of Yanglin, where I had a clean upstairs room in an
+excellent inn. The wall of my bedroom was scrawled over in Chinese
+characters with what I was told were facetious remarks by Chinese
+tourists on the quality of the fare.
+
+In the evening my mule was sick, Laohwan said, and a veterinary surgeon
+had to be sent for. He came with unbecoming expedition. Then in the same
+way that I have seen the Chinese doctors in Australia diagnose the
+ailments of their human patients of the same great family, he examined
+the poor mule with the inscrutable air of one to whom are unveiled the
+mysteries of futurity, and he retired with his fee. The medicine came
+later in a large basket, and consisted of an assortment of herbs so
+varied that one at least might be expected to hit the mark. My Laohwan
+paid the mule doctor, so he said, for advice and medicine 360 cash
+(ninepence), an exorbitant charge as prices are in China.
+
+On Friday, April 13th, we had another pleasant day in open country,
+leading to the low rim of hills that border the plain and lake of Yunnan
+city. Ruins everywhere testify to the march of the rebellion of thirty
+years ago--triumphal arches in fragments, broken temples, battered idols
+destroyed by Mohammedan iconoclasts. Districts destitute of habitations,
+where a thriving population once lived, attest that suppression of a
+rebellion in China spells extermination to the rebels.
+
+On the road I met a case of goitre, and by-and-by others, till I counted
+twenty or more, and then remembered that I was now entering on a
+district of Asia extending over Western Yunnan into Thibet, Burma, the
+Shan States, and Siam, the prevailing deformity of whose people is
+goitre.
+
+[Illustration: THE BIG EAST GATE OF YUNNAN CITY.]
+
+Ten miles before Yunnan my men led me off the road to a fine building
+among the poplars, which a large monogram on the gateway told me was the
+Catholic College of the _Missions Étrangères de Paris_, known throughout
+the Province as Jinmaasuh. Situated on rising ground, the plain of
+Yunnan widening before it, the College commands a distant view of the
+walls and turretted gateways, the pagodas and lofty temples of the
+famous city. Chinese students are trained here for the priesthood. At
+the time of my visit there were thirty students in residence, who, after
+their ordination, will be scattered as evangelists throughout the
+Province. Père Excoffier was at home, and received me with
+characteristic courtesy. His news was many weeks later than mine. M.
+Gladstone had retired from the Premiership, and M. Rosebery was his
+successor. England had determined to renew the payment of the tribute
+which China formerly exacted by right of suzerainty from Burma. The
+Chinese were daily expecting the arrival of two white elephants from
+Burma, which were coming in charge of the British Resident in Singai
+(Bhamo), M. Warry, as a present to the Emperor, and were the official
+recognition by England that Burma is still a tributary of the Middle
+Kingdom. I may here say that I often heard of this tribute in Western
+China. The Chinese had been long waiting for the arrival of the
+elephants, with their yellow flags floating from the howdahs,
+announcing, as did the flags of Lord Macartney's Mission to Peking,
+"Tribute from the English to the Emperor of China," and I suppose that
+there are governments idiotic enough to thus pander to Chinese
+arrogance. No doubt what has given rise to the report is the knowledge
+that the Government of India is bound, under the Convention of 1886, to
+send, every ten years, a complimentary mission from the Chief
+Commissioner of Burma to the Viceroy of Yunnan.
+
+It was late when I left Jinmaasuh, and long after sundown before I
+reached the city. The flagged causeway across the plain was slippery to
+walk on, and my mule would not agree with me that there was any need to
+hurry. He knew the Chinese character better than I did. Gunfire, the
+signal for the closing of the gates, had sounded when we were two miles
+from the wall; but sentries are negligent in China and the gates were
+still open. Had we been earlier we should have entered by the south
+gate, which is always the most important of the gates of a Chinese city,
+and the one through which all officials make their official entry; but,
+unable to do this, we entered by the big east gate. Turning sharply to
+the right along the city wall we were conducted in a few minutes to the
+Telegraph Offices, where I received a cordial welcome from Mr. Christian
+Jensen, the superintendent of telegraphs in the two great provinces of
+Yunnan and Kweichow. These are his headquarters, and here I was to rest
+a delightful week. It was a pleasant change from silence to speech, from
+Chinese discomfort to European civilisation. Chinese fare one evening,
+pork, rice, tea, and beans; and the next, chicken and the famed Shuenwei
+ham, mutton and green peas and red currant jelly, pancakes and
+aboriginal Yunnan cheese, claret, champagne, port, and cordial Medoc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+AT YUNNAN CITY.
+
+
+Yunnan City is one of the great cities of China, not so much in size as
+in importance. It is within easy access at all seasons of the year of
+the French colony of Tonquin, whereas the trade route from here to
+British Burma is long, arduous, and mountainous, and in its Western
+portions is closed to traffic during the rains. From Yunnan City to
+Mungtze on the borders of Tonquin, where there is a branch of the
+Imperial Maritime Customs of China, is a journey of eight days over an
+easy road. Four days from Mungtze is Laokai on the Red River, a river
+which is navigable by boat or steamer to Hanoi, the chief river port of
+Tonquin. In the middle of 1889 the French river steamer, _Le Laokai_,
+made the voyage from Hanoi to Laokai in sixty hours.
+
+From Yunnan City to Bhamo on the Irrawaddy, in British Burma, is a
+difficult journey of thirty-three stages over a mountainous road which
+can never by any human possibility be made available for other traffic
+than caravans of horses or coolies on foot. The natural highway of
+Central and Southern Yunnan is by Tonquin, and no artificial means can
+ever alter it. At present Eastern Yunnan sends her trade through the
+provinces of Kweichow and Hunan to the Yangtse above Hankow, or viâ the
+two Kuangs to Canton. Shortness of distance, combined with facility of
+transport, must soon tap this trade or divert it into the highways of
+Tonquin. Northern Yunnan must send her produce and receive her imports,
+viâ Szechuen and the Yangtse. As for the trade of Szechuen, the richest
+of the provinces of China, no man can venture to assert that any other
+trade route exists, or can ever be made to exist, than the River
+Yangtse; and all the French Commissioners in the world can no more alter
+the natural course of this trade than they can change the channel of the
+Yangtse itself.
+
+I am not, of course, the first distinguished visitor who has been in
+Yunnan City. Marco Polo was here in 1283, and has left on record a
+description of the city, which, in his time, was known by the name of
+Yachi. Jesuit missionaries have been propagating the faith in the
+province since the seventeenth century. But the distinction of being the
+first European traveller, not a missionary priest, to visit the city
+since the time of Marco Polo rests with Captain Doudart de la Grée of
+the French Navy, who was here in 1867.
+
+Margary, the British Consul, who met a cruel death at Manwyne, passed
+through Yunnan in 1875 on his famous journey from Hankow; and two years
+later the tardy mission under Grosvenor, with the brilliant Baber as
+interpreter, and Li Han Chang, the brother of Li Hung Chang, as delegate
+for the Chinese, arrived here in the barren hope of bringing his
+murderers to justice.
+
+Hosie, formerly H.B.M. Consul in Chungking, and well known as a
+traveller in Western China, was in Yunnan City in 1882.
+
+In September, 1890, Bonvalot and Prince Henri d'Orleans stopped here at
+the French Mission on their way to Mungtze in Tonquin. It was on the
+completion of their journey along the eastern edge of _Tibet
+Inconnu_--"Unknown Thibet!" as they term it, although the whole route
+had been traversed time and again by missionary priests, a journey whose
+success was due--though few have ever heard his name--to its true
+leader, interpreter, and guide, the brave Dutch priest from Kuldja, Père
+Dedeken.
+
+Another famous missionary traveller, Père Vial, who led Colquhoun out of
+his difficulty in that journey "Across Chryse," which Colquhoun
+describes as a "Journey of Exploration" (though it was through a country
+that had been explored and accurately mapped a century and a half before
+by Jesuit missionaries), and conducted him in safety to Bhamo in Burma,
+has often been in Yunnan City, and is a possible successor to the
+Bishopric.
+
+M. Boell, who left the Secretaryship of the French Legation in Peking to
+become the special correspondent of _Le Temps_, was here in 1892 on his
+way from Kweiyang, in Kweichow, to Tonquin, and a few months later
+Captain d'Amade, the Military Secretary of the French Legation,
+completed a similar journey from Chungking. In May, 1892, the
+Commissioner from the French Government opium farm in Hanoi, M. Tommé,
+arrived in Yunnan City from Mungtze, sent by his Government in search of
+improved methods of poppy cultivation--the Yunnan opium, with the
+exception of the Shansi opium, being probably the finest in China.
+Finally, in May, 1893, Lenz, the American bicyclist, to the profound
+amazement of the populace, rode on his "living wheel" to the
+_Yesu-tang_. This was the most remarkable journey of all. Lenz
+practically walked across China, surmounting hardships and dangers that
+few men would venture to face. I often heard of him. He stayed at the
+mission stations. All the missionaries praise his courage and endurance,
+and the admirable good humour with which he endured every discomfort.
+But one missionary lamented to me that Lenz did not possess that close
+acquaintance with the Bible which was to be expected of a man of his
+hardihood. It seems that at family prayers at this good missionary's,
+the chapter for reading was given out when poor Lenz was discovered
+feverishly seeking the Epistle to the Galatians in the Old Testament.
+When his mistake was gently pointed out to him he was not discouraged,
+far from it; it was the missionary who was dismayed to hear that in the
+United States this particular Epistle is always reckoned a part of the
+Pentateuch.
+
+I paid an early visit of courtesy to my nominal host, Li Pi Chang, the
+Chinese manager of the Telegraphs. He received me in his private office,
+gave me the best seat on the left, and handed me tea with his own fat
+hands. A mandarin whose rank is above that of an expectant Taotai, Li is
+to be the next Taotai of Mungtze, where, from an official salary of 400
+taels per annum, he hopes to save from 10,000 to 20,000 taels per annum.
+
+"Squeezing," as this method of enrichment is termed, is, you see, not
+confined to America. Few arts, indeed, seem to be more widely
+distributed than the art of squeezing. "Dives, the tax-dodger," is as
+common in China as he is in the United States. Compare, however, any
+city in China, in the midst of the most ancient civilisation in the
+world, with a city like Chicago, which claims to have reached the
+highest development of modern civilisation, and it would be difficult to
+assert that the condition of public morals in the heathen city was even
+comparable with the corruption and sin of the American city, a city
+"nominally Christian, which is studded with churches and littered with
+Bibles," but still a city "where perjury is a protected industry." No
+community is more ardent in its evangelisation of the "perishing
+Chinese" than Chicago, but where in all China is there "such a supreme
+embodiment of fraud, falsehood, and injustice," as prevails in Chicago?
+An alderman in Chicago, Mr. Stead tells us (p. 172 _et seq._) receives
+only 156 dollars a year salary; but, in addition to his salary, he
+enjoys "practically unrestricted liberty to fill his pockets by
+bartering away the property of the city." "It is expected of the
+alderman, as a fundamental principle, that he will steal," and, in a
+fruitful year, says the _Record_, the average crooked alderman makes
+15,000 to 20,000 dollars. An assessorship in Chicago is worth nominally
+1500 dollars per annum, but "everyone knows that in Chicago an
+assessorship is the shortest cut to fortune."
+
+Squeezing in China may be common, but it is a humble industry compared
+with the monumental swindling which Mr. Stead describes as existing in
+Chicago.
+
+Besides being manager in Yunnan City, Li is the chief telegraph director
+of the two provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow. That he is entirely
+innocent of all knowledge of telegraphy, or of the management of
+telegraphs, is no bar to such an appointment. He is a mandarin, and is,
+therefore, presumably fitted to take any position whatever, whether it
+be that of Magistrate or Admiral of the Fleet, Collector of Customs, or
+General commanding in the field. Of the mandarin in China it is truly
+said that "there is nothing he isn't."
+
+Li is also Chief Secretary of the _Shan-hao-Tsung-Kuh_, "The Supreme
+Board of Reorganisation" of the province, the members of which are the
+four highest provincial officials next below the Governor
+(_Futai_)--viz., the Treasurer (_Fantai_), Provincial Judge (_Niehtai_),
+the Salt Comptroller, and the Grain Intendant.
+
+Li, it may be said at once, is a man of no common virtue. He is the
+father of seven sons and four daughters; he can die in peace; in his
+family there is no fear of the early extinction of male descendants, for
+the succession is as well provided against as it is in the most fertile
+Royal family in Europe. His family is far spreading, and it is worth
+noting as an instance of the patriarchal nature of the family in China,
+that Li is regarded as the father of a family, whose members dependent
+upon him for entire or partial support number eighty persons. He has had
+three wives. His number one wife still lives at the family seat in
+Changsha; another secondary wife is dead; his present number two wife
+lives with him in Yunnan. This is his favourite wife, and her story is
+worth a passing note. She was not a "funded houri," but a poor _yatow_,
+a "forked head" or slave girl, whom he purchased on a lucky day, and,
+smitten with her charms, made her his wife. It was a case of love at
+first sight. Her conduct since marriage has more than justified the
+choice of her master. Still a young woman, she has already presented her
+lord with nine children, on the last occasion surpassing herself by
+giving birth to twins. She has a most pleasant face, and really charming
+children; but the chief attraction of a Chinese lady is absent in her
+case. Her feet are of natural size, and not even in the exaggerated
+murmurings of love could her husband describe them as "three-inch gold
+lilies."
+
+That this was a marriage of inclination there can be no doubt whatever.
+It is idle to argue that the Chinese are an unemotional people,
+incapable of feeling the same passions that move us. We ridicule the
+image of a Chinaman languishing in love, just as the Chinaman derides
+the possibility of experiencing the feelings of love for the average
+foreign woman he has seen in China. Their poetry abounds in love
+episodes. Students of Chinese civilisation seem to agree that a _mariage
+de convenance_ in China is more likely even than on the Continent to
+become instantly a marriage of affection. The pleasures of female
+society are almost denied the Chinaman; he cannot fall in love before
+marriage because of the absence of an object for his love. "The faculty
+of love produces a subjective ideal; and craves for a corresponding
+objective reality. And the longer the absence of the objective reality,
+the higher the ideal becomes; as in the mind of the hungry man ideal
+foods get more and more exquisite."
+
+In Meadows' "Essay on Civilisation in China," there is a charming story,
+translated from the Chinese, of love at first sight, given in
+illustration of the author's contention that "it is the men to whom
+women's society is almost unknown that are most apt to fall violently in
+love at first sight. Violent love at first sight is a general
+characteristic of nations where the sexes have no intercourse before
+marriage.... The starved cravings of love devour the first object":--
+
+"A Chinese who had suffered bitter disenchantments in marriage retired
+with his infant son to the solitude of a mountain inaccessible for
+little-footed Chinese women. He trained up the youth to worship the gods
+and stand in awe and abhorrence of devils, but he never mentioned even
+the name of woman to him. He always descended to market alone, but when
+he grew old and feeble he was at length compelled to take the young man
+with him to carry the heavy bag of rice. He very reasonably argued, 'I
+shall always accompany my son, and take care that if he does see a
+woman by chance, he shall never speak to one; he is very obedient; he
+has never heard of woman; he does not know what they are; and as he has
+lived in that way for twenty years already, he is, of course, now pretty
+safe.'
+
+"As they were on the first occasion leaving the market town together,
+the son suddenly stopped short, and, pointing to three approaching
+objects, inquired: 'Father, what are these things? Look! look! what are
+they?' The father hastily answered: 'Turn away your head. They are
+devils.' The son, in some alarm, instantly turned away from things so
+bad, and which were gazing at his motions with surprise from under their
+fans. He walked to the mountain top in silence, ate no supper, and from
+that day lost his appetite and was afflicted with melancholy. For some
+time his anxious and puzzled parent could get no satisfactory answer to
+his inquiries; but at length the poor young man burst out, almost crying
+from an inexplicable pain: 'Oh, father, that tallest devil! that tallest
+devil, father!'"
+
+Girls for Yunnan City are bought at two chief centres--at Chaotong, as
+we have seen, and at Bichih. They are carried to the city in baskets.
+They are rarely sold into prostitution, but are bought as slave girls
+for domestic service, as concubines, and occasionally as wives. Their
+great merit is the absence of the "thickneck," goitre.
+
+The morning after my visit, Li sent me his card, together with a leg of
+mutton and a pile of sweet cakes. I returned my card, and gave the
+bearer 200 cash (fivepence), not as a return gift to the mandarin, but
+as a private act of generosity to his servant--all this being in
+accordance with Chinese etiquette.
+
+My host in Yunnan, and the actual manager and superintendent of the
+telegraphs of the two provinces, is a clever Danish gentleman, Mr.
+Christian Jensen, an accomplished linguist, to whom every European
+resident and traveller in the province is indebted for a thousand acts
+of kindness and attention. He has a rare knowledge of travel in China.
+Mr. Jensen arrived in China in 1880 in the service of the Great Northern
+Telegraph Company--a Danish company. From December, 1881, when the first
+Chinese telegraph line was opened (that from Shanghai to Tientsin), till
+the spring of 1883, he was one of eight operatives and engineers lent by
+the Company to the Chinese Government. In December 1883, having returned
+in the meantime to the Great Northern he accepted an engagement under
+the Imperial Government and he has been in their employ ever since.
+During this time he has superintended the construction of 7000 li (2350
+miles) of telegraph lines, and it was he who, on the 20th May, 1890,
+effected the junction of the Chinese system with the French lines at
+Laokai. Among the more important lines constructed by him are those
+joining the two capital cities of the provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow;
+that from Yunnan City to Mungtze, on the frontier of Tonquin; that from
+Canton to the boundary of Fuhkien province; and that from Yunnan City
+through Tali to Tengyueh (Momien), this last line being the one which
+will eventually unite with the marvellous Indian telegraph system at the
+Burmese frontier. In the course of his many journeys through China, Mr.
+Jensen has been invariably well treated by the Chinese, and it is
+pleasant to hear one who has seen so much of the inner life of the
+country speak as he does of the universal courtesy and hospitality,
+attention, and kindness that has been shown him by all classes of
+Chinese from the highest officials to the humblest coolies.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW IN YUNNAN CITY.]
+
+Many interesting episodes have marked his stay in China. Once, when
+repairing the line from Pase, in Kwangsi, to Mungtze, during the rainy
+season of 1889, fifty-six out of sixty men employed by him died of what
+there can be little doubt was the same plague that has lately devastated
+Hong Kong. On this occasion, of twelve men who at different times were
+employed as his chair-bearers, all died.
+
+In October, 1886, he came to Yunnan City, and made this his
+headquarters. He has always enjoyed good health.
+
+One of the chief difficulties that formerly impeded the extension of the
+telegraph in China was the belief that the telegraph poles spoil the
+"_fungshui_"--in other words, that they divert good luck from the
+districts they pass through. This objection has been everywhere
+overcome. It last revealed itself in the extreme west of the line from
+Yunnan. Villagers who saw in the telegraph a menace to the good fortune
+of their district would cut down the poles--and sell the wire in
+compensation for their trouble. The annoyance had to be put a stop to.
+An energetic magistrate took the matter in hand. He issued a warning to
+the villagers, but his warning was unheeded. Then he took more vigorous
+measures. The very next case that occurred he had two men arrested, and
+charged with the offence. They were probably innocent, but under the
+persuasion of the bamboo they were induced to acquiesce in the
+magistrate's opinion as to their guilt. They were sentenced to be
+deprived of their ears, and then they were sent on foot, that all might
+see them, under escort along the line from Yunnan City to Tengyueh and
+back again. No poles have been cut down since.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+GOLD, BANKS, AND TELEGRAPHS IN YUNNAN.
+
+
+Yunnan City is the great gold emporium of China, for most of the gold
+found in China comes from the province of which it is the capital. When
+a rich Chinaman returns from Yunnan to another province, or is summoned
+on a visit to the Emperor at Peking, he carries his money in gold not
+silver. Gold leaf sent from Yunnan gilds the gods of Thibet and the
+temples and pagodas of Indo-China. No caravan returns to Burma from
+Western China whose spare silver has not been changed into gold leaf. In
+the Arracan Temple in Mandalay, as in the Shway-dagon Pagoda in Rangoon,
+you see the gold leaf that Yunnan produces, and in the future will
+produce in infinitely greater quantities.
+
+Gold comes chiefly from the mines of Talang, eighteen days journey by
+land S.W. from Yunnan City, on the confines of the district which
+produces the famous Puerh tea. The yield must be a rich one despite the
+ineffective appliances that are employed in its extraction. Gold has
+always been abundant in this province; at the time of Marco Polo's visit
+it was so abundant that its value in relation to silver was only as one
+to six.
+
+When gold is worth in Shanghai 35 times its weight in silver, it may be
+bought in Yunnan City or Talifu for from 25 to 27.5 times its weight in
+silver, and in quantities up to hundreds of ounces. To remit silver by
+telegraphic transfer from Shanghai or Hong Kong to Yunnan city costs six
+per cent., and either of the two leading banks in the city will
+negotiate the transfer from their agents at the seaports of any amount
+up to 10,000 ounces of silver in a single transaction. The gold can
+always be readily sold in Shanghai or Hong Kong, and the only risk is in
+the carriage of the gold from the inland city to the seaport. So far as
+I could learn, no gold thus sent has gone astray. It is carried overland
+by the fastest trade route--that through Mungtze to Laokai--and thence
+by a boat down stream to Hanoi in Tonquin, from which port it is sent by
+registered post to Saigon and Hong Kong. Here then is a venture open to
+all, with excitement sufficient for the most _blasé_ speculator. Ample
+profits are made by the dealer. For instance, a large quantity of gold
+was purchased in Yunnan city on the 21st January, 1894, at 23.2, its
+value in Shanghai on the same date being 30.9; but on the date that the
+gold arrived in Shanghai its value had risen to 35, at which price it
+was sold. At the time of my visit gold was 25.5 to 27 in Yunnan, and 35
+in Shanghai, and I have since learnt that, while gold has become cheaper
+in the province, it has become dearer at the seaport.
+
+The gold is brought to the buyer in the form of jewellery of really
+exquisite workmanship, of rings and bracelets, earrings and head
+ornaments, of those tiny images worn by rich children in a half circlet
+over the forehead, and bridal charms that would make covetous the heart
+of a nun. Ornaments of gold such as these are 98 per cent. fine and are
+sold, weighed on the same scales, for so many times their weight in
+silver. They are sold not because of the poverty of their owners, but
+because their owners make a very large profit on their original cost by
+so disposing of them. If, however, the purchaser prefer it, gold will be
+brought him in the leaf 99 per cent. fine, and this is undoubtedly the
+best form into which to convert your silver. The gold beaters of Yunnan
+are a recognised class, and are so numerous that they have a powerful
+guild or trade's union of their own.
+
+Gold-testing is also a recognised profession, but the methods are
+primitive and require the skill of an expert, consisting, as they do, of
+a comparison of the rubbing on a stone of the unknown gold, with a
+similar rubbing of gold whose standard has been accurately determined.
+One of the best gold-testers in the city has been taught electric
+gilding by Mr. Jensen and does some skilful work.
+
+The principle of self-protection restrains the Chinaman from the
+ostentatious exhibition of his wealth--he fears being squeezed by the
+officials who are apt to regard wealth as an aggravation of crime, to be
+the more severely punished the better able is the accused to purchase
+exemption from punishment. I have seen a stranger come into the room
+where Mr. Jensen and I were sitting, who from his appearance seemed to
+be worth perhaps a five-dollar bill, and after a preliminary interchange
+of compliments, I have seen his hand disappear up his long sleeve and
+produce a package of gold leaf worth perhaps 2000 taels of silver. This
+he would offer for sale; there was some quiet bargaining; when, should
+they agree, the gold was weighed, the purchaser handed a cheque on his
+Chinese banker for the amount in silver, and the transaction was
+finished as quickly and neatly as if it had taken place in Bond Street,
+and not in the most inland capital of an "uncivilised country"; whose
+civilisation has nevertheless kept it intact and mighty since the dawn
+of history, and whose banking methods are the same now as they were in
+the days of Solomon.
+
+The silver of Yunnan is of the same standard as the silver of Shanghai,
+namely 98 per cent. pure, and differs to the eye from the absolutely
+unalloyed silver of Szechuen.
+
+The cash of Yunnan vary in a way that is more than usually bewildering.
+Let me explain, in a few sentences, the "cash" currency of the Middle
+Kingdom. The current coin of China as everyone knows is the brass cash,
+which is perforated so that it may be carried on a string. Now,
+theoretically, a "string of cash" contains 100 coins, and in the Eastern
+provinces ten strings are the theoretical equivalent of one Mexican
+dollar. But there are eighteen provinces in China, and the number of
+brass cash passing for a string varies in each province from the full
+100, which I have never seen, to 83 in Taiyuen, and down to 33 in the
+Eastern part of the province of Chihli. In Peking I found the system
+charmingly simple. One thousand cash are there represented by 100 coins,
+whereas 1000 "old cash" consist of 1000 coins, though 1000 "capital
+cash" are only 500 coins. The big cash are marked as 10 capital cash,
+but count the same as 5 old cash. Nowhere does a Chinaman mean 1000 cash
+when he speaks of 1000 cash. In Tientsin 1000 cash means 500 cash--that
+is to say 5 times 100 cash, the 100 there being any number you can pass
+except 100, though by agreement the 100 is usually estimated at 98. In
+Nanking I found a different system to prevail. There cash are 1075 the
+1000, but of the 10 strings of 100 cash, 7 contain only 98 cash each,
+and 3 only 95, yet the surplus 75 cash--that is to say the number which
+for the time being is the Nanking equivalent of 75--are added all the
+same. At Lanchow in Chihli on the Imperial Chinese Railway near
+Shanhai-kwan, 16 old cash count as 100 cash, yet 33 are required to make
+up 200; in Tientsin from which point the railway starts, 1000 cash are
+really 500 cash and 98 count there as 100. Now 2000 Chihli cash are
+represented by 325 coins, and 1000 by 162 coins, and 6000 by 975 coins,
+which again count as 1000 large cash and equal on an average one Mexican
+dollar. Therefore to convert Lanchow cash into Tientsin cash you must
+divide the Lanchow cash by 3, count 975 as 1000, and consider this equal
+to a certain percentage of a theoretical amount of silver known as a
+tael, which is always varying of itself as well as by the fluctuations
+in the market value of silver, and which is not alike in any two places,
+and may widely vary in different portions of the same place.
+
+Could anything be simpler? And yet there are those who say that the
+system of money exchange in China is both cumbrous and exasperating.
+Take as a further instance the cash in Yunnan. Everyone knows that
+theoretically there are 2000 cash in the tael, each tael containing 20
+"strings," and each "string" 100 cash, but in Yunnan 2000 cash are not
+2000 cash--they are only 1880 cash. This does not mean that 1880 cash
+are represented by 1880 coins, not at all; because 62 cash in Yunnan are
+counted as 100. Eighteen hundred and eighty cash are therefore
+represented by only 1240 cash coins and all prices must be paid in this
+proportion. Immediately outside the city, however, a string of cash is a
+"full string" and contains 100 cash or rather it contains as few cash as
+possibly can be passed for 100, a fair average number being 98.
+
+Silver is weighed in the City banks and at the wholesale houses on the
+"capital scale," but in the retail stores on scales that are heavier by
+14 per cent. (one mace and 4 candareens in the tael). Outside the city
+on the road to Tali there is a loss on exchange varying according to
+your astuteness from 3 to 6 per cent. on the capital scale.
+
+There are two chief banks in Yunnan city. Wong's whose bank, the
+signboard tells us, is "Beneficent, Rich, United," and Mong's "Bank of
+the Hundred Streams," which is said to be still richer.
+
+With Mr. Jensen I called one evening upon Wong, and found him with his
+sons and chief dependents at the evening meal. All rose as we entered
+and pressed us to take a seat with them, and when we would not, the
+father and grown-up son showed us into the guest-room and seated us on
+the opium-dais under the canopy. The opium-lamps were already lit; on a
+beautiful tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl there were pipes for
+visitors, and phials of prepared opium. Here we insisted on their
+leaving us and returning to their supper; they finished speedily and
+returned to their visitors. We were given good tea and afterwards a
+single cigar was handed to each of us. In offering you a cigar it is not
+the Chinese custom to offer you your choice from the cigar box; the
+courtesy is too costly, for there are few Chinamen in these
+circumstances who could refrain from helping themselves to a handful.
+"When one is eating one's own" says the Chinese proverb, "one does not
+eat to repletion; when one is eating another's, one eats till the tears
+run."
+
+Wong is one of the leading citizens of Yunnan, and is held in high
+honour by his townsmen. His house is a handsome Chinese mansion; it has
+a dignified entrance and the garden court is richly filled with plants
+in porcelain vases. It may thus be said of him, as of the Confucian
+Superior Man, "riches adorn his house and virtue his person, his heart
+is expanded, and his body is at ease."
+
+A Szechuen man, a native of Chungking, fifty-nine years of age, Wong is
+a man of immense wealth, his bank being known all over China, and having
+branches in capital cities so far distant from each other as Peking,
+Canton, Kweiyang, Shanghai, Hankow, Nanchang, Soochow, Hangchow, and
+Chungking. I may add that he has smoked opium for many years.
+
+I formed a high opinion of the intelligence of Wong. He questioned me
+like an insurance doctor as to my family history, and professed himself
+charmed with the amazing richness in sons of my most honourable family.
+He had heard of my native country, which he called _Hsin Chin Shan_, the
+"New Gold Mountain," to distinguish it from the _Lao Chin Shan_, the
+"Old Gold Mountain," as the Chinese term California. I was the more
+pleased to find that Wong had some knowledge of Australia and its gold,
+because a few months before I had been pained by an incident bearing on
+this very subject, which occurred to me in the highly civilised city of
+Manila, in the Philippine Islands. On an afternoon in August, 1893, I
+stood in the Augustine Church, in Old Manila, to witness the funeral
+service of the Padre Provincial of the Augustines. It was the first
+occasion for one hundred and twenty-three years that the Provincial of
+the Order had died while in the actual exercise of his office, and it
+was known that the ceremony would be one of the most imposing ever seen
+in the Islands. The fine old church, built by the son of the architect
+of the Escorial--the only building in Manila left standing by the
+earthquake of 1645--was crowded with mourners, and almost every
+notability of the province was said to be present. During the service
+two young Spaniards, students from the University close by, pushed their
+way in beside me. Wishing to learn who were the more distinguished of
+the mourners, I asked the students to kindly point out to me the
+Governor-General (Blanco), and other prominent officials, and they did
+so with agreeable courtesy. When the service was finished I thanked them
+for the trouble they had taken and was coming away, when one of them
+stopped me.
+
+"Pardon me, Caballero," he said, "but will you do me the favour to tell
+me where you come from?"
+
+"I am from Australia."
+
+"From Austria! so then you come from Austria?"
+
+"No, sir, from Australia."
+
+"But 'Australia'--where is it?"
+
+"It is a rich colony of England of immense importance."
+
+"But where is it?" he persisted.
+
+"_Dios mio!_" I exclaimed aghast, "it is in China."
+
+But his friend interposed. "The gentleman is talking in fun," he said.
+"Thou knowest, Pepe, where is Australia, where is Seednay, and
+Melboornay, where all the banks have broken one after the other in a
+bankruptcy colossal."
+
+"_Ya me figuraba donde era_," Pepe replied, as I edged uncomfortably
+away.
+
+During my journey across China it was not often that I was called upon
+to make use of my profession. But I was pleased to be of some service to
+this rich banker. He wished to consult me professionally, because he had
+heard from the truthful lips of rumour of the wonderful powers of
+divination given to the foreign medical man. What was his probable
+tenure of life? That was the problem. I gravely examined two of his
+pulses--every properly organised Chinaman has four hundred--and finding
+his heart where it should be in the centre of his body, with the other
+organs ranged round it like the satellites round the sun--every Chinaman
+is thus constructed--I was glad to be able to assure him that he will
+certainly live forty years longer--if Heaven permit him.
+
+Wong has a grown-up son of twenty who will succeed to the bank; he is at
+present the managing proprietor of a small general store purchased for
+him by his father. The son has been taught photography by Mr. Jensen,
+and has an excellent camera obtained from Paris. He is quite an
+enthusiast. In his shop a crowd is always gathered round the counter
+looking at the work of this Chinese amateur. There are a variety of
+stores for sale on the shelves, and I was interested to notice the
+cheerful promiscuity with which bottles of cyanide of potassium and
+perchloride of mercury were scattered among bottles of carbonate of
+soda, of alum, of Moët and Chandon (spurious), of pickles, and Howard's
+quinine. The first time that cyanide of potassium is sold for alum, or
+corrosive sublimate for bicarbonate of soda there will be an _éclat_
+given to the dealings of this shop which will be very gratifying to its
+owner.
+
+The telegraph in Yunnan is very largely used by the Chinese, especially
+by the bankers and officials. By telegraph you can remit, as I have
+said, through the Chinese banks, telegraphic transfers to the value of
+thousands of taels in single transactions. It is principally the banks
+and the Government who make use of the telegraph, and their
+communications are sent by private code. When the Tsungli Yamen in
+Peking sends a telegram to the Viceroy in Yunnan it is in code that the
+message comes; and it is by private code also that a Chinese bank in
+Shanghai telegraphs to its far inland agents. Messages are sent in China
+by the Morse system. The method of telegraphing Chinese characters,
+whose discovery enabled the Chinese to make use of the telegraph, was
+the ingenious invention of a forgotten genius in the Imperial Maritime
+Customs of China. The method is simplicity itself. The telegraph code
+consists of ten thousand numbers of four numerals each, and each group
+so constituted represents a Chinese character. Any operator, however
+ignorant of Chinese, can thus telegraph or receive a message in Chinese.
+He receives, for instance, a message containing a series of numbers such
+as 0018, 0297, 5396, 8424. He has before him a series of ten thousand
+wood blocks on which the number is cut at one end and the corresponding
+Chinese character at the other, he takes out the number, touches the
+inkpad with the other end, and stamps opposite each group its Chinese
+character. The system permits, moreover, of the easy arrangement of
+indecipherable private codes, because by adding or subtracting a certain
+number from each group of figures, other characters than those
+telegraphed can be indicated.
+
+I need hardly add that the system of wood blocks is not in practical
+use, for the numbers and their characters are now printed in code-books.
+And here we have an instance of the marvellous faculty of memorising
+characteristic of the Chinese. A Chinaman's memory is something
+prodigious. From time immemorial the memory of the Chinese has been
+developed above all the other faculties. Memory is the secret of success
+in China, not originality. Among a people taught to associate innovation
+with impiety, and with whom precedent determines all action, it is
+inevitable that the faculty of recollection should be the most highly
+developed of all the mental faculties. Necessity compels the Chinaman to
+have a good memory. No race has ever been known where the power of
+memory has been developed even in rare individual cases to the degree
+that is common to all classes of the Chinese, especially to the
+literati.
+
+The Chinese telegraph clerk quickly learns all the essential portion of
+the code-book by heart. The book then lies in the drawer a superfluity.
+It is claimed for Chiang, the second Chinese clerk in Yunnan, that he
+knows all the 10,000 numbers and their corresponding characters.
+
+Telegrams from Yunnan to Shanghai cost twenty-two tael cents (at the
+present value of the tael this is equal to sixpence) for each Chinese
+character; but each word in any other language is charged double, that
+is, forty-four cents.
+
+[Illustration: SOLDIERS ON THE WALL OF YUNNAN CITY.]
+
+From Yunnan to Talifu is a distance of 307 miles. The native banker in
+the capital will remit for you by wire to his agent in Tali the sum of
+1000 taels, for a charge of eight taels, exclusive of the cost of the
+telegram, and, as the value of silver in Tali is one per cent. higher
+than it is in Yunnan, the traveller can send his money by wire with
+perfect safety, and lose nothing in the remittance, not even the cost of
+the telegram.
+
+The telegraph offices are separated from the city wall by a small
+common, which is quite level, and which the Chinaman of the future will
+convert into a bowling green and lawn-tennis ground. There is a handsome
+entrance. The large portal is painted with horrific gods armed with
+monstrous weapons. The Chinese still seem to adhere to the belief that
+the deadliness of a weapon must be in proportion to the savageness of
+its aspect. Inside, there are spacious courts and well-furnished guest
+rooms, roomy apartments, and offices for the mandarin, as well as
+comfortable quarters for Mr. Jensen and his body of Chinese clerks and
+operators. There is a pretty garden all bright and sunny, with a pond of
+gold fish and ornamental parapet. Wandering freely in the enclosure are
+peacocks and native companions, while a constant playmate of the
+children is a little laughing monkey of a kind that is found in the
+woods beyond Tali. At night a watchman passes round the courts every two
+hours, striking a dismal gong under the windows, and waking the
+foreigner from his slumbers; but the noise he makes does not disturb the
+sleep of the Chinese--indeed, it is open to question if there is any
+discord known which, as mere noise, _could_ disturb a Chinaman.
+
+The walls that flank the entrance are covered with official posters
+giving the names of the men of Yunnan City who contributed to the relief
+of the sufferers by a recent famine in Shansi, together with the amounts
+of their contributions and the rewards to which their gifts entitled
+them. The Chinese are firm believers in the doctrine of justification by
+works, and on these posters one could read the exact return made in this
+world for an act of merit, apart, of course, from the reward that will
+be reaped in Heaven. In a case like this it is usually arranged that for
+"gifts amounting to a certain percentage of the sums ordinarily
+authorised, subscribers may obtain brevet titles, posthumous titles,
+decorations, buttons up to the second class, the grade of licentiate,
+and brevet rank up to the rank of Colonel. Disgraced officials may apply
+to have their rank restored. Nominal donations of clothes, if the money
+value of the articles be presented instead, will entitle the givers to
+similar honours."--_The Peking Gazette_, August 22, 1892.
+
+In the centre of the green stands the hollow pillar in which Chinese
+printed waste-paper is reverently burnt. "When letters were invented,"
+the Chinese say, "Heaven rejoiced and Hell trembled." "Reverence the
+characters," is an injunction of Confucius which no Chinaman neglects to
+follow. He remembers that "he who uses lettered paper to kindle the fire
+has ten demerits, and will have itchy sores"; he remembers that "he who
+tosses lettered paper into dirty water, or burns it in a filthy place,
+has twenty demerits and will frequently have sore eyes or become blind,"
+whereas "he who goes about and collects, washes, and burns lettered
+paper, has 5000 merits, adds twelve years to his life, will become
+honoured and wealthy, and his children and grandchildren will be
+virtuous and filial." But his reverence has strict limits, and while he
+reverences the piece of paper upon which a moral precept is written, he
+often thinks himself absolved from reverencing the moral precept itself,
+just as a deacon in England need not necessarily be one who never
+over-reached his neighbours or swindled his creditors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE FRENCH MISSION AND THE ARSENAL IN YUNNAN CITY.
+
+
+The most prominent structure within the city walls is the Heavenly Lord
+Hall (_Tien-chu-tang_), the pile of buildings which form the
+headquarters of the French Mission in the province of Yunnan. It was a
+master-stroke to secure possession of so important a site. The palace is
+on a higher level even than the yamen of the Viceroy, and must intercept
+much of the good fortune that would otherwise flow into the city. The
+façade of the central hall has been ornamented with a superb cross of
+porcelain mosaic, which is a conspicuous object from the city wall. A
+large garden, where the eucalyptus has been wisely planted, surrounds
+the buildings. In residence in the Heavenly Hall are the venerable
+Vicaire Apostolique of the province, Monseigneur Fenouil, the
+Provicaire, and four missionary priests, all four of whom are from
+Alsace. In the province altogether there are twenty-two French priests
+and eight ordained Chinese priests--thirty in all; their converts number
+15,000. Monseigneur Fenouil is a landmark of Western China; he first set
+foot in the province in 1847, and is the oldest foreign resident in the
+interior of China. No Chinaman speaks purer Chinese than he; he thinks
+in Chinese. Present in the province throughout the Mohammedan
+insurrection, he was an eye-witness of the horrors of religious warfare.
+Few men have had their path in life marked by more thrilling episodes.
+He was elected Bishop, in 1880, by the unanimous vote of all the priests
+in the province, a vote confirmed by Rome; which is, I am told, the mode
+of election by which Catholic Missionary Bishops in China are always
+chosen.
+
+The grand old Bishop seemed much amused at my journey. "I suppose you
+are riding a mule," he said, "for you English have large bones, and the
+Chinese ponies are very small." I said that I had come so far most of
+the way on foot. "You speak Chinese, of course?"
+
+"Hardly at all; I speak only a dozen words of Chinese."
+
+"Then you have a Chinese interpreter? No! An English companion who can
+speak Chinese? No! A Chinese servant who can speak English? No, and no
+escort! But without doubt you are armed? No! No escort, no revolver, no
+companion, and you can live on Chinese food. Ah! you have a brave heart,
+Monsieur."
+
+At the time of my visit to Yunnan, Père de Gorostarza, the accomplished
+Provicaire, was absent at Mungtze deciding a question of discipline.
+Four months before one of the most trusted converts of the mission had
+been sent to Mungtze to purchase a property for the use of the mission.
+He was given the purchase-money of 400 taels, but, when he arrived in
+Mungtze, and the eye of the mission was no longer upon him, he invested
+the money, not in premises for the mission, but in a coolie-hong for
+himself. His backsliding had availed him little. And he was now
+defending his conduct as best he could before the Bishop's deputy.
+
+Converts of the French mission in China, it is well to remember, are no
+longer French subjects or _protégés_; the objection is no longer
+tenable that the mission shields bad characters who only become
+converted in order to escape from the consequences of their guilt.
+
+How wonderful has been the pioneer work done by the Jesuit Missionaries
+in China! It may almost be said that the foundation of all that we know
+about China we owe to the Jesuit Missionaries. All maps on China are
+founded upon the maps of the Jesuit Missionaries employed for the
+purpose by the Emperor Kanghi (1663-1723), "the greatest prince who ever
+graced the throne of China." Their accuracy has been the wonder of all
+geographers for a century past. "Now that the 'Great River' (the
+Yangtse) has been surveyed," says Captain Blakiston, "for nearly 1600
+miles from the ocean, and with instruments and appliances such as were
+unknown in the days of those energetic and persevering men, no small
+praise is due to the first Christian explorers for the extraordinary
+correctness of their maps and records." The reports of the early Jesuit
+Missionaries even Voltaire describes as the "productions of the most
+intelligent travellers that have extended and embellished the fields of
+science and philosophy."
+
+Yet we, as Protestants, are warned by a great missionary that we must
+not be deluded by these insidious compliments; we must not forget that
+the work of the Jesuits in China "overtops all other forms of
+superstition and error in danger, and stands forth an organised
+conspiracy against the liberties of mankind. The schemes of the Jesuits
+must be checked."
+
+One Sunday morning Mr. Jensen and I rode round the city wall. This is
+one of the most massive walls in a country of walled cities. It is built
+of brick and stone over a body of earth thirty feet thick; it is of
+imposing height, and wide enough for a carriage drive. When I was
+mounted on my mule the upper edge of the parapet was on a level with my
+forehead. There are six city gates. The great north gate is closely
+barred all through the rains to prevent the entrance of the "Flood God,"
+who, fortunately, his intelligence being limited, knows no other way to
+enter the city than by this gate. The great turreted south gate is the
+most important of all, as it is in all Chinese cities. Near this gate
+the Viceroy's Yamen is situated, and the Yamen of the Futai (Governor of
+the Province); both buildings, of course, looking to the south, as did
+the Temple of Solomon and the tombs of the Mings, and as Chinese custom
+requires that every building of importance shall do, whether temple or
+yamen, private residence or royal palace. But why should they look
+south? Because from the south the sun comes, bringing with it "genial
+and animating influence," and putting new life into plant and animal
+after the winter.
+
+The south gate is a double gate in a semi-circular bastion. Beyond it is
+a splendid triumphal arch erected by a grateful community to the memory
+of the late viceroy. A thickly-populated suburb extends from here to the
+wide common, where stands the lofty guardian pagoda of the city, 250
+feet high, a conspicuous sight from every part of the great Yunnan
+plain. Rich temples are all around it, their eaves hung with sweet-toned
+bells, which tinkle with every breath of wind, giving forth what the
+Chinese poetically describe as "the tribute of praise from inanimate
+nature to the greatness of Buddha."
+
+[Illustration: THE PAGODA OF YUNNAN CITY, 250 FEET HIGH.]
+
+In the early morning the traveller is awakened by the steam whistle of
+the arsenal, a strange sound to be heard in so far inland a city in
+China. The factory is under Chinese management, a fact patent to any
+visitor. Its two foremen were trained partly in the arsenal in Nanking
+under Dr. Macartney (now Sir Halliday Macartney), and partly in the
+splendid Shanghai arsenal under Mr. Cornish. I went to the arsenal, and
+was received as usual in the opium-room. There was nothing to conceal,
+and I was freely shown everything. The arsenal turns out Krupp guns of
+7-1/2 centimetres calibre, but the iron is inferior, and the workmen are
+in need of better training. Cartridges are also made here. And in one
+room I saw two men finishing with much neatness a pure silver opium-tray
+intended for the Fantai (provincial treasurer), but why made in the
+arsenal only a Chinaman could tell you. Work in the furnace is done at a
+disadvantage owing to the shortness of the furnace chimney, which is
+only 25 feet high. All attempts to increase its height are now forbidden
+by the authorities. There was agitation in the city when the chimney was
+being heightened. Geomancers were consulted, who saw the feeling of the
+majority, and therefore gave it as their unprejudiced opinion that, if
+the chimney were not stunted, the _fungshui_ (good luck) of the Futai's
+yamen (provincial governor), and of that portion of the city under its
+protection, would depart for ever. All the machinery of the arsenal is
+stamped with the name of Greenwood, Battley and Co., Leeds. Rust and
+dirt are everywhere, and the 100 workmen for whom pay is drawn never
+number on the rare pay days more than sixty persons, a phenomenon
+observed in most establishments in China worked by government. Yet with
+a foreigner in charge excellent work could be turned out from the
+factory. The buildings are spacious, the grounds are ample.
+
+The powder factory is outside the city, near the north-eastern angle of
+the wall, but the powder magazine is on some rising ground inside the
+city. No guns are stationed anywhere on the walls, though they may be in
+concealment in the turrets; but near the small west gate I saw some
+small cannon of ancient casting, built on the model of the guns cast by
+the Jesuit missionaries in China two centuries ago, if they were not the
+actual originals. They were all marked in relief with a cross and the
+device I.H.S.--a motto that you would think none but a Chinaman could
+select for a weapon designed to destroy men, yet characteristic of this
+country of contradictions. "The Chinese statesman," says Wingrove Cooke,
+the famous _Times_ correspondent, "cuts off 10,000 heads, and cites a
+passage from Mencius about the sanctity of human life. He pockets the
+money given him to repair an embankment and thus inundates a province,
+and he deplores the land lost to the cultivator of the soil."
+
+Du Halde tells us that "the first Chinese cannon were cast under the
+directions of Père Verbiest in 1682, who blest the cannon, and gave to
+each the name of a saint." "A female saint!" says Huc.
+
+Near the arsenal and drill ground there is a large intramural swamp or
+reedy lake, the reeds of which have an economic value as wicks for
+Chinese candles. Dykes cross the swamp in various directions, and in the
+centre there is a well known Taoist Temple, a richly endowed edifice,
+with superior gods and censers of great beauty. Where the swamp deepens
+into a pond at the margin of the temple, a pretty pavilion has been
+built, which is a favourite resort of the Yunnan gentry. The most _chic_
+dinner parties in the province are given here. The pond itself swarms
+with sacred fish; they are so numerous that when the masses move the
+whole pond vibrates. Many merits are gained by feeding the fish, and,
+as it happened at the time of my visit that I had no money, I was
+constrained to borrow fifteen cash from my chair coolies, with which I
+purchased some of the artificial food that women were vending and threw
+it to the fish, so that I might add another thousand to the innumerable
+merits I have already hoarded in Heaven.
+
+Upon a pretty wooded hill near the centre of the city is the Confucian
+Temple, and on the lower slope of the hill, in an admirable position,
+are the quarters of the China Inland Mission, conducted by Mr. and Mrs.
+X., assisted by Mr. Graham, who at the time of my visit was absent in
+Tali, and by two exceedingly nice young girls, one of whom comes from
+Melbourne. The single ladies live in quarters of their own on the edge
+of a swamp, and suffer inevitably from malarial fever. Mr. X. "finds the
+people very hard to reach," he told me, and his success has only been
+relatively cheering. After labouring here nearly six years--the mission
+was first opened in 1882--he has no male converts, though there are two
+promising nibblers, who are waiting for the first vacancy to become
+adherents. There _was_ a convert, baptised before Mr. X. came here, a
+poor manure-coolie, who was employed by the mission as an evangelist in
+a small way; but "Satan tempted him, he fell from grace, and had to be
+expelled for stealing the children's buttons." It was a sad trial to the
+mission. The men refuse to be saved, recalcitrant sinners! but the women
+happily are more tractable. Mr. X. has up to date (May, 1894), baptised
+his children's nurse girl, the "native helper" of the single ladies, and
+his wife's cook. Mr. X. works hard, far too hard. He is of the type that
+never can be successful in China. He was converted when nearing middle
+age, is narrow and uncompromising in his views, and is as stern as a
+Cameronian. It is a farce sending such men to China. At his services
+there is never any lack of listeners, who marvel greatly at the new
+method of speaking Chinese which this enterprising emissary--in London
+he was in the oil trade--is endeavouring to introduce into the province.
+Of "tones" instead of the five used by the Chinese, he does not
+recognise more than two, and these he uses indifferently. He hopes,
+however, to be understood by loud speaking, and he bellows at the placid
+coolies like a bull of Bashan.
+
+I paid an early visit to my countrymen at the _Yesu-tang_ (Jesus Hall),
+the mission home, as I thought that my medical knowledge might be of
+some service. I wished to learn a little about their work, but to my
+great sorrow I was no sooner seated than they began plying me with
+questions about the welfare of my soul. I am a "poor lost sinner," they
+told me. They flung texts at my head, and then sang a terrifying ballad,
+by which I learnt for the first time the awful fate that is to be mine.
+It is something too dreadful to contemplate. And the cheerful equanimity
+with which they announced it to me! I left the _Yesu-tang_ in a cold
+sweat, and never returned there.
+
+Missionary work is being pursued in the province with increasing vigour.
+Among its population of from five to seven millions, spread over an area
+of 107,969 square miles, there are eighteen Protestant missionaries,
+nine men and nine ladies (this is the number at present, but the usual
+strength is twenty-three). Stations are open at Chaotong (1887),
+Tongchuan (1891), Yunnan City (1882), Tali (1881), and Kuhtsing (1889).
+The converts number--the work, however, must not be judged by
+statistics--two at Chaotong, one at Tongchuan, three at Yunnan City,
+three at Tali, and two at Kuhtsing.
+
+That the Chinese are capable of very rapid conversion can be proved by
+numberless instances quoted in missionary reports on China. The Rev. S.
+F. Woodin (in the _Records_ of the Missionary Conference, 1877, p. 91)
+states that he converted a "grossly immoral Chinaman, who had smoked
+opium for more than twenty years," simply by saying to him "in a spirit
+of earnest love, elder brother Six, as far as I can see, you must
+perish; you are Hell's child."
+
+Mr. Stanley P. Smith, B.A., who was formerly stroke of the Cambridge
+eight, had been only seven months in China when he performed that
+wonderful conversion, so applauded at the Missionary Conference of 1888,
+of "a young Chinaman, a learned man, a B.A. of his University," who
+heard Mr. Smith speak in the Chinese that can be acquired in seven
+months, and "accepted Him there and then." (_Records_ of the Missionary
+Conference, 1888, i., 46). Indeed, the earlier the new missionaries in
+China begin to preach the more rapid are the conversions they make.
+
+Now, in this province of Yunnan, conversions will have to be infinitely
+more rapid before we can say that there is any reasonable hope of the
+proximate conversion of the province. The problem is this: In a
+population of from five to seven millions of friendly and peaceable
+people, eighteen missionaries in eight years (the average time during
+which the mission stations have been opened), have converted eleven
+Chinese; how long, then, will it take to convert the remainder?
+
+"I believe," said a late member of the House of Commons, who was once
+Lord Mayor of London, speaking at the anniversary meeting of the China
+Inland Mission in 1884, "I believe God intends to accomplish great
+things in China," and, undoubtedly, the opinion of an ex-Lord Mayor on
+such a subject is entitled to great weight.
+
+"The Gospel," he said, "is making rapid progress in China.... We are
+amazed at the great things God hath wrought" (in the conversion of the
+Chinese).
+
+Let us examine for a moment an instance of the rapid progress which
+excited the amazement of this good man. No missionary body in China is
+working with greater energy than the China Inland Mission. Their
+missionaries go far afield in their work, and they are, what their
+mission intends them to be, pioneer Protestant missionaries in Inland
+China. At the present time, the beginning of 1894, the Inland Mission
+numbers 611 male and female missionaries. They are assisted by 261 paid
+native helpers, and the combined body of 872 Evangelists baptised during
+the year just passed (1893) 821 Chinese. These figures, taken from
+_China's Millions_, 1894, p. 122, attest a rather lower rate of progress
+than the other missions can boast of; but a considerable part of the
+inland work, it must be remembered, is the most difficult work of
+all--the preaching of the Gospel for the first time in newly-opened
+districts.
+
+[Illustration: THE VICEROY OF THE TWO PROVINCES OF YUNNAN AND KWEICHOW.]
+
+The Viceroy of the two provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow, Wong-wen-shao,
+is one of the most enlightened rulers in China. No stranger could fail
+to be impressed with his keen intellectual face and courtly grace of
+manner. His career has been a distinguished one. Good fortune attended
+him even at his birth. He is a native of Hangchow, in Chehkiang, a city
+famous in China for its coffins. Every Chinaman will tell you that true
+felicity consists in three things: to be born in Peking (under the
+shadow of the Son of Heaven); to live in Soochow (where the girls are
+prettiest); and to die in Hangchow (where the coffins are grandest).
+Twelve years ago he was Governor of the province of Hunan. Called then
+to Peking as one of the Ministers of State of the "Tsungli Yamen," or
+Foreign Office, he remained there four years, his retirement being then
+due to the inexorable law which requires an official to resign office
+and go into mourning for three years on the death of one of his parents.
+In this case it was his mother. (A Chinese mother suckles her child two
+and a half years, and, as the age of the child is dated from a time
+anterior by some months to birth, the child is three years old before it
+leaves its mother's breast. Three years, therefore, has been defined as
+the proper period for mourning.) At the termination of the three years,
+Wong was reappointed Governor of Hunan, and a year and a half later, in
+May, 1890, he was appointed to his present important satrapy, where he
+has the supreme control of a district larger than Spain and Portugal,
+and with a population larger than that of Canada and Australia combined.
+In May, 1893, he made application to the throne to be allowed to return
+to his ancestral home to die, but the privilege was refused him.
+
+Before leaving Yunnan city the Mandarin Li kindly provided me with a
+letter of introduction to his friend Brigadier-General Chang-chen Nien,
+in Tengyueh. Since it contained a communication between persons of rank,
+the envelope was about the size of an ordinary pillow-slip. The General
+was presumably of higher rank than the traveller; I had, therefore, in
+accordance with Chinese etiquette, to provide myself with a suitable
+visiting card of a size appropriate to his importance. Now Chinese
+visiting cards differ from ours in differing in size according to the
+importance of the person to whom they are to be presented. My ordinary
+card is eight inches by three, red in colour--the colour of
+happiness--and inscribed in black with the three characters of my
+Chinese name. But the card that I was expected to present to the
+General was very much larger than this. Folded it was of the same size,
+but unfolded it was ten times the size of the other (eight by thirty
+inches), and the last page, politely inscribed in Chinese, contained
+this humiliating indication of its purport: "Your addlepated nephew
+Mo-li-son bows his stupid head, and pays his humble respects to your
+exalted Excellency."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I still have this card in my possession; and I should be extremely
+reluctant to present it to any official in the Empire of lower rank than
+the Emperor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE JOURNEY FROM YUNNAN CITY TO TALIFU.
+
+
+I sold the mule in Yunnan City, and bought instead a little white pony
+at a cost, including saddle, bridle, and bells, of _£3 6s._ In doing
+this I reversed the exchange that would have been made by a Chinaman. A
+mule is a more aristocratic animal than a pony; it thrives better on a
+journey, and is more sure-footed. If a pony, the Chinese tell you, lets
+slip one foot, the other three follow; whereas a mule, if three feet
+slip from under him, will hold on with the fourth.
+
+My men, who had come with me from Chaotong, were paid off in Yunnan; but
+it was pleasant to find all three accept an offer to go on with me to
+Talifu. Coolies to do this journey are usually supplied by the coolie
+agents for the wage of two _chien_ a day each (_7d._), each man to carry
+seventy catties (93lbs.), find himself by the way, and spend thirteen
+days on the journey. But no coolies, owing to the increase in the price
+of food, were now willing to go for so little. Accordingly I offered my
+two coolies three taels each (_9s._), instead of the hong price of _7s.
+9d._, and loads of fifty catties instead of seventy catties. I offered
+to refund them 100 cash each (_2-1/2d._) a day for every day that they
+had been delayed in Yunnan, and, in addition, I promised them a reward
+of five mace each (_1s. 6d._) if they would take me to Tali in nine
+days, instead of thirteen, the first evening not to count. To Laohwan,
+who had no load to carry, but had to attend to me and the pony and pay
+away the cash, I made a similar offer. These terms, involving me in an
+outlay of _36s._ for hiring three men to go with me on foot 915 li, and
+return empty-handed, were considered liberal, and were agreed to at
+once.
+
+The afternoon, then, of the 19th April saw us again _en route_, bound to
+the west to Talifu, the most famous city in western China, the
+headquarters of the Mohammedan "Sultan" during the great rebellion of
+1857-1873.
+
+By the courtesy of the Mandarin Li, two men were detailed to "sung"
+me--to accompany me, that is--and take the responsibility for my safe
+delivery at the next hsien. One was a "wen," a chairen, or yamen runner;
+the other was a "wu," a soldier, with a sightless right eye, who was
+dressed in the ragged vestiges of a uniform that reflected both the
+poverty of his environment and, inversely, the richness of his
+commanding officer. For in China the officer enriches himself by the
+twofold expedient of drawing pay for soldiers who have no existence,
+except in his statement of claim, and by diverting the pay of his
+soldiers who do exist from their pockets into his own.
+
+[Illustration: THE GIANT OF YUNNAN.]
+
+As I was leaving, a colossal Chinaman, sent by the Fantai to speed the
+foreign gentleman on his way, strode into the court. He was dressed in
+military jacket and official hat and foxtails. He was the Yunnan giant,
+Chang Yan Miun, a kindly-featured monster, whom it is a pity to see
+buried in China when he might be holding _levées_ of thousands in a
+Western side-show. For the information of those in search of novelties,
+I may say that the giant is thirty years of age, a native of Tongchuan,
+born of parents of ordinary stature; he is 7ft. 1in. in his bare feet,
+and weighs, when in condition, 27st. 6lb. With that ingenious
+arrangement for increasing height known to all showmen, this giant might
+be worth investing in as a possible successor to his unrivalled
+namesake. There is surely money in it. Chang's present earnings are
+rather less than _7s._ a month, without board and lodging; he is
+unmarried, and has no incumbrance; and he is slightly taller and much
+more massively built than a well-known American giant whom I once had
+permission to measure, who has been shown half over the world as the
+"tallest man on earth," his height being attested as "7ft. 11in. in his
+stockings' soles," and who commands the salary of an English admiral.
+
+We made only a short march the first evening, but after that we
+travelled by long stages. The country was very pretty, open glades with
+clumps of pine, and here and there a magnificent sacred tree like the
+banyan, under whose far-reaching branches small villages are often half
+concealed. Despite the fertility of the country, poverty and starvation
+met us at every step; the poor were lingering miserably through the
+year. Goitre, too, was increasing in frequency. It was rarely that a
+group gathered to see us some of whose members were not suffering from
+this horrible deformity. And everywhere in the pretty country were signs
+of the ruthless devastation of religious war. That was a war of
+extermination. "A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed
+every house, destroyed every temple."
+
+Crumbling walls are at long distances from the towns they used to guard;
+there are pastures and waste lands where there were streets of
+buildings; walls of houses have returned whence they came to the mother
+earth; others are roofless. In the open country, far from habitation,
+the traveller comes across groups of bare walls with foundations still
+uncovered, and dismantled arches, and broken images in the long grass,
+that were formerly yamens and temples in the midst of thriving
+communities. Yet there are signs of a renaissance; many new houses are
+being built along the main road; walls are being repaired, and bridges
+reconstructed. When an exodus takes place from Szechuen to this
+province, there is little reason why Yunnan should not become one of the
+richest provinces in China. It has every advantage of climate, great
+fertility of soil, and immense mineral resources hardly yet developed.
+It needs population. It needs the population that dwelt in the province
+before the rebellion involved the death of millions. It can absorb an
+immense proportion of the surplus population of China. During, and
+subsequent to, the Taiping rebellion the province of Szechuen increased
+by 45,000,000 in forty years (1842-82); given the necessity, there seems
+no reason why the population of Yunnan should not increase in an almost
+equal proportion.
+
+On the 22nd we passed Lu-feng-hsien, another ruined town. The finest
+stone bridge I have seen in Western China, and one that would arrest
+attention in any country in the world, is at this town. It crosses the
+wide bed of a stream that in winter is insignificant, but which grows in
+volume in the rains of summer to a broad and powerful river. It is a
+bridge of seven beautiful arches; it is 12 yards broad and 150 yards
+long, of perfect simplicity and symmetry, with massive piers, all built
+of dressed masonry and destined to survive the lapse of centuries.
+Triumphal archways with memorial tablets and pedestals of carved lions
+are befitting portals to a really noble work.
+
+On the 23rd we reached the important city of Chuhsing-fu, a walled city,
+still half-in-ruins, that was long occupied by the Mohammedans, and
+suffered terrible reprisals on its recapture by the Imperialists. For
+four days we had travelled at an average rate of one hundred and five li
+(thirty-five miles) a day. I must, however, note that these distances as
+estimated by Mr. Jensen, the constructor of the telegraph line, do not
+agree with the distances in Mr. Baber's itinerary. The Chinese distances
+in li agree in both estimates; but, whereas Mr. Jensen allows three li
+for a mile, Mr. Baber allows four and a-half, a wide difference indeed.
+For convenience sake I have made use of the telegraph figures, but Mr.
+Baber was so scrupulously accurate in all that he wrote that I have no
+doubt the telegraph distances are over-estimated.
+
+We were again in a district almost exclusively devoted to the poppy; the
+valley-plains sparkled with poppy flowers of a multiplicity of tints.
+The days were pleasant, and the sun shone brightly; every plant was in
+flower; doves cooed in the trees, and the bushes in blossom were bright
+with butterflies. Lanes led between hedges of wild roses white with
+flower, and, wherever a creek trickled across the plain, its
+willow-lined borders were blue with forget-me-nots. And everywhere a
+peaceful people, who never spoke a word to the foreigner that was not
+friendly.
+
+On the evening of the 24th, at a ruined town thirty li from Luho, we
+received our first check. It was at a walled town, with gateways and a
+pagoda that gave some indication of its former prosperity, prettily
+situated among the trees on the confines of a plain of remarkable
+fertility. Near sundown we passed down the one long street, all battered
+and dismantled, which is all that is left of the old town. News of the
+foreigner quickly spread, and the people gathered into the street to
+see me--no reception could be more flattering. We did not wait, but,
+pushing on, we passed out by the west gate and hastened on across the
+plain. But I noticed that Laohwan kept looking back at the impoverished
+town, shaking his head and stuttering "_pu-pu-pu-pu-hao! pu-pu-pu-hao!_"
+(bad! bad!) We had thus gone half a mile or so, when we were arrested by
+cries behind us, and our last chairen was seen running, panting, after
+us. We waited for him; he was absurdly excited, and could hardly speak.
+He made an address to me, speaking with great energy and gesticulation;
+but what was its purport, _Dios sabe_. When he had finished, not to be
+outdone in politeness, I thanked him in English for the kindly phrases
+in which he had spoken to me, assured him of my continued sympathy, and
+undertook to say that, if ever he came to Geelong, he would find there a
+house at his disposition, and a friend who would be ever ready to do him
+a service. He seemed completely mystified, and began to speak again,
+more excitedly than before. It was getting late, and a crowd was
+collecting, so I checked him by waving my left hand before my face and
+bawling at him with all my voice: "_Putung_, you stupid ass, _putung_ (I
+don't understand)! Can't you see I don't understand a word you say, you
+benighted heathen you? _Putung_, man, _putung_! Advance Australia, _dzo_
+(go)!" And, swinging open my umbrella, I walked on. His excitement
+increased--we must go back to the town; he seized me by the wrists, and
+urged me to go back. We had a slight discussion; his feet gave from
+under him and he fell down, and I was going on cheerfully when he burst
+out crying. This I interpreted to mean that he would get into trouble if
+I did not return, so, of course, I turned back at once, for the tears
+of a Chinaman are sadly affecting. Back, then, we were taken to an
+excellent inn in the main street, where a respectful _levée_ of the
+townsfolk had assembled to welcome me. A polite official called upon me,
+to whom I showed, with simulated indignation, my official card and my
+Chinese passport, and I hinted to him in English that this interference
+with my rights as a traveller from England, protected by the favour of
+the Emperor, would--let him mark my word--be made an international
+question. While saying this, I inadvertently left on my box, so that all
+might see it, the letter of introduction to the Brigadier-General in
+Tengyueh, which was calculated to give the natives an indication of the
+class of Chinese who had the privilege to be admitted to my friendship.
+The official was very polite and apologetic. I freely forgave him, and
+we had tea together.
+
+He had done it all for the best. A moneyed foreigner was passing through
+his town near sundown without stopping to spend a single cash there. Was
+it not his duty, as a public-spirited man, to interfere and avert this
+loss, and compel the stranger to spend at least one night within his
+gates?
+
+This was what I wrote at the time. I subsequently found that I had been
+sent for to come back because the road was believed to be dangerous,
+there was no secure resting-place, and the authorities could not
+guarantee my safety. Imagine a Chinese in a Western country acting with
+the bluster that I did, although in good humour; I wonder whether he
+would be treated with the courtesy that those Chinamen showed to me!
+
+On the 25th an elderly chairen was ready to accompany us in the morning,
+and he remained with us all day. All day he was engrossed in deep
+thought. He spoke to no one, but he kept a watchful eye over his charge,
+never leaving me a moment, but dogging my very footsteps all the
+hundred li we travelled together. Poorly clad, he was better provided
+than his brother of yesterday in that he wore sandals, whereas the
+chairen of yesterday was in rags and barefoot. He was, of course,
+unprovided with weapon of any kind--it was moral force that he relied
+on. Over his shoulder was slung a bag from which projected his
+opium-pipe; a tobacco pipe and tobacco box hung at his girdle; a green
+glass bottle of crude opium he carried round his neck.
+
+The chairen is the policeman of China, the lictor of the magistrate, the
+satellite of the official; the soldier is the representative of military
+authority. Now, China, in the person of her greatest statesman, Li Hung
+Chang, has, through the secretary of the Anti-Opium Society, called upon
+England "to aid her in the efforts she is now making to suppress opium."
+If, then, China is sincere in her alleged efforts to abolish opium, it
+is the chairen and the soldier who must be employed by the authorities
+to suppress the evil; yet I have never been accompanied by either a
+chairen or a soldier who did not smoke opium, nor have I to my knowledge
+ever met a chairen or a soldier who was not an opium-smoker. Through all
+districts of Yunnan, wherever the soil permits it, the poppy is grown
+for miles, as far as the sight can reach, on every available acre, on
+both sides of the road.
+
+But why does China grow this poppy? Have not the _literati_ and elders
+of Canton written to support the schemes of the Anti-Opium Society in
+these thrilling words: "If Englishmen wish to know the sentiments of
+China, here they are:--If we are told to let things go on as they are
+going, then there is no remedy and no salvation for China. Oh! it makes
+the blood run cold, and we want in this our extremity to ask the
+question of High Heaven, what unknown crimes or atrocity have the
+Chinese people committed beyond all others that they are doomed to
+suffer thus?" (Cited by Mr. S. S. Mander, _China's Millions_, iv., 156.)
+
+And the women of Canton, have they not written to the missionaries "that
+there is no tear that they shed that is not red with blood because of
+this opium?" ("China," by M. Reed, p. 63). Why, then, does China, while
+she protests against the importation of a drug which a Governor of
+Canton, himself an opium-smoker, described as a "vile excrementitious
+substance" ("Barrow's Travels," p. 153), sanction, if not foster, with
+all the weight of the authorities in the ever-extending opium-districts
+the growth of the poppy? To the Rev. G. Piercy (formerly of the W.M.S.,
+Canton), we are indebted for the following explanation of this anomaly:
+China, it appears, is growing opium in order to put a stop to
+opium-smoking.
+
+"Moreover, China has not done with the evils of opium, even if our hands
+were washed of this traffic to-day. China in her desperation has invoked
+Satan to cast out Satan. She now grows her own opium, vainly dreaming
+that, if the Indian supply lapse, she can then deal with this rapidly
+growing evil. But Satan is not divided against himself; he means his
+kingdom to stand. Opium-growing will not destroy opium-smoking."
+(Missionary Conference of 1888, _Records_, ii., 546.)
+
+"Yet the awful guilt remains," said the Ven. Archdeacon Farrar on a
+recent occasion in Westminster Abbey, "that we, 'wherever winds blow and
+waters roll,' have girdled the world with a zone of drunkenness, until I
+seem to shudder as I think of the curses, not loud but deep, muttered
+against our name by races which our fire-water has decimated and our
+vice degraded." (_National Righteousness_, December 1892, p. 4.)
+
+And this patriotic utterance of a distinguished Englishman the Chinese
+will quote in unexpected support of the memorial "On the Restriction of
+Christianity" addressed to the Throne of China in 1884 by the High
+Commissioner Pêng Yü-lin, which memorial stated in severe language that
+"_since the treaties have permitted foreigners from the West to spread
+their doctrines, the morals of the people have been greatly injured_."
+("The Causes of the Anti-Foreign Disturbances in China." Rev. Gilbert
+Reid, M.A., p. 9.)
+
+Forty li from our sleeping place we came to the pretty town of
+Shachiaokai, on some undulating high ground well sheltered with trees.
+Justice had lately been here with her headsman and brought death to a
+gang of malefactors. Their heads, swinging in wooden cages, hung from
+the tower near the gateway. They could be seen by all persons passing
+along the road, and, with due consideration for the feelings of the
+bereaved relatives, they were hung near enough for the features to be
+recognised by their friends. Each head was in a cage of its own, and was
+suspended by the pigtail to the rim, so that it might not lie upside
+down but could by-and-by rattle in its box as dead men's bones should
+do. To each cage a white ticket was attached giving the name of the
+criminal and his confession of the offence for which he was executed.
+They were the heads of highway robbers who had murdered two travellers
+on the road near Chennan-chow, and it was this circumstance which
+accounted for the solicitude of the officials near Luho to prevent our
+being benighted in a district where such things were possible.
+
+[Illustration: THE "EAGLE NEST BARRIER," ON THE ROAD BETWEEN YUNNAN AND
+TALIFU.]
+
+Midway between Shachiaokai and Pupêng there was steep climbing to be
+done till we reached Ying-wu-kwan, the "Eagle Nest Barrier," which is
+more than 8000 feet above the sea. Then by very hilly and poor country
+we came to Pupêng, and, pursuing our way over a thickly-peopled plateau,
+we reached a break in the high land from which we descended into a wide
+and deep valley, skirted with villages and gleaming with sheets of
+water--the submerged rice-fields. At the foot of the steep was a poor
+mud town, but, standing back from it in the fields, was a splendid
+Taoist temple fit for a capital. In this village we were delayed for
+nearly an hour while my three men bargained against half the village for
+the possession of a hen that was all unconscious of the comments,
+flattering and deprecatory, that were being passed on its fatness. It
+was secured eventually for 260 cash, the vendors having declared that
+the hen was a family pet, hatched on a lucky day, that it had been
+carefully and tenderly reared, and that nothing in the world could
+induce them to part with it for a cash less than 350. My men with equal
+confidence, based upon long experience in the purchase of poultry,
+asserted that the real value of the hen was 200 cash, and that not a
+single cash more of the foreign gentleman's money could they
+conscientiously invest in such a travesty of a hen as _that_. But little
+by little each party gave way till they were able to _tomber d'accord_.
+
+A pleasant walk across the busy plain brought us to Yunnan Yeh, where we
+passed the night.
+
+On the 27th we had an unsatisfactory day's journey. We travelled only
+seventy li over an even road, yet with four good hours of daylight
+before us my men elected to stop when we came to the village of
+Yenwanshan. We had left the main road for some unknown reason, and were
+taking a short cut over the mountains to Tali. But a short-cut in China
+often means the longest distance, and I was sure that this short-cut
+would bring us to Tali a day later than if we had gone by the main
+road--in ten days, that is, from Yunnan, instead of the nine which my
+men had promised me. Laohwan, who, like most Chinaman I met, persisted
+in thinking that I was deaf, yelled to me in the presence of the village
+that the next stopping place was twenty miles distant, that "_mitte
+liao! mitte liao!_" ("there were no beans") on the way for the pony, and
+that assuredly we would reach Tali to-morrow, having given the pony the
+admirable rest that here offered. As he stammered these sentences the
+people supported what he said. Obviously their statements were _ex
+parte_, and were promoted solely by the desire to see the distinguished
+foreign mandarin sojourn for one night in their hungry midst. So here I
+was detained in a tumble-down inn that had formerly been a temple. All
+of us, men and master, were housed in the old guest-room. Beds were
+formed of disused coffin boards, laid between steps made of clods of dry
+clay; the floor was earth, the windows paper. The pony was feeding from
+a trough in the temple hall itself, an armful of excellent grass before
+it, while a bucket of beans was soaking for him in our corner. Other
+mules and ponies were stationed in the side pavilions where formerly
+were displayed the scenes of torture in the Buddhist Hells.
+
+As I wrote at a table by the window, a crowd collected, stretching
+across the street and quarrelling to catch a glimpse of the foreign
+teacher and his strange method of writing, so different from the
+Chinese. Poor sickly people were these--of the ten in the first row
+three were suffering from goitre, one from strabismus, and two from
+ophthalmia. All were poorly clad and poorly nourished; all were very
+dirty, and their heads were unshaven of the growth of days. But, despite
+their poverty, nearly all the women, the children as well as the
+grandmothers, wore silver earrings of pretty filigree.
+
+Now, even among these poor people, I noticed that there was a
+disposition rather to laugh at me than to open the eyes of wonder; and
+this is a peculiarity of the Chinese which every traveller will be
+struck with. It often grieved me. During my journey, although I was
+treated with undeniable friendliness, I found that the Chinese, instead
+of being impressed by my appearance, would furtively giggle when they
+saw me. But they were never openly rude like the coloured folk were in
+Jamaica, when, stranded in their beautiful island, I did them the honour
+to go as a "walk-foot buccra" round the sugar plantations from Ewarton
+to Montego Bay. Even poor ragged fellows, living in utter misery, would
+laugh and snigger at me when not observed, and crack jokes at the
+foreigner who was well-fed, well-clad, and well-mounted in a way you
+would think to excite envy rather than derision. But Chinese laughter
+seems to be moved by different springs from ours. The Chinaman makes
+merry in the presence of death. A Chinaman, come to announce to you the
+death of a beloved parent or brother, laughs heartily as he tells
+you--you might think he was overflowing with joy, but he is really sick
+and sore at heart, and is only laughing to deceive the spirits. So it
+may be that the poor beggars who laughed at that noble presence which
+has been the admiration of my friends in four continents, were moved to
+do so by the hope to deceive the evil spirits who had punished them with
+poverty, and so by their apparent gaiety induce them to relax the
+severity of their punishment.
+
+To within two or three miles of this village the road was singularly
+level; I do not think that it either rose or fell 100 feet in twenty
+miles. Forty li from where we slept the night before, having previously
+left the main road, we came to the large walled town of Yunnan-hsien.
+The streets were crowded, for it was market day, and both sides of the
+main thoroughfares, especially in the vicinity of the Confucian Temple,
+were thronged with peasant women selling garden produce, turnips, beans
+and peas, and live fish caught in the lake beyond Tali. Articles of
+Western trade were also for sale--stacks of calico, braid, and thread,
+"new impermeable matches made in Trieste," and "toilet soap of the
+finest quality." I had a royal reception as I rode through the crowd,
+and the street where was situated the inn to which we went for lunch
+speedily became impassable. There was keen competition to see me. Two
+thieves were among the foremost, with huge iron crowbars chained to
+their necks and ankles, while a third prisoner, with his head pilloried
+in a _cangue_, obstructed the gaze of many. There was the most admirable
+courtesy shown me; it was the "foreign teacher" they wished to see, not
+the "foreign devil." When I rose from the table, half a dozen guests
+sitting at the other tables rose also and bowed to me as I passed out.
+Of all people I have ever met, the Chinese are, I think, the politest.
+My illiterate Laohwan, who could neither read nor write, had a courtesy
+of demeanour, a well-bred ease of manner, a graceful deference that
+never approached servility, which it was a constant pleasure to me to
+witness.
+
+As regards the educated classes, there can be little doubt, I think,
+that there are no people in the world so scrupulously polite as the
+Chinese. Their smallest actions on all occasions of ceremony are
+governed by the most minute rules. Let me give, as an example, the
+method of cross-examination to which the stranger is subjected, and
+which is a familiar instance of true politeness in China.
+
+When a well-bred Chinaman, of whatever station, meets you for the first
+time, he thus addresses you, first asking you how old you are:
+
+"What is your honourable age?"
+
+"I have been dragged up a fool so many years," you politely reply.
+
+"What is your noble and exalted occupation?"
+
+"My mean and contemptible calling is that of a doctor."
+
+"What is your noble patronymic?"
+
+"My poverty-struck family name is Mô."
+
+"How many honourable and distinguished sons have you?"
+
+"Alas! Fate has been niggardly; I have not even one little bug."
+
+But, if you can truthfully say that you are the honourable father of
+sons, your interlocutor will raise his clasped hands and say gravely,
+"Sir, you are a man of virtue; I congratulate you." He continues--
+
+"How many tens of thousands of pieces of silver have you?" meaning how
+many daughters have you?
+
+"My yatows" (forked heads or slave children), "my daughters," you answer
+with a deprecatory shrug, "number so many."
+
+So the conversation continues, and the more minute are the inquiries the
+more polite is the questioner.
+
+Unlike most of the Western nations, the Chinese have an overmastering
+desire to have children. More than death itself the Chinaman fears to
+die without leaving male progeny to worship at his shrine; for, if he
+should die childless, he leaves behind him no provision for his support
+in heaven, but wanders there a hungry ghost, forlorn and forsaken--an
+"orphan" because he has no children. "If one has plenty of money," says
+the Chinese proverb, "but no children, he cannot be reckoned rich; if
+one has children, but no money, he cannot be considered poor." To have
+sons is a foremost virtue in China; "the greatest of the three unfilial
+things," says Mencius, "is to have no children." (Mencius, iv., pt. i.,
+26).
+
+In China longevity is the highest of the five grades of felicity.
+Triumphal arches are erected all over the kingdom in honour of those who
+have attained the patriarchal age which among us seems only to be
+assured to those who partake in sufficient quantity of certain
+fruit-salts and pills. Age when not known is guessed by the length of
+the beard, which is never allowed to grow till the thirty-second year.
+Now it happens that I am clean-shaven, and, as it is a well-known fact
+that the face of the European is an enigma to the Oriental, just as the
+face of the Chinaman is an inscrutable mystery to most of us, I have
+often been amused by the varying estimates of my age advanced by curious
+bystanders. It has been estimated as low as twelve--"look at the
+foreigner," they said, "there's a fine fat boy!"--and never higher than
+twenty-two. But it is not only in China that a youthful appearance has
+hampered me in my walk through life.
+
+I remember that on one occasion, some years ago, I obliged a medical
+friend by taking his practice while he went away for a few days to be
+married. It was in a semi-barbarian village named Portree, in a
+forgotten remnant of Scotland called the Isle of Skye. The time was
+winter. The first case I was called to was that of a bashful matron, the
+baker's wife, who had lately given birth to her tenth child. I entered
+the room cheerfully. She looked me over critically, and then greatly
+disconcerted me by remarking that: "She was gey thankfu' to the Lord
+that it was a' by afore I cam', as she had nae wush to be meddled wi' by
+a laddie of nineteen." Yet I was two years older than the doctor who had
+attended her.
+
+If in China you are so fortunate as to be graced with a beard, the
+Chinaman will add many years to your true age. In the agreeable company
+of one of the finest men in China, I once made a journey to the Nankow
+Pass in the Great Wall, north of Peking. My friend had a beard like a
+Welsh bard's, and, though a younger man than his years, forty-four,
+there was not a native who saw him, who did not gaze upon him with awe,
+as a possible Buddha, and not one who attributed to him an age less than
+eighty.
+
+Next day, the 28th of April, despite my misgivings, my men fulfilled
+their promise, and led me into Tali on the ninth day out from Yunnan. We
+had come 307 miles in nine days. They walked all the way, living
+frugally on scanty rations. I walked only 210 miles; I was better fed
+than they, and I had a pony at my hand ready to carry me whenever I was
+tired.
+
+My men thus earned a reward of eighteen pence each for doing thirteen
+stages in nine days. Long before daylight we were on our way. For miles
+and miles in the early morning we were climbing up the mountains, till
+we reached a plateau where the wind blew piercingly keen, and my fingers
+ached with the cold, and the rarefaction in the atmosphere made
+breathing uneasy. The road was lonely and unfrequented. We were
+accompanied by a muleteer who knew the way, by his sturdy son of twelve,
+and his two pack horses. By midday we had left the bare plateau, had
+passed the three pagoda peaks, and were standing on the brow of a steep
+hill overlooking the valleys of Chaochow and Tali. The plains were
+studded with thriving villages, in rich fields, and intersected with
+roadways lined with hedges. There on the left was the walled city of
+Chaochow, beyond, to the right, was the great lake of Tali, hemmed in by
+mountains, those beyond the lake thickly covered with snow, and rising
+7000 feet above the lake, which itself is 7000 feet above the sea.
+
+We descended into the valley, and, as we picked our way down the steep
+path, I could count in the lap of the first valley eighteen villages
+besides the walled city. Crossing the fields we struck the main road,
+and mingled with the stream of people who were bending their steps
+towards Hsiakwan. Many varieties of feature were among them, a diversity
+of type unlooked for by the traveller in China who had become habituated
+to the uniformity of type of the Chinese face. There were faces plainly
+European, others as unmistakably Hindoo, Indigenes of Yunnan province,
+Thibetans, Cantonese pedlars, and Szechuen coolies. A broad flagged road
+brought us to the important market town of Hsiakwan, which guards the
+southern pass to the Valley of Tali. It is on the main road going west
+to the frontier of Burma, and is the junction where the road turns north
+to Tali. It is a busy town. It is one of the most famous halting places
+on the main road to Burma. The two largest caravanserais in Western
+China are in Hsiakwan, and I do not exaggerate when I say that a
+regiment of British cavalry could be quartered in either of them. At a
+restaurant near the cross-road we had rice and a cup of tea, and a bowl
+of the vermicelli soup known as _mien_, the muleteer and his son sitting
+down with my men. When the time came to go, the muleteer, unrolling a
+string of cash from his waistband, was about to pay his share, when
+Laohwan with much civility refused to permit him. He insisted, but
+Laohwan was firm; had they been Frenchmen, they could not have been more
+polite and complimentary. The muleteer gave way with good grace, and
+Laohwan paid with my cash, and gained merit by his courtesy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE CITY OF TALI--PRISONS--POISONING--PLAGUES AND MISSIONS.
+
+
+Three hours later we were in Tali. A broad paved road, smooth from the
+passage of countless feet, leads to the city. Rocky creeks drain the
+mountain range into the lake; they are spanned by numerous bridges of
+dressed stone, many of the slabs of which are well cut granite blocks
+eighteen feet in length. At a stall by the roadside excellent ices were
+for sale, genuine ices, made of concave tablets of pressed snow
+sweetened with treacle, costing one cash each--equal to one penny for
+three dozen. We passed the Temple to the Goddess of Mercy, and entered
+Tali by the south gate. Then by the yamen of the Titai and the Great
+Five Glory Gate, the northern entrance of what was for seventeen years
+the palace of the Mohammedan king during the rebellion, we turned down
+the East street to the _Yesu-tang_, the Inland Mission, where Mr. and
+Mrs. John Smith gave me a cordial greeting.
+
+Tali has always been an important city. It was the capital of an
+independent kingdom in the time of Kublai Khan and Marco Polo. It was
+the headquarters of the Mohammedan Sultan or Dictator, Tu Wen Hsiu,
+during the rebellion, and seemed at one time destined to become the
+capital of an independent Moslem Empire in Western China.
+
+The city surrendered to the Mohammedans in 1857. It was recaptured by
+the Imperialists under General Yang Yu-ko on January 15th, 1873, the
+Chinese troops being aided by artillery cast by Frenchmen in the arsenal
+of Yunnan and manned by French gunners. At its recapture the carnage was
+appalling; the streets were ankle-deep in blood. Of 50,000 inhabitants
+30,000 were butchered. After the massacre twenty-four panniers of human
+ears were sent to Yunnan city to convince the people of the capital that
+they had nothing more to fear from the rebellion.
+
+In March, 1873, Yang was appointed _Titai_ or Commander-in-chief of
+Yunnan Province, with his headquarters in Tali, not in the capital, and
+Tali has ever since been the seat of the most important military command
+in the province.
+
+The subsequent history of Yang may be told in a few words. He assumed
+despotic power over the country he had conquered, and grew in power till
+his authority became a menace to the Imperial Government. They feared
+that he aspired to found a kingdom of his own in Western China, and
+recalled him to Peking--to do him honour. He was not to be permitted to
+return to Yunnan. At the time of his recall another rebellion had broken
+out against China--the rebellion of the French--and, like another Uriah,
+the powerful general was sent to the forefront in Formosa, where he was
+opportunely slain by a French bullet, or by a misdirected Chinese one.
+
+After his death it was found that Yang had made a noble bequest to the
+City of Tali. During his residence he had built for himself a splendid
+yamen of granite and marble. This he had richly endowed and left as a
+free gift to the city as a college for students. It is one of the
+finest residences in China, and, though only seventy undergraduates were
+living there at the time of my visit, the rooms could accommodate in
+comfort many hundreds.
+
+[Illustration: SNOW-CLAD MOUNTAINS BEHIND TALIFU.]
+
+Tali is situated on the undulating ground that shelves gently from the
+base of snow-clad mountains down to the lake. The lower slopes of the
+mountain, above the town, are covered with myriads of grave-mounds,
+which in the distance are scarcely distinguishable from the granite
+blocks around them. Creeks and rills of running water spring from the
+melting of the snows far up the mountain, run among the grave-mounds,
+and are then trained into the town. The Chinese residents thus enjoy the
+privilege of drinking a diluted solution of their ancestors. Half-way to
+the lake, there is a huge tumulus of earth and stone over-grown with
+grass, in which are buried the bones of 10,000 Mohammedans who fell
+during the massacre. There is no more fertile valley in the world than
+the valley of Tali. It is studded with villages. Between the two passes,
+Hsiakwan on the south, and Shang-kwan on the north, which are distant
+from each other a long day's walk, there are 360 villages, each in its
+own plantation of trees, with a pretty white temple in the centre with
+curved roof and upturned gables. The sunny reaches of the lake are busy
+with fleets of fishing boats. The poppy, grown in small pockets by the
+margin of the lake, is probably unequalled in the world; the flowers, as
+I walked through the fields, were on a level with my forehead.
+
+Tali is not a large city; its wall is only three and a half miles in
+circumference. Before the rebellion populous suburbs extended half-way
+to Hsiakwan, but they are now only heaps of rubble. In the town itself
+there are market-gardens and large open spaces where formerly there
+were narrow streets of Chinese houses. The wall is in fairly good
+repair, but there are no guns in the town, except a few old-fashioned
+cannon lying half buried in the ground near the north gate.
+
+One afternoon we climbed up the mountain intending to reach a famous
+cave, "The Phoenix-eyed Cave" (_Fung-yen-tung_) which overlooks a
+precipice, of some fame in years gone by as a favourite spot for
+suicides. We did not reach the cave. My energy gave out when we were
+only half-way, so we sat down in the grass and, to use a phrase that I
+fancy I have heard before, we feasted our eyes on the scene before us.
+And here we gathered many bunches of edelweiss.
+
+As we were coming back down the hill, picking our way among the graves,
+a pensive Chinaman stopped us to ask our assistance in finding him a
+lucky spot in which to bury his father, who died a year ago but was
+still above ground. He was sorry to hear that we could not pretend to
+any knowledge of such things. He was of an inquiring mind, for he then
+asked us if we had seen any precious stones in the hillside--every
+Chinaman knows that the foreigner with his blue eyes can see four feet
+underground--but he was again disappointed with our reply, or did not
+believe us.
+
+At the poor old shrine to the God of Riches, half a dozen Chinamen in
+need of the god's good offices were holding a small feast in his honour.
+They had prepared many dishes, and, having "dedicated to the god the
+spiritual essence, were now about to partake of the insipid remains."
+"_Ching fan_," they courteously said to us when we approached down the
+path. "We invite (you to take) rice." We raised our clasped hands:
+"_Ching, ching_," we replied, "we invite (you to go on), we invite," and
+passed on. They were bent upon enjoyment. They were taking as an
+_apéritif_ a preliminary cup of that awful spirit _tsiu_, which is
+almost pure alcohol and can be burnt in lamps like methylated spirit.
+
+On the level sward, between this poor temple and the city, the annual
+Thibetan Fair is held on the 17th, 18th, and 19th of April, when
+caravans of Thibetans, with herds of ponies, make a pilgrimage from
+their mountain villages to the ancient home of their forefathers. But
+the fair is falling into disfavour owing to the increasing number of
+likin-barriers on the northern trade routes.
+
+There are many temples in Tali. The finest is the Confucian Temple, with
+its splendid halls and pavilions, in a beautiful garden. Kwanti, the God
+of War, has also a temple worthy of a god whose services to China in the
+past can never be forgotten. Every Chinaman knows, that if it had not
+been for the personal aid of this god, General Gordon could never have
+succeeded in suppressing the Taiping rebellion. In the present rebellion
+of the Japanese, the god appears to have maintained an attitude of
+strict neutrality.
+
+The City Temple is near the drill-ground. As the Temple of a Fu city it
+contains the images of both Fu magistrate and Hsien magistrate, with
+their attendants. In its precincts the _Kwan_ of the beggars, (the
+beggar king or headman), is domiciled, who eats the Emperor's rice and
+is officially responsible for the good conduct of the guild of beggars.
+
+In the main street there is a Memorial Temple to General Yang, who won
+the city back from the Mohammedans. But the temple where prayer is
+offered most earnestly, is the small temple near the _Yesu-tang_,
+erected to the goddess who has in her power the dispensation of the
+pleasures of maternity. Rarely did I pass here without seeing two or
+three childless wives on their knees, praying to the goddess to remove
+from them the sin of barrenness.
+
+Some of the largest caravanserais I have seen in China are in Tali. One
+of the largest belongs to the city, and is managed by the authorities
+for the benefit of the poor, all profits being devoted to a poor-relief
+fund. There are many storerooms here, filled with foreign goods and
+stores imported from Burma, and useful wares and ornamental nick-nacks
+brought from the West by Cantonese pedlars. Prices are curiously low. I
+bought condensed milk, "Milkmaid brand," for the equivalent of _7d._ a
+tin. In the inn there is stabling accommodation for more than a hundred
+mules and horses, and there are rooms for as many drivers. The tariff
+cannot be called immoderate. The charges are: For a mule or horse per
+night, fodder included, one farthing; for a man per night, a supper of
+rice included, one penny.
+
+Even larger than the city inn is the caravanserai where my pony was
+stabled; it is more like a barracks than an inn. One afternoon the
+landlord invited the missionary and me into his guest-room, and as I was
+the chief guest, he insisted, of course, that I should occupy the seat
+of honour on the left hand. But I was modest and refused to; he
+persisted and I was reluctant; he pushed me forward and I held back,
+protesting against the honour he wished to show me. But he would take no
+refusal and pressed me forward into the seat. I showed becoming
+reluctance of course, but I would not have occupied any other. By-and-by
+he introduced to me with much pride his aged father, to whom, when he
+came into the room, I insisted upon giving my seat, and humbly sat on
+an inferior seat by his side, showing him all the consideration due to
+his eighty years. The old man bore an extraordinary resemblance to
+Moltke. He had smoked opium, he told Mr. Smith, the missionary, for
+fifty years, but always in moderation. His daily allowance was two
+_chien_ of raw opium, rather more than one-fifth of an ounce, but he
+knew many Chinese, he told the missionary, who smoked daily five times
+as much opium as he did without apparent injury.
+
+In Tali there are four chief officials: the Prefect or Fu Magistrate,
+the Hsien or City Magistrate, the Intendant or Taotai, and the Titai.
+The yamen of the Taotai is a humble residence for so important an
+official; but the yamen of the Titai, between the South Gate and the
+Five Glory Tower, is one of the finest in the province. The Titai is not
+only the chief military commander of the province of Yunnan, but he is a
+very much married man. An Imperialist, he has yet obeyed the Mohammedan
+injunction and taken to himself four wives in order to be sure of
+obtaining one good one. He has been abundantly blessed with children. In
+offices at the back of the Titai's yamen and within its walls, is the
+local branch of the Imperial Chinese telegraphs, conducted by two
+Chinese operators, who can read and write English a little, and can
+speak crudely a few sentences.
+
+The City Magistrate is an advanced opium-smoker, a slave to the pipe,
+who neglects his duties. In his yamen I saw the wooden cage in which
+prisoners convicted of certain serious crimes are slowly done to death
+by starvation and exhaustion, as well as the wooden cages of different
+shape in which criminals of another class condemned to death are carried
+to and from the capital.
+
+The City prison is in the Hsien's yamen, but permission to enter was
+refused me, though the missionary has frequently been admitted. "The
+prison," explained the Chinese clerk, "is private, and strangers cannot
+be admitted." I was sorry not to be allowed to see the prison, all the
+more because I had heard from the missionary nothing but praise of the
+humanity and justice of its management.
+
+The gaols of China, or, as the Chinese term them, the "hells," just as
+the prison hulks in England forty years ago were known as "floating
+hells," have been universally condemned for the cruelties and
+deprivations practised in them. They are probably as bad as were the
+prisons of England in the early years of the present century.
+
+The gaolers purchase their appointments, as they did in England in the
+time of John Howard, and, as was the case in England, they receive no
+other pay than what they can squeeze from the prisoners or the
+prisoners' friends. Poor and friendless, the prisoners fare badly. But I
+question if the cruelties practised in the Chinese gaols, allowing for
+the blunted nerve sensibility of the Chinaman, are less endurable than
+the condition of things existing in English prisons so recently as when
+Charles Reade wrote "It is Never Too Late to Mend." The cruelties of
+Hawes, the "punishment jacket," the crank, the dark cell, and
+starvation, "the living tortured, the dying abandoned, the dead kicked
+out of the way"; when boys of fifteen, like Josephs, were driven to
+self-slaughter by cruelty. These are statements published in 1856,
+"every detail of which was verified, every fact obtained, by research
+and observation." ("Life of Charles Reade," ii., 33.)
+
+And it cannot admit, I think, of question that there are no cruelties
+practised in the Chinese gaols greater, even if there are any equal to
+the awful and degraded brutality with which the England of our fathers
+treated her convicts in the penal settlements of Norfolk Island, Fort
+Arthur, Macquarie Harbour, and the prison hulks of Williamstown. "The
+convict settlements were terrible cesspools of iniquity, so bad that it
+seemed, to use the words of one who knew them well, 'the heart of man
+who went to them was taken from him, and there was given to him the
+heart of a beast.'"
+
+Can the mind conceive of anything more dreadful in China than the
+incident narrated by the Chaplain of Norfolk Island, the Rev. W.
+Ullathorne, D.D., afterwards Roman Catholic Bishop of Birmingham, in his
+evidence before the Commission of the House of Commons in 1838: "As I
+mentioned the names of those men who were to die, they one after
+another, as their names were pronounced, dropped on their knees and
+thanked God that they were to be delivered from that horrible place,
+whilst the others remained standing mute, weeping. It was the most
+horrible scene I have ever witnessed."
+
+Those who have read Marcus Clarke's "For the Term of His Natural Life,"
+remember the powerfully-drawn character of Maurice Frere, the Governor
+of Norfolk Island. It is well known, of course, that the story is
+founded upon fact, and is a perfectly true picture of the convict days.
+The original of Maurice Frere is known to have been the late Colonel
+----, who was killed by the convicts in the prison hulk "Success," at
+Williamstown, in 1853. To this day there is no old lag that was ever
+exposed to his cruelty but reviles his memory. I once knew the convict
+who gave the signal for his murder. He was sentenced to death, but was
+reprieved and served a long term of imprisonment. The murder happened
+forty-one years ago, yet to this day the old convict commends the
+murder as a just act of retribution, and when he narrates the story he
+tells you with bitter passion that the "Colonel's dead, and, if there's
+a hell, he's frizzling there yet."
+
+Captain Foster Fyans, a former Governor of Norfolk Island Convict
+Settlement, spent the last years of his life in the town I belong to,
+Geelong, in Victoria. The cruelties imposed on the convicts under his
+charge were justified, he declared, by the brutalised character of the
+prisoners. On one occasion, he used to tell, a band of convicts
+attempted to escape from the Island; but their attempt was frustrated by
+the guard. The twelve convicts implicated in the outbreak were put on
+their trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death by strangulation, as
+hanging really was in those days. Word was sent to headquarters in
+Sydney, and instructions were asked for to carry the sentence into
+effect. The laconic order was sent back from Sydney to "hang half of
+them." The Captain acknowledged the humour of the despatch, though it
+placed him in a difficulty. Which half should he hang, when all were
+equally guilty? In his pleasant way the Captain used to tell how he
+acted in the dilemma. He went round to the twelve condemned wretches,
+and asked each man separately if, being under sentence of death, he
+desired a reprieve or wished for death. As luck would have it, of the
+twelve men, six pleaded for life and six as earnestly prayed that they
+might be sent to the scaffold. So the Captain hanged the six men who
+wished to live, and spared the six men who prayed for death to release
+them from their awful misery. This is an absolutely true story, which I
+have heard from men to whom the Captain himself told it. Besides, it
+bears on its face the impress of truth. And yet we are accustomed to
+speak of the Chinese as centuries behind us in civilisation and
+humanity.
+
+I went to two opium-poisoning cases in Tali, both being cases of
+attempted suicide. The first was that of an old man living not _at_ the
+South Gate as the messenger assured us, who feared to discourage us if
+he told the truth, but more than a mile beyond it. On our way we bought
+in the street some sulphate of copper, and a large dose made the old man
+so sick that he said he would never take opium again, and, if he did, he
+would not send for the foreign gentleman.
+
+The other was that of a young bride, a girl of unusual personal
+attraction, only ten days married, who thus early had become weary of
+the pock-marked husband her parents had sold her to. She was dressed
+still in her bridal attire, which had not been removed since marriage;
+she was dressed in red--the colour of happiness. "She was dressed in her
+best, all ready for the journey," and was determined to die, because
+dead she could repay fourfold the injuries which she had received while
+living. In this case many neighbours were present, and, as all were
+anxious to prevent the liberation of the girl's evil spirit, I proved to
+them how skilful are the barbarian doctors. The bride was induced to
+drink hot water till it was, she declared, on a level with her neck,
+then I gave her a hypodermic injection of that wonderful emetic
+apomorphia. The effect was very gratifying to all but the patient.
+
+Small-pox, or, as the Chinese respectfully term it, "Heavenly Flowers,"
+is a terrible scourge in Western China. It is estimated that two
+thousand deaths--there is a charming vagueness about all Chinese
+figures--from this disease alone occur in the course of a year in the
+valley of Tali. Inoculation is practised, as it has been for many
+centuries, by the primitive method of introducing a dried pock-scab, on
+a lucky day, into one of the nostrils. The people have heard of the
+results of Western methods of inoculation, and immense benefit could be
+conferred upon a very large community by sending to the Inland Mission
+in Talifu a few hundred tubes of vaccine lymph. Vaccination introduced
+into Western China would be a means, the most effective that could be
+imagined, to check the death rate over that large area of country which
+was ravaged by the civil war, and whose reduced population is only a
+small percentage of the population which so fertile a country needs for
+its development. Infanticide is hardly known in that section of Yunnan
+of which Tali may be considered the capital. Small-pox kills the
+children. There is no need for a mother to sacrifice her superfluous
+children, for she has none.
+
+Another disease endemic in Yunnan is the bubonic plague, which is, no
+doubt, identical with the plague that has lately played havoc in Hong
+Kong and Canton. Cantonese peddlers returning to the coast probably
+carried the germs with them.
+
+The China Inland Mission in Tali was the last of the mission stations
+which I was to see on my journey. This is the furthest inland of the
+stations of the Inland Mission in China. It was opened in 1881 by Mr.
+George W. Clarke, the most widely-travelled, with the single exception
+of the late Dr. Cameron, of all the pioneer missionaries of this brave
+society; I think Mr. Clarke told me that he has been in fourteen out of
+the eighteen provinces. His work here was not encouraging; he was
+treated with kindness by the Chinese, but they refused to accept the
+truth when he placed it before them.
+
+"For the Bible and the Light of Truth," says Miss Guinness, in her
+charming but hysterical "Letters from the Far East"--a book that has
+deluded many poor girls to China--"For the Bible and the Light of Truth
+the Chinese cry with outstretched, empty, longing hands" (p. 173). But
+this allegation unhappily conflicts with facts when applied to Tali.
+
+For the first eleven years the mission laboured here without any success
+whatever; but now a happier time seems coming, and no less than three
+converts have been baptised in the last two years.
+
+There are now three missionaries in Tali--there are usually four; they
+are universally respected by the Chinese; they have made their little
+mission home one of the most charming in China. Mr. John Smith, who
+succeeded Mr. Clarke, has been ten years in Tali. He is welcomed
+everywhere, and in every case of serious sickness or opium-poisoning he
+is sent for. During all the time he has been in Tali he has never
+refused to attend a summons to the sick, whether by day or night. In the
+course of the year he attends, on an average, between fifty and sixty
+cases of attempted suicide by opium in the town or its environs, and, if
+called in time, he is rarely unsuccessful. Should he be called to a case
+outside the city wall and be detained after dark, the city gate will be
+kept open for him till he returns. The city magistrate has himself
+publicly praised the benevolence of this missionary, and said, "there is
+no man in Tali like Mr. Smith--would that there were others!" He is a
+Christian in word and deed, brave and simple, unaffected and
+sympathetic--the type of missionary needed in China--an honour to his
+mission. I saw the courageous man working here almost alone, far distant
+from all Western comforts, cut off from the world, and almost unknown,
+and I contrasted him with those other missionaries--the majority--who
+live in luxurious mission-houses in absolute safety in the treaty ports,
+yet whose courage and self-denial we have accustomed ourselves to
+praise in England and America, when with humble voices they parade the
+dangers they undergo and the hardships they endure in preaching, dear
+friends, to the "perishing heathen in China, God's lost ones!"
+
+In addition to the three converts who have been baptised in Tali in the
+last two years, there are two inquirers--one the mission cook--who are
+nearly ready for acceptance. At the Sunday service I met the three
+converts. One is the paid teacher in the mission school; another is a
+humble pedlar; the third is a courageous native belonging to one of the
+indigenous tribes of Western China, a Minchia man, whose conversion,
+judged by all tests, is one of those genuine cases which bring real joy
+to the missionary. He has only recently been baptised. Every Sunday he
+comes in fifteen li from the small patch of ground he tills to the
+mission services. His son is at the mission school, and is boarded on
+the premises. There is a small school in connection with the mission
+under the baptised teacher, where eight boys and eight girls are being
+taught. They are learning quickly, their wonderful gifts of memory being
+a chief factor in their progress. At the service there was another
+worshipper, a sturdy boy of fourteen, who slept composedly all through
+the exhortation. If any boy should feel gratitude towards the kind
+missionaries it is he. They have reared him from the most degraded
+poverty, have taught him to read and write, and are now on the eve of
+apprenticing him to a carpenter. He was a beggar boy, the son of a
+professional beggar, who, with unkempt hair and in rags and filth, used
+to shamble through the streets gathering reluctant alms. The father
+died, and some friends would have sold his son to pay the expenses of
+his burial; but the missionaries intervened and, to save the son from
+slavery, buried his father. This action gave them some claim to help the
+boy, and the boy has accordingly been with them since in a comfortable,
+kindly home, instead of grovelling round the streets in squalor and
+nakedness.
+
+The mission-house, formerly occupied by Mr. George Clarke is near the
+City Temple. We went to see it a day or two after my arrival. It is now
+in the possession of a family of Mohammedans, one of the very few Moslem
+families still living in the valley of Tali. "When we were in possession
+of the valley," said the father sorrowfully, "we numbered '12,000 tens'
+(120,000 souls), now we are '100 fives' (500 souls). Our men were slain,
+our women were taken in prey, only a remnant escaped the destroyer."
+Several members of the family were in the court when we entered, and
+among the men were three with marked Anglo-Saxon features, a peculiarity
+frequently seen in Western China, where every traveller has given a
+different explanation of the phenomenon. One especially moved my
+curiosity, for he possessed to an absurd degree the closest likeness to
+myself. Could I give him any higher praise than that?
+
+That the Mohammedan Chinese is physically superior to his Buddhist
+countryman is acknowledged by all observers; there is a fearlessness and
+independence of bearing in the Mohammedan, a militant carriage that
+distinguishes him from the Chinese unbeliever. His religion is but a
+thinly diluted Mohammedanism, and excites the scorn of the true
+believers from India who witness his devotion, or rather his want of
+devotion.
+
+One of the men talking to us in the old mission-house was a
+comical-looking fellow, whose head-dress differed from that of the
+other Chinese, in that, in addition to his queue, lappets of hair were
+drawn down his cheeks in the fashion affected by old ladies in England.
+I raised these strange locks--impudent curiosity is often polite
+attention in China--whereupon the reason for them was apparent. The body
+bequeathed to him by his fathers had been mutilated--he had suffered the
+removal of both ears. He explained to us how he came to lose them, but
+we knew even before he told us; "he had lost them in battle facing the
+enemy"--and of course we believed him. The less credulous would
+associate the mutilation with a case of theft and its detection and
+punishment by the magistrate; but "a bottle-nosed man," says the Chinese
+proverb, "may be a teetotaller and yet no one will think so."
+
+Our milkman at the mission was a follower of the Prophet, and the milk
+he gave us was usually as reduced in quality as are his co-religionists
+in number. In the milk he supplied there was what a chemist describes as
+a remarkable absence of butter fat. Yet, when he was reproached for his
+deceit, he used piously to say, even when met coming from the well, "I
+could not put a drop of water in the milk, for there is a God up
+there"--and he would jerk his chin towards the sky--"who would see me if
+I did."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+THE JOURNEY FROM TALI, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE CHARACTER OF THE
+CANTONESE, CHINESE EMIGRANTS, CRETINS, AND WIFE-BEATING IN CHINA.
+
+
+The three men who had come with me the six hundred and seventeen miles
+from Chaotong left me at Tali to return all that long way home on foot
+with their well-earned savings. I was sorry to say good-bye to them; but
+they had come many miles further than they intended, and their friends,
+they said, would be anxious: besides Laohwan, you remember, was newly
+married.
+
+I engaged three new men in their places. They were to take me right
+through to Singai (Bhamo). Every day was of importance now with four
+hundred and fifty miles to travel and the rainy season closing in.
+Laotseng was the name of the Chinaman whom I engaged in place of
+Laohwan. He was a fine young fellow, active as a deer, strong, and
+high-spirited. I agreed to pay him the fancy wage of _24s._ for the
+journey. He was to carry no load, but undertook, in the event of either
+of my coolies falling sick, to carry his load until a new coolie could
+be engaged. The two coolies I engaged through a coolie-hong. One was a
+strongly-built man, a "chop dollar," good-humoured, but of rare
+ugliness. The other was the thinnest man I ever saw outside a Bowery
+dime-show. He had the opium habit. He was an opium-eater rather than an
+opium-smoker; and he ate the ash from the opium-pipe, instead of the
+opium itself--the most vicious of the methods of taking opium. He was
+the nearest approach I saw in China to the Exeter Hall type of
+opium-eater, whose "wasted limbs and palsied hands" cry out against the
+sin of the opium traffic. Though a victim of the injustice of England,
+this man had never tasted Indian opium in his life, and, perishing as he
+was in body and soul, going "straight to eternal damnation," his "dying
+wail unheard," he yet undertook a journey that would have deterred the
+majority of Englishmen, and agreed to carry, at forced speed, a far
+heavier load than the English soldier is ever weighted with on march.
+The two coolies were to be paid 4 taels each (_12s._) for the twenty
+stages to Singai, and had to find their own board and lodging. But I
+also stipulated to give them _churo_ money (pork money) of 100 cash each
+at three places--Yungchang, Tengyueh, and Bhamo--100 cash each a day
+extra for every day that I detained them on the way, and, in addition, I
+was to reward them with 150 cash each a day for every day that they
+saved on the twenty days' journey, days that I rested not to count.
+
+Of course none of the three men spoke a word of English. All were
+natives of the province of Szechuen, and all carried out their agreement
+to the letter.
+
+On May 3rd I left Tali. The last and longest stage of all the journey
+was before me, a distance of some hundreds of miles, which I had to
+traverse before I could hope to meet another countryman or foreigner
+with whom I could converse. The two missionaries, Mr. Smith and Mr.
+Graham, kindly offered to see me on my way, and we all started together
+for Hsiakwan, leaving the men to follow.
+
+Ten li from Tali we stopped to have tea at one of the many tea-houses
+that are grouped round the famous temple to the Goddess of Mercy, the
+_Kwanyin-tang_. The scene was an animated one. The open space between
+the temple steps and the temple theatre opposite was thronged with
+Chinese of strange diversity of feature crying their wares from under
+the shelter of huge umbrellas. There is always a busy traffic to
+Hsiakwan, and every traveller rests here, if only for a few minutes. For
+this is the most famous temple in the valley of Tali. The Goddess of
+Mercy is the friend of travellers, and no thoughtful Chinese should
+venture on a journey without first asking the favour of the goddess and
+obtaining from her priests a forecast of his success. The temple is a
+fine specimen of Chinese architecture. It was built specially to record
+a miracle. In the chief court, surrounded by the temple buildings, there
+is a huge granite boulder lying in an ornamental pond. It is connected
+by marble approaches, and is surmounted by a handsome monument of
+marble, which is faced on all sides with memorial tablets. This boulder
+was carried to its present position by the goddess herself, the monument
+and bridges were built to detain it where it lay, and the temple
+afterwards erected to commemorate an event of such happy augury for the
+beautiful valley.
+
+[Illustration: MEMORIAL IN THE TEMPLE OF THE GODDESS OF MERCY, NEAR
+TALIFU.]
+
+But the temple has not always witnessed only scenes of mercy. Two years
+ago a tragedy was enacted here of strange interest. At a religious
+festival held here in April, 1892, and attended by all the high
+officials and by a crowd of sightseers, a thief, taking advantage of the
+crush, tried to snatch a bracelet from the wrist of a young woman, and,
+when she resisted, he stabbed her. He was seized red-handed, dragged
+before the Titai, who happened to be present, and ordered to be
+beheaded there and then. An executioner was selected from among the
+soldiers; but so clumsily did he do the work, hacking the head off by
+repeated blows, instead of severing it by one clean cut, that the
+friends of the thief were incensed and vowed vengeance. That same night
+they lay in wait for the executioner as he was returning to the city,
+and beat him to death with stones. Five men were arrested for this
+crime; they were compelled to confess their guilt and were sentenced to
+death. As they were being carried out to the execution-ground, one of
+the condemned pointed to two men, who were in the crowd of sightseers,
+and swore that they were equally concerned in the murder. So these two
+men were also put on their trial, with the result that one was found
+guilty and was equally condemned to death. As if this were not
+sufficient, at the execution the mother of one of the prisoners, when
+she saw her son's head fall beneath the knife, gave a loud scream and
+fell down stone-dead. Nine lives were sacrificed in this tragedy: the
+woman who was stabbed recovered of her wound.
+
+Hsiakwan was crowded, as it was market day. We had lunch together at a
+Chinese restaurant, and then, my men having come up, the kind
+missionaries returned, and I went on alone. A river, the Yangki River,
+drains the Tali Lake, and, leaving the south-west corner of the lake,
+flows through the town of Hsiakwan, and so on west to join the Mekong.
+For three days the river would be our guide. A mile from the town the
+river enters a narrow defile, where steep walls of rock rise abruptly
+from the banks. The road here passes under a massive gateway. Forts, now
+dismantled, guard the entrance; the pass could be made absolutely
+impregnable. At this point the torrent falls under a natural bridge of
+unusual beauty. We rode on by the narrow bank along the river, crossed
+from the left to the right bank, and continued on through a beautiful
+country, sweet with the scent of the honeysuckle, to the charming little
+village of Hokiangpu. Here we had arranged to stay. The inn was a large
+one, and very clean. Many of its rooms were already occupied by a large
+party of Cantonese returning home after the Thibetan Fair with loads of
+opium.
+
+The Cantonese, using the term in its broader sense as applied to the
+natives of the province of Kuangtung, are the Catalans of China. They
+are as enterprising as the Scotch, adapt themselves as readily to
+circumstances, are enduring, canny, and successful; you meet them in the
+most distant parts of China. They make wonderful pilgrimages on foot.
+They have the reputation of being the most quick-witted of all Chinese.
+Large numbers come to Tali during the Thibetan Fair, and in the opium
+season. They bring all kinds of foreign goods adapted for Chinese
+wants--cheap pistols and revolvers, mirrors, scales, fancy pictures, and
+a thousand gewgaws useful as well as attractive--and they return with
+opium. They travel in bands, marching in single file, their carrying
+poles pointed with a steel spearhead two feet long, serving a double
+use--a carrying pole in peace, a formidable spear in trouble.
+
+Everywhere they can be distinguished by their dress, by their enormous
+oiled sunshades, and by their habit of tricing their loads high up to
+the carrying pole. They are always well clad in dark blue; their heads
+are always cleanly shaved; their feet are well sandalled, and their
+calves neatly bandaged. They have a travelled mien about them, and carry
+themselves with an air of conscious superiority to the untravelled
+savages among whom they are trading. To me they were always polite and
+amiable; they recognised that I was, like themselves, a stranger far
+from home.
+
+This is the class of Chinese who, emigrating from the thickly-peopled
+south-eastern provinces of China, already possess a predominant share of
+the wealth of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Timor, the Celebes and the
+Philippine Islands, Burma, Siam, Annam and Tonquin, the Straits
+Settlements, Malay Peninsula, and Cochin China. "There is hardly a tiny
+islet visited by our naturalists in any part of these seas but Chinamen
+are found." And it is this class of Chinese who have already driven us
+out of the Northern Territory of Australia, and whose unrestricted entry
+into the other colonies we must prevent at all hazards. We cannot
+compete with Chinese; we cannot intermix or marry with them; they are
+aliens in language, thought, and customs; they are working animals of
+low grade but great vitality. The Chinese is temperate, frugal,
+hard-working, and law-evading, if not law-abiding--we all acknowledge
+that. He can outwork an Englishman, and starve him out of the
+country--no one can deny that. To compete successfully with a Chinaman,
+the artisan or labourer of our own flesh and blood would require to be
+degraded into a mere mechanical beast of labour, unable to support wife
+or family, toiling seven days in the week, with no amusements,
+enjoyments, or comforts of any kind, no interest in the country,
+contributing no share towards the expense of government, living on food
+that he would now reject with loathing, crowded with his fellows ten or
+fifteen in a room that he would not now live in alone, except with
+repugnance. Admitted freely into Australia, the Chinese would starve
+out the Englishman, in accordance with the law of currency--that of two
+currencies in a country the baser will always supplant the better. "In
+Victoria," says Professor Pearson, "a single trade--that of
+furniture-making--was taken possession of and ruined for white men
+within the space of something like five years." In the small colony of
+Victoria there are 9377 Chinese in a population of 1,150,000; in all
+China, with its population of 350,000,000, there are only 8081
+foreigners (Dyer Ball), a large proportion of whom are working for
+China's salvation.
+
+There is not room for both in Australia. Which is to be our colonist,
+the Asiatic or the Englishman?
+
+In the morning we had another beautiful walk round the snow-clad
+mountains to the village of Yangpi, at the back of Tali. There was a
+long delay here. News of my arrival spread, and the people hurried along
+to see me. No sooner was I seated at an inn than two messengers from the
+yamen called for my passport. They were officious young fellows, sadly
+wanting in respect, and they asked for my passport in a noisy way that I
+did not like, so I would not understand them. I only smiled at them in
+the most friendly manner possible. I kept them for some time in a fever
+of irritation at their inability to make me understand; I listened with
+imperturbable calmness to their excited phrases till they were nearly
+dancing. Then I leisurely produced my passport, as if to satisfy a
+curiosity of my own, and began scanning it. Seeing this, they rudely
+thrust forth their hands to seize it; but I had my eye on them. "Not so
+quick, my friends," I said, soothingly. "Be calm; nervous irritability
+is a fruitful source of trouble. See, here is my passport; here is the
+official seal, and here the name of your unworthy servant. Now I fold it
+up carefully and--put it back in my pocket. But here is a copy, which
+is at your service. If you wish to show the original to the magistrate,
+I will take it to his honour myself, but out of my hands it does not
+pass." They looked puzzled, as they did not understand English; they
+debated a minute or two, and then went away with the copy, which in due
+time they politely returned to me.
+
+If you wish to travel quickly in China, never be in a hurry. Appear
+unconscious of all that is passing; never be irritated by any delay, and
+assume complete indifference, even when you are really anxious to push
+on. Emulate, too, that leading trait in the Chinese character, and never
+understand anything which you do not wish to understand. No man on earth
+can be denser than a Chinaman, when he chooses.
+
+Let me give an instance. It was not so long ago, in a police court in
+Melbourne, that a Chinaman was summoned for being in possession of a
+tenement unfit for human habitation. The case was clearly proved, and he
+was fined _£1_. But in no way could John be made to understand that a fine
+had been inflicted. He sat there with unmoved stolidity, and all that
+the court could extract from him was: "My no savvy, no savvy." After
+saying this in a voice devoid of all hope, he sank again into silence.
+Here rose a well-known lawyer. "With your worship's permission, I think
+I can make the Chinaman understand," he said. He was permitted to try.
+Striding fiercely up to the poor Celestial, he said to him in a loud
+voice, "John, you are fined two pounds." "No dam fear! Only _one_!"
+
+Crossing now the river by a well-constructed suspension bridge, we had a
+fearful climb of 2000 feet up the mountain. My coolie "Bones" nearly
+died on the way. Then there was a rough descent by a jagged path down
+the rocky side of the mountain-river to the village of Taiping-pu. It
+was long after dark when we arrived; and an hour later stalked in the
+gaunt form of poor "Bones," who, instead of eating a good meal, coiled
+up on the _kang_ and smoked an opium-pipe that he borrowed from the
+chairen. All the next day, and, indeed, for every day till we reached
+Tengyueh, our journey was one of the most arduous I have ever known. The
+road has to surmount in succession parallel ridges of mountains. The
+road is never even, for it cannot remain where travelling is easiest,
+but must continually dip from the crest of the ranges to the depths of
+the valleys.
+
+Shortly before reaching Huanglien-pu my pony cast a shoe, and it was
+some time before we were able to have it seen to; but I had brought half
+a dozen spare shoes with me, and by-and-by a muleteer came along who
+fixed one on as neatly as any farrier could have done, and gladly
+accepted a reward of one halfpenny. He kept the foot steady while
+shoeing it by lashing the fetlock to the pony's tail.
+
+Caravans of cotton coming from Burma were meeting us all day. Miles away
+the booming of their gongs sounded in the silent hills; a long time
+afterwards their bells were heard jingling, and by-and-by the mules and
+horses appeared under their huge bales of cotton, the foremost decorated
+with scarlet tufts and plumes of pheasant tails, the last carrying the
+saddle and bedding of the headman, as well as the burly headman himself,
+perched above all. A man with a gong always headed the way; there was a
+driver to every five animals. In the sandy bed of the river at one place
+a caravan was resting. Their packs were piled in parallel rows; their
+horses browsed on the hillside. I counted 107 horses in this one
+caravan.
+
+The prevailing pathological feature of the Chinese of Western Yunnan is
+the deformity goitre. It may safely be asserted that it is as common in
+many districts as are the marks of small-pox. Goitre occurs widely in
+Annam, Siam, Upper Burma, the Shan States, and in Western China as far
+as the frontier of Thibet. It is distinctly associated with cretinism
+and its interrupted intellectual development. And the disease must
+increase, for there is no attempt to check it. To be a "thickneck" is no
+bar to marriage on either side. The goitrous intermarry, and have
+children who are goitrous, or, rather, who will, if exposed to the same
+conditions as their parents, inevitably develop goitre. Frequently the
+disease is intensified in the offspring into cretinism, and I can
+conceive of no sight more disgusting than that which so often met our
+view, of a goitrous mother suckling her imbecile child. On one
+afternoon, among those who passed us on the road, I counted eighty
+persons with the deformity. On another day nine adults were climbing a
+path, by which we had just descended, every one of whom had goitre. In
+one small village, out of eighteen full-grown men and women whom I met
+in the street down which I rode, fifteen were affected. My diary in the
+West, especially from Yunnan City to Yungchang, after which point the
+cases greatly diminished in number, became a monotonous record of cases.
+At the mission in Tali three women are employed, and of these two are
+goitrous; the third, a Minchia woman, is free from the disease, and I
+have been told that among the indigenes the disease is much less common
+than among the Chinese. On all sides one encounters the horrible
+deformity, among all classes, of all ages. The disease early manifests
+itself, and I have often seen well-marked enlargement in children as
+young as eight. Turn any street corner in any town of importance in
+Western Yunnan and you will meet half a dozen cases; there must be few
+families in the western portion of the province free from the taint.
+
+On a day, for example, like this (May 5th), when the road was more than
+usually mountainous, though that may have been an accident, my chairen
+was a "thickneck" and my two soldiers were "thicknecks." At the village
+of Huanglien-pu, where I had lunch, the landlady of the inn had a
+goitrous neck that was swelled out half-way to the shoulder, and her son
+was a slobbering-mouthed cretin with the intelligence of an animal. And
+among the people who gathered round me in a dull, apathetic way every
+other one was more or less marked with the disease and its attendant
+mental phenomena. Again, at the inn in a little mountain village, where
+we stopped for the night, mother, father, and every person in the house,
+to the number of nine, above the age of childhood was either goitrous or
+cretinous, dull of intelligence, mentally verging upon dementia in three
+cases, in two of which physical growth had been arrested at childhood.
+
+Rarely during my journey to Burma was I offended by hearing myself
+called "_Yang kweitze_" (foreign devil), although this is the universal
+appellation of the foreigner wherever Mandarin is spoken in China.
+To-day, however, (May 6th), I was seated at the inn in the town of
+Chutung when I heard the offensive term. I was seated at a table in the
+midst of the accustomed crowd of Chinese. I was on the highest seat, of
+course, because I was the most important person present, when a
+bystander, seeing that I spoke no Chinese, coolly said the words "_Yang
+kweitze_" (foreign devil). I rose in my wrath, and seized my whip. "You
+Chinese devil" (_Chung kweitze_), I said in Chinese, and then I assailed
+him in English. He seemed surprised at my warmth, but said nothing, and,
+turning on his heel, walked uncomfortably away.
+
+I often regretted afterwards that I did not teach the man a lesson, and
+cut him across the face with my whip; yet, had I done so, it would have
+been unjust. He called me, as I thought, "_Yang kweitze_," but I have no
+doubt, having told the story to Mr. Warry, the Chinese adviser to the
+Government of Burma, that he did not use these words at all, but others
+so closely resembling them that they sounded identically the same to my
+untrained ear, and yet signified not "foreign devil," but "honoured
+guest." He had paid me a compliment; he had not insulted me. The
+Yunnanese, Mr. Warry tells me, do not readily speak of the devil for
+fear he should appear.
+
+On my journey I made it a rule, acting advisedly, to refuse to occupy
+any other than the best room in the inn, and, if there was only one
+room, I required that the best bed in the room, as regards elevation,
+should be given to me. So, too, at every inn I insisted that the best
+table should be given me, and, if there were already Chinese seated at
+it, I gravely bowed to them, and by a wave of my hand signified that it
+was my pleasure that they should make way for the distinguished
+stranger. When there was only the one table, I occupied, as by right,
+its highest seat, refusing to sit in any other. I required, indeed, by
+politeness and firmness, that the Chinese take me at my own valuation.
+And they invariably did so. They always gave way to me. They recognised
+that I must be a traveller of importance, despite the smallness of my
+retinue and the homeliness of my attire; and they acknowledged my
+superiority. Had I been content with a humbler place, it would quickly
+have been reported along the road, and, little by little, my complacence
+would have been tested. I am perfectly sure that, by never verging from
+my position of superiority, I gained the respect of the Chinese, and it
+is largely to this I attribute the universal respect and attention shown
+me during the journey. For I was unarmed, entirely dependent upon the
+Chinese, and, for all practical purposes, inarticulate. As it was, I
+never had any difficulty whatever.
+
+Chinese etiquette pays great attention to the question of position; so
+important, indeed, is it that, when a carriage was taken by Lord
+Macartney's Embassy to Peking as a present, or, as the Chinese said, as
+tribute to the Emperor Kienlung, great offence was caused by the
+arrangement of the seats requiring the driver to sit on a higher level
+than His Majesty. A small enough mistake surely, but sufficient to mar
+the success of an expedition which the Chinese have always regarded as
+"one of the most splendid testimonials of respect that a tributary
+nation ever paid their Court."
+
+On the morning of May 7th, as we were leaving the village where we had
+slept the night before, we were witnesses of a domestic quarrel which
+might well have become a tragedy. On the green outside their cabin a
+husband with goitre, enraged against his goitrous wife, was kept from
+killing her by two elderly goitrous women. All were speaking with
+horrible goitrous voices as if they had cleft palates, and the husband
+was hoarse with fury. Jealousy could not have been the cause of the
+quarrel, for his wife was one of the most hideous creatures I have seen
+in China. Throwing aside the bamboo with which he was threatening her,
+the husband ran into the house, and was out again in a moment
+brandishing a long native sword with which he menaced speedy death to
+the joy of his existence. I stood in the road and watched the
+disturbance, and with me the soldier-guard, who did not venture to
+interfere. But the two women seized the angry brute and held him till
+his wife toddled round the corner. Now, if this were a determined woman,
+she could best revenge herself for the cruelty that had been done her by
+going straightway and poisoning herself with opium, for then would her
+spirit be liberated, ever after to haunt her husband, even if he escaped
+punishment for being the cause of her death. If in the dispute he had
+killed her, he would be punished with "strangulation after the usual
+period," the sentence laid down by the law and often recorded in the
+_Peking Gazette_ (_e.g._, May 15th, 1892), unless he could prove her
+guilty of infidelity, or want of filial respect for his parents, in
+which case his action would be praiseworthy rather than culpable. If,
+however, in the dispute the wife had killed her husband, or by her
+conduct had driven him to suicide, she would be inexorably tied to the
+cross and put to death by the "_Ling chi_," or "degrading and slow
+process." For a wife to kill her husband has always been regarded as a
+more serious crime than for a husband to kill his wife; even in our own
+highly favoured country, till within a few years of the present century,
+the punishment for the man was death by hanging, but in the case of the
+woman death by burning alive.
+
+Let me at this point interpolate a word or two about the method of
+execution known as the _Ling chi_. The words are commonly, and quite
+wrongly, translated as "death by slicing into 10,000 pieces"--a truly
+awful description of a punishment whose cruelty has been
+extraordinarily misrepresented. It is true that no punishment is more
+dreaded by the Chinese than the _Ling chi_; but it is dreaded, not
+because of any torture associated with its performance, but because of
+the dismemberment practised upon the body which was received whole from
+its parents. The mutilation is ghastly and excites our horror as an
+example of barbarian cruelty: but it is not cruel, and need not excite
+our horror, since the mutilation is done, not before death, but after.
+The method is simply the following, which I give as I received it
+first-hand from an eye-witness:--The prisoner is tied to a rude cross:
+he is invariably deeply under the influence of opium. The executioner,
+standing before him, with a sharp sword makes two quick incisions above
+the eyebrows, and draws down the portion of skin over each eye, then he
+makes two more quick incisions across the breast, and in the next moment
+he pierces the heart, and death is instantaneous. Then he cuts the body
+in pieces; and the degradation consists in the fragmentary shape in
+which the prisoner has to appear in heaven. As a missionary said to me:
+"He can't lie out that he got there properly when he carries with him
+such damning evidence to the contrary."
+
+[Illustration: THE DESCENT TO THE RIVER MEKONG.]
+
+In China immense power is given to the husband over the body of his
+wife, and it seems as if the tendency in England were to approximate to
+the Chinese custom. Is it not a fact that, if a husband in England
+brutally maltreats his wife, kicks her senseless, and disfigures her for
+life, the average English bench of unpaid magistrates will find
+extenuating circumstances in the fact of his being the husband, and will
+rarely sentence him to more than a month or two's hard labour?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE MEKONG AND SALWEEN RIVERS--HOW TO TRAVEL IN CHINA.
+
+
+To-day, May 7th, we crossed the River Mekong, even at this distance from
+Siam a broad and swift stream. The river flows into the light from a
+dark and gloomy gorge, takes a sharp bend, and rolls on between the
+mountains. Where it issues from the gorge a suspension bridge has been
+stretched across the stream. A wonderful pathway zigzags down the face
+of the mountain to the river, in an almost vertical incline of 2000ft.
+At the riverside an embankment of dressed stone, built up from the rock,
+leads for some hundreds of feet along the bank, where there would
+otherwise have been no foothold, to the clearing by the bridge. The
+likin-barrier is here, and a teahouse or two, and the guardian temple.
+The bridge itself is graceful and strong, swinging easily 30ft. above
+the current; it is built of powerful chains, carried from bank to bank
+and held by masses of solid masonry set in the bed-rock. It is 60 yards
+long and 10ft. wide, is floored with wood, and has a picket parapet
+supported by lateral chains. From the river a path led us up to a small
+village, where my men rested to gather strength. For facing us were the
+mountain heights, which had to be escaladed before we could leave the
+river gulch. Then with immense toil we climbed up the mountain path by
+a rocky staircase of thousands of steps, till, worn out, and with
+"Bones" nearly dead, we at length reached the narrow defile near the
+summit, whence an easy road brought us in the early evening to Shuichai
+(6700ft.).
+
+In the course of one afternoon we had descended 2000ft. to the river
+(4250ft. above the sea), and had then climbed 2450ft. to Shuichai. And
+the ascent from the river was steeper than the descent into it; yet the
+railway which is to be built over this trade-route between Burma and
+Yunnan will have other engineering difficulties to contend with even
+greater than this.
+
+My soldier to-day was a boy of fifteen or sixteen. He was armed with a
+revolver, and bore himself valiantly. But his revolver was more
+dangerous in appearance than in effect, for the cylinder would not
+revolve, the hammer was broken short off, and there were no cartridges.
+Everywhere the weapon was examined with curiosity blended with awe, and
+I imagine that the Chinese were told strange tales of its deadliness.
+
+Next morning we continued by easy gradients to Talichao (7700ft.),
+rising 1000ft. in rather less than seven miles. It was bitterly cold in
+the mists of the early morning. But twenty miles further the road dipped
+again to the sunshine and warmth of the valley of Yungchang, where, in
+the city made famous by Marco Polo, we found comfortable quarters in an
+excellent inn.
+
+Yungchang is a large town, strongly walled. It is, however, only a
+remnant of the old city, acres of houses having been destroyed during
+the insurrection, when for three years, it is said, Imperialists and
+Mohammedans were contending for its possession. There is a telegraph
+station in the town. The streets are broad and well-paved, the inns
+large, and the temples flourishing. One fortunate circumstance the
+traveller will notice in Yungchang--there is a marked diminution in the
+number of cases of goitre. And the diminution is not confined to the
+town, but is apparent from this point right on to Burma.
+
+Long after our arrival in Yungchang my opium-eating coolie "Bones" had
+not come, and we had to wait for him in anger and annoyance. He had my
+hamper of eatables and my bundle of bedding. Tired of waiting for him, I
+went for a walk to the telegraph office and was turning to come back,
+when I met the faithful skeleton, a mile from the inn, walking along as
+if to a funeral, his neck elongating from side to side like a camel's, a
+lean and hungry look in his staring eyes, his bones crackling inside his
+skin. Continuing in the direction that he was going when I found him, he
+might have reached Thibet in time, but never Burma. I led him back to
+the hotel, where he ruefully showed me his empty string of cash, as if
+that had been the cause of his delay; he had only 6 cash left, and he
+wanted an advance.
+
+This was the worst coolie I had in my employ during my journey. But he
+was a good-natured fellow and honest. He was better educated, too, than
+most of the other coolies, and could both read and write. His dress on
+march was characteristic of the man. He was nearly naked; his clothes
+hardly hung together; he wore no sandals on his feet; but round his neck
+he carried a small earthenware phial of opium ash. In the early stages
+he delayed us all an hour or two every day, but he improved as we went
+further. And then he was so long and thin, so grotesque in his gait, and
+afforded me such frequent amusement, that I would not willingly have
+exchanged him for the most active coolie in China.
+
+[Illustration: INSIDE VIEW OF A SUSPENSION BRIDGE IN FAR WESTERN CHINA.]
+
+On the 9th we had a long and steep march west from the plain of
+Yungchang. At Pupiao I had a public lunch. It was market day, and the
+country people enjoyed the rare pleasure of seeing a foreigner feed. The
+street past the inn was packed in a few minutes, and the innkeeper had
+all he could do to attend to the many customers who wished to take tea
+at the same time as the foreigner. I was now used to these
+demonstrations. I could eat on with undisturbed equanimity. On such
+occasions I made it a practice, when I had finished and was leaving the
+inn, to turn round and bow gravely to the crowd, thanking them in a few
+kindly words of English, for the reception they had accorded me. At the
+same time I took the opportunity of mentioning that they would
+contribute to the comfort of future travellers, if only they would pay a
+little more attention to their table manners. Then, addressing the
+innkeeper, I thought it only right to point out to him that it was
+absurd to expect that one small black cloth should wipe all cups and
+cup-lids, all tables, all spilt tea, and all dishes, all through the
+day, without getting dirty. Occasionally, too, I pointed out another
+defect of management to the innkeeper, and told him that, while I
+personally had an open mind on the subject, other travellers might come
+his way who would disapprove, for instance--he would pardon my
+mentioning it--of the manure coolie passing through the restaurant with
+his buckets at mealtime, and halting by the table to see the stranger
+eat.
+
+When I spoke in this way quite seriously and bowed, those whose eyes met
+mine always bowed gravely in return. And for the next hour on the track
+my men would tell each other, with cackles of laughter, how Mô Shensen,
+their master, mystified the natives.
+
+From Pupiao we had a pleasant ride over a valley-plain, between hedges
+of cactus in flower and bushes of red roses, past graceful clumps of
+bamboo waving like ostrich feathers. By-and-by drizzling rain came on
+and compelled us to seek shelter in the only inn in a poor
+out-of-the-way hamlet. But I could not stop here, because the best room
+in the inn was already occupied by a military officer of some
+distinction, a colonel, on his way, like ourselves, to Tengyueh. An
+official chair with arched poles fitted for four bearers was in the
+common-room; the mules of his attendants were in the stables, and were
+valuable animals. The landlord offered me another room, an inferior one;
+but I waved the open fingers of my left hand before my face and said,
+"_puyao! puyao!_" (I don't want it, I don't want it). For I was not so
+foolish or inconsistent as to be content with a poorer quarter of the
+inn than that occupied by the officer, whatever his button. I could not
+acknowledge to the Chinese that any Chinaman travelling in the Middle
+Kingdom was my equal, let alone my superior. Refusing to remain, I
+waited in the front room until the rain should lift and allow us to
+proceed. But we did not require to go on. It happened as I expected. The
+Colonel sent for me, and, bowing to me, showed by signs that one half
+his room was at my service. In return for his politeness he had the
+privilege of seeing me eat. With both hands I offered him in turn every
+one of my dishes. Afterwards I showed him my photographs--I treated him,
+indeed, with proper condescension.
+
+On the 10th we crossed the famous River Salween (2600 ft.). Through an
+open tableland, well grassed and sparsely wooded, we came at length to
+the cleft in the hills from which is obtained the first view of the
+river valley. There was a small village here, and, while we were taking
+tea, a soldier came hurriedly down the road, who handed me a letter
+addressed in Chinese. I confess that at the moment I had a sudden
+misgiving that some impediment was to be put in the way of my journey.
+But it was nothing more than a telegram from Mr. Jensen in Yunnan,
+telling me of the decision of the Chinese Government to continue the
+telegraph to the frontier of Burma. The telegram was written by the
+Chinese operator in Yungchang in a neat round hand, without any error of
+spelling; it had come to Yungchang after my departure, and had been
+courteously forwarded by the Chinese manager. The soldier who brought it
+had made a hurried march of thirty-eight miles before overtaking me, and
+deserved a reward. I motioned Laotseng, my cash-bearer, to give him a
+present, and he meanly counted out 25 cash, and was about to give them,
+when I ostentatiously increased the amount to 100 cash. The soldier was
+delighted; the onlookers were charmed with this exhibition of Western
+munificence. Suppose a rich Chinese traveller in England, who spoke no
+English, were to offer Tommy Atkins twopence halfpenny for travelling on
+foot thirty-eight miles to bring him a telegram, having then to walk
+back thirty-eight miles and find himself on the way, would the English
+soldier bow as gratefully as did his perishing Chinese brother when I
+thus rewarded him?
+
+We descended by beautiful open country into the Valley of the Shadow of
+Death--the valley of the River Salween. No other part of Western China
+has the evil repute of this valley; its unhealthiness is a by-word. "It
+is impossible to pass," says Marco Polo; "the air in summer is so impure
+and bad and any foreigner attempting it would die for certain."
+
+The Salween was formerly the boundary between Burma and China, and it is
+to be regretted that at the annexation of Upper Burma England did not
+push her frontier back to its former position. But the delimitation of
+the frontier of Burma is not yet complete. No time could be more
+opportune for its completion than the present, when China is distracted
+by her difficulties with Japan. China disheartened could need but little
+persuasion to accede to the just demand of England that the frontier of
+Burma shall be the true south-western frontier of China--the Salween
+River.
+
+There are no Chinese in the valley, nor would any Chinaman venture to
+cross it after nightfall. The reason of its unhealthiness is not
+apparent, except in the explanation of Baber, that "border regions,
+'debatable grounds,' are notoriously the birthplace of myths and
+marvels." There can be little doubt that the deadliness of the valley is
+a tradition rather than a reality.
+
+By flights of stone steps we descended to the river, where at the
+bridge-landing, we were arrested by a sight that could not be seen
+without emotion. A prisoner, chained by the hands and feet and cooped in
+a wooden cage, was being carried by four bearers to Yungchang to
+execution. He was not more than twenty-one years of age, was
+well-dressed, and evidently of a rank in life from which are recruited
+few of the criminals of China. Yet his crime could not have been much
+graver. On the corner posts of his cage white strips of paper were
+posted, giving his name and the particulars of the crime which he was so
+soon to expiate. He was a burglar who had escaped from prison by killing
+his guard, and had been recaptured. Unlike other criminals I have seen
+in China, who laugh at the stranger and appear unaffected by their lot,
+this young fellow seemed to feel keenly the cruel but well-deserved fate
+that was in store for him. Three days hence he would be put to death by
+strangulation outside the wall of Yungchang.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIVER SALWEEN, THE FORMER BOUNDARY BETWEEN CHINA AND
+BURMA.]
+
+Another of those remarkable works which declare the engineering skill of
+the Chinese, is the suspension bridge which spans the Salween by a
+double loop--the larger loop over the river, the smaller one across the
+overflow. A natural piece of rock strengthened by masonry, rising from
+the river bed, holds the central ends of both loops. The longer span is
+80 yards in length, the shorter 55; both are 12ft. wide, and are formed
+of twelve parallel chain cables, drawn to an appropriate curve. A rapid
+river flows under the bridge, the rush of whose waters can be heard high
+up the mountain slopes.
+
+None but Shans live in the valley. They are permitted to govern
+themselves under Chinese supervision, and preserve their own laws and
+customs. They have a village near the bridge, of grass-thatched huts and
+open booths, where travellers can find rest and refreshment, and where
+native women prettily arrayed in dark-blue, will brew you tea in
+earthenware teapots. Very different are the Shan women from the Chinese.
+Their colour is much darker; their head-dress is a circular pile formed
+of concentric folds of dark-blue cloth; their dress closely resembles
+with its jacket and kilt the bathing dress of civilisation; their arms
+are bare, they have gaiters on their legs, and do not compress their
+feet. All wear brooches and earrings, and other ornaments of silver
+filigree.
+
+From the valley the main road rises without intermission 6130 feet to
+the village of Fengshui-ling (8730 feet), a climb which has to be
+completed in the course of the afternoon. We were once more among the
+trees. Pushing on till I was afraid we should be benighted, we reached
+long after dark an encampment of bamboo and grass, in the lonely bush,
+where the kind people made us welcome. It was bitterly cold during the
+night, for the hut I slept in was open to the air. My three men and the
+escort must have been even colder than I was. But at least we all slept
+in perfect security, and I cannot praise too highly the constant care of
+the Chinese authorities to shield even from the apprehension of harm one
+whose only protection was his British passport.
+
+All the way westward from Yunnan City I was shadowed both by a
+yamen-runner and a soldier; both were changed nearly every day, and the
+further west I went the more frequently were they armed. The
+yamen-runner usually carried a long native sword only, but the soldier,
+in addition to his sword, was on one occasion, as we have seen, armed
+with the relics of a revolver that would not revolve. On May 10th, for
+the first time, the soldier detailed to accompany me was provided with a
+rusty old musket with a very long barrel. I examined this weapon with
+much curiosity. China is our neighbour in Eastern Asia, and is, it is
+often stated, an ideal power to be intrusted with the government of the
+buffer state called for by French aggression in Siam. In China, it is
+alleged, we have a prospective ally in Asia, and it is preferable that
+England should suffer all reasonable indignities and humilities at her
+hands rather than endanger any possible relations, which may
+subsequently be entered into, with a hypothetically powerful neighbour.
+
+On my arrival in Burma I was often amused by the serious questions I was
+asked concerning the military equipment of the Chinese soldiers of
+Western Yunnan. The soldier who was with me to-day was a type of the
+warlike sons of China, not only in the province bordering on Burma, but,
+with slight differences, all over the Middle Kingdom. Now, physically,
+this man was fit to be drafted into any army in the world, but, apart
+from his endurance, his value as a fighting machine lay in the weapon
+with which the military authorities had armed him. This weapon was
+peculiar; I noted down its peculiarities on the spot. In this weapon the
+spring of the trigger was broken so that it could not be pulled; if it
+had been in order, there was no cap for the hammer to strike; if there
+had been a cap, it would have been of no use because the pinhole was
+rusted; even if the pinhole had been open, the rifle would still have
+been ineffective because it was not loaded, for the very good reason
+that the soldier had not been provided with powder, or, if he had, he
+had been compelled to sell it in order to purchase the rice which the
+Emperor, "whose rice he ate," had neglected to send him.
+
+An early start in the morning and we descended quickly to the River
+Shweli.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIVER SHWELI AND ITS SUSPENSION BRIDGE.]
+
+The Salween River is at an elevation of 2600 feet. Forty-five li further
+the road reaches at Fengshui-ling a height of 8730, from which point, in
+thirty-five li, it dips again to the River Shweli, 4400 feet above sea
+level. There was the usual suspension bridge at the river, and the
+inevitable likin-barrier. For the first time the Customs officials
+seemed inclined to delay me. I was on foot, and separated from my men by
+half the height of the hill. The collectors, and the underlings who are
+always hanging about the barriers, gathered round me and interrogated me
+closely. They spoke to me in Chinese, and with insufficient deference.
+The Chinese seem imbued with the mistaken belief that their language is
+the vehicle of intercourse not only within the four seas, but beyond
+them, and are often arrogant in consequence. I answered them in English.
+"I don't understand one word you say, but, if you wish to know," I said,
+energetically, "I come from Shanghai." "Shanghai," they exclaimed, "he
+comes from Shanghai!" "And I am bound for Singai" (Bhamo);--"Singai,"
+they repeated, "he is going to Singai!"--"unless the Imperial
+Government, suspicious of my intentions, which the meanest intelligence
+can see are pacific, should prevent me, in which case England will find
+a coveted pretext to add Yunnan to her Burmese Empire." Then, addressing
+myself to the noisiest, I indulged in some sarcastic speculations upon
+his probable family history, deduced from his personal peculiarities,
+till he looked very uncomfortable indeed. Thereupon I gravely bowed to
+them, and, leaving them in dumb astonishment, walked on over the bridge.
