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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 54402 ***
+
+A BROKEN JOURNEY
+
+Wanderings from the Hoang-Ho yo the Island of Saghalien and the Upper
+Reaches of The Amur River
+
+By Mary Gaunt
+
+Author Of “Alone In West Africa”
+
+“A Woman In China,” Etc.
+
+London
+
+T. Werner Laurie Ltd.
+
+1919
+
+
+[Illustration: 0001]
+
+[Illustration: 0008]
+
+[Illustration: 0009]
+
+
+
+TO MY
+
+SISTER AND BROTHERS
+
+IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE DAYS BEFORE WE
+
+WANDERED
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+I have to thank my friend Mrs Lang for the drastic criticism which once
+more has materially helped me to write this book. Other people also have
+I to thank, but so great was the kindness I received everywhere I
+can only hope each one will see in this book some token of my sincere
+gratitude.
+
+Mary Gaunt.
+
+Mary Haven, New Eltham, Kent.
+
+
+
+
+
+A BROKEN JOURNEY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--THE LURE OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+Each time I begin a book of travel I search for the reasons that sent
+me awandering. Foolishness, for I ought to know by this time the
+wander fever was born in my blood; it is in the blood of my sister and
+brothers. We were brought up in an inland town in Victoria, Australia,
+and the years have seen us roaming all over the world. I do not think
+any of us has been nearer the North Pole than Petropaulovski, or to the
+South Pole than Cape Horn--children of a sub-tropical clime, we do not
+like the cold--but in many countries in between have we wandered.
+The sailors by virtue of their profession have had the greater
+opportunities, but the other five have made a very good second best of
+it, and always there has been among us a very understanding sympathy
+'with the desire that is planted in each and all to visit the remote
+corners of the earth.
+
+Anybody can go on the beaten track. It only requires money to take
+a railway or steamer ticket, and though we by no means despise
+comfort--indeed, because we know something of the difficulties that
+beset the traveller beyond the bounds of civilisation, we appreciate it
+the more highly--still there is something else beyond comfort in life.
+Wherein lies the call of the Unknown? To have done something that no
+one else has done--or only accomplished with difficulty? Where lies
+the charm? I cannot put it into words--only it is there, the “something
+calling--beyond the mountains,” the “Come and find me” of Kipling. That
+voice every one of the Gaunts hears, and we all sympathise when another
+one goes.
+
+And that voice I heard loudly in China.
+
+“Come and find me! Come and find me!”
+
+The livelong day I heard it, and again and again and yet again I tried
+to stifle it, for you who have read my _Woman in China_ will know that
+travelling there leaves much to be desired. To say it is uncomfortable
+is to put it in the mildest terms. Everything that I particularly
+dislike in life have I met travelling in China; everything that repells
+me; and yet, having unwisely invested $10 (about £1) in an atlas of
+China, the voice began to ring in my ears day and night.
+
+I was living in an American Presbyterian mission station in the
+western suburb of the walled town of Pao Ting Fu, just beyond European
+influence, the influence of the Treaty Ports and the Legation quarter of
+Peking. I wanted to see something of the real China, to get material for
+a novel--not a novel concerning the Chinese; for I have observed that
+no successful novel in English deals with anybody but the British or
+the Americans; the other peoples come in as subordinates--and the
+local colour was best got on the spot. There was plenty in Pao Ting Fu,
+goodness knows. It had suffered severely in the Boxer trouble. In the
+northern suburb, just about a mile from where we lived, was a tomb,
+or monument rather, that had been raised to the missionaries massacred
+then. They have made a garden plot where those burning houses stood,
+they have planted trees and flowers, and set up memorial tablets in the
+Chinese style, and the mission has moved to the western suburb, just
+under the frowning walls of the town, and--is doubly strong. A God-given
+fervour, say the missionaries, sends them forth.'Who am I to judge? But
+I see that same desire to go forth in myself, that same disregard of
+danger, when it is not immediate--I know I should be horribly scared
+if it materialised--and I cannot claim for myself it is God-given, save
+perhaps that all our desires are God-given.
+
+So there in the comfortable mission station I studied the local colour,
+corrected my last book of China, and instead of planning the novel,
+looked daily at the atlas of China, till there grew up in me a desire
+to cross Asia, not by train to the north as I had already done, as
+thousands of people used to do every year, but by the caravan route,
+across Shensi and Kansu and Sinkiang to Andijan in Asiatic Russia, the
+terminus of the Caspian Railway. Thousands and thousands of people go
+slowly along that way too, but the majority do not go all the way, and
+they do not belong to the class or nation whose comings and goings are
+recorded. In fact, you may count on the fingers of one hand the people
+who know anything of that road. The missionaries, particularly the
+womenkind, did not take very cheerful view's about it.
+
+“If I wanted to die,” said one woman, meeting me as I was going round
+the compound one day in the early spring of 1914, “I would choose some
+easier way.”
+
+But the doctor there was keenly interested. He would have liked to
+have gone himself, but his duty kept him alongside his patients and his
+hospital in Pao Ting Fu, and though he pulled himself up every now and
+then, remembering I was only a woman and probably couldn't do it, he
+could not but take as great an interest in that map and ways and means
+as I did myself. Then there was Mr Long, a professor at the big Chinese
+college in the northern suburb--he was young and enthusiastic and as
+interested as Dr Lewis.
+
+He too knew something about travel in unknown China, for he had been one
+of the band of white men who had made their way over the mountains of
+Shansi and Shensi in the depths of winter to go to the rescue of the
+missionaries in Sui Te Chou and all the little towns down to Hsi An
+Fu at the time of the Revolution. Yes, he knew something of the
+difficulties of Chinese travel, and he thought I could do it.
+
+“The only danger would be robbers, and--well, you know, there mightn't
+be robbers.”
+
+But Peking--the Peking of the Legations--that, I knew, held different
+view's. I wrote to an influential man who had been in China over ten
+years, who spoke the language well, and he was against it.
+
+“I was very much interested” (wrote he) “to read of your intention to
+do that trek across country. You ask my opinion about it, but I can only
+give you the same advice that _Punch_ gave many years ago, and that is,
+_don't_. You must realise that the travelling will be absolutely awful
+and the cost is very great indeed. You have not yet forgotten your
+trip to Jehol, I hope, and the roughness of the road. The trip you
+contemplate will make the little journey to Jehol look like a Sunday
+morning walk in Hyde Park, particularly as regards travelling comfort,
+to say nothing about the danger of the journey as regards hostile tribes
+on the southern and western borders of Tibet. You will be passing near
+the Lolo country, and I can assure you that the Lolos are _not_ a set of
+gentlemen within the meaning of the Act. They are distinctly hostile to
+foreigners, and many murders have taken place in their country that have
+not been published because of the inability of the Chinese troops to
+stand up against these people. What the peoples are like farther north
+I do not know, but I understand the Tibetans are not particularly
+trustworthy, and it will follow that the people living on their borders
+will inherit a good many of their vices and few of their virtues.
+
+“If you have really made up your mind to go, however, just let me know,
+and I will endeavour to hunt up all the information that it is possible
+to collect as to the best route to take, etc., though I repeat I would
+not advise the journey, and the Geographical Society can go to the
+deuce.”
+
+This not because he despised the Geographical Society by any means, but
+because I had advanced as one reason for going across Asia the desire to
+win my spurs so and be an acceptable member.
+
+“My dear,” wrote a woman, “think of that poor young Brooke. The Tibetans
+cut his throat with a sharp stone, which is a pleasant little way they
+have.”
+
+Now the man's opinion was worth having, but the woman's is a specimen of
+the loose way people are apt to reason--I do it myself--when they deal
+with the unknown. The “poor young Brooke” never went near Tibet, and
+was murdered about a thousand miles distant from the route I intended
+to take. It was something as if a traveller bound to the Hebrides was
+warned against dangers to be met upon the Rhone.
+
+One man who had travelled extensively in Mongolia was strongly against
+the journey, but declared that “Purdom knew a great deal more about
+travelling in China” than he did, and if “Purdom” said I might got--well
+then, I might. Mr Purdom and Mr Reginald Farrer were going west to the
+borders of Tibet botanising, and one night I dined with them, and Mr
+Purdom was optimistic and declared if I was prepared for discomfort and
+perhaps hardship he thought I might go.
+
+So it was decided, and thereupon those who knew took me in hand and gave
+me all advice about travelling in China, how to minimise discomfort,
+what to take and what to leave behind. One thing they were all agreed
+upon. The Chinese, as a rule, are the most peaceable people upon earth,
+the only thing I had to fear was a chance band of robbers, and if I fell
+into their hands--well, it would probably be finish.
+
+“The Chinese are fiendishly cruel,” said my friend of Mongolian travel;
+“keep your last cartridge for yourself.”
+
+I intimated that a pistol was quite beyond me, that that way of going
+out did not appeal to me, and anyhow I'd be sure to bungle it.
+
+“Then have something made up at the chemist's and keep it always on your
+person. You do not know how desperately you may need it.”
+
+I may say here that these remarks made no impression upon me whatever.
+I suppose in most of us the feeling is strong that nothing bad
+could possibly happen. It happens to other people, we know, but to
+us--impossible! I have often wondered how near I could get to danger
+without feeling that it really threatened--pretty close, I suspect. It
+is probably a matter of experience. I cannot cross a London road with
+equanimity--but then twice have I been knocked down and rather badly
+hurt--but I gaily essayed to cross Asia by way of China, and would quite
+certainly as gaily try again did I get the chance. Only next time I
+propose to take a good cook.
+
+To some, of course, the unknown is always full of danger.
+
+The folks who walked about Peking without a qualm warned me I would die
+of indigestion, I would be unable to drink the water, the filth would be
+unspeakable, hydrophobia raged, and “when you are bitten, promptly cut
+deep into the place and insert a chloride of mercury tabloid.”
+
+That last warning made me laugh. It reminded me of the time when as a
+little girl, living in a country where deadly snakes swarmed--my eldest
+brother killed sixty in a week, I remember, in our garden--I used to
+think it would be extremely dangerous to go to Europe because there were
+there mad dogs, things we never had in Australia! I think it was the
+reference to hydrophobia and the chloride of mercury tabloid helped me
+to put things in their proper prospective and made me realise that I was
+setting out on a difficult journey with a possible danger of robbers;
+but a possible danger is the thing we risk every day we travel in a
+railway train or on an electric tramcar. I am always ready for possible
+risks, it is when they become probable I bar them, so I set about my
+preparations with a quiet mind.
+
+A servant. I decided I must have a tall servant and strong, because
+so often in China I found I had to be lifted, and I had suffered from
+having too small a man on my former journeys. The missionaries provided
+me with a new convert of theirs, a tall strapping Northern Chinaman, who
+was a mason by trade. Tsai Chih Fu, we called him--that is to say, he
+came of the Tsai family; and the Chih Fu--I'm by no means sure that I
+spell it right--meant a “master workman.” He belonged to a large firm of
+masons, but as he had never made a dollar a day at his trade, my offer
+of that sum put him at my service, ready to go out into the unknown. He
+was a fine-looking man, dignified and courteous, and I had and have the
+greatest respect for him. He could not read or write, of course. Now
+a man who cannot read or write here in the West we look upon with
+contempt, but it would be impossible to look upon Tsai Chih Fu with
+contempt. He was a responsible person, a man who would count in any
+company. He belonged to another era and another civilisation, but he
+was a man of weight. A master of transport in Babylon probably closely
+resembled my servant Tsai Chih Fu.
+
+[Illustration: 0027]
+
+My interpreter, Wang Hsien--that is, Mr Wang--was of quite a different
+order. He was little and slight, with long artistic hands, of the
+incapable artistic order, and he was a fool in any language; but good
+interpreters are exceedingly difficult to get. He used to come and see
+me every day for a fortnight before we started, and I must say my heart
+sank when the simplest remark, probably a greeting, or a statement as
+to the weather, was met with a “Repeat, please.” I found this was the
+invariable formula and it was not conducive to brisk conversation. On my
+way through the country things were apt to vanish before I had made
+Mr Wang understand that I was asking, and was really in search of,
+information. He had his black hair cut short in the progressive foreign
+fashion (it looked as if he had had a basin put on his head--a good
+large one--and the hair snipped off round), and he wore a long blue
+cotton gown buttoned to his feet. Always he spoke with a silly giggle.
+Could I have chosen, which I could not, he would have been about the
+very last man I should have taken on a strenuous journey as guide,
+philosopher and friend.
+
+And there was another member of the party, a most important member,
+without whom I should not have dreamt of stirring--my little black and
+white k'ang dog, James Buehanan, who loved me as no one in the world has
+ever loved me, thought everything I did was perfect, and declared he was
+willing to go with me to the ends of the earth.
+
+So I began my preparations. One thing only was clear, everyone was
+agreed upon it, all my goods must be packed in canvas bags, because it
+is impossible to travel by mule, or cart, or litter with one's clothes
+in ordinary boxes. And I had, through the kindness of Messrs Forbes &
+Company, to make arrangements with Chinese bankers, who have probably
+been making the same arrangements since before the dawn of history,
+to get money along the proposed route. These things I managed
+satisfactorily; it was over the stores that, as usual, I made mistakes.
+The fact of the matter is that the experience gained in one country is
+not always useful for the next. When first I travelled in Africa I took
+many “chop” boxes that were weighty and expensive of transport, and
+contained much tinned meat that in a warm, moist climate I did not want.
+I found I could live quite happily on biscuits and fruit and eggs, with
+such relishes as anchovy paste or a few Bologna sausages for a change.
+My expensive tinned foods I bestowed upon my servants and carriers,
+greatly to my own regret. I went travelling in China, in Northern Chihli
+and Inner Mongolia, I dwelt apart from all foreigners in a temple in the
+western hills, and I found with a good cook I lived very comfortably off
+the country, with just the addition of a few biscuits, tea, condensed
+milk, coffee and raisins, therefore I persuaded myself I could go west
+with few stores and do exactly the same. Thus I added considerably to my
+own discomfort. The excellent master of transport was a bad cook, and a
+simple diet of hard-boiled eggs, puffed rice and tea, with raisins for
+dessert, however good in itself, is apt to pall when it is served up
+three times a day for weeks with unfailing regularity.
+
+However, I didn't know that at the time.
+
+And at last all was ready. I had written to all the mission stations
+as far west as Tihwa, in Sinkiang, announcing my coming. I had provided
+myself with a folding table and chair--they both, I found, were given to
+fold at inconvenient moments--some enamel plates, a couple of glasses,
+a knife and fork, rudimentary kitchen utensils, bedding, cushions, rugs,
+etc., and all was ready. I was to start the next week, ten days after Mr
+Purdom and Mr Farrer had set out, for Honan, when there came a telegram
+from Hsi An Fu:
+
+“Delay journey” (it read).
+
+“White wolf in Shensi. Shorrocks.”
+
+Was there ever such country? News that a robber was holding up the road
+could be sent by telegram!
+
+China rather specialises in robbers, but White Wolf was considerably
+worse than the average gentleman of the road. He defied the Government
+in 1914, but the last time we of the mission station had heard of him
+he was making things pleasant for the peaceful inhabitants of Anhwei,
+to the east, and the troops were said to have him “well in hand.” But in
+China you never know exactly where you are, and now he was in Shensi!
+
+I read that telegram in the pleasant March sunshine. I looked up at the
+boughs of the “water chestnuts,” where the buds were beginning to swell,
+and I wondered what on earth I should do. The roads now were as good
+as they were ever likely to be, hard after the long winter and not yet
+broken up by the summer rains. We discussed the matter from all points
+that day at the midday dinner. The missionaries had a splendid cook, a
+Chinese who had had his kitchen education finished in a French family,
+and with a few good American recipes thrown in the combination makes a
+craftsman fit for the Savoy, and all for ten Mexican dollars a month!
+Never again do I expect to meet such salads, sweet and savoury! And here
+was I doing my best to leave the flesh-pots of Egypt. It seemed foolish.
+
+I contented my soul with what patience I might for a week, and then I
+telegraphed to Honan Fu, at which place I expected to be well away from
+the railway. Honan Fu answered promptly:
+
+“The case is hopeless. Hsi An Fu threatened. Advise you go by T'ai Yuan
+Fu.”
+
+Now the road from Honan Fu to Hsi An Fu is always dangerous. It is
+through the loess, sunken many feet below the level of the surrounding
+country, and at the best of times is infested with stray robbers who,
+from the cliffs above, roll down missiles on the carts beneath, kill the
+mules and hold the travellers at their mercy. The carters go in large
+bodies and are always careful to find themselves safe in the inn-yards
+before the dusk has fallen.
+
+These were the everyday dangers of the way such as men have faced for
+thousands of years; if you add to them an organised robber band and a
+large body of soldiers in pursuit, clearly that road is no place for a
+solitary foreign woman, with only a couple of attendants, a little dog,
+and for all arms a small pistol and exactly thirteen cartridges--all
+I could get, for it is difficult to buy ammunition in China. Then to
+clinch matters came another telegram from Hsi An Fu, in cipher this
+time:
+
+“Do not come” (it said).
+
+
+“The country is very much disturbed.”
+
+From Anhwei to Shensi the brigands had operated. They had burned and
+looted and outraged by order of Pai Lang (White Wolf), leaving behind
+them ruined homes and desolated hearths, and when the soldiers came
+after them, so said Rumour of the many tongues, White Wolf, who was rich
+by then, left money on the roads and so bribed the avenging army to come
+over to him.
+
+But to the ordinary peaceful inhabitant--and curiously enough the
+ordinary Chinese is extremely peaceful--it is not a matter of much
+moment whether it be Pai Lang or the soldier who is hunting him who
+falls upon the country. The inhabitants are sure to suffer. Both bandit
+and soldier must have food, so both loot and outrage impartially, for
+the unpaid soldiery--I hope I shall not be sued for libel, but most of
+the soldiery when I was in China appeared to be unpaid--loot just as
+readily as do the professional bandits. A robber band alone is a heavy
+load for a community to carry, and a robber band pursued by soldiers
+more than doubles the burden.
+
+Still the soldiers held Tungkwan, the gate into Shensi, the mountains on
+either side blocked the way, and Hsi An Fu breathed for a moment till
+it was discovered that Pai Lang in strategy was equal to anyone who had
+been sent against him. He had taken the old and difficult route through
+the mountains and had come out west of the narrow pass of Tungkwan and,
+when I became interested in him, was within a day's march of Hsi An
+Fu, the town that is the capital of the province of Shensi and was the
+capital of China many hundreds of years ago. It is a walled city, but
+the people feared and so did the members of the English Baptist Mission
+sheltering behind those walls. And, naturally, they feared, for the
+Society of the Elder Brethren had joined Pai Lang, and the Society of
+Elder Brethren always has been and is markedly anti-foreign. This was
+the situation, growing daily a little worse, and we foreigners looked
+on; and the Government organs in Peking told one day how a certain Tao
+Tai had been punished and degraded because he had been slack in putting
+down White Wolf and possibly the next day declared the power of White
+Wolf was broken and he was in full retreat. I don't know how many times
+I read the power of White Wolf had been broken and yet in the end I
+was regretfully obliged to acknowledge that he was stronger than ever.
+Certainly Pai Lang turned my face north sooner than I intended, for the
+idea of being a target for rocks and stones and billets of wood at
+the bottom of a deep ditch from which there could be no escape did not
+commend itself to me. True, in loess country, as I afterwards found,
+there are no stones, no rocks and no wood. I can't speak for the road
+through Tungkwan, for I didn't dare it. But, even if there were
+no stones, loose earth--and there is an unlimited quantity of that
+commodity in Northern China--flung down from a height would be
+exceedingly unpleasant.
+
+Of course it all might have been rumour--it wasn't, I found out
+afterwards; but unfortunately the only way to find out at the time
+was by going to see for myself, and if it had been true--well, in
+all probability I shouldn't have come back. That missionary evidently
+realised how keen I was when he suggested that I should go by T'ai Yuan
+Fu, the capital of Shansi, and I determined to take his advice. There
+was a way, a little-known way, across the mountains, across Shansi, by
+Sui Te Chou in Shensi, and thence into Kansu, which would eventually
+land me in Lan Chou Fu if I cared to risk it.
+
+This time I asked Mr Long's advice. He and the little band of nine
+rescuers who had ridden hot haste to the aid of the Shensi missionaries
+during the revolution had taken this road, and they had gone in the
+depths of winter when the country was frozen hard and the thermometer
+was more often below zero, very far below zero, than not. If they had
+accomplished it when pressed for time in the great cold, I thought' in
+all probability I might manage it now at the best time of the year
+and at my leisure. Mr Long, who would have liked to have gone himself,
+thought so too, and eventually I set off.
+
+The missionaries were goodness itself to me. Dr Mackay, in charge of the
+Women's Hospital, set me up with all sorts of simple drugs that I might
+require and that I could manage, and one day in the springtime, when the
+buds on the trees in the compound were just about to burst, and full
+of the promise of the life that was coming, I, with most of the
+missionaries to wish me “Godspeed,” and with James Buchanan under my
+arm, my giggling interpreter and my master of transport following with
+my gear, took train to T'ai Yuan Fu, a walled city that is set in the
+heart of a fertile plateau surrounded by mountains.
+
+The great adventure had begun.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--TRUCULENT T'AI YUAN FU
+
+But you mayn't go to T'ai Yuan Fu in one day. The southern train puts
+you down at Shih Chia Chuang--the village of the Stone Family--and there
+you must stay till 7.40 a.m. next morning, when the French railway built
+through the mountains that divide Shansi from Shensi takes you on to
+its terminus at T'ai Yuan Fu. There is a little Chinese inn at Shih
+Chia Chuang that by this time has become accustomed to catering for the
+foreigner, but those who are wise beg the hospitality of the British
+American Tobacco Company.
+
+I craved that hospitality, and two kindly young men came to the station
+through a dust-storm to meet me and took me off to their house that,
+whether it was intended to or not, with great cool stone balconies,
+looked like a fort. But they lived on perfectly friendly terms with
+people. Why not? To a great number of the missionaries the B.A.T. is
+_anathema maranatha_, though many of the members rival in pluck and
+endurance the missionaries themselves. And why is it a crime for a man
+or a woman to smoke? Many of the new teachers make it so and thus lay an
+added burden on shoulders already heavily weighted. Personally I should
+encourage smoking, because it is the one thing people who are far apart
+as the Poles might have in common.
+
+And goodness knows they have so few things. Even with the animals the
+“East is East and West is West” feeling is most marked. Here at the
+B.A.T. they had a small pekinese as a pet. She made a friend of James
+Buchanan in a high and haughty manner, but she declined to accompany him
+outside the premises. Once she had been stolen and had spent over three
+months in a Chinese house. Then one day her master saw her and, making
+good his claim, took her home with him. Since that time nothing would
+induce her to go beyond the front door. She said in effect that she got
+all the exercise she needed in the courtyard, and if it did spoil her
+figure, she preferred a little weight to risking the tender mercies of
+a Chinese household, and I'm sure she told Buchanan, who, having the
+sacred V-shaped mark on his forehead, was reckoned very beautiful and
+was much admired by the Chinese, that he had better take care and not
+fall into alien hands. Buchanan as a puppy of two months old had been
+bought in the streets of Peking, and when we started on our journey
+must have been nearly ten months old, but he had entirely forgotten his
+origin and regarded all Chinese with suspicion. He tolerated the master
+of transport as a follower of whom we had need.
+
+“Small dog,” Mr Wang called him, and looked upon him doubtfully, but
+really not as doubtfully as Buchanan looked at him. He was a peaceful,
+friendly little dog, but I always thought he did not bite Mr Wang simply
+because he despised him so.
+
+Those two young men were more than good to me. They gave me refreshment,
+plenty of hot water to wash away the ravages of the dust-storm, and good
+company, and as we sat and talked--of White Wolf, of course--there
+came to us the tragedy of a life, a woman who had not the instincts of
+Buchanan.
+
+Foreign women are scarce at Shih Chia Chuang; one a month is something
+to remark upon, one a week is a crowd, so that when, as we sat in the
+big sitting-room talking, the door opened and a foreign woman stood
+there, everyone rose to his feet in astonishment. Mr Long, who had been
+up the line, stood beside her, and behind her was a Chinaman with a
+half-caste baby in his arms. She was young and tall and rather pretty.
+
+[Illustration: 0037]
+
+[Illustration: 0038]
+
+“I bring you a lady in distress,” said Mr Long rather hastily,
+explaining matters. “I met Mrs Chang on the train. She has miscalculated
+her resources and has not left herself enough money to get to Peking.”
+
+The woman began to explain; but it is an awkward thing to explain to
+strangers that you have no money and are without any credentials. I
+hesitated. Eventually I hope I should have helped her, but my charity
+and kindliness were by no means as ready and spontaneous as those of my
+gallant young host. He never hesitated a moment. You would have thought
+that women and babies without any money were his everyday business.
+
+“Why, sure,” said he in his pleasant American voice, “if I can be of any
+assistance. But you can't go to-day, Mrs Chang; of course you will stay
+with us--oh yes, yes; indeed we should be very much hurt if you didn't;
+and you will let me lend you some money.”
+
+And so she was established among us, this woman who had committed the
+unpardonable sin of the East, the sin against her race, the sin for
+which there is no atoning. It is extraordinary after all these years,
+after all that has been said and written, that Englishwomen, women of
+good class and standing, will so outrage all the laws of decency and
+good taste. This woman talked. She did not like the Chinese, she would
+not associate with them; her husband, of course, was different. He was
+good to her; but it was hard to get work in these troubled times, harder
+still to get paid for it, and he had gone away in search of it, so she
+was going for a holiday to Peking and--here she tumedto the young
+men and talked about the society and the dances and the amusement she
+expected to have among the foreigners in the capital, she who for so
+long had been cut off from such joys in the heart of China among an
+alien people.
+
+We listened. What could we say?
+
+“People in England don't really understand,” said she, “what being in
+exile means. They don't understand the craving to go home and speak to
+one's own people; but being in Peking will be something like being in
+England.”
+
+We other five never even looked at each other, because we knew, and we
+could hardly believe, that she had not yet realised that in marrying
+a Chinese, even one who had been brought up in England, she had exiled
+herself effectually. The Chinese look down upon her, they will have none
+of her, and among the foreigners she is outcast. These young men who had
+come to her rescue with such right good will--“I could not see a foreign
+woman in distress among Chinese”--will pass her in the street with a
+bow, will not see her if they can help themselves, will certainly object
+that anyone they care about should see them talking to her, and their
+attitude but reflects that of the majority of the foreigners in China.
+Her little child may not go to the same sehool as the foreign children,
+even as it may not go to the same school as the Chinese. She has
+committed the one error that outclasses her, and she is going to pay for
+it in bitterness all the days of her life. And everyone in that room,
+while we pitied her, held, and held strongly, that the attitude of the
+community, foreign and Chinese, was one to be upheld.
+
+“East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,” and yet
+here and there one still comes across a foolish woman who wrecks her
+life because she never seems to have heard of this dictum. She talked
+and talked, and told us how good was her husband to her, and we
+listeners said afterwards she “doth protest too much,” she was
+convincing herself, not us, and that, of course, seeing he was a
+Chinaman, he was disappointed that the baby was a girl, and that his
+going off alone was the beginning of the end, and we were thankful that
+she was “the only girl her mother had got,” and so she could go back to
+her when the inevitable happened.
+
+The pity of it! When will the stay-at-home English learn that the
+very worst thing one of their women can do with her life is to wed
+an Oriental? But when I think of that misguided woman in that remote
+Chinese village I shall always think too of those gallant young
+gentlemen, perfect in courteous kindliness, who ran the B.A.T. in Shih
+Chia Chuang.
+
+The next day Buchanan and I and our following boarded the luxurious
+little mountain railway and went to T'ai Yuan Fu.
+
+This railway, to me, who know nothing of such things, is a very marvel
+of engineering skill. There are great rugged mountains, steep and rocky,
+and the train winds its way through them, clinging along the sides of
+precipices, running through dark tunnels and cuttings that tower high
+overhead and going round such curves that the engine and the guard's van
+of a long train are going in exactly opposite directions. A wonderful
+railway, and doubly was I interested in it because before ever I came to
+China I had heard about it.
+
+When there are disturbances in China it is always well for the foreign
+element to flee while there is yet time, for the sanctity of human life
+is not yet thoroughly grasped there, and there is always the chance
+that the foreigner may be killed first and his harmlessness, or even
+his value, discovered later. So in the revolution in the winter of
+1910-1911, though all train traffic had stopped, the missionaries from
+T'ai Yuan Fu and those from the country beyond fled down this railway.
+A friend of mine, an artist, happened to be staying at a mission station
+in the mountains and made one of the party. It was the depth of a Shansi
+winter, a Continental winter, with the thermometer generally below -15°
+at the warmest part of the day, and the little band of fugitives came
+fleeing down this line on trollies worked by the men of the party.
+They stayed the nights at the deserted railway stations, whence all the
+officials had fled, and the country people in their faded blue cotton
+wadded coats came and looked at them and, pointing their fingers at
+them exactly as I have seen the folks in the streets of London do at a
+Chinaman or an Arab in an outlandish dress, remarked that these people
+were going to their death.
+
+“Death! Death!” sounded on all sides. They, the country people, were
+peaceful souls; they would not have killed them themselves; they merely
+looked upon them as an interesting exhibit because they were foreign and
+they were going to die. That the audience were wrong the people on show
+were not quite as sure as they would have liked to be, and a single-line
+railway through mountainous country is by no means easy to negotiate on
+a trolly. They came to places where the line was carried upon trestles;
+they could see a river winding its way at the bottom of a rocky ravine
+far below them, and the question would be how to get across. It required
+more nerve than most of them had to walk across the skeleton bridge. The
+procedure seems to have been to give each trolly a good hard push, to
+spring upon it and to trust to Providence to get safely across to the
+firm earth upon the other side. The tunnels too, and the sharp curves,
+were hair-raising, for they knew nothing of what was happening at the
+other end of the line, and for all they could say they might have come
+full butt upon a train rushing up in the other direction.
+
+Eventually they did get through, but with considerable hardship, and I
+should hesitate to say how many days that little company went without
+taking off their clothes. I thought of them whenever our train went into
+a tunnel, and I thought too of the gay girl who told me the story
+and who had dwelt not upon the discomfort and danger, but upon the
+excitement and exhilaration that comes with danger.
+
+“I lived,” said she, “I lived,” and my heart went out to her. It is that
+spirit in this “nation of shopkeepers” that is helping us to beat the
+Germans.
+
+The scenery through which we went is beautiful--it would be beautiful
+in any land--and this in China, where I expected not so much beauty
+as industry. There were evidences of industry in plenty on every side.
+These people were brethren of the bandits who turned me north and they
+are surely the most industrious in the world. Wherever among these stony
+hills there was a patch of ground fit for cultivation, though it was
+tiny as a pocket handkerchief, it was cultivated. Everywhere I saw
+people at work in the fields, digging, weeding, ploughing with a dry cow
+or a dry cow and a donkey hitched to the primitive plough, or guiding
+trains of donkeys or mules carrying merchandise along the steep and
+narrow paths, and more than once I saw strings of camels, old-world
+camels that took me back before the days of written history. They kept
+to the valleys and evidently made their way along the river beds.
+
+Through mountain sidings and tunnels we came at length to the curious
+loess country, where the friable land is cut into huge terraces that
+make the high hills look like pyramids carved in great clay-coloured
+steps, and now in April the green crops were already springing; another
+month and they would be banks of waving green. The people are poor,
+their faces were browned by the sun and the wind, their garments were
+scanty and ragged, and the original blue was faded till the men and
+the clothes were all the same monotonous clay colour of the surrounding
+country. The women I saw here were few, and only afterwards I found the
+reason. The miserably poor peasant of Shansi binds the feet of his
+women so effectually that to the majority movement is a physical
+impossibility.
+
+We climbed up and up through the mountains into the loess country,
+and at last we were on the plateau, about four thousand feet above the
+sea-level, whereon is T'ai Yuan Fu, the capital of the province. There
+are other towns here too, little walled eities, and the train drew up at
+the stations outside the grey brick walls, the most ancient and the most
+modern, Babylon and Crewe meeting. Oh, I understand the need of those
+walled eities now I have heard so much about Pai Lang. There is a
+certain degree of safety behind those grey walls, so long as the robber
+bands are small and the great iron-bound gates ean keep them out, but
+dire is the fate of the city into which the enemy has penetrated, has
+fastened the gates and holds the people in a trap behind their own
+walls.
+
+But these people were at peace; they were thinking of no robbers. Pai
+Lang was about five hundred miles away and the station platforms were
+crowded with would-be travellers with their belongings in bundles, and
+over the fence that shut off the platform hung a vociferating crowd
+waving white banners on which were inscribed in black characters the
+signs of the various inns, while each banner-bearer at the top of his
+voice advocated the charms of his own employer's establishment. The
+queue was forbidden for the moment, but many of these ragged touts and
+many of the other peasants still wore their heads shaven in front, for
+the average Chinaman, especially he of the poorer classes, is loath to
+give up the fashions of his forefathers.
+
+Every railway platform was pandemonium, for every person on that
+platform yelled and shrieked at the top of his voice. On the main line
+every station was guarded by untidy, unkempt-looking soldiers armed with
+rifles, but there on this little mountain railway the only guards were
+policemen, equally unkempt, clad in very dusty black and white and
+armed with stout-looking bludgeons. They stood along the line at regular
+intervals, good-natured-looking men, and I wondered whether they would
+really be any good in an emergency, or whether they would not take the
+line of least resistance and join the attacking force.
+
+All across the cultivated plain we went, where not an inch of ground
+is wasted, and at half-past five in the evening we arrived at T'ai Yuan
+Fu--arrived, that is, at the station outside the little South Gate.
+
+T'ai Yuan Fu is a great walled city eight miles round, with five gates
+in the walls, gates that contrast strangely with the modern-looking
+macadamised road which goes up from the station. I don't know why I
+should feel that way, for they certainly had paved roads even in the
+days before history. Outside the walls are neat, perhaps forty feet high
+and of grey brick, and inside you see how these city walls are made, for
+they are the unfinished clay banks that have been faced in front, and
+when I was there in the springtime the grass upon them was showing
+everywhere and the shrubs were bursting into leaf. But those banks gave
+me a curious feeling of being behind the scenes.
+
+[Illustration: 0047]
+
+I was met at the station by some of the ladies of the English Baptist
+Mission who had come to welcome me and to offer me, a total stranger to
+them, kindly hospitality, and we walked through the gate to the mission
+inside the walls. It was only a short walk, short and dusty, but it was
+thronged. All the roadway was crowded with rickshaws and carts waiting
+in a long line their turn to go underneath the gateway over which
+frowned a typical many-roofed Chinese watch tower, and as cart or
+rickshaw came up the men along with it were stopped by the dusty
+soldiery in black and grey and interrogated as to their business.
+
+When I got out on to the platform I had looked up at the ancient walls
+clear-cut against the bright blue sky, and the women meeting me looked
+askance at Tsai Chih Fu, who, a lordly presence, stood behind me, with
+James Buchanan in his arms, a little black satin cap on his head and his
+pigtail hanging down his back.
+
+“There is some little commotion in the town,” said Miss Franklin. “They
+are cutting off queues.”
+
+The master of transport smiled tolerantly when they told him, and,
+taking off his cap, he wound his tightly round his head.
+
+“I know,” he said in the attitude of a man of the world, “some people do
+not wear them now. But I have always worn one, and I like it,” and his
+manner said he would like to see the person who would dare dictate to
+him in what manner he should wear his hair. He could certainly have put
+up a good fight.
+
+It was not needed. He passed through unchallenged; he was a quietly
+dressed man who did not court notice and his strapping inches were
+in his favour. He might well be passed over when there were so many
+slighter men more easily tackled. One man riding along in a rickshaw I
+saw put up a splendid fight. At last he was hauled out of his carriage
+and his little round cap tossed off his head, and then it was patent his
+queue could not be cut, for he was bald as a billiard ball! The Chinese
+do understand a joke, even a mob. They yelled and howled with laughter,
+and we heard it echoing and re-echoing as we passed under the frowning
+archway, tramping across many a dusty coil of coarse black hair roughly
+shorn from the heads of the luckless adherents to the old fashion. The
+missionaries said that Tsai Chih Fu must be the only man in T'ai Yuan Fu
+with a pigtail and that it would be very useful to us as we went farther
+west, where they had not yet realised the revolution. They doubted if
+he would be able to keep it on so strict was the rule, but he did--a
+tribute, I take it, to the force of my “master of transport.”
+
+The ladies lived in a Chinese house close under the walls. There is a
+great charm about these houses built round courtyards in the Chinese
+style; there is always plenty of air and sunshine, though, as most of
+the rooms open into the courtyard only, I admit in rough weather they
+must sometimes be awkward, and when--as is always the case in Shansi
+in winter-time--the courtyard is covered with ice and snow, and the
+thermometer is far below zero for weeks at a time, it is impossible to
+go from bedroom to sitting-room without being well wrapped up. And yet,
+because China is not a damp country, it could never be as awkward as
+it would be in England, and for weeks at a time it is a charming
+arrangement. Staying there in April, I found it delightful. Buchanan and
+I had a room under a great tree just showing the first faint tinge of
+green, and I shall always be grateful for the kindly hospitality those
+young ladies gave me.
+
+From there we went out and saw T'ai Yuan Fu, and another kindly
+missionary engaged muleteers for me and made all arrangements for my
+journey across Shansi and Shensi and Kansu to Lan Chou Fu.
+
+But T'ai Yuan Fu is not a nice town to stay in.
+
+“The town,” said the missionaries, “is progressive and anti-foreign.”
+ It is. You feel somehow the difference in the attitude of the people
+the moment you set foot inside the walls. It seems to me that if trouble
+really came it would be an easy matter to seize the railway and cut off
+the foreign missionaries from all help, for it is at least a fortnight
+away in the mountains.
+
+They suffered cruelly at the Boxer time: forty men, women and little
+helpless children were butchered in cold blood in the yamen, and the
+archway leading to the hospital where Miss Coombs the schoolmistress
+was deliberately burned to death while trying to guard and shelter
+her helpless pupils still stands. In the yamen, with a refinement of
+torture, they cut to pieces the little children first, and then the
+women, the nuns of the Catholic Church the fierce soldiery dishonoured,
+and finally they slew all the men. Against the walls in the street stand
+two miserable stones that the Government were forced to put up to the
+memory of the foreigners thus ruthlessly done to death, but a deeper
+memorial is engraven on the hearts of the people. Some few years later
+the tree underneath which they were slain was blasted by lightning and
+half destroyed, and on that very spot, during the recent revolution, the
+Tao Tai of the province was killed.
+
+“A judgment!” said the superstitious people. “A judgment!” say even the
+educated.
+
+And during the late revolution the white people shared with the
+inhabitants a terribly anxious time. Shut up in the hospital with a
+raging mob outside, they waited for the place to be set on fire. The
+newest shops in the principal streets were being looted, the Manchu
+city--a little walled city within the great city--was destroyed, and
+though they opened the gates and told the Manchus they might escape,
+the mob hunted down the men as they fled and slew them, though, more
+merciful than Hsi An Fu, they let the women and children escape. Men's
+blood was up, the lust of killing was upon them, and the men and women
+behind the hospital walls trembled.
+
+“We made up our minds,” said a young missionary lady to me, “that if
+they fired the place we would rush out and mingle in the mob waiting
+to kill us. They looked awful. I can't tell you how they looked, but it
+would have been better than being burned like rats in a trap.”
+
+A Chinese crowd, to my Western eyes, unkempt, unwashed, always looks
+awful; what it must be like when they are out to kill I cannot imagine.
+
+And then she went on: “Do you know, I was not really as much afraid as
+I should have thought I would have been. There was too mueh to think
+about.” Oh, merciful God! I pray that always in such moments there may
+be “too much to think about.”
+
+The mob looted the city. They ruined the university. They destroyed the
+Manehus. But they spared the foreigners; and still there flourishes in
+the town a mission of the English Baptists and another of the Catholics,
+but when I was there the town had not yet settled down. There was
+unrest, and the missionaries kept their eyes anxiously on the south, on
+the movements of Pai Lang. We thought about him at Pao Ting Fu, but here
+the danger was just a little nearer, help just a little farther away.
+Besides, the people were different. They were not quite so subservient,
+not quite so friendly to the foreigner, it would take less to light the
+tinder.
+
+For myself, I was glad of the instinct that had impelled me to engage
+as servant a man of inches. I dared never walk in the streets alone as
+I had been accustomed to in Pao Ting Fu. It marks in my mind the
+jumping-off place. Here I left altogether the civilisation of the West
+and tasted the age-old civilisation of the East, the civilisation that
+was in full swing when my ancestors were naked savages hunting the deer
+and the bear and the wolf in the swamps and marshes of Northern Europe.
+I had thought I had reached that civilisation when I lived in Peking,
+when I dwelt alone in a temple in the mountains, when I went to Pao
+Ting Fu, but here in T'ai Yuan Fu the feeling deepened. Only the mission
+stations stood between me and this strange thing. The people in the
+streets looked at me askance, over the compound wall came the curious
+sounds of an ancient people at work, the shrieking of the greased
+wheel-barrows, the beating of gongs, the whir of the rattle of the
+embroidery silk seller, the tinkling of the bells that were hung round
+the necks of the donkeys and the mules, the shouting of the hucksters
+selling scones and meat balls, all the sounds of an industrious city,
+and I was an outsider, the alien who was something of a curiosity, but
+who anyhow was of no account. Frankly, I don't like being of no account.
+As a matter of fact, I shocked all Chinese ideas of correct deportment.
+When a well-bred Chinese gentleman arrives at a strange place, he does
+not look around him, he shows no curiosity whatever in his surroundings,
+he retires to his room, his meal is brought to him and he remains
+quietly in his resting-place till it is time for him to take his
+departure, and what applies to a man, applies, of course, in an
+exaggerated degree, to a woman. Now I had come to see China, and I made
+every effort in my power to see all I could. I tremble to think what
+the inhabitants of Shansi must have thought of me! Possibly, since I
+outraged all their canons of decency, I was lucky in that they only
+found me of no account.
+
+All the while I was in T'ai Yuan Fu I was exceedingly anxious about the
+measure of safety for a foreign woman outside the walls, and opinions
+differed as to the wisdom of my venture, but, on the whole, those I
+consulted thought I would be all right. They rather envied me, in fact,
+the power to go wandering, but on one point they were very sure: it was
+a pity Dr Edwards, the veteran missionary doctor, was not there, because
+he knew more about China and travelling there than all the rest of them
+put together. But he had gone out on his own account and was on the way
+to Hsi An Fu, the town I had given up as hopeless. He did not propose to
+approach it through the Tungkwan, but from the north, and they did not
+expect him to have any difficulty.
+
+Then I found I had not brought enough money with me and the missionaries
+lent me more, and they engaged muleteers with four mules and a donkey
+that were to take me across the thousand miles that lay between the
+capital of Shansi and that of Kansu. Two men were in charge, and the
+cost of getting there, everything included--the men to feed themselves
+and their animals and I only to be responsible for the feeding and
+lodging of my own servants--was exactly eighteen pounds. It has always
+seemed to me ridiculously cheap. Money must go a long way in China for
+it to be possible for two men to take four mules and a donkey laden a
+thousand miles, and then come back unladen and keep themselves by the
+way, for so small a sum.
+
+So I sent off my servants the day before, then Buchanan and I bade
+good-bye to the missionaries and went the first day's journey back along
+the line to Yu Tze, where the road started for the Yellow River, and
+as I left the train and was taken by Tsai Chih Fu and Mr Wang to the
+enclosure of the inn where they had spent the night I felt that I had
+indeed left the West behind, and the only companion and friend I had was
+James Buchanan. It was lucky he was a host in himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--THE FIRST SIGN OF UNREST
+
+I was to ride a pack-mule. Now riding a pack-mule at any time is an
+unpleasant way of getting along the road. I know no more uncomfortable
+method. It is not quite as comfortable as sitting upon a table with
+one's legs dangling, for the table is still, the mule is moving, and
+one's legs dangle on either side of his neck. There are neither reins
+nor stirrups, and the mule goes at his own sweet will, and in a very
+short time your back begins to ache, after a few hours that aching is
+intolerable. To get over this difficulty the missionary had cut the legs
+off a chair and suggested that, mounted on the pack, I might sit in it
+comfortably. I don't know whether I could, for the mule objected.
+
+It was a sunny morning with a bright blue sky above, and all seemed
+auspicious except my mule, who expressed in no measured language his
+dislike to that chair. Tsai Chih Fu had no sooner hoisted me into it
+than up he went on his hind legs and, using them as a pivot, stood
+on end pawing the air. Everybody in the inn-yard shrieked and yelled
+except, I hope, myself, and then Tsai Chih Fu, how I know not, rescued
+me from my unpleasant position, and thankfully I found myself upon
+the firm ground again. He was a true Chinese mule and objected to all
+innovations. He stood meekly enough once the chair was removed.
+
+I wanted to cross Asia and here I was faced with disaster at the very
+outset! Finally I was put upon the pack minus the chair, Buchanan was
+handed up to me and nestled down beside me, and the procession started.
+My heart sank. I don't mind acknowledging it now. I had at least
+a thousand miles to go, and within half-an-hour of the start I had
+thoroughly grasped the faet that of all modes of progression a pack-mule
+is the most abominable. There are no words at my command to express its
+discomforts.
+
+Very little did I see of the landscape of Shansi that day. I was engaged
+in hanging on to my pack and wondering how I could stick it out. We
+passed along the usual hopeless cart-track of China. I had eschewed
+Peking carts as being the very acme of misery, but I was beginning to
+reflect that anyhow a cart was comparatively passive misery while the
+back of a pack-mule was decidedly active. Buchanan was a good little
+dog, but he mentioned several times in the course of that day that he
+was uncomfortable and he thought I was doing a fool thing. I was much of
+his opinion.
+
+[Illustration: 0057]
+
+[Illustration: 0058]
+
+The day was never ending. All across a plain we went, with rough fields
+just showing green on either hand, through walled villages, through
+little towns, and I cared for nothing, I was too intent on holding on,
+on wishing the day would end, and at last, as the dusk was falling, the
+muleteer pointed out, clear-cut against the evening sky, the long wralls
+of a large town--Taiku. At last! At last!
+
+I was to stay the night at a large mission school kept by a Mr and Mrs
+Wolf, and I only longed for the comfort of a bed, any sort of a bed so
+long as it was flat and warm and kept still. We went on and on, we got
+into the suburbs of the town, and we appeared to go round and round,
+through an unending length of dark, narrow streets, full of ruts and
+holes, with the dim loom of houses on either side, and an occasional
+gleam of light from a dingy kerosene lamp or Chinese paper lantern
+showing through the paper windows.
+
+Again and again we stopped and spoke to men who were merely muffled
+shapeless figures in the darkness, and again we went on. I think now
+that in all probability neither Tsai Chih Fu nor Mr Wang understood
+enough of the dialect to make the muleteers or the people of whom we
+inquired understand where we wanted to go, but at last, more probably by
+good luck than good management, somebody, seeing I was a foreigner, sent
+us to the foreigners they knew, those who kept a school for a hundred
+and twenty-five boys in the lovely Flower Garden. It certainly was
+lovely, an old-world Chinese house, with little courtyards and ponds
+and terraces and flowers and trees--and that comfortable bed I had been
+desiring so long. As we entered the courtyard in the darkness and Tsai
+Chili Fu lifted me down, the bed was the only thing I could think of.
+
+[Illustration: 0057]
+
+[Illustration: 0058]
+
+[Illustration: 0059]
+
+And yet next day I started again--I wonder now I dared--and we skirted
+the walls of Taiku. We had gone round two sides and then, as I always do
+when I am dead-tired, I had a bad attack of breathlessness. Stay on that
+pack I knew I could not, so I made my master of transport lift me down,
+and I sat on a bank for the edification of all the small boys in the
+district who, even if they had known how ill I felt, probably would
+not have cared, and I deeided there and then that pack-mule riding was
+simply impossible and something would have to be done. Therefore, with
+great difficulty, I made my way baek to the mission school and asked Mr
+Wolf what he would recommend.
+
+Again were missionaries kindness itself to me. They sympathised with my
+trouble, they took me in and made me their guest, refusing to take any
+money for it, though they added to their kindness by allowing me to pay
+for the keep of my servants, and they strongly recommended that I should
+have a litter. A litter then I decided I would have.
+
+It is, I should think, the very earliest form of human conveyance. It
+consists of two long poles laid about as far apart as the shafts of an
+ordinary cart, in the middle is hung a coarse-meshed rope net, and over
+that a tilt of matting--the sort of stuff we see tea-chests covered
+with in this country. Into the net is tumbled all one's small
+impedimenta--clothes-bags, kettles, anything that will not conveniently
+go on mule-back; the bedding is put on top, rugs and cushions arranged
+to the future inmate's satisfaction, then you get inside and the
+available people about are commandeered to hoist the concern on to the
+backs of the couple of mules, who object very strongly. The head of the
+one behind is in the shafts, and the ends rest in his pack-saddle, and
+the hind quarters of the one in front are in the shafts, just as in an
+ordinary buggy. Of course there are no reins, and at first I felt very
+much at the mercy of the mules, though I am bound to say the big white
+mule who conducted my affairs seemed to thoroughly understand his
+business. Still it is uncomfortable, to say the least of it, to find
+yourself going, apparently quite unattended, down steep and rocky paths,
+or right into a rushing river. But on the whole a litter is a very
+comfortable way of travelling; after a pack-mule it was simply heaven,
+and I had no doubts whatever that I could comfortably do the thousand
+miles, lessened now, I think, by about thirty, that lay before me. If I
+reached Lan Chou Fu there would be time enough to think how I would go
+on farther. And here my muleteers had me. When I arranged for a litter,
+I paid them, of course, extra, and I said another mule was to be got to
+carry some of the loads. They accepted the money and agreed. But I may
+say that that other mule never materialised. I accepted the excuse when
+we left Taiku that there was no other mule to be hired, and by the time
+that excuse had worn thin I had so much else to think about that I bore
+up, though not even a donkey was added to our equipment.
+
+Money I took with me in lumps of silver, sycee--shoes, they called
+them--and a very unsatisfactory way it is of carrying cash. It is very
+heavy and there is no hiding the fact that you have got it. We changed
+little bits for our daily needs as we went along, just as little as
+we could, because the change in cash was an intolerable burden. On one
+occasion in Fen Chou Fu I gave Tsai Chih Fu a very small piece of silver
+to change and intimated that I would like to see the result. That piece
+of silver I reckon was worth about five shillings, but presently my
+master of transport and one of the muleteers came staggering in and
+laid before me rows and rows of cash strung on strings! I never felt
+so wealthy in my life. After that I never asked for my change. I was
+content to keep a sort of general eye on the expenditure, and I expect
+the only leakage was the accepted percentage which every servant levies
+on his master. 'When they might easily have cheated me, I found my
+servants showed always a most praiseworthy desire for my welfare. And
+yet Mr Wang did surprise me occasionally. While I was in Pao Ting Fu I
+had found it useful to learn to count in Chinese, so that roughly I knew
+what people at the food-stalls were charging me. On one occasion I saw
+some little cakes powdered with sesame seed that I thought I should like
+and I instructed Mr Wang to buy me one. I heard him ask the price and
+the man say three cash, and my interpreter turned to me and said that
+it was four! I was so surprised I said nothing. It may have been the
+regulation percentage, and twenty-five per cent is good anywhere, but
+at the moment it seemed to me extraordinary that a man who considered
+himself as belonging to the upper classes should find it worth his while
+to do me out of one cash, which was worth--no, I give it up. I don't
+know what it was worth. 10.53 dollars went to the pound when I was in
+Shansi and about thirteen hundred cash to the dollar, so I leave it to
+some better mathematician than I am to say what I was done out of on
+that occasion.
+
+There was another person who was very pleased with the litter and that
+was James Buchanan. Poor little man, just before we left the Flower
+Garden he was badly bitten by a dog, so badly he could no longer walk,
+and I had to carry him on a cushion alongside me in the litter. I never
+knew before how dearly one could love a dog, for I was terrified lest he
+should die and I should be alone in the world. He lay still and refused
+to eat, and every movement seemed to pain him, and whenever I struck
+a missionary--they were the only people, of course, with whom I could
+converse--they always suggested his back was broken.
+
+I remember at Ki Hsien, where I was entertained most hospitably, and
+where the missionary's wife was most sympathetic, he was so ill that I
+sat up all night with him and thought he would surely die. And yet in
+the morning he was still alive. He moaned when we lifted him into the
+litter and whined pitifully when I got out, as I had to several times to
+take photographs.
+
+“Don't leave me, don't leave me to the mercy of the Chinese,” he said,
+and greeted me with howls of joy when I returned. It was a great day for
+both of us when he got a little better and could put his pretty little
+black and white head round the tilt and keep his eye upon me while I
+worked. But really he was an ideal patient, such a good, patient little
+dog, so grateful for any attention that was paid him, and from that time
+he began to mend and by the time I reached Fen Chou Fu was almost his
+old gay happy little self again.
+
+Taiku is a dying town over two thousand years old, and I have before
+seen dead towns in China. Fewer and fewer grow the inhabitants, the
+grass grows in the streets, the bricks fall away from the walls, the
+houses fall down, until but a few shepherds or peasant farmers dwell
+where once were the busy haunts of merchants and tradesmen.
+
+From Taiku I went on across the rich Shansi plain. Now in the springtime
+in the golden sunshine the wheat was just above the ground, turning the
+land into one vivid green, the sky was a cloudless blue, and all was
+bathed in the golden sunshine of Northern China. The air was clear and
+invigorating as champagne. “Every prospect pleases,” as the hymn says,
+“and only man is vile.” He wasn't vile; really I think he was a very
+good fellow in his own way, which was in a dimension into which I
+have never and am never likely to enter, but he was certainly unclean,
+ignorant, a serf, poverty-stricken with a poverty we hardly conceive of
+in the West, and the farther away I found myself from T'ai Yuan Fu the
+more friendly did I find him. This country was not like England, where
+until the last four years has been in the memory of our fathers and our
+fathers' fathers only peace. Even now, now as I write, when the World
+War is on, an air raid is the worst that has befallen the home-staying
+citizens of Britain. But Shansi has been raided again and again. Still
+the land was tilled, well tilled; on every hand were men working hard,
+working from dawn to dark, and working, to a stranger's eyes, for the
+good of the community, for the fields are not divided by hedge or fence;
+there is an occasional poplar or elm, and there are graves everywhere,
+but there is nothing to show where Wang's land ends and Lui's begins.
+All through the cultivated land wanders, apparently without object, the
+zigzag track of sand and ruts and stones known as the Great South
+Road, impossible for anything with wheels but a Chinese cart, and often
+impossible for that. There are no wayside cottages, nothing save those
+few trees to break the monotony, only here and there is a village
+sheltering behind high walls, sometimes of mud, but generally of brick,
+and stout, substantial brick at that; and if, as is not infrequent,
+there is a farmhouse alone, it, too, is behind high brick walls, built
+like a baronial castle of mediaeval times, with a look-out tower and
+room behind the walls not only for the owner's family even unto the
+third and fourth generation, but for all his hinds and his dependents
+as well. The whole is built evidently with a view to defence, and built
+apparently to last for hundreds of years. For Shansi is worth raiding.
+There is oil and there is wheat in abundance. There is money too, much
+of which comes from Mongolia and Manchuria. The bankers (the Shansi men
+are called the Jews of China) wander across and trade far into Russian
+territory while still their home is in agricultural Shansi, and certain
+it is that any disturbances in these countries, even in Russia, affect
+the prosperity of Shansi. I wonder if the Russian Revolution has been
+felt there. Very probably.
+
+Shansi is rich in other things too not as yet appreciated by the
+Chinaman. She has iron and copper and coal that has barely been touched,
+for the popular feeling is against mining. They say that no part of the
+globe contains such stores of coal. I hesitate about quoting a German,
+but they told me that Baron Reichthoffen has said that this province has
+enough coal to supply the world for two thousand years at the present
+rate of consumption. I haven't the faintest notion whether the Baron's
+opinion is worth anything, but if it is, it is no wonder that Germany,
+with her eye for ever on the main chance, has felt deeply being thrust
+out of China.
+
+With ample coal, and with iron alongside it, what might not Shansi be
+worth to exploit!
+
+Ki Hsien is a little walled town five _li_ round. Roughly three _li_
+make a mile, but it is a little doubtful. For instance, from Taiku to Ki
+Hsien is fifty li, and that fifty _li_ is sixteen miles, from Ki Hsien
+to Ping Yao is also fifty li, but that is only fourteen English miles.
+The land, say the Chinese, explaining this discrepancy, was measured in
+time of famine when it wasn't of any value! A very Chinese explanation.
+
+The city of Ki Hsien is very, very crowded; there were hundreds of tiny
+courtyards and flat roofs. In the picture of the missionary's house I
+have not been able to get the roof in because the courtyard--and it
+was a fairly large courtyard as courtyards in the city go--was not
+big enough. I stood as far away as I possibly could. Mr and Mrs Falls
+belonged to the Chinese Inland Mission and the house they lived in was
+over three hundred years old. Like many of the houses in Shansi, it
+was two storeys high and, strangely enough, a thing I have never seen
+anywhere else, the floors upstairs were of brick.
+
+I do not know how I would like to live in such a crowded community, but
+it has its advantages on occasion. At the time of the revolution,
+when those missionaries who had come through the Boxer times were all
+troubled and anxious about their future, the Falls decided to stay on
+at their station, and a rich native doctor, a heathen, but a friend, who
+lived next door, commended that decision.
+
+“Why go away?” said he. “Your courtyard adjoins mine. If there is
+trouble we put up a ladder and you come over to us.”
+
+And there was hint of trouble then. As we sat at supper there came in
+the Chinese postman in his shabby uniform of dirty blue and white, with
+his large military cap pushed on the back of his head, and he brought
+to the Falls a letter from Dr Edwards, the missionary doctor all foreign
+T'ai Yuan Fu thought I ought to meet.
+
+When I was within reach of the Peking foreign daily papers they
+mentioned Pai Lang as one might mention a burglar in London, sandwiching
+him in between the last racing fixtures or the latest Cinema attraction,
+but from a little walled town within a day's march of Hsi An Fu the
+veteran missionary wrote very differently, and we in this other little
+walled town read breathlessly.
+
+White Wolf had surrounded Hsi An Fu, he said; it was impossible to get
+there and he was returning.
+
+The darkness had fallen, the lamp in the middle of the table threw a
+light on the letter and on the faces of the middle-aged missionary
+and his wife who pored over it. It might mean so much to them. It
+undoubtedly meant much to their friends in Hsi An Fu, and it meant much
+to me, the outsider who had but an hour ago walked into their lives.
+For I began to fear lest this robber might affect me after all, lest in
+coming north I was not going to outflank him. According to Dr Edwards,
+he had already taken a little walled city a hundred li--about a day's
+journey--north-west of Hsi An Fu, and when 'White Wolf took a town it
+meant murder and rapine. And sitting there in the old Chinese room these
+two people who knew China told me in no measured terms what might happen
+to a woman travelling alone in disturbed country.
+
+Missionaries, they said, never left their stations when the country was
+disturbed, they were safer at home, surrounded by their friends. Once
+the country is raided by a robber band--and remember this is no uncommon
+thing in China--all the bad characters in the country come to the fore,
+and robber bands that have nothing to do with the original one spring
+into existence, the cities shut their gates to all strangers, and
+passports are so much waste paper. Between ourselves, I have a feeling
+they always are in China. I could hardly tell the difference between
+mine and my agreement with my muleteers, and I have an uneasy feeling
+that occasionally the agreement was presented when it should have been
+the passport.
+
+Now no one could be certain whether Pai Lang intended to take Lan Chou
+Fu, but it looked as if that were his objective. If he took the city
+it would not be much good my getting there, because the bankers would
+certainly not be able to supply me with money; even if he only raided
+the country round, it would be so disturbed that my muleteers would be
+bound to take alarm. If they left me, and they certainly would leave me
+if they thought there was a chance of their mules being taken, I should
+be done. It would spell finish not only to the expedition but to my
+life. A foreigner, especially a woman without money and without friends,
+would be helpless in China. Why should the people help her? It takes
+them all they know to keep their own heads above water. And Kansu was
+always turbulent; it only wanted a match to set the fire alight. Air and
+Mrs Falls--bless them for their kindness and interest!--thought I should
+be mad to venture.
+
+[Illustration: 0068]
+
+[Illustration: 0069]
+
+[Illustration: 0070]
+
+So there in the sitting-room which had been planned for a merchant
+prince and had come into the possession of these two who desired to
+bring the religion of the West to China I sat and discussed this new
+obstacle. After coming so far, laying out so much money, could I turn
+back when danger did not directly press? I felt I could not. And yet my
+hosts pointed out to me that if danger did directly threaten I would not
+be able to get away. If Pai Lang did take Lan Chou Fu, or even if he
+did not, it might well be worth his while to turn east and raid fertile
+Shansi. In a little town like Ki Hsien there was loot well worth having.
+In the revolution a banker there was held to ransom, and paid, as the
+people put it, thirty times ten thousand taels (a tael is roughly three
+shillings, according to the price of silver), and they said it was but
+a trifle to him--a flea-bite, I believe, was the exact term--and I
+ean well believe, in the multitude of worse parasites that afflict the
+average Chinaman, a flea-bite means much less than it does in England.
+
+However, I didn't feel like giving up just yet, so I decided to go on to
+Fen Chou Fu, where was a big American mission, and see what they had to
+say about the matter. If then I had to flee, the missionaries would very
+likely be fleeing too, and I should have company.
+
+And the very next day I had what I took for a warning.
+
+It was a gorgeous day, a cloudless blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and
+I passed too many things of interest worth photographing. There were
+some extraordinary tombs, there was a quaint village gateway--the Gate
+of Everlasting Peace they call it--but I was glad to get back into my
+litter and hoped to stay there for a little, for getting out of a litter
+presents some difficulties unless you are very active indeed. It is
+a good long drop across the shafts on to the ground; the only other
+alternative is to drop down behind the mule's hind quarters and slip out
+under those shafts, but I never had sufficient confidence in my mule to
+do that, so that I generally ealled upon Tsài Chih Fu to lift me down.
+I had set out full of tremors, but taking photographs of the peaceful
+scenes soothed my ruffled nerves. I persuaded myself my fears had been
+born of the night and the dread of loneliness which sometimes overtakes
+me when I am in company and thinking of setting out alone, leaving
+kindly faces behind.
+
+And then I came upon it, the first sign of unrest.
+
+The winding road rose a little and I could see right ahead of us a great
+crowd of people evidently much agitated, and I called to Mr Wang to know
+what was the matter.
+
+“Repeat, please,” said he as usual, and then rode forward and came baek
+saying, “I do not know the word.”
+
+“What word?”
+
+“What is a lot of people and a dead man?”
+
+“Ah!” said I, jumping to conclusions unwarrantably, “that is a funeral.”
+
+“A funeral!” said he triumphantly. “I have learned a new word.”
+
+Mr Wang was always learning a new word and rejoicing over it, but, as I
+had hired him as a finished product, I hardly think it was unreasonable
+of me to be aggrieved, and to feel that I was paying him a salary for
+the pleasure of teaching him English. However, on this occasion his
+triumph was short-lived. .
+
+“Would you like to see the funeral?” he said.
+
+I intimated that I would. My stalwart master of transport lifted me down
+and the crowded people made a lane for me to pass through, and half of
+them turned their attention to me, for though there were missionaries in
+the big towns, a foreigner was a sight to these country people, and, Mr
+Wang going first, we arrived at a man with his head cut off! Mercifully
+he was mixed up with a good deal of matting and planks, but still there
+was no mistaking the poor dead feet in their worn Chinese shoes turned
+up to the sky.
+
+Considering we are mortal, it is extraordinary how seldom the ordinary
+person looks upon death. Always it comes with a shock. At least it did.
+I suppose this war has accustomed some of us to the sight, so that we
+take the result of the meeting of mortal man with his last friend on
+earth more as a matter of eourse, as indeed it should be taken. Of
+course I know this is one of the results of the war.
+
+My sister's son, staying with me after six months in hospital,
+consequent upon a wound at Gallipoli, came home from a stroll one day
+and reported that he had seen nothing, and then at dinner that night
+mentioned in a casual manner that he had seen two dead men being carried
+out of a large building and put in a motor ear.
+
+I said in astonishment:
+
+“They couldn't have been dead!”
+
+“Of course they were. Do you think I don't know dead men when I see
+them? I've seen plenty.”
+
+So many that the sight of a couple in the streets of a quiet little
+country town seemed not even an occasion for remark.
+
+But I was not even accustomed to thinking of dead men and I turned upon
+Mr Wang angrily:
+
+“But that isn't a funeral. That's a corpse,” and once more to my
+irritation he rejoiced over a new word.
+
+“Who killed him?” I asked.
+
+“They think an enemy has done this thing,” said he sententiously and
+unnecessarily, as, ignorant as I am of tilings Chinese, I should hardly
+think even they could have called it a friendly action. The body had
+been found the day before, and the people were much troubled about it.
+An official from Ping Yow--a coroner, I suppose we should call him--was
+coming out to inquire about it, and because the sun was already hot the
+people had raised a little screen of matting with a table and chairs
+where he could sit to hold inquiry.
+
+And here was the thing the missionaries had warned me against. Trouble,
+said they, always begins by the finding of dead bodies that cannot be
+accounted for, and this body was on the Great South Road. It might
+be only a case of common murder such as one might perchance meet in
+Piccadilly, possibly it was due to the bands of soldiers that were
+pouring into the country--to defend the crossings of the Yellow
+River, some people said--but it was to me an emphatic reminder that the
+warnings of Mr and Mrs Falls had not been given lightly, and I meditated
+upon it all the way to Ping Yow.
+
+All day long the soldiers had been pouring through Ki Hsien, all night
+long they poured through the suburbs of Ping Yow. Not through the town
+itself--the townspeople were not going to allow that if they could help
+themselves; and as it was evidently a forced march and the regiments
+were travelling by night, they could help themselves, for every city
+gate is shut at sundown. The China Inland Mission had a station at an
+old camel inn in the eastern suburb, and there the missionary's young
+wife was alone with five young children, babies all of them, and there I
+found her. I think she was very glad to see me, anyhow I was someone to
+discuss things with, and we two women talked and talked over our evening
+meal. She was a tall, pretty young woman--not even the ugly Chinese
+dress and her hair drawn back, not a hair out of place, Chinese fashion,
+could disguise her pathetic beauty. And she was a countrywoman of mine,
+born and brought up in the same state, Victoria, and her native town was
+Ararat, green and fresh among the hills. And how she talked Australia!
+What a beautiful land it was! And the people! The free, independent
+people! The women who walked easily and feared no man! To thoroughly
+appreciate a democratic country you should dwell in effete China.
+But she feared too, this woman, feared for herself and her five tiny
+children. It would be no easy job to get away. I told her of the dead
+man I had seen--how should I not tell her?--and she trembled.
+
+“Very likely it is the soldiers,” she said. “I am afraid of the Chinese
+soldiers.” And so am I in bulk, though taken singly they seem sueh
+harmless little chaps.
+
+“When the willow is green and the apricot yellow in the fifth moon,”
+ said a metrical inscription on a stone dug up at Nankin in that
+year--the fatal year 1914--“terrible things will happen in the land of
+Han.” Terrible things, it seems to me, always happen in the land of Han;
+but if it spoke for the great world beyond, truly the stone spoke truth,
+though we did not know it then.
+
+In the evening back from the country where he had been preaching for the
+last day or two came my Australian's husband, and there also came in to
+see the stranger two missionaries from the other side of the town.
+They sat there, these men and women of British race, dressed in the
+outlandish costume of the people around them--a foolish fashion, it
+seems to me, for a European in unadulterated Chinese dress looks as ugly
+and out of place as a Chinese in a stiff collar and a bowler hat. And
+all the evening we discussed the soldiers and the dead man I had seen,
+and opinions differed as to the portent.
+
+It is true, said one of them who had been in the country many years, and
+was a missionary pure and simple, with eyes for nothing but the work he
+had in hand--which is probably the way to work for success--that a
+dead body, particularly a dead body by the highroad, is often a sign of
+unrest, but again, quite as often it means no more than a dead body
+in any other place. If he had turned back for every dead body he had
+seen----
+
+Well, I thought I would not turn back either. Not yet, at least.
+
+Never was I sorrier for missionaries, I who have always written against
+missionaries, than I was for this young countrywoman of mine who never
+thought of being sorry for herself. It was a big ugly mission compound,
+the rooms, opening one into another, were plain and undecorated, and the
+little children as a great treat watered the flowers that struggled up
+among the stones of the dusty courtyard, and the very watering-can was
+made with Chinese ingenuity from an old kerosene tin. It seemed to me
+those little children would have had such a much better chance
+growing up in their mother's land, or in their father's land--he was a
+Canadian--among the free peoples of the earth. But who am I, to judge?
+No one in the world, it seems to me, wants help so much as the poorer
+Chinese, whose life is one long battle with disease and poverty; and
+perhaps these poorer missionaries help a little, a very little; but the
+poorer the mission the poorer the class they reach, and the sacrifice,
+as I saw it here, is so great.
+
+Next morning we arose early, and I breakfasted with my host and hostess
+and their five children. The children's grace rings in my ears yet,
+always I think it will ring there, the childish voices sung it with such
+fervour and such faith:
+
+               “Every day, every day, we bless Thee, we bless Thee,
+
+          We praise Thy Name, we praise Thy Name,
+
+               For ever and for ever!”
+
+There in the heart of China these little children, who had, it seemed to
+me, so very little to be grateful for, thanked their God with all their
+hearts, and when their elders with the same simple fervour went down on
+their knees and asked their God to guide and help the stranger and set
+her on her way, though it was against all my received canons of good
+taste, what could I do but be simply grateful.
+
+Ping Yow is a large town set in the midst of a wheatgrowing country, and
+it is built in the shape of a turtle, at least so I was told. I could
+see for myself that its walls were not the usual four-square set to the
+points of the compass, but seemed irregular, with many little towers
+upon them. These towers, it seems, were built in memory of the teachers
+of Confucius--this is the only intimation I have had that he
+had seventy-two; and there were over three thousand small
+excrescences--again I only repeat what I was told; I did not count them,
+and if I had I would surely have counted them wrong--like sentry-boxes
+in memory of his disciples. I do not know why Ping Yow thus dedicates
+itself to the memory of the great sage. It needs something to commend
+it, for it remains in my mind as a bare, ugly, crowded town, with an
+extra amount of dust and dirt and heat, and no green thing to break the
+monotony.
+
+And I set forth, and in spite of all I still faced West.
+
+[Illustration: 0079]
+
+[Illustration: 0080]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--A CITY UNDER THE HILLS
+
+In my wanderings across Shansi I came in contact with two missionary
+systems run with the same object in view but carried out in
+diametrically opposite ways. Of course I speak as an outsider. I
+criticise as one who only looks on, but after all it is an old saw that
+the onlooker sees most of the game. There are, of course, many missions
+in China, and I often feel that if the Chinaman were not by nature a
+philosopher he would sometimes be a little confused by salvation offered
+him by foreigners of all sects and classes, ranging from Roman Catholics
+to Seventh Day Adventists. Personally I have received much kindness
+from English Baptists, from the China Inland Mission and from American
+Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Amongst them all I--who frankly
+do not believe in missions, believing that the children at home
+should first be fed--found much to admire, much individual courage and
+sacrifice, but for the systems, I felt the American missions were the
+most efficient, far the most likely to attain the end in view.
+
+The Chinaman, to begin with, sees no necessity for his own conversion.
+Unlike the ordinary black man, he neither admires nor envies the white
+man, and is given to thinking his own ways are infinitely preferable.
+But the Chinaman is a man of sound common-sense, he immensely admires
+efficiency, he is a great believer in education, and when a mission
+comes to him fully equipped with doctors, nurses and hospitals, teachers
+and schools, he, once he has overcome his dread of anything new, begins
+to avail himself first of the doctor and the hospital, for the sore need
+of China is for medical attendance, and then of the schools. Then comes
+conversion. They tell me that there are many genuine converts. I have
+only noticed that the great rich American missions rake in converts by
+tens and twenties, where they come dribbling in in units to the faith
+missions, which offer no such advantages as medical attendance or
+tuition. The faith missionaries work hard enough. I have seen a woman
+just come in from a week's missionary tour in a district where, she
+explained, she had slept on the k'angs with the other women of the
+household, and she was stripping off her clothes most carefully and
+combing her long hair with a tooth-comb, because all women of the class
+she visited among were afflicted with those little parasites that we do
+not mention. The Chinese have a proverb that “the Empress herself has
+three,” so it is no shame. She thought nothing of her sacrifice, that
+was what she had come for, everyone else was prepared to do the same;
+but when so much is given I like to see great results, as in the
+American missions. They are rich, and the Chinaman, with a few glaring
+exceptions, is a very practical person. To ask him to change his faith
+for good that will work out in another world is asking rather much of
+him. If he is going to do so he feels he may as well have a God who will
+give him something in return for being outcast. At least that is the way
+I read the results. Look at Fen Chou, for instance, where the Americans
+are thriving and a power in the town, and look at Yung Ning Chou,
+farther west, where a Scandinavian faith mission has been established
+for over twenty years. They may have a few adherents in the country
+round, but in the city itself--a city of merchants--they have, I
+believe, not made a single convert.
+
+Of course the China Inland Mission does not lay itself out to be rich.
+However many subscriptions come in, the individual missionary gets no
+more than fifty pounds a year; if more money comes, more missionaries
+are established, if less, then the luckless individual missionary gets
+as much of the fifty pounds as funds allow. The Founder of the Faith was
+poor and lowly, therefore the missionaries must follow in His footsteps.
+I understand the reason, the nobility, that lies in the sacrifice
+implied when men and women give their lives for their faith, but not
+only do I like best the results of the American system, but I dislike
+exceedingly that a European should be poor in an Oriental country. If
+missionaries must go to China, I like them to go for the benefit of the
+Chinese and for the honour and glory of the race to which they belong,
+and not for the good of their own souls.
+
+I came into Fen Chou Fu and went straight to the large compound of the
+American missionaries, three men and three women from Oberlin College,
+Ohio. They had a hospital, they had a school, they had a kindergarten,
+the whole compound was a flourishing centre of industry. They teach
+their faith, for that is what they have come out for, but also they
+teach the manifold knowledge of the West. Sanitation and hygiene
+loom large in their curriculum, and heaven knows, without taking into
+consideration any future life, they must be a blessing to those men and
+women who under cruel conditions must see this life through. These six
+missionaries at Fen Chou Fu do their best to improve those conditions
+with a practical American common-sense and thoroughness that won my
+admiration.
+
+Fen Chou Fu, unlike T'ai Yuan Fu, is friendly, and has always been
+friendly, to the foreigner; even during the Boxer trouble they were
+loath to kill their missionaries, and when the order came that they were
+to be slain, declined to allow it to be done within their walls, but
+sent them out, and they were killed about seven miles outside the
+city--a very Chinese way of freeing themselves from blood-guiltiness.
+
+The town struck me as curiously peaceful after the unrest and the
+never-ending talk of riot, robbery and murder I had heard all along
+the road. The weather was getting warm and we all sat at supper on the
+verandah of Dr Watson's house, with the lamps shedding a subdued light
+on the table, and the sounds of the city coming to us softened by the
+distance, and Mr Watt Pye assured me he had been out in the country and
+there was nothing to fear, nothing. The Chinaman as he had seen him had
+many sins, at least errors of conduct that a missionary counts sin, but
+as far as he knew I might go safely to the Russian border. He had not
+been in the country very long, not, I fancy, a fifth of the time Dr
+Edwards had been there, but, listening to him, I hoped once more.
+
+The town is old. It was going as a city in 2205 b.c., and it is quite
+unlike any other I have come across in China. It is a small square city
+about nine _li_ round, and on each of the four sides are suburbs, also
+walled. Between them and the city are the gully-like roads leading to
+the gates. The eastern suburb is nearly twice as large as the main city,
+and is surrounded by a high brick wall, but the other suburbs have only
+walls like huge banks of clay, on the top the grass grows, and on my way
+in I was not surprised to see on top of this clay-bank a flock of sheep
+browsing. It seemed a very appropriate place for sheep, for at first
+sight there is nothing to show that this was the top of a town wall.
+
+When the Manehus drove out the Mings, the vanquished Imperial family
+took refuge in this western town and rebuilt the walls, which had been
+allowed to fall into disrepair, and they set about the job in a fashion
+worthy of Babylon itself. The bricks were made seven miles away in the
+hills, and passed from hand to hand down a long line of men till they
+reached their destination and were laid one on top of another to face
+the great clay-bank forty-six feet high that guards the city. According
+to Chinese ideas, the city needs guarding not from human enemies only.
+The mountains to the west and north overshadow it, and all manner of
+evil influences come from the north, and the people fear greatly
+their effect upon the town. It was possible it might never get a good
+magistrate, or that, having got one, he might die, and therefore they
+took every precaution they could to ward off such a calamity. Gods they
+put in their watch tower over the gate, and they sit there still, carved
+wooden figures, a great fat god--if a city is to be prosperous must not
+its god be prosperous too?--surrounded by lesser satellites. Some are
+fallen now, and the birds of the air roost upon them, and the dust and
+the cobwebs have gathered upon them, but not yet will they be cleared
+away. In a chamber below are rusty old-world cannon flung aside in a
+heap as so much useless lumber, and, below, all the busy traffic of
+the city passes in and out beneath the arches of the gateway. In that
+gateway are two upright stones between whieh all wheeled traffic must
+pass, the distance between these stones marking the length of the axle
+allowed by the narrow city streets. Any vehicle having a greater length
+of axle cannot pass in. No mere words can describe the awful condition
+of the roads of Shansi, and to lessen as far as possible the chance of
+an upset the country man makes his axle very wide, and, knowing this,
+the town man notifies at his gates the width of the vehicle that can
+pass in his streets. No other can enter.
+
+Besides the gods over the gateway, Fen Chou Fu, owing to its peculiar
+position under the hills, requires other guarding, and there are two
+tall bronze phoenixes on the wall close to the northern watch tower. I
+was quite pleased to make the acquaintance of a phoenix, as, though I
+have read about them, I had never met them before. In Fen Chou Fu it
+appears that a phoenix is between thirty and forty feet high, built like
+a comic representation of a chicken, with a long curly neck and a cock's
+comb upon his head. It would indeed be a churlish, evil spirit who was
+not moved to laughter at the sight. But though the form is crude, on
+the bronze bases and on the birds themselves are worked beautifully the
+details of a long story. Dragons and foxes and rabbits, and many strange
+symbols that I do not understand come into it, but how they help to
+guard the city, except by pleasing the gods or amusing the evil spirits,
+I must confess I cannot imagine. Certainly the city fathers omit
+the most necessary care: once the walls are finished, the mason is
+apparently never called in, and they are drifting to decay. Everywhere
+the bricks are falling out, and when I was there in the springtime the
+birds of the air found there a secure resting-place. There were crows
+and hawks and magpies and whistling kites popping in and out of the
+holes so made, in their beaks straws and twigs for the making of their
+nests. They would be secure probably in any case, for the Chinese love
+birds, but here they are doubly secure, for only with difficulty and by
+the aid of a long rope could any man possibly reach them.
+
+The ramps up to those walls were extremely steep--it was a
+heart-breaking process to get on top--but Buchanan and I, accompanied by
+the master of transport carrying the camera, and often by Mr Leete, one
+of the missionaries, took exercise there; for in a walled city in the
+narrow streets there is seldom enough air for my taste. The climate here
+is roughly summer and winter, for though so short a while ago it had
+been freezing at night, already it was very hot in the middle of
+the day, and the dust rose up from the narrow streets in clouds. A
+particularly bad cloud of dust generally indicated pigs, which travel a
+good deal in Northern China, even as sheep and cattle do in Australia.
+In Shantung a man sets out with a herd of pigs and travels them slowly
+west, very slowly, and they feed along the wayside, though what they
+feed on heaven only knows, for it looks to me as though there is
+nothing, still possibly they pick up something, and I suppose the idea
+is that they arrive at the various places in time for the harvest, or
+when grain and products are cheapest. There are inns solely given over
+to pigs and their drivers in Shansi, and the stench outside some of
+those in Fen Chou Fu was just a little taller than the average smell,
+and the average smell in a Chinese city is something to be always
+remembered. There were other things to be seen from the top of the wall
+too--long lines of camels bearing merchandise to and from the town,
+donkeys, mules, carts, all churning up the dust of the unkempt roadway,
+small-footed women seated in their doorways looking out upon the life of
+the streets, riding donkeys or peeping out of the tilts of the carts. I
+could see into the courtyards of the well-to-do, with their little
+ponds and bridges and gardens. All the life of the city lay beneath us.
+Possibly that is why one meets so very, very seldom any Chinese on the
+wall--it may be, it probably is, I should think, bad taste to look into
+your neighbour's courtyard.
+
+And the wall justified its existence, mediaeval and out of date as it
+seemed to me. There along the top at intervals were little heaps of
+good-sized stones, placed there by the magistrate in the revolution for
+the defence of the town. At first I smiled and thought how primeval, but
+looking down into the road nearly fifty feet below, I realised that a
+big stone flung by a good hefty fist from the top of that wall was a
+weapon by no means to be despised.
+
+But walls, if often a protection, are sometimes a danger in more ways
+than in shutting out the fresh air. The summer rains in North China are
+heavy, and Fen Chou Fu holds water like a bucket. The only outlets are
+the narrow gateways, and the waters rise and rise. A short time before I
+came there all the eastern quarter of the town was flooded so deep that
+a woman was drowned. At last the waters escaped through the eastern
+gate, only to be banked up by the great ash-heaps, the product of
+centuries, the waste rubbish of the town, that are just outside the wall
+of the eastern suburb. It took a long, long while for those flood waters
+to percolate through the gateway of the suburb and find a resting-place
+at last in a swamp the other side of that long-suffering town. I must
+confess that this is one of the drawbacks to a walled town that has
+never before occurred to me, though to stand there and look at those
+great gates, those solid walls, made me feel as if I had somehow
+wandered into the fourth dimension, so out of my world were they.
+
+There was a great fair in a Taoist temple and one day Mr Leete and
+I, with his teacher and my servant, attended. A wonderful thing is a
+Chinese fair in a temple. I do not yet understand the exact object of
+these fairs, though I have attended a good many of them. Whether they
+help the funds of the temple as a bazaar is supposed to help a church in
+this country, I cannot say. A temple in China usually consists of a set
+of buildings often in different courtyards behind one enclosing wall,
+and these buildings are not only temples to the gods, but living-rooms
+which are often let to suitable tenants, and, generally speaking, if
+the stranger knows his way about--I never did--he can get in a temple
+accommodation for himself and his servants, far superior accommodation
+to that offered in the inns. It costs a little more, but everything is
+so cheap that makes no difference to the foreigner. The Taoist temple
+the day I went there was simply humming with life; there were stalls
+everywhere, and crowds of people buying, selling or merely gossiping
+and looking on. I took a picture of some ladies of easy virtue with gay
+dresses and gaily painted faces, tottering about, poor things, on their
+maimed feet, and at the same spot, close against the altar of the god,
+I took a picture of the priest. With much hesitation he consented to
+stand. He had in his hand some fortune-telling sticks, but did not
+dare hold them while his portrait was being taken. However, Mr Leete's
+teacher was a bold, brave, enlightened man--in a foreign helmet--and he
+held the sticks, and the two came out in the picture together. I trust
+no subsequent harm came to the daring man.
+
+[Illustration: 0089]
+
+[Illustration: 0090]
+
+In Fen Chou Fu I could have walked about the town alone unmolested. I
+never did, because it would have been undignified and often awkward, as
+I could not speak the language, but the people were invariably friendly.
+On the whole, there was not very much to see. The sun poured down day
+after day in a cloudless sky, and the narrow streets, faced with stalls
+or blank grey brick walls enclosing the compounds, were dusty and
+uneven, with the ruts still there that had been made when the ground was
+softened by the summer rains of the year before. Away to the south-east
+was a great pagoda, the second tallest in China, a landmark that can be
+seen for many a long mile across the plain. This, like the phoenixes, is
+_feng shui_. I have never grasped the inwardness of pagodas, which are
+dotted in apparently a casual manner about the landscape. An immense
+amount of labour must have been expended upon them, and they do not
+appear to serve any useful purpose. This one at Fen Chou Fu is meant to
+balance after a fashion the phoenixes on the northern wall and afford
+protection for the southern approach to the city. I don't know that it
+was used for any other purpose. It stood there, tall and commanding,
+dwarfing everything else within sight. Neither do I know the purpose of
+the literary tower which stands on the southeast corner of the wall. It
+denotes that the town either has or hopes to have a literary man of high
+standing among its inhabitants. But to look for the use in all things
+Chinese would be foolish; much labour is expended on work that can be
+only for artistic purposes. To walk through a Chinese town, in spite of
+filth, in spite of neglect and disrepair, is to feel that the Chinaman
+is an artist to his finger-tips.
+
+The gate to the American church in Fen Chou Fu, for instance, was a
+circle, a thing of strange beauty. Imagine such a gate in an English
+town, and yet here it seemed quite natural and very beautiful. They had
+no bell, why I do not know, perhaps because every temple in China has
+a plenitude of bells hanging from its eaves and making the air musical
+when the faintest breath of wind stirs and missionaries are anxious to
+dissociate themselves in every way from practices they call idolatry,
+even when those practices seem to an outsider like myself rather
+attractive. At any rate, to summon the faithful to church a man beats a
+gong.
+
+But there is one institution of Fen Chou Fu which is decidedly
+utilitarian, and that is the wells in the northwestern corner. A
+Chinaman, I should say, certainly uses on the average less water than
+the majority of humanity; a bath when he is three days old, a bath when
+he is married, and after that he can comfortably last till he is dead,
+is the generally received idea of his ablutions, but he does want
+a little water to carry on life, and in this corner of the town are
+situated the wells which supply that necessary. It is rather brackish,
+but it is still drinkable, and it is all that the city gets. They were
+a never-ending source of interest to me. They were established in those
+far-away days before history began--perhaps the presence of the water
+here was the reason for the building of the town--and they have been
+here ever since. The mouths are builded over with masonry, and year in
+and year out have come those self-same carts with solid wheels, drawn
+by a harnessed ox or an ox and a mule, bearing the barrels to be filled
+with water. Down through all the ages those self-same men, dressed in
+blue cotton that has worn to a dingy drab, with a wisp of like stuff
+tied round their heads to protect them from the dust or the cold or the
+sun, have driven those oxen and drawn that water. Really and truly our
+own water, that comes to us, hot and cold, so easily by the turning of a
+tap, is much more wonderful and interesting, but that I take as a matter
+of course, while I never tired of watching those prehistoric carts. It
+was in rather a desolate corner of the town too. The high walls rose up
+and frowned upon it, the inside of the walls where there was no brick,
+only crumbling clay with shrubs and creepers just bursting into leaf and
+little paths that a goat or an active boy might negotiate meandering up
+to the top. And to get to that part I had to pass the ruins of the old
+yamen razed to the ground when the Government repented them of the
+Boxer atrocities, and razed so effectually that only the two gate-posts,
+fashioned like lions, Chinese architectural lions, survive. A curse is
+on the place, the people say; anyhow when I visited it fourteen years
+later no effort had been made to rebuild. Not for want of labour,
+surely. There are no trade unions in China, and daily from dawn to dark
+in Fen Chou Fu I saw the bricklayers' labourers trotting along, bringing
+supplies to the men who were building, in the streets I met men carrying
+water to the houses in buckets, and now in the springtime there was a
+never-ending supply of small boys, clad in trousers only, or without
+even those, bearing, slung from each end of a bamboo, supplies of
+firewood, or rather of such scraps as in any other land would have been
+counted scarce worth the cost of transport. Any day too I might expect
+to meet a coffin being borne along, not secretly and by night as we take
+one to a house, but proudly borne in the open daylight, for everyone
+knows a coffin is the most thoughtful and kindly as well as often the
+most expensive of gifts.
+
+While here I attended a wedding. Twice have I attended a Chinese
+wedding. The first was at Pao Ting Fu at Christmas time, and the
+contracting parties were an evangelist of the church who in his lay
+capacity was a strapping big laundryman and one of the girls in Miss
+Newton's school. They had never spoken to one another, that would have
+been a frightful breach of decorum, but as they went to the same church,
+where there was no screen between the men and the women, as there is in
+many Chinese churches, it is possible they knew each other by sight. It
+is curious how in some things the missionaries conform to Chinese ideas
+and in others decline to yield an inch. In Pao Ting Fu no church member
+was allowed to smoke, but the women were kept carefully in retirement,
+and the schoolmistress, herself an unmarried woman, and the doctor's
+wife arranged marriages for such of the girls as came under their
+guardianship. Of course I see the reason for that: in the present
+state of Chinese society no other method would be possible, for these
+schoolgirls, all the more because they had a little scholarship and
+education, unless their future had been arranged for, would have been a
+temptation and a prey for all the young men around, and even with their
+careful education--and it was a careful education; Miss Newton was a
+woman in a thousand, I always grudged her to the Chinese--were entirely
+unfitted to take care of themselves.
+
+Still it always made me smile to see these two women, middle-class
+Americans from Virginia, good-looking and kindly, with a keen sense of
+humour, gravely discussing the eligible young men around the mission and
+the girls who were most suitable for them. It was the most barefaced and
+open match-making I have ever seen. But generally, I believe, they were
+very successful, for this one thing is certain, they had the welfare of
+the girls at heart.
+
+And this was one of the matches they had arranged. It is on record that
+on this special occasion the bridegroom, with the consent and connivance
+of the schoolmistress, had written to the bride exhorting her to
+diligence, and pointing out how good a thing it was that a woman should
+be well read and cultured. And seeing that she came of very poor people
+she might well be counted one of the fortunate ones of the earth, for
+the bridegroom was educating her. The ignorance of the average Chinese
+woman in far higher circles than she came of is appalling.
+
+Christmas Day was chosen for the ceremony, and Christmas Day was a
+glorious winter's day, with golden sunshine for the bride, and the air,
+the keen, invigorating air of Northern China, was sparkling with frost.
+Now, in contrast to the next wedding I attended, this wedding was on
+so-called Western lines; but the Chinese is no slavish imitator, he
+changes, but he changes after his own fashion. The church was decorated
+by devout Chinese Christians with results which to 'Western eyes were
+a little weird and outré. Over the platform that in an Anglican church
+would be the altar was a bank of greenery, very pretty, with flowers
+dotted all over it, and on it Chinese characters in cotton wool, “Earth
+rejoices, heaven sings,” and across that again was a festoon of small
+flags of all nations, while from side to side of the church were
+slung garlands of gaily coloured paper in the five colours of the new
+republic, and when I think of the time and patience that went to
+the making of those garlands I was quite sorry they reminded me of
+fly-catchers. But the crowning decoration was the Chinese angel that
+hovered over all. This being was clad in white, a nurse's apron was
+used, girt in at the waist, foreign fashion, and I grieve to say they
+did not give her much breathing-space, though they tucked a pink flower
+in her belt. Great white paper wings were spread out behind, and from
+her head, framing the decidedly Mongolian countenance, were flowing
+golden curls, made by the ingenious decorators of singed cotton wool.
+
+One o'clock was fixed for the wedding, and at a quarter to one the
+church was full.
+
+They did not have the red chair for the bride. The consensus of opinion
+was against it. “It was given up now by the best people in Peking. They
+generally had carriages. And anyhow it was a ridiculous expense.” So
+it was deeided that the bride should walk. The church was only a
+stone's-throw from the schoolhouse where she lived. The bridegroom stood
+at the door on the men's side of the church, a tall, stalwart Chinaman,
+with his blaek hair sleek and oiled and cut short after the modern
+fashion. He was suitably clad in black silk. He reminded me of
+“William,” a doll of my childhood who was dressed in the remains of an
+old silk umbrella--this is saying nothing against the bridegroom, for
+“William” was an eminently superior doll, and always looked his very
+best if a little smug occasionally. But if a gentleman who has attained
+to the proud position of laundryman and evangelist, and is marrying the
+girl he has himself at great expense educated for the position, has not
+a right to look a little smug, I don't know who has. Beside him stood
+his special friend, the chief Chinese evangelist, who had himself been
+married four months before. At the organ sat the American doctor's
+pretty young wife, and as the word was passed, “The bride is coming!”
+ she struck up the wedding march, and all the women's eyes turned to
+the women's door, while the men, who would not commit such a breach of
+decorum as to look, stared steadily ahead.
+
+But the wedding march had been played over and over again before she
+did come, resplendent and veiled, after the foreign fashion, in white
+mosquito netting, with pink and blue flowers in her hair, and another
+bunch in her hand. The bridegroom had wished her to wear silk on this
+great occasion, so he had hired the clothes, a green silk skirt and a
+bronze satin brocade coat.
+
+A model of Chinese decorum was that bride. Her head under the white veil
+was bent, her eyes were glued to the ground, and not a muscle of her
+body moved as she progressed very slowly forward. Presumably she did put
+one foot before the other, but she had the appearance of an automaton in
+the hands of the women on either side--her mother, a stooping little old
+woman, and a tall young woman in a bright blue brocade, the wife of the
+bridegroom's special friend. Each grasped her by an arm just above
+the elbow and apparently propelled her up the aisle as if she were on
+wheels. Up the opposite aisle came the bridegroom, also with his head
+bent and his eyes glued to the ground and propelled forward in the same
+manner by his friend.
+
+They met, those two who had never met face to face before, before the
+minister, and he performed the short marriage ceremony, and as he said
+the closing words the Chinese evangelist became Master of Ceremonies.
+
+“The bridegroom and bride,” said he, “'will bow to each other once in
+the new style.”
+
+The bride and groom standing before the minister bowed deeply to each
+other in the new style.
+
+“They will bow a second time,” and they bowed again.
+
+“They will bow a third time,” and once more they bowed low.
+
+“They will now bow to the minister,” and they turned like well-drilled
+soldiers and bowed to the white-haired man who had married them.
+
+“They will now bow to the audience,” and they faced the people and
+bowed deeply, and everybody in that congregation rose and returned the
+salutation.
+
+“And now the audience will bow to the bride and bridegroom,” and
+with right good will the congregation, Chinese and the two or three
+foreigners, rose and saluted the newly married couple, also I presume in
+the new style.
+
+It was over, and to the strains of the wedding march they left the
+church, actually together, by way of the women's entrance. But the bride
+was not on the groom's arm. That would not have been in accord with
+Chinese ideas. The bridegroom marched a little ahead, propelled forward
+by his friend, as if he had no means of volition of his own--again
+I thought of “William,” long since departed and forgotten till this
+moment--and behind came the new wife, thrust forward in the same manner,
+still with her eyes on the floor and every muscle stiff as if she too
+had been a doll.
+
+“All the world loves a lover,” but in China, the land of ceremonies,
+there are no lovers. This man had gone further than most men in the
+wooing of his wife, and they were beginning life together with very fair
+chances of success. But even so the girl might not hope for a home of
+her own.
+
+That would have been most unseemly. The evangelist laundryman had not a
+mother, but his only sister was taking the place of mother-in-law, and
+he and his bride would live with her and her husband.
+
+[Illustration: 0099]
+
+[Illustration: 0100]
+
+The wedding I attended in Fen Chou Fu was quite a different affair. It
+was spring, or perhaps I should say early summer, the streets through
+which we drove to the old house of one of the Ming princes where dwelt
+the bridegroom with his mother were thick with dust, and the sun blazed
+down on us. The bridegroom belonged to a respectable well-to-do trading
+family, and he wanted a Christian wife because he himself is an active
+member of the church, but the Christian church at Fen Chou Fu has been
+bachelor so long, and the division between the sexes is so strait, that
+there are about fifty available girls to between eight and nine hundred
+young men, therefore he had to take what he could get, and what he could
+get was a pagan little girl about eighteen, for whom he paid thirty
+Mexican dollars, roughly a little under three pounds. I, a Greek, who
+do not care much what any man's religion is so long as he live a decent
+life, understand the desire of that man for a Christian wife, for
+that means here in the interior that she will have received a little
+education, will be able to read and write and do arithmetic, and will
+know something of cleanliness and hygiene.
+
+The great day arrived, and the missionaries and I were invited to the
+bridegroom's house for the ceremony and the feast that was to follow.
+The entertainment began about eight o'clock in the morning, but we
+arrived a little after noon, and we two women, Miss Grace Maccomaughey
+and I, were ushered through the courtyards till we came to the interior
+one, which was crowded with all manner of folks, some in festive array,
+some servants in the ordinary blue of the country, and some beggars
+in rags who were anticipating the scraps that fall from the rich man's
+table, and were having tea and cake already. Overhead the sky was shut
+out by all manner of flags and banners with inscriptions in Chinese
+characters upon them, and once inside, we made our way towards the house
+through a pressing crowd. Opposite the place that perhaps answered for
+a front door was a table draped in red, the colour of joy, and on the
+table were two long square candles of red wax with Chinese characters
+in gold upon them. They were warranted to burn a day and a night, and
+between them was a pretty dwarf plant quaintly gnarled and bearing
+innumerable white flowers. That table was artistic and pretty, but to
+its left was a great pile of coal, and, beside the coal, a stove and a
+long table at which a man, blue-clad, shaven and with a queue, was busy
+preparing the feast within sight of all. I could have wished the signs
+of hospitality had not been so much in evidence, for I could quite
+believe that cook had not been washed since he was three days old, and
+under the table was a large earthenware bowl full of extremely dirty
+water in which were being washed the bowls we would presently use.
+
+Out came the women of the household to greet us and conduct us to the
+bridal chamber, dark and draped with red and without any air to speak
+of. It was crowded to suffocation with women in gala costumes, with
+bands of black satin embroidered in flowers upon their heads, gay coats
+and loose trousers, smiling faces and the tiny feet of all Shansi. It
+was quite a relief to sit down on the _k'ang_ opposite to a stout and
+cheerful old lady with a beaming face who looked like a well-to-do
+farmer's wife. She was a childless widow, however, but she had attained
+to the proud position of Bible-woman, receiving a salary of four Mexican
+dollars a month, and consequently had a position and station of her
+own. In my experience there is nothing like being sure of one's own
+importance in the world. It is certainly conducive to happiness. I know
+the missionaries, bless them! would say I am taking a wrong view, but
+whatever the reason at the back of it all, to them is the honour of
+that happy, comfortable-looking Bible-woman. And there are so few
+happy-looking women in China!
+
+We sat on the _k'ang_ and waited for the bride, and we discoursed. My
+feet--I never can tuck them under me--clad in good substantial
+leather, looked very large beside the tiny ones around me, for even the
+Bible-woman's had been bound in her youth, and of course, though they
+were unbound now, the broken bones could never come straight, and
+the-flesh could not grow between the heel and the toes. She looked at my
+feet and I laughed, and she said sententiously, like a true Chinese:
+
+“The larger the feet the happier the woman.”
+
+I asked did it hurt when hers were bound.
+
+“It hurt like anything,” translated the missionary girl beside me, “but
+it is all right now.”
+
+The bride was long in coming, and shortly after four we heard the gongs
+and music and crackers that heralded her arrival, and we all went out
+to greet her, or rather to stare at her. First came the bridegroom, and
+that well-to-do tradesman was a sight worth coming out to see. He wore
+a most respectable black satin jacket and a very pretty blue silk
+petticoat; round his neck and crossed on his breast was a sash of
+orange-red silk, set off with a flaring magenta artificial chrysanthemum
+of no mean proportions, and on his head, and somewhat too small for him,
+was--a rare headgear in China--a hard black felt hat. From the brim of
+that, on either side, rose a wire archway across the crown, on which
+were strung ornaments of brass, and I am bound to say that the whole
+effect was striking.
+
+Before the bride came in to be married, out went two women to lift her
+veil and smear her face with onion. They explained that the bridegroom's
+mother should do this, but the fortune-teller had informed them that
+these two women would be antagonistic--which I think I could have
+foretold without the aid of any fortune-teller--therefore the rite was
+deputed to two other women, one of whom was the kindergarten teacher at
+the sehool. Then, with the teacher on one side and a lucky woman with
+husband and children living on the other, down through the crowd came
+the little bride to her marriage. She was clad in a red robe, much
+embroidered, which entirely hid her figure, so that whether she were
+fat or slim it was impossible to see, on her head was a brazen crown
+entirely covering it, and over her face was a veil of thick bright red
+silk. She could neither see nor be seen. Her feet were the tiniest I
+have ever seen, they looked about suitable for a baby of twelve months
+old. The tiny red shoes were decorated with little green tassels at the
+pointed toe and had little baby high heels, and though they say these
+feet were probably false, the real ones must have been wonderfully small
+if they were hidden in the manifold red bandages that purported to make
+the slender red ankles neat.
+
+Bride and bridegroom took their places in front of the minister, in
+front of the plant and alongside the coals, and it made my back ache to
+think of keeping any being standing for above a second on such feet.
+The service began, all in Chinese, of course, though the officiating
+minister was an American, a couple of hymns were sung, and the audience
+laughed aloud because she was married by her baby name, her mother
+having omitted to provide her with another.
+
+The good woman had yearned for a son so she had called this girl “Lead a
+brother.”
+
+Half-way through the ceremony the bridegroom lifted the veil. He gave
+it a hurried snatch, as if it were a matter of no moment, and hung it on
+one of the projections of the brazen crown, and then he and we saw the
+bride's face for the first time. They had done their best to spoil her
+beauty with carmine paint, but she had a nice little nose and a
+sweet little quivering mouth that was very lovable, and I think the
+bridegroom, though he never moved a muscle, must have been pleased with
+his bargain.
+
+When the service was ended, she and we, the principal guests, went back
+to the _k'ang_ in the bride chamber; her crown and outer red robe were
+taken off, all in public, and a small square box containing some of her
+trousseau was brought in, and every woman and child there in that stuffy
+little room dived into it and hauled out the silks and embroideries and
+little shoes and made audible comments on them.
+
+“H'm! it's only sham silk,” said one.
+
+“How old are you, new bride?” asked another.
+
+“She's not much to look at,” said a third, which was a shame, for with
+the paint washed off she must have been pretty though tired-looking.
+
+It was five o'clock before we went to the feast, all the women together,
+and all the men together, four or five at a table, and the bridegroom,
+without the absurd headgear, and his mother, in sober blue silk, came
+round at intervals and exhorted us to eat plenty.
+
+We had one little saucer each, a pair of chopsticks and a china spoon
+such as that with which my grandmother used to ladle out her tea, and
+they served for all the courses. It was lucky I had had nothing since
+seven in the morning, or I might not have felt equal to eating after I
+had seen the cooking and the washing-up arrangements. As it was, I
+was hungry enough not to worry over trifles. After she had sucked them
+audibly, my friend the Bible-woman helped me with her own chopsticks,
+and I managed to put up with that too. I tried a little wine. It
+was served in little bowls not as large as a very small salt-cellar,
+literally in thimblefuls, but one was too much for me. It tasted of
+fiery spirit and earth, and I felt my companion was not denying herself
+much when she proclaimed herself a teetotaller. What we ate heaven only
+knows, but much to my surprise I found it very good. Chinese when they
+have the opportunity are excellent cooks.
+
+The bride sat throughout the feast on the _k'ang_, her hands--three of
+her finger-nails were shielded with long silver shields--hidden under
+her lavender jacket and her plate piled before her, though etiquette
+required that she should refuse all food. They chaffed her and laughed
+at her, but she sat there with downcast eyes like a graven image. After
+the feast two or three men friends of the bridegroom were brought in,
+and to every one she had to rise and make an obeisance, and though the
+men and women hardly looked at or spoke to each other, it was evident
+that she was for this occasion a thing to be commented on, inspected
+and laughed at. She was bearing it very well, poor little girl, when Kan
+T'ai T'ai's cart--I was Kan T'ai T'ai--was announced, and we went home
+through the streets as the shades of evening were falling. I had
+fed bountifully and well, but the dissipation had worn me out, the
+airlessness of the rooms was terrible, and even the dust-laden air of
+the narrow street I drew into my lungs with a sigh of deep thankfulness.
+It was good to be in the free air again. Better still to remember,
+however I had railed against my fate at times, nothing that could ever
+happen to me would be quite as bad as the fate of the average Chinese
+woman.
+
+However, a new life was beginning for this girl in more ways than one.
+The bridegroom was going back to his business, that of a photographer
+in T'ai Yuan Fu, leaving his wife with his mother. She was to be sent to
+the school for married women opened by the missionaries, and, of
+course, her feet were to be unbound. Probably, I hope I do not do him an
+injustice, the bridegroom would not have objected to bound feet, but he
+did want an educated mother for his children, and the missionaries
+will take no woman with bound feet. They will do the best they can to
+retrieve the damage done, though she can never hope to be anything but
+a maimed cripple, but at least she in the future will be free from pain,
+into her darkened life will come a little knowledge and a little light,
+and certainly her daughters will have a happier life and a brighter
+outlook.
+
+Missions in China, if they are to do any good, are necessarily
+patriarchal. They look after their converts from the cradle to the
+grave. The kindergarten run by a Chinese girl under the maternal eye
+of young Miss Grace Maccomaughey was quite a pretty sight, with all the
+little tots in their quaint dresses of many colours and their hair done
+or their heads shaved in the absurd fashion which seems good to the
+proud Chinese parents--for Chinese parents are both proud and tender and
+loving, though their ways seem strange to us. But babies all the world
+over, yellow or black or white, are all lovable, and these babies at the
+kindergarten were delicious.
+
+“Beloved guest, beloved guest,” they sang in chorus when I came in and
+they were told to greet me. “Peace to thee, peace to thee.”
+
+And “Lao T'ai T'ai” they used to address me in shrill little voices as I
+went about the compound. Lao T'ai T'ai (I shouldn't like to swear I'd
+spelled it properly) means “Old lady”--that is, a woman of venerable
+years who is rich enough to keep a servant--and it was the first time in
+my life I had been so addressed, so I looked in the glass to see if I
+had developed grey hair or wrinkles--riding on a mule-pack would be
+enough to excuse anything--and then I remembered that if in doubt in
+China it is erring on the side of courtesy to consider your acquaintance
+old. I dare say to the children I was old. I remember as a very little
+girl a maiden aunt asking me how old I thought her, and I, knowing she
+was older than my mother, felt she must be quite tottery and suggested
+in all good faith she might be about ninety. I believe the lady had just
+attained her five and thirtieth year, and prided herself upon her
+youthful appearance. At any rate her attitude on this occasion taught me
+when guessing an age it is better to understate than to overestimate. At
+least in the West. Here in the East I was “Old lady” by courtesy.
+
+And they begin the important things of life early in China. At the
+kindergarten there were two little tots, a boy and a girl, engaged to be
+married. The boy was the son of one of the mission cooks and the girl
+was the daughter of his wife. He, a widower, sought a wife to look after
+his little boy, and he got this young widow cheap. Her price was thirty
+_tiaous_--that is, a little over one pound--and at first he said it was
+too much and he could not afford it, but when he heard she had a little
+girl he changed his mind and scraped together the money, for the child
+could be betrothed to his little son and save the expense of a wife
+later on.
+
+They were a quaint little pair, both in coats and trousers, shabby and
+old, evidently the children of poor people, and both with their heads
+shaven save for a tuft of hair here and there. The boy had his tufts cut
+short, while the girl's were allowed to grow as long as they would and
+were twisted into a plait. Such a happy little couple they were, always
+together, and in the games at the kindergarten when they had to pair
+these little ones always chose each other. Possibly the new wife in the
+home was a wise and discreet woman. She might be glad too at the thought
+that she need not part with her daughter. Anyhow I should think that in
+Fen Chou Fu in the future there would be one married couple between whom
+the sincerest affection will exist.
+
+I suppose Chinese husbands and wives are fond of each other
+occasionally, but the Chinaman looks upon wedded life from quite a
+different point of view from the Westerner. I remember hearing about a
+new-made widow who came to sympathise with a missionary recovering from
+a long illness. She was properly thanked, and then the missionary in her
+turn said in the vernacular:
+
+“And you too have suffered a bitterness. I am sorry.”
+
+“I?” incredulously, as much as to say, Who could think I had a sorrow?
+
+“Why, yes. You have lost your husband, haven't you?”
+
+“Call that a bitterness?” smiled the relict cheerfully, and her would-be
+consoler felt the ground cut away beneath her feet.
+
+But perhaps that sympathiser was not quite as much dismayed as another
+lady who offered her condolences upon a similar occasion. The new-made
+widow was a gay old thing, and she remarked blandly, with a toss of her
+head:
+
+“All, we don't worry about things like that when we've got the Gospel!”
+ which left that well-meaning teacher a little uncertain as to whether
+she had instructed her in the doctrines of her new faith quite
+correctly.
+
+Fen Chou Fu is a town that lends itself to reform, that asks for it.
+When I was there they had a magistrate who had been educated in Japan
+and was ready to back any measures for the good of the town. He was too
+much imbued with the spirit of modern thought to be a Christian, but
+he was full of admiration for many of the measures advocated by these
+enthusiastic young people from Oberlin College. There is a large
+Government school here--you may see the courtyards with their lily ponds
+and bridges from the wall--that has been in existence for hundreds of
+years, and this magistrate appealed to the missionaries to take it over
+and institute their modern methods. They might even, so he said, teach
+their own faith there. The only thing that stood in the way was want
+of funds, for though the school was endowed, money has still a way of
+sticking to the hands through which it passes in China. The missionaries
+were rather inclined, I think, to have hopes of his conversion, but I do
+not think it is very easy to convert the broad-minded man who sees the
+good in all creeds. This magistrate was anxious to help his people sunk
+in ignorance and was wise enough to use every means that came in his
+way, for he knows, knowing his own people, you will never Westernise
+a Chinaman. He will take all that is good--or bad--in the West that
+appeals to him, and he will mould it in his own way. This magistrate
+was building an industrial school for criminal boys close to the mission
+station and, more progressive than the West itself, he allowed his wife
+to sit on the bench beside him and try and sentence women proved guilty
+of crime.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--“MISERERE DOMINE!”
+
+As I have said more than once, it seems to me the most intolerable
+thing in life would be to be a Chinese woman. I remember when first I
+began to write about China I asked a friend of mine to look over my
+work and he objected to my making such a fuss about the condition of the
+women.
+
+“Why, people will think you are a suffragette!” said he, searching for
+some term of obloquy that he felt could not possibly apply to me.
+
+But I am a suffragist, an ardent suffragist, realising that a woman
+is most valuable neither as an angel nor as a slave, but as a useful
+citizen, and I saw then that he possibly knew little about the condition
+of his own women, and probably absolutely nothing at all about the
+condition of the women of the race who swarmed around him. Those he met
+would be dumb, and at any rate no right-minded woman begins upon her
+wrongs to a stranger. In any country it would be bad taste, in China no
+words can tell what shocking bad taste. I had to seek further afield for
+my information, and I got it from the medical missions. Now I went to
+China with a strong prejudice against missionaries, and I found there
+many people who backed me up. And then it occurred to me that I had
+better go to a mission station and see what manner of people were these
+I was judging so hastily and so finally.
+
+I went. And what I saw made me sorry that Great Britain and America, to
+say nothing of Scandinavia, should be deprived of the services of these
+men and women who are giving so much to an alien people. Of course I
+know that many missionaries have the “call,” a “vocation” I suppose the
+Catholics would call it.
+
+“It is a fine work,” said I, usually the unadmiring, “to teach these
+women, but I do not like coming in contact with them, however much I
+appreciate their virtues.”
+
+And the missionary girl looked at me pityingly.
+
+“Do you think,” said she, “we could come all this way to teach Chinese
+women reading, writing and arithmetic?”
+
+It seems to me a great thing to do; if it be only to teach them to wash,
+it is a great thing; but I who merely pitied would never have stayed
+there to better the condition of those unhappy women. To her and her
+comrades had come that mysterious call that comes to all peoples through
+all the ages, the Crying in the Wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the
+Lord. Make His paths straight,” and she thought more, far more, of it
+than I did of the undoubtedly good work I saw she was doing, saw as
+I never should have seen had I not gone in the ways untrodden by the
+tourist, or indeed by any white man.
+
+There are missionaries and missionaries, of course; there are even
+backsliders who, having learned the difficult tongue under the ægis of
+the missions, have taken up curio-buying or any other of the mercantile
+careers that loom so temptingly before the man who knows China; but in
+all classes of society there are backsliders, the great majority must
+not be judged by them. Neither must their narrowness be laid too mueh
+to heart when judging the missionary as a whole. Possibly only a fanatic
+can carry through whole-heartedly the work of a missionary at a remote
+station in China, and most fanatics are narrow. There are, too, the men
+and women who make it a business and a livelihood, who reckon they have
+house and income and position and servants in return for their services
+to the heathen, but they too are faithful and carry out their contracts.
+Having once seen the misery and poverty in which the great majority of
+Chinese dwell, I can say honestly that I think every mission station
+that I have seen is a centre from which radiates at least a hope of
+better things. They raise the standard of living, and though I care
+not what god a man worships, and cannot understand how any man can be
+brought to care, it is good that to these people sitting in darkness
+someone should point out that behind the world lies a great Force, God,
+Love, call it what you will, that is working for good. That the more
+educated Chinese has worked out a faith for himself, just as many in
+the West have done, I grant you, but still the majority of the people
+that I have seen sit in darkness and want help. From the missions they
+get it. Taken by and large, the Chinaman is a utilitarian person, and if
+the missions had not been helpful they would long ago have gone. And for
+the missionaries themselves--I speak of those in the outstations--not
+one, it seems to me, not one would stay among the Chinese unless he were
+sure that his God had sent him, for the life is hard, even for the rich
+missions there are many deprivations, and if therefore, being but human,
+they sometimes depict their God as merciful and loving in a way that
+seems small and petty, much must be forgiven them. They are doing their
+best.
+
+There is another side to it too for the West. These missionaries
+are conquering China by the system of peaceful penetration. They are
+persecuted, they suffer, are murdered often, but that does not drive
+them away. They come back again and again, and wherever the missionary
+succeeds in planting his foot the hatred to foreigners and things
+foreign, strong among the conservative Chinese, is weakened and finally
+broken down. China is a rich country, she is invaluable to the nations
+of the earth for purposes of trade, and though the missionary in many
+ways, if he were asked, would oppose the coming of the white man, he
+certainly is the pioneer.
+
+China is trying to reform herself, but the process is slow, and it seems
+to me in Shansi and in the parts of Chihli that I know it would be a
+long, long while before the good percolated to the proletariat, the
+Babylonish slaves, if it were not for the missionaries; and particularly
+do I admire the medical missionaries, for China is one huge sore.
+
+That is the word the woman doctor at Pao Ting Fu applied to it, and,
+attending her clinic of a morning, I was inclined to agree with her.
+Life is hard for everybody among the poor in China, but especially does
+it press upon the women. They came there into the clean sun-lit room and
+the reek of them went up to heaven--bald-headed, toothless old crones in
+wadded coats out of which all semblance of colour had long since passed,
+young girls and little children clad in the oldest of garments. There
+were so many with ingrowing eyelashes that the doctor had one particular
+day upon which she operated for this painful disfigurement, and she
+showed me how, by making a little nick--I'm afraid I can't use proper
+surgical terms--in the upper eyelid, she turned back the eyelashes and
+made them grow in the direction they are intended to grow, and saved the
+unfortunates' eyes. Why eyelashes should grow in in China I don't know.
+Perhaps it is my ignorance, but I have never heard of their behaving in
+such an unnatural fashion in any other part of the world, while in Pao
+Ting Fu this ailment seemed to be as common as influenza in London. Then
+there would be women with their mouths closed by sores, often so badly
+they could only live by suction, and more than once a new mouth had to
+be cut; there were cancerous growths--the woman depicted in the picture
+had waited twenty years before she could arrange to come under one
+hundred miles to the doctor--there were sores on the head, sores all
+over the body, all, I suppose, including the ingrowing eyelashes, caused
+by malnutrition, swollen glands, abscesses offensive and purulent, in
+fact in that clinic were collected such an array of human woes, ghastly,
+horrible, as well might make one wonder if the force behind all life
+could possibly be anything but devilish and cruel. Wherein could the
+good be found? Where?
+
+And yet there was good. Among these women moved the nurses. They were
+comely girls in blue coats and trousers, with their abundant black hair
+smoothly drawn back, neat white stockings and the daintiest of little
+shoes. Their delicate artistic hands used sponge and basin very capably,
+they were the greatest contrast to their patients, and yet they were
+truly Chinese, had sprung from the people to whom they now ministered,
+and one of them, though it was hardly observable, had an artificial
+foot. So had she suffered from foot-binding that her own had had to be
+amputated.
+
+Probably most of the ailments there treated were preventable, but worst
+of all were the bound feet and the ailments the women suffered from in
+consequence. It is not good manners to speak about a woman's feet,
+and the women themselves rarely refer to them, but naturally I was
+interested in the custom, and whenever the doctor got a “good” bound
+foot, which probably meant a very bad one, she sent over for me to come
+and see it. Anyone who has once seen a bound foot will never forget it.
+It always smelt abominably when first the bandages were taken off, and
+the first thing the nurses did was to provide a square kerosene tin of
+hot water in which to soak the foot well.
+
+Well washed, the feet might be looked at. Shansi especially is the home
+of the bound foot, most of the women have such small feet that they are
+confined for the greater part of their lives to the _k'ang_. I remember
+Dr Lewis in all seriousness saying that he thought on the whole a
+Chinese woman was better without her feet. And I'm inclined to think he
+was right. The toes, all except the big toe, are pressed back till they
+touch the heel, the bandage is put on and drawn tighter and tighter
+every day, and if the girl is healthy and big-boned, so much the worse
+for her. No matter the size of the girl, the foot must conform to the
+one standard. In Shansi when I was there the shoes were generally about
+four inches long, and I have taken shoes of that length off a tall and
+strapping woman who was tottering along with the aid of a stick. What
+she must have suffered to get her feet to that size is too terrible
+to imagine. She must have been suffering still for that matter. If the
+instep after the tightest binding still sticks up the girl's marriage
+chances are seriously interfered with, and then the mother or some
+feminine relative takes a meat-chopper and breaks the bone till she can
+bind the foot small enough. This information I got from the American
+lady who looks after the women in the mission in Fen Chou Fu; and at
+T'ai Yuan Fu the sister in the women's hospital added the gruesome
+detail that they sometimes pull off the little girls' toe-nails so that
+they may not interfere with the binding!
+
+And at the women's hospital at Pao Ting Fu I saw the finished product.
+The big toe stuck straight out, red, possibly because of the soaking
+in hot water--I never had courage to look at one unsoaked--and
+ghastly-looking, the other toes were pressed back against the heel
+and the heel went up and was exactly like the Cuban heels affected by
+smartly dressed women, only this time it had been worked in flesh
+and blood. The whole limb from the big toe to the knee was hard and
+immovable as stone. If you press ordinary flesh anywhere it pits, just
+yields a little, not so a Chinese woman's leg and foot. It is thin,
+perished, literally hard as marble. Once having seen a foot unbound, it
+is a wonder to me that any woman should walk at all. And yet they do.
+They hold out their arms and walk, balancing themselves, and they use a
+stick. Sometimes they walk on their heels, sometimes they try the toe,
+but once I realised what those bandages concealed it was a painful and
+dreadful thing to me to see a Chinese woman walking. In spite of the
+hardness of the flesh, or probably because of it, they get bad corns on
+the spot upon which they balance, and sores, very often tuberculous, eat
+into the foot.
+
+[Illustration: 0117]
+
+[Illustration: 0118]
+
+But the evil does not stop at the foot. In Shansi it seemed to me every
+woman's face was marked with the marks of patient suffering. Travelling
+I often got a glimpse of one peering out of a cart or litter at the
+foreigner, and that face invariably was patient, pallid and worn, for
+foot-binding brings no end of evils in its train. The doctor at Fen Chou
+Fu declared that nine-tenths of the women who came to him for treatment
+suffered from tuberculosis in some form or another, and this in a
+climate that in the winter must outrival in dryness Davos Platts. Not
+a few, too, develop spinal curvature low down in the back, and often
+because of the displacement of the organs they die in child-birth. A
+missionary in one of the little towns I passed through, a trained nurse,
+told me that when a woman suffered from what she (the woman) called
+leg-waist pains--the doctor called it osteomalacia--her case was
+hopeless, she could not give birth to a child. Often this nurse had been
+called in to such cases, and she could do nothing to help the suffering
+girl. She could only stand by and see her die. I could well believe
+these tales of suffering. In Fen Chou Fu and in Pao Ting Fu the women
+of the poorer classes freely walked the streets, and their crippled
+condition was patent to all eyes. But in some towns it is not considered
+seemly for any woman to be seen in the streets. Some reason established
+this custom long ago: the reason passes, but China is the most
+conservative of nations, and the custom remains. But the reason for
+foot-binding is not very clear. There is something sexual at the bottom
+of it, I believe, but why a sick and ailing woman should be supposed
+to welcome the embraces of her lord more readily than one abounding in
+health passes my understanding. Of course we remember that not so very
+long ago, in the reign of Victoria, practically the delicate woman
+who was always ailing was held up to universal admiration. Look at
+the swooning heroines of Dickens and Thackeray. But let no man put the
+compressed waist on the same plane as foot-binding. I have heard
+more than one man do so, but I unhesitatingly affirm they are wrong.
+Foot-binding is infinitely the worse crime. The pinched-in waist did not
+begin till the girl was at least well on in her teens, and it was
+only the extreme cases--and they did it of their own free will I
+presume--who kept up the pressure always. There was always the night for
+rest, whereas the Chinese women get no rest from torture.
+
+The missionaries at Fen Chou Fu, being very anxious to improve the
+status of the women, used to arrange to have lectures in their large
+hall to women only, and they raked the country-side for important people
+to address them on subjects that were, or rather that should be, of
+interest to women. They were not supposed to have anything to do with
+religion, but they discussed openly women's position, were told about
+hygiene and the care of children, and the magistrate's wife, she who had
+been educated in Japan, told them some home-truths about the position of
+women in China.
+
+“American women,” said she on one occasion, “go out into the world and
+help in the world's development. We Chinese stay at home and are dragged
+along by the men. The time has come when we must learn better things.”
+
+But I looked one day at over seventy women of the richer classes
+assembled to listen to a young and enthusiastic Chinese with modern
+views on the position of women and their equality with men. He was
+passionate, he was eloquent, he was desperately in earnest, but it was
+very evident he spoke to deaf ears. I do not think that any one of those
+women grasped, or cared for that matter, what he was saying. In the
+heart of China woman is very far from being the equal of man. These
+women were pets and toys, and they came to the mission station probably
+because it was the fashionable form of amusement just then, but they
+listened to what was being said with deaf ears and minds incapable
+of understanding. They were gaily clad in silks and satins, richly
+embroidered; their hair when it was abundant was oiled and elaborately
+dressed and decorated with gold and silver pins, and when it was scanty
+was hidden under embroidered silken bands; there was not a skirt amongst
+them, that was left to the lecturer, their blue and green and brilliant
+red trousers were rather narrow, their feet were of the very tiniest
+even in Shansi, and their faces, worn and suffering under their paint
+and powder, were vacant. Some of them had brought their babies, and only
+when a child cried, and they cried fairly frequently, did those faces
+light up. That was something they really did understand.
+
+And yet that enthusiastic young scholar in his voluminous petticoats,
+with his hair cut in the modern fashion, went on lecturing to them on
+the rights of women, the position women ought to occupy!
+
+But the position of women! Toys or slaves are they, toys and slaves have
+been their mothers and their grandmothers since the days before the
+dawn of history, and very, very slowly is the idea of the possibility of
+better things percolating through to the masses in China. It will come,
+I suppose, because already there are Government schools for women,
+though they are few and far between, and in some places, so far has
+the desire for freedom gone, the girls have banded themselves into
+societies, declaring that rather than marry a man they have never seen
+they will commit suicide, and more than one has taken her own life. But
+in the parts of Shansi and Chihli where I was so much light has not yet
+penetrated. The wife and mother has influence because any living
+thing with which we are closely associated--even if it be but a little
+dog--must needs influence us, but all the same the Chinese women are as
+a rule mere chattels, dependent entirely upon their menfolk. Amongst
+the Chinese the five happinesses are: old age, a son, riches, official
+position and a moustache; so slight a thing is a woman that she does not
+come in in this connection.
+
+“As far as the heavens are above the earth, so far am I,” disdainfully
+proclaimed a Chinese teacher, “above my wife.” And he only spoke as if
+stating a self-evident fact, a thing that could not be questioned. “How
+could she be my equal?” Just as I might have objected to being put on
+the same plane as my mule or my little dog. Indeed I doubt very much
+whether he gave the same consideration to his wife as I would do to my
+little dog, who is much beloved.
+
+This is not to say, of course, that the men don't consider the women.
+They do.
+
+I remember the gate-keeper at Pao Ting Fu mission paying up for his
+daughter's schooling. He was a jovial old soul, so old that I was
+surprised to hear he had a mother.
+
+“Short am I?” said he cheerfully. “Short? Oh, that dollar and a half!”
+ He paused to consider the matter, then added: “And I was thinking about
+borrowing a dollar from you. My mother's dying, and I want to buy her a
+skirt! Must be prepared, you know!”
+
+The old lady, said Miss Newton, had probably never owned such a luxury
+as a skirt in her life, but that was her son's way of being good to
+her, for the people have a proverb to the effect that the most important
+thing in life is to be buried well, an idea that isn't entirely unknown
+in Western and more enlightened lands. Poor old lady, whose one and
+only skirt came to her to be buried in, or perhaps it would be taken off
+before she was buried, for the Chinese are a careful people. I remember
+one frugal man who celebrated the funeral of his mother and the marriage
+of his son at the same time, so that the funeral baked meats did for
+the marriage feast, and the same musicians did for both. The coffin,
+of heavy black wood, tall as a mantelpiece, stood in the yard, with the
+eldest son and his wife clad in white as mourners, and the rest of
+the company made merry in the house over the bridal. It was the most
+exquisite piece of thrift, but the Chinaman is _par excellence_ an
+economist.
+
+It was in Pao Ting Fu that I met the only woman who made open complaint
+against the position of women, and she only did it because, poor thing,
+she was driven to it.
+
+She slipped through the mission compound gate while the gate-keeper was
+looking the other way, a miserable, unkempt woman with roughened hair
+and maimed feet. Her coat and trousers of the poorest blue cotton were
+old and soiled, and the child she carried in her arms was naked save
+for a little square of blue cotton tied round his body in front. She
+was simply a woman of the people, deadly poor where all just escape
+starvation, young and comely where many are unattractive, and she stood
+under the shade of the trees watching eagerly the mission family and
+their guest at breakfast on the porch! It was a June morning, the
+sunshine that would be too fierce later on now at 7 a.m. was golden, and
+a gentle breeze just whispered softly in the branches that China--even
+Pao Ting Fu--in the early summer morning was a delightful place.
+
+But eager watching eyes glued to every mouthful are distinctly
+disquieting, and in China, the land of punctilious etiquette, are rude.
+Besides, she had no business to be there, and the doctor's wife turned
+and spoke to her.
+
+“What custom is this?” said she, using the vernacular, “and how did you
+get in here?”
+
+“I ran past”--ran, save the mark, with those poor broken cramped
+feet--“when the gate-keeper was not looking. And it's not a day's hunger
+I have. For weeks when we have had a meal we have not known where the
+next was coming from.”
+
+“But you have a husband?”
+
+“And he was rich,” assented the woman, “but he has gambled it all away.”
+
+It was quite a likely story. Another woman working on the compound said
+it was true. She had a bad husband--_hi yah!_ a very bad husband. He
+beat her, often he beat her. Sometimes perhaps it was her fault, because
+she was bad-tempered. Who would not be bad-tempered with maimed feet, an
+empty stomach and two little hungry children? But often he beat her
+for no reason at all. And everyone knows that a Chinese husband has a
+perfect right to beat his wife. That he refrains from so doing is an act
+of grace on his part, but a woman of herself is merely his chattel. She
+has no rights.
+
+The hospital quilted bed-covers--_pel wos_, they called them--had to be
+unripped and washed. The pay was twenty-five _t'ung tzus_ a day and keep
+yourself. One hundred and thirty _t'ung tzus_ went to the dollar, and
+10-35 dollars went to the sovereign at that time, so that the work
+could not be considered overpaid; but this was China, and the women were
+apparently rising up out of the ground and clamouring for it. It was
+evidently looked upon as quite a recreation to sit under the trees on
+the grass in the mission compound and gossip and unpick quilts. The new
+recruit joined them and spent a happy day, sure of food for herself and
+her children for that day at least--not food perhaps such as we would
+appreciate, but at least a sufficiency of millet porridge.
+
+That day and the next she worked, and then on the third day at midday
+she went away for her meal and did not come back till after two o'clock
+in the afternoon. The doctor's wife was reproachful.
+
+“You have been away for over three hours. Why is this?”
+
+She was a true Chinese and found it difficult to give a direct answer.
+
+“I have been talking to my mother,” said she, rousing wrath where she
+might have gained sympathy.
+
+“What excuse is this?” said the doctor's wife. “You go away, and when
+I ask you why, you tell me you have been talking to your mother! Your
+mother should have more sense than to keep you from your work!”
+
+“But my husband has sold me!” protested the culprit and then we saw that
+her face was swollen with crying; “and I am a young woman and I don't
+know what to do when my husband sells me. He keeps the children and
+he sells me, and Tsao, the man who has bought me, is a bad man,” and
+dropping down to the ground she let the tears fall on to the work in her
+hands.
+
+“I am young and so I don't know what to do.” It was the burden of her
+song. It may be she is wailing still, for the story was unfinished when
+I left. She was young and she didn't know what to do. She would not have
+minded leaving her husband if only the man to whom she had been sold had
+been a better man, but he bore a worse reputation if anything than her
+husband, and ignorant, unlearned in all things of this world as she was,
+she and the women round her knew exactly what her fate would be. Tsao
+would sell her when he tired of her, and her next purchaser would do
+likewise, and as she gets older and her white teeth decay and her bright
+eyes fade and her comeliness wanes her money value will grow less and
+less, and beating and starvation will be her portion till death comes
+as a merciful release. But, as she kept repeating pathetically, she is
+young, and death is the goal at the end of a weary, weary, heartbreaking
+road.
+
+For her husband was quite within his rights. He could sell her. It may
+be, of course, he will be swayed by public opinion, and public opinion
+is against the disposing of a wife after this fashion.
+
+“Let her complain to the official,” suggested my assurance.
+
+But the wise women who knew rose up in horror at the depths of ignorance
+I was disclosing.
+
+“Go to the yamen and complain of her husband!”
+
+It is no crime for a man to sell his wife, but it is a deadly crime for
+a woman to speak evil of her husband! She was not yet handed over. All
+he would have to do would be to deny it, and then she would be convicted
+of this crime and to her other ills would be added the wrath of the
+official. No, something better than that must be thought of.
+
+She had been sold for a hundred _tiaou_--something under four
+pounds--and when the money was paid she would have to go to her new
+master, far away from all her friends.
+
+“_Hi yah!_” said the other women. “What a bad man!” So public opinion
+was against it!
+
+It would do no good to buy her freedom unless the purchaser were
+prepared to take upon himself the conduct of her future life. A woman
+must belong to somebody in China; she is, except in very exceptional
+cases and among the very advanced, considered incapable of guiding her
+own life, and pay this and the man would still regard her as his wife
+and sell her again.
+
+Then a woman wise with wisdom of the people arose.
+
+“There is only one thing to be done,” said she; “you must pretend you
+know nothing about it, and when Tsao comes, and you are sold, then make
+an excuse and run to the yamen. It may be the official will help, for it
+is a wicked thing.”
+
+“Run to the yamen!” on feet on which she could just totter. But the wise
+woman had taken that into consideration.
+
+“Mark well the way so you may hide in the turnings.”
+
+Such a forlorn, pitiful little hope! But with it she had to be content,
+and that night she held her peace and pretended she did not know
+the fate that hung over her, and when I left she was still ripping
+bed-covers with the other women. She had had no hand in bringing about
+her own fate, for she did not choose this man. She had never seen him
+till she was handed over on her marriage day by her parents.
+
+“What,” said the women at one place when a new missionary came to them,
+“forty and not married! What freedom! How did you manage it! What good
+fortune!”
+
+In China there is no respectable word, so I am told, to denote a
+bachelor, and there was almost never, at least under the old regime,
+such a thing as an old maid. Every woman must belong to someone, and
+few and far between are the families that can afford to keep unmarried
+daughters, so the women regard as eminently fortunate those foreign
+women they come across, missionary or otherwise, who are apparently free
+to guide their own lives.
+
+Of course the average husband would no more think of selling his wife
+than would an Englishman, but, unlike the Englishman, he knows that he
+has the right to do so should he so please, even as he has the right
+of life and death over her and his children. She is his chattel, to be
+faithful to her would simply be foolishness.
+
+They tell a story of an angry father found digging a hole in which he
+proposed to bury his son alive. That son had been insolent, and it was
+a terrible thing to have an insolent son. His mother wept, but to her
+tears the father paid no heed. A stranger passed along and questioned
+the little company, and finding in his heart pity for the woman and the
+lad, cast about how he might help them. He did not set about it as we of
+the West would have done.
+
+He commiserated with the father. It was a terrible thing to have an
+insolent son. Undoubtedly he deserved death. But it would be a bad thing
+to have no son to worship at the ancestral tablet.
+
+That was provided for, said the irate parent. He had two other sons.
+
+That was well! That was well! And of course they had sons?
+
+No, they were young. They had no sons yet.
+
+A-a-ah! And suppose anything happened by which they both should die?
+
+The stranger let that sink in. He had struck the right chord. It
+would be a terrible thing to have no son to worship at the ancestral
+tablet--to think that he by his own act----
+
+Chinese reasoning prevailed, and the son's life was spared.
+
+And yet the Chinese are fond of their children and, according to their
+lights, good to their wives. It is that under the patriarchal system
+children and women--a woman is always a child, a very ignorant child as
+a rule--have no rights. They are dependent upon the good will of their
+owners.
+
+And so the woman sitting waiting to see if her husband would complete
+the bargain and sell her had no rights. She was just a chattel in the
+eye of the law. And there was none to help. Miserere Domine! It was just
+possible public opinion would save her. It was her only hope. Miserere
+Domine! Miserere Domine!
+
+In Fen Chou Fu the missionaries had started an adult school for women.
+First it was started, as they themselves put it, to teach the Gospel,
+but then wisely they extended it and taught reading, writing and
+arithmetic, and very eager indeed were the pupils. It is only fair to
+say that very often husbands, or possibly fathers-in-law--for a woman
+belongs to the head of her husband's family, or at least owes allegiance
+to him--aided and abetted in every way, and when necessary sent the
+pupils twenty and thirty miles in carts and in litters from away in
+the mountains to attend. One woman with four little children, all under
+five, with another coming, was a most eager pupil. Her children were
+sent to the kindergarten, which is in charge of a young Chinese teacher
+educated by the missionaries.
+
+Again I do not say the Chinese are not doing something to ameliorate the
+condition of their women. I can only speak of what I saw, and what I saw
+was, here in Shansi, the wives of the most miserable peasants sunk in
+ignorance and hardly able to crawl from the _k'angs_ on which they spent
+their lives. The men do the cooking because the women are incapable, and
+the mortality among the children is terrible. A doctor told me that
+very often he had attended a woman at the birth of her thirteenth or
+fourteenth child and only one or two would be living!
+
+I don't know how many wives or concubines a man is allowed. Only the
+first one has any standing, and the number of the others is probably
+limited by his means. I remember hearing of one man, a Mr Feng, who had
+just married his second wife to another man because she was making his
+life too miserable for him. This was the man's side of the story; I had
+heard the woman's the last time. I wonder how the case is put on these
+occasions. Does a man say he is parting with the lady with extreme
+regret because the climate does not suit her, or because his first wife
+does not like her, or because a sudden reverse of fortune has compelled
+him to reduce his household? He surely would never have given the real
+reason. My friend Mr Farrer waxes enthusiastic over things Chinese, but
+I must say what I have seen of their domestic life repels me, and I
+am rather inclined to agree with a missionary of my acquaintance--a
+bachelor though--that it would give nervous prostration to a brazen
+statue.
+
+There can be little happiness where there is ignorance, and the majority
+of the women of Shansi anyhow are the ignorant slaves of ignorant
+slaves. Miserere Domine!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--BY MOUNTAIN AND RIVER
+
+Setting out on a long journey by road, moving along slowly, at the rate
+of thirty miles a day, I find I do not have the end in view in my mind
+all the time. I do subconsciously, of course, or I would never get on
+at all, but I take a point a couple of days ahead and concentrate
+on getting there. Having arrived so far, I am so pleased with the
+performance I can concentrate on the next couple of days ahead. So
+I pass on comfortably, with the invigorating feeling of, something
+accomplished.
+
+Fen Chou Fu, then, was one of my jumping-off places.
+
+And at Fen Chou Fu my muleteers began to complain. Looked at from a
+Western point of view, they ought to have complained long before, but
+their complaint was not what I expected. They sent my interpreter to say
+we were going the wrong way. This road would lead us out into a great
+bare place of sand. When the wind blew it would raise the sand in great
+clouds that would overwhelm us, and if the clouds gathered in the sky we
+should not be able to see the sun, we would not know in which direction
+to go and we should perish miserably. And having supplied me with this
+valuable and sinister information they stood back to watch it sink in.
+
+It didn't have the damping and depressing effect they doubtless
+expected. To begin with, I couldn't believe in a Chinese sky where you
+couldn't see the sun. The clouds might gather, but a few hours would
+suffice to disperse them, in my experience, and as for losing ourselves
+in the sand--well, I couldn't believe it possible. Always in China,
+where-ever I had been, there had been plenty of people of whom to ask
+the way, and though every man's radius was doubtless short, still at
+every yard there was somebody. It was like an endless chain.
+
+“Don't they want to go?” I asked Mr Wang.
+
+“Repeat, please,” said he, according to the approved formula.
+
+“Won't they go?” I felt I had better have the matter clear.
+
+“You say 'Go,' mus' go. You fear--you no go.”
+
+If I feared and wouldn't go on, I grasped, the money I paid them would
+be forfeit.
+
+“But I must go. I am not afraid.”
+
+“They say you go by Hsi An Fu. That be ploper.” And the listening
+muleteers smiled at me blandly.
+
+“But I cannot go by Hsi An Fu because of White Wolf.” I did not say that
+also it would be going round two sides of a triangle because that would
+not appeal to the Chinese mind.
+
+“They not knowing White Wolf,” said Mr Wang, shaking his head.
+
+“Well, I know White Wolf,” I said, departing a little from the truth,
+“and I am going across the river to Sui Te Chou.”
+
+“You say 'Go,'” said Mr Wang sorrowfully, “mus' go,” and he looked at
+the muleteers, and the muleteers looked at him sorrowfully and went
+off the verandah sorrowfully to prepare for the lonely road where there
+would be no people of whom to ask the way, only sand and no sun.
+
+There was plenty of sun when we started. It was a glorious summer
+morning when my little caravan went out of the northern gate into the
+mountains that threatened the town. It was unknown China now, China as
+she was in the time of the Cæsars, further back still in the time of
+the Babylonish kings, in the days before the first dynasty in Egypt. Out
+through the northern gate we went, by the clay-walled northern suburb,
+past great ash-heaps like little mountain ranges, the refuse of
+centuries, their softly rounded sides now tinged with the green of
+springtime, and almost at once my caravan was at the foot of the
+hills--hills carved into terraces by the daily toil of thousands, but
+looking as if they had been so carved by some giant hand. As we entered
+them as hills they promptly disappeared, for the road was sunken, and
+high over our heads rose the steep clay walls, shutting out all view
+save the bright strip of blue sky above.
+
+I here put it on record--I believe I have done it before, but it really
+cannot be repeated too often--that as a conveyance a mule litter leaves
+much to be desired. Sitting up there on my bedding among my cushions,
+with James Buchanan beside me, I was much more comfortable than I should
+have been in a Peking cart, but also I was much more helpless. A driver
+did take charge of the Peking cart, but the gentleman who sometimes led
+my mule litter more often felt that things were safer in the charge of
+the big white mule in front, and when the way was extremely steep or
+rough he abandoned it entirely to its discretion. The missionaries had
+told me whenever I came to a bad place to be sure and get out, because
+the Chinese mules are not surefooted enough to be always trusted. They
+are quite likely at a bad place to slip and go over. This was a cheering
+reflection when I found myself at the bad place abandoned to the tender
+mercies of those animals. The mule in the lead certainly was a capable
+beast, but again and again, as I told Mr Wang, I would have preferred
+that the muleteers should not put quite so much faith in him. I learned
+to say “B-r-rrr, b-r-r-rrr!” when I wanted him to stop, but I did
+not like to say it often, because I felt in a critical moment I might
+seriously hamper him to my own disadvantage. I told Mr Wang I was to
+be lifted out when we came to bad places, but that too was hardly
+practicable, for we came to many places that I certainly could not have
+negotiated on my own feet, and how the mules got a cumbersome litter
+down or up them passes my understanding. Thinking it over, the only
+advice I can give to anyone who wishes to follow in my footsteps is
+to shut his eyes as I did and trust to the mule. And we went down some
+places that were calculated to take the curl out of my hair.
+
+James Buchanan was a great comfort to me under these circumstances. He
+nestled down beside me--he had recovered from his accident before we
+left Fen Chou Fu--and he always assured me that everything would be all
+right. One thing he utterly declined to do, and that was to walk with
+the servants. I used to think it would be good for his health, but the
+wisdom of the little Pekinese at the British American Tobacco Factory
+had sunk in deep and he declined to trust himself with them unless I
+walked too, when he was wild with delight. Put out by himself, he would
+raise a pitiful wail.
+
+“Buchanan declines,” Mr Wang would say sententiously, and he would be
+lifted baek into the litter by my master of transport as if he were a
+prince of the blood at least. And if anyone thinks I make an absurd fuss
+about a little dog, I must remind him that I was entirely alone among an
+alien people, and the little dog's affection meant a tremendous deal
+to me. He took away all sense of loneliness. Looking back, I know now I
+could not have gone on, this book would never have been written, if it
+had not been for James Buchanan.
+
+Roughly the way to the Yellow River is through a chain of mountains,
+across a stony plateau in the centre of which is situated Yung Ning
+Chou, quite a busy commercial city, and across another chain of
+mountains through which the river forces its way. When first I entered
+the ditch in the loess my objective was Yung Ning Chou. I looked no
+farther. I wanted to get to that town in which seven Scandinavian
+missionaries in twenty years had not effected a single convert. The
+cliffs frowned overhead, and the effect to me was of wandering along an
+extremely stony way with many pitfalls in it to the chiming of many
+mule bells and an unceasing shouting of “_Ta, ta!_”--that is, “Beat,
+beat!”--a threat by which the muleteer exhorts his animals to do their
+best. Generally speaking, I couldn't see the man who had charge of
+me because he was some way behind and the tilt shut him from my view.
+Except for knowing that he was attending to his job and looking after
+me, I don't know that I pined to look upon him. His appearance was
+calculated to make me feel I had not wakened from a nightmare. Sometimes
+he wore a dirty rag over his head, but just as often he went in his
+plain beauty unadorned--that is to say, with all the front part of his
+head shaven and the back a mass of wild coarse black hair standing out
+at all angles. They had cut off his queue during the reforming fever at
+T'ai Yuan Fu and I presume he was doing the best he could till it should
+grow again. Certainly it was an awe-inspiring headpiece.
+
+[Illustration: 0135]
+
+[Illustration: 0136]
+
+And always we progressed to the clashing of bells, for on every possible
+point on the trappings of the four mules and the donkey that made up the
+caravan and on every available point on the harness of every mule and
+donkey that passed us was a brass bell. For, for all my muleteers had
+objected to going this way, it was a caravan route to the West, and it
+was seldom we did not see someone on the road. Here in this ditch in the
+loess I realised the stern necessity for these bells, for often the way
+was narrow and when we could hear another caravan coming we could make
+arrangements to pass or to allow them to pass. There were many caravans
+of ragged camels, and to these my animals objected with all the spirit
+a life on the roads had still left in them. When we met a string of
+them at close quarters in the loess my white mule in the lead nearly had
+hysterics, and his feelings were shared, so I judged by the behaviour of
+the litter, by his companion behind, and they both endeavoured to
+commit suicide by climbing the bank, having no respect whatever for my
+feelings.
+
+On these occasions, with clenched teeth and concentrated energy, my
+muleteer addressed himself to that leading mule:
+
+“Now! Who's your mother? You may count yourself as dead!”
+
+The mule evidently felt this was serious and made a desperate endeavour
+to get a little higher, and his attendant became sarcastic.
+
+“Call yourself a mule! Call yourself a lord, sir!”
+
+By the jangling of the bells and the yells of the rest of the company I
+knew that the other animals felt equally bad, and more than once I saw
+my luckless interpreter, who evidently was not much of a hand at sitting
+on a pack, ruefully picking himself up and shaking the dust from his
+person, his mule having flung him as a protest against the polluting of
+the road by a train of camels.
+
+The camels march along with a very supercilious air, but mules, horses
+and donkeys all fear them so much that there are special inns for them
+and they are supposed only to travel by night, but this rule is more
+honoured, I imagine, in the breach than in the observance. Most parts
+of the road I don't see that any caravan could pass along at night. The
+special inns do not present any difference to my unprejudiced eyes from
+the discomfort of an ordinary mule and donkey inn. I stopped at one one
+day in the loess for tiffin, and it consisted of a courtyard round which
+were rooms (_yaos_) that were simply caves with the mouths bricked up
+and doors in them. Inside, the caves were dark and airless, with for all
+furniture the universal, _k'ang_; a fireplace is either in the middle or
+at one of the ends, and the flues underneath carry the hot air under
+the _k'ang_ to warm it. I have never before or since seen such miserable
+dwelling-places as these _yaos_, and in the loess country I saw hundreds
+of them, inhabitated by thousands of people. Wu Ch'eng particularly
+commended itself to my notice because here I first realised that in
+expecting a room to myself I was asking too much of the country.
+
+We crossed the mountain pass the first day out of Fen Chou Fu. Steep it
+was, steep as the roof of a house, and we scrambled down the other
+side and, just as the dusk was falling, we came to Wu Ch'eng, a village
+mostly of _yaos_ in the mountain-side. Wu Ch'eng, where hundreds of
+people live and die, was short of most things that make life worth
+living: water was very scarce indeed, and there were no eggs there. It
+was necessary that our little company should move on with what speed we
+might. Also the inn only had one room.
+
+“The _k'ang_ is large,” said my interpreter, as if he thought that a
+woman who would come out on this journey would not mind sharing that
+_k'ang_ with all the other guests, the innkeeper and his servants. It
+was rather large. I looked into an earthen cave the end of which, about
+thirty feet away, I could hardly make out in the dim light. There were
+great cobwebs hanging from the ceiling--dimly I saw them by the light
+that filtered through the dirty paper that did duty for a window--and
+the high _k'ang_ occupied the whole length of the room, leaving a narrow
+passage with hard-beaten earth for a floor about two feet wide between
+the _k'ang_ and the left-hand wall. It was about as uninviting a room
+as I have ever seen. Also it was clearly impossible that Buchanan and I
+should turn out the rest of the company, so I decreed that I should have
+it to myself for half-an-hour for the purposes of washing and changing,
+for whieh privilege I paid about twenty cash, roughly a ha'penny, and
+then we slept in the litter, as we did on many other occasions, outside
+in the yard among the donkeys and mules. The last thing I saw was the
+bright stars peeping down at me, and the last thing I heard was the
+mules munching at their well-earned chaff, and I wakened to the same
+stars and the same sounds, for early retiring is conducive to early
+rising, and yet the muleteers were always before me and were feeding
+their beasts. Always I went through the same routine. I went to bed
+despairing and disgusted and a little afraid. I slept like the dead, if
+I slept outside, and I wakened to watch the sun rise and renew my hopes.
+
+There are hundreds, probably thousands, of villages like Wu Ch'eng in
+China. The winter in Shansi in the mountains is Arctic and no words can
+describe what must be the sufferings of these people; especially must
+the women suffer, for the poorest peasant binds his daughter's feet, his
+wife can hardly crawl. In Chihli you may see the women tottering round
+on their stumps grinding the corn, in Shansi lucky is the woman who can
+do so much. The ordinary peasant woman is equal to nothing but a little
+needlework, if she have anything to sew, or to making a little porridge,
+if she can do so without moving off the _k'ang_.
+
+The getting something for the men to cook must be a hard job. Potatoes
+are sold singly, other vegetables are cut in halves or quarters, a fowl
+is always sold by the joint. There may be people who do buy a whole
+fowl, but they are probably millionaires. I suppose a whole section of a
+community could not possibly exist on other folks' old clothes, but that
+is how the people of this part of Shansi looked as if they were clothed.
+They had not second-hand clothes or third-hand, they were apparently the
+remnants that the third buyer could find no use for.
+
+I shall never forget on one occasion seeing a ragged scarecrow bearing
+on the end of a pole a dead dog, not even an ordinary dead dog, but one
+all over sores, a most disgustingly diseased specimen. I asked Mr Wang
+what he was carrying that dog away for and that young gentleman looked
+at me in surprise. He would never get to the bottom of this foolish
+foreigner.
+
+“For eat,” said he simply!
+
+The people of the loess cannot afford to waste anything save the health
+of their women. A dog, a wonk, shares the scavenging work of the Chinese
+towns with the black and white crows, and doubtless the citizens do not
+care so much for eating them as they would a nice juicy leg of mutton,
+but they would no more throw away a wonk that had found life in a
+Chinese town too hard and simply died than I would yesterday's leg of
+mutton in favour of the tender chicken I prefer.
+
+This, the first camel inn I particularly noticed, was not far from
+Fen Chou Fu, and they told me how many years ago one of the medical
+missionaries touring the country found there the innkeeper's wife with
+one of her bound feet in a terrible condition. She had a little baby at
+her breast and she was suffering horribly--the foot was gangrenous. The
+doctor was troubled and puzzled as well. He had no appliances and no
+drugs, but left as they were, mother and baby, already half starved,
+were doomed. Therefore, like a brave man as he was, he took his courage
+in both hands, made a saw of a piece of scrap iron from an American
+packing-case and with this rude instrument and no anaesthetics he
+amputated that foot. And the woman survived, lived to see her child grow
+up, was living when I passed along that way, and I sat in her courtyard
+and had my tiffin of hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice washed down by
+tea. It was her son's courtyard then, possibly that very baby's whose
+life the missionary had saved by saving his mother's. For the Chinese
+have no milch cows or goats and know little about feeding infants
+artificially.
+
+Always at midday the litter was lifted off the mules' backs, my table
+and chair were produced from some recess among the packs, my blue cotton
+tablecloth was spread and Tsai Chih Fu armed himself with a frying-pan
+in which to warm the rice and offered it to me along with hard-boiled
+eggs of dubious age. The excellent master of transport was a bad cook,
+and it is not an exhilarating diet when it is served up three times
+a day for weeks with unfailing regularity. I never grew so weary of
+anything in my life, and occasionally I tried to vary it by buying
+little scones or cakes peppered with sesame seed, but I'm bound to say
+they were all nasty. It always seemed to me that an unfair amount
+of grit from the millstones had got into the flour. Chinese are
+connoisseurs in their cooking, but not in poor little villages in the
+mountains in Western Shansi, where they are content if they can fill
+their starving stomachs. To judge Chinese taste by the provisions of
+these mountaineers is as if we condemned the food of London, having
+sampled only those shops where a steak pudding can be had for fourpence.
+
+And all these little inns, these underground inns, very often had the
+most high-sounding names. “The Inn of Increasing Righteousness”--I hope
+it was, there was certainly nothing else to recommend it; but the “Inn
+of Ten Thousand Conveniences” really made the greatest claim upon my
+faith. The Ritz or the Carlton could hardly have claimed more than this
+cave with the hard-beaten earth for the floor of its one room and for
+all furnishing the _k'ang_ where landlord and guests slept in company.
+
+Yet all these uncomfortable inns between Fen Chou Fu and Yung Ning Chou
+were thronged. The roads outside were littered with the packs of the
+mules and donkeys, and inside the courtyard all was bustle, watering
+and feeding the animals and attending to the wants of the men, who
+apparently took most of their refreshment out of little basins with
+chopsticks and when they were very wealthy, or on great occasions, had
+tea without milk or sugar--which, of course, is the proper way to drink
+it--out of little handleless cups. I don't know that they had anything
+else to drink except hot water. I certainly never saw them drinking
+anything intoxicating, and I believe there are no public-houses in China
+proper.
+
+Every now and then the way through the loess widened a little and there
+was an archway with a tower above it and a crowded village behind.
+Always the villages were crowded. There was very often one or perhaps
+two trees shading the principal street, but other hints of garden or
+greenery there were none. The shops--open stalls--were packed together.
+And in these little villages it is all slum: there is no hint of country
+life, and the street was full of people, ragged people, mostly men and
+children. The men were in rags in all shades of blue, and blue worn
+and washed--at least possibly the washing is doubtful, we will say worn
+only--to dun dirt colour. It was not picturesque, but filthy, and the
+only hint of luxury was a pipe a yard long with a very tiny bowl which
+when not in use hung round their necks or stuck out behind from under
+their coats. Round their necks too would be hung a tiny brass tobacco
+box with hieroglyphics upon it which contained the evil-smelling
+compound they smoked. Sometimes they were at work in their alfresco
+kitchens--never have I seen so much cooking done in the open
+air--sometimes they were shoeing a mule, sometimes waiting for customers
+for their cotton goods, or their pottery ware, or their unappetising
+cooked stuff, and often they were nursing babies, little blaek-eyed
+bundles of variegated dirty rags which on inspection resolved themselves
+into a coat and trousers, whatever the age or the sex of the baby. And
+never have I seen so many family men. The Chinaman is a good father and
+is not ashamed to carry his baby. At least so I judge.
+
+Only occasionally was a woman or two to be seen, sitting on their
+doorsteps gossiping in the sun or the shade, according to the
+temperature. Men and women stared at the foreign woman with all their
+eyes, for foreigners are rather like snow in June in these parts, and
+my coming made me feel as if a menagerie had arrived in the villages
+so great and interested were the crowds that assembled to look at and
+comment on me.
+
+After we passed through the loess the track was up a winding ravine cut
+in past ages by the agency of water. From five hundred to a thousand
+feet above us towered the cliffs and at their feet trickled a tiny drain
+of water, not ankle-deep, that must once have come down a mighty flood
+to cut for itself such a way through the eternal hills. For this, unlike
+the road through the loess, is a broad way where many caravans might
+find room. And this trickle was the beginnings of a tributary to the
+Yellow River. Along its winding banks lay the caravan route.
+
+And many caravans were passing. No place in China is lonely. There were
+strings of camels, ragged and losing their coats--second-hand goods,
+Mark Twain calls them--there were strings of pack-mules and still longer
+strings of little donkeys, and there were many men with bamboos across
+their shoulders and loads slung from either end. Some of these men had
+come from Peking and were bound for far Kansu, the other side of Shensi;
+but as I went on fewer and fewer got the loads from Kansu, most of them
+stopped at Yung Ning Chou, the last walled town of any size this side of
+the river. Always, always through the loess, through the deep ravines,
+across the mountain passes, across the rocky plateau right away to the
+little mountain city was the stream coming and going, bearing Pekingese
+and Cantonese goods into the mountains, and coming back laden with
+wheat, which is the principal product of these places.
+
+Ask the drivers where they were going, camel, mule or donkey, and the
+answer was always the same, they were going east or west, which, of
+course, we could see for ourselves. There was no possibility of going
+any other way. Those in authority knew whither they were bound, but the
+ignorant drivers knew nothing but the direction. At least that is one
+explanation, the one I accepted at the time, afterwards I came to know
+it is a breach of good manners to exhibit curiosity in China, and quite
+likely my interpreter simply greeted the caravans and made his own
+answer to my question. It satisfied or at least silenced me and saved my
+face.
+
+One thing, however, grew more and more noticeable: the laden beasts were
+coming east, going west the pack-saddles were empty. Fear was upon the
+merchants and they would not send goods across the great river into
+turbulent Shensi.
+
+Already, so said my interpreter, and I judged the truth of his statement
+by the empty pack-saddles, they were fearing to send goods into the
+mountains at all. It was pleasant for me. I began to think. I had only
+Buchanan to consult, and he had one great drawback, he always agreed
+that what I thought was likely to be right. It is an attitude of mind
+that I greatly commend in my friends and desire to encourage, but there
+are occasions in life when a little perfectly disinterested advice would
+be most acceptable, and that I could not get. Badly I wanted to cross
+Asia, but I should not cross Asia if I were stopped by _tufeis_, which
+is the local term for robbers. Were these rumours anything, or were
+they manufactured by my interpreter? There were the warnings of the
+missionaries, and there were the empty pack-saddles, and the empty
+pack-saddles spoke loudly. Still I thought I might go on a little
+farther, and James Buchanan encouraged me.
+
+Truly the way to the great river through the mountains was hard. Taking
+all the difficulties in the lump, it would seem impossible to overcome
+them, but taking them one by one I managed it. And not the least of my
+troubles were the dogs.
+
+Here in the mountains was a very handsome breed of large white dogs with
+long hair, at least I am sure they would have been handsome if they had
+been well fed and well eared for. If it had not been for Buchanan, whose
+heart it would have broken, I should certainly have got a puppy to bring
+home with me. These dogs one and all waged war on my little friend,
+who had a great idea of his own importance and probably aggravated the
+ill-fed denizens of the inn-yards. He would go hectoring down a yard,
+head up, white plume waving, with a sort of “Well, here we are! Now what
+have you got to say for yourselves?” air about him, and in two seconds
+more a big white scarecrow of a dog would have him by the neck, dragging
+him across the yard, designing to slay him behind the drinking troughs.
+He would give one shriek for help, and I would fly to that dog's head,
+catch him by the ears or the ruff round his neck and be dragged along in
+my turn till Tsai Chih Fu the resourceful appeared on the scene with a
+billet of wood, and then the unfortunate beast would be banished from
+the yard or tied up till we had gone. I remembered often the warning
+I had received on the subject of hydrophobia, but I never had time to
+think of that till afterwards, when, of course, if anything had happened
+it would have been too late.
+
+There is one thing about a Chinese inn in the interior: it may be
+exceedingly uncomfortable, but it is also exceedingly cheap. A night's
+lodging as a rule costs forty cash. Eleven cash roughly is equal to a
+cent, and a cent, again roughly--it depends upon the price of silver--is
+a little less than a farthing. Forty cash, then, is hardly a penny.
+Hot water costs eight cash, eggs were six cash apiece and so were the
+wheaten scones I bought in place of the bread my servant could not make,
+and I could buy those last as low as three cash apiece. Of course
+I quite understand that I as a rich traveller paid top price for
+everything, probably twice or three times as much as the ordinary
+traveller; the missionaries, indeed, were shocked at the price I paid
+for eggs, and again I was always rooked in the matter of paper. For even
+though I preferred it, it often happened that it was impossible to sleep
+in my litter in the yard, it was too crowded with beasts--and it had to
+be very crowded--and then I stripped off the paper from the window of
+the room I occupied to let in the air, just a little air, and I was
+charged accordingly from thirty to eighty cash for my destructiveness.
+I found afterwards that a whole sheet of new paper can be had for ten
+cash, and the paper I destroyed was not half-a-sheet and was grimed with
+the dirt of ages! Glass, of course, in the mountains of Shansi is almost
+unknown and the windows are covered with white paper.
+
+After the mountains came a high stony plateau, not dangerous but
+difficult, for though this is a great trade route there was not an
+inch of smooth roadway, every step had to be carefully picked among the
+stones, and presently the stream that when we entered the mountains was
+a trickle a hand's-breadth across was now a river meandering among the
+stones. We began by stepping across it; wider it grew and there were
+stepping-stones for the walking muleteers; then the mules waded and the
+muleteers climbed on to the beasts or on to the front of the litter,
+which last proceeding made me very uncomfortable, for I remembered my
+special man was likely at most only to have been washed twice in his
+life, and I was very sure his clothes had never been washed at all and
+probably had never been taken off his back since last October. Finally
+we crossed by bridges, fairly substantial bridges three planks wide, but
+the mules required a deal of encouraging before they would trust them
+and always felt the boards gingerly with their hoofs first as if they
+distrusted the Chinaman and all his engineering works. The engineering
+was probably all right, but as the state of repair often left much to be
+desired I could hardly blame the mules for their caution. And one day we
+crossed that river twenty-six times!
+
+There is no charm in the country in Shansi beyond the sunshine and the
+invigorating air. There were fields, every patch of land that could
+possibly be made to grow a blade of wheat was most carefully tilled,
+there was not a weed, not a blade of grass out of place. In some
+fields the crops were springing green, in others the farmers were still
+ploughing, with a patient ox in the plough; but there were no divisions
+between these fields; there were no hedges; few and scanty trees; no
+gardens; no farmhouses, picturesque or otherwise. The peasants all live
+huddled together, literally in the hill-sides, and of the beauty of life
+there was none. It was toil, toil without remission and with never a
+day off. Even the blue sky and the sunshine and the invigorating dry
+air must be discounted by the dirt and darkness and airlessness of
+the houses and the underground _yaos_. The Chinese peasant's idea in
+building a house seems to be to get rid of the light and the air, the
+only two things I should have thought that make his life bearable. And
+in these dark and airless caves the crippled women spend their days.
+The younger women--I met them occasionally gaily clad and mounted on
+a donkey--looked waxen and had an air of suffering, and the older were
+lined and had a look of querulousness and irritability that was not on
+the men's faces. Many an old man have I seen whose face might stand for
+a model of prosperous, contented, peaceful old age looking back on a
+well-lived life, but never, never have I seen such a look on a woman's
+face.
+
+At last, after crossing a long bridge across the river, we came to Yung
+Ning Chou. The dark grey wall stood out against the blue sky and, unlike
+most Chinese cities that I have seen, there is no watch-tower over the
+gate. It has suburbs, suburbs like Fen Chou Fu enclosed in crumbling
+clay walls that are fast drifting to their inevitable end. They could
+not keep out a rabbit now, let alone a man, and yet they are entered
+through great brick gateways with a turn in them, and going under the
+archways I felt as usual as if I had gone back to Biblical days.
+The walls of the city proper, the crowded little city, are in better
+preservation, and tower high above the caravans that pass round them,
+for there are no inns in Yung Ning Chou and all caravans must stay in
+the eastern suburb. There are narrow, stony little streets of houses
+pressed close together, and the rough roadways are crowded with traffic:
+people, donkeys, laden mules and grunting camels are for ever passing
+to and fro. Looking up the principal street between the eastern and
+the western gate was like looking up a dark tunnel in which fluttered
+various notices, the shop signs, Chinese characters printed on white
+calico. Most of those signs, according to my interpreter's translation,
+bore a strong resemblance to one another. “Virtue and Abundance,” it
+seems they proclaimed to all who could read. But there was no one to
+tell me whether there was really any wealth in this little mountain
+city that is the same now as it probably was a thousand years ago. I
+wondered, I could not help wondering, whether it would be worth Pai
+Lang's while to attack. I wondered if he could get in if he did, for
+the walls were high and the gates, rising up straight and sheer
+without watch towers, such piles of masonry as might have been built by
+conquering Nineveh or Babylon. Here and there, though, in the walls
+the water had got under the clay and forced out the bricks in long deep
+cracks, and here if they were not carefully guarded were places that an
+invading force might storm, and in the suburbs and among the houses that
+clustered close under the protecting walls terrible things might be
+done. But the western gate, I should say, is well-nigh impregnable.
+Nobody but a Chinaman would have built a gate in such a place. It opens
+out on to a steep cliff that falls sheer sixty feet to the river below.
+Chinese towns are always built symmetrically; there should be at least
+one gate in each of the four walls, therefore a gate there is here. It
+seems to have occurred to no one that a gate is placed in those walls
+for the convenience of traffic, and that it is simple waste of time and
+labour to make a gate in a place by which no one could possibly pass.
+For that matter I should have thought a wall unnecessary on top of so
+steep a cliff.
+
+The Scandinavian missionaries who have faithfully worked Yung Ning
+Chou for the last twenty years with so little result were absent when I
+passed through. Only two of them live here, the rest are scattered over
+the mountains to the north, and when I was in Fen Chou Fu I met a woman,
+a Norwegian, who was on her way to join them. She remains in my mind a
+pathetic figure of sacrifice, a wistful woman who was giving of her very
+best and yet was haunted by the fear that all she was giving was of very
+little worth, surely the most bitter and sorrowful reflection in this
+world. She had worked in China as a missionary in her girlhood. She
+explained to me how hard it was for these northern peoples, for to learn
+Chinese they have first to learn English. Then she married, and after
+her little girl was born her husband died and so she took her treasure
+home to educate her in Norway. But she died and, feeling her duty was
+to the Chinese, back came the lonely mother, and when I met her she was
+setting out for the little walled city in the hills where she dwelt
+with some other women. A strangely lonely life, devoid of all pleasures,
+theirs must have been. I was struck with the little things that pleased
+this devoted woman, such little things, and we who may enjoy them
+every day go calmly on our way and never appreciate them. She wore the
+unbecoming Chinese dress, with her white hair drawn baek from her face,
+and her blue eyes looked out wistfully as if she were loath to give up
+hope that somewhere, somehow, in the world individual happiness, that
+would be for her alone, would come to her. During the revolution they,
+remembering the troubles and dangers of the Boxer time, had refugeed in
+Tientsin, and the days there were evidently marked with a white stone in
+her calendar.
+
+“It was so delightful,” she said in her pretty precise English, “to see
+the European children in the gardens.”
+
+How her heart went out to those children. They reminded her, I suppose,
+of the little girl she had left behind sleeping her last sleep among the
+Norwegian mountains.
+
+“Oh, the children!” she sighed. “It brought a lump in your throat to
+look at them!”
+
+It brought a lump in my throat to look at her as I saw her set out for
+her home with two little black-eyed Chinese girls crowded in the litter
+beside her. She was taking them home from the school at Fen Chou Fu.
+The loneliness of her life! The sacrifice of it! I wonder if those three
+women, shut away in that little walled town, made any converts. I doubt
+it, for theirs, like the Yung Ning Chou mission, was purely a faith
+mission.
+
+Unmarried women and widows were these three women. The Yung Ning Chou
+mission consists of four old bachelors and three old maids. Not for a
+moment do I suppose the majority of the Chinese believe they are what
+they are, men and women living the lives of ascetics, giving up all
+for their faith, and the absence of children in child-loving China must
+seriously handicap them in their efforts to spread their faith. Think of
+the weary years of those workers toiling so hopelessly in an alien land
+among a poor and alien population, whose first impulse is certainly to
+despise them. All honour to those workers even though they have failed
+in their object so far as human eye can see, and even though that object
+makes no appeal to people like me.
+
+[Illustration: 0155]
+
+[Illustration: 0156]
+
+[Illustration: 0157]
+
+And I passed on through Yung Ning Chou, on across the stony plateau, and
+at last, at a village called Liu Lin Chen, I was brought up with a sharp
+turn with a tale of Pai Lang.
+
+I was having my midday meal. Not that it was midday. It was four
+o'clock, and I had breakfasted at 6 a.m.; but time is of no account
+in China. Liu Lin Chen was the proper place at which to stop for the
+noonday rest, so we did not stop till we arrived there, though the
+badness of the road had delayed us. I was sitting in the inn-yard
+waiting for Tsai Chih Fu to bring me the eternal hard-boiled eggs and
+puffed rice when Mr Wang came up, accompanied by the two muleteers,
+and they--that is, the two muleteers--dropped down to the ground and
+clamoured, so I made out from his excited statements that the gates of
+Sui Te Chou had been closed for the last four days on account of Pai
+Lang! And Sui Te Chou was the first town I proposed to stop at after I
+crossed the river! If I would go to Lan Chou Fu and on through Sin Kiang
+to the Russian border through Sui Te Chou I must go. There was no other
+way. These days in the mountains had shown me that to stray from the
+caravan road was an utter impossibility. Had I been one of the
+country people conversant with the language I think it would have been
+impossible. As it was, I had my choice. I might go on or I might go
+back. Mr Wang apparently thought there should be no doubt in my mind.
+He evidently expected I would turn tail there and then, and I myself
+realised--I had been realising ever since round the table in the mission
+station at Ki Hsien we had read Dr Edwards' letter--that my journey
+across the continent was ended; but to turn tail in this ignominious
+fashion, having seen nothing, within, I suppose, twenty-five miles of
+the Yellow River, with the country about me as peaceful as the road in
+Kent in which I live at present, how could I? It was more peaceful,
+in fact, for now at night searchlights stream across the sky, within a
+furlong of my house bombs have been dropped and men have been killed,
+and by day and by night the house rocks as motors laden with armament
+and instruments of war thunder past. But there in Shansi in the fields
+the people worked diligently, in the village the archway over which they
+held theatrical representations was placarded with notices, and in the
+inn-yard where I sat the people went about attending to the animals as
+if there was nothing to be feared. And I felt lonely, and James Buchanan
+sat close beside me because at the other side of the very narrow yard a
+great big white dog with a fierce face and a patch of mange on his side
+looked at him threateningly.
+
+“I'll have none of your drawing-room dogs here,” said he.
+
+But Buchanan's difficulties were solved when he appealed to me. I--and
+I was feeling it horribly--had no one to appeal to. I must rely upon
+myself.
+
+And then to add to my woes it began to rain, soft, gentle spring rain,
+growing rain that must have been a godsend to the whole country-side.
+
+It stopped, and Mr Wang and the muleteers looked at me anxiously.
+
+“We will go on,” I said firmly, “to the Yellow River.”
+
+Their faces fell. I could see the disappointment, but still I judged I
+might go in safety so far.
+
+“Don't they want to go?” I asked Mr Wang.
+
+“Repeat, please,” said he. So I repeated, and he said as he had said
+before:
+
+“If you say 'Go,' mus' go.”
+
+And I said “Go.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--CHINA'S SORROW
+
+It is better, says a Chinese proverb, “to hear about a thing than to
+see it,” and truly on this journey I was much inclined to agree with
+that dictum.
+
+We were bound for Hsieh Ts'un. I can't pronounce it, and I should not
+like to swear to the spelling, but of one thing I am very sure, not one
+of the inhabitants could spell it, or even know it was wrongly set forth
+to the world, so I am fairly safe.
+
+We went under the archway with the theatrical notices at Liu Lin Chen,
+under the arched gateway of the village, out into the open country, and
+it began to rain again. It came down not exactly in torrents but good
+steady growing rain. The roads when they were not slippery stones were
+appalling quagmires, and my mule litter always seemed to be overhanging
+a precipice of some sort. I was not very comfortable when that precipice
+was only twenty feet deep, when it was more I fervently wished that I
+had not come to China. I wished it more than once, and it rained and it
+rained and it rained, silent, soaking, penetrating rain, and I saw the
+picturesque mountain country through a veil of mist.
+
+Hsieh Ts'un is a little dirty straggling village, and as we entered it
+through the usual archway with a watch tower above the setting sun broke
+through the thick clouds and his golden rays strcamed down upon the
+slippery wet cobblestones that paved the principal street. The golden
+sunlight and the gorgeous rainbow glorified things a little, and they
+needed glorifying. The principal inn, as usual, was a fairly large yard,
+roughly paved, but swimming now in dirty water; there were stalls for
+animals all round it, and there was a large empty shed where they stored
+lime. It was stone-paved, and the roof leaked like a sieve, but here I
+established myself, dodging as far as possible the holes in the roof and
+drawing across the front of the shed my litter as a sort of protection,
+for the inn, as usual with these mountain inns, had but one room.
+
+It was cold, it was dirty, and I realised how scarce foreigners must
+be when through the misty, soaking rain, which generally chokes off a
+Chinaman, crowds came to stand round and stare at me. I was stationary,
+so the women came, dirty, ragged, miserable-looking women, supporting
+themselves with sticks and holding up their babies to look at the
+stranger while she ate. By and by it grew so cold I felt I must really
+go to bed, and I asked Mr Wang to put it to the crowd that it was not
+courteous to stare at the foreign woman when she wished to be alone,
+and, O most courtly folk! every single one of those people went away.
+
+“You can have a bath,” said he, “no one will look”; and, all honour
+give I to those poor peasants of Western Shansi, I was undisturbed. I am
+afraid a lonely Chinese lady would hardly be received with such courtesy
+in an English village were the cases reversed.
+
+Next day the rain still teemed down. The fowls pecked about the yard,
+drenched and dripping; a miserable, mangy, cream-coloured dog or two
+came foraging for a dinner, and the people, holding wadded coats and
+oiled paper over their heads, came to look again at the show that had
+come to the town; but there was no break in the grey sky, and there was
+nothing to do but sit there shivering with cold, writing letters on my
+little travelling table and listening to my interpreter, who talked with
+the innkeeper and brought me at intervals that gentleman's views on the
+doings of Pai Lang.
+
+Those views varied hour by hour. At first he was sure he was attacking
+Sui Te Chou. That seemed to me sending the famous robber over
+the country too quickly. Then it was _tufeis_--that is, bands of
+robbers--that Sui Te Chou feared, and finally, boiled down, I came to
+the conclusion that Sui Te Chou had probably shut her gates because the
+country round was disturbed, and that she admitted no one who had not
+friends in the city or could not in some way guarantee his good faith.
+It served to show me my friends in Ki Hsien had been right, such
+disturbed country would be no place for a woman alone. I suppose it was
+the rain and the grey skies, but I must admit that day I was distinctly
+unhappy and more than a little afraid. I was alone among an alien
+people, who only regarded me as a cheap show; I had no one to take
+counsel with, my interpreter only irritated me and, to add to my misery,
+I was very cold. I have seldom put in a longer or more dreary day than
+I did at Hsieh Ts'un. There was absolutely nothing to do but watch the
+misty rain, for if I went outside and got wetter than I was already
+getting under the leaking roof--I wore my Burberry--I had no possible
+means of drying my clothes save by laying them on the hot _k'ang_ in the
+solitary living-room of the inn, and that was already inhabited by many
+humans and the parasites that preyed upon them. Therefore I stayed where
+I was, compared my feet with the stumps of the women who came to visit
+me--distinctly I was a woman's show--gave the grubby little children
+raisins, and wondered if there was any fear of Pai Lang coming along
+this way before I had time to turn back. If it kept on raining, would my
+muleteers compel me to stay here till Pai Lang swept down upon us?
+But no, that thought did not trouble me, first, because I momentarily
+expected it to clear up, and secondly, because I was very sure that
+any rain that kept me prisoner would also hold up Pai Lang. I could not
+believe in a Chinaman, even a robber, going out in the rain if he could
+help himself, any more than I could believe in it raining longer than a
+day in China.
+
+“The people are not afraid,” I said to my interpreter as I looked at
+a worn old woman in a much-patched blue cotton smock and trousers, her
+head protected from the rain by a wadded coat in the last stages of
+decrepitude; her feet made me shiver, and her finger-nails made me
+crawl, the odour that came from her was sickening, but she liked to see
+me write, and I guessed she had had but few pleasures in her weary life.
+
+“They not knowing yet,” said he; “only travellers know. They tell
+innkeeper.”
+
+Yes, certainly the travellers would know best.
+
+And all day long he came, bringing me various reports, and said that,
+according to the innkeeper, the last caravan that had passed through
+had gone back on its tracks. I might have remembered it. I did remember
+it--a long line of donkeys and mules.
+
+But the day passed, and the night passed, and the next day the sun came
+out warm and pleasant, and all my doubts were resolved. My journey was
+broken beyond hope, and I must go back, but turn I would not till I had
+looked upon the Yellow River.
+
+We started with all our paraphernalia. We were to turn in our tracks
+after tiffin, but Mr Wang and the muleteers were certain on that point,
+everything I possessed must be dragged across the mountains if I hoped
+to see it again, and I acquiesced, for I certainly felt until I got back
+to civilisation I could not do without any of my belongings.
+
+Almost immediately we left the village we began to ascend the mountain
+pass. Steeper and steeper it grew, and at last the opening in my mule
+litter was pointing straight up to the sky, and I, seeing there
+was nothing else for it, demanded to be lifted out and signified my
+intention of walking.
+
+There was one thing against this and that was an attack of
+breathlessness. Asthma always attacks me when I am tired or worried, and
+now, with a very steep mountain to cross and no means of doing it except
+on my own feet, it had its wicked way. My master of transport and Mr
+Wang, like perfectly correct Chinese servants, each put a hand under my
+elbows, and with Buchanan skirmishing around joyfully, rejoicing that
+for once his mistress was sensible, the little procession started. It
+was hard work, very hard work. When I could go no longer I sat down and
+waited till I felt equal to starting again. On the one hand the mountain
+rose up sheer and steep, on the other it dropped away into the gully
+beneath, only to rise again on the other side. And yet in the most
+inaccessible places were patches of cultivation and wheat growing. I
+cannot imagine how man or beast kept a footing on such a slant, and
+how they ploughed and sowed it passes my understanding. But most of the
+mountain-side was too much even for them, and then they turned loose
+their flocks, meek cream-coloured sheep and impudent black goats, to
+graze on the scanty mountain pastures. Of course they were in charge of
+a shepherd, for there were no fences, and the newly springing wheat must
+have been far more attractive than the scanty mountain grasses.
+
+And then I knew it was worth it all--the long trek from Fen Chou Fu,
+the dreary day at Hsieh Ts'un, the still more dreary nights, this stiff
+climb which took more breath than I had to spare--for the view when
+I arrived at a point of vantage was beautiful. These were strange
+mountains. The road before me rose at a very steep angle, and all around
+me were hill-sides whereon only a goat or a sheep might find foothold,
+but the general effect looked at from a distance was not of steepness.
+These were not mountains, rugged, savage, grand, they were gentle hills
+and dales that lay about me; I had come through them; there were more
+ahead; I could see them range after range, softly rounded, green and
+brown and then blue, beautiful for all there were no trees, in an
+atmosphere that was clear as a mirror after the rain of the day before.
+Beautiful, beautiful, with a tender entrancing loveliness, is that view
+over the country up in the hills that hem in the Yellow River as it
+passes between Shansi and Shensi. Is it possible there is never anyone
+to see it but these poor peasants who wring a hard livelihood from the
+soil, and who for all their toil, which lasts from daylight to dark all
+the year round, get from this rich soil just enough wheaten flour to
+keep the life in them, a hovel to dwell in, and a few unspeakable
+rags to cover their nakedness? As far as I could see, everyone was
+desperately poor, and yet these hills hold coal and iron in close
+proximity, wealth untold and unexploited. The pity of it! Unexploited,
+the people are poor to the verge of starvation; worked, the delicate
+loveliness of the country-side will vanish as the beauty of the Black
+Country has vanished, and can we be sure that the peasant will benefit?
+
+[Illustration: 0166]
+
+[Illustration: 0167]
+
+Still we went up and up, and the climbing of these gentle wooing hills
+I found hard. Steep it was, and at last, just when I felt I could not
+possibly go any farther, though the penalty were that I should turn back
+almost within sight of the river, I found that the original makers of
+the track had been of the same opinion, for here was the top of the pass
+with a tunnel bored through it, a tunnel perhaps a hundred feet long,
+carefully bricked, and when we, breathless and panting, walked through
+we came out on a little plateau with a narrow road wandering down a
+mountain-side as steep as the one we had just climbed. There was the
+most primitive of restaurants here, and the woman in charge--it was a
+woman, and her feet were not bound--proffered us a thin sort of drink
+like very tasteless barley water. At least now I know it was tasteless,
+then I found it was nectar, and I sat on a stone and drank it
+thankfully, gave not a thought to the dirt of the bowl that contained
+it, and drew long breaths and looked around me.
+
+The hills rose up on either hand and away in the distance where they
+opened out were the beautiful treeless hills of forbidden Shensi, just
+as alluring, just as peaceful as the hills I had come through. It was
+worth the long and toilsome journey, well worth even all my fears.
+
+Then we went down, down, but I did not dare get into my litter, the way
+was too steep, the chances of going over too great, for it seems the
+Chinese never make a road if by any chance they can get along without.
+They were driven to bore a tunnel through the mountains, but they never
+smooth or take away rocks as long as, by taking a little care, an animal
+can pass without the certainty of going over the cliff.
+
+And at last through a cleft in the hills I saw one of the world's great
+rivers and--was disappointed. The setting was ideal. The hills rose
+up steep and rugged, real mountains, on either side, pheasants called,
+rock-doves mourned, magpies chattered, overhead was a clear blue sky
+just flecked here and there with fleecy clouds, beyond again were the
+mountains of Shensi, the golden sunlight on their rounded tops, purple
+shadow in their swelling folds, far away in the distance they melted
+blue into the blue sky, close at hand they were green with the green
+of springtime, save where the plough had just turned up patches of rich
+brown soil, and at their foot rolled a muddy flood that looked neither
+decent water nor good sound earth, the mighty Hoang-Ho, the Yellow
+River, China's sorrow. China's sorrow indeed; for though here it was
+hemmed in by mountains, and might not shift its bed, it looked as if it
+were carrying the soul of the mountains away to the sea.
+
+There is a temple where the gully opens on to the river, a temple and
+a little village, and the temple was crowded with blue-clad,
+shabby-looking soldiers who promptly swarmed round me and wanted to
+look in my baggage, that heavy baggage we were hauling for safety over
+fourteen miles of mountain road. Presumably they were seeking arms. We
+managed to persuade them there were none, and that the loads contained
+nothing likely to disturb the peace, and then we went down to the river,
+crossing by a devious, rocky and unpleasant path simply reeking of human
+occupancy, and the inhabitants of that soldier village crowded round me
+and examined everything I wore and commented on everything I did.
+
+They were there to guard the crossing; and far from me be it to say they
+were not most efficient, but if so their looks belied them. They did not
+even look toy soldiers. No man was in full uniform. Apparently they
+wore odd bits, as if there were not enough clothes in the company to go
+round, and they were one and all dirty, touzly, untidy, and all
+smiling and friendly and good-tempered. I only picked them out from
+the surrounding country people--who were certainly dirty and
+poverty-stricken enough in all conscience--by the fact that the soldiers
+had abandoned the queue which the people around, like all these country
+people, still affect. The soldier wore his hair about four or five
+inches long, sticking out at all angles, rusty-black, unkempt and
+uncombed, and whether he ran to a cap or not, the result was equally
+unworkmanlike.
+
+I conclude Chun Pu is not a very important crossing. What the road is
+like on the Shensi side I do not know, but on the Shansi side I should
+think the pass we had just crossed was a very effective safeguard. He
+would be a bold leader who would venture to bring his men up that path
+in the face of half-a-dozen armed men, and they need not be very bold
+men either. Those soldiers did not look bold. They were kindly, though,
+and they had women and children with them--I conclude their own, for
+they nursed the grubby little children, all clad in grubby patches, very
+proudly, took such good care they had a good view of the show--me--that
+I could not but sympathise with their paternal affection and aid in
+every way in my power. Generally my good-will took the form of raisins.
+I was lavish now I had given up my journey, and my master of transport
+distributed with an air as if I were bestowing gold and silver.
+
+He set out my table on the cobble-stones of the inn-yard in the
+sunshine. I believe, had I been a really dignified traveller, I should
+have put up with the stuffiness and darkness of the inn's one room, but
+I felt the recurrent hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice, with a certain
+steamed scone which contained more of the millstone and less of the
+flour than was usual even with the scones of the country, were trials
+enough without trying to be dignified in discomfort.
+
+And while I had my meal everybody took it in turns to look through the
+finder of my camera, the women, small-footed, dirty creatures, much to
+the surprise of their menfolk, having precedence. Those women vowed they
+had never seen a foreigner before. Every one of them had bound feet,
+tiny feet on which they could just totter, and all were clad
+in extremely dirty, much-patched blue cotton faded into a dingy
+dirt-colour. Most of them wore tight-fitting coverings of black cloth to
+cover their scalps, often evidently to conceal their baldness, for many
+of them suffered from “expending too much heart.” Baldness is caused,
+say the Chinese half in fun, because the luckless man or woman has
+thought more of others than of themselves. I am afraid they do not
+believe it, or they may like to hide their good deeds, for they are
+anything but proud of being bald. Most of the mouths, too, here, and
+indeed all along the road, were badly formed and full of shockingly
+broken and decayed teeth, the women's particularly. Wheaten flour, which
+is the staple food of Shansi, is apparently not enough to make good
+teeth. The people were not of a markedly Mongolian type. Already it
+seemed as if the nations to the West were setting their seal upon them,
+and some of the younger girls, with thick black hair parted in the
+middle, a little colour in their cheeks, and somewhat pathetic,
+wistful-looking faces, would have been good-looking in any land.
+
+Then I had one more good look at the river, my farthest point west on
+the journey, the river I had come so far to see. It was all so peaceful
+in the afternoon sunlight that it seemed foolish not to go on. The hills
+of Shensi beckoned and all my fears fell from me. I wanted badly to
+go on. Then came reason. It was madness to risk the _tufeis_ with whom
+everyone was agreed Shensi swarmed. There in the brilliant sunshine,
+with the laughing people around me, I was not afraid, but when night
+fell--no, even if the soldiers would have allowed, which Mr Wang
+declared they would not--I dared not, and I turned sadly and regretfully
+and made my way back to Fen Chou Fu.
+
+Had I gone on I should have arrived in Russia with the war in full
+swing, so on the whole? am thankful I had to flee before the _tufeis_
+of Shensi. Perhaps when the world is at peace I shall essay that
+fascinating journey again. Only I shall look out for some companion, and
+even if I take the matchless master of transport I shall most certainly
+see to it that I have a good cook.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--LAST DAYS IN CHINA
+
+Well, I had failed! The horrid word kept ringing in my ears, the still
+more horrid thought was ever in my mind day and night as I retraced my
+footsteps, and I come of a family that does not like to fail.
+
+I wondered if it were possible to make my way along the great
+waterways of Siberia. There were mighty rivers there, I had seen them,
+little-known rivers, and it seemed to me that before going West again I
+might see something of them, and as my mules picked their way across the
+streams, along the stony paths, by the walled cities, through the busy
+little villages, already China was behind me, I was thinking of ways and
+means by which I might penetrate Siberia.
+
+At Fen Chou Fu they were kind, but I knew they thought I had given in
+too easily, that I had turned back at a shadow, but at T'ai Yuan Fu I
+met the veteran missionary, Dr Edwards, and I was comforted and did not
+feel so markedly that failure was branded all over me when he thanked
+God that his letter had had the effect of making me consider carefully
+my ways, for of one thing he was sure, there would have been but
+one ending to the expedition. To get to Lan Chou Fu would have been
+impossible.
+
+Still my mind was not quite at ease about the matter, and at intervals
+I wondered if I would not have gone on had I had a good cook. Rather
+a humiliating thought! It was a satisfaction when one day I met Mr
+Reginald Farrer, who had left Peking with Mr Purdom to botanise in Kansu
+ten days before I too had proposed to start West.
+
+“I often wondered,” said he, “what became of you and how you had got on.
+We thought perhaps you might have fallen into the hands of White Wolf
+and then------” He paused.
+
+Shensi, he declared, was a seething mass of unrest. It would have
+spelled death to cross to those peaceful hills I had looked at from
+the left bank of the Hoang-Ho. We discussed our travels, and we took
+diametrically opposite views of China. But it is impossible to have
+everything: one has to choose, and I prefer the crudeness of the new
+world, the rush and the scramble and the progress, to the calm of the
+Oriental. Very likely this is because I am a woman. In the East woman
+holds a subservient position, she has no individuality of her own, and
+I, coming from the newest new world, where woman has a very high place
+indeed, is counted a citizen, and a useful citizen, could hardly be
+expected to admire a state of society where her whole life is a torture
+and her position is regulated by her value to the man to whom she
+belongs. I put this to my friend when he was admiring the Chinese ladies
+and he laughed.
+
+“I admit,” said he, “that a young woman has a”--well, he used a very
+strong expression, but it wasn't strong enough--“of a time when she is
+young, but, if she has a son, when her husband dies see what a position
+she holds. That little old woman sitting on a _k'ang_ rules a whole
+community.”
+
+And then I gave it up because our points of view were East and West.
+But I am thankful that the Fates did not make me--a woman--a member of
+a nation where I could have no consideration, no chance of happiness, no
+great influence or power by my own effort, where recognition only came
+if I had borne a son who was still living and my husband was dead.
+
+[Illustration: 0176]
+
+[Illustration: 0177]
+
+[Illustration: 0178]
+
+On my way back to T'ai Yuan Fu I stayed at no mission station except
+at Fen Chou Fu; I went by a different route and spent the nights at
+miserable inns that kindly charged me a whole penny for lodging and
+allowed me to sleep in my litter in their yards, and about eighty _li_
+from Fen Chou Fu I came across evidences of another mission that would
+be _anathema maranatha_ to the Nonconformists with whom I had been
+staying. It is curious this schism between two bodies holding what
+purports to be the same faith. I remember a missionary, the wife of a
+doctor at Ping Ting Chou, who belonged to a sect called The Brethren,
+who spoke of the Roman Catholics as if they were in as much need of
+conversion as the ignorant Chinese around her. It made me smile; yet I
+strongly suspect that Mr Farrer will put me in the same category as I
+put my friend from Ping Ting Chou! However, here under the care of the
+Alsatian Fathers the country was most beautifully cultivated. The
+wheat was growing tall and lush in the land, emerald-green in the May
+sunshine; there were avenues of trees along the wayside clothed in the
+tender fresh green of spring, and I came upon a whole village, men and
+boys, busy making a bridge across a stream. Never in China have I seen
+such evidences of well-conducted agricultural industry; and the Fathers
+were militant too, for they were, and probably are, armed, and in the
+Boxer trouble held their station like a fort, and any missionaries
+fleeing who reached them had their lives saved. I found much to commend
+in that Roman Catholic mission, and felt they were as useful to the
+country people in their way as were the Americans to the people of the
+towns.
+
+Outside another little town the population seemed to be given over to
+the making of strawboard, and great banks were plastered with squares of
+it set out to dry, and every here and there a man was engaged in putting
+more pieces up. It wras rather a comical effect to see the side of a
+bank plastered with yellow squares of strawboard and the wheat springing
+on top.
+
+All along the route still went caravans of camels, mules and donkeys,
+and, strangest of all modes of conveyance, wheel-barrows, heavily laden
+too. A wheel-barrow in China carries goods on each side of a great
+wheel, a man holds up the shafts and wheels it, usually with a strap
+round his shoulders, and in front either another man or a donkey is
+harnessed to help with the traction. Hundreds of miles they go, over the
+roughest way, and the labour must be very heavy; but wherever I went
+in China this was impressed upon me, that man was the least important
+factor in any work of production. He might be used till he failed and
+then thrown lightly away without a qualm. There were plenty glad enough
+to take his place.
+
+I have been taken to task for comparing China to Babylon, but I must
+make some comparison to bring home things to my readers. This journey
+through the country in the warm spring sunshine was as unlike a journey
+anywhere that I have been in Europe, Africa or Australia as anything
+could possibly be. It was through an old land, old when Europe was
+young. I stopped at inns that were the disgusting product of the
+slums; I passed men working in the fields who were survivals of an old
+civilisation, and when I passed any house that was not a hovel it was
+secluded carefully, so that the owner and his womenkind might keep
+themselves apart from the proletariat, the serfs who laboured around
+them and for them.
+
+Within a day's journey of T'ai Yuan Fu I came to a little town, Tsui Su,
+where there was an extra vile inn with no courtyard that I could sleep
+in, only a room where the rats were numerous and so fierce that they
+drove Buchanan for refuge to my bed and the objectionable insects that
+I hustled off the _k'ang_ by means of powdered borax and Keating's,
+strewed over and under the ground sheet, crawled up the walls and
+dropped down upon me from the ceiling. Poor Buchanan and I spent a
+horrid night. I don't like rats anyway, and fierce and hungry rats on
+the spot are far worse for keeping off sleep than possible robbers in
+the future. All that night I dozed and waked and restrained Buchanan's
+energies and vowed I was a fool for coming to China, and then in the
+morning as usual I walked it all back, and was glad, for Mr Wang came
+to me and, after the best personally conducted Cook's tourist style,
+explained that here was a temple which “mus' see.”
+
+I didn't believe much in temples in these parts, but I went a little
+way back into the town and came to a really wonderful temple, built, I
+think, over nine warm springs--the sort of thing that weighed down the
+scales heavily on Mr Farrer's side. What has a nation that could produce
+such a temple to learn from the West? I shall never forget the carved
+dragons in red and gold that climbed the pillars at the principal
+entrance, the twisted trees, the shrines over the springs and the bronze
+figures that stood guard on the platform at the entrance gate. The
+steps up to that gate were worn and broken with the passing of many feet
+through countless years; the yellow tiles of the roof were falling and
+broken; from the figures had been torn or had fallen the arms that they
+once had borne; the whole place was typical of the decay which China
+allows to fall upon her holy places; but seen in the glamour of the
+early morning, with the grass springing underfoot, the trees in full
+leaf, the sunshine lighting the yellow roofs and the tender green of the
+trees, it was gorgeous. Then the clouds gathered and it began to rain,
+gentle, soft, warm, growing rain, and I left it shrouded in a seductive
+grey mist that veiled its imperfections and left me a 'memory only of
+one of the beautiful places of the earth that I am glad I have seen.
+
+At T'ai Yuan Fu I paid Mr Wang's fare back to Pao Ting Fu and bade him
+a glad farewell. There may be worse interpreters in China, but I really
+hope there are not many. He would have been a futile person in any
+country; he was a helpless product of age-old China. I believe he did
+get back safely, but I must confess to feeling on sending him away
+much as I should do were I to turn loose a baby of four to find his way
+across London. Indeed I have met many babies of four in Australia
+who struck me as being far more capable than the interpreter who had
+undertaken to see me across China.
+
+I was on the loose myself now. I was bent on going to Siberia; but the
+matter had to be arranged in my own mind first, and while I did so I
+lingered and spent a day or two at Hwailu; not that I wanted to see that
+town--somehow I had done with China--but because the personality of Mr
+and Mrs Green of the China Inland Mission interested me.
+
+Hwailu is a small walled city, exactly like hundreds of other little
+walled cities, with walls four-square to each point of the compass, and
+it is set where the hills begin to rise that divide Chihli from Shansi,
+and beyond the mission station is a square hill called Nursing Calf
+Fort. The hill has steep sides up which it is almost impossible to take
+any animal, but there are about one hundred acres of arable land on top,
+and this, with true Chinese thrift, could not be allowed to go untilled,
+so the story goes that while a calf was young a man carried it up on
+his back; there it grew to maturity, and with its help they ploughed the
+land and they reaped the crops. It is a truly Chinese story, and very
+likely it is true. It is exactly what the Chinese would do.
+
+At Hwailu, where they had lived for many years, Mr and Mrs Green were
+engaged in putting up a new church, and with them I came in contact with
+missionaries who had actually suffered almost to death at the hands of
+the Boxers. It was thrilling to listen to the tales of their sufferings,
+sitting there on the verandah of the mission house looking out on to the
+peaceful flowers and shrubs of the mission garden.
+
+When the Boxer trouble spread to Hwailu and it was manifest the mission
+house was no longer safe, they took refuge in a cave among the hills
+that surround the town. Their converts and friends--for they had many
+friends who were not converts--hardly dared come near them, and
+death was very close. It was damp and cold in the cave though it was
+summer-time, and by and by they had eaten all their food and drunk all
+their water, and their hearts were heavy, for they feared not only for
+themselves, but for what the little children must suffer.
+
+“I could not help it,” said Mrs Green, reproaching herself for being
+human. “I used to look at my children and wonder how the saints _could_
+rejoice in martyrdom!”
+
+When they were in despair and thinking of coming out and giving
+themselves up they heard hushed voices, and a hand at the opening of
+the cave offered five large wheaten scones. Some friends, again not
+converts, merely pagan friends, had remembered their sufferings.
+Still they looked at the scenes doubtfully, and though the little
+children--they were only four and six--held out their hands for them
+eagerly, they were obliged to implore them not to eat them, they
+would make them so desperately thirsty. But their Chinese friends were
+thoughtful as well as kind, and presently came the same soft voice
+again and a hand sending up a basketful of luscious cucumbers, cool and
+refreshing with their store of water.
+
+But they could not stay there for ever, and finally they made their way
+down to the river bank, the Ching River--the Clear River we called it,
+and I have also heard it translated the Dark Blue River, though it was
+neither dark, nor blue, nor clear, simply a muddy canal--and slowly made
+their way in the direction of Tientsin, hundreds of miles away. That
+story of the devoted little band's wanderings makes pitiful reading.
+Sometimes they went by boat, sometimes they crept along in the kaoliang
+and reeds, and at last they arrived at the outskirts of Hsi An--not
+the great city in Shensi, but a small walled town on the Ching River
+in Chihli. Western cities are as common in China as new towns in
+English-speaking lands--and here they, hearing a band was after them,
+hid themselves in the kaoliang, the grain that grows close and tall as
+a man. They were weary and worn and starved; they were well-nigh
+hopeless--at least I should have been hopeless--but still their faith
+upheld them. It was the height of summer and the sun poured down his
+rays, but towards evening the clouds gathered. If it rained they knew
+with little children they must leave their refuge.
+
+“But surely, I know,” said Mrs Green, “the dear Lord will never let it
+rain.”
+
+And as I looked at her I seemed to see the passionate yearning with
+which she looked at the little children that the rain must doom to a
+Chinese prison or worse. In among those thick kaoliang stalks they could
+not stay.
+
+It rained, the heavy rain that comes in the Chinese summer, and the
+fugitives crept out and gave themselves up.
+
+“It shows how ignorant we are, how unfit to judge for ourselves,” said
+the teller of the tale fervently, “for we fell into the hands of a
+comparatively merciful band, whereas presently the kaoliang was beaten
+by a ruthless set of men whom there would have been no escaping, and who
+certainly would have killed us.”
+
+But the tenderness of the most merciful band was a thing to be prayed
+against. They carried the children kindly enough--the worst of Chinamen
+seem to be good to children--but they constantly threatened their elders
+with death. They were going to their death, that they made very clear to
+them; and they slung them on poles by their hands and feet, and the pins
+came out of the women's long hair--there was another teacher, a girl,
+with them--and it trailed in the dust of the filthy Chinese paths. And
+Mr Green was faint and weary from a wound in his neck, but still they
+had no pity.
+
+Still these devoted people comforted each other. It was the will of the
+Lord. Always was He with them. They were taken to Pao Ting Fu, Pao
+Ting Fu that had just burned its own missionaries, and put in the gaol
+there--and, knowing a Chinese inn, I wonder what can be the awfulness
+of a Chinese gaol--and they were allowed no privacy. Mrs Green had
+dysentery; they had not even a change of clothes; but the soldiers were
+always in the rooms with them, or at any rate in the outer room, and
+this was done, of course, of _malice prepense_, for no one values the
+privacy of their women more than the Chinese. The girl got permission
+to go down to the river to wash their clothes, but a soldier always
+accompanied her, and always the crowds jeered and taunted as she went
+along in the glaring sunshine, feeling that nothing was hidden from
+these scornful people. Only strangely to the children were they kind;
+the soldiers used to give them copper coins so that they might buy
+little scones and cakes to eke out the scanty rations, and once--it
+brought home to me, perhaps as nothing else could, the deprivations of
+such a life--instead of buying the much-needed food the women bought
+a whole pennyworth of hairpins, for their long hair was about their
+shoulders, and though they brushed it to the best of their ability with
+their hands it was to them an unseemly thing.
+
+And before the order came--everything is ordered in China--that their
+lives were to be saved and they were to be sent to Tientsin the little
+maid who had done so much to cheer and alleviate their hard lot lay
+dying; the hardships and the coarse food had been too much for her. In
+the filth and misery of the ghastly Chinese prison she lay, and, bending
+over her, they picked the lice off her. Think of that, ye folk who guard
+your little ones tenderly and love them as these missionaries who feel
+called upon to convert the Chinese loved theirs.
+
+After all that suffering they went back, back to Hwailu and the
+desolated mission station under the Nursing Calf Fort, where they
+continue their work to this day, and so will continue it, I suppose,
+to the end, for most surely their sufferings and their endurance have
+fitted them for the work they have at heart as no one who has not so
+suffered and endured could be fitted. And so I think the whirligig of
+Time brings in his revenges.
+
+I walked through a tremendous dust-storm to the railway station at
+the other side of the town, and the woman who had suffered these awful
+things, and who was as sweet and charming and lovable a woman as I have
+ever met, walked with me and bade me God-speed on my journey, and when
+I parted from her I knew that among a class I--till I came to China--had
+always strenuously opposed I had found one whom I could not only
+respect, but whom I could love and admire.
+
+Going back to Pao Ting Fu was like going back to old friends. They had
+not received my letter. Mr Wang had not made his appearance, so when
+James Buchanan and I, attended by the master of transport, appeared upon
+the scene on a hot summer day we found the missionary party having their
+midday dinner on the verandah, and they received me--bless their kind
+hearts!--with open arms, and proceeded to explain to me how very wise a
+thing I had done in coming back. The moment I had left, they said, they
+had been uncomfortable in the part they had taken in forwarding me on my
+journey.
+
+It was very good of them. There are days we always remember all our
+lives--our wedding day and such-like--and that coming back on the warm
+summer's day out of the hot, dusty streets of the western suburb into
+the cool, clean, tree-shaded compound of the American missionaries at
+Pao Ting Fu is one of them. And that compound is one of the places in
+the world I much want to visit again.
+
+There is another day, too, I shall not lightly forget. We called it the
+last meeting of the Travellers' Club of Pao Ting Fu. There were only
+two members in the club, Mr Long and I and an honorary member, James
+Buchanan, and on this day the club decided to meet, and Mr Long asked me
+to dinner. He lived in the Chinese college in the northern suburb. His
+house was only about two miles away and it could be reached generally
+by going round by the farms and graves, mostly graves, that cover the
+ground by the rounded north-west corner of the wall of the city. Outside
+a city in China is ugly. True, the walls are strangely old-world and the
+moat is a relic of the past--useful in these modern times for disposing
+of unwanted puppies; Pao Ting Fu never seemed so hard up for food as
+Shansi--but otherwise the ground looks much as the deserted alluvial
+goldfields round Ballarat used to look in the days of my youth; the
+houses are ramshackle to the last degree, and all the fields, even when
+they are green with the growing grain, look unfinished. But round the
+north-west corner of Pao Ting Fu the graves predominate. There are
+thousands and thousands of them. And on that particular day it rained,
+it rained, and it rained, steady warm summer rain that only stopped
+and left the air fresh and washed about six o'clock in the evening.
+I ordered a rickshaw--a rickshaw in Pao Ting Fu is a very primitive
+conveyance; but it was pleasantly warm, and, with James Buchanan on my
+knee, in the last evening dress that remained to me and an embroidered
+Chinese jacket for an opera cloak, I set out. I had started early
+because on account of the rain the missionaries opined there might be a
+little difficulty with the roads. However, I did not worry much because
+I only had two miles to go, and I had walked it often in less than
+three-quarters of an hour. I was a little surprised when my rickshaw man
+elected to go through the town, but, as I could not speak the language,
+I was not in a position to remonstrate, and I knew we could not come
+back that way as at sundown all the gates shut save the western, and
+that only waits till the last train at nine o'clock.
+
+It was muddy, red, clayey mud in the western suburb when we started,
+but when we got into the northern part of the town I was reminded of the
+tribulations of Fen Chou Fu in the summer rains, for the water was up to
+our axles, the whole place was like a lake and the people were piling
+up dripping goods to get them out of the way of the very dirty flood. My
+man only paused to turn his trousers up round his thighs and then went
+on again--going through floods was apparently all in the contract--but
+we went very slowly indeed. Dinner was not until eight and I had given
+myself plenty of time, but I began to wonder whether we should arrive at
+that hour. Presently I knew we shouldn't.
+
+We went through the northern gate, and to my dismay the country in the
+fading light seemed under water. From side to side and far beyond the
+road was covered, and what those waters hid I trembled to think, for
+a road at any time in China is a doubtful proposition and by no means
+spells security. As likely as not there were deep holes in it. But
+apparently my coolie had no misgivings. In he went at his usual snail's
+pace and the water swirled up to the axles, up to the floor of the
+rickshaw, and when I had gathered my feet up on the seat and we were in
+the middle of the sheet of exceedingly dirty water the rickshaw coolie
+stopped and gave me to understand that he had done his darnedest and
+could do no more. He dropped the shafts and stood a little way off,
+wringing the water out of his garments. It wasn't dangerous, of course,
+but it was distinctly uncomfortable. I saw myself in evening dress
+wading through two feet of dirty water to a clayey, slippery bank at
+the side. I waited a little because the prospect did not please me, and
+though there were plenty of houses round, there was not a soul in sight.
+It was getting dark too, and it was after eight o'clock.
+
+Presently a figure materialised on that clayey bank and him I beckoned
+vehemently.
+
+Now Pao Ting Fu had seen foreigners, not many, but still foreigners,
+and they spell to it a little extra cash, so the gentleman on the bank
+tucked up his garments and came wading over. He and my original friend
+took a maddeningly long time discussing the situation, and then they
+proceeded to drag the rickshaw sideways to the bank. There was a narrow
+pathway along the top and they apparently decided that if they could get
+the conveyance up there we might proceed on our journey. First I had to
+step out, and it looked slippery enough to make me a little doubtful.
+As a preliminary I handed James Buchanan to the stranger, because, as he
+had to sit on my knee, I did not want him to get dirtier than necessary.
+Buchanan did not like the stranger, but he submitted with a bad grace
+till I, stepping out, slipped on the clay and fell flat on my back, when
+he promptly bit the man who was holding him and, getting away, expressed
+his sympathy by licking my face. Such a commotion as there was! My two
+men yelled in dismay. Buchanan barked furiously, and I had some ado to
+get on my feet again, for the path was very slippery. It was long past
+eight now and could I have gone back I would have done so, but clearly
+that was impossible, so by signs I engaged No. 2 man, whose wounds had
+to be salved--copper did it--to push behind, and we resumed our way....
+
+Briefly it was long after ten o'clock when I arrived at the college. My
+host had given me up as a bad job long before and, not being well, had
+gone to bed. There was nothing for it but to rouse him up, because I
+wanted to explain that I thought I had better have another man to take
+me home over the still worse road that I knew ran outside the city.
+
+He made me most heartily welcome and then explained to my dismay that
+the men utterly declined to go any farther, declared no rickshaw could
+get over the road to the western suburb and that I must have a cart.
+That was all very well, but where was I to get a cart at that time of
+night, with the city gates shut?
+
+Mr Long explained that his servant was a wise and resourceful man and
+would probably get one if I would come in and have dinner. So the two
+members of the Travellers' Club sat down to an excellent dinner--a
+Chinese cook doesn't spoil a dinner because you are two hours late--and
+we tried to take a flash-light photograph of the entertainment. Alas!
+I was not fortunate that day; something went wrong with the magnesium
+light and we burnt up most things. However, we ourselves were all right,
+and at two o'clock in the morning Mr Long's servant's uncle, or cousin,
+or some relative, arrived with a Peking cart and a good substantial
+mule. I confess I was a bit doubtful about the journey home because I
+knew the state of repair, or rather disrepair, of a couple of bridges
+we had to cross, but they were negotiated, and just as the dawn was
+beginning to break I arrived at the mission compound and rewarded the
+adventurous men who had had charge of me with what seemed to them much
+silver and to me very little. I have been to many dinners in my life,
+but the last meeting of the Travellers' Club at Pao Ting Fu remains
+engraved on my memory.
+
+Yet a little longer I waited in Pao Ting Fu before starting on my
+Siberian trip, for the start was to be made from Tientsin and the
+missionaries were going there in house-boats. They were bound for Pei Ta
+Ho for their summer holiday and the first stage of the journey was down
+the Ching River to Tientsin. I thought it would be rather a pleasant
+way of getting over the country, and it would be pleasant too to have
+company. I am not enamoured of my own society; I can manage alone, but
+company certainly has great charms.
+
+So I waited, and while I waited I bought curios.
+
+In Pao Ting Fu in the revolution there was a great deal of looting done,
+and when order reigned again it was as much as a man's life was worth
+to try and dispose of any of his loot. A foreigner who would take the
+things right out of the country was a perfect godsend, and once it was
+known I was buying, men waited for me the livelong day, and I only
+had to put my nose outside the house to be pounced upon by a would-be
+seller. I have had as many as nine men selling at once; they
+enlisted the servants, and china ranged round the kitchen floor, and
+embroideries, brass and mirrors were stowed away in the pantry. Indeed
+I and my followers must have been an awful nuisance to the missionaries.
+They knew no English, but as I could count a little in Chinese, when
+we could not get an interpreter we managed; and I expect I bought an
+immense amount of rubbish, but never in my life have I had greater
+satisfaction in spending money. More than ever was I pleased when I
+unpacked in England, and I have been pleased ever since.
+
+Those sellers were persistent. They said in effect that never before had
+they had such a chance and they were going to make the best of it. We
+engaged house-boats for our transit; we went down to those boats, we
+pushed off from the shore, and even then there were sellers bent on
+making the best of their last chance. I bought there on the boat a royal
+blue vase for two dollars and a quaint old brass mirror in a carved
+wooden frame also for two dollars, and then the boatmen cleared off the
+merchants and we started.
+
+I expect on the banks of the Euphrates or the Tigris in the days before
+the dawn of history men went backwards and forwards in boats like these
+we embarked in on the little river just outside the south gate of Pao
+Ting Fu. We had three boats. Dr and Mrs Lewis and their children had the
+largest, with their servants, and we all made arrangements to mess on
+board their boat. Miss Newton and a friend had another, with more of the
+servants, and I, like a millionaire, had one all to myself. I had parted
+with the master of transport at Pao Ting Fu, but Hsu Sen, one of the
+Lewis's servants, waited upon me and made up my bed in the open part of
+the boat under a little roof. The cabins were behind, low little places
+like rabbit hutches, with little windows and little doors through which
+I could get by going down on my knees. I used them only for my luggage,
+so was enabled to offer a passage to a sewing-woman who would be
+exceedingly useful to the missionaries. She had had her feet bound in
+her youth and was rather crippled in consequence, and she bought her own
+food, as I bought my water, at the wayside places as we passed. She
+was a foolish soul, like most Chinese women, and took great interest in
+Buchanan, offering him always a share of her own meals, which consisted
+apparently largely of cucumbers and the tasteless Chinese melon. Now
+James Buchanan was extremely polite, always accepting what was offered
+him, but he could not possibly eat cucumber and melon, and when I went
+to bed at night I often came in contact with something cold and clammy
+which invariably turned out to be fragments of the sewing-woman's meals
+bestowed upon my courtly little dog. I forgave him because of his good
+manners. There really was nowhere else to hide them.
+
+They were pleasant days we spent meandering down the river. We passed by
+little farms; we passed by villages, by fishing traps, by walled cities.
+Hsi An Fu, with the water of the river flowing at the foot of its
+castellated walls, was like a city of romance, and when we came upon
+little marketplaces by the water's edge the romance deepened, for
+we knew then how the people lived. Sometimes we paused and bought
+provisions; sometimes we got out and strolled along the banks in the
+pleasant summer weather. Never have I gone a more delightful or more
+unique voyage. And at last we arrived at Tientsin and I parted from my
+friends, and they went on to Pei Ta Ho and I to Astor House to prepare
+for my journey east and north.
+
+And so I left China, China where I had dwelt for sixteen months, China
+that has been civilised so long and is a world apart, and now I sit in
+my comfortable sitting-room in England and read what the papers say of
+China; and the China I know and the China of the newspapers is quite a
+different place. It is another world. China has come into the war. On
+our side, of course: the Chinaman is far too astute to meddle with a
+losing cause. But, after all, what do the peasants of Chihli and the
+cave-dwellers in the _yaos_ of Shansi know about a world's war? The
+very, very small section that rules China manages these affairs, and
+the mass of the population are exactly as they were in the days of the
+Cæsars, or before the first dynasty in Egypt for that matter.
+
+“China,” said one day to me a man who knew it well commercially, just
+before I left, “was never in so promising a condition. All the taxes are
+coming in and money was never so easy to get.”
+
+“There was a row over the new tax,” said a missionary sadly, in the part
+I know well, “in a little village beyond there. The village attacked the
+tax-collectors and the soldiers fell upon the villagers and thirteen men
+were killed. Oh, I know they say it is only nominal, but what is merely
+nominal to outsiders is their all to these poor villagers. They must pay
+the tax and starve, or resist and be killed.”
+
+He did not say they were between the devil and the deep sea, because he
+was a missionary, but I said it for him, and there were two cases like
+that which came within my ken during my last month in China.
+
+The fact of the matter is, I suppose, that outsiders can only judge
+generally, and China is true to type, the individual has never counted
+there and he does not count yet. What are a few thousand unpaid soldiers
+revolting in Kalgan? What a robber desolating Kansu? A score or two of
+villagers killed because they could not pay a tax? Absolutely nothing in
+the general crowd. I, being a woman, and a woman from the new nations
+of the south, cannot help feeling, and feeling strongly, the individual
+ought to count, that no nation can be really prosperous until the
+individual with but few exceptions is well-to-do and happy. I should
+like to rule out the “few exceptions,” but that would be asking too much
+of this present world. At least I like to think that most people have
+a chance of happiness, but I feel in China that not a tenth of the
+population has that.
+
+[Illustration: 0194]
+
+[Illustration: 0195]
+
+China left a curious impression upon my mind. The people are courteous
+and kindly, far more courteous than would be the same class of people
+in England, and yet I came back from the interior with a strong
+feeling that it is unsafe, not because of the general hostility of the
+people--they are not hostile--but because suffering and life count for
+so little. They themselves suffer and die by the thousand.
+
+“What! Bring a daughter-in-law to see the doctor in the middle of the
+harvest! Impossible!” And yet they knew she was suffering agony, that
+seeing the doctor was her only chance of sight! But she did not get it.
+They were harvesting and no one could be spared!
+
+What is the life then of a foreign barbarian more or less? These
+courteous, kindly, dirty folk who look upon one as a menagerie would
+look on with equal interest at one's death. They might stretch out
+a hand to help, just as a man in England might stop another from
+ill-treating a horse, though for one who would put himself out two
+would pass by with a shrug of the shoulders and a feeling that it wras
+no business of theirs. Every day of their lives the majority look upon
+the suffering of their women and think nothing of it. The desire of the
+average man is to have a wife who has so suffered. I do not know whether
+the keeping of the women in a state of subserviency has reacted upon
+the nation at large, but I should think it has hampered it beyond words.
+Nothing--nothing made me so ardent a believer in the rights of women as
+my visit to China.
+
+“Women in England,” said a man to me the other day, a foreigner, one
+of our Allies, “deserve the vote, but the Continental women are babies.
+They cannot have it.” So are the Chinese women babies, very helpless
+babies indeed, and I feel, and feel very strongly indeed, that until
+China educates her women, makes them an efficient half of the nation,
+not merely man's toy and his slave, China will always lag behind in the
+world's progress.
+
+Already China is split up into “spheres of influence.” Whether she likes
+it or not, she must realise that Russian misrule is paramount in
+the great steppes of the north; Japan rules to a great extent in
+the north-east, her railway from Mukden to Chang Ch'un is a model of
+efficiency; Britain counts her influence as the most important along
+the valley of the Yang Tze Kiang, and France has some say in Yunnan.
+I cannot help thinking that it would be a great day for China, for the