+They probably thought I was rating them in Manchu, the language of the
+Emperor. Two boys staggering under loads of firewood did not escape so
+easily, but were detained and a log squeezed from each wherewith to
+light the likin fires.
+
+A steep climb of another 3000 or 4000 feet over hills carpeted with
+bracken, with here and there grassy swards, pretty with lilies and
+daisies and wild strawberries, and then a quick descent, and we were in
+the valley of Tengyueh (5600ft.). A plain everywhere irrigated, flanked
+by treeless hills; fields shut in by low embankments; villages in
+plantations round its margin; black-faced sheep in flocks on the
+hillsides; and, away to the right the crenellated walls of Tengyueh. A
+stone-flagged path down the centre of the plain led us into the town. We
+entered by the south gate, and, turning to the left, were conducted into
+the telegraph compound, where I was to find accommodation, the clerk in
+charge of the operators being able to speak a few words of English. I
+was an immediate object of curiosity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE CITY OF TENGYUEH--THE CELEBRATED WUNTHO SAWBWA--SHAN SOLDIERS.
+
+
+I was given a comfortable room in the telegraph offices, but I had
+little privacy. My room was thronged during all the time of my visit.
+The first evening I held an informal and involuntary reception, which
+was attended by all the officials of the town, with the dignified
+exception of the Brigadier-General. The three members of the Chinese
+Boundary Commission, which had recently arranged with the British
+Commission the preliminaries to the delimitation of the boundary between
+Burma and China, were here, disputing with clerks, yamen-runners, and
+chair-coolies for a sight of my photographs and curiosities. The
+telegraph Manager Pen, Yeh (the magistrate), and a stalwart soldier
+(Colonel Liu), formed the Commission, and they retain hallowed
+recollections of the benignity of the Englishmen, and the excellence of
+their champagne. Colonel Liu proved to be the most enlightened member of
+the party. He is a tall, handsome fellow, fifty years of age, a native
+of Hunan, the most warlike and anti-foreign province in China. He was
+especially glad to see a foreign doctor. The gallant Colonel confided to
+me a wish that had long been uppermost in his heart. From some member,
+unknown, of the British Commission he had learnt of the marvellous
+rejuvenating power of a barbarian medicine--could I get him some?
+_Could I get him a bottle of hair-dye?_ Unlike his compatriots, who
+regard the external features of longevity as the most coveted attribute
+of life, this gentleman, in whose brain the light of civilisation was
+dawning, wished to frustrate the doings of age. Could I get him a bottle
+of hair-dye? He was in charge of the fort at Ganai, two days out on the
+way to Bhamo, and would write to the officer in charge during his
+absence directing him to provide me with an escort worthy of my
+benefaction.
+
+One celebrity, who lives in the neighbourhood of Tengyueh, did not
+favour me with a visit. That famous dacoit, the outlawed Prince of
+Wuntho--the Wuntho Sawbwa--lives here, an exile sheltered by the Chinese
+Government. A pure Burmese himself, the father-in-law of the amiable
+Sawbwa of Santa, he is believed by the Government of Burma to have been
+"concerned in all the Kachin risings of 1892-1893." A reward of 5000
+rupees is offered for his head, which will be paid equally whether the
+head be on or off the shoulders. Another famous outlaw, the Shan Chief
+Kanhliang, is also believed to be in hiding in the neighbourhood of
+Tengyueh. The value of _his_ head has been assessed at 2000 rupees.
+
+Tengyueh is more a park than a town. The greater part of the city within
+the walls is waste land or gardens. The houses are collected mainly near
+the south gate, and extend beyond the south gate on each side of the
+road for half a mile on the road to Bhamo. There is an excellent wall in
+admirable order, with an embankment of earth 20ft. in width. But I saw
+no guns of any kind whatever, nor did I meet a single armed man in the
+town or district.
+
+Tengyueh is so situated that the invading army coming from Burma will
+find a pleasant pastime in shelling it from the open hills all around
+the town. This was the last stronghold of the Mohammedans. It was
+formerly a prosperous border town, the chief town in all the fertile
+valley of the Taiping. It was in the hands of the rebels till June 10th,
+1873, when it was delivered over to the Imperialists to carnage and
+destruction. The valley is fertile and well populated, and prosperity is
+quickly returning to the district.
+
+There is only one yamen in Tengyueh of any pretension, and it is the
+official residence of a red-button warrior, the Brigadier-General
+(_Chentai_) Chang, the successor, though not, of course, the immediate
+successor, of Li-Sieh-tai, who was concerned in the murder of Margary
+and the repulse of the expedition under Colonel Horace Browne in 1875. A
+tall, handsome Chinaman is Chang, of soldierly bearing and blissful
+innocence of all knowledge of modern warfare. Yungchang is the limit of
+his jurisdiction in one direction, the Burmese boundary in the other;
+his only superior officer is the Titai in Tali.
+
+The telegraph office adjoins the City Temple and Theatre of Tengyueh. At
+this time the annual festival was being celebrated in the temple.
+Theatrical performances were being given in uninterrupted succession
+daily for the term of one month. Play began at sunrise, and the curtain
+fell, or would have fallen if there had been a curtain, at twilight. Day
+was rendered hideous by the clangour of the instruments which the
+blunted senses of Chinese have been misguided into believing are
+musical. Already the play, or succession of plays, had continued fifteen
+days, and another thirteen days had yet to be endured before its
+completion. Crowds occupied the temple court during the performance,
+while a considerable body of dead-heads witnessed the entertainment from
+the embankment and wall overlooking the open stage. My host, the
+telegraph Manager Pen, and his two friends Liu and Yeh, were given an
+improvised seat of honour outside my window, and here they sat all day
+and sipped tea and cracked jokes. No actresses were on the stage; the
+female parts were taken by men whose make-up was admirable, and who
+imitated, with curious fidelity, the voice and gestures of women. The
+dresses were rich and varied. Scene-shifters, band, supers, and friends
+remained on the stage during the performance, dodging about among the
+actors. There is no drop curtain in a Chinese theatre, and all scenes
+are changed on the open stage before you. The villain, whose nose is
+painted white, vanquished by triumphant virtue, dies a gory death; he
+remains dead just long enough to satisfy you that he _is_ dead, and then
+gets up and serenely walks to the side. There is laughter at sallies of
+indecency, and the spectators grunt their applause. The Chinaman is
+rarely carried away by his feelings at the theatre; indeed, it may be
+questioned if strong emotion is ever aroused in his breast, except by
+the first addresses of the junior members of the China Inland Mission,
+the thrilling effect of whose Chinese exhortations is recorded every
+month in _China's Millions_.
+
+The Manager of the telegraph, to show his good feeling, presented me
+with a stale tin of condensed milk. His second clerk and operator was
+the most covetous man I met in China. He begged in turn for nearly every
+article I possessed, beginning with my waterproof, which I did not give
+him, and ending with the empty milk tin, which I did, for "Give to him
+that asketh," said Buddha, "even though it be but a little." The chief
+operator in charge of the telegraph offices speaks a little English, and
+is the medium by which English messages and letters are translated into
+Chinese for the information of the officials. His name is Chueh. His
+method of translation is to glean the sense of a sentence by the
+probable meaning, derived from an inaccurate Anglo-Chinese dictionary,
+of the separate words of the sentence. He is a broken reed to trust to
+as an interpreter. Chueh is not an offensively truthful man. When he
+speaks to you, you find yourself wondering if you have ever met a
+greater liar than he. "Three men's strength," he says, "cannot prevail
+against truth;" yet he is, I think, the greatest liar I have met since I
+left Morocco. Indeed, the way he spoke of my head boy Laotseng, who was
+undoubtedly an honest Chinese, and the opinion Laotseng emphatically
+held of Chueh, was a curious repetition of an experience that I had not
+long ago in Morocco. I was living in Tangier, when I had occasion to go
+to Fez and Mequinez. My visit was arranged so hurriedly that I had no
+means of learning what was the degree of personal esteem attaching to
+the gentleman, a resident of Tangier, who was to be my companion. I
+accordingly interrogated the hotel-keeper, Mr. B. "What kind of a man is
+D.?" I asked. "Not a bad fellow," he replied, "if he wasn't such a
+blank, blank awful liar!" On the road to Wazan I became very friendly
+with D., and one day questioned him as to his private regard for Mr. B.
+of the hotel. "A fine fellow B. seems," I said, "very friendly and
+entertaining. What do you think of him?" "What do I think of him?" he
+shouted in his falsetto. "I _know_ he's the biggest blank liar in
+Morocco." It was pleasant to meet, even in Morocco, such a rare case of
+mutual esteem.
+
+My pony fared badly in Tengyueh. There was a poor stable in the
+courtyard with a tiled roof that would fall at the first shower. There
+were no beans. The pony had to be content with rice or paddy, which it
+disliked equally. The rice was _1-1/2d._ the 7-1/2lbs. There was no
+grass, Chueh said, to be obtained in the district. He assured me so on
+his honour, or its Chinese equivalent; but I sent out and bought some in
+the street round the corner.
+
+Silver in Tengyueh is the purest Szechuen or Yunnanese silver. Rupees
+are also current, and at this time were equivalent to 400 cash--the tael
+at the same time being worth 1260 cash. Every 10 taels, costing me
+_30s._ in Shanghai, I could exchange in Tengyueh for 31 rupees. Rupees
+are the chief silver currency west from Tengyueh into Burma.
+
+On May 31st I had given instructions that we were to leave early, but my
+men, who did not sleep in the telegraph compound, were late in coming.
+To still further delay me, at the time of leaving no escort had made its
+appearance. I did not wait for it. We marched out of the town
+unaccompanied, and were among the tombstones on the rise overlooking the
+town when the escort hurriedly overtook us. It consisted of a
+quiet-mannered chairen and two soldiers, one of whom was an impudent cub
+that I had to treat with every indignity. He was armed with a sword
+carried in the folds of his red cincture, in which was also concealed an
+old muzzle-loading pistol, formidable to look at but unloaded. This was
+one of the days on my journey when I wished that I had brought a
+revolver, not as a defence in case of danger, for there was no danger,
+but as a menace on occasion of anger.
+
+Rain fell continuously. At a small village thronged with muleteers from
+Bhamo we took shelter for an hour. The men sipping tea under the
+verandahs had seen Europeans in Bhamo, and my presence evoked no
+interest whatever. Many of these strangers possessed an astonishing
+likeness to European friends of my own. Contact with Europeans, causing
+the phenomena of "maternal impression," was probably in a few cases
+accountable for the moulding of their features, but the general
+prevalence of the European type has yet to be explained. "My conscience!
+Who could ever have expected to meet _you_ here?" I was often on the
+point of saying to some Chinese Shan or Burmese Shan in whom, to my
+confusion, I thought I recognised a college friend of my own.
+
+Leaving the village, we followed the windings of the River Taiping,
+coasting along the edge of the high land on the left bank of the river.
+
+[Illustration: THE SUBURB BEYOND THE SOUTH GATE OF TENGYUEH. (Stalls
+under the Umbrellas.)]
+
+Rain poured incessantly; the creeks overflowed; the paths became
+watercourses and were scarcely fordable. "Bones," my opium-eating coolie
+with the long neck, slipped into a hole which was too deep even for his
+long shanks, and all my bedding was wetted. It was ninety li to Nantien,
+the fort we were bound to beyond Tengyueh, and we finished the distance
+by sundown. The town is of little importance. It is situated on an
+eminence and is surrounded by a wall built, with that strange spirit of
+contrariness characteristic of the Chinese, and because it incloses a
+fort, more weakly than any city wall. It is not more substantial nor
+higher than the wall round many a mission compound. Some 400 soldiers
+are stationed in the fort, which means that the commander draws the pay
+for 1000 soldiers, and represents the strength of his garrison as 1000.
+Their arms are primitive and rusty muzzle-loaders of many patterns;
+there are no guns to be seen, if there are any in existence--which is
+doubtful. The few rusty cast-iron ten-pounders that lie _hors de combat_
+in the mud have long since become useless. There may be ammunition in
+the fort; but there is none to be seen. It is more probable, and more in
+accordance with Chinese practice in such matters, that the ammunition
+left by his predecessor (if any were left, which is doubtful) has long
+ago been sold by the colonel in command, whose perquisite this would
+naturally be.
+
+The fort of Nantien is a fort in name only--it has no need to be
+otherwise, for peace and quiet are abroad in the valley. Besides, the
+mere fact of its being called a fort is sufficiently misleading to the
+neighbouring British province of Burma, where they are apt to picture a
+Chinese fort as a structure seriously built in some accordance with
+modern methods of fortification.
+
+I was given a comfortable room in a large inn already well filled with
+travellers. All treated me with pleasant courtesy. They were at supper
+when I entered the room, and they invited me to share their food. They
+gave me the best table to myself, and after supper they crowded into
+another room in order to let me have the room to myself.
+
+Next day we continued along the sandy bed of the river, which was here
+more than a mile in width. The river itself, shrunk now into its
+smallest size, flowed in a double stream down the middle. Then we left
+the river, and rode along the high bank flanking the valley. All paved
+roads had ended at Tengyueh, and the track was deeply cut and jagged by
+the rains. At one point in to-day's journey the road led up an almost
+vertical ascent to a narrow ledge or spur at the summit, and then fell
+as steeply into the plain again. It was a short-cut, that, as you would
+expect in China, required five times more physical effort to compass
+than did the longer but level road which it was intended to save. So
+narrow is the ridge that the double row of open sheds leaves barely room
+for pack mules to pass. The whole traffic on the caravan route to Burma
+passes by this spot. The long bamboo sheds with their grass roofs are
+divided into stalls, where Shan women in their fantastic turbans, with
+silver bracelets and earrings, their lips and teeth stained with
+betel-juice, sit behind the counters of raised earth, and eagerly
+compete for the custom of travellers. More than half the women had
+goitre. Before them were laid out the various dishes. There were pale
+cuts of pork, well soaked in water to double their weight, eggs and
+cabbage and salted fish, bean curds, and a doubtful tea flavoured with
+camomile and wild herbs. There were hampers of coarse grass for the
+horses, and wooden bowls of cooked rice for the men, while hollow
+bamboos were used equally to bring water from below, to hold sheaves of
+chopsticks where the traveller helped himself, and to receive the cash.
+Trade was busy. Muleteers are glad to rest here after the climb, if only
+to enjoy a puff of tobacco from the bamboo-pipe which is always carried
+by one member of the party for the common use of all.
+
+Descending again into the river valley, I rode lazily along in the sun,
+taking no heed of my men, who were soon separated from me. The broad
+river-bed of sand was before me as level as the waters of a lake. As I
+was riding slowly along by myself, away from all guard, I saw
+approaching me in the lonely plain a small body of men. They were moving
+quickly along in single file, and we soon met and passed each other.
+They were three Chinese Shan officers on horseback, dressed in Chinese
+fashion, and immediately behind them were six soldiers on foot, who I
+saw were Burmese or Burmese Shans. They were smart men, clad in loose
+jerseys and knickerbockers, with sun-hats and bare legs, and they
+marched like soldiers. Cartridge-belts were over their left shoulders,
+and Martini-Henry rifles, carried muzzle foremost, on their right. I
+took particular note of them because they were stepping in admirable
+order, and, though small of stature, I thought they were the first armed
+men I had met in all my journey across China who could without shame be
+presented as soldiers in any civilised country.
+
+They passed me, but seemed struck by my appearance; and I had not gone a
+dozen yards before they all stopped by a common impulse, and when I
+looked back they were still there in a group talking, with the officers'
+horses turned towards me; and it was very evident I was the subject of
+their conversation. I was alone at the time, far from all my men,
+without weapon of any kind. I was dressed in full Chinese dress and
+mounted on an unmistakably Chinese pony. I rode unconcernedly on, but I
+must confess that I did not feel comfortable till I was assured that
+they did not intend to obtrude an interview upon me. At length, to my
+relief, the party continued on its way, while I hurried on to my
+coolies, and made them wait till my party was complete. I was probably
+alarmed without any reason. But it was not till I arrived in Burma that
+I learnt that this was the armed escort of the outlawed Wuntho Sawbwa,
+the dacoit chief who has a price set on his head. The soldiers' rifles
+and cartridge-belts had been stripped from the dead bodies of British
+sepoys, killed on the frontier in the Kachin Hills.
+
+My men, when we were all together again, indicated to me by signs that
+I would shortly meet an elephant, and I thought that at last I was about
+to witness the realisation of that story, everywhere current in Western
+China, of the British tribute from Burma. Sure enough we had not gone
+far when, at the foot of a headland which projected into the plain, we
+came full upon a large elephant picking its way along the margin of the
+rocks--a remarkable sight to my Chinese. Its scarlet howdah was empty;
+its trappings were scarlet; the mahout was a Shan. It was the elephant
+of the Wuntho Prince--a little earlier and I might have had the
+privilege of meeting the dacoit himself. The elephant passed
+unconcernedly on, and we continued down the plain of sand to the village
+of Ganai, where we were to stay the night.
+
+It was market-day in the town. A double row of stalls extended down the
+main street, each stall under the shelter of a huge umbrella. Japanese
+matches from Osaka were for sale here, and foreign nick-nacks, needles
+and braid and cotton, and Manchester dress stuffs mixed with the
+multitudinous articles of native produce. This is a Shan town, but large
+numbers of native women--Kachins--were here also with their ugly black
+faces, and coarse black fringes hiding their low foreheads. Far away
+from the town an obliging Shan had attached himself to us as guide. He
+was dressed in white cotton jacket and dark-blue knickerbockers, with a
+dark-blue sash round his waist. He was barelegged, and rode as the
+Chinese do, and as you would expect them to do who do everything _al
+reves_, with the heel in the stirrup instead of the toe. His turban was
+dark-blue, and the pigtail was coiled up under it, and did not hang down
+from under the skull cap as with the Chinese. When I rode into the town
+accompanied by the guide, all the people forsook the market street and
+followed the illustrious stranger to the inn which had been selected for
+his resting-place. It was a favourite inn, and was already crowded. The
+best room was in possession of Chinese travellers, who were on the road
+like myself. They were dozing on the couches, but what must they do when
+I entered the room but, thinking that I should wish to occupy it by
+myself, rise and pack up their things, and one after another move into
+another apartment adjoining, which was already well filled, and now
+became doubly so. Their thoughtfulness and courtesy charmed me. They
+must have been more tired than I was, but they smiled and nodded
+pleasantly to me as they left the room, as if they were grateful to me
+for putting them to inconvenience. They may be perishing heathen, I
+thought, but the average deacon or elder in our enlightened country
+could scarcely be more courteous.
+
+Ganai is a mud village thatched with grass. It is a military station
+under the command of the red-button Colonel Liu, whom I met in Tengyueh.
+The Colonel had earned his bottle of hair-dye. He had written to have me
+provided with an escort, and by-and-by the two officers who were to
+accompany me on the morrow came in to see me. As many spectators as
+could find elbow-room squeezed into my room behind them. Both were
+gentlemanly young fellows, very amiable and inquisitive, and keenly
+desirous to learn all they could concerning my honourable family. Their
+curiosity was satisfied. By the help of my Chinese phrase-book I gave
+them all particulars, and a few more. You see it was important that I
+should leave as favourable an impression as possible for the benefit of
+future travellers. More than one of my ancestors I brought to life again
+and endowed with a patriarchal age and a beard to correspond. As to my
+own age they marvelled greatly that one so young-looking could be so
+old, and when, in answer to their earnest question, I modestly confessed
+that I was already the unhappy possessor of two unworthy wives, five
+wretched sons, and three contemptible daughters, their admiration of my
+virtue increased tenfold.
+
+The officers left me after this, but till late at night I held _levées_
+of the townsfolk, our landlady, who was most zealous, no sooner
+dismissing one crowd than another pressed into its place. The courtyard,
+I believe, remained filled till early in the morning, but I was allowed
+to sleep at last.
+
+A large crowd followed me out of the town in the morning, and swarmed
+with me across the beautiful sward, as level as the Oval, which here
+widens into the country. No guest was ever sped on his way with a
+kindlier farewell. The fort is outside the town; we passed it on our
+left; it is a square inclosure of considerable size, inclosed by a mud
+wall 15 feet high; it is in the unsheltered plain, and presents no
+formidable front to an invader. At each of the four corners outside the
+square are detached four-sided watch-towers. No guns of any kind are
+mounted on the walls, and there are no sentries; one could easily
+imagine that the inclosure was a market-square, but imagination could
+never picture it as a serious obstacle to an armed entry into Western
+China. The river was well on our right. The plain down which we rode is
+of exceeding richness and highly cultivated, water being trained into
+the paddy-fields in the same way that everywhere prevails in China
+proper. Buffaloes were ploughing--wearily plodding through mud and water
+up to their middles. We were now among the Shans, and those working in
+the fields were Shans, not Chinese. Ganai, Santa, and other places are
+but little principalities or Shan States, governed by hereditary
+princelets or Sawbwas, and preserving a form of self-government under
+the protection of the Chinese. There are no more charming people in the
+world than the Shans. They are courteous, hospitable, and honest, with
+all the virtues and few of the vices of Orientals. "The elder brothers
+of the Siamese, they came originally from the Chinese province of
+Szechuen, and they can boast of a civilisation dating from twenty-three
+centuries B.C." So Terrien de Lacouperie tells us, who had a happy
+faculty of drawing upon his imagination for his facts.
+
+Under the wide branches of a banyan tree I made my men stop, for I was
+very tired, and while they waited I lay down for an hour on the grass
+and had a refreshing sleep. While I slept, the rest of the escort sent
+to "_sung_" me to Santa arrived. Within a few yards of my resting place
+there is a characteristic monument, dating from the time when Burma
+occupied not only this valley but the fertile territory beyond it, and
+beyond Tengyueh to the River Salween. It is a solid Burmese pagoda,
+built of concentric layers of brick and mortar, and surmounted with a
+solid bell-shaped dome that is still intact. It stands alone on the
+plain near a group of banyans, and its erection no doubt gained many
+myriads of merits for the conscience-stricken Buddhist who found the
+money to build it. All goldleaf has been peeled off the pagoda years
+ago.
+
+It was a picturesque party that now enfiladed into the wide stretch of
+sand which in the rainy season forms the bed of the river. Mounted on
+his white pony, there was the inarticulate European who had discarded
+his Chinese garb and was now dressed in the æsthetic garments of the
+Australian bush; there were his two coolies and Laotseng his boy, none
+of whom could speak any English, the two officers in their loose Chinese
+clothes, mounted on tough little ponies, and eight soldiers. They were
+Shans of kindly feature, small and nimble fellows, in neat
+uniforms--green jackets edged with black and braided with yellow, yellow
+sashes, and loose dark-blue knickerbockers--the uniform of the Sawbwa of
+Ganai. They were armed with Remington rifles, carried their cartridges
+in bandoliers, and seemed to be of excellent fighting material. All
+their accoutrements were in good order.
+
+Now we had to cross the broad stream, here running with a swift current
+over the sand, in channels of varying depths that are frequently
+changing. For the width of nearly half a mile at the crossing place the
+water was never shallower than to my knee, nor deeper than to my waist.
+We all crossed safely, but, to my tribulation, the soldier who was
+carrying my two boxes tripped in the deepest channel and let both boxes
+slip from the carrying pole into the water. All the notes and papers
+upon which this valuable record is founded were much damaged. But it
+might have been worse. I had a presentiment that an accident would
+happen, and had waded back to the channel and was standing by at the
+time. But for this the papers might have been floated down to the
+Irrawaddy and been lost to the world--loss irreparable!
+
+The sun was very hot. I laid out my things on the bank and dried them.
+Long and narrow dugouts, as light and swift as the string-test gigs of
+civilisation, paddled or poled, were gliding with extraordinary speed
+down the channel near the bank. Riding then a little way, we dismounted
+under a magnificent banyan tree, one of the finest specimens, I should
+think, in the world. Ponies and men were dwarfed into Lilliputians under
+the amazing canopy of its branches. A number of villagers, come to see
+the foreigner, were clambering like monkeys over its roots, which
+"writhed in fantastic coils" over half an acre. Their village was hard
+by, a poor array of mud houses; the teak temple to which we were
+conducted was raised on piles in the centre of the village. The temple
+was lumbered like an old curiosity shop with fragmentary gods and torn
+missals. Yet the ragged priest in his smirched yellow gown, and shaven
+head that had been a week unshaven, seemed to enjoy a reputation for no
+common sanctity, to judge by the reverence shown him by my followers,
+and the contemptuous indifference with which he regarded their
+obeisance. He was club-footed and could only hobble about with
+difficulty--an excuse he would, no doubt, urge for the disorder of his
+sanctuary. To me, of course, he was very polite, and gave me the best
+seat he had, while Laotseng prepared me a bowl of cocoa. Then we rode
+along the right bank of the river, but kept moving away from the stream
+till in the distance across the plain at the foot of the hills, we saw
+the Shan town of Santa, the end of our day's stage.
+
+Native women, returning from the town, were wending their way across the
+plain--lank overgrown girls with long thin legs and overhanging mops of
+hair like deck-swabs. They were a favourite butt of my men, who chaffed
+them in the humorous Eastern manner, with remarks that were, I am
+afraid, more coarse than witty. Kachins are not virtuous. Their customs
+preclude such a possibility. No Japanese maiden is more innocent of
+virtue than a Kachin girl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE SHAN TOWN OF SANTA, AND MANYUEN, THE SCENE OF CONSUL MARGARY'S
+MURDER.
+
+
+It was market day in Santa, and the accustomed crowd gathered round me
+as I stood in the open square in front of the Sawbwa's yamen. I was hot
+and hungry, for it was still early in the afternoon, and the attentions
+of the people were oppressive. Presently two men pushed their way
+through the spectators, and politely motioning to me to follow them,
+they led me to a neighbouring temple, to the upper storey, where the
+side pavilion off the chief hall was being prepared for my reception. My
+quarters overlooked the main court; the pony was comfortably stabled in
+the corner below me. Nothing could have been pleasanter than the
+attention I received here. Two foreign chairs were brought for my use,
+and half a dozen dishes of good food and clean chopsticks were set
+before me. The chief priest welcomed me, whose smiling face was
+good-nature itself. With clean-shaven head and a long robe of grey, with
+a rosary of black and white beads hung loosely from his neck, the kind
+old man moved about my room giving orders for my comfort. He held
+authority over a number of priests, some in black, others in yellow, and
+over a small band of choristers. Religion was an active performance in
+the temple, and the temple was in good order, with clean matting and
+well-kept shrines, with strange pictures on the walls of elephants and
+horses, with legends and scrolls in Burmese as well as in Chinese.
+
+Towards evening the Santa Sawbwa, the hereditary prince (what a
+privilege it was to meet a prince! I had never met even a lord before in
+my life, or anyone approaching the rank of a lord, except a spurious
+Duke of York whom I sent to the lunatic asylum), the _Prince_ of Santa
+paid me a State call, accompanied by a well-ordered retinue, very
+different indeed from the ragged reprobates who follow at the heels of a
+Chinese grandee when on a visit of ceremony. The Sawbwa occupied one
+chair, his distinguished guest the other, till the chief priest came in,
+when, with that deep reverence for the cloth which has always
+characterised me, I rose and gave him mine. He refused to take it, but I
+insisted; he pretended to be as reluctant to occupy it as any Frenchman,
+but I pushed him bodily into it, and that ended the matter.
+
+A pleasant, kindly fellow is the Prince; even among the Shans he is
+conspicuous for his courtesy and amiability. He was a great favourite
+with the English Boundary Commission, and in his turn remembers with
+much pleasure his association with them. Half a dozen times, when
+conversation flagged, he raised his clasped hands and said "Warry
+_Ching, ching_!" and I knew that this was his foolish heathen way of
+sending greeting to the Chinese adviser of the Government of Burma. The
+Shan dialect is quite distinct from the Chinese, but all the princes or
+princelets dress in Chinese fashion and learn Mandarin, and it was of
+course in Mandarin that the Santa Sawbwa conversed with Mr. Warry. This
+Sawbwa is the son-in-law of the ex-Wuntho Sawbwa. He rules over a
+territory smaller than many squatters' stations in Victoria. He is one
+of the ablest of Shans, and would willingly place his little
+principality under the protection of England. He is thirty-five years of
+age, dresses in full Chinese costume, with pigtail and skullcap, is
+pock-marked, and has incipient goitre. He is polite and refined, chews
+betel nut "to stimulate his meditative faculties," and expectorates on
+the floor with easy freedom. I showed him my photographs, and he
+graciously invited me to give him some. I nodded cheerfully to him in
+assent, rolled them all up again, and put them back in my box. He knew
+that I did not understand.
+
+We had tea together, and then he took his leave, "Warry _Ching, ching_!"
+being his parting words.
+
+As soon as he had gone the deep drum--a hollow instrument of wood shaped
+like a fish--was beaten, and the priests gathered to vespers, dressed in
+many-coloured garments of silk; and, as evening fell, they intoned a
+sweet and mournful chant.
+
+The service over, all but the choristers entered the room off the
+gallery in which I was lying, where, looking in, I saw them throw off
+their gowns and coil themselves on the sleeping benches. Opium-lamps
+were already lit, and all were soon inhaling opium; all but one who had
+rheumatism, and who, lying down, stretched himself at full length, while
+a brother priest punched him all over in that primitive method of
+massage employed by every native race the wide world over.
+
+In the City Temple some festival was being celebrated, and night was
+turbulent with the beating of gongs and drums and the bursting of
+crackers. Long processions of priests in their yellow robes were passing
+the temple in the bright moonlight. Priests were as plentiful as
+blackberries; if they had been dressed in black instead of yellow, the
+traveller might have imagined that he was in Edinburgh at Assembly time.
+
+In the morning another escort of half a dozen men was ready to accompany
+me for the day's stage to Manyuen. They were in the uniform of the Santa
+Sawbwa, in blue jackets instead of green. They were armed with rusty
+muzzle-loaders, unloaded, and with long Burmese swords (_dahs_). They
+were the most amiable of warriors, both in feature and manner, and were
+unlike the turbaned braves of China, who, armed no better than these
+men, still regard, as did their forefathers, fierceness of aspect as an
+important factor in warfare (_rostro feroz ao enemigo!_)--an illusion
+also shared in the English army, where monstrous bearskin shakos were
+introduced to increase the apparent height of the soldiers. The officer
+in command was late in overtaking me. As soon as he came within
+horse-length he let down his queue and bowed reverently, and I could see
+pride lighting his features as he confessed to the honour that had been
+done him in intrusting such an honourable and illustrious charge to the
+mean and unworthy care of so contemptible an officer.
+
+The country before us was open meadow-land, pleasant to ride over, only
+here and there broken by a massive banyan tree. Herds of buffaloes were
+grazing on the hillsides. The mud villages were far apart on the margin
+of the river-plain, inclosed with superb hedges of living bamboo.
+
+Thirty li from Santa is the Shan village of Taipingkai. It was
+market-day, and the broad main street was crowded. We were taken to the
+house of an oil-merchant, who kindly asked me in and had tea brewed for
+me. Earthenware jars of oil were stacked round the room. The basement
+opened to the street, and was packed in a moment. "_Dzo! Dzo!_" (Go!
+go!) cried the master, and the throng hustled out, to be renewed in a
+minute by a fresh body of curious who had waited their turn.
+
+Then we rode on, over a country as beautiful as a nobleman's park, to
+the town of Manyuen. Every here and there by the roadside there are
+springs of fresh water, where travellers can slake their thirst. Bamboo
+ladles are placed here by devotees, whose action will be counted unto
+them for righteousness, for "he that piously bestows a little water
+shall receive an ocean in return." And, where there are no springs, neat
+little bamboo stalls with shelves are built, and in the cool shelter
+pitchers of water and bamboo cups are placed, so that the thirsty may
+bless the unknown hand which gives him to drink.
+
+Manyuen--or, to use the name by which it is better known to foreigners,
+Manwyne--is a large and straggling town overlooking the river-plain. It
+was here that Margary, the British Consular Agent, was murdered in 1875.
+I had a long wait at the yamen gate while they were arranging where to
+send me, but by-and-by two yamen-runners came and conducted me to the
+City Temple. It was the same temple that Margary had occupied. Many
+shaven-pated Buddhist priests were waiting for me, and received me
+kindly in the temple hall. A table was brought for me and the only
+foreign chair, and Laotseng was shown where to spread my bedding in the
+temple hall itself. And here I held _levées_ of the townspeople of all
+shades of colour and variety of feature--Chinese, Shan, Burmese, Kachin,
+and hybrid. The people were very amiable, and I found on all sides the
+same courtesy and kindliness that Margary describes on his first visit.
+But the crowd was quiet for only a little while; then a dispute arose.
+It began in the far corner, and the crowd left me to gather round the
+disputants. Voices were raised, loud and excited, and increased in
+energy. A deadly interest seemed to enthral the bystanders. It was easy
+to imagine that they were debating to do with me as they had done with
+Margary. The dispute waxed warmer. Surely they will come to blows? When
+suddenly the quarrel ceased as it had begun, and the crowd came smiling
+back to me. What was the dispute? The priests were cheapening a chicken
+for my dinner.
+
+The temple was built on teak piles, and teak pillars supported the
+triple roof. It was like a barn or lumber room but for the gilt Buddhas
+on the altar and the gilt cabinets by its side, containing many smaller
+gilt images of Buddha and his disciples. Umbrellas, flags, and the
+tawdry paraphernalia used in processions were hanging from the beams.
+Sacerdotal vestments of dingy yellow--the yellow of turmeric--were
+tumbled over bamboo rests. When the gong sounded for prayers, men you
+thought were coolies threw these garments over the left shoulder,
+hitched them round the waist, and were transformed into priests, putting
+them back again immediately after the service. Close under the tiles was
+a paper sedan-chair, to be sent for the use of some rich man in heaven.
+Painted scrolls of paper were on the walls, and on old ledges were torn
+books in the Burmese character, which a few boys made a pretence of
+reading. Where I slept the floor was raised some feet from the ground,
+and underneath, seen through the gaping boards--though previously
+detected by another of the senses--were a number of coffins freighted
+with dead, waiting for a fit occasion for interment. Heavy stones were
+placed on the lids to keep the dead more securely at rest. The lucky
+day for burial would be determined by the priests--it would be
+determined by them as soon as the pious relatives had paid sufficiently
+for their fears. So long, then, as the coffins remained where they were,
+they might be described as capital invested by the priests and returning
+heavy interest; removed from the temple, they ceased to be productive.
+
+As is the case in so many temples, there is an opium-room in the temple
+at the back of the gilded shrine, where priests and neophytes, throwing
+aside their office, can while away the licentious hours till the gong
+calls them again to prayers.
+
+In the early morning, while I was still lying in my pukai on the floor,
+I saw many women, a large proportion of whom were goitrous, come to the
+hall, and make an offering of rice, and kneel down before the Buddha. As
+time went on, and more kept coming in, small heaps of rice had collected
+in front of the chief altar and before the cabinets. And when the women
+retired, a chorister came round and swept with his fingers all the
+little heaps into a basket. To the gods the spirit! To the priests the
+solid remains!
+
+It was in Manyuen, as I have mentioned, that Margary met his death on
+February 21st, 1875. He had safely traversed China from Hankow to Bhamo,
+had been everywhere courteously treated by the Chinese and been given
+every facility and protection on his journey. He had passed safely
+through Manyuen only five weeks before, and had then written: "I come
+and go without meeting the slightest rudeness among this charming
+people, and they address me with the greatest respect." And yet five
+weeks later he was killed on his return! Even assuming that he was
+killed in obedience to orders issued by the cruel Viceroy at Yunnan
+City, the notorious Tsen Yü-ying, and not by a lawless Chinese
+train-band which then infested the district and are believed by Baber to
+have been the real murderers, the British Government must still be held
+guilty of contributory negligence. Margary, having passed unmolested to
+Bhamo, there met the expedition under Colonel Horace Browne, and
+returned as its forerunner to prepare for its entry into China by the
+route he had just traversed. The expedition was a "peace expedition"
+sent by the Government of Burma, and numbered only "fifty persons in
+all, together with a Burmese guard of 150 armed soldiers."
+
+Seven years before, an expedition under Major Sladen had advanced from
+Burma into Western China as far as Tengyueh; had remained in Tengyueh
+from May 25th to July 13th, 1868; had entered into friendly negotiations
+with the military governor and other Mohammedan officials in revolt
+against China; and had remained under the friendly protection of the
+Mohammedan insurgents who were then in possession of Western China from
+Tengyueh to near Yunnan City. "To what principles," it has been asked,
+"of justice or equity can we attribute the action of the British in
+retaining their Minister at the capital of an empire while sending a
+peaceful mission to a rebel in arms at its boundaries?"
+
+The Mohammedan insurrection was not quelled till the early months of
+1874. And less than a year later the Chinese learned with alarm that
+another peaceful expedition was entering Western China, by the same
+route, under the same auspices, and with the identical objects of the
+expedition which had been welcomed by the leaders of the insurrection.
+
+The Chinese mind was incapable of grasping the fact that the second
+expedition was planned solely to discover new fields for international
+commerce and scientific investigation. Barbarians as they are, they
+feared that England thereby intended to "foster the dying embers of the
+rebellion." No time for such an expedition, a peaceful trade expedition,
+could have been more ill-chosen. The folly of it was seen in the murder
+of Margary and the repulse of Colonel Horace Browne, whose expedition
+was driven back at Tsurai within sight of Manyuen. And this murder,
+known to all the world, is the typical instance cited in illustration of
+the barbarity of the Chinese.
+
+China may be a barbarous country; many missionaries have said so, and it
+is the fashion so to speak; but let us for a moment look at facts.
+During the last twenty-three years foreigners of every nationality and
+every degree of temperament, from the mildest to the most fanatical,
+have penetrated into every nook and cranny of the empire. Some have been
+sent back, and there has been an occasional riot with some destruction
+of property. But all the foreigners who have been killed can be numbered
+on the fingers of one hand, and in the majority of these cases it can
+hardly be denied that it was the indiscretion of the white man which was
+the exciting cause of his murder. In the same time how many hundreds of
+unoffending Chinese have been murdered in civilised foreign countries?
+An anti-foreign riot in China--and at what rare intervals do
+anti-foreign riots occur in its vast empire--may cause some destruction
+of property; but it may be questioned if the destruction done in China
+by the combined anti-foreign riots of the last twenty-three years
+equalled the looting done by the civilised London mob who a year or two
+ago on a certain Black Monday played havoc in Oxford-street and
+Piccadilly. "It is less dangerous," says one of the most accurate
+writers on China, the Rev. A. H. Smith, himself an American missionary,
+"for a foreigner to cross China than for a Chinese to cross the United
+States." And there are few who give the matter a thought but must admit
+the correctness of Mr. Smith's statement.
+
+On May 17th I was on the road again. The fort of Manyuen is outside the
+town, and some little distance beyond it the dry creek bends into the
+pathway at a point where it is bordered with cactus and overshadowed by
+a banyan tree. This is said to be the exact spot where Margary was
+killed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+CHINA AS A FIGHTING POWER--THE KACHINS--AND THE LAST STAGE INTO BHAMO.
+
+
+We now left the low land and the open country, the pastures and meadows,
+and climbed up the jungle-clad spurs which form the triangular dividing
+range that separates the broad and open valley of the Taiping, where
+Manyuen is situated, from the confined and tropical valley of the
+Hongmuho, which lies at the foot of the English frontier fort of
+Nampoung, the present boundary of Burma. Two miles below Nampoung the
+two rivers join, and the combined stream flows on to enter the Irrawaddy
+a mile or two above Bhamo.
+
+No change could be greater or more sudden. We toiled upwards in the
+blazing sun, and in two hours we were deep in the thickest jungle, in
+the exuberant vegetation of a tropical forest. We had left the valley of
+the peaceful Shans and were in the forest inhabited by other "protected
+barbarians" of China--the wild tribes of Kachins, who even in Burma are
+slow to recognise the beneficent influences of British frontier
+administration. Nature serenely sleeps in the valley; nature is
+throbbing with life in the forest, and the humming and buzzing of all
+insect life was strange to our unaccustomed ears.
+
+A well-cut path has been made through the forest, and caravans of mules
+laden with bales of cotton were in the early stages of the long
+overland journey to Yunnan. Their bells tinkled through the forest,
+while the herd boy filled the air with the sweet tones of his bamboo
+flute, breathing out his soul in music more beautiful than any bagpipes.
+Cotton is the chief article of import entering China by this highway.
+From Talifu to the frontier a traveller could trace his way by the
+fluffs of cotton torn by the bushes from the mule-packs.
+
+The road through the forest reaches the highest points, because it is at
+the highest points that the Chinese forts are situated, either on the
+road or on some elevated clearing near it.
+
+The forts are stockades inclosed in wooden palisades, and guarded by
+_chevaux de frise_ of sharp-cut bamboo. The barracks are a few native
+straw-thatched wooden huts. Perhaps a score or two of men form the
+garrison of each fort; they are badly armed, if armed at all. There are
+no guns and no store supplies. Water is trained into the stockades down
+open conduits of split bamboo. To anyone who has seen the Chinese
+soldiers at home in Western China, it is diverting to observe the
+credence which is given to Chinese statements of the armed strength of
+Western China. How much longer are we to persist in regarding the
+Chinese, as they now are, as a warlike power? In numbers, capacity for
+physical endurance, calm courage when well officered, and powers
+unequalled by any other race of mankind of doing the greatest amount of
+labour on the smallest allowance of food, their potential strength is
+stupendous. But they are not advancing, they are stationary; they look
+backwards, not forwards; they live in the past. Weapons with which their
+ancestors subdued the greater part of Asia they are loath to believe
+are unfitted for conducting the warfare of to-day. Should Japan bring
+China to terms, she can impose no terms that will not tend towards the
+advancement of China. Victories such as Japan has won over China might
+affect any other nation but China; but they are trifling and
+insignificant in their effect upon the gigantic mass of China. Suppose
+China has lost 20,000 men in this war, in one day there are 20,000
+births in the Empire, and I am perfectly sure that, outside the
+immediate neighbourhood of the seat of operations, the Chinese as a
+nation, apart from the officials, are profoundly ignorant that there is
+even a war, or, as they would term it, a rebellion, in progress.
+Trouble, serious trouble, will begin in China in the near future, for
+the time must be fast approaching when the effete and alien dynasty now
+reigning in China--the Manchu dynasty--shall be overthrown, and a
+Chinese Emperor shall rule on the throne of China.
+
+At a native village called Schehleh there is a likin-barrier. The yellow
+flag was drooping over the roadway in the hot sun. The customs officer,
+an amiable Chinese Shan, invited me in to tea, and brought his pukai for
+me to lie down upon. Like thousands of his countrymen, he had played for
+fortune in the Manila lottery. Two old lottery tickets and the prize
+list in Chinese were on one wall of his room, on the other were a number
+of Chinese visiting cards, to which I graciously permitted him to add
+mine.
+
+Soldiers accompanied me from camp to camp, Chinese soldiers from
+districts many hundreds of miles distant in China. Some were armed, some
+were unarmed, and there was equal confidence to be reposed in the one as
+in the other; but all were civil, and watched me with a care that was
+embarrassing.
+
+At the first camp beyond Schehleh the gateway was ornamented with
+trophies of valour. From two bare tree-trunks baskets of heads were
+hanging, putrefying in the heat. They were the heads of Kachin dacoits.
+And thus shall it be done with all taken in rebellion against the Son of
+Heaven, whose mighty clemency alone permits the sun to shine on any
+kingdom beyond his borders. Kachin villages are scattered through the
+forest, among the hills. You see their native houses, long bamboo
+structures raised on piles and thatched with grass, with low eaves
+sloping nearly to the ground. In sylvan glades sacred to the _nats_ you
+pass wooden pillars erected by the roadside, rudely cut, and rudely
+painted with lines and squares and rough figures of knives, and close
+beside them conical grass structures with coloured weathercocks. Split
+bamboos support narrow shelves, whereon are placed the various
+food-offerings with which is sought the goodwill of the evil spirits.
+
+The Kachin men we met were all armed with the formidable _dah_ or native
+sword, whose widened blade they protect in a univalvular sheath of wood.
+They wore Shan jackets and dark knickerbockers; their hair was gathered
+under a turban. They all carried the characteristic embroidered Kachin
+bag over the left shoulder.
+
+The Kachin women are as stunted as the Japanese, and are disfigured with
+the same disproportionate shortness of legs. They wear Shan jackets and
+petticoats of dark-blue; their ornaments are chiefly cowries; their legs
+are bare. Unmarried, they wear no head-dress, but have their hair cut in
+a black mop with a deep fringe to the eyebrows. If married, their
+head-dress is the same as that of the Shan women--a huge dark-blue
+conical turban. Morality among the Kachin maidens, a missionary tells
+me, is not, as we understand the term, believed to exist. There is a
+tradition in the neighbourhood concerning a virtuous maiden; but little
+reliance can be placed on such legendary tales. Among the Kachins each
+clan is ruled by a Sawbwa, whose office "is hereditary, not to the
+eldest son, but to the youngest, or, failing sons, to the youngest
+surviving brother." (Anderson.) All Kachins chew betel-nut and nearly
+all smoke opium--men, women and children. Goitre is very prevalent among
+them; in some villages Major Couchman believes that as many as 25 per
+cent. of the inhabitants are afflicted with the disease. They have no
+written language, but their spoken language has been romanised by the
+American missionaries in Burma.
+
+We camped within five miles of the British border at the Chinese fortlet
+of Settee, a palisaded camp whose gateway also was hung with heads of
+dacoits. A Chinese Shan was in command, a smart young officer with a
+Burmese wife. He was active, alert, and intelligent, and gave me the
+best room in the series of sheds which formed the barracks. I was made
+very comfortable. There were between forty and fifty soldiers stationed
+in the barracks--harmless warriors--who were very attentive. At
+nightfall the tattoo was beaten. The gong sounded; its notes died away
+in a distant murmur, then brayed forth with a stentorian clangour that
+might wake the dead. At the same time a tattoo was beaten on the drum,
+then a gun was fired and the noise ceased, to be repeated again during
+the night at the change of guard. All foes, visible and invisible, were
+in this way scared away from the fort.
+
+Hearing that I was a doctor, the commandant asked me to see several of
+his men who were on the sick list. Among them was one poor young fellow
+dying, in the next room to mine, of remittent fever. When I went to the
+bedside the patient was lying down deadly ill, weak, and emaciated; but
+two of his companions took him by the arms, and, telling him to sit up,
+would have pulled him into what they considered a more respectful
+attitude. In the morning I again went to see the poor fellow. He was
+lying on his side undergoing treatment. An opium-pipe was held to his
+lips by one comrade, while another rolled the pellet of opium and placed
+it heated in the pipe-bowl, so that he might inhale its fumes.
+
+In the morning the officer accompanied me to the gate of the stockade
+and bade me good-bye, with many unintelligible expressions of good will.
+His eight best soldiers were told off to escort me to the frontier,
+distant only fifteen li. It was a splendid walk through the jungle
+across the mountains to the Hongmuho. We passed the outlying stockade of
+the Chinese, and, winding along the spur, came full in view of the
+British camp across the valley, half-way up the opposite slope. By a
+very steep path we descended through the forest to the frontier fort of
+the Chinese, and emerged upon the grassy slope that shelves below it to
+the river.
+
+There are a few bamboo huts on the sward, and here the Chinese guard
+left me; for armed guards are allowed no further. I was led to the ford,
+my pony plunged into the swift stream, and a moment or two later I was
+on British soil and passing the Sepoy outpost, where the guard, to my
+great alarm, for I feared being shot, turned out and saluted me. Then I
+climbed up the steep hill to the British encampment, where the English
+officer commanding, Captain R. G. Iremonger, of the 3rd Burma Regiment,
+gave me a kind reception, and congratulated me upon my successful
+journey. He telegraphed to headquarters the news of my arrival. It was
+of no earthly interest to anybody that I, an unknown wanderer, should
+pass through safely; but it was of interest to know that anyone could
+pass through so easily. Reports had only recently reached the Government
+that Western China was in a state of disaffection; that a feeling
+strongly anti-foreign had arisen in Yunnan; and that now, of all times,
+would it be inexpedient to despatch a commission for the delimitation of
+the boundary. My quiet and uninterrupted journey was in direct conflict
+with all such reports.
+
+The encampment of Nampoung is at an elevation of 1500 feet above the
+river. It is well exposed on all sides, and has been condemned by
+military experts. But the law of fortifications which applies to any
+ordinary frontier does not apply to the frontier of China, where there
+is no danger whatsoever. The palisade is irregularly made, and is not
+superior, of course, to any round the Chinese stockades.
+
+The houses are built of bamboo, are raised on piles, and thatched with
+grass. A company of the 3rd Burma Regiment is permanently stationed here
+under an English officer, and consists of 100 men, who are either Sikhs
+or Punjabis, all of splendid stature and military bearing. A picket of
+six men under a non-commissioned native officer guards the ford, and
+permits no armed Chinese to cross the border.
+
+There are numbers of transport mules and ponies. In the creek there are
+plenty of fish; the rod, indeed, is the chief amusement of the officers
+who are exiled on duty to this lonely spot to pass three months in turn
+in almost uninterrupted solitude. There is a telegraph line into Bhamo,
+and it is at this point that connection will be made with the Imperial
+Chinese Telegraphs.
+
+At the ford from fifty to one hundred loaded pack-animals, mostly
+carrying cotton, cross into China daily. A toll of six annas is levied
+upon each pack-animal, the money so collected being distributed by the
+Government among those Kachin Sawbwas who have an hereditary right to
+levy this tribute. The money is collected by two Burmese officials, and
+handed daily to the officer commanding. No duty is paid on entering
+Burma. Chinese likin-barriers begin to harass the caravans at Schehleh.
+
+Beautiful views of the surrounding hills, all covered with "lofty forest
+trees, tangled with magnificent creepers, and festooned with orchids,"
+are obtained from the camp. All the country round is extremely fertile,
+yielding with but little labour three crops a year. Cultivation of the
+soil there is none. Fire clears the jungle, and the ashes manure the
+soil; the ground is then superficially scratched, and rice is sown.
+Nothing more is done. Every seed germinates; the paddy ripens, and,
+where one basketful is sown, five hundred basketfuls are gathered. And
+the field lies untouched till again covered with jungle. Thus is the
+heathen rewarded five-hundred-fold in accordance with the law of Nature
+which gives blessing to the labour of the husbandman inversely as he
+deserves it.
+
+In the evening the officer walked down with me to the creek, where I
+bathed in the shadow of the bank, in a favourite pool for fishing. As we
+crossed the field on our return, we met the two Burmese
+tribute-gatherers. They had occasion to speak to the officer, when,
+instead of standing upright like a stalwart and independent Chinaman,
+they squatted humbly on their heels, and, resting their elbows on their
+knees in an attitude of servility, conversed with their superior. How
+different the Chinaman, who confesses few people his superior, and none
+of any race beyond the borders of China!
+
+From Nampoung to Bhamo is an easy walk of thirty-three miles. This is
+usually done in two stages, the halting place being the military station
+of Myothit, which is fourteen miles from Nampoung. On leaving Nampoung,
+an escort of a lance-corporal and two soldiers was detailed to accompany
+me. They were Punjabis, men of great stature and warlike aspect; but
+they were presumably out of training, for they arrived at Myothit, limp
+and haggard, an hour or more after we did. There is an admirable road
+through the jungle, maintained in that excellent order characteristic of
+military roads under British supervision. My Chinese from time to time
+questioned me as to the distance. We had gone fifteen li when Laotseng
+asked me how much farther it was to Santien (Myothit). "Three li," I
+said. We walked ten li further. "How far is it now?" he asked. "Only
+five li further," I replied, gravely. We went on another six li, when
+again he asked me: "Teacher Mô, how many li to Santien?" "Only eight
+more li," I said, and he did not ask me again. I was endeavouring to
+give him information in the fashion that prevails in his own country.
+
+At Myothit we camped in the dâk bungalow, an unfurnished cottage kept
+for the use of travellers. The encampment is on the outskirts of a
+perfectly flat plain, skirted with jungle-clad hills and covered with
+elephant grass. Through the plain the broad river Taiping flows on its
+muddy way to the Irrawaddy. One hundred sepoys are stationed here under
+a native officer, a Sirdar, Jemadar, or Subadar (I am not certain
+which), who called upon me, and stood by me as I ate my tiffin, and, to
+my great embarrassment, saluted me in the most alarming way every time
+my eye unexpectedly caught his. I confess that I did not know the
+gentleman from Adam. I mistook him for an ornamental head-waiter, and,
+as I regarded him as a superfluous nuisance, I told him not to stand
+upon the order of his going but go. I pointed to the steps; and he went,
+sidling off backwards as if from the presence of royalty. Drawing his
+heels together, he saluted me at the stair-top and again at the bottom,
+murmuring words which were more unintelligible to me even than Chinese.
+
+During the night our exposed bungalow was assailed by a fearful storm of
+wind and rain, and for a time I expected it to be bodily lifted off the
+piles and carried to the lee-side of the settlement. The roof leaked in
+a thousand places, rain was driven under the walls, and everything I had
+was soaked with warm water.
+
+Next day we had a pleasant walk into Bhamo, that important military
+station on the left bank of the Irrawaddy. We crossed the Taiping at
+Myothit by a bridge, a temporary and very shaky structure, which is
+every year carried away when the river rises, and every year renewed
+when the caravans take the road after the rains.
+
+Bhamo is 1520 miles by land from Chungking; and it is an equal distance
+further from Chungking to Shanghai. The entire distance I traversed in
+exactly one hundred days, for I purposely waited till the hundredth day
+to complete it. And it surely speaks well of the sense of responsibility
+innate in the Chinese that, during all this time, I never had in my
+employ a Chinese coolie who did not fulfil, with something to spare, all
+that he undertook to do. I paid off my men in Bhamo. To Laotseng I gave
+400 cash too many, and asked him for the change. At once with much
+readiness he ranged some cash on the table in the form of an abacus,
+and, setting down some hieroglyphics on a sheet of paper, he worked out
+a calculation, by which he proved that I owed _him_ 400 cash, and,
+therefore, the accounts were now exactly balanced. For my own expenses I
+gave him 1175 cash in Tengyueh and 400 more in Bhamo, so that my entire
+personal expenses between two points nine days distant from each other
+were rather more than _3s._ My entire journey from Shanghai to Bhamo
+cost less than _£20_ sterling, including my Chinese outfit. Had I
+travelled economically, I estimate that the journey need not have cost
+me more than _£14_. Had I carried more silver with me, I would still
+further have reduced the total cost of my tour. The gold I bought in
+Yunnan with my surplus silver, I sold in Burma for 20 per cent. profit,
+the rupees which I purchased in Tengyueh for _11d._ were worth _13d._ in
+Bhamo. For some curios which I purchased in the interior for _£2 5s._ I
+was offered when I reached civilisation _£14_. Without doubt the journey
+across China is the cheapest that can be done in all the world.
+
+I was sorry to say good-bye to my men, who had served me so faithfully.
+And I cannot speak more highly of the pleasure of my journey than to
+declare that I felt greater regret when it was finished than I ever felt
+on leaving any other country. The men all through had behaved admirably,
+and it is only fair to add that mine was the common experience of
+travellers in far Western China. Thus a very great traveller in China
+and Thibet (W. W. Rockhill), writing in the _Century_, April, 1894, on
+the discomforts of his recent journey, says:
+
+"But never a word of complaint from either the Thibetans or my Chinese.
+They were always alert, always good-tempered, always attentive to me,
+and anxious to contribute to my comfort in every way in their power. And
+so I have ever found these peoples, with whom I am glad to say, after
+travelling over 20,000 miles in their countries, I have never exchanged
+a rough word, and among whom I think I have left not one enemy and not a
+few friends."
+
+Two days after their arrival in Bhamo my three men started on their
+return journey to Talifu. They were laden with medicines, stores,
+newspapers, and letters for the mission in Tali, which for months had
+been accumulating in the premises of the American Mission in Bhamo, the
+missionary in charge, amid the multifarious avocations pertaining to his
+post, having found no time to forward them to their destination to his
+lonely Christian brother in the far interior. And, had I not arrived
+when I did, they could not have been sent till after the rains. A coolie
+will carry eighty pounds weight from Bhamo to Tali for _12s._; and I
+need hardly point out that a very small transaction in teak would cover
+the cost of many coolies. Besides, any expenditure incurred would have
+been reimbursed by the Inland Mission. My three men were pursued by
+cruel fate on their return; they all were taken ill at Pupiao. Poor
+"Bones" and the pock-marked coolie died, and Laotseng lay ill in the
+hotel there for weeks, and, when he recovered sufficiently to go on to
+Tali, he had to go without the three loads, which the landlord of the
+inn detained, pending the payment of his board and lodging and the
+burial expenses of his two companions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+BHAMO, MANDALAY, RANGOON, AND CALCUTTA.
+
+
+The finest residence in Bhamo is, of course, the American mission.
+America nobly supports her self-sacrificing and devoted sons who go
+forth to arrest the "awful ruin of souls" among the innumerable millions
+of Asia, who are "perishing without hope, having sinned without law."
+The missionary in charge told me that he labours with a "humble heart to
+bring a knowledge of the Saving Truth to the perishing heathen among the
+Kachins." His appointment is one which even a worldly-minded man might
+covet. I will give an instance of his methods. This devoted evangelist
+told me that a poor woman, a Kachin Christian, in whose welfare he felt
+deep personal interest, was, he greatly feared, dying from
+blood-poisoning at a small Christian village one hour's ride up the
+river from Bhamo; and he had little doubt that some surgical
+interference in her case would save her life. I at once offered to go
+and see her. I had received great kindness from many American
+missionaries in China, and it would give me great pleasure, I said, if I
+could be of any service.
+
+The missionary professed to be grateful for my offer, but, instead of
+arranging to go that afternoon, named seven o'clock the following
+morning as the hour when he would call for me to take me to the village.
+At the time appointed I was ready; I waited, but no missionary came.
+There was a slight drizzle, sufficient to prevent his going to the sick
+woman but not sufficient to deter him from going to market to the
+Irrawaddy steamer, where I accidentally met him. So far from being
+abashed when he saw me, he took the occasion to tell me what he will, I
+know, pardon me for thinking an inexcusable untruth. He had written, he
+said, to the poor woman telling her, dying as he believed her to be, to
+come down to Bhamo by boat to see me.
+
+In Bhamo I stayed in the comfortable house of the Deputy Commissioner,
+and was treated with the most pleasant hospitality. To my regret, the
+Deputy Commissioner was down the river, and I did not see him. He is
+regarded as one of the ablest men in the service. His rise has been
+rapid, and he was lately invested with the C.I.E.--there seems, indeed,
+to be no position in Burma that he might not aspire to. In his absence
+his office was being administered by the Assistant Commissioner, a
+courteous young Englishman, who gave me my first experience of the Civil
+Service. I could not but envy the position of this young fellow, and
+marvel at the success which attends our method of administering the
+Indian Empire. Here was a young man of twenty-four, acting as governor
+with large powers over a tract of country of hundreds of square miles--a
+new country requiring for its proper administration a knowledge of law,
+of finance, of trade, experience of men, and ability to deal with the
+conflicting interests of several native races. Superior to all other
+authorities, civil and military, in his district, he was considered fit
+to fill this post--and success showed his fitness--because a year or two
+before he had been one of forty crammed candidates out of 200 who had
+taken the highest places in a series of examinations in Latin, English,
+mathematics, &c. With the most limited experience of human life, he had
+obtained his position in exactly the same way that a Chinese Mandarin
+does his--by competitive examination in subjects which, even less than
+in the case of the Chinese, had little bearing upon his future work; and
+now, like a Chinese Mandarin, "there are few things he isn't."
+
+On the face of it no system appears more preposterous; in its results no
+system was ever more successful. The Assistant Commissioner early learns
+self-reliance, decision, and ability to wield authority; and he can
+always look forward to the time when he may become Chief Commissioner.
+
+There is a wonderful mixture of types in Bhamo. Nowhere in the world,
+not even in Macao, is there a greater intermingling of races. Here live
+in cheerful promiscuity Britishers and Chinese, Shans and Kachins, Sikhs
+and Madrasis, Punjabis, Arabs, German Jews and French adventurers,
+American missionaries and Japanese ladies.
+
+There are many ruined pagodas and some wooden temples which, however, do
+not display the higher features of Burmese architecture. There is a
+club, of course; a polo and football ground, and a cricket ground.
+Inside the fort, among the barracks, there is a building which has a
+double debt to pay, being a theatre at one end and a church at the
+other, the same athletic gentleman being the chief performer at both
+places. But, at its best, Bhamo is a forlorn, miserable, and wretched
+station, where all men seem to regard it as their first duty to the
+stranger to apologise to him for being there.
+
+The distinguished Chinese scholar and traveller, E. Colborne Baber, who
+wrote the classic book of travel in Western China, was formerly British
+Resident in Bhamo. He spoke Chinese unusually well and was naturally
+proud of his accomplishment. Now the ordinary Chinaman has this feature
+in common with many of the European races, that, if he thinks you cannot
+speak his language, he _will_ not understand you, even if you speak to
+him with perfect correctness of idiom and tone. And Baber had an
+experience of this which deeply hurt his pride. Walking one day in the
+neighbourhood of Bhamo, he met two Chinese--strangers--and began
+speaking to them in his best Mandarin. They heard him with unmoved
+stolidity, and, when he had finished, one turned to his companion and
+said, as if struck with his discovery, "the language of these foreign
+barbarians sounds not unlike our own!"
+
+In Bhamo I had the pleasure of meeting the three members of the Boundary
+Commission who represented us in some preliminary delimitation questions
+with the Chinese Government. A better choice could not have been made.
+M. Martini, a Frenchman, has been twenty years in Upper Burma, and is
+our D.S.P. (District Superintendent of Police). Mr. Warry, the Chinese
+adviser to the Burmese Government, is one of the ablest men who ever
+graduated from the Consular Staff in China; while Captain H. R. Davies,
+of the Staff Corps, who is on special duty in the Intelligence
+Department, is not only an exceptionally able officer, but is the most
+accomplished linguist of Upper Burma. These were the three
+representatives.
+
+I sold my pony in Bhamo. I was exceedingly sorry to part with it, for it
+had come with me 800 miles in thirty days, over an unusually difficult
+road, at great variations of altitude, and amid many changes of climate.
+And it was always in good spirit, brave and hardy, carrying me as surely
+the last twenty miles as it had the first twenty. Yet, when I came to
+sell it, I was astonished to learn how many were its defects. Its
+height, which was 12.3 in Nampoung, had shrunk three days later to 11.3
+in Bhamo. This one subaltern told me who came to look at the pony with
+the view, he said, of making me an offer. Another officer proved to me
+that the off foreleg was gone hopelessly; a third confirmed this
+diagnosis of his friend, and in a clinical lecture demonstrated that the
+poor beast was spavined, and that its near hind frog was rotten, "as all
+Chinese ponies' are," he added. One of the mounted constabulary, a smart
+officer, fortunately discovered in time that the pony was a roarer;
+while the Hungarian Israelite who lends help on notes of hand,
+post-obits, personal applications, and other insecurities, and is on
+terms of friendly intimacy with most of the garrison, when about to make
+an offer, found, to his great regret, that the pony's hind legs were
+even more defective than the fore. The end of it was that I had to sell
+the pony--for what it cost me. I am indebted to the Reverend Mr.
+Roberts, of the American Baptist Mission, for helping me to sell my
+pony. Mr. Roberts has a pious gift for buying ponies and selling
+them--at a profit. He offered me 40 rupees for my pony. I mentioned this
+offer at the Bhamo Club, when a civilian present at once offered me 50
+rupees for the pony; he did not know the pony, he explained, but--he
+knew Roberts.
+
+In a steamer of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company I came down the river
+from Bhamo to Mandalay. When I left the Commissioner's bungalow, the
+entire staff of the establishment and of some neighbouring bungalows
+assembled to do me honour, creeping up to me, and with deep humility
+carrying each an article of my possessions from my room down to the
+porch. There were the _dhobie_ and _bearer_, the waterman with his
+goatskin waterbag, the washerman who washed my blue Chinese garments as
+white as his own, the _syce_ who did not collect grass, the cook who
+sent me ten bad eggs in three days, and the Christian Madrasi, the
+laziest rascal in Bhamo, who early confessed to me his change of faith
+and the transformation it had effected in the future prospects of his
+soul. There was the Burmese watchman, and the English-speaking Burmese
+clerk, and the coolie who went to the bazaar for me, and many others.
+They lined the stairs as I came out, and placed their hands reverently
+to their foreheads when I passed by. It was pleasant to see such
+disinterested evidence of their good will, and my only regret was that I
+could not reward them according to their deserts. But to the Chinese
+coolie who was grinning to see my paltry outfit carried by so many
+hands, and who gathered together all I possessed and swung off with it
+down past the temples to the steamer landing in the native city, I gave
+a day's pay, and cheerfully--though he then asked for more.
+
+In Mandalay I was taken to the club, and passed many hours there reading
+the home papers and wandering through its gilded halls. Few clubs in the
+world have such a sumptuous setting as this, for it is installed in the
+throne-room and chambers and reception-halls of the palace of King
+Theebaw.
+
+In the very centre of the building is a seven-storeyed spire,
+"emblematic of royalty and religion," which the Burmese look upon as the
+"exact centre of creation." The reception-hall at the foot of the
+throne is now the English chapel; the reading-room with its gilded daïs
+where the Queen sat on her throne, with its lofty roof, its pillars of
+teak, and walls all ablaze with gilding, was the throne-room of
+Theebaw's chief Queen.
+
+Mandalay is largely Chinese, and on the outskirts of the city there is a
+handsome temple which bears the charming inscription, so characteristic
+of the Chinese, "enlightenment finds its way even among the outer
+barbarians."
+
+There is a military hospital with two nursing sisters, highly trained
+ladies from Bart.'s. Australians are now so widely distributed over the
+world that it did not surprise me to find that one of the two sisters
+comes from Melbourne.
+
+From Mandalay I went by train to Rangoon, where I lived in a pretty
+villa among noble trees on the lower slope of the hill which is crowned
+with the famous golden pagoda, the "Shway-dagon," the most sacred temple
+of Indo-China. We looked out upon the park and the royal lake. I early
+went to the Intelligence Department and saw Major Couchman. In his
+office I met the chief Chinese interpreter, a Chinaman with a rare
+genius for languages. He is a native of Fuhkien province, and, of
+course, speaks the Fuhkien dialect; he knows also Cantonese and
+Mandarin. In addition, he possesses French, Hindustani, Burmese, Shan,
+and Sanscrit, and, in an admirable translation which he has made of a
+Chinese novel into English, he frequently quotes Latin. Fit assistant he
+would make to Max Müller; his services command a high salary.
+
+The Chinese in Rangoon are a predominating force in the prosperity of
+the city. They have deeply impressed their potentiality upon the
+community. "It seems almost certain," says a great authority, perhaps
+_the_ greatest authority on Burma--J. G. Scott (Shway Yoe)--"that in no
+very long time Burma, or, at any rate, the large trading towns of Burma,
+will be for all practical purposes absorbed by the Chinese traders, just
+as Singapore and Penang are virtually Chinese towns. Unless some
+marvellous upheaval of energy takes place in the Burmese character, the
+plodding, unwearying Chinaman is almost certainly destined to overrun
+the country to the exclusion of the native race."
+
+The artisans of Rangoon are largely Chinese, and the carpenters
+exclusively so. The Chinese marry Burmese women, and, treating their
+wives with the consideration which the Chinaman invariably extends to
+his foreign wife in a foreign country, they are desired as husbands even
+above the Burmans. Next to the British, the only indispensable element
+in the community is now the Chinese.
+
+The best known figure in Burma is the Reverend John Ebenezer Marks,
+D.D., Principal of the St. John's College of the S.P.G. Dr. Marks has
+been thirty-five years in Burma, is still hale and hearty, brimful of
+reminiscences, and is one of the most amusing companions in the world. I
+think it was he who converted King Theebaw to Christianity. His school
+is a curiosity. It is an anthropological institute with perhaps the
+finest collection of human cross-breeds in existence. It is away out
+beyond the gaol, in large wooden buildings set in extensive playgrounds.
+Here he has 550 students, all but four of whom are Asiatics of fifteen
+different nationalities--Chinese, Karens, Kachins, Shans, and a varied
+assortment of Hindoos and Malays, both pure and blended with the native
+Burmese. All the different races represented in Burma have intermarried
+with the native Burmese, and the resulting half-breeds have crossed
+with other half-breeds. Most of the better class Eurasian boys
+(European-Asian) are educated here, some being supported by their
+fathers, some not. The former Dr. Marks ingeniously calls after their
+mothers; the latter, who have been neglected, retain the names (when
+they are known), of their fathers. It is amusing to meet among the
+latter the names of so many brave Englishmen who, in the earlier days
+when morals had not attained the strictness that now characterises them,
+gallantly served their country in Burma.
+
+No woman in the world is more catholic in her tastes than the Burmese.
+She bestows her loves as variously as the Japanese. She marries with
+equal readiness Protestant or Catholic, Turk, Infidel, or Jew. She
+clings cheerfully to whichever will support her; but above all she
+desires the Chinaman. No one treats her so well as the Chinaman. If she
+is capable of experiencing the emotion of love for any being outside her
+own race, she feels it for the Chinaman, who is of a cognate race to her
+own, is hard-working, frugal, and industrious, permits her to live in
+idleness, and delights her with presents, loving her children with that
+affection which the Chinaman has ever been known to bestow upon his
+offspring. The Chino-Burmese is not quite the equal of his father, but
+he is markedly superior to the Burmese. The best half-caste in the East
+is, of course, the Eurasian of British parentage. Englishmen going to
+Burma are, as a rule, picked men, physically powerful, courageous,
+energetic, and enterprising; for it is the possession of these qualities
+which has sent them to the East, either for business or in the service
+of their country. And their Burmese companions--of course I speak of a
+condition of things which is gradually ceasing to exist--are all picked
+women, selected for the comeliness of their persons and the sweetness of
+their manners.
+
+After a stay of two or three weeks in Rangoon, I went round by the
+British India steamer to Calcutta. Ill fortune awaited me here. The
+night after my arrival I was laid down with remittent fever, and a few
+days later I nearly died. The reader will, I am sure, pardon me for
+obtruding this purely personal matter. But, as I opened this book with a
+testimony of gratitude to the distinguished surgeon who cut a spear
+point from my body, where nine months before it had been thrust by a
+savage in New Guinea, so should I be sorry to close this narrative
+without recording a word of thanks to those who befriended me in
+Calcutta.
+
+I was a stranger, knowing only two men in all Calcutta; but they were
+friends in need, who looked after me during my illness with the greatest
+kindness. A leading doctor of Calcutta attended me, and treated me with
+unremitting attention and great skill. To Mr. John Bathgate and Mr.
+Maxwell Prophit and to Dr. Arnold Caddy I owe a lasting debt of
+gratitude. And what shall I say of that kind nurse--dark of complexion,
+but most fair to look upon--whose presence in the sick room almost
+consoled me for being ill? Bless her dear heart! Even hydrochlorate of
+quinine tasted sweet from her fingers.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+[Illustration: CHINESE MAP OF CHUNGKING.]
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  Adridge, Dr., of Ichang, 10
+
+  d'Amade, Capt., in Yunnan, 150
+
+  Ancestral worship, 67
+
+  Anderson, Dr. J., cited, 274, 277
+
+  Anpien, 79
+
+  Anti-foreign riots, 9, 54, 268
+
+  Arsenal in Yunnan, 175
+
+  Augustine mission, 6
+
+
+  Baber, E. C., cited, 51, 90, 239, 267;
+    in Yunnan, 149;
+    in Bhamo, 285;
+    on distances, 187
+
+  Ball, Dyer, cited, 113, 224
+
+  Baller, Rev. F. W., cited, 113
+
+  Banks and banking, 95, 96, 163, 164
+
+  Barrow, Sir John, cited, 101, 110, 191
+
+  Béraud, Père, of Suifu, 63, 65
+
+  Bhamo (Singai), 279-287
+
+  Bible Christian mission, in Chaotong, 99;
+    in Tongchuan, 121
+
+  Blakiston, Capt., cited, 173
+
+  Blodget, Rev. Dr., cited, 123
+
+  Boell, M., of _Le Temps_, in Yunnan, 150
+
+  Bonvalot, G., in Yunnan, 149
+
+  Bridges, some notable, 26, 83, 85, 118, 186, 233, 240, 242
+
+  Broomhall, B., cited, 66, 67
+
+  Browne, Col. Horace, 246, 267, 268
+
+  Bugs in China and Spain, 55, 56
+
+  Burdon, Bishop, cited, 123
+
+
+  Cameron, Dr., missionary traveller, 213
+
+  Cantonese, 207;
+    in Australia, 222-224
+
+  Caravans of cotton, 226, 271
+
+  Carruthers, A. G. H., assistant commissioner of customs, Chungking, 51
+
+  Cash currency of China, 161, 162
+
+  Chairen, the policeman of China, 77, 190
+
+  Chang-chen Nien, Brigadier-General, Tengyueh, 181, 246
+
+  Chang Chi Tung, the viceroy, 3, 4
+
+  Chang-show-hsien, 33
+
+  Chang Yan Miun, the giant of Yunnan, 184, 185
+
+  Chaochow, 200
+
+  Chaotong, the city of, 97-116;
+    its converts, 178
+
+  Chehki, 137
+
+  Ch'en, merchant prince, 29, 30
+
+  Chennan-chow, 192
+
+  Chentu, city, 62;
+    river, 62
+
+  Chiang, telegraph clerk, Yunnan, 168
+
+  China Inland Mission, in Hankow, 6;
+    in Wanhsien, 27-29;
+    in Chungking, 49;
+    in Suifu, 65, 73, 75;
+    in Yunnan, 177;
+    in Tali, 213-216;
+    results in Yunnan province, 178;
+    in China generally, 180;
+    its teaching, 65-71
+
+  Chinese, in Australia, 222-224;
+    in Burma, 288-290
+
+  Chinese, avarice, 79;
+    benevolence, 29;
+    beauty of women, 13;
+    cards, visiting, 181, 182;
+    characters, reverence for, 170;
+    courtesy, 255;
+    desire to have children, 197, 198;
+    etiquette, 230;
+    friendliness, 140;
+    good nature, 117;
+    gratitude, 27, 28;
+    inaccuracy, 99;
+    indifference to pain, 104,
+      to sound, 74, 169;
+    irreverence, 195;
+    justification by works, 169;
+    kindness to children, 113, 290;
+    laughter, 195;
+    love at first sight, 153-155;
+    politeness, 196, 197, 201, 255;
+    respect for old age, 117, 198;
+    thoughtfulness, 189;
+    true felicity, 180;
+    wonderful memory, 167, 168
+
+  Chipatzu, 22
+
+  Chueh, telegraph operator and interpreter, 248
+
+  Chungking, city of, 34-39
+
+  Chuhsing-fu, 187
+
+  Clarke, Mr. G. W., missionary traveller, 213
+
+  Clarke, Marcus, cited, 210
+
+  Coal on the Yangtse, 32
+
+  Coffins in China, 92, 137, 265
+
+  Colquhoun, A. R., in Yunnan, 150
+
+  Conversion, instances of rapid, 179
+
+  Converts, in China, 5;
+    Wanhsien, 28;
+    Chungking, 49;
+    Suifu, 65;
+    Chaotong, 99;
+    Tongchuan, 121;
+    Yunnan City, 177;
+    Yunnan Province, 178, 179;
+    Talifu, 214
+
+  Cooke, G. W., cited, 46, 176
+
+  Coolies' enormous loads, 90, 91
+
+  Couchman, Major, cited, 274;
+    in Rangoon, 288
+
+  Crockery, 118, 119
+
+  Customs, China Inland (likin-barriers), 21, 48, 97, 118, 242, 272, 277
+
+  Customs, Imperial Maritime, 13, 25, 35-38
+
+
+  Davenport, Dr. Cecil, medical missionary, Chungking, 49
+
+  Davies, Capt. H. R., Bhamo, 285
+
+  Davis, Sir J. F., cited, 57
+
+  Dedeken, Père, of Kuldja, 150
+
+  De Gorostarza, Père, Provicaire in Yunnan, 172
+
+  De Guignes, cited, 140
+
+  Distances in China, 141, 278
+
+  Doctors in China, 107-110; mule-doctor, 145
+
+  Doolittle, Rev. Justus, cited, 69, 130, 170
+
+  Doudart de la Grée, in Yunnan, 149
+
+  Douglas, R. K., cited, 127
+
+  Dudgeon, Dr. J., cited, 112, 130
+
+  Du Halde, cited, 90, 108, 176
+
+  Dymond, Rev. Frank, missionary, Chaotong, 98, 99
+
+
+  Eclipse of the Sun, 125, 126
+
+  Edkins, Rev. Dr. J., cited, 130
+
+  Eitel, Rev. Dr. E. J., cited, 129
+
+  Excoffier, Père, of Yunnan, 146
+
+
+  Famine in Chaotong, 99;
+    in Tongchuan, 127;
+    on the way to Yunnan, 137-144
+
+  Fan-yien-tsen, 82
+
+  Farrar, Ven. Archdeacon, cited, 191
+
+  Feng-hsiang, Gorge, 21, 30
+
+  Fengshui-ling, 240
+
+  Feng-tu-hsien, 33
+
+  Fenouil, Monseigneur, of Yunnan, 171, 172
+
+  Fraser, Consul E. H., Chungking, 45
+
+  Fuchou, 33
+
+  _Fungshui_, 157, 175
+
+  Fung-yen-tung, 205
+
+  Fu-to-kuan, fort of, 52
+
+
+  Ganai, Shan town, 254-256
+
+  Gates of a Chinese city, 174
+
+  Geary, H. Grattan, cited, 43
+
+  Giles, H. A., cited, 129
+
+  Gill, Mr. Hope, missionary, Wanhsien, 27
+
+  Gill, Capt. W., cited, 17, 90
+
+  Girls in China, 13, 14, 139, 140;
+    bought, 155;
+    sold, 100, 101;
+    price of, 100
+
+  Goitre, 101, 145, 155, 185;
+    its prevalence, 227, 228
+
+  Gold, on the Yangtse, 23;
+    in Yunnan, 158-160
+
+  Graham, Mr., missionary, Yunnan, 177, 219
+
+  Grosvenor Mission in Yunnan, 149
+
+  Guinness, Miss G., cited, 213
+
+
+  Haas, M., 42-44
+
+  Hankow, the city of, 3-8
+
+  Hanyang, 3
+
+  Heads of criminals, 192;
+    of dacoits, 273, 274
+
+  Hirth, Dr. F., Commissioner of Customs, 40
+
+  Hobson, H. E., cited, 31
+
+  Hokiangpu, 222
+
+  Hongmuho, 270, 275-277
+
+  Hosie, A. M., cited, 17;
+    in Yunnan, 149
+
+  Hsiakwan, 200, 219, 221
+
+  Hsintan rapids, 15
+
+  Huanglien-pu, 226;
+    goitre at, 228
+
+  Huc, Abbé, cited, 176
+
+
+  Iangkai, 144
+
+  Ichang, 9
+
+  Infanticide in China, 129, 130;
+    in Chaotong, 101;
+    in Tongchuan, 129
+
+  Inquirers at Wanhsien, 28;
+    Yunnan, 177;
+    Tali, 215
+
+  Iremonger, Capt. R. G., Nampoung, 275
+
+
+  Jensen, Mr. C., in Yunnan, 147;
+    experiences in China, 156, 157;
+    on distances, 187;
+    to construct line to Burma, 238
+
+  Jesuit Missionaries in China, 123, 173, 176
+
+  John, Rev. Dr. Griffith, cited, 130
+
+
+  Kachins ("protected barbarians"), 254, 259, 270, 273, 274
+
+  Kanhliang, Shan chief, 245
+
+  Kaw Hong Beng, Private Secretary to Viceroy, 4, 5
+
+  Kiangti, 117
+
+  Kong-shan, 141
+
+  Kueichow on the Yangtse, 18
+
+  Kuhtsing, its converts, 178
+
+  Kung Chao-yuan, Minister to Great Britain, 73
+
+  Kung-t'-an-ho, 33
+
+  Kweichou-fu, 21
+
+
+  Lacouperie, Terrien de, cited, 257
+
+  Lanchihsien, 60
+
+  Laokai, 148, 159
+
+  Laowatan river, 79; town, 85
+
+  Lay, G. T., cited, 13, 45
+
+  Leitoupo, 139
+
+  Lenz, F. G., in Yunnan, 150, 151
+
+  Li Han Chang, in Yunnan, 149
+
+  Li Hung Chang, 72, 149;
+    on opium, 46, 190
+
+  _Ling chi_, 69, 231, 232
+
+  Li Pi Chang, Telegraph Manager, Yunnan, 151-153, 181, 184
+
+  Li-Sieh-tai, of Tengyueh, 246
+
+  Little, A. J., cited, 13, 122;
+    in Chungking, 51
+
+  Little river, 40, 44, 52
+
+  Liu, Colonel, of Chinese Boundary Commission, 244, 245, 255
+
+  Liu, the Viceroy, 72
+
+  Lockhart, Dr. W., cited, 28, 130
+
+  Loh-Ta-Jen, Chentai at Ichang, 9
+
+  London Missionary Society, Hankow, 6;
+    Chungking, 49
+
+  Lorain, Père, Procureur in Chungking, 50
+
+  Luchow, 60
+
+  Lu-feng-hsien, 186
+
+  Luho, 187
+
+
+  MacCarthy, Justin, cited, 210
+
+  MacGowan, Rev. Dr. D. J., cited, 130
+
+  Maire, Père, of Tongchuan, 133
+
+  Mander, S. S., cited, 47, 191
+
+  Manyuen (Manwyne), 264-269
+
+  Marco Polo, cited, 238;
+    in Yunnan, 149
+
+  Margary, A. R., cited, 266;
+    in Yunnan, 149, 246;
+    his murder, 264-269
+
+  Marks, Rev. Dr. J. E., 289, 290
+
+  Martin, Rev. Dr. W. A. P., cited, 67, 170
+
+  Martini, M. (D.S.P.), in Bhamo, 285
+
+  Mason, Rev. G. L., cited, 28
+
+  Mateer, Rev. C. W., cited, 28, 140
+
+  Meadows, T. T., cited, 113, 154
+
+  Medhurst, Rev. W. H., cited, 87 (wrongly written "Meadows"), 197
+
+  Medhurst, Sir W. H., cited, 5, 45, 108
+
+  Medicines in China, 83, 107-110
+
+  Mekong river, 221, 233, 234
+
+  Mencius, cited, 198
+
+  Methodist Episcopalian Mission, 40, 54
+
+  Michie, A., cited, 124
+
+  Missionaries, success in China, 5;
+    numbers in Hankow, 6
+
+  Missions Étrangères de Paris, 6, 64, 65, 105, 122, 146, 171
+
+  Mi Tsang Gorge, 17
+
+  Mohammedans, and opium, 112;
+    in Chaotong, 113, 114;
+    near Tongchuan, 128;
+    in Tali, 216;
+    insurrection, 145, 185, 187, 203;
+    superiority, 216;
+    the milkman, 217
+
+  Momien (Tengyueh), the city of, 243-249
+
+  Money, changing, 95;
+    remittance of, 95
+
+  Morgan, C. L., cited, 66, 70
+
+  Morphia, imported, 48, 49
+
+  Moule, Bishop, cited, 130
+
+  Moutot, Père, Provicaire in Suifu, 63, 65
+
+  Muirhead, Rev. W., cited, 123
+
+  Mungtze, 148-150, 159
+
+  Myothit (Santien), 278, 279
+
+
+  Nampoung, encampment, 270, 275-278
+
+  Nantien, fort of, 250, 251
+
+
+  Opium, imports and exports of, 46-48;
+    in Hankow, 3;
+    in Chungking, 45;
+    in Suifu, 72, 73;
+    demoralising influence of, 41;
+    ---- refuge, Chungking, 41;
+    ---- ports, 33;
+    poisoning by, 111, 112, 212;
+    my chairbearers and, 94;
+    my coolie and, 219;
+    appeal for suppression, 190, 191
+
+  d'Orleans, Prince Henri, cited, 148;
+    in Yunnan, 149
+
+
+  Parricide in China, 69
+
+  Pearson, Prof. C. H., cited, 186, 224
+
+  _Peking Gazette_, cited, 53, 169, 231
+
+  Pen, telegraph manager, Tengyueh, 244
+
+  Pêng Yü-lin, high commissioner, cited, 192
+
+  Pidgin-English, 3, 9, 18
+
+  Piercy, Rev. G., cited, 191
+
+  Ping-shan-pa, 13
+
+  Pits for the dead, 133
+
+  Plague, bubonic, in Yunnan, 213
+
+  Pollard, Rev. S., missionary, Tongchuan, 121
+
+  Poppy, 37, 57, 78, 84, 118, 142;
+    surreptitiously grown, 46
+
+  Post-offices, 95, 96
+
+  Prisons in China, 209-211
+
+  Punishments in China, 103, 104, 136, 239
+
+  Pupêng, 193
+
+  Pupiao, 236;
+    my men die at, 281
+
+
+  Reade, Charles, cited, 209
+
+  Reed, Miss M., cited, 191
+
+  Reid, Rev. G., cited, 41, 192
+
+  "Rice Christians," 6
+
+  Roberts, Rev. Mr., missionary, Bhamo, 286
+
+  Rockhill, W. W., cited, 280, 281
+
+
+  St. Thomas, visit to Suifu, 65
+
+  Salween river, 237-240
+
+  Santa, Shan town, 259-263
+
+  Schehleh, 272, 277
+
+  Scott, J. G., cited, 287, 289
+
+  Sengki-ping, 84
+
+  Settee, fort of, 274, 275
+
+  Shachiaokai, 192
+
+  Shang-kwan, 204
+
+  Shans, 240, 252, 254, 256-269
+
+  Shih-pao-chai, 32
+
+  Shuichai, 234
+
+  Shweli river, 242
+
+  Silver in Yunnan, 161, 163;
+    in Tengyueh, 249
+
+  Singai (Bhamo), 218
+
+  Sladen, Major, 267
+
+  Small feet, 14, 101, 153
+
+  Small-pox, 212, 213
+
+  Smith, Rev. A. H., cited, 41, 269
+
+  Smith, Rev. John, missionary, Talifu, 202, 209, 214, 219
+
+  Smith, Mr. Stanley P., his rapid conversion of a Chinaman, 279
+
+  Soldiers, their weapons, 234, 241, 249;
+    fierceness of aspect, 263;
+    courage, 271
+
+  "Squeezing" in China, 151, 152
+
+  Stead, W. T., cited, 152
+
+  Suicide by opium, 111;
+    land of, 111, 112
+
+  Suifu, the city of, 62-75
+
+  Sutherland, Rev. Dr. A., cited, 123, 173
+
+  Swinburne, A. C., cited, 14
+
+  Szechuen, "country of the clouds," 82;
+    population, 186;
+    contrasted with Yunnan, 85-88;
+    Catholic stronghold, 64
+
+
+  Taipingkai, Shan town, 263
+
+  Taiping-pu, 226
+
+  Taiping river, 246, 250, 252, 258, 278, 279
+
+  Tak-wan-hsien, 92, 94, 96
+
+  Tak-wan-leo, 92
+
+  Talichao, 234
+
+  Talifu, the city of, 202-219;
+    its converts, 178
+
+  Tanto, 82
+
+  Taoshakwan, 86
+
+  Tao[=u]en, 116
+
+  Tawantzu, 92
+
+  Taylor, Rev. Dr. J. Hudson, cited, 46, 67, 68, 70, 179;
+    on opium, 46;
+    on ancestral worship, 67;
+    Chinese in lake of fire, 67, 68
+
+  Tchih-li-pu, 86
+
+  Telegraph, in Yunnan, 147;
+    in Tali, 208;
+    in Yungchang, 234;
+    in Tengyueh, 243-248;
+    system of telegraphing Chinese characters, 166-168;
+    telegraphic transfers, 95, 159
+
+  Tengyueh (Momien), the city of, 243-249
+
+  "Term question," 122, 123
+
+  Theatre in Tengyueh, 246, 247
+
+  Tommé, M., in Yunnan, 150
+
+  Tongchuan, the city of, 120-134;
+    its converts, 178
+
+  Tonquin, 148, 149
+
+  Tragedy of the Tali valley, 220, 221
+
+  Tremberth, Rev. Mr., missionary, Chaotong, 101
+
+  Tsen Yü-ying, the cruel Viceroy, 267
+
+  Tung-lo-hsia, 35
+
+  Turner, Rev. F. Storrs, cited, 46
+
+  Tu Wen Hsiu, the Mohammedan Sultan, 203
+
+
+  Ullathorne, Bishop, cited, 210
+
+
+  Vial, Père, of Yunnan, 150
+
+  Voltaire, cited, 173
+
+  Von Richthofen, cited, 90
+
+
+  Wanhsien, the city of, 24-31
+
+  Warren, Consul Pelham, of Hankow, 8
+
+  Warry, Mr., Chinese adviser to the Burmese Government, 229, 261, 285
+
+  Wherry, Rev. J., cited, 123
+
+  Widows, virtuous, 52, 53, 78
+
+  Williams, Rev. Dr. S. Wells, cited, 47, 110, 126, 197, 267
+
+  Williamson, Rev. Dr. A. W., cited, 70, 223
+
+  Wong, banker in Yunnan, 163-166
+
+  Wong-wen-shao, the Viceroy, 180, 181
+
+  Woodin, Rev. S. F., cited, 66, 179
+
+  Woolston, Miss S. H., cited, 14
+
+  Wuchang, 3
+
+  Wuntho Sawbwa, 245, 253, 254
+
+  Wushan Gorge, 20
+
+  Wushan-hsien, 20
+
+
+  Yangki river, 221
+
+  "_Yang kweitze_", 18, 25, 228, 229
+
+  Yanglin, 145
+
+  Yangpi, 224
+
+  Yang Yu-ko, Imperialist general, 203, 204
+
+  Yeh, of the Chinese Boundary Commission, 224
+
+  Yehtan rapid, 19
+
+  Yenwanshan, 193
+
+  Ying-wu-kwan, 193
+
+  Yuenchuan, 60
+
+  Yungchang, the city of, 234, 235
+
+  Yunnan, the city of, 147-183;
+    its converts, 177;
+    the province of, 85-88;
+    its converts, 178
+
+  Yunnanhsien, 196
+
+  Yunnan Yeh, 193
+
+[Illustration: ROUGH SKETCH-MAP OF CHINA AND BURMA SHOWING AUTHOR'S
+ROUTE FROM SHANGHAI TO RANGOON.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                    |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Page vii: Hankow replaced with Ichang in chapter title     |
+    | Page  ix: Teng-yueh replaced with Tengyueh                 |
+    | Page   8: "My Chinese Passport" replaced with "The         |
+    |            Author's Chinese Passport"                      |
+    | Page   9: Kweichou replaced with Kweichow                  |
+    | Page  22: Kueichou replaced with Kweichou                  |
+    | Page  29: mid-day replaced with midday; mission replaced   |
+    |           with missionary                                  |
+    | Page  30: Kueichou replaced with Kweichou                  |
+    | Page  32: hill-sides replaced with hillsides               |
+    | Page  33: tow-line replaced with towline                   |
+    | Page  34: Tung-to-hsia replaced with Tung-lo-hsia          |
+    | Page  44: Chung-king replaced with Chungking               |
+    | Page  47: Fuh-kien replaced with Fuhkien                   |
+    | Page  57: rape seed replaced with rape-seed                |
+    | Page  58: mainroad replaced with main road                 |
+    | Page  61: Comma after "Chinese, who," removed              |
+    | Page  62: tow-rope replaced with towrope                   |
+    | Page  63: Tali-fu replaced with Talifu                     |
+    | Page  64: trôp matèrialistes italicised                    |
+    | Page  69: ling-chi replaced with Ling chi                  |
+    | Page  76: Semi-colon following Chaotong replaced with      |
+    |           comma                                            |
+    | Page  77: Takwan-hsien replaced with Tak-wan-hsien, twice  |
+    | Page  78: Comma after "yellow rape-seed" removed;          |
+    |           half-penny replaced with halfpenny               |
+    | Page  91: Chen-tu replaced with Chentu                     |
+    | Page  96: ill paved replaced with ill-paved                |
+    | Page  97: Semi-colon following Chaotong replaced with      |
+    |           comma                                            |
+    | Page 105: Etrangères replaced with Étrangères              |
+    | Page 111: trival replaced with trivial                     |
+    | Page 118: main-road replaced with main road                |
+    | Page 125: Semi-colon after Tongchuan replaced with comma   |
+    | Page 139: Comma after "other heathen country" replaced     |
+    |           with full stop                                   |
+    | Page 142: Kongshan replaced with Kong-shan                 |
+    | Page 149: Chung-king corrected to Chungking                |
+    | Page 150: Yesutang replaced with Yesu-tang                 |
+    | Page 154: Double quotes inside double quotes replaced with |
+    |           single quotes (single quotes used for the last   |
+    |           reported speech in the story)                    |
+    | Page 155: Single quote after "pretty safe" added;          |
+    |           thick-neck replaced with thickneck               |
+    | Page 156: Momein replaced with Momien                      |
+    | Page 161: uncivilized and civilization replaced with       |
+    |           uncivilised and civilisation                     |
+    | Page 162: Mexican Dollar replaced with Mexican dollar      |
+    | Page 164: Chung-king replaced with Chungking               |
+    | Page 172: Muntze replaced with Mungtze                     |
+    | Page 184: Tong-chuan replaced with Tongchuan               |
+    | Page 186: Tai-ping replaced with Taiping                   |
+    | Page 190: Full stop added after "in rags and barefoot"     |
+    | Page 192: Tali replaced with Talifu                        |
+    | Page 193: a'accord replaced with d'accord                  |
+    | Page 197: Question mark after "...that of a doctor?"       |
+    |           replaced with full stop                          |
+    | Page 199: mid-day replaced with midday                     |
+    | Page 200: Yunnen replaced with Yunnan                      |
+    | Page 204: Hsia-kwan replaced with Hsiakwan, twice          |
+    | Page 206: Commas added after "we replied" and "(you to go  |
+    |           on)"                                             |
+    | Page 208: Mahommedan replaced with Mohammedan              |
+    | Page 219: Yung-chang replaced with Yungchang               |
+    | Page 220: Tali-fu replaced with Talifu                     |
+    | Page 230: splended replaced with splendid                  |
+    | Page 233: Full stop removed after Rivers; tea house        |
+    |           replaced with teahouse                           |
+    | Page 236: inn-keeper replaced with innkeeper               |
+    | Page 238: Laotsêng replaced with Laotseng                  |
+    | Page 246: Yung-chang replaced with Yungchang; "and other"  |
+    |           replaced with "and another"                      |
+    | Page 249: Yunnaness replaced with Yunnanese                |
+    | Page 259: Liliputians replaced with Lilliputians           |
+    | Page 270: Full stops after Power and Kachins removed       |
+    | Page 294: Chunking replaced with Chungking                 |
+    | Page 295: Fenghsiang replaced with Feng-hsiang             |
+    | Page 296: Lingchi replaced with Ling chi                   |
+    | Page 298: Subtopics under entry "Soldiers" separated with  |
+    |           semi-colons                                      |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Inconsistent capitalisations between the Table of          |
+    | Contents and individual chapter titles have been retained. |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Discrepancies between illustration captions and those in   |
+    | the list of illustrations retained, unless noted above.    |
+    | As the illustrations were not included with the original   |
+    | scans but were located during processing of this book,     |
+    | where there have been small differences the List of        |
+    | Illustrations has generally been preferred.                |
+    |                                                            |
+    | One instance of Taouen with an unclear mark above the      |
+    | /u/, one instance of Tao[=u]en. This has been left as is.  |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Punctuation of standard abbreviations (Mr., Mrs., per      |
+    | cent., s. ) has been standardised.                         |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Pounds, shillings and pence have all been italicised.      |
+    |                                                            |
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's An Australian in China, by George Ernest Morrison
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+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of An Australian in China, by George Ernest Morrison.
+    </title>
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+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's An Australian in China, by George Ernest Morrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An Australian in China
+       Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma
+
+Author: George Ernest Morrison
+
+Release Date: September 4, 2006 [EBook #19172]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AUSTRALIAN IN CHINA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class ='bbox'>
+<h3>Transcriber's Note:</h3>
+<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in
+this text. For a complete list, please see <a href="#TN">the bottom of
+this document.</a>
+</p></div>
+
+<p><a name="img001" id="img001"></a></p>
+<div class="padding">
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/001.jpg"><img src="images/001_th.jpg" width="400" height="270" alt="THE AUTHOR IN WESTERN CHINA." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Author in Western China.</span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<h1>AN AUSTRALIAN IN CHINA</h1>
+
+<h2>BEING THE NARRATIVE OF A QUIET JOURNEY
+ACROSS CHINA TO BURMA</h2>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+<h3>GEORGE ERNEST MORRISON</h3>
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">M.D. Edin., F.R.G.S.</span></p>
+
+
+<p class='center'><i>THIRD EDITION</i><br/>
+
+LONDON: HORACE COX<br/>
+WINDSOR HOUSE, BREAM'S BUILDINGS<br/>
+E.C.<br/>
+
+MDCCCCII</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class='center'>TO</p>
+
+<h4>JOHN CHIENE, M.D.,</h4>
+
+<p class='center'>F.R.C.S.E., F.R.S.E., ETC.,<br/>
+
+PROFESSOR OF SURGERY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH,<br/>
+
+WHO GAVE ME BACK THE POWER OF LOCOMOTION.<br/>
+
+I GRATEFULLY<br/>
+
+INSCRIBE THIS VOLUME.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<p>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER I.</td><td align='right'><span class="smcap">&nbsp;&nbsp;PAGES</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">Introductory&mdash;Mainly about Missionaries and the City
+of Hankow</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_1">1-11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER II.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">From Hankow to Wanhsien, with some Account of
+Chinese Women and the Rapids of the Yangtse</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_12">12-23</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER III.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The City of Wanhsien, and the Journey from Wanhsien
+To Chungking</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_24">24-34</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER IV.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The City of Chungking&mdash;The Chinese Customs&mdash;The
+famous Monsieur Haas, and a few Words on
+the Opium Fallacy</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_35">35-49</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER V.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The Journey from Chungking to Suifu&mdash;Chinese Inns</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_50">50-62</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER VI.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The City of Suifu&mdash;The China Inland Mission, with
+some general Remarks about Missionaries in China</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_63">63-75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER VII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">Suifu to Chaotong, with some Remarks on the
+Province of Yunnan&mdash;Chinese Porters, Postal
+Arrangements, and Banks</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_76">76-96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan='2'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER VIII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The City of Chaotong, with some Remarks on its
+Poverty, Infanticide, Selling Female Children
+into Slavery, Tortures, and the Chinese Insensibility
+to Pain</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_97">97-106</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER IX.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">Mainly about Chinese Doctors</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_107">107-114</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER X.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The Journey from Chaotong to Tongchuan</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_115">115-124</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XI.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The City of Tongchuan, with some Remarks upon
+Infanticide</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_125">125-134</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">Tongchuan to Yunnan City</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_135">135-147</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XIII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">At Yunnan City</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_148">148-157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XIV.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">Gold, Banks, and Telegraphs in Yunnan</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_158">158-170</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XV.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The French Mission and the Arsenal in Yunnan City</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_171">171-182</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XVI.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The Journey from Yunnan City to Talifu</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_183">183-201</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XVII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The City of Tali&mdash;Prisons&mdash;Poisoning&mdash;Plagues and
+Missions</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_202">202-217</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XVIII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The Journey from Tali, with some Remarks on the
+Character of the Cantonese, Chinese Emigrants,
+Cretins, and Wife-beating in China</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_218">218-232</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan='2'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XIX.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The Mekong and Salween Rivers&mdash;How to Travel
+in China</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_233">233-243</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XX.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The City of Tengyueh&mdash;The Celebrated Wuntho
+Sawbwa&mdash;Shan Soldiers</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_244">244-259</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XXI.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">The Shan Town of Santa, and Manyuen, the Scene
+of Consul Margary's Murder</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_260">260-269</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XXII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">China as a Fighting Power&mdash;The Kachins&mdash;And the
+Last Stage into Bhamo</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_270">270-281</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'>CHAPTER XXIII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><p><span class="smcap">Bhamo, Mandalay, Rangoon, and Calcutta</span></p></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_282">282-291</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span><br /></p>
+
+<p class='center'><i>Mostly from Photographs by</i> <span class="smcap">Mr. C. Jensen</span> <i>of the Imperial
+Chinese Telegraphs</i>.</p>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Author in Western China</span></td><td align='right'><i><a href="#img001">Frontispiece.</a></i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Author's Chinese Passport</span></td><td align='right'><i>page</i> <a href="#img002">8</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">On a Balcony in Western China</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img003">14</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The River Yangtse at Tung-lo-hsia</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img004">34</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Memorial Archway at the Fort of Fu-to-kuan</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img005">34</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Chungking, from the opposite Bank of the Yangtse</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img006">38</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Temple Theatre in Chungking</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img007">44</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">On the Main Road To Suifu</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img008">52</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Cultivation in Terraces</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img009">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Scene in Szechuen</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img010">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Opium-smoking</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img011">72</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Temple in Szechuen</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img012">84</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Laowatan</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img013">84</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Opium-smoker of Romance</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img014">93</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Pagoda by the Wayside, Western China</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img015">118</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Big East Gate of Yunnan City</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img016">146</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">View in Yunnan City</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img017">156</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Soldiers on the Wall of Yunnan City</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img018">168</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Pagoda of Yunnan City, 250 feet high</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img019">174</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Viceroy of Two Provinces</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img020">180</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Author's Chinese Name</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img021">182</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan='2'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Giant of Yunnan</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img022">184</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The &quot;Eagle Nest Barrier,&quot; on the Road to Talifu</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img023">192</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Snow-clad Mountains behind Talifu</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img024">204</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Memorial in a Temple near Talifu</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img025">220</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Descent to the River Mekong</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img026">232</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Inside View of a Suspension Bridge</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img027">236</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The River Salween</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img028">240</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The River Shweli and its Suspension Bridge</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img029">242</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Suburb beyond the South Gate of Tengyueh</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img030">250</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Chinese Map of Chungking</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#img031">292</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Rough Sketch-map of China and Burma</span></td><td align='right'><i><a href="#img032">at end</a>.</i></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1>AN AUSTRALIAN IN CHINA.</h1>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Introductory&mdash;Mainly about Missionaries and the City of Hankow.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>In the first week of February, 1894, I returned to Shanghai from Japan.
+It was my intention to go up the Yangtse River as far as Chungking, and
+then, dressed as a Chinese, to cross quietly over Western China, the
+Chinese Shan States, and Kachin Hills to the frontier of Burma. The
+ensuing narrative will tell how easily and pleasantly this journey,
+which a few years ago would have been regarded as a formidable
+undertaking, can now be done.</p>
+
+<p>The journey was, of course, in no sense one of exploration; it consisted
+simply of a voyage of 1500 miles up the Yangtse River, followed by a
+quiet, though extended, excursion of another 1500 miles along the great
+overland highway into Burma, taken by one who spoke no Chinese, who had
+no interpreter or companion, who was unarmed, but who trusted implicitly
+in the good faith of the Chinese. Anyone in the world can cross over to
+Burma in the way I did, provided he be willing to exercise for a certain
+number of weeks or months some endurance&mdash;for he will have to travel
+many miles on foot over a mountainous country&mdash;and much forbearance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I went to China possessed with the strong racial antipathy to the
+Chinese common to my countrymen, but that feeling has long since given
+way to one of lively sympathy and gratitude, and I shall always look
+back with pleasure to this journey, during which I experienced, while
+traversing provinces as wide as European kingdoms, uniform kindness and
+hospitality, and the most charming courtesy. In my case, at least, the
+Chinese did not forget their precept, "deal gently with strangers from
+afar."</p>
+
+<p>I left Shanghai on Sunday, February 11th, by the Jardine Matheson's
+steamer <i>Taiwo</i>. One kind friend, a merchant captain who had seen life
+in every important seaport in the world, came down, though it was past
+midnight, to bid me farewell. We shook hands on the wharf, and for the
+last time. Already he had been promised the first vacancy in Jardine
+Matheson's. Some time after my departure, when I was in Western China,
+he was appointed one of the officers of the ill-fated <i>Kowshing</i>, and
+when this unarmed transport before the declaration of war was destroyed
+by a Japanese gunboat, he was among the slain&mdash;struck, I believe, by a
+Japanese bullet while struggling for life in the water.</p>
+
+<p>I travelled as a Chinese, dressed in warm Chinese winter clothing, with
+a pigtail attached to the inside of my hat. I could not have been more
+comfortable. I had a small cabin to myself. I had of course my own
+bedding, and by paying a Mexican dollar a day to the Chinese steward,
+"foreign chow," was brought me from the saloon. The traveller who cares
+to travel in this way, to put his pride in his pocket and a pigtail down
+his back, need pay only one-fourth of what it would cost him to travel
+as a European in European dress.</p>
+
+<p>But I was, I found, unwittingly travelling under false<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> pretences. When
+the smart chief officer came for my fare he charged me, I thought, too
+little. I expressed my surprise, and said that I thought the fare was
+seven dollars. "So it is," he replied "but we only charge missionaries
+five dollars, and I knew you were a missionary even before they told
+me." How different was his acuteness from that of the Chinese compradore
+who received me on the China Merchants' steamer <i>Hsin Chi</i>, in which I
+once made a voyage from Shanghai to Tientsin, also in Chinese dress! The
+conversation was short, sharp, and emphatic. The compradore looked at me
+searchingly. "What pidgin belong you?" he asked&mdash;meaning what is your
+business? Humbly I answered, "My belong Jesus Christ pidgin"; that is, I
+am a missionary, to which he instantly and with some scorn replied, "No
+dam fear!"</p>
+
+<p>We called at the river ports and reached Hankow on the 14th. Hankow, the
+Chinese say, is the mart of eight provinces and the centre of the earth.
+It is the chief distributing centre of the Yangtse valley, the capital
+city of the centre of China. The trade in tea, its staple export, is
+declining rapidly, particularly since 1886. Indian opium goes no higher
+up the river than this point; its importation into Hankow is now
+insignificant, amounting to only 738 piculs (44 tons) per annum. Hankow
+is on the left bank of the Yangtse, separated only by the width of the
+Han river from Hanyang, and by the width of the Yangtse from Wuchang;
+these three divisions really form one large city, with more inhabitants
+than the entire population of the colony of Victoria.</p>
+
+<p>Wuchang is the capital city of the two provinces of Hunan and Hupeh; it
+is here that the Viceroy, Chang Chi Tung, resides in his official yamen
+and dispenses injustice from a building almost as handsome as the
+American mission-houses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> which overlook it. Chang Chi Tung is the most
+anti-foreign of all the Viceroys of China; yet no Viceroy in the Empire
+has ever had so many foreigners in his employ as he. "Within the four
+seas," he says, "all men are brothers"; yet the two provinces he rules
+over are closed against foreigners, and the missionaries are compelled
+to remain under the shelter of the foreign Concession in Hankow. With a
+public spirit unusual among Chinese Viceroys he has devoted the immense
+revenues of his office to the modern development of the resources of his
+vice-kingdom. He has erected a gigantic cotton-mill at Wuchang with
+thirty-five thousand spindles, covering six acres and lit with the
+electric light, and with a reservoir of three acres and a half. He has
+built a large mint. At Hanyang he has erected magnificent iron-works and
+blast furnaces which cover many acres and are provided with all the
+latest machinery. He has iron and coal mines, with a railway seventeen
+miles long from the mines to the river, and specially constructed
+river-steamers and special hoisting machinery at the river-banks. Money
+he has poured out like water; he is probably the only important official
+in China who will leave office a poor man.</p>
+
+<p>Acting as private secretary to the Viceroy is a clever Chinese named Kaw
+Hong Beng, the author of <i>Defensio Populi</i>, that often-quoted attack
+upon missionary methods which appeared first in <i>The North China Daily
+News</i>. A linguist of unusual ability, who publishes in <i>The Daily News</i>
+translations from Heine in English verse, Kaw is gifted with a rare
+command over the resources of English. He is a Master of Arts of the
+University of Edinburgh. Yet, strange paradox, notwithstanding that he
+had the privilege of being trained in the most pious and earnest
+community in the United<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> Kingdom, under the lights of the United
+Presbyterian Kirk, Free Kirk, Episcopalian Church, and <i>The</i> Kirk, not
+to mention a large and varied assortment of Dissenting Churches of more
+or less dubious orthodoxy, he is openly hostile to the introduction of
+Christianity into China. And nowhere in China is the opposition to the
+introduction of Christianity more intense than in the Yangtse valley. In
+this intensity many thoughtful missionaries see the greater hope of the
+ultimate conversion of this portion of China; opposition they say is a
+better aid to missionary success than mere apathy.</p>
+
+<p>During the time I was in China, I met large numbers of missionaries of
+all classes, in many cities from Peking to Canton, and they unanimously
+expressed satisfaction at the progress they are making in China.
+Expressed succinctly, their harvest may be described as amounting to a
+fraction more than two Chinamen per missionary per annum. If, however,
+the paid ordained and unordained native helpers be added to the number
+of missionaries, you find that the aggregate body converts nine-tenths
+of a Chinaman per worker per annum; but the missionaries deprecate their
+work being judged by statistics. There are 1511 Protestant missionaries
+labouring in the Empire; and, estimating their results from the
+statistics of previous years as published in the <i>Chinese Recorder</i>, we
+find that they gathered last year (1893) into the fold 3127 Chinese&mdash;not
+all of whom it is feared are genuine Christians&mdash;at a cost of <i>&pound;</i>350,000,
+a sum equal to the combined incomes of the ten chief London hospitals.</p>
+
+<p>Hankow itself swarms with missionaries, "who are unhappily divided into
+so many sects, that even a foreigner is bewildered by their number, let
+alone the heathen to whom they are accredited." (Medhurst.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Dwelling in well-deserved comfort in and around the foreign settlement,
+there are members of the London Missionary Society, of the Tract
+Society, of the Local Tract Society, of the British and Foreign Bible
+Society, of the National Bible Society of Scotland, of the American
+Bible Society; there are Quaker missionaries, Baptist, Wesleyan, and
+Independent missionaries of private means; there are members of the
+Church Missionary Society, of the American Board of Missions, and of the
+American High Church Episcopal Mission; there is a Medical Mission in
+connection with the London Missionary Society, there is a flourishing
+French Mission under a bishop, the "<i>Missions &eacute;trang&egrave;res de Paris</i>," a
+Mission of Franciscan Fathers, most of whom are Italian, and a Spanish
+Mission of the Order of St. Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>The China Inland Mission has its chief central distributing station at
+Hankow, and here also are the headquarters of a Scandinavian Mission, of
+a Danish Mission, and of an unattached mission, most of the members of
+which are also Danish. Where there are so many missions, of so many
+different sects, and holding such widely divergent views, it is, I
+suppose, inevitable that each mission should look with some disfavour
+upon the work done by its neighbours, should have some doubts as to the
+expediency of their methods, and some reasonable misgivings as to the
+genuineness of their conversions.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese "Rice Christians," those spurious Christians who become
+converted in return for being provided with rice, are just those who
+profit by these differences of opinion, and who, with timely lapses from
+grace, are said to succeed in being converted in turn by all the
+missions from the Augustins to the Quakers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Every visitor to Hankow and to all other open ports, who is a supporter
+of missionary effort, is pleased to find that his preconceived notions
+as to the hardships and discomforts of the open port missionary in China
+are entirely false. Comfort and pleasures of life are there as great as
+in any other country. Among the most comfortable residences in Hankow
+are the quarters of the missionaries; and it is but right that the
+missionaries should be separated as far as possible from all
+discomfort&mdash;missionaries who are sacrificing all for China, and who are
+prepared to undergo any reasonable hardship to bring enlightenment to
+this land of darkness.</p>
+
+<p>I called at the headquarters of the Spanish mission of Padres Agustinos
+and smoked a cigarette with two of the Padres, and exchanged
+reminiscences of Valladolid and Barcelona. And I can well conceive,
+having seen the extreme dirtiness of the mission premises, how little
+the Spaniard has to alter his ways in order to make them conform to the
+more ancient civilisation of the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>In Hankow there is a large foreign concession with a handsome embankment
+lined by large buildings. There is a rise and fall in the river between
+summer and winter levels of nearly sixty feet. In the summer the river
+laps the edge of the embankment and may overflow into the concession; in
+the winter, broad steps lead down to the edge of the water which, even
+when shrunk into its bed, is still more than half a mile in width. Our
+handsome consulate is at one end of the embankment; at the other there
+is a remarkable municipal building which was designed by a former City
+constable, who was, I hope, more expert with the handcuffs than he was
+with the pencil.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img002" id="img002"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 340px;">
+<a href="images/002.jpg"><img src="images/002_th.jpg" width="340" height="400" alt="THE AUTHOR&#39;S CHINESE PASSPORT." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Author&#39;s Chinese Passport.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Our interests in Hankow are protected by Mr. Pelham Warren, the Consul,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+one of the ablest men in the Service. I registered at the Consulate as a
+British subject and obtained a Chinese passport in terms of the Treaty
+of Tientsin for the four provinces Hupeh, Szechuen, Kweichow, and
+Yunnan, available for one year from the date of issue.</p>
+
+<p>I had no servant. An English-speaking "boy," hearing that I was in need
+of one, came to me to recommend "his number one flend," who, he assured
+me, spoke English "all the same Englishman." But when the "flend" came I
+found that he spoke English all the same as I spoke Chinese. He was not
+abashed, but turned away wrath by saying to me, through an interpreter,
+"It is true that I cannot speak the foreign language, but the foreign
+gentleman is so clever that in one month he will speak Chinese
+beautifully." We did not come to terms.</p>
+
+<p>At Hankow I embarked on the China Merchants' steamer <i>Kweili</i>, the only
+triple-screw steamer on the River, and four days later, on February
+21st, I landed at Ichang, the most inland port on the Yangtse yet
+reached by steam. Ichang is an open port; it is the scene of the
+anti-foreign riot of September 2nd, 1891, when the foreign settlement
+was pillaged and burnt by the mob, aided by soldiers of the Chentai
+Loh-Ta-Jen, the head military official in charge at Ichang, "who gave
+the outbreak the benefit of his connivance." Pleasant zest is given to
+life here in the anticipation of another outbreak; it is the only
+excitement.</p>
+
+<p>From Ichang to Chungking&mdash;a distance of 412 miles&mdash;the river Yangtse, in
+a great part of its course, is a series of rapids which no steamer has
+yet attempted to ascend, though it is contended that the difficulties of
+navigation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> would not be insuperable to a specially constructed steamer
+of elevated horse-power. Some idea of the speed of the current at this
+part of the river may be given by the fact that a junk, taking thirty to
+thirty-five days to do the upward journey, hauled most of the way by
+gangs of trackers, has been known to do the down-river journey in two
+days and a half.</p>
+
+<p>Believing that I could thus save some days on the journey, I decided to
+go to Chungking on foot, and engaged a coolie to accompany me. We were
+to start on the Thursday afternoon; but about midnight on Wednesday I
+met Dr. Aldridge, of the Customs, who easily persuaded me that by taking
+the risk of going in a small boat (a <i>wupan</i>), and not in an ordinary
+passenger junk (a <i>kwatze</i>), I might, with luck, reach Chungking as soon
+by water as I could reach Wanhsien at half the distance by land. The
+Doctor was a man of surprising energy. He offered to arrange everything
+for me, and by 6 o'clock in the morning he had engaged a boat, had
+selected a captain (<i>laoban</i>), and a picked crew of four young men, who
+undertook to land me in Chungking in fifteen days, and had given them
+all necessary instructions for my journey. All was to be ready for a
+start the same evening.</p>
+
+<p>During the course of the morning the written agreement was brought me by
+the laoban, drawn up in Chinese and duly signed, of which a Chinese
+clerk made me the following translation into English. I transcribe it
+literally:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Yang Hsing Chung (the laoban) hereby contracts to convey Dr. M. to
+Chungking on the following conditions:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>1. The passage-money agreed upon is 28,000 cash (<i>&pound;</i>2 16<i>s.</i>),
+which includes all charges.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>2. If Chungking is reached in twelve days, Dr. M. will give
+the master 32,500 cash instead; if in thirteen days 31,000,
+and if in fifteen days 28,000.</p>
+
+<p>3. If all goes well and the master does his duty
+satisfactorily, Dr. M. will give him 30,000 cash, even if he
+gets to Chungking in fifteen days.</p>
+
+<p>4. The sum of 14,000 cash is to be advanced to the master
+before starting; the remainder to be paid on arrival at
+Chungking.</p>
+
+<p>(Signed) <span class="smcap">Yang Hsing Chung</span>.</p>
+
+<p>
+Dated the 17th day of the 2nd moon,<br />
+K, shui 20th year.<br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>The Chinaman who wrote this in English speaks English better than many
+Englishmen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">From Ichang To Wanhsien, with some account of Chinese Women and the
+Rapids of the Yangtse Kiang.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>The agreement was brought me in the morning; all the afternoon I was
+busy, and at 8 p.m. I embarked from the Customs pontoon. The boat was a
+wupan (five boards), 28 feet long and drawing 8 inches. Its sail was
+like the wing of a butterfly, with transverse ribs of light bamboo; its
+stern was shaped "like a swallow's wings at rest." An improvised
+covering of mats amidships was my crib; and with spare mats, slipt
+during the day over the boat's hood, coverings could be made at night
+for'ard for my three men and aft for the other two. It seemed a frail
+little craft to face the dangers of the cataracts, but it was manned by
+as smart a crew of young Chinese as could be found on the river. It was
+pitch dark when we paddled into the stream amidst a discharge of
+crackers. As we passed under the <i>Kweili</i>, men were there to wish me
+<i>bon voyage</i>, and a revolver was emptied into the darkness to propitiate
+the river god.</p>
+
+<p>We paddled up the bank under the sterns of countless junks, past the
+walled city, and then, crossing to the other bank, we made fast and
+waited for the morning to begin our journey. The lights of the city were
+down the river; all was quiet; my men were in good heart, and there was
+no doubt whatever that they would make every effort to fulfil their
+contract.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At daylight we were away again and soon entered the first of the great
+gorges where the river has cleft its way through the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>With a clear and sunny sky, the river flowing smoothly and reflecting
+deeply the lofty and rugged hills which fall steeply to the water's
+edge, a light boat, and a model crew, it was a pleasure to lie at ease
+wrapped in my Chinese pukai and watch the many junks lazily falling down
+the river, the largest of them "dwarfed by the colossal dimensions of
+the surrounding scenery to the size of sampans," and the fishing boats,
+noiseless but for the gentle creaking of the sheers and dip-net,
+silently working in the still waters under the bank.</p>
+
+<p>At Ping-shan-pa there is an outstation of the Imperial Maritime Customs
+in charge of a seafaring man who was once a cockatoo farmer in South
+Australia, and drove the first team of bullocks to the Mount Brown
+diggings. He lives comfortably in a house-boat moored to the bank. He is
+one of the few Englishmen in China married in the English way, as
+distinct from the Chinese, to a Chinese girl. His wife is one of the
+prettiest girls that ever came out of Nanking, and talks English
+delightfully with a musical voice that is pleasant to listen to. I
+confess that I am one of those who agree with the missionary writer in
+regarding "the smile of a Chinese woman as inexpressibly charming." I
+have seen girls in China who would be considered beautiful in any
+capital in Europe. The attractiveness of the Japanese lady has been the
+theme of many writers, but, speaking as an impartial observer who has
+been both in Japan and China, I have never been able to come to any
+other decision than that in every feature the Chinese woman is superior
+to her Japanese sister. She is head and shoulders above the Japanese;
+she is more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> intellectual, or, rather, she is more capable of
+intellectual development; she is incomparably more chaste and modest.
+She is prettier, sweeter, and more trustworthy than the misshapen
+cackling little dot with black teeth that we are asked to admire as a
+Japanese beauty. The traveller in China is early impressed by the
+contrast between the almost entire freedom from apparent immorality of
+the Chinese cities, especially of Western China, and the flaunting
+indecency of the <i>Yoshiwaras</i> of Japan, with "their teeming, seething,
+busy mass of women, whose virtue is industry and whose industry is
+vice."</p>
+
+<p>The small feet of the Chinese women, though admired by the Chinese and
+poetically referred to by them as "three-inch gold lilies," are in our
+eyes a very unpleasant deformity&mdash;but still, even with this deformity,
+the walk of the Chinese woman is more comely than the gait of the
+Japanese woman as she shambles ungracefully along with her little bent
+legs, scraping her wooden-soled slippers along the pavement with a noise
+that sets your teeth on edge. "Girls are like flowers," say the Chinese,
+"like the willow. It is very important that their feet should be bound
+short so that they can walk beautifully with mincing steps, swaying
+gracefully, and thus showing to all that they are persons of
+respectability." Apart from the Manchus, the dominant race, whose women
+do not bind their feet, all chaste Chinese girls have small feet. Those
+who have large feet are either, speaking generally, ladies of easy
+virtue or slave girls. And, of course, no Christian girl is allowed to
+have her feet bound.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img003" id="img003"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/003.jpg"><img src="images/003_th.jpg" width="400" height="244" alt="ON A BALCONY IN WESTERN CHINA." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">On a Balcony in Western China.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Leaving Ping-shan-pa with a stiff breeze in our favour we slowly stemmed
+the current. Look at the current side, and you would think we were doing
+eight knots an hour or more, but look at the shore side, close to which
+we kept to escape<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> as far as possible from the current, and you saw how
+gradually we felt our way along.</p>
+
+<p>At a double row of mat sheds filled with huge coils of bamboo rope of
+all thicknesses, my laoban went ashore to purchase a towline; he took
+with him 1000 cash (about two shillings), and returned with a coil 100
+yards in length and 600 cash of change. The rope he brought was made of
+plaited bamboo, was as thick as the middle finger, and as tough as
+whalebone.</p>
+
+<p>The country was more open and terraced everywhere into gardens. Our
+progress was most satisfactory. When night came we drew into the bank,
+and I coiled up in my crib and made myself comfortable. Space was
+cramped, and I had barely room to stretch my legs. My cabin was 5 feet 6
+inches square and 4 feet high, open behind, but with two little doors in
+front, out of which I could just manage to squeeze myself sideways round
+the mast. Coir matting was next the floor boards, then a thick Chinese
+quilt (a <i>pukai</i>), then a Scotch plaid made in Geelong. My pillow was
+Chinese, and the hardest part of the bed; my portmanteau was beside me
+and served as a desk; a Chinese candle, more wick than wax, stuck into a
+turnip, gave me light.</p>
+
+<p>This, our first day's journey, brought us to within sound of the worst
+rapid on the river, the Hsintan, and the roar of the cataract hummed in
+our ears all night.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning we were at the foot of the rapid under the bank on
+the opposite side of the river from the town of Hsintan. It was an
+exciting scene. A swirling torrent with a roar like thunder was frothing
+down the cataract. Above, barriers of rocks athwart the stream stretched
+like a weir across the river, damming the deep still water behind it.
+The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> shore was strewn with boulders. Groups of trackers were on the bank
+squatting on the rocks to see the foreign devil and his cockleshell.
+Other Chinese were standing where the side-stream is split by the
+boulders into narrow races, catching fish with great dexterity, dipping
+them out of the water with scoop-nets.</p>
+
+<p>We rested in some smooth water under shelter and put out our towline;
+three of my boys jumped ashore and laid hold of it; another with his
+bamboo boat-hook stood on the bow; the laoban was at the tiller; and I
+was cooped up useless in the well under the awning. The men started
+hauling as we pushed out into the sea of waters. The boat quivered, the
+water leapt at the bow as if it would engulf us; our three men were
+obviously too few. The boat danced in the rapid. My men on board
+shrieked excitedly that the towrope was fouling&mdash;it had caught in a
+rock&mdash;but their voices could not be heard; our trackers were brought to
+with a jerk; the hindmost saw the foul and ran back to free it, but he
+was too late, for the boat had come beam on to the current. Our captain
+frantically waved to let go, and the next moment we were tossed bodily
+into the cataract. The boat heeled gunwale under, and suddenly, but the
+bowman kept his feet like a Blondin, dropped the boat-hook, and jumped
+to unlash the halyard; a wave buried the boat nose under and swamped me
+in my kennel; my heart stopped beating, and, scared out of my wits, I
+began to strip off my sodden clothes; but before I had half done the
+sail had been set; both men had miraculously fended the boat from a
+rock, which, by a moment's hesitation, would have smashed us in bits or
+buried us in the boiling trough formed by the eddy below it, and, with
+another desperate effort, we had slid from danger into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> smooth water.
+Then my men laughed heartily. How it was done I do not know, but I felt
+keen admiration for the calm dexterity with which it had been done.</p>
+
+<p>We baled the water out of the boat, paid out a second towrope&mdash;this one
+from the bow to keep the stern under control, the other being made fast
+to the mast, and took on board a licensed pilot. Extra trackers, hired
+for a few cash, laid hold of both towlines, and bodily&mdash;the water
+swelling and foaming under our bows&mdash;the boat was hauled against the
+torrent, and up the ledge of water that stretches across the river. We
+were now in smooth water at the entrance to the Mi Tsang Gorge. Two
+stupendous walls of rock, almost perpendicular, as bold and rugged as
+the Mediterranean side of the Rock of Gibraltar seem folded one behind
+the other across the river. "Savage cliffs are these, where not a tree
+and scarcely a blade of grass can grow, and where the stream, which is
+rather heard than seen, seems to be fretting in vain efforts to escape
+from its dark and gloomy prison." In the gorge itself the current was
+restrained, and boats could cross from bank to bank without difficulty.
+It was an eerie feeling to glide over the sunless water shut in by the
+stupendous sidewalls of rock. At a sandy spit to the west of the gorge
+we landed and put things in order. And here I stood and watched the
+junks disappear down the river one after the other, and I saw the truth
+of what Hosie had written that, as their masts are always unshipped in
+the down passage, the junks seem to be "passing with their human freight
+into eternity."</p>
+
+<p>An immensely high declivity with a precipitous face was in front of us,
+which strained your eyes to look at; yet high up to the summit and to
+the very edge of the precipice, little farmsteads are dotted, and every
+yard of land available is under cultivation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> So steep is it that the
+scanty soil must be washed away, you think, at the first rains, and only
+an adventurous goat could dwell there in comfort. My laoban, Enjeh,
+pointing to this mighty mass, said, "<i>Pin su chiao</i>;" but whether these
+words were the name of the place, or were intended to convey to me his
+sense of its magnificence, or dealt with the question of the
+precariousness of tenure so far above our heads, I had no means to
+determine.</p>
+
+<p>My laoban knew twelve words of English, and I twelve words of Chinese,
+and this was the extent of our common vocabulary; it had to be carefully
+eked out with signs and gestures. I knew the Chinese for rice,
+flourcake, tea, egg, chopsticks, opium, bed, by-and-by, how many,
+charcoal, cabbage, and customs. My laoban could say in English, or
+pidgin English, chow, number one, no good, go ashore, sit down,
+by-and-by, to-morrow, match, lamp, alright, one piecee, and goddam. This
+last named exotic he had been led to consider as synonymous with "very
+good." It was not the first time I had known the words to be misapplied.
+I remember reading in the <i>Sydney Bulletin</i>, that a Chinese cook in
+Sydney when applying for a situation detailed to the mistress his
+undeniable qualifications, concluding with the memorable announcement,
+"My Clistian man mum; my eat beef; my say goddam."</p>
+
+<p>There was a small village behind us. The villagers strolled down to see
+the foreigner whom children well in the background called "<i>Yang
+kweitze</i>" (foreign devil). Below on the sand, were the remains of a
+junk, confiscated for smuggling salt; it had been sawn bodily in two.
+Salt is a Government monopoly and a junk found smuggling it is
+confiscated on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>Kueichow, on the left bank, is the first walled town we came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> to. Here
+we had infinite difficulty in passing the rapids, and crossed and
+recrossed the river several times. I sat in the boat stripped and
+shivering, for shipwreck seemed certain, and I did not wish to be
+drowned like a rat. For cool daring I never saw the equal of my boys,
+and their nicety of judgment was remarkable. Creeping along close to the
+bank, every moment in danger of having its bottom knocked out, the boat
+would be worked to the exact point from which the crossing of the river
+was feasible, balanced for a moment in the stream, then with sail set
+and a clipping breeze, and my men working like demons with the oars,
+taking short strokes, and stamping time with their feet, the boat shot
+into the current. We made for a rock in the centre of the river; we
+missed it, and my heart was in my mouth as I saw the rapid below us into
+which we were being drawn, when the boat mysteriously swung half round
+and glided under the lee of the rock. One of the boys leapt out with the
+bow-rope, and the others with scull and boat-hook worked the boat round
+to the upper edge of the rock, and then, steadying her for the dash
+across, pushed off again into the swirling current and made like fiends
+for the bank. Standing on the stern, managing the sheet and tiller, and
+with his bamboo pole ready, the laoban yelled and stamped in his
+excitement; there was the roar of the cataract below us, towards which
+we were fast edging stern on, destruction again threatened us and all
+seemed over, when in that moment we entered the back-wash and were again
+in good shelter. And so it went on, my men with splendid skill doing
+always the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, with
+unerring certainty.</p>
+
+<p>At Yehtan rapid, which is said to be the worst on the river in the
+winter, as the Hsintan rapid is in summer, three of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> the boys went
+ashore to haul us up the ledge of water&mdash;they were plainly insufficient.
+While we were hanging on the cataract extra trackers appeared from
+behind the rocks and offered their services. They could bargain with us
+at an advantage. It was a case well known to all Chinese "of speaking of
+the price after the pig has been killed." But, when we agreed to their
+terms, they laid hold of the towrope and hauled us through in a moment.
+Here, as at other dangerous rapids on the river, an official lifeboat is
+stationed. It is of broad beam, painted red. The sailors are paid eighty
+cash (2<i>d.</i>) a day, and are rewarded with 1000 cash for every life they
+save, and 800 cash for every corpse.</p>
+
+<p>Wushan Gorge, the "Witches' Gorge," which extends from Kuantukou to
+Wushan-hsien, a distance of twenty miles, is the longest gorge on the
+river.</p>
+
+<p>Directly facing us as we emerged from the gorge was the walled town of
+Wushan-hsien. Its guardian pagoda, with its seven stories and its
+upturned gables, like the rim of an official hat, is down-stream from
+the city, and thus prevents wealth and prosperity being swept by the
+current past the city.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond there is a short but steep rapid. Before a strong wind with all
+sail set we boldly entered it and determined which was the stronger, the
+wind or the current. But, while we hung in the current calling and
+whistling for the wind, the wind flagged for a moment; tension being
+removed, the bow swung into the rocks; but the water was shallow, and in
+a trice two of the boys had jumped into the water and were holding the
+boat-sides. Then poling and pulling we crept up the rapid into smooth
+water. Never was there any confusion, never a false stroke. To hear my
+boys jabber in their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> unintelligible speech you pictured disorder, and
+disaster, and wild excitement; to see them act you witnessed such
+coolness, skill, and daring as you had rarely seen before. My boys were
+all young. The captain was only twenty, and was a model of physical
+grace, with a face that will gladden the heart of the Chinese maiden
+whom he condescends to select to be the mother of his children.</p>
+
+<p>Junks were making slow progress up the river. The towpath is here on the
+left bank, sixty feet above the present level of the river. Barefooted
+trackers, often one hundred in a gang, clamber over the rocks "like a
+pack of hounds in full cry," each with the coupling over his shoulder
+and all singing in chorus, the junk they are towing often a quarter of a
+mile astern of them. When a rapid intervenes they strain like bondmen at
+the towrope; the line creaks under the enormous tension but holds fast.
+On board the junk, a drum tattoo is beaten and fire-crackers let off,
+and a dozen men with long ironshod bamboos sheer the vessel off the
+rocks as foot by foot it is drawn past the obstruction. Contrast with
+this toilsome slowness the speed of the junk bound down-stream. Its mast
+is shipped; its prodigious bow-sweep projects like a low bowsprit; the
+after deck is covered as far as midships with arched mat-roof; coils of
+bamboo rope are hanging under the awning; a score or more of boatmen,
+standing to their work and singing to keep time, work the yulos, as
+looking like a modern whaleback the junk races down the rapids.</p>
+
+<p>Kweichou-fu, 146 miles from Ichang, is one of the largest cities on the
+Upper Yangtse. Just before it is the Feng-hsiang Gorge the "Windbox
+Gorge" where the mountains have been again cleft in twain to let pass
+the river; this is the last of the great gorges of the Yangtse.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We had left the province of Hupeh. Kweichou is the first prefectural
+city that the traveller meets in Szechuen; for that reason my laoban
+required me to give him my passport that he might take it ashore and
+have it vis&eacute;ed by the magistrate. While he was away two Customs
+officials searched my boat for contraband goods. When he returned, he
+had to pay a squeeze at the Customs station. We clawed with our hooked
+bamboos round the sterns of a hundred Szechuen junks, and were again
+arrested at a likin boat, and more cash passed from my laoban to the
+officials in charge. We went on again, when a third time we came face on
+to a likin-barrier, and a third time my laoban was squeezed. After this
+we were permitted to continue our journey. For the rest of the day
+whenever the laoban caught my eye he raised three fingers and with a
+rueful shake of the head said "Kweichou haikwan (customs) no good"; and
+then he swore, no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>My little boat was the smallest on the river. In sailing it could hold
+its own with all but the long ferry boats or tenders which accompany the
+larger junks to land the trackers and towline. These boats carry a huge
+square sail set vertically from sheer legs, and are very fast. But in
+rowing, poling, and tracking we could beat the river.</p>
+
+<p>Anping was passed&mdash;a beautiful country town in a landscape of red hills
+and rich green pastures, of groves of bamboo and cypress, of pretty
+little farmhouses with overhanging eaves and picturesque temples in
+wooded glens.</p>
+
+<p>At Chipatzu there are the remains of a remarkable embankment built of
+huge blocks of dressed stone resting upon a noble brow of natural rock;
+deep Chinese characters are cut into the stone; but the glory is
+departed and there are now only a few straggling huts where there was
+once a large city.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The river was now at its lowest and at every point of sand and shingle,
+meagre bands of gold puddlers were at work washing for gold in cradle
+rockers. To judge, however, from the shabbiness of their surroundings
+there was little fear that their gains would disturb the equilibrium of
+the world's gold yield.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The City of Wanhsien, and the Journey from Wanhsien to
+Chungking.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>At daylight, on March 1st, we were abreast of the many storied pagoda,
+whose lofty position, commanding the approach to the city, brings good
+fortune to the city of Wanhsien. A beautiful country is this&mdash;the
+chocolate soil richly tilled, the sides of the hills dotted with
+farmhouses in groves of bamboo and cedar, with every variety of green in
+the fields, shot through with blazing patches of the yellow rape-seed.
+The current was swift, the water was shallow where we were tracking, and
+we were constantly aground in the shingle; but we rounded the point, and
+Wanhsien was before us. This is the half-way city between Ichang and
+Chungking. My smart laoban dressed himself in his best to be ready to go
+ashore with me; he was jubilant at his skill in bringing me so quickly.
+"Sampan number one! goddam!" he said; and, holding up two hands, he
+turned down seven fingers to show that we had come in seven days. Then
+he pointed to other boats that we were passing, and counted on his
+fingers fifteen, whereby I knew he was demonstrating that, had I gone in
+any other boat but his, I should have been fifteen days on the way
+instead of seven.</p>
+
+<p>An immense number of junks of all kinds were moored to the bank, bow on.
+Many of them were large vessels, with hulls like that of an Aberdeen
+clipper. Many carry foreign<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> flags, by which they are exempt from the
+Chinese likin duties, so capricious in their imposition, and pay instead
+a general five per cent. <i>ad valorem</i> duty on their cargoes, which is
+levied by the Imperial Maritime Customs, and collected either in
+Chungking or Ichang. From one to the other, with boathooks and paddle,
+we crept past the outer wings of their balanced rudders till we reached
+the landing place. On the rocks at the landing a bevy of women were
+washing, beating their hardy garments with wooden flappers against the
+stones; but they ceased their work as the foreign devil, in his uncouth
+garb, stepped ashore in their midst. Wanhsien is not friendly to
+foreigners in foreign garb. I did not know this, and went ashore dressed
+as a European. Never have I received such a spontaneous welcome as I did
+in this city; never do I wish to receive such another. I landed at the
+mouth of the small creek which separates the large walled city to the
+east from the still larger city beyond the walls to the west. My laoban
+was with me. We passed through the washerwomen. Boys and ragamuffins
+hanging about the shipping saw me, and ran towards me, yelling: "<i>Yang
+kweitze, Yang kweitze</i>" (foreign devil, foreign devil).</p>
+
+<p>Behind the booths a story-teller had gathered a crowd; in a moment he
+was alone and the crowd were following me up the hill, yelling and
+howling with a familiarity most offensive to a sensitive stranger. My
+sturdy boy wished me to produce my passport which is the size of an
+admiral's ensign, but I was not such a fool as to do so for it had to
+serve me for many months yet. With this taunting noisy crowd I had to
+walk on as if I enjoyed the demonstration. I stopped once and spoke to
+the crowd, and, as I knew no Chinese, I told them in gentle English of
+the very low opinion their conduct led me to form<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> of the moral
+relations of their mothers, and the resignation with which it induced me
+to contemplate the hyperpyretic surroundings of their posthumous
+existence; and, borrowing the Chinese imprecation, I ventured to express
+the hope that when their souls return again to earth they may dwell in
+the bodies of hogs, since they appeared to me the only habitations meet
+for them.</p>
+
+<p>But my words were useless. With a smiling face, but rage at my heart, I
+led the procession up the creek to a stone bridge where large numbers
+left me, only to have their places taken on the other bank by a still
+more enthusiastic gathering. I stopped here a moment in the jostling
+crowd to look up-stream at that singular natural bridge, which an
+enormous mass of stone has formed across the creek, and I could see the
+high arched bridge beyond it, which stretches from bank to bank in one
+noble span, and is so high above the water that junks can pass under it
+in the summer time when the rains swell this little stream into a broad
+and navigable river.</p>
+
+<p>Then we climbed the steep bank into the city and entering by a dirty
+narrow street we emerged into the main thoroughfare, the crowd still
+following and the shops emptying into the street to see me. We passed
+the Mohammedan Mosque, the Roman Catholic Mission, the City Temple, to a
+Chinese house where I was slipped into the court and the door shut, and
+then into another to find that I was in the home of the China Inland
+Mission, and that the pigtailed celestial receiving me at the steps was
+Mr. Hope Gill. It was my clothes I then learnt that had caused the
+manifestation in my honour. An hour later, when I came out again into
+the street, the crowd was waiting still to see me, but it was
+disappointed to see me now dressed like one of themselves. In the
+meantime I had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> resumed my Chinese dress. "Look," the people said, "at
+the foreigner; he had on foreign dress, and now he is dressed in Chinese
+even to his queue. Look at his queue, it is false." I took off my hat to
+scratch my head. "Look," they shouted again, "at his queue; it is stuck
+to the inside of his hat." But they ceased to follow me.</p>
+
+<p>There are three Missionaries in Wanhsien of the China Inland Mission,
+one of whom is from Sydney. The mission has been opened six years, and
+has been fairly successful, or completely unsuccessful, according to the
+point of view of the inquirer.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hope Gill, the senior member of the mission, is a most earnest good
+man, who works on in his discouraging task with an enthusiasm and
+devotion beyond all praise. A Premillennialist, he preaches without
+ceasing throughout the city; and his preaching is earnest and
+indiscriminate. His method has been sarcastically likened by the
+Chinese, in the words of one of their best-known aphorisms, to the
+unavailing efforts of a "blind fowl picking at random after worms."
+Nearly all the Chinese in Wanhsien have heard the doctrine described
+with greater or less unintelligibility, and it is at their own risk if
+they still refuse to be saved.</p>
+
+<p>During the cholera epidemic this brave man never left his post; he never
+refused a call to attend the sick and dying, and, at the risk of his
+own, saved many lives. And what is his reward? This work he did, the
+Chinese say, not from a disinterested love of his fellows, which was his
+undoubted motive, but to accumulate merit for himself in the invisible
+world beyond the grave. "Gratitude," says this missionary, and it is the
+opinion of many, "is a condition of heart, or of mind, which seems to be
+incapable of existence in the body<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> of a Chinaman." Yet other
+missionaries tell me that no man can possess a livelier sense of
+gratitude than a Chinaman, or manifest it with more sincerity. "If our
+words are compared to the croaking of the frog, we heed it not, but
+freely express the feelings of our heart," are actual words addressed by
+a grateful Chinese patient to the first medical missionary in China. And
+the Chinaman himself will tell you, says Smith, "that it does not follow
+that, because he does not exhibit gratitude he does not feel it. When
+the dumb man swallows a tooth he may not say much about it, but it is
+all inside."</p>
+
+<p>Since its foundation in 1887, the Inland Mission of Wanhsien has been
+conducted with brave perseverance. There are, unfortunately, no
+converts, but there are three hopeful "inquirers," whose conversion
+would be the more speedy the more likely they were to obtain employment
+afterwards. They argue in this way; they say, to quote the words used by
+the Rev. G. L. Mason at the Shanghai Missionary Conference of 1890, "if
+the foreign teacher will take care of our bodies, we will do him the
+favour to seek the salvation of our souls." This question of the
+employment of converts is one of the chief difficulties of the
+missionary in China. "The idea (derived from Buddhism) is universally
+prevalent in China," says the Rev. C. W. Mateer, "that everyone who
+enters any sect should live by it.... When a Chinaman becomes a
+Christian he expects to live by his Christianity."</p>
+
+<p>One of the three inquirers was shown me; he was described as the most
+advanced of the three in knowledge of the doctrine. Now I do not wish to
+write unkindly, but I am compelled to say that this man was a poor,
+wretched, ragged coolie, who sells the commonest gritty cakes in a
+rickety<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> stall round the corner from the mission, who can neither read
+nor write, and belongs to a very humble order of blunted intelligence.
+The poor fellow is the father of a little girl of three, an only child,
+who is both deaf and dumb. And there is the fear that his fondness for
+the little one tempts him to give hope to the missionaries that in him
+they are to see the first fruit of their toil, the first in the district
+to be saved by their teaching, while he nurses a vague hope that, when
+the foreign teachers regard him as adequately converted, they may be
+willing to restore speech and hearing to his poor little offspring. It
+is a scant harvest.</p>
+
+<p>After a Chinese dinner the missionary and I went for a walk into the
+country. In the main street we met a troop of beggars, each with a bowl
+of rice and garbage and a long stick, with a few tattered rags hanging
+round his loins&mdash;they were the poorest poor I had ever seen. They were
+the beggars of the city, who had just received their midday meal at the
+"Wanhsien Ragged Homes." There are three institutions of the kind in the
+city for the relief of the destitute; they are entirely supported by
+charity, and are said to have an average annual income of 40,000 taels.
+Wanhsien is a very rich city, with wealthy merchants and great salt
+hongs. The landed gentry and the great junk owners have their town
+houses here. The money distributed by the townspeople in private charity
+is unusually great even for a Chinese city. Its most public-spirited
+citizen is Ch'en, one of the merchant princes of China whose
+transactions are confined exclusively to the products of his own
+country. Starting life with an income of one hundred taels, bequeathed
+him by his father, Ch'en has now agents all over the empire, and
+mercantile dealings which are believed to yield him a clear annual
+income<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> of a quarter of a million taels. His probity is a by-word; his
+benefactions have enriched the province. That cutting in the face of the
+cliff in the Feng-hsiang Gorge near Kweichou-fu, where a pathway for
+trackers has been hewn out of the solid rock, was done at his expense,
+and is said to have cost one hundred thousand taels. Not only by his
+benefactions has Ch'en laid up for himself merit in heaven, but he has
+already had his reward in this world. His son presented himself for the
+M.A. examination for the Hanlin degree, the highest academical degree in
+the Empire. Everyone in China knows that success in this examination is
+dependent upon the favour of Wunchang-te-keun, the god of literature
+(Taoist) "who from generation to generation hath sent his miraculous
+influence down upon earth", and, as the god had seen with approbation
+the good works done by the father, he gave success to the son. When the
+son returned home after his good fortune, he was met beyond the walls
+and escorted into the city with royal honours; his success was a triumph
+for the city which gave him birth.</p>
+
+<p>A short walk and we were out of the city, following a flagged path with
+flights of steps winding up the hill through levelled terraces rich with
+every kind of cereal, and with abundance of poppy. Splendid views of one
+of the richest agricultural regions in the world are here unfolded. Away
+down in the valley is the palatial family mansion of Pien, one of the
+wealthiest yeomen in the province. Beyond you see the commencement of
+the high road, a paved causeway eight feet wide, which extends for
+hundreds of miles to Chentu, the capital of the province, and takes rank
+as the finest work of its kind in the empire. On every hill-top is a
+fort. That bolder than the rest commanding the city at a distance of
+five<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> miles, is on the "Hill of Heavenly Birth." It was built, says
+Hobson, during the Taiping Rebellion; it existed, says the missionary,
+before the present dynasty; discrepant statements characteristic of this
+country of contradictions. But, whether thirty or two hundred and fifty
+years old, the fort is now one in name only, and is at present occupied
+by a garrison of peaceful peasantry.</p>
+
+<p>Chinamen that we met asked us politely "if we had eaten our rice," and
+"whither were we going." We answered correctly. But when with equal
+politeness we asked the wayfarer where he was going, he jerked his chin
+towards the horizon and said, "a long way."</p>
+
+<p>We called at the residence of a rich young Chinese, who had lately
+received it in his inheritance, together with 3000 acres of farmland,
+which, we were told, yield him an annual income of 70,000 taels. In the
+absence of the master, who was away in the country reading with his
+tutor for the Hanlin degree, we were received by the caretakers, who
+showed us the handsome guest chambers, the splendid gilded tablet, the
+large courts, and garden rockeries. A handsome residence is this,
+solidly built of wood and masonry, and with the trellis work carved with
+much elaboration.</p>
+
+<p>It was late when we returned to the mission, and after dark when I went
+on board my little wupan. My boys had not been idle. They had bought new
+provisions of excellent quality, and had made the boat much more
+comfortable. The three kind missionaries came down to wish me Godspeed.
+Brave men! they deserve a kinder fortune than has been their fate
+hitherto. We crossed the river and anchored above the city, ready
+against an early start in the morning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The day after leaving Wanhsien was the first time that we required any
+assistance on our journey from another junk; it was cheerfully given.
+Our towrope had chafed through, and we were in a difficulty, attempting
+to pass a bad rapid among the rocks, when a large junk was hauled bodily
+past us, and, seeing our plight, hooked on to us and towed us with them
+out of danger. On this night we anchored under the Sentinel Rock
+(Shih-pao-chai), perhaps the most remarkable landmark on the river. From
+two hundred to three hundred feet high, and sixty feet wide at the base,
+it is a detached rock, cleft vertically from a former cliff. A
+nine-storied pagoda has been inset into the south-eastern face, and
+temple buildings crown the summit.</p>
+
+<p>It was surprising how well my men lived on board the boat. They had
+three good meals a day, always with rice and abundance of vegetables,
+and frequently with a little pork. Cooking was done while we were under
+way; for the purpose we had two little earthenware stoves, two pans, and
+a kettle. All along the river cabbages and turnips are abundant and
+cheap. Bumboats, laden to the rail, waylay the boats <i>en route</i>, and
+offer an armful of fresh vegetables for the equivalent in copper cash of
+three-eighths of a penny. Other boats peddle firewood, cut short and
+bound in little bundles, and sticks of charcoal. Coal is everywhere
+abundant, and there are excellent briquettes for sale, made of a mixture
+of clay and coal-dust.</p>
+
+<p>All day long now for the rest of our voyage we sailed through a
+beautiful country. From the hill tops to the water's edge the hillsides
+are levelled into a succession of terraces; there are cereals and the
+universal poppy, pretty hamlets, and thriving little villages; a river
+half a mile wide thronged with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> every kind of river craft, and back in
+the distance snow-clad mountains. There are bamboo sheds at every point,
+with coils of bamboo towrope, mats, and baskets, and huge Szechuen hats
+as wide as an umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of March 5th I was awakened by loud screaming and yelling
+ahead of us. I squeezed out of my cabin, and saw a huge junk looming
+down upon us. In an awkward rapid its towline had parted, and the huge
+structure tumbling uncontrolled in the water, was bearing down on us,
+broadside on. It seemed as if we should be crushed against the rocks,
+and we must have been, but for the marvellous skill with which the
+sailors on the junk, just at the critical time, swung their vessel out
+of danger. They were yelling with discord, but worked together as one
+man.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon we were at Feng-tu-hsien, a flourishing river port, one
+of the principal outlets of the opium traffic of the Upper Yangtse. Next
+day we were at Fuchou, the other opium port, whose trade in opium is
+greater still than that of Feng-tu-hsien. It is at the junction of a
+large tributary&mdash;the Kung-t'-an-ho, which is navigable for large vessels
+for more than two hundred miles. Large numbers of the Fuchou junks were
+moored here, which differ in construction from all other junks on the
+river Yangtse in having their great sterns twisted or wrung a quarter
+round to starboard, and in being steered by an immense stern sweep, and
+not by the balanced rudder of an ordinary junk.</p>
+
+<p>The following day, after a long day's work, we moored beyond the town of
+Chang-show-hsien. Here I paid the laoban 2000 cash, whereupon he paid
+his men something on account, and then blandly suggested a game of
+cards. He was fast winning back his money, when I intervened and bade<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+them turn in, as I wished to make an early start in the morning. The
+river seemed to get broader, deeper, and more rapid as we ascended; the
+trackers, on the contrary, became thinner, narrower, and more decrepit.</p>
+
+<p>On March 8th, our fourteenth day out, disaster nearly overtook us when
+within a day's sail of our destination. Next day we reached Chungking
+safely, having done by some days the fastest journey on record up the
+Yangtse rapids. My captain and his young crew had finished the journey
+within the time agreed upon.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img004" id="img004"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/004.jpg"><img src="images/004_th.jpg" width="400" height="294" alt="THE RIVER YANGTSE AT TUNG-LO-HSIA." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The River Yangtse at Tung-lo-hsia.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="img005" id="img005"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/005.jpg"><img src="images/005_th.jpg" width="400" height="305" alt="MEMORIAL ARCHWAY AT THE FORT OF FU-TO-KUAN." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Memorial Archway at the Fort of Fu-to-kuan.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The City of Chungking&mdash;The Chinese Customs&mdash;The Famous Monsieur
+Haas, and a few words on the Opium Fallacy.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>After passing through the gorge known as Tung-lo-hsia ten miles from
+Chungking, the laoban tried to attract my attention, calling me from my
+crib and pointing with his chin up the river repeating "Haikwan one
+piecee," which I interpreted to mean that there was an outpost of the
+customs here in charge of one white man; and this proved to be the case.
+The customs kuatze or houseboat was moored to the left bank; the
+Imperial Customs flag floated gaily over an animated collection of
+native craft. We drew alongside the junk and an Englishman appeared at
+the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Where from?" he asked, laconically.</p>
+
+<p>"Australia."</p>
+
+<p>"The devil, so am I. What part?"</p>
+
+<p>"Victoria."</p>
+
+<p>"So am I. Town?"</p>
+
+<p>"Last from Ballarat."</p>
+
+<p>"My native town, by Jove! Jump up."</p>
+
+<p>I gave him my card. He looked at it and said, "When I was last in
+Victoria I used to follow with much interest a curious walk across
+Australia, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Melbourne done by a namesake.
+Any relation? The same man! I'm delighted to see you." Here then at the
+most inland of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> the customs stations in China, 1500 miles from the sea,
+I met my fellow countryman who was born near my home and whose father
+was a well-known Mayor of Ballarat City.</p>
+
+<p>Like myself he had formerly been a student of Melbourne University, but
+I was many years his senior. What was his experience of the University I
+forgot to inquire, but mine I remember vividly enough; for it was not
+happy. In the examination for the Second-year Medicine, hoping the more
+to impress the Professors, I entered my name for honours&mdash;and they
+rejected me in the preliminary pass. It seems that in the examination in
+Materia Medica, I had among other trifling lapses prescribed a dose of
+Oleum Crotonis of "one half to two drachms <i>carefully increased</i>." I
+confess that I had never heard of the wretched stuff; the question was
+taken from far on in the text book and, unfortunately, my reading had
+not extended quite so far. When a deputation from my family waited upon
+the examiner to ascertain the cause of my misadventure, the only
+satisfaction we got was the obliging assurance "that you might as well
+let a mad dog loose in Collins Street" as allow me to become a doctor.
+And then the examiner produced my prescription. But I thought I saw a
+faint chance of escape. I pointed a nervous finger to the two words
+"carefully increased," and pleaded that that indication of caution ought
+to save me. "Save <i>you</i> it might," he shouted with unnecessary
+vehemence; "but, God bless my soul, man, it would not save your
+patient." The examiner was a man intemperate of speech; so I left the
+University. It was a severe blow to the University, but the University
+survived it.</p>
+
+<p>My countryman had been five years in China in the customs service, that
+marvellous organisation which is more impartially<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> open to all the world
+than any other service in the world. As an example, I note that among
+the Commissioners of Customs at the ports of the River Yangtse alone, at
+the time of my voyage the Commissioner at Shanghai was an Austrian, at
+Kiukiang a Frenchman, at Hankow an Englishman, at Ichang a Scandinavian,
+and at Chungking a German.</p>
+
+<p>The Australian had been ten months at Chungking. His up-river journey
+occupied thirty-eight days, and was attended with one moving incident.
+In the Hsintan rapid the towline parted, and his junk was smashed to
+pieces by the rocks, and all that he possessed destroyed. It was in this
+rapid that my boat narrowly escaped disaster, but there was this
+difference in our experiences, that at the time of his accident the
+river was sixty feet higher than on the occasion of mine.</p>
+
+<p>Tang-chia-to, the customs out-station, is ten miles by river from
+Chungking, but not more than four miles by land. So I sent the boat on,
+and in the afternoon walked over to the city. A customs coolie came with
+me to show me the way. My friend accompanied me to the river crossing,
+walking with me through fields of poppy and sugarcane, and open beds of
+tobacco. At the river side he left me to return to his solitary home,
+while I crossed the river in a sampan, and then set out over the hills
+to Chungking. It was more than ever noticeable, the poor hungry
+wretchedness of the river coolies. For three days past all the trackers
+I had seen were the most wretched in physique of any I had met in China.
+Phthisis and malaria prevail among them; their work is terribly arduous;
+they suffer greatly from exposure; they appear to be starving in the
+midst of abundance. My coolie showed well by contrast with the trackers;
+he was sleek and well fed. A "chop dollar," as he would be termed down
+south, for his face<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> was punched or chopped with the small-pox, he swung
+along the paved pathway and up and down the endless stone steps in a way
+that made me breathless to follow. We passed a few straggling houses and
+wayside shrines and tombstones. All the dogs in the district recognised
+that I was a stranger, and yelped consumedly, like the wolfish mongrels
+that they are. From a hill we obtained a misty view of the City of
+Chungking, surrounded on two sides by river and covering a broad expanse
+of hill and highland. I was taken to the customs pontoon on the south
+bank of the river, and then up the steep bank by many steps to the
+basement of an old temple where the two customs officers have their
+pleasant dwelling. I was kindly received, and stayed the night. We were
+an immense height above the water; the great city was across the broad
+expanse of river, here more than seven hundred yards in width. Away down
+below us, moored close to the bank, and guarded by three Chinese armed
+junks or gunboats, was the customs hulk, where the searching is done,
+and where the three officers of the outdoor staff have their offices.
+There is at present but little smuggling, because there are no Chinese
+officials. Smuggling may be expected to begin in earnest as soon as
+Chinese officials are introduced to prevent it. Chinese searchers do
+best who use their eyes not to see&mdash;best for themselves, that is. The
+gunboats guarding this Haikwan Station have a nominal complement of
+eighty men, and an actual complement of twenty-four; to avoid, however,
+unnecessary explanation, pay is drawn by the commanding officer, not for
+the actual twenty-four, but for the nominal eighty.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img006" id="img006"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/006.jpg"><img src="images/006_th.jpg" width="400" height="246" alt="The City of Chungking, as seen from the opposite Bank of
+the River Yangtse." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The City of Chungking, as seen from the opposite Bank of
+the River Yangtse.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>My two companions in the temple were tidewaiters in the Customs. There
+are many storied lives locked away among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> the tidewaiters in China. Down
+the river there is a tidewaiter who was formerly professor of French in
+the Imperial University of St. Petersburg; and here in Chungking,
+filling the same humble post, is the godson of a marquis and the nephew
+of an earl, a brave soldier whose father is a major-general and his
+mother an earl's daughter, and who is first cousin to that enlightened
+nobleman and legislator the Earl of C. Few men so young have had so many
+and varied experiences as this sturdy Briton. He has humped his swag in
+Australia, has earned fifteen shillings a day there as a blackleg
+protected by police picquets on a New South Wales coal mine. He was at
+Harrow under Dr. Butler, and at Corpus Christi, Cambridge. He has been
+in the Dublin Fusiliers, and a lieutenant in Weatherby's Horse, enlisted
+in the 5th Lancers, and rose from private to staff-sergeant, and ten
+months later would have had his commission. He served with distinction
+in the Soudan and Zululand, and has three medals with four clasps. He
+was present at El Teb, and at the disaster at Tamai, when McNeill's
+zareeba was broken. He was at Tel-el-kebir; saw Burnaby go forth to meet
+a coveted death at Abu-klea, and was present at Abu-Kru when Sir Herbert
+Stewart received his death-wound. He was at Rorke's Drift, and appears
+with that heroic band in Miss Elizabeth Thompson's painting. Leaving the
+army, C. held for a time a commission in the mounted constabulary of
+Madras, and now he is a third class assistant tidewaiter in the Imperial
+Maritime Customs of China, with a salary as low as his spirits are high.</p>
+
+<p>Chungking is an open port, which is not an open port. By the treaty of
+Tientsin it is included in the clause which states that any foreign
+steamer going to it, a closed port, shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> be confiscated. Yet by the
+Chefoo Convention, Chungking is to become an open port as soon as the
+first foreign steamer shall reach there. This reminds one of the
+conflicting instructions once issued by a certain government in
+reference to the building of a new gaol. The instructions were
+explicit:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Clause I.&mdash;The new gaol shall be constructed out of the
+materials of the old.</p>
+
+<p>Clause II.&mdash;The prisoners shall remain in the old gaol till
+the new gaol is constructed.</p></div>
+
+<p>In Chungking the Commissioner of Customs is Dr. F. Hirth, whose Chinese
+house is on the highest part of Chungking in front of a temple, which,
+dimly seen through the mist, is the crowning feature of the city. A
+distinguished sinologue is the doctor, one of the finest Chinese
+scholars in the Empire, author of "China and the Roman Orient," "Ancient
+Porcelain," and an elaborate "Textbook of Documentary Chinese," which is
+in the hands of most of the Customs staff in China, for whose assistance
+it was specially written. Dr. Hirth is a German who has been many years
+in China. He holds the third button, the transparent blue button, the
+third rank in the nine degrees by which Chinese Mandarins are
+distinguished.</p>
+
+<p>The best site in Chungking has been fortunately secured by the Methodist
+Episcopalian Mission of the United States. Their missionaries dwell with
+great comfort in the only foreign-built houses in the city in a large
+compound with an ample garden. Their Mission hospital is a well-equipped
+Anglo-Chinese building attached to the city wall, and overlooking from
+its lofty elevation the Little River, and the walled city beyond it.</p>
+
+<p>The wards of the hospital are comfortable and well lit; the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> floors are
+varnished; the beds are provided with spring mattresses; indeed, in the
+comfort of the hospital the Chinese find its chief discomfort. A
+separate compartment has been walled off for the treatment of
+opium-smokers who desire by forced restraint to break off the habit.
+Three opium-smokers were in durance at the time of my visit; they were
+happy and contented and well nourished, and none but the trained eye of
+an expert, who saw what he wished to see, could have guessed that they
+were addicted to the use of a drug which has been described in
+exaggerated terms as "more deadly to the Chinese than war, famine, and
+pestilence combined." (Rev. A. H. Smith, "Chinese Characteristics," p.
+187.)</p>
+
+<p>Not long ago three men were admitted into the hospital suffering, on
+their own confession, from the opium habit. They freely expressed the
+desire of their hearts to be cured, and were received with welcome and
+placed in confinement. Every effort was made to wean them from the habit
+which, they alleged, had "seized them in a death grip." Attentive to the
+teacher and obedient to the doctor, they gave every hope of being early
+admitted into Church fellowship. But one night the desire to return to
+the drug became irresistible, and, strangely, the desire attacked all
+three men at the same time on the same night; and they escaped together.
+Sadly enough there was in this case marked evidence of the demoralising
+influence of opium, for when they escaped they took with them everything
+portable that they could lay their hands on. It was a sad trial.</p>
+
+<p>Excellent medical work is done in the hospital. From the first annual
+report just published by the surgeon in charge, an M.D. from the United
+States, I extract the two following pleasing items.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><i>Medical Work.</i>&mdash;"Mr. Tsang Taotai, of Kuei-Iang-fu, was an eye witness
+to several operations, as well as being operated upon for Internal
+Piles" (the last words in large capitals).</p>
+
+<p><i>Evangelistic Work.</i>&mdash;"Mrs. Wei, in the hospital for suppurating glands
+of the neck, became greatly interested in the truth while there, left a
+believer, and attends Sunday service regular (<i>sic</i>), walking from a
+distant part of the city each Sunday. We regard her as very hopeful, and
+she is reported by the Chinese as being very warm-hearted. She will be
+converted when the first vacancy occurs in the nursing staff."</p>
+
+<p>During my stay in Chungking I frequently met the French Consul "<i>en
+commission</i>," Monsieur Haas, who had lately arrived on a diplomatic
+mission, which was invested with much secrecy. It was believed to have
+for its object the diversion of the trade of Szechuen from its natural
+channel, the Yangtse River, southward through Yunnan province to
+Tonquin. Success need not be feared to attend his mission. "<i>Ils
+perdront et leur temps et leur argent.</i>" Monsieur Haas has helped to
+make history in his time. The most gentle-mannered of men, he writes
+with strange rancour against the perfidious designs of Britain in the
+East. In his diplomatic career Monsieur Haas suffered one great
+disappointment. He was formerly the French Charg&eacute; d'Affaires and
+Political Resident at the court of King Theebaw in Mandalay. And it was
+his "Secret Treaty" with the king which forced the hand of England and
+led to her hasty occupation of Upper Burma. The story is a very pretty
+one. By this treaty French influence was to become predominant in Upper
+Burma; the country was to become virtually a colony of France, with a
+community of interest with France, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> France to support her in any
+difficulty with British Burma. Such a position England could not
+tolerate for one moment. Fortunately for us French intrigue outwitted
+itself, and the Secret Treaty became known. It was in this way. Draft
+copies of the agreement drawn up in French and Burmese were exchanged
+between Monsieur Haas and King Theebaw. But Monsieur Haas could not read
+Burmese, and he distrusted the King. A trusted interpreter was
+necessary, and there was only one man in Mandalay that seemed to him
+sufficiently trustworthy. To Signor A&mdash;&mdash; then, the Italian Charg&eacute;
+d'Affaires and Manager of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, Monsieur Haas
+went and, pledging him to secrecy, sought his assistance as interpreter.</p>
+
+<p>As Monsieur Haas had done, so did his Majesty the King. Two great minds
+were being guided by the same spirit. Theebaw could not read French, and
+he distrusted Monsieur Haas. An interpreter was essential, and, casting
+about for a trusted one, he decided that no one could serve him so
+faithfully as Signor A&mdash;&mdash;, and straightway sought his assistance, as
+Monsieur Haas had done. Their fates were in his hands; which master
+should the Italian serve, the French or the Burmese? He did not
+hesitate&mdash;he betrayed them both. Within an hour the Secret Treaty was in
+possession of the British Resident. Action was taken with splendid
+promptitude. "M. de Freycinet, when pressed on the subject, repudiated
+any intention of acquiring for France a political predominance in
+Burma." An immediate pretext was found to place Theebaw in a dilemma;
+eleven days later the British troops had crossed the frontier, and Upper
+Burma was another province of our Indian Empire.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Haas was recalled, and his abortive action<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> repudiated. He had
+acted, of course, without orders, he had erred from too much zeal.
+Signor A&mdash;&mdash; was also recalled, but did not go because the order was not
+accompanied with the customary cheque to defray the cost of his passage.
+His services to England were rewarded, and he retained his engagement as
+Manager of the Flotilla Company; but he lost his appointment as the
+Representative of Italy&mdash;an honourable post with a dignified salary paid
+by the Italian Government in I.O.U.'s.</p>
+
+<p>Chungking is an enormously rich city. It is built at the junction of the
+Little River and the Yangtse, and is, from its position, the great river
+port of the province of Szechuen. Water-ways stretch from here an
+immense distance inland. The Little River is little only in comparison
+with the Yangtse, and in any other country would be regarded as a mighty
+inland river. It is navigable for more than 2000 li (600 miles). The
+Yangtse drains a continent; the Little River drains a province larger
+than a European kingdom. Chungking is built at a great height above the
+present river, now sixty feet below its summer level. Its walls are
+unscalable. Good influences are directed over the city from a lofty
+pagoda on the topmost hill in the vicinity. Temples abound, and spacious
+yamens and rich buildings, the crowning edifice of all being the Temple
+to the God of Literature. Distances are prodigious in Chungking, and the
+streets so steep and hilly, with flights of stairs cut from the solid
+rock, that only a mountaineer can live here in comfort. All who can
+afford it go in chairs; stands of sedan chairs are at every important
+street corner.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img007" id="img007"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/007.jpg"><img src="images/007_th.jpg" width="400" height="250" alt="A TEMPLE THEATRE IN CHUNGKING." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">A Temple Theatre in Chungking.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>During the day the city vibrates with teeming traffic; at night the
+streets are deserted and dead, the stillness only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> disturbed by a
+distant watchman springing his bamboo rattle to keep himself awake and
+warn robbers of his approach. In no city in Europe is security to life
+and property better guarded than in this, or, indeed, in any other
+important city in China. It is a truism to say that no people are more
+law-abiding than the Chinese; "they appear," says Medhurst, "to maintain
+order as if by common consent, independent of all surveillance."</p>
+
+<p>Our Consul in Chungking is Mr. E. H. Fraser, an accomplished Chinese
+scholar, who fills a difficult post with rare tact and complete success.
+Consul Fraser estimates the population of Chungking at 200,000; the
+Chinese, he says, have a record of 35,000 families within the walls. Of
+this number from forty to fifty per cent. of all men, and from four to
+five per cent. of all women, indulge in the opium pipe. The city abounds
+in opium-shops&mdash;shops, that is, where the little opium-lamps and the
+opium-pipes are stacked in hundreds upon hundreds. Opium is one of the
+staple products of this rich province, and one of the chief sources of
+wealth of this flourishing city.</p>
+
+<p>During the nine months that I was in China I saw thousands of
+opium-smokers, but I never saw one to whom could be applied that
+description by Lay (of the British and Foreign Bible Society), so often
+quoted, of the typical opium-smoker in China "with his lank and
+shrivelled limbs, tottering gait, sallow visage, feeble voice, and
+death-boding glance of eye, proclaiming him the most forlorn creature
+that treads upon the ground."</p>
+
+<p>This fantastic description, paraded for years past for our sympathy, can
+be only applied to an infinitesimal number of the millions in China who
+smoke opium. It is a well-known fact that should a Chinese suffering
+from the extreme emaciation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> of disease be also in the habit of using
+the opium-pipe, it is the pipe and not the disease that in ninety-nine
+cases out of a hundred will be wrongly blamed as the cause of the
+emaciation.</p>
+
+<p>During the year 1893 4275 tons of Indian opium were imported into China.
+The Chinese, we are told, plead to us with "outstretched necks" to cease
+the great wrong we are doing in forcing them to buy our opium. "Many a
+time," says the Rev. Dr. Hudson Taylor, "have I seen the Chinaman point
+with his thumb to Heaven, and say, 'There is Heaven up there! There is
+Heaven up there!' What did he mean by that? You may bring this opium to
+us; you may force it upon us; we cannot resist you, but there is a Power
+up there that will inflict vengeance." (<i>National Righteousness</i>, Dec.
+1892, p. 13.)</p>
+
+<p>But, with all respect to Dr. Hudson Taylor and his ingenious
+interpretation of the Chinaman's gesture, it is extremely difficult for
+the traveller in China to believe that the Chinese are sincere in their
+condemnation of opium and the opium traffic. "In some countries," says
+Wingrove Cooke, "words represent facts, but this is never the case in
+China." Li Hung Chang, the Viceroy of Chihli, in the well-known letter
+that he addressed to the Rev. F. Storrs Turner, the Secretary of the
+Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, on May 24th, 1881, a
+letter still widely circulated and perennially cited, says, "the poppy
+is certainly surreptitiously grown in some parts of China,
+notwithstanding the laws and frequent Imperial edicts prohibiting its
+cultivation."</p>
+
+<p>Surreptitiously grown in some parts of China! Why, from the time I left
+Hupeh till I reached the boundary of Burma, a distance of 1700 miles, I
+never remember to have been out of sight of the poppy. Li Hung Chang
+continues, "I earnestly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> hope that your Society, and all right-minded
+men of your country, will support the efforts China is now making to
+escape from the thraldom of opium." And yet you are told in China that
+the largest growers of the poppy in China are the family of Li Hung
+Chang.</p>
+
+<p>The Society for the Suppression of Opium has circulated by tens of
+thousands a petition which was forwarded to them from the
+Chinese&mdash;spontaneously, per favour of the missionaries. "Some tens of
+millions," this petition says, "some tens of millions of human beings in
+distress are looking on tiptoe with outstretched necks for salvation to
+come from you, O just and benevolent men of England! If not for the good
+or honour of your country, then for mercy's sake do this good deed now
+to save a people, and the rescued millions shall themselves be your
+great reward." (<i>China's Millions</i>, iv., 156.)</p>
+
+<p>Assume, then, that the Chinese do not want our opium, and unavailingly
+beseech us to stay this nefarious traffic, which is as if "the Rivers
+Phlegethon and Lethe were united in it, carrying fire and destruction
+wherever it flows, and leaving a deadly forgetfulness wherever it has
+passed." (The Rev. Dr. Wells Williams. "The Middle Kingdom," i., 288.)</p>
+
+<p>They do not want our opium, but they purchase from us 4275 tons per
+annum.</p>
+
+<p>Of the eighteen provinces of China four only, Kiangsu, Cheh-kiang,
+Fuhkien, and Kuangtung use Indian opium, the remaining fourteen
+provinces use exclusively home-grown opium. Native-grown opium has
+entirely driven the imported opium from the markets of the Yangtse
+Valley; no Indian opium, except an insignificant quantity, comes up the
+river even as far as Hankow. The Chinese do not want our opium&mdash;it
+competes with their own. In the three adjoining<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> provinces of Szechuen,
+Yunnan, and Kweichow they grow their own opium; but they grow more than
+they need, and have a large surplus to export to other parts of the
+Empire. The amount of this surplus can be estimated, because all
+exported opium has to pay customs and likin dues to the value of two
+shillings a pound, and the amount thus collected is known. Allowing no
+margin for opium that has evaded customs dues, and there are no more
+scientific smugglers than the Chinese, we still find that during the
+year 1893 2250 tons of opium were exported from the province of
+Szechuen, 1350 tons from Yunnan, and 450 tons from Kweichow, a total of
+4050 tons exported by the rescued millions of three provinces only for
+the benefit of their fellow-countrymen, who, with outstretched necks,
+plead to England to leave them alone in their monopoly.</p>
+
+<p>Edicts are still issued against the use of opium. They are drawn up by
+Chinese philanthropists over a quiet pipe of opium, signed by
+opium-smoking officials, whose revenues are derived from the poppy, and
+posted near fields of poppy by the opium-smoking magistrates who own
+them.</p>
+
+<p>In the City Temple of Chungking there is a warning to opium-eaters. One
+of the fiercest devils in hell is there represented gloating over the
+crushed body of an opium-smoker; his protruding tongue is smeared with
+opium put there by the victim of "<i>yin</i>" (the opium craving), who wishes
+to renounce the habit. The opium thus collected is the perquisite of the
+Temple priests, and at the gate of the Temple there is a stall for the
+sale of opium fittings.</p>
+
+<p>Morphia pills are sold in Chungking by the Chinese chemists to cure the
+opium habit. This profitable remedy was introduced by the foreign
+chemists of the coast ports and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> adopted by the Chinese. Its advantage
+is that it converts a desire for opium into a taste for morphia, a mode
+of treatment analogous to changing one's stimulant from colonial beer to
+methylated spirit. In 1893, 15,000 ounces of hydrochlorate of morphia
+were admitted into Shanghai alone.</p>
+
+<p>The China Inland Mission have an important station at Chungking. It was
+opened seventeen years ago, in 1877, and is assisted by a representative
+of the Horsburgh Mission. The mission is managed by a charming English
+gentleman, who has exchanged all that could make life happy in England
+for the wretched discomfort of this malarious city. Every assistance I
+needed was given me by this kindly fellow who, like nearly all the China
+Inland Mission men, deserves success if he cannot command it. A more
+engaging personality I have rarely met, and it was sad to think that for
+the past year, 1893, no new convert was made by his Mission among the
+Chinese of Chungking. (<i>China's Millions</i>, January, 1894.) The Mission
+has been working short-handed, with only three missionaries instead of
+six, and progress has been much delayed in consequence.</p>
+
+<p>The London Missionary Society, who have been here since 1889, have two
+missionaries at work, and have gathered nine communicants and six
+adherents. Their work is largely aided by an admirable hospital under
+Cecil Davenport, F.R.C.S., a countryman of my own. "Broad Benevolence"
+are the Chinese characters displayed over the entrance to the hospital,
+and they truthfully describe the work done by the hospital. In the
+chapel adjoining, a red screen is drawn down the centre of the church,
+and separates the men from the women&mdash;one of the chief pretexts that an
+Englishman has for going to church is thus denied the Chinaman, since he
+cannot cast an ogling eye through a curtain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The Journey from Chungking to Suifu&mdash;Chinese Inns.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>I left the boat at Chungking and started on my land journey, going west
+230 miles to Suifu. I had with me two coolies to carry my things, the
+one who received the higher pay having also to bring me my food, make my
+bed, and pay away my copper cash. They could not speak a single word of
+English. They were to be paid for the journey one 4<i>s.</i> 10<i>d.</i> and the
+other 5<i>s.</i> 7<i>d.</i> They were to be entitled to no perquisites, were to
+find themselves on the way, and take their chance of employment on the
+return journey. They were to lead me into Suifu on the seventh day out
+from Chungking. All that they undertook to do they did to my complete
+satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of March 14th I set out from Chungking to cross 1600
+miles over Western China to Burma. Men did not speak hopefully of my
+chance of getting through. There were the rains of June and July to be
+feared apart from other obstacles.</p>
+
+<p>P&egrave;re Lorain, the Procureur of the French Mission, who spoke from an
+experience of twenty-five years of China, assured me that, speaking no
+Chinese, unarmed, unaccompanied, except by two poor coolies of the
+humblest class, and on foot, I would have <i>les plus grandes
+difficult&eacute;s</i>, and Monsieur Haas, the Consul <i>en commission</i>, was equally
+pessimistic.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> The evening before starting, the Consul and my friend
+Carruthers (one of the <i>Inverness Courier</i> Carruthers) gave me a lesson
+in Chinese. "French before breakfast" was nothing to this kind of
+cramming. I learnt a dozen useful words and phrases, and rehearsed them
+in the morning to a member of the Inland Mission, who cheered me by
+saying that it would be a clever Chinaman indeed who could understand
+Chinese like mine.</p>
+
+<p>I left on foot by the West Gate, being accompanied so far by A. J.
+Little, an experienced traveller and authority on China, manager in
+Chungking of the Chungking Transport Company (which deals especially
+with the transport of cargo from Ichang up the rapids), whose book on
+"The Yangtse Gorges" is known to every reader of books on China.</p>
+
+<p>I was dressed as a Chinese teacher in thickly-wadded Chinese gown, with
+pants, stockings, and sandals, with Chinese hat and pigtail. In my dress
+I looked a person of weight. I must acknowledge that my outfit was very
+poor; but this was not altogether a disadvantage, for my men would have
+the less temptation to levy upon it. Still it would have been awkward if
+my men had taken it into their heads to walk off with my things, because
+I could not have explained my loss. My chief efforts, I knew, throughout
+my journey would be applied in the direction of inducing the Chinese to
+treat me with the respect that was undoubtedly due to one who, in their
+own words, had done them the "exalted honour" of visiting "their mean
+and contemptible country." For I could not afford a private sedan chair,
+though I knew that Baber had written that "no traveller in Western China
+who possesses any sense of self-respect should journey without a sedan
+chair, not necessarily as a conveyance, but for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> honour and glory of
+the thing. Unfurnished with this indispensable token of respectability
+he is liable to be thrust aside on the highway, to be kept waiting at
+ferries, to be relegated to the worst inn's worst room, and generally to
+be treated with indignity, or, what is sometimes worse, with
+familiarity, as a peddling footpad who, unable to gain a living in his
+own country, has come to subsist on China." ("Travels and Researches in
+Western China," p. 1.)</p>
+
+<p>Six li out (two miles), beyond the gravemounds there is a small village
+where ponies are kept for hire. A kind friend came with me as far as the
+village to act as my interpreter, and here he engaged a pony for me. It
+was to carry me ten miles for fourpence. It was small, rat-like and
+wiry, and was steered by the "mafoo" using the tail like a tiller.
+Mounted then on this small beast, which carried me without wincing, I
+jogged along over the stone-flagged pathway, down hill and along valley,
+scaling and descending the long flights of steps which lead over the
+mountains. The bells of the pony jingled merrily; the day was fine and
+the sun shone behind the clouds. My two coolies sublet their contracts,
+and had their loads borne for a fraction of a farthing per mile by
+coolies returning empty-handed to Suifu.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img008" id="img008"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 282px;">
+<a href="images/008.jpg"><img src="images/008_th.jpg" width="282" height="400" alt="ON THE MAIN ROAD TO SUIFU." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">On the Main Road To Suifu.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Fu-to-kuan four miles from Chungking is a powerful hill-fort that guards
+the isthmus where the Yangtse and the Little River come nearly together
+before encircling Chungking. Set in the face of the cliff is a gigantic
+image of Buddha. Massive stone portals, elaborately carved, and huge
+commemorative tablets cut from single blocks of stone and deeply
+engraved, here adorn the highway. The archways have been erected by
+command of the Emperor, but at the expense of their relatives, to the
+memory of virtuous widows who have refused to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> remarry, or who have
+sacrificed their lives on the death of their husbands. Happy are those
+whose names are thus recorded, for not only do they obtain ten thousand
+merits in heaven, as well as the Imperial recognition of the Son of
+Heaven on earth; but as an additional reward their souls may, on
+entering the world a second time, enjoy the indescribable felicity of
+inhabiting the bodies of men.</p>
+
+<p>Cases where the widow has thus brought honour to the family are
+constantly recorded in the pages of the <i>Peking Gazette</i>. One of more
+than usual merit is described in the <i>Peking Gazette</i> of June 10th,
+1892. The story runs:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The Governor of Shansi narrates the story of a virtuous wife who
+destroyed herself after the death of her husband. The lady was a native
+of T'ienmen, in Hupeh, and both her father and grandfather were
+officials who attained the rank of Taotai. When she was little more than
+ten years old her mother fell ill. The child cut flesh from her body and
+mixed it with the medicines and thus cured her parent. The year before
+last she was married to an expectant magistrate. Last autumn, just after
+he had obtained an appointment, he was taken violently ill. She mixed
+her flesh with the medicine but it was in vain, and he died shortly
+afterwards. Overcome with grief, and without parents or children to
+demand her care, she determined that she would not live. Only waiting
+till she had completed the arrangements for her husband's interment, she
+swallowed gold and powder of lead. She handed her trousseau to her
+relatives to defray her funeral expenses, and made presents to the
+younger members of the family and the servants, after which, draped in
+her state robes, she sat waiting her end. The poison began to work and
+soon all was over. The memorialist thinks that the case<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> is one which
+should be recorded in the erection of a memorial arch, and he asks the
+Emperor to grant that honour to the deceased lady." ("<i>Granted.</i>")</p>
+
+<p>Near the base of the rock upon which the hill-fort is built, and between
+it and the city, the Methodist Episcopalian Mission of the U.S.A.
+commenced in 1886 to build what the Chinese, in their ignorance, feared
+was a foreign fort, but what was nothing more than a mission house in a
+compound surrounded by a powerful wall. The indiscreet mystery
+associated with its erection was the exciting cause of the anti-foreign
+riot of July, 1886.</p>
+
+<p>From the fort the pathway led us through a beautiful country. We met
+numbers of sedan chairs, borne by two coolies, or three, according to
+the importance of the traveller. There were Chinese gentlemen mounted on
+ponies or mules; there were strings of coolies swinging along under
+prodigious loads of salt and coal, and huge bales of raw cotton.
+Buffaloes with slow and painful steps were ploughing the paddy fields,
+the water up to their middles&mdash;the primitive plough and share guided by
+half-naked Chinamen. Along the road there are inns and tea-houses every
+mile or two, for this is one of the most frequented roadways of China.
+At one good-sized village my cook signed to me to dismount; the mafoo
+and pony were paid off, and I sat down in an inn, and was served with an
+excellent dish of rice and minced beef. The inn was crowded and open to
+the street. Despite my Chinese dress anyone could see that I was a
+foreigner, but I was not far enough away from Chungking to excite much
+curiosity. The other diners treated me with every courtesy; they offered
+me of their dishes, and addressed me in Chinese&mdash;a compliment which I
+repaid by thanking them blandly in English.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now I went on, on foot, though I had difficulty in keeping pace with my
+men. Behind the village we climbed a very steep hill by interminable
+steps, and passed under an archway at the summit. Descending the hill,
+my cook engaged in a controversy with a thin lad whom he had hired to
+carry his load a stage. The dispute waxed warm, and, while they stopped
+to argue it out at leisure, I went on. My cook, engaged through the kind
+offices of the Inland Mission, was a man of strong convictions; and in
+the last I saw of the dispute he was pulling the unfortunate coolie
+downhill by the pigtail. When he overtook me he was alone and smiling
+cheerfully, well satisfied with himself for having settled <i>that</i> little
+dispute. The road became more level, and we got over the ground quickly.</p>
+
+<p>Late in the evening I was led into a crowded inn in a large village,
+where we were to stay the night. We had come twenty-seven miles, and had
+begun well. I was shown into a room with three straw-covered wooden
+bedsteads, a rough table, lit by a lighted taper in a saucer of oil, a
+rough seat, and the naked earth floor. Hot water was brought me to wash
+with and tea to drink, and my man prepared me an excellent supper. My
+baggage was in the corner; it consisted of two light bamboo boxes with
+Chinese padlocks, a bamboo hamper, and a roll of bedding covered with
+oilcloth. An oilcloth is indispensable to the traveller in China, for
+placed next the straw on a Chinese bed it is impassable to bugs. And
+during all my journey in China I was never disturbed in my sleep by this
+unpleasant pest. Bugs in China are sufficiently numerous, but their
+numbers cannot be compared with the gregarious hosts that disturb the
+traveller in Spain.</p>
+
+<p>My last night in Spain was spent in Cadiz, the most charming<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> city in
+the peninsula. I had lost the last boat off to the steamer, on which I
+was a passenger; it was late at night, and I knew of no inn near the
+landing. At midnight, as I was walking in the Plaza, called after that
+revered monarch, Queen Isabel II., I was spoken to at the door of a
+fonda, and asked if I wanted a bedroom. It was the taberna "La
+Valenciana." I was delighted; it was the very thing I was looking for, I
+said. The innkeeper had just one room unoccupied, and he showed me
+upstairs into a plain, homely apartment, which I was pleased to engage
+for the night. "<i>Que usted descanse bien</i>" (may you sleep well), said
+the landlord, and left me. Keeping the candle burning I tumbled into
+bed, for I was very tired, but jumped out almost immediately, despite my
+fatigue. I turned down the clothes, and saw the bugs gathering in the
+centre from all parts of the bed. I collected a dozen or two, and put
+them in a basin of water, and, dressing myself, went out on the landing
+and called the landlord.</p>
+
+<p>He came up yawning.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," he said, "do you wish anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing; but it is impossible, absolutely impossible, for me to sleep
+in that bed."</p>
+
+<p>"But why, se&ntilde;or?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because it is full of bugs."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, sir, that cannot be, that cannot be; there is not a bug in the
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"But I have seen them."</p>
+
+<p>"You must be mistaken; it is impossible that there can be a bug in the
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"But I have caught some."</p>
+
+<p>"It makes twenty years that I live in this house, and never have I seen
+such a thing."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, but will you do me the favour to look at this basin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir, you are right, you are completely right; it is the weather; <i>every
+bed in Cadiz is now full of them</i>."</p>
+
+<p>In the morning, and every morning, we were away at daylight, and walked
+some miles before breakfast. All the way to Suifu the road is a paved
+causeway, 3 feet 6 inches to 6 feet wide, laid down with dressed flags
+of stone; and here, at least, it cannot be alleged, as the Chinese
+proverb would have it, that their roads are "good for ten years and bad
+for ten hundred." There are, of course, no fences; the main road picks
+its way through the cultivated fields; no traveller ever thinks of
+trespassing from the roadway, nor did I ever see any question of
+trespass between neighbours. In this law-abiding country the peasantry
+conspicuously follow the Confucian maxim taught in China four hundred
+years before Christ, "Do not unto others what you would not have others
+do unto you." Every rood of ground is under tillage.</p>
+
+<p>Hills are everywhere terraced like the seats of an amphitheatre, each
+terrace being irrigated from the one below it by a small stream of
+water, drawn up an inclined plain by a continuous chain bucket, worked
+with a windlass by either hand or foot. The poppy is everywhere abundant
+and well tended; there are fields of winter wheat, and pink-flowered
+beans, and beautiful patches of golden rape-seed. Dotted over the
+landscape are pretty Szechuen farmhouses in groves of trees. Splendid
+banyan trees give grateful shelter to the traveller. Of this country it
+could be written as a Chinese traveller wrote of England, "their fertile
+hills, adorned with the richest luxuriance, resemble in the outline of
+their summits the arched eyebrows of a fair woman."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The country is well populated, and a continuous stream of people is
+moving along the road. Grand memorial arches span the roadway, many of
+them notable efforts of monumental skill, with columns and architraves
+carved with elephants and deer, and flowers and peacocks, and the
+Imperial seven-tailed dragon of China. Chinese art is seen at its best
+in this rich province.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img009" id="img009"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/009.jpg"><img src="images/009_th.jpg" width="400" height="283" alt="CULTIVATION IN TERRACES. In the foreground the poppy in
+bloom." title="" /></a>
+<p class='center'><span class="caption">Cultivation in Terraces.</span> <br />
+<i>In the foreground the poppy in
+bloom.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="img010" id="img010"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/010.jpg"><img src="images/010_th.jpg" width="400" height="280" alt="SCENE IN SZECHUEN." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Scene in Szechuen.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>I lived, of course, in the common Chinese inn, ate Chinese food, and was
+everywhere treated with courtesy and good nature; but at first I found
+it trying to be such an object of curiosity; to have to do all things in
+unsecluded publicity; to have to push my way through streets thronged by
+the curious to see the foreigner. My meals I ate in the presence of the
+street before gaping crowds. When they came too close I told them
+politely in English to keep back a little, and they did so if I
+illustrated my words by gesture. When I scratched my head and they saw
+the spurious pigtail, they smiled; when I flicked the dust off the table
+with my pigtail, they laughed hilariously.</p>
+
+<p>The wayside inns are usually at the side of an arcade of grass and
+bamboo stretched above the main road. Two or three ponies are usually
+waiting here for hire, and expectant coolies are eager to offer their
+services. In engaging a pony you make an offer casually, as if you had
+no desire in the world of its being accepted, and then walk on as if you
+had no intention whatever of riding for the next month. The mafoo
+demands more, but will come down; you stick to your offer, though
+prepared to increase it; so demand and offer you exchange with the mafoo
+till the width of the village is between you, and your voices are almost
+out of hearing, when you come to terms.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Suppose I wanted a chair to give me a rest for a few miles&mdash;it was
+usually slung under the rafters&mdash;Laokwang (my cook) unobserved by anyone
+but me pointed to it with his thumb inquiringly. I nodded assent and
+apparently nothing more happened and the conversation, of which I was
+quite ignorant, continued. We left together on foot, my man still
+maintaining a crescendo conversation with the inn people till well away.
+When almost out of hearing he called out something and an answer came
+faintly back from the distance. It was his ultimatum as regards price
+and its acceptance&mdash;they had been bargaining all the time. My man
+motioned to me to wait, said the one word "<i>chiaodza</i>" (sedan chair) and
+in a few moments the chair of bamboo and wicker came rapidly down the
+road carried by two bearers. They put down the chair before me and bowed
+to me; I took my seat and was borne easily and pleasantly along at four
+miles an hour at a charge of less than one penny a mile.</p>
+
+<p>My men received nearly 400 cash a day each; but from time to time they
+sweated their contract to unemployed coolies and had their loads carried
+for so little as sixty cash (one penny halfpenny), for two-thirds of a
+day's journey.</p>
+
+<p>At nightfall we always reached some large village or town where my cook
+selected the best inn for my resting place, the best inn in such cases
+being usually the one which promised him the largest squeeze. All the
+towns through which the road passes swarm with inns, for there is an
+immense floating population to provide for. Competition is keen. Touts
+stand at the doorway of every inn, who excitedly waylay the traveller
+and cry the merits of their houses. At the counter inside the entrance,
+piles of pukais (the warm Chinese bedding), are stacked for hire&mdash;few of
+the travellers carry<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> their own bedding. The inns are sufficiently
+comfortable. The bedrooms are in one or two stories and are arranged
+round one or more, or a succession of courts. The cheapness is to be
+commended. For supper, bed, and light, tea during the night and tea
+before starting in the morning, and various little comforts, such as hot
+water for washing, the total charge for the six nights of my journey
+from Chungking to Suifu was 840 cash (1<i>s.</i> 9<i>d.</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Rice was my staple article of diet; eggs, fowls, and vegetables were
+also abundant and cheap; but I avoided pork which is the flesh
+universally eaten throughout China by all but the Mohammedans and
+vegetarians. In case of emergency I had a few tins of foreign stores
+with me. I made it a point never to drink water&mdash;I drank tea. No
+Chinaman ever drinks anything cold. Every half hour or hour he can reach
+an inn or teahouse where tea can be infused for him in a few minutes.
+The price of a bowl of tea with a pinch of tea-leaves, filled and
+refilled with hot water <i>ad lib</i>, is two cash&mdash;equal to the twentieth
+part of one penny. Pork has its weight largely added to by being
+injected with water, the point of the syringe being passed into a large
+vein; this is usually described as the Chinese method of "watering
+stock."</p>
+
+<p>On the third day we were at Yuenchuan, sixty-three miles from Chungking.
+On the 5th, we passed through Luchow, one of the richest and most
+populous cities on the Upper Yangtse, and at noon next day we again
+reached the Yangtse at the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy, two miles
+down the river from the large town of Lanchihsien. According to my
+interpretation of the gesticulations of Laokwang, we were then forty
+miles from Suifu, and a beautiful sunny afternoon before us, in which to
+easily cover one half the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> distance. But I must reckon with my guide. He
+wished to remain here; I wished to go on; but as I could not understand
+his Chinese explanation, nor advance any protest except in English, of
+which he was innocent, I could only look aggrieved and make a virtue of
+a necessity. He did, however, convey to me his solemn assurance that
+to-morrow (<i>ming tien</i>) he would conduct me into Suifu before sunset. An
+elderly Chinaman, who had given us the advantage of his company at
+various inns during the last three days, here entered into the
+conversation, produced his watch, and, with his hand over his heart,
+which, in a Chinaman, is in the centre of the breast-bone, added his
+sacred asseveration to my guide's. So I stayed. We were quite a friendly
+party travelling together.</p>
+
+<p>In the middle of the night a light was flashed into our room and a voice
+pealed out an alarm that awoke even my two Chinese, who always
+obligingly slept in the same room with me. I had protested against their
+doing so, but they mistook my expostulation for approbation. We rose at
+once, and came down the steep bank to a boat that was lying stern to
+shore showing a light. I was charmed to get such an early start, and
+construed the indications into a ferry boat to take me across the river,
+whence we would go by a short route into Suifu. The boat was loaded with
+sugar and had a crew of two men and three boys. There was an awning over
+the cargo, but most of the space under it was already occupied by twelve
+amiable Chinese, among whom were six promiscuous friends, who had kept
+with us for several stages, and had, I imagine, derived some pecuniary
+advantages from my company. Yet this was not a ferry boat, but a
+passenger boat engaged especially for me to carry me to Suifu before
+nightfall.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> The Chinese passengers had courteously projected their
+companionship upon the inarticulate stranger. An elderly gentleman, with
+huge goggles and long nails, whose fingers were stained with opium, was
+the pacificator of the party, and calmed the frequent wranglings in
+which the other eighteen Chinese engaged with much earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>Well, this boat&mdash;a leaky, heavy, old tub that had to be tracked nearly
+all the way&mdash;carried me the forty miles to Suifu within contract time.
+The boatmen on board worked sixteen hours without any rest except at two
+hasty meals; the frayed towrope never parted at any rapid, and only once
+did our boat get entangled with any other. Towards sundown we were
+abreast of the fine pagoda of Suifu, and a little later were at the
+landing. The city is on a high, level shelf of land with high hills
+behind it. It lies in the angle of bifurcation formed by the Yangtse
+river (here known as the "River of Golden Sand"), going west, and the
+Min, or Chentu river, going north to Chentu, the capital city of the
+province. I landed below the southern wall, and said good-bye to my
+companions. Climbing up the bank into the city, I passed by a busy
+thoroughfare to the pretty home of the Inland Mission, where I received
+a kind welcome from the gentleman and lady who conduct the mission, and
+a charming English girl, also in the mission, who lives with them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The City of Suifu&mdash;The China Inland Mission, with some general
+remarks about Missionaries in China.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>At Suifu I rested a day in order to engage new coolies to go with me to
+Chaotong in Yunnan Province, distant 290 miles. Neither of my two
+Chungking men would re-engage to go further. Yet in Chungking Laokwang
+the cook had declared that he was prepared to go with me all the way to
+Talifu. But now he feared the loneliness of the road to Chaotong. The
+way, he said, was mountainous and little trodden, and robbers would see
+the smallness of our party and "come down and stab us." I was then glad
+that I had not paid him the retaining fee he had asked in Chungking to
+take me to Tali.</p>
+
+<p>I called upon the famous Catholic missionaries, the Provicaire Moutot
+and P&egrave;re B&eacute;raud, saw the more important sights and visited some
+newly-arrived missionaries of the American Board of Missions. Four of
+the Americans were living together. I called with the Inland missionary
+at a time when they were at dinner. We were shown into the drawing-room,
+where the most conspicuous ornament was a painted scroll with a well
+executed drawing of the poppy in flower, a circumstance which would
+confirm the belief of the Chinese who saw it, that the poppy is held in
+veneration by foreigners. While we waited we heard the noise of dinner
+gradually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> cease, and then the door opened and one of the single ladies
+entered. She was fierce to look at, tall as a grenadier, with a stride
+like a camel; she was picking her teeth with a hairpin. She courteously
+expressed her regret that she could not invite us to dinner. "Waal now,"
+she said, looking at us from under her spectacles, "ahm real sorry I
+caan't ask you to have somethin' to eat, but we've just finished, and I
+guess there ain't nothin' left."</p>
+
+<p>Fourteen American missionaries were lately imported into Suifu in one
+shipment. Most of them are from Chicago. One of their earliest efforts
+will be to translate into Chinese Mr. Stead's "If Christ came to
+Chicago," in order the better to demonstrate to the Chinese the lofty
+standard of morality, virtue, probity, and honour attained by the
+Christian community that sent them to China to enlighten the poor
+benighted heathen in this land of darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Szechuen is a Catholic stronghold. There are nominally one hundred
+thousand Catholics in the province, representing the labours of many
+French missionaries for a period of rather more than two hundred years.
+Actually, however, there are only sixty thousand Chinese in the province
+who could be called Catholics. To use the words of the Provicaire, the
+Chinese are "<i>tr&ocirc;p mat&egrave;rialistes</i>" to become Christian, and, as they are
+all "liars and robbers," the faith is not easily propagated amongst
+them. Rarely have I met two more charming men than these brave
+missionaries. French, they told me, I speak with the "<i>vrai accent
+parisien</i>," a compliment which I have no doubt is true, though it
+conflicts with my experience in Paris, where most of the true Parisians
+to whom I spoke in their own language gave me the same look of
+intelligence that I observe in the Chinaman when I address<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> him in
+English. P&egrave;re Moutot has been twenty-three years in China&mdash;six years at
+the sacred Mount Omi, and seventeen years in Suifu; P&egrave;re B&eacute;raud has been
+twenty-three years in Suifu. They both speak Chinese to perfection, and
+have been co-workers with the bishop in the production of a
+Mandarin-French dictionary just published at Sicawei; they dress as
+Chinese, and live as Chinese in handsome mission premises built in
+Chinese style. There is a pretty chapel in the compound with scrolls and
+memorial tablets presented by Chinese Catholics, a school for boys
+attended by fifty ragamuffins, a nunnery and girls' school, and a fit
+residence for the venerable bishop. When showing me the chapel, the
+Provicaire told me of the visit of one of Our Lord's Apostles to Suifu.
+He seemed to have no doubt himself of the truth of the story. Tradition
+says that St. Thomas came to China, and, if further proof were wanting,
+there is the black image of Tamo worshipped to this day in many of the
+temples of Szechuen. Scholars, however, identify this image and its
+marked Hindoo features with that of the Buddhist evangelist Tamo, who is
+known to have visited China in the sixth century.</p>
+
+<p>In Suifu there is a branch of the China Inland Mission under an
+enthusiastic young missionary, who was formerly a French polisher in
+Hereford. He is helped by an amiable wife and by a charming English girl
+scarcely out of her teens. The missionary's work has, he tells me, been
+"abundantly blessed,"&mdash;he has baptised six converts in the last three
+years. A fine type of man is this missionary, brave and self-reliant,
+sympathetic and self-denying, hopeful and self-satisfied. His views as a
+missionary are well-defined. I give them in his own words:&mdash;"Those
+Chinese who have never heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> the Gospel will be judged by the Almighty
+as He thinks fit"&mdash;a contention which does not admit of dispute&mdash;"but
+those Chinese who have heard the Christian doctrine, and still steel
+their hearts against the Holy Ghost, will assuredly go to hell; there is
+no help for them, they can believe and they won't; had they believed,
+their reward would be eternal; they refuse to believe and their
+punishment will be eternal." But the destruction that awaits the Chinese
+must be pointed out to them with becoming gentleness, in accordance with
+the teaching of the Rev. S. F. Woodin, of the American Baptist Mission,
+Foochow, who says:&mdash;"There are occasions when we must speak that awful
+word 'hell,' but this should always be done in a spirit of earnest
+love." (<i>Records</i> of the Shanghai Missionary Conference, 1877, p. 91.)
+It was a curious study to observe the equanimity with which this
+good-natured man contemplates the work he has done in China, when to
+obtain six dubious conversions he has on his own confession sent some
+thousands of unoffending Chinese <i>en enfer bouillir &eacute;ternellement</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But, if the teaching of this good missionary is unwelcome to the
+Chinese, and there are hundreds in China who teach as he does, how
+infinitely more distasteful must be the teaching of both the Founder and
+the Secretary of the Mission which sent him to China.</p>
+
+<p>"They are God's lost ones who are in China," says Mr. C. L. Morgan,
+editor of <i>The Christian</i>, "and God cares for them and yearns over
+them." (<i>China's Millions</i>, 1879, p. 94.) "The millions of Chinese,"
+(who have never heard the Gospel,) says Mr. B. Broomhall, secretary of
+the China Inland Mission, and editor of <i>China's Millions</i>, "where are
+they going, what is to be their future? What is to be their condition
+beyond<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> the grave? Oh, tremendous question! It is an awful thing to
+contemplate&mdash;but they perish; that is what God says." ("Evangelisation
+of the World," p. 70.) "The heathen are all guilty in God's eyes; as
+guilty they perish." (<i>Id.</i>, 101.) "Do we believe that these millions
+are without hope in the next world? We turn the leaves of God's Word in
+vain, for there we find no hope; not only that, but positive words to
+the contrary. Yes! we believe it." (<i>Id.</i>, p. 199.)</p>
+
+<p>The Rev. Dr. Hudson Taylor, the distinguished Founder of the Mission,
+certainly believes it, and has frequently stated his belief in public.
+Ancestral worship is the keystone of the religion of the Chinese; "the
+keystone also of China's social fabric." And "the worship springs," says
+the Rev. W. A. P. Martin, D.D., LL.D., of the Tung Wen College, Peking,
+"from some of the best principles of human nature. The first conception
+of a life beyond the grave was, it is thought, suggested by a desire to
+commune with deceased parents." ("The Worship of Ancestors&mdash;a plea for
+toleration.") But Dr. Hudson Taylor condemned bitterly this plea for
+toleration. "Ancestral worship," he said (it was at the Shanghai
+Missionary Conference of May, 1890), "Ancestral worship is idolatry from
+beginning to end, the whole of it, and everything connected with it."
+China's religion is idolatry, the Chinese are universally idolatrous,
+and the fate that befalls idolaters is carefully pointed out by Dr.
+Taylor:&mdash;"Their part is in the lake of fire."</p>
+
+<p>"These millions of China," I quote again from Dr. Taylor, "These
+millions of China" (who have never heard the Gospel), "are unsaved. Oh!
+my dear friends, may I say one word about that condition? The Bible says
+of the heathen, that they are without hope; will you say there is good
+hope for them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> of whom the Word of God says, 'they are without hope,
+without God in the world'?" (Missionary Conference of 1888, <i>Records</i>,
+i., 176.)</p>
+
+<p>"There are those who know more about the state of the heathen than did
+the Apostle Paul, who wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,
+'They that sin without law, perish without law,' nay, there are those
+who are not afraid to contradict the revelation of Jesus Christ, which
+God gave unto Him to shew unto His servants, in which He solemnly
+affirms that 'idolators and all liars, their part shall be in the lake
+that burneth with fire and brimstone.' Such being the state of the
+unsaved of China, do not their urgent needs claim from us that with
+<i>agonising eagerness</i> we should hasten to proclaim everywhere the
+message through which alone deliverance can be found?" (<i>Ut supra</i>, ii.,
+31.)</p>
+
+<p>Look then at the enormous difficulty which the six hundred and eleven
+missionaries, of the China Inland Mission, raise up against themselves,
+the majority of whom are presumably in agreement with the teaching of
+their director, Dr. Hudson Taylor. They tell the Chinese inquirer that
+his unconverted father, who never heard the Gospel, has, like Confucius,
+perished eternally. But the chief of all virtues in China is filial
+piety; the strongest emotion that can move the heart of a Chinaman is
+the supreme desire to follow in the footsteps of his father. Conversion
+with him means not only eternal separation from the father who gave him
+life, but the "immediate liberation of his ancestors to a life of
+beggary, to inflict sickness and all manner of evil on the
+neighbourhood."</p>
+
+<p>I believe that it is now universally recognised that the most difficult
+of all missionary fields&mdash;incomparably the most difficult&mdash;is China.
+Difficulties assail the missionary at every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> step; and every honest man,
+whether his views be broad or high or low, must sympathise with the
+earnest efforts the missionaries are making for the good and advancement
+of the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>Look for example at the difficulty there is in telling a Chinese, who
+has been taught to regard the love of his parents as his chief duty, as
+his forefathers have been taught for hundreds of generations before
+him&mdash;the difficulty there is in explaining to him, in his own language,
+the words of Christ, "If any man come to Me and hate not his father, he
+cannot be My disciple. For I am come to set a man at variance against
+his father."</p>
+
+<p>In the patriarchal system of government which prevails in China, the
+most awful crime that a son can commit, is to kill his parent, either
+father or mother. And this is said to be, though the description is no
+doubt abundantly exaggerated, the punishment of his crime. He is put to
+death by the "<i>Ling chi</i>," or "degrading and slow process," and his
+younger brothers are beheaded; his house is razed to the ground and the
+earth under it dug up several feet deep; his neighbours are severely
+punished; his principal teacher is decapitated; the district magistrate
+is deprived of his office; and the higher officials of the province
+degraded three degrees in rank.</p>
+
+<p>Such is the enormity of the crime of parricide in China; yet it is to
+the Chinese who approves of the severity of this punishment that the
+missionary has to preach, "And the children shall rise up against their
+parents and cause them to be put to death."</p>
+
+<p>The China Inland Mission, as a body of courageous workers, brave
+travellers, unselfish and kindly men endowed with every manly virtue
+that can command our admiration, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> worthy of all the praise that can
+be bestowed on it. Most of its members are men who have been saved after
+reaching maturity, and delicately-nurtured emotional girls with
+heightened religious feelings.</p>
+
+<p>Too often entirely ignorant of the history of China, a mighty nation
+which has "witnessed the rise to glory and the decay of Egypt, Assyria,
+Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and still remains the only monument
+of ages long bygone," of its manners and polity, customs and religions,
+and of the extraordinary difficulties in the acquirement of its
+language, too often forgetful that the Chinese are a people whose
+"prepossessions and prejudices and cherished judgments are the growth of
+millenniums," they come to China hoping that miraculous assistance will
+aid them in their exposition of the Christian doctrine, in language
+which is too often impenetrable darkness to its hearers.</p>
+
+<p>"They are God's lost ones who are in China, and God cares for them and
+yearns over them," and men who were in England respectable artisans,
+with an imperfect hold of their own language, come to China, in response
+to the "wail of the dying millions," to stay this "awful ruin of souls,"
+who, at the rate of 33,000 a day, are "perishing without hope, having
+sinned without law."</p>
+
+<p>Six months after their arrival they write to <i>China's Millions</i>: "Now
+for the news! Glorious news this time! Our services crowded! Such bright
+intelligent faces! So eager to hear the good news! They seemed to drink
+in every word, and to listen as if they were afraid that a word might be
+lost." Five years later they write: "The first convert in Siao Wong Miao
+was a young man named Sengleping, a matseller. He was very earnest in
+his efforts to spread the Gospel, but about the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> beginning of the year
+he became insane. The poor man lost his reason, but not his piety."
+(<i>China's Millions</i>, iv., 5, 95, and 143).</p>
+
+<p>A young English girl at this mission, who has been more than a year in
+China, tells me that she has never felt the Lord so near her as she has
+since she came to China, nor ever realised so entirely His abundant
+goodness. Poor thing, it made me sad to talk to her. In England she
+lived in a bright and happy home with brothers and sisters, in a
+charming climate. She was always well and full of life and vigour,
+surrounded by all that can make life worth living. In China she is never
+well; she is almost forgetting what is the sensation of health; she is
+an&aelig;mic and apprehensive; she has nervous headaches and neuralgia; she
+can have no pleasure, no amusement whatever; her only relaxation is
+taking her temperature; her only diversion a prayer meeting. She is
+cooped up in a Chinese house in the unchanging society of a married
+couple&mdash;the only exercise she can permit herself is a prison-like walk
+along the top of the city at the back of the mission. Her lover, a
+refined English gentleman who is also in the mission, lives a week's
+journey away, in Chungking, a depressing fever-stricken city where the
+sun is never seen from November to June, and blazes with unendurable
+fierceness from July to October. In England he was full of strength and
+vigour, fond of boating and a good lawn-tennis player. In China he is
+always ill, an&aelig;mic, wasted, and dyspeptic, constantly subject to low
+forms of fever, and destitute of appetite. But more agonising than his
+bad health is the horrible reality of the unavailing sacrifice he is
+making&mdash;no converts but "outcasts subsidised to forsake their family
+altars;" no reward but the ultimate one which his noble self-devotion<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+is laying up for himself in Heaven. No man with a healthy brain can
+discern "Blessing" in the work of these two missionaries, nor be blind
+to the fact that it is the reverse of worshipful to return effusive
+thanks to the great Almighty, "who yearns over the Chinese, His lost
+ones," for "vouchsafing the abundant mercies" of a harvest of six
+doubtful converts as the work of three missionaries for three years.</p>
+
+<p>There are 180,000 people in Suifu, and, as is the case with Chinese
+cities, a larger area than that under habitation is occupied by the
+public graveyard outside the city, which covers the hill slopes for
+miles and miles. The number of opium-smokers is so large that the
+question is not, who does smoke opium, but who doesn't. In the mission
+street alone, besides the Inland Mission, the Buddhist Temple,
+Mohammedan Mosque, and Roman Catholic Mission, there are eight
+opium-houses. Every bank, silk shop, and hong, of any pretension
+whatever, throughout the city, has its opium-room, with the lamp always
+lit ready for the guest. Opium-rooms are as common as smoking rooms are
+with us. A whiff of opium rather than a nip of whisky is the preliminary
+to business in Western China.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img011" id="img011"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/011.jpg"><img src="images/011_th.jpg" width="400" height="256" alt="OPIUM-SMOKING." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Opium-Smoking.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>An immensely rich city is Suifu with every advantage of position, on a
+great waterway in the heart of a district rich in coal and minerals and
+inexhaustible subterranean reservoirs of brine. Silks and furs and
+silverwork, medicines, opium and whitewax, are the chief articles of
+export, and as, fortunately for us, Western China can grow but little
+cotton, the most important imports are Manchester goods.</p>
+
+<p>Szechuen is by far the richest province of the eighteen that constitute
+the Middle Kingdom. Its present Viceroy, Liu, is a native of Anhwei; he
+is, therefore, a countryman of Li Hung Chang to whom he is related by
+marriage, his daughter having<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> married Li Hung Chang's nephew. Its
+provincial Treasurer is believed to occupy the richest post held by any
+official in the empire. It is worth noticing that the present provincial
+Treasurer, Kung Chao-yuan, has just been made (1894) Minister
+Plenipotentiary to Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Sweden and
+Norway, and one can well believe how intense was his chagrin when he
+received this appointment from the "Imperial Supreme" compelling him, as
+it did, to forsake the tombs of his ancestors&mdash;to leave China for
+England on a fixed salary, and vacate the most coveted post in the
+empire, a post where the opportunities of personal enrichment are simply
+illimitable.</p>
+
+<p>In Suifu there are two magistrates, both with important yamens. The Fu
+magistrate is the "Father of the City," the Hsien magistrate is the
+"Mother of the City;" and the "Mother of the City" largely favours the
+export opium trade. When Protestant missionaries first came to the city
+in 1888 and 1889 there was little friendliness shown to them. Folk would
+cry after the missionary, "There goes the foreigner that eats children,"
+and children would be hurriedly hidden, as if from fear. These taunts
+were at first disregarded. But there came a time when living children
+were brought to the mission for sale as food; whereupon the mission made
+formal complaint in the yamen, and the Fu at once issued a proclamation
+checking the absurd tales about the foreigners, and ordering the
+citizens, under many pains and penalties, to treat the foreigners with
+respect. There has been no trouble since, and, as we walked through the
+crowded streets, I could see nothing but friendly indifference.
+Reference to this and other sorrows is made in the missionary's report
+to <i>China's Millions</i>, November, 1893:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Soon after this trial had passed away (the rumours of baby eating),
+still more painful internal sorrow arose. One of the members, who had
+been baptised three years before and had been useful as a preacher of
+the Gospel, fell into grievous sin, and had to be excluded from Church
+fellowship. Then a little later a very promising inquirer, who had been
+cured of opium-smoking and appeared to be growing in grace, fell again
+under its power. While still under a cloud he was suddenly removed
+during the cholera visitation."</p>
+
+<p>The China Inland Mission has pleasant quarters close under the city
+wall. Their pretty chapel opens into the street, and displays
+prominently the proclamation of the Emperor concerning the treaty rights
+of foreign missionaries. Seven children, all of whom are girls, are
+boarded on the premises, and are being brought up as Christians. They
+are pretty, bright children, the eldest, a girl of fourteen,
+particularly so. All are large-footed, and they are to be married to
+Christian converts. When this fact becomes known it is hoped that more
+young Chinamen than at present may be emulous to be converted. All seven
+are foundlings from Chungking where, wrapped in brown paper, they were
+at different times dropped over the wall into the Mission compound. They
+have been carefully reared by the Mission.</p>
+
+<p>At the boys' school fifty smart boys, all heathens, were at their
+lessons. They were learning different subjects, and were teaching their
+ears the "tones" by reading at the top of their voices. The noise was
+awful. None but a Chinese boy could study in such a din. In China, when
+the lesson is finished, the class is silent; noise, therefore, is the
+indication of work in a Chinese school&mdash;not silence.</p>
+
+<p>The schoolmaster was a ragged-looking loafer, dressed in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> grey. He was
+in mourning, and had been unshaven for forty-two days in consequence of
+the death of his father. This was an important day of mourning, because
+on this day, the forty-second after his death, his dead father became,
+for the first time, aware of his own decease. A week later, on the
+forty-ninth day, the funeral rites would cease.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Suifu to Chaotong, with some remarks on the Province of
+Yunnan&mdash;Chinese Porters, Postal Arrangements, and Banks.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>I engaged three new men in Suifu, who undertook to take me to Chaotong,
+290 miles, in thirteen days, special inducement being held out to them
+in the shape of a reward of one shilling each to do the journey in
+eleven days. Their pay was to be seven shillings and threepence each,
+apart from the bonus, and of course they had to find themselves. They
+brought me from the coolie-hong, where they were engaged, an agreement
+signed by the hong-master, which was to be returned to them in Chaotong,
+and remitted to their master as a receipt for my safe delivery.</p>
+
+<p>Every condition detailed in the agreement they faithfully carried out,
+and they took me to Chaotong in ten days and a half, though the ordinary
+time is fourteen days.</p>
+
+<p>One of the three was a convert, one of the six surviving converts made
+by the aggregate Inland Mission of Suifu in six years. He was an
+excellent good fellow, rather dull of wits, but a credit to the Mission.
+To him was intrusted the paying away of my money&mdash;he carried no load.
+When he wanted money he was to show me his empty hands, and say "<i>Muta
+tsien! muta tsien!</i>" (I have no money! I have no money!).<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I knew that perfect confidence could be placed in the convert, apart
+from the reason of his conversion, because he had a father living in
+Suifu. Were he to rob me or do me a wrong and run away, we could arrest
+his father and have him detained in the yamen prison till his son
+returned. Nothing in China gives one greater protection against fraud
+and injury than the law which holds a father responsible for the
+wrongdoing of his son, or, where there is no father, an elder son
+culpable for the misdeed of the younger.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of March 22nd we started for Chaotong in Yunnan province.
+The Inland Missionary and a Brother from the American Baptist Mission
+kindly came with me for the first thirteen miles. My route lay west on
+the north bank of the Yangtse, but later, after crossing the Yangtse,
+would be nearly south to Chaotong.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before leaving, the <i>chairen</i> or yamen-runner&mdash;the policeman,
+that is to say&mdash;sent by the Magistrate to shadow me to Tak-wan-hsien,
+called at the Mission to request that the interpreter would kindly
+remind the traveller, who did not speak Chinese, that it was customary
+to give wine-money to the chairen at the end of the journey. The request
+was reasonable. All the way from Chungking I had been accompanied by
+yamen-runners without knowing it. The chairen is sent partly for the
+protection of the traveller, but mainly for the protection of the
+Magistrate; for, should a traveller provided with a passport receive any
+injury, the Magistrate of the district would be liable to degradation.
+It was arranged, therefore, with the convert that, on our arrival in
+Tak-wan-hsien, I was to give the chairen, if satisfied with his
+services, 200 cash (five pence); but, if he said "<i>gowshun! gowshun!</i>"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+(a little more! a little more!) with sufficient persistence, I was to
+increase the reward gradually to sevenpence halfpenny. This was to be
+the limit; and the chairen, I was assured, would consider this a
+generous return for accompanying me 227 miles over one of the most
+mountainous roads in China.</p>
+
+<p>It was a pleasant walk along the river-bank in the fertile alluvial,
+where the poppy in white flower and tobacco were growing, and where
+fields of yellow rape-seed alternated with beds of rushes&mdash;the rape-seed
+yielding the oil, and the rushes the rushlights of Chinese lamps. Flocks
+of wild geese were within easy shot on the sandbanks&mdash;the "peaceful
+geese," whose virtues are extolled by every Chinaman. They live in
+pairs, and, if one dies, its mate will be for ever faithful to its
+memory. Such virtue is worthy of being recorded on the arch which here
+spans the roadway, whose Chinese characters, <i>Shen</i> (holy), <i>Chi</i>
+(will), show that it was erected by the holy decree of the Emperor to
+perpetuate the memory of some widow who never remarried.</p>
+
+<p>As we walked along the missionary gave instructions to my men. "In my
+grace I had given them very light loads; hurry and they would be richly
+rewarded"&mdash;one shilling extra for doing fourteen stages in eleven days.</p>
+
+<p>At an inn, under the branches of a banyan tree, we sat down and had a
+cup of tea. While we waited, a hawker came and sat near us. He was
+peddling live cats. In one of his two baskets was a cat that bore a
+curious resemblance to a tortoise-shell tabby, that till a week ago had
+been a pet in the Inland Mission. It had disappeared mysteriously; it
+had died, the Chinese servant said; and here it was reincarnated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the market town the missionaries left me to go on alone with my three
+men. I had seventeen miles still to go before night.</p>
+
+<p>It was midday, and the sun was hot, so a chair was arranged for to take
+me the seventeen miles to Anpien. It was to cost 320 cash (eightpence),
+but, just before leaving, the grasping coolies refused to carry me for
+less than 340 cash. "Walk on," said the missionary, "and teach them a
+Christian lesson," so I walked seventeen miles in the sun to rebuke them
+for their avarice and save one halfpenny. In the evening I am afraid
+that I was hardly in the frame of mind requisite for conducting an
+evangelical meeting.</p>
+
+<p>Anpien is a considerable town. It is on the Yangtse River just below
+where it bifurcates into two rivers, one of which goes north-west, the
+other south-west. Streets of temporary houses are built down by the
+river; they form the winter suburb, and disappear in the summer when the
+river rises in consequence of the melting of the snows in its mountain
+sources. At an excellent inn, with a noisy restaurant on the first
+floor, good accommodation was given me. No sooner was I seated than a
+chairen came from the yamen to ask for my Chinese visiting card; but he
+did not ask for my passport, though I had brought with me twenty-five
+copies besides the original.</p>
+
+<p>At daybreak a chair was ready, and I was carried to the River, where a
+ferry boat was in waiting to take us across below the junction. Then we
+started on our journey towards the south, along the right bank of the
+Laowatan branch of the Yangtse. The road was a tracking path cut into
+the face of the cliff; it was narrow, steep, winding, and slippery.
+There was only just room for the chair to pass, and at the sudden turns<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+it had often to be canted to one side to permit of its passage. We were
+high above the river in the mountain gorges. The comfort of the
+traveller in a chair along this road depends entirely upon the sureness
+of foot of his two bearers&mdash;a false step, and chair and traveller would
+tumble down the cliff into the foaming river below. Deep and narrow was
+the mountain river, and it roared like a cataract, yet down the passage
+a long narrow junk, swarming with passengers, was racing, its oars and
+bow-sweep worked by a score of sailors singing in chorus. The boat
+appeared, passed down the reach, and was out of sight in a moment; a
+single error, the slightest confusion, and it would have been smashed in
+fragments on the rocks and the river strewn with corpses.</p>
+
+<p>We did a good stage before breakfast. Every few li where the steepness
+of the valley side permits it, there are straw-thatched, bamboo and
+plaster inns. Here rice is kept in wooden bins all ready steaming hot
+for the use of travellers; good tea is brewed in a few minutes; the
+tables and chopsticks are sufficiently clean.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the river, we crossed over the mountains by a short cut to the
+river again, and at a wayside inn, much frequented by Chinese, the chair
+stage finished. I wished to do some writing, and sat down at one of the
+tables. A crowd gathered round me, and were much interested. One elderly
+Chinese with huge glasses, a wag in his own way, seeing that I did not
+speak Chinese, thought to make me understand and divert the crowd by the
+loudness of his speech, and, insisting that I was deaf, yelled into my
+ears in tones that shook the tympanum. I told the foolish fellow, in
+English, that the less he talked the better I could understand him; but
+he persisted, and poked his face almost into mine, but withdrew it and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+hobbled off in umbrage when I drew the attention of the bystanders to
+the absurd capacity of his mouth, which was larger than any mule's.</p>
+
+<p>I must admit that my knowledge of Chinese was very scanty, so scanty
+indeed as to be almost non-existent. What few words I knew were rarely
+intelligible; but, as Mrs. General Baynes, when staying at Boulogne,
+found Hindostanee to be of great help in speaking French, so did I
+discover that English was of great assistance to me in conversing in
+Chinese. Remonstrance was thus made much more effective. Whenever I was
+in a difficulty, or the crowd too obtrusive, I had only to say a few
+grave sentences in English, and I was master of the situation. This
+method of speaking often reminded me of that employed by a Cornish lady
+of high family whose husband was a colleague of mine in Spain. She had
+been many years in Andalusia, but had never succeeded in mastering
+Spanish. At a dinner party given by this lady, at which I was present,
+she thus addressed her Spanish servant, who did not "possess" a single
+word of English: "Bring me," she said in an angry aside, "bring me the
+<i>cuchillo</i> with the black-handled heft," adding, as she turned to us and
+thumped her fist on the table, while the servant stood still mystified,
+"D&mdash;&mdash; the language! I wish I had never learnt it."</p>
+
+<p>The inn, where the sedan left me, was built over the pathway, which was
+here a narrow track, two feet six inches wide. Mountain coolies on the
+road were passing in single file through the inn, their backs bending
+under their huge burdens. Pigs and fowls and dogs, and a stray cat, were
+foraging for crumbs under the table. Through the open doorways you saw
+the paddy-fields under water and the terraced hills, with every arable
+yard under cultivation. The air was hot and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> enervating. "The country of
+the clouds," as the Chinese term the province of Szechuen, does not
+belie its name. An elderly woman was in charge of the oven, and toddled
+about on her deformed feet as if she were walking on her heels. Her
+husband, the innkeeper, brought us hot water every few minutes to keep
+our tea basins full. "<i>Na kaishui lai</i>" (bring hot water), you heard on
+all sides. A heap of bedding was in one corner of the room, in another
+were a number of rolls of straw mattresses; a hollow joint of bamboo was
+filled with chopsticks for the common use, into another bamboo the
+innkeeper slipped his takings of copper cash. Hanging from the rafters
+were strings of straw sandals for the poor, and hemp sandals for moneyed
+wayfarers like the writer. The people who stood round, and those seated
+at the tables, were friendly and respectful, and plied my men with
+questions concerning their master. And I did hope that the convert was
+not tempted to backslide and swerve from the truth in his answers.</p>
+
+<p>My men were now anxious to push on. Over a mountainous country of
+surpassing beauty, I continued my journey on foot to Fan-yien-tsen, and
+rested there for the night, having done two days' journey in one.</p>
+
+<p>On March 24th we were all day toiling over the mountains, climbing and
+descending wooded steeps, through groves of pine, with an ever-changing
+landscape before us, beautiful with running water, with cascades and
+waterfalls tumbling down into the river, with magnificent glens and
+gorges, and picturesque temples on the mountain tops. At night we were
+at the village of Tanto, on the river, having crossed, a few li before,
+over the boundary which separates the province of Szechuen from the
+province of Yunnan.</p>
+
+<p>From Tanto the path up the gorges leads across a rocky<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> mountain creek
+in a defile of the mountains. In England this creek would be spanned by
+a bridge; but the poor heathen, in China, how do they find their way
+across the stream? By a bridge also. They have spanned the torrent with
+a powerful iron suspension bridge, 100 feet long by ten feet broad,
+swung between two massive buttresses and approached under handsome
+temple-archways.</p>
+
+<p>Mists clothe the mountains&mdash;the air is confined between these walls of
+rock and stone. Population is scanty, but there is cultivation wherever
+possible. Villages sparsely distributed along the mountain path have
+water trained to them in bamboo conduits from tarns on the hillside.
+Each house has its own supply, and there is no attempt to provide for
+the common good. Besides other reasons, it would interfere with the
+trade of the water-carriers, who all day long are toiling up from the
+river.</p>
+
+<p>The mountain slope does not permit a greater width of building space
+than on each side of the one main street. And on market days this street
+is almost impassable, being thronged with traffickers, and blocked with
+stalls and wares. Coal is for sale, both pure and mixed with clay in
+briquettes, and salt in blocks almost as black as coal, and three times
+as heavy, and piles of drugs&mdash;a medley of bones, horns, roots, leaves,
+and minerals&mdash;and raw cotton and cotton yarn from Wuchang and Bombay,
+and finished goods from Manchester. At one of the villages there was a
+chair for hire, and, knowing how difficult was the country, I was
+willing to pay the amount asked&mdash;namely, 7<i>d.</i> for nearly seven miles;
+but my friend the convert, who arranged these things, considered that
+between the 5<i>d.</i> he offered and the 7<i>d.</i> they asked the discrepancy
+was too great, and after some acrimonious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> bargaining it was decided
+that I should continue on foot, my man indicating to me by gestures, in
+a most sarcastic way, that the "<i>chiaodza</i>" men had failed to overreach
+him.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img012" id="img012"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/012.jpg"><img src="images/012_th.jpg" width="400" height="294" alt="A TEMPLE IN SZECHUEN." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">A Temple in Szechuen.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><a name="img013" id="img013"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/013.jpg"><img src="images/013_th.jpg" width="400" height="322" alt="LAOWATAN." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Laowatan.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>At Sengki-ping it rained all through the night, and I had to sleep under
+my umbrella because of a solution in the continuity of the roof
+immediately above my pillow. And it rained all the day following; but my
+men, eager to earn their reward of one shilling, pushed on through the
+slush. It was hard work following the slippery path above the river. Few
+rivers in the world flow between more majestic banks than these,
+towering as they do a thousand feet above the water. Clad with thick
+mountain scrub, that has firm foothold, the mountains offer but a poor
+harvest to the peasant; yet even here high up on the precipitous sides
+of the cliffs, ledges that seem inaccessible are sown with wheat or
+peas, and, if the soil be deep enough, with the baneful poppy. As we
+plodded on through the mud and rain, we overtook a poor lad painfully
+limping along with the help of a stick. He was a bright lad, who unbound
+his leg and showed me a large swelling above the knee. He spoke to me,
+though I did not understand him, but with sturdy independence did not
+ask for alms, and when I had seen his leg he bound it up again and
+limped on. Meeting him a little later at an inn, where he was sitting at
+a table with nothing before him to eat, I gave him a handful of cash
+which I had put in my pocket for him. He thanked me by raising his
+clasped hands, and said something, I knew not what, as I hurried on. A
+little while afterwards I stopped to have my breakfast, when the boy
+passed. As soon as he saw me he fell down upon his knees and "kotow'd"
+to me, with every mark of the liveliest gratitude. I felt touched by the
+poor fellow's gratitude&mdash;he could not have been more than fifteen&mdash;and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>
+mean, to think that the benefaction, which in his eyes appeared so
+generous, was little more than one penny. There can be no doubt that I
+gained merit by this action, for this very afternoon as I was on the
+track a large stone the size of a shell from a 50-ton gun fell from the
+crag above me, struck the rock within two paces of me, and shot past
+into the river. A few feet nearer and it would have blotted out the life
+of one whom the profession could ill spare. We camped at Laowatan.</p>
+
+<p>A chair with three bearers was waiting for me in the morning, so that I
+left the town of Laowatan in a manner befitting my rank. The town had
+risen to see me leave, and I went down the street amid serried ranks of
+spectators. We crossed the river by a wonderful suspension bridge, 250
+feet long and 12 feet broad, formed of linked bars of wrought iron. It
+shows stability, strength, and delicacy of design, and is a remarkable
+work to have been done by the untutored barbarians of this land of
+night. We ascended the steep incline opposite, and passed the likin
+barrier, but at a turn in the road, higher still in the mountain, a
+woman emerged from her cottage and blocked our path. Nor could the chair
+pass till my foremost bearer had reluctantly given her a string of cash.
+"With money you can move the gods," say the Chinese; "without it you
+can't move a man."</p>
+
+<p>For miles we mounted upwards. We were now in Yunnan, "south of the
+clouds"&mdash;in Szechuen we were always under the clouds&mdash;the sun was warm,
+the air dry and crisp. Ponies passed us in long droves; often there were
+eighty ponies in a single drove. All were heavily laden with copper and
+lead, were nozzled to keep them off the grass, and picked their way down
+the rocky path of steps with the agility and sureness of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> foot of
+mountain goats. Time was beaten for them on musical gongs, and the
+echoes rang among the mountains. Many were decorated with red flags and
+tufts, and with plumes of the Amherst pheasant. These were official pack
+animals, which were franked through the likin barriers without
+examination.</p>
+
+<p>The path, rising to the height of the watershed, where at a great
+elevation we gain a distant view of water, descends by the counterslope
+once more to the river Laowatan. A wonderful ravine, a mountain riven
+perpendicularly in twain, here gives passage to the river, and in full
+view of this we rested at the little town of Taoshakwan, with the roar
+of the river hundreds of feet below us. Midway up the face of the
+precipice opposite there is a sight worth seeing; a mass of coffin
+boards, caught in a fault in the precipice, have been lying there for
+untold generations, having been originally carried there by the "ancient
+flying-men who are now extinct."</p>
+
+<p>A poor little town is Taoshakwan, with a poor little yamen with
+pretentious tigers painted on its outflanking wall, with a poor little
+temple, and gods in sad disrepair; but with an admirable inn, with a
+charming verandah facing a scene of alpine magnificence.</p>
+
+<p>We were entering a district of great poverty. At Tchih-li-pu, where we
+arrived at midday the next day, the houses are poor, the people
+poverty-stricken and ill-clad, the hotel dirty, and my room the worst I
+had yet slept in. The road is a well-worn path flagged in places,
+uneven, and irregular, following at varying heights the upward course of
+the tortuous river. The country is bald; it is grand but lonely;
+vegetation is scanty and houses are few; we have left the prosperity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+Szechuen, and are in the midst of the poverty of Yunnan. Farmhouses
+there are at rare intervals, amid occasional patches of cultivation;
+there are square white-washed watch towers in groves of sacred trees;
+there are a few tombstones, and an occasional rudely carved god to guard
+the way. There are poor mud and bamboo inns with grass roofs, and dirty
+tables set out with half a dozen bowls of tea, and with ovens for the
+use of travellers. Food we had now to bring with us, and only at the
+larger towns where the stages terminate could we expect to find food for
+sale. The tea is inferior, and we had to be content with maize meal,
+bean curds, rice roasted in sugar, and sweet gelatinous cakes made from
+the waste of maize meal. Rice can only be bought in the large towns. It
+is not kept in roadside inns ready steaming hot for use, as it is in
+Szechuen. Rarely there are sweet potatoes; there are eggs, however, in
+abundance, one hundred for a shilling (500 cash), but the coolies cannot
+eat them because of their dearness. A large bowl of rice costs four
+cash, an egg five cash, and the Chinaman strikes a balance in his mind
+and sees more nourishment in one bowl of rice than in three eggs. Of
+meat there is pork&mdash;pork in plenty, and pork only. Pigs and dogs are the
+scavengers of China. None of the carnivora are more omnivorous than the
+Chinese. "A Chinaman has the most unscrupulous stomach in the world,"
+says Meadows; "he will eat anything from the root to the leaf, and from
+the hide to the entrails." He will not even despise the flesh of dog
+that has died a natural death. During the awful famine in Shansi of
+1876-1879 starving men fought to the death for the bodies of dogs that
+had fattened on the corpses of their dead countrymen. Mutton is
+sometimes for sale in Mohammedan shops, and beef also, but it must not
+be imagined that either sheep or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> ox is killed for its flesh, unless on
+the point of death from starvation or disease. And the beef is not from
+the ox but from the water buffalo. Sugar can be bought only in the
+larger towns; salt can be purchased everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>Beggars there are in numbers, skulking about almost naked, with unkempt
+hair and no queue, with a small basket for gathering garbage and a staff
+to keep away dogs. Only beggars carry sticks in China, and it is only
+the beggars that need beware of dogs. To carry a stick in China for
+protection against dogs is like carrying a red flag to scare away bulls.
+Dogs in China are lowly organised; they are not discriminating animals;
+and, despite the luxurious splendour of my Chinese dress&mdash;it cost more
+than seven shillings&mdash;dogs frequently mistook my calling. In Szechuen,
+as we passed through the towns, there was competition among the inns to
+obtain our custom. Hotel runners were there to shout to all the world
+the superior merits of their establishments. But here in Yunnan it is
+different. There is barely inn accommodation for the road traffic, and
+the innkeepers are either too apathetic or too shamefaced to call the
+attention of the traveller to their poor, dirty accommodation houses.</p>
+
+<p>In Szechuen, one of the most flourishing of trades is that of the
+monumental mason and carver in stone. Huge monoliths are there cut from
+the boulders which have been dislodged from the mountains, dressed and
+finished <i>in situ</i>, and then removed to the spot where they are to be
+erected. The Chinese thus pursue a practice different from that of the
+Westerns, who bring the undressed stone from the quarry and carve it in
+the studio. With the Chinese the difficulty is one of transport&mdash;the
+finished work is obviously lighter than the unhewn block. In Yunnan, up
+to the present, I had seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> no mason at work, for no masonry was needed.
+Houses built of stone were falling into ruin, and only thatched,
+mud-plastered, bamboo and wood houses were being built in their places.</p>
+
+<p>At Laowatan I told my Christian to hire me a chair for thirty or forty
+li, and he did so, but the chair, instead of carrying me the shorter
+distance, carried me the whole day. The following day the chair kept
+company with me, and as I had not ordered it, I naturally walked; but
+the third day also the chair haunted me, and then I discovered that my
+admirable guide had engaged the chair not for thirty or forty li, as I
+had instructed him in my best Chinese, but for three hundred and sixty
+li, for four days' stages of ninety li each. He had made the agreement
+"out of consideration for me," and his own pocket; he had made an
+agreement which gave him wider scope for a little private arrangement of
+his own with the chair-coolies. For two days I was paying fifteen cash a
+li for a chair and walking alongside of it charmed by the good humour of
+the coolies, and unaware that they were laughing in their sleeves at my
+folly. Trifling mistakes like this are inevitable to one who travels in
+China without an interpreter.</p>
+
+<p>My two coolies were capital fellows, full of good humour, cheerful, and
+untiring. The elder was disposed to be argumentative with his
+countrymen, but he could not quarrel. Nature had given him an
+uncontrollable stutter, and, if he tried to speak quickly, spasm seized
+his tongue, and he had to break into a laugh. Few men in China, I think,
+could be more curiously constructed than this coolie. He was all neck;
+his chin was simply an upward prolongation of his neck like a second
+"Adam's apple." Both were very pleasant companions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> They were naturally
+in good humour, for they were well paid, and their loads, as loads are
+in China, were almost insignificant; I had only asked them to carry
+sixty-seven pounds each.</p>
+
+<p>We, who live amid the advantages of Western civilisation, can hardly
+realise how enormous are the weights borne by those human beasts of
+burthen, our brothers in China. The common fast-travelling coolie of
+Szechuen contracts to carry eighty catties (107lbs.), forty miles a day
+over difficult country. But the weight-carrying coolie, travelling
+shorter distances, carries far heavier loads than that. There are
+porters, says Du Halde, who will carry 160 of our pounds, ten leagues a
+day. The coolies, engaged in carrying the compressed cakes of Szechuen
+tea into Thibet, travel over mountain passes 7000 feet above their
+starting place; yet there are those among them, says Von Richthofen, who
+carry 324 catties (432lbs.). A package of tea is called a "<i>pao</i>" and
+varies in weight from eleven to eighteen catties, yet Baber has often
+seen coolies carrying eighteen of the eighteen-catty <i>pao</i> (the "<i>Yachou
+pao</i>") and on one occasion twenty-two, in other words Baber has often
+seen coolies with more than 400lbs. on their backs. Under these enormous
+loads they travel from six to seven miles a day. The average load of the
+Thibetan tea-carrier is, says Gill, from 240lbs. to 264lbs. Gill
+constantly saw "little boys carrying 120lbs." Bundles of calico weigh
+fifty-five catties each (73-1/3lbs.), and three bundles are the average
+load. Salt is solid, hard, metallic, and of high specific gravity, yet I
+have seen men ambling along the road, under loads that a strong
+Englishman could with difficulty raise from the ground. The average load
+of salt, coal, copper, zinc, and tin is 200lbs. Gill met coolies
+carrying logs, 200lbs. in weight, ten miles a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> day; and 200lbs., the
+Consul in Chungking told me, is the average weight carried by the
+cloth-porters between Wanhsien and Chentu, the capital.</p>
+
+<p>Mountain coolies, such as the tea-carriers, bear the weight of their
+burden on their shoulders, carrying it as we do a knapsack, not in the
+ordinary Chinese way, with a pliant carrying pole. They are all provided
+with a short staff, which has a transverse handle curved like a
+boomerang, and with this they ease the weight off the back, while
+standing at rest.</p>
+
+<p>We were still ascending the valley, which became more difficult of
+passage every day. Hamlets are built where there is scarce foothold in
+the detritus, below perpendicular escarpments of rock, cut clean like
+the fa&ccedil;ades of a Gothic temple. A tributary of the river is crossed by
+an admirable stone bridge of two arches, with a central pier and
+cut-water of magnificent boldness and strength, and with two images of
+lions guarding its abutment. Just below the branch the main stream can
+be crossed by a traveller, if he be brave enough to venture, in a bamboo
+loop-cradle, and be drawn across the stream on a powerful bamboo cable
+slung from bank to bank.</p>
+
+<p>We rested by the bridge and refreshed ourselves, for above us was an
+ascent whose steepness my stuttering coolie indicated to me by fixing my
+walking stick in the ground, almost perpendicularly, and running his
+finger up the side. He did not exaggerate. A zigzag path set with stone
+steps has been cut in the vertical ascent, and up this we toiled for
+hours. At the base of the escalade my men sublet their loads to spare
+coolies who were waiting there in numbers for the purpose, and climbed
+up with me empty-handed. At every few turns there were rest-houses where
+one could get tea and shelter from the hot sun. The village of
+Tak-wan-leo is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> at the summit; it is a village of some little importance
+and commands a noble view of mountain, valley, and river. Its largest
+hong is the coffin-maker's, which is always filled with shells of the
+thickest timber that money can buy.</p>
+
+<p>Stress is laid in China upon the necessity of a secure resting-place
+after death. The filial affection of a son can do no more thoughtful act
+than present a coffin to his father, to prove to him how composedly he
+will lie after he is dead. And nothing will a father in China show the
+stranger with more pride than the coffin-boards presented to him by his
+dutiful son.</p>
+
+<p>Tak-wan-leo is the highest point on the road between Suifu and Chaotong.
+For centuries it has been known to the Chinese as the highest point;
+how, then, with their defective appliances did they arrive at so
+accurate a determination? Twenty li beyond the village the stage ends at
+the town of Tawantzu, where I had good quarters in the pavilion of an
+old temple. The shrine was thick with the dust of years; the three gods
+were dishevelled and mutilated; no sheaves of joss sticks were
+smouldering on the altar. The steps led down into manure heaps and a
+piggery, into a garden rank and waste, which yet commands an outlook
+over mountain and river worthy of the greatest of temples.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img014" id="img014"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 252px;">
+<a href="images/014.png"><img src="images/014_th.png" width="252" height="400" alt="THE OPIUM-SMOKER OF ROMANCE." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Opium-smoker of Romance.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On March 30th I reached Tak-wan-hsien, the day's stage having been
+seventy li (twenty-three and one-third miles). I was carried all the way
+by three chair-coolies in a heavy chair in steady rain that made the
+unpaved track as slippery as ice&mdash;and this over the dizzy heights of a
+mountain pathway of extraordinary irregularity. Never slipping, never
+making a mistake, the three coolies bore the chair with my thirteen
+stone, easily and without straining. From<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> time to time they rested a
+minute or two to take a whiff of tobacco; they were always in good
+humour, and finished the day as strong and fresh as when they began it.
+Within an hour of their arrival all these three men were lying on their
+sides in the room opposite to mine, with their opium-pipes and little
+wooden vials of opium before them, all three engaged in rolling and
+heating in their opium-lamps treacly pellets of opium. Then they had
+their daily smoke of opium. "They were ruining themselves body and
+soul." Two of the men were past middle age; the third was a strapping
+young fellow of twenty-five. They may have only recently acquired the
+habit, I had no means of asking them; but those who know Western China
+will tell you that it is almost certain that the two elder men had used
+the opium-pipe as a stimulant since they were as young as their
+companion. All three men were physically well-developed, with large
+frames, showing unusual muscular strength and endurance, and differed,
+indeed, from those resurrected corpses whose fleshless figures, drawn by
+imaginative Chinese artists, we have known for years to be typical of
+our poor lost brothers&mdash;the opium-smoking millions of China. For their
+work to-day, work that few men out of China would be capable of
+attempting, the three coolies were paid sevenpence each, out of which
+they found themselves, and had to pay as well one penny each for the
+hire of the chair.</p>
+
+<p>On arriving at the inn in Tak-wan-hsien my estimable comrade, one of the
+six surviving converts of Suifu, indicated to me that his cash belt was
+empty&mdash;up the road he could not produce a single cash for me to give a
+beggar&mdash;and pointing in turn to the bag where I kept my silver, to the
+ceiling and to his heart, he conveyed to me the pious assurance that if
+I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> would give him some silver from the bag he would bring me back the
+true change, on his honour, so witness Heaven! I gave him two lumps of
+silver which I made him understand were worth 3420 cash; he went away,
+and after a suspicious absence returned quite gleefully with 3050 cash,
+the bank, no doubt, having detained the remainder pending the
+declaration of a bogus dividend. But he also brought back with him what
+was better than cash, some nutritious maize-meal cakes, which proved a
+welcome change from the everlasting rice. They were as large as an
+English scone, and cost two cash apiece, that is to say, for one
+shilling I could buy twenty dozen.</p>
+
+<p>Money in Western China consists of solid ingots of silver, and copper
+cash. The silver is in lumps of one tael or more each, the tael being a
+Chinese ounce and equivalent roughly to between 1400 and 1500 cash.
+Speaking generally a tael was worth, during my journey, three shillings,
+that is to say, forty cash were equivalent to one penny. There are
+bankers in every town, and the Chinese methods of banking, it is well
+known, are but little inferior to our own. From Hankow to Chungking my
+money was remitted by draft through a Chinese bank. West from Chungking
+the money may be sent by draft, by telegraph, or in bullion, as you
+choose. I carried some silver with me; the rest I put up in a package
+and handed to a native post in Chungking, which undertook to deliver it
+intact to me at Yunnan city, 700 miles away, within a specified time. By
+my declaring its contents and paying the registration fee, a mere
+trifle, the post guaranteed its safe delivery, and engaged to make good
+any loss. Money is thus remitted in Western China with complete
+confidence and security. My money arrived, I may add, in Yunnan at the
+time agreed upon, but after I had left for Talifu. As there is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> a
+telegraph line between Yunnan and Tali, the money was forwarded by
+telegraph and awaited my arrival in Tali.</p>
+
+<p>There are no less than four native post-offices between Chungking and
+Suifu. All the post-offices transmit parcels, as well as letters and
+bullion, at very moderate charges. The distance is 230 miles, and the
+charges are fifty cash (1-1/4<i>d.</i>) the catty (1-1/3lb.), or any part
+thereof; thus a single letter pays fifty cash, a catty's weight of
+letters paying no more than a single letter.</p>
+
+<p>From Chungking to Yunnan city, a distance of 630 miles, letters pay two
+hundred cash (fivepence) each; packages of one catty, or under, pay
+three hundred and fifty cash; while for silver bullion there is a
+special fee of three hundred and fifty cash for every ten taels,
+equivalent to ninepence for thirty shillings, or two-and-a-half per
+cent., which includes postage registration, guarantee, and insurance.</p>
+
+<p>Tak-wan-hsien is a town of some importance, and was formerly the seat of
+the French missionary bishop. It is a walled town, ranking as a Hsien
+city, with a Hsien magistrate as its chief ruler. There are 10,000
+people (more or less), within the walls, but the city is poor, and its
+poverty is but a reflex of the district. Its mud wall is crumbling; its
+houses of mud and wood are falling; the streets are ill-paved and the
+people ill-clad.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The City of Chaotong, with some remarks on its Poverty, Infanticide,
+Selling Female Children into Slavery, Tortures, and the Chinese
+Insensibility to Pain.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>By the following day we had crossed the mountains, and were walking
+along the level upland that leads to the plain of Chaotong. And on
+Sunday, April 1st, we reached the city. Cedars, held sacred, with
+shrines in the shelter of their branches, dot the plain; peach-trees and
+pear-trees were now in full bloom; the harvest was ripening in the
+fields. There were black-faced sheep in abundance, red cattle with short
+horns, and the ubiquitous water-buffalo. Over the level roads primitive
+carts, drawn by red oxen, were rumbling in the dust. There were mud
+villages, poor and falling into ruins; there were everywhere signs of
+poverty and famine. Children ran about naked, or in rags. We passed the
+likin-barrier, known by its white flag, and I was not even asked for my
+visiting card, nor were my boxes looked into&mdash;they were as beggarly as
+the district&mdash;but poor carriers were detained, and a few cash unjustly
+wrung from them. At a crowded teahouse, a few miles from the city, we
+waited for the stragglers, while many wayfarers gathered in to see me.
+Prices were ranging higher. Tea here was 4 cash, and not 2 cash as
+hitherto. But even this charge was not excessive.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> In Canton one day,
+after a weary journey on foot through the crowded streets, I was taken
+to a five-storied pagoda overlooking the city. At the topmost story tea
+was brought me, and I drank a dozen cups, and was asked threepence in
+payment. I thought that the cheapest refreshment I ever had. Yet here I
+was served as abundantly with better tea at a charge compared with which
+the Canton charge was twenty-five times greater. Previously in this
+province the price I had paid for tea in comparison with the price at
+Canton was as one to fifty.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the afternoon we passed through the south gate into Chaotong,
+and, picking our way through the streets, were led to the comfortable
+home of the Bible Christian Mission, where I was kindly received by the
+Rev. Frank Dymond, and welcomed as a brother missionary of whose arrival
+he had been advised. Services were ended, but the neighbours dropped in
+to see the stranger, and ask my exalted age, my honourable name, and my
+dignified business; they hoped to be able to congratulate me upon being
+a man of virtue, the father of many sons; asked how many thousands of
+pieces of silver I had (daughters), and how long I proposed to permit my
+dignified presence to remain in their mean and contemptible city.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Dymond is a Devonshire man, and that evening he gave me for tea
+Devonshire cream and blackberry jam made in Chaotong, and native oatmeal
+cakes, than which I never tasted any better in Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>Chaotong is a walled Fu city with 40,000 inhabitants. Roman Catholics
+have been established here for many years, and the Bible Christian
+Mission, which is affiliated to the China Inland Mission, has been
+working here since 1887.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There were formerly five missionaries; there are now only two, and one
+of these was absent. The missionary in charge, Mr. Frank Dymond, is one
+of the most agreeable men I met in China, broad-minded, sympathetic and
+earnest&mdash;universally honoured and respected by all the district. Since
+the mission was opened three converts have been baptised, one of whom is
+in Szechuen, another is in Tongchuan, and the third has been gathered to
+his fathers. The harvest has not been abundant, but there are now six
+promising inquirers, and the missionary is not discouraged. The mission
+premises are built on land which cost two hundred and ninety taels, and
+are well situated not far from the south gate, the chief yamens, the
+temples, and the French Mission. People are friendly, but manifest
+dangerously little interest in their salvation.</p>
+
+<p>At Chaotong I had entered upon a district that had been devastated by
+recurring seasons of plague and famine. Last year more than 5000 people
+are believed to have died from starvation in the town and its immediate
+neighbourhood. The numbers are appalling, but doubt must always be
+thrown upon statistics derived from Chinese sources. The Chinese and
+Japanese disregard of accuracy is characteristic of all Orientals.
+Beggars were so numerous, and became such a menace to the community,
+that their suppression was called for; they were driven from the
+streets, and confined within the walls of the temple and grounds beyond
+the south gate, and fed by common charity. Huddled together in rags and
+misery, they took famine fever and perished by hundreds. Seventy dead
+were carried from the temple in one day. Of 5000 poor wretches who
+crossed the temple threshold, the Chinese say that 2000 never came out
+alive. For four years past the harvests had been very bad, but there was
+now hope of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> better time coming. Opportune rains had fallen, and the
+opium crop was good. More than anything else the district depends for
+its prosperity upon the opium crop&mdash;if the crop is good, money is
+plentiful. Maize-cobs last harvest were four times the size of those of
+the previous harvest, when they were no larger than one's finger. Wheat
+and beans were forward; the coming rice crop gave every hope of being a
+good one. Food was still dear, and all prices were high, because rice
+was scarce and dear, and it is the price of rice which regulates the
+market. In a good year one sheng of rice (6-2/3lbs.) costs thirty-five
+cash (less than one penny), it now costs 110 cash. The normal price of
+maize is sixteen cash the sheng, it now cost sixty-five cash the sheng.
+To make things worse, the weight of the sheng had been reduced with the
+times from twelve catties to five catties, and at the same time the
+relation of cash to silver had fallen from 1640 to 1250 cash the tael.</p>
+
+<p>The selling of its female children into slavery is the chief sorrow of
+this famine-stricken district. During last year it is estimated, or
+rather, it is stated by the Chinese, that no less than three thousand
+children from this neighbourhood, chiefly female children and a few
+boys, were sold to dealers and carried like poultry in baskets to the
+capital. At ordinary times the price for girls is one tael (three
+shillings) for every year of their age, thus a girl of five costs
+fifteen shillings, of ten, thirty shillings, but in time of famine
+children, to speak brutally, become a drug in the market. Female
+children were now offering at from three shillings and fourpence to six
+shillings each. You could buy as many as you cared to, you might even
+obtain them for nothing if you would enter into an agreement with the
+father, which he had no means of enforcing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> to take care of his child,
+and clothe and feed her, and rear her kindly. Starving mothers would
+come to the mission beseeching the foreign teachers to take their babies
+and save them from the fate that was otherwise inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>Girls are bought in Chaotong up to the age of twenty, and there is
+always a ready market for those above the age of puberty; prices then
+vary according to the measure of the girl's beauty, an important feature
+being the smallness of her feet. They are sold in the capital for wives
+and <i>yatows</i>; they are rarely sold into prostitution. Two important
+factors in the demand for them are the large preponderance in the number
+of males at the capital, and the prevalence there of goitre or thick
+neck, a deformity which is absent from the district of Chaotong.
+Infanticide in a starving city like this is dreadfully common. "For the
+parents, seeing their children must be doomed to poverty, think it
+better at once to let the soul escape in search of a more happy asylum
+than to linger in one condemned to want and wretchedness." The
+infanticide is, however, exclusively confined to the destruction of
+female children, the sons being permitted to live in order to continue
+the ancestral sacrifices.</p>
+
+<p>One mother I met, who was employed by the mission, told the missionary
+in ordinary conversation that she had suffocated in turn three of her
+female children within a few days of birth; and, when a fourth was born,
+so enraged was her husband to discover that it was also a girl that he
+seized it by the legs and struck it against the wall and killed it.</p>
+
+<p>Dead children, and often living infants, are thrown out on the common
+among the gravemounds, and may be seen there any morning being gnawed by
+dogs. Mr. Tremberth of the Bible Christian Mission, leaving by the south
+gate early one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> morning, disturbed a dog eating a still living child
+that had been thrown over the wall during the night. Its little arm was
+crunched and stript of flesh, and it was whining inarticulately&mdash;it died
+almost immediately. A man came to see me, who for a long time used to
+heap up merit for himself in heaven by acting as a city scavenger. Early
+every morning he went round the city picking up dead dogs and dead cats
+in order to bury them decently&mdash;who could tell, perhaps the soul of his
+grandfather had found habitation in that cat? While he was doing this
+pious work, never a morning passed that he did not find a dead child,
+and usually three or four. The dead of the poor people are roughly
+buried near the surface and eaten by dogs.</p>
+
+<p>An instance of the undoubted truth of the doctrine of transmigration
+occurred recently in Chaotong and is worth recording. A cow was killed
+near the south gate on whose intestine&mdash;and this fact can be attested by
+all who saw it&mdash;was written plainly and unmistakably the character
+"<i>Wong</i>," which proved, they told me, that the soul of one whose name
+was Wong had returned to earth in the body of that cow.</p>
+
+<p>I stayed two days in Chaotong, and strolled in pleasant company through
+the city. Close to the Mission is the yamen of the Chentai or
+Brigadier-General, the Military Governor of this portion of the
+province, and a little further is the more crowded yamen of the Fu
+Magistrate. Here, as in all yamens, the detached wall or fixed screen of
+stone facing the entrance is painted with the gigantic representation of
+a mythical monster in red trying to swallow the sun&mdash;the Chinese
+illustration of the French saying "<i>prendre la lune avec les dents</i>." It
+is the warning against covetousness, the exhortation against squeezing,
+and is as little likely to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> attended to by the magistrate here as it
+would be by his brother in Chicago. We visited the Confucian Temple
+among the trees and the examination hall close by, and another yamen,
+and the Temple of the God of Riches. In the yamen, at the time of our
+visit, a young official, seated in his four-bearer chair, was waiting in
+the outer court; he had sent in his visiting card, and attended the
+pleasure of his superior officer. China may be uncivilised and may yearn
+for the missionaries, but there was refined etiquette in China, and an
+interchange of many of the pleasantest courtesies of modern
+civilisation, when we noble Britons were grubbing in the forest, painted
+savages with a clout.</p>
+
+<p>As we went out of the west gate, I was shown the spot where a few days
+before a young woman, taken in adultery, was done to death in a cage
+amid a crowd of spectators, who witnessed her agony for three days. She
+had to stand on tiptoe in the cage, her head projecting through a hole
+in the roof, and here she had to remain until death by exhaustion or
+strangulation ensued, or till some kind friend, seeking to accumulate
+merit in heaven, passed into her mouth sufficient opium to poison her,
+and so end her struggles.</p>
+
+<p>On the gate itself a man not so long ago was nailed with red-hot nails
+hammered through his wrists above the hands. In this way he was exposed
+in turn at each of the four gates of the city, so that every man, woman,
+and child could see his torture. He survived four days, having
+unsuccessfully attempted to shorten his pain by beating his head against
+the woodwork, an attempt which was frustrated by padding the woodwork.
+This man had murdered and robbed two travellers on the high road, and,
+as things are in China, his punishment was not too severe.</p>
+
+<p>No people are more cruel in their punishments than the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> Chinese, and
+obviously the reason is that the sensory nervous system of a Chinaman is
+either blunted or of arrested development. Can anyone doubt this who
+witnesses the stoicism with which a Chinaman can endure physical pain
+when sustaining surgical operation without chloroform, the comfort with
+which he can thrive amid foul and penetrating smells, the calmness with
+which he can sleep amid the noise of gunfire and crackers, drums and
+tomtoms, and the indifference with which he contemplates the sufferings
+of lower animals, and the infliction of tortures on higher?</p>
+
+<p>Every text-book on China devotes a special chapter to the subject of
+punishment. Mutilation is extremely common. Often I met men who had been
+deprived of their ears&mdash;they had lost them, they explained, in battle
+facing the enemy! It is a common punishment to sever the hamstrings or
+to break the ankle-bones, especially in the case of prisoners who have
+attempted to escape. And I remember that when I was in Shanghai, Mr.
+Tsai, the Mixed Court Magistrate, was reproved by the papers because he
+had from the bench expressed his regret that the foreign law of Shanghai
+did not permit him to punish in this way a prisoner who had twice
+succeeded in breaking from gaol. The hand is cut off for theft, as it
+was in England not so many years ago. I have seen men with the tendon of
+Achilles cut out, and it is worth noting that the Chinese say that this
+"acquired deformity" can be cured by the transplantation in the seat of
+injury of the tendon of a sheep. One embellishment of the Chinese
+punishment of flogging might with good effect be introduced into
+England. After a Chinese flagellation, the culprit is compelled to go
+down on his knees and humbly thank the magistrate for the trouble he has
+been put to to correct his morals.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is a branch of the <i>Missions &Eacute;trang&egrave;res de Paris</i> in Chaotong. I
+called at the mission and saw their school of fifteen children, and
+their tiny little church. One priest lives here solitary and alone; he
+was reading, when I entered, the famous Chinese story, "The Three
+Kingdoms." He gave me a kindly welcome, and was pleased to talk in his
+own tongue. An excellent bottle of rich wine was produced, and over the
+glass the Father painted with voluble energy the evil qualities of the
+people whom he has left his beautiful home in the Midi of France to lead
+to Rome. "No Chinaman can resist temptation; all are thieves. Justice
+depends on the richness of the accused. Victory in a court of justice is
+to the richer. Talk to the Chinese of Religion, of a God, of Heaven or
+Hell, and they yawn; speak to them of business and they are all
+attention. If you ever hear of a Chinaman who is not a thief and a liar,
+do not believe it, Monsieur Morrison, do not believe it, they are
+thieves and liars every one."</p>
+
+<p>For eight years the priest had been in China devoting his best energies
+to the propagation of his religion. And sorry had been his recompense.
+The best Christian in the mission had lately broken into the mission
+house and stolen everything valuable he could lay his impious hands on.
+Remembrance of this infamy rankled in his bosom and impelled him to this
+expansive panegyric on Chinese virtue.</p>
+
+<p>Some four months ago the good father was away on a holiday, visiting a
+missionary brother in an adjoining town. In his absence the mission was
+entered through a rift made in the wall, and three hundred taels of
+silver, all the money to the last sou that he possessed, were stolen.
+Suspicion fell upon a Christian, who was not only an active Catholic
+himself, but whose fathers before him had been Catholics<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> for
+generations. It was learned that his wife had some of the money, and
+that the thief was on his way to Suifu with the remainder. There was
+great difficulty in inducing the yamen to take action, but at last the
+wife was arrested. She protested that she knew nothing; but, having been
+triced up by the wrists joined behind her back, she soon came to reason,
+and cried out that, if the magistrate would release her hands, she would
+confess all. Two hundred taels were seized in her house and restored to
+the priest, and the culprit, her husband, followed to Tak-wan-hsien by
+the satellites of the yamen, was there arrested, and was now in prison
+awaiting punishment. The goods he purchased were likewise seized and
+were now with the poor father.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Mainly about Chinese Doctors.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Chaotong is an important centre for the distribution of medicines to
+Szechuen and other parts of the empire. An extraordinary variety of
+drugs and medicaments is collected in the city. No pharmacop[oe]ia is
+more comprehensive than the Chinese. No English physician can surpass
+the Chinese in the easy confidence with which he will diagnose symptoms
+that he does not understand. The Chinese physician who witnesses the
+unfortunate effect of placing a drug of which he knows nothing into a
+body of which he knows less, is no more disconcerted than is his Western
+brother under similar circumstances; he retires, sententiously observing
+"there is medicine for sickness but none for fate." "Medicine," says the
+Chinese proverb, "cures the man who is fated not to die." "When Yenwang
+(the King of Hell) has decreed a man to die at the third watch, no power
+will detain him till the fifth."</p>
+
+<p>The professional knowledge of a Chinese doctor largely consists in
+ability to feel the pulse, or rather the innumerable pulses of his
+Chinese patient. This is the real criterion of his skill. The pulses of
+a Chinaman vary in a manner that no English doctor can conceive of. For
+instance, among the seven kinds of pulse which presage approaching
+death, occur the five following:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"1. When the pulse is perceived under the fingers to bubble irregularly
+like water over a great fire, if it be in the morning, the patient will
+die in the evening.</p>
+
+<p>"2. Death is no farther off if the pulse seems like a fish whose head is
+stopped in such a manner that he cannot move, but has a frisking tail
+without any regularity; the cause of this distemper lies in the kidneys.</p>
+
+<p>"3. If the pulse seems like drops of water that fall into a room through
+some crack, and when in its return it is scattered and disordered much
+like the twine of a cord which is unravelled, the bones are dried up
+even to the very marrow.</p>
+
+<p>"4. Likewise if the motion of the pulse resembles the pace of a frog
+when he is embarrassed in the weeds, death is certain.</p>
+
+<p>"5. If the motion of the pulse resembles the hasty pecking of the beak
+of a bird, there is a defect of spirits in the stomach."</p>
+
+<p>Heredity is the most important factor in the evolution of a doctor in
+China, success in his career as an "hereditary physician" being
+specially assured to him who has the good fortune to make his first
+appearance in the world feet foremost. Doctors dispense their own
+medicines. In their shops you see an amazing variety of drugs; you will
+occasionally also see tethered a live stag, which on a certain day, to
+be decided by the priests, will be pounded whole in a pestle and mortar.
+"Pills manufactured out of a whole stag slaughtered with purity of
+purpose on a propitious day," is a common announcement in dispensaries
+in China. The wall of a doctor's shop is usually stuck all over with
+disused plasters returned by grateful patients with complimentary
+testimonies to their efficiency; they have done what England is alleged
+to expect of all her sons&mdash;their duty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Medicines, it is known to all Chinamen, operate variously according to
+their taste, thus:&mdash;"All sour medicines are capable of impeding and
+retaining; bitter medicines of causing looseness and warmth as well as
+hardening; sweet possess the qualities of strengthening, of harmonising,
+and of warming; acids disperse, prove emollient, and go in an athwart
+direction; salt medicines possess the properties of descending; those
+substances that are hard and tasteless open the orifices of the body and
+promote a discharge. This explains the use of the five tastes."</p>
+
+<p>Coming from Szechuen, we frequently met porters carrying baskets of
+armadillos, leopard skins, leopard and tiger bones. The skins were for
+wear, but the armadillos and bones were being taken to Suifu to be
+converted into medicine. From the bones of leopards an admirable tonic
+may be distilled; while it is well known that the infusion prepared from
+tiger bones is the greatest of the tonics, conferring something of the
+courage, agility, and strength of the tiger upon its partaker.</p>
+
+<p>Another excellent specific for courage is a preparation made from the
+gall bladder of a robber famous for his bravery, who has died at the
+hands of the executioner. The sale of such a gall bladder is one of the
+perquisites of a Chinese executioner.</p>
+
+<p>Ague at certain seasons is one of the most common ailments of the
+district of Chaotong, yet there is an admirable prophylactic at hand
+against it: write the names of the eight demons of ague on paper, and
+then eat the paper with a cake; or take out the eyes of the paper
+door-god (there are door-gods on all your neighbours' doors), and devour
+them&mdash;this remedy never fails.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Unlike the Spaniard, the Chinese disapproves of blood-letting in fevers,
+"for a fever is like a pot boiling; it is requisite to reduce the fire
+and not diminish the liquid in the vessel, if we wish to cure the
+patient."</p>
+
+<p>Unlike the Spaniard, too, the Chinese doctors would not venture to
+assert, as the medical faculty of Madrid in the middle of last century
+assured the inhabitants, that "if human excrement was no longer to be
+suffered to accumulate as usual in the streets, where it might attract
+the putrescent particles floating in the air, these noxious vapours
+would find their way into the human body and a pestilential sickness
+would be the inevitable consequence."</p>
+
+<p>For boils there is a certain cure:&mdash;There is a God of Boils. If you have
+a boil you will plaster the offending excrescence without avail, if that
+be <i>all</i> you plaster; to get relief you must at the same time plaster
+the corresponding area on the image of the God. Go into his temple in
+Western China, and you will find this deity dripping with plasters, with
+scarcely an undesecrated space on his superficies.</p>
+
+<p>At the yamen of the Brigadier-General in Chaotong, the entrance is
+guarded by the customary stone images of mythical shape and grotesque
+features. They are believed to represent lions, but their faces are not
+leonine&mdash;they are a reproduction, exaggerated, of the characteristic
+features of the bulldog of Western China. The images are of undoubted
+value to the city. One is male and the other female. On the sixteenth
+day of the first month they are visited by the townspeople, who rub them
+energetically with their hands, all over from end to end. Every spot so
+touched confers immunity from pain upon the corresponding region of
+their own bodies for the ensuing year. And so from year to year these
+images are visited. Pain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> accordingly is almost absent from the city,
+and only that man suffers pain who has the temerity to neglect the
+opportunity of insuring himself against it.</p>
+
+<p>I was called to a case of opium-poisoning in Chaotong. A son came in
+casually to seek our aid in saving his father, who had attempted suicide
+with a large over-dose of opium. He had taken it at ten in the morning
+and it was now two. We were led to the house and found it a single small
+unlit room up a narrow alley. In the room two men were unconcernedly
+eating their rice, and in the darkness they seemed to be the only
+occupants; but, lying down behind them on a narrow bed, was the dim
+figure of the dying man, who was breathing stertorously. A crowd quickly
+gathered round the door and pent up the alley-way. Rousing the man, I
+caused him to swallow some pints of warm water, and then I gave him a
+hypodermic injection of apomorphia. The effect was admirable, and
+pleased the spectators even more than the patient.</p>
+
+<p>Opium is almost exclusively the drug used by suicides. No Chinaman would
+kill himself by the mutilation of the razor or pistol-shot because awful
+is the future punishment of him who would so dare to disturb the
+integrity of the body bequeathed to him by his fathers.</p>
+
+<p>China is the land of suicides. I suppose more people die from suicide in
+China in proportion to the population than in any other country. Where
+the struggle for existence is so keen, it is hardly to be wondered at
+that men are so willing to abandon the struggle. But poverty and misery
+are not the only causes. For the most trivial reason the Chinaman will
+take his own life. Suicide with a Chinaman is an act that is recorded in
+his honour rather than to his opprobrium.</p>
+
+<p>Thus a widow, as we have seen, may obtain much merit by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> sacrificing
+herself on the death of her husband. But in a large proportion of cases
+the motive is revenge, for the spirit of the dead is believed to "haunt
+and injure the living person who has been the cause of the suicide." In
+China to ruin your adversary you injure or kill yourself. To vow to
+commit suicide is the most awful threat with which you can drive terror
+into the heart of your adversary. If your enemy do you wrong, there is
+no way in which you can cause him more bitterly to repent his misdeed
+than by slaying yourself at his doorstep. He will be charged with your
+murder, and may be executed for the crime; he will be utterly ruined in
+establishing, if he can establish, his innocence; and he will be haunted
+ever after by your avenging spirit.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally two men who have quarrelled will take poison together, and
+their spirits will fight it out in heaven. Opium is very cheap in
+Chaotong, costing only fivepence an ounce for the crude article. You see
+it exposed for sale everywhere, like thick treacle in dirty besmeared
+jars. It is largely adulterated with ground pigskin, the adulteration
+being detected by the craving being unsatisfied. Mohammedans have a holy
+loathing of the pig, and look with contempt on their countrymen whose
+chief meat-food is pork. But each one in his turn. It is, on the other
+hand, a source of infinite amusement to the Chinese to see his
+Mohammedan brother unwittingly smoking the unclean beast in his
+opium-pipe.</p>
+
+<p>On our way to the opium case we passed a doorway from which pitiful
+screams were issuing. It was a mother thrashing her little boy with a
+heavy stick&mdash;she had tethered him by the leg and was using the stick
+with both hands. A Chinese proverb as old as the hills tells you, "if
+you love your son, give him plenty of the cudgel; if you hate him, cram
+him with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> delicacies." He was a young wretch, she said, and she could do
+nothing with him; and she raised her baton again to strike, but the
+missionary interposed, whereupon she consented to stay her wrath and did
+so&mdash;till we were round the corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Extreme lenity alternating with rude passion in the treatment of
+children is the characteristic," says Meadows, "of the lower stages of
+civilisation." I mention this incident only because of its rarity. In no
+other country in the world, civilised or "heathen," are children
+generally treated with more kindness and affection than they are in
+China. "Children, even amongst seemingly stolid Chinese, have the
+faculty of calling forth the better feelings so often found latent.
+Their prattle delights the fond father, whose pride beams through every
+line of his countenance, and their quaint and winning ways and touches
+of nature are visible even under the disadvantages of almond eyes and
+shaven crowns" (Dyer Ball).</p>
+
+<p>A mother in China is given, both by law and custom, extreme power over
+her sons whatever their age or rank. The Sacred Edict says, "Parents are
+like heaven. Heaven produces a blade of grass. Spring causes it to
+germinate. Autumn kills it with frost. Both are by the will of heaven.
+In like manner the power of life and death over the body which they have
+begotten is with the parents."</p>
+
+<p>And it is this law giving such power to a mother in China which tends,
+it is believed, to nullify that other law whereby a husband in China is
+given extreme power over his wife, even to the power in some cases of
+life and death.</p>
+
+<p>The Mohammedans are still numerous in Chaotong, and there are some 3000
+families&mdash;the figures are Chinese&mdash;in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> city and district. Their
+numbers were much reduced during the suppression of the rebellion of
+1857-1873, when they suffered the most awful cruelties. Again, thirteen
+years ago, there was an uprising which was suppressed by the Government
+with merciless severity. One street is exclusively occupied by Moslems,
+who have in their hands the skin trade of the city. Their houses are
+known by a conspicuous absence from door and window of the coloured
+paper door-gods that are seen grotesquely glaring from the doors of the
+unbelievers. Their mosque is well cared for and unusually clean. In the
+centre, within the main doorway, as in every mosque in the empire, is a
+gilt tablet of loyalty to the living Emperor. "May the Emperor reign ten
+thousand years!" it says, a token of subjection which the mosques of
+Yunnan have especially been compelled to display since the insurrection.
+At the time of my visit an aged mollah was teaching Arabic and the Koran
+to a ragged handful of boys. He spoke to me through an interpreter, and
+gave me the impression of having some little knowledge of things outside
+the four seas that surround China. I told him that I had lived under the
+shelter of two of the greatest mosques, but he seemed to question my
+contention that the mosque in Cordova and the Karouin mosque in Fez are
+even more noble in their proportions than his mosque in Chaotong. In
+some of the skin-hongs that I entered, the walls were ornamented with
+coloured plans of Mecca and Medinah, bought in Chentu, the capital city
+of the province of Szechuen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The Journey from Chaotong to Tongchuan.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>In Chaotong I engaged three new men to go with me to Tongchuan, a
+distance of 110 miles, and I rewarded liberally the three excellent
+fellows who had accompanied me from Suifu. My new men were all active
+Chinamen. The headman Laohwan was most anxious to come with me.
+Recognising that he possessed characteristics which his posterity would
+rejoice to have transmitted to them, he had lately taken to himself a
+wife and now, a fortnight later, he sought rest. He would come with me
+to Burma, the further away the better; he wished to prove the truth of
+the adage about distance and enchantment. The two coolies who were to
+carry the loads were country lads from the district. My men were to
+receive 4<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> each for the 110 miles, an excessive wage, but all
+food was unusually dear, and people were eating maize instead of rice;
+they were to find themselves on the way, in other words, they were "to
+eat their own rice," and, in return for a small reward, they were to
+endeavour to do the five days' stages in three days. I bought a few
+stores, including some excellent oatmeal and an annular cake of that
+compressed tea, the "Puerh-cha," which is grown in the Shan States and
+is distributed as a luxury all over China. It is in favour in the palace
+of the Emperor in Peking itself; it is one of the finest teas in China,
+yet, to show how jealous the rivalry now is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> between China tea and
+Indian, when I submitted the remainder of this very cake to a well-known
+tea-taster in Mangoe Lane, Calcutta, and asked his expert opinion, he
+reported that the sample was "of undoubted value and of great interest,
+as showing what <i>muck can be called tea</i>."</p>
+
+<p>We left on the 3rd, and passed by the main-street through the crowded
+city, past the rich wholesale warehouses, and out by the west gate to
+the plain of Chaotong. The country spread before us was smiling and
+rich, with many farmsteads, and orchards of pears and peaches&mdash;a pretty
+sight, for the trees were now in full blossom. Many carts were lumbering
+along the road on their uneven wheels. Just beyond the city there was a
+noisy altercation in the road for the possession apparently of a blunt
+adze. Carts stopped to see the row, and all the bystanders joined in
+with their voices, with much earnestness. It is rare for the disputants
+to be injured in these questions. Their language on these occasions is,
+I am told, extremely rich in allusions. It would often make a <i>gendarme</i>
+blush. Their oaths are more ornate than the Italians'; the art of
+vituperation is far advanced in China. A strong wind was blowing in our
+faces. We rested at some mud hovels where poverty was stalking about
+with a stick in rags and nakedness. Full dress of many of these beggars
+would disgrace a Polynesian. Even the better dressed were hung with
+garments in rags, tattered, and dirty as a Paisley ragpicker's. The
+children were mostly stark-naked. In the middle of the day we reached a
+Mohammedan village named Taouen, twenty miles from Chaotong, and my man
+prepared me an <i>al fresco</i> lunch. The entire village gathered into the
+square to see me eat; they struggled for the orange peel I threw under
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>From here the road rises quickly to the village of Tashuitsing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> (7380
+feet above sea level), where my men wished to remain, and apparently
+came to an understanding with the innkeeper; but I would not understand
+and went on alone, and they perforce had to follow me. There are only
+half-a-dozen rude inns in the village, all Mohammedan; but just outside
+the village the road passes under a magnificent triple archway in four
+tiers made of beautifully cut stone, embossed with flowers and images,
+and richly gilt&mdash;a striking monument in so forlorn a situation. It was
+built two years ago, in obedience to the will of the Emperor, by the
+richest merchant of Chaotong, and is dedicated to the memory of his
+virtuous mother, who died at the age of eighty, having thus experienced
+the joy of old age, which in China is the foremost of the five measures
+of felicity. It was erected and carved on the spot by masons from
+Chungking. Long after dark we reached an outlying inn of the village of
+Kiangti, a thatched mud barn, with a sleeping room surrounded on three
+sides by a raised ledge of mud bricks upon which were stretched the
+mattresses. The room was dimly lit by an oil-lamp; the floor was earth;
+the grating under the rafters was stored with maize-cobs. Outside the
+door cooking was done in the usual square earthen stove, in which are
+sunk two iron basins, one for rice, the other for hot water; maize
+stalks were being burnt in the flues. The room, when we entered, was
+occupied by a dozen Chinese, with their loads and the packsaddles of a
+caravan of mules; yet what did the good-natured fellows do? They must
+all have been more tired than I; but, without complaining, they all got
+up when they saw me, and packed their things and went out of the room,
+one after the other, to make way for myself and my companions. And,
+while we were comfortable, they crowded into another room that was
+already crowded.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Next day a tremendously steep descent took us down to Kiangti, a
+mountain village on the right bank of a swift stream, here spanned in
+its rocky pass by a beautiful suspension bridge, which swings gracefully
+high above the torrent. The bridge is 150 feet long by 12 feet broad,
+and there is no engineer in England who might not be proud to have been
+its builder. At its far end the parapets are guarded by two sculptured
+monkeys, hewn with rough tools out of granite, and the more remarkable
+for their fidelity of form, seeing that the artist must have carved them
+from memory. The inevitable likin-barrier is at the bridge to squeeze a
+few more cash out of the poor carriers. That the Inland Customs dues of
+China are vexatious there can be no doubt; yet it is open to question if
+the combined duties of all the likin-barriers on any one main road
+extending from frontier to frontier of any single province in China are
+greater than the <i>ad valorem</i> duties imposed by our colony of Victoria
+upon the protected goods crossing her border from an adjoining colony.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img015" id="img015"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 297px;">
+<a href="images/015.jpg"><img src="images/015_th.jpg" width="297" height="400" alt="PAGODA BY THE WAYSIDE, WESTERN CHINA." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Pagoda by the Wayside, Western China.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Leaving the bridge, the road leads again up the hills. Poppy was now in
+full flower, and everywhere in the fields women were collecting opium.
+They were scoring the poppy capsules with vertical scratches and
+scraping off the exuded juice which had bled from the incisions they
+made yesterday. Hundreds of pack horses carrying Puerh tea met us on the
+road; while all day long we were passing files of coolies toiling
+patiently along under heavy loads of crockery. They were going in the
+same direction as ourselves to the confines of the empire, distributing
+those teacups, saucers, and cuplids, china spoons, and rice-bowls that
+one sees in every inn in China. Most of the crockery is brought across
+China from the province of Kiangsi, whose natural resources seems to
+give it almost the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> monopoly of this industry. The trade is an immense
+one. In the neighbourhood of King-teh-chin, in Kiangsi, at the outbreak
+of the Taiping rebellion, more than one million workmen were employed in
+the porcelain manufactories. Cups and saucers by the time they reach so
+far distant a part of China as this, carried as they are so many
+hundreds of miles on the backs of coolies, are sold for three or four
+times their original cost. Great care is taken of them, and no piece can
+be so badly broken as not to be mended. Crockery-repairing is a
+recognised trade, and the workmen are unusually skilful even for
+Chinese. They rivet the pieces together with minute copper clamps. To
+have a specimen of their handiwork I purposely in Yunnan broke a cup and
+saucer into fragments, only to find when I had done so that there was
+not a mender in the district. Rice bowls and teacups are neatly made,
+tough, and well finished; even the humblest are not inelegantly
+coloured, while the high-class china, especially where the imperial
+yellow is used, often shows the richest beauty of ornamentation.</p>
+
+<p>Inns on this road were few and at wide distances; they were scarcely
+sufficient for the numbers who used them. The country was red sandstone,
+open, and devoid of all timber, till, descending again into a valley,
+the path crossed an obstructing ridge, and led us with pleasant surprise
+into a beautiful park. It was all green and refreshing. A pretty stream
+was humming past the willows, its banks covered with the poppy in full
+flower, a blaze of colour, magenta, white, scarlet, pink and blue picked
+out with hedges of roses. The birds were as tame as in the Garden of
+Eden; magpies came almost to our feet; the sparrows took no notice of
+us; the falcons knew we would not molest them; the pigeons seemed to
+think we could not.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> All was peaceful, and the peasants who sat with us
+under the cedars on the borders of the park were friendly and
+unobtrusive. Long after sundown we reached, far from the regular stage,
+a lonely pair of houses, at one of which we found uncomfortable
+accommodation. Fire had to be kindled in the room in a hollow in the
+ground; there was no ventilation, the wood was green, the smoke almost
+suffocating. My men talked on far into the night until I lost patience
+and yelled at them in English. They thought that I was swearing, and
+desisted for fear that I should injure their ancestors. There was a
+shrine in this room for private devotions, the corresponding spot in the
+adjoining room being a rough opium-couch already occupied by two lusty
+thickset "slaves to this thrice-accursed drug." My men ate the most
+frugal of suppers. Food was so much in advance of its ordinary price
+that my men, in common with thousands of other coolies, were doing their
+hard work on starvation rations.</p>
+
+<p>On the 5th we did a long day's stage and spent the night at a bleak
+hamlet 8500 feet above sea level, in a position so exposed that the
+roofs of the houses were weighted with stones to prevent their being
+carried away by the wind. This was the "Temple of the Dragon King," and
+it was only twenty li from Tongchuan.</p>
+
+<p>Next day we were astir early and soon after daylight we came suddenly to
+the brow of the tableland overlooking the valley of Tongchuan. The
+compact little walled city, with its whitewashed buildings glistening in
+the morning sun, lay beyond the gleaming plats of the irrigated plain,
+snugly ensconced under rolling masses of hills, which rose at the far
+end of the valley to lofty mountains covered with snow. All the plain is
+watered with springs; large patches of it are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> under water all the year
+round, and, rendered thus useless for cultivation, are employed by the
+Chinese for the artificial rearing of fish and as breeding grounds for
+the wild duck and the "faithful bird," the wild goose. A narrow dyke
+serpentining across the plain leads into the pretty city, where, at the
+north-east angle of the wall, I was charmed to find the cheerful home of
+the Bible Christian Mission, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Sam Pollard and
+two lady assistants, one of whom is a countrywoman of my own. This is, I
+believe, the most charming spot for a mission station in all China. Mr.
+Pollard is quite a young man, full of enthusiasm, modest, and clever.
+Everywhere he is received kindly; he is on friendly terms with the
+officials, and there is not a Chinese home within ten miles of the city
+where he and his pretty wife are not gladly welcomed. His knowledge of
+Chinese is exceptional; he is the best Chinese scholar in Western China,
+and is examiner in Chinese for the distant branches of the Inland
+Mission.</p>
+
+<p>The mission in Tongchuan was opened in 1891, and the results are not
+discouraging, seeing that the Chinaman is as difficult to lead into the
+true path as any Jew. No native has been baptized up to date. The
+convert employed by the mission as a native helper is one of the three
+converts of Chaotong. He is a bright-faced lad of seventeen, as ardent
+an evangelist as heart of missionary could desire, but a native preacher
+can never be so successful as the foreign missionary. The Chinese listen
+to him with complacency, "You eat Jesus's rice and of course you speak
+his words," they say. The attitude of the Chinese in Tongchuan towards
+the Christian missionary is one of perfect friendliness towards the
+missionary, combined with perfect apathy towards his religion. Like any
+other trader, the missionary has a perfect right to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> offer his goods,
+but he must not be surprised, the Chinese thinks, if he finds difficulty
+in securing a purchaser for wares as much inferior to the home
+production as is the foreign barbarian to the subject of the Son of
+Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>There is a Catholic Mission in Tongchuan, but the priest does not
+associate with the Protestant. How indeed can the two associate when
+they worship different Gods!</p>
+
+<p>The difficulty is one which cannot be easily overcome while there exists
+in China that bone of contention among missionaries which is known as
+the "Term Question."</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese recognise a supreme God, or are believed by some to
+recognise a supreme God&mdash;"High Heaven's ruler" (<i>Shangtien hou</i>), who is
+"probably intended," says Williams, "for the true God." The Mohammedans,
+when they entered China, could not recognise this god as identical with
+the only one God, to whom they accordingly gave the Chinese name of
+"true Lord" (<i>Ch&ecirc;n Chu</i>). The Jesuits, when they entered China, could
+not recognise either of these gods as identical with the God of the
+Hebrews, whom they accordingly represented in Chinese first by the
+characters for "Supreme Ruler" (<i>Shang ti</i>), and subsequently by the
+characters for "Lord of Heaven" (<i>Tien Chu</i>). The Protestants naturally
+could not be identified with the Catholics, and invented another Chinese
+name, or other Chinese names, for the true God; while the Americans,
+superior to all other considerations, discovered a different name still
+for the true God to whom they assigned the Chinese characters for "the
+true Spirit" (<i>Ch&ecirc;n Sh&ecirc;n</i>), thereby suggesting by implication, as Little
+observes, that the other spirits were false. But, as if such divergent
+terms were not sufficiently confusing for the Chinese, the Protestants
+themselves have still more varied the Chinese characters for God.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> Thus,
+in the first translation of the Bible, the term for God used is the
+Chinese character for "Spirit" (<i>Sh&ecirc;n</i>); in the second translation this
+term is rejected and "Supreme Ruler" (<i>Shang ti</i>), substituted; the
+third translation reverts to the "Spirit"; the fourth returns to the
+"Supreme Ruler"; and the fifth, by Bishop Burdon of Hong Kong, and Dr.
+Blodget of Peking, in 1884, rejects the title that was first accepted by
+the Jesuits, and accepts the title "Lord of Heaven" (<i>Tien Chu</i>), that
+was first rejected by the Jesuits.</p>
+
+<p>"Many editions," says the Rev. J. Wherry, of Peking, "with other terms
+have since been published." "Bible work in particular," says the Rev.
+Mr. Muirhead, of Shanghai, "is carried on under no small disadvantage in
+view of this state of things." "It is true, however," adds Mr. Muirhead,
+"that God has blest all terms in spite of our incongruity." But
+obviously the Chinese are a little puzzled to know which of the
+contending gods is most worthy of their allegiance.</p>
+
+<p>But apart from the "Term Question" there must be irreconcilable
+antagonism between the two great missionary churches in China, for it
+cannot be forgotten that "in the development of the missionary idea
+three great tasks await the (Protestant) Church.... The second task is
+<i>to check the schemes of the Jesuit</i>. In the great work of the world's
+evangelisation the Church has no foe at all comparable with the
+Jesuit.... Swayed ever by the vicious maxim that the end justifies the
+means, he would fain put back the shadow of the dial of human progress
+by half a dozen centuries. Other forms of superstition and error are
+dangerous, but Jesuitism overtops them all, and stands forth an
+organised conspiracy against the liberties of mankind. This foe is not
+likely to be overcome by a divided Protestantism. If we would conquer in
+this war we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> must move together, and in our movements must manifest a
+patience, a heroism, a devotion equal to anything the Jesuit can claim."
+(The Rev. A. Sutherland, D.D., Delegate from Canada to the Missionary
+Conference, 1888, <i>Records</i>, i., 145.)</p>
+
+<p>And, on the other hand, the distracted Chinese reads
+that:&mdash;"Protestantism is not only a veritable Babel, but a horrible
+theory, and an immoral practice which blasphemes God, degrades man, and
+endangers society." (Cardinal Cuesta's Catechism cited in "China and
+Christianity," by Michie, p. 8.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The City of Tongchuan, with some remarks upon Infanticide.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>When I entered Tongchuan the town was in commotion; kettledrums and
+tomtoms were beating, and crackers and guns firing; the din and clatter
+was continuous and deafening. An eclipse of the sun was commencing&mdash;it
+was the 6th of April&mdash;"the sun was being swallowed by the Dog of
+Heaven," and the noise was to compel the monster to disgorge its prey.
+Five months ago the Prefect of the city had been advised of the
+impending disaster, and it was known that at a certain hour he would
+publicly intervene with Heaven to avert from the city the calamity of
+darkness. I myself saw with my own eyes the wonderful power of this man.
+The sun was darkened when I went to the Prefect's yamen. A crowd was
+already gathered in the court. At the foot of the steps in the open air,
+a loosely built framework of wood ten feet high was standing, displaying
+on its vertex a yellow disc of paper inscribed with the characters for
+"voracity."</p>
+
+<p>As we waited the sun became gradually clearer, when, just as the moon
+was disappearing across its edge, the Prefect in full dress, stepped
+from his yamen into the court, accompanied by the city magistrate and a
+dozen city fathers. Every instrument of discord was still clanging over
+the city. Then<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> all these men of weight walked solemnly three times
+round the scaffold, and halted three times, while the Prefect went down
+on his knees, and did obeisance with nine kotows to the rickety frame
+and its disc of yellow paper. There was almost immediate answer to his
+prayer. With a sigh of relief we saw the lingering remnant of darkness
+disappear, and the midday sun shone full and bright. Then the Prefect
+retired, his suite dividing to let him pass, and we all went home
+blessing the good man whose intercession had saved the town from
+darkness. For there can be little doubt, I hope, that it is due to the
+action of this Prefect that the sun is shining to-day in Tongchuan. The
+Chinese might well ask if any barbarian missionary could do as he did.</p>
+
+<p>Eclipses in China are foretold by the Government almanac published
+annually in Peking by a bureau of astrology attached to the Board of
+Rites. The almanac is a Government monopoly, and any infraction of its
+copyright is a penal offence. "It monopolises the management of the
+superstitions of the people, in regard to the fortunate or unlucky
+conjunctions of each day and hour. No one ventures to be without it,
+lest he be liable to the greatest misfortunes and run the imminent
+hazard of undertaking important events on blackballed days."</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese almanac is much more comprehensive than ours, for even
+eclipses are foretold that never happen. Should an error take place in
+their almanac, and an expected eclipse not occur, the royal astronomers
+are not disconcerted&mdash;far from it; they discover in their error reason
+for rejoicing; they then congratulate the Emperor that "the heavens have
+dispensed with this omen of ill-luck in his favour." For eclipses
+forebode disaster, and every thoughtful Chinaman who has heard of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+present rebellion of the Japanese must attribute the reverses caused by
+the revolt to the eclipse of April 6th, occurring immediately before the
+insurrection.</p>
+
+<p>Tongchuan is one of the most charming towns I have ever visited; it is
+probably the cleanest city in China, and the best governed. Its prefect
+is a man of singular enlightenment, who rules with a justice that is
+rarely known in China. His people regard him as something more than
+mortal. Like Confucius "his ear is an obedient organ for the reception
+of truth." Like the Confucian Superior Man "his dignity separates him
+from the crowd; being reverent he is beloved; being loyal he is
+submitted to; and being faithful he is trusted. By his word he directs
+men, and by his conduct he warns them."</p>
+
+<p>For several years he was attached to the Embassy in Japan, and he boasts
+that he has made Tongchuan as clean a city as any to be found in the
+empire of the Mikado. The yamen is a model of neatness. Painted on the
+outflanking wall there is the usual huge representation of the fabulous
+monster attempting to swallow the sun&mdash;the admonition against
+extortion&mdash;and probably the only magistrate in China who does not stand
+in need of the warning is the Prefect of Tongchuan.</p>
+
+<p>Prices in Tongchuan at the time of my visit were high and food was
+scarce. It was difficult to realise that men at that moment were dying
+of starvation in the pretty town. Rice cost 400 cash for the same
+quantity that in a good season can be bought for 60 cash; maize was 300
+cash the sheng, whereas the normal price is only 40 cash. Sugar was 15
+cash the cake instead of 6 cash the cake, and so on in all things. Poppy
+is not grown in the valley to the same extent as hitherto,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> because
+poppy displaces wheat and beans, and the people have need of all the
+land they can spare to grow breadstuffs. In the other half of the year,
+rice, maize, and tobacco are grown together on the plain, and at the
+same season potatoes, oats, and buckwheat are grown in the hills.</p>
+
+<p>Part of the plain is permanently under water, but it was the drought in
+the winter and the rains in the summer of successive years that caused
+the famine. There are no Mohammedans in the town&mdash;there have been none
+since the rebellion&mdash;but there are many small Mohammedan villages across
+the hills. No district in China is now more peaceful than the Valley of
+Tongchuan. The Yangtse River&mdash;"The River of Golden Sand"&mdash;is only two
+days distant, but it is not navigable even by Chinese boatmen. Sugarcane
+grows in the Yangtse Valley in little pockets, and it is from there that
+the compressed cakes of brown sugar seen in all the markets of Western
+Yunnan are brought. Coal comes from a mine two or three days inland;
+white-wax trees provide an important industry; the hills to the west
+contain the most celebrated copper mines in the empire.</p>
+
+<p>The cash of Tongchuan are very small and inferior, 2000 being equivalent
+to one tael, whereas in Chaotong, 110 miles away, the cash vary from
+1260 to 1640 the tael. Before the present Prefect took office the cash
+were more debased still, no less than 4000 being then counted as one
+tael, but the Prefect caused all these cash to be withdrawn from
+circulation.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike Chaotong, no children are permitted to be sold in the city, but
+during last year no less than 3000 children (the figures are again
+Chinese) were carried through the town on their way from Chaotong to the
+capital. The edict of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> Prefect which forbids the selling of children
+increases the cases of infanticide, and in time of famine there are few
+mothers among the starving poor who can truthfully assert that they have
+never abandoned any of their offspring.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of infanticide in China has been discussed by a legion of
+writers and observers; and the opinion they come to seems to be
+generally that the prevalence of the crime, except in seasons of famine,
+has been enormously overstated. The prevalent idea with us Westerns
+appears to be, that the murder of their children, especially of their
+female children, is a kind of national pastime with the Chinese, or, at
+the best, a national peculiarity. Yet it is open to question whether the
+crime, excepting in seasons of famine, is, in proportion to the
+population, more common in China than it is in England. H. A. Giles of
+H.B.M. Chinese Consular Service, one of the greatest living authorities
+on China, says "I am unable to believe that infanticide prevails to any
+great extent in China.... In times of famine or rebellion, under stress
+of exceptional circumstances, infanticide may possibly cast its shadow
+over the empire, but as a general rule I believe it to be no more
+practised in China than in England, France, the United States and
+elsewhere." (<i>Journal, China Branch R.A.S.</i>, 1885, p. 28.)</p>
+
+<p>G. Eug&egrave;ne Simon, formerly French Consul in China, declares that
+"infanticide is a good deal less frequent in China than in Europe
+generally, and particularly in France." A statement that inferentially
+receives the support of Dr. E. J. Eitel. (<i>China Review</i>, xvi., 189.)</p>
+
+<p>The prevailing impression as to the frequency of infanticide in China is
+derived from the statements of missionaries, who, no doubt
+unintentionally, exaggerate the prevalence of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> the crime in order to
+bring home to us Westerns the deplorable condition of the heathen among
+whom they are labouring. But, even among the missionaries, the
+statements are as divergent as they are on almost every other subject
+relating to China. Thus the Rev. Griffith John argues "from his own
+experience that infanticide is common all over the Empire," the Rev. Dr.