+welfare of her toiling millions, millions toiling without hope, if she
+were partitioned up among the stable nations of the earth--that is to
+say, between Japan, Britain and France. And having said so much, I refer
+my readers to Mr Farrer for the other point of view. It is diametrically
+opposed to mine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--KHARBIN AND VLADIVOSTOK
+
+At Tientsin I sweltered in the Astor House, and I put it on record that
+I found it hotter in Northern China than I did on the Guinea coast in
+West Africa. It was probably, of course, the conditions under which I
+lived, for the hotel had been so well arranged for the bitter winter
+it was impossible to get a thorough draught of air through any of
+the rooms. James Buchanan did not like it either, for in the British
+concessions in China dogs come under suspicion of hydrophobia and have
+always to be on the leash, wherefore, of course, I had to take the poor
+little chap out into the Chinese quarter before he could have a proper
+run, and he spent a great deal more time shut up in my bedroom than he
+or I liked.
+
+But Tientsin was a place apart, not exactly Chinese as I know
+China--certainly not Europe; it remains in my mind as a place where
+Chinese art learns to accommodate itself to European needs. All the
+nations of the world East and West meet there: in the British quarter
+were the Sikhs and other Indian nationalities, and in the French the
+streets were kept by Anamites in quaint peaked straw hats. I loved
+those streets of Tientsin that made me feel so safe and yet gave me a
+delightful feeling of adventure--adventure that cost me nothing; and I
+always knew I could go and dine with a friend or come back and exchange
+ideas with somebody who spoke my own tongue. But Tientsin wasn't any
+good to me as a traveller. It has been written about for the last sixty
+years or more. I went on.
+
+One night Buchanan and I, without a servant--we missed the servant we
+always had in China--wended our way down to the railway station and
+ensconced ourselves in a first-class carriage bound for Mukden. The
+train didn't start till some ungodly hour of the night, but as it was in
+the station I got permission to take my place early, and with rugs and
+cushions made myself comfortable and was sound asleep long before we
+started. When I wakened I was well on the way to my destination.
+
+I made friends with a British officer of Marines who, with his sister,
+was coming back across Russia. He had been learning Japanese, and I
+corrected another wrong impression. The British do sometimes learn a
+language other than their own. At Mukden we dined and had a bath. I find
+henceforth that all my stopping-places are punctuated by baths, or by
+the fact that a bath was not procurable. A night and day in the train
+made one desirable at Mukden, and a hotel run by capable Japanese made
+it a delight. The Japanese, as far as I could see, run Manchuria; must
+be more powerful than ever now Russia is out of it; Kharbin is Russian,
+Mukden Japanese. The train from there to Chang Ch'un is Japanese, and
+we all travelled in a large open carriage, clean and, considering how
+packed it was, fairly airy. There was room for everybody to lie down,
+just room, and the efficient Japanese parted me from my treasured James
+Buchanan and put him, howling miserably, into a big box--rather a dirty
+box; I suppose they don't think much of animals--in another compartment.
+I climbed over much luggage and crawled under a good deal more to see
+that all was right with him, and the Japanese guards looked upon me as
+a mild sort of lunatic and smiled contemptuously. I don't like being
+looked upon with contempt by Orientals, so I was a little ruffled when I
+came back to my own seat. Then I was amused.
+
+Naturally among such a crowd I made no attempt to undress for the night,
+merely contenting myself with taking off my boots. But the man next me,
+a Japanese naval officer, with whom I conversed in French, had quite
+different views. My French was rather bad and so was his in a different
+way, so we did not get on very fast. I fear I left him with the
+impression that I was an Austrian, for he never seemed to have heard
+of Australia. However, we showed each other our good will. Then he
+proceeded to undress. Never have I seen the process more nattily
+accomplished. How he slipped out of blue cloth and gold lace into a
+kimono I'm sure I don't know, though he did it under my very eyes, and
+then, with praiseworthy forethought, he took the links and studs out
+of his shirt and put them into a clean one ready for the morrow, stowed
+them both away in his little trunk, settled himself down on his couch
+and gave himself up to a cigarette and conversation. I smoked too--one
+of his cigarettes--and we both went to sleep amicably, and with the
+morning we arrived at Chang Ch'un, and poor little Buchanan made the
+welkin ring when he saw me and found himself caged in a barred box.
+However that was soon settled, and he told me how infinitely preferable
+from a dog's point of view are the free and easy trains of Russia and
+China to the well-managed ones of Japan.
+
+These towns on the great railway are weird little places, merely
+scattered houses and wide roads leading out into the great plain, and
+the railway comes out of the distance and goes away into the distance.
+And the people who inhabit them seem to be a conglomeration of nations,
+perhaps the residuum of all the nations. Here the marine officer and
+his sister and I fell into the hands of a strange-looking individual who
+might have been a cross between a Russian Pole and a Chinaman, with a
+dash of Korean thrown in, and he undertook to take us to a better hotel
+than that usually-frequented by visitors to Chang Ch'un. I confess I
+wonder what sort of people do visit Chang Ch'un, not the British tourist
+as a rule, and if the principal hotel is worse than the ramshackle place
+where we had breakfast, it must be bad. Still it was pleasant in the
+brilliant warm sunshine, even though it was lucky we had bathed the
+night before at Mukden, for the best they could do here was to show us
+into the most primitive of bedrooms, the very first effort in the way of
+a bedroom, I should think, after people had given up _k'angs_, and there
+I met a very small portion of water in a very small basin alongside an
+exceedingly frowsy bed and made an effort to wash away the stains of
+a night's travel. Now such a beginning to the day would effectually
+disgust me; then, fresh from the discomforts of Chinese travel, I found
+it all in the day's work.
+
+I found too that I had made a mistake and not brought enough money with
+me. Before I had paid for Buchanan's ticket I had parted with every
+penny I possessed and could not possibly get any more till I arrived
+at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank at Kharbin. I am rather given to a
+mistake of that sort; I always feel my money is so much safer in the
+bank's charge than in mine.
+
+We went on through fertile Manchuria and I saw the rich fields that
+coming out I had passed over at night. This train was Russian, and
+presently there came along a soldier, a forerunner of an officer
+inspecting passengers and carriages. Promptly his eye fell on Buchanan,
+who was taking an intelligent interest in the scenery--he always
+insisted on looking out of the window--and I, seeing he, the soldier,
+was troubled, tried to tell him my intentions were good and I would pay
+at Kharbin; but I don't think I made myself understood, for he looked
+wildly round the compartment, seized the little dog, pushed him in
+a corner and threw a cushion over him. Both Buchanan and I were so
+surprised we kept quite still, and the Russian officer looked in, saw a
+solitary woman holding out her ticket and passed on, and not till he
+was well out of the way did James Buchanan, who was a jewel, poke up his
+pretty little head and make a few remarks upon the enormity of smuggling
+little dogs without paying their fares, which was evidently what I was
+doing.
+
+We arrived at Kharbin about nine o'clock at night, and as I stepped out
+on to a platform, where all the nations of the earth, in dirty clothes,
+seemed yelling in chorus, a man came along and spoke to me in English.
+The soldier who had aided and abetted in the smuggling of Buchanan was
+standing beside me, evidently expecting some little remembrance, and I
+was meditating borrowing from the officer of Marines, though, as they
+were going on and I was not, I did not much like it. And the voice in
+English asked did I want a hotel. I did, of course. The man said he was
+the courier of the Grand Hotel, but he had a little place of his own
+which was much better and he could make me very comfortable. Then I
+explained I could not get any money till the bank opened next day and
+he spread out his hands as a Chinaman might have done. “No matter, no
+matter,” he would pay, his purse was mine.
+
+Would I go to his house?
+
+Could I do anything else under the circumstances? And I promptly took
+him at his word and asked for a rouble--Kharbin is China, but the rouble
+was the current coin--and paid off the soldier for his services. I bade
+farewell to my friends and in a ramshackle droshky went away through the
+streets of Kharbin, and we drove so far I wondered if I had done wisely.
+I had, as it turned out.
+
+But I heard afterwards that even in those days anything might have
+happened in Kharbin, where the population consists of Japanese and
+Chinese and Russians and an evil combination of all three, to say
+nothing of a sprinkling of rascals from all the nations of the earth.
+
+“There is not,” said a man who knew it well, “a decent Chinaman in the
+whole place.”
+
+In fact to all intents and purposes it is Russian. There were Russian
+students all in uniform in the streets, and bearded, belted drivers
+drove the droshkies with their extra horse in a trace beside the shafts,
+just as they did in Russia. Anyhow it seems to me the sins of Kharbin
+would be the vigorous primal sins of Russia, not the decadent sins of
+old-world China.
+
+Kharbin when I was there in 1914 had 60,000 inhabitants and 25,000
+Russian soldiers guarding the railway in the district. The Russian
+police forbade me to take photographs, and you might take your choice:
+Chinese _hung hu tzes_ or Russian brigands would rob and slay you on
+your very doorstep in the heart of the town. At least they would in
+1914, and things are probably worse now. All the signs are in Russian
+and, after the Chinese, looked to me at first as if I should be able to
+understand them, but closer inspection convinced me that the letters,
+though I knew their shape, had been out all night and were coming home
+in not quite the condition we would wish them to be. There is a Chinese
+town without a wall a little way over the plain--like all other Chinese
+towns, a place of dirt and smells--and there is a great river, the
+Sungari, a tributary of the Amur, on which I first met the magnificent
+river steamers of these parts. Badly I wanted to photograph them, but
+the Russian police said “No, no,” I would have to get a permit from
+the colonel in command before that could be allowed, and the colonel in
+command was away and was not expected back till the middle of next week,
+by which time I expected to be in Vladivostok, if not in Kharbarosvk,
+for Kharbin was hardly inviting as a place of sojourn for a traveller.
+Mr Poland, as he called himself, did his best for me. He gave me a
+fairly large room with a bed in it, a chair, a table and a broken-down
+wardrobe that would not open. He had the family washing cleared out of
+the bath, so that I bathed amidst the fluttering damp garments of his
+numerous progeny, but still there was a bath and a bath heater that with
+a certain expenditure of wood could be made to produce hot water; and
+if it was rather a terrifying machine to be locked up with at close
+quarters, still it did aid me to arrive at a certain degree of
+cleanliness, and I had been long enough in China not to be carping.
+
+But it is dull eating in your bedroom, and I knew I had not done wisely,
+for even if the principal hotel had been uncomfortable--I am not saying
+it was, because I never went there--it would have been more amusing to
+watch other folks than to be alone.
+
+The day after I arrived I called upon Mr Sly, the British consul, and I
+was amused to hear the very dubious sounds that came from his room when
+I was announced.
+
+I cleared the air by saying hastily: “I'm not a distressed British
+subject and I don't want any money,” though I'm bound to say he looked
+kind enough to provide me with the wherewithal had I wanted it. Then he
+shook his head and expressed his disapproval of my method of arrival.
+
+“The last man who fell into Kharbin like that,” said he, “I hunted for
+a week, and two days later I attended his funeral,” so badly had he been
+man-handled. But that man, it seems, had plenty of money; it was wisdom
+he lacked. My trouble was the other way, certainly as far as money was
+concerned. It would never have been worth anyone's while to harm me for
+the sake of my possessions. I had fallen into the hands of a Polish
+Jew named Polonetzky, though he called himself Poland to me, feeling, I
+suppose, my English tongue was not equal to the more complicated word,
+and he dwelt in the Dome Stratkorskaya--remember Kharbin is China--and
+I promised if he dealt well by me that I would recommend his
+boarding-house to all my friends bound for Kharbin. He did deal well by
+me. So frightened was he about me that he would not let me out of his
+sight, or if he were not in attendance his wife or his brother was
+turned on to look after me.
+
+“I am very good friends,” said he, “with Mr Sly at present. I do not
+want anything to happen.”
+
+Mr Sly, we found, knew one of my brothers and he very kindly asked me
+to dinner. That introduced me to the élite of the place, and after
+dinner--Chinese cooks are still excellent on the borders--we drove in
+his private carriage and ended the evening in the public gardens.
+The coachmen here are quite gorgeous affairs; no matter what their
+nondescript nationality--they are generally Russians, I think, though I
+have seen Chinamen, Tartars, driving like Jehu the son of Nimshi--they
+wear for full livery grey beaver hats with curly brims like Johnny
+Walker or the Corinthians in the days of the Regent. It took my breath
+away when I found myself bowling along behind two of these curly brimmed
+hats that I thought had passed away in the days of my grandfather.
+
+The gardens at Kharbin are a great institution. There in the summer's
+evening the paths were all lined with lamps; there were open-air
+restaurants; there were bands and fluttering flags; there were the most
+excellent ices and insidious drinks of all descriptions, and there were
+crowds of gaily dressed people--Monte Carlo in the heart of Central
+Asia! Kharbin in the summer is hot, very hot, and Kharbin in the winter
+is bitter cold. It is all ice and snow and has a temperature that ranges
+somewhere down to 40° Fahrenheit below zero, and this though the sun
+shines brilliantly. It is insidious cold that sneaks on you and takes
+you unawares, not like the bleak raw cold of England that makes the very
+most of itself. They told me a tale of a girl who had gone skating and
+when she came off the ice found that her feet were frozen, though she
+was unaware of her danger and had thought them all right. Dogs are often
+frozen in the streets and Chinamen too, for the Chinaman has a way of
+going to sleep in odd places, and many a one has slept his last sleep in
+the winter streets of Kharbin--the wide straggling streets with houses
+and gardens and vacant spaces just like the towns of Australia. A
+frontier town it is in effect. We have got beyond the teeming population
+of China.
+
+And then I prepared to go first east to Vladivostok and then north
+to Siberia, and I asked advice of both the British consul and my
+self-appointed courier, Mr Poland.
+
+Certainly he took care of me, and the day before I started east he
+handed me over to his wife and suggested she should take me to the
+market and buy necessaries for my journey. It was only a little over
+twenty-four hours so it did not seem to me a matter of much consequence,
+but I felt it would be interesting to walk through the market. It was.
+
+This class of market, I find, is very much alike all over the world
+because they sell the necessaries of life to the people and it is only
+varied by the difference of the local products. Kharbin market was
+a series of great sheds, and though most of the stalls were kept by
+Chinamen, it differed from a market in a Chinese town in the fact that
+huge quantities of butter and cheese and cream were for sale. Your true
+Chinaman is shocked at the European taste for milk and butter and cream.
+He thinks it loathsome, and many a man is unable to sit at table and
+watch people eat these delicacies. Just as, of course, he is shocked at
+the taste that would put before a diner a huge joint of beef or mutton.
+These things Chinese refinement disguises. I suspect the proletariat
+with whom I came in contact in Shansi would gladly eat anything, but
+I speak of the refined Chinaman. Here in this market, whether he was
+refined or not, he had got over these fancies and there was much butter
+and delicious soured cream for sale. My Polish Jewess and I laboured
+under the usual difficulty of language, but she made me understand I had
+better buy a basket for my provisions, a plate, a knife, a fork--I had
+left these things behind in China, not thinking I should want them--a
+tumbler and a couple of kettles. No self-respecting person, according to
+her, would dream of travelling in Siberia without at least a couple
+of kettles. I laid in two of blue enamel ware and I am bound to say I
+blessed her forethought many and many a time.
+
+Then we proceeded to buy provisions, and here I lost my way. She engaged
+a stray Chinaman, at least I think he was a Chinaman, with a dash of the
+gorilla in him, to carry the goods, and I thought she was provisioning
+her family against a siege or that perhaps there was only one market
+a month in Kharbin. Anyhow I did not feel called upon to interfere. It
+didn't seem any concern of mine and she had a large little family. We
+bought bread in large quantities, ten cucumbers, two pounds of butter,
+two pounds of cream--for these we bought earthenware jars--two dozen
+bananas, ten eggs and two pounds of tea. And then I discovered these
+were the provisions for my journey to Vladivostok, twenty-seven hours
+away! I never quite knew why I bought provisions at all, for the train
+stopped at stations where there were restaurants even though there was
+no restaurant car attached to it. Mr Sly warned me to travel first class
+and I had had no thought of doing aught else, for travelling is very
+cheap and very good in Russia, but Mr Poland thought differently.
+
+“I arrange,” said he, “I arrange, and you see if you are not
+comfortable.”
+
+I am bound to say I was, very comfortable, for Buchanan and I had a
+very nice second-class carriage all to ourselves. At every station a
+conductor appeared to know if I wanted boiling water, and we had any
+amount of good things to eat, for the ten eggs had been hard boiled
+by Mrs “Poland,” and the bread and butter and cream and cucumbers and
+bananas were as good as ever I have tasted. I also had two pounds of
+loaf sugar, German beet, I think, and some lemons.
+
+And so we went east through the wooded hills of Manchuria. They were
+covered with lush grass restfully green, and there were flowers, purple
+and white and yellow and red, lifting their starry faces to the cloudy
+sky, and a soft damp air blew in through the open window. Such a change
+it was after China, with its hard blue skies, brilliant sunshine and
+dry, invigorating air. But the Manchus were industrious as the Chinese
+themselves, and where there were fields the crops were tended
+as carefully as those in China proper, only in between were the
+pasture-lands and the flowers that were a delight to me, who had not
+seen a flower save those in pots since I came to China.
+
+I spread out my rugs and cushions and, taking off my clothes and getting
+into a kimono--also bought in the Kharbin market; a man's kimono as the
+women's are too narrow--I slept peacefully, and in the morning I found
+we had climbed to the top of the ridge, the watershed, the pleasant
+rain was falling softly, all around was the riotous green, and peasants,
+Russian and Chinese, came selling sweet red raspberries in little
+baskets of green twigs.
+
+And the flowers, the flowers of Siberia! After all I had heard about
+them, they were still something more beautiful than I could have hoped
+for; and then the rain passed, the life-giving rain, the rain that
+smoothed away all harshness and gave such a charm and a softness to the
+scenery. And it was vast. China was so crowded I never had a sense of
+vastness there; but this was like Australia, great stretches of land
+under the sky, green, rich lush green, and away in the distance was a
+dim line of blue hills. Then would come a little corrugated-iron-roofed
+town sprawled out over the mighty plain, a pathway to it across the
+surrounding green, and then the sun came out and the clouds threw great
+shadows and there was room to see the outline of their shapes on the
+green grass.
+
+There were Chinese still on the stations, but they were becoming more
+and more Russianised. They still wore queues, but they had belted
+Russian blouses and top-boots, and they mixed on friendly terms with
+flaxen-haired, blue-eyed Russians similarly attired. And the evening
+shadows gathered again and in the new world we steamed into Vladivostok.
+
+The Russians I came across did not appreciate fresh air. The porter of a
+hotel captured me and Buchanan, and when we arrived on a hot July night
+I was shown into a bedroom with double windows hermetically sealed and
+the cracks stopped up with cotton wool!
+
+I protested vehemently and the hotel porter looked at me in
+astonishment. Tear down those carefully stopped-up cracks! Perish the
+thought. However, I persuaded him down that cotton wool must come, and
+he pulled it down regretfully. I called at the British consulate next
+day and asked them to recommend me to the best hotel, but they told me
+I was already there and could not better myself, so I gave myself up
+to exploring the town in the Far East where now the Czech Slovaks have
+established themselves.
+
+It is a beautifully situated town set in the hills alongside a narrow
+arm of the sea, rather a grey sea with a grey sky overhead, and the
+hills around were covered with the luxuriant green of midsummer,
+midsummer in a land where it is winter almost to June. The principal
+buildings in Vladivostok are rather fine, but they are all along the
+shore, and once you go back you come into the hills where the wood-paved
+streets very often are mere flights of steps. It is because of that
+sheltered arm of the sea that here is a town at all.
+
+Along the shore are all manner of craft. The British fleet had come on
+a visit, and grey and grim the ships lay there on the grey sea, like a
+Turner picture, with, for a dash of colour, the Union Jacks. The Russian
+fleet was there too, welcoming their guests, and I took a boat manned
+by a native of the country, Mongolian evidently, with, of course, an
+unknown tongue, but whether he was Gold or Gilyak I know not. He was a
+good boatman, for a nasty little sea got up and James Buchanan told me
+several times he did not like the new turn our voyaging had taken, and
+then, poor little dog, he was violently sick. I know the torments of
+sea-sickness are not lightly to be borne, so after sailing round the
+fleets I went ashore and studied the shipping from the firm land.
+
+I was glad then that Mr Sly at Kharbin had insisted that I should see
+the Russian port. The whole picture was framed in green, soft tender
+green, edged with grey mist, and all the old forgotten ships of wood,
+the ships that perhaps were sailed by my grandfather in the old East
+India Company, seemed to have found a resting-place here. They were
+drawn up against the shore or they were going down the bay with all
+their sails set, and the sunlight breaking through the clouds touched
+the white sails and made them mountains of snow. There was shipbuilding
+going on too, naturally--for are there not great stores of timber in the
+forests behind?--and there were ships unloading all manner of things.
+Ships brought vegetables and fruit; ships brought meat; there were
+fishing-boats, hundreds of them close against each other along the
+shore, and on all the small ships, at the mast-heads, were little
+fluttering white butterflies of flags. What they were there for I do
+not know, or what they denoted. Oh, the general who commands the Czech
+Slovaks has a splendid base. I wish him all success. And here were the
+sealing-ships, the ships that presently would go up to the rookeries to
+bring away the pelts.
+
+One of my brothers was once navigating lieutenant on the British ship
+that guarded the rookeries “north of 53°,” and I remembered, as Buchanan
+and I walked along the shore, the tales he had told me of life in these
+parts. His particular ship had acquired two sheep, rather an acquisition
+for men who had lived long off the Chinese coast, and had a surfeit of
+chickens; so while they were eating one, thinking to save the other a
+long sea voyage they landed him on an island, giving him in charge of
+the man, an Aleut Indian, my brother called him, who ruled the little
+place. Coming back they were reduced to salt and tinned food, but they
+cheered themselves with thoughts of the mutton chops that should regale
+them when they met again their sheep. Alas for those sailor-men! They
+found the Indian, but the sheep was not forthcoming.
+
+His whilom guardian was most polite. He gave them to understand he was
+deeply grieved, but unfortunately he had been obliged to slay the sheep
+as he was killing the fowls!
+
+The ward-room mess realised all too late that mutton was appreciated in
+other places than on board his Majesty's ships.
+
+I thought all the races of the earth met in Kharbin, but I don't know
+that this port does not run it very close. There were Japanese, Chinese,
+Russians, Koreans in horsehair hats and white garments; there were the
+aboriginal natives of the country and there were numberless Germans.
+And then, in July, 1914, these people, I think, had no thought of the
+World's War.
+
+And here I came across a new way of carrying, for all the porters had
+chairs strapped upon their backs and the load, whatever it was, was
+placed upon the chair. Of all ways I have seen, that way strikes me as
+being the best, for the weight is most evenly distributed. Most of the
+porters, I believe, were Koreans, though they did not wear white; nor
+did they wear a hat of any description; their long black, hair was
+twisted up like a woman's, but they were vigorous and stalwart. We left
+weakness behind us in China. Here the people looked as if they were
+meat-fed, and though they might be dirty--they generally were--they all
+looked as if they had enough.
+
+Always the principal streets were thronged with people. At night the
+town all lighted up is like a crescent of sparkling diamonds flung
+against the hill-sides, and when I went to the railway station to take
+train for Kharbarosvk, thirty hours away, at the junction of the Ussuri
+and the Amur, that large and spacious building was a seething mass of
+people of apparently all classes and all nationalities, and they were
+giving voice to their feelings at the top of their lungs. Everybody, I
+should think, had a grievance and was makin the most of it. I had not
+my capable Mr Poland to arrange for me, so I went first class--the exact
+fare I have forgotten, but it was ridiculously low--and Buchanan and I
+had a compartment all to ourselves. Indeed I believe we were the only
+first-class passengers. I had my basket and my kettles and I had laid in
+store of provisions, and we went away back west for a couple of hours,
+and then north into the spacious green country where there was room and
+more than room for everybody.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREAT RIVERS
+
+All the afternoon we went back on our tracks along the main line, the
+sea on one side and the green country, riotous, lush, luxuriant, on the
+other, till at last we reached the head of the gulf and took our last
+look at the Northern Sea; grey like a silver shield it spread before us,
+and right down to the very water's edge came the vivid green. And then
+we turned inland, and presently we left the main line and went north.
+Above was the grey sky, and the air was soft and cool and delicious.
+I had had too much stimulation and I welcomed, as I had done the rains
+after the summer in my youth, the soft freshness of the Siberian summer.
+
+There were soldiers everywhere, tall, strapping, virile Russians; there
+were peasants in belted, blouses, with collars all of needlework; and
+there were Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and the natives of the country,
+men with a strong Mongolian cast of countenance. The country itself was
+strangely empty after teeming China, but these all travelled by train
+or were to be found on the railway stations and at the fishing stations
+that we passed, but apparently I was the only bloated aristocrat who
+travelled first class. In normal times this made travelling fairly easy
+in Russia, for it was very cheap and you could generally get a carriage
+to yourself.
+
+Oh! but it was lovely; the greenness of the country was a rest to eyes
+wearied with the dust and dirt of China. And there were trees--not trees
+denuded of all but enough timber to make a bare livelihood possible, but
+trees growing luxuriantly in abundant leaf after their own free will,
+oaks and firs and white-stemmed, graceful birches bending daintily
+before the soft breeze. At the stations the natives, exactly like
+Chinamen, dirty and in rags, brought strawberries for sale; and there
+were always flowers--purple vetches and gorgeous red poppies, tall
+foxgloves and blue spikes of larkspur. The very antithesis of China it
+was, for this was waste land and undeveloped. The very engines were run
+with wood, and there were stacks of wood by the wayside waiting to be
+burnt. I was sorry--I could not but be sorry. I have seen my own people
+cut down the great forests of Western Victoria, and here were people
+doing the same, with exactly the same wanton extravagance, and in this
+country, with its seven months of bitter winter, in all probability the
+trees take three times as long to come to maturity. But it is virgin
+land, this glorious fertile country, and was practically uninhabited
+till the Russian Government planted here and there bands of Cossacks
+who, they say, made no endeavour to develop the land. The Koreans and
+the Japanese and the Chinese came creeping in, but the Russians made
+an effort to keep them out. But still the population is scanty. Always,
+though it was before the war, there were soldiers--soldiers singly,
+soldiers in pairs, soldiers in little bands; a horseman appeared on a
+lonely road, he was a soldier; a man came along driving a cart, he was a
+soldier; but the people we saw were few, for the rigours of this lovely
+land in the winter are terrible, and this was the dreaded land where
+Russia sent her exiles a long, long way from home.
+
+Farther we went into the hills; a cuckoo called in the cool and dewy
+morning; there were lonely little cottages with wooden roofs and log
+walls; there were flowering creepers round the windows, and once I saw
+a woman's wistful face peeping out at the passing train, the new train
+that at last was bringing her nearer the old home and that yet seemed to
+emphasise the distance. We went along by a river, the Ussuri, that wound
+its way among the wooded green hills and by still pools of water that
+reflected in their depths the blue sky, soft with snow-white clouds. A
+glorious land this land of exile! At the next station we stopped at
+the people were seated at a table having a meal under the shade of the
+trees. Then there was a lonely cross of new wood; someone had been laid
+in his long last home in the wilderness and would never go back to
+Holy Russia again; and again I thought of the woman's wistful face that
+peered out of the flower-bordered window.
+
+This is a new line. Formerly the way to Kharbarosvk was down the Amur
+river from the west, and that, I suppose, is why all this country of the
+Amur Province south and east of the river is so lonely.
+
+As we neared Kharbarosvk came signs of settlement, the signs of
+settlement I had been accustomed to in Australia. There were tree
+stumps, more and more, and anything more desolate than a forest of
+newly cut tree stumps I don't know. It always spells to me ruthless
+destruction. I am sure it did here, for they cut down recklessly,
+sweeping all before them. It seemed to cry out, as all newly settled
+land that ever I have seen, and I have seen a good deal, the distaste of
+the people who here mean to make their homes. These are not our trees,
+they say; they are not beautiful like the trees of our own old home; let
+us cut them down, there are plenty; by and by when we have time, when
+we are settled, we will plant trees that really are worth growing. We
+shall not see them, of course, our children will benefit little; but
+they will be nice for our grandchildren, if we hold on so long. But
+no one believes they will stay so long; they hope to make money and go
+back. Meanwhile they want the timber, but they neglect to plant fresh
+trees.
+
+They wanted the timber to build Kharbarosvk. This is a town of the
+outposts, a frontier town; there are no towns like it in the British
+Isles, where they value their land and build towns compactly, but I have
+seen its counterpart many a time in Australia, and I know there must be
+its like in America and Canada. It straggled all along the river bank,
+and its wide streets, streets paved, or rather floored, here and there
+with planks of wood, were sparsely planted with houses. In one respect
+Australian towns of the frontier are much wiser. When there is a train
+they do build their stations with some regard for the comfort and
+convenience of the inhabitants. In Russia wherever I have been the
+railway station is a long distance, sometimes half-an-hour's drive, from
+the town it serves. I suppose it is one of the evils of the last bad
+regime and that in the future, the future which is for the people, it
+will be remedied, but it is difficult to see what purpose it serves. I
+had to get a droshky to the hotel. We drove first along a country road,
+then through the wide grass-grown streets of the town, and I arrived
+at the principal hotel, kept by a German on Russian lines, for the
+restaurant was perfectly distinct from the living-rooms. I put it on
+record it was an excellent restaurant; I remember that cold soup--the
+day was hot--and that most fragrant coffee still.
+
+From the windows of my bedroom I saw another of the world's great
+rivers. I looked away over a wide expanse of water sparkling in the
+sunshine: it was the junction of the Ussuri and the Amur, and it was
+like a great lake or the sea. It was very, very still, clear as glass,
+and the blue sky and white clouds were reflected in it, and there were
+green islands and low green banks. All was colour, but soft colour
+without outlines, like a Turner picture.
+
+The Amur is hard frozen for about five months of the year and for about
+two more is neither good solid ice nor navigable water. It is made by
+the joining of the Shilka and the Aigun in about lat. 53° N. 121° E.,
+and, counting in the Shilka, must be nearly three thousand miles in
+length, and close on two thousand miles have I now travelled. I
+don't know the Amur, of course, but at least I may claim to have been
+introduced to it, and that, I think, is more than the majority of
+Englishmen may do. And oh, it is a mighty river! At Kharbarosvk, over a
+thousand versts--about six hundred and forty miles--from the sea, it
+is at least a mile and a third wide, and towards the mouth, what with
+backwaters and swamps, it takes up sometimes about forty miles of
+country, while the main channel is often nearly three miles wide. It
+rises in the hills of Trans-Baikal--the Yablonoi Mountains we used to
+call them when I was at school. Really I think it is the watershed that
+runs up East Central Siberia and turns the waters to the shallow Sea of
+Okhotsk; and it cuts its way through wooded hills among rich land hardly
+as yet touched by agriculture, beautiful, lovely hills they are, steep
+and wooded. It climbs down into the flat country and then again, just
+before it reaches the sea, it is in the hills, colder hills this time,
+though the Amur falls into the sea on much the same parallel of latitude
+as that which sees it rise, only it seems to me that the farther you get
+east the colder and more extreme is the climate. For Nikolayeusk at the
+mouth is in the same latitude as London, but as a port it is closed for
+seven months of the year. True, the winter in Siberia is lovely, bright,
+clear cold, a hard, bright clearness, but the thermometer is often down
+below -40°
+
+Fahrenheit, and when that happens life is difficult for both man and
+beast. No wonder it is an empty river. The wonder to me is that there
+should be so much life as there is. For in those five months that it
+is open fine large steamers run from Nikolayeusk by Ivharbarosvk to
+Blagovesehensk, and smaller ones, but still rather fine, to Stretensk,
+where river navigation, for steamers of any size at any rate, ceases.
+There are the two months, April-May, September-October, when the river
+cannot be used at all, and there are the winter months when it may be,
+and is to a certain extent, used as a road, but with the thermometer
+down far below zero no one is particularly keen on travelling. It has
+its disadvantages. So most of the travelling is done in the summer
+months and in 1914 the steamers were crowded. Now, I suppose, they are
+fighting there. It is a country well worth fighting for.
+
+It was a curious contrast, the lonely empty river and the packed
+steamer. It was an event when we passed another; two made a crowd;
+and very, very seldom did we pass more than two in a day. But it was
+delightful moving along, the great crowded steamer but a puny thing on
+the wide river, the waters still and clear, reflecting the blue sky and
+the soft white clouds and the low banks far, far away. When there were
+hills they were generally closer, as if the river had had more trouble
+in cutting a passage and therefore had not had time to spread itself as
+it did in the plain country. The hills were densely wooded, mostly with
+dark firs, with an occasional deciduous tree showing up brightly among
+the dark foliage, and about Blagovesehensk there is a beautiful oak
+known as the velvet oak, the wood of which is much sought for making
+furniture. However dense the forest, every here and there would be a
+wide swath of green bare of trees--a fire brake; for these forests in
+the summer burn fiercely, and coming back I saw the valleys thick with
+the curling blue wood smoke, smelt the aromatic smell of the burning fir
+woods, and at night saw the hills outlined in flames. It was a gorgeous
+sight, but it is desperately destructive for the country, especially
+a country where the wood grows so slowly. But at first there were no
+fires, and what struck me was the vastness and the loneliness of the
+mighty river. I had the same feeling on the Congo in the tropics, a
+great and lonely river with empty banks, but that was for a distance
+under two hundred miles. Here in the north the great lonely river went
+wandering on for ten times as far, and still the feeling when one stood
+apart from the steamer was of loneliness and grandeur. Man was such a
+small thing here. At night a little wind sighed over the waters or swept
+down between the hills; round the bows the water rose white; there was a
+waste of tossing water all round, under a lowering sky, and the far-away
+banks were lost in the gloom. A light would appear, perhaps two lights
+shining out of the darkness, but they only emphasised the loneliness. A
+wonderful river!
+
+The navigation of the river is a profession in itself. There is a school
+for the navigators at Blagoveschensk where they are properly trained.
+All along we came across the red beacons that mark the way, while beside
+them in the daytime we could see the cabins of the lonely men who tended
+them.
+
+Truly a voyage down the Amur in summer is not to be easily forgotten,
+and yet, sitting here writing about it in my garden in Kent, I sometimes
+wonder did I dream it all, the vastness and the loneliness and the
+grandeur that is so very different from the orchard land wherein is
+set my home. You do not see orchards on the Amur, the climate is too
+rigorous, and I doubt if they grow much beyond berries, a blue berry in
+large quantities, raspberries, and coming back we bought cucumbers.
+
+Oh, but it was lovely on that river. Dearly should I like to share its
+delights with a companion who could discuss it with me, but somehow it
+seems to be my lot to travel alone.
+
+Not, of course, that I was really alone. Though the steamers were
+few, perhaps because they were few, they were crowded. There were two
+companies on the river, the Sormovo or quick-sailing company, and the
+Amur Company; and I hereby put it on record that the Amur Company is
+much the best. The _John Cockerill_, named after some long-dead
+English engineer who was once on the Amur, is one of the best and most
+comfortable.
+
+At Kharbarosvk, finding the steamer did not leave till the evening of
+the next day, I had naturally gone to a hotel. It seemed the obvious
+thing to do. But I was wrong. The great Russian steamship companies,
+with a laudable desire to keep passengers and make them comfortable,
+always allow a would-be traveller to spend at least two days on board
+in the ports, paying, of course, for his food. And I, who had only come
+about thirty-six hours too soon, had actually put up at a hotel, with
+the _John Cockerill_ lying at the wharf. The Russo-Asiatic Bank,
+as represented by a woman clerk, the only one there who could speak
+English, was shocked at my extravagance and said so. These women clerks
+were a little surprise for me, for in 1914 I was not accustomed to
+seeing women in banks, but here in Eastern Siberia--in Vladivostok,
+Kharbarosvk, and all the towns of the Amur--they were as usual as the
+men.
+
+The _John Cockerill_ surprised me as much as I surprised the bank clerk.
+To begin with, I didn't realise it was the _John Cockerill_, for I could
+not read the Russian letters, and at first I did not recognise the name
+as pronounced by the Russians. She was a very gorgeous, comfortable
+ship, with a dining saloon and a lounge gorgeous in green velvet. And
+yet she was not a post steamer, but spent most of her time drawing
+barges laden with cargo, and stopped to discharge and take in at all
+manner of lonely little ports on the great river. She was a big steamer,
+divided into four classes, and was packed with passengers: Russians
+in the first, second and third class, with an occasional German or
+Japanese, and in the fourth an extraordinary medley of poorer Russians,
+Chinese and Gilyaks and Golds, the aboriginals of the country, men with
+a Mongolian east of countenance, long coarse blaek hair, very often
+beards, and dirty--the ordinary poor Chinaman is clean and tidy beside
+them.
+
+But the first class was luxurious. We had electric light and hot and
+cold water. The cabins were not to hold more than two, and you brought
+your own bedding. I dare say it could have been hired on the steamer,
+but the difficulty of language always stood in my way, and once away
+from the seaboard in North-Eastern Asia the only other European language
+beside Russian that is likely to be understood is German, and I have no
+German. I was lucky enough on the _John Cockerill_ to find the wife of
+a Russian colonel who spoke a little English. She, with her husband, was
+taking a summer holiday by journeying up to Nikolayeusk, and she very
+kindly took Buchanan and me under her wing and interpreted for us. It
+was very nice for me, and the only thing I had to complain of on that
+steamer was the way in which the night watch promenading the deek shut
+my window and slammed to the shutters. They did it every night, with a
+care for my welfare I could have done without. In a river steamer
+the cabins are all in the centre with the deck round, and the watch
+evidently could not understand how any woman could really desire to
+sleep under an open window. I used to get up early in the morning and
+walk round the decks, and I found that first and second class invariably
+shut their windows tight, though the nights were always just pleasantly
+cool, and consequently those passages between the cabins smelt like
+a menagerie, and an ill-kept menagerie at that. They say Russians age
+early and invariably they are of a pallid complexion. I do not wonder,
+now that I have seen their dread of fresh air. Again and again I was
+told: “Draughts are not good!” Draughts! I'd rather sleep in a hurricane
+than in the hermetically sealed boxes in which those passengers stowed
+themselves on board the river steamers. On the _John Cockerill_ the
+windows of the dining saloon and the lounge did open, but on the steamer
+on which I went up the river, the _Kanovina_, one of the “Sormovo”
+ Company, and the mail steamer, there was only one saloon in the first
+class. We had our meals and we lived there. It was a fine large room
+placed for'ard in the ship's bows, with beautiful large windows of glass
+through which we could see excellently the scenery; but those windows
+were fast; they would not open; they were not made to open. The
+atmosphere was always thick when I went in for breakfast in the morning,
+and I used to make desperate efforts to get the little windows that ran
+round the top opened. I could not do it myself, as you had to get on the
+roof of the saloon, the deck where the look-out stood, and anyhow they
+were only little things, a foot high by two feet broad. But such an
+innovation was evidently regarded as dangerous. Besides the fact that
+draughts were bad, I have been assured that perhaps it was going to
+rain--the rain couldn't come in both sides--and at night I was assured
+they couldn't be opened because the lights would be confusing to other
+steamers!
+
+Nobody seemed to mind an atmosphere you could have cut with a knife. I
+am sure if the walls had been taken away it would have stood there in
+a solid block--a dark-coloured, high-smelling block, I should think. I
+gave up trying to do good to a community against its will and used to
+carry my meals outside and have them on the little tables that were
+dotted about the deck.
+
+After all, bar that little difficulty about the air--and certainly if
+right goes with the majority I have no cause of complaint, I was in a
+minority of one--those steamers made the most comfortable and cheapest
+form of travelling I have ever undertaken. From Kharbarosvk to
+Nikolayeusk for over three days' voyage my fare with a first-class cabin
+to myself was twelve roubles--about one pound four shillings. I came
+back by the mail steamer and it was fifteen roubles--about one pound
+ten shillings. This, of course, does not include food. Food on a
+Russian steamer you buy as you would on a railway train. You may make
+arrangements with the restaurant and have breakfast, luncheon, afternoon
+tea and dinner for so much a day; or you may have each meal separate
+and pay for it as you have it; or you may buy your food at the various
+stopping-places, get your kettles filled with hot water for a trifling
+tip, and feed yourself in the privacy of your own cabin. I found
+the simplest way, having no servant, was to pay so much a day--five
+shillings on the big steamers, four shillings on the smaller one--and
+live as I would do at a hotel. The food was excellent on the Amur
+Company's ships. We had chicken and salmon--not much salmon, it was too
+cheap--and sturgeon. Sturgeon, that prince of fish, was a treat,
+and caviare was as common as marmalade used to be on a British
+breakfast-table. It was generally of the red variety that we do not see
+here and looked not unlike clusters of red currants, only I don't know
+that I have ever seen currants in such quantities. I enjoyed it very
+much till one day, looking over the railing into the stern of the boat,
+where much of the food was roughly prepared--an unwise thing to do--I
+saw an extremely dirty woman of the country, a Gilyak, in an extremely
+dirty garment, with her dirty bare arms plunged to the elbow in the red
+caviare she was preparing for the table. Then I discovered for a little
+while that I didn't much fancy caviare. But I wish I had some of that
+nice red caviare now.
+
+The second class differed but little from the first. There was not so
+much decoration about the saloons, and on the _John Cockerill_, where
+the first class had two rooms, they had only one; and the food was much
+the same, only not so many courses. There was plenty, and they only paid
+three shillings a day for the four meals. The people were much the
+same as we in the first class, and I met a girl from Samara, in Central
+Russia, who spoke a little French. She was a teacher and was going
+to Nikolayeusk for a holiday exactly as I have seen teachers here in
+England go to Switzerland.
+
+But between the first and second and the third and fourth class was a
+great gulf fixed. They were both on the lower deck, the third under the
+first and the fourth under the second, while amidships between them were
+the kitchens and the engines and the store of wood for fuel. The third
+had no cabins, but the people went to bed and apparently spent their
+days in places like old-fashioned dinner-wagons; and they bought their
+own food, either from the steamer or at the various stopping-places, and
+ate it on their beds, for they had no saloon. The fourth class was still
+more primitive. The passengers, men, women and children, were packed
+away upon shelves rising in three tiers, one above the other, and the
+place of each man and woman was marked out by posts. There was no effort
+made to provide separate accommodation for men and women. As far as I
+could see, they all herded together like cattle.
+
+The ship was crowded. The Russian colonel's wife and I used to walk up
+and down the long decks for exercise, with Buchanan in attendance, she
+improving her English and I learning no Russian. It is evidently quite
+the custom for the people of the great towns of the Amur to make every
+summer an excursion up the river, and the poorer people, the third and
+fourth class, go up to Nikolayeusk for the fishing. Hence those shelves
+crowded with dirty folk. There were troughs for washing outside the
+fourth class, I discovered, minor editions of our luxurious bathrooms
+in the first class, but I am bound to say they did not have much use.
+Washing even in this hot weather, and it certainly was pleasantly
+warm, was more honoured in the breach than in the observance. The only
+drawback to the bathrooms in the first class, from my point of view, was
+their want of air. They were built so that apparently there was no means
+of getting fresh air into them, and I always regarded myself as a very
+plucky woman when in the interests of cleanliness I had a bath. The
+hot water and the airlessness always brought me to such a condition of
+faintness that I generally had to rush out and lie on the couch in my
+cabin to recover, and then if somebody outside took it upon them to bang
+to the window I was reduced to the last gasp.
+
+The _John Cockerill_ was run like a man-of-war. The bells struck the
+hours and half-hours, the captain and officers were clad in white and
+brass-bound, and the men were in orthodox sailor's rig. One man came
+and explained to me--he spoke no tongue that I could understand, but his
+meaning was obvious--that Buchanan was not allowed on the first-class
+deck, the rules and regulations, so said the colonel's wife, said he
+was not; but no one seemed to object, so I thought to smooth matters
+by paying half-a-rouble; then I found that every sailor I came across
+apparently made the same statement, and having listened to one or two,
+at last I decided to part with no more cash, and it was, I suppose,
+agreed that Buchanan had paid his footing, for they troubled me no more
+about him.
+
+Three or four times a day we pulled up at some little wayside place,
+generally only two or three log-houses with painted doors or windows, an
+occasional potato patch and huge stacks of wood to replenish the fuel
+of the steamer, and with much yelling they put out a long gangway,
+and while the wood was brought on board we all went ashore to see
+the country. The country was always exactly alike, vast and green and
+lonely, the sparse human habitations emphasising that vastness and
+loneliness. The people were few. The men wore belted blouses and high
+boots and very often, though it was summer, fur caps, and the women very
+voluminous and very dirty skirts with unbelted blouses, a shawl across
+their shoulders and a kerchief on their unkempt hair. They were dirty;
+they were untidy; they were uneducated; they belonged to the very
+poorest classes; and I think I can safely say that all the way from
+Kharbarosvk to Nikolayeusk the only attempt at farming I saw was in a
+few scattered places where the grass had been cut and tossed up into
+haycocks. And yet those people impressed upon me a sense of their
+virility and strength, a feeling that I had never had when moving among
+the Chinese, where every inch of land--bar the graves--is turned to good
+account. Was it the condition of the women? I wonder. I know I never saw
+one of those stalwart women pounding along on her big flat feet without
+a feeling of gladness and thankfulness. Here at least was good material.
+It was crude and rough, of course, but it was there waiting for the
+wheel of the potter. Shall we find the potter in the turmoil of the
+revolution and the war?
+
+We went on, north, north with a little of east, and it grew cooler and
+the twilight grew longer. I do not know how other people do, but I count
+my miles and realise distances from some distance I knew well in my
+youth. So I know that from Kharbarosvk to Nikolaycusk is a little
+farther away than is Melbourne from Sydney; and always we went by way of
+the great empty land, by way of the great empty river. Sometimes far
+in the distance we could see the blue hills; sometimes the hills were
+close; but always it was empty, because the few inhabitants, the house
+or two at the little stopping-places where were the piles of wood for
+the steamer, but emphasised the loneliness and emptiness. You could have
+put all the people we saw in a street of a suburb of London and lost
+them, and I suppose the distance traversed was as far as from London to
+Aberdeen. It was a beautiful land, a land with a wondrous charm, but it
+is waiting for the colonist who will dare the rigours of the winter and
+populate it.
+
+At last we steamed up to the port of Nikolayeusk, set at the entrance of
+the shallow Sea of Okhotsk, right away in the east of the world. When I
+set foot upon the wharf among all the barrels with which it was packed I
+could hardly believe I had come so far east, so far away from my regular
+beat. One of my brothers always declares I sent him to sea because my
+sex prevented me from going, and yet here I was, in spite of that grave
+disadvantage, in as remote a corner of the earth as even he might have
+hoped to attain.
+
+It was a July day, sunny and warm. They had slain an Austrian archduke
+in Serbia and the world was on the verge of the war of the ages, but
+I knew nothing of all that. I stepped off the steamer and proceeded to
+investigate Nikolayeusk, well satisfied with the point at which I had
+arrived.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
+
+Nikolayeusk seemed to me the ends of the earth. I hardly know why it
+should have done so, for I arrived there by way of a very comfortable
+steamer and I have made my way to very much more ungetatable places. I
+suppose the explanation is that all the other places I have visited I
+had looked up so long on the map that when I arrived I only felt I was
+attaining the goal I had set out to reach, whereas I must admit I had
+never heard of Nikolayeusk till Mr Sly, the British consul, sketched
+it out as the end of my itinerary on the Siberian rivers, and ten days
+later I found myself in the Far Eastern town. I remember one of my
+brothers writing to me once from Petropaulovski:
+
+“I always said my address would some day be Kamseatkha and here I am!”
+
+Well, I never said my address would be Nikolayeusk because I had never
+heard of it, but here I was nevertheless. The weather was warm, the sun
+poured down from a cloudless blue sky, and in the broad, grass-grown
+streets, such streets have I seen in Australian towns, when the faint
+breeze stirred the yellow dust rose on the air. And the town straggled
+all along the northern side of the river, a town of low, one-storeyed
+wooden houses for the most part, with an occasional two-storeyed house
+and heavy shutters to all the windows. There was a curious absence
+of stone, and the streets when they were paved at all were, as in
+Kharbarosvk, lines of planks, sometimes three, sometimes five planks
+wide, with a waste of dust or mud or grass, as the case might be, on
+either side.
+
+The Russians I found kindness itself. In Vladivostok I had met a man
+who knew one of my brothers--I sometimes wonder if I could get to such
+a remote corner of the earth that I should not meet someone who knew
+one of these ubiquitous brothers of mine--and this good friend, having
+sampled the family, took me on trust and found someone else who
+would give me a letter to the manager of the Russo-Asiatic Bank at
+Nikolayeusk. This was a godsend, for Mr Pauloff spoke excellent English,
+and he and his corresponding clerk, a Russian lady of middle age who had
+spent a long time in France, took me in hand and showed me the sights.
+Madame Schulmann and I and Buchanan drove all over the town in one of
+the most ancient victorias I have ever seen--the most ancient are in
+Saghalien, which is beyond the ends of the earth--and she very kindly
+took me to a meal at the principal hotel. I was staying on board the
+steamer while I looked around me. The visit with this lady decided me
+not to go there. It wras about four o'clock in the afternoon, so I don't
+know whether our meal was dinner or tea or luncheon; we had good soup,
+I remember, and nice wine, to say nothing of excellent coffee, but the
+atmosphere left much to be desired. I don't suppose the windows ever
+had been opened since the place was built, and no one seemed to see any
+necessity for opening them. My hostess smiled at my distress. She said
+she liked fresh air herself but that for a whole year she had lodged in
+a room where the windows would not open. She had wanted to have one of
+the panes--not the window, just one of the panes--made to open to admit
+fresh air, and had offered to do it at her own expense, but her landlord
+refused. It would spoil the look of the room. She advised me strongly
+if I wanted fresh air to stay as long as I could on board the steamer at
+the wharf, and I decided to take her advice.
+
+The Russo-Asiatic Bank was not unlike the banks I have seen in
+Australian townships, in that it was built of wood of one storey and the
+manager and his wife lived on the premises, but the roof was far more
+ornamental than Australia could stand and gave the touch of the East
+that made for romance. The manager was good enough to ask me to dinner
+and to include Buchanan in the invitation because I did not like to
+leave the poor little chap shut up in my cabin. This was really dinner,
+called so, and we had it at five o'clock of a hot summer's afternoon,
+a very excellent dinner, with delicious sour cream in the soup
+and excellent South Australian wine, not the stuff that passes for
+Australian wine in England and that so many people take medicinally, but
+really good wine, such as Australians themselves drink. The house was
+built with a curious lack of partitions that made for spaciousness, so
+that you wandered from one room to another, hardly knowing that you had
+gone from the sitting-room to the bedroom, and James Buchanan going on a
+voyage of discovery unfortunately found the cradle, to the dismay of his
+mistress. He stood and looked at it and barked.
+
+“Gracious me! What's this funny thing! I've never seen anything like it
+before!”
+
+Neither had I; but I was covered with shame when a wail proclaimed the
+presence of the son and heir.
+
+Naturally I expressed myself--truly--charmed with the town, and Mr
+Pauloff smiled and nodded at his wife, who spoke no English.
+
+“She hates it,” said he; “she has never been well since we came here.”
+
+She was white, poor little girl, as the paper on which this is written,
+and very frail-looking, but it never seemed to occur to anyone that it
+would be well to open the double windows, and so close was the air of
+the room that it made me feel sick and faint.
+
+“She never goes out,” said her husband. “She is not well enough.”
+
+I believe there was a time in our grandmothers' days when we too dreaded
+the fresh air.
+
+And in this the town differed markedly from any Australian towns I have
+known. The double windows were all tight shut these warm July days, with
+all the cracks stopped up with cotton wool, with often decorations of
+coloured ribbons or paper wandering across the space between. Also there
+were very heavy shutters, and I thought these must be to shut out the
+winter storms, but M. Pauloff did not seem to think much of the winter
+storms, though he admitted they had some bad blizzards and regularly the
+thermometer went down below -40° Fahrenheit.
+
+“No,” he said, “we shut them at night, at four in the winter and at nine
+in the summer. Leave them open you cannot.”
+
+“But why?” I thought it was some device for keeping out still more air.
+
+“There is danger,” said he--“danger from men.”
+
+“Do they steal?” said I, surprised.
+
+“And kill,” he added with conviction.
+
+It seems that when the Japanese invaded Saghalien, the great island
+which lies opposite the mouth of the Amur, they liberated at least
+thirty thousand convicts, and they burnt the records so that no one
+could prove anything against them, and the majority of these convicts
+were unluckily not all suffering political prisoners, but criminals,
+many of them of the deepest dye. These first made Saghalien an
+unwholesome place to live in, but gradually they migrated to the
+mainland, and Nikolayeusk and other towns of Eastern Siberia are by no
+means safe places in consequence. Madame Schulmann told me that many
+a time men were killed in the open streets and that going back to her
+lodgings on the dark winter evenings she was very much afraid and always
+tried to do it in daylight.
+
+Nikolayeusk is officially supposed to have thirteen thousand
+inhabitants, but really in the winter-time, says Mr Pauloff, they shrink
+to ten thousand, while in the summer they rise to over forty thousand,
+everybody coming for the fishing, the great salmon fisheries.
+
+“Here is noting,” said he, “noting--only fish.”
+
+And this remark he made at intervals. He could not reiterate it too
+often, as if he were warning me against expecting too much from this
+remote corner of the world. But indeed the fish interested me. The
+summer fishing was on while I was there, but that, it seems, is as
+nothing to the autumn fishing, when the fish rush into the wide river in
+solid blocks. The whole place then is given over to the fishing and the
+other trades that fishing calls into being to support it. All the summer
+the steamers coming down the river are crowded, and they bring great
+cargoes of timber; the wharves when I was there were covered with
+barrels and packing-cases containing, according to Mr Pauloff, “only
+air.” These were for the fish. And now, when the humble mackerel costs
+me at least ninepence or a shilling, I remember with longing the days
+when I used to see a man like a Chinaman, but not a Chinaman, a bamboo
+across his shoulder, and from each end a great fresh salmon slung, a
+salmon that was nearly as long as the bearer, and I could have bought
+the two for ten kopecks!
+
+He that will not when he may!
+
+But great as the trade was down the river, most eatables--groceries,
+flour and such-like things--came from Shanghai, and the ships that
+brought them took back wood to be made into furniture, and there
+was, when I was there, quite a flourishing trade in frozen meat with
+Australia, Nikolayeusk requiring about two hundred and forty thousand
+pounds in the year. In winter, of course, all the provisions are frozen;
+the milk is poured into basins, a stick is stuck in it and it freezes
+round it, so that a milk-seller instead of having a large can has an
+array of sticks on top of which is the milk frozen hard as a stone.
+Milk, meat, eggs, all provisions are frozen from October to May.
+
+I do not know what Nikolayeusk is doing now war and revolution have
+reached it. At least they have brought it into touch with the outer
+world.
+
+And having got so far I looked longingly out over the harbour and
+wondered whether I might not go to Saghalien.
+
+Mr Pauloff laughed at my desires. If there was nothing to see in
+Nikolayeusk, there was less than nothing in Saghalien. It was dead. It
+never had been much and the Japanese invasion had killed it. Not that he
+harboured any animosity against the Japanese. Russians and Japanese, he
+declared, were on very friendly terms, and though they invaded Saghalien
+they did not disgrace their occupation by any atrocities. The Russian,
+everybody declared in Nikolayeusk, bridges the gulf between the white
+man and the yellow. Russian and Chinese peasants will work side by side
+in friendliest fashion; they will occupy the same boardinghouses; the
+Russian woman does not object to the Chinese as a husband, and the
+Russian takes a Chinese wife. Of course these are the peasant classes.
+The Russian authorities made very definite arrangements for keeping out
+Chinese from Siberia, as I saw presently when I went back up the river.
+
+But the more I thought of it the more determined I was not to go
+back till I had gone as far east as I possibly could go. The Russian
+Volunteer fleet I found called at Alexandrovsk regularly during the
+months the sea was open, making Nikolayeusk its most northern port of
+call. I could go by the steamer going down and be picked up by the one
+coming north. It would give me a couple of days in the island, and Mr
+Pauloff was of opinion that a couple of days would be far too long.
+
+But the _John Cockerill_ was going back and Buchanan and I must find
+another roof and a resting-place. According to the inhabitants, it would
+not be safe to sleep in the streets, and I had conceived a distinct
+distaste for the hotel. But the _Erivan_ lay in the stream and to
+that we transferred ourselves and our belongings, where the mate spoke
+English with a strong Glasgow accent and the steward had a smattering.
+It was only a smattering, however. I had had a very early lunch and
+no afternoon tea, so when I got on board at six in the evening I
+was decidedly hungry and demanded food, or rather when food might be
+expected. The steward was in a dilemma. It was distinctly too early for
+dinner, he considered, and too late for tea. He scratched his head.
+
+“Lunch!” said he triumphantly, and ushered me into the saloon, where
+hung large photographs of the Tsar, the Tsarina and the good-looking
+little Tsarevitch. In the corner was an ikon, St Nicolas, I think, who
+protects sailors. And there at six o'clock in the evening I meekly sat
+down to luncheon all by myself.
+
+Lying there I had a lovely view of the town. At night, like Vladivostok,
+it lay like a ring of diamonds along the shore of the river; and in
+the daytime the softly rounded green hills, the grey-blue sky and the
+grey-blue sea with the little white wavelets, and the little town just
+a line between the green and the blue, with the spires and domes of the
+churches and other public buildings, green and blue and red and white,
+made a view that was worth coming so far to see. There were ships in the
+bay too--not very big ships; but a ship always has an attraction: it has
+come from the unknown; it is about to go into the unknown--and as I sat
+on deck there came to me the mate with the Scots accent and explained
+all about the ships in sight.
+
+The place was a fort and they were going to make it a great harbour, to
+fill it up till the great ships should lie along the shore. It will
+take a good time, for we lay a long way out, but he never doubted the
+possibility; and meantime the goods come to the ships in the lighters
+in which they have already come down the river, and they are worked by
+labourers getting, according to the mate, twelve shillings a day.
+
+“Dey carry near as much as we do,” said he.
+
+Then there were other ships: a ship for fish, summer fish, for Japan,
+sealers for the rookeries, and ships loading timber for Kamseatkha. I
+thought I would like to emulate my brother and go there, and the Russky
+mate thought it would be quite possible, only very uncomfortable. It
+would take three months, said he, and it was rather late in the season
+now. Besides, these ships load themselves so with timber that there
+is only a narrow space on deck to walk on, and they are packed with
+passengers, mostly labourers, going up for the short summer season.
+
+My old trouble, want of air, followed me on board the _Erivan_. On deck
+it was cool, at night the thermometer registered about 55° Fahrenheit,
+but in my cabin Buehanan and I gasped with the thermometer at over 90°,
+and that with the port, a very small one, open. That stuffiness was
+horrible. The bathroom looked like a boiler with a tightfitting iron
+door right amidships, and having looked at it I had not the courage
+to shut myself in and take a bath. It seemed as if it would be burying
+myself alive. As it was, sleep down below I could not, and I used to
+steal up on deck and with plenty of rugs and cushions lay myself out
+along the seats and sleep in the fresh air; but a seat really does leave
+something to be desired in the way of luxury.
+
+But the early mornings were delightful. The first faint light showed a
+mist hanging over the green hills marking out their outlines, green
+and blue and grey; then it was all grey mist; but to the east was the
+crimson of the dawn, and we left our moorings early one morning and
+steamed into that crimson. The sun rose among silver and grey clouds,
+and rose again and again as we passed along the river and the mountains
+hid him from sight. There were long streaks of silver on the broad
+river; slowly the fir-clad hills emerged from the mist and the air was
+moist and fragrant; the scent of the sea and the fragrance of the pines
+was in it. A delicious, delicate northern sunrise it was; never before
+or since have I seen such a sunrise. Never again can I possibly see one
+more beautiful.
+
+And the great river widened. There were little settlements, the
+five-pointed tents of the Russian soldiers and many places for catching
+fish. No wonder the fish--fish is always salmon here--like this great
+-wide river. The brownish water flowed on swiftly and the morning
+wind whipped it into never-ending ripples that caught the sunlight. A
+wonderful river! A delightful river! I have grown enthusiastic over
+many rivers. I know the Murray in my own land and the great rivers of
+tropical Africa, the Congo, the Gambia, the Volta, grand and lovely
+all of them. I felt I had looked upon the glory of the Lord when I had
+looked upon them, but there was something in the tender beauty of the
+Amur, the summer beauty veiled in mist, the beauty that would last so
+short a time, that was best of all.
+
+Meanwhile the passengers and officers of the _Erivan_ were much
+exercised in their minds over me. What could an Englishwoman want
+in Saghalien? To my surprise I found that none had ever stayed there
+before, though it was on record that one had once landed there from a
+steamer. The mate was scathing in his remarks.
+
+“Dere are skeeters,” said he, “big ones, I hear,” and he rolled his
+“r's” like a true Scotsman.
+
+“But where can I stay?” He shook his head.
+
+“In de hotel you cannot stay. It is impossible.” That I could quite
+believe, but all the same, if the hotel was impossible, where could I
+stay?
+
+However, here I was, and I did not intend to go back to Vladivostok by
+sea. At Alexandrosvk, the town of Saghalien, I proposed to land and I
+felt it was no good worrying till I got there.
+
+We entered De Castries Bay in a soft grey mist, a mist that veiled
+the mountains behind. Then the mist lifted and showed us the string of
+islands that guard the mouth of the bay, strung in a line like jewels
+set in the sea, and the hills on them were all crowned with firs; and
+then the mist dropped again, veiling all things.
+
+It was a lonely place, where I, being a foreigner, was not allowed to
+land, and we did not go close up to the shore, but the shore came to us
+in great white whale-boats. Many peasants and soldiers got off here, and
+I saw saws and spades in the bundles, the bundles of emigrants. There
+were a few women amongst them, women with hard, elemental faces, so
+different from the Chinese, that were vacuous and refined. I remembered
+the women who had listened to the lecturer at Fen Chou Fu and I drew
+a long sigh of relief. It was refreshing to look at those big-hipped
+women, with their broad, strong feet and their broad, strong hands and
+the little dirty kerchiefs over their heads. Elemental, rough, rude, but
+I was glad of them. One was suckling a child in the boat, calmly, as if
+it were the most natural thing to do, and somehow it was good to see it.
+The beginning of life.
+
+The morning brought a dense mist, and as it cleared away it showed us
+a sparkling, smooth sea, greyish-blue like the skies above it, and a
+little wooden town nestling against fir-clad hills. We had arrived at
+Alexandrosvk and I wondered what would become of me.
+
+And then once again I learned what a kind place is this old world of
+ours that we abuse so often. I had gone on board that steamer without
+any introduction whatever, with only my passport to show that I was a
+respectable member of society. I knew nobody and saw no reason
+whatever why anyone should trouble themselves about me. But we
+carried distinguished passengers on board the _Erivan_. There was the
+Vice-Governor of Saghalien, his wife and son, with the soldiers in
+attendance, and a good-looking young fellow with short-cropped hair and
+dreamy eyes who was the Assistant Chief of Police of the island, and
+this man, by command of the Governor, took me in charge.
+
+Never again shall I hear of the Russian police without thinking of the
+deep debt of gratitude that I owe to Vladimir Merokushoff of Saghalien.
+
+I do not think as a rule that people land from steamers at Alexandrosvk
+on to red tapestry carpets under fluttering bruiting to the strains of
+a band. But we did; and the Chief of Police--he spoke no language but
+Russian--motioned me to wait a moment, and when the Governor had been
+safely despatched to his home he appeared on the scene with a victoria
+and drove me and Buchanan to the police station, a charming little
+one-storeyed building buried in greenery, and there he established us.
+Buchanan he appreciated as a dog likes to be appreciated, and he gave
+up to me his own bedroom, where the top pane of the window had actually
+been made to open. His sitting-room was a very bower of growing plants,
+and when I went to bed that night he brought his elderly working
+housekeeper, a plain-faced woman whom he called “Stera,” and made
+her bring her bed and lay it across my door, which opened into the
+sitting-room. It was no good my protesting; there she had to sleep. Poor
+old thing, she must have been glad my stay was not long. Every day she
+wore a blue skirt and a drab-coloured blouse, unbelted, and her grey
+hair twisted up into an untidy knot behind, but she was an excellent
+cook. That young man got himself into his everyday holland summer coat
+and to entertain me proceeded to lay in enough provisions to supply a
+hungry school. He showed me the things first to see if I liked them, as
+if I wouldn't have liked shark when people were so kind. But as a matter
+of fact everything was very good. He produced a large tin of crawling
+crayfish, and when I had expressed not only my approval but my delight,
+they appeared deliciously red and white for dinner, and then I found
+they were only _sakouska_--that is, the _hors d'ouvre_ that the Russians
+take to whet their appetites. I have often lived well, but never better
+than when I, a stranger and a sojourner, was taken in charge by the
+hospitable Russian police, who would not let me pay one penny for my
+board and lodging. We fed all day long. I had only to come in for a
+bottle of wine or beer to be produced. I was given a _gens d'arme_ to
+carry my camera and another to take care of Buchanan. Never surely was
+stranger so well done as I by hospitable Saghalien. The policeman
+made me understand he was an author and presented me with a couple of
+pamphlets he had written on Saghalien and its inhabitants, but though
+I treasure them I cannot read them. Then the Japanese photographer was
+sent for and he and I were taken sitting side by side on the bench in
+his leafy porch, and, to crown all, because I could speak no Russian, he
+sent for two girls who had been educated in Japan and who spoke English
+almost as well as I did myself, though they had never before spoken to
+an Englishwoman. Marie and Lariss Borodin were they, and their father
+kept the principal store in Alexandrosvk. They were dainty, pretty,
+dark-eyed girls and they were a godsend to me. They had a tea in my
+honour and introduced me to the manager of the coal mine of Saghalien
+and took care I should have all the information about the island it was
+in their power to supply.
+
+There were then about five thousand people there, one thousand in
+Alexandrosvk itself, but they were going daily, for the blight of the
+convict was over the beautiful land. The best coal mine is closed down
+on fire and the one whose manager I met was leased to a company by the
+year and worked by Chinese on most primitive lines. There is gold,
+he told me, this business man who surprised me by his lavish use of
+perfume, but he did not know whether it would pay for working--gold
+and coal as well would be almost too much good luck for one island--and
+there is naphtha everywhere on the east coast, but as it has never been
+struck they think that the main vein must come up somewhere under the
+sea. Still it is there waiting for the enterprising man who shall work
+it.
+
+Saghalien used to be as bad as Nikolayeusk, they told me, after the
+Japanese had evacuated the northern part; but now the most enterprising
+section of the convicts had betaken themselves to the mainland, and
+though the free settlers were few and far between, and the most of the
+people I saw were convicts, they were the harmless ones with all the
+devilment gone out of them.
+
+Alexandrosvk is a place of empty houses. When the Japanese came the
+people fled, leaving everything exactly as it was; and though the
+Japanese behaved with admirable restraint, considering they came as
+an invading army, many of these people never came back again, and the
+alertness in a bad cause which had sent many of the convicts there
+against their will sent them away again as soon as they were free. All
+down by the long wooden pier which stretches out into the sea are great
+wooden storehouses and barracks, empty, and a monument, if they needed
+it, to the courteous manner in which the Japanese make war. They had
+burnt the museum, they told me, and opened the prison doors and burnt
+the prison, but the other houses they had spared. And so there were
+many, many empty houses in Alexandrosvk.
+
+All the oldest carriages in the world have drifted to Saghalien.
+
+They are decrepit in Western Siberia, they are worse, if possible, in
+the East, but in the island of Saghalien I really don't know how they
+hold together. Perhaps they are not wanted very often. I hired the most
+archaic victoria I have ever seen and the two girls came for a drive
+with me all round the town and its neighbourhood. It was a drive to be
+remembered. The early summer was in all its full freshness, the red and
+white cows stood knee-deep in grass that was green and lush everywhere.
+There were fir-trees on the hills and on every spur of the hills, and
+there were hedges with dog-roses blossoming all over them; there were
+fields of dark blue iris; there were little red tiger lilies and a
+spiked heliotrope flower like veronica, only each bloom grew on a single
+stalk of its own; there were purple vetches and white spiræa growing in
+marshy places, and the land was thick with sweet-scented clover among
+which the bees were humming, and in a little village there was a Greek
+church that, set in its emerald-green field, was a very riot of colour.
+There were balls on the roof of royal blue, the roof itself was of pale
+green, the walls were of brown logs untouched by paint and the window
+edges were picked out in white. I photographed that picturesque little
+church, as I did the peasant women standing at the doors of their log
+huts and the queer old shandrydan in which we drove, but alas! all my
+photographs perished miserably in Russia. The girls wondered that I
+liked town and country so much, that I saw so much beauty in everything.
+
+“Ah! Madame,” they sighed, “but you can go away tomorrow! If only we
+could go!”
+
+They had been educated at a convent and they produced the English books
+they had read. They were very apologetic but they had found them rather
+tame. Had I read them? I smiled, for they all turned out to be the
+immortal works of Charles Garvice!
+
+And we had tea in the dining-room, where father slept because they were
+rather crowded, the store took up so much room; and it was a very nice
+tea too, with raspberry jam in saucers, which we ate Russian
+fashion with a spoon, and the roses in the garden tapped against the
+window-panes, asking to come in and join us, and Buchanan got what his
+soul loved, plenty of cake. They apologised because there was no fruit.
+No fruit save berries ripen in Saghalien and the strawberries would not
+be ready till well on in August. No words of mine can tell how kind they
+were to the stranger.
+
+I went back in the long twilight that was so cool and restful and sat
+outside the leafy shaded police station and killed mosquitoes, for the
+mate had heard aright, there were “skeeters” and to spare, the sort to
+which Mark Twain took a gun. I watched the grey mist creeping slowly
+down, down the beautiful mountains, and when it had enveloped them the
+night was come and it was time to go in and have dinner and go to bed.
+
+Perhaps it would not do to stay long in Saghalien. There is nothing to
+do. She lies a Sleeping Beauty waiting the kiss of the Prince. Will this
+war awaken her? The short time I was there I enjoyed every moment.
+
+The people seemed nondescript. The upper class were certainly Russians,
+and all the men wore military caps and had their hair clipped so close
+it looked shaven, but it would be utterly impossible to say to what
+nationality the peasant belonged. There were flaxen-haired Russians
+certainly, but then there were dark-bearded men, a Mongolian type, and
+there were many thrifty Chinese with queues, in belted blouses and
+high boots, generally keeping little eating-shops. There may have been
+Japanese, probably there were, seeing they hold the lower half of the
+island, but I did not notice them, and there is, I am afraid, in that
+place which is so full of possibilities absolutely nothing for that
+go-ahead nation to do.
+
+My pretty girls complained dreadfully. They looked after the shop and
+then there was nothing. In the winter they said they had skating and
+they liked the winter best, but the really bad time in places like
+Saghalien and Nikolayeusk were the two months when it was neither
+winter nor summer. Then their only means of communication with the
+outside world, the river and the sea, was too full of ice to admit of
+navigation and yet was not solid enough for dog-sled, so that if the
+telegraph broke down, and it very often did, they are entirely cut off
+from the world. Saghalien, of course, is worse off than the town, for on
+the mainland presumably there are roads of sorts that can be negotiated
+in case of necessity, but the island is entirely isolated. In the winter
+the mails take five days coming across the frozen sea from the mainland,
+and often when there are storms they take much longer. Fancy living on
+an island that stretches over nearly ten degrees of latitude, which
+for five months in the year gets its mails by dog-sled and for two goes
+without them altogether! On the whole, there may be drawbacks to living
+in Saghalien!
+
+I left it at nine o'clock in the evening, after the darkness had fallen,
+and the police officer and the pretty girls saw me on board the steamer
+which was to take me back to Nikolayeusk.
+
+They loaded me with flowers and they were full of regrets.
+
+“Oh, Madame, Madame, how lucky you are to get away from Saghalien!”
+
+But I said truly enough that I felt my luck lay in getting there. And
+now that I sit in my garden in Kent and watch the beans coming into
+blossom and the roses into bloom, look at the beds gay with red
+poppies and violas, cream and purple, or wander round and calculate the
+prospects of fruit on the cherry and the pear trees, I am still more
+glad to think that I know what manner of island that is that lies so far
+away in the Eastern world that it is almost West.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII--FACING WEST
+
+On the 25th July 1914, at nine o'clock in the evening, I left
+Saghalien, and as the ship steamed away from the loom of the land into
+the night I knew that at last, after eighteen months of voyaging in the
+East, I had turned my face homeward. I had enjoyed it, but I wanted to
+go home, and in my notebook I see evidences of this longing. At last
+I was counting the days--one day to Nikolayeusk, three days to
+Kharbarosvk, three days more to Blagoveschensk--and I was out in my
+calculations in the very beginning. The ships of the Volunteer fleet
+take their time, and we took three days wandering along the island of
+Saghalien and calling at ports I should think mail steamer had never
+before called at before we turned again towards the mainland.
+
+And yet in a way it was interesting, for I saw some of the inhabitants
+of the island, the aboriginal inhabitants, I should never have otherwise
+seen. Gilyaks they are, and the water seems their element. They have the
+long straight black hair of the Mongolian, and sometimes they were
+clad in furs--ragged and old and worn, the very last remains of
+furs--sometimes merely in dirty clothes, the cast-offs of far-away
+nations.
+
+They live by the fish. There is nothing else.
+
+I tried hard to photograph these aborigines, using all sorts of guile to
+get them into focus. I produced cigarettes, I offered sugar, but as soon
+as they found out what I was about they at once fled, even though their
+boat was fastened against the gangway and it meant abandoning somebody
+who was on board. I did eventually get some photographs, but they shared
+the fate of the rest of my Russian pictures, and I am sorry, for I do
+not suppose I shall ever again have the chance of photographing the
+Gilyak in his native haunts. He belongs to a dying race, they told me,
+and there are few children amongst them.
+
+And though we lay long at De Castries Bay they would not let me take
+pictures there at all. It was forbidden, so I was reduced to doing the
+best I could through my cabin port. In Alexandrosvk the police officer
+had aided and abetted my picture-making, but in Nikolayeusk it was a
+forbidden pastime, for the town, for purposes of photography, was a
+fort, and when I boarded the _Kanovina_ on the river, the post steamer
+bound for Blagoveschensk, I met with more difficulties.
+
+There was on board a Mrs Marie Skibitsky and her husband, the headmaster
+of the Nikolayeusk “Real” School, and she spoke very good English and
+was a kind friend to me. Through her came a message from the captain to
+the effect that though he did not mind my photographing himself, it
+was forbidden in Russia, and he begged me not to do it when anyone was
+looking on. That made it pretty hopeless, for the ship was crowded and
+there was always not one person but probably a score of people taking a
+very great interest. The captain was not brass-bound as he had been in
+the _John Cockerill_, but he and all his officers were clad in khaki,
+with military caps, and it was sometime before I realised them as the
+ship's officers. The captain looked to me like a depressed corporal who
+was having difficulties with his sergeant, and the ship, though they
+charged us three roubles more for the trip to Blagoveschensk than the
+Amur Company would have done, was dirty and ill-kept. It was in her I
+met the saloon the windows of which would not open, and the water in my
+cabin had gone wrong, and when I insisted that I could not be happy till
+I had some, it was brought me in a teapot! They never struck the hours
+on this steamer as they had done on the _John Cockerill_, and gone was
+the excellent cook, and the food consisted largely of meat, of which I
+am bound to say there was any quantity.
+
+But in spite of all drawbacks the ship was crowded; there were many
+officers and their wives on board, and there were many officers on board
+with women who were not their 'wives. These last were so demonstrative
+that I always took them for honeymoon couples till at last a Cossack
+officer whom I met farther on explained:
+
+“Not 'wives. Oh no! It is always so! It is just the steamer!”
+
+Whether these little irregularities were to be set down to the
+discomforts of the steamer or to the seductive air of the river, I do
+not know. Perhaps I struck a particularly amorous company. I am bound to
+say no one but me appeared to be embarrassed. It seemed to be all in the
+day's work.
+
+It was pleasant going up the river again and having beside me one who
+could explain things to me. Every day it grew warmer, for not only was
+the short northern summer reaching its zenith, but we were now going
+south again. And Mrs Skibitsky sat beside me and rubbed up her English
+and told me how in two years' time she proposed to bring her daughters
+to England to give them an English education, and I promised to look out
+for her and show her the ropes and how she could best manage in London.
+In two years' time! And we neither of us knew that we were on the
+threshold of the greatest war in the world's history.
+
+I took the breaking out of that war so calmly.
+
+We arrived at Kharbarosvk. I parted from Mrs Skibitsky, who was going to
+Vladivostok, and next day I looked up my friend the colonel's wife with
+whom I had travelled on the _John Cockerill_. She received me with open
+arms, but the household cat flew and spat and stated in no measured
+terms what she thought of Buchanan. The lady caught the cat before I
+realised what was happening and in a moment she had scored with her
+talons great red lines that spouted blood on her mistress's arms. She
+looked at them calmly, went into the kitchen, rubbed butter on her
+wounds and came back smiling as if nothing in the world had happened.
+But it was not nothing. I admired her extremely for a very brave woman.
+Presently her husband came in and she just drew down her sleeves to
+cover her torn arms and said not a word to him. He was talking earnestly
+and presently she said to me:
+
+“There is war!”
+
+I thought she meant between Buehanan and the cat and I smiled feebly,
+because I was very much ashamed of the trouble I and my dog had caused,
+but she said again:
+
+“There is war! Between Austria and Serbia!”
+
+It did not seem to concern me. I don't know that I had ever realised
+Serbia as a distinct nationality at all before, and she knew so little
+English and I knew no Russian at all, so that we were not able to
+discuss the matter much, though it was evident that the colonel was very
+much excited. That, I thought, might be natural. He was a soldier. War
+was his business, though here, I think, he was engaged in training boys.
+
+After the midday meal--_déjeuner_, I think we called it--she and I went
+for a walk, and presently down the wide streets of Kharbarosvk came a
+little procession of four led by a wooden-legged man bearing a Russian
+naval flag, the blue St Andrew's Cross on a white ground. I looked at
+them.
+
+They meant nothing to me in that great, empty street where the new
+little trees were just beginning to take root and the new red-brick post
+office dominated all minor buildings among many empty spaces.
+
+“They want war! They ask for war!” said my friend. I was witnessing my
+first demonstration against Germany! And I thought no more of it than I
+do of the children playing in the streets of this Kentish village!
+
+She saw me on to the steamer and bade me farewell, and then my troubles
+began. Not a single person on that steamer spoke English. However, I
+had always found the Russians so kind that the faet that we could not
+understand one another when the going was straight did not seem to
+matter very much. But I had not reckoned with the Russians at war.
+
+At Kharbarosvk the river forms the Chinese-Russian boundary and a little
+beyond it reaches its most southern point, about lat. 48°. But the China
+that was on our left was not the China that I knew. This was Manchuria,
+green and fresh as Siberia itself, and though there was little or no
+agriculture beyond perhaps a patch of vegetables here and there, on both
+sides of the broad river was a lovely land of hills and lush grass and
+trees. Here were firs and pines and cedars, whose sombreness contrasted
+with the limes and elms, the poplars and dainty birches with whieh they
+were interspersed. The Russian towns were small, the merest villages,
+with here and there a church with the painted ball-like domes they
+affect, and though the houses were of unpainted logs, always the windows
+and doors were painted white.
+
+And at every little town were great piles of wood waiting for the
+steamer, and whenever we stopped men hastily set to work bringing in
+loads of wood to replace that which we had burnt. And we burnt lavishly.
+Even the magnificent forests of Siberia will not stand this drain on
+them long.
+
+The other day when the National Service papers came round one was sent
+to a dear old “Sister” who for nearly all her life has been working for
+the Church in an outlying district of London. She is past work now, but
+she can still go and talk to the old and sick and perhaps give advice
+about the babies, but that is about the extent of her powers. She
+looked at the paper and as in duty bound filled it in, giving her age
+as seventy. What was her surprise then to receive promptly from the
+Department a suggestion that she should volunteer for service on the
+land, and offering her, by way of inducement, good wages, a becoming
+hat and high boots! That branch of the Department has evidently become
+rather mechanical. Now the Russians all the way from Saghalien to
+Petrograd treated me with sueh unfailing kindness that I was in danger
+of writing of them in the stereotyped fashion in which the National
+Service Department sent out its papers. Luckily they themselves saved
+me from such an error. There were three memorable, never-to-be-forgotten
+days when the Russians did not treat me with kindness.
+
+The warmest and pleasantest days of my trip on the Amur we went through
+lovely scenery: the river was very wide, the blue sky was reflected in
+its blue waters and the green, tree-clad hills on either side opened
+out and showed beyond mountains in the distance, purple and blue and
+alluring. It was the height of summer-time, summer at its best, a green,
+moist summer. We hugged the Russian bank, and the Manchurian bank seemed
+very far away, only it was possible to see that wherever the Russians
+had planted a little town on the other side was a Chinese town much
+bigger. The Russian were very little towns, and all the inhabitants, it
+seemed, turned out to meet us, who were their only link with the outside
+world.
+
+The minute the steamer came close enough ropes were flung ashore to moor
+it, and a gangway was run out very often--and it was an anxious moment
+for me with Buchanan standing on the end, for he was always the first
+to put dainty little paws on the gangway, and there he stood while
+it swayed this way and that before it could make up its mind where to
+finally settle down. Then there was a rush, and a stream of people going
+ashore for exercise passed a stream of people coming on board to sell
+goods. Always these took the form of eatables. Butter, bread, meat,
+milk, berries they had for sale, and the third and fourth class
+passengers bought eagerly.
+
+I followed Buchanan ashore, but I seldom bought anything unless the
+berries tempted me. There were strawberries, raspberries and a blue
+berry which sometimes was very sweet and pleasant.
+
+At first the people had been very kind and taken a great deal of
+interest in the stranger and her pretty little dog, but after we left
+Kharbarosvk and I had no one to appeal to a marked change came over
+things. If I wanted to take a photograph, merely a photograph of the
+steamer lying against the bank, my camera was rudely snatched away and
+I was given to understand in a manner that did not require me to know
+Russian that if I did that again it would be worse for me. Poor little
+Buchanan was kicked and chunks of wood were flung at him. As I passed
+along the lower decks to and from the steamer I was rudely hustled, and
+on shore not only did the people crowd around me in a hostile manner,
+but to my disgust they spat upon me.
+
+I could not understand the change, for even in the first-class saloon
+the people looked at me askance. And I had ten days of the river before
+I reached Stretensk, where I was to join the train. It is terrible to
+be alone among hostile people, and I kept Buchanan close beside me for
+company and because I did not know what might happen to him. If this had
+been China I should not have been surprised, but Russia, that had always
+been so friendly. I was mightily troubled.
+
+And then came the explanation, the very simple explanation.
+
+Just as the river narrowed between the hills and looked more like a
+river, and turned north, there came on board at a tiny wayside town a
+tall young Cossack officer, a _soinik_ of Cossacks, he called himself.
+He wore a khaki jacket and cap, and dark blue breeches and riding-boots.
+He had a great scar across his forehead, caused by a Chinese sword, and
+he had pleasant blue eyes and a row of nice white teeth. He was tall and
+goodly to look upon, and as I sat at afternoon tea at a little table on
+deck he came swaggering along the deck and stood before me with one hand
+on a deck-chair.
+
+“Madame, is it permitted?” he asked in French.
+
+Of course Madame permitted and ealled for another glass and offered
+him some of her tea and cake. Possibly he had plenty of his own, but no
+matter, it was good to entertain someone in friendly fashion again after
+being an outcast for three days. And it took a little while to find out
+what was wrong, he was so very polite.
+
+“Madame understands we are at war?”
+
+Madame opened her eyes in astonishment. What could a war in the Balkan
+Provinces have to do with her treatment on the Amur river thousands of
+miles in the East?
+
+However, she said she did.
+
+“And Madame knows------” He paused, and then very kindly abandoned his
+people. “Madame sees the people are bad?”
+
+Madame quite agreed. They were bad. I had quite an appetite for my tea
+now that this nice young man was sympathising with me on the abominable
+behaviour of his countrymen.
+
+He spread out his hands as if deprecating the opinion of sueh foolish
+people. “They think--on the ship--and on the shore--that Madame is a
+GERMAN!”
+
+So it was out, and it took me a moment to realise it, so little had I
+realised the war.
+
+“A German!” I did not put it in capital letters as he had done. I had
+not yet learned to hate the Germans.
+
+“A--spy!”
+
+“Oh, good gracious!” And then I flew for my passports.
+
+In vain that young man protested it was not necessary. He had felt sure
+from the moment he set eyes upon her that Madame was no German. He had
+told the captain--so the depressed corporal had been taking an interest
+in me--she might be French, or even from the north of Spain, but
+certainly not German. But I insisted on his looking at my passports and
+being in a position to swear that I was British, and from that moment we
+were friends and he constituted himself my champion.
+
+“The people are bad,” he told me. “Madame, they are angry and they are
+bad. They may harm you. Here I go ashore with you; at Blagoveschensk
+you get a protection order from the Governor written in Russian so that
+somebody may read.”
+
+Then he told me about the war. Russia and France were fighting Germany.
+He had come from Tsitsihar, on the Mongolian border, across Manchuria,
+and before that he had come from Kodbo, right in the heart of the great
+Western Mongolian mountains, and he was going as fast as he could to
+Chita, and thence he supposed to the front.
+
+“C'est gai a la guerre, Madame, c'est gai!” I hope so. I earnestly hope
+he found it so, for he was a good fellow and awfully good to me.
+
+He was a little disquieting too, for now it dawned upon me it would be
+impossible to go back through Germany with Germany at war with Russia,
+and my friend was equally sure it would be almost impossible to go by
+way of St Petersburg, as we called Petrograd then. Anyhow we were still
+in the Amur Province, in Eastern Siberia, so I did not worry much. Now
+that the people were friendly once more it all seemed so far away, and
+whenever we went ashore my Cossack friend explained matters.
+
+But he was a little troubled.
+
+“Madame, why does not England come in?” he asked again and again, and I,
+who had seen no papers since I left Tientsin, and only _The North China
+Herald_ then, could not imagine what England had to do with it. The idea
+of a world war was out of the question.
+
+It was more interesting now going up the beautiful river, narrowed till
+it really did look like a river. I could see both banks quite plainly.
+My friend had been stationed here a year or two before, and he told me
+that there were many tigers in the woods, and wild boar and bear, but
+not very many wolves. And the tigers were beautiful and fierce and
+dangerous, northern tigers that could stand the rigours of the winter,
+and they did not wait to be attacked, they attacked you. There was a
+German professor in Blagoveschensk a year or two ago who had gone out
+butterfly-hunting, which one would think was a harmless and safe enough
+pastime to satisfy even a conscientious objector, and a tiger had got
+on his tracks and eaten him incontinently. They found only his butterfly
+net and the buttons of his coat when they went in search of him.
+
+The plague had broken out during this officer's stay on the river,
+and the authorities had drawn a cordon of Cossacks round to keep the
+terrified, plague-stricken people from fleeing and spreading the disease
+yet farther, and he pointed out to me the house in which he and two
+comrades had lived. It was merely a roof pitched at a steep angle, and
+the low walls were embedded in earth; only on the side facing the river
+was a little window--it did not open--and a door. A comfortless-looking
+place it was.
+
+“But why the earth piled up against the sides?” I asked. It was
+sprouting grass now and yellow buttercups and looked gay and pretty, the
+only attractive thing about the place.
+
+“Madame, for the cold,” said he, “for the cold.” And remembering
+what they had told me about the cold of Kharbin, what I myself had
+experienced at Manchuria on the way out in much the same latitude as
+this, I could quite well believe that even sunk in the earth this poor
+little hut was not a very good protection against the cold.
+
+The river widened again, winding its way across a plateau. On the
+Chinese side were great oak forests where my Cossack told me were many
+pig that gave them good hunting and many bees, but this was not China
+as I knew it. It was inhabited, he said, by nomad tribes who were great
+horsemen, and we saw occasional villages and--a rare sight--cattle, red
+and white, standing knee-deep in the clear water. Particularly was I
+struck by the cattle, for in all those thousands of miles of travel
+I could count on my fingers--the fingers of one hand would be too
+many--the numbers of times I saw herds of cattle. Once was in Saghalien,
+and twice, I think, here, curiously enough, for the pure Chinese does
+not use milk or butter on the Chinese side of the river. Of course there
+must have been cows somewhere, for there was plenty of milk, cream and
+butter for sale, but they were not in evidence from the river.
+
+On the Russian side the landing-places did not change much, only now
+among the women hawkers were Chinese in belted blouses, green, yellow,
+blue, pink, red; they rioted in colour as they never did in their own
+land, and they all wore sea-boots.
+
+And still over twelve hundred miles from the sea it was a great
+river. And then at last I saw what I had been looking for ever since I
+embarked--fields of corn, corn ripe for the harvest. This was all this
+lovely land needed, a field of corn; but again it was not on the Russian
+side, but on the Chinese.
+
+The spires and domes of Blagoveschensk, the capital of the Amur
+Province, came into view. All along the Russian bank of the river lay
+this city of Eastern Siberia. Its buildings stood out against the clear
+sky behind it, and approaching it was like coming up to a great port.
+The river, I should think, was at least a mile wide. I am not very good
+at judging distances, but it gave me the impression of a very wide river
+set here in the midst of a plain--that is, of course, a plateau, for we
+had come through the hills.
+
+And here my Cossack friend came to bid me good-bye and to impress upon
+me once again to go straight to the Governor for that protection order.
+He was sorry he could not see me through, but his orders were to go
+to Chita as fast as he could, and someone would speak English at
+Blagoveschensk, for it was a great city, and then he asked for the last
+time:
+
+“But, Madame, why does not England come in?”
+
+And then the question that had troubled me so was answered, for as we
+touched the shore men came on board wild with excitement, shouting,
+yelling, telling the war news, that very day, that very moment, it
+seemed, England had come in!
+
+And I appeared to be the only representative of Britain in that corner
+of the world! Never was there such a popular person. The sailor-men who
+worked the ship, the poorer third and fourth class passengers all came
+crowding to look at the Englishwoman. I had only got to say “Anglisky”
+ to have everyone bowing down before me and kissing my hand, and
+my Cossack friend as he bade me good-bye seemed to think it hardly
+necessary to go to the Governor except that a member of a great Allied
+nation ought to be properly received.
+
+But I had been bitten once, and I determined to make things as safe as
+I could for the future. So I got a droshky--a sort of tumble-down
+victoria, held together with pieces of string, and driven by a man who
+might have been Russian or might have been Chinese--and Buchanan and
+I went through the dusty, sunny streets of the capital of the Amur
+Province to the viceregal residence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII--THE UPPER REACHES OF THE AMUR
+
+Blagoveschensk is built on much the same lines as all the other
+Siberian towns that I have seen, a wooden town mostly of one-storeyed
+houses straggling over the plain in wide streets that cut one another
+at right angles. Again it was not at all unlike an Australian town, a
+frontier town to all intents and purposes. The side-roads were deep in
+dust, and the principal shop, a great store, a sort of mild imitation of
+Harrod's, where you could buy everything from a needle to an anchor--I
+bought a dog-collar with a bell for Buchanan--was run by Germans. It was
+a specimen of Germany's success in peaceful penetration. It seemed as if
+she were throwing away the meat for the shadow, for they were interning
+all those assistants--400 of them. Now probably they form the nucleus of
+the Bolshevist force helping Germany.
+
+The Governor's house was on the outskirts of the town, and it was
+thronged with people, men mostly, and Buchanan and I were passed from
+one room to another, evidently by people who had not the faintest
+notion of what we wanted. Everybody said “Bonjour,” and the Governor and
+everybody else kissed my hand. I said I was “Anglisky,” and it seemed
+as if everybody in consequence came to look at me. But it didn't advance
+matters at all.
+
+I began to be hungry and tired, and various people tried questions upon
+me, but nothing definite happened. At last, after about two hours, when
+I was seriously thinking of giving up in despair, a tall, good-looking
+officer in khaki came in. He put his heels together and kissed my hand
+as courteously as the rest had done, and then informed me in excellent
+English that he was the Boundary Commissioner and they had sent for him
+because there was an Englishwoman arrived, and, while very desirous of
+being civil to the representative of their new Ally, nobody could make
+out what on earth she was doing here and what she wanted!
+
+I told my story and it was easy enough then. He admired Buchanan
+properly, drove us both to his house, introduced me to his wife and made
+me out a most gorgeous protection order written in Russian. I have it
+still, but I never had occasion to use it.
+
+Opposite Blagoveschensk is a Chinese town which is called Sakalin,
+though the maps never give it that name, and in Vladivostok and Peking
+they call it various other names. But its right name is Sakalin, I know,
+for I stayed there for the best part of a week.
+
+At Sakalin the head of the Chinese Customs is a Dane, Paul Barentzen,
+and to him and his wife am I greatly beholden. I had been given letters
+to them, and I asked my friend the kindly Russian Boundary Commissioner
+if he knew them. He did. He explained to me I must have a permit to
+cross the river and he would give me one for a week. A week seemed
+overlong, but he explained the Russian Government did not allow free
+traffic across the river and it was just as well to have a permit that
+would cover the whole of my stay. Even now, though I did stay my week, I
+have not fathomed the reason of these elaborate precautions, because
+it must be impossible to guard every little landing-place on the long,
+long, lonely river--there must be hundreds of places where it is easy
+enough to cross--only I suppose every stranger is liable sooner or later
+to be called upon to give an account of himself.
+
+The ferries that crossed the Amur to the Chinese side were great boats
+built to carry a large number of passengers, but the arrangements
+for getting across the river did justice to both Chinese and Russian
+mismanagement. Unlike the efficient Japanese, both these nations,
+it seems to me, arrive at the end in view with the minimum amount of
+trouble to those in authority--that is to say, the maximum of trouble
+to everybody concerned. The ferry-boats owing to local politics had a
+monopoly, and therefore went at their own sweet will just exactly when
+they pleased. There was a large and busy traffic, but the boats
+never went oftener than once an hour, and the approaches were just as
+primitive as they possibly could be. There was one little shed with a
+seat running round where if you were fortunate you could sit down with
+the Chinese hawkers and wait for the arrival of the boat. And when it
+did come the passengers, after a long, long wait, came climbing up the
+rough path up the bank looking as if they had been searched to the
+skin. They let me through on the Chinese side and I found without
+any difficulty my way to Mr Paul Barentzen's house, a two-storeyed,
+comfortable house, and received a warm invitation from him and his wife
+to stay with them.
+
+It was a chance not to be missed. I was getting very weary, I was tired
+in every bone, so a chance like this to stay with kindly people who
+spoke my own language, on the very outskirts of the Chinese Empire, was
+not to be lightly missed, and I accepted with gratitude, a gratitude I
+feel strongly. Mr Barentzen was a Dane, but he spoke as good English as
+I do, and if possible was more British. His wife was English. And that
+night he celebrated the coming into the war of Britain. He asked me
+and the Russian Boundary Commissioner and his wife and another Russian
+gentleman all to dinner in the gardens at Blagoveschensk.
+
+The place was a blaze of light, there were flags and lamps and bands
+everywhere, the whole city was _en fête_ to do honour to the new
+addition to the Grande Entente. When we were tired of walking about the
+gardens we went inside to the principal restaurant that was packed with
+people dining, while on a stage various singers discoursed sweet music
+and waved the flags of the Allies. But the British flag had not got as
+far as the capital of the Amur Province. Indeed much farther west than
+that I found it represented by a red flag with black crosses drawn on
+it, very much at the taste of the artist, and “Anglisky” written boldly
+across it to make up for any deficiency.
+
+Mr Barentzen had foreseen this difficulty and had provided us all with
+nice little silk specimens of the Union Jack to wear pinned on our
+breasts. About ten o'clock we sat down to a most excellent dinner,
+with sturgeon and sour cream and caviare and all the good tilings that
+Eastern Siberia produces. A packed room also dined, while the people on
+the stage sang patriotic songs, and we were all given silk programmes
+as souvenirs. They sang the Belgian, the French and the Russian national
+anthems, and at last we asked for the British.
+
+Very courteously the conductor sent back word to say he was very sorry
+but the British national anthem was also a German hymn and if he dared
+play it the people would tear him to pieces. Remembering my tribulations
+a little way down the river, I quite believed him, so I suggested as an
+alternative _Rule, Britannia_, but alas! he had never heard of it. It
+was a deadlock, and we looked at one another.
+
+Then the tall Russian who was the other guest pushed his chair from
+the table, stood up, and saluting, whistled _Rule, Britannia!_ How the
+people applauded! And so Britain entered the war in Far Eastern Siberia.
+
+We certainly did not go home till morning that day. For that matter, I
+don't think you are supposed to cross the river at night, not ordinary
+folk, Customs officials may have special privileges. At any rate I came
+back to my bunk on the steamer and an anxious little dog just as the
+day was breaking, and next day I crossed to Sakalin and stayed with the
+Barentzens.
+
+The Russians then took so much trouble to keep the Chinese on their own
+side of the river that the Russian officers and civil servants, much to
+the chagrin of their wives, were nowhere in the province allowed to have
+Chinese servants. The fee for a passport had been raised to, I think,
+twelve roubles, so it was no longer worth a Chinaman's while to get one
+to hawk a basket of vegetables, and the mines on the Zeya, a tributary
+of the Amur on the Russian side, had fallen off in their yield because
+cheap labour was no longer possible. The people who did get passports
+were the Chinese prostitutes, though a Chinese woman has not a separate
+identity in China and is not allowed a passport of her own. However,
+there are ways of getting over that. A man applied for a passport and it
+was granted him. He handed it over to the woman for a consideration, and
+on the other side any Chinese document was, as a rule, all one to the
+Russian official. Remembering my own experience and how I had difficulty
+in deciding between my passport and my agreement with my muleteers, I
+could quite believe this story.
+
+Blagoveschensk is a regular frontier town and, according to Mr
+Barentzen, is unsafe. On the first occasion that I crossed the river
+with him I produced a hundred-rouble note. Almost before I had laid it
+down it was snatched up by the Chinese Commissioner of Customs.
+
+“Are you mad?” said he, and he crumpled up the note in his hand and
+held out for my acceptance a rouble. I tried to explain that not having
+change, and finding it a little awkward, I thought that this would be a
+good opportunity to get it, as I felt sure the man at receipt of custom
+must have plenty.
+
+“I dare say,” said my host sarcastically. “I don't want to take away
+anybody's character, but I'll venture to say there are at least ten
+men within hail”--there was a crowd round--“who would joyfully cut your
+throat for ten roubles.”
+
+He enlarged upon that theme later. We used to sit out on the balcony of
+his house looking out, not over the river, but over the town of Sakalin,
+and there used to come in the men from the B.A.T. Factory, a Russian in
+top-boots who spoke excellent English and a young American named Hyde.
+They told me tales, well, something like the stories I used to listen
+to in my childhood's days when we talked about “the breaking out of the
+gold” in Australia, tales of men who had washed much gold and then
+were lured away and murdered for their riches. Certainly they did not
+consider Blagoveschensk or Sakalin towns in which a woman could safely
+wander. In fact all the Siberian towns that they knew came under the
+ban.
+
+But of course mostly we talked about the war and how maddening it was
+only to get scraps of news through the telegraph. The young American was
+keen, I remember. I wonder if he really had patience to wait till his
+country came in. He talked then in the first week of the war of making
+his way back to Canada and seeing if he could enlist there, for even
+then we felt sure that the Outer Dominions would want to help the
+Motherland. And the Germans were round Liège--would they take it?
+Association is a curious thing. Whenever I hear of Liège I cannot
+help thinking, not of the Belgian city, but of a comfortable seat on a
+balcony with the shadows falling and the lights coming out one by one
+on the bath-houses that are dotted about a little town on the very
+outskirts of the Chinese Empire--the lights of the town. There are the
+sounds and the smells of the Chinese town mingling with the voices of
+the talkers and the fragrance of the coffee, and the air is close with
+the warmth of August. There comes back to me the remembrance of the
+keen young American who wanted to fight Germany and the young Russian in
+top-boots who was very much afraid he would only be used to guard German
+prisoners.
+
+Sakalin was cosmopolitan, but it had a leaning toward Russia, hence the
+bath-houses, an idea foreign to Chinese civilisation; and when I got a
+piece of grit in my eye which refused to come out it was to a Japanese
+doctor I went, accompanied by my host's Chinese servant, who, having
+had the trouble stated by me in English, explained it to another man in
+Chinese, who in his turn told the doctor what was the matter in Russian.
+Luckily that man of medicine was very deft and I expect he could have
+managed very well without any explanation at all. I have the greatest
+respect for the Japanese leech I visited in Sakalin.
+
+On the Sunday we had a big picnic. The Russian Boundary Commissioner
+came across with his wife and little girls, Mrs Barentzen took
+her little girl and the Chinese Tao Tai lent us the light of his
+countenance. He was the feature of the entertainment, for he was a very
+big man, both literally and socially, and could not move without a large
+following, so that an escort of mounted police took charge of us. The
+proper portly Chinaman of whom this retinue was in honour spoke no
+English, but smiled at me benevolently, and wore a petticoat and a
+Russian military cap! The picnic was by a little brook about seven miles
+from the town and I shall always remember it because of the lush grass,
+waist-high, and the lovely flowers. I had looked at the Siberian flowers
+from the steamer when they were ungetatable, I had gathered them with
+joy in Saghalien, and now here they were again just to my hand. In June
+they told me there were abundant lilies of the valley, and I regretted
+I had not been there in June. Truly I feel it would be a delight to
+see lilies of the valley growing wild, but as it was, the flowers were
+beautiful enough, and there were heaps of them. There were very fine
+Canterbury bells, a glorious violet flower and magnificent white
+poppies. Never have I gathered more lovely flowers, never before have I
+seen them growing wild in such amazing abundance. No one is more truly
+artistic than the average Chinese, and I think the Tao Tai must have
+enjoyed himself, though it is against the canons of good taste in China
+to look about you.
+
+Presently I was asking the chief magistrate's good offices for Buchanan,
+for he, my treasured Buchanan, was lost. In the Barentzens' house
+there was, of course, as in all well-regulated Chinese houses run by
+foreigners, a bathroom attached to every bedroom, and when I wanted a
+bath the servants filled with warm water the half of a large barrel,
+which made a very excellent bath-tub. And having bathed myself, I bathed
+Buchanan, whose white coat got very dirty in the dusty Chinese streets.
+He ran away downstairs and I lingered for a moment to put on my dress,
+and when I came down he was gone. High and low I hunted; I went up and
+down the street calling his name, and I knew he would have answered, he
+always did, had he been within hearing. All the Customs men were turned
+out and I went to the Chinese Tao Tai, who promptly put on all the
+police. But Buchanan was gone for a night and I was in despair. Mr
+Barentzen's head boy shook his head.
+
+“Master saying,” said he, “mus' get back that dog.” So I realised I was
+making a fuss, but for the moment I did not care. The Tao Tai gave it
+as his opinion that he had not been stolen. There were many little dogs
+like him in the town, said he, no one would steal one, which only shows
+a Chinese magistrate may not be infallible, for I was sure Buchanan
+would not stay away from me of his own free will.
+
+And then at last the servants turned up triumphant, Buchanan, in the
+arms of the head boy, wild with delight at seeing his mistress again.
+The police had searched everywhere, but the servants, with their
+master's injunction in mind and my reward to be earned, had made further
+inquiries and found that a little boy had been seen taking the dog into
+a certain house occupied by an official, the man who was responsible for
+the cleaning of the streets. This was the first intimation I ever had
+that the Chinese did clean their streets: I had thought that they
+left that job to the “wonks” and the scavenger crows. The police made
+inquiries. No, there was no little dog there. But the servants--wise
+Chinese servants--made friends with the people round, and they said:
+“Watch. There is a dog.” So a junior servant was put to watch, and when
+the gate of the compound was opened he stole in, and there was poor
+little James Buchanan tied up to a post. That servant seized the dog and
+fled home in triumph.
+
+The T'ai T'ai (the official's wife), said the people round, had wanted
+the pretty little dog.
+
+I was so delighted to get my little friend back that I should have been
+content to leave things there. Not so Mr Barentzen. He sent for that
+official, and there in his drawing-room he and I interviewed a portly
+Chinese gentleman in grey petticoats, a long pigtail, a little black
+silk cap and the tips of the silver shields that encased the long nails
+of his little fingers just showing beyond his voluminous sleeves.
+
+“An officious servant,” he said. He was extremely sorry the Commissioner
+of Customs and his friend had been put to so much inconvenience. The
+servant had already been dismissed. And so we bowed him out, face was
+saved, and all parties were satisfied. It was very Chinese. And yet we
+knew, and we knew that he must have known we knew, that it was really
+his wife who received the little dog that everyone concerned must have
+realised was valuable and must have been stolen.
+
+Here in Sakai in I heard about the doings of the only wolves that came
+into my wanderings. In the little river harbour were many small steamers
+flying the Russian flag and loading great barrels with the ends painted
+bright red. These barrels, explained the Customs Commissioner, contained
+spirits which the Russians were desirous of smuggling into Russian
+territory. The Chinese had not the least objection to their leaving
+China after they had paid export duty. They were taken up and down the
+river and finally landed at some small port whence they were smuggled
+across. The trade was a very big one. The men engaged in it were known
+as the wolves of the Amur and were usually Caucasians and Jews. In
+1913, the last year of which I have statistics, no less than twenty-five
+thousand pounds export was paid on these spirits, and in the years
+before it used to be greater. I wonder whether with the relaxing of
+discipline consequent on the war and the revolution the receipts for the
+export have not gone up.
+
+The wide river was beautiful here, and Blagovesehensk, lying across the
+water, with its spires and domes, all the outlines softened, standing
+against the evening sky, might have been some town of pictured Italy. I
+am glad I have seen it. I dare not expiate on Mr Barentzen's kindness.
+My drastic critic, drastic and so invaluable, says that I have already
+overloaded this book with tales of people's kindness, so I can only say
+I stayed there a week and then took passage on the smaller steamer which
+was bound up the Amur and the Shilka to Stretensk and the railway.
+
+I had, however, one regret. I had inadvertently taken my plates and
+films on which I had all my pictures of the Amur and Saghalien across
+the Sakalin and I could not take them back again. The Russian rule was
+very strict. No photographs were allowed. Everything crossing the river
+must be examined. Now to examine my undeveloped films and plates would
+be to ruin them. I interviewed a Japanese photographer on the Sakalin
+side, but he appeared to be a very tyro in the art of developing, and
+finally very reluctantly I decided to leave them for Mr Barentzen to
+send home when he got the chance. He did not get that chance till the
+middle of 1916, and I regret to state that when we came to develop them
+every single one of them was ruined.
+
+The steamer that I embarked on now was considerably smaller, for the
+river was narrowing. The deck that ran round the cabins was only thirty
+inches wide and crowded with children; worse, when James Buchanan and
+I went for our daily promenades we found the way disputed by women,
+mothers, or nursemaids, I know not whieh, propelling the children who
+could not walk in wheeled chairs, and they thought Buchanan had been
+brought there for their special benefit, a view which the gentleman
+himself did not share. However, he was my only means of communication
+with them, for they had no English or French.
+
+But I was lucky, for one of the mates, brass-bound and in spotless
+white, like so many Russians had served in British ships and spoke
+English very well with a slight Scots accent. With him I used to hold
+daily conversations and always we discussed the war. But he shook his
+head over it. It was not possible to get much news at the little wayside
+places at which we stopped. There were no papers--the Russian peasant
+under the beneficent rule of the Tsar was not encouraged to learn to
+read--and for his part he, the mate, put no faith in the telegrams. All
+would be well, of course, but we must wait till we came to some large
+and influential place for news upon which we could rely.
+
+But that large and influential place was long in coming, in fact I may
+say it never materialised while I was on the river. There are at least
+eleven towns marked on the way between Blagoveschensk and Stretensk, but
+even the town at the junction where the Aigun and the Shilka merge into
+the Amur is but a tiny frontier village, and the rest as I know the
+river banks are only a few log huts inhabited by peasants who apparently
+keep guard over and supply the stacks of wood needed by the steamers.
+
+It was a lovely river now going north, north and then west, or rather
+we went north, the river flowed the other way, it was narrower and wound
+between wooded hills and it was very lonely. There were occasional, very
+occasional, little settlements, on the Chinese side I do not remember
+even a hut, though it was a lovely green land and the river, clear as
+crystal, reflected on its breast the trees and rocks among which we made
+our way.
+
+Once on the Russian side we landed from a boat a woman with two little
+children and innumerable bundles. They had been down, I suppose, to
+visit the centre of civilisation at Blagoveschensk and now were
+coming home. In the dusk of the evening we left her there looking down
+thoughtfully at her encumbrances, not a living creature in sight, not
+a sign of man's handiwork anywhere. I hoped there were no tigers about,
+but she has always lived in my memory as an unfinished story. I suppose
+we all of us have those unfinished stories in our lives, not stories
+left unfinished because they are so long drawn out we could not possibly
+wait for developments, but stories that must finish suddenly, only
+we are withdrawn. Once I looked from a railway carriage window in the
+Midlands and I saw a bull chasing a woman; she was running, screaming
+for all she was worth, for a fence, but whether she reached it or not
+I have no means of knowing. Another time I saw also from a railway
+carriage window two men, mother naked, chasing each other across the
+greensward and left them there because the train went on. Of course I
+have often enough seen men without clothes in the tropics, but in the
+heart of England they are out of the picture and want explaining.
+That explanation I shall never get. Nor is it likely I shall ever know
+whether that unknown woman and her little children ever reached their
+unknown home.
+
+We were luxuriously fed upon that little steamer. The Russian tea with
+lemon and the bread and butter were delicious, and we had plenty of
+cream, though gone was the red caviare that farther east had been so
+common. But I was tired and at last feeling lonely. I began to count the
+days till I should reach home.
+
+On the Amur the weather had been gorgeous, but when we entered the
+Shilka we were north of 53° again and well into the mountains, and
+the next morning I awoke to a grey day. It rained and it rained, not
+tropical rain, but soft, penetrating rain; the fir-clad hills on either
+side were veiled in a silvery mist. The river wound so that as we looked
+ahead we seemed to be sailing straight into the hills. The way looked
+blocked with hills, sometimes all mist-covered, sometimes with the green
+showing alluringly through the mist, and occasionally, when the mist
+lifted and the sun came out, in all the gullies would linger little grey
+cloudlets, as if caught before they could get away and waiting there
+screened by the hills till the mist should fall again. Occasionally
+there were lonely houses, still more occasionally little settlements of
+log huts with painted windows hermetically sealed, and once or twice a
+field of corn ripe for the harvest but drowned by the persistent rain.
+But the air was soft and delicious, divine; only in the cabins on board
+the crowded steamer was it pestilential. The mate told me how, six weeks
+before, on his last trip up, an Englishman had come selling reapers and
+binders, and he thought that now I had made my appearance the English
+were rather crowding the Amur.
+
+Sometimes when we stopped the passengers went ashore and went berrying,
+returning with great branches laden with fruit, and I and Buchanan too
+walked a little way, keeping the steamer 'well in sight, and rejoicing
+in the flowers and the green and the rich, fresh smell of moist earth. I
+do not know that ever in my life do I remember enjoying rain so much.
+Of course in my youth in Australia I had always welcomed the life-giving
+rain, but thirteen years in England, where I yearned for the sunshine,
+had somehow dimmed those memories, and now once again the rain on the
+river brought me joy. The mist was a thing of beauty, and when a ray of
+sunshine found its way into a green, mist-veiled valley, illuminating
+its lovely loneliness, then indeed I knew that the earth was the Lord's
+and the fullness thereof.
+
+Sometimes we passed rafts upon the river. They were logs bound together
+in great parallelograms and worked with twelve long sweeps fixed at each
+end. Twelve men at least went to each raft, and there were small houses
+built of grass and canvas and wood. They were taking the wood down to
+Nikolayeusk to be shipped to Shanghai and other parts of the world for
+furniture, for these great forests of birch and elm and fir and oak must
+be a mine of wealth to their owners. I do not know whether the wood is
+cut on any system, and whether the presence of these great rafts had
+anything to do with the many dead trees I saw in the forests, their
+white stems standing up ghostlike against the green hill-side.
+
+I have no record of these lovely places. My camera was locked away now
+in my suit-case, for it was war, and Russia, rightly, would allow no
+photographs.
+
+Seven days after we left Blagoveschensk we reached Stretensk and I came
+in contact for the first time with the World's War.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV--MOBILISING IN EASTERN SIBERIA
+
+At Stretensk I awakened to the fact that I was actually in Siberia,
+nay, that I had travelled over about two thousand miles of Siberia, that
+dark and gloomy land across which--I believed in my youth--tramped long
+lines of prisoners in chains, sometimes amidst the snow and ice of a
+bitter winter, sometimes with the fierce sun beating down upon them, but
+always hopeless, always hungry, weary, heartbroken, a sacrifice to the
+desire for political liberty that was implanted in the hearts of an
+enslaved people.
+
+It is an extraordinary thing that, though for many years I had believed
+Saghalien was a terrible island, a sort of inferno for political
+prisoners, something like Van Diemen's Land used to be in the old
+convict days one hundred and ten years ago, only that in the Asiatic
+island the conditions were still more cruel and it was hopeless to think
+of escaping, while I was actually in that beautiful island I was so
+taken up with its charm, it was so extremely unlike the place of which I
+had a picture in my mind's eye, that I hardly connected the two. All
+up the Amur river was a new land, a land crying out for pioneers,
+pastoralists and farmers, so that the thought that was uppermost in my
+mind was of the contrast between it and the old land of China, where I
+had spent so long a time; but at Stretensk I suddenly remembered
+this was Siberia, the very heart of Siberia, where men had suffered
+unutterable things, might still be so suffering for all I knew, and I
+stepped off the steamer and prepared to explore, with a feeling that at
+any moment I might come across the heavy logs that made up the walls of
+a prison, might see the armed sentries, clad to the eyes in furs, who
+tramped amidst the snow. But this was August and it was fiercely hot, so
+the snow and the sentries clad in furs were ruled out, and presently
+as Buchanan and I walked about the town even the lonely prison built of
+logs had to go too. There may have been a prison, probably there was,
+but it did not dominate the picture. Not here should I find the Siberia
+I had been familiar with from my youth up.
+
+Stretensk is like all other Siberian towns that I have seen. The houses
+are mostly of one storey and of wood, of logs; the streets are wide and
+straight, cutting each other at right angles, and the whole is flung out
+upon the plain; it is really, I think, rather high among the mountains,
+but you do not get the sensation of hills as you do from the steamer.
+
+The rain had cleared away and it was very hot, though we had started
+out very early because I was determined to go west if possible that very
+afternoon; We went gingerly because the dangers of Siberian towns
+for one who looked fairly prosperous had been impressed upon me at
+Blagoveschensk, and I hesitated about going far from the steamer, where
+the mate could speak English. Still we went. I was not going to miss the
+Siberia of my dreams if I could help it.
+
+I saw something more wonderful than the Siberia of my dreams.
+
+In consequence of the ceaseless rain the roads between the log-houses
+with their painted windows were knee-deep in mud, a quagmire that looked
+impassable. In the air was the sound of martial music, and up and
+down in what would have been reckless fashion but for the restraining
+glue-like mud galloped officers and their orderlies. It was the war, the
+first I had seen of it. The war was taking the place of the political
+exiles, and instead of seeing Siberia as a background for the exiles as
+I had dreamed of it for so many years, I saw it busy with preparations
+for war. The roads were like sloughs out of which it would have been
+impossible to get had I ever ventured in. Naturally I did not venture,
+but took all sorts of long rounds to get to the places I wanted to
+reach. It is not a bad way of seeing a town.
+
+The heavily built houses, built to defy the Siberian winter, might have
+come out of Nikolayeusk or Kharbarosvk, and though the sun poured down
+out of a cloudless sky, and I was gasping in a thin Shantung silk, they
+were hermetically sealed, and the cotton wool between the double windows
+was decorated with the usual gay ribbons. I dare say they were cool
+enough inside, but they must have been intolerably stuffy. The sidewalks
+too had dried quickly in the fierce sunshine. They were the usual
+Siberian sidewalks, with long lines of planks like flooring. Had
+they ever been trodden, I wonder, by the forced emigrant looking with
+hopeless longing back to the West. Finally we wandered into the gardens,
+where I doubt not, judging by the little tables and many seats,
+there was the usual gay throng at night, but now early in the morning
+everything looked dishevelled, and I could not find anyone to supply me
+with the cool drink of which I stood so badly in need, and at last we
+made our way back to the steamer, where the mate, having got over the
+struggle of arrival--for this was the farthest the steamer went--kindly
+found time enough to give himself to my affairs. I wanted a droshky to
+take me to the train, and as nowhere about had I seen any signs of a
+railway station I wanted to know where it was.
+
+The mate laughed and pointed far away down the river on the other side.
+I really ought to have known my Siberia better by now. Railways are not
+constructed for the convenience of the townsfolk. There was nothing
+else for it. I had to get there somehow, and as the train left somewhere
+between five and six, about noon, with the mate's assistance, I engaged
+a droshky. The carriages that are doing a last stage in this country
+are not quite so elderly here as they are in Saghalien, but that is
+not saying much for them. The one the mate engaged for me had a sturdy
+little ungroomed horse in the shafts and another running in a trace
+alongside. On the seat was packed all my baggage, two small suit-cases
+and a large canvas sack into which I dumped rugs, cushions and all odds
+and ends, including my precious kettles, and the rough little unkempt
+horses towed us down through the sea of mud to the ferry, and then I saw
+the scene had indeed shifted. It was not long lines of exiles bearing
+chains I met, that was all in the past, at least for an outsider like
+me, but here in the heart of Asia Russia in her might was collecting her
+forces for a spring. The great flat ferry was crossing and recrossing,
+and down the swamp that courtesy called a road came endless streams of
+square khaki-coloured carts, driven by men in flat caps and belted
+khaki blouses, big fair men, often giants with red, sun-tanned faces and
+lint-white hair, men who shouted and laughed and sang and threw up their
+caps, who were sober as judges and yet were wild with excitement; they
+were going to the war. I could not understand one word they said, but
+there is no mistaking gladness, and these men were delighted with their
+lot. I wondered was it a case of the prisoner freed or was it that life
+under the old regime in a Russian village was dull to monotony and to
+these recruits was coming the chance of their lifetime.
+
+Some will never come east again, never whether in love or hate will they
+see the steppes and the flowers and the golden sunshine and the snow of
+Siberia, they have left their bones on those battle-fields; but some, I
+hope, will live to see the regeneration of Russia, when every man shall
+have a chance of freedom and happiness. I suppose this revolution was in
+the air as cart after cart drove on to the ferry and the men yelled and
+shouted in their excitement. A small company of men who were going east
+looked at them tolerantly--I'm sure it was tolerantly--and then they too
+caught the infection and yelled in chorus.
+
+I watched it all with interest.
+
+Then half-an-hour passed and still they came; an hour, and I grew a
+little worried, for they were still pouring over. Two hours--I comforted
+myself, the train did not start till late in the afternoon--three horns,
+and there was no cessation in the stream. And of course I could make no
+one understand. It looked as if I might wait here all night. At last
+a man who was manifestly an officer came galloping along and him I
+addressed in French.
+
+“Is it possible to cross on the ferry?”
+
+He was very courteous.
+
+“It is not possible to cross, Madame. It is not possible. The soldiers
+come first.”
+
+I took another look at the good-humoured, strapping, fair-haired
+soldiers in khaki, with their khaki-coloured carts. The ferry crossing
+was laden with them, hundreds of others were waiting, among them numbers
+of country people. They had bundles and laden baskets and looked people
+who had shopped and wanted to go home again. Were these exiles? I did
+not know. They looked simple peasants. Whoever they were, there did not
+seem much chance for them or me, and I said the one Russian word I
+knew, “steamer,” and indicated that I wanted to go back there. Much as
+I wanted to go home, tired as I was of travelling, I decided I would
+postpone my railway journey for a day and take advantage of that
+comfortable Russian custom that allows you to live on a steamer for
+two days while she is in port. The _ishvornik_ nodded, back we went
+helter-skelter to the wharf and--the steamer was gone!
+
+I have had some bad moments in my life, but that one stands out still.
+Why, I hardly know, for sitting here in my garden it does not seem a
+very terrible thing. I had plenty of money in my pocket and there were
+hotels in the town. But no! more than ever, safe here in Kent, do I
+dread a Siberian hotel! Then I was distinctly afraid. I might so easily
+have disappeared and no one would have asked questions for months to
+come. I tried to tell the boy I wanted to go to one of those dreaded
+hotels--I felt I would have to risk it, for I certainly could not spend
+the night in a droshky--and I could not make him understand. Perhaps, as
+in Saghalien, there were no hotels to accommodate a woman of my class,
+or perhaps, as is most probable, they were all full of soldiers, anyhow
+he only looked at me blankly, and Buchanan and I looked at each other.
+Buchanan anyhow had no fears. He was quite sure I could take care of
+him. I looked at the boy again and then, as if he had suddenly had an
+inspiration, he drove me back to the place opposite the ferry whence we
+had come. The soldiers were there still, crowds and crowds of them,
+with their little carts and horses, and they were amusing themselves by
+stealing each other's fodder; the ferry had come back, but there were no
+soldiers on it, only the country people were crowding down. I had been
+forbidden to go upon it, and never should I have dreamt of disobeying
+orders, but my driver had different views. He waited till no officer was
+looking, seized my baggage and flung it down on the great ferry right
+in front of the military stores, beside the refreshment stall where they
+were selling sausages and bread in round rings such as peasants eat, and
+tea and lemonade. I had not expected to find so commonplace a thing on
+a river in Siberia. Now I had sat in that dilapidated carriage for
+over four hours and I was weary to death, also I could not afford to be
+parted from my luggage, so I put Buchanan under my arm--it was too muddy
+for him to walk--and followed as fast as I could. My good angel prompted
+me to pay that driver well. I paid him twice what the mate had said it
+ought to cost me if I waited half-a-day, and never have I laid out money
+to better advantage. He turned to a big man who was standing by, a man
+in sea-boots, a red belted blouse and the tall black Astrakhan cap that
+I have always associated in my own mind 'with Circassians, and spoke to
+him, saying “Anglisky.” Evidently he said it might be worth his while to
+look after me. I don't know whether this gentleman was a Caucasian, one
+of the “wolves of the Amur,” but whoever he was, he was a very hefty and
+capable individual, with a very clear idea of what a foreign lady ought
+to do, and he promptly constituted himself my guardian.
+
+After all, the world, take it on the whole, is a very kindly, honest
+place. So many times have I been stranded when I might quite easily have
+been stripped of everything, and always some good Samaritan has come
+to my aid, and the reward, though I did my best, has never been
+commensurate with the services rendered.
+
+The ferry across the Shilka at Stretensk is a great affair, like a young
+paddock afloat, and beside the horses and carts upon it were a number
+of country people with their bundles. I sat there a little uncomfortably
+because I did not know what would happen, only I was determined not to
+be parted from my baggage. Presently the huge float drifted off, amidst
+wild shouts and yells. When I was there, a great deal in Russia was
+done to the accompaniment of much shouting, and I rather fancy that this
+ferry was going off on an unauthorised jaunt of its own. The Shilka is a
+broad river here, a fortnight's steamer journey from its mouth, but the
+ferry came to a full stop in the middle of the stream and a motor boat
+which did not look as if it could hold half the people came alongside.
+
+“Skurry! Skurry!” was the cry, and the people began leaping overboard
+into the boat. The military were getting rid summarily of their civilian
+crowd. In a few seconds that boat was packed to the gunwales and I was
+looking over at it. I had Buchanan under my arm; he was always a good
+little dog at critical moments, understanding it was his part to keep
+quiet and give as little trouble as possible. In my other hand I had my
+despatch-case, and, being anything but acrobatic by temperament, I felt
+it was hopeless to think of getting into it. If the penalty for not
+doing so had been death, I do not think I could have managed it.
+However, I didn't have a say in the matter. The big Russian in the red
+blouse picked me up and dropped me, little dog, box and all, into the
+boat, right on top of the people already there. First I was on top, and
+then, still hanging on to my little dog, I slipped down a little, but my
+feet found no foothold; I was wedged between the screaming people. After
+me, with my luggage on his shoulder, came my guardian, and he somehow
+seemed to find a very precarious foothold on the gunwale, and he made me
+understand he wanted two roubles for our fares. If he had asked for ten
+he would have got it, but how I managed to get at my money to this day I
+do not know. The boat rocked and swayed in a most alarming manner, and I
+thought to myself, Well, we are on top now, but presently the boat will
+upset and then we shall certainly be underneath. I gathered that the
+passengers were disputing with the boatman as to the price to be paid
+for the passage across, though this was unwise, for the ferry was
+threatening momentarily to crush us against the rocky bank. He was
+asking sixty kopecks--a little over a shilling--and with one voice they
+declared that forty was enough. Considering the crowd, forty I should
+have thought would have paid him excellently. That I had given my
+guardian more did not trouble me, because any extra he earned was more
+than justified, for one thing was certain, I could never have tackled
+the job by myself.
+
+Just as I was growing desperate and Buchanan began to mention that he
+was on the verge of suffocation the difficulty of the fares was settled
+and we made for the bank. But we did not go to the usual landing-stage;
+that, I presume, was forbidden as sacred to the soldiers, and we drew up
+against a steep, high bank faced with granite.
+
+“Skurry! Skurry!” And more than ever was haste necessary, for it
+looked as if the great ferry would certainly crush us. The people began
+scrambling up. But I was helpless. Whatever happened, I knew I could
+never climb that wall. I could only clutch my little dog and await
+events. My guardian was quite equal to the situation. The boat had
+cleared a little and there was room to move, and, dropping the baggage,
+he picked me up like a baby and tossed me, dog and all, up on to the
+bank above. Whether that boat got clear away from the ferry I do not
+know. When I visited the place next morning there were no remains, so
+I presume she did, but at the time I was giving all my attention to
+catching a train.
+
+My guardian engaged a boy to carry the lighter baggage, and shouldering
+the rest himself, he took me by the arm and fairly raeed me up the steep
+incline to the railway station that was a seething mass of khaki-clad
+men.
+
+“Billet! Billet!” said he, raping the sweat from his streaming face
+and making a way for me among the thronging recruits. There was a train
+coming in and he evidently intended I should catch it.
+
+Such a crowd it was, and in the railway station confusion was worse
+confounded. It was packed with people--people of the poorer class--and
+with soldiers, and everyone was giving his opinion of things in general
+at the top of his voice. My stalwart guardian elbowed a way to the
+pigeon-hole, still crying, “Billet! Billet!” and I, seeing I wanted
+a ticket to Petrograd, produced a hundred-rouble note. The man inside
+pushed it away with contumely and declined it in various unknown
+tongues. I offered it again, and again it was thrust rudely aside, my
+guardian becoming vehement in his protests, though what he said I have
+not the faintest idea. I offered it a third time, then a man standing
+beside me whisked it away and whisked me away too.
+
+“Madame, are you mad?” he asked, as Mr Barentzen had asked over a
+week before, but he spoke in French, very Russian French. And then he
+proceeded to explain volubly that all around were thieves, robbers and
+assassins--oh! the land of suffering exiles--the mobilisation had called
+them up, and any one of them would cut my throat for a good deal less
+than a ten-pound note. And he promptly shoved the offending cash in his
+pocket. It was the most high-handed proceeding I have ever taken
+part in, and I looked at him in astonishment. He was a man in a green
+uniform, wearing a military cap with pipings of white and magenta, and
+the white and magenta were repeated on the coat and trousers. On the
+whole, the effect was reassuring. A gentleman so attired was really too
+conspicuous to be engaged in any very nefarious occupation.
+
+He proceeded to explain that by that train I could not go.
+
+It was reserved for the troops. They were turning out the people already
+in it. This in a measure explained the bedlam in the station. The people
+who did not want to be landed here and the people who wanted to get away
+were comparing notes, and there were so many of them they had to do it
+at the top of their voices.
+
+“When does the next train go?” I asked.
+
+My new friend looked dubious. “Possibly to-morrow night,” said he. That
+was cheering.
+
+“And where is there a hotel?”
+
+He pointed across the river to Stretensk.
+
+“Are there none this side?”
+
+“No, Madame, not one.”
+
+I debated. Cross that river again after all it had cost me to get here I
+could not.
+
+“But where can I stay?”
+
+He looked round as if he were offering palatial quarters.
+
+“Here, Madame, here.”
+
+In the railway station; there was nothing else for it; and in that
+railway station I waited till the train came in the following evening.
+
+That little matter settled, I turned to reward my first friend for his
+efforts on my behalf, and I felt five roubles was little enough. My new
+friend was very scornful, a rouble was ample, he considered. He had my
+ten-pound note in his pocket, and I am afraid I was very conscious
+that he had not yet proved himself, whereas the other man had done me
+yeoman's service, and never have I parted with ten shillings with more
+satisfaction. They were certainly earned.
+
+After, I set myself to make the best of the situation. The station was
+crowded with all sorts and conditions of people, and a forlorn crowd
+they looked, and curious was the flotsam and jetsam that were their
+belongings. Of course there was the usual travellers' baggage, but
+there were other things too I did not expect to come across in a railway
+station in Siberia. There was a sewing-machine; there was the trumpet
+part of a gramophone; there was the back of a piano with all the wires
+showing; there was a dressmaker's stand, the stuffed form of a woman,
+looking forlorn and out of place among the bundles of the soldiers.
+
+But the people accepted it as all in the day's work, watched the
+soldiers getting into the carriages from which they were debarred, and
+waved their hands and cheered them, though the first train that started
+for anywhere did not leave till one-fifteen a.m. next morning. They
+were content that the soldiers should be served first. They
+settled themselves in little companies on the open platform, in the
+refreshment-room, in the waiting-rooms, fathers, mothers, children and
+dogs, and they solaced themselves with kettles of tea, black bread and
+sausages.
+
+It was all so different from what I had expected, so very different, but
+the first effect was to bring home to me forcibly the fact that there
+was a great struggle going on in the West, and Eastern Siberia was being
+drawn into the whirlpool, sending her best, whether they were the exiles
+of my dreams or the thieves and robbers my newest friend had called
+them, to help in the struggle! To wait a night and day in a railway
+station was surely a little sacrifice to what some must make. How
+cheerfully and patiently that Siberian crowd waited! There were no
+complaints, no moans, only here and there a woman buried her head in her
+shawl and wept for her nearest and dearest, gone to the war, gone out
+into the unknown, and she might never see him again, might never even
+know what became of him. Truly “They also serve who only stand and
+wait.”
+
+I went into the refreshment-room to get some food, and had soup with
+sour cream in it, and ate chicken and bread and butter and cucumber and
+drank _kvass_ as a change from the eternal tea. I watched the people
+on the platform and as the shades of night fell began to wonder where I
+should sleep. I would have chosen the platform, but it looked as if
+it might rain, so I went into the ladies' waiting-room, dragged a
+seat across the open window, and spread out my rugs and cushions and
+established myself there. I wanted to have first right to that window,
+for the night up in the hills here was chilly and I felt sure somebody
+would come in and want to shut it. My intuitions were correct. Buchanan
+and I kept that open window against a crowd. Everybody who came in--and
+the room was soon packed--wanted to shut it. They stretched over me and
+I arose from my slumbers and protested. For, in addition to a crowd,
+the sanitary arrangements were abominable, and what the atmosphere would
+have been like with the window shut I tremble to think. I remembered the
+tales of the pestilential resthouses into which the travelling exiles
+had been thrust, and I was thankful for that window, thankful too that
+it was summer-time, for in winter I suppose we would have had to shut
+it. At last one woman pulled at my rugs and said--though I could not
+understand her language her meaning was plain enough--that it was all
+very well for me, I had plenty of rugs, it was they who had nothing.
+It was a fair complaint, so with many qualms I shared my rugs and the
+summer night slowly wore to morning.
+
+And morning brought its own difficulties. Russian washing arrangements
+to me are always difficult. I had met them first in Kharbin in the house
+of Mr Poland. I wrestled with the same thing in the house of the Chief
+of Police in Saghalien, and I met it in an aggravated form here in the
+railway station waiting-room. A Russian basin has not a plug--it is
+supposed to be cleaner to wash in running water--and the tap is a twirly
+affair with two spouts, and on pressing a little lever water gushes
+out of both and, theoretically, you may direct it where you please.
+Practically I found that while I was directing one stream of water down
+on to my hands, the other hit me in the eye or the ear, and when I got
+that right the first took advantage of inattention and deluged me round
+the waist. It may be my inexperience, but I do not like Russian basins.
+It was running water with a vengeance, it all ran away.
+
+However, I did the best I could, and after, as my face was a little
+rough and sore from the hot sun of the day before, I took out a jar of
+hazeline cream and began to rub it on my cheeks. This proceeding aroused
+intense interest in the women around. What they imagined the cream was
+for I don't know, but one and all they came and begged some, and as long
+as that pot held out every woman within range had hazeline cream daubed
+on her weather-beaten cheeks, and they omitted to rub it off, apparently
+considering it ornamental. However, hazeline cream is a pleasant
+preparation.
+
+Having dressed, Buchanan and I had the long day before us, and I did not
+dare leave the railway station to explore because I was uneasy about my
+luggage. I had had it put in the corner of the refreshment-room and as
+far as I could see no one was responsible for it, and as people were
+coming and going the livelong day I felt bound to keep an eye upon it.
+I also awaited with a good deal of interest the gentleman with the
+variegated uniform and my ten-pound note. He came at last, and explained
+in French that he had got the change but he could not give it to me till
+the train came in because of the thieves and robbers, as if he would
+insist upon tearing the veil of romance I had mapped round Siberia. And
+God forgive me that I doubted the honesty of a very kindly, courteous
+gentleman.
+
+It was a long, long day because there was really nothing to do save to
+walk about for Buchanan's benefit, and I diversified things by taking
+odd meals in the refreshment-room whenever I felt I really must do
+something. But I was very tired. I began to feel I had been travelling
+too long, and I really think if it had not been for Buchanan's sympathy
+I should have wept. No one seemed at all certain when the next train
+west might be expected, opinions, judging by fingers pointing at the
+clock, varying between two o'clock in the afternoon and three o'clock
+next morning. However, as the evening shadows were beginning to fall
+a train did come in, and my friend in uniform, suddenly appearing,
+declared it was the western train. Taking me by the hand, he led me into
+a carriage and, shutting the door and drawing down the blinds, placed in
+my hands change for my ten-pound note.
+
+“Guard your purse, Madame,” said he, “guard your purse. There are
+thieves and robbers everywhere!”
+
+So all the way across Siberia had I been warned of the unsafe condition
+of the country. At Kharbin, at Nikolayeusk, at Blagoveschensk men
+whose good faith I could not doubt assured me that a ten-pound note and
+helplessness was quite likely to spell a sudden and ignominious end to
+my career, and this was in the days when no one doubted the power of the
+Tsar, a bitter commentary surely on an autocracy. What the condition of
+Siberia must be now, with rival factions fighting up and down the land,
+and released German prisoners throwing the weight of their strength in
+with the Bolshevists, I tremble to think.
+
+When he made sure I had carefully hidden my money and thoroughly
+realised the gravity of the situation, my friend offered to get my
+ticket, a second-class ticket, he suggested. I demurred. I am not rich
+and am not above saving my pennies, but a first-class ticket was so
+cheap, and ensured so much more privacy, that a second-class was an
+economy I did not feel inclined to make. He pointed round the carriage
+in which we were seated. Was this not good enough for anyone? It was.
+I had to admit it, and the argument was clinched by the fact that there
+was not a first-class carriage on the train. The ticket only cost about
+five pounds and another pound bought a ticket for Buchanan. We got
+in--my friend in need got in with me, that misjudged friend; it seemed
+he was the stationmaster at a little place a little way down the
+line--and we were fairly off on our road to the West.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV--ON A RUSSIAN MILITARY TRAIN
+
+I was in the train at last, fairly on my way home, and I was glad. But
+I wasn't glad for very long. I began to wish myself back in the railway
+station at Stretensk, where at least I had fresh air. At first I had the
+window open and a corner seat. There are only two people on a seat in a
+Russian long-distance train, because when night falls they let down the
+seat above, which makes a bunk for the second person. But I was
+second class and my compartment opened without a door into the other
+compartments in the carriage, also two more bunks appeared crossways,
+and they were all filled with people. We were four women, two men who
+smoked, a baby who cried, and my little dog. I spread out my rugs and
+cushions, and when I wanted the window open the majority were against
+me. Not only was the window shut, but every ventilating arrangement was
+tightly closed also, and presently the atmosphere was pestilential.
+I grew desperate. I wandered out of the carriage and got on to the
+platform at the end, where the cold wind--for all it was August--cut me
+like a knife. The people objected to that cold wind coming in, and the
+next time I wandered out for a breath of fresh air I found the door
+barred and no prayers of mine would open it. In that carriage the people
+were packed like sardines, but though I was three-quarters suffocated
+no one else seemed at all the worse. I couldn't have looked at breakfast
+next morning, but the rest of the company preened themselves and fed
+cheerfully from the baskets they carried. Then at last I found a student
+going to a Western Siberian university who spoke a little French and
+through him I told the authorities that if I could not be transferred
+to a first-class carriage I was to be left behind at the next station. I
+had spent a night in a station and I knew all about it; it wasn't nice,
+but it was infinitely preferable to a night in a crowded second-class
+carriage.
+
+After a little while the train master came and with the aid of the
+student informed me that there would be a first-class carriage a little
+farther on and if there was room I should go in it, also we would know
+in an hour or so.
+
+So I bore up, and at a little town in the hills I was taken to a
+first-class compartment. There were three--that is, six bunks--making
+up half of a second-class carriage, and they were most luxurious, with
+mirrors and washing arrangements complete. The one I entered was already
+occupied by a very stout woman who, though we did not know any tongue in
+common, made me understand she was going to a place we would reach next
+morning for an operation, and she apologised--most unnecessarily but
+most courteously--for making me take the top bunk. She had a big Irish
+setter with her whom she called “Box”--“Anglisky,” as she said--and
+“Box” was by no means as courteous and friendly as his mistress, and not
+only objected to Buchanan's presence but said so in no measured terms.
+I had to keep my little dog up on the top bunk all the time, where
+he peered over and whimpered protestingly at intervals. There was one
+drawback, and so kind and hospitable was my stable companion that I
+hardly liked to mention it, but the atmosphere in that compartment you
+could have cut with a knife. Wildly I endeavoured to open the windows,
+and she looked at me in astonishment. But I was so vehement that the
+student was once more brought along to interpret, and then everybody
+took a turn at trying to open that window. I must say I think it was
+exceedingly kind and hospitable of them, for these people certainly
+shrank from the dangers of a draught quite as much as I did from the
+stuffiness of a shut window. But it was all to no purpose. That window
+had evidently never been opened since the carriage was made and it held
+on gallantly to the position it had taken up. They consulted together,
+and at length the student turned to me:
+
+“Calm yourself, Madame, calm yourself; a man will come with an
+instrument.” And three stations farther down the line a man did appear
+with an instrument and opened that window, and I drew in deep breaths of
+exceedingly dusty fresh air.
+
+The lady in possession and I shared our breakfast. She made the tea, and
+she also cleaned out the kettle by the simple process of emptying the
+tea leaves into the wash-hand basin. That, as far as I saw, was the
+only use she made of the excellent washing arrangements supplied by
+the railway. But it is not for me to carp, she was so kind, and bravely
+stood dusty wind blowing through the compartment all night just because
+I did not like stuffiness. And when she was gone, O luxury! Buchanan and
+I had the carriage to ourselves all the way to Irkutsk.
+
+And this was Siberia. We were going West, slowly it is true, but with
+wonderful swiftness I felt when I remembered--and how should I not
+remember every moment of the time?--that this was the great and
+sorrowful road along which the exiles used to march, that the summer
+sun would scorch them, these great plains would be snow-covered and the
+biting, bitter wind would freeze them long before they reached their
+destination. I looked ahead into the West longingly; but I was going
+there, would be there in less than a fortnight at the most, while their
+reluctant feet had taken them slowly, the days stretched into weeks, the
+weeks into months, and they were still tramping east into an exile that
+for all they knew would be lifelong. Ah! but this road must have been
+watered with blood and tears. Every river, whether they were ferried
+over it or went across on the ice, must have seemed an added barrier to
+the man or woman thinking of escape; every forest would mean for them
+either shelter or danger, possibly both, for I had not forgotten the
+tigers of the Amur and the bears and wolves that are farther west. And
+yet the steppes, those hopeless plains, must have afforded still less
+chance of escape.
+
+Oh! my early ideas were right after all. Nature was jailer enough here
+in Siberia. Men did escape, we know, but many more must have perished
+in the attempt, and many, many must have resigned themselves to their
+bitter fate, for surely all the forces of earth and air and sky had
+ranged themselves on the side of the Tsar. This beautiful country, and
+men had marched along it in chains!
+
+At Chita, greatly to my surprise, my _sotnik_ of Cossacks joined the
+train, and we greeted eaeh other as old friends. Indeed I was pleased to
+see his smiling face again, and Buchanan benefited largely, for many
+a time when I was not able to take him out for a little run our friend
+came along and did it for us.
+
+The platforms at Siberian stations are short and this troop train,
+packed with soldiers, was long, so that many a time our carriage never
+drew up at the platform at all. This meant that the carriage was usually
+five feet from the ground, and often more. I am a little woman and
+five feet was all I could manage, when it was more it was beyond me. Of
+course I could have dropped down, but it would have been impossible to
+haul myself up again, to say nothing of getting Buchanan on board. A
+Russian post train--and this troop train was managed to all intents and
+purposes as a post train--stops at stations along the line so that the
+passengers may get food, and five minutes before it starts it rings a
+“Make ready” bell one minute before it rings a second bell, “Take your
+seats,” and with a third bell off the train goes. And it would have gone
+inexorably even though I, having climbed down, had been unable to climb
+up again. Deeply grateful then were Buehanan and I to the _sotnik_ of
+Cossacks, who recognised our limitations and never forgot us.
+
+I liked these Russian post trains far better than the train _de luxe_,
+with its crowd and its comforts and its cosmopolitan atmosphere. A
+Russian post train in those days had an atmosphere of its own. It was
+also much cheaper. From Stretensk to Petrograd, including Buehanan, the
+cost was a little over nine pounds for the tickets, and I bought my food
+by the way. It was excellent and very cheap. All the things I had bought
+in Kharbin, especially the kettles, came into use once more. The moment
+the train stopped out tumbled the soldiers, crowds and crowds of them,
+and raced for the provision stalls and for the large boilers full of
+water that are a feature of every Russian station on the overland line.
+These boilers are always enclosed in a building just outside the railway
+station, and the spouts for the boiling water, two, three and sometimes
+four in a row, come out through the walls. Beside every spout is an iron
+handle which, being pulled, brings the boiling water gushing out.
+Russia even in those days before the revolution struck me as strangely
+democratic, for the soldiers, the non-commissioned officers, the
+officers and everyone else on the train mingled in the struggle for hot
+water. I could never have got mine filled, but my Cossack friend always
+remembered me and if he did not come himself sent someone to get my
+kettles. Indeed everyone vied in being kind to the Englishwoman, to
+show, I think, their good will to the only representative of the Allied
+nation on the train.
+
+It was at breakfast-time one warm morning I first made the acquaintance
+of “that very great officer,” as the others called him, the captain of
+the _Askold_. He was in full naval uniform, and at that time I was not
+accustomed to seeing naval officers in uniform outside their ships, and
+he was racing along the platform, a little teapot in one hand, intent
+on filling it with hot water to make coffee. He was not ashamed to
+pause and come to the assistance of a foreigner whom he considered the
+peasants were shamefully overcharging. They actually wanted her to pay a
+farthing a piece for their largest cucumbers! He spoke French and so we
+were able to communicate, and he was kind enough to take an interest in
+me and declare that he himself would provide me with cucumbers. He got
+me four large ones and when I wanted to repay him he laughed and said
+it was hardly necessary as they only cost a halfpenny! He had the
+compartment next to mine and that morning he sent me in a glass of
+coffee--we didn't run to cups on that train. Excellent coffee it was
+too. Indeed I was overwhelmed with provisions. One woman does not want
+very much to eat, but unless I supplied myself liberally and made it
+patent to all that I had enough and more than enough I was sure to be
+supplied by my neighbours out of friendship for my nation. From the
+Cossack officer, from a Hussar officer and his wife who had come up
+from Ugra in Mongolia, and from the captain of the _Askold_ I was always
+receiving presents. Chickens, smoked fish--very greasy, in a sheet of
+paper, eaten raw and very excellent--raspberries and blue berries, to
+say nothing of cucumbers, were rained upon me.
+
+At some stations there was a buffet and little tables set about
+where the first and second class passengers could sit down and have
+_déjeuner_, or dinner, but oftener, especially in the East, we all
+dashed out, first, second and third class, and at little stalls presided
+over by men with kerchiefs on their heads and sturdy bare feet, women
+that were a joy to me after the effete women of China, bought what we
+wanted, took it back with us into the carriages and there ate it. I had
+all my table things in a basket, including a little saucer for Buchanan.
+It was an exceedingly economical arrangement, and I have seldom enjoyed
+food more. The bread and butter was excellent. You could buy fine white
+bread, and bread of varying quality to the coarse black bread eaten by
+the peasant, and I am bound to say I very much like fine white bread.
+There was delicious cream; there were raspberries and blue berries to
+be bought for a trifle; there were lemons for the tea; there was German
+beet sugar; there were roast chickens at sixpence apiece, little pasties
+very excellent for twopence-halfpenny, and rapchicks, a delicious little
+bird a little larger than a partridge, could be bought for fivepence,
+and sometimes there was plenty of honey. Milk, if a bottle were
+provided, could be had for a penny-farthing a quart, and my neighbours
+soon saw that I did not commit the extravagance of paying three times as
+much for it, which was what it cost if you bought the bottle.
+
+The English, they said, were very rich! and they were confirmed in their
+belief when they found how I bought milk. Hard-boiled eggs were to be
+had in any quantity, two and sometimes three for a penny-farthing. I am
+reckoning the kopeck as a farthing. These were first-class prices, the
+soldiers bought much more cheaply. Enough meat to last a man a day could
+be bought for a penny-farthing, and good meat too--such meat nowadays I
+should pay at least five shillings for.
+
+Was all this abundance because the exiles had tramped wearily across the
+steppes? How much hand had they had in the settling of the country? I
+asked myself the question many times, but nowhere found an answer. The
+stations were generally crowded, but the country round was as empty as
+it had been along the Amur.
+
+And the train went steadily on. Very slowly though--we only went at the
+rate of three hundred versts a day, why, I do not know. There we stuck
+at platforms where there was nothing to do but walk up and down and look
+at the parallel rails coming out of the East on the horizon and running
+away into the West on the horizon again.
+
+“We shall never arrive,” I said impatiently.
+
+“Ah! Madame, we arrive, we arrive,” said the Hussar officer, and he
+spoke a little sadly. And then I remembered that for him arrival meant
+parting with his comely young wife and his little son. They had with
+them a fox-terrier whom I used to ask into my compartment to play with
+Buchanan, and they called him “Sport.”
+
+“An English name,” they said smilingly. If ever I have a fox-terrier
+I shall call him “Sport,” in kindly remembrance of the owners of the
+little friend I made on that long, long journey across the Old World.
+And the Hussar officer's wife, I put it on record, liked fresh air as
+much as I did myself. As I walked up and down the train, even though
+it was warm summer weather, I always knew our two carriages because in
+spite of the dust we had our windows open. The rest of the passengers
+shut theirs most carefully. The second class were packed, and the third
+class were simply on top of one another--I should not think they could
+have inserted another baby--and the reek that came from the open doors
+and that hung about the people that came out of them was disgusting.
+
+I used to ask my Cossack friend to tea sometimes--I could always buy
+cakes by the wayside--and he was the only person I ever met who took
+salt with his tea. He assured me the Mongolians always did so, but I
+must say though I have tried tea in many ways I don't like that custom.
+
+In Kobdo, ten thousand feet among the mountains in the west of Mongolia,
+was a great lama, and the Cossack was full of this man's prophecy.
+
+Three emperors, said the lama, would fight. One would be overwhelmed and
+utterly destroyed, the other would lose immense sums of money, and the
+third would have great glory.
+
+“The Tsar, Madame,” said my friend, “the Tsar, of course, is the third.”
+
+I wonder what part he took in the revolution. He was a Balt, a man from
+the Baltic Provinces, heart and soul with the Poles, and he did not even
+call himself a Russian. Well, the Tsar has been overwhelmed, but which
+is the one who is to have great glory? After all, the present is no very
+great time for kings and emperors. I am certainly not taking any stock
+in them as a whole. Perhaps that lama meant the President of the United
+States!
+
+We went round Lake Baikal, and the Holy Sea, that I had seen before one
+hard plain of glittering ice, lay glittering now, beautiful still in the
+August sunshine. There were white sails on it and a steamer or two, and
+men were feverishly working at alterations on the railway. The Angara
+ran swiftly, a mighty river, and we steamed along it into the Irkutsk
+station, which is by no means Irkutsk, for the town is--Russian
+fashion--four miles away on the other side of the river.
+
+At Irkutsk it seemed to me we began to be faintly Western again. And the
+exiles who had come so far I suppose abandoned hope here. All that they
+loved--all their life--lay behind. I should have found it hard to turn
+back and go east myself now. What must that facing east have been for
+them?
+
+They turned us out of the train, and Buchanan and I were ruefully
+surveying our possessions, heaped upon the platform, wondering how on
+earth we were to get them taken to the cloakroom and how we should
+get them out again supposing they were taken, when the captain of the
+_Askold_ appeared with a porter.
+
+“Would Madame permit,” he asked, not as if he were conferring a favour,
+“that her luggage be put with mine in the cloakroom?”
+
+Madame could have hugged him. Already the dusk was falling, the
+soft, warm dusk, and the people were hastening to the town or to the
+refreshment-rooms. There would be no train that night, said my kind
+friend, some time in the morning perhaps, but certainly not that night.
+I sighed. Again I was adrift, and it was not a comfortable feeling.
+
+If Madame desired to dine---- Madame did desire to dine.
+
+Then if Madame permits---- Of course Madame permitted.
+
+She was most grateful. And we dined together at the same table outside
+the station restaurant--I like that fashion of dining outside--under the
+brilliant glare of the electric light. He arranged everything for me,
+even to getting some supper for Buchanan. And I forgot the exiles who
+had haunted me, forgot this was Siberia. Here in the restaurant, save
+for the Tartar waiters, it might almost have been France.
+
+“Perhaps,” said my companion courteously as we were having coffee,
+“Madame would care to come to my hotel. I could interpret for her and
+here no one speaks anything but Russian.”
+
+Again I could have hugged him. I intimated my dressing-bag was in the
+cloakroom, but he smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“For one night!”
+
+He himself had nothing, so there and then we got into one of the usual
+decrepit landaus and went to the town, to Irkutsk on the Angara, in the
+heart of Siberia. If in my girlish days when I studied the atlas of the
+world so carefully I could have known that one day I should be driving
+into Irkutsk, that map would have been glorified for ever and a day;
+but I could never have realised, never, that it would be set in a summer
+land, warm as my own country, and that I should feel it a great step on
+towards the civilisation of the West.
+
+It was night, and here and there clustering electric lights glittered
+like diamonds, making darker the spaces in between. In the morning I saw
+that the capital of Eastern Siberia, like all the other towns of that
+country, is a regular frontier town. There were the same wide streets
+grass-grown at the edges, great houses and small houses side by side,
+and empty spaces where as yet there were no houses. We went to the
+Central Hotel.
+
+“I do not go to an expensive hotel,” my companion told me, “this is a
+moderate one.”
+
+But if it were moderate it certainly was a very large and nice hotel.
+Russian hotels do not as a rule provide food, the restaurant is
+generally separate, but we had already dined. That naval officer made
+all arrangements for me. He even explained to an astonished chamber-maid
+with her hair done in two long plaits that I must have all the windows
+open and when I tried for a bath did his best for me. But again, he
+explained, Russians as a rule go to a bath-house, and there was only
+one bathroom in this hotel; it had been engaged for two hours by a
+gentleman, and he thought, seeing I should have to start early in the
+morning, it might be rather late for me to have a bath then, but if I
+liked in the morning it would be at my service.
+
+If anyone had told me in the old days that going to Irkutsk I should be
+deeply interested in a bath!
+
+I engaged that bath for an hour in the morning as that seemed to be the
+correct thing to do. Then I went to bed and heartily envied Buchanan,
+who did not have to bother about toilet arrangements.
+
+In the morning early there was a knock at the door and when I said “Come
+in,” half expecting tea, there was my naval officer in full uniform
+smilingly declaring my bath was ready, he had paid the bill, and I could
+pay him back when we were on board the train. The chamber-maid, with
+her hair still done in two plaits--I rather fancy she had slept in
+them--conducted me to the bathroom, and I pass over the difficulty of
+doing without brush and comb and tooth-brush. But I washed the dust
+out of my hair, and when I was as tidy as I could manage I joined
+the captain of the _Askold_ and we drove back through the town to the
+railway station.
+
+The station was a surging mass of people all talking at once, and all,
+I suppose, objurgating the railway management, but we two had breakfast
+together in the pleasant sunlight. We had fresh rolls and butter and
+coffee and cream and honey--I ask no better breakfast when these things
+are good--and meanwhile people, officials, came and went, discussing
+evidently some important matter with my friend. He departed for a
+moment, and then the others that I had known came up, my Cossack friend
+and the Hussar officer, and told me that the outgoing train was a
+military train, it would be impossible for a woman, a civilian and a
+foreigner at that, to go on it. I said the captain of the _Askold_ had
+assured me I could, and they shook their heads and then said hopefully,
+well, he was a very great officer, the captain of a ship, and I realised
+that no lesser authority could possibly have managed this thing for
+me. And even he was doubtful, for when he came back and resumed his
+interrupted breakfast he said:
+
+“The train is full. The military authorities will not allow you on
+board.”
+
+That really did seem to me tragedy at the moment. I forgot the sorrowful
+people who would gladly enough have stayed their journey at Irkutsk. But
+their faces were set East. I forgot that after all a day or two out of a
+life would not matter very much, or rather I think I hated to part from
+these kindly friends I had made on the train. I suppose I looked my
+disappointment.
+
+“Wait. Wait. It is not yet finished,” said my friend kindly. “They give
+me two compartments”--I felt then he was indeed “a very great officer,”
+ for the people were packed in that train, tier upon tier, like herrings
+in a barrel--“and I cannot sleep in four bunks. It is ridiculous.”
+
+That may have been, but it was kindness itself of him to establish a
+stranger in one of those compartments. It was most comfortable, and
+Buchanan and I being established, and my luggage having come safely to
+hand, I proceeded to make the most of the brush and comb that had come
+once more into my possession, and I felt that the world was a very good
+place indeed as we sped across the green plain in the sunny morning. I
+could hardly believe that this goodly land was the one to which I had
+always been accustomed to think men went as to a living death.
+
+And then I forgot other folks' troubles in my own, for envious eyes were
+cast upon the spare bunk in my compartment. No one would have dreamt of
+interfering had the sailor insisted upon having all four for himself,
+but since he had parted with the rights of one compartment to a foreign
+woman, it was evident that other people, crowded out, began to think
+of their own comfort. Various people interviewed me. I am afraid
+I understood thoroughly what they wanted, but I did not understand
+Russian, and I made the most of that disability. Also all my friends who
+spoke French kept out of the way, so I suppose they did not wish to
+aid and abet in upsetting my comfort. At last a most extraordinary
+individual with a handkerchief tied round his neck in lieu of a collar
+and a little tourist cap on the back of his head was brought, and he
+informed me in French that there was a doctor in the hospital section
+of the train who had not been in bed for a week, they could not turn
+the soldiers out, they must have rest, would I allow him to sleep in my
+compartment?
+
+“Madame,” he said, and the officials standing round emphasised the
+remark, if it needed emphasis, “it is war time. The train is for the
+soldiers.”
+
+Certainly I was here on sufferance. They had a right to turn me out if
+they liked. So the doctor came and turned in in the top bunk, and his
+long-drawn snores took away from my sense of privacy.
+
+I don't think he liked it very much, for presently he was succeeded by
+a train official, very drunk, though I am bound to say he was the only
+drunken man I saw on all that long train journey from Stretensk to
+Petrograd. It was a little unlucky we were at such close quarters.
+Everyone, too, was very apologetic.
+
+He was a good fellow. It was an unfortunate accident and he would be
+very much ashamed.
+
+I suppose he was, for the next day he too disappeared and his place
+was taken by a professor from one of the Siberian universities who was
+seeking radium. He was a nice old gentleman who had learned English
+but had never had the chance of hearing it spoken. Where he went in the
+daytime I do not know, probably to a friend's compartment, and Buchanan
+and I had the place to ourselves. We could and did invite the Cossack
+officer and the Hussar officer and his belongings and the naval man to
+tea, and we had great games with the little fox-terrier “Sport” from
+next door, but when night fell the professor turned up and notified me
+he was about to go to bed. Then he retired and I went to bed first on
+the lower seat. He knocked, came in and climbed up to his bunk, and
+we discoursed on the affairs of the world, I correcting his curious
+pronunciation. He really was a man of the world; he was the sort of man
+I had expected to meet in Siberia, only I had never imagined him as free
+and sharing a railway compartment with me. I should have expected to
+find him toiling across the plains with the chains that bound his ankles
+hitched to his belt for convenience of carrying. But he looked and
+he spoke as any other cultivated old gentleman might have spoken,
+and looking back I see that his views of the war, given in the end of
+August, 1914, were quite the soundest I have ever listened to.
+
+“The Allies will win,” he used to say, “yes, they will win.” And he
+shook his head. “But it will be a long war, and the place will be
+drenched in blood first. Two years, three years, I think four years.” I
+wonder if he foresaw the chaos that would fall upon Russia.
+
+These views were very different from those held by the other men.
+
+“Madame,” the Cossack would say, laughing, “do you know a good hotel in
+Berlin?”
+
+I looked up surprised. “Because,” he went on, “I engage a room there. We
+go to Berlin!”
+
+“Peace dictated at Berlin,” said they all again and again, “peace
+dictated at Berlin.” This was during the first onward rush of the
+Russians. Then there came a setback, two towns were taken and the
+Germans demanded an indemnity of twenty thousand pounds apiece.
+
+“Very well,” said the Cossack grimly, and the Hussar nodded his head.
+“They have set the tune. Now we know what to ask.”
+
+But the professor looked grave. “Many towns will fall,” said he.
+
+Another thing that struck me was the friendly relations of the officers
+with those under them. As the only representative of their Western
+Ally on the train, I was something of a curiosity, and soldiers and
+non-commissioned officers liked to make excuse to look at me. I only
+wished I had been a little smarter and better-looking for the sake of my
+country, for I had had no new clothes since the end of 1912. However, I
+had to make the best of it, and the men came to me on the platforms or
+to my compartment without fear. If by chance they knew a little French
+they spoke to me, helped out by their officers if their vocabulary ran
+short.
+
+“Madame, Madame,” said an old non-commissioned officer, “would you be
+so good as to tell me how to pronounce the English 'zee'? I teach myself
+French, now I teach myself English.”
+
+Well, they had all been good to me and I had no means of repaying their
+kindness save vicariously, so I took him in hand and with the aid of a
+booklet published by the Wagons Lit Train du Luxe describing the journey
+across Siberia we wrestled with the difficulties of the English “th.”
+
+It was a long long journey. We crept across the great steppes, we
+lingered by stations, sometimes there were lakes, sometimes great
+rivers, but always the great plains. Far as the eye could see rolled the
+extent of green under the clear blue sky; often we saw herds of cattle
+and mobs of horses, and again and again companies of soldiers, and
+yet so vast is the country the sensation left upon the stranger is of
+emptiness, of a rich and fertile land crying out for inhabitants. I
+looked at it from the train with eager eyes, but I began to understand
+how there had grown up in my mind the picture of this lovely land as
+a dark and terrible place. To the prisoners who came here this plain,
+whether it were green and smiling, or whether it were deep in white
+snow, could only have been the barrier that cut them off from home and
+hope, from all that made life dear. How could they take up their broken
+lives here, they who for the most part were dwellers in the cities?
+
+Here was a regiment of soldiers; it was nothing, nothing, set in the
+vast plain. The buttercups and daisies and purple vetches were trampled
+down for a great space where men had been exercising or camping; but it
+was nothing. There were wide stretches of country where the cattle were
+peacefully feeding and where the flowers turned up smiling faces to the
+blue sky for miles and miles, making me forget that this had been the
+land of shadowed lives in the past and that away in the West men were
+fighting for their very existence, locked in a death-grip such as the
+world has never before seen.
+
+It was well there was something to look out upon, for that train was
+horrid. I realised something of the horrors of the post-houses in which
+the prisoners had been locked at night. We could get good food at every
+station, but in the train we were too close on the ground and the
+reek of us went up to heaven. I felt as if the atmosphere of the train
+desecrated the fresh, clear air of the great plain over which we passed,
+as if we must breed disease. The journey seemed interminable, and what
+I should do when it ended I did not know, for opinion was fairly
+unanimous: they were sure I could not get to England!
+
+With many apologies the captain of the _Askold_ permitted himself to ask
+how I was off for money. I was a total stranger, met on a train, and a
+foreigner! I told him I had a little over forty pounds and if that were
+not enough I had thought to be able to send to London for more.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“I doubt if even letters can get through.”
+
+And I sighed that then I did not know what I should do, for I had no
+friends in Petrograd.
+
+“Pardon, Madame,” said he remonstrantly, and he gave me the address of
+his wife and daughters. He told me to go and see them; he assured me
+that everybody in Russia now wanted to learn English, that I would have
+no difficulty in getting pupils and so do myself very comfortably “till
+we make a passage to England again.”
+
+Just before we reached Cheliabynsk he came and told me that he had heard
+there was a west-bound express with one place vacant, a ship awaited him
+and speed was very necessary, therefore he was leaving this train. Then
+at one of the greater stopping-places he bowed low over my hand, bade me
+farewell, made a dash and caught the express. I have never either seen
+or heard of him since, but he remains in my mind as one of the very
+kindly men I have met on my way through the world.
+
+At Cheliabynsk we spent the livelong day, for there the main part of the
+train went on to Moscow with the soldiers, while we who wanted to go
+to Petrograd caught a train in the evening. I was glad to find that the
+Hussar officer and the Cossack were both bound for Petrograd. And here
+we came in touch once more with the West. There was a bookstall, and
+though I could not buy an English paper I could and did buy an English
+book, one of John Galsworthy's in the Tauchnitz edition. It was a great
+delight to come in contact once more with something I could read. There
+was a big refreshment-room here with all manner of delectable things to
+eat, only we had passed beyond the sturgeon, and caviare was no longer
+to be had save at a price that was prohibitive to a woman who had had as
+much as she could eat and who anyhow was saving her pennies in case of
+contingencies.
+
+But one thing I did have, and that was a bath. In fact the whole train
+bathed. Near the station was a long row of bath-houses, but each one
+I visited--and they all seemed unpleasant places--was crowded with
+soldiers. After a third attempt to get taken in my Cossack friend met
+me and was shocked at the idea of my going to such a place; if I would
+trust him he would take me to a proper place after _déjeuner_.
+
+Naturally I trusted him gladly, and we got into one of the usual
+broken-down landaus and drove away to the other side of the town to a
+row of quite superior bath-houses. My friend declared he knew the
+place well, he had been stationed here in “the last revolution,” as if
+revolutions came as regularly as the seasons.
+
+It was a gorgeous bath-house. That young man bought me soap; he bought
+me some sort of loofah for scrubbing; he escorted me to three large
+rooms which I engaged for a couple of hours and, much to the surprise of
+the people, having had the windows opened, he left me, assuring me that
+the carriage should return for me in two hours. There was plenty of hot
+water, plenty of cold, and any amount of towels, and both Buchanan and
+I washed the grime of the journey from us and then rested on the sofa in
+the retiring-room. I read John Galsworthy and punctually to the moment
+I descended to the street, clean and refreshed, and there our carriage
+awaited us.
+
+We bought water-melons on our way back to the train, for the streets
+were heaped up with the great dark green melons with the pink flesh that
+I had not seen since I left Australia. Autumn was on the land and here
+were watermelons proof thereof.
+
+Ever as we went west the cornfields increased. Most of the wheat was cut
+and standing in golden-brown stooks waiting to be garnered by old men
+and boys and sturdy country women and those who were left of her young
+men, for Russia had by no means called out her last lines in 1914. There
+were still great patches of forest, primeval forest, of dense fir, and I
+remembered that here must be the haunts of the wolves and the bear with
+which I had always associated Russia. More, though why I know not,
+my mind flew back to the times of the nomad hordes who, coming out of
+Central Asia, imposed their rule upon the fair-haired Aryan race that
+had settled upon the northern plain of Europe. Those forests for me
+spelled Romance; they took away from the feeling of commonplaceness that
+the breaking down of my preconceived ideas of Siberia had engendered.
+Almost anything might happen in a land that held such forests, and such
+rivers. Not that I was allowed to see much of the rivers now. Someone
+always came in and drew down the blinds in my compartment--I had one to
+myself since leaving Cheliabynsk--and told me I must not go out on
+the platform whenever we crossed a bridge. They were evidently taking
+precautions against spying though they were too polite to say so. There
+were big towns with stations packed to overflowing. At Perm we met some
+German prisoners of war, and there were soldiers, soldiers everywhere,
+and at last one day in the first week in September we steamed into
+Petrograd.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI--THE WAYS OF THE FINNS
+
+It was evening and we had arrived at Petrograd. For many years I
+had wanted to see the northern capital. I had thought of it as a town
+planned by a genius, slowly growing amid surrounding swamps, and in
+my childhood I had pictured that genius as steadily working as a
+carpenter--in a white paper cap--having always in his mind's eye the
+town that was to grow on the Baltic Sea, the seaport that should give
+his country free access to the civilisation of the West. He was a great
+hero of mine because of his efficiency; after all I see no reason why I
+should dethrone him now that I realise he had the faults of his time and
+his position.
+
+But in life I find things always come differently to what one pictures
+them. The little necessities of life will crop up and must be attended
+to first and foremost. The first thought that came to me was that I had
+to part with the friends I had made on the journey. Right away from the
+borders of China the Cossack officer and I had travelled together; I had
+met the Hussar officer and his wife soon after I had joined the train,
+and we seemed to have come out of one world into another together. It
+made a bond, and I for one was sorry to part. They were going to their
+own friends or to a Russian hotel, and the general consensus of opinion
+was that I would be more comfortable in a hotel where there were English
+or at least French people.
+
+“Go to the Grand Hotel, Madame,” suggested the Hussar officer's wife,
+she who spoke perfect French.
+
+So Buchanan and I loaded our belongings on to a droshky that looked
+smart after the ones I had been accustomed to in Asia, bade farewell to
+our friends “till after the war”--the Cossack was coming to England then
+“to buy a dog”--and drove to the Grand Hotel.
+
+The Grand Hotel spoke perfect English, looked at me and--declined to
+take me because I had a little dog. I was very much astonished,
+but clearly I couldn't abandon Buehanan, so I went on to the Hotel
+d'Angleterre, which also declined. I went from hotel to hotel and
+they all said the same thing, they could not think of taking in anyone
+accompanied by a dog. It was growing dark--it was dark, and after a
+fortnight on the train I was weary to death. How could I think of the
+glories of the Russian capital when I was wondering where I could find
+a resting-place? I couldn't turn Buchanan adrift in the streets, I
+couldn't camp in the streets myself, and the hotel porters who could
+speak English had no suggestions to make as to where I could bestow my
+little friend in safety. Six hotels we went to and everyone was firm and
+polite, they could not take a dog. At last a hotel porter had a great
+idea, the Hotel Astoria would take dogs.
+
+“Why on earth didn't someone tell me so before?” I said, and promptly
+went to the Hotel Astoria. It was rather like going to the Hotel Ritz,
+and though I should like to stay at the Hotel Ritz I would not recommend
+it to anyone who was fearing an unlimited stay in the country, who had
+only forty pounds to her credit and was not at all sure she could get
+any more. Still the Hotel Astoria took little dogs, actually welcomed
+them, and charged four shillings a day for their keep. I forgot Peter
+the Great and the building of the capital of Russia, revelling in the
+comforts of a delightful room all mirrors, of a bathroom attached and
+a dinner that it was worth coming half across the world to meet. My
+spirits rose and I began to be quite sure that all difficulties would
+pass away, I should be able to get back to England and there would be
+no need for that desperate economy. It was delightful to go to bed in
+a still bed between clean white sheets, to listen to the rain upon the
+window and to know that for this night at least all was well. I had seen
+no English papers; I knew nothing about the war, and it is a fact one's
+own comfort is very apt to colour one's views of life. Buchanan agreed
+with me this was a very pleasant world--as a rule I do find the world
+pleasant--it was impossible anything could go wrong in it.
+
+And the next day I received a snub--a snub from my own people.
+
+I went to the British Consulate full of confidence. Every foreigner I
+had met all across the world had been so pleased to see me, had been so
+courteous and kind, had never counted the cost when I wanted help, so
+that I don't know what I didn't expect from my own countrymen. I looked
+forward very mueh to meeting them. And the young gentleman in office
+snubbed me properly. He wasn't wanting any truck with foolish women who
+crossed continents; he didn't care one scrap whether I had come from
+Saghalien or just walked down the Nevsky Prospekt; I was a nuisance
+anyway, his manner gave me to understand, since I disturbed his peace
+and quiet, and the sooner I took myself out of the country the better
+he would be pleased. He just condescended to explain where I could get a
+ticket straight through to Newcastle-on-Tyne; people were doing it every
+day; he didn't know anything about the war, and his manner gave me to
+understand that it wasn't his business to supply travellers with news.
+I walked out of that office with all the jauntiness taken out of me.
+Possibly, I have thought since, he was depressed at the news from
+France, perhaps someone was jeering him because he had not joined up, or
+else he had wanted to join up and was not allowed. It was unlucky that
+my first Englishman after so long should be such a churlish specimen. I
+felt that unless my necessity was dire indeed I should not apply to the
+British Consulate for help in an emergency. I did not recover till I
+went to the company who sold through tickets, across Finland, across
+Sweden and Norway, across the North Sea to Newcastle-on-Tyne. There I
+bought a ticket for fifteen pounds which was to carry me the whole
+way. It was a Swedish company, I think, and the office was packed with
+people, Poles, Letts, Lithuanians and Russians, who were naturalised
+Americans and who wanted to go home. Everybody took the deepest interest
+in Buchanan, so much interest that the man in charge asked me if I was
+going to take him, I said “Of eourse,” and he shook his head.
+
+“You will never get him through Sweden. They are most strict.”
+
+Poor Buchanan! Despair seized me. Having been to the British Consulate,
+I knew it was no use seeking advice there. I suppose I was too tired or
+I should have remembered that Americans are always kind and helpful and
+gone there or even dared the British Embassy. But these ideas occurred
+to me too late.
+
+You may travel the world over and the places you visit will often remain
+in your mind as pleasant or otherwise not because of any of their own
+attributes, but because of the emotions you have suffered in them. Here
+was I in St Petrograd, and instead of exploring streets and canals and
+cathedrals and palaces my whole thoughts were occupied with the fate
+of my little dog. I “had given my heart to a dog to tear” and I was
+suffering in consequence. All the while I was in Petrograd--and I stayed
+there three days looking for a way out--my thoughts were given to James
+Buchanan. I discussed the matter with the authorities in the hotel who
+could speak English, and finally Buchanan and I made a peregrination to
+the Swedish Consulate. And though the Swedish Consulate was a deal more
+civil and more interested in me and my doings than the English, in
+the matter of a dog, even a nice little dog like Buchanan, they were
+firm--through Sweden he could not go.
+
+I read in the paper the other day that the world might be divided into
+men and women and people-who-hate-dogs, and these last will wonder what
+I was making such a fuss about, but the men and women will understand.
+My dear little companion and friend had made the lonely places pleasant
+for me and I could not get him out of the country save by turning round
+and going back across Europe, Asia and America!
+
+I went back to the place where I had bought my ticket. They also were
+sympathetic. Everyone in the office was interested in the tribulations
+of the cheerful little black and white dog who sat on the counter and
+wagged a friendly tail. I had many offers to take care of him for me,
+and the consensus of opinion was that he might be smuggled! And many
+tales were told me of dogs taken across the borders in overcoats and
+muffs, or drugged in baskets.
+
+That last appealed to me. Buchanan was just too big to cany hidden
+easily, but he might be drugged and covered up in a basket. I went back
+to the Astoria and sent for a vet. Also I bought a highly ornamental
+basket. The porter thought I was cruel. He thought I might leave the dog
+with him till after the war, but he translated the vet's opinion for me,
+and the vet gave me some sulphonal. He assured me the little dog would
+be all right, and I tried to put worrying thoughts away from me and to
+see Petrograd, the capital of the Tsars.
+
+But I had seen too much. There comes a moment, however keen you are on
+seeing the world, when you want to see no new thing, when you want only
+to close your eyes and rest, and I had arrived at that moment. The wide
+and busy streets intersected with canals, the broad expanse of the Neva,
+the cathedral and the Winter Palace were nothing to me; even the wrecked
+German Embassy did not stir me.
+
+I was glad then when the fourth morning found me on the Finland station.
+The Finland station was crowded and the Finland train, with only second
+and third class carnages and bound for Raumo, was crowded also, and it
+appeared it did not know its way very well as the line had only just
+been opened to meet the traffic west diverted from Germany. A fortnight
+before no one had ever heard of Raumo.
+
+And now for me the whole outlook was changed. This was no military
+train, packed as it was, but a train of men, women and children
+struggling to get out of the country, the flotsam and jetsam that come
+to the surface at the beginning of a war. And I heard again for the
+first time since I left Tientsin, worlds away, English spoken that was
+not addressed to me. To be sure it was English with an accent, the very
+peculiar accent that belongs to Russians, Lithuanians, Poles and Letts
+Americanised, and with it mingled the nasal tones of a young musician
+from Central Russia who spoke the language of his adopted land with a
+most exaggerated accent and the leisurely, cultivated tones of Oxford.
+
+I had come from the East to the West!
+
+The carriage was open from end to end and they would not allow Buchanan
+to enter it. He, poor little man, in the gorgeous basket that he
+objected to strongly, was banished to the luggage-van, and because the
+carriage was hot, and also because I felt he would be lonely separated
+from me, I went there and kept him company.
+
+And in that van I met another Russian naval officer and deepened my
+obligations to the Russian navy. He sat down beside me on one of the
+boxes, a tall, broad-shouldered, fair man who looked like a Viking with
+his moustache shaved off. I found to my joy he spoke English, and I
+confided to him my difficulties with regard to breakfast. I was so old
+a traveller by now I had learned the wisdom of considering carefully the
+commissariat. He was going to the forts on the Finnish border of which
+he was in command, but before he left the train we would arrive at a
+refreshment-room, and he undertook to arrange matters for me. And so he
+did.
+
+Petrograd does not get up early, at least the Hotel Astoria did not, and
+the most I could manage before I left was a cup of coffee, but I made
+up for it at that first refreshment-room. The naval officer took entire
+charge and, revelling in his importance, I not only had a very good
+breakfast but made the most of my chances and, filling up my basket with
+a view to future comforts, bought good things so that I might be able
+to exchange civilities with my fellow-passengers on the way to Raumo. I
+had eggs and sausages and new bread and scones and a plentiful supply
+of fruit, to say nothing of sugar and lemons and cream and meat for
+Buehanan--the naval man looking on smiling--and when I had really done
+myself well I turned to him and demanded what I ought to pay.
+
+“Nothing, Madame. In Russia when a gentleman takes a lady for
+refreshment he pays!”
+
+Imagine my horror! And I had stocked my basket so lavishly!
+
+My protests were useless. I was escorted back to our luggage-van and
+my thoughts led gently from the coffee and eggs I had consumed and the
+sausages and bread I had stowed away in my basket to the state of the
+war as it struck the Russian naval mind.
+
+Had I heard about the sea fight in the Mediterranean? Not heard about
+the little _Gloucester_ attacking the _Goeben_, the little _Gloucester_
+that the big German battleship could have eaten! A dwarf and a giant!
+Madame! Madame! It was a sea fight that will go down through the ages!
+Russia was ringing with it!
+
+“Do you know anyone in the English navy?”
+
+I said I had two brothers in the senior service, a little later and I
+might have said three.
+
+“Then tell them,” said he earnestly, “we Russian sailors are proud to be
+Allies of a nation that breeds such men as manned the _Gloucester!_”
+
+The Finnish border was soon reached and he left us, and the day went
+on and discipline I suppose relaxed, for I brought Buchanan into the
+carriage and made friends with the people who surrounded me. And then
+once again did I bless the foresight of the Polish Jewess in Kharbin who
+had impressed upon me the necessity for two kettles. They were a godsend
+in that carriage. We commandeered glasses, we got hot water at wayside
+stations and I made tea for all within reach, and a cup of tea to a
+thirsty traveller, especially if that traveller be a woman, is certainly
+a road to that traveller's good graces.
+
+Finland is curiously different from Russia. They used to believe in the
+old sailing-ship days that every Finn was a magician. Whether they are
+magicians or not, they have a beautiful country, though its beauty is
+as different from that of the Amur as the Thames is from the Murray
+in far-away Australia. Gone were the wide spaces of the earth and the
+primitive peoples. We wandered through cultivated lands, we passed lake
+and river and woods, crossed a wonderful salmon river, skirted Finland's
+inland sea: here and there was a castle dominating the farmhouses and
+little towns, the trees were turning, just touched gently by Autumn's
+golden fingers, and I remembered I had watched the tender green of
+the spring awakening on the other side of the world, more, I had been
+travelling ever since. It made me feel weary--weary. And yet it was good
+to note the difference in these lands that I had journeyed over. The air
+here was clear, clear as it had been in China; it had that curious
+charm that is over scenery viewed through a looking-glass, a charm I can
+express in no other words. Unlike the great rivers of Russia, the little
+rivers brawled over the stones, companionable little streams that 'made
+you feel you might own them, on their banks spend a pleasant afternoon,
+returning to a cosy fire and a cheery home when the dusk was falling.
+
+And this evening, our first day out, we, the little company in my
+carriage, fell into trouble.
+
+We spoke among us many tongues, English, French, German, Polish,
+Russian, Lettish, and one whose tongue was polyglot thought in Yiddish
+and came from the streets, the “mean streets” of London, but not one
+amongst us spoke Finnish, the language of the magicians, or could even
+understand one word of it. This was unfortunate, for the Films either
+spoke no language but their own or had a grudge against us and declined
+to understand us. That didn't prevent them from turning us out that
+night in a railway station in the heart of Finland and leaving us to
+discover for ourselves that every hotel in the little town was full
+to overflowing! Once more I was faced with it--a night in a railway
+station. But my predicament was not so bad shared with others who spoke
+my language. There was the Oxford man and the musician with a twang,
+there was the wife of an American lawyer with her little boy and the
+wife of an American doctor with her little girls--they all spoke English
+of sorts, used it habitually--and there were four Austrian girls making
+their way back to some place in Hungary. Of course, technically, they
+were our enemies, while the Americans were neutral, but we all went in
+together. The Russian-American musician had been in Leipsic and was most
+disgustingly full of the mighty strength of Germany.
+
+The refreshment-rooms were shut, the whole place was in darkness, but
+it was a mild night, with a gorgeous September moon sailing out into the
+clear sky, and personally I should not have minded spreading my rugs and
+sleeping outside. I should have liked it, in fact, but the tales of the
+insecurity of Siberia still lingered in my consciousness, and when the
+Oxford man said that one of the porters would put us up in his house I
+gladly went along with all the others and, better still, took along my
+bundles of rugs and cushions.
+
+The places that I have slept in! That porter had a quaint little wooden
+house set in a garden and the whole place might have been lifted bodily
+out of Hans Andersen. We had the freedom of the kitchen, a very clean
+kitchen, and we made tea there and ate what we had brought in our
+baskets. The Austrian girls had a room to themselves, I lent my rugs to
+the young men and they made shift with them in the entrance porch, and
+the best sitting-room was turned over to the women and children and me.
+Two very small beds were put up very close together and into them
+got the two women and three children, and I was accommodated with a
+remarkably Lilliputian sofa. I am not a big woman, but it would not hold
+me, and as for Buchanan, he looked at me in disgust, said a bed was a
+proper place for a dog and promptly jumped on it. But it was full to
+overflowing of women and children sleeping the sleep of the utterly
+weary and he as promptly jumped off again and the next moment was
+sitting up in front of my sofa with his little front paws hanging down.
+He was a disgusted dog. He always begged when he wanted me to give him
+something, and now he begged to show me he was really in need of a bed.
+There were great uncurtained windows on two sides of that room, there
+were flowers and ferns in pots growing in it, and the full moon strcamed
+in and showed me everything: the crowded, rather gimcrack furniture, the
+bucket that contained water for us to wash in in the morning, the bed
+full of sleeping women and children and the little black and white dog
+sitting up in protest against what he considered the discomforts of
+the situation. What I found hard to bear were the hermetically sealed
+windows--the women had been afraid of draughts for the children--so as
+soon as that night wore through and daylight came stealing through the
+windows I dressed quietly and, stepping across the sleeping young men at
+the door, went outside with Buchanan to explore Finland.
+
+Our porter evidently ran some sort of tea gardens, for there were large
+swings set up, swings that would hold four and six people at once, and
+we tried them, much to Buchanan's discomfiture. We went for a walk up
+the street, a country town street of little wooden houses set in little
+gardens, and over all lay a Sabbath calm. It was Sunday, and the people
+slept, and the autumn sunlight made the whole place glorious. There is
+such rest and peace about the autumn: everything has been accomplished
+and now is the fullness of time. I never know which season I like best,
+each has its own beauty, but I shall always think of Finland as a land
+of little things, charming little things bathed in the autumn sunlight.
+
+When the whole party were awake we found some difficulty in getting
+something to eat. The porter could not supply us, and at the station,
+where they were vigorously sweeping--the Finns are very clean--they
+utterly declined to open the first-class refreshment-rooms. We could
+only get something to eat in the third-class. There was a great feeling
+of camaraderie and good-fellowship among us all, and here I remember the
+lawyer's wife insisted upon us all having breakfast at her expense, for
+according to her she owed us all something. It was she who added to our
+party the Yiddish woman, a fat, square little person hung round with
+innumerable bundles, carrying as she did a month's provisions, enough to
+last her across to America, for she was a very strict Jew and could eat
+nothing but _kosher_ killed meat and _kosher_ bread, whatever that may
+be. I know it made her a care, for a month's provisions make something
+of a parcel, and when bedding and a certain amount of clothing has to be
+carried as well, and no porters are available, the resulting baggage
+is apt to be a nuisance. All along the line this fat little person was
+liable to come into view, toiling under the weight of her many bundles.
+She would be found jammed in a doorway; she would subside exhausted in
+the middle of a railway platform--the majority of her bundles would be
+retrieved as they fell downstairs--or she blocked the little gateway
+through which passengers were admitted one by one, and the resulting
+bad language in all the tongues of Northern Europe probably caused the
+Recording Angel a good deal of unnecessary trouble. But the Oxford
+man and the musician were always ready to help her, and she must have
+blessed the day the American lawyer's wife added her to a party which
+had such kindly, helpful young men among its members.
+
+I found presently that the Oxford man and I were the moneyed members of
+the party, the only ones who were paying our way; the others, far richer
+people than I, I daresay, had been caught in the whirlpool of the war
+and were being passed on from one American consul to another, unable
+to get money from their own country. Apparently this was rather an
+unpleasant process, meaning a certain scarcity of cash, as an American
+consul naturally cannot afford to spend lavishly on his distressed
+subjects. It was the irony of fate that some of them were evidently not
+accustomed to looking too carefully after the pennies.
+
+It took us two days to cross Finland, and towards the end of the
+journey, after we had got out to have tea at a wayside station that
+blossomed out into ham and tea and bread and honey, we made friends with
+a certain Finn whose father had been a Scotsman. At last we were able to
+communicate with the people of the country! Also I'm afraid we told him
+in no measured terms that we did not think much of his compatriots.
+That was rather a shame, for he was exceedingly kind. He was going to
+England, he told us, to buy sheepskins for the Russian army, and he took
+great interest in my trouble about Buchanan. He examined him carefully,
+came to the conclusion he was a perfectly healthy little dog and
+suggested I should lend him to him till we reached Sweden, as he was
+perfectly well known to the authorities, and Finnish dogs would be
+allowed to enter Sweden, while a dog that had come from Russia would
+certainly be barred. I loved that man for his kindly interest and I
+handed over Buchanan in his basket without a qualm.
+
+We were really quite a goodly company when in the dusk of the evening
+we steamed into Raumo. The station seemed deserted, but we didn't worry
+much about that, as our new Finnish friend suggested the best thing to
+do was to go straight down to the steamer, the _Uleaborg_, a Finnish
+ship, and have our dinner and spend the night there. Even if she did not
+go that night, and he did not think she would, we could rest and sleep
+comfortably. We all agreed, and as the train went on down to the wharf
+we appointed him our delegate to go on board and see what arrangements
+he could make for us. The minute the train stopped, off he went, and
+Buchanan went with him. I was getting easier in my mind about Buchanan
+now, the thought of drugging him had been spoiling my pleasure in the
+scenery. And then we waited.
+
+It began to rain, and through the mist which hid the moonlight to-night
+we could see the loom of the ships; they were all white and the lights
+from the cabin ports showed dim through the misty rain. The wharf was
+littered with goods, barrels and bales, and as there was more than one
+steamer, and apparently no one to guide us, or the Scots Finn had not
+returned, we tackled the Russian _gens d'arme_ who seemed to be in
+charge of the wharf and who was leaning up against the train.
+
+“Can you speak Finnish?”
+
+“Ah! now you have my secret first shot,” said he, with a smile. He,
+their guardian, was no more equal to communicating with these people
+than we were. And then, to our dismay, before our messenger could
+return, the train which considered not a parcel of refugees put on steam
+and started back to Raumo!
+
+A dozen voices were raised in frantic protest, but we might as well have
+spared our breath, the train naturally paid no attention to us, but went
+back at full speed to the town proper. It was a comfort when it stopped,
+for, for all we knew, it might have gone straight back to Petrograd
+itself. And Buchanan, shut up in a basket, was left behind, I knew not
+where! They dumped us on that station, bag and baggage, in the rain. We
+were worse off here than we were at the wharf, for there the steamer and
+comfort at least loomed in the distance. Here was only a bare and empty
+station, half-a-dozen men who looked at us as if we were so many wild
+beasts on show, and a telephone to the wharf which we were allowed to
+use as long as we pleased, but as far as I could gather the only result
+was a flow of bad language in many tongues. We might be of many nations,
+but one and all were we agreed in our dislike of the Finns and all
+things Finnish. If I remember rightly, in the Middle Ages, most people
+feared and disliked magicians.
+
+We managed to get our baggage into the hall of the station, whieh was
+dimly lighted by electric lights, and in anticipation of our coming they
+had filled up the station water-carafes. But that was all the provision
+they had made. If there was a refreshment-room it had been locked up
+long ago, and as far as we could make out, now our interpreter had gone,
+there were no hotels or boarding-houses. Our Scots Finn had said it was
+impossible to stay in Raumo. We looked at one another in a dismay in
+which there was, after all, something comic. This that had befallen us
+was the sort of aggravating thing a mischievous magician would cause
+to happen. We were tired and hungry and bad-tempered, and I for one was
+anxious about my little dog and I began to seek, with cash in my hand,
+somebody who would find me Buchanan.
+
+How I made my wants known I don't now realise, but money does wonders,
+and presently there came in a man bearing his basket and a rapturous
+little dog was let out into the room. Where he had been I have not the
+faintest idea, and I could not ask, only I gathered that the man who
+brought him professed himself perfectly willing to go on fetching little
+dogs all night at the same rate, and the musician remarked in his high
+nasal twang that he supposed it was no good expecting any more sympathy
+from Mrs Gaunt, she was content now she had her little dog. As a
+matter of fact, now that my mind was at ease, I was equal to giving my
+attention to other people's woes.
+
+We tackled the men round us.
+
+Where was our messenger?
+
+No one knew.
+
+Where could we get something to eat?
+
+Blank stare. They were not accustomed to foreigners yet at Raumo. The
+station had only just been opened. The musician took out his violin
+and its wailing tones went echoing and re-echoing through the hall. The
+audience looked as if they thought we had suddenly gone mad, and one man
+came forward and by signs told us we must leave the station. That was
+all very well, we were not enamoured of the station, but the port we
+judged to be at least four miles off, and no one was prepared to start
+down an unknown road in the dark and pouring rain. There was a long
+consultation, and we hoped it meant food, but it didn't. Out of a
+wilderness of words we at last arrived at the interesting fact that if
+we cared to subscribe five marks one of these gentlemen was prepared to
+conduct us to the police station. There appeared to be no wild desire on
+the part of any of us to go to the police station, the violin let out a
+screech of scornful derision, and one of the officials promptly turned
+off the electric lights and left us in darkness!
+
+There were many of us, and vexations shared are amusing. We laughed,
+how we laughed, and the violin went wailing up and down the octaves. No
+wonder the Finns looked at us askance. Even the darkness did not turn us
+out, for we had nowhere else to go, and finally a man who spoke English
+turned up, the agent for the Swedish steamer. He had thought there would
+be no passengers and had gone to bed, to be roused up, I presume by the
+stationmaster, as the only person likely to be capable of dealing with
+these troublesome people who were disturbing the peace of this Finnish
+village.
+
+We flew at him--there were about a dozen of us--and showed our tickets
+for the Finnish steamer, and he smiled in a superior manner and said we
+should be captured by Germans.
+
+We didn't believe much in the Germans, for we had many of us come
+through a country which certainly believed itself invulnerable. Then
+a woman travelling with her two daughters, Americans of the Americans,
+though their mother spoke English with a most extraordinary accent,
+proclaimed aloud that if there was a Swedish steamer she was going by it
+as she was afraid of “dose Yarmans.” She and her daughters would give up
+their tickets and go by the Swedish steamer. Protest was useless. If
+we liked to break up the party we could. She was not going by the
+_Uleaborg_. Besides, where were we to sleep that night? The Finnish
+steamer was three or four miles away down at the wharf and we were here
+along with the Swedish agent.
+
+The Swedish agent seized the opening thus given. There were no hotels;
+there were no boarding-houses; no, it was not possible to get anything
+to eat at that hour of the night. Something to drink? Well, in surprised
+tones, there was surely plenty of water in the station--there was--and
+he would arrange for a train for us to sleep in. The train at ten
+o'clock next morning would take us down to the steamer.
+
+We retired to that train. Only one of the carriages was lighted, and
+that by general consent we gave up to the lady whose fear of the Germans
+had settled our affairs for us, and she in return asked us to share
+what provisions we had left. We pooled our stores--I don't think I
+had anything left, but the others shared with me--and we dined, not
+unsatisfactorily, off sardines, black bread, sausages and apples. The
+only person left out of the universal friendliness was the Yiddish lady.
+Out of her plenty she did not offer to share.
+
+“She cannot,” said the musician. “She is saving for the voyage to
+America. You see, she can eat none of the shipboard food.” He too came
+of the same strict order of Jew, and his grandparents, with whom he
+had been staying in Little Russia, had provided him with any amount of
+sausage made of _kosher_ meat, but when he was away from his own people
+he was evidently anything but strict and ate what pleased him. He shared
+with the rest of us. Possibly he was right about the Yiddish woman,
+and I suppose it did not really do us any harm to go short till next
+morning, but it looked very greedy, and I still wonder at the nerve of
+a woman who could sit down and eat sausage and bread and all manner
+of such-like things while within a stone's-throw of her people who had
+helped her in every way they could were cutting up apples and pears into
+quarters and audibly wishing they had a little more bread. The Oxford
+man and musician had always helped her, but she could not find it in her
+heart to spare them one crumb. I admire her nerve. In America I doubt
+not she will acquire wealth.
+
+After supper Buchanan and I retired to a dark carriage, wrapped
+ourselves in my eiderdown and slept till with break of day two capable
+but plain Finnish damsels came in to clean the train. I think the
+sailors' ideas must have been wrong: every Finn cannot be a magician
+else they would not allow all their women to be so plain. I arose and
+dressed and prepared to go out and see if Raumo could produce coffee
+and rolls, but as I was starting the violinist in the next compartment
+protested.
+
+“I wouldn't. Guess you haven't got the hang of these Finnish trains. It
+might take it into its head to go on. Can't you wait till we reach the
+steamer.”
+
+I gave the matter my consideration, and while I was considering the
+train did take it into its head to go on four hours before its appointed
+time. On it went, and at last in the fresh northern dewy morning, with
+the sun just newly risen, sending his long low rays streaming across the
+dancing waters of the bay, we steamed up to the wharf, and there lay the
+white ships that were bound for Sweden, the other side of the Baltic.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII--CAPTURED BY GERMANS
+
+But we couldn't get on the steamer at once. For some reason or other
+there were Customs delays and everything we possessed had to be examined
+before we were allowed to leave the country, but--and we hailed them
+with delight--under the goods sheds were set out little tables where we
+could buy coffee and rolls and butter and eggs. It was autumn now, and
+for all the sunshine here in such high latitudes there was a nip in the
+air and the hot coffee was welcome. We met, too, our friend of the night
+before, the Scots Finn, but the glamour had departed from him and we
+paid no attention to his suggestion that the _Goathied_, the Swedish
+steamer, was very much smaller than the _Uleaborg_ and that there was
+a wind getting up and we would all be deadly sick. We said we preferred
+being sick to being captured by the Germans. And he laughed at us. There
+was no need to fear the Germans in the Baltic so far north.
+
+It was midday before we were allowed on board the little white ship,
+but still she lingered. I was weary, weary, even the waiting seemed a
+weariness so anxious was I to end my long journeying and get home. And
+then suddenly I felt very near it, for my ears were greeted by the good
+broad Doric of Scotland, and there came trooping on board five and fifty
+men, part of the crews of four English ships that had been caught by the
+tide of war and laid up at Petrograd and Kronstadt. An opportunity had
+been found and they were going back by way of Sweden, leaving their
+ships behind till after the war. We did not think the war _could_ last
+very long on board that steamer.
+
+The Scotsmen had evidently been expected, for on the deck in the bows
+of the little steamer--she was only about three hundred tons--were laid
+long tables spread with ample supplies of boiled sausages, suet pudding
+and potatoes, and very appetising it looked, though in all my wanderings
+I had never met boiled sausages before. Down to the feast sat the
+sailor-men, and our Yiddish friend voiced aloud my feelings.
+
+“Anglisky,” said she unexpectedly, “nice Anglisky boys. Guten appetite,
+nice Anglisky boys!”
+
+They were very cheery, poor boys, and though they were not accustomed to
+her sort in Leith, they received her remarks with appreciative grins.
+
+As we started the captain came down upon me.
+
+“Who does that dog belong to?” he asked angrily. Everyone on board spoke
+English. And before I could answer--I wasn't particularly anxious to
+answer--he added: “He can't be landed in Sweden.”
+
+My heart sank. What would they do to my poor little dog? I was
+determined they shouldn't harm him unless they harmed me first, and if
+he had to go back to Russia--well, I would go too; but the thought of
+going back made me very miserable, and I made solemn vows to myself
+that if I by some miracle got through safely, never, never again would I
+travel with a dog.
+
+And while I was thinking about it there came along a junior officer,
+mate, purser, he might have been the cook for all I know, and he said:
+“If you have bought this dog in Finland, or even on board the steamer,
+he can land.”
+
+It was light in darkness, and I do not mind stating that where my dog is
+concerned I have absolutely no morals, if it is to save him from
+pain. He had been my close companion for over a year and I knew he was
+perfectly healthy.
+
+“I will give you a good price for him,” said I. “He is a pretty little
+dog.”
+
+“Wait,” he said, “wait. By and by I see.”
+
+Just as we got out of the bay the captain announced that he was not
+going to Stockholm at all, but to Gefle, farther north. Why, he did not
+know. Such were his orders. In ordinary times to find yourself being
+landed at Liverpool, say, when you had booked for London might be
+upsetting, but in war time it is all in the day's work, and sailors and
+crowded passengers only laughed.
+
+“Let's awa',” said the sailors. “Let's awa'.”
+
+The air was clear and clean, clean as if every speck of dust had been
+washed away by the rain of the preceding night; the little islands at
+the mouth of the bay stood out green and fresh in the blue sea, but the
+head wind broke it up into little waves, and the ship was empty of cargo
+and tossed about like a cork. The blue sea and snow-white clouds, the
+sunlight on the dancing waves mattered not to us; all we wanted, those
+of us who were not in favour of drowning at once and so ending
+our misery, was to land in Sweden. Buchanan sat up looking at me
+reproachfully, then he too subsided and was violently sick, and I
+watched the passengers go one by one below to hide their misery, even
+those who had vowed they never were sea-sick. I stayed on deck because I
+felt I was happier there in the fresh air, and so I watched the sunset.
+It was a gorgeous sunset; the clouds piled themselves one upon the other
+and the red sun stained them deepest crimson. It was so striking that I
+forgot my sea-sick qualms.
+
+And then suddenly I became aware there were more ships upon the sea
+than ours, one in particular, a black, low-lying craft, was steaming
+all round us, sending out defiant hoots. There were three other ships
+farther off, and I went to the rail to look over the darkening sea.
+
+Between us and the sunset was the low-lying craft, so close I could see
+the gaiters of a man in uniform who stood on a platform a little higher
+than his fellows; the little decks were crowded with men and a long gun
+was pointed at us. It was all black, clean-cut, silhouetted against the
+crimson sunset.
+
+We were slowed down, barely moving, the waves slop-slopped against our
+sides, and the passengers came scrambling up.
+
+“Germans! Yarmans!” they cried, and from the torpedo boat came a voice
+through a megaphone.
+
+“What are you doing with all those fine young men on board?” it asked in
+excellent English, the language of the sea.
+
+The black torpedo boat was lying up against us.
+
+Sea-sickness was forgotten, and the violinist came to me.
+
+“They are going to take the young men,” he said, and he was sorry and
+yet pleased, because all the time he had been full of the might of the
+Germans.
+
+I thought of the Oxford man in the very prime of his manhood.
+
+“Have you told him?”
+
+“Guess I didn't dare,” said he.
+
+“Well, I think you'd better, or I'll go myself. They are going to search
+the ship and he won't like being taken unawares.”
+
+So he went down, and presently they came up together. The Oxford man
+had been very sea-sick and he thought all the row was caused by the ship
+having struck a mine, and he felt so ill that if things were to end
+that way he was accepting it calmly, but being captured by Germans was
+a different matter. He was the only Englishman in the first class, and
+when we heard they were coming for the young men we felt sure he would
+have to go.
+
+Leaning over the rail of the _Goathied_, we could look down upon the
+black decks of the torpedo boat, blacker than ever now in the dusk of
+the evening, for the sun sank and the darkness was coming quickly. A
+rope ladder was flung over and up came a couple of German officers. They
+spoke perfect English, and they talked English all the time. They went
+below, demanded the passenger list and studied it carefully.
+
+“We must take those Englishmen,” said the leader, and then he went
+through every cabin to see that none was concealed.
+
+The captain made remonstrance, as much remonstrance as an unarmed
+man can make with three cruisers looking on and a torpedo boat close
+alongside.
+
+“It is war,” said the German curtly, and in the dusk he ranged the
+sailor-men along the decks, all fifty-five of them, and picked out
+those between the ages of nineteen and forty. Indeed one luckless lad of
+seventeen was taken, but he was a strapping fellow and they said if he
+was not twenty-one he looked it.
+
+It was tragic. Of course there must have been treachery at work or how
+should the German squadron have known that the Englishmen were crossing
+at this very hour? But a few moments before they had been counting
+on getting home and now they were bound for a German prison! In the
+gathering darkness they stood on the decks, and the short, choppy sea
+beat the iron torpedo boat against the ship's side, and the captain
+in the light from a lantern hung against the little house looked the
+picture of despair.
+
+“She cannot stand it! She cannot stand it much longer!”
+
+Crash! Crash! Crash!
+
+“She cannot stand it! She was never built for it! And she is old now!”
+
+But the German paid no attention. The possible destruction of
+a passenger ship was as nothing weighed in the balance with the
+acquirement of six and thirty fighting men.
+
+They were so quiet. They handed letters and small bundles and sometimes
+some of their pay to their comrades or to the passengers looking on and
+they dropped down that ladder. No one but a sailor could have gone down,
+for the ships heaved up and down, and sometimes they were bumping and
+sometimes there was a wide belt of heaving dark water between them,
+bridged only by that frail ladder. One by one they went, landing on the
+hostile deck, and were greeted with what were manifestly jeers at their
+misfortune. The getting down was difficult and more than once a bundle
+was dropped into the sea and there went up a sigh that was like a wail,
+for the passengers looking on thought the man was gone, and I do not
+think there would have been any hope for him between the ships.
+
+Darker and darker it grew. On the _Goathied_ there were the lighted
+decks, but below on the torpedo boat the men were dim figures, German
+and English undiscernible in the gloom. On the horizon loomed the sombre
+bulk of the cruisers, eaeh with a bright light aloft, and all around
+was the heaving sea, the white tops of the choppy waves showing sinister
+against the darker hollows.
+
+“Anglisky boys! Anglisky boys!” wailed the Yiddish woman, and her voice
+cut into the waiting silence. It was their dirge, the dirge for the
+long, long months of imprisonment that lay before them. And we were
+hoping for a short war! I could hear the Oxford man drawing a long
+breath occasionally, steeling himself against the moment when his turn
+would come.
+
+It never came. Why, I do not know. Perhaps they did not realise his
+nationality, for being a Scotsman he had entered himself as “British” on
+the passenger list, and “British” was not such a well-known word as the
+sons of Britain gathering from all corners of the earth to fight the
+common foe have made it to-day.
+
+“Puir chappies! Puir chappies! A'm losin' guid comrades,” sighed an
+elderly man leaning over the side and shouting a farewell to “Andra'.”
+
+I murmured something about “after the war,” but he cut me short sternly.
+The general opinion was that they would be put to stoke German warships
+and as the British were sure to beat them they would go down and be
+ingloriously lost. The thought must have been a bitter one to the men on
+that torpedo boat. And they took it like heroes.
+
+The last man was gone, and as the torpedo boat drew away a sort of
+moan went up from the bereft passenger ship and we went on our way, the
+captain relieved that we were free before a hole had been knocked in our
+side.
+
+He was so thankful that no worse thing had befallen him that he became
+quite communicative.
+
+“They are gone to take the _Uleaborg_,” he said, “and they will blow her
+up and before to-morrow morning Raumo will be in flames!”
+
+In those days Sweden had great faith in the might of Germany. I hope
+that faith is getting a little shaken at last. Still that captain
+declared his intention of warning all the ships he could. There were two
+Finnish ships of which he knew that he said were coming out of Stockholm
+that night and he was going to look for them and warn them.
+
+And so the night was alive with brilliant electric light signals and
+wild hootings from the steam siren, and he found them at last, all
+honour to him for a kindly sailor-man, and the Finnish ships were warned
+and went back to Sweden.
+
+But no matter how sorry one is for the sufferings of others, the feeling
+does not in any way tend to lessen one's own private woes. Rather are
+they deepened because sympathy and help is not so easily come by when
+men's thoughts are occupied by more--to them more--important matters.
+And so I could not go to sleep because of my anxiety about my little
+dog. Only for the moment did the taking of the men and my pity for them
+drive the thought of his predicament from my mind.
+
+We were nearing Sweden, every moment was bringing us closer, and as yet
+I had made no arrangements for his safety. He lay curled up on the seat,
+hiding his little snub nose and his little white paws with his bushy
+tail, for the autumn night was chilly, and I lay fearing a prison for
+him too, when he would think his mistress whom he had trusted had failed
+him. All the crew were so excited over the kidnapping of the men that my
+meditated nefarious transaction was thrust into the background. It was
+hopeless to think that any one of them would give ear to the woes of
+a little dog, so at last, very reluctantly, I gave him, much to his
+surprise, a sulphonal tablet. I dozed a little and when by my watch it
+was four o'clock Buchanan was as lively as a cricket. Sulphonal did not
+seem to have affected him in any way. I gave him another, and he said it
+was extremely nasty and he was surprised at my conduct, but otherwise it
+made no difference to him.
+
+In the grey of the early morning we drew up to the wharf and were
+told to get all our belongings on to the lower deck for the Customs to
+examine them, and Buchanan was as cheerful and as wide awake as if he
+had not swallowed two sulphonal tablets. With a sinking heart I gave him
+another, put him in his basket and, carrying it down to the appointed
+place, threw a rug over it and piled my two suit-cases on top of it. How
+thankful I was there was such a noisy crowd, going over and over again
+in many tongues the events of the night. They wrangled too about their
+luggage and about their places, and above all their din I could hear
+poor little James Buchanan whining and whimpering and asking why his
+mistress was treating him so badly.
+
+Then came the Customs officer and my heart stood still. He poked an
+investigatory hand into my suit-case and asked me--I understood him
+quite well--to show him what was underneath. I could hear Buchanan if he
+could not, and I pretended that I thought he wanted to know what was at
+the bottom of my suit-case and I turned over the things again and again.
+He grew impatient, but luckily so did all the people round, and as a
+woman dragged him away by force to look at her things so that she could
+get them ashore I noticed with immense relief that the sailors were
+beginning to take the things to the wharf. Luckily I had taken care the
+night before to get some Swedish money--I was taking no chances--and a
+little palm oil made that sailor prompt to attend to my wants. Blessings
+on the confusion that reigned around! Two minutes later on Swedish
+soil I was piling my gear on a little hand-cart with a lot of luggage
+belonging to the people with whom I had come across Finland and it was
+bound to the railway station.
+
+“You have left your umbrella,” cried the violinist.
+
+“I don't care,” said I. I had lost my only remaining hat for that
+matter, goodness knows what had become of it, but I was not going to put
+myself within range of those Customs men again. What did I care about
+appearances! I had passed the very worst milestone on my journey when I
+got James Buchanan into Sweden; I had awakened from the nightmare that
+had haunted me ever since I had taken my ticket in Petrograd, and I
+breathed freely.
+
+At the railway station we left our luggage, but I got Buchanan's basket,
+and we all went across the road to a restaurant just waking to business,
+for we badly wanted breakfast. I loved those passengers. I shall always
+think of them with gratitude. They were all so kind and sympathetic and
+the restaurant folks, who were full of the seizing of the Englishmen on
+a Swedish ship--so are joys and sorrows mingled--must have thought
+we were a little mad when we all stood round and, before ordering
+breakfast, opened a basket and let out a pretty little black and white
+dog.
+
+And then I'm sorry to say we laughed, even I laughed, laughed with
+relief, though I there and then took a vow never again to drug a dog,
+for poor little James Buchanan was drunk. He wobbled as he walked, and
+he could not make up his mind to lie down like a sensible dog and sleep
+if off; he was conversational and silly and had to be restrained. Poor
+little James Buchanan! But he was a Swedish dog, and I ate my breakfast
+with appetite, and we all speculated as to what had become of the Scots
+Finn who had failed me.
+
+Gefle reminded me of Hans Andersen even more than Finland had done. It
+had neat streets and neat houses and neat trees and neat and fair-haired
+women, and Gefle was seething with excitement because the _Goathied_
+had been stopped. It was early days then, and Sweden had not become
+accustomed to the filibustering ways of the German, so every poster had
+the tale writ large upon it, in every place they were talking about it,
+and we, the passengers who walked about the streets, were the observed
+of all observers.
+
+I was nearing the end of my long journey, very near now, and it did not
+seem to me to matter much what I did. We were all--the new friends I had
+made on the way from Petrograd--pretty untidy and travel-stained, and
+if I wore a lace veil on my hair, the violinist had a huge rent in his
+shoe, and, having no money to buy more, he went into a shoe-shop and had
+it mended. I, with Buchanan a little recovered, sat beside him while it
+was done.
+
+And in the afternoon we went by train through the neat and tidy country,
+Selma Lagerlof's country, to Stockholm. I felt as if I were resting,
+rested, because I was anxious no longer about Buchanan, who slumbered
+peacefully on my knee; and if anybody thinks I am making an absurd fuss
+about a little dog, let them remember he had been my faithful companion
+and friend in far corners of the earth when there were none but
+alien faces around me, and had stood many a time between me and utter
+loneliness and depression.
+
+We discussed these sturdy Swedes. The Chicago woman's daughter, with the
+pertness and aptness of the American flapper, summed them up quickly.
+
+“The men are handsome,” she said, looking round, “but the women--well,
+the women lack something--I call them tame.”
+
+And I knew she had hit them off to a “T.” After that I never looked at
+a neat and tidy Swedish woman with her hair, that was fair without that
+touch of red that makes for gold--gives life--coiled at the back of
+her head and her mild eyes looking out placidly on the world around her
+without feeling that I too call her tame.
+
+Stockholm for the most of us was the parting of the ways. The American
+consul took charge of the people who had come across Finland with us
+and the Oxford man and I alone went to the Continental Hotel, which, I
+believe, is the best hotel in that city. We had an evening meal together
+in a room that reminded me very much of the sort of places we used to
+call coffee palaces in Melbourne when I was a girl, and I met here again
+for the first time for many a long day tea served in cups with milk and
+cream. It was excellent, and I felt I was indeed nearing home. Things
+were getting commonplace and the adventure was going out of life. But I
+was tired and I didn't want adventure any more. There comes a time when
+we have a surfeit of it.
+
+I remember my sister once writing from her home somewhere in the Malay
+jungle that her husband was away and it was awkward because every night
+a leopard came and took up his position under the house, and though she
+believed he was only after the fowls she didn't like it because of the
+children. If ever she complains that she hasn't had enough adventure
+in her life I remind her of that and she says that is not the sort of
+adventure she has craved. That is always the way. The adventure is
+not always in the form we want. I seemed to have had plenty, but I was
+weary. I wanted to sit in a comfortable English garden in the autumn
+sunshine and forget that such things as trains and ships--perish the
+thought of a mule litter--existed. I counted the hours. It couldn't be
+long now. We came down into the hall to find that I had been entered on
+the board containing the names of the hotel guests as the Oxford man's
+wife. Poor young man! It was a little rough on him, for I hadn't even a
+hat, and I felt I looked dilapidated.
+
+I was too. That night in the sleeper crossing to Christiania the woman
+who had the bottom berth spoke excellent English. She was going to some
+baths and she gave some advice.
+
+“You are very ill, Madame,” said she, “very ill.”
+
+I said no, I was only a little tired.
+
+“I think,” she went on, “you are very ill, and if you are wise when you
+get to Christiania you will go to the Hotel Victoria and go to bed.”
+
+I was horrified. Because I felt I must go to England as quickly as
+possible, and I said so.
+
+“The train does not go to Bergen till night,” said she. “Stay in bed all
+day.” And then as we crossed the border a Customs officer came into the
+carriage. Now I could easily have hidden Buchanan, but I thought as
+a Swedish dog all his troubles were over, and he sat up there looking
+pertly at the uniformed man and saying “What are you doing here?”
+
+“Have you got a certificate of health for that dog?” asked the man
+sternly.
+
+I said “No,” remembering how very carefully I had kept him out of the
+way of anybody likely to be interested in his health.
+
+“Then,” said he, “you must telegraph to the police at Christiania. They
+will meet you and take him to a veterinary surgeon.”
+
+“And after?” I asked, trembling, my Swedish friend translating.
+
+“If his health is good they give him back to you. You take a room at
+a hotel and if his health is good he will be allowed to skip about the
+streets.”
+
+I felt pretty sure he would be allowed to skip about the streets and
+I took a room at the Victoria, the Oxford man kindly seeing us
+through--they put us down as Mr and Mrs Gaunt here--and James Buchanan,
+who had been taken possession of by the police at the station, came back
+to me, accompanied by a Norwegian policeman who demanded five shillings
+and gave me a certificate that he was a perfectly healthy little dog.
+
+I want to go back to Norway when I am not tired and fed up with
+travelling, for Christiania struck me as a dear little home-like town
+that one could love; and the railway journey across the Dovrefield and
+even the breakfast baskets that came in in the early morning were things
+to be remembered. I saw snow up in those mountains, whether the first
+snow of the coming winter or snow left over from the winter before, I
+do not know, but the views were lovely, and I asked myself why I went
+wandering in far-away places when there were places like this so close
+at home and so easily reached. So near home. We were so near home. I
+could think of nothing else. I told Buchanan about it and he licked my
+hand sympathetically and told me always to remember that wherever I was
+was good enough for him. And then we arrived at Bergen, a little wooden
+city set at the head of a fiord among the hills, and we went on board
+the _Haakon VII._, bound for Newcastle-on-Tyne.
+
+And then the most memorable thing happened, the most memorable thing
+in what for me was a wondrous journey. All across the Old World we had
+come, almost from the very farthest corner of the Old World, a wonderful
+journey not to be lightly undertaken nor soon forgotten. And yet as I
+went on board that ship I felt what a very little thing it was. I have
+been feeling it ever since. A Norwegian who spoke good English was
+there, going back to London, and, talking to another man, he mentioned
+in a casual manner something about the English contingent that had
+landed on the Continent.
+
+It startled me. Not in my lifetime, nor in the lifetime of my father,
+indeed I think my grandfathers must have been very little boys when the
+last English troops landed in France.
+
+“English troops!” I cried in astonishment.
+
+The Norwegian turned to me, smiling.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “But of course they are only evidence of good will.
+Their use is negligible!”
+
+And I agreed. I actually agreed. Britain's rôle, it seemed to me, was on
+the sea!
+
+And in four years I have seen Britain grow into a mighty military power.
+I have seen the men of my own people come crowding across the ocean to
+help the Motherland; I have seen my sister's young son pleased to be a
+soldier in that army, just one of the proud and humble crowd that go to
+uphold Britain's might. And all this has grown since I stood there at
+the head of the Norwegian fiord with the western sun sparkling on the
+little wavelets and heard a friendly foreigner talk about the little
+army that was “negligible.”
+
+I was tired. I envied those who could work and exert themselves, but I
+could do nothing. If the future of the nation had depended on me I could
+have done nothing. I was coming back to strenuous times and I longed
+for rest. I wanted a house of my own; I wanted a seat in the garden; I
+wanted to see the flowers grow, to listen to the birds singing in the
+trees. All that our men are fighting for to keep sacred and safe, I
+longed for.
+
+And I have had it, thanks to those fighting men who have sacrificed
+themselves for me, I have had it. It is good to sit in the garden
+where the faithful little friend I shall never forget has his last
+resting-place; it is good to see the roses grow, to listen to the lark
+and the cuckoo and the thrush; but there is something in our race that
+cannot keep still for long, the something, I suppose, that sent my
+grandfather to the sea, my father to Australia, and scattered his sons
+and daughters all over the world. I had a letter from a soldier brother
+the other day. The war holds him, of course, but nevertheless he wrote,
+quoting:
+
+          “Salt with desire of travel
+
+               Are my lips; and the wind's wild singing
+
+          Lifts my heart to the ocean
+
+               And the sight of the great ships swinging.”
+
+
+And my heart echoed: “And I too! And I too!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Broken Journey, Illustrated, by Mary Gaunt
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 54402 ***
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Broken Journey, Illustrated, by Mary Gaunt

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-Title: A Broken Journey, Illustrated

-       Wanderings from the Hoang-Ho Yo the Island of Saghalien

-              and the Upper Reaches of The Amur River

-

-Author: Mary Gaunt

-

-Release Date: March 21, 2017 [EBook #54402]

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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BROKEN JOURNEY, ILLUSTRATED ***

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-      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />

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-    <h1>

-      A BROKEN JOURNEY

-    </h1>

-    <h3>

-      Wanderings from the Hoang-Ho yo the Island of Saghalien and the Upper

-      Reaches of The Amur River

-    </h3>

-    <h2>

-      By Mary Gaunt

-    </h2>

-    <h3>

-      Author Of &ldquo;Alone In West Africa&rdquo; &ldquo;A Woman In China,&rdquo; Etc.

-    </h3>

-    <h4>

-      London

-    </h4>

-    <h4>

-      T. Werner Laurie Ltd.

-    </h4>

-    <h3>

-      1919

-    </h3>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0001.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0008.jpg" alt="0008 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0008.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0009.jpg" alt="0009 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0009.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <h3>

-      TO MY

-    </h3>

-    <h3>

-      SISTER AND BROTHERS

-    </h3>

-    <h3>

-      IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE DAYS BEFORE WE

-    </h3>

-    <h3>

-      WANDERED

-    </h3>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <b>CONTENTS</b>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2H_FORE"> FOREWORD </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> A BROKEN JOURNEY </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I&mdash;THE LURE OF THE UNKNOWN </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II&mdash;TRUCULENT T'AI YUAN FU </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III&mdash;THE FIRST SIGN OF UNREST </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV&mdash;A CITY UNDER THE HILLS </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V&mdash;&ldquo;MISERERE DOMINE!&rdquo; </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI&mdash;BY MOUNTAIN AND RIVER </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII&mdash;CHINA'S SORROW </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII&mdash;LAST DAYS IN CHINA </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX&mdash;KHARBIN AND VLADIVOSTOK </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X&mdash;ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREAT RIVERS

-      </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI&mdash;THE ENDS OF THE EARTH </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII&mdash;FACING WEST </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII&mdash;THE UPPER REACHES OF THE AMUR

-      </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV&mdash;MOBILISING IN EASTERN SIBERIA

-      </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV&mdash;ON A RUSSIAN MILITARY TRAIN </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI&mdash;THE WAYS OF THE FINNS </a>

-    </p>

-    <p class="toc">

-      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII&mdash;CAPTURED BY GERMANS </a>

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2H_FORE" id="link2H_FORE"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      FOREWORD

-    </h2>

-    <p>

-      I have to thank my friend Mrs Lang for the drastic criticism which once

-      more has materially helped me to write this book. Other people also have I

-      to thank, but so great was the kindness I received everywhere I can only

-      hope each one will see in this book some token of my sincere gratitude.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Mary Gaunt.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Mary Haven, New Eltham, Kent.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h1>

-      A BROKEN JOURNEY

-    </h1>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER I&mdash;THE LURE OF THE UNKNOWN

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>ach time I begin a

-      book of travel I search for the reasons that sent me awandering.

-      Foolishness, for I ought to know by this time the wander fever was born in

-      my blood; it is in the blood of my sister and brothers. We were brought up

-      in an inland town in Victoria, Australia, and the years have seen us

-      roaming all over the world. I do not think any of us has been nearer the

-      North Pole than Petropaulovski, or to the South Pole than Cape Horn&mdash;children

-      of a sub-tropical clime, we do not like the cold&mdash;but in many

-      countries in between have we wandered. The sailors by virtue of their

-      profession have had the greater opportunities, but the other five have

-      made a very good second best of it, and always there has been among us a

-      very understanding sympathy 'with the desire that is planted in each and

-      all to visit the remote corners of the earth.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Anybody can go on the beaten track. It only requires money to take a

-      railway or steamer ticket, and though we by no means despise comfort&mdash;indeed,

-      because we know something of the difficulties that beset the traveller

-      beyond the bounds of civilisation, we appreciate it the more highly&mdash;still

-      there is something else beyond comfort in life. Wherein lies the call of

-      the Unknown? To have done something that no one else has done&mdash;or

-      only accomplished with difficulty? Where lies the charm? I cannot put it

-      into words&mdash;only it is there, the &ldquo;something calling&mdash;beyond the

-      mountains,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Come and find me&rdquo; of Kipling. That voice every one of the

-      Gaunts hears, and we all sympathise when another one goes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And that voice I heard loudly in China.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Come and find me! Come and find me!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The livelong day I heard it, and again and again and yet again I tried to

-      stifle it, for you who have read my <i>Woman in China</i> will know that

-      travelling there leaves much to be desired. To say it is uncomfortable is

-      to put it in the mildest terms. Everything that I particularly dislike in

-      life have I met travelling in China; everything that repells me; and yet,

-      having unwisely invested $10 (about £1) in an atlas of China, the voice

-      began to ring in my ears day and night.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was living in an American Presbyterian mission station in the western

-      suburb of the walled town of Pao Ting Fu, just beyond European influence,

-      the influence of the Treaty Ports and the Legation quarter of Peking. I

-      wanted to see something of the real China, to get material for a novel&mdash;not

-      a novel concerning the Chinese; for I have observed that no successful

-      novel in English deals with anybody but the British or the Americans; the

-      other peoples come in as subordinates&mdash;and the local colour was best

-      got on the spot. There was plenty in Pao Ting Fu, goodness knows. It had

-      suffered severely in the Boxer trouble. In the northern suburb, just about

-      a mile from where we lived, was a tomb, or monument rather, that had been

-      raised to the missionaries massacred then. They have made a garden plot

-      where those burning houses stood, they have planted trees and flowers, and

-      set up memorial tablets in the Chinese style, and the mission has moved to

-      the western suburb, just under the frowning walls of the town, and&mdash;is

-      doubly strong. A God-given fervour, say the missionaries, sends them

-      forth.'Who am I to judge? But I see that same desire to go forth in

-      myself, that same disregard of danger, when it is not immediate&mdash;I

-      know I should be horribly scared if it materialised&mdash;and I cannot

-      claim for myself it is God-given, save perhaps that all our desires are

-      God-given.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So there in the comfortable mission station I studied the local colour,

-      corrected my last book of China, and instead of planning the novel, looked

-      daily at the atlas of China, till there grew up in me a desire to cross

-      Asia, not by train to the north as I had already done, as thousands of

-      people used to do every year, but by the caravan route, across Shensi and

-      Kansu and Sinkiang to Andijan in Asiatic Russia, the terminus of the

-      Caspian Railway. Thousands and thousands of people go slowly along that

-      way too, but the majority do not go all the way, and they do not belong to

-      the class or nation whose comings and goings are recorded. In fact, you

-      may count on the fingers of one hand the people who know anything of that

-      road. The missionaries, particularly the womenkind, did not take very

-      cheerful view's about it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If I wanted to die,&rdquo; said one woman, meeting me as I was going round the

-      compound one day in the early spring of 1914, &ldquo;I would choose some easier

-      way.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But the doctor there was keenly interested. He would have liked to have

-      gone himself, but his duty kept him alongside his patients and his

-      hospital in Pao Ting Fu, and though he pulled himself up every now and

-      then, remembering I was only a woman and probably couldn't do it, he could

-      not but take as great an interest in that map and ways and means as I did

-      myself. Then there was Mr Long, a professor at the big Chinese college in

-      the northern suburb&mdash;he was young and enthusiastic and as interested

-      as Dr Lewis.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He too knew something about travel in unknown China, for he had been one

-      of the band of white men who had made their way over the mountains of

-      Shansi and Shensi in the depths of winter to go to the rescue of the

-      missionaries in Sui Te Chou and all the little towns down to Hsi An Fu at

-      the time of the Revolution. Yes, he knew something of the difficulties of

-      Chinese travel, and he thought I could do it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The only danger would be robbers, and&mdash;well, you know, there

-      mightn't be robbers.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But Peking&mdash;the Peking of the Legations&mdash;that, I knew, held

-      different view's. I wrote to an influential man who had been in China over

-      ten years, who spoke the language well, and he was against it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I was very much interested&rdquo; (wrote he) &ldquo;to read of your intention to do

-      that trek across country. You ask my opinion about it, but I can only give

-      you the same advice that <i>Punch</i> gave many years ago, and that is, <i>don't</i>.

-      You must realise that the travelling will be absolutely awful and the cost

-      is very great indeed. You have not yet forgotten your trip to Jehol, I

-      hope, and the roughness of the road. The trip you contemplate will make

-      the little journey to Jehol look like a Sunday morning walk in Hyde Park,

-      particularly as regards travelling comfort, to say nothing about the

-      danger of the journey as regards hostile tribes on the southern and

-      western borders of Tibet. You will be passing near the Lolo country, and I

-      can assure you that the Lolos are <i>not</i> a set of gentlemen within the

-      meaning of the Act. They are distinctly hostile to foreigners, and many

-      murders have taken place in their country that have not been published

-      because of the inability of the Chinese troops to stand up against these

-      people. What the peoples are like farther north I do not know, but I

-      understand the Tibetans are not particularly trustworthy, and it will

-      follow that the people living on their borders will inherit a good many of

-      their vices and few of their virtues.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If you have really made up your mind to go, however, just let me know,

-      and I will endeavour to hunt up all the information that it is possible to

-      collect as to the best route to take, etc., though I repeat I would not

-      advise the journey, and the Geographical Society can go to the deuce.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      This not because he despised the Geographical Society by any means, but

-      because I had advanced as one reason for going across Asia the desire to

-      win my spurs so and be an acceptable member.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; wrote a woman, &ldquo;think of that poor young Brooke. The Tibetans

-      cut his throat with a sharp stone, which is a pleasant little way they

-      have.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Now the man's opinion was worth having, but the woman's is a specimen of

-      the loose way people are apt to reason&mdash;I do it myself&mdash;when

-      they deal with the unknown. The &ldquo;poor young Brooke&rdquo; never went near Tibet,

-      and was murdered about a thousand miles distant from the route I intended

-      to take. It was something as if a traveller bound to the Hebrides was

-      warned against dangers to be met upon the Rhone.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One man who had travelled extensively in Mongolia was strongly against the

-      journey, but declared that &ldquo;Purdom knew a great deal more about travelling

-      in China&rdquo; than he did, and if &ldquo;Purdom&rdquo; said I might got&mdash;well then, I

-      might. Mr Purdom and Mr Reginald Farrer were going west to the borders of

-      Tibet botanising, and one night I dined with them, and Mr Purdom was

-      optimistic and declared if I was prepared for discomfort and perhaps

-      hardship he thought I might go.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So it was decided, and thereupon those who knew took me in hand and gave

-      me all advice about travelling in China, how to minimise discomfort, what

-      to take and what to leave behind. One thing they were all agreed upon. The

-      Chinese, as a rule, are the most peaceable people upon earth, the only

-      thing I had to fear was a chance band of robbers, and if I fell into their

-      hands&mdash;well, it would probably be finish.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The Chinese are fiendishly cruel,&rdquo; said my friend of Mongolian travel;

-      &ldquo;keep your last cartridge for yourself.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I intimated that a pistol was quite beyond me, that that way of going out

-      did not appeal to me, and anyhow I'd be sure to bungle it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Then have something made up at the chemist's and keep it always on your

-      person. You do not know how desperately you may need it.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I may say here that these remarks made no impression upon me whatever. I

-      suppose in most of us the feeling is strong that nothing bad could

-      possibly happen. It happens to other people, we know, but to us&mdash;impossible!

-      I have often wondered how near I could get to danger without feeling that

-      it really threatened&mdash;pretty close, I suspect. It is probably a

-      matter of experience. I cannot cross a London road with equanimity&mdash;but

-      then twice have I been knocked down and rather badly hurt&mdash;but I

-      gaily essayed to cross Asia by way of China, and would quite certainly as

-      gaily try again did I get the chance. Only next time I propose to take a

-      good cook.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      To some, of course, the unknown is always full of danger.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The folks who walked about Peking without a qualm warned me I would die of

-      indigestion, I would be unable to drink the water, the filth would be

-      unspeakable, hydrophobia raged, and &ldquo;when you are bitten, promptly cut

-      deep into the place and insert a chloride of mercury tabloid.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      That last warning made me laugh. It reminded me of the time when as a

-      little girl, living in a country where deadly snakes swarmed&mdash;my

-      eldest brother killed sixty in a week, I remember, in our garden&mdash;I

-      used to think it would be extremely dangerous to go to Europe because

-      there were there mad dogs, things we never had in Australia! I think it

-      was the reference to hydrophobia and the chloride of mercury tabloid

-      helped me to put things in their proper prospective and made me realise

-      that I was setting out on a difficult journey with a possible danger of

-      robbers; but a possible danger is the thing we risk every day we travel in

-      a railway train or on an electric tramcar. I am always ready for possible

-      risks, it is when they become probable I bar them, so I set about my

-      preparations with a quiet mind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A servant. I decided I must have a tall servant and strong, because so

-      often in China I found I had to be lifted, and I had suffered from having

-      too small a man on my former journeys. The missionaries provided me with a

-      new convert of theirs, a tall strapping Northern Chinaman, who was a mason

-      by trade. Tsai Chih Fu, we called him&mdash;that is to say, he came of the

-      Tsai family; and the Chih Fu&mdash;I'm by no means sure that I spell it

-      right&mdash;meant a &ldquo;master workman.&rdquo; He belonged to a large firm of

-      masons, but as he had never made a dollar a day at his trade, my offer of

-      that sum put him at my service, ready to go out into the unknown. He was a

-      fine-looking man, dignified and courteous, and I had and have the greatest

-      respect for him. He could not read or write, of course. Now a man who

-      cannot read or write here in the West we look upon with contempt, but it

-      would be impossible to look upon Tsai Chih Fu with contempt. He was a

-      responsible person, a man who would count in any company. He belonged to

-      another era and another civilisation, but he was a man of weight. A master

-      of transport in Babylon probably closely resembled my servant Tsai Chih

-      Fu.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0027.jpg" alt="0027 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0027.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      My interpreter, Wang Hsien&mdash;that is, Mr Wang&mdash;was of quite a

-      different order. He was little and slight, with long artistic hands, of

-      the incapable artistic order, and he was a fool in any language; but good

-      interpreters are exceedingly difficult to get. He used to come and see me

-      every day for a fortnight before we started, and I must say my heart sank

-      when the simplest remark, probably a greeting, or a statement as to the

-      weather, was met with a &ldquo;Repeat, please.&rdquo; I found this was the invariable

-      formula and it was not conducive to brisk conversation. On my way through

-      the country things were apt to vanish before I had made Mr Wang understand

-      that I was asking, and was really in search of, information. He had his

-      black hair cut short in the progressive foreign fashion (it looked as if

-      he had had a basin put on his head&mdash;a good large one&mdash;and the

-      hair snipped off round), and he wore a long blue cotton gown buttoned to

-      his feet. Always he spoke with a silly giggle. Could I have chosen, which

-      I could not, he would have been about the very last man I should have

-      taken on a strenuous journey as guide, philosopher and friend.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And there was another member of the party, a most important member,

-      without whom I should not have dreamt of stirring&mdash;my little black

-      and white k'ang dog, James Buehanan, who loved me as no one in the world

-      has ever loved me, thought everything I did was perfect, and declared he

-      was willing to go with me to the ends of the earth.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So I began my preparations. One thing only was clear, everyone was agreed

-      upon it, all my goods must be packed in canvas bags, because it is

-      impossible to travel by mule, or cart, or litter with one's clothes in

-      ordinary boxes. And I had, through the kindness of Messrs Forbes &amp;

-      Company, to make arrangements with Chinese bankers, who have probably been

-      making the same arrangements since before the dawn of history, to get

-      money along the proposed route. These things I managed satisfactorily; it

-      was over the stores that, as usual, I made mistakes. The fact of the

-      matter is that the experience gained in one country is not always useful

-      for the next. When first I travelled in Africa I took many &ldquo;chop&rdquo; boxes

-      that were weighty and expensive of transport, and contained much tinned

-      meat that in a warm, moist climate I did not want. I found I could live

-      quite happily on biscuits and fruit and eggs, with such relishes as

-      anchovy paste or a few Bologna sausages for a change. My expensive tinned

-      foods I bestowed upon my servants and carriers, greatly to my own regret.

-      I went travelling in China, in Northern Chihli and Inner Mongolia, I dwelt

-      apart from all foreigners in a temple in the western hills, and I found

-      with a good cook I lived very comfortably off the country, with just the

-      addition of a few biscuits, tea, condensed milk, coffee and raisins,

-      therefore I persuaded myself I could go west with few stores and do

-      exactly the same. Thus I added considerably to my own discomfort. The

-      excellent master of transport was a bad cook, and a simple diet of

-      hard-boiled eggs, puffed rice and tea, with raisins for dessert, however

-      good in itself, is apt to pall when it is served up three times a day for

-      weeks with unfailing regularity.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      However, I didn't know that at the time.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And at last all was ready. I had written to all the mission stations as

-      far west as Tihwa, in Sinkiang, announcing my coming. I had provided

-      myself with a folding table and chair&mdash;they both, I found, were given

-      to fold at inconvenient moments&mdash;some enamel plates, a couple of

-      glasses, a knife and fork, rudimentary kitchen utensils, bedding,

-      cushions, rugs, etc., and all was ready. I was to start the next week, ten

-      days after Mr Purdom and Mr Farrer had set out, for Honan, when there came

-      a telegram from Hsi An Fu:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Delay journey&rdquo; (it read).

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;White wolf in Shensi. Shorrocks.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Was there ever such country? News that a robber was holding up the road

-      could be sent by telegram!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      China rather specialises in robbers, but White Wolf was considerably worse

-      than the average gentleman of the road. He defied the Government in 1914,

-      but the last time we of the mission station had heard of him he was making

-      things pleasant for the peaceful inhabitants of Anhwei, to the east, and

-      the troops were said to have him &ldquo;well in hand.&rdquo; But in China you never

-      know exactly where you are, and now he was in Shensi!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I read that telegram in the pleasant March sunshine. I looked up at the

-      boughs of the &ldquo;water chestnuts,&rdquo; where the buds were beginning to swell,

-      and I wondered what on earth I should do. The roads now were as good as

-      they were ever likely to be, hard after the long winter and not yet broken

-      up by the summer rains. We discussed the matter from all points that day

-      at the midday dinner. The missionaries had a splendid cook, a Chinese who

-      had had his kitchen education finished in a French family, and with a few

-      good American recipes thrown in the combination makes a craftsman fit for

-      the Savoy, and all for ten Mexican dollars a month! Never again do I

-      expect to meet such salads, sweet and savoury! And here was I doing my

-      best to leave the flesh-pots of Egypt. It seemed foolish.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I contented my soul with what patience I might for a week, and then I

-      telegraphed to Honan Fu, at which place I expected to be well away from

-      the railway. Honan Fu answered promptly:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The case is hopeless. Hsi An Fu threatened. Advise you go by T'ai Yuan

-      Fu.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Now the road from Honan Fu to Hsi An Fu is always dangerous. It is through

-      the loess, sunken many feet below the level of the surrounding country,

-      and at the best of times is infested with stray robbers who, from the

-      cliffs above, roll down missiles on the carts beneath, kill the mules and

-      hold the travellers at their mercy. The carters go in large bodies and are

-      always careful to find themselves safe in the inn-yards before the dusk

-      has fallen.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      These were the everyday dangers of the way such as men have faced for

-      thousands of years; if you add to them an organised robber band and a

-      large body of soldiers in pursuit, clearly that road is no place for a

-      solitary foreign woman, with only a couple of attendants, a little dog,

-      and for all arms a small pistol and exactly thirteen cartridges&mdash;all

-      I could get, for it is difficult to buy ammunition in China. Then to

-      clinch matters came another telegram from Hsi An Fu, in cipher this time:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Do not come&rdquo; (it said).

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The country is very much disturbed.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      From Anhwei to Shensi the brigands had operated. They had burned and

-      looted and outraged by order of Pai Lang (White Wolf), leaving behind them

-      ruined homes and desolated hearths, and when the soldiers came after them,

-      so said Rumour of the many tongues, White Wolf, who was rich by then, left

-      money on the roads and so bribed the avenging army to come over to him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But to the ordinary peaceful inhabitant&mdash;and curiously enough the

-      ordinary Chinese is extremely peaceful&mdash;it is not a matter of much

-      moment whether it be Pai Lang or the soldier who is hunting him who falls

-      upon the country. The inhabitants are sure to suffer. Both bandit and

-      soldier must have food, so both loot and outrage impartially, for the

-      unpaid soldiery&mdash;I hope I shall not be sued for libel, but most of

-      the soldiery when I was in China appeared to be unpaid&mdash;loot just as

-      readily as do the professional bandits. A robber band alone is a heavy

-      load for a community to carry, and a robber band pursued by soldiers more

-      than doubles the burden.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Still the soldiers held Tungkwan, the gate into Shensi, the mountains on

-      either side blocked the way, and Hsi An Fu breathed for a moment till it

-      was discovered that Pai Lang in strategy was equal to anyone who had been

-      sent against him. He had taken the old and difficult route through the

-      mountains and had come out west of the narrow pass of Tungkwan and, when I

-      became interested in him, was within a day's march of Hsi An Fu, the town

-      that is the capital of the province of Shensi and was the capital of China

-      many hundreds of years ago. It is a walled city, but the people feared and

-      so did the members of the English Baptist Mission sheltering behind those

-      walls. And, naturally, they feared, for the Society of the Elder Brethren

-      had joined Pai Lang, and the Society of Elder Brethren always has been and

-      is markedly anti-foreign. This was the situation, growing daily a little

-      worse, and we foreigners looked on; and the Government organs in Peking

-      told one day how a certain Tao Tai had been punished and degraded because

-      he had been slack in putting down White Wolf and possibly the next day

-      declared the power of White Wolf was broken and he was in full retreat. I

-      don't know how many times I read the power of White Wolf had been broken

-      and yet in the end I was regretfully obliged to acknowledge that he was

-      stronger than ever. Certainly Pai Lang turned my face north sooner than I

-      intended, for the idea of being a target for rocks and stones and billets

-      of wood at the bottom of a deep ditch from which there could be no escape

-      did not commend itself to me. True, in loess country, as I afterwards

-      found, there are no stones, no rocks and no wood. I can't speak for the

-      road through Tungkwan, for I didn't dare it. But, even if there were no

-      stones, loose earth&mdash;and there is an unlimited quantity of that

-      commodity in Northern China&mdash;flung down from a height would be

-      exceedingly unpleasant.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Of course it all might have been rumour&mdash;it wasn't, I found out

-      afterwards; but unfortunately the only way to find out at the time was by

-      going to see for myself, and if it had been true&mdash;well, in all

-      probability I shouldn't have come back. That missionary evidently realised

-      how keen I was when he suggested that I should go by T'ai Yuan Fu, the

-      capital of Shansi, and I determined to take his advice. There was a way, a

-      little-known way, across the mountains, across Shansi, by Sui Te Chou in

-      Shensi, and thence into Kansu, which would eventually land me in Lan Chou

-      Fu if I cared to risk it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This time I asked Mr Long's advice. He and the little band of nine

-      rescuers who had ridden hot haste to the aid of the Shensi missionaries

-      during the revolution had taken this road, and they had gone in the depths

-      of winter when the country was frozen hard and the thermometer was more

-      often below zero, very far below zero, than not. If they had accomplished

-      it when pressed for time in the great cold, I thought' in all probability

-      I might manage it now at the best time of the year and at my leisure. Mr

-      Long, who would have liked to have gone himself, thought so too, and

-      eventually I set off.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The missionaries were goodness itself to me. Dr Mackay, in charge of the

-      Women's Hospital, set me up with all sorts of simple drugs that I might

-      require and that I could manage, and one day in the springtime, when the

-      buds on the trees in the compound were just about to burst, and full of

-      the promise of the life that was coming, I, with most of the missionaries

-      to wish me &ldquo;Godspeed,&rdquo; and with James Buchanan under my arm, my giggling

-      interpreter and my master of transport following with my gear, took train

-      to T'ai Yuan Fu, a walled city that is set in the heart of a fertile

-      plateau surrounded by mountains.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The great adventure had begun.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER II&mdash;TRUCULENT T'AI YUAN FU

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>ut you mayn't go

-      to T'ai Yuan Fu in one day. The southern train puts you down at Shih Chia

-      Chuang&mdash;the village of the Stone Family&mdash;and there you must stay

-      till 7.40 a.m. next morning, when the French railway built through the

-      mountains that divide Shansi from Shensi takes you on to its terminus at

-      T'ai Yuan Fu. There is a little Chinese inn at Shih Chia Chuang that by

-      this time has become accustomed to catering for the foreigner, but those

-      who are wise beg the hospitality of the British American Tobacco Company.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I craved that hospitality, and two kindly young men came to the station

-      through a dust-storm to meet me and took me off to their house that,

-      whether it was intended to or not, with great cool stone balconies, looked

-      like a fort. But they lived on perfectly friendly terms with people. Why

-      not? To a great number of the missionaries the B.A.T. is <i>anathema

-      maranatha</i>, though many of the members rival in pluck and endurance the

-      missionaries themselves. And why is it a crime for a man or a woman to

-      smoke? Many of the new teachers make it so and thus lay an added burden on

-      shoulders already heavily weighted. Personally I should encourage smoking,

-      because it is the one thing people who are far apart as the Poles might

-      have in common.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And goodness knows they have so few things. Even with the animals the

-      &ldquo;East is East and West is West&rdquo; feeling is most marked. Here at the B.A.T.

-      they had a small pekinese as a pet. She made a friend of James Buchanan in

-      a high and haughty manner, but she declined to accompany him outside the

-      premises. Once she had been stolen and had spent over three months in a

-      Chinese house. Then one day her master saw her and, making good his claim,

-      took her home with him. Since that time nothing would induce her to go

-      beyond the front door. She said in effect that she got all the exercise

-      she needed in the courtyard, and if it did spoil her figure, she preferred

-      a little weight to risking the tender mercies of a Chinese household, and

-      I'm sure she told Buchanan, who, having the sacred V-shaped mark on his

-      forehead, was reckoned very beautiful and was much admired by the Chinese,

-      that he had better take care and not fall into alien hands. Buchanan as a

-      puppy of two months old had been bought in the streets of Peking, and when

-      we started on our journey must have been nearly ten months old, but he had

-      entirely forgotten his origin and regarded all Chinese with suspicion. He

-      tolerated the master of transport as a follower of whom we had need.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Small dog,&rdquo; Mr Wang called him, and looked upon him doubtfully, but

-      really not as doubtfully as Buchanan looked at him. He was a peaceful,

-      friendly little dog, but I always thought he did not bite Mr Wang simply

-      because he despised him so.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Those two young men were more than good to me. They gave me refreshment,

-      plenty of hot water to wash away the ravages of the dust-storm, and good

-      company, and as we sat and talked&mdash;of White Wolf, of course&mdash;there

-      came to us the tragedy of a life, a woman who had not the instincts of

-      Buchanan.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Foreign women are scarce at Shih Chia Chuang; one a month is something to

-      remark upon, one a week is a crowd, so that when, as we sat in the big

-      sitting-room talking, the door opened and a foreign woman stood there,

-      everyone rose to his feet in astonishment. Mr Long, who had been up the

-      line, stood beside her, and behind her was a Chinaman with a half-caste

-      baby in his arms. She was young and tall and rather pretty.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0037.jpg" alt="0037 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0037.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0038.jpg" alt="0038 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0038.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I bring you a lady in distress,&rdquo; said Mr Long rather hastily, explaining

-      matters. &ldquo;I met Mrs Chang on the train. She has miscalculated her

-      resources and has not left herself enough money to get to Peking.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The woman began to explain; but it is an awkward thing to explain to

-      strangers that you have no money and are without any credentials. I

-      hesitated. Eventually I hope I should have helped her, but my charity and

-      kindliness were by no means as ready and spontaneous as those of my

-      gallant young host. He never hesitated a moment. You would have thought

-      that women and babies without any money were his everyday business.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Why, sure,&rdquo; said he in his pleasant American voice, &ldquo;if I can be of any

-      assistance. But you can't go to-day, Mrs Chang; of course you will stay

-      with us&mdash;oh yes, yes; indeed we should be very much hurt if you

-      didn't; and you will let me lend you some money.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And so she was established among us, this woman who had committed the

-      unpardonable sin of the East, the sin against her race, the sin for which

-      there is no atoning. It is extraordinary after all these years, after all

-      that has been said and written, that Englishwomen, women of good class and

-      standing, will so outrage all the laws of decency and good taste. This

-      woman talked. She did not like the Chinese, she would not associate with

-      them; her husband, of course, was different. He was good to her; but it

-      was hard to get work in these troubled times, harder still to get paid for

-      it, and he had gone away in search of it, so she was going for a holiday

-      to Peking and&mdash;here she tumed|to the young men and talked about the

-      society and the dances and the amusement she expected to have among the

-      foreigners in the capital, she who for so long had been cut off from such

-      joys in the heart of China among an alien people.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We listened. What could we say?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;People in England don't really understand,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;what being in

-      exile means. They don't understand the craving to go home and speak to

-      one's own people; but being in Peking will be something like being in

-      England.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      We other five never even looked at each other, because we knew, and we

-      could hardly believe, that she had not yet realised that in marrying a

-      Chinese, even one who had been brought up in England, she had exiled

-      herself effectually. The Chinese look down upon her, they will have none

-      of her, and among the foreigners she is outcast. These young men who had

-      come to her rescue with such right good will&mdash;&ldquo;I could not see a

-      foreign woman in distress among Chinese&rdquo;&mdash;will pass her in the street

-      with a bow, will not see her if they can help themselves, will certainly

-      object that anyone they care about should see them talking to her, and

-      their attitude but reflects that of the majority of the foreigners in

-      China. Her little child may not go to the same sehool as the foreign

-      children, even as it may not go to the same school as the Chinese. She has

-      committed the one error that outclasses her, and she is going to pay for

-      it in bitterness all the days of her life. And everyone in that room,

-      while we pitied her, held, and held strongly, that the attitude of the

-      community, foreign and Chinese, was one to be upheld.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,&rdquo; and yet

-      here and there one still comes across a foolish woman who wrecks her life

-      because she never seems to have heard of this dictum. She talked and

-      talked, and told us how good was her husband to her, and we listeners said

-      afterwards she &ldquo;doth protest too much,&rdquo; she was convincing herself, not

-      us, and that, of course, seeing he was a Chinaman, he was disappointed

-      that the baby was a girl, and that his going off alone was the beginning

-      of the end, and we were thankful that she was &ldquo;the only girl her mother

-      had got,&rdquo; and so she could go back to her when the inevitable happened.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The pity of it! When will the stay-at-home English learn that the very

-      worst thing one of their women can do with her life is to wed an Oriental?

-      But when I think of that misguided woman in that remote Chinese village I

-      shall always think too of those gallant young gentlemen, perfect in

-      courteous kindliness, who ran the B.A.T. in Shih Chia Chuang.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The next day Buchanan and I and our following boarded the luxurious little

-      mountain railway and went to T'ai Yuan Fu.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This railway, to me, who know nothing of such things, is a very marvel of

-      engineering skill. There are great rugged mountains, steep and rocky, and

-      the train winds its way through them, clinging along the sides of

-      precipices, running through dark tunnels and cuttings that tower high

-      overhead and going round such curves that the engine and the guard's van

-      of a long train are going in exactly opposite directions. A wonderful

-      railway, and doubly was I interested in it because before ever I came to

-      China I had heard about it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When there are disturbances in China it is always well for the foreign

-      element to flee while there is yet time, for the sanctity of human life is

-      not yet thoroughly grasped there, and there is always the chance that the

-      foreigner may be killed first and his harmlessness, or even his value,

-      discovered later. So in the revolution in the winter of 1910-1911, though

-      all train traffic had stopped, the missionaries from T'ai Yuan Fu and

-      those from the country beyond fled down this railway. A friend of mine, an

-      artist, happened to be staying at a mission station in the mountains and

-      made one of the party. It was the depth of a Shansi winter, a Continental

-      winter, with the thermometer generally below -15° at the warmest part of

-      the day, and the little band of fugitives came fleeing down this line on

-      trollies worked by the men of the party. They stayed the nights at the

-      deserted railway stations, whence all the officials had fled, and the

-      country people in their faded blue cotton wadded coats came and looked at

-      them and, pointing their fingers at them exactly as I have seen the folks

-      in the streets of London do at a Chinaman or an Arab in an outlandish

-      dress, remarked that these people were going to their death.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Death! Death!&rdquo; sounded on all sides. They, the country people, were

-      peaceful souls; they would not have killed them themselves; they merely

-      looked upon them as an interesting exhibit because they were foreign and

-      they were going to die. That the audience were wrong the people on show

-      were not quite as sure as they would have liked to be, and a single-line

-      railway through mountainous country is by no means easy to negotiate on a

-      trolly. They came to places where the line was carried upon trestles; they

-      could see a river winding its way at the bottom of a rocky ravine far

-      below them, and the question would be how to get across. It required more

-      nerve than most of them had to walk across the skeleton bridge. The

-      procedure seems to have been to give each trolly a good hard push, to

-      spring upon it and to trust to Providence to get safely across to the firm

-      earth upon the other side. The tunnels too, and the sharp curves, were

-      hair-raising, for they knew nothing of what was happening at the other end

-      of the line, and for all they could say they might have come full butt

-      upon a train rushing up in the other direction.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Eventually they did get through, but with considerable hardship, and I

-      should hesitate to say how many days that little company went without

-      taking off their clothes. I thought of them whenever our train went into a

-      tunnel, and I thought too of the gay girl who told me the story and who

-      had dwelt not upon the discomfort and danger, but upon the excitement and

-      exhilaration that comes with danger.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I lived,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;I lived,&rdquo; and my heart went out to her. It is that

-      spirit in this &ldquo;nation of shopkeepers&rdquo; that is helping us to beat the

-      Germans.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The scenery through which we went is beautiful&mdash;it would be beautiful

-      in any land&mdash;and this in China, where I expected not so much beauty

-      as industry. There were evidences of industry in plenty on every side.

-      These people were brethren of the bandits who turned me north and they are

-      surely the most industrious in the world. Wherever among these stony hills

-      there was a patch of ground fit for cultivation, though it was tiny as a

-      pocket handkerchief, it was cultivated. Everywhere I saw people at work in

-      the fields, digging, weeding, ploughing with a dry cow or a dry cow and a

-      donkey hitched to the primitive plough, or guiding trains of donkeys or

-      mules carrying merchandise along the steep and narrow paths, and more than

-      once I saw strings of camels, old-world camels that took me back before

-      the days of written history. They kept to the valleys and evidently made

-      their way along the river beds.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Through mountain sidings and tunnels we came at length to the curious

-      loess country, where the friable land is cut into huge terraces that make

-      the high hills look like pyramids carved in great clay-coloured steps, and

-      now in April the green crops were already springing; another month and

-      they would be banks of waving green. The people are poor, their faces were

-      browned by the sun and the wind, their garments were scanty and ragged,

-      and the original blue was faded till the men and the clothes were all the

-      same monotonous clay colour of the surrounding country. The women I saw

-      here were few, and only afterwards I found the reason. The miserably poor

-      peasant of Shansi binds the feet of his women so effectually that to the

-      majority movement is a physical impossibility.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We climbed up and up through the mountains into the loess country, and at

-      last we were on the plateau, about four thousand feet above the sea-level,

-      whereon is T'ai Yuan Fu, the capital of the province. There are other

-      towns here too, little walled eities, and the train drew up at the

-      stations outside the grey brick walls, the most ancient and the most

-      modern, Babylon and Crewe meeting. Oh, I understand the need of those

-      walled eities now I have heard so much about Pai Lang. There is a certain

-      degree of safety behind those grey walls, so long as the robber bands are

-      small and the great iron-bound gates ean keep them out, but dire is the

-      fate of the city into which the enemy has penetrated, has fastened the

-      gates and holds the people in a trap behind their own walls.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But these people were at peace; they were thinking of no robbers. Pai Lang

-      was about five hundred miles away and the station platforms were crowded

-      with would-be travellers with their belongings in bundles, and over the

-      fence that shut off the platform hung a vociferating crowd waving white

-      banners on which were inscribed in black characters the signs of the

-      various inns, while each banner-bearer at the top of his voice advocated

-      the charms of his own employer's establishment. The queue was forbidden

-      for the moment, but many of these ragged touts and many of the other

-      peasants still wore their heads shaven in front, for the average Chinaman,

-      especially he of the poorer classes, is loath to give up the fashions of

-      his forefathers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Every railway platform was pandemonium, for every person on that platform

-      yelled and shrieked at the top of his voice. On the main line every

-      station was guarded by untidy, unkempt-looking soldiers armed with rifles,

-      but there on this little mountain railway the only guards were policemen,

-      equally unkempt, clad in very dusty black and white and armed with

-      stout-looking bludgeons. They stood along the line at regular intervals,

-      good-natured-looking men, and I wondered whether they would really be any

-      good in an emergency, or whether they would not take the line of least

-      resistance and join the attacking force.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      All across the cultivated plain we went, where not an inch of ground is

-      wasted, and at half-past five in the evening we arrived at T'ai Yuan Fu&mdash;arrived,

-      that is, at the station outside the little South Gate.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      T'ai Yuan Fu is a great walled city eight miles round, with five gates in

-      the walls, gates that contrast strangely with the modern-looking

-      macadamised road which goes up from the station. I don't know why I should

-      feel that way, for they certainly had paved roads even in the days before

-      history. Outside the walls are neat, perhaps forty feet high and of grey

-      brick, and inside you see how these city walls are made, for they are the

-      unfinished clay banks that have been faced in front, and when I was there

-      in the springtime the grass upon them was showing everywhere and the

-      shrubs were bursting into leaf. But those banks gave me a curious feeling

-      of being behind the scenes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0047.jpg" alt="0047 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0047.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      I was met at the station by some of the ladies of the English Baptist

-      Mission who had come to welcome me and to offer me, a total stranger to

-      them, kindly hospitality, and we walked through the gate to the mission

-      inside the walls. It was only a short walk, short and dusty, but it was

-      thronged. All the roadway was crowded with rickshaws and carts waiting in

-      a long line their turn to go underneath the gateway over which frowned a

-      typical many-roofed Chinese watch tower, and as cart or rickshaw came up

-      the men along with it were stopped by the dusty soldiery in black and grey

-      and interrogated as to their business.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When I got out on to the platform I had looked up at the ancient walls

-      clear-cut against the bright blue sky, and the women meeting me looked

-      askance at Tsai Chih Fu, who, a lordly presence, stood behind me, with

-      James Buchanan in his arms, a little black satin cap on his head and his

-      pigtail hanging down his back.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;There is some little commotion in the town,&rdquo; said Miss Franklin. &ldquo;They

-      are cutting off queues.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The master of transport smiled tolerantly when they told him, and, taking

-      off his cap, he wound his tightly round his head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; he said in the attitude of a man of the world, &ldquo;some people do

-      not wear them now. But I have always worn one, and I like it,&rdquo; and his

-      manner said he would like to see the person who would dare dictate to him

-      in what manner he should wear his hair. He could certainly have put up a

-      good fight.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was not needed. He passed through unchallenged; he was a quietly

-      dressed man who did not court notice and his strapping inches were in his

-      favour. He might well be passed over when there were so many slighter men

-      more easily tackled. One man riding along in a rickshaw I saw put up a

-      splendid fight. At last he was hauled out of his carriage and his little

-      round cap tossed off his head, and then it was patent his queue could not

-      be cut, for he was bald as a billiard ball! The Chinese do understand a

-      joke, even a mob. They yelled and howled with laughter, and we heard it

-      echoing and re-echoing as we passed under the frowning archway, tramping

-      across many a dusty coil of coarse black hair roughly shorn from the heads

-      of the luckless adherents to the old fashion. The missionaries said that

-      Tsai Chih Fu must be the only man in T'ai Yuan Fu with a pigtail and that

-      it would be very useful to us as we went farther west, where they had not

-      yet realised the revolution. They doubted if he would be able to keep it

-      on so strict was the rule, but he did&mdash;a tribute, I take it, to the

-      force of my &ldquo;master of transport.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The ladies lived in a Chinese house close under the walls. There is a

-      great charm about these houses built round courtyards in the Chinese

-      style; there is always plenty of air and sunshine, though, as most of the

-      rooms open into the courtyard only, I admit in rough weather they must

-      sometimes be awkward, and when&mdash;as is always the case in Shansi in

-      winter-time&mdash;the courtyard is covered with ice and snow, and the

-      thermometer is far below zero for weeks at a time, it is impossible to go

-      from bedroom to sitting-room without being well wrapped up. And yet,

-      because China is not a damp country, it could never be as awkward as it

-      would be in England, and for weeks at a time it is a charming arrangement.

-      Staying there in April, I found it delightful. Buchanan and I had a room

-      under a great tree just showing the first faint tinge of green, and I

-      shall always be grateful for the kindly hospitality those young ladies

-      gave me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      From there we went out and saw T'ai Yuan Fu, and another kindly missionary

-      engaged muleteers for me and made all arrangements for my journey across

-      Shansi and Shensi and Kansu to Lan Chou Fu.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But T'ai Yuan Fu is not a nice town to stay in.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The town,&rdquo; said the missionaries, &ldquo;is progressive and anti-foreign.&rdquo; It

-      is. You feel somehow the difference in the attitude of the people the

-      moment you set foot inside the walls. It seems to me that if trouble

-      really came it would be an easy matter to seize the railway and cut off

-      the foreign missionaries from all help, for it is at least a fortnight

-      away in the mountains.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They suffered cruelly at the Boxer time: forty men, women and little

-      helpless children were butchered in cold blood in the yamen, and the

-      archway leading to the hospital where Miss Coombs the schoolmistress was

-      deliberately burned to death while trying to guard and shelter her

-      helpless pupils still stands. In the yamen, with a refinement of torture,

-      they cut to pieces the little children first, and then the women, the nuns

-      of the Catholic Church the fierce soldiery dishonoured, and finally they

-      slew all the men. Against the walls in the street stand two miserable

-      stones that the Government were forced to put up to the memory of the

-      foreigners thus ruthlessly done to death, but a deeper memorial is

-      engraven on the hearts of the people. Some few years later the tree

-      underneath which they were slain was blasted by lightning and half

-      destroyed, and on that very spot, during the recent revolution, the Tao

-      Tai of the province was killed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;A judgment!&rdquo; said the superstitious people. &ldquo;A judgment!&rdquo; say even the

-      educated.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And during the late revolution the white people shared with the

-      inhabitants a terribly anxious time. Shut up in the hospital with a raging

-      mob outside, they waited for the place to be set on fire. The newest shops

-      in the principal streets were being looted, the Manchu city&mdash;a little

-      walled city within the great city&mdash;was destroyed, and though they

-      opened the gates and told the Manchus they might escape, the mob hunted

-      down the men as they fled and slew them, though, more merciful than Hsi An

-      Fu, they let the women and children escape. Men's blood was up, the lust

-      of killing was upon them, and the men and women behind the hospital walls

-      trembled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We made up our minds,&rdquo; said a young missionary lady to me, &ldquo;that if they

-      fired the place we would rush out and mingle in the mob waiting to kill

-      us. They looked awful. I can't tell you how they looked, but it would have

-      been better than being burned like rats in a trap.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      A Chinese crowd, to my Western eyes, unkempt, unwashed, always looks

-      awful; what it must be like when they are out to kill I cannot imagine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then she went on: &ldquo;Do you know, I was not really as much afraid as I

-      should have thought I would have been. There was too mueh to think about.&rdquo;

-       Oh, merciful God! I pray that always in such moments there may be &ldquo;too

-      much to think about.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The mob looted the city. They ruined the university. They destroyed the

-      Manehus. But they spared the foreigners; and still there flourishes in the

-      town a mission of the English Baptists and another of the Catholics, but

-      when I was there the town had not yet settled down. There was unrest, and

-      the missionaries kept their eyes anxiously on the south, on the movements

-      of Pai Lang. We thought about him at Pao Ting Fu, but here the danger was

-      just a little nearer, help just a little farther away. Besides, the people

-      were different. They were not quite so subservient, not quite so friendly

-      to the foreigner, it would take less to light the tinder.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      For myself, I was glad of the instinct that had impelled me to engage as

-      servant a man of inches. I dared never walk in the streets alone as I had

-      been accustomed to in Pao Ting Fu. It marks in my mind the jumping-off

-      place. Here I left altogether the civilisation of the West and tasted the

-      age-old civilisation of the East, the civilisation that was in full swing

-      when my ancestors were naked savages hunting the deer and the bear and the

-      wolf in the swamps and marshes of Northern Europe. I had thought I had

-      reached that civilisation when I lived in Peking, when I dwelt alone in a

-      temple in the mountains, when I went to Pao Ting Fu, but here in T'ai Yuan

-      Fu the feeling deepened. Only the mission stations stood between me and

-      this strange thing. The people in the streets looked at me askance, over

-      the compound wall came the curious sounds of an ancient people at work,

-      the shrieking of the greased wheel-barrows, the beating of gongs, the whir

-      of the rattle of the embroidery silk seller, the tinkling of the bells

-      that were hung round the necks of the donkeys and the mules, the shouting

-      of the hucksters selling scones and meat balls, all the sounds of an

-      industrious city, and I was an outsider, the alien who was something of a

-      curiosity, but who anyhow was of no account. Frankly, I don't like being

-      of no account. As a matter of fact, I shocked all Chinese ideas of correct

-      deportment. When a well-bred Chinese gentleman arrives at a strange place,

-      he does not look around him, he shows no curiosity whatever in his

-      surroundings, he retires to his room, his meal is brought to him and he

-      remains quietly in his resting-place till it is time for him to take his

-      departure, and what applies to a man, applies, of course, in an

-      exaggerated degree, to a woman. Now I had come to see China, and I made

-      every effort in my power to see all I could. I tremble to think what the

-      inhabitants of Shansi must have thought of me! Possibly, since I outraged

-      all their canons of decency, I was lucky in that they only found me of no

-      account.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      All the while I was in T'ai Yuan Fu I was exceedingly anxious about the

-      measure of safety for a foreign woman outside the walls, and opinions

-      differed as to the wisdom of my venture, but, on the whole, those I

-      consulted thought I would be all right. They rather envied me, in fact,

-      the power to go wandering, but on one point they were very sure: it was a

-      pity Dr Edwards, the veteran missionary doctor, was not there, because he

-      knew more about China and travelling there than all the rest of them put

-      together. But he had gone out on his own account and was on the way to Hsi

-      An Fu, the town I had given up as hopeless. He did not propose to approach

-      it through the Tungkwan, but from the north, and they did not expect him

-      to have any difficulty.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then I found I had not brought enough money with me and the missionaries

-      lent me more, and they engaged muleteers with four mules and a donkey that

-      were to take me across the thousand miles that lay between the capital of

-      Shansi and that of Kansu. Two men were in charge, and the cost of getting

-      there, everything included&mdash;the men to feed themselves and their

-      animals and I only to be responsible for the feeding and lodging of my own

-      servants&mdash;was exactly eighteen pounds. It has always seemed to me

-      ridiculously cheap. Money must go a long way in China for it to be

-      possible for two men to take four mules and a donkey laden a thousand

-      miles, and then come back unladen and keep themselves by the way, for so

-      small a sum.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So I sent off my servants the day before, then Buchanan and I bade

-      good-bye to the missionaries and went the first day's journey back along

-      the line to Yu Tze, where the road started for the Yellow River, and as I

-      left the train and was taken by Tsai Chih Fu and Mr Wang to the enclosure

-      of the inn where they had spent the night I felt that I had indeed left

-      the West behind, and the only companion and friend I had was James

-      Buchanan. It was lucky he was a host in himself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER III&mdash;THE FIRST SIGN OF UNREST

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was to ride a

-      pack-mule. Now riding a pack-mule at any time is an unpleasant way of

-      getting along the road. I know no more uncomfortable method. It is not

-      quite as comfortable as sitting upon a table with one's legs dangling, for

-      the table is still, the mule is moving, and one's legs dangle on either

-      side of his neck. There are neither reins nor stirrups, and the mule goes

-      at his own sweet will, and in a very short time your back begins to ache,

-      after a few hours that aching is intolerable. To get over this difficulty

-      the missionary had cut the legs off a chair and suggested that, mounted on

-      the pack, I might sit in it comfortably. I don't know whether I could, for

-      the mule objected.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a sunny morning with a bright blue sky above, and all seemed

-      auspicious except my mule, who expressed in no measured language his

-      dislike to that chair. Tsai Chih Fu had no sooner hoisted me into it than

-      up he went on his hind legs and, using them as a pivot, stood on end

-      pawing the air. Everybody in the inn-yard shrieked and yelled except, I

-      hope, myself, and then Tsai Chih Fu, how I know not, rescued me from my

-      unpleasant position, and thankfully I found myself upon the firm ground

-      again. He was a true Chinese mule and objected to all innovations. He

-      stood meekly enough once the chair was removed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I wanted to cross Asia and here I was faced with disaster at the very

-      outset! Finally I was put upon the pack minus the chair, Buchanan was

-      handed up to me and nestled down beside me, and the procession started. My

-      heart sank. I don't mind acknowledging it now. I had at least a thousand

-      miles to go, and within half-an-hour of the start I had thoroughly grasped

-      the faet that of all modes of progression a pack-mule is the most

-      abominable. There are no words at my command to express its discomforts.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Very little did I see of the landscape of Shansi that day. I was engaged

-      in hanging on to my pack and wondering how I could stick it out. We passed

-      along the usual hopeless cart-track of China. I had eschewed Peking carts

-      as being the very acme of misery, but I was beginning to reflect that

-      anyhow a cart was comparatively passive misery while the back of a

-      pack-mule was decidedly active. Buchanan was a good little dog, but he

-      mentioned several times in the course of that day that he was

-      uncomfortable and he thought I was doing a fool thing. I was much of his

-      opinion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0057.jpg" alt="0057 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0057.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0058.jpg" alt="0058 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0058.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The day was never ending. All across a plain we went, with rough fields

-      just showing green on either hand, through walled villages, through little

-      towns, and I cared for nothing, I was too intent on holding on, on wishing

-      the day would end, and at last, as the dusk was falling, the muleteer

-      pointed out, clear-cut against the evening sky, the long wralls of a large

-      town&mdash;Taiku. At last! At last!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was to stay the night at a large mission school kept by a Mr and Mrs

-      Wolf, and I only longed for the comfort of a bed, any sort of a bed so

-      long as it was flat and warm and kept still. We went on and on, we got

-      into the suburbs of the town, and we appeared to go round and round,

-      through an unending length of dark, narrow streets, full of ruts and

-      holes, with the dim loom of houses on either side, and an occasional gleam

-      of light from a dingy kerosene lamp or Chinese paper lantern showing

-      through the paper windows.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Again and again we stopped and spoke to men who were merely muffled

-      shapeless figures in the darkness, and again we went on. I think now that

-      in all probability neither Tsai Chih Fu nor Mr Wang understood enough of

-      the dialect to make the muleteers or the people of whom we inquired

-      understand where we wanted to go, but at last, more probably by good luck

-      than good management, somebody, seeing I was a foreigner, sent us to the

-      foreigners they knew, those who kept a school for a hundred and

-      twenty-five boys in the lovely Flower Garden. It certainly was lovely, an

-      old-world Chinese house, with little courtyards and ponds and terraces and

-      flowers and trees&mdash;and that comfortable bed I had been desiring so

-      long. As we entered the courtyard in the darkness and Tsai Chili Fu lifted

-      me down, the bed was the only thing I could think of.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0059.jpg" alt="0059 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0059.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      And yet next day I started again&mdash;I wonder now I dared&mdash;and we

-      skirted the walls of Taiku. We had gone round two sides and then, as I

-      always do when I am dead-tired, I had a bad attack of breathlessness. Stay

-      on that pack I knew I could not, so I made my master of transport lift me

-      down, and I sat on a bank for the edification of all the small boys in the

-      district who, even if they had known how ill I felt, probably would not

-      have cared, and I deeided there and then that pack-mule riding was simply

-      impossible and something would have to be done. Therefore, with great

-      difficulty, I made my way baek to the mission school and asked Mr Wolf

-      what he would recommend.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Again were missionaries kindness itself to me. They sympathised with my

-      trouble, they took me in and made me their guest, refusing to take any

-      money for it, though they added to their kindness by allowing me to pay

-      for the keep of my servants, and they strongly recommended that I should

-      have a litter. A litter then I decided I would have.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It is, I should think, the very earliest form of human conveyance. It

-      consists of two long poles laid about as far apart as the shafts of an

-      ordinary cart, in the middle is hung a coarse-meshed rope net, and over

-      that a tilt of matting&mdash;the sort of stuff we see tea-chests covered

-      with in this country. Into the net is tumbled all one's small impedimenta&mdash;clothes-bags,

-      kettles, anything that will not conveniently go on mule-back; the bedding

-      is put on top, rugs and cushions arranged to the future inmate's

-      satisfaction, then you get inside and the available people about are

-      commandeered to hoist the concern on to the backs of the couple of mules,

-      who object very strongly. The head of the one behind is in the shafts, and

-      the ends rest in his pack-saddle, and the hind quarters of the one in

-      front are in the shafts, just as in an ordinary buggy. Of course there are

-      no reins, and at first I felt very much at the mercy of the mules, though

-      I am bound to say the big white mule who conducted my affairs seemed to

-      thoroughly understand his business. Still it is uncomfortable, to say the

-      least of it, to find yourself going, apparently quite unattended, down

-      steep and rocky paths, or right into a rushing river. But on the whole a

-      litter is a very comfortable way of travelling; after a pack-mule it was

-      simply heaven, and I had no doubts whatever that I could comfortably do

-      the thousand miles, lessened now, I think, by about thirty, that lay

-      before me. If I reached Lan Chou Fu there would be time enough to think

-      how I would go on farther. And here my muleteers had me. When I arranged

-      for a litter, I paid them, of course, extra, and I said another mule was

-      to be got to carry some of the loads. They accepted the money and agreed.

-      But I may say that that other mule never materialised. I accepted the

-      excuse when we left Taiku that there was no other mule to be hired, and by

-      the time that excuse had worn thin I had so much else to think about that

-      I bore up, though not even a donkey was added to our equipment.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Money I took with me in lumps of silver, sycee&mdash;shoes, they called

-      them&mdash;and a very unsatisfactory way it is of carrying cash. It is

-      very heavy and there is no hiding the fact that you have got it. We

-      changed little bits for our daily needs as we went along, just as little

-      as we could, because the change in cash was an intolerable burden. On one

-      occasion in Fen Chou Fu I gave Tsai Chih Fu a very small piece of silver

-      to change and intimated that I would like to see the result. That piece of

-      silver I reckon was worth about five shillings, but presently my master of

-      transport and one of the muleteers came staggering in and laid before me

-      rows and rows of cash strung on strings! I never felt so wealthy in my

-      life. After that I never asked for my change. I was content to keep a sort

-      of general eye on the expenditure, and I expect the only leakage was the

-      accepted percentage which every servant levies on his master. 'When they

-      might easily have cheated me, I found my servants showed always a most

-      praiseworthy desire for my welfare. And yet Mr Wang did surprise me

-      occasionally. While I was in Pao Ting Fu I had found it useful to learn to

-      count in Chinese, so that roughly I knew what people at the food-stalls

-      were charging me. On one occasion I saw some little cakes powdered with

-      sesame seed that I thought I should like and I instructed Mr Wang to buy

-      me one. I heard him ask the price and the man say three cash, and my

-      interpreter turned to me and said that it was four! I was so surprised I

-      said nothing. It may have been the regulation percentage, and twenty-five

-      per cent is good anywhere, but at the moment it seemed to me extraordinary

-      that a man who considered himself as belonging to the upper classes should

-      find it worth his while to do me out of one cash, which was worth&mdash;no,

-      I give it up. I don't know what it was worth. 10.53 dollars went to the

-      pound when I was in Shansi and about thirteen hundred cash to the dollar,

-      so I leave it to some better mathematician than I am to say what I was

-      done out of on that occasion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was another person who was very pleased with the litter and that was

-      James Buchanan. Poor little man, just before we left the Flower Garden he

-      was badly bitten by a dog, so badly he could no longer walk, and I had to

-      carry him on a cushion alongside me in the litter. I never knew before how

-      dearly one could love a dog, for I was terrified lest he should die and I

-      should be alone in the world. He lay still and refused to eat, and every

-      movement seemed to pain him, and whenever I struck a missionary&mdash;they

-      were the only people, of course, with whom I could converse&mdash;they

-      always suggested his back was broken.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I remember at Ki Hsien, where I was entertained most hospitably, and where

-      the missionary's wife was most sympathetic, he was so ill that I sat up

-      all night with him and thought he would surely die. And yet in the morning

-      he was still alive. He moaned when we lifted him into the litter and

-      whined pitifully when I got out, as I had to several times to take

-      photographs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Don't leave me, don't leave me to the mercy of the Chinese,&rdquo; he said, and

-      greeted me with howls of joy when I returned. It was a great day for both

-      of us when he got a little better and could put his pretty little black

-      and white head round the tilt and keep his eye upon me while I worked. But

-      really he was an ideal patient, such a good, patient little dog, so

-      grateful for any attention that was paid him, and from that time he began

-      to mend and by the time I reached Fen Chou Fu was almost his old gay happy

-      little self again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Taiku is a dying town over two thousand years old, and I have before seen

-      dead towns in China. Fewer and fewer grow the inhabitants, the grass grows

-      in the streets, the bricks fall away from the walls, the houses fall down,

-      until but a few shepherds or peasant farmers dwell where once were the

-      busy haunts of merchants and tradesmen.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      From Taiku I went on across the rich Shansi plain. Now in the springtime

-      in the golden sunshine the wheat was just above the ground, turning the

-      land into one vivid green, the sky was a cloudless blue, and all was

-      bathed in the golden sunshine of Northern China. The air was clear and

-      invigorating as champagne. &ldquo;Every prospect pleases,&rdquo; as the hymn says,

-      &ldquo;and only man is vile.&rdquo; He wasn't vile; really I think he was a very good

-      fellow in his own way, which was in a dimension into which I have never

-      and am never likely to enter, but he was certainly unclean, ignorant, a

-      serf, poverty-stricken with a poverty we hardly conceive of in the West,

-      and the farther away I found myself from T'ai Yuan Fu the more friendly

-      did I find him. This country was not like England, where until the last

-      four years has been in the memory of our fathers and our fathers' fathers

-      only peace. Even now, now as I write, when the World War is on, an air

-      raid is the worst that has befallen the home-staying citizens of Britain.

-      But Shansi has been raided again and again. Still the land was tilled,

-      well tilled; on every hand were men working hard, working from dawn to

-      dark, and working, to a stranger's eyes, for the good of the community,

-      for the fields are not divided by hedge or fence; there is an occasional

-      poplar or elm, and there are graves everywhere, but there is nothing to

-      show where Wang's land ends and Lui's begins. All through the cultivated

-      land wanders, apparently without object, the zigzag track of sand and ruts

-      and stones known as the Great South Road, impossible for anything with

-      wheels but a Chinese cart, and often impossible for that. There are no

-      wayside cottages, nothing save those few trees to break the monotony, only

-      here and there is a village sheltering behind high walls, sometimes of

-      mud, but generally of brick, and stout, substantial brick at that; and if,

-      as is not infrequent, there is a farmhouse alone, it, too, is behind high

-      brick walls, built like a baronial castle of mediaeval times, with a

-      look-out tower and room behind the walls not only for the owner's family

-      even unto the third and fourth generation, but for all his hinds and his

-      dependents as well. The whole is built evidently with a view to defence,

-      and built apparently to last for hundreds of years. For Shansi is worth

-      raiding. There is oil and there is wheat in abundance. There is money too,

-      much of which comes from Mongolia and Manchuria. The bankers (the Shansi

-      men are called the Jews of China) wander across and trade far into Russian

-      territory while still their home is in agricultural Shansi, and certain it

-      is that any disturbances in these countries, even in Russia, affect the

-      prosperity of Shansi. I wonder if the Russian Revolution has been felt

-      there. Very probably.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Shansi is rich in other things too not as yet appreciated by the Chinaman.

-      She has iron and copper and coal that has barely been touched, for the

-      popular feeling is against mining. They say that no part of the globe

-      contains such stores of coal. I hesitate about quoting a German, but they

-      told me that Baron Reichthoffen has said that this province has enough

-      coal to supply the world for two thousand years at the present rate of

-      consumption. I haven't the faintest notion whether the Baron's opinion is

-      worth anything, but if it is, it is no wonder that Germany, with her eye

-      for ever on the main chance, has felt deeply being thrust out of China.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With ample coal, and with iron alongside it, what might not Shansi be

-      worth to exploit!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Ki Hsien is a little walled town five <i>li</i> round. Roughly three <i>li</i>

-      make a mile, but it is a little doubtful. For instance, from Taiku to Ki

-      Hsien is fifty li, and that fifty <i>li</i> is sixteen miles, from Ki

-      Hsien to Ping Yao is also fifty li, but that is only fourteen English

-      miles. The land, say the Chinese, explaining this discrepancy, was

-      measured in time of famine when it wasn't of any value! A very Chinese

-      explanation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The city of Ki Hsien is very, very crowded; there were hundreds of tiny

-      courtyards and flat roofs. In the picture of the missionary's house I have

-      not been able to get the roof in because the courtyard&mdash;and it was a

-      fairly large courtyard as courtyards in the city go&mdash;was not big

-      enough. I stood as far away as I possibly could. Mr and Mrs Falls belonged

-      to the Chinese Inland Mission and the house they lived in was over three

-      hundred years old. Like many of the houses in Shansi, it was two storeys

-      high and, strangely enough, a thing I have never seen anywhere else, the

-      floors upstairs were of brick.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I do not know how I would like to live in such a crowded community, but it

-      has its advantages on occasion. At the time of the revolution, when those

-      missionaries who had come through the Boxer times were all troubled and

-      anxious about their future, the Falls decided to stay on at their station,

-      and a rich native doctor, a heathen, but a friend, who lived next door,

-      commended that decision.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Why go away?&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Your courtyard adjoins mine. If there is trouble

-      we put up a ladder and you come over to us.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And there was hint of trouble then. As we sat at supper there came in the

-      Chinese postman in his shabby uniform of dirty blue and white, with his

-      large military cap pushed on the back of his head, and he brought to the

-      Falls a letter from Dr Edwards, the missionary doctor all foreign T'ai

-      Yuan Fu thought I ought to meet.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When I was within reach of the Peking foreign daily papers they mentioned

-      Pai Lang as one might mention a burglar in London, sandwiching him in

-      between the last racing fixtures or the latest Cinema attraction, but from

-      a little walled town within a day's march of Hsi An Fu the veteran

-      missionary wrote very differently, and we in this other little walled town

-      read breathlessly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      White Wolf had surrounded Hsi An Fu, he said; it was impossible to get

-      there and he was returning.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The darkness had fallen, the lamp in the middle of the table threw a light

-      on the letter and on the faces of the middle-aged missionary and his wife

-      who pored over it. It might mean so much to them. It undoubtedly meant

-      much to their friends in Hsi An Fu, and it meant much to me, the outsider

-      who had but an hour ago walked into their lives. For I began to fear lest

-      this robber might affect me after all, lest in coming north I was not

-      going to outflank him. According to Dr Edwards, he had already taken a

-      little walled city a hundred li&mdash;about a day's journey&mdash;north-west

-      of Hsi An Fu, and when 'White Wolf took a town it meant murder and rapine.

-      And sitting there in the old Chinese room these two people who knew China

-      told me in no measured terms what might happen to a woman travelling alone

-      in disturbed country.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Missionaries, they said, never left their stations when the country was

-      disturbed, they were safer at home, surrounded by their friends. Once the

-      country is raided by a robber band&mdash;and remember this is no uncommon

-      thing in China&mdash;all the bad characters in the country come to the

-      fore, and robber bands that have nothing to do with the original one

-      spring into existence, the cities shut their gates to all strangers, and

-      passports are so much waste paper. Between ourselves, I have a feeling

-      they always are in China. I could hardly tell the difference between mine

-      and my agreement with my muleteers, and I have an uneasy feeling that

-      occasionally the agreement was presented when it should have been the

-      passport.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now no one could be certain whether Pai Lang intended to take Lan Chou Fu,

-      but it looked as if that were his objective. If he took the city it would

-      not be much good my getting there, because the bankers would certainly not

-      be able to supply me with money; even if he only raided the country round,

-      it would be so disturbed that my muleteers would be bound to take alarm.

-      If they left me, and they certainly would leave me if they thought there

-      was a chance of their mules being taken, I should be done. It would spell

-      finish not only to the expedition but to my life. A foreigner, especially

-      a woman without money and without friends, would be helpless in China. Why

-      should the people help her? It takes them all they know to keep their own

-      heads above water. And Kansu was always turbulent; it only wanted a match

-      to set the fire alight. Air and Mrs Falls&mdash;bless them for their

-      kindness and interest!&mdash;thought I should be mad to venture.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0068.jpg" alt="0068 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0068.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0069.jpg" alt="0069 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0069.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0070.jpg" alt="0070 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0070.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      So there in the sitting-room which had been planned for a merchant prince

-      and had come into the possession of these two who desired to bring the

-      religion of the West to China I sat and discussed this new obstacle. After

-      coming so far, laying out so much money, could I turn back when danger did

-      not directly press? I felt I could not. And yet my hosts pointed out to me

-      that if danger did directly threaten I would not be able to get away. If

-      Pai Lang did take Lan Chou Fu, or even if he did not, it might well be

-      worth his while to turn east and raid fertile Shansi. In a little town

-      like Ki Hsien there was loot well worth having. In the revolution a banker

-      there was held to ransom, and paid, as the people put it, thirty times ten

-      thousand taels (a tael is roughly three shillings, according to the price

-      of silver), and they said it was but a trifle to him&mdash;a flea-bite, I

-      believe, was the exact term&mdash;and I ean well believe, in the multitude

-      of worse parasites that afflict the average Chinaman, a flea-bite means

-      much less than it does in England.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      However, I didn't feel like giving up just yet, so I decided to go on to

-      Fen Chou Fu, where was a big American mission, and see what they had to

-      say about the matter. If then I had to flee, the missionaries would very

-      likely be fleeing too, and I should have company.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And the very next day I had what I took for a warning.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a gorgeous day, a cloudless blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and I

-      passed too many things of interest worth photographing. There were some

-      extraordinary tombs, there was a quaint village gateway&mdash;the Gate of

-      Everlasting Peace they call it&mdash;but I was glad to get back into my

-      litter and hoped to stay there for a little, for getting out of a litter

-      presents some difficulties unless you are very active indeed. It is a good

-      long drop across the shafts on to the ground; the only other alternative

-      is to drop down behind the mule's hind quarters and slip out under those

-      shafts, but I never had sufficient confidence in my mule to do that, so

-      that I generally ealled upon Tsài Chih Fu to lift me down. I had set out

-      full of tremors, but taking photographs of the peaceful scenes soothed my

-      ruffled nerves. I persuaded myself my fears had been born of the night and

-      the dread of loneliness which sometimes overtakes me when I am in company

-      and thinking of setting out alone, leaving kindly faces behind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then I came upon it, the first sign of unrest.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The winding road rose a little and I could see right ahead of us a great

-      crowd of people evidently much agitated, and I called to Mr Wang to know

-      what was the matter.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Repeat, please,&rdquo; said he as usual, and then rode forward and came baek

-      saying, &ldquo;I do not know the word.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What word?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What is a lot of people and a dead man?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said I, jumping to conclusions unwarrantably, &ldquo;that is a funeral.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;A funeral!&rdquo; said he triumphantly. &ldquo;I have learned a new word.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Mr Wang was always learning a new word and rejoicing over it, but, as I

-      had hired him as a finished product, I hardly think it was unreasonable of

-      me to be aggrieved, and to feel that I was paying him a salary for the

-      pleasure of teaching him English. However, on this occasion his triumph

-      was short-lived. .

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Would you like to see the funeral?&rdquo; he said.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I intimated that I would. My stalwart master of transport lifted me down

-      and the crowded people made a lane for me to pass through, and half of

-      them turned their attention to me, for though there were missionaries in

-      the big towns, a foreigner was a sight to these country people, and, Mr

-      Wang going first, we arrived at a man with his head cut off! Mercifully he

-      was mixed up with a good deal of matting and planks, but still there was

-      no mistaking the poor dead feet in their worn Chinese shoes turned up to

-      the sky.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Considering we are mortal, it is extraordinary how seldom the ordinary

-      person looks upon death. Always it comes with a shock. At least it did. I

-      suppose this war has accustomed some of us to the sight, so that we take

-      the result of the meeting of mortal man with his last friend on earth more

-      as a matter of eourse, as indeed it should be taken. Of course I know this

-      is one of the results of the war.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My sister's son, staying with me after six months in hospital, consequent

-      upon a wound at Gallipoli, came home from a stroll one day and reported

-      that he had seen nothing, and then at dinner that night mentioned in a

-      casual manner that he had seen two dead men being carried out of a large

-      building and put in a motor ear.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I said in astonishment:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They couldn't have been dead!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Of course they were. Do you think I don't know dead men when I see them?

-      I've seen plenty.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      So many that the sight of a couple in the streets of a quiet little

-      country town seemed not even an occasion for remark.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I was not even accustomed to thinking of dead men and I turned upon Mr

-      Wang angrily:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But that isn't a funeral. That's a corpse,&rdquo; and once more to my

-      irritation he rejoiced over a new word.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Who killed him?&rdquo; I asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They think an enemy has done this thing,&rdquo; said he sententiously and

-      unnecessarily, as, ignorant as I am of tilings Chinese, I should hardly

-      think even they could have called it a friendly action. The body had been

-      found the day before, and the people were much troubled about it. An

-      official from Ping Yow&mdash;a coroner, I suppose we should call him&mdash;was

-      coming out to inquire about it, and because the sun was already hot the

-      people had raised a little screen of matting with a table and chairs where

-      he could sit to hold inquiry.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And here was the thing the missionaries had warned me against. Trouble,

-      said they, always begins by the finding of dead bodies that cannot be

-      accounted for, and this body was on the Great South Road. It might be only

-      a case of common murder such as one might perchance meet in Piccadilly,

-      possibly it was due to the bands of soldiers that were pouring into the

-      country&mdash;to defend the crossings of the Yellow River, some people

-      said&mdash;but it was to me an emphatic reminder that the warnings of Mr

-      and Mrs Falls had not been given lightly, and I meditated upon it all the

-      way to Ping Yow.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      All day long the soldiers had been pouring through Ki Hsien, all night

-      long they poured through the suburbs of Ping Yow. Not through the town

-      itself&mdash;the townspeople were not going to allow that if they could

-      help themselves; and as it was evidently a forced march and the regiments

-      were travelling by night, they could help themselves, for every city gate

-      is shut at sundown. The China Inland Mission had a station at an old camel

-      inn in the eastern suburb, and there the missionary's young wife was alone

-      with five young children, babies all of them, and there I found her. I

-      think she was very glad to see me, anyhow I was someone to discuss things

-      with, and we two women talked and talked over our evening meal. She was a

-      tall, pretty young woman&mdash;not even the ugly Chinese dress and her

-      hair drawn back, not a hair out of place, Chinese fashion, could disguise

-      her pathetic beauty. And she was a countrywoman of mine, born and brought

-      up in the same state, Victoria, and her native town was Ararat, green and

-      fresh among the hills. And how she talked Australia! What a beautiful land

-      it was! And the people! The free, independent people! The women who walked

-      easily and feared no man! To thoroughly appreciate a democratic country

-      you should dwell in effete China. But she feared too, this woman, feared

-      for herself and her five tiny children. It would be no easy job to get

-      away. I told her of the dead man I had seen&mdash;how should I not tell

-      her?&mdash;and she trembled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Very likely it is the soldiers,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am afraid of the Chinese

-      soldiers.&rdquo; And so am I in bulk, though taken singly they seem sueh

-      harmless little chaps.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;When the willow is green and the apricot yellow in the fifth moon,&rdquo; said

-      a metrical inscription on a stone dug up at Nankin in that year&mdash;the

-      fatal year 1914&mdash;&ldquo;terrible things will happen in the land of Han.&rdquo;

-       Terrible things, it seems to me, always happen in the land of Han; but if

-      it spoke for the great world beyond, truly the stone spoke truth, though

-      we did not know it then.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the evening back from the country where he had been preaching for the

-      last day or two came my Australian's husband, and there also came in to

-      see the stranger two missionaries from the other side of the town. They

-      sat there, these men and women of British race, dressed in the outlandish

-      costume of the people around them&mdash;a foolish fashion, it seems to me,

-      for a European in unadulterated Chinese dress looks as ugly and out of

-      place as a Chinese in a stiff collar and a bowler hat. And all the evening

-      we discussed the soldiers and the dead man I had seen, and opinions

-      differed as to the portent.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It is true, said one of them who had been in the country many years, and

-      was a missionary pure and simple, with eyes for nothing but the work he

-      had in hand&mdash;which is probably the way to work for success&mdash;that

-      a dead body, particularly a dead body by the highroad, is often a sign of

-      unrest, but again, quite as often it means no more than a dead body in any

-      other place. If he had turned back for every dead body he had seen&mdash;&mdash;

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Well, I thought I would not turn back either. Not yet, at least.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Never was I sorrier for missionaries, I who have always written against

-      missionaries, than I was for this young countrywoman of mine who never

-      thought of being sorry for herself. It was a big ugly mission compound,

-      the rooms, opening one into another, were plain and undecorated, and the

-      little children as a great treat watered the flowers that struggled up

-      among the stones of the dusty courtyard, and the very watering-can was

-      made with Chinese ingenuity from an old kerosene tin. It seemed to me

-      those little children would have had such a much better chance growing up

-      in their mother's land, or in their father's land&mdash;he was a Canadian&mdash;among

-      the free peoples of the earth. But who am I, to judge? No one in the

-      world, it seems to me, wants help so much as the poorer Chinese, whose

-      life is one long battle with disease and poverty; and perhaps these poorer

-      missionaries help a little, a very little; but the poorer the mission the

-      poorer the class they reach, and the sacrifice, as I saw it here, is so

-      great.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Next morning we arose early, and I breakfasted with my host and hostess

-      and their five children. The children's grace rings in my ears yet, always

-      I think it will ring there, the childish voices sung it with such fervour

-      and such faith:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br />

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent15">

-      &ldquo;Every day, every day, we bless Thee, we bless Thee,

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent10">

-      We praise Thy Name, we praise Thy Name,

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent15">

-      For ever and for ever!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      <br />

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There in the heart of China these little children, who had, it seemed to

-      me, so very little to be grateful for, thanked their God with all their

-      hearts, and when their elders with the same simple fervour went down on

-      their knees and asked their God to guide and help the stranger and set her

-      on her way, though it was against all my received canons of good taste,

-      what could I do but be simply grateful.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Ping Yow is a large town set in the midst of a wheatgrowing country, and

-      it is built in the shape of a turtle, at least so I was told. I could see

-      for myself that its walls were not the usual four-square set to the points

-      of the compass, but seemed irregular, with many little towers upon them.

-      These towers, it seems, were built in memory of the teachers of Confucius&mdash;this

-      is the only intimation I have had that he had seventy-two; and there were

-      over three thousand small excrescences&mdash;again I only repeat what I

-      was told; I did not count them, and if I had I would surely have counted

-      them wrong&mdash;like sentry-boxes in memory of his disciples. I do not

-      know why Ping Yow thus dedicates itself to the memory of the great sage.

-      It needs something to commend it, for it remains in my mind as a bare,

-      ugly, crowded town, with an extra amount of dust and dirt and heat, and no

-      green thing to break the monotony.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And I set forth, and in spite of all I still faced West.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0079.jpg" alt="0079 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0079.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0080.jpg" alt="0080 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0080.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER IV&mdash;A CITY UNDER THE HILLS

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n my wanderings

-      across Shansi I came in contact with two missionary systems run with the

-      same object in view but carried out in diametrically opposite ways. Of

-      course I speak as an outsider. I criticise as one who only looks on, but

-      after all it is an old saw that the onlooker sees most of the game. There

-      are, of course, many missions in China, and I often feel that if the

-      Chinaman were not by nature a philosopher he would sometimes be a little

-      confused by salvation offered him by foreigners of all sects and classes,

-      ranging from Roman Catholics to Seventh Day Adventists. Personally I have

-      received much kindness from English Baptists, from the China Inland

-      Mission and from American Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Amongst

-      them all I&mdash;who frankly do not believe in missions, believing that

-      the children at home should first be fed&mdash;found much to admire, much

-      individual courage and sacrifice, but for the systems, I felt the American

-      missions were the most efficient, far the most likely to attain the end in

-      view.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Chinaman, to begin with, sees no necessity for his own conversion.

-      Unlike the ordinary black man, he neither admires nor envies the white

-      man, and is given to thinking his own ways are infinitely preferable. But

-      the Chinaman is a man of sound common-sense, he immensely admires

-      efficiency, he is a great believer in education, and when a mission comes

-      to him fully equipped with doctors, nurses and hospitals, teachers and

-      schools, he, once he has overcome his dread of anything new, begins to

-      avail himself first of the doctor and the hospital, for the sore need of

-      China is for medical attendance, and then of the schools. Then comes

-      conversion. They tell me that there are many genuine converts. I have only

-      noticed that the great rich American missions rake in converts by tens and

-      twenties, where they come dribbling in in units to the faith missions,

-      which offer no such advantages as medical attendance or tuition. The faith

-      missionaries work hard enough. I have seen a woman just come in from a

-      week's missionary tour in a district where, she explained, she had slept

-      on the k'angs with the other women of the household, and she was stripping

-      off her clothes most carefully and combing her long hair with a

-      tooth-comb, because all women of the class she visited among were

-      afflicted with those little parasites that we do not mention. The Chinese

-      have a proverb that &ldquo;the Empress herself has three,&rdquo; so it is no shame.

-      She thought nothing of her sacrifice, that was what she had come for,

-      everyone else was prepared to do the same; but when so much is given I

-      like to see great results, as in the American missions. They are rich, and

-      the Chinaman, with a few glaring exceptions, is a very practical person.

-      To ask him to change his faith for good that will work out in another

-      world is asking rather much of him. If he is going to do so he feels he

-      may as well have a God who will give him something in return for being

-      outcast. At least that is the way I read the results. Look at Fen Chou,

-      for instance, where the Americans are thriving and a power in the town,

-      and look at Yung Ning Chou, farther west, where a Scandinavian faith

-      mission has been established for over twenty years. They may have a few

-      adherents in the country round, but in the city itself&mdash;a city of

-      merchants&mdash;they have, I believe, not made a single convert.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Of course the China Inland Mission does not lay itself out to be rich.

-      However many subscriptions come in, the individual missionary gets no more

-      than fifty pounds a year; if more money comes, more missionaries are

-      established, if less, then the luckless individual missionary gets as much

-      of the fifty pounds as funds allow. The Founder of the Faith was poor and

-      lowly, therefore the missionaries must follow in His footsteps. I

-      understand the reason, the nobility, that lies in the sacrifice implied

-      when men and women give their lives for their faith, but not only do I

-      like best the results of the American system, but I dislike exceedingly

-      that a European should be poor in an Oriental country. If missionaries

-      must go to China, I like them to go for the benefit of the Chinese and for

-      the honour and glory of the race to which they belong, and not for the

-      good of their own souls.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I came into Fen Chou Fu and went straight to the large compound of the

-      American missionaries, three men and three women from Oberlin College,

-      Ohio. They had a hospital, they had a school, they had a kindergarten, the

-      whole compound was a flourishing centre of industry. They teach their

-      faith, for that is what they have come out for, but also they teach the

-      manifold knowledge of the West. Sanitation and hygiene loom large in their

-      curriculum, and heaven knows, without taking into consideration any future

-      life, they must be a blessing to those men and women who under cruel

-      conditions must see this life through. These six missionaries at Fen Chou

-      Fu do their best to improve those conditions with a practical American

-      common-sense and thoroughness that won my admiration.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Fen Chou Fu, unlike T'ai Yuan Fu, is friendly, and has always been

-      friendly, to the foreigner; even during the Boxer trouble they were loath

-      to kill their missionaries, and when the order came that they were to be

-      slain, declined to allow it to be done within their walls, but sent them

-      out, and they were killed about seven miles outside the city&mdash;a very

-      Chinese way of freeing themselves from blood-guiltiness.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The town struck me as curiously peaceful after the unrest and the

-      never-ending talk of riot, robbery and murder I had heard all along the

-      road. The weather was getting warm and we all sat at supper on the

-      verandah of Dr Watson's house, with the lamps shedding a subdued light on

-      the table, and the sounds of the city coming to us softened by the

-      distance, and Mr Watt Pye assured me he had been out in the country and

-      there was nothing to fear, nothing. The Chinaman as he had seen him had

-      many sins, at least errors of conduct that a missionary counts sin, but as

-      far as he knew I might go safely to the Russian border. He had not been in

-      the country very long, not, I fancy, a fifth of the time Dr Edwards had

-      been there, but, listening to him, I hoped once more.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The town is old. It was going as a city in 2205 b.c., and it is quite

-      unlike any other I have come across in China. It is a small square city

-      about nine <i>li</i> round, and on each of the four sides are suburbs,

-      also walled. Between them and the city are the gully-like roads leading to

-      the gates. The eastern suburb is nearly twice as large as the main city,

-      and is surrounded by a high brick wall, but the other suburbs have only

-      walls like huge banks of clay, on the top the grass grows, and on my way

-      in I was not surprised to see on top of this clay-bank a flock of sheep

-      browsing. It seemed a very appropriate place for sheep, for at first sight

-      there is nothing to show that this was the top of a town wall.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the Manehus drove out the Mings, the vanquished Imperial family took

-      refuge in this western town and rebuilt the walls, which had been allowed

-      to fall into disrepair, and they set about the job in a fashion worthy of

-      Babylon itself. The bricks were made seven miles away in the hills, and

-      passed from hand to hand down a long line of men till they reached their

-      destination and were laid one on top of another to face the great

-      clay-bank forty-six feet high that guards the city. According to Chinese

-      ideas, the city needs guarding not from human enemies only. The mountains

-      to the west and north overshadow it, and all manner of evil influences

-      come from the north, and the people fear greatly their effect upon the

-      town. It was possible it might never get a good magistrate, or that,

-      having got one, he might die, and therefore they took every precaution

-      they could to ward off such a calamity. Gods they put in their watch tower

-      over the gate, and they sit there still, carved wooden figures, a great

-      fat god&mdash;if a city is to be prosperous must not its god be prosperous

-      too?&mdash;surrounded by lesser satellites. Some are fallen now, and the

-      birds of the air roost upon them, and the dust and the cobwebs have

-      gathered upon them, but not yet will they be cleared away. In a chamber

-      below are rusty old-world cannon flung aside in a heap as so much useless

-      lumber, and, below, all the busy traffic of the city passes in and out

-      beneath the arches of the gateway. In that gateway are two upright stones

-      between whieh all wheeled traffic must pass, the distance between these

-      stones marking the length of the axle allowed by the narrow city streets.