+Edkins on the other hand says that "infanticide is a thing almost
+unknown in Peking." And the well known medical missionary, Dr. Dudgeon
+of Peking (who has left the London Mission), agrees with another medical
+missionary, Dr. Lockhart, "that infanticide is almost as rare in China
+as in England."</p>
+
+<p>The Rev. A. H. Smith ("Chinese Characteristics," p. 207) speaks "of the
+enormous infanticide which is known to exist in China." The Rev. Justus
+Doolittle ("Social Life of the Chinese," ii. p. 203) asserts that "there
+are most indubitable reasons for believing that infanticide is tolerated
+by the Government, and that the subject is treated with indifference and
+with shocking levity by the mass." ... But Bishop Moule "has good reason
+to conclude that the prevalence of the crime has been largely
+exaggerated." (<i>Journal, China Branch R.A.S.</i>, <i>ut supra</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>One of the best known Consuls in China, who lately retired from the
+Service, told the writer that in all his thirty years' experience of
+China he had only had personal knowledge of one authentic case of
+infanticide.</p>
+
+<p>"Exaggerated estimates respecting the frequency of infanticide," says
+the Rev. Dr. D. J. MacGowan, "are formed owing to the withholding
+interment from children who die in infancy." And he adds that "opinions
+of careful observers will be found to vary with fields of observation."
+(<i>China Review</i>, xiv., 206.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Whatever the relative frequency of infanticide in China and Europe may
+be, it cannot, I think, admit of question that the crime of infanticide
+is less common among the barbarian Chinese than is the crime of
+f[oe]ticide among the highly civilised races of Europe and America.</p>
+
+<p>There are several temples in Tongchuan, and two beyond the walls which
+are of more than ordinary interest. There is a Temple to the Goddess of
+Mercy, where deep reverence is shown to the images of the Trinity of
+Sisters. They are seated close into the wall, the nimbus of glory which
+plays round their impassive features being represented by a golden
+aureola painted on the wall. The Goddess of Mercy is called by the
+Chinese "<i>Sheng-mu</i>," or Holy Mother, and it is this name which has been
+adopted by the Roman Catholic Church as the Chinese name of the Virgin
+Mary.</p>
+
+<p>There is a fine City Temple which controls the spirits of the dead of
+the city as the yamens of the magistrates control the living of the
+city. The Prefect and the City Magistrate are here shown in their
+celestial abodes administering justice&mdash;or its Chinese equivalent&mdash;to
+the spirits who, when living, were under their jurisdiction on earth.
+They hold the same position in Heaven and have the same authority as
+they had on earth; and may, as spirits, be bribed to deal gently with
+the spirits of departed friends just as, when living, they were open to
+offers to deal leniently with any living prisoner in whose welfare the
+friends were prepared to express practical sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>In the Buddhist Temple are to be seen, in the long side pavilions, the
+chambers of horrors with their realistic representations of the torments
+of a soul in its passage through the eight Buddhist hells. I looked on
+these scenes with the calmness of an unbeliever; not so a poor woman to
+whom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> the horrors were very vivid truths. She was on her knees before
+the grating, sobbing piteously at a ghastly scene where a man, while
+still alive, was being cast by monsters from a hill-top on to red-hot
+spikes, there to be torn in pieces by serpents. This was the torture her
+dead husband was now enduring; it was this stage he had reached in his
+onward passage through hell&mdash;the priest had told her so, and only money
+paid to the priests could lighten his torment.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond the south gate, amid groves of lofty pine trees, are the temple
+and grounds, the pond and senior wrangler bridge, of the Confucian
+Temple&mdash;the most beautifully-finished temple I have seen in China. We
+have accustomed ourselves to speak in ecstacies of the wood-carving in
+the temples of Japan, but not even in the Sh&#333;gun chapels of the Shiba
+temples in Tokyo have I seen wood-carving superior to the exquisite
+delicacy of workmanship displayed in the carving of the Imperial dragons
+that frame with their fantastic coils the large Confucian tablet of this
+temple. Money has been lavished on this building. The inclined marble
+slabs that divide the terrace steps are covered with fanciful tracery;
+the parapets of the bridge are chiselled in marble; sculptured images of
+elephants with howdahs crown the pillars of the marble balustrades; the
+lattice work under the wide eaves is everywhere beautifully carved.
+Lofty pillars of wood support the temple roofs. They are preserved by a
+coating of hemp and protected against fire by an outer coating of
+plaster stained the colour of the original wood. Gilding is used as
+freely in the decoration of the grand altar and tablets of this temple,
+as it is in a temple in Burma.</p>
+
+<p>On a hill overlooking the city and valley is the Temple to the God of
+Literature. The missionary and I climbed to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> temple and saw its
+pretty court, its ancient bronze censer, and its many beautiful flowers,
+and then sat on the terrace in the sun and watched the picturesque
+valley spread out before us.</p>
+
+<p>As we descended the hill again, a lad, who had attached himself to us,
+offered to show us the two common pits in which are cast the dead bodies
+of paupers and criminals. The pits are at the foot of the hill,
+open-mouthed in the uncut grass. With famine in the city, with people
+dying at that very hour of starvation, there was no lack of dead, and
+both pits were filled to within a few feet of the surface. Bodies are
+thrown in here without any covering, and hawks and crows strip them of
+their flesh, a mode of treating the dead grateful to the Parsee, but
+inexpressibly hateful to the Chinese, whose poverty must be overwhelming
+when he can be found to permit it. Pigtails were lying carelessly about
+and skulls separated from the trunk. Human bones gnawed by dogs were to
+be picked up in numbers in the long grass all round the hill; they were
+the bones of the dead who had been loosely buried close to the surface,
+through which dogs&mdash;the domestic dogs one met afterwards in the
+street&mdash;had scraped their way. Many, too, were the bones of dead
+children; for poor children are not buried, but are thrown outside the
+wall, sometimes before they are dead, to be eaten perhaps by the very
+dog that was their playmate since birth.</p>
+
+<p>I called upon the French priest, P&egrave;re Maire, and he came with much
+cordiality to the door of the mission to receive me. His is a pretty
+mission, built in the Chinese style, with a modest little church and a
+nice garden and summer-house. The father has been four years in
+Tongchuan and ten in China. Like most of the French priests in China he
+has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> succeeded in growing a prodigious beard whose imposing length adds
+to his influence among the Chinese, who are apt to estimate age by the
+length of the beard. Only three weeks ago he returned from the capital.
+Signs of famine were everywhere apparent. The weather was very cold, and
+the road in many places deeply covered with snow. Riding on his mule he
+passed at different places on the wayside eight bodies, all recently
+dead from hunger and cold. No school is attached to the mission, but
+there is an <i>orph&egrave;linat</i> of little girls, <i>ramass&eacute;es dans les rues</i>, who
+had been cast away by their parents; they are in charge of Chinese
+Catholic nuns, and will be reared as nuns. As we sat in the pavilion in
+the garden and drank wine sent to him by his brother in Bordeaux&mdash;true
+French wine&mdash;the priest had many things to tell me of interest, of the
+native rebellion on the frontier of Tonquin, of the mission of Monsieur
+Haas to Chungking, and the Thibetan trade in tea. "The Chinese? ah! yes.
+He loves the Chinese because he loves all God's creatures, but they are
+liars and thieves. Many families are converted, but even the Christians
+are never Christian till the third generation." These were his words.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Tongchuan to Yunnan City.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>From Tongchuan to Yunnan city, the provincial seat of Government and
+official residence of the Viceroy, whither I was now bound, is a
+distance of two hundred miles. My two carriers from Chaotong had been
+engaged to go with me only as far as Tongchuan, but they now re-engaged
+to go with Laohwan, my third man, as far as the capital. The conditions
+were that they were to receive 6<i>s.</i> 9<i>d.</i> each (2.25 taels), one tael
+(3<i>s.</i>) to be paid in advance and the balance on arrival, and they were
+to do the distance in seven days. The two taels they asked the
+missionary to remit to their parents in Chaotong, and he promised to
+receive the money from me and do so. There was no written agreement of
+any kind&mdash;none of the three men could read; they did not even see the
+money that the missionary was to get for them; but they had absolute
+confidence in our good faith.</p>
+
+<p>I had a mule with me from Tongchuan to Yunnan, which saved me many miles
+of walking, and increased my importance in the eyes of the heathen. I
+was taking it to the capital for sale. It was a big-boned rough-hewn
+animal, of superior intelligence, and I was authorised to sell it,
+together with its saddle and bridle, for four pounds. Like most Chinese
+mules it had two corns on the forelegs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> and thus could see at night.
+Every Chinaman knows that the corns are adventitious eyes which give the
+mule this remarkable power.</p>
+
+<p>We were on our way early in the afternoon of the 7th, going up the
+valley. Below the curiously draped pagoda which commands Tongchuan we
+met two pairs of prisoners, who were being led into the city under
+escort. They were coupled by the neck; they were suffering cruelly, for
+their wrists were so tightly manacled that their hands were
+strangulated, a mode of torture to which, it will be remembered, the
+Chinese Government in 1860 subjected Bowlby, the <i>Times</i> correspondent,
+and the other prisoners seized with him "in treacherous violation of a
+flag of truce," till death ended their sufferings. These men were
+roadside robbers caught red-handed. Their punishment would be swift and
+certain. Found guilty on their own confession, either tendered
+voluntarily to escape torture, or under the compulsion of torture,
+"self-accusation wrested from their agony," they would be sentenced to
+death, carried in baskets without delay&mdash;if they had not previously
+"died in prison"&mdash;died, that is, from the torture having been pushed too
+far&mdash;to the execution ground, and there beheaded.</p>
+
+<p>We stopped at an inn that was not the ordinary stage, where in
+consequence we had few comforts. In the morning my men lay in bed till
+late, and when I called them they opened the door and pointed to the
+road, clearly indicating that rain had fallen, and that the roads were
+too slippery for traffic. But what was my surprise on looking myself to
+find the whole country deeply under snow, and that it was still snowing.
+All day, indeed, it snowed. The track was very slippery, but my mule,
+though obstinate, was sure-footed, and we kept going.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> We passed a huge
+coffin&mdash;borne by a dozen men with every gentleness, not to disturb the
+dead one's rest&mdash;preceded, not followed, by mourners, two of whom were
+carrying a paper sedan chair, which would be burnt, and so, rendered
+invisible, would be sent to the invisible world to bear the dead man's
+spirit with becoming dignity. All day we were in the mountains
+travelling up the bed of a creek with mountains on both sides of us. We
+passed Chehki, ninety li from Tongchuan, and thirty li further were glad
+to escape from the cold and snow to the shelter of a poor thatched mud
+inn, where we rested for the night.</p>
+
+<p>A hump-back was in charge. The only bedroom was half open to the sky,
+but the main room was still whole, though it had seen better days. There
+was a shrine in this room with ancestral tablets, and a sheet of
+many-featured gods, conspicuous amongst them being the God of Riches,
+who had been little attentive to the prayers offered him in this poor
+hamlet. In a stall adjoining our bedroom the mule was housed, and
+jingled his bell discontentedly all through the night. A poor man,
+nearly blind with acute inflammation of the eyes, was shivering over the
+scanty embers of an open fire which was burning in a square hole scooped
+in the earthern floor near the doorway. He ate the humblest dishful of
+maize husks and meal strainings. That night I wondered did he sleep out
+in the open under a hedge, or did the inn people give him shelter with
+my mule in the next room. My men and I had to sleep in the same room.
+They were still on short rations. They ate only twice a day, and then
+sparingly, of maize and vegetables; they took but little rice, and no
+tea, and only a very small allowance of pork once in two days. Food was
+very dear,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> and, though they were receiving nearly double wages to carry
+half-loads, they must needs be careful. What admirable fellows they
+were! In all my wanderings I have never travelled with more good-natured
+companions. The attendant Laohwan was a powerful Chinese, solid and
+determined, but courteous in manner, voluble of speech, but with an
+amusing stammer; he had a wide experience of travel in Western China. He
+seemed to enjoy his journey&mdash;he never appeared lovesick; but, of course,
+I had no means of asking if he felt keenly the long separation from his
+bride.</p>
+
+<p>At the inn there was no bedding for my men; they had to cover
+themselves, as best they could, with some pieces of felt brought them by
+the hunchback, and sleep all huddled together from the cold. They had a
+few hardships to put up with, but their lot was a thousand times better
+than that of hundreds of their countrymen who were dying from hunger as
+well as from cold.</p>
+
+<p>On the 9th, as I was riding on my mule up the mountain road, with the
+bleak, bare mountain tops on every side, I was watching an eagle
+circling overhead, when my men called out to me excitedly and pointed to
+a large wolf that leisurely crossed the path in front of us and slunk
+over the brow. It had in its mouth a haunch of flesh torn from some poor
+wretch who had perished during the night. This was the only wolf I saw
+on my journey, though they are numerous in the province. Last year, not
+twenty li from Chaotong, a little girl of four, the only child of the
+mission cook, was killed by a wolf in broad daylight before its mother's
+eyes, while playing at the cabin door.</p>
+
+<p>Again, to-day, I passed a humpbacked dwarf on the hills, making his
+solitary way towards Tongchuan, and I afterwards<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> saw others, an
+indication of the prosperity that had left the district, for in time of
+famine no child who was badly deformed at birth would be suffered to
+live.</p>
+
+<p>We stopped the night at Leitoupo, and next day from the bleak tableland
+high among the mountains, where the wind whistled in our faces, we
+gradually descended into a country of trees and cultivation and
+fertility. We left the bare red hills behind us, and came down into a
+beautiful glade, with pretty streams running in pebbly beds past
+terraced banks. At a village among the trees, where the houses made some
+pretension to comfort, and where poppies with brilliantly coloured
+flowers, encroached upon the street itself, we rested under a sunshade
+in front of a teahouse. A pretty rill of mountain water ran at our feet.
+Good tea was brought us in new clean cups, and a sweetmeat of peanuts,
+set in sugar-like almond toffee. The teahouse was filled. In the midst
+of the tea drinkers a man was lying curled on a mat, a bent elbow his
+pillow, and fast asleep, with the opium pipe still beside him, and the
+lamp still lit. A pretty little girl from the adjoining cottage came
+shyly out to see me. I called her to me and gave her some sweetmeat. I
+wished to put it in her mouth but she would not let me, and ran off
+indoors. I looked into the room after her and saw her father take the
+lolly from her and give it to her fat little baby brother, who seemed
+the best fed urchin in the town. But I stood by and saw justice done,
+and saw the little maid of four enjoy the first luxury of her life-time.
+Girls in China early learn that they are, at best, only necessary evils,
+to be endured, as tradition says Confucius taught, only as the possible
+mothers of men. Yet the condition of women in China is far superior to
+that in any other heathen country. Monogamy is the rule in China,
+polygamy is the exception,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> being confined to the three classes, the
+rich, the officials, and those who can by effort afford to take a
+secondary wife, their first wife having failed to give birth to a son.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to read the combined experiences of many missionaries
+and travellers in China without forming the opinion that the condition
+of women in China is as nearly satisfactory as could be hoped for, in a
+kingdom of "civilised and organised heathenism," as the Rev. C. W.
+Mateer terms it. The lot of the average Chinese woman is certainly not
+one that a Western woman need envy. She cannot enjoy the happiness which
+a Western woman does, but she is happy in her own way nevertheless.
+"Happiness does not always consist in absolute enjoyment&mdash;but in the
+idea which we have formed of it."</p>
+
+<p>There was no impertinent curiosity to see the stranger. The people in
+Yunnan seem cowed and crushed. That arrogance which characterises the
+Chinese elsewhere is entirely wanting here. They have seen the horrors
+of rebellion and civil war, of battle, murder and sudden death, of
+devastation by the sword, famine, ruin, and misery. They are resigned
+and spiritless. But their friendliness is charming; their courtesy and
+kindliness is a constant delight to the traveller. At meal time you are
+always pressed to join the table in the same manner, and with the
+identical phrases still used by the Spaniards, but the request is one of
+politeness only, and like the "<i>quiere Vd. gustar?</i>" is not meant to be
+accepted.</p>
+
+<p>We continued on our way. Comparatively few coolies now met us, and the
+majority of those who did were travelling empty-handed; but there were
+many ponies and mules coming from the capital, laden with tea and with
+blocks of white salt like marble. Every here and there a rude shelter
+was erected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> by the wayside, where a dish of cabbage and herbs could be
+obtained, which you ate out of cracked dishes at an improvised bench
+made from a coffin board resting on two stones. Towards sundown we
+entered the village of Kong-shan, a pretty place on the hill slope, with
+views across a fertile hollow that was pleasant to see. Here we found an
+excellent inn with good quarters. Our day's journey was thirty-seven
+miles, of which I walked fifteen miles and rode twenty-two miles. We
+were travelling quickly. Distances in China are, at first, very
+confusing. They differ from ours in a very important particular: they
+are not fixed quantities; they vary in length according to the nature of
+the ground passed over. Inequalities increase the distance; thus it by
+no means follows that the distance from A to B is equal to the distance
+from B to A&mdash;it may be fifty per cent. or one hundred per cent. longer.
+The explanation is simple. Distance is estimated by time, and, speaking
+roughly, ten li (3-1/3 miles) is the unit of distance equivalent to an
+hour's journey. "Sixty li still to go" means six hours' journey before
+you; it may be uphill all the way. If you are returning downhill you
+need not be surprised to learn that the distance by the same road is
+only thirty li.</p>
+
+<p>To-night before turning in I looked in to see how my mule was faring. He
+was standing in a crib at the foot of some underground stairs, with a
+huge horse trough before him, the size and shape of a Chinese coffin. He
+was peaceful and meditative. When he saw me he looked reproachfully at
+the cut straw heaped untidily in the trough, and then at me, and asked
+as clearly as he could if that was a reasonable ration for a
+high-spirited mule, who had carried my honourable person up hill and
+down dale over steep rocks and by tortuous paths, a long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> spring day in
+a warm sun. Alas, I had nothing else to offer him, unless I gave him the
+uncut straw that was stitched into our paillasses. What straw was before
+him was Chinese chaff, cut into three-inch lengths, by a long knife
+worked on a pivot and board, like the tobacco knife of civilisation. And
+he had to be content with that or nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Next day we had an early start soon after sunrise. It was a lovely day
+with a gentle breeze blowing and a cloudless sky. The village of
+Kong-shan was a very pretty place. It was built chiefly on two sides of
+a main road which was as rugged as the dry bed of a mountain creek. The
+houses were better and the inns were again provided with heaps of
+bedding at the doorways. Advertisement bills in blue and red were
+displayed on the lintels and doorposts, while fierce door-gods guarded
+against the admission of evil spirits. Brave indeed must be the spirits
+who venture within reach of such fierce bearded monsters, armed with
+such desperate weapons, as were here represented. I stood on the edge of
+the town overlooking the valley while my mule was being saddled. Patches
+of wheat and beans were scattered among fields of white-flowered poppy.
+Coolies carrying double buckets of water were winding up the sinuous
+path from the border of the garden where "a pebbled brook laughs upon
+its way." Boys were shouting to frighten away the sparrows from the
+newly-sown rice beds; while women were moving on their little feet among
+the poppies, scoring anew the capsules and gathering the juice that had
+exuded since yesterday. Down the road coolies were filing laden with
+their heavy burdens&mdash;a long day's toil before them; rude carts were
+lumbering past me drawn by oxen and jolting on wheels that were solid
+but not circular. Then the mule was brought to me, and we went on
+through an avenue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> of trees that were half hidden in showers of white
+roses, by hedges of roses in full bloom and wayside flowers, daisies and
+violets, dandelions and forget-me-nots, a pretty sight all fresh and
+sparkling in the morning sun.</p>
+
+<p>We went on in single file, my two coolies first with their light loads
+that swung easily from their shoulders, then myself on the mule, and
+last my stalwart attendant Laohwan with his superior dress, his huge sun
+hat, his long pipe, and umbrella. A man of unusual endurance was
+Laohwan. The day's journey done&mdash;he always arrived the freshest of the
+party&mdash;he had to get ready my supper, make my bed, and look after my
+mule. He was always the last to bed and the first to rise. Long before
+daybreak he was about again, attending to the mule and preparing my
+porridge and eggs for breakfast. He thought I liked my eggs hard, and
+each morning construed my look of remonstrance into one of approbation.
+It is very true of the Chinaman that precedent determines his action.
+The first morning Laohwan boiled the eggs hard and I could not reprove
+him. Afterwards of course he made a point of serving me the eggs every
+morning in the same way. I could say in Chinese "I don't like them," but
+the morning I said so Laohwan applied my dislike to the eggs not to
+their condition of cooking, and saying in Chinese "good, good," he
+obligingly ate them for me.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the valley we ascended the red incline to an open tableland,
+where the soil is arid, and yields but a reluctant and scanty harvest.
+Nothing obstructs the view, and you can see long distances over the
+downs, which are bereft of all timber except an occasional clump of
+pines that the axe has spared because of the beneficial influence the
+geomancers declare they exercise over the neighbourhood. The roadway in
+places<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> is cut deeply into the ground; for the path worn by the
+attrition of countless feet soon becomes a waterchannel, and the roadway
+in the rains is often the bed of a rapid stream. At short intervals are
+vast numbers of grave mounds with tablets and arched gables of well
+dressed stone. No habitations of the living are within miles of them, a
+forcible illustration of the devastation that has ravaged the district.
+This was still the famine district. In the open uncultivated fields
+women were searching for weeds and herbs to save them from starvation
+till the ingathering of the winter harvest. Their children it was
+pitiful to see. It is rare for Australians to see children dying of
+hunger. These poor creatures, with their pinched faces and fleshless
+bones, were like the patient with typhoid fever who has long been
+hovering between life and death. There were no beggars. All the beggars
+were dead long ago. All through the famine district we were not once
+solicited for either food or money, but those who were still living were
+crying for alms with silent voices a hundred times more appealing. When
+we rested to have tea the poor children gathered round to see us,
+skeletons dressed in skins and rags, yet meekly independent and
+friendly. Their parents were covered with ragged garments that hardly
+held together. Many wore over their shoulders rude grass cloths made
+from pine fibre that appear to be identical with the native petticoats
+worn by the women of New Guinea.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the poor upland behind us, we descended to a broad and fertile
+plain where the travelling was easy, and passed the night in a large
+Moslem inn in the town of Iangkai.</p>
+
+<p>All next day we pursued our way through fertile fields flanked by pretty
+hills, which it was hard to realise were the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> peaks of mountains 10,000
+to 11,000 feet above sea-level. Before sundown we reached the prosperous
+market town of Yanglin, where I had a clean upstairs room in an
+excellent inn. The wall of my bedroom was scrawled over in Chinese
+characters with what I was told were facetious remarks by Chinese
+tourists on the quality of the fare.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening my mule was sick, Laohwan said, and a veterinary surgeon
+had to be sent for. He came with unbecoming expedition. Then in the same
+way that I have seen the Chinese doctors in Australia diagnose the
+ailments of their human patients of the same great family, he examined
+the poor mule with the inscrutable air of one to whom are unveiled the
+mysteries of futurity, and he retired with his fee. The medicine came
+later in a large basket, and consisted of an assortment of herbs so
+varied that one at least might be expected to hit the mark. My Laohwan
+paid the mule doctor, so he said, for advice and medicine 360 cash
+(ninepence), an exorbitant charge as prices are in China.</p>
+
+<p>On Friday, April 13th, we had another pleasant day in open country,
+leading to the low rim of hills that border the plain and lake of Yunnan
+city. Ruins everywhere testify to the march of the rebellion of thirty
+years ago&mdash;triumphal arches in fragments, broken temples, battered idols
+destroyed by Mohammedan iconoclasts. Districts destitute of habitations,
+where a thriving population once lived, attest that suppression of a
+rebellion in China spells extermination to the rebels.</p>
+
+<p>On the road I met a case of goitre, and by-and-by others, till I counted
+twenty or more, and then remembered that I was now entering on a
+district of Asia extending over Western Yunnan into Thibet, Burma, the
+Shan States, and Siam, the prevailing deformity of whose people is
+goitre.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="img016" id="img016"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/016.jpg"><img src="images/016_th.jpg" width="400" height="283" alt="THE BIG EAST GATE OF YUNNAN CITY." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Big East Gate of Yunnan City.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Ten miles before Yunnan my men led me off the road to a fine building
+among the poplars, which a large monogram on the gateway told me was the
+Catholic College of the <i>Missions &Eacute;trang&egrave;res de Paris</i>, known throughout
+the Province as Jinmaasuh. Situated on rising ground, the plain of
+Yunnan widening before it, the College commands a distant view of the
+walls and turretted gateways, the pagodas and lofty temples of the
+famous city. Chinese students are trained here for the priesthood. At
+the time of my visit there were thirty students in residence, who, after
+their ordination, will be scattered as evangelists throughout the
+Province. P&egrave;re Excoffier was at home, and received me with
+characteristic courtesy. His news was many weeks later than mine. M.
+Gladstone had retired from the Premiership, and M. Rosebery was his
+successor. England had determined to renew the payment of the tribute
+which China formerly exacted by right of suzerainty from Burma. The
+Chinese were daily expecting the arrival of two white elephants from
+Burma, which were coming in charge of the British Resident in Singai
+(Bhamo), M. Warry, as a present to the Emperor, and were the official
+recognition by England that Burma is still a tributary of the Middle
+Kingdom. I may here say that I often heard of this tribute in Western
+China. The Chinese had been long waiting for the arrival of the
+elephants, with their yellow flags floating from the howdahs,
+announcing, as did the flags of Lord Macartney's Mission to Peking,
+"Tribute from the English to the Emperor of China," and I suppose that
+there are governments idiotic enough to thus pander to Chinese
+arrogance. No doubt what has given rise to the report is the knowledge
+that the Government of India is bound, under the Convention of 1886, to
+send, every ten years, a complimentary mission<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> from the Chief
+Commissioner of Burma to the Viceroy of Yunnan.</p>
+
+<p>It was late when I left Jinmaasuh, and long after sundown before I
+reached the city. The flagged causeway across the plain was slippery to
+walk on, and my mule would not agree with me that there was any need to
+hurry. He knew the Chinese character better than I did. Gunfire, the
+signal for the closing of the gates, had sounded when we were two miles
+from the wall; but sentries are negligent in China and the gates were
+still open. Had we been earlier we should have entered by the south
+gate, which is always the most important of the gates of a Chinese city,
+and the one through which all officials make their official entry; but,
+unable to do this, we entered by the big east gate. Turning sharply to
+the right along the city wall we were conducted in a few minutes to the
+Telegraph Offices, where I received a cordial welcome from Mr. Christian
+Jensen, the superintendent of telegraphs in the two great provinces of
+Yunnan and Kweichow. These are his headquarters, and here I was to rest
+a delightful week. It was a pleasant change from silence to speech, from
+Chinese discomfort to European civilisation. Chinese fare one evening,
+pork, rice, tea, and beans; and the next, chicken and the famed Shuenwei
+ham, mutton and green peas and red currant jelly, pancakes and
+aboriginal Yunnan cheese, claret, champagne, port, and cordial Medoc.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">At Yunnan City.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Yunnan City is one of the great cities of China, not so much in size as
+in importance. It is within easy access at all seasons of the year of
+the French colony of Tonquin, whereas the trade route from here to
+British Burma is long, arduous, and mountainous, and in its Western
+portions is closed to traffic during the rains. From Yunnan City to
+Mungtze on the borders of Tonquin, where there is a branch of the
+Imperial Maritime Customs of China, is a journey of eight days over an
+easy road. Four days from Mungtze is Laokai on the Red River, a river
+which is navigable by boat or steamer to Hanoi, the chief river port of
+Tonquin. In the middle of 1889 the French river steamer, <i>Le Laokai</i>,
+made the voyage from Hanoi to Laokai in sixty hours.</p>
+
+<p>From Yunnan City to Bhamo on the Irrawaddy, in British Burma, is a
+difficult journey of thirty-three stages over a mountainous road which
+can never by any human possibility be made available for other traffic
+than caravans of horses or coolies on foot. The natural highway of
+Central and Southern Yunnan is by Tonquin, and no artificial means can
+ever alter it. At present Eastern Yunnan sends her trade through the
+provinces of Kweichow and Hunan to the Yangtse above Hankow, or vi&acirc; the
+two Kuangs to Canton. Shortness of distance, combined with facility of
+transport,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> must soon tap this trade or divert it into the highways of
+Tonquin. Northern Yunnan must send her produce and receive her imports,
+vi&acirc; Szechuen and the Yangtse. As for the trade of Szechuen, the richest
+of the provinces of China, no man can venture to assert that any other
+trade route exists, or can ever be made to exist, than the River
+Yangtse; and all the French Commissioners in the world can no more alter
+the natural course of this trade than they can change the channel of the
+Yangtse itself.</p>
+
+<p>I am not, of course, the first distinguished visitor who has been in
+Yunnan City. Marco Polo was here in 1283, and has left on record a
+description of the city, which, in his time, was known by the name of
+Yachi. Jesuit missionaries have been propagating the faith in the
+province since the seventeenth century. But the distinction of being the
+first European traveller, not a missionary priest, to visit the city
+since the time of Marco Polo rests with Captain Doudart de la Gr&eacute;e of
+the French Navy, who was here in 1867.</p>
+
+<p>Margary, the British Consul, who met a cruel death at Manwyne, passed
+through Yunnan in 1875 on his famous journey from Hankow; and two years
+later the tardy mission under Grosvenor, with the brilliant Baber as
+interpreter, and Li Han Chang, the brother of Li Hung Chang, as delegate
+for the Chinese, arrived here in the barren hope of bringing his
+murderers to justice.</p>
+
+<p>Hosie, formerly H.B.M. Consul in Chungking, and well known as a
+traveller in Western China, was in Yunnan City in 1882.</p>
+
+<p>In September, 1890, Bonvalot and Prince Henri d'Orleans stopped here at
+the French Mission on their way to Mungtze in Tonquin. It was on the
+completion of their journey along<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> the eastern edge of <i>Tibet
+Inconnu</i>&mdash;"Unknown Thibet!" as they term it, although the whole route
+had been traversed time and again by missionary priests, a journey whose
+success was due&mdash;though few have ever heard his name&mdash;to its true
+leader, interpreter, and guide, the brave Dutch priest from Kuldja, P&egrave;re
+Dedeken.</p>
+
+<p>Another famous missionary traveller, P&egrave;re Vial, who led Colquhoun out of
+his difficulty in that journey "Across Chryse," which Colquhoun
+describes as a "Journey of Exploration" (though it was through a country
+that had been explored and accurately mapped a century and a half before
+by Jesuit missionaries), and conducted him in safety to Bhamo in Burma,
+has often been in Yunnan City, and is a possible successor to the
+Bishopric.</p>
+
+<p>M. Boell, who left the Secretaryship of the French Legation in Peking to
+become the special correspondent of <i>Le Temps</i>, was here in 1892 on his
+way from Kweiyang, in Kweichow, to Tonquin, and a few months later
+Captain d'Amade, the Military Secretary of the French Legation,
+completed a similar journey from Chungking. In May, 1892, the
+Commissioner from the French Government opium farm in Hanoi, M. Tomm&eacute;,
+arrived in Yunnan City from Mungtze, sent by his Government in search of
+improved methods of poppy cultivation&mdash;the Yunnan opium, with the
+exception of the Shansi opium, being probably the finest in China.
+Finally, in May, 1893, Lenz, the American bicyclist, to the profound
+amazement of the populace, rode on his "living wheel" to the
+<i>Yesu-tang</i>. This was the most remarkable journey of all. Lenz
+practically walked across China, surmounting hardships and dangers that
+few men would venture to face. I often heard of him. He stayed at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span>
+mission stations. All the missionaries praise his courage and endurance,
+and the admirable good humour with which he endured every discomfort.
+But one missionary lamented to me that Lenz did not possess that close
+acquaintance with the Bible which was to be expected of a man of his
+hardihood. It seems that at family prayers at this good missionary's,
+the chapter for reading was given out when poor Lenz was discovered
+feverishly seeking the Epistle to the Galatians in the Old Testament.
+When his mistake was gently pointed out to him he was not discouraged,
+far from it; it was the missionary who was dismayed to hear that in the
+United States this particular Epistle is always reckoned a part of the
+Pentateuch.</p>
+
+<p>I paid an early visit of courtesy to my nominal host, Li Pi Chang, the
+Chinese manager of the Telegraphs. He received me in his private office,
+gave me the best seat on the left, and handed me tea with his own fat
+hands. A mandarin whose rank is above that of an expectant Taotai, Li is
+to be the next Taotai of Mungtze, where, from an official salary of 400
+taels per annum, he hopes to save from 10,000 to 20,000 taels per annum.</p>
+
+<p>"Squeezing," as this method of enrichment is termed, is, you see, not
+confined to America. Few arts, indeed, seem to be more widely
+distributed than the art of squeezing. "Dives, the tax-dodger," is as
+common in China as he is in the United States. Compare, however, any
+city in China, in the midst of the most ancient civilisation in the
+world, with a city like Chicago, which claims to have reached the
+highest development of modern civilisation, and it would be difficult to
+assert that the condition of public morals in the heathen city was even
+comparable with the corruption and sin of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> American city, a city
+"nominally Christian, which is studded with churches and littered with
+Bibles," but still a city "where perjury is a protected industry." No
+community is more ardent in its evangelisation of the "perishing
+Chinese" than Chicago, but where in all China is there "such a supreme
+embodiment of fraud, falsehood, and injustice," as prevails in Chicago?
+An alderman in Chicago, Mr. Stead tells us (p. 172 <i>et seq.</i>) receives
+only 156 dollars a year salary; but, in addition to his salary, he
+enjoys "practically unrestricted liberty to fill his pockets by
+bartering away the property of the city." "It is expected of the
+alderman, as a fundamental principle, that he will steal," and, in a
+fruitful year, says the <i>Record</i>, the average crooked alderman makes
+15,000 to 20,000 dollars. An assessorship in Chicago is worth nominally
+1500 dollars per annum, but "everyone knows that in Chicago an
+assessorship is the shortest cut to fortune."</p>
+
+<p>Squeezing in China may be common, but it is a humble industry compared
+with the monumental swindling which Mr. Stead describes as existing in
+Chicago.</p>
+
+<p>Besides being manager in Yunnan City, Li is the chief telegraph director
+of the two provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow. That he is entirely
+innocent of all knowledge of telegraphy, or of the management of
+telegraphs, is no bar to such an appointment. He is a mandarin, and is,
+therefore, presumably fitted to take any position whatever, whether it
+be that of Magistrate or Admiral of the Fleet, Collector of Customs, or
+General commanding in the field. Of the mandarin in China it is truly
+said that "there is nothing he isn't."</p>
+
+<p>Li is also Chief Secretary of the <i>Shan-hao-Tsung-Kuh</i>, "The Supreme
+Board of Reorganisation" of the province, the members of which are the
+four highest provincial officials<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> next below the Governor
+(<i>Futai</i>)&mdash;viz., the Treasurer (<i>Fantai</i>), Provincial Judge (<i>Niehtai</i>),
+the Salt Comptroller, and the Grain Intendant.</p>
+
+<p>Li, it may be said at once, is a man of no common virtue. He is the
+father of seven sons and four daughters; he can die in peace; in his
+family there is no fear of the early extinction of male descendants, for
+the succession is as well provided against as it is in the most fertile
+Royal family in Europe. His family is far spreading, and it is worth
+noting as an instance of the patriarchal nature of the family in China,
+that Li is regarded as the father of a family, whose members dependent
+upon him for entire or partial support number eighty persons. He has had
+three wives. His number one wife still lives at the family seat in
+Changsha; another secondary wife is dead; his present number two wife
+lives with him in Yunnan. This is his favourite wife, and her story is
+worth a passing note. She was not a "funded houri," but a poor <i>yatow</i>,
+a "forked head" or slave girl, whom he purchased on a lucky day, and,
+smitten with her charms, made her his wife. It was a case of love at
+first sight. Her conduct since marriage has more than justified the
+choice of her master. Still a young woman, she has already presented her
+lord with nine children, on the last occasion surpassing herself by
+giving birth to twins. She has a most pleasant face, and really charming
+children; but the chief attraction of a Chinese lady is absent in her
+case. Her feet are of natural size, and not even in the exaggerated
+murmurings of love could her husband describe them as "three-inch gold
+lilies."</p>
+
+<p>That this was a marriage of inclination there can be no doubt whatever.
+It is idle to argue that the Chinese are an unemotional people,
+incapable of feeling the same passions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> that move us. We ridicule the
+image of a Chinaman languishing in love, just as the Chinaman derides
+the possibility of experiencing the feelings of love for the average
+foreign woman he has seen in China. Their poetry abounds in love
+episodes. Students of Chinese civilisation seem to agree that a <i>mariage
+de convenance</i> in China is more likely even than on the Continent to
+become instantly a marriage of affection. The pleasures of female
+society are almost denied the Chinaman; he cannot fall in love before
+marriage because of the absence of an object for his love. "The faculty
+of love produces a subjective ideal; and craves for a corresponding
+objective reality. And the longer the absence of the objective reality,
+the higher the ideal becomes; as in the mind of the hungry man ideal
+foods get more and more exquisite."</p>
+
+<p>In Meadows' "Essay on Civilisation in China," there is a charming story,
+translated from the Chinese, of love at first sight, given in
+illustration of the author's contention that "it is the men to whom
+women's society is almost unknown that are most apt to fall violently in
+love at first sight. Violent love at first sight is a general
+characteristic of nations where the sexes have no intercourse before
+marriage.... The starved cravings of love devour the first object":&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"A Chinese who had suffered bitter disenchantments in marriage retired
+with his infant son to the solitude of a mountain inaccessible for
+little-footed Chinese women. He trained up the youth to worship the gods
+and stand in awe and abhorrence of devils, but he never mentioned even
+the name of woman to him. He always descended to market alone, but when
+he grew old and feeble he was at length compelled to take the young man
+with him to carry the heavy bag of rice. He very reasonably argued, 'I
+shall always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> accompany my son, and take care that if he does see a
+woman by chance, he shall never speak to one; he is very obedient; he
+has never heard of woman; he does not know what they are; and as he has
+lived in that way for twenty years already, he is, of course, now pretty
+safe.'</p>
+
+<p>"As they were on the first occasion leaving the market town together,
+the son suddenly stopped short, and, pointing to three approaching
+objects, inquired: 'Father, what are these things? Look! look! what are
+they?' The father hastily answered: 'Turn away your head. They are
+devils.' The son, in some alarm, instantly turned away from things so
+bad, and which were gazing at his motions with surprise from under their
+fans. He walked to the mountain top in silence, ate no supper, and from
+that day lost his appetite and was afflicted with melancholy. For some
+time his anxious and puzzled parent could get no satisfactory answer to
+his inquiries; but at length the poor young man burst out, almost crying
+from an inexplicable pain: 'Oh, father, that tallest devil! that tallest
+devil, father!'"</p>
+
+<p>Girls for Yunnan City are bought at two chief centres&mdash;at Chaotong, as
+we have seen, and at Bichih. They are carried to the city in baskets.
+They are rarely sold into prostitution, but are bought as slave girls
+for domestic service, as concubines, and occasionally as wives. Their
+great merit is the absence of the "thickneck," goitre.</p>
+
+<p>The morning after my visit, Li sent me his card, together with a leg of
+mutton and a pile of sweet cakes. I returned my card, and gave the
+bearer 200 cash (fivepence), not as a return gift to the mandarin, but
+as a private act of generosity to his servant&mdash;all this being in
+accordance with Chinese etiquette.</p>
+
+<p>My host in Yunnan, and the actual manager and superintendent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> of the
+telegraphs of the two provinces, is a clever Danish gentleman, Mr.
+Christian Jensen, an accomplished linguist, to whom every European
+resident and traveller in the province is indebted for a thousand acts
+of kindness and attention. He has a rare knowledge of travel in China.
+Mr. Jensen arrived in China in 1880 in the service of the Great Northern
+Telegraph Company&mdash;a Danish company. From December, 1881, when the first
+Chinese telegraph line was opened (that from Shanghai to Tientsin), till
+the spring of 1883, he was one of eight operatives and engineers lent by
+the Company to the Chinese Government. In December 1883, having returned
+in the meantime to the Great Northern he accepted an engagement under
+the Imperial Government and he has been in their employ ever since.
+During this time he has superintended the construction of 7000 li (2350
+miles) of telegraph lines, and it was he who, on the 20th May, 1890,
+effected the junction of the Chinese system with the French lines at
+Laokai. Among the more important lines constructed by him are those
+joining the two capital cities of the provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow;
+that from Yunnan City to Mungtze, on the frontier of Tonquin; that from
+Canton to the boundary of Fuhkien province; and that from Yunnan City
+through Tali to Tengyueh (Momien), this last line being the one which
+will eventually unite with the marvellous Indian telegraph system at the
+Burmese frontier. In the course of his many journeys through China, Mr.
+Jensen has been invariably well treated by the Chinese, and it is
+pleasant to hear one who has seen so much of the inner life of the
+country speak as he does of the universal courtesy and hospitality,
+attention, and kindness that has been shown him by all classes of
+Chinese from the highest officials to the humblest coolies.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img017" id="img017"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/017.jpg"><img src="images/017_th.jpg" width="400" height="238" alt="VIEW IN YUNNAN CITY." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">View in Yunnan City.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Many interesting episodes have marked his stay in China. Once, when
+repairing the line from Pase, in Kwangsi, to Mungtze, during the rainy
+season of 1889, fifty-six out of sixty men employed by him died of what
+there can be little doubt was the same plague that has lately devastated
+Hong Kong. On this occasion, of twelve men who at different times were
+employed as his chair-bearers, all died.</p>
+
+<p>In October, 1886, he came to Yunnan City, and made this his
+headquarters. He has always enjoyed good health.</p>
+
+<p>One of the chief difficulties that formerly impeded the extension of the
+telegraph in China was the belief that the telegraph poles spoil the
+"<i>fungshui</i>"&mdash;in other words, that they divert good luck from the
+districts they pass through. This objection has been everywhere
+overcome. It last revealed itself in the extreme west of the line from
+Yunnan. Villagers who saw in the telegraph a menace to the good fortune
+of their district would cut down the poles&mdash;and sell the wire in
+compensation for their trouble. The annoyance had to be put a stop to.
+An energetic magistrate took the matter in hand. He issued a warning to
+the villagers, but his warning was unheeded. Then he took more vigorous
+measures. The very next case that occurred he had two men arrested, and
+charged with the offence. They were probably innocent, but under the
+persuasion of the bamboo they were induced to acquiesce in the
+magistrate's opinion as to their guilt. They were sentenced to be
+deprived of their ears, and then they were sent on foot, that all might
+see them, under escort along the line from Yunnan City to Tengyueh and
+back again. No poles have been cut down since.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Gold, Banks, and Telegraphs in Yunnan.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Yunnan City is the great gold emporium of China, for most of the gold
+found in China comes from the province of which it is the capital. When
+a rich Chinaman returns from Yunnan to another province, or is summoned
+on a visit to the Emperor at Peking, he carries his money in gold not
+silver. Gold leaf sent from Yunnan gilds the gods of Thibet and the
+temples and pagodas of Indo-China. No caravan returns to Burma from
+Western China whose spare silver has not been changed into gold leaf. In
+the Arracan Temple in Mandalay, as in the Shway-dagon Pagoda in Rangoon,
+you see the gold leaf that Yunnan produces, and in the future will
+produce in infinitely greater quantities.</p>
+
+<p>Gold comes chiefly from the mines of Talang, eighteen days journey by
+land S.W. from Yunnan City, on the confines of the district which
+produces the famous Puerh tea. The yield must be a rich one despite the
+ineffective appliances that are employed in its extraction. Gold has
+always been abundant in this province; at the time of Marco Polo's visit
+it was so abundant that its value in relation to silver was only as one
+to six.</p>
+
+<p>When gold is worth in Shanghai 35 times its weight in silver, it may be
+bought in Yunnan City or Talifu for from 25<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> to 27.5 times its weight in
+silver, and in quantities up to hundreds of ounces. To remit silver by
+telegraphic transfer from Shanghai or Hong Kong to Yunnan city costs six
+per cent., and either of the two leading banks in the city will
+negotiate the transfer from their agents at the seaports of any amount
+up to 10,000 ounces of silver in a single transaction. The gold can
+always be readily sold in Shanghai or Hong Kong, and the only risk is in
+the carriage of the gold from the inland city to the seaport. So far as
+I could learn, no gold thus sent has gone astray. It is carried overland
+by the fastest trade route&mdash;that through Mungtze to Laokai&mdash;and thence
+by a boat down stream to Hanoi in Tonquin, from which port it is sent by
+registered post to Saigon and Hong Kong. Here then is a venture open to
+all, with excitement sufficient for the most <i>blas&eacute;</i> speculator. Ample
+profits are made by the dealer. For instance, a large quantity of gold
+was purchased in Yunnan city on the 21st January, 1894, at 23.2, its
+value in Shanghai on the same date being 30.9; but on the date that the
+gold arrived in Shanghai its value had risen to 35, at which price it
+was sold. At the time of my visit gold was 25.5 to 27 in Yunnan, and 35
+in Shanghai, and I have since learnt that, while gold has become cheaper
+in the province, it has become dearer at the seaport.</p>
+
+<p>The gold is brought to the buyer in the form of jewellery of really
+exquisite workmanship, of rings and bracelets, earrings and head
+ornaments, of those tiny images worn by rich children in a half circlet
+over the forehead, and bridal charms that would make covetous the heart
+of a nun. Ornaments of gold such as these are 98 per cent. fine and are
+sold, weighed on the same scales, for so many times their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> weight in
+silver. They are sold not because of the poverty of their owners, but
+because their owners make a very large profit on their original cost by
+so disposing of them. If, however, the purchaser prefer it, gold will be
+brought him in the leaf 99 per cent. fine, and this is undoubtedly the
+best form into which to convert your silver. The gold beaters of Yunnan
+are a recognised class, and are so numerous that they have a powerful
+guild or trade's union of their own.</p>
+
+<p>Gold-testing is also a recognised profession, but the methods are
+primitive and require the skill of an expert, consisting, as they do, of
+a comparison of the rubbing on a stone of the unknown gold, with a
+similar rubbing of gold whose standard has been accurately determined.
+One of the best gold-testers in the city has been taught electric
+gilding by Mr. Jensen and does some skilful work.</p>
+
+<p>The principle of self-protection restrains the Chinaman from the
+ostentatious exhibition of his wealth&mdash;he fears being squeezed by the
+officials who are apt to regard wealth as an aggravation of crime, to be
+the more severely punished the better able is the accused to purchase
+exemption from punishment. I have seen a stranger come into the room
+where Mr. Jensen and I were sitting, who from his appearance seemed to
+be worth perhaps a five-dollar bill, and after a preliminary interchange
+of compliments, I have seen his hand disappear up his long sleeve and
+produce a package of gold leaf worth perhaps 2000 taels of silver. This
+he would offer for sale; there was some quiet bargaining; when, should
+they agree, the gold was weighed, the purchaser handed a cheque on his
+Chinese banker for the amount in silver, and the transaction was
+finished as quickly and neatly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> as if it had taken place in Bond Street,
+and not in the most inland capital of an "uncivilised country"; whose
+civilisation has nevertheless kept it intact and mighty since the dawn
+of history, and whose banking methods are the same now as they were in
+the days of Solomon.</p>
+
+<p>The silver of Yunnan is of the same standard as the silver of Shanghai,
+namely 98 per cent. pure, and differs to the eye from the absolutely
+unalloyed silver of Szechuen.</p>
+
+<p>The cash of Yunnan vary in a way that is more than usually bewildering.
+Let me explain, in a few sentences, the "cash" currency of the Middle
+Kingdom. The current coin of China as everyone knows is the brass cash,
+which is perforated so that it may be carried on a string. Now,
+theoretically, a "string of cash" contains 100 coins, and in the Eastern
+provinces ten strings are the theoretical equivalent of one Mexican
+dollar. But there are eighteen provinces in China, and the number of
+brass cash passing for a string varies in each province from the full
+100, which I have never seen, to 83 in Taiyuen, and down to 33 in the
+Eastern part of the province of Chihli. In Peking I found the system
+charmingly simple. One thousand cash are there represented by 100 coins,
+whereas 1000 "old cash" consist of 1000 coins, though 1000 "capital
+cash" are only 500 coins. The big cash are marked as 10 capital cash,
+but count the same as 5 old cash. Nowhere does a Chinaman mean 1000 cash
+when he speaks of 1000 cash. In Tientsin 1000 cash means 500 cash&mdash;that
+is to say 5 times 100 cash, the 100 there being any number you can pass
+except 100, though by agreement the 100 is usually estimated at 98. In
+Nanking I found a different system to prevail. There cash are 1075 the
+1000, but of the 10 strings of 100 cash, 7 contain only 98 cash each,
+and 3 only 95, yet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> the surplus 75 cash&mdash;that is to say the number which
+for the time being is the Nanking equivalent of 75&mdash;are added all the
+same. At Lanchow in Chihli on the Imperial Chinese Railway near
+Shanhai-kwan, 16 old cash count as 100 cash, yet 33 are required to make
+up 200; in Tientsin from which point the railway starts, 1000 cash are
+really 500 cash and 98 count there as 100. Now 2000 Chihli cash are
+represented by 325 coins, and 1000 by 162 coins, and 6000 by 975 coins,
+which again count as 1000 large cash and equal on an average one Mexican
+dollar. Therefore to convert Lanchow cash into Tientsin cash you must
+divide the Lanchow cash by 3, count 975 as 1000, and consider this equal
+to a certain percentage of a theoretical amount of silver known as a
+tael, which is always varying of itself as well as by the fluctuations
+in the market value of silver, and which is not alike in any two places,
+and may widely vary in different portions of the same place.</p>
+
+<p>Could anything be simpler? And yet there are those who say that the
+system of money exchange in China is both cumbrous and exasperating.
+Take as a further instance the cash in Yunnan. Everyone knows that
+theoretically there are 2000 cash in the tael, each tael containing 20
+"strings," and each "string" 100 cash, but in Yunnan 2000 cash are not
+2000 cash&mdash;they are only 1880 cash. This does not mean that 1880 cash
+are represented by 1880 coins, not at all; because 62 cash in Yunnan are
+counted as 100. Eighteen hundred and eighty cash are therefore
+represented by only 1240 cash coins and all prices must be paid in this
+proportion. Immediately outside the city, however, a string of cash is a
+"full string" and contains 100 cash or rather it contains as few cash as
+possibly can be passed for 100, a fair average number being 98.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Silver is weighed in the City banks and at the wholesale houses on the
+"capital scale," but in the retail stores on scales that are heavier by
+14 per cent. (one mace and 4 candareens in the tael). Outside the city
+on the road to Tali there is a loss on exchange varying according to
+your astuteness from 3 to 6 per cent. on the capital scale.</p>
+
+<p>There are two chief banks in Yunnan city. Wong's whose bank, the
+signboard tells us, is "Beneficent, Rich, United," and Mong's "Bank of
+the Hundred Streams," which is said to be still richer.</p>
+
+<p>With Mr. Jensen I called one evening upon Wong, and found him with his
+sons and chief dependents at the evening meal. All rose as we entered
+and pressed us to take a seat with them, and when we would not, the
+father and grown-up son showed us into the guest-room and seated us on
+the opium-dais under the canopy. The opium-lamps were already lit; on a
+beautiful tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl there were pipes for
+visitors, and phials of prepared opium. Here we insisted on their
+leaving us and returning to their supper; they finished speedily and
+returned to their visitors. We were given good tea and afterwards a
+single cigar was handed to each of us. In offering you a cigar it is not
+the Chinese custom to offer you your choice from the cigar box; the
+courtesy is too costly, for there are few Chinamen in these
+circumstances who could refrain from helping themselves to a handful.
+"When one is eating one's own" says the Chinese proverb, "one does not
+eat to repletion; when one is eating another's, one eats till the tears
+run."</p>
+
+<p>Wong is one of the leading citizens of Yunnan, and is held in high
+honour by his townsmen. His house is a handsome Chinese mansion; it has
+a dignified entrance and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> garden court is richly filled with plants
+in porcelain vases. It may thus be said of him, as of the Confucian
+Superior Man, "riches adorn his house and virtue his person, his heart
+is expanded, and his body is at ease."</p>
+
+<p>A Szechuen man, a native of Chungking, fifty-nine years of age, Wong is
+a man of immense wealth, his bank being known all over China, and having
+branches in capital cities so far distant from each other as Peking,
+Canton, Kweiyang, Shanghai, Hankow, Nanchang, Soochow, Hangchow, and
+Chungking. I may add that he has smoked opium for many years.</p>
+
+<p>I formed a high opinion of the intelligence of Wong. He questioned me
+like an insurance doctor as to my family history, and professed himself
+charmed with the amazing richness in sons of my most honourable family.
+He had heard of my native country, which he called <i>Hsin Chin Shan</i>, the
+"New Gold Mountain," to distinguish it from the <i>Lao Chin Shan</i>, the
+"Old Gold Mountain," as the Chinese term California. I was the more
+pleased to find that Wong had some knowledge of Australia and its gold,
+because a few months before I had been pained by an incident bearing on
+this very subject, which occurred to me in the highly civilised city of
+Manila, in the Philippine Islands. On an afternoon in August, 1893, I
+stood in the Augustine Church, in Old Manila, to witness the funeral
+service of the Padre Provincial of the Augustines. It was the first
+occasion for one hundred and twenty-three years that the Provincial of
+the Order had died while in the actual exercise of his office, and it
+was known that the ceremony would be one of the most imposing ever seen
+in the Islands. The fine old church, built by the son of the architect
+of the Escorial&mdash;the only building in Manila left standing by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> the
+earthquake of 1645&mdash;was crowded with mourners, and almost every
+notability of the province was said to be present. During the service
+two young Spaniards, students from the University close by, pushed their
+way in beside me. Wishing to learn who were the more distinguished of
+the mourners, I asked the students to kindly point out to me the
+Governor-General (Blanco), and other prominent officials, and they did
+so with agreeable courtesy. When the service was finished I thanked them
+for the trouble they had taken and was coming away, when one of them
+stopped me.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, Caballero," he said, "but will you do me the favour to tell
+me where you come from?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am from Australia."</p>
+
+<p>"From Austria! so then you come from Austria?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, from Australia."</p>
+
+<p>"But 'Australia'&mdash;where is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a rich colony of England of immense importance."</p>
+
+<p>"But where is it?" he persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Dios mio!</i>" I exclaimed aghast, "it is in China."</p>
+
+<p>But his friend interposed. "The gentleman is talking in fun," he said.
+"Thou knowest, Pepe, where is Australia, where is Seednay, and
+Melboornay, where all the banks have broken one after the other in a
+bankruptcy colossal."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ya me figuraba donde era</i>," Pepe replied, as I edged uncomfortably
+away.</p>
+
+<p>During my journey across China it was not often that I was called upon
+to make use of my profession. But I was pleased to be of some service to
+this rich banker. He wished to consult me professionally, because he had
+heard from the truthful lips of rumour of the wonderful powers of
+divination given to the foreign medical man. What was his probable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>
+tenure of life? That was the problem. I gravely examined two of his
+pulses&mdash;every properly organised Chinaman has four hundred&mdash;and finding
+his heart where it should be in the centre of his body, with the other
+organs ranged round it like the satellites round the sun&mdash;every Chinaman
+is thus constructed&mdash;I was glad to be able to assure him that he will
+certainly live forty years longer&mdash;if Heaven permit him.</p>
+
+<p>Wong has a grown-up son of twenty who will succeed to the bank; he is at
+present the managing proprietor of a small general store purchased for
+him by his father. The son has been taught photography by Mr. Jensen,
+and has an excellent camera obtained from Paris. He is quite an
+enthusiast. In his shop a crowd is always gathered round the counter
+looking at the work of this Chinese amateur. There are a variety of
+stores for sale on the shelves, and I was interested to notice the
+cheerful promiscuity with which bottles of cyanide of potassium and
+perchloride of mercury were scattered among bottles of carbonate of
+soda, of alum, of Mo&euml;t and Chandon (spurious), of pickles, and Howard's
+quinine. The first time that cyanide of potassium is sold for alum, or
+corrosive sublimate for bicarbonate of soda there will be an <i>&eacute;clat</i>
+given to the dealings of this shop which will be very gratifying to its
+owner.</p>
+
+<p>The telegraph in Yunnan is very largely used by the Chinese, especially
+by the bankers and officials. By telegraph you can remit, as I have
+said, through the Chinese banks, telegraphic transfers to the value of
+thousands of taels in single transactions. It is principally the banks
+and the Government who make use of the telegraph, and their
+communications are sent by private code. When the Tsungli Yamen in
+Peking sends a telegram to the Viceroy in Yunnan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> it is in code that the
+message comes; and it is by private code also that a Chinese bank in
+Shanghai telegraphs to its far inland agents. Messages are sent in China
+by the Morse system. The method of telegraphing Chinese characters,
+whose discovery enabled the Chinese to make use of the telegraph, was
+the ingenious invention of a forgotten genius in the Imperial Maritime
+Customs of China. The method is simplicity itself. The telegraph code
+consists of ten thousand numbers of four numerals each, and each group
+so constituted represents a Chinese character. Any operator, however
+ignorant of Chinese, can thus telegraph or receive a message in Chinese.
+He receives, for instance, a message containing a series of numbers such
+as 0018, 0297, 5396, 8424. He has before him a series of ten thousand
+wood blocks on which the number is cut at one end and the corresponding
+Chinese character at the other, he takes out the number, touches the
+inkpad with the other end, and stamps opposite each group its Chinese
+character. The system permits, moreover, of the easy arrangement of
+indecipherable private codes, because by adding or subtracting a certain
+number from each group of figures, other characters than those
+telegraphed can be indicated.</p>
+
+<p>I need hardly add that the system of wood blocks is not in practical
+use, for the numbers and their characters are now printed in code-books.
+And here we have an instance of the marvellous faculty of memorising
+characteristic of the Chinese. A Chinaman's memory is something
+prodigious. From time immemorial the memory of the Chinese has been
+developed above all the other faculties. Memory is the secret of success
+in China, not originality. Among a people taught to associate innovation
+with impiety, and with whom precedent determines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> all action, it is
+inevitable that the faculty of recollection should be the most highly
+developed of all the mental faculties. Necessity compels the Chinaman to
+have a good memory. No race has ever been known where the power of
+memory has been developed even in rare individual cases to the degree
+that is common to all classes of the Chinese, especially to the
+literati.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese telegraph clerk quickly learns all the essential portion of
+the code-book by heart. The book then lies in the drawer a superfluity.
+It is claimed for Chiang, the second Chinese clerk in Yunnan, that he
+knows all the 10,000 numbers and their corresponding characters.</p>
+
+<p>Telegrams from Yunnan to Shanghai cost twenty-two tael cents (at the
+present value of the tael this is equal to sixpence) for each Chinese
+character; but each word in any other language is charged double, that
+is, forty-four cents.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img018" id="img018"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/018.jpg"><img src="images/018_th.jpg" width="400" height="233" alt="SOLDIERS ON THE WALL OF YUNNAN CITY." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Soldiers on the Wall of Yunnan City.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>From Yunnan to Talifu is a distance of 307 miles. The native banker in
+the capital will remit for you by wire to his agent in Tali the sum of
+1000 taels, for a charge of eight taels, exclusive of the cost of the
+telegram, and, as the value of silver in Tali is one per cent. higher
+than it is in Yunnan, the traveller can send his money by wire with
+perfect safety, and lose nothing in the remittance, not even the cost of
+the telegram.</p>
+
+<p>The telegraph offices are separated from the city wall by a small
+common, which is quite level, and which the Chinaman of the future will
+convert into a bowling green and lawn-tennis ground. There is a handsome
+entrance. The large portal is painted with horrific gods armed with
+monstrous weapons. The Chinese still seem to adhere to the belief that
+the deadliness of a weapon must be in proportion to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> savageness of
+its aspect. Inside, there are spacious courts and well-furnished guest
+rooms, roomy apartments, and offices for the mandarin, as well as
+comfortable quarters for Mr. Jensen and his body of Chinese clerks and
+operators. There is a pretty garden all bright and sunny, with a pond of
+gold fish and ornamental parapet. Wandering freely in the enclosure are
+peacocks and native companions, while a constant play-mate of the
+children is a little laughing monkey of a kind that is found in the
+woods beyond Tali. At night a watchman passes round the courts every two
+hours, striking a dismal gong under the windows, and waking the
+foreigner from his slumbers; but the noise he makes does not disturb the
+sleep of the Chinese&mdash;indeed, it is open to question if there is any
+discord known which, as mere noise, <i>could</i> disturb a Chinaman.</p>
+
+<p>The walls that flank the entrance are covered with official posters
+giving the names of the men of Yunnan City who contributed to the relief
+of the sufferers by a recent famine in Shansi, together with the amounts
+of their contributions and the rewards to which their gifts entitled
+them. The Chinese are firm believers in the doctrine of justification by
+works, and on these posters one could read the exact return made in this
+world for an act of merit, apart, of course, from the reward that will
+be reaped in Heaven. In a case like this it is usually arranged that for
+"gifts amounting to a certain percentage of the sums ordinarily
+authorised, subscribers may obtain brevet titles, posthumous titles,
+decorations, buttons up to the second class, the grade of licentiate,
+and brevet rank up to the rank of Colonel. Disgraced officials may apply
+to have their rank restored. Nominal donations of clothes, if the money
+value of the articles be presented instead, will entitle the givers to
+similar honours."&mdash;<i>The Peking Gazette</i>, August 22, 1892.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the centre of the green stands the hollow pillar in which Chinese
+printed waste-paper is reverently burnt. "When letters were invented,"
+the Chinese say, "Heaven rejoiced and Hell trembled." "Reverence the
+characters," is an injunction of Confucius which no Chinaman neglects to
+follow. He remembers that "he who uses lettered paper to kindle the fire
+has ten demerits, and will have itchy sores"; he remembers that "he who
+tosses lettered paper into dirty water, or burns it in a filthy place,
+has twenty demerits and will frequently have sore eyes or become blind,"
+whereas "he who goes about and collects, washes, and burns lettered
+paper, has 5000 merits, adds twelve years to his life, will become
+honoured and wealthy, and his children and grandchildren will be
+virtuous and filial." But his reverence has strict limits, and while he
+reverences the piece of paper upon which a moral precept is written, he
+often thinks himself absolved from reverencing the moral precept itself,
+just as a deacon in England need not necessarily be one who never
+over-reached his neighbours or swindled his creditors.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The French Mission and the Arsenal in Yunnan City.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>The most prominent structure within the city walls is the Heavenly Lord
+Hall (<i>Tien-chu-tang</i>), the pile of buildings which form the
+headquarters of the French Mission in the province of Yunnan. It was a
+master-stroke to secure possession of so important a site. The palace is
+on a higher level even than the yamen of the Viceroy, and must intercept
+much of the good fortune that would otherwise flow into the city. The
+fa&ccedil;ade of the central hall has been ornamented with a superb cross of
+porcelain mosaic, which is a conspicuous object from the city wall. A
+large garden, where the eucalyptus has been wisely planted, surrounds
+the buildings. In residence in the Heavenly Hall are the venerable
+Vicaire Apostolique of the province, Monseigneur Fenouil, the
+Provicaire, and four missionary priests, all four of whom are from
+Alsace. In the province altogether there are twenty-two French priests
+and eight ordained Chinese priests&mdash;thirty in all; their converts number
+15,000. Monseigneur Fenouil is a landmark of Western China; he first set
+foot in the province in 1847, and is the oldest foreign resident in the
+interior of China. No Chinaman speaks purer Chinese than he; he thinks
+in Chinese. Present in the province throughout the Mohammedan
+insurrection, he was an eye-witness of the horrors of religious warfare.
+Few men have had their path in life marked by more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> thrilling episodes.
+He was elected Bishop, in 1880, by the unanimous vote of all the priests
+in the province, a vote confirmed by Rome; which is, I am told, the mode
+of election by which Catholic Missionary Bishops in China are always
+chosen.</p>
+
+<p>The grand old Bishop seemed much amused at my journey. "I suppose you
+are riding a mule," he said, "for you English have large bones, and the
+Chinese ponies are very small." I said that I had come so far most of
+the way on foot. "You speak Chinese, of course?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hardly at all; I speak only a dozen words of Chinese."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you have a Chinese interpreter? No! An English companion who can
+speak Chinese? No! A Chinese servant who can speak English? No, and no
+escort! But without doubt you are armed? No! No escort, no revolver, no
+companion, and you can live on Chinese food. Ah! you have a brave heart,
+Monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>At the time of my visit to Yunnan, P&egrave;re de Gorostarza, the accomplished
+Provicaire, was absent at Mungtze deciding a question of discipline.
+Four months before one of the most trusted converts of the mission had
+been sent to Mungtze to purchase a property for the use of the mission.
+He was given the purchase-money of 400 taels, but, when he arrived in
+Mungtze, and the eye of the mission was no longer upon him, he invested
+the money, not in premises for the mission, but in a coolie-hong for
+himself. His backsliding had availed him little. And he was now
+defending his conduct as best he could before the Bishop's deputy.</p>
+
+<p>Converts of the French mission in China, it is well to remember, are no
+longer French subjects or <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;s</i>; the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> objection is no longer
+tenable that the mission shields bad characters who only become
+converted in order to escape from the consequences of their guilt.</p>
+
+<p>How wonderful has been the pioneer work done by the Jesuit Missionaries
+in China! It may almost be said that the foundation of all that we know
+about China we owe to the Jesuit Missionaries. All maps on China are
+founded upon the maps of the Jesuit Missionaries employed for the
+purpose by the Emperor Kanghi (1663-1723), "the greatest prince who ever
+graced the throne of China." Their accuracy has been the wonder of all
+geographers for a century past. "Now that the 'Great River' (the
+Yangtse) has been surveyed," says Captain Blakiston, "for nearly 1600
+miles from the ocean, and with instruments and appliances such as were
+unknown in the days of those energetic and persevering men, no small
+praise is due to the first Christian explorers for the extraordinary
+correctness of their maps and records." The reports of the early Jesuit
+Missionaries even Voltaire describes as the "productions of the most
+intelligent travellers that have extended and embellished the fields of
+science and philosophy."</p>
+
+<p>Yet we, as Protestants, are warned by a great missionary that we must
+not be deluded by these insidious compliments; we must not forget that
+the work of the Jesuits in China "overtops all other forms of
+superstition and error in danger, and stands forth an organised
+conspiracy against the liberties of mankind. The schemes of the Jesuits
+must be checked."</p>
+
+<p>One Sunday morning Mr. Jensen and I rode round the city wall. This is
+one of the most massive walls in a country of walled cities. It is built
+of brick and stone over a body of earth thirty feet thick; it is of
+imposing height, and wide<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> enough for a carriage drive. When I was
+mounted on my mule the upper edge of the parapet was on a level with my
+forehead. There are six city gates. The great north gate is closely
+barred all through the rains to prevent the entrance of the "Flood God,"
+who, fortunately, his intelligence being limited, knows no other way to
+enter the city than by this gate. The great turreted south gate is the
+most important of all, as it is in all Chinese cities. Near this gate
+the Viceroy's Yamen is situated, and the Yamen of the Futai (Governor of
+the Province); both buildings, of course, looking to the south, as did
+the Temple of Solomon and the tombs of the Mings, and as Chinese custom
+requires that every building of importance shall do, whether temple or
+yamen, private residence or royal palace. But why should they look
+south? Because from the south the sun comes, bringing with it "genial
+and animating influence," and putting new life into plant and animal
+after the winter.</p>
+
+<p>The south gate is a double gate in a semi-circular bastion. Beyond it is
+a splendid triumphal arch erected by a grateful community to the memory
+of the late viceroy. A thickly-populated suburb extends from here to the
+wide common, where stands the lofty guardian pagoda of the city, 250
+feet high, a conspicuous sight from every part of the great Yunnan
+plain. Rich temples are all around it, their eaves hung with sweet-toned
+bells, which tinkle with every breath of wind, giving forth what the
+Chinese poetically describe as "the tribute of praise from inanimate
+nature to the greatness of Buddha."</p>
+
+<p><a name="img019" id="img019"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 262px;">
+<a href="images/019.jpg"><img src="images/019_th.jpg" width="262" height="400" alt="THE PAGODA OF YUNNAN CITY, 250 FEET HIGH." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Pagoda of Yunnan City, 250 feet high.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the early morning the traveller is awakened by the steam whistle of
+the arsenal, a strange sound to be heard in so far inland a city in
+China. The factory is under Chinese<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> management, a fact patent to any
+visitor. Its two foremen were trained partly in the arsenal in Nanking
+under Dr. Macartney (now Sir Halliday Macartney), and partly in the
+splendid Shanghai arsenal under Mr. Cornish. I went to the arsenal, and
+was received as usual in the opium-room. There was nothing to conceal,
+and I was freely shown everything. The arsenal turns out Krupp guns of
+7-1/2 centimetres calibre, but the iron is inferior, and the workmen are
+in need of better training. Cartridges are also made here. And in one
+room I saw two men finishing with much neatness a pure silver opium-tray
+intended for the Fantai (provincial treasurer), but why made in the
+arsenal only a Chinaman could tell you. Work in the furnace is done at a
+disadvantage owing to the shortness of the furnace chimney, which is
+only 25 feet high. All attempts to increase its height are now forbidden
+by the authorities. There was agitation in the city when the chimney was
+being heightened. Geomancers were consulted, who saw the feeling of the
+majority, and therefore gave it as their unprejudiced opinion that, if
+the chimney were not stunted, the <i>fungshui</i> (good luck) of the Futai's
+yamen (provincial governor), and of that portion of the city under its
+protection, would depart for ever. All the machinery of the arsenal is
+stamped with the name of Greenwood, Battley and Co., Leeds. Rust and
+dirt are everywhere, and the 100 workmen for whom pay is drawn never
+number on the rare pay days more than sixty persons, a phenomenon
+observed in most establishments in China worked by government. Yet with
+a foreigner in charge excellent work could be turned out from the
+factory. The buildings are spacious, the grounds are ample.</p>
+
+<p>The powder factory is outside the city, near the north-eastern angle of
+the wall, but the powder magazine is on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> some rising ground inside the
+city. No guns are stationed anywhere on the walls, though they may be in
+concealment in the turrets; but near the small west gate I saw some
+small cannon of ancient casting, built on the model of the guns cast by
+the Jesuit missionaries in China two centuries ago, if they were not the
+actual originals. They were all marked in relief with a cross and the
+device I.H.S.&mdash;a motto that you would think none but a Chinaman could
+select for a weapon designed to destroy men, yet characteristic of this
+country of contradictions. "The Chinese statesman," says Wingrove Cooke,
+the famous <i>Times</i> correspondent, "cuts off 10,000 heads, and cites a
+passage from Mencius about the sanctity of human life. He pockets the
+money given him to repair an embankment and thus inundates a province,
+and he deplores the land lost to the cultivator of the soil."</p>
+
+<p>Du Halde tells us that "the first Chinese cannon were cast under the
+directions of P&egrave;re Verbiest in 1682, who blest the cannon, and gave to
+each the name of a saint." "A female saint!" says Huc.</p>
+
+<p>Near the arsenal and drill ground there is a large intramural swamp or
+reedy lake, the reeds of which have an economic value as wicks for
+Chinese candles. Dykes cross the swamp in various directions, and in the
+centre there is a well known Taoist Temple, a richly endowed edifice,
+with superior gods and censers of great beauty. Where the swamp deepens
+into a pond at the margin of the temple, a pretty pavilion has been
+built, which is a favourite resort of the Yunnan gentry. The most <i>chic</i>
+dinner parties in the province are given here. The pond itself swarms
+with sacred fish; they are so numerous that when the masses move the
+whole pond vibrates. Many merits are gained by feeding the fish, and,
+as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> it happened at the time of my visit that I had no money, I was
+constrained to borrow fifteen cash from my chair coolies, with which I
+purchased some of the artificial food that women were vending and threw
+it to the fish, so that I might add another thousand to the innumerable
+merits I have already hoarded in Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Upon a pretty wooded hill near the centre of the city is the Confucian
+Temple, and on the lower slope of the hill, in an admirable position,
+are the quarters of the China Inland Mission, conducted by Mr. and Mrs.
+X., assisted by Mr. Graham, who at the time of my visit was absent in
+Tali, and by two exceedingly nice young girls, one of whom comes from
+Melbourne. The single ladies live in quarters of their own on the edge
+of a swamp, and suffer inevitably from malarial fever. Mr. X. "finds the
+people very hard to reach," he told me, and his success has only been
+relatively cheering. After labouring here nearly six years&mdash;the mission
+was first opened in 1882&mdash;he has no male converts, though there are two
+promising nibblers, who are waiting for the first vacancy to become
+adherents. There <i>was</i> a convert, baptised before Mr. X. came here, a
+poor manure-coolie, who was employed by the mission as an evangelist in
+a small way; but "Satan tempted him, he fell from grace, and had to be
+expelled for stealing the children's buttons." It was a sad trial to the
+mission. The men refuse to be saved, recalcitrant sinners! but the women
+happily are more tractable. Mr. X. has up to date (May, 1894), baptised
+his children's nurse girl, the "native helper" of the single ladies, and
+his wife's cook. Mr. X. works hard, far too hard. He is of the type that
+never can be successful in China. He was converted when nearing middle
+age, is narrow and uncompromising in his views,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> and is as stern as a
+Cameronian. It is a farce sending such men to China. At his services
+there is never any lack of listeners, who marvel greatly at the new
+method of speaking Chinese which this enterprising emissary&mdash;in London
+he was in the oil trade&mdash;is endeavouring to introduce into the province.
+Of "tones" instead of the five used by the Chinese, he does not
+recognise more than two, and these he uses indifferently. He hopes,
+however, to be understood by loud speaking, and he bellows at the placid
+coolies like a bull of Bashan.</p>
+
+<p>I paid an early visit to my countrymen at the <i>Yesu-tang</i> (Jesus Hall),
+the mission home, as I thought that my medical knowledge might be of
+some service. I wished to learn a little about their work, but to my
+great sorrow I was no sooner seated than they began plying me with
+questions about the welfare of my soul. I am a "poor lost sinner," they
+told me. They flung texts at my head, and then sang a terrifying ballad,
+by which I learnt for the first time the awful fate that is to be mine.
+It is something too dreadful to contemplate. And the cheerful equanimity
+with which they announced it to me! I left the <i>Yesu-tang</i> in a cold
+sweat, and never returned there.</p>
+
+<p>Missionary work is being pursued in the province with increasing vigour.
+Among its population of from five to seven millions, spread over an area
+of 107,969 square miles, there are eighteen Protestant missionaries,
+nine men and nine ladies (this is the number at present, but the usual
+strength is twenty-three). Stations are open at Chaotong (1887),
+Tongchuan (1891), Yunnan City (1882), Tali (1881), and Kuhtsing (1889).
+The converts number&mdash;the work, however, must not be judged by
+statistics&mdash;two at Chaotong, one at Tongchuan, three at Yunnan City,
+three at Tali, and two at Kuhtsing.</p>
+
+<p>That the Chinese are capable of very rapid conversion can<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> be proved by
+numberless instances quoted in missionary reports on China. The Rev. S.
+F. Woodin (in the <i>Records</i> of the Missionary Conference, 1877, p. 91)
+states that he converted a "grossly immoral Chinaman, who had smoked
+opium for more than twenty years," simply by saying to him "in a spirit
+of earnest love, elder brother Six, as far as I can see, you must
+perish; you are Hell's child."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Stanley P. Smith, B.A., who was formerly stroke of the Cambridge
+eight, had been only seven months in China when he performed that
+wonderful conversion, so applauded at the Missionary Conference of 1888,
+of "a young Chinaman, a learned man, a B.A. of his University," who
+heard Mr. Smith speak in the Chinese that can be acquired in seven
+months, and "accepted Him there and then." (<i>Records</i> of the Missionary
+Conference, 1888, i., 46). Indeed, the earlier the new missionaries in
+China begin to preach the more rapid are the conversions they make.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in this province of Yunnan, conversions will have to be infinitely
+more rapid before we can say that there is any reasonable hope of the
+proximate conversion of the province. The problem is this: In a
+population of from five to seven millions of friendly and peaceable
+people, eighteen missionaries in eight years (the average time during
+which the mission stations have been opened), have converted eleven
+Chinese; how long, then, will it take to convert the remainder?</p>
+
+<p>"I believe," said a late member of the House of Commons, who was once
+Lord Mayor of London, speaking at the anniversary meeting of the China
+Inland Mission in 1884, "I believe God intends to accomplish great
+things in China," and, undoubtedly, the opinion of an ex-Lord Mayor on
+such a subject is entitled to great weight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The Gospel," he said, "is making rapid progress in China.... We are
+amazed at the great things God hath wrought" (in the conversion of the
+Chinese).</p>
+
+<p>Let us examine for a moment an instance of the rapid progress which
+excited the amazement of this good man. No missionary body in China is
+working with greater energy than the China Inland Mission. Their
+missionaries go far afield in their work, and they are, what their
+mission intends them to be, pioneer Protestant missionaries in Inland
+China. At the present time, the beginning of 1894, the Inland Mission
+numbers 611 male and female missionaries. They are assisted by 261 paid
+native helpers, and the combined body of 872 Evangelists baptised during
+the year just passed (1893) 821 Chinese. These figures, taken from
+<i>China's Millions</i>, 1894, p. 122, attest a rather lower rate of progress
+than the other missions can boast of; but a considerable part of the
+inland work, it must be remembered, is the most difficult work of
+all&mdash;the preaching of the Gospel for the first time in newly-opened
+districts.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img020" id="img020"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 262px;">
+<a href="images/020.jpg"><img src="images/020_th.jpg" width="262" height="400" alt="THE VICEROY OF THE TWO PROVINCES OF YUNNAN AND KWEICHOW." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Viceroy of the Two Provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Viceroy of the two provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow, Wong-wen-shao,
+is one of the most enlightened rulers in China. No stranger could fail
+to be impressed with his keen intellectual face and courtly grace of
+manner. His career has been a distinguished one. Good fortune attended
+him even at his birth. He is a native of Hangchow, in Chehkiang, a city
+famous in China for its coffins. Every Chinaman will tell you that true
+felicity consists in three things: to be born in Peking (under the
+shadow of the Son of Heaven); to live in Soochow (where the girls are
+prettiest); and to die in Hangchow (where the coffins are grandest).
+Twelve years ago he was Governor of the province of Hunan. Called then
+to Peking as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> one of the Ministers of State of the "Tsungli Yamen," or
+Foreign Office, he remained there four years, his retirement being then
+due to the inexorable law which requires an official to resign office
+and go into mourning for three years on the death of one of his parents.
+In this case it was his mother. (A Chinese mother suckles her child two
+and a half years, and, as the age of the child is dated from a time
+anterior by some months to birth, the child is three years old before it
+leaves its mother's breast. Three years, therefore, has been defined as
+the proper period for mourning.) At the termination of the three years,
+Wong was reappointed Governor of Hunan, and a year and a half later, in
+May, 1890, he was appointed to his present important satrapy, where he
+has the supreme control of a district larger than Spain and Portugal,
+and with a population larger than that of Canada and Australia combined.
+In May, 1893, he made application to the throne to be allowed to return
+to his ancestral home to die, but the privilege was refused him.</p>
+
+<p>Before leaving Yunnan city the Mandarin Li kindly provided me with a
+letter of introduction to his friend Brigadier-General Chang-chen Nien,
+in Tengyueh. Since it contained a communication between persons of rank,
+the envelope was about the size of an ordinary pillow-slip. The General
+was presumably of higher rank than the traveller; I had, therefore, in
+accordance with Chinese etiquette, to provide myself with a suitable
+visiting card of a size appropriate to his importance. Now Chinese
+visiting cards differ from ours in differing in size according to the
+importance of the person to whom they are to be presented. My ordinary
+card is eight inches by three, red in colour&mdash;the colour of
+happiness&mdash;and inscribed in black with the three characters of my
+Chinese name.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> But the card that I was expected to present to the General
+was very much larger than this. Folded it was of the same size, but
+unfolded it was ten times the size of the other (eight by thirty
+inches), and the last page, politely inscribed in Chinese, contained
+this humiliating indication of its purport: "Your addlepated nephew
+Mo-li-son bows his stupid head, and pays his humble respects to your
+exalted Excellency."</p>
+
+<p><a name="img021" id="img021"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 375px;">
+<a href="images/021.jpg"><img src="images/021_th.jpg" width="375" height="400" alt="" title="" /></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>I still have this card in my possession; and I should be extremely
+reluctant to present it to any official in the Empire of lower rank than
+the Emperor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The Journey from Yunnan City to Talifu.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>I sold the mule in Yunnan City, and bought instead a little white pony
+at a cost, including saddle, bridle, and bells, of <i>&pound;</i>3 6<i>s.</i> In doing
+this I reversed the exchange that would have been made by a Chinaman. A
+mule is a more aristocratic animal than a pony; it thrives better on a
+journey, and is more sure-footed. If a pony, the Chinese tell you, lets
+slip one foot, the other three follow; whereas a mule, if three feet
+slip from under him, will hold on with the fourth.</p>
+
+<p>My men, who had come with me from Chaotong, were paid off in Yunnan; but
+it was pleasant to find all three accept an offer to go on with me to
+Talifu. Coolies to do this journey are usually supplied by the coolie
+agents for the wage of two <i>chien</i> a day each (7<i>d.</i>), each man to carry
+seventy catties (93lbs.), find himself by the way, and spend thirteen
+days on the journey. But no coolies, owing to the increase in the price
+of food, were now willing to go for so little. Accordingly I offered my
+two coolies three taels each (9<i>s.</i>), instead of the hong price of 7<i>s.</i>
+9<i>d.</i>, and loads of fifty catties instead of seventy catties. I offered
+to refund them 100 cash each (2-1/2<i>d.</i>) a day for every day that they
+had been delayed in Yunnan, and, in addition, I promised them a reward
+of five mace each (1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>) if they would take me to Tali in nine
+days, instead<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> of thirteen, the first evening not to count. To Laohwan,
+who had no load to carry, but had to attend to me and the pony and pay
+away the cash, I made a similar offer. These terms, involving me in an
+outlay of 36<i>s.</i> for hiring three men to go with me on foot 915 li, and
+return empty-handed, were considered liberal, and were agreed to at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon, then, of the 19th April saw us again <i>en route</i>, bound to
+the west to Talifu, the most famous city in western China, the
+headquarters of the Mohammedan "Sultan" during the great rebellion of
+1857-1873.</p>
+
+<p>By the courtesy of the Mandarin Li, two men were detailed to "sung"
+me&mdash;to accompany me, that is&mdash;and take the responsibility for my safe
+delivery at the next hsien. One was a "wen," a chairen, or yamen runner;
+the other was a "wu," a soldier, with a sightless right eye, who was
+dressed in the ragged vestiges of a uniform that reflected both the
+poverty of his environment and, inversely, the richness of his
+commanding officer. For in China the officer enriches himself by the
+twofold expedient of drawing pay for soldiers who have no existence,
+except in his statement of claim, and by diverting the pay of his
+soldiers who do exist from their pockets into his own.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img022" id="img022"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 242px;">
+<a href="images/022.jpg"><img src="images/022_th.jpg" width="242" height="400" alt="THE GIANT OF YUNNAN." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Giant of Yunnan.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>As I was leaving, a colossal Chinaman, sent by the Fantai to speed the
+foreign gentleman on his way, strode into the court. He was dressed in
+military jacket and official hat and foxtails. He was the Yunnan giant,
+Chang Yan Miun, a kindly-featured monster, whom it is a pity to see
+buried in China when he might be holding <i>lev&eacute;es</i> of thousands in a
+Western side-show. For the information of those in search of novelties,
+I may say that the giant is thirty years of age, a native of Tongchuan,
+born of parents of ordinary stature; he is 7ft. 1in.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> in his bare feet,
+and weighs, when in condition, 27st. 6lb. With that ingenious
+arrangement for increasing height known to all showmen, this giant might
+be worth investing in as a possible successor to his unrivalled
+namesake. There is surely money in it. Chang's present earnings are
+rather less than 7<i>s.</i> a month, without board and lodging; he is
+unmarried, and has no incumbrance; and he is slightly taller and much
+more massively built than a well-known American giant whom I once had
+permission to measure, who has been shown half over the world as the
+"tallest man on earth," his height being attested as "7ft. 11in. in his
+stockings' soles," and who commands the salary of an English admiral.</p>
+
+<p>We made only a short march the first evening, but after that we
+travelled by long stages. The country was very pretty, open glades with
+clumps of pine, and here and there a magnificent sacred tree like the
+banyan, under whose far-reaching branches small villages are often half
+concealed. Despite the fertility of the country, poverty and starvation
+met us at every step; the poor were lingering miserably through the
+year. Goitre, too, was increasing in frequency. It was rarely that a
+group gathered to see us some of whose members were not suffering from
+this horrible deformity. And everywhere in the pretty country were signs
+of the ruthless devastation of religious war. That was a war of
+extermination. "A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed
+every house, destroyed every temple."</p>
+
+<p>Crumbling walls are at long distances from the towns they used to guard;
+there are pastures and waste lands where there were streets of
+buildings; walls of houses have returned whence they came to the mother
+earth; others are roofless.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> In the open country, far from habitation,
+the traveller comes across groups of bare walls with foundations still
+uncovered, and dismantled arches, and broken images in the long grass,
+that were formerly yamens and temples in the midst of thriving
+communities. Yet there are signs of a renaissance; many new houses are
+being built along the main road; walls are being repaired, and bridges
+reconstructed. When an exodus takes place from Szechuen to this
+province, there is little reason why Yunnan should not become one of the
+richest provinces in China. It has every advantage of climate, great
+fertility of soil, and immense mineral resources hardly yet developed.
+It needs population. It needs the population that dwelt in the province
+before the rebellion involved the death of millions. It can absorb an
+immense proportion of the surplus population of China. During, and
+subsequent to, the Taiping rebellion the province of Szechuen increased
+by 45,000,000 in forty years (1842-82); given the necessity, there seems
+no reason why the population of Yunnan should not increase in an almost
+equal proportion.</p>
+
+<p>On the 22nd we passed Lu-feng-hsien, another ruined town. The finest
+stone bridge I have seen in Western China, and one that would arrest
+attention in any country in the world, is at this town. It crosses the
+wide bed of a stream that in winter is insignificant, but which grows in
+volume in the rains of summer to a broad and powerful river. It is a
+bridge of seven beautiful arches; it is 12 yards broad and 150 yards
+long, of perfect simplicity and symmetry, with massive piers, all built
+of dressed masonry and destined to survive the lapse of centuries.
+Triumphal archways with memorial tablets and pedestals of carved lions
+are befitting portals to a really noble work.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On the 23rd we reached the important city of Chuhsing-fu, a walled city,
+still half-in-ruins, that was long occupied by the Mohammedans, and
+suffered terrible reprisals on its recapture by the Imperialists. For
+four days we had travelled at an average rate of one hundred and five li
+(thirty-five miles) a day. I must, however, note that these distances as
+estimated by Mr. Jensen, the constructor of the telegraph line, do not
+agree with the distances in Mr. Baber's itinerary. The Chinese distances
+in li agree in both estimates; but, whereas Mr. Jensen allows three li
+for a mile, Mr. Baber allows four and a-half, a wide difference indeed.
+For convenience sake I have made use of the telegraph figures, but Mr.
+Baber was so scrupulously accurate in all that he wrote that I have no
+doubt the telegraph distances are over-estimated.</p>
+
+<p>We were again in a district almost exclusively devoted to the poppy; the
+valley-plains sparkled with poppy flowers of a multiplicity of tints.
+The days were pleasant, and the sun shone brightly; every plant was in
+flower; doves cooed in the trees, and the bushes in blossom were bright
+with butterflies. Lanes led between hedges of wild roses white with
+flower, and, wherever a creek trickled across the plain, its
+willow-lined borders were blue with forget-me-nots. And everywhere a
+peaceful people, who never spoke a word to the foreigner that was not
+friendly.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of the 24th, at a ruined town thirty li from Luho, we
+received our first check. It was at a walled town, with gateways and a
+pagoda that gave some indication of its former prosperity, prettily
+situated among the trees on the confines of a plain of remarkable
+fertility. Near sundown we passed down the one long street, all battered
+and dismantled, which is all that is left of the old town. News of the
+foreigner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> quickly spread, and the people gathered into the street to
+see me&mdash;no reception could be more flattering. We did not wait, but,
+pushing on, we passed out by the west gate and hastened on across the
+plain. But I noticed that Laohwan kept looking back at the impoverished
+town, shaking his head and stuttering "<i>pu-pu-pu-pu-hao! pu-pu-pu-hao!</i>"
+(bad! bad!) We had thus gone half a mile or so, when we were arrested by
+cries behind us, and our last chairen was seen running, panting, after
+us. We waited for him; he was absurdly excited, and could hardly speak.
+He made an address to me, speaking with great energy and gesticulation;
+but what was its purport, <i>Dios sabe</i>. When he had finished, not to be
+outdone in politeness, I thanked him in English for the kindly phrases
+in which he had spoken to me, assured him of my continued sympathy, and
+undertook to say that, if ever he came to Geelong, he would find there a
+house at his disposition, and a friend who would be ever ready to do him
+a service. He seemed completely mystified, and began to speak again,
+more excitedly than before. It was getting late, and a crowd was
+collecting, so I checked him by waving my left hand before my face and
+bawling at him with all my voice: "<i>Putung</i>, you stupid ass, <i>putung</i> (I
+don't understand)! Can't you see I don't understand a word you say, you
+benighted heathen you? <i>Putung</i>, man, <i>putung</i>! Advance Australia, <i>dzo</i>
+(go)!" And, swinging open my umbrella, I walked on. His excitement
+increased&mdash;we must go back to the town; he seized me by the wrists, and
+urged me to go back. We had a slight discussion; his feet gave from
+under him and he fell down, and I was going on cheerfully when he burst
+out crying. This I interpreted to mean that he would get into trouble if
+I did not return, so, of course, I turned back at once, for the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> tears
+of a Chinaman are sadly affecting. Back, then, we were taken to an
+excellent inn in the main street, where a respectful <i>lev&eacute;e</i> of the
+townsfolk had assembled to welcome me. A polite official called upon me,
+to whom I showed, with simulated indignation, my official card and my
+Chinese passport, and I hinted to him in English that this interference
+with my rights as a traveller from England, protected by the favour of
+the Emperor, would&mdash;let him mark my word&mdash;be made an international
+question. While saying this, I inadvertently left on my box, so that all
+might see it, the letter of introduction to the Brigadier-General in
+Tengyueh, which was calculated to give the natives an indication of the
+class of Chinese who had the privilege to be admitted to my friendship.
+The official was very polite and apologetic. I freely forgave him, and
+we had tea together.</p>
+
+<p>He had done it all for the best. A moneyed foreigner was passing through
+his town near sundown without stopping to spend a single cash there. Was
+it not his duty, as a public-spirited man, to interfere and avert this
+loss, and compel the stranger to spend at least one night within his
+gates?</p>
+
+<p>This was what I wrote at the time. I subsequently found that I had been
+sent for to come back because the road was believed to be dangerous,
+there was no secure resting-place, and the authorities could not
+guarantee my safety. Imagine a Chinese in a Western country acting with
+the bluster that I did, although in good humour; I wonder whether he
+would be treated with the courtesy that those Chinamen showed to me!</p>
+
+<p>On the 25th an elderly chairen was ready to accompany us in the morning,
+and he remained with us all day. All day he was engrossed in deep
+thought. He spoke to no one, but he kept a watchful eye over his charge,
+never leaving me a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> moment, but dogging my very footsteps all the
+hundred li we travelled together. Poorly clad, he was better provided
+than his brother of yesterday in that he wore sandals, whereas the
+chairen of yesterday was in rags and barefoot. He was, of course,
+unprovided with weapon of any kind&mdash;it was moral force that he relied
+on. Over his shoulder was slung a bag from which projected his
+opium-pipe; a tobacco pipe and tobacco box hung at his girdle; a green
+glass bottle of crude opium he carried round his neck.</p>
+
+<p>The chairen is the policeman of China, the lictor of the magistrate, the
+satellite of the official; the soldier is the representative of military
+authority. Now, China, in the person of her greatest statesman, Li Hung
+Chang, has, through the secretary of the Anti-Opium Society, called upon
+England "to aid her in the efforts she is now making to suppress opium."
+If, then, China is sincere in her alleged efforts to abolish opium, it
+is the chairen and the soldier who must be employed by the authorities
+to suppress the evil; yet I have never been accompanied by either a
+chairen or a soldier who did not smoke opium, nor have I to my knowledge
+ever met a chairen or a soldier who was not an opium-smoker. Through all
+districts of Yunnan, wherever the soil permits it, the poppy is grown
+for miles, as far as the sight can reach, on every available acre, on
+both sides of the road.</p>
+
+<p>But why does China grow this poppy? Have not the <i>literati</i> and elders
+of Canton written to support the schemes of the Anti-Opium Society in
+these thrilling words: "If Englishmen wish to know the sentiments of
+China, here they are:&mdash;If we are told to let things go on as they are
+going, then there is no remedy and no salvation for China. Oh! it makes
+the blood run cold, and we want in this our extremity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> to ask the
+question of High Heaven, what unknown crimes or atrocity have the
+Chinese people committed beyond all others that they are doomed to
+suffer thus?" (Cited by Mr. S. S. Mander, <i>China's Millions</i>, iv., 156.)</p>
+
+<p>And the women of Canton, have they not written to the missionaries "that
+there is no tear that they shed that is not red with blood because of
+this opium?" ("China," by M. Reed, p. 63). Why, then, does China, while
+she protests against the importation of a drug which a Governor of
+Canton, himself an opium-smoker, described as a "vile excrementitious
+substance" ("Barrow's Travels," p. 153), sanction, if not foster, with
+all the weight of the authorities in the ever-extending opium-districts
+the growth of the poppy? To the Rev. G. Piercy (formerly of the W.M.S.,
+Canton), we are indebted for the following explanation of this anomaly:
+China, it appears, is growing opium in order to put a stop to
+opium-smoking.</p>
+
+<p>"Moreover, China has not done with the evils of opium, even if our hands
+were washed of this traffic to-day. China in her desperation has invoked
+Satan to cast out Satan. She now grows her own opium, vainly dreaming
+that, if the Indian supply lapse, she can then deal with this rapidly
+growing evil. But Satan is not divided against himself; he means his
+kingdom to stand. Opium-growing will not destroy opium-smoking."
+(Missionary Conference of 1888, <i>Records</i>, ii., 546.)</p>
+
+<p>"Yet the awful guilt remains," said the Ven. Archdeacon Farrar on a
+recent occasion in Westminster Abbey, "that we, 'wherever winds blow and
+waters roll,' have girdled the world with a zone of drunkenness, until I
+seem to shudder as I think of the curses, not loud but deep, muttered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+against our name by races which our fire-water has decimated and our
+vice degraded." (<i>National Righteousness</i>, December 1892, p. 4.)</p>
+
+<p>And this patriotic utterance of a distinguished Englishman the Chinese
+will quote in unexpected support of the memorial "On the Restriction of
+Christianity" addressed to the Throne of China in 1884 by the High
+Commissioner P&ecirc;ng Y&uuml;-lin, which memorial stated in severe language that
+"<i>since the treaties have permitted foreigners from the West to spread
+their doctrines, the morals of the people have been greatly injured</i>."
+("The Causes of the Anti-Foreign Disturbances in China." Rev. Gilbert
+Reid, M.A., p. 9.)</p>
+
+<p>Forty li from our sleeping place we came to the pretty town of
+Shachiaokai, on some undulating high ground well sheltered with trees.
+Justice had lately been here with her headsman and brought death to a
+gang of malefactors. Their heads, swinging in wooden cages, hung from
+the tower near the gateway. They could be seen by all persons passing
+along the road, and, with due consideration for the feelings of the
+bereaved relatives, they were hung near enough for the features to be
+recognised by their friends. Each head was in a cage of its own, and was
+suspended by the pigtail to the rim, so that it might not lie upside
+down but could by-and-by rattle in its box as dead men's bones should
+do. To each cage a white ticket was attached giving the name of the
+criminal and his confession of the offence for which he was executed.
+They were the heads of highway robbers who had murdered two travellers
+on the road near Chennan-chow, and it was this circumstance which
+accounted for the solicitude of the officials near Luho to prevent our
+being benighted in a district where such things were possible.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img023" id="img023"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/023.jpg"><img src="images/023_th.jpg" width="400" height="242" alt="THE &quot;EAGLE NEST BARRIER&quot; ON THE ROAD BETWEEN YUNNAN AND
+TALIFU." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The &quot;Eagle Nest Barrier,&quot; on the Road between Yunnan and
+Talifu.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Midway between Shachiaokai and Pup&ecirc;ng there was steep climbing to be
+done till we reached Ying-wu-kwan, the "Eagle Nest Barrier," which is
+more than 8000 feet above the sea. Then by very hilly and poor country
+we came to Pup&ecirc;ng, and, pursuing our way over a thickly-peopled plateau,
+we reached a break in the high land from which we descended into a wide
+and deep valley, skirted with villages and gleaming with sheets of
+water&mdash;the submerged rice-fields. At the foot of the steep was a poor
+mud town, but, standing back from it in the fields, was a splendid
+Taoist temple fit for a capital. In this village we were delayed for
+nearly an hour while my three men bargained against half the village for
+the possession of a hen that was all unconscious of the comments,
+flattering and deprecatory, that were being passed on its fatness. It
+was secured eventually for 260 cash, the vendors having declared that
+the hen was a family pet, hatched on a lucky day, that it had been
+carefully and tenderly reared, and that nothing in the world could
+induce them to part with it for a cash less than 350. My men with equal
+confidence, based upon long experience in the purchase of poultry,
+asserted that the real value of the hen was 200 cash, and that not a
+single cash more of the foreign gentleman's money could they
+conscientiously invest in such a travesty of a hen as <i>that</i>. But little
+by little each party gave way till they were able to <i>tomber d'accord</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A pleasant walk across the busy plain brought us to Yunnan Yeh, where we
+passed the night.</p>
+
+<p>On the 27th we had an unsatisfactory day's journey. We travelled only
+seventy li over an even road, yet with four good hours of daylight
+before us my men elected to stop when we came to the village of
+Yenwanshan. We had left the main<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> road for some unknown reason, and were
+taking a short cut over the mountains to Tali. But a short-cut in China
+often means the longest distance, and I was sure that this short-cut
+would bring us to Tali a day later than if we had gone by the main
+road&mdash;in ten days, that is, from Yunnan, instead of the nine which my
+men had promised me. Laohwan, who, like most Chinaman I met, persisted
+in thinking that I was deaf, yelled to me in the presence of the village
+that the next stopping place was twenty miles distant, that "<i>mitte
+liao! mitte liao!</i>" ("there were no beans") on the way for the pony, and
+that assuredly we would reach Tali to-morrow, having given the pony the
+admirable rest that here offered. As he stammered these sentences the
+people supported what he said. Obviously their statements were <i>ex
+parte</i>, and were promoted solely by the desire to see the distinguished
+foreign mandarin sojourn for one night in their hungry midst. So here I
+was detained in a tumble-down inn that had formerly been a temple. All
+of us, men and master, were housed in the old guest-room. Beds were
+formed of disused coffin boards, laid between steps made of clods of dry
+clay; the floor was earth, the windows paper. The pony was feeding from
+a trough in the temple hall itself, an armful of excellent grass before
+it, while a bucket of beans was soaking for him in our corner. Other
+mules and ponies were stationed in the side pavilions where formerly
+were displayed the scenes of torture in the Buddhist Hells.</p>
+
+<p>As I wrote at a table by the window, a crowd collected, stretching
+across the street and quarrelling to catch a glimpse of the foreign
+teacher and his strange method of writing, so different from the
+Chinese. Poor sickly people were these&mdash;of the ten in the first row
+three were suffering from goitre,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> one from strabismus, and two from
+ophthalmia. All were poorly clad and poorly nourished; all were very
+dirty, and their heads were unshaven of the growth of days. But, despite
+their poverty, nearly all the women, the children as well as the
+grandmothers, wore silver earrings of pretty filigree.</p>
+
+<p>Now, even among these poor people, I noticed that there was a
+disposition rather to laugh at me than to open the eyes of wonder; and
+this is a peculiarity of the Chinese which every traveller will be
+struck with. It often grieved me. During my journey, although I was
+treated with undeniable friendliness, I found that the Chinese, instead
+of being impressed by my appearance, would furtively giggle when they
+saw me. But they were never openly rude like the coloured folk were in
+Jamaica, when, stranded in their beautiful island, I did them the honour
+to go as a "walk-foot buccra" round the sugar plantations from Ewarton
+to Montego Bay. Even poor ragged fellows, living in utter misery, would
+laugh and snigger at me when not observed, and crack jokes at the
+foreigner who was well-fed, well-clad, and well-mounted in a way you
+would think to excite envy rather than derision. But Chinese laughter
+seems to be moved by different springs from ours. The Chinaman makes
+merry in the presence of death. A Chinaman, come to announce to you the
+death of a beloved parent or brother, laughs heartily as he tells
+you&mdash;you might think he was overflowing with joy, but he is really sick
+and sore at heart, and is only laughing to deceive the spirits. So it
+may be that the poor beggars who laughed at that noble presence which
+has been the admiration of my friends in four continents, were moved to
+do so by the hope to deceive the evil spirits who had punished them with
+poverty, and so by their apparent gaiety induce them to relax the
+severity of their punishment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To within two or three miles of this village the road was singularly
+level; I do not think that it either rose or fell 100 feet in twenty
+miles. Forty li from where we slept the night before, having previously
+left the main road, we came to the large walled town of Yunnan-hsien.
+The streets were crowded, for it was market day, and both sides of the
+main thoroughfares, especially in the vicinity of the Confucian Temple,
+were thronged with peasant women selling garden produce, turnips, beans
+and peas, and live fish caught in the lake beyond Tali. Articles of
+Western trade were also for sale&mdash;stacks of calico, braid, and thread,
+"new impermeable matches made in Trieste," and "toilet soap of the
+finest quality." I had a royal reception as I rode through the crowd,
+and the street where was situated the inn to which we went for lunch
+speedily became impassable. There was keen competition to see me. Two
+thieves were among the foremost, with huge iron crowbars chained to
+their necks and ankles, while a third prisoner, with his head pilloried
+in a <i>cangue</i>, obstructed the gaze of many. There was the most admirable
+courtesy shown me; it was the "foreign teacher" they wished to see, not
+the "foreign devil." When I rose from the table, half a dozen guests
+sitting at the other tables rose also and bowed to me as I passed out.
+Of all people I have ever met, the Chinese are, I think, the politest.
+My illiterate Laohwan, who could neither read nor write, had a courtesy
+of demeanour, a well-bred ease of manner, a graceful deference that
+never approached servility, which it was a constant pleasure to me to
+witness.</p>
+
+<p>As regards the educated classes, there can be little doubt, I think,
+that there are no people in the world so scrupulously polite as the
+Chinese. Their smallest actions on all occasions of ceremony are
+governed by the most minute rules. Let me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> give, as an example, the
+method of cross-examination to which the stranger is subjected, and
+which is a familiar instance of true politeness in China.</p>
+
+<p>When a well-bred Chinaman, of whatever station, meets you for the first
+time, he thus addresses you, first asking you how old you are:</p>
+
+<p>"What is your honourable age?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have been dragged up a fool so many years," you politely reply.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your noble and exalted occupation?"</p>
+
+<p>"My mean and contemptible calling is that of a doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"What is your noble patronymic?"</p>
+
+<p>"My poverty-struck family name is M&ocirc;."</p>
+
+<p>"How many honourable and distinguished sons have you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Alas! Fate has been niggardly; I have not even one little bug."</p>
+
+<p>But, if you can truthfully say that you are the honourable father of
+sons, your interlocutor will raise his clasped hands and say gravely,
+"Sir, you are a man of virtue; I congratulate you." He continues&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"How many tens of thousands of pieces of silver have you?" meaning how
+many daughters have you?</p>
+
+<p>"My yatows" (forked heads or slave children), "my daughters," you answer
+with a deprecatory shrug, "number so many."</p>
+
+<p>So the conversation continues, and the more minute are the inquiries the
+more polite is the questioner.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike most of the Western nations, the Chinese have an overmastering
+desire to have children. More than death itself the Chinaman fears to
+die without leaving male progeny to worship at his shrine; for, if he
+should die childless, he leaves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> behind him no provision for his support
+in heaven, but wanders there a hungry ghost, forlorn and forsaken&mdash;an
+"orphan" because he has no children. "If one has plenty of money," says
+the Chinese proverb, "but no children, he cannot be reckoned rich; if
+one has children, but no money, he cannot be considered poor." To have
+sons is a foremost virtue in China; "the greatest of the three unfilial
+things," says Mencius, "is to have no children." (Mencius, iv., pt. i.,
+26).</p>
+
+<p>In China longevity is the highest of the five grades of felicity.
+Triumphal arches are erected all over the kingdom in honour of those who
+have attained the patriarchal age which among us seems only to be
+assured to those who partake in sufficient quantity of certain
+fruit-salts and pills. Age when not known is guessed by the length of
+the beard, which is never allowed to grow till the thirty-second year.
+Now it happens that I am clean-shaven, and, as it is a well-known fact
+that the face of the European is an enigma to the Oriental, just as the
+face of the Chinaman is an inscrutable mystery to most of us, I have
+often been amused by the varying estimates of my age advanced by curious
+bystanders. It has been estimated as low as twelve&mdash;"look at the
+foreigner," they said, "there's a fine fat boy!"&mdash;and never higher than
+twenty-two. But it is not only in China that a youthful appearance has
+hampered me in my walk through life.</p>
+
+<p>I remember that on one occasion, some years ago, I obliged a medical
+friend by taking his practice while he went away for a few days to be
+married. It was in a semi-barbarian village named Portree, in a
+forgotten remnant of Scotland called the Isle of Skye. The time was
+winter. The first case I was called to was that of a bashful matron, the
+baker's wife, who had lately given birth to her tenth child. I entered
+the room<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> cheerfully. She looked me over critically, and then greatly
+disconcerted me by remarking that: "She was gey thankfu' to the Lord
+that it was a' by afore I cam', as she had nae wush to be meddled wi' by
+a laddie of nineteen." Yet I was two years older than the doctor who had
+attended her.</p>
+
+<p>If in China you are so fortunate as to be graced with a beard, the
+Chinaman will add many years to your true age. In the agreeable company
+of one of the finest men in China, I once made a journey to the Nankow
+Pass in the Great Wall, north of Peking. My friend had a beard like a
+Welsh bard's, and, though a younger man than his years, forty-four,
+there was not a native who saw him, who did not gaze upon him with awe,
+as a possible Buddha, and not one who attributed to him an age less than
+eighty.</p>
+
+<p>Next day, the 28th of April, despite my misgivings, my men fulfilled
+their promise, and led me into Tali on the ninth day out from Yunnan. We
+had come 307 miles in nine days. They walked all the way, living
+frugally on scanty rations. I walked only 210 miles; I was better fed
+than they, and I had a pony at my hand ready to carry me whenever I was
+tired.</p>
+
+<p>My men thus earned a reward of eighteen pence each for doing thirteen
+stages in nine days. Long before daylight we were on our way. For miles
+and miles in the early morning we were climbing up the mountains, till
+we reached a plateau where the wind blew piercingly keen, and my fingers
+ached with the cold, and the rarefaction in the atmosphere made
+breathing uneasy. The road was lonely and unfrequented. We were
+accompanied by a muleteer who knew the way, by his sturdy son of twelve,
+and his two pack horses. By midday we had left the bare plateau, had
+passed the three<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> pagoda peaks, and were standing on the brow of a steep
+hill overlooking the valleys of Chaochow and Tali. The plains were
+studded with thriving villages, in rich fields, and intersected with
+roadways lined with hedges. There on the left was the walled city of
+Chaochow, beyond, to the right, was the great lake of Tali, hemmed in by
+mountains, those beyond the lake thickly covered with snow, and rising
+7000 feet above the lake, which itself is 7000 feet above the sea.</p>
+
+<p>We descended into the valley, and, as we picked our way down the steep
+path, I could count in the lap of the first valley eighteen villages
+besides the walled city. Crossing the fields we struck the main road,
+and mingled with the stream of people who were bending their steps
+towards Hsiakwan. Many varieties of feature were among them, a diversity
+of type unlooked for by the traveller in China who had become habituated
+to the uniformity of type of the Chinese face. There were faces plainly
+European, others as unmistakably Hindoo, Indigenes of Yunnan province,
+Thibetans, Cantonese pedlars, and Szechuen coolies. A broad flagged road
+brought us to the important market town of Hsiakwan, which guards the
+southern pass to the Valley of Tali. It is on the main road going west
+to the frontier of Burma, and is the junction where the road turns north
+to Tali. It is a busy town. It is one of the most famous halting places
+on the main road to Burma. The two largest caravanserais in Western
+China are in Hsiakwan, and I do not exaggerate when I say that a
+regiment of British cavalry could be quartered in either of them. At a
+restaurant near the cross-road we had rice and a cup of tea, and a bowl
+of the vermicelli soup known as <i>mien</i>, the muleteer and his son sitting
+down with my men. When the time came to go, the muleteer, unrolling a
+string of cash<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> from his waistband, was about to pay his share, when
+Laohwan with much civility refused to permit him. He insisted, but
+Laohwan was firm; had they been Frenchmen, they could not have been more
+polite and complimentary. The muleteer gave way with good grace, and
+Laohwan paid with my cash, and gained merit by his courtesy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The City of Tali&mdash;Prisons&mdash;Poisoning&mdash;Plagues and Missions.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>Three hours later we were in Tali. A broad paved road, smooth from the
+passage of countless feet, leads to the city. Rocky creeks drain the
+mountain range into the lake; they are spanned by numerous bridges of
+dressed stone, many of the slabs of which are well cut granite blocks
+eighteen feet in length. At a stall by the roadside excellent ices were
+for sale, genuine ices, made of concave tablets of pressed snow
+sweetened with treacle, costing one cash each&mdash;equal to one penny for
+three dozen. We passed the Temple to the Goddess of Mercy, and entered
+Tali by the south gate. Then by the yamen of the Titai and the Great
+Five Glory Gate, the northern entrance of what was for seventeen years
+the palace of the Mohammedan king during the rebellion, we turned down
+the East street to the <i>Yesu-tang</i>, the Inland Mission, where Mr. and
+Mrs. John Smith gave me a cordial greeting.</p>
+
+<p>Tali has always been an important city. It was the capital of an
+independent kingdom in the time of Kublai Khan and Marco Polo. It was
+the headquarters of the Mohammedan Sultan or Dictator, Tu Wen Hsiu,
+during the rebellion, and seemed at one time destined to become the
+capital of an independent Moslem Empire in Western China.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The city surrendered to the Mohammedans in 1857. It was recaptured by
+the Imperialists under General Yang Yu-ko on January 15th, 1873, the
+Chinese troops being aided by artillery cast by Frenchmen in the arsenal
+of Yunnan and manned by French gunners. At its recapture the carnage was
+appalling; the streets were ankle-deep in blood. Of 50,000 inhabitants
+30,000 were butchered. After the massacre twenty-four panniers of human
+ears were sent to Yunnan city to convince the people of the capital that
+they had nothing more to fear from the rebellion.</p>
+
+<p>In March, 1873, Yang was appointed <i>Titai</i> or Commander-in-chief of
+Yunnan Province, with his headquarters in Tali, not in the capital, and
+Tali has ever since been the seat of the most important military command
+in the province.</p>
+
+<p>The subsequent history of Yang may be told in a few words. He assumed
+despotic power over the country he had conquered, and grew in power till
+his authority became a menace to the Imperial Government. They feared
+that he aspired to found a kingdom of his own in Western China, and
+recalled him to Peking&mdash;to do him honour. He was not to be permitted to
+return to Yunnan. At the time of his recall another rebellion had broken
+out against China&mdash;the rebellion of the French&mdash;and, like another Uriah,
+the powerful general was sent to the forefront in Formosa, where he was
+opportunely slain by a French bullet, or by a misdirected Chinese one.</p>
+
+<p>After his death it was found that Yang had made a noble bequest to the
+City of Tali. During his residence he had built for himself a splendid
+yamen of granite and marble. This he had richly endowed and left as a
+free gift to the city<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> as a college for students. It is one of the
+finest residences in China, and, though only seventy undergraduates were
+living there at the time of my visit, the rooms could accommodate in
+comfort many hundreds.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img024" id="img024"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/024.jpg"><img src="images/024_th.jpg" width="400" height="295" alt="SNOW-CLAD MOUNTAINS BEHIND TALIFU." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Snow-clad Mountains behind Talifu.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Tali is situated on the undulating ground that shelves gently from the
+base of snow-clad mountains down to the lake. The lower slopes of the
+mountain, above the town, are covered with myriads of grave-mounds,
+which in the distance are scarcely distinguishable from the granite
+blocks around them. Creeks and rills of running water spring from the
+melting of the snows far up the mountain, run among the grave-mounds,
+and are then trained into the town. The Chinese residents thus enjoy the
+privilege of drinking a diluted solution of their ancestors. Half-way to
+the lake, there is a huge tumulus of earth and stone over-grown with
+grass, in which are buried the bones of 10,000 Mohammedans who fell
+during the massacre. There is no more fertile valley in the world than
+the valley of Tali. It is studded with villages. Between the two passes,
+Hsiakwan on the south, and Shang-kwan on the north, which are distant
+from each other a long day's walk, there are 360 villages, each in its
+own plantation of trees, with a pretty white temple in the centre with
+curved roof and upturned gables. The sunny reaches of the lake are busy
+with fleets of fishing boats. The poppy, grown in small pockets by the
+margin of the lake, is probably unequalled in the world; the flowers, as
+I walked through the fields, were on a level with my forehead.</p>
+
+<p>Tali is not a large city; its wall is only three and a half miles in
+circumference. Before the rebellion populous suburbs extended half-way
+to Hsiakwan, but they are now only heaps of rubble. In the town itself
+there are market-gardens<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> and large open spaces where formerly there
+were narrow streets of Chinese houses. The wall is in fairly good
+repair, but there are no guns in the town, except a few old-fashioned
+cannon lying half buried in the ground near the north gate.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon we climbed up the mountain intending to reach a famous
+cave, "The Ph[oe]nix-eyed Cave" (<i>Fung-yen-tung</i>) which overlooks a
+precipice, of some fame in years gone by as a favourite spot for
+suicides. We did not reach the cave. My energy gave out when we were
+only half-way, so we sat down in the grass and, to use a phrase that I
+fancy I have heard before, we feasted our eyes on the scene before us.
+And here we gathered many bunches of edelweiss.</p>
+
+<p>As we were coming back down the hill, picking our way among the graves,
+a pensive Chinaman stopped us to ask our assistance in finding him a
+lucky spot in which to bury his father, who died a year ago but was
+still above ground. He was sorry to hear that we could not pretend to
+any knowledge of such things. He was of an inquiring mind, for he then
+asked us if we had seen any precious stones in the hillside&mdash;every
+Chinaman knows that the foreigner with his blue eyes can see four feet
+underground&mdash;but he was again disappointed with our reply, or did not
+believe us.</p>
+
+<p>At the poor old shrine to the God of Riches, half a dozen Chinamen in
+need of the god's good offices were holding a small feast in his honour.
+They had prepared many dishes, and, having "dedicated to the god the
+spiritual essence, were now about to partake of the insipid remains."
+"<i>Ching fan</i>," they courteously said to us when we approached down the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>
+path. "We invite (you to take) rice." We raised our clasped hands:
+"<i>Ching, ching</i>," we replied, "we invite (you to go on), we invite," and
+passed on. They were bent upon enjoyment. They were taking as an
+<i>ap&eacute;ritif</i> a preliminary cup of that awful spirit <i>tsiu</i>, which is
+almost pure alcohol and can be burnt in lamps like methylated spirit.</p>
+
+<p>On the level sward, between this poor temple and the city, the annual
+Thibetan Fair is held on the 17th, 18th, and 19th of April, when
+caravans of Thibetans, with herds of ponies, make a pilgrimage from
+their mountain villages to the ancient home of their forefathers. But
+the fair is falling into disfavour owing to the increasing number of
+likin-barriers on the northern trade routes.</p>
+
+<p>There are many temples in Tali. The finest is the Confucian Temple, with
+its splendid halls and pavilions, in a beautiful garden. Kwanti, the God
+of War, has also a temple worthy of a god whose services to China in the
+past can never be forgotten. Every Chinaman knows, that if it had not
+been for the personal aid of this god, General Gordon could never have
+succeeded in suppressing the Taiping rebellion. In the present rebellion
+of the Japanese, the god appears to have maintained an attitude of
+strict neutrality.</p>
+
+<p>The City Temple is near the drill-ground. As the Temple of a Fu city it
+contains the images of both Fu magistrate and Hsien magistrate, with
+their attendants. In its precincts the <i>Kwan</i> of the beggars, (the
+beggar king or headman), is domiciled, who eats the Emperor's rice and
+is officially responsible for the good conduct of the guild of beggars.</p>
+
+<p>In the main street there is a Memorial Temple to General Yang, who won
+the city back from the Mohammedans. But the temple where prayer is
+offered most earnestly, is the small<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> temple near the <i>Yesu-tang</i>,
+erected to the goddess who has in her power the dispensation of the
+pleasures of maternity. Rarely did I pass here without seeing two or
+three childless wives on their knees, praying to the goddess to remove
+from them the sin of barrenness.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the largest caravanserais I have seen in China are in Tali. One
+of the largest belongs to the city, and is managed by the authorities
+for the benefit of the poor, all profits being devoted to a poor-relief
+fund. There are many storerooms here, filled with foreign goods and
+stores imported from Burma, and useful wares and ornamental nick-nacks
+brought from the West by Cantonese pedlars. Prices are curiously low. I
+bought condensed milk, "Milkmaid brand," for the equivalent of 7<i>d.</i> a
+tin. In the inn there is stabling accommodation for more than a hundred
+mules and horses, and there are rooms for as many drivers. The tariff
+cannot be called immoderate. The charges are: For a mule or horse per
+night, fodder included, one farthing; for a man per night, a supper of
+rice included, one penny.</p>
+
+<p>Even larger than the city inn is the caravanserai where my pony was
+stabled; it is more like a barracks than an inn. One afternoon the
+landlord invited the missionary and me into his guest-room, and as I was
+the chief guest, he insisted, of course, that I should occupy the seat
+of honour on the left hand. But I was modest and refused to; he
+persisted and I was reluctant; he pushed me forward and I held back,
+protesting against the honour he wished to show me. But he would take no
+refusal and pressed me forward into the seat. I showed becoming
+reluctance of course, but I would not have occupied any other. By-and-by
+he introduced to me with much pride his aged father, to whom, when he
+came into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> room, I insisted upon giving my seat, and humbly sat on
+an inferior seat by his side, showing him all the consideration due to
+his eighty years. The old man bore an extraordinary resemblance to
+Moltke. He had smoked opium, he told Mr. Smith, the missionary, for
+fifty years, but always in moderation. His daily allowance was two
+<i>chien</i> of raw opium, rather more than one-fifth of an ounce, but he
+knew many Chinese, he told the missionary, who smoked daily five times
+as much opium as he did without apparent injury.</p>
+
+<p>In Tali there are four chief officials: the Prefect or Fu Magistrate,
+the Hsien or City Magistrate, the Intendant or Taotai, and the Titai.
+The yamen of the Taotai is a humble residence for so important an
+official; but the yamen of the Titai, between the South Gate and the
+Five Glory Tower, is one of the finest in the province. The Titai is not
+only the chief military commander of the province of Yunnan, but he is a
+very much married man. An Imperialist, he has yet obeyed the Mohammedan
+injunction and taken to himself four wives in order to be sure of
+obtaining one good one. He has been abundantly blessed with children. In
+offices at the back of the Titai's yamen and within its walls, is the
+local branch of the Imperial Chinese telegraphs, conducted by two
+Chinese operators, who can read and write English a little, and can
+speak crudely a few sentences.</p>
+
+<p>The City Magistrate is an advanced opium-smoker, a slave to the pipe,
+who neglects his duties. In his yamen I saw the wooden cage in which
+prisoners convicted of certain serious crimes are slowly done to death
+by starvation and exhaustion, as well as the wooden cages of different
+shape in which criminals of another class condemned to death are carried
+to and from the capital.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The City prison is in the Hsien's yamen, but permission to enter was
+refused me, though the missionary has frequently been admitted. "The
+prison," explained the Chinese clerk, "is private, and strangers cannot
+be admitted." I was sorry not to be allowed to see the prison, all the
+more because I had heard from the missionary nothing but praise of the
+humanity and justice of its management.</p>
+
+<p>The gaols of China, or, as the Chinese term them, the "hells," just as
+the prison hulks in England forty years ago were known as "floating
+hells," have been universally condemned for the cruelties and
+deprivations practised in them. They are probably as bad as were the
+prisons of England in the early years of the present century.</p>
+
+<p>The gaolers purchase their appointments, as they did in England in the
+time of John Howard, and, as was the case in England, they receive no
+other pay than what they can squeeze from the prisoners or the
+prisoners' friends. Poor and friendless, the prisoners fare badly. But I
+question if the cruelties practised in the Chinese gaols, allowing for
+the blunted nerve sensibility of the Chinaman, are less endurable than
+the condition of things existing in English prisons so recently as when
+Charles Reade wrote "It is Never Too Late to Mend." The cruelties of
+Hawes, the "punishment jacket," the crank, the dark cell, and
+starvation, "the living tortured, the dying abandoned, the dead kicked
+out of the way"; when boys of fifteen, like Josephs, were driven to
+self-slaughter by cruelty. These are statements published in 1856,
+"every detail of which was verified, every fact obtained, by research
+and observation." ("Life of Charles Reade," ii., 33.)</p>
+
+<p>And it cannot admit, I think, of question that there are no cruelties
+practised in the Chinese gaols greater, even if there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> are any equal to
+the awful and degraded brutality with which the England of our fathers
+treated her convicts in the penal settlements of Norfolk Island, Fort
+Arthur, Macquarie Harbour, and the prison hulks of Williamstown. "The
+convict settlements were terrible cesspools of iniquity, so bad that it
+seemed, to use the words of one who knew them well, 'the heart of man
+who went to them was taken from him, and there was given to him the
+heart of a beast.'"</p>
+
+<p>Can the mind conceive of anything more dreadful in China than the
+incident narrated by the Chaplain of Norfolk Island, the Rev. W.
+Ullathorne, D.D., afterwards Roman Catholic Bishop of Birmingham, in his
+evidence before the Commission of the House of Commons in 1838: "As I
+mentioned the names of those men who were to die, they one after
+another, as their names were pronounced, dropped on their knees and
+thanked God that they were to be delivered from that horrible place,
+whilst the others remained standing mute, weeping. It was the most
+horrible scene I have ever witnessed."</p>
+
+<p>Those who have read Marcus Clarke's "For the Term of His Natural Life,"
+remember the powerfully-drawn character of Maurice Frere, the Governor
+of Norfolk Island. It is well known, of course, that the story is
+founded upon fact, and is a perfectly true picture of the convict days.
+The original of Maurice Frere is known to have been the late Colonel
+----, who was killed by the convicts in the prison hulk "Success," at
+Williamstown, in 1853. To this day there is no old lag that was ever
+exposed to his cruelty but reviles his memory. I once knew the convict
+who gave the signal for his murder. He was sentenced to death, but was
+reprieved and served a long term of imprisonment. The murder happened
+forty-one years ago, yet to this day the old convict commends the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+murder as a just act of retribution, and when he narrates the story he
+tells you with bitter passion that the "Colonel's dead, and, if there's
+a hell, he's frizzling there yet."</p>
+
+<p>Captain Foster Fyans, a former Governor of Norfolk Island Convict
+Settlement, spent the last years of his life in the town I belong to,
+Geelong, in Victoria. The cruelties imposed on the convicts under his
+charge were justified, he declared, by the brutalised character of the
+prisoners. On one occasion, he used to tell, a band of convicts
+attempted to escape from the Island; but their attempt was frustrated by
+the guard. The twelve convicts implicated in the outbreak were put on
+their trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death by strangulation, as
+hanging really was in those days. Word was sent to headquarters in
+Sydney, and instructions were asked for to carry the sentence into
+effect. The laconic order was sent back from Sydney to "hang half of
+them." The Captain acknowledged the humour of the despatch, though it
+placed him in a difficulty. Which half should he hang, when all were
+equally guilty? In his pleasant way the Captain used to tell how he
+acted in the dilemma. He went round to the twelve condemned wretches,
+and asked each man separately if, being under sentence of death, he
+desired a reprieve or wished for death. As luck would have it, of the
+twelve men, six pleaded for life and six as earnestly prayed that they
+might be sent to the scaffold. So the Captain hanged the six men who
+wished to live, and spared the six men who prayed for death to release
+them from their awful misery. This is an absolutely true story, which I
+have heard from men to whom the Captain himself told it. Besides, it
+bears on its face the impress of truth. And yet we are accustomed to
+speak of the Chinese as centuries behind us in civilisation and
+humanity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I went to two opium-poisoning cases in Tali, both being cases of
+attempted suicide. The first was that of an old man living not <i>at</i> the
+South Gate as the messenger assured us, who feared to discourage us if
+he told the truth, but more than a mile beyond it. On our way we bought
+in the street some sulphate of copper, and a large dose made the old man
+so sick that he said he would never take opium again, and, if he did, he
+would not send for the foreign gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>The other was that of a young bride, a girl of unusual personal
+attraction, only ten days married, who thus early had become weary of
+the pock-marked husband her parents had sold her to. She was dressed
+still in her bridal attire, which had not been removed since marriage;
+she was dressed in red&mdash;the colour of happiness. "She was dressed in her
+best, all ready for the journey," and was determined to die, because
+dead she could repay fourfold the injuries which she had received while
+living. In this case many neighbours were present, and, as all were
+anxious to prevent the liberation of the girl's evil spirit, I proved to
+them how skilful are the barbarian doctors. The bride was induced to
+drink hot water till it was, she declared, on a level with her neck,
+then I gave her a hypodermic injection of that wonderful emetic
+apomorphia. The effect was very gratifying to all but the patient.</p>
+
+<p>Small-pox, or, as the Chinese respectfully term it, "Heavenly Flowers,"
+is a terrible scourge in Western China. It is estimated that two
+thousand deaths&mdash;there is a charming vagueness about all Chinese
+figures&mdash;from this disease alone occur in the course of a year in the
+valley of Tali. Inoculation is practised, as it has been for many
+centuries, by the primitive method of introducing a dried pock-scab, on
+a lucky day,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> into one of the nostrils. The people have heard of the
+results of Western methods of inoculation, and immense benefit could be
+conferred upon a very large community by sending to the Inland Mission
+in Talifu a few hundred tubes of vaccine lymph. Vaccination introduced
+into Western China would be a means, the most effective that could be
+imagined, to check the death rate over that large area of country which
+was ravaged by the civil war, and whose reduced population is only a
+small percentage of the population which so fertile a country needs for
+its development. Infanticide is hardly known in that section of Yunnan
+of which Tali may be considered the capital. Small-pox kills the
+children. There is no need for a mother to sacrifice her superfluous
+children, for she has none.</p>
+
+<p>Another disease endemic in Yunnan is the bubonic plague, which is, no
+doubt, identical with the plague that has lately played havoc in Hong
+Kong and Canton. Cantonese peddlers returning to the coast probably
+carried the germs with them.</p>
+
+<p>The China Inland Mission in Tali was the last of the mission stations
+which I was to see on my journey. This is the furthest inland of the
+stations of the Inland Mission in China. It was opened in 1881 by Mr.
+George W. Clarke, the most widely-travelled, with the single exception
+of the late Dr. Cameron, of all the pioneer missionaries of this brave
+society; I think Mr. Clarke told me that he has been in fourteen out of
+the eighteen provinces. His work here was not encouraging; he was
+treated with kindness by the Chinese, but they refused to accept the
+truth when he placed it before them.</p>
+
+<p>"For the Bible and the Light of Truth," says Miss Guinness, in her
+charming but hysterical "Letters from the Far East"&mdash;a book that has
+deluded many poor girls to China&mdash;"For the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> Bible and the Light of Truth
+the Chinese cry with outstretched, empty, longing hands" (p. 173). But
+this allegation unhappily conflicts with facts when applied to Tali.</p>
+
+<p>For the first eleven years the mission laboured here without any success
+whatever; but now a happier time seems coming, and no less than three
+converts have been baptised in the last two years.</p>
+
+<p>There are now three missionaries in Tali&mdash;there are usually four; they
+are universally respected by the Chinese; they have made their little
+mission home one of the most charming in China. Mr. John Smith, who
+succeeded Mr. Clarke, has been ten years in Tali. He is welcomed
+everywhere, and in every case of serious sickness or opium-poisoning he
+is sent for. During all the time he has been in Tali he has never
+refused to attend a summons to the sick, whether by day or night. In the
+course of the year he attends, on an average, between fifty and sixty
+cases of attempted suicide by opium in the town or its environs, and, if
+called in time, he is rarely unsuccessful. Should he be called to a case
+outside the city wall and be detained after dark, the city gate will be
+kept open for him till he returns. The city magistrate has himself
+publicly praised the benevolence of this missionary, and said, "there is
+no man in Tali like Mr. Smith&mdash;would that there were others!" He is a
+Christian in word and deed, brave and simple, unaffected and
+sympathetic&mdash;the type of missionary needed in China&mdash;an honour to his
+mission. I saw the courageous man working here almost alone, far distant
+from all Western comforts, cut off from the world, and almost unknown,
+and I contrasted him with those other missionaries&mdash;the majority&mdash;who
+live in luxurious mission-houses in absolute safety in the treaty ports,
+yet whose courage and self-denial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> we have accustomed ourselves to
+praise in England and America, when with humble voices they parade the
+dangers they undergo and the hardships they endure in preaching, dear
+friends, to the "perishing heathen in China, God's lost ones!"</p>
+
+<p>In addition to the three converts who have been baptised in Tali in the
+last two years, there are two inquirers&mdash;one the mission cook&mdash;who are
+nearly ready for acceptance. At the Sunday service I met the three
+converts. One is the paid teacher in the mission school; another is a
+humble pedlar; the third is a courageous native belonging to one of the
+indigenous tribes of Western China, a Minchia man, whose conversion,
+judged by all tests, is one of those genuine cases which bring real joy
+to the missionary. He has only recently been baptised. Every Sunday he
+comes in fifteen li from the small patch of ground he tills to the
+mission services. His son is at the mission school, and is boarded on
+the premises. There is a small school in connection with the mission
+under the baptised teacher, where eight boys and eight girls are being
+taught. They are learning quickly, their wonderful gifts of memory being
+a chief factor in their progress. At the service there was another
+worshipper, a sturdy boy of fourteen, who slept composedly all through
+the exhortation. If any boy should feel gratitude towards the kind
+missionaries it is he. They have reared him from the most degraded
+poverty, have taught him to read and write, and are now on the eve of
+apprenticing him to a carpenter. He was a beggar boy, the son of a
+professional beggar, who, with unkempt hair and in rags and filth, used
+to shamble through the streets gathering reluctant alms. The father
+died, and some friends would have sold his son to pay the expenses of
+his burial; but the missionaries intervened and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> to save the son from
+slavery, buried his father. This action gave them some claim to help the
+boy, and the boy has accordingly been with them since in a comfortable,
+kindly home, instead of grovelling round the streets in squalor and
+nakedness.</p>
+
+<p>The mission-house, formerly occupied by Mr. George Clarke is near the
+City Temple. We went to see it a day or two after my arrival. It is now
+in the possession of a family of Mohammedans, one of the very few Moslem
+families still living in the valley of Tali. "When we were in possession
+of the valley," said the father sorrowfully, "we numbered '12,000 tens'
+(120,000 souls), now we are '100 fives' (500 souls). Our men were slain,
+our women were taken in prey, only a remnant escaped the destroyer."
+Several members of the family were in the court when we entered, and
+among the men were three with marked Anglo-Saxon features, a peculiarity
+frequently seen in Western China, where every traveller has given a
+different explanation of the phenomenon. One especially moved my
+curiosity, for he possessed to an absurd degree the closest likeness to
+myself. Could I give him any higher praise than that?</p>
+
+<p>That the Mohammedan Chinese is physically superior to his Buddhist
+countryman is acknowledged by all observers; there is a fearlessness and
+independence of bearing in the Mohammedan, a militant carriage that
+distinguishes him from the Chinese unbeliever. His religion is but a
+thinly diluted Mohammedanism, and excites the scorn of the true
+believers from India who witness his devotion, or rather his want of
+devotion.</p>
+
+<p>One of the men talking to us in the old mission-house was a
+comical-looking fellow, whose head-dress differed from that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> of the
+other Chinese, in that, in addition to his queue, lappets of hair were
+drawn down his cheeks in the fashion affected by old ladies in England.
+I raised these strange locks&mdash;impudent curiosity is often polite
+attention in China&mdash;whereupon the reason for them was apparent. The body
+bequeathed to him by his fathers had been mutilated&mdash;he had suffered the
+removal of both ears. He explained to us how he came to lose them, but
+we knew even before he told us; "he had lost them in battle facing the
+enemy"&mdash;and of course we believed him. The less credulous would
+associate the mutilation with a case of theft and its detection and
+punishment by the magistrate; but "a bottle-nosed man," says the Chinese
+proverb, "may be a teetotaller and yet no one will think so."</p>
+
+<p>Our milkman at the mission was a follower of the Prophet, and the milk
+he gave us was usually as reduced in quality as are his co-religionists
+in number. In the milk he supplied there was what a chemist describes as
+a remarkable absence of butter fat. Yet, when he was reproached for his
+deceit, he used piously to say, even when met coming from the well, "I
+could not put a drop of water in the milk, for there is a God up
+there"&mdash;and he would jerk his chin towards the sky&mdash;"who would see me if
+I did."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The Journey from Tali, with some Remarks on the Character of the
+Cantonese, Chinese Emigrants, Cretins, and Wife-beating in China.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>The three men who had come with me the six hundred and seventeen miles
+from Chaotong left me at Tali to return all that long way home on foot
+with their well-earned savings. I was sorry to say good-bye to them; but
+they had come many miles further than they intended, and their friends,
+they said, would be anxious: besides Laohwan, you remember, was newly
+married.</p>
+
+<p>I engaged three new men in their places. They were to take me right
+through to Singai (Bhamo). Every day was of importance now with four
+hundred and fifty miles to travel and the rainy season closing in.
+Laotseng was the name of the Chinaman whom I engaged in place of
+Laohwan. He was a fine young fellow, active as a deer, strong, and
+high-spirited. I agreed to pay him the fancy wage of 24<i>s.</i> for the
+journey. He was to carry no load, but undertook, in the event of either
+of my coolies falling sick, to carry his load until a new coolie could
+be engaged. The two coolies I engaged through a coolie-hong. One was a
+strongly-built man, a "chop dollar," good-humoured, but of rare
+ugliness. The other was the thinnest man I ever saw outside a Bowery
+dime-show. He had the opium habit. He was an opium-eater rather than an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+opium-smoker; and he ate the ash from the opium-pipe, instead of the
+opium itself&mdash;the most vicious of the methods of taking opium. He was
+the nearest approach I saw in China to the Exeter Hall type of
+opium-eater, whose "wasted limbs and palsied hands" cry out against the
+sin of the opium traffic. Though a victim of the injustice of England,
+this man had never tasted Indian opium in his life, and, perishing as he
+was in body and soul, going "straight to eternal damnation," his "dying
+wail unheard," he yet undertook a journey that would have deterred the
+majority of Englishmen, and agreed to carry, at forced speed, a far
+heavier load than the English soldier is ever weighted with on march.
+The two coolies were to be paid 4 taels each (12<i>s.</i>) for the twenty
+stages to Singai, and had to find their own board and lodging. But I
+also stipulated to give them <i>churo</i> money (pork money) of 100 cash each
+at three places&mdash;Yungchang, Tengyueh, and Bhamo&mdash;100 cash each a day
+extra for every day that I detained them on the way, and, in addition, I
+was to reward them with 150 cash each a day for every day that they
+saved on the twenty days' journey, days that I rested not to count.</p>
+
+<p>Of course none of the three men spoke a word of English. All were
+natives of the province of Szechuen, and all carried out their agreement
+to the letter.</p>
+
+<p>On May 3rd I left Tali. The last and longest stage of all the journey
+was before me, a distance of some hundreds of miles, which I had to
+traverse before I could hope to meet another countryman or foreigner
+with whom I could converse. The two missionaries, Mr. Smith and Mr.
+Graham, kindly offered to see me on my way, and we all started together
+for Hsiakwan, leaving the men to follow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ten li from Tali we stopped to have tea at one of the many tea-houses
+that are grouped round the famous temple to the Goddess of Mercy, the
+<i>Kwanyin-tang</i>. The scene was an animated one. The open space between
+the temple steps and the temple theatre opposite was thronged with
+Chinese of strange diversity of feature crying their wares from under
+the shelter of huge umbrellas. There is always a busy traffic to
+Hsiakwan, and every traveller rests here, if only for a few minutes. For
+this is the most famous temple in the valley of Tali. The Goddess of
+Mercy is the friend of travellers, and no thoughtful Chinese should
+venture on a journey without first asking the favour of the goddess and
+obtaining from her priests a forecast of his success. The temple is a
+fine specimen of Chinese architecture. It was built specially to record
+a miracle. In the chief court, surrounded by the temple buildings, there
+is a huge granite boulder lying in an ornamental pond. It is connected
+by marble approaches, and is surmounted by a handsome monument of
+marble, which is faced on all sides with memorial tablets. This boulder
+was carried to its present position by the goddess herself, the monument
+and bridges were built to detain it where it lay, and the temple
+afterwards erected to commemorate an event of such happy augury for the
+beautiful valley.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img025" id="img025"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/025.jpg"><img src="images/025_th.jpg" width="400" height="292" alt="MEMORIAL IN THE TEMPLE OF THE GODDESS OF MERCY, NEAR
+TALIFU." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Memorial in the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy, near
+Talifu.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>But the temple has not always witnessed only scenes of mercy. Two years
+ago a tragedy was enacted here of strange interest. At a religious
+festival held here in April, 1892, and attended by all the high
+officials and by a crowd of sightseers, a thief, taking advantage of the
+crush, tried to snatch a bracelet from the wrist of a young woman, and,
+when she resisted, he stabbed her. He was seized red-handed, dragged
+before the Titai, who happened to be present, and ordered to be
+beheaded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> there and then. An executioner was selected from among the
+soldiers; but so clumsily did he do the work, hacking the head off by
+repeated blows, instead of severing it by one clean cut, that the
+friends of the thief were incensed and vowed vengeance. That same night
+they lay in wait for the executioner as he was returning to the city,
+and beat him to death with stones. Five men were arrested for this
+crime; they were compelled to confess their guilt and were sentenced to
+death. As they were being carried out to the execution-ground, one of
+the condemned pointed to two men, who were in the crowd of sightseers,
+and swore that they were equally concerned in the murder. So these two
+men were also put on their trial, with the result that one was found
+guilty and was equally condemned to death. As if this were not
+sufficient, at the execution the mother of one of the prisoners, when
+she saw her son's head fall beneath the knife, gave a loud scream and
+fell down stone-dead. Nine lives were sacrificed in this tragedy: the
+woman who was stabbed recovered of her wound.</p>
+
+<p>Hsiakwan was crowded, as it was market day. We had lunch together at a
+Chinese restaurant, and then, my men having come up, the kind
+missionaries returned, and I went on alone. A river, the Yangki River,
+drains the Tali Lake, and, leaving the south-west corner of the lake,
+flows through the town of Hsiakwan, and so on west to join the Mekong.
+For three days the river would be our guide. A mile from the town the
+river enters a narrow defile, where steep walls of rock rise abruptly
+from the banks. The road here passes under a massive gateway. Forts, now
+dismantled, guard the entrance; the pass could be made absolutely
+impregnable. At this point the torrent falls under a natural bridge of
+unusual beauty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> We rode on by the narrow bank along the river, crossed
+from the left to the right bank, and continued on through a beautiful
+country, sweet with the scent of the honeysuckle, to the charming little
+village of Hokiangpu. Here we had arranged to stay. The inn was a large
+one, and very clean. Many of its rooms were already occupied by a large
+party of Cantonese returning home after the Thibetan Fair with loads of
+opium.</p>
+
+<p>The Cantonese, using the term in its broader sense as applied to the
+natives of the province of Kuangtung, are the Catalans of China. They
+are as enterprising as the Scotch, adapt themselves as readily to
+circumstances, are enduring, canny, and successful; you meet them in the
+most distant parts of China. They make wonderful pilgrimages on foot.
+They have the reputation of being the most quick-witted of all Chinese.