-      Any vehicle having a greater length of axle cannot pass in. No mere words

-      can describe the awful condition of the roads of Shansi, and to lessen as

-      far as possible the chance of an upset the country man makes his axle very

-      wide, and, knowing this, the town man notifies at his gates the width of

-      the vehicle that can pass in his streets. No other can enter.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Besides the gods over the gateway, Fen Chou Fu, owing to its peculiar

-      position under the hills, requires other guarding, and there are two tall

-      bronze phoenixes on the wall close to the northern watch tower. I was

-      quite pleased to make the acquaintance of a phoenix, as, though I have

-      read about them, I had never met them before. In Fen Chou Fu it appears

-      that a phoenix is between thirty and forty feet high, built like a comic

-      representation of a chicken, with a long curly neck and a cock's comb upon

-      his head. It would indeed be a churlish, evil spirit who was not moved to

-      laughter at the sight. But though the form is crude, on the bronze bases

-      and on the birds themselves are worked beautifully the details of a long

-      story. Dragons and foxes and rabbits, and many strange symbols that I do

-      not understand come into it, but how they help to guard the city, except

-      by pleasing the gods or amusing the evil spirits, I must confess I cannot

-      imagine. Certainly the city fathers omit the most necessary care: once the

-      walls are finished, the mason is apparently never called in, and they are

-      drifting to decay. Everywhere the bricks are falling out, and when I was

-      there in the springtime the birds of the air found there a secure

-      resting-place. There were crows and hawks and magpies and whistling kites

-      popping in and out of the holes so made, in their beaks straws and twigs

-      for the making of their nests. They would be secure probably in any case,

-      for the Chinese love birds, but here they are doubly secure, for only with

-      difficulty and by the aid of a long rope could any man possibly reach

-      them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The ramps up to those walls were extremely steep&mdash;it was a

-      heart-breaking process to get on top&mdash;but Buchanan and I, accompanied

-      by the master of transport carrying the camera, and often by Mr Leete, one

-      of the missionaries, took exercise there; for in a walled city in the

-      narrow streets there is seldom enough air for my taste. The climate here

-      is roughly summer and winter, for though so short a while ago it had been

-      freezing at night, already it was very hot in the middle of the day, and

-      the dust rose up from the narrow streets in clouds. A particularly bad

-      cloud of dust generally indicated pigs, which travel a good deal in

-      Northern China, even as sheep and cattle do in Australia. In Shantung a

-      man sets out with a herd of pigs and travels them slowly west, very

-      slowly, and they feed along the wayside, though what they feed on heaven

-      only knows, for it looks to me as though there is nothing, still possibly

-      they pick up something, and I suppose the idea is that they arrive at the

-      various places in time for the harvest, or when grain and products are

-      cheapest. There are inns solely given over to pigs and their drivers in

-      Shansi, and the stench outside some of those in Fen Chou Fu was just a

-      little taller than the average smell, and the average smell in a Chinese

-      city is something to be always remembered. There were other things to be

-      seen from the top of the wall too&mdash;long lines of camels bearing

-      merchandise to and from the town, donkeys, mules, carts, all churning up

-      the dust of the unkempt roadway, small-footed women seated in their

-      doorways looking out upon the life of the streets, riding donkeys or

-      peeping out of the tilts of the carts. I could see into the courtyards of

-      the well-to-do, with their little ponds and bridges and gardens. All the

-      life of the city lay beneath us. Possibly that is why one meets so very,

-      very seldom any Chinese on the wall&mdash;it may be, it probably is, I

-      should think, bad taste to look into your neighbour's courtyard.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And the wall justified its existence, mediaeval and out of date as it

-      seemed to me. There along the top at intervals were little heaps of

-      good-sized stones, placed there by the magistrate in the revolution for

-      the defence of the town. At first I smiled and thought how primeval, but

-      looking down into the road nearly fifty feet below, I realised that a big

-      stone flung by a good hefty fist from the top of that wall was a weapon by

-      no means to be despised.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But walls, if often a protection, are sometimes a danger in more ways than

-      in shutting out the fresh air. The summer rains in North China are heavy,

-      and Fen Chou Fu holds water like a bucket. The only outlets are the narrow

-      gateways, and the waters rise and rise. A short time before I came there

-      all the eastern quarter of the town was flooded so deep that a woman was

-      drowned. At last the waters escaped through the eastern gate, only to be

-      banked up by the great ash-heaps, the product of centuries, the waste

-      rubbish of the town, that are just outside the wall of the eastern suburb.

-      It took a long, long while for those flood waters to percolate through the

-      gateway of the suburb and find a resting-place at last in a swamp the

-      other side of that long-suffering town. I must confess that this is one of

-      the drawbacks to a walled town that has never before occurred to me,

-      though to stand there and look at those great gates, those solid walls,

-      made me feel as if I had somehow wandered into the fourth dimension, so

-      out of my world were they.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was a great fair in a Taoist temple and one day Mr Leete and I, with

-      his teacher and my servant, attended. A wonderful thing is a Chinese fair

-      in a temple. I do not yet understand the exact object of these fairs,

-      though I have attended a good many of them. Whether they help the funds of

-      the temple as a bazaar is supposed to help a church in this country, I

-      cannot say. A temple in China usually consists of a set of buildings often

-      in different courtyards behind one enclosing wall, and these buildings are

-      not only temples to the gods, but living-rooms which are often let to

-      suitable tenants, and, generally speaking, if the stranger knows his way

-      about&mdash;I never did&mdash;he can get in a temple accommodation for

-      himself and his servants, far superior accommodation to that offered in

-      the inns. It costs a little more, but everything is so cheap that makes no

-      difference to the foreigner. The Taoist temple the day I went there was

-      simply humming with life; there were stalls everywhere, and crowds of

-      people buying, selling or merely gossiping and looking on. I took a

-      picture of some ladies of easy virtue with gay dresses and gaily painted

-      faces, tottering about, poor things, on their maimed feet, and at the same

-      spot, close against the altar of the god, I took a picture of the priest.

-      With much hesitation he consented to stand. He had in his hand some

-      fortune-telling sticks, but did not dare hold them while his portrait was

-      being taken. However, Mr Leete's teacher was a bold, brave, enlightened

-      man&mdash;in a foreign helmet&mdash;and he held the sticks, and the two

-      came out in the picture together. I trust no subsequent harm came to the

-      daring man.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0089.jpg" alt="0089 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0089.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0019" id="linkimage-0019"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0090.jpg" alt="0090 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0090.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      In Fen Chou Fu I could have walked about the town alone unmolested. I

-      never did, because it would have been undignified and often awkward, as I

-      could not speak the language, but the people were invariably friendly. On

-      the whole, there was not very much to see. The sun poured down day after

-      day in a cloudless sky, and the narrow streets, faced with stalls or blank

-      grey brick walls enclosing the compounds, were dusty and uneven, with the

-      ruts still there that had been made when the ground was softened by the

-      summer rains of the year before. Away to the south-east was a great

-      pagoda, the second tallest in China, a landmark that can be seen for many

-      a long mile across the plain. This, like the phoenixes, is <i>feng shui</i>.

-      I have never grasped the inwardness of pagodas, which are dotted in

-      apparently a casual manner about the landscape. An immense amount of

-      labour must have been expended upon them, and they do not appear to serve

-      any useful purpose. This one at Fen Chou Fu is meant to balance after a

-      fashion the phoenixes on the northern wall and afford protection for the

-      southern approach to the city. I don't know that it was used for any other

-      purpose. It stood there, tall and commanding, dwarfing everything else

-      within sight. Neither do I know the purpose of the literary tower which

-      stands on the southeast corner of the wall. It denotes that the town

-      either has or hopes to have a literary man of high standing among its

-      inhabitants. But to look for the use in all things Chinese would be

-      foolish; much labour is expended on work that can be only for artistic

-      purposes. To walk through a Chinese town, in spite of filth, in spite of

-      neglect and disrepair, is to feel that the Chinaman is an artist to his

-      finger-tips.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The gate to the American church in Fen Chou Fu, for instance, was a

-      circle, a thing of strange beauty. Imagine such a gate in an English town,

-      and yet here it seemed quite natural and very beautiful. They had no bell,

-      why I do not know, perhaps because every temple in China has a plenitude

-      of bells hanging from its eaves and making the air musical when the

-      faintest breath of wind stirs and missionaries are anxious to dissociate

-      themselves in every way from practices they call idolatry, even when those

-      practices seem to an outsider like myself rather attractive. At any rate,

-      to summon the faithful to church a man beats a gong.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But there is one institution of Fen Chou Fu which is decidedly

-      utilitarian, and that is the wells in the northwestern corner. A Chinaman,

-      I should say, certainly uses on the average less water than the majority

-      of humanity; a bath when he is three days old, a bath when he is married,

-      and after that he can comfortably last till he is dead, is the generally

-      received idea of his ablutions, but he does want a little water to carry

-      on life, and in this corner of the town are situated the wells which

-      supply that necessary. It is rather brackish, but it is still drinkable,

-      and it is all that the city gets. They were a never-ending source of

-      interest to me. They were established in those far-away days before

-      history began&mdash;perhaps the presence of the water here was the reason

-      for the building of the town&mdash;and they have been here ever since. The

-      mouths are builded over with masonry, and year in and year out have come

-      those self-same carts with solid wheels, drawn by a harnessed ox or an ox

-      and a mule, bearing the barrels to be filled with water. Down through all

-      the ages those self-same men, dressed in blue cotton that has worn to a

-      dingy drab, with a wisp of like stuff tied round their heads to protect

-      them from the dust or the cold or the sun, have driven those oxen and

-      drawn that water. Really and truly our own water, that comes to us, hot

-      and cold, so easily by the turning of a tap, is much more wonderful and

-      interesting, but that I take as a matter of course, while I never tired of

-      watching those prehistoric carts. It was in rather a desolate corner of

-      the town too. The high walls rose up and frowned upon it, the inside of

-      the walls where there was no brick, only crumbling clay with shrubs and

-      creepers just bursting into leaf and little paths that a goat or an active

-      boy might negotiate meandering up to the top. And to get to that part I

-      had to pass the ruins of the old yamen razed to the ground when the

-      Government repented them of the Boxer atrocities, and razed so effectually

-      that only the two gate-posts, fashioned like lions, Chinese architectural

-      lions, survive. A curse is on the place, the people say; anyhow when I

-      visited it fourteen years later no effort had been made to rebuild. Not

-      for want of labour, surely. There are no trade unions in China, and daily

-      from dawn to dark in Fen Chou Fu I saw the bricklayers' labourers trotting

-      along, bringing supplies to the men who were building, in the streets I

-      met men carrying water to the houses in buckets, and now in the springtime

-      there was a never-ending supply of small boys, clad in trousers only, or

-      without even those, bearing, slung from each end of a bamboo, supplies of

-      firewood, or rather of such scraps as in any other land would have been

-      counted scarce worth the cost of transport. Any day too I might expect to

-      meet a coffin being borne along, not secretly and by night as we take one

-      to a house, but proudly borne in the open daylight, for everyone knows a

-      coffin is the most thoughtful and kindly as well as often the most

-      expensive of gifts.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      While here I attended a wedding. Twice have I attended a Chinese wedding.

-      The first was at Pao Ting Fu at Christmas time, and the contracting

-      parties were an evangelist of the church who in his lay capacity was a

-      strapping big laundryman and one of the girls in Miss Newton's school.

-      They had never spoken to one another, that would have been a frightful

-      breach of decorum, but as they went to the same church, where there was no

-      screen between the men and the women, as there is in many Chinese

-      churches, it is possible they knew each other by sight. It is curious how

-      in some things the missionaries conform to Chinese ideas and in others

-      decline to yield an inch. In Pao Ting Fu no church member was allowed to

-      smoke, but the women were kept carefully in retirement, and the

-      schoolmistress, herself an unmarried woman, and the doctor's wife arranged

-      marriages for such of the girls as came under their guardianship. Of

-      course I see the reason for that: in the present state of Chinese society

-      no other method would be possible, for these schoolgirls, all the more

-      because they had a little scholarship and education, unless their future

-      had been arranged for, would have been a temptation and a prey for all the

-      young men around, and even with their careful education&mdash;and it was a

-      careful education; Miss Newton was a woman in a thousand, I always grudged

-      her to the Chinese&mdash;were entirely unfitted to take care of

-      themselves.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Still it always made me smile to see these two women, middle-class

-      Americans from Virginia, good-looking and kindly, with a keen sense of

-      humour, gravely discussing the eligible young men around the mission and

-      the girls who were most suitable for them. It was the most barefaced and

-      open match-making I have ever seen. But generally, I believe, they were

-      very successful, for this one thing is certain, they had the welfare of

-      the girls at heart.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And this was one of the matches they had arranged. It is on record that on

-      this special occasion the bridegroom, with the consent and connivance of

-      the schoolmistress, had written to the bride exhorting her to diligence,

-      and pointing out how good a thing it was that a woman should be well read

-      and cultured. And seeing that she came of very poor people she might well

-      be counted one of the fortunate ones of the earth, for the bridegroom was

-      educating her. The ignorance of the average Chinese woman in far higher

-      circles than she came of is appalling.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Christmas Day was chosen for the ceremony, and Christmas Day was a

-      glorious winter's day, with golden sunshine for the bride, and the air,

-      the keen, invigorating air of Northern China, was sparkling with frost.

-      Now, in contrast to the next wedding I attended, this wedding was on

-      so-called Western lines; but the Chinese is no slavish imitator, he

-      changes, but he changes after his own fashion. The church was decorated by

-      devout Chinese Christians with results which to 'Western eyes were a

-      little weird and outré. Over the platform that in an Anglican church would

-      be the altar was a bank of greenery, very pretty, with flowers dotted all

-      over it, and on it Chinese characters in cotton wool, &ldquo;Earth rejoices,

-      heaven sings,&rdquo; and across that again was a festoon of small flags of all

-      nations, while from side to side of the church were slung garlands of

-      gaily coloured paper in the five colours of the new republic, and when I

-      think of the time and patience that went to the making of those garlands I

-      was quite sorry they reminded me of fly-catchers. But the crowning

-      decoration was the Chinese angel that hovered over all. This being was

-      clad in white, a nurse's apron was used, girt in at the waist, foreign

-      fashion, and I grieve to say they did not give her much breathing-space,

-      though they tucked a pink flower in her belt. Great white paper wings were

-      spread out behind, and from her head, framing the decidedly Mongolian

-      countenance, were flowing golden curls, made by the ingenious decorators

-      of singed cotton wool.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One o'clock was fixed for the wedding, and at a quarter to one the church

-      was full.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They did not have the red chair for the bride. The consensus of opinion

-      was against it. &ldquo;It was given up now by the best people in Peking. They

-      generally had carriages. And anyhow it was a ridiculous expense.&rdquo; So it

-      was deeided that the bride should walk. The church was only a

-      stone's-throw from the schoolhouse where she lived. The bridegroom stood

-      at the door on the men's side of the church, a tall, stalwart Chinaman,

-      with his blaek hair sleek and oiled and cut short after the modern

-      fashion. He was suitably clad in black silk. He reminded me of &ldquo;William,&rdquo;

-       a doll of my childhood who was dressed in the remains of an old silk

-      umbrella&mdash;this is saying nothing against the bridegroom, for

-      &ldquo;William&rdquo; was an eminently superior doll, and always looked his very best

-      if a little smug occasionally. But if a gentleman who has attained to the

-      proud position of laundryman and evangelist, and is marrying the girl he

-      has himself at great expense educated for the position, has not a right to

-      look a little smug, I don't know who has. Beside him stood his special

-      friend, the chief Chinese evangelist, who had himself been married four

-      months before. At the organ sat the American doctor's pretty young wife,

-      and as the word was passed, &ldquo;The bride is coming!&rdquo; she struck up the

-      wedding march, and all the women's eyes turned to the women's door, while

-      the men, who would not commit such a breach of decorum as to look, stared

-      steadily ahead.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the wedding march had been played over and over again before she did

-      come, resplendent and veiled, after the foreign fashion, in white mosquito

-      netting, with pink and blue flowers in her hair, and another bunch in her

-      hand. The bridegroom had wished her to wear silk on this great occasion,

-      so he had hired the clothes, a green silk skirt and a bronze satin brocade

-      coat.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A model of Chinese decorum was that bride. Her head under the white veil

-      was bent, her eyes were glued to the ground, and not a muscle of her body

-      moved as she progressed very slowly forward. Presumably she did put one

-      foot before the other, but she had the appearance of an automaton in the

-      hands of the women on either side&mdash;her mother, a stooping little old

-      woman, and a tall young woman in a bright blue brocade, the wife of the

-      bridegroom's special friend. Each grasped her by an arm just above the

-      elbow and apparently propelled her up the aisle as if she were on wheels.

-      Up the opposite aisle came the bridegroom, also with his head bent and his

-      eyes glued to the ground and propelled forward in the same manner by his

-      friend.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They met, those two who had never met face to face before, before the

-      minister, and he performed the short marriage ceremony, and as he said the

-      closing words the Chinese evangelist became Master of Ceremonies.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The bridegroom and bride,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;'will bow to each other once in the

-      new style.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The bride and groom standing before the minister bowed deeply to each

-      other in the new style.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They will bow a second time,&rdquo; and they bowed again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They will bow a third time,&rdquo; and once more they bowed low.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They will now bow to the minister,&rdquo; and they turned like well-drilled

-      soldiers and bowed to the white-haired man who had married them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They will now bow to the audience,&rdquo; and they faced the people and bowed

-      deeply, and everybody in that congregation rose and returned the

-      salutation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;And now the audience will bow to the bride and bridegroom,&rdquo; and with

-      right good will the congregation, Chinese and the two or three foreigners,

-      rose and saluted the newly married couple, also I presume in the new

-      style.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was over, and to the strains of the wedding march they left the church,

-      actually together, by way of the women's entrance. But the bride was not

-      on the groom's arm. That would not have been in accord with Chinese ideas.

-      The bridegroom marched a little ahead, propelled forward by his friend, as

-      if he had no means of volition of his own&mdash;again I thought of

-      &ldquo;William,&rdquo; long since departed and forgotten till this moment&mdash;and

-      behind came the new wife, thrust forward in the same manner, still with

-      her eyes on the floor and every muscle stiff as if she too had been a

-      doll.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;All the world loves a lover,&rdquo; but in China, the land of ceremonies, there

-      are no lovers. This man had gone further than most men in the wooing of

-      his wife, and they were beginning life together with very fair chances of

-      success. But even so the girl might not hope for a home of her own.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That would have been most unseemly. The evangelist laundryman had not a

-      mother, but his only sister was taking the place of mother-in-law, and he

-      and his bride would live with her and her husband.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0020" id="linkimage-0020"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0099.jpg" alt="0099 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0099.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0021" id="linkimage-0021"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0100.jpg" alt="0100 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0100.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      The wedding I attended in Fen Chou Fu was quite a different affair. It was

-      spring, or perhaps I should say early summer, the streets through which we

-      drove to the old house of one of the Ming princes where dwelt the

-      bridegroom with his mother were thick with dust, and the sun blazed down

-      on us. The bridegroom belonged to a respectable well-to-do trading family,

-      and he wanted a Christian wife because he himself is an active member of

-      the church, but the Christian church at Fen Chou Fu has been bachelor so

-      long, and the division between the sexes is so strait, that there are

-      about fifty available girls to between eight and nine hundred young men,

-      therefore he had to take what he could get, and what he could get was a

-      pagan little girl about eighteen, for whom he paid thirty Mexican dollars,

-      roughly a little under three pounds. I, a Greek, who do not care much what

-      any man's religion is so long as he live a decent life, understand the

-      desire of that man for a Christian wife, for that means here in the

-      interior that she will have received a little education, will be able to

-      read and write and do arithmetic, and will know something of cleanliness

-      and hygiene.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The great day arrived, and the missionaries and I were invited to the

-      bridegroom's house for the ceremony and the feast that was to follow. The

-      entertainment began about eight o'clock in the morning, but we arrived a

-      little after noon, and we two women, Miss Grace Maccomaughey and I, were

-      ushered through the courtyards till we came to the interior one, which was

-      crowded with all manner of folks, some in festive array, some servants in

-      the ordinary blue of the country, and some beggars in rags who were

-      anticipating the scraps that fall from the rich man's table, and were

-      having tea and cake already. Overhead the sky was shut out by all manner

-      of flags and banners with inscriptions in Chinese characters upon them,

-      and once inside, we made our way towards the house through a pressing

-      crowd. Opposite the place that perhaps answered for a front door was a

-      table draped in red, the colour of joy, and on the table were two long

-      square candles of red wax with Chinese characters in gold upon them. They

-      were warranted to burn a day and a night, and between them was a pretty

-      dwarf plant quaintly gnarled and bearing innumerable white flowers. That

-      table was artistic and pretty, but to its left was a great pile of coal,

-      and, beside the coal, a stove and a long table at which a man, blue-clad,

-      shaven and with a queue, was busy preparing the feast within sight of all.

-      I could have wished the signs of hospitality had not been so much in

-      evidence, for I could quite believe that cook had not been washed since he

-      was three days old, and under the table was a large earthenware bowl full

-      of extremely dirty water in which were being washed the bowls we would

-      presently use.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Out came the women of the household to greet us and conduct us to the

-      bridal chamber, dark and draped with red and without any air to speak of.

-      It was crowded to suffocation with women in gala costumes, with bands of

-      black satin embroidered in flowers upon their heads, gay coats and loose

-      trousers, smiling faces and the tiny feet of all Shansi. It was quite a

-      relief to sit down on the <i>k'ang</i> opposite to a stout and cheerful

-      old lady with a beaming face who looked like a well-to-do farmer's wife.

-      She was a childless widow, however, but she had attained to the proud

-      position of Bible-woman, receiving a salary of four Mexican dollars a

-      month, and consequently had a position and station of her own. In my

-      experience there is nothing like being sure of one's own importance in the

-      world. It is certainly conducive to happiness. I know the missionaries,

-      bless them! would say I am taking a wrong view, but whatever the reason at

-      the back of it all, to them is the honour of that happy,

-      comfortable-looking Bible-woman. And there are so few happy-looking women

-      in China!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We sat on the <i>k'ang</i> and waited for the bride, and we discoursed. My

-      feet&mdash;I never can tuck them under me&mdash;clad in good substantial

-      leather, looked very large beside the tiny ones around me, for even the

-      Bible-woman's had been bound in her youth, and of course, though they were

-      unbound now, the broken bones could never come straight, and the-flesh

-      could not grow between the heel and the toes. She looked at my feet and I

-      laughed, and she said sententiously, like a true Chinese:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The larger the feet the happier the woman.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I asked did it hurt when hers were bound.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It hurt like anything,&rdquo; translated the missionary girl beside me, &ldquo;but it

-      is all right now.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The bride was long in coming, and shortly after four we heard the gongs

-      and music and crackers that heralded her arrival, and we all went out to

-      greet her, or rather to stare at her. First came the bridegroom, and that

-      well-to-do tradesman was a sight worth coming out to see. He wore a most

-      respectable black satin jacket and a very pretty blue silk petticoat;

-      round his neck and crossed on his breast was a sash of orange-red silk,

-      set off with a flaring magenta artificial chrysanthemum of no mean

-      proportions, and on his head, and somewhat too small for him, was&mdash;a

-      rare headgear in China&mdash;a hard black felt hat. From the brim of that,

-      on either side, rose a wire archway across the crown, on which were strung

-      ornaments of brass, and I am bound to say that the whole effect was

-      striking.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Before the bride came in to be married, out went two women to lift her

-      veil and smear her face with onion. They explained that the bridegroom's

-      mother should do this, but the fortune-teller had informed them that these

-      two women would be antagonistic&mdash;which I think I could have foretold

-      without the aid of any fortune-teller&mdash;therefore the rite was deputed

-      to two other women, one of whom was the kindergarten teacher at the

-      sehool. Then, with the teacher on one side and a lucky woman with husband

-      and children living on the other, down through the crowd came the little

-      bride to her marriage. She was clad in a red robe, much embroidered, which

-      entirely hid her figure, so that whether she were fat or slim it was

-      impossible to see, on her head was a brazen crown entirely covering it,

-      and over her face was a veil of thick bright red silk. She could neither

-      see nor be seen. Her feet were the tiniest I have ever seen, they looked

-      about suitable for a baby of twelve months old. The tiny red shoes were

-      decorated with little green tassels at the pointed toe and had little baby

-      high heels, and though they say these feet were probably false, the real

-      ones must have been wonderfully small if they were hidden in the manifold

-      red bandages that purported to make the slender red ankles neat.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Bride and bridegroom took their places in front of the minister, in front

-      of the plant and alongside the coals, and it made my back ache to think of

-      keeping any being standing for above a second on such feet. The service

-      began, all in Chinese, of course, though the officiating minister was an

-      American, a couple of hymns were sung, and the audience laughed aloud

-      because she was married by her baby name, her mother having omitted to

-      provide her with another.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The good woman had yearned for a son so she had called this girl &ldquo;Lead a

-      brother.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Half-way through the ceremony the bridegroom lifted the veil. He gave it a

-      hurried snatch, as if it were a matter of no moment, and hung it on one of

-      the projections of the brazen crown, and then he and we saw the bride's

-      face for the first time. They had done their best to spoil her beauty with

-      carmine paint, but she had a nice little nose and a sweet little quivering

-      mouth that was very lovable, and I think the bridegroom, though he never

-      moved a muscle, must have been pleased with his bargain.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the service was ended, she and we, the principal guests, went back to

-      the <i>k'ang</i> in the bride chamber; her crown and outer red robe were

-      taken off, all in public, and a small square box containing some of her

-      trousseau was brought in, and every woman and child there in that stuffy

-      little room dived into it and hauled out the silks and embroideries and

-      little shoes and made audible comments on them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;H'm! it's only sham silk,&rdquo; said one.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;How old are you, new bride?&rdquo; asked another.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;She's not much to look at,&rdquo; said a third, which was a shame, for with the

-      paint washed off she must have been pretty though tired-looking.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was five o'clock before we went to the feast, all the women together,

-      and all the men together, four or five at a table, and the bridegroom,

-      without the absurd headgear, and his mother, in sober blue silk, came

-      round at intervals and exhorted us to eat plenty.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We had one little saucer each, a pair of chopsticks and a china spoon such

-      as that with which my grandmother used to ladle out her tea, and they

-      served for all the courses. It was lucky I had had nothing since seven in

-      the morning, or I might not have felt equal to eating after I had seen the

-      cooking and the washing-up arrangements. As it was, I was hungry enough

-      not to worry over trifles. After she had sucked them audibly, my friend

-      the Bible-woman helped me with her own chopsticks, and I managed to put up

-      with that too. I tried a little wine. It was served in little bowls not as

-      large as a very small salt-cellar, literally in thimblefuls, but one was

-      too much for me. It tasted of fiery spirit and earth, and I felt my

-      companion was not denying herself much when she proclaimed herself a

-      teetotaller. What we ate heaven only knows, but much to my surprise I

-      found it very good. Chinese when they have the opportunity are excellent

-      cooks.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The bride sat throughout the feast on the <i>k'ang</i>, her hands&mdash;three

-      of her finger-nails were shielded with long silver shields&mdash;hidden

-      under her lavender jacket and her plate piled before her, though etiquette

-      required that she should refuse all food. They chaffed her and laughed at

-      her, but she sat there with downcast eyes like a graven image. After the

-      feast two or three men friends of the bridegroom were brought in, and to

-      every one she had to rise and make an obeisance, and though the men and

-      women hardly looked at or spoke to each other, it was evident that she was

-      for this occasion a thing to be commented on, inspected and laughed at.

-      She was bearing it very well, poor little girl, when Kan T'ai T'ai's cart&mdash;I

-      was Kan T'ai T'ai&mdash;was announced, and we went home through the

-      streets as the shades of evening were falling. I had fed bountifully and

-      well, but the dissipation had worn me out, the airlessness of the rooms

-      was terrible, and even the dust-laden air of the narrow street I drew into

-      my lungs with a sigh of deep thankfulness. It was good to be in the free

-      air again. Better still to remember, however I had railed against my fate

-      at times, nothing that could ever happen to me would be quite as bad as

-      the fate of the average Chinese woman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      However, a new life was beginning for this girl in more ways than one. The

-      bridegroom was going back to his business, that of a photographer in T'ai

-      Yuan Fu, leaving his wife with his mother. She was to be sent to the

-      school for married women opened by the missionaries, and, of course, her

-      feet were to be unbound. Probably, I hope I do not do him an injustice,

-      the bridegroom would not have objected to bound feet, but he did want an

-      educated mother for his children, and the missionaries will take no woman

-      with bound feet. They will do the best they can to retrieve the damage

-      done, though she can never hope to be anything but a maimed cripple, but

-      at least she in the future will be free from pain, into her darkened life

-      will come a little knowledge and a little light, and certainly her

-      daughters will have a happier life and a brighter outlook.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Missions in China, if they are to do any good, are necessarily

-      patriarchal. They look after their converts from the cradle to the grave.

-      The kindergarten run by a Chinese girl under the maternal eye of young

-      Miss Grace Maccomaughey was quite a pretty sight, with all the little tots

-      in their quaint dresses of many colours and their hair done or their heads

-      shaved in the absurd fashion which seems good to the proud Chinese parents&mdash;for

-      Chinese parents are both proud and tender and loving, though their ways

-      seem strange to us. But babies all the world over, yellow or black or

-      white, are all lovable, and these babies at the kindergarten were

-      delicious.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Beloved guest, beloved guest,&rdquo; they sang in chorus when I came in and

-      they were told to greet me. &ldquo;Peace to thee, peace to thee.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And &ldquo;Lao T'ai T'ai&rdquo; they used to address me in shrill little voices as I

-      went about the compound. Lao T'ai T'ai (I shouldn't like to swear I'd

-      spelled it properly) means &ldquo;Old lady&rdquo;&mdash;that is, a woman of venerable

-      years who is rich enough to keep a servant&mdash;and it was the first time

-      in my life I had been so addressed, so I looked in the glass to see if I

-      had developed grey hair or wrinkles&mdash;riding on a mule-pack would be

-      enough to excuse anything&mdash;and then I remembered that if in doubt in

-      China it is erring on the side of courtesy to consider your acquaintance

-      old. I dare say to the children I was old. I remember as a very little

-      girl a maiden aunt asking me how old I thought her, and I, knowing she was

-      older than my mother, felt she must be quite tottery and suggested in all

-      good faith she might be about ninety. I believe the lady had just attained

-      her five and thirtieth year, and prided herself upon her youthful

-      appearance. At any rate her attitude on this occasion taught me when

-      guessing an age it is better to understate than to overestimate. At least

-      in the West. Here in the East I was &ldquo;Old lady&rdquo; by courtesy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And they begin the important things of life early in China. At the

-      kindergarten there were two little tots, a boy and a girl, engaged to be

-      married. The boy was the son of one of the mission cooks and the girl was

-      the daughter of his wife. He, a widower, sought a wife to look after his

-      little boy, and he got this young widow cheap. Her price was thirty <i>tiaous</i>&mdash;that

-      is, a little over one pound&mdash;and at first he said it was too much and

-      he could not afford it, but when he heard she had a little girl he changed

-      his mind and scraped together the money, for the child could be betrothed

-      to his little son and save the expense of a wife later on.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They were a quaint little pair, both in coats and trousers, shabby and

-      old, evidently the children of poor people, and both with their heads

-      shaven save for a tuft of hair here and there. The boy had his tufts cut

-      short, while the girl's were allowed to grow as long as they would and

-      were twisted into a plait. Such a happy little couple they were, always

-      together, and in the games at the kindergarten when they had to pair these

-      little ones always chose each other. Possibly the new wife in the home was

-      a wise and discreet woman. She might be glad too at the thought that she

-      need not part with her daughter. Anyhow I should think that in Fen Chou Fu

-      in the future there would be one married couple between whom the sincerest

-      affection will exist.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I suppose Chinese husbands and wives are fond of each other occasionally,

-      but the Chinaman looks upon wedded life from quite a different point of

-      view from the Westerner. I remember hearing about a new-made widow who

-      came to sympathise with a missionary recovering from a long illness. She

-      was properly thanked, and then the missionary in her turn said in the

-      vernacular:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;And you too have suffered a bitterness. I am sorry.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I?&rdquo; incredulously, as much as to say, Who could think I had a sorrow?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Why, yes. You have lost your husband, haven't you?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Call that a bitterness?&rdquo; smiled the relict cheerfully, and her would-be

-      consoler felt the ground cut away beneath her feet.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But perhaps that sympathiser was not quite as much dismayed as another

-      lady who offered her condolences upon a similar occasion. The new-made

-      widow was a gay old thing, and she remarked blandly, with a toss of her

-      head:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;All, we don't worry about things like that when we've got the Gospel!&rdquo;

-       which left that well-meaning teacher a little uncertain as to whether she

-      had instructed her in the doctrines of her new faith quite correctly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Fen Chou Fu is a town that lends itself to reform, that asks for it. When

-      I was there they had a magistrate who had been educated in Japan and was

-      ready to back any measures for the good of the town. He was too much

-      imbued with the spirit of modern thought to be a Christian, but he was

-      full of admiration for many of the measures advocated by these

-      enthusiastic young people from Oberlin College. There is a large

-      Government school here&mdash;you may see the courtyards with their lily

-      ponds and bridges from the wall&mdash;that has been in existence for

-      hundreds of years, and this magistrate appealed to the missionaries to

-      take it over and institute their modern methods. They might even, so he

-      said, teach their own faith there. The only thing that stood in the way

-      was want of funds, for though the school was endowed, money has still a

-      way of sticking to the hands through which it passes in China. The

-      missionaries were rather inclined, I think, to have hopes of his

-      conversion, but I do not think it is very easy to convert the broad-minded

-      man who sees the good in all creeds. This magistrate was anxious to help

-      his people sunk in ignorance and was wise enough to use every means that

-      came in his way, for he knows, knowing his own people, you will never

-      Westernise a Chinaman. He will take all that is good&mdash;or bad&mdash;in

-      the West that appeals to him, and he will mould it in his own way. This

-      magistrate was building an industrial school for criminal boys close to

-      the mission station and, more progressive than the West itself, he allowed

-      his wife to sit on the bench beside him and try and sentence women proved

-      guilty of crime.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER V&mdash;&ldquo;MISERERE DOMINE!&rdquo;

-     </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>s I have said more

-      than once, it seems to me the most intolerable thing in life would be to

-      be a Chinese woman. I remember when first I began to write about China I

-      asked a friend of mine to look over my work and he objected to my making

-      such a fuss about the condition of the women.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Why, people will think you are a suffragette!&rdquo; said he, searching for

-      some term of obloquy that he felt could not possibly apply to me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I am a suffragist, an ardent suffragist, realising that a woman is

-      most valuable neither as an angel nor as a slave, but as a useful citizen,

-      and I saw then that he possibly knew little about the condition of his own

-      women, and probably absolutely nothing at all about the condition of the

-      women of the race who swarmed around him. Those he met would be dumb, and

-      at any rate no right-minded woman begins upon her wrongs to a stranger. In

-      any country it would be bad taste, in China no words can tell what

-      shocking bad taste. I had to seek further afield for my information, and I

-      got it from the medical missions. Now I went to China with a strong

-      prejudice against missionaries, and I found there many people who backed

-      me up. And then it occurred to me that I had better go to a mission

-      station and see what manner of people were these I was judging so hastily

-      and so finally.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I went. And what I saw made me sorry that Great Britain and America, to

-      say nothing of Scandinavia, should be deprived of the services of these

-      men and women who are giving so much to an alien people. Of course I know

-      that many missionaries have the &ldquo;call,&rdquo; a &ldquo;vocation&rdquo; I suppose the

-      Catholics would call it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It is a fine work,&rdquo; said I, usually the unadmiring, &ldquo;to teach these

-      women, but I do not like coming in contact with them, however much I

-      appreciate their virtues.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And the missionary girl looked at me pityingly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;we could come all this way to teach Chinese

-      women reading, writing and arithmetic?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It seems to me a great thing to do; if it be only to teach them to wash,

-      it is a great thing; but I who merely pitied would never have stayed there

-      to better the condition of those unhappy women. To her and her comrades

-      had come that mysterious call that comes to all peoples through all the

-      ages, the Crying in the Wilderness, &ldquo;Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make

-      His paths straight,&rdquo; and she thought more, far more, of it than I did of

-      the undoubtedly good work I saw she was doing, saw as I never should have

-      seen had I not gone in the ways untrodden by the tourist, or indeed by any

-      white man.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There are missionaries and missionaries, of course; there are even

-      backsliders who, having learned the difficult tongue under the ægis of the

-      missions, have taken up curio-buying or any other of the mercantile

-      careers that loom so temptingly before the man who knows China; but in all

-      classes of society there are backsliders, the great majority must not be

-      judged by them. Neither must their narrowness be laid too mueh to heart

-      when judging the missionary as a whole. Possibly only a fanatic can carry

-      through whole-heartedly the work of a missionary at a remote station in

-      China, and most fanatics are narrow. There are, too, the men and women who

-      make it a business and a livelihood, who reckon they have house and income

-      and position and servants in return for their services to the heathen, but

-      they too are faithful and carry out their contracts. Having once seen the

-      misery and poverty in which the great majority of Chinese dwell, I can say

-      honestly that I think every mission station that I have seen is a centre

-      from which radiates at least a hope of better things. They raise the

-      standard of living, and though I care not what god a man worships, and

-      cannot understand how any man can be brought to care, it is good that to

-      these people sitting in darkness someone should point out that behind the

-      world lies a great Force, God, Love, call it what you will, that is

-      working for good. That the more educated Chinese has worked out a faith

-      for himself, just as many in the West have done, I grant you, but still

-      the majority of the people that I have seen sit in darkness and want help.

-      From the missions they get it. Taken by and large, the Chinaman is a

-      utilitarian person, and if the missions had not been helpful they would

-      long ago have gone. And for the missionaries themselves&mdash;I speak of

-      those in the outstations&mdash;not one, it seems to me, not one would stay

-      among the Chinese unless he were sure that his God had sent him, for the

-      life is hard, even for the rich missions there are many deprivations, and

-      if therefore, being but human, they sometimes depict their God as merciful

-      and loving in a way that seems small and petty, much must be forgiven

-      them. They are doing their best.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There is another side to it too for the West. These missionaries are

-      conquering China by the system of peaceful penetration. They are

-      persecuted, they suffer, are murdered often, but that does not drive them

-      away. They come back again and again, and wherever the missionary succeeds

-      in planting his foot the hatred to foreigners and things foreign, strong

-      among the conservative Chinese, is weakened and finally broken down. China

-      is a rich country, she is invaluable to the nations of the earth for

-      purposes of trade, and though the missionary in many ways, if he were

-      asked, would oppose the coming of the white man, he certainly is the

-      pioneer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      China is trying to reform herself, but the process is slow, and it seems

-      to me in Shansi and in the parts of Chihli that I know it would be a long,

-      long while before the good percolated to the proletariat, the Babylonish

-      slaves, if it were not for the missionaries; and particularly do I admire

-      the medical missionaries, for China is one huge sore.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That is the word the woman doctor at Pao Ting Fu applied to it, and,

-      attending her clinic of a morning, I was inclined to agree with her. Life

-      is hard for everybody among the poor in China, but especially does it

-      press upon the women. They came there into the clean sun-lit room and the

-      reek of them went up to heaven&mdash;bald-headed, toothless old crones in

-      wadded coats out of which all semblance of colour had long since passed,

-      young girls and little children clad in the oldest of garments. There were

-      so many with ingrowing eyelashes that the doctor had one particular day

-      upon which she operated for this painful disfigurement, and she showed me

-      how, by making a little nick&mdash;I'm afraid I can't use proper surgical

-      terms&mdash;in the upper eyelid, she turned back the eyelashes and made

-      them grow in the direction they are intended to grow, and saved the

-      unfortunates' eyes. Why eyelashes should grow in in China I don't know.

-      Perhaps it is my ignorance, but I have never heard of their behaving in

-      such an unnatural fashion in any other part of the world, while in Pao

-      Ting Fu this ailment seemed to be as common as influenza in London. Then

-      there would be women with their mouths closed by sores, often so badly

-      they could only live by suction, and more than once a new mouth had to be

-      cut; there were cancerous growths&mdash;the woman depicted in the picture

-      had waited twenty years before she could arrange to come under one hundred

-      miles to the doctor&mdash;there were sores on the head, sores all over the

-      body, all, I suppose, including the ingrowing eyelashes, caused by

-      malnutrition, swollen glands, abscesses offensive and purulent, in fact in

-      that clinic were collected such an array of human woes, ghastly, horrible,

-      as well might make one wonder if the force behind all life could possibly

-      be anything but devilish and cruel. Wherein could the good be found?

-      Where?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And yet there was good. Among these women moved the nurses. They were

-      comely girls in blue coats and trousers, with their abundant black hair

-      smoothly drawn back, neat white stockings and the daintiest of little

-      shoes. Their delicate artistic hands used sponge and basin very capably,

-      they were the greatest contrast to their patients, and yet they were truly

-      Chinese, had sprung from the people to whom they now ministered, and one

-      of them, though it was hardly observable, had an artificial foot. So had

-      she suffered from foot-binding that her own had had to be amputated.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Probably most of the ailments there treated were preventable, but worst of

-      all were the bound feet and the ailments the women suffered from in

-      consequence. It is not good manners to speak about a woman's feet, and the

-      women themselves rarely refer to them, but naturally I was interested in

-      the custom, and whenever the doctor got a &ldquo;good&rdquo; bound foot, which

-      probably meant a very bad one, she sent over for me to come and see it.

-      Anyone who has once seen a bound foot will never forget it. It always

-      smelt abominably when first the bandages were taken off, and the first

-      thing the nurses did was to provide a square kerosene tin of hot water in

-      which to soak the foot well.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Well washed, the feet might be looked at. Shansi especially is the home of

-      the bound foot, most of the women have such small feet that they are

-      confined for the greater part of their lives to the <i>k'ang</i>. I

-      remember Dr Lewis in all seriousness saying that he thought on the whole a

-      Chinese woman was better without her feet. And I'm inclined to think he

-      was right. The toes, all except the big toe, are pressed back till they

-      touch the heel, the bandage is put on and drawn tighter and tighter every

-      day, and if the girl is healthy and big-boned, so much the worse for her.

-      No matter the size of the girl, the foot must conform to the one standard.

-      In Shansi when I was there the shoes were generally about four inches

-      long, and I have taken shoes of that length off a tall and strapping woman

-      who was tottering along with the aid of a stick. What she must have

-      suffered to get her feet to that size is too terrible to imagine. She must

-      have been suffering still for that matter. If the instep after the

-      tightest binding still sticks up the girl's marriage chances are seriously

-      interfered with, and then the mother or some feminine relative takes a

-      meat-chopper and breaks the bone till she can bind the foot small enough.

-      This information I got from the American lady who looks after the women in

-      the mission in Fen Chou Fu; and at T'ai Yuan Fu the sister in the women's

-      hospital added the gruesome detail that they sometimes pull off the little

-      girls' toe-nails so that they may not interfere with the binding!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And at the women's hospital at Pao Ting Fu I saw the finished product. The

-      big toe stuck straight out, red, possibly because of the soaking in hot

-      water&mdash;I never had courage to look at one unsoaked&mdash;and

-      ghastly-looking, the other toes were pressed back against the heel and the

-      heel went up and was exactly like the Cuban heels affected by smartly

-      dressed women, only this time it had been worked in flesh and blood. The

-      whole limb from the big toe to the knee was hard and immovable as stone.

-      If you press ordinary flesh anywhere it pits, just yields a little, not so

-      a Chinese woman's leg and foot. It is thin, perished, literally hard as

-      marble. Once having seen a foot unbound, it is a wonder to me that any

-      woman should walk at all. And yet they do. They hold out their arms and

-      walk, balancing themselves, and they use a stick. Sometimes they walk on

-      their heels, sometimes they try the toe, but once I realised what those

-      bandages concealed it was a painful and dreadful thing to me to see a

-      Chinese woman walking. In spite of the hardness of the flesh, or probably

-      because of it, they get bad corns on the spot upon which they balance, and

-      sores, very often tuberculous, eat into the foot.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0022" id="linkimage-0022"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0117.jpg" alt="0117 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0117.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0023" id="linkimage-0023"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0118.jpg" alt="0118 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0118.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      But the evil does not stop at the foot. In Shansi it seemed to me every

-      woman's face was marked with the marks of patient suffering. Travelling I

-      often got a glimpse of one peering out of a cart or litter at the

-      foreigner, and that face invariably was patient, pallid and worn, for

-      foot-binding brings no end of evils in its train. The doctor at Fen Chou

-      Fu declared that nine-tenths of the women who came to him for treatment

-      suffered from tuberculosis in some form or another, and this in a climate

-      that in the winter must outrival in dryness Davos Platts. Not a few, too,

-      develop spinal curvature low down in the back, and often because of the

-      displacement of the organs they die in child-birth. A missionary in one of

-      the little towns I passed through, a trained nurse, told me that when a

-      woman suffered from what she (the woman) called leg-waist pains&mdash;the

-      doctor called it osteomalacia&mdash;her case was hopeless, she could not

-      give birth to a child. Often this nurse had been called in to such cases,

-      and she could do nothing to help the suffering girl. She could only stand

-      by and see her die. I could well believe these tales of suffering. In Fen

-      Chou Fu and in Pao Ting Fu the women of the poorer classes freely walked

-      the streets, and their crippled condition was patent to all eyes. But in

-      some towns it is not considered seemly for any woman to be seen in the

-      streets. Some reason established this custom long ago: the reason passes,

-      but China is the most conservative of nations, and the custom remains. But

-      the reason for foot-binding is not very clear. There is something sexual

-      at the bottom of it, I believe, but why a sick and ailing woman should be

-      supposed to welcome the embraces of her lord more readily than one

-      abounding in health passes my understanding. Of course we remember that

-      not so very long ago, in the reign of Victoria, practically the delicate

-      woman who was always ailing was held up to universal admiration. Look at

-      the swooning heroines of Dickens and Thackeray. But let no man put the

-      compressed waist on the same plane as foot-binding. I have heard more than

-      one man do so, but I unhesitatingly affirm they are wrong. Foot-binding is

-      infinitely the worse crime. The pinched-in waist did not begin till the

-      girl was at least well on in her teens, and it was only the extreme cases&mdash;and

-      they did it of their own free will I presume&mdash;who kept up the

-      pressure always. There was always the night for rest, whereas the Chinese

-      women get no rest from torture.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The missionaries at Fen Chou Fu, being very anxious to improve the status

-      of the women, used to arrange to have lectures in their large hall to

-      women only, and they raked the country-side for important people to

-      address them on subjects that were, or rather that should be, of interest

-      to women. They were not supposed to have anything to do with religion, but

-      they discussed openly women's position, were told about hygiene and the

-      care of children, and the magistrate's wife, she who had been educated in

-      Japan, told them some home-truths about the position of women in China.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;American women,&rdquo; said she on one occasion, &ldquo;go out into the world and

-      help in the world's development. We Chinese stay at home and are dragged

-      along by the men. The time has come when we must learn better things.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But I looked one day at over seventy women of the richer classes assembled

-      to listen to a young and enthusiastic Chinese with modern views on the

-      position of women and their equality with men. He was passionate, he was

-      eloquent, he was desperately in earnest, but it was very evident he spoke

-      to deaf ears. I do not think that any one of those women grasped, or cared

-      for that matter, what he was saying. In the heart of China woman is very

-      far from being the equal of man. These women were pets and toys, and they

-      came to the mission station probably because it was the fashionable form

-      of amusement just then, but they listened to what was being said with deaf

-      ears and minds incapable of understanding. They were gaily clad in silks

-      and satins, richly embroidered; their hair when it was abundant was oiled

-      and elaborately dressed and decorated with gold and silver pins, and when

-      it was scanty was hidden under embroidered silken bands; there was not a

-      skirt amongst them, that was left to the lecturer, their blue and green

-      and brilliant red trousers were rather narrow, their feet were of the very

-      tiniest even in Shansi, and their faces, worn and suffering under their

-      paint and powder, were vacant. Some of them had brought their babies, and

-      only when a child cried, and they cried fairly frequently, did those faces

-      light up. That was something they really did understand.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And yet that enthusiastic young scholar in his voluminous petticoats, with

-      his hair cut in the modern fashion, went on lecturing to them on the

-      rights of women, the position women ought to occupy!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the position of women! Toys or slaves are they, toys and slaves have

-      been their mothers and their grandmothers since the days before the dawn

-      of history, and very, very slowly is the idea of the possibility of better

-      things percolating through to the masses in China. It will come, I

-      suppose, because already there are Government schools for women, though

-      they are few and far between, and in some places, so far has the desire

-      for freedom gone, the girls have banded themselves into societies,

-      declaring that rather than marry a man they have never seen they will

-      commit suicide, and more than one has taken her own life. But in the parts

-      of Shansi and Chihli where I was so much light has not yet penetrated. The

-      wife and mother has influence because any living thing with which we are

-      closely associated&mdash;even if it be but a little dog&mdash;must needs

-      influence us, but all the same the Chinese women are as a rule mere

-      chattels, dependent entirely upon their menfolk. Amongst the Chinese the

-      five happinesses are: old age, a son, riches, official position and a

-      moustache; so slight a thing is a woman that she does not come in in this

-      connection.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;As far as the heavens are above the earth, so far am I,&rdquo; disdainfully

-      proclaimed a Chinese teacher, &ldquo;above my wife.&rdquo; And he only spoke as if

-      stating a self-evident fact, a thing that could not be questioned. &ldquo;How

-      could she be my equal?&rdquo; Just as I might have objected to being put on the

-      same plane as my mule or my little dog. Indeed I doubt very much whether

-      he gave the same consideration to his wife as I would do to my little dog,

-      who is much beloved.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This is not to say, of course, that the men don't consider the women. They

-      do.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I remember the gate-keeper at Pao Ting Fu mission paying up for his

-      daughter's schooling. He was a jovial old soul, so old that I was

-      surprised to hear he had a mother.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Short am I?&rdquo; said he cheerfully. &ldquo;Short? Oh, that dollar and a half!&rdquo; He

-      paused to consider the matter, then added: &ldquo;And I was thinking about

-      borrowing a dollar from you. My mother's dying, and I want to buy her a

-      skirt! Must be prepared, you know!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The old lady, said Miss Newton, had probably never owned such a luxury as

-      a skirt in her life, but that was her son's way of being good to her, for

-      the people have a proverb to the effect that the most important thing in

-      life is to be buried well, an idea that isn't entirely unknown in Western

-      and more enlightened lands. Poor old lady, whose one and only skirt came

-      to her to be buried in, or perhaps it would be taken off before she was

-      buried, for the Chinese are a careful people. I remember one frugal man

-      who celebrated the funeral of his mother and the marriage of his son at

-      the same time, so that the funeral baked meats did for the marriage feast,

-      and the same musicians did for both. The coffin, of heavy black wood, tall

-      as a mantelpiece, stood in the yard, with the eldest son and his wife clad

-      in white as mourners, and the rest of the company made merry in the house

-      over the bridal. It was the most exquisite piece of thrift, but the

-      Chinaman is <i>par excellence</i> an economist.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was in Pao Ting Fu that I met the only woman who made open complaint

-      against the position of women, and she only did it because, poor thing,

-      she was driven to it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      She slipped through the mission compound gate while the gate-keeper was

-      looking the other way, a miserable, unkempt woman with roughened hair and

-      maimed feet. Her coat and trousers of the poorest blue cotton were old and

-      soiled, and the child she carried in her arms was naked save for a little

-      square of blue cotton tied round his body in front. She was simply a woman

-      of the people, deadly poor where all just escape starvation, young and

-      comely where many are unattractive, and she stood under the shade of the

-      trees watching eagerly the mission family and their guest at breakfast on

-      the porch! It was a June morning, the sunshine that would be too fierce

-      later on now at 7 a.m. was golden, and a gentle breeze just whispered

-      softly in the branches that China&mdash;even Pao Ting Fu&mdash;in the

-      early summer morning was a delightful place.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But eager watching eyes glued to every mouthful are distinctly

-      disquieting, and in China, the land of punctilious etiquette, are rude.

-      Besides, she had no business to be there, and the doctor's wife turned and

-      spoke to her.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What custom is this?&rdquo; said she, using the vernacular, &ldquo;and how did you

-      get in here?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I ran past&rdquo;&mdash;ran, save the mark, with those poor broken cramped feet&mdash;&ldquo;when

-      the gate-keeper was not looking. And it's not a day's hunger I have. For

-      weeks when we have had a meal we have not known where the next was coming

-      from.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But you have a husband?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;And he was rich,&rdquo; assented the woman, &ldquo;but he has gambled it all away.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It was quite a likely story. Another woman working on the compound said it

-      was true. She had a bad husband&mdash;<i>hi yah!</i> a very bad husband.

-      He beat her, often he beat her. Sometimes perhaps it was her fault,

-      because she was bad-tempered. Who would not be bad-tempered with maimed

-      feet, an empty stomach and two little hungry children? But often he beat

-      her for no reason at all. And everyone knows that a Chinese husband has a

-      perfect right to beat his wife. That he refrains from so doing is an act

-      of grace on his part, but a woman of herself is merely his chattel. She

-      has no rights.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The hospital quilted bed-covers&mdash;<i>pel wos</i>, they called them&mdash;had

-      to be unripped and washed. The pay was twenty-five <i>t'ung tzus</i> a day

-      and keep yourself. One hundred and thirty <i>t'ung tzus</i> went to the

-      dollar, and 10-35 dollars went to the sovereign at that time, so that the

-      work could not be considered overpaid; but this was China, and the women

-      were apparently rising up out of the ground and clamouring for it. It was

-      evidently looked upon as quite a recreation to sit under the trees on the

-      grass in the mission compound and gossip and unpick quilts. The new

-      recruit joined them and spent a happy day, sure of food for herself and

-      her children for that day at least&mdash;not food perhaps such as we would

-      appreciate, but at least a sufficiency of millet porridge.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That day and the next she worked, and then on the third day at midday she

-      went away for her meal and did not come back till after two o'clock in the

-      afternoon. The doctor's wife was reproachful.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You have been away for over three hours. Why is this?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      She was a true Chinese and found it difficult to give a direct answer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I have been talking to my mother,&rdquo; said she, rousing wrath where she

-      might have gained sympathy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What excuse is this?&rdquo; said the doctor's wife. &ldquo;You go away, and when I

-      ask you why, you tell me you have been talking to your mother! Your mother

-      should have more sense than to keep you from your work!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But my husband has sold me!&rdquo; protested the culprit and then we saw that

-      her face was swollen with crying; &ldquo;and I am a young woman and I don't know

-      what to do when my husband sells me. He keeps the children and he sells

-      me, and Tsao, the man who has bought me, is a bad man,&rdquo; and dropping down

-      to the ground she let the tears fall on to the work in her hands.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I am young and so I don't know what to do.&rdquo; It was the burden of her

-      song. It may be she is wailing still, for the story was unfinished when I

-      left. She was young and she didn't know what to do. She would not have

-      minded leaving her husband if only the man to whom she had been sold had

-      been a better man, but he bore a worse reputation if anything than her

-      husband, and ignorant, unlearned in all things of this world as she was,

-      she and the women round her knew exactly what her fate would be. Tsao

-      would sell her when he tired of her, and her next purchaser would do

-      likewise, and as she gets older and her white teeth decay and her bright

-      eyes fade and her comeliness wanes her money value will grow less and

-      less, and beating and starvation will be her portion till death comes as a

-      merciful release. But, as she kept repeating pathetically, she is young,

-      and death is the goal at the end of a weary, weary, heartbreaking road.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      For her husband was quite within his rights. He could sell her. It may be,

-      of course, he will be swayed by public opinion, and public opinion is

-      against the disposing of a wife after this fashion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Let her complain to the official,&rdquo; suggested my assurance.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the wise women who knew rose up in horror at the depths of ignorance I

-      was disclosing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Go to the yamen and complain of her husband!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It is no crime for a man to sell his wife, but it is a deadly crime for a

-      woman to speak evil of her husband! She was not yet handed over. All he

-      would have to do would be to deny it, and then she would be convicted of

-      this crime and to her other ills would be added the wrath of the official.

-      No, something better than that must be thought of.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      She had been sold for a hundred <i>tiaou</i>&mdash;something under four

-      pounds&mdash;and when the money was paid she would have to go to her new

-      master, far away from all her friends.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;<i>Hi yah!</i>&rdquo; said the other women. &ldquo;What a bad man!&rdquo; So public opinion

-      was against it!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It would do no good to buy her freedom unless the purchaser were prepared

-      to take upon himself the conduct of her future life. A woman must belong

-      to somebody in China; she is, except in very exceptional cases and among

-      the very advanced, considered incapable of guiding her own life, and pay

-      this and the man would still regard her as his wife and sell her again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then a woman wise with wisdom of the people arose.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;There is only one thing to be done,&rdquo; said she; &ldquo;you must pretend you know

-      nothing about it, and when Tsao comes, and you are sold, then make an

-      excuse and run to the yamen. It may be the official will help, for it is a

-      wicked thing.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Run to the yamen!&rdquo; on feet on which she could just totter. But the wise

-      woman had taken that into consideration.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Mark well the way so you may hide in the turnings.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Such a forlorn, pitiful little hope! But with it she had to be content,

-      and that night she held her peace and pretended she did not know the fate

-      that hung over her, and when I left she was still ripping bed-covers with

-      the other women. She had had no hand in bringing about her own fate, for

-      she did not choose this man. She had never seen him till she was handed

-      over on her marriage day by her parents.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What,&rdquo; said the women at one place when a new missionary came to them,

-      &ldquo;forty and not married! What freedom! How did you manage it! What good

-      fortune!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      In China there is no respectable word, so I am told, to denote a bachelor,

-      and there was almost never, at least under the old regime, such a thing as

-      an old maid. Every woman must belong to someone, and few and far between

-      are the families that can afford to keep unmarried daughters, so the women

-      regard as eminently fortunate those foreign women they come across,

-      missionary or otherwise, who are apparently free to guide their own lives.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Of course the average husband would no more think of selling his wife than

-      would an Englishman, but, unlike the Englishman, he knows that he has the

-      right to do so should he so please, even as he has the right of life and

-      death over her and his children. She is his chattel, to be faithful to her

-      would simply be foolishness.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They tell a story of an angry father found digging a hole in which he

-      proposed to bury his son alive. That son had been insolent, and it was a

-      terrible thing to have an insolent son. His mother wept, but to her tears

-      the father paid no heed. A stranger passed along and questioned the little

-      company, and finding in his heart pity for the woman and the lad, cast

-      about how he might help them. He did not set about it as we of the West

-      would have done.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He commiserated with the father. It was a terrible thing to have an

-      insolent son. Undoubtedly he deserved death. But it would be a bad thing

-      to have no son to worship at the ancestral tablet.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That was provided for, said the irate parent. He had two other sons.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That was well! That was well! And of course they had sons?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      No, they were young. They had no sons yet.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A-a-ah! And suppose anything happened by which they both should die?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The stranger let that sink in. He had struck the right chord. It would be

-      a terrible thing to have no son to worship at the ancestral tablet&mdash;to

-      think that he by his own act&mdash;&mdash;

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Chinese reasoning prevailed, and the son's life was spared.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And yet the Chinese are fond of their children and, according to their

-      lights, good to their wives. It is that under the patriarchal system

-      children and women&mdash;a woman is always a child, a very ignorant child

-      as a rule&mdash;have no rights. They are dependent upon the good will of

-      their owners.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And so the woman sitting waiting to see if her husband would complete the

-      bargain and sell her had no rights. She was just a chattel in the eye of

-      the law. And there was none to help. Miserere Domine! It was just possible

-      public opinion would save her. It was her only hope. Miserere Domine!

-      Miserere Domine!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In Fen Chou Fu the missionaries had started an adult school for women.

-      First it was started, as they themselves put it, to teach the Gospel, but

-      then wisely they extended it and taught reading, writing and arithmetic,

-      and very eager indeed were the pupils. It is only fair to say that very

-      often husbands, or possibly fathers-in-law&mdash;for a woman belongs to

-      the head of her husband's family, or at least owes allegiance to him&mdash;aided

-      and abetted in every way, and when necessary sent the pupils twenty and

-      thirty miles in carts and in litters from away in the mountains to attend.

-      One woman with four little children, all under five, with another coming,

-      was a most eager pupil. Her children were sent to the kindergarten, which

-      is in charge of a young Chinese teacher educated by the missionaries.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Again I do not say the Chinese are not doing something to ameliorate the

-      condition of their women. I can only speak of what I saw, and what I saw

-      was, here in Shansi, the wives of the most miserable peasants sunk in

-      ignorance and hardly able to crawl from the <i>k'angs</i> on which they

-      spent their lives. The men do the cooking because the women are incapable,

-      and the mortality among the children is terrible. A doctor told me that

-      very often he had attended a woman at the birth of her thirteenth or

-      fourteenth child and only one or two would be living!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I don't know how many wives or concubines a man is allowed. Only the first

-      one has any standing, and the number of the others is probably limited by

-      his means. I remember hearing of one man, a Mr Feng, who had just married

-      his second wife to another man because she was making his life too

-      miserable for him. This was the man's side of the story; I had heard the

-      woman's the last time. I wonder how the case is put on these occasions.

-      Does a man say he is parting with the lady with extreme regret because the

-      climate does not suit her, or because his first wife does not like her, or

-      because a sudden reverse of fortune has compelled him to reduce his

-      household? He surely would never have given the real reason. My friend Mr

-      Farrer waxes enthusiastic over things Chinese, but I must say what I have

-      seen of their domestic life repels me, and I am rather inclined to agree

-      with a missionary of my acquaintance&mdash;a bachelor though&mdash;that it

-      would give nervous prostration to a brazen statue.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There can be little happiness where there is ignorance, and the majority

-      of the women of Shansi anyhow are the ignorant slaves of ignorant slaves.

-      Miserere Domine!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER VI&mdash;BY MOUNTAIN AND RIVER

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>etting out on a

-      long journey by road, moving along slowly, at the rate of thirty miles a

-      day, I find I do not have the end in view in my mind all the time. I do

-      subconsciously, of course, or I would never get on at all, but I take a

-      point a couple of days ahead and concentrate on getting there. Having

-      arrived so far, I am so pleased with the performance I can concentrate on

-      the next couple of days ahead. So I pass on comfortably, with the

-      invigorating feeling of, something accomplished.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Fen Chou Fu, then, was one of my jumping-off places.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And at Fen Chou Fu my muleteers began to complain. Looked at from a

-      Western point of view, they ought to have complained long before, but

-      their complaint was not what I expected. They sent my interpreter to say

-      we were going the wrong way. This road would lead us out into a great bare

-      place of sand. When the wind blew it would raise the sand in great clouds

-      that would overwhelm us, and if the clouds gathered in the sky we should

-      not be able to see the sun, we would not know in which direction to go and

-      we should perish miserably. And having supplied me with this valuable and

-      sinister information they stood back to watch it sink in.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It didn't have the damping and depressing effect they doubtless expected.

-      To begin with, I couldn't believe in a Chinese sky where you couldn't see

-      the sun. The clouds might gather, but a few hours would suffice to

-      disperse them, in my experience, and as for losing ourselves in the sand&mdash;well,

-      I couldn't believe it possible. Always in China, where-ever I had been,

-      there had been plenty of people of whom to ask the way, and though every

-      man's radius was doubtless short, still at every yard there was somebody.

-      It was like an endless chain.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Don't they want to go?&rdquo; I asked Mr Wang.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Repeat, please,&rdquo; said he, according to the approved formula.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Won't they go?&rdquo; I felt I had better have the matter clear.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You say 'Go,' mus' go. You fear&mdash;you no go.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      If I feared and wouldn't go on, I grasped, the money I paid them would be

-      forfeit.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But I must go. I am not afraid.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They say you go by Hsi An Fu. That be ploper.&rdquo; And the listening

-      muleteers smiled at me blandly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But I cannot go by Hsi An Fu because of White Wolf.&rdquo; I did not say that

-      also it would be going round two sides of a triangle because that would

-      not appeal to the Chinese mind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They not knowing White Wolf,&rdquo; said Mr Wang, shaking his head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Well, I know White Wolf,&rdquo; I said, departing a little from the truth, &ldquo;and

-      I am going across the river to Sui Te Chou.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You say 'Go,'&rdquo; said Mr Wang sorrowfully, &ldquo;mus' go,&rdquo; and he looked at the

-      muleteers, and the muleteers looked at him sorrowfully and went off the

-      verandah sorrowfully to prepare for the lonely road where there would be

-      no people of whom to ask the way, only sand and no sun.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was plenty of sun when we started. It was a glorious summer morning

-      when my little caravan went out of the northern gate into the mountains

-      that threatened the town. It was unknown China now, China as she was in

-      the time of the Cæsars, further back still in the time of the Babylonish

-      kings, in the days before the first dynasty in Egypt. Out through the

-      northern gate we went, by the clay-walled northern suburb, past great

-      ash-heaps like little mountain ranges, the refuse of centuries, their

-      softly rounded sides now tinged with the green of springtime, and almost

-      at once my caravan was at the foot of the hills&mdash;hills carved into

-      terraces by the daily toil of thousands, but looking as if they had been

-      so carved by some giant hand. As we entered them as hills they promptly

-      disappeared, for the road was sunken, and high over our heads rose the

-      steep clay walls, shutting out all view save the bright strip of blue sky

-      above.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I here put it on record&mdash;I believe I have done it before, but it

-      really cannot be repeated too often&mdash;that as a conveyance a mule

-      litter leaves much to be desired. Sitting up there on my bedding among my

-      cushions, with James Buchanan beside me, I was much more comfortable than

-      I should have been in a Peking cart, but also I was much more helpless. A

-      driver did take charge of the Peking cart, but the gentleman who sometimes

-      led my mule litter more often felt that things were safer in the charge of

-      the big white mule in front, and when the way was extremely steep or rough

-      he abandoned it entirely to its discretion. The missionaries had told me

-      whenever I came to a bad place to be sure and get out, because the Chinese

-      mules are not surefooted enough to be always trusted. They are quite

-      likely at a bad place to slip and go over. This was a cheering reflection

-      when I found myself at the bad place abandoned to the tender mercies of

-      those animals. The mule in the lead certainly was a capable beast, but

-      again and again, as I told Mr Wang, I would have preferred that the

-      muleteers should not put quite so much faith in him. I learned to say

-      &ldquo;B-r-rrr, b-r-r-rrr!&rdquo; when I wanted him to stop, but I did not like to say

-      it often, because I felt in a critical moment I might seriously hamper him

-      to my own disadvantage. I told Mr Wang I was to be lifted out when we came

-      to bad places, but that too was hardly practicable, for we came to many

-      places that I certainly could not have negotiated on my own feet, and how

-      the mules got a cumbersome litter down or up them passes my understanding.

-      Thinking it over, the only advice I can give to anyone who wishes to

-      follow in my footsteps is to shut his eyes as I did and trust to the mule.

-      And we went down some places that were calculated to take the curl out of

-      my hair.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      James Buchanan was a great comfort to me under these circumstances. He

-      nestled down beside me&mdash;he had recovered from his accident before we

-      left Fen Chou Fu&mdash;and he always assured me that everything would be

-      all right. One thing he utterly declined to do, and that was to walk with

-      the servants. I used to think it would be good for his health, but the

-      wisdom of the little Pekinese at the British American Tobacco Factory had

-      sunk in deep and he declined to trust himself with them unless I walked

-      too, when he was wild with delight. Put out by himself, he would raise a

-      pitiful wail.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Buchanan declines,&rdquo; Mr Wang would say sententiously, and he would be

-      lifted baek into the litter by my master of transport as if he were a

-      prince of the blood at least. And if anyone thinks I make an absurd fuss

-      about a little dog, I must remind him that I was entirely alone among an

-      alien people, and the little dog's affection meant a tremendous deal to

-      me. He took away all sense of loneliness. Looking back, I know now I could

-      not have gone on, this book would never have been written, if it had not

-      been for James Buchanan.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Roughly the way to the Yellow River is through a chain of mountains,

-      across a stony plateau in the centre of which is situated Yung Ning Chou,

-      quite a busy commercial city, and across another chain of mountains

-      through which the river forces its way. When first I entered the ditch in

-      the loess my objective was Yung Ning Chou. I looked no farther. I wanted

-      to get to that town in which seven Scandinavian missionaries in twenty

-      years had not effected a single convert. The cliffs frowned overhead, and

-      the effect to me was of wandering along an extremely stony way with many

-      pitfalls in it to the chiming of many mule bells and an unceasing shouting

-      of &ldquo;<i>Ta, ta!</i>&rdquo;&mdash;that is, &ldquo;Beat, beat!&rdquo;&mdash;a threat by which

-      the muleteer exhorts his animals to do their best. Generally speaking, I

-      couldn't see the man who had charge of me because he was some way behind

-      and the tilt shut him from my view. Except for knowing that he was

-      attending to his job and looking after me, I don't know that I pined to

-      look upon him. His appearance was calculated to make me feel I had not

-      wakened from a nightmare. Sometimes he wore a dirty rag over his head, but

-      just as often he went in his plain beauty unadorned&mdash;that is to say,

-      with all the front part of his head shaven and the back a mass of wild

-      coarse black hair standing out at all angles. They had cut off his queue

-      during the reforming fever at T'ai Yuan Fu and I presume he was doing the

-      best he could till it should grow again. Certainly it was an awe-inspiring

-      headpiece.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0024" id="linkimage-0024"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0135.jpg" alt="0135 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0135.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0025" id="linkimage-0025"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0136.jpg" alt="0136 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0136.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      And always we progressed to the clashing of bells, for on every possible

-      point on the trappings of the four mules and the donkey that made up the

-      caravan and on every available point on the harness of every mule and

-      donkey that passed us was a brass bell. For, for all my muleteers had

-      objected to going this way, it was a caravan route to the West, and it was

-      seldom we did not see someone on the road. Here in this ditch in the loess

-      I realised the stern necessity for these bells, for often the way was

-      narrow and when we could hear another caravan coming we could make

-      arrangements to pass or to allow them to pass. There were many caravans of

-      ragged camels, and to these my animals objected with all the spirit a life

-      on the roads had still left in them. When we met a string of them at close

-      quarters in the loess my white mule in the lead nearly had hysterics, and

-      his feelings were shared, so I judged by the behaviour of the litter, by

-      his companion behind, and they both endeavoured to commit suicide by

-      climbing the bank, having no respect whatever for my feelings.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      On these occasions, with clenched teeth and concentrated energy, my

-      muleteer addressed himself to that leading mule:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Now! Who's your mother? You may count yourself as dead!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The mule evidently felt this was serious and made a desperate endeavour to

-      get a little higher, and his attendant became sarcastic.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Call yourself a mule! Call yourself a lord, sir!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      By the jangling of the bells and the yells of the rest of the company I

-      knew that the other animals felt equally bad, and more than once I saw my

-      luckless interpreter, who evidently was not much of a hand at sitting on a

-      pack, ruefully picking himself up and shaking the dust from his person,

-      his mule having flung him as a protest against the polluting of the road

-      by a train of camels.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The camels march along with a very supercilious air, but mules, horses and

-      donkeys all fear them so much that there are special inns for them and

-      they are supposed only to travel by night, but this rule is more honoured,

-      I imagine, in the breach than in the observance. Most parts of the road I

-      don't see that any caravan could pass along at night. The special inns do

-      not present any difference to my unprejudiced eyes from the discomfort of

-      an ordinary mule and donkey inn. I stopped at one one day in the loess for

-      tiffin, and it consisted of a courtyard round which were rooms (<i>yaos</i>)

-      that were simply caves with the mouths bricked up and doors in them.

-      Inside, the caves were dark and airless, with for all furniture the

-      universal, <i>k'ang</i>; a fireplace is either in the middle or at one of

-      the ends, and the flues underneath carry the hot air under the <i>k'ang</i>

-      to warm it. I have never before or since seen such miserable

-      dwelling-places as these <i>yaos</i>, and in the loess country I saw

-      hundreds of them, inhabitated by thousands of people. Wu Ch'eng

-      particularly commended itself to my notice because here I first realised

-      that in expecting a room to myself I was asking too much of the country.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We crossed the mountain pass the first day out of Fen Chou Fu. Steep it

-      was, steep as the roof of a house, and we scrambled down the other side

-      and, just as the dusk was falling, we came to Wu Ch'eng, a village mostly

-      of <i>yaos</i> in the mountain-side. Wu Ch'eng, where hundreds of people

-      live and die, was short of most things that make life worth living: water

-      was very scarce indeed, and there were no eggs there. It was necessary

-      that our little company should move on with what speed we might. Also the

-      inn only had one room.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The <i>k'ang</i> is large,&rdquo; said my interpreter, as if he thought that a

-      woman who would come out on this journey would not mind sharing that <i>k'ang</i>

-      with all the other guests, the innkeeper and his servants. It was rather

-      large. I looked into an earthen cave the end of which, about thirty feet

-      away, I could hardly make out in the dim light. There were great cobwebs

-      hanging from the ceiling&mdash;dimly I saw them by the light that filtered

-      through the dirty paper that did duty for a window&mdash;and the high <i>k'ang</i>

-      occupied the whole length of the room, leaving a narrow passage with

-      hard-beaten earth for a floor about two feet wide between the <i>k'ang</i>

-      and the left-hand wall. It was about as uninviting a room as I have ever

-      seen. Also it was clearly impossible that Buchanan and I should turn out

-      the rest of the company, so I decreed that I should have it to myself for

-      half-an-hour for the purposes of washing and changing, for whieh privilege

-      I paid about twenty cash, roughly a ha'penny, and then we slept in the

-      litter, as we did on many other occasions, outside in the yard among the

-      donkeys and mules. The last thing I saw was the bright stars peeping down

-      at me, and the last thing I heard was the mules munching at their

-      well-earned chaff, and I wakened to the same stars and the same sounds,

-      for early retiring is conducive to early rising, and yet the muleteers

-      were always before me and were feeding their beasts. Always I went through

-      the same routine. I went to bed despairing and disgusted and a little

-      afraid. I slept like the dead, if I slept outside, and I wakened to watch

-      the sun rise and renew my hopes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There are hundreds, probably thousands, of villages like Wu Ch'eng in

-      China. The winter in Shansi in the mountains is Arctic and no words can

-      describe what must be the sufferings of these people; especially must the

-      women suffer, for the poorest peasant binds his daughter's feet, his wife

-      can hardly crawl. In Chihli you may see the women tottering round on their

-      stumps grinding the corn, in Shansi lucky is the woman who can do so much.

-      The ordinary peasant woman is equal to nothing but a little needlework, if

-      she have anything to sew, or to making a little porridge, if she can do so

-      without moving off the <i>k'ang</i>.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The getting something for the men to cook must be a hard job. Potatoes are

-      sold singly, other vegetables are cut in halves or quarters, a fowl is

-      always sold by the joint. There may be people who do buy a whole fowl, but

-      they are probably millionaires. I suppose a whole section of a community

-      could not possibly exist on other folks' old clothes, but that is how the

-      people of this part of Shansi looked as if they were clothed. They had not

-      second-hand clothes or third-hand, they were apparently the remnants that

-      the third buyer could find no use for.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I shall never forget on one occasion seeing a ragged scarecrow bearing on

-      the end of a pole a dead dog, not even an ordinary dead dog, but one all

-      over sores, a most disgustingly diseased specimen. I asked Mr Wang what he

-      was carrying that dog away for and that young gentleman looked at me in

-      surprise. He would never get to the bottom of this foolish foreigner.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;For eat,&rdquo; said he simply!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The people of the loess cannot afford to waste anything save the health of

-      their women. A dog, a wonk, shares the scavenging work of the Chinese

-      towns with the black and white crows, and doubtless the citizens do not

-      care so much for eating them as they would a nice juicy leg of mutton, but

-      they would no more throw away a wonk that had found life in a Chinese town

-      too hard and simply died than I would yesterday's leg of mutton in favour

-      of the tender chicken I prefer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This, the first camel inn I particularly noticed, was not far from Fen

-      Chou Fu, and they told me how many years ago one of the medical

-      missionaries touring the country found there the innkeeper's wife with one

-      of her bound feet in a terrible condition. She had a little baby at her

-      breast and she was suffering horribly&mdash;the foot was gangrenous. The

-      doctor was troubled and puzzled as well. He had no appliances and no

-      drugs, but left as they were, mother and baby, already half starved, were

-      doomed. Therefore, like a brave man as he was, he took his courage in both

-      hands, made a saw of a piece of scrap iron from an American packing-case

-      and with this rude instrument and no anaesthetics he amputated that foot.

-      And the woman survived, lived to see her child grow up, was living when I

-      passed along that way, and I sat in her courtyard and had my tiffin of

-      hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice washed down by tea. It was her son's

-      courtyard then, possibly that very baby's whose life the missionary had

-      saved by saving his mother's. For the Chinese have no milch cows or goats

-      and know little about feeding infants artificially.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Always at midday the litter was lifted off the mules' backs, my table and

-      chair were produced from some recess among the packs, my blue cotton

-      tablecloth was spread and Tsai Chih Fu armed himself with a frying-pan in

-      which to warm the rice and offered it to me along with hard-boiled eggs of

-      dubious age. The excellent master of transport was a bad cook, and it is

-      not an exhilarating diet when it is served up three times a day for weeks

-      with unfailing regularity. I never grew so weary of anything in my life,

-      and occasionally I tried to vary it by buying little scones or cakes

-      peppered with sesame seed, but I'm bound to say they were all nasty. It

-      always seemed to me that an unfair amount of grit from the millstones had

-      got into the flour. Chinese are connoisseurs in their cooking, but not in

-      poor little villages in the mountains in Western Shansi, where they are

-      content if they can fill their starving stomachs. To judge Chinese taste

-      by the provisions of these mountaineers is as if we condemned the food of

-      London, having sampled only those shops where a steak pudding can be had

-      for fourpence.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And all these little inns, these underground inns, very often had the most

-      high-sounding names. &ldquo;The Inn of Increasing Righteousness&rdquo;&mdash;I hope it

-      was, there was certainly nothing else to recommend it; but the &ldquo;Inn of Ten

-      Thousand Conveniences&rdquo; really made the greatest claim upon my faith. The

-      Ritz or the Carlton could hardly have claimed more than this cave with the

-      hard-beaten earth for the floor of its one room and for all furnishing the

-      <i>k'ang</i> where landlord and guests slept in company.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Yet all these uncomfortable inns between Fen Chou Fu and Yung Ning Chou

-      were thronged. The roads outside were littered with the packs of the mules

-      and donkeys, and inside the courtyard all was bustle, watering and feeding

-      the animals and attending to the wants of the men, who apparently took

-      most of their refreshment out of little basins with chopsticks and when

-      they were very wealthy, or on great occasions, had tea without milk or

-      sugar&mdash;which, of course, is the proper way to drink it&mdash;out of

-      little handleless cups. I don't know that they had anything else to drink

-      except hot water. I certainly never saw them drinking anything

-      intoxicating, and I believe there are no public-houses in China proper.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Every now and then the way through the loess widened a little and there

-      was an archway with a tower above it and a crowded village behind. Always

-      the villages were crowded. There was very often one or perhaps two trees

-      shading the principal street, but other hints of garden or greenery there

-      were none. The shops&mdash;open stalls&mdash;were packed together. And in

-      these little villages it is all slum: there is no hint of country life,

-      and the street was full of people, ragged people, mostly men and children.

-      The men were in rags in all shades of blue, and blue worn and washed&mdash;at

-      least possibly the washing is doubtful, we will say worn only&mdash;to dun

-      dirt colour. It was not picturesque, but filthy, and the only hint of

-      luxury was a pipe a yard long with a very tiny bowl which when not in use

-      hung round their necks or stuck out behind from under their coats. Round

-      their necks too would be hung a tiny brass tobacco box with hieroglyphics

-      upon it which contained the evil-smelling compound they smoked. Sometimes

-      they were at work in their alfresco kitchens&mdash;never have I seen so

-      much cooking done in the open air&mdash;sometimes they were shoeing a

-      mule, sometimes waiting for customers for their cotton goods, or their

-      pottery ware, or their unappetising cooked stuff, and often they were

-      nursing babies, little blaek-eyed bundles of variegated dirty rags which

-      on inspection resolved themselves into a coat and trousers, whatever the

-      age or the sex of the baby. And never have I seen so many family men. The

-      Chinaman is a good father and is not ashamed to carry his baby. At least

-      so I judge.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Only occasionally was a woman or two to be seen, sitting on their

-      doorsteps gossiping in the sun or the shade, according to the temperature.

-      Men and women stared at the foreign woman with all their eyes, for

-      foreigners are rather like snow in June in these parts, and my coming made

-      me feel as if a menagerie had arrived in the villages so great and

-      interested were the crowds that assembled to look at and comment on me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After we passed through the loess the track was up a winding ravine cut in

-      past ages by the agency of water. From five hundred to a thousand feet

-      above us towered the cliffs and at their feet trickled a tiny drain of

-      water, not ankle-deep, that must once have come down a mighty flood to cut

-      for itself such a way through the eternal hills. For this, unlike the road

-      through the loess, is a broad way where many caravans might find room. And

-      this trickle was the beginnings of a tributary to the Yellow River. Along

-      its winding banks lay the caravan route.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And many caravans were passing. No place in China is lonely. There were

-      strings of camels, ragged and losing their coats&mdash;second-hand goods,

-      Mark Twain calls them&mdash;there were strings of pack-mules and still

-      longer strings of little donkeys, and there were many men with bamboos

-      across their shoulders and loads slung from either end. Some of these men

-      had come from Peking and were bound for far Kansu, the other side of

-      Shensi; but as I went on fewer and fewer got the loads from Kansu, most of

-      them stopped at Yung Ning Chou, the last walled town of any size this side

-      of the river. Always, always through the loess, through the deep ravines,

-      across the mountain passes, across the rocky plateau right away to the

-      little mountain city was the stream coming and going, bearing Pekingese

-      and Cantonese goods into the mountains, and coming back laden with wheat,

-      which is the principal product of these places.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Ask the drivers where they were going, camel, mule or donkey, and the

-      answer was always the same, they were going east or west, which, of

-      course, we could see for ourselves. There was no possibility of going any

-      other way. Those in authority knew whither they were bound, but the

-      ignorant drivers knew nothing but the direction. At least that is one

-      explanation, the one I accepted at the time, afterwards I came to know it

-      is a breach of good manners to exhibit curiosity in China, and quite

-      likely my interpreter simply greeted the caravans and made his own answer

-      to my question. It satisfied or at least silenced me and saved my face.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One thing, however, grew more and more noticeable: the laden beasts were

-      coming east, going west the pack-saddles were empty. Fear was upon the

-      merchants and they would not send goods across the great river into

-      turbulent Shensi.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Already, so said my interpreter, and I judged the truth of his statement

-      by the empty pack-saddles, they were fearing to send goods into the

-      mountains at all. It was pleasant for me. I began to think. I had only

-      Buchanan to consult, and he had one great drawback, he always agreed that

-      what I thought was likely to be right. It is an attitude of mind that I

-      greatly commend in my friends and desire to encourage, but there are

-      occasions in life when a little perfectly disinterested advice would be

-      most acceptable, and that I could not get. Badly I wanted to cross Asia,

-      but I should not cross Asia if I were stopped by <i>tufeis</i>, which is

-      the local term for robbers. Were these rumours anything, or were they

-      manufactured by my interpreter? There were the warnings of the

-      missionaries, and there were the empty pack-saddles, and the empty

-      pack-saddles spoke loudly. Still I thought I might go on a little farther,

-      and James Buchanan encouraged me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Truly the way to the great river through the mountains was hard. Taking

-      all the difficulties in the lump, it would seem impossible to overcome

-      them, but taking them one by one I managed it. And not the least of my

-      troubles were the dogs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Here in the mountains was a very handsome breed of large white dogs with

-      long hair, at least I am sure they would have been handsome if they had

-      been well fed and well eared for. If it had not been for Buchanan, whose

-      heart it would have broken, I should certainly have got a puppy to bring

-      home with me. These dogs one and all waged war on my little friend, who

-      had a great idea of his own importance and probably aggravated the ill-fed

-      denizens of the inn-yards. He would go hectoring down a yard, head up,

-      white plume waving, with a sort of &ldquo;Well, here we are! Now what have you

-      got to say for yourselves?&rdquo; air about him, and in two seconds more a big

-      white scarecrow of a dog would have him by the neck, dragging him across

-      the yard, designing to slay him behind the drinking troughs. He would give

-      one shriek for help, and I would fly to that dog's head, catch him by the

-      ears or the ruff round his neck and be dragged along in my turn till Tsai

-      Chih Fu the resourceful appeared on the scene with a billet of wood, and

-      then the unfortunate beast would be banished from the yard or tied up till

-      we had gone. I remembered often the warning I had received on the subject

-      of hydrophobia, but I never had time to think of that till afterwards,

-      when, of course, if anything had happened it would have been too late.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There is one thing about a Chinese inn in the interior: it may be

-      exceedingly uncomfortable, but it is also exceedingly cheap. A night's

-      lodging as a rule costs forty cash. Eleven cash roughly is equal to a

-      cent, and a cent, again roughly&mdash;it depends upon the price of silver&mdash;is

-      a little less than a farthing. Forty cash, then, is hardly a penny. Hot

-      water costs eight cash, eggs were six cash apiece and so were the wheaten

-      scones I bought in place of the bread my servant could not make, and I

-      could buy those last as low as three cash apiece. Of course I quite

-      understand that I as a rich traveller paid top price for everything,

-      probably twice or three times as much as the ordinary traveller; the

-      missionaries, indeed, were shocked at the price I paid for eggs, and again

-      I was always rooked in the matter of paper. For even though I preferred

-      it, it often happened that it was impossible to sleep in my litter in the

-      yard, it was too crowded with beasts&mdash;and it had to be very crowded&mdash;and

-      then I stripped off the paper from the window of the room I occupied to

-      let in the air, just a little air, and I was charged accordingly from

-      thirty to eighty cash for my destructiveness. I found afterwards that a

-      whole sheet of new paper can be had for ten cash, and the paper I

-      destroyed was not half-a-sheet and was grimed with the dirt of ages!

-      Glass, of course, in the mountains of Shansi is almost unknown and the

-      windows are covered with white paper.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After the mountains came a high stony plateau, not dangerous but

-      difficult, for though this is a great trade route there was not an inch of

-      smooth roadway, every step had to be carefully picked among the stones,

-      and presently the stream that when we entered the mountains was a trickle

-      a hand's-breadth across was now a river meandering among the stones. We

-      began by stepping across it; wider it grew and there were stepping-stones

-      for the walking muleteers; then the mules waded and the muleteers climbed

-      on to the beasts or on to the front of the litter, which last proceeding

-      made me very uncomfortable, for I remembered my special man was likely at

-      most only to have been washed twice in his life, and I was very sure his

-      clothes had never been washed at all and probably had never been taken off

-      his back since last October. Finally we crossed by bridges, fairly

-      substantial bridges three planks wide, but the mules required a deal of

-      encouraging before they would trust them and always felt the boards

-      gingerly with their hoofs first as if they distrusted the Chinaman and all

-      his engineering works. The engineering was probably all right, but as the

-      state of repair often left much to be desired I could hardly blame the

-      mules for their caution. And one day we crossed that river twenty-six

-      times!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There is no charm in the country in Shansi beyond the sunshine and the

-      invigorating air. There were fields, every patch of land that could

-      possibly be made to grow a blade of wheat was most carefully tilled, there

-      was not a weed, not a blade of grass out of place. In some fields the

-      crops were springing green, in others the farmers were still ploughing,

-      with a patient ox in the plough; but there were no divisions between these

-      fields; there were no hedges; few and scanty trees; no gardens; no

-      farmhouses, picturesque or otherwise. The peasants all live huddled

-      together, literally in the hill-sides, and of the beauty of life there was

-      none. It was toil, toil without remission and with never a day off. Even

-      the blue sky and the sunshine and the invigorating dry air must be

-      discounted by the dirt and darkness and airlessness of the houses and the

-      underground <i>yaos</i>. The Chinese peasant's idea in building a house

-      seems to be to get rid of the light and the air, the only two things I

-      should have thought that make his life bearable. And in these dark and

-      airless caves the crippled women spend their days. The younger women&mdash;I

-      met them occasionally gaily clad and mounted on a donkey&mdash;looked

-      waxen and had an air of suffering, and the older were lined and had a look

-      of querulousness and irritability that was not on the men's faces. Many an

-      old man have I seen whose face might stand for a model of prosperous,

-      contented, peaceful old age looking back on a well-lived life, but never,

-      never have I seen such a look on a woman's face.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At last, after crossing a long bridge across the river, we came to Yung

-      Ning Chou. The dark grey wall stood out against the blue sky and, unlike

-      most Chinese cities that I have seen, there is no watch-tower over the

-      gate. It has suburbs, suburbs like Fen Chou Fu enclosed in crumbling clay

-      walls that are fast drifting to their inevitable end. They could not keep

-      out a rabbit now, let alone a man, and yet they are entered through great

-      brick gateways with a turn in them, and going under the archways I felt as

-      usual as if I had gone back to Biblical days. The walls of the city

-      proper, the crowded little city, are in better preservation, and tower

-      high above the caravans that pass round them, for there are no inns in

-      Yung Ning Chou and all caravans must stay in the eastern suburb. There are

-      narrow, stony little streets of houses pressed close together, and the

-      rough roadways are crowded with traffic: people, donkeys, laden mules and

-      grunting camels are for ever passing to and fro. Looking up the principal

-      street between the eastern and the western gate was like looking up a dark

-      tunnel in which fluttered various notices, the shop signs, Chinese

-      characters printed on white calico. Most of those signs, according to my

-      interpreter's translation, bore a strong resemblance to one another.

-      &ldquo;Virtue and Abundance,&rdquo; it seems they proclaimed to all who could read.

-      But there was no one to tell me whether there was really any wealth in

-      this little mountain city that is the same now as it probably was a

-      thousand years ago. I wondered, I could not help wondering, whether it

-      would be worth Pai Lang's while to attack. I wondered if he could get in

-      if he did, for the walls were high and the gates, rising up straight and

-      sheer without watch towers, such piles of masonry as might have been built

-      by conquering Nineveh or Babylon. Here and there, though, in the walls the

-      water had got under the clay and forced out the bricks in long deep

-      cracks, and here if they were not carefully guarded were places that an

-      invading force might storm, and in the suburbs and among the houses that

-      clustered close under the protecting walls terrible things might be done.

-      But the western gate, I should say, is well-nigh impregnable. Nobody but a

-      Chinaman would have built a gate in such a place. It opens out on to a

-      steep cliff that falls sheer sixty feet to the river below. Chinese towns

-      are always built symmetrically; there should be at least one gate in each

-      of the four walls, therefore a gate there is here. It seems to have

-      occurred to no one that a gate is placed in those walls for the

-      convenience of traffic, and that it is simple waste of time and labour to

-      make a gate in a place by which no one could possibly pass. For that

-      matter I should have thought a wall unnecessary on top of so steep a

-      cliff.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Scandinavian missionaries who have faithfully worked Yung Ning Chou

-      for the last twenty years with so little result were absent when I passed

-      through. Only two of them live here, the rest are scattered over the

-      mountains to the north, and when I was in Fen Chou Fu I met a woman, a

-      Norwegian, who was on her way to join them. She remains in my mind a

-      pathetic figure of sacrifice, a wistful woman who was giving of her very

-      best and yet was haunted by the fear that all she was giving was of very

-      little worth, surely the most bitter and sorrowful reflection in this

-      world. She had worked in China as a missionary in her girlhood. She

-      explained to me how hard it was for these northern peoples, for to learn

-      Chinese they have first to learn English. Then she married, and after her

-      little girl was born her husband died and so she took her treasure home to

-      educate her in Norway. But she died and, feeling her duty was to the

-      Chinese, back came the lonely mother, and when I met her she was setting

-      out for the little walled city in the hills where she dwelt with some

-      other women. A strangely lonely life, devoid of all pleasures, theirs must

-      have been. I was struck with the little things that pleased this devoted

-      woman, such little things, and we who may enjoy them every day go calmly

-      on our way and never appreciate them. She wore the unbecoming Chinese

-      dress, with her white hair drawn baek from her face, and her blue eyes

-      looked out wistfully as if she were loath to give up hope that somewhere,

-      somehow, in the world individual happiness, that would be for her alone,

-      would come to her. During the revolution they, remembering the troubles

-      and dangers of the Boxer time, had refugeed in Tientsin, and the days

-      there were evidently marked with a white stone in her calendar.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It was so delightful,&rdquo; she said in her pretty precise English, &ldquo;to see

-      the European children in the gardens.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      How her heart went out to those children. They reminded her, I suppose, of

-      the little girl she had left behind sleeping her last sleep among the

-      Norwegian mountains.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh, the children!&rdquo; she sighed. &ldquo;It brought a lump in your throat to look

-      at them!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It brought a lump in my throat to look at her as I saw her set out for her

-      home with two little black-eyed Chinese girls crowded in the litter beside

-      her. She was taking them home from the school at Fen Chou Fu. The

-      loneliness of her life! The sacrifice of it! I wonder if those three

-      women, shut away in that little walled town, made any converts. I doubt

-      it, for theirs, like the Yung Ning Chou mission, was purely a faith

-      mission.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Unmarried women and widows were these three women. The Yung Ning Chou

-      mission consists of four old bachelors and three old maids. Not for a

-      moment do I suppose the majority of the Chinese believe they are what they

-      are, men and women living the lives of ascetics, giving up all for their

-      faith, and the absence of children in child-loving China must seriously

-      handicap them in their efforts to spread their faith. Think of the weary

-      years of those workers toiling so hopelessly in an alien land among a poor

-      and alien population, whose first impulse is certainly to despise them.

-      All honour to those workers even though they have failed in their object

-      so far as human eye can see, and even though that object makes no appeal

-      to people like me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0026" id="linkimage-0026"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0155.jpg" alt="0155 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0155.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0027" id="linkimage-0027"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0156.jpg" alt="0156 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0156.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0028" id="linkimage-0028"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0157.jpg" alt="0157 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0157.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      And I passed on through Yung Ning Chou, on across the stony plateau, and

-      at last, at a village called Liu Lin Chen, I was brought up with a sharp

-      turn with a tale of Pai Lang.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was having my midday meal. Not that it was midday. It was four o'clock,

-      and I had breakfasted at 6 a.m.; but time is of no account in China. Liu

-      Lin Chen was the proper place at which to stop for the noonday rest, so we

-      did not stop till we arrived there, though the badness of the road had

-      delayed us. I was sitting in the inn-yard waiting for Tsai Chih Fu to

-      bring me the eternal hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice when Mr Wang came

-      up, accompanied by the two muleteers, and they&mdash;that is, the two

-      muleteers&mdash;dropped down to the ground and clamoured, so I made out

-      from his excited statements that the gates of Sui Te Chou had been closed

-      for the last four days on account of Pai Lang! And Sui Te Chou was the

-      first town I proposed to stop at after I crossed the river! If I would go

-      to Lan Chou Fu and on through Sin Kiang to the Russian border through Sui

-      Te Chou I must go. There was no other way. These days in the mountains had

-      shown me that to stray from the caravan road was an utter impossibility.

-      Had I been one of the country people conversant with the language I think

-      it would have been impossible. As it was, I had my choice. I might go on

-      or I might go back. Mr Wang apparently thought there should be no doubt in

-      my mind. He evidently expected I would turn tail there and then, and I

-      myself realised&mdash;I had been realising ever since round the table in

-      the mission station at Ki Hsien we had read Dr Edwards' letter&mdash;that

-      my journey across the continent was ended; but to turn tail in this

-      ignominious fashion, having seen nothing, within, I suppose, twenty-five

-      miles of the Yellow River, with the country about me as peaceful as the

-      road in Kent in which I live at present, how could I? It was more

-      peaceful, in fact, for now at night searchlights stream across the sky,

-      within a furlong of my house bombs have been dropped and men have been

-      killed, and by day and by night the house rocks as motors laden with

-      armament and instruments of war thunder past. But there in Shansi in the

-      fields the people worked diligently, in the village the archway over which

-      they held theatrical representations was placarded with notices, and in

-      the inn-yard where I sat the people went about attending to the animals as

-      if there was nothing to be feared. And I felt lonely, and James Buchanan

-      sat close beside me because at the other side of the very narrow yard a

-      great big white dog with a fierce face and a patch of mange on his side

-      looked at him threateningly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I'll have none of your drawing-room dogs here,&rdquo; said he.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Buchanan's difficulties were solved when he appealed to me. I&mdash;and

-      I was feeling it horribly&mdash;had no one to appeal to. I must rely upon

-      myself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then to add to my woes it began to rain, soft, gentle spring rain,

-      growing rain that must have been a godsend to the whole country-side.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It stopped, and Mr Wang and the muleteers looked at me anxiously.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We will go on,&rdquo; I said firmly, &ldquo;to the Yellow River.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Their faces fell. I could see the disappointment, but still I judged I

-      might go in safety so far.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Don't they want to go?&rdquo; I asked Mr Wang.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Repeat, please,&rdquo; said he. So I repeated, and he said as he had said

-      before:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If you say 'Go,' mus' go.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And I said &ldquo;Go.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER VII&mdash;CHINA'S SORROW

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is better, says

-      a Chinese proverb, &ldquo;to hear about a thing than to see it,&rdquo; and truly on

-      this journey I was much inclined to agree with that dictum.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We were bound for Hsieh Ts'un. I can't pronounce it, and I should not like

-      to swear to the spelling, but of one thing I am very sure, not one of the

-      inhabitants could spell it, or even know it was wrongly set forth to the

-      world, so I am fairly safe.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We went under the archway with the theatrical notices at Liu Lin Chen,

-      under the arched gateway of the village, out into the open country, and it

-      began to rain again. It came down not exactly in torrents but good steady

-      growing rain. The roads when they were not slippery stones were appalling

-      quagmires, and my mule litter always seemed to be overhanging a precipice

-      of some sort. I was not very comfortable when that precipice was only

-      twenty feet deep, when it was more I fervently wished that I had not come

-      to China. I wished it more than once, and it rained and it rained and it

-      rained, silent, soaking, penetrating rain, and I saw the picturesque

-      mountain country through a veil of mist.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Hsieh Ts'un is a little dirty straggling village, and as we entered it

-      through the usual archway with a watch tower above the setting sun broke

-      through the thick clouds and his golden rays strcamed down upon the

-      slippery wet cobblestones that paved the principal street. The golden

-      sunlight and the gorgeous rainbow glorified things a little, and they

-      needed glorifying. The principal inn, as usual, was a fairly large yard,

-      roughly paved, but swimming now in dirty water; there were stalls for

-      animals all round it, and there was a large empty shed where they stored

-      lime. It was stone-paved, and the roof leaked like a sieve, but here I

-      established myself, dodging as far as possible the holes in the roof and

-      drawing across the front of the shed my litter as a sort of protection,

-      for the inn, as usual with these mountain inns, had but one room.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was cold, it was dirty, and I realised how scarce foreigners must be

-      when through the misty, soaking rain, which generally chokes off a

-      Chinaman, crowds came to stand round and stare at me. I was stationary, so

-      the women came, dirty, ragged, miserable-looking women, supporting

-      themselves with sticks and holding up their babies to look at the stranger

-      while she ate. By and by it grew so cold I felt I must really go to bed,

-      and I asked Mr Wang to put it to the crowd that it was not courteous to

-      stare at the foreign woman when she wished to be alone, and, O most

-      courtly folk! every single one of those people went away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You can have a bath,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;no one will look&rdquo;; and, all honour give I

-      to those poor peasants of Western Shansi, I was undisturbed. I am afraid a

-      lonely Chinese lady would hardly be received with such courtesy in an

-      English village were the cases reversed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Next day the rain still teemed down. The fowls pecked about the yard,

-      drenched and dripping; a miserable, mangy, cream-coloured dog or two came

-      foraging for a dinner, and the people, holding wadded coats and oiled

-      paper over their heads, came to look again at the show that had come to

-      the town; but there was no break in the grey sky, and there was nothing to

-      do but sit there shivering with cold, writing letters on my little

-      travelling table and listening to my interpreter, who talked with the

-      innkeeper and brought me at intervals that gentleman's views on the doings

-      of Pai Lang.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Those views varied hour by hour. At first he was sure he was attacking Sui

-      Te Chou. That seemed to me sending the famous robber over the country too

-      quickly. Then it was <i>tufeis</i>&mdash;that is, bands of robbers&mdash;that

-      Sui Te Chou feared, and finally, boiled down, I came to the conclusion

-      that Sui Te Chou had probably shut her gates because the country round was

-      disturbed, and that she admitted no one who had not friends in the city or

-      could not in some way guarantee his good faith. It served to show me my

-      friends in Ki Hsien had been right, such disturbed country would be no

-      place for a woman alone. I suppose it was the rain and the grey skies, but

-      I must admit that day I was distinctly unhappy and more than a little

-      afraid. I was alone among an alien people, who only regarded me as a cheap

-      show; I had no one to take counsel with, my interpreter only irritated me

-      and, to add to my misery, I was very cold. I have seldom put in a longer

-      or more dreary day than I did at Hsieh Ts'un. There was absolutely nothing

-      to do but watch the misty rain, for if I went outside and got wetter than

-      I was already getting under the leaking roof&mdash;I wore my Burberry&mdash;I

-      had no possible means of drying my clothes save by laying them on the hot

-      <i>k'ang</i> in the solitary living-room of the inn, and that was already

-      inhabited by many humans and the parasites that preyed upon them.

-      Therefore I stayed where I was, compared my feet with the stumps of the

-      women who came to visit me&mdash;distinctly I was a woman's show&mdash;gave

-      the grubby little children raisins, and wondered if there was any fear of

-      Pai Lang coming along this way before I had time to turn back. If it kept

-      on raining, would my muleteers compel me to stay here till Pai Lang swept

-      down upon us? But no, that thought did not trouble me, first, because I

-      momentarily expected it to clear up, and secondly, because I was very sure

-      that any rain that kept me prisoner would also hold up Pai Lang. I could

-      not believe in a Chinaman, even a robber, going out in the rain if he

-      could help himself, any more than I could believe in it raining longer

-      than a day in China.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The people are not afraid,&rdquo; I said to my interpreter as I looked at a

-      worn old woman in a much-patched blue cotton smock and trousers, her head

-      protected from the rain by a wadded coat in the last stages of

-      decrepitude; her feet made me shiver, and her finger-nails made me crawl,

-      the odour that came from her was sickening, but she liked to see me write,

-      and I guessed she had had but few pleasures in her weary life.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They not knowing yet,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;only travellers know. They tell

-      innkeeper.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Yes, certainly the travellers would know best.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And all day long he came, bringing me various reports, and said that,

-      according to the innkeeper, the last caravan that had passed through had

-      gone back on its tracks. I might have remembered it. I did remember it&mdash;a

-      long line of donkeys and mules.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the day passed, and the night passed, and the next day the sun came

-      out warm and pleasant, and all my doubts were resolved. My journey was

-      broken beyond hope, and I must go back, but turn I would not till I had

-      looked upon the Yellow River.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We started with all our paraphernalia. We were to turn in our tracks after

-      tiffin, but Mr Wang and the muleteers were certain on that point,

-      everything I possessed must be dragged across the mountains if I hoped to

-      see it again, and I acquiesced, for I certainly felt until I got back to

-      civilisation I could not do without any of my belongings.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Almost immediately we left the village we began to ascend the mountain

-      pass. Steeper and steeper it grew, and at last the opening in my mule

-      litter was pointing straight up to the sky, and I, seeing there was

-      nothing else for it, demanded to be lifted out and signified my intention

-      of walking.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was one thing against this and that was an attack of breathlessness.

-      Asthma always attacks me when I am tired or worried, and now, with a very

-      steep mountain to cross and no means of doing it except on my own feet, it

-      had its wicked way. My master of transport and Mr Wang, like perfectly

-      correct Chinese servants, each put a hand under my elbows, and with

-      Buchanan skirmishing around joyfully, rejoicing that for once his mistress

-      was sensible, the little procession started. It was hard work, very hard

-      work. When I could go no longer I sat down and waited till I felt equal to

-      starting again. On the one hand the mountain rose up sheer and steep, on

-      the other it dropped away into the gully beneath, only to rise again on

-      the other side. And yet in the most inaccessible places were patches of

-      cultivation and wheat growing. I cannot imagine how man or beast kept a

-      footing on such a slant, and how they ploughed and sowed it passes my

-      understanding. But most of the mountain-side was too much even for them,

-      and then they turned loose their flocks, meek cream-coloured sheep and

-      impudent black goats, to graze on the scanty mountain pastures. Of course

-      they were in charge of a shepherd, for there were no fences, and the newly

-      springing wheat must have been far more attractive than the scanty

-      mountain grasses.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then I knew it was worth it all&mdash;the long trek from Fen Chou Fu,

-      the dreary day at Hsieh Ts'un, the still more dreary nights, this stiff

-      climb which took more breath than I had to spare&mdash;for the view when I

-      arrived at a point of vantage was beautiful. These were strange mountains.

-      The road before me rose at a very steep angle, and all around me were

-      hill-sides whereon only a goat or a sheep might find foothold, but the

-      general effect looked at from a distance was not of steepness. These were

-      not mountains, rugged, savage, grand, they were gentle hills and dales

-      that lay about me; I had come through them; there were more ahead; I could

-      see them range after range, softly rounded, green and brown and then blue,

-      beautiful for all there were no trees, in an atmosphere that was clear as

-      a mirror after the rain of the day before. Beautiful, beautiful, with a

-      tender entrancing loveliness, is that view over the country up in the

-      hills that hem in the Yellow River as it passes between Shansi and Shensi.

-      Is it possible there is never anyone to see it but these poor peasants who

-      wring a hard livelihood from the soil, and who for all their toil, which

-      lasts from daylight to dark all the year round, get from this rich soil

-      just enough wheaten flour to keep the life in them, a hovel to dwell in,

-      and a few unspeakable rags to cover their nakedness? As far as I could

-      see, everyone was desperately poor, and yet these hills hold coal and iron

-      in close proximity, wealth untold and unexploited. The pity of it!

-      Unexploited, the people are poor to the verge of starvation; worked, the

-      delicate loveliness of the country-side will vanish as the beauty of the

-      Black Country has vanished, and can we be sure that the peasant will

-      benefit?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0029" id="linkimage-0029"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0166.jpg" alt="0166 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0166.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0030" id="linkimage-0030"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0167.jpg" alt="0167 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0167.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      Still we went up and up, and the climbing of these gentle wooing hills I

-      found hard. Steep it was, and at last, just when I felt I could not

-      possibly go any farther, though the penalty were that I should turn back

-      almost within sight of the river, I found that the original makers of the

-      track had been of the same opinion, for here was the top of the pass with

-      a tunnel bored through it, a tunnel perhaps a hundred feet long, carefully

-      bricked, and when we, breathless and panting, walked through we came out

-      on a little plateau with a narrow road wandering down a mountain-side as

-      steep as the one we had just climbed. There was the most primitive of

-      restaurants here, and the woman in charge&mdash;it was a woman, and her

-      feet were not bound&mdash;proffered us a thin sort of drink like very

-      tasteless barley water. At least now I know it was tasteless, then I found

-      it was nectar, and I sat on a stone and drank it thankfully, gave not a

-      thought to the dirt of the bowl that contained it, and drew long breaths

-      and looked around me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The hills rose up on either hand and away in the distance where they

-      opened out were the beautiful treeless hills of forbidden Shensi, just as

-      alluring, just as peaceful as the hills I had come through. It was worth

-      the long and toilsome journey, well worth even all my fears.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then we went down, down, but I did not dare get into my litter, the way

-      was too steep, the chances of going over too great, for it seems the

-      Chinese never make a road if by any chance they can get along without.

-      They were driven to bore a tunnel through the mountains, but they never

-      smooth or take away rocks as long as, by taking a little care, an animal

-      can pass without the certainty of going over the cliff.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And at last through a cleft in the hills I saw one of the world's great

-      rivers and&mdash;was disappointed. The setting was ideal. The hills rose

-      up steep and rugged, real mountains, on either side, pheasants called,

-      rock-doves mourned, magpies chattered, overhead was a clear blue sky just

-      flecked here and there with fleecy clouds, beyond again were the mountains

-      of Shensi, the golden sunlight on their rounded tops, purple shadow in

-      their swelling folds, far away in the distance they melted blue into the

-      blue sky, close at hand they were green with the green of springtime, save

-      where the plough had just turned up patches of rich brown soil, and at

-      their foot rolled a muddy flood that looked neither decent water nor good

-      sound earth, the mighty Hoang-Ho, the Yellow River, China's sorrow.

-      China's sorrow indeed; for though here it was hemmed in by mountains, and

-      might not shift its bed, it looked as if it were carrying the soul of the

-      mountains away to the sea.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There is a temple where the gully opens on to the river, a temple and a

-      little village, and the temple was crowded with blue-clad, shabby-looking

-      soldiers who promptly swarmed round me and wanted to look in my baggage,

-      that heavy baggage we were hauling for safety over fourteen miles of

-      mountain road. Presumably they were seeking arms. We managed to persuade

-      them there were none, and that the loads contained nothing likely to

-      disturb the peace, and then we went down to the river, crossing by a

-      devious, rocky and unpleasant path simply reeking of human occupancy, and

-      the inhabitants of that soldier village crowded round me and examined

-      everything I wore and commented on everything I did.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They were there to guard the crossing; and far from me be it to say they

-      were not most efficient, but if so their looks belied them. They did not

-      even look toy soldiers. No man was in full uniform. Apparently they wore

-      odd bits, as if there were not enough clothes in the company to go round,

-      and they were one and all dirty, touzly, untidy, and all smiling and

-      friendly and good-tempered. I only picked them out from the surrounding

-      country people&mdash;who were certainly dirty and poverty-stricken enough

-      in all conscience&mdash;by the fact that the soldiers had abandoned the

-      queue which the people around, like all these country people, still

-      affect. The soldier wore his hair about four or five inches long, sticking

-      out at all angles, rusty-black, unkempt and uncombed, and whether he ran

-      to a cap or not, the result was equally unworkmanlike.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I conclude Chun Pu is not a very important crossing. What the road is like

-      on the Shensi side I do not know, but on the Shansi side I should think

-      the pass we had just crossed was a very effective safeguard. He would be a

-      bold leader who would venture to bring his men up that path in the face of

-      half-a-dozen armed men, and they need not be very bold men either. Those

-      soldiers did not look bold. They were kindly, though, and they had women

-      and children with them&mdash;I conclude their own, for they nursed the

-      grubby little children, all clad in grubby patches, very proudly, took

-      such good care they had a good view of the show&mdash;me&mdash;that I

-      could not but sympathise with their paternal affection and aid in every

-      way in my power. Generally my good-will took the form of raisins. I was

-      lavish now I had given up my journey, and my master of transport

-      distributed with an air as if I were bestowing gold and silver.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He set out my table on the cobble-stones of the inn-yard in the sunshine.

-      I believe, had I been a really dignified traveller, I should have put up

-      with the stuffiness and darkness of the inn's one room, but I felt the

-      recurrent hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice, with a certain steamed scone

-      which contained more of the millstone and less of the flour than was usual

-      even with the scones of the country, were trials enough without trying to

-      be dignified in discomfort.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And while I had my meal everybody took it in turns to look through the

-      finder of my camera, the women, small-footed, dirty creatures, much to the

-      surprise of their menfolk, having precedence. Those women vowed they had

-      never seen a foreigner before. Every one of them had bound feet, tiny feet

-      on which they could just totter, and all were clad in extremely dirty,

-      much-patched blue cotton faded into a dingy dirt-colour. Most of them wore

-      tight-fitting coverings of black cloth to cover their scalps, often

-      evidently to conceal their baldness, for many of them suffered from

-      &ldquo;expending too much heart.&rdquo; Baldness is caused, say the Chinese half in

-      fun, because the luckless man or woman has thought more of others than of

-      themselves. I am afraid they do not believe it, or they may like to hide

-      their good deeds, for they are anything but proud of being bald. Most of

-      the mouths, too, here, and indeed all along the road, were badly formed

-      and full of shockingly broken and decayed teeth, the women's particularly.

-      Wheaten flour, which is the staple food of Shansi, is apparently not

-      enough to make good teeth. The people were not of a markedly Mongolian

-      type. Already it seemed as if the nations to the West were setting their

-      seal upon them, and some of the younger girls, with thick black hair

-      parted in the middle, a little colour in their cheeks, and somewhat

-      pathetic, wistful-looking faces, would have been good-looking in any land.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then I had one more good look at the river, my farthest point west on the

-      journey, the river I had come so far to see. It was all so peaceful in the

-      afternoon sunlight that it seemed foolish not to go on. The hills of

-      Shensi beckoned and all my fears fell from me. I wanted badly to go on.

-      Then came reason. It was madness to risk the <i>tufeis</i> with whom

-      everyone was agreed Shensi swarmed. There in the brilliant sunshine, with

-      the laughing people around me, I was not afraid, but when night fell&mdash;no,

-      even if the soldiers would have allowed, which Mr Wang declared they would

-      not&mdash;I dared not, and I turned sadly and regretfully and made my way

-      back to Fen Chou Fu.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Had I gone on I should have arrived in Russia with the war in full swing,

-      so on the whole? am thankful I had to flee before the <i>tufeis</i> of

-      Shensi. Perhaps when the world is at peace I shall essay that fascinating

-      journey again. Only I shall look out for some companion, and even if I

-      take the matchless master of transport I shall most certainly see to it

-      that I have a good cook.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER VIII&mdash;LAST DAYS IN CHINA

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ell, I had failed!

-      The horrid word kept ringing in my ears, the still more horrid thought was

-      ever in my mind day and night as I retraced my footsteps, and I come of a

-      family that does not like to fail.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I wondered if it were possible to make my way along the great waterways of

-      Siberia. There were mighty rivers there, I had seen them, little-known

-      rivers, and it seemed to me that before going West again I might see

-      something of them, and as my mules picked their way across the streams,

-      along the stony paths, by the walled cities, through the busy little

-      villages, already China was behind me, I was thinking of ways and means by

-      which I might penetrate Siberia.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Fen Chou Fu they were kind, but I knew they thought I had given in too

-      easily, that I had turned back at a shadow, but at T'ai Yuan Fu I met the

-      veteran missionary, Dr Edwards, and I was comforted and did not feel so

-      markedly that failure was branded all over me when he thanked God that his

-      letter had had the effect of making me consider carefully my ways, for of

-      one thing he was sure, there would have been but one ending to the

-      expedition. To get to Lan Chou Fu would have been impossible.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Still my mind was not quite at ease about the matter, and at intervals I

-      wondered if I would not have gone on had I had a good cook. Rather a

-      humiliating thought! It was a satisfaction when one day I met Mr Reginald

-      Farrer, who had left Peking with Mr Purdom to botanise in Kansu ten days

-      before I too had proposed to start West.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I often wondered,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;what became of you and how you had got on.

-      We thought perhaps you might have fallen into the hands of White Wolf and

-      then&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He paused.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Shensi, he declared, was a seething mass of unrest. It would have spelled

-      death to cross to those peaceful hills I had looked at from the left bank

-      of the Hoang-Ho. We discussed our travels, and we took diametrically

-      opposite views of China. But it is impossible to have everything: one has

-      to choose, and I prefer the crudeness of the new world, the rush and the

-      scramble and the progress, to the calm of the Oriental. Very likely this

-      is because I am a woman. In the East woman holds a subservient position,

-      she has no individuality of her own, and I, coming from the newest new

-      world, where woman has a very high place indeed, is counted a citizen, and

-      a useful citizen, could hardly be expected to admire a state of society

-      where her whole life is a torture and her position is regulated by her

-      value to the man to whom she belongs. I put this to my friend when he was

-      admiring the Chinese ladies and he laughed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I admit,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that a young woman has a&rdquo;&mdash;well, he used a very

-      strong expression, but it wasn't strong enough&mdash;&ldquo;of a time when she

-      is young, but, if she has a son, when her husband dies see what a position

-      she holds. That little old woman sitting on a <i>k'ang</i> rules a whole

-      community.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And then I gave it up because our points of view were East and West. But I

-      am thankful that the Fates did not make me&mdash;a woman&mdash;a member of

-      a nation where I could have no consideration, no chance of happiness, no

-      great influence or power by my own effort, where recognition only came if

-      I had borne a son who was still living and my husband was dead.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0031" id="linkimage-0031"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0176.jpg" alt="0176 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0176.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0032" id="linkimage-0032"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0177.jpg" alt="0177 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0177.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      On my way back to T'ai Yuan Fu I stayed at no mission station except at

-      Fen Chou Fu; I went by a different route and spent the nights at miserable

-      inns that kindly charged me a whole penny for lodging and allowed me to

-      sleep in my litter in their yards, and about eighty <i>li</i> from Fen

-      Chou Fu I came across evidences of another mission that would be <i>anathema

-      maranatha</i> to the Nonconformists with whom I had been staying. It is

-      curious this schism between two bodies holding what purports to be the

-      same faith. I remember a missionary, the wife of a doctor at Ping Ting

-      Chou, who belonged to a sect called The Brethren, who spoke of the Roman

-      Catholics as if they were in as much need of conversion as the ignorant

-      Chinese around her. It made me smile; yet I strongly suspect that Mr

-      Farrer will put me in the same category as I put my friend from Ping Ting

-      Chou! However, here under the care of the Alsatian Fathers the country was

-      most beautifully cultivated. The wheat was growing tall and lush in the

-      land, emerald-green in the May sunshine; there were avenues of trees along

-      the wayside clothed in the tender fresh green of spring, and I came upon a

-      whole village, men and boys, busy making a bridge across a stream. Never

-      in China have I seen such evidences of well-conducted agricultural

-      industry; and the Fathers were militant too, for they were, and probably

-      are, armed, and in the Boxer trouble held their station like a fort, and

-      any missionaries fleeing who reached them had their lives saved. I found

-      much to commend in that Roman Catholic mission, and felt they were as

-      useful to the country people in their way as were the Americans to the

-      people of the towns.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Outside another little town the population seemed to be given over to the

-      making of strawboard, and great banks were plastered with squares of it

-      set out to dry, and every here and there a man was engaged in putting more

-      pieces up. It wras rather a comical effect to see the side of a bank

-      plastered with yellow squares of strawboard and the wheat springing on

-      top.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      All along the route still went caravans of camels, mules and donkeys, and,

-      strangest of all modes of conveyance, wheel-barrows, heavily laden too. A

-      wheel-barrow in China carries goods on each side of a great wheel, a man

-      holds up the shafts and wheels it, usually with a strap round his

-      shoulders, and in front either another man or a donkey is harnessed to

-      help with the traction. Hundreds of miles they go, over the roughest way,

-      and the labour must be very heavy; but wherever I went in China this was

-      impressed upon me, that man was the least important factor in any work of

-      production. He might be used till he failed and then thrown lightly away

-      without a qualm. There were plenty glad enough to take his place.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I have been taken to task for comparing China to Babylon, but I must make

-      some comparison to bring home things to my readers. This journey through

-      the country in the warm spring sunshine was as unlike a journey anywhere

-      that I have been in Europe, Africa or Australia as anything could possibly

-      be. It was through an old land, old when Europe was young. I stopped at

-      inns that were the disgusting product of the slums; I passed men working

-      in the fields who were survivals of an old civilisation, and when I passed

-      any house that was not a hovel it was secluded carefully, so that the

-      owner and his womenkind might keep themselves apart from the proletariat,

-      the serfs who laboured around them and for them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Within a day's journey of T'ai Yuan Fu I came to a little town, Tsui Su,

-      where there was an extra vile inn with no courtyard that I could sleep in,

-      only a room where the rats were numerous and so fierce that they drove

-      Buchanan for refuge to my bed and the objectionable insects that I hustled

-      off the <i>k'ang</i> by means of powdered borax and Keating's, strewed

-      over and under the ground sheet, crawled up the walls and dropped down

-      upon me from the ceiling. Poor Buchanan and I spent a horrid night. I

-      don't like rats anyway, and fierce and hungry rats on the spot are far

-      worse for keeping off sleep than possible robbers in the future. All that

-      night I dozed and waked and restrained Buchanan's energies and vowed I was

-      a fool for coming to China, and then in the morning as usual I walked it

-      all back, and was glad, for Mr Wang came to me and, after the best

-      personally conducted Cook's tourist style, explained that here was a

-      temple which &ldquo;mus' see.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I didn't believe much in temples in these parts, but I went a little way

-      back into the town and came to a really wonderful temple, built, I think,

-      over nine warm springs&mdash;the sort of thing that weighed down the

-      scales heavily on Mr Farrer's side. What has a nation that could produce

-      such a temple to learn from the West? I shall never forget the carved

-      dragons in red and gold that climbed the pillars at the principal

-      entrance, the twisted trees, the shrines over the springs and the bronze

-      figures that stood guard on the platform at the entrance gate. The steps

-      up to that gate were worn and broken with the passing of many feet through

-      countless years; the yellow tiles of the roof were falling and broken;

-      from the figures had been torn or had fallen the arms that they once had

-      borne; the whole place was typical of the decay which China allows to fall

-      upon her holy places; but seen in the glamour of the early morning, with

-      the grass springing underfoot, the trees in full leaf, the sunshine

-      lighting the yellow roofs and the tender green of the trees, it was

-      gorgeous. Then the clouds gathered and it began to rain, gentle, soft,

-      warm, growing rain, and I left it shrouded in a seductive grey mist that

-      veiled its imperfections and left me a 'memory only of one of the

-      beautiful places of the earth that I am glad I have seen.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At T'ai Yuan Fu I paid Mr Wang's fare back to Pao Ting Fu and bade him a

-      glad farewell. There may be worse interpreters in China, but I really hope

-      there are not many. He would have been a futile person in any country; he

-      was a helpless product of age-old China. I believe he did get back safely,

-      but I must confess to feeling on sending him away much as I should do were

-      I to turn loose a baby of four to find his way across London. Indeed I

-      have met many babies of four in Australia who struck me as being far more

-      capable than the interpreter who had undertaken to see me across China.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was on the loose myself now. I was bent on going to Siberia; but the

-      matter had to be arranged in my own mind first, and while I did so I

-      lingered and spent a day or two at Hwailu; not that I wanted to see that

-      town&mdash;somehow I had done with China&mdash;but because the personality

-      of Mr and Mrs Green of the China Inland Mission interested me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Hwailu is a small walled city, exactly like hundreds of other little

-      walled cities, with walls four-square to each point of the compass, and it

-      is set where the hills begin to rise that divide Chihli from Shansi, and

-      beyond the mission station is a square hill called Nursing Calf Fort. The

-      hill has steep sides up which it is almost impossible to take any animal,

-      but there are about one hundred acres of arable land on top, and this,

-      with true Chinese thrift, could not be allowed to go untilled, so the

-      story goes that while a calf was young a man carried it up on his back;

-      there it grew to maturity, and with its help they ploughed the land and

-      they reaped the crops. It is a truly Chinese story, and very likely it is

-      true. It is exactly what the Chinese would do.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Hwailu, where they had lived for many years, Mr and Mrs Green were

-      engaged in putting up a new church, and with them I came in contact with

-      missionaries who had actually suffered almost to death at the hands of the

-      Boxers. It was thrilling to listen to the tales of their sufferings,

-      sitting there on the verandah of the mission house looking out on to the

-      peaceful flowers and shrubs of the mission garden.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the Boxer trouble spread to Hwailu and it was manifest the mission

-      house was no longer safe, they took refuge in a cave among the hills that

-      surround the town. Their converts and friends&mdash;for they had many

-      friends who were not converts&mdash;hardly dared come near them, and death

-      was very close. It was damp and cold in the cave though it was

-      summer-time, and by and by they had eaten all their food and drunk all

-      their water, and their hearts were heavy, for they feared not only for

-      themselves, but for what the little children must suffer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I could not help it,&rdquo; said Mrs Green, reproaching herself for being

-      human. &ldquo;I used to look at my children and wonder how the saints <i>could</i>

-      rejoice in martyrdom!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      When they were in despair and thinking of coming out and giving themselves

-      up they heard hushed voices, and a hand at the opening of the cave offered

-      five large wheaten scones. Some friends, again not converts, merely pagan

-      friends, had remembered their sufferings. Still they looked at the scenes

-      doubtfully, and though the little children&mdash;they were only four and

-      six&mdash;held out their hands for them eagerly, they were obliged to

-      implore them not to eat them, they would make them so desperately thirsty.

-      But their Chinese friends were thoughtful as well as kind, and presently

-      came the same soft voice again and a hand sending up a basketful of

-      luscious cucumbers, cool and refreshing with their store of water.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But they could not stay there for ever, and finally they made their way

-      down to the river bank, the Ching River&mdash;the Clear River we called

-      it, and I have also heard it translated the Dark Blue River, though it was

-      neither dark, nor blue, nor clear, simply a muddy canal&mdash;and slowly

-      made their way in the direction of Tientsin, hundreds of miles away. That

-      story of the devoted little band's wanderings makes pitiful reading.

-      Sometimes they went by boat, sometimes they crept along in the kaoliang

-      and reeds, and at last they arrived at the outskirts of Hsi An&mdash;not

-      the great city in Shensi, but a small walled town on the Ching River in

-      Chihli. Western cities are as common in China as new towns in

-      English-speaking lands&mdash;and here they, hearing a band was after them,

-      hid themselves in the kaoliang, the grain that grows close and tall as a

-      man. They were weary and worn and starved; they were well-nigh hopeless&mdash;at

-      least I should have been hopeless&mdash;but still their faith upheld them.

-      It was the height of summer and the sun poured down his rays, but towards

-      evening the clouds gathered. If it rained they knew with little children

-      they must leave their refuge.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But surely, I know,&rdquo; said Mrs Green, &ldquo;the dear Lord will never let it

-      rain.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And as I looked at her I seemed to see the passionate yearning with which

-      she looked at the little children that the rain must doom to a Chinese

-      prison or worse. In among those thick kaoliang stalks they could not stay.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It rained, the heavy rain that comes in the Chinese summer, and the

-      fugitives crept out and gave themselves up.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It shows how ignorant we are, how unfit to judge for ourselves,&rdquo; said the

-      teller of the tale fervently, &ldquo;for we fell into the hands of a

-      comparatively merciful band, whereas presently the kaoliang was beaten by

-      a ruthless set of men whom there would have been no escaping, and who

-      certainly would have killed us.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But the tenderness of the most merciful band was a thing to be prayed

-      against. They carried the children kindly enough&mdash;the worst of

-      Chinamen seem to be good to children&mdash;but they constantly threatened

-      their elders with death. They were going to their death, that they made

-      very clear to them; and they slung them on poles by their hands and feet,

-      and the pins came out of the women's long hair&mdash;there was another

-      teacher, a girl, with them&mdash;and it trailed in the dust of the filthy

-      Chinese paths. And Mr Green was faint and weary from a wound in his neck,

-      but still they had no pity.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Still these devoted people comforted each other. It was the will of the

-      Lord. Always was He with them. They were taken to Pao Ting Fu, Pao Ting Fu

-      that had just burned its own missionaries, and put in the gaol there&mdash;and,

-      knowing a Chinese inn, I wonder what can be the awfulness of a Chinese

-      gaol&mdash;and they were allowed no privacy. Mrs Green had dysentery; they

-      had not even a change of clothes; but the soldiers were always in the

-      rooms with them, or at any rate in the outer room, and this was done, of

-      course, of <i>malice prepense</i>, for no one values the privacy of their

-      women more than the Chinese. The girl got permission to go down to the

-      river to wash their clothes, but a soldier always accompanied her, and

-      always the crowds jeered and taunted as she went along in the glaring

-      sunshine, feeling that nothing was hidden from these scornful people. Only

-      strangely to the children were they kind; the soldiers used to give them

-      copper coins so that they might buy little scones and cakes to eke out the

-      scanty rations, and once&mdash;it brought home to me, perhaps as nothing

-      else could, the deprivations of such a life&mdash;instead of buying the

-      much-needed food the women bought a whole pennyworth of hairpins, for

-      their long hair was about their shoulders, and though they brushed it to

-      the best of their ability with their hands it was to them an unseemly

-      thing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And before the order came&mdash;everything is ordered in China&mdash;that

-      their lives were to be saved and they were to be sent to Tientsin the

-      little maid who had done so much to cheer and alleviate their hard lot lay

-      dying; the hardships and the coarse food had been too much for her. In the

-      filth and misery of the ghastly Chinese prison she lay, and, bending over

-      her, they picked the lice off her. Think of that, ye folk who guard your

-      little ones tenderly and love them as these missionaries who feel called

-      upon to convert the Chinese loved theirs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After all that suffering they went back, back to Hwailu and the desolated

-      mission station under the Nursing Calf Fort, where they continue their

-      work to this day, and so will continue it, I suppose, to the end, for most

-      surely their sufferings and their endurance have fitted them for the work

-      they have at heart as no one who has not so suffered and endured could be

-      fitted. And so I think the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I walked through a tremendous dust-storm to the railway station at the

-      other side of the town, and the woman who had suffered these awful things,

-      and who was as sweet and charming and lovable a woman as I have ever met,

-      walked with me and bade me God-speed on my journey, and when I parted from

-      her I knew that among a class I&mdash;till I came to China&mdash;had

-      always strenuously opposed I had found one whom I could not only respect,

-      but whom I could love and admire.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Going back to Pao Ting Fu was like going back to old friends. They had not

-      received my letter. Mr Wang had not made his appearance, so when James

-      Buchanan and I, attended by the master of transport, appeared upon the

-      scene on a hot summer day we found the missionary party having their

-      midday dinner on the verandah, and they received me&mdash;bless their kind

-      hearts!&mdash;with open arms, and proceeded to explain to me how very wise

-      a thing I had done in coming back. The moment I had left, they said, they

-      had been uncomfortable in the part they had taken in forwarding me on my

-      journey.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was very good of them. There are days we always remember all our lives&mdash;our

-      wedding day and such-like&mdash;and that coming back on the warm summer's

-      day out of the hot, dusty streets of the western suburb into the cool,

-      clean, tree-shaded compound of the American missionaries at Pao Ting Fu is

-      one of them. And that compound is one of the places in the world I much

-      want to visit again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There is another day, too, I shall not lightly forget. We called it the

-      last meeting of the Travellers' Club of Pao Ting Fu. There were only two

-      members in the club, Mr Long and I and an honorary member, James Buchanan,

-      and on this day the club decided to meet, and Mr Long asked me to dinner.

-      He lived in the Chinese college in the northern suburb. His house was only

-      about two miles away and it could be reached generally by going round by

-      the farms and graves, mostly graves, that cover the ground by the rounded

-      north-west corner of the wall of the city. Outside a city in China is

-      ugly. True, the walls are strangely old-world and the moat is a relic of

-      the past&mdash;useful in these modern times for disposing of unwanted

-      puppies; Pao Ting Fu never seemed so hard up for food as Shansi&mdash;but

-      otherwise the ground looks much as the deserted alluvial goldfields round

-      Ballarat used to look in the days of my youth; the houses are ramshackle

-      to the last degree, and all the fields, even when they are green with the

-      growing grain, look unfinished. But round the north-west corner of Pao

-      Ting Fu the graves predominate. There are thousands and thousands of them.

-      And on that particular day it rained, it rained, and it rained, steady

-      warm summer rain that only stopped and left the air fresh and washed about

-      six o'clock in the evening. I ordered a rickshaw&mdash;a rickshaw in Pao

-      Ting Fu is a very primitive conveyance; but it was pleasantly warm, and,

-      with James Buchanan on my knee, in the last evening dress that remained to

-      me and an embroidered Chinese jacket for an opera cloak, I set out. I had

-      started early because on account of the rain the missionaries opined there

-      might be a little difficulty with the roads. However, I did not worry much

-      because I only had two miles to go, and I had walked it often in less than

-      three-quarters of an hour. I was a little surprised when my rickshaw man

-      elected to go through the town, but, as I could not speak the language, I

-      was not in a position to remonstrate, and I knew we could not come back

-      that way as at sundown all the gates shut save the western, and that only

-      waits till the last train at nine o'clock.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was muddy, red, clayey mud in the western suburb when we started, but

-      when we got into the northern part of the town I was reminded of the

-      tribulations of Fen Chou Fu in the summer rains, for the water was up to

-      our axles, the whole place was like a lake and the people were piling up

-      dripping goods to get them out of the way of the very dirty flood. My man

-      only paused to turn his trousers up round his thighs and then went on

-      again&mdash;going through floods was apparently all in the contract&mdash;but

-      we went very slowly indeed. Dinner was not until eight and I had given

-      myself plenty of time, but I began to wonder whether we should arrive at

-      that hour. Presently I knew we shouldn't.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We went through the northern gate, and to my dismay the country in the

-      fading light seemed under water. From side to side and far beyond the road

-      was covered, and what those waters hid I trembled to think, for a road at

-      any time in China is a doubtful proposition and by no means spells

-      security. As likely as not there were deep holes in it. But apparently my

-      coolie had no misgivings. In he went at his usual snail's pace and the

-      water swirled up to the axles, up to the floor of the rickshaw, and when I

-      had gathered my feet up on the seat and we were in the middle of the sheet

-      of exceedingly dirty water the rickshaw coolie stopped and gave me to

-      understand that he had done his darnedest and could do no more. He dropped

-      the shafts and stood a little way off, wringing the water out of his

-      garments. It wasn't dangerous, of course, but it was distinctly

-      uncomfortable. I saw myself in evening dress wading through two feet of

-      dirty water to a clayey, slippery bank at the side. I waited a little

-      because the prospect did not please me, and though there were plenty of

-      houses round, there was not a soul in sight. It was getting dark too, and

-      it was after eight o'clock.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Presently a figure materialised on that clayey bank and him I beckoned

-      vehemently.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Now Pao Ting Fu had seen foreigners, not many, but still foreigners, and

-      they spell to it a little extra cash, so the gentleman on the bank tucked

-      up his garments and came wading over. He and my original friend took a

-      maddeningly long time discussing the situation, and then they proceeded to

-      drag the rickshaw sideways to the bank. There was a narrow pathway along

-      the top and they apparently decided that if they could get the conveyance

-      up there we might proceed on our journey. First I had to step out, and it

-      looked slippery enough to make me a little doubtful. As a preliminary I

-      handed James Buchanan to the stranger, because, as he had to sit on my

-      knee, I did not want him to get dirtier than necessary. Buchanan did not

-      like the stranger, but he submitted with a bad grace till I, stepping out,

-      slipped on the clay and fell flat on my back, when he promptly bit the man

-      who was holding him and, getting away, expressed his sympathy by licking

-      my face. Such a commotion as there was! My two men yelled in dismay.

-      Buchanan barked furiously, and I had some ado to get on my feet again, for

-      the path was very slippery. It was long past eight now and could I have

-      gone back I would have done so, but clearly that was impossible, so by

-      signs I engaged No. 2 man, whose wounds had to be salved&mdash;copper did

-      it&mdash;to push behind, and we resumed our way....

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Briefly it was long after ten o'clock when I arrived at the college. My

-      host had given me up as a bad job long before and, not being well, had

-      gone to bed. There was nothing for it but to rouse him up, because I

-      wanted to explain that I thought I had better have another man to take me

-      home over the still worse road that I knew ran outside the city.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He made me most heartily welcome and then explained to my dismay that the

-      men utterly declined to go any farther, declared no rickshaw could get

-      over the road to the western suburb and that I must have a cart. That was

-      all very well, but where was I to get a cart at that time of night, with

-      the city gates shut?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Mr Long explained that his servant was a wise and resourceful man and

-      would probably get one if I would come in and have dinner. So the two

-      members of the Travellers' Club sat down to an excellent dinner&mdash;a

-      Chinese cook doesn't spoil a dinner because you are two hours late&mdash;and

-      we tried to take a flash-light photograph of the entertainment. Alas! I

-      was not fortunate that day; something went wrong with the magnesium light

-      and we burnt up most things. However, we ourselves were all right, and at

-      two o'clock in the morning Mr Long's servant's uncle, or cousin, or some

-      relative, arrived with a Peking cart and a good substantial mule. I

-      confess I was a bit doubtful about the journey home because I knew the

-      state of repair, or rather disrepair, of a couple of bridges we had to

-      cross, but they were negotiated, and just as the dawn was beginning to

-      break I arrived at the mission compound and rewarded the adventurous men

-      who had had charge of me with what seemed to them much silver and to me

-      very little. I have been to many dinners in my life, but the last meeting

-      of the Travellers' Club at Pao Ting Fu remains engraved on my memory.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Yet a little longer I waited in Pao Ting Fu before starting on my Siberian

-      trip, for the start was to be made from Tientsin and the missionaries were

-      going there in house-boats. They were bound for Pei Ta Ho for their summer

-      holiday and the first stage of the journey was down the Ching River to

-      Tientsin. I thought it would be rather a pleasant way of getting over the

-      country, and it would be pleasant too to have company. I am not enamoured

-      of my own society; I can manage alone, but company certainly has great

-      charms.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So I waited, and while I waited I bought curios.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In Pao Ting Fu in the revolution there was a great deal of looting done,

-      and when order reigned again it was as much as a man's life was worth to

-      try and dispose of any of his loot. A foreigner who would take the things

-      right out of the country was a perfect godsend, and once it was known I

-      was buying, men waited for me the livelong day, and I only had to put my

-      nose outside the house to be pounced upon by a would-be seller. I have had

-      as many as nine men selling at once; they enlisted the servants, and china

-      ranged round the kitchen floor, and embroideries, brass and mirrors were

-      stowed away in the pantry. Indeed I and my followers must have been an

-      awful nuisance to the missionaries. They knew no English, but as I could

-      count a little in Chinese, when we could not get an interpreter we

-      managed; and I expect I bought an immense amount of rubbish, but never in

-      my life have I had greater satisfaction in spending money. More than ever

-      was I pleased when I unpacked in England, and I have been pleased ever

-      since.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Those sellers were persistent. They said in effect that never before had

-      they had such a chance and they were going to make the best of it. We

-      engaged house-boats for our transit; we went down to those boats, we

-      pushed off from the shore, and even then there were sellers bent on making

-      the best of their last chance. I bought there on the boat a royal blue

-      vase for two dollars and a quaint old brass mirror in a carved wooden

-      frame also for two dollars, and then the boatmen cleared off the merchants

-      and we started.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I expect on the banks of the Euphrates or the Tigris in the days before

-      the dawn of history men went backwards and forwards in boats like these we

-      embarked in on the little river just outside the south gate of Pao Ting

-      Fu. We had three boats. Dr and Mrs Lewis and their children had the

-      largest, with their servants, and we all made arrangements to mess on

-      board their boat. Miss Newton and a friend had another, with more of the

-      servants, and I, like a millionaire, had one all to myself. I had parted

-      with the master of transport at Pao Ting Fu, but Hsu Sen, one of the

-      Lewis's servants, waited upon me and made up my bed in the open part of

-      the boat under a little roof. The cabins were behind, low little places

-      like rabbit hutches, with little windows and little doors through which I

-      could get by going down on my knees. I used them only for my luggage, so

-      was enabled to offer a passage to a sewing-woman who would be exceedingly

-      useful to the missionaries. She had had her feet bound in her youth and

-      was rather crippled in consequence, and she bought her own food, as I

-      bought my water, at the wayside places as we passed. She was a foolish

-      soul, like most Chinese women, and took great interest in Buchanan,

-      offering him always a share of her own meals, which consisted apparently

-      largely of cucumbers and the tasteless Chinese melon. Now James Buchanan

-      was extremely polite, always accepting what was offered him, but he could

-      not possibly eat cucumber and melon, and when I went to bed at night I

-      often came in contact with something cold and clammy which invariably

-      turned out to be fragments of the sewing-woman's meals bestowed upon my

-      courtly little dog. I forgave him because of his good manners. There

-      really was nowhere else to hide them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They were pleasant days we spent meandering down the river. We passed by

-      little farms; we passed by villages, by fishing traps, by walled cities.

-      Hsi An Fu, with the water of the river flowing at the foot of its

-      castellated walls, was like a city of romance, and when we came upon

-      little marketplaces by the water's edge the romance deepened, for we knew

-      then how the people lived. Sometimes we paused and bought provisions;

-      sometimes we got out and strolled along the banks in the pleasant summer

-      weather. Never have I gone a more delightful or more unique voyage. And at

-      last we arrived at Tientsin and I parted from my friends, and they went on

-      to Pei Ta Ho and I to Astor House to prepare for my journey east and

-      north.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And so I left China, China where I had dwelt for sixteen months, China

-      that has been civilised so long and is a world apart, and now I sit in my

-      comfortable sitting-room in England and read what the papers say of China;

-      and the China I know and the China of the newspapers is quite a different

-      place. It is another world. China has come into the war. On our side, of

-      course: the Chinaman is far too astute to meddle with a losing cause. But,

-      after all, what do the peasants of Chihli and the cave-dwellers in the <i>yaos</i>

-      of Shansi know about a world's war? The very, very small section that

-      rules China manages these affairs, and the mass of the population are

-      exactly as they were in the days of the Cæsars, or before the first

-      dynasty in Egypt for that matter.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;China,&rdquo; said one day to me a man who knew it well commercially, just

-      before I left, &ldquo;was never in so promising a condition. All the taxes are

-      coming in and money was never so easy to get.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;There was a row over the new tax,&rdquo; said a missionary sadly, in the part I

-      know well, &ldquo;in a little village beyond there. The village attacked the

-      tax-collectors and the soldiers fell upon the villagers and thirteen men

-      were killed. Oh, I know they say it is only nominal, but what is merely

-      nominal to outsiders is their all to these poor villagers. They must pay

-      the tax and starve, or resist and be killed.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He did not say they were between the devil and the deep sea, because he

-      was a missionary, but I said it for him, and there were two cases like

-      that which came within my ken during my last month in China.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The fact of the matter is, I suppose, that outsiders can only judge

-      generally, and China is true to type, the individual has never counted

-      there and he does not count yet. What are a few thousand unpaid soldiers

-      revolting in Kalgan? What a robber desolating Kansu? A score or two of

-      villagers killed because they could not pay a tax? Absolutely nothing in

-      the general crowd. I, being a woman, and a woman from the new nations of

-      the south, cannot help feeling, and feeling strongly, the individual ought

-      to count, that no nation can be really prosperous until the individual

-      with but few exceptions is well-to-do and happy. I should like to rule out

-      the &ldquo;few exceptions,&rdquo; but that would be asking too much of this present

-      world. At least I like to think that most people have a chance of

-      happiness, but I feel in China that not a tenth of the population has

-      that.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0034" id="linkimage-0034"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0194.jpg" alt="0194 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0194.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0035" id="linkimage-0035"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">

-      <img src="images/0195.jpg" alt="0195 " width="100%" /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h5>

-      <a href="images/0195.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>

-    </h5>

-    <p>

-      China left a curious impression upon my mind. The people are courteous and

-      kindly, far more courteous than would be the same class of people in

-      England, and yet I came back from the interior with a strong feeling that

-      it is unsafe, not because of the general hostility of the people&mdash;they

-      are not hostile&mdash;but because suffering and life count for so little.

-      They themselves suffer and die by the thousand.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What! Bring a daughter-in-law to see the doctor in the middle of the

-      harvest! Impossible!&rdquo; And yet they knew she was suffering agony, that

-      seeing the doctor was her only chance of sight! But she did not get it.

-      They were harvesting and no one could be spared!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      What is the life then of a foreign barbarian more or less? These

-      courteous, kindly, dirty folk who look upon one as a menagerie would look

-      on with equal interest at one's death. They might stretch out a hand to

-      help, just as a man in England might stop another from ill-treating a

-      horse, though for one who would put himself out two would pass by with a

-      shrug of the shoulders and a feeling that it wras no business of theirs.

-      Every day of their lives the majority look upon the suffering of their

-      women and think nothing of it. The desire of the average man is to have a

-      wife who has so suffered. I do not know whether the keeping of the women

-      in a state of subserviency has reacted upon the nation at large, but I

-      should think it has hampered it beyond words. Nothing&mdash;nothing made

-      me so ardent a believer in the rights of women as my visit to China.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Women in England,&rdquo; said a man to me the other day, a foreigner, one of

-      our Allies, &ldquo;deserve the vote, but the Continental women are babies. They

-      cannot have it.&rdquo; So are the Chinese women babies, very helpless babies

-      indeed, and I feel, and feel very strongly indeed, that until China

-      educates her women, makes them an efficient half of the nation, not merely

-      man's toy and his slave, China will always lag behind in the world's

-      progress.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Already China is split up into &ldquo;spheres of influence.&rdquo; Whether she likes

-      it or not, she must realise that Russian misrule is paramount in the great

-      steppes of the north; Japan rules to a great extent in the north-east, her

-      railway from Mukden to Chang Ch'un is a model of efficiency; Britain

-      counts her influence as the most important along the valley of the Yang

-      Tze Kiang, and France has some say in Yunnan. I cannot help thinking that

-      it would be a great day for China, for the welfare of her toiling

-      millions, millions toiling without hope, if she were partitioned up among

-      the stable nations of the earth&mdash;that is to say, between Japan,

-      Britain and France. And having said so much, I refer my readers to Mr

-      Farrer for the other point of view. It is diametrically opposed to mine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER IX&mdash;KHARBIN AND VLADIVOSTOK

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t Tientsin I

-      sweltered in the Astor House, and I put it on record that I found it

-      hotter in Northern China than I did on the Guinea coast in West Africa. It

-      was probably, of course, the conditions under which I lived, for the hotel

-      had been so well arranged for the bitter winter it was impossible to get a

-      thorough draught of air through any of the rooms. James Buchanan did not

-      like it either, for in the British concessions in China dogs come under

-      suspicion of hydrophobia and have always to be on the leash, wherefore, of

-      course, I had to take the poor little chap out into the Chinese quarter

-      before he could have a proper run, and he spent a great deal more time

-      shut up in my bedroom than he or I liked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But Tientsin was a place apart, not exactly Chinese as I know China&mdash;certainly

-      not Europe; it remains in my mind as a place where Chinese art learns to

-      accommodate itself to European needs. All the nations of the world East

-      and West meet there: in the British quarter were the Sikhs and other

-      Indian nationalities, and in the French the streets were kept by Anamites

-      in quaint peaked straw hats. I loved those streets of Tientsin that made

-      me feel so safe and yet gave me a delightful feeling of adventure&mdash;adventure

-      that cost me nothing; and I always knew I could go and dine with a friend

-      or come back and exchange ideas with somebody who spoke my own tongue. But

-      Tientsin wasn't any good to me as a traveller. It has been written about

-      for the last sixty years or more. I went on.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One night Buchanan and I, without a servant&mdash;we missed the servant we

-      always had in China&mdash;wended our way down to the railway station and

-      ensconced ourselves in a first-class carriage bound for Mukden. The train

-      didn't start till some ungodly hour of the night, but as it was in the

-      station I got permission to take my place early, and with rugs and

-      cushions made myself comfortable and was sound asleep long before we

-      started. When I wakened I was well on the way to my destination.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I made friends with a British officer of Marines who, with his sister, was

-      coming back across Russia. He had been learning Japanese, and I corrected

-      another wrong impression. The British do sometimes learn a language other

-      than their own. At Mukden we dined and had a bath. I find henceforth that

-      all my stopping-places are punctuated by baths, or by the fact that a bath

-      was not procurable. A night and day in the train made one desirable at

-      Mukden, and a hotel run by capable Japanese made it a delight. The

-      Japanese, as far as I could see, run Manchuria; must be more powerful than

-      ever now Russia is out of it; Kharbin is Russian, Mukden Japanese. The

-      train from there to Chang Ch'un is Japanese, and we all travelled in a

-      large open carriage, clean and, considering how packed it was, fairly

-      airy. There was room for everybody to lie down, just room, and the

-      efficient Japanese parted me from my treasured James Buchanan and put him,

-      howling miserably, into a big box&mdash;rather a dirty box; I suppose they

-      don't think much of animals&mdash;in another compartment. I climbed over

-      much luggage and crawled under a good deal more to see that all was right

-      with him, and the Japanese guards looked upon me as a mild sort of lunatic

-      and smiled contemptuously. I don't like being looked upon with contempt by

-      Orientals, so I was a little ruffled when I came back to my own seat. Then

-      I was amused.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Naturally among such a crowd I made no attempt to undress for the night,

-      merely contenting myself with taking off my boots. But the man next me, a

-      Japanese naval officer, with whom I conversed in French, had quite

-      different views. My French was rather bad and so was his in a different

-      way, so we did not get on very fast. I fear I left him with the impression

-      that I was an Austrian, for he never seemed to have heard of Australia.

-      However, we showed each other our good will. Then he proceeded to undress.

-      Never have I seen the process more nattily accomplished. How he slipped

-      out of blue cloth and gold lace into a kimono I'm sure I don't know,

-      though he did it under my very eyes, and then, with praiseworthy

-      forethought, he took the links and studs out of his shirt and put them

-      into a clean one ready for the morrow, stowed them both away in his little

-      trunk, settled himself down on his couch and gave himself up to a

-      cigarette and conversation. I smoked too&mdash;one of his cigarettes&mdash;and

-      we both went to sleep amicably, and with the morning we arrived at Chang

-      Ch'un, and poor little Buchanan made the welkin ring when he saw me and

-      found himself caged in a barred box. However that was soon settled, and he

-      told me how infinitely preferable from a dog's point of view are the free

-      and easy trains of Russia and China to the well-managed ones of Japan.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      These towns on the great railway are weird little places, merely scattered

-      houses and wide roads leading out into the great plain, and the railway

-      comes out of the distance and goes away into the distance. And the people

-      who inhabit them seem to be a conglomeration of nations, perhaps the

-      residuum of all the nations. Here the marine officer and his sister and I

-      fell into the hands of a strange-looking individual who might have been a

-      cross between a Russian Pole and a Chinaman, with a dash of Korean thrown

-      in, and he undertook to take us to a better hotel than that

-      usually-frequented by visitors to Chang Ch'un. I confess I wonder what

-      sort of people do visit Chang Ch'un, not the British tourist as a rule,

-      and if the principal hotel is worse than the ramshackle place where we had

-      breakfast, it must be bad. Still it was pleasant in the brilliant warm

-      sunshine, even though it was lucky we had bathed the night before at

-      Mukden, for the best they could do here was to show us into the most

-      primitive of bedrooms, the very first effort in the way of a bedroom, I

-      should think, after people had given up <i>k'angs</i>, and there I met a

-      very small portion of water in a very small basin alongside an exceedingly

-      frowsy bed and made an effort to wash away the stains of a night's travel.

-      Now such a beginning to the day would effectually disgust me; then, fresh

-      from the discomforts of Chinese travel, I found it all in the day's work.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I found too that I had made a mistake and not brought enough money with

-      me. Before I had paid for Buchanan's ticket I had parted with every penny

-      I possessed and could not possibly get any more till I arrived at the Hong

-      Kong and Shanghai Bank at Kharbin. I am rather given to a mistake of that

-      sort; I always feel my money is so much safer in the bank's charge than in

-      mine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We went on through fertile Manchuria and I saw the rich fields that coming

-      out I had passed over at night. This train was Russian, and presently

-      there came along a soldier, a forerunner of an officer inspecting

-      passengers and carriages. Promptly his eye fell on Buchanan, who was

-      taking an intelligent interest in the scenery&mdash;he always insisted on

-      looking out of the window&mdash;and I, seeing he, the soldier, was

-      troubled, tried to tell him my intentions were good and I would pay at

-      Kharbin; but I don't think I made myself understood, for he looked wildly

-      round the compartment, seized the little dog, pushed him in a corner and

-      threw a cushion over him. Both Buchanan and I were so surprised we kept

-      quite still, and the Russian officer looked in, saw a solitary woman

-      holding out her ticket and passed on, and not till he was well out of the

-      way did James Buchanan, who was a jewel, poke up his pretty little head

-      and make a few remarks upon the enormity of smuggling little dogs without

-      paying their fares, which was evidently what I was doing.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We arrived at Kharbin about nine o'clock at night, and as I stepped out on

-      to a platform, where all the nations of the earth, in dirty clothes,

-      seemed yelling in chorus, a man came along and spoke to me in English. The

-      soldier who had aided and abetted in the smuggling of Buchanan was

-      standing beside me, evidently expecting some little remembrance, and I was

-      meditating borrowing from the officer of Marines, though, as they were

-      going on and I was not, I did not much like it. And the voice in English

-      asked did I want a hotel. I did, of course. The man said he was the

-      courier of the Grand Hotel, but he had a little place of his own which was

-      much better and he could make me very comfortable. Then I explained I

-      could not get any money till the bank opened next day and he spread out

-      his hands as a Chinaman might have done. &ldquo;No matter, no matter,&rdquo; he would

-      pay, his purse was mine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Would I go to his house?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Could I do anything else under the circumstances? And I promptly took him

-      at his word and asked for a rouble&mdash;Kharbin is China, but the rouble

-      was the current coin&mdash;and paid off the soldier for his services. I

-      bade farewell to my friends and in a ramshackle droshky went away through

-      the streets of Kharbin, and we drove so far I wondered if I had done

-      wisely. I had, as it turned out.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I heard afterwards that even in those days anything might have

-      happened in Kharbin, where the population consists of Japanese and Chinese

-      and Russians and an evil combination of all three, to say nothing of a

-      sprinkling of rascals from all the nations of the earth.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;There is not,&rdquo; said a man who knew it well, &ldquo;a decent Chinaman in the

-      whole place.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      In fact to all intents and purposes it is Russian. There were Russian

-      students all in uniform in the streets, and bearded, belted drivers drove

-      the droshkies with their extra horse in a trace beside the shafts, just as

-      they did in Russia. Anyhow it seems to me the sins of Kharbin would be the

-      vigorous primal sins of Russia, not the decadent sins of old-world China.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Kharbin when I was there in 1914 had 60,000 inhabitants and 25,000 Russian

-      soldiers guarding the railway in the district. The Russian police forbade

-      me to take photographs, and you might take your choice: Chinese <i>hung hu

-      tzes</i> or Russian brigands would rob and slay you on your very doorstep

-      in the heart of the town. At least they would in 1914, and things are

-      probably worse now. All the signs are in Russian and, after the Chinese,

-      looked to me at first as if I should be able to understand them, but

-      closer inspection convinced me that the letters, though I knew their

-      shape, had been out all night and were coming home in not quite the

-      condition we would wish them to be. There is a Chinese town without a wall

-      a little way over the plain&mdash;like all other Chinese towns, a place of

-      dirt and smells&mdash;and there is a great river, the Sungari, a tributary

-      of the Amur, on which I first met the magnificent river steamers of these

-      parts. Badly I wanted to photograph them, but the Russian police said &ldquo;No,

-      no,&rdquo; I would have to get a permit from the colonel in command before that

-      could be allowed, and the colonel in command was away and was not expected

-      back till the middle of next week, by which time I expected to be in

-      Vladivostok, if not in Kharbarosvk, for Kharbin was hardly inviting as a

-      place of sojourn for a traveller. Mr Poland, as he called himself, did his

-      best for me. He gave me a fairly large room with a bed in it, a chair, a

-      table and a broken-down wardrobe that would not open. He had the family

-      washing cleared out of the bath, so that I bathed amidst the fluttering

-      damp garments of his numerous progeny, but still there was a bath and a

-      bath heater that with a certain expenditure of wood could be made to

-      produce hot water; and if it was rather a terrifying machine to be locked

-      up with at close quarters, still it did aid me to arrive at a certain

-      degree of cleanliness, and I had been long enough in China not to be

-      carping.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But it is dull eating in your bedroom, and I knew I had not done wisely,

-      for even if the principal hotel had been uncomfortable&mdash;I am not

-      saying it was, because I never went there&mdash;it would have been more

-      amusing to watch other folks than to be alone.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The day after I arrived I called upon Mr Sly, the British consul, and I

-      was amused to hear the very dubious sounds that came from his room when I

-      was announced.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I cleared the air by saying hastily: &ldquo;I'm not a distressed British subject

-      and I don't want any money,&rdquo; though I'm bound to say he looked kind enough

-      to provide me with the wherewithal had I wanted it. Then he shook his head

-      and expressed his disapproval of my method of arrival.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The last man who fell into Kharbin like that,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I hunted for a

-      week, and two days later I attended his funeral,&rdquo; so badly had he been

-      man-handled. But that man, it seems, had plenty of money; it was wisdom he

-      lacked. My trouble was the other way, certainly as far as money was

-      concerned. It would never have been worth anyone's while to harm me for

-      the sake of my possessions. I had fallen into the hands of a Polish Jew

-      named Polonetzky, though he called himself Poland to me, feeling, I

-      suppose, my English tongue was not equal to the more complicated word, and

-      he dwelt in the Dome Stratkorskaya&mdash;remember Kharbin is China&mdash;and

-      I promised if he dealt well by me that I would recommend his

-      boarding-house to all my friends bound for Kharbin. He did deal well by

-      me. So frightened was he about me that he would not let me out of his

-      sight, or if he were not in attendance his wife or his brother was turned

-      on to look after me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I am very good friends,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;with Mr Sly at present. I do not want

-      anything to happen.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Mr Sly, we found, knew one of my brothers and he very kindly asked me to

-      dinner. That introduced me to the élite of the place, and after dinner&mdash;Chinese

-      cooks are still excellent on the borders&mdash;we drove in his private

-      carriage and ended the evening in the public gardens. The coachmen here

-      are quite gorgeous affairs; no matter what their nondescript nationality&mdash;they

-      are generally Russians, I think, though I have seen Chinamen, Tartars,

-      driving like Jehu the son of Nimshi&mdash;they wear for full livery grey

-      beaver hats with curly brims like Johnny Walker or the Corinthians in the

-      days of the Regent. It took my breath away when I found myself bowling

-      along behind two of these curly brimmed hats that I thought had passed

-      away in the days of my grandfather.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The gardens at Kharbin are a great institution. There in the summer's

-      evening the paths were all lined with lamps; there were open-air

-      restaurants; there were bands and fluttering flags; there were the most

-      excellent ices and insidious drinks of all descriptions, and there were

-      crowds of gaily dressed people&mdash;Monte Carlo in the heart of Central

-      Asia! Kharbin in the summer is hot, very hot, and Kharbin in the winter is

-      bitter cold. It is all ice and snow and has a temperature that ranges

-      somewhere down to 40° Fahrenheit below zero, and this though the sun

-      shines brilliantly. It is insidious cold that sneaks on you and takes you

-      unawares, not like the bleak raw cold of England that makes the very most

-      of itself. They told me a tale of a girl who had gone skating and when she

-      came off the ice found that her feet were frozen, though she was unaware

-      of her danger and had thought them all right. Dogs are often frozen in the

-      streets and Chinamen too, for the Chinaman has a way of going to sleep in

-      odd places, and many a one has slept his last sleep in the winter streets

-      of Kharbin&mdash;the wide straggling streets with houses and gardens and

-      vacant spaces just like the towns of Australia. A frontier town it is in

-      effect. We have got beyond the teeming population of China.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then I prepared to go first east to Vladivostok and then north to

-      Siberia, and I asked advice of both the British consul and my

-      self-appointed courier, Mr Poland.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Certainly he took care of me, and the day before I started east he handed

-      me over to his wife and suggested she should take me to the market and buy

-      necessaries for my journey. It was only a little over twenty-four hours so

-      it did not seem to me a matter of much consequence, but I felt it would be

-      interesting to walk through the market. It was.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This class of market, I find, is very much alike all over the world

-      because they sell the necessaries of life to the people and it is only

-      varied by the difference of the local products. Kharbin market was a

-      series of great sheds, and though most of the stalls were kept by

-      Chinamen, it differed from a market in a Chinese town in the fact that

-      huge quantities of butter and cheese and cream were for sale. Your true

-      Chinaman is shocked at the European taste for milk and butter and cream.

-      He thinks it loathsome, and many a man is unable to sit at table and watch

-      people eat these delicacies. Just as, of course, he is shocked at the

-      taste that would put before a diner a huge joint of beef or mutton. These

-      things Chinese refinement disguises. I suspect the proletariat with whom I

-      came in contact in Shansi would gladly eat anything, but I speak of the

-      refined Chinaman. Here in this market, whether he was refined or not, he

-      had got over these fancies and there was much butter and delicious soured

-      cream for sale. My Polish Jewess and I laboured under the usual difficulty

-      of language, but she made me understand I had better buy a basket for my

-      provisions, a plate, a knife, a fork&mdash;I had left these things behind

-      in China, not thinking I should want them&mdash;a tumbler and a couple of

-      kettles. No self-respecting person, according to her, would dream of

-      travelling in Siberia without at least a couple of kettles. I laid in two

-      of blue enamel ware and I am bound to say I blessed her forethought many

-      and many a time.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then we proceeded to buy provisions, and here I lost my way. She engaged a

-      stray Chinaman, at least I think he was a Chinaman, with a dash of the

-      gorilla in him, to carry the goods, and I thought she was provisioning her

-      family against a siege or that perhaps there was only one market a month

-      in Kharbin. Anyhow I did not feel called upon to interfere. It didn't seem

-      any concern of mine and she had a large little family. We bought bread in

-      large quantities, ten cucumbers, two pounds of butter, two pounds of cream&mdash;for

-      these we bought earthenware jars&mdash;two dozen bananas, ten eggs and two

-      pounds of tea. And then I discovered these were the provisions for my

-      journey to Vladivostok, twenty-seven hours away! I never quite knew why I

-      bought provisions at all, for the train stopped at stations where there

-      were restaurants even though there was no restaurant car attached to it.

-      Mr Sly warned me to travel first class and I had had no thought of doing

-      aught else, for travelling is very cheap and very good in Russia, but Mr

-      Poland thought differently.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I arrange,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I arrange, and you see if you are not comfortable.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I am bound to say I was, very comfortable, for Buchanan and I had a very

-      nice second-class carriage all to ourselves. At every station a conductor

-      appeared to know if I wanted boiling water, and we had any amount of good

-      things to eat, for the ten eggs had been hard boiled by Mrs &ldquo;Poland,&rdquo; and

-      the bread and butter and cream and cucumbers and bananas were as good as

-      ever I have tasted. I also had two pounds of loaf sugar, German beet, I

-      think, and some lemons.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And so we went east through the wooded hills of Manchuria. They were

-      covered with lush grass restfully green, and there were flowers, purple

-      and white and yellow and red, lifting their starry faces to the cloudy

-      sky, and a soft damp air blew in through the open window. Such a change it

-      was after China, with its hard blue skies, brilliant sunshine and dry,

-      invigorating air. But the Manchus were industrious as the Chinese

-      themselves, and where there were fields the crops were tended as carefully

-      as those in China proper, only in between were the pasture-lands and the

-      flowers that were a delight to me, who had not seen a flower save those in

-      pots since I came to China.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I spread out my rugs and cushions and, taking off my clothes and getting

-      into a kimono&mdash;also bought in the Kharbin market; a man's kimono as

-      the women's are too narrow&mdash;I slept peacefully, and in the morning I

-      found we had climbed to the top of the ridge, the watershed, the pleasant

-      rain was falling softly, all around was the riotous green, and peasants,

-      Russian and Chinese, came selling sweet red raspberries in little baskets

-      of green twigs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And the flowers, the flowers of Siberia! After all I had heard about them,

-      they were still something more beautiful than I could have hoped for; and

-      then the rain passed, the life-giving rain, the rain that smoothed away

-      all harshness and gave such a charm and a softness to the scenery. And it

-      was vast. China was so crowded I never had a sense of vastness there; but

-      this was like Australia, great stretches of land under the sky, green,

-      rich lush green, and away in the distance was a dim line of blue hills.

-      Then would come a little corrugated-iron-roofed town sprawled out over the

-      mighty plain, a pathway to it across the surrounding green, and then the

-      sun came out and the clouds threw great shadows and there was room to see

-      the outline of their shapes on the green grass.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There were Chinese still on the stations, but they were becoming more and

-      more Russianised. They still wore queues, but they had belted Russian

-      blouses and top-boots, and they mixed on friendly terms with

-      flaxen-haired, blue-eyed Russians similarly attired. And the evening

-      shadows gathered again and in the new world we steamed into Vladivostok.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Russians I came across did not appreciate fresh air. The porter of a

-      hotel captured me and Buchanan, and when we arrived on a hot July night I

-      was shown into a bedroom with double windows hermetically sealed and the

-      cracks stopped up with cotton wool!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I protested vehemently and the hotel porter looked at me in astonishment.

-      Tear down those carefully stopped-up cracks! Perish the thought. However,

-      I persuaded him down that cotton wool must come, and he pulled it down

-      regretfully. I called at the British consulate next day and asked them to

-      recommend me to the best hotel, but they told me I was already there and

-      could not better myself, so I gave myself up to exploring the town in the

-      Far East where now the Czech Slovaks have established themselves.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It is a beautifully situated town set in the hills alongside a narrow arm

-      of the sea, rather a grey sea with a grey sky overhead, and the hills

-      around were covered with the luxuriant green of midsummer, midsummer in a

-      land where it is winter almost to June. The principal buildings in

-      Vladivostok are rather fine, but they are all along the shore, and once

-      you go back you come into the hills where the wood-paved streets very

-      often are mere flights of steps. It is because of that sheltered arm of

-      the sea that here is a town at all.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Along the shore are all manner of craft. The British fleet had come on a

-      visit, and grey and grim the ships lay there on the grey sea, like a

-      Turner picture, with, for a dash of colour, the Union Jacks. The Russian

-      fleet was there too, welcoming their guests, and I took a boat manned by a

-      native of the country, Mongolian evidently, with, of course, an unknown

-      tongue, but whether he was Gold or Gilyak I know not. He was a good

-      boatman, for a nasty little sea got up and James Buchanan told me several

-      times he did not like the new turn our voyaging had taken, and then, poor

-      little dog, he was violently sick. I know the torments of sea-sickness are

-      not lightly to be borne, so after sailing round the fleets I went ashore

-      and studied the shipping from the firm land.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was glad then that Mr Sly at Kharbin had insisted that I should see the

-      Russian port. The whole picture was framed in green, soft tender green,

-      edged with grey mist, and all the old forgotten ships of wood, the ships

-      that perhaps were sailed by my grandfather in the old East India Company,

-      seemed to have found a resting-place here. They were drawn up against the

-      shore or they were going down the bay with all their sails set, and the

-      sunlight breaking through the clouds touched the white sails and made them

-      mountains of snow. There was shipbuilding going on too, naturally&mdash;for

-      are there not great stores of timber in the forests behind?&mdash;and

-      there were ships unloading all manner of things. Ships brought vegetables

-      and fruit; ships brought meat; there were fishing-boats, hundreds of them

-      close against each other along the shore, and on all the small ships, at

-      the mast-heads, were little fluttering white butterflies of flags. What

-      they were there for I do not know, or what they denoted. Oh, the general

-      who commands the Czech Slovaks has a splendid base. I wish him all

-      success. And here were the sealing-ships, the ships that presently would

-      go up to the rookeries to bring away the pelts.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      One of my brothers was once navigating lieutenant on the British ship that

-      guarded the rookeries &ldquo;north of 53°,&rdquo; and I remembered, as Buchanan and I

-      walked along the shore, the tales he had told me of life in these parts.

-      His particular ship had acquired two sheep, rather an acquisition for men

-      who had lived long off the Chinese coast, and had a surfeit of chickens;

-      so while they were eating one, thinking to save the other a long sea

-      voyage they landed him on an island, giving him in charge of the man, an

-      Aleut Indian, my brother called him, who ruled the little place. Coming

-      back they were reduced to salt and tinned food, but they cheered

-      themselves with thoughts of the mutton chops that should regale them when

-      they met again their sheep. Alas for those sailor-men! They found the

-      Indian, but the sheep was not forthcoming.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      His whilom guardian was most polite. He gave them to understand he was

-      deeply grieved, but unfortunately he had been obliged to slay the sheep as

-      he was killing the fowls!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The ward-room mess realised all too late that mutton was appreciated in

-      other places than on board his Majesty's ships.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I thought all the races of the earth met in Kharbin, but I don't know that

-      this port does not run it very close. There were Japanese, Chinese,

-      Russians, Koreans in horsehair hats and white garments; there were the

-      aboriginal natives of the country and there were numberless Germans. And

-      then, in July, 1914, these people, I think, had no thought of the World's

-      War.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And here I came across a new way of carrying, for all the porters had

-      chairs strapped upon their backs and the load, whatever it was, was placed

-      upon the chair. Of all ways I have seen, that way strikes me as being the

-      best, for the weight is most evenly distributed. Most of the porters, I

-      believe, were Koreans, though they did not wear white; nor did they wear a

-      hat of any description; their long black, hair was twisted up like a

-      woman's, but they were vigorous and stalwart. We left weakness behind us

-      in China. Here the people looked as if they were meat-fed, and though they

-      might be dirty&mdash;they generally were&mdash;they all looked as if they

-      had enough.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Always the principal streets were thronged with people. At night the town

-      all lighted up is like a crescent of sparkling diamonds flung against the

-      hill-sides, and when I went to the railway station to take train for

-      Kharbarosvk, thirty hours away, at the junction of the Ussuri and the

-      Amur, that large and spacious building was a seething mass of people of

-      apparently all classes and all nationalities, and they were giving voice

-      to their feelings at the top of their lungs. Everybody, I should think,

-      had a grievance and was makin the most of it. I had not my capable Mr

-      Poland to arrange for me, so I went first class&mdash;the exact fare I

-      have forgotten, but it was ridiculously low&mdash;and Buchanan and I had a

-      compartment all to ourselves. Indeed I believe we were the only

-      first-class passengers. I had my basket and my kettles and I had laid in

-      store of provisions, and we went away back west for a couple of hours, and

-      then north into the spacious green country where there was room and more

-      than room for everybody.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER X&mdash;ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREAT RIVERS

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>ll the afternoon

-      we went back on our tracks along the main line, the sea on one side and

-      the green country, riotous, lush, luxuriant, on the other, till at last we

-      reached the head of the gulf and took our last look at the Northern Sea;

-      grey like a silver shield it spread before us, and right down to the very

-      water's edge came the vivid green. And then we turned inland, and

-      presently we left the main line and went north. Above was the grey sky,

-      and the air was soft and cool and delicious. I had had too much

-      stimulation and I welcomed, as I had done the rains after the summer in my

-      youth, the soft freshness of the Siberian summer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There were soldiers everywhere, tall, strapping, virile Russians; there

-      were peasants in belted, blouses, with collars all of needlework; and

-      there were Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and the natives of the country, men

-      with a strong Mongolian cast of countenance. The country itself was

-      strangely empty after teeming China, but these all travelled by train or

-      were to be found on the railway stations and at the fishing stations that

-      we passed, but apparently I was the only bloated aristocrat who travelled

-      first class. In normal times this made travelling fairly easy in Russia,

-      for it was very cheap and you could generally get a carriage to yourself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Oh! but it was lovely; the greenness of the country was a rest to eyes

-      wearied with the dust and dirt of China. And there were trees&mdash;not

-      trees denuded of all but enough timber to make a bare livelihood possible,

-      but trees growing luxuriantly in abundant leaf after their own free will,

-      oaks and firs and white-stemmed, graceful birches bending daintily before

-      the soft breeze. At the stations the natives, exactly like Chinamen, dirty

-      and in rags, brought strawberries for sale; and there were always flowers&mdash;purple

-      vetches and gorgeous red poppies, tall foxgloves and blue spikes of

-      larkspur. The very antithesis of China it was, for this was waste land and

-      undeveloped. The very engines were run with wood, and there were stacks of

-      wood by the wayside waiting to be burnt. I was sorry&mdash;I could not but

-      be sorry. I have seen my own people cut down the great forests of Western

-      Victoria, and here were people doing the same, with exactly the same

-      wanton extravagance, and in this country, with its seven months of bitter

-      winter, in all probability the trees take three times as long to come to

-      maturity. But it is virgin land, this glorious fertile country, and was

-      practically uninhabited till the Russian Government planted here and there

-      bands of Cossacks who, they say, made no endeavour to develop the land.

-      The Koreans and the Japanese and the Chinese came creeping in, but the

-      Russians made an effort to keep them out. But still the population is

-      scanty. Always, though it was before the war, there were soldiers&mdash;soldiers

-      singly, soldiers in pairs, soldiers in little bands; a horseman appeared

-      on a lonely road, he was a soldier; a man came along driving a cart, he

-      was a soldier; but the people we saw were few, for the rigours of this

-      lovely land in the winter are terrible, and this was the dreaded land

-      where Russia sent her exiles a long, long way from home.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Farther we went into the hills; a cuckoo called in the cool and dewy

-      morning; there were lonely little cottages with wooden roofs and log

-      walls; there were flowering creepers round the windows, and once I saw a

-      woman's wistful face peeping out at the passing train, the new train that

-      at last was bringing her nearer the old home and that yet seemed to

-      emphasise the distance. We went along by a river, the Ussuri, that wound

-      its way among the wooded green hills and by still pools of water that

-      reflected in their depths the blue sky, soft with snow-white clouds. A

-      glorious land this land of exile! At the next station we stopped at the

-      people were seated at a table having a meal under the shade of the trees.

-      Then there was a lonely cross of new wood; someone had been laid in his

-      long last home in the wilderness and would never go back to Holy Russia

-      again; and again I thought of the woman's wistful face that peered out of

-      the flower-bordered window.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      This is a new line. Formerly the way to Kharbarosvk was down the Amur

-      river from the west, and that, I suppose, is why all this country of the

-      Amur Province south and east of the river is so lonely.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As we neared Kharbarosvk came signs of settlement, the signs of settlement

-      I had been accustomed to in Australia. There were tree stumps, more and

-      more, and anything more desolate than a forest of newly cut tree stumps I

-      don't know. It always spells to me ruthless destruction. I am sure it did

-      here, for they cut down recklessly, sweeping all before them. It seemed to

-      cry out, as all newly settled land that ever I have seen, and I have seen

-      a good deal, the distaste of the people who here mean to make their homes.

-      These are not our trees, they say; they are not beautiful like the trees

-      of our own old home; let us cut them down, there are plenty; by and by

-      when we have time, when we are settled, we will plant trees that really

-      are worth growing. We shall not see them, of course, our children will

-      benefit little; but they will be nice for our grandchildren, if we hold on

-      so long. But no one believes they will stay so long; they hope to make

-      money and go back. Meanwhile they want the timber, but they neglect to

-      plant fresh trees.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They wanted the timber to build Kharbarosvk. This is a town of the

-      outposts, a frontier town; there are no towns like it in the British

-      Isles, where they value their land and build towns compactly, but I have

-      seen its counterpart many a time in Australia, and I know there must be

-      its like in America and Canada. It straggled all along the river bank, and

-      its wide streets, streets paved, or rather floored, here and there with

-      planks of wood, were sparsely planted with houses. In one respect

-      Australian towns of the frontier are much wiser. When there is a train

-      they do build their stations with some regard for the comfort and

-      convenience of the inhabitants. In Russia wherever I have been the railway

-      station is a long distance, sometimes half-an-hour's drive, from the town

-      it serves. I suppose it is one of the evils of the last bad regime and

-      that in the future, the future which is for the people, it will be

-      remedied, but it is difficult to see what purpose it serves. I had to get

-      a droshky to the hotel. We drove first along a country road, then through

-      the wide grass-grown streets of the town, and I arrived at the principal

-      hotel, kept by a German on Russian lines, for the restaurant was perfectly

-      distinct from the living-rooms. I put it on record it was an excellent

-      restaurant; I remember that cold soup&mdash;the day was hot&mdash;and that

-      most fragrant coffee still.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      From the windows of my bedroom I saw another of the world's great rivers.

-      I looked away over a wide expanse of water sparkling in the sunshine: it

-      was the junction of the Ussuri and the Amur, and it was like a great lake

-      or the sea. It was very, very still, clear as glass, and the blue sky and

-      white clouds were reflected in it, and there were green islands and low

-      green banks. All was colour, but soft colour without outlines, like a

-      Turner picture.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Amur is hard frozen for about five months of the year and for about

-      two more is neither good solid ice nor navigable water. It is made by the

-      joining of the Shilka and the Aigun in about lat. 53° N. 121° E., and,

-      counting in the Shilka, must be nearly three thousand miles in length, and

-      close on two thousand miles have I now travelled. I don't know the Amur,

-      of course, but at least I may claim to have been introduced to it, and

-      that, I think, is more than the majority of Englishmen may do. And oh, it

-      is a mighty river! At Kharbarosvk, over a thousand versts&mdash;about six

-      hundred and forty miles&mdash;from the sea, it is at least a mile and a

-      third wide, and towards the mouth, what with backwaters and swamps, it

-      takes up sometimes about forty miles of country, while the main channel is

-      often nearly three miles wide. It rises in the hills of Trans-Baikal&mdash;the

-      Yablonoi Mountains we used to call them when I was at school. Really I

-      think it is the watershed that runs up East Central Siberia and turns the

-      waters to the shallow Sea of Okhotsk; and it cuts its way through wooded

-      hills among rich land hardly as yet touched by agriculture, beautiful,

-      lovely hills they are, steep and wooded. It climbs down into the flat

-      country and then again, just before it reaches the sea, it is in the

-      hills, colder hills this time, though the Amur falls into the sea on much

-      the same parallel of latitude as that which sees it rise, only it seems to

-      me that the farther you get east the colder and more extreme is the

-      climate. For Nikolayeusk at the mouth is in the same latitude as London,

-      but as a port it is closed for seven months of the year. True, the winter

-      in Siberia is lovely, bright, clear cold, a hard, bright clearness, but

-      the thermometer is often down below -40°

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Fahrenheit, and when that happens life is difficult for both man and

-      beast. No wonder it is an empty river. The wonder to me is that there

-      should be so much life as there is. For in those five months that it is

-      open fine large steamers run from Nikolayeusk by Ivharbarosvk to

-      Blagovesehensk, and smaller ones, but still rather fine, to Stretensk,

-      where river navigation, for steamers of any size at any rate, ceases.

-      There are the two months, April-May, September-October, when the river

-      cannot be used at all, and there are the winter months when it may be, and

-      is to a certain extent, used as a road, but with the thermometer down far

-      below zero no one is particularly keen on travelling. It has its

-      disadvantages. So most of the travelling is done in the summer months and

-      in 1914 the steamers were crowded. Now, I suppose, they are fighting

-      there. It is a country well worth fighting for.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a curious contrast, the lonely empty river and the packed steamer.

-      It was an event when we passed another; two made a crowd; and very, very

-      seldom did we pass more than two in a day. But it was delightful moving

-      along, the great crowded steamer but a puny thing on the wide river, the

-      waters still and clear, reflecting the blue sky and the soft white clouds

-      and the low banks far, far away. When there were hills they were generally

-      closer, as if the river had had more trouble in cutting a passage and

-      therefore had not had time to spread itself as it did in the plain

-      country. The hills were densely wooded, mostly with dark firs, with an

-      occasional deciduous tree showing up brightly among the dark foliage, and

-      about Blagovesehensk there is a beautiful oak known as the velvet oak, the

-      wood of which is much sought for making furniture. However dense the

-      forest, every here and there would be a wide swath of green bare of trees&mdash;a

-      fire brake; for these forests in the summer burn fiercely, and coming back

-      I saw the valleys thick with the curling blue wood smoke, smelt the

-      aromatic smell of the burning fir woods, and at night saw the hills

-      outlined in flames. It was a gorgeous sight, but it is desperately

-      destructive for the country, especially a country where the wood grows so

-      slowly. But at first there were no fires, and what struck me was the

-      vastness and the loneliness of the mighty river. I had the same feeling on

-      the Congo in the tropics, a great and lonely river with empty banks, but

-      that was for a distance under two hundred miles. Here in the north the

-      great lonely river went wandering on for ten times as far, and still the

-      feeling when one stood apart from the steamer was of loneliness and

-      grandeur. Man was such a small thing here. At night a little wind sighed

-      over the waters or swept down between the hills; round the bows the water

-      rose white; there was a waste of tossing water all round, under a lowering

-      sky, and the far-away banks were lost in the gloom. A light would appear,

-      perhaps two lights shining out of the darkness, but they only emphasised

-      the loneliness. A wonderful river!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The navigation of the river is a profession in itself. There is a school

-      for the navigators at Blagoveschensk where they are properly trained. All

-      along we came across the red beacons that mark the way, while beside them

-      in the daytime we could see the cabins of the lonely men who tended them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Truly a voyage down the Amur in summer is not to be easily forgotten, and

-      yet, sitting here writing about it in my garden in Kent, I sometimes

-      wonder did I dream it all, the vastness and the loneliness and the

-      grandeur that is so very different from the orchard land wherein is set my

-      home. You do not see orchards on the Amur, the climate is too rigorous,

-      and I doubt if they grow much beyond berries, a blue berry in large

-      quantities, raspberries, and coming back we bought cucumbers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Oh, but it was lovely on that river. Dearly should I like to share its

-      delights with a companion who could discuss it with me, but somehow it

-      seems to be my lot to travel alone.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Not, of course, that I was really alone. Though the steamers were few,

-      perhaps because they were few, they were crowded. There were two companies

-      on the river, the Sormovo or quick-sailing company, and the Amur Company;

-      and I hereby put it on record that the Amur Company is much the best. The

-      <i>John Cockerill</i>, named after some long-dead English engineer who was

-      once on the Amur, is one of the best and most comfortable.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Kharbarosvk, finding the steamer did not leave till the evening of the

-      next day, I had naturally gone to a hotel. It seemed the obvious thing to

-      do. But I was wrong. The great Russian steamship companies, with a

-      laudable desire to keep passengers and make them comfortable, always allow

-      a would-be traveller to spend at least two days on board in the ports,

-      paying, of course, for his food. And I, who had only come about thirty-six

-      hours too soon, had actually put up at a hotel, with the <i>John Cockerill</i>

-      lying at the wharf. The Russo-Asiatic Bank, as represented by a woman

-      clerk, the only one there who could speak English, was shocked at my

-      extravagance and said so. These women clerks were a little surprise for

-      me, for in 1914 I was not accustomed to seeing women in banks, but here in

-      Eastern Siberia&mdash;in Vladivostok, Kharbarosvk, and all the towns of

-      the Amur&mdash;they were as usual as the men.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The <i>John Cockerill</i> surprised me as much as I surprised the bank

-      clerk. To begin with, I didn't realise it was the <i>John Cockerill</i>,

-      for I could not read the Russian letters, and at first I did not recognise

-      the name as pronounced by the Russians. She was a very gorgeous,

-      comfortable ship, with a dining saloon and a lounge gorgeous in green

-      velvet. And yet she was not a post steamer, but spent most of her time

-      drawing barges laden with cargo, and stopped to discharge and take in at

-      all manner of lonely little ports on the great river. She was a big

-      steamer, divided into four classes, and was packed with passengers:

-      Russians in the first, second and third class, with an occasional German

-      or Japanese, and in the fourth an extraordinary medley of poorer Russians,

-      Chinese and Gilyaks and Golds, the aboriginals of the country, men with a

-      Mongolian east of countenance, long coarse blaek hair, very often beards,

-      and dirty&mdash;the ordinary poor Chinaman is clean and tidy beside them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the first class was luxurious. We had electric light and hot and cold

-      water. The cabins were not to hold more than two, and you brought your own

-      bedding. I dare say it could have been hired on the steamer, but the

-      difficulty of language always stood in my way, and once away from the

-      seaboard in North-Eastern Asia the only other European language beside

-      Russian that is likely to be understood is German, and I have no German. I

-      was lucky enough on the <i>John Cockerill</i> to find the wife of a

-      Russian colonel who spoke a little English. She, with her husband, was

-      taking a summer holiday by journeying up to Nikolayeusk, and she very

-      kindly took Buchanan and me under her wing and interpreted for us. It was

-      very nice for me, and the only thing I had to complain of on that steamer

-      was the way in which the night watch promenading the deek shut my window

-      and slammed to the shutters. They did it every night, with a care for my

-      welfare I could have done without. In a river steamer the cabins are all

-      in the centre with the deck round, and the watch evidently could not

-      understand how any woman could really desire to sleep under an open

-      window. I used to get up early in the morning and walk round the decks,

-      and I found that first and second class invariably shut their windows

-      tight, though the nights were always just pleasantly cool, and

-      consequently those passages between the cabins smelt like a menagerie, and

-      an ill-kept menagerie at that. They say Russians age early and invariably

-      they are of a pallid complexion. I do not wonder, now that I have seen

-      their dread of fresh air. Again and again I was told: &ldquo;Draughts are not

-      good!&rdquo; Draughts! I'd rather sleep in a hurricane than in the hermetically

-      sealed boxes in which those passengers stowed themselves on board the

-      river steamers. On the <i>John Cockerill</i> the windows of the dining

-      saloon and the lounge did open, but on the steamer on which I went up the

-      river, the <i>Kanovina</i>, one of the &ldquo;Sormovo&rdquo; Company, and the mail

-      steamer, there was only one saloon in the first class. We had our meals

-      and we lived there. It was a fine large room placed for'ard in the ship's

-      bows, with beautiful large windows of glass through which we could see

-      excellently the scenery; but those windows were fast; they would not open;

-      they were not made to open. The atmosphere was always thick when I went in

-      for breakfast in the morning, and I used to make desperate efforts to get

-      the little windows that ran round the top opened. I could not do it

-      myself, as you had to get on the roof of the saloon, the deck where the

-      look-out stood, and anyhow they were only little things, a foot high by

-      two feet broad. But such an innovation was evidently regarded as

-      dangerous. Besides the fact that draughts were bad, I have been assured

-      that perhaps it was going to rain&mdash;the rain couldn't come in both

-      sides&mdash;and at night I was assured they couldn't be opened because the

-      lights would be confusing to other steamers!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Nobody seemed to mind an atmosphere you could have cut with a knife. I am

-      sure if the walls had been taken away it would have stood there in a solid

-      block&mdash;a dark-coloured, high-smelling block, I should think. I gave

-      up trying to do good to a community against its will and used to carry my

-      meals outside and have them on the little tables that were dotted about

-      the deck.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After all, bar that little difficulty about the air&mdash;and certainly if

-      right goes with the majority I have no cause of complaint, I was in a

-      minority of one&mdash;those steamers made the most comfortable and

-      cheapest form of travelling I have ever undertaken. From Kharbarosvk to

-      Nikolayeusk for over three days' voyage my fare with a first-class cabin

-      to myself was twelve roubles&mdash;about one pound four shillings. I came

-      back by the mail steamer and it was fifteen roubles&mdash;about one pound

-      ten shillings. This, of course, does not include food. Food on a Russian

-      steamer you buy as you would on a railway train. You may make arrangements

-      with the restaurant and have breakfast, luncheon, afternoon tea and dinner

-      for so much a day; or you may have each meal separate and pay for it as

-      you have it; or you may buy your food at the various stopping-places, get

-      your kettles filled with hot water for a trifling tip, and feed yourself

-      in the privacy of your own cabin. I found the simplest way, having no

-      servant, was to pay so much a day&mdash;five shillings on the big

-      steamers, four shillings on the smaller one&mdash;and live as I would do

-      at a hotel. The food was excellent on the Amur Company's ships. We had

-      chicken and salmon&mdash;not much salmon, it was too cheap&mdash;and

-      sturgeon. Sturgeon, that prince of fish, was a treat, and caviare was as

-      common as marmalade used to be on a British breakfast-table. It was

-      generally of the red variety that we do not see here and looked not unlike

-      clusters of red currants, only I don't know that I have ever seen currants

-      in such quantities. I enjoyed it very much till one day, looking over the

-      railing into the stern of the boat, where much of the food was roughly

-      prepared&mdash;an unwise thing to do&mdash;I saw an extremely dirty woman

-      of the country, a Gilyak, in an extremely dirty garment, with her dirty

-      bare arms plunged to the elbow in the red caviare she was preparing for

-      the table. Then I discovered for a little while that I didn't much fancy

-      caviare. But I wish I had some of that nice red caviare now.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The second class differed but little from the first. There was not so much

-      decoration about the saloons, and on the <i>John Cockerill</i>, where the

-      first class had two rooms, they had only one; and the food was much the

-      same, only not so many courses. There was plenty, and they only paid three

-      shillings a day for the four meals. The people were much the same as we in

-      the first class, and I met a girl from Samara, in Central Russia, who

-      spoke a little French. She was a teacher and was going to Nikolayeusk for

-      a holiday exactly as I have seen teachers here in England go to

-      Switzerland.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But between the first and second and the third and fourth class was a

-      great gulf fixed. They were both on the lower deck, the third under the

-      first and the fourth under the second, while amidships between them were

-      the kitchens and the engines and the store of wood for fuel. The third had

-      no cabins, but the people went to bed and apparently spent their days in

-      places like old-fashioned dinner-wagons; and they bought their own food,

-      either from the steamer or at the various stopping-places, and ate it on

-      their beds, for they had no saloon. The fourth class was still more

-      primitive. The passengers, men, women and children, were packed away upon

-      shelves rising in three tiers, one above the other, and the place of each

-      man and woman was marked out by posts. There was no effort made to provide

-      separate accommodation for men and women. As far as I could see, they all

-      herded together like cattle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The ship was crowded. The Russian colonel's wife and I used to walk up and

-      down the long decks for exercise, with Buchanan in attendance, she

-      improving her English and I learning no Russian. It is evidently quite the

-      custom for the people of the great towns of the Amur to make every summer

-      an excursion up the river, and the poorer people, the third and fourth

-      class, go up to Nikolayeusk for the fishing. Hence those shelves crowded

-      with dirty folk. There were troughs for washing outside the fourth class,

-      I discovered, minor editions of our luxurious bathrooms in the first

-      class, but I am bound to say they did not have much use. Washing even in

-      this hot weather, and it certainly was pleasantly warm, was more honoured

-      in the breach than in the observance. The only drawback to the bathrooms

-      in the first class, from my point of view, was their want of air. They

-      were built so that apparently there was no means of getting fresh air into

-      them, and I always regarded myself as a very plucky woman when in the

-      interests of cleanliness I had a bath. The hot water and the airlessness

-      always brought me to such a condition of faintness that I generally had to

-      rush out and lie on the couch in my cabin to recover, and then if somebody

-      outside took it upon them to bang to the window I was reduced to the last

-      gasp.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The <i>John Cockerill</i> was run like a man-of-war. The bells struck the

-      hours and half-hours, the captain and officers were clad in white and

-      brass-bound, and the men were in orthodox sailor's rig. One man came and

-      explained to me&mdash;he spoke no tongue that I could understand, but his

-      meaning was obvious&mdash;that Buchanan was not allowed on the first-class

-      deck, the rules and regulations, so said the colonel's wife, said he was

-      not; but no one seemed to object, so I thought to smooth matters by paying

-      half-a-rouble; then I found that every sailor I came across apparently

-      made the same statement, and having listened to one or two, at last I

-      decided to part with no more cash, and it was, I suppose, agreed that

-      Buchanan had paid his footing, for they troubled me no more about him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Three or four times a day we pulled up at some little wayside place,

-      generally only two or three log-houses with painted doors or windows, an

-      occasional potato patch and huge stacks of wood to replenish the fuel of

-      the steamer, and with much yelling they put out a long gangway, and while

-      the wood was brought on board we all went ashore to see the country. The

-      country was always exactly alike, vast and green and lonely, the sparse

-      human habitations emphasising that vastness and loneliness. The people

-      were few. The men wore belted blouses and high boots and very often,

-      though it was summer, fur caps, and the women very voluminous and very

-      dirty skirts with unbelted blouses, a shawl across their shoulders and a

-      kerchief on their unkempt hair. They were dirty; they were untidy; they

-      were uneducated; they belonged to the very poorest classes; and I think I

-      can safely say that all the way from Kharbarosvk to Nikolayeusk the only

-      attempt at farming I saw was in a few scattered places where the grass had

-      been cut and tossed up into haycocks. And yet those people impressed upon

-      me a sense of their virility and strength, a feeling that I had never had

-      when moving among the Chinese, where every inch of land&mdash;bar the

-      graves&mdash;is turned to good account. Was it the condition of the women?

-      I wonder. I know I never saw one of those stalwart women pounding along on

-      her big flat feet without a feeling of gladness and thankfulness. Here at

-      least was good material. It was crude and rough, of course, but it was

-      there waiting for the wheel of the potter. Shall we find the potter in the

-      turmoil of the revolution and the war?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We went on, north, north with a little of east, and it grew cooler and the

-      twilight grew longer. I do not know how other people do, but I count my

-      miles and realise distances from some distance I knew well in my youth. So

-      I know that from Kharbarosvk to Nikolaycusk is a little farther away than

-      is Melbourne from Sydney; and always we went by way of the great empty

-      land, by way of the great empty river. Sometimes far in the distance we

-      could see the blue hills; sometimes the hills were close; but always it

-      was empty, because the few inhabitants, the house or two at the little

-      stopping-places where were the piles of wood for the steamer, but

-      emphasised the loneliness and emptiness. You could have put all the people

-      we saw in a street of a suburb of London and lost them, and I suppose the

-      distance traversed was as far as from London to Aberdeen. It was a

-      beautiful land, a land with a wondrous charm, but it is waiting for the

-      colonist who will dare the rigours of the winter and populate it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At last we steamed up to the port of Nikolayeusk, set at the entrance of

-      the shallow Sea of Okhotsk, right away in the east of the world. When I

-      set foot upon the wharf among all the barrels with which it was packed I

-      could hardly believe I had come so far east, so far away from my regular

-      beat. One of my brothers always declares I sent him to sea because my sex

-      prevented me from going, and yet here I was, in spite of that grave

-      disadvantage, in as remote a corner of the earth as even he might have

-      hoped to attain.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a July day, sunny and warm. They had slain an Austrian archduke in

-      Serbia and the world was on the verge of the war of the ages, but I knew

-      nothing of all that. I stepped off the steamer and proceeded to

-      investigate Nikolayeusk, well satisfied with the point at which I had

-      arrived.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XI&mdash;THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>ikolayeusk seemed

-      to me the ends of the earth. I hardly know why it should have done so, for

-      I arrived there by way of a very comfortable steamer and I have made my

-      way to very much more ungetatable places. I suppose the explanation is

-      that all the other places I have visited I had looked up so long on the

-      map that when I arrived I only felt I was attaining the goal I had set out

-      to reach, whereas I must admit I had never heard of Nikolayeusk till Mr

-      Sly, the British consul, sketched it out as the end of my itinerary on the

-      Siberian rivers, and ten days later I found myself in the Far Eastern

-      town. I remember one of my brothers writing to me once from

-      Petropaulovski:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I always said my address would some day be Kamseatkha and here I am!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Well, I never said my address would be Nikolayeusk because I had never

-      heard of it, but here I was nevertheless. The weather was warm, the sun

-      poured down from a cloudless blue sky, and in the broad, grass-grown

-      streets, such streets have I seen in Australian towns, when the faint

-      breeze stirred the yellow dust rose on the air. And the town straggled all

-      along the northern side of the river, a town of low, one-storeyed wooden

-      houses for the most part, with an occasional two-storeyed house and heavy

-      shutters to all the windows. There was a curious absence of stone, and the

-      streets when they were paved at all were, as in Kharbarosvk, lines of

-      planks, sometimes three, sometimes five planks wide, with a waste of dust

-      or mud or grass, as the case might be, on either side.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Russians I found kindness itself. In Vladivostok I had met a man who

-      knew one of my brothers&mdash;I sometimes wonder if I could get to such a

-      remote corner of the earth that I should not meet someone who knew one of

-      these ubiquitous brothers of mine&mdash;and this good friend, having

-      sampled the family, took me on trust and found someone else who would give

-      me a letter to the manager of the Russo-Asiatic Bank at Nikolayeusk. This

-      was a godsend, for Mr Pauloff spoke excellent English, and he and his

-      corresponding clerk, a Russian lady of middle age who had spent a long

-      time in France, took me in hand and showed me the sights. Madame Schulmann

-      and I and Buchanan drove all over the town in one of the most ancient

-      victorias I have ever seen&mdash;the most ancient are in Saghalien, which

-      is beyond the ends of the earth&mdash;and she very kindly took me to a

-      meal at the principal hotel. I was staying on board the steamer while I

-      looked around me. The visit with this lady decided me not to go there. It

-      wras about four o'clock in the afternoon, so I don't know whether our meal

-      was dinner or tea or luncheon; we had good soup, I remember, and nice

-      wine, to say nothing of excellent coffee, but the atmosphere left much to

-      be desired. I don't suppose the windows ever had been opened since the

-      place was built, and no one seemed to see any necessity for opening them.

-      My hostess smiled at my distress. She said she liked fresh air herself but

-      that for a whole year she had lodged in a room where the windows would not

-      open. She had wanted to have one of the panes&mdash;not the window, just

-      one of the panes&mdash;made to open to admit fresh air, and had offered to

-      do it at her own expense, but her landlord refused. It would spoil the

-      look of the room. She advised me strongly if I wanted fresh air to stay as

-      long as I could on board the steamer at the wharf, and I decided to take

-      her advice.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Russo-Asiatic Bank was not unlike the banks I have seen in Australian

-      townships, in that it was built of wood of one storey and the manager and

-      his wife lived on the premises, but the roof was far more ornamental than

-      Australia could stand and gave the touch of the East that made for

-      romance. The manager was good enough to ask me to dinner and to include

-      Buchanan in the invitation because I did not like to leave the poor little

-      chap shut up in my cabin. This was really dinner, called so, and we had it

-      at five o'clock of a hot summer's afternoon, a very excellent dinner, with

-      delicious sour cream in the soup and excellent South Australian wine, not

-      the stuff that passes for Australian wine in England and that so many

-      people take medicinally, but really good wine, such as Australians

-      themselves drink. The house was built with a curious lack of partitions

-      that made for spaciousness, so that you wandered from one room to another,

-      hardly knowing that you had gone from the sitting-room to the bedroom, and

-      James Buchanan going on a voyage of discovery unfortunately found the

-      cradle, to the dismay of his mistress. He stood and looked at it and

-      barked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Gracious me! What's this funny thing! I've never seen anything like it

-      before!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Neither had I; but I was covered with shame when a wail proclaimed the

-      presence of the son and heir.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Naturally I expressed myself&mdash;truly&mdash;charmed with the town, and

-      Mr Pauloff smiled and nodded at his wife, who spoke no English.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;She hates it,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;she has never been well since we came here.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      She was white, poor little girl, as the paper on which this is written,

-      and very frail-looking, but it never seemed to occur to anyone that it

-      would be well to open the double windows, and so close was the air of the

-      room that it made me feel sick and faint.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;She never goes out,&rdquo; said her husband. &ldquo;She is not well enough.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I believe there was a time in our grandmothers' days when we too dreaded

-      the fresh air.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And in this the town differed markedly from any Australian towns I have

-      known. The double windows were all tight shut these warm July days, with

-      all the cracks stopped up with cotton wool, with often decorations of

-      coloured ribbons or paper wandering across the space between. Also there

-      were very heavy shutters, and I thought these must be to shut out the

-      winter storms, but M. Pauloff did not seem to think much of the winter

-      storms, though he admitted they had some bad blizzards and regularly the

-      thermometer went down below -40° Fahrenheit.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we shut them at night, at four in the winter and at nine

-      in the summer. Leave them open you cannot.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo; I thought it was some device for keeping out still more air.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;There is danger,&rdquo; said he&mdash;&ldquo;danger from men.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Do they steal?&rdquo; said I, surprised.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;And kill,&rdquo; he added with conviction.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It seems that when the Japanese invaded Saghalien, the great island which

-      lies opposite the mouth of the Amur, they liberated at least thirty

-      thousand convicts, and they burnt the records so that no one could prove

-      anything against them, and the majority of these convicts were unluckily

-      not all suffering political prisoners, but criminals, many of them of the

-      deepest dye. These first made Saghalien an unwholesome place to live in,

-      but gradually they migrated to the mainland, and Nikolayeusk and other

-      towns of Eastern Siberia are by no means safe places in consequence.

-      Madame Schulmann told me that many a time men were killed in the open

-      streets and that going back to her lodgings on the dark winter evenings

-      she was very much afraid and always tried to do it in daylight.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Nikolayeusk is officially supposed to have thirteen thousand inhabitants,

-      but really in the winter-time, says Mr Pauloff, they shrink to ten

-      thousand, while in the summer they rise to over forty thousand, everybody

-      coming for the fishing, the great salmon fisheries.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Here is noting,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;noting&mdash;only fish.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And this remark he made at intervals. He could not reiterate it too often,

-      as if he were warning me against expecting too much from this remote

-      corner of the world. But indeed the fish interested me. The summer fishing

-      was on while I was there, but that, it seems, is as nothing to the autumn

-      fishing, when the fish rush into the wide river in solid blocks. The whole

-      place then is given over to the fishing and the other trades that fishing

-      calls into being to support it. All the summer the steamers coming down

-      the river are crowded, and they bring great cargoes of timber; the wharves

-      when I was there were covered with barrels and packing-cases containing,

-      according to Mr Pauloff, &ldquo;only air.&rdquo; These were for the fish. And now,

-      when the humble mackerel costs me at least ninepence or a shilling, I

-      remember with longing the days when I used to see a man like a Chinaman,

-      but not a Chinaman, a bamboo across his shoulder, and from each end a

-      great fresh salmon slung, a salmon that was nearly as long as the bearer,

-      and I could have bought the two for ten kopecks!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He that will not when he may!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But great as the trade was down the river, most eatables&mdash;groceries,

-      flour and such-like things&mdash;came from Shanghai, and the ships that

-      brought them took back wood to be made into furniture, and there was, when

-      I was there, quite a flourishing trade in frozen meat with Australia,

-      Nikolayeusk requiring about two hundred and forty thousand pounds in the

-      year. In winter, of course, all the provisions are frozen; the milk is

-      poured into basins, a stick is stuck in it and it freezes round it, so

-      that a milk-seller instead of having a large can has an array of sticks on

-      top of which is the milk frozen hard as a stone. Milk, meat, eggs, all

-      provisions are frozen from October to May.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I do not know what Nikolayeusk is doing now war and revolution have

-      reached it. At least they have brought it into touch with the outer world.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And having got so far I looked longingly out over the harbour and wondered

-      whether I might not go to Saghalien.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Mr Pauloff laughed at my desires. If there was nothing to see in

-      Nikolayeusk, there was less than nothing in Saghalien. It was dead. It

-      never had been much and the Japanese invasion had killed it. Not that he

-      harboured any animosity against the Japanese. Russians and Japanese, he

-      declared, were on very friendly terms, and though they invaded Saghalien

-      they did not disgrace their occupation by any atrocities. The Russian,

-      everybody declared in Nikolayeusk, bridges the gulf between the white man

-      and the yellow. Russian and Chinese peasants will work side by side in

-      friendliest fashion; they will occupy the same boardinghouses; the Russian

-      woman does not object to the Chinese as a husband, and the Russian takes a

-      Chinese wife. Of course these are the peasant classes. The Russian

-      authorities made very definite arrangements for keeping out Chinese from

-      Siberia, as I saw presently when I went back up the river.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the more I thought of it the more determined I was not to go back till

-      I had gone as far east as I possibly could go. The Russian Volunteer fleet

-      I found called at Alexandrovsk regularly during the months the sea was

-      open, making Nikolayeusk its most northern port of call. I could go by the

-      steamer going down and be picked up by the one coming north. It would give

-      me a couple of days in the island, and Mr Pauloff was of opinion that a

-      couple of days would be far too long.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the <i>John Cockerill</i> was going back and Buchanan and I must find

-      another roof and a resting-place. According to the inhabitants, it would

-      not be safe to sleep in the streets, and I had conceived a distinct

-      distaste for the hotel. But the <i>Erivan</i> lay in the stream and to

-      that we transferred ourselves and our belongings, where the mate spoke

-      English with a strong Glasgow accent and the steward had a smattering. It

-      was only a smattering, however. I had had a very early lunch and no

-      afternoon tea, so when I got on board at six in the evening I was

-      decidedly hungry and demanded food, or rather when food might be expected.

-      The steward was in a dilemma. It was distinctly too early for dinner, he

-      considered, and too late for tea. He scratched his head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Lunch!&rdquo; said he triumphantly, and ushered me into the saloon, where hung

-      large photographs of the Tsar, the Tsarina and the good-looking little

-      Tsarevitch. In the corner was an ikon, St Nicolas, I think, who protects

-      sailors. And there at six o'clock in the evening I meekly sat down to

-      luncheon all by myself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Lying there I had a lovely view of the town. At night, like Vladivostok,

-      it lay like a ring of diamonds along the shore of the river; and in the

-      daytime the softly rounded green hills, the grey-blue sky and the

-      grey-blue sea with the little white wavelets, and the little town just a

-      line between the green and the blue, with the spires and domes of the

-      churches and other public buildings, green and blue and red and white,

-      made a view that was worth coming so far to see. There were ships in the

-      bay too&mdash;not very big ships; but a ship always has an attraction: it

-      has come from the unknown; it is about to go into the unknown&mdash;and as

-      I sat on deck there came to me the mate with the Scots accent and

-      explained all about the ships in sight.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The place was a fort and they were going to make it a great harbour, to

-      fill it up till the great ships should lie along the shore. It will take a

-      good time, for we lay a long way out, but he never doubted the

-      possibility; and meantime the goods come to the ships in the lighters in

-      which they have already come down the river, and they are worked by

-      labourers getting, according to the mate, twelve shillings a day.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Dey carry near as much as we do,&rdquo; said he.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then there were other ships: a ship for fish, summer fish, for Japan,

-      sealers for the rookeries, and ships loading timber for Kamseatkha. I

-      thought I would like to emulate my brother and go there, and the Russky

-      mate thought it would be quite possible, only very uncomfortable. It would

-      take three months, said he, and it was rather late in the season now.

-      Besides, these ships load themselves so with timber that there is only a

-      narrow space on deck to walk on, and they are packed with passengers,

-      mostly labourers, going up for the short summer season.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My old trouble, want of air, followed me on board the <i>Erivan</i>. On

-      deck it was cool, at night the thermometer registered about 55°

-      Fahrenheit, but in my cabin Buehanan and I gasped with the thermometer at

-      over 90°, and that with the port, a very small one, open. That stuffiness

-      was horrible. The bathroom looked like a boiler with a tightfitting iron

-      door right amidships, and having looked at it I had not the courage to

-      shut myself in and take a bath. It seemed as if it would be burying myself

-      alive. As it was, sleep down below I could not, and I used to steal up on

-      deck and with plenty of rugs and cushions lay myself out along the seats

-      and sleep in the fresh air; but a seat really does leave something to be

-      desired in the way of luxury.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the early mornings were delightful. The first faint light showed a

-      mist hanging over the green hills marking out their outlines, green and

-      blue and grey; then it was all grey mist; but to the east was the crimson

-      of the dawn, and we left our moorings early one morning and steamed into

-      that crimson. The sun rose among silver and grey clouds, and rose again

-      and again as we passed along the river and the mountains hid him from

-      sight. There were long streaks of silver on the broad river; slowly the

-      fir-clad hills emerged from the mist and the air was moist and fragrant;

-      the scent of the sea and the fragrance of the pines was in it. A

-      delicious, delicate northern sunrise it was; never before or since have I

-      seen such a sunrise. Never again can I possibly see one more beautiful.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And the great river widened. There were little settlements, the

-      five-pointed tents of the Russian soldiers and many places for catching

-      fish. No wonder the fish&mdash;fish is always salmon here&mdash;like this

-      great -wide river. The brownish water flowed on swiftly and the morning

-      wind whipped it into never-ending ripples that caught the sunlight. A

-      wonderful river! A delightful river! I have grown enthusiastic over many

-      rivers. I know the Murray in my own land and the great rivers of tropical

-      Africa, the Congo, the Gambia, the Volta, grand and lovely all of them. I

-      felt I had looked upon the glory of the Lord when I had looked upon them,

-      but there was something in the tender beauty of the Amur, the summer

-      beauty veiled in mist, the beauty that would last so short a time, that

-      was best of all.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Meanwhile the passengers and officers of the <i>Erivan</i> were much

-      exercised in their minds over me. What could an Englishwoman want in

-      Saghalien? To my surprise I found that none had ever stayed there before,

-      though it was on record that one had once landed there from a steamer. The

-      mate was scathing in his remarks.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Dere are skeeters,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;big ones, I hear,&rdquo; and he rolled his &ldquo;r's&rdquo;

-       like a true Scotsman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But where can I stay?&rdquo; He shook his head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;In de hotel you cannot stay. It is impossible.&rdquo; That I could quite

-      believe, but all the same, if the hotel was impossible, where could I

-      stay?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      However, here I was, and I did not intend to go back to Vladivostok by

-      sea. At Alexandrosvk, the town of Saghalien, I proposed to land and I felt

-      it was no good worrying till I got there.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We entered De Castries Bay in a soft grey mist, a mist that veiled the

-      mountains behind. Then the mist lifted and showed us the string of islands

-      that guard the mouth of the bay, strung in a line like jewels set in the

-      sea, and the hills on them were all crowned with firs; and then the mist

-      dropped again, veiling all things.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a lonely place, where I, being a foreigner, was not allowed to

-      land, and we did not go close up to the shore, but the shore came to us in

-      great white whale-boats. Many peasants and soldiers got off here, and I

-      saw saws and spades in the bundles, the bundles of emigrants. There were a

-      few women amongst them, women with hard, elemental faces, so different

-      from the Chinese, that were vacuous and refined. I remembered the women

-      who had listened to the lecturer at Fen Chou Fu and I drew a long sigh of

-      relief. It was refreshing to look at those big-hipped women, with their

-      broad, strong feet and their broad, strong hands and the little dirty

-      kerchiefs over their heads. Elemental, rough, rude, but I was glad of

-      them. One was suckling a child in the boat, calmly, as if it were the most

-      natural thing to do, and somehow it was good to see it. The beginning of

-      life.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The morning brought a dense mist, and as it cleared away it showed us a

-      sparkling, smooth sea, greyish-blue like the skies above it, and a little

-      wooden town nestling against fir-clad hills. We had arrived at

-      Alexandrosvk and I wondered what would become of me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then once again I learned what a kind place is this old world of ours

-      that we abuse so often. I had gone on board that steamer without any

-      introduction whatever, with only my passport to show that I was a

-      respectable member of society. I knew nobody and saw no reason whatever

-      why anyone should trouble themselves about me. But we carried

-      distinguished passengers on board the <i>Erivan</i>. There was the

-      Vice-Governor of Saghalien, his wife and son, with the soldiers in

-      attendance, and a good-looking young fellow with short-cropped hair and

-      dreamy eyes who was the Assistant Chief of Police of the island, and this

-      man, by command of the Governor, took me in charge.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Never again shall I hear of the Russian police without thinking of the

-      deep debt of gratitude that I owe to Vladimir Merokushoff of Saghalien.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I do not think as a rule that people land from steamers at Alexandrosvk on

-      to red tapestry carpets under fluttering bruiting to the strains of a

-      band. But we did; and the Chief of Police&mdash;he spoke no language but

-      Russian&mdash;motioned me to wait a moment, and when the Governor had been

-      safely despatched to his home he appeared on the scene with a victoria and

-      drove me and Buchanan to the police station, a charming little

-      one-storeyed building buried in greenery, and there he established us.

-      Buchanan he appreciated as a dog likes to be appreciated, and he gave up

-      to me his own bedroom, where the top pane of the window had actually been

-      made to open. His sitting-room was a very bower of growing plants, and

-      when I went to bed that night he brought his elderly working housekeeper,

-      a plain-faced woman whom he called &ldquo;Stera,&rdquo; and made her bring her bed and

-      lay it across my door, which opened into the sitting-room. It was no good

-      my protesting; there she had to sleep. Poor old thing, she must have been

-      glad my stay was not long. Every day she wore a blue skirt and a

-      drab-coloured blouse, unbelted, and her grey hair twisted up into an

-      untidy knot behind, but she was an excellent cook. That young man got

-      himself into his everyday holland summer coat and to entertain me

-      proceeded to lay in enough provisions to supply a hungry school. He showed

-      me the things first to see if I liked them, as if I wouldn't have liked

-      shark when people were so kind. But as a matter of fact everything was

-      very good. He produced a large tin of crawling crayfish, and when I had

-      expressed not only my approval but my delight, they appeared deliciously

-      red and white for dinner, and then I found they were only <i>sakouska</i>&mdash;that

-      is, the <i>hors d'ouvre</i> that the Russians take to whet their

-      appetites. I have often lived well, but never better than when I, a

-      stranger and a sojourner, was taken in charge by the hospitable Russian

-      police, who would not let me pay one penny for my board and lodging. We

-      fed all day long. I had only to come in for a bottle of wine or beer to be

-      produced. I was given a <i>gens d'arme</i> to carry my camera and another

-      to take care of Buchanan. Never surely was stranger so well done as I by

-      hospitable Saghalien. The policeman made me understand he was an author

-      and presented me with a couple of pamphlets he had written on Saghalien

-      and its inhabitants, but though I treasure them I cannot read them. Then

-      the Japanese photographer was sent for and he and I were taken sitting

-      side by side on the bench in his leafy porch, and, to crown all, because I

-      could speak no Russian, he sent for two girls who had been educated in

-      Japan and who spoke English almost as well as I did myself, though they

-      had never before spoken to an Englishwoman. Marie and Lariss Borodin were

-      they, and their father kept the principal store in Alexandrosvk. They were

-      dainty, pretty, dark-eyed girls and they were a godsend to me. They had a

-      tea in my honour and introduced me to the manager of the coal mine of

-      Saghalien and took care I should have all the information about the island

-      it was in their power to supply.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There were then about five thousand people there, one thousand in

-      Alexandrosvk itself, but they were going daily, for the blight of the

-      convict was over the beautiful land. The best coal mine is closed down on

-      fire and the one whose manager I met was leased to a company by the year

-      and worked by Chinese on most primitive lines. There is gold, he told me,

-      this business man who surprised me by his lavish use of perfume, but he

-      did not know whether it would pay for working&mdash;gold and coal as well

-      would be almost too much good luck for one island&mdash;and there is

-      naphtha everywhere on the east coast, but as it has never been struck they

-      think that the main vein must come up somewhere under the sea. Still it is

-      there waiting for the enterprising man who shall work it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Saghalien used to be as bad as Nikolayeusk, they told me, after the

-      Japanese had evacuated the northern part; but now the most enterprising

-      section of the convicts had betaken themselves to the mainland, and though

-      the free settlers were few and far between, and the most of the people I

-      saw were convicts, they were the harmless ones with all the devilment gone

-      out of them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Alexandrosvk is a place of empty houses. When the Japanese came the people

-      fled, leaving everything exactly as it was; and though the Japanese

-      behaved with admirable restraint, considering they came as an invading

-      army, many of these people never came back again, and the alertness in a

-      bad cause which had sent many of the convicts there against their will

-      sent them away again as soon as they were free. All down by the long

-      wooden pier which stretches out into the sea are great wooden storehouses

-      and barracks, empty, and a monument, if they needed it, to the courteous

-      manner in which the Japanese make war. They had burnt the museum, they

-      told me, and opened the prison doors and burnt the prison, but the other

-      houses they had spared. And so there were many, many empty houses in

-      Alexandrosvk.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      All the oldest carriages in the world have drifted to Saghalien.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They are decrepit in Western Siberia, they are worse, if possible, in the

-      East, but in the island of Saghalien I really don't know how they hold

-      together. Perhaps they are not wanted very often. I hired the most archaic

-      victoria I have ever seen and the two girls came for a drive with me all

-      round the town and its neighbourhood. It was a drive to be remembered. The

-      early summer was in all its full freshness, the red and white cows stood

-      knee-deep in grass that was green and lush everywhere. There were

-      fir-trees on the hills and on every spur of the hills, and there were

-      hedges with dog-roses blossoming all over them; there were fields of dark

-      blue iris; there were little red tiger lilies and a spiked heliotrope

-      flower like veronica, only each bloom grew on a single stalk of its own;

-      there were purple vetches and white spiræa growing in marshy places, and

-      the land was thick with sweet-scented clover among which the bees were

-      humming, and in a little village there was a Greek church that, set in its

-      emerald-green field, was a very riot of colour. There were balls on the

-      roof of royal blue, the roof itself was of pale green, the walls were of

-      brown logs untouched by paint and the window edges were picked out in

-      white. I photographed that picturesque little church, as I did the peasant

-      women standing at the doors of their log huts and the queer old shandrydan

-      in which we drove, but alas! all my photographs perished miserably in

-      Russia. The girls wondered that I liked town and country so much, that I

-      saw so much beauty in everything.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Ah! Madame,&rdquo; they sighed, &ldquo;but you can go away tomorrow! If only we could

-      go!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      They had been educated at a convent and they produced the English books

-      they had read. They were very apologetic but they had found them rather

-      tame. Had I read them? I smiled, for they all turned out to be the

-      immortal works of Charles Garvice!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And we had tea in the dining-room, where father slept because they were

-      rather crowded, the store took up so much room; and it was a very nice tea

-      too, with raspberry jam in saucers, which we ate Russian fashion with a

-      spoon, and the roses in the garden tapped against the window-panes, asking

-      to come in and join us, and Buchanan got what his soul loved, plenty of

-      cake. They apologised because there was no fruit. No fruit save berries

-      ripen in Saghalien and the strawberries would not be ready till well on in

-      August. No words of mine can tell how kind they were to the stranger.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I went back in the long twilight that was so cool and restful and sat

-      outside the leafy shaded police station and killed mosquitoes, for the

-      mate had heard aright, there were &ldquo;skeeters&rdquo; and to spare, the sort to

-      which Mark Twain took a gun. I watched the grey mist creeping slowly down,

-      down the beautiful mountains, and when it had enveloped them the night was

-      come and it was time to go in and have dinner and go to bed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Perhaps it would not do to stay long in Saghalien. There is nothing to do.

-      She lies a Sleeping Beauty waiting the kiss of the Prince. Will this war

-      awaken her? The short time I was there I enjoyed every moment.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The people seemed nondescript. The upper class were certainly Russians,

-      and all the men wore military caps and had their hair clipped so close it

-      looked shaven, but it would be utterly impossible to say to what

-      nationality the peasant belonged. There were flaxen-haired Russians

-      certainly, but then there were dark-bearded men, a Mongolian type, and

-      there were many thrifty Chinese with queues, in belted blouses and high

-      boots, generally keeping little eating-shops. There may have been

-      Japanese, probably there were, seeing they hold the lower half of the

-      island, but I did not notice them, and there is, I am afraid, in that

-      place which is so full of possibilities absolutely nothing for that

-      go-ahead nation to do.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My pretty girls complained dreadfully. They looked after the shop and then

-      there was nothing. In the winter they said they had skating and they liked

-      the winter best, but the really bad time in places like Saghalien and

-      Nikolayeusk were the two months when it was neither winter nor summer.

-      Then their only means of communication with the outside world, the river

-      and the sea, was too full of ice to admit of navigation and yet was not

-      solid enough for dog-sled, so that if the telegraph broke down, and it

-      very often did, they are entirely cut off from the world. Saghalien, of

-      course, is worse off than the town, for on the mainland presumably there

-      are roads of sorts that can be negotiated in case of necessity, but the

-      island is entirely isolated. In the winter the mails take five days coming

-      across the frozen sea from the mainland, and often when there are storms

-      they take much longer. Fancy living on an island that stretches over

-      nearly ten degrees of latitude, which for five months in the year gets its

-      mails by dog-sled and for two goes without them altogether! On the whole,

-      there may be drawbacks to living in Saghalien!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I left it at nine o'clock in the evening, after the darkness had fallen,

-      and the police officer and the pretty girls saw me on board the steamer

-      which was to take me back to Nikolayeusk.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They loaded me with flowers and they were full of regrets.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh, Madame, Madame, how lucky you are to get away from Saghalien!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But I said truly enough that I felt my luck lay in getting there. And now

-      that I sit in my garden in Kent and watch the beans coming into blossom

-      and the roses into bloom, look at the beds gay with red poppies and

-      violas, cream and purple, or wander round and calculate the prospects of

-      fruit on the cherry and the pear trees, I am still more glad to think that

-      I know what manner of island that is that lies so far away in the Eastern

-      world that it is almost West.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XII&mdash;FACING WEST

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>n the 25th July

-      1914, at nine o'clock in the evening, I left Saghalien, and as the ship

-      steamed away from the loom of the land into the night I knew that at last,

-      after eighteen months of voyaging in the East, I had turned my face

-      homeward. I had enjoyed it, but I wanted to go home, and in my notebook I

-      see evidences of this longing. At last I was counting the days&mdash;one

-      day to Nikolayeusk, three days to Kharbarosvk, three days more to

-      Blagoveschensk&mdash;and I was out in my calculations in the very

-      beginning. The ships of the Volunteer fleet take their time, and we took

-      three days wandering along the island of Saghalien and calling at ports I

-      should think mail steamer had never before called at before we turned

-      again towards the mainland.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And yet in a way it was interesting, for I saw some of the inhabitants of

-      the island, the aboriginal inhabitants, I should never have otherwise

-      seen. Gilyaks they are, and the water seems their element. They have the

-      long straight black hair of the Mongolian, and sometimes they were clad in

-      furs&mdash;ragged and old and worn, the very last remains of furs&mdash;sometimes

-      merely in dirty clothes, the cast-offs of far-away nations.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They live by the fish. There is nothing else.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I tried hard to photograph these aborigines, using all sorts of guile to

-      get them into focus. I produced cigarettes, I offered sugar, but as soon

-      as they found out what I was about they at once fled, even though their

-      boat was fastened against the gangway and it meant abandoning somebody who

-      was on board. I did eventually get some photographs, but they shared the

-      fate of the rest of my Russian pictures, and I am sorry, for I do not

-      suppose I shall ever again have the chance of photographing the Gilyak in

-      his native haunts. He belongs to a dying race, they told me, and there are

-      few children amongst them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And though we lay long at De Castries Bay they would not let me take

-      pictures there at all. It was forbidden, so I was reduced to doing the

-      best I could through my cabin port. In Alexandrosvk the police officer had

-      aided and abetted my picture-making, but in Nikolayeusk it was a forbidden

-      pastime, for the town, for purposes of photography, was a fort, and when I

-      boarded the <i>Kanovina</i> on the river, the post steamer bound for

-      Blagoveschensk, I met with more difficulties.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There was on board a Mrs Marie Skibitsky and her husband, the headmaster

-      of the Nikolayeusk &ldquo;Real&rdquo; School, and she spoke very good English and was

-      a kind friend to me. Through her came a message from the captain to the

-      effect that though he did not mind my photographing himself, it was

-      forbidden in Russia, and he begged me not to do it when anyone was looking

-      on. That made it pretty hopeless, for the ship was crowded and there was

-      always not one person but probably a score of people taking a very great

-      interest. The captain was not brass-bound as he had been in the <i>John

-      Cockerill</i>, but he and all his officers were clad in khaki, with

-      military caps, and it was sometime before I realised them as the ship's

-      officers. The captain looked to me like a depressed corporal who was

-      having difficulties with his sergeant, and the ship, though they charged

-      us three roubles more for the trip to Blagoveschensk than the Amur Company

-      would have done, was dirty and ill-kept. It was in her I met the saloon

-      the windows of which would not open, and the water in my cabin had gone

-      wrong, and when I insisted that I could not be happy till I had some, it

-      was brought me in a teapot! They never struck the hours on this steamer as

-      they had done on the <i>John Cockerill</i>, and gone was the excellent

-      cook, and the food consisted largely of meat, of which I am bound to say

-      there was any quantity.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But in spite of all drawbacks the ship was crowded; there were many

-      officers and their wives on board, and there were many officers on board

-      with women who were not their 'wives. These last were so demonstrative

-      that I always took them for honeymoon couples till at last a Cossack

-      officer whom I met farther on explained:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Not 'wives. Oh no! It is always so! It is just the steamer!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Whether these little irregularities were to be set down to the discomforts

-      of the steamer or to the seductive air of the river, I do not know.

-      Perhaps I struck a particularly amorous company. I am bound to say no one

-      but me appeared to be embarrassed. It seemed to be all in the day's work.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was pleasant going up the river again and having beside me one who

-      could explain things to me. Every day it grew warmer, for not only was the

-      short northern summer reaching its zenith, but we were now going south

-      again. And Mrs Skibitsky sat beside me and rubbed up her English and told

-      me how in two years' time she proposed to bring her daughters to England

-      to give them an English education, and I promised to look out for her and

-      show her the ropes and how she could best manage in London. In two years'

-      time! And we neither of us knew that we were on the threshold of the

-      greatest war in the world's history.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I took the breaking out of that war so calmly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We arrived at Kharbarosvk. I parted from Mrs Skibitsky, who was going to

-      Vladivostok, and next day I looked up my friend the colonel's wife with

-      whom I had travelled on the <i>John Cockerill</i>. She received me with

-      open arms, but the household cat flew and spat and stated in no measured

-      terms what she thought of Buchanan. The lady caught the cat before I

-      realised what was happening and in a moment she had scored with her talons

-      great red lines that spouted blood on her mistress's arms. She looked at

-      them calmly, went into the kitchen, rubbed butter on her wounds and came

-      back smiling as if nothing in the world had happened. But it was not

-      nothing. I admired her extremely for a very brave woman. Presently her

-      husband came in and she just drew down her sleeves to cover her torn arms

-      and said not a word to him. He was talking earnestly and presently she

-      said to me:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;There is war!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I thought she meant between Buehanan and the cat and I smiled feebly,

-      because I was very much ashamed of the trouble I and my dog had caused,

-      but she said again:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;There is war! Between Austria and Serbia!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It did not seem to concern me. I don't know that I had ever realised

-      Serbia as a distinct nationality at all before, and she knew so little

-      English and I knew no Russian at all, so that we were not able to discuss

-      the matter much, though it was evident that the colonel was very much

-      excited. That, I thought, might be natural. He was a soldier. War was his

-      business, though here, I think, he was engaged in training boys.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After the midday meal&mdash;<i>déjeuner</i>, I think we called it&mdash;she

-      and I went for a walk, and presently down the wide streets of Kharbarosvk

-      came a little procession of four led by a wooden-legged man bearing a

-      Russian naval flag, the blue St Andrew's Cross on a white ground. I looked

-      at them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They meant nothing to me in that great, empty street where the new little

-      trees were just beginning to take root and the new red-brick post office

-      dominated all minor buildings among many empty spaces.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They want war! They ask for war!&rdquo; said my friend. I was witnessing my

-      first demonstration against Germany! And I thought no more of it than I do

-      of the children playing in the streets of this Kentish village!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      She saw me on to the steamer and bade me farewell, and then my troubles

-      began. Not a single person on that steamer spoke English. However, I had

-      always found the Russians so kind that the faet that we could not

-      understand one another when the going was straight did not seem to matter

-      very much. But I had not reckoned with the Russians at war.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Kharbarosvk the river forms the Chinese-Russian boundary and a little

-      beyond it reaches its most southern point, about lat. 48°. But the China

-      that was on our left was not the China that I knew. This was Manchuria,

-      green and fresh as Siberia itself, and though there was little or no

-      agriculture beyond perhaps a patch of vegetables here and there, on both

-      sides of the broad river was a lovely land of hills and lush grass and

-      trees. Here were firs and pines and cedars, whose sombreness contrasted

-      with the limes and elms, the poplars and dainty birches with whieh they

-      were interspersed. The Russian towns were small, the merest villages, with

-      here and there a church with the painted ball-like domes they affect, and

-      though the houses were of unpainted logs, always the windows and doors

-      were painted white.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And at every little town were great piles of wood waiting for the steamer,

-      and whenever we stopped men hastily set to work bringing in loads of wood

-      to replace that which we had burnt. And we burnt lavishly. Even the

-      magnificent forests of Siberia will not stand this drain on them long.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The other day when the National Service papers came round one was sent to

-      a dear old &ldquo;Sister&rdquo; who for nearly all her life has been working for the

-      Church in an outlying district of London. She is past work now, but she

-      can still go and talk to the old and sick and perhaps give advice about

-      the babies, but that is about the extent of her powers. She looked at the

-      paper and as in duty bound filled it in, giving her age as seventy. What

-      was her surprise then to receive promptly from the Department a suggestion

-      that she should volunteer for service on the land, and offering her, by

-      way of inducement, good wages, a becoming hat and high boots! That branch

-      of the Department has evidently become rather mechanical. Now the Russians

-      all the way from Saghalien to Petrograd treated me with sueh unfailing

-      kindness that I was in danger of writing of them in the stereotyped

-      fashion in which the National Service Department sent out its papers.

-      Luckily they themselves saved me from such an error. There were three

-      memorable, never-to-be-forgotten days when the Russians did not treat me

-      with kindness.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The warmest and pleasantest days of my trip on the Amur we went through

-      lovely scenery: the river was very wide, the blue sky was reflected in its

-      blue waters and the green, tree-clad hills on either side opened out and

-      showed beyond mountains in the distance, purple and blue and alluring. It

-      was the height of summer-time, summer at its best, a green, moist summer.

-      We hugged the Russian bank, and the Manchurian bank seemed very far away,

-      only it was possible to see that wherever the Russians had planted a

-      little town on the other side was a Chinese town much bigger. The Russian

-      were very little towns, and all the inhabitants, it seemed, turned out to

-      meet us, who were their only link with the outside world.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The minute the steamer came close enough ropes were flung ashore to moor

-      it, and a gangway was run out very often&mdash;and it was an anxious

-      moment for me with Buchanan standing on the end, for he was always the

-      first to put dainty little paws on the gangway, and there he stood while

-      it swayed this way and that before it could make up its mind where to

-      finally settle down. Then there was a rush, and a stream of people going

-      ashore for exercise passed a stream of people coming on board to sell

-      goods. Always these took the form of eatables. Butter, bread, meat, milk,

-      berries they had for sale, and the third and fourth class passengers

-      bought eagerly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I followed Buchanan ashore, but I seldom bought anything unless the

-      berries tempted me. There were strawberries, raspberries and a blue berry

-      which sometimes was very sweet and pleasant.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At first the people had been very kind and taken a great deal of interest

-      in the stranger and her pretty little dog, but after we left Kharbarosvk

-      and I had no one to appeal to a marked change came over things. If I

-      wanted to take a photograph, merely a photograph of the steamer lying

-      against the bank, my camera was rudely snatched away and I was given to

-      understand in a manner that did not require me to know Russian that if I

-      did that again it would be worse for me. Poor little Buchanan was kicked

-      and chunks of wood were flung at him. As I passed along the lower decks to

-      and from the steamer I was rudely hustled, and on shore not only did the

-      people crowd around me in a hostile manner, but to my disgust they spat

-      upon me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I could not understand the change, for even in the first-class saloon the

-      people looked at me askance. And I had ten days of the river before I

-      reached Stretensk, where I was to join the train. It is terrible to be

-      alone among hostile people, and I kept Buchanan close beside me for

-      company and because I did not know what might happen to him. If this had

-      been China I should not have been surprised, but Russia, that had always

-      been so friendly. I was mightily troubled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then came the explanation, the very simple explanation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Just as the river narrowed between the hills and looked more like a river,

-      and turned north, there came on board at a tiny wayside town a tall young

-      Cossack officer, a <i>soinik</i> of Cossacks, he called himself. He wore a

-      khaki jacket and cap, and dark blue breeches and riding-boots. He had a

-      great scar across his forehead, caused by a Chinese sword, and he had

-      pleasant blue eyes and a row of nice white teeth. He was tall and goodly

-      to look upon, and as I sat at afternoon tea at a little table on deck he

-      came swaggering along the deck and stood before me with one hand on a

-      deck-chair.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Madame, is it permitted?&rdquo; he asked in French.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Of course Madame permitted and ealled for another glass and offered him

-      some of her tea and cake. Possibly he had plenty of his own, but no

-      matter, it was good to entertain someone in friendly fashion again after

-      being an outcast for three days. And it took a little while to find out

-      what was wrong, he was so very polite.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Madame understands we are at war?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Madame opened her eyes in astonishment. What could a war in the Balkan

-      Provinces have to do with her treatment on the Amur river thousands of

-      miles in the East?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      However, she said she did.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;And Madame knows&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, and then very kindly

-      abandoned his people. &ldquo;Madame sees the people are bad?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Madame quite agreed. They were bad. I had quite an appetite for my tea now

-      that this nice young man was sympathising with me on the abominable

-      behaviour of his countrymen.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He spread out his hands as if deprecating the opinion of sueh foolish

-      people. &ldquo;They think&mdash;on the ship&mdash;and on the shore&mdash;that

-      Madame is a GERMAN!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      So it was out, and it took me a moment to realise it, so little had I

-      realised the war.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;A German!&rdquo; I did not put it in capital letters as he had done. I had not

-      yet learned to hate the Germans.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;A&mdash;spy!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Oh, good gracious!&rdquo; And then I flew for my passports.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In vain that young man protested it was not necessary. He had felt sure

-      from the moment he set eyes upon her that Madame was no German. He had

-      told the captain&mdash;so the depressed corporal had been taking an

-      interest in me&mdash;she might be French, or even from the north of Spain,

-      but certainly not German. But I insisted on his looking at my passports

-      and being in a position to swear that I was British, and from that moment

-      we were friends and he constituted himself my champion.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The people are bad,&rdquo; he told me. &ldquo;Madame, they are angry and they are

-      bad. They may harm you. Here I go ashore with you; at Blagoveschensk you

-      get a protection order from the Governor written in Russian so that

-      somebody may read.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Then he told me about the war. Russia and France were fighting Germany. He

-      had come from Tsitsihar, on the Mongolian border, across Manchuria, and

-      before that he had come from Kodbo, right in the heart of the great

-      Western Mongolian mountains, and he was going as fast as he could to

-      Chita, and thence he supposed to the front.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;C'est gai a la guerre, Madame, c'est gai!&rdquo; I hope so. I earnestly hope he

-      found it so, for he was a good fellow and awfully good to me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was a little disquieting too, for now it dawned upon me it would be

-      impossible to go back through Germany with Germany at war with Russia, and

-      my friend was equally sure it would be almost impossible to go by way of

-      St Petersburg, as we called Petrograd then. Anyhow we were still in the

-      Amur Province, in Eastern Siberia, so I did not worry much. Now that the

-      people were friendly once more it all seemed so far away, and whenever we

-      went ashore my Cossack friend explained matters.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But he was a little troubled.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Madame, why does not England come in?&rdquo; he asked again and again, and I,

-      who had seen no papers since I left Tientsin, and only <i>The North China

-      Herald</i> then, could not imagine what England had to do with it. The

-      idea of a world war was out of the question.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was more interesting now going up the beautiful river, narrowed till it

-      really did look like a river. I could see both banks quite plainly. My

-      friend had been stationed here a year or two before, and he told me that

-      there were many tigers in the woods, and wild boar and bear, but not very

-      many wolves. And the tigers were beautiful and fierce and dangerous,

-      northern tigers that could stand the rigours of the winter, and they did

-      not wait to be attacked, they attacked you. There was a German professor

-      in Blagoveschensk a year or two ago who had gone out butterfly-hunting,

-      which one would think was a harmless and safe enough pastime to satisfy

-      even a conscientious objector, and a tiger had got on his tracks and eaten

-      him incontinently. They found only his butterfly net and the buttons of

-      his coat when they went in search of him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The plague had broken out during this officer's stay on the river, and the

-      authorities had drawn a cordon of Cossacks round to keep the terrified,

-      plague-stricken people from fleeing and spreading the disease yet farther,

-      and he pointed out to me the house in which he and two comrades had lived.

-      It was merely a roof pitched at a steep angle, and the low walls were

-      embedded in earth; only on the side facing the river was a little window&mdash;it

-      did not open&mdash;and a door. A comfortless-looking place it was.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But why the earth piled up against the sides?&rdquo; I asked. It was sprouting

-      grass now and yellow buttercups and looked gay and pretty, the only

-      attractive thing about the place.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Madame, for the cold,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;for the cold.&rdquo; And remembering what they

-      had told me about the cold of Kharbin, what I myself had experienced at

-      Manchuria on the way out in much the same latitude as this, I could quite

-      well believe that even sunk in the earth this poor little hut was not a

-      very good protection against the cold.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The river widened again, winding its way across a plateau. On the Chinese

-      side were great oak forests where my Cossack told me were many pig that

-      gave them good hunting and many bees, but this was not China as I knew it.

-      It was inhabited, he said, by nomad tribes who were great horsemen, and we

-      saw occasional villages and&mdash;a rare sight&mdash;cattle, red and

-      white, standing knee-deep in the clear water. Particularly was I struck by

-      the cattle, for in all those thousands of miles of travel I could count on

-      my fingers&mdash;the fingers of one hand would be too many&mdash;the

-      numbers of times I saw herds of cattle. Once was in Saghalien, and twice,

-      I think, here, curiously enough, for the pure Chinese does not use milk or

-      butter on the Chinese side of the river. Of course there must have been

-      cows somewhere, for there was plenty of milk, cream and butter for sale,

-      but they were not in evidence from the river.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      On the Russian side the landing-places did not change much, only now among

-      the women hawkers were Chinese in belted blouses, green, yellow, blue,

-      pink, red; they rioted in colour as they never did in their own land, and

-      they all wore sea-boots.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And still over twelve hundred miles from the sea it was a great river. And

-      then at last I saw what I had been looking for ever since I embarked&mdash;fields

-      of corn, corn ripe for the harvest. This was all this lovely land needed,

-      a field of corn; but again it was not on the Russian side, but on the

-      Chinese.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The spires and domes of Blagoveschensk, the capital of the Amur Province,

-      came into view. All along the Russian bank of the river lay this city of

-      Eastern Siberia. Its buildings stood out against the clear sky behind it,

-      and approaching it was like coming up to a great port. The river, I should

-      think, was at least a mile wide. I am not very good at judging distances,

-      but it gave me the impression of a very wide river set here in the midst

-      of a plain&mdash;that is, of course, a plateau, for we had come through

-      the hills.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And here my Cossack friend came to bid me good-bye and to impress upon me

-      once again to go straight to the Governor for that protection order. He

-      was sorry he could not see me through, but his orders were to go to Chita

-      as fast as he could, and someone would speak English at Blagoveschensk,

-      for it was a great city, and then he asked for the last time:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But, Madame, why does not England come in?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And then the question that had troubled me so was answered, for as we

-      touched the shore men came on board wild with excitement, shouting,

-      yelling, telling the war news, that very day, that very moment, it seemed,

-      England had come in!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And I appeared to be the only representative of Britain in that corner of

-      the world! Never was there such a popular person. The sailor-men who

-      worked the ship, the poorer third and fourth class passengers all came

-      crowding to look at the Englishwoman. I had only got to say &ldquo;Anglisky&rdquo; to

-      have everyone bowing down before me and kissing my hand, and my Cossack

-      friend as he bade me good-bye seemed to think it hardly necessary to go to

-      the Governor except that a member of a great Allied nation ought to be

-      properly received.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I had been bitten once, and I determined to make things as safe as I

-      could for the future. So I got a droshky&mdash;a sort of tumble-down

-      victoria, held together with pieces of string, and driven by a man who

-      might have been Russian or might have been Chinese&mdash;and Buchanan and

-      I went through the dusty, sunny streets of the capital of the Amur

-      Province to the viceregal residence.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XIII&mdash;THE UPPER REACHES OF THE AMUR

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>lagoveschensk is

-      built on much the same lines as all the other Siberian towns that I have

-      seen, a wooden town mostly of one-storeyed houses straggling over the

-      plain in wide streets that cut one another at right angles. Again it was

-      not at all unlike an Australian town, a frontier town to all intents and

-      purposes. The side-roads were deep in dust, and the principal shop, a

-      great store, a sort of mild imitation of Harrod's, where you could buy

-      everything from a needle to an anchor&mdash;I bought a dog-collar with a

-      bell for Buchanan&mdash;was run by Germans. It was a specimen of Germany's

-      success in peaceful penetration. It seemed as if she were throwing away

-      the meat for the shadow, for they were interning all those assistants&mdash;400

-      of them. Now probably they form the nucleus of the Bolshevist force

-      helping Germany.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Governor's house was on the outskirts of the town, and it was thronged

-      with people, men mostly, and Buchanan and I were passed from one room to

-      another, evidently by people who had not the faintest notion of what we

-      wanted. Everybody said &ldquo;Bonjour,&rdquo; and the Governor and everybody else

-      kissed my hand. I said I was &ldquo;Anglisky,&rdquo; and it seemed as if everybody in

-      consequence came to look at me. But it didn't advance matters at all.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I began to be hungry and tired, and various people tried questions upon

-      me, but nothing definite happened. At last, after about two hours, when I

-      was seriously thinking of giving up in despair, a tall, good-looking

-      officer in khaki came in. He put his heels together and kissed my hand as

-      courteously as the rest had done, and then informed me in excellent

-      English that he was the Boundary Commissioner and they had sent for him

-      because there was an Englishwoman arrived, and, while very desirous of

-      being civil to the representative of their new Ally, nobody could make out

-      what on earth she was doing here and what she wanted!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I told my story and it was easy enough then. He admired Buchanan properly,

-      drove us both to his house, introduced me to his wife and made me out a

-      most gorgeous protection order written in Russian. I have it still, but I

-      never had occasion to use it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Opposite Blagoveschensk is a Chinese town which is called Sakalin, though

-      the maps never give it that name, and in Vladivostok and Peking they call

-      it various other names. But its right name is Sakalin, I know, for I

-      stayed there for the best part of a week.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Sakalin the head of the Chinese Customs is a Dane, Paul Barentzen, and

-      to him and his wife am I greatly beholden. I had been given letters to

-      them, and I asked my friend the kindly Russian Boundary Commissioner if he

-      knew them. He did. He explained to me I must have a permit to cross the

-      river and he would give me one for a week. A week seemed overlong, but he

-      explained the Russian Government did not allow free traffic across the

-      river and it was just as well to have a permit that would cover the whole

-      of my stay. Even now, though I did stay my week, I have not fathomed the

-      reason of these elaborate precautions, because it must be impossible to

-      guard every little landing-place on the long, long, lonely river&mdash;there

-      must be hundreds of places where it is easy enough to cross&mdash;only I

-      suppose every stranger is liable sooner or later to be called upon to give

-      an account of himself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The ferries that crossed the Amur to the Chinese side were great boats

-      built to carry a large number of passengers, but the arrangements for

-      getting across the river did justice to both Chinese and Russian

-      mismanagement. Unlike the efficient Japanese, both these nations, it seems

-      to me, arrive at the end in view with the minimum amount of trouble to

-      those in authority&mdash;that is to say, the maximum of trouble to

-      everybody concerned. The ferry-boats owing to local politics had a

-      monopoly, and therefore went at their own sweet will just exactly when

-      they pleased. There was a large and busy traffic, but the boats never went

-      oftener than once an hour, and the approaches were just as primitive as

-      they possibly could be. There was one little shed with a seat running

-      round where if you were fortunate you could sit down with the Chinese

-      hawkers and wait for the arrival of the boat. And when it did come the

-      passengers, after a long, long wait, came climbing up the rough path up

-      the bank looking as if they had been searched to the skin. They let me

-      through on the Chinese side and I found without any difficulty my way to

-      Mr Paul Barentzen's house, a two-storeyed, comfortable house, and received

-      a warm invitation from him and his wife to stay with them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a chance not to be missed. I was getting very weary, I was tired in

-      every bone, so a chance like this to stay with kindly people who spoke my

-      own language, on the very outskirts of the Chinese Empire, was not to be

-      lightly missed, and I accepted with gratitude, a gratitude I feel

-      strongly. Mr Barentzen was a Dane, but he spoke as good English as I do,

-      and if possible was more British. His wife was English. And that night he

-      celebrated the coming into the war of Britain. He asked me and the Russian

-      Boundary Commissioner and his wife and another Russian gentleman all to

-      dinner in the gardens at Blagoveschensk.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The place was a blaze of light, there were flags and lamps and bands

-      everywhere, the whole city was <i>en fête</i> to do honour to the new

-      addition to the Grande Entente. When we were tired of walking about the

-      gardens we went inside to the principal restaurant that was packed with

-      people dining, while on a stage various singers discoursed sweet music and

-      waved the flags of the Allies. But the British flag had not got as far as

-      the capital of the Amur Province. Indeed much farther west than that I

-      found it represented by a red flag with black crosses drawn on it, very

-      much at the taste of the artist, and &ldquo;Anglisky&rdquo; written boldly across it

-      to make up for any deficiency.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Mr Barentzen had foreseen this difficulty and had provided us all with

-      nice little silk specimens of the Union Jack to wear pinned on our

-      breasts. About ten o'clock we sat down to a most excellent dinner, with

-      sturgeon and sour cream and caviare and all the good tilings that Eastern

-      Siberia produces. A packed room also dined, while the people on the stage

-      sang patriotic songs, and we were all given silk programmes as souvenirs.

-      They sang the Belgian, the French and the Russian national anthems, and at

-      last we asked for the British.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Very courteously the conductor sent back word to say he was very sorry but

-      the British national anthem was also a German hymn and if he dared play it

-      the people would tear him to pieces. Remembering my tribulations a little

-      way down the river, I quite believed him, so I suggested as an alternative

-      <i>Rule, Britannia</i>, but alas! he had never heard of it. It was a

-      deadlock, and we looked at one another.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then the tall Russian who was the other guest pushed his chair from the

-      table, stood up, and saluting, whistled <i>Rule, Britannia!</i> How the

-      people applauded! And so Britain entered the war in Far Eastern Siberia.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We certainly did not go home till morning that day. For that matter, I

-      don't think you are supposed to cross the river at night, not ordinary

-      folk, Customs officials may have special privileges. At any rate I came

-      back to my bunk on the steamer and an anxious little dog just as the day

-      was breaking, and next day I crossed to Sakalin and stayed with the

-      Barentzens.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Russians then took so much trouble to keep the Chinese on their own

-      side of the river that the Russian officers and civil servants, much to

-      the chagrin of their wives, were nowhere in the province allowed to have

-      Chinese servants. The fee for a passport had been raised to, I think,

-      twelve roubles, so it was no longer worth a Chinaman's while to get one to

-      hawk a basket of vegetables, and the mines on the Zeya, a tributary of the

-      Amur on the Russian side, had fallen off in their yield because cheap

-      labour was no longer possible. The people who did get passports were the

-      Chinese prostitutes, though a Chinese woman has not a separate identity in

-      China and is not allowed a passport of her own. However, there are ways of

-      getting over that. A man applied for a passport and it was granted him. He

-      handed it over to the woman for a consideration, and on the other side any

-      Chinese document was, as a rule, all one to the Russian official.

-      Remembering my own experience and how I had difficulty in deciding between

-      my passport and my agreement with my muleteers, I could quite believe this

-      story.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Blagoveschensk is a regular frontier town and, according to Mr Barentzen,

-      is unsafe. On the first occasion that I crossed the river with him I

-      produced a hundred-rouble note. Almost before I had laid it down it was

-      snatched up by the Chinese Commissioner of Customs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo; said he, and he crumpled up the note in his hand and held

-      out for my acceptance a rouble. I tried to explain that not having change,

-      and finding it a little awkward, I thought that this would be a good

-      opportunity to get it, as I felt sure the man at receipt of custom must

-      have plenty.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I dare say,&rdquo; said my host sarcastically. &ldquo;I don't want to take away

-      anybody's character, but I'll venture to say there are at least ten men

-      within hail&rdquo;&mdash;there was a crowd round&mdash;&ldquo;who would joyfully cut

-      your throat for ten roubles.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He enlarged upon that theme later. We used to sit out on the balcony of

-      his house looking out, not over the river, but over the town of Sakalin,

-      and there used to come in the men from the B.A.T. Factory, a Russian in

-      top-boots who spoke excellent English and a young American named Hyde.

-      They told me tales, well, something like the stories I used to listen to

-      in my childhood's days when we talked about &ldquo;the breaking out of the gold&rdquo;

-       in Australia, tales of men who had washed much gold and then were lured

-      away and murdered for their riches. Certainly they did not consider

-      Blagoveschensk or Sakalin towns in which a woman could safely wander. In

-      fact all the Siberian towns that they knew came under the ban.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But of course mostly we talked about the war and how maddening it was only

-      to get scraps of news through the telegraph. The young American was keen,

-      I remember. I wonder if he really had patience to wait till his country

-      came in. He talked then in the first week of the war of making his way

-      back to Canada and seeing if he could enlist there, for even then we felt

-      sure that the Outer Dominions would want to help the Motherland. And the

-      Germans were round Liège&mdash;would they take it? Association is a

-      curious thing. Whenever I hear of Liège I cannot help thinking, not of the

-      Belgian city, but of a comfortable seat on a balcony with the shadows

-      falling and the lights coming out one by one on the bath-houses that are

-      dotted about a little town on the very outskirts of the Chinese Empire&mdash;the

-      lights of the town. There are the sounds and the smells of the Chinese

-      town mingling with the voices of the talkers and the fragrance of the

-      coffee, and the air is close with the warmth of August. There comes back

-      to me the remembrance of the keen young American who wanted to fight

-      Germany and the young Russian in top-boots who was very much afraid he

-      would only be used to guard German prisoners.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sakalin was cosmopolitan, but it had a leaning toward Russia, hence the

-      bath-houses, an idea foreign to Chinese civilisation; and when I got a

-      piece of grit in my eye which refused to come out it was to a Japanese

-      doctor I went, accompanied by my host's Chinese servant, who, having had

-      the trouble stated by me in English, explained it to another man in

-      Chinese, who in his turn told the doctor what was the matter in Russian.

-      Luckily that man of medicine was very deft and I expect he could have

-      managed very well without any explanation at all. I have the greatest

-      respect for the Japanese leech I visited in Sakalin.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      On the Sunday we had a big picnic. The Russian Boundary Commissioner came

-      across with his wife and little girls, Mrs Barentzen took her little girl

-      and the Chinese Tao Tai lent us the light of his countenance. He was the

-      feature of the entertainment, for he was a very big man, both literally

-      and socially, and could not move without a large following, so that an

-      escort of mounted police took charge of us. The proper portly Chinaman of

-      whom this retinue was in honour spoke no English, but smiled at me

-      benevolently, and wore a petticoat and a Russian military cap! The picnic

-      was by a little brook about seven miles from the town and I shall always

-      remember it because of the lush grass, waist-high, and the lovely flowers.

-      I had looked at the Siberian flowers from the steamer when they were

-      ungetatable, I had gathered them with joy in Saghalien, and now here they

-      were again just to my hand. In June they told me there were abundant

-      lilies of the valley, and I regretted I had not been there in June. Truly

-      I feel it would be a delight to see lilies of the valley growing wild, but

-      as it was, the flowers were beautiful enough, and there were heaps of

-      them. There were very fine Canterbury bells, a glorious violet flower and

-      magnificent white poppies. Never have I gathered more lovely flowers,

-      never before have I seen them growing wild in such amazing abundance. No

-      one is more truly artistic than the average Chinese, and I think the Tao

-      Tai must have enjoyed himself, though it is against the canons of good

-      taste in China to look about you.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Presently I was asking the chief magistrate's good offices for Buchanan,

-      for he, my treasured Buchanan, was lost. In the Barentzens' house there

-      was, of course, as in all well-regulated Chinese houses run by foreigners,

-      a bathroom attached to every bedroom, and when I wanted a bath the

-      servants filled with warm water the half of a large barrel, which made a

-      very excellent bath-tub. And having bathed myself, I bathed Buchanan,

-      whose white coat got very dirty in the dusty Chinese streets. He ran away

-      downstairs and I lingered for a moment to put on my dress, and when I came

-      down he was gone. High and low I hunted; I went up and down the street

-      calling his name, and I knew he would have answered, he always did, had he

-      been within hearing. All the Customs men were turned out and I went to the

-      Chinese Tao Tai, who promptly put on all the police. But Buchanan was gone

-      for a night and I was in despair. Mr Barentzen's head boy shook his head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Master saying,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;mus' get back that dog.&rdquo; So I realised I was

-      making a fuss, but for the moment I did not care. The Tao Tai gave it as

-      his opinion that he had not been stolen. There were many little dogs like

-      him in the town, said he, no one would steal one, which only shows a

-      Chinese magistrate may not be infallible, for I was sure Buchanan would

-      not stay away from me of his own free will.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then at last the servants turned up triumphant, Buchanan, in the arms

-      of the head boy, wild with delight at seeing his mistress again. The

-      police had searched everywhere, but the servants, with their master's

-      injunction in mind and my reward to be earned, had made further inquiries

-      and found that a little boy had been seen taking the dog into a certain

-      house occupied by an official, the man who was responsible for the

-      cleaning of the streets. This was the first intimation I ever had that the

-      Chinese did clean their streets: I had thought that they left that job to

-      the &ldquo;wonks&rdquo; and the scavenger crows. The police made inquiries. No, there

-      was no little dog there. But the servants&mdash;wise Chinese servants&mdash;made

-      friends with the people round, and they said: &ldquo;Watch. There is a dog.&rdquo; So

-      a junior servant was put to watch, and when the gate of the compound was

-      opened he stole in, and there was poor little James Buchanan tied up to a

-      post. That servant seized the dog and fled home in triumph.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The T'ai T'ai (the official's wife), said the people round, had wanted the

-      pretty little dog.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was so delighted to get my little friend back that I should have been

-      content to leave things there. Not so Mr Barentzen. He sent for that

-      official, and there in his drawing-room he and I interviewed a portly

-      Chinese gentleman in grey petticoats, a long pigtail, a little black silk

-      cap and the tips of the silver shields that encased the long nails of his

-      little fingers just showing beyond his voluminous sleeves.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;An officious servant,&rdquo; he said. He was extremely sorry the Commissioner

-      of Customs and his friend had been put to so much inconvenience. The

-      servant had already been dismissed. And so we bowed him out, face was

-      saved, and all parties were satisfied. It was very Chinese. And yet we

-      knew, and we knew that he must have known we knew, that it was really his

-      wife who received the little dog that everyone concerned must have

-      realised was valuable and must have been stolen.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Here in Sakai in I heard about the doings of the only wolves that came

-      into my wanderings. In the little river harbour were many small steamers

-      flying the Russian flag and loading great barrels with the ends painted

-      bright red. These barrels, explained the Customs Commissioner, contained

-      spirits which the Russians were desirous of smuggling into Russian

-      territory. The Chinese had not the least objection to their leaving China

-      after they had paid export duty. They were taken up and down the river and

-      finally landed at some small port whence they were smuggled across. The

-      trade was a very big one. The men engaged in it were known as the wolves

-      of the Amur and were usually Caucasians and Jews. In 1913, the last year

-      of which I have statistics, no less than twenty-five thousand pounds

-      export was paid on these spirits, and in the years before it used to be

-      greater. I wonder whether with the relaxing of discipline consequent on

-      the war and the revolution the receipts for the export have not gone up.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The wide river was beautiful here, and Blagovesehensk, lying across the

-      water, with its spires and domes, all the outlines softened, standing

-      against the evening sky, might have been some town of pictured Italy. I am

-      glad I have seen it. I dare not expiate on Mr Barentzen's kindness. My

-      drastic critic, drastic and so invaluable, says that I have already

-      overloaded this book with tales of people's kindness, so I can only say I

-      stayed there a week and then took passage on the smaller steamer which was

-      bound up the Amur and the Shilka to Stretensk and the railway.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I had, however, one regret. I had inadvertently taken my plates and films

-      on which I had all my pictures of the Amur and Saghalien across the

-      Sakalin and I could not take them back again. The Russian rule was very

-      strict. No photographs were allowed. Everything crossing the river must be

-      examined. Now to examine my undeveloped films and plates would be to ruin

-      them. I interviewed a Japanese photographer on the Sakalin side, but he

-      appeared to be a very tyro in the art of developing, and finally very

-      reluctantly I decided to leave them for Mr Barentzen to send home when he

-      got the chance. He did not get that chance till the middle of 1916, and I

-      regret to state that when we came to develop them every single one of them

-      was ruined.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The steamer that I embarked on now was considerably smaller, for the river

-      was narrowing. The deck that ran round the cabins was only thirty inches

-      wide and crowded with children; worse, when James Buchanan and I went for

-      our daily promenades we found the way disputed by women, mothers, or

-      nursemaids, I know not whieh, propelling the children who could not walk

-      in wheeled chairs, and they thought Buchanan had been brought there for

-      their special benefit, a view which the gentleman himself did not share.

-      However, he was my only means of communication with them, for they had no

-      English or French.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I was lucky, for one of the mates, brass-bound and in spotless white,

-      like so many Russians had served in British ships and spoke English very

-      well with a slight Scots accent. With him I used to hold daily

-      conversations and always we discussed the war. But he shook his head over

-      it. It was not possible to get much news at the little wayside places at

-      which we stopped. There were no papers&mdash;the Russian peasant under the

-      beneficent rule of the Tsar was not encouraged to learn to read&mdash;and

-      for his part he, the mate, put no faith in the telegrams. All would be

-      well, of course, but we must wait till we came to some large and

-      influential place for news upon which we could rely.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But that large and influential place was long in coming, in fact I may say

-      it never materialised while I was on the river. There are at least eleven

-      towns marked on the way between Blagoveschensk and Stretensk, but even the

-      town at the junction where the Aigun and the Shilka merge into the Amur is

-      but a tiny frontier village, and the rest as I know the river banks are

-      only a few log huts inhabited by peasants who apparently keep guard over

-      and supply the stacks of wood needed by the steamers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a lovely river now going north, north and then west, or rather we

-      went north, the river flowed the other way, it was narrower and wound

-      between wooded hills and it was very lonely. There were occasional, very

-      occasional, little settlements, on the Chinese side I do not remember even

-      a hut, though it was a lovely green land and the river, clear as crystal,

-      reflected on its breast the trees and rocks among which we made our way.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Once on the Russian side we landed from a boat a woman with two little

-      children and innumerable bundles. They had been down, I suppose, to visit

-      the centre of civilisation at Blagoveschensk and now were coming home. In

-      the dusk of the evening we left her there looking down thoughtfully at her

-      encumbrances, not a living creature in sight, not a sign of man's

-      handiwork anywhere. I hoped there were no tigers about, but she has always

-      lived in my memory as an unfinished story. I suppose we all of us have

-      those unfinished stories in our lives, not stories left unfinished because

-      they are so long drawn out we could not possibly wait for developments,

-      but stories that must finish suddenly, only we are withdrawn. Once I

-      looked from a railway carriage window in the Midlands and I saw a bull

-      chasing a woman; she was running, screaming for all she was worth, for a

-      fence, but whether she reached it or not I have no means of knowing.

-      Another time I saw also from a railway carriage window two men, mother

-      naked, chasing each other across the greensward and left them there

-      because the train went on. Of course I have often enough seen men without

-      clothes in the tropics, but in the heart of England they are out of the

-      picture and want explaining. That explanation I shall never get. Nor is it

-      likely I shall ever know whether that unknown woman and her little

-      children ever reached their unknown home.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We were luxuriously fed upon that little steamer. The Russian tea with

-      lemon and the bread and butter were delicious, and we had plenty of cream,

-      though gone was the red caviare that farther east had been so common. But

-      I was tired and at last feeling lonely. I began to count the days till I

-      should reach home.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      On the Amur the weather had been gorgeous, but when we entered the Shilka

-      we were north of 53° again and well into the mountains, and the next

-      morning I awoke to a grey day. It rained and it rained, not tropical rain,

-      but soft, penetrating rain; the fir-clad hills on either side were veiled

-      in a silvery mist. The river wound so that as we looked ahead we seemed to

-      be sailing straight into the hills. The way looked blocked with hills,

-      sometimes all mist-covered, sometimes with the green showing alluringly

-      through the mist, and occasionally, when the mist lifted and the sun came

-      out, in all the gullies would linger little grey cloudlets, as if caught

-      before they could get away and waiting there screened by the hills till

-      the mist should fall again. Occasionally there were lonely houses, still

-      more occasionally little settlements of log huts with painted windows

-      hermetically sealed, and once or twice a field of corn ripe for the

-      harvest but drowned by the persistent rain. But the air was soft and

-      delicious, divine; only in the cabins on board the crowded steamer was it

-      pestilential. The mate told me how, six weeks before, on his last trip up,

-      an Englishman had come selling reapers and binders, and he thought that

-      now I had made my appearance the English were rather crowding the Amur.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sometimes when we stopped the passengers went ashore and went berrying,

-      returning with great branches laden with fruit, and I and Buchanan too

-      walked a little way, keeping the steamer 'well in sight, and rejoicing in

-      the flowers and the green and the rich, fresh smell of moist earth. I do

-      not know that ever in my life do I remember enjoying rain so much. Of

-      course in my youth in Australia I had always welcomed the life-giving

-      rain, but thirteen years in England, where I yearned for the sunshine, had

-      somehow dimmed those memories, and now once again the rain on the river

-      brought me joy. The mist was a thing of beauty, and when a ray of sunshine

-      found its way into a green, mist-veiled valley, illuminating its lovely

-      loneliness, then indeed I knew that the earth was the Lord's and the

-      fullness thereof.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sometimes we passed rafts upon the river. They were logs bound together in

-      great parallelograms and worked with twelve long sweeps fixed at each end.

-      Twelve men at least went to each raft, and there were small houses built

-      of grass and canvas and wood. They were taking the wood down to

-      Nikolayeusk to be shipped to Shanghai and other parts of the world for

-      furniture, for these great forests of birch and elm and fir and oak must

-      be a mine of wealth to their owners. I do not know whether the wood is cut

-      on any system, and whether the presence of these great rafts had anything

-      to do with the many dead trees I saw in the forests, their white stems

-      standing up ghostlike against the green hill-side.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I have no record of these lovely places. My camera was locked away now in

-      my suit-case, for it was war, and Russia, rightly, would allow no

-      photographs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Seven days after we left Blagoveschensk we reached Stretensk and I came in

-      contact for the first time with the World's War.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XIV&mdash;MOBILISING IN EASTERN SIBERIA

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t Stretensk I

-      awakened to the fact that I was actually in Siberia, nay, that I had

-      travelled over about two thousand miles of Siberia, that dark and gloomy

-      land across which&mdash;I believed in my youth&mdash;tramped long lines of

-      prisoners in chains, sometimes amidst the snow and ice of a bitter winter,

-      sometimes with the fierce sun beating down upon them, but always hopeless,

-      always hungry, weary, heartbroken, a sacrifice to the desire for political

-      liberty that was implanted in the hearts of an enslaved people.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It is an extraordinary thing that, though for many years I had believed

-      Saghalien was a terrible island, a sort of inferno for political

-      prisoners, something like Van Diemen's Land used to be in the old convict

-      days one hundred and ten years ago, only that in the Asiatic island the

-      conditions were still more cruel and it was hopeless to think of escaping,

-      while I was actually in that beautiful island I was so taken up with its

-      charm, it was so extremely unlike the place of which I had a picture in my

-      mind's eye, that I hardly connected the two. All up the Amur river was a

-      new land, a land crying out for pioneers, pastoralists and farmers, so

-      that the thought that was uppermost in my mind was of the contrast between

-      it and the old land of China, where I had spent so long a time; but at

-      Stretensk I suddenly remembered this was Siberia, the very heart of

-      Siberia, where men had suffered unutterable things, might still be so

-      suffering for all I knew, and I stepped off the steamer and prepared to

-      explore, with a feeling that at any moment I might come across the heavy

-      logs that made up the walls of a prison, might see the armed sentries,

-      clad to the eyes in furs, who tramped amidst the snow. But this was August

-      and it was fiercely hot, so the snow and the sentries clad in furs were

-      ruled out, and presently as Buchanan and I walked about the town even the

-      lonely prison built of logs had to go too. There may have been a prison,

-      probably there was, but it did not dominate the picture. Not here should I

-      find the Siberia I had been familiar with from my youth up.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Stretensk is like all other Siberian towns that I have seen. The houses

-      are mostly of one storey and of wood, of logs; the streets are wide and

-      straight, cutting each other at right angles, and the whole is flung out

-      upon the plain; it is really, I think, rather high among the mountains,

-      but you do not get the sensation of hills as you do from the steamer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The rain had cleared away and it was very hot, though we had started out

-      very early because I was determined to go west if possible that very

-      afternoon; We went gingerly because the dangers of Siberian towns for one

-      who looked fairly prosperous had been impressed upon me at Blagoveschensk,

-      and I hesitated about going far from the steamer, where the mate could

-      speak English. Still we went. I was not going to miss the Siberia of my

-      dreams if I could help it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I saw something more wonderful than the Siberia of my dreams.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In consequence of the ceaseless rain the roads between the log-houses with

-      their painted windows were knee-deep in mud, a quagmire that looked

-      impassable. In the air was the sound of martial music, and up and down in

-      what would have been reckless fashion but for the restraining glue-like

-      mud galloped officers and their orderlies. It was the war, the first I had

-      seen of it. The war was taking the place of the political exiles, and

-      instead of seeing Siberia as a background for the exiles as I had dreamed

-      of it for so many years, I saw it busy with preparations for war. The

-      roads were like sloughs out of which it would have been impossible to get

-      had I ever ventured in. Naturally I did not venture, but took all sorts of

-      long rounds to get to the places I wanted to reach. It is not a bad way of

-      seeing a town.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The heavily built houses, built to defy the Siberian winter, might have

-      come out of Nikolayeusk or Kharbarosvk, and though the sun poured down out

-      of a cloudless sky, and I was gasping in a thin Shantung silk, they were

-      hermetically sealed, and the cotton wool between the double windows was

-      decorated with the usual gay ribbons. I dare say they were cool enough

-      inside, but they must have been intolerably stuffy. The sidewalks too had

-      dried quickly in the fierce sunshine. They were the usual Siberian

-      sidewalks, with long lines of planks like flooring. Had they ever been

-      trodden, I wonder, by the forced emigrant looking with hopeless longing

-      back to the West. Finally we wandered into the gardens, where I doubt not,

-      judging by the little tables and many seats, there was the usual gay

-      throng at night, but now early in the morning everything looked

-      dishevelled, and I could not find anyone to supply me with the cool drink

-      of which I stood so badly in need, and at last we made our way back to the

-      steamer, where the mate, having got over the struggle of arrival&mdash;for

-      this was the farthest the steamer went&mdash;kindly found time enough to

-      give himself to my affairs. I wanted a droshky to take me to the train,

-      and as nowhere about had I seen any signs of a railway station I wanted to

-      know where it was.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The mate laughed and pointed far away down the river on the other side. I

-      really ought to have known my Siberia better by now. Railways are not

-      constructed for the convenience of the townsfolk. There was nothing else

-      for it. I had to get there somehow, and as the train left somewhere

-      between five and six, about noon, with the mate's assistance, I engaged a

-      droshky. The carriages that are doing a last stage in this country are not

-      quite so elderly here as they are in Saghalien, but that is not saying

-      much for them. The one the mate engaged for me had a sturdy little

-      ungroomed horse in the shafts and another running in a trace alongside. On

-      the seat was packed all my baggage, two small suit-cases and a large

-      canvas sack into which I dumped rugs, cushions and all odds and ends,

-      including my precious kettles, and the rough little unkempt horses towed

-      us down through the sea of mud to the ferry, and then I saw the scene had

-      indeed shifted. It was not long lines of exiles bearing chains I met, that

-      was all in the past, at least for an outsider like me, but here in the

-      heart of Asia Russia in her might was collecting her forces for a spring.

-      The great flat ferry was crossing and recrossing, and down the swamp that

-      courtesy called a road came endless streams of square khaki-coloured

-      carts, driven by men in flat caps and belted khaki blouses, big fair men,

-      often giants with red, sun-tanned faces and lint-white hair, men who

-      shouted and laughed and sang and threw up their caps, who were sober as

-      judges and yet were wild with excitement; they were going to the war. I

-      could not understand one word they said, but there is no mistaking

-      gladness, and these men were delighted with their lot. I wondered was it a

-      case of the prisoner freed or was it that life under the old regime in a

-      Russian village was dull to monotony and to these recruits was coming the

-      chance of their lifetime.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Some will never come east again, never whether in love or hate will they

-      see the steppes and the flowers and the golden sunshine and the snow of

-      Siberia, they have left their bones on those battle-fields; but some, I

-      hope, will live to see the regeneration of Russia, when every man shall

-      have a chance of freedom and happiness. I suppose this revolution was in

-      the air as cart after cart drove on to the ferry and the men yelled and

-      shouted in their excitement. A small company of men who were going east

-      looked at them tolerantly&mdash;I'm sure it was tolerantly&mdash;and then

-      they too caught the infection and yelled in chorus.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I watched it all with interest.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then half-an-hour passed and still they came; an hour, and I grew a little

-      worried, for they were still pouring over. Two hours&mdash;I comforted

-      myself, the train did not start till late in the afternoon&mdash;three

-      horns, and there was no cessation in the stream. And of course I could

-      make no one understand. It looked as if I might wait here all night. At

-      last a man who was manifestly an officer came galloping along and him I

-      addressed in French.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Is it possible to cross on the ferry?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He was very courteous.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It is not possible to cross, Madame. It is not possible. The soldiers

-      come first.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I took another look at the good-humoured, strapping, fair-haired soldiers

-      in khaki, with their khaki-coloured carts. The ferry crossing was laden

-      with them, hundreds of others were waiting, among them numbers of country

-      people. They had bundles and laden baskets and looked people who had

-      shopped and wanted to go home again. Were these exiles? I did not know.

-      They looked simple peasants. Whoever they were, there did not seem much

-      chance for them or me, and I said the one Russian word I knew, &ldquo;steamer,&rdquo;

-       and indicated that I wanted to go back there. Much as I wanted to go home,

-      tired as I was of travelling, I decided I would postpone my railway

-      journey for a day and take advantage of that comfortable Russian custom

-      that allows you to live on a steamer for two days while she is in port.

-      The <i>ishvornik</i> nodded, back we went helter-skelter to the wharf and&mdash;the

-      steamer was gone!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I have had some bad moments in my life, but that one stands out still.

-      Why, I hardly know, for sitting here in my garden it does not seem a very

-      terrible thing. I had plenty of money in my pocket and there were hotels

-      in the town. But no! more than ever, safe here in Kent, do I dread a

-      Siberian hotel! Then I was distinctly afraid. I might so easily have

-      disappeared and no one would have asked questions for months to come. I

-      tried to tell the boy I wanted to go to one of those dreaded hotels&mdash;I

-      felt I would have to risk it, for I certainly could not spend the night in

-      a droshky&mdash;and I could not make him understand. Perhaps, as in

-      Saghalien, there were no hotels to accommodate a woman of my class, or

-      perhaps, as is most probable, they were all full of soldiers, anyhow he

-      only looked at me blankly, and Buchanan and I looked at each other.

-      Buchanan anyhow had no fears. He was quite sure I could take care of him.

-      I looked at the boy again and then, as if he had suddenly had an

-      inspiration, he drove me back to the place opposite the ferry whence we

-      had come. The soldiers were there still, crowds and crowds of them, with

-      their little carts and horses, and they were amusing themselves by

-      stealing each other's fodder; the ferry had come back, but there were no

-      soldiers on it, only the country people were crowding down. I had been

-      forbidden to go upon it, and never should I have dreamt of disobeying

-      orders, but my driver had different views. He waited till no officer was

-      looking, seized my baggage and flung it down on the great ferry right in

-      front of the military stores, beside the refreshment stall where they were

-      selling sausages and bread in round rings such as peasants eat, and tea

-      and lemonade. I had not expected to find so commonplace a thing on a river

-      in Siberia. Now I had sat in that dilapidated carriage for over four hours

-      and I was weary to death, also I could not afford to be parted from my

-      luggage, so I put Buchanan under my arm&mdash;it was too muddy for him to

-      walk&mdash;and followed as fast as I could. My good angel prompted me to

-      pay that driver well. I paid him twice what the mate had said it ought to

-      cost me if I waited half-a-day, and never have I laid out money to better

-      advantage. He turned to a big man who was standing by, a man in sea-boots,

-      a red belted blouse and the tall black Astrakhan cap that I have always

-      associated in my own mind 'with Circassians, and spoke to him, saying

-      &ldquo;Anglisky.&rdquo; Evidently he said it might be worth his while to look after

-      me. I don't know whether this gentleman was a Caucasian, one of the

-      &ldquo;wolves of the Amur,&rdquo; but whoever he was, he was a very hefty and capable

-      individual, with a very clear idea of what a foreign lady ought to do, and

-      he promptly constituted himself my guardian.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After all, the world, take it on the whole, is a very kindly, honest

-      place. So many times have I been stranded when I might quite easily have

-      been stripped of everything, and always some good Samaritan has come to my

-      aid, and the reward, though I did my best, has never been commensurate

-      with the services rendered.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The ferry across the Shilka at Stretensk is a great affair, like a young

-      paddock afloat, and beside the horses and carts upon it were a number of

-      country people with their bundles. I sat there a little uncomfortably

-      because I did not know what would happen, only I was determined not to be

-      parted from my baggage. Presently the huge float drifted off, amidst wild

-      shouts and yells. When I was there, a great deal in Russia was done to the

-      accompaniment of much shouting, and I rather fancy that this ferry was

-      going off on an unauthorised jaunt of its own. The Shilka is a broad river

-      here, a fortnight's steamer journey from its mouth, but the ferry came to

-      a full stop in the middle of the stream and a motor boat which did not

-      look as if it could hold half the people came alongside.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Skurry! Skurry!&rdquo; was the cry, and the people began leaping overboard into

-      the boat. The military were getting rid summarily of their civilian crowd.

-      In a few seconds that boat was packed to the gunwales and I was looking

-      over at it. I had Buchanan under my arm; he was always a good little dog

-      at critical moments, understanding it was his part to keep quiet and give

-      as little trouble as possible. In my other hand I had my despatch-case,

-      and, being anything but acrobatic by temperament, I felt it was hopeless

-      to think of getting into it. If the penalty for not doing so had been

-      death, I do not think I could have managed it. However, I didn't have a

-      say in the matter. The big Russian in the red blouse picked me up and

-      dropped me, little dog, box and all, into the boat, right on top of the

-      people already there. First I was on top, and then, still hanging on to my

-      little dog, I slipped down a little, but my feet found no foothold; I was

-      wedged between the screaming people. After me, with my luggage on his

-      shoulder, came my guardian, and he somehow seemed to find a very

-      precarious foothold on the gunwale, and he made me understand he wanted

-      two roubles for our fares. If he had asked for ten he would have got it,

-      but how I managed to get at my money to this day I do not know. The boat

-      rocked and swayed in a most alarming manner, and I thought to myself,

-      Well, we are on top now, but presently the boat will upset and then we

-      shall certainly be underneath. I gathered that the passengers were

-      disputing with the boatman as to the price to be paid for the passage

-      across, though this was unwise, for the ferry was threatening momentarily

-      to crush us against the rocky bank. He was asking sixty kopecks&mdash;a

-      little over a shilling&mdash;and with one voice they declared that forty

-      was enough. Considering the crowd, forty I should have thought would have

-      paid him excellently. That I had given my guardian more did not trouble

-      me, because any extra he earned was more than justified, for one thing was

-      certain, I could never have tackled the job by myself.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Just as I was growing desperate and Buchanan began to mention that he was

-      on the verge of suffocation the difficulty of the fares was settled and we

-      made for the bank. But we did not go to the usual landing-stage; that, I

-      presume, was forbidden as sacred to the soldiers, and we drew up against a

-      steep, high bank faced with granite.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Skurry! Skurry!&rdquo; And more than ever was haste necessary, for it looked as

-      if the great ferry would certainly crush us. The people began scrambling

-      up. But I was helpless. Whatever happened, I knew I could never climb that

-      wall. I could only clutch my little dog and await events. My guardian was

-      quite equal to the situation. The boat had cleared a little and there was

-      room to move, and, dropping the baggage, he picked me up like a baby and

-      tossed me, dog and all, up on to the bank above. Whether that boat got

-      clear away from the ferry I do not know. When I visited the place next

-      morning there were no remains, so I presume she did, but at the time I was

-      giving all my attention to catching a train.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My guardian engaged a boy to carry the lighter baggage, and shouldering

-      the rest himself, he took me by the arm and fairly raeed me up the steep

-      incline to the railway station that was a seething mass of khaki-clad men.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Billet! Billet!&rdquo; said he, raping the sweat from his streaming face and

-      making a way for me among the thronging recruits. There was a train coming

-      in and he evidently intended I should catch it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Such a crowd it was, and in the railway station confusion was worse

-      confounded. It was packed with people&mdash;people of the poorer class&mdash;and

-      with soldiers, and everyone was giving his opinion of things in general at

-      the top of his voice. My stalwart guardian elbowed a way to the

-      pigeon-hole, still crying, &ldquo;Billet! Billet!&rdquo; and I, seeing I wanted a

-      ticket to Petrograd, produced a hundred-rouble note. The man inside pushed

-      it away with contumely and declined it in various unknown tongues. I

-      offered it again, and again it was thrust rudely aside, my guardian

-      becoming vehement in his protests, though what he said I have not the

-      faintest idea. I offered it a third time, then a man standing beside me

-      whisked it away and whisked me away too.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Madame, are you mad?&rdquo; he asked, as Mr Barentzen had asked over a week

-      before, but he spoke in French, very Russian French. And then he proceeded

-      to explain volubly that all around were thieves, robbers and assassins&mdash;oh!

-      the land of suffering exiles&mdash;the mobilisation had called them up,

-      and any one of them would cut my throat for a good deal less than a

-      ten-pound note. And he promptly shoved the offending cash in his pocket.

-      It was the most high-handed proceeding I have ever taken part in, and I

-      looked at him in astonishment. He was a man in a green uniform, wearing a

-      military cap with pipings of white and magenta, and the white and magenta

-      were repeated on the coat and trousers. On the whole, the effect was

-      reassuring. A gentleman so attired was really too conspicuous to be

-      engaged in any very nefarious occupation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He proceeded to explain that by that train I could not go.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was reserved for the troops. They were turning out the people already

-      in it. This in a measure explained the bedlam in the station. The people

-      who did not want to be landed here and the people who wanted to get away

-      were comparing notes, and there were so many of them they had to do it at

-      the top of their voices.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;When does the next train go?&rdquo; I asked.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My new friend looked dubious. &ldquo;Possibly to-morrow night,&rdquo; said he. That

-      was cheering.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;And where is there a hotel?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He pointed across the river to Stretensk.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Are there none this side?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;No, Madame, not one.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I debated. Cross that river again after all it had cost me to get here I

-      could not.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;But where can I stay?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He looked round as if he were offering palatial quarters.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Here, Madame, here.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      In the railway station; there was nothing else for it; and in that railway

-      station I waited till the train came in the following evening.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That little matter settled, I turned to reward my first friend for his

-      efforts on my behalf, and I felt five roubles was little enough. My new

-      friend was very scornful, a rouble was ample, he considered. He had my

-      ten-pound note in his pocket, and I am afraid I was very conscious that he

-      had not yet proved himself, whereas the other man had done me yeoman's

-      service, and never have I parted with ten shillings with more

-      satisfaction. They were certainly earned.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After, I set myself to make the best of the situation. The station was

-      crowded with all sorts and conditions of people, and a forlorn crowd they

-      looked, and curious was the flotsam and jetsam that were their belongings.

-      Of course there was the usual travellers' baggage, but there were other

-      things too I did not expect to come across in a railway station in

-      Siberia. There was a sewing-machine; there was the trumpet part of a

-      gramophone; there was the back of a piano with all the wires showing;

-      there was a dressmaker's stand, the stuffed form of a woman, looking

-      forlorn and out of place among the bundles of the soldiers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But the people accepted it as all in the day's work, watched the soldiers

-      getting into the carriages from which they were debarred, and waved their

-      hands and cheered them, though the first train that started for anywhere

-      did not leave till one-fifteen a.m. next morning. They were content that

-      the soldiers should be served first. They settled themselves in little

-      companies on the open platform, in the refreshment-room, in the

-      waiting-rooms, fathers, mothers, children and dogs, and they solaced

-      themselves with kettles of tea, black bread and sausages.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was all so different from what I had expected, so very different, but

-      the first effect was to bring home to me forcibly the fact that there was

-      a great struggle going on in the West, and Eastern Siberia was being drawn

-      into the whirlpool, sending her best, whether they were the exiles of my

-      dreams or the thieves and robbers my newest friend had called them, to

-      help in the struggle! To wait a night and day in a railway station was

-      surely a little sacrifice to what some must make. How cheerfully and

-      patiently that Siberian crowd waited! There were no complaints, no moans,

-      only here and there a woman buried her head in her shawl and wept for her

-      nearest and dearest, gone to the war, gone out into the unknown, and she

-      might never see him again, might never even know what became of him. Truly

-      &ldquo;They also serve who only stand and wait.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I went into the refreshment-room to get some food, and had soup with sour

-      cream in it, and ate chicken and bread and butter and cucumber and drank

-      <i>kvass</i> as a change from the eternal tea. I watched the people on the

-      platform and as the shades of night fell began to wonder where I should

-      sleep. I would have chosen the platform, but it looked as if it might

-      rain, so I went into the ladies' waiting-room, dragged a seat across the

-      open window, and spread out my rugs and cushions and established myself

-      there. I wanted to have first right to that window, for the night up in

-      the hills here was chilly and I felt sure somebody would come in and want

-      to shut it. My intuitions were correct. Buchanan and I kept that open

-      window against a crowd. Everybody who came in&mdash;and the room was soon

-      packed&mdash;wanted to shut it. They stretched over me and I arose from my

-      slumbers and protested. For, in addition to a crowd, the sanitary

-      arrangements were abominable, and what the atmosphere would have been like

-      with the window shut I tremble to think. I remembered the tales of the

-      pestilential resthouses into which the travelling exiles had been thrust,

-      and I was thankful for that window, thankful too that it was summer-time,

-      for in winter I suppose we would have had to shut it. At last one woman

-      pulled at my rugs and said&mdash;though I could not understand her

-      language her meaning was plain enough&mdash;that it was all very well for

-      me, I had plenty of rugs, it was they who had nothing. It was a fair

-      complaint, so with many qualms I shared my rugs and the summer night

-      slowly wore to morning.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And morning brought its own difficulties. Russian washing arrangements to

-      me are always difficult. I had met them first in Kharbin in the house of

-      Mr Poland. I wrestled with the same thing in the house of the Chief of

-      Police in Saghalien, and I met it in an aggravated form here in the

-      railway station waiting-room. A Russian basin has not a plug&mdash;it is

-      supposed to be cleaner to wash in running water&mdash;and the tap is a

-      twirly affair with two spouts, and on pressing a little lever water gushes

-      out of both and, theoretically, you may direct it where you please.

-      Practically I found that while I was directing one stream of water down on

-      to my hands, the other hit me in the eye or the ear, and when I got that

-      right the first took advantage of inattention and deluged me round the

-      waist. It may be my inexperience, but I do not like Russian basins. It was

-      running water with a vengeance, it all ran away.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      However, I did the best I could, and after, as my face was a little rough

-      and sore from the hot sun of the day before, I took out a jar of hazeline

-      cream and began to rub it on my cheeks. This proceeding aroused intense

-      interest in the women around. What they imagined the cream was for I don't

-      know, but one and all they came and begged some, and as long as that pot

-      held out every woman within range had hazeline cream daubed on her

-      weather-beaten cheeks, and they omitted to rub it off, apparently

-      considering it ornamental. However, hazeline cream is a pleasant

-      preparation.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Having dressed, Buchanan and I had the long day before us, and I did not

-      dare leave the railway station to explore because I was uneasy about my

-      luggage. I had had it put in the corner of the refreshment-room and as far

-      as I could see no one was responsible for it, and as people were coming

-      and going the livelong day I felt bound to keep an eye upon it. I also

-      awaited with a good deal of interest the gentleman with the variegated

-      uniform and my ten-pound note. He came at last, and explained in French

-      that he had got the change but he could not give it to me till the train

-      came in because of the thieves and robbers, as if he would insist upon

-      tearing the veil of romance I had mapped round Siberia. And God forgive me

-      that I doubted the honesty of a very kindly, courteous gentleman.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a long, long day because there was really nothing to do save to

-      walk about for Buchanan's benefit, and I diversified things by taking odd

-      meals in the refreshment-room whenever I felt I really must do something.

-      But I was very tired. I began to feel I had been travelling too long, and

-      I really think if it had not been for Buchanan's sympathy I should have

-      wept. No one seemed at all certain when the next train west might be

-      expected, opinions, judging by fingers pointing at the clock, varying

-      between two o'clock in the afternoon and three o'clock next morning.

-      However, as the evening shadows were beginning to fall a train did come

-      in, and my friend in uniform, suddenly appearing, declared it was the

-      western train. Taking me by the hand, he led me into a carriage and,

-      shutting the door and drawing down the blinds, placed in my hands change

-      for my ten-pound note.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Guard your purse, Madame,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;guard your purse. There are thieves

-      and robbers everywhere!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      So all the way across Siberia had I been warned of the unsafe condition of

-      the country. At Kharbin, at Nikolayeusk, at Blagoveschensk men whose good

-      faith I could not doubt assured me that a ten-pound note and helplessness

-      was quite likely to spell a sudden and ignominious end to my career, and

-      this was in the days when no one doubted the power of the Tsar, a bitter

-      commentary surely on an autocracy. What the condition of Siberia must be

-      now, with rival factions fighting up and down the land, and released

-      German prisoners throwing the weight of their strength in with the

-      Bolshevists, I tremble to think.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When he made sure I had carefully hidden my money and thoroughly realised

-      the gravity of the situation, my friend offered to get my ticket, a

-      second-class ticket, he suggested. I demurred. I am not rich and am not

-      above saving my pennies, but a first-class ticket was so cheap, and

-      ensured so much more privacy, that a second-class was an economy I did not

-      feel inclined to make. He pointed round the carriage in which we were

-      seated. Was this not good enough for anyone? It was. I had to admit it,

-      and the argument was clinched by the fact that there was not a first-class

-      carriage on the train. The ticket only cost about five pounds and another

-      pound bought a ticket for Buchanan. We got in&mdash;my friend in need got

-      in with me, that misjudged friend; it seemed he was the stationmaster at a

-      little place a little way down the line&mdash;and we were fairly off on

-      our road to the West.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XV&mdash;ON A RUSSIAN MILITARY TRAIN

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was in the train

-      at last, fairly on my way home, and I was glad. But I wasn't glad for very

-      long. I began to wish myself back in the railway station at Stretensk,

-      where at least I had fresh air. At first I had the window open and a

-      corner seat. There are only two people on a seat in a Russian

-      long-distance train, because when night falls they let down the seat

-      above, which makes a bunk for the second person. But I was second class

-      and my compartment opened without a door into the other compartments in

-      the carriage, also two more bunks appeared crossways, and they were all

-      filled with people. We were four women, two men who smoked, a baby who

-      cried, and my little dog. I spread out my rugs and cushions, and when I

-      wanted the window open the majority were against me. Not only was the

-      window shut, but every ventilating arrangement was tightly closed also,

-      and presently the atmosphere was pestilential. I grew desperate. I

-      wandered out of the carriage and got on to the platform at the end, where

-      the cold wind&mdash;for all it was August&mdash;cut me like a knife. The

-      people objected to that cold wind coming in, and the next time I wandered

-      out for a breath of fresh air I found the door barred and no prayers of

-      mine would open it. In that carriage the people were packed like sardines,

-      but though I was three-quarters suffocated no one else seemed at all the

-      worse. I couldn't have looked at breakfast next morning, but the rest of

-      the company preened themselves and fed cheerfully from the baskets they

-      carried. Then at last I found a student going to a Western Siberian

-      university who spoke a little French and through him I told the

-      authorities that if I could not be transferred to a first-class carriage I

-      was to be left behind at the next station. I had spent a night in a

-      station and I knew all about it; it wasn't nice, but it was infinitely

-      preferable to a night in a crowded second-class carriage.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After a little while the train master came and with the aid of the student

-      informed me that there would be a first-class carriage a little farther on

-      and if there was room I should go in it, also we would know in an hour or

-      so.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So I bore up, and at a little town in the hills I was taken to a

-      first-class compartment. There were three&mdash;that is, six bunks&mdash;making

-      up half of a second-class carriage, and they were most luxurious, with

-      mirrors and washing arrangements complete. The one I entered was already

-      occupied by a very stout woman who, though we did not know any tongue in

-      common, made me understand she was going to a place we would reach next

-      morning for an operation, and she apologised&mdash;most unnecessarily but

-      most courteously&mdash;for making me take the top bunk. She had a big

-      Irish setter with her whom she called &ldquo;Box&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Anglisky,&rdquo; as she said&mdash;and

-      &ldquo;Box&rdquo; was by no means as courteous and friendly as his mistress, and not

-      only objected to Buchanan's presence but said so in no measured terms. I

-      had to keep my little dog up on the top bunk all the time, where he peered

-      over and whimpered protestingly at intervals. There was one drawback, and

-      so kind and hospitable was my stable companion that I hardly liked to

-      mention it, but the atmosphere in that compartment you could have cut with

-      a knife. Wildly I endeavoured to open the windows, and she looked at me in

-      astonishment. But I was so vehement that the student was once more brought

-      along to interpret, and then everybody took a turn at trying to open that

-      window. I must say I think it was exceedingly kind and hospitable of them,

-      for these people certainly shrank from the dangers of a draught quite as

-      much as I did from the stuffiness of a shut window. But it was all to no

-      purpose. That window had evidently never been opened since the carriage

-      was made and it held on gallantly to the position it had taken up. They

-      consulted together, and at length the student turned to me:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Calm yourself, Madame, calm yourself; a man will come with an

-      instrument.&rdquo; And three stations farther down the line a man did appear

-      with an instrument and opened that window, and I drew in deep breaths of

-      exceedingly dusty fresh air.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The lady in possession and I shared our breakfast. She made the tea, and

-      she also cleaned out the kettle by the simple process of emptying the tea

-      leaves into the wash-hand basin. That, as far as I saw, was the only use

-      she made of the excellent washing arrangements supplied by the railway.

-      But it is not for me to carp, she was so kind, and bravely stood dusty

-      wind blowing through the compartment all night just because I did not like

-      stuffiness. And when she was gone, O luxury! Buchanan and I had the

-      carriage to ourselves all the way to Irkutsk.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And this was Siberia. We were going West, slowly it is true, but with

-      wonderful swiftness I felt when I remembered&mdash;and how should I not

-      remember every moment of the time?&mdash;that this was the great and

-      sorrowful road along which the exiles used to march, that the summer sun

-      would scorch them, these great plains would be snow-covered and the

-      biting, bitter wind would freeze them long before they reached their

-      destination. I looked ahead into the West longingly; but I was going

-      there, would be there in less than a fortnight at the most, while their

-      reluctant feet had taken them slowly, the days stretched into weeks, the

-      weeks into months, and they were still tramping east into an exile that

-      for all they knew would be lifelong. Ah! but this road must have been

-      watered with blood and tears. Every river, whether they were ferried over

-      it or went across on the ice, must have seemed an added barrier to the man

-      or woman thinking of escape; every forest would mean for them either

-      shelter or danger, possibly both, for I had not forgotten the tigers of

-      the Amur and the bears and wolves that are farther west. And yet the

-      steppes, those hopeless plains, must have afforded still less chance of

-      escape.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Oh! my early ideas were right after all. Nature was jailer enough here in

-      Siberia. Men did escape, we know, but many more must have perished in the

-      attempt, and many, many must have resigned themselves to their bitter

-      fate, for surely all the forces of earth and air and sky had ranged

-      themselves on the side of the Tsar. This beautiful country, and men had

-      marched along it in chains!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Chita, greatly to my surprise, my <i>sotnik</i> of Cossacks joined the

-      train, and we greeted eaeh other as old friends. Indeed I was pleased to

-      see his smiling face again, and Buchanan benefited largely, for many a

-      time when I was not able to take him out for a little run our friend came

-      along and did it for us.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The platforms at Siberian stations are short and this troop train, packed

-      with soldiers, was long, so that many a time our carriage never drew up at

-      the platform at all. This meant that the carriage was usually five feet

-      from the ground, and often more. I am a little woman and five feet was all

-      I could manage, when it was more it was beyond me. Of course I could have

-      dropped down, but it would have been impossible to haul myself up again,

-      to say nothing of getting Buchanan on board. A Russian post train&mdash;and

-      this troop train was managed to all intents and purposes as a post train&mdash;stops

-      at stations along the line so that the passengers may get food, and five

-      minutes before it starts it rings a &ldquo;Make ready&rdquo; bell one minute before it

-      rings a second bell, &ldquo;Take your seats,&rdquo; and with a third bell off the

-      train goes. And it would have gone inexorably even though I, having

-      climbed down, had been unable to climb up again. Deeply grateful then were

-      Buehanan and I to the <i>sotnik</i> of Cossacks, who recognised our

-      limitations and never forgot us.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I liked these Russian post trains far better than the train <i>de luxe</i>,

-      with its crowd and its comforts and its cosmopolitan atmosphere. A Russian

-      post train in those days had an atmosphere of its own. It was also much

-      cheaper. From Stretensk to Petrograd, including Buehanan, the cost was a

-      little over nine pounds for the tickets, and I bought my food by the way.

-      It was excellent and very cheap. All the things I had bought in Kharbin,

-      especially the kettles, came into use once more. The moment the train

-      stopped out tumbled the soldiers, crowds and crowds of them, and raced for

-      the provision stalls and for the large boilers full of water that are a

-      feature of every Russian station on the overland line. These boilers are

-      always enclosed in a building just outside the railway station, and the

-      spouts for the boiling water, two, three and sometimes four in a row, come

-      out through the walls. Beside every spout is an iron handle which, being

-      pulled, brings the boiling water gushing out. Russia even in those days

-      before the revolution struck me as strangely democratic, for the soldiers,

-      the non-commissioned officers, the officers and everyone else on the train

-      mingled in the struggle for hot water. I could never have got mine filled,

-      but my Cossack friend always remembered me and if he did not come himself

-      sent someone to get my kettles. Indeed everyone vied in being kind to the

-      Englishwoman, to show, I think, their good will to the only representative

-      of the Allied nation on the train.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was at breakfast-time one warm morning I first made the acquaintance of

-      &ldquo;that very great officer,&rdquo; as the others called him, the captain of the <i>Askold</i>.

-      He was in full naval uniform, and at that time I was not accustomed to

-      seeing naval officers in uniform outside their ships, and he was racing

-      along the platform, a little teapot in one hand, intent on filling it with

-      hot water to make coffee. He was not ashamed to pause and come to the

-      assistance of a foreigner whom he considered the peasants were shamefully

-      overcharging. They actually wanted her to pay a farthing a piece for their

-      largest cucumbers! He spoke French and so we were able to communicate, and

-      he was kind enough to take an interest in me and declare that he himself

-      would provide me with cucumbers. He got me four large ones and when I

-      wanted to repay him he laughed and said it was hardly necessary as they

-      only cost a halfpenny! He had the compartment next to mine and that

-      morning he sent me in a glass of coffee&mdash;we didn't run to cups on

-      that train. Excellent coffee it was too. Indeed I was overwhelmed with

-      provisions. One woman does not want very much to eat, but unless I

-      supplied myself liberally and made it patent to all that I had enough and

-      more than enough I was sure to be supplied by my neighbours out of

-      friendship for my nation. From the Cossack officer, from a Hussar officer

-      and his wife who had come up from Ugra in Mongolia, and from the captain

-      of the <i>Askold</i> I was always receiving presents. Chickens, smoked

-      fish&mdash;very greasy, in a sheet of paper, eaten raw and very excellent&mdash;raspberries

-      and blue berries, to say nothing of cucumbers, were rained upon me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At some stations there was a buffet and little tables set about where the

-      first and second class passengers could sit down and have <i>déjeuner</i>,

-      or dinner, but oftener, especially in the East, we all dashed out, first,

-      second and third class, and at little stalls presided over by men with

-      kerchiefs on their heads and sturdy bare feet, women that were a joy to me

-      after the effete women of China, bought what we wanted, took it back with

-      us into the carriages and there ate it. I had all my table things in a

-      basket, including a little saucer for Buchanan. It was an exceedingly

-      economical arrangement, and I have seldom enjoyed food more. The bread and

-      butter was excellent. You could buy fine white bread, and bread of varying

-      quality to the coarse black bread eaten by the peasant, and I am bound to

-      say I very much like fine white bread. There was delicious cream; there

-      were raspberries and blue berries to be bought for a trifle; there were

-      lemons for the tea; there was German beet sugar; there were roast chickens

-      at sixpence apiece, little pasties very excellent for twopence-halfpenny,

-      and rapchicks, a delicious little bird a little larger than a partridge,

-      could be bought for fivepence, and sometimes there was plenty of honey.

-      Milk, if a bottle were provided, could be had for a penny-farthing a

-      quart, and my neighbours soon saw that I did not commit the extravagance

-      of paying three times as much for it, which was what it cost if you bought

-      the bottle.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The English, they said, were very rich! and they were confirmed in their

-      belief when they found how I bought milk. Hard-boiled eggs were to be had

-      in any quantity, two and sometimes three for a penny-farthing. I am

-      reckoning the kopeck as a farthing. These were first-class prices, the

-      soldiers bought much more cheaply. Enough meat to last a man a day could

-      be bought for a penny-farthing, and good meat too&mdash;such meat nowadays

-      I should pay at least five shillings for.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Was all this abundance because the exiles had tramped wearily across the

-      steppes? How much hand had they had in the settling of the country? I

-      asked myself the question many times, but nowhere found an answer. The

-      stations were generally crowded, but the country round was as empty as it

-      had been along the Amur.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And the train went steadily on. Very slowly though&mdash;we only went at

-      the rate of three hundred versts a day, why, I do not know. There we stuck

-      at platforms where there was nothing to do but walk up and down and look

-      at the parallel rails coming out of the East on the horizon and running

-      away into the West on the horizon again.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We shall never arrive,&rdquo; I said impatiently.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Ah! Madame, we arrive, we arrive,&rdquo; said the Hussar officer, and he spoke

-      a little sadly. And then I remembered that for him arrival meant parting

-      with his comely young wife and his little son. They had with them a

-      fox-terrier whom I used to ask into my compartment to play with Buchanan,

-      and they called him &ldquo;Sport.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;An English name,&rdquo; they said smilingly. If ever I have a fox-terrier I

-      shall call him &ldquo;Sport,&rdquo; in kindly remembrance of the owners of the little

-      friend I made on that long, long journey across the Old World. And the

-      Hussar officer's wife, I put it on record, liked fresh air as much as I

-      did myself. As I walked up and down the train, even though it was warm

-      summer weather, I always knew our two carriages because in spite of the

-      dust we had our windows open. The rest of the passengers shut theirs most

-      carefully. The second class were packed, and the third class were simply

-      on top of one another&mdash;I should not think they could have inserted

-      another baby&mdash;and the reek that came from the open doors and that

-      hung about the people that came out of them was disgusting.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I used to ask my Cossack friend to tea sometimes&mdash;I could always buy

-      cakes by the wayside&mdash;and he was the only person I ever met who took

-      salt with his tea. He assured me the Mongolians always did so, but I must

-      say though I have tried tea in many ways I don't like that custom.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In Kobdo, ten thousand feet among the mountains in the west of Mongolia,

-      was a great lama, and the Cossack was full of this man's prophecy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Three emperors, said the lama, would fight. One would be overwhelmed and

-      utterly destroyed, the other would lose immense sums of money, and the

-      third would have great glory.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The Tsar, Madame,&rdquo; said my friend, &ldquo;the Tsar, of course, is the third.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I wonder what part he took in the revolution. He was a Balt, a man from

-      the Baltic Provinces, heart and soul with the Poles, and he did not even

-      call himself a Russian. Well, the Tsar has been overwhelmed, but which is

-      the one who is to have great glory? After all, the present is no very

-      great time for kings and emperors. I am certainly not taking any stock in

-      them as a whole. Perhaps that lama meant the President of the United

-      States!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We went round Lake Baikal, and the Holy Sea, that I had seen before one

-      hard plain of glittering ice, lay glittering now, beautiful still in the

-      August sunshine. There were white sails on it and a steamer or two, and

-      men were feverishly working at alterations on the railway. The Angara ran

-      swiftly, a mighty river, and we steamed along it into the Irkutsk station,

-      which is by no means Irkutsk, for the town is&mdash;Russian fashion&mdash;four

-      miles away on the other side of the river.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Irkutsk it seemed to me we began to be faintly Western again. And the

-      exiles who had come so far I suppose abandoned hope here. All that they

-      loved&mdash;all their life&mdash;lay behind. I should have found it hard

-      to turn back and go east myself now. What must that facing east have been

-      for them?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They turned us out of the train, and Buchanan and I were ruefully

-      surveying our possessions, heaped upon the platform, wondering how on

-      earth we were to get them taken to the cloakroom and how we should get

-      them out again supposing they were taken, when the captain of the <i>Askold</i>

-      appeared with a porter.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Would Madame permit,&rdquo; he asked, not as if he were conferring a favour,

-      &ldquo;that her luggage be put with mine in the cloakroom?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Madame could have hugged him. Already the dusk was falling, the soft, warm

-      dusk, and the people were hastening to the town or to the

-      refreshment-rooms. There would be no train that night, said my kind

-      friend, some time in the morning perhaps, but certainly not that night. I

-      sighed. Again I was adrift, and it was not a comfortable feeling.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      If Madame desired to dine&mdash;&mdash; Madame did desire to dine.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then if Madame permits&mdash;&mdash; Of course Madame permitted.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      She was most grateful. And we dined together at the same table outside the

-      station restaurant&mdash;I like that fashion of dining outside&mdash;under

-      the brilliant glare of the electric light. He arranged everything for me,

-      even to getting some supper for Buchanan. And I forgot the exiles who had

-      haunted me, forgot this was Siberia. Here in the restaurant, save for the

-      Tartar waiters, it might almost have been France.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; said my companion courteously as we were having coffee, &ldquo;Madame

-      would care to come to my hotel. I could interpret for her and here no one

-      speaks anything but Russian.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Again I could have hugged him. I intimated my dressing-bag was in the

-      cloakroom, but he smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;For one night!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      He himself had nothing, so there and then we got into one of the usual

-      decrepit landaus and went to the town, to Irkutsk on the Angara, in the

-      heart of Siberia. If in my girlish days when I studied the atlas of the

-      world so carefully I could have known that one day I should be driving

-      into Irkutsk, that map would have been glorified for ever and a day; but I

-      could never have realised, never, that it would be set in a summer land,

-      warm as my own country, and that I should feel it a great step on towards

-      the civilisation of the West.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was night, and here and there clustering electric lights glittered like

-      diamonds, making darker the spaces in between. In the morning I saw that

-      the capital of Eastern Siberia, like all the other towns of that country,

-      is a regular frontier town. There were the same wide streets grass-grown

-      at the edges, great houses and small houses side by side, and empty spaces

-      where as yet there were no houses. We went to the Central Hotel.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I do not go to an expensive hotel,&rdquo; my companion told me, &ldquo;this is a

-      moderate one.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But if it were moderate it certainly was a very large and nice hotel.

-      Russian hotels do not as a rule provide food, the restaurant is generally

-      separate, but we had already dined. That naval officer made all

-      arrangements for me. He even explained to an astonished chamber-maid with

-      her hair done in two long plaits that I must have all the windows open and

-      when I tried for a bath did his best for me. But again, he explained,

-      Russians as a rule go to a bath-house, and there was only one bathroom in

-      this hotel; it had been engaged for two hours by a gentleman, and he

-      thought, seeing I should have to start early in the morning, it might be

-      rather late for me to have a bath then, but if I liked in the morning it

-      would be at my service.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      If anyone had told me in the old days that going to Irkutsk I should be

-      deeply interested in a bath!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I engaged that bath for an hour in the morning as that seemed to be the

-      correct thing to do. Then I went to bed and heartily envied Buchanan, who

-      did not have to bother about toilet arrangements.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the morning early there was a knock at the door and when I said &ldquo;Come

-      in,&rdquo; half expecting tea, there was my naval officer in full uniform

-      smilingly declaring my bath was ready, he had paid the bill, and I could

-      pay him back when we were on board the train. The chamber-maid, with her

-      hair still done in two plaits&mdash;I rather fancy she had slept in them&mdash;conducted

-      me to the bathroom, and I pass over the difficulty of doing without brush

-      and comb and tooth-brush. But I washed the dust out of my hair, and when I

-      was as tidy as I could manage I joined the captain of the <i>Askold</i>

-      and we drove back through the town to the railway station.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The station was a surging mass of people all talking at once, and all, I

-      suppose, objurgating the railway management, but we two had breakfast

-      together in the pleasant sunlight. We had fresh rolls and butter and

-      coffee and cream and honey&mdash;I ask no better breakfast when these

-      things are good&mdash;and meanwhile people, officials, came and went,

-      discussing evidently some important matter with my friend. He departed for

-      a moment, and then the others that I had known came up, my Cossack friend

-      and the Hussar officer, and told me that the outgoing train was a military

-      train, it would be impossible for a woman, a civilian and a foreigner at

-      that, to go on it. I said the captain of the <i>Askold</i> had assured me

-      I could, and they shook their heads and then said hopefully, well, he was

-      a very great officer, the captain of a ship, and I realised that no lesser

-      authority could possibly have managed this thing for me. And even he was

-      doubtful, for when he came back and resumed his interrupted breakfast he

-      said:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The train is full. The military authorities will not allow you on board.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      That really did seem to me tragedy at the moment. I forgot the sorrowful

-      people who would gladly enough have stayed their journey at Irkutsk. But

-      their faces were set East. I forgot that after all a day or two out of a

-      life would not matter very much, or rather I think I hated to part from

-      these kindly friends I had made on the train. I suppose I looked my

-      disappointment.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Wait. Wait. It is not yet finished,&rdquo; said my friend kindly. &ldquo;They give me

-      two compartments&rdquo;&mdash;I felt then he was indeed &ldquo;a very great officer,&rdquo;

-       for the people were packed in that train, tier upon tier, like herrings in

-      a barrel&mdash;&ldquo;and I cannot sleep in four bunks. It is ridiculous.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      That may have been, but it was kindness itself of him to establish a

-      stranger in one of those compartments. It was most comfortable, and

-      Buchanan and I being established, and my luggage having come safely to

-      hand, I proceeded to make the most of the brush and comb that had come

-      once more into my possession, and I felt that the world was a very good

-      place indeed as we sped across the green plain in the sunny morning. I

-      could hardly believe that this goodly land was the one to which I had

-      always been accustomed to think men went as to a living death.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then I forgot other folks' troubles in my own, for envious eyes were

-      cast upon the spare bunk in my compartment. No one would have dreamt of

-      interfering had the sailor insisted upon having all four for himself, but

-      since he had parted with the rights of one compartment to a foreign woman,

-      it was evident that other people, crowded out, began to think of their own

-      comfort. Various people interviewed me. I am afraid I understood

-      thoroughly what they wanted, but I did not understand Russian, and I made

-      the most of that disability. Also all my friends who spoke French kept out

-      of the way, so I suppose they did not wish to aid and abet in upsetting my

-      comfort. At last a most extraordinary individual with a handkerchief tied

-      round his neck in lieu of a collar and a little tourist cap on the back of

-      his head was brought, and he informed me in French that there was a doctor

-      in the hospital section of the train who had not been in bed for a week,

-      they could not turn the soldiers out, they must have rest, would I allow

-      him to sleep in my compartment?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; he said, and the officials standing round emphasised the remark,

-      if it needed emphasis, &ldquo;it is war time. The train is for the soldiers.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Certainly I was here on sufferance. They had a right to turn me out if

-      they liked. So the doctor came and turned in in the top bunk, and his

-      long-drawn snores took away from my sense of privacy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I don't think he liked it very much, for presently he was succeeded by a

-      train official, very drunk, though I am bound to say he was the only

-      drunken man I saw on all that long train journey from Stretensk to

-      Petrograd. It was a little unlucky we were at such close quarters.

-      Everyone, too, was very apologetic.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was a good fellow. It was an unfortunate accident and he would be very

-      much ashamed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I suppose he was, for the next day he too disappeared and his place was

-      taken by a professor from one of the Siberian universities who was seeking

-      radium. He was a nice old gentleman who had learned English but had never

-      had the chance of hearing it spoken. Where he went in the daytime I do not

-      know, probably to a friend's compartment, and Buchanan and I had the place

-      to ourselves. We could and did invite the Cossack officer and the Hussar

-      officer and his belongings and the naval man to tea, and we had great

-      games with the little fox-terrier &ldquo;Sport&rdquo; from next door, but when night

-      fell the professor turned up and notified me he was about to go to bed.

-      Then he retired and I went to bed first on the lower seat. He knocked,

-      came in and climbed up to his bunk, and we discoursed on the affairs of

-      the world, I correcting his curious pronunciation. He really was a man of

-      the world; he was the sort of man I had expected to meet in Siberia, only

-      I had never imagined him as free and sharing a railway compartment with

-      me. I should have expected to find him toiling across the plains with the

-      chains that bound his ankles hitched to his belt for convenience of

-      carrying. But he looked and he spoke as any other cultivated old gentleman

-      might have spoken, and looking back I see that his views of the war, given

-      in the end of August, 1914, were quite the soundest I have ever listened

-      to.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The Allies will win,&rdquo; he used to say, &ldquo;yes, they will win.&rdquo; And he shook

-      his head. &ldquo;But it will be a long war, and the place will be drenched in

-      blood first. Two years, three years, I think four years.&rdquo; I wonder if he

-      foresaw the chaos that would fall upon Russia.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      These views were very different from those held by the other men.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; the Cossack would say, laughing, &ldquo;do you know a good hotel in

-      Berlin?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I looked up surprised. &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;I engage a room there. We

-      go to Berlin!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Peace dictated at Berlin,&rdquo; said they all again and again, &ldquo;peace dictated

-      at Berlin.&rdquo; This was during the first onward rush of the Russians. Then

-      there came a setback, two towns were taken and the Germans demanded an

-      indemnity of twenty thousand pounds apiece.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said the Cossack grimly, and the Hussar nodded his head.

-      &ldquo;They have set the tune. Now we know what to ask.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But the professor looked grave. &ldquo;Many towns will fall,&rdquo; said he.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Another thing that struck me was the friendly relations of the officers

-      with those under them. As the only representative of their Western Ally on

-      the train, I was something of a curiosity, and soldiers and

-      non-commissioned officers liked to make excuse to look at me. I only

-      wished I had been a little smarter and better-looking for the sake of my

-      country, for I had had no new clothes since the end of 1912. However, I

-      had to make the best of it, and the men came to me on the platforms or to

-      my compartment without fear. If by chance they knew a little French they

-      spoke to me, helped out by their officers if their vocabulary ran short.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Madame, Madame,&rdquo; said an old non-commissioned officer, &ldquo;would you be so

-      good as to tell me how to pronounce the English 'zee'? I teach myself

-      French, now I teach myself English.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Well, they had all been good to me and I had no means of repaying their

-      kindness save vicariously, so I took him in hand and with the aid of a

-      booklet published by the Wagons Lit Train du Luxe describing the journey

-      across Siberia we wrestled with the difficulties of the English &ldquo;th.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a long long journey. We crept across the great steppes, we lingered

-      by stations, sometimes there were lakes, sometimes great rivers, but

-      always the great plains. Far as the eye could see rolled the extent of

-      green under the clear blue sky; often we saw herds of cattle and mobs of

-      horses, and again and again companies of soldiers, and yet so vast is the

-      country the sensation left upon the stranger is of emptiness, of a rich

-      and fertile land crying out for inhabitants. I looked at it from the train

-      with eager eyes, but I began to understand how there had grown up in my

-      mind the picture of this lovely land as a dark and terrible place. To the

-      prisoners who came here this plain, whether it were green and smiling, or

-      whether it were deep in white snow, could only have been the barrier that

-      cut them off from home and hope, from all that made life dear. How could

-      they take up their broken lives here, they who for the most part were

-      dwellers in the cities?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Here was a regiment of soldiers; it was nothing, nothing, set in the vast

-      plain. The buttercups and daisies and purple vetches were trampled down

-      for a great space where men had been exercising or camping; but it was

-      nothing. There were wide stretches of country where the cattle were

-      peacefully feeding and where the flowers turned up smiling faces to the

-      blue sky for miles and miles, making me forget that this had been the land

-      of shadowed lives in the past and that away in the West men were fighting

-      for their very existence, locked in a death-grip such as the world has

-      never before seen.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was well there was something to look out upon, for that train was

-      horrid. I realised something of the horrors of the post-houses in which

-      the prisoners had been locked at night. We could get good food at every

-      station, but in the train we were too close on the ground and the reek of

-      us went up to heaven. I felt as if the atmosphere of the train desecrated

-      the fresh, clear air of the great plain over which we passed, as if we

-      must breed disease. The journey seemed interminable, and what I should do

-      when it ended I did not know, for opinion was fairly unanimous: they were

-      sure I could not get to England!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      With many apologies the captain of the <i>Askold</i> permitted himself to

-      ask how I was off for money. I was a total stranger, met on a train, and a

-      foreigner! I told him I had a little over forty pounds and if that were

-      not enough I had thought to be able to send to London for more.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He shook his head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I doubt if even letters can get through.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And I sighed that then I did not know what I should do, for I had no

-      friends in Petrograd.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Pardon, Madame,&rdquo; said he remonstrantly, and he gave me the address of his

-      wife and daughters. He told me to go and see them; he assured me that

-      everybody in Russia now wanted to learn English, that I would have no

-      difficulty in getting pupils and so do myself very comfortably &ldquo;till we

-      make a passage to England again.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Just before we reached Cheliabynsk he came and told me that he had heard

-      there was a west-bound express with one place vacant, a ship awaited him

-      and speed was very necessary, therefore he was leaving this train. Then at

-      one of the greater stopping-places he bowed low over my hand, bade me

-      farewell, made a dash and caught the express. I have never either seen or

-      heard of him since, but he remains in my mind as one of the very kindly

-      men I have met on my way through the world.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At Cheliabynsk we spent the livelong day, for there the main part of the

-      train went on to Moscow with the soldiers, while we who wanted to go to

-      Petrograd caught a train in the evening. I was glad to find that the

-      Hussar officer and the Cossack were both bound for Petrograd. And here we

-      came in touch once more with the West. There was a bookstall, and though I

-      could not buy an English paper I could and did buy an English book, one of

-      John Galsworthy's in the Tauchnitz edition. It was a great delight to come

-      in contact once more with something I could read. There was a big

-      refreshment-room here with all manner of delectable things to eat, only we

-      had passed beyond the sturgeon, and caviare was no longer to be had save

-      at a price that was prohibitive to a woman who had had as much as she

-      could eat and who anyhow was saving her pennies in case of contingencies.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But one thing I did have, and that was a bath. In fact the whole train

-      bathed. Near the station was a long row of bath-houses, but each one I

-      visited&mdash;and they all seemed unpleasant places&mdash;was crowded with

-      soldiers. After a third attempt to get taken in my Cossack friend met me

-      and was shocked at the idea of my going to such a place; if I would trust

-      him he would take me to a proper place after <i>déjeuner</i>.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Naturally I trusted him gladly, and we got into one of the usual

-      broken-down landaus and drove away to the other side of the town to a row

-      of quite superior bath-houses. My friend declared he knew the place well,

-      he had been stationed here in &ldquo;the last revolution,&rdquo; as if revolutions

-      came as regularly as the seasons.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was a gorgeous bath-house. That young man bought me soap; he bought me

-      some sort of loofah for scrubbing; he escorted me to three large rooms

-      which I engaged for a couple of hours and, much to the surprise of the

-      people, having had the windows opened, he left me, assuring me that the

-      carriage should return for me in two hours. There was plenty of hot water,

-      plenty of cold, and any amount of towels, and both Buchanan and I washed

-      the grime of the journey from us and then rested on the sofa in the

-      retiring-room. I read John Galsworthy and punctually to the moment I

-      descended to the street, clean and refreshed, and there our carriage

-      awaited us.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We bought water-melons on our way back to the train, for the streets were

-      heaped up with the great dark green melons with the pink flesh that I had

-      not seen since I left Australia. Autumn was on the land and here were

-      watermelons proof thereof.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Ever as we went west the cornfields increased. Most of the wheat was cut

-      and standing in golden-brown stooks waiting to be garnered by old men and

-      boys and sturdy country women and those who were left of her young men,

-      for Russia had by no means called out her last lines in 1914. There were

-      still great patches of forest, primeval forest, of dense fir, and I

-      remembered that here must be the haunts of the wolves and the bear with

-      which I had always associated Russia. More, though why I know not, my mind

-      flew back to the times of the nomad hordes who, coming out of Central

-      Asia, imposed their rule upon the fair-haired Aryan race that had settled

-      upon the northern plain of Europe. Those forests for me spelled Romance;

-      they took away from the feeling of commonplaceness that the breaking down

-      of my preconceived ideas of Siberia had engendered. Almost anything might

-      happen in a land that held such forests, and such rivers. Not that I was

-      allowed to see much of the rivers now. Someone always came in and drew

-      down the blinds in my compartment&mdash;I had one to myself since leaving

-      Cheliabynsk&mdash;and told me I must not go out on the platform whenever

-      we crossed a bridge. They were evidently taking precautions against spying

-      though they were too polite to say so. There were big towns with stations

-      packed to overflowing. At Perm we met some German prisoners of war, and

-      there were soldiers, soldiers everywhere, and at last one day in the first

-      week in September we steamed into Petrograd.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XVI&mdash;THE WAYS OF THE FINNS

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was evening and

-      we had arrived at Petrograd. For many years I had wanted to see the

-      northern capital. I had thought of it as a town planned by a genius,

-      slowly growing amid surrounding swamps, and in my childhood I had pictured

-      that genius as steadily working as a carpenter&mdash;in a white paper cap&mdash;having

-      always in his mind's eye the town that was to grow on the Baltic Sea, the

-      seaport that should give his country free access to the civilisation of

-      the West. He was a great hero of mine because of his efficiency; after all

-      I see no reason why I should dethrone him now that I realise he had the

-      faults of his time and his position.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But in life I find things always come differently to what one pictures

-      them. The little necessities of life will crop up and must be attended to

-      first and foremost. The first thought that came to me was that I had to

-      part with the friends I had made on the journey. Right away from the

-      borders of China the Cossack officer and I had travelled together; I had

-      met the Hussar officer and his wife soon after I had joined the train, and

-      we seemed to have come out of one world into another together. It made a

-      bond, and I for one was sorry to part. They were going to their own

-      friends or to a Russian hotel, and the general consensus of opinion was

-      that I would be more comfortable in a hotel where there were English or at

-      least French people.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Go to the Grand Hotel, Madame,&rdquo; suggested the Hussar officer's wife, she

-      who spoke perfect French.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      So Buchanan and I loaded our belongings on to a droshky that looked smart

-      after the ones I had been accustomed to in Asia, bade farewell to our

-      friends &ldquo;till after the war&rdquo;&mdash;the Cossack was coming to England then

-      &ldquo;to buy a dog&rdquo;&mdash;and drove to the Grand Hotel.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Grand Hotel spoke perfect English, looked at me and&mdash;declined to

-      take me because I had a little dog. I was very much astonished, but

-      clearly I couldn't abandon Buehanan, so I went on to the Hotel

-      d'Angleterre, which also declined. I went from hotel to hotel and they all

-      said the same thing, they could not think of taking in anyone accompanied

-      by a dog. It was growing dark&mdash;it was dark, and after a fortnight on

-      the train I was weary to death. How could I think of the glories of the

-      Russian capital when I was wondering where I could find a resting-place? I

-      couldn't turn Buchanan adrift in the streets, I couldn't camp in the

-      streets myself, and the hotel porters who could speak English had no

-      suggestions to make as to where I could bestow my little friend in safety.

-      Six hotels we went to and everyone was firm and polite, they could not

-      take a dog. At last a hotel porter had a great idea, the Hotel Astoria

-      would take dogs.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Why on earth didn't someone tell me so before?&rdquo; I said, and promptly went

-      to the Hotel Astoria. It was rather like going to the Hotel Ritz, and

-      though I should like to stay at the Hotel Ritz I would not recommend it to

-      anyone who was fearing an unlimited stay in the country, who had only

-      forty pounds to her credit and was not at all sure she could get any more.

-      Still the Hotel Astoria took little dogs, actually welcomed them, and

-      charged four shillings a day for their keep. I forgot Peter the Great and

-      the building of the capital of Russia, revelling in the comforts of a

-      delightful room all mirrors, of a bathroom attached and a dinner that it

-      was worth coming half across the world to meet. My spirits rose and I

-      began to be quite sure that all difficulties would pass away, I should be

-      able to get back to England and there would be no need for that desperate

-      economy. It was delightful to go to bed in a still bed between clean white

-      sheets, to listen to the rain upon the window and to know that for this

-      night at least all was well. I had seen no English papers; I knew nothing

-      about the war, and it is a fact one's own comfort is very apt to colour

-      one's views of life. Buchanan agreed with me this was a very pleasant

-      world&mdash;as a rule I do find the world pleasant&mdash;it was impossible

-      anything could go wrong in it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And the next day I received a snub&mdash;a snub from my own people.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I went to the British Consulate full of confidence. Every foreigner I had

-      met all across the world had been so pleased to see me, had been so

-      courteous and kind, had never counted the cost when I wanted help, so that

-      I don't know what I didn't expect from my own countrymen. I looked forward

-      very mueh to meeting them. And the young gentleman in office snubbed me

-      properly. He wasn't wanting any truck with foolish women who crossed

-      continents; he didn't care one scrap whether I had come from Saghalien or

-      just walked down the Nevsky Prospekt; I was a nuisance anyway, his manner

-      gave me to understand, since I disturbed his peace and quiet, and the

-      sooner I took myself out of the country the better he would be pleased. He

-      just condescended to explain where I could get a ticket straight through

-      to Newcastle-on-Tyne; people were doing it every day; he didn't know

-      anything about the war, and his manner gave me to understand that it

-      wasn't his business to supply travellers with news. I walked out of that

-      office with all the jauntiness taken out of me. Possibly, I have thought

-      since, he was depressed at the news from France, perhaps someone was

-      jeering him because he had not joined up, or else he had wanted to join up

-      and was not allowed. It was unlucky that my first Englishman after so long

-      should be such a churlish specimen. I felt that unless my necessity was

-      dire indeed I should not apply to the British Consulate for help in an

-      emergency. I did not recover till I went to the company who sold through

-      tickets, across Finland, across Sweden and Norway, across the North Sea to

-      Newcastle-on-Tyne. There I bought a ticket for fifteen pounds which was to

-      carry me the whole way. It was a Swedish company, I think, and the office

-      was packed with people, Poles, Letts, Lithuanians and Russians, who were

-      naturalised Americans and who wanted to go home. Everybody took the

-      deepest interest in Buchanan, so much interest that the man in charge

-      asked me if I was going to take him, I said &ldquo;Of eourse,&rdquo; and he shook his

-      head.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You will never get him through Sweden. They are most strict.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Poor Buchanan! Despair seized me. Having been to the British Consulate, I

-      knew it was no use seeking advice there. I suppose I was too tired or I

-      should have remembered that Americans are always kind and helpful and gone

-      there or even dared the British Embassy. But these ideas occurred to me

-      too late.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      You may travel the world over and the places you visit will often remain

-      in your mind as pleasant or otherwise not because of any of their own

-      attributes, but because of the emotions you have suffered in them. Here

-      was I in St Petrograd, and instead of exploring streets and canals and

-      cathedrals and palaces my whole thoughts were occupied with the fate of my

-      little dog. I &ldquo;had given my heart to a dog to tear&rdquo; and I was suffering in

-      consequence. All the while I was in Petrograd&mdash;and I stayed there

-      three days looking for a way out&mdash;my thoughts were given to James

-      Buchanan. I discussed the matter with the authorities in the hotel who

-      could speak English, and finally Buchanan and I made a peregrination to

-      the Swedish Consulate. And though the Swedish Consulate was a deal more

-      civil and more interested in me and my doings than the English, in the

-      matter of a dog, even a nice little dog like Buchanan, they were firm&mdash;through

-      Sweden he could not go.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I read in the paper the other day that the world might be divided into men

-      and women and people-who-hate-dogs, and these last will wonder what I was

-      making such a fuss about, but the men and women will understand. My dear

-      little companion and friend had made the lonely places pleasant for me and

-      I could not get him out of the country save by turning round and going

-      back across Europe, Asia and America!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I went back to the place where I had bought my ticket. They also were

-      sympathetic. Everyone in the office was interested in the tribulations of

-      the cheerful little black and white dog who sat on the counter and wagged

-      a friendly tail. I had many offers to take care of him for me, and the

-      consensus of opinion was that he might be smuggled! And many tales were

-      told me of dogs taken across the borders in overcoats and muffs, or

-      drugged in baskets.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      That last appealed to me. Buchanan was just too big to cany hidden easily,

-      but he might be drugged and covered up in a basket. I went back to the

-      Astoria and sent for a vet. Also I bought a highly ornamental basket. The

-      porter thought I was cruel. He thought I might leave the dog with him till

-      after the war, but he translated the vet's opinion for me, and the vet

-      gave me some sulphonal. He assured me the little dog would be all right,

-      and I tried to put worrying thoughts away from me and to see Petrograd,

-      the capital of the Tsars.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But I had seen too much. There comes a moment, however keen you are on

-      seeing the world, when you want to see no new thing, when you want only to

-      close your eyes and rest, and I had arrived at that moment. The wide and

-      busy streets intersected with canals, the broad expanse of the Neva, the

-      cathedral and the Winter Palace were nothing to me; even the wrecked

-      German Embassy did not stir me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was glad then when the fourth morning found me on the Finland station.

-      The Finland station was crowded and the Finland train, with only second

-      and third class carnages and bound for Raumo, was crowded also, and it

-      appeared it did not know its way very well as the line had only just been

-      opened to meet the traffic west diverted from Germany. A fortnight before

-      no one had ever heard of Raumo.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And now for me the whole outlook was changed. This was no military train,

-      packed as it was, but a train of men, women and children struggling to get

-      out of the country, the flotsam and jetsam that come to the surface at the

-      beginning of a war. And I heard again for the first time since I left

-      Tientsin, worlds away, English spoken that was not addressed to me. To be

-      sure it was English with an accent, the very peculiar accent that belongs

-      to Russians, Lithuanians, Poles and Letts Americanised, and with it

-      mingled the nasal tones of a young musician from Central Russia who spoke

-      the language of his adopted land with a most exaggerated accent and the

-      leisurely, cultivated tones of Oxford.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I had come from the East to the West!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The carriage was open from end to end and they would not allow Buchanan to

-      enter it. He, poor little man, in the gorgeous basket that he objected to

-      strongly, was banished to the luggage-van, and because the carriage was

-      hot, and also because I felt he would be lonely separated from me, I went

-      there and kept him company.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And in that van I met another Russian naval officer and deepened my

-      obligations to the Russian navy. He sat down beside me on one of the

-      boxes, a tall, broad-shouldered, fair man who looked like a Viking with

-      his moustache shaved off. I found to my joy he spoke English, and I

-      confided to him my difficulties with regard to breakfast. I was so old a

-      traveller by now I had learned the wisdom of considering carefully the

-      commissariat. He was going to the forts on the Finnish border of which he

-      was in command, but before he left the train we would arrive at a

-      refreshment-room, and he undertook to arrange matters for me. And so he

-      did.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Petrograd does not get up early, at least the Hotel Astoria did not, and

-      the most I could manage before I left was a cup of coffee, but I made up

-      for it at that first refreshment-room. The naval officer took entire

-      charge and, revelling in his importance, I not only had a very good

-      breakfast but made the most of my chances and, filling up my basket with a

-      view to future comforts, bought good things so that I might be able to

-      exchange civilities with my fellow-passengers on the way to Raumo. I had

-      eggs and sausages and new bread and scones and a plentiful supply of

-      fruit, to say nothing of sugar and lemons and cream and meat for Buehanan&mdash;the

-      naval man looking on smiling&mdash;and when I had really done myself well

-      I turned to him and demanded what I ought to pay.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Nothing, Madame. In Russia when a gentleman takes a lady for refreshment

-      he pays!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Imagine my horror! And I had stocked my basket so lavishly!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      My protests were useless. I was escorted back to our luggage-van and my

-      thoughts led gently from the coffee and eggs I had consumed and the

-      sausages and bread I had stowed away in my basket to the state of the war

-      as it struck the Russian naval mind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Had I heard about the sea fight in the Mediterranean? Not heard about the

-      little <i>Gloucester</i> attacking the <i>Goeben</i>, the little <i>Gloucester</i>

-      that the big German battleship could have eaten! A dwarf and a giant!

-      Madame! Madame! It was a sea fight that will go down through the ages!

-      Russia was ringing with it!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Do you know anyone in the English navy?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I said I had two brothers in the senior service, a little later and I

-      might have said three.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Then tell them,&rdquo; said he earnestly, &ldquo;we Russian sailors are proud to be

-      Allies of a nation that breeds such men as manned the <i>Gloucester!</i>&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The Finnish border was soon reached and he left us, and the day went on

-      and discipline I suppose relaxed, for I brought Buchanan into the carriage

-      and made friends with the people who surrounded me. And then once again

-      did I bless the foresight of the Polish Jewess in Kharbin who had

-      impressed upon me the necessity for two kettles. They were a godsend in

-      that carriage. We commandeered glasses, we got hot water at wayside

-      stations and I made tea for all within reach, and a cup of tea to a

-      thirsty traveller, especially if that traveller be a woman, is certainly a

-      road to that traveller's good graces.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Finland is curiously different from Russia. They used to believe in the

-      old sailing-ship days that every Finn was a magician. Whether they are

-      magicians or not, they have a beautiful country, though its beauty is as

-      different from that of the Amur as the Thames is from the Murray in

-      far-away Australia. Gone were the wide spaces of the earth and the

-      primitive peoples. We wandered through cultivated lands, we passed lake

-      and river and woods, crossed a wonderful salmon river, skirted Finland's

-      inland sea: here and there was a castle dominating the farmhouses and

-      little towns, the trees were turning, just touched gently by Autumn's

-      golden fingers, and I remembered I had watched the tender green of the

-      spring awakening on the other side of the world, more, I had been

-      travelling ever since. It made me feel weary&mdash;weary. And yet it was

-      good to note the difference in these lands that I had journeyed over. The

-      air here was clear, clear as it had been in China; it had that curious

-      charm that is over scenery viewed through a looking-glass, a charm I can

-      express in no other words. Unlike the great rivers of Russia, the little

-      rivers brawled over the stones, companionable little streams that 'made

-      you feel you might own them, on their banks spend a pleasant afternoon,

-      returning to a cosy fire and a cheery home when the dusk was falling.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And this evening, our first day out, we, the little company in my

-      carriage, fell into trouble.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We spoke among us many tongues, English, French, German, Polish, Russian,

-      Lettish, and one whose tongue was polyglot thought in Yiddish and came

-      from the streets, the &ldquo;mean streets&rdquo; of London, but not one amongst us

-      spoke Finnish, the language of the magicians, or could even understand one

-      word of it. This was unfortunate, for the Films either spoke no language

-      but their own or had a grudge against us and declined to understand us.

-      That didn't prevent them from turning us out that night in a railway

-      station in the heart of Finland and leaving us to discover for ourselves

-      that every hotel in the little town was full to overflowing! Once more I

-      was faced with it&mdash;a night in a railway station. But my predicament

-      was not so bad shared with others who spoke my language. There was the

-      Oxford man and the musician with a twang, there was the wife of an

-      American lawyer with her little boy and the wife of an American doctor

-      with her little girls&mdash;they all spoke English of sorts, used it

-      habitually&mdash;and there were four Austrian girls making their way back

-      to some place in Hungary. Of course, technically, they were our enemies,

-      while the Americans were neutral, but we all went in together. The

-      Russian-American musician had been in Leipsic and was most disgustingly

-      full of the mighty strength of Germany.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The refreshment-rooms were shut, the whole place was in darkness, but it

-      was a mild night, with a gorgeous September moon sailing out into the

-      clear sky, and personally I should not have minded spreading my rugs and

-      sleeping outside. I should have liked it, in fact, but the tales of the

-      insecurity of Siberia still lingered in my consciousness, and when the

-      Oxford man said that one of the porters would put us up in his house I

-      gladly went along with all the others and, better still, took along my

-      bundles of rugs and cushions.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The places that I have slept in! That porter had a quaint little wooden

-      house set in a garden and the whole place might have been lifted bodily

-      out of Hans Andersen. We had the freedom of the kitchen, a very clean

-      kitchen, and we made tea there and ate what we had brought in our baskets.

-      The Austrian girls had a room to themselves, I lent my rugs to the young

-      men and they made shift with them in the entrance porch, and the best

-      sitting-room was turned over to the women and children and me. Two very

-      small beds were put up very close together and into them got the two women

-      and three children, and I was accommodated with a remarkably Lilliputian

-      sofa. I am not a big woman, but it would not hold me, and as for Buchanan,

-      he looked at me in disgust, said a bed was a proper place for a dog and

-      promptly jumped on it. But it was full to overflowing of women and

-      children sleeping the sleep of the utterly weary and he as promptly jumped

-      off again and the next moment was sitting up in front of my sofa with his

-      little front paws hanging down. He was a disgusted dog. He always begged

-      when he wanted me to give him something, and now he begged to show me he

-      was really in need of a bed. There were great uncurtained windows on two

-      sides of that room, there were flowers and ferns in pots growing in it,

-      and the full moon strcamed in and showed me everything: the crowded,

-      rather gimcrack furniture, the bucket that contained water for us to wash

-      in in the morning, the bed full of sleeping women and children and the

-      little black and white dog sitting up in protest against what he

-      considered the discomforts of the situation. What I found hard to bear

-      were the hermetically sealed windows&mdash;the women had been afraid of

-      draughts for the children&mdash;so as soon as that night wore through and

-      daylight came stealing through the windows I dressed quietly and, stepping

-      across the sleeping young men at the door, went outside with Buchanan to

-      explore Finland.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Our porter evidently ran some sort of tea gardens, for there were large

-      swings set up, swings that would hold four and six people at once, and we

-      tried them, much to Buchanan's discomfiture. We went for a walk up the

-      street, a country town street of little wooden houses set in little

-      gardens, and over all lay a Sabbath calm. It was Sunday, and the people

-      slept, and the autumn sunlight made the whole place glorious. There is

-      such rest and peace about the autumn: everything has been accomplished and

-      now is the fullness of time. I never know which season I like best, each

-      has its own beauty, but I shall always think of Finland as a land of

-      little things, charming little things bathed in the autumn sunlight.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      When the whole party were awake we found some difficulty in getting

-      something to eat. The porter could not supply us, and at the station,

-      where they were vigorously sweeping&mdash;the Finns are very clean&mdash;they

-      utterly declined to open the first-class refreshment-rooms. We could only

-      get something to eat in the third-class. There was a great feeling of

-      camaraderie and good-fellowship among us all, and here I remember the

-      lawyer's wife insisted upon us all having breakfast at her expense, for

-      according to her she owed us all something. It was she who added to our

-      party the Yiddish woman, a fat, square little person hung round with

-      innumerable bundles, carrying as she did a month's provisions, enough to

-      last her across to America, for she was a very strict Jew and could eat

-      nothing but <i>kosher</i> killed meat and <i>kosher</i> bread, whatever

-      that may be. I know it made her a care, for a month's provisions make

-      something of a parcel, and when bedding and a certain amount of clothing

-      has to be carried as well, and no porters are available, the resulting

-      baggage is apt to be a nuisance. All along the line this fat little person

-      was liable to come into view, toiling under the weight of her many

-      bundles. She would be found jammed in a doorway; she would subside

-      exhausted in the middle of a railway platform&mdash;the majority of her

-      bundles would be retrieved as they fell downstairs&mdash;or she blocked

-      the little gateway through which passengers were admitted one by one, and

-      the resulting bad language in all the tongues of Northern Europe probably

-      caused the Recording Angel a good deal of unnecessary trouble. But the

-      Oxford man and the musician were always ready to help her, and she must

-      have blessed the day the American lawyer's wife added her to a party which

-      had such kindly, helpful young men among its members.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I found presently that the Oxford man and I were the moneyed members of

-      the party, the only ones who were paying our way; the others, far richer

-      people than I, I daresay, had been caught in the whirlpool of the war and

-      were being passed on from one American consul to another, unable to get

-      money from their own country. Apparently this was rather an unpleasant

-      process, meaning a certain scarcity of cash, as an American consul

-      naturally cannot afford to spend lavishly on his distressed subjects. It

-      was the irony of fate that some of them were evidently not accustomed to

-      looking too carefully after the pennies.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It took us two days to cross Finland, and towards the end of the journey,

-      after we had got out to have tea at a wayside station that blossomed out

-      into ham and tea and bread and honey, we made friends with a certain Finn

-      whose father had been a Scotsman. At last we were able to communicate with

-      the people of the country! Also I'm afraid we told him in no measured

-      terms that we did not think much of his compatriots. That was rather a

-      shame, for he was exceedingly kind. He was going to England, he told us,

-      to buy sheepskins for the Russian army, and he took great interest in my

-      trouble about Buchanan. He examined him carefully, came to the conclusion

-      he was a perfectly healthy little dog and suggested I should lend him to

-      him till we reached Sweden, as he was perfectly well known to the

-      authorities, and Finnish dogs would be allowed to enter Sweden, while a

-      dog that had come from Russia would certainly be barred. I loved that man

-      for his kindly interest and I handed over Buchanan in his basket without a

-      qualm.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We were really quite a goodly company when in the dusk of the evening we

-      steamed into Raumo. The station seemed deserted, but we didn't worry much

-      about that, as our new Finnish friend suggested the best thing to do was

-      to go straight down to the steamer, the <i>Uleaborg</i>, a Finnish ship,

-      and have our dinner and spend the night there. Even if she did not go that

-      night, and he did not think she would, we could rest and sleep

-      comfortably. We all agreed, and as the train went on down to the wharf we

-      appointed him our delegate to go on board and see what arrangements he

-      could make for us. The minute the train stopped, off he went, and Buchanan

-      went with him. I was getting easier in my mind about Buchanan now, the

-      thought of drugging him had been spoiling my pleasure in the scenery. And

-      then we waited.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It began to rain, and through the mist which hid the moonlight to-night we

-      could see the loom of the ships; they were all white and the lights from

-      the cabin ports showed dim through the misty rain. The wharf was littered

-      with goods, barrels and bales, and as there was more than one steamer, and

-      apparently no one to guide us, or the Scots Finn had not returned, we

-      tackled the Russian <i>gens d'arme</i> who seemed to be in charge of the

-      wharf and who was leaning up against the train.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Can you speak Finnish?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Ah! now you have my secret first shot,&rdquo; said he, with a smile. He, their

-      guardian, was no more equal to communicating with these people than we

-      were. And then, to our dismay, before our messenger could return, the

-      train which considered not a parcel of refugees put on steam and started

-      back to Raumo!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      A dozen voices were raised in frantic protest, but we might as well have

-      spared our breath, the train naturally paid no attention to us, but went

-      back at full speed to the town proper. It was a comfort when it stopped,

-      for, for all we knew, it might have gone straight back to Petrograd

-      itself. And Buchanan, shut up in a basket, was left behind, I knew not

-      where! They dumped us on that station, bag and baggage, in the rain. We

-      were worse off here than we were at the wharf, for there the steamer and

-      comfort at least loomed in the distance. Here was only a bare and empty

-      station, half-a-dozen men who looked at us as if we were so many wild

-      beasts on show, and a telephone to the wharf which we were allowed to use

-      as long as we pleased, but as far as I could gather the only result was a

-      flow of bad language in many tongues. We might be of many nations, but one

-      and all were we agreed in our dislike of the Finns and all things Finnish.