+Large numbers come to Tali during the Thibetan Fair, and in the opium
+season. They bring all kinds of foreign goods adapted for Chinese
+wants&mdash;cheap pistols and revolvers, mirrors, scales, fancy pictures, and
+a thousand gewgaws useful as well as attractive&mdash;and they return with
+opium. They travel in bands, marching in single file, their carrying
+poles pointed with a steel spearhead two feet long, serving a double
+use&mdash;a carrying pole in peace, a formidable spear in trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere they can be distinguished by their dress, by their enormous
+oiled sunshades, and by their habit of tricing their loads high up to
+the carrying pole. They are always well clad in dark blue; their heads
+are always cleanly shaved; their feet are well sandalled, and their
+calves neatly bandaged. They have a travelled mien about them, and carry
+themselves with an air of conscious superiority to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> untravelled
+savages among whom they are trading. To me they were always polite and
+amiable; they recognised that I was, like themselves, a stranger far
+from home.</p>
+
+<p>This is the class of Chinese who, emigrating from the thickly-peopled
+south-eastern provinces of China, already possess a predominant share of
+the wealth of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Timor, the Celebes and the
+Philippine Islands, Burma, Siam, Annam and Tonquin, the Straits
+Settlements, Malay Peninsula, and Cochin China. "There is hardly a tiny
+islet visited by our naturalists in any part of these seas but Chinamen
+are found." And it is this class of Chinese who have already driven us
+out of the Northern Territory of Australia, and whose unrestricted entry
+into the other colonies we must prevent at all hazards. We cannot
+compete with Chinese; we cannot intermix or marry with them; they are
+aliens in language, thought, and customs; they are working animals of
+low grade but great vitality. The Chinese is temperate, frugal,
+hard-working, and law-evading, if not law-abiding&mdash;we all acknowledge
+that. He can outwork an Englishman, and starve him out of the
+country&mdash;no one can deny that. To compete successfully with a Chinaman,
+the artisan or labourer of our own flesh and blood would require to be
+degraded into a mere mechanical beast of labour, unable to support wife
+or family, toiling seven days in the week, with no amusements,
+enjoyments, or comforts of any kind, no interest in the country,
+contributing no share towards the expense of government, living on food
+that he would now reject with loathing, crowded with his fellows ten or
+fifteen in a room that he would not now live in alone, except with
+repugnance. Admitted freely into Australia, the Chinese would starve
+out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> the Englishman, in accordance with the law of currency&mdash;that of two
+currencies in a country the baser will always supplant the better. "In
+Victoria," says Professor Pearson, "a single trade&mdash;that of
+furniture-making&mdash;was taken possession of and ruined for white men
+within the space of something like five years." In the small colony of
+Victoria there are 9377 Chinese in a population of 1,150,000; in all
+China, with its population of 350,000,000, there are only 8081
+foreigners (Dyer Ball), a large proportion of whom are working for
+China's salvation.</p>
+
+<p>There is not room for both in Australia. Which is to be our colonist,
+the Asiatic or the Englishman?</p>
+
+<p>In the morning we had another beautiful walk round the snow-clad
+mountains to the village of Yangpi, at the back of Tali. There was a
+long delay here. News of my arrival spread, and the people hurried along
+to see me. No sooner was I seated at an inn than two messengers from the
+yamen called for my passport. They were officious young fellows, sadly
+wanting in respect, and they asked for my passport in a noisy way that I
+did not like, so I would not understand them. I only smiled at them in
+the most friendly manner possible. I kept them for some time in a fever
+of irritation at their inability to make me understand; I listened with
+imperturbable calmness to their excited phrases till they were nearly
+dancing. Then I leisurely produced my passport, as if to satisfy a
+curiosity of my own, and began scanning it. Seeing this, they rudely
+thrust forth their hands to seize it; but I had my eye on them. "Not so
+quick, my friends," I said, soothingly. "Be calm; nervous irritability
+is a fruitful source of trouble. See, here is my passport; here is the
+official seal, and here the name of your unworthy servant. Now I fold it
+up carefully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> and&mdash;put it back in my pocket. But here is a copy, which
+is at your service. If you wish to show the original to the magistrate,
+I will take it to his honour myself, but out of my hands it does not
+pass." They looked puzzled, as they did not understand English; they
+debated a minute or two, and then went away with the copy, which in due
+time they politely returned to me.</p>
+
+<p>If you wish to travel quickly in China, never be in a hurry. Appear
+unconscious of all that is passing; never be irritated by any delay, and
+assume complete indifference, even when you are really anxious to push
+on. Emulate, too, that leading trait in the Chinese character, and never
+understand anything which you do not wish to understand. No man on earth
+can be denser than a Chinaman, when he chooses.</p>
+
+<p>Let me give an instance. It was not so long ago, in a police court in
+Melbourne, that a Chinaman was summoned for being in possession of a
+tenement unfit for human habitation. The case was clearly proved, and he
+was fined <i>&pound;</i>1. But in no way could John be made to understand that a fine
+had been inflicted. He sat there with unmoved stolidity, and all that
+the court could extract from him was: "My no savvy, no savvy." After
+saying this in a voice devoid of all hope, he sank again into silence.
+Here rose a well-known lawyer. "With your worship's permission, I think
+I can make the Chinaman understand," he said. He was permitted to try.
+Striding fiercely up to the poor Celestial, he said to him in a loud
+voice, "John, you are fined two pounds." "No dam fear! Only <i>one</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>Crossing now the river by a well-constructed suspension bridge, we had a
+fearful climb of 2000 feet up the mountain. My coolie "Bones" nearly
+died on the way. Then there was a rough descent by a jagged path down
+the rocky side of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> mountain-river to the village of Taiping-pu. It
+was long after dark when we arrived; and an hour later stalked in the
+gaunt form of poor "Bones," who, instead of eating a good meal, coiled
+up on the <i>kang</i> and smoked an opium-pipe that he borrowed from the
+chairen. All the next day, and, indeed, for every day till we reached
+Tengyueh, our journey was one of the most arduous I have ever known. The
+road has to surmount in succession parallel ridges of mountains. The
+road is never even, for it cannot remain where travelling is easiest,
+but must continually dip from the crest of the ranges to the depths of
+the valleys.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before reaching Huanglien-pu my pony cast a shoe, and it was
+some time before we were able to have it seen to; but I had brought half
+a dozen spare shoes with me, and by-and-by a muleteer came along who
+fixed one on as neatly as any farrier could have done, and gladly
+accepted a reward of one halfpenny. He kept the foot steady while
+shoeing it by lashing the fetlock to the pony's tail.</p>
+
+<p>Caravans of cotton coming from Burma were meeting us all day. Miles away
+the booming of their gongs sounded in the silent hills; a long time
+afterwards their bells were heard jingling, and by-and-by the mules and
+horses appeared under their huge bales of cotton, the foremost decorated
+with scarlet tufts and plumes of pheasant tails, the last carrying the
+saddle and bedding of the headman, as well as the burly headman himself,
+perched above all. A man with a gong always headed the way; there was a
+driver to every five animals. In the sandy bed of the river at one place
+a caravan was resting. Their packs were piled in parallel rows; their
+horses browsed on the hillside. I counted 107 horses in this one
+caravan.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The prevailing pathological feature of the Chinese of Western Yunnan is
+the deformity goitre. It may safely be asserted that it is as common in
+many districts as are the marks of small-pox. Goitre occurs widely in
+Annam, Siam, Upper Burma, the Shan States, and in Western China as far
+as the frontier of Thibet. It is distinctly associated with cretinism
+and its interrupted intellectual development. And the disease must
+increase, for there is no attempt to check it. To be a "thickneck" is no
+bar to marriage on either side. The goitrous intermarry, and have
+children who are goitrous, or, rather, who will, if exposed to the same
+conditions as their parents, inevitably develop goitre. Frequently the
+disease is intensified in the offspring into cretinism, and I can
+conceive of no sight more disgusting than that which so often met our
+view, of a goitrous mother suckling her imbecile child. On one
+afternoon, among those who passed us on the road, I counted eighty
+persons with the deformity. On another day nine adults were climbing a
+path, by which we had just descended, every one of whom had goitre. In
+one small village, out of eighteen full-grown men and women whom I met
+in the street down which I rode, fifteen were affected. My diary in the
+West, especially from Yunnan City to Yungchang, after which point the
+cases greatly diminished in number, became a monotonous record of cases.
+At the mission in Tali three women are employed, and of these two are
+goitrous; the third, a Minchia woman, is free from the disease, and I
+have been told that among the indigenes the disease is much less common
+than among the Chinese. On all sides one encounters the horrible
+deformity, among all classes, of all ages. The disease early manifests
+itself, and I have often seen well-marked enlargement in children as
+young as eight.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> Turn any street corner in any town of importance in
+Western Yunnan and you will meet half a dozen cases; there must be few
+families in the western portion of the province free from the taint.</p>
+
+<p>On a day, for example, like this (May 5th), when the road was more than
+usually mountainous, though that may have been an accident, my chairen
+was a "thickneck" and my two soldiers were "thicknecks." At the village
+of Huanglien-pu, where I had lunch, the landlady of the inn had a
+goitrous neck that was swelled out half-way to the shoulder, and her son
+was a slobbering-mouthed cretin with the intelligence of an animal. And
+among the people who gathered round me in a dull, apathetic way every
+other one was more or less marked with the disease and its attendant
+mental phenomena. Again, at the inn in a little mountain village, where
+we stopped for the night, mother, father, and every person in the house,
+to the number of nine, above the age of childhood was either goitrous or
+cretinous, dull of intelligence, mentally verging upon dementia in three
+cases, in two of which physical growth had been arrested at childhood.</p>
+
+<p>Rarely during my journey to Burma was I offended by hearing myself
+called "<i>Yang kweitze</i>" (foreign devil), although this is the universal
+appellation of the foreigner wherever Mandarin is spoken in China.
+To-day, however, (May 6th), I was seated at the inn in the town of
+Chutung when I heard the offensive term. I was seated at a table in the
+midst of the accustomed crowd of Chinese. I was on the highest seat, of
+course, because I was the most important person present, when a
+bystander, seeing that I spoke no Chinese, coolly said the words "<i>Yang
+kweitze</i>" (foreign<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> devil). I rose in my wrath, and seized my whip. "You
+Chinese devil" (<i>Chung kweitze</i>), I said in Chinese, and then I assailed
+him in English. He seemed surprised at my warmth, but said nothing, and,
+turning on his heel, walked uncomfortably away.</p>
+
+<p>I often regretted afterwards that I did not teach the man a lesson, and
+cut him across the face with my whip; yet, had I done so, it would have
+been unjust. He called me, as I thought, "<i>Yang kweitze</i>," but I have no
+doubt, having told the story to Mr. Warry, the Chinese adviser to the
+Government of Burma, that he did not use these words at all, but others
+so closely resembling them that they sounded identically the same to my
+untrained ear, and yet signified not "foreign devil," but "honoured
+guest." He had paid me a compliment; he had not insulted me. The
+Yunnanese, Mr. Warry tells me, do not readily speak of the devil for
+fear he should appear.</p>
+
+<p>On my journey I made it a rule, acting advisedly, to refuse to occupy
+any other than the best room in the inn, and, if there was only one
+room, I required that the best bed in the room, as regards elevation,
+should be given to me. So, too, at every inn I insisted that the best
+table should be given me, and, if there were already Chinese seated at
+it, I gravely bowed to them, and by a wave of my hand signified that it
+was my pleasure that they should make way for the distinguished
+stranger. When there was only the one table, I occupied, as by right,
+its highest seat, refusing to sit in any other. I required, indeed, by
+politeness and firmness, that the Chinese take me at my own valuation.
+And they invariably did so. They always gave way to me. They recognised
+that I must be a traveller of importance, despite the smallness of my
+retinue and the homeliness of my attire; and they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> acknowledged my
+superiority. Had I been content with a humbler place, it would quickly
+have been reported along the road, and, little by little, my complacence
+would have been tested. I am perfectly sure that, by never verging from
+my position of superiority, I gained the respect of the Chinese, and it
+is largely to this I attribute the universal respect and attention shown
+me during the journey. For I was unarmed, entirely dependent upon the
+Chinese, and, for all practical purposes, inarticulate. As it was, I
+never had any difficulty whatever.</p>
+
+<p>Chinese etiquette pays great attention to the question of position; so
+important, indeed, is it that, when a carriage was taken by Lord
+Macartney's Embassy to Peking as a present, or, as the Chinese said, as
+tribute to the Emperor Kienlung, great offence was caused by the
+arrangement of the seats requiring the driver to sit on a higher level
+than His Majesty. A small enough mistake surely, but sufficient to mar
+the success of an expedition which the Chinese have always regarded as
+"one of the most splendid testimonials of respect that a tributary
+nation ever paid their Court."</p>
+
+<p>On the morning of May 7th, as we were leaving the village where we had
+slept the night before, we were witnesses of a domestic quarrel which
+might well have become a tragedy. On the green outside their cabin a
+husband with goitre, enraged against his goitrous wife, was kept from
+killing her by two elderly goitrous women. All were speaking with
+horrible goitrous voices as if they had cleft palates, and the husband
+was hoarse with fury. Jealousy could not have been the cause of the
+quarrel, for his wife was one of the most hideous creatures I have seen
+in China. Throwing aside the bamboo with which he was threatening her,
+the husband ran<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> into the house, and was out again in a moment
+brandishing a long native sword with which he menaced speedy death to
+the joy of his existence. I stood in the road and watched the
+disturbance, and with me the soldier-guard, who did not venture to
+interfere. But the two women seized the angry brute and held him till
+his wife toddled round the corner. Now, if this were a determined woman,
+she could best revenge herself for the cruelty that had been done her by
+going straightway and poisoning herself with opium, for then would her
+spirit be liberated, ever after to haunt her husband, even if he escaped
+punishment for being the cause of her death. If in the dispute he had
+killed her, he would be punished with "strangulation after the usual
+period," the sentence laid down by the law and often recorded in the
+<i>Peking Gazette</i> (<i>e.g.</i>, May 15th, 1892), unless he could prove her
+guilty of infidelity, or want of filial respect for his parents, in
+which case his action would be praiseworthy rather than culpable. If,
+however, in the dispute the wife had killed her husband, or by her
+conduct had driven him to suicide, she would be inexorably tied to the
+cross and put to death by the "<i>Ling chi</i>," or "degrading and slow
+process." For a wife to kill her husband has always been regarded as a
+more serious crime than for a husband to kill his wife; even in our own
+highly favoured country, till within a few years of the present century,
+the punishment for the man was death by hanging, but in the case of the
+woman death by burning alive.</p>
+
+<p>Let me at this point interpolate a word or two about the method of
+execution known as the <i>Ling chi</i>. The words are commonly, and quite
+wrongly, translated as "death by slicing into 10,000 pieces"&mdash;a truly
+awful description of a punishment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> whose cruelty has been
+extraordinarily misrepresented. It is true that no punishment is more
+dreaded by the Chinese than the <i>Ling chi</i>; but it is dreaded, not
+because of any torture associated with its performance, but because of
+the dismemberment practised upon the body which was received whole from
+its parents. The mutilation is ghastly and excites our horror as an
+example of barbarian cruelty: but it is not cruel, and need not excite
+our horror, since the mutilation is done, not before death, but after.
+The method is simply the following, which I give as I received it
+first-hand from an eye-witness:&mdash;The prisoner is tied to a rude cross:
+he is invariably deeply under the influence of opium. The executioner,
+standing before him, with a sharp sword makes two quick incisions above
+the eyebrows, and draws down the portion of skin over each eye, then he
+makes two more quick incisions across the breast, and in the next moment
+he pierces the heart, and death is instantaneous. Then he cuts the body
+in pieces; and the degradation consists in the fragmentary shape in
+which the prisoner has to appear in heaven. As a missionary said to me:
+"He can't lie out that he got there properly when he carries with him
+such damning evidence to the contrary."</p>
+
+<p><a name="img026" id="img026"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 269px;">
+<a href="images/026.jpg"><img src="images/026_th.jpg" width="269" height="400" alt="THE DESCENT TO THE RIVER MEKONG." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The Descent to the River Mekong.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In China immense power is given to the husband over the body of his
+wife, and it seems as if the tendency in England were to approximate to
+the Chinese custom. Is it not a fact that, if a husband in England
+brutally maltreats his wife, kicks her senseless, and disfigures her for
+life, the average English bench of unpaid magistrates will find
+extenuating circumstances in the fact of his being the husband, and will
+rarely sentence him to more than a month or two's hard labour?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The Mekong and Salween Rivers&mdash;How to Travel in China.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>To-day, May 7th, we crossed the River Mekong, even at this distance from
+Siam a broad and swift stream. The river flows into the light from a
+dark and gloomy gorge, takes a sharp bend, and rolls on between the
+mountains. Where it issues from the gorge a suspension bridge has been
+stretched across the stream. A wonderful pathway zigzags down the face
+of the mountain to the river, in an almost vertical incline of 2000ft.
+At the riverside an embankment of dressed stone, built up from the rock,
+leads for some hundreds of feet along the bank, where there would
+otherwise have been no foothold, to the clearing by the bridge. The
+likin-barrier is here, and a teahouse or two, and the guardian temple.
+The bridge itself is graceful and strong, swinging easily 30ft. above
+the current; it is built of powerful chains, carried from bank to bank
+and held by masses of solid masonry set in the bed-rock. It is 60 yards
+long and 10ft. wide, is floored with wood, and has a picket parapet
+supported by lateral chains. From the river a path led us up to a small
+village, where my men rested to gather strength. For facing us were the
+mountain heights, which had to be escaladed before we could leave the
+river gulch. Then with immense toil we climbed up the mountain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> path by
+a rocky staircase of thousands of steps, till, worn out, and with
+"Bones" nearly dead, we at length reached the narrow defile near the
+summit, whence an easy road brought us in the early evening to Shuichai
+(6700ft.).</p>
+
+<p>In the course of one afternoon we had descended 2000ft. to the river
+(4250ft. above the sea), and had then climbed 2450ft. to Shuichai. And
+the ascent from the river was steeper than the descent into it; yet the
+railway which is to be built over this trade-route between Burma and
+Yunnan will have other engineering difficulties to contend with even
+greater than this.</p>
+
+<p>My soldier to-day was a boy of fifteen or sixteen. He was armed with a
+revolver, and bore himself valiantly. But his revolver was more
+dangerous in appearance than in effect, for the cylinder would not
+revolve, the hammer was broken short off, and there were no cartridges.
+Everywhere the weapon was examined with curiosity blended with awe, and
+I imagine that the Chinese were told strange tales of its deadliness.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning we continued by easy gradients to Talichao (7700ft.),
+rising 1000ft. in rather less than seven miles. It was bitterly cold in
+the mists of the early morning. But twenty miles further the road dipped
+again to the sunshine and warmth of the valley of Yungchang, where, in
+the city made famous by Marco Polo, we found comfortable quarters in an
+excellent inn.</p>
+
+<p>Yungchang is a large town, strongly walled. It is, however, only a
+remnant of the old city, acres of houses having been destroyed during
+the insurrection, when for three years, it is said, Imperialists and
+Mohammedans were contending for its possession. There is a telegraph
+station in the town. The streets are broad and well-paved, the inns
+large, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> temples flourishing. One fortunate circumstance the
+traveller will notice in Yungchang&mdash;there is a marked diminution in the
+number of cases of goitre. And the diminution is not confined to the
+town, but is apparent from this point right on to Burma.</p>
+
+<p>Long after our arrival in Yungchang my opium-eating coolie "Bones" had
+not come, and we had to wait for him in anger and annoyance. He had my
+hamper of eatables and my bundle of bedding. Tired of waiting for him, I
+went for a walk to the telegraph office and was turning to come back,
+when I met the faithful skeleton, a mile from the inn, walking along as
+if to a funeral, his neck elongating from side to side like a camel's, a
+lean and hungry look in his staring eyes, his bones crackling inside his
+skin. Continuing in the direction that he was going when I found him, he
+might have reached Thibet in time, but never Burma. I led him back to
+the hotel, where he ruefully showed me his empty string of cash, as if
+that had been the cause of his delay; he had only 6 cash left, and he
+wanted an advance.</p>
+
+<p>This was the worst coolie I had in my employ during my journey. But he
+was a good-natured fellow and honest. He was better educated, too, than
+most of the other coolies, and could both read and write. His dress on
+march was characteristic of the man. He was nearly naked; his clothes
+hardly hung together; he wore no sandals on his feet; but round his neck
+he carried a small earthenware phial of opium ash. In the early stages
+he delayed us all an hour or two every day, but he improved as we went
+further. And then he was so long and thin, so grotesque in his gait, and
+afforded me such frequent amusement, that I would not willingly have
+exchanged him for the most active coolie in China.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="img027" id="img027"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/027.jpg"><img src="images/027_th.jpg" width="400" height="294" alt="INSIDE VIEW OF A SUSPENSION BRIDGE IN FAR WESTERN CHINA." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Inside View of a Suspension Bridge in Far Western China.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the 9th we had a long and steep march west from the plain of
+Yungchang. At Pupiao I had a public lunch. It was market day, and the
+country people enjoyed the rare pleasure of seeing a foreigner feed. The
+street past the inn was packed in a few minutes, and the innkeeper had
+all he could do to attend to the many customers who wished to take tea
+at the same time as the foreigner. I was now used to these
+demonstrations. I could eat on with undisturbed equanimity. On such
+occasions I made it a practice, when I had finished and was leaving the
+inn, to turn round and bow gravely to the crowd, thanking them in a few
+kindly words of English, for the reception they had accorded me. At the
+same time I took the opportunity of mentioning that they would
+contribute to the comfort of future travellers, if only they would pay a
+little more attention to their table manners. Then, addressing the
+innkeeper, I thought it only right to point out to him that it was
+absurd to expect that one small black cloth should wipe all cups and
+cup-lids, all tables, all spilt tea, and all dishes, all through the
+day, without getting dirty. Occasionally, too, I pointed out another
+defect of management to the innkeeper, and told him that, while I
+personally had an open mind on the subject, other travellers might come
+his way who would disapprove, for instance&mdash;he would pardon my
+mentioning it&mdash;of the manure coolie passing through the restaurant with
+his buckets at mealtime, and halting by the table to see the stranger
+eat.</p>
+
+<p>When I spoke in this way quite seriously and bowed, those whose eyes met
+mine always bowed gravely in return. And for the next hour on the track
+my men would tell each other, with cackles of laughter, how M&ocirc; Shensen,
+their master, mystified the natives.</p>
+
+<p>From Pupiao we had a pleasant ride over a valley-plain,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> between hedges
+of cactus in flower and bushes of red roses, past graceful clumps of
+bamboo waving like ostrich feathers. By-and-by drizzling rain came on
+and compelled us to seek shelter in the only inn in a poor
+out-of-the-way hamlet. But I could not stop here, because the best room
+in the inn was already occupied by a military officer of some
+distinction, a colonel, on his way, like ourselves, to Tengyueh. An
+official chair with arched poles fitted for four bearers was in the
+common-room; the mules of his attendants were in the stables, and were
+valuable animals. The landlord offered me another room, an inferior one;
+but I waved the open fingers of my left hand before my face and said,
+"<i>puyao! puyao!</i>" (I don't want it, I don't want it). For I was not so
+foolish or inconsistent as to be content with a poorer quarter of the
+inn than that occupied by the officer, whatever his button. I could not
+acknowledge to the Chinese that any Chinaman travelling in the Middle
+Kingdom was my equal, let alone my superior. Refusing to remain, I
+waited in the front room until the rain should lift and allow us to
+proceed. But we did not require to go on. It happened as I expected. The
+Colonel sent for me, and, bowing to me, showed by signs that one half
+his room was at my service. In return for his politeness he had the
+privilege of seeing me eat. With both hands I offered him in turn every
+one of my dishes. Afterwards I showed him my photographs&mdash;I treated him,
+indeed, with proper condescension.</p>
+
+<p>On the 10th we crossed the famous River Salween (2600 ft.). Through an
+open tableland, well grassed and sparsely wooded, we came at length to
+the cleft in the hills from which is obtained the first view of the
+river valley. There was a small village here, and, while we were taking
+tea, a soldier came hurriedly down the road, who handed me a letter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+addressed in Chinese. I confess that at the moment I had a sudden
+misgiving that some impediment was to be put in the way of my journey.
+But it was nothing more than a telegram from Mr. Jensen in Yunnan,
+telling me of the decision of the Chinese Government to continue the
+telegraph to the frontier of Burma. The telegram was written by the
+Chinese operator in Yungchang in a neat round hand, without any error of
+spelling; it had come to Yungchang after my departure, and had been
+courteously forwarded by the Chinese manager. The soldier who brought it
+had made a hurried march of thirty-eight miles before overtaking me, and
+deserved a reward. I motioned Laotseng, my cash-bearer, to give him a
+present, and he meanly counted out 25 cash, and was about to give them,
+when I ostentatiously increased the amount to 100 cash. The soldier was
+delighted; the onlookers were charmed with this exhibition of Western
+munificence. Suppose a rich Chinese traveller in England, who spoke no
+English, were to offer Tommy Atkins twopence halfpenny for travelling on
+foot thirty-eight miles to bring him a telegram, having then to walk
+back thirty-eight miles and find himself on the way, would the English
+soldier bow as gratefully as did his perishing Chinese brother when I
+thus rewarded him?</p>
+
+<p>We descended by beautiful open country into the Valley of the Shadow of
+Death&mdash;the valley of the River Salween. No other part of Western China
+has the evil repute of this valley; its unhealthiness is a by-word. "It
+is impossible to pass," says Marco Polo; "the air in summer is so impure
+and bad and any foreigner attempting it would die for certain."</p>
+
+<p>The Salween was formerly the boundary between Burma and China, and it is
+to be regretted that at the annexation of Upper Burma England did not
+push her frontier back to its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> former position. But the delimitation of
+the frontier of Burma is not yet complete. No time could be more
+opportune for its completion than the present, when China is distracted
+by her difficulties with Japan. China disheartened could need but little
+persuasion to accede to the just demand of England that the frontier of
+Burma shall be the true south-western frontier of China&mdash;the Salween
+River.</p>
+
+<p>There are no Chinese in the valley, nor would any Chinaman venture to
+cross it after nightfall. The reason of its unhealthiness is not
+apparent, except in the explanation of Baber, that "border regions,
+'debatable grounds,' are notoriously the birthplace of myths and
+marvels." There can be little doubt that the deadliness of the valley is
+a tradition rather than a reality.</p>
+
+<p>By flights of stone steps we descended to the river, where at the
+bridge-landing, we were arrested by a sight that could not be seen
+without emotion. A prisoner, chained by the hands and feet and cooped in
+a wooden cage, was being carried by four bearers to Yungchang to
+execution. He was not more than twenty-one years of age, was
+well-dressed, and evidently of a rank in life from which are recruited
+few of the criminals of China. Yet his crime could not have been much
+graver. On the corner posts of his cage white strips of paper were
+posted, giving his name and the particulars of the crime which he was so
+soon to expiate. He was a burglar who had escaped from prison by killing
+his guard, and had been recaptured. Unlike other criminals I have seen
+in China, who laugh at the stranger and appear unaffected by their lot,
+this young fellow seemed to feel keenly the cruel but well-deserved fate
+that was in store for him. Three days hence he would be put to death by
+strangulation outside the wall of Yungchang.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="img028" id="img028"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/028.jpg"><img src="images/028_th.jpg" width="400" height="281" alt="THE RIVER SALWEEN, THE FORMER BOUNDARY BETWEEN CHINA AND
+BURMA." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The River Salween, the former Boundary between China and
+Burma.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Another of those remarkable works which declare the engineering skill of
+the Chinese, is the suspension bridge which spans the Salween by a
+double loop&mdash;the larger loop over the river, the smaller one across the
+overflow. A natural piece of rock strengthened by masonry, rising from
+the river bed, holds the central ends of both loops. The longer span is
+80 yards in length, the shorter 55; both are 12ft. wide, and are formed
+of twelve parallel chain cables, drawn to an appropriate curve. A rapid
+river flows under the bridge, the rush of whose waters can be heard high
+up the mountain slopes.</p>
+
+<p>None but Shans live in the valley. They are permitted to govern
+themselves under Chinese supervision, and preserve their own laws and
+customs. They have a village near the bridge, of grass-thatched huts and
+open booths, where travellers can find rest and refreshment, and where
+native women prettily arrayed in dark-blue, will brew you tea in
+earthenware teapots. Very different are the Shan women from the Chinese.
+Their colour is much darker; their head-dress is a circular pile formed
+of concentric folds of dark-blue cloth; their dress closely resembles
+with its jacket and kilt the bathing dress of civilisation; their arms
+are bare, they have gaiters on their legs, and do not compress their
+feet. All wear brooches and earrings, and other ornaments of silver
+filigree.</p>
+
+<p>From the valley the main road rises without intermission 6130 feet to
+the village of Fengshui-ling (8730 feet), a climb which has to be
+completed in the course of the afternoon. We were once more among the
+trees. Pushing on till I was afraid we should be benighted, we reached
+long after dark an encampment of bamboo and grass, in the lonely bush,
+where the kind people made us welcome. It was bitterly cold during<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> the
+night, for the hut I slept in was open to the air. My three men and the
+escort must have been even colder than I was. But at least we all slept
+in perfect security, and I cannot praise too highly the constant care of
+the Chinese authorities to shield even from the apprehension of harm one
+whose only protection was his British passport.</p>
+
+<p>All the way westward from Yunnan City I was shadowed both by a
+yamen-runner and a soldier; both were changed nearly every day, and the
+further west I went the more frequently were they armed. The
+yamen-runner usually carried a long native sword only, but the soldier,
+in addition to his sword, was on one occasion, as we have seen, armed
+with the relics of a revolver that would not revolve. On May 10th, for
+the first time, the soldier detailed to accompany me was provided with a
+rusty old musket with a very long barrel. I examined this weapon with
+much curiosity. China is our neighbour in Eastern Asia, and is, it is
+often stated, an ideal power to be intrusted with the government of the
+buffer state called for by French aggression in Siam. In China, it is
+alleged, we have a prospective ally in Asia, and it is preferable that
+England should suffer all reasonable indignities and humilities at her
+hands rather than endanger any possible relations, which may
+subsequently be entered into, with a hypothetically powerful neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>On my arrival in Burma I was often amused by the serious questions I was
+asked concerning the military equipment of the Chinese soldiers of
+Western Yunnan. The soldier who was with me to-day was a type of the
+warlike sons of China, not only in the province bordering on Burma, but,
+with slight differences, all over the Middle Kingdom. Now, physically,
+this man was fit to be drafted into any army in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> world, but, apart
+from his endurance, his value as a fighting machine lay in the weapon
+with which the military authorities had armed him. This weapon was
+peculiar; I noted down its peculiarities on the spot. In this weapon the
+spring of the trigger was broken so that it could not be pulled; if it
+had been in order, there was no cap for the hammer to strike; if there
+had been a cap, it would have been of no use because the pinhole was
+rusted; even if the pinhole had been open, the rifle would still have
+been ineffective because it was not loaded, for the very good reason
+that the soldier had not been provided with powder, or, if he had, he
+had been compelled to sell it in order to purchase the rice which the
+Emperor, "whose rice he ate," had neglected to send him.</p>
+
+<p>An early start in the morning and we descended quickly to the River
+Shweli.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img029" id="img029"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/029.jpg"><img src="images/029_th.jpg" width="400" height="247" alt="THE RIVER SHWELI AND ITS SUSPENSION BRIDGE." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">The River Shweli and its Suspension Bridge.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Salween River is at an elevation of 2600 feet. Forty-five li further
+the road reaches at Fengshui-ling a height of 8730, from which point, in
+thirty-five li, it dips again to the River Shweli, 4400 feet above sea
+level. There was the usual suspension bridge at the river, and the
+inevitable likin-barrier. For the first time the Customs officials
+seemed inclined to delay me. I was on foot, and separated from my men by
+half the height of the hill. The collectors, and the underlings who are
+always hanging about the barriers, gathered round me and interrogated me
+closely. They spoke to me in Chinese, and with insufficient deference.
+The Chinese seem imbued with the mistaken belief that their language is
+the vehicle of intercourse not only within the four seas, but beyond
+them, and are often arrogant in consequence. I answered them in English.
+"I don't understand one word you say, but, if you wish to know," I said,
+energetically, "I come from Shanghai."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> "Shanghai," they exclaimed, "he
+comes from Shanghai!" "And I am bound for Singai" (Bhamo);&mdash;"Singai,"
+they repeated, "he is going to Singai!"&mdash;"unless the Imperial
+Government, suspicious of my intentions, which the meanest intelligence
+can see are pacific, should prevent me, in which case England will find
+a coveted pretext to add Yunnan to her Burmese Empire." Then, addressing
+myself to the noisiest, I indulged in some sarcastic speculations upon
+his probable family history, deduced from his personal peculiarities,
+till he looked very uncomfortable indeed. Thereupon I gravely bowed to
+them, and, leaving them in dumb astonishment, walked on over the bridge.
+They probably thought I was rating them in Manchu, the language of the
+Emperor. Two boys staggering under loads of firewood did not escape so
+easily, but were detained and a log squeezed from each wherewith to
+light the likin fires.</p>
+
+<p>A steep climb of another 3000 or 4000 feet over hills carpeted with
+bracken, with here and there grassy swards, pretty with lilies and
+daisies and wild strawberries, and then a quick descent, and we were in
+the valley of Tengyueh (5600ft.). A plain everywhere irrigated, flanked
+by treeless hills; fields shut in by low embankments; villages in
+plantations round its margin; black-faced sheep in flocks on the
+hillsides; and, away to the right the crenellated walls of Tengyueh. A
+stone-flagged path down the centre of the plain led us into the town. We
+entered by the south gate, and, turning to the left, were conducted into
+the telegraph compound, where I was to find accommodation, the clerk in
+charge of the operators being able to speak a few words of English. I
+was an immediate object of curiosity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The City of Tengyueh&mdash;The celebrated Wuntho Sawbwa&mdash;Shan
+Soldiers.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>I was given a comfortable room in the telegraph offices, but I had
+little privacy. My room was thronged during all the time of my visit.
+The first evening I held an informal and involuntary reception, which
+was attended by all the officials of the town, with the dignified
+exception of the Brigadier-General. The three members of the Chinese
+Boundary Commission, which had recently arranged with the British
+Commission the preliminaries to the delimitation of the boundary between
+Burma and China, were here, disputing with clerks, yamen-runners, and
+chair-coolies for a sight of my photographs and curiosities. The
+telegraph Manager Pen, Yeh (the magistrate), and a stalwart soldier
+(Colonel Liu), formed the Commission, and they retain hallowed
+recollections of the benignity of the Englishmen, and the excellence of
+their champagne. Colonel Liu proved to be the most enlightened member of
+the party. He is a tall, handsome fellow, fifty years of age, a native
+of Hunan, the most warlike and anti-foreign province in China. He was
+especially glad to see a foreign doctor. The gallant Colonel confided to
+me a wish that had long been uppermost in his heart. From some member,
+unknown, of the British Commission he had learnt of the marvellous
+rejuvenating power of a barbarian<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> medicine&mdash;could I get him some?
+<i>Could I get him a bottle of hair-dye?</i> Unlike his compatriots, who
+regard the external features of longevity as the most coveted attribute
+of life, this gentleman, in whose brain the light of civilisation was
+dawning, wished to frustrate the doings of age. Could I get him a bottle
+of hair-dye? He was in charge of the fort at Ganai, two days out on the
+way to Bhamo, and would write to the officer in charge during his
+absence directing him to provide me with an escort worthy of my
+benefaction.</p>
+
+<p>One celebrity, who lives in the neighbourhood of Tengyueh, did not
+favour me with a visit. That famous dacoit, the outlawed Prince of
+Wuntho&mdash;the Wuntho Sawbwa&mdash;lives here, an exile sheltered by the Chinese
+Government. A pure Burmese himself, the father-in-law of the amiable
+Sawbwa of Santa, he is believed by the Government of Burma to have been
+"concerned in all the Kachin risings of 1892-1893." A reward of 5000
+rupees is offered for his head, which will be paid equally whether the
+head be on or off the shoulders. Another famous outlaw, the Shan Chief
+Kanhliang, is also believed to be in hiding in the neighbourhood of
+Tengyueh. The value of <i>his</i> head has been assessed at 2000 rupees.</p>
+
+<p>Tengyueh is more a park than a town. The greater part of the city within
+the walls is waste land or gardens. The houses are collected mainly near
+the south gate, and extend beyond the south gate on each side of the
+road for half a mile on the road to Bhamo. There is an excellent wall in
+admirable order, with an embankment of earth 20ft. in width. But I saw
+no guns of any kind whatever, nor did I meet a single armed man in the
+town or district.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tengyueh is so situated that the invading army coming from Burma will
+find a pleasant pastime in shelling it from the open hills all around
+the town. This was the last stronghold of the Mohammedans. It was
+formerly a prosperous border town, the chief town in all the fertile
+valley of the Taiping. It was in the hands of the rebels till June 10th,
+1873, when it was delivered over to the Imperialists to carnage and
+destruction. The valley is fertile and well populated, and prosperity is
+quickly returning to the district.</p>
+
+<p>There is only one yamen in Tengyueh of any pretension, and it is the
+official residence of a red-button warrior, the Brigadier-General
+(<i>Chentai</i>) Chang, the successor, though not, of course, the immediate
+successor, of Li-Sieh-tai, who was concerned in the murder of Margary
+and the repulse of the expedition under Colonel Horace Browne in 1875. A
+tall, handsome Chinaman is Chang, of soldierly bearing and blissful
+innocence of all knowledge of modern warfare. Yungchang is the limit of
+his jurisdiction in one direction, the Burmese boundary in the other;
+his only superior officer is the Titai in Tali.</p>
+
+<p>The telegraph office adjoins the City Temple and Theatre of Tengyueh. At
+this time the annual festival was being celebrated in the temple.
+Theatrical performances were being given in uninterrupted succession
+daily for the term of one month. Play began at sunrise, and the curtain
+fell, or would have fallen if there had been a curtain, at twilight. Day
+was rendered hideous by the clangour of the instruments which the
+blunted senses of Chinese have been misguided into believing are
+musical. Already the play, or succession of plays, had continued fifteen
+days, and another thirteen days had yet to be endured before its
+completion. Crowds occupied<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> the temple court during the performance,
+while a considerable body of dead-heads witnessed the entertainment from
+the embankment and wall overlooking the open stage. My host, the
+telegraph Manager Pen, and his two friends Liu and Yeh, were given an
+improvised seat of honour outside my window, and here they sat all day
+and sipped tea and cracked jokes. No actresses were on the stage; the
+female parts were taken by men whose make-up was admirable, and who
+imitated, with curious fidelity, the voice and gestures of women. The
+dresses were rich and varied. Scene-shifters, band, supers, and friends
+remained on the stage during the performance, dodging about among the
+actors. There is no drop curtain in a Chinese theatre, and all scenes
+are changed on the open stage before you. The villain, whose nose is
+painted white, vanquished by triumphant virtue, dies a gory death; he
+remains dead just long enough to satisfy you that he <i>is</i> dead, and then
+gets up and serenely walks to the side. There is laughter at sallies of
+indecency, and the spectators grunt their applause. The Chinaman is
+rarely carried away by his feelings at the theatre; indeed, it may be
+questioned if strong emotion is ever aroused in his breast, except by
+the first addresses of the junior members of the China Inland Mission,
+the thrilling effect of whose Chinese exhortations is recorded every
+month in <i>China's Millions</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Manager of the telegraph, to show his good feeling, presented me
+with a stale tin of condensed milk. His second clerk and operator was
+the most covetous man I met in China. He begged in turn for nearly every
+article I possessed, beginning with my waterproof, which I did not give
+him, and ending with the empty milk tin, which I did, for "Give to him
+that asketh," said Buddha, "even though it be but a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> little." The chief
+operator in charge of the telegraph offices speaks a little English, and
+is the medium by which English messages and letters are translated into
+Chinese for the information of the officials. His name is Chueh. His
+method of translation is to glean the sense of a sentence by the
+probable meaning, derived from an inaccurate Anglo-Chinese dictionary,
+of the separate words of the sentence. He is a broken reed to trust to
+as an interpreter. Chueh is not an offensively truthful man. When he
+speaks to you, you find yourself wondering if you have ever met a
+greater liar than he. "Three men's strength," he says, "cannot prevail
+against truth;" yet he is, I think, the greatest liar I have met since I
+left Morocco. Indeed, the way he spoke of my head boy Laotseng, who was
+undoubtedly an honest Chinese, and the opinion Laotseng emphatically
+held of Chueh, was a curious repetition of an experience that I had not
+long ago in Morocco. I was living in Tangier, when I had occasion to go
+to Fez and Mequinez. My visit was arranged so hurriedly that I had no
+means of learning what was the degree of personal esteem attaching to
+the gentleman, a resident of Tangier, who was to be my companion. I
+accordingly interrogated the hotel-keeper, Mr. B. "What kind of a man is
+D.?" I asked. "Not a bad fellow," he replied, "if he wasn't such a
+blank, blank awful liar!" On the road to Wazan I became very friendly
+with D., and one day questioned him as to his private regard for Mr. B.
+of the hotel. "A fine fellow B. seems," I said, "very friendly and
+entertaining. What do you think of him?" "What do I think of him?" he
+shouted in his falsetto. "I <i>know</i> he's the biggest blank liar in
+Morocco." It was pleasant to meet, even in Morocco, such a rare case of
+mutual esteem.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>My pony fared badly in Tengyueh. There was a poor stable in the
+courtyard with a tiled roof that would fall at the first shower. There
+were no beans. The pony had to be content with rice or paddy, which it
+disliked equally. The rice was 1-1/2<i>d.</i> the 7-1/2lbs. There was no
+grass, Chueh said, to be obtained in the district. He assured me so on
+his honour, or its Chinese equivalent; but I sent out and bought some in
+the street round the corner.</p>
+
+<p>Silver in Tengyueh is the purest Szechuen or Yunnanese silver. Rupees
+are also current, and at this time were equivalent to 400 cash&mdash;the tael
+at the same time being worth 1260 cash. Every 10 taels, costing me
+30<i>s.</i> in Shanghai, I could exchange in Tengyueh for 31 rupees. Rupees
+are the chief silver currency west from Tengyueh into Burma.</p>
+
+<p>On May 31st I had given instructions that we were to leave early, but my
+men, who did not sleep in the telegraph compound, were late in coming.
+To still further delay me, at the time of leaving no escort had made its
+appearance. I did not wait for it. We marched out of the town
+unaccompanied, and were among the tombstones on the rise overlooking the
+town when the escort hurriedly overtook us. It consisted of a
+quiet-mannered chairen and two soldiers, one of whom was an impudent cub
+that I had to treat with every indignity. He was armed with a sword
+carried in the folds of his red cincture, in which was also concealed an
+old muzzle-loading pistol, formidable to look at but unloaded. This was
+one of the days on my journey when I wished that I had brought a
+revolver, not as a defence in case of danger, for there was no danger,
+but as a menace on occasion of anger.</p>
+
+<p>Rain fell continuously. At a small village thronged with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> muleteers from
+Bhamo we took shelter for an hour. The men sipping tea under the
+verandahs had seen Europeans in Bhamo, and my presence evoked no
+interest whatever. Many of these strangers possessed an astonishing
+likeness to European friends of my own. Contact with Europeans, causing
+the phenomena of "maternal impression," was probably in a few cases
+accountable for the moulding of their features, but the general
+prevalence of the European type has yet to be explained. "My conscience!
+Who could ever have expected to meet <i>you</i> here?" I was often on the
+point of saying to some Chinese Shan or Burmese Shan in whom, to my
+confusion, I thought I recognised a college friend of my own.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the village, we followed the windings of the River Taiping,
+coasting along the edge of the high land on the left bank of the river.</p>
+
+<p><a name="img030" id="img030"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/030.jpg"><img src="images/030_th.jpg" width="400" height="249" alt="THE SUBURB BEYOND THE SOUTH GATE OF TENGYUEH. (Stalls
+under the Umbrellas.)" title="" /></a>
+<p class='center'><span class="caption">The Suburb beyond the South Gate of Tengyueh.</span> <br />
+(<i>Stalls under the Umbrellas.</i>)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Rain poured incessantly; the creeks overflowed; the paths became
+watercourses and were scarcely fordable. "Bones," my opium-eating coolie
+with the long neck, slipped into a hole which was too deep even for his
+long shanks, and all my bedding was wetted. It was ninety li to Nantien,
+the fort we were bound to beyond Tengyueh, and we finished the distance
+by sundown. The town is of little importance. It is situated on an
+eminence and is surrounded by a wall built, with that strange spirit of
+contrariness characteristic of the Chinese, and because it incloses a
+fort, more weakly than any city wall. It is not more substantial nor
+higher than the wall round many a mission compound. Some 400 soldiers
+are stationed in the fort, which means that the commander draws the pay
+for 1000 soldiers, and represents the strength of his garrison as 1000.
+Their arms are primitive and rusty muzzle-loaders<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> of many patterns;
+there are no guns to be seen, if there are any in existence&mdash;which is
+doubtful. The few rusty cast-iron ten-pounders that lie <i>hors de combat</i>
+in the mud have long since become useless. There may be ammunition in
+the fort; but there is none to be seen. It is more probable, and more in
+accordance with Chinese practice in such matters, that the ammunition
+left by his predecessor (if any were left, which is doubtful) has long
+ago been sold by the colonel in command, whose perquisite this would
+naturally be.</p>
+
+<p>The fort of Nantien is a fort in name only&mdash;it has no need to be
+otherwise, for peace and quiet are abroad in the valley. Besides, the
+mere fact of its being called a fort is sufficiently misleading to the
+neighbouring British province of Burma, where they are apt to picture a
+Chinese fort as a structure seriously built in some accordance with
+modern methods of fortification.</p>
+
+<p>I was given a comfortable room in a large inn already well filled with
+travellers. All treated me with pleasant courtesy. They were at supper
+when I entered the room, and they invited me to share their food. They
+gave me the best table to myself, and after supper they crowded into
+another room in order to let me have the room to myself.</p>
+
+<p>Next day we continued along the sandy bed of the river, which was here
+more than a mile in width. The river itself, shrunk now into its
+smallest size, flowed in a double stream down the middle. Then we left
+the river, and rode along the high bank flanking the valley. All paved
+roads had ended at Tengyueh, and the track was deeply cut and jagged by
+the rains. At one point in to-day's journey the road led up an almost
+vertical ascent to a narrow ledge or spur at the summit, and then fell
+as steeply into the plain again. It was a short-cut,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> that, as you would
+expect in China, required five times more physical effort to compass
+than did the longer but level road which it was intended to save. So
+narrow is the ridge that the double row of open sheds leaves barely room
+for pack mules to pass. The whole traffic on the caravan route to Burma
+passes by this spot. The long bamboo sheds with their grass roofs are
+divided into stalls, where Shan women in their fantastic turbans, with
+silver bracelets and earrings, their lips and teeth stained with
+betel-juice, sit behind the counters of raised earth, and eagerly
+compete for the custom of travellers. More than half the women had
+goitre. Before them were laid out the various dishes. There were pale
+cuts of pork, well soaked in water to double their weight, eggs and
+cabbage and salted fish, bean curds, and a doubtful tea flavoured with
+camomile and wild herbs. There were hampers of coarse grass for the
+horses, and wooden bowls of cooked rice for the men, while hollow
+bamboos were used equally to bring water from below, to hold sheaves of
+chopsticks where the traveller helped himself, and to receive the cash.
+Trade was busy. Muleteers are glad to rest here after the climb, if only
+to enjoy a puff of tobacco from the bamboo-pipe which is always carried
+by one member of the party for the common use of all.</p>
+
+<p>Descending again into the river valley, I rode lazily along in the sun,
+taking no heed of my men, who were soon separated from me. The broad
+river-bed of sand was before me as level as the waters of a lake. As I
+was riding slowly along by myself, away from all guard, I saw
+approaching me in the lonely plain a small body of men. They were moving
+quickly along in single file, and we soon met and passed each other.
+They were three Chinese Shan officers on horseback,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> dressed in Chinese
+fashion, and immediately behind them were six soldiers on foot, who I
+saw were Burmese or Burmese Shans. They were smart men, clad in loose
+jerseys and knickerbockers, with sun-hats and bare legs, and they
+marched like soldiers. Cartridge-belts were over their left shoulders,
+and Martini-Henry rifles, carried muzzle foremost, on their right. I
+took particular note of them because they were stepping in admirable
+order, and, though small of stature, I thought they were the first armed
+men I had met in all my journey across China who could without shame be
+presented as soldiers in any civilised country.</p>
+
+<p>They passed me, but seemed struck by my appearance; and I had not gone a
+dozen yards before they all stopped by a common impulse, and when I
+looked back they were still there in a group talking, with the officers'
+horses turned towards me; and it was very evident I was the subject of
+their conversation. I was alone at the time, far from all my men,
+without weapon of any kind. I was dressed in full Chinese dress and
+mounted on an unmistakably Chinese pony. I rode unconcernedly on, but I
+must confess that I did not feel comfortable till I was assured that
+they did not intend to obtrude an interview upon me. At length, to my
+relief, the party continued on its way, while I hurried on to my
+coolies, and made them wait till my party was complete. I was probably
+alarmed without any reason. But it was not till I arrived in Burma that
+I learnt that this was the armed escort of the outlawed Wuntho Sawbwa,
+the dacoit chief who has a price set on his head. The soldiers' rifles
+and cartridge-belts had been stripped from the dead bodies of British
+sepoys, killed on the frontier in the Kachin Hills.</p>
+
+<p>My men, when we were all together again, indicated to me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> by signs that
+I would shortly meet an elephant, and I thought that at last I was about
+to witness the realisation of that story, everywhere current in Western
+China, of the British tribute from Burma. Sure enough we had not gone
+far when, at the foot of a headland which projected into the plain, we
+came full upon a large elephant picking its way along the margin of the
+rocks&mdash;a remarkable sight to my Chinese. Its scarlet howdah was empty;
+its trappings were scarlet; the mahout was a Shan. It was the elephant
+of the Wuntho Prince&mdash;a little earlier and I might have had the
+privilege of meeting the dacoit himself. The elephant passed
+unconcernedly on, and we continued down the plain of sand to the village
+of Ganai, where we were to stay the night.</p>
+
+<p>It was market-day in the town. A double row of stalls extended down the
+main street, each stall under the shelter of a huge umbrella. Japanese
+matches from Osaka were for sale here, and foreign nick-nacks, needles
+and braid and cotton, and Manchester dress stuffs mixed with the
+multitudinous articles of native produce. This is a Shan town, but large
+numbers of native women&mdash;Kachins&mdash;were here also with their ugly black
+faces, and coarse black fringes hiding their low foreheads. Far away
+from the town an obliging Shan had attached himself to us as guide. He
+was dressed in white cotton jacket and dark-blue knickerbockers, with a
+dark-blue sash round his waist. He was barelegged, and rode as the
+Chinese do, and as you would expect them to do who do everything <i>al
+reves</i>, with the heel in the stirrup instead of the toe. His turban was
+dark-blue, and the pigtail was coiled up under it, and did not hang down
+from under the skull cap as with the Chinese. When I rode into the town
+accompanied by the guide, all the people forsook the market street and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+followed the illustrious stranger to the inn which had been selected for
+his resting-place. It was a favourite inn, and was already crowded. The
+best room was in possession of Chinese travellers, who were on the road
+like myself. They were dozing on the couches, but what must they do when
+I entered the room but, thinking that I should wish to occupy it by
+myself, rise and pack up their things, and one after another move into
+another apartment adjoining, which was already well filled, and now
+became doubly so. Their thoughtfulness and courtesy charmed me. They
+must have been more tired than I was, but they smiled and nodded
+pleasantly to me as they left the room, as if they were grateful to me
+for putting them to inconvenience. They may be perishing heathen, I
+thought, but the average deacon or elder in our enlightened country
+could scarcely be more courteous.</p>
+
+<p>Ganai is a mud village thatched with grass. It is a military station
+under the command of the red-button Colonel Liu, whom I met in Tengyueh.
+The Colonel had earned his bottle of hair-dye. He had written to have me
+provided with an escort, and by-and-by the two officers who were to
+accompany me on the morrow came in to see me. As many spectators as
+could find elbow-room squeezed into my room behind them. Both were
+gentlemanly young fellows, very amiable and inquisitive, and keenly
+desirous to learn all they could concerning my honourable family. Their
+curiosity was satisfied. By the help of my Chinese phrase-book I gave
+them all particulars, and a few more. You see it was important that I
+should leave as favourable an impression as possible for the benefit of
+future travellers. More than one of my ancestors I brought to life again
+and endowed with a patriarchal age and a beard to correspond. As to my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+own age they marvelled greatly that one so young-looking could be so
+old, and when, in answer to their earnest question, I modestly confessed
+that I was already the unhappy possessor of two unworthy wives, five
+wretched sons, and three contemptible daughters, their admiration of my
+virtue increased tenfold.</p>
+
+<p>The officers left me after this, but till late at night I held <i>lev&eacute;es</i>
+of the townsfolk, our landlady, who was most zealous, no sooner
+dismissing one crowd than another pressed into its place. The courtyard,
+I believe, remained filled till early in the morning, but I was allowed
+to sleep at last.</p>
+
+<p>A large crowd followed me out of the town in the morning, and swarmed
+with me across the beautiful sward, as level as the Oval, which here
+widens into the country. No guest was ever sped on his way with a
+kindlier farewell. The fort is outside the town; we passed it on our
+left; it is a square inclosure of considerable size, inclosed by a mud
+wall 15 feet high; it is in the unsheltered plain, and presents no
+formidable front to an invader. At each of the four corners outside the
+square are detached four-sided watch-towers. No guns of any kind are
+mounted on the walls, and there are no sentries; one could easily
+imagine that the inclosure was a market-square, but imagination could
+never picture it as a serious obstacle to an armed entry into Western
+China. The river was well on our right. The plain down which we rode is
+of exceeding richness and highly cultivated, water being trained into
+the paddy-fields in the same way that everywhere prevails in China
+proper. Buffaloes were ploughing&mdash;wearily plodding through mud and water
+up to their middles. We were now among the Shans, and those working in
+the fields were Shans, not Chinese. Ganai, Santa, and other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> places are
+but little principalities or Shan States, governed by hereditary
+princelets or Sawbwas, and preserving a form of self-government under
+the protection of the Chinese. There are no more charming people in the
+world than the Shans. They are courteous, hospitable, and honest, with
+all the virtues and few of the vices of Orientals. "The elder brothers
+of the Siamese, they came originally from the Chinese province of
+Szechuen, and they can boast of a civilisation dating from twenty-three
+centuries <span class="smcap">B.C.</span>" So Terrien de Lacouperie tells us, who had a
+happy faculty of drawing upon his imagination for his facts.</p>
+
+<p>Under the wide branches of a banyan tree I made my men stop, for I was
+very tired, and while they waited I lay down for an hour on the grass
+and had a refreshing sleep. While I slept, the rest of the escort sent
+to "<i>sung</i>" me to Santa arrived. Within a few yards of my resting place
+there is a characteristic monument, dating from the time when Burma
+occupied not only this valley but the fertile territory beyond it, and
+beyond Tengyueh to the River Salween. It is a solid Burmese pagoda,
+built of concentric layers of brick and mortar, and surmounted with a
+solid bell-shaped dome that is still intact. It stands alone on the
+plain near a group of banyans, and its erection no doubt gained many
+myriads of merits for the conscience-stricken Buddhist who found the
+money to build it. All goldleaf has been peeled off the pagoda years
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>It was a picturesque party that now enfiladed into the wide stretch of
+sand which in the rainy season forms the bed of the river. Mounted on
+his white pony, there was the inarticulate European who had discarded
+his Chinese garb and was now dressed in the &aelig;sthetic garments of the
+Australian bush;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> there were his two coolies and Laotseng his boy, none
+of whom could speak any English, the two officers in their loose Chinese
+clothes, mounted on tough little ponies, and eight soldiers. They were
+Shans of kindly feature, small and nimble fellows, in neat
+uniforms&mdash;green jackets edged with black and braided with yellow, yellow
+sashes, and loose dark-blue knickerbockers&mdash;the uniform of the Sawbwa of
+Ganai. They were armed with Remington rifles, carried their cartridges
+in bandoliers, and seemed to be of excellent fighting material. All
+their accoutrements were in good order.</p>
+
+<p>Now we had to cross the broad stream, here running with a swift current
+over the sand, in channels of varying depths that are frequently
+changing. For the width of nearly half a mile at the crossing place the
+water was never shallower than to my knee, nor deeper than to my waist.
+We all crossed safely, but, to my tribulation, the soldier who was
+carrying my two boxes tripped in the deepest channel and let both boxes
+slip from the carrying pole into the water. All the notes and papers
+upon which this valuable record is founded were much damaged. But it
+might have been worse. I had a presentiment that an accident would
+happen, and had waded back to the channel and was standing by at the
+time. But for this the papers might have been floated down to the
+Irrawaddy and been lost to the world&mdash;loss irreparable!</p>
+
+<p>The sun was very hot. I laid out my things on the bank and dried them.
+Long and narrow dugouts, as light and swift as the string-test gigs of
+civilisation, paddled or poled, were gliding with extraordinary speed
+down the channel near the bank. Riding then a little way, we dismounted
+under a magnificent banyan tree, one of the finest<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> specimens, I should
+think, in the world. Ponies and men were dwarfed into Lilliputians under
+the amazing canopy of its branches. A number of villagers, come to see
+the foreigner, were clambering like monkeys over its roots, which
+"writhed in fantastic coils" over half an acre. Their village was hard
+by, a poor array of mud houses; the teak temple to which we were
+conducted was raised on piles in the centre of the village. The temple
+was lumbered like an old curiosity shop with fragmentary gods and torn
+missals. Yet the ragged priest in his smirched yellow gown, and shaven
+head that had been a week unshaven, seemed to enjoy a reputation for no
+common sanctity, to judge by the reverence shown him by my followers,
+and the contemptuous indifference with which he regarded their
+obeisance. He was club-footed and could only hobble about with
+difficulty&mdash;an excuse he would, no doubt, urge for the disorder of his
+sanctuary. To me, of course, he was very polite, and gave me the best
+seat he had, while Laotseng prepared me a bowl of cocoa. Then we rode
+along the right bank of the river, but kept moving away from the stream
+till in the distance across the plain at the foot of the hills, we saw
+the Shan town of Santa, the end of our day's stage.</p>
+
+<p>Native women, returning from the town, were wending their way across the
+plain&mdash;lank overgrown girls with long thin legs and overhanging mops of
+hair like deck-swabs. They were a favourite butt of my men, who chaffed
+them in the humorous Eastern manner, with remarks that were, I am
+afraid, more coarse than witty. Kachins are not virtuous. Their customs
+preclude such a possibility. No Japanese maiden is more innocent of
+virtue than a Kachin girl.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The Shan Town of Santa, and Manyuen, the Scene of Consul Margary's
+Murder.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>It was market day in Santa, and the accustomed crowd gathered round me
+as I stood in the open square in front of the Sawbwa's yamen. I was hot
+and hungry, for it was still early in the afternoon, and the attentions
+of the people were oppressive. Presently two men pushed their way
+through the spectators, and politely motioning to me to follow them,
+they led me to a neighbouring temple, to the upper storey, where the
+side pavilion off the chief hall was being prepared for my reception. My
+quarters overlooked the main court; the pony was comfortably stabled in
+the corner below me. Nothing could have been pleasanter than the
+attention I received here. Two foreign chairs were brought for my use,
+and half a dozen dishes of good food and clean chopsticks were set
+before me. The chief priest welcomed me, whose smiling face was
+good-nature itself. With clean-shaven head and a long robe of grey, with
+a rosary of black and white beads hung loosely from his neck, the kind
+old man moved about my room giving orders for my comfort. He held
+authority over a number of priests, some in black, others in yellow, and
+over a small band of choristers. Religion was an active performance in
+the temple, and the temple was in good order, with clean matting and
+well-kept shrines, with strange pictures on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> walls of elephants and
+horses, with legends and scrolls in Burmese as well as in Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>Towards evening the Santa Sawbwa, the hereditary prince (what a
+privilege it was to meet a prince! I had never met even a lord before in
+my life, or anyone approaching the rank of a lord, except a spurious
+Duke of York whom I sent to the lunatic asylum), the <i>Prince</i> of Santa
+paid me a State call, accompanied by a well-ordered retinue, very
+different indeed from the ragged reprobates who follow at the heels of a
+Chinese grandee when on a visit of ceremony. The Sawbwa occupied one
+chair, his distinguished guest the other, till the chief priest came in,
+when, with that deep reverence for the cloth which has always
+characterised me, I rose and gave him mine. He refused to take it, but I
+insisted; he pretended to be as reluctant to occupy it as any Frenchman,
+but I pushed him bodily into it, and that ended the matter.</p>
+
+<p>A pleasant, kindly fellow is the Prince; even among the Shans he is
+conspicuous for his courtesy and amiability. He was a great favourite
+with the English Boundary Commission, and in his turn remembers with
+much pleasure his association with them. Half a dozen times, when
+conversation flagged, he raised his clasped hands and said "Warry
+<i>Ching, ching</i>!" and I knew that this was his foolish heathen way of
+sending greeting to the Chinese adviser of the Government of Burma. The
+Shan dialect is quite distinct from the Chinese, but all the princes or
+princelets dress in Chinese fashion and learn Mandarin, and it was of
+course in Mandarin that the Santa Sawbwa conversed with Mr. Warry. This
+Sawbwa is the son-in-law of the ex-Wuntho Sawbwa. He rules over a
+territory smaller than many squatters' stations in Victoria.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> He is one
+of the ablest of Shans, and would willingly place his little
+principality under the protection of England. He is thirty-five years of
+age, dresses in full Chinese costume, with pigtail and skullcap, is
+pock-marked, and has incipient goitre. He is polite and refined, chews
+betel nut "to stimulate his meditative faculties," and expectorates on
+the floor with easy freedom. I showed him my photographs, and he
+graciously invited me to give him some. I nodded cheerfully to him in
+assent, rolled them all up again, and put them back in my box. He knew
+that I did not understand.</p>
+
+<p>We had tea together, and then he took his leave, "Warry <i>Ching, ching</i>!"
+being his parting words.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he had gone the deep drum&mdash;a hollow instrument of wood shaped
+like a fish&mdash;was beaten, and the priests gathered to vespers, dressed in
+many-coloured garments of silk; and, as evening fell, they intoned a
+sweet and mournful chant.</p>
+
+<p>The service over, all but the choristers entered the room off the
+gallery in which I was lying, where, looking in, I saw them throw off
+their gowns and coil themselves on the sleeping benches. Opium-lamps
+were already lit, and all were soon inhaling opium; all but one who had
+rheumatism, and who, lying down, stretched himself at full length, while
+a brother priest punched him all over in that primitive method of
+massage employed by every native race the wide world over.</p>
+
+<p>In the City Temple some festival was being celebrated, and night was
+turbulent with the beating of gongs and drums and the bursting of
+crackers. Long processions of priests in their yellow robes were passing
+the temple in the bright moonlight. Priests were as plentiful as
+blackberries; if they had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> been dressed in black instead of yellow, the
+traveller might have imagined that he was in Edinburgh at Assembly time.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning another escort of half a dozen men was ready to accompany
+me for the day's stage to Manyuen. They were in the uniform of the Santa
+Sawbwa, in blue jackets instead of green. They were armed with rusty
+muzzle-loaders, unloaded, and with long Burmese swords (<i>dahs</i>). They
+were the most amiable of warriors, both in feature and manner, and were
+unlike the turbaned braves of China, who, armed no better than these
+men, still regard, as did their forefathers, fierceness of aspect as an
+important factor in warfare (<i>rostro feroz ao enemigo!</i>)&mdash;an illusion
+also shared in the English army, where monstrous bearskin shakos were
+introduced to increase the apparent height of the soldiers. The officer
+in command was late in overtaking me. As soon as he came within
+horse-length he let down his queue and bowed reverently, and I could see
+pride lighting his features as he confessed to the honour that had been
+done him in intrusting such an honourable and illustrious charge to the
+mean and unworthy care of so contemptible an officer.</p>
+
+<p>The country before us was open meadow-land, pleasant to ride over, only
+here and there broken by a massive banyan tree. Herds of buffaloes were
+grazing on the hillsides. The mud villages were far apart on the margin
+of the river-plain, inclosed with superb hedges of living bamboo.</p>
+
+<p>Thirty li from Santa is the Shan village of Taipingkai. It was
+market-day, and the broad main street was crowded. We were taken to the
+house of an oil-merchant, who kindly asked me in and had tea brewed for
+me. Earthenware jars of oil were stacked round the room. The basement<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+opened to the street, and was packed in a moment. "<i>Dzo! Dzo!</i>" (Go!
+go!) cried the master, and the throng hustled out, to be renewed in a
+minute by a fresh body of curious who had waited their turn.</p>
+
+<p>Then we rode on, over a country as beautiful as a nobleman's park, to
+the town of Manyuen. Every here and there by the roadside there are
+springs of fresh water, where travellers can slake their thirst. Bamboo
+ladles are placed here by devotees, whose action will be counted unto
+them for righteousness, for "he that piously bestows a little water
+shall receive an ocean in return." And, where there are no springs, neat
+little bamboo stalls with shelves are built, and in the cool shelter
+pitchers of water and bamboo cups are placed, so that the thirsty may
+bless the unknown hand which gives him to drink.</p>
+
+<p>Manyuen&mdash;or, to use the name by which it is better known to foreigners,
+Manwyne&mdash;is a large and straggling town overlooking the river-plain. It
+was here that Margary, the British Consular Agent, was murdered in 1875.
+I had a long wait at the yamen gate while they were arranging where to
+send me, but by-and-by two yamen-runners came and conducted me to the
+City Temple. It was the same temple that Margary had occupied. Many
+shaven-pated Buddhist priests were waiting for me, and received me
+kindly in the temple hall. A table was brought for me and the only
+foreign chair, and Laotseng was shown where to spread my bedding in the
+temple hall itself. And here I held <i>lev&eacute;es</i> of the townspeople of all
+shades of colour and variety of feature&mdash;Chinese, Shan, Burmese, Kachin,
+and hybrid. The people were very amiable, and I found on all sides the
+same courtesy and kindliness that Margary describes on his first visit.
+But the crowd was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> quiet for only a little while; then a dispute arose.
+It began in the far corner, and the crowd left me to gather round the
+disputants. Voices were raised, loud and excited, and increased in
+energy. A deadly interest seemed to enthral the bystanders. It was easy
+to imagine that they were debating to do with me as they had done with
+Margary. The dispute waxed warmer. Surely they will come to blows? When
+suddenly the quarrel ceased as it had begun, and the crowd came smiling
+back to me. What was the dispute? The priests were cheapening a chicken
+for my dinner.</p>
+
+<p>The temple was built on teak piles, and teak pillars supported the
+triple roof. It was like a barn or lumber room but for the gilt Buddhas
+on the altar and the gilt cabinets by its side, containing many smaller
+gilt images of Buddha and his disciples. Umbrellas, flags, and the
+tawdry paraphernalia used in processions were hanging from the beams.
+Sacerdotal vestments of dingy yellow&mdash;the yellow of turmeric&mdash;were
+tumbled over bamboo rests. When the gong sounded for prayers, men you
+thought were coolies threw these garments over the left shoulder,
+hitched them round the waist, and were transformed into priests, putting
+them back again immediately after the service. Close under the tiles was
+a paper sedan-chair, to be sent for the use of some rich man in heaven.
+Painted scrolls of paper were on the walls, and on old ledges were torn
+books in the Burmese character, which a few boys made a pretence of
+reading. Where I slept the floor was raised some feet from the ground,
+and underneath, seen through the gaping boards&mdash;though previously
+detected by another of the senses&mdash;were a number of coffins freighted
+with dead, waiting for a fit occasion for interment. Heavy stones were
+placed on the lids to keep the dead more securely at rest. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> lucky
+day for burial would be determined by the priests&mdash;it would be
+determined by them as soon as the pious relatives had paid sufficiently
+for their fears. So long, then, as the coffins remained where they were,
+they might be described as capital invested by the priests and returning
+heavy interest; removed from the temple, they ceased to be productive.</p>
+
+<p>As is the case in so many temples, there is an opium-room in the temple
+at the back of the gilded shrine, where priests and neophytes, throwing
+aside their office, can while away the licentious hours till the gong
+calls them again to prayers.</p>
+
+<p>In the early morning, while I was still lying in my pukai on the floor,
+I saw many women, a large proportion of whom were goitrous, come to the
+hall, and make an offering of rice, and kneel down before the Buddha. As
+time went on, and more kept coming in, small heaps of rice had collected
+in front of the chief altar and before the cabinets. And when the women
+retired, a chorister came round and swept with his fingers all the
+little heaps into a basket. To the gods the spirit! To the priests the
+solid remains!</p>
+
+<p>It was in Manyuen, as I have mentioned, that Margary met his death on
+February 21st, 1875. He had safely traversed China from Hankow to Bhamo,
+had been everywhere courteously treated by the Chinese and been given
+every facility and protection on his journey. He had passed safely
+through Manyuen only five weeks before, and had then written: "I come
+and go without meeting the slightest rudeness among this charming
+people, and they address me with the greatest respect." And yet five
+weeks later he was killed on his return! Even assuming that he was
+killed in obedience to orders issued by the cruel Viceroy at Yunnan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+City, the notorious Tsen Y&uuml;-ying, and not by a lawless Chinese
+train-band which then infested the district and are believed by Baber to
+have been the real murderers, the British Government must still be held
+guilty of contributory negligence. Margary, having passed unmolested to
+Bhamo, there met the expedition under Colonel Horace Browne, and
+returned as its forerunner to prepare for its entry into China by the
+route he had just traversed. The expedition was a "peace expedition"
+sent by the Government of Burma, and numbered only "fifty persons in
+all, together with a Burmese guard of 150 armed soldiers."</p>
+
+<p>Seven years before, an expedition under Major Sladen had advanced from
+Burma into Western China as far as Tengyueh; had remained in Tengyueh
+from May 25th to July 13th, 1868; had entered into friendly negotiations
+with the military governor and other Mohammedan officials in revolt
+against China; and had remained under the friendly protection of the
+Mohammedan insurgents who were then in possession of Western China from
+Tengyueh to near Yunnan City. "To what principles," it has been asked,
+"of justice or equity can we attribute the action of the British in
+retaining their Minister at the capital of an empire while sending a
+peaceful mission to a rebel in arms at its boundaries?"</p>
+
+<p>The Mohammedan insurrection was not quelled till the early months of
+1874. And less than a year later the Chinese learned with alarm that
+another peaceful expedition was entering Western China, by the same
+route, under the same auspices, and with the identical objects of the
+expedition which had been welcomed by the leaders of the insurrection.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese mind was incapable of grasping the fact that the second
+expedition was planned solely to discover new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> fields for international
+commerce and scientific investigation. Barbarians as they are, they
+feared that England thereby intended to "foster the dying embers of the
+rebellion." No time for such an expedition, a peaceful trade expedition,
+could have been more ill-chosen. The folly of it was seen in the murder
+of Margary and the repulse of Colonel Horace Browne, whose expedition
+was driven back at Tsurai within sight of Manyuen. And this murder,
+known to all the world, is the typical instance cited in illustration of
+the barbarity of the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>China may be a barbarous country; many missionaries have said so, and it
+is the fashion so to speak; but let us for a moment look at facts.
+During the last twenty-three years foreigners of every nationality and
+every degree of temperament, from the mildest to the most fanatical,
+have penetrated into every nook and cranny of the empire. Some have been
+sent back, and there has been an occasional riot with some destruction
+of property. But all the foreigners who have been killed can be numbered
+on the fingers of one hand, and in the majority of these cases it can
+hardly be denied that it was the indiscretion of the white man which was
+the exciting cause of his murder. In the same time how many hundreds of
+unoffending Chinese have been murdered in civilised foreign countries?
+An anti-foreign riot in China&mdash;and at what rare intervals do
+anti-foreign riots occur in its vast empire&mdash;may cause some destruction
+of property; but it may be questioned if the destruction done in China
+by the combined anti-foreign riots of the last twenty-three years
+equalled the looting done by the civilised London mob who a year or two
+ago on a certain Black Monday played havoc in Oxford-street and
+Piccadilly. "It is less dangerous," says one of the most<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> accurate
+writers on China, the Rev. A. H. Smith, himself an American missionary,
+"for a foreigner to cross China than for a Chinese to cross the United
+States." And there are few who give the matter a thought but must admit
+the correctness of Mr. Smith's statement.</p>
+
+<p>On May 17th I was on the road again. The fort of Manyuen is outside the
+town, and some little distance beyond it the dry creek bends into the
+pathway at a point where it is bordered with cactus and overshadowed by
+a banyan tree. This is said to be the exact spot where Margary was
+killed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">China as a Fighting Power&mdash;The Kachins&mdash;And the Last Stage into
+Bhamo.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>We now left the low land and the open country, the pastures and meadows,
+and climbed up the jungle-clad spurs which form the triangular dividing
+range that separates the broad and open valley of the Taiping, where
+Manyuen is situated, from the confined and tropical valley of the
+Hongmuho, which lies at the foot of the English frontier fort of
+Nampoung, the present boundary of Burma. Two miles below Nampoung the
+two rivers join, and the combined stream flows on to enter the Irrawaddy
+a mile or two above Bhamo.</p>
+
+<p>No change could be greater or more sudden. We toiled upwards in the
+blazing sun, and in two hours we were deep in the thickest jungle, in
+the exuberant vegetation of a tropical forest. We had left the valley of
+the peaceful Shans and were in the forest inhabited by other "protected
+barbarians" of China&mdash;the wild tribes of Kachins, who even in Burma are
+slow to recognise the beneficent influences of British frontier
+administration. Nature serenely sleeps in the valley; nature is
+throbbing with life in the forest, and the humming and buzzing of all
+insect life was strange to our unaccustomed ears.</p>
+
+<p>A well-cut path has been made through the forest, and caravans of mules
+laden with bales of cotton were in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> early stages of the long
+overland journey to Yunnan. Their bells tinkled through the forest,
+while the herd boy filled the air with the sweet tones of his bamboo
+flute, breathing out his soul in music more beautiful than any bagpipes.
+Cotton is the chief article of import entering China by this highway.
+From Talifu to the frontier a traveller could trace his way by the
+fluffs of cotton torn by the bushes from the mule-packs.</p>
+
+<p>The road through the forest reaches the highest points, because it is at
+the highest points that the Chinese forts are situated, either on the
+road or on some elevated clearing near it.</p>
+
+<p>The forts are stockades inclosed in wooden palisades, and guarded by
+<i>chevaux de frise</i> of sharp-cut bamboo. The barracks are a few native
+straw-thatched wooden huts. Perhaps a score or two of men form the
+garrison of each fort; they are badly armed, if armed at all. There are
+no guns and no store supplies. Water is trained into the stockades down
+open conduits of split bamboo. To anyone who has seen the Chinese
+soldiers at home in Western China, it is diverting to observe the
+credence which is given to Chinese statements of the armed strength of
+Western China. How much longer are we to persist in regarding the
+Chinese, as they now are, as a warlike power? In numbers, capacity for
+physical endurance, calm courage when well officered, and powers
+unequalled by any other race of mankind of doing the greatest amount of
+labour on the smallest allowance of food, their potential strength is
+stupendous. But they are not advancing, they are stationary; they look
+backwards, not forwards; they live in the past. Weapons with which their
+ancestors subdued the greater part of Asia they are loath to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> believe
+are unfitted for conducting the warfare of to-day. Should Japan bring
+China to terms, she can impose no terms that will not tend towards the
+advancement of China. Victories such as Japan has won over China might
+affect any other nation but China; but they are trifling and
+insignificant in their effect upon the gigantic mass of China. Suppose
+China has lost 20,000 men in this war, in one day there are 20,000
+births in the Empire, and I am perfectly sure that, outside the
+immediate neighbourhood of the seat of operations, the Chinese as a
+nation, apart from the officials, are profoundly ignorant that there is
+even a war, or, as they would term it, a rebellion, in progress.
+Trouble, serious trouble, will begin in China in the near future, for
+the time must be fast approaching when the effete and alien dynasty now
+reigning in China&mdash;the Manchu dynasty&mdash;shall be overthrown, and a
+Chinese Emperor shall rule on the throne of China.</p>
+
+<p>At a native village called Schehleh there is a likin-barrier. The yellow
+flag was drooping over the roadway in the hot sun. The customs officer,
+an amiable Chinese Shan, invited me in to tea, and brought his pukai for
+me to lie down upon. Like thousands of his countrymen, he had played for
+fortune in the Manila lottery. Two old lottery tickets and the prize
+list in Chinese were on one wall of his room, on the other were a number
+of Chinese visiting cards, to which I graciously permitted him to add
+mine.</p>
+
+<p>Soldiers accompanied me from camp to camp, Chinese soldiers from
+districts many hundreds of miles distant in China. Some were armed, some
+were unarmed, and there was equal confidence to be reposed in the one as
+in the other; but all were civil, and watched me with a care that was
+embarrassing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the first camp beyond Schehleh the gateway was ornamented with
+trophies of valour. From two bare tree-trunks baskets of heads were
+hanging, putrefying in the heat. They were the heads of Kachin dacoits.
+And thus shall it be done with all taken in rebellion against the Son of
+Heaven, whose mighty clemency alone permits the sun to shine on any
+kingdom beyond his borders. Kachin villages are scattered through the
+forest, among the hills. You see their native houses, long bamboo
+structures raised on piles and thatched with grass, with low eaves
+sloping nearly to the ground. In sylvan glades sacred to the <i>nats</i> you
+pass wooden pillars erected by the roadside, rudely cut, and rudely
+painted with lines and squares and rough figures of knives, and close
+beside them conical grass structures with coloured weathercocks. Split
+bamboos support narrow shelves, whereon are placed the various
+food-offerings with which is sought the goodwill of the evil spirits.</p>
+
+<p>The Kachin men we met were all armed with the formidable <i>dah</i> or native
+sword, whose widened blade they protect in a univalvular sheath of wood.
+They wore Shan jackets and dark knickerbockers; their hair was gathered
+under a turban. They all carried the characteristic embroidered Kachin
+bag over the left shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>The Kachin women are as stunted as the Japanese, and are disfigured with
+the same disproportionate shortness of legs. They wear Shan jackets and
+petticoats of dark-blue; their ornaments are chiefly cowries; their legs
+are bare. Unmarried, they wear no head-dress, but have their hair cut in
+a black mop with a deep fringe to the eyebrows. If married, their
+head-dress is the same as that of the Shan women&mdash;a huge dark-blue
+conical turban. Morality among the Kachin maidens,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> a missionary tells
+me, is not, as we understand the term, believed to exist. There is a
+tradition in the neighbourhood concerning a virtuous maiden; but little
+reliance can be placed on such legendary tales. Among the Kachins each
+clan is ruled by a Sawbwa, whose office "is hereditary, not to the
+eldest son, but to the youngest, or, failing sons, to the youngest
+surviving brother." (Anderson.) All Kachins chew betel-nut and nearly
+all smoke opium&mdash;men, women and children. Goitre is very prevalent among
+them; in some villages Major Couchman believes that as many as 25 per
+cent. of the inhabitants are afflicted with the disease. They have no
+written language, but their spoken language has been romanised by the
+American missionaries in Burma.</p>
+
+<p>We camped within five miles of the British border at the Chinese fortlet
+of Settee, a palisaded camp whose gateway also was hung with heads of
+dacoits. A Chinese Shan was in command, a smart young officer with a
+Burmese wife. He was active, alert, and intelligent, and gave me the
+best room in the series of sheds which formed the barracks. I was made
+very comfortable. There were between forty and fifty soldiers stationed
+in the barracks&mdash;harmless warriors&mdash;who were very attentive. At
+nightfall the tattoo was beaten. The gong sounded; its notes died away
+in a distant murmur, then brayed forth with a stentorian clangour that
+might wake the dead. At the same time a tattoo was beaten on the drum,
+then a gun was fired and the noise ceased, to be repeated again during
+the night at the change of guard. All foes, visible and invisible, were
+in this way scared away from the fort.</p>
+
+<p>Hearing that I was a doctor, the commandant asked me to see several of
+his men who were on the sick list. Among<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> them was one poor young fellow
+dying, in the next room to mine, of remittent fever. When I went to the
+bedside the patient was lying down deadly ill, weak, and emaciated; but
+two of his companions took him by the arms, and, telling him to sit up,
+would have pulled him into what they considered a more respectful
+attitude. In the morning I again went to see the poor fellow. He was
+lying on his side undergoing treatment. An opium-pipe was held to his
+lips by one comrade, while another rolled the pellet of opium and placed
+it heated in the pipe-bowl, so that he might inhale its fumes.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning the officer accompanied me to the gate of the stockade
+and bade me good-bye, with many unintelligible expressions of good will.
+His eight best soldiers were told off to escort me to the frontier,
+distant only fifteen li. It was a splendid walk through the jungle
+across the mountains to the Hongmuho. We passed the outlying stockade of
+the Chinese, and, winding along the spur, came full in view of the
+British camp across the valley, half-way up the opposite slope. By a
+very steep path we descended through the forest to the frontier fort of
+the Chinese, and emerged upon the grassy slope that shelves below it to
+the river.</p>
+
+<p>There are a few bamboo huts on the sward, and here the Chinese guard
+left me; for armed guards are allowed no further. I was led to the ford,
+my pony plunged into the swift stream, and a moment or two later I was
+on British soil and passing the Sepoy outpost, where the guard, to my
+great alarm, for I feared being shot, turned out and saluted me. Then I
+climbed up the steep hill to the British encampment, where the English
+officer commanding, Captain R. G. Iremonger, of the 3rd Burma Regiment,
+gave me a kind reception, and congratulated me upon my successful
+journey.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> He telegraphed to headquarters the news of my arrival. It was
+of no earthly interest to anybody that I, an unknown wanderer, should
+pass through safely; but it was of interest to know that anyone could
+pass through so easily. Reports had only recently reached the Government
+that Western China was in a state of disaffection; that a feeling
+strongly anti-foreign had arisen in Yunnan; and that now, of all times,
+would it be inexpedient to despatch a commission for the delimitation of
+the boundary. My quiet and uninterrupted journey was in direct conflict
+with all such reports.</p>
+
+<p>The encampment of Nampoung is at an elevation of 1500 feet above the
+river. It is well exposed on all sides, and has been condemned by
+military experts. But the law of fortifications which applies to any
+ordinary frontier does not apply to the frontier of China, where there
+is no danger whatsoever. The palisade is irregularly made, and is not
+superior, of course, to any round the Chinese stockades.</p>
+
+<p>The houses are built of bamboo, are raised on piles, and thatched with
+grass. A company of the 3rd Burma Regiment is permanently stationed here
+under an English officer, and consists of 100 men, who are either Sikhs
+or Punjabis, all of splendid stature and military bearing. A picket of
+six men under a non-commissioned native officer guards the ford, and
+permits no armed Chinese to cross the border.</p>
+
+<p>There are numbers of transport mules and ponies. In the creek there are
+plenty of fish; the rod, indeed, is the chief amusement of the officers
+who are exiled on duty to this lonely spot to pass three months in turn
+in almost uninterrupted solitude. There is a telegraph line into Bhamo,
+and it is at this point that connection will be made with the Imperial
+Chinese Telegraphs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At the ford from fifty to one hundred loaded pack-animals, mostly
+carrying cotton, cross into China daily. A toll of six annas is levied
+upon each pack-animal, the money so collected being distributed by the
+Government among those Kachin Sawbwas who have an hereditary right to
+levy this tribute. The money is collected by two Burmese officials, and
+handed daily to the officer commanding. No duty is paid on entering
+Burma. Chinese likin-barriers begin to harass the caravans at Schehleh.</p>
+
+<p>Beautiful views of the surrounding hills, all covered with "lofty forest
+trees, tangled with magnificent creepers, and festooned with orchids,"
+are obtained from the camp. All the country round is extremely fertile,
+yielding with but little labour three crops a year. Cultivation of the
+soil there is none. Fire clears the jungle, and the ashes manure the
+soil; the ground is then superficially scratched, and rice is sown.
+Nothing more is done. Every seed germinates; the paddy ripens, and,
+where one basketful is sown, five hundred basketfuls are gathered. And
+the field lies untouched till again covered with jungle. Thus is the
+heathen rewarded five-hundred-fold in accordance with the law of Nature
+which gives blessing to the labour of the husbandman inversely as he
+deserves it.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening the officer walked down with me to the creek, where I
+bathed in the shadow of the bank, in a favourite pool for fishing. As we
+crossed the field on our return, we met the two Burmese
+tribute-gatherers. They had occasion to speak to the officer, when,
+instead of standing upright like a stalwart and independent Chinaman,
+they squatted humbly on their heels, and, resting their elbows on their
+knees in an attitude of servility, conversed with their superior. How
+different the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> Chinaman, who confesses few people his superior, and none
+of any race beyond the borders of China!</p>
+
+<p>From Nampoung to Bhamo is an easy walk of thirty-three miles. This is
+usually done in two stages, the halting place being the military station
+of Myothit, which is fourteen miles from Nampoung. On leaving Nampoung,
+an escort of a lance-corporal and two soldiers was detailed to accompany
+me. They were Punjabis, men of great stature and warlike aspect; but
+they were presumably out of training, for they arrived at Myothit, limp
+and haggard, an hour or more after we did. There is an admirable road
+through the jungle, maintained in that excellent order characteristic of
+military roads under British supervision. My Chinese from time to time
+questioned me as to the distance. We had gone fifteen li when Laotseng
+asked me how much farther it was to Santien (Myothit). "Three li," I
+said. We walked ten li further. "How far is it now?" he asked. "Only
+five li further," I replied, gravely. We went on another six li, when
+again he asked me: "Teacher M&ocirc;, how many li to Santien?" "Only eight
+more li," I said, and he did not ask me again. I was endeavouring to
+give him information in the fashion that prevails in his own country.</p>
+
+<p>At Myothit we camped in the d&acirc;k bungalow, an unfurnished cottage kept
+for the use of travellers. The encampment is on the outskirts of a
+perfectly flat plain, skirted with jungle-clad hills and covered with
+elephant grass. Through the plain the broad river Taiping flows on its
+muddy way to the Irrawaddy. One hundred sepoys are stationed here under
+a native officer, a Sirdar, Jemadar, or Subadar (I am not certain
+which), who called upon me, and stood by me as I ate my tiffin, and, to
+my great embarrassment, saluted me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> in the most alarming way every time
+my eye unexpectedly caught his. I confess that I did not know the
+gentleman from Adam. I mistook him for an ornamental head-waiter, and,
+as I regarded him as a superfluous nuisance, I told him not to stand
+upon the order of his going but go. I pointed to the steps; and he went,
+sidling off backwards as if from the presence of royalty. Drawing his
+heels together, he saluted me at the stair-top and again at the bottom,
+murmuring words which were more unintelligible to me even than Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>During the night our exposed bungalow was assailed by a fearful storm of
+wind and rain, and for a time I expected it to be bodily lifted off the
+piles and carried to the lee-side of the settlement. The roof leaked in
+a thousand places, rain was driven under the walls, and everything I had
+was soaked with warm water.</p>
+
+<p>Next day we had a pleasant walk into Bhamo, that important military
+station on the left bank of the Irrawaddy. We crossed the Taiping at
+Myothit by a bridge, a temporary and very shaky structure, which is
+every year carried away when the river rises, and every year renewed
+when the caravans take the road after the rains.</p>
+
+<p>Bhamo is 1520 miles by land from Chungking; and it is an equal distance
+further from Chungking to Shanghai. The entire distance I traversed in
+exactly one hundred days, for I purposely waited till the hundredth day
+to complete it. And it surely speaks well of the sense of responsibility
+innate in the Chinese that, during all this time, I never had in my
+employ a Chinese coolie who did not fulfil, with something to spare, all
+that he undertook to do. I paid off my men in Bhamo. To Laotseng I gave
+400 cash too many, and asked<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> him for the change. At once with much
+readiness he ranged some cash on the table in the form of an abacus,
+and, setting down some hieroglyphics on a sheet of paper, he worked out
+a calculation, by which he proved that I owed <i>him</i> 400 cash, and,
+therefore, the accounts were now exactly balanced. For my own expenses I
+gave him 1175 cash in Tengyueh and 400 more in Bhamo, so that my entire
+personal expenses between two points nine days distant from each other
+were rather more than 3<i>s.</i> My entire journey from Shanghai to Bhamo
+cost less than <i>&pound;</i>20 sterling, including my Chinese outfit. Had I
+travelled economically, I estimate that the journey need not have cost
+me more than <i>&pound;</i>14. Had I carried more silver with me, I would still
+further have reduced the total cost of my tour. The gold I bought in
+Yunnan with my surplus silver, I sold in Burma for 20 per cent. profit,
+the rupees which I purchased in Tengyueh for 11<i>d.</i> were worth 13<i>d.</i> in
+Bhamo. For some curios which I purchased in the interior for <i>&pound;</i>2 5<i>s.</i> I
+was offered when I reached civilisation <i>&pound;</i>14. Without doubt the journey
+across China is the cheapest that can be done in all the world.</p>
+
+<p>I was sorry to say good-bye to my men, who had served me so faithfully.
+And I cannot speak more highly of the pleasure of my journey than to
+declare that I felt greater regret when it was finished than I ever felt
+on leaving any other country. The men all through had behaved admirably,
+and it is only fair to add that mine was the common experience of
+travellers in far Western China. Thus a very great traveller in China
+and Thibet (W. W. Rockhill), writing in the <i>Century</i>, April, 1894, on
+the discomforts of his recent journey, says:</p>
+
+<p>"But never a word of complaint from either the Thibetans<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> or my Chinese.
+They were always alert, always good-tempered, always attentive to me,
+and anxious to contribute to my comfort in every way in their power. And
+so I have ever found these peoples, with whom I am glad to say, after
+travelling over 20,000 miles in their countries, I have never exchanged
+a rough word, and among whom I think I have left not one enemy and not a
+few friends."</p>
+
+<p>Two days after their arrival in Bhamo my three men started on their
+return journey to Talifu. They were laden with medicines, stores,
+newspapers, and letters for the mission in Tali, which for months had
+been accumulating in the premises of the American Mission in Bhamo, the
+missionary in charge, amid the multifarious avocations pertaining to his
+post, having found no time to forward them to their destination to his
+lonely Christian brother in the far interior. And, had I not arrived
+when I did, they could not have been sent till after the rains. A coolie
+will carry eighty pounds weight from Bhamo to Tali for 12<i>s.</i>; and I
+need hardly point out that a very small transaction in teak would cover
+the cost of many coolies. Besides, any expenditure incurred would have
+been reimbursed by the Inland Mission. My three men were pursued by
+cruel fate on their return; they all were taken ill at Pupiao. Poor
+"Bones" and the pock-marked coolie died, and Laotseng lay ill in the
+hotel there for weeks, and, when he recovered sufficiently to go on to
+Tali, he had to go without the three loads, which the landlord of the
+inn detained, pending the payment of his board and lodging and the
+burial expenses of his two companions.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">Bhamo, Mandalay, Rangoon, and Calcutta.</span></p>
+
+
+<p>The finest residence in Bhamo is, of course, the American mission.
+America nobly supports her self-sacrificing and devoted sons who go
+forth to arrest the "awful ruin of souls" among the innumerable millions
+of Asia, who are "perishing without hope, having sinned without law."
+The missionary in charge told me that he labours with a "humble heart to
+bring a knowledge of the Saving Truth to the perishing heathen among the
+Kachins." His appointment is one which even a worldly-minded man might
+covet. I will give an instance of his methods. This devoted evangelist
+told me that a poor woman, a Kachin Christian, in whose welfare he felt
+deep personal interest, was, he greatly feared, dying from
+blood-poisoning at a small Christian village one hour's ride up the
+river from Bhamo; and he had little doubt that some surgical
+interference in her case would save her life. I at once offered to go
+and see her. I had received great kindness from many American
+missionaries in China, and it would give me great pleasure, I said, if I
+could be of any service.</p>
+
+<p>The missionary professed to be grateful for my offer, but, instead of
+arranging to go that afternoon, named seven o'clock the following
+morning as the hour when he would call for me to take me to the village.
+At the time appointed I was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> ready; I waited, but no missionary came.
+There was a slight drizzle, sufficient to prevent his going to the sick
+woman but not sufficient to deter him from going to market to the
+Irrawaddy steamer, where I accidentally met him. So far from being
+abashed when he saw me, he took the occasion to tell me what he will, I
+know, pardon me for thinking an inexcusable untruth. He had written, he
+said, to the poor woman telling her, dying as he believed her to be, to
+come down to Bhamo by boat to see me.</p>
+
+<p>In Bhamo I stayed in the comfortable house of the Deputy Commissioner,
+and was treated with the most pleasant hospitality. To my regret, the
+Deputy Commissioner was down the river, and I did not see him. He is
+regarded as one of the ablest men in the service. His rise has been
+rapid, and he was lately invested with the C.I.E.&mdash;there seems, indeed,
+to be no position in Burma that he might not aspire to. In his absence
+his office was being administered by the Assistant Commissioner, a
+courteous young Englishman, who gave me my first experience of the Civil
+Service. I could not but envy the position of this young fellow, and
+marvel at the success which attends our method of administering the
+Indian Empire. Here was a young man of twenty-four, acting as governor
+with large powers over a tract of country of hundreds of square miles&mdash;a
+new country requiring for its proper administration a knowledge of law,
+of finance, of trade, experience of men, and ability to deal with the
+conflicting interests of several native races. Superior to all other
+authorities, civil and military, in his district, he was considered fit
+to fill this post&mdash;and success showed his fitness&mdash;because a year or two
+before he had been one of forty crammed candidates out of 200 who had
+taken the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> highest places in a series of examinations in Latin, English,
+mathematics, &amp;c. With the most limited experience of human life, he had
+obtained his position in exactly the same way that a Chinese Mandarin
+does his&mdash;by competitive examination in subjects which, even less than
+in the case of the Chinese, had little bearing upon his future work; and
+now, like a Chinese Mandarin, "there are few things he isn't."</p>
+
+<p>On the face of it no system appears more preposterous; in its results no
+system was ever more successful. The Assistant Commissioner early learns
+self-reliance, decision, and ability to wield authority; and he can
+always look forward to the time when he may become Chief Commissioner.</p>
+
+<p>There is a wonderful mixture of types in Bhamo. Nowhere in the world,
+not even in Macao, is there a greater intermingling of races. Here live
+in cheerful promiscuity Britishers and Chinese, Shans and Kachins, Sikhs
+and Madrasis, Punjabis, Arabs, German Jews and French adventurers,
+American missionaries and Japanese ladies.</p>
+
+<p>There are many ruined pagodas and some wooden temples which, however, do
+not display the higher features of Burmese architecture. There is a
+club, of course; a polo and football ground, and a cricket ground.
+Inside the fort, among the barracks, there is a building which has a
+double debt to pay, being a theatre at one end and a church at the
+other, the same athletic gentleman being the chief performer at both
+places. But, at its best, Bhamo is a forlorn, miserable, and wretched
+station, where all men seem to regard it as their first duty to the
+stranger to apologise to him for being there.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The distinguished Chinese scholar and traveller, E. Colborne Baber, who
+wrote the classic book of travel in Western China, was formerly British
+Resident in Bhamo. He spoke Chinese unusually well and was naturally
+proud of his accomplishment. Now the ordinary Chinaman has this feature
+in common with many of the European races, that, if he thinks you cannot
+speak his language, he <i>will</i> not understand you, even if you speak to
+him with perfect correctness of idiom and tone. And Baber had an
+experience of this which deeply hurt his pride. Walking one day in the
+neighbourhood of Bhamo, he met two Chinese&mdash;strangers&mdash;and began
+speaking to them in his best Mandarin. They heard him with unmoved
+stolidity, and, when he had finished, one turned to his companion and
+said, as if struck with his discovery, "the language of these foreign
+barbarians sounds not unlike our own!"</p>
+
+<p>In Bhamo I had the pleasure of meeting the three members of the Boundary
+Commission who represented us in some preliminary delimitation questions
+with the Chinese Government. A better choice could not have been made.
+M. Martini, a Frenchman, has been twenty years in Upper Burma, and is
+our D.S.P. (District Superintendent of Police). Mr. Warry, the Chinese
+adviser to the Burmese Government, is one of the ablest men who ever
+graduated from the Consular Staff in China; while Captain H. R. Davies,
+of the Staff Corps, who is on special duty in the Intelligence
+Department, is not only an exceptionally able officer, but is the most
+accomplished linguist of Upper Burma. These were the three
+representatives.</p>
+
+<p>I sold my pony in Bhamo. I was exceedingly sorry to part with it, for it
+had come with me 800 miles in thirty days, over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> an unusually difficult
+road, at great variations of altitude, and amid many changes of climate.
+And it was always in good spirit, brave and hardy, carrying me as surely
+the last twenty miles as it had the first twenty. Yet, when I came to
+sell it, I was astonished to learn how many were its defects. Its
+height, which was 12.3 in Nampoung, had shrunk three days later to 11.3
+in Bhamo. This one subaltern told me who came to look at the pony with
+the view, he said, of making me an offer. Another officer proved to me
+that the off foreleg was gone hopelessly; a third confirmed this
+diagnosis of his friend, and in a clinical lecture demonstrated that the
+poor beast was spavined, and that its near hind frog was rotten, "as all
+Chinese ponies' are," he added. One of the mounted constabulary, a smart
+officer, fortunately discovered in time that the pony was a roarer;
+while the Hungarian Israelite who lends help on notes of hand,
+post-obits, personal applications, and other insecurities, and is on
+terms of friendly intimacy with most of the garrison, when about to make
+an offer, found, to his great regret, that the pony's hind legs were
+even more defective than the fore. The end of it was that I had to sell
+the pony&mdash;for what it cost me. I am indebted to the Reverend Mr.
+Roberts, of the American Baptist Mission, for helping me to sell my
+pony. Mr. Roberts has a pious gift for buying ponies and selling
+them&mdash;at a profit. He offered me 40 rupees for my pony. I mentioned this
+offer at the Bhamo Club, when a civilian present at once offered me 50
+rupees for the pony; he did not know the pony, he explained, but&mdash;he
+knew Roberts.</p>
+
+<p>In a steamer of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company I came down the river
+from Bhamo to Mandalay. When I left the Commissioner's bungalow, the
+entire staff of the establishment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> and of some neighbouring bungalows
+assembled to do me honour, creeping up to me, and with deep humility
+carrying each an article of my possessions from my room down to the
+porch. There were the <i>dhobie</i> and <i>bearer</i>, the waterman with his
+goatskin waterbag, the washerman who washed my blue Chinese garments as
+white as his own, the <i>syce</i> who did not collect grass, the cook who
+sent me ten bad eggs in three days, and the Christian Madrasi, the
+laziest rascal in Bhamo, who early confessed to me his change of faith
+and the transformation it had effected in the future prospects of his
+soul. There was the Burmese watchman, and the English-speaking Burmese
+clerk, and the coolie who went to the bazaar for me, and many others.
+They lined the stairs as I came out, and placed their hands reverently
+to their foreheads when I passed by. It was pleasant to see such
+disinterested evidence of their good will, and my only regret was that I
+could not reward them according to their deserts. But to the Chinese
+coolie who was grinning to see my paltry outfit carried by so many
+hands, and who gathered together all I possessed and swung off with it
+down past the temples to the steamer landing in the native city, I gave
+a day's pay, and cheerfully&mdash;though he then asked for more.</p>
+
+<p>In Mandalay I was taken to the club, and passed many hours there reading
+the home papers and wandering through its gilded halls. Few clubs in the
+world have such a sumptuous setting as this, for it is installed in the
+throne-room and chambers and reception-halls of the palace of King
+Theebaw.</p>
+
+<p>In the very centre of the building is a seven-storeyed spire,
+"emblematic of royalty and religion," which the Burmese look upon as the
+"exact centre of creation." The reception-hall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> at the foot of the
+throne is now the English chapel; the reading-room with its gilded da&iuml;s
+where the Queen sat on her throne, with its lofty roof, its pillars of
+teak, and walls all ablaze with gilding, was the throne-room of
+Theebaw's chief Queen.</p>
+
+<p>Mandalay is largely Chinese, and on the outskirts of the city there is a
+handsome temple which bears the charming inscription, so characteristic
+of the Chinese, "enlightenment finds its way even among the outer
+barbarians."</p>
+
+<p>There is a military hospital with two nursing sisters, highly trained
+ladies from Bart.'s. Australians are now so widely distributed over the
+world that it did not surprise me to find that one of the two sisters
+comes from Melbourne.</p>
+
+<p>From Mandalay I went by train to Rangoon, where I lived in a pretty
+villa among noble trees on the lower slope of the hill which is crowned
+with the famous golden pagoda, the "Shway-dagon," the most sacred temple
+of Indo-China. We looked out upon the park and the royal lake. I early
+went to the Intelligence Department and saw Major Couchman. In his
+office I met the chief Chinese interpreter, a Chinaman with a rare
+genius for languages. He is a native of Fuhkien province, and, of
+course, speaks the Fuhkien dialect; he knows also Cantonese and
+Mandarin. In addition, he possesses French, Hindustani, Burmese, Shan,
+and Sanscrit, and, in an admirable translation which he has made of a
+Chinese novel into English, he frequently quotes Latin. Fit assistant he
+would make to Max M&uuml;ller; his services command a high salary.</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese in Rangoon are a predominating force in the prosperity of
+the city. They have deeply impressed their potentiality upon the
+community. "It seems almost certain,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> says a great authority, perhaps
+<i>the</i> greatest authority on Burma&mdash;J. G. Scott (Shway Yoe)&mdash;"that in no
+very long time Burma, or, at any rate, the large trading towns of Burma,
+will be for all practical purposes absorbed by the Chinese traders, just
+as Singapore and Penang are virtually Chinese towns. Unless some
+marvellous upheaval of energy takes place in the Burmese character, the
+plodding, unwearying Chinaman is almost certainly destined to overrun
+the country to the exclusion of the native race."</p>
+
+<p>The artisans of Rangoon are largely Chinese, and the carpenters
+exclusively so. The Chinese marry Burmese women, and, treating their
+wives with the consideration which the Chinaman invariably extends to
+his foreign wife in a foreign country, they are desired as husbands even
+above the Burmans. Next to the British, the only indispensable element
+in the community is now the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p>The best known figure in Burma is the Reverend John Ebenezer Marks,
+D.D., Principal of the St. John's College of the S.P.G. Dr. Marks has
+been thirty-five years in Burma, is still hale and hearty, brimful of
+reminiscences, and is one of the most amusing companions in the world. I
+think it was he who converted King Theebaw to Christianity. His school
+is a curiosity. It is an anthropological institute with perhaps the
+finest collection of human cross-breeds in existence. It is away out
+beyond the gaol, in large wooden buildings set in extensive playgrounds.
+Here he has 550 students, all but four of whom are Asiatics of fifteen
+different nationalities&mdash;Chinese, Karens, Kachins, Shans, and a varied
+assortment of Hindoos and Malays, both pure and blended with the native
+Burmese. All the different races represented in Burma have intermarried
+with the native Burmese, and the resulting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> half-breeds have crossed
+with other half-breeds. Most of the better class Eurasian boys
+(European-Asian) are educated here, some being supported by their
+fathers, some not. The former Dr. Marks ingeniously calls after their
+mothers; the latter, who have been neglected, retain the names (when
+they are known), of their fathers. It is amusing to meet among the
+latter the names of so many brave Englishmen who, in the earlier days
+when morals had not attained the strictness that now characterises them,
+gallantly served their country in Burma.</p>
+
+<p>No woman in the world is more catholic in her tastes than the Burmese.
+She bestows her loves as variously as the Japanese. She marries with
+equal readiness Protestant or Catholic, Turk, Infidel, or Jew. She
+clings cheerfully to whichever will support her; but above all she
+desires the Chinaman. No one treats her so well as the Chinaman. If she
+is capable of experiencing the emotion of love for any being outside her
+own race, she feels it for the Chinaman, who is of a cognate race to her
+own, is hard-working, frugal, and industrious, permits her to live in
+idleness, and delights her with presents, loving her children with that
+affection which the Chinaman has ever been known to bestow upon his
+offspring. The Chino-Burmese is not quite the equal of his father, but
+he is markedly superior to the Burmese. The best half-caste in the East
+is, of course, the Eurasian of British parentage. Englishmen going to
+Burma are, as a rule, picked men, physically powerful, courageous,
+energetic, and enterprising; for it is the possession of these qualities
+which has sent them to the East, either for business or in the service
+of their country. And their Burmese companions&mdash;of course I speak of a
+condition of things which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> is gradually ceasing to exist&mdash;are all picked
+women, selected for the comeliness of their persons and the sweetness of
+their manners.</p>
+
+<p>After a stay of two or three weeks in Rangoon, I went round by the
+British India steamer to Calcutta. Ill fortune awaited me here. The
+night after my arrival I was laid down with remittent fever, and a few
+days later I nearly died. The reader will, I am sure, pardon me for
+obtruding this purely personal matter. But, as I opened this book with a
+testimony of gratitude to the distinguished surgeon who cut a spear
+point from my body, where nine months before it had been thrust by a
+savage in New Guinea, so should I be sorry to close this narrative
+without recording a word of thanks to those who befriended me in
+Calcutta.</p>
+
+<p>I was a stranger, knowing only two men in all Calcutta; but they were
+friends in need, who looked after me during my illness with the greatest
+kindness. A leading doctor of Calcutta attended me, and treated me with
+unremitting attention and great skill. To Mr. John Bathgate and Mr.
+Maxwell Prophit and to Dr. Arnold Caddy I owe a lasting debt of
+gratitude. And what shall I say of that kind nurse&mdash;dark of complexion,
+but most fair to look upon&mdash;whose presence in the sick room almost
+consoled me for being ill? Bless her dear heart! Even hydrochlorate of
+quinine tasted sweet from her fingers.</p>
+
+
+<p class='center'><span class="smcap">The End.</span></p>
+
+<p><a name="img031" id="img031"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/031.png"><img src="images/031_th.png" width="400" height="225" alt="Chinese Map of Chungking." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Chinese Map of Chungking.</span>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX.</h2>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Adridge, Dr., of Ichang, <a href="#Page_10">10</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">d'Amade, Capt., in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ancestral worship, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Anderson, Dr. J., cited, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Anpien, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Anti-foreign riots, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Arsenal in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Augustine mission, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Baber, E. C., cited, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Bhamo, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">on distances, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ball, Dyer, cited, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Baller, Rev. F. W., cited, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Banks and banking, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Barrow, Sir John, cited, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">B&eacute;raud, P&egrave;re, of Suifu, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bhamo (Singai), <a href="#Page_279">279-287</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bible Christian mission, in Chaotong, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Tongchuan, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Blakiston, Capt., cited, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Blodget, Rev. Dr., cited, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Boell, M., of <i>Le Temps</i>, in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bonvalot, G., in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bridges, some notable, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Broomhall, B., cited, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Browne, Col. Horace, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bugs in China and Spain, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Burdon, Bishop, cited, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cameron, Dr., missionary traveller, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cantonese, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Australia, <a href="#Page_222">222-224</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Caravans of cotton, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Carruthers, A. G. H., assistant commissioner of customs, Chungking, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cash currency of China, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chairen, the policeman of China, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chang-chen Nien, Brigadier-General, Tengyueh, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chang Chi Tung, the viceroy, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chang-show-hsien, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chang Yan Miun, the giant of Yunnan, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chaochow, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chaotong, the city of, <a href="#Page_97">97-116</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">its converts, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chehki, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ch'en, merchant prince, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chennan-chow, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chentu, city, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">river, <a href="#Page_62">62</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chiang, telegraph clerk, Yunnan, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">China Inland Mission, in Hankow, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Wanhsien, <a href="#Page_27">27-29</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Chungking, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Suifu, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Tali, <a href="#Page_213">213-216</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">results in Yunnan province, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in China generally, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">its teaching, <a href="#Page_65">65-71</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chinese, in Australia, <a href="#Page_222">222-224</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Burma, <a href="#Page_288">288-290</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chinese, avarice, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">benevolence, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">beauty of women, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">cards, visiting, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">characters, reverence for, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">courtesy, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">desire to have children, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">etiquette, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">friendliness, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">good nature, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">gratitude, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">inaccuracy, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">indifference to pain, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">to sound, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">irreverence, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">justification by works, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">kindness to children, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">laughter, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">love at first sight, <a href="#Page_153">153-155</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">politeness, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">respect for old age, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">thoughtfulness, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">true felicity, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">wonderful memory, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chipatzu, <a href="#Page_22">22</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chueh, telegraph operator and interpreter, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chungking, city of, <a href="#Page_34">34-39</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chuhsing-fu, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Clarke, Mr. G. W., missionary traveller, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Clarke, Marcus, cited, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Coal on the Yangtse, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Coffins in China, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Colquhoun, A. R., in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Conversion, instances of rapid, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Converts, in China, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Wanhsien, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Chungking, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Suifu, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Chaotong, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tongchuan, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Yunnan City, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Yunnan Province, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Talifu, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cooke, G. W., cited, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Coolies' enormous loads, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Couchman, Major, cited, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Rangoon, <a href="#Page_288">288</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Crockery, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Customs, China Inland (likin-barriers), <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Customs, Imperial Maritime, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35-38</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Davenport, Dr. Cecil, medical missionary, Chungking, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Davies, Capt. H. R., Bhamo, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Davis, Sir J. F., cited, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dedeken, P&egrave;re, of Kuldja, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">De Gorostarza, P&egrave;re, Provicaire in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">De Guignes, cited, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Distances in China, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Doctors in China, <a href="#Page_107">107-110</a>; mule-doctor, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Doolittle, Rev. Justus, cited, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Doudart de la Gr&eacute;e, in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Douglas, R. K., cited, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dudgeon, Dr. J., cited, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Du Halde, cited, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dymond, Rev. Frank, missionary, Chaotong, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Eclipse of the Sun, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Edkins, Rev. Dr. J., cited, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Eitel, Rev. Dr. E. J., cited, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Excoffier, P&egrave;re, of Yunnan, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Famine in Chaotong, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Tongchuan, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">on the way to Yunnan, <a href="#Page_137">137-144</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fan-yien-tsen, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Farrar, Ven. Archdeacon, cited, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Feng-hsiang, Gorge, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fengshui-ling, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Feng-tu-hsien, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fenouil, Monseigneur, of Yunnan, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fraser, Consul E. H., Chungking, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fuchou, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Fungshui</i>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fung-yen-tung, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fu-to-kuan, fort of, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ganai, Shan town, <a href="#Page_254">254-256</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gates of a Chinese city, <a href="#Page_174">174</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Geary, H. Grattan, cited, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Giles, H. A., cited, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gill, Mr. Hope, missionary, Wanhsien, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gill, Capt. W., cited, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Girls in China, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">bought, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">sold, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">price of, <a href="#Page_100">100</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Goitre, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">its prevalence, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gold, on the Yangtse, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_158">158-160</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Graham, Mr., missionary, Yunnan, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grosvenor Mission in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Guinness, Miss G., cited, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Haas, M., <a href="#Page_42">42-44</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hankow, the city of, <a href="#Page_3">3-8</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hanyang, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Heads of criminals, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">of dacoits, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hirth, Dr. F., Commissioner of Customs, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hobson, H. E., cited, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hokiangpu, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hongmuho, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275-277</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hosie, A. M., cited, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hsiakwan, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hsintan rapids, <a href="#Page_15">15</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Huanglien-pu, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">goitre at, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Huc, Abb&eacute;, cited, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Iangkai, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ichang, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Infanticide in China, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Chaotong, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Tongchuan, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Inquirers at Wanhsien, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Yunnan, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Tali, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Iremonger, Capt. R. G., Nampoung, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Jensen, Mr. C., in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">experiences in China, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">on distances, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">to construct line to Burma, <a href="#Page_238">238</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Jesuit Missionaries in China, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">John, Rev. Dr. Griffith, cited, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kachins ("protected barbarians"), <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kanhliang, Shan chief, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kaw Hong Beng, Private Secretary to Viceroy, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kiangti, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kong-shan, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kueichow on the Yangtse, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kuhtsing, its converts, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kung Chao-yuan, Minister to Great Britain, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kung-t'-an-ho, <a href="#Page_33">33</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Kweichou-fu, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lacouperie, Terrien de, cited, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lanchihsien, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Laokai, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Laowatan river, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>; town, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lay, G. T., cited, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Leitoupo, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lenz, F. G., in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Li Han Chang, in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Li Hung Chang, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">on opium, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Ling chi</i>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Li Pi Chang, Telegraph Manager, Yunnan, <a href="#Page_151">151-153</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Li-Sieh-tai, of Tengyueh, <a href="#Page_246">246</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Little, A. J., cited, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Chungking, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Little river, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Liu, Colonel, of Chinese Boundary Commission, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Liu, the Viceroy, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lockhart, Dr. W., cited, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Loh-Ta-Jen, Chentai at Ichang, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">London Missionary Society, Hankow, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Chungking, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lorain, P&egrave;re, Procureur in Chungking, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Luchow, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lu-feng-hsien, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Luho, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">MacCarthy, Justin, cited, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">MacGowan, Rev. Dr. D. J., cited, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Maire, P&egrave;re, of Tongchuan, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mander, S. S., cited, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Manyuen (Manwyne), <a href="#Page_264">264-269</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Marco Polo, cited, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Margary, A. R., cited, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">his murder, <a href="#Page_264">264-269</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Marks, Rev. Dr. J. E., <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Martin, Rev. Dr. W. A. P., cited, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Martini, M. (D.S.P.), in Bhamo, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mason, Rev. G. L., cited, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mateer, Rev. C. W., cited, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Meadows, T. T., cited, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Medhurst, Rev. W. H., cited, <a href="#Page_87">87</a> (wrongly written "Meadows"), <a href="#Page_197">197</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Medhurst, Sir W. H., cited, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Medicines in China, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107-110</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mekong river, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mencius, cited, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Methodist Episcopalian Mission, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Michie, A., cited, <a href="#Page_124">124</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Missionaries, success in China, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">numbers in Hankow, <a href="#Page_6">6</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Missions &Eacute;trang&egrave;res de Paris, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mi Tsang Gorge, <a href="#Page_17">17</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mohammedans, and opium, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Chaotong, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">near Tongchuan, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Tali, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">insurrection, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">superiority, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>;</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">the milkman, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Momien (Tengyueh), the city of, <a href="#Page_243">243-249</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Money, changing, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">remittance of, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Morgan, C. L., cited, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Morphia, imported, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moule, Bishop, cited, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moutot, P&egrave;re, Provicaire in Suifu, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Muirhead, Rev. W., cited, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mungtze, <a href="#Page_148">148-150</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Myothit (Santien), <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nampoung, encampment, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275-278</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nantien, fort of, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Opium, imports and exports of, <a href="#Page_46">46-48</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Hankow, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Chungking, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Suifu, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">demoralising influence of, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&mdash;&mdash; refuge, Chungking, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">&mdash;&mdash; ports, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">poisoning by, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">my chairbearers and, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">my coolie and, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">appeal for suppression, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">d'Orleans, Prince Henri, cited, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Parricide in China, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pearson, Prof. C. H., cited, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Peking Gazette</i>, cited, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pen, telegraph manager, Tengyueh, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">P&ecirc;ng Y&uuml;-lin, high commissioner, cited, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pidgin-English, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Piercy, Rev. G., cited, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ping-shan-pa, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pits for the dead, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Plague, bubonic, in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pollard, Rev. S., missionary, Tongchuan, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Poppy, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">surreptitiously grown, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Post-offices, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Prisons in China, <a href="#Page_209">209-211</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Punishments in China, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pup&ecirc;ng, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pupiao, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">my men die at, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Reade, Charles, cited, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Reed, Miss M., cited, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Reid, Rev. G., cited, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Rice Christians," <a href="#Page_6">6</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Roberts, Rev. Mr., missionary, Bhamo, <a href="#Page_286">286</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rockhill, W. W., cited, <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">St. Thomas, visit to Suifu, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Salween river, <a href="#Page_237">237-240</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Santa, Shan town, <a href="#Page_259">259-263</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Schehleh, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scott, J. G., cited, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sengki-ping, <a href="#Page_84">84</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Settee, fort of, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shachiaokai, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shang-kwan, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shans, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256-269</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shih-pao-chai, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shuichai, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shweli river, <a href="#Page_242">242</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Silver in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Tengyueh, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Singai (Bhamo), <a href="#Page_218">218</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sladen, Major, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Small feet, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Small-pox, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Smith, Rev. A. H., cited, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Smith, Rev. John, missionary, Talifu, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Smith, Mr. Stanley P., his rapid conversion of a Chinaman, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Soldiers, their weapons, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">fierceness of aspect, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">courage, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Squeezing" in China, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Stead, W. T., cited, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Suicide by opium, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">land of, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Suifu, the city of, <a href="#Page_62">62-75</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sutherland, Rev. Dr. A., cited, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Swinburne, A. C., cited, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Szechuen, "country of the clouds," <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">population, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">contrasted with Yunnan, <a href="#Page_85">85-88</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Catholic stronghold, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Taipingkai, Shan town, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Taiping-pu, <a href="#Page_226">226</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Taiping river, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tak-wan-hsien, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tak-wan-leo, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Talichao, <a href="#Page_234">234</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Talifu, the city of, <a href="#Page_202">202-219</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">its converts, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tanto, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Taoshakwan, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tao&#363;en, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tawantzu, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Taylor, Rev. Dr. J. Hudson, cited, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">on opium, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">on ancestral worship, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Chinese in lake of fire, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tchih-li-pu, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Telegraph, in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Tali, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Yungchang, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">in Tengyueh, <a href="#Page_243">243-248</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">system of telegraphing Chinese characters, <a href="#Page_166">166-168</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">telegraphic transfers, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tengyueh (Momien), the city of, <a href="#Page_243">243-249</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Term question," <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Theatre in Tengyueh, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tomm&eacute;, M., in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tongchuan, the city of, <a href="#Page_120">120-134</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">its converts, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tonquin, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tragedy of the Tali valley, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tremberth, Rev. Mr., missionary, Chaotong, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tsen Y&uuml;-ying, the cruel Viceroy, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tung-lo-hsia, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Turner, Rev. F. Storrs, cited, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tu Wen Hsiu, the Mohammedan Sultan, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ullathorne, Bishop, cited, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vial, P&egrave;re, of Yunnan, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Voltaire, cited, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Von Richthofen, cited, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wanhsien, the city of, <a href="#Page_24">24-31</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Warren, Consul Pelham, of Hankow, <a href="#Page_8">8</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Warry, Mr., Chinese adviser to the Burmese Government, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wherry, Rev. J., cited, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Widows, virtuous, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Williams, Rev. Dr. S. Wells, cited, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Williamson, Rev. Dr. A. W., cited, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wong, banker in Yunnan, <a href="#Page_163">163-166</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wong-wen-shao, the Viceroy, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Woodin, Rev. S. F., cited, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Woolston, Miss S. H., cited, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wuchang, <a href="#Page_3">3</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wuntho Sawbwa, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wushan Gorge, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wushan-hsien, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yangki river, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"<i>Yang kweitze</i>", <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yanglin, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yangpi, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yang Yu-ko, Imperialist general, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yeh, of the Chinese Boundary Commission, <a href="#Page_224">224</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yehtan rapid, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yenwanshan, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ying-wu-kwan, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yuenchuan, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yungchang, the city of, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yunnan, the city of, <a href="#Page_147">147-183</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">its converts, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">the province of, <a href="#Page_85">85-88</a>;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">its converts, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yunnanhsien, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yunnan Yeh, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></span><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="padding">
+<p><a name="img032" id="img032"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<a href="images/032.png"><img src="images/032_th.png" width="400" height="342" alt="Rough Sketch-Map of China and Burma showing Author&#39;s
+Route from Shanghai to Rangoon." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">Rough Sketch-Map of China and Burma showing Author&#39;s
+Route from Shanghai to Rangoon.</span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<div class='bbox'>
+<h4><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Typographical errors corrected in text</h4>
+<p>
+<br />
+<a href="#Page_vii">Page vii</a>: Hankow replaced with Ichang in chapter title<br />
+<a href="#Page_ix">Page ix</a>: Teng-yueh replaced with Tengyueh<br />
+<a href="#Page_8">Page 8</a>: "My Chinese Passport" replaced with "The
+Author's Chinese Passport"<br />
+<a href="#Page_9">Page 9</a>: Kweichou replaced with Kweichow<br />
+<a href="#Page_22">Page 22</a>: Kueichou replaced with Kweichou<br />
+<a href="#Page_29">Page 29</a>: mid-day replaced with midday; mission replaced
+with missionary<br />
+<a href="#Page_30">Page 30</a>: Kueichou replaced with Kweichou<br />
+<a href="#Page_32">Page 32</a>: hill-sides replaced with hillsides<br />
+<a href="#Page_33">Page 33</a>: tow-line replaced with towline<br />
+<a href="#Page_34">Page 34</a>: Tung-to-hsia replaced with Tung-lo-hsia<br />
+<a href="#Page_44">Page 44</a>: Chung-king replaced with Chungking<br />
+<a href="#Page_47">Page 47</a>: Fuh-kien replaced with Fuhkien<br />
+<a href="#Page_57">Page 57</a>: rape seed replaced with rape-seed<br />
+<a href="#Page_58">Page 58</a>: mainroad replaced with main road<br />
+<a href="#Page_61">Page 61</a>: Comma after "Chinese, who," removed<br />
+<a href="#Page_62">Page 62</a>: tow-rope replaced with towrope<br />
+<a href="#Page_63">Page 63</a>: Tali-fu replaced with Talifu<br />
+<a href="#Page_64">Page 64</a>: tr&ocirc;p mat&egrave;rialistes italicised<br />
+<a href="#Page_69">Page 69</a>: ling-chi replaced with Ling chi<br />
+<a href="#Page_76">Page 76</a>: Semi-colon following Chaotong replaced with comma<br />
+<a href="#Page_77">Page 77</a>: Takwan-hsien replaced with Tak-wan-hsien, twice<br />
+<a href="#Page_78">Page 78</a>: Comma after "yellow rape-seed" removed;
+half-penny replaced with halfpenny<br />
+<a href="#Page_91">Page 91</a>: Chen-tu replaced with Chentu<br />
+<a href="#Page_96">Page 96</a>: ill paved replaced with ill-paved<br />
+<a href="#Page_97">Page 97</a>: Semi-colon following Chaotong replaced with comma<br />
+<a href="#Page_105">Page 105</a>: Etrang&egrave;res replaced with &Eacute;trang&egrave;res<br />
+<a href="#Page_111">Page 111</a>: trival replaced with trivial<br />
+<a href="#Page_118">Page 118</a>: main-road replaced with main road<br />
+<a href="#Page_125">Page 125</a>: Semi-colon after Tongchuan replaced with comma<br />
+<a href="#Page_139">Page 139</a>: Comma after "other heathen country" replaced
+with full stop<br />
+<a href="#Page_142">Page 142</a>: Kongshan replaced with Kong-shan<br />
+<a href="#Page_149">Page 149</a>: Chung-king corrected to Chungking<br />
+<a href="#Page_150">Page 150</a>: Yesutang replaced with Yesu-tang<br />
+<a href="#Page_154">Page 154</a>: Double quotes inside double quotes replaced with
+single quotes (single quotes used for the last reported speech in the story)<br />
+<a href="#Page_155">Page 155</a>: Single quote after "pretty safe" added;
+thick-neck replaced with thickneck<br />
+<a href="#Page_156">Page 156</a>: Momein replaced with Momien<br />
+<a href="#Page_161">Page 161</a>: uncivilized and civilization replaced with
+uncivilised and civilisation<br />
+<a href="#Page_162">Page 162</a>: Mexican Dollar replaced with Mexican dollar<br />
+<a href="#Page_164">Page 164</a>: Chung-king replaced with Chungking<br />
+<a href="#Page_172">Page 172</a>: Muntze replaced with Mungtze<br />
+<a href="#Page_184">Page 184</a>: Tong-chuan replaced with Tongchuan<br />
+<a href="#Page_186">Page 186</a>: Tai-ping replaced with Taiping<br />
+<a href="#Page_190">Page 190</a>: Full stop added after "in rags and barefoot"<br />
+<a href="#Page_192">Page 192</a>: Tali replaced with Talifu<br />
+<a href="#Page_193">Page 193</a>: a'accord replaced with d'accord<br />
+<a href="#Page_197">Page 197</a>: Question mark after "...that of a doctor?"
+replaced with full stop<br />
+<a href="#Page_199">Page 199</a>: mid-day replaced with midday<br />
+<a href="#Page_200">Page 200</a>: Yunnen replaced with Yunnan<br />
+<a href="#Page_204">Page 204</a>: Hsia-kwan replaced with Hsiakwan, twice<br />
+<a href="#Page_206">Page 206</a>: Commas added after "we replied" and "(you to go
+on)"<br />
+<a href="#Page_208">Page 208</a>: Mahommedan replaced with Mohammedan<br />
+<a href="#Page_219">Page 219</a>: Yung-chang replaced with Yungchang<br />
+<a href="#Page_220">Page 220</a>: Tali-fu replaced with Talifu<br />
+<a href="#Page_230">Page 230</a>: splended replaced with splendid<br />
+<a href="#Page_233">Page 233</a>: Full stop removed after Rivers; tea house
+replaced with teahouse<br />
+<a href="#Page_236">Page 236</a>: inn-keeper replaced with innkeeper<br />
+<a href="#Page_238">Page 238</a>: Laots&ecirc;ng replaced with Laotseng<br />
+<a href="#Page_246">Page 246</a>: Yung-chang replaced with Yungchang; "and other"
+replaced with "and another"<br />
+<a href="#Page_249">Page 249</a>: Yunnaness replaced with Yunnanese<br />
+<a href="#Page_259">Page 259</a>: Liliputians replaced with Lilliputians<br />
+<a href="#Page_270">Page 270</a>: Full stops after Power and Kachins removed<br />
+<a href="#Page_294">Page 294</a>: Chunking replaced with Chungking<br />
+<a href="#Page_295">Page 295</a>: Fenghsiang replaced with Feng-hsiang<br />
+<a href="#Page_296">Page 296</a>: Lingchi replaced with Ling chi<br />
+<a href="#Page_298">Page 298</a>: Subtopics under entry "Soldiers" separated with
+semi-colons<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Inconsistent capitalisations between the Table of
+Contents and individual chapter titles have been retained.</p>
+
+<p>Discrepancies between illustration captions and those in
+the list of illustrations retained, unless noted above.
+As the illustrations were not included with the original
+scans but were located during processing of this book,
+where there have been small differences the List of
+Illustrations has generally been preferred.</p>
+
+<p>One instance of Taouen with an unclear mark above the
+/u/, one instance of Tao&#363;en. This has been left as is.</p>
+
+<p>Punctuation of standard abbreviations (Mr., Mrs., per
+cent., s. ) has been standardised.</p>
+
+<p>Pounds, shillings and pence have all been italicised.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's An Australian in China, by George Ernest Morrison
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AUSTRALIAN IN CHINA ***
+
+***** This file should be named 19172-h.htm or 19172-h.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/1/7/19172/
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg's An Australian in China, by George Ernest Morrison
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: An Australian in China
+       Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma
+
+Author: George Ernest Morrison
+
+Release Date: September 4, 2006 [EBook #19172]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AUSTRALIAN IN CHINA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                        |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in        |
+    | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of   |
+    | this document.                                             |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Macrons are shown as [=o] and [=u]                         |
+    |                                                            |
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: THE AUTHOR IN WESTERN CHINA.]
+
+
+AN AUSTRALIAN IN CHINA
+
+BEING THE NARRATIVE OF A QUIET JOURNEY ACROSS CHINA TO BURMA
+
+BY GEORGE ERNEST MORRISON M.D. EDIN., F.R.G.S.
+
+
+_THIRD EDITION_
+
+LONDON: HORACE COX WINDSOR HOUSE, BREAM'S BUILDINGS E.C.
+
+MDCCCCII
+
+
+TO
+
+JOHN CHIENE, M.D.,
+
+F.R.C.S.E., F.R.S.E., ETC.,
+
+PROFESSOR OF SURGERY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH,
+
+WHO GAVE ME BACK THE POWER OF LOCOMOTION.
+
+I GRATEFULLY
+
+INSCRIBE THIS VOLUME.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+
+  CHAPTER I.                                              PAGES
+  INTRODUCTORY--MAINLY ABOUT MISSIONARIES AND THE CITY
+  OF HANKOW                                                1-11
+
+  CHAPTER II.
+  FROM HANKOW TO WANHSIEN, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF
+  CHINESE WOMEN AND THE RAPIDS OF THE YANGTSE             12-23
+
+  CHAPTER III.
+  THE CITY OF WANHSIEN, AND THE JOURNEY FROM WANHSIEN
+  TO CHUNGKING                                            24-34
+
+  CHAPTER IV.
+  THE CITY OF CHUNGKING--THE CHINESE CUSTOMS--THE
+  FAMOUS MONSIEUR HAAS, AND A FEW WORDS ON
+  THE OPIUM FALLACY                                       35-49
+
+  CHAPTER V.
+  THE JOURNEY FROM CHUNGKING TO SUIFU--CHINESE INNS       50-62
+
+  CHAPTER VI.
+  THE CITY OF SUIFU--THE CHINA INLAND MISSION, WITH
+  SOME GENERAL REMARKS ABOUT MISSIONARIES IN CHINA        63-75
+
+  CHAPTER VII.
+  SUIFU TO CHAOTONG, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE
+  PROVINCE OF YUNNAN--CHINESE PORTERS, POSTAL
+  ARRANGEMENTS, AND BANKS                                 76-96
+
+  CHAPTER VIII.
+  THE CITY OF CHAOTONG, WITH SOME REMARKS ON ITS
+  POVERTY, INFANTICIDE, SELLING FEMALE CHILDREN
+  INTO SLAVERY, TORTURES, AND THE CHINESE INSENSIBILITY
+  TO PAIN                                                97-106
+
+  CHAPTER IX.
+  MAINLY ABOUT CHINESE DOCTORS                          107-114
+
+  CHAPTER X.
+  THE JOURNEY FROM CHAOTONG TO TONGCHUAN                115-124
+
+  CHAPTER XI.
+  THE CITY OF TONGCHUAN, WITH SOME REMARKS UPON
+  INFANTICIDE                                           125-134
+
+  CHAPTER XII.
+  TONGCHUAN TO YUNNAN CITY                              135-147
+
+  CHAPTER XIII.
+  AT YUNNAN CITY                                        148-157
+
+  CHAPTER XIV.
+  GOLD, BANKS, AND TELEGRAPHS IN YUNNAN                 158-170
+
+  CHAPTER XV.
+  THE FRENCH MISSION AND THE ARSENAL IN YUNNAN CITY     171-182
+
+  CHAPTER XVI.
+  THE JOURNEY FROM YUNNAN CITY TO TALIFU                183-201
+
+  CHAPTER XVII.
+  THE CITY OF TALI--PRISONS--POISONING--PLAGUES AND
+  MISSIONS                                              202-217
+
+  CHAPTER XVIII.
+  THE JOURNEY FROM TALI, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE
+  CHARACTER OF THE CANTONESE, CHINESE EMIGRANTS,
+  CRETINS, AND WIFE-BEATING IN CHINA                    218-232
+
+  CHAPTER XIX.
+  THE MEKONG AND SALWEEN RIVERS--HOW TO TRAVEL
+  IN CHINA                                              233-243
+
+  CHAPTER XX.
+  THE CITY OF TENGYUEH--THE CELEBRATED WUNTHO
+  SAWBWA--SHAN SOLDIERS                                 244-259
+
+  CHAPTER XXI.
+  THE SHAN TOWN OF SANTA, AND MANYUEN, THE SCENE
+  OF CONSUL MARGARY'S MURDER                            260-269
+
+  CHAPTER XXII.
+  CHINA AS A FIGHTING POWER--THE KACHINS--AND THE
+  LAST STAGE INTO BHAMO                                 270-281
+
+  CHAPTER XXIII.
+  BHAMO, MANDALAY, RANGOON, AND CALCUTTA                282-291
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+_Mostly from Photographs by_ MR. C. JENSEN _of the Imperial Chinese
+Telegraphs._
+
+
+  THE AUTHOR IN WESTERN CHINA                    _Frontispiece._
+
+  THE AUTHOR'S CHINESE PASSPORT                        _page_ 8
+
+  ON A BALCONY IN WESTERN CHINA                              14
+
+  THE RIVER YANGTSE AT TUNG-LO-HSIA                          34
+
+  MEMORIAL ARCHWAY AT THE FORT OF FU-TO-KUAN                 34
+
+  CHUNGKING, FROM THE OPPOSITE BANK OF THE YANGTSE           38
+
+  A TEMPLE THEATRE IN CHUNGKING                              44
+
+  ON THE MAIN ROAD TO SUIFU                                  52
+
+  CULTIVATION IN TERRACES                                    58
+
+  SCENE IN SZECHUEN                                          58
+
+  OPIUM-SMOKING                                              72
+
+  A TEMPLE IN SZECHUEN                                       84
+
+  LAOWATAN                                                   84
+
+  THE OPIUM-SMOKER OF ROMANCE                                93
+
+  PAGODA BY THE WAYSIDE, WESTERN CHINA                      118
+
+  THE BIG EAST GATE OF YUNNAN CITY                          146
+
+  VIEW IN YUNNAN CITY                                       156
+
+  SOLDIERS ON THE WALL OF YUNNAN CITY                       168
+
+  THE PAGODA OF YUNNAN CITY, 250 FEET HIGH                  174
+
+  THE VICEROY OF TWO PROVINCES                              180
+
+  THE AUTHOR'S CHINESE NAME                                 182
+
+  THE GIANT OF YUNNAN                                       184
+
+  THE "EAGLE NEST BARRIER," ON THE ROAD TO TALIFU           192
+
+  SNOW-CLAD MOUNTAINS BEHIND TALIFU                         204
+
+  MEMORIAL IN A TEMPLE NEAR TALIFU                          220
+
+  THE DESCENT TO THE RIVER MEKONG                           232
+
+  INSIDE VIEW OF A SUSPENSION BRIDGE                        236
+
+  THE RIVER SALWEEN                                         240
+
+  THE RIVER SHWELI AND ITS SUSPENSION BRIDGE                242
+
+  THE SUBURB BEYOND THE SOUTH GATE OF TENGYUEH              250
+
+  CHINESE MAP OF CHUNGKING                                  292
+
+  ROUGH SKETCH-MAP OF CHINA AND BURMA                  _at end._
+
+
+
+
+AN AUSTRALIAN IN CHINA.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTORY--MAINLY ABOUT MISSIONARIES AND THE CITY OF HANKOW.
+
+
+In the first week of February, 1894, I returned to Shanghai from Japan.
+It was my intention to go up the Yangtse River as far as Chungking, and
+then, dressed as a Chinese, to cross quietly over Western China, the
+Chinese Shan States, and Kachin Hills to the frontier of Burma. The
+ensuing narrative will tell how easily and pleasantly this journey,
+which a few years ago would have been regarded as a formidable
+undertaking, can now be done.
+
+The journey was, of course, in no sense one of exploration; it consisted
+simply of a voyage of 1500 miles up the Yangtse River, followed by a
+quiet, though extended, excursion of another 1500 miles along the great
+overland highway into Burma, taken by one who spoke no Chinese, who had
+no interpreter or companion, who was unarmed, but who trusted implicitly
+in the good faith of the Chinese. Anyone in the world can cross over to
+Burma in the way I did, provided he be willing to exercise for a certain
+number of weeks or months some endurance--for he will have to travel
+many miles on foot over a mountainous country--and much forbearance.
+
+I went to China possessed with the strong racial antipathy to the
+Chinese common to my countrymen, but that feeling has long since given
+way to one of lively sympathy and gratitude, and I shall always look
+back with pleasure to this journey, during which I experienced, while
+traversing provinces as wide as European kingdoms, uniform kindness and
+hospitality, and the most charming courtesy. In my case, at least, the
+Chinese did not forget their precept, "deal gently with strangers from
+afar."
+
+I left Shanghai on Sunday, February 11th, by the Jardine Matheson's
+steamer _Taiwo_. One kind friend, a merchant captain who had seen life
+in every important seaport in the world, came down, though it was past
+midnight, to bid me farewell. We shook hands on the wharf, and for the
+last time. Already he had been promised the first vacancy in Jardine
+Matheson's. Some time after my departure, when I was in Western China,
+he was appointed one of the officers of the ill-fated _Kowshing_, and
+when this unarmed transport before the declaration of war was destroyed
+by a Japanese gunboat, he was among the slain--struck, I believe, by a
+Japanese bullet while struggling for life in the water.
+
+I travelled as a Chinese, dressed in warm Chinese winter clothing, with
+a pigtail attached to the inside of my hat. I could not have been more
+comfortable. I had a small cabin to myself. I had of course my own
+bedding, and by paying a Mexican dollar a day to the Chinese steward,
+"foreign chow," was brought me from the saloon. The traveller who cares
+to travel in this way, to put his pride in his pocket and a pigtail down
+his back, need pay only one-fourth of what it would cost him to travel
+as a European in European dress.
+
+But I was, I found, unwittingly travelling under false pretences. When
+the smart chief officer came for my fare he charged me, I thought, too
+little. I expressed my surprise, and said that I thought the fare was
+seven dollars. "So it is," he replied "but we only charge missionaries
+five dollars, and I knew you were a missionary even before they told
+me." How different was his acuteness from that of the Chinese compradore
+who received me on the China Merchants' steamer _Hsin Chi_, in which I
+once made a voyage from Shanghai to Tientsin, also in Chinese dress! The
+conversation was short, sharp, and emphatic. The compradore looked at me
+searchingly. "What pidgin belong you?" he asked--meaning what is your
+business? Humbly I answered, "My belong Jesus Christ pidgin"; that is, I
+am a missionary, to which he instantly and with some scorn replied, "No
+dam fear!"
+
+We called at the river ports and reached Hankow on the 14th. Hankow, the
+Chinese say, is the mart of eight provinces and the centre of the earth.
+It is the chief distributing centre of the Yangtse valley, the capital
+city of the centre of China. The trade in tea, its staple export, is
+declining rapidly, particularly since 1886. Indian opium goes no higher
+up the river than this point; its importation into Hankow is now
+insignificant, amounting to only 738 piculs (44 tons) per annum. Hankow
+is on the left bank of the Yangtse, separated only by the width of the
+Han river from Hanyang, and by the width of the Yangtse from Wuchang;
+these three divisions really form one large city, with more inhabitants
+than the entire population of the colony of Victoria.
+
+Wuchang is the capital city of the two provinces of Hunan and Hupeh; it
+is here that the Viceroy, Chang Chi Tung, resides in his official yamen
+and dispenses injustice from a building almost as handsome as the
+American mission-houses which overlook it. Chang Chi Tung is the most
+anti-foreign of all the Viceroys of China; yet no Viceroy in the Empire
+has ever had so many foreigners in his employ as he. "Within the four
+seas," he says, "all men are brothers"; yet the two provinces he rules
+over are closed against foreigners, and the missionaries are compelled
+to remain under the shelter of the foreign Concession in Hankow. With a
+public spirit unusual among Chinese Viceroys he has devoted the immense
+revenues of his office to the modern development of the resources of his
+vice-kingdom. He has erected a gigantic cotton-mill at Wuchang with
+thirty-five thousand spindles, covering six acres and lit with the
+electric light, and with a reservoir of three acres and a half. He has
+built a large mint. At Hanyang he has erected magnificent iron-works and
+blast furnaces which cover many acres and are provided with all the
+latest machinery. He has iron and coal mines, with a railway seventeen
+miles long from the mines to the river, and specially constructed
+river-steamers and special hoisting machinery at the river-banks. Money
+he has poured out like water; he is probably the only important official
+in China who will leave office a poor man.
+
+Acting as private secretary to the Viceroy is a clever Chinese named Kaw
+Hong Beng, the author of _Defensio Populi_, that often-quoted attack
+upon missionary methods which appeared first in _The North China Daily
+News_. A linguist of unusual ability, who publishes in _The Daily News_
+translations from Heine in English verse, Kaw is gifted with a rare
+command over the resources of English. He is a Master of Arts of the
+University of Edinburgh. Yet, strange paradox, notwithstanding that he
+had the privilege of being trained in the most pious and earnest
+community in the United Kingdom, under the lights of the United
+Presbyterian Kirk, Free Kirk, Episcopalian Church, and _The_ Kirk, not
+to mention a large and varied assortment of Dissenting Churches of more
+or less dubious orthodoxy, he is openly hostile to the introduction of
+Christianity into China. And nowhere in China is the opposition to the
+introduction of Christianity more intense than in the Yangtse valley. In
+this intensity many thoughtful missionaries see the greater hope of the
+ultimate conversion of this portion of China; opposition they say is a
+better aid to missionary success than mere apathy.
+
+During the time I was in China, I met large numbers of missionaries of
+all classes, in many cities from Peking to Canton, and they unanimously
+expressed satisfaction at the progress they are making in China.
+Expressed succinctly, their harvest may be described as amounting to a
+fraction more than two Chinamen per missionary per annum. If, however,
+the paid ordained and unordained native helpers be added to the number
+of missionaries, you find that the aggregate body converts nine-tenths
+of a Chinaman per worker per annum; but the missionaries deprecate their
+work being judged by statistics. There are 1511 Protestant missionaries
+labouring in the Empire; and, estimating their results from the
+statistics of previous years as published in the _Chinese Recorder_, we
+find that they gathered last year (1893) into the fold 3127 Chinese--not
+all of whom it is feared are genuine Christians--at a cost of _L350,000_,
+a sum equal to the combined incomes of the ten chief London hospitals.
+
+Hankow itself swarms with missionaries, "who are unhappily divided into
+so many sects, that even a foreigner is bewildered by their number, let
+alone the heathen to whom they are accredited." (Medhurst.)
+
+Dwelling in well-deserved comfort in and around the foreign settlement,
+there are members of the London Missionary Society, of the Tract
+Society, of the Local Tract Society, of the British and Foreign Bible
+Society, of the National Bible Society of Scotland, of the American
+Bible Society; there are Quaker missionaries, Baptist, Wesleyan, and
+Independent missionaries of private means; there are members of the
+Church Missionary Society, of the American Board of Missions, and of the
+American High Church Episcopal Mission; there is a Medical Mission in
+connection with the London Missionary Society, there is a flourishing
+French Mission under a bishop, the "_Missions etrangeres de Paris_," a
+Mission of Franciscan Fathers, most of whom are Italian, and a Spanish
+Mission of the Order of St. Augustine.
+
+The China Inland Mission has its chief central distributing station at
+Hankow, and here also are the headquarters of a Scandinavian Mission, of
+a Danish Mission, and of an unattached mission, most of the members of
+which are also Danish. Where there are so many missions, of so many
+different sects, and holding such widely divergent views, it is, I
+suppose, inevitable that each mission should look with some disfavour
+upon the work done by its neighbours, should have some doubts as to the
+expediency of their methods, and some reasonable misgivings as to the
+genuineness of their conversions.
+
+The Chinese "Rice Christians," those spurious Christians who become
+converted in return for being provided with rice, are just those who
+profit by these differences of opinion, and who, with timely lapses from
+grace, are said to succeed in being converted in turn by all the
+missions from the Augustins to the Quakers.
+
+Every visitor to Hankow and to all other open ports, who is a supporter
+of missionary effort, is pleased to find that his preconceived notions
+as to the hardships and discomforts of the open port missionary in China
+are entirely false. Comfort and pleasures of life are there as great as
+in any other country. Among the most comfortable residences in Hankow
+are the quarters of the missionaries; and it is but right that the
+missionaries should be separated as far as possible from all
+discomfort--missionaries who are sacrificing all for China, and who are
+prepared to undergo any reasonable hardship to bring enlightenment to
+this land of darkness.
+
+I called at the headquarters of the Spanish mission of Padres Agustinos
+and smoked a cigarette with two of the Padres, and exchanged
+reminiscences of Valladolid and Barcelona. And I can well conceive,
+having seen the extreme dirtiness of the mission premises, how little
+the Spaniard has to alter his ways in order to make them conform to the
+more ancient civilisation of the Chinese.
+
+In Hankow there is a large foreign concession with a handsome embankment
+lined by large buildings. There is a rise and fall in the river between
+summer and winter levels of nearly sixty feet. In the summer the river
+laps the edge of the embankment and may overflow into the concession; in
+the winter, broad steps lead down to the edge of the water which, even
+when shrunk into its bed, is still more than half a mile in width. Our
+handsome consulate is at one end of the embankment; at the other there
+is a remarkable municipal building which was designed by a former City
+constable, who was, I hope, more expert with the handcuffs than he was
+with the pencil.
+
+[Illustration: THE AUTHOR'S CHINESE PASSPORT.]
+
+Our interests in Hankow are protected by Mr. Pelham Warren, the Consul,
+one of the ablest men in the Service. I registered at the Consulate as a
+British subject and obtained a Chinese passport in terms of the Treaty
+of Tientsin for the four provinces Hupeh, Szechuen, Kweichow, and
+Yunnan, available for one year from the date of issue.
+
+I had no servant. An English-speaking "boy," hearing that I was in need
+of one, came to me to recommend "his number one flend," who, he assured
+me, spoke English "all the same Englishman." But when the "flend" came I
+found that he spoke English all the same as I spoke Chinese. He was not
+abashed, but turned away wrath by saying to me, through an interpreter,
+"It is true that I cannot speak the foreign language, but the foreign
+gentleman is so clever that in one month he will speak Chinese
+beautifully." We did not come to terms.
+
+At Hankow I embarked on the China Merchants' steamer _Kweili_, the only
+triple-screw steamer on the River, and four days later, on February
+21st, I landed at Ichang, the most inland port on the Yangtse yet
+reached by steam. Ichang is an open port; it is the scene of the
+anti-foreign riot of September 2nd, 1891, when the foreign settlement
+was pillaged and burnt by the mob, aided by soldiers of the Chentai
+Loh-Ta-Jen, the head military official in charge at Ichang, "who gave
+the outbreak the benefit of his connivance." Pleasant zest is given to
+life here in the anticipation of another outbreak; it is the only
+excitement.
+
+From Ichang to Chungking--a distance of 412 miles--the river Yangtse, in
+a great part of its course, is a series of rapids which no steamer has
+yet attempted to ascend, though it is contended that the difficulties of
+navigation would not be insuperable to a specially constructed steamer
+of elevated horse-power. Some idea of the speed of the current at this
+part of the river may be given by the fact that a junk, taking thirty to
+thirty-five days to do the upward journey, hauled most of the way by
+gangs of trackers, has been known to do the down-river journey in two
+days and a half.
+
+Believing that I could thus save some days on the journey, I decided to
+go to Chungking on foot, and engaged a coolie to accompany me. We were
+to start on the Thursday afternoon; but about midnight on Wednesday I
+met Dr. Aldridge, of the Customs, who easily persuaded me that by taking
+the risk of going in a small boat (a _wupan_), and not in an ordinary
+passenger junk (a _kwatze_), I might, with luck, reach Chungking as soon
+by water as I could reach Wanhsien at half the distance by land. The
+Doctor was a man of surprising energy. He offered to arrange everything
+for me, and by 6 o'clock in the morning he had engaged a boat, had
+selected a captain (_laoban_), and a picked crew of four young men, who
+undertook to land me in Chungking in fifteen days, and had given them
+all necessary instructions for my journey. All was to be ready for a
+start the same evening.
+
+During the course of the morning the written agreement was brought me by
+the laoban, drawn up in Chinese and duly signed, of which a Chinese
+clerk made me the following translation into English. I transcribe it
+literally:--
+
+Yang Hsing Chung (the laoban) hereby contracts to convey Dr. M. to
+Chungking on the following conditions:--
+
+     1. The passage-money agreed upon is 28,000 cash (_L2 16s._),
+     which includes all charges.
+
+     2. If Chungking is reached in twelve days, Dr. M. will give
+     the master 32,500 cash instead; if in thirteen days 31,000,
+     and if in fifteen days 28,000.
+
+     3. If all goes well and the master does his duty
+     satisfactorily, Dr. M. will give him 30,000 cash, even if he
+     gets to Chungking in fifteen days.
+
+     4. The sum of 14,000 cash is to be advanced to the master
+     before starting; the remainder to be paid on arrival at
+     Chungking.
+
+               (Signed)     YANG HSING CHUNG.
+
+  Dated the 17th day of the 2nd moon,
+          K, shui 20th year.
+
+The Chinaman who wrote this in English speaks English better than many
+Englishmen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+FROM ICHANG TO WANHSIEN, WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF CHINESE WOMEN AND THE
+RAPIDS OF THE YANGTSE KIANG.
+
+
+The agreement was brought me in the morning; all the afternoon I was
+busy, and at 8 p.m. I embarked from the Customs pontoon. The boat was a
+wupan (five boards), 28 feet long and drawing 8 inches. Its sail was
+like the wing of a butterfly, with transverse ribs of light bamboo; its
+stern was shaped "like a swallow's wings at rest." An improvised
+covering of mats amidships was my crib; and with spare mats, slipt
+during the day over the boat's hood, coverings could be made at night
+for'ard for my three men and aft for the other two. It seemed a frail
+little craft to face the dangers of the cataracts, but it was manned by
+as smart a crew of young Chinese as could be found on the river. It was
+pitch dark when we paddled into the stream amidst a discharge of
+crackers. As we passed under the _Kweili_, men were there to wish me
+_bon voyage_, and a revolver was emptied into the darkness to propitiate
+the river god.
+
+We paddled up the bank under the sterns of countless junks, past the
+walled city, and then, crossing to the other bank, we made fast and
+waited for the morning to begin our journey. The lights of the city were
+down the river; all was quiet; my men were in good heart, and there was
+no doubt whatever that they would make every effort to fulfil their
+contract.
+
+At daylight we were away again and soon entered the first of the great
+gorges where the river has cleft its way through the mountains.
+
+With a clear and sunny sky, the river flowing smoothly and reflecting
+deeply the lofty and rugged hills which fall steeply to the water's
+edge, a light boat, and a model crew, it was a pleasure to lie at ease
+wrapped in my Chinese pukai and watch the many junks lazily falling down
+the river, the largest of them "dwarfed by the colossal dimensions of
+the surrounding scenery to the size of sampans," and the fishing boats,
+noiseless but for the gentle creaking of the sheers and dip-net,
+silently working in the still waters under the bank.
+
+At Ping-shan-pa there is an outstation of the Imperial Maritime Customs
+in charge of a seafaring man who was once a cockatoo farmer in South
+Australia, and drove the first team of bullocks to the Mount Brown
+diggings. He lives comfortably in a house-boat moored to the bank. He is
+one of the few Englishmen in China married in the English way, as
+distinct from the Chinese, to a Chinese girl. His wife is one of the
+prettiest girls that ever came out of Nanking, and talks English
+delightfully with a musical voice that is pleasant to listen to. I
+confess that I am one of those who agree with the missionary writer in
+regarding "the smile of a Chinese woman as inexpressibly charming." I
+have seen girls in China who would be considered beautiful in any
+capital in Europe. The attractiveness of the Japanese lady has been the
+theme of many writers, but, speaking as an impartial observer who has
+been both in Japan and China, I have never been able to come to any
+other decision than that in every feature the Chinese woman is superior
+to her Japanese sister. She is head and shoulders above the Japanese;
+she is more intellectual, or, rather, she is more capable of
+intellectual development; she is incomparably more chaste and modest.
+She is prettier, sweeter, and more trustworthy than the misshapen
+cackling little dot with black teeth that we are asked to admire as a
+Japanese beauty. The traveller in China is early impressed by the
+contrast between the almost entire freedom from apparent immorality of
+the Chinese cities, especially of Western China, and the flaunting
+indecency of the _Yoshiwaras_ of Japan, with "their teeming, seething,
+busy mass of women, whose virtue is industry and whose industry is
+vice."
+
+The small feet of the Chinese women, though admired by the Chinese and
+poetically referred to by them as "three-inch gold lilies," are in our
+eyes a very unpleasant deformity--but still, even with this deformity,
+the walk of the Chinese woman is more comely than the gait of the
+Japanese woman as she shambles ungracefully along with her little bent
+legs, scraping her wooden-soled slippers along the pavement with a noise
+that sets your teeth on edge. "Girls are like flowers," say the Chinese,
+"like the willow. It is very important that their feet should be bound
+short so that they can walk beautifully with mincing steps, swaying
+gracefully, and thus showing to all that they are persons of
+respectability." Apart from the Manchus, the dominant race, whose women
+do not bind their feet, all chaste Chinese girls have small feet. Those
+who have large feet are either, speaking generally, ladies of easy
+virtue or slave girls. And, of course, no Christian girl is allowed to
+have her feet bound.
+
+[Illustration: ON A BALCONY IN WESTERN CHINA.]
+
+Leaving Ping-shan-pa with a stiff breeze in our favour we slowly stemmed
+the current. Look at the current side, and you would think we were doing
+eight knots an hour or more, but look at the shore side, close to which
+we kept to escape as far as possible from the current, and you saw how
+gradually we felt our way along.
+
+At a double row of mat sheds filled with huge coils of bamboo rope of
+all thicknesses, my laoban went ashore to purchase a towline; he took
+with him 1000 cash (about two shillings), and returned with a coil 100
+yards in length and 600 cash of change. The rope he brought was made of
+plaited bamboo, was as thick as the middle finger, and as tough as
+whalebone.
+
+The country was more open and terraced everywhere into gardens. Our
+progress was most satisfactory. When night came we drew into the bank,
+and I coiled up in my crib and made myself comfortable. Space was
+cramped, and I had barely room to stretch my legs. My cabin was 5 feet 6
+inches square and 4 feet high, open behind, but with two little doors in
+front, out of which I could just manage to squeeze myself sideways round
+the mast. Coir matting was next the floor boards, then a thick Chinese
+quilt (a _pukai_), then a Scotch plaid made in Geelong. My pillow was
+Chinese, and the hardest part of the bed; my portmanteau was beside me
+and served as a desk; a Chinese candle, more wick than wax, stuck into a
+turnip, gave me light.
+
+This, our first day's journey, brought us to within sound of the worst
+rapid on the river, the Hsintan, and the roar of the cataract hummed in
+our ears all night.
+
+Early in the morning we were at the foot of the rapid under the bank on
+the opposite side of the river from the town of Hsintan. It was an
+exciting scene. A swirling torrent with a roar like thunder was frothing
+down the cataract. Above, barriers of rocks athwart the stream stretched
+like a weir across the river, damming the deep still water behind it.
+The shore was strewn with boulders. Groups of trackers were on the bank
+squatting on the rocks to see the foreign devil and his cockleshell.
+Other Chinese were standing where the side-stream is split by the
+boulders into narrow races, catching fish with great dexterity, dipping
+them out of the water with scoop-nets.
+
+We rested in some smooth water under shelter and put out our towline;
+three of my boys jumped ashore and laid hold of it; another with his
+bamboo boat-hook stood on the bow; the laoban was at the tiller; and I
+was cooped up useless in the well under the awning. The men started
+hauling as we pushed out into the sea of waters. The boat quivered, the
+water leapt at the bow as if it would engulf us; our three men were
+obviously too few. The boat danced in the rapid. My men on board
+shrieked excitedly that the towrope was fouling--it had caught in a
+rock--but their voices could not be heard; our trackers were brought to
+with a jerk; the hindmost saw the foul and ran back to free it, but he
+was too late, for the boat had come beam on to the current. Our captain
+frantically waved to let go, and the next moment we were tossed bodily
+into the cataract. The boat heeled gunwale under, and suddenly, but the
+bowman kept his feet like a Blondin, dropped the boat-hook, and jumped
+to unlash the halyard; a wave buried the boat nose under and swamped me
+in my kennel; my heart stopped beating, and, scared out of my wits, I
+began to strip off my sodden clothes; but before I had half done the
+sail had been set; both men had miraculously fended the boat from a
+rock, which, by a moment's hesitation, would have smashed us in bits or
+buried us in the boiling trough formed by the eddy below it, and, with
+another desperate effort, we had slid from danger into smooth water.
+Then my men laughed heartily. How it was done I do not know, but I felt
+keen admiration for the calm dexterity with which it had been done.
+
+We baled the water out of the boat, paid out a second towrope--this one
+from the bow to keep the stern under control, the other being made fast
+to the mast, and took on board a licensed pilot. Extra trackers, hired
+for a few cash, laid hold of both towlines, and bodily--the water
+swelling and foaming under our bows--the boat was hauled against the
+torrent, and up the ledge of water that stretches across the river. We
+were now in smooth water at the entrance to the Mi Tsang Gorge. Two
+stupendous walls of rock, almost perpendicular, as bold and rugged as
+the Mediterranean side of the Rock of Gibraltar seem folded one behind
+the other across the river. "Savage cliffs are these, where not a tree
+and scarcely a blade of grass can grow, and where the stream, which is
+rather heard than seen, seems to be fretting in vain efforts to escape
+from its dark and gloomy prison." In the gorge itself the current was
+restrained, and boats could cross from bank to bank without difficulty.
+It was an eerie feeling to glide over the sunless water shut in by the
+stupendous sidewalls of rock. At a sandy spit to the west of the gorge
+we landed and put things in order. And here I stood and watched the
+junks disappear down the river one after the other, and I saw the truth
+of what Hosie had written that, as their masts are always unshipped in
+the down passage, the junks seem to be "passing with their human freight
+into eternity."
+
+An immensely high declivity with a precipitous face was in front of us,
+which strained your eyes to look at; yet high up to the summit and to
+the very edge of the precipice, little farmsteads are dotted, and every
+yard of land available is under cultivation. So steep is it that the
+scanty soil must be washed away, you think, at the first rains, and only
+an adventurous goat could dwell there in comfort. My laoban, Enjeh,
+pointing to this mighty mass, said, "_Pin su chiao_;" but whether these
+words were the name of the place, or were intended to convey to me his
+sense of its magnificence, or dealt with the question of the
+precariousness of tenure so far above our heads, I had no means to
+determine.
+
+My laoban knew twelve words of English, and I twelve words of Chinese,
+and this was the extent of our common vocabulary; it had to be carefully
+eked out with signs and gestures. I knew the Chinese for rice,
+flourcake, tea, egg, chopsticks, opium, bed, by-and-by, how many,
+charcoal, cabbage, and customs. My laoban could say in English, or
+pidgin English, chow, number one, no good, go ashore, sit down,
+by-and-by, to-morrow, match, lamp, alright, one piecee, and goddam. This
+last named exotic he had been led to consider as synonymous with "very
+good." It was not the first time I had known the words to be misapplied.
+I remember reading in the _Sydney Bulletin_, that a Chinese cook in
+Sydney when applying for a situation detailed to the mistress his
+undeniable qualifications, concluding with the memorable announcement,
+"My Clistian man mum; my eat beef; my say goddam."
+
+There was a small village behind us. The villagers strolled down to see
+the foreigner whom children well in the background called "_Yang
+kweitze_" (foreign devil). Below on the sand, were the remains of a
+junk, confiscated for smuggling salt; it had been sawn bodily in two.
+Salt is a Government monopoly and a junk found smuggling it is
+confiscated on the spot.
+
+Kueichow, on the left bank, is the first walled town we came to. Here
+we had infinite difficulty in passing the rapids, and crossed and
+recrossed the river several times. I sat in the boat stripped and
+shivering, for shipwreck seemed certain, and I did not wish to be
+drowned like a rat. For cool daring I never saw the equal of my boys,
+and their nicety of judgment was remarkable. Creeping along close to the
+bank, every moment in danger of having its bottom knocked out, the boat
+would be worked to the exact point from which the crossing of the river
+was feasible, balanced for a moment in the stream, then with sail set
+and a clipping breeze, and my men working like demons with the oars,
+taking short strokes, and stamping time with their feet, the boat shot
+into the current. We made for a rock in the centre of the river; we
+missed it, and my heart was in my mouth as I saw the rapid below us into
+which we were being drawn, when the boat mysteriously swung half round
+and glided under the lee of the rock. One of the boys leapt out with the
+bow-rope, and the others with scull and boat-hook worked the boat round
+to the upper edge of the rock, and then, steadying her for the dash
+across, pushed off again into the swirling current and made like fiends
+for the bank. Standing on the stern, managing the sheet and tiller, and
+with his bamboo pole ready, the laoban yelled and stamped in his
+excitement; there was the roar of the cataract below us, towards which
+we were fast edging stern on, destruction again threatened us and all
+seemed over, when in that moment we entered the back-wash and were again
+in good shelter. And so it went on, my men with splendid skill doing
+always the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, with
+unerring certainty.
+
+At Yehtan rapid, which is said to be the worst on the river in the
+winter, as the Hsintan rapid is in summer, three of the boys went
+ashore to haul us up the ledge of water--they were plainly insufficient.
+While we were hanging on the cataract extra trackers appeared from
+behind the rocks and offered their services. They could bargain with us
+at an advantage. It was a case well known to all Chinese "of speaking of
+the price after the pig has been killed." But, when we agreed to their
+terms, they laid hold of the towrope and hauled us through in a moment.
+Here, as at other dangerous rapids on the river, an official lifeboat is
+stationed. It is of broad beam, painted red. The sailors are paid eighty
+cash (_2d._) a day, and are rewarded with 1000 cash for every life they
+save, and 800 cash for every corpse.
+
+Wushan Gorge, the "Witches' Gorge," which extends from Kuantukou to
+Wushan-hsien, a distance of twenty miles, is the longest gorge on the
+river.
+
+Directly facing us as we emerged from the gorge was the walled town of
+Wushan-hsien. Its guardian pagoda, with its seven stories and its
+upturned gables, like the rim of an official hat, is down-stream from
+the city, and thus prevents wealth and prosperity being swept by the
+current past the city.
+
+Beyond there is a short but steep rapid. Before a strong wind with all
+sail set we boldly entered it and determined which was the stronger, the
+wind or the current. But, while we hung in the current calling and
+whistling for the wind, the wind flagged for a moment; tension being
+removed, the bow swung into the rocks; but the water was shallow, and in
+a trice two of the boys had jumped into the water and were holding the
+boat-sides. Then poling and pulling we crept up the rapid into smooth
+water. Never was there any confusion, never a false stroke. To hear my
+boys jabber in their unintelligible speech you pictured disorder, and
+disaster, and wild excitement; to see them act you witnessed such
+coolness, skill, and daring as you had rarely seen before. My boys were
+all young. The captain was only twenty, and was a model of physical
+grace, with a face that will gladden the heart of the Chinese maiden
+whom he condescends to select to be the mother of his children.
+
+Junks were making slow progress up the river. The towpath is here on the
+left bank, sixty feet above the present level of the river. Barefooted
+trackers, often one hundred in a gang, clamber over the rocks "like a
+pack of hounds in full cry," each with the coupling over his shoulder
+and all singing in chorus, the junk they are towing often a quarter of a
+mile astern of them. When a rapid intervenes they strain like bondmen at
+the towrope; the line creaks under the enormous tension but holds fast.
+On board the junk, a drum tattoo is beaten and fire-crackers let off,
+and a dozen men with long ironshod bamboos sheer the vessel off the
+rocks as foot by foot it is drawn past the obstruction. Contrast with
+this toilsome slowness the speed of the junk bound down-stream. Its mast
+is shipped; its prodigious bow-sweep projects like a low bowsprit; the
+after deck is covered as far as midships with arched mat-roof; coils of
+bamboo rope are hanging under the awning; a score or more of boatmen,
+standing to their work and singing to keep time, work the yulos, as
+looking like a modern whaleback the junk races down the rapids.
+
+Kweichou-fu, 146 miles from Ichang, is one of the largest cities on the
+Upper Yangtse. Just before it is the Feng-hsiang Gorge the "Windbox
+Gorge" where the mountains have been again cleft in twain to let pass
+the river; this is the last of the great gorges of the Yangtse.
+
+We had left the province of Hupeh. Kweichou is the first prefectural
+city that the traveller meets in Szechuen; for that reason my laoban
+required me to give him my passport that he might take it ashore and
+have it viseed by the magistrate. While he was away two Customs
+officials searched my boat for contraband goods. When he returned, he
+had to pay a squeeze at the Customs station. We clawed with our hooked
+bamboos round the sterns of a hundred Szechuen junks, and were again
+arrested at a likin boat, and more cash passed from my laoban to the
+officials in charge. We went on again, when a third time we came face on
+to a likin-barrier, and a third time my laoban was squeezed. After this
+we were permitted to continue our journey. For the rest of the day
+whenever the laoban caught my eye he raised three fingers and with a
+rueful shake of the head said "Kweichou haikwan (customs) no good"; and
+then he swore, no doubt.
+
+My little boat was the smallest on the river. In sailing it could hold
+its own with all but the long ferry boats or tenders which accompany the
+larger junks to land the trackers and towline. These boats carry a huge
+square sail set vertically from sheer legs, and are very fast. But in
+rowing, poling, and tracking we could beat the river.
+
+Anping was passed--a beautiful country town in a landscape of red hills
+and rich green pastures, of groves of bamboo and cypress, of pretty
+little farmhouses with overhanging eaves and picturesque temples in
+wooded glens.
+
+At Chipatzu there are the remains of a remarkable embankment built of
+huge blocks of dressed stone resting upon a noble brow of natural rock;
+deep Chinese characters are cut into the stone; but the glory is
+departed and there are now only a few straggling huts where there was
+once a large city.
+
+The river was now at its lowest and at every point of sand and shingle,
+meagre bands of gold puddlers were at work washing for gold in cradle
+rockers. To judge, however, from the shabbiness of their surroundings
+there was little fear that their gains would disturb the equilibrium of
+the world's gold yield.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE CITY OF WANHSIEN, AND THE JOURNEY FROM WANHSIEN TO CHUNGKING.
+
+
+At daylight, on March 1st, we were abreast of the many storied pagoda,
+whose lofty position, commanding the approach to the city, brings good
+fortune to the city of Wanhsien. A beautiful country is this--the
+chocolate soil richly tilled, the sides of the hills dotted with
+farmhouses in groves of bamboo and cedar, with every variety of green in
+the fields, shot through with blazing patches of the yellow rape-seed.
+The current was swift, the water was shallow where we were tracking, and
+we were constantly aground in the shingle; but we rounded the point, and
+Wanhsien was before us. This is the half-way city between Ichang and
+Chungking. My smart laoban dressed himself in his best to be ready to go
+ashore with me; he was jubilant at his skill in bringing me so quickly.
+"Sampan number one! goddam!" he said; and, holding up two hands, he
+turned down seven fingers to show that we had come in seven days. Then
+he pointed to other boats that we were passing, and counted on his
+fingers fifteen, whereby I knew he was demonstrating that, had I gone in
+any other boat but his, I should have been fifteen days on the way
+instead of seven.
+
+An immense number of junks of all kinds were moored to the bank, bow on.
+Many of them were large vessels, with hulls like that of an Aberdeen
+clipper. Many carry foreign flags, by which they are exempt from the
+Chinese likin duties, so capricious in their imposition, and pay instead
+a general five per cent. _ad valorem_ duty on their cargoes, which is
+levied by the Imperial Maritime Customs, and collected either in
+Chungking or Ichang. From one to the other, with boathooks and paddle,
+we crept past the outer wings of their balanced rudders till we reached
+the landing place. On the rocks at the landing a bevy of women were
+washing, beating their hardy garments with wooden flappers against the
+stones; but they ceased their work as the foreign devil, in his uncouth
+garb, stepped ashore in their midst. Wanhsien is not friendly to
+foreigners in foreign garb. I did not know this, and went ashore dressed
+as a European. Never have I received such a spontaneous welcome as I did
+in this city; never do I wish to receive such another. I landed at the
+mouth of the small creek which separates the large walled city to the
+east from the still larger city beyond the walls to the west. My laoban
+was with me. We passed through the washerwomen. Boys and ragamuffins
+hanging about the shipping saw me, and ran towards me, yelling: "_Yang
+kweitze, Yang kweitze_" (foreign devil, foreign devil).
+
+Behind the booths a story-teller had gathered a crowd; in a moment he
+was alone and the crowd were following me up the hill, yelling and
+howling with a familiarity most offensive to a sensitive stranger. My
+sturdy boy wished me to produce my passport which is the size of an
+admiral's ensign, but I was not such a fool as to do so for it had to
+serve me for many months yet. With this taunting noisy crowd I had to
+walk on as if I enjoyed the demonstration. I stopped once and spoke to
+the crowd, and, as I knew no Chinese, I told them in gentle English of
+the very low opinion their conduct led me to form of the moral
+relations of their mothers, and the resignation with which it induced me
+to contemplate the hyperpyretic surroundings of their posthumous
+existence; and, borrowing the Chinese imprecation, I ventured to express
+the hope that when their souls return again to earth they may dwell in
+the bodies of hogs, since they appeared to me the only habitations meet
+for them.
+
+But my words were useless. With a smiling face, but rage at my heart, I
+led the procession up the creek to a stone bridge where large numbers
+left me, only to have their places taken on the other bank by a still
+more enthusiastic gathering. I stopped here a moment in the jostling
+crowd to look up-stream at that singular natural bridge, which an
+enormous mass of stone has formed across the creek, and I could see the
+high arched bridge beyond it, which stretches from bank to bank in one
+noble span, and is so high above the water that junks can pass under it
+in the summer time when the rains swell this little stream into a broad
+and navigable river.
+
+Then we climbed the steep bank into the city and entering by a dirty
+narrow street we emerged into the main thoroughfare, the crowd still
+following and the shops emptying into the street to see me. We passed
+the Mohammedan Mosque, the Roman Catholic Mission, the City Temple, to a
+Chinese house where I was slipped into the court and the door shut, and
+then into another to find that I was in the home of the China Inland
+Mission, and that the pigtailed celestial receiving me at the steps was
+Mr. Hope Gill. It was my clothes I then learnt that had caused the
+manifestation in my honour. An hour later, when I came out again into
+the street, the crowd was waiting still to see me, but it was
+disappointed to see me now dressed like one of themselves. In the
+meantime I had resumed my Chinese dress. "Look," the people said, "at
+the foreigner; he had on foreign dress, and now he is dressed in Chinese
+even to his queue. Look at his queue, it is false." I took off my hat to
+scratch my head. "Look," they shouted again, "at his queue; it is stuck
+to the inside of his hat." But they ceased to follow me.
+
+There are three Missionaries in Wanhsien of the China Inland Mission,
+one of whom is from Sydney. The mission has been opened six years, and
+has been fairly successful, or completely unsuccessful, according to the
+point of view of the inquirer.
+
+Mr. Hope Gill, the senior member of the mission, is a most earnest good
+man, who works on in his discouraging task with an enthusiasm and
+devotion beyond all praise. A Premillennialist, he preaches without
+ceasing throughout the city; and his preaching is earnest and
+indiscriminate. His method has been sarcastically likened by the
+Chinese, in the words of one of their best-known aphorisms, to the
+unavailing efforts of a "blind fowl picking at random after worms."
+Nearly all the Chinese in Wanhsien have heard the doctrine described
+with greater or less unintelligibility, and it is at their own risk if
+they still refuse to be saved.
+
+During the cholera epidemic this brave man never left his post; he never
+refused a call to attend the sick and dying, and, at the risk of his
+own, saved many lives. And what is his reward? This work he did, the
+Chinese say, not from a disinterested love of his fellows, which was his
+undoubted motive, but to accumulate merit for himself in the invisible
+world beyond the grave. "Gratitude," says this missionary, and it is the
+opinion of many, "is a condition of heart, or of mind, which seems to be
+incapable of existence in the body of a Chinaman." Yet other
+missionaries tell me that no man can possess a livelier sense of
+gratitude than a Chinaman, or manifest it with more sincerity. "If our
+words are compared to the croaking of the frog, we heed it not, but
+freely express the feelings of our heart," are actual words addressed by
+a grateful Chinese patient to the first medical missionary in China. And
+the Chinaman himself will tell you, says Smith, "that it does not follow
+that, because he does not exhibit gratitude he does not feel it. When
+the dumb man swallows a tooth he may not say much about it, but it is
+all inside."
+
+Since its foundation in 1887, the Inland Mission of Wanhsien has been
+conducted with brave perseverance. There are, unfortunately, no
+converts, but there are three hopeful "inquirers," whose conversion
+would be the more speedy the more likely they were to obtain employment
+afterwards. They argue in this way; they say, to quote the words used by
+the Rev. G. L. Mason at the Shanghai Missionary Conference of 1890, "if
+the foreign teacher will take care of our bodies, we will do him the
+favour to seek the salvation of our souls." This question of the
+employment of converts is one of the chief difficulties of the
+missionary in China. "The idea (derived from Buddhism) is universally
+prevalent in China," says the Rev. C. W. Mateer, "that everyone who
+enters any sect should live by it.... When a Chinaman becomes a
+Christian he expects to live by his Christianity."
+
+One of the three inquirers was shown me; he was described as the most
+advanced of the three in knowledge of the doctrine. Now I do not wish to
+write unkindly, but I am compelled to say that this man was a poor,
+wretched, ragged coolie, who sells the commonest gritty cakes in a
+rickety stall round the corner from the mission, who can neither read
+nor write, and belongs to a very humble order of blunted intelligence.
+The poor fellow is the father of a little girl of three, an only child,
+who is both deaf and dumb. And there is the fear that his fondness for
+the little one tempts him to give hope to the missionaries that in him
+they are to see the first fruit of their toil, the first in the district
+to be saved by their teaching, while he nurses a vague hope that, when
+the foreign teachers regard him as adequately converted, they may be
+willing to restore speech and hearing to his poor little offspring. It
+is a scant harvest.
+
+After a Chinese dinner the missionary and I went for a walk into the
+country. In the main street we met a troop of beggars, each with a bowl
+of rice and garbage and a long stick, with a few tattered rags hanging
+round his loins--they were the poorest poor I had ever seen. They were
+the beggars of the city, who had just received their midday meal at the
+"Wanhsien Ragged Homes." There are three institutions of the kind in the
+city for the relief of the destitute; they are entirely supported by
+charity, and are said to have an average annual income of 40,000 taels.
+Wanhsien is a very rich city, with wealthy merchants and great salt
+hongs. The landed gentry and the great junk owners have their town
+houses here. The money distributed by the townspeople in private charity
+is unusually great even for a Chinese city. Its most public-spirited
+citizen is Ch'en, one of the merchant princes of China whose
+transactions are confined exclusively to the products of his own
+country. Starting life with an income of one hundred taels, bequeathed
+him by his father, Ch'en has now agents all over the empire, and
+mercantile dealings which are believed to yield him a clear annual
+income of a quarter of a million taels. His probity is a by-word; his
+benefactions have enriched the province. That cutting in the face of the
+cliff in the Feng-hsiang Gorge near Kweichou-fu, where a pathway for
+trackers has been hewn out of the solid rock, was done at his expense,
+and is said to have cost one hundred thousand taels. Not only by his
+benefactions has Ch'en laid up for himself merit in heaven, but he has
+already had his reward in this world. His son presented himself for the
+M.A. examination for the Hanlin degree, the highest academical degree in
+the Empire. Everyone in China knows that success in this examination is
+dependent upon the favour of Wunchang-te-keun, the god of literature
+(Taoist) "who from generation to generation hath sent his miraculous
+influence down upon earth", and, as the god had seen with approbation
+the good works done by the father, he gave success to the son. When the
+son returned home after his good fortune, he was met beyond the walls
+and escorted into the city with royal honours; his success was a triumph
+for the city which gave him birth.
+
+A short walk and we were out of the city, following a flagged path with
+flights of steps winding up the hill through levelled terraces rich with
+every kind of cereal, and with abundance of poppy. Splendid views of one
+of the richest agricultural regions in the world are here unfolded. Away
+down in the valley is the palatial family mansion of Pien, one of the
+wealthiest yeomen in the province. Beyond you see the commencement of
+the high road, a paved causeway eight feet wide, which extends for
+hundreds of miles to Chentu, the capital of the province, and takes rank
+as the finest work of its kind in the empire. On every hill-top is a
+fort. That bolder than the rest commanding the city at a distance of
+five miles, is on the "Hill of Heavenly Birth." It was built, says
+Hobson, during the Taiping Rebellion; it existed, says the missionary,
+before the present dynasty; discrepant statements characteristic of this
+country of contradictions. But, whether thirty or two hundred and fifty
+years old, the fort is now one in name only, and is at present occupied
+by a garrison of peaceful peasantry.
+
+Chinamen that we met asked us politely "if we had eaten our rice," and
+"whither were we going." We answered correctly. But when with equal
+politeness we asked the wayfarer where he was going, he jerked his chin
+towards the horizon and said, "a long way."
+
+We called at the residence of a rich young Chinese, who had lately
+received it in his inheritance, together with 3000 acres of farmland,
+which, we were told, yield him an annual income of 70,000 taels. In the
+absence of the master, who was away in the country reading with his
+tutor for the Hanlin degree, we were received by the caretakers, who
+showed us the handsome guest chambers, the splendid gilded tablet, the
+large courts, and garden rockeries. A handsome residence is this,
+solidly built of wood and masonry, and with the trellis work carved with
+much elaboration.
+
+It was late when we returned to the mission, and after dark when I went
+on board my little wupan. My boys had not been idle. They had bought new
+provisions of excellent quality, and had made the boat much more
+comfortable. The three kind missionaries came down to wish me Godspeed.
+Brave men! they deserve a kinder fortune than has been their fate
+hitherto. We crossed the river and anchored above the city, ready
+against an early start in the morning.
+
+The day after leaving Wanhsien was the first time that we required any
+assistance on our journey from another junk; it was cheerfully given.
+Our towrope had chafed through, and we were in a difficulty, attempting
+to pass a bad rapid among the rocks, when a large junk was hauled bodily
+past us, and, seeing our plight, hooked on to us and towed us with them
+out of danger. On this night we anchored under the Sentinel Rock
+(Shih-pao-chai), perhaps the most remarkable landmark on the river. From
+two hundred to three hundred feet high, and sixty feet wide at the base,
+it is a detached rock, cleft vertically from a former cliff. A
+nine-storied pagoda has been inset into the south-eastern face, and
+temple buildings crown the summit.
+
+It was surprising how well my men lived on board the boat. They had
+three good meals a day, always with rice and abundance of vegetables,
+and frequently with a little pork. Cooking was done while we were under
+way; for the purpose we had two little earthenware stoves, two pans, and
+a kettle. All along the river cabbages and turnips are abundant and
+cheap. Bumboats, laden to the rail, waylay the boats _en route_, and
+offer an armful of fresh vegetables for the equivalent in copper cash of
+three-eighths of a penny. Other boats peddle firewood, cut short and
+bound in little bundles, and sticks of charcoal. Coal is everywhere
+abundant, and there are excellent briquettes for sale, made of a mixture
+of clay and coal-dust.
+
+All day long now for the rest of our voyage we sailed through a
+beautiful country. From the hill tops to the water's edge the hillsides
+are levelled into a succession of terraces; there are cereals and the
+universal poppy, pretty hamlets, and thriving little villages; a river
+half a mile wide thronged with every kind of river craft, and back in
+the distance snow-clad mountains. There are bamboo sheds at every point,
+with coils of bamboo towrope, mats, and baskets, and huge Szechuen hats
+as wide as an umbrella.
+
+On the morning of March 5th I was awakened by loud screaming and yelling
+ahead of us. I squeezed out of my cabin, and saw a huge junk looming
+down upon us. In an awkward rapid its towline had parted, and the huge
+structure tumbling uncontrolled in the water, was bearing down on us,
+broadside on. It seemed as if we should be crushed against the rocks,
+and we must have been, but for the marvellous skill with which the
+sailors on the junk, just at the critical time, swung their vessel out
+of danger. They were yelling with discord, but worked together as one
+man.
+
+In the afternoon we were at Feng-tu-hsien, a flourishing river port, one
+of the principal outlets of the opium traffic of the Upper Yangtse. Next
+day we were at Fuchou, the other opium port, whose trade in opium is
+greater still than that of Feng-tu-hsien. It is at the junction of a
+large tributary--the Kung-t'-an-ho, which is navigable for large vessels
+for more than two hundred miles. Large numbers of the Fuchou junks were
+moored here, which differ in construction from all other junks on the
+river Yangtse in having their great sterns twisted or wrung a quarter
+round to starboard, and in being steered by an immense stern sweep, and
+not by the balanced rudder of an ordinary junk.
+
+The following day, after a long day's work, we moored beyond the town of
+Chang-show-hsien. Here I paid the laoban 2000 cash, whereupon he paid
+his men something on account, and then blandly suggested a game of
+cards. He was fast winning back his money, when I intervened and bade
+them turn in, as I wished to make an early start in the morning. The
+river seemed to get broader, deeper, and more rapid as we ascended; the
+trackers, on the contrary, became thinner, narrower, and more decrepit.
+
+On March 8th, our fourteenth day out, disaster nearly overtook us when
+within a day's sail of our destination. Next day we reached Chungking
+safely, having done by some days the fastest journey on record up the
+Yangtse rapids. My captain and his young crew had finished the journey
+within the time agreed upon.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIVER YANGTSE AT TUNG-LO-HSIA.]
+
+[Illustration: MEMORIAL ARCHWAY AT THE FORT OF FU-TO-KUAN.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CITY OF CHUNGKING--THE CHINESE CUSTOMS--THE FAMOUS MONSIEUR HAAS,
+AND A FEW WORDS ON THE OPIUM FALLACY.
+
+
+After passing through the gorge known as Tung-lo-hsia ten miles from
+Chungking, the laoban tried to attract my attention, calling me from my
+crib and pointing with his chin up the river repeating "Haikwan one
+piecee," which I interpreted to mean that there was an outpost of the
+customs here in charge of one white man; and this proved to be the case.
+The customs kuatze or houseboat was moored to the left bank; the
+Imperial Customs flag floated gaily over an animated collection of
+native craft. We drew alongside the junk and an Englishman appeared at
+the window.
+
+"Where from?" he asked, laconically.
+
+"Australia."
+
+"The devil, so am I. What part?"
+
+"Victoria."
+
+"So am I. Town?"
+
+"Last from Ballarat."
+
+"My native town, by Jove! Jump up."
+
+I gave him my card. He looked at it and said, "When I was last in
+Victoria I used to follow with much interest a curious walk across
+Australia, from the Gulf of Carpentaria to Melbourne done by a namesake.
+Any relation? The same man! I'm delighted to see you." Here then at the
+most inland of the customs stations in China, 1500 miles from the sea,
+I met my fellow countryman who was born near my home and whose father
+was a well-known Mayor of Ballarat City.
+
+Like myself he had formerly been a student of Melbourne University, but
+I was many years his senior. What was his experience of the University I
+forgot to inquire, but mine I remember vividly enough; for it was not
+happy. In the examination for the Second-year Medicine, hoping the more
+to impress the Professors, I entered my name for honours--and they
+rejected me in the preliminary pass. It seems that in the examination in
+Materia Medica, I had among other trifling lapses prescribed a dose of
+Oleum Crotonis of "one half to two drachms _carefully increased_." I
+confess that I had never heard of the wretched stuff; the question was
+taken from far on in the text book and, unfortunately, my reading had
+not extended quite so far. When a deputation from my family waited upon
+the examiner to ascertain the cause of my misadventure, the only
+satisfaction we got was the obliging assurance "that you might as well
+let a mad dog loose in Collins Street" as allow me to become a doctor.
+And then the examiner produced my prescription. But I thought I saw a
+faint chance of escape. I pointed a nervous finger to the two words
+"carefully increased," and pleaded that that indication of caution ought
+to save me. "Save _you_ it might," he shouted with unnecessary
+vehemence; "but, God bless my soul, man, it would not save your
+patient." The examiner was a man intemperate of speech; so I left the
+University. It was a severe blow to the University, but the University
+survived it.
+
+My countryman had been five years in China in the customs service, that
+marvellous organisation which is more impartially open to all the world
+than any other service in the world. As an example, I note that among
+the Commissioners of Customs at the ports of the River Yangtse alone, at
+the time of my voyage the Commissioner at Shanghai was an Austrian, at
+Kiukiang a Frenchman, at Hankow an Englishman, at Ichang a Scandinavian,
+and at Chungking a German.
+
+The Australian had been ten months at Chungking. His up-river journey
+occupied thirty-eight days, and was attended with one moving incident.
+In the Hsintan rapid the towline parted, and his junk was smashed to
+pieces by the rocks, and all that he possessed destroyed. It was in this
+rapid that my boat narrowly escaped disaster, but there was this
+difference in our experiences, that at the time of his accident the
+river was sixty feet higher than on the occasion of mine.
+
+Tang-chia-to, the customs out-station, is ten miles by river from
+Chungking, but not more than four miles by land. So I sent the boat on,
+and in the afternoon walked over to the city. A customs coolie came with
+me to show me the way. My friend accompanied me to the river crossing,
+walking with me through fields of poppy and sugarcane, and open beds of
+tobacco. At the river side he left me to return to his solitary home,
+while I crossed the river in a sampan, and then set out over the hills
+to Chungking. It was more than ever noticeable, the poor hungry
+wretchedness of the river coolies. For three days past all the trackers
+I had seen were the most wretched in physique of any I had met in China.
+Phthisis and malaria prevail among them; their work is terribly arduous;
+they suffer greatly from exposure; they appear to be starving in the
+midst of abundance. My coolie showed well by contrast with the trackers;
+he was sleek and well fed. A "chop dollar," as he would be termed down
+south, for his face was punched or chopped with the small-pox, he swung
+along the paved pathway and up and down the endless stone steps in a way
+that made me breathless to follow. We passed a few straggling houses and
+wayside shrines and tombstones. All the dogs in the district recognised
+that I was a stranger, and yelped consumedly, like the wolfish mongrels
+that they are. From a hill we obtained a misty view of the City of
+Chungking, surrounded on two sides by river and covering a broad expanse
+of hill and highland. I was taken to the customs pontoon on the south
+bank of the river, and then up the steep bank by many steps to the
+basement of an old temple where the two customs officers have their
+pleasant dwelling. I was kindly received, and stayed the night. We were
+an immense height above the water; the great city was across the broad
+expanse of river, here more than seven hundred yards in width. Away down
+below us, moored close to the bank, and guarded by three Chinese armed
+junks or gunboats, was the customs hulk, where the searching is done,
+and where the three officers of the outdoor staff have their offices.
+There is at present but little smuggling, because there are no Chinese
+officials. Smuggling may be expected to begin in earnest as soon as
+Chinese officials are introduced to prevent it. Chinese searchers do
+best who use their eyes not to see--best for themselves, that is. The
+gunboats guarding this Haikwan Station have a nominal complement of
+eighty men, and an actual complement of twenty-four; to avoid, however,
+unnecessary explanation, pay is drawn by the commanding officer, not for
+the actual twenty-four, but for the nominal eighty.
+
+[Illustration: THE CITY OF CHUNGKING, AS SEEN FROM THE OPPOSITE BANK OF
+THE RIVER YANGTSE.]
+
+My two companions in the temple were tidewaiters in the Customs. There
+are many storied lives locked away among the tidewaiters in China. Down
+the river there is a tidewaiter who was formerly professor of French in
+the Imperial University of St. Petersburg; and here in Chungking,
+filling the same humble post, is the godson of a marquis and the nephew
+of an earl, a brave soldier whose father is a major-general and his
+mother an earl's daughter, and who is first cousin to that enlightened
+nobleman and legislator the Earl of C. Few men so young have had so many
+and varied experiences as this sturdy Briton. He has humped his swag in
+Australia, has earned fifteen shillings a day there as a blackleg
+protected by police picquets on a New South Wales coal mine. He was at
+Harrow under Dr. Butler, and at Corpus Christi, Cambridge. He has been
+in the Dublin Fusiliers, and a lieutenant in Weatherby's Horse, enlisted
+in the 5th Lancers, and rose from private to staff-sergeant, and ten
+months later would have had his commission. He served with distinction
+in the Soudan and Zululand, and has three medals with four clasps. He
+was present at El Teb, and at the disaster at Tamai, when McNeill's
+zareeba was broken. He was at Tel-el-kebir; saw Burnaby go forth to meet
+a coveted death at Abu-klea, and was present at Abu-Kru when Sir Herbert
+Stewart received his death-wound. He was at Rorke's Drift, and appears
+with that heroic band in Miss Elizabeth Thompson's painting. Leaving the
+army, C. held for a time a commission in the mounted constabulary of
+Madras, and now he is a third class assistant tidewaiter in the Imperial
+Maritime Customs of China, with a salary as low as his spirits are high.
+
+Chungking is an open port, which is not an open port. By the treaty of
+Tientsin it is included in the clause which states that any foreign
+steamer going to it, a closed port, shall be confiscated. Yet by the
+Chefoo Convention, Chungking is to become an open port as soon as the
+first foreign steamer shall reach there. This reminds one of the
+conflicting instructions once issued by a certain government in
+reference to the building of a new gaol. The instructions were
+explicit:--
+
+     Clause I.--The new gaol shall be constructed out of the
+     materials of the old.
+
+     Clause II.--The prisoners shall remain in the old gaol till
+     the new gaol is constructed.
+
+In Chungking the Commissioner of Customs is Dr. F. Hirth, whose Chinese
+house is on the highest part of Chungking in front of a temple, which,
+dimly seen through the mist, is the crowning feature of the city. A
+distinguished sinologue is the doctor, one of the finest Chinese
+scholars in the Empire, author of "China and the Roman Orient," "Ancient
+Porcelain," and an elaborate "Textbook of Documentary Chinese," which is
+in the hands of most of the Customs staff in China, for whose assistance
+it was specially written. Dr. Hirth is a German who has been many years
+in China. He holds the third button, the transparent blue button, the
+third rank in the nine degrees by which Chinese Mandarins are
+distinguished.
+
+The best site in Chungking has been fortunately secured by the Methodist
+Episcopalian Mission of the United States. Their missionaries dwell with
+great comfort in the only foreign-built houses in the city in a large
+compound with an ample garden. Their Mission hospital is a well-equipped
+Anglo-Chinese building attached to the city wall, and overlooking from
+its lofty elevation the Little River, and the walled city beyond it.
+
+The wards of the hospital are comfortable and well lit; the floors are
+varnished; the beds are provided with spring mattresses; indeed, in the
+comfort of the hospital the Chinese find its chief discomfort. A
+separate compartment has been walled off for the treatment of
+opium-smokers who desire by forced restraint to break off the habit.
+Three opium-smokers were in durance at the time of my visit; they were
+happy and contented and well nourished, and none but the trained eye of
+an expert, who saw what he wished to see, could have guessed that they
+were addicted to the use of a drug which has been described in
+exaggerated terms as "more deadly to the Chinese than war, famine, and
+pestilence combined." (Rev. A. H. Smith, "Chinese Characteristics," p.
+187.)
+
+Not long ago three men were admitted into the hospital suffering, on
+their own confession, from the opium habit. They freely expressed the
+desire of their hearts to be cured, and were received with welcome and
+placed in confinement. Every effort was made to wean them from the habit
+which, they alleged, had "seized them in a death grip." Attentive to the
+teacher and obedient to the doctor, they gave every hope of being early
+admitted into Church fellowship. But one night the desire to return to
+the drug became irresistible, and, strangely, the desire attacked all
+three men at the same time on the same night; and they escaped together.
+Sadly enough there was in this case marked evidence of the demoralising
+influence of opium, for when they escaped they took with them everything
+portable that they could lay their hands on. It was a sad trial.
+
+Excellent medical work is done in the hospital. From the first annual
+report just published by the surgeon in charge, an M.D. from the United
+States, I extract the two following pleasing items.
+
+_Medical Work._--"Mr. Tsang Taotai, of Kuei-Iang-fu, was an eye witness
+to several operations, as well as being operated upon for Internal
+Piles" (the last words in large capitals).
+
+_Evangelistic Work._--"Mrs. Wei, in the hospital for suppurating glands
+of the neck, became greatly interested in the truth while there, left a
+believer, and attends Sunday service regular (_sic_), walking from a
+distant part of the city each Sunday. We regard her as very hopeful, and
+she is reported by the Chinese as being very warm-hearted. She will be
+converted when the first vacancy occurs in the nursing staff."
+
+During my stay in Chungking I frequently met the French Consul "_en
+commission_," Monsieur Haas, who had lately arrived on a diplomatic
+mission, which was invested with much secrecy. It was believed to have
+for its object the diversion of the trade of Szechuen from its natural
+channel, the Yangtse River, southward through Yunnan province to
+Tonquin. Success need not be feared to attend his mission. "_Ils
+perdront et leur temps et leur argent._" Monsieur Haas has helped to
+make history in his time. The most gentle-mannered of men, he writes
+with strange rancour against the perfidious designs of Britain in the
+East. In his diplomatic career Monsieur Haas suffered one great
+disappointment. He was formerly the French Charge d'Affaires and
+Political Resident at the court of King Theebaw in Mandalay. And it was
+his "Secret Treaty" with the king which forced the hand of England and
+led to her hasty occupation of Upper Burma. The story is a very pretty
+one. By this treaty French influence was to become predominant in Upper
+Burma; the country was to become virtually a colony of France, with a
+community of interest with France, with France to support her in any
+difficulty with British Burma. Such a position England could not
+tolerate for one moment. Fortunately for us French intrigue outwitted
+itself, and the Secret Treaty became known. It was in this way. Draft
+copies of the agreement drawn up in French and Burmese were exchanged
+between Monsieur Haas and King Theebaw. But Monsieur Haas could not read
+Burmese, and he distrusted the King. A trusted interpreter was
+necessary, and there was only one man in Mandalay that seemed to him
+sufficiently trustworthy. To Signor A---- then, the Italian Charge
+d'Affaires and Manager of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, Monsieur Haas
+went and, pledging him to secrecy, sought his assistance as interpreter.
+
+As Monsieur Haas had done, so did his Majesty the King. Two great minds
+were being guided by the same spirit. Theebaw could not read French, and
+he distrusted Monsieur Haas. An interpreter was essential, and, casting
+about for a trusted one, he decided that no one could serve him so
+faithfully as Signor A----, and straightway sought his assistance, as
+Monsieur Haas had done. Their fates were in his hands; which master
+should the Italian serve, the French or the Burmese? He did not
+hesitate--he betrayed them both. Within an hour the Secret Treaty was in
+possession of the British Resident. Action was taken with splendid
+promptitude. "M. de Freycinet, when pressed on the subject, repudiated
+any intention of acquiring for France a political predominance in
+Burma." An immediate pretext was found to place Theebaw in a dilemma;
+eleven days later the British troops had crossed the frontier, and Upper
+Burma was another province of our Indian Empire.
+
+Monsieur Haas was recalled, and his abortive action repudiated. He had
+acted, of course, without orders, he had erred from too much zeal.
+Signor A---- was also recalled, but did not go because the order was not
+accompanied with the customary cheque to defray the cost of his passage.
+His services to England were rewarded, and he retained his engagement as
+Manager of the Flotilla Company; but he lost his appointment as the
+Representative of Italy--an honourable post with a dignified salary paid
+by the Italian Government in I.O.U.'s.
+
+Chungking is an enormously rich city. It is built at the junction of the
+Little River and the Yangtse, and is, from its position, the great river
+port of the province of Szechuen. Water-ways stretch from here an
+immense distance inland. The Little River is little only in comparison
+with the Yangtse, and in any other country would be regarded as a mighty
+inland river. It is navigable for more than 2000 li (600 miles). The
+Yangtse drains a continent; the Little River drains a province larger
+than a European kingdom. Chungking is built at a great height above the
+present river, now sixty feet below its summer level. Its walls are
+unscalable. Good influences are directed over the city from a lofty
+pagoda on the topmost hill in the vicinity. Temples abound, and spacious
+yamens and rich buildings, the crowning edifice of all being the Temple
+to the God of Literature. Distances are prodigious in Chungking, and the
+streets so steep and hilly, with flights of stairs cut from the solid
+rock, that only a mountaineer can live here in comfort. All who can
+afford it go in chairs; stands of sedan chairs are at every important
+street corner.
+
+[Illustration: A TEMPLE THEATRE IN CHUNGKING.]
+
+During the day the city vibrates with teeming traffic; at night the
+streets are deserted and dead, the stillness only disturbed by a
+distant watchman springing his bamboo rattle to keep himself awake and
+warn robbers of his approach. In no city in Europe is security to life
+and property better guarded than in this, or, indeed, in any other
+important city in China. It is a truism to say that no people are more
+law-abiding than the Chinese; "they appear," says Medhurst, "to maintain
+order as if by common consent, independent of all surveillance."
+
+Our Consul in Chungking is Mr. E. H. Fraser, an accomplished Chinese
+scholar, who fills a difficult post with rare tact and complete success.
+Consul Fraser estimates the population of Chungking at 200,000; the
+Chinese, he says, have a record of 35,000 families within the walls. Of
+this number from forty to fifty per cent. of all men, and from four to
+five per cent. of all women, indulge in the opium pipe. The city abounds
+in opium-shops--shops, that is, where the little opium-lamps and the
+opium-pipes are stacked in hundreds upon hundreds. Opium is one of the
+staple products of this rich province, and one of the chief sources of
+wealth of this flourishing city.
+
+During the nine months that I was in China I saw thousands of
+opium-smokers, but I never saw one to whom could be applied that
+description by Lay (of the British and Foreign Bible Society), so often
+quoted, of the typical opium-smoker in China "with his lank and
+shrivelled limbs, tottering gait, sallow visage, feeble voice, and
+death-boding glance of eye, proclaiming him the most forlorn creature
+that treads upon the ground."
+
+This fantastic description, paraded for years past for our sympathy, can
+be only applied to an infinitesimal number of the millions in China who
+smoke opium. It is a well-known fact that should a Chinese suffering
+from the extreme emaciation of disease be also in the habit of using
+the opium-pipe, it is the pipe and not the disease that in ninety-nine
+cases out of a hundred will be wrongly blamed as the cause of the
+emaciation.
+
+During the year 1893 4275 tons of Indian opium were imported into China.
+The Chinese, we are told, plead to us with "outstretched necks" to cease
+the great wrong we are doing in forcing them to buy our opium. "Many a
+time," says the Rev. Dr. Hudson Taylor, "have I seen the Chinaman point
+with his thumb to Heaven, and say, 'There is Heaven up there! There is
+Heaven up there!' What did he mean by that? You may bring this opium to
+us; you may force it upon us; we cannot resist you, but there is a Power
+up there that will inflict vengeance." (_National Righteousness_, Dec.
+1892, p. 13.)
+
+But, with all respect to Dr. Hudson Taylor and his ingenious
+interpretation of the Chinaman's gesture, it is extremely difficult for
+the traveller in China to believe that the Chinese are sincere in their
+condemnation of opium and the opium traffic. "In some countries," says
+Wingrove Cooke, "words represent facts, but this is never the case in
+China." Li Hung Chang, the Viceroy of Chihli, in the well-known letter
+that he addressed to the Rev. F. Storrs Turner, the Secretary of the
+Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, on May 24th, 1881, a
+letter still widely circulated and perennially cited, says, "the poppy
+is certainly surreptitiously grown in some parts of China,
+notwithstanding the laws and frequent Imperial edicts prohibiting its
+cultivation."
+
+Surreptitiously grown in some parts of China! Why, from the time I left
+Hupeh till I reached the boundary of Burma, a distance of 1700 miles, I
+never remember to have been out of sight of the poppy. Li Hung Chang
+continues, "I earnestly hope that your Society, and all right-minded
+men of your country, will support the efforts China is now making to
+escape from the thraldom of opium." And yet you are told in China that
+the largest growers of the poppy in China are the family of Li Hung
+Chang.
+
+The Society for the Suppression of Opium has circulated by tens of
+thousands a petition which was forwarded to them from the
+Chinese--spontaneously, per favour of the missionaries. "Some tens of
+millions," this petition says, "some tens of millions of human beings in
+distress are looking on tiptoe with outstretched necks for salvation to
+come from you, O just and benevolent men of England! If not for the good
+or honour of your country, then for mercy's sake do this good deed now
+to save a people, and the rescued millions shall themselves be your
+great reward." (_China's Millions_, iv., 156.)
+
+Assume, then, that the Chinese do not want our opium, and unavailingly
+beseech us to stay this nefarious traffic, which is as if "the Rivers
+Phlegethon and Lethe were united in it, carrying fire and destruction
+wherever it flows, and leaving a deadly forgetfulness wherever it has
+passed." (The Rev. Dr. Wells Williams. "The Middle Kingdom," i., 288.)
+
+They do not want our opium, but they purchase from us 4275 tons per
+annum.
+
+Of the eighteen provinces of China four only, Kiangsu, Cheh-kiang,
+Fuhkien, and Kuangtung use Indian opium, the remaining fourteen
+provinces use exclusively home-grown opium. Native-grown opium has
+entirely driven the imported opium from the markets of the Yangtse
+Valley; no Indian opium, except an insignificant quantity, comes up the
+river even as far as Hankow. The Chinese do not want our opium--it
+competes with their own. In the three adjoining provinces of Szechuen,
+Yunnan, and Kweichow they grow their own opium; but they grow more than
+they need, and have a large surplus to export to other parts of the
+Empire. The amount of this surplus can be estimated, because all
+exported opium has to pay customs and likin dues to the value of two
+shillings a pound, and the amount thus collected is known. Allowing no
+margin for opium that has evaded customs dues, and there are no more
+scientific smugglers than the Chinese, we still find that during the
+year 1893 2250 tons of opium were exported from the province of
+Szechuen, 1350 tons from Yunnan, and 450 tons from Kweichow, a total of
+4050 tons exported by the rescued millions of three provinces only for
+the benefit of their fellow-countrymen, who, with outstretched necks,
+plead to England to leave them alone in their monopoly.
+
+Edicts are still issued against the use of opium. They are drawn up by
+Chinese philanthropists over a quiet pipe of opium, signed by
+opium-smoking officials, whose revenues are derived from the poppy, and
+posted near fields of poppy by the opium-smoking magistrates who own
+them.
+
+In the City Temple of Chungking there is a warning to opium-eaters. One
+of the fiercest devils in hell is there represented gloating over the
+crushed body of an opium-smoker; his protruding tongue is smeared with
+opium put there by the victim of "_yin_" (the opium craving), who wishes
+to renounce the habit. The opium thus collected is the perquisite of the
+Temple priests, and at the gate of the Temple there is a stall for the
+sale of opium fittings.
+
+Morphia pills are sold in Chungking by the Chinese chemists to cure the
+opium habit. This profitable remedy was introduced by the foreign
+chemists of the coast ports and adopted by the Chinese. Its advantage
+is that it converts a desire for opium into a taste for morphia, a mode
+of treatment analogous to changing one's stimulant from colonial beer to
+methylated spirit. In 1893, 15,000 ounces of hydrochlorate of morphia
+were admitted into Shanghai alone.
+
+The China Inland Mission have an important station at Chungking. It was
+opened seventeen years ago, in 1877, and is assisted by a representative
+of the Horsburgh Mission. The mission is managed by a charming English
+gentleman, who has exchanged all that could make life happy in England
+for the wretched discomfort of this malarious city. Every assistance I
+needed was given me by this kindly fellow who, like nearly all the China
+Inland Mission men, deserves success if he cannot command it. A more
+engaging personality I have rarely met, and it was sad to think that for
+the past year, 1893, no new convert was made by his Mission among the
+Chinese of Chungking. (_China's Millions_, January, 1894.) The Mission
+has been working short-handed, with only three missionaries instead of
+six, and progress has been much delayed in consequence.
+
+The London Missionary Society, who have been here since 1889, have two
+missionaries at work, and have gathered nine communicants and six
+adherents. Their work is largely aided by an admirable hospital under
+Cecil Davenport, F.R.C.S., a countryman of my own. "Broad Benevolence"
+are the Chinese characters displayed over the entrance to the hospital,
+and they truthfully describe the work done by the hospital. In the
+chapel adjoining, a red screen is drawn down the centre of the church,
+and separates the men from the women--one of the chief pretexts that an
+Englishman has for going to church is thus denied the Chinaman, since he
+cannot cast an ogling eye through a curtain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE JOURNEY FROM CHUNGKING TO SUIFU--CHINESE INNS.
+
+
+I left the boat at Chungking and started on my land journey, going west
+230 miles to Suifu. I had with me two coolies to carry my things, the
+one who received the higher pay having also to bring me my food, make my
+bed, and pay away my copper cash. They could not speak a single word of
+English. They were to be paid for the journey one _4s. 10d._ and the
+other _5s. 7d._ They were to be entitled to no perquisites, were to find
+themselves on the way, and take their chance of employment on the return
+journey. They were to lead me into Suifu on the seventh day out from
+Chungking. All that they undertook to do they did to my complete
+satisfaction.
+
+On the morning of March 14th I set out from Chungking to cross 1600
+miles over Western China to Burma. Men did not speak hopefully of my
+chance of getting through. There were the rains of June and July to be
+feared apart from other obstacles.
+
+Pere Lorain, the Procureur of the French Mission, who spoke from an
+experience of twenty-five years of China, assured me that, speaking no
+Chinese, unarmed, unaccompanied, except by two poor coolies of the
+humblest class, and on foot, I would have _les plus grandes
+difficultes_, and Monsieur Haas, the Consul _en commission_, was equally
+pessimistic. The evening before starting, the Consul and my friend
+Carruthers (one of the _Inverness Courier_ Carruthers) gave me a lesson
+in Chinese. "French before breakfast" was nothing to this kind of
+cramming. I learnt a dozen useful words and phrases, and rehearsed them
+in the morning to a member of the Inland Mission, who cheered me by
+saying that it would be a clever Chinaman indeed who could understand
+Chinese like mine.
+
+I left on foot by the West Gate, being accompanied so far by A. J.
+Little, an experienced traveller and authority on China, manager in
+Chungking of the Chungking Transport Company (which deals especially
+with the transport of cargo from Ichang up the rapids), whose book on
+"The Yangtse Gorges" is known to every reader of books on China.
+
+I was dressed as a Chinese teacher in thickly-wadded Chinese gown, with
+pants, stockings, and sandals, with Chinese hat and pigtail. In my dress
+I looked a person of weight. I must acknowledge that my outfit was very
+poor; but this was not altogether a disadvantage, for my men would have
+the less temptation to levy upon it. Still it would have been awkward if
+my men had taken it into their heads to walk off with my things, because
+I could not have explained my loss. My chief efforts, I knew, throughout
+my journey would be applied in the direction of inducing the Chinese to
+treat me with the respect that was undoubtedly due to one who, in their
+own words, had done them the "exalted honour" of visiting "their mean
+and contemptible country." For I could not afford a private sedan chair,
+though I knew that Baber had written that "no traveller in Western China
+who possesses any sense of self-respect should journey without a sedan
+chair, not necessarily as a conveyance, but for the honour and glory of
+the thing. Unfurnished with this indispensable token of respectability
+he is liable to be thrust aside on the highway, to be kept waiting at
+ferries, to be relegated to the worst inn's worst room, and generally to
+be treated with indignity, or, what is sometimes worse, with
+familiarity, as a peddling footpad who, unable to gain a living in his
+own country, has come to subsist on China." ("Travels and Researches in
+Western China," p. 1.)
+
+Six li out (two miles), beyond the gravemounds there is a small village
+where ponies are kept for hire. A kind friend came with me as far as the
+village to act as my interpreter, and here he engaged a pony for me. It
+was to carry me ten miles for fourpence. It was small, rat-like and
+wiry, and was steered by the "mafoo" using the tail like a tiller.
+Mounted then on this small beast, which carried me without wincing, I
+jogged along over the stone-flagged pathway, down hill and along valley,
+scaling and descending the long flights of steps which lead over the
+mountains. The bells of the pony jingled merrily; the day was fine and
+the sun shone behind the clouds. My two coolies sublet their contracts,
+and had their loads borne for a fraction of a farthing per mile by
+coolies returning empty-handed to Suifu.
+
+[Illustration: ON THE MAIN ROAD TO SUIFU.]
+
+Fu-to-kuan four miles from Chungking is a powerful hill-fort that guards
+the isthmus where the Yangtse and the Little River come nearly together
+before encircling Chungking. Set in the face of the cliff is a gigantic
+image of Buddha. Massive stone portals, elaborately carved, and huge
+commemorative tablets cut from single blocks of stone and deeply
+engraved, here adorn the highway. The archways have been erected by
+command of the Emperor, but at the expense of their relatives, to the
+memory of virtuous widows who have refused to remarry, or who have
+sacrificed their lives on the death of their husbands. Happy are those
+whose names are thus recorded, for not only do they obtain ten thousand
+merits in heaven, as well as the Imperial recognition of the Son of
+Heaven on earth; but as an additional reward their souls may, on
+entering the world a second time, enjoy the indescribable felicity of
+inhabiting the bodies of men.
+
+Cases where the widow has thus brought honour to the family are
+constantly recorded in the pages of the _Peking Gazette_. One of more
+than usual merit is described in the _Peking Gazette_ of June 10th,
+1892. The story runs:--
+
+"The Governor of Shansi narrates the story of a virtuous wife who
+destroyed herself after the death of her husband. The lady was a native
+of T'ienmen, in Hupeh, and both her father and grandfather were
+officials who attained the rank of Taotai. When she was little more than
+ten years old her mother fell ill. The child cut flesh from her body and
+mixed it with the medicines and thus cured her parent. The year before
+last she was married to an expectant magistrate. Last autumn, just after
+he had obtained an appointment, he was taken violently ill. She mixed
+her flesh with the medicine but it was in vain, and he died shortly
+afterwards. Overcome with grief, and without parents or children to
+demand her care, she determined that she would not live. Only waiting
+till she had completed the arrangements for her husband's interment, she
+swallowed gold and powder of lead. She handed her trousseau to her
+relatives to defray her funeral expenses, and made presents to the
+younger members of the family and the servants, after which, draped in
+her state robes, she sat waiting her end. The poison began to work and
+soon all was over. The memorialist thinks that the case is one which
+should be recorded in the erection of a memorial arch, and he asks the
+Emperor to grant that honour to the deceased lady." ("_Granted._")
+
+Near the base of the rock upon which the hill-fort is built, and between
+it and the city, the Methodist Episcopalian Mission of the U.S.A.
+commenced in 1886 to build what the Chinese, in their ignorance, feared
+was a foreign fort, but what was nothing more than a mission house in a
+compound surrounded by a powerful wall. The indiscreet mystery
+associated with its erection was the exciting cause of the anti-foreign
+riot of July, 1886.
+
+From the fort the pathway led us through a beautiful country. We met
+numbers of sedan chairs, borne by two coolies, or three, according to
+the importance of the traveller. There were Chinese gentlemen mounted on
+ponies or mules; there were strings of coolies swinging along under
+prodigious loads of salt and coal, and huge bales of raw cotton.
+Buffaloes with slow and painful steps were ploughing the paddy fields,
+the water up to their middles--the primitive plough and share guided by
+half-naked Chinamen. Along the road there are inns and tea-houses every
+mile or two, for this is one of the most frequented roadways of China.
+At one good-sized village my cook signed to me to dismount; the mafoo
+and pony were paid off, and I sat down in an inn, and was served with an
+excellent dish of rice and minced beef. The inn was crowded and open to
+the street. Despite my Chinese dress anyone could see that I was a
+foreigner, but I was not far enough away from Chungking to excite much
+curiosity. The other diners treated me with every courtesy; they offered
+me of their dishes, and addressed me in Chinese--a compliment which I
+repaid by thanking them blandly in English.
+
+Now I went on, on foot, though I had difficulty in keeping pace with my
+men. Behind the village we climbed a very steep hill by interminable
+steps, and passed under an archway at the summit. Descending the hill,
+my cook engaged in a controversy with a thin lad whom he had hired to
+carry his load a stage. The dispute waxed warm, and, while they stopped
+to argue it out at leisure, I went on. My cook, engaged through the kind
+offices of the Inland Mission, was a man of strong convictions; and in
+the last I saw of the dispute he was pulling the unfortunate coolie
+downhill by the pigtail. When he overtook me he was alone and smiling
+cheerfully, well satisfied with himself for having settled _that_ little
+dispute. The road became more level, and we got over the ground quickly.
+
+Late in the evening I was led into a crowded inn in a large village,
+where we were to stay the night. We had come twenty-seven miles, and had
+begun well. I was shown into a room with three straw-covered wooden
+bedsteads, a rough table, lit by a lighted taper in a saucer of oil, a
+rough seat, and the naked earth floor. Hot water was brought me to wash
+with and tea to drink, and my man prepared me an excellent supper. My
+baggage was in the corner; it consisted of two light bamboo boxes with
+Chinese padlocks, a bamboo hamper, and a roll of bedding covered with
+oilcloth. An oilcloth is indispensable to the traveller in China, for
+placed next the straw on a Chinese bed it is impassable to bugs. And
+during all my journey in China I was never disturbed in my sleep by this
+unpleasant pest. Bugs in China are sufficiently numerous, but their
+numbers cannot be compared with the gregarious hosts that disturb the
+traveller in Spain.
+
+My last night in Spain was spent in Cadiz, the most charming city in
+the peninsula. I had lost the last boat off to the steamer, on which I
+was a passenger; it was late at night, and I knew of no inn near the
+landing. At midnight, as I was walking in the Plaza, called after that
+revered monarch, Queen Isabel II., I was spoken to at the door of a
+fonda, and asked if I wanted a bedroom. It was the taberna "La
+Valenciana." I was delighted; it was the very thing I was looking for, I
+said. The innkeeper had just one room unoccupied, and he showed me
+upstairs into a plain, homely apartment, which I was pleased to engage
+for the night. "_Que usted descanse bien_" (may you sleep well), said
+the landlord, and left me. Keeping the candle burning I tumbled into
+bed, for I was very tired, but jumped out almost immediately, despite my
+fatigue. I turned down the clothes, and saw the bugs gathering in the
+centre from all parts of the bed. I collected a dozen or two, and put
+them in a basin of water, and, dressing myself, went out on the landing
+and called the landlord.
+
+He came up yawning.
+
+"Sir," he said, "do you wish anything?"
+
+"Nothing; but it is impossible, absolutely impossible, for me to sleep
+in that bed."
+
+"But why, senor?"
+
+"Because it is full of bugs."
+
+"Oh no, sir, that cannot be, that cannot be; there is not a bug in the
+house."
+
+"But I have seen them."
+
+"You must be mistaken; it is impossible that there can be a bug in the
+house."
+
+"But I have caught some."
+
+"It makes twenty years that I live in this house, and never have I seen
+such a thing."
+
+"Pardon me, but will you do me the favour to look at this basin?"
+
+"Sir, you are right, you are completely right; it is the weather; _every
+bed in Cadiz is now full of them_."
+
+In the morning, and every morning, we were away at daylight, and walked
+some miles before breakfast. All the way to Suifu the road is a paved
+causeway, 3 feet 6 inches to 6 feet wide, laid down with dressed flags
+of stone; and here, at least, it cannot be alleged, as the Chinese
+proverb would have it, that their roads are "good for ten years and bad
+for ten hundred." There are, of course, no fences; the main road picks
+its way through the cultivated fields; no traveller ever thinks of
+trespassing from the roadway, nor did I ever see any question of
+trespass between neighbours. In this law-abiding country the peasantry
+conspicuously follow the Confucian maxim taught in China four hundred
+years before Christ, "Do not unto others what you would not have others
+do unto you." Every rood of ground is under tillage.
+
+Hills are everywhere terraced like the seats of an amphitheatre, each
+terrace being irrigated from the one below it by a small stream of
+water, drawn up an inclined plain by a continuous chain bucket, worked
+with a windlass by either hand or foot. The poppy is everywhere abundant
+and well tended; there are fields of winter wheat, and pink-flowered
+beans, and beautiful patches of golden rape-seed. Dotted over the
+landscape are pretty Szechuen farmhouses in groves of trees. Splendid
+banyan trees give grateful shelter to the traveller. Of this country it
+could be written as a Chinese traveller wrote of England, "their fertile
+hills, adorned with the richest luxuriance, resemble in the outline of
+their summits the arched eyebrows of a fair woman."
+
+The country is well populated, and a continuous stream of people is
+moving along the road. Grand memorial arches span the roadway, many of
+them notable efforts of monumental skill, with columns and architraves
+carved with elephants and deer, and flowers and peacocks, and the
+Imperial seven-tailed dragon of China. Chinese art is seen at its best
+in this rich province.
+
+[Illustration: CULTIVATION IN TERRACES. In the foreground the poppy in
+bloom.]
+
+[Illustration: SCENE IN SZECHUEN.]
+
+I lived, of course, in the common Chinese inn, ate Chinese food, and was
+everywhere treated with courtesy and good nature; but at first I found
+it trying to be such an object of curiosity; to have to do all things in
+unsecluded publicity; to have to push my way through streets thronged by
+the curious to see the foreigner. My meals I ate in the presence of the
+street before gaping crowds. When they came too close I told them
+politely in English to keep back a little, and they did so if I
+illustrated my words by gesture. When I scratched my head and they saw
+the spurious pigtail, they smiled; when I flicked the dust off the table
+with my pigtail, they laughed hilariously.
+
+The wayside inns are usually at the side of an arcade of grass and
+bamboo stretched above the main road. Two or three ponies are usually
+waiting here for hire, and expectant coolies are eager to offer their
+services. In engaging a pony you make an offer casually, as if you had
+no desire in the world of its being accepted, and then walk on as if you
+had no intention whatever of riding for the next month. The mafoo
+demands more, but will come down; you stick to your offer, though
+prepared to increase it; so demand and offer you exchange with the mafoo
+till the width of the village is between you, and your voices are almost
+out of hearing, when you come to terms.
+
+Suppose I wanted a chair to give me a rest for a few miles--it was
+usually slung under the rafters--Laokwang (my cook) unobserved by anyone
+but me pointed to it with his thumb inquiringly. I nodded assent and
+apparently nothing more happened and the conversation, of which I was
+quite ignorant, continued. We left together on foot, my man still
+maintaining a crescendo conversation with the inn people till well away.
+When almost out of hearing he called out something and an answer came
+faintly back from the distance. It was his ultimatum as regards price
+and its acceptance--they had been bargaining all the time. My man
+motioned to me to wait, said the one word "_chiaodza_" (sedan chair) and
+in a few moments the chair of bamboo and wicker came rapidly down the
+road carried by two bearers. They put down the chair before me and bowed
+to me; I took my seat and was borne easily and pleasantly along at four
+miles an hour at a charge of less than one penny a mile.
+
+My men received nearly 400 cash a day each; but from time to time they
+sweated their contract to unemployed coolies and had their loads carried
+for so little as sixty cash (one penny halfpenny), for two-thirds of a
+day's journey.
+
+At nightfall we always reached some large village or town where my cook
+selected the best inn for my resting place, the best inn in such cases
+being usually the one which promised him the largest squeeze. All the
+towns through which the road passes swarm with inns, for there is an
+immense floating population to provide for. Competition is keen. Touts
+stand at the doorway of every inn, who excitedly waylay the traveller
+and cry the merits of their houses. At the counter inside the entrance,
+piles of pukais (the warm Chinese bedding), are stacked for hire--few of
+the travellers carry their own bedding. The inns are sufficiently
+comfortable. The bedrooms are in one or two stories and are arranged
+round one or more, or a succession of courts. The cheapness is to be
+commended. For supper, bed, and light, tea during the night and tea
+before starting in the morning, and various little comforts, such as hot
+water for washing, the total charge for the six nights of my journey
+from Chungking to Suifu was 840 cash (_1s. 9d._).
+
+Rice was my staple article of diet; eggs, fowls, and vegetables were
+also abundant and cheap; but I avoided pork which is the flesh
+universally eaten throughout China by all but the Mohammedans and
+vegetarians. In case of emergency I had a few tins of foreign stores
+with me. I made it a point never to drink water--I drank tea. No
+Chinaman ever drinks anything cold. Every half hour or hour he can reach
+an inn or teahouse where tea can be infused for him in a few minutes.
+The price of a bowl of tea with a pinch of tea-leaves, filled and
+refilled with hot water _ad lib_, is two cash--equal to the twentieth
+part of one penny. Pork has its weight largely added to by being
+injected with water, the point of the syringe being passed into a large
+vein; this is usually described as the Chinese method of "watering
+stock."
+
+On the third day we were at Yuenchuan, sixty-three miles from Chungking.
+On the 5th, we passed through Luchow, one of the richest and most
+populous cities on the Upper Yangtse, and at noon next day we again
+reached the Yangtse at the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy, two miles
+down the river from the large town of Lanchihsien. According to my
+interpretation of the gesticulations of Laokwang, we were then forty
+miles from Suifu, and a beautiful sunny afternoon before us, in which to
+easily cover one half the distance. But I must reckon with my guide. He
+wished to remain here; I wished to go on; but as I could not understand
+his Chinese explanation, nor advance any protest except in English, of
+which he was innocent, I could only look aggrieved and make a virtue of
+a necessity. He did, however, convey to me his solemn assurance that
+to-morrow (_ming tien_) he would conduct me into Suifu before sunset. An
+elderly Chinaman, who had given us the advantage of his company at
+various inns during the last three days, here entered into the
+conversation, produced his watch, and, with his hand over his heart,
+which, in a Chinaman, is in the centre of the breast-bone, added his
+sacred asseveration to my guide's. So I stayed. We were quite a friendly
+party travelling together.
+
+In the middle of the night a light was flashed into our room and a voice
+pealed out an alarm that awoke even my two Chinese, who always
+obligingly slept in the same room with me. I had protested against their
+doing so, but they mistook my expostulation for approbation. We rose at
+once, and came down the steep bank to a boat that was lying stern to
+shore showing a light. I was charmed to get such an early start, and
+construed the indications into a ferry boat to take me across the river,
+whence we would go by a short route into Suifu. The boat was loaded with
+sugar and had a crew of two men and three boys. There was an awning over
+the cargo, but most of the space under it was already occupied by twelve
+amiable Chinese, among whom were six promiscuous friends, who had kept
+with us for several stages, and had, I imagine, derived some pecuniary
+advantages from my company. Yet this was not a ferry boat, but a
+passenger boat engaged especially for me to carry me to Suifu before
+nightfall. The Chinese passengers had courteously projected their
+companionship upon the inarticulate stranger. An elderly gentleman, with
+huge goggles and long nails, whose fingers were stained with opium, was
+the pacificator of the party, and calmed the frequent wranglings in
+which the other eighteen Chinese engaged with much earnestness.
+
+Well, this boat--a leaky, heavy, old tub that had to be tracked nearly
+all the way--carried me the forty miles to Suifu within contract time.
+The boatmen on board worked sixteen hours without any rest except at two
+hasty meals; the frayed towrope never parted at any rapid, and only once
+did our boat get entangled with any other. Towards sundown we were
+abreast of the fine pagoda of Suifu, and a little later were at the
+landing. The city is on a high, level shelf of land with high hills
+behind it. It lies in the angle of bifurcation formed by the Yangtse
+river (here known as the "River of Golden Sand"), going west, and the
+Min, or Chentu river, going north to Chentu, the capital city of the
+province. I landed below the southern wall, and said good-bye to my
+companions. Climbing up the bank into the city, I passed by a busy
+thoroughfare to the pretty home of the Inland Mission, where I received
+a kind welcome from the gentleman and lady who conduct the mission, and
+a charming English girl, also in the mission, who lives with them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE CITY OF SUIFU--THE CHINA INLAND MISSION, WITH SOME GENERAL REMARKS
+ABOUT MISSIONARIES IN CHINA.
+
+
+At Suifu I rested a day in order to engage new coolies to go with me to
+Chaotong in Yunnan Province, distant 290 miles. Neither of my two
+Chungking men would re-engage to go further. Yet in Chungking Laokwang
+the cook had declared that he was prepared to go with me all the way to
+Talifu. But now he feared the loneliness of the road to Chaotong. The
+way, he said, was mountainous and little trodden, and robbers would see
+the smallness of our party and "come down and stab us." I was then glad
+that I had not paid him the retaining fee he had asked in Chungking to
+take me to Tali.
+
+I called upon the famous Catholic missionaries, the Provicaire Moutot
+and Pere Beraud, saw the more important sights and visited some
+newly-arrived missionaries of the American Board of Missions. Four of
+the Americans were living together. I called with the Inland missionary
+at a time when they were at dinner. We were shown into the drawing-room,
+where the most conspicuous ornament was a painted scroll with a well
+executed drawing of the poppy in flower, a circumstance which would
+confirm the belief of the Chinese who saw it, that the poppy is held in
+veneration by foreigners. While we waited we heard the noise of dinner
+gradually cease, and then the door opened and one of the single ladies
+entered. She was fierce to look at, tall as a grenadier, with a stride
+like a camel; she was picking her teeth with a hairpin. She courteously
+expressed her regret that she could not invite us to dinner. "Waal now,"
+she said, looking at us from under her spectacles, "ahm real sorry I
+caan't ask you to have somethin' to eat, but we've just finished, and I
+guess there ain't nothin' left."
+
+Fourteen American missionaries were lately imported into Suifu in one
+shipment. Most of them are from Chicago. One of their earliest efforts
+will be to translate into Chinese Mr. Stead's "If Christ came to
+Chicago," in order the better to demonstrate to the Chinese the lofty
+standard of morality, virtue, probity, and honour attained by the
+Christian community that sent them to China to enlighten the poor
+benighted heathen in this land of darkness.
+
+Szechuen is a Catholic stronghold. There are nominally one hundred
+thousand Catholics in the province, representing the labours of many
+French missionaries for a period of rather more than two hundred years.
+Actually, however, there are only sixty thousand Chinese in the province
+who could be called Catholics. To use the words of the Provicaire, the
+Chinese are "_trop materialistes_" to become Christian, and, as they are
+all "liars and robbers," the faith is not easily propagated amongst
+them. Rarely have I met two more charming men than these brave
+missionaries. French, they told me, I speak with the "_vrai accent
+parisien_," a compliment which I have no doubt is true, though it
+conflicts with my experience in Paris, where most of the true Parisians
+to whom I spoke in their own language gave me the same look of
+intelligence that I observe in the Chinaman when I address him in
+English. Pere Moutot has been twenty-three years in China--six years at
+the sacred Mount Omi, and seventeen years in Suifu; Pere Beraud has been
+twenty-three years in Suifu. They both speak Chinese to perfection, and
+have been co-workers with the bishop in the production of a
+Mandarin-French dictionary just published at Sicawei; they dress as
+Chinese, and live as Chinese in handsome mission premises built in
+Chinese style. There is a pretty chapel in the compound with scrolls and
+memorial tablets presented by Chinese Catholics, a school for boys
+attended by fifty ragamuffins, a nunnery and girls' school, and a fit
+residence for the venerable bishop. When showing me the chapel, the
+Provicaire told me of the visit of one of Our Lord's Apostles to Suifu.
+He seemed to have no doubt himself of the truth of the story. Tradition
+says that St. Thomas came to China, and, if further proof were wanting,
+there is the black image of Tamo worshipped to this day in many of the
+temples of Szechuen. Scholars, however, identify this image and its
+marked Hindoo features with that of the Buddhist evangelist Tamo, who is
+known to have visited China in the sixth century.
+
+In Suifu there is a branch of the China Inland Mission under an
+enthusiastic young missionary, who was formerly a French polisher in
+Hereford. He is helped by an amiable wife and by a charming English girl
+scarcely out of her teens. The missionary's work has, he tells me, been
+"abundantly blessed,"--he has baptised six converts in the last three
+years. A fine type of man is this missionary, brave and self-reliant,
+sympathetic and self-denying, hopeful and self-satisfied. His views as a
+missionary are well-defined. I give them in his own words:--"Those
+Chinese who have never heard the Gospel will be judged by the Almighty
+as He thinks fit"--a contention which does not admit of dispute--"but
+those Chinese who have heard the Christian doctrine, and still steel
+their hearts against the Holy Ghost, will assuredly go to hell; there is
+no help for them, they can believe and they won't; had they believed,
+their reward would be eternal; they refuse to believe and their
+punishment will be eternal." But the destruction that awaits the Chinese
+must be pointed out to them with becoming gentleness, in accordance with
+the teaching of the Rev. S. F. Woodin, of the American Baptist Mission,
+Foochow, who says:--"There are occasions when we must speak that awful
+word 'hell,' but this should always be done in a spirit of earnest
+love." (_Records_ of the Shanghai Missionary Conference, 1877, p. 91.)
+It was a curious study to observe the equanimity with which this
+good-natured man contemplates the work he has done in China, when to
+obtain six dubious conversions he has on his own confession sent some
+thousands of unoffending Chinese _en enfer bouillir eternellement_.
+
+But, if the teaching of this good missionary is unwelcome to the
+Chinese, and there are hundreds in China who teach as he does, how
+infinitely more distasteful must be the teaching of both the Founder and
+the Secretary of the Mission which sent him to China.
+
+"They are God's lost ones who are in China," says Mr. C. L. Morgan,
+editor of _The Christian_, "and God cares for them and yearns over
+them." (_China's Millions_, 1879, p. 94.) "The millions of Chinese,"
+(who have never heard the Gospel,) says Mr. B. Broomhall, secretary of
+the China Inland Mission, and editor of _China's Millions_, "where are
+they going, what is to be their future? What is to be their condition
+beyond the grave? Oh, tremendous question! It is an awful thing to
+contemplate--but they perish; that is what God says." ("Evangelisation
+of the World," p. 70.) "The heathen are all guilty in God's eyes; as
+guilty they perish." (_Id._, 101.) "Do we believe that these millions
+are without hope in the next world? We turn the leaves of God's Word in
+vain, for there we find no hope; not only that, but positive words to
+the contrary. Yes! we believe it." (_Id._, p. 199.)
+
+The Rev. Dr. Hudson Taylor, the distinguished Founder of the Mission,
+certainly believes it, and has frequently stated his belief in public.
+Ancestral worship is the keystone of the religion of the Chinese; "the
+keystone also of China's social fabric." And "the worship springs," says
+the Rev. W. A. P. Martin, D.D., LL.D., of the Tung Wen College, Peking,
+"from some of the best principles of human nature. The first conception
+of a life beyond the grave was, it is thought, suggested by a desire to
+commune with deceased parents." ("The Worship of Ancestors--a plea for
+toleration.") But Dr. Hudson Taylor condemned bitterly this plea for
+toleration. "Ancestral worship," he said (it was at the Shanghai
+Missionary Conference of May, 1890), "Ancestral worship is idolatry from
+beginning to end, the whole of it, and everything connected with it."
+China's religion is idolatry, the Chinese are universally idolatrous,
+and the fate that befalls idolaters is carefully pointed out by Dr.
+Taylor:--"Their part is in the lake of fire."
+
+"These millions of China," I quote again from Dr. Taylor, "These
+millions of China" (who have never heard the Gospel), "are unsaved. Oh!
+my dear friends, may I say one word about that condition? The Bible says
+of the heathen, that they are without hope; will you say there is good
+hope for them of whom the Word of God says, 'they are without hope,
+without God in the world'?" (Missionary Conference of 1888, _Records_,
+i., 176.)
+
+"There are those who know more about the state of the heathen than did
+the Apostle Paul, who wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost,
+'They that sin without law, perish without law,' nay, there are those
+who are not afraid to contradict the revelation of Jesus Christ, which
+God gave unto Him to shew unto His servants, in which He solemnly
+affirms that 'idolators and all liars, their part shall be in the lake
+that burneth with fire and brimstone.' Such being the state of the
+unsaved of China, do not their urgent needs claim from us that with
+_agonising eagerness_ we should hasten to proclaim everywhere the
+message through which alone deliverance can be found?" (_Ut supra_, ii.,
+31.)
+
+Look then at the enormous difficulty which the six hundred and eleven
+missionaries, of the China Inland Mission, raise up against themselves,
+the majority of whom are presumably in agreement with the teaching of
+their director, Dr. Hudson Taylor. They tell the Chinese inquirer that
+his unconverted father, who never heard the Gospel, has, like Confucius,
+perished eternally. But the chief of all virtues in China is filial
+piety; the strongest emotion that can move the heart of a Chinaman is
+the supreme desire to follow in the footsteps of his father. Conversion
+with him means not only eternal separation from the father who gave him
+life, but the "immediate liberation of his ancestors to a life of
+beggary, to inflict sickness and all manner of evil on the
+neighbourhood."
+
+I believe that it is now universally recognised that the most difficult
+of all missionary fields--incomparably the most difficult--is China.
+Difficulties assail the missionary at every step; and every honest man,
+whether his views be broad or high or low, must sympathise with the
+earnest efforts the missionaries are making for the good and advancement
+of the Chinese.
+
+Look for example at the difficulty there is in telling a Chinese, who
+has been taught to regard the love of his parents as his chief duty, as
+his forefathers have been taught for hundreds of generations before
+him--the difficulty there is in explaining to him, in his own language,
+the words of Christ, "If any man come to Me and hate not his father, he
+cannot be My disciple. For I am come to set a man at variance against
+his father."
+
+In the patriarchal system of government which prevails in China, the
+most awful crime that a son can commit, is to kill his parent, either
+father or mother. And this is said to be, though the description is no
+doubt abundantly exaggerated, the punishment of his crime. He is put to
+death by the "_Ling chi_," or "degrading and slow process," and his
+younger brothers are beheaded; his house is razed to the ground and the
+earth under it dug up several feet deep; his neighbours are severely
+punished; his principal teacher is decapitated; the district magistrate
+is deprived of his office; and the higher officials of the province
+degraded three degrees in rank.
+
+Such is the enormity of the crime of parricide in China; yet it is to
+the Chinese who approves of the severity of this punishment that the
+missionary has to preach, "And the children shall rise up against their
+parents and cause them to be put to death."
+
+The China Inland Mission, as a body of courageous workers, brave
+travellers, unselfish and kindly men endowed with every manly virtue
+that can command our admiration, is worthy of all the praise that can
+be bestowed on it. Most of its members are men who have been saved after
+reaching maturity, and delicately-nurtured emotional girls with
+heightened religious feelings.
+
+Too often entirely ignorant of the history of China, a mighty nation
+which has "witnessed the rise to glory and the decay of Egypt, Assyria,
+Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome, and still remains the only monument
+of ages long bygone," of its manners and polity, customs and religions,
+and of the extraordinary difficulties in the acquirement of its
+language, too often forgetful that the Chinese are a people whose
+"prepossessions and prejudices and cherished judgments are the growth of
+millenniums," they come to China hoping that miraculous assistance will
+aid them in their exposition of the Christian doctrine, in language
+which is too often impenetrable darkness to its hearers.
+
+"They are God's lost ones who are in China, and God cares for them and
+yearns over them," and men who were in England respectable artisans,
+with an imperfect hold of their own language, come to China, in response
+to the "wail of the dying millions," to stay this "awful ruin of souls,"
+who, at the rate of 33,000 a day, are "perishing without hope, having
+sinned without law."
+
+Six months after their arrival they write to _China's Millions_: "Now
+for the news! Glorious news this time! Our services crowded! Such bright
+intelligent faces! So eager to hear the good news! They seemed to drink
+in every word, and to listen as if they were afraid that a word might be
+lost." Five years later they write: "The first convert in Siao Wong Miao
+was a young man named Sengleping, a matseller. He was very earnest in
+his efforts to spread the Gospel, but about the beginning of the year
+he became insane. The poor man lost his reason, but not his piety."
+(_China's Millions_, iv., 5, 95, and 143).
+
+A young English girl at this mission, who has been more than a year in
+China, tells me that she has never felt the Lord so near her as she has
+since she came to China, nor ever realised so entirely His abundant
+goodness. Poor thing, it made me sad to talk to her. In England she
+lived in a bright and happy home with brothers and sisters, in a
+charming climate. She was always well and full of life and vigour,
+surrounded by all that can make life worth living. In China she is never
+well; she is almost forgetting what is the sensation of health; she is
+anaemic and apprehensive; she has nervous headaches and neuralgia; she
+can have no pleasure, no amusement whatever; her only relaxation is
+taking her temperature; her only diversion a prayer meeting. She is
+cooped up in a Chinese house in the unchanging society of a married
+couple--the only exercise she can permit herself is a prison-like walk
+along the top of the city at the back of the mission. Her lover, a
+refined English gentleman who is also in the mission, lives a week's
+journey away, in Chungking, a depressing fever-stricken city where the
+sun is never seen from November to June, and blazes with unendurable
+fierceness from July to October. In England he was full of strength and
+vigour, fond of boating and a good lawn-tennis player. In China he is
+always ill, anaemic, wasted, and dyspeptic, constantly subject to low
+forms of fever, and destitute of appetite. But more agonising than his
+bad health is the horrible reality of the unavailing sacrifice he is
+making--no converts but "outcasts subsidised to forsake their family
+altars;" no reward but the ultimate one which his noble self-devotion
+is laying up for himself in Heaven. No man with a healthy brain can
+discern "Blessing" in the work of these two missionaries, nor be blind
+to the fact that it is the reverse of worshipful to return effusive
+thanks to the great Almighty, "who yearns over the Chinese, His lost
+ones," for "vouchsafing the abundant mercies" of a harvest of six
+doubtful converts as the work of three missionaries for three years.
+
+There are 180,000 people in Suifu, and, as is the case with Chinese
+cities, a larger area than that under habitation is occupied by the
+public graveyard outside the city, which covers the hill slopes for
+miles and miles. The number of opium-smokers is so large that the
+question is not, who does smoke opium, but who doesn't. In the mission
+street alone, besides the Inland Mission, the Buddhist Temple,
+Mohammedan Mosque, and Roman Catholic Mission, there are eight
+opium-houses. Every bank, silk shop, and hong, of any pretension
+whatever, throughout the city, has its opium-room, with the lamp always
+lit ready for the guest. Opium-rooms are as common as smoking rooms are
+with us. A whiff of opium rather than a nip of whisky is the preliminary
+to business in Western China.
+
+[Illustration: OPIUM-SMOKING.]
+
+An immensely rich city is Suifu with every advantage of position, on a
+great waterway in the heart of a district rich in coal and minerals and
+inexhaustible subterranean reservoirs of brine. Silks and furs and
+silverwork, medicines, opium and whitewax, are the chief articles of
+export, and as, fortunately for us, Western China can grow but little
+cotton, the most important imports are Manchester goods.
+
+Szechuen is by far the richest province of the eighteen that constitute
+the Middle Kingdom. Its present Viceroy, Liu, is a native of Anhwei; he
+is, therefore, a countryman of Li Hung Chang to whom he is related by
+marriage, his daughter having married Li Hung Chang's nephew. Its
+provincial Treasurer is believed to occupy the richest post held by any
+official in the empire. It is worth noticing that the present provincial
+Treasurer, Kung Chao-yuan, has just been made (1894) Minister
+Plenipotentiary to Great Britain, France, Italy, Belgium, Sweden and
+Norway, and one can well believe how intense was his chagrin when he
+received this appointment from the "Imperial Supreme" compelling him, as
+it did, to forsake the tombs of his ancestors--to leave China for
+England on a fixed salary, and vacate the most coveted post in the
+empire, a post where the opportunities of personal enrichment are simply
+illimitable.
+
+In Suifu there are two magistrates, both with important yamens. The Fu
+magistrate is the "Father of the City," the Hsien magistrate is the
+"Mother of the City;" and the "Mother of the City" largely favours the
+export opium trade. When Protestant missionaries first came to the city
+in 1888 and 1889 there was little friendliness shown to them. Folk would
+cry after the missionary, "There goes the foreigner that eats children,"
+and children would be hurriedly hidden, as if from fear. These taunts
+were at first disregarded. But there came a time when living children
+were brought to the mission for sale as food; whereupon the mission made
+formal complaint in the yamen, and the Fu at once issued a proclamation
+checking the absurd tales about the foreigners, and ordering the
+citizens, under many pains and penalties, to treat the foreigners with
+respect. There has been no trouble since, and, as we walked through the
+crowded streets, I could see nothing but friendly indifference.
+Reference to this and other sorrows is made in the missionary's report
+to _China's Millions_, November, 1893:--
+
+"Soon after this trial had passed away (the rumours of baby eating),
+still more painful internal sorrow arose. One of the members, who had
+been baptised three years before and had been useful as a preacher of
+the Gospel, fell into grievous sin, and had to be excluded from Church
+fellowship. Then a little later a very promising inquirer, who had been
+cured of opium-smoking and appeared to be growing in grace, fell again
+under its power. While still under a cloud he was suddenly removed
+during the cholera visitation."
+
+The China Inland Mission has pleasant quarters close under the city
+wall. Their pretty chapel opens into the street, and displays
+prominently the proclamation of the Emperor concerning the treaty rights
+of foreign missionaries. Seven children, all of whom are girls, are
+boarded on the premises, and are being brought up as Christians. They
+are pretty, bright children, the eldest, a girl of fourteen,
+particularly so. All are large-footed, and they are to be married to
+Christian converts. When this fact becomes known it is hoped that more
+young Chinamen than at present may be emulous to be converted. All seven
+are foundlings from Chungking where, wrapped in brown paper, they were
+at different times dropped over the wall into the Mission compound. They
+have been carefully reared by the Mission.
+
+At the boys' school fifty smart boys, all heathens, were at their
+lessons. They were learning different subjects, and were teaching their
+ears the "tones" by reading at the top of their voices. The noise was
+awful. None but a Chinese boy could study in such a din. In China, when
+the lesson is finished, the class is silent; noise, therefore, is the
+indication of work in a Chinese school--not silence.
+
+The schoolmaster was a ragged-looking loafer, dressed in grey. He was
+in mourning, and had been unshaven for forty-two days in consequence of
+the death of his father. This was an important day of mourning, because
+on this day, the forty-second after his death, his dead father became,
+for the first time, aware of his own decease. A week later, on the
+forty-ninth day, the funeral rites would cease.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+SUIFU TO CHAOTONG, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE PROVINCE OF YUNNAN--CHINESE
+PORTERS, POSTAL ARRANGEMENTS, AND BANKS.
+
+
+I engaged three new men in Suifu, who undertook to take me to Chaotong,
+290 miles, in thirteen days, special inducement being held out to them
+in the shape of a reward of one shilling each to do the journey in
+eleven days. Their pay was to be seven shillings and threepence each,
+apart from the bonus, and of course they had to find themselves. They
+brought me from the coolie-hong, where they were engaged, an agreement
+signed by the hong-master, which was to be returned to them in Chaotong,
+and remitted to their master as a receipt for my safe delivery.
+
+Every condition detailed in the agreement they faithfully carried out,
+and they took me to Chaotong in ten days and a half, though the ordinary
+time is fourteen days.
+
+One of the three was a convert, one of the six surviving converts made
+by the aggregate Inland Mission of Suifu in six years. He was an
+excellent good fellow, rather dull of wits, but a credit to the Mission.
+To him was intrusted the paying away of my money--he carried no load.
+When he wanted money he was to show me his empty hands, and say "_Muta
+tsien! muta tsien!_" (I have no money! I have no money!).
+
+I knew that perfect confidence could be placed in the convert, apart
+from the reason of his conversion, because he had a father living in
+Suifu. Were he to rob me or do me a wrong and run away, we could arrest
+his father and have him detained in the yamen prison till his son
+returned. Nothing in China gives one greater protection against fraud
+and injury than the law which holds a father responsible for the
+wrongdoing of his son, or, where there is no father, an elder son
+culpable for the misdeed of the younger.
+
+On the morning of March 22nd we started for Chaotong in Yunnan province.
+The Inland Missionary and a Brother from the American Baptist Mission
+kindly came with me for the first thirteen miles. My route lay west on
+the north bank of the Yangtse, but later, after crossing the Yangtse,
+would be nearly south to Chaotong.
+
+Shortly before leaving, the _chairen_ or yamen-runner--the policeman,
+that is to say--sent by the Magistrate to shadow me to Tak-wan-hsien,
+called at the Mission to request that the interpreter would kindly
+remind the traveller, who did not speak Chinese, that it was customary
+to give wine-money to the chairen at the end of the journey. The request
+was reasonable. All the way from Chungking I had been accompanied by
+yamen-runners without knowing it. The chairen is sent partly for the
+protection of the traveller, but mainly for the protection of the
+Magistrate; for, should a traveller provided with a passport receive any
+injury, the Magistrate of the district would be liable to degradation.
+It was arranged, therefore, with the convert that, on our arrival in
+Tak-wan-hsien, I was to give the chairen, if satisfied with his
+services, 200 cash (five pence); but, if he said "_gowshun! gowshun!_"
+(a little more! a little more!) with sufficient persistence, I was to
+increase the reward gradually to sevenpence halfpenny. This was to be
+the limit; and the chairen, I was assured, would consider this a
+generous return for accompanying me 227 miles over one of the most
+mountainous roads in China.
+
+It was a pleasant walk along the river-bank in the fertile alluvial,
+where the poppy in white flower and tobacco were growing, and where
+fields of yellow rape-seed alternated with beds of rushes--the rape-seed
+yielding the oil, and the rushes the rushlights of Chinese lamps. Flocks
+of wild geese were within easy shot on the sandbanks--the "peaceful
+geese," whose virtues are extolled by every Chinaman. They live in
+pairs, and, if one dies, its mate will be for ever faithful to its
+memory. Such virtue is worthy of being recorded on the arch which here
+spans the roadway, whose Chinese characters, _Shen_ (holy), _Chi_
+(will), show that it was erected by the holy decree of the Emperor to
+perpetuate the memory of some widow who never remarried.
+
+As we walked along the missionary gave instructions to my men. "In my
+grace I had given them very light loads; hurry and they would be richly
+rewarded"--one shilling extra for doing fourteen stages in eleven days.
+
+At an inn, under the branches of a banyan tree, we sat down and had a
+cup of tea. While we waited, a hawker came and sat near us. He was
+peddling live cats. In one of his two baskets was a cat that bore a
+curious resemblance to a tortoise-shell tabby, that till a week ago had
+been a pet in the Inland Mission. It had disappeared mysteriously; it
+had died, the Chinese servant said; and here it was reincarnated.
+
+At the market town the missionaries left me to go on alone with my three
+men. I had seventeen miles still to go before night.
+
+It was midday, and the sun was hot, so a chair was arranged for to take
+me the seventeen miles to Anpien. It was to cost 320 cash (eightpence),
+but, just before leaving, the grasping coolies refused to carry me for
+less than 340 cash. "Walk on," said the missionary, "and teach them a
+Christian lesson," so I walked seventeen miles in the sun to rebuke them
+for their avarice and save one halfpenny. In the evening I am afraid
+that I was hardly in the frame of mind requisite for conducting an
+evangelical meeting.
+
+Anpien is a considerable town. It is on the Yangtse River just below
+where it bifurcates into two rivers, one of which goes north-west, the
+other south-west. Streets of temporary houses are built down by the
+river; they form the winter suburb, and disappear in the summer when the
+river rises in consequence of the melting of the snows in its mountain
+sources. At an excellent inn, with a noisy restaurant on the first
+floor, good accommodation was given me. No sooner was I seated than a
+chairen came from the yamen to ask for my Chinese visiting card; but he
+did not ask for my passport, though I had brought with me twenty-five
+copies besides the original.
+
+At daybreak a chair was ready, and I was carried to the River, where a
+ferry boat was in waiting to take us across below the junction. Then we
+started on our journey towards the south, along the right bank of the
+Laowatan branch of the Yangtse. The road was a tracking path cut into
+the face of the cliff; it was narrow, steep, winding, and slippery.
+There was only just room for the chair to pass, and at the sudden turns
+it had often to be canted to one side to permit of its passage. We were
+high above the river in the mountain gorges. The comfort of the
+traveller in a chair along this road depends entirely upon the sureness
+of foot of his two bearers--a false step, and chair and traveller would
+tumble down the cliff into the foaming river below. Deep and narrow was
+the mountain river, and it roared like a cataract, yet down the passage
+a long narrow junk, swarming with passengers, was racing, its oars and
+bow-sweep worked by a score of sailors singing in chorus. The boat
+appeared, passed down the reach, and was out of sight in a moment; a
+single error, the slightest confusion, and it would have been smashed in
+fragments on the rocks and the river strewn with corpses.
+
+We did a good stage before breakfast. Every few li where the steepness
+of the valley side permits it, there are straw-thatched, bamboo and
+plaster inns. Here rice is kept in wooden bins all ready steaming hot
+for the use of travellers; good tea is brewed in a few minutes; the
+tables and chopsticks are sufficiently clean.
+
+Leaving the river, we crossed over the mountains by a short cut to the
+river again, and at a wayside inn, much frequented by Chinese, the chair
+stage finished. I wished to do some writing, and sat down at one of the
+tables. A crowd gathered round me, and were much interested. One elderly
+Chinese with huge glasses, a wag in his own way, seeing that I did not
+speak Chinese, thought to make me understand and divert the crowd by the
+loudness of his speech, and, insisting that I was deaf, yelled into my
+ears in tones that shook the tympanum. I told the foolish fellow, in
+English, that the less he talked the better I could understand him; but
+he persisted, and poked his face almost into mine, but withdrew it and
+hobbled off in umbrage when I drew the attention of the bystanders to
+the absurd capacity of his mouth, which was larger than any mule's.
+
+I must admit that my knowledge of Chinese was very scanty, so scanty
+indeed as to be almost non-existent. What few words I knew were rarely
+intelligible; but, as Mrs. General Baynes, when staying at Boulogne,
+found Hindostanee to be of great help in speaking French, so did I
+discover that English was of great assistance to me in conversing in
+Chinese. Remonstrance was thus made much more effective. Whenever I was
+in a difficulty, or the crowd too obtrusive, I had only to say a few
+grave sentences in English, and I was master of the situation. This
+method of speaking often reminded me of that employed by a Cornish lady
+of high family whose husband was a colleague of mine in Spain. She had
+been many years in Andalusia, but had never succeeded in mastering
+Spanish. At a dinner party given by this lady, at which I was present,
+she thus addressed her Spanish servant, who did not "possess" a single
+word of English: "Bring me," she said in an angry aside, "bring me the
+_cuchillo_ with the black-handled heft," adding, as she turned to us and
+thumped her fist on the table, while the servant stood still mystified,
+"D---- the language! I wish I had never learnt it."
+
+The inn, where the sedan left me, was built over the pathway, which was
+here a narrow track, two feet six inches wide. Mountain coolies on the
+road were passing in single file through the inn, their backs bending
+under their huge burdens. Pigs and fowls and dogs, and a stray cat, were
+foraging for crumbs under the table. Through the open doorways you saw
+the paddy-fields under water and the terraced hills, with every arable
+yard under cultivation. The air was hot and enervating. "The country of
+the clouds," as the Chinese term the province of Szechuen, does not
+belie its name. An elderly woman was in charge of the oven, and toddled
+about on her deformed feet as if she were walking on her heels. Her
+husband, the innkeeper, brought us hot water every few minutes to keep
+our tea basins full. "_Na kaishui lai_" (bring hot water), you heard on
+all sides. A heap of bedding was in one corner of the room, in another
+were a number of rolls of straw mattresses; a hollow joint of bamboo was
+filled with chopsticks for the common use, into another bamboo the
+innkeeper slipped his takings of copper cash. Hanging from the rafters
+were strings of straw sandals for the poor, and hemp sandals for moneyed
+wayfarers like the writer. The people who stood round, and those seated
+at the tables, were friendly and respectful, and plied my men with
+questions concerning their master. And I did hope that the convert was
+not tempted to backslide and swerve from the truth in his answers.
+
+My men were now anxious to push on. Over a mountainous country of
+surpassing beauty, I continued my journey on foot to Fan-yien-tsen, and
+rested there for the night, having done two days' journey in one.
+
+On March 24th we were all day toiling over the mountains, climbing and
+descending wooded steeps, through groves of pine, with an ever-changing
+landscape before us, beautiful with running water, with cascades and
+waterfalls tumbling down into the river, with magnificent glens and
+gorges, and picturesque temples on the mountain tops. At night we were
+at the village of Tanto, on the river, having crossed, a few li before,
+over the boundary which separates the province of Szechuen from the
+province of Yunnan.
+
+From Tanto the path up the gorges leads across a rocky mountain creek
+in a defile of the mountains. In England this creek would be spanned by
+a bridge; but the poor heathen, in China, how do they find their way
+across the stream? By a bridge also. They have spanned the torrent with
+a powerful iron suspension bridge, 100 feet long by ten feet broad,
+swung between two massive buttresses and approached under handsome
+temple-archways.
+
+Mists clothe the mountains--the air is confined between these walls of
+rock and stone. Population is scanty, but there is cultivation wherever
+possible. Villages sparsely distributed along the mountain path have
+water trained to them in bamboo conduits from tarns on the hillside.
+Each house has its own supply, and there is no attempt to provide for
+the common good. Besides other reasons, it would interfere with the
+trade of the water-carriers, who all day long are toiling up from the
+river.
+
+The mountain slope does not permit a greater width of building space
+than on each side of the one main street. And on market days this street
+is almost impassable, being thronged with traffickers, and blocked with
+stalls and wares. Coal is for sale, both pure and mixed with clay in
+briquettes, and salt in blocks almost as black as coal, and three times
+as heavy, and piles of drugs--a medley of bones, horns, roots, leaves,
+and minerals--and raw cotton and cotton yarn from Wuchang and Bombay,
+and finished goods from Manchester. At one of the villages there was a
+chair for hire, and, knowing how difficult was the country, I was
+willing to pay the amount asked--namely, _7d._ for nearly seven miles;
+but my friend the convert, who arranged these things, considered that
+between the _5d._ he offered and the _7d._ they asked the discrepancy
+was too great, and after some acrimonious bargaining it was decided
+that I should continue on foot, my man indicating to me by gestures, in
+a most sarcastic way, that the "_chiaodza_" men had failed to overreach
+him.
+
+[Illustration: A TEMPLE IN SZECHUEN.]
+
+[Illustration: LAOWATAN.]
+
+At Sengki-ping it rained all through the night, and I had to sleep under
+my umbrella because of a solution in the continuity of the roof
+immediately above my pillow. And it rained all the day following; but my
+men, eager to earn their reward of one shilling, pushed on through the
+slush. It was hard work following the slippery path above the river. Few
+rivers in the world flow between more majestic banks than these,
+towering as they do a thousand feet above the water. Clad with thick
+mountain scrub, that has firm foothold, the mountains offer but a poor
+harvest to the peasant; yet even here high up on the precipitous sides
+of the cliffs, ledges that seem inaccessible are sown with wheat or
+peas, and, if the soil be deep enough, with the baneful poppy. As we
+plodded on through the mud and rain, we overtook a poor lad painfully
+limping along with the help of a stick. He was a bright lad, who unbound
+his leg and showed me a large swelling above the knee. He spoke to me,
+though I did not understand him, but with sturdy independence did not
+ask for alms, and when I had seen his leg he bound it up again and
+limped on. Meeting him a little later at an inn, where he was sitting at
+a table with nothing before him to eat, I gave him a handful of cash
+which I had put in my pocket for him. He thanked me by raising his
+clasped hands, and said something, I knew not what, as I hurried on. A
+little while afterwards I stopped to have my breakfast, when the boy
+passed. As soon as he saw me he fell down upon his knees and "kotow'd"
+to me, with every mark of the liveliest gratitude. I felt touched by the
+poor fellow's gratitude--he could not have been more than fifteen--and
+mean, to think that the benefaction, which in his eyes appeared so
+generous, was little more than one penny. There can be no doubt that I
+gained merit by this action, for this very afternoon as I was on the
+track a large stone the size of a shell from a 50-ton gun fell from the
+crag above me, struck the rock within two paces of me, and shot past
+into the river. A few feet nearer and it would have blotted out the life
+of one whom the profession could ill spare. We camped at Laowatan.
+
+A chair with three bearers was waiting for me in the morning, so that I
+left the town of Laowatan in a manner befitting my rank. The town had
+risen to see me leave, and I went down the street amid serried ranks of
+spectators. We crossed the river by a wonderful suspension bridge, 250
+feet long and 12 feet broad, formed of linked bars of wrought iron. It
+shows stability, strength, and delicacy of design, and is a remarkable
+work to have been done by the untutored barbarians of this land of
+night. We ascended the steep incline opposite, and passed the likin
+barrier, but at a turn in the road, higher still in the mountain, a
+woman emerged from her cottage and blocked our path. Nor could the chair
+pass till my foremost bearer had reluctantly given her a string of cash.
+"With money you can move the gods," say the Chinese; "without it you
+can't move a man."
+
+For miles we mounted upwards. We were now in Yunnan, "south of the
+clouds"--in Szechuen we were always under the clouds--the sun was warm,
+the air dry and crisp. Ponies passed us in long droves; often there were
+eighty ponies in a single drove. All were heavily laden with copper and
+lead, were nozzled to keep them off the grass, and picked their way down
+the rocky path of steps with the agility and sureness of foot of
+mountain goats. Time was beaten for them on musical gongs, and the
+echoes rang among the mountains. Many were decorated with red flags and
+tufts, and with plumes of the Amherst pheasant. These were official pack
+animals, which were franked through the likin barriers without
+examination.
+
+The path, rising to the height of the watershed, where at a great
+elevation we gain a distant view of water, descends by the counterslope
+once more to the river Laowatan. A wonderful ravine, a mountain riven
+perpendicularly in twain, here gives passage to the river, and in full
+view of this we rested at the little town of Taoshakwan, with the roar
+of the river hundreds of feet below us. Midway up the face of the
+precipice opposite there is a sight worth seeing; a mass of coffin
+boards, caught in a fault in the precipice, have been lying there for
+untold generations, having been originally carried there by the "ancient
+flying-men who are now extinct."
+
+A poor little town is Taoshakwan, with a poor little yamen with
+pretentious tigers painted on its outflanking wall, with a poor little
+temple, and gods in sad disrepair; but with an admirable inn, with a
+charming verandah facing a scene of alpine magnificence.
+
+We were entering a district of great poverty. At Tchih-li-pu, where we
+arrived at midday the next day, the houses are poor, the people
+poverty-stricken and ill-clad, the hotel dirty, and my room the worst I
+had yet slept in. The road is a well-worn path flagged in places,
+uneven, and irregular, following at varying heights the upward course of
+the tortuous river. The country is bald; it is grand but lonely;
+vegetation is scanty and houses are few; we have left the prosperity of
+Szechuen, and are in the midst of the poverty of Yunnan. Farmhouses
+there are at rare intervals, amid occasional patches of cultivation;
+there are square white-washed watch towers in groves of sacred trees;
+there are a few tombstones, and an occasional rudely carved god to guard
+the way. There are poor mud and bamboo inns with grass roofs, and dirty
+tables set out with half a dozen bowls of tea, and with ovens for the
+use of travellers. Food we had now to bring with us, and only at the
+larger towns where the stages terminate could we expect to find food for
+sale. The tea is inferior, and we had to be content with maize meal,
+bean curds, rice roasted in sugar, and sweet gelatinous cakes made from
+the waste of maize meal. Rice can only be bought in the large towns. It
+is not kept in roadside inns ready steaming hot for use, as it is in
+Szechuen. Rarely there are sweet potatoes; there are eggs, however, in
+abundance, one hundred for a shilling (500 cash), but the coolies cannot
+eat them because of their dearness. A large bowl of rice costs four
+cash, an egg five cash, and the Chinaman strikes a balance in his mind
+and sees more nourishment in one bowl of rice than in three eggs. Of
+meat there is pork--pork in plenty, and pork only. Pigs and dogs are the
+scavengers of China. None of the carnivora are more omnivorous than the
+Chinese. "A Chinaman has the most unscrupulous stomach in the world,"
+says Meadows; "he will eat anything from the root to the leaf, and from
+the hide to the entrails." He will not even despise the flesh of dog
+that has died a natural death. During the awful famine in Shansi of
+1876-1879 starving men fought to the death for the bodies of dogs that
+had fattened on the corpses of their dead countrymen. Mutton is
+sometimes for sale in Mohammedan shops, and beef also, but it must not
+be imagined that either sheep or ox is killed for its flesh, unless on
+the point of death from starvation or disease. And the beef is not from
+the ox but from the water buffalo. Sugar can be bought only in the
+larger towns; salt can be purchased everywhere.
+
+Beggars there are in numbers, skulking about almost naked, with unkempt
+hair and no queue, with a small basket for gathering garbage and a staff
+to keep away dogs. Only beggars carry sticks in China, and it is only
+the beggars that need beware of dogs. To carry a stick in China for
+protection against dogs is like carrying a red flag to scare away bulls.
+Dogs in China are lowly organised; they are not discriminating animals;
+and, despite the luxurious splendour of my Chinese dress--it cost more
+than seven shillings--dogs frequently mistook my calling. In Szechuen,
+as we passed through the towns, there was competition among the inns to
+obtain our custom. Hotel runners were there to shout to all the world
+the superior merits of their establishments. But here in Yunnan it is
+different. There is barely inn accommodation for the road traffic, and
+the innkeepers are either too apathetic or too shamefaced to call the
+attention of the traveller to their poor, dirty accommodation houses.
+
+In Szechuen, one of the most flourishing of trades is that of the
+monumental mason and carver in stone. Huge monoliths are there cut from
+the boulders which have been dislodged from the mountains, dressed and
+finished _in situ_, and then removed to the spot where they are to be
+erected. The Chinese thus pursue a practice different from that of the
+Westerns, who bring the undressed stone from the quarry and carve it in
+the studio. With the Chinese the difficulty is one of transport--the
+finished work is obviously lighter than the unhewn block. In Yunnan, up
+to the present, I had seen no mason at work, for no masonry was needed.
+Houses built of stone were falling into ruin, and only thatched,
+mud-plastered, bamboo and wood houses were being built in their places.
+
+At Laowatan I told my Christian to hire me a chair for thirty or forty
+li, and he did so, but the chair, instead of carrying me the shorter
+distance, carried me the whole day. The following day the chair kept
+company with me, and as I had not ordered it, I naturally walked; but
+the third day also the chair haunted me, and then I discovered that my
+admirable guide had engaged the chair not for thirty or forty li, as I
+had instructed him in my best Chinese, but for three hundred and sixty
+li, for four days' stages of ninety li each. He had made the agreement
+"out of consideration for me," and his own pocket; he had made an
+agreement which gave him wider scope for a little private arrangement of
+his own with the chair-coolies. For two days I was paying fifteen cash a
+li for a chair and walking alongside of it charmed by the good humour of
+the coolies, and unaware that they were laughing in their sleeves at my
+folly. Trifling mistakes like this are inevitable to one who travels in
+China without an interpreter.
+
+My two coolies were capital fellows, full of good humour, cheerful, and
+untiring. The elder was disposed to be argumentative with his
+countrymen, but he could not quarrel. Nature had given him an
+uncontrollable stutter, and, if he tried to speak quickly, spasm seized
+his tongue, and he had to break into a laugh. Few men in China, I think,
+could be more curiously constructed than this coolie. He was all neck;
+his chin was simply an upward prolongation of his neck like a second
+"Adam's apple." Both were very pleasant companions. They were naturally
+in good humour, for they were well paid, and their loads, as loads are
+in China, were almost insignificant; I had only asked them to carry
+sixty-seven pounds each.
+
+We, who live amid the advantages of Western civilisation, can hardly
+realise how enormous are the weights borne by those human beasts of
+burthen, our brothers in China. The common fast-travelling coolie of
+Szechuen contracts to carry eighty catties (107lbs.), forty miles a day
+over difficult country. But the weight-carrying coolie, travelling
+shorter distances, carries far heavier loads than that. There are
+porters, says Du Halde, who will carry 160 of our pounds, ten leagues a
+day. The coolies, engaged in carrying the compressed cakes of Szechuen
+tea into Thibet, travel over mountain passes 7000 feet above their
+starting place; yet there are those among them, says Von Richthofen, who
+carry 324 catties (432lbs.). A package of tea is called a "_pao_" and
+varies in weight from eleven to eighteen catties, yet Baber has often
+seen coolies carrying eighteen of the eighteen-catty _pao_ (the "_Yachou
+pao_") and on one occasion twenty-two, in other words Baber has often
+seen coolies with more than 400lbs. on their backs. Under these enormous
+loads they travel from six to seven miles a day. The average load of the
+Thibetan tea-carrier is, says Gill, from 240lbs. to 264lbs. Gill
+constantly saw "little boys carrying 120lbs." Bundles of calico weigh
+fifty-five catties each (73-1/3lbs.), and three bundles are the average
+load. Salt is solid, hard, metallic, and of high specific gravity, yet I
+have seen men ambling along the road, under loads that a strong
+Englishman could with difficulty raise from the ground. The average load
+of salt, coal, copper, zinc, and tin is 200lbs. Gill met coolies
+carrying logs, 200lbs. in weight, ten miles a day; and 200lbs., the
+Consul in Chungking told me, is the average weight carried by the
+cloth-porters between Wanhsien and Chentu, the capital.
+
+Mountain coolies, such as the tea-carriers, bear the weight of their
+burden on their shoulders, carrying it as we do a knapsack, not in the
+ordinary Chinese way, with a pliant carrying pole. They are all provided
+with a short staff, which has a transverse handle curved like a
+boomerang, and with this they ease the weight off the back, while
+standing at rest.
+
+We were still ascending the valley, which became more difficult of
+passage every day. Hamlets are built where there is scarce foothold in
+the detritus, below perpendicular escarpments of rock, cut clean like
+the facades of a Gothic temple. A tributary of the river is crossed by
+an admirable stone bridge of two arches, with a central pier and
+cut-water of magnificent boldness and strength, and with two images of
+lions guarding its abutment. Just below the branch the main stream can
+be crossed by a traveller, if he be brave enough to venture, in a bamboo
+loop-cradle, and be drawn across the stream on a powerful bamboo cable
+slung from bank to bank.
+
+We rested by the bridge and refreshed ourselves, for above us was an
+ascent whose steepness my stuttering coolie indicated to me by fixing my
+walking stick in the ground, almost perpendicularly, and running his
+finger up the side. He did not exaggerate. A zigzag path set with stone
+steps has been cut in the vertical ascent, and up this we toiled for
+hours. At the base of the escalade my men sublet their loads to spare
+coolies who were waiting there in numbers for the purpose, and climbed
+up with me empty-handed. At every few turns there were rest-houses where
+one could get tea and shelter from the hot sun. The village of
+Tak-wan-leo is at the summit; it is a village of some little importance
+and commands a noble view of mountain, valley, and river. Its largest
+hong is the coffin-maker's, which is always filled with shells of the
+thickest timber that money can buy.
+
+Stress is laid in China upon the necessity of a secure resting-place
+after death. The filial affection of a son can do no more thoughtful act
+than present a coffin to his father, to prove to him how composedly he
+will lie after he is dead. And nothing will a father in China show the
+stranger with more pride than the coffin-boards presented to him by his
+dutiful son.
+
+Tak-wan-leo is the highest point on the road between Suifu and Chaotong.
+For centuries it has been known to the Chinese as the highest point;
+how, then, with their defective appliances did they arrive at so
+accurate a determination? Twenty li beyond the village the stage ends at
+the town of Tawantzu, where I had good quarters in the pavilion of an
+old temple. The shrine was thick with the dust of years; the three gods
+were dishevelled and mutilated; no sheaves of joss sticks were
+smouldering on the altar. The steps led down into manure heaps and a
+piggery, into a garden rank and waste, which yet commands an outlook
+over mountain and river worthy of the greatest of temples.
+
+[Illustration: THE OPIUM-SMOKER OF ROMANCE.]
+
+On March 30th I reached Tak-wan-hsien, the day's stage having been
+seventy li (twenty-three and one-third miles). I was carried all the way
+by three chair-coolies in a heavy chair in steady rain that made the
+unpaved track as slippery as ice--and this over the dizzy heights of a
+mountain pathway of extraordinary irregularity. Never slipping, never
+making a mistake, the three coolies bore the chair with my thirteen
+stone, easily and without straining. From time to time they rested a
+minute or two to take a whiff of tobacco; they were always in good
+humour, and finished the day as strong and fresh as when they began it.
+Within an hour of their arrival all these three men were lying on their
+sides in the room opposite to mine, with their opium-pipes and little
+wooden vials of opium before them, all three engaged in rolling and
+heating in their opium-lamps treacly pellets of opium. Then they had
+their daily smoke of opium. "They were ruining themselves body and
+soul." Two of the men were past middle age; the third was a strapping
+young fellow of twenty-five. They may have only recently acquired the
+habit, I had no means of asking them; but those who know Western China
+will tell you that it is almost certain that the two elder men had used
+the opium-pipe as a stimulant since they were as young as their
+companion. All three men were physically well-developed, with large
+frames, showing unusual muscular strength and endurance, and differed,
+indeed, from those resurrected corpses whose fleshless figures, drawn by
+imaginative Chinese artists, we have known for years to be typical of
+our poor lost brothers--the opium-smoking millions of China. For their
+work to-day, work that few men out of China would be capable of
+attempting, the three coolies were paid sevenpence each, out of which
+they found themselves, and had to pay as well one penny each for the
+hire of the chair.
+
+On arriving at the inn in Tak-wan-hsien my estimable comrade, one of the
+six surviving converts of Suifu, indicated to me that his cash belt was
+empty--up the road he could not produce a single cash for me to give a
+beggar--and pointing in turn to the bag where I kept my silver, to the
+ceiling and to his heart, he conveyed to me the pious assurance that if
+I would give him some silver from the bag he would bring me back the
+true change, on his honour, so witness Heaven! I gave him two lumps of
+silver which I made him understand were worth 3420 cash; he went away,
+and after a suspicious absence returned quite gleefully with 3050 cash,
+the bank, no doubt, having detained the remainder pending the
+declaration of a bogus dividend. But he also brought back with him what
+was better than cash, some nutritious maize-meal cakes, which proved a
+welcome change from the everlasting rice. They were as large as an
+English scone, and cost two cash apiece, that is to say, for one
+shilling I could buy twenty dozen.
+
+Money in Western China consists of solid ingots of silver, and copper
+cash. The silver is in lumps of one tael or more each, the tael being a
+Chinese ounce and equivalent roughly to between 1400 and 1500 cash.
+Speaking generally a tael was worth, during my journey, three shillings,
+that is to say, forty cash were equivalent to one penny. There are
+bankers in every town, and the Chinese methods of banking, it is well
+known, are but little inferior to our own. From Hankow to Chungking my
+money was remitted by draft through a Chinese bank. West from Chungking
+the money may be sent by draft, by telegraph, or in bullion, as you
+choose. I carried some silver with me; the rest I put up in a package
+and handed to a native post in Chungking, which undertook to deliver it
+intact to me at Yunnan city, 700 miles away, within a specified time. By
+my declaring its contents and paying the registration fee, a mere
+trifle, the post guaranteed its safe delivery, and engaged to make good
+any loss. Money is thus remitted in Western China with complete
+confidence and security. My money arrived, I may add, in Yunnan at the
+time agreed upon, but after I had left for Talifu. As there is a
+telegraph line between Yunnan and Tali, the money was forwarded by
+telegraph and awaited my arrival in Tali.
+
+There are no less than four native post-offices between Chungking and
+Suifu. All the post-offices transmit parcels, as well as letters and
+bullion, at very moderate charges. The distance is 230 miles, and the
+charges are fifty cash (_1-1/4d._) the catty (1-1/3lb.), or any part
+thereof; thus a single letter pays fifty cash, a catty's weight of
+letters paying no more than a single letter.
+
+From Chungking to Yunnan city, a distance of 630 miles, letters pay two
+hundred cash (fivepence) each; packages of one catty, or under, pay
+three hundred and fifty cash; while for silver bullion there is a
+special fee of three hundred and fifty cash for every ten taels,
+equivalent to ninepence for thirty shillings, or two-and-a-half per
+cent., which includes postage registration, guarantee, and insurance.
+
+Tak-wan-hsien is a town of some importance, and was formerly the seat of
+the French missionary bishop. It is a walled town, ranking as a Hsien
+city, with a Hsien magistrate as its chief ruler. There are 10,000
+people (more or less), within the walls, but the city is poor, and its
+poverty is but a reflex of the district. Its mud wall is crumbling; its
+houses of mud and wood are falling; the streets are ill-paved and the
+people ill-clad.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE CITY OF CHAOTONG, WITH SOME REMARKS ON ITS POVERTY, INFANTICIDE,
+SELLING FEMALE CHILDREN INTO SLAVERY, TORTURES, AND THE CHINESE
+INSENSIBILITY TO PAIN.
+
+
+By the following day we had crossed the mountains, and were walking
+along the level upland that leads to the plain of Chaotong. And on
+Sunday, April 1st, we reached the city. Cedars, held sacred, with
+shrines in the shelter of their branches, dot the plain; peach-trees and
+pear-trees were now in full bloom; the harvest was ripening in the
+fields. There were black-faced sheep in abundance, red cattle with short
+horns, and the ubiquitous water-buffalo. Over the level roads primitive
+carts, drawn by red oxen, were rumbling in the dust. There were mud
+villages, poor and falling into ruins; there were everywhere signs of
+poverty and famine. Children ran about naked, or in rags. We passed the
+likin-barrier, known by its white flag, and I was not even asked for my
+visiting card, nor were my boxes looked into--they were as beggarly as
+the district--but poor carriers were detained, and a few cash unjustly
+wrung from them. At a crowded teahouse, a few miles from the city, we
+waited for the stragglers, while many wayfarers gathered in to see me.
+Prices were ranging higher. Tea here was 4 cash, and not 2 cash as
+hitherto. But even this charge was not excessive. In Canton one day,
+after a weary journey on foot through the crowded streets, I was taken
+to a five-storied pagoda overlooking the city. At the topmost story tea
+was brought me, and I drank a dozen cups, and was asked threepence in
+payment. I thought that the cheapest refreshment I ever had. Yet here I
+was served as abundantly with better tea at a charge compared with which
+the Canton charge was twenty-five times greater. Previously in this
+province the price I had paid for tea in comparison with the price at
+Canton was as one to fifty.
+
+Early in the afternoon we passed through the south gate into Chaotong,
+and, picking our way through the streets, were led to the comfortable
+home of the Bible Christian Mission, where I was kindly received by the
+Rev. Frank Dymond, and welcomed as a brother missionary of whose arrival
+he had been advised. Services were ended, but the neighbours dropped in
+to see the stranger, and ask my exalted age, my honourable name, and my
+dignified business; they hoped to be able to congratulate me upon being
+a man of virtue, the father of many sons; asked how many thousands of
+pieces of silver I had (daughters), and how long I proposed to permit my
+dignified presence to remain in their mean and contemptible city.
+
+Mr. Dymond is a Devonshire man, and that evening he gave me for tea
+Devonshire cream and blackberry jam made in Chaotong, and native oatmeal
+cakes, than which I never tasted any better in Scotland.
+
+Chaotong is a walled Fu city with 40,000 inhabitants. Roman Catholics
+have been established here for many years, and the Bible Christian
+Mission, which is affiliated to the China Inland Mission, has been
+working here since 1887.
+
+There were formerly five missionaries; there are now only two, and one
+of these was absent. The missionary in charge, Mr. Frank Dymond, is one
+of the most agreeable men I met in China, broad-minded, sympathetic and
+earnest--universally honoured and respected by all the district. Since
+the mission was opened three converts have been baptised, one of whom is
+in Szechuen, another is in Tongchuan, and the third has been gathered to
+his fathers. The harvest has not been abundant, but there are now six
+promising inquirers, and the missionary is not discouraged. The mission
+premises are built on land which cost two hundred and ninety taels, and
+are well situated not far from the south gate, the chief yamens, the
+temples, and the French Mission. People are friendly, but manifest
+dangerously little interest in their salvation.
+
+At Chaotong I had entered upon a district that had been devastated by
+recurring seasons of plague and famine. Last year more than 5000 people
+are believed to have died from starvation in the town and its immediate
+neighbourhood. The numbers are appalling, but doubt must always be
+thrown upon statistics derived from Chinese sources. The Chinese and
+Japanese disregard of accuracy is characteristic of all Orientals.
+Beggars were so numerous, and became such a menace to the community,
+that their suppression was called for; they were driven from the
+streets, and confined within the walls of the temple and grounds beyond
+the south gate, and fed by common charity. Huddled together in rags and
+misery, they took famine fever and perished by hundreds. Seventy dead
+were carried from the temple in one day. Of 5000 poor wretches who
+crossed the temple threshold, the Chinese say that 2000 never came out
+alive. For four years past the harvests had been very bad, but there was
+now hope of a better time coming. Opportune rains had fallen, and the
+opium crop was good. More than anything else the district depends for
+its prosperity upon the opium crop--if the crop is good, money is
+plentiful. Maize-cobs last harvest were four times the size of those of
+the previous harvest, when they were no larger than one's finger. Wheat
+and beans were forward; the coming rice crop gave every hope of being a
+good one. Food was still dear, and all prices were high, because rice
+was scarce and dear, and it is the price of rice which regulates the
+market. In a good year one sheng of rice (6-2/3lbs.) costs thirty-five
+cash (less than one penny), it now costs 110 cash. The normal price of
+maize is sixteen cash the sheng, it now cost sixty-five cash the sheng.
+To make things worse, the weight of the sheng had been reduced with the
+times from twelve catties to five catties, and at the same time the
+relation of cash to silver had fallen from 1640 to 1250 cash the tael.
+
+The selling of its female children into slavery is the chief sorrow of
+this famine-stricken district. During last year it is estimated, or
+rather, it is stated by the Chinese, that no less than three thousand
+children from this neighbourhood, chiefly female children and a few
+boys, were sold to dealers and carried like poultry in baskets to the
+capital. At ordinary times the price for girls is one tael (three
+shillings) for every year of their age, thus a girl of five costs
+fifteen shillings, of ten, thirty shillings, but in time of famine
+children, to speak brutally, become a drug in the market. Female
+children were now offering at from three shillings and fourpence to six
+shillings each. You could buy as many as you cared to, you might even
+obtain them for nothing if you would enter into an agreement with the
+father, which he had no means of enforcing, to take care of his child,
+and clothe and feed her, and rear her kindly. Starving mothers would
+come to the mission beseeching the foreign teachers to take their babies
+and save them from the fate that was otherwise inevitable.
+
+Girls are bought in Chaotong up to the age of twenty, and there is
+always a ready market for those above the age of puberty; prices then
+vary according to the measure of the girl's beauty, an important feature
+being the smallness of her feet. They are sold in the capital for wives
+and _yatows_; they are rarely sold into prostitution. Two important
+factors in the demand for them are the large preponderance in the number
+of males at the capital, and the prevalence there of goitre or thick
+neck, a deformity which is absent from the district of Chaotong.
+Infanticide in a starving city like this is dreadfully common. "For the
+parents, seeing their children must be doomed to poverty, think it
+better at once to let the soul escape in search of a more happy asylum
+than to linger in one condemned to want and wretchedness." The
+infanticide is, however, exclusively confined to the destruction of
+female children, the sons being permitted to live in order to continue
+the ancestral sacrifices.
+
+One mother I met, who was employed by the mission, told the missionary
+in ordinary conversation that she had suffocated in turn three of her
+female children within a few days of birth; and, when a fourth was born,
+so enraged was her husband to discover that it was also a girl that he
+seized it by the legs and struck it against the wall and killed it.
+
+Dead children, and often living infants, are thrown out on the common
+among the gravemounds, and may be seen there any morning being gnawed by
+dogs. Mr. Tremberth of the Bible Christian Mission, leaving by the south
+gate early one morning, disturbed a dog eating a still living child
+that had been thrown over the wall during the night. Its little arm was
+crunched and stript of flesh, and it was whining inarticulately--it died
+almost immediately. A man came to see me, who for a long time used to
+heap up merit for himself in heaven by acting as a city scavenger. Early
+every morning he went round the city picking up dead dogs and dead cats
+in order to bury them decently--who could tell, perhaps the soul of his
+grandfather had found habitation in that cat? While he was doing this
+pious work, never a morning passed that he did not find a dead child,
+and usually three or four. The dead of the poor people are roughly
+buried near the surface and eaten by dogs.
+
+An instance of the undoubted truth of the doctrine of transmigration
+occurred recently in Chaotong and is worth recording. A cow was killed
+near the south gate on whose intestine--and this fact can be attested by
+all who saw it--was written plainly and unmistakably the character
+"_Wong_," which proved, they told me, that the soul of one whose name
+was Wong had returned to earth in the body of that cow.
+
+I stayed two days in Chaotong, and strolled in pleasant company through
+the city. Close to the Mission is the yamen of the Chentai or
+Brigadier-General, the Military Governor of this portion of the
+province, and a little further is the more crowded yamen of the Fu
+Magistrate. Here, as in all yamens, the detached wall or fixed screen of
+stone facing the entrance is painted with the gigantic representation of
+a mythical monster in red trying to swallow the sun--the Chinese
+illustration of the French saying "_prendre la lune avec les dents_." It
+is the warning against covetousness, the exhortation against squeezing,
+and is as little likely to be attended to by the magistrate here as it
+would be by his brother in Chicago. We visited the Confucian Temple
+among the trees and the examination hall close by, and another yamen,
+and the Temple of the God of Riches. In the yamen, at the time of our
+visit, a young official, seated in his four-bearer chair, was waiting in
+the outer court; he had sent in his visiting card, and attended the
+pleasure of his superior officer. China may be uncivilised and may yearn
+for the missionaries, but there was refined etiquette in China, and an
+interchange of many of the pleasantest courtesies of modern
+civilisation, when we noble Britons were grubbing in the forest, painted
+savages with a clout.
+
+As we went out of the west gate, I was shown the spot where a few days
+before a young woman, taken in adultery, was done to death in a cage
+amid a crowd of spectators, who witnessed her agony for three days. She
+had to stand on tiptoe in the cage, her head projecting through a hole
+in the roof, and here she had to remain until death by exhaustion or
+strangulation ensued, or till some kind friend, seeking to accumulate
+merit in heaven, passed into her mouth sufficient opium to poison her,
+and so end her struggles.
+
+On the gate itself a man not so long ago was nailed with red-hot nails
+hammered through his wrists above the hands. In this way he was exposed
+in turn at each of the four gates of the city, so that every man, woman,
+and child could see his torture. He survived four days, having
+unsuccessfully attempted to shorten his pain by beating his head against
+the woodwork, an attempt which was frustrated by padding the woodwork.
+This man had murdered and robbed two travellers on the high road, and,
+as things are in China, his punishment was not too severe.
+
+No people are more cruel in their punishments than the Chinese, and
+obviously the reason is that the sensory nervous system of a Chinaman is
+either blunted or of arrested development. Can anyone doubt this who
+witnesses the stoicism with which a Chinaman can endure physical pain
+when sustaining surgical operation without chloroform, the comfort with
+which he can thrive amid foul and penetrating smells, the calmness with
+which he can sleep amid the noise of gunfire and crackers, drums and
+tomtoms, and the indifference with which he contemplates the sufferings
+of lower animals, and the infliction of tortures on higher?
+
+Every text-book on China devotes a special chapter to the subject of
+punishment. Mutilation is extremely common. Often I met men who had been
+deprived of their ears--they had lost them, they explained, in battle
+facing the enemy! It is a common punishment to sever the hamstrings or
+to break the ankle-bones, especially in the case of prisoners who have
+attempted to escape. And I remember that when I was in Shanghai, Mr.
+Tsai, the Mixed Court Magistrate, was reproved by the papers because he
+had from the bench expressed his regret that the foreign law of Shanghai
+did not permit him to punish in this way a prisoner who had twice
+succeeded in breaking from gaol. The hand is cut off for theft, as it
+was in England not so many years ago. I have seen men with the tendon of
+Achilles cut out, and it is worth noting that the Chinese say that this
+"acquired deformity" can be cured by the transplantation in the seat of
+injury of the tendon of a sheep. One embellishment of the Chinese
+punishment of flogging might with good effect be introduced into
+England. After a Chinese flagellation, the culprit is compelled to go
+down on his knees and humbly thank the magistrate for the trouble he has
+been put to to correct his morals.
+
+There is a branch of the _Missions Etrangeres de Paris_ in Chaotong. I
+called at the mission and saw their school of fifteen children, and
+their tiny little church. One priest lives here solitary and alone; he
+was reading, when I entered, the famous Chinese story, "The Three
+Kingdoms." He gave me a kindly welcome, and was pleased to talk in his
+own tongue. An excellent bottle of rich wine was produced, and over the
+glass the Father painted with voluble energy the evil qualities of the
+people whom he has left his beautiful home in the Midi of France to lead
+to Rome. "No Chinaman can resist temptation; all are thieves. Justice
+depends on the richness of the accused. Victory in a court of justice is
+to the richer. Talk to the Chinese of Religion, of a God, of Heaven or
+Hell, and they yawn; speak to them of business and they are all
+attention. If you ever hear of a Chinaman who is not a thief and a liar,
+do not believe it, Monsieur Morrison, do not believe it, they are
+thieves and liars every one."
+
+For eight years the priest had been in China devoting his best energies
+to the propagation of his religion. And sorry had been his recompense.
+The best Christian in the mission had lately broken into the mission
+house and stolen everything valuable he could lay his impious hands on.
+Remembrance of this infamy rankled in his bosom and impelled him to this
+expansive panegyric on Chinese virtue.
+
+Some four months ago the good father was away on a holiday, visiting a
+missionary brother in an adjoining town. In his absence the mission was
+entered through a rift made in the wall, and three hundred taels of
+silver, all the money to the last sou that he possessed, were stolen.
+Suspicion fell upon a Christian, who was not only an active Catholic
+himself, but whose fathers before him had been Catholics for
+generations. It was learned that his wife had some of the money, and
+that the thief was on his way to Suifu with the remainder. There was
+great difficulty in inducing the yamen to take action, but at last the
+wife was arrested. She protested that she knew nothing; but, having been
+triced up by the wrists joined behind her back, she soon came to reason,
+and cried out that, if the magistrate would release her hands, she would
+confess all. Two hundred taels were seized in her house and restored to
+the priest, and the culprit, her husband, followed to Tak-wan-hsien by
+the satellites of the yamen, was there arrested, and was now in prison
+awaiting punishment. The goods he purchased were likewise seized and
+were now with the poor father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MAINLY ABOUT CHINESE DOCTORS.
+
+
+Chaotong is an important centre for the distribution of medicines to
+Szechuen and other parts of the empire. An extraordinary variety of
+drugs and medicaments is collected in the city. No pharmacopoeia is more
+comprehensive than the Chinese. No English physician can surpass the
+Chinese in the easy confidence with which he will diagnose symptoms that
+he does not understand. The Chinese physician who witnesses the
+unfortunate effect of placing a drug of which he knows nothing into a
+body of which he knows less, is no more disconcerted than is his Western
+brother under similar circumstances; he retires, sententiously observing
+"there is medicine for sickness but none for fate." "Medicine," says the
+Chinese proverb, "cures the man who is fated not to die." "When Yenwang
+(the King of Hell) has decreed a man to die at the third watch, no power
+will detain him till the fifth."
+
+The professional knowledge of a Chinese doctor largely consists in
+ability to feel the pulse, or rather the innumerable pulses of his
+Chinese patient. This is the real criterion of his skill. The pulses of
+a Chinaman vary in a manner that no English doctor can conceive of. For
+instance, among the seven kinds of pulse which presage approaching
+death, occur the five following:--
+
+"1. When the pulse is perceived under the fingers to bubble irregularly
+like water over a great fire, if it be in the morning, the patient will
+die in the evening.
+
+"2. Death is no farther off if the pulse seems like a fish whose head is
+stopped in such a manner that he cannot move, but has a frisking tail
+without any regularity; the cause of this distemper lies in the kidneys.
+
+"3. If the pulse seems like drops of water that fall into a room through
+some crack, and when in its return it is scattered and disordered much
+like the twine of a cord which is unravelled, the bones are dried up
+even to the very marrow.
+
+"4. Likewise if the motion of the pulse resembles the pace of a frog
+when he is embarrassed in the weeds, death is certain.
+
+"5. If the motion of the pulse resembles the hasty pecking of the beak
+of a bird, there is a defect of spirits in the stomach."
+
+Heredity is the most important factor in the evolution of a doctor in
+China, success in his career as an "hereditary physician" being
+specially assured to him who has the good fortune to make his first
+appearance in the world feet foremost. Doctors dispense their own
+medicines. In their shops you see an amazing variety of drugs; you will
+occasionally also see tethered a live stag, which on a certain day, to
+be decided by the priests, will be pounded whole in a pestle and mortar.
+"Pills manufactured out of a whole stag slaughtered with purity of
+purpose on a propitious day," is a common announcement in dispensaries
+in China. The wall of a doctor's shop is usually stuck all over with
+disused plasters returned by grateful patients with complimentary
+testimonies to their efficiency; they have done what England is alleged
+to expect of all her sons--their duty.
+
+Medicines, it is known to all Chinamen, operate variously according to
+their taste, thus:--"All sour medicines are capable of impeding and
+retaining; bitter medicines of causing looseness and warmth as well as
+hardening; sweet possess the qualities of strengthening, of harmonising,
+and of warming; acids disperse, prove emollient, and go in an athwart
+direction; salt medicines possess the properties of descending; those
+substances that are hard and tasteless open the orifices of the body and
+promote a discharge. This explains the use of the five tastes."
+
+Coming from Szechuen, we frequently met porters carrying baskets of
+armadillos, leopard skins, leopard and tiger bones. The skins were for
+wear, but the armadillos and bones were being taken to Suifu to be
+converted into medicine. From the bones of leopards an admirable tonic
+may be distilled; while it is well known that the infusion prepared from
+tiger bones is the greatest of the tonics, conferring something of the
+courage, agility, and strength of the tiger upon its partaker.
+
+Another excellent specific for courage is a preparation made from the
+gall bladder of a robber famous for his bravery, who has died at the
+hands of the executioner. The sale of such a gall bladder is one of the
+perquisites of a Chinese executioner.
+
+Ague at certain seasons is one of the most common ailments of the
+district of Chaotong, yet there is an admirable prophylactic at hand
+against it: write the names of the eight demons of ague on paper, and
+then eat the paper with a cake; or take out the eyes of the paper
+door-god (there are door-gods on all your neighbours' doors), and devour
+them--this remedy never fails.
+
+Unlike the Spaniard, the Chinese disapproves of blood-letting in fevers,
+"for a fever is like a pot boiling; it is requisite to reduce the fire
+and not diminish the liquid in the vessel, if we wish to cure the
+patient."
+
+Unlike the Spaniard, too, the Chinese doctors would not venture to
+assert, as the medical faculty of Madrid in the middle of last century
+assured the inhabitants, that "if human excrement was no longer to be
+suffered to accumulate as usual in the streets, where it might attract
+the putrescent particles floating in the air, these noxious vapours
+would find their way into the human body and a pestilential sickness
+would be the inevitable consequence."
+
+For boils there is a certain cure:--There is a God of Boils. If you have
+a boil you will plaster the offending excrescence without avail, if that
+be _all_ you plaster; to get relief you must at the same time plaster
+the corresponding area on the image of the God. Go into his temple in
+Western China, and you will find this deity dripping with plasters, with
+scarcely an undesecrated space on his superficies.
+
+At the yamen of the Brigadier-General in Chaotong, the entrance is
+guarded by the customary stone images of mythical shape and grotesque
+features. They are believed to represent lions, but their faces are not
+leonine--they are a reproduction, exaggerated, of the characteristic
+features of the bulldog of Western China. The images are of undoubted
+value to the city. One is male and the other female. On the sixteenth
+day of the first month they are visited by the townspeople, who rub them
+energetically with their hands, all over from end to end. Every spot so
+touched confers immunity from pain upon the corresponding region of
+their own bodies for the ensuing year. And so from year to year these
+images are visited. Pain accordingly is almost absent from the city,
+and only that man suffers pain who has the temerity to neglect the
+opportunity of insuring himself against it.