-      If I remember rightly, in the Middle Ages, most people feared and disliked

-      magicians.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We managed to get our baggage into the hall of the station, whieh was

-      dimly lighted by electric lights, and in anticipation of our coming they

-      had filled up the station water-carafes. But that was all the provision

-      they had made. If there was a refreshment-room it had been locked up long

-      ago, and as far as we could make out, now our interpreter had gone, there

-      were no hotels or boarding-houses. Our Scots Finn had said it was

-      impossible to stay in Raumo. We looked at one another in a dismay in which

-      there was, after all, something comic. This that had befallen us was the

-      sort of aggravating thing a mischievous magician would cause to happen. We

-      were tired and hungry and bad-tempered, and I for one was anxious about my

-      little dog and I began to seek, with cash in my hand, somebody who would

-      find me Buchanan.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      How I made my wants known I don't now realise, but money does wonders, and

-      presently there came in a man bearing his basket and a rapturous little

-      dog was let out into the room. Where he had been I have not the faintest

-      idea, and I could not ask, only I gathered that the man who brought him

-      professed himself perfectly willing to go on fetching little dogs all

-      night at the same rate, and the musician remarked in his high nasal twang

-      that he supposed it was no good expecting any more sympathy from Mrs

-      Gaunt, she was content now she had her little dog. As a matter of fact,

-      now that my mind was at ease, I was equal to giving my attention to other

-      people's woes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We tackled the men round us.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Where was our messenger?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      No one knew.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Where could we get something to eat?

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Blank stare. They were not accustomed to foreigners yet at Raumo. The

-      station had only just been opened. The musician took out his violin and

-      its wailing tones went echoing and re-echoing through the hall. The

-      audience looked as if they thought we had suddenly gone mad, and one man

-      came forward and by signs told us we must leave the station. That was all

-      very well, we were not enamoured of the station, but the port we judged to

-      be at least four miles off, and no one was prepared to start down an

-      unknown road in the dark and pouring rain. There was a long consultation,

-      and we hoped it meant food, but it didn't. Out of a wilderness of words we

-      at last arrived at the interesting fact that if we cared to subscribe five

-      marks one of these gentlemen was prepared to conduct us to the police

-      station. There appeared to be no wild desire on the part of any of us to

-      go to the police station, the violin let out a screech of scornful

-      derision, and one of the officials promptly turned off the electric lights

-      and left us in darkness!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      There were many of us, and vexations shared are amusing. We laughed, how

-      we laughed, and the violin went wailing up and down the octaves. No wonder

-      the Finns looked at us askance. Even the darkness did not turn us out, for

-      we had nowhere else to go, and finally a man who spoke English turned up,

-      the agent for the Swedish steamer. He had thought there would be no

-      passengers and had gone to bed, to be roused up, I presume by the

-      stationmaster, as the only person likely to be capable of dealing with

-      these troublesome people who were disturbing the peace of this Finnish

-      village.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We flew at him&mdash;there were about a dozen of us&mdash;and showed our

-      tickets for the Finnish steamer, and he smiled in a superior manner and

-      said we should be captured by Germans.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We didn't believe much in the Germans, for we had many of us come through

-      a country which certainly believed itself invulnerable. Then a woman

-      travelling with her two daughters, Americans of the Americans, though

-      their mother spoke English with a most extraordinary accent, proclaimed

-      aloud that if there was a Swedish steamer she was going by it as she was

-      afraid of &ldquo;dose Yarmans.&rdquo; She and her daughters would give up their

-      tickets and go by the Swedish steamer. Protest was useless. If we liked to

-      break up the party we could. She was not going by the <i>Uleaborg</i>.

-      Besides, where were we to sleep that night? The Finnish steamer was three

-      or four miles away down at the wharf and we were here along with the

-      Swedish agent.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Swedish agent seized the opening thus given. There were no hotels;

-      there were no boarding-houses; no, it was not possible to get anything to

-      eat at that hour of the night. Something to drink? Well, in surprised

-      tones, there was surely plenty of water in the station&mdash;there was&mdash;and

-      he would arrange for a train for us to sleep in. The train at ten o'clock

-      next morning would take us down to the steamer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We retired to that train. Only one of the carriages was lighted, and that

-      by general consent we gave up to the lady whose fear of the Germans had

-      settled our affairs for us, and she in return asked us to share what

-      provisions we had left. We pooled our stores&mdash;I don't think I had

-      anything left, but the others shared with me&mdash;and we dined, not

-      unsatisfactorily, off sardines, black bread, sausages and apples. The only

-      person left out of the universal friendliness was the Yiddish lady. Out of

-      her plenty she did not offer to share.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;She cannot,&rdquo; said the musician. &ldquo;She is saving for the voyage to America.

-      You see, she can eat none of the shipboard food.&rdquo; He too came of the same

-      strict order of Jew, and his grandparents, with whom he had been staying

-      in Little Russia, had provided him with any amount of sausage made of <i>kosher</i>

-      meat, but when he was away from his own people he was evidently anything

-      but strict and ate what pleased him. He shared with the rest of us.

-      Possibly he was right about the Yiddish woman, and I suppose it did not

-      really do us any harm to go short till next morning, but it looked very

-      greedy, and I still wonder at the nerve of a woman who could sit down and

-      eat sausage and bread and all manner of such-like things while within a

-      stone's-throw of her people who had helped her in every way they could

-      were cutting up apples and pears into quarters and audibly wishing they

-      had a little more bread. The Oxford man and musician had always helped

-      her, but she could not find it in her heart to spare them one crumb. I

-      admire her nerve. In America I doubt not she will acquire wealth.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      After supper Buchanan and I retired to a dark carriage, wrapped ourselves

-      in my eiderdown and slept till with break of day two capable but plain

-      Finnish damsels came in to clean the train. I think the sailors' ideas

-      must have been wrong: every Finn cannot be a magician else they would not

-      allow all their women to be so plain. I arose and dressed and prepared to

-      go out and see if Raumo could produce coffee and rolls, but as I was

-      starting the violinist in the next compartment protested.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I wouldn't. Guess you haven't got the hang of these Finnish trains. It

-      might take it into its head to go on. Can't you wait till we reach the

-      steamer.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I gave the matter my consideration, and while I was considering the train

-      did take it into its head to go on four hours before its appointed time.

-      On it went, and at last in the fresh northern dewy morning, with the sun

-      just newly risen, sending his long low rays streaming across the dancing

-      waters of the bay, we steamed up to the wharf, and there lay the white

-      ships that were bound for Sweden, the other side of the Baltic.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br /><br />

-    </p>

-    <hr />

-    <p>

-      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>

-    </p>

-    <div style="height: 4em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-    <h2>

-      CHAPTER XVII&mdash;CAPTURED BY GERMANS

-    </h2>

-    <p class="pfirst">

-      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>ut we couldn't get

-      on the steamer at once. For some reason or other there were Customs delays

-      and everything we possessed had to be examined before we were allowed to

-      leave the country, but&mdash;and we hailed them with delight&mdash;under

-      the goods sheds were set out little tables where we could buy coffee and

-      rolls and butter and eggs. It was autumn now, and for all the sunshine

-      here in such high latitudes there was a nip in the air and the hot coffee

-      was welcome. We met, too, our friend of the night before, the Scots Finn,

-      but the glamour had departed from him and we paid no attention to his

-      suggestion that the <i>Goathied</i>, the Swedish steamer, was very much

-      smaller than the <i>Uleaborg</i> and that there was a wind getting up and

-      we would all be deadly sick. We said we preferred being sick to being

-      captured by the Germans. And he laughed at us. There was no need to fear

-      the Germans in the Baltic so far north.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was midday before we were allowed on board the little white ship, but

-      still she lingered. I was weary, weary, even the waiting seemed a

-      weariness so anxious was I to end my long journeying and get home. And

-      then suddenly I felt very near it, for my ears were greeted by the good

-      broad Doric of Scotland, and there came trooping on board five and fifty

-      men, part of the crews of four English ships that had been caught by the

-      tide of war and laid up at Petrograd and Kronstadt. An opportunity had

-      been found and they were going back by way of Sweden, leaving their ships

-      behind till after the war. We did not think the war <i>could</i> last very

-      long on board that steamer.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Scotsmen had evidently been expected, for on the deck in the bows of

-      the little steamer&mdash;she was only about three hundred tons&mdash;were

-      laid long tables spread with ample supplies of boiled sausages, suet

-      pudding and potatoes, and very appetising it looked, though in all my

-      wanderings I had never met boiled sausages before. Down to the feast sat

-      the sailor-men, and our Yiddish friend voiced aloud my feelings.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Anglisky,&rdquo; said she unexpectedly, &ldquo;nice Anglisky boys. Guten appetite,

-      nice Anglisky boys!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      They were very cheery, poor boys, and though they were not accustomed to

-      her sort in Leith, they received her remarks with appreciative grins.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      As we started the captain came down upon me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Who does that dog belong to?&rdquo; he asked angrily. Everyone on board spoke

-      English. And before I could answer&mdash;I wasn't particularly anxious to

-      answer&mdash;he added: &ldquo;He can't be landed in Sweden.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      My heart sank. What would they do to my poor little dog? I was determined

-      they shouldn't harm him unless they harmed me first, and if he had to go

-      back to Russia&mdash;well, I would go too; but the thought of going back

-      made me very miserable, and I made solemn vows to myself that if I by some

-      miracle got through safely, never, never again would I travel with a dog.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And while I was thinking about it there came along a junior officer, mate,

-      purser, he might have been the cook for all I know, and he said: &ldquo;If you

-      have bought this dog in Finland, or even on board the steamer, he can

-      land.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      It was light in darkness, and I do not mind stating that where my dog is

-      concerned I have absolutely no morals, if it is to save him from pain. He

-      had been my close companion for over a year and I knew he was perfectly

-      healthy.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I will give you a good price for him,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;He is a pretty little

-      dog.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;wait. By and by I see.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Just as we got out of the bay the captain announced that he was not going

-      to Stockholm at all, but to Gefle, farther north. Why, he did not know.

-      Such were his orders. In ordinary times to find yourself being landed at

-      Liverpool, say, when you had booked for London might be upsetting, but in

-      war time it is all in the day's work, and sailors and crowded passengers

-      only laughed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Let's awa',&rdquo; said the sailors. &ldquo;Let's awa'.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      The air was clear and clean, clean as if every speck of dust had been

-      washed away by the rain of the preceding night; the little islands at the

-      mouth of the bay stood out green and fresh in the blue sea, but the head

-      wind broke it up into little waves, and the ship was empty of cargo and

-      tossed about like a cork. The blue sea and snow-white clouds, the sunlight

-      on the dancing waves mattered not to us; all we wanted, those of us who

-      were not in favour of drowning at once and so ending our misery, was to

-      land in Sweden. Buchanan sat up looking at me reproachfully, then he too

-      subsided and was violently sick, and I watched the passengers go one by

-      one below to hide their misery, even those who had vowed they never were

-      sea-sick. I stayed on deck because I felt I was happier there in the fresh

-      air, and so I watched the sunset. It was a gorgeous sunset; the clouds

-      piled themselves one upon the other and the red sun stained them deepest

-      crimson. It was so striking that I forgot my sea-sick qualms.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then suddenly I became aware there were more ships upon the sea than

-      ours, one in particular, a black, low-lying craft, was steaming all round

-      us, sending out defiant hoots. There were three other ships farther off,

-      and I went to the rail to look over the darkening sea.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Between us and the sunset was the low-lying craft, so close I could see

-      the gaiters of a man in uniform who stood on a platform a little higher

-      than his fellows; the little decks were crowded with men and a long gun

-      was pointed at us. It was all black, clean-cut, silhouetted against the

-      crimson sunset.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We were slowed down, barely moving, the waves slop-slopped against our

-      sides, and the passengers came scrambling up.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Germans! Yarmans!&rdquo; they cried, and from the torpedo boat came a voice

-      through a megaphone.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;What are you doing with all those fine young men on board?&rdquo; it asked in

-      excellent English, the language of the sea.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The black torpedo boat was lying up against us.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Sea-sickness was forgotten, and the violinist came to me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They are going to take the young men,&rdquo; he said, and he was sorry and yet

-      pleased, because all the time he had been full of the might of the

-      Germans.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I thought of the Oxford man in the very prime of his manhood.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Have you told him?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Guess I didn't dare,&rdquo; said he.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Well, I think you'd better, or I'll go myself. They are going to search

-      the ship and he won't like being taken unawares.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      So he went down, and presently they came up together. The Oxford man had

-      been very sea-sick and he thought all the row was caused by the ship

-      having struck a mine, and he felt so ill that if things were to end that

-      way he was accepting it calmly, but being captured by Germans was a

-      different matter. He was the only Englishman in the first class, and when

-      we heard they were coming for the young men we felt sure he would have to

-      go.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Leaning over the rail of the <i>Goathied</i>, we could look down upon the

-      black decks of the torpedo boat, blacker than ever now in the dusk of the

-      evening, for the sun sank and the darkness was coming quickly. A rope

-      ladder was flung over and up came a couple of German officers. They spoke

-      perfect English, and they talked English all the time. They went below,

-      demanded the passenger list and studied it carefully.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;We must take those Englishmen,&rdquo; said the leader, and then he went through

-      every cabin to see that none was concealed.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The captain made remonstrance, as much remonstrance as an unarmed man can

-      make with three cruisers looking on and a torpedo boat close alongside.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;It is war,&rdquo; said the German curtly, and in the dusk he ranged the

-      sailor-men along the decks, all fifty-five of them, and picked out those

-      between the ages of nineteen and forty. Indeed one luckless lad of

-      seventeen was taken, but he was a strapping fellow and they said if he was

-      not twenty-one he looked it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It was tragic. Of course there must have been treachery at work or how

-      should the German squadron have known that the Englishmen were crossing at

-      this very hour? But a few moments before they had been counting on getting

-      home and now they were bound for a German prison! In the gathering

-      darkness they stood on the decks, and the short, choppy sea beat the iron

-      torpedo boat against the ship's side, and the captain in the light from a

-      lantern hung against the little house looked the picture of despair.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;She cannot stand it! She cannot stand it much longer!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      Crash! Crash! Crash!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;She cannot stand it! She was never built for it! And she is old now!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      But the German paid no attention. The possible destruction of a passenger

-      ship was as nothing weighed in the balance with the acquirement of six and

-      thirty fighting men.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      They were so quiet. They handed letters and small bundles and sometimes

-      some of their pay to their comrades or to the passengers looking on and

-      they dropped down that ladder. No one but a sailor could have gone down,

-      for the ships heaved up and down, and sometimes they were bumping and

-      sometimes there was a wide belt of heaving dark water between them,

-      bridged only by that frail ladder. One by one they went, landing on the

-      hostile deck, and were greeted with what were manifestly jeers at their

-      misfortune. The getting down was difficult and more than once a bundle was

-      dropped into the sea and there went up a sigh that was like a wail, for

-      the passengers looking on thought the man was gone, and I do not think

-      there would have been any hope for him between the ships.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Darker and darker it grew. On the <i>Goathied</i> there were the lighted

-      decks, but below on the torpedo boat the men were dim figures, German and

-      English undiscernible in the gloom. On the horizon loomed the sombre bulk

-      of the cruisers, eaeh with a bright light aloft, and all around was the

-      heaving sea, the white tops of the choppy waves showing sinister against

-      the darker hollows.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Anglisky boys! Anglisky boys!&rdquo; wailed the Yiddish woman, and her voice

-      cut into the waiting silence. It was their dirge, the dirge for the long,

-      long months of imprisonment that lay before them. And we were hoping for a

-      short war! I could hear the Oxford man drawing a long breath occasionally,

-      steeling himself against the moment when his turn would come.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It never came. Why, I do not know. Perhaps they did not realise his

-      nationality, for being a Scotsman he had entered himself as &ldquo;British&rdquo; on

-      the passenger list, and &ldquo;British&rdquo; was not such a well-known word as the

-      sons of Britain gathering from all corners of the earth to fight the

-      common foe have made it to-day.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Puir chappies! Puir chappies! A'm losin' guid comrades,&rdquo; sighed an

-      elderly man leaning over the side and shouting a farewell to &ldquo;Andra'.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I murmured something about &ldquo;after the war,&rdquo; but he cut me short sternly.

-      The general opinion was that they would be put to stoke German warships

-      and as the British were sure to beat them they would go down and be

-      ingloriously lost. The thought must have been a bitter one to the men on

-      that torpedo boat. And they took it like heroes.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The last man was gone, and as the torpedo boat drew away a sort of moan

-      went up from the bereft passenger ship and we went on our way, the captain

-      relieved that we were free before a hole had been knocked in our side.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      He was so thankful that no worse thing had befallen him that he became

-      quite communicative.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;They are gone to take the <i>Uleaborg</i>,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and they will blow

-      her up and before to-morrow morning Raumo will be in flames!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      In those days Sweden had great faith in the might of Germany. I hope that

-      faith is getting a little shaken at last. Still that captain declared his

-      intention of warning all the ships he could. There were two Finnish ships

-      of which he knew that he said were coming out of Stockholm that night and

-      he was going to look for them and warn them.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And so the night was alive with brilliant electric light signals and wild

-      hootings from the steam siren, and he found them at last, all honour to

-      him for a kindly sailor-man, and the Finnish ships were warned and went

-      back to Sweden.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      But no matter how sorry one is for the sufferings of others, the feeling

-      does not in any way tend to lessen one's own private woes. Rather are they

-      deepened because sympathy and help is not so easily come by when men's

-      thoughts are occupied by more&mdash;to them more&mdash;important matters.

-      And so I could not go to sleep because of my anxiety about my little dog.

-      Only for the moment did the taking of the men and my pity for them drive

-      the thought of his predicament from my mind.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We were nearing Sweden, every moment was bringing us closer, and as yet I

-      had made no arrangements for his safety. He lay curled up on the seat,

-      hiding his little snub nose and his little white paws with his bushy tail,

-      for the autumn night was chilly, and I lay fearing a prison for him too,

-      when he would think his mistress whom he had trusted had failed him. All

-      the crew were so excited over the kidnapping of the men that my meditated

-      nefarious transaction was thrust into the background. It was hopeless to

-      think that any one of them would give ear to the woes of a little dog, so

-      at last, very reluctantly, I gave him, much to his surprise, a sulphonal

-      tablet. I dozed a little and when by my watch it was four o'clock Buchanan

-      was as lively as a cricket. Sulphonal did not seem to have affected him in

-      any way. I gave him another, and he said it was extremely nasty and he was

-      surprised at my conduct, but otherwise it made no difference to him.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      In the grey of the early morning we drew up to the wharf and were told to

-      get all our belongings on to the lower deck for the Customs to examine

-      them, and Buchanan was as cheerful and as wide awake as if he had not

-      swallowed two sulphonal tablets. With a sinking heart I gave him another,

-      put him in his basket and, carrying it down to the appointed place, threw

-      a rug over it and piled my two suit-cases on top of it. How thankful I was

-      there was such a noisy crowd, going over and over again in many tongues

-      the events of the night. They wrangled too about their luggage and about

-      their places, and above all their din I could hear poor little James

-      Buchanan whining and whimpering and asking why his mistress was treating

-      him so badly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Then came the Customs officer and my heart stood still. He poked an

-      investigatory hand into my suit-case and asked me&mdash;I understood him

-      quite well&mdash;to show him what was underneath. I could hear Buchanan if

-      he could not, and I pretended that I thought he wanted to know what was at

-      the bottom of my suit-case and I turned over the things again and again.

-      He grew impatient, but luckily so did all the people round, and as a woman

-      dragged him away by force to look at her things so that she could get them

-      ashore I noticed with immense relief that the sailors were beginning to

-      take the things to the wharf. Luckily I had taken care the night before to

-      get some Swedish money&mdash;I was taking no chances&mdash;and a little

-      palm oil made that sailor prompt to attend to my wants. Blessings on the

-      confusion that reigned around! Two minutes later on Swedish soil I was

-      piling my gear on a little hand-cart with a lot of luggage belonging to

-      the people with whom I had come across Finland and it was bound to the

-      railway station.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You have left your umbrella,&rdquo; cried the violinist.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I don't care,&rdquo; said I. I had lost my only remaining hat for that matter,

-      goodness knows what had become of it, but I was not going to put myself

-      within range of those Customs men again. What did I care about

-      appearances! I had passed the very worst milestone on my journey when I

-      got James Buchanan into Sweden; I had awakened from the nightmare that had

-      haunted me ever since I had taken my ticket in Petrograd, and I breathed

-      freely.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      At the railway station we left our luggage, but I got Buchanan's basket,

-      and we all went across the road to a restaurant just waking to business,

-      for we badly wanted breakfast. I loved those passengers. I shall always

-      think of them with gratitude. They were all so kind and sympathetic and

-      the restaurant folks, who were full of the seizing of the Englishmen on a

-      Swedish ship&mdash;so are joys and sorrows mingled&mdash;must have thought

-      we were a little mad when we all stood round and, before ordering

-      breakfast, opened a basket and let out a pretty little black and white

-      dog.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then I'm sorry to say we laughed, even I laughed, laughed with relief,

-      though I there and then took a vow never again to drug a dog, for poor

-      little James Buchanan was drunk. He wobbled as he walked, and he could not

-      make up his mind to lie down like a sensible dog and sleep if off; he was

-      conversational and silly and had to be restrained. Poor little James

-      Buchanan! But he was a Swedish dog, and I ate my breakfast with appetite,

-      and we all speculated as to what had become of the Scots Finn who had

-      failed me.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Gefle reminded me of Hans Andersen even more than Finland had done. It had

-      neat streets and neat houses and neat trees and neat and fair-haired

-      women, and Gefle was seething with excitement because the <i>Goathied</i>

-      had been stopped. It was early days then, and Sweden had not become

-      accustomed to the filibustering ways of the German, so every poster had

-      the tale writ large upon it, in every place they were talking about it,

-      and we, the passengers who walked about the streets, were the observed of

-      all observers.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was nearing the end of my long journey, very near now, and it did not

-      seem to me to matter much what I did. We were all&mdash;the new friends I

-      had made on the way from Petrograd&mdash;pretty untidy and travel-stained,

-      and if I wore a lace veil on my hair, the violinist had a huge rent in his

-      shoe, and, having no money to buy more, he went into a shoe-shop and had

-      it mended. I, with Buchanan a little recovered, sat beside him while it

-      was done.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And in the afternoon we went by train through the neat and tidy country,

-      Selma Lagerlof's country, to Stockholm. I felt as if I were resting,

-      rested, because I was anxious no longer about Buchanan, who slumbered

-      peacefully on my knee; and if anybody thinks I am making an absurd fuss

-      about a little dog, let them remember he had been my faithful companion

-      and friend in far corners of the earth when there were none but alien

-      faces around me, and had stood many a time between me and utter loneliness

-      and depression.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      We discussed these sturdy Swedes. The Chicago woman's daughter, with the

-      pertness and aptness of the American flapper, summed them up quickly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The men are handsome,&rdquo; she said, looking round, &ldquo;but the women&mdash;well,

-      the women lack something&mdash;I call them tame.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And I knew she had hit them off to a &ldquo;T.&rdquo; After that I never looked at a

-      neat and tidy Swedish woman with her hair, that was fair without that

-      touch of red that makes for gold&mdash;gives life&mdash;coiled at the back

-      of her head and her mild eyes looking out placidly on the world around her

-      without feeling that I too call her tame.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      Stockholm for the most of us was the parting of the ways. The American

-      consul took charge of the people who had come across Finland with us and

-      the Oxford man and I alone went to the Continental Hotel, which, I

-      believe, is the best hotel in that city. We had an evening meal together

-      in a room that reminded me very much of the sort of places we used to call

-      coffee palaces in Melbourne when I was a girl, and I met here again for

-      the first time for many a long day tea served in cups with milk and cream.

-      It was excellent, and I felt I was indeed nearing home. Things were

-      getting commonplace and the adventure was going out of life. But I was

-      tired and I didn't want adventure any more. There comes a time when we

-      have a surfeit of it.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I remember my sister once writing from her home somewhere in the Malay

-      jungle that her husband was away and it was awkward because every night a

-      leopard came and took up his position under the house, and though she

-      believed he was only after the fowls she didn't like it because of the

-      children. If ever she complains that she hasn't had enough adventure in

-      her life I remind her of that and she says that is not the sort of

-      adventure she has craved. That is always the way. The adventure is not

-      always in the form we want. I seemed to have had plenty, but I was weary.

-      I wanted to sit in a comfortable English garden in the autumn sunshine and

-      forget that such things as trains and ships&mdash;perish the thought of a

-      mule litter&mdash;existed. I counted the hours. It couldn't be long now.

-      We came down into the hall to find that I had been entered on the board

-      containing the names of the hotel guests as the Oxford man's wife. Poor

-      young man! It was a little rough on him, for I hadn't even a hat, and I

-      felt I looked dilapidated.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I was too. That night in the sleeper crossing to Christiania the woman who

-      had the bottom berth spoke excellent English. She was going to some baths

-      and she gave some advice.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;You are very ill, Madame,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;very ill.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I said no, I was only a little tired.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;you are very ill, and if you are wise when you

-      get to Christiania you will go to the Hotel Victoria and go to bed.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I was horrified. Because I felt I must go to England as quickly as

-      possible, and I said so.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;The train does not go to Bergen till night,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Stay in bed all

-      day.&rdquo; And then as we crossed the border a Customs officer came into the

-      carriage. Now I could easily have hidden Buchanan, but I thought as a

-      Swedish dog all his troubles were over, and he sat up there looking pertly

-      at the uniformed man and saying &ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Have you got a certificate of health for that dog?&rdquo; asked the man

-      sternly.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I said &ldquo;No,&rdquo; remembering how very carefully I had kept him out of the way

-      of anybody likely to be interested in his health.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you must telegraph to the police at Christiania. They

-      will meet you and take him to a veterinary surgeon.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;And after?&rdquo; I asked, trembling, my Swedish friend translating.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;If his health is good they give him back to you. You take a room at a

-      hotel and if his health is good he will be allowed to skip about the

-      streets.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I felt pretty sure he would be allowed to skip about the streets and I

-      took a room at the Victoria, the Oxford man kindly seeing us through&mdash;they

-      put us down as Mr and Mrs Gaunt here&mdash;and James Buchanan, who had

-      been taken possession of by the police at the station, came back to me,

-      accompanied by a Norwegian policeman who demanded five shillings and gave

-      me a certificate that he was a perfectly healthy little dog.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      I want to go back to Norway when I am not tired and fed up with

-      travelling, for Christiania struck me as a dear little home-like town that

-      one could love; and the railway journey across the Dovrefield and even the

-      breakfast baskets that came in in the early morning were things to be

-      remembered. I saw snow up in those mountains, whether the first snow of

-      the coming winter or snow left over from the winter before, I do not know,

-      but the views were lovely, and I asked myself why I went wandering in

-      far-away places when there were places like this so close at home and so

-      easily reached. So near home. We were so near home. I could think of

-      nothing else. I told Buchanan about it and he licked my hand

-      sympathetically and told me always to remember that wherever I was was

-      good enough for him. And then we arrived at Bergen, a little wooden city

-      set at the head of a fiord among the hills, and we went on board the <i>Haakon

-      VII.</i>, bound for Newcastle-on-Tyne.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And then the most memorable thing happened, the most memorable thing in

-      what for me was a wondrous journey. All across the Old World we had come,

-      almost from the very farthest corner of the Old World, a wonderful journey

-      not to be lightly undertaken nor soon forgotten. And yet as I went on

-      board that ship I felt what a very little thing it was. I have been

-      feeling it ever since. A Norwegian who spoke good English was there, going

-      back to London, and, talking to another man, he mentioned in a casual

-      manner something about the English contingent that had landed on the

-      Continent.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      It startled me. Not in my lifetime, nor in the lifetime of my father,

-      indeed I think my grandfathers must have been very little boys when the

-      last English troops landed in France.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;English troops!&rdquo; I cried in astonishment.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      The Norwegian turned to me, smiling.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But of course they are only evidence of good will. Their

-      use is negligible!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      And I agreed. I actually agreed. Britain's rôle, it seemed to me, was on

-      the sea!

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And in four years I have seen Britain grow into a mighty military power. I

-      have seen the men of my own people come crowding across the ocean to help

-      the Motherland; I have seen my sister's young son pleased to be a soldier

-      in that army, just one of the proud and humble crowd that go to uphold

-      Britain's might. And all this has grown since I stood there at the head of

-      the Norwegian fiord with the western sun sparkling on the little wavelets

-      and heard a friendly foreigner talk about the little army that was

-      &ldquo;negligible.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      I was tired. I envied those who could work and exert themselves, but I

-      could do nothing. If the future of the nation had depended on me I could

-      have done nothing. I was coming back to strenuous times and I longed for

-      rest. I wanted a house of my own; I wanted a seat in the garden; I wanted

-      to see the flowers grow, to listen to the birds singing in the trees. All

-      that our men are fighting for to keep sacred and safe, I longed for.

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And I have had it, thanks to those fighting men who have sacrificed

-      themselves for me, I have had it. It is good to sit in the garden where

-      the faithful little friend I shall never forget has his last

-      resting-place; it is good to see the roses grow, to listen to the lark and

-      the cuckoo and the thrush; but there is something in our race that cannot

-      keep still for long, the something, I suppose, that sent my grandfather to

-      the sea, my father to Australia, and scattered his sons and daughters all

-      over the world. I had a letter from a soldier brother the other day. The

-      war holds him, of course, but nevertheless he wrote, quoting:

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      <br />

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent10">

-      &ldquo;Salt with desire of travel

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent15">

-      Are my lips; and the wind's wild singing

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent10">

-      Lifts my heart to the ocean

-    </p>

-    <p class="indent15">

-      And the sight of the great ships swinging.&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <p>

-      <br />

-    </p>

-    <p>

-      And my heart echoed: &ldquo;And I too! And I too!&rdquo;

-     </p>

-    <div style="height: 6em;">

-      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />

-    </div>

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-<pre>

-

-

-

-

-

-End of Project Gutenberg's A Broken Journey, Illustrated, by Mary Gaunt

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-</pre>

-

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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>A Broken Journey, Illustrated, by Mary Gaunt</title>
+    <meta content="pg2html (binary v0.17)" />
+    <link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" />
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+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
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+    .head      { float: left; font-size: 90%; width: 98%; padding-left: 0.8em;
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+               text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;
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+    p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0}
+    span.dropcap         { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 }
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 54402 ***</div>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      A BROKEN JOURNEY
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      Wanderings from the Hoang-Ho yo the Island of Saghalien and the Upper
+      Reaches of The Amur River
+    </h3>
+    <h2>
+      By Mary Gaunt
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Author Of &ldquo;Alone In West Africa&rdquo; &ldquo;A Woman In China,&rdquo; Etc.
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      London
+    </h4>
+    <h4>
+      T. Werner Laurie Ltd.
+    </h4>
+    <h3>
+      1919
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0001.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0008.jpg" alt="0008 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0008.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0009.jpg" alt="0009 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0009.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <h3>
+      TO MY
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      SISTER AND BROTHERS
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE DAYS BEFORE WE
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      WANDERED
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_FORE"> FOREWORD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> A BROKEN JOURNEY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I&mdash;THE LURE OF THE UNKNOWN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II&mdash;TRUCULENT T'AI YUAN FU </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III&mdash;THE FIRST SIGN OF UNREST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV&mdash;A CITY UNDER THE HILLS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V&mdash;&ldquo;MISERERE DOMINE!&rdquo; </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI&mdash;BY MOUNTAIN AND RIVER </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII&mdash;CHINA'S SORROW </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII&mdash;LAST DAYS IN CHINA </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX&mdash;KHARBIN AND VLADIVOSTOK </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X&mdash;ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREAT RIVERS
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI&mdash;THE ENDS OF THE EARTH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII&mdash;FACING WEST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII&mdash;THE UPPER REACHES OF THE AMUR
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV&mdash;MOBILISING IN EASTERN SIBERIA
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV&mdash;ON A RUSSIAN MILITARY TRAIN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI&mdash;THE WAYS OF THE FINNS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII&mdash;CAPTURED BY GERMANS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_FORE" id="link2H_FORE"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      FOREWORD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I have to thank my friend Mrs Lang for the drastic criticism which once
+      more has materially helped me to write this book. Other people also have I
+      to thank, but so great was the kindness I received everywhere I can only
+      hope each one will see in this book some token of my sincere gratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Gaunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Haven, New Eltham, Kent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      A BROKEN JOURNEY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I&mdash;THE LURE OF THE UNKNOWN
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>ach time I begin a
+      book of travel I search for the reasons that sent me awandering.
+      Foolishness, for I ought to know by this time the wander fever was born in
+      my blood; it is in the blood of my sister and brothers. We were brought up
+      in an inland town in Victoria, Australia, and the years have seen us
+      roaming all over the world. I do not think any of us has been nearer the
+      North Pole than Petropaulovski, or to the South Pole than Cape Horn&mdash;children
+      of a sub-tropical clime, we do not like the cold&mdash;but in many
+      countries in between have we wandered. The sailors by virtue of their
+      profession have had the greater opportunities, but the other five have
+      made a very good second best of it, and always there has been among us a
+      very understanding sympathy 'with the desire that is planted in each and
+      all to visit the remote corners of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anybody can go on the beaten track. It only requires money to take a
+      railway or steamer ticket, and though we by no means despise comfort&mdash;indeed,
+      because we know something of the difficulties that beset the traveller
+      beyond the bounds of civilisation, we appreciate it the more highly&mdash;still
+      there is something else beyond comfort in life. Wherein lies the call of
+      the Unknown? To have done something that no one else has done&mdash;or
+      only accomplished with difficulty? Where lies the charm? I cannot put it
+      into words&mdash;only it is there, the &ldquo;something calling&mdash;beyond the
+      mountains,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Come and find me&rdquo; of Kipling. That voice every one of the
+      Gaunts hears, and we all sympathise when another one goes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that voice I heard loudly in China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and find me! Come and find me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The livelong day I heard it, and again and again and yet again I tried to
+      stifle it, for you who have read my <i>Woman in China</i> will know that
+      travelling there leaves much to be desired. To say it is uncomfortable is
+      to put it in the mildest terms. Everything that I particularly dislike in
+      life have I met travelling in China; everything that repells me; and yet,
+      having unwisely invested $10 (about £1) in an atlas of China, the voice
+      began to ring in my ears day and night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was living in an American Presbyterian mission station in the western
+      suburb of the walled town of Pao Ting Fu, just beyond European influence,
+      the influence of the Treaty Ports and the Legation quarter of Peking. I
+      wanted to see something of the real China, to get material for a novel&mdash;not
+      a novel concerning the Chinese; for I have observed that no successful
+      novel in English deals with anybody but the British or the Americans; the
+      other peoples come in as subordinates&mdash;and the local colour was best
+      got on the spot. There was plenty in Pao Ting Fu, goodness knows. It had
+      suffered severely in the Boxer trouble. In the northern suburb, just about
+      a mile from where we lived, was a tomb, or monument rather, that had been
+      raised to the missionaries massacred then. They have made a garden plot
+      where those burning houses stood, they have planted trees and flowers, and
+      set up memorial tablets in the Chinese style, and the mission has moved to
+      the western suburb, just under the frowning walls of the town, and&mdash;is
+      doubly strong. A God-given fervour, say the missionaries, sends them
+      forth.'Who am I to judge? But I see that same desire to go forth in
+      myself, that same disregard of danger, when it is not immediate&mdash;I
+      know I should be horribly scared if it materialised&mdash;and I cannot
+      claim for myself it is God-given, save perhaps that all our desires are
+      God-given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So there in the comfortable mission station I studied the local colour,
+      corrected my last book of China, and instead of planning the novel, looked
+      daily at the atlas of China, till there grew up in me a desire to cross
+      Asia, not by train to the north as I had already done, as thousands of
+      people used to do every year, but by the caravan route, across Shensi and
+      Kansu and Sinkiang to Andijan in Asiatic Russia, the terminus of the
+      Caspian Railway. Thousands and thousands of people go slowly along that
+      way too, but the majority do not go all the way, and they do not belong to
+      the class or nation whose comings and goings are recorded. In fact, you
+      may count on the fingers of one hand the people who know anything of that
+      road. The missionaries, particularly the womenkind, did not take very
+      cheerful view's about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I wanted to die,&rdquo; said one woman, meeting me as I was going round the
+      compound one day in the early spring of 1914, &ldquo;I would choose some easier
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the doctor there was keenly interested. He would have liked to have
+      gone himself, but his duty kept him alongside his patients and his
+      hospital in Pao Ting Fu, and though he pulled himself up every now and
+      then, remembering I was only a woman and probably couldn't do it, he could
+      not but take as great an interest in that map and ways and means as I did
+      myself. Then there was Mr Long, a professor at the big Chinese college in
+      the northern suburb&mdash;he was young and enthusiastic and as interested
+      as Dr Lewis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He too knew something about travel in unknown China, for he had been one
+      of the band of white men who had made their way over the mountains of
+      Shansi and Shensi in the depths of winter to go to the rescue of the
+      missionaries in Sui Te Chou and all the little towns down to Hsi An Fu at
+      the time of the Revolution. Yes, he knew something of the difficulties of
+      Chinese travel, and he thought I could do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The only danger would be robbers, and&mdash;well, you know, there
+      mightn't be robbers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Peking&mdash;the Peking of the Legations&mdash;that, I knew, held
+      different view's. I wrote to an influential man who had been in China over
+      ten years, who spoke the language well, and he was against it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was very much interested&rdquo; (wrote he) &ldquo;to read of your intention to do
+      that trek across country. You ask my opinion about it, but I can only give
+      you the same advice that <i>Punch</i> gave many years ago, and that is, <i>don't</i>.
+      You must realise that the travelling will be absolutely awful and the cost
+      is very great indeed. You have not yet forgotten your trip to Jehol, I
+      hope, and the roughness of the road. The trip you contemplate will make
+      the little journey to Jehol look like a Sunday morning walk in Hyde Park,
+      particularly as regards travelling comfort, to say nothing about the
+      danger of the journey as regards hostile tribes on the southern and
+      western borders of Tibet. You will be passing near the Lolo country, and I
+      can assure you that the Lolos are <i>not</i> a set of gentlemen within the
+      meaning of the Act. They are distinctly hostile to foreigners, and many
+      murders have taken place in their country that have not been published
+      because of the inability of the Chinese troops to stand up against these
+      people. What the peoples are like farther north I do not know, but I
+      understand the Tibetans are not particularly trustworthy, and it will
+      follow that the people living on their borders will inherit a good many of
+      their vices and few of their virtues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have really made up your mind to go, however, just let me know,
+      and I will endeavour to hunt up all the information that it is possible to
+      collect as to the best route to take, etc., though I repeat I would not
+      advise the journey, and the Geographical Society can go to the deuce.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This not because he despised the Geographical Society by any means, but
+      because I had advanced as one reason for going across Asia the desire to
+      win my spurs so and be an acceptable member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; wrote a woman, &ldquo;think of that poor young Brooke. The Tibetans
+      cut his throat with a sharp stone, which is a pleasant little way they
+      have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the man's opinion was worth having, but the woman's is a specimen of
+      the loose way people are apt to reason&mdash;I do it myself&mdash;when
+      they deal with the unknown. The &ldquo;poor young Brooke&rdquo; never went near Tibet,
+      and was murdered about a thousand miles distant from the route I intended
+      to take. It was something as if a traveller bound to the Hebrides was
+      warned against dangers to be met upon the Rhone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One man who had travelled extensively in Mongolia was strongly against the
+      journey, but declared that &ldquo;Purdom knew a great deal more about travelling
+      in China&rdquo; than he did, and if &ldquo;Purdom&rdquo; said I might got&mdash;well then, I
+      might. Mr Purdom and Mr Reginald Farrer were going west to the borders of
+      Tibet botanising, and one night I dined with them, and Mr Purdom was
+      optimistic and declared if I was prepared for discomfort and perhaps
+      hardship he thought I might go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it was decided, and thereupon those who knew took me in hand and gave
+      me all advice about travelling in China, how to minimise discomfort, what
+      to take and what to leave behind. One thing they were all agreed upon. The
+      Chinese, as a rule, are the most peaceable people upon earth, the only
+      thing I had to fear was a chance band of robbers, and if I fell into their
+      hands&mdash;well, it would probably be finish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Chinese are fiendishly cruel,&rdquo; said my friend of Mongolian travel;
+      &ldquo;keep your last cartridge for yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I intimated that a pistol was quite beyond me, that that way of going out
+      did not appeal to me, and anyhow I'd be sure to bungle it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then have something made up at the chemist's and keep it always on your
+      person. You do not know how desperately you may need it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I may say here that these remarks made no impression upon me whatever. I
+      suppose in most of us the feeling is strong that nothing bad could
+      possibly happen. It happens to other people, we know, but to us&mdash;impossible!
+      I have often wondered how near I could get to danger without feeling that
+      it really threatened&mdash;pretty close, I suspect. It is probably a
+      matter of experience. I cannot cross a London road with equanimity&mdash;but
+      then twice have I been knocked down and rather badly hurt&mdash;but I
+      gaily essayed to cross Asia by way of China, and would quite certainly as
+      gaily try again did I get the chance. Only next time I propose to take a
+      good cook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To some, of course, the unknown is always full of danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The folks who walked about Peking without a qualm warned me I would die of
+      indigestion, I would be unable to drink the water, the filth would be
+      unspeakable, hydrophobia raged, and &ldquo;when you are bitten, promptly cut
+      deep into the place and insert a chloride of mercury tabloid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That last warning made me laugh. It reminded me of the time when as a
+      little girl, living in a country where deadly snakes swarmed&mdash;my
+      eldest brother killed sixty in a week, I remember, in our garden&mdash;I
+      used to think it would be extremely dangerous to go to Europe because
+      there were there mad dogs, things we never had in Australia! I think it
+      was the reference to hydrophobia and the chloride of mercury tabloid
+      helped me to put things in their proper prospective and made me realise
+      that I was setting out on a difficult journey with a possible danger of
+      robbers; but a possible danger is the thing we risk every day we travel in
+      a railway train or on an electric tramcar. I am always ready for possible
+      risks, it is when they become probable I bar them, so I set about my
+      preparations with a quiet mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A servant. I decided I must have a tall servant and strong, because so
+      often in China I found I had to be lifted, and I had suffered from having
+      too small a man on my former journeys. The missionaries provided me with a
+      new convert of theirs, a tall strapping Northern Chinaman, who was a mason
+      by trade. Tsai Chih Fu, we called him&mdash;that is to say, he came of the
+      Tsai family; and the Chih Fu&mdash;I'm by no means sure that I spell it
+      right&mdash;meant a &ldquo;master workman.&rdquo; He belonged to a large firm of
+      masons, but as he had never made a dollar a day at his trade, my offer of
+      that sum put him at my service, ready to go out into the unknown. He was a
+      fine-looking man, dignified and courteous, and I had and have the greatest
+      respect for him. He could not read or write, of course. Now a man who
+      cannot read or write here in the West we look upon with contempt, but it
+      would be impossible to look upon Tsai Chih Fu with contempt. He was a
+      responsible person, a man who would count in any company. He belonged to
+      another era and another civilisation, but he was a man of weight. A master
+      of transport in Babylon probably closely resembled my servant Tsai Chih
+      Fu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0027.jpg" alt="0027 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0027.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      My interpreter, Wang Hsien&mdash;that is, Mr Wang&mdash;was of quite a
+      different order. He was little and slight, with long artistic hands, of
+      the incapable artistic order, and he was a fool in any language; but good
+      interpreters are exceedingly difficult to get. He used to come and see me
+      every day for a fortnight before we started, and I must say my heart sank
+      when the simplest remark, probably a greeting, or a statement as to the
+      weather, was met with a &ldquo;Repeat, please.&rdquo; I found this was the invariable
+      formula and it was not conducive to brisk conversation. On my way through
+      the country things were apt to vanish before I had made Mr Wang understand
+      that I was asking, and was really in search of, information. He had his
+      black hair cut short in the progressive foreign fashion (it looked as if
+      he had had a basin put on his head&mdash;a good large one&mdash;and the
+      hair snipped off round), and he wore a long blue cotton gown buttoned to
+      his feet. Always he spoke with a silly giggle. Could I have chosen, which
+      I could not, he would have been about the very last man I should have
+      taken on a strenuous journey as guide, philosopher and friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there was another member of the party, a most important member,
+      without whom I should not have dreamt of stirring&mdash;my little black
+      and white k'ang dog, James Buehanan, who loved me as no one in the world
+      has ever loved me, thought everything I did was perfect, and declared he
+      was willing to go with me to the ends of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I began my preparations. One thing only was clear, everyone was agreed
+      upon it, all my goods must be packed in canvas bags, because it is
+      impossible to travel by mule, or cart, or litter with one's clothes in
+      ordinary boxes. And I had, through the kindness of Messrs Forbes &amp;
+      Company, to make arrangements with Chinese bankers, who have probably been
+      making the same arrangements since before the dawn of history, to get
+      money along the proposed route. These things I managed satisfactorily; it
+      was over the stores that, as usual, I made mistakes. The fact of the
+      matter is that the experience gained in one country is not always useful
+      for the next. When first I travelled in Africa I took many &ldquo;chop&rdquo; boxes
+      that were weighty and expensive of transport, and contained much tinned
+      meat that in a warm, moist climate I did not want. I found I could live
+      quite happily on biscuits and fruit and eggs, with such relishes as
+      anchovy paste or a few Bologna sausages for a change. My expensive tinned
+      foods I bestowed upon my servants and carriers, greatly to my own regret.
+      I went travelling in China, in Northern Chihli and Inner Mongolia, I dwelt
+      apart from all foreigners in a temple in the western hills, and I found
+      with a good cook I lived very comfortably off the country, with just the
+      addition of a few biscuits, tea, condensed milk, coffee and raisins,
+      therefore I persuaded myself I could go west with few stores and do
+      exactly the same. Thus I added considerably to my own discomfort. The
+      excellent master of transport was a bad cook, and a simple diet of
+      hard-boiled eggs, puffed rice and tea, with raisins for dessert, however
+      good in itself, is apt to pall when it is served up three times a day for
+      weeks with unfailing regularity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, I didn't know that at the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at last all was ready. I had written to all the mission stations as
+      far west as Tihwa, in Sinkiang, announcing my coming. I had provided
+      myself with a folding table and chair&mdash;they both, I found, were given
+      to fold at inconvenient moments&mdash;some enamel plates, a couple of
+      glasses, a knife and fork, rudimentary kitchen utensils, bedding,
+      cushions, rugs, etc., and all was ready. I was to start the next week, ten
+      days after Mr Purdom and Mr Farrer had set out, for Honan, when there came
+      a telegram from Hsi An Fu:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Delay journey&rdquo; (it read).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;White wolf in Shensi. Shorrocks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Was there ever such country? News that a robber was holding up the road
+      could be sent by telegram!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      China rather specialises in robbers, but White Wolf was considerably worse
+      than the average gentleman of the road. He defied the Government in 1914,
+      but the last time we of the mission station had heard of him he was making
+      things pleasant for the peaceful inhabitants of Anhwei, to the east, and
+      the troops were said to have him &ldquo;well in hand.&rdquo; But in China you never
+      know exactly where you are, and now he was in Shensi!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I read that telegram in the pleasant March sunshine. I looked up at the
+      boughs of the &ldquo;water chestnuts,&rdquo; where the buds were beginning to swell,
+      and I wondered what on earth I should do. The roads now were as good as
+      they were ever likely to be, hard after the long winter and not yet broken
+      up by the summer rains. We discussed the matter from all points that day
+      at the midday dinner. The missionaries had a splendid cook, a Chinese who
+      had had his kitchen education finished in a French family, and with a few
+      good American recipes thrown in the combination makes a craftsman fit for
+      the Savoy, and all for ten Mexican dollars a month! Never again do I
+      expect to meet such salads, sweet and savoury! And here was I doing my
+      best to leave the flesh-pots of Egypt. It seemed foolish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I contented my soul with what patience I might for a week, and then I
+      telegraphed to Honan Fu, at which place I expected to be well away from
+      the railway. Honan Fu answered promptly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The case is hopeless. Hsi An Fu threatened. Advise you go by T'ai Yuan
+      Fu.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the road from Honan Fu to Hsi An Fu is always dangerous. It is through
+      the loess, sunken many feet below the level of the surrounding country,
+      and at the best of times is infested with stray robbers who, from the
+      cliffs above, roll down missiles on the carts beneath, kill the mules and
+      hold the travellers at their mercy. The carters go in large bodies and are
+      always careful to find themselves safe in the inn-yards before the dusk
+      has fallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These were the everyday dangers of the way such as men have faced for
+      thousands of years; if you add to them an organised robber band and a
+      large body of soldiers in pursuit, clearly that road is no place for a
+      solitary foreign woman, with only a couple of attendants, a little dog,
+      and for all arms a small pistol and exactly thirteen cartridges&mdash;all
+      I could get, for it is difficult to buy ammunition in China. Then to
+      clinch matters came another telegram from Hsi An Fu, in cipher this time:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not come&rdquo; (it said).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The country is very much disturbed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From Anhwei to Shensi the brigands had operated. They had burned and
+      looted and outraged by order of Pai Lang (White Wolf), leaving behind them
+      ruined homes and desolated hearths, and when the soldiers came after them,
+      so said Rumour of the many tongues, White Wolf, who was rich by then, left
+      money on the roads and so bribed the avenging army to come over to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to the ordinary peaceful inhabitant&mdash;and curiously enough the
+      ordinary Chinese is extremely peaceful&mdash;it is not a matter of much
+      moment whether it be Pai Lang or the soldier who is hunting him who falls
+      upon the country. The inhabitants are sure to suffer. Both bandit and
+      soldier must have food, so both loot and outrage impartially, for the
+      unpaid soldiery&mdash;I hope I shall not be sued for libel, but most of
+      the soldiery when I was in China appeared to be unpaid&mdash;loot just as
+      readily as do the professional bandits. A robber band alone is a heavy
+      load for a community to carry, and a robber band pursued by soldiers more
+      than doubles the burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still the soldiers held Tungkwan, the gate into Shensi, the mountains on
+      either side blocked the way, and Hsi An Fu breathed for a moment till it
+      was discovered that Pai Lang in strategy was equal to anyone who had been
+      sent against him. He had taken the old and difficult route through the
+      mountains and had come out west of the narrow pass of Tungkwan and, when I
+      became interested in him, was within a day's march of Hsi An Fu, the town
+      that is the capital of the province of Shensi and was the capital of China
+      many hundreds of years ago. It is a walled city, but the people feared and
+      so did the members of the English Baptist Mission sheltering behind those
+      walls. And, naturally, they feared, for the Society of the Elder Brethren
+      had joined Pai Lang, and the Society of Elder Brethren always has been and
+      is markedly anti-foreign. This was the situation, growing daily a little
+      worse, and we foreigners looked on; and the Government organs in Peking
+      told one day how a certain Tao Tai had been punished and degraded because
+      he had been slack in putting down White Wolf and possibly the next day
+      declared the power of White Wolf was broken and he was in full retreat. I
+      don't know how many times I read the power of White Wolf had been broken
+      and yet in the end I was regretfully obliged to acknowledge that he was
+      stronger than ever. Certainly Pai Lang turned my face north sooner than I
+      intended, for the idea of being a target for rocks and stones and billets
+      of wood at the bottom of a deep ditch from which there could be no escape
+      did not commend itself to me. True, in loess country, as I afterwards
+      found, there are no stones, no rocks and no wood. I can't speak for the
+      road through Tungkwan, for I didn't dare it. But, even if there were no
+      stones, loose earth&mdash;and there is an unlimited quantity of that
+      commodity in Northern China&mdash;flung down from a height would be
+      exceedingly unpleasant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course it all might have been rumour&mdash;it wasn't, I found out
+      afterwards; but unfortunately the only way to find out at the time was by
+      going to see for myself, and if it had been true&mdash;well, in all
+      probability I shouldn't have come back. That missionary evidently realised
+      how keen I was when he suggested that I should go by T'ai Yuan Fu, the
+      capital of Shansi, and I determined to take his advice. There was a way, a
+      little-known way, across the mountains, across Shansi, by Sui Te Chou in
+      Shensi, and thence into Kansu, which would eventually land me in Lan Chou
+      Fu if I cared to risk it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time I asked Mr Long's advice. He and the little band of nine
+      rescuers who had ridden hot haste to the aid of the Shensi missionaries
+      during the revolution had taken this road, and they had gone in the depths
+      of winter when the country was frozen hard and the thermometer was more
+      often below zero, very far below zero, than not. If they had accomplished
+      it when pressed for time in the great cold, I thought' in all probability
+      I might manage it now at the best time of the year and at my leisure. Mr
+      Long, who would have liked to have gone himself, thought so too, and
+      eventually I set off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The missionaries were goodness itself to me. Dr Mackay, in charge of the
+      Women's Hospital, set me up with all sorts of simple drugs that I might
+      require and that I could manage, and one day in the springtime, when the
+      buds on the trees in the compound were just about to burst, and full of
+      the promise of the life that was coming, I, with most of the missionaries
+      to wish me &ldquo;Godspeed,&rdquo; and with James Buchanan under my arm, my giggling
+      interpreter and my master of transport following with my gear, took train
+      to T'ai Yuan Fu, a walled city that is set in the heart of a fertile
+      plateau surrounded by mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great adventure had begun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II&mdash;TRUCULENT T'AI YUAN FU
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>ut you mayn't go
+      to T'ai Yuan Fu in one day. The southern train puts you down at Shih Chia
+      Chuang&mdash;the village of the Stone Family&mdash;and there you must stay
+      till 7.40 a.m. next morning, when the French railway built through the
+      mountains that divide Shansi from Shensi takes you on to its terminus at
+      T'ai Yuan Fu. There is a little Chinese inn at Shih Chia Chuang that by
+      this time has become accustomed to catering for the foreigner, but those
+      who are wise beg the hospitality of the British American Tobacco Company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I craved that hospitality, and two kindly young men came to the station
+      through a dust-storm to meet me and took me off to their house that,
+      whether it was intended to or not, with great cool stone balconies, looked
+      like a fort. But they lived on perfectly friendly terms with people. Why
+      not? To a great number of the missionaries the B.A.T. is <i>anathema
+      maranatha</i>, though many of the members rival in pluck and endurance the
+      missionaries themselves. And why is it a crime for a man or a woman to
+      smoke? Many of the new teachers make it so and thus lay an added burden on
+      shoulders already heavily weighted. Personally I should encourage smoking,
+      because it is the one thing people who are far apart as the Poles might
+      have in common.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And goodness knows they have so few things. Even with the animals the
+      &ldquo;East is East and West is West&rdquo; feeling is most marked. Here at the B.A.T.
+      they had a small pekinese as a pet. She made a friend of James Buchanan in
+      a high and haughty manner, but she declined to accompany him outside the
+      premises. Once she had been stolen and had spent over three months in a
+      Chinese house. Then one day her master saw her and, making good his claim,
+      took her home with him. Since that time nothing would induce her to go
+      beyond the front door. She said in effect that she got all the exercise
+      she needed in the courtyard, and if it did spoil her figure, she preferred
+      a little weight to risking the tender mercies of a Chinese household, and
+      I'm sure she told Buchanan, who, having the sacred V-shaped mark on his
+      forehead, was reckoned very beautiful and was much admired by the Chinese,
+      that he had better take care and not fall into alien hands. Buchanan as a
+      puppy of two months old had been bought in the streets of Peking, and when
+      we started on our journey must have been nearly ten months old, but he had
+      entirely forgotten his origin and regarded all Chinese with suspicion. He
+      tolerated the master of transport as a follower of whom we had need.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Small dog,&rdquo; Mr Wang called him, and looked upon him doubtfully, but
+      really not as doubtfully as Buchanan looked at him. He was a peaceful,
+      friendly little dog, but I always thought he did not bite Mr Wang simply
+      because he despised him so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those two young men were more than good to me. They gave me refreshment,
+      plenty of hot water to wash away the ravages of the dust-storm, and good
+      company, and as we sat and talked&mdash;of White Wolf, of course&mdash;there
+      came to us the tragedy of a life, a woman who had not the instincts of
+      Buchanan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foreign women are scarce at Shih Chia Chuang; one a month is something to
+      remark upon, one a week is a crowd, so that when, as we sat in the big
+      sitting-room talking, the door opened and a foreign woman stood there,
+      everyone rose to his feet in astonishment. Mr Long, who had been up the
+      line, stood beside her, and behind her was a Chinaman with a half-caste
+      baby in his arms. She was young and tall and rather pretty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0037.jpg" alt="0037 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0037.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0038.jpg" alt="0038 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0038.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bring you a lady in distress,&rdquo; said Mr Long rather hastily, explaining
+      matters. &ldquo;I met Mrs Chang on the train. She has miscalculated her
+      resources and has not left herself enough money to get to Peking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman began to explain; but it is an awkward thing to explain to
+      strangers that you have no money and are without any credentials. I
+      hesitated. Eventually I hope I should have helped her, but my charity and
+      kindliness were by no means as ready and spontaneous as those of my
+      gallant young host. He never hesitated a moment. You would have thought
+      that women and babies without any money were his everyday business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sure,&rdquo; said he in his pleasant American voice, &ldquo;if I can be of any
+      assistance. But you can't go to-day, Mrs Chang; of course you will stay
+      with us&mdash;oh yes, yes; indeed we should be very much hurt if you
+      didn't; and you will let me lend you some money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so she was established among us, this woman who had committed the
+      unpardonable sin of the East, the sin against her race, the sin for which
+      there is no atoning. It is extraordinary after all these years, after all
+      that has been said and written, that Englishwomen, women of good class and
+      standing, will so outrage all the laws of decency and good taste. This
+      woman talked. She did not like the Chinese, she would not associate with
+      them; her husband, of course, was different. He was good to her; but it
+      was hard to get work in these troubled times, harder still to get paid for
+      it, and he had gone away in search of it, so she was going for a holiday
+      to Peking and&mdash;here she tumed|to the young men and talked about the
+      society and the dances and the amusement she expected to have among the
+      foreigners in the capital, she who for so long had been cut off from such
+      joys in the heart of China among an alien people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We listened. What could we say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People in England don't really understand,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;what being in
+      exile means. They don't understand the craving to go home and speak to
+      one's own people; but being in Peking will be something like being in
+      England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We other five never even looked at each other, because we knew, and we
+      could hardly believe, that she had not yet realised that in marrying a
+      Chinese, even one who had been brought up in England, she had exiled
+      herself effectually. The Chinese look down upon her, they will have none
+      of her, and among the foreigners she is outcast. These young men who had
+      come to her rescue with such right good will&mdash;&ldquo;I could not see a
+      foreign woman in distress among Chinese&rdquo;&mdash;will pass her in the street
+      with a bow, will not see her if they can help themselves, will certainly
+      object that anyone they care about should see them talking to her, and
+      their attitude but reflects that of the majority of the foreigners in
+      China. Her little child may not go to the same sehool as the foreign
+      children, even as it may not go to the same school as the Chinese. She has
+      committed the one error that outclasses her, and she is going to pay for
+      it in bitterness all the days of her life. And everyone in that room,
+      while we pitied her, held, and held strongly, that the attitude of the
+      community, foreign and Chinese, was one to be upheld.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,&rdquo; and yet
+      here and there one still comes across a foolish woman who wrecks her life
+      because she never seems to have heard of this dictum. She talked and
+      talked, and told us how good was her husband to her, and we listeners said
+      afterwards she &ldquo;doth protest too much,&rdquo; she was convincing herself, not
+      us, and that, of course, seeing he was a Chinaman, he was disappointed
+      that the baby was a girl, and that his going off alone was the beginning
+      of the end, and we were thankful that she was &ldquo;the only girl her mother
+      had got,&rdquo; and so she could go back to her when the inevitable happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pity of it! When will the stay-at-home English learn that the very
+      worst thing one of their women can do with her life is to wed an Oriental?
+      But when I think of that misguided woman in that remote Chinese village I
+      shall always think too of those gallant young gentlemen, perfect in
+      courteous kindliness, who ran the B.A.T. in Shih Chia Chuang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Buchanan and I and our following boarded the luxurious little
+      mountain railway and went to T'ai Yuan Fu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This railway, to me, who know nothing of such things, is a very marvel of
+      engineering skill. There are great rugged mountains, steep and rocky, and
+      the train winds its way through them, clinging along the sides of
+      precipices, running through dark tunnels and cuttings that tower high
+      overhead and going round such curves that the engine and the guard's van
+      of a long train are going in exactly opposite directions. A wonderful
+      railway, and doubly was I interested in it because before ever I came to
+      China I had heard about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When there are disturbances in China it is always well for the foreign
+      element to flee while there is yet time, for the sanctity of human life is
+      not yet thoroughly grasped there, and there is always the chance that the
+      foreigner may be killed first and his harmlessness, or even his value,
+      discovered later. So in the revolution in the winter of 1910-1911, though
+      all train traffic had stopped, the missionaries from T'ai Yuan Fu and
+      those from the country beyond fled down this railway. A friend of mine, an
+      artist, happened to be staying at a mission station in the mountains and
+      made one of the party. It was the depth of a Shansi winter, a Continental
+      winter, with the thermometer generally below -15° at the warmest part of
+      the day, and the little band of fugitives came fleeing down this line on
+      trollies worked by the men of the party. They stayed the nights at the
+      deserted railway stations, whence all the officials had fled, and the
+      country people in their faded blue cotton wadded coats came and looked at
+      them and, pointing their fingers at them exactly as I have seen the folks
+      in the streets of London do at a Chinaman or an Arab in an outlandish
+      dress, remarked that these people were going to their death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Death! Death!&rdquo; sounded on all sides. They, the country people, were
+      peaceful souls; they would not have killed them themselves; they merely
+      looked upon them as an interesting exhibit because they were foreign and
+      they were going to die. That the audience were wrong the people on show
+      were not quite as sure as they would have liked to be, and a single-line
+      railway through mountainous country is by no means easy to negotiate on a
+      trolly. They came to places where the line was carried upon trestles; they
+      could see a river winding its way at the bottom of a rocky ravine far
+      below them, and the question would be how to get across. It required more
+      nerve than most of them had to walk across the skeleton bridge. The
+      procedure seems to have been to give each trolly a good hard push, to
+      spring upon it and to trust to Providence to get safely across to the firm
+      earth upon the other side. The tunnels too, and the sharp curves, were
+      hair-raising, for they knew nothing of what was happening at the other end
+      of the line, and for all they could say they might have come full butt
+      upon a train rushing up in the other direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eventually they did get through, but with considerable hardship, and I
+      should hesitate to say how many days that little company went without
+      taking off their clothes. I thought of them whenever our train went into a
+      tunnel, and I thought too of the gay girl who told me the story and who
+      had dwelt not upon the discomfort and danger, but upon the excitement and
+      exhilaration that comes with danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I lived,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;I lived,&rdquo; and my heart went out to her. It is that
+      spirit in this &ldquo;nation of shopkeepers&rdquo; that is helping us to beat the
+      Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scenery through which we went is beautiful&mdash;it would be beautiful
+      in any land&mdash;and this in China, where I expected not so much beauty
+      as industry. There were evidences of industry in plenty on every side.
+      These people were brethren of the bandits who turned me north and they are
+      surely the most industrious in the world. Wherever among these stony hills
+      there was a patch of ground fit for cultivation, though it was tiny as a
+      pocket handkerchief, it was cultivated. Everywhere I saw people at work in
+      the fields, digging, weeding, ploughing with a dry cow or a dry cow and a
+      donkey hitched to the primitive plough, or guiding trains of donkeys or
+      mules carrying merchandise along the steep and narrow paths, and more than
+      once I saw strings of camels, old-world camels that took me back before
+      the days of written history. They kept to the valleys and evidently made
+      their way along the river beds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through mountain sidings and tunnels we came at length to the curious
+      loess country, where the friable land is cut into huge terraces that make
+      the high hills look like pyramids carved in great clay-coloured steps, and
+      now in April the green crops were already springing; another month and
+      they would be banks of waving green. The people are poor, their faces were
+      browned by the sun and the wind, their garments were scanty and ragged,
+      and the original blue was faded till the men and the clothes were all the
+      same monotonous clay colour of the surrounding country. The women I saw
+      here were few, and only afterwards I found the reason. The miserably poor
+      peasant of Shansi binds the feet of his women so effectually that to the
+      majority movement is a physical impossibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We climbed up and up through the mountains into the loess country, and at
+      last we were on the plateau, about four thousand feet above the sea-level,
+      whereon is T'ai Yuan Fu, the capital of the province. There are other
+      towns here too, little walled eities, and the train drew up at the
+      stations outside the grey brick walls, the most ancient and the most
+      modern, Babylon and Crewe meeting. Oh, I understand the need of those
+      walled eities now I have heard so much about Pai Lang. There is a certain
+      degree of safety behind those grey walls, so long as the robber bands are
+      small and the great iron-bound gates ean keep them out, but dire is the
+      fate of the city into which the enemy has penetrated, has fastened the
+      gates and holds the people in a trap behind their own walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these people were at peace; they were thinking of no robbers. Pai Lang
+      was about five hundred miles away and the station platforms were crowded
+      with would-be travellers with their belongings in bundles, and over the
+      fence that shut off the platform hung a vociferating crowd waving white
+      banners on which were inscribed in black characters the signs of the
+      various inns, while each banner-bearer at the top of his voice advocated
+      the charms of his own employer's establishment. The queue was forbidden
+      for the moment, but many of these ragged touts and many of the other
+      peasants still wore their heads shaven in front, for the average Chinaman,
+      especially he of the poorer classes, is loath to give up the fashions of
+      his forefathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every railway platform was pandemonium, for every person on that platform
+      yelled and shrieked at the top of his voice. On the main line every
+      station was guarded by untidy, unkempt-looking soldiers armed with rifles,
+      but there on this little mountain railway the only guards were policemen,
+      equally unkempt, clad in very dusty black and white and armed with
+      stout-looking bludgeons. They stood along the line at regular intervals,
+      good-natured-looking men, and I wondered whether they would really be any
+      good in an emergency, or whether they would not take the line of least
+      resistance and join the attacking force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All across the cultivated plain we went, where not an inch of ground is
+      wasted, and at half-past five in the evening we arrived at T'ai Yuan Fu&mdash;arrived,
+      that is, at the station outside the little South Gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      T'ai Yuan Fu is a great walled city eight miles round, with five gates in
+      the walls, gates that contrast strangely with the modern-looking
+      macadamised road which goes up from the station. I don't know why I should
+      feel that way, for they certainly had paved roads even in the days before
+      history. Outside the walls are neat, perhaps forty feet high and of grey
+      brick, and inside you see how these city walls are made, for they are the
+      unfinished clay banks that have been faced in front, and when I was there
+      in the springtime the grass upon them was showing everywhere and the
+      shrubs were bursting into leaf. But those banks gave me a curious feeling
+      of being behind the scenes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0047.jpg" alt="0047 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0047.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      I was met at the station by some of the ladies of the English Baptist
+      Mission who had come to welcome me and to offer me, a total stranger to
+      them, kindly hospitality, and we walked through the gate to the mission
+      inside the walls. It was only a short walk, short and dusty, but it was
+      thronged. All the roadway was crowded with rickshaws and carts waiting in
+      a long line their turn to go underneath the gateway over which frowned a
+      typical many-roofed Chinese watch tower, and as cart or rickshaw came up
+      the men along with it were stopped by the dusty soldiery in black and grey
+      and interrogated as to their business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I got out on to the platform I had looked up at the ancient walls
+      clear-cut against the bright blue sky, and the women meeting me looked
+      askance at Tsai Chih Fu, who, a lordly presence, stood behind me, with
+      James Buchanan in his arms, a little black satin cap on his head and his
+      pigtail hanging down his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is some little commotion in the town,&rdquo; said Miss Franklin. &ldquo;They
+      are cutting off queues.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The master of transport smiled tolerantly when they told him, and, taking
+      off his cap, he wound his tightly round his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; he said in the attitude of a man of the world, &ldquo;some people do
+      not wear them now. But I have always worn one, and I like it,&rdquo; and his
+      manner said he would like to see the person who would dare dictate to him
+      in what manner he should wear his hair. He could certainly have put up a
+      good fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not needed. He passed through unchallenged; he was a quietly
+      dressed man who did not court notice and his strapping inches were in his
+      favour. He might well be passed over when there were so many slighter men
+      more easily tackled. One man riding along in a rickshaw I saw put up a
+      splendid fight. At last he was hauled out of his carriage and his little
+      round cap tossed off his head, and then it was patent his queue could not
+      be cut, for he was bald as a billiard ball! The Chinese do understand a
+      joke, even a mob. They yelled and howled with laughter, and we heard it
+      echoing and re-echoing as we passed under the frowning archway, tramping
+      across many a dusty coil of coarse black hair roughly shorn from the heads
+      of the luckless adherents to the old fashion. The missionaries said that
+      Tsai Chih Fu must be the only man in T'ai Yuan Fu with a pigtail and that
+      it would be very useful to us as we went farther west, where they had not
+      yet realised the revolution. They doubted if he would be able to keep it
+      on so strict was the rule, but he did&mdash;a tribute, I take it, to the
+      force of my &ldquo;master of transport.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The ladies lived in a Chinese house close under the walls. There is a
+      great charm about these houses built round courtyards in the Chinese
+      style; there is always plenty of air and sunshine, though, as most of the
+      rooms open into the courtyard only, I admit in rough weather they must
+      sometimes be awkward, and when&mdash;as is always the case in Shansi in
+      winter-time&mdash;the courtyard is covered with ice and snow, and the
+      thermometer is far below zero for weeks at a time, it is impossible to go
+      from bedroom to sitting-room without being well wrapped up. And yet,
+      because China is not a damp country, it could never be as awkward as it
+      would be in England, and for weeks at a time it is a charming arrangement.
+      Staying there in April, I found it delightful. Buchanan and I had a room
+      under a great tree just showing the first faint tinge of green, and I
+      shall always be grateful for the kindly hospitality those young ladies
+      gave me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From there we went out and saw T'ai Yuan Fu, and another kindly missionary
+      engaged muleteers for me and made all arrangements for my journey across
+      Shansi and Shensi and Kansu to Lan Chou Fu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But T'ai Yuan Fu is not a nice town to stay in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The town,&rdquo; said the missionaries, &ldquo;is progressive and anti-foreign.&rdquo; It
+      is. You feel somehow the difference in the attitude of the people the
+      moment you set foot inside the walls. It seems to me that if trouble
+      really came it would be an easy matter to seize the railway and cut off
+      the foreign missionaries from all help, for it is at least a fortnight
+      away in the mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They suffered cruelly at the Boxer time: forty men, women and little
+      helpless children were butchered in cold blood in the yamen, and the
+      archway leading to the hospital where Miss Coombs the schoolmistress was
+      deliberately burned to death while trying to guard and shelter her
+      helpless pupils still stands. In the yamen, with a refinement of torture,
+      they cut to pieces the little children first, and then the women, the nuns
+      of the Catholic Church the fierce soldiery dishonoured, and finally they
+      slew all the men. Against the walls in the street stand two miserable
+      stones that the Government were forced to put up to the memory of the
+      foreigners thus ruthlessly done to death, but a deeper memorial is
+      engraven on the hearts of the people. Some few years later the tree
+      underneath which they were slain was blasted by lightning and half
+      destroyed, and on that very spot, during the recent revolution, the Tao
+      Tai of the province was killed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A judgment!&rdquo; said the superstitious people. &ldquo;A judgment!&rdquo; say even the
+      educated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And during the late revolution the white people shared with the
+      inhabitants a terribly anxious time. Shut up in the hospital with a raging
+      mob outside, they waited for the place to be set on fire. The newest shops
+      in the principal streets were being looted, the Manchu city&mdash;a little
+      walled city within the great city&mdash;was destroyed, and though they
+      opened the gates and told the Manchus they might escape, the mob hunted
+      down the men as they fled and slew them, though, more merciful than Hsi An
+      Fu, they let the women and children escape. Men's blood was up, the lust
+      of killing was upon them, and the men and women behind the hospital walls
+      trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We made up our minds,&rdquo; said a young missionary lady to me, &ldquo;that if they
+      fired the place we would rush out and mingle in the mob waiting to kill
+      us. They looked awful. I can't tell you how they looked, but it would have
+      been better than being burned like rats in a trap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A Chinese crowd, to my Western eyes, unkempt, unwashed, always looks
+      awful; what it must be like when they are out to kill I cannot imagine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she went on: &ldquo;Do you know, I was not really as much afraid as I
+      should have thought I would have been. There was too mueh to think about.&rdquo;
+       Oh, merciful God! I pray that always in such moments there may be &ldquo;too
+      much to think about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mob looted the city. They ruined the university. They destroyed the
+      Manehus. But they spared the foreigners; and still there flourishes in the
+      town a mission of the English Baptists and another of the Catholics, but
+      when I was there the town had not yet settled down. There was unrest, and
+      the missionaries kept their eyes anxiously on the south, on the movements
+      of Pai Lang. We thought about him at Pao Ting Fu, but here the danger was
+      just a little nearer, help just a little farther away. Besides, the people
+      were different. They were not quite so subservient, not quite so friendly
+      to the foreigner, it would take less to light the tinder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For myself, I was glad of the instinct that had impelled me to engage as
+      servant a man of inches. I dared never walk in the streets alone as I had
+      been accustomed to in Pao Ting Fu. It marks in my mind the jumping-off
+      place. Here I left altogether the civilisation of the West and tasted the
+      age-old civilisation of the East, the civilisation that was in full swing
+      when my ancestors were naked savages hunting the deer and the bear and the
+      wolf in the swamps and marshes of Northern Europe. I had thought I had
+      reached that civilisation when I lived in Peking, when I dwelt alone in a
+      temple in the mountains, when I went to Pao Ting Fu, but here in T'ai Yuan
+      Fu the feeling deepened. Only the mission stations stood between me and
+      this strange thing. The people in the streets looked at me askance, over
+      the compound wall came the curious sounds of an ancient people at work,
+      the shrieking of the greased wheel-barrows, the beating of gongs, the whir
+      of the rattle of the embroidery silk seller, the tinkling of the bells
+      that were hung round the necks of the donkeys and the mules, the shouting
+      of the hucksters selling scones and meat balls, all the sounds of an
+      industrious city, and I was an outsider, the alien who was something of a
+      curiosity, but who anyhow was of no account. Frankly, I don't like being
+      of no account. As a matter of fact, I shocked all Chinese ideas of correct
+      deportment. When a well-bred Chinese gentleman arrives at a strange place,
+      he does not look around him, he shows no curiosity whatever in his
+      surroundings, he retires to his room, his meal is brought to him and he
+      remains quietly in his resting-place till it is time for him to take his
+      departure, and what applies to a man, applies, of course, in an
+      exaggerated degree, to a woman. Now I had come to see China, and I made
+      every effort in my power to see all I could. I tremble to think what the
+      inhabitants of Shansi must have thought of me! Possibly, since I outraged
+      all their canons of decency, I was lucky in that they only found me of no
+      account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the while I was in T'ai Yuan Fu I was exceedingly anxious about the
+      measure of safety for a foreign woman outside the walls, and opinions
+      differed as to the wisdom of my venture, but, on the whole, those I
+      consulted thought I would be all right. They rather envied me, in fact,
+      the power to go wandering, but on one point they were very sure: it was a
+      pity Dr Edwards, the veteran missionary doctor, was not there, because he
+      knew more about China and travelling there than all the rest of them put
+      together. But he had gone out on his own account and was on the way to Hsi
+      An Fu, the town I had given up as hopeless. He did not propose to approach
+      it through the Tungkwan, but from the north, and they did not expect him
+      to have any difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I found I had not brought enough money with me and the missionaries
+      lent me more, and they engaged muleteers with four mules and a donkey that
+      were to take me across the thousand miles that lay between the capital of
+      Shansi and that of Kansu. Two men were in charge, and the cost of getting
+      there, everything included&mdash;the men to feed themselves and their
+      animals and I only to be responsible for the feeding and lodging of my own
+      servants&mdash;was exactly eighteen pounds. It has always seemed to me
+      ridiculously cheap. Money must go a long way in China for it to be
+      possible for two men to take four mules and a donkey laden a thousand
+      miles, and then come back unladen and keep themselves by the way, for so
+      small a sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I sent off my servants the day before, then Buchanan and I bade
+      good-bye to the missionaries and went the first day's journey back along
+      the line to Yu Tze, where the road started for the Yellow River, and as I
+      left the train and was taken by Tsai Chih Fu and Mr Wang to the enclosure
+      of the inn where they had spent the night I felt that I had indeed left
+      the West behind, and the only companion and friend I had was James
+      Buchanan. It was lucky he was a host in himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III&mdash;THE FIRST SIGN OF UNREST
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was to ride a
+      pack-mule. Now riding a pack-mule at any time is an unpleasant way of
+      getting along the road. I know no more uncomfortable method. It is not
+      quite as comfortable as sitting upon a table with one's legs dangling, for
+      the table is still, the mule is moving, and one's legs dangle on either
+      side of his neck. There are neither reins nor stirrups, and the mule goes
+      at his own sweet will, and in a very short time your back begins to ache,
+      after a few hours that aching is intolerable. To get over this difficulty
+      the missionary had cut the legs off a chair and suggested that, mounted on
+      the pack, I might sit in it comfortably. I don't know whether I could, for
+      the mule objected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a sunny morning with a bright blue sky above, and all seemed
+      auspicious except my mule, who expressed in no measured language his
+      dislike to that chair. Tsai Chih Fu had no sooner hoisted me into it than
+      up he went on his hind legs and, using them as a pivot, stood on end
+      pawing the air. Everybody in the inn-yard shrieked and yelled except, I
+      hope, myself, and then Tsai Chih Fu, how I know not, rescued me from my
+      unpleasant position, and thankfully I found myself upon the firm ground
+      again. He was a true Chinese mule and objected to all innovations. He
+      stood meekly enough once the chair was removed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wanted to cross Asia and here I was faced with disaster at the very
+      outset! Finally I was put upon the pack minus the chair, Buchanan was
+      handed up to me and nestled down beside me, and the procession started. My
+      heart sank. I don't mind acknowledging it now. I had at least a thousand
+      miles to go, and within half-an-hour of the start I had thoroughly grasped
+      the faet that of all modes of progression a pack-mule is the most
+      abominable. There are no words at my command to express its discomforts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very little did I see of the landscape of Shansi that day. I was engaged
+      in hanging on to my pack and wondering how I could stick it out. We passed
+      along the usual hopeless cart-track of China. I had eschewed Peking carts
+      as being the very acme of misery, but I was beginning to reflect that
+      anyhow a cart was comparatively passive misery while the back of a
+      pack-mule was decidedly active. Buchanan was a good little dog, but he
+      mentioned several times in the course of that day that he was
+      uncomfortable and he thought I was doing a fool thing. I was much of his
+      opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0057.jpg" alt="0057 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0057.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0058.jpg" alt="0058 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0058.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      The day was never ending. All across a plain we went, with rough fields
+      just showing green on either hand, through walled villages, through little
+      towns, and I cared for nothing, I was too intent on holding on, on wishing
+      the day would end, and at last, as the dusk was falling, the muleteer
+      pointed out, clear-cut against the evening sky, the long wralls of a large
+      town&mdash;Taiku. At last! At last!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was to stay the night at a large mission school kept by a Mr and Mrs
+      Wolf, and I only longed for the comfort of a bed, any sort of a bed so
+      long as it was flat and warm and kept still. We went on and on, we got
+      into the suburbs of the town, and we appeared to go round and round,
+      through an unending length of dark, narrow streets, full of ruts and
+      holes, with the dim loom of houses on either side, and an occasional gleam
+      of light from a dingy kerosene lamp or Chinese paper lantern showing
+      through the paper windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again and again we stopped and spoke to men who were merely muffled
+      shapeless figures in the darkness, and again we went on. I think now that
+      in all probability neither Tsai Chih Fu nor Mr Wang understood enough of
+      the dialect to make the muleteers or the people of whom we inquired
+      understand where we wanted to go, but at last, more probably by good luck
+      than good management, somebody, seeing I was a foreigner, sent us to the
+      foreigners they knew, those who kept a school for a hundred and
+      twenty-five boys in the lovely Flower Garden. It certainly was lovely, an
+      old-world Chinese house, with little courtyards and ponds and terraces and
+      flowers and trees&mdash;and that comfortable bed I had been desiring so
+      long. As we entered the courtyard in the darkness and Tsai Chili Fu lifted
+      me down, the bed was the only thing I could think of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0059.jpg" alt="0059 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0059.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      And yet next day I started again&mdash;I wonder now I dared&mdash;and we
+      skirted the walls of Taiku. We had gone round two sides and then, as I
+      always do when I am dead-tired, I had a bad attack of breathlessness. Stay
+      on that pack I knew I could not, so I made my master of transport lift me
+      down, and I sat on a bank for the edification of all the small boys in the
+      district who, even if they had known how ill I felt, probably would not
+      have cared, and I deeided there and then that pack-mule riding was simply
+      impossible and something would have to be done. Therefore, with great
+      difficulty, I made my way baek to the mission school and asked Mr Wolf
+      what he would recommend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again were missionaries kindness itself to me. They sympathised with my
+      trouble, they took me in and made me their guest, refusing to take any
+      money for it, though they added to their kindness by allowing me to pay
+      for the keep of my servants, and they strongly recommended that I should
+      have a litter. A litter then I decided I would have.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, I should think, the very earliest form of human conveyance. It
+      consists of two long poles laid about as far apart as the shafts of an
+      ordinary cart, in the middle is hung a coarse-meshed rope net, and over
+      that a tilt of matting&mdash;the sort of stuff we see tea-chests covered
+      with in this country. Into the net is tumbled all one's small impedimenta&mdash;clothes-bags,
+      kettles, anything that will not conveniently go on mule-back; the bedding
+      is put on top, rugs and cushions arranged to the future inmate's
+      satisfaction, then you get inside and the available people about are
+      commandeered to hoist the concern on to the backs of the couple of mules,
+      who object very strongly. The head of the one behind is in the shafts, and
+      the ends rest in his pack-saddle, and the hind quarters of the one in
+      front are in the shafts, just as in an ordinary buggy. Of course there are
+      no reins, and at first I felt very much at the mercy of the mules, though
+      I am bound to say the big white mule who conducted my affairs seemed to
+      thoroughly understand his business. Still it is uncomfortable, to say the
+      least of it, to find yourself going, apparently quite unattended, down
+      steep and rocky paths, or right into a rushing river. But on the whole a
+      litter is a very comfortable way of travelling; after a pack-mule it was
+      simply heaven, and I had no doubts whatever that I could comfortably do
+      the thousand miles, lessened now, I think, by about thirty, that lay
+      before me. If I reached Lan Chou Fu there would be time enough to think
+      how I would go on farther. And here my muleteers had me. When I arranged
+      for a litter, I paid them, of course, extra, and I said another mule was
+      to be got to carry some of the loads. They accepted the money and agreed.
+      But I may say that that other mule never materialised. I accepted the
+      excuse when we left Taiku that there was no other mule to be hired, and by
+      the time that excuse had worn thin I had so much else to think about that
+      I bore up, though not even a donkey was added to our equipment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Money I took with me in lumps of silver, sycee&mdash;shoes, they called
+      them&mdash;and a very unsatisfactory way it is of carrying cash. It is
+      very heavy and there is no hiding the fact that you have got it. We
+      changed little bits for our daily needs as we went along, just as little
+      as we could, because the change in cash was an intolerable burden. On one
+      occasion in Fen Chou Fu I gave Tsai Chih Fu a very small piece of silver
+      to change and intimated that I would like to see the result. That piece of
+      silver I reckon was worth about five shillings, but presently my master of
+      transport and one of the muleteers came staggering in and laid before me
+      rows and rows of cash strung on strings! I never felt so wealthy in my
+      life. After that I never asked for my change. I was content to keep a sort
+      of general eye on the expenditure, and I expect the only leakage was the
+      accepted percentage which every servant levies on his master. 'When they
+      might easily have cheated me, I found my servants showed always a most
+      praiseworthy desire for my welfare. And yet Mr Wang did surprise me
+      occasionally. While I was in Pao Ting Fu I had found it useful to learn to
+      count in Chinese, so that roughly I knew what people at the food-stalls
+      were charging me. On one occasion I saw some little cakes powdered with
+      sesame seed that I thought I should like and I instructed Mr Wang to buy
+      me one. I heard him ask the price and the man say three cash, and my
+      interpreter turned to me and said that it was four! I was so surprised I
+      said nothing. It may have been the regulation percentage, and twenty-five
+      per cent is good anywhere, but at the moment it seemed to me extraordinary
+      that a man who considered himself as belonging to the upper classes should
+      find it worth his while to do me out of one cash, which was worth&mdash;no,
+      I give it up. I don't know what it was worth. 10.53 dollars went to the
+      pound when I was in Shansi and about thirteen hundred cash to the dollar,
+      so I leave it to some better mathematician than I am to say what I was
+      done out of on that occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another person who was very pleased with the litter and that was
+      James Buchanan. Poor little man, just before we left the Flower Garden he
+      was badly bitten by a dog, so badly he could no longer walk, and I had to
+      carry him on a cushion alongside me in the litter. I never knew before how
+      dearly one could love a dog, for I was terrified lest he should die and I
+      should be alone in the world. He lay still and refused to eat, and every
+      movement seemed to pain him, and whenever I struck a missionary&mdash;they
+      were the only people, of course, with whom I could converse&mdash;they
+      always suggested his back was broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember at Ki Hsien, where I was entertained most hospitably, and where
+      the missionary's wife was most sympathetic, he was so ill that I sat up
+      all night with him and thought he would surely die. And yet in the morning
+      he was still alive. He moaned when we lifted him into the litter and
+      whined pitifully when I got out, as I had to several times to take
+      photographs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't leave me, don't leave me to the mercy of the Chinese,&rdquo; he said, and
+      greeted me with howls of joy when I returned. It was a great day for both
+      of us when he got a little better and could put his pretty little black
+      and white head round the tilt and keep his eye upon me while I worked. But
+      really he was an ideal patient, such a good, patient little dog, so
+      grateful for any attention that was paid him, and from that time he began
+      to mend and by the time I reached Fen Chou Fu was almost his old gay happy
+      little self again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taiku is a dying town over two thousand years old, and I have before seen
+      dead towns in China. Fewer and fewer grow the inhabitants, the grass grows
+      in the streets, the bricks fall away from the walls, the houses fall down,
+      until but a few shepherds or peasant farmers dwell where once were the
+      busy haunts of merchants and tradesmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Taiku I went on across the rich Shansi plain. Now in the springtime
+      in the golden sunshine the wheat was just above the ground, turning the
+      land into one vivid green, the sky was a cloudless blue, and all was
+      bathed in the golden sunshine of Northern China. The air was clear and
+      invigorating as champagne. &ldquo;Every prospect pleases,&rdquo; as the hymn says,
+      &ldquo;and only man is vile.&rdquo; He wasn't vile; really I think he was a very good
+      fellow in his own way, which was in a dimension into which I have never
+      and am never likely to enter, but he was certainly unclean, ignorant, a
+      serf, poverty-stricken with a poverty we hardly conceive of in the West,
+      and the farther away I found myself from T'ai Yuan Fu the more friendly
+      did I find him. This country was not like England, where until the last
+      four years has been in the memory of our fathers and our fathers' fathers
+      only peace. Even now, now as I write, when the World War is on, an air
+      raid is the worst that has befallen the home-staying citizens of Britain.
+      But Shansi has been raided again and again. Still the land was tilled,
+      well tilled; on every hand were men working hard, working from dawn to
+      dark, and working, to a stranger's eyes, for the good of the community,
+      for the fields are not divided by hedge or fence; there is an occasional
+      poplar or elm, and there are graves everywhere, but there is nothing to
+      show where Wang's land ends and Lui's begins. All through the cultivated
+      land wanders, apparently without object, the zigzag track of sand and ruts
+      and stones known as the Great South Road, impossible for anything with
+      wheels but a Chinese cart, and often impossible for that. There are no
+      wayside cottages, nothing save those few trees to break the monotony, only
+      here and there is a village sheltering behind high walls, sometimes of
+      mud, but generally of brick, and stout, substantial brick at that; and if,
+      as is not infrequent, there is a farmhouse alone, it, too, is behind high
+      brick walls, built like a baronial castle of mediaeval times, with a
+      look-out tower and room behind the walls not only for the owner's family
+      even unto the third and fourth generation, but for all his hinds and his
+      dependents as well. The whole is built evidently with a view to defence,
+      and built apparently to last for hundreds of years. For Shansi is worth
+      raiding. There is oil and there is wheat in abundance. There is money too,
+      much of which comes from Mongolia and Manchuria. The bankers (the Shansi
+      men are called the Jews of China) wander across and trade far into Russian
+      territory while still their home is in agricultural Shansi, and certain it
+      is that any disturbances in these countries, even in Russia, affect the
+      prosperity of Shansi. I wonder if the Russian Revolution has been felt
+      there. Very probably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shansi is rich in other things too not as yet appreciated by the Chinaman.
+      She has iron and copper and coal that has barely been touched, for the
+      popular feeling is against mining. They say that no part of the globe
+      contains such stores of coal. I hesitate about quoting a German, but they
+      told me that Baron Reichthoffen has said that this province has enough
+      coal to supply the world for two thousand years at the present rate of
+      consumption. I haven't the faintest notion whether the Baron's opinion is
+      worth anything, but if it is, it is no wonder that Germany, with her eye
+      for ever on the main chance, has felt deeply being thrust out of China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With ample coal, and with iron alongside it, what might not Shansi be
+      worth to exploit!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ki Hsien is a little walled town five <i>li</i> round. Roughly three <i>li</i>
+      make a mile, but it is a little doubtful. For instance, from Taiku to Ki
+      Hsien is fifty li, and that fifty <i>li</i> is sixteen miles, from Ki
+      Hsien to Ping Yao is also fifty li, but that is only fourteen English
+      miles. The land, say the Chinese, explaining this discrepancy, was
+      measured in time of famine when it wasn't of any value! A very Chinese
+      explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city of Ki Hsien is very, very crowded; there were hundreds of tiny
+      courtyards and flat roofs. In the picture of the missionary's house I have
+      not been able to get the roof in because the courtyard&mdash;and it was a
+      fairly large courtyard as courtyards in the city go&mdash;was not big
+      enough. I stood as far away as I possibly could. Mr and Mrs Falls belonged
+      to the Chinese Inland Mission and the house they lived in was over three
+      hundred years old. Like many of the houses in Shansi, it was two storeys
+      high and, strangely enough, a thing I have never seen anywhere else, the
+      floors upstairs were of brick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know how I would like to live in such a crowded community, but it
+      has its advantages on occasion. At the time of the revolution, when those
+      missionaries who had come through the Boxer times were all troubled and
+      anxious about their future, the Falls decided to stay on at their station,
+      and a rich native doctor, a heathen, but a friend, who lived next door,
+      commended that decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why go away?&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Your courtyard adjoins mine. If there is trouble
+      we put up a ladder and you come over to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And there was hint of trouble then. As we sat at supper there came in the
+      Chinese postman in his shabby uniform of dirty blue and white, with his
+      large military cap pushed on the back of his head, and he brought to the
+      Falls a letter from Dr Edwards, the missionary doctor all foreign T'ai
+      Yuan Fu thought I ought to meet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I was within reach of the Peking foreign daily papers they mentioned
+      Pai Lang as one might mention a burglar in London, sandwiching him in
+      between the last racing fixtures or the latest Cinema attraction, but from
+      a little walled town within a day's march of Hsi An Fu the veteran
+      missionary wrote very differently, and we in this other little walled town
+      read breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      White Wolf had surrounded Hsi An Fu, he said; it was impossible to get
+      there and he was returning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The darkness had fallen, the lamp in the middle of the table threw a light
+      on the letter and on the faces of the middle-aged missionary and his wife
+      who pored over it. It might mean so much to them. It undoubtedly meant
+      much to their friends in Hsi An Fu, and it meant much to me, the outsider
+      who had but an hour ago walked into their lives. For I began to fear lest
+      this robber might affect me after all, lest in coming north I was not
+      going to outflank him. According to Dr Edwards, he had already taken a
+      little walled city a hundred li&mdash;about a day's journey&mdash;north-west
+      of Hsi An Fu, and when 'White Wolf took a town it meant murder and rapine.
+      And sitting there in the old Chinese room these two people who knew China
+      told me in no measured terms what might happen to a woman travelling alone
+      in disturbed country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Missionaries, they said, never left their stations when the country was
+      disturbed, they were safer at home, surrounded by their friends. Once the
+      country is raided by a robber band&mdash;and remember this is no uncommon
+      thing in China&mdash;all the bad characters in the country come to the
+      fore, and robber bands that have nothing to do with the original one
+      spring into existence, the cities shut their gates to all strangers, and
+      passports are so much waste paper. Between ourselves, I have a feeling
+      they always are in China. I could hardly tell the difference between mine
+      and my agreement with my muleteers, and I have an uneasy feeling that
+      occasionally the agreement was presented when it should have been the
+      passport.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now no one could be certain whether Pai Lang intended to take Lan Chou Fu,
+      but it looked as if that were his objective. If he took the city it would
+      not be much good my getting there, because the bankers would certainly not
+      be able to supply me with money; even if he only raided the country round,
+      it would be so disturbed that my muleteers would be bound to take alarm.
+      If they left me, and they certainly would leave me if they thought there
+      was a chance of their mules being taken, I should be done. It would spell
+      finish not only to the expedition but to my life. A foreigner, especially
+      a woman without money and without friends, would be helpless in China. Why
+      should the people help her? It takes them all they know to keep their own
+      heads above water. And Kansu was always turbulent; it only wanted a match
+      to set the fire alight. Air and Mrs Falls&mdash;bless them for their
+      kindness and interest!&mdash;thought I should be mad to venture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0068.jpg" alt="0068 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0068.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0069.jpg" alt="0069 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0069.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0070.jpg" alt="0070 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0070.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      So there in the sitting-room which had been planned for a merchant prince
+      and had come into the possession of these two who desired to bring the
+      religion of the West to China I sat and discussed this new obstacle. After
+      coming so far, laying out so much money, could I turn back when danger did
+      not directly press? I felt I could not. And yet my hosts pointed out to me
+      that if danger did directly threaten I would not be able to get away. If
+      Pai Lang did take Lan Chou Fu, or even if he did not, it might well be
+      worth his while to turn east and raid fertile Shansi. In a little town
+      like Ki Hsien there was loot well worth having. In the revolution a banker
+      there was held to ransom, and paid, as the people put it, thirty times ten
+      thousand taels (a tael is roughly three shillings, according to the price
+      of silver), and they said it was but a trifle to him&mdash;a flea-bite, I
+      believe, was the exact term&mdash;and I ean well believe, in the multitude
+      of worse parasites that afflict the average Chinaman, a flea-bite means
+      much less than it does in England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, I didn't feel like giving up just yet, so I decided to go on to
+      Fen Chou Fu, where was a big American mission, and see what they had to
+      say about the matter. If then I had to flee, the missionaries would very
+      likely be fleeing too, and I should have company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the very next day I had what I took for a warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a gorgeous day, a cloudless blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and I
+      passed too many things of interest worth photographing. There were some
+      extraordinary tombs, there was a quaint village gateway&mdash;the Gate of
+      Everlasting Peace they call it&mdash;but I was glad to get back into my
+      litter and hoped to stay there for a little, for getting out of a litter
+      presents some difficulties unless you are very active indeed. It is a good
+      long drop across the shafts on to the ground; the only other alternative
+      is to drop down behind the mule's hind quarters and slip out under those
+      shafts, but I never had sufficient confidence in my mule to do that, so
+      that I generally ealled upon Tsài Chih Fu to lift me down. I had set out
+      full of tremors, but taking photographs of the peaceful scenes soothed my
+      ruffled nerves. I persuaded myself my fears had been born of the night and
+      the dread of loneliness which sometimes overtakes me when I am in company
+      and thinking of setting out alone, leaving kindly faces behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I came upon it, the first sign of unrest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The winding road rose a little and I could see right ahead of us a great
+      crowd of people evidently much agitated, and I called to Mr Wang to know
+      what was the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Repeat, please,&rdquo; said he as usual, and then rode forward and came baek
+      saying, &ldquo;I do not know the word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What word?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is a lot of people and a dead man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said I, jumping to conclusions unwarrantably, &ldquo;that is a funeral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A funeral!&rdquo; said he triumphantly. &ldquo;I have learned a new word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr Wang was always learning a new word and rejoicing over it, but, as I
+      had hired him as a finished product, I hardly think it was unreasonable of
+      me to be aggrieved, and to feel that I was paying him a salary for the
+      pleasure of teaching him English. However, on this occasion his triumph
+      was short-lived. .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like to see the funeral?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I intimated that I would. My stalwart master of transport lifted me down
+      and the crowded people made a lane for me to pass through, and half of
+      them turned their attention to me, for though there were missionaries in
+      the big towns, a foreigner was a sight to these country people, and, Mr
+      Wang going first, we arrived at a man with his head cut off! Mercifully he
+      was mixed up with a good deal of matting and planks, but still there was
+      no mistaking the poor dead feet in their worn Chinese shoes turned up to
+      the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Considering we are mortal, it is extraordinary how seldom the ordinary
+      person looks upon death. Always it comes with a shock. At least it did. I
+      suppose this war has accustomed some of us to the sight, so that we take
+      the result of the meeting of mortal man with his last friend on earth more
+      as a matter of eourse, as indeed it should be taken. Of course I know this
+      is one of the results of the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My sister's son, staying with me after six months in hospital, consequent
+      upon a wound at Gallipoli, came home from a stroll one day and reported
+      that he had seen nothing, and then at dinner that night mentioned in a
+      casual manner that he had seen two dead men being carried out of a large
+      building and put in a motor ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said in astonishment:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They couldn't have been dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course they were. Do you think I don't know dead men when I see them?
+      I've seen plenty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So many that the sight of a couple in the streets of a quiet little
+      country town seemed not even an occasion for remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was not even accustomed to thinking of dead men and I turned upon Mr
+      Wang angrily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that isn't a funeral. That's a corpse,&rdquo; and once more to my
+      irritation he rejoiced over a new word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who killed him?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They think an enemy has done this thing,&rdquo; said he sententiously and
+      unnecessarily, as, ignorant as I am of tilings Chinese, I should hardly
+      think even they could have called it a friendly action. The body had been
+      found the day before, and the people were much troubled about it. An
+      official from Ping Yow&mdash;a coroner, I suppose we should call him&mdash;was
+      coming out to inquire about it, and because the sun was already hot the
+      people had raised a little screen of matting with a table and chairs where
+      he could sit to hold inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here was the thing the missionaries had warned me against. Trouble,
+      said they, always begins by the finding of dead bodies that cannot be
+      accounted for, and this body was on the Great South Road. It might be only
+      a case of common murder such as one might perchance meet in Piccadilly,
+      possibly it was due to the bands of soldiers that were pouring into the
+      country&mdash;to defend the crossings of the Yellow River, some people
+      said&mdash;but it was to me an emphatic reminder that the warnings of Mr
+      and Mrs Falls had not been given lightly, and I meditated upon it all the
+      way to Ping Yow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day long the soldiers had been pouring through Ki Hsien, all night
+      long they poured through the suburbs of Ping Yow. Not through the town
+      itself&mdash;the townspeople were not going to allow that if they could
+      help themselves; and as it was evidently a forced march and the regiments
+      were travelling by night, they could help themselves, for every city gate
+      is shut at sundown. The China Inland Mission had a station at an old camel
+      inn in the eastern suburb, and there the missionary's young wife was alone
+      with five young children, babies all of them, and there I found her. I
+      think she was very glad to see me, anyhow I was someone to discuss things
+      with, and we two women talked and talked over our evening meal. She was a
+      tall, pretty young woman&mdash;not even the ugly Chinese dress and her
+      hair drawn back, not a hair out of place, Chinese fashion, could disguise
+      her pathetic beauty. And she was a countrywoman of mine, born and brought
+      up in the same state, Victoria, and her native town was Ararat, green and
+      fresh among the hills. And how she talked Australia! What a beautiful land
+      it was! And the people! The free, independent people! The women who walked
+      easily and feared no man! To thoroughly appreciate a democratic country
+      you should dwell in effete China. But she feared too, this woman, feared
+      for herself and her five tiny children. It would be no easy job to get
+      away. I told her of the dead man I had seen&mdash;how should I not tell
+      her?&mdash;and she trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely it is the soldiers,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am afraid of the Chinese
+      soldiers.&rdquo; And so am I in bulk, though taken singly they seem sueh
+      harmless little chaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the willow is green and the apricot yellow in the fifth moon,&rdquo; said
+      a metrical inscription on a stone dug up at Nankin in that year&mdash;the
+      fatal year 1914&mdash;&ldquo;terrible things will happen in the land of Han.&rdquo;
+       Terrible things, it seems to me, always happen in the land of Han; but if
+      it spoke for the great world beyond, truly the stone spoke truth, though
+      we did not know it then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the evening back from the country where he had been preaching for the
+      last day or two came my Australian's husband, and there also came in to
+      see the stranger two missionaries from the other side of the town. They
+      sat there, these men and women of British race, dressed in the outlandish
+      costume of the people around them&mdash;a foolish fashion, it seems to me,
+      for a European in unadulterated Chinese dress looks as ugly and out of
+      place as a Chinese in a stiff collar and a bowler hat. And all the evening
+      we discussed the soldiers and the dead man I had seen, and opinions
+      differed as to the portent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true, said one of them who had been in the country many years, and
+      was a missionary pure and simple, with eyes for nothing but the work he
+      had in hand&mdash;which is probably the way to work for success&mdash;that
+      a dead body, particularly a dead body by the highroad, is often a sign of
+      unrest, but again, quite as often it means no more than a dead body in any
+      other place. If he had turned back for every dead body he had seen&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I thought I would not turn back either. Not yet, at least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never was I sorrier for missionaries, I who have always written against
+      missionaries, than I was for this young countrywoman of mine who never
+      thought of being sorry for herself. It was a big ugly mission compound,
+      the rooms, opening one into another, were plain and undecorated, and the
+      little children as a great treat watered the flowers that struggled up
+      among the stones of the dusty courtyard, and the very watering-can was
+      made with Chinese ingenuity from an old kerosene tin. It seemed to me
+      those little children would have had such a much better chance growing up
+      in their mother's land, or in their father's land&mdash;he was a Canadian&mdash;among
+      the free peoples of the earth. But who am I, to judge? No one in the
+      world, it seems to me, wants help so much as the poorer Chinese, whose
+      life is one long battle with disease and poverty; and perhaps these poorer
+      missionaries help a little, a very little; but the poorer the mission the
+      poorer the class they reach, and the sacrifice, as I saw it here, is so
+      great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning we arose early, and I breakfasted with my host and hostess
+      and their five children. The children's grace rings in my ears yet, always
+      I think it will ring there, the childish voices sung it with such fervour
+      and such faith:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      &ldquo;Every day, every day, we bless Thee, we bless Thee,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent10">
+      We praise Thy Name, we praise Thy Name,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      For ever and for ever!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There in the heart of China these little children, who had, it seemed to
+      me, so very little to be grateful for, thanked their God with all their
+      hearts, and when their elders with the same simple fervour went down on
+      their knees and asked their God to guide and help the stranger and set her
+      on her way, though it was against all my received canons of good taste,
+      what could I do but be simply grateful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ping Yow is a large town set in the midst of a wheatgrowing country, and
+      it is built in the shape of a turtle, at least so I was told. I could see
+      for myself that its walls were not the usual four-square set to the points
+      of the compass, but seemed irregular, with many little towers upon them.
+      These towers, it seems, were built in memory of the teachers of Confucius&mdash;this
+      is the only intimation I have had that he had seventy-two; and there were
+      over three thousand small excrescences&mdash;again I only repeat what I
+      was told; I did not count them, and if I had I would surely have counted
+      them wrong&mdash;like sentry-boxes in memory of his disciples. I do not
+      know why Ping Yow thus dedicates itself to the memory of the great sage.
+      It needs something to commend it, for it remains in my mind as a bare,
+      ugly, crowded town, with an extra amount of dust and dirt and heat, and no
+      green thing to break the monotony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I set forth, and in spite of all I still faced West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0079.jpg" alt="0079 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0079.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0080.jpg" alt="0080 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0080.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV&mdash;A CITY UNDER THE HILLS
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n my wanderings
+      across Shansi I came in contact with two missionary systems run with the
+      same object in view but carried out in diametrically opposite ways. Of
+      course I speak as an outsider. I criticise as one who only looks on, but
+      after all it is an old saw that the onlooker sees most of the game. There
+      are, of course, many missions in China, and I often feel that if the
+      Chinaman were not by nature a philosopher he would sometimes be a little
+      confused by salvation offered him by foreigners of all sects and classes,
+      ranging from Roman Catholics to Seventh Day Adventists. Personally I have
+      received much kindness from English Baptists, from the China Inland
+      Mission and from American Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Amongst
+      them all I&mdash;who frankly do not believe in missions, believing that
+      the children at home should first be fed&mdash;found much to admire, much
+      individual courage and sacrifice, but for the systems, I felt the American
+      missions were the most efficient, far the most likely to attain the end in
+      view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chinaman, to begin with, sees no necessity for his own conversion.
+      Unlike the ordinary black man, he neither admires nor envies the white
+      man, and is given to thinking his own ways are infinitely preferable. But
+      the Chinaman is a man of sound common-sense, he immensely admires
+      efficiency, he is a great believer in education, and when a mission comes
+      to him fully equipped with doctors, nurses and hospitals, teachers and
+      schools, he, once he has overcome his dread of anything new, begins to
+      avail himself first of the doctor and the hospital, for the sore need of
+      China is for medical attendance, and then of the schools. Then comes
+      conversion. They tell me that there are many genuine converts. I have only
+      noticed that the great rich American missions rake in converts by tens and
+      twenties, where they come dribbling in in units to the faith missions,
+      which offer no such advantages as medical attendance or tuition. The faith
+      missionaries work hard enough. I have seen a woman just come in from a
+      week's missionary tour in a district where, she explained, she had slept
+      on the k'angs with the other women of the household, and she was stripping
+      off her clothes most carefully and combing her long hair with a
+      tooth-comb, because all women of the class she visited among were
+      afflicted with those little parasites that we do not mention. The Chinese
+      have a proverb that &ldquo;the Empress herself has three,&rdquo; so it is no shame.
+      She thought nothing of her sacrifice, that was what she had come for,
+      everyone else was prepared to do the same; but when so much is given I
+      like to see great results, as in the American missions. They are rich, and
+      the Chinaman, with a few glaring exceptions, is a very practical person.
+      To ask him to change his faith for good that will work out in another
+      world is asking rather much of him. If he is going to do so he feels he
+      may as well have a God who will give him something in return for being
+      outcast. At least that is the way I read the results. Look at Fen Chou,
+      for instance, where the Americans are thriving and a power in the town,
+      and look at Yung Ning Chou, farther west, where a Scandinavian faith
+      mission has been established for over twenty years. They may have a few
+      adherents in the country round, but in the city itself&mdash;a city of
+      merchants&mdash;they have, I believe, not made a single convert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course the China Inland Mission does not lay itself out to be rich.
+      However many subscriptions come in, the individual missionary gets no more
+      than fifty pounds a year; if more money comes, more missionaries are
+      established, if less, then the luckless individual missionary gets as much
+      of the fifty pounds as funds allow. The Founder of the Faith was poor and
+      lowly, therefore the missionaries must follow in His footsteps. I
+      understand the reason, the nobility, that lies in the sacrifice implied
+      when men and women give their lives for their faith, but not only do I
+      like best the results of the American system, but I dislike exceedingly
+      that a European should be poor in an Oriental country. If missionaries
+      must go to China, I like them to go for the benefit of the Chinese and for
+      the honour and glory of the race to which they belong, and not for the
+      good of their own souls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I came into Fen Chou Fu and went straight to the large compound of the
+      American missionaries, three men and three women from Oberlin College,
+      Ohio. They had a hospital, they had a school, they had a kindergarten, the
+      whole compound was a flourishing centre of industry. They teach their
+      faith, for that is what they have come out for, but also they teach the
+      manifold knowledge of the West. Sanitation and hygiene loom large in their
+      curriculum, and heaven knows, without taking into consideration any future
+      life, they must be a blessing to those men and women who under cruel
+      conditions must see this life through. These six missionaries at Fen Chou
+      Fu do their best to improve those conditions with a practical American
+      common-sense and thoroughness that won my admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fen Chou Fu, unlike T'ai Yuan Fu, is friendly, and has always been
+      friendly, to the foreigner; even during the Boxer trouble they were loath
+      to kill their missionaries, and when the order came that they were to be
+      slain, declined to allow it to be done within their walls, but sent them
+      out, and they were killed about seven miles outside the city&mdash;a very
+      Chinese way of freeing themselves from blood-guiltiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The town struck me as curiously peaceful after the unrest and the
+      never-ending talk of riot, robbery and murder I had heard all along the
+      road. The weather was getting warm and we all sat at supper on the
+      verandah of Dr Watson's house, with the lamps shedding a subdued light on
+      the table, and the sounds of the city coming to us softened by the
+      distance, and Mr Watt Pye assured me he had been out in the country and
+      there was nothing to fear, nothing. The Chinaman as he had seen him had
+      many sins, at least errors of conduct that a missionary counts sin, but as
+      far as he knew I might go safely to the Russian border. He had not been in
+      the country very long, not, I fancy, a fifth of the time Dr Edwards had
+      been there, but, listening to him, I hoped once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The town is old. It was going as a city in 2205 b.c., and it is quite
+      unlike any other I have come across in China. It is a small square city
+      about nine <i>li</i> round, and on each of the four sides are suburbs,
+      also walled. Between them and the city are the gully-like roads leading to
+      the gates. The eastern suburb is nearly twice as large as the main city,
+      and is surrounded by a high brick wall, but the other suburbs have only
+      walls like huge banks of clay, on the top the grass grows, and on my way
+      in I was not surprised to see on top of this clay-bank a flock of sheep
+      browsing. It seemed a very appropriate place for sheep, for at first sight
+      there is nothing to show that this was the top of a town wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Manehus drove out the Mings, the vanquished Imperial family took
+      refuge in this western town and rebuilt the walls, which had been allowed
+      to fall into disrepair, and they set about the job in a fashion worthy of
+      Babylon itself. The bricks were made seven miles away in the hills, and
+      passed from hand to hand down a long line of men till they reached their
+      destination and were laid one on top of another to face the great
+      clay-bank forty-six feet high that guards the city. According to Chinese
+      ideas, the city needs guarding not from human enemies only. The mountains
+      to the west and north overshadow it, and all manner of evil influences
+      come from the north, and the people fear greatly their effect upon the
+      town. It was possible it might never get a good magistrate, or that,
+      having got one, he might die, and therefore they took every precaution
+      they could to ward off such a calamity. Gods they put in their watch tower
+      over the gate, and they sit there still, carved wooden figures, a great
+      fat god&mdash;if a city is to be prosperous must not its god be prosperous
+      too?&mdash;surrounded by lesser satellites. Some are fallen now, and the
+      birds of the air roost upon them, and the dust and the cobwebs have
+      gathered upon them, but not yet will they be cleared away. In a chamber
+      below are rusty old-world cannon flung aside in a heap as so much useless
+      lumber, and, below, all the busy traffic of the city passes in and out
+      beneath the arches of the gateway. In that gateway are two upright stones
+      between whieh all wheeled traffic must pass, the distance between these
+      stones marking the length of the axle allowed by the narrow city streets.
+      Any vehicle having a greater length of axle cannot pass in. No mere words
+      can describe the awful condition of the roads of Shansi, and to lessen as
+      far as possible the chance of an upset the country man makes his axle very
+      wide, and, knowing this, the town man notifies at his gates the width of
+      the vehicle that can pass in his streets. No other can enter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides the gods over the gateway, Fen Chou Fu, owing to its peculiar
+      position under the hills, requires other guarding, and there are two tall
+      bronze phoenixes on the wall close to the northern watch tower. I was
+      quite pleased to make the acquaintance of a phoenix, as, though I have
+      read about them, I had never met them before. In Fen Chou Fu it appears
+      that a phoenix is between thirty and forty feet high, built like a comic
+      representation of a chicken, with a long curly neck and a cock's comb upon
+      his head. It would indeed be a churlish, evil spirit who was not moved to
+      laughter at the sight. But though the form is crude, on the bronze bases
+      and on the birds themselves are worked beautifully the details of a long
+      story. Dragons and foxes and rabbits, and many strange symbols that I do
+      not understand come into it, but how they help to guard the city, except
+      by pleasing the gods or amusing the evil spirits, I must confess I cannot
+      imagine. Certainly the city fathers omit the most necessary care: once the
+      walls are finished, the mason is apparently never called in, and they are
+      drifting to decay. Everywhere the bricks are falling out, and when I was
+      there in the springtime the birds of the air found there a secure
+      resting-place. There were crows and hawks and magpies and whistling kites
+      popping in and out of the holes so made, in their beaks straws and twigs
+      for the making of their nests. They would be secure probably in any case,
+      for the Chinese love birds, but here they are doubly secure, for only with
+      difficulty and by the aid of a long rope could any man possibly reach
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ramps up to those walls were extremely steep&mdash;it was a
+      heart-breaking process to get on top&mdash;but Buchanan and I, accompanied
+      by the master of transport carrying the camera, and often by Mr Leete, one
+      of the missionaries, took exercise there; for in a walled city in the
+      narrow streets there is seldom enough air for my taste. The climate here
+      is roughly summer and winter, for though so short a while ago it had been
+      freezing at night, already it was very hot in the middle of the day, and
+      the dust rose up from the narrow streets in clouds. A particularly bad
+      cloud of dust generally indicated pigs, which travel a good deal in
+      Northern China, even as sheep and cattle do in Australia. In Shantung a
+      man sets out with a herd of pigs and travels them slowly west, very
+      slowly, and they feed along the wayside, though what they feed on heaven
+      only knows, for it looks to me as though there is nothing, still possibly
+      they pick up something, and I suppose the idea is that they arrive at the
+      various places in time for the harvest, or when grain and products are
+      cheapest. There are inns solely given over to pigs and their drivers in
+      Shansi, and the stench outside some of those in Fen Chou Fu was just a
+      little taller than the average smell, and the average smell in a Chinese
+      city is something to be always remembered. There were other things to be
+      seen from the top of the wall too&mdash;long lines of camels bearing
+      merchandise to and from the town, donkeys, mules, carts, all churning up
+      the dust of the unkempt roadway, small-footed women seated in their
+      doorways looking out upon the life of the streets, riding donkeys or
+      peeping out of the tilts of the carts. I could see into the courtyards of
+      the well-to-do, with their little ponds and bridges and gardens. All the
+      life of the city lay beneath us. Possibly that is why one meets so very,
+      very seldom any Chinese on the wall&mdash;it may be, it probably is, I
+      should think, bad taste to look into your neighbour's courtyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the wall justified its existence, mediaeval and out of date as it
+      seemed to me. There along the top at intervals were little heaps of
+      good-sized stones, placed there by the magistrate in the revolution for
+      the defence of the town. At first I smiled and thought how primeval, but
+      looking down into the road nearly fifty feet below, I realised that a big
+      stone flung by a good hefty fist from the top of that wall was a weapon by
+      no means to be despised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But walls, if often a protection, are sometimes a danger in more ways than
+      in shutting out the fresh air. The summer rains in North China are heavy,
+      and Fen Chou Fu holds water like a bucket. The only outlets are the narrow
+      gateways, and the waters rise and rise. A short time before I came there
+      all the eastern quarter of the town was flooded so deep that a woman was
+      drowned. At last the waters escaped through the eastern gate, only to be
+      banked up by the great ash-heaps, the product of centuries, the waste
+      rubbish of the town, that are just outside the wall of the eastern suburb.
+      It took a long, long while for those flood waters to percolate through the
+      gateway of the suburb and find a resting-place at last in a swamp the
+      other side of that long-suffering town. I must confess that this is one of
+      the drawbacks to a walled town that has never before occurred to me,
+      though to stand there and look at those great gates, those solid walls,
+      made me feel as if I had somehow wandered into the fourth dimension, so
+      out of my world were they.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a great fair in a Taoist temple and one day Mr Leete and I, with
+      his teacher and my servant, attended. A wonderful thing is a Chinese fair
+      in a temple. I do not yet understand the exact object of these fairs,
+      though I have attended a good many of them. Whether they help the funds of
+      the temple as a bazaar is supposed to help a church in this country, I
+      cannot say. A temple in China usually consists of a set of buildings often
+      in different courtyards behind one enclosing wall, and these buildings are
+      not only temples to the gods, but living-rooms which are often let to
+      suitable tenants, and, generally speaking, if the stranger knows his way
+      about&mdash;I never did&mdash;he can get in a temple accommodation for
+      himself and his servants, far superior accommodation to that offered in
+      the inns. It costs a little more, but everything is so cheap that makes no
+      difference to the foreigner. The Taoist temple the day I went there was
+      simply humming with life; there were stalls everywhere, and crowds of
+      people buying, selling or merely gossiping and looking on. I took a
+      picture of some ladies of easy virtue with gay dresses and gaily painted
+      faces, tottering about, poor things, on their maimed feet, and at the same
+      spot, close against the altar of the god, I took a picture of the priest.
+      With much hesitation he consented to stand. He had in his hand some
+      fortune-telling sticks, but did not dare hold them while his portrait was
+      being taken. However, Mr Leete's teacher was a bold, brave, enlightened
+      man&mdash;in a foreign helmet&mdash;and he held the sticks, and the two
+      came out in the picture together. I trust no subsequent harm came to the
+      daring man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0089.jpg" alt="0089 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0089.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0019" id="linkimage-0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0090.jpg" alt="0090 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0090.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      In Fen Chou Fu I could have walked about the town alone unmolested. I
+      never did, because it would have been undignified and often awkward, as I
+      could not speak the language, but the people were invariably friendly. On
+      the whole, there was not very much to see. The sun poured down day after
+      day in a cloudless sky, and the narrow streets, faced with stalls or blank
+      grey brick walls enclosing the compounds, were dusty and uneven, with the
+      ruts still there that had been made when the ground was softened by the
+      summer rains of the year before. Away to the south-east was a great
+      pagoda, the second tallest in China, a landmark that can be seen for many
+      a long mile across the plain. This, like the phoenixes, is <i>feng shui</i>.
+      I have never grasped the inwardness of pagodas, which are dotted in
+      apparently a casual manner about the landscape. An immense amount of
+      labour must have been expended upon them, and they do not appear to serve
+      any useful purpose. This one at Fen Chou Fu is meant to balance after a
+      fashion the phoenixes on the northern wall and afford protection for the
+      southern approach to the city. I don't know that it was used for any other
+      purpose. It stood there, tall and commanding, dwarfing everything else
+      within sight. Neither do I know the purpose of the literary tower which
+      stands on the southeast corner of the wall. It denotes that the town
+      either has or hopes to have a literary man of high standing among its
+      inhabitants. But to look for the use in all things Chinese would be
+      foolish; much labour is expended on work that can be only for artistic
+      purposes. To walk through a Chinese town, in spite of filth, in spite of
+      neglect and disrepair, is to feel that the Chinaman is an artist to his
+      finger-tips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gate to the American church in Fen Chou Fu, for instance, was a
+      circle, a thing of strange beauty. Imagine such a gate in an English town,
+      and yet here it seemed quite natural and very beautiful. They had no bell,
+      why I do not know, perhaps because every temple in China has a plenitude
+      of bells hanging from its eaves and making the air musical when the
+      faintest breath of wind stirs and missionaries are anxious to dissociate
+      themselves in every way from practices they call idolatry, even when those
+      practices seem to an outsider like myself rather attractive. At any rate,
+      to summon the faithful to church a man beats a gong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there is one institution of Fen Chou Fu which is decidedly
+      utilitarian, and that is the wells in the northwestern corner. A Chinaman,
+      I should say, certainly uses on the average less water than the majority
+      of humanity; a bath when he is three days old, a bath when he is married,
+      and after that he can comfortably last till he is dead, is the generally
+      received idea of his ablutions, but he does want a little water to carry
+      on life, and in this corner of the town are situated the wells which
+      supply that necessary. It is rather brackish, but it is still drinkable,
+      and it is all that the city gets. They were a never-ending source of
+      interest to me. They were established in those far-away days before
+      history began&mdash;perhaps the presence of the water here was the reason
+      for the building of the town&mdash;and they have been here ever since. The
+      mouths are builded over with masonry, and year in and year out have come
+      those self-same carts with solid wheels, drawn by a harnessed ox or an ox
+      and a mule, bearing the barrels to be filled with water. Down through all
+      the ages those self-same men, dressed in blue cotton that has worn to a
+      dingy drab, with a wisp of like stuff tied round their heads to protect
+      them from the dust or the cold or the sun, have driven those oxen and
+      drawn that water. Really and truly our own water, that comes to us, hot
+      and cold, so easily by the turning of a tap, is much more wonderful and
+      interesting, but that I take as a matter of course, while I never tired of
+      watching those prehistoric carts. It was in rather a desolate corner of
+      the town too. The high walls rose up and frowned upon it, the inside of
+      the walls where there was no brick, only crumbling clay with shrubs and
+      creepers just bursting into leaf and little paths that a goat or an active
+      boy might negotiate meandering up to the top. And to get to that part I
+      had to pass the ruins of the old yamen razed to the ground when the
+      Government repented them of the Boxer atrocities, and razed so effectually
+      that only the two gate-posts, fashioned like lions, Chinese architectural
+      lions, survive. A curse is on the place, the people say; anyhow when I
+      visited it fourteen years later no effort had been made to rebuild. Not
+      for want of labour, surely. There are no trade unions in China, and daily
+      from dawn to dark in Fen Chou Fu I saw the bricklayers' labourers trotting
+      along, bringing supplies to the men who were building, in the streets I
+      met men carrying water to the houses in buckets, and now in the springtime
+      there was a never-ending supply of small boys, clad in trousers only, or
+      without even those, bearing, slung from each end of a bamboo, supplies of
+      firewood, or rather of such scraps as in any other land would have been
+      counted scarce worth the cost of transport. Any day too I might expect to
+      meet a coffin being borne along, not secretly and by night as we take one
+      to a house, but proudly borne in the open daylight, for everyone knows a
+      coffin is the most thoughtful and kindly as well as often the most
+      expensive of gifts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While here I attended a wedding. Twice have I attended a Chinese wedding.
+      The first was at Pao Ting Fu at Christmas time, and the contracting
+      parties were an evangelist of the church who in his lay capacity was a
+      strapping big laundryman and one of the girls in Miss Newton's school.
+      They had never spoken to one another, that would have been a frightful
+      breach of decorum, but as they went to the same church, where there was no
+      screen between the men and the women, as there is in many Chinese
+      churches, it is possible they knew each other by sight. It is curious how
+      in some things the missionaries conform to Chinese ideas and in others
+      decline to yield an inch. In Pao Ting Fu no church member was allowed to
+      smoke, but the women were kept carefully in retirement, and the
+      schoolmistress, herself an unmarried woman, and the doctor's wife arranged
+      marriages for such of the girls as came under their guardianship. Of
+      course I see the reason for that: in the present state of Chinese society
+      no other method would be possible, for these schoolgirls, all the more
+      because they had a little scholarship and education, unless their future
+      had been arranged for, would have been a temptation and a prey for all the
+      young men around, and even with their careful education&mdash;and it was a
+      careful education; Miss Newton was a woman in a thousand, I always grudged
+      her to the Chinese&mdash;were entirely unfitted to take care of
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still it always made me smile to see these two women, middle-class
+      Americans from Virginia, good-looking and kindly, with a keen sense of
+      humour, gravely discussing the eligible young men around the mission and
+      the girls who were most suitable for them. It was the most barefaced and
+      open match-making I have ever seen. But generally, I believe, they were
+      very successful, for this one thing is certain, they had the welfare of
+      the girls at heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this was one of the matches they had arranged. It is on record that on
+      this special occasion the bridegroom, with the consent and connivance of
+      the schoolmistress, had written to the bride exhorting her to diligence,
+      and pointing out how good a thing it was that a woman should be well read
+      and cultured. And seeing that she came of very poor people she might well
+      be counted one of the fortunate ones of the earth, for the bridegroom was
+      educating her. The ignorance of the average Chinese woman in far higher
+      circles than she came of is appalling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christmas Day was chosen for the ceremony, and Christmas Day was a
+      glorious winter's day, with golden sunshine for the bride, and the air,
+      the keen, invigorating air of Northern China, was sparkling with frost.
+      Now, in contrast to the next wedding I attended, this wedding was on
+      so-called Western lines; but the Chinese is no slavish imitator, he
+      changes, but he changes after his own fashion. The church was decorated by
+      devout Chinese Christians with results which to 'Western eyes were a
+      little weird and outré. Over the platform that in an Anglican church would
+      be the altar was a bank of greenery, very pretty, with flowers dotted all
+      over it, and on it Chinese characters in cotton wool, &ldquo;Earth rejoices,
+      heaven sings,&rdquo; and across that again was a festoon of small flags of all
+      nations, while from side to side of the church were slung garlands of
+      gaily coloured paper in the five colours of the new republic, and when I
+      think of the time and patience that went to the making of those garlands I
+      was quite sorry they reminded me of fly-catchers. But the crowning
+      decoration was the Chinese angel that hovered over all. This being was
+      clad in white, a nurse's apron was used, girt in at the waist, foreign
+      fashion, and I grieve to say they did not give her much breathing-space,
+      though they tucked a pink flower in her belt. Great white paper wings were
+      spread out behind, and from her head, framing the decidedly Mongolian
+      countenance, were flowing golden curls, made by the ingenious decorators
+      of singed cotton wool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One o'clock was fixed for the wedding, and at a quarter to one the church
+      was full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They did not have the red chair for the bride. The consensus of opinion
+      was against it. &ldquo;It was given up now by the best people in Peking. They
+      generally had carriages. And anyhow it was a ridiculous expense.&rdquo; So it
+      was deeided that the bride should walk. The church was only a
+      stone's-throw from the schoolhouse where she lived. The bridegroom stood
+      at the door on the men's side of the church, a tall, stalwart Chinaman,
+      with his blaek hair sleek and oiled and cut short after the modern
+      fashion. He was suitably clad in black silk. He reminded me of &ldquo;William,&rdquo;
+       a doll of my childhood who was dressed in the remains of an old silk
+      umbrella&mdash;this is saying nothing against the bridegroom, for
+      &ldquo;William&rdquo; was an eminently superior doll, and always looked his very best
+      if a little smug occasionally. But if a gentleman who has attained to the
+      proud position of laundryman and evangelist, and is marrying the girl he
+      has himself at great expense educated for the position, has not a right to
+      look a little smug, I don't know who has. Beside him stood his special
+      friend, the chief Chinese evangelist, who had himself been married four
+      months before. At the organ sat the American doctor's pretty young wife,
+      and as the word was passed, &ldquo;The bride is coming!&rdquo; she struck up the
+      wedding march, and all the women's eyes turned to the women's door, while
+      the men, who would not commit such a breach of decorum as to look, stared
+      steadily ahead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the wedding march had been played over and over again before she did
+      come, resplendent and veiled, after the foreign fashion, in white mosquito
+      netting, with pink and blue flowers in her hair, and another bunch in her
+      hand. The bridegroom had wished her to wear silk on this great occasion,
+      so he had hired the clothes, a green silk skirt and a bronze satin brocade
+      coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A model of Chinese decorum was that bride. Her head under the white veil
+      was bent, her eyes were glued to the ground, and not a muscle of her body
+      moved as she progressed very slowly forward. Presumably she did put one
+      foot before the other, but she had the appearance of an automaton in the
+      hands of the women on either side&mdash;her mother, a stooping little old
+      woman, and a tall young woman in a bright blue brocade, the wife of the
+      bridegroom's special friend. Each grasped her by an arm just above the
+      elbow and apparently propelled her up the aisle as if she were on wheels.
+      Up the opposite aisle came the bridegroom, also with his head bent and his
+      eyes glued to the ground and propelled forward in the same manner by his
+      friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They met, those two who had never met face to face before, before the
+      minister, and he performed the short marriage ceremony, and as he said the
+      closing words the Chinese evangelist became Master of Ceremonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bridegroom and bride,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;'will bow to each other once in the
+      new style.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bride and groom standing before the minister bowed deeply to each
+      other in the new style.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will bow a second time,&rdquo; and they bowed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will bow a third time,&rdquo; and once more they bowed low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will now bow to the minister,&rdquo; and they turned like well-drilled
+      soldiers and bowed to the white-haired man who had married them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will now bow to the audience,&rdquo; and they faced the people and bowed
+      deeply, and everybody in that congregation rose and returned the
+      salutation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now the audience will bow to the bride and bridegroom,&rdquo; and with
+      right good will the congregation, Chinese and the two or three foreigners,
+      rose and saluted the newly married couple, also I presume in the new
+      style.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was over, and to the strains of the wedding march they left the church,
+      actually together, by way of the women's entrance. But the bride was not
+      on the groom's arm. That would not have been in accord with Chinese ideas.
+      The bridegroom marched a little ahead, propelled forward by his friend, as
+      if he had no means of volition of his own&mdash;again I thought of
+      &ldquo;William,&rdquo; long since departed and forgotten till this moment&mdash;and
+      behind came the new wife, thrust forward in the same manner, still with
+      her eyes on the floor and every muscle stiff as if she too had been a
+      doll.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the world loves a lover,&rdquo; but in China, the land of ceremonies, there
+      are no lovers. This man had gone further than most men in the wooing of
+      his wife, and they were beginning life together with very fair chances of
+      success. But even so the girl might not hope for a home of her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That would have been most unseemly. The evangelist laundryman had not a
+      mother, but his only sister was taking the place of mother-in-law, and he
+      and his bride would live with her and her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0020" id="linkimage-0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0099.jpg" alt="0099 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0099.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0021" id="linkimage-0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0100.jpg" alt="0100 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0100.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      The wedding I attended in Fen Chou Fu was quite a different affair. It was
+      spring, or perhaps I should say early summer, the streets through which we
+      drove to the old house of one of the Ming princes where dwelt the
+      bridegroom with his mother were thick with dust, and the sun blazed down
+      on us. The bridegroom belonged to a respectable well-to-do trading family,
+      and he wanted a Christian wife because he himself is an active member of
+      the church, but the Christian church at Fen Chou Fu has been bachelor so
+      long, and the division between the sexes is so strait, that there are
+      about fifty available girls to between eight and nine hundred young men,
+      therefore he had to take what he could get, and what he could get was a
+      pagan little girl about eighteen, for whom he paid thirty Mexican dollars,
+      roughly a little under three pounds. I, a Greek, who do not care much what
+      any man's religion is so long as he live a decent life, understand the
+      desire of that man for a Christian wife, for that means here in the
+      interior that she will have received a little education, will be able to
+      read and write and do arithmetic, and will know something of cleanliness
+      and hygiene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great day arrived, and the missionaries and I were invited to the
+      bridegroom's house for the ceremony and the feast that was to follow. The
+      entertainment began about eight o'clock in the morning, but we arrived a
+      little after noon, and we two women, Miss Grace Maccomaughey and I, were
+      ushered through the courtyards till we came to the interior one, which was
+      crowded with all manner of folks, some in festive array, some servants in
+      the ordinary blue of the country, and some beggars in rags who were
+      anticipating the scraps that fall from the rich man's table, and were
+      having tea and cake already. Overhead the sky was shut out by all manner
+      of flags and banners with inscriptions in Chinese characters upon them,
+      and once inside, we made our way towards the house through a pressing
+      crowd. Opposite the place that perhaps answered for a front door was a
+      table draped in red, the colour of joy, and on the table were two long
+      square candles of red wax with Chinese characters in gold upon them. They
+      were warranted to burn a day and a night, and between them was a pretty
+      dwarf plant quaintly gnarled and bearing innumerable white flowers. That
+      table was artistic and pretty, but to its left was a great pile of coal,
+      and, beside the coal, a stove and a long table at which a man, blue-clad,
+      shaven and with a queue, was busy preparing the feast within sight of all.
+      I could have wished the signs of hospitality had not been so much in
+      evidence, for I could quite believe that cook had not been washed since he
+      was three days old, and under the table was a large earthenware bowl full
+      of extremely dirty water in which were being washed the bowls we would
+      presently use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out came the women of the household to greet us and conduct us to the
+      bridal chamber, dark and draped with red and without any air to speak of.
+      It was crowded to suffocation with women in gala costumes, with bands of
+      black satin embroidered in flowers upon their heads, gay coats and loose
+      trousers, smiling faces and the tiny feet of all Shansi. It was quite a
+      relief to sit down on the <i>k'ang</i> opposite to a stout and cheerful
+      old lady with a beaming face who looked like a well-to-do farmer's wife.
+      She was a childless widow, however, but she had attained to the proud
+      position of Bible-woman, receiving a salary of four Mexican dollars a
+      month, and consequently had a position and station of her own. In my
+      experience there is nothing like being sure of one's own importance in the
+      world. It is certainly conducive to happiness. I know the missionaries,
+      bless them! would say I am taking a wrong view, but whatever the reason at
+      the back of it all, to them is the honour of that happy,
+      comfortable-looking Bible-woman. And there are so few happy-looking women
+      in China!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We sat on the <i>k'ang</i> and waited for the bride, and we discoursed. My
+      feet&mdash;I never can tuck them under me&mdash;clad in good substantial
+      leather, looked very large beside the tiny ones around me, for even the
+      Bible-woman's had been bound in her youth, and of course, though they were
+      unbound now, the broken bones could never come straight, and the-flesh
+      could not grow between the heel and the toes. She looked at my feet and I
+      laughed, and she said sententiously, like a true Chinese:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The larger the feet the happier the woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I asked did it hurt when hers were bound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It hurt like anything,&rdquo; translated the missionary girl beside me, &ldquo;but it
+      is all right now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bride was long in coming, and shortly after four we heard the gongs
+      and music and crackers that heralded her arrival, and we all went out to
+      greet her, or rather to stare at her. First came the bridegroom, and that
+      well-to-do tradesman was a sight worth coming out to see. He wore a most
+      respectable black satin jacket and a very pretty blue silk petticoat;
+      round his neck and crossed on his breast was a sash of orange-red silk,
+      set off with a flaring magenta artificial chrysanthemum of no mean
+      proportions, and on his head, and somewhat too small for him, was&mdash;a
+      rare headgear in China&mdash;a hard black felt hat. From the brim of that,
+      on either side, rose a wire archway across the crown, on which were strung
+      ornaments of brass, and I am bound to say that the whole effect was
+      striking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the bride came in to be married, out went two women to lift her
+      veil and smear her face with onion. They explained that the bridegroom's
+      mother should do this, but the fortune-teller had informed them that these
+      two women would be antagonistic&mdash;which I think I could have foretold
+      without the aid of any fortune-teller&mdash;therefore the rite was deputed
+      to two other women, one of whom was the kindergarten teacher at the
+      sehool. Then, with the teacher on one side and a lucky woman with husband
+      and children living on the other, down through the crowd came the little
+      bride to her marriage. She was clad in a red robe, much embroidered, which
+      entirely hid her figure, so that whether she were fat or slim it was
+      impossible to see, on her head was a brazen crown entirely covering it,
+      and over her face was a veil of thick bright red silk. She could neither
+      see nor be seen. Her feet were the tiniest I have ever seen, they looked
+      about suitable for a baby of twelve months old. The tiny red shoes were
+      decorated with little green tassels at the pointed toe and had little baby
+      high heels, and though they say these feet were probably false, the real
+      ones must have been wonderfully small if they were hidden in the manifold
+      red bandages that purported to make the slender red ankles neat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bride and bridegroom took their places in front of the minister, in front
+      of the plant and alongside the coals, and it made my back ache to think of
+      keeping any being standing for above a second on such feet. The service
+      began, all in Chinese, of course, though the officiating minister was an
+      American, a couple of hymns were sung, and the audience laughed aloud
+      because she was married by her baby name, her mother having omitted to
+      provide her with another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The good woman had yearned for a son so she had called this girl &ldquo;Lead a
+      brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Half-way through the ceremony the bridegroom lifted the veil. He gave it a
+      hurried snatch, as if it were a matter of no moment, and hung it on one of
+      the projections of the brazen crown, and then he and we saw the bride's
+      face for the first time. They had done their best to spoil her beauty with
+      carmine paint, but she had a nice little nose and a sweet little quivering
+      mouth that was very lovable, and I think the bridegroom, though he never
+      moved a muscle, must have been pleased with his bargain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the service was ended, she and we, the principal guests, went back to
+      the <i>k'ang</i> in the bride chamber; her crown and outer red robe were
+      taken off, all in public, and a small square box containing some of her
+      trousseau was brought in, and every woman and child there in that stuffy
+      little room dived into it and hauled out the silks and embroideries and
+      little shoes and made audible comments on them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;H'm! it's only sham silk,&rdquo; said one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old are you, new bride?&rdquo; asked another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's not much to look at,&rdquo; said a third, which was a shame, for with the
+      paint washed off she must have been pretty though tired-looking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was five o'clock before we went to the feast, all the women together,
+      and all the men together, four or five at a table, and the bridegroom,
+      without the absurd headgear, and his mother, in sober blue silk, came
+      round at intervals and exhorted us to eat plenty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had one little saucer each, a pair of chopsticks and a china spoon such
+      as that with which my grandmother used to ladle out her tea, and they
+      served for all the courses. It was lucky I had had nothing since seven in
+      the morning, or I might not have felt equal to eating after I had seen the
+      cooking and the washing-up arrangements. As it was, I was hungry enough
+      not to worry over trifles. After she had sucked them audibly, my friend
+      the Bible-woman helped me with her own chopsticks, and I managed to put up
+      with that too. I tried a little wine. It was served in little bowls not as
+      large as a very small salt-cellar, literally in thimblefuls, but one was
+      too much for me. It tasted of fiery spirit and earth, and I felt my
+      companion was not denying herself much when she proclaimed herself a
+      teetotaller. What we ate heaven only knows, but much to my surprise I
+      found it very good. Chinese when they have the opportunity are excellent
+      cooks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bride sat throughout the feast on the <i>k'ang</i>, her hands&mdash;three
+      of her finger-nails were shielded with long silver shields&mdash;hidden
+      under her lavender jacket and her plate piled before her, though etiquette
+      required that she should refuse all food. They chaffed her and laughed at
+      her, but she sat there with downcast eyes like a graven image. After the
+      feast two or three men friends of the bridegroom were brought in, and to
+      every one she had to rise and make an obeisance, and though the men and
+      women hardly looked at or spoke to each other, it was evident that she was
+      for this occasion a thing to be commented on, inspected and laughed at.
+      She was bearing it very well, poor little girl, when Kan T'ai T'ai's cart&mdash;I
+      was Kan T'ai T'ai&mdash;was announced, and we went home through the
+      streets as the shades of evening were falling. I had fed bountifully and
+      well, but the dissipation had worn me out, the airlessness of the rooms
+      was terrible, and even the dust-laden air of the narrow street I drew into
+      my lungs with a sigh of deep thankfulness. It was good to be in the free
+      air again. Better still to remember, however I had railed against my fate
+      at times, nothing that could ever happen to me would be quite as bad as
+      the fate of the average Chinese woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, a new life was beginning for this girl in more ways than one. The
+      bridegroom was going back to his business, that of a photographer in T'ai
+      Yuan Fu, leaving his wife with his mother. She was to be sent to the
+      school for married women opened by the missionaries, and, of course, her
+      feet were to be unbound. Probably, I hope I do not do him an injustice,
+      the bridegroom would not have objected to bound feet, but he did want an
+      educated mother for his children, and the missionaries will take no woman
+      with bound feet. They will do the best they can to retrieve the damage
+      done, though she can never hope to be anything but a maimed cripple, but
+      at least she in the future will be free from pain, into her darkened life
+      will come a little knowledge and a little light, and certainly her
+      daughters will have a happier life and a brighter outlook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Missions in China, if they are to do any good, are necessarily
+      patriarchal. They look after their converts from the cradle to the grave.
+      The kindergarten run by a Chinese girl under the maternal eye of young
+      Miss Grace Maccomaughey was quite a pretty sight, with all the little tots
+      in their quaint dresses of many colours and their hair done or their heads
+      shaved in the absurd fashion which seems good to the proud Chinese parents&mdash;for
+      Chinese parents are both proud and tender and loving, though their ways
+      seem strange to us. But babies all the world over, yellow or black or
+      white, are all lovable, and these babies at the kindergarten were
+      delicious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beloved guest, beloved guest,&rdquo; they sang in chorus when I came in and
+      they were told to greet me. &ldquo;Peace to thee, peace to thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And &ldquo;Lao T'ai T'ai&rdquo; they used to address me in shrill little voices as I
+      went about the compound. Lao T'ai T'ai (I shouldn't like to swear I'd
+      spelled it properly) means &ldquo;Old lady&rdquo;&mdash;that is, a woman of venerable
+      years who is rich enough to keep a servant&mdash;and it was the first time
+      in my life I had been so addressed, so I looked in the glass to see if I
+      had developed grey hair or wrinkles&mdash;riding on a mule-pack would be
+      enough to excuse anything&mdash;and then I remembered that if in doubt in
+      China it is erring on the side of courtesy to consider your acquaintance
+      old. I dare say to the children I was old. I remember as a very little
+      girl a maiden aunt asking me how old I thought her, and I, knowing she was
+      older than my mother, felt she must be quite tottery and suggested in all
+      good faith she might be about ninety. I believe the lady had just attained
+      her five and thirtieth year, and prided herself upon her youthful
+      appearance. At any rate her attitude on this occasion taught me when
+      guessing an age it is better to understate than to overestimate. At least
+      in the West. Here in the East I was &ldquo;Old lady&rdquo; by courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they begin the important things of life early in China. At the
+      kindergarten there were two little tots, a boy and a girl, engaged to be
+      married. The boy was the son of one of the mission cooks and the girl was
+      the daughter of his wife. He, a widower, sought a wife to look after his
+      little boy, and he got this young widow cheap. Her price was thirty <i>tiaous</i>&mdash;that
+      is, a little over one pound&mdash;and at first he said it was too much and
+      he could not afford it, but when he heard she had a little girl he changed
+      his mind and scraped together the money, for the child could be betrothed
+      to his little son and save the expense of a wife later on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were a quaint little pair, both in coats and trousers, shabby and
+      old, evidently the children of poor people, and both with their heads
+      shaven save for a tuft of hair here and there. The boy had his tufts cut
+      short, while the girl's were allowed to grow as long as they would and
+      were twisted into a plait. Such a happy little couple they were, always
+      together, and in the games at the kindergarten when they had to pair these
+      little ones always chose each other. Possibly the new wife in the home was
+      a wise and discreet woman. She might be glad too at the thought that she
+      need not part with her daughter. Anyhow I should think that in Fen Chou Fu
+      in the future there would be one married couple between whom the sincerest
+      affection will exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose Chinese husbands and wives are fond of each other occasionally,
+      but the Chinaman looks upon wedded life from quite a different point of
+      view from the Westerner. I remember hearing about a new-made widow who
+      came to sympathise with a missionary recovering from a long illness. She
+      was properly thanked, and then the missionary in her turn said in the
+      vernacular:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you too have suffered a bitterness. I am sorry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I?&rdquo; incredulously, as much as to say, Who could think I had a sorrow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes. You have lost your husband, haven't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call that a bitterness?&rdquo; smiled the relict cheerfully, and her would-be
+      consoler felt the ground cut away beneath her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But perhaps that sympathiser was not quite as much dismayed as another
+      lady who offered her condolences upon a similar occasion. The new-made
+      widow was a gay old thing, and she remarked blandly, with a toss of her
+      head:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All, we don't worry about things like that when we've got the Gospel!&rdquo;
+       which left that well-meaning teacher a little uncertain as to whether she
+      had instructed her in the doctrines of her new faith quite correctly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fen Chou Fu is a town that lends itself to reform, that asks for it. When
+      I was there they had a magistrate who had been educated in Japan and was
+      ready to back any measures for the good of the town. He was too much
+      imbued with the spirit of modern thought to be a Christian, but he was
+      full of admiration for many of the measures advocated by these
+      enthusiastic young people from Oberlin College. There is a large
+      Government school here&mdash;you may see the courtyards with their lily
+      ponds and bridges from the wall&mdash;that has been in existence for
+      hundreds of years, and this magistrate appealed to the missionaries to
+      take it over and institute their modern methods. They might even, so he
+      said, teach their own faith there. The only thing that stood in the way
+      was want of funds, for though the school was endowed, money has still a
+      way of sticking to the hands through which it passes in China. The
+      missionaries were rather inclined, I think, to have hopes of his
+      conversion, but I do not think it is very easy to convert the broad-minded
+      man who sees the good in all creeds. This magistrate was anxious to help
+      his people sunk in ignorance and was wise enough to use every means that
+      came in his way, for he knows, knowing his own people, you will never
+      Westernise a Chinaman. He will take all that is good&mdash;or bad&mdash;in
+      the West that appeals to him, and he will mould it in his own way. This
+      magistrate was building an industrial school for criminal boys close to
+      the mission station and, more progressive than the West itself, he allowed
+      his wife to sit on the bench beside him and try and sentence women proved
+      guilty of crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V&mdash;&ldquo;MISERERE DOMINE!&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>s I have said more
+      than once, it seems to me the most intolerable thing in life would be to
+      be a Chinese woman. I remember when first I began to write about China I
+      asked a friend of mine to look over my work and he objected to my making
+      such a fuss about the condition of the women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, people will think you are a suffragette!&rdquo; said he, searching for
+      some term of obloquy that he felt could not possibly apply to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I am a suffragist, an ardent suffragist, realising that a woman is
+      most valuable neither as an angel nor as a slave, but as a useful citizen,
+      and I saw then that he possibly knew little about the condition of his own
+      women, and probably absolutely nothing at all about the condition of the
+      women of the race who swarmed around him. Those he met would be dumb, and
+      at any rate no right-minded woman begins upon her wrongs to a stranger. In
+      any country it would be bad taste, in China no words can tell what
+      shocking bad taste. I had to seek further afield for my information, and I
+      got it from the medical missions. Now I went to China with a strong
+      prejudice against missionaries, and I found there many people who backed
+      me up. And then it occurred to me that I had better go to a mission
+      station and see what manner of people were these I was judging so hastily
+      and so finally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went. And what I saw made me sorry that Great Britain and America, to
+      say nothing of Scandinavia, should be deprived of the services of these
+      men and women who are giving so much to an alien people. Of course I know
+      that many missionaries have the &ldquo;call,&rdquo; a &ldquo;vocation&rdquo; I suppose the
+      Catholics would call it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a fine work,&rdquo; said I, usually the unadmiring, &ldquo;to teach these
+      women, but I do not like coming in contact with them, however much I
+      appreciate their virtues.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the missionary girl looked at me pityingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;we could come all this way to teach Chinese
+      women reading, writing and arithmetic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems to me a great thing to do; if it be only to teach them to wash,
+      it is a great thing; but I who merely pitied would never have stayed there
+      to better the condition of those unhappy women. To her and her comrades
+      had come that mysterious call that comes to all peoples through all the
+      ages, the Crying in the Wilderness, &ldquo;Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make
+      His paths straight,&rdquo; and she thought more, far more, of it than I did of
+      the undoubtedly good work I saw she was doing, saw as I never should have
+      seen had I not gone in the ways untrodden by the tourist, or indeed by any
+      white man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are missionaries and missionaries, of course; there are even
+      backsliders who, having learned the difficult tongue under the ægis of the
+      missions, have taken up curio-buying or any other of the mercantile
+      careers that loom so temptingly before the man who knows China; but in all
+      classes of society there are backsliders, the great majority must not be
+      judged by them. Neither must their narrowness be laid too mueh to heart
+      when judging the missionary as a whole. Possibly only a fanatic can carry
+      through whole-heartedly the work of a missionary at a remote station in
+      China, and most fanatics are narrow. There are, too, the men and women who
+      make it a business and a livelihood, who reckon they have house and income
+      and position and servants in return for their services to the heathen, but
+      they too are faithful and carry out their contracts. Having once seen the
+      misery and poverty in which the great majority of Chinese dwell, I can say
+      honestly that I think every mission station that I have seen is a centre
+      from which radiates at least a hope of better things. They raise the
+      standard of living, and though I care not what god a man worships, and
+      cannot understand how any man can be brought to care, it is good that to
+      these people sitting in darkness someone should point out that behind the
+      world lies a great Force, God, Love, call it what you will, that is
+      working for good. That the more educated Chinese has worked out a faith
+      for himself, just as many in the West have done, I grant you, but still
+      the majority of the people that I have seen sit in darkness and want help.
+      From the missions they get it. Taken by and large, the Chinaman is a
+      utilitarian person, and if the missions had not been helpful they would
+      long ago have gone. And for the missionaries themselves&mdash;I speak of
+      those in the outstations&mdash;not one, it seems to me, not one would stay
+      among the Chinese unless he were sure that his God had sent him, for the
+      life is hard, even for the rich missions there are many deprivations, and
+      if therefore, being but human, they sometimes depict their God as merciful
+      and loving in a way that seems small and petty, much must be forgiven
+      them. They are doing their best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is another side to it too for the West. These missionaries are
+      conquering China by the system of peaceful penetration. They are
+      persecuted, they suffer, are murdered often, but that does not drive them
+      away. They come back again and again, and wherever the missionary succeeds
+      in planting his foot the hatred to foreigners and things foreign, strong
+      among the conservative Chinese, is weakened and finally broken down. China
+      is a rich country, she is invaluable to the nations of the earth for
+      purposes of trade, and though the missionary in many ways, if he were
+      asked, would oppose the coming of the white man, he certainly is the
+      pioneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      China is trying to reform herself, but the process is slow, and it seems
+      to me in Shansi and in the parts of Chihli that I know it would be a long,
+      long while before the good percolated to the proletariat, the Babylonish
+      slaves, if it were not for the missionaries; and particularly do I admire
+      the medical missionaries, for China is one huge sore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is the word the woman doctor at Pao Ting Fu applied to it, and,
+      attending her clinic of a morning, I was inclined to agree with her. Life
+      is hard for everybody among the poor in China, but especially does it
+      press upon the women. They came there into the clean sun-lit room and the
+      reek of them went up to heaven&mdash;bald-headed, toothless old crones in
+      wadded coats out of which all semblance of colour had long since passed,
+      young girls and little children clad in the oldest of garments. There were
+      so many with ingrowing eyelashes that the doctor had one particular day
+      upon which she operated for this painful disfigurement, and she showed me
+      how, by making a little nick&mdash;I'm afraid I can't use proper surgical
+      terms&mdash;in the upper eyelid, she turned back the eyelashes and made
+      them grow in the direction they are intended to grow, and saved the
+      unfortunates' eyes. Why eyelashes should grow in in China I don't know.
+      Perhaps it is my ignorance, but I have never heard of their behaving in
+      such an unnatural fashion in any other part of the world, while in Pao
+      Ting Fu this ailment seemed to be as common as influenza in London. Then
+      there would be women with their mouths closed by sores, often so badly
+      they could only live by suction, and more than once a new mouth had to be
+      cut; there were cancerous growths&mdash;the woman depicted in the picture
+      had waited twenty years before she could arrange to come under one hundred
+      miles to the doctor&mdash;there were sores on the head, sores all over the
+      body, all, I suppose, including the ingrowing eyelashes, caused by
+      malnutrition, swollen glands, abscesses offensive and purulent, in fact in
+      that clinic were collected such an array of human woes, ghastly, horrible,
+      as well might make one wonder if the force behind all life could possibly
+      be anything but devilish and cruel. Wherein could the good be found?
+      Where?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet there was good. Among these women moved the nurses. They were
+      comely girls in blue coats and trousers, with their abundant black hair
+      smoothly drawn back, neat white stockings and the daintiest of little
+      shoes. Their delicate artistic hands used sponge and basin very capably,
+      they were the greatest contrast to their patients, and yet they were truly
+      Chinese, had sprung from the people to whom they now ministered, and one
+      of them, though it was hardly observable, had an artificial foot. So had
+      she suffered from foot-binding that her own had had to be amputated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Probably most of the ailments there treated were preventable, but worst of
+      all were the bound feet and the ailments the women suffered from in
+      consequence. It is not good manners to speak about a woman's feet, and the
+      women themselves rarely refer to them, but naturally I was interested in
+      the custom, and whenever the doctor got a &ldquo;good&rdquo; bound foot, which
+      probably meant a very bad one, she sent over for me to come and see it.
+      Anyone who has once seen a bound foot will never forget it. It always
+      smelt abominably when first the bandages were taken off, and the first
+      thing the nurses did was to provide a square kerosene tin of hot water in
+      which to soak the foot well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well washed, the feet might be looked at. Shansi especially is the home of
+      the bound foot, most of the women have such small feet that they are
+      confined for the greater part of their lives to the <i>k'ang</i>. I
+      remember Dr Lewis in all seriousness saying that he thought on the whole a
+      Chinese woman was better without her feet. And I'm inclined to think he
+      was right. The toes, all except the big toe, are pressed back till they
+      touch the heel, the bandage is put on and drawn tighter and tighter every
+      day, and if the girl is healthy and big-boned, so much the worse for her.
+      No matter the size of the girl, the foot must conform to the one standard.
+      In Shansi when I was there the shoes were generally about four inches
+      long, and I have taken shoes of that length off a tall and strapping woman
+      who was tottering along with the aid of a stick. What she must have
+      suffered to get her feet to that size is too terrible to imagine. She must
+      have been suffering still for that matter. If the instep after the
+      tightest binding still sticks up the girl's marriage chances are seriously
+      interfered with, and then the mother or some feminine relative takes a
+      meat-chopper and breaks the bone till she can bind the foot small enough.
+      This information I got from the American lady who looks after the women in
+      the mission in Fen Chou Fu; and at T'ai Yuan Fu the sister in the women's
+      hospital added the gruesome detail that they sometimes pull off the little
+      girls' toe-nails so that they may not interfere with the binding!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at the women's hospital at Pao Ting Fu I saw the finished product. The
+      big toe stuck straight out, red, possibly because of the soaking in hot
+      water&mdash;I never had courage to look at one unsoaked&mdash;and
+      ghastly-looking, the other toes were pressed back against the heel and the
+      heel went up and was exactly like the Cuban heels affected by smartly
+      dressed women, only this time it had been worked in flesh and blood. The
+      whole limb from the big toe to the knee was hard and immovable as stone.
+      If you press ordinary flesh anywhere it pits, just yields a little, not so
+      a Chinese woman's leg and foot. It is thin, perished, literally hard as
+      marble. Once having seen a foot unbound, it is a wonder to me that any
+      woman should walk at all. And yet they do. They hold out their arms and
+      walk, balancing themselves, and they use a stick. Sometimes they walk on
+      their heels, sometimes they try the toe, but once I realised what those
+      bandages concealed it was a painful and dreadful thing to me to see a
+      Chinese woman walking. In spite of the hardness of the flesh, or probably
+      because of it, they get bad corns on the spot upon which they balance, and
+      sores, very often tuberculous, eat into the foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0022" id="linkimage-0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0117.jpg" alt="0117 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0117.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0023" id="linkimage-0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0118.jpg" alt="0118 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0118.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      But the evil does not stop at the foot. In Shansi it seemed to me every
+      woman's face was marked with the marks of patient suffering. Travelling I
+      often got a glimpse of one peering out of a cart or litter at the
+      foreigner, and that face invariably was patient, pallid and worn, for
+      foot-binding brings no end of evils in its train. The doctor at Fen Chou
+      Fu declared that nine-tenths of the women who came to him for treatment
+      suffered from tuberculosis in some form or another, and this in a climate
+      that in the winter must outrival in dryness Davos Platts. Not a few, too,
+      develop spinal curvature low down in the back, and often because of the
+      displacement of the organs they die in child-birth. A missionary in one of
+      the little towns I passed through, a trained nurse, told me that when a
+      woman suffered from what she (the woman) called leg-waist pains&mdash;the
+      doctor called it osteomalacia&mdash;her case was hopeless, she could not
+      give birth to a child. Often this nurse had been called in to such cases,
+      and she could do nothing to help the suffering girl. She could only stand
+      by and see her die. I could well believe these tales of suffering. In Fen
+      Chou Fu and in Pao Ting Fu the women of the poorer classes freely walked
+      the streets, and their crippled condition was patent to all eyes. But in
+      some towns it is not considered seemly for any woman to be seen in the
+      streets. Some reason established this custom long ago: the reason passes,
+      but China is the most conservative of nations, and the custom remains. But
+      the reason for foot-binding is not very clear. There is something sexual
+      at the bottom of it, I believe, but why a sick and ailing woman should be
+      supposed to welcome the embraces of her lord more readily than one
+      abounding in health passes my understanding. Of course we remember that
+      not so very long ago, in the reign of Victoria, practically the delicate
+      woman who was always ailing was held up to universal admiration. Look at
+      the swooning heroines of Dickens and Thackeray. But let no man put the
+      compressed waist on the same plane as foot-binding. I have heard more than
+      one man do so, but I unhesitatingly affirm they are wrong. Foot-binding is
+      infinitely the worse crime. The pinched-in waist did not begin till the
+      girl was at least well on in her teens, and it was only the extreme cases&mdash;and
+      they did it of their own free will I presume&mdash;who kept up the
+      pressure always. There was always the night for rest, whereas the Chinese
+      women get no rest from torture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The missionaries at Fen Chou Fu, being very anxious to improve the status
+      of the women, used to arrange to have lectures in their large hall to
+      women only, and they raked the country-side for important people to
+      address them on subjects that were, or rather that should be, of interest
+      to women. They were not supposed to have anything to do with religion, but
+      they discussed openly women's position, were told about hygiene and the
+      care of children, and the magistrate's wife, she who had been educated in
+      Japan, told them some home-truths about the position of women in China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;American women,&rdquo; said she on one occasion, &ldquo;go out into the world and
+      help in the world's development. We Chinese stay at home and are dragged
+      along by the men. The time has come when we must learn better things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I looked one day at over seventy women of the richer classes assembled
+      to listen to a young and enthusiastic Chinese with modern views on the
+      position of women and their equality with men. He was passionate, he was
+      eloquent, he was desperately in earnest, but it was very evident he spoke
+      to deaf ears. I do not think that any one of those women grasped, or cared
+      for that matter, what he was saying. In the heart of China woman is very
+      far from being the equal of man. These women were pets and toys, and they
+      came to the mission station probably because it was the fashionable form
+      of amusement just then, but they listened to what was being said with deaf
+      ears and minds incapable of understanding. They were gaily clad in silks
+      and satins, richly embroidered; their hair when it was abundant was oiled
+      and elaborately dressed and decorated with gold and silver pins, and when
+      it was scanty was hidden under embroidered silken bands; there was not a
+      skirt amongst them, that was left to the lecturer, their blue and green
+      and brilliant red trousers were rather narrow, their feet were of the very
+      tiniest even in Shansi, and their faces, worn and suffering under their
+      paint and powder, were vacant. Some of them had brought their babies, and
+      only when a child cried, and they cried fairly frequently, did those faces
+      light up. That was something they really did understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet that enthusiastic young scholar in his voluminous petticoats, with
+      his hair cut in the modern fashion, went on lecturing to them on the
+      rights of women, the position women ought to occupy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the position of women! Toys or slaves are they, toys and slaves have
+      been their mothers and their grandmothers since the days before the dawn
+      of history, and very, very slowly is the idea of the possibility of better
+      things percolating through to the masses in China. It will come, I
+      suppose, because already there are Government schools for women, though
+      they are few and far between, and in some places, so far has the desire
+      for freedom gone, the girls have banded themselves into societies,
+      declaring that rather than marry a man they have never seen they will
+      commit suicide, and more than one has taken her own life. But in the parts
+      of Shansi and Chihli where I was so much light has not yet penetrated. The
+      wife and mother has influence because any living thing with which we are
+      closely associated&mdash;even if it be but a little dog&mdash;must needs
+      influence us, but all the same the Chinese women are as a rule mere
+      chattels, dependent entirely upon their menfolk. Amongst the Chinese the
+      five happinesses are: old age, a son, riches, official position and a
+      moustache; so slight a thing is a woman that she does not come in in this
+      connection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as the heavens are above the earth, so far am I,&rdquo; disdainfully
+      proclaimed a Chinese teacher, &ldquo;above my wife.&rdquo; And he only spoke as if
+      stating a self-evident fact, a thing that could not be questioned. &ldquo;How
+      could she be my equal?&rdquo; Just as I might have objected to being put on the
+      same plane as my mule or my little dog. Indeed I doubt very much whether
+      he gave the same consideration to his wife as I would do to my little dog,
+      who is much beloved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is not to say, of course, that the men don't consider the women. They
+      do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember the gate-keeper at Pao Ting Fu mission paying up for his
+      daughter's schooling. He was a jovial old soul, so old that I was
+      surprised to hear he had a mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Short am I?&rdquo; said he cheerfully. &ldquo;Short? Oh, that dollar and a half!&rdquo; He
+      paused to consider the matter, then added: &ldquo;And I was thinking about
+      borrowing a dollar from you. My mother's dying, and I want to buy her a
+      skirt! Must be prepared, you know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady, said Miss Newton, had probably never owned such a luxury as
+      a skirt in her life, but that was her son's way of being good to her, for
+      the people have a proverb to the effect that the most important thing in
+      life is to be buried well, an idea that isn't entirely unknown in Western
+      and more enlightened lands. Poor old lady, whose one and only skirt came
+      to her to be buried in, or perhaps it would be taken off before she was
+      buried, for the Chinese are a careful people. I remember one frugal man
+      who celebrated the funeral of his mother and the marriage of his son at
+      the same time, so that the funeral baked meats did for the marriage feast,
+      and the same musicians did for both. The coffin, of heavy black wood, tall
+      as a mantelpiece, stood in the yard, with the eldest son and his wife clad
+      in white as mourners, and the rest of the company made merry in the house
+      over the bridal. It was the most exquisite piece of thrift, but the
+      Chinaman is <i>par excellence</i> an economist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in Pao Ting Fu that I met the only woman who made open complaint
+      against the position of women, and she only did it because, poor thing,
+      she was driven to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She slipped through the mission compound gate while the gate-keeper was
+      looking the other way, a miserable, unkempt woman with roughened hair and
+      maimed feet. Her coat and trousers of the poorest blue cotton were old and
+      soiled, and the child she carried in her arms was naked save for a little
+      square of blue cotton tied round his body in front. She was simply a woman
+      of the people, deadly poor where all just escape starvation, young and
+      comely where many are unattractive, and she stood under the shade of the
+      trees watching eagerly the mission family and their guest at breakfast on
+      the porch! It was a June morning, the sunshine that would be too fierce
+      later on now at 7 a.m. was golden, and a gentle breeze just whispered
+      softly in the branches that China&mdash;even Pao Ting Fu&mdash;in the
+      early summer morning was a delightful place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But eager watching eyes glued to every mouthful are distinctly
+      disquieting, and in China, the land of punctilious etiquette, are rude.
+      Besides, she had no business to be there, and the doctor's wife turned and
+      spoke to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What custom is this?&rdquo; said she, using the vernacular, &ldquo;and how did you
+      get in here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ran past&rdquo;&mdash;ran, save the mark, with those poor broken cramped feet&mdash;&ldquo;when
+      the gate-keeper was not looking. And it's not a day's hunger I have. For
+      weeks when we have had a meal we have not known where the next was coming
+      from.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have a husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he was rich,&rdquo; assented the woman, &ldquo;but he has gambled it all away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite a likely story. Another woman working on the compound said it
+      was true. She had a bad husband&mdash;<i>hi yah!</i> a very bad husband.
+      He beat her, often he beat her. Sometimes perhaps it was her fault,
+      because she was bad-tempered. Who would not be bad-tempered with maimed
+      feet, an empty stomach and two little hungry children? But often he beat
+      her for no reason at all. And everyone knows that a Chinese husband has a
+      perfect right to beat his wife. That he refrains from so doing is an act
+      of grace on his part, but a woman of herself is merely his chattel. She
+      has no rights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hospital quilted bed-covers&mdash;<i>pel wos</i>, they called them&mdash;had
+      to be unripped and washed. The pay was twenty-five <i>t'ung tzus</i> a day
+      and keep yourself. One hundred and thirty <i>t'ung tzus</i> went to the
+      dollar, and 10-35 dollars went to the sovereign at that time, so that the
+      work could not be considered overpaid; but this was China, and the women
+      were apparently rising up out of the ground and clamouring for it. It was
+      evidently looked upon as quite a recreation to sit under the trees on the
+      grass in the mission compound and gossip and unpick quilts. The new
+      recruit joined them and spent a happy day, sure of food for herself and
+      her children for that day at least&mdash;not food perhaps such as we would
+      appreciate, but at least a sufficiency of millet porridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That day and the next she worked, and then on the third day at midday she
+      went away for her meal and did not come back till after two o'clock in the
+      afternoon. The doctor's wife was reproachful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been away for over three hours. Why is this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a true Chinese and found it difficult to give a direct answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been talking to my mother,&rdquo; said she, rousing wrath where she
+      might have gained sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What excuse is this?&rdquo; said the doctor's wife. &ldquo;You go away, and when I
+      ask you why, you tell me you have been talking to your mother! Your mother
+      should have more sense than to keep you from your work!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my husband has sold me!&rdquo; protested the culprit and then we saw that
+      her face was swollen with crying; &ldquo;and I am a young woman and I don't know
+      what to do when my husband sells me. He keeps the children and he sells
+      me, and Tsao, the man who has bought me, is a bad man,&rdquo; and dropping down
+      to the ground she let the tears fall on to the work in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am young and so I don't know what to do.&rdquo; It was the burden of her
+      song. It may be she is wailing still, for the story was unfinished when I
+      left. She was young and she didn't know what to do. She would not have
+      minded leaving her husband if only the man to whom she had been sold had
+      been a better man, but he bore a worse reputation if anything than her
+      husband, and ignorant, unlearned in all things of this world as she was,
+      she and the women round her knew exactly what her fate would be. Tsao
+      would sell her when he tired of her, and her next purchaser would do
+      likewise, and as she gets older and her white teeth decay and her bright
+      eyes fade and her comeliness wanes her money value will grow less and
+      less, and beating and starvation will be her portion till death comes as a
+      merciful release. But, as she kept repeating pathetically, she is young,
+      and death is the goal at the end of a weary, weary, heartbreaking road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For her husband was quite within his rights. He could sell her. It may be,
+      of course, he will be swayed by public opinion, and public opinion is
+      against the disposing of a wife after this fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her complain to the official,&rdquo; suggested my assurance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the wise women who knew rose up in horror at the depths of ignorance I
+      was disclosing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to the yamen and complain of her husband!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is no crime for a man to sell his wife, but it is a deadly crime for a
+      woman to speak evil of her husband! She was not yet handed over. All he
+      would have to do would be to deny it, and then she would be convicted of
+      this crime and to her other ills would be added the wrath of the official.
+      No, something better than that must be thought of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been sold for a hundred <i>tiaou</i>&mdash;something under four
+      pounds&mdash;and when the money was paid she would have to go to her new
+      master, far away from all her friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Hi yah!</i>&rdquo; said the other women. &ldquo;What a bad man!&rdquo; So public opinion
+      was against it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would do no good to buy her freedom unless the purchaser were prepared
+      to take upon himself the conduct of her future life. A woman must belong
+      to somebody in China; she is, except in very exceptional cases and among
+      the very advanced, considered incapable of guiding her own life, and pay
+      this and the man would still regard her as his wife and sell her again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a woman wise with wisdom of the people arose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one thing to be done,&rdquo; said she; &ldquo;you must pretend you know
+      nothing about it, and when Tsao comes, and you are sold, then make an
+      excuse and run to the yamen. It may be the official will help, for it is a
+      wicked thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run to the yamen!&rdquo; on feet on which she could just totter. But the wise
+      woman had taken that into consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mark well the way so you may hide in the turnings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a forlorn, pitiful little hope! But with it she had to be content,
+      and that night she held her peace and pretended she did not know the fate
+      that hung over her, and when I left she was still ripping bed-covers with
+      the other women. She had had no hand in bringing about her own fate, for
+      she did not choose this man. She had never seen him till she was handed
+      over on her marriage day by her parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What,&rdquo; said the women at one place when a new missionary came to them,
+      &ldquo;forty and not married! What freedom! How did you manage it! What good
+      fortune!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In China there is no respectable word, so I am told, to denote a bachelor,
+      and there was almost never, at least under the old regime, such a thing as
+      an old maid. Every woman must belong to someone, and few and far between
+      are the families that can afford to keep unmarried daughters, so the women
+      regard as eminently fortunate those foreign women they come across,
+      missionary or otherwise, who are apparently free to guide their own lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course the average husband would no more think of selling his wife than
+      would an Englishman, but, unlike the Englishman, he knows that he has the
+      right to do so should he so please, even as he has the right of life and
+      death over her and his children. She is his chattel, to be faithful to her
+      would simply be foolishness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They tell a story of an angry father found digging a hole in which he
+      proposed to bury his son alive. That son had been insolent, and it was a
+      terrible thing to have an insolent son. His mother wept, but to her tears
+      the father paid no heed. A stranger passed along and questioned the little
+      company, and finding in his heart pity for the woman and the lad, cast
+      about how he might help them. He did not set about it as we of the West
+      would have done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He commiserated with the father. It was a terrible thing to have an
+      insolent son. Undoubtedly he deserved death. But it would be a bad thing
+      to have no son to worship at the ancestral tablet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was provided for, said the irate parent. He had two other sons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was well! That was well! And of course they had sons?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, they were young. They had no sons yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A-a-ah! And suppose anything happened by which they both should die?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger let that sink in. He had struck the right chord. It would be
+      a terrible thing to have no son to worship at the ancestral tablet&mdash;to
+      think that he by his own act&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chinese reasoning prevailed, and the son's life was spared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet the Chinese are fond of their children and, according to their
+      lights, good to their wives. It is that under the patriarchal system
+      children and women&mdash;a woman is always a child, a very ignorant child
+      as a rule&mdash;have no rights. They are dependent upon the good will of
+      their owners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the woman sitting waiting to see if her husband would complete the
+      bargain and sell her had no rights. She was just a chattel in the eye of
+      the law. And there was none to help. Miserere Domine! It was just possible
+      public opinion would save her. It was her only hope. Miserere Domine!
+      Miserere Domine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Fen Chou Fu the missionaries had started an adult school for women.
+      First it was started, as they themselves put it, to teach the Gospel, but
+      then wisely they extended it and taught reading, writing and arithmetic,
+      and very eager indeed were the pupils. It is only fair to say that very
+      often husbands, or possibly fathers-in-law&mdash;for a woman belongs to
+      the head of her husband's family, or at least owes allegiance to him&mdash;aided
+      and abetted in every way, and when necessary sent the pupils twenty and
+      thirty miles in carts and in litters from away in the mountains to attend.
+      One woman with four little children, all under five, with another coming,
+      was a most eager pupil. Her children were sent to the kindergarten, which
+      is in charge of a young Chinese teacher educated by the missionaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again I do not say the Chinese are not doing something to ameliorate the
+      condition of their women. I can only speak of what I saw, and what I saw
+      was, here in Shansi, the wives of the most miserable peasants sunk in
+      ignorance and hardly able to crawl from the <i>k'angs</i> on which they
+      spent their lives. The men do the cooking because the women are incapable,
+      and the mortality among the children is terrible. A doctor told me that
+      very often he had attended a woman at the birth of her thirteenth or
+      fourteenth child and only one or two would be living!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know how many wives or concubines a man is allowed. Only the first
+      one has any standing, and the number of the others is probably limited by
+      his means. I remember hearing of one man, a Mr Feng, who had just married
+      his second wife to another man because she was making his life too
+      miserable for him. This was the man's side of the story; I had heard the
+      woman's the last time. I wonder how the case is put on these occasions.
+      Does a man say he is parting with the lady with extreme regret because the
+      climate does not suit her, or because his first wife does not like her, or
+      because a sudden reverse of fortune has compelled him to reduce his
+      household? He surely would never have given the real reason. My friend Mr
+      Farrer waxes enthusiastic over things Chinese, but I must say what I have
+      seen of their domestic life repels me, and I am rather inclined to agree
+      with a missionary of my acquaintance&mdash;a bachelor though&mdash;that it
+      would give nervous prostration to a brazen statue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There can be little happiness where there is ignorance, and the majority
+      of the women of Shansi anyhow are the ignorant slaves of ignorant slaves.
+      Miserere Domine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI&mdash;BY MOUNTAIN AND RIVER
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>etting out on a
+      long journey by road, moving along slowly, at the rate of thirty miles a
+      day, I find I do not have the end in view in my mind all the time. I do
+      subconsciously, of course, or I would never get on at all, but I take a
+      point a couple of days ahead and concentrate on getting there. Having
+      arrived so far, I am so pleased with the performance I can concentrate on
+      the next couple of days ahead. So I pass on comfortably, with the
+      invigorating feeling of, something accomplished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fen Chou Fu, then, was one of my jumping-off places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at Fen Chou Fu my muleteers began to complain. Looked at from a
+      Western point of view, they ought to have complained long before, but
+      their complaint was not what I expected. They sent my interpreter to say
+      we were going the wrong way. This road would lead us out into a great bare
+      place of sand. When the wind blew it would raise the sand in great clouds
+      that would overwhelm us, and if the clouds gathered in the sky we should
+      not be able to see the sun, we would not know in which direction to go and
+      we should perish miserably. And having supplied me with this valuable and
+      sinister information they stood back to watch it sink in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It didn't have the damping and depressing effect they doubtless expected.
+      To begin with, I couldn't believe in a Chinese sky where you couldn't see
+      the sun. The clouds might gather, but a few hours would suffice to
+      disperse them, in my experience, and as for losing ourselves in the sand&mdash;well,
+      I couldn't believe it possible. Always in China, where-ever I had been,
+      there had been plenty of people of whom to ask the way, and though every
+      man's radius was doubtless short, still at every yard there was somebody.
+      It was like an endless chain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't they want to go?&rdquo; I asked Mr Wang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Repeat, please,&rdquo; said he, according to the approved formula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won't they go?&rdquo; I felt I had better have the matter clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say 'Go,' mus' go. You fear&mdash;you no go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If I feared and wouldn't go on, I grasped, the money I paid them would be
+      forfeit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I must go. I am not afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say you go by Hsi An Fu. That be ploper.&rdquo; And the listening
+      muleteers smiled at me blandly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I cannot go by Hsi An Fu because of White Wolf.&rdquo; I did not say that
+      also it would be going round two sides of a triangle because that would
+      not appeal to the Chinese mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They not knowing White Wolf,&rdquo; said Mr Wang, shaking his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I know White Wolf,&rdquo; I said, departing a little from the truth, &ldquo;and
+      I am going across the river to Sui Te Chou.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say 'Go,'&rdquo; said Mr Wang sorrowfully, &ldquo;mus' go,&rdquo; and he looked at the
+      muleteers, and the muleteers looked at him sorrowfully and went off the
+      verandah sorrowfully to prepare for the lonely road where there would be
+      no people of whom to ask the way, only sand and no sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was plenty of sun when we started. It was a glorious summer morning
+      when my little caravan went out of the northern gate into the mountains
+      that threatened the town. It was unknown China now, China as she was in
+      the time of the Cæsars, further back still in the time of the Babylonish
+      kings, in the days before the first dynasty in Egypt. Out through the
+      northern gate we went, by the clay-walled northern suburb, past great
+      ash-heaps like little mountain ranges, the refuse of centuries, their
+      softly rounded sides now tinged with the green of springtime, and almost
+      at once my caravan was at the foot of the hills&mdash;hills carved into
+      terraces by the daily toil of thousands, but looking as if they had been
+      so carved by some giant hand. As we entered them as hills they promptly
+      disappeared, for the road was sunken, and high over our heads rose the
+      steep clay walls, shutting out all view save the bright strip of blue sky
+      above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I here put it on record&mdash;I believe I have done it before, but it
+      really cannot be repeated too often&mdash;that as a conveyance a mule
+      litter leaves much to be desired. Sitting up there on my bedding among my
+      cushions, with James Buchanan beside me, I was much more comfortable than
+      I should have been in a Peking cart, but also I was much more helpless. A
+      driver did take charge of the Peking cart, but the gentleman who sometimes
+      led my mule litter more often felt that things were safer in the charge of
+      the big white mule in front, and when the way was extremely steep or rough
+      he abandoned it entirely to its discretion. The missionaries had told me
+      whenever I came to a bad place to be sure and get out, because the Chinese
+      mules are not surefooted enough to be always trusted. They are quite
+      likely at a bad place to slip and go over. This was a cheering reflection
+      when I found myself at the bad place abandoned to the tender mercies of
+      those animals. The mule in the lead certainly was a capable beast, but
+      again and again, as I told Mr Wang, I would have preferred that the
+      muleteers should not put quite so much faith in him. I learned to say
+      &ldquo;B-r-rrr, b-r-r-rrr!&rdquo; when I wanted him to stop, but I did not like to say
+      it often, because I felt in a critical moment I might seriously hamper him
+      to my own disadvantage. I told Mr Wang I was to be lifted out when we came
+      to bad places, but that too was hardly practicable, for we came to many
+      places that I certainly could not have negotiated on my own feet, and how
+      the mules got a cumbersome litter down or up them passes my understanding.
+      Thinking it over, the only advice I can give to anyone who wishes to
+      follow in my footsteps is to shut his eyes as I did and trust to the mule.
+      And we went down some places that were calculated to take the curl out of
+      my hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James Buchanan was a great comfort to me under these circumstances. He
+      nestled down beside me&mdash;he had recovered from his accident before we
+      left Fen Chou Fu&mdash;and he always assured me that everything would be
+      all right. One thing he utterly declined to do, and that was to walk with
+      the servants. I used to think it would be good for his health, but the
+      wisdom of the little Pekinese at the British American Tobacco Factory had
+      sunk in deep and he declined to trust himself with them unless I walked
+      too, when he was wild with delight. Put out by himself, he would raise a
+      pitiful wail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buchanan declines,&rdquo; Mr Wang would say sententiously, and he would be
+      lifted baek into the litter by my master of transport as if he were a
+      prince of the blood at least. And if anyone thinks I make an absurd fuss
+      about a little dog, I must remind him that I was entirely alone among an
+      alien people, and the little dog's affection meant a tremendous deal to
+      me. He took away all sense of loneliness. Looking back, I know now I could
+      not have gone on, this book would never have been written, if it had not
+      been for James Buchanan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roughly the way to the Yellow River is through a chain of mountains,
+      across a stony plateau in the centre of which is situated Yung Ning Chou,
+      quite a busy commercial city, and across another chain of mountains
+      through which the river forces its way. When first I entered the ditch in
+      the loess my objective was Yung Ning Chou. I looked no farther. I wanted
+      to get to that town in which seven Scandinavian missionaries in twenty
+      years had not effected a single convert. The cliffs frowned overhead, and
+      the effect to me was of wandering along an extremely stony way with many
+      pitfalls in it to the chiming of many mule bells and an unceasing shouting
+      of &ldquo;<i>Ta, ta!</i>&rdquo;&mdash;that is, &ldquo;Beat, beat!&rdquo;&mdash;a threat by which
+      the muleteer exhorts his animals to do their best. Generally speaking, I
+      couldn't see the man who had charge of me because he was some way behind
+      and the tilt shut him from my view. Except for knowing that he was
+      attending to his job and looking after me, I don't know that I pined to
+      look upon him. His appearance was calculated to make me feel I had not
+      wakened from a nightmare. Sometimes he wore a dirty rag over his head, but
+      just as often he went in his plain beauty unadorned&mdash;that is to say,
+      with all the front part of his head shaven and the back a mass of wild
+      coarse black hair standing out at all angles. They had cut off his queue
+      during the reforming fever at T'ai Yuan Fu and I presume he was doing the
+      best he could till it should grow again. Certainly it was an awe-inspiring
+      headpiece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0024" id="linkimage-0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0135.jpg" alt="0135 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0135.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0025" id="linkimage-0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0136.jpg" alt="0136 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0136.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      And always we progressed to the clashing of bells, for on every possible
+      point on the trappings of the four mules and the donkey that made up the
+      caravan and on every available point on the harness of every mule and
+      donkey that passed us was a brass bell. For, for all my muleteers had
+      objected to going this way, it was a caravan route to the West, and it was
+      seldom we did not see someone on the road. Here in this ditch in the loess
+      I realised the stern necessity for these bells, for often the way was
+      narrow and when we could hear another caravan coming we could make
+      arrangements to pass or to allow them to pass. There were many caravans of
+      ragged camels, and to these my animals objected with all the spirit a life
+      on the roads had still left in them. When we met a string of them at close
+      quarters in the loess my white mule in the lead nearly had hysterics, and
+      his feelings were shared, so I judged by the behaviour of the litter, by
+      his companion behind, and they both endeavoured to commit suicide by
+      climbing the bank, having no respect whatever for my feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On these occasions, with clenched teeth and concentrated energy, my
+      muleteer addressed himself to that leading mule:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now! Who's your mother? You may count yourself as dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mule evidently felt this was serious and made a desperate endeavour to
+      get a little higher, and his attendant became sarcastic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call yourself a mule! Call yourself a lord, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the jangling of the bells and the yells of the rest of the company I
+      knew that the other animals felt equally bad, and more than once I saw my
+      luckless interpreter, who evidently was not much of a hand at sitting on a
+      pack, ruefully picking himself up and shaking the dust from his person,
+      his mule having flung him as a protest against the polluting of the road
+      by a train of camels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The camels march along with a very supercilious air, but mules, horses and
+      donkeys all fear them so much that there are special inns for them and
+      they are supposed only to travel by night, but this rule is more honoured,
+      I imagine, in the breach than in the observance. Most parts of the road I
+      don't see that any caravan could pass along at night. The special inns do
+      not present any difference to my unprejudiced eyes from the discomfort of
+      an ordinary mule and donkey inn. I stopped at one one day in the loess for
+      tiffin, and it consisted of a courtyard round which were rooms (<i>yaos</i>)
+      that were simply caves with the mouths bricked up and doors in them.
+      Inside, the caves were dark and airless, with for all furniture the
+      universal, <i>k'ang</i>; a fireplace is either in the middle or at one of
+      the ends, and the flues underneath carry the hot air under the <i>k'ang</i>
+      to warm it. I have never before or since seen such miserable
+      dwelling-places as these <i>yaos</i>, and in the loess country I saw
+      hundreds of them, inhabitated by thousands of people. Wu Ch'eng
+      particularly commended itself to my notice because here I first realised
+      that in expecting a room to myself I was asking too much of the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We crossed the mountain pass the first day out of Fen Chou Fu. Steep it
+      was, steep as the roof of a house, and we scrambled down the other side
+      and, just as the dusk was falling, we came to Wu Ch'eng, a village mostly
+      of <i>yaos</i> in the mountain-side. Wu Ch'eng, where hundreds of people
+      live and die, was short of most things that make life worth living: water
+      was very scarce indeed, and there were no eggs there. It was necessary
+      that our little company should move on with what speed we might. Also the
+      inn only had one room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The <i>k'ang</i> is large,&rdquo; said my interpreter, as if he thought that a
+      woman who would come out on this journey would not mind sharing that <i>k'ang</i>
+      with all the other guests, the innkeeper and his servants. It was rather
+      large. I looked into an earthen cave the end of which, about thirty feet
+      away, I could hardly make out in the dim light. There were great cobwebs
+      hanging from the ceiling&mdash;dimly I saw them by the light that filtered
+      through the dirty paper that did duty for a window&mdash;and the high <i>k'ang</i>
+      occupied the whole length of the room, leaving a narrow passage with
+      hard-beaten earth for a floor about two feet wide between the <i>k'ang</i>
+      and the left-hand wall. It was about as uninviting a room as I have ever
+      seen. Also it was clearly impossible that Buchanan and I should turn out
+      the rest of the company, so I decreed that I should have it to myself for
+      half-an-hour for the purposes of washing and changing, for whieh privilege
+      I paid about twenty cash, roughly a ha'penny, and then we slept in the
+      litter, as we did on many other occasions, outside in the yard among the
+      donkeys and mules. The last thing I saw was the bright stars peeping down
+      at me, and the last thing I heard was the mules munching at their
+      well-earned chaff, and I wakened to the same stars and the same sounds,
+      for early retiring is conducive to early rising, and yet the muleteers
+      were always before me and were feeding their beasts. Always I went through
+      the same routine. I went to bed despairing and disgusted and a little
+      afraid. I slept like the dead, if I slept outside, and I wakened to watch
+      the sun rise and renew my hopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are hundreds, probably thousands, of villages like Wu Ch'eng in
+      China. The winter in Shansi in the mountains is Arctic and no words can
+      describe what must be the sufferings of these people; especially must the
+      women suffer, for the poorest peasant binds his daughter's feet, his wife
+      can hardly crawl. In Chihli you may see the women tottering round on their
+      stumps grinding the corn, in Shansi lucky is the woman who can do so much.
+      The ordinary peasant woman is equal to nothing but a little needlework, if
+      she have anything to sew, or to making a little porridge, if she can do so
+      without moving off the <i>k'ang</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The getting something for the men to cook must be a hard job. Potatoes are
+      sold singly, other vegetables are cut in halves or quarters, a fowl is
+      always sold by the joint. There may be people who do buy a whole fowl, but
+      they are probably millionaires. I suppose a whole section of a community
+      could not possibly exist on other folks' old clothes, but that is how the
+      people of this part of Shansi looked as if they were clothed. They had not
+      second-hand clothes or third-hand, they were apparently the remnants that
+      the third buyer could find no use for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall never forget on one occasion seeing a ragged scarecrow bearing on
+      the end of a pole a dead dog, not even an ordinary dead dog, but one all
+      over sores, a most disgustingly diseased specimen. I asked Mr Wang what he
+      was carrying that dog away for and that young gentleman looked at me in
+      surprise. He would never get to the bottom of this foolish foreigner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For eat,&rdquo; said he simply!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people of the loess cannot afford to waste anything save the health of
+      their women. A dog, a wonk, shares the scavenging work of the Chinese
+      towns with the black and white crows, and doubtless the citizens do not
+      care so much for eating them as they would a nice juicy leg of mutton, but
+      they would no more throw away a wonk that had found life in a Chinese town
+      too hard and simply died than I would yesterday's leg of mutton in favour
+      of the tender chicken I prefer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, the first camel inn I particularly noticed, was not far from Fen
+      Chou Fu, and they told me how many years ago one of the medical
+      missionaries touring the country found there the innkeeper's wife with one
+      of her bound feet in a terrible condition. She had a little baby at her
+      breast and she was suffering horribly&mdash;the foot was gangrenous. The
+      doctor was troubled and puzzled as well. He had no appliances and no
+      drugs, but left as they were, mother and baby, already half starved, were
+      doomed. Therefore, like a brave man as he was, he took his courage in both
+      hands, made a saw of a piece of scrap iron from an American packing-case
+      and with this rude instrument and no anaesthetics he amputated that foot.
+      And the woman survived, lived to see her child grow up, was living when I
+      passed along that way, and I sat in her courtyard and had my tiffin of
+      hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice washed down by tea. It was her son's
+      courtyard then, possibly that very baby's whose life the missionary had
+      saved by saving his mother's. For the Chinese have no milch cows or goats
+      and know little about feeding infants artificially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Always at midday the litter was lifted off the mules' backs, my table and
+      chair were produced from some recess among the packs, my blue cotton
+      tablecloth was spread and Tsai Chih Fu armed himself with a frying-pan in
+      which to warm the rice and offered it to me along with hard-boiled eggs of
+      dubious age. The excellent master of transport was a bad cook, and it is
+      not an exhilarating diet when it is served up three times a day for weeks
+      with unfailing regularity. I never grew so weary of anything in my life,
+      and occasionally I tried to vary it by buying little scones or cakes
+      peppered with sesame seed, but I'm bound to say they were all nasty. It
+      always seemed to me that an unfair amount of grit from the millstones had
+      got into the flour. Chinese are connoisseurs in their cooking, but not in
+      poor little villages in the mountains in Western Shansi, where they are
+      content if they can fill their starving stomachs. To judge Chinese taste
+      by the provisions of these mountaineers is as if we condemned the food of
+      London, having sampled only those shops where a steak pudding can be had
+      for fourpence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all these little inns, these underground inns, very often had the most
+      high-sounding names. &ldquo;The Inn of Increasing Righteousness&rdquo;&mdash;I hope it
+      was, there was certainly nothing else to recommend it; but the &ldquo;Inn of Ten
+      Thousand Conveniences&rdquo; really made the greatest claim upon my faith. The
+      Ritz or the Carlton could hardly have claimed more than this cave with the
+      hard-beaten earth for the floor of its one room and for all furnishing the
+      <i>k'ang</i> where landlord and guests slept in company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet all these uncomfortable inns between Fen Chou Fu and Yung Ning Chou
+      were thronged. The roads outside were littered with the packs of the mules
+      and donkeys, and inside the courtyard all was bustle, watering and feeding
+      the animals and attending to the wants of the men, who apparently took
+      most of their refreshment out of little basins with chopsticks and when
+      they were very wealthy, or on great occasions, had tea without milk or
+      sugar&mdash;which, of course, is the proper way to drink it&mdash;out of
+      little handleless cups. I don't know that they had anything else to drink
+      except hot water. I certainly never saw them drinking anything
+      intoxicating, and I believe there are no public-houses in China proper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every now and then the way through the loess widened a little and there
+      was an archway with a tower above it and a crowded village behind. Always
+      the villages were crowded. There was very often one or perhaps two trees
+      shading the principal street, but other hints of garden or greenery there
+      were none. The shops&mdash;open stalls&mdash;were packed together. And in
+      these little villages it is all slum: there is no hint of country life,
+      and the street was full of people, ragged people, mostly men and children.
+      The men were in rags in all shades of blue, and blue worn and washed&mdash;at
+      least possibly the washing is doubtful, we will say worn only&mdash;to dun
+      dirt colour. It was not picturesque, but filthy, and the only hint of
+      luxury was a pipe a yard long with a very tiny bowl which when not in use
+      hung round their necks or stuck out behind from under their coats. Round
+      their necks too would be hung a tiny brass tobacco box with hieroglyphics
+      upon it which contained the evil-smelling compound they smoked. Sometimes
+      they were at work in their alfresco kitchens&mdash;never have I seen so
+      much cooking done in the open air&mdash;sometimes they were shoeing a
+      mule, sometimes waiting for customers for their cotton goods, or their
+      pottery ware, or their unappetising cooked stuff, and often they were
+      nursing babies, little blaek-eyed bundles of variegated dirty rags which
+      on inspection resolved themselves into a coat and trousers, whatever the
+      age or the sex of the baby. And never have I seen so many family men. The
+      Chinaman is a good father and is not ashamed to carry his baby. At least
+      so I judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only occasionally was a woman or two to be seen, sitting on their
+      doorsteps gossiping in the sun or the shade, according to the temperature.
+      Men and women stared at the foreign woman with all their eyes, for
+      foreigners are rather like snow in June in these parts, and my coming made
+      me feel as if a menagerie had arrived in the villages so great and
+      interested were the crowds that assembled to look at and comment on me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After we passed through the loess the track was up a winding ravine cut in
+      past ages by the agency of water. From five hundred to a thousand feet
+      above us towered the cliffs and at their feet trickled a tiny drain of
+      water, not ankle-deep, that must once have come down a mighty flood to cut
+      for itself such a way through the eternal hills. For this, unlike the road
+      through the loess, is a broad way where many caravans might find room. And
+      this trickle was the beginnings of a tributary to the Yellow River. Along
+      its winding banks lay the caravan route.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And many caravans were passing. No place in China is lonely. There were
+      strings of camels, ragged and losing their coats&mdash;second-hand goods,
+      Mark Twain calls them&mdash;there were strings of pack-mules and still
+      longer strings of little donkeys, and there were many men with bamboos
+      across their shoulders and loads slung from either end. Some of these men
+      had come from Peking and were bound for far Kansu, the other side of
+      Shensi; but as I went on fewer and fewer got the loads from Kansu, most of
+      them stopped at Yung Ning Chou, the last walled town of any size this side
+      of the river. Always, always through the loess, through the deep ravines,
+      across the mountain passes, across the rocky plateau right away to the
+      little mountain city was the stream coming and going, bearing Pekingese
+      and Cantonese goods into the mountains, and coming back laden with wheat,
+      which is the principal product of these places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ask the drivers where they were going, camel, mule or donkey, and the
+      answer was always the same, they were going east or west, which, of
+      course, we could see for ourselves. There was no possibility of going any
+      other way. Those in authority knew whither they were bound, but the
+      ignorant drivers knew nothing but the direction. At least that is one
+      explanation, the one I accepted at the time, afterwards I came to know it
+      is a breach of good manners to exhibit curiosity in China, and quite
+      likely my interpreter simply greeted the caravans and made his own answer
+      to my question. It satisfied or at least silenced me and saved my face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing, however, grew more and more noticeable: the laden beasts were
+      coming east, going west the pack-saddles were empty. Fear was upon the
+      merchants and they would not send goods across the great river into
+      turbulent Shensi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already, so said my interpreter, and I judged the truth of his statement
+      by the empty pack-saddles, they were fearing to send goods into the
+      mountains at all. It was pleasant for me. I began to think. I had only
+      Buchanan to consult, and he had one great drawback, he always agreed that
+      what I thought was likely to be right. It is an attitude of mind that I
+      greatly commend in my friends and desire to encourage, but there are
+      occasions in life when a little perfectly disinterested advice would be
+      most acceptable, and that I could not get. Badly I wanted to cross Asia,
+      but I should not cross Asia if I were stopped by <i>tufeis</i>, which is
+      the local term for robbers. Were these rumours anything, or were they
+      manufactured by my interpreter? There were the warnings of the
+      missionaries, and there were the empty pack-saddles, and the empty
+      pack-saddles spoke loudly. Still I thought I might go on a little farther,
+      and James Buchanan encouraged me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Truly the way to the great river through the mountains was hard. Taking
+      all the difficulties in the lump, it would seem impossible to overcome
+      them, but taking them one by one I managed it. And not the least of my
+      troubles were the dogs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here in the mountains was a very handsome breed of large white dogs with
+      long hair, at least I am sure they would have been handsome if they had
+      been well fed and well eared for. If it had not been for Buchanan, whose
+      heart it would have broken, I should certainly have got a puppy to bring
+      home with me. These dogs one and all waged war on my little friend, who
+      had a great idea of his own importance and probably aggravated the ill-fed
+      denizens of the inn-yards. He would go hectoring down a yard, head up,
+      white plume waving, with a sort of &ldquo;Well, here we are! Now what have you
+      got to say for yourselves?&rdquo; air about him, and in two seconds more a big
+      white scarecrow of a dog would have him by the neck, dragging him across
+      the yard, designing to slay him behind the drinking troughs. He would give
+      one shriek for help, and I would fly to that dog's head, catch him by the
+      ears or the ruff round his neck and be dragged along in my turn till Tsai
+      Chih Fu the resourceful appeared on the scene with a billet of wood, and
+      then the unfortunate beast would be banished from the yard or tied up till
+      we had gone. I remembered often the warning I had received on the subject
+      of hydrophobia, but I never had time to think of that till afterwards,
+      when, of course, if anything had happened it would have been too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one thing about a Chinese inn in the interior: it may be
+      exceedingly uncomfortable, but it is also exceedingly cheap. A night's
+      lodging as a rule costs forty cash. Eleven cash roughly is equal to a
+      cent, and a cent, again roughly&mdash;it depends upon the price of silver&mdash;is
+      a little less than a farthing. Forty cash, then, is hardly a penny. Hot
+      water costs eight cash, eggs were six cash apiece and so were the wheaten
+      scones I bought in place of the bread my servant could not make, and I
+      could buy those last as low as three cash apiece. Of course I quite
+      understand that I as a rich traveller paid top price for everything,
+      probably twice or three times as much as the ordinary traveller; the
+      missionaries, indeed, were shocked at the price I paid for eggs, and again
+      I was always rooked in the matter of paper. For even though I preferred
+      it, it often happened that it was impossible to sleep in my litter in the
+      yard, it was too crowded with beasts&mdash;and it had to be very crowded&mdash;and
+      then I stripped off the paper from the window of the room I occupied to
+      let in the air, just a little air, and I was charged accordingly from
+      thirty to eighty cash for my destructiveness. I found afterwards that a
+      whole sheet of new paper can be had for ten cash, and the paper I
+      destroyed was not half-a-sheet and was grimed with the dirt of ages!
+      Glass, of course, in the mountains of Shansi is almost unknown and the
+      windows are covered with white paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the mountains came a high stony plateau, not dangerous but
+      difficult, for though this is a great trade route there was not an inch of
+      smooth roadway, every step had to be carefully picked among the stones,
+      and presently the stream that when we entered the mountains was a trickle
+      a hand's-breadth across was now a river meandering among the stones. We
+      began by stepping across it; wider it grew and there were stepping-stones
+      for the walking muleteers; then the mules waded and the muleteers climbed
+      on to the beasts or on to the front of the litter, which last proceeding
+      made me very uncomfortable, for I remembered my special man was likely at
+      most only to have been washed twice in his life, and I was very sure his
+      clothes had never been washed at all and probably had never been taken off
+      his back since last October. Finally we crossed by bridges, fairly
+      substantial bridges three planks wide, but the mules required a deal of
+      encouraging before they would trust them and always felt the boards
+      gingerly with their hoofs first as if they distrusted the Chinaman and all
+      his engineering works. The engineering was probably all right, but as the
+      state of repair often left much to be desired I could hardly blame the
+      mules for their caution. And one day we crossed that river twenty-six
+      times!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no charm in the country in Shansi beyond the sunshine and the
+      invigorating air. There were fields, every patch of land that could
+      possibly be made to grow a blade of wheat was most carefully tilled, there
+      was not a weed, not a blade of grass out of place. In some fields the
+      crops were springing green, in others the farmers were still ploughing,
+      with a patient ox in the plough; but there were no divisions between these
+      fields; there were no hedges; few and scanty trees; no gardens; no
+      farmhouses, picturesque or otherwise. The peasants all live huddled
+      together, literally in the hill-sides, and of the beauty of life there was
+      none. It was toil, toil without remission and with never a day off. Even
+      the blue sky and the sunshine and the invigorating dry air must be
+      discounted by the dirt and darkness and airlessness of the houses and the
+      underground <i>yaos</i>. The Chinese peasant's idea in building a house
+      seems to be to get rid of the light and the air, the only two things I
+      should have thought that make his life bearable. And in these dark and
+      airless caves the crippled women spend their days. The younger women&mdash;I
+      met them occasionally gaily clad and mounted on a donkey&mdash;looked
+      waxen and had an air of suffering, and the older were lined and had a look
+      of querulousness and irritability that was not on the men's faces. Many an
+      old man have I seen whose face might stand for a model of prosperous,
+      contented, peaceful old age looking back on a well-lived life, but never,
+      never have I seen such a look on a woman's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, after crossing a long bridge across the river, we came to Yung
+      Ning Chou. The dark grey wall stood out against the blue sky and, unlike
+      most Chinese cities that I have seen, there is no watch-tower over the
+      gate. It has suburbs, suburbs like Fen Chou Fu enclosed in crumbling clay
+      walls that are fast drifting to their inevitable end. They could not keep
+      out a rabbit now, let alone a man, and yet they are entered through great
+      brick gateways with a turn in them, and going under the archways I felt as
+      usual as if I had gone back to Biblical days. The walls of the city
+      proper, the crowded little city, are in better preservation, and tower
+      high above the caravans that pass round them, for there are no inns in
+      Yung Ning Chou and all caravans must stay in the eastern suburb. There are
+      narrow, stony little streets of houses pressed close together, and the
+      rough roadways are crowded with traffic: people, donkeys, laden mules and
+      grunting camels are for ever passing to and fro. Looking up the principal
+      street between the eastern and the western gate was like looking up a dark
+      tunnel in which fluttered various notices, the shop signs, Chinese
+      characters printed on white calico. Most of those signs, according to my
+      interpreter's translation, bore a strong resemblance to one another.
+      &ldquo;Virtue and Abundance,&rdquo; it seems they proclaimed to all who could read.
+      But there was no one to tell me whether there was really any wealth in
+      this little mountain city that is the same now as it probably was a
+      thousand years ago. I wondered, I could not help wondering, whether it
+      would be worth Pai Lang's while to attack. I wondered if he could get in
+      if he did, for the walls were high and the gates, rising up straight and
+      sheer without watch towers, such piles of masonry as might have been built
+      by conquering Nineveh or Babylon. Here and there, though, in the walls the
+      water had got under the clay and forced out the bricks in long deep
+      cracks, and here if they were not carefully guarded were places that an
+      invading force might storm, and in the suburbs and among the houses that
+      clustered close under the protecting walls terrible things might be done.
+      But the western gate, I should say, is well-nigh impregnable. Nobody but a
+      Chinaman would have built a gate in such a place. It opens out on to a
+      steep cliff that falls sheer sixty feet to the river below. Chinese towns
+      are always built symmetrically; there should be at least one gate in each
+      of the four walls, therefore a gate there is here. It seems to have
+      occurred to no one that a gate is placed in those walls for the
+      convenience of traffic, and that it is simple waste of time and labour to
+      make a gate in a place by which no one could possibly pass. For that
+      matter I should have thought a wall unnecessary on top of so steep a
+      cliff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Scandinavian missionaries who have faithfully worked Yung Ning Chou
+      for the last twenty years with so little result were absent when I passed
+      through. Only two of them live here, the rest are scattered over the
+      mountains to the north, and when I was in Fen Chou Fu I met a woman, a
+      Norwegian, who was on her way to join them. She remains in my mind a
+      pathetic figure of sacrifice, a wistful woman who was giving of her very
+      best and yet was haunted by the fear that all she was giving was of very
+      little worth, surely the most bitter and sorrowful reflection in this
+      world. She had worked in China as a missionary in her girlhood. She
+      explained to me how hard it was for these northern peoples, for to learn
+      Chinese they have first to learn English. Then she married, and after her
+      little girl was born her husband died and so she took her treasure home to
+      educate her in Norway. But she died and, feeling her duty was to the
+      Chinese, back came the lonely mother, and when I met her she was setting
+      out for the little walled city in the hills where she dwelt with some
+      other women. A strangely lonely life, devoid of all pleasures, theirs must
+      have been. I was struck with the little things that pleased this devoted
+      woman, such little things, and we who may enjoy them every day go calmly
+      on our way and never appreciate them. She wore the unbecoming Chinese
+      dress, with her white hair drawn baek from her face, and her blue eyes
+      looked out wistfully as if she were loath to give up hope that somewhere,
+      somehow, in the world individual happiness, that would be for her alone,
+      would come to her. During the revolution they, remembering the troubles
+      and dangers of the Boxer time, had refugeed in Tientsin, and the days
+      there were evidently marked with a white stone in her calendar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was so delightful,&rdquo; she said in her pretty precise English, &ldquo;to see
+      the European children in the gardens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How her heart went out to those children. They reminded her, I suppose, of
+      the little girl she had left behind sleeping her last sleep among the
+      Norwegian mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the children!&rdquo; she sighed. &ldquo;It brought a lump in your throat to look
+      at them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It brought a lump in my throat to look at her as I saw her set out for her
+      home with two little black-eyed Chinese girls crowded in the litter beside
+      her. She was taking them home from the school at Fen Chou Fu. The
+      loneliness of her life! The sacrifice of it! I wonder if those three
+      women, shut away in that little walled town, made any converts. I doubt
+      it, for theirs, like the Yung Ning Chou mission, was purely a faith
+      mission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unmarried women and widows were these three women. The Yung Ning Chou
+      mission consists of four old bachelors and three old maids. Not for a
+      moment do I suppose the majority of the Chinese believe they are what they
+      are, men and women living the lives of ascetics, giving up all for their
+      faith, and the absence of children in child-loving China must seriously
+      handicap them in their efforts to spread their faith. Think of the weary
+      years of those workers toiling so hopelessly in an alien land among a poor
+      and alien population, whose first impulse is certainly to despise them.
+      All honour to those workers even though they have failed in their object
+      so far as human eye can see, and even though that object makes no appeal
+      to people like me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0026" id="linkimage-0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0155.jpg" alt="0155 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0155.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0027" id="linkimage-0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0156.jpg" alt="0156 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0156.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0028" id="linkimage-0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0157.jpg" alt="0157 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0157.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      And I passed on through Yung Ning Chou, on across the stony plateau, and
+      at last, at a village called Liu Lin Chen, I was brought up with a sharp
+      turn with a tale of Pai Lang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was having my midday meal. Not that it was midday. It was four o'clock,
+      and I had breakfasted at 6 a.m.; but time is of no account in China. Liu
+      Lin Chen was the proper place at which to stop for the noonday rest, so we
+      did not stop till we arrived there, though the badness of the road had
+      delayed us. I was sitting in the inn-yard waiting for Tsai Chih Fu to
+      bring me the eternal hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice when Mr Wang came
+      up, accompanied by the two muleteers, and they&mdash;that is, the two
+      muleteers&mdash;dropped down to the ground and clamoured, so I made out
+      from his excited statements that the gates of Sui Te Chou had been closed
+      for the last four days on account of Pai Lang! And Sui Te Chou was the
+      first town I proposed to stop at after I crossed the river! If I would go
+      to Lan Chou Fu and on through Sin Kiang to the Russian border through Sui
+      Te Chou I must go. There was no other way. These days in the mountains had
+      shown me that to stray from the caravan road was an utter impossibility.
+      Had I been one of the country people conversant with the language I think
+      it would have been impossible. As it was, I had my choice. I might go on
+      or I might go back. Mr Wang apparently thought there should be no doubt in
+      my mind. He evidently expected I would turn tail there and then, and I
+      myself realised&mdash;I had been realising ever since round the table in
+      the mission station at Ki Hsien we had read Dr Edwards' letter&mdash;that
+      my journey across the continent was ended; but to turn tail in this
+      ignominious fashion, having seen nothing, within, I suppose, twenty-five
+      miles of the Yellow River, with the country about me as peaceful as the
+      road in Kent in which I live at present, how could I? It was more
+      peaceful, in fact, for now at night searchlights stream across the sky,
+      within a furlong of my house bombs have been dropped and men have been
+      killed, and by day and by night the house rocks as motors laden with
+      armament and instruments of war thunder past. But there in Shansi in the
+      fields the people worked diligently, in the village the archway over which
+      they held theatrical representations was placarded with notices, and in
+      the inn-yard where I sat the people went about attending to the animals as
+      if there was nothing to be feared. And I felt lonely, and James Buchanan
+      sat close beside me because at the other side of the very narrow yard a
+      great big white dog with a fierce face and a patch of mange on his side
+      looked at him threateningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll have none of your drawing-room dogs here,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Buchanan's difficulties were solved when he appealed to me. I&mdash;and
+      I was feeling it horribly&mdash;had no one to appeal to. I must rely upon
+      myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then to add to my woes it began to rain, soft, gentle spring rain,
+      growing rain that must have been a godsend to the whole country-side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It stopped, and Mr Wang and the muleteers looked at me anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will go on,&rdquo; I said firmly, &ldquo;to the Yellow River.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their faces fell. I could see the disappointment, but still I judged I
+      might go in safety so far.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't they want to go?&rdquo; I asked Mr Wang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Repeat, please,&rdquo; said he. So I repeated, and he said as he had said
+      before:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you say 'Go,' mus' go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And I said &ldquo;Go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII&mdash;CHINA'S SORROW
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is better, says
+      a Chinese proverb, &ldquo;to hear about a thing than to see it,&rdquo; and truly on
+      this journey I was much inclined to agree with that dictum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were bound for Hsieh Ts'un. I can't pronounce it, and I should not like
+      to swear to the spelling, but of one thing I am very sure, not one of the
+      inhabitants could spell it, or even know it was wrongly set forth to the
+      world, so I am fairly safe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went under the archway with the theatrical notices at Liu Lin Chen,
+      under the arched gateway of the village, out into the open country, and it
+      began to rain again. It came down not exactly in torrents but good steady
+      growing rain. The roads when they were not slippery stones were appalling
+      quagmires, and my mule litter always seemed to be overhanging a precipice
+      of some sort. I was not very comfortable when that precipice was only
+      twenty feet deep, when it was more I fervently wished that I had not come
+      to China. I wished it more than once, and it rained and it rained and it
+      rained, silent, soaking, penetrating rain, and I saw the picturesque
+      mountain country through a veil of mist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hsieh Ts'un is a little dirty straggling village, and as we entered it
+      through the usual archway with a watch tower above the setting sun broke
+      through the thick clouds and his golden rays strcamed down upon the
+      slippery wet cobblestones that paved the principal street. The golden
+      sunlight and the gorgeous rainbow glorified things a little, and they
+      needed glorifying. The principal inn, as usual, was a fairly large yard,
+      roughly paved, but swimming now in dirty water; there were stalls for
+      animals all round it, and there was a large empty shed where they stored
+      lime. It was stone-paved, and the roof leaked like a sieve, but here I
+      established myself, dodging as far as possible the holes in the roof and
+      drawing across the front of the shed my litter as a sort of protection,
+      for the inn, as usual with these mountain inns, had but one room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was cold, it was dirty, and I realised how scarce foreigners must be
+      when through the misty, soaking rain, which generally chokes off a
+      Chinaman, crowds came to stand round and stare at me. I was stationary, so
+      the women came, dirty, ragged, miserable-looking women, supporting
+      themselves with sticks and holding up their babies to look at the stranger
+      while she ate. By and by it grew so cold I felt I must really go to bed,
+      and I asked Mr Wang to put it to the crowd that it was not courteous to
+      stare at the foreign woman when she wished to be alone, and, O most
+      courtly folk! every single one of those people went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can have a bath,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;no one will look&rdquo;; and, all honour give I
+      to those poor peasants of Western Shansi, I was undisturbed. I am afraid a
+      lonely Chinese lady would hardly be received with such courtesy in an
+      English village were the cases reversed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day the rain still teemed down. The fowls pecked about the yard,
+      drenched and dripping; a miserable, mangy, cream-coloured dog or two came
+      foraging for a dinner, and the people, holding wadded coats and oiled
+      paper over their heads, came to look again at the show that had come to
+      the town; but there was no break in the grey sky, and there was nothing to
+      do but sit there shivering with cold, writing letters on my little
+      travelling table and listening to my interpreter, who talked with the
+      innkeeper and brought me at intervals that gentleman's views on the doings
+      of Pai Lang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those views varied hour by hour. At first he was sure he was attacking Sui
+      Te Chou. That seemed to me sending the famous robber over the country too
+      quickly. Then it was <i>tufeis</i>&mdash;that is, bands of robbers&mdash;that
+      Sui Te Chou feared, and finally, boiled down, I came to the conclusion
+      that Sui Te Chou had probably shut her gates because the country round was
+      disturbed, and that she admitted no one who had not friends in the city or
+      could not in some way guarantee his good faith. It served to show me my
+      friends in Ki Hsien had been right, such disturbed country would be no
+      place for a woman alone. I suppose it was the rain and the grey skies, but
+      I must admit that day I was distinctly unhappy and more than a little
+      afraid. I was alone among an alien people, who only regarded me as a cheap
+      show; I had no one to take counsel with, my interpreter only irritated me
+      and, to add to my misery, I was very cold. I have seldom put in a longer
+      or more dreary day than I did at Hsieh Ts'un. There was absolutely nothing
+      to do but watch the misty rain, for if I went outside and got wetter than
+      I was already getting under the leaking roof&mdash;I wore my Burberry&mdash;I
+      had no possible means of drying my clothes save by laying them on the hot
+      <i>k'ang</i> in the solitary living-room of the inn, and that was already
+      inhabited by many humans and the parasites that preyed upon them.
+      Therefore I stayed where I was, compared my feet with the stumps of the
+      women who came to visit me&mdash;distinctly I was a woman's show&mdash;gave
+      the grubby little children raisins, and wondered if there was any fear of
+      Pai Lang coming along this way before I had time to turn back. If it kept
+      on raining, would my muleteers compel me to stay here till Pai Lang swept
+      down upon us? But no, that thought did not trouble me, first, because I
+      momentarily expected it to clear up, and secondly, because I was very sure
+      that any rain that kept me prisoner would also hold up Pai Lang. I could
+      not believe in a Chinaman, even a robber, going out in the rain if he
+      could help himself, any more than I could believe in it raining longer
+      than a day in China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people are not afraid,&rdquo; I said to my interpreter as I looked at a
+      worn old woman in a much-patched blue cotton smock and trousers, her head
+      protected from the rain by a wadded coat in the last stages of
+      decrepitude; her feet made me shiver, and her finger-nails made me crawl,
+      the odour that came from her was sickening, but she liked to see me write,
+      and I guessed she had had but few pleasures in her weary life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They not knowing yet,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;only travellers know. They tell
+      innkeeper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, certainly the travellers would know best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all day long he came, bringing me various reports, and said that,
+      according to the innkeeper, the last caravan that had passed through had
+      gone back on its tracks. I might have remembered it. I did remember it&mdash;a
+      long line of donkeys and mules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the day passed, and the night passed, and the next day the sun came
+      out warm and pleasant, and all my doubts were resolved. My journey was
+      broken beyond hope, and I must go back, but turn I would not till I had
+      looked upon the Yellow River.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We started with all our paraphernalia. We were to turn in our tracks after
+      tiffin, but Mr Wang and the muleteers were certain on that point,
+      everything I possessed must be dragged across the mountains if I hoped to
+      see it again, and I acquiesced, for I certainly felt until I got back to
+      civilisation I could not do without any of my belongings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost immediately we left the village we began to ascend the mountain
+      pass. Steeper and steeper it grew, and at last the opening in my mule
+      litter was pointing straight up to the sky, and I, seeing there was
+      nothing else for it, demanded to be lifted out and signified my intention
+      of walking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one thing against this and that was an attack of breathlessness.
+      Asthma always attacks me when I am tired or worried, and now, with a very
+      steep mountain to cross and no means of doing it except on my own feet, it
+      had its wicked way. My master of transport and Mr Wang, like perfectly
+      correct Chinese servants, each put a hand under my elbows, and with
+      Buchanan skirmishing around joyfully, rejoicing that for once his mistress
+      was sensible, the little procession started. It was hard work, very hard
+      work. When I could go no longer I sat down and waited till I felt equal to
+      starting again. On the one hand the mountain rose up sheer and steep, on
+      the other it dropped away into the gully beneath, only to rise again on
+      the other side. And yet in the most inaccessible places were patches of
+      cultivation and wheat growing. I cannot imagine how man or beast kept a
+      footing on such a slant, and how they ploughed and sowed it passes my
+      understanding. But most of the mountain-side was too much even for them,
+      and then they turned loose their flocks, meek cream-coloured sheep and
+      impudent black goats, to graze on the scanty mountain pastures. Of course
+      they were in charge of a shepherd, for there were no fences, and the newly
+      springing wheat must have been far more attractive than the scanty
+      mountain grasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I knew it was worth it all&mdash;the long trek from Fen Chou Fu,
+      the dreary day at Hsieh Ts'un, the still more dreary nights, this stiff
+      climb which took more breath than I had to spare&mdash;for the view when I
+      arrived at a point of vantage was beautiful. These were strange mountains.
+      The road before me rose at a very steep angle, and all around me were
+      hill-sides whereon only a goat or a sheep might find foothold, but the
+      general effect looked at from a distance was not of steepness. These were
+      not mountains, rugged, savage, grand, they were gentle hills and dales
+      that lay about me; I had come through them; there were more ahead; I could
+      see them range after range, softly rounded, green and brown and then blue,
+      beautiful for all there were no trees, in an atmosphere that was clear as
+      a mirror after the rain of the day before. Beautiful, beautiful, with a
+      tender entrancing loveliness, is that view over the country up in the
+      hills that hem in the Yellow River as it passes between Shansi and Shensi.
+      Is it possible there is never anyone to see it but these poor peasants who
+      wring a hard livelihood from the soil, and who for all their toil, which
+      lasts from daylight to dark all the year round, get from this rich soil
+      just enough wheaten flour to keep the life in them, a hovel to dwell in,
+      and a few unspeakable rags to cover their nakedness? As far as I could
+      see, everyone was desperately poor, and yet these hills hold coal and iron
+      in close proximity, wealth untold and unexploited. The pity of it!
+      Unexploited, the people are poor to the verge of starvation; worked, the
+      delicate loveliness of the country-side will vanish as the beauty of the
+      Black Country has vanished, and can we be sure that the peasant will
+      benefit?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0029" id="linkimage-0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0166.jpg" alt="0166 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0166.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0030" id="linkimage-0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0167.jpg" alt="0167 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0167.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Still we went up and up, and the climbing of these gentle wooing hills I
+      found hard. Steep it was, and at last, just when I felt I could not
+      possibly go any farther, though the penalty were that I should turn back
+      almost within sight of the river, I found that the original makers of the
+      track had been of the same opinion, for here was the top of the pass with
+      a tunnel bored through it, a tunnel perhaps a hundred feet long, carefully
+      bricked, and when we, breathless and panting, walked through we came out
+      on a little plateau with a narrow road wandering down a mountain-side as
+      steep as the one we had just climbed. There was the most primitive of
+      restaurants here, and the woman in charge&mdash;it was a woman, and her
+      feet were not bound&mdash;proffered us a thin sort of drink like very
+      tasteless barley water. At least now I know it was tasteless, then I found
+      it was nectar, and I sat on a stone and drank it thankfully, gave not a
+      thought to the dirt of the bowl that contained it, and drew long breaths
+      and looked around me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hills rose up on either hand and away in the distance where they
+      opened out were the beautiful treeless hills of forbidden Shensi, just as
+      alluring, just as peaceful as the hills I had come through. It was worth
+      the long and toilsome journey, well worth even all my fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we went down, down, but I did not dare get into my litter, the way
+      was too steep, the chances of going over too great, for it seems the
+      Chinese never make a road if by any chance they can get along without.
+      They were driven to bore a tunnel through the mountains, but they never
+      smooth or take away rocks as long as, by taking a little care, an animal
+      can pass without the certainty of going over the cliff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at last through a cleft in the hills I saw one of the world's great
+      rivers and&mdash;was disappointed. The setting was ideal. The hills rose
+      up steep and rugged, real mountains, on either side, pheasants called,
+      rock-doves mourned, magpies chattered, overhead was a clear blue sky just
+      flecked here and there with fleecy clouds, beyond again were the mountains
+      of Shensi, the golden sunlight on their rounded tops, purple shadow in
+      their swelling folds, far away in the distance they melted blue into the
+      blue sky, close at hand they were green with the green of springtime, save
+      where the plough had just turned up patches of rich brown soil, and at
+      their foot rolled a muddy flood that looked neither decent water nor good
+      sound earth, the mighty Hoang-Ho, the Yellow River, China's sorrow.
+      China's sorrow indeed; for though here it was hemmed in by mountains, and
+      might not shift its bed, it looked as if it were carrying the soul of the
+      mountains away to the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a temple where the gully opens on to the river, a temple and a
+      little village, and the temple was crowded with blue-clad, shabby-looking
+      soldiers who promptly swarmed round me and wanted to look in my baggage,
+      that heavy baggage we were hauling for safety over fourteen miles of
+      mountain road. Presumably they were seeking arms. We managed to persuade
+      them there were none, and that the loads contained nothing likely to
+      disturb the peace, and then we went down to the river, crossing by a
+      devious, rocky and unpleasant path simply reeking of human occupancy, and
+      the inhabitants of that soldier village crowded round me and examined
+      everything I wore and commented on everything I did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were there to guard the crossing; and far from me be it to say they
+      were not most efficient, but if so their looks belied them. They did not
+      even look toy soldiers. No man was in full uniform. Apparently they wore
+      odd bits, as if there were not enough clothes in the company to go round,
+      and they were one and all dirty, touzly, untidy, and all smiling and
+      friendly and good-tempered. I only picked them out from the surrounding
+      country people&mdash;who were certainly dirty and poverty-stricken enough
+      in all conscience&mdash;by the fact that the soldiers had abandoned the
+      queue which the people around, like all these country people, still
+      affect. The soldier wore his hair about four or five inches long, sticking
+      out at all angles, rusty-black, unkempt and uncombed, and whether he ran
+      to a cap or not, the result was equally unworkmanlike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I conclude Chun Pu is not a very important crossing. What the road is like
+      on the Shensi side I do not know, but on the Shansi side I should think
+      the pass we had just crossed was a very effective safeguard. He would be a
+      bold leader who would venture to bring his men up that path in the face of
+      half-a-dozen armed men, and they need not be very bold men either. Those
+      soldiers did not look bold. They were kindly, though, and they had women
+      and children with them&mdash;I conclude their own, for they nursed the
+      grubby little children, all clad in grubby patches, very proudly, took
+      such good care they had a good view of the show&mdash;me&mdash;that I
+      could not but sympathise with their paternal affection and aid in every
+      way in my power. Generally my good-will took the form of raisins. I was
+      lavish now I had given up my journey, and my master of transport
+      distributed with an air as if I were bestowing gold and silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He set out my table on the cobble-stones of the inn-yard in the sunshine.
+      I believe, had I been a really dignified traveller, I should have put up
+      with the stuffiness and darkness of the inn's one room, but I felt the
+      recurrent hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice, with a certain steamed scone
+      which contained more of the millstone and less of the flour than was usual
+      even with the scones of the country, were trials enough without trying to
+      be dignified in discomfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And while I had my meal everybody took it in turns to look through the
+      finder of my camera, the women, small-footed, dirty creatures, much to the
+      surprise of their menfolk, having precedence. Those women vowed they had
+      never seen a foreigner before. Every one of them had bound feet, tiny feet
+      on which they could just totter, and all were clad in extremely dirty,
+      much-patched blue cotton faded into a dingy dirt-colour. Most of them wore
+      tight-fitting coverings of black cloth to cover their scalps, often
+      evidently to conceal their baldness, for many of them suffered from
+      &ldquo;expending too much heart.&rdquo; Baldness is caused, say the Chinese half in
+      fun, because the luckless man or woman has thought more of others than of
+      themselves. I am afraid they do not believe it, or they may like to hide
+      their good deeds, for they are anything but proud of being bald. Most of
+      the mouths, too, here, and indeed all along the road, were badly formed
+      and full of shockingly broken and decayed teeth, the women's particularly.
+      Wheaten flour, which is the staple food of Shansi, is apparently not
+      enough to make good teeth. The people were not of a markedly Mongolian
+      type. Already it seemed as if the nations to the West were setting their
+      seal upon them, and some of the younger girls, with thick black hair
+      parted in the middle, a little colour in their cheeks, and somewhat
+      pathetic, wistful-looking faces, would have been good-looking in any land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I had one more good look at the river, my farthest point west on the
+      journey, the river I had come so far to see. It was all so peaceful in the
+      afternoon sunlight that it seemed foolish not to go on. The hills of
+      Shensi beckoned and all my fears fell from me. I wanted badly to go on.
+      Then came reason. It was madness to risk the <i>tufeis</i> with whom
+      everyone was agreed Shensi swarmed. There in the brilliant sunshine, with
+      the laughing people around me, I was not afraid, but when night fell&mdash;no,
+      even if the soldiers would have allowed, which Mr Wang declared they would
+      not&mdash;I dared not, and I turned sadly and regretfully and made my way
+      back to Fen Chou Fu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had I gone on I should have arrived in Russia with the war in full swing,
+      so on the whole? am thankful I had to flee before the <i>tufeis</i> of
+      Shensi. Perhaps when the world is at peace I shall essay that fascinating
+      journey again. Only I shall look out for some companion, and even if I
+      take the matchless master of transport I shall most certainly see to it
+      that I have a good cook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII&mdash;LAST DAYS IN CHINA
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ell, I had failed!
+      The horrid word kept ringing in my ears, the still more horrid thought was
+      ever in my mind day and night as I retraced my footsteps, and I come of a
+      family that does not like to fail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wondered if it were possible to make my way along the great waterways of
+      Siberia. There were mighty rivers there, I had seen them, little-known
+      rivers, and it seemed to me that before going West again I might see
+      something of them, and as my mules picked their way across the streams,
+      along the stony paths, by the walled cities, through the busy little
+      villages, already China was behind me, I was thinking of ways and means by
+      which I might penetrate Siberia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Fen Chou Fu they were kind, but I knew they thought I had given in too
+      easily, that I had turned back at a shadow, but at T'ai Yuan Fu I met the
+      veteran missionary, Dr Edwards, and I was comforted and did not feel so
+      markedly that failure was branded all over me when he thanked God that his
+      letter had had the effect of making me consider carefully my ways, for of
+      one thing he was sure, there would have been but one ending to the
+      expedition. To get to Lan Chou Fu would have been impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still my mind was not quite at ease about the matter, and at intervals I
+      wondered if I would not have gone on had I had a good cook. Rather a
+      humiliating thought! It was a satisfaction when one day I met Mr Reginald
+      Farrer, who had left Peking with Mr Purdom to botanise in Kansu ten days
+      before I too had proposed to start West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I often wondered,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;what became of you and how you had got on.
+      We thought perhaps you might have fallen into the hands of White Wolf and
+      then&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shensi, he declared, was a seething mass of unrest. It would have spelled
+      death to cross to those peaceful hills I had looked at from the left bank
+      of the Hoang-Ho. We discussed our travels, and we took diametrically
+      opposite views of China. But it is impossible to have everything: one has
+      to choose, and I prefer the crudeness of the new world, the rush and the
+      scramble and the progress, to the calm of the Oriental. Very likely this
+      is because I am a woman. In the East woman holds a subservient position,
+      she has no individuality of her own, and I, coming from the newest new
+      world, where woman has a very high place indeed, is counted a citizen, and
+      a useful citizen, could hardly be expected to admire a state of society
+      where her whole life is a torture and her position is regulated by her
+      value to the man to whom she belongs. I put this to my friend when he was
+      admiring the Chinese ladies and he laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I admit,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that a young woman has a&rdquo;&mdash;well, he used a very
+      strong expression, but it wasn't strong enough&mdash;&ldquo;of a time when she
+      is young, but, if she has a son, when her husband dies see what a position
+      she holds. That little old woman sitting on a <i>k'ang</i> rules a whole
+      community.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I gave it up because our points of view were East and West. But I
+      am thankful that the Fates did not make me&mdash;a woman&mdash;a member of
+      a nation where I could have no consideration, no chance of happiness, no
+      great influence or power by my own effort, where recognition only came if
+      I had borne a son who was still living and my husband was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0031" id="linkimage-0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0176.jpg" alt="0176 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0176.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0032" id="linkimage-0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0177.jpg" alt="0177 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0177.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      On my way back to T'ai Yuan Fu I stayed at no mission station except at
+      Fen Chou Fu; I went by a different route and spent the nights at miserable
+      inns that kindly charged me a whole penny for lodging and allowed me to
+      sleep in my litter in their yards, and about eighty <i>li</i> from Fen
+      Chou Fu I came across evidences of another mission that would be <i>anathema
+      maranatha</i> to the Nonconformists with whom I had been staying. It is
+      curious this schism between two bodies holding what purports to be the
+      same faith. I remember a missionary, the wife of a doctor at Ping Ting
+      Chou, who belonged to a sect called The Brethren, who spoke of the Roman
+      Catholics as if they were in as much need of conversion as the ignorant
+      Chinese around her. It made me smile; yet I strongly suspect that Mr
+      Farrer will put me in the same category as I put my friend from Ping Ting
+      Chou! However, here under the care of the Alsatian Fathers the country was
+      most beautifully cultivated. The wheat was growing tall and lush in the
+      land, emerald-green in the May sunshine; there were avenues of trees along
+      the wayside clothed in the tender fresh green of spring, and I came upon a
+      whole village, men and boys, busy making a bridge across a stream. Never
+      in China have I seen such evidences of well-conducted agricultural
+      industry; and the Fathers were militant too, for they were, and probably
+      are, armed, and in the Boxer trouble held their station like a fort, and
+      any missionaries fleeing who reached them had their lives saved. I found
+      much to commend in that Roman Catholic mission, and felt they were as
+      useful to the country people in their way as were the Americans to the
+      people of the towns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside another little town the population seemed to be given over to the
+      making of strawboard, and great banks were plastered with squares of it
+      set out to dry, and every here and there a man was engaged in putting more
+      pieces up. It wras rather a comical effect to see the side of a bank
+      plastered with yellow squares of strawboard and the wheat springing on
+      top.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All along the route still went caravans of camels, mules and donkeys, and,
+      strangest of all modes of conveyance, wheel-barrows, heavily laden too. A
+      wheel-barrow in China carries goods on each side of a great wheel, a man
+      holds up the shafts and wheels it, usually with a strap round his
+      shoulders, and in front either another man or a donkey is harnessed to
+      help with the traction. Hundreds of miles they go, over the roughest way,
+      and the labour must be very heavy; but wherever I went in China this was
+      impressed upon me, that man was the least important factor in any work of
+      production. He might be used till he failed and then thrown lightly away
+      without a qualm. There were plenty glad enough to take his place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been taken to task for comparing China to Babylon, but I must make
+      some comparison to bring home things to my readers. This journey through
+      the country in the warm spring sunshine was as unlike a journey anywhere
+      that I have been in Europe, Africa or Australia as anything could possibly
+      be. It was through an old land, old when Europe was young. I stopped at
+      inns that were the disgusting product of the slums; I passed men working
+      in the fields who were survivals of an old civilisation, and when I passed
+      any house that was not a hovel it was secluded carefully, so that the
+      owner and his womenkind might keep themselves apart from the proletariat,
+      the serfs who laboured around them and for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within a day's journey of T'ai Yuan Fu I came to a little town, Tsui Su,
+      where there was an extra vile inn with no courtyard that I could sleep in,
+      only a room where the rats were numerous and so fierce that they drove
+      Buchanan for refuge to my bed and the objectionable insects that I hustled
+      off the <i>k'ang</i> by means of powdered borax and Keating's, strewed
+      over and under the ground sheet, crawled up the walls and dropped down
+      upon me from the ceiling. Poor Buchanan and I spent a horrid night. I
+      don't like rats anyway, and fierce and hungry rats on the spot are far
+      worse for keeping off sleep than possible robbers in the future. All that
+      night I dozed and waked and restrained Buchanan's energies and vowed I was
+      a fool for coming to China, and then in the morning as usual I walked it
+      all back, and was glad, for Mr Wang came to me and, after the best
+      personally conducted Cook's tourist style, explained that here was a
+      temple which &ldquo;mus' see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn't believe much in temples in these parts, but I went a little way
+      back into the town and came to a really wonderful temple, built, I think,
+      over nine warm springs&mdash;the sort of thing that weighed down the
+      scales heavily on Mr Farrer's side. What has a nation that could produce
+      such a temple to learn from the West? I shall never forget the carved
+      dragons in red and gold that climbed the pillars at the principal
+      entrance, the twisted trees, the shrines over the springs and the bronze
+      figures that stood guard on the platform at the entrance gate. The steps
+      up to that gate were worn and broken with the passing of many feet through
+      countless years; the yellow tiles of the roof were falling and broken;
+      from the figures had been torn or had fallen the arms that they once had
+      borne; the whole place was typical of the decay which China allows to fall
+      upon her holy places; but seen in the glamour of the early morning, with
+      the grass springing underfoot, the trees in full leaf, the sunshine
+      lighting the yellow roofs and the tender green of the trees, it was
+      gorgeous. Then the clouds gathered and it began to rain, gentle, soft,
+      warm, growing rain, and I left it shrouded in a seductive grey mist that
+      veiled its imperfections and left me a 'memory only of one of the
+      beautiful places of the earth that I am glad I have seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At T'ai Yuan Fu I paid Mr Wang's fare back to Pao Ting Fu and bade him a
+      glad farewell. There may be worse interpreters in China, but I really hope
+      there are not many. He would have been a futile person in any country; he
+      was a helpless product of age-old China. I believe he did get back safely,
+      but I must confess to feeling on sending him away much as I should do were
+      I to turn loose a baby of four to find his way across London. Indeed I
+      have met many babies of four in Australia who struck me as being far more
+      capable than the interpreter who had undertaken to see me across China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was on the loose myself now. I was bent on going to Siberia; but the
+      matter had to be arranged in my own mind first, and while I did so I
+      lingered and spent a day or two at Hwailu; not that I wanted to see that
+      town&mdash;somehow I had done with China&mdash;but because the personality
+      of Mr and Mrs Green of the China Inland Mission interested me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hwailu is a small walled city, exactly like hundreds of other little
+      walled cities, with walls four-square to each point of the compass, and it
+      is set where the hills begin to rise that divide Chihli from Shansi, and
+      beyond the mission station is a square hill called Nursing Calf Fort. The
+      hill has steep sides up which it is almost impossible to take any animal,
+      but there are about one hundred acres of arable land on top, and this,
+      with true Chinese thrift, could not be allowed to go untilled, so the
+      story goes that while a calf was young a man carried it up on his back;
+      there it grew to maturity, and with its help they ploughed the land and
+      they reaped the crops. It is a truly Chinese story, and very likely it is
+      true. It is exactly what the Chinese would do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Hwailu, where they had lived for many years, Mr and Mrs Green were
+      engaged in putting up a new church, and with them I came in contact with
+      missionaries who had actually suffered almost to death at the hands of the
+      Boxers. It was thrilling to listen to the tales of their sufferings,
+      sitting there on the verandah of the mission house looking out on to the
+      peaceful flowers and shrubs of the mission garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Boxer trouble spread to Hwailu and it was manifest the mission
+      house was no longer safe, they took refuge in a cave among the hills that
+      surround the town. Their converts and friends&mdash;for they had many
+      friends who were not converts&mdash;hardly dared come near them, and death
+      was very close. It was damp and cold in the cave though it was
+      summer-time, and by and by they had eaten all their food and drunk all
+      their water, and their hearts were heavy, for they feared not only for
+      themselves, but for what the little children must suffer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not help it,&rdquo; said Mrs Green, reproaching herself for being
+      human. &ldquo;I used to look at my children and wonder how the saints <i>could</i>
+      rejoice in martyrdom!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When they were in despair and thinking of coming out and giving themselves
+      up they heard hushed voices, and a hand at the opening of the cave offered
+      five large wheaten scones. Some friends, again not converts, merely pagan
+      friends, had remembered their sufferings. Still they looked at the scenes
+      doubtfully, and though the little children&mdash;they were only four and
+      six&mdash;held out their hands for them eagerly, they were obliged to
+      implore them not to eat them, they would make them so desperately thirsty.
+      But their Chinese friends were thoughtful as well as kind, and presently
+      came the same soft voice again and a hand sending up a basketful of
+      luscious cucumbers, cool and refreshing with their store of water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But they could not stay there for ever, and finally they made their way
+      down to the river bank, the Ching River&mdash;the Clear River we called
+      it, and I have also heard it translated the Dark Blue River, though it was
+      neither dark, nor blue, nor clear, simply a muddy canal&mdash;and slowly
+      made their way in the direction of Tientsin, hundreds of miles away. That
+      story of the devoted little band's wanderings makes pitiful reading.
+      Sometimes they went by boat, sometimes they crept along in the kaoliang
+      and reeds, and at last they arrived at the outskirts of Hsi An&mdash;not
+      the great city in Shensi, but a small walled town on the Ching River in
+      Chihli. Western cities are as common in China as new towns in
+      English-speaking lands&mdash;and here they, hearing a band was after them,
+      hid themselves in the kaoliang, the grain that grows close and tall as a
+      man. They were weary and worn and starved; they were well-nigh hopeless&mdash;at
+      least I should have been hopeless&mdash;but still their faith upheld them.
+      It was the height of summer and the sun poured down his rays, but towards
+      evening the clouds gathered. If it rained they knew with little children
+      they must leave their refuge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely, I know,&rdquo; said Mrs Green, &ldquo;the dear Lord will never let it
+      rain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as I looked at her I seemed to see the passionate yearning with which
+      she looked at the little children that the rain must doom to a Chinese
+      prison or worse. In among those thick kaoliang stalks they could not stay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It rained, the heavy rain that comes in the Chinese summer, and the
+      fugitives crept out and gave themselves up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It shows how ignorant we are, how unfit to judge for ourselves,&rdquo; said the
+      teller of the tale fervently, &ldquo;for we fell into the hands of a
+      comparatively merciful band, whereas presently the kaoliang was beaten by
+      a ruthless set of men whom there would have been no escaping, and who
+      certainly would have killed us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the tenderness of the most merciful band was a thing to be prayed
+      against. They carried the children kindly enough&mdash;the worst of
+      Chinamen seem to be good to children&mdash;but they constantly threatened
+      their elders with death. They were going to their death, that they made
+      very clear to them; and they slung them on poles by their hands and feet,
+      and the pins came out of the women's long hair&mdash;there was another
+      teacher, a girl, with them&mdash;and it trailed in the dust of the filthy
+      Chinese paths. And Mr Green was faint and weary from a wound in his neck,
+      but still they had no pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still these devoted people comforted each other. It was the will of the
+      Lord. Always was He with them. They were taken to Pao Ting Fu, Pao Ting Fu
+      that had just burned its own missionaries, and put in the gaol there&mdash;and,
+      knowing a Chinese inn, I wonder what can be the awfulness of a Chinese
+      gaol&mdash;and they were allowed no privacy. Mrs Green had dysentery; they
+      had not even a change of clothes; but the soldiers were always in the
+      rooms with them, or at any rate in the outer room, and this was done, of
+      course, of <i>malice prepense</i>, for no one values the privacy of their
+      women more than the Chinese. The girl got permission to go down to the
+      river to wash their clothes, but a soldier always accompanied her, and
+      always the crowds jeered and taunted as she went along in the glaring
+      sunshine, feeling that nothing was hidden from these scornful people. Only
+      strangely to the children were they kind; the soldiers used to give them
+      copper coins so that they might buy little scones and cakes to eke out the
+      scanty rations, and once&mdash;it brought home to me, perhaps as nothing
+      else could, the deprivations of such a life&mdash;instead of buying the
+      much-needed food the women bought a whole pennyworth of hairpins, for
+      their long hair was about their shoulders, and though they brushed it to
+      the best of their ability with their hands it was to them an unseemly
+      thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And before the order came&mdash;everything is ordered in China&mdash;that
+      their lives were to be saved and they were to be sent to Tientsin the
+      little maid who had done so much to cheer and alleviate their hard lot lay
+      dying; the hardships and the coarse food had been too much for her. In the
+      filth and misery of the ghastly Chinese prison she lay, and, bending over
+      her, they picked the lice off her. Think of that, ye folk who guard your
+      little ones tenderly and love them as these missionaries who feel called
+      upon to convert the Chinese loved theirs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all that suffering they went back, back to Hwailu and the desolated
+      mission station under the Nursing Calf Fort, where they continue their
+      work to this day, and so will continue it, I suppose, to the end, for most
+      surely their sufferings and their endurance have fitted them for the work
+      they have at heart as no one who has not so suffered and endured could be
+      fitted. And so I think the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I walked through a tremendous dust-storm to the railway station at the
+      other side of the town, and the woman who had suffered these awful things,
+      and who was as sweet and charming and lovable a woman as I have ever met,
+      walked with me and bade me God-speed on my journey, and when I parted from
+      her I knew that among a class I&mdash;till I came to China&mdash;had
+      always strenuously opposed I had found one whom I could not only respect,
+      but whom I could love and admire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Going back to Pao Ting Fu was like going back to old friends. They had not
+      received my letter. Mr Wang had not made his appearance, so when James
+      Buchanan and I, attended by the master of transport, appeared upon the
+      scene on a hot summer day we found the missionary party having their
+      midday dinner on the verandah, and they received me&mdash;bless their kind
+      hearts!&mdash;with open arms, and proceeded to explain to me how very wise
+      a thing I had done in coming back. The moment I had left, they said, they
+      had been uncomfortable in the part they had taken in forwarding me on my
+      journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very good of them. There are days we always remember all our lives&mdash;our
+      wedding day and such-like&mdash;and that coming back on the warm summer's
+      day out of the hot, dusty streets of the western suburb into the cool,
+      clean, tree-shaded compound of the American missionaries at Pao Ting Fu is
+      one of them. And that compound is one of the places in the world I much
+      want to visit again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is another day, too, I shall not lightly forget. We called it the
+      last meeting of the Travellers' Club of Pao Ting Fu. There were only two
+      members in the club, Mr Long and I and an honorary member, James Buchanan,
+      and on this day the club decided to meet, and Mr Long asked me to dinner.
+      He lived in the Chinese college in the northern suburb. His house was only
+      about two miles away and it could be reached generally by going round by
+      the farms and graves, mostly graves, that cover the ground by the rounded
+      north-west corner of the wall of the city. Outside a city in China is
+      ugly. True, the walls are strangely old-world and the moat is a relic of
+      the past&mdash;useful in these modern times for disposing of unwanted
+      puppies; Pao Ting Fu never seemed so hard up for food as Shansi&mdash;but
+      otherwise the ground looks much as the deserted alluvial goldfields round
+      Ballarat used to look in the days of my youth; the houses are ramshackle
+      to the last degree, and all the fields, even when they are green with the
+      growing grain, look unfinished. But round the north-west corner of Pao
+      Ting Fu the graves predominate. There are thousands and thousands of them.
+      And on that particular day it rained, it rained, and it rained, steady
+      warm summer rain that only stopped and left the air fresh and washed about
+      six o'clock in the evening. I ordered a rickshaw&mdash;a rickshaw in Pao
+      Ting Fu is a very primitive conveyance; but it was pleasantly warm, and,
+      with James Buchanan on my knee, in the last evening dress that remained to
+      me and an embroidered Chinese jacket for an opera cloak, I set out. I had
+      started early because on account of the rain the missionaries opined there
+      might be a little difficulty with the roads. However, I did not worry much
+      because I only had two miles to go, and I had walked it often in less than
+      three-quarters of an hour. I was a little surprised when my rickshaw man
+      elected to go through the town, but, as I could not speak the language, I
+      was not in a position to remonstrate, and I knew we could not come back
+      that way as at sundown all the gates shut save the western, and that only
+      waits till the last train at nine o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was muddy, red, clayey mud in the western suburb when we started, but
+      when we got into the northern part of the town I was reminded of the
+      tribulations of Fen Chou Fu in the summer rains, for the water was up to
+      our axles, the whole place was like a lake and the people were piling up
+      dripping goods to get them out of the way of the very dirty flood. My man
+      only paused to turn his trousers up round his thighs and then went on
+      again&mdash;going through floods was apparently all in the contract&mdash;but
+      we went very slowly indeed. Dinner was not until eight and I had given
+      myself plenty of time, but I began to wonder whether we should arrive at
+      that hour. Presently I knew we shouldn't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went through the northern gate, and to my dismay the country in the
+      fading light seemed under water. From side to side and far beyond the road
+      was covered, and what those waters hid I trembled to think, for a road at
+      any time in China is a doubtful proposition and by no means spells
+      security. As likely as not there were deep holes in it. But apparently my
+      coolie had no misgivings. In he went at his usual snail's pace and the
+      water swirled up to the axles, up to the floor of the rickshaw, and when I
+      had gathered my feet up on the seat and we were in the middle of the sheet
+      of exceedingly dirty water the rickshaw coolie stopped and gave me to
+      understand that he had done his darnedest and could do no more. He dropped
+      the shafts and stood a little way off, wringing the water out of his
+      garments. It wasn't dangerous, of course, but it was distinctly
+      uncomfortable. I saw myself in evening dress wading through two feet of
+      dirty water to a clayey, slippery bank at the side. I waited a little
+      because the prospect did not please me, and though there were plenty of
+      houses round, there was not a soul in sight. It was getting dark too, and
+      it was after eight o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently a figure materialised on that clayey bank and him I beckoned
+      vehemently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Pao Ting Fu had seen foreigners, not many, but still foreigners, and
+      they spell to it a little extra cash, so the gentleman on the bank tucked
+      up his garments and came wading over. He and my original friend took a
+      maddeningly long time discussing the situation, and then they proceeded to
+      drag the rickshaw sideways to the bank. There was a narrow pathway along
+      the top and they apparently decided that if they could get the conveyance
+      up there we might proceed on our journey. First I had to step out, and it
+      looked slippery enough to make me a little doubtful. As a preliminary I
+      handed James Buchanan to the stranger, because, as he had to sit on my
+      knee, I did not want him to get dirtier than necessary. Buchanan did not
+      like the stranger, but he submitted with a bad grace till I, stepping out,
+      slipped on the clay and fell flat on my back, when he promptly bit the man
+      who was holding him and, getting away, expressed his sympathy by licking
+      my face. Such a commotion as there was! My two men yelled in dismay.
+      Buchanan barked furiously, and I had some ado to get on my feet again, for
+      the path was very slippery. It was long past eight now and could I have
+      gone back I would have done so, but clearly that was impossible, so by
+      signs I engaged No. 2 man, whose wounds had to be salved&mdash;copper did
+      it&mdash;to push behind, and we resumed our way....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Briefly it was long after ten o'clock when I arrived at the college. My
+      host had given me up as a bad job long before and, not being well, had
+      gone to bed. There was nothing for it but to rouse him up, because I
+      wanted to explain that I thought I had better have another man to take me
+      home over the still worse road that I knew ran outside the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made me most heartily welcome and then explained to my dismay that the
+      men utterly declined to go any farther, declared no rickshaw could get
+      over the road to the western suburb and that I must have a cart. That was
+      all very well, but where was I to get a cart at that time of night, with
+      the city gates shut?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr Long explained that his servant was a wise and resourceful man and
+      would probably get one if I would come in and have dinner. So the two
+      members of the Travellers' Club sat down to an excellent dinner&mdash;a
+      Chinese cook doesn't spoil a dinner because you are two hours late&mdash;and
+      we tried to take a flash-light photograph of the entertainment. Alas! I
+      was not fortunate that day; something went wrong with the magnesium light
+      and we burnt up most things. However, we ourselves were all right, and at
+      two o'clock in the morning Mr Long's servant's uncle, or cousin, or some
+      relative, arrived with a Peking cart and a good substantial mule. I
+      confess I was a bit doubtful about the journey home because I knew the
+      state of repair, or rather disrepair, of a couple of bridges we had to
+      cross, but they were negotiated, and just as the dawn was beginning to
+      break I arrived at the mission compound and rewarded the adventurous men
+      who had had charge of me with what seemed to them much silver and to me
+      very little. I have been to many dinners in my life, but the last meeting
+      of the Travellers' Club at Pao Ting Fu remains engraved on my memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet a little longer I waited in Pao Ting Fu before starting on my Siberian
+      trip, for the start was to be made from Tientsin and the missionaries were
+      going there in house-boats. They were bound for Pei Ta Ho for their summer
+      holiday and the first stage of the journey was down the Ching River to
+      Tientsin. I thought it would be rather a pleasant way of getting over the
+      country, and it would be pleasant too to have company. I am not enamoured
+      of my own society; I can manage alone, but company certainly has great
+      charms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I waited, and while I waited I bought curios.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Pao Ting Fu in the revolution there was a great deal of looting done,
+      and when order reigned again it was as much as a man's life was worth to
+      try and dispose of any of his loot. A foreigner who would take the things
+      right out of the country was a perfect godsend, and once it was known I
+      was buying, men waited for me the livelong day, and I only had to put my
+      nose outside the house to be pounced upon by a would-be seller. I have had
+      as many as nine men selling at once; they enlisted the servants, and china
+      ranged round the kitchen floor, and embroideries, brass and mirrors were
+      stowed away in the pantry. Indeed I and my followers must have been an
+      awful nuisance to the missionaries. They knew no English, but as I could
+      count a little in Chinese, when we could not get an interpreter we
+      managed; and I expect I bought an immense amount of rubbish, but never in
+      my life have I had greater satisfaction in spending money. More than ever
+      was I pleased when I unpacked in England, and I have been pleased ever
+      since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those sellers were persistent. They said in effect that never before had
+      they had such a chance and they were going to make the best of it. We
+      engaged house-boats for our transit; we went down to those boats, we
+      pushed off from the shore, and even then there were sellers bent on making
+      the best of their last chance. I bought there on the boat a royal blue
+      vase for two dollars and a quaint old brass mirror in a carved wooden
+      frame also for two dollars, and then the boatmen cleared off the merchants
+      and we started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I expect on the banks of the Euphrates or the Tigris in the days before
+      the dawn of history men went backwards and forwards in boats like these we
+      embarked in on the little river just outside the south gate of Pao Ting
+      Fu. We had three boats. Dr and Mrs Lewis and their children had the
+      largest, with their servants, and we all made arrangements to mess on
+      board their boat. Miss Newton and a friend had another, with more of the
+      servants, and I, like a millionaire, had one all to myself. I had parted
+      with the master of transport at Pao Ting Fu, but Hsu Sen, one of the
+      Lewis's servants, waited upon me and made up my bed in the open part of
+      the boat under a little roof. The cabins were behind, low little places
+      like rabbit hutches, with little windows and little doors through which I
+      could get by going down on my knees. I used them only for my luggage, so
+      was enabled to offer a passage to a sewing-woman who would be exceedingly
+      useful to the missionaries. She had had her feet bound in her youth and
+      was rather crippled in consequence, and she bought her own food, as I
+      bought my water, at the wayside places as we passed. She was a foolish
+      soul, like most Chinese women, and took great interest in Buchanan,
+      offering him always a share of her own meals, which consisted apparently
+      largely of cucumbers and the tasteless Chinese melon. Now James Buchanan
+      was extremely polite, always accepting what was offered him, but he could
+      not possibly eat cucumber and melon, and when I went to bed at night I
+      often came in contact with something cold and clammy which invariably
+      turned out to be fragments of the sewing-woman's meals bestowed upon my
+      courtly little dog. I forgave him because of his good manners. There
+      really was nowhere else to hide them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were pleasant days we spent meandering down the river. We passed by
+      little farms; we passed by villages, by fishing traps, by walled cities.
+      Hsi An Fu, with the water of the river flowing at the foot of its
+      castellated walls, was like a city of romance, and when we came upon
+      little marketplaces by the water's edge the romance deepened, for we knew
+      then how the people lived. Sometimes we paused and bought provisions;
+      sometimes we got out and strolled along the banks in the pleasant summer
+      weather. Never have I gone a more delightful or more unique voyage. And at
+      last we arrived at Tientsin and I parted from my friends, and they went on
+      to Pei Ta Ho and I to Astor House to prepare for my journey east and
+      north.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so I left China, China where I had dwelt for sixteen months, China
+      that has been civilised so long and is a world apart, and now I sit in my
+      comfortable sitting-room in England and read what the papers say of China;
+      and the China I know and the China of the newspapers is quite a different
+      place. It is another world. China has come into the war. On our side, of
+      course: the Chinaman is far too astute to meddle with a losing cause. But,
+      after all, what do the peasants of Chihli and the cave-dwellers in the <i>yaos</i>
+      of Shansi know about a world's war? The very, very small section that
+      rules China manages these affairs, and the mass of the population are
+      exactly as they were in the days of the Cæsars, or before the first
+      dynasty in Egypt for that matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;China,&rdquo; said one day to me a man who knew it well commercially, just
+      before I left, &ldquo;was never in so promising a condition. All the taxes are
+      coming in and money was never so easy to get.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a row over the new tax,&rdquo; said a missionary sadly, in the part I
+      know well, &ldquo;in a little village beyond there. The village attacked the
+      tax-collectors and the soldiers fell upon the villagers and thirteen men
+      were killed. Oh, I know they say it is only nominal, but what is merely
+      nominal to outsiders is their all to these poor villagers. They must pay
+      the tax and starve, or resist and be killed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not say they were between the devil and the deep sea, because he
+      was a missionary, but I said it for him, and there were two cases like
+      that which came within my ken during my last month in China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact of the matter is, I suppose, that outsiders can only judge
+      generally, and China is true to type, the individual has never counted
+      there and he does not count yet. What are a few thousand unpaid soldiers
+      revolting in Kalgan? What a robber desolating Kansu? A score or two of
+      villagers killed because they could not pay a tax? Absolutely nothing in
+      the general crowd. I, being a woman, and a woman from the new nations of
+      the south, cannot help feeling, and feeling strongly, the individual ought
+      to count, that no nation can be really prosperous until the individual
+      with but few exceptions is well-to-do and happy. I should like to rule out
+      the &ldquo;few exceptions,&rdquo; but that would be asking too much of this present
+      world. At least I like to think that most people have a chance of
+      happiness, but I feel in China that not a tenth of the population has
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0034" id="linkimage-0034"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0194.jpg" alt="0194 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0194.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0035" id="linkimage-0035"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0195.jpg" alt="0195 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0195.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      China left a curious impression upon my mind. The people are courteous and
+      kindly, far more courteous than would be the same class of people in
+      England, and yet I came back from the interior with a strong feeling that
+      it is unsafe, not because of the general hostility of the people&mdash;they
+      are not hostile&mdash;but because suffering and life count for so little.
+      They themselves suffer and die by the thousand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Bring a daughter-in-law to see the doctor in the middle of the
+      harvest! Impossible!&rdquo; And yet they knew she was suffering agony, that
+      seeing the doctor was her only chance of sight! But she did not get it.
+      They were harvesting and no one could be spared!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is the life then of a foreign barbarian more or less? These
+      courteous, kindly, dirty folk who look upon one as a menagerie would look
+      on with equal interest at one's death. They might stretch out a hand to
+      help, just as a man in England might stop another from ill-treating a
+      horse, though for one who would put himself out two would pass by with a
+      shrug of the shoulders and a feeling that it wras no business of theirs.
+      Every day of their lives the majority look upon the suffering of their
+      women and think nothing of it. The desire of the average man is to have a
+      wife who has so suffered. I do not know whether the keeping of the women
+      in a state of subserviency has reacted upon the nation at large, but I
+      should think it has hampered it beyond words. Nothing&mdash;nothing made
+      me so ardent a believer in the rights of women as my visit to China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Women in England,&rdquo; said a man to me the other day, a foreigner, one of
+      our Allies, &ldquo;deserve the vote, but the Continental women are babies. They
+      cannot have it.&rdquo; So are the Chinese women babies, very helpless babies
+      indeed, and I feel, and feel very strongly indeed, that until China
+      educates her women, makes them an efficient half of the nation, not merely
+      man's toy and his slave, China will always lag behind in the world's
+      progress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already China is split up into &ldquo;spheres of influence.&rdquo; Whether she likes
+      it or not, she must realise that Russian misrule is paramount in the great
+      steppes of the north; Japan rules to a great extent in the north-east, her
+      railway from Mukden to Chang Ch'un is a model of efficiency; Britain
+      counts her influence as the most important along the valley of the Yang
+      Tze Kiang, and France has some say in Yunnan. I cannot help thinking that
+      it would be a great day for China, for the welfare of her toiling
+      millions, millions toiling without hope, if she were partitioned up among
+      the stable nations of the earth&mdash;that is to say, between Japan,
+      Britain and France. And having said so much, I refer my readers to Mr
+      Farrer for the other point of view. It is diametrically opposed to mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX&mdash;KHARBIN AND VLADIVOSTOK
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t Tientsin I
+      sweltered in the Astor House, and I put it on record that I found it
+      hotter in Northern China than I did on the Guinea coast in West Africa. It
+      was probably, of course, the conditions under which I lived, for the hotel
+      had been so well arranged for the bitter winter it was impossible to get a
+      thorough draught of air through any of the rooms. James Buchanan did not
+      like it either, for in the British concessions in China dogs come under
+      suspicion of hydrophobia and have always to be on the leash, wherefore, of
+      course, I had to take the poor little chap out into the Chinese quarter
+      before he could have a proper run, and he spent a great deal more time
+      shut up in my bedroom than he or I liked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tientsin was a place apart, not exactly Chinese as I know China&mdash;certainly
+      not Europe; it remains in my mind as a place where Chinese art learns to
+      accommodate itself to European needs. All the nations of the world East
+      and West meet there: in the British quarter were the Sikhs and other
+      Indian nationalities, and in the French the streets were kept by Anamites
+      in quaint peaked straw hats. I loved those streets of Tientsin that made
+      me feel so safe and yet gave me a delightful feeling of adventure&mdash;adventure
+      that cost me nothing; and I always knew I could go and dine with a friend
+      or come back and exchange ideas with somebody who spoke my own tongue. But
+      Tientsin wasn't any good to me as a traveller. It has been written about
+      for the last sixty years or more. I went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One night Buchanan and I, without a servant&mdash;we missed the servant we
+      always had in China&mdash;wended our way down to the railway station and
+      ensconced ourselves in a first-class carriage bound for Mukden. The train
+      didn't start till some ungodly hour of the night, but as it was in the
+      station I got permission to take my place early, and with rugs and
+      cushions made myself comfortable and was sound asleep long before we
+      started. When I wakened I was well on the way to my destination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I made friends with a British officer of Marines who, with his sister, was
+      coming back across Russia. He had been learning Japanese, and I corrected
+      another wrong impression. The British do sometimes learn a language other
+      than their own. At Mukden we dined and had a bath. I find henceforth that
+      all my stopping-places are punctuated by baths, or by the fact that a bath
+      was not procurable. A night and day in the train made one desirable at
+      Mukden, and a hotel run by capable Japanese made it a delight. The
+      Japanese, as far as I could see, run Manchuria; must be more powerful than
+      ever now Russia is out of it; Kharbin is Russian, Mukden Japanese. The
+      train from there to Chang Ch'un is Japanese, and we all travelled in a
+      large open carriage, clean and, considering how packed it was, fairly
+      airy. There was room for everybody to lie down, just room, and the
+      efficient Japanese parted me from my treasured James Buchanan and put him,
+      howling miserably, into a big box&mdash;rather a dirty box; I suppose they
+      don't think much of animals&mdash;in another compartment. I climbed over
+      much luggage and crawled under a good deal more to see that all was right
+      with him, and the Japanese guards looked upon me as a mild sort of lunatic
+      and smiled contemptuously. I don't like being looked upon with contempt by
+      Orientals, so I was a little ruffled when I came back to my own seat. Then
+      I was amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally among such a crowd I made no attempt to undress for the night,
+      merely contenting myself with taking off my boots. But the man next me, a
+      Japanese naval officer, with whom I conversed in French, had quite
+      different views. My French was rather bad and so was his in a different
+      way, so we did not get on very fast. I fear I left him with the impression
+      that I was an Austrian, for he never seemed to have heard of Australia.
+      However, we showed each other our good will. Then he proceeded to undress.
+      Never have I seen the process more nattily accomplished. How he slipped
+      out of blue cloth and gold lace into a kimono I'm sure I don't know,
+      though he did it under my very eyes, and then, with praiseworthy
+      forethought, he took the links and studs out of his shirt and put them
+      into a clean one ready for the morrow, stowed them both away in his little
+      trunk, settled himself down on his couch and gave himself up to a
+      cigarette and conversation. I smoked too&mdash;one of his cigarettes&mdash;and
+      we both went to sleep amicably, and with the morning we arrived at Chang
+      Ch'un, and poor little Buchanan made the welkin ring when he saw me and
+      found himself caged in a barred box. However that was soon settled, and he
+      told me how infinitely preferable from a dog's point of view are the free
+      and easy trains of Russia and China to the well-managed ones of Japan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These towns on the great railway are weird little places, merely scattered
+      houses and wide roads leading out into the great plain, and the railway
+      comes out of the distance and goes away into the distance. And the people
+      who inhabit them seem to be a conglomeration of nations, perhaps the
+      residuum of all the nations. Here the marine officer and his sister and I
+      fell into the hands of a strange-looking individual who might have been a
+      cross between a Russian Pole and a Chinaman, with a dash of Korean thrown
+      in, and he undertook to take us to a better hotel than that
+      usually-frequented by visitors to Chang Ch'un. I confess I wonder what
+      sort of people do visit Chang Ch'un, not the British tourist as a rule,
+      and if the principal hotel is worse than the ramshackle place where we had
+      breakfast, it must be bad. Still it was pleasant in the brilliant warm
+      sunshine, even though it was lucky we had bathed the night before at
+      Mukden, for the best they could do here was to show us into the most
+      primitive of bedrooms, the very first effort in the way of a bedroom, I
+      should think, after people had given up <i>k'angs</i>, and there I met a
+      very small portion of water in a very small basin alongside an exceedingly
+      frowsy bed and made an effort to wash away the stains of a night's travel.
+      Now such a beginning to the day would effectually disgust me; then, fresh
+      from the discomforts of Chinese travel, I found it all in the day's work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found too that I had made a mistake and not brought enough money with
+      me. Before I had paid for Buchanan's ticket I had parted with every penny
+      I possessed and could not possibly get any more till I arrived at the Hong
+      Kong and Shanghai Bank at Kharbin. I am rather given to a mistake of that
+      sort; I always feel my money is so much safer in the bank's charge than in
+      mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went on through fertile Manchuria and I saw the rich fields that coming
+      out I had passed over at night. This train was Russian, and presently
+      there came along a soldier, a forerunner of an officer inspecting
+      passengers and carriages. Promptly his eye fell on Buchanan, who was
+      taking an intelligent interest in the scenery&mdash;he always insisted on
+      looking out of the window&mdash;and I, seeing he, the soldier, was
+      troubled, tried to tell him my intentions were good and I would pay at
+      Kharbin; but I don't think I made myself understood, for he looked wildly
+      round the compartment, seized the little dog, pushed him in a corner and
+      threw a cushion over him. Both Buchanan and I were so surprised we kept
+      quite still, and the Russian officer looked in, saw a solitary woman
+      holding out her ticket and passed on, and not till he was well out of the
+      way did James Buchanan, who was a jewel, poke up his pretty little head
+      and make a few remarks upon the enormity of smuggling little dogs without
+      paying their fares, which was evidently what I was doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We arrived at Kharbin about nine o'clock at night, and as I stepped out on
+      to a platform, where all the nations of the earth, in dirty clothes,
+      seemed yelling in chorus, a man came along and spoke to me in English. The
+      soldier who had aided and abetted in the smuggling of Buchanan was
+      standing beside me, evidently expecting some little remembrance, and I was
+      meditating borrowing from the officer of Marines, though, as they were
+      going on and I was not, I did not much like it. And the voice in English
+      asked did I want a hotel. I did, of course. The man said he was the
+      courier of the Grand Hotel, but he had a little place of his own which was
+      much better and he could make me very comfortable. Then I explained I
+      could not get any money till the bank opened next day and he spread out
+      his hands as a Chinaman might have done. &ldquo;No matter, no matter,&rdquo; he would
+      pay, his purse was mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Would I go to his house?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could I do anything else under the circumstances? And I promptly took him
+      at his word and asked for a rouble&mdash;Kharbin is China, but the rouble
+      was the current coin&mdash;and paid off the soldier for his services. I
+      bade farewell to my friends and in a ramshackle droshky went away through
+      the streets of Kharbin, and we drove so far I wondered if I had done
+      wisely. I had, as it turned out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I heard afterwards that even in those days anything might have
+      happened in Kharbin, where the population consists of Japanese and Chinese
+      and Russians and an evil combination of all three, to say nothing of a
+      sprinkling of rascals from all the nations of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is not,&rdquo; said a man who knew it well, &ldquo;a decent Chinaman in the
+      whole place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact to all intents and purposes it is Russian. There were Russian
+      students all in uniform in the streets, and bearded, belted drivers drove
+      the droshkies with their extra horse in a trace beside the shafts, just as
+      they did in Russia. Anyhow it seems to me the sins of Kharbin would be the
+      vigorous primal sins of Russia, not the decadent sins of old-world China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kharbin when I was there in 1914 had 60,000 inhabitants and 25,000 Russian
+      soldiers guarding the railway in the district. The Russian police forbade
+      me to take photographs, and you might take your choice: Chinese <i>hung hu
+      tzes</i> or Russian brigands would rob and slay you on your very doorstep
+      in the heart of the town. At least they would in 1914, and things are
+      probably worse now. All the signs are in Russian and, after the Chinese,
+      looked to me at first as if I should be able to understand them, but
+      closer inspection convinced me that the letters, though I knew their
+      shape, had been out all night and were coming home in not quite the
+      condition we would wish them to be. There is a Chinese town without a wall
+      a little way over the plain&mdash;like all other Chinese towns, a place of
+      dirt and smells&mdash;and there is a great river, the Sungari, a tributary
+      of the Amur, on which I first met the magnificent river steamers of these
+      parts. Badly I wanted to photograph them, but the Russian police said &ldquo;No,
+      no,&rdquo; I would have to get a permit from the colonel in command before that
+      could be allowed, and the colonel in command was away and was not expected
+      back till the middle of next week, by which time I expected to be in
+      Vladivostok, if not in Kharbarosvk, for Kharbin was hardly inviting as a
+      place of sojourn for a traveller. Mr Poland, as he called himself, did his
+      best for me. He gave me a fairly large room with a bed in it, a chair, a
+      table and a broken-down wardrobe that would not open. He had the family
+      washing cleared out of the bath, so that I bathed amidst the fluttering
+      damp garments of his numerous progeny, but still there was a bath and a
+      bath heater that with a certain expenditure of wood could be made to
+      produce hot water; and if it was rather a terrifying machine to be locked
+      up with at close quarters, still it did aid me to arrive at a certain
+      degree of cleanliness, and I had been long enough in China not to be
+      carping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is dull eating in your bedroom, and I knew I had not done wisely,
+      for even if the principal hotel had been uncomfortable&mdash;I am not
+      saying it was, because I never went there&mdash;it would have been more
+      amusing to watch other folks than to be alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day after I arrived I called upon Mr Sly, the British consul, and I
+      was amused to hear the very dubious sounds that came from his room when I
+      was announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cleared the air by saying hastily: &ldquo;I'm not a distressed British subject
+      and I don't want any money,&rdquo; though I'm bound to say he looked kind enough
+      to provide me with the wherewithal had I wanted it. Then he shook his head
+      and expressed his disapproval of my method of arrival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The last man who fell into Kharbin like that,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I hunted for a
+      week, and two days later I attended his funeral,&rdquo; so badly had he been
+      man-handled. But that man, it seems, had plenty of money; it was wisdom he
+      lacked. My trouble was the other way, certainly as far as money was
+      concerned. It would never have been worth anyone's while to harm me for
+      the sake of my possessions. I had fallen into the hands of a Polish Jew
+      named Polonetzky, though he called himself Poland to me, feeling, I
+      suppose, my English tongue was not equal to the more complicated word, and
+      he dwelt in the Dome Stratkorskaya&mdash;remember Kharbin is China&mdash;and
+      I promised if he dealt well by me that I would recommend his
+      boarding-house to all my friends bound for Kharbin. He did deal well by
+      me. So frightened was he about me that he would not let me out of his
+      sight, or if he were not in attendance his wife or his brother was turned
+      on to look after me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very good friends,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;with Mr Sly at present. I do not want
+      anything to happen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr Sly, we found, knew one of my brothers and he very kindly asked me to
+      dinner. That introduced me to the élite of the place, and after dinner&mdash;Chinese
+      cooks are still excellent on the borders&mdash;we drove in his private
+      carriage and ended the evening in the public gardens. The coachmen here
+      are quite gorgeous affairs; no matter what their nondescript nationality&mdash;they
+      are generally Russians, I think, though I have seen Chinamen, Tartars,
+      driving like Jehu the son of Nimshi&mdash;they wear for full livery grey
+      beaver hats with curly brims like Johnny Walker or the Corinthians in the
+      days of the Regent. It took my breath away when I found myself bowling
+      along behind two of these curly brimmed hats that I thought had passed
+      away in the days of my grandfather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gardens at Kharbin are a great institution. There in the summer's
+      evening the paths were all lined with lamps; there were open-air
+      restaurants; there were bands and fluttering flags; there were the most
+      excellent ices and insidious drinks of all descriptions, and there were
+      crowds of gaily dressed people&mdash;Monte Carlo in the heart of Central
+      Asia! Kharbin in the summer is hot, very hot, and Kharbin in the winter is
+      bitter cold. It is all ice and snow and has a temperature that ranges
+      somewhere down to 40° Fahrenheit below zero, and this though the sun
+      shines brilliantly. It is insidious cold that sneaks on you and takes you
+      unawares, not like the bleak raw cold of England that makes the very most
+      of itself. They told me a tale of a girl who had gone skating and when she
+      came off the ice found that her feet were frozen, though she was unaware
+      of her danger and had thought them all right. Dogs are often frozen in the
+      streets and Chinamen too, for the Chinaman has a way of going to sleep in
+      odd places, and many a one has slept his last sleep in the winter streets
+      of Kharbin&mdash;the wide straggling streets with houses and gardens and
+      vacant spaces just like the towns of Australia. A frontier town it is in
+      effect. We have got beyond the teeming population of China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I prepared to go first east to Vladivostok and then north to
+      Siberia, and I asked advice of both the British consul and my
+      self-appointed courier, Mr Poland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly he took care of me, and the day before I started east he handed
+      me over to his wife and suggested she should take me to the market and buy
+      necessaries for my journey. It was only a little over twenty-four hours so
+      it did not seem to me a matter of much consequence, but I felt it would be
+      interesting to walk through the market. It was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This class of market, I find, is very much alike all over the world