+
+I was called to a case of opium-poisoning in Chaotong. A son came in
+casually to seek our aid in saving his father, who had attempted suicide
+with a large over-dose of opium. He had taken it at ten in the morning
+and it was now two. We were led to the house and found it a single small
+unlit room up a narrow alley. In the room two men were unconcernedly
+eating their rice, and in the darkness they seemed to be the only
+occupants; but, lying down behind them on a narrow bed, was the dim
+figure of the dying man, who was breathing stertorously. A crowd quickly
+gathered round the door and pent up the alley-way. Rousing the man, I
+caused him to swallow some pints of warm water, and then I gave him a
+hypodermic injection of apomorphia. The effect was admirable, and
+pleased the spectators even more than the patient.
+
+Opium is almost exclusively the drug used by suicides. No Chinaman would
+kill himself by the mutilation of the razor or pistol-shot because awful
+is the future punishment of him who would so dare to disturb the
+integrity of the body bequeathed to him by his fathers.
+
+China is the land of suicides. I suppose more people die from suicide in
+China in proportion to the population than in any other country. Where
+the struggle for existence is so keen, it is hardly to be wondered at
+that men are so willing to abandon the struggle. But poverty and misery
+are not the only causes. For the most trivial reason the Chinaman will
+take his own life. Suicide with a Chinaman is an act that is recorded in
+his honour rather than to his opprobrium.
+
+Thus a widow, as we have seen, may obtain much merit by sacrificing
+herself on the death of her husband. But in a large proportion of cases
+the motive is revenge, for the spirit of the dead is believed to "haunt
+and injure the living person who has been the cause of the suicide." In
+China to ruin your adversary you injure or kill yourself. To vow to
+commit suicide is the most awful threat with which you can drive terror
+into the heart of your adversary. If your enemy do you wrong, there is
+no way in which you can cause him more bitterly to repent his misdeed
+than by slaying yourself at his doorstep. He will be charged with your
+murder, and may be executed for the crime; he will be utterly ruined in
+establishing, if he can establish, his innocence; and he will be haunted
+ever after by your avenging spirit.
+
+Occasionally two men who have quarrelled will take poison together, and
+their spirits will fight it out in heaven. Opium is very cheap in
+Chaotong, costing only fivepence an ounce for the crude article. You see
+it exposed for sale everywhere, like thick treacle in dirty besmeared
+jars. It is largely adulterated with ground pigskin, the adulteration
+being detected by the craving being unsatisfied. Mohammedans have a holy
+loathing of the pig, and look with contempt on their countrymen whose
+chief meat-food is pork. But each one in his turn. It is, on the other
+hand, a source of infinite amusement to the Chinese to see his
+Mohammedan brother unwittingly smoking the unclean beast in his
+opium-pipe.
+
+On our way to the opium case we passed a doorway from which pitiful
+screams were issuing. It was a mother thrashing her little boy with a
+heavy stick--she had tethered him by the leg and was using the stick
+with both hands. A Chinese proverb as old as the hills tells you, "if
+you love your son, give him plenty of the cudgel; if you hate him, cram
+him with delicacies." He was a young wretch, she said, and she could do
+nothing with him; and she raised her baton again to strike, but the
+missionary interposed, whereupon she consented to stay her wrath and did
+so--till we were round the corner.
+
+"Extreme lenity alternating with rude passion in the treatment of
+children is the characteristic," says Meadows, "of the lower stages of
+civilisation." I mention this incident only because of its rarity. In no
+other country in the world, civilised or "heathen," are children
+generally treated with more kindness and affection than they are in
+China. "Children, even amongst seemingly stolid Chinese, have the
+faculty of calling forth the better feelings so often found latent.
+Their prattle delights the fond father, whose pride beams through every
+line of his countenance, and their quaint and winning ways and touches
+of nature are visible even under the disadvantages of almond eyes and
+shaven crowns" (Dyer Ball).
+
+A mother in China is given, both by law and custom, extreme power over
+her sons whatever their age or rank. The Sacred Edict says, "Parents are
+like heaven. Heaven produces a blade of grass. Spring causes it to
+germinate. Autumn kills it with frost. Both are by the will of heaven.
+In like manner the power of life and death over the body which they have
+begotten is with the parents."
+
+And it is this law giving such power to a mother in China which tends,
+it is believed, to nullify that other law whereby a husband in China is
+given extreme power over his wife, even to the power in some cases of
+life and death.
+
+The Mohammedans are still numerous in Chaotong, and there are some 3000
+families--the figures are Chinese--in the city and district. Their
+numbers were much reduced during the suppression of the rebellion of
+1857-1873, when they suffered the most awful cruelties. Again, thirteen
+years ago, there was an uprising which was suppressed by the Government
+with merciless severity. One street is exclusively occupied by Moslems,
+who have in their hands the skin trade of the city. Their houses are
+known by a conspicuous absence from door and window of the coloured
+paper door-gods that are seen grotesquely glaring from the doors of the
+unbelievers. Their mosque is well cared for and unusually clean. In the
+centre, within the main doorway, as in every mosque in the empire, is a
+gilt tablet of loyalty to the living Emperor. "May the Emperor reign ten
+thousand years!" it says, a token of subjection which the mosques of
+Yunnan have especially been compelled to display since the insurrection.
+At the time of my visit an aged mollah was teaching Arabic and the Koran
+to a ragged handful of boys. He spoke to me through an interpreter, and
+gave me the impression of having some little knowledge of things outside
+the four seas that surround China. I told him that I had lived under the
+shelter of two of the greatest mosques, but he seemed to question my
+contention that the mosque in Cordova and the Karouin mosque in Fez are
+even more noble in their proportions than his mosque in Chaotong. In
+some of the skin-hongs that I entered, the walls were ornamented with
+coloured plans of Mecca and Medinah, bought in Chentu, the capital city
+of the province of Szechuen.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE JOURNEY FROM CHAOTONG TO TONGCHUAN.
+
+
+In Chaotong I engaged three new men to go with me to Tongchuan, a
+distance of 110 miles, and I rewarded liberally the three excellent
+fellows who had accompanied me from Suifu. My new men were all active
+Chinamen. The headman Laohwan was most anxious to come with me.
+Recognising that he possessed characteristics which his posterity would
+rejoice to have transmitted to them, he had lately taken to himself a
+wife and now, a fortnight later, he sought rest. He would come with me
+to Burma, the further away the better; he wished to prove the truth of
+the adage about distance and enchantment. The two coolies who were to
+carry the loads were country lads from the district. My men were to
+receive _4s. 6d._ each for the 110 miles, an excessive wage, but all
+food was unusually dear, and people were eating maize instead of rice;
+they were to find themselves on the way, in other words, they were "to
+eat their own rice," and, in return for a small reward, they were to
+endeavour to do the five days' stages in three days. I bought a few
+stores, including some excellent oatmeal and an annular cake of that
+compressed tea, the "Puerh-cha," which is grown in the Shan States and
+is distributed as a luxury all over China. It is in favour in the palace
+of the Emperor in Peking itself; it is one of the finest teas in China,
+yet, to show how jealous the rivalry now is between China tea and
+Indian, when I submitted the remainder of this very cake to a well-known
+tea-taster in Mangoe Lane, Calcutta, and asked his expert opinion, he
+reported that the sample was "of undoubted value and of great interest,
+as showing what _muck can be called tea_."
+
+We left on the 3rd, and passed by the main-street through the crowded
+city, past the rich wholesale warehouses, and out by the west gate to
+the plain of Chaotong. The country spread before us was smiling and
+rich, with many farmsteads, and orchards of pears and peaches--a pretty
+sight, for the trees were now in full blossom. Many carts were lumbering
+along the road on their uneven wheels. Just beyond the city there was a
+noisy altercation in the road for the possession apparently of a blunt
+adze. Carts stopped to see the row, and all the bystanders joined in
+with their voices, with much earnestness. It is rare for the disputants
+to be injured in these questions. Their language on these occasions is,
+I am told, extremely rich in allusions. It would often make a _gendarme_
+blush. Their oaths are more ornate than the Italians'; the art of
+vituperation is far advanced in China. A strong wind was blowing in our
+faces. We rested at some mud hovels where poverty was stalking about
+with a stick in rags and nakedness. Full dress of many of these beggars
+would disgrace a Polynesian. Even the better dressed were hung with
+garments in rags, tattered, and dirty as a Paisley ragpicker's. The
+children were mostly stark-naked. In the middle of the day we reached a
+Mohammedan village named Taouen, twenty miles from Chaotong, and my man
+prepared me an _al fresco_ lunch. The entire village gathered into the
+square to see me eat; they struggled for the orange peel I threw under
+the table.
+
+From here the road rises quickly to the village of Tashuitsing (7380
+feet above sea level), where my men wished to remain, and apparently
+came to an understanding with the innkeeper; but I would not understand
+and went on alone, and they perforce had to follow me. There are only
+half-a-dozen rude inns in the village, all Mohammedan; but just outside
+the village the road passes under a magnificent triple archway in four
+tiers made of beautifully cut stone, embossed with flowers and images,
+and richly gilt--a striking monument in so forlorn a situation. It was
+built two years ago, in obedience to the will of the Emperor, by the
+richest merchant of Chaotong, and is dedicated to the memory of his
+virtuous mother, who died at the age of eighty, having thus experienced
+the joy of old age, which in China is the foremost of the five measures
+of felicity. It was erected and carved on the spot by masons from
+Chungking. Long after dark we reached an outlying inn of the village of
+Kiangti, a thatched mud barn, with a sleeping room surrounded on three
+sides by a raised ledge of mud bricks upon which were stretched the
+mattresses. The room was dimly lit by an oil-lamp; the floor was earth;
+the grating under the rafters was stored with maize-cobs. Outside the
+door cooking was done in the usual square earthen stove, in which are
+sunk two iron basins, one for rice, the other for hot water; maize
+stalks were being burnt in the flues. The room, when we entered, was
+occupied by a dozen Chinese, with their loads and the packsaddles of a
+caravan of mules; yet what did the good-natured fellows do? They must
+all have been more tired than I; but, without complaining, they all got
+up when they saw me, and packed their things and went out of the room,
+one after the other, to make way for myself and my companions. And,
+while we were comfortable, they crowded into another room that was
+already crowded.
+
+Next day a tremendously steep descent took us down to Kiangti, a
+mountain village on the right bank of a swift stream, here spanned in
+its rocky pass by a beautiful suspension bridge, which swings gracefully
+high above the torrent. The bridge is 150 feet long by 12 feet broad,
+and there is no engineer in England who might not be proud to have been
+its builder. At its far end the parapets are guarded by two sculptured
+monkeys, hewn with rough tools out of granite, and the more remarkable
+for their fidelity of form, seeing that the artist must have carved them
+from memory. The inevitable likin-barrier is at the bridge to squeeze a
+few more cash out of the poor carriers. That the Inland Customs dues of
+China are vexatious there can be no doubt; yet it is open to question if
+the combined duties of all the likin-barriers on any one main road
+extending from frontier to frontier of any single province in China are
+greater than the _ad valorem_ duties imposed by our colony of Victoria
+upon the protected goods crossing her border from an adjoining colony.
+
+[Illustration: PAGODA BY THE WAYSIDE, WESTERN CHINA.]
+
+Leaving the bridge, the road leads again up the hills. Poppy was now in
+full flower, and everywhere in the fields women were collecting opium.
+They were scoring the poppy capsules with vertical scratches and
+scraping off the exuded juice which had bled from the incisions they
+made yesterday. Hundreds of pack horses carrying Puerh tea met us on the
+road; while all day long we were passing files of coolies toiling
+patiently along under heavy loads of crockery. They were going in the
+same direction as ourselves to the confines of the empire, distributing
+those teacups, saucers, and cuplids, china spoons, and rice-bowls that
+one sees in every inn in China. Most of the crockery is brought across
+China from the province of Kiangsi, whose natural resources seems to
+give it almost the monopoly of this industry. The trade is an immense
+one. In the neighbourhood of King-teh-chin, in Kiangsi, at the outbreak
+of the Taiping rebellion, more than one million workmen were employed in
+the porcelain manufactories. Cups and saucers by the time they reach so
+far distant a part of China as this, carried as they are so many
+hundreds of miles on the backs of coolies, are sold for three or four
+times their original cost. Great care is taken of them, and no piece can
+be so badly broken as not to be mended. Crockery-repairing is a
+recognised trade, and the workmen are unusually skilful even for
+Chinese. They rivet the pieces together with minute copper clamps. To
+have a specimen of their handiwork I purposely in Yunnan broke a cup and
+saucer into fragments, only to find when I had done so that there was
+not a mender in the district. Rice bowls and teacups are neatly made,
+tough, and well finished; even the humblest are not inelegantly
+coloured, while the high-class china, especially where the imperial
+yellow is used, often shows the richest beauty of ornamentation.
+
+Inns on this road were few and at wide distances; they were scarcely
+sufficient for the numbers who used them. The country was red sandstone,
+open, and devoid of all timber, till, descending again into a valley,
+the path crossed an obstructing ridge, and led us with pleasant surprise
+into a beautiful park. It was all green and refreshing. A pretty stream
+was humming past the willows, its banks covered with the poppy in full
+flower, a blaze of colour, magenta, white, scarlet, pink and blue picked
+out with hedges of roses. The birds were as tame as in the Garden of
+Eden; magpies came almost to our feet; the sparrows took no notice of
+us; the falcons knew we would not molest them; the pigeons seemed to
+think we could not. All was peaceful, and the peasants who sat with us
+under the cedars on the borders of the park were friendly and
+unobtrusive. Long after sundown we reached, far from the regular stage,
+a lonely pair of houses, at one of which we found uncomfortable
+accommodation. Fire had to be kindled in the room in a hollow in the
+ground; there was no ventilation, the wood was green, the smoke almost
+suffocating. My men talked on far into the night until I lost patience
+and yelled at them in English. They thought that I was swearing, and
+desisted for fear that I should injure their ancestors. There was a
+shrine in this room for private devotions, the corresponding spot in the
+adjoining room being a rough opium-couch already occupied by two lusty
+thickset "slaves to this thrice-accursed drug." My men ate the most
+frugal of suppers. Food was so much in advance of its ordinary price
+that my men, in common with thousands of other coolies, were doing their
+hard work on starvation rations.
+
+On the 5th we did a long day's stage and spent the night at a bleak
+hamlet 8500 feet above sea level, in a position so exposed that the
+roofs of the houses were weighted with stones to prevent their being
+carried away by the wind. This was the "Temple of the Dragon King," and
+it was only twenty li from Tongchuan.
+
+Next day we were astir early and soon after daylight we came suddenly to
+the brow of the tableland overlooking the valley of Tongchuan. The
+compact little walled city, with its whitewashed buildings glistening in
+the morning sun, lay beyond the gleaming plats of the irrigated plain,
+snugly ensconced under rolling masses of hills, which rose at the far
+end of the valley to lofty mountains covered with snow. All the plain is
+watered with springs; large patches of it are under water all the year
+round, and, rendered thus useless for cultivation, are employed by the
+Chinese for the artificial rearing of fish and as breeding grounds for
+the wild duck and the "faithful bird," the wild goose. A narrow dyke
+serpentining across the plain leads into the pretty city, where, at the
+north-east angle of the wall, I was charmed to find the cheerful home of
+the Bible Christian Mission, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Sam Pollard and
+two lady assistants, one of whom is a countrywoman of my own. This is, I
+believe, the most charming spot for a mission station in all China. Mr.
+Pollard is quite a young man, full of enthusiasm, modest, and clever.
+Everywhere he is received kindly; he is on friendly terms with the
+officials, and there is not a Chinese home within ten miles of the city
+where he and his pretty wife are not gladly welcomed. His knowledge of
+Chinese is exceptional; he is the best Chinese scholar in Western China,
+and is examiner in Chinese for the distant branches of the Inland
+Mission.
+
+The mission in Tongchuan was opened in 1891, and the results are not
+discouraging, seeing that the Chinaman is as difficult to lead into the
+true path as any Jew. No native has been baptized up to date. The
+convert employed by the mission as a native helper is one of the three
+converts of Chaotong. He is a bright-faced lad of seventeen, as ardent
+an evangelist as heart of missionary could desire, but a native preacher
+can never be so successful as the foreign missionary. The Chinese listen
+to him with complacency, "You eat Jesus's rice and of course you speak
+his words," they say. The attitude of the Chinese in Tongchuan towards
+the Christian missionary is one of perfect friendliness towards the
+missionary, combined with perfect apathy towards his religion. Like any
+other trader, the missionary has a perfect right to offer his goods,
+but he must not be surprised, the Chinese thinks, if he finds difficulty
+in securing a purchaser for wares as much inferior to the home
+production as is the foreign barbarian to the subject of the Son of
+Heaven.
+
+There is a Catholic Mission in Tongchuan, but the priest does not
+associate with the Protestant. How indeed can the two associate when
+they worship different Gods!
+
+The difficulty is one which cannot be easily overcome while there exists
+in China that bone of contention among missionaries which is known as
+the "Term Question."
+
+The Chinese recognise a supreme God, or are believed by some to
+recognise a supreme God--"High Heaven's ruler" (_Shangtien hou_), who is
+"probably intended," says Williams, "for the true God." The Mohammedans,
+when they entered China, could not recognise this god as identical with
+the only one God, to whom they accordingly gave the Chinese name of
+"true Lord" (_Chen Chu_). The Jesuits, when they entered China, could
+not recognise either of these gods as identical with the God of the
+Hebrews, whom they accordingly represented in Chinese first by the
+characters for "Supreme Ruler" (_Shang ti_), and subsequently by the
+characters for "Lord of Heaven" (_Tien Chu_). The Protestants naturally
+could not be identified with the Catholics, and invented another Chinese
+name, or other Chinese names, for the true God; while the Americans,
+superior to all other considerations, discovered a different name still
+for the true God to whom they assigned the Chinese characters for "the
+true Spirit" (_Chen Shen_), thereby suggesting by implication, as Little
+observes, that the other spirits were false. But, as if such divergent
+terms were not sufficiently confusing for the Chinese, the Protestants
+themselves have still more varied the Chinese characters for God. Thus,
+in the first translation of the Bible, the term for God used is the
+Chinese character for "Spirit" (_Shen_); in the second translation this
+term is rejected and "Supreme Ruler" (_Shang ti_), substituted; the
+third translation reverts to the "Spirit"; the fourth returns to the
+"Supreme Ruler"; and the fifth, by Bishop Burdon of Hong Kong, and Dr.
+Blodget of Peking, in 1884, rejects the title that was first accepted by
+the Jesuits, and accepts the title "Lord of Heaven" (_Tien Chu_), that
+was first rejected by the Jesuits.
+
+"Many editions," says the Rev. J. Wherry, of Peking, "with other terms
+have since been published." "Bible work in particular," says the Rev.
+Mr. Muirhead, of Shanghai, "is carried on under no small disadvantage in
+view of this state of things." "It is true, however," adds Mr. Muirhead,
+"that God has blest all terms in spite of our incongruity." But
+obviously the Chinese are a little puzzled to know which of the
+contending gods is most worthy of their allegiance.
+
+But apart from the "Term Question" there must be irreconcilable
+antagonism between the two great missionary churches in China, for it
+cannot be forgotten that "in the development of the missionary idea
+three great tasks await the (Protestant) Church.... The second task is
+_to check the schemes of the Jesuit_. In the great work of the world's
+evangelisation the Church has no foe at all comparable with the
+Jesuit.... Swayed ever by the vicious maxim that the end justifies the
+means, he would fain put back the shadow of the dial of human progress
+by half a dozen centuries. Other forms of superstition and error are
+dangerous, but Jesuitism overtops them all, and stands forth an
+organised conspiracy against the liberties of mankind. This foe is not
+likely to be overcome by a divided Protestantism. If we would conquer in
+this war we must move together, and in our movements must manifest a
+patience, a heroism, a devotion equal to anything the Jesuit can claim."
+(The Rev. A. Sutherland, D.D., Delegate from Canada to the Missionary
+Conference, 1888, _Records_, i., 145.)
+
+And, on the other hand, the distracted Chinese reads
+that:--"Protestantism is not only a veritable Babel, but a horrible
+theory, and an immoral practice which blasphemes God, degrades man, and
+endangers society." (Cardinal Cuesta's Catechism cited in "China and
+Christianity," by Michie, p. 8.)
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE CITY OF TONGCHUAN, WITH SOME REMARKS UPON INFANTICIDE.
+
+
+When I entered Tongchuan the town was in commotion; kettledrums and
+tomtoms were beating, and crackers and guns firing; the din and clatter
+was continuous and deafening. An eclipse of the sun was commencing--it
+was the 6th of April--"the sun was being swallowed by the Dog of
+Heaven," and the noise was to compel the monster to disgorge its prey.
+Five months ago the Prefect of the city had been advised of the
+impending disaster, and it was known that at a certain hour he would
+publicly intervene with Heaven to avert from the city the calamity of
+darkness. I myself saw with my own eyes the wonderful power of this man.
+The sun was darkened when I went to the Prefect's yamen. A crowd was
+already gathered in the court. At the foot of the steps in the open air,
+a loosely built framework of wood ten feet high was standing, displaying
+on its vertex a yellow disc of paper inscribed with the characters for
+"voracity."
+
+As we waited the sun became gradually clearer, when, just as the moon
+was disappearing across its edge, the Prefect in full dress, stepped
+from his yamen into the court, accompanied by the city magistrate and a
+dozen city fathers. Every instrument of discord was still clanging over
+the city. Then all these men of weight walked solemnly three times
+round the scaffold, and halted three times, while the Prefect went down
+on his knees, and did obeisance with nine kotows to the rickety frame
+and its disc of yellow paper. There was almost immediate answer to his
+prayer. With a sigh of relief we saw the lingering remnant of darkness
+disappear, and the midday sun shone full and bright. Then the Prefect
+retired, his suite dividing to let him pass, and we all went home
+blessing the good man whose intercession had saved the town from
+darkness. For there can be little doubt, I hope, that it is due to the
+action of this Prefect that the sun is shining to-day in Tongchuan. The
+Chinese might well ask if any barbarian missionary could do as he did.
+
+Eclipses in China are foretold by the Government almanac published
+annually in Peking by a bureau of astrology attached to the Board of
+Rites. The almanac is a Government monopoly, and any infraction of its
+copyright is a penal offence. "It monopolises the management of the
+superstitions of the people, in regard to the fortunate or unlucky
+conjunctions of each day and hour. No one ventures to be without it,
+lest he be liable to the greatest misfortunes and run the imminent
+hazard of undertaking important events on blackballed days."
+
+The Chinese almanac is much more comprehensive than ours, for even
+eclipses are foretold that never happen. Should an error take place in
+their almanac, and an expected eclipse not occur, the royal astronomers
+are not disconcerted--far from it; they discover in their error reason
+for rejoicing; they then congratulate the Emperor that "the heavens have
+dispensed with this omen of ill-luck in his favour." For eclipses
+forebode disaster, and every thoughtful Chinaman who has heard of the
+present rebellion of the Japanese must attribute the reverses caused by
+the revolt to the eclipse of April 6th, occurring immediately before the
+insurrection.
+
+Tongchuan is one of the most charming towns I have ever visited; it is
+probably the cleanest city in China, and the best governed. Its prefect
+is a man of singular enlightenment, who rules with a justice that is
+rarely known in China. His people regard him as something more than
+mortal. Like Confucius "his ear is an obedient organ for the reception
+of truth." Like the Confucian Superior Man "his dignity separates him
+from the crowd; being reverent he is beloved; being loyal he is
+submitted to; and being faithful he is trusted. By his word he directs
+men, and by his conduct he warns them."
+
+For several years he was attached to the Embassy in Japan, and he boasts
+that he has made Tongchuan as clean a city as any to be found in the
+empire of the Mikado. The yamen is a model of neatness. Painted on the
+outflanking wall there is the usual huge representation of the fabulous
+monster attempting to swallow the sun--the admonition against
+extortion--and probably the only magistrate in China who does not stand
+in need of the warning is the Prefect of Tongchuan.
+
+Prices in Tongchuan at the time of my visit were high and food was
+scarce. It was difficult to realise that men at that moment were dying
+of starvation in the pretty town. Rice cost 400 cash for the same
+quantity that in a good season can be bought for 60 cash; maize was 300
+cash the sheng, whereas the normal price is only 40 cash. Sugar was 15
+cash the cake instead of 6 cash the cake, and so on in all things. Poppy
+is not grown in the valley to the same extent as hitherto, because
+poppy displaces wheat and beans, and the people have need of all the
+land they can spare to grow breadstuffs. In the other half of the year,
+rice, maize, and tobacco are grown together on the plain, and at the
+same season potatoes, oats, and buckwheat are grown in the hills.
+
+Part of the plain is permanently under water, but it was the drought in
+the winter and the rains in the summer of successive years that caused
+the famine. There are no Mohammedans in the town--there have been none
+since the rebellion--but there are many small Mohammedan villages across
+the hills. No district in China is now more peaceful than the Valley of
+Tongchuan. The Yangtse River--"The River of Golden Sand"--is only two
+days distant, but it is not navigable even by Chinese boatmen. Sugarcane
+grows in the Yangtse Valley in little pockets, and it is from there that
+the compressed cakes of brown sugar seen in all the markets of Western
+Yunnan are brought. Coal comes from a mine two or three days inland;
+white-wax trees provide an important industry; the hills to the west
+contain the most celebrated copper mines in the empire.
+
+The cash of Tongchuan are very small and inferior, 2000 being equivalent
+to one tael, whereas in Chaotong, 110 miles away, the cash vary from
+1260 to 1640 the tael. Before the present Prefect took office the cash
+were more debased still, no less than 4000 being then counted as one
+tael, but the Prefect caused all these cash to be withdrawn from
+circulation.
+
+Unlike Chaotong, no children are permitted to be sold in the city, but
+during last year no less than 3000 children (the figures are again
+Chinese) were carried through the town on their way from Chaotong to the
+capital. The edict of the Prefect which forbids the selling of children
+increases the cases of infanticide, and in time of famine there are few
+mothers among the starving poor who can truthfully assert that they have
+never abandoned any of their offspring.
+
+The subject of infanticide in China has been discussed by a legion of
+writers and observers; and the opinion they come to seems to be
+generally that the prevalence of the crime, except in seasons of famine,
+has been enormously overstated. The prevalent idea with us Westerns
+appears to be, that the murder of their children, especially of their
+female children, is a kind of national pastime with the Chinese, or, at
+the best, a national peculiarity. Yet it is open to question whether the
+crime, excepting in seasons of famine, is, in proportion to the
+population, more common in China than it is in England. H. A. Giles of
+H.B.M. Chinese Consular Service, one of the greatest living authorities
+on China, says "I am unable to believe that infanticide prevails to any
+great extent in China.... In times of famine or rebellion, under stress
+of exceptional circumstances, infanticide may possibly cast its shadow
+over the empire, but as a general rule I believe it to be no more
+practised in China than in England, France, the United States and
+elsewhere." (_Journal, China Branch R.A.S._, 1885, p. 28.)
+
+G. Eugene Simon, formerly French Consul in China, declares that
+"infanticide is a good deal less frequent in China than in Europe
+generally, and particularly in France." A statement that inferentially
+receives the support of Dr. E. J. Eitel. (_China Review_, xvi., 189.)
+
+The prevailing impression as to the frequency of infanticide in China is
+derived from the statements of missionaries, who, no doubt
+unintentionally, exaggerate the prevalence of the crime in order to
+bring home to us Westerns the deplorable condition of the heathen among
+whom they are labouring. But, even among the missionaries, the
+statements are as divergent as they are on almost every other subject
+relating to China. Thus the Rev. Griffith John argues "from his own
+experience that infanticide is common all over the Empire," the Rev. Dr.
+Edkins on the other hand says that "infanticide is a thing almost
+unknown in Peking." And the well known medical missionary, Dr. Dudgeon
+of Peking (who has left the London Mission), agrees with another medical
+missionary, Dr. Lockhart, "that infanticide is almost as rare in China
+as in England."
+
+The Rev. A. H. Smith ("Chinese Characteristics," p. 207) speaks "of the
+enormous infanticide which is known to exist in China." The Rev. Justus
+Doolittle ("Social Life of the Chinese," ii. p. 203) asserts that "there
+are most indubitable reasons for believing that infanticide is tolerated
+by the Government, and that the subject is treated with indifference and
+with shocking levity by the mass." ... But Bishop Moule "has good reason
+to conclude that the prevalence of the crime has been largely
+exaggerated." (_Journal, China Branch R.A.S._, _ut supra_.)
+
+One of the best known Consuls in China, who lately retired from the
+Service, told the writer that in all his thirty years' experience of
+China he had only had personal knowledge of one authentic case of
+infanticide.
+
+"Exaggerated estimates respecting the frequency of infanticide," says
+the Rev. Dr. D. J. MacGowan, "are formed owing to the withholding
+interment from children who die in infancy." And he adds that "opinions
+of careful observers will be found to vary with fields of observation."
+(_China Review_, xiv., 206.)
+
+Whatever the relative frequency of infanticide in China and Europe may
+be, it cannot, I think, admit of question that the crime of infanticide
+is less common among the barbarian Chinese than is the crime of
+foeticide among the highly civilised races of Europe and America.
+
+There are several temples in Tongchuan, and two beyond the walls which
+are of more than ordinary interest. There is a Temple to the Goddess of
+Mercy, where deep reverence is shown to the images of the Trinity of
+Sisters. They are seated close into the wall, the nimbus of glory which
+plays round their impassive features being represented by a golden
+aureola painted on the wall. The Goddess of Mercy is called by the
+Chinese "_Sheng-mu_," or Holy Mother, and it is this name which has been
+adopted by the Roman Catholic Church as the Chinese name of the Virgin
+Mary.
+
+There is a fine City Temple which controls the spirits of the dead of
+the city as the yamens of the magistrates control the living of the
+city. The Prefect and the City Magistrate are here shown in their
+celestial abodes administering justice--or its Chinese equivalent--to
+the spirits who, when living, were under their jurisdiction on earth.
+They hold the same position in Heaven and have the same authority as
+they had on earth; and may, as spirits, be bribed to deal gently with
+the spirits of departed friends just as, when living, they were open to
+offers to deal leniently with any living prisoner in whose welfare the
+friends were prepared to express practical sympathy.
+
+In the Buddhist Temple are to be seen, in the long side pavilions, the
+chambers of horrors with their realistic representations of the torments
+of a soul in its passage through the eight Buddhist hells. I looked on
+these scenes with the calmness of an unbeliever; not so a poor woman to
+whom the horrors were very vivid truths. She was on her knees before
+the grating, sobbing piteously at a ghastly scene where a man, while
+still alive, was being cast by monsters from a hill-top on to red-hot
+spikes, there to be torn in pieces by serpents. This was the torture her
+dead husband was now enduring; it was this stage he had reached in his
+onward passage through hell--the priest had told her so, and only money
+paid to the priests could lighten his torment.
+
+Beyond the south gate, amid groves of lofty pine trees, are the temple
+and grounds, the pond and senior wrangler bridge, of the Confucian
+Temple--the most beautifully-finished temple I have seen in China. We
+have accustomed ourselves to speak in ecstacies of the wood-carving in
+the temples of Japan, but not even in the Sh[=o]gun chapels of the Shiba
+temples in Tokyo have I seen wood-carving superior to the exquisite
+delicacy of workmanship displayed in the carving of the Imperial dragons
+that frame with their fantastic coils the large Confucian tablet of this
+temple. Money has been lavished on this building. The inclined marble
+slabs that divide the terrace steps are covered with fanciful tracery;
+the parapets of the bridge are chiselled in marble; sculptured images of
+elephants with howdahs crown the pillars of the marble balustrades; the
+lattice work under the wide eaves is everywhere beautifully carved.
+Lofty pillars of wood support the temple roofs. They are preserved by a
+coating of hemp and protected against fire by an outer coating of
+plaster stained the colour of the original wood. Gilding is used as
+freely in the decoration of the grand altar and tablets of this temple,
+as it is in a temple in Burma.
+
+On a hill overlooking the city and valley is the Temple to the God of
+Literature. The missionary and I climbed to the temple and saw its
+pretty court, its ancient bronze censer, and its many beautiful flowers,
+and then sat on the terrace in the sun and watched the picturesque
+valley spread out before us.
+
+As we descended the hill again, a lad, who had attached himself to us,
+offered to show us the two common pits in which are cast the dead bodies
+of paupers and criminals. The pits are at the foot of the hill,
+open-mouthed in the uncut grass. With famine in the city, with people
+dying at that very hour of starvation, there was no lack of dead, and
+both pits were filled to within a few feet of the surface. Bodies are
+thrown in here without any covering, and hawks and crows strip them of
+their flesh, a mode of treating the dead grateful to the Parsee, but
+inexpressibly hateful to the Chinese, whose poverty must be overwhelming
+when he can be found to permit it. Pigtails were lying carelessly about
+and skulls separated from the trunk. Human bones gnawed by dogs were to
+be picked up in numbers in the long grass all round the hill; they were
+the bones of the dead who had been loosely buried close to the surface,
+through which dogs--the domestic dogs one met afterwards in the
+street--had scraped their way. Many, too, were the bones of dead
+children; for poor children are not buried, but are thrown outside the
+wall, sometimes before they are dead, to be eaten perhaps by the very
+dog that was their playmate since birth.
+
+I called upon the French priest, Pere Maire, and he came with much
+cordiality to the door of the mission to receive me. His is a pretty
+mission, built in the Chinese style, with a modest little church and a
+nice garden and summer-house. The father has been four years in
+Tongchuan and ten in China. Like most of the French priests in China he
+has succeeded in growing a prodigious beard whose imposing length adds
+to his influence among the Chinese, who are apt to estimate age by the
+length of the beard. Only three weeks ago he returned from the capital.
+Signs of famine were everywhere apparent. The weather was very cold, and
+the road in many places deeply covered with snow. Riding on his mule he
+passed at different places on the wayside eight bodies, all recently
+dead from hunger and cold. No school is attached to the mission, but
+there is an _orphelinat_ of little girls, _ramassees dans les rues_, who
+had been cast away by their parents; they are in charge of Chinese
+Catholic nuns, and will be reared as nuns. As we sat in the pavilion in
+the garden and drank wine sent to him by his brother in Bordeaux--true
+French wine--the priest had many things to tell me of interest, of the
+native rebellion on the frontier of Tonquin, of the mission of Monsieur
+Haas to Chungking, and the Thibetan trade in tea. "The Chinese? ah! yes.
+He loves the Chinese because he loves all God's creatures, but they are
+liars and thieves. Many families are converted, but even the Christians
+are never Christian till the third generation." These were his words.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+TONGCHUAN TO YUNNAN CITY.
+
+
+From Tongchuan to Yunnan city, the provincial seat of Government and
+official residence of the Viceroy, whither I was now bound, is a
+distance of two hundred miles. My two carriers from Chaotong had been
+engaged to go with me only as far as Tongchuan, but they now re-engaged
+to go with Laohwan, my third man, as far as the capital. The conditions
+were that they were to receive _6s. 9d._ each (2.25 taels), one tael
+(_3s._) to be paid in advance and the balance on arrival, and they were
+to do the distance in seven days. The two taels they asked the
+missionary to remit to their parents in Chaotong, and he promised to
+receive the money from me and do so. There was no written agreement of
+any kind--none of the three men could read; they did not even see the
+money that the missionary was to get for them; but they had absolute
+confidence in our good faith.
+
+I had a mule with me from Tongchuan to Yunnan, which saved me many miles
+of walking, and increased my importance in the eyes of the heathen. I
+was taking it to the capital for sale. It was a big-boned rough-hewn
+animal, of superior intelligence, and I was authorised to sell it,
+together with its saddle and bridle, for four pounds. Like most Chinese
+mules it had two corns on the forelegs, and thus could see at night.
+Every Chinaman knows that the corns are adventitious eyes which give the
+mule this remarkable power.
+
+We were on our way early in the afternoon of the 7th, going up the
+valley. Below the curiously draped pagoda which commands Tongchuan we
+met two pairs of prisoners, who were being led into the city under
+escort. They were coupled by the neck; they were suffering cruelly, for
+their wrists were so tightly manacled that their hands were
+strangulated, a mode of torture to which, it will be remembered, the
+Chinese Government in 1860 subjected Bowlby, the _Times_ correspondent,
+and the other prisoners seized with him "in treacherous violation of a
+flag of truce," till death ended their sufferings. These men were
+roadside robbers caught red-handed. Their punishment would be swift and
+certain. Found guilty on their own confession, either tendered
+voluntarily to escape torture, or under the compulsion of torture,
+"self-accusation wrested from their agony," they would be sentenced to
+death, carried in baskets without delay--if they had not previously
+"died in prison"--died, that is, from the torture having been pushed too
+far--to the execution ground, and there beheaded.
+
+We stopped at an inn that was not the ordinary stage, where in
+consequence we had few comforts. In the morning my men lay in bed till
+late, and when I called them they opened the door and pointed to the
+road, clearly indicating that rain had fallen, and that the roads were
+too slippery for traffic. But what was my surprise on looking myself to
+find the whole country deeply under snow, and that it was still snowing.
+All day, indeed, it snowed. The track was very slippery, but my mule,
+though obstinate, was sure-footed, and we kept going. We passed a huge
+coffin--borne by a dozen men with every gentleness, not to disturb the
+dead one's rest--preceded, not followed, by mourners, two of whom were
+carrying a paper sedan chair, which would be burnt, and so, rendered
+invisible, would be sent to the invisible world to bear the dead man's
+spirit with becoming dignity. All day we were in the mountains
+travelling up the bed of a creek with mountains on both sides of us. We
+passed Chehki, ninety li from Tongchuan, and thirty li further were glad
+to escape from the cold and snow to the shelter of a poor thatched mud
+inn, where we rested for the night.
+
+A hump-back was in charge. The only bedroom was half open to the sky,
+but the main room was still whole, though it had seen better days. There
+was a shrine in this room with ancestral tablets, and a sheet of
+many-featured gods, conspicuous amongst them being the God of Riches,
+who had been little attentive to the prayers offered him in this poor
+hamlet. In a stall adjoining our bedroom the mule was housed, and
+jingled his bell discontentedly all through the night. A poor man,
+nearly blind with acute inflammation of the eyes, was shivering over the
+scanty embers of an open fire which was burning in a square hole scooped
+in the earthern floor near the doorway. He ate the humblest dishful of
+maize husks and meal strainings. That night I wondered did he sleep out
+in the open under a hedge, or did the inn people give him shelter with
+my mule in the next room. My men and I had to sleep in the same room.
+They were still on short rations. They ate only twice a day, and then
+sparingly, of maize and vegetables; they took but little rice, and no
+tea, and only a very small allowance of pork once in two days. Food was
+very dear, and, though they were receiving nearly double wages to carry
+half-loads, they must needs be careful. What admirable fellows they
+were! In all my wanderings I have never travelled with more good-natured
+companions. The attendant Laohwan was a powerful Chinese, solid and
+determined, but courteous in manner, voluble of speech, but with an
+amusing stammer; he had a wide experience of travel in Western China. He
+seemed to enjoy his journey--he never appeared lovesick; but, of course,
+I had no means of asking if he felt keenly the long separation from his
+bride.
+
+At the inn there was no bedding for my men; they had to cover
+themselves, as best they could, with some pieces of felt brought them by
+the hunchback, and sleep all huddled together from the cold. They had a
+few hardships to put up with, but their lot was a thousand times better
+than that of hundreds of their countrymen who were dying from hunger as
+well as from cold.
+
+On the 9th, as I was riding on my mule up the mountain road, with the
+bleak, bare mountain tops on every side, I was watching an eagle
+circling overhead, when my men called out to me excitedly and pointed to
+a large wolf that leisurely crossed the path in front of us and slunk
+over the brow. It had in its mouth a haunch of flesh torn from some poor
+wretch who had perished during the night. This was the only wolf I saw
+on my journey, though they are numerous in the province. Last year, not
+twenty li from Chaotong, a little girl of four, the only child of the
+mission cook, was killed by a wolf in broad daylight before its mother's
+eyes, while playing at the cabin door.
+
+Again, to-day, I passed a humpbacked dwarf on the hills, making his
+solitary way towards Tongchuan, and I afterwards saw others, an
+indication of the prosperity that had left the district, for in time of
+famine no child who was badly deformed at birth would be suffered to
+live.
+
+We stopped the night at Leitoupo, and next day from the bleak tableland
+high among the mountains, where the wind whistled in our faces, we
+gradually descended into a country of trees and cultivation and
+fertility. We left the bare red hills behind us, and came down into a
+beautiful glade, with pretty streams running in pebbly beds past
+terraced banks. At a village among the trees, where the houses made some
+pretension to comfort, and where poppies with brilliantly coloured
+flowers, encroached upon the street itself, we rested under a sunshade
+in front of a teahouse. A pretty rill of mountain water ran at our feet.
+Good tea was brought us in new clean cups, and a sweetmeat of peanuts,
+set in sugar-like almond toffee. The teahouse was filled. In the midst
+of the tea drinkers a man was lying curled on a mat, a bent elbow his
+pillow, and fast asleep, with the opium pipe still beside him, and the
+lamp still lit. A pretty little girl from the adjoining cottage came
+shyly out to see me. I called her to me and gave her some sweetmeat. I
+wished to put it in her mouth but she would not let me, and ran off
+indoors. I looked into the room after her and saw her father take the
+lolly from her and give it to her fat little baby brother, who seemed
+the best fed urchin in the town. But I stood by and saw justice done,
+and saw the little maid of four enjoy the first luxury of her life-time.
+Girls in China early learn that they are, at best, only necessary evils,
+to be endured, as tradition says Confucius taught, only as the possible
+mothers of men. Yet the condition of women in China is far superior to
+that in any other heathen country. Monogamy is the rule in China,
+polygamy is the exception, being confined to the three classes, the
+rich, the officials, and those who can by effort afford to take a
+secondary wife, their first wife having failed to give birth to a son.
+
+It is impossible to read the combined experiences of many missionaries
+and travellers in China without forming the opinion that the condition
+of women in China is as nearly satisfactory as could be hoped for, in a
+kingdom of "civilised and organised heathenism," as the Rev. C. W.
+Mateer terms it. The lot of the average Chinese woman is certainly not
+one that a Western woman need envy. She cannot enjoy the happiness which
+a Western woman does, but she is happy in her own way nevertheless.
+"Happiness does not always consist in absolute enjoyment--but in the
+idea which we have formed of it."
+
+There was no impertinent curiosity to see the stranger. The people in
+Yunnan seem cowed and crushed. That arrogance which characterises the
+Chinese elsewhere is entirely wanting here. They have seen the horrors
+of rebellion and civil war, of battle, murder and sudden death, of
+devastation by the sword, famine, ruin, and misery. They are resigned
+and spiritless. But their friendliness is charming; their courtesy and
+kindliness is a constant delight to the traveller. At meal time you are
+always pressed to join the table in the same manner, and with the
+identical phrases still used by the Spaniards, but the request is one of
+politeness only, and like the "_quiere Vd. gustar?_" is not meant to be
+accepted.
+
+We continued on our way. Comparatively few coolies now met us, and the
+majority of those who did were travelling empty-handed; but there were
+many ponies and mules coming from the capital, laden with tea and with
+blocks of white salt like marble. Every here and there a rude shelter
+was erected by the wayside, where a dish of cabbage and herbs could be
+obtained, which you ate out of cracked dishes at an improvised bench
+made from a coffin board resting on two stones. Towards sundown we
+entered the village of Kong-shan, a pretty place on the hill slope, with
+views across a fertile hollow that was pleasant to see. Here we found an
+excellent inn with good quarters. Our day's journey was thirty-seven
+miles, of which I walked fifteen miles and rode twenty-two miles. We
+were travelling quickly. Distances in China are, at first, very
+confusing. They differ from ours in a very important particular: they
+are not fixed quantities; they vary in length according to the nature of
+the ground passed over. Inequalities increase the distance; thus it by
+no means follows that the distance from A to B is equal to the distance
+from B to A--it may be fifty per cent. or one hundred per cent. longer.
+The explanation is simple. Distance is estimated by time, and, speaking
+roughly, ten li (3-1/3 miles) is the unit of distance equivalent to an
+hour's journey. "Sixty li still to go" means six hours' journey before
+you; it may be uphill all the way. If you are returning downhill you
+need not be surprised to learn that the distance by the same road is
+only thirty li.
+
+To-night before turning in I looked in to see how my mule was faring. He
+was standing in a crib at the foot of some underground stairs, with a
+huge horse trough before him, the size and shape of a Chinese coffin. He
+was peaceful and meditative. When he saw me he looked reproachfully at
+the cut straw heaped untidily in the trough, and then at me, and asked
+as clearly as he could if that was a reasonable ration for a
+high-spirited mule, who had carried my honourable person up hill and
+down dale over steep rocks and by tortuous paths, a long spring day in
+a warm sun. Alas, I had nothing else to offer him, unless I gave him the
+uncut straw that was stitched into our paillasses. What straw was before
+him was Chinese chaff, cut into three-inch lengths, by a long knife
+worked on a pivot and board, like the tobacco knife of civilisation. And
+he had to be content with that or nothing.
+
+Next day we had an early start soon after sunrise. It was a lovely day
+with a gentle breeze blowing and a cloudless sky. The village of
+Kong-shan was a very pretty place. It was built chiefly on two sides of
+a main road which was as rugged as the dry bed of a mountain creek. The
+houses were better and the inns were again provided with heaps of
+bedding at the doorways. Advertisement bills in blue and red were
+displayed on the lintels and doorposts, while fierce door-gods guarded
+against the admission of evil spirits. Brave indeed must be the spirits
+who venture within reach of such fierce bearded monsters, armed with
+such desperate weapons, as were here represented. I stood on the edge of
+the town overlooking the valley while my mule was being saddled. Patches
+of wheat and beans were scattered among fields of white-flowered poppy.
+Coolies carrying double buckets of water were winding up the sinuous
+path from the border of the garden where "a pebbled brook laughs upon
+its way." Boys were shouting to frighten away the sparrows from the
+newly-sown rice beds; while women were moving on their little feet among
+the poppies, scoring anew the capsules and gathering the juice that had
+exuded since yesterday. Down the road coolies were filing laden with
+their heavy burdens--a long day's toil before them; rude carts were
+lumbering past me drawn by oxen and jolting on wheels that were solid
+but not circular. Then the mule was brought to me, and we went on
+through an avenue of trees that were half hidden in showers of white
+roses, by hedges of roses in full bloom and wayside flowers, daisies and
+violets, dandelions and forget-me-nots, a pretty sight all fresh and
+sparkling in the morning sun.
+
+We went on in single file, my two coolies first with their light loads
+that swung easily from their shoulders, then myself on the mule, and
+last my stalwart attendant Laohwan with his superior dress, his huge sun
+hat, his long pipe, and umbrella. A man of unusual endurance was
+Laohwan. The day's journey done--he always arrived the freshest of the
+party--he had to get ready my supper, make my bed, and look after my
+mule. He was always the last to bed and the first to rise. Long before
+daybreak he was about again, attending to the mule and preparing my
+porridge and eggs for breakfast. He thought I liked my eggs hard, and
+each morning construed my look of remonstrance into one of approbation.
+It is very true of the Chinaman that precedent determines his action.
+The first morning Laohwan boiled the eggs hard and I could not reprove
+him. Afterwards of course he made a point of serving me the eggs every
+morning in the same way. I could say in Chinese "I don't like them," but
+the morning I said so Laohwan applied my dislike to the eggs not to
+their condition of cooking, and saying in Chinese "good, good," he
+obligingly ate them for me.
+
+Leaving the valley we ascended the red incline to an open tableland,
+where the soil is arid, and yields but a reluctant and scanty harvest.
+Nothing obstructs the view, and you can see long distances over the
+downs, which are bereft of all timber except an occasional clump of
+pines that the axe has spared because of the beneficial influence the
+geomancers declare they exercise over the neighbourhood. The roadway in
+places is cut deeply into the ground; for the path worn by the
+attrition of countless feet soon becomes a waterchannel, and the roadway
+in the rains is often the bed of a rapid stream. At short intervals are
+vast numbers of grave mounds with tablets and arched gables of well
+dressed stone. No habitations of the living are within miles of them, a
+forcible illustration of the devastation that has ravaged the district.
+This was still the famine district. In the open uncultivated fields
+women were searching for weeds and herbs to save them from starvation
+till the ingathering of the winter harvest. Their children it was
+pitiful to see. It is rare for Australians to see children dying of
+hunger. These poor creatures, with their pinched faces and fleshless
+bones, were like the patient with typhoid fever who has long been
+hovering between life and death. There were no beggars. All the beggars
+were dead long ago. All through the famine district we were not once
+solicited for either food or money, but those who were still living were
+crying for alms with silent voices a hundred times more appealing. When
+we rested to have tea the poor children gathered round to see us,
+skeletons dressed in skins and rags, yet meekly independent and
+friendly. Their parents were covered with ragged garments that hardly
+held together. Many wore over their shoulders rude grass cloths made
+from pine fibre that appear to be identical with the native petticoats
+worn by the women of New Guinea.
+
+Leaving the poor upland behind us, we descended to a broad and fertile
+plain where the travelling was easy, and passed the night in a large
+Moslem inn in the town of Iangkai.
+
+All next day we pursued our way through fertile fields flanked by pretty
+hills, which it was hard to realise were the peaks of mountains 10,000
+to 11,000 feet above sea-level. Before sundown we reached the prosperous
+market town of Yanglin, where I had a clean upstairs room in an
+excellent inn. The wall of my bedroom was scrawled over in Chinese
+characters with what I was told were facetious remarks by Chinese
+tourists on the quality of the fare.
+
+In the evening my mule was sick, Laohwan said, and a veterinary surgeon
+had to be sent for. He came with unbecoming expedition. Then in the same
+way that I have seen the Chinese doctors in Australia diagnose the
+ailments of their human patients of the same great family, he examined
+the poor mule with the inscrutable air of one to whom are unveiled the
+mysteries of futurity, and he retired with his fee. The medicine came
+later in a large basket, and consisted of an assortment of herbs so
+varied that one at least might be expected to hit the mark. My Laohwan
+paid the mule doctor, so he said, for advice and medicine 360 cash
+(ninepence), an exorbitant charge as prices are in China.
+
+On Friday, April 13th, we had another pleasant day in open country,
+leading to the low rim of hills that border the plain and lake of Yunnan
+city. Ruins everywhere testify to the march of the rebellion of thirty
+years ago--triumphal arches in fragments, broken temples, battered idols
+destroyed by Mohammedan iconoclasts. Districts destitute of habitations,
+where a thriving population once lived, attest that suppression of a
+rebellion in China spells extermination to the rebels.
+
+On the road I met a case of goitre, and by-and-by others, till I counted
+twenty or more, and then remembered that I was now entering on a
+district of Asia extending over Western Yunnan into Thibet, Burma, the
+Shan States, and Siam, the prevailing deformity of whose people is
+goitre.
+
+[Illustration: THE BIG EAST GATE OF YUNNAN CITY.]
+
+Ten miles before Yunnan my men led me off the road to a fine building
+among the poplars, which a large monogram on the gateway told me was the
+Catholic College of the _Missions Etrangeres de Paris_, known throughout
+the Province as Jinmaasuh. Situated on rising ground, the plain of
+Yunnan widening before it, the College commands a distant view of the
+walls and turretted gateways, the pagodas and lofty temples of the
+famous city. Chinese students are trained here for the priesthood. At
+the time of my visit there were thirty students in residence, who, after
+their ordination, will be scattered as evangelists throughout the
+Province. Pere Excoffier was at home, and received me with
+characteristic courtesy. His news was many weeks later than mine. M.
+Gladstone had retired from the Premiership, and M. Rosebery was his
+successor. England had determined to renew the payment of the tribute
+which China formerly exacted by right of suzerainty from Burma. The
+Chinese were daily expecting the arrival of two white elephants from
+Burma, which were coming in charge of the British Resident in Singai
+(Bhamo), M. Warry, as a present to the Emperor, and were the official
+recognition by England that Burma is still a tributary of the Middle
+Kingdom. I may here say that I often heard of this tribute in Western
+China. The Chinese had been long waiting for the arrival of the
+elephants, with their yellow flags floating from the howdahs,
+announcing, as did the flags of Lord Macartney's Mission to Peking,
+"Tribute from the English to the Emperor of China," and I suppose that
+there are governments idiotic enough to thus pander to Chinese
+arrogance. No doubt what has given rise to the report is the knowledge
+that the Government of India is bound, under the Convention of 1886, to
+send, every ten years, a complimentary mission from the Chief
+Commissioner of Burma to the Viceroy of Yunnan.
+
+It was late when I left Jinmaasuh, and long after sundown before I
+reached the city. The flagged causeway across the plain was slippery to
+walk on, and my mule would not agree with me that there was any need to
+hurry. He knew the Chinese character better than I did. Gunfire, the
+signal for the closing of the gates, had sounded when we were two miles
+from the wall; but sentries are negligent in China and the gates were
+still open. Had we been earlier we should have entered by the south
+gate, which is always the most important of the gates of a Chinese city,
+and the one through which all officials make their official entry; but,
+unable to do this, we entered by the big east gate. Turning sharply to
+the right along the city wall we were conducted in a few minutes to the
+Telegraph Offices, where I received a cordial welcome from Mr. Christian
+Jensen, the superintendent of telegraphs in the two great provinces of
+Yunnan and Kweichow. These are his headquarters, and here I was to rest
+a delightful week. It was a pleasant change from silence to speech, from
+Chinese discomfort to European civilisation. Chinese fare one evening,
+pork, rice, tea, and beans; and the next, chicken and the famed Shuenwei
+ham, mutton and green peas and red currant jelly, pancakes and
+aboriginal Yunnan cheese, claret, champagne, port, and cordial Medoc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+AT YUNNAN CITY.
+
+
+Yunnan City is one of the great cities of China, not so much in size as
+in importance. It is within easy access at all seasons of the year of
+the French colony of Tonquin, whereas the trade route from here to
+British Burma is long, arduous, and mountainous, and in its Western
+portions is closed to traffic during the rains. From Yunnan City to
+Mungtze on the borders of Tonquin, where there is a branch of the
+Imperial Maritime Customs of China, is a journey of eight days over an
+easy road. Four days from Mungtze is Laokai on the Red River, a river
+which is navigable by boat or steamer to Hanoi, the chief river port of
+Tonquin. In the middle of 1889 the French river steamer, _Le Laokai_,
+made the voyage from Hanoi to Laokai in sixty hours.
+
+From Yunnan City to Bhamo on the Irrawaddy, in British Burma, is a
+difficult journey of thirty-three stages over a mountainous road which
+can never by any human possibility be made available for other traffic
+than caravans of horses or coolies on foot. The natural highway of
+Central and Southern Yunnan is by Tonquin, and no artificial means can
+ever alter it. At present Eastern Yunnan sends her trade through the
+provinces of Kweichow and Hunan to the Yangtse above Hankow, or via the
+two Kuangs to Canton. Shortness of distance, combined with facility of
+transport, must soon tap this trade or divert it into the highways of
+Tonquin. Northern Yunnan must send her produce and receive her imports,
+via Szechuen and the Yangtse. As for the trade of Szechuen, the richest
+of the provinces of China, no man can venture to assert that any other
+trade route exists, or can ever be made to exist, than the River
+Yangtse; and all the French Commissioners in the world can no more alter
+the natural course of this trade than they can change the channel of the
+Yangtse itself.
+
+I am not, of course, the first distinguished visitor who has been in
+Yunnan City. Marco Polo was here in 1283, and has left on record a
+description of the city, which, in his time, was known by the name of
+Yachi. Jesuit missionaries have been propagating the faith in the
+province since the seventeenth century. But the distinction of being the
+first European traveller, not a missionary priest, to visit the city
+since the time of Marco Polo rests with Captain Doudart de la Gree of
+the French Navy, who was here in 1867.
+
+Margary, the British Consul, who met a cruel death at Manwyne, passed
+through Yunnan in 1875 on his famous journey from Hankow; and two years
+later the tardy mission under Grosvenor, with the brilliant Baber as
+interpreter, and Li Han Chang, the brother of Li Hung Chang, as delegate
+for the Chinese, arrived here in the barren hope of bringing his
+murderers to justice.
+
+Hosie, formerly H.B.M. Consul in Chungking, and well known as a
+traveller in Western China, was in Yunnan City in 1882.
+
+In September, 1890, Bonvalot and Prince Henri d'Orleans stopped here at
+the French Mission on their way to Mungtze in Tonquin. It was on the
+completion of their journey along the eastern edge of _Tibet
+Inconnu_--"Unknown Thibet!" as they term it, although the whole route
+had been traversed time and again by missionary priests, a journey whose
+success was due--though few have ever heard his name--to its true
+leader, interpreter, and guide, the brave Dutch priest from Kuldja, Pere
+Dedeken.
+
+Another famous missionary traveller, Pere Vial, who led Colquhoun out of
+his difficulty in that journey "Across Chryse," which Colquhoun
+describes as a "Journey of Exploration" (though it was through a country
+that had been explored and accurately mapped a century and a half before
+by Jesuit missionaries), and conducted him in safety to Bhamo in Burma,
+has often been in Yunnan City, and is a possible successor to the
+Bishopric.
+
+M. Boell, who left the Secretaryship of the French Legation in Peking to
+become the special correspondent of _Le Temps_, was here in 1892 on his
+way from Kweiyang, in Kweichow, to Tonquin, and a few months later
+Captain d'Amade, the Military Secretary of the French Legation,
+completed a similar journey from Chungking. In May, 1892, the
+Commissioner from the French Government opium farm in Hanoi, M. Tomme,
+arrived in Yunnan City from Mungtze, sent by his Government in search of
+improved methods of poppy cultivation--the Yunnan opium, with the
+exception of the Shansi opium, being probably the finest in China.
+Finally, in May, 1893, Lenz, the American bicyclist, to the profound
+amazement of the populace, rode on his "living wheel" to the
+_Yesu-tang_. This was the most remarkable journey of all. Lenz
+practically walked across China, surmounting hardships and dangers that
+few men would venture to face. I often heard of him. He stayed at the
+mission stations. All the missionaries praise his courage and endurance,
+and the admirable good humour with which he endured every discomfort.
+But one missionary lamented to me that Lenz did not possess that close
+acquaintance with the Bible which was to be expected of a man of his
+hardihood. It seems that at family prayers at this good missionary's,
+the chapter for reading was given out when poor Lenz was discovered
+feverishly seeking the Epistle to the Galatians in the Old Testament.
+When his mistake was gently pointed out to him he was not discouraged,
+far from it; it was the missionary who was dismayed to hear that in the
+United States this particular Epistle is always reckoned a part of the
+Pentateuch.
+
+I paid an early visit of courtesy to my nominal host, Li Pi Chang, the
+Chinese manager of the Telegraphs. He received me in his private office,
+gave me the best seat on the left, and handed me tea with his own fat
+hands. A mandarin whose rank is above that of an expectant Taotai, Li is
+to be the next Taotai of Mungtze, where, from an official salary of 400
+taels per annum, he hopes to save from 10,000 to 20,000 taels per annum.
+
+"Squeezing," as this method of enrichment is termed, is, you see, not
+confined to America. Few arts, indeed, seem to be more widely
+distributed than the art of squeezing. "Dives, the tax-dodger," is as
+common in China as he is in the United States. Compare, however, any
+city in China, in the midst of the most ancient civilisation in the
+world, with a city like Chicago, which claims to have reached the
+highest development of modern civilisation, and it would be difficult to
+assert that the condition of public morals in the heathen city was even
+comparable with the corruption and sin of the American city, a city
+"nominally Christian, which is studded with churches and littered with
+Bibles," but still a city "where perjury is a protected industry." No
+community is more ardent in its evangelisation of the "perishing
+Chinese" than Chicago, but where in all China is there "such a supreme
+embodiment of fraud, falsehood, and injustice," as prevails in Chicago?
+An alderman in Chicago, Mr. Stead tells us (p. 172 _et seq._) receives
+only 156 dollars a year salary; but, in addition to his salary, he
+enjoys "practically unrestricted liberty to fill his pockets by
+bartering away the property of the city." "It is expected of the
+alderman, as a fundamental principle, that he will steal," and, in a
+fruitful year, says the _Record_, the average crooked alderman makes
+15,000 to 20,000 dollars. An assessorship in Chicago is worth nominally
+1500 dollars per annum, but "everyone knows that in Chicago an
+assessorship is the shortest cut to fortune."
+
+Squeezing in China may be common, but it is a humble industry compared
+with the monumental swindling which Mr. Stead describes as existing in
+Chicago.
+
+Besides being manager in Yunnan City, Li is the chief telegraph director
+of the two provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow. That he is entirely
+innocent of all knowledge of telegraphy, or of the management of
+telegraphs, is no bar to such an appointment. He is a mandarin, and is,
+therefore, presumably fitted to take any position whatever, whether it
+be that of Magistrate or Admiral of the Fleet, Collector of Customs, or
+General commanding in the field. Of the mandarin in China it is truly
+said that "there is nothing he isn't."
+
+Li is also Chief Secretary of the _Shan-hao-Tsung-Kuh_, "The Supreme
+Board of Reorganisation" of the province, the members of which are the
+four highest provincial officials next below the Governor
+(_Futai_)--viz., the Treasurer (_Fantai_), Provincial Judge (_Niehtai_),
+the Salt Comptroller, and the Grain Intendant.
+
+Li, it may be said at once, is a man of no common virtue. He is the
+father of seven sons and four daughters; he can die in peace; in his
+family there is no fear of the early extinction of male descendants, for
+the succession is as well provided against as it is in the most fertile
+Royal family in Europe. His family is far spreading, and it is worth
+noting as an instance of the patriarchal nature of the family in China,
+that Li is regarded as the father of a family, whose members dependent
+upon him for entire or partial support number eighty persons. He has had
+three wives. His number one wife still lives at the family seat in
+Changsha; another secondary wife is dead; his present number two wife
+lives with him in Yunnan. This is his favourite wife, and her story is
+worth a passing note. She was not a "funded houri," but a poor _yatow_,
+a "forked head" or slave girl, whom he purchased on a lucky day, and,
+smitten with her charms, made her his wife. It was a case of love at
+first sight. Her conduct since marriage has more than justified the
+choice of her master. Still a young woman, she has already presented her
+lord with nine children, on the last occasion surpassing herself by
+giving birth to twins. She has a most pleasant face, and really charming
+children; but the chief attraction of a Chinese lady is absent in her
+case. Her feet are of natural size, and not even in the exaggerated
+murmurings of love could her husband describe them as "three-inch gold
+lilies."
+
+That this was a marriage of inclination there can be no doubt whatever.
+It is idle to argue that the Chinese are an unemotional people,
+incapable of feeling the same passions that move us. We ridicule the
+image of a Chinaman languishing in love, just as the Chinaman derides
+the possibility of experiencing the feelings of love for the average
+foreign woman he has seen in China. Their poetry abounds in love
+episodes. Students of Chinese civilisation seem to agree that a _mariage
+de convenance_ in China is more likely even than on the Continent to
+become instantly a marriage of affection. The pleasures of female
+society are almost denied the Chinaman; he cannot fall in love before
+marriage because of the absence of an object for his love. "The faculty
+of love produces a subjective ideal; and craves for a corresponding
+objective reality. And the longer the absence of the objective reality,
+the higher the ideal becomes; as in the mind of the hungry man ideal
+foods get more and more exquisite."
+
+In Meadows' "Essay on Civilisation in China," there is a charming story,
+translated from the Chinese, of love at first sight, given in
+illustration of the author's contention that "it is the men to whom
+women's society is almost unknown that are most apt to fall violently in
+love at first sight. Violent love at first sight is a general
+characteristic of nations where the sexes have no intercourse before
+marriage.... The starved cravings of love devour the first object":--
+
+"A Chinese who had suffered bitter disenchantments in marriage retired
+with his infant son to the solitude of a mountain inaccessible for
+little-footed Chinese women. He trained up the youth to worship the gods
+and stand in awe and abhorrence of devils, but he never mentioned even
+the name of woman to him. He always descended to market alone, but when
+he grew old and feeble he was at length compelled to take the young man
+with him to carry the heavy bag of rice. He very reasonably argued, 'I
+shall always accompany my son, and take care that if he does see a
+woman by chance, he shall never speak to one; he is very obedient; he
+has never heard of woman; he does not know what they are; and as he has
+lived in that way for twenty years already, he is, of course, now pretty
+safe.'
+
+"As they were on the first occasion leaving the market town together,
+the son suddenly stopped short, and, pointing to three approaching
+objects, inquired: 'Father, what are these things? Look! look! what are
+they?' The father hastily answered: 'Turn away your head. They are
+devils.' The son, in some alarm, instantly turned away from things so
+bad, and which were gazing at his motions with surprise from under their
+fans. He walked to the mountain top in silence, ate no supper, and from
+that day lost his appetite and was afflicted with melancholy. For some
+time his anxious and puzzled parent could get no satisfactory answer to
+his inquiries; but at length the poor young man burst out, almost crying
+from an inexplicable pain: 'Oh, father, that tallest devil! that tallest
+devil, father!'"
+
+Girls for Yunnan City are bought at two chief centres--at Chaotong, as
+we have seen, and at Bichih. They are carried to the city in baskets.
+They are rarely sold into prostitution, but are bought as slave girls
+for domestic service, as concubines, and occasionally as wives. Their
+great merit is the absence of the "thickneck," goitre.
+
+The morning after my visit, Li sent me his card, together with a leg of
+mutton and a pile of sweet cakes. I returned my card, and gave the
+bearer 200 cash (fivepence), not as a return gift to the mandarin, but
+as a private act of generosity to his servant--all this being in
+accordance with Chinese etiquette.
+
+My host in Yunnan, and the actual manager and superintendent of the
+telegraphs of the two provinces, is a clever Danish gentleman, Mr.
+Christian Jensen, an accomplished linguist, to whom every European
+resident and traveller in the province is indebted for a thousand acts
+of kindness and attention. He has a rare knowledge of travel in China.
+Mr. Jensen arrived in China in 1880 in the service of the Great Northern
+Telegraph Company--a Danish company. From December, 1881, when the first
+Chinese telegraph line was opened (that from Shanghai to Tientsin), till
+the spring of 1883, he was one of eight operatives and engineers lent by
+the Company to the Chinese Government. In December 1883, having returned
+in the meantime to the Great Northern he accepted an engagement under
+the Imperial Government and he has been in their employ ever since.
+During this time he has superintended the construction of 7000 li (2350
+miles) of telegraph lines, and it was he who, on the 20th May, 1890,
+effected the junction of the Chinese system with the French lines at
+Laokai. Among the more important lines constructed by him are those
+joining the two capital cities of the provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow;
+that from Yunnan City to Mungtze, on the frontier of Tonquin; that from
+Canton to the boundary of Fuhkien province; and that from Yunnan City
+through Tali to Tengyueh (Momien), this last line being the one which
+will eventually unite with the marvellous Indian telegraph system at the
+Burmese frontier. In the course of his many journeys through China, Mr.
+Jensen has been invariably well treated by the Chinese, and it is
+pleasant to hear one who has seen so much of the inner life of the
+country speak as he does of the universal courtesy and hospitality,
+attention, and kindness that has been shown him by all classes of
+Chinese from the highest officials to the humblest coolies.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW IN YUNNAN CITY.]
+
+Many interesting episodes have marked his stay in China. Once, when
+repairing the line from Pase, in Kwangsi, to Mungtze, during the rainy
+season of 1889, fifty-six out of sixty men employed by him died of what
+there can be little doubt was the same plague that has lately devastated
+Hong Kong. On this occasion, of twelve men who at different times were
+employed as his chair-bearers, all died.
+
+In October, 1886, he came to Yunnan City, and made this his
+headquarters. He has always enjoyed good health.
+
+One of the chief difficulties that formerly impeded the extension of the
+telegraph in China was the belief that the telegraph poles spoil the
+"_fungshui_"--in other words, that they divert good luck from the
+districts they pass through. This objection has been everywhere
+overcome. It last revealed itself in the extreme west of the line from
+Yunnan. Villagers who saw in the telegraph a menace to the good fortune
+of their district would cut down the poles--and sell the wire in
+compensation for their trouble. The annoyance had to be put a stop to.
+An energetic magistrate took the matter in hand. He issued a warning to
+the villagers, but his warning was unheeded. Then he took more vigorous
+measures. The very next case that occurred he had two men arrested, and
+charged with the offence. They were probably innocent, but under the
+persuasion of the bamboo they were induced to acquiesce in the
+magistrate's opinion as to their guilt. They were sentenced to be
+deprived of their ears, and then they were sent on foot, that all might
+see them, under escort along the line from Yunnan City to Tengyueh and
+back again. No poles have been cut down since.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+GOLD, BANKS, AND TELEGRAPHS IN YUNNAN.
+
+
+Yunnan City is the great gold emporium of China, for most of the gold
+found in China comes from the province of which it is the capital. When
+a rich Chinaman returns from Yunnan to another province, or is summoned
+on a visit to the Emperor at Peking, he carries his money in gold not
+silver. Gold leaf sent from Yunnan gilds the gods of Thibet and the
+temples and pagodas of Indo-China. No caravan returns to Burma from
+Western China whose spare silver has not been changed into gold leaf. In
+the Arracan Temple in Mandalay, as in the Shway-dagon Pagoda in Rangoon,
+you see the gold leaf that Yunnan produces, and in the future will
+produce in infinitely greater quantities.
+
+Gold comes chiefly from the mines of Talang, eighteen days journey by
+land S.W. from Yunnan City, on the confines of the district which
+produces the famous Puerh tea. The yield must be a rich one despite the
+ineffective appliances that are employed in its extraction. Gold has
+always been abundant in this province; at the time of Marco Polo's visit
+it was so abundant that its value in relation to silver was only as one
+to six.
+
+When gold is worth in Shanghai 35 times its weight in silver, it may be
+bought in Yunnan City or Talifu for from 25 to 27.5 times its weight in
+silver, and in quantities up to hundreds of ounces. To remit silver by
+telegraphic transfer from Shanghai or Hong Kong to Yunnan city costs six
+per cent., and either of the two leading banks in the city will
+negotiate the transfer from their agents at the seaports of any amount
+up to 10,000 ounces of silver in a single transaction. The gold can
+always be readily sold in Shanghai or Hong Kong, and the only risk is in
+the carriage of the gold from the inland city to the seaport. So far as
+I could learn, no gold thus sent has gone astray. It is carried overland
+by the fastest trade route--that through Mungtze to Laokai--and thence
+by a boat down stream to Hanoi in Tonquin, from which port it is sent by
+registered post to Saigon and Hong Kong. Here then is a venture open to
+all, with excitement sufficient for the most _blase_ speculator. Ample
+profits are made by the dealer. For instance, a large quantity of gold
+was purchased in Yunnan city on the 21st January, 1894, at 23.2, its
+value in Shanghai on the same date being 30.9; but on the date that the
+gold arrived in Shanghai its value had risen to 35, at which price it
+was sold. At the time of my visit gold was 25.5 to 27 in Yunnan, and 35
+in Shanghai, and I have since learnt that, while gold has become cheaper
+in the province, it has become dearer at the seaport.
+
+The gold is brought to the buyer in the form of jewellery of really
+exquisite workmanship, of rings and bracelets, earrings and head
+ornaments, of those tiny images worn by rich children in a half circlet
+over the forehead, and bridal charms that would make covetous the heart
+of a nun. Ornaments of gold such as these are 98 per cent. fine and are
+sold, weighed on the same scales, for so many times their weight in
+silver. They are sold not because of the poverty of their owners, but
+because their owners make a very large profit on their original cost by
+so disposing of them. If, however, the purchaser prefer it, gold will be
+brought him in the leaf 99 per cent. fine, and this is undoubtedly the
+best form into which to convert your silver. The gold beaters of Yunnan
+are a recognised class, and are so numerous that they have a powerful
+guild or trade's union of their own.
+
+Gold-testing is also a recognised profession, but the methods are
+primitive and require the skill of an expert, consisting, as they do, of
+a comparison of the rubbing on a stone of the unknown gold, with a
+similar rubbing of gold whose standard has been accurately determined.
+One of the best gold-testers in the city has been taught electric
+gilding by Mr. Jensen and does some skilful work.
+
+The principle of self-protection restrains the Chinaman from the
+ostentatious exhibition of his wealth--he fears being squeezed by the
+officials who are apt to regard wealth as an aggravation of crime, to be
+the more severely punished the better able is the accused to purchase
+exemption from punishment. I have seen a stranger come into the room
+where Mr. Jensen and I were sitting, who from his appearance seemed to
+be worth perhaps a five-dollar bill, and after a preliminary interchange
+of compliments, I have seen his hand disappear up his long sleeve and
+produce a package of gold leaf worth perhaps 2000 taels of silver. This
+he would offer for sale; there was some quiet bargaining; when, should
+they agree, the gold was weighed, the purchaser handed a cheque on his
+Chinese banker for the amount in silver, and the transaction was
+finished as quickly and neatly as if it had taken place in Bond Street,
+and not in the most inland capital of an "uncivilised country"; whose
+civilisation has nevertheless kept it intact and mighty since the dawn
+of history, and whose banking methods are the same now as they were in
+the days of Solomon.
+
+The silver of Yunnan is of the same standard as the silver of Shanghai,
+namely 98 per cent. pure, and differs to the eye from the absolutely
+unalloyed silver of Szechuen.
+
+The cash of Yunnan vary in a way that is more than usually bewildering.
+Let me explain, in a few sentences, the "cash" currency of the Middle
+Kingdom. The current coin of China as everyone knows is the brass cash,
+which is perforated so that it may be carried on a string. Now,
+theoretically, a "string of cash" contains 100 coins, and in the Eastern
+provinces ten strings are the theoretical equivalent of one Mexican
+dollar. But there are eighteen provinces in China, and the number of
+brass cash passing for a string varies in each province from the full
+100, which I have never seen, to 83 in Taiyuen, and down to 33 in the
+Eastern part of the province of Chihli. In Peking I found the system
+charmingly simple. One thousand cash are there represented by 100 coins,
+whereas 1000 "old cash" consist of 1000 coins, though 1000 "capital
+cash" are only 500 coins. The big cash are marked as 10 capital cash,
+but count the same as 5 old cash. Nowhere does a Chinaman mean 1000 cash
+when he speaks of 1000 cash. In Tientsin 1000 cash means 500 cash--that
+is to say 5 times 100 cash, the 100 there being any number you can pass
+except 100, though by agreement the 100 is usually estimated at 98. In
+Nanking I found a different system to prevail. There cash are 1075 the
+1000, but of the 10 strings of 100 cash, 7 contain only 98 cash each,
+and 3 only 95, yet the surplus 75 cash--that is to say the number which
+for the time being is the Nanking equivalent of 75--are added all the
+same. At Lanchow in Chihli on the Imperial Chinese Railway near
+Shanhai-kwan, 16 old cash count as 100 cash, yet 33 are required to make
+up 200; in Tientsin from which point the railway starts, 1000 cash are
+really 500 cash and 98 count there as 100. Now 2000 Chihli cash are
+represented by 325 coins, and 1000 by 162 coins, and 6000 by 975 coins,
+which again count as 1000 large cash and equal on an average one Mexican
+dollar. Therefore to convert Lanchow cash into Tientsin cash you must
+divide the Lanchow cash by 3, count 975 as 1000, and consider this equal
+to a certain percentage of a theoretical amount of silver known as a
+tael, which is always varying of itself as well as by the fluctuations
+in the market value of silver, and which is not alike in any two places,
+and may widely vary in different portions of the same place.
+
+Could anything be simpler? And yet there are those who say that the
+system of money exchange in China is both cumbrous and exasperating.
+Take as a further instance the cash in Yunnan. Everyone knows that
+theoretically there are 2000 cash in the tael, each tael containing 20
+"strings," and each "string" 100 cash, but in Yunnan 2000 cash are not
+2000 cash--they are only 1880 cash. This does not mean that 1880 cash
+are represented by 1880 coins, not at all; because 62 cash in Yunnan are
+counted as 100. Eighteen hundred and eighty cash are therefore
+represented by only 1240 cash coins and all prices must be paid in this
+proportion. Immediately outside the city, however, a string of cash is a
+"full string" and contains 100 cash or rather it contains as few cash as
+possibly can be passed for 100, a fair average number being 98.
+
+Silver is weighed in the City banks and at the wholesale houses on the
+"capital scale," but in the retail stores on scales that are heavier by
+14 per cent. (one mace and 4 candareens in the tael). Outside the city
+on the road to Tali there is a loss on exchange varying according to
+your astuteness from 3 to 6 per cent. on the capital scale.
+
+There are two chief banks in Yunnan city. Wong's whose bank, the
+signboard tells us, is "Beneficent, Rich, United," and Mong's "Bank of
+the Hundred Streams," which is said to be still richer.
+
+With Mr. Jensen I called one evening upon Wong, and found him with his
+sons and chief dependents at the evening meal. All rose as we entered
+and pressed us to take a seat with them, and when we would not, the
+father and grown-up son showed us into the guest-room and seated us on
+the opium-dais under the canopy. The opium-lamps were already lit; on a
+beautiful tray inlaid with mother-of-pearl there were pipes for
+visitors, and phials of prepared opium. Here we insisted on their
+leaving us and returning to their supper; they finished speedily and
+returned to their visitors. We were given good tea and afterwards a
+single cigar was handed to each of us. In offering you a cigar it is not
+the Chinese custom to offer you your choice from the cigar box; the
+courtesy is too costly, for there are few Chinamen in these
+circumstances who could refrain from helping themselves to a handful.
+"When one is eating one's own" says the Chinese proverb, "one does not
+eat to repletion; when one is eating another's, one eats till the tears
+run."
+
+Wong is one of the leading citizens of Yunnan, and is held in high
+honour by his townsmen. His house is a handsome Chinese mansion; it has
+a dignified entrance and the garden court is richly filled with plants
+in porcelain vases. It may thus be said of him, as of the Confucian
+Superior Man, "riches adorn his house and virtue his person, his heart
+is expanded, and his body is at ease."
+
+A Szechuen man, a native of Chungking, fifty-nine years of age, Wong is
+a man of immense wealth, his bank being known all over China, and having
+branches in capital cities so far distant from each other as Peking,
+Canton, Kweiyang, Shanghai, Hankow, Nanchang, Soochow, Hangchow, and
+Chungking. I may add that he has smoked opium for many years.
+
+I formed a high opinion of the intelligence of Wong. He questioned me
+like an insurance doctor as to my family history, and professed himself
+charmed with the amazing richness in sons of my most honourable family.
+He had heard of my native country, which he called _Hsin Chin Shan_, the
+"New Gold Mountain," to distinguish it from the _Lao Chin Shan_, the
+"Old Gold Mountain," as the Chinese term California. I was the more
+pleased to find that Wong had some knowledge of Australia and its gold,
+because a few months before I had been pained by an incident bearing on
+this very subject, which occurred to me in the highly civilised city of
+Manila, in the Philippine Islands. On an afternoon in August, 1893, I
+stood in the Augustine Church, in Old Manila, to witness the funeral
+service of the Padre Provincial of the Augustines. It was the first
+occasion for one hundred and twenty-three years that the Provincial of
+the Order had died while in the actual exercise of his office, and it
+was known that the ceremony would be one of the most imposing ever seen
+in the Islands. The fine old church, built by the son of the architect
+of the Escorial--the only building in Manila left standing by the
+earthquake of 1645--was crowded with mourners, and almost every
+notability of the province was said to be present. During the service
+two young Spaniards, students from the University close by, pushed their
+way in beside me. Wishing to learn who were the more distinguished of
+the mourners, I asked the students to kindly point out to me the
+Governor-General (Blanco), and other prominent officials, and they did
+so with agreeable courtesy. When the service was finished I thanked them
+for the trouble they had taken and was coming away, when one of them
+stopped me.
+
+"Pardon me, Caballero," he said, "but will you do me the favour to tell
+me where you come from?"
+
+"I am from Australia."
+
+"From Austria! so then you come from Austria?"
+
+"No, sir, from Australia."
+
+"But 'Australia'--where is it?"
+
+"It is a rich colony of England of immense importance."
+
+"But where is it?" he persisted.
+
+"_Dios mio!_" I exclaimed aghast, "it is in China."
+
+But his friend interposed. "The gentleman is talking in fun," he said.
+"Thou knowest, Pepe, where is Australia, where is Seednay, and
+Melboornay, where all the banks have broken one after the other in a
+bankruptcy colossal."
+
+"_Ya me figuraba donde era_," Pepe replied, as I edged uncomfortably
+away.
+
+During my journey across China it was not often that I was called upon
+to make use of my profession. But I was pleased to be of some service to
+this rich banker. He wished to consult me professionally, because he had
+heard from the truthful lips of rumour of the wonderful powers of
+divination given to the foreign medical man. What was his probable
+tenure of life? That was the problem. I gravely examined two of his
+pulses--every properly organised Chinaman has four hundred--and finding
+his heart where it should be in the centre of his body, with the other
+organs ranged round it like the satellites round the sun--every Chinaman
+is thus constructed--I was glad to be able to assure him that he will
+certainly live forty years longer--if Heaven permit him.
+
+Wong has a grown-up son of twenty who will succeed to the bank; he is at
+present the managing proprietor of a small general store purchased for
+him by his father. The son has been taught photography by Mr. Jensen,
+and has an excellent camera obtained from Paris. He is quite an
+enthusiast. In his shop a crowd is always gathered round the counter
+looking at the work of this Chinese amateur. There are a variety of
+stores for sale on the shelves, and I was interested to notice the
+cheerful promiscuity with which bottles of cyanide of potassium and
+perchloride of mercury were scattered among bottles of carbonate of
+soda, of alum, of Moet and Chandon (spurious), of pickles, and Howard's
+quinine. The first time that cyanide of potassium is sold for alum, or
+corrosive sublimate for bicarbonate of soda there will be an _eclat_
+given to the dealings of this shop which will be very gratifying to its
+owner.
+
+The telegraph in Yunnan is very largely used by the Chinese, especially
+by the bankers and officials. By telegraph you can remit, as I have
+said, through the Chinese banks, telegraphic transfers to the value of
+thousands of taels in single transactions. It is principally the banks
+and the Government who make use of the telegraph, and their
+communications are sent by private code. When the Tsungli Yamen in
+Peking sends a telegram to the Viceroy in Yunnan it is in code that the
+message comes; and it is by private code also that a Chinese bank in
+Shanghai telegraphs to its far inland agents. Messages are sent in China
+by the Morse system. The method of telegraphing Chinese characters,
+whose discovery enabled the Chinese to make use of the telegraph, was
+the ingenious invention of a forgotten genius in the Imperial Maritime
+Customs of China. The method is simplicity itself. The telegraph code
+consists of ten thousand numbers of four numerals each, and each group
+so constituted represents a Chinese character. Any operator, however
+ignorant of Chinese, can thus telegraph or receive a message in Chinese.
+He receives, for instance, a message containing a series of numbers such
+as 0018, 0297, 5396, 8424. He has before him a series of ten thousand
+wood blocks on which the number is cut at one end and the corresponding
+Chinese character at the other, he takes out the number, touches the
+inkpad with the other end, and stamps opposite each group its Chinese
+character. The system permits, moreover, of the easy arrangement of
+indecipherable private codes, because by adding or subtracting a certain
+number from each group of figures, other characters than those
+telegraphed can be indicated.
+
+I need hardly add that the system of wood blocks is not in practical
+use, for the numbers and their characters are now printed in code-books.
+And here we have an instance of the marvellous faculty of memorising
+characteristic of the Chinese. A Chinaman's memory is something
+prodigious. From time immemorial the memory of the Chinese has been
+developed above all the other faculties. Memory is the secret of success
+in China, not originality. Among a people taught to associate innovation
+with impiety, and with whom precedent determines all action, it is
+inevitable that the faculty of recollection should be the most highly
+developed of all the mental faculties. Necessity compels the Chinaman to
+have a good memory. No race has ever been known where the power of
+memory has been developed even in rare individual cases to the degree
+that is common to all classes of the Chinese, especially to the
+literati.
+
+The Chinese telegraph clerk quickly learns all the essential portion of
+the code-book by heart. The book then lies in the drawer a superfluity.
+It is claimed for Chiang, the second Chinese clerk in Yunnan, that he
+knows all the 10,000 numbers and their corresponding characters.
+
+Telegrams from Yunnan to Shanghai cost twenty-two tael cents (at the
+present value of the tael this is equal to sixpence) for each Chinese
+character; but each word in any other language is charged double, that
+is, forty-four cents.
+
+[Illustration: SOLDIERS ON THE WALL OF YUNNAN CITY.]
+
+From Yunnan to Talifu is a distance of 307 miles. The native banker in
+the capital will remit for you by wire to his agent in Tali the sum of
+1000 taels, for a charge of eight taels, exclusive of the cost of the
+telegram, and, as the value of silver in Tali is one per cent. higher
+than it is in Yunnan, the traveller can send his money by wire with
+perfect safety, and lose nothing in the remittance, not even the cost of
+the telegram.
+
+The telegraph offices are separated from the city wall by a small
+common, which is quite level, and which the Chinaman of the future will
+convert into a bowling green and lawn-tennis ground. There is a handsome
+entrance. The large portal is painted with horrific gods armed with
+monstrous weapons. The Chinese still seem to adhere to the belief that
+the deadliness of a weapon must be in proportion to the savageness of
+its aspect. Inside, there are spacious courts and well-furnished guest
+rooms, roomy apartments, and offices for the mandarin, as well as
+comfortable quarters for Mr. Jensen and his body of Chinese clerks and
+operators. There is a pretty garden all bright and sunny, with a pond of
+gold fish and ornamental parapet. Wandering freely in the enclosure are
+peacocks and native companions, while a constant playmate of the
+children is a little laughing monkey of a kind that is found in the
+woods beyond Tali. At night a watchman passes round the courts every two
+hours, striking a dismal gong under the windows, and waking the
+foreigner from his slumbers; but the noise he makes does not disturb the
+sleep of the Chinese--indeed, it is open to question if there is any
+discord known which, as mere noise, _could_ disturb a Chinaman.
+
+The walls that flank the entrance are covered with official posters
+giving the names of the men of Yunnan City who contributed to the relief
+of the sufferers by a recent famine in Shansi, together with the amounts
+of their contributions and the rewards to which their gifts entitled
+them. The Chinese are firm believers in the doctrine of justification by
+works, and on these posters one could read the exact return made in this
+world for an act of merit, apart, of course, from the reward that will
+be reaped in Heaven. In a case like this it is usually arranged that for
+"gifts amounting to a certain percentage of the sums ordinarily
+authorised, subscribers may obtain brevet titles, posthumous titles,
+decorations, buttons up to the second class, the grade of licentiate,
+and brevet rank up to the rank of Colonel. Disgraced officials may apply
+to have their rank restored. Nominal donations of clothes, if the money
+value of the articles be presented instead, will entitle the givers to
+similar honours."--_The Peking Gazette_, August 22, 1892.
+
+In the centre of the green stands the hollow pillar in which Chinese
+printed waste-paper is reverently burnt. "When letters were invented,"
+the Chinese say, "Heaven rejoiced and Hell trembled." "Reverence the
+characters," is an injunction of Confucius which no Chinaman neglects to
+follow. He remembers that "he who uses lettered paper to kindle the fire
+has ten demerits, and will have itchy sores"; he remembers that "he who
+tosses lettered paper into dirty water, or burns it in a filthy place,
+has twenty demerits and will frequently have sore eyes or become blind,"
+whereas "he who goes about and collects, washes, and burns lettered
+paper, has 5000 merits, adds twelve years to his life, will become
+honoured and wealthy, and his children and grandchildren will be
+virtuous and filial." But his reverence has strict limits, and while he
+reverences the piece of paper upon which a moral precept is written, he
+often thinks himself absolved from reverencing the moral precept itself,
+just as a deacon in England need not necessarily be one who never
+over-reached his neighbours or swindled his creditors.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE FRENCH MISSION AND THE ARSENAL IN YUNNAN CITY.
+
+
+The most prominent structure within the city walls is the Heavenly Lord
+Hall (_Tien-chu-tang_), the pile of buildings which form the
+headquarters of the French Mission in the province of Yunnan. It was a
+master-stroke to secure possession of so important a site. The palace is
+on a higher level even than the yamen of the Viceroy, and must intercept
+much of the good fortune that would otherwise flow into the city. The
+facade of the central hall has been ornamented with a superb cross of
+porcelain mosaic, which is a conspicuous object from the city wall. A
+large garden, where the eucalyptus has been wisely planted, surrounds
+the buildings. In residence in the Heavenly Hall are the venerable
+Vicaire Apostolique of the province, Monseigneur Fenouil, the
+Provicaire, and four missionary priests, all four of whom are from
+Alsace. In the province altogether there are twenty-two French priests
+and eight ordained Chinese priests--thirty in all; their converts number
+15,000. Monseigneur Fenouil is a landmark of Western China; he first set
+foot in the province in 1847, and is the oldest foreign resident in the
+interior of China. No Chinaman speaks purer Chinese than he; he thinks
+in Chinese. Present in the province throughout the Mohammedan
+insurrection, he was an eye-witness of the horrors of religious warfare.
+Few men have had their path in life marked by more thrilling episodes.
+He was elected Bishop, in 1880, by the unanimous vote of all the priests
+in the province, a vote confirmed by Rome; which is, I am told, the mode
+of election by which Catholic Missionary Bishops in China are always
+chosen.
+
+The grand old Bishop seemed much amused at my journey. "I suppose you
+are riding a mule," he said, "for you English have large bones, and the
+Chinese ponies are very small." I said that I had come so far most of
+the way on foot. "You speak Chinese, of course?"
+
+"Hardly at all; I speak only a dozen words of Chinese."
+
+"Then you have a Chinese interpreter? No! An English companion who can
+speak Chinese? No! A Chinese servant who can speak English? No, and no
+escort! But without doubt you are armed? No! No escort, no revolver, no
+companion, and you can live on Chinese food. Ah! you have a brave heart,
+Monsieur."
+
+At the time of my visit to Yunnan, Pere de Gorostarza, the accomplished
+Provicaire, was absent at Mungtze deciding a question of discipline.
+Four months before one of the most trusted converts of the mission had
+been sent to Mungtze to purchase a property for the use of the mission.
+He was given the purchase-money of 400 taels, but, when he arrived in
+Mungtze, and the eye of the mission was no longer upon him, he invested
+the money, not in premises for the mission, but in a coolie-hong for
+himself. His backsliding had availed him little. And he was now
+defending his conduct as best he could before the Bishop's deputy.
+
+Converts of the French mission in China, it is well to remember, are no
+longer French subjects or _proteges_; the objection is no longer
+tenable that the mission shields bad characters who only become
+converted in order to escape from the consequences of their guilt.
+
+How wonderful has been the pioneer work done by the Jesuit Missionaries
+in China! It may almost be said that the foundation of all that we know
+about China we owe to the Jesuit Missionaries. All maps on China are
+founded upon the maps of the Jesuit Missionaries employed for the
+purpose by the Emperor Kanghi (1663-1723), "the greatest prince who ever
+graced the throne of China." Their accuracy has been the wonder of all
+geographers for a century past. "Now that the 'Great River' (the
+Yangtse) has been surveyed," says Captain Blakiston, "for nearly 1600
+miles from the ocean, and with instruments and appliances such as were
+unknown in the days of those energetic and persevering men, no small
+praise is due to the first Christian explorers for the extraordinary
+correctness of their maps and records." The reports of the early Jesuit
+Missionaries even Voltaire describes as the "productions of the most
+intelligent travellers that have extended and embellished the fields of
+science and philosophy."
+
+Yet we, as Protestants, are warned by a great missionary that we must
+not be deluded by these insidious compliments; we must not forget that
+the work of the Jesuits in China "overtops all other forms of
+superstition and error in danger, and stands forth an organised
+conspiracy against the liberties of mankind. The schemes of the Jesuits
+must be checked."
+
+One Sunday morning Mr. Jensen and I rode round the city wall. This is
+one of the most massive walls in a country of walled cities. It is built
+of brick and stone over a body of earth thirty feet thick; it is of
+imposing height, and wide enough for a carriage drive. When I was
+mounted on my mule the upper edge of the parapet was on a level with my
+forehead. There are six city gates. The great north gate is closely
+barred all through the rains to prevent the entrance of the "Flood God,"
+who, fortunately, his intelligence being limited, knows no other way to
+enter the city than by this gate. The great turreted south gate is the
+most important of all, as it is in all Chinese cities. Near this gate
+the Viceroy's Yamen is situated, and the Yamen of the Futai (Governor of
+the Province); both buildings, of course, looking to the south, as did
+the Temple of Solomon and the tombs of the Mings, and as Chinese custom
+requires that every building of importance shall do, whether temple or
+yamen, private residence or royal palace. But why should they look
+south? Because from the south the sun comes, bringing with it "genial
+and animating influence," and putting new life into plant and animal
+after the winter.
+
+The south gate is a double gate in a semi-circular bastion. Beyond it is
+a splendid triumphal arch erected by a grateful community to the memory
+of the late viceroy. A thickly-populated suburb extends from here to the
+wide common, where stands the lofty guardian pagoda of the city, 250
+feet high, a conspicuous sight from every part of the great Yunnan
+plain. Rich temples are all around it, their eaves hung with sweet-toned
+bells, which tinkle with every breath of wind, giving forth what the
+Chinese poetically describe as "the tribute of praise from inanimate
+nature to the greatness of Buddha."
+
+[Illustration: THE PAGODA OF YUNNAN CITY, 250 FEET HIGH.]
+
+In the early morning the traveller is awakened by the steam whistle of
+the arsenal, a strange sound to be heard in so far inland a city in
+China. The factory is under Chinese management, a fact patent to any
+visitor. Its two foremen were trained partly in the arsenal in Nanking
+under Dr. Macartney (now Sir Halliday Macartney), and partly in the
+splendid Shanghai arsenal under Mr. Cornish. I went to the arsenal, and
+was received as usual in the opium-room. There was nothing to conceal,
+and I was freely shown everything. The arsenal turns out Krupp guns of
+7-1/2 centimetres calibre, but the iron is inferior, and the workmen are
+in need of better training. Cartridges are also made here. And in one
+room I saw two men finishing with much neatness a pure silver opium-tray
+intended for the Fantai (provincial treasurer), but why made in the
+arsenal only a Chinaman could tell you. Work in the furnace is done at a
+disadvantage owing to the shortness of the furnace chimney, which is
+only 25 feet high. All attempts to increase its height are now forbidden
+by the authorities. There was agitation in the city when the chimney was
+being heightened. Geomancers were consulted, who saw the feeling of the
+majority, and therefore gave it as their unprejudiced opinion that, if
+the chimney were not stunted, the _fungshui_ (good luck) of the Futai's
+yamen (provincial governor), and of that portion of the city under its
+protection, would depart for ever. All the machinery of the arsenal is
+stamped with the name of Greenwood, Battley and Co., Leeds. Rust and
+dirt are everywhere, and the 100 workmen for whom pay is drawn never
+number on the rare pay days more than sixty persons, a phenomenon
+observed in most establishments in China worked by government. Yet with
+a foreigner in charge excellent work could be turned out from the
+factory. The buildings are spacious, the grounds are ample.
+
+The powder factory is outside the city, near the north-eastern angle of
+the wall, but the powder magazine is on some rising ground inside the
+city. No guns are stationed anywhere on the walls, though they may be in
+concealment in the turrets; but near the small west gate I saw some
+small cannon of ancient casting, built on the model of the guns cast by
+the Jesuit missionaries in China two centuries ago, if they were not the
+actual originals. They were all marked in relief with a cross and the
+device I.H.S.--a motto that you would think none but a Chinaman could
+select for a weapon designed to destroy men, yet characteristic of this
+country of contradictions. "The Chinese statesman," says Wingrove Cooke,
+the famous _Times_ correspondent, "cuts off 10,000 heads, and cites a
+passage from Mencius about the sanctity of human life. He pockets the
+money given him to repair an embankment and thus inundates a province,
+and he deplores the land lost to the cultivator of the soil."
+
+Du Halde tells us that "the first Chinese cannon were cast under the
+directions of Pere Verbiest in 1682, who blest the cannon, and gave to
+each the name of a saint." "A female saint!" says Huc.
+
+Near the arsenal and drill ground there is a large intramural swamp or
+reedy lake, the reeds of which have an economic value as wicks for
+Chinese candles. Dykes cross the swamp in various directions, and in the
+centre there is a well known Taoist Temple, a richly endowed edifice,
+with superior gods and censers of great beauty. Where the swamp deepens
+into a pond at the margin of the temple, a pretty pavilion has been
+built, which is a favourite resort of the Yunnan gentry. The most _chic_
+dinner parties in the province are given here. The pond itself swarms
+with sacred fish; they are so numerous that when the masses move the
+whole pond vibrates. Many merits are gained by feeding the fish, and,
+as it happened at the time of my visit that I had no money, I was
+constrained to borrow fifteen cash from my chair coolies, with which I
+purchased some of the artificial food that women were vending and threw
+it to the fish, so that I might add another thousand to the innumerable
+merits I have already hoarded in Heaven.
+
+Upon a pretty wooded hill near the centre of the city is the Confucian
+Temple, and on the lower slope of the hill, in an admirable position,
+are the quarters of the China Inland Mission, conducted by Mr. and Mrs.
+X., assisted by Mr. Graham, who at the time of my visit was absent in
+Tali, and by two exceedingly nice young girls, one of whom comes from
+Melbourne. The single ladies live in quarters of their own on the edge
+of a swamp, and suffer inevitably from malarial fever. Mr. X. "finds the
+people very hard to reach," he told me, and his success has only been
+relatively cheering. After labouring here nearly six years--the mission
+was first opened in 1882--he has no male converts, though there are two
+promising nibblers, who are waiting for the first vacancy to become
+adherents. There _was_ a convert, baptised before Mr. X. came here, a
+poor manure-coolie, who was employed by the mission as an evangelist in
+a small way; but "Satan tempted him, he fell from grace, and had to be
+expelled for stealing the children's buttons." It was a sad trial to the
+mission. The men refuse to be saved, recalcitrant sinners! but the women
+happily are more tractable. Mr. X. has up to date (May, 1894), baptised
+his children's nurse girl, the "native helper" of the single ladies, and
+his wife's cook. Mr. X. works hard, far too hard. He is of the type that
+never can be successful in China. He was converted when nearing middle
+age, is narrow and uncompromising in his views, and is as stern as a
+Cameronian. It is a farce sending such men to China. At his services
+there is never any lack of listeners, who marvel greatly at the new
+method of speaking Chinese which this enterprising emissary--in London
+he was in the oil trade--is endeavouring to introduce into the province.
+Of "tones" instead of the five used by the Chinese, he does not
+recognise more than two, and these he uses indifferently. He hopes,
+however, to be understood by loud speaking, and he bellows at the placid
+coolies like a bull of Bashan.
+
+I paid an early visit to my countrymen at the _Yesu-tang_ (Jesus Hall),
+the mission home, as I thought that my medical knowledge might be of
+some service. I wished to learn a little about their work, but to my
+great sorrow I was no sooner seated than they began plying me with
+questions about the welfare of my soul. I am a "poor lost sinner," they
+told me. They flung texts at my head, and then sang a terrifying ballad,
+by which I learnt for the first time the awful fate that is to be mine.
+It is something too dreadful to contemplate. And the cheerful equanimity
+with which they announced it to me! I left the _Yesu-tang_ in a cold
+sweat, and never returned there.
+
+Missionary work is being pursued in the province with increasing vigour.
+Among its population of from five to seven millions, spread over an area
+of 107,969 square miles, there are eighteen Protestant missionaries,
+nine men and nine ladies (this is the number at present, but the usual
+strength is twenty-three). Stations are open at Chaotong (1887),
+Tongchuan (1891), Yunnan City (1882), Tali (1881), and Kuhtsing (1889).
+The converts number--the work, however, must not be judged by
+statistics--two at Chaotong, one at Tongchuan, three at Yunnan City,
+three at Tali, and two at Kuhtsing.
+
+That the Chinese are capable of very rapid conversion can be proved by
+numberless instances quoted in missionary reports on China. The Rev. S.
+F. Woodin (in the _Records_ of the Missionary Conference, 1877, p. 91)
+states that he converted a "grossly immoral Chinaman, who had smoked
+opium for more than twenty years," simply by saying to him "in a spirit
+of earnest love, elder brother Six, as far as I can see, you must
+perish; you are Hell's child."
+
+Mr. Stanley P. Smith, B.A., who was formerly stroke of the Cambridge
+eight, had been only seven months in China when he performed that
+wonderful conversion, so applauded at the Missionary Conference of 1888,
+of "a young Chinaman, a learned man, a B.A. of his University," who
+heard Mr. Smith speak in the Chinese that can be acquired in seven
+months, and "accepted Him there and then." (_Records_ of the Missionary
+Conference, 1888, i., 46). Indeed, the earlier the new missionaries in
+China begin to preach the more rapid are the conversions they make.
+
+Now, in this province of Yunnan, conversions will have to be infinitely
+more rapid before we can say that there is any reasonable hope of the
+proximate conversion of the province. The problem is this: In a
+population of from five to seven millions of friendly and peaceable
+people, eighteen missionaries in eight years (the average time during
+which the mission stations have been opened), have converted eleven
+Chinese; how long, then, will it take to convert the remainder?
+
+"I believe," said a late member of the House of Commons, who was once
+Lord Mayor of London, speaking at the anniversary meeting of the China
+Inland Mission in 1884, "I believe God intends to accomplish great
+things in China," and, undoubtedly, the opinion of an ex-Lord Mayor on
+such a subject is entitled to great weight.
+
+"The Gospel," he said, "is making rapid progress in China.... We are
+amazed at the great things God hath wrought" (in the conversion of the
+Chinese).
+
+Let us examine for a moment an instance of the rapid progress which
+excited the amazement of this good man. No missionary body in China is
+working with greater energy than the China Inland Mission. Their
+missionaries go far afield in their work, and they are, what their
+mission intends them to be, pioneer Protestant missionaries in Inland
+China. At the present time, the beginning of 1894, the Inland Mission
+numbers 611 male and female missionaries. They are assisted by 261 paid
+native helpers, and the combined body of 872 Evangelists baptised during
+the year just passed (1893) 821 Chinese. These figures, taken from
+_China's Millions_, 1894, p. 122, attest a rather lower rate of progress
+than the other missions can boast of; but a considerable part of the
+inland work, it must be remembered, is the most difficult work of
+all--the preaching of the Gospel for the first time in newly-opened
+districts.
+
+[Illustration: THE VICEROY OF THE TWO PROVINCES OF YUNNAN AND KWEICHOW.]
+
+The Viceroy of the two provinces of Yunnan and Kweichow, Wong-wen-shao,
+is one of the most enlightened rulers in China. No stranger could fail
+to be impressed with his keen intellectual face and courtly grace of
+manner. His career has been a distinguished one. Good fortune attended
+him even at his birth. He is a native of Hangchow, in Chehkiang, a city
+famous in China for its coffins. Every Chinaman will tell you that true
+felicity consists in three things: to be born in Peking (under the
+shadow of the Son of Heaven); to live in Soochow (where the girls are
+prettiest); and to die in Hangchow (where the coffins are grandest).
+Twelve years ago he was Governor of the province of Hunan. Called then
+to Peking as one of the Ministers of State of the "Tsungli Yamen," or
+Foreign Office, he remained there four years, his retirement being then
+due to the inexorable law which requires an official to resign office
+and go into mourning for three years on the death of one of his parents.
+In this case it was his mother. (A Chinese mother suckles her child two
+and a half years, and, as the age of the child is dated from a time
+anterior by some months to birth, the child is three years old before it
+leaves its mother's breast. Three years, therefore, has been defined as
+the proper period for mourning.) At the termination of the three years,
+Wong was reappointed Governor of Hunan, and a year and a half later, in
+May, 1890, he was appointed to his present important satrapy, where he
+has the supreme control of a district larger than Spain and Portugal,
+and with a population larger than that of Canada and Australia combined.
+In May, 1893, he made application to the throne to be allowed to return
+to his ancestral home to die, but the privilege was refused him.
+
+Before leaving Yunnan city the Mandarin Li kindly provided me with a
+letter of introduction to his friend Brigadier-General Chang-chen Nien,
+in Tengyueh. Since it contained a communication between persons of rank,
+the envelope was about the size of an ordinary pillow-slip. The General
+was presumably of higher rank than the traveller; I had, therefore, in
+accordance with Chinese etiquette, to provide myself with a suitable
+visiting card of a size appropriate to his importance. Now Chinese
+visiting cards differ from ours in differing in size according to the
+importance of the person to whom they are to be presented. My ordinary
+card is eight inches by three, red in colour--the colour of
+happiness--and inscribed in black with the three characters of my
+Chinese name. But the card that I was expected to present to the
+General was very much larger than this. Folded it was of the same size,
+but unfolded it was ten times the size of the other (eight by thirty
+inches), and the last page, politely inscribed in Chinese, contained
+this humiliating indication of its purport: "Your addlepated nephew
+Mo-li-son bows his stupid head, and pays his humble respects to your
+exalted Excellency."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+I still have this card in my possession; and I should be extremely
+reluctant to present it to any official in the Empire of lower rank than
+the Emperor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+THE JOURNEY FROM YUNNAN CITY TO TALIFU.
+
+
+I sold the mule in Yunnan City, and bought instead a little white pony
+at a cost, including saddle, bridle, and bells, of _L3 6s._ In doing
+this I reversed the exchange that would have been made by a Chinaman. A
+mule is a more aristocratic animal than a pony; it thrives better on a
+journey, and is more sure-footed. If a pony, the Chinese tell you, lets
+slip one foot, the other three follow; whereas a mule, if three feet
+slip from under him, will hold on with the fourth.
+
+My men, who had come with me from Chaotong, were paid off in Yunnan; but
+it was pleasant to find all three accept an offer to go on with me to
+Talifu. Coolies to do this journey are usually supplied by the coolie
+agents for the wage of two _chien_ a day each (_7d._), each man to carry
+seventy catties (93lbs.), find himself by the way, and spend thirteen
+days on the journey. But no coolies, owing to the increase in the price
+of food, were now willing to go for so little. Accordingly I offered my
+two coolies three taels each (_9s._), instead of the hong price of _7s.
+9d._, and loads of fifty catties instead of seventy catties. I offered
+to refund them 100 cash each (_2-1/2d._) a day for every day that they
+had been delayed in Yunnan, and, in addition, I promised them a reward
+of five mace each (_1s. 6d._) if they would take me to Tali in nine
+days, instead of thirteen, the first evening not to count. To Laohwan,
+who had no load to carry, but had to attend to me and the pony and pay
+away the cash, I made a similar offer. These terms, involving me in an
+outlay of _36s._ for hiring three men to go with me on foot 915 li, and
+return empty-handed, were considered liberal, and were agreed to at
+once.
+
+The afternoon, then, of the 19th April saw us again _en route_, bound to
+the west to Talifu, the most famous city in western China, the
+headquarters of the Mohammedan "Sultan" during the great rebellion of
+1857-1873.
+
+By the courtesy of the Mandarin Li, two men were detailed to "sung"
+me--to accompany me, that is--and take the responsibility for my safe
+delivery at the next hsien. One was a "wen," a chairen, or yamen runner;
+the other was a "wu," a soldier, with a sightless right eye, who was
+dressed in the ragged vestiges of a uniform that reflected both the
+poverty of his environment and, inversely, the richness of his
+commanding officer. For in China the officer enriches himself by the
+twofold expedient of drawing pay for soldiers who have no existence,
+except in his statement of claim, and by diverting the pay of his
+soldiers who do exist from their pockets into his own.
+
+[Illustration: THE GIANT OF YUNNAN.]
+
+As I was leaving, a colossal Chinaman, sent by the Fantai to speed the
+foreign gentleman on his way, strode into the court. He was dressed in
+military jacket and official hat and foxtails. He was the Yunnan giant,
+Chang Yan Miun, a kindly-featured monster, whom it is a pity to see
+buried in China when he might be holding _levees_ of thousands in a
+Western side-show. For the information of those in search of novelties,
+I may say that the giant is thirty years of age, a native of Tongchuan,
+born of parents of ordinary stature; he is 7ft. 1in. in his bare feet,
+and weighs, when in condition, 27st. 6lb. With that ingenious
+arrangement for increasing height known to all showmen, this giant might
+be worth investing in as a possible successor to his unrivalled
+namesake. There is surely money in it. Chang's present earnings are
+rather less than _7s._ a month, without board and lodging; he is
+unmarried, and has no incumbrance; and he is slightly taller and much
+more massively built than a well-known American giant whom I once had
+permission to measure, who has been shown half over the world as the
+"tallest man on earth," his height being attested as "7ft. 11in. in his
+stockings' soles," and who commands the salary of an English admiral.
+
+We made only a short march the first evening, but after that we
+travelled by long stages. The country was very pretty, open glades with
+clumps of pine, and here and there a magnificent sacred tree like the
+banyan, under whose far-reaching branches small villages are often half
+concealed. Despite the fertility of the country, poverty and starvation
+met us at every step; the poor were lingering miserably through the
+year. Goitre, too, was increasing in frequency. It was rarely that a
+group gathered to see us some of whose members were not suffering from
+this horrible deformity. And everywhere in the pretty country were signs
+of the ruthless devastation of religious war. That was a war of
+extermination. "A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed
+every house, destroyed every temple."
+
+Crumbling walls are at long distances from the towns they used to guard;
+there are pastures and waste lands where there were streets of
+buildings; walls of houses have returned whence they came to the mother
+earth; others are roofless. In the open country, far from habitation,
+the traveller comes across groups of bare walls with foundations still
+uncovered, and dismantled arches, and broken images in the long grass,
+that were formerly yamens and temples in the midst of thriving
+communities. Yet there are signs of a renaissance; many new houses are
+being built along the main road; walls are being repaired, and bridges
+reconstructed. When an exodus takes place from Szechuen to this
+province, there is little reason why Yunnan should not become one of the
+richest provinces in China. It has every advantage of climate, great
+fertility of soil, and immense mineral resources hardly yet developed.
+It needs population. It needs the population that dwelt in the province
+before the rebellion involved the death of millions. It can absorb an
+immense proportion of the surplus population of China. During, and
+subsequent to, the Taiping rebellion the province of Szechuen increased
+by 45,000,000 in forty years (1842-82); given the necessity, there seems
+no reason why the population of Yunnan should not increase in an almost
+equal proportion.
+
+On the 22nd we passed Lu-feng-hsien, another ruined town. The finest
+stone bridge I have seen in Western China, and one that would arrest
+attention in any country in the world, is at this town. It crosses the
+wide bed of a stream that in winter is insignificant, but which grows in
+volume in the rains of summer to a broad and powerful river. It is a
+bridge of seven beautiful arches; it is 12 yards broad and 150 yards
+long, of perfect simplicity and symmetry, with massive piers, all built
+of dressed masonry and destined to survive the lapse of centuries.
+Triumphal archways with memorial tablets and pedestals of carved lions
+are befitting portals to a really noble work.
+
+On the 23rd we reached the important city of Chuhsing-fu, a walled city,
+still half-in-ruins, that was long occupied by the Mohammedans, and
+suffered terrible reprisals on its recapture by the Imperialists. For
+four days we had travelled at an average rate of one hundred and five li
+(thirty-five miles) a day. I must, however, note that these distances as
+estimated by Mr. Jensen, the constructor of the telegraph line, do not
+agree with the distances in Mr. Baber's itinerary. The Chinese distances
+in li agree in both estimates; but, whereas Mr. Jensen allows three li
+for a mile, Mr. Baber allows four and a-half, a wide difference indeed.
+For convenience sake I have made use of the telegraph figures, but Mr.
+Baber was so scrupulously accurate in all that he wrote that I have no
+doubt the telegraph distances are over-estimated.
+
+We were again in a district almost exclusively devoted to the poppy; the
+valley-plains sparkled with poppy flowers of a multiplicity of tints.
+The days were pleasant, and the sun shone brightly; every plant was in
+flower; doves cooed in the trees, and the bushes in blossom were bright
+with butterflies. Lanes led between hedges of wild roses white with
+flower, and, wherever a creek trickled across the plain, its
+willow-lined borders were blue with forget-me-nots. And everywhere a
+peaceful people, who never spoke a word to the foreigner that was not
+friendly.
+
+On the evening of the 24th, at a ruined town thirty li from Luho, we
+received our first check. It was at a walled town, with gateways and a
+pagoda that gave some indication of its former prosperity, prettily
+situated among the trees on the confines of a plain of remarkable
+fertility. Near sundown we passed down the one long street, all battered
+and dismantled, which is all that is left of the old town. News of the
+foreigner quickly spread, and the people gathered into the street to
+see me--no reception could be more flattering. We did not wait, but,
+pushing on, we passed out by the west gate and hastened on across the
+plain. But I noticed that Laohwan kept looking back at the impoverished
+town, shaking his head and stuttering "_pu-pu-pu-pu-hao! pu-pu-pu-hao!_"
+(bad! bad!) We had thus gone half a mile or so, when we were arrested by
+cries behind us, and our last chairen was seen running, panting, after
+us. We waited for him; he was absurdly excited, and could hardly speak.
+He made an address to me, speaking with great energy and gesticulation;
+but what was its purport, _Dios sabe_. When he had finished, not to be
+outdone in politeness, I thanked him in English for the kindly phrases
+in which he had spoken to me, assured him of my continued sympathy, and
+undertook to say that, if ever he came to Geelong, he would find there a
+house at his disposition, and a friend who would be ever ready to do him
+a service. He seemed completely mystified, and began to speak again,
+more excitedly than before. It was getting late, and a crowd was
+collecting, so I checked him by waving my left hand before my face and
+bawling at him with all my voice: "_Putung_, you stupid ass, _putung_ (I
+don't understand)! Can't you see I don't understand a word you say, you
+benighted heathen you? _Putung_, man, _putung_! Advance Australia, _dzo_
+(go)!" And, swinging open my umbrella, I walked on. His excitement
+increased--we must go back to the town; he seized me by the wrists, and
+urged me to go back. We had a slight discussion; his feet gave from
+under him and he fell down, and I was going on cheerfully when he burst
+out crying. This I interpreted to mean that he would get into trouble if
+I did not return, so, of course, I turned back at once, for the tears
+of a Chinaman are sadly affecting. Back, then, we were taken to an
+excellent inn in the main street, where a respectful _levee_ of the
+townsfolk had assembled to welcome me. A polite official called upon me,
+to whom I showed, with simulated indignation, my official card and my
+Chinese passport, and I hinted to him in English that this interference
+with my rights as a traveller from England, protected by the favour of
+the Emperor, would--let him mark my word--be made an international
+question. While saying this, I inadvertently left on my box, so that all
+might see it, the letter of introduction to the Brigadier-General in
+Tengyueh, which was calculated to give the natives an indication of the
+class of Chinese who had the privilege to be admitted to my friendship.
+The official was very polite and apologetic. I freely forgave him, and
+we had tea together.
+
+He had done it all for the best. A moneyed foreigner was passing through
+his town near sundown without stopping to spend a single cash there. Was
+it not his duty, as a public-spirited man, to interfere and avert this
+loss, and compel the stranger to spend at least one night within his
+gates?
+
+This was what I wrote at the time. I subsequently found that I had been
+sent for to come back because the road was believed to be dangerous,
+there was no secure resting-place, and the authorities could not
+guarantee my safety. Imagine a Chinese in a Western country acting with
+the bluster that I did, although in good humour; I wonder whether he
+would be treated with the courtesy that those Chinamen showed to me!
+
+On the 25th an elderly chairen was ready to accompany us in the morning,
+and he remained with us all day. All day he was engrossed in deep
+thought. He spoke to no one, but he kept a watchful eye over his charge,
+never leaving me a moment, but dogging my very footsteps all the
+hundred li we travelled together. Poorly clad, he was better provided
+than his brother of yesterday in that he wore sandals, whereas the
+chairen of yesterday was in rags and barefoot. He was, of course,
+unprovided with weapon of any kind--it was moral force that he relied
+on. Over his shoulder was slung a bag from which projected his
+opium-pipe; a tobacco pipe and tobacco box hung at his girdle; a green
+glass bottle of crude opium he carried round his neck.
+
+The chairen is the policeman of China, the lictor of the magistrate, the
+satellite of the official; the soldier is the representative of military
+authority. Now, China, in the person of her greatest statesman, Li Hung
+Chang, has, through the secretary of the Anti-Opium Society, called upon
+England "to aid her in the efforts she is now making to suppress opium."
+If, then, China is sincere in her alleged efforts to abolish opium, it
+is the chairen and the soldier who must be employed by the authorities
+to suppress the evil; yet I have never been accompanied by either a
+chairen or a soldier who did not smoke opium, nor have I to my knowledge
+ever met a chairen or a soldier who was not an opium-smoker. Through all
+districts of Yunnan, wherever the soil permits it, the poppy is grown
+for miles, as far as the sight can reach, on every available acre, on
+both sides of the road.
+
+But why does China grow this poppy? Have not the _literati_ and elders
+of Canton written to support the schemes of the Anti-Opium Society in
+these thrilling words: "If Englishmen wish to know the sentiments of
+China, here they are:--If we are told to let things go on as they are
+going, then there is no remedy and no salvation for China. Oh! it makes
+the blood run cold, and we want in this our extremity to ask the
+question of High Heaven, what unknown crimes or atrocity have the
+Chinese people committed beyond all others that they are doomed to
+suffer thus?" (Cited by Mr. S. S. Mander, _China's Millions_, iv., 156.)
+
+And the women of Canton, have they not written to the missionaries "that
+there is no tear that they shed that is not red with blood because of
+this opium?" ("China," by M. Reed, p. 63). Why, then, does China, while
+she protests against the importation of a drug which a Governor of
+Canton, himself an opium-smoker, described as a "vile excrementitious
+substance" ("Barrow's Travels," p. 153), sanction, if not foster, with
+all the weight of the authorities in the ever-extending opium-districts
+the growth of the poppy? To the Rev. G. Piercy (formerly of the W.M.S.,
+Canton), we are indebted for the following explanation of this anomaly:
+China, it appears, is growing opium in order to put a stop to
+opium-smoking.
+
+"Moreover, China has not done with the evils of opium, even if our hands
+were washed of this traffic to-day. China in her desperation has invoked
+Satan to cast out Satan. She now grows her own opium, vainly dreaming
+that, if the Indian supply lapse, she can then deal with this rapidly
+growing evil. But Satan is not divided against himself; he means his
+kingdom to stand. Opium-growing will not destroy opium-smoking."
+(Missionary Conference of 1888, _Records_, ii., 546.)
+
+"Yet the awful guilt remains," said the Ven. Archdeacon Farrar on a
+recent occasion in Westminster Abbey, "that we, 'wherever winds blow and
+waters roll,' have girdled the world with a zone of drunkenness, until I
+seem to shudder as I think of the curses, not loud but deep, muttered
+against our name by races which our fire-water has decimated and our
+vice degraded." (_National Righteousness_, December 1892, p. 4.)
+
+And this patriotic utterance of a distinguished Englishman the Chinese
+will quote in unexpected support of the memorial "On the Restriction of
+Christianity" addressed to the Throne of China in 1884 by the High
+Commissioner Peng Yue-lin, which memorial stated in severe language that
+"_since the treaties have permitted foreigners from the West to spread
+their doctrines, the morals of the people have been greatly injured_."
+("The Causes of the Anti-Foreign Disturbances in China." Rev. Gilbert
+Reid, M.A., p. 9.)
+
+Forty li from our sleeping place we came to the pretty town of
+Shachiaokai, on some undulating high ground well sheltered with trees.
+Justice had lately been here with her headsman and brought death to a
+gang of malefactors. Their heads, swinging in wooden cages, hung from
+the tower near the gateway. They could be seen by all persons passing
+along the road, and, with due consideration for the feelings of the
+bereaved relatives, they were hung near enough for the features to be
+recognised by their friends. Each head was in a cage of its own, and was
+suspended by the pigtail to the rim, so that it might not lie upside
+down but could by-and-by rattle in its box as dead men's bones should
+do. To each cage a white ticket was attached giving the name of the
+criminal and his confession of the offence for which he was executed.
+They were the heads of highway robbers who had murdered two travellers
+on the road near Chennan-chow, and it was this circumstance which
+accounted for the solicitude of the officials near Luho to prevent our
+being benighted in a district where such things were possible.
+
+[Illustration: THE "EAGLE NEST BARRIER," ON THE ROAD BETWEEN YUNNAN AND
+TALIFU.]
+
+Midway between Shachiaokai and Pupeng there was steep climbing to be
+done till we reached Ying-wu-kwan, the "Eagle Nest Barrier," which is
+more than 8000 feet above the sea. Then by very hilly and poor country
+we came to Pupeng, and, pursuing our way over a thickly-peopled plateau,
+we reached a break in the high land from which we descended into a wide
+and deep valley, skirted with villages and gleaming with sheets of
+water--the submerged rice-fields. At the foot of the steep was a poor
+mud town, but, standing back from it in the fields, was a splendid
+Taoist temple fit for a capital. In this village we were delayed for
+nearly an hour while my three men bargained against half the village for
+the possession of a hen that was all unconscious of the comments,
+flattering and deprecatory, that were being passed on its fatness. It
+was secured eventually for 260 cash, the vendors having declared that
+the hen was a family pet, hatched on a lucky day, that it had been
+carefully and tenderly reared, and that nothing in the world could
+induce them to part with it for a cash less than 350. My men with equal
+confidence, based upon long experience in the purchase of poultry,
+asserted that the real value of the hen was 200 cash, and that not a
+single cash more of the foreign gentleman's money could they
+conscientiously invest in such a travesty of a hen as _that_. But little
+by little each party gave way till they were able to _tomber d'accord_.
+
+A pleasant walk across the busy plain brought us to Yunnan Yeh, where we
+passed the night.
+
+On the 27th we had an unsatisfactory day's journey. We travelled only
+seventy li over an even road, yet with four good hours of daylight
+before us my men elected to stop when we came to the village of
+Yenwanshan. We had left the main road for some unknown reason, and were
+taking a short cut over the mountains to Tali. But a short-cut in China
+often means the longest distance, and I was sure that this short-cut
+would bring us to Tali a day later than if we had gone by the main
+road--in ten days, that is, from Yunnan, instead of the nine which my
+men had promised me. Laohwan, who, like most Chinaman I met, persisted
+in thinking that I was deaf, yelled to me in the presence of the village
+that the next stopping place was twenty miles distant, that "_mitte
+liao! mitte liao!_" ("there were no beans") on the way for the pony, and
+that assuredly we would reach Tali to-morrow, having given the pony the
+admirable rest that here offered. As he stammered these sentences the
+people supported what he said. Obviously their statements were _ex
+parte_, and were promoted solely by the desire to see the distinguished
+foreign mandarin sojourn for one night in their hungry midst. So here I
+was detained in a tumble-down inn that had formerly been a temple. All
+of us, men and master, were housed in the old guest-room. Beds were
+formed of disused coffin boards, laid between steps made of clods of dry
+clay; the floor was earth, the windows paper. The pony was feeding from
+a trough in the temple hall itself, an armful of excellent grass before
+it, while a bucket of beans was soaking for him in our corner. Other
+mules and ponies were stationed in the side pavilions where formerly
+were displayed the scenes of torture in the Buddhist Hells.
+
+As I wrote at a table by the window, a crowd collected, stretching
+across the street and quarrelling to catch a glimpse of the foreign
+teacher and his strange method of writing, so different from the
+Chinese. Poor sickly people were these--of the ten in the first row
+three were suffering from goitre, one from strabismus, and two from
+ophthalmia. All were poorly clad and poorly nourished; all were very
+dirty, and their heads were unshaven of the growth of days. But, despite
+their poverty, nearly all the women, the children as well as the
+grandmothers, wore silver earrings of pretty filigree.
+
+Now, even among these poor people, I noticed that there was a
+disposition rather to laugh at me than to open the eyes of wonder; and
+this is a peculiarity of the Chinese which every traveller will be
+struck with. It often grieved me. During my journey, although I was
+treated with undeniable friendliness, I found that the Chinese, instead
+of being impressed by my appearance, would furtively giggle when they
+saw me. But they were never openly rude like the coloured folk were in
+Jamaica, when, stranded in their beautiful island, I did them the honour
+to go as a "walk-foot buccra" round the sugar plantations from Ewarton
+to Montego Bay. Even poor ragged fellows, living in utter misery, would
+laugh and snigger at me when not observed, and crack jokes at the
+foreigner who was well-fed, well-clad, and well-mounted in a way you
+would think to excite envy rather than derision. But Chinese laughter
+seems to be moved by different springs from ours. The Chinaman makes
+merry in the presence of death. A Chinaman, come to announce to you the
+death of a beloved parent or brother, laughs heartily as he tells
+you--you might think he was overflowing with joy, but he is really sick
+and sore at heart, and is only laughing to deceive the spirits. So it
+may be that the poor beggars who laughed at that noble presence which
+has been the admiration of my friends in four continents, were moved to
+do so by the hope to deceive the evil spirits who had punished them with
+poverty, and so by their apparent gaiety induce them to relax the
+severity of their punishment.
+
+To within two or three miles of this village the road was singularly
+level; I do not think that it either rose or fell 100 feet in twenty
+miles. Forty li from where we slept the night before, having previously
+left the main road, we came to the large walled town of Yunnan-hsien.
+The streets were crowded, for it was market day, and both sides of the
+main thoroughfares, especially in the vicinity of the Confucian Temple,
+were thronged with peasant women selling garden produce, turnips, beans
+and peas, and live fish caught in the lake beyond Tali. Articles of
+Western trade were also for sale--stacks of calico, braid, and thread,
+"new impermeable matches made in Trieste," and "toilet soap of the
+finest quality." I had a royal reception as I rode through the crowd,
+and the street where was situated the inn to which we went for lunch
+speedily became impassable. There was keen competition to see me. Two
+thieves were among the foremost, with huge iron crowbars chained to
+their necks and ankles, while a third prisoner, with his head pilloried
+in a _cangue_, obstructed the gaze of many. There was the most admirable
+courtesy shown me; it was the "foreign teacher" they wished to see, not
+the "foreign devil." When I rose from the table, half a dozen guests
+sitting at the other tables rose also and bowed to me as I passed out.
+Of all people I have ever met, the Chinese are, I think, the politest.
+My illiterate Laohwan, who could neither read nor write, had a courtesy
+of demeanour, a well-bred ease of manner, a graceful deference that
+never approached servility, which it was a constant pleasure to me to
+witness.
+
+As regards the educated classes, there can be little doubt, I think,
+that there are no people in the world so scrupulously polite as the
+Chinese. Their smallest actions on all occasions of ceremony are
+governed by the most minute rules. Let me give, as an example, the
+method of cross-examination to which the stranger is subjected, and
+which is a familiar instance of true politeness in China.
+
+When a well-bred Chinaman, of whatever station, meets you for the first
+time, he thus addresses you, first asking you how old you are:
+
+"What is your honourable age?"
+
+"I have been dragged up a fool so many years," you politely reply.
+
+"What is your noble and exalted occupation?"
+
+"My mean and contemptible calling is that of a doctor."
+
+"What is your noble patronymic?"
+
+"My poverty-struck family name is Mo."
+
+"How many honourable and distinguished sons have you?"
+
+"Alas! Fate has been niggardly; I have not even one little bug."
+
+But, if you can truthfully say that you are the honourable father of
+sons, your interlocutor will raise his clasped hands and say gravely,
+"Sir, you are a man of virtue; I congratulate you." He continues--
+
+"How many tens of thousands of pieces of silver have you?" meaning how
+many daughters have you?
+
+"My yatows" (forked heads or slave children), "my daughters," you answer
+with a deprecatory shrug, "number so many."
+
+So the conversation continues, and the more minute are the inquiries the
+more polite is the questioner.
+
+Unlike most of the Western nations, the Chinese have an overmastering
+desire to have children. More than death itself the Chinaman fears to
+die without leaving male progeny to worship at his shrine; for, if he
+should die childless, he leaves behind him no provision for his support
+in heaven, but wanders there a hungry ghost, forlorn and forsaken--an
+"orphan" because he has no children. "If one has plenty of money," says
+the Chinese proverb, "but no children, he cannot be reckoned rich; if
+one has children, but no money, he cannot be considered poor." To have
+sons is a foremost virtue in China; "the greatest of the three unfilial
+things," says Mencius, "is to have no children." (Mencius, iv., pt. i.,
+26).
+
+In China longevity is the highest of the five grades of felicity.
+Triumphal arches are erected all over the kingdom in honour of those who
+have attained the patriarchal age which among us seems only to be
+assured to those who partake in sufficient quantity of certain
+fruit-salts and pills. Age when not known is guessed by the length of
+the beard, which is never allowed to grow till the thirty-second year.
+Now it happens that I am clean-shaven, and, as it is a well-known fact
+that the face of the European is an enigma to the Oriental, just as the
+face of the Chinaman is an inscrutable mystery to most of us, I have
+often been amused by the varying estimates of my age advanced by curious
+bystanders. It has been estimated as low as twelve--"look at the
+foreigner," they said, "there's a fine fat boy!"--and never higher than
+twenty-two. But it is not only in China that a youthful appearance has
+hampered me in my walk through life.
+
+I remember that on one occasion, some years ago, I obliged a medical
+friend by taking his practice while he went away for a few days to be
+married. It was in a semi-barbarian village named Portree, in a
+forgotten remnant of Scotland called the Isle of Skye. The time was
+winter. The first case I was called to was that of a bashful matron, the
+baker's wife, who had lately given birth to her tenth child. I entered
+the room cheerfully. She looked me over critically, and then greatly
+disconcerted me by remarking that: "She was gey thankfu' to the Lord
+that it was a' by afore I cam', as she had nae wush to be meddled wi' by
+a laddie of nineteen." Yet I was two years older than the doctor who had
+attended her.
+
+If in China you are so fortunate as to be graced with a beard, the
+Chinaman will add many years to your true age. In the agreeable company
+of one of the finest men in China, I once made a journey to the Nankow
+Pass in the Great Wall, north of Peking. My friend had a beard like a
+Welsh bard's, and, though a younger man than his years, forty-four,
+there was not a native who saw him, who did not gaze upon him with awe,
+as a possible Buddha, and not one who attributed to him an age less than
+eighty.
+
+Next day, the 28th of April, despite my misgivings, my men fulfilled
+their promise, and led me into Tali on the ninth day out from Yunnan. We
+had come 307 miles in nine days. They walked all the way, living
+frugally on scanty rations. I walked only 210 miles; I was better fed
+than they, and I had a pony at my hand ready to carry me whenever I was
+tired.
+
+My men thus earned a reward of eighteen pence each for doing thirteen
+stages in nine days. Long before daylight we were on our way. For miles
+and miles in the early morning we were climbing up the mountains, till
+we reached a plateau where the wind blew piercingly keen, and my fingers
+ached with the cold, and the rarefaction in the atmosphere made
+breathing uneasy. The road was lonely and unfrequented. We were
+accompanied by a muleteer who knew the way, by his sturdy son of twelve,
+and his two pack horses. By midday we had left the bare plateau, had
+passed the three pagoda peaks, and were standing on the brow of a steep
+hill overlooking the valleys of Chaochow and Tali. The plains were
+studded with thriving villages, in rich fields, and intersected with
+roadways lined with hedges. There on the left was the walled city of
+Chaochow, beyond, to the right, was the great lake of Tali, hemmed in by
+mountains, those beyond the lake thickly covered with snow, and rising
+7000 feet above the lake, which itself is 7000 feet above the sea.
+
+We descended into the valley, and, as we picked our way down the steep
+path, I could count in the lap of the first valley eighteen villages
+besides the walled city. Crossing the fields we struck the main road,
+and mingled with the stream of people who were bending their steps
+towards Hsiakwan. Many varieties of feature were among them, a diversity
+of type unlooked for by the traveller in China who had become habituated
+to the uniformity of type of the Chinese face. There were faces plainly
+European, others as unmistakably Hindoo, Indigenes of Yunnan province,
+Thibetans, Cantonese pedlars, and Szechuen coolies. A broad flagged road
+brought us to the important market town of Hsiakwan, which guards the
+southern pass to the Valley of Tali. It is on the main road going west
+to the frontier of Burma, and is the junction where the road turns north
+to Tali. It is a busy town. It is one of the most famous halting places
+on the main road to Burma. The two largest caravanserais in Western
+China are in Hsiakwan, and I do not exaggerate when I say that a
+regiment of British cavalry could be quartered in either of them. At a
+restaurant near the cross-road we had rice and a cup of tea, and a bowl
+of the vermicelli soup known as _mien_, the muleteer and his son sitting
+down with my men. When the time came to go, the muleteer, unrolling a
+string of cash from his waistband, was about to pay his share, when
+Laohwan with much civility refused to permit him. He insisted, but
+Laohwan was firm; had they been Frenchmen, they could not have been more
+polite and complimentary. The muleteer gave way with good grace, and
+Laohwan paid with my cash, and gained merit by his courtesy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+THE CITY OF TALI--PRISONS--POISONING--PLAGUES AND MISSIONS.
+
+
+Three hours later we were in Tali. A broad paved road, smooth from the
+passage of countless feet, leads to the city. Rocky creeks drain the
+mountain range into the lake; they are spanned by numerous bridges of
+dressed stone, many of the slabs of which are well cut granite blocks
+eighteen feet in length. At a stall by the roadside excellent ices were
+for sale, genuine ices, made of concave tablets of pressed snow
+sweetened with treacle, costing one cash each--equal to one penny for
+three dozen. We passed the Temple to the Goddess of Mercy, and entered
+Tali by the south gate. Then by the yamen of the Titai and the Great
+Five Glory Gate, the northern entrance of what was for seventeen years
+the palace of the Mohammedan king during the rebellion, we turned down
+the East street to the _Yesu-tang_, the Inland Mission, where Mr. and
+Mrs. John Smith gave me a cordial greeting.
+
+Tali has always been an important city. It was the capital of an
+independent kingdom in the time of Kublai Khan and Marco Polo. It was
+the headquarters of the Mohammedan Sultan or Dictator, Tu Wen Hsiu,
+during the rebellion, and seemed at one time destined to become the
+capital of an independent Moslem Empire in Western China.
+
+The city surrendered to the Mohammedans in 1857. It was recaptured by
+the Imperialists under General Yang Yu-ko on January 15th, 1873, the
+Chinese troops being aided by artillery cast by Frenchmen in the arsenal
+of Yunnan and manned by French gunners. At its recapture the carnage was
+appalling; the streets were ankle-deep in blood. Of 50,000 inhabitants
+30,000 were butchered. After the massacre twenty-four panniers of human
+ears were sent to Yunnan city to convince the people of the capital that
+they had nothing more to fear from the rebellion.
+
+In March, 1873, Yang was appointed _Titai_ or Commander-in-chief of
+Yunnan Province, with his headquarters in Tali, not in the capital, and
+Tali has ever since been the seat of the most important military command
+in the province.
+
+The subsequent history of Yang may be told in a few words. He assumed
+despotic power over the country he had conquered, and grew in power till
+his authority became a menace to the Imperial Government. They feared
+that he aspired to found a kingdom of his own in Western China, and
+recalled him to Peking--to do him honour. He was not to be permitted to
+return to Yunnan. At the time of his recall another rebellion had broken
+out against China--the rebellion of the French--and, like another Uriah,
+the powerful general was sent to the forefront in Formosa, where he was
+opportunely slain by a French bullet, or by a misdirected Chinese one.
+
+After his death it was found that Yang had made a noble bequest to the
+City of Tali. During his residence he had built for himself a splendid
+yamen of granite and marble. This he had richly endowed and left as a
+free gift to the city as a college for students. It is one of the
+finest residences in China, and, though only seventy undergraduates were
+living there at the time of my visit, the rooms could accommodate in
+comfort many hundreds.
+
+[Illustration: SNOW-CLAD MOUNTAINS BEHIND TALIFU.]
+
+Tali is situated on the undulating ground that shelves gently from the
+base of snow-clad mountains down to the lake. The lower slopes of the
+mountain, above the town, are covered with myriads of grave-mounds,
+which in the distance are scarcely distinguishable from the granite
+blocks around them. Creeks and rills of running water spring from the
+melting of the snows far up the mountain, run among the grave-mounds,
+and are then trained into the town. The Chinese residents thus enjoy the
+privilege of drinking a diluted solution of their ancestors. Half-way to
+the lake, there is a huge tumulus of earth and stone over-grown with
+grass, in which are buried the bones of 10,000 Mohammedans who fell
+during the massacre. There is no more fertile valley in the world than
+the valley of Tali. It is studded with villages. Between the two passes,
+Hsiakwan on the south, and Shang-kwan on the north, which are distant
+from each other a long day's walk, there are 360 villages, each in its
+own plantation of trees, with a pretty white temple in the centre with
+curved roof and upturned gables. The sunny reaches of the lake are busy
+with fleets of fishing boats. The poppy, grown in small pockets by the
+margin of the lake, is probably unequalled in the world; the flowers, as
+I walked through the fields, were on a level with my forehead.
+
+Tali is not a large city; its wall is only three and a half miles in
+circumference. Before the rebellion populous suburbs extended half-way
+to Hsiakwan, but they are now only heaps of rubble. In the town itself
+there are market-gardens and large open spaces where formerly there
+were narrow streets of Chinese houses. The wall is in fairly good
+repair, but there are no guns in the town, except a few old-fashioned
+cannon lying half buried in the ground near the north gate.
+
+One afternoon we climbed up the mountain intending to reach a famous
+cave, "The Phoenix-eyed Cave" (_Fung-yen-tung_) which overlooks a
+precipice, of some fame in years gone by as a favourite spot for
+suicides. We did not reach the cave. My energy gave out when we were
+only half-way, so we sat down in the grass and, to use a phrase that I
+fancy I have heard before, we feasted our eyes on the scene before us.
+And here we gathered many bunches of edelweiss.
+
+As we were coming back down the hill, picking our way among the graves,
+a pensive Chinaman stopped us to ask our assistance in finding him a
+lucky spot in which to bury his father, who died a year ago but was
+still above ground. He was sorry to hear that we could not pretend to
+any knowledge of such things. He was of an inquiring mind, for he then
+asked us if we had seen any precious stones in the hillside--every
+Chinaman knows that the foreigner with his blue eyes can see four feet
+underground--but he was again disappointed with our reply, or did not
+believe us.
+
+At the poor old shrine to the God of Riches, half a dozen Chinamen in
+need of the god's good offices were holding a small feast in his honour.
+They had prepared many dishes, and, having "dedicated to the god the
+spiritual essence, were now about to partake of the insipid remains."
+"_Ching fan_," they courteously said to us when we approached down the
+path. "We invite (you to take) rice." We raised our clasped hands:
+"_Ching, ching_," we replied, "we invite (you to go on), we invite," and
+passed on. They were bent upon enjoyment. They were taking as an
+_aperitif_ a preliminary cup of that awful spirit _tsiu_, which is
+almost pure alcohol and can be burnt in lamps like methylated spirit.
+
+On the level sward, between this poor temple and the city, the annual
+Thibetan Fair is held on the 17th, 18th, and 19th of April, when
+caravans of Thibetans, with herds of ponies, make a pilgrimage from
+their mountain villages to the ancient home of their forefathers. But
+the fair is falling into disfavour owing to the increasing number of
+likin-barriers on the northern trade routes.
+
+There are many temples in Tali. The finest is the Confucian Temple, with
+its splendid halls and pavilions, in a beautiful garden. Kwanti, the God
+of War, has also a temple worthy of a god whose services to China in the
+past can never be forgotten. Every Chinaman knows, that if it had not
+been for the personal aid of this god, General Gordon could never have
+succeeded in suppressing the Taiping rebellion. In the present rebellion
+of the Japanese, the god appears to have maintained an attitude of
+strict neutrality.
+
+The City Temple is near the drill-ground. As the Temple of a Fu city it
+contains the images of both Fu magistrate and Hsien magistrate, with
+their attendants. In its precincts the _Kwan_ of the beggars, (the
+beggar king or headman), is domiciled, who eats the Emperor's rice and
+is officially responsible for the good conduct of the guild of beggars.
+
+In the main street there is a Memorial Temple to General Yang, who won
+the city back from the Mohammedans. But the temple where prayer is
+offered most earnestly, is the small temple near the _Yesu-tang_,
+erected to the goddess who has in her power the dispensation of the
+pleasures of maternity. Rarely did I pass here without seeing two or
+three childless wives on their knees, praying to the goddess to remove
+from them the sin of barrenness.
+
+Some of the largest caravanserais I have seen in China are in Tali. One
+of the largest belongs to the city, and is managed by the authorities
+for the benefit of the poor, all profits being devoted to a poor-relief
+fund. There are many storerooms here, filled with foreign goods and
+stores imported from Burma, and useful wares and ornamental nick-nacks
+brought from the West by Cantonese pedlars. Prices are curiously low. I
+bought condensed milk, "Milkmaid brand," for the equivalent of _7d._ a
+tin. In the inn there is stabling accommodation for more than a hundred
+mules and horses, and there are rooms for as many drivers. The tariff
+cannot be called immoderate. The charges are: For a mule or horse per
+night, fodder included, one farthing; for a man per night, a supper of
+rice included, one penny.
+
+Even larger than the city inn is the caravanserai where my pony was
+stabled; it is more like a barracks than an inn. One afternoon the
+landlord invited the missionary and me into his guest-room, and as I was
+the chief guest, he insisted, of course, that I should occupy the seat
+of honour on the left hand. But I was modest and refused to; he
+persisted and I was reluctant; he pushed me forward and I held back,
+protesting against the honour he wished to show me. But he would take no
+refusal and pressed me forward into the seat. I showed becoming
+reluctance of course, but I would not have occupied any other. By-and-by
+he introduced to me with much pride his aged father, to whom, when he
+came into the room, I insisted upon giving my seat, and humbly sat on
+an inferior seat by his side, showing him all the consideration due to
+his eighty years. The old man bore an extraordinary resemblance to
+Moltke. He had smoked opium, he told Mr. Smith, the missionary, for
+fifty years, but always in moderation. His daily allowance was two
+_chien_ of raw opium, rather more than one-fifth of an ounce, but he
+knew many Chinese, he told the missionary, who smoked daily five times
+as much opium as he did without apparent injury.
+
+In Tali there are four chief officials: the Prefect or Fu Magistrate,
+the Hsien or City Magistrate, the Intendant or Taotai, and the Titai.
+The yamen of the Taotai is a humble residence for so important an
+official; but the yamen of the Titai, between the South Gate and the
+Five Glory Tower, is one of the finest in the province. The Titai is not
+only the chief military commander of the province of Yunnan, but he is a
+very much married man. An Imperialist, he has yet obeyed the Mohammedan
+injunction and taken to himself four wives in order to be sure of
+obtaining one good one. He has been abundantly blessed with children. In
+offices at the back of the Titai's yamen and within its walls, is the
+local branch of the Imperial Chinese telegraphs, conducted by two
+Chinese operators, who can read and write English a little, and can
+speak crudely a few sentences.
+
+The City Magistrate is an advanced opium-smoker, a slave to the pipe,
+who neglects his duties. In his yamen I saw the wooden cage in which
+prisoners convicted of certain serious crimes are slowly done to death
+by starvation and exhaustion, as well as the wooden cages of different
+shape in which criminals of another class condemned to death are carried
+to and from the capital.
+
+The City prison is in the Hsien's yamen, but permission to enter was
+refused me, though the missionary has frequently been admitted. "The
+prison," explained the Chinese clerk, "is private, and strangers cannot
+be admitted." I was sorry not to be allowed to see the prison, all the
+more because I had heard from the missionary nothing but praise of the
+humanity and justice of its management.
+
+The gaols of China, or, as the Chinese term them, the "hells," just as
+the prison hulks in England forty years ago were known as "floating
+hells," have been universally condemned for the cruelties and
+deprivations practised in them. They are probably as bad as were the
+prisons of England in the early years of the present century.
+
+The gaolers purchase their appointments, as they did in England in the
+time of John Howard, and, as was the case in England, they receive no
+other pay than what they can squeeze from the prisoners or the
+prisoners' friends. Poor and friendless, the prisoners fare badly. But I
+question if the cruelties practised in the Chinese gaols, allowing for
+the blunted nerve sensibility of the Chinaman, are less endurable than
+the condition of things existing in English prisons so recently as when
+Charles Reade wrote "It is Never Too Late to Mend." The cruelties of
+Hawes, the "punishment jacket," the crank, the dark cell, and
+starvation, "the living tortured, the dying abandoned, the dead kicked
+out of the way"; when boys of fifteen, like Josephs, were driven to
+self-slaughter by cruelty. These are statements published in 1856,
+"every detail of which was verified, every fact obtained, by research
+and observation." ("Life of Charles Reade," ii., 33.)
+
+And it cannot admit, I think, of question that there are no cruelties
+practised in the Chinese gaols greater, even if there are any equal to
+the awful and degraded brutality with which the England of our fathers
+treated her convicts in the penal settlements of Norfolk Island, Fort
+Arthur, Macquarie Harbour, and the prison hulks of Williamstown. "The
+convict settlements were terrible cesspools of iniquity, so bad that it
+seemed, to use the words of one who knew them well, 'the heart of man
+who went to them was taken from him, and there was given to him the
+heart of a beast.'"
+
+Can the mind conceive of anything more dreadful in China than the
+incident narrated by the Chaplain of Norfolk Island, the Rev. W.
+Ullathorne, D.D., afterwards Roman Catholic Bishop of Birmingham, in his
+evidence before the Commission of the House of Commons in 1838: "As I
+mentioned the names of those men who were to die, they one after
+another, as their names were pronounced, dropped on their knees and
+thanked God that they were to be delivered from that horrible place,
+whilst the others remained standing mute, weeping. It was the most
+horrible scene I have ever witnessed."
+
+Those who have read Marcus Clarke's "For the Term of His Natural Life,"
+remember the powerfully-drawn character of Maurice Frere, the Governor
+of Norfolk Island. It is well known, of course, that the story is
+founded upon fact, and is a perfectly true picture of the convict days.
+The original of Maurice Frere is known to have been the late Colonel
+----, who was killed by the convicts in the prison hulk "Success," at
+Williamstown, in 1853. To this day there is no old lag that was ever
+exposed to his cruelty but reviles his memory. I once knew the convict
+who gave the signal for his murder. He was sentenced to death, but was
+reprieved and served a long term of imprisonment. The murder happened
+forty-one years ago, yet to this day the old convict commends the
+murder as a just act of retribution, and when he narrates the story he
+tells you with bitter passion that the "Colonel's dead, and, if there's
+a hell, he's frizzling there yet."
+
+Captain Foster Fyans, a former Governor of Norfolk Island Convict
+Settlement, spent the last years of his life in the town I belong to,
+Geelong, in Victoria. The cruelties imposed on the convicts under his
+charge were justified, he declared, by the brutalised character of the
+prisoners. On one occasion, he used to tell, a band of convicts
+attempted to escape from the Island; but their attempt was frustrated by
+the guard. The twelve convicts implicated in the outbreak were put on
+their trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death by strangulation, as
+hanging really was in those days. Word was sent to headquarters in
+Sydney, and instructions were asked for to carry the sentence into
+effect. The laconic order was sent back from Sydney to "hang half of
+them." The Captain acknowledged the humour of the despatch, though it
+placed him in a difficulty. Which half should he hang, when all were
+equally guilty? In his pleasant way the Captain used to tell how he
+acted in the dilemma. He went round to the twelve condemned wretches,
+and asked each man separately if, being under sentence of death, he
+desired a reprieve or wished for death. As luck would have it, of the
+twelve men, six pleaded for life and six as earnestly prayed that they
+might be sent to the scaffold. So the Captain hanged the six men who
+wished to live, and spared the six men who prayed for death to release
+them from their awful misery. This is an absolutely true story, which I
+have heard from men to whom the Captain himself told it. Besides, it
+bears on its face the impress of truth. And yet we are accustomed to
+speak of the Chinese as centuries behind us in civilisation and
+humanity.
+
+I went to two opium-poisoning cases in Tali, both being cases of
+attempted suicide. The first was that of an old man living not _at_ the
+South Gate as the messenger assured us, who feared to discourage us if
+he told the truth, but more than a mile beyond it. On our way we bought
+in the street some sulphate of copper, and a large dose made the old man
+so sick that he said he would never take opium again, and, if he did, he
+would not send for the foreign gentleman.
+
+The other was that of a young bride, a girl of unusual personal
+attraction, only ten days married, who thus early had become weary of
+the pock-marked husband her parents had sold her to. She was dressed
+still in her bridal attire, which had not been removed since marriage;
+she was dressed in red--the colour of happiness. "She was dressed in her
+best, all ready for the journey," and was determined to die, because
+dead she could repay fourfold the injuries which she had received while
+living. In this case many neighbours were present, and, as all were
+anxious to prevent the liberation of the girl's evil spirit, I proved to
+them how skilful are the barbarian doctors. The bride was induced to
+drink hot water till it was, she declared, on a level with her neck,
+then I gave her a hypodermic injection of that wonderful emetic
+apomorphia. The effect was very gratifying to all but the patient.
+
+Small-pox, or, as the Chinese respectfully term it, "Heavenly Flowers,"
+is a terrible scourge in Western China. It is estimated that two
+thousand deaths--there is a charming vagueness about all Chinese
+figures--from this disease alone occur in the course of a year in the
+valley of Tali. Inoculation is practised, as it has been for many
+centuries, by the primitive method of introducing a dried pock-scab, on
+a lucky day, into one of the nostrils. The people have heard of the
+results of Western methods of inoculation, and immense benefit could be
+conferred upon a very large community by sending to the Inland Mission
+in Talifu a few hundred tubes of vaccine lymph. Vaccination introduced
+into Western China would be a means, the most effective that could be
+imagined, to check the death rate over that large area of country which
+was ravaged by the civil war, and whose reduced population is only a
+small percentage of the population which so fertile a country needs for
+its development. Infanticide is hardly known in that section of Yunnan
+of which Tali may be considered the capital. Small-pox kills the
+children. There is no need for a mother to sacrifice her superfluous
+children, for she has none.
+
+Another disease endemic in Yunnan is the bubonic plague, which is, no
+doubt, identical with the plague that has lately played havoc in Hong
+Kong and Canton. Cantonese peddlers returning to the coast probably
+carried the germs with them.
+
+The China Inland Mission in Tali was the last of the mission stations
+which I was to see on my journey. This is the furthest inland of the
+stations of the Inland Mission in China. It was opened in 1881 by Mr.
+George W. Clarke, the most widely-travelled, with the single exception
+of the late Dr. Cameron, of all the pioneer missionaries of this brave
+society; I think Mr. Clarke told me that he has been in fourteen out of
+the eighteen provinces. His work here was not encouraging; he was
+treated with kindness by the Chinese, but they refused to accept the
+truth when he placed it before them.
+
+"For the Bible and the Light of Truth," says Miss Guinness, in her
+charming but hysterical "Letters from the Far East"--a book that has
+deluded many poor girls to China--"For the Bible and the Light of Truth
+the Chinese cry with outstretched, empty, longing hands" (p. 173). But
+this allegation unhappily conflicts with facts when applied to Tali.
+
+For the first eleven years the mission laboured here without any success
+whatever; but now a happier time seems coming, and no less than three
+converts have been baptised in the last two years.
+
+There are now three missionaries in Tali--there are usually four; they
+are universally respected by the Chinese; they have made their little
+mission home one of the most charming in China. Mr. John Smith, who
+succeeded Mr. Clarke, has been ten years in Tali. He is welcomed
+everywhere, and in every case of serious sickness or opium-poisoning he
+is sent for. During all the time he has been in Tali he has never
+refused to attend a summons to the sick, whether by day or night. In the
+course of the year he attends, on an average, between fifty and sixty
+cases of attempted suicide by opium in the town or its environs, and, if
+called in time, he is rarely unsuccessful. Should he be called to a case
+outside the city wall and be detained after dark, the city gate will be
+kept open for him till he returns. The city magistrate has himself
+publicly praised the benevolence of this missionary, and said, "there is
+no man in Tali like Mr. Smith--would that there were others!" He is a
+Christian in word and deed, brave and simple, unaffected and
+sympathetic--the type of missionary needed in China--an honour to his
+mission. I saw the courageous man working here almost alone, far distant
+from all Western comforts, cut off from the world, and almost unknown,
+and I contrasted him with those other missionaries--the majority--who
+live in luxurious mission-houses in absolute safety in the treaty ports,
+yet whose courage and self-denial we have accustomed ourselves to
+praise in England and America, when with humble voices they parade the
+dangers they undergo and the hardships they endure in preaching, dear
+friends, to the "perishing heathen in China, God's lost ones!"
+
+In addition to the three converts who have been baptised in Tali in the
+last two years, there are two inquirers--one the mission cook--who are
+nearly ready for acceptance. At the Sunday service I met the three
+converts. One is the paid teacher in the mission school; another is a
+humble pedlar; the third is a courageous native belonging to one of the
+indigenous tribes of Western China, a Minchia man, whose conversion,
+judged by all tests, is one of those genuine cases which bring real joy
+to the missionary. He has only recently been baptised. Every Sunday he
+comes in fifteen li from the small patch of ground he tills to the
+mission services. His son is at the mission school, and is boarded on
+the premises. There is a small school in connection with the mission
+under the baptised teacher, where eight boys and eight girls are being
+taught. They are learning quickly, their wonderful gifts of memory being
+a chief factor in their progress. At the service there was another
+worshipper, a sturdy boy of fourteen, who slept composedly all through
+the exhortation. If any boy should feel gratitude towards the kind
+missionaries it is he. They have reared him from the most degraded
+poverty, have taught him to read and write, and are now on the eve of
+apprenticing him to a carpenter. He was a beggar boy, the son of a
+professional beggar, who, with unkempt hair and in rags and filth, used
+to shamble through the streets gathering reluctant alms. The father
+died, and some friends would have sold his son to pay the expenses of
+his burial; but the missionaries intervened and, to save the son from
+slavery, buried his father. This action gave them some claim to help the
+boy, and the boy has accordingly been with them since in a comfortable,
+kindly home, instead of grovelling round the streets in squalor and
+nakedness.
+
+The mission-house, formerly occupied by Mr. George Clarke is near the
+City Temple. We went to see it a day or two after my arrival. It is now
+in the possession of a family of Mohammedans, one of the very few Moslem
+families still living in the valley of Tali. "When we were in possession
+of the valley," said the father sorrowfully, "we numbered '12,000 tens'
+(120,000 souls), now we are '100 fives' (500 souls). Our men were slain,
+our women were taken in prey, only a remnant escaped the destroyer."
+Several members of the family were in the court when we entered, and
+among the men were three with marked Anglo-Saxon features, a peculiarity
+frequently seen in Western China, where every traveller has given a
+different explanation of the phenomenon. One especially moved my
+curiosity, for he possessed to an absurd degree the closest likeness to
+myself. Could I give him any higher praise than that?
+
+That the Mohammedan Chinese is physically superior to his Buddhist
+countryman is acknowledged by all observers; there is a fearlessness and
+independence of bearing in the Mohammedan, a militant carriage that
+distinguishes him from the Chinese unbeliever. His religion is but a
+thinly diluted Mohammedanism, and excites the scorn of the true
+believers from India who witness his devotion, or rather his want of
+devotion.
+
+One of the men talking to us in the old mission-house was a
+comical-looking fellow, whose head-dress differed from that of the
+other Chinese, in that, in addition to his queue, lappets of hair were
+drawn down his cheeks in the fashion affected by old ladies in England.
+I raised these strange locks--impudent curiosity is often polite
+attention in China--whereupon the reason for them was apparent. The body
+bequeathed to him by his fathers had been mutilated--he had suffered the
+removal of both ears. He explained to us how he came to lose them, but
+we knew even before he told us; "he had lost them in battle facing the
+enemy"--and of course we believed him. The less credulous would
+associate the mutilation with a case of theft and its detection and
+punishment by the magistrate; but "a bottle-nosed man," says the Chinese
+proverb, "may be a teetotaller and yet no one will think so."
+
+Our milkman at the mission was a follower of the Prophet, and the milk
+he gave us was usually as reduced in quality as are his co-religionists
+in number. In the milk he supplied there was what a chemist describes as
+a remarkable absence of butter fat. Yet, when he was reproached for his
+deceit, he used piously to say, even when met coming from the well, "I
+could not put a drop of water in the milk, for there is a God up
+there"--and he would jerk his chin towards the sky--"who would see me if
+I did."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+THE JOURNEY FROM TALI, WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE CHARACTER OF THE
+CANTONESE, CHINESE EMIGRANTS, CRETINS, AND WIFE-BEATING IN CHINA.
+
+
+The three men who had come with me the six hundred and seventeen miles
+from Chaotong left me at Tali to return all that long way home on foot
+with their well-earned savings. I was sorry to say good-bye to them; but
+they had come many miles further than they intended, and their friends,
+they said, would be anxious: besides Laohwan, you remember, was newly
+married.
+
+I engaged three new men in their places. They were to take me right
+through to Singai (Bhamo). Every day was of importance now with four
+hundred and fifty miles to travel and the rainy season closing in.
+Laotseng was the name of the Chinaman whom I engaged in place of
+Laohwan. He was a fine young fellow, active as a deer, strong, and
+high-spirited. I agreed to pay him the fancy wage of _24s._ for the
+journey. He was to carry no load, but undertook, in the event of either
+of my coolies falling sick, to carry his load until a new coolie could
+be engaged. The two coolies I engaged through a coolie-hong. One was a
+strongly-built man, a "chop dollar," good-humoured, but of rare
+ugliness. The other was the thinnest man I ever saw outside a Bowery
+dime-show. He had the opium habit. He was an opium-eater rather than an
+opium-smoker; and he ate the ash from the opium-pipe, instead of the
+opium itself--the most vicious of the methods of taking opium. He was
+the nearest approach I saw in China to the Exeter Hall type of
+opium-eater, whose "wasted limbs and palsied hands" cry out against the
+sin of the opium traffic. Though a victim of the injustice of England,
+this man had never tasted Indian opium in his life, and, perishing as he
+was in body and soul, going "straight to eternal damnation," his "dying
+wail unheard," he yet undertook a journey that would have deterred the
+majority of Englishmen, and agreed to carry, at forced speed, a far
+heavier load than the English soldier is ever weighted with on march.
+The two coolies were to be paid 4 taels each (_12s._) for the twenty
+stages to Singai, and had to find their own board and lodging. But I
+also stipulated to give them _churo_ money (pork money) of 100 cash each
+at three places--Yungchang, Tengyueh, and Bhamo--100 cash each a day
+extra for every day that I detained them on the way, and, in addition, I
+was to reward them with 150 cash each a day for every day that they
+saved on the twenty days' journey, days that I rested not to count.
+
+Of course none of the three men spoke a word of English. All were
+natives of the province of Szechuen, and all carried out their agreement
+to the letter.
+
+On May 3rd I left Tali. The last and longest stage of all the journey
+was before me, a distance of some hundreds of miles, which I had to
+traverse before I could hope to meet another countryman or foreigner
+with whom I could converse. The two missionaries, Mr. Smith and Mr.
+Graham, kindly offered to see me on my way, and we all started together
+for Hsiakwan, leaving the men to follow.
+
+Ten li from Tali we stopped to have tea at one of the many tea-houses
+that are grouped round the famous temple to the Goddess of Mercy, the
+_Kwanyin-tang_. The scene was an animated one. The open space between
+the temple steps and the temple theatre opposite was thronged with
+Chinese of strange diversity of feature crying their wares from under
+the shelter of huge umbrellas. There is always a busy traffic to
+Hsiakwan, and every traveller rests here, if only for a few minutes. For
+this is the most famous temple in the valley of Tali. The Goddess of
+Mercy is the friend of travellers, and no thoughtful Chinese should
+venture on a journey without first asking the favour of the goddess and
+obtaining from her priests a forecast of his success. The temple is a
+fine specimen of Chinese architecture. It was built specially to record
+a miracle. In the chief court, surrounded by the temple buildings, there
+is a huge granite boulder lying in an ornamental pond. It is connected
+by marble approaches, and is surmounted by a handsome monument of
+marble, which is faced on all sides with memorial tablets. This boulder
+was carried to its present position by the goddess herself, the monument
+and bridges were built to detain it where it lay, and the temple
+afterwards erected to commemorate an event of such happy augury for the
+beautiful valley.
+
+[Illustration: MEMORIAL IN THE TEMPLE OF THE GODDESS OF MERCY, NEAR
+TALIFU.]
+
+But the temple has not always witnessed only scenes of mercy. Two years
+ago a tragedy was enacted here of strange interest. At a religious
+festival held here in April, 1892, and attended by all the high
+officials and by a crowd of sightseers, a thief, taking advantage of the
+crush, tried to snatch a bracelet from the wrist of a young woman, and,
+when she resisted, he stabbed her. He was seized red-handed, dragged
+before the Titai, who happened to be present, and ordered to be
+beheaded there and then. An executioner was selected from among the
+soldiers; but so clumsily did he do the work, hacking the head off by
+repeated blows, instead of severing it by one clean cut, that the
+friends of the thief were incensed and vowed vengeance. That same night
+they lay in wait for the executioner as he was returning to the city,
+and beat him to death with stones. Five men were arrested for this
+crime; they were compelled to confess their guilt and were sentenced to
+death. As they were being carried out to the execution-ground, one of
+the condemned pointed to two men, who were in the crowd of sightseers,
+and swore that they were equally concerned in the murder. So these two
+men were also put on their trial, with the result that one was found
+guilty and was equally condemned to death. As if this were not
+sufficient, at the execution the mother of one of the prisoners, when
+she saw her son's head fall beneath the knife, gave a loud scream and
+fell down stone-dead. Nine lives were sacrificed in this tragedy: the
+woman who was stabbed recovered of her wound.
+
+Hsiakwan was crowded, as it was market day. We had lunch together at a
+Chinese restaurant, and then, my men having come up, the kind
+missionaries returned, and I went on alone. A river, the Yangki River,
+drains the Tali Lake, and, leaving the south-west corner of the lake,
+flows through the town of Hsiakwan, and so on west to join the Mekong.
+For three days the river would be our guide. A mile from the town the
+river enters a narrow defile, where steep walls of rock rise abruptly
+from the banks. The road here passes under a massive gateway. Forts, now
+dismantled, guard the entrance; the pass could be made absolutely
+impregnable. At this point the torrent falls under a natural bridge of
+unusual beauty. We rode on by the narrow bank along the river, crossed
+from the left to the right bank, and continued on through a beautiful
+country, sweet with the scent of the honeysuckle, to the charming little
+village of Hokiangpu. Here we had arranged to stay. The inn was a large
+one, and very clean. Many of its rooms were already occupied by a large
+party of Cantonese returning home after the Thibetan Fair with loads of
+opium.
+
+The Cantonese, using the term in its broader sense as applied to the
+natives of the province of Kuangtung, are the Catalans of China. They
+are as enterprising as the Scotch, adapt themselves as readily to
+circumstances, are enduring, canny, and successful; you meet them in the
+most distant parts of China. They make wonderful pilgrimages on foot.
+They have the reputation of being the most quick-witted of all Chinese.
+Large numbers come to Tali during the Thibetan Fair, and in the opium
+season. They bring all kinds of foreign goods adapted for Chinese
+wants--cheap pistols and revolvers, mirrors, scales, fancy pictures, and
+a thousand gewgaws useful as well as attractive--and they return with
+opium. They travel in bands, marching in single file, their carrying
+poles pointed with a steel spearhead two feet long, serving a double
+use--a carrying pole in peace, a formidable spear in trouble.
+
+Everywhere they can be distinguished by their dress, by their enormous
+oiled sunshades, and by their habit of tricing their loads high up to
+the carrying pole. They are always well clad in dark blue; their heads
+are always cleanly shaved; their feet are well sandalled, and their
+calves neatly bandaged. They have a travelled mien about them, and carry
+themselves with an air of conscious superiority to the untravelled
+savages among whom they are trading. To me they were always polite and
+amiable; they recognised that I was, like themselves, a stranger far
+from home.
+
+This is the class of Chinese who, emigrating from the thickly-peopled
+south-eastern provinces of China, already possess a predominant share of
+the wealth of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Timor, the Celebes and the
+Philippine Islands, Burma, Siam, Annam and Tonquin, the Straits
+Settlements, Malay Peninsula, and Cochin China. "There is hardly a tiny
+islet visited by our naturalists in any part of these seas but Chinamen
+are found." And it is this class of Chinese who have already driven us
+out of the Northern Territory of Australia, and whose unrestricted entry
+into the other colonies we must prevent at all hazards. We cannot
+compete with Chinese; we cannot intermix or marry with them; they are
+aliens in language, thought, and customs; they are working animals of
+low grade but great vitality. The Chinese is temperate, frugal,
+hard-working, and law-evading, if not law-abiding--we all acknowledge
+that. He can outwork an Englishman, and starve him out of the
+country--no one can deny that. To compete successfully with a Chinaman,
+the artisan or labourer of our own flesh and blood would require to be
+degraded into a mere mechanical beast of labour, unable to support wife
+or family, toiling seven days in the week, with no amusements,
+enjoyments, or comforts of any kind, no interest in the country,
+contributing no share towards the expense of government, living on food
+that he would now reject with loathing, crowded with his fellows ten or
+fifteen in a room that he would not now live in alone, except with
+repugnance. Admitted freely into Australia, the Chinese would starve
+out the Englishman, in accordance with the law of currency--that of two
+currencies in a country the baser will always supplant the better. "In
+Victoria," says Professor Pearson, "a single trade--that of
+furniture-making--was taken possession of and ruined for white men
+within the space of something like five years." In the small colony of
+Victoria there are 9377 Chinese in a population of 1,150,000; in all
+China, with its population of 350,000,000, there are only 8081
+foreigners (Dyer Ball), a large proportion of whom are working for
+China's salvation.
+
+There is not room for both in Australia. Which is to be our colonist,
+the Asiatic or the Englishman?
+
+In the morning we had another beautiful walk round the snow-clad
+mountains to the village of Yangpi, at the back of Tali. There was a
+long delay here. News of my arrival spread, and the people hurried along
+to see me. No sooner was I seated at an inn than two messengers from the
+yamen called for my passport. They were officious young fellows, sadly
+wanting in respect, and they asked for my passport in a noisy way that I
+did not like, so I would not understand them. I only smiled at them in
+the most friendly manner possible. I kept them for some time in a fever
+of irritation at their inability to make me understand; I listened with
+imperturbable calmness to their excited phrases till they were nearly
+dancing. Then I leisurely produced my passport, as if to satisfy a
+curiosity of my own, and began scanning it. Seeing this, they rudely
+thrust forth their hands to seize it; but I had my eye on them. "Not so
+quick, my friends," I said, soothingly. "Be calm; nervous irritability
+is a fruitful source of trouble. See, here is my passport; here is the
+official seal, and here the name of your unworthy servant. Now I fold it
+up carefully and--put it back in my pocket. But here is a copy, which
+is at your service. If you wish to show the original to the magistrate,
+I will take it to his honour myself, but out of my hands it does not
+pass." They looked puzzled, as they did not understand English; they
+debated a minute or two, and then went away with the copy, which in due
+time they politely returned to me.
+
+If you wish to travel quickly in China, never be in a hurry. Appear
+unconscious of all that is passing; never be irritated by any delay, and
+assume complete indifference, even when you are really anxious to push
+on. Emulate, too, that leading trait in the Chinese character, and never
+understand anything which you do not wish to understand. No man on earth
+can be denser than a Chinaman, when he chooses.
+
+Let me give an instance. It was not so long ago, in a police court in
+Melbourne, that a Chinaman was summoned for being in possession of a
+tenement unfit for human habitation. The case was clearly proved, and he
+was fined _L1_. But in no way could John be made to understand that a fine
+had been inflicted. He sat there with unmoved stolidity, and all that
+the court could extract from him was: "My no savvy, no savvy." After
+saying this in a voice devoid of all hope, he sank again into silence.
+Here rose a well-known lawyer. "With your worship's permission, I think
+I can make the Chinaman understand," he said. He was permitted to try.
+Striding fiercely up to the poor Celestial, he said to him in a loud
+voice, "John, you are fined two pounds." "No dam fear! Only _one_!"
+
+Crossing now the river by a well-constructed suspension bridge, we had a
+fearful climb of 2000 feet up the mountain. My coolie "Bones" nearly
+died on the way. Then there was a rough descent by a jagged path down
+the rocky side of the mountain-river to the village of Taiping-pu. It
+was long after dark when we arrived; and an hour later stalked in the
+gaunt form of poor "Bones," who, instead of eating a good meal, coiled
+up on the _kang_ and smoked an opium-pipe that he borrowed from the
+chairen. All the next day, and, indeed, for every day till we reached
+Tengyueh, our journey was one of the most arduous I have ever known. The
+road has to surmount in succession parallel ridges of mountains. The
+road is never even, for it cannot remain where travelling is easiest,
+but must continually dip from the crest of the ranges to the depths of
+the valleys.
+
+Shortly before reaching Huanglien-pu my pony cast a shoe, and it was
+some time before we were able to have it seen to; but I had brought half
+a dozen spare shoes with me, and by-and-by a muleteer came along who
+fixed one on as neatly as any farrier could have done, and gladly
+accepted a reward of one halfpenny. He kept the foot steady while
+shoeing it by lashing the fetlock to the pony's tail.
+
+Caravans of cotton coming from Burma were meeting us all day. Miles away
+the booming of their gongs sounded in the silent hills; a long time
+afterwards their bells were heard jingling, and by-and-by the mules and
+horses appeared under their huge bales of cotton, the foremost decorated
+with scarlet tufts and plumes of pheasant tails, the last carrying the
+saddle and bedding of the headman, as well as the burly headman himself,
+perched above all. A man with a gong always headed the way; there was a
+driver to every five animals. In the sandy bed of the river at one place
+a caravan was resting. Their packs were piled in parallel rows; their
+horses browsed on the hillside. I counted 107 horses in this one
+caravan.
+
+The prevailing pathological feature of the Chinese of Western Yunnan is
+the deformity goitre. It may safely be asserted that it is as common in
+many districts as are the marks of small-pox. Goitre occurs widely in
+Annam, Siam, Upper Burma, the Shan States, and in Western China as far
+as the frontier of Thibet. It is distinctly associated with cretinism
+and its interrupted intellectual development. And the disease must
+increase, for there is no attempt to check it. To be a "thickneck" is no
+bar to marriage on either side. The goitrous intermarry, and have
+children who are goitrous, or, rather, who will, if exposed to the same
+conditions as their parents, inevitably develop goitre. Frequently the
+disease is intensified in the offspring into cretinism, and I can
+conceive of no sight more disgusting than that which so often met our
+view, of a goitrous mother suckling her imbecile child. On one
+afternoon, among those who passed us on the road, I counted eighty
+persons with the deformity. On another day nine adults were climbing a
+path, by which we had just descended, every one of whom had goitre. In
+one small village, out of eighteen full-grown men and women whom I met
+in the street down which I rode, fifteen were affected. My diary in the
+West, especially from Yunnan City to Yungchang, after which point the
+cases greatly diminished in number, became a monotonous record of cases.
+At the mission in Tali three women are employed, and of these two are
+goitrous; the third, a Minchia woman, is free from the disease, and I
+have been told that among the indigenes the disease is much less common
+than among the Chinese. On all sides one encounters the horrible
+deformity, among all classes, of all ages. The disease early manifests
+itself, and I have often seen well-marked enlargement in children as
+young as eight. Turn any street corner in any town of importance in
+Western Yunnan and you will meet half a dozen cases; there must be few
+families in the western portion of the province free from the taint.
+
+On a day, for example, like this (May 5th), when the road was more than
+usually mountainous, though that may have been an accident, my chairen
+was a "thickneck" and my two soldiers were "thicknecks." At the village
+of Huanglien-pu, where I had lunch, the landlady of the inn had a
+goitrous neck that was swelled out half-way to the shoulder, and her son
+was a slobbering-mouthed cretin with the intelligence of an animal. And
+among the people who gathered round me in a dull, apathetic way every
+other one was more or less marked with the disease and its attendant
+mental phenomena. Again, at the inn in a little mountain village, where
+we stopped for the night, mother, father, and every person in the house,
+to the number of nine, above the age of childhood was either goitrous or
+cretinous, dull of intelligence, mentally verging upon dementia in three
+cases, in two of which physical growth had been arrested at childhood.
+
+Rarely during my journey to Burma was I offended by hearing myself
+called "_Yang kweitze_" (foreign devil), although this is the universal
+appellation of the foreigner wherever Mandarin is spoken in China.
+To-day, however, (May 6th), I was seated at the inn in the town of
+Chutung when I heard the offensive term. I was seated at a table in the
+midst of the accustomed crowd of Chinese. I was on the highest seat, of
+course, because I was the most important person present, when a
+bystander, seeing that I spoke no Chinese, coolly said the words "_Yang
+kweitze_" (foreign devil). I rose in my wrath, and seized my whip. "You
+Chinese devil" (_Chung kweitze_), I said in Chinese, and then I assailed
+him in English. He seemed surprised at my warmth, but said nothing, and,
+turning on his heel, walked uncomfortably away.
+
+I often regretted afterwards that I did not teach the man a lesson, and
+cut him across the face with my whip; yet, had I done so, it would have
+been unjust. He called me, as I thought, "_Yang kweitze_," but I have no
+doubt, having told the story to Mr. Warry, the Chinese adviser to the
+Government of Burma, that he did not use these words at all, but others
+so closely resembling them that they sounded identically the same to my
+untrained ear, and yet signified not "foreign devil," but "honoured
+guest." He had paid me a compliment; he had not insulted me. The
+Yunnanese, Mr. Warry tells me, do not readily speak of the devil for
+fear he should appear.
+
+On my journey I made it a rule, acting advisedly, to refuse to occupy
+any other than the best room in the inn, and, if there was only one
+room, I required that the best bed in the room, as regards elevation,
+should be given to me. So, too, at every inn I insisted that the best
+table should be given me, and, if there were already Chinese seated at
+it, I gravely bowed to them, and by a wave of my hand signified that it
+was my pleasure that they should make way for the distinguished
+stranger. When there was only the one table, I occupied, as by right,
+its highest seat, refusing to sit in any other. I required, indeed, by
+politeness and firmness, that the Chinese take me at my own valuation.
+And they invariably did so. They always gave way to me. They recognised
+that I must be a traveller of importance, despite the smallness of my
+retinue and the homeliness of my attire; and they acknowledged my
+superiority. Had I been content with a humbler place, it would quickly
+have been reported along the road, and, little by little, my complacence
+would have been tested. I am perfectly sure that, by never verging from
+my position of superiority, I gained the respect of the Chinese, and it
+is largely to this I attribute the universal respect and attention shown
+me during the journey. For I was unarmed, entirely dependent upon the
+Chinese, and, for all practical purposes, inarticulate. As it was, I
+never had any difficulty whatever.
+
+Chinese etiquette pays great attention to the question of position; so
+important, indeed, is it that, when a carriage was taken by Lord
+Macartney's Embassy to Peking as a present, or, as the Chinese said, as
+tribute to the Emperor Kienlung, great offence was caused by the
+arrangement of the seats requiring the driver to sit on a higher level
+than His Majesty. A small enough mistake surely, but sufficient to mar
+the success of an expedition which the Chinese have always regarded as
+"one of the most splendid testimonials of respect that a tributary
+nation ever paid their Court."
+
+On the morning of May 7th, as we were leaving the village where we had
+slept the night before, we were witnesses of a domestic quarrel which
+might well have become a tragedy. On the green outside their cabin a
+husband with goitre, enraged against his goitrous wife, was kept from
+killing her by two elderly goitrous women. All were speaking with
+horrible goitrous voices as if they had cleft palates, and the husband
+was hoarse with fury. Jealousy could not have been the cause of the
+quarrel, for his wife was one of the most hideous creatures I have seen
+in China. Throwing aside the bamboo with which he was threatening her,
+the husband ran into the house, and was out again in a moment
+brandishing a long native sword with which he menaced speedy death to
+the joy of his existence. I stood in the road and watched the
+disturbance, and with me the soldier-guard, who did not venture to
+interfere. But the two women seized the angry brute and held him till
+his wife toddled round the corner. Now, if this were a determined woman,
+she could best revenge herself for the cruelty that had been done her by
+going straightway and poisoning herself with opium, for then would her
+spirit be liberated, ever after to haunt her husband, even if he escaped
+punishment for being the cause of her death. If in the dispute he had
+killed her, he would be punished with "strangulation after the usual
+period," the sentence laid down by the law and often recorded in the
+_Peking Gazette_ (_e.g._, May 15th, 1892), unless he could prove her
+guilty of infidelity, or want of filial respect for his parents, in
+which case his action would be praiseworthy rather than culpable. If,
+however, in the dispute the wife had killed her husband, or by her
+conduct had driven him to suicide, she would be inexorably tied to the
+cross and put to death by the "_Ling chi_," or "degrading and slow
+process." For a wife to kill her husband has always been regarded as a
+more serious crime than for a husband to kill his wife; even in our own
+highly favoured country, till within a few years of the present century,
+the punishment for the man was death by hanging, but in the case of the
+woman death by burning alive.
+
+Let me at this point interpolate a word or two about the method of
+execution known as the _Ling chi_. The words are commonly, and quite
+wrongly, translated as "death by slicing into 10,000 pieces"--a truly
+awful description of a punishment whose cruelty has been
+extraordinarily misrepresented. It is true that no punishment is more
+dreaded by the Chinese than the _Ling chi_; but it is dreaded, not
+because of any torture associated with its performance, but because of
+the dismemberment practised upon the body which was received whole from
+its parents. The mutilation is ghastly and excites our horror as an
+example of barbarian cruelty: but it is not cruel, and need not excite
+our horror, since the mutilation is done, not before death, but after.
+The method is simply the following, which I give as I received it
+first-hand from an eye-witness:--The prisoner is tied to a rude cross:
+he is invariably deeply under the influence of opium. The executioner,
+standing before him, with a sharp sword makes two quick incisions above
+the eyebrows, and draws down the portion of skin over each eye, then he
+makes two more quick incisions across the breast, and in the next moment
+he pierces the heart, and death is instantaneous. Then he cuts the body
+in pieces; and the degradation consists in the fragmentary shape in
+which the prisoner has to appear in heaven. As a missionary said to me:
+"He can't lie out that he got there properly when he carries with him
+such damning evidence to the contrary."
+
+[Illustration: THE DESCENT TO THE RIVER MEKONG.]
+
+In China immense power is given to the husband over the body of his
+wife, and it seems as if the tendency in England were to approximate to
+the Chinese custom. Is it not a fact that, if a husband in England
+brutally maltreats his wife, kicks her senseless, and disfigures her for
+life, the average English bench of unpaid magistrates will find
+extenuating circumstances in the fact of his being the husband, and will
+rarely sentence him to more than a month or two's hard labour?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE MEKONG AND SALWEEN RIVERS--HOW TO TRAVEL IN CHINA.
+
+
+To-day, May 7th, we crossed the River Mekong, even at this distance from
+Siam a broad and swift stream. The river flows into the light from a
+dark and gloomy gorge, takes a sharp bend, and rolls on between the
+mountains. Where it issues from the gorge a suspension bridge has been
+stretched across the stream. A wonderful pathway zigzags down the face
+of the mountain to the river, in an almost vertical incline of 2000ft.
+At the riverside an embankment of dressed stone, built up from the rock,
+leads for some hundreds of feet along the bank, where there would
+otherwise have been no foothold, to the clearing by the bridge. The
+likin-barrier is here, and a teahouse or two, and the guardian temple.
+The bridge itself is graceful and strong, swinging easily 30ft. above
+the current; it is built of powerful chains, carried from bank to bank
+and held by masses of solid masonry set in the bed-rock. It is 60 yards
+long and 10ft. wide, is floored with wood, and has a picket parapet
+supported by lateral chains. From the river a path led us up to a small
+village, where my men rested to gather strength. For facing us were the
+mountain heights, which had to be escaladed before we could leave the
+river gulch. Then with immense toil we climbed up the mountain path by
+a rocky staircase of thousands of steps, till, worn out, and with
+"Bones" nearly dead, we at length reached the narrow defile near the
+summit, whence an easy road brought us in the early evening to Shuichai
+(6700ft.).
+
+In the course of one afternoon we had descended 2000ft. to the river
+(4250ft. above the sea), and had then climbed 2450ft. to Shuichai. And
+the ascent from the river was steeper than the descent into it; yet the
+railway which is to be built over this trade-route between Burma and
+Yunnan will have other engineering difficulties to contend with even
+greater than this.
+
+My soldier to-day was a boy of fifteen or sixteen. He was armed with a
+revolver, and bore himself valiantly. But his revolver was more
+dangerous in appearance than in effect, for the cylinder would not
+revolve, the hammer was broken short off, and there were no cartridges.
+Everywhere the weapon was examined with curiosity blended with awe, and
+I imagine that the Chinese were told strange tales of its deadliness.
+
+Next morning we continued by easy gradients to Talichao (7700ft.),
+rising 1000ft. in rather less than seven miles. It was bitterly cold in
+the mists of the early morning. But twenty miles further the road dipped
+again to the sunshine and warmth of the valley of Yungchang, where, in
+the city made famous by Marco Polo, we found comfortable quarters in an
+excellent inn.
+
+Yungchang is a large town, strongly walled. It is, however, only a
+remnant of the old city, acres of houses having been destroyed during
+the insurrection, when for three years, it is said, Imperialists and
+Mohammedans were contending for its possession. There is a telegraph
+station in the town. The streets are broad and well-paved, the inns
+large, and the temples flourishing. One fortunate circumstance the
+traveller will notice in Yungchang--there is a marked diminution in the
+number of cases of goitre. And the diminution is not confined to the
+town, but is apparent from this point right on to Burma.
+
+Long after our arrival in Yungchang my opium-eating coolie "Bones" had
+not come, and we had to wait for him in anger and annoyance. He had my
+hamper of eatables and my bundle of bedding. Tired of waiting for him, I
+went for a walk to the telegraph office and was turning to come back,
+when I met the faithful skeleton, a mile from the inn, walking along as
+if to a funeral, his neck elongating from side to side like a camel's, a
+lean and hungry look in his staring eyes, his bones crackling inside his
+skin. Continuing in the direction that he was going when I found him, he
+might have reached Thibet in time, but never Burma. I led him back to
+the hotel, where he ruefully showed me his empty string of cash, as if
+that had been the cause of his delay; he had only 6 cash left, and he
+wanted an advance.
+
+This was the worst coolie I had in my employ during my journey. But he
+was a good-natured fellow and honest. He was better educated, too, than
+most of the other coolies, and could both read and write. His dress on
+march was characteristic of the man. He was nearly naked; his clothes
+hardly hung together; he wore no sandals on his feet; but round his neck
+he carried a small earthenware phial of opium ash. In the early stages
+he delayed us all an hour or two every day, but he improved as we went
+further. And then he was so long and thin, so grotesque in his gait, and
+afforded me such frequent amusement, that I would not willingly have
+exchanged him for the most active coolie in China.
+
+[Illustration: INSIDE VIEW OF A SUSPENSION BRIDGE IN FAR WESTERN CHINA.]
+
+On the 9th we had a long and steep march west from the plain of
+Yungchang. At Pupiao I had a public lunch. It was market day, and the
+country people enjoyed the rare pleasure of seeing a foreigner feed. The
+street past the inn was packed in a few minutes, and the innkeeper had
+all he could do to attend to the many customers who wished to take tea
+at the same time as the foreigner. I was now used to these
+demonstrations. I could eat on with undisturbed equanimity. On such
+occasions I made it a practice, when I had finished and was leaving the
+inn, to turn round and bow gravely to the crowd, thanking them in a few
+kindly words of English, for the reception they had accorded me. At the
+same time I took the opportunity of mentioning that they would
+contribute to the comfort of future travellers, if only they would pay a
+little more attention to their table manners. Then, addressing the
+innkeeper, I thought it only right to point out to him that it was
+absurd to expect that one small black cloth should wipe all cups and
+cup-lids, all tables, all spilt tea, and all dishes, all through the
+day, without getting dirty. Occasionally, too, I pointed out another
+defect of management to the innkeeper, and told him that, while I
+personally had an open mind on the subject, other travellers might come
+his way who would disapprove, for instance--he would pardon my
+mentioning it--of the manure coolie passing through the restaurant with
+his buckets at mealtime, and halting by the table to see the stranger
+eat.
+
+When I spoke in this way quite seriously and bowed, those whose eyes met
+mine always bowed gravely in return. And for the next hour on the track
+my men would tell each other, with cackles of laughter, how Mo Shensen,
+their master, mystified the natives.
+
+From Pupiao we had a pleasant ride over a valley-plain, between hedges
+of cactus in flower and bushes of red roses, past graceful clumps of
+bamboo waving like ostrich feathers. By-and-by drizzling rain came on
+and compelled us to seek shelter in the only inn in a poor
+out-of-the-way hamlet. But I could not stop here, because the best room
+in the inn was already occupied by a military officer of some
+distinction, a colonel, on his way, like ourselves, to Tengyueh. An
+official chair with arched poles fitted for four bearers was in the
+common-room; the mules of his attendants were in the stables, and were
+valuable animals. The landlord offered me another room, an inferior one;
+but I waved the open fingers of my left hand before my face and said,
+"_puyao! puyao!_" (I don't want it, I don't want it). For I was not so
+foolish or inconsistent as to be content with a poorer quarter of the
+inn than that occupied by the officer, whatever his button. I could not
+acknowledge to the Chinese that any Chinaman travelling in the Middle
+Kingdom was my equal, let alone my superior. Refusing to remain, I
+waited in the front room until the rain should lift and allow us to
+proceed. But we did not require to go on. It happened as I expected. The
+Colonel sent for me, and, bowing to me, showed by signs that one half
+his room was at my service. In return for his politeness he had the
+privilege of seeing me eat. With both hands I offered him in turn every
+one of my dishes. Afterwards I showed him my photographs--I treated him,
+indeed, with proper condescension.
+
+On the 10th we crossed the famous River Salween (2600 ft.). Through an
+open tableland, well grassed and sparsely wooded, we came at length to
+the cleft in the hills from which is obtained the first view of the
+river valley. There was a small village here, and, while we were taking
+tea, a soldier came hurriedly down the road, who handed me a letter
+addressed in Chinese. I confess that at the moment I had a sudden
+misgiving that some impediment was to be put in the way of my journey.
+But it was nothing more than a telegram from Mr. Jensen in Yunnan,
+telling me of the decision of the Chinese Government to continue the
+telegraph to the frontier of Burma. The telegram was written by the
+Chinese operator in Yungchang in a neat round hand, without any error of
+spelling; it had come to Yungchang after my departure, and had been
+courteously forwarded by the Chinese manager. The soldier who brought it
+had made a hurried march of thirty-eight miles before overtaking me, and
+deserved a reward. I motioned Laotseng, my cash-bearer, to give him a
+present, and he meanly counted out 25 cash, and was about to give them,
+when I ostentatiously increased the amount to 100 cash. The soldier was
+delighted; the onlookers were charmed with this exhibition of Western
+munificence. Suppose a rich Chinese traveller in England, who spoke no
+English, were to offer Tommy Atkins twopence halfpenny for travelling on
+foot thirty-eight miles to bring him a telegram, having then to walk
+back thirty-eight miles and find himself on the way, would the English
+soldier bow as gratefully as did his perishing Chinese brother when I
+thus rewarded him?
+
+We descended by beautiful open country into the Valley of the Shadow of
+Death--the valley of the River Salween. No other part of Western China
+has the evil repute of this valley; its unhealthiness is a by-word. "It
+is impossible to pass," says Marco Polo; "the air in summer is so impure
+and bad and any foreigner attempting it would die for certain."
+
+The Salween was formerly the boundary between Burma and China, and it is
+to be regretted that at the annexation of Upper Burma England did not
+push her frontier back to its former position. But the delimitation of
+the frontier of Burma is not yet complete. No time could be more
+opportune for its completion than the present, when China is distracted
+by her difficulties with Japan. China disheartened could need but little
+persuasion to accede to the just demand of England that the frontier of
+Burma shall be the true south-western frontier of China--the Salween
+River.
+
+There are no Chinese in the valley, nor would any Chinaman venture to
+cross it after nightfall. The reason of its unhealthiness is not
+apparent, except in the explanation of Baber, that "border regions,
+'debatable grounds,' are notoriously the birthplace of myths and
+marvels." There can be little doubt that the deadliness of the valley is
+a tradition rather than a reality.
+
+By flights of stone steps we descended to the river, where at the
+bridge-landing, we were arrested by a sight that could not be seen
+without emotion. A prisoner, chained by the hands and feet and cooped in
+a wooden cage, was being carried by four bearers to Yungchang to
+execution. He was not more than twenty-one years of age, was
+well-dressed, and evidently of a rank in life from which are recruited
+few of the criminals of China. Yet his crime could not have been much
+graver. On the corner posts of his cage white strips of paper were
+posted, giving his name and the particulars of the crime which he was so
+soon to expiate. He was a burglar who had escaped from prison by killing
+his guard, and had been recaptured. Unlike other criminals I have seen
+in China, who laugh at the stranger and appear unaffected by their lot,
+this young fellow seemed to feel keenly the cruel but well-deserved fate
+that was in store for him. Three days hence he would be put to death by
+strangulation outside the wall of Yungchang.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIVER SALWEEN, THE FORMER BOUNDARY BETWEEN CHINA AND
+BURMA.]
+
+Another of those remarkable works which declare the engineering skill of
+the Chinese, is the suspension bridge which spans the Salween by a
+double loop--the larger loop over the river, the smaller one across the
+overflow. A natural piece of rock strengthened by masonry, rising from
+the river bed, holds the central ends of both loops. The longer span is
+80 yards in length, the shorter 55; both are 12ft. wide, and are formed
+of twelve parallel chain cables, drawn to an appropriate curve. A rapid
+river flows under the bridge, the rush of whose waters can be heard high
+up the mountain slopes.
+
+None but Shans live in the valley. They are permitted to govern
+themselves under Chinese supervision, and preserve their own laws and
+customs. They have a village near the bridge, of grass-thatched huts and
+open booths, where travellers can find rest and refreshment, and where
+native women prettily arrayed in dark-blue, will brew you tea in
+earthenware teapots. Very different are the Shan women from the Chinese.
+Their colour is much darker; their head-dress is a circular pile formed
+of concentric folds of dark-blue cloth; their dress closely resembles
+with its jacket and kilt the bathing dress of civilisation; their arms
+are bare, they have gaiters on their legs, and do not compress their
+feet. All wear brooches and earrings, and other ornaments of silver
+filigree.
+
+From the valley the main road rises without intermission 6130 feet to
+the village of Fengshui-ling (8730 feet), a climb which has to be
+completed in the course of the afternoon. We were once more among the
+trees. Pushing on till I was afraid we should be benighted, we reached
+long after dark an encampment of bamboo and grass, in the lonely bush,
+where the kind people made us welcome. It was bitterly cold during the
+night, for the hut I slept in was open to the air. My three men and the
+escort must have been even colder than I was. But at least we all slept
+in perfect security, and I cannot praise too highly the constant care of
+the Chinese authorities to shield even from the apprehension of harm one
+whose only protection was his British passport.
+
+All the way westward from Yunnan City I was shadowed both by a
+yamen-runner and a soldier; both were changed nearly every day, and the
+further west I went the more frequently were they armed. The
+yamen-runner usually carried a long native sword only, but the soldier,
+in addition to his sword, was on one occasion, as we have seen, armed
+with the relics of a revolver that would not revolve. On May 10th, for
+the first time, the soldier detailed to accompany me was provided with a
+rusty old musket with a very long barrel. I examined this weapon with
+much curiosity. China is our neighbour in Eastern Asia, and is, it is
+often stated, an ideal power to be intrusted with the government of the
+buffer state called for by French aggression in Siam. In China, it is
+alleged, we have a prospective ally in Asia, and it is preferable that
+England should suffer all reasonable indignities and humilities at her
+hands rather than endanger any possible relations, which may
+subsequently be entered into, with a hypothetically powerful neighbour.
+
+On my arrival in Burma I was often amused by the serious questions I was
+asked concerning the military equipment of the Chinese soldiers of
+Western Yunnan. The soldier who was with me to-day was a type of the
+warlike sons of China, not only in the province bordering on Burma, but,
+with slight differences, all over the Middle Kingdom. Now, physically,
+this man was fit to be drafted into any army in the world, but, apart
+from his endurance, his value as a fighting machine lay in the weapon
+with which the military authorities had armed him. This weapon was
+peculiar; I noted down its peculiarities on the spot. In this weapon the
+spring of the trigger was broken so that it could not be pulled; if it
+had been in order, there was no cap for the hammer to strike; if there
+had been a cap, it would have been of no use because the pinhole was
+rusted; even if the pinhole had been open, the rifle would still have
+been ineffective because it was not loaded, for the very good reason
+that the soldier had not been provided with powder, or, if he had, he
+had been compelled to sell it in order to purchase the rice which the
+Emperor, "whose rice he ate," had neglected to send him.
+
+An early start in the morning and we descended quickly to the River
+Shweli.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIVER SHWELI AND ITS SUSPENSION BRIDGE.]
+
+The Salween River is at an elevation of 2600 feet. Forty-five li further
+the road reaches at Fengshui-ling a height of 8730, from which point, in
+thirty-five li, it dips again to the River Shweli, 4400 feet above sea
+level. There was the usual suspension bridge at the river, and the
+inevitable likin-barrier. For the first time the Customs officials
+seemed inclined to delay me. I was on foot, and separated from my men by
+half the height of the hill. The collectors, and the underlings who are
+always hanging about the barriers, gathered round me and interrogated me
+closely. They spoke to me in Chinese, and with insufficient deference.
+The Chinese seem imbued with the mistaken belief that their language is
+the vehicle of intercourse not only within the four seas, but beyond
+them, and are often arrogant in consequence. I answered them in English.
+"I don't understand one word you say, but, if you wish to know," I said,
+energetically, "I come from Shanghai." "Shanghai," they exclaimed, "he
+comes from Shanghai!" "And I am bound for Singai" (Bhamo);--"Singai,"
+they repeated, "he is going to Singai!"--"unless the Imperial
+Government, suspicious of my intentions, which the meanest intelligence
+can see are pacific, should prevent me, in which case England will find
+a coveted pretext to add Yunnan to her Burmese Empire." Then, addressing
+myself to the noisiest, I indulged in some sarcastic speculations upon
+his probable family history, deduced from his personal peculiarities,
+till he looked very uncomfortable indeed. Thereupon I gravely bowed to
+them, and, leaving them in dumb astonishment, walked on over the bridge.
+They probably thought I was rating them in Manchu, the language of the
+Emperor. Two boys staggering under loads of firewood did not escape so
+easily, but were detained and a log squeezed from each wherewith to
+light the likin fires.
+
+A steep climb of another 3000 or 4000 feet over hills carpeted with
+bracken, with here and there grassy swards, pretty with lilies and
+daisies and wild strawberries, and then a quick descent, and we were in
+the valley of Tengyueh (5600ft.). A plain everywhere irrigated, flanked
+by treeless hills; fields shut in by low embankments; villages in
+plantations round its margin; black-faced sheep in flocks on the
+hillsides; and, away to the right the crenellated walls of Tengyueh. A
+stone-flagged path down the centre of the plain led us into the town. We
+entered by the south gate, and, turning to the left, were conducted into
+the telegraph compound, where I was to find accommodation, the clerk in
+charge of the operators being able to speak a few words of English. I
+was an immediate object of curiosity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE CITY OF TENGYUEH--THE CELEBRATED WUNTHO SAWBWA--SHAN SOLDIERS.
+
+
+I was given a comfortable room in the telegraph offices, but I had
+little privacy. My room was thronged during all the time of my visit.
+The first evening I held an informal and involuntary reception, which
+was attended by all the officials of the town, with the dignified
+exception of the Brigadier-General. The three members of the Chinese
+Boundary Commission, which had recently arranged with the British
+Commission the preliminaries to the delimitation of the boundary between
+Burma and China, were here, disputing with clerks, yamen-runners, and
+chair-coolies for a sight of my photographs and curiosities. The
+telegraph Manager Pen, Yeh (the magistrate), and a stalwart soldier
+(Colonel Liu), formed the Commission, and they retain hallowed
+recollections of the benignity of the Englishmen, and the excellence of
+their champagne. Colonel Liu proved to be the most enlightened member of
+the party. He is a tall, handsome fellow, fifty years of age, a native
+of Hunan, the most warlike and anti-foreign province in China. He was
+especially glad to see a foreign doctor. The gallant Colonel confided to
+me a wish that had long been uppermost in his heart. From some member,
+unknown, of the British Commission he had learnt of the marvellous
+rejuvenating power of a barbarian medicine--could I get him some?
+_Could I get him a bottle of hair-dye?_ Unlike his compatriots, who
+regard the external features of longevity as the most coveted attribute
+of life, this gentleman, in whose brain the light of civilisation was
+dawning, wished to frustrate the doings of age. Could I get him a bottle
+of hair-dye? He was in charge of the fort at Ganai, two days out on the
+way to Bhamo, and would write to the officer in charge during his
+absence directing him to provide me with an escort worthy of my
+benefaction.
+
+One celebrity, who lives in the neighbourhood of Tengyueh, did not
+favour me with a visit. That famous dacoit, the outlawed Prince of
+Wuntho--the Wuntho Sawbwa--lives here, an exile sheltered by the Chinese
+Government. A pure Burmese himself, the father-in-law of the amiable
+Sawbwa of Santa, he is believed by the Government of Burma to have been
+"concerned in all the Kachin risings of 1892-1893." A reward of 5000
+rupees is offered for his head, which will be paid equally whether the
+head be on or off the shoulders. Another famous outlaw, the Shan Chief
+Kanhliang, is also believed to be in hiding in the neighbourhood of
+Tengyueh. The value of _his_ head has been assessed at 2000 rupees.
+
+Tengyueh is more a park than a town. The greater part of the city within
+the walls is waste land or gardens. The houses are collected mainly near
+the south gate, and extend beyond the south gate on each side of the
+road for half a mile on the road to Bhamo. There is an excellent wall in
+admirable order, with an embankment of earth 20ft. in width. But I saw
+no guns of any kind whatever, nor did I meet a single armed man in the
+town or district.
+
+Tengyueh is so situated that the invading army coming from Burma will
+find a pleasant pastime in shelling it from the open hills all around
+the town. This was the last stronghold of the Mohammedans. It was
+formerly a prosperous border town, the chief town in all the fertile
+valley of the Taiping. It was in the hands of the rebels till June 10th,
+1873, when it was delivered over to the Imperialists to carnage and
+destruction. The valley is fertile and well populated, and prosperity is
+quickly returning to the district.
+
+There is only one yamen in Tengyueh of any pretension, and it is the
+official residence of a red-button warrior, the Brigadier-General
+(_Chentai_) Chang, the successor, though not, of course, the immediate
+successor, of Li-Sieh-tai, who was concerned in the murder of Margary
+and the repulse of the expedition under Colonel Horace Browne in 1875. A
+tall, handsome Chinaman is Chang, of soldierly bearing and blissful
+innocence of all knowledge of modern warfare. Yungchang is the limit of
+his jurisdiction in one direction, the Burmese boundary in the other;
+his only superior officer is the Titai in Tali.
+
+The telegraph office adjoins the City Temple and Theatre of Tengyueh. At
+this time the annual festival was being celebrated in the temple.
+Theatrical performances were being given in uninterrupted succession
+daily for the term of one month. Play began at sunrise, and the curtain
+fell, or would have fallen if there had been a curtain, at twilight. Day
+was rendered hideous by the clangour of the instruments which the
+blunted senses of Chinese have been misguided into believing are
+musical. Already the play, or succession of plays, had continued fifteen
+days, and another thirteen days had yet to be endured before its
+completion. Crowds occupied the temple court during the performance,
+while a considerable body of dead-heads witnessed the entertainment from
+the embankment and wall overlooking the open stage. My host, the
+telegraph Manager Pen, and his two friends Liu and Yeh, were given an
+improvised seat of honour outside my window, and here they sat all day
+and sipped tea and cracked jokes. No actresses were on the stage; the
+female parts were taken by men whose make-up was admirable, and who
+imitated, with curious fidelity, the voice and gestures of women. The
+dresses were rich and varied. Scene-shifters, band, supers, and friends
+remained on the stage during the performance, dodging about among the
+actors. There is no drop curtain in a Chinese theatre, and all scenes
+are changed on the open stage before you. The villain, whose nose is
+painted white, vanquished by triumphant virtue, dies a gory death; he
+remains dead just long enough to satisfy you that he _is_ dead, and then
+gets up and serenely walks to the side. There is laughter at sallies of
+indecency, and the spectators grunt their applause. The Chinaman is
+rarely carried away by his feelings at the theatre; indeed, it may be
+questioned if strong emotion is ever aroused in his breast, except by
+the first addresses of the junior members of the China Inland Mission,
+the thrilling effect of whose Chinese exhortations is recorded every
+month in _China's Millions_.
+
+The Manager of the telegraph, to show his good feeling, presented me
+with a stale tin of condensed milk. His second clerk and operator was
+the most covetous man I met in China. He begged in turn for nearly every
+article I possessed, beginning with my waterproof, which I did not give
+him, and ending with the empty milk tin, which I did, for "Give to him
+that asketh," said Buddha, "even though it be but a little." The chief
+operator in charge of the telegraph offices speaks a little English, and
+is the medium by which English messages and letters are translated into
+Chinese for the information of the officials. His name is Chueh. His
+method of translation is to glean the sense of a sentence by the
+probable meaning, derived from an inaccurate Anglo-Chinese dictionary,
+of the separate words of the sentence. He is a broken reed to trust to
+as an interpreter. Chueh is not an offensively truthful man. When he
+speaks to you, you find yourself wondering if you have ever met a
+greater liar than he. "Three men's strength," he says, "cannot prevail
+against truth;" yet he is, I think, the greatest liar I have met since I
+left Morocco. Indeed, the way he spoke of my head boy Laotseng, who was
+undoubtedly an honest Chinese, and the opinion Laotseng emphatically
+held of Chueh, was a curious repetition of an experience that I had not
+long ago in Morocco. I was living in Tangier, when I had occasion to go
+to Fez and Mequinez. My visit was arranged so hurriedly that I had no
+means of learning what was the degree of personal esteem attaching to
+the gentleman, a resident of Tangier, who was to be my companion. I
+accordingly interrogated the hotel-keeper, Mr. B. "What kind of a man is
+D.?" I asked. "Not a bad fellow," he replied, "if he wasn't such a
+blank, blank awful liar!" On the road to Wazan I became very friendly
+with D., and one day questioned him as to his private regard for Mr. B.
+of the hotel. "A fine fellow B. seems," I said, "very friendly and
+entertaining. What do you think of him?" "What do I think of him?" he
+shouted in his falsetto. "I _know_ he's the biggest blank liar in
+Morocco." It was pleasant to meet, even in Morocco, such a rare case of
+mutual esteem.
+
+My pony fared badly in Tengyueh. There was a poor stable in the
+courtyard with a tiled roof that would fall at the first shower. There
+were no beans. The pony had to be content with rice or paddy, which it
+disliked equally. The rice was _1-1/2d._ the 7-1/2lbs. There was no
+grass, Chueh said, to be obtained in the district. He assured me so on
+his honour, or its Chinese equivalent; but I sent out and bought some in
+the street round the corner.
+
+Silver in Tengyueh is the purest Szechuen or Yunnanese silver. Rupees
+are also current, and at this time were equivalent to 400 cash--the tael
+at the same time being worth 1260 cash. Every 10 taels, costing me
+_30s._ in Shanghai, I could exchange in Tengyueh for 31 rupees. Rupees
+are the chief silver currency west from Tengyueh into Burma.
+
+On May 31st I had given instructions that we were to leave early, but my
+men, who did not sleep in the telegraph compound, were late in coming.
+To still further delay me, at the time of leaving no escort had made its
+appearance. I did not wait for it. We marched out of the town
+unaccompanied, and were among the tombstones on the rise overlooking the
+town when the escort hurriedly overtook us. It consisted of a
+quiet-mannered chairen and two soldiers, one of whom was an impudent cub
+that I had to treat with every indignity. He was armed with a sword
+carried in the folds of his red cincture, in which was also concealed an
+old muzzle-loading pistol, formidable to look at but unloaded. This was
+one of the days on my journey when I wished that I had brought a
+revolver, not as a defence in case of danger, for there was no danger,
+but as a menace on occasion of anger.
+
+Rain fell continuously. At a small village thronged with muleteers from
+Bhamo we took shelter for an hour. The men sipping tea under the
+verandahs had seen Europeans in Bhamo, and my presence evoked no
+interest whatever. Many of these strangers possessed an astonishing
+likeness to European friends of my own. Contact with Europeans, causing
+the phenomena of "maternal impression," was probably in a few cases
+accountable for the moulding of their features, but the general
+prevalence of the European type has yet to be explained. "My conscience!
+Who could ever have expected to meet _you_ here?" I was often on the
+point of saying to some Chinese Shan or Burmese Shan in whom, to my
+confusion, I thought I recognised a college friend of my own.
+
+Leaving the village, we followed the windings of the River Taiping,
+coasting along the edge of the high land on the left bank of the river.
+
+[Illustration: THE SUBURB BEYOND THE SOUTH GATE OF TENGYUEH. (Stalls
+under the Umbrellas.)]
+
+Rain poured incessantly; the creeks overflowed; the paths became
+watercourses and were scarcely fordable. "Bones," my opium-eating coolie
+with the long neck, slipped into a hole which was too deep even for his
+long shanks, and all my bedding was wetted. It was ninety li to Nantien,
+the fort we were bound to beyond Tengyueh, and we finished the distance
+by sundown. The town is of little importance. It is situated on an
+eminence and is surrounded by a wall built, with that strange spirit of
+contrariness characteristic of the Chinese, and because it incloses a
+fort, more weakly than any city wall. It is not more substantial nor
+higher than the wall round many a mission compound. Some 400 soldiers
+are stationed in the fort, which means that the commander draws the pay
+for 1000 soldiers, and represents the strength of his garrison as 1000.
+Their arms are primitive and rusty muzzle-loaders of many patterns;
+there are no guns to be seen, if there are any in existence--which is
+doubtful. The few rusty cast-iron ten-pounders that lie _hors de combat_
+in the mud have long since become useless. There may be ammunition in
+the fort; but there is none to be seen. It is more probable, and more in
+accordance with Chinese practice in such matters, that the ammunition
+left by his predecessor (if any were left, which is doubtful) has long
+ago been sold by the colonel in command, whose perquisite this would
+naturally be.
+
+The fort of Nantien is a fort in name only--it has no need to be
+otherwise, for peace and quiet are abroad in the valley. Besides, the
+mere fact of its being called a fort is sufficiently misleading to the
+neighbouring British province of Burma, where they are apt to picture a
+Chinese fort as a structure seriously built in some accordance with
+modern methods of fortification.
+
+I was given a comfortable room in a large inn already well filled with
+travellers. All treated me with pleasant courtesy. They were at supper
+when I entered the room, and they invited me to share their food. They
+gave me the best table to myself, and after supper they crowded into
+another room in order to let me have the room to myself.
+
+Next day we continued along the sandy bed of the river, which was here
+more than a mile in width. The river itself, shrunk now into its
+smallest size, flowed in a double stream down the middle. Then we left
+the river, and rode along the high bank flanking the valley. All paved
+roads had ended at Tengyueh, and the track was deeply cut and jagged by
+the rains. At one point in to-day's journey the road led up an almost
+vertical ascent to a narrow ledge or spur at the summit, and then fell
+as steeply into the plain again. It was a short-cut, that, as you would
+expect in China, required five times more physical effort to compass
+than did the longer but level road which it was intended to save. So
+narrow is the ridge that the double row of open sheds leaves barely room
+for pack mules to pass. The whole traffic on the caravan route to Burma
+passes by this spot. The long bamboo sheds with their grass roofs are
+divided into stalls, where Shan women in their fantastic turbans, with
+silver bracelets and earrings, their lips and teeth stained with
+betel-juice, sit behind the counters of raised earth, and eagerly
+compete for the custom of travellers. More than half the women had
+goitre. Before them were laid out the various dishes. There were pale
+cuts of pork, well soaked in water to double their weight, eggs and
+cabbage and salted fish, bean curds, and a doubtful tea flavoured with
+camomile and wild herbs. There were hampers of coarse grass for the
+horses, and wooden bowls of cooked rice for the men, while hollow
+bamboos were used equally to bring water from below, to hold sheaves of
+chopsticks where the traveller helped himself, and to receive the cash.
+Trade was busy. Muleteers are glad to rest here after the climb, if only
+to enjoy a puff of tobacco from the bamboo-pipe which is always carried
+by one member of the party for the common use of all.
+
+Descending again into the river valley, I rode lazily along in the sun,
+taking no heed of my men, who were soon separated from me. The broad
+river-bed of sand was before me as level as the waters of a lake. As I
+was riding slowly along by myself, away from all guard, I saw
+approaching me in the lonely plain a small body of men. They were moving
+quickly along in single file, and we soon met and passed each other.
+They were three Chinese Shan officers on horseback, dressed in Chinese
+fashion, and immediately behind them were six soldiers on foot, who I
+saw were Burmese or Burmese Shans. They were smart men, clad in loose
+jerseys and knickerbockers, with sun-hats and bare legs, and they
+marched like soldiers. Cartridge-belts were over their left shoulders,
+and Martini-Henry rifles, carried muzzle foremost, on their right. I
+took particular note of them because they were stepping in admirable
+order, and, though small of stature, I thought they were the first armed
+men I had met in all my journey across China who could without shame be
+presented as soldiers in any civilised country.
+
+They passed me, but seemed struck by my appearance; and I had not gone a
+dozen yards before they all stopped by a common impulse, and when I
+looked back they were still there in a group talking, with the officers'
+horses turned towards me; and it was very evident I was the subject of
+their conversation. I was alone at the time, far from all my men,
+without weapon of any kind. I was dressed in full Chinese dress and
+mounted on an unmistakably Chinese pony. I rode unconcernedly on, but I
+must confess that I did not feel comfortable till I was assured that
+they did not intend to obtrude an interview upon me. At length, to my
+relief, the party continued on its way, while I hurried on to my
+coolies, and made them wait till my party was complete. I was probably
+alarmed without any reason. But it was not till I arrived in Burma that
+I learnt that this was the armed escort of the outlawed Wuntho Sawbwa,
+the dacoit chief who has a price set on his head. The soldiers' rifles
+and cartridge-belts had been stripped from the dead bodies of British
+sepoys, killed on the frontier in the Kachin Hills.
+
+My men, when we were all together again, indicated to me by signs that
+I would shortly meet an elephant, and I thought that at last I was about
+to witness the realisation of that story, everywhere current in Western
+China, of the British tribute from Burma. Sure enough we had not gone
+far when, at the foot of a headland which projected into the plain, we
+came full upon a large elephant picking its way along the margin of the
+rocks--a remarkable sight to my Chinese. Its scarlet howdah was empty;
+its trappings were scarlet; the mahout was a Shan. It was the elephant
+of the Wuntho Prince--a little earlier and I might have had the
+privilege of meeting the dacoit himself. The elephant passed
+unconcernedly on, and we continued down the plain of sand to the village
+of Ganai, where we were to stay the night.
+
+It was market-day in the town. A double row of stalls extended down the
+main street, each stall under the shelter of a huge umbrella. Japanese
+matches from Osaka were for sale here, and foreign nick-nacks, needles
+and braid and cotton, and Manchester dress stuffs mixed with the
+multitudinous articles of native produce. This is a Shan town, but large
+numbers of native women--Kachins--were here also with their ugly black
+faces, and coarse black fringes hiding their low foreheads. Far away
+from the town an obliging Shan had attached himself to us as guide. He
+was dressed in white cotton jacket and dark-blue knickerbockers, with a
+dark-blue sash round his waist. He was barelegged, and rode as the
+Chinese do, and as you would expect them to do who do everything _al
+reves_, with the heel in the stirrup instead of the toe. His turban was
+dark-blue, and the pigtail was coiled up under it, and did not hang down
+from under the skull cap as with the Chinese. When I rode into the town
+accompanied by the guide, all the people forsook the market street and
+followed the illustrious stranger to the inn which had been selected for
+his resting-place. It was a favourite inn, and was already crowded. The
+best room was in possession of Chinese travellers, who were on the road
+like myself. They were dozing on the couches, but what must they do when
+I entered the room but, thinking that I should wish to occupy it by
+myself, rise and pack up their things, and one after another move into
+another apartment adjoining, which was already well filled, and now
+became doubly so. Their thoughtfulness and courtesy charmed me. They
+must have been more tired than I was, but they smiled and nodded
+pleasantly to me as they left the room, as if they were grateful to me
+for putting them to inconvenience. They may be perishing heathen, I
+thought, but the average deacon or elder in our enlightened country
+could scarcely be more courteous.
+
+Ganai is a mud village thatched with grass. It is a military station
+under the command of the red-button Colonel Liu, whom I met in Tengyueh.
+The Colonel had earned his bottle of hair-dye. He had written to have me
+provided with an escort, and by-and-by the two officers who were to
+accompany me on the morrow came in to see me. As many spectators as
+could find elbow-room squeezed into my room behind them. Both were
+gentlemanly young fellows, very amiable and inquisitive, and keenly
+desirous to learn all they could concerning my honourable family. Their
+curiosity was satisfied. By the help of my Chinese phrase-book I gave
+them all particulars, and a few more. You see it was important that I
+should leave as favourable an impression as possible for the benefit of
+future travellers. More than one of my ancestors I brought to life again
+and endowed with a patriarchal age and a beard to correspond. As to my
+own age they marvelled greatly that one so young-looking could be so
+old, and when, in answer to their earnest question, I modestly confessed
+that I was already the unhappy possessor of two unworthy wives, five
+wretched sons, and three contemptible daughters, their admiration of my
+virtue increased tenfold.
+
+The officers left me after this, but till late at night I held _levees_
+of the townsfolk, our landlady, who was most zealous, no sooner
+dismissing one crowd than another pressed into its place. The courtyard,
+I believe, remained filled till early in the morning, but I was allowed
+to sleep at last.
+
+A large crowd followed me out of the town in the morning, and swarmed
+with me across the beautiful sward, as level as the Oval, which here
+widens into the country. No guest was ever sped on his way with a
+kindlier farewell. The fort is outside the town; we passed it on our
+left; it is a square inclosure of considerable size, inclosed by a mud
+wall 15 feet high; it is in the unsheltered plain, and presents no
+formidable front to an invader. At each of the four corners outside the
+square are detached four-sided watch-towers. No guns of any kind are
+mounted on the walls, and there are no sentries; one could easily
+imagine that the inclosure was a market-square, but imagination could
+never picture it as a serious obstacle to an armed entry into Western
+China. The river was well on our right. The plain down which we rode is
+of exceeding richness and highly cultivated, water being trained into
+the paddy-fields in the same way that everywhere prevails in China
+proper. Buffaloes were ploughing--wearily plodding through mud and water
+up to their middles. We were now among the Shans, and those working in
+the fields were Shans, not Chinese. Ganai, Santa, and other places are
+but little principalities or Shan States, governed by hereditary
+princelets or Sawbwas, and preserving a form of self-government under
+the protection of the Chinese. There are no more charming people in the
+world than the Shans. They are courteous, hospitable, and honest, with
+all the virtues and few of the vices of Orientals. "The elder brothers
+of the Siamese, they came originally from the Chinese province of
+Szechuen, and they can boast of a civilisation dating from twenty-three
+centuries B.C." So Terrien de Lacouperie tells us, who had a happy
+faculty of drawing upon his imagination for his facts.
+
+Under the wide branches of a banyan tree I made my men stop, for I was
+very tired, and while they waited I lay down for an hour on the grass
+and had a refreshing sleep. While I slept, the rest of the escort sent
+to "_sung_" me to Santa arrived. Within a few yards of my resting place
+there is a characteristic monument, dating from the time when Burma
+occupied not only this valley but the fertile territory beyond it, and
+beyond Tengyueh to the River Salween. It is a solid Burmese pagoda,
+built of concentric layers of brick and mortar, and surmounted with a
+solid bell-shaped dome that is still intact. It stands alone on the
+plain near a group of banyans, and its erection no doubt gained many
+myriads of merits for the conscience-stricken Buddhist who found the
+money to build it. All goldleaf has been peeled off the pagoda years
+ago.
+
+It was a picturesque party that now enfiladed into the wide stretch of
+sand which in the rainy season forms the bed of the river. Mounted on
+his white pony, there was the inarticulate European who had discarded
+his Chinese garb and was now dressed in the aesthetic garments of the
+Australian bush; there were his two coolies and Laotseng his boy, none
+of whom could speak any English, the two officers in their loose Chinese
+clothes, mounted on tough little ponies, and eight soldiers. They were
+Shans of kindly feature, small and nimble fellows, in neat
+uniforms--green jackets edged with black and braided with yellow, yellow
+sashes, and loose dark-blue knickerbockers--the uniform of the Sawbwa of
+Ganai. They were armed with Remington rifles, carried their cartridges
+in bandoliers, and seemed to be of excellent fighting material. All
+their accoutrements were in good order.
+
+Now we had to cross the broad stream, here running with a swift current
+over the sand, in channels of varying depths that are frequently
+changing. For the width of nearly half a mile at the crossing place the
+water was never shallower than to my knee, nor deeper than to my waist.
+We all crossed safely, but, to my tribulation, the soldier who was
+carrying my two boxes tripped in the deepest channel and let both boxes
+slip from the carrying pole into the water. All the notes and papers
+upon which this valuable record is founded were much damaged. But it
+might have been worse. I had a presentiment that an accident would
+happen, and had waded back to the channel and was standing by at the
+time. But for this the papers might have been floated down to the
+Irrawaddy and been lost to the world--loss irreparable!
+
+The sun was very hot. I laid out my things on the bank and dried them.
+Long and narrow dugouts, as light and swift as the string-test gigs of
+civilisation, paddled or poled, were gliding with extraordinary speed
+down the channel near the bank. Riding then a little way, we dismounted
+under a magnificent banyan tree, one of the finest specimens, I should
+think, in the world. Ponies and men were dwarfed into Lilliputians under
+the amazing canopy of its branches. A number of villagers, come to see
+the foreigner, were clambering like monkeys over its roots, which
+"writhed in fantastic coils" over half an acre. Their village was hard
+by, a poor array of mud houses; the teak temple to which we were
+conducted was raised on piles in the centre of the village. The temple
+was lumbered like an old curiosity shop with fragmentary gods and torn
+missals. Yet the ragged priest in his smirched yellow gown, and shaven
+head that had been a week unshaven, seemed to enjoy a reputation for no
+common sanctity, to judge by the reverence shown him by my followers,
+and the contemptuous indifference with which he regarded their
+obeisance. He was club-footed and could only hobble about with
+difficulty--an excuse he would, no doubt, urge for the disorder of his
+sanctuary. To me, of course, he was very polite, and gave me the best
+seat he had, while Laotseng prepared me a bowl of cocoa. Then we rode
+along the right bank of the river, but kept moving away from the stream
+till in the distance across the plain at the foot of the hills, we saw
+the Shan town of Santa, the end of our day's stage.
+
+Native women, returning from the town, were wending their way across the
+plain--lank overgrown girls with long thin legs and overhanging mops of
+hair like deck-swabs. They were a favourite butt of my men, who chaffed
+them in the humorous Eastern manner, with remarks that were, I am
+afraid, more coarse than witty. Kachins are not virtuous. Their customs
+preclude such a possibility. No Japanese maiden is more innocent of
+virtue than a Kachin girl.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE SHAN TOWN OF SANTA, AND MANYUEN, THE SCENE OF CONSUL MARGARY'S
+MURDER.
+
+
+It was market day in Santa, and the accustomed crowd gathered round me
+as I stood in the open square in front of the Sawbwa's yamen. I was hot
+and hungry, for it was still early in the afternoon, and the attentions
+of the people were oppressive. Presently two men pushed their way
+through the spectators, and politely motioning to me to follow them,
+they led me to a neighbouring temple, to the upper storey, where the
+side pavilion off the chief hall was being prepared for my reception. My
+quarters overlooked the main court; the pony was comfortably stabled in
+the corner below me. Nothing could have been pleasanter than the
+attention I received here. Two foreign chairs were brought for my use,
+and half a dozen dishes of good food and clean chopsticks were set
+before me. The chief priest welcomed me, whose smiling face was
+good-nature itself. With clean-shaven head and a long robe of grey, with
+a rosary of black and white beads hung loosely from his neck, the kind
+old man moved about my room giving orders for my comfort. He held
+authority over a number of priests, some in black, others in yellow, and
+over a small band of choristers. Religion was an active performance in
+the temple, and the temple was in good order, with clean matting and
+well-kept shrines, with strange pictures on the walls of elephants and
+horses, with legends and scrolls in Burmese as well as in Chinese.
+
+Towards evening the Santa Sawbwa, the hereditary prince (what a
+privilege it was to meet a prince! I had never met even a lord before in
+my life, or anyone approaching the rank of a lord, except a spurious
+Duke of York whom I sent to the lunatic asylum), the _Prince_ of Santa
+paid me a State call, accompanied by a well-ordered retinue, very
+different indeed from the ragged reprobates who follow at the heels of a
+Chinese grandee when on a visit of ceremony. The Sawbwa occupied one
+chair, his distinguished guest the other, till the chief priest came in,
+when, with that deep reverence for the cloth which has always
+characterised me, I rose and gave him mine. He refused to take it, but I
+insisted; he pretended to be as reluctant to occupy it as any Frenchman,
+but I pushed him bodily into it, and that ended the matter.
+
+A pleasant, kindly fellow is the Prince; even among the Shans he is
+conspicuous for his courtesy and amiability. He was a great favourite
+with the English Boundary Commission, and in his turn remembers with
+much pleasure his association with them. Half a dozen times, when
+conversation flagged, he raised his clasped hands and said "Warry
+_Ching, ching_!" and I knew that this was his foolish heathen way of
+sending greeting to the Chinese adviser of the Government of Burma. The
+Shan dialect is quite distinct from the Chinese, but all the princes or
+princelets dress in Chinese fashion and learn Mandarin, and it was of
+course in Mandarin that the Santa Sawbwa conversed with Mr. Warry. This
+Sawbwa is the son-in-law of the ex-Wuntho Sawbwa. He rules over a
+territory smaller than many squatters' stations in Victoria. He is one
+of the ablest of Shans, and would willingly place his little
+principality under the protection of England. He is thirty-five years of
+age, dresses in full Chinese costume, with pigtail and skullcap, is
+pock-marked, and has incipient goitre. He is polite and refined, chews
+betel nut "to stimulate his meditative faculties," and expectorates on
+the floor with easy freedom. I showed him my photographs, and he
+graciously invited me to give him some. I nodded cheerfully to him in
+assent, rolled them all up again, and put them back in my box. He knew
+that I did not understand.
+
+We had tea together, and then he took his leave, "Warry _Ching, ching_!"
+being his parting words.
+
+As soon as he had gone the deep drum--a hollow instrument of wood shaped
+like a fish--was beaten, and the priests gathered to vespers, dressed in
+many-coloured garments of silk; and, as evening fell, they intoned a
+sweet and mournful chant.
+
+The service over, all but the choristers entered the room off the
+gallery in which I was lying, where, looking in, I saw them throw off
+their gowns and coil themselves on the sleeping benches. Opium-lamps
+were already lit, and all were soon inhaling opium; all but one who had
+rheumatism, and who, lying down, stretched himself at full length, while
+a brother priest punched him all over in that primitive method of
+massage employed by every native race the wide world over.
+
+In the City Temple some festival was being celebrated, and night was
+turbulent with the beating of gongs and drums and the bursting of
+crackers. Long processions of priests in their yellow robes were passing
+the temple in the bright moonlight. Priests were as plentiful as
+blackberries; if they had been dressed in black instead of yellow, the
+traveller might have imagined that he was in Edinburgh at Assembly time.
+
+In the morning another escort of half a dozen men was ready to accompany
+me for the day's stage to Manyuen. They were in the uniform of the Santa
+Sawbwa, in blue jackets instead of green. They were armed with rusty
+muzzle-loaders, unloaded, and with long Burmese swords (_dahs_). They
+were the most amiable of warriors, both in feature and manner, and were
+unlike the turbaned braves of China, who, armed no better than these
+men, still regard, as did their forefathers, fierceness of aspect as an
+important factor in warfare (_rostro feroz ao enemigo!_)--an illusion
+also shared in the English army, where monstrous bearskin shakos were
+introduced to increase the apparent height of the soldiers. The officer
+in command was late in overtaking me. As soon as he came within
+horse-length he let down his queue and bowed reverently, and I could see
+pride lighting his features as he confessed to the honour that had been
+done him in intrusting such an honourable and illustrious charge to the
+mean and unworthy care of so contemptible an officer.
+
+The country before us was open meadow-land, pleasant to ride over, only
+here and there broken by a massive banyan tree. Herds of buffaloes were
+grazing on the hillsides. The mud villages were far apart on the margin
+of the river-plain, inclosed with superb hedges of living bamboo.
+
+Thirty li from Santa is the Shan village of Taipingkai. It was
+market-day, and the broad main street was crowded. We were taken to the
+house of an oil-merchant, who kindly asked me in and had tea brewed for
+me. Earthenware jars of oil were stacked round the room. The basement
+opened to the street, and was packed in a moment. "_Dzo! Dzo!_" (Go!
+go!) cried the master, and the throng hustled out, to be renewed in a
+minute by a fresh body of curious who had waited their turn.
+
+Then we rode on, over a country as beautiful as a nobleman's park, to
+the town of Manyuen. Every here and there by the roadside there are
+springs of fresh water, where travellers can slake their thirst. Bamboo
+ladles are placed here by devotees, whose action will be counted unto
+them for righteousness, for "he that piously bestows a little water
+shall receive an ocean in return." And, where there are no springs, neat
+little bamboo stalls with shelves are built, and in the cool shelter
+pitchers of water and bamboo cups are placed, so that the thirsty may
+bless the unknown hand which gives him to drink.
+
+Manyuen--or, to use the name by which it is better known to foreigners,
+Manwyne--is a large and straggling town overlooking the river-plain. It
+was here that Margary, the British Consular Agent, was murdered in 1875.
+I had a long wait at the yamen gate while they were arranging where to
+send me, but by-and-by two yamen-runners came and conducted me to the
+City Temple. It was the same temple that Margary had occupied. Many
+shaven-pated Buddhist priests were waiting for me, and received me
+kindly in the temple hall. A table was brought for me and the only
+foreign chair, and Laotseng was shown where to spread my bedding in the
+temple hall itself. And here I held _levees_ of the townspeople of all
+shades of colour and variety of feature--Chinese, Shan, Burmese, Kachin,
+and hybrid. The people were very amiable, and I found on all sides the
+same courtesy and kindliness that Margary describes on his first visit.
+But the crowd was quiet for only a little while; then a dispute arose.
+It began in the far corner, and the crowd left me to gather round the
+disputants. Voices were raised, loud and excited, and increased in
+energy. A deadly interest seemed to enthral the bystanders. It was easy
+to imagine that they were debating to do with me as they had done with
+Margary. The dispute waxed warmer. Surely they will come to blows? When
+suddenly the quarrel ceased as it had begun, and the crowd came smiling
+back to me. What was the dispute? The priests were cheapening a chicken
+for my dinner.
+
+The temple was built on teak piles, and teak pillars supported the
+triple roof. It was like a barn or lumber room but for the gilt Buddhas
+on the altar and the gilt cabinets by its side, containing many smaller
+gilt images of Buddha and his disciples. Umbrellas, flags, and the
+tawdry paraphernalia used in processions were hanging from the beams.
+Sacerdotal vestments of dingy yellow--the yellow of turmeric--were
+tumbled over bamboo rests. When the gong sounded for prayers, men you
+thought were coolies threw these garments over the left shoulder,
+hitched them round the waist, and were transformed into priests, putting
+them back again immediately after the service. Close under the tiles was
+a paper sedan-chair, to be sent for the use of some rich man in heaven.
+Painted scrolls of paper were on the walls, and on old ledges were torn
+books in the Burmese character, which a few boys made a pretence of
+reading. Where I slept the floor was raised some feet from the ground,
+and underneath, seen through the gaping boards--though previously
+detected by another of the senses--were a number of coffins freighted
+with dead, waiting for a fit occasion for interment. Heavy stones were
+placed on the lids to keep the dead more securely at rest. The lucky
+day for burial would be determined by the priests--it would be
+determined by them as soon as the pious relatives had paid sufficiently
+for their fears. So long, then, as the coffins remained where they were,
+they might be described as capital invested by the priests and returning
+heavy interest; removed from the temple, they ceased to be productive.
+
+As is the case in so many temples, there is an opium-room in the temple
+at the back of the gilded shrine, where priests and neophytes, throwing
+aside their office, can while away the licentious hours till the gong
+calls them again to prayers.
+
+In the early morning, while I was still lying in my pukai on the floor,
+I saw many women, a large proportion of whom were goitrous, come to the
+hall, and make an offering of rice, and kneel down before the Buddha. As
+time went on, and more kept coming in, small heaps of rice had collected
+in front of the chief altar and before the cabinets. And when the women
+retired, a chorister came round and swept with his fingers all the
+little heaps into a basket. To the gods the spirit! To the priests the
+solid remains!
+
+It was in Manyuen, as I have mentioned, that Margary met his death on
+February 21st, 1875. He had safely traversed China from Hankow to Bhamo,
+had been everywhere courteously treated by the Chinese and been given
+every facility and protection on his journey. He had passed safely
+through Manyuen only five weeks before, and had then written: "I come
+and go without meeting the slightest rudeness among this charming
+people, and they address me with the greatest respect." And yet five
+weeks later he was killed on his return! Even assuming that he was
+killed in obedience to orders issued by the cruel Viceroy at Yunnan
+City, the notorious Tsen Yue-ying, and not by a lawless Chinese
+train-band which then infested the district and are believed by Baber to
+have been the real murderers, the British Government must still be held
+guilty of contributory negligence. Margary, having passed unmolested to
+Bhamo, there met the expedition under Colonel Horace Browne, and
+returned as its forerunner to prepare for its entry into China by the
+route he had just traversed. The expedition was a "peace expedition"
+sent by the Government of Burma, and numbered only "fifty persons in
+all, together with a Burmese guard of 150 armed soldiers."
+
+Seven years before, an expedition under Major Sladen had advanced from
+Burma into Western China as far as Tengyueh; had remained in Tengyueh
+from May 25th to July 13th, 1868; had entered into friendly negotiations
+with the military governor and other Mohammedan officials in revolt
+against China; and had remained under the friendly protection of the
+Mohammedan insurgents who were then in possession of Western China from
+Tengyueh to near Yunnan City. "To what principles," it has been asked,
+"of justice or equity can we attribute the action of the British in
+retaining their Minister at the capital of an empire while sending a
+peaceful mission to a rebel in arms at its boundaries?"
+
+The Mohammedan insurrection was not quelled till the early months of
+1874. And less than a year later the Chinese learned with alarm that
+another peaceful expedition was entering Western China, by the same
+route, under the same auspices, and with the identical objects of the
+expedition which had been welcomed by the leaders of the insurrection.
+
+The Chinese mind was incapable of grasping the fact that the second
+expedition was planned solely to discover new fields for international
+commerce and scientific investigation. Barbarians as they are, they
+feared that England thereby intended to "foster the dying embers of the
+rebellion." No time for such an expedition, a peaceful trade expedition,
+could have been more ill-chosen. The folly of it was seen in the murder
+of Margary and the repulse of Colonel Horace Browne, whose expedition
+was driven back at Tsurai within sight of Manyuen. And this murder,
+known to all the world, is the typical instance cited in illustration of
+the barbarity of the Chinese.
+
+China may be a barbarous country; many missionaries have said so, and it
+is the fashion so to speak; but let us for a moment look at facts.
+During the last twenty-three years foreigners of every nationality and
+every degree of temperament, from the mildest to the most fanatical,
+have penetrated into every nook and cranny of the empire. Some have been
+sent back, and there has been an occasional riot with some destruction
+of property. But all the foreigners who have been killed can be numbered
+on the fingers of one hand, and in the majority of these cases it can
+hardly be denied that it was the indiscretion of the white man which was
+the exciting cause of his murder. In the same time how many hundreds of
+unoffending Chinese have been murdered in civilised foreign countries?
+An anti-foreign riot in China--and at what rare intervals do
+anti-foreign riots occur in its vast empire--may cause some destruction
+of property; but it may be questioned if the destruction done in China
+by the combined anti-foreign riots of the last twenty-three years
+equalled the looting done by the civilised London mob who a year or two
+ago on a certain Black Monday played havoc in Oxford-street and
+Piccadilly. "It is less dangerous," says one of the most accurate
+writers on China, the Rev. A. H. Smith, himself an American missionary,
+"for a foreigner to cross China than for a Chinese to cross the United
+States." And there are few who give the matter a thought but must admit
+the correctness of Mr. Smith's statement.
+
+On May 17th I was on the road again. The fort of Manyuen is outside the
+town, and some little distance beyond it the dry creek bends into the
+pathway at a point where it is bordered with cactus and overshadowed by
+a banyan tree. This is said to be the exact spot where Margary was
+killed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+CHINA AS A FIGHTING POWER--THE KACHINS--AND THE LAST STAGE INTO BHAMO.
+
+
+We now left the low land and the open country, the pastures and meadows,
+and climbed up the jungle-clad spurs which form the triangular dividing
+range that separates the broad and open valley of the Taiping, where
+Manyuen is situated, from the confined and tropical valley of the
+Hongmuho, which lies at the foot of the English frontier fort of
+Nampoung, the present boundary of Burma. Two miles below Nampoung the
+two rivers join, and the combined stream flows on to enter the Irrawaddy
+a mile or two above Bhamo.
+
+No change could be greater or more sudden. We toiled upwards in the
+blazing sun, and in two hours we were deep in the thickest jungle, in
+the exuberant vegetation of a tropical forest. We had left the valley of
+the peaceful Shans and were in the forest inhabited by other "protected
+barbarians" of China--the wild tribes of Kachins, who even in Burma are
+slow to recognise the beneficent influences of British frontier
+administration. Nature serenely sleeps in the valley; nature is
+throbbing with life in the forest, and the humming and buzzing of all
+insect life was strange to our unaccustomed ears.
+
+A well-cut path has been made through the forest, and caravans of mules
+laden with bales of cotton were in the early stages of the long
+overland journey to Yunnan. Their bells tinkled through the forest,
+while the herd boy filled the air with the sweet tones of his bamboo
+flute, breathing out his soul in music more beautiful than any bagpipes.
+Cotton is the chief article of import entering China by this highway.
+From Talifu to the frontier a traveller could trace his way by the
+fluffs of cotton torn by the bushes from the mule-packs.
+
+The road through the forest reaches the highest points, because it is at
+the highest points that the Chinese forts are situated, either on the
+road or on some elevated clearing near it.
+
+The forts are stockades inclosed in wooden palisades, and guarded by
+_chevaux de frise_ of sharp-cut bamboo. The barracks are a few native
+straw-thatched wooden huts. Perhaps a score or two of men form the
+garrison of each fort; they are badly armed, if armed at all. There are
+no guns and no store supplies. Water is trained into the stockades down
+open conduits of split bamboo. To anyone who has seen the Chinese
+soldiers at home in Western China, it is diverting to observe the
+credence which is given to Chinese statements of the armed strength of
+Western China. How much longer are we to persist in regarding the
+Chinese, as they now are, as a warlike power? In numbers, capacity for
+physical endurance, calm courage when well officered, and powers
+unequalled by any other race of mankind of doing the greatest amount of
+labour on the smallest allowance of food, their potential strength is
+stupendous. But they are not advancing, they are stationary; they look
+backwards, not forwards; they live in the past. Weapons with which their
+ancestors subdued the greater part of Asia they are loath to believe
+are unfitted for conducting the warfare of to-day. Should Japan bring
+China to terms, she can impose no terms that will not tend towards the
+advancement of China. Victories such as Japan has won over China might
+affect any other nation but China; but they are trifling and
+insignificant in their effect upon the gigantic mass of China. Suppose
+China has lost 20,000 men in this war, in one day there are 20,000
+births in the Empire, and I am perfectly sure that, outside the
+immediate neighbourhood of the seat of operations, the Chinese as a
+nation, apart from the officials, are profoundly ignorant that there is
+even a war, or, as they would term it, a rebellion, in progress.
+Trouble, serious trouble, will begin in China in the near future, for
+the time must be fast approaching when the effete and alien dynasty now
+reigning in China--the Manchu dynasty--shall be overthrown, and a
+Chinese Emperor shall rule on the throne of China.
+
+At a native village called Schehleh there is a likin-barrier. The yellow
+flag was drooping over the roadway in the hot sun. The customs officer,
+an amiable Chinese Shan, invited me in to tea, and brought his pukai for
+me to lie down upon. Like thousands of his countrymen, he had played for
+fortune in the Manila lottery. Two old lottery tickets and the prize
+list in Chinese were on one wall of his room, on the other were a number
+of Chinese visiting cards, to which I graciously permitted him to add
+mine.
+
+Soldiers accompanied me from camp to camp, Chinese soldiers from
+districts many hundreds of miles distant in China. Some were armed, some
+were unarmed, and there was equal confidence to be reposed in the one as
+in the other; but all were civil, and watched me with a care that was
+embarrassing.
+
+At the first camp beyond Schehleh the gateway was ornamented with
+trophies of valour. From two bare tree-trunks baskets of heads were
+hanging, putrefying in the heat. They were the heads of Kachin dacoits.
+And thus shall it be done with all taken in rebellion against the Son of
+Heaven, whose mighty clemency alone permits the sun to shine on any
+kingdom beyond his borders. Kachin villages are scattered through the
+forest, among the hills. You see their native houses, long bamboo
+structures raised on piles and thatched with grass, with low eaves
+sloping nearly to the ground. In sylvan glades sacred to the _nats_ you
+pass wooden pillars erected by the roadside, rudely cut, and rudely
+painted with lines and squares and rough figures of knives, and close
+beside them conical grass structures with coloured weathercocks. Split
+bamboos support narrow shelves, whereon are placed the various
+food-offerings with which is sought the goodwill of the evil spirits.
+
+The Kachin men we met were all armed with the formidable _dah_ or native
+sword, whose widened blade they protect in a univalvular sheath of wood.
+They wore Shan jackets and dark knickerbockers; their hair was gathered
+under a turban. They all carried the characteristic embroidered Kachin
+bag over the left shoulder.
+
+The Kachin women are as stunted as the Japanese, and are disfigured with
+the same disproportionate shortness of legs. They wear Shan jackets and
+petticoats of dark-blue; their ornaments are chiefly cowries; their legs
+are bare. Unmarried, they wear no head-dress, but have their hair cut in
+a black mop with a deep fringe to the eyebrows. If married, their
+head-dress is the same as that of the Shan women--a huge dark-blue
+conical turban. Morality among the Kachin maidens, a missionary tells
+me, is not, as we understand the term, believed to exist. There is a
+tradition in the neighbourhood concerning a virtuous maiden; but little
+reliance can be placed on such legendary tales. Among the Kachins each
+clan is ruled by a Sawbwa, whose office "is hereditary, not to the
+eldest son, but to the youngest, or, failing sons, to the youngest
+surviving brother." (Anderson.) All Kachins chew betel-nut and nearly
+all smoke opium--men, women and children. Goitre is very prevalent among
+them; in some villages Major Couchman believes that as many as 25 per
+cent. of the inhabitants are afflicted with the disease. They have no
+written language, but their spoken language has been romanised by the
+American missionaries in Burma.
+
+We camped within five miles of the British border at the Chinese fortlet
+of Settee, a palisaded camp whose gateway also was hung with heads of
+dacoits. A Chinese Shan was in command, a smart young officer with a
+Burmese wife. He was active, alert, and intelligent, and gave me the
+best room in the series of sheds which formed the barracks. I was made
+very comfortable. There were between forty and fifty soldiers stationed
+in the barracks--harmless warriors--who were very attentive. At
+nightfall the tattoo was beaten. The gong sounded; its notes died away
+in a distant murmur, then brayed forth with a stentorian clangour that
+might wake the dead. At the same time a tattoo was beaten on the drum,
+then a gun was fired and the noise ceased, to be repeated again during
+the night at the change of guard. All foes, visible and invisible, were
+in this way scared away from the fort.
+
+Hearing that I was a doctor, the commandant asked me to see several of
+his men who were on the sick list. Among them was one poor young fellow
+dying, in the next room to mine, of remittent fever. When I went to the
+bedside the patient was lying down deadly ill, weak, and emaciated; but
+two of his companions took him by the arms, and, telling him to sit up,
+would have pulled him into what they considered a more respectful
+attitude. In the morning I again went to see the poor fellow. He was
+lying on his side undergoing treatment. An opium-pipe was held to his
+lips by one comrade, while another rolled the pellet of opium and placed
+it heated in the pipe-bowl, so that he might inhale its fumes.
+
+In the morning the officer accompanied me to the gate of the stockade
+and bade me good-bye, with many unintelligible expressions of good will.
+His eight best soldiers were told off to escort me to the frontier,
+distant only fifteen li. It was a splendid walk through the jungle
+across the mountains to the Hongmuho. We passed the outlying stockade of
+the Chinese, and, winding along the spur, came full in view of the
+British camp across the valley, half-way up the opposite slope. By a
+very steep path we descended through the forest to the frontier fort of
+the Chinese, and emerged upon the grassy slope that shelves below it to
+the river.
+
+There are a few bamboo huts on the sward, and here the Chinese guard
+left me; for armed guards are allowed no further. I was led to the ford,
+my pony plunged into the swift stream, and a moment or two later I was
+on British soil and passing the Sepoy outpost, where the guard, to my
+great alarm, for I feared being shot, turned out and saluted me. Then I
+climbed up the steep hill to the British encampment, where the English
+officer commanding, Captain R. G. Iremonger, of the 3rd Burma Regiment,
+gave me a kind reception, and congratulated me upon my successful
+journey. He telegraphed to headquarters the news of my arrival. It was
+of no earthly interest to anybody that I, an unknown wanderer, should
+pass through safely; but it was of interest to know that anyone could
+pass through so easily. Reports had only recently reached the Government
+that Western China was in a state of disaffection; that a feeling
+strongly anti-foreign had arisen in Yunnan; and that now, of all times,
+would it be inexpedient to despatch a commission for the delimitation of
+the boundary. My quiet and uninterrupted journey was in direct conflict
+with all such reports.
+
+The encampment of Nampoung is at an elevation of 1500 feet above the
+river. It is well exposed on all sides, and has been condemned by
+military experts. But the law of fortifications which applies to any
+ordinary frontier does not apply to the frontier of China, where there
+is no danger whatsoever. The palisade is irregularly made, and is not
+superior, of course, to any round the Chinese stockades.
+
+The houses are built of bamboo, are raised on piles, and thatched with
+grass. A company of the 3rd Burma Regiment is permanently stationed here
+under an English officer, and consists of 100 men, who are either Sikhs
+or Punjabis, all of splendid stature and military bearing. A picket of
+six men under a non-commissioned native officer guards the ford, and
+permits no armed Chinese to cross the border.
+
+There are numbers of transport mules and ponies. In the creek there are
+plenty of fish; the rod, indeed, is the chief amusement of the officers
+who are exiled on duty to this lonely spot to pass three months in turn
+in almost uninterrupted solitude. There is a telegraph line into Bhamo,
+and it is at this point that connection will be made with the Imperial
+Chinese Telegraphs.
+
+At the ford from fifty to one hundred loaded pack-animals, mostly
+carrying cotton, cross into China daily. A toll of six annas is levied
+upon each pack-animal, the money so collected being distributed by the
+Government among those Kachin Sawbwas who have an hereditary right to
+levy this tribute. The money is collected by two Burmese officials, and
+handed daily to the officer commanding. No duty is paid on entering
+Burma. Chinese likin-barriers begin to harass the caravans at Schehleh.
+
+Beautiful views of the surrounding hills, all covered with "lofty forest
+trees, tangled with magnificent creepers, and festooned with orchids,"
+are obtained from the camp. All the country round is extremely fertile,
+yielding with but little labour three crops a year. Cultivation of the
+soil there is none. Fire clears the jungle, and the ashes manure the
+soil; the ground is then superficially scratched, and rice is sown.
+Nothing more is done. Every seed germinates; the paddy ripens, and,
+where one basketful is sown, five hundred basketfuls are gathered. And
+the field lies untouched till again covered with jungle. Thus is the
+heathen rewarded five-hundred-fold in accordance with the law of Nature
+which gives blessing to the labour of the husbandman inversely as he
+deserves it.
+
+In the evening the officer walked down with me to the creek, where I
+bathed in the shadow of the bank, in a favourite pool for fishing. As we
+crossed the field on our return, we met the two Burmese
+tribute-gatherers. They had occasion to speak to the officer, when,
+instead of standing upright like a stalwart and independent Chinaman,
+they squatted humbly on their heels, and, resting their elbows on their
+knees in an attitude of servility, conversed with their superior. How
+different the Chinaman, who confesses few people his superior, and none
+of any race beyond the borders of China!
+
+From Nampoung to Bhamo is an easy walk of thirty-three miles. This is
+usually done in two stages, the halting place being the military station
+of Myothit, which is fourteen miles from Nampoung. On leaving Nampoung,
+an escort of a lance-corporal and two soldiers was detailed to accompany
+me. They were Punjabis, men of great stature and warlike aspect; but
+they were presumably out of training, for they arrived at Myothit, limp
+and haggard, an hour or more after we did. There is an admirable road
+through the jungle, maintained in that excellent order characteristic of
+military roads under British supervision. My Chinese from time to time
+questioned me as to the distance. We had gone fifteen li when Laotseng
+asked me how much farther it was to Santien (Myothit). "Three li," I
+said. We walked ten li further. "How far is it now?" he asked. "Only
+five li further," I replied, gravely. We went on another six li, when
+again he asked me: "Teacher Mo, how many li to Santien?" "Only eight
+more li," I said, and he did not ask me again. I was endeavouring to
+give him information in the fashion that prevails in his own country.
+
+At Myothit we camped in the dak bungalow, an unfurnished cottage kept
+for the use of travellers. The encampment is on the outskirts of a
+perfectly flat plain, skirted with jungle-clad hills and covered with
+elephant grass. Through the plain the broad river Taiping flows on its
+muddy way to the Irrawaddy. One hundred sepoys are stationed here under
+a native officer, a Sirdar, Jemadar, or Subadar (I am not certain
+which), who called upon me, and stood by me as I ate my tiffin, and, to
+my great embarrassment, saluted me in the most alarming way every time
+my eye unexpectedly caught his. I confess that I did not know the
+gentleman from Adam. I mistook him for an ornamental head-waiter, and,
+as I regarded him as a superfluous nuisance, I told him not to stand
+upon the order of his going but go. I pointed to the steps; and he went,
+sidling off backwards as if from the presence of royalty. Drawing his
+heels together, he saluted me at the stair-top and again at the bottom,
+murmuring words which were more unintelligible to me even than Chinese.
+
+During the night our exposed bungalow was assailed by a fearful storm of
+wind and rain, and for a time I expected it to be bodily lifted off the
+piles and carried to the lee-side of the settlement. The roof leaked in
+a thousand places, rain was driven under the walls, and everything I had
+was soaked with warm water.
+
+Next day we had a pleasant walk into Bhamo, that important military
+station on the left bank of the Irrawaddy. We crossed the Taiping at
+Myothit by a bridge, a temporary and very shaky structure, which is
+every year carried away when the river rises, and every year renewed
+when the caravans take the road after the rains.
+
+Bhamo is 1520 miles by land from Chungking; and it is an equal distance
+further from Chungking to Shanghai. The entire distance I traversed in
+exactly one hundred days, for I purposely waited till the hundredth day
+to complete it. And it surely speaks well of the sense of responsibility
+innate in the Chinese that, during all this time, I never had in my
+employ a Chinese coolie who did not fulfil, with something to spare, all
+that he undertook to do. I paid off my men in Bhamo. To Laotseng I gave
+400 cash too many, and asked him for the change. At once with much
+readiness he ranged some cash on the table in the form of an abacus,
+and, setting down some hieroglyphics on a sheet of paper, he worked out
+a calculation, by which he proved that I owed _him_ 400 cash, and,
+therefore, the accounts were now exactly balanced. For my own expenses I
+gave him 1175 cash in Tengyueh and 400 more in Bhamo, so that my entire
+personal expenses between two points nine days distant from each other
+were rather more than _3s._ My entire journey from Shanghai to Bhamo
+cost less than _L20_ sterling, including my Chinese outfit. Had I
+travelled economically, I estimate that the journey need not have cost
+me more than _L14_. Had I carried more silver with me, I would still
+further have reduced the total cost of my tour. The gold I bought in
+Yunnan with my surplus silver, I sold in Burma for 20 per cent. profit,
+the rupees which I purchased in Tengyueh for _11d._ were worth _13d._ in
+Bhamo. For some curios which I purchased in the interior for _L2 5s._ I
+was offered when I reached civilisation _L14_. Without doubt the journey
+across China is the cheapest that can be done in all the world.
+
+I was sorry to say good-bye to my men, who had served me so faithfully.
+And I cannot speak more highly of the pleasure of my journey than to
+declare that I felt greater regret when it was finished than I ever felt
+on leaving any other country. The men all through had behaved admirably,
+and it is only fair to add that mine was the common experience of
+travellers in far Western China. Thus a very great traveller in China
+and Thibet (W. W. Rockhill), writing in the _Century_, April, 1894, on
+the discomforts of his recent journey, says:
+
+"But never a word of complaint from either the Thibetans or my Chinese.
+They were always alert, always good-tempered, always attentive to me,
+and anxious to contribute to my comfort in every way in their power. And
+so I have ever found these peoples, with whom I am glad to say, after
+travelling over 20,000 miles in their countries, I have never exchanged
+a rough word, and among whom I think I have left not one enemy and not a
+few friends."
+
+Two days after their arrival in Bhamo my three men started on their
+return journey to Talifu. They were laden with medicines, stores,
+newspapers, and letters for the mission in Tali, which for months had
+been accumulating in the premises of the American Mission in Bhamo, the
+missionary in charge, amid the multifarious avocations pertaining to his
+post, having found no time to forward them to their destination to his
+lonely Christian brother in the far interior. And, had I not arrived
+when I did, they could not have been sent till after the rains. A coolie
+will carry eighty pounds weight from Bhamo to Tali for _12s._; and I
+need hardly point out that a very small transaction in teak would cover
+the cost of many coolies. Besides, any expenditure incurred would have
+been reimbursed by the Inland Mission. My three men were pursued by
+cruel fate on their return; they all were taken ill at Pupiao. Poor
+"Bones" and the pock-marked coolie died, and Laotseng lay ill in the
+hotel there for weeks, and, when he recovered sufficiently to go on to
+Tali, he had to go without the three loads, which the landlord of the
+inn detained, pending the payment of his board and lodging and the
+burial expenses of his two companions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+BHAMO, MANDALAY, RANGOON, AND CALCUTTA.
+
+
+The finest residence in Bhamo is, of course, the American mission.
+America nobly supports her self-sacrificing and devoted sons who go
+forth to arrest the "awful ruin of souls" among the innumerable millions
+of Asia, who are "perishing without hope, having sinned without law."
+The missionary in charge told me that he labours with a "humble heart to
+bring a knowledge of the Saving Truth to the perishing heathen among the
+Kachins." His appointment is one which even a worldly-minded man might
+covet. I will give an instance of his methods. This devoted evangelist
+told me that a poor woman, a Kachin Christian, in whose welfare he felt
+deep personal interest, was, he greatly feared, dying from
+blood-poisoning at a small Christian village one hour's ride up the
+river from Bhamo; and he had little doubt that some surgical
+interference in her case would save her life. I at once offered to go
+and see her. I had received great kindness from many American
+missionaries in China, and it would give me great pleasure, I said, if I
+could be of any service.
+
+The missionary professed to be grateful for my offer, but, instead of
+arranging to go that afternoon, named seven o'clock the following
+morning as the hour when he would call for me to take me to the village.
+At the time appointed I was ready; I waited, but no missionary came.
+There was a slight drizzle, sufficient to prevent his going to the sick
+woman but not sufficient to deter him from going to market to the
+Irrawaddy steamer, where I accidentally met him. So far from being
+abashed when he saw me, he took the occasion to tell me what he will, I
+know, pardon me for thinking an inexcusable untruth. He had written, he
+said, to the poor woman telling her, dying as he believed her to be, to
+come down to Bhamo by boat to see me.
+
+In Bhamo I stayed in the comfortable house of the Deputy Commissioner,
+and was treated with the most pleasant hospitality. To my regret, the
+Deputy Commissioner was down the river, and I did not see him. He is
+regarded as one of the ablest men in the service. His rise has been
+rapid, and he was lately invested with the C.I.E.--there seems, indeed,
+to be no position in Burma that he might not aspire to. In his absence
+his office was being administered by the Assistant Commissioner, a
+courteous young Englishman, who gave me my first experience of the Civil
+Service. I could not but envy the position of this young fellow, and
+marvel at the success which attends our method of administering the
+Indian Empire. Here was a young man of twenty-four, acting as governor
+with large powers over a tract of country of hundreds of square miles--a
+new country requiring for its proper administration a knowledge of law,
+of finance, of trade, experience of men, and ability to deal with the
+conflicting interests of several native races. Superior to all other
+authorities, civil and military, in his district, he was considered fit
+to fill this post--and success showed his fitness--because a year or two
+before he had been one of forty crammed candidates out of 200 who had
+taken the highest places in a series of examinations in Latin, English,
+mathematics, &c. With the most limited experience of human life, he had
+obtained his position in exactly the same way that a Chinese Mandarin
+does his--by competitive examination in subjects which, even less than
+in the case of the Chinese, had little bearing upon his future work; and
+now, like a Chinese Mandarin, "there are few things he isn't."
+
+On the face of it no system appears more preposterous; in its results no
+system was ever more successful. The Assistant Commissioner early learns
+self-reliance, decision, and ability to wield authority; and he can
+always look forward to the time when he may become Chief Commissioner.
+
+There is a wonderful mixture of types in Bhamo. Nowhere in the world,
+not even in Macao, is there a greater intermingling of races. Here live
+in cheerful promiscuity Britishers and Chinese, Shans and Kachins, Sikhs
+and Madrasis, Punjabis, Arabs, German Jews and French adventurers,
+American missionaries and Japanese ladies.
+
+There are many ruined pagodas and some wooden temples which, however, do
+not display the higher features of Burmese architecture. There is a
+club, of course; a polo and football ground, and a cricket ground.
+Inside the fort, among the barracks, there is a building which has a
+double debt to pay, being a theatre at one end and a church at the
+other, the same athletic gentleman being the chief performer at both
+places. But, at its best, Bhamo is a forlorn, miserable, and wretched
+station, where all men seem to regard it as their first duty to the
+stranger to apologise to him for being there.
+
+The distinguished Chinese scholar and traveller, E. Colborne Baber, who
+wrote the classic book of travel in Western China, was formerly British
+Resident in Bhamo. He spoke Chinese unusually well and was naturally
+proud of his accomplishment. Now the ordinary Chinaman has this feature
+in common with many of the European races, that, if he thinks you cannot
+speak his language, he _will_ not understand you, even if you speak to
+him with perfect correctness of idiom and tone. And Baber had an
+experience of this which deeply hurt his pride. Walking one day in the
+neighbourhood of Bhamo, he met two Chinese--strangers--and began
+speaking to them in his best Mandarin. They heard him with unmoved
+stolidity, and, when he had finished, one turned to his companion and
+said, as if struck with his discovery, "the language of these foreign
+barbarians sounds not unlike our own!"
+
+In Bhamo I had the pleasure of meeting the three members of the Boundary
+Commission who represented us in some preliminary delimitation questions
+with the Chinese Government. A better choice could not have been made.
+M. Martini, a Frenchman, has been twenty years in Upper Burma, and is
+our D.S.P. (District Superintendent of Police). Mr. Warry, the Chinese
+adviser to the Burmese Government, is one of the ablest men who ever
+graduated from the Consular Staff in China; while Captain H. R. Davies,
+of the Staff Corps, who is on special duty in the Intelligence
+Department, is not only an exceptionally able officer, but is the most
+accomplished linguist of Upper Burma. These were the three
+representatives.
+
+I sold my pony in Bhamo. I was exceedingly sorry to part with it, for it
+had come with me 800 miles in thirty days, over an unusually difficult
+road, at great variations of altitude, and amid many changes of climate.
+And it was always in good spirit, brave and hardy, carrying me as surely
+the last twenty miles as it had the first twenty. Yet, when I came to
+sell it, I was astonished to learn how many were its defects. Its
+height, which was 12.3 in Nampoung, had shrunk three days later to 11.3
+in Bhamo. This one subaltern told me who came to look at the pony with
+the view, he said, of making me an offer. Another officer proved to me
+that the off foreleg was gone hopelessly; a third confirmed this
+diagnosis of his friend, and in a clinical lecture demonstrated that the
+poor beast was spavined, and that its near hind frog was rotten, "as all
+Chinese ponies' are," he added. One of the mounted constabulary, a smart
+officer, fortunately discovered in time that the pony was a roarer;
+while the Hungarian Israelite who lends help on notes of hand,
+post-obits, personal applications, and other insecurities, and is on
+terms of friendly intimacy with most of the garrison, when about to make
+an offer, found, to his great regret, that the pony's hind legs were
+even more defective than the fore. The end of it was that I had to sell
+the pony--for what it cost me. I am indebted to the Reverend Mr.
+Roberts, of the American Baptist Mission, for helping me to sell my
+pony. Mr. Roberts has a pious gift for buying ponies and selling
+them--at a profit. He offered me 40 rupees for my pony. I mentioned this
+offer at the Bhamo Club, when a civilian present at once offered me 50
+rupees for the pony; he did not know the pony, he explained, but--he
+knew Roberts.
+
+In a steamer of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company I came down the river
+from Bhamo to Mandalay. When I left the Commissioner's bungalow, the
+entire staff of the establishment and of some neighbouring bungalows
+assembled to do me honour, creeping up to me, and with deep humility
+carrying each an article of my possessions from my room down to the
+porch. There were the _dhobie_ and _bearer_, the waterman with his
+goatskin waterbag, the washerman who washed my blue Chinese garments as
+white as his own, the _syce_ who did not collect grass, the cook who
+sent me ten bad eggs in three days, and the Christian Madrasi, the
+laziest rascal in Bhamo, who early confessed to me his change of faith
+and the transformation it had effected in the future prospects of his
+soul. There was the Burmese watchman, and the English-speaking Burmese
+clerk, and the coolie who went to the bazaar for me, and many others.
+They lined the stairs as I came out, and placed their hands reverently
+to their foreheads when I passed by. It was pleasant to see such
+disinterested evidence of their good will, and my only regret was that I
+could not reward them according to their deserts. But to the Chinese
+coolie who was grinning to see my paltry outfit carried by so many
+hands, and who gathered together all I possessed and swung off with it
+down past the temples to the steamer landing in the native city, I gave
+a day's pay, and cheerfully--though he then asked for more.
+
+In Mandalay I was taken to the club, and passed many hours there reading
+the home papers and wandering through its gilded halls. Few clubs in the
+world have such a sumptuous setting as this, for it is installed in the
+throne-room and chambers and reception-halls of the palace of King
+Theebaw.
+
+In the very centre of the building is a seven-storeyed spire,
+"emblematic of royalty and religion," which the Burmese look upon as the
+"exact centre of creation." The reception-hall at the foot of the
+throne is now the English chapel; the reading-room with its gilded dais
+where the Queen sat on her throne, with its lofty roof, its pillars of
+teak, and walls all ablaze with gilding, was the throne-room of
+Theebaw's chief Queen.
+
+Mandalay is largely Chinese, and on the outskirts of the city there is a
+handsome temple which bears the charming inscription, so characteristic
+of the Chinese, "enlightenment finds its way even among the outer
+barbarians."
+
+There is a military hospital with two nursing sisters, highly trained
+ladies from Bart.'s. Australians are now so widely distributed over the
+world that it did not surprise me to find that one of the two sisters
+comes from Melbourne.
+
+From Mandalay I went by train to Rangoon, where I lived in a pretty
+villa among noble trees on the lower slope of the hill which is crowned
+with the famous golden pagoda, the "Shway-dagon," the most sacred temple
+of Indo-China. We looked out upon the park and the royal lake. I early
+went to the Intelligence Department and saw Major Couchman. In his
+office I met the chief Chinese interpreter, a Chinaman with a rare
+genius for languages. He is a native of Fuhkien province, and, of
+course, speaks the Fuhkien dialect; he knows also Cantonese and
+Mandarin. In addition, he possesses French, Hindustani, Burmese, Shan,
+and Sanscrit, and, in an admirable translation which he has made of a
+Chinese novel into English, he frequently quotes Latin. Fit assistant he
+would make to Max Mueller; his services command a high salary.
+
+The Chinese in Rangoon are a predominating force in the prosperity of
+the city. They have deeply impressed their potentiality upon the
+community. "It seems almost certain," says a great authority, perhaps
+_the_ greatest authority on Burma--J. G. Scott (Shway Yoe)--"that in no
+very long time Burma, or, at any rate, the large trading towns of Burma,
+will be for all practical purposes absorbed by the Chinese traders, just
+as Singapore and Penang are virtually Chinese towns. Unless some
+marvellous upheaval of energy takes place in the Burmese character, the
+plodding, unwearying Chinaman is almost certainly destined to overrun
+the country to the exclusion of the native race."
+
+The artisans of Rangoon are largely Chinese, and the carpenters
+exclusively so. The Chinese marry Burmese women, and, treating their
+wives with the consideration which the Chinaman invariably extends to
+his foreign wife in a foreign country, they are desired as husbands even
+above the Burmans. Next to the British, the only indispensable element
+in the community is now the Chinese.
+
+The best known figure in Burma is the Reverend John Ebenezer Marks,
+D.D., Principal of the St. John's College of the S.P.G. Dr. Marks has
+been thirty-five years in Burma, is still hale and hearty, brimful of
+reminiscences, and is one of the most amusing companions in the world. I
+think it was he who converted King Theebaw to Christianity. His school
+is a curiosity. It is an anthropological institute with perhaps the
+finest collection of human cross-breeds in existence. It is away out
+beyond the gaol, in large wooden buildings set in extensive playgrounds.
+Here he has 550 students, all but four of whom are Asiatics of fifteen
+different nationalities--Chinese, Karens, Kachins, Shans, and a varied
+assortment of Hindoos and Malays, both pure and blended with the native
+Burmese. All the different races represented in Burma have intermarried
+with the native Burmese, and the resulting half-breeds have crossed
+with other half-breeds. Most of the better class Eurasian boys
+(European-Asian) are educated here, some being supported by their
+fathers, some not. The former Dr. Marks ingeniously calls after their
+mothers; the latter, who have been neglected, retain the names (when
+they are known), of their fathers. It is amusing to meet among the
+latter the names of so many brave Englishmen who, in the earlier days
+when morals had not attained the strictness that now characterises them,
+gallantly served their country in Burma.
+
+No woman in the world is more catholic in her tastes than the Burmese.
+She bestows her loves as variously as the Japanese. She marries with
+equal readiness Protestant or Catholic, Turk, Infidel, or Jew. She
+clings cheerfully to whichever will support her; but above all she
+desires the Chinaman. No one treats her so well as the Chinaman. If she
+is capable of experiencing the emotion of love for any being outside her
+own race, she feels it for the Chinaman, who is of a cognate race to her
+own, is hard-working, frugal, and industrious, permits her to live in
+idleness, and delights her with presents, loving her children with that
+affection which the Chinaman has ever been known to bestow upon his
+offspring. The Chino-Burmese is not quite the equal of his father, but
+he is markedly superior to the Burmese. The best half-caste in the East
+is, of course, the Eurasian of British parentage. Englishmen going to
+Burma are, as a rule, picked men, physically powerful, courageous,
+energetic, and enterprising; for it is the possession of these qualities
+which has sent them to the East, either for business or in the service
+of their country. And their Burmese companions--of course I speak of a
+condition of things which is gradually ceasing to exist--are all picked
+women, selected for the comeliness of their persons and the sweetness of
+their manners.
+
+After a stay of two or three weeks in Rangoon, I went round by the
+British India steamer to Calcutta. Ill fortune awaited me here. The
+night after my arrival I was laid down with remittent fever, and a few
+days later I nearly died. The reader will, I am sure, pardon me for
+obtruding this purely personal matter. But, as I opened this book with a
+testimony of gratitude to the distinguished surgeon who cut a spear
+point from my body, where nine months before it had been thrust by a
+savage in New Guinea, so should I be sorry to close this narrative
+without recording a word of thanks to those who befriended me in
+Calcutta.
+
+I was a stranger, knowing only two men in all Calcutta; but they were
+friends in need, who looked after me during my illness with the greatest
+kindness. A leading doctor of Calcutta attended me, and treated me with
+unremitting attention and great skill. To Mr. John Bathgate and Mr.
+Maxwell Prophit and to Dr. Arnold Caddy I owe a lasting debt of
+gratitude. And what shall I say of that kind nurse--dark of complexion,
+but most fair to look upon--whose presence in the sick room almost
+consoled me for being ill? Bless her dear heart! Even hydrochlorate of
+quinine tasted sweet from her fingers.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+[Illustration: CHINESE MAP OF CHUNGKING.]
+
+
+
+
+INDEX.
+
+
+  Adridge, Dr., of Ichang, 10
+
+  d'Amade, Capt., in Yunnan, 150
+
+  Ancestral worship, 67
+
+  Anderson, Dr. J., cited, 274, 277
+
+  Anpien, 79
+
+  Anti-foreign riots, 9, 54, 268
+
+  Arsenal in Yunnan, 175
+
+  Augustine mission, 6
+
+
+  Baber, E. C., cited, 51, 90, 239, 267;
+    in Yunnan, 149;
+    in Bhamo, 285;
+    on distances, 187
+
+  Ball, Dyer, cited, 113, 224
+
+  Baller, Rev. F. W., cited, 113
+
+  Banks and banking, 95, 96, 163, 164
+
+  Barrow, Sir John, cited, 101, 110, 191
+
+  Beraud, Pere, of Suifu, 63, 65
+
+  Bhamo (Singai), 279-287
+
+  Bible Christian mission, in Chaotong, 99;
+    in Tongchuan, 121
+
+  Blakiston, Capt., cited, 173
+
+  Blodget, Rev. Dr., cited, 123
+
+  Boell, M., of _Le Temps_, in Yunnan, 150
+
+  Bonvalot, G., in Yunnan, 149
+
+  Bridges, some notable, 26, 83, 85, 118, 186, 233, 240, 242
+
+  Broomhall, B., cited, 66, 67
+
+  Browne, Col. Horace, 246, 267, 268
+
+  Bugs in China and Spain, 55, 56
+
+  Burdon, Bishop, cited, 123
+
+
+  Cameron, Dr., missionary traveller, 213
+
+  Cantonese, 207;
+    in Australia, 222-224
+
+  Caravans of cotton, 226, 271
+
+  Carruthers, A. G. H., assistant commissioner of customs, Chungking, 51
+
+  Cash currency of China, 161, 162
+
+  Chairen, the policeman of China, 77, 190
+
+  Chang-chen Nien, Brigadier-General, Tengyueh, 181, 246
+
+  Chang Chi Tung, the viceroy, 3, 4
+
+  Chang-show-hsien, 33
+
+  Chang Yan Miun, the giant of Yunnan, 184, 185
+
+  Chaochow, 200
+
+  Chaotong, the city of, 97-116;
+    its converts, 178
+
+  Chehki, 137
+
+  Ch'en, merchant prince, 29, 30
+
+  Chennan-chow, 192
+
+  Chentu, city, 62;
+    river, 62
+
+  Chiang, telegraph clerk, Yunnan, 168
+
+  China Inland Mission, in Hankow, 6;
+    in Wanhsien, 27-29;
+    in Chungking, 49;
+    in Suifu, 65, 73, 75;
+    in Yunnan, 177;
+    in Tali, 213-216;
+    results in Yunnan province, 178;
+    in China generally, 180;
+    its teaching, 65-71
+
+  Chinese, in Australia, 222-224;
+    in Burma, 288-290
+
+  Chinese, avarice, 79;
+    benevolence, 29;
+    beauty of women, 13;
+    cards, visiting, 181, 182;
+    characters, reverence for, 170;
+    courtesy, 255;
+    desire to have children, 197, 198;
+    etiquette, 230;
+    friendliness, 140;
+    good nature, 117;
+    gratitude, 27, 28;
+    inaccuracy, 99;
+    indifference to pain, 104,
+      to sound, 74, 169;
+    irreverence, 195;
+    justification by works, 169;
+    kindness to children, 113, 290;
+    laughter, 195;
+    love at first sight, 153-155;
+    politeness, 196, 197, 201, 255;
+    respect for old age, 117, 198;
+    thoughtfulness, 189;
+    true felicity, 180;
+    wonderful memory, 167, 168
+
+  Chipatzu, 22
+
+  Chueh, telegraph operator and interpreter, 248
+
+  Chungking, city of, 34-39
+
+  Chuhsing-fu, 187
+
+  Clarke, Mr. G. W., missionary traveller, 213
+
+  Clarke, Marcus, cited, 210
+
+  Coal on the Yangtse, 32
+
+  Coffins in China, 92, 137, 265
+
+  Colquhoun, A. R., in Yunnan, 150
+
+  Conversion, instances of rapid, 179
+
+  Converts, in China, 5;
+    Wanhsien, 28;
+    Chungking, 49;
+    Suifu, 65;
+    Chaotong, 99;
+    Tongchuan, 121;
+    Yunnan City, 177;
+    Yunnan Province, 178, 179;
+    Talifu, 214
+
+  Cooke, G. W., cited, 46, 176
+
+  Coolies' enormous loads, 90, 91
+
+  Couchman, Major, cited, 274;
+    in Rangoon, 288
+
+  Crockery, 118, 119
+
+  Customs, China Inland (likin-barriers), 21, 48, 97, 118, 242, 272, 277
+
+  Customs, Imperial Maritime, 13, 25, 35-38
+
+
+  Davenport, Dr. Cecil, medical missionary, Chungking, 49
+
+  Davies, Capt. H. R., Bhamo, 285
+
+  Davis, Sir J. F., cited, 57
+
+  Dedeken, Pere, of Kuldja, 150
+
+  De Gorostarza, Pere, Provicaire in Yunnan, 172
+
+  De Guignes, cited, 140
+
+  Distances in China, 141, 278
+
+  Doctors in China, 107-110; mule-doctor, 145
+
+  Doolittle, Rev. Justus, cited, 69, 130, 170
+
+  Doudart de la Gree, in Yunnan, 149
+
+  Douglas, R. K., cited, 127
+
+  Dudgeon, Dr. J., cited, 112, 130
+
+  Du Halde, cited, 90, 108, 176
+
+  Dymond, Rev. Frank, missionary, Chaotong, 98, 99
+
+
+  Eclipse of the Sun, 125, 126
+
+  Edkins, Rev. Dr. J., cited, 130
+
+  Eitel, Rev. Dr. E. J., cited, 129
+
+  Excoffier, Pere, of Yunnan, 146
+
+
+  Famine in Chaotong, 99;
+    in Tongchuan, 127;
+    on the way to Yunnan, 137-144
+
+  Fan-yien-tsen, 82
+
+  Farrar, Ven. Archdeacon, cited, 191
+
+  Feng-hsiang, Gorge, 21, 30
+
+  Fengshui-ling, 240
+
+  Feng-tu-hsien, 33
+
+  Fenouil, Monseigneur, of Yunnan, 171, 172
+
+  Fraser, Consul E. H., Chungking, 45
+
+  Fuchou, 33
+
+  _Fungshui_, 157, 175
+
+  Fung-yen-tung, 205
+
+  Fu-to-kuan, fort of, 52
+
+
+  Ganai, Shan town, 254-256
+
+  Gates of a Chinese city, 174
+
+  Geary, H. Grattan, cited, 43
+
+  Giles, H. A., cited, 129
+
+  Gill, Mr. Hope, missionary, Wanhsien, 27
+
+  Gill, Capt. W., cited, 17, 90
+
+  Girls in China, 13, 14, 139, 140;
+    bought, 155;
+    sold, 100, 101;
+    price of, 100
+
+  Goitre, 101, 145, 155, 185;
+    its prevalence, 227, 228
+
+  Gold, on the Yangtse, 23;
+    in Yunnan, 158-160
+
+  Graham, Mr., missionary, Yunnan, 177, 219
+
+  Grosvenor Mission in Yunnan, 149
+
+  Guinness, Miss G., cited, 213
+
+
+  Haas, M., 42-44
+
+  Hankow, the city of, 3-8
+
+  Hanyang, 3
+
+  Heads of criminals, 192;
+    of dacoits, 273, 274
+
+  Hirth, Dr. F., Commissioner of Customs, 40
+
+  Hobson, H. E., cited, 31
+
+  Hokiangpu, 222
+
+  Hongmuho, 270, 275-277
+
+  Hosie, A. M., cited, 17;
+    in Yunnan, 149
+
+  Hsiakwan, 200, 219, 221
+
+  Hsintan rapids, 15
+
+  Huanglien-pu, 226;
+    goitre at, 228
+
+  Huc, Abbe, cited, 176
+
+
+  Iangkai, 144
+
+  Ichang, 9
+
+  Infanticide in China, 129, 130;
+    in Chaotong, 101;
+    in Tongchuan, 129
+
+  Inquirers at Wanhsien, 28;
+    Yunnan, 177;
+    Tali, 215
+
+  Iremonger, Capt. R. G., Nampoung, 275
+
+
+  Jensen, Mr. C., in Yunnan, 147;
+    experiences in China, 156, 157;
+    on distances, 187;
+    to construct line to Burma, 238
+
+  Jesuit Missionaries in China, 123, 173, 176
+
+  John, Rev. Dr. Griffith, cited, 130
+
+
+  Kachins ("protected barbarians"), 254, 259, 270, 273, 274
+
+  Kanhliang, Shan chief, 245
+
+  Kaw Hong Beng, Private Secretary to Viceroy, 4, 5
+
+  Kiangti, 117
+
+  Kong-shan, 141
+
+  Kueichow on the Yangtse, 18
+
+  Kuhtsing, its converts, 178
+
+  Kung Chao-yuan, Minister to Great Britain, 73
+
+  Kung-t'-an-ho, 33
+
+  Kweichou-fu, 21
+
+
+  Lacouperie, Terrien de, cited, 257
+
+  Lanchihsien, 60
+
+  Laokai, 148, 159
+
+  Laowatan river, 79; town, 85
+
+  Lay, G. T., cited, 13, 45
+
+  Leitoupo, 139
+
+  Lenz, F. G., in Yunnan, 150, 151
+
+  Li Han Chang, in Yunnan, 149
+
+  Li Hung Chang, 72, 149;
+    on opium, 46, 190
+
+  _Ling chi_, 69, 231, 232
+
+  Li Pi Chang, Telegraph Manager, Yunnan, 151-153, 181, 184
+
+  Li-Sieh-tai, of Tengyueh, 246
+
+  Little, A. J., cited, 13, 122;
+    in Chungking, 51
+
+  Little river, 40, 44, 52
+
+  Liu, Colonel, of Chinese Boundary Commission, 244, 245, 255
+
+  Liu, the Viceroy, 72
+
+  Lockhart, Dr. W., cited, 28, 130
+
+  Loh-Ta-Jen, Chentai at Ichang, 9
+
+  London Missionary Society, Hankow, 6;
+    Chungking, 49
+
+  Lorain, Pere, Procureur in Chungking, 50
+
+  Luchow, 60
+
+  Lu-feng-hsien, 186
+
+  Luho, 187
+
+
+  MacCarthy, Justin, cited, 210
+
+  MacGowan, Rev. Dr. D. J., cited, 130
+
+  Maire, Pere, of Tongchuan, 133
+
+  Mander, S. S., cited, 47, 191
+
+  Manyuen (Manwyne), 264-269
+
+  Marco Polo, cited, 238;
+    in Yunnan, 149
+
+  Margary, A. R., cited, 266;
+    in Yunnan, 149, 246;
+    his murder, 264-269
+
+  Marks, Rev. Dr. J. E., 289, 290
+
+  Martin, Rev. Dr. W. A. P., cited, 67, 170
+
+  Martini, M. (D.S.P.), in Bhamo, 285
+
+  Mason, Rev. G. L., cited, 28
+
+  Mateer, Rev. C. W., cited, 28, 140
+
+  Meadows, T. T., cited, 113, 154
+
+  Medhurst, Rev. W. H., cited, 87 (wrongly written "Meadows"), 197
+
+  Medhurst, Sir W. H., cited, 5, 45, 108
+
+  Medicines in China, 83, 107-110
+
+  Mekong river, 221, 233, 234
+
+  Mencius, cited, 198
+
+  Methodist Episcopalian Mission, 40, 54
+
+  Michie, A., cited, 124
+
+  Missionaries, success in China, 5;
+    numbers in Hankow, 6
+
+  Missions Etrangeres de Paris, 6, 64, 65, 105, 122, 146, 171
+
+  Mi Tsang Gorge, 17
+
+  Mohammedans, and opium, 112;
+    in Chaotong, 113, 114;
+    near Tongchuan, 128;
+    in Tali, 216;
+    insurrection, 145, 185, 187, 203;
+    superiority, 216;
+    the milkman, 217
+
+  Momien (Tengyueh), the city of, 243-249
+
+  Money, changing, 95;
+    remittance of, 95
+
+  Morgan, C. L., cited, 66, 70
+
+  Morphia, imported, 48, 49
+
+  Moule, Bishop, cited, 130
+
+  Moutot, Pere, Provicaire in Suifu, 63, 65
+
+  Muirhead, Rev. W., cited, 123
+
+  Mungtze, 148-150, 159
+
+  Myothit (Santien), 278, 279
+
+
+  Nampoung, encampment, 270, 275-278
+
+  Nantien, fort of, 250, 251
+
+
+  Opium, imports and exports of, 46-48;
+    in Hankow, 3;
+    in Chungking, 45;
+    in Suifu, 72, 73;
+    demoralising influence of, 41;
+    ---- refuge, Chungking, 41;
+    ---- ports, 33;
+    poisoning by, 111, 112, 212;
+    my chairbearers and, 94;
+    my coolie and, 219;
+    appeal for suppression, 190, 191
+
+  d'Orleans, Prince Henri, cited, 148;
+    in Yunnan, 149
+
+
+  Parricide in China, 69
+
+  Pearson, Prof. C. H., cited, 186, 224
+
+  _Peking Gazette_, cited, 53, 169, 231
+
+  Pen, telegraph manager, Tengyueh, 244
+
+  Peng Yue-lin, high commissioner, cited, 192
+
+  Pidgin-English, 3, 9, 18
+
+  Piercy, Rev. G., cited, 191
+
+  Ping-shan-pa, 13
+
+  Pits for the dead, 133
+
+  Plague, bubonic, in Yunnan, 213
+
+  Pollard, Rev. S., missionary, Tongchuan, 121
+
+  Poppy, 37, 57, 78, 84, 118, 142;
+    surreptitiously grown, 46
+
+  Post-offices, 95, 96
+
+  Prisons in China, 209-211
+
+  Punishments in China, 103, 104, 136, 239
+
+  Pupeng, 193
+
+  Pupiao, 236;
+    my men die at, 281
+
+
+  Reade, Charles, cited, 209
+
+  Reed, Miss M., cited, 191
+
+  Reid, Rev. G., cited, 41, 192
+
+  "Rice Christians," 6
+
+  Roberts, Rev. Mr., missionary, Bhamo, 286
+
+  Rockhill, W. W., cited, 280, 281
+
+
+  St. Thomas, visit to Suifu, 65
+
+  Salween river, 237-240
+
+  Santa, Shan town, 259-263
+
+  Schehleh, 272, 277
+
+  Scott, J. G., cited, 287, 289
+
+  Sengki-ping, 84
+
+  Settee, fort of, 274, 275
+
+  Shachiaokai, 192
+
+  Shang-kwan, 204
+
+  Shans, 240, 252, 254, 256-269
+
+  Shih-pao-chai, 32
+
+  Shuichai, 234
+
+  Shweli river, 242
+
+  Silver in Yunnan, 161, 163;
+    in Tengyueh, 249
+
+  Singai (Bhamo), 218
+
+  Sladen, Major, 267
+
+  Small feet, 14, 101, 153
+
+  Small-pox, 212, 213
+
+  Smith, Rev. A. H., cited, 41, 269
+
+  Smith, Rev. John, missionary, Talifu, 202, 209, 214, 219
+
+  Smith, Mr. Stanley P., his rapid conversion of a Chinaman, 279
+
+  Soldiers, their weapons, 234, 241, 249;
+    fierceness of aspect, 263;
+    courage, 271
+
+  "Squeezing" in China, 151, 152
+
+  Stead, W. T., cited, 152
+
+  Suicide by opium, 111;
+    land of, 111, 112
+
+  Suifu, the city of, 62-75
+
+  Sutherland, Rev. Dr. A., cited, 123, 173
+
+  Swinburne, A. C., cited, 14
+
+  Szechuen, "country of the clouds," 82;
+    population, 186;
+    contrasted with Yunnan, 85-88;
+    Catholic stronghold, 64
+
+
+  Taipingkai, Shan town, 263
+
+  Taiping-pu, 226
+
+  Taiping river, 246, 250, 252, 258, 278, 279
+
+  Tak-wan-hsien, 92, 94, 96
+
+  Tak-wan-leo, 92
+
+  Talichao, 234
+
+  Talifu, the city of, 202-219;
+    its converts, 178
+
+  Tanto, 82
+
+  Taoshakwan, 86
+
+  Tao[=u]en, 116
+
+  Tawantzu, 92
+
+  Taylor, Rev. Dr. J. Hudson, cited, 46, 67, 68, 70, 179;
+    on opium, 46;
+    on ancestral worship, 67;
+    Chinese in lake of fire, 67, 68
+
+  Tchih-li-pu, 86
+
+  Telegraph, in Yunnan, 147;
+    in Tali, 208;
+    in Yungchang, 234;
+    in Tengyueh, 243-248;
+    system of telegraphing Chinese characters, 166-168;
+    telegraphic transfers, 95, 159
+
+  Tengyueh (Momien), the city of, 243-249
+
+  "Term question," 122, 123
+
+  Theatre in Tengyueh, 246, 247
+
+  Tomme, M., in Yunnan, 150
+
+  Tongchuan, the city of, 120-134;
+    its converts, 178
+
+  Tonquin, 148, 149
+
+  Tragedy of the Tali valley, 220, 221
+
+  Tremberth, Rev. Mr., missionary, Chaotong, 101
+
+  Tsen Yue-ying, the cruel Viceroy, 267
+
+  Tung-lo-hsia, 35
+
+  Turner, Rev. F. Storrs, cited, 46
+
+  Tu Wen Hsiu, the Mohammedan Sultan, 203
+
+
+  Ullathorne, Bishop, cited, 210
+
+
+  Vial, Pere, of Yunnan, 150
+
+  Voltaire, cited, 173
+
+  Von Richthofen, cited, 90
+
+
+  Wanhsien, the city of, 24-31
+
+  Warren, Consul Pelham, of Hankow, 8
+
+  Warry, Mr., Chinese adviser to the Burmese Government, 229, 261, 285
+
+  Wherry, Rev. J., cited, 123
+
+  Widows, virtuous, 52, 53, 78
+
+  Williams, Rev. Dr. S. Wells, cited, 47, 110, 126, 197, 267
+
+  Williamson, Rev. Dr. A. W., cited, 70, 223
+
+  Wong, banker in Yunnan, 163-166
+
+  Wong-wen-shao, the Viceroy, 180, 181
+
+  Woodin, Rev. S. F., cited, 66, 179
+
+  Woolston, Miss S. H., cited, 14
+
+  Wuchang, 3
+
+  Wuntho Sawbwa, 245, 253, 254
+
+  Wushan Gorge, 20
+
+  Wushan-hsien, 20
+
+
+  Yangki river, 221
+
+  "_Yang kweitze_", 18, 25, 228, 229
+
+  Yanglin, 145
+
+  Yangpi, 224
+
+  Yang Yu-ko, Imperialist general, 203, 204
+
+  Yeh, of the Chinese Boundary Commission, 224
+
+  Yehtan rapid, 19
+
+  Yenwanshan, 193
+
+  Ying-wu-kwan, 193
+
+  Yuenchuan, 60
+
+  Yungchang, the city of, 234, 235
+
+  Yunnan, the city of, 147-183;
+    its converts, 177;
+    the province of, 85-88;
+    its converts, 178
+
+  Yunnanhsien, 196
+
+  Yunnan Yeh, 193
+
+[Illustration: ROUGH SKETCH-MAP OF CHINA AND BURMA SHOWING AUTHOR'S
+ROUTE FROM SHANGHAI TO RANGOON.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Typographical errors corrected in text:                    |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Page vii: Hankow replaced with Ichang in chapter title     |
+    | Page  ix: Teng-yueh replaced with Tengyueh                 |
+    | Page   8: "My Chinese Passport" replaced with "The         |
+    |            Author's Chinese Passport"                      |
+    | Page   9: Kweichou replaced with Kweichow                  |
+    | Page  22: Kueichou replaced with Kweichou                  |
+    | Page  29: mid-day replaced with midday; mission replaced   |
+    |           with missionary                                  |
+    | Page  30: Kueichou replaced with Kweichou                  |
+    | Page  32: hill-sides replaced with hillsides               |
+    | Page  33: tow-line replaced with towline                   |
+    | Page  34: Tung-to-hsia replaced with Tung-lo-hsia          |
+    | Page  44: Chung-king replaced with Chungking               |
+    | Page  47: Fuh-kien replaced with Fuhkien                   |
+    | Page  57: rape seed replaced with rape-seed                |
+    | Page  58: mainroad replaced with main road                 |
+    | Page  61: Comma after "Chinese, who," removed              |
+    | Page  62: tow-rope replaced with towrope                   |
+    | Page  63: Tali-fu replaced with Talifu                     |
+    | Page  64: trop materialistes italicised                    |
+    | Page  69: ling-chi replaced with Ling chi                  |
+    | Page  76: Semi-colon following Chaotong replaced with      |
+    |           comma                                            |
+    | Page  77: Takwan-hsien replaced with Tak-wan-hsien, twice  |
+    | Page  78: Comma after "yellow rape-seed" removed;          |
+    |           half-penny replaced with halfpenny               |
+    | Page  91: Chen-tu replaced with Chentu                     |
+    | Page  96: ill paved replaced with ill-paved                |
+    | Page  97: Semi-colon following Chaotong replaced with      |
+    |           comma                                            |
+    | Page 105: Etrangeres replaced with Etrangeres              |
+    | Page 111: trival replaced with trivial                     |
+    | Page 118: main-road replaced with main road                |
+    | Page 125: Semi-colon after Tongchuan replaced with comma   |
+    | Page 139: Comma after "other heathen country" replaced     |
+    |           with full stop                                   |
+    | Page 142: Kongshan replaced with Kong-shan                 |
+    | Page 149: Chung-king corrected to Chungking                |
+    | Page 150: Yesutang replaced with Yesu-tang                 |
+    | Page 154: Double quotes inside double quotes replaced with |
+    |           single quotes (single quotes used for the last   |
+    |           reported speech in the story)                    |
+    | Page 155: Single quote after "pretty safe" added;          |
+    |           thick-neck replaced with thickneck               |
+    | Page 156: Momein replaced with Momien                      |
+    | Page 161: uncivilized and civilization replaced with       |
+    |           uncivilised and civilisation                     |
+    | Page 162: Mexican Dollar replaced with Mexican dollar      |
+    | Page 164: Chung-king replaced with Chungking               |
+    | Page 172: Muntze replaced with Mungtze                     |
+    | Page 184: Tong-chuan replaced with Tongchuan               |
+    | Page 186: Tai-ping replaced with Taiping                   |
+    | Page 190: Full stop added after "in rags and barefoot"     |
+    | Page 192: Tali replaced with Talifu                        |
+    | Page 193: a'accord replaced with d'accord                  |
+    | Page 197: Question mark after "...that of a doctor?"       |
+    |           replaced with full stop                          |
+    | Page 199: mid-day replaced with midday                     |
+    | Page 200: Yunnen replaced with Yunnan                      |
+    | Page 204: Hsia-kwan replaced with Hsiakwan, twice          |
+    | Page 206: Commas added after "we replied" and "(you to go  |
+    |           on)"                                             |
+    | Page 208: Mahommedan replaced with Mohammedan              |
+    | Page 219: Yung-chang replaced with Yungchang               |
+    | Page 220: Tali-fu replaced with Talifu                     |
+    | Page 230: splended replaced with splendid                  |
+    | Page 233: Full stop removed after Rivers; tea house        |
+    |           replaced with teahouse                           |
+    | Page 236: inn-keeper replaced with innkeeper               |
+    | Page 238: Laotseng replaced with Laotseng                  |
+    | Page 246: Yung-chang replaced with Yungchang; "and other"  |
+    |           replaced with "and another"                      |
+    | Page 249: Yunnaness replaced with Yunnanese                |
+    | Page 259: Liliputians replaced with Lilliputians           |
+    | Page 270: Full stops after Power and Kachins removed       |
+    | Page 294: Chunking replaced with Chungking                 |
+    | Page 295: Fenghsiang replaced with Feng-hsiang             |
+    | Page 296: Lingchi replaced with Ling chi                   |
+    | Page 298: Subtopics under entry "Soldiers" separated with  |
+    |           semi-colons                                      |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Inconsistent capitalisations between the Table of          |
+    | Contents and individual chapter titles have been retained. |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Discrepancies between illustration captions and those in   |
+    | the list of illustrations retained, unless noted above.    |
+    | As the illustrations were not included with the original   |
+    | scans but were located during processing of this book,     |
+    | where there have been small differences the List of        |
+    | Illustrations has generally been preferred.                |
+    |                                                            |
+    | One instance of Taouen with an unclear mark above the      |
+    | /u/, one instance of Tao[=u]en. This has been left as is.  |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Punctuation of standard abbreviations (Mr., Mrs., per      |
+    | cent., s. ) has been standardised.                         |
+    |                                                            |
+    | Pounds, shillings and pence have all been italicised.      |
+    |                                                            |
+    +------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's An Australian in China, by George Ernest Morrison
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