+      because they sell the necessaries of life to the people and it is only
+      varied by the difference of the local products. Kharbin market was a
+      series of great sheds, and though most of the stalls were kept by
+      Chinamen, it differed from a market in a Chinese town in the fact that
+      huge quantities of butter and cheese and cream were for sale. Your true
+      Chinaman is shocked at the European taste for milk and butter and cream.
+      He thinks it loathsome, and many a man is unable to sit at table and watch
+      people eat these delicacies. Just as, of course, he is shocked at the
+      taste that would put before a diner a huge joint of beef or mutton. These
+      things Chinese refinement disguises. I suspect the proletariat with whom I
+      came in contact in Shansi would gladly eat anything, but I speak of the
+      refined Chinaman. Here in this market, whether he was refined or not, he
+      had got over these fancies and there was much butter and delicious soured
+      cream for sale. My Polish Jewess and I laboured under the usual difficulty
+      of language, but she made me understand I had better buy a basket for my
+      provisions, a plate, a knife, a fork&mdash;I had left these things behind
+      in China, not thinking I should want them&mdash;a tumbler and a couple of
+      kettles. No self-respecting person, according to her, would dream of
+      travelling in Siberia without at least a couple of kettles. I laid in two
+      of blue enamel ware and I am bound to say I blessed her forethought many
+      and many a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we proceeded to buy provisions, and here I lost my way. She engaged a
+      stray Chinaman, at least I think he was a Chinaman, with a dash of the
+      gorilla in him, to carry the goods, and I thought she was provisioning her
+      family against a siege or that perhaps there was only one market a month
+      in Kharbin. Anyhow I did not feel called upon to interfere. It didn't seem
+      any concern of mine and she had a large little family. We bought bread in
+      large quantities, ten cucumbers, two pounds of butter, two pounds of cream&mdash;for
+      these we bought earthenware jars&mdash;two dozen bananas, ten eggs and two
+      pounds of tea. And then I discovered these were the provisions for my
+      journey to Vladivostok, twenty-seven hours away! I never quite knew why I
+      bought provisions at all, for the train stopped at stations where there
+      were restaurants even though there was no restaurant car attached to it.
+      Mr Sly warned me to travel first class and I had had no thought of doing
+      aught else, for travelling is very cheap and very good in Russia, but Mr
+      Poland thought differently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I arrange,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I arrange, and you see if you are not comfortable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I am bound to say I was, very comfortable, for Buchanan and I had a very
+      nice second-class carriage all to ourselves. At every station a conductor
+      appeared to know if I wanted boiling water, and we had any amount of good
+      things to eat, for the ten eggs had been hard boiled by Mrs &ldquo;Poland,&rdquo; and
+      the bread and butter and cream and cucumbers and bananas were as good as
+      ever I have tasted. I also had two pounds of loaf sugar, German beet, I
+      think, and some lemons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so we went east through the wooded hills of Manchuria. They were
+      covered with lush grass restfully green, and there were flowers, purple
+      and white and yellow and red, lifting their starry faces to the cloudy
+      sky, and a soft damp air blew in through the open window. Such a change it
+      was after China, with its hard blue skies, brilliant sunshine and dry,
+      invigorating air. But the Manchus were industrious as the Chinese
+      themselves, and where there were fields the crops were tended as carefully
+      as those in China proper, only in between were the pasture-lands and the
+      flowers that were a delight to me, who had not seen a flower save those in
+      pots since I came to China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I spread out my rugs and cushions and, taking off my clothes and getting
+      into a kimono&mdash;also bought in the Kharbin market; a man's kimono as
+      the women's are too narrow&mdash;I slept peacefully, and in the morning I
+      found we had climbed to the top of the ridge, the watershed, the pleasant
+      rain was falling softly, all around was the riotous green, and peasants,
+      Russian and Chinese, came selling sweet red raspberries in little baskets
+      of green twigs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the flowers, the flowers of Siberia! After all I had heard about them,
+      they were still something more beautiful than I could have hoped for; and
+      then the rain passed, the life-giving rain, the rain that smoothed away
+      all harshness and gave such a charm and a softness to the scenery. And it
+      was vast. China was so crowded I never had a sense of vastness there; but
+      this was like Australia, great stretches of land under the sky, green,
+      rich lush green, and away in the distance was a dim line of blue hills.
+      Then would come a little corrugated-iron-roofed town sprawled out over the
+      mighty plain, a pathway to it across the surrounding green, and then the
+      sun came out and the clouds threw great shadows and there was room to see
+      the outline of their shapes on the green grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were Chinese still on the stations, but they were becoming more and
+      more Russianised. They still wore queues, but they had belted Russian
+      blouses and top-boots, and they mixed on friendly terms with
+      flaxen-haired, blue-eyed Russians similarly attired. And the evening
+      shadows gathered again and in the new world we steamed into Vladivostok.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Russians I came across did not appreciate fresh air. The porter of a
+      hotel captured me and Buchanan, and when we arrived on a hot July night I
+      was shown into a bedroom with double windows hermetically sealed and the
+      cracks stopped up with cotton wool!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I protested vehemently and the hotel porter looked at me in astonishment.
+      Tear down those carefully stopped-up cracks! Perish the thought. However,
+      I persuaded him down that cotton wool must come, and he pulled it down
+      regretfully. I called at the British consulate next day and asked them to
+      recommend me to the best hotel, but they told me I was already there and
+      could not better myself, so I gave myself up to exploring the town in the
+      Far East where now the Czech Slovaks have established themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a beautifully situated town set in the hills alongside a narrow arm
+      of the sea, rather a grey sea with a grey sky overhead, and the hills
+      around were covered with the luxuriant green of midsummer, midsummer in a
+      land where it is winter almost to June. The principal buildings in
+      Vladivostok are rather fine, but they are all along the shore, and once
+      you go back you come into the hills where the wood-paved streets very
+      often are mere flights of steps. It is because of that sheltered arm of
+      the sea that here is a town at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Along the shore are all manner of craft. The British fleet had come on a
+      visit, and grey and grim the ships lay there on the grey sea, like a
+      Turner picture, with, for a dash of colour, the Union Jacks. The Russian
+      fleet was there too, welcoming their guests, and I took a boat manned by a
+      native of the country, Mongolian evidently, with, of course, an unknown
+      tongue, but whether he was Gold or Gilyak I know not. He was a good
+      boatman, for a nasty little sea got up and James Buchanan told me several
+      times he did not like the new turn our voyaging had taken, and then, poor
+      little dog, he was violently sick. I know the torments of sea-sickness are
+      not lightly to be borne, so after sailing round the fleets I went ashore
+      and studied the shipping from the firm land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was glad then that Mr Sly at Kharbin had insisted that I should see the
+      Russian port. The whole picture was framed in green, soft tender green,
+      edged with grey mist, and all the old forgotten ships of wood, the ships
+      that perhaps were sailed by my grandfather in the old East India Company,
+      seemed to have found a resting-place here. They were drawn up against the
+      shore or they were going down the bay with all their sails set, and the
+      sunlight breaking through the clouds touched the white sails and made them
+      mountains of snow. There was shipbuilding going on too, naturally&mdash;for
+      are there not great stores of timber in the forests behind?&mdash;and
+      there were ships unloading all manner of things. Ships brought vegetables
+      and fruit; ships brought meat; there were fishing-boats, hundreds of them
+      close against each other along the shore, and on all the small ships, at
+      the mast-heads, were little fluttering white butterflies of flags. What
+      they were there for I do not know, or what they denoted. Oh, the general
+      who commands the Czech Slovaks has a splendid base. I wish him all
+      success. And here were the sealing-ships, the ships that presently would
+      go up to the rookeries to bring away the pelts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of my brothers was once navigating lieutenant on the British ship that
+      guarded the rookeries &ldquo;north of 53°,&rdquo; and I remembered, as Buchanan and I
+      walked along the shore, the tales he had told me of life in these parts.
+      His particular ship had acquired two sheep, rather an acquisition for men
+      who had lived long off the Chinese coast, and had a surfeit of chickens;
+      so while they were eating one, thinking to save the other a long sea
+      voyage they landed him on an island, giving him in charge of the man, an
+      Aleut Indian, my brother called him, who ruled the little place. Coming
+      back they were reduced to salt and tinned food, but they cheered
+      themselves with thoughts of the mutton chops that should regale them when
+      they met again their sheep. Alas for those sailor-men! They found the
+      Indian, but the sheep was not forthcoming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His whilom guardian was most polite. He gave them to understand he was
+      deeply grieved, but unfortunately he had been obliged to slay the sheep as
+      he was killing the fowls!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ward-room mess realised all too late that mutton was appreciated in
+      other places than on board his Majesty's ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought all the races of the earth met in Kharbin, but I don't know that
+      this port does not run it very close. There were Japanese, Chinese,
+      Russians, Koreans in horsehair hats and white garments; there were the
+      aboriginal natives of the country and there were numberless Germans. And
+      then, in July, 1914, these people, I think, had no thought of the World's
+      War.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here I came across a new way of carrying, for all the porters had
+      chairs strapped upon their backs and the load, whatever it was, was placed
+      upon the chair. Of all ways I have seen, that way strikes me as being the
+      best, for the weight is most evenly distributed. Most of the porters, I
+      believe, were Koreans, though they did not wear white; nor did they wear a
+      hat of any description; their long black, hair was twisted up like a
+      woman's, but they were vigorous and stalwart. We left weakness behind us
+      in China. Here the people looked as if they were meat-fed, and though they
+      might be dirty&mdash;they generally were&mdash;they all looked as if they
+      had enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Always the principal streets were thronged with people. At night the town
+      all lighted up is like a crescent of sparkling diamonds flung against the
+      hill-sides, and when I went to the railway station to take train for
+      Kharbarosvk, thirty hours away, at the junction of the Ussuri and the
+      Amur, that large and spacious building was a seething mass of people of
+      apparently all classes and all nationalities, and they were giving voice
+      to their feelings at the top of their lungs. Everybody, I should think,
+      had a grievance and was makin the most of it. I had not my capable Mr
+      Poland to arrange for me, so I went first class&mdash;the exact fare I
+      have forgotten, but it was ridiculously low&mdash;and Buchanan and I had a
+      compartment all to ourselves. Indeed I believe we were the only
+      first-class passengers. I had my basket and my kettles and I had laid in
+      store of provisions, and we went away back west for a couple of hours, and
+      then north into the spacious green country where there was room and more
+      than room for everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X&mdash;ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREAT RIVERS
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>ll the afternoon
+      we went back on our tracks along the main line, the sea on one side and
+      the green country, riotous, lush, luxuriant, on the other, till at last we
+      reached the head of the gulf and took our last look at the Northern Sea;
+      grey like a silver shield it spread before us, and right down to the very
+      water's edge came the vivid green. And then we turned inland, and
+      presently we left the main line and went north. Above was the grey sky,
+      and the air was soft and cool and delicious. I had had too much
+      stimulation and I welcomed, as I had done the rains after the summer in my
+      youth, the soft freshness of the Siberian summer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were soldiers everywhere, tall, strapping, virile Russians; there
+      were peasants in belted, blouses, with collars all of needlework; and
+      there were Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and the natives of the country, men
+      with a strong Mongolian cast of countenance. The country itself was
+      strangely empty after teeming China, but these all travelled by train or
+      were to be found on the railway stations and at the fishing stations that
+      we passed, but apparently I was the only bloated aristocrat who travelled
+      first class. In normal times this made travelling fairly easy in Russia,
+      for it was very cheap and you could generally get a carriage to yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! but it was lovely; the greenness of the country was a rest to eyes
+      wearied with the dust and dirt of China. And there were trees&mdash;not
+      trees denuded of all but enough timber to make a bare livelihood possible,
+      but trees growing luxuriantly in abundant leaf after their own free will,
+      oaks and firs and white-stemmed, graceful birches bending daintily before
+      the soft breeze. At the stations the natives, exactly like Chinamen, dirty
+      and in rags, brought strawberries for sale; and there were always flowers&mdash;purple
+      vetches and gorgeous red poppies, tall foxgloves and blue spikes of
+      larkspur. The very antithesis of China it was, for this was waste land and
+      undeveloped. The very engines were run with wood, and there were stacks of
+      wood by the wayside waiting to be burnt. I was sorry&mdash;I could not but
+      be sorry. I have seen my own people cut down the great forests of Western
+      Victoria, and here were people doing the same, with exactly the same
+      wanton extravagance, and in this country, with its seven months of bitter
+      winter, in all probability the trees take three times as long to come to
+      maturity. But it is virgin land, this glorious fertile country, and was
+      practically uninhabited till the Russian Government planted here and there
+      bands of Cossacks who, they say, made no endeavour to develop the land.
+      The Koreans and the Japanese and the Chinese came creeping in, but the
+      Russians made an effort to keep them out. But still the population is
+      scanty. Always, though it was before the war, there were soldiers&mdash;soldiers
+      singly, soldiers in pairs, soldiers in little bands; a horseman appeared
+      on a lonely road, he was a soldier; a man came along driving a cart, he
+      was a soldier; but the people we saw were few, for the rigours of this
+      lovely land in the winter are terrible, and this was the dreaded land
+      where Russia sent her exiles a long, long way from home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farther we went into the hills; a cuckoo called in the cool and dewy
+      morning; there were lonely little cottages with wooden roofs and log
+      walls; there were flowering creepers round the windows, and once I saw a
+      woman's wistful face peeping out at the passing train, the new train that
+      at last was bringing her nearer the old home and that yet seemed to
+      emphasise the distance. We went along by a river, the Ussuri, that wound
+      its way among the wooded green hills and by still pools of water that
+      reflected in their depths the blue sky, soft with snow-white clouds. A
+      glorious land this land of exile! At the next station we stopped at the
+      people were seated at a table having a meal under the shade of the trees.
+      Then there was a lonely cross of new wood; someone had been laid in his
+      long last home in the wilderness and would never go back to Holy Russia
+      again; and again I thought of the woman's wistful face that peered out of
+      the flower-bordered window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a new line. Formerly the way to Kharbarosvk was down the Amur
+      river from the west, and that, I suppose, is why all this country of the
+      Amur Province south and east of the river is so lonely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we neared Kharbarosvk came signs of settlement, the signs of settlement
+      I had been accustomed to in Australia. There were tree stumps, more and
+      more, and anything more desolate than a forest of newly cut tree stumps I
+      don't know. It always spells to me ruthless destruction. I am sure it did
+      here, for they cut down recklessly, sweeping all before them. It seemed to
+      cry out, as all newly settled land that ever I have seen, and I have seen
+      a good deal, the distaste of the people who here mean to make their homes.
+      These are not our trees, they say; they are not beautiful like the trees
+      of our own old home; let us cut them down, there are plenty; by and by
+      when we have time, when we are settled, we will plant trees that really
+      are worth growing. We shall not see them, of course, our children will
+      benefit little; but they will be nice for our grandchildren, if we hold on
+      so long. But no one believes they will stay so long; they hope to make
+      money and go back. Meanwhile they want the timber, but they neglect to
+      plant fresh trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They wanted the timber to build Kharbarosvk. This is a town of the
+      outposts, a frontier town; there are no towns like it in the British
+      Isles, where they value their land and build towns compactly, but I have
+      seen its counterpart many a time in Australia, and I know there must be
+      its like in America and Canada. It straggled all along the river bank, and
+      its wide streets, streets paved, or rather floored, here and there with
+      planks of wood, were sparsely planted with houses. In one respect
+      Australian towns of the frontier are much wiser. When there is a train
+      they do build their stations with some regard for the comfort and
+      convenience of the inhabitants. In Russia wherever I have been the railway
+      station is a long distance, sometimes half-an-hour's drive, from the town
+      it serves. I suppose it is one of the evils of the last bad regime and
+      that in the future, the future which is for the people, it will be
+      remedied, but it is difficult to see what purpose it serves. I had to get
+      a droshky to the hotel. We drove first along a country road, then through
+      the wide grass-grown streets of the town, and I arrived at the principal
+      hotel, kept by a German on Russian lines, for the restaurant was perfectly
+      distinct from the living-rooms. I put it on record it was an excellent
+      restaurant; I remember that cold soup&mdash;the day was hot&mdash;and that
+      most fragrant coffee still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the windows of my bedroom I saw another of the world's great rivers.
+      I looked away over a wide expanse of water sparkling in the sunshine: it
+      was the junction of the Ussuri and the Amur, and it was like a great lake
+      or the sea. It was very, very still, clear as glass, and the blue sky and
+      white clouds were reflected in it, and there were green islands and low
+      green banks. All was colour, but soft colour without outlines, like a
+      Turner picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Amur is hard frozen for about five months of the year and for about
+      two more is neither good solid ice nor navigable water. It is made by the
+      joining of the Shilka and the Aigun in about lat. 53° N. 121° E., and,
+      counting in the Shilka, must be nearly three thousand miles in length, and
+      close on two thousand miles have I now travelled. I don't know the Amur,
+      of course, but at least I may claim to have been introduced to it, and
+      that, I think, is more than the majority of Englishmen may do. And oh, it
+      is a mighty river! At Kharbarosvk, over a thousand versts&mdash;about six
+      hundred and forty miles&mdash;from the sea, it is at least a mile and a
+      third wide, and towards the mouth, what with backwaters and swamps, it
+      takes up sometimes about forty miles of country, while the main channel is
+      often nearly three miles wide. It rises in the hills of Trans-Baikal&mdash;the
+      Yablonoi Mountains we used to call them when I was at school. Really I
+      think it is the watershed that runs up East Central Siberia and turns the
+      waters to the shallow Sea of Okhotsk; and it cuts its way through wooded
+      hills among rich land hardly as yet touched by agriculture, beautiful,
+      lovely hills they are, steep and wooded. It climbs down into the flat
+      country and then again, just before it reaches the sea, it is in the
+      hills, colder hills this time, though the Amur falls into the sea on much
+      the same parallel of latitude as that which sees it rise, only it seems to
+      me that the farther you get east the colder and more extreme is the
+      climate. For Nikolayeusk at the mouth is in the same latitude as London,
+      but as a port it is closed for seven months of the year. True, the winter
+      in Siberia is lovely, bright, clear cold, a hard, bright clearness, but
+      the thermometer is often down below -40°
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fahrenheit, and when that happens life is difficult for both man and
+      beast. No wonder it is an empty river. The wonder to me is that there
+      should be so much life as there is. For in those five months that it is
+      open fine large steamers run from Nikolayeusk by Ivharbarosvk to
+      Blagovesehensk, and smaller ones, but still rather fine, to Stretensk,
+      where river navigation, for steamers of any size at any rate, ceases.
+      There are the two months, April-May, September-October, when the river
+      cannot be used at all, and there are the winter months when it may be, and
+      is to a certain extent, used as a road, but with the thermometer down far
+      below zero no one is particularly keen on travelling. It has its
+      disadvantages. So most of the travelling is done in the summer months and
+      in 1914 the steamers were crowded. Now, I suppose, they are fighting
+      there. It is a country well worth fighting for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a curious contrast, the lonely empty river and the packed steamer.
+      It was an event when we passed another; two made a crowd; and very, very
+      seldom did we pass more than two in a day. But it was delightful moving
+      along, the great crowded steamer but a puny thing on the wide river, the
+      waters still and clear, reflecting the blue sky and the soft white clouds
+      and the low banks far, far away. When there were hills they were generally
+      closer, as if the river had had more trouble in cutting a passage and
+      therefore had not had time to spread itself as it did in the plain
+      country. The hills were densely wooded, mostly with dark firs, with an
+      occasional deciduous tree showing up brightly among the dark foliage, and
+      about Blagovesehensk there is a beautiful oak known as the velvet oak, the
+      wood of which is much sought for making furniture. However dense the
+      forest, every here and there would be a wide swath of green bare of trees&mdash;a
+      fire brake; for these forests in the summer burn fiercely, and coming back
+      I saw the valleys thick with the curling blue wood smoke, smelt the
+      aromatic smell of the burning fir woods, and at night saw the hills
+      outlined in flames. It was a gorgeous sight, but it is desperately
+      destructive for the country, especially a country where the wood grows so
+      slowly. But at first there were no fires, and what struck me was the
+      vastness and the loneliness of the mighty river. I had the same feeling on
+      the Congo in the tropics, a great and lonely river with empty banks, but
+      that was for a distance under two hundred miles. Here in the north the
+      great lonely river went wandering on for ten times as far, and still the
+      feeling when one stood apart from the steamer was of loneliness and
+      grandeur. Man was such a small thing here. At night a little wind sighed
+      over the waters or swept down between the hills; round the bows the water
+      rose white; there was a waste of tossing water all round, under a lowering
+      sky, and the far-away banks were lost in the gloom. A light would appear,
+      perhaps two lights shining out of the darkness, but they only emphasised
+      the loneliness. A wonderful river!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The navigation of the river is a profession in itself. There is a school
+      for the navigators at Blagoveschensk where they are properly trained. All
+      along we came across the red beacons that mark the way, while beside them
+      in the daytime we could see the cabins of the lonely men who tended them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Truly a voyage down the Amur in summer is not to be easily forgotten, and
+      yet, sitting here writing about it in my garden in Kent, I sometimes
+      wonder did I dream it all, the vastness and the loneliness and the
+      grandeur that is so very different from the orchard land wherein is set my
+      home. You do not see orchards on the Amur, the climate is too rigorous,
+      and I doubt if they grow much beyond berries, a blue berry in large
+      quantities, raspberries, and coming back we bought cucumbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, but it was lovely on that river. Dearly should I like to share its
+      delights with a companion who could discuss it with me, but somehow it
+      seems to be my lot to travel alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not, of course, that I was really alone. Though the steamers were few,
+      perhaps because they were few, they were crowded. There were two companies
+      on the river, the Sormovo or quick-sailing company, and the Amur Company;
+      and I hereby put it on record that the Amur Company is much the best. The
+      <i>John Cockerill</i>, named after some long-dead English engineer who was
+      once on the Amur, is one of the best and most comfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Kharbarosvk, finding the steamer did not leave till the evening of the
+      next day, I had naturally gone to a hotel. It seemed the obvious thing to
+      do. But I was wrong. The great Russian steamship companies, with a
+      laudable desire to keep passengers and make them comfortable, always allow
+      a would-be traveller to spend at least two days on board in the ports,
+      paying, of course, for his food. And I, who had only come about thirty-six
+      hours too soon, had actually put up at a hotel, with the <i>John Cockerill</i>
+      lying at the wharf. The Russo-Asiatic Bank, as represented by a woman
+      clerk, the only one there who could speak English, was shocked at my
+      extravagance and said so. These women clerks were a little surprise for
+      me, for in 1914 I was not accustomed to seeing women in banks, but here in
+      Eastern Siberia&mdash;in Vladivostok, Kharbarosvk, and all the towns of
+      the Amur&mdash;they were as usual as the men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>John Cockerill</i> surprised me as much as I surprised the bank
+      clerk. To begin with, I didn't realise it was the <i>John Cockerill</i>,
+      for I could not read the Russian letters, and at first I did not recognise
+      the name as pronounced by the Russians. She was a very gorgeous,
+      comfortable ship, with a dining saloon and a lounge gorgeous in green
+      velvet. And yet she was not a post steamer, but spent most of her time
+      drawing barges laden with cargo, and stopped to discharge and take in at
+      all manner of lonely little ports on the great river. She was a big
+      steamer, divided into four classes, and was packed with passengers:
+      Russians in the first, second and third class, with an occasional German
+      or Japanese, and in the fourth an extraordinary medley of poorer Russians,
+      Chinese and Gilyaks and Golds, the aboriginals of the country, men with a
+      Mongolian east of countenance, long coarse blaek hair, very often beards,
+      and dirty&mdash;the ordinary poor Chinaman is clean and tidy beside them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the first class was luxurious. We had electric light and hot and cold
+      water. The cabins were not to hold more than two, and you brought your own
+      bedding. I dare say it could have been hired on the steamer, but the
+      difficulty of language always stood in my way, and once away from the
+      seaboard in North-Eastern Asia the only other European language beside
+      Russian that is likely to be understood is German, and I have no German. I
+      was lucky enough on the <i>John Cockerill</i> to find the wife of a
+      Russian colonel who spoke a little English. She, with her husband, was
+      taking a summer holiday by journeying up to Nikolayeusk, and she very
+      kindly took Buchanan and me under her wing and interpreted for us. It was
+      very nice for me, and the only thing I had to complain of on that steamer
+      was the way in which the night watch promenading the deek shut my window
+      and slammed to the shutters. They did it every night, with a care for my
+      welfare I could have done without. In a river steamer the cabins are all
+      in the centre with the deck round, and the watch evidently could not
+      understand how any woman could really desire to sleep under an open
+      window. I used to get up early in the morning and walk round the decks,
+      and I found that first and second class invariably shut their windows
+      tight, though the nights were always just pleasantly cool, and
+      consequently those passages between the cabins smelt like a menagerie, and
+      an ill-kept menagerie at that. They say Russians age early and invariably
+      they are of a pallid complexion. I do not wonder, now that I have seen
+      their dread of fresh air. Again and again I was told: &ldquo;Draughts are not
+      good!&rdquo; Draughts! I'd rather sleep in a hurricane than in the hermetically
+      sealed boxes in which those passengers stowed themselves on board the
+      river steamers. On the <i>John Cockerill</i> the windows of the dining
+      saloon and the lounge did open, but on the steamer on which I went up the
+      river, the <i>Kanovina</i>, one of the &ldquo;Sormovo&rdquo; Company, and the mail
+      steamer, there was only one saloon in the first class. We had our meals
+      and we lived there. It was a fine large room placed for'ard in the ship's
+      bows, with beautiful large windows of glass through which we could see
+      excellently the scenery; but those windows were fast; they would not open;
+      they were not made to open. The atmosphere was always thick when I went in
+      for breakfast in the morning, and I used to make desperate efforts to get
+      the little windows that ran round the top opened. I could not do it
+      myself, as you had to get on the roof of the saloon, the deck where the
+      look-out stood, and anyhow they were only little things, a foot high by
+      two feet broad. But such an innovation was evidently regarded as
+      dangerous. Besides the fact that draughts were bad, I have been assured
+      that perhaps it was going to rain&mdash;the rain couldn't come in both
+      sides&mdash;and at night I was assured they couldn't be opened because the
+      lights would be confusing to other steamers!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody seemed to mind an atmosphere you could have cut with a knife. I am
+      sure if the walls had been taken away it would have stood there in a solid
+      block&mdash;a dark-coloured, high-smelling block, I should think. I gave
+      up trying to do good to a community against its will and used to carry my
+      meals outside and have them on the little tables that were dotted about
+      the deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, bar that little difficulty about the air&mdash;and certainly if
+      right goes with the majority I have no cause of complaint, I was in a
+      minority of one&mdash;those steamers made the most comfortable and
+      cheapest form of travelling I have ever undertaken. From Kharbarosvk to
+      Nikolayeusk for over three days' voyage my fare with a first-class cabin
+      to myself was twelve roubles&mdash;about one pound four shillings. I came
+      back by the mail steamer and it was fifteen roubles&mdash;about one pound
+      ten shillings. This, of course, does not include food. Food on a Russian
+      steamer you buy as you would on a railway train. You may make arrangements
+      with the restaurant and have breakfast, luncheon, afternoon tea and dinner
+      for so much a day; or you may have each meal separate and pay for it as
+      you have it; or you may buy your food at the various stopping-places, get
+      your kettles filled with hot water for a trifling tip, and feed yourself
+      in the privacy of your own cabin. I found the simplest way, having no
+      servant, was to pay so much a day&mdash;five shillings on the big
+      steamers, four shillings on the smaller one&mdash;and live as I would do
+      at a hotel. The food was excellent on the Amur Company's ships. We had
+      chicken and salmon&mdash;not much salmon, it was too cheap&mdash;and
+      sturgeon. Sturgeon, that prince of fish, was a treat, and caviare was as
+      common as marmalade used to be on a British breakfast-table. It was
+      generally of the red variety that we do not see here and looked not unlike
+      clusters of red currants, only I don't know that I have ever seen currants
+      in such quantities. I enjoyed it very much till one day, looking over the
+      railing into the stern of the boat, where much of the food was roughly
+      prepared&mdash;an unwise thing to do&mdash;I saw an extremely dirty woman
+      of the country, a Gilyak, in an extremely dirty garment, with her dirty
+      bare arms plunged to the elbow in the red caviare she was preparing for
+      the table. Then I discovered for a little while that I didn't much fancy
+      caviare. But I wish I had some of that nice red caviare now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second class differed but little from the first. There was not so much
+      decoration about the saloons, and on the <i>John Cockerill</i>, where the
+      first class had two rooms, they had only one; and the food was much the
+      same, only not so many courses. There was plenty, and they only paid three
+      shillings a day for the four meals. The people were much the same as we in
+      the first class, and I met a girl from Samara, in Central Russia, who
+      spoke a little French. She was a teacher and was going to Nikolayeusk for
+      a holiday exactly as I have seen teachers here in England go to
+      Switzerland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But between the first and second and the third and fourth class was a
+      great gulf fixed. They were both on the lower deck, the third under the
+      first and the fourth under the second, while amidships between them were
+      the kitchens and the engines and the store of wood for fuel. The third had
+      no cabins, but the people went to bed and apparently spent their days in
+      places like old-fashioned dinner-wagons; and they bought their own food,
+      either from the steamer or at the various stopping-places, and ate it on
+      their beds, for they had no saloon. The fourth class was still more
+      primitive. The passengers, men, women and children, were packed away upon
+      shelves rising in three tiers, one above the other, and the place of each
+      man and woman was marked out by posts. There was no effort made to provide
+      separate accommodation for men and women. As far as I could see, they all
+      herded together like cattle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ship was crowded. The Russian colonel's wife and I used to walk up and
+      down the long decks for exercise, with Buchanan in attendance, she
+      improving her English and I learning no Russian. It is evidently quite the
+      custom for the people of the great towns of the Amur to make every summer
+      an excursion up the river, and the poorer people, the third and fourth
+      class, go up to Nikolayeusk for the fishing. Hence those shelves crowded
+      with dirty folk. There were troughs for washing outside the fourth class,
+      I discovered, minor editions of our luxurious bathrooms in the first
+      class, but I am bound to say they did not have much use. Washing even in
+      this hot weather, and it certainly was pleasantly warm, was more honoured
+      in the breach than in the observance. The only drawback to the bathrooms
+      in the first class, from my point of view, was their want of air. They
+      were built so that apparently there was no means of getting fresh air into
+      them, and I always regarded myself as a very plucky woman when in the
+      interests of cleanliness I had a bath. The hot water and the airlessness
+      always brought me to such a condition of faintness that I generally had to
+      rush out and lie on the couch in my cabin to recover, and then if somebody
+      outside took it upon them to bang to the window I was reduced to the last
+      gasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>John Cockerill</i> was run like a man-of-war. The bells struck the
+      hours and half-hours, the captain and officers were clad in white and
+      brass-bound, and the men were in orthodox sailor's rig. One man came and
+      explained to me&mdash;he spoke no tongue that I could understand, but his
+      meaning was obvious&mdash;that Buchanan was not allowed on the first-class
+      deck, the rules and regulations, so said the colonel's wife, said he was
+      not; but no one seemed to object, so I thought to smooth matters by paying
+      half-a-rouble; then I found that every sailor I came across apparently
+      made the same statement, and having listened to one or two, at last I
+      decided to part with no more cash, and it was, I suppose, agreed that
+      Buchanan had paid his footing, for they troubled me no more about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three or four times a day we pulled up at some little wayside place,
+      generally only two or three log-houses with painted doors or windows, an
+      occasional potato patch and huge stacks of wood to replenish the fuel of
+      the steamer, and with much yelling they put out a long gangway, and while
+      the wood was brought on board we all went ashore to see the country. The
+      country was always exactly alike, vast and green and lonely, the sparse
+      human habitations emphasising that vastness and loneliness. The people
+      were few. The men wore belted blouses and high boots and very often,
+      though it was summer, fur caps, and the women very voluminous and very
+      dirty skirts with unbelted blouses, a shawl across their shoulders and a
+      kerchief on their unkempt hair. They were dirty; they were untidy; they
+      were uneducated; they belonged to the very poorest classes; and I think I
+      can safely say that all the way from Kharbarosvk to Nikolayeusk the only
+      attempt at farming I saw was in a few scattered places where the grass had
+      been cut and tossed up into haycocks. And yet those people impressed upon
+      me a sense of their virility and strength, a feeling that I had never had
+      when moving among the Chinese, where every inch of land&mdash;bar the
+      graves&mdash;is turned to good account. Was it the condition of the women?
+      I wonder. I know I never saw one of those stalwart women pounding along on
+      her big flat feet without a feeling of gladness and thankfulness. Here at
+      least was good material. It was crude and rough, of course, but it was
+      there waiting for the wheel of the potter. Shall we find the potter in the
+      turmoil of the revolution and the war?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went on, north, north with a little of east, and it grew cooler and the
+      twilight grew longer. I do not know how other people do, but I count my
+      miles and realise distances from some distance I knew well in my youth. So
+      I know that from Kharbarosvk to Nikolaycusk is a little farther away than
+      is Melbourne from Sydney; and always we went by way of the great empty
+      land, by way of the great empty river. Sometimes far in the distance we
+      could see the blue hills; sometimes the hills were close; but always it
+      was empty, because the few inhabitants, the house or two at the little
+      stopping-places where were the piles of wood for the steamer, but
+      emphasised the loneliness and emptiness. You could have put all the people
+      we saw in a street of a suburb of London and lost them, and I suppose the
+      distance traversed was as far as from London to Aberdeen. It was a
+      beautiful land, a land with a wondrous charm, but it is waiting for the
+      colonist who will dare the rigours of the winter and populate it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last we steamed up to the port of Nikolayeusk, set at the entrance of
+      the shallow Sea of Okhotsk, right away in the east of the world. When I
+      set foot upon the wharf among all the barrels with which it was packed I
+      could hardly believe I had come so far east, so far away from my regular
+      beat. One of my brothers always declares I sent him to sea because my sex
+      prevented me from going, and yet here I was, in spite of that grave
+      disadvantage, in as remote a corner of the earth as even he might have
+      hoped to attain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a July day, sunny and warm. They had slain an Austrian archduke in
+      Serbia and the world was on the verge of the war of the ages, but I knew
+      nothing of all that. I stepped off the steamer and proceeded to
+      investigate Nikolayeusk, well satisfied with the point at which I had
+      arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI&mdash;THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>ikolayeusk seemed
+      to me the ends of the earth. I hardly know why it should have done so, for
+      I arrived there by way of a very comfortable steamer and I have made my
+      way to very much more ungetatable places. I suppose the explanation is
+      that all the other places I have visited I had looked up so long on the
+      map that when I arrived I only felt I was attaining the goal I had set out
+      to reach, whereas I must admit I had never heard of Nikolayeusk till Mr
+      Sly, the British consul, sketched it out as the end of my itinerary on the
+      Siberian rivers, and ten days later I found myself in the Far Eastern
+      town. I remember one of my brothers writing to me once from
+      Petropaulovski:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always said my address would some day be Kamseatkha and here I am!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I never said my address would be Nikolayeusk because I had never
+      heard of it, but here I was nevertheless. The weather was warm, the sun
+      poured down from a cloudless blue sky, and in the broad, grass-grown
+      streets, such streets have I seen in Australian towns, when the faint
+      breeze stirred the yellow dust rose on the air. And the town straggled all
+      along the northern side of the river, a town of low, one-storeyed wooden
+      houses for the most part, with an occasional two-storeyed house and heavy
+      shutters to all the windows. There was a curious absence of stone, and the
+      streets when they were paved at all were, as in Kharbarosvk, lines of
+      planks, sometimes three, sometimes five planks wide, with a waste of dust
+      or mud or grass, as the case might be, on either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Russians I found kindness itself. In Vladivostok I had met a man who
+      knew one of my brothers&mdash;I sometimes wonder if I could get to such a
+      remote corner of the earth that I should not meet someone who knew one of
+      these ubiquitous brothers of mine&mdash;and this good friend, having
+      sampled the family, took me on trust and found someone else who would give
+      me a letter to the manager of the Russo-Asiatic Bank at Nikolayeusk. This
+      was a godsend, for Mr Pauloff spoke excellent English, and he and his
+      corresponding clerk, a Russian lady of middle age who had spent a long
+      time in France, took me in hand and showed me the sights. Madame Schulmann
+      and I and Buchanan drove all over the town in one of the most ancient
+      victorias I have ever seen&mdash;the most ancient are in Saghalien, which
+      is beyond the ends of the earth&mdash;and she very kindly took me to a
+      meal at the principal hotel. I was staying on board the steamer while I
+      looked around me. The visit with this lady decided me not to go there. It
+      wras about four o'clock in the afternoon, so I don't know whether our meal
+      was dinner or tea or luncheon; we had good soup, I remember, and nice
+      wine, to say nothing of excellent coffee, but the atmosphere left much to
+      be desired. I don't suppose the windows ever had been opened since the
+      place was built, and no one seemed to see any necessity for opening them.
+      My hostess smiled at my distress. She said she liked fresh air herself but
+      that for a whole year she had lodged in a room where the windows would not
+      open. She had wanted to have one of the panes&mdash;not the window, just
+      one of the panes&mdash;made to open to admit fresh air, and had offered to
+      do it at her own expense, but her landlord refused. It would spoil the
+      look of the room. She advised me strongly if I wanted fresh air to stay as
+      long as I could on board the steamer at the wharf, and I decided to take
+      her advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Russo-Asiatic Bank was not unlike the banks I have seen in Australian
+      townships, in that it was built of wood of one storey and the manager and
+      his wife lived on the premises, but the roof was far more ornamental than
+      Australia could stand and gave the touch of the East that made for
+      romance. The manager was good enough to ask me to dinner and to include
+      Buchanan in the invitation because I did not like to leave the poor little
+      chap shut up in my cabin. This was really dinner, called so, and we had it
+      at five o'clock of a hot summer's afternoon, a very excellent dinner, with
+      delicious sour cream in the soup and excellent South Australian wine, not
+      the stuff that passes for Australian wine in England and that so many
+      people take medicinally, but really good wine, such as Australians
+      themselves drink. The house was built with a curious lack of partitions
+      that made for spaciousness, so that you wandered from one room to another,
+      hardly knowing that you had gone from the sitting-room to the bedroom, and
+      James Buchanan going on a voyage of discovery unfortunately found the
+      cradle, to the dismay of his mistress. He stood and looked at it and
+      barked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gracious me! What's this funny thing! I've never seen anything like it
+      before!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither had I; but I was covered with shame when a wail proclaimed the
+      presence of the son and heir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally I expressed myself&mdash;truly&mdash;charmed with the town, and
+      Mr Pauloff smiled and nodded at his wife, who spoke no English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She hates it,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;she has never been well since we came here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was white, poor little girl, as the paper on which this is written,
+      and very frail-looking, but it never seemed to occur to anyone that it
+      would be well to open the double windows, and so close was the air of the
+      room that it made me feel sick and faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She never goes out,&rdquo; said her husband. &ldquo;She is not well enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe there was a time in our grandmothers' days when we too dreaded
+      the fresh air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in this the town differed markedly from any Australian towns I have
+      known. The double windows were all tight shut these warm July days, with
+      all the cracks stopped up with cotton wool, with often decorations of
+      coloured ribbons or paper wandering across the space between. Also there
+      were very heavy shutters, and I thought these must be to shut out the
+      winter storms, but M. Pauloff did not seem to think much of the winter
+      storms, though he admitted they had some bad blizzards and regularly the
+      thermometer went down below -40° Fahrenheit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we shut them at night, at four in the winter and at nine
+      in the summer. Leave them open you cannot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo; I thought it was some device for keeping out still more air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is danger,&rdquo; said he&mdash;&ldquo;danger from men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do they steal?&rdquo; said I, surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And kill,&rdquo; he added with conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems that when the Japanese invaded Saghalien, the great island which
+      lies opposite the mouth of the Amur, they liberated at least thirty
+      thousand convicts, and they burnt the records so that no one could prove
+      anything against them, and the majority of these convicts were unluckily
+      not all suffering political prisoners, but criminals, many of them of the
+      deepest dye. These first made Saghalien an unwholesome place to live in,
+      but gradually they migrated to the mainland, and Nikolayeusk and other
+      towns of Eastern Siberia are by no means safe places in consequence.
+      Madame Schulmann told me that many a time men were killed in the open
+      streets and that going back to her lodgings on the dark winter evenings
+      she was very much afraid and always tried to do it in daylight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nikolayeusk is officially supposed to have thirteen thousand inhabitants,
+      but really in the winter-time, says Mr Pauloff, they shrink to ten
+      thousand, while in the summer they rise to over forty thousand, everybody
+      coming for the fishing, the great salmon fisheries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is noting,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;noting&mdash;only fish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this remark he made at intervals. He could not reiterate it too often,
+      as if he were warning me against expecting too much from this remote
+      corner of the world. But indeed the fish interested me. The summer fishing
+      was on while I was there, but that, it seems, is as nothing to the autumn
+      fishing, when the fish rush into the wide river in solid blocks. The whole
+      place then is given over to the fishing and the other trades that fishing
+      calls into being to support it. All the summer the steamers coming down
+      the river are crowded, and they bring great cargoes of timber; the wharves
+      when I was there were covered with barrels and packing-cases containing,
+      according to Mr Pauloff, &ldquo;only air.&rdquo; These were for the fish. And now,
+      when the humble mackerel costs me at least ninepence or a shilling, I
+      remember with longing the days when I used to see a man like a Chinaman,
+      but not a Chinaman, a bamboo across his shoulder, and from each end a
+      great fresh salmon slung, a salmon that was nearly as long as the bearer,
+      and I could have bought the two for ten kopecks!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He that will not when he may!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But great as the trade was down the river, most eatables&mdash;groceries,
+      flour and such-like things&mdash;came from Shanghai, and the ships that
+      brought them took back wood to be made into furniture, and there was, when
+      I was there, quite a flourishing trade in frozen meat with Australia,
+      Nikolayeusk requiring about two hundred and forty thousand pounds in the
+      year. In winter, of course, all the provisions are frozen; the milk is
+      poured into basins, a stick is stuck in it and it freezes round it, so
+      that a milk-seller instead of having a large can has an array of sticks on
+      top of which is the milk frozen hard as a stone. Milk, meat, eggs, all
+      provisions are frozen from October to May.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know what Nikolayeusk is doing now war and revolution have
+      reached it. At least they have brought it into touch with the outer world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And having got so far I looked longingly out over the harbour and wondered
+      whether I might not go to Saghalien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr Pauloff laughed at my desires. If there was nothing to see in
+      Nikolayeusk, there was less than nothing in Saghalien. It was dead. It
+      never had been much and the Japanese invasion had killed it. Not that he
+      harboured any animosity against the Japanese. Russians and Japanese, he
+      declared, were on very friendly terms, and though they invaded Saghalien
+      they did not disgrace their occupation by any atrocities. The Russian,
+      everybody declared in Nikolayeusk, bridges the gulf between the white man
+      and the yellow. Russian and Chinese peasants will work side by side in
+      friendliest fashion; they will occupy the same boardinghouses; the Russian
+      woman does not object to the Chinese as a husband, and the Russian takes a
+      Chinese wife. Of course these are the peasant classes. The Russian
+      authorities made very definite arrangements for keeping out Chinese from
+      Siberia, as I saw presently when I went back up the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the more I thought of it the more determined I was not to go back till
+      I had gone as far east as I possibly could go. The Russian Volunteer fleet
+      I found called at Alexandrovsk regularly during the months the sea was
+      open, making Nikolayeusk its most northern port of call. I could go by the
+      steamer going down and be picked up by the one coming north. It would give
+      me a couple of days in the island, and Mr Pauloff was of opinion that a
+      couple of days would be far too long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the <i>John Cockerill</i> was going back and Buchanan and I must find
+      another roof and a resting-place. According to the inhabitants, it would
+      not be safe to sleep in the streets, and I had conceived a distinct
+      distaste for the hotel. But the <i>Erivan</i> lay in the stream and to
+      that we transferred ourselves and our belongings, where the mate spoke
+      English with a strong Glasgow accent and the steward had a smattering. It
+      was only a smattering, however. I had had a very early lunch and no
+      afternoon tea, so when I got on board at six in the evening I was
+      decidedly hungry and demanded food, or rather when food might be expected.
+      The steward was in a dilemma. It was distinctly too early for dinner, he
+      considered, and too late for tea. He scratched his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lunch!&rdquo; said he triumphantly, and ushered me into the saloon, where hung
+      large photographs of the Tsar, the Tsarina and the good-looking little
+      Tsarevitch. In the corner was an ikon, St Nicolas, I think, who protects
+      sailors. And there at six o'clock in the evening I meekly sat down to
+      luncheon all by myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lying there I had a lovely view of the town. At night, like Vladivostok,
+      it lay like a ring of diamonds along the shore of the river; and in the
+      daytime the softly rounded green hills, the grey-blue sky and the
+      grey-blue sea with the little white wavelets, and the little town just a
+      line between the green and the blue, with the spires and domes of the
+      churches and other public buildings, green and blue and red and white,
+      made a view that was worth coming so far to see. There were ships in the
+      bay too&mdash;not very big ships; but a ship always has an attraction: it
+      has come from the unknown; it is about to go into the unknown&mdash;and as
+      I sat on deck there came to me the mate with the Scots accent and
+      explained all about the ships in sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place was a fort and they were going to make it a great harbour, to
+      fill it up till the great ships should lie along the shore. It will take a
+      good time, for we lay a long way out, but he never doubted the
+      possibility; and meantime the goods come to the ships in the lighters in
+      which they have already come down the river, and they are worked by
+      labourers getting, according to the mate, twelve shillings a day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dey carry near as much as we do,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there were other ships: a ship for fish, summer fish, for Japan,
+      sealers for the rookeries, and ships loading timber for Kamseatkha. I
+      thought I would like to emulate my brother and go there, and the Russky
+      mate thought it would be quite possible, only very uncomfortable. It would
+      take three months, said he, and it was rather late in the season now.
+      Besides, these ships load themselves so with timber that there is only a
+      narrow space on deck to walk on, and they are packed with passengers,
+      mostly labourers, going up for the short summer season.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My old trouble, want of air, followed me on board the <i>Erivan</i>. On
+      deck it was cool, at night the thermometer registered about 55°
+      Fahrenheit, but in my cabin Buehanan and I gasped with the thermometer at
+      over 90°, and that with the port, a very small one, open. That stuffiness
+      was horrible. The bathroom looked like a boiler with a tightfitting iron
+      door right amidships, and having looked at it I had not the courage to
+      shut myself in and take a bath. It seemed as if it would be burying myself
+      alive. As it was, sleep down below I could not, and I used to steal up on
+      deck and with plenty of rugs and cushions lay myself out along the seats
+      and sleep in the fresh air; but a seat really does leave something to be
+      desired in the way of luxury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the early mornings were delightful. The first faint light showed a
+      mist hanging over the green hills marking out their outlines, green and
+      blue and grey; then it was all grey mist; but to the east was the crimson
+      of the dawn, and we left our moorings early one morning and steamed into
+      that crimson. The sun rose among silver and grey clouds, and rose again
+      and again as we passed along the river and the mountains hid him from
+      sight. There were long streaks of silver on the broad river; slowly the
+      fir-clad hills emerged from the mist and the air was moist and fragrant;
+      the scent of the sea and the fragrance of the pines was in it. A
+      delicious, delicate northern sunrise it was; never before or since have I
+      seen such a sunrise. Never again can I possibly see one more beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the great river widened. There were little settlements, the
+      five-pointed tents of the Russian soldiers and many places for catching
+      fish. No wonder the fish&mdash;fish is always salmon here&mdash;like this
+      great -wide river. The brownish water flowed on swiftly and the morning
+      wind whipped it into never-ending ripples that caught the sunlight. A
+      wonderful river! A delightful river! I have grown enthusiastic over many
+      rivers. I know the Murray in my own land and the great rivers of tropical
+      Africa, the Congo, the Gambia, the Volta, grand and lovely all of them. I
+      felt I had looked upon the glory of the Lord when I had looked upon them,
+      but there was something in the tender beauty of the Amur, the summer
+      beauty veiled in mist, the beauty that would last so short a time, that
+      was best of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the passengers and officers of the <i>Erivan</i> were much
+      exercised in their minds over me. What could an Englishwoman want in
+      Saghalien? To my surprise I found that none had ever stayed there before,
+      though it was on record that one had once landed there from a steamer. The
+      mate was scathing in his remarks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dere are skeeters,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;big ones, I hear,&rdquo; and he rolled his &ldquo;r's&rdquo;
+       like a true Scotsman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where can I stay?&rdquo; He shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In de hotel you cannot stay. It is impossible.&rdquo; That I could quite
+      believe, but all the same, if the hotel was impossible, where could I
+      stay?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, here I was, and I did not intend to go back to Vladivostok by
+      sea. At Alexandrosvk, the town of Saghalien, I proposed to land and I felt
+      it was no good worrying till I got there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We entered De Castries Bay in a soft grey mist, a mist that veiled the
+      mountains behind. Then the mist lifted and showed us the string of islands
+      that guard the mouth of the bay, strung in a line like jewels set in the
+      sea, and the hills on them were all crowned with firs; and then the mist
+      dropped again, veiling all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a lonely place, where I, being a foreigner, was not allowed to
+      land, and we did not go close up to the shore, but the shore came to us in
+      great white whale-boats. Many peasants and soldiers got off here, and I
+      saw saws and spades in the bundles, the bundles of emigrants. There were a
+      few women amongst them, women with hard, elemental faces, so different
+      from the Chinese, that were vacuous and refined. I remembered the women
+      who had listened to the lecturer at Fen Chou Fu and I drew a long sigh of
+      relief. It was refreshing to look at those big-hipped women, with their
+      broad, strong feet and their broad, strong hands and the little dirty
+      kerchiefs over their heads. Elemental, rough, rude, but I was glad of
+      them. One was suckling a child in the boat, calmly, as if it were the most
+      natural thing to do, and somehow it was good to see it. The beginning of
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning brought a dense mist, and as it cleared away it showed us a
+      sparkling, smooth sea, greyish-blue like the skies above it, and a little
+      wooden town nestling against fir-clad hills. We had arrived at
+      Alexandrosvk and I wondered what would become of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then once again I learned what a kind place is this old world of ours
+      that we abuse so often. I had gone on board that steamer without any
+      introduction whatever, with only my passport to show that I was a
+      respectable member of society. I knew nobody and saw no reason whatever
+      why anyone should trouble themselves about me. But we carried
+      distinguished passengers on board the <i>Erivan</i>. There was the
+      Vice-Governor of Saghalien, his wife and son, with the soldiers in
+      attendance, and a good-looking young fellow with short-cropped hair and
+      dreamy eyes who was the Assistant Chief of Police of the island, and this
+      man, by command of the Governor, took me in charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never again shall I hear of the Russian police without thinking of the
+      deep debt of gratitude that I owe to Vladimir Merokushoff of Saghalien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not think as a rule that people land from steamers at Alexandrosvk on
+      to red tapestry carpets under fluttering bruiting to the strains of a
+      band. But we did; and the Chief of Police&mdash;he spoke no language but
+      Russian&mdash;motioned me to wait a moment, and when the Governor had been
+      safely despatched to his home he appeared on the scene with a victoria and
+      drove me and Buchanan to the police station, a charming little
+      one-storeyed building buried in greenery, and there he established us.
+      Buchanan he appreciated as a dog likes to be appreciated, and he gave up
+      to me his own bedroom, where the top pane of the window had actually been
+      made to open. His sitting-room was a very bower of growing plants, and
+      when I went to bed that night he brought his elderly working housekeeper,
+      a plain-faced woman whom he called &ldquo;Stera,&rdquo; and made her bring her bed and
+      lay it across my door, which opened into the sitting-room. It was no good
+      my protesting; there she had to sleep. Poor old thing, she must have been
+      glad my stay was not long. Every day she wore a blue skirt and a
+      drab-coloured blouse, unbelted, and her grey hair twisted up into an
+      untidy knot behind, but she was an excellent cook. That young man got
+      himself into his everyday holland summer coat and to entertain me
+      proceeded to lay in enough provisions to supply a hungry school. He showed
+      me the things first to see if I liked them, as if I wouldn't have liked
+      shark when people were so kind. But as a matter of fact everything was
+      very good. He produced a large tin of crawling crayfish, and when I had
+      expressed not only my approval but my delight, they appeared deliciously
+      red and white for dinner, and then I found they were only <i>sakouska</i>&mdash;that
+      is, the <i>hors d'ouvre</i> that the Russians take to whet their
+      appetites. I have often lived well, but never better than when I, a
+      stranger and a sojourner, was taken in charge by the hospitable Russian
+      police, who would not let me pay one penny for my board and lodging. We
+      fed all day long. I had only to come in for a bottle of wine or beer to be
+      produced. I was given a <i>gens d'arme</i> to carry my camera and another
+      to take care of Buchanan. Never surely was stranger so well done as I by
+      hospitable Saghalien. The policeman made me understand he was an author
+      and presented me with a couple of pamphlets he had written on Saghalien
+      and its inhabitants, but though I treasure them I cannot read them. Then
+      the Japanese photographer was sent for and he and I were taken sitting
+      side by side on the bench in his leafy porch, and, to crown all, because I
+      could speak no Russian, he sent for two girls who had been educated in
+      Japan and who spoke English almost as well as I did myself, though they
+      had never before spoken to an Englishwoman. Marie and Lariss Borodin were
+      they, and their father kept the principal store in Alexandrosvk. They were
+      dainty, pretty, dark-eyed girls and they were a godsend to me. They had a
+      tea in my honour and introduced me to the manager of the coal mine of
+      Saghalien and took care I should have all the information about the island
+      it was in their power to supply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were then about five thousand people there, one thousand in
+      Alexandrosvk itself, but they were going daily, for the blight of the
+      convict was over the beautiful land. The best coal mine is closed down on
+      fire and the one whose manager I met was leased to a company by the year
+      and worked by Chinese on most primitive lines. There is gold, he told me,
+      this business man who surprised me by his lavish use of perfume, but he
+      did not know whether it would pay for working&mdash;gold and coal as well
+      would be almost too much good luck for one island&mdash;and there is
+      naphtha everywhere on the east coast, but as it has never been struck they
+      think that the main vein must come up somewhere under the sea. Still it is
+      there waiting for the enterprising man who shall work it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Saghalien used to be as bad as Nikolayeusk, they told me, after the
+      Japanese had evacuated the northern part; but now the most enterprising
+      section of the convicts had betaken themselves to the mainland, and though
+      the free settlers were few and far between, and the most of the people I
+      saw were convicts, they were the harmless ones with all the devilment gone
+      out of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alexandrosvk is a place of empty houses. When the Japanese came the people
+      fled, leaving everything exactly as it was; and though the Japanese
+      behaved with admirable restraint, considering they came as an invading
+      army, many of these people never came back again, and the alertness in a
+      bad cause which had sent many of the convicts there against their will
+      sent them away again as soon as they were free. All down by the long
+      wooden pier which stretches out into the sea are great wooden storehouses
+      and barracks, empty, and a monument, if they needed it, to the courteous
+      manner in which the Japanese make war. They had burnt the museum, they
+      told me, and opened the prison doors and burnt the prison, but the other
+      houses they had spared. And so there were many, many empty houses in
+      Alexandrosvk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the oldest carriages in the world have drifted to Saghalien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They are decrepit in Western Siberia, they are worse, if possible, in the
+      East, but in the island of Saghalien I really don't know how they hold
+      together. Perhaps they are not wanted very often. I hired the most archaic
+      victoria I have ever seen and the two girls came for a drive with me all
+      round the town and its neighbourhood. It was a drive to be remembered. The
+      early summer was in all its full freshness, the red and white cows stood
+      knee-deep in grass that was green and lush everywhere. There were
+      fir-trees on the hills and on every spur of the hills, and there were
+      hedges with dog-roses blossoming all over them; there were fields of dark
+      blue iris; there were little red tiger lilies and a spiked heliotrope
+      flower like veronica, only each bloom grew on a single stalk of its own;
+      there were purple vetches and white spiræa growing in marshy places, and
+      the land was thick with sweet-scented clover among which the bees were
+      humming, and in a little village there was a Greek church that, set in its
+      emerald-green field, was a very riot of colour. There were balls on the
+      roof of royal blue, the roof itself was of pale green, the walls were of
+      brown logs untouched by paint and the window edges were picked out in
+      white. I photographed that picturesque little church, as I did the peasant
+      women standing at the doors of their log huts and the queer old shandrydan
+      in which we drove, but alas! all my photographs perished miserably in
+      Russia. The girls wondered that I liked town and country so much, that I
+      saw so much beauty in everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Madame,&rdquo; they sighed, &ldquo;but you can go away tomorrow! If only we could
+      go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had been educated at a convent and they produced the English books
+      they had read. They were very apologetic but they had found them rather
+      tame. Had I read them? I smiled, for they all turned out to be the
+      immortal works of Charles Garvice!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And we had tea in the dining-room, where father slept because they were
+      rather crowded, the store took up so much room; and it was a very nice tea
+      too, with raspberry jam in saucers, which we ate Russian fashion with a
+      spoon, and the roses in the garden tapped against the window-panes, asking
+      to come in and join us, and Buchanan got what his soul loved, plenty of
+      cake. They apologised because there was no fruit. No fruit save berries
+      ripen in Saghalien and the strawberries would not be ready till well on in
+      August. No words of mine can tell how kind they were to the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went back in the long twilight that was so cool and restful and sat
+      outside the leafy shaded police station and killed mosquitoes, for the
+      mate had heard aright, there were &ldquo;skeeters&rdquo; and to spare, the sort to
+      which Mark Twain took a gun. I watched the grey mist creeping slowly down,
+      down the beautiful mountains, and when it had enveloped them the night was
+      come and it was time to go in and have dinner and go to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it would not do to stay long in Saghalien. There is nothing to do.
+      She lies a Sleeping Beauty waiting the kiss of the Prince. Will this war
+      awaken her? The short time I was there I enjoyed every moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people seemed nondescript. The upper class were certainly Russians,
+      and all the men wore military caps and had their hair clipped so close it
+      looked shaven, but it would be utterly impossible to say to what
+      nationality the peasant belonged. There were flaxen-haired Russians
+      certainly, but then there were dark-bearded men, a Mongolian type, and
+      there were many thrifty Chinese with queues, in belted blouses and high
+      boots, generally keeping little eating-shops. There may have been
+      Japanese, probably there were, seeing they hold the lower half of the
+      island, but I did not notice them, and there is, I am afraid, in that
+      place which is so full of possibilities absolutely nothing for that
+      go-ahead nation to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My pretty girls complained dreadfully. They looked after the shop and then
+      there was nothing. In the winter they said they had skating and they liked
+      the winter best, but the really bad time in places like Saghalien and
+      Nikolayeusk were the two months when it was neither winter nor summer.
+      Then their only means of communication with the outside world, the river
+      and the sea, was too full of ice to admit of navigation and yet was not
+      solid enough for dog-sled, so that if the telegraph broke down, and it
+      very often did, they are entirely cut off from the world. Saghalien, of
+      course, is worse off than the town, for on the mainland presumably there
+      are roads of sorts that can be negotiated in case of necessity, but the
+      island is entirely isolated. In the winter the mails take five days coming
+      across the frozen sea from the mainland, and often when there are storms
+      they take much longer. Fancy living on an island that stretches over
+      nearly ten degrees of latitude, which for five months in the year gets its
+      mails by dog-sled and for two goes without them altogether! On the whole,
+      there may be drawbacks to living in Saghalien!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I left it at nine o'clock in the evening, after the darkness had fallen,
+      and the police officer and the pretty girls saw me on board the steamer
+      which was to take me back to Nikolayeusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They loaded me with flowers and they were full of regrets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Madame, Madame, how lucky you are to get away from Saghalien!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I said truly enough that I felt my luck lay in getting there. And now
+      that I sit in my garden in Kent and watch the beans coming into blossom
+      and the roses into bloom, look at the beds gay with red poppies and
+      violas, cream and purple, or wander round and calculate the prospects of
+      fruit on the cherry and the pear trees, I am still more glad to think that
+      I know what manner of island that is that lies so far away in the Eastern
+      world that it is almost West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII&mdash;FACING WEST
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>n the 25th July
+      1914, at nine o'clock in the evening, I left Saghalien, and as the ship
+      steamed away from the loom of the land into the night I knew that at last,
+      after eighteen months of voyaging in the East, I had turned my face
+      homeward. I had enjoyed it, but I wanted to go home, and in my notebook I
+      see evidences of this longing. At last I was counting the days&mdash;one
+      day to Nikolayeusk, three days to Kharbarosvk, three days more to
+      Blagoveschensk&mdash;and I was out in my calculations in the very
+      beginning. The ships of the Volunteer fleet take their time, and we took
+      three days wandering along the island of Saghalien and calling at ports I
+      should think mail steamer had never before called at before we turned
+      again towards the mainland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet in a way it was interesting, for I saw some of the inhabitants of
+      the island, the aboriginal inhabitants, I should never have otherwise
+      seen. Gilyaks they are, and the water seems their element. They have the
+      long straight black hair of the Mongolian, and sometimes they were clad in
+      furs&mdash;ragged and old and worn, the very last remains of furs&mdash;sometimes
+      merely in dirty clothes, the cast-offs of far-away nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They live by the fish. There is nothing else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I tried hard to photograph these aborigines, using all sorts of guile to
+      get them into focus. I produced cigarettes, I offered sugar, but as soon
+      as they found out what I was about they at once fled, even though their
+      boat was fastened against the gangway and it meant abandoning somebody who
+      was on board. I did eventually get some photographs, but they shared the
+      fate of the rest of my Russian pictures, and I am sorry, for I do not
+      suppose I shall ever again have the chance of photographing the Gilyak in
+      his native haunts. He belongs to a dying race, they told me, and there are
+      few children amongst them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And though we lay long at De Castries Bay they would not let me take
+      pictures there at all. It was forbidden, so I was reduced to doing the
+      best I could through my cabin port. In Alexandrosvk the police officer had
+      aided and abetted my picture-making, but in Nikolayeusk it was a forbidden
+      pastime, for the town, for purposes of photography, was a fort, and when I
+      boarded the <i>Kanovina</i> on the river, the post steamer bound for
+      Blagoveschensk, I met with more difficulties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was on board a Mrs Marie Skibitsky and her husband, the headmaster
+      of the Nikolayeusk &ldquo;Real&rdquo; School, and she spoke very good English and was
+      a kind friend to me. Through her came a message from the captain to the
+      effect that though he did not mind my photographing himself, it was
+      forbidden in Russia, and he begged me not to do it when anyone was looking
+      on. That made it pretty hopeless, for the ship was crowded and there was
+      always not one person but probably a score of people taking a very great
+      interest. The captain was not brass-bound as he had been in the <i>John
+      Cockerill</i>, but he and all his officers were clad in khaki, with
+      military caps, and it was sometime before I realised them as the ship's
+      officers. The captain looked to me like a depressed corporal who was
+      having difficulties with his sergeant, and the ship, though they charged
+      us three roubles more for the trip to Blagoveschensk than the Amur Company
+      would have done, was dirty and ill-kept. It was in her I met the saloon
+      the windows of which would not open, and the water in my cabin had gone
+      wrong, and when I insisted that I could not be happy till I had some, it
+      was brought me in a teapot! They never struck the hours on this steamer as
+      they had done on the <i>John Cockerill</i>, and gone was the excellent
+      cook, and the food consisted largely of meat, of which I am bound to say
+      there was any quantity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in spite of all drawbacks the ship was crowded; there were many
+      officers and their wives on board, and there were many officers on board
+      with women who were not their 'wives. These last were so demonstrative
+      that I always took them for honeymoon couples till at last a Cossack
+      officer whom I met farther on explained:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not 'wives. Oh no! It is always so! It is just the steamer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether these little irregularities were to be set down to the discomforts
+      of the steamer or to the seductive air of the river, I do not know.
+      Perhaps I struck a particularly amorous company. I am bound to say no one
+      but me appeared to be embarrassed. It seemed to be all in the day's work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was pleasant going up the river again and having beside me one who
+      could explain things to me. Every day it grew warmer, for not only was the
+      short northern summer reaching its zenith, but we were now going south
+      again. And Mrs Skibitsky sat beside me and rubbed up her English and told
+      me how in two years' time she proposed to bring her daughters to England
+      to give them an English education, and I promised to look out for her and
+      show her the ropes and how she could best manage in London. In two years'
+      time! And we neither of us knew that we were on the threshold of the
+      greatest war in the world's history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took the breaking out of that war so calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We arrived at Kharbarosvk. I parted from Mrs Skibitsky, who was going to
+      Vladivostok, and next day I looked up my friend the colonel's wife with
+      whom I had travelled on the <i>John Cockerill</i>. She received me with
+      open arms, but the household cat flew and spat and stated in no measured
+      terms what she thought of Buchanan. The lady caught the cat before I
+      realised what was happening and in a moment she had scored with her talons
+      great red lines that spouted blood on her mistress's arms. She looked at
+      them calmly, went into the kitchen, rubbed butter on her wounds and came
+      back smiling as if nothing in the world had happened. But it was not
+      nothing. I admired her extremely for a very brave woman. Presently her
+      husband came in and she just drew down her sleeves to cover her torn arms
+      and said not a word to him. He was talking earnestly and presently she
+      said to me:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is war!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought she meant between Buehanan and the cat and I smiled feebly,
+      because I was very much ashamed of the trouble I and my dog had caused,
+      but she said again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is war! Between Austria and Serbia!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It did not seem to concern me. I don't know that I had ever realised
+      Serbia as a distinct nationality at all before, and she knew so little
+      English and I knew no Russian at all, so that we were not able to discuss
+      the matter much, though it was evident that the colonel was very much
+      excited. That, I thought, might be natural. He was a soldier. War was his
+      business, though here, I think, he was engaged in training boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the midday meal&mdash;<i>déjeuner</i>, I think we called it&mdash;she
+      and I went for a walk, and presently down the wide streets of Kharbarosvk
+      came a little procession of four led by a wooden-legged man bearing a
+      Russian naval flag, the blue St Andrew's Cross on a white ground. I looked
+      at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They meant nothing to me in that great, empty street where the new little
+      trees were just beginning to take root and the new red-brick post office
+      dominated all minor buildings among many empty spaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They want war! They ask for war!&rdquo; said my friend. I was witnessing my
+      first demonstration against Germany! And I thought no more of it than I do
+      of the children playing in the streets of this Kentish village!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw me on to the steamer and bade me farewell, and then my troubles
+      began. Not a single person on that steamer spoke English. However, I had
+      always found the Russians so kind that the faet that we could not
+      understand one another when the going was straight did not seem to matter
+      very much. But I had not reckoned with the Russians at war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Kharbarosvk the river forms the Chinese-Russian boundary and a little
+      beyond it reaches its most southern point, about lat. 48°. But the China
+      that was on our left was not the China that I knew. This was Manchuria,
+      green and fresh as Siberia itself, and though there was little or no
+      agriculture beyond perhaps a patch of vegetables here and there, on both
+      sides of the broad river was a lovely land of hills and lush grass and
+      trees. Here were firs and pines and cedars, whose sombreness contrasted
+      with the limes and elms, the poplars and dainty birches with whieh they
+      were interspersed. The Russian towns were small, the merest villages, with
+      here and there a church with the painted ball-like domes they affect, and
+      though the houses were of unpainted logs, always the windows and doors
+      were painted white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at every little town were great piles of wood waiting for the steamer,
+      and whenever we stopped men hastily set to work bringing in loads of wood
+      to replace that which we had burnt. And we burnt lavishly. Even the
+      magnificent forests of Siberia will not stand this drain on them long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other day when the National Service papers came round one was sent to
+      a dear old &ldquo;Sister&rdquo; who for nearly all her life has been working for the
+      Church in an outlying district of London. She is past work now, but she
+      can still go and talk to the old and sick and perhaps give advice about
+      the babies, but that is about the extent of her powers. She looked at the
+      paper and as in duty bound filled it in, giving her age as seventy. What
+      was her surprise then to receive promptly from the Department a suggestion
+      that she should volunteer for service on the land, and offering her, by
+      way of inducement, good wages, a becoming hat and high boots! That branch
+      of the Department has evidently become rather mechanical. Now the Russians
+      all the way from Saghalien to Petrograd treated me with sueh unfailing
+      kindness that I was in danger of writing of them in the stereotyped
+      fashion in which the National Service Department sent out its papers.
+      Luckily they themselves saved me from such an error. There were three
+      memorable, never-to-be-forgotten days when the Russians did not treat me
+      with kindness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The warmest and pleasantest days of my trip on the Amur we went through
+      lovely scenery: the river was very wide, the blue sky was reflected in its
+      blue waters and the green, tree-clad hills on either side opened out and
+      showed beyond mountains in the distance, purple and blue and alluring. It
+      was the height of summer-time, summer at its best, a green, moist summer.
+      We hugged the Russian bank, and the Manchurian bank seemed very far away,
+      only it was possible to see that wherever the Russians had planted a
+      little town on the other side was a Chinese town much bigger. The Russian
+      were very little towns, and all the inhabitants, it seemed, turned out to
+      meet us, who were their only link with the outside world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The minute the steamer came close enough ropes were flung ashore to moor
+      it, and a gangway was run out very often&mdash;and it was an anxious
+      moment for me with Buchanan standing on the end, for he was always the
+      first to put dainty little paws on the gangway, and there he stood while
+      it swayed this way and that before it could make up its mind where to
+      finally settle down. Then there was a rush, and a stream of people going
+      ashore for exercise passed a stream of people coming on board to sell
+      goods. Always these took the form of eatables. Butter, bread, meat, milk,
+      berries they had for sale, and the third and fourth class passengers
+      bought eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I followed Buchanan ashore, but I seldom bought anything unless the
+      berries tempted me. There were strawberries, raspberries and a blue berry
+      which sometimes was very sweet and pleasant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first the people had been very kind and taken a great deal of interest
+      in the stranger and her pretty little dog, but after we left Kharbarosvk
+      and I had no one to appeal to a marked change came over things. If I
+      wanted to take a photograph, merely a photograph of the steamer lying
+      against the bank, my camera was rudely snatched away and I was given to
+      understand in a manner that did not require me to know Russian that if I
+      did that again it would be worse for me. Poor little Buchanan was kicked
+      and chunks of wood were flung at him. As I passed along the lower decks to
+      and from the steamer I was rudely hustled, and on shore not only did the
+      people crowd around me in a hostile manner, but to my disgust they spat
+      upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could not understand the change, for even in the first-class saloon the
+      people looked at me askance. And I had ten days of the river before I
+      reached Stretensk, where I was to join the train. It is terrible to be
+      alone among hostile people, and I kept Buchanan close beside me for
+      company and because I did not know what might happen to him. If this had
+      been China I should not have been surprised, but Russia, that had always
+      been so friendly. I was mightily troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then came the explanation, the very simple explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as the river narrowed between the hills and looked more like a river,
+      and turned north, there came on board at a tiny wayside town a tall young
+      Cossack officer, a <i>soinik</i> of Cossacks, he called himself. He wore a
+      khaki jacket and cap, and dark blue breeches and riding-boots. He had a
+      great scar across his forehead, caused by a Chinese sword, and he had
+      pleasant blue eyes and a row of nice white teeth. He was tall and goodly
+      to look upon, and as I sat at afternoon tea at a little table on deck he
+      came swaggering along the deck and stood before me with one hand on a
+      deck-chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, is it permitted?&rdquo; he asked in French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course Madame permitted and ealled for another glass and offered him
+      some of her tea and cake. Possibly he had plenty of his own, but no
+      matter, it was good to entertain someone in friendly fashion again after
+      being an outcast for three days. And it took a little while to find out
+      what was wrong, he was so very polite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame understands we are at war?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame opened her eyes in astonishment. What could a war in the Balkan
+      Provinces have to do with her treatment on the Amur river thousands of
+      miles in the East?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, she said she did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Madame knows&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, and then very kindly
+      abandoned his people. &ldquo;Madame sees the people are bad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame quite agreed. They were bad. I had quite an appetite for my tea now
+      that this nice young man was sympathising with me on the abominable
+      behaviour of his countrymen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spread out his hands as if deprecating the opinion of sueh foolish
+      people. &ldquo;They think&mdash;on the ship&mdash;and on the shore&mdash;that
+      Madame is a GERMAN!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So it was out, and it took me a moment to realise it, so little had I
+      realised the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A German!&rdquo; I did not put it in capital letters as he had done. I had not
+      yet learned to hate the Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A&mdash;spy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good gracious!&rdquo; And then I flew for my passports.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain that young man protested it was not necessary. He had felt sure
+      from the moment he set eyes upon her that Madame was no German. He had
+      told the captain&mdash;so the depressed corporal had been taking an
+      interest in me&mdash;she might be French, or even from the north of Spain,
+      but certainly not German. But I insisted on his looking at my passports
+      and being in a position to swear that I was British, and from that moment
+      we were friends and he constituted himself my champion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people are bad,&rdquo; he told me. &ldquo;Madame, they are angry and they are
+      bad. They may harm you. Here I go ashore with you; at Blagoveschensk you
+      get a protection order from the Governor written in Russian so that
+      somebody may read.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he told me about the war. Russia and France were fighting Germany. He
+      had come from Tsitsihar, on the Mongolian border, across Manchuria, and
+      before that he had come from Kodbo, right in the heart of the great
+      Western Mongolian mountains, and he was going as fast as he could to
+      Chita, and thence he supposed to the front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;C'est gai a la guerre, Madame, c'est gai!&rdquo; I hope so. I earnestly hope he
+      found it so, for he was a good fellow and awfully good to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a little disquieting too, for now it dawned upon me it would be
+      impossible to go back through Germany with Germany at war with Russia, and
+      my friend was equally sure it would be almost impossible to go by way of
+      St Petersburg, as we called Petrograd then. Anyhow we were still in the
+      Amur Province, in Eastern Siberia, so I did not worry much. Now that the
+      people were friendly once more it all seemed so far away, and whenever we
+      went ashore my Cossack friend explained matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was a little troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, why does not England come in?&rdquo; he asked again and again, and I,
+      who had seen no papers since I left Tientsin, and only <i>The North China
+      Herald</i> then, could not imagine what England had to do with it. The
+      idea of a world war was out of the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was more interesting now going up the beautiful river, narrowed till it
+      really did look like a river. I could see both banks quite plainly. My
+      friend had been stationed here a year or two before, and he told me that
+      there were many tigers in the woods, and wild boar and bear, but not very
+      many wolves. And the tigers were beautiful and fierce and dangerous,
+      northern tigers that could stand the rigours of the winter, and they did
+      not wait to be attacked, they attacked you. There was a German professor
+      in Blagoveschensk a year or two ago who had gone out butterfly-hunting,
+      which one would think was a harmless and safe enough pastime to satisfy
+      even a conscientious objector, and a tiger had got on his tracks and eaten
+      him incontinently. They found only his butterfly net and the buttons of
+      his coat when they went in search of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The plague had broken out during this officer's stay on the river, and the
+      authorities had drawn a cordon of Cossacks round to keep the terrified,
+      plague-stricken people from fleeing and spreading the disease yet farther,
+      and he pointed out to me the house in which he and two comrades had lived.
+      It was merely a roof pitched at a steep angle, and the low walls were
+      embedded in earth; only on the side facing the river was a little window&mdash;it
+      did not open&mdash;and a door. A comfortless-looking place it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why the earth piled up against the sides?&rdquo; I asked. It was sprouting
+      grass now and yellow buttercups and looked gay and pretty, the only
+      attractive thing about the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, for the cold,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;for the cold.&rdquo; And remembering what they
+      had told me about the cold of Kharbin, what I myself had experienced at
+      Manchuria on the way out in much the same latitude as this, I could quite
+      well believe that even sunk in the earth this poor little hut was not a
+      very good protection against the cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The river widened again, winding its way across a plateau. On the Chinese
+      side were great oak forests where my Cossack told me were many pig that
+      gave them good hunting and many bees, but this was not China as I knew it.
+      It was inhabited, he said, by nomad tribes who were great horsemen, and we
+      saw occasional villages and&mdash;a rare sight&mdash;cattle, red and
+      white, standing knee-deep in the clear water. Particularly was I struck by
+      the cattle, for in all those thousands of miles of travel I could count on
+      my fingers&mdash;the fingers of one hand would be too many&mdash;the
+      numbers of times I saw herds of cattle. Once was in Saghalien, and twice,
+      I think, here, curiously enough, for the pure Chinese does not use milk or
+      butter on the Chinese side of the river. Of course there must have been
+      cows somewhere, for there was plenty of milk, cream and butter for sale,
+      but they were not in evidence from the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Russian side the landing-places did not change much, only now among
+      the women hawkers were Chinese in belted blouses, green, yellow, blue,
+      pink, red; they rioted in colour as they never did in their own land, and
+      they all wore sea-boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And still over twelve hundred miles from the sea it was a great river. And
+      then at last I saw what I had been looking for ever since I embarked&mdash;fields
+      of corn, corn ripe for the harvest. This was all this lovely land needed,
+      a field of corn; but again it was not on the Russian side, but on the
+      Chinese.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spires and domes of Blagoveschensk, the capital of the Amur Province,
+      came into view. All along the Russian bank of the river lay this city of
+      Eastern Siberia. Its buildings stood out against the clear sky behind it,
+      and approaching it was like coming up to a great port. The river, I should
+      think, was at least a mile wide. I am not very good at judging distances,
+      but it gave me the impression of a very wide river set here in the midst
+      of a plain&mdash;that is, of course, a plateau, for we had come through
+      the hills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here my Cossack friend came to bid me good-bye and to impress upon me
+      once again to go straight to the Governor for that protection order. He
+      was sorry he could not see me through, but his orders were to go to Chita
+      as fast as he could, and someone would speak English at Blagoveschensk,
+      for it was a great city, and then he asked for the last time:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Madame, why does not England come in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the question that had troubled me so was answered, for as we
+      touched the shore men came on board wild with excitement, shouting,
+      yelling, telling the war news, that very day, that very moment, it seemed,
+      England had come in!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I appeared to be the only representative of Britain in that corner of
+      the world! Never was there such a popular person. The sailor-men who
+      worked the ship, the poorer third and fourth class passengers all came
+      crowding to look at the Englishwoman. I had only got to say &ldquo;Anglisky&rdquo; to
+      have everyone bowing down before me and kissing my hand, and my Cossack
+      friend as he bade me good-bye seemed to think it hardly necessary to go to
+      the Governor except that a member of a great Allied nation ought to be
+      properly received.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I had been bitten once, and I determined to make things as safe as I
+      could for the future. So I got a droshky&mdash;a sort of tumble-down
+      victoria, held together with pieces of string, and driven by a man who
+      might have been Russian or might have been Chinese&mdash;and Buchanan and
+      I went through the dusty, sunny streets of the capital of the Amur
+      Province to the viceregal residence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII&mdash;THE UPPER REACHES OF THE AMUR
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>lagoveschensk is
+      built on much the same lines as all the other Siberian towns that I have
+      seen, a wooden town mostly of one-storeyed houses straggling over the
+      plain in wide streets that cut one another at right angles. Again it was
+      not at all unlike an Australian town, a frontier town to all intents and
+      purposes. The side-roads were deep in dust, and the principal shop, a
+      great store, a sort of mild imitation of Harrod's, where you could buy
+      everything from a needle to an anchor&mdash;I bought a dog-collar with a
+      bell for Buchanan&mdash;was run by Germans. It was a specimen of Germany's
+      success in peaceful penetration. It seemed as if she were throwing away
+      the meat for the shadow, for they were interning all those assistants&mdash;400
+      of them. Now probably they form the nucleus of the Bolshevist force
+      helping Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor's house was on the outskirts of the town, and it was thronged
+      with people, men mostly, and Buchanan and I were passed from one room to
+      another, evidently by people who had not the faintest notion of what we
+      wanted. Everybody said &ldquo;Bonjour,&rdquo; and the Governor and everybody else
+      kissed my hand. I said I was &ldquo;Anglisky,&rdquo; and it seemed as if everybody in
+      consequence came to look at me. But it didn't advance matters at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I began to be hungry and tired, and various people tried questions upon
+      me, but nothing definite happened. At last, after about two hours, when I
+      was seriously thinking of giving up in despair, a tall, good-looking
+      officer in khaki came in. He put his heels together and kissed my hand as
+      courteously as the rest had done, and then informed me in excellent
+      English that he was the Boundary Commissioner and they had sent for him
+      because there was an Englishwoman arrived, and, while very desirous of
+      being civil to the representative of their new Ally, nobody could make out
+      what on earth she was doing here and what she wanted!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told my story and it was easy enough then. He admired Buchanan properly,
+      drove us both to his house, introduced me to his wife and made me out a
+      most gorgeous protection order written in Russian. I have it still, but I
+      never had occasion to use it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opposite Blagoveschensk is a Chinese town which is called Sakalin, though
+      the maps never give it that name, and in Vladivostok and Peking they call
+      it various other names. But its right name is Sakalin, I know, for I
+      stayed there for the best part of a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Sakalin the head of the Chinese Customs is a Dane, Paul Barentzen, and
+      to him and his wife am I greatly beholden. I had been given letters to
+      them, and I asked my friend the kindly Russian Boundary Commissioner if he
+      knew them. He did. He explained to me I must have a permit to cross the
+      river and he would give me one for a week. A week seemed overlong, but he
+      explained the Russian Government did not allow free traffic across the
+      river and it was just as well to have a permit that would cover the whole
+      of my stay. Even now, though I did stay my week, I have not fathomed the
+      reason of these elaborate precautions, because it must be impossible to
+      guard every little landing-place on the long, long, lonely river&mdash;there
+      must be hundreds of places where it is easy enough to cross&mdash;only I
+      suppose every stranger is liable sooner or later to be called upon to give
+      an account of himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ferries that crossed the Amur to the Chinese side were great boats
+      built to carry a large number of passengers, but the arrangements for
+      getting across the river did justice to both Chinese and Russian
+      mismanagement. Unlike the efficient Japanese, both these nations, it seems
+      to me, arrive at the end in view with the minimum amount of trouble to
+      those in authority&mdash;that is to say, the maximum of trouble to
+      everybody concerned. The ferry-boats owing to local politics had a
+      monopoly, and therefore went at their own sweet will just exactly when
+      they pleased. There was a large and busy traffic, but the boats never went
+      oftener than once an hour, and the approaches were just as primitive as
+      they possibly could be. There was one little shed with a seat running
+      round where if you were fortunate you could sit down with the Chinese
+      hawkers and wait for the arrival of the boat. And when it did come the
+      passengers, after a long, long wait, came climbing up the rough path up
+      the bank looking as if they had been searched to the skin. They let me
+      through on the Chinese side and I found without any difficulty my way to
+      Mr Paul Barentzen's house, a two-storeyed, comfortable house, and received
+      a warm invitation from him and his wife to stay with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a chance not to be missed. I was getting very weary, I was tired in
+      every bone, so a chance like this to stay with kindly people who spoke my
+      own language, on the very outskirts of the Chinese Empire, was not to be
+      lightly missed, and I accepted with gratitude, a gratitude I feel
+      strongly. Mr Barentzen was a Dane, but he spoke as good English as I do,
+      and if possible was more British. His wife was English. And that night he
+      celebrated the coming into the war of Britain. He asked me and the Russian
+      Boundary Commissioner and his wife and another Russian gentleman all to
+      dinner in the gardens at Blagoveschensk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place was a blaze of light, there were flags and lamps and bands
+      everywhere, the whole city was <i>en fête</i> to do honour to the new
+      addition to the Grande Entente. When we were tired of walking about the
+      gardens we went inside to the principal restaurant that was packed with
+      people dining, while on a stage various singers discoursed sweet music and
+      waved the flags of the Allies. But the British flag had not got as far as
+      the capital of the Amur Province. Indeed much farther west than that I
+      found it represented by a red flag with black crosses drawn on it, very
+      much at the taste of the artist, and &ldquo;Anglisky&rdquo; written boldly across it
+      to make up for any deficiency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr Barentzen had foreseen this difficulty and had provided us all with
+      nice little silk specimens of the Union Jack to wear pinned on our
+      breasts. About ten o'clock we sat down to a most excellent dinner, with
+      sturgeon and sour cream and caviare and all the good tilings that Eastern
+      Siberia produces. A packed room also dined, while the people on the stage
+      sang patriotic songs, and we were all given silk programmes as souvenirs.
+      They sang the Belgian, the French and the Russian national anthems, and at
+      last we asked for the British.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very courteously the conductor sent back word to say he was very sorry but
+      the British national anthem was also a German hymn and if he dared play it
+      the people would tear him to pieces. Remembering my tribulations a little
+      way down the river, I quite believed him, so I suggested as an alternative
+      <i>Rule, Britannia</i>, but alas! he had never heard of it. It was a
+      deadlock, and we looked at one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the tall Russian who was the other guest pushed his chair from the
+      table, stood up, and saluting, whistled <i>Rule, Britannia!</i> How the
+      people applauded! And so Britain entered the war in Far Eastern Siberia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We certainly did not go home till morning that day. For that matter, I
+      don't think you are supposed to cross the river at night, not ordinary
+      folk, Customs officials may have special privileges. At any rate I came
+      back to my bunk on the steamer and an anxious little dog just as the day
+      was breaking, and next day I crossed to Sakalin and stayed with the
+      Barentzens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Russians then took so much trouble to keep the Chinese on their own
+      side of the river that the Russian officers and civil servants, much to
+      the chagrin of their wives, were nowhere in the province allowed to have
+      Chinese servants. The fee for a passport had been raised to, I think,
+      twelve roubles, so it was no longer worth a Chinaman's while to get one to
+      hawk a basket of vegetables, and the mines on the Zeya, a tributary of the
+      Amur on the Russian side, had fallen off in their yield because cheap
+      labour was no longer possible. The people who did get passports were the
+      Chinese prostitutes, though a Chinese woman has not a separate identity in
+      China and is not allowed a passport of her own. However, there are ways of
+      getting over that. A man applied for a passport and it was granted him. He
+      handed it over to the woman for a consideration, and on the other side any
+      Chinese document was, as a rule, all one to the Russian official.
+      Remembering my own experience and how I had difficulty in deciding between
+      my passport and my agreement with my muleteers, I could quite believe this
+      story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blagoveschensk is a regular frontier town and, according to Mr Barentzen,
+      is unsafe. On the first occasion that I crossed the river with him I
+      produced a hundred-rouble note. Almost before I had laid it down it was
+      snatched up by the Chinese Commissioner of Customs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo; said he, and he crumpled up the note in his hand and held
+      out for my acceptance a rouble. I tried to explain that not having change,
+      and finding it a little awkward, I thought that this would be a good
+      opportunity to get it, as I felt sure the man at receipt of custom must
+      have plenty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say,&rdquo; said my host sarcastically. &ldquo;I don't want to take away
+      anybody's character, but I'll venture to say there are at least ten men
+      within hail&rdquo;&mdash;there was a crowd round&mdash;&ldquo;who would joyfully cut
+      your throat for ten roubles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He enlarged upon that theme later. We used to sit out on the balcony of
+      his house looking out, not over the river, but over the town of Sakalin,
+      and there used to come in the men from the B.A.T. Factory, a Russian in
+      top-boots who spoke excellent English and a young American named Hyde.
+      They told me tales, well, something like the stories I used to listen to
+      in my childhood's days when we talked about &ldquo;the breaking out of the gold&rdquo;
+       in Australia, tales of men who had washed much gold and then were lured
+      away and murdered for their riches. Certainly they did not consider
+      Blagoveschensk or Sakalin towns in which a woman could safely wander. In
+      fact all the Siberian towns that they knew came under the ban.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But of course mostly we talked about the war and how maddening it was only
+      to get scraps of news through the telegraph. The young American was keen,
+      I remember. I wonder if he really had patience to wait till his country
+      came in. He talked then in the first week of the war of making his way
+      back to Canada and seeing if he could enlist there, for even then we felt
+      sure that the Outer Dominions would want to help the Motherland. And the
+      Germans were round Liège&mdash;would they take it? Association is a
+      curious thing. Whenever I hear of Liège I cannot help thinking, not of the
+      Belgian city, but of a comfortable seat on a balcony with the shadows
+      falling and the lights coming out one by one on the bath-houses that are
+      dotted about a little town on the very outskirts of the Chinese Empire&mdash;the
+      lights of the town. There are the sounds and the smells of the Chinese
+      town mingling with the voices of the talkers and the fragrance of the
+      coffee, and the air is close with the warmth of August. There comes back
+      to me the remembrance of the keen young American who wanted to fight
+      Germany and the young Russian in top-boots who was very much afraid he
+      would only be used to guard German prisoners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sakalin was cosmopolitan, but it had a leaning toward Russia, hence the
+      bath-houses, an idea foreign to Chinese civilisation; and when I got a
+      piece of grit in my eye which refused to come out it was to a Japanese
+      doctor I went, accompanied by my host's Chinese servant, who, having had
+      the trouble stated by me in English, explained it to another man in
+      Chinese, who in his turn told the doctor what was the matter in Russian.
+      Luckily that man of medicine was very deft and I expect he could have
+      managed very well without any explanation at all. I have the greatest
+      respect for the Japanese leech I visited in Sakalin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Sunday we had a big picnic. The Russian Boundary Commissioner came
+      across with his wife and little girls, Mrs Barentzen took her little girl
+      and the Chinese Tao Tai lent us the light of his countenance. He was the
+      feature of the entertainment, for he was a very big man, both literally
+      and socially, and could not move without a large following, so that an
+      escort of mounted police took charge of us. The proper portly Chinaman of
+      whom this retinue was in honour spoke no English, but smiled at me
+      benevolently, and wore a petticoat and a Russian military cap! The picnic
+      was by a little brook about seven miles from the town and I shall always
+      remember it because of the lush grass, waist-high, and the lovely flowers.
+      I had looked at the Siberian flowers from the steamer when they were
+      ungetatable, I had gathered them with joy in Saghalien, and now here they
+      were again just to my hand. In June they told me there were abundant
+      lilies of the valley, and I regretted I had not been there in June. Truly
+      I feel it would be a delight to see lilies of the valley growing wild, but
+      as it was, the flowers were beautiful enough, and there were heaps of
+      them. There were very fine Canterbury bells, a glorious violet flower and
+      magnificent white poppies. Never have I gathered more lovely flowers,
+      never before have I seen them growing wild in such amazing abundance. No
+      one is more truly artistic than the average Chinese, and I think the Tao
+      Tai must have enjoyed himself, though it is against the canons of good
+      taste in China to look about you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently I was asking the chief magistrate's good offices for Buchanan,
+      for he, my treasured Buchanan, was lost. In the Barentzens' house there
+      was, of course, as in all well-regulated Chinese houses run by foreigners,
+      a bathroom attached to every bedroom, and when I wanted a bath the
+      servants filled with warm water the half of a large barrel, which made a
+      very excellent bath-tub. And having bathed myself, I bathed Buchanan,
+      whose white coat got very dirty in the dusty Chinese streets. He ran away
+      downstairs and I lingered for a moment to put on my dress, and when I came
+      down he was gone. High and low I hunted; I went up and down the street
+      calling his name, and I knew he would have answered, he always did, had he
+      been within hearing. All the Customs men were turned out and I went to the
+      Chinese Tao Tai, who promptly put on all the police. But Buchanan was gone
+      for a night and I was in despair. Mr Barentzen's head boy shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Master saying,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;mus' get back that dog.&rdquo; So I realised I was
+      making a fuss, but for the moment I did not care. The Tao Tai gave it as
+      his opinion that he had not been stolen. There were many little dogs like
+      him in the town, said he, no one would steal one, which only shows a
+      Chinese magistrate may not be infallible, for I was sure Buchanan would
+      not stay away from me of his own free will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then at last the servants turned up triumphant, Buchanan, in the arms
+      of the head boy, wild with delight at seeing his mistress again. The
+      police had searched everywhere, but the servants, with their master's
+      injunction in mind and my reward to be earned, had made further inquiries
+      and found that a little boy had been seen taking the dog into a certain
+      house occupied by an official, the man who was responsible for the
+      cleaning of the streets. This was the first intimation I ever had that the
+      Chinese did clean their streets: I had thought that they left that job to
+      the &ldquo;wonks&rdquo; and the scavenger crows. The police made inquiries. No, there
+      was no little dog there. But the servants&mdash;wise Chinese servants&mdash;made
+      friends with the people round, and they said: &ldquo;Watch. There is a dog.&rdquo; So
+      a junior servant was put to watch, and when the gate of the compound was
+      opened he stole in, and there was poor little James Buchanan tied up to a
+      post. That servant seized the dog and fled home in triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The T'ai T'ai (the official's wife), said the people round, had wanted the
+      pretty little dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was so delighted to get my little friend back that I should have been
+      content to leave things there. Not so Mr Barentzen. He sent for that
+      official, and there in his drawing-room he and I interviewed a portly
+      Chinese gentleman in grey petticoats, a long pigtail, a little black silk
+      cap and the tips of the silver shields that encased the long nails of his
+      little fingers just showing beyond his voluminous sleeves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An officious servant,&rdquo; he said. He was extremely sorry the Commissioner
+      of Customs and his friend had been put to so much inconvenience. The
+      servant had already been dismissed. And so we bowed him out, face was
+      saved, and all parties were satisfied. It was very Chinese. And yet we
+      knew, and we knew that he must have known we knew, that it was really his
+      wife who received the little dog that everyone concerned must have
+      realised was valuable and must have been stolen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here in Sakai in I heard about the doings of the only wolves that came
+      into my wanderings. In the little river harbour were many small steamers
+      flying the Russian flag and loading great barrels with the ends painted
+      bright red. These barrels, explained the Customs Commissioner, contained
+      spirits which the Russians were desirous of smuggling into Russian
+      territory. The Chinese had not the least objection to their leaving China
+      after they had paid export duty. They were taken up and down the river and
+      finally landed at some small port whence they were smuggled across. The
+      trade was a very big one. The men engaged in it were known as the wolves
+      of the Amur and were usually Caucasians and Jews. In 1913, the last year
+      of which I have statistics, no less than twenty-five thousand pounds
+      export was paid on these spirits, and in the years before it used to be
+      greater. I wonder whether with the relaxing of discipline consequent on
+      the war and the revolution the receipts for the export have not gone up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wide river was beautiful here, and Blagovesehensk, lying across the
+      water, with its spires and domes, all the outlines softened, standing
+      against the evening sky, might have been some town of pictured Italy. I am
+      glad I have seen it. I dare not expiate on Mr Barentzen's kindness. My
+      drastic critic, drastic and so invaluable, says that I have already
+      overloaded this book with tales of people's kindness, so I can only say I
+      stayed there a week and then took passage on the smaller steamer which was
+      bound up the Amur and the Shilka to Stretensk and the railway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had, however, one regret. I had inadvertently taken my plates and films
+      on which I had all my pictures of the Amur and Saghalien across the
+      Sakalin and I could not take them back again. The Russian rule was very
+      strict. No photographs were allowed. Everything crossing the river must be
+      examined. Now to examine my undeveloped films and plates would be to ruin
+      them. I interviewed a Japanese photographer on the Sakalin side, but he
+      appeared to be a very tyro in the art of developing, and finally very
+      reluctantly I decided to leave them for Mr Barentzen to send home when he
+      got the chance. He did not get that chance till the middle of 1916, and I
+      regret to state that when we came to develop them every single one of them
+      was ruined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The steamer that I embarked on now was considerably smaller, for the river
+      was narrowing. The deck that ran round the cabins was only thirty inches
+      wide and crowded with children; worse, when James Buchanan and I went for
+      our daily promenades we found the way disputed by women, mothers, or
+      nursemaids, I know not whieh, propelling the children who could not walk
+      in wheeled chairs, and they thought Buchanan had been brought there for
+      their special benefit, a view which the gentleman himself did not share.
+      However, he was my only means of communication with them, for they had no
+      English or French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was lucky, for one of the mates, brass-bound and in spotless white,
+      like so many Russians had served in British ships and spoke English very
+      well with a slight Scots accent. With him I used to hold daily
+      conversations and always we discussed the war. But he shook his head over
+      it. It was not possible to get much news at the little wayside places at
+      which we stopped. There were no papers&mdash;the Russian peasant under the
+      beneficent rule of the Tsar was not encouraged to learn to read&mdash;and
+      for his part he, the mate, put no faith in the telegrams. All would be
+      well, of course, but we must wait till we came to some large and
+      influential place for news upon which we could rely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that large and influential place was long in coming, in fact I may say
+      it never materialised while I was on the river. There are at least eleven
+      towns marked on the way between Blagoveschensk and Stretensk, but even the
+      town at the junction where the Aigun and the Shilka merge into the Amur is
+      but a tiny frontier village, and the rest as I know the river banks are
+      only a few log huts inhabited by peasants who apparently keep guard over
+      and supply the stacks of wood needed by the steamers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a lovely river now going north, north and then west, or rather we
+      went north, the river flowed the other way, it was narrower and wound
+      between wooded hills and it was very lonely. There were occasional, very
+      occasional, little settlements, on the Chinese side I do not remember even
+      a hut, though it was a lovely green land and the river, clear as crystal,
+      reflected on its breast the trees and rocks among which we made our way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once on the Russian side we landed from a boat a woman with two little
+      children and innumerable bundles. They had been down, I suppose, to visit
+      the centre of civilisation at Blagoveschensk and now were coming home. In
+      the dusk of the evening we left her there looking down thoughtfully at her
+      encumbrances, not a living creature in sight, not a sign of man's
+      handiwork anywhere. I hoped there were no tigers about, but she has always
+      lived in my memory as an unfinished story. I suppose we all of us have
+      those unfinished stories in our lives, not stories left unfinished because
+      they are so long drawn out we could not possibly wait for developments,
+      but stories that must finish suddenly, only we are withdrawn. Once I
+      looked from a railway carriage window in the Midlands and I saw a bull
+      chasing a woman; she was running, screaming for all she was worth, for a
+      fence, but whether she reached it or not I have no means of knowing.
+      Another time I saw also from a railway carriage window two men, mother
+      naked, chasing each other across the greensward and left them there
+      because the train went on. Of course I have often enough seen men without
+      clothes in the tropics, but in the heart of England they are out of the
+      picture and want explaining. That explanation I shall never get. Nor is it
+      likely I shall ever know whether that unknown woman and her little
+      children ever reached their unknown home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were luxuriously fed upon that little steamer. The Russian tea with
+      lemon and the bread and butter were delicious, and we had plenty of cream,
+      though gone was the red caviare that farther east had been so common. But
+      I was tired and at last feeling lonely. I began to count the days till I
+      should reach home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Amur the weather had been gorgeous, but when we entered the Shilka
+      we were north of 53° again and well into the mountains, and the next
+      morning I awoke to a grey day. It rained and it rained, not tropical rain,
+      but soft, penetrating rain; the fir-clad hills on either side were veiled
+      in a silvery mist. The river wound so that as we looked ahead we seemed to
+      be sailing straight into the hills. The way looked blocked with hills,
+      sometimes all mist-covered, sometimes with the green showing alluringly
+      through the mist, and occasionally, when the mist lifted and the sun came
+      out, in all the gullies would linger little grey cloudlets, as if caught
+      before they could get away and waiting there screened by the hills till
+      the mist should fall again. Occasionally there were lonely houses, still
+      more occasionally little settlements of log huts with painted windows
+      hermetically sealed, and once or twice a field of corn ripe for the
+      harvest but drowned by the persistent rain. But the air was soft and
+      delicious, divine; only in the cabins on board the crowded steamer was it
+      pestilential. The mate told me how, six weeks before, on his last trip up,
+      an Englishman had come selling reapers and binders, and he thought that
+      now I had made my appearance the English were rather crowding the Amur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes when we stopped the passengers went ashore and went berrying,
+      returning with great branches laden with fruit, and I and Buchanan too
+      walked a little way, keeping the steamer 'well in sight, and rejoicing in
+      the flowers and the green and the rich, fresh smell of moist earth. I do
+      not know that ever in my life do I remember enjoying rain so much. Of
+      course in my youth in Australia I had always welcomed the life-giving
+      rain, but thirteen years in England, where I yearned for the sunshine, had
+      somehow dimmed those memories, and now once again the rain on the river
+      brought me joy. The mist was a thing of beauty, and when a ray of sunshine
+      found its way into a green, mist-veiled valley, illuminating its lovely
+      loneliness, then indeed I knew that the earth was the Lord's and the
+      fullness thereof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes we passed rafts upon the river. They were logs bound together in
+      great parallelograms and worked with twelve long sweeps fixed at each end.
+      Twelve men at least went to each raft, and there were small houses built
+      of grass and canvas and wood. They were taking the wood down to
+      Nikolayeusk to be shipped to Shanghai and other parts of the world for
+      furniture, for these great forests of birch and elm and fir and oak must
+      be a mine of wealth to their owners. I do not know whether the wood is cut
+      on any system, and whether the presence of these great rafts had anything
+      to do with the many dead trees I saw in the forests, their white stems
+      standing up ghostlike against the green hill-side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have no record of these lovely places. My camera was locked away now in
+      my suit-case, for it was war, and Russia, rightly, would allow no
+      photographs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seven days after we left Blagoveschensk we reached Stretensk and I came in
+      contact for the first time with the World's War.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV&mdash;MOBILISING IN EASTERN SIBERIA
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t Stretensk I
+      awakened to the fact that I was actually in Siberia, nay, that I had
+      travelled over about two thousand miles of Siberia, that dark and gloomy
+      land across which&mdash;I believed in my youth&mdash;tramped long lines of
+      prisoners in chains, sometimes amidst the snow and ice of a bitter winter,
+      sometimes with the fierce sun beating down upon them, but always hopeless,
+      always hungry, weary, heartbroken, a sacrifice to the desire for political
+      liberty that was implanted in the hearts of an enslaved people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is an extraordinary thing that, though for many years I had believed
+      Saghalien was a terrible island, a sort of inferno for political
+      prisoners, something like Van Diemen's Land used to be in the old convict
+      days one hundred and ten years ago, only that in the Asiatic island the
+      conditions were still more cruel and it was hopeless to think of escaping,
+      while I was actually in that beautiful island I was so taken up with its
+      charm, it was so extremely unlike the place of which I had a picture in my
+      mind's eye, that I hardly connected the two. All up the Amur river was a
+      new land, a land crying out for pioneers, pastoralists and farmers, so
+      that the thought that was uppermost in my mind was of the contrast between
+      it and the old land of China, where I had spent so long a time; but at
+      Stretensk I suddenly remembered this was Siberia, the very heart of
+      Siberia, where men had suffered unutterable things, might still be so
+      suffering for all I knew, and I stepped off the steamer and prepared to
+      explore, with a feeling that at any moment I might come across the heavy
+      logs that made up the walls of a prison, might see the armed sentries,
+      clad to the eyes in furs, who tramped amidst the snow. But this was August
+      and it was fiercely hot, so the snow and the sentries clad in furs were
+      ruled out, and presently as Buchanan and I walked about the town even the
+      lonely prison built of logs had to go too. There may have been a prison,
+      probably there was, but it did not dominate the picture. Not here should I
+      find the Siberia I had been familiar with from my youth up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stretensk is like all other Siberian towns that I have seen. The houses
+      are mostly of one storey and of wood, of logs; the streets are wide and
+      straight, cutting each other at right angles, and the whole is flung out
+      upon the plain; it is really, I think, rather high among the mountains,
+      but you do not get the sensation of hills as you do from the steamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rain had cleared away and it was very hot, though we had started out
+      very early because I was determined to go west if possible that very
+      afternoon; We went gingerly because the dangers of Siberian towns for one
+      who looked fairly prosperous had been impressed upon me at Blagoveschensk,
+      and I hesitated about going far from the steamer, where the mate could
+      speak English. Still we went. I was not going to miss the Siberia of my
+      dreams if I could help it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw something more wonderful than the Siberia of my dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In consequence of the ceaseless rain the roads between the log-houses with
+      their painted windows were knee-deep in mud, a quagmire that looked
+      impassable. In the air was the sound of martial music, and up and down in
+      what would have been reckless fashion but for the restraining glue-like
+      mud galloped officers and their orderlies. It was the war, the first I had
+      seen of it. The war was taking the place of the political exiles, and
+      instead of seeing Siberia as a background for the exiles as I had dreamed
+      of it for so many years, I saw it busy with preparations for war. The
+      roads were like sloughs out of which it would have been impossible to get
+      had I ever ventured in. Naturally I did not venture, but took all sorts of
+      long rounds to get to the places I wanted to reach. It is not a bad way of
+      seeing a town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heavily built houses, built to defy the Siberian winter, might have
+      come out of Nikolayeusk or Kharbarosvk, and though the sun poured down out
+      of a cloudless sky, and I was gasping in a thin Shantung silk, they were
+      hermetically sealed, and the cotton wool between the double windows was
+      decorated with the usual gay ribbons. I dare say they were cool enough
+      inside, but they must have been intolerably stuffy. The sidewalks too had
+      dried quickly in the fierce sunshine. They were the usual Siberian
+      sidewalks, with long lines of planks like flooring. Had they ever been
+      trodden, I wonder, by the forced emigrant looking with hopeless longing
+      back to the West. Finally we wandered into the gardens, where I doubt not,
+      judging by the little tables and many seats, there was the usual gay
+      throng at night, but now early in the morning everything looked
+      dishevelled, and I could not find anyone to supply me with the cool drink
+      of which I stood so badly in need, and at last we made our way back to the
+      steamer, where the mate, having got over the struggle of arrival&mdash;for
+      this was the farthest the steamer went&mdash;kindly found time enough to
+      give himself to my affairs. I wanted a droshky to take me to the train,
+      and as nowhere about had I seen any signs of a railway station I wanted to
+      know where it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mate laughed and pointed far away down the river on the other side. I
+      really ought to have known my Siberia better by now. Railways are not
+      constructed for the convenience of the townsfolk. There was nothing else
+      for it. I had to get there somehow, and as the train left somewhere
+      between five and six, about noon, with the mate's assistance, I engaged a
+      droshky. The carriages that are doing a last stage in this country are not
+      quite so elderly here as they are in Saghalien, but that is not saying
+      much for them. The one the mate engaged for me had a sturdy little
+      ungroomed horse in the shafts and another running in a trace alongside. On
+      the seat was packed all my baggage, two small suit-cases and a large
+      canvas sack into which I dumped rugs, cushions and all odds and ends,
+      including my precious kettles, and the rough little unkempt horses towed
+      us down through the sea of mud to the ferry, and then I saw the scene had
+      indeed shifted. It was not long lines of exiles bearing chains I met, that
+      was all in the past, at least for an outsider like me, but here in the
+      heart of Asia Russia in her might was collecting her forces for a spring.
+      The great flat ferry was crossing and recrossing, and down the swamp that
+      courtesy called a road came endless streams of square khaki-coloured
+      carts, driven by men in flat caps and belted khaki blouses, big fair men,
+      often giants with red, sun-tanned faces and lint-white hair, men who
+      shouted and laughed and sang and threw up their caps, who were sober as
+      judges and yet were wild with excitement; they were going to the war. I
+      could not understand one word they said, but there is no mistaking
+      gladness, and these men were delighted with their lot. I wondered was it a
+      case of the prisoner freed or was it that life under the old regime in a
+      Russian village was dull to monotony and to these recruits was coming the
+      chance of their lifetime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some will never come east again, never whether in love or hate will they
+      see the steppes and the flowers and the golden sunshine and the snow of
+      Siberia, they have left their bones on those battle-fields; but some, I
+      hope, will live to see the regeneration of Russia, when every man shall
+      have a chance of freedom and happiness. I suppose this revolution was in
+      the air as cart after cart drove on to the ferry and the men yelled and
+      shouted in their excitement. A small company of men who were going east
+      looked at them tolerantly&mdash;I'm sure it was tolerantly&mdash;and then
+      they too caught the infection and yelled in chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I watched it all with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then half-an-hour passed and still they came; an hour, and I grew a little
+      worried, for they were still pouring over. Two hours&mdash;I comforted
+      myself, the train did not start till late in the afternoon&mdash;three
+      horns, and there was no cessation in the stream. And of course I could
+      make no one understand. It looked as if I might wait here all night. At
+      last a man who was manifestly an officer came galloping along and him I
+      addressed in French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible to cross on the ferry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was very courteous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not possible to cross, Madame. It is not possible. The soldiers
+      come first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I took another look at the good-humoured, strapping, fair-haired soldiers
+      in khaki, with their khaki-coloured carts. The ferry crossing was laden
+      with them, hundreds of others were waiting, among them numbers of country
+      people. They had bundles and laden baskets and looked people who had
+      shopped and wanted to go home again. Were these exiles? I did not know.
+      They looked simple peasants. Whoever they were, there did not seem much
+      chance for them or me, and I said the one Russian word I knew, &ldquo;steamer,&rdquo;
+       and indicated that I wanted to go back there. Much as I wanted to go home,
+      tired as I was of travelling, I decided I would postpone my railway
+      journey for a day and take advantage of that comfortable Russian custom
+      that allows you to live on a steamer for two days while she is in port.
+      The <i>ishvornik</i> nodded, back we went helter-skelter to the wharf and&mdash;the
+      steamer was gone!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have had some bad moments in my life, but that one stands out still.
+      Why, I hardly know, for sitting here in my garden it does not seem a very
+      terrible thing. I had plenty of money in my pocket and there were hotels
+      in the town. But no! more than ever, safe here in Kent, do I dread a
+      Siberian hotel! Then I was distinctly afraid. I might so easily have
+      disappeared and no one would have asked questions for months to come. I
+      tried to tell the boy I wanted to go to one of those dreaded hotels&mdash;I
+      felt I would have to risk it, for I certainly could not spend the night in
+      a droshky&mdash;and I could not make him understand. Perhaps, as in
+      Saghalien, there were no hotels to accommodate a woman of my class, or
+      perhaps, as is most probable, they were all full of soldiers, anyhow he
+      only looked at me blankly, and Buchanan and I looked at each other.
+      Buchanan anyhow had no fears. He was quite sure I could take care of him.
+      I looked at the boy again and then, as if he had suddenly had an
+      inspiration, he drove me back to the place opposite the ferry whence we
+      had come. The soldiers were there still, crowds and crowds of them, with
+      their little carts and horses, and they were amusing themselves by
+      stealing each other's fodder; the ferry had come back, but there were no
+      soldiers on it, only the country people were crowding down. I had been
+      forbidden to go upon it, and never should I have dreamt of disobeying
+      orders, but my driver had different views. He waited till no officer was
+      looking, seized my baggage and flung it down on the great ferry right in
+      front of the military stores, beside the refreshment stall where they were
+      selling sausages and bread in round rings such as peasants eat, and tea
+      and lemonade. I had not expected to find so commonplace a thing on a river
+      in Siberia. Now I had sat in that dilapidated carriage for over four hours
+      and I was weary to death, also I could not afford to be parted from my
+      luggage, so I put Buchanan under my arm&mdash;it was too muddy for him to
+      walk&mdash;and followed as fast as I could. My good angel prompted me to
+      pay that driver well. I paid him twice what the mate had said it ought to
+      cost me if I waited half-a-day, and never have I laid out money to better
+      advantage. He turned to a big man who was standing by, a man in sea-boots,
+      a red belted blouse and the tall black Astrakhan cap that I have always
+      associated in my own mind 'with Circassians, and spoke to him, saying
+      &ldquo;Anglisky.&rdquo; Evidently he said it might be worth his while to look after
+      me. I don't know whether this gentleman was a Caucasian, one of the
+      &ldquo;wolves of the Amur,&rdquo; but whoever he was, he was a very hefty and capable
+      individual, with a very clear idea of what a foreign lady ought to do, and
+      he promptly constituted himself my guardian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, the world, take it on the whole, is a very kindly, honest
+      place. So many times have I been stranded when I might quite easily have
+      been stripped of everything, and always some good Samaritan has come to my
+      aid, and the reward, though I did my best, has never been commensurate
+      with the services rendered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ferry across the Shilka at Stretensk is a great affair, like a young
+      paddock afloat, and beside the horses and carts upon it were a number of
+      country people with their bundles. I sat there a little uncomfortably
+      because I did not know what would happen, only I was determined not to be
+      parted from my baggage. Presently the huge float drifted off, amidst wild
+      shouts and yells. When I was there, a great deal in Russia was done to the
+      accompaniment of much shouting, and I rather fancy that this ferry was
+      going off on an unauthorised jaunt of its own. The Shilka is a broad river
+      here, a fortnight's steamer journey from its mouth, but the ferry came to
+      a full stop in the middle of the stream and a motor boat which did not
+      look as if it could hold half the people came alongside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Skurry! Skurry!&rdquo; was the cry, and the people began leaping overboard into
+      the boat. The military were getting rid summarily of their civilian crowd.
+      In a few seconds that boat was packed to the gunwales and I was looking
+      over at it. I had Buchanan under my arm; he was always a good little dog
+      at critical moments, understanding it was his part to keep quiet and give
+      as little trouble as possible. In my other hand I had my despatch-case,
+      and, being anything but acrobatic by temperament, I felt it was hopeless
+      to think of getting into it. If the penalty for not doing so had been
+      death, I do not think I could have managed it. However, I didn't have a
+      say in the matter. The big Russian in the red blouse picked me up and
+      dropped me, little dog, box and all, into the boat, right on top of the
+      people already there. First I was on top, and then, still hanging on to my
+      little dog, I slipped down a little, but my feet found no foothold; I was
+      wedged between the screaming people. After me, with my luggage on his
+      shoulder, came my guardian, and he somehow seemed to find a very
+      precarious foothold on the gunwale, and he made me understand he wanted
+      two roubles for our fares. If he had asked for ten he would have got it,
+      but how I managed to get at my money to this day I do not know. The boat
+      rocked and swayed in a most alarming manner, and I thought to myself,
+      Well, we are on top now, but presently the boat will upset and then we
+      shall certainly be underneath. I gathered that the passengers were
+      disputing with the boatman as to the price to be paid for the passage
+      across, though this was unwise, for the ferry was threatening momentarily
+      to crush us against the rocky bank. He was asking sixty kopecks&mdash;a
+      little over a shilling&mdash;and with one voice they declared that forty
+      was enough. Considering the crowd, forty I should have thought would have
+      paid him excellently. That I had given my guardian more did not trouble
+      me, because any extra he earned was more than justified, for one thing was
+      certain, I could never have tackled the job by myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as I was growing desperate and Buchanan began to mention that he was
+      on the verge of suffocation the difficulty of the fares was settled and we
+      made for the bank. But we did not go to the usual landing-stage; that, I
+      presume, was forbidden as sacred to the soldiers, and we drew up against a
+      steep, high bank faced with granite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Skurry! Skurry!&rdquo; And more than ever was haste necessary, for it looked as
+      if the great ferry would certainly crush us. The people began scrambling
+      up. But I was helpless. Whatever happened, I knew I could never climb that
+      wall. I could only clutch my little dog and await events. My guardian was
+      quite equal to the situation. The boat had cleared a little and there was
+      room to move, and, dropping the baggage, he picked me up like a baby and
+      tossed me, dog and all, up on to the bank above. Whether that boat got
+      clear away from the ferry I do not know. When I visited the place next
+      morning there were no remains, so I presume she did, but at the time I was
+      giving all my attention to catching a train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My guardian engaged a boy to carry the lighter baggage, and shouldering
+      the rest himself, he took me by the arm and fairly raeed me up the steep
+      incline to the railway station that was a seething mass of khaki-clad men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Billet! Billet!&rdquo; said he, raping the sweat from his streaming face and
+      making a way for me among the thronging recruits. There was a train coming
+      in and he evidently intended I should catch it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a crowd it was, and in the railway station confusion was worse
+      confounded. It was packed with people&mdash;people of the poorer class&mdash;and
+      with soldiers, and everyone was giving his opinion of things in general at
+      the top of his voice. My stalwart guardian elbowed a way to the
+      pigeon-hole, still crying, &ldquo;Billet! Billet!&rdquo; and I, seeing I wanted a
+      ticket to Petrograd, produced a hundred-rouble note. The man inside pushed
+      it away with contumely and declined it in various unknown tongues. I
+      offered it again, and again it was thrust rudely aside, my guardian
+      becoming vehement in his protests, though what he said I have not the
+      faintest idea. I offered it a third time, then a man standing beside me
+      whisked it away and whisked me away too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, are you mad?&rdquo; he asked, as Mr Barentzen had asked over a week
+      before, but he spoke in French, very Russian French. And then he proceeded
+      to explain volubly that all around were thieves, robbers and assassins&mdash;oh!
+      the land of suffering exiles&mdash;the mobilisation had called them up,
+      and any one of them would cut my throat for a good deal less than a
+      ten-pound note. And he promptly shoved the offending cash in his pocket.
+      It was the most high-handed proceeding I have ever taken part in, and I
+      looked at him in astonishment. He was a man in a green uniform, wearing a
+      military cap with pipings of white and magenta, and the white and magenta
+      were repeated on the coat and trousers. On the whole, the effect was
+      reassuring. A gentleman so attired was really too conspicuous to be
+      engaged in any very nefarious occupation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He proceeded to explain that by that train I could not go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was reserved for the troops. They were turning out the people already
+      in it. This in a measure explained the bedlam in the station. The people
+      who did not want to be landed here and the people who wanted to get away
+      were comparing notes, and there were so many of them they had to do it at
+      the top of their voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When does the next train go?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My new friend looked dubious. &ldquo;Possibly to-morrow night,&rdquo; said he. That
+      was cheering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where is there a hotel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pointed across the river to Stretensk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are there none this side?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Madame, not one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I debated. Cross that river again after all it had cost me to get here I
+      could not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where can I stay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked round as if he were offering palatial quarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Madame, here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the railway station; there was nothing else for it; and in that railway
+      station I waited till the train came in the following evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That little matter settled, I turned to reward my first friend for his
+      efforts on my behalf, and I felt five roubles was little enough. My new
+      friend was very scornful, a rouble was ample, he considered. He had my
+      ten-pound note in his pocket, and I am afraid I was very conscious that he
+      had not yet proved himself, whereas the other man had done me yeoman's
+      service, and never have I parted with ten shillings with more
+      satisfaction. They were certainly earned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After, I set myself to make the best of the situation. The station was
+      crowded with all sorts and conditions of people, and a forlorn crowd they
+      looked, and curious was the flotsam and jetsam that were their belongings.
+      Of course there was the usual travellers' baggage, but there were other
+      things too I did not expect to come across in a railway station in
+      Siberia. There was a sewing-machine; there was the trumpet part of a
+      gramophone; there was the back of a piano with all the wires showing;
+      there was a dressmaker's stand, the stuffed form of a woman, looking
+      forlorn and out of place among the bundles of the soldiers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the people accepted it as all in the day's work, watched the soldiers
+      getting into the carriages from which they were debarred, and waved their
+      hands and cheered them, though the first train that started for anywhere
+      did not leave till one-fifteen a.m. next morning. They were content that
+      the soldiers should be served first. They settled themselves in little
+      companies on the open platform, in the refreshment-room, in the
+      waiting-rooms, fathers, mothers, children and dogs, and they solaced
+      themselves with kettles of tea, black bread and sausages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all so different from what I had expected, so very different, but
+      the first effect was to bring home to me forcibly the fact that there was
+      a great struggle going on in the West, and Eastern Siberia was being drawn
+      into the whirlpool, sending her best, whether they were the exiles of my
+      dreams or the thieves and robbers my newest friend had called them, to
+      help in the struggle! To wait a night and day in a railway station was
+      surely a little sacrifice to what some must make. How cheerfully and
+      patiently that Siberian crowd waited! There were no complaints, no moans,
+      only here and there a woman buried her head in her shawl and wept for her
+      nearest and dearest, gone to the war, gone out into the unknown, and she
+      might never see him again, might never even know what became of him. Truly
+      &ldquo;They also serve who only stand and wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I went into the refreshment-room to get some food, and had soup with sour
+      cream in it, and ate chicken and bread and butter and cucumber and drank
+      <i>kvass</i> as a change from the eternal tea. I watched the people on the
+      platform and as the shades of night fell began to wonder where I should
+      sleep. I would have chosen the platform, but it looked as if it might
+      rain, so I went into the ladies' waiting-room, dragged a seat across the
+      open window, and spread out my rugs and cushions and established myself
+      there. I wanted to have first right to that window, for the night up in
+      the hills here was chilly and I felt sure somebody would come in and want
+      to shut it. My intuitions were correct. Buchanan and I kept that open
+      window against a crowd. Everybody who came in&mdash;and the room was soon
+      packed&mdash;wanted to shut it. They stretched over me and I arose from my
+      slumbers and protested. For, in addition to a crowd, the sanitary
+      arrangements were abominable, and what the atmosphere would have been like
+      with the window shut I tremble to think. I remembered the tales of the
+      pestilential resthouses into which the travelling exiles had been thrust,
+      and I was thankful for that window, thankful too that it was summer-time,
+      for in winter I suppose we would have had to shut it. At last one woman
+      pulled at my rugs and said&mdash;though I could not understand her
+      language her meaning was plain enough&mdash;that it was all very well for
+      me, I had plenty of rugs, it was they who had nothing. It was a fair
+      complaint, so with many qualms I shared my rugs and the summer night
+      slowly wore to morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And morning brought its own difficulties. Russian washing arrangements to
+      me are always difficult. I had met them first in Kharbin in the house of
+      Mr Poland. I wrestled with the same thing in the house of the Chief of
+      Police in Saghalien, and I met it in an aggravated form here in the
+      railway station waiting-room. A Russian basin has not a plug&mdash;it is
+      supposed to be cleaner to wash in running water&mdash;and the tap is a
+      twirly affair with two spouts, and on pressing a little lever water gushes
+      out of both and, theoretically, you may direct it where you please.
+      Practically I found that while I was directing one stream of water down on
+      to my hands, the other hit me in the eye or the ear, and when I got that
+      right the first took advantage of inattention and deluged me round the
+      waist. It may be my inexperience, but I do not like Russian basins. It was
+      running water with a vengeance, it all ran away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, I did the best I could, and after, as my face was a little rough
+      and sore from the hot sun of the day before, I took out a jar of hazeline
+      cream and began to rub it on my cheeks. This proceeding aroused intense
+      interest in the women around. What they imagined the cream was for I don't
+      know, but one and all they came and begged some, and as long as that pot
+      held out every woman within range had hazeline cream daubed on her
+      weather-beaten cheeks, and they omitted to rub it off, apparently
+      considering it ornamental. However, hazeline cream is a pleasant
+      preparation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having dressed, Buchanan and I had the long day before us, and I did not
+      dare leave the railway station to explore because I was uneasy about my
+      luggage. I had had it put in the corner of the refreshment-room and as far
+      as I could see no one was responsible for it, and as people were coming
+      and going the livelong day I felt bound to keep an eye upon it. I also
+      awaited with a good deal of interest the gentleman with the variegated
+      uniform and my ten-pound note. He came at last, and explained in French
+      that he had got the change but he could not give it to me till the train
+      came in because of the thieves and robbers, as if he would insist upon
+      tearing the veil of romance I had mapped round Siberia. And God forgive me
+      that I doubted the honesty of a very kindly, courteous gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a long, long day because there was really nothing to do save to
+      walk about for Buchanan's benefit, and I diversified things by taking odd
+      meals in the refreshment-room whenever I felt I really must do something.
+      But I was very tired. I began to feel I had been travelling too long, and
+      I really think if it had not been for Buchanan's sympathy I should have
+      wept. No one seemed at all certain when the next train west might be
+      expected, opinions, judging by fingers pointing at the clock, varying
+      between two o'clock in the afternoon and three o'clock next morning.
+      However, as the evening shadows were beginning to fall a train did come
+      in, and my friend in uniform, suddenly appearing, declared it was the
+      western train. Taking me by the hand, he led me into a carriage and,
+      shutting the door and drawing down the blinds, placed in my hands change
+      for my ten-pound note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guard your purse, Madame,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;guard your purse. There are thieves
+      and robbers everywhere!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So all the way across Siberia had I been warned of the unsafe condition of
+      the country. At Kharbin, at Nikolayeusk, at Blagoveschensk men whose good
+      faith I could not doubt assured me that a ten-pound note and helplessness
+      was quite likely to spell a sudden and ignominious end to my career, and
+      this was in the days when no one doubted the power of the Tsar, a bitter
+      commentary surely on an autocracy. What the condition of Siberia must be
+      now, with rival factions fighting up and down the land, and released
+      German prisoners throwing the weight of their strength in with the
+      Bolshevists, I tremble to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he made sure I had carefully hidden my money and thoroughly realised
+      the gravity of the situation, my friend offered to get my ticket, a
+      second-class ticket, he suggested. I demurred. I am not rich and am not
+      above saving my pennies, but a first-class ticket was so cheap, and
+      ensured so much more privacy, that a second-class was an economy I did not
+      feel inclined to make. He pointed round the carriage in which we were
+      seated. Was this not good enough for anyone? It was. I had to admit it,
+      and the argument was clinched by the fact that there was not a first-class
+      carriage on the train. The ticket only cost about five pounds and another
+      pound bought a ticket for Buchanan. We got in&mdash;my friend in need got
+      in with me, that misjudged friend; it seemed he was the stationmaster at a
+      little place a little way down the line&mdash;and we were fairly off on
+      our road to the West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV&mdash;ON A RUSSIAN MILITARY TRAIN
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was in the train
+      at last, fairly on my way home, and I was glad. But I wasn't glad for very
+      long. I began to wish myself back in the railway station at Stretensk,
+      where at least I had fresh air. At first I had the window open and a
+      corner seat. There are only two people on a seat in a Russian
+      long-distance train, because when night falls they let down the seat
+      above, which makes a bunk for the second person. But I was second class
+      and my compartment opened without a door into the other compartments in
+      the carriage, also two more bunks appeared crossways, and they were all
+      filled with people. We were four women, two men who smoked, a baby who
+      cried, and my little dog. I spread out my rugs and cushions, and when I
+      wanted the window open the majority were against me. Not only was the
+      window shut, but every ventilating arrangement was tightly closed also,
+      and presently the atmosphere was pestilential. I grew desperate. I
+      wandered out of the carriage and got on to the platform at the end, where
+      the cold wind&mdash;for all it was August&mdash;cut me like a knife. The
+      people objected to that cold wind coming in, and the next time I wandered
+      out for a breath of fresh air I found the door barred and no prayers of
+      mine would open it. In that carriage the people were packed like sardines,
+      but though I was three-quarters suffocated no one else seemed at all the
+      worse. I couldn't have looked at breakfast next morning, but the rest of
+      the company preened themselves and fed cheerfully from the baskets they
+      carried. Then at last I found a student going to a Western Siberian
+      university who spoke a little French and through him I told the
+      authorities that if I could not be transferred to a first-class carriage I
+      was to be left behind at the next station. I had spent a night in a
+      station and I knew all about it; it wasn't nice, but it was infinitely
+      preferable to a night in a crowded second-class carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a little while the train master came and with the aid of the student
+      informed me that there would be a first-class carriage a little farther on
+      and if there was room I should go in it, also we would know in an hour or
+      so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I bore up, and at a little town in the hills I was taken to a
+      first-class compartment. There were three&mdash;that is, six bunks&mdash;making
+      up half of a second-class carriage, and they were most luxurious, with
+      mirrors and washing arrangements complete. The one I entered was already
+      occupied by a very stout woman who, though we did not know any tongue in
+      common, made me understand she was going to a place we would reach next
+      morning for an operation, and she apologised&mdash;most unnecessarily but
+      most courteously&mdash;for making me take the top bunk. She had a big
+      Irish setter with her whom she called &ldquo;Box&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Anglisky,&rdquo; as she said&mdash;and
+      &ldquo;Box&rdquo; was by no means as courteous and friendly as his mistress, and not
+      only objected to Buchanan's presence but said so in no measured terms. I
+      had to keep my little dog up on the top bunk all the time, where he peered
+      over and whimpered protestingly at intervals. There was one drawback, and
+      so kind and hospitable was my stable companion that I hardly liked to
+      mention it, but the atmosphere in that compartment you could have cut with
+      a knife. Wildly I endeavoured to open the windows, and she looked at me in
+      astonishment. But I was so vehement that the student was once more brought
+      along to interpret, and then everybody took a turn at trying to open that
+      window. I must say I think it was exceedingly kind and hospitable of them,
+      for these people certainly shrank from the dangers of a draught quite as
+      much as I did from the stuffiness of a shut window. But it was all to no
+      purpose. That window had evidently never been opened since the carriage
+      was made and it held on gallantly to the position it had taken up. They
+      consulted together, and at length the student turned to me:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Calm yourself, Madame, calm yourself; a man will come with an
+      instrument.&rdquo; And three stations farther down the line a man did appear
+      with an instrument and opened that window, and I drew in deep breaths of
+      exceedingly dusty fresh air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady in possession and I shared our breakfast. She made the tea, and
+      she also cleaned out the kettle by the simple process of emptying the tea
+      leaves into the wash-hand basin. That, as far as I saw, was the only use
+      she made of the excellent washing arrangements supplied by the railway.
+      But it is not for me to carp, she was so kind, and bravely stood dusty
+      wind blowing through the compartment all night just because I did not like
+      stuffiness. And when she was gone, O luxury! Buchanan and I had the
+      carriage to ourselves all the way to Irkutsk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this was Siberia. We were going West, slowly it is true, but with
+      wonderful swiftness I felt when I remembered&mdash;and how should I not
+      remember every moment of the time?&mdash;that this was the great and
+      sorrowful road along which the exiles used to march, that the summer sun
+      would scorch them, these great plains would be snow-covered and the
+      biting, bitter wind would freeze them long before they reached their
+      destination. I looked ahead into the West longingly; but I was going
+      there, would be there in less than a fortnight at the most, while their
+      reluctant feet had taken them slowly, the days stretched into weeks, the
+      weeks into months, and they were still tramping east into an exile that
+      for all they knew would be lifelong. Ah! but this road must have been
+      watered with blood and tears. Every river, whether they were ferried over
+      it or went across on the ice, must have seemed an added barrier to the man
+      or woman thinking of escape; every forest would mean for them either
+      shelter or danger, possibly both, for I had not forgotten the tigers of
+      the Amur and the bears and wolves that are farther west. And yet the
+      steppes, those hopeless plains, must have afforded still less chance of
+      escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! my early ideas were right after all. Nature was jailer enough here in
+      Siberia. Men did escape, we know, but many more must have perished in the
+      attempt, and many, many must have resigned themselves to their bitter
+      fate, for surely all the forces of earth and air and sky had ranged
+      themselves on the side of the Tsar. This beautiful country, and men had
+      marched along it in chains!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Chita, greatly to my surprise, my <i>sotnik</i> of Cossacks joined the
+      train, and we greeted eaeh other as old friends. Indeed I was pleased to
+      see his smiling face again, and Buchanan benefited largely, for many a
+      time when I was not able to take him out for a little run our friend came
+      along and did it for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The platforms at Siberian stations are short and this troop train, packed
+      with soldiers, was long, so that many a time our carriage never drew up at
+      the platform at all. This meant that the carriage was usually five feet
+      from the ground, and often more. I am a little woman and five feet was all
+      I could manage, when it was more it was beyond me. Of course I could have
+      dropped down, but it would have been impossible to haul myself up again,
+      to say nothing of getting Buchanan on board. A Russian post train&mdash;and
+      this troop train was managed to all intents and purposes as a post train&mdash;stops
+      at stations along the line so that the passengers may get food, and five
+      minutes before it starts it rings a &ldquo;Make ready&rdquo; bell one minute before it
+      rings a second bell, &ldquo;Take your seats,&rdquo; and with a third bell off the
+      train goes. And it would have gone inexorably even though I, having
+      climbed down, had been unable to climb up again. Deeply grateful then were
+      Buehanan and I to the <i>sotnik</i> of Cossacks, who recognised our
+      limitations and never forgot us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I liked these Russian post trains far better than the train <i>de luxe</i>,
+      with its crowd and its comforts and its cosmopolitan atmosphere. A Russian
+      post train in those days had an atmosphere of its own. It was also much
+      cheaper. From Stretensk to Petrograd, including Buehanan, the cost was a
+      little over nine pounds for the tickets, and I bought my food by the way.
+      It was excellent and very cheap. All the things I had bought in Kharbin,
+      especially the kettles, came into use once more. The moment the train
+      stopped out tumbled the soldiers, crowds and crowds of them, and raced for
+      the provision stalls and for the large boilers full of water that are a
+      feature of every Russian station on the overland line. These boilers are
+      always enclosed in a building just outside the railway station, and the
+      spouts for the boiling water, two, three and sometimes four in a row, come
+      out through the walls. Beside every spout is an iron handle which, being
+      pulled, brings the boiling water gushing out. Russia even in those days
+      before the revolution struck me as strangely democratic, for the soldiers,
+      the non-commissioned officers, the officers and everyone else on the train
+      mingled in the struggle for hot water. I could never have got mine filled,
+      but my Cossack friend always remembered me and if he did not come himself
+      sent someone to get my kettles. Indeed everyone vied in being kind to the
+      Englishwoman, to show, I think, their good will to the only representative
+      of the Allied nation on the train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at breakfast-time one warm morning I first made the acquaintance of
+      &ldquo;that very great officer,&rdquo; as the others called him, the captain of the <i>Askold</i>.
+      He was in full naval uniform, and at that time I was not accustomed to
+      seeing naval officers in uniform outside their ships, and he was racing
+      along the platform, a little teapot in one hand, intent on filling it with
+      hot water to make coffee. He was not ashamed to pause and come to the
+      assistance of a foreigner whom he considered the peasants were shamefully
+      overcharging. They actually wanted her to pay a farthing a piece for their
+      largest cucumbers! He spoke French and so we were able to communicate, and
+      he was kind enough to take an interest in me and declare that he himself
+      would provide me with cucumbers. He got me four large ones and when I
+      wanted to repay him he laughed and said it was hardly necessary as they
+      only cost a halfpenny! He had the compartment next to mine and that
+      morning he sent me in a glass of coffee&mdash;we didn't run to cups on
+      that train. Excellent coffee it was too. Indeed I was overwhelmed with
+      provisions. One woman does not want very much to eat, but unless I
+      supplied myself liberally and made it patent to all that I had enough and
+      more than enough I was sure to be supplied by my neighbours out of
+      friendship for my nation. From the Cossack officer, from a Hussar officer
+      and his wife who had come up from Ugra in Mongolia, and from the captain
+      of the <i>Askold</i> I was always receiving presents. Chickens, smoked
+      fish&mdash;very greasy, in a sheet of paper, eaten raw and very excellent&mdash;raspberries
+      and blue berries, to say nothing of cucumbers, were rained upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At some stations there was a buffet and little tables set about where the
+      first and second class passengers could sit down and have <i>déjeuner</i>,
+      or dinner, but oftener, especially in the East, we all dashed out, first,
+      second and third class, and at little stalls presided over by men with
+      kerchiefs on their heads and sturdy bare feet, women that were a joy to me
+      after the effete women of China, bought what we wanted, took it back with
+      us into the carriages and there ate it. I had all my table things in a
+      basket, including a little saucer for Buchanan. It was an exceedingly
+      economical arrangement, and I have seldom enjoyed food more. The bread and
+      butter was excellent. You could buy fine white bread, and bread of varying
+      quality to the coarse black bread eaten by the peasant, and I am bound to
+      say I very much like fine white bread. There was delicious cream; there
+      were raspberries and blue berries to be bought for a trifle; there were
+      lemons for the tea; there was German beet sugar; there were roast chickens
+      at sixpence apiece, little pasties very excellent for twopence-halfpenny,
+      and rapchicks, a delicious little bird a little larger than a partridge,
+      could be bought for fivepence, and sometimes there was plenty of honey.
+      Milk, if a bottle were provided, could be had for a penny-farthing a
+      quart, and my neighbours soon saw that I did not commit the extravagance
+      of paying three times as much for it, which was what it cost if you bought
+      the bottle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The English, they said, were very rich! and they were confirmed in their
+      belief when they found how I bought milk. Hard-boiled eggs were to be had
+      in any quantity, two and sometimes three for a penny-farthing. I am
+      reckoning the kopeck as a farthing. These were first-class prices, the
+      soldiers bought much more cheaply. Enough meat to last a man a day could
+      be bought for a penny-farthing, and good meat too&mdash;such meat nowadays
+      I should pay at least five shillings for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was all this abundance because the exiles had tramped wearily across the
+      steppes? How much hand had they had in the settling of the country? I
+      asked myself the question many times, but nowhere found an answer. The
+      stations were generally crowded, but the country round was as empty as it
+      had been along the Amur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the train went steadily on. Very slowly though&mdash;we only went at
+      the rate of three hundred versts a day, why, I do not know. There we stuck
+      at platforms where there was nothing to do but walk up and down and look
+      at the parallel rails coming out of the East on the horizon and running
+      away into the West on the horizon again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall never arrive,&rdquo; I said impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Madame, we arrive, we arrive,&rdquo; said the Hussar officer, and he spoke
+      a little sadly. And then I remembered that for him arrival meant parting
+      with his comely young wife and his little son. They had with them a
+      fox-terrier whom I used to ask into my compartment to play with Buchanan,
+      and they called him &ldquo;Sport.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An English name,&rdquo; they said smilingly. If ever I have a fox-terrier I
+      shall call him &ldquo;Sport,&rdquo; in kindly remembrance of the owners of the little
+      friend I made on that long, long journey across the Old World. And the
+      Hussar officer's wife, I put it on record, liked fresh air as much as I
+      did myself. As I walked up and down the train, even though it was warm
+      summer weather, I always knew our two carriages because in spite of the
+      dust we had our windows open. The rest of the passengers shut theirs most
+      carefully. The second class were packed, and the third class were simply
+      on top of one another&mdash;I should not think they could have inserted
+      another baby&mdash;and the reek that came from the open doors and that
+      hung about the people that came out of them was disgusting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I used to ask my Cossack friend to tea sometimes&mdash;I could always buy
+      cakes by the wayside&mdash;and he was the only person I ever met who took
+      salt with his tea. He assured me the Mongolians always did so, but I must
+      say though I have tried tea in many ways I don't like that custom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Kobdo, ten thousand feet among the mountains in the west of Mongolia,
+      was a great lama, and the Cossack was full of this man's prophecy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three emperors, said the lama, would fight. One would be overwhelmed and
+      utterly destroyed, the other would lose immense sums of money, and the
+      third would have great glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Tsar, Madame,&rdquo; said my friend, &ldquo;the Tsar, of course, is the third.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I wonder what part he took in the revolution. He was a Balt, a man from
+      the Baltic Provinces, heart and soul with the Poles, and he did not even
+      call himself a Russian. Well, the Tsar has been overwhelmed, but which is
+      the one who is to have great glory? After all, the present is no very
+      great time for kings and emperors. I am certainly not taking any stock in
+      them as a whole. Perhaps that lama meant the President of the United
+      States!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went round Lake Baikal, and the Holy Sea, that I had seen before one
+      hard plain of glittering ice, lay glittering now, beautiful still in the
+      August sunshine. There were white sails on it and a steamer or two, and
+      men were feverishly working at alterations on the railway. The Angara ran
+      swiftly, a mighty river, and we steamed along it into the Irkutsk station,
+      which is by no means Irkutsk, for the town is&mdash;Russian fashion&mdash;four
+      miles away on the other side of the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Irkutsk it seemed to me we began to be faintly Western again. And the
+      exiles who had come so far I suppose abandoned hope here. All that they
+      loved&mdash;all their life&mdash;lay behind. I should have found it hard
+      to turn back and go east myself now. What must that facing east have been
+      for them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They turned us out of the train, and Buchanan and I were ruefully
+      surveying our possessions, heaped upon the platform, wondering how on
+      earth we were to get them taken to the cloakroom and how we should get
+      them out again supposing they were taken, when the captain of the <i>Askold</i>
+      appeared with a porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would Madame permit,&rdquo; he asked, not as if he were conferring a favour,
+      &ldquo;that her luggage be put with mine in the cloakroom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame could have hugged him. Already the dusk was falling, the soft, warm
+      dusk, and the people were hastening to the town or to the
+      refreshment-rooms. There would be no train that night, said my kind
+      friend, some time in the morning perhaps, but certainly not that night. I
+      sighed. Again I was adrift, and it was not a comfortable feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Madame desired to dine&mdash;&mdash; Madame did desire to dine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then if Madame permits&mdash;&mdash; Of course Madame permitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was most grateful. And we dined together at the same table outside the
+      station restaurant&mdash;I like that fashion of dining outside&mdash;under
+      the brilliant glare of the electric light. He arranged everything for me,
+      even to getting some supper for Buchanan. And I forgot the exiles who had
+      haunted me, forgot this was Siberia. Here in the restaurant, save for the
+      Tartar waiters, it might almost have been France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; said my companion courteously as we were having coffee, &ldquo;Madame
+      would care to come to my hotel. I could interpret for her and here no one
+      speaks anything but Russian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again I could have hugged him. I intimated my dressing-bag was in the
+      cloakroom, but he smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For one night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He himself had nothing, so there and then we got into one of the usual
+      decrepit landaus and went to the town, to Irkutsk on the Angara, in the
+      heart of Siberia. If in my girlish days when I studied the atlas of the
+      world so carefully I could have known that one day I should be driving
+      into Irkutsk, that map would have been glorified for ever and a day; but I
+      could never have realised, never, that it would be set in a summer land,
+      warm as my own country, and that I should feel it a great step on towards
+      the civilisation of the West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was night, and here and there clustering electric lights glittered like
+      diamonds, making darker the spaces in between. In the morning I saw that
+      the capital of Eastern Siberia, like all the other towns of that country,
+      is a regular frontier town. There were the same wide streets grass-grown
+      at the edges, great houses and small houses side by side, and empty spaces
+      where as yet there were no houses. We went to the Central Hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not go to an expensive hotel,&rdquo; my companion told me, &ldquo;this is a
+      moderate one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But if it were moderate it certainly was a very large and nice hotel.
+      Russian hotels do not as a rule provide food, the restaurant is generally
+      separate, but we had already dined. That naval officer made all
+      arrangements for me. He even explained to an astonished chamber-maid with
+      her hair done in two long plaits that I must have all the windows open and
+      when I tried for a bath did his best for me. But again, he explained,
+      Russians as a rule go to a bath-house, and there was only one bathroom in
+      this hotel; it had been engaged for two hours by a gentleman, and he
+      thought, seeing I should have to start early in the morning, it might be
+      rather late for me to have a bath then, but if I liked in the morning it
+      would be at my service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If anyone had told me in the old days that going to Irkutsk I should be
+      deeply interested in a bath!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I engaged that bath for an hour in the morning as that seemed to be the
+      correct thing to do. Then I went to bed and heartily envied Buchanan, who
+      did not have to bother about toilet arrangements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning early there was a knock at the door and when I said &ldquo;Come
+      in,&rdquo; half expecting tea, there was my naval officer in full uniform
+      smilingly declaring my bath was ready, he had paid the bill, and I could
+      pay him back when we were on board the train. The chamber-maid, with her
+      hair still done in two plaits&mdash;I rather fancy she had slept in them&mdash;conducted
+      me to the bathroom, and I pass over the difficulty of doing without brush
+      and comb and tooth-brush. But I washed the dust out of my hair, and when I
+      was as tidy as I could manage I joined the captain of the <i>Askold</i>
+      and we drove back through the town to the railway station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The station was a surging mass of people all talking at once, and all, I
+      suppose, objurgating the railway management, but we two had breakfast
+      together in the pleasant sunlight. We had fresh rolls and butter and
+      coffee and cream and honey&mdash;I ask no better breakfast when these
+      things are good&mdash;and meanwhile people, officials, came and went,
+      discussing evidently some important matter with my friend. He departed for
+      a moment, and then the others that I had known came up, my Cossack friend
+      and the Hussar officer, and told me that the outgoing train was a military
+      train, it would be impossible for a woman, a civilian and a foreigner at
+      that, to go on it. I said the captain of the <i>Askold</i> had assured me
+      I could, and they shook their heads and then said hopefully, well, he was
+      a very great officer, the captain of a ship, and I realised that no lesser
+      authority could possibly have managed this thing for me. And even he was
+      doubtful, for when he came back and resumed his interrupted breakfast he
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The train is full. The military authorities will not allow you on board.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That really did seem to me tragedy at the moment. I forgot the sorrowful
+      people who would gladly enough have stayed their journey at Irkutsk. But
+      their faces were set East. I forgot that after all a day or two out of a
+      life would not matter very much, or rather I think I hated to part from
+      these kindly friends I had made on the train. I suppose I looked my
+      disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait. Wait. It is not yet finished,&rdquo; said my friend kindly. &ldquo;They give me
+      two compartments&rdquo;&mdash;I felt then he was indeed &ldquo;a very great officer,&rdquo;
+       for the people were packed in that train, tier upon tier, like herrings in
+      a barrel&mdash;&ldquo;and I cannot sleep in four bunks. It is ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That may have been, but it was kindness itself of him to establish a
+      stranger in one of those compartments. It was most comfortable, and
+      Buchanan and I being established, and my luggage having come safely to
+      hand, I proceeded to make the most of the brush and comb that had come
+      once more into my possession, and I felt that the world was a very good
+      place indeed as we sped across the green plain in the sunny morning. I
+      could hardly believe that this goodly land was the one to which I had
+      always been accustomed to think men went as to a living death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I forgot other folks' troubles in my own, for envious eyes were
+      cast upon the spare bunk in my compartment. No one would have dreamt of
+      interfering had the sailor insisted upon having all four for himself, but
+      since he had parted with the rights of one compartment to a foreign woman,
+      it was evident that other people, crowded out, began to think of their own
+      comfort. Various people interviewed me. I am afraid I understood
+      thoroughly what they wanted, but I did not understand Russian, and I made
+      the most of that disability. Also all my friends who spoke French kept out
+      of the way, so I suppose they did not wish to aid and abet in upsetting my
+      comfort. At last a most extraordinary individual with a handkerchief tied
+      round his neck in lieu of a collar and a little tourist cap on the back of
+      his head was brought, and he informed me in French that there was a doctor
+      in the hospital section of the train who had not been in bed for a week,
+      they could not turn the soldiers out, they must have rest, would I allow
+      him to sleep in my compartment?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; he said, and the officials standing round emphasised the remark,
+      if it needed emphasis, &ldquo;it is war time. The train is for the soldiers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly I was here on sufferance. They had a right to turn me out if
+      they liked. So the doctor came and turned in in the top bunk, and his
+      long-drawn snores took away from my sense of privacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't think he liked it very much, for presently he was succeeded by a
+      train official, very drunk, though I am bound to say he was the only
+      drunken man I saw on all that long train journey from Stretensk to
+      Petrograd. It was a little unlucky we were at such close quarters.
+      Everyone, too, was very apologetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a good fellow. It was an unfortunate accident and he would be very
+      much ashamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose he was, for the next day he too disappeared and his place was
+      taken by a professor from one of the Siberian universities who was seeking
+      radium. He was a nice old gentleman who had learned English but had never
+      had the chance of hearing it spoken. Where he went in the daytime I do not
+      know, probably to a friend's compartment, and Buchanan and I had the place
+      to ourselves. We could and did invite the Cossack officer and the Hussar
+      officer and his belongings and the naval man to tea, and we had great
+      games with the little fox-terrier &ldquo;Sport&rdquo; from next door, but when night
+      fell the professor turned up and notified me he was about to go to bed.
+      Then he retired and I went to bed first on the lower seat. He knocked,
+      came in and climbed up to his bunk, and we discoursed on the affairs of
+      the world, I correcting his curious pronunciation. He really was a man of
+      the world; he was the sort of man I had expected to meet in Siberia, only
+      I had never imagined him as free and sharing a railway compartment with
+      me. I should have expected to find him toiling across the plains with the
+      chains that bound his ankles hitched to his belt for convenience of
+      carrying. But he looked and he spoke as any other cultivated old gentleman
+      might have spoken, and looking back I see that his views of the war, given
+      in the end of August, 1914, were quite the soundest I have ever listened
+      to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Allies will win,&rdquo; he used to say, &ldquo;yes, they will win.&rdquo; And he shook
+      his head. &ldquo;But it will be a long war, and the place will be drenched in
+      blood first. Two years, three years, I think four years.&rdquo; I wonder if he
+      foresaw the chaos that would fall upon Russia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These views were very different from those held by the other men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; the Cossack would say, laughing, &ldquo;do you know a good hotel in
+      Berlin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked up surprised. &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;I engage a room there. We
+      go to Berlin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace dictated at Berlin,&rdquo; said they all again and again, &ldquo;peace dictated
+      at Berlin.&rdquo; This was during the first onward rush of the Russians. Then
+      there came a setback, two towns were taken and the Germans demanded an
+      indemnity of twenty thousand pounds apiece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said the Cossack grimly, and the Hussar nodded his head.
+      &ldquo;They have set the tune. Now we know what to ask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the professor looked grave. &ldquo;Many towns will fall,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another thing that struck me was the friendly relations of the officers
+      with those under them. As the only representative of their Western Ally on
+      the train, I was something of a curiosity, and soldiers and
+      non-commissioned officers liked to make excuse to look at me. I only
+      wished I had been a little smarter and better-looking for the sake of my
+      country, for I had had no new clothes since the end of 1912. However, I
+      had to make the best of it, and the men came to me on the platforms or to
+      my compartment without fear. If by chance they knew a little French they
+      spoke to me, helped out by their officers if their vocabulary ran short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, Madame,&rdquo; said an old non-commissioned officer, &ldquo;would you be so
+      good as to tell me how to pronounce the English 'zee'? I teach myself
+      French, now I teach myself English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, they had all been good to me and I had no means of repaying their
+      kindness save vicariously, so I took him in hand and with the aid of a
+      booklet published by the Wagons Lit Train du Luxe describing the journey
+      across Siberia we wrestled with the difficulties of the English &ldquo;th.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a long long journey. We crept across the great steppes, we lingered
+      by stations, sometimes there were lakes, sometimes great rivers, but
+      always the great plains. Far as the eye could see rolled the extent of
+      green under the clear blue sky; often we saw herds of cattle and mobs of
+      horses, and again and again companies of soldiers, and yet so vast is the
+      country the sensation left upon the stranger is of emptiness, of a rich
+      and fertile land crying out for inhabitants. I looked at it from the train
+      with eager eyes, but I began to understand how there had grown up in my
+      mind the picture of this lovely land as a dark and terrible place. To the
+      prisoners who came here this plain, whether it were green and smiling, or
+      whether it were deep in white snow, could only have been the barrier that
+      cut them off from home and hope, from all that made life dear. How could
+      they take up their broken lives here, they who for the most part were
+      dwellers in the cities?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a regiment of soldiers; it was nothing, nothing, set in the vast
+      plain. The buttercups and daisies and purple vetches were trampled down
+      for a great space where men had been exercising or camping; but it was
+      nothing. There were wide stretches of country where the cattle were
+      peacefully feeding and where the flowers turned up smiling faces to the
+      blue sky for miles and miles, making me forget that this had been the land
+      of shadowed lives in the past and that away in the West men were fighting
+      for their very existence, locked in a death-grip such as the world has
+      never before seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was well there was something to look out upon, for that train was
+      horrid. I realised something of the horrors of the post-houses in which
+      the prisoners had been locked at night. We could get good food at every
+      station, but in the train we were too close on the ground and the reek of
+      us went up to heaven. I felt as if the atmosphere of the train desecrated
+      the fresh, clear air of the great plain over which we passed, as if we
+      must breed disease. The journey seemed interminable, and what I should do
+      when it ended I did not know, for opinion was fairly unanimous: they were
+      sure I could not get to England!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With many apologies the captain of the <i>Askold</i> permitted himself to
+      ask how I was off for money. I was a total stranger, met on a train, and a
+      foreigner! I told him I had a little over forty pounds and if that were
+      not enough I had thought to be able to send to London for more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if even letters can get through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And I sighed that then I did not know what I should do, for I had no
+      friends in Petrograd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon, Madame,&rdquo; said he remonstrantly, and he gave me the address of his
+      wife and daughters. He told me to go and see them; he assured me that
+      everybody in Russia now wanted to learn English, that I would have no
+      difficulty in getting pupils and so do myself very comfortably &ldquo;till we
+      make a passage to England again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just before we reached Cheliabynsk he came and told me that he had heard
+      there was a west-bound express with one place vacant, a ship awaited him
+      and speed was very necessary, therefore he was leaving this train. Then at
+      one of the greater stopping-places he bowed low over my hand, bade me
+      farewell, made a dash and caught the express. I have never either seen or
+      heard of him since, but he remains in my mind as one of the very kindly
+      men I have met on my way through the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Cheliabynsk we spent the livelong day, for there the main part of the
+      train went on to Moscow with the soldiers, while we who wanted to go to
+      Petrograd caught a train in the evening. I was glad to find that the
+      Hussar officer and the Cossack were both bound for Petrograd. And here we
+      came in touch once more with the West. There was a bookstall, and though I
+      could not buy an English paper I could and did buy an English book, one of
+      John Galsworthy's in the Tauchnitz edition. It was a great delight to come
+      in contact once more with something I could read. There was a big
+      refreshment-room here with all manner of delectable things to eat, only we
+      had passed beyond the sturgeon, and caviare was no longer to be had save
+      at a price that was prohibitive to a woman who had had as much as she
+      could eat and who anyhow was saving her pennies in case of contingencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But one thing I did have, and that was a bath. In fact the whole train
+      bathed. Near the station was a long row of bath-houses, but each one I
+      visited&mdash;and they all seemed unpleasant places&mdash;was crowded with
+      soldiers. After a third attempt to get taken in my Cossack friend met me
+      and was shocked at the idea of my going to such a place; if I would trust
+      him he would take me to a proper place after <i>déjeuner</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally I trusted him gladly, and we got into one of the usual
+      broken-down landaus and drove away to the other side of the town to a row
+      of quite superior bath-houses. My friend declared he knew the place well,
+      he had been stationed here in &ldquo;the last revolution,&rdquo; as if revolutions
+      came as regularly as the seasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a gorgeous bath-house. That young man bought me soap; he bought me
+      some sort of loofah for scrubbing; he escorted me to three large rooms
+      which I engaged for a couple of hours and, much to the surprise of the
+      people, having had the windows opened, he left me, assuring me that the
+      carriage should return for me in two hours. There was plenty of hot water,
+      plenty of cold, and any amount of towels, and both Buchanan and I washed
+      the grime of the journey from us and then rested on the sofa in the
+      retiring-room. I read John Galsworthy and punctually to the moment I
+      descended to the street, clean and refreshed, and there our carriage
+      awaited us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We bought water-melons on our way back to the train, for the streets were
+      heaped up with the great dark green melons with the pink flesh that I had
+      not seen since I left Australia. Autumn was on the land and here were
+      watermelons proof thereof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever as we went west the cornfields increased. Most of the wheat was cut
+      and standing in golden-brown stooks waiting to be garnered by old men and
+      boys and sturdy country women and those who were left of her young men,
+      for Russia had by no means called out her last lines in 1914. There were
+      still great patches of forest, primeval forest, of dense fir, and I
+      remembered that here must be the haunts of the wolves and the bear with
+      which I had always associated Russia. More, though why I know not, my mind
+      flew back to the times of the nomad hordes who, coming out of Central
+      Asia, imposed their rule upon the fair-haired Aryan race that had settled
+      upon the northern plain of Europe. Those forests for me spelled Romance;
+      they took away from the feeling of commonplaceness that the breaking down
+      of my preconceived ideas of Siberia had engendered. Almost anything might
+      happen in a land that held such forests, and such rivers. Not that I was
+      allowed to see much of the rivers now. Someone always came in and drew
+      down the blinds in my compartment&mdash;I had one to myself since leaving
+      Cheliabynsk&mdash;and told me I must not go out on the platform whenever
+      we crossed a bridge. They were evidently taking precautions against spying
+      though they were too polite to say so. There were big towns with stations
+      packed to overflowing. At Perm we met some German prisoners of war, and
+      there were soldiers, soldiers everywhere, and at last one day in the first
+      week in September we steamed into Petrograd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI&mdash;THE WAYS OF THE FINNS
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was evening and
+      we had arrived at Petrograd. For many years I had wanted to see the
+      northern capital. I had thought of it as a town planned by a genius,
+      slowly growing amid surrounding swamps, and in my childhood I had pictured
+      that genius as steadily working as a carpenter&mdash;in a white paper cap&mdash;having
+      always in his mind's eye the town that was to grow on the Baltic Sea, the
+      seaport that should give his country free access to the civilisation of
+      the West. He was a great hero of mine because of his efficiency; after all
+      I see no reason why I should dethrone him now that I realise he had the
+      faults of his time and his position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in life I find things always come differently to what one pictures
+      them. The little necessities of life will crop up and must be attended to
+      first and foremost. The first thought that came to me was that I had to
+      part with the friends I had made on the journey. Right away from the
+      borders of China the Cossack officer and I had travelled together; I had
+      met the Hussar officer and his wife soon after I had joined the train, and
+      we seemed to have come out of one world into another together. It made a
+      bond, and I for one was sorry to part. They were going to their own
+      friends or to a Russian hotel, and the general consensus of opinion was
+      that I would be more comfortable in a hotel where there were English or at
+      least French people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to the Grand Hotel, Madame,&rdquo; suggested the Hussar officer's wife, she
+      who spoke perfect French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Buchanan and I loaded our belongings on to a droshky that looked smart
+      after the ones I had been accustomed to in Asia, bade farewell to our
+      friends &ldquo;till after the war&rdquo;&mdash;the Cossack was coming to England then
+      &ldquo;to buy a dog&rdquo;&mdash;and drove to the Grand Hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Grand Hotel spoke perfect English, looked at me and&mdash;declined to
+      take me because I had a little dog. I was very much astonished, but
+      clearly I couldn't abandon Buehanan, so I went on to the Hotel
+      d'Angleterre, which also declined. I went from hotel to hotel and they all
+      said the same thing, they could not think of taking in anyone accompanied
+      by a dog. It was growing dark&mdash;it was dark, and after a fortnight on
+      the train I was weary to death. How could I think of the glories of the
+      Russian capital when I was wondering where I could find a resting-place? I
+      couldn't turn Buchanan adrift in the streets, I couldn't camp in the
+      streets myself, and the hotel porters who could speak English had no
+      suggestions to make as to where I could bestow my little friend in safety.
+      Six hotels we went to and everyone was firm and polite, they could not
+      take a dog. At last a hotel porter had a great idea, the Hotel Astoria
+      would take dogs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why on earth didn't someone tell me so before?&rdquo; I said, and promptly went
+      to the Hotel Astoria. It was rather like going to the Hotel Ritz, and
+      though I should like to stay at the Hotel Ritz I would not recommend it to
+      anyone who was fearing an unlimited stay in the country, who had only
+      forty pounds to her credit and was not at all sure she could get any more.
+      Still the Hotel Astoria took little dogs, actually welcomed them, and
+      charged four shillings a day for their keep. I forgot Peter the Great and
+      the building of the capital of Russia, revelling in the comforts of a
+      delightful room all mirrors, of a bathroom attached and a dinner that it
+      was worth coming half across the world to meet. My spirits rose and I
+      began to be quite sure that all difficulties would pass away, I should be
+      able to get back to England and there would be no need for that desperate
+      economy. It was delightful to go to bed in a still bed between clean white
+      sheets, to listen to the rain upon the window and to know that for this
+      night at least all was well. I had seen no English papers; I knew nothing
+      about the war, and it is a fact one's own comfort is very apt to colour
+      one's views of life. Buchanan agreed with me this was a very pleasant
+      world&mdash;as a rule I do find the world pleasant&mdash;it was impossible
+      anything could go wrong in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the next day I received a snub&mdash;a snub from my own people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went to the British Consulate full of confidence. Every foreigner I had
+      met all across the world had been so pleased to see me, had been so
+      courteous and kind, had never counted the cost when I wanted help, so that
+      I don't know what I didn't expect from my own countrymen. I looked forward
+      very mueh to meeting them. And the young gentleman in office snubbed me
+      properly. He wasn't wanting any truck with foolish women who crossed
+      continents; he didn't care one scrap whether I had come from Saghalien or
+      just walked down the Nevsky Prospekt; I was a nuisance anyway, his manner
+      gave me to understand, since I disturbed his peace and quiet, and the
+      sooner I took myself out of the country the better he would be pleased. He
+      just condescended to explain where I could get a ticket straight through
+      to Newcastle-on-Tyne; people were doing it every day; he didn't know
+      anything about the war, and his manner gave me to understand that it
+      wasn't his business to supply travellers with news. I walked out of that
+      office with all the jauntiness taken out of me. Possibly, I have thought
+      since, he was depressed at the news from France, perhaps someone was
+      jeering him because he had not joined up, or else he had wanted to join up
+      and was not allowed. It was unlucky that my first Englishman after so long
+      should be such a churlish specimen. I felt that unless my necessity was
+      dire indeed I should not apply to the British Consulate for help in an
+      emergency. I did not recover till I went to the company who sold through
+      tickets, across Finland, across Sweden and Norway, across the North Sea to
+      Newcastle-on-Tyne. There I bought a ticket for fifteen pounds which was to
+      carry me the whole way. It was a Swedish company, I think, and the office
+      was packed with people, Poles, Letts, Lithuanians and Russians, who were
+      naturalised Americans and who wanted to go home. Everybody took the
+      deepest interest in Buchanan, so much interest that the man in charge
+      asked me if I was going to take him, I said &ldquo;Of eourse,&rdquo; and he shook his
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will never get him through Sweden. They are most strict.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Buchanan! Despair seized me. Having been to the British Consulate, I
+      knew it was no use seeking advice there. I suppose I was too tired or I
+      should have remembered that Americans are always kind and helpful and gone
+      there or even dared the British Embassy. But these ideas occurred to me
+      too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You may travel the world over and the places you visit will often remain
+      in your mind as pleasant or otherwise not because of any of their own
+      attributes, but because of the emotions you have suffered in them. Here
+      was I in St Petrograd, and instead of exploring streets and canals and
+      cathedrals and palaces my whole thoughts were occupied with the fate of my
+      little dog. I &ldquo;had given my heart to a dog to tear&rdquo; and I was suffering in
+      consequence. All the while I was in Petrograd&mdash;and I stayed there
+      three days looking for a way out&mdash;my thoughts were given to James
+      Buchanan. I discussed the matter with the authorities in the hotel who
+      could speak English, and finally Buchanan and I made a peregrination to
+      the Swedish Consulate. And though the Swedish Consulate was a deal more
+      civil and more interested in me and my doings than the English, in the
+      matter of a dog, even a nice little dog like Buchanan, they were firm&mdash;through
+      Sweden he could not go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I read in the paper the other day that the world might be divided into men
+      and women and people-who-hate-dogs, and these last will wonder what I was
+      making such a fuss about, but the men and women will understand. My dear
+      little companion and friend had made the lonely places pleasant for me and
+      I could not get him out of the country save by turning round and going
+      back across Europe, Asia and America!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went back to the place where I had bought my ticket. They also were
+      sympathetic. Everyone in the office was interested in the tribulations of
+      the cheerful little black and white dog who sat on the counter and wagged
+      a friendly tail. I had many offers to take care of him for me, and the
+      consensus of opinion was that he might be smuggled! And many tales were
+      told me of dogs taken across the borders in overcoats and muffs, or
+      drugged in baskets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That last appealed to me. Buchanan was just too big to cany hidden easily,
+      but he might be drugged and covered up in a basket. I went back to the
+      Astoria and sent for a vet. Also I bought a highly ornamental basket. The
+      porter thought I was cruel. He thought I might leave the dog with him till
+      after the war, but he translated the vet's opinion for me, and the vet
+      gave me some sulphonal. He assured me the little dog would be all right,
+      and I tried to put worrying thoughts away from me and to see Petrograd,
+      the capital of the Tsars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I had seen too much. There comes a moment, however keen you are on
+      seeing the world, when you want to see no new thing, when you want only to
+      close your eyes and rest, and I had arrived at that moment. The wide and
+      busy streets intersected with canals, the broad expanse of the Neva, the
+      cathedral and the Winter Palace were nothing to me; even the wrecked
+      German Embassy did not stir me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was glad then when the fourth morning found me on the Finland station.
+      The Finland station was crowded and the Finland train, with only second
+      and third class carnages and bound for Raumo, was crowded also, and it
+      appeared it did not know its way very well as the line had only just been
+      opened to meet the traffic west diverted from Germany. A fortnight before
+      no one had ever heard of Raumo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now for me the whole outlook was changed. This was no military train,
+      packed as it was, but a train of men, women and children struggling to get
+      out of the country, the flotsam and jetsam that come to the surface at the
+      beginning of a war. And I heard again for the first time since I left
+      Tientsin, worlds away, English spoken that was not addressed to me. To be
+      sure it was English with an accent, the very peculiar accent that belongs
+      to Russians, Lithuanians, Poles and Letts Americanised, and with it
+      mingled the nasal tones of a young musician from Central Russia who spoke
+      the language of his adopted land with a most exaggerated accent and the
+      leisurely, cultivated tones of Oxford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had come from the East to the West!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The carriage was open from end to end and they would not allow Buchanan to
+      enter it. He, poor little man, in the gorgeous basket that he objected to
+      strongly, was banished to the luggage-van, and because the carriage was
+      hot, and also because I felt he would be lonely separated from me, I went
+      there and kept him company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in that van I met another Russian naval officer and deepened my
+      obligations to the Russian navy. He sat down beside me on one of the
+      boxes, a tall, broad-shouldered, fair man who looked like a Viking with
+      his moustache shaved off. I found to my joy he spoke English, and I
+      confided to him my difficulties with regard to breakfast. I was so old a
+      traveller by now I had learned the wisdom of considering carefully the
+      commissariat. He was going to the forts on the Finnish border of which he
+      was in command, but before he left the train we would arrive at a
+      refreshment-room, and he undertook to arrange matters for me. And so he
+      did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Petrograd does not get up early, at least the Hotel Astoria did not, and
+      the most I could manage before I left was a cup of coffee, but I made up
+      for it at that first refreshment-room. The naval officer took entire
+      charge and, revelling in his importance, I not only had a very good
+      breakfast but made the most of my chances and, filling up my basket with a
+      view to future comforts, bought good things so that I might be able to
+      exchange civilities with my fellow-passengers on the way to Raumo. I had
+      eggs and sausages and new bread and scones and a plentiful supply of
+      fruit, to say nothing of sugar and lemons and cream and meat for Buehanan&mdash;the
+      naval man looking on smiling&mdash;and when I had really done myself well
+      I turned to him and demanded what I ought to pay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, Madame. In Russia when a gentleman takes a lady for refreshment
+      he pays!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Imagine my horror! And I had stocked my basket so lavishly!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My protests were useless. I was escorted back to our luggage-van and my
+      thoughts led gently from the coffee and eggs I had consumed and the
+      sausages and bread I had stowed away in my basket to the state of the war
+      as it struck the Russian naval mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had I heard about the sea fight in the Mediterranean? Not heard about the
+      little <i>Gloucester</i> attacking the <i>Goeben</i>, the little <i>Gloucester</i>
+      that the big German battleship could have eaten! A dwarf and a giant!
+      Madame! Madame! It was a sea fight that will go down through the ages!
+      Russia was ringing with it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know anyone in the English navy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said I had two brothers in the senior service, a little later and I
+      might have said three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then tell them,&rdquo; said he earnestly, &ldquo;we Russian sailors are proud to be
+      Allies of a nation that breeds such men as manned the <i>Gloucester!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Finnish border was soon reached and he left us, and the day went on
+      and discipline I suppose relaxed, for I brought Buchanan into the carriage
+      and made friends with the people who surrounded me. And then once again
+      did I bless the foresight of the Polish Jewess in Kharbin who had
+      impressed upon me the necessity for two kettles. They were a godsend in
+      that carriage. We commandeered glasses, we got hot water at wayside
+      stations and I made tea for all within reach, and a cup of tea to a
+      thirsty traveller, especially if that traveller be a woman, is certainly a
+      road to that traveller's good graces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finland is curiously different from Russia. They used to believe in the
+      old sailing-ship days that every Finn was a magician. Whether they are
+      magicians or not, they have a beautiful country, though its beauty is as
+      different from that of the Amur as the Thames is from the Murray in
+      far-away Australia. Gone were the wide spaces of the earth and the
+      primitive peoples. We wandered through cultivated lands, we passed lake
+      and river and woods, crossed a wonderful salmon river, skirted Finland's
+      inland sea: here and there was a castle dominating the farmhouses and
+      little towns, the trees were turning, just touched gently by Autumn's
+      golden fingers, and I remembered I had watched the tender green of the
+      spring awakening on the other side of the world, more, I had been
+      travelling ever since. It made me feel weary&mdash;weary. And yet it was
+      good to note the difference in these lands that I had journeyed over. The
+      air here was clear, clear as it had been in China; it had that curious
+      charm that is over scenery viewed through a looking-glass, a charm I can
+      express in no other words. Unlike the great rivers of Russia, the little
+      rivers brawled over the stones, companionable little streams that 'made
+      you feel you might own them, on their banks spend a pleasant afternoon,
+      returning to a cosy fire and a cheery home when the dusk was falling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this evening, our first day out, we, the little company in my
+      carriage, fell into trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We spoke among us many tongues, English, French, German, Polish, Russian,
+      Lettish, and one whose tongue was polyglot thought in Yiddish and came
+      from the streets, the &ldquo;mean streets&rdquo; of London, but not one amongst us
+      spoke Finnish, the language of the magicians, or could even understand one
+      word of it. This was unfortunate, for the Films either spoke no language
+      but their own or had a grudge against us and declined to understand us.
+      That didn't prevent them from turning us out that night in a railway
+      station in the heart of Finland and leaving us to discover for ourselves
+      that every hotel in the little town was full to overflowing! Once more I
+      was faced with it&mdash;a night in a railway station. But my predicament
+      was not so bad shared with others who spoke my language. There was the
+      Oxford man and the musician with a twang, there was the wife of an
+      American lawyer with her little boy and the wife of an American doctor
+      with her little girls&mdash;they all spoke English of sorts, used it
+      habitually&mdash;and there were four Austrian girls making their way back
+      to some place in Hungary. Of course, technically, they were our enemies,
+      while the Americans were neutral, but we all went in together. The
+      Russian-American musician had been in Leipsic and was most disgustingly
+      full of the mighty strength of Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The refreshment-rooms were shut, the whole place was in darkness, but it
+      was a mild night, with a gorgeous September moon sailing out into the
+      clear sky, and personally I should not have minded spreading my rugs and
+      sleeping outside. I should have liked it, in fact, but the tales of the
+      insecurity of Siberia still lingered in my consciousness, and when the
+      Oxford man said that one of the porters would put us up in his house I
+      gladly went along with all the others and, better still, took along my
+      bundles of rugs and cushions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The places that I have slept in! That porter had a quaint little wooden
+      house set in a garden and the whole place might have been lifted bodily
+      out of Hans Andersen. We had the freedom of the kitchen, a very clean
+      kitchen, and we made tea there and ate what we had brought in our baskets.
+      The Austrian girls had a room to themselves, I lent my rugs to the young
+      men and they made shift with them in the entrance porch, and the best
+      sitting-room was turned over to the women and children and me. Two very
+      small beds were put up very close together and into them got the two women
+      and three children, and I was accommodated with a remarkably Lilliputian
+      sofa. I am not a big woman, but it would not hold me, and as for Buchanan,
+      he looked at me in disgust, said a bed was a proper place for a dog and
+      promptly jumped on it. But it was full to overflowing of women and
+      children sleeping the sleep of the utterly weary and he as promptly jumped
+      off again and the next moment was sitting up in front of my sofa with his
+      little front paws hanging down. He was a disgusted dog. He always begged
+      when he wanted me to give him something, and now he begged to show me he
+      was really in need of a bed. There were great uncurtained windows on two
+      sides of that room, there were flowers and ferns in pots growing in it,
+      and the full moon strcamed in and showed me everything: the crowded,
+      rather gimcrack furniture, the bucket that contained water for us to wash
+      in in the morning, the bed full of sleeping women and children and the
+      little black and white dog sitting up in protest against what he
+      considered the discomforts of the situation. What I found hard to bear
+      were the hermetically sealed windows&mdash;the women had been afraid of
+      draughts for the children&mdash;so as soon as that night wore through and
+      daylight came stealing through the windows I dressed quietly and, stepping
+      across the sleeping young men at the door, went outside with Buchanan to
+      explore Finland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our porter evidently ran some sort of tea gardens, for there were large
+      swings set up, swings that would hold four and six people at once, and we
+      tried them, much to Buchanan's discomfiture. We went for a walk up the
+      street, a country town street of little wooden houses set in little
+      gardens, and over all lay a Sabbath calm. It was Sunday, and the people
+      slept, and the autumn sunlight made the whole place glorious. There is
+      such rest and peace about the autumn: everything has been accomplished and
+      now is the fullness of time. I never know which season I like best, each
+      has its own beauty, but I shall always think of Finland as a land of
+      little things, charming little things bathed in the autumn sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the whole party were awake we found some difficulty in getting
+      something to eat. The porter could not supply us, and at the station,
+      where they were vigorously sweeping&mdash;the Finns are very clean&mdash;they
+      utterly declined to open the first-class refreshment-rooms. We could only
+      get something to eat in the third-class. There was a great feeling of
+      camaraderie and good-fellowship among us all, and here I remember the
+      lawyer's wife insisted upon us all having breakfast at her expense, for
+      according to her she owed us all something. It was she who added to our
+      party the Yiddish woman, a fat, square little person hung round with
+      innumerable bundles, carrying as she did a month's provisions, enough to
+      last her across to America, for she was a very strict Jew and could eat
+      nothing but <i>kosher</i> killed meat and <i>kosher</i> bread, whatever
+      that may be. I know it made her a care, for a month's provisions make
+      something of a parcel, and when bedding and a certain amount of clothing
+      has to be carried as well, and no porters are available, the resulting
+      baggage is apt to be a nuisance. All along the line this fat little person
+      was liable to come into view, toiling under the weight of her many
+      bundles. She would be found jammed in a doorway; she would subside
+      exhausted in the middle of a railway platform&mdash;the majority of her
+      bundles would be retrieved as they fell downstairs&mdash;or she blocked
+      the little gateway through which passengers were admitted one by one, and
+      the resulting bad language in all the tongues of Northern Europe probably
+      caused the Recording Angel a good deal of unnecessary trouble. But the
+      Oxford man and the musician were always ready to help her, and she must
+      have blessed the day the American lawyer's wife added her to a party which
+      had such kindly, helpful young men among its members.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found presently that the Oxford man and I were the moneyed members of
+      the party, the only ones who were paying our way; the others, far richer
+      people than I, I daresay, had been caught in the whirlpool of the war and
+      were being passed on from one American consul to another, unable to get
+      money from their own country. Apparently this was rather an unpleasant
+      process, meaning a certain scarcity of cash, as an American consul
+      naturally cannot afford to spend lavishly on his distressed subjects. It
+      was the irony of fate that some of them were evidently not accustomed to
+      looking too carefully after the pennies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It took us two days to cross Finland, and towards the end of the journey,
+      after we had got out to have tea at a wayside station that blossomed out
+      into ham and tea and bread and honey, we made friends with a certain Finn
+      whose father had been a Scotsman. At last we were able to communicate with
+      the people of the country! Also I'm afraid we told him in no measured
+      terms that we did not think much of his compatriots. That was rather a
+      shame, for he was exceedingly kind. He was going to England, he told us,
+      to buy sheepskins for the Russian army, and he took great interest in my
+      trouble about Buchanan. He examined him carefully, came to the conclusion
+      he was a perfectly healthy little dog and suggested I should lend him to
+      him till we reached Sweden, as he was perfectly well known to the
+      authorities, and Finnish dogs would be allowed to enter Sweden, while a
+      dog that had come from Russia would certainly be barred. I loved that man
+      for his kindly interest and I handed over Buchanan in his basket without a
+      qualm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were really quite a goodly company when in the dusk of the evening we
+      steamed into Raumo. The station seemed deserted, but we didn't worry much
+      about that, as our new Finnish friend suggested the best thing to do was
+      to go straight down to the steamer, the <i>Uleaborg</i>, a Finnish ship,
+      and have our dinner and spend the night there. Even if she did not go that
+      night, and he did not think she would, we could rest and sleep
+      comfortably. We all agreed, and as the train went on down to the wharf we
+      appointed him our delegate to go on board and see what arrangements he
+      could make for us. The minute the train stopped, off he went, and Buchanan
+      went with him. I was getting easier in my mind about Buchanan now, the
+      thought of drugging him had been spoiling my pleasure in the scenery. And
+      then we waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It began to rain, and through the mist which hid the moonlight to-night we
+      could see the loom of the ships; they were all white and the lights from
+      the cabin ports showed dim through the misty rain. The wharf was littered
+      with goods, barrels and bales, and as there was more than one steamer, and
+      apparently no one to guide us, or the Scots Finn had not returned, we
+      tackled the Russian <i>gens d'arme</i> who seemed to be in charge of the
+      wharf and who was leaning up against the train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you speak Finnish?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! now you have my secret first shot,&rdquo; said he, with a smile. He, their
+      guardian, was no more equal to communicating with these people than we
+      were. And then, to our dismay, before our messenger could return, the
+      train which considered not a parcel of refugees put on steam and started
+      back to Raumo!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dozen voices were raised in frantic protest, but we might as well have
+      spared our breath, the train naturally paid no attention to us, but went
+      back at full speed to the town proper. It was a comfort when it stopped,
+      for, for all we knew, it might have gone straight back to Petrograd
+      itself. And Buchanan, shut up in a basket, was left behind, I knew not
+      where! They dumped us on that station, bag and baggage, in the rain. We
+      were worse off here than we were at the wharf, for there the steamer and
+      comfort at least loomed in the distance. Here was only a bare and empty
+      station, half-a-dozen men who looked at us as if we were so many wild
+      beasts on show, and a telephone to the wharf which we were allowed to use
+      as long as we pleased, but as far as I could gather the only result was a
+      flow of bad language in many tongues. We might be of many nations, but one
+      and all were we agreed in our dislike of the Finns and all things Finnish.
+      If I remember rightly, in the Middle Ages, most people feared and disliked
+      magicians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We managed to get our baggage into the hall of the station, whieh was
+      dimly lighted by electric lights, and in anticipation of our coming they
+      had filled up the station water-carafes. But that was all the provision
+      they had made. If there was a refreshment-room it had been locked up long
+      ago, and as far as we could make out, now our interpreter had gone, there
+      were no hotels or boarding-houses. Our Scots Finn had said it was
+      impossible to stay in Raumo. We looked at one another in a dismay in which
+      there was, after all, something comic. This that had befallen us was the
+      sort of aggravating thing a mischievous magician would cause to happen. We
+      were tired and hungry and bad-tempered, and I for one was anxious about my
+      little dog and I began to seek, with cash in my hand, somebody who would
+      find me Buchanan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How I made my wants known I don't now realise, but money does wonders, and
+      presently there came in a man bearing his basket and a rapturous little
+      dog was let out into the room. Where he had been I have not the faintest
+      idea, and I could not ask, only I gathered that the man who brought him
+      professed himself perfectly willing to go on fetching little dogs all
+      night at the same rate, and the musician remarked in his high nasal twang
+      that he supposed it was no good expecting any more sympathy from Mrs
+      Gaunt, she was content now she had her little dog. As a matter of fact,
+      now that my mind was at ease, I was equal to giving my attention to other
+      people's woes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We tackled the men round us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where was our messenger?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where could we get something to eat?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blank stare. They were not accustomed to foreigners yet at Raumo. The
+      station had only just been opened. The musician took out his violin and
+      its wailing tones went echoing and re-echoing through the hall. The
+      audience looked as if they thought we had suddenly gone mad, and one man
+      came forward and by signs told us we must leave the station. That was all
+      very well, we were not enamoured of the station, but the port we judged to
+      be at least four miles off, and no one was prepared to start down an
+      unknown road in the dark and pouring rain. There was a long consultation,
+      and we hoped it meant food, but it didn't. Out of a wilderness of words we
+      at last arrived at the interesting fact that if we cared to subscribe five
+      marks one of these gentlemen was prepared to conduct us to the police
+      station. There appeared to be no wild desire on the part of any of us to
+      go to the police station, the violin let out a screech of scornful
+      derision, and one of the officials promptly turned off the electric lights
+      and left us in darkness!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were many of us, and vexations shared are amusing. We laughed, how
+      we laughed, and the violin went wailing up and down the octaves. No wonder
+      the Finns looked at us askance. Even the darkness did not turn us out, for
+      we had nowhere else to go, and finally a man who spoke English turned up,
+      the agent for the Swedish steamer. He had thought there would be no
+      passengers and had gone to bed, to be roused up, I presume by the
+      stationmaster, as the only person likely to be capable of dealing with
+      these troublesome people who were disturbing the peace of this Finnish
+      village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We flew at him&mdash;there were about a dozen of us&mdash;and showed our
+      tickets for the Finnish steamer, and he smiled in a superior manner and
+      said we should be captured by Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We didn't believe much in the Germans, for we had many of us come through
+      a country which certainly believed itself invulnerable. Then a woman
+      travelling with her two daughters, Americans of the Americans, though
+      their mother spoke English with a most extraordinary accent, proclaimed
+      aloud that if there was a Swedish steamer she was going by it as she was
+      afraid of &ldquo;dose Yarmans.&rdquo; She and her daughters would give up their
+      tickets and go by the Swedish steamer. Protest was useless. If we liked to
+      break up the party we could. She was not going by the <i>Uleaborg</i>.
+      Besides, where were we to sleep that night? The Finnish steamer was three
+      or four miles away down at the wharf and we were here along with the
+      Swedish agent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Swedish agent seized the opening thus given. There were no hotels;
+      there were no boarding-houses; no, it was not possible to get anything to
+      eat at that hour of the night. Something to drink? Well, in surprised
+      tones, there was surely plenty of water in the station&mdash;there was&mdash;and
+      he would arrange for a train for us to sleep in. The train at ten o'clock
+      next morning would take us down to the steamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We retired to that train. Only one of the carriages was lighted, and that
+      by general consent we gave up to the lady whose fear of the Germans had
+      settled our affairs for us, and she in return asked us to share what
+      provisions we had left. We pooled our stores&mdash;I don't think I had
+      anything left, but the others shared with me&mdash;and we dined, not
+      unsatisfactorily, off sardines, black bread, sausages and apples. The only
+      person left out of the universal friendliness was the Yiddish lady. Out of
+      her plenty she did not offer to share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She cannot,&rdquo; said the musician. &ldquo;She is saving for the voyage to America.
+      You see, she can eat none of the shipboard food.&rdquo; He too came of the same
+      strict order of Jew, and his grandparents, with whom he had been staying
+      in Little Russia, had provided him with any amount of sausage made of <i>kosher</i>
+      meat, but when he was away from his own people he was evidently anything
+      but strict and ate what pleased him. He shared with the rest of us.
+      Possibly he was right about the Yiddish woman, and I suppose it did not
+      really do us any harm to go short till next morning, but it looked very
+      greedy, and I still wonder at the nerve of a woman who could sit down and
+      eat sausage and bread and all manner of such-like things while within a
+      stone's-throw of her people who had helped her in every way they could
+      were cutting up apples and pears into quarters and audibly wishing they
+      had a little more bread. The Oxford man and musician had always helped
+      her, but she could not find it in her heart to spare them one crumb. I
+      admire her nerve. In America I doubt not she will acquire wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After supper Buchanan and I retired to a dark carriage, wrapped ourselves
+      in my eiderdown and slept till with break of day two capable but plain
+      Finnish damsels came in to clean the train. I think the sailors' ideas
+      must have been wrong: every Finn cannot be a magician else they would not
+      allow all their women to be so plain. I arose and dressed and prepared to
+      go out and see if Raumo could produce coffee and rolls, but as I was
+      starting the violinist in the next compartment protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't. Guess you haven't got the hang of these Finnish trains. It
+      might take it into its head to go on. Can't you wait till we reach the
+      steamer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I gave the matter my consideration, and while I was considering the train
+      did take it into its head to go on four hours before its appointed time.
+      On it went, and at last in the fresh northern dewy morning, with the sun
+      just newly risen, sending his long low rays streaming across the dancing
+      waters of the bay, we steamed up to the wharf, and there lay the white
+      ships that were bound for Sweden, the other side of the Baltic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII&mdash;CAPTURED BY GERMANS
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>ut we couldn't get
+      on the steamer at once. For some reason or other there were Customs delays
+      and everything we possessed had to be examined before we were allowed to
+      leave the country, but&mdash;and we hailed them with delight&mdash;under
+      the goods sheds were set out little tables where we could buy coffee and
+      rolls and butter and eggs. It was autumn now, and for all the sunshine
+      here in such high latitudes there was a nip in the air and the hot coffee
+      was welcome. We met, too, our friend of the night before, the Scots Finn,
+      but the glamour had departed from him and we paid no attention to his
+      suggestion that the <i>Goathied</i>, the Swedish steamer, was very much
+      smaller than the <i>Uleaborg</i> and that there was a wind getting up and
+      we would all be deadly sick. We said we preferred being sick to being
+      captured by the Germans. And he laughed at us. There was no need to fear
+      the Germans in the Baltic so far north.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was midday before we were allowed on board the little white ship, but
+      still she lingered. I was weary, weary, even the waiting seemed a
+      weariness so anxious was I to end my long journeying and get home. And
+      then suddenly I felt very near it, for my ears were greeted by the good
+      broad Doric of Scotland, and there came trooping on board five and fifty
+      men, part of the crews of four English ships that had been caught by the
+      tide of war and laid up at Petrograd and Kronstadt. An opportunity had
+      been found and they were going back by way of Sweden, leaving their ships
+      behind till after the war. We did not think the war <i>could</i> last very
+      long on board that steamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Scotsmen had evidently been expected, for on the deck in the bows of
+      the little steamer&mdash;she was only about three hundred tons&mdash;were
+      laid long tables spread with ample supplies of boiled sausages, suet
+      pudding and potatoes, and very appetising it looked, though in all my
+      wanderings I had never met boiled sausages before. Down to the feast sat
+      the sailor-men, and our Yiddish friend voiced aloud my feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anglisky,&rdquo; said she unexpectedly, &ldquo;nice Anglisky boys. Guten appetite,
+      nice Anglisky boys!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were very cheery, poor boys, and though they were not accustomed to
+      her sort in Leith, they received her remarks with appreciative grins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we started the captain came down upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who does that dog belong to?&rdquo; he asked angrily. Everyone on board spoke
+      English. And before I could answer&mdash;I wasn't particularly anxious to
+      answer&mdash;he added: &ldquo;He can't be landed in Sweden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My heart sank. What would they do to my poor little dog? I was determined
+      they shouldn't harm him unless they harmed me first, and if he had to go
+      back to Russia&mdash;well, I would go too; but the thought of going back
+      made me very miserable, and I made solemn vows to myself that if I by some
+      miracle got through safely, never, never again would I travel with a dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And while I was thinking about it there came along a junior officer, mate,
+      purser, he might have been the cook for all I know, and he said: &ldquo;If you
+      have bought this dog in Finland, or even on board the steamer, he can
+      land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was light in darkness, and I do not mind stating that where my dog is
+      concerned I have absolutely no morals, if it is to save him from pain. He
+      had been my close companion for over a year and I knew he was perfectly
+      healthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will give you a good price for him,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;He is a pretty little
+      dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;wait. By and by I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as we got out of the bay the captain announced that he was not going
+      to Stockholm at all, but to Gefle, farther north. Why, he did not know.
+      Such were his orders. In ordinary times to find yourself being landed at
+      Liverpool, say, when you had booked for London might be upsetting, but in
+      war time it is all in the day's work, and sailors and crowded passengers
+      only laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's awa',&rdquo; said the sailors. &ldquo;Let's awa'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The air was clear and clean, clean as if every speck of dust had been
+      washed away by the rain of the preceding night; the little islands at the
+      mouth of the bay stood out green and fresh in the blue sea, but the head
+      wind broke it up into little waves, and the ship was empty of cargo and
+      tossed about like a cork. The blue sea and snow-white clouds, the sunlight
+      on the dancing waves mattered not to us; all we wanted, those of us who
+      were not in favour of drowning at once and so ending our misery, was to
+      land in Sweden. Buchanan sat up looking at me reproachfully, then he too
+      subsided and was violently sick, and I watched the passengers go one by
+      one below to hide their misery, even those who had vowed they never were
+      sea-sick. I stayed on deck because I felt I was happier there in the fresh
+      air, and so I watched the sunset. It was a gorgeous sunset; the clouds
+      piled themselves one upon the other and the red sun stained them deepest
+      crimson. It was so striking that I forgot my sea-sick qualms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then suddenly I became aware there were more ships upon the sea than
+      ours, one in particular, a black, low-lying craft, was steaming all round
+      us, sending out defiant hoots. There were three other ships farther off,
+      and I went to the rail to look over the darkening sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between us and the sunset was the low-lying craft, so close I could see
+      the gaiters of a man in uniform who stood on a platform a little higher
+      than his fellows; the little decks were crowded with men and a long gun
+      was pointed at us. It was all black, clean-cut, silhouetted against the
+      crimson sunset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were slowed down, barely moving, the waves slop-slopped against our
+      sides, and the passengers came scrambling up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Germans! Yarmans!&rdquo; they cried, and from the torpedo boat came a voice
+      through a megaphone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing with all those fine young men on board?&rdquo; it asked in
+      excellent English, the language of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The black torpedo boat was lying up against us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sea-sickness was forgotten, and the violinist came to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are going to take the young men,&rdquo; he said, and he was sorry and yet
+      pleased, because all the time he had been full of the might of the
+      Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought of the Oxford man in the very prime of his manhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you told him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess I didn't dare,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think you'd better, or I'll go myself. They are going to search
+      the ship and he won't like being taken unawares.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So he went down, and presently they came up together. The Oxford man had
+      been very sea-sick and he thought all the row was caused by the ship
+      having struck a mine, and he felt so ill that if things were to end that
+      way he was accepting it calmly, but being captured by Germans was a
+      different matter. He was the only Englishman in the first class, and when
+      we heard they were coming for the young men we felt sure he would have to
+      go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaning over the rail of the <i>Goathied</i>, we could look down upon the
+      black decks of the torpedo boat, blacker than ever now in the dusk of the
+      evening, for the sun sank and the darkness was coming quickly. A rope
+      ladder was flung over and up came a couple of German officers. They spoke
+      perfect English, and they talked English all the time. They went below,
+      demanded the passenger list and studied it carefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must take those Englishmen,&rdquo; said the leader, and then he went through
+      every cabin to see that none was concealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain made remonstrance, as much remonstrance as an unarmed man can
+      make with three cruisers looking on and a torpedo boat close alongside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is war,&rdquo; said the German curtly, and in the dusk he ranged the
+      sailor-men along the decks, all fifty-five of them, and picked out those
+      between the ages of nineteen and forty. Indeed one luckless lad of
+      seventeen was taken, but he was a strapping fellow and they said if he was
+      not twenty-one he looked it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was tragic. Of course there must have been treachery at work or how
+      should the German squadron have known that the Englishmen were crossing at
+      this very hour? But a few moments before they had been counting on getting
+      home and now they were bound for a German prison! In the gathering
+      darkness they stood on the decks, and the short, choppy sea beat the iron
+      torpedo boat against the ship's side, and the captain in the light from a
+      lantern hung against the little house looked the picture of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She cannot stand it! She cannot stand it much longer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crash! Crash! Crash!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She cannot stand it! She was never built for it! And she is old now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the German paid no attention. The possible destruction of a passenger
+      ship was as nothing weighed in the balance with the acquirement of six and
+      thirty fighting men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were so quiet. They handed letters and small bundles and sometimes
+      some of their pay to their comrades or to the passengers looking on and
+      they dropped down that ladder. No one but a sailor could have gone down,
+      for the ships heaved up and down, and sometimes they were bumping and
+      sometimes there was a wide belt of heaving dark water between them,
+      bridged only by that frail ladder. One by one they went, landing on the
+      hostile deck, and were greeted with what were manifestly jeers at their
+      misfortune. The getting down was difficult and more than once a bundle was
+      dropped into the sea and there went up a sigh that was like a wail, for
+      the passengers looking on thought the man was gone, and I do not think
+      there would have been any hope for him between the ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Darker and darker it grew. On the <i>Goathied</i> there were the lighted
+      decks, but below on the torpedo boat the men were dim figures, German and
+      English undiscernible in the gloom. On the horizon loomed the sombre bulk
+      of the cruisers, eaeh with a bright light aloft, and all around was the
+      heaving sea, the white tops of the choppy waves showing sinister against
+      the darker hollows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anglisky boys! Anglisky boys!&rdquo; wailed the Yiddish woman, and her voice
+      cut into the waiting silence. It was their dirge, the dirge for the long,
+      long months of imprisonment that lay before them. And we were hoping for a
+      short war! I could hear the Oxford man drawing a long breath occasionally,
+      steeling himself against the moment when his turn would come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It never came. Why, I do not know. Perhaps they did not realise his
+      nationality, for being a Scotsman he had entered himself as &ldquo;British&rdquo; on
+      the passenger list, and &ldquo;British&rdquo; was not such a well-known word as the
+      sons of Britain gathering from all corners of the earth to fight the
+      common foe have made it to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Puir chappies! Puir chappies! A'm losin' guid comrades,&rdquo; sighed an
+      elderly man leaning over the side and shouting a farewell to &ldquo;Andra'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I murmured something about &ldquo;after the war,&rdquo; but he cut me short sternly.
+      The general opinion was that they would be put to stoke German warships
+      and as the British were sure to beat them they would go down and be
+      ingloriously lost. The thought must have been a bitter one to the men on
+      that torpedo boat. And they took it like heroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last man was gone, and as the torpedo boat drew away a sort of moan
+      went up from the bereft passenger ship and we went on our way, the captain
+      relieved that we were free before a hole had been knocked in our side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was so thankful that no worse thing had befallen him that he became
+      quite communicative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are gone to take the <i>Uleaborg</i>,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and they will blow
+      her up and before to-morrow morning Raumo will be in flames!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In those days Sweden had great faith in the might of Germany. I hope that
+      faith is getting a little shaken at last. Still that captain declared his
+      intention of warning all the ships he could. There were two Finnish ships
+      of which he knew that he said were coming out of Stockholm that night and
+      he was going to look for them and warn them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the night was alive with brilliant electric light signals and wild
+      hootings from the steam siren, and he found them at last, all honour to
+      him for a kindly sailor-man, and the Finnish ships were warned and went
+      back to Sweden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no matter how sorry one is for the sufferings of others, the feeling
+      does not in any way tend to lessen one's own private woes. Rather are they
+      deepened because sympathy and help is not so easily come by when men's
+      thoughts are occupied by more&mdash;to them more&mdash;important matters.
+      And so I could not go to sleep because of my anxiety about my little dog.
+      Only for the moment did the taking of the men and my pity for them drive
+      the thought of his predicament from my mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were nearing Sweden, every moment was bringing us closer, and as yet I
+      had made no arrangements for his safety. He lay curled up on the seat,
+      hiding his little snub nose and his little white paws with his bushy tail,
+      for the autumn night was chilly, and I lay fearing a prison for him too,
+      when he would think his mistress whom he had trusted had failed him. All
+      the crew were so excited over the kidnapping of the men that my meditated
+      nefarious transaction was thrust into the background. It was hopeless to
+      think that any one of them would give ear to the woes of a little dog, so
+      at last, very reluctantly, I gave him, much to his surprise, a sulphonal
+      tablet. I dozed a little and when by my watch it was four o'clock Buchanan
+      was as lively as a cricket. Sulphonal did not seem to have affected him in
+      any way. I gave him another, and he said it was extremely nasty and he was
+      surprised at my conduct, but otherwise it made no difference to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the grey of the early morning we drew up to the wharf and were told to
+      get all our belongings on to the lower deck for the Customs to examine
+      them, and Buchanan was as cheerful and as wide awake as if he had not
+      swallowed two sulphonal tablets. With a sinking heart I gave him another,
+      put him in his basket and, carrying it down to the appointed place, threw
+      a rug over it and piled my two suit-cases on top of it. How thankful I was
+      there was such a noisy crowd, going over and over again in many tongues
+      the events of the night. They wrangled too about their luggage and about
+      their places, and above all their din I could hear poor little James
+      Buchanan whining and whimpering and asking why his mistress was treating
+      him so badly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the Customs officer and my heart stood still. He poked an
+      investigatory hand into my suit-case and asked me&mdash;I understood him
+      quite well&mdash;to show him what was underneath. I could hear Buchanan if
+      he could not, and I pretended that I thought he wanted to know what was at
+      the bottom of my suit-case and I turned over the things again and again.
+      He grew impatient, but luckily so did all the people round, and as a woman
+      dragged him away by force to look at her things so that she could get them
+      ashore I noticed with immense relief that the sailors were beginning to
+      take the things to the wharf. Luckily I had taken care the night before to
+      get some Swedish money&mdash;I was taking no chances&mdash;and a little
+      palm oil made that sailor prompt to attend to my wants. Blessings on the
+      confusion that reigned around! Two minutes later on Swedish soil I was
+      piling my gear on a little hand-cart with a lot of luggage belonging to
+      the people with whom I had come across Finland and it was bound to the
+      railway station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have left your umbrella,&rdquo; cried the violinist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't care,&rdquo; said I. I had lost my only remaining hat for that matter,
+      goodness knows what had become of it, but I was not going to put myself
+      within range of those Customs men again. What did I care about
+      appearances! I had passed the very worst milestone on my journey when I
+      got James Buchanan into Sweden; I had awakened from the nightmare that had
+      haunted me ever since I had taken my ticket in Petrograd, and I breathed
+      freely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the railway station we left our luggage, but I got Buchanan's basket,
+      and we all went across the road to a restaurant just waking to business,
+      for we badly wanted breakfast. I loved those passengers. I shall always
+      think of them with gratitude. They were all so kind and sympathetic and
+      the restaurant folks, who were full of the seizing of the Englishmen on a
+      Swedish ship&mdash;so are joys and sorrows mingled&mdash;must have thought
+      we were a little mad when we all stood round and, before ordering
+      breakfast, opened a basket and let out a pretty little black and white
+      dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I'm sorry to say we laughed, even I laughed, laughed with relief,
+      though I there and then took a vow never again to drug a dog, for poor
+      little James Buchanan was drunk. He wobbled as he walked, and he could not
+      make up his mind to lie down like a sensible dog and sleep if off; he was
+      conversational and silly and had to be restrained. Poor little James
+      Buchanan! But he was a Swedish dog, and I ate my breakfast with appetite,
+      and we all speculated as to what had become of the Scots Finn who had
+      failed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gefle reminded me of Hans Andersen even more than Finland had done. It had
+      neat streets and neat houses and neat trees and neat and fair-haired
+      women, and Gefle was seething with excitement because the <i>Goathied</i>
+      had been stopped. It was early days then, and Sweden had not become
+      accustomed to the filibustering ways of the German, so every poster had
+      the tale writ large upon it, in every place they were talking about it,
+      and we, the passengers who walked about the streets, were the observed of
+      all observers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was nearing the end of my long journey, very near now, and it did not
+      seem to me to matter much what I did. We were all&mdash;the new friends I
+      had made on the way from Petrograd&mdash;pretty untidy and travel-stained,
+      and if I wore a lace veil on my hair, the violinist had a huge rent in his
+      shoe, and, having no money to buy more, he went into a shoe-shop and had
+      it mended. I, with Buchanan a little recovered, sat beside him while it
+      was done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the afternoon we went by train through the neat and tidy country,
+      Selma Lagerlof's country, to Stockholm. I felt as if I were resting,
+      rested, because I was anxious no longer about Buchanan, who slumbered
+      peacefully on my knee; and if anybody thinks I am making an absurd fuss
+      about a little dog, let them remember he had been my faithful companion
+      and friend in far corners of the earth when there were none but alien
+      faces around me, and had stood many a time between me and utter loneliness
+      and depression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We discussed these sturdy Swedes. The Chicago woman's daughter, with the
+      pertness and aptness of the American flapper, summed them up quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The men are handsome,&rdquo; she said, looking round, &ldquo;but the women&mdash;well,
+      the women lack something&mdash;I call them tame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And I knew she had hit them off to a &ldquo;T.&rdquo; After that I never looked at a
+      neat and tidy Swedish woman with her hair, that was fair without that
+      touch of red that makes for gold&mdash;gives life&mdash;coiled at the back
+      of her head and her mild eyes looking out placidly on the world around her
+      without feeling that I too call her tame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stockholm for the most of us was the parting of the ways. The American
+      consul took charge of the people who had come across Finland with us and
+      the Oxford man and I alone went to the Continental Hotel, which, I
+      believe, is the best hotel in that city. We had an evening meal together
+      in a room that reminded me very much of the sort of places we used to call
+      coffee palaces in Melbourne when I was a girl, and I met here again for
+      the first time for many a long day tea served in cups with milk and cream.
+      It was excellent, and I felt I was indeed nearing home. Things were
+      getting commonplace and the adventure was going out of life. But I was
+      tired and I didn't want adventure any more. There comes a time when we
+      have a surfeit of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember my sister once writing from her home somewhere in the Malay
+      jungle that her husband was away and it was awkward because every night a
+      leopard came and took up his position under the house, and though she
+      believed he was only after the fowls she didn't like it because of the
+      children. If ever she complains that she hasn't had enough adventure in
+      her life I remind her of that and she says that is not the sort of
+      adventure she has craved. That is always the way. The adventure is not
+      always in the form we want. I seemed to have had plenty, but I was weary.
+      I wanted to sit in a comfortable English garden in the autumn sunshine and
+      forget that such things as trains and ships&mdash;perish the thought of a
+      mule litter&mdash;existed. I counted the hours. It couldn't be long now.
+      We came down into the hall to find that I had been entered on the board
+      containing the names of the hotel guests as the Oxford man's wife. Poor
+      young man! It was a little rough on him, for I hadn't even a hat, and I
+      felt I looked dilapidated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was too. That night in the sleeper crossing to Christiania the woman who
+      had the bottom berth spoke excellent English. She was going to some baths
+      and she gave some advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very ill, Madame,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;very ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said no, I was only a little tired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;you are very ill, and if you are wise when you
+      get to Christiania you will go to the Hotel Victoria and go to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was horrified. Because I felt I must go to England as quickly as
+      possible, and I said so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The train does not go to Bergen till night,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Stay in bed all
+      day.&rdquo; And then as we crossed the border a Customs officer came into the
+      carriage. Now I could easily have hidden Buchanan, but I thought as a
+      Swedish dog all his troubles were over, and he sat up there looking pertly
+      at the uniformed man and saying &ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you got a certificate of health for that dog?&rdquo; asked the man
+      sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said &ldquo;No,&rdquo; remembering how very carefully I had kept him out of the way
+      of anybody likely to be interested in his health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you must telegraph to the police at Christiania. They
+      will meet you and take him to a veterinary surgeon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And after?&rdquo; I asked, trembling, my Swedish friend translating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If his health is good they give him back to you. You take a room at a
+      hotel and if his health is good he will be allowed to skip about the
+      streets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt pretty sure he would be allowed to skip about the streets and I
+      took a room at the Victoria, the Oxford man kindly seeing us through&mdash;they
+      put us down as Mr and Mrs Gaunt here&mdash;and James Buchanan, who had
+      been taken possession of by the police at the station, came back to me,
+      accompanied by a Norwegian policeman who demanded five shillings and gave
+      me a certificate that he was a perfectly healthy little dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I want to go back to Norway when I am not tired and fed up with
+      travelling, for Christiania struck me as a dear little home-like town that
+      one could love; and the railway journey across the Dovrefield and even the
+      breakfast baskets that came in in the early morning were things to be
+      remembered. I saw snow up in those mountains, whether the first snow of
+      the coming winter or snow left over from the winter before, I do not know,
+      but the views were lovely, and I asked myself why I went wandering in
+      far-away places when there were places like this so close at home and so
+      easily reached. So near home. We were so near home. I could think of
+      nothing else. I told Buchanan about it and he licked my hand
+      sympathetically and told me always to remember that wherever I was was
+      good enough for him. And then we arrived at Bergen, a little wooden city
+      set at the head of a fiord among the hills, and we went on board the <i>Haakon
+      VII.</i>, bound for Newcastle-on-Tyne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the most memorable thing happened, the most memorable thing in
+      what for me was a wondrous journey. All across the Old World we had come,
+      almost from the very farthest corner of the Old World, a wonderful journey
+      not to be lightly undertaken nor soon forgotten. And yet as I went on
+      board that ship I felt what a very little thing it was. I have been
+      feeling it ever since. A Norwegian who spoke good English was there, going
+      back to London, and, talking to another man, he mentioned in a casual
+      manner something about the English contingent that had landed on the
+      Continent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It startled me. Not in my lifetime, nor in the lifetime of my father,
+      indeed I think my grandfathers must have been very little boys when the
+      last English troops landed in France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;English troops!&rdquo; I cried in astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Norwegian turned to me, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But of course they are only evidence of good will. Their
+      use is negligible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And I agreed. I actually agreed. Britain's rôle, it seemed to me, was on
+      the sea!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in four years I have seen Britain grow into a mighty military power. I
+      have seen the men of my own people come crowding across the ocean to help
+      the Motherland; I have seen my sister's young son pleased to be a soldier
+      in that army, just one of the proud and humble crowd that go to uphold
+      Britain's might. And all this has grown since I stood there at the head of
+      the Norwegian fiord with the western sun sparkling on the little wavelets
+      and heard a friendly foreigner talk about the little army that was
+      &ldquo;negligible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was tired. I envied those who could work and exert themselves, but I
+      could do nothing. If the future of the nation had depended on me I could
+      have done nothing. I was coming back to strenuous times and I longed for
+      rest. I wanted a house of my own; I wanted a seat in the garden; I wanted
+      to see the flowers grow, to listen to the birds singing in the trees. All
+      that our men are fighting for to keep sacred and safe, I longed for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I have had it, thanks to those fighting men who have sacrificed
+      themselves for me, I have had it. It is good to sit in the garden where
+      the faithful little friend I shall never forget has his last
+      resting-place; it is good to see the roses grow, to listen to the lark and
+      the cuckoo and the thrush; but there is something in our race that cannot
+      keep still for long, the something, I suppose, that sent my grandfather to
+      the sea, my father to Australia, and scattered his sons and daughters all
+      over the world. I had a letter from a soldier brother the other day. The
+      war holds him, of course, but nevertheless he wrote, quoting:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent10">
+      &ldquo;Salt with desire of travel
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Are my lips; and the wind's wild singing
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent10">
+      Lifts my heart to the ocean
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And the sight of the great ships swinging.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And my heart echoed: &ldquo;And I too! And I too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 54402 ***</div>
+  </body>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Broken Journey, Illustrated, by Mary Gaunt
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world 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.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+Title: A Broken Journey, Illustrated
+       Wanderings from the Hoang-Ho Yo the Island of Saghalien
+       and the Upper Reaches of The Amur River
+
+Author: Mary Gaunt
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2017 [EBook #54402]
+Last Updated: March 12, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BROKEN JOURNEY, ILLUSTRATED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger from page images generously
+provided by the Internet Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A BROKEN JOURNEY
+
+Wanderings from the Hoang-Ho yo the Island of Saghalien and the Upper
+Reaches of The Amur River
+
+By Mary Gaunt
+
+Author Of “Alone In West Africa”
+
+“A Woman In China,” Etc.
+
+London
+
+T. Werner Laurie Ltd.
+
+1919
+
+
+[Illustration: 0001]
+
+[Illustration: 0008]
+
+[Illustration: 0009]
+
+
+
+TO MY
+
+SISTER AND BROTHERS
+
+IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE DAYS BEFORE WE
+
+WANDERED
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+I have to thank my friend Mrs Lang for the drastic criticism which once
+more has materially helped me to write this book. Other people also have
+I to thank, but so great was the kindness I received everywhere I
+can only hope each one will see in this book some token of my sincere
+gratitude.
+
+Mary Gaunt.
+
+Mary Haven, New Eltham, Kent.
+
+
+
+
+
+A BROKEN JOURNEY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--THE LURE OF THE UNKNOWN
+
+Each time I begin a book of travel I search for the reasons that sent
+me awandering. Foolishness, for I ought to know by this time the
+wander fever was born in my blood; it is in the blood of my sister and
+brothers. We were brought up in an inland town in Victoria, Australia,
+and the years have seen us roaming all over the world. I do not think
+any of us has been nearer the North Pole than Petropaulovski, or to the
+South Pole than Cape Horn--children of a sub-tropical clime, we do not
+like the cold--but in many countries in between have we wandered.
+The sailors by virtue of their profession have had the greater
+opportunities, but the other five have made a very good second best of
+it, and always there has been among us a very understanding sympathy
+'with the desire that is planted in each and all to visit the remote
+corners of the earth.
+
+Anybody can go on the beaten track. It only requires money to take
+a railway or steamer ticket, and though we by no means despise
+comfort--indeed, because we know something of the difficulties that
+beset the traveller beyond the bounds of civilisation, we appreciate it
+the more highly--still there is something else beyond comfort in life.
+Wherein lies the call of the Unknown? To have done something that no
+one else has done--or only accomplished with difficulty? Where lies
+the charm? I cannot put it into words--only it is there, the “something
+calling--beyond the mountains,” the “Come and find me” of Kipling. That
+voice every one of the Gaunts hears, and we all sympathise when another
+one goes.
+
+And that voice I heard loudly in China.
+
+“Come and find me! Come and find me!”
+
+The livelong day I heard it, and again and again and yet again I tried
+to stifle it, for you who have read my _Woman in China_ will know that
+travelling there leaves much to be desired. To say it is uncomfortable
+is to put it in the mildest terms. Everything that I particularly
+dislike in life have I met travelling in China; everything that repells
+me; and yet, having unwisely invested $10 (about £1) in an atlas of
+China, the voice began to ring in my ears day and night.
+
+I was living in an American Presbyterian mission station in the
+western suburb of the walled town of Pao Ting Fu, just beyond European
+influence, the influence of the Treaty Ports and the Legation quarter of
+Peking. I wanted to see something of the real China, to get material for
+a novel--not a novel concerning the Chinese; for I have observed that
+no successful novel in English deals with anybody but the British or
+the Americans; the other peoples come in as subordinates--and the
+local colour was best got on the spot. There was plenty in Pao Ting Fu,
+goodness knows. It had suffered severely in the Boxer trouble. In the
+northern suburb, just about a mile from where we lived, was a tomb,
+or monument rather, that had been raised to the missionaries massacred
+then. They have made a garden plot where those burning houses stood,
+they have planted trees and flowers, and set up memorial tablets in the
+Chinese style, and the mission has moved to the western suburb, just
+under the frowning walls of the town, and--is doubly strong. A God-given
+fervour, say the missionaries, sends them forth.'Who am I to judge? But
+I see that same desire to go forth in myself, that same disregard of
+danger, when it is not immediate--I know I should be horribly scared
+if it materialised--and I cannot claim for myself it is God-given, save
+perhaps that all our desires are God-given.
+
+So there in the comfortable mission station I studied the local colour,
+corrected my last book of China, and instead of planning the novel,
+looked daily at the atlas of China, till there grew up in me a desire
+to cross Asia, not by train to the north as I had already done, as
+thousands of people used to do every year, but by the caravan route,
+across Shensi and Kansu and Sinkiang to Andijan in Asiatic Russia, the
+terminus of the Caspian Railway. Thousands and thousands of people go
+slowly along that way too, but the majority do not go all the way, and
+they do not belong to the class or nation whose comings and goings are
+recorded. In fact, you may count on the fingers of one hand the people
+who know anything of that road. The missionaries, particularly the
+womenkind, did not take very cheerful view's about it.
+
+“If I wanted to die,” said one woman, meeting me as I was going round
+the compound one day in the early spring of 1914, “I would choose some
+easier way.”
+
+But the doctor there was keenly interested. He would have liked to
+have gone himself, but his duty kept him alongside his patients and his
+hospital in Pao Ting Fu, and though he pulled himself up every now and
+then, remembering I was only a woman and probably couldn't do it, he
+could not but take as great an interest in that map and ways and means
+as I did myself. Then there was Mr Long, a professor at the big Chinese
+college in the northern suburb--he was young and enthusiastic and as
+interested as Dr Lewis.
+
+He too knew something about travel in unknown China, for he had been one
+of the band of white men who had made their way over the mountains of
+Shansi and Shensi in the depths of winter to go to the rescue of the
+missionaries in Sui Te Chou and all the little towns down to Hsi An
+Fu at the time of the Revolution. Yes, he knew something of the
+difficulties of Chinese travel, and he thought I could do it.
+
+“The only danger would be robbers, and--well, you know, there mightn't
+be robbers.”
+
+But Peking--the Peking of the Legations--that, I knew, held different
+view's. I wrote to an influential man who had been in China over ten
+years, who spoke the language well, and he was against it.
+
+“I was very much interested” (wrote he) “to read of your intention to
+do that trek across country. You ask my opinion about it, but I can only
+give you the same advice that _Punch_ gave many years ago, and that is,
+_don't_. You must realise that the travelling will be absolutely awful
+and the cost is very great indeed. You have not yet forgotten your
+trip to Jehol, I hope, and the roughness of the road. The trip you
+contemplate will make the little journey to Jehol look like a Sunday
+morning walk in Hyde Park, particularly as regards travelling comfort,
+to say nothing about the danger of the journey as regards hostile tribes
+on the southern and western borders of Tibet. You will be passing near
+the Lolo country, and I can assure you that the Lolos are _not_ a set of
+gentlemen within the meaning of the Act. They are distinctly hostile to
+foreigners, and many murders have taken place in their country that have
+not been published because of the inability of the Chinese troops to
+stand up against these people. What the peoples are like farther north
+I do not know, but I understand the Tibetans are not particularly
+trustworthy, and it will follow that the people living on their borders
+will inherit a good many of their vices and few of their virtues.
+
+“If you have really made up your mind to go, however, just let me know,
+and I will endeavour to hunt up all the information that it is possible
+to collect as to the best route to take, etc., though I repeat I would
+not advise the journey, and the Geographical Society can go to the
+deuce.”
+
+This not because he despised the Geographical Society by any means, but
+because I had advanced as one reason for going across Asia the desire to
+win my spurs so and be an acceptable member.
+
+“My dear,” wrote a woman, “think of that poor young Brooke. The Tibetans
+cut his throat with a sharp stone, which is a pleasant little way they
+have.”
+
+Now the man's opinion was worth having, but the woman's is a specimen of
+the loose way people are apt to reason--I do it myself--when they deal
+with the unknown. The “poor young Brooke” never went near Tibet, and
+was murdered about a thousand miles distant from the route I intended
+to take. It was something as if a traveller bound to the Hebrides was
+warned against dangers to be met upon the Rhone.
+
+One man who had travelled extensively in Mongolia was strongly against
+the journey, but declared that “Purdom knew a great deal more about
+travelling in China” than he did, and if “Purdom” said I might got--well
+then, I might. Mr Purdom and Mr Reginald Farrer were going west to the
+borders of Tibet botanising, and one night I dined with them, and Mr
+Purdom was optimistic and declared if I was prepared for discomfort and
+perhaps hardship he thought I might go.
+
+So it was decided, and thereupon those who knew took me in hand and gave
+me all advice about travelling in China, how to minimise discomfort,
+what to take and what to leave behind. One thing they were all agreed
+upon. The Chinese, as a rule, are the most peaceable people upon earth,
+the only thing I had to fear was a chance band of robbers, and if I fell
+into their hands--well, it would probably be finish.
+
+“The Chinese are fiendishly cruel,” said my friend of Mongolian travel;
+“keep your last cartridge for yourself.”
+
+I intimated that a pistol was quite beyond me, that that way of going
+out did not appeal to me, and anyhow I'd be sure to bungle it.
+
+“Then have something made up at the chemist's and keep it always on your
+person. You do not know how desperately you may need it.”
+
+I may say here that these remarks made no impression upon me whatever.
+I suppose in most of us the feeling is strong that nothing bad
+could possibly happen. It happens to other people, we know, but to
+us--impossible! I have often wondered how near I could get to danger
+without feeling that it really threatened--pretty close, I suspect. It
+is probably a matter of experience. I cannot cross a London road with
+equanimity--but then twice have I been knocked down and rather badly
+hurt--but I gaily essayed to cross Asia by way of China, and would quite
+certainly as gaily try again did I get the chance. Only next time I
+propose to take a good cook.
+
+To some, of course, the unknown is always full of danger.
+
+The folks who walked about Peking without a qualm warned me I would die
+of indigestion, I would be unable to drink the water, the filth would be
+unspeakable, hydrophobia raged, and “when you are bitten, promptly cut
+deep into the place and insert a chloride of mercury tabloid.”
+
+That last warning made me laugh. It reminded me of the time when as a
+little girl, living in a country where deadly snakes swarmed--my eldest
+brother killed sixty in a week, I remember, in our garden--I used to
+think it would be extremely dangerous to go to Europe because there were
+there mad dogs, things we never had in Australia! I think it was the
+reference to hydrophobia and the chloride of mercury tabloid helped me
+to put things in their proper prospective and made me realise that I was
+setting out on a difficult journey with a possible danger of robbers;
+but a possible danger is the thing we risk every day we travel in a
+railway train or on an electric tramcar. I am always ready for possible
+risks, it is when they become probable I bar them, so I set about my
+preparations with a quiet mind.
+
+A servant. I decided I must have a tall servant and strong, because
+so often in China I found I had to be lifted, and I had suffered from
+having too small a man on my former journeys. The missionaries provided
+me with a new convert of theirs, a tall strapping Northern Chinaman, who
+was a mason by trade. Tsai Chih Fu, we called him--that is to say, he
+came of the Tsai family; and the Chih Fu--I'm by no means sure that I
+spell it right--meant a “master workman.” He belonged to a large firm of
+masons, but as he had never made a dollar a day at his trade, my offer
+of that sum put him at my service, ready to go out into the unknown. He
+was a fine-looking man, dignified and courteous, and I had and have the
+greatest respect for him. He could not read or write, of course. Now
+a man who cannot read or write here in the West we look upon with
+contempt, but it would be impossible to look upon Tsai Chih Fu with
+contempt. He was a responsible person, a man who would count in any
+company. He belonged to another era and another civilisation, but he
+was a man of weight. A master of transport in Babylon probably closely
+resembled my servant Tsai Chih Fu.
+
+[Illustration: 0027]
+
+My interpreter, Wang Hsien--that is, Mr Wang--was of quite a different
+order. He was little and slight, with long artistic hands, of the
+incapable artistic order, and he was a fool in any language; but good
+interpreters are exceedingly difficult to get. He used to come and see
+me every day for a fortnight before we started, and I must say my heart
+sank when the simplest remark, probably a greeting, or a statement as
+to the weather, was met with a “Repeat, please.” I found this was the
+invariable formula and it was not conducive to brisk conversation. On my
+way through the country things were apt to vanish before I had made
+Mr Wang understand that I was asking, and was really in search of,
+information. He had his black hair cut short in the progressive foreign
+fashion (it looked as if he had had a basin put on his head--a good
+large one--and the hair snipped off round), and he wore a long blue
+cotton gown buttoned to his feet. Always he spoke with a silly giggle.
+Could I have chosen, which I could not, he would have been about the
+very last man I should have taken on a strenuous journey as guide,
+philosopher and friend.
+
+And there was another member of the party, a most important member,
+without whom I should not have dreamt of stirring--my little black and
+white k'ang dog, James Buehanan, who loved me as no one in the world has
+ever loved me, thought everything I did was perfect, and declared he was
+willing to go with me to the ends of the earth.
+
+So I began my preparations. One thing only was clear, everyone was
+agreed upon it, all my goods must be packed in canvas bags, because it
+is impossible to travel by mule, or cart, or litter with one's clothes
+in ordinary boxes. And I had, through the kindness of Messrs Forbes &
+Company, to make arrangements with Chinese bankers, who have probably
+been making the same arrangements since before the dawn of history,
+to get money along the proposed route. These things I managed
+satisfactorily; it was over the stores that, as usual, I made mistakes.
+The fact of the matter is that the experience gained in one country is
+not always useful for the next. When first I travelled in Africa I took
+many “chop” boxes that were weighty and expensive of transport, and
+contained much tinned meat that in a warm, moist climate I did not want.
+I found I could live quite happily on biscuits and fruit and eggs, with
+such relishes as anchovy paste or a few Bologna sausages for a change.
+My expensive tinned foods I bestowed upon my servants and carriers,
+greatly to my own regret. I went travelling in China, in Northern Chihli
+and Inner Mongolia, I dwelt apart from all foreigners in a temple in the
+western hills, and I found with a good cook I lived very comfortably off
+the country, with just the addition of a few biscuits, tea, condensed
+milk, coffee and raisins, therefore I persuaded myself I could go west
+with few stores and do exactly the same. Thus I added considerably to my
+own discomfort. The excellent master of transport was a bad cook, and a
+simple diet of hard-boiled eggs, puffed rice and tea, with raisins for
+dessert, however good in itself, is apt to pall when it is served up
+three times a day for weeks with unfailing regularity.
+
+However, I didn't know that at the time.
+
+And at last all was ready. I had written to all the mission stations
+as far west as Tihwa, in Sinkiang, announcing my coming. I had provided
+myself with a folding table and chair--they both, I found, were given to
+fold at inconvenient moments--some enamel plates, a couple of glasses,
+a knife and fork, rudimentary kitchen utensils, bedding, cushions, rugs,
+etc., and all was ready. I was to start the next week, ten days after Mr
+Purdom and Mr Farrer had set out, for Honan, when there came a telegram
+from Hsi An Fu:
+
+“Delay journey” (it read).
+
+“White wolf in Shensi. Shorrocks.”
+
+Was there ever such country? News that a robber was holding up the road
+could be sent by telegram!
+
+China rather specialises in robbers, but White Wolf was considerably
+worse than the average gentleman of the road. He defied the Government
+in 1914, but the last time we of the mission station had heard of him
+he was making things pleasant for the peaceful inhabitants of Anhwei,
+to the east, and the troops were said to have him “well in hand.” But in
+China you never know exactly where you are, and now he was in Shensi!
+
+I read that telegram in the pleasant March sunshine. I looked up at the
+boughs of the “water chestnuts,” where the buds were beginning to swell,
+and I wondered what on earth I should do. The roads now were as good
+as they were ever likely to be, hard after the long winter and not yet
+broken up by the summer rains. We discussed the matter from all points
+that day at the midday dinner. The missionaries had a splendid cook, a
+Chinese who had had his kitchen education finished in a French family,
+and with a few good American recipes thrown in the combination makes a
+craftsman fit for the Savoy, and all for ten Mexican dollars a month!
+Never again do I expect to meet such salads, sweet and savoury! And here
+was I doing my best to leave the flesh-pots of Egypt. It seemed foolish.
+
+I contented my soul with what patience I might for a week, and then I
+telegraphed to Honan Fu, at which place I expected to be well away from
+the railway. Honan Fu answered promptly:
+
+“The case is hopeless. Hsi An Fu threatened. Advise you go by T'ai Yuan
+Fu.”
+
+Now the road from Honan Fu to Hsi An Fu is always dangerous. It is
+through the loess, sunken many feet below the level of the surrounding
+country, and at the best of times is infested with stray robbers who,
+from the cliffs above, roll down missiles on the carts beneath, kill the
+mules and hold the travellers at their mercy. The carters go in large
+bodies and are always careful to find themselves safe in the inn-yards
+before the dusk has fallen.
+
+These were the everyday dangers of the way such as men have faced for
+thousands of years; if you add to them an organised robber band and a
+large body of soldiers in pursuit, clearly that road is no place for a
+solitary foreign woman, with only a couple of attendants, a little dog,
+and for all arms a small pistol and exactly thirteen cartridges--all
+I could get, for it is difficult to buy ammunition in China. Then to
+clinch matters came another telegram from Hsi An Fu, in cipher this
+time:
+
+“Do not come” (it said).
+
+
+“The country is very much disturbed.”
+
+From Anhwei to Shensi the brigands had operated. They had burned and
+looted and outraged by order of Pai Lang (White Wolf), leaving behind
+them ruined homes and desolated hearths, and when the soldiers came
+after them, so said Rumour of the many tongues, White Wolf, who was rich
+by then, left money on the roads and so bribed the avenging army to come
+over to him.
+
+But to the ordinary peaceful inhabitant--and curiously enough the
+ordinary Chinese is extremely peaceful--it is not a matter of much
+moment whether it be Pai Lang or the soldier who is hunting him who
+falls upon the country. The inhabitants are sure to suffer. Both bandit
+and soldier must have food, so both loot and outrage impartially, for
+the unpaid soldiery--I hope I shall not be sued for libel, but most of
+the soldiery when I was in China appeared to be unpaid--loot just as
+readily as do the professional bandits. A robber band alone is a heavy
+load for a community to carry, and a robber band pursued by soldiers
+more than doubles the burden.
+
+Still the soldiers held Tungkwan, the gate into Shensi, the mountains on
+either side blocked the way, and Hsi An Fu breathed for a moment till
+it was discovered that Pai Lang in strategy was equal to anyone who had
+been sent against him. He had taken the old and difficult route through
+the mountains and had come out west of the narrow pass of Tungkwan and,
+when I became interested in him, was within a day's march of Hsi An
+Fu, the town that is the capital of the province of Shensi and was the
+capital of China many hundreds of years ago. It is a walled city, but
+the people feared and so did the members of the English Baptist Mission
+sheltering behind those walls. And, naturally, they feared, for the
+Society of the Elder Brethren had joined Pai Lang, and the Society of
+Elder Brethren always has been and is markedly anti-foreign. This was
+the situation, growing daily a little worse, and we foreigners looked
+on; and the Government organs in Peking told one day how a certain Tao
+Tai had been punished and degraded because he had been slack in putting
+down White Wolf and possibly the next day declared the power of White
+Wolf was broken and he was in full retreat. I don't know how many times
+I read the power of White Wolf had been broken and yet in the end I
+was regretfully obliged to acknowledge that he was stronger than ever.
+Certainly Pai Lang turned my face north sooner than I intended, for the
+idea of being a target for rocks and stones and billets of wood at
+the bottom of a deep ditch from which there could be no escape did not
+commend itself to me. True, in loess country, as I afterwards found,
+there are no stones, no rocks and no wood. I can't speak for the road
+through Tungkwan, for I didn't dare it. But, even if there were
+no stones, loose earth--and there is an unlimited quantity of that
+commodity in Northern China--flung down from a height would be
+exceedingly unpleasant.
+
+Of course it all might have been rumour--it wasn't, I found out
+afterwards; but unfortunately the only way to find out at the time
+was by going to see for myself, and if it had been true--well, in
+all probability I shouldn't have come back. That missionary evidently
+realised how keen I was when he suggested that I should go by T'ai Yuan
+Fu, the capital of Shansi, and I determined to take his advice. There
+was a way, a little-known way, across the mountains, across Shansi, by
+Sui Te Chou in Shensi, and thence into Kansu, which would eventually
+land me in Lan Chou Fu if I cared to risk it.
+
+This time I asked Mr Long's advice. He and the little band of nine
+rescuers who had ridden hot haste to the aid of the Shensi missionaries
+during the revolution had taken this road, and they had gone in the
+depths of winter when the country was frozen hard and the thermometer
+was more often below zero, very far below zero, than not. If they had
+accomplished it when pressed for time in the great cold, I thought' in
+all probability I might manage it now at the best time of the year
+and at my leisure. Mr Long, who would have liked to have gone himself,
+thought so too, and eventually I set off.
+
+The missionaries were goodness itself to me. Dr Mackay, in charge of the
+Women's Hospital, set me up with all sorts of simple drugs that I might
+require and that I could manage, and one day in the springtime, when the
+buds on the trees in the compound were just about to burst, and full
+of the promise of the life that was coming, I, with most of the
+missionaries to wish me “Godspeed,” and with James Buchanan under my
+arm, my giggling interpreter and my master of transport following with
+my gear, took train to T'ai Yuan Fu, a walled city that is set in the
+heart of a fertile plateau surrounded by mountains.
+
+The great adventure had begun.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--TRUCULENT T'AI YUAN FU
+
+But you mayn't go to T'ai Yuan Fu in one day. The southern train puts
+you down at Shih Chia Chuang--the village of the Stone Family--and there
+you must stay till 7.40 a.m. next morning, when the French railway built
+through the mountains that divide Shansi from Shensi takes you on to
+its terminus at T'ai Yuan Fu. There is a little Chinese inn at Shih
+Chia Chuang that by this time has become accustomed to catering for the
+foreigner, but those who are wise beg the hospitality of the British
+American Tobacco Company.
+
+I craved that hospitality, and two kindly young men came to the station
+through a dust-storm to meet me and took me off to their house that,
+whether it was intended to or not, with great cool stone balconies,
+looked like a fort. But they lived on perfectly friendly terms with
+people. Why not? To a great number of the missionaries the B.A.T. is
+_anathema maranatha_, though many of the members rival in pluck and
+endurance the missionaries themselves. And why is it a crime for a man
+or a woman to smoke? Many of the new teachers make it so and thus lay an
+added burden on shoulders already heavily weighted. Personally I should
+encourage smoking, because it is the one thing people who are far apart
+as the Poles might have in common.
+
+And goodness knows they have so few things. Even with the animals the
+“East is East and West is West” feeling is most marked. Here at the
+B.A.T. they had a small pekinese as a pet. She made a friend of James
+Buchanan in a high and haughty manner, but she declined to accompany him
+outside the premises. Once she had been stolen and had spent over three
+months in a Chinese house. Then one day her master saw her and, making
+good his claim, took her home with him. Since that time nothing would
+induce her to go beyond the front door. She said in effect that she got
+all the exercise she needed in the courtyard, and if it did spoil her
+figure, she preferred a little weight to risking the tender mercies of
+a Chinese household, and I'm sure she told Buchanan, who, having the
+sacred V-shaped mark on his forehead, was reckoned very beautiful and
+was much admired by the Chinese, that he had better take care and not
+fall into alien hands. Buchanan as a puppy of two months old had been
+bought in the streets of Peking, and when we started on our journey
+must have been nearly ten months old, but he had entirely forgotten his
+origin and regarded all Chinese with suspicion. He tolerated the master
+of transport as a follower of whom we had need.
+
+“Small dog,” Mr Wang called him, and looked upon him doubtfully, but
+really not as doubtfully as Buchanan looked at him. He was a peaceful,
+friendly little dog, but I always thought he did not bite Mr Wang simply
+because he despised him so.
+
+Those two young men were more than good to me. They gave me refreshment,
+plenty of hot water to wash away the ravages of the dust-storm, and good
+company, and as we sat and talked--of White Wolf, of course--there
+came to us the tragedy of a life, a woman who had not the instincts of
+Buchanan.
+
+Foreign women are scarce at Shih Chia Chuang; one a month is something
+to remark upon, one a week is a crowd, so that when, as we sat in the
+big sitting-room talking, the door opened and a foreign woman stood
+there, everyone rose to his feet in astonishment. Mr Long, who had been
+up the line, stood beside her, and behind her was a Chinaman with a
+half-caste baby in his arms. She was young and tall and rather pretty.
+
+[Illustration: 0037]
+
+[Illustration: 0038]
+
+“I bring you a lady in distress,” said Mr Long rather hastily,
+explaining matters. “I met Mrs Chang on the train. She has miscalculated
+her resources and has not left herself enough money to get to Peking.”
+
+The woman began to explain; but it is an awkward thing to explain to
+strangers that you have no money and are without any credentials. I
+hesitated. Eventually I hope I should have helped her, but my charity
+and kindliness were by no means as ready and spontaneous as those of my
+gallant young host. He never hesitated a moment. You would have thought
+that women and babies without any money were his everyday business.
+
+“Why, sure,” said he in his pleasant American voice, “if I can be of any
+assistance. But you can't go to-day, Mrs Chang; of course you will stay
+with us--oh yes, yes; indeed we should be very much hurt if you didn't;
+and you will let me lend you some money.”
+
+And so she was established among us, this woman who had committed the
+unpardonable sin of the East, the sin against her race, the sin for
+which there is no atoning. It is extraordinary after all these years,
+after all that has been said and written, that Englishwomen, women of
+good class and standing, will so outrage all the laws of decency and
+good taste. This woman talked. She did not like the Chinese, she would
+not associate with them; her husband, of course, was different. He was
+good to her; but it was hard to get work in these troubled times, harder
+still to get paid for it, and he had gone away in search of it, so she
+was going for a holiday to Peking and--here she tumedto the young
+men and talked about the society and the dances and the amusement she
+expected to have among the foreigners in the capital, she who for so
+long had been cut off from such joys in the heart of China among an
+alien people.
+
+We listened. What could we say?
+
+“People in England don't really understand,” said she, “what being in
+exile means. They don't understand the craving to go home and speak to
+one's own people; but being in Peking will be something like being in
+England.”
+
+We other five never even looked at each other, because we knew, and we
+could hardly believe, that she had not yet realised that in marrying
+a Chinese, even one who had been brought up in England, she had exiled
+herself effectually. The Chinese look down upon her, they will have none
+of her, and among the foreigners she is outcast. These young men who had
+come to her rescue with such right good will--“I could not see a foreign
+woman in distress among Chinese”--will pass her in the street with a
+bow, will not see her if they can help themselves, will certainly object
+that anyone they care about should see them talking to her, and their
+attitude but reflects that of the majority of the foreigners in China.
+Her little child may not go to the same sehool as the foreign children,
+even as it may not go to the same school as the Chinese. She has
+committed the one error that outclasses her, and she is going to pay for
+it in bitterness all the days of her life. And everyone in that room,
+while we pitied her, held, and held strongly, that the attitude of the
+community, foreign and Chinese, was one to be upheld.
+
+“East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,” and yet
+here and there one still comes across a foolish woman who wrecks her
+life because she never seems to have heard of this dictum. She talked
+and talked, and told us how good was her husband to her, and we
+listeners said afterwards she “doth protest too much,” she was
+convincing herself, not us, and that, of course, seeing he was a
+Chinaman, he was disappointed that the baby was a girl, and that his
+going off alone was the beginning of the end, and we were thankful that
+she was “the only girl her mother had got,” and so she could go back to
+her when the inevitable happened.
+
+The pity of it! When will the stay-at-home English learn that the
+very worst thing one of their women can do with her life is to wed
+an Oriental? But when I think of that misguided woman in that remote
+Chinese village I shall always think too of those gallant young
+gentlemen, perfect in courteous kindliness, who ran the B.A.T. in Shih
+Chia Chuang.
+
+The next day Buchanan and I and our following boarded the luxurious
+little mountain railway and went to T'ai Yuan Fu.
+
+This railway, to me, who know nothing of such things, is a very marvel
+of engineering skill. There are great rugged mountains, steep and rocky,
+and the train winds its way through them, clinging along the sides of
+precipices, running through dark tunnels and cuttings that tower high
+overhead and going round such curves that the engine and the guard's van
+of a long train are going in exactly opposite directions. A wonderful
+railway, and doubly was I interested in it because before ever I came to
+China I had heard about it.
+
+When there are disturbances in China it is always well for the foreign
+element to flee while there is yet time, for the sanctity of human life
+is not yet thoroughly grasped there, and there is always the chance
+that the foreigner may be killed first and his harmlessness, or even
+his value, discovered later. So in the revolution in the winter of
+1910-1911, though all train traffic had stopped, the missionaries from
+T'ai Yuan Fu and those from the country beyond fled down this railway.
+A friend of mine, an artist, happened to be staying at a mission station
+in the mountains and made one of the party. It was the depth of a Shansi
+winter, a Continental winter, with the thermometer generally below -15°
+at the warmest part of the day, and the little band of fugitives came
+fleeing down this line on trollies worked by the men of the party.
+They stayed the nights at the deserted railway stations, whence all the
+officials had fled, and the country people in their faded blue cotton
+wadded coats came and looked at them and, pointing their fingers at
+them exactly as I have seen the folks in the streets of London do at a
+Chinaman or an Arab in an outlandish dress, remarked that these people
+were going to their death.
+
+“Death! Death!” sounded on all sides. They, the country people, were
+peaceful souls; they would not have killed them themselves; they merely
+looked upon them as an interesting exhibit because they were foreign and
+they were going to die. That the audience were wrong the people on show
+were not quite as sure as they would have liked to be, and a single-line
+railway through mountainous country is by no means easy to negotiate on
+a trolly. They came to places where the line was carried upon trestles;
+they could see a river winding its way at the bottom of a rocky ravine
+far below them, and the question would be how to get across. It required
+more nerve than most of them had to walk across the skeleton bridge. The
+procedure seems to have been to give each trolly a good hard push, to
+spring upon it and to trust to Providence to get safely across to the
+firm earth upon the other side. The tunnels too, and the sharp curves,
+were hair-raising, for they knew nothing of what was happening at the
+other end of the line, and for all they could say they might have come
+full butt upon a train rushing up in the other direction.
+
+Eventually they did get through, but with considerable hardship, and I
+should hesitate to say how many days that little company went without
+taking off their clothes. I thought of them whenever our train went into
+a tunnel, and I thought too of the gay girl who told me the story
+and who had dwelt not upon the discomfort and danger, but upon the
+excitement and exhilaration that comes with danger.
+
+“I lived,” said she, “I lived,” and my heart went out to her. It is that
+spirit in this “nation of shopkeepers” that is helping us to beat the
+Germans.
+
+The scenery through which we went is beautiful--it would be beautiful
+in any land--and this in China, where I expected not so much beauty
+as industry. There were evidences of industry in plenty on every side.
+These people were brethren of the bandits who turned me north and they
+are surely the most industrious in the world. Wherever among these stony
+hills there was a patch of ground fit for cultivation, though it was
+tiny as a pocket handkerchief, it was cultivated. Everywhere I saw
+people at work in the fields, digging, weeding, ploughing with a dry cow
+or a dry cow and a donkey hitched to the primitive plough, or guiding
+trains of donkeys or mules carrying merchandise along the steep and
+narrow paths, and more than once I saw strings of camels, old-world
+camels that took me back before the days of written history. They kept
+to the valleys and evidently made their way along the river beds.
+
+Through mountain sidings and tunnels we came at length to the curious
+loess country, where the friable land is cut into huge terraces that
+make the high hills look like pyramids carved in great clay-coloured
+steps, and now in April the green crops were already springing; another
+month and they would be banks of waving green. The people are poor,
+their faces were browned by the sun and the wind, their garments were
+scanty and ragged, and the original blue was faded till the men and
+the clothes were all the same monotonous clay colour of the surrounding
+country. The women I saw here were few, and only afterwards I found the
+reason. The miserably poor peasant of Shansi binds the feet of his
+women so effectually that to the majority movement is a physical
+impossibility.
+
+We climbed up and up through the mountains into the loess country,
+and at last we were on the plateau, about four thousand feet above the
+sea-level, whereon is T'ai Yuan Fu, the capital of the province. There
+are other towns here too, little walled eities, and the train drew up at
+the stations outside the grey brick walls, the most ancient and the most
+modern, Babylon and Crewe meeting. Oh, I understand the need of those
+walled eities now I have heard so much about Pai Lang. There is a
+certain degree of safety behind those grey walls, so long as the robber
+bands are small and the great iron-bound gates ean keep them out, but
+dire is the fate of the city into which the enemy has penetrated, has
+fastened the gates and holds the people in a trap behind their own
+walls.
+
+But these people were at peace; they were thinking of no robbers. Pai
+Lang was about five hundred miles away and the station platforms were
+crowded with would-be travellers with their belongings in bundles, and
+over the fence that shut off the platform hung a vociferating crowd
+waving white banners on which were inscribed in black characters the
+signs of the various inns, while each banner-bearer at the top of his
+voice advocated the charms of his own employer's establishment. The
+queue was forbidden for the moment, but many of these ragged touts and
+many of the other peasants still wore their heads shaven in front, for
+the average Chinaman, especially he of the poorer classes, is loath to
+give up the fashions of his forefathers.
+
+Every railway platform was pandemonium, for every person on that
+platform yelled and shrieked at the top of his voice. On the main line
+every station was guarded by untidy, unkempt-looking soldiers armed with
+rifles, but there on this little mountain railway the only guards were
+policemen, equally unkempt, clad in very dusty black and white and
+armed with stout-looking bludgeons. They stood along the line at regular
+intervals, good-natured-looking men, and I wondered whether they would
+really be any good in an emergency, or whether they would not take the
+line of least resistance and join the attacking force.
+
+All across the cultivated plain we went, where not an inch of ground
+is wasted, and at half-past five in the evening we arrived at T'ai Yuan
+Fu--arrived, that is, at the station outside the little South Gate.
+
+T'ai Yuan Fu is a great walled city eight miles round, with five gates
+in the walls, gates that contrast strangely with the modern-looking
+macadamised road which goes up from the station. I don't know why I
+should feel that way, for they certainly had paved roads even in the
+days before history. Outside the walls are neat, perhaps forty feet high
+and of grey brick, and inside you see how these city walls are made, for
+they are the unfinished clay banks that have been faced in front, and
+when I was there in the springtime the grass upon them was showing
+everywhere and the shrubs were bursting into leaf. But those banks gave
+me a curious feeling of being behind the scenes.
+
+[Illustration: 0047]
+
+I was met at the station by some of the ladies of the English Baptist
+Mission who had come to welcome me and to offer me, a total stranger to
+them, kindly hospitality, and we walked through the gate to the mission
+inside the walls. It was only a short walk, short and dusty, but it was
+thronged. All the roadway was crowded with rickshaws and carts waiting
+in a long line their turn to go underneath the gateway over which
+frowned a typical many-roofed Chinese watch tower, and as cart or
+rickshaw came up the men along with it were stopped by the dusty
+soldiery in black and grey and interrogated as to their business.
+
+When I got out on to the platform I had looked up at the ancient walls
+clear-cut against the bright blue sky, and the women meeting me looked
+askance at Tsai Chih Fu, who, a lordly presence, stood behind me, with
+James Buchanan in his arms, a little black satin cap on his head and his
+pigtail hanging down his back.
+
+“There is some little commotion in the town,” said Miss Franklin. “They
+are cutting off queues.”
+
+The master of transport smiled tolerantly when they told him, and,
+taking off his cap, he wound his tightly round his head.
+
+“I know,” he said in the attitude of a man of the world, “some people do
+not wear them now. But I have always worn one, and I like it,” and his
+manner said he would like to see the person who would dare dictate to
+him in what manner he should wear his hair. He could certainly have put
+up a good fight.
+
+It was not needed. He passed through unchallenged; he was a quietly
+dressed man who did not court notice and his strapping inches were
+in his favour. He might well be passed over when there were so many
+slighter men more easily tackled. One man riding along in a rickshaw I
+saw put up a splendid fight. At last he was hauled out of his carriage
+and his little round cap tossed off his head, and then it was patent his
+queue could not be cut, for he was bald as a billiard ball! The Chinese
+do understand a joke, even a mob. They yelled and howled with laughter,
+and we heard it echoing and re-echoing as we passed under the frowning
+archway, tramping across many a dusty coil of coarse black hair roughly
+shorn from the heads of the luckless adherents to the old fashion. The
+missionaries said that Tsai Chih Fu must be the only man in T'ai Yuan Fu
+with a pigtail and that it would be very useful to us as we went farther
+west, where they had not yet realised the revolution. They doubted if
+he would be able to keep it on so strict was the rule, but he did--a
+tribute, I take it, to the force of my “master of transport.”
+
+The ladies lived in a Chinese house close under the walls. There is a
+great charm about these houses built round courtyards in the Chinese
+style; there is always plenty of air and sunshine, though, as most of
+the rooms open into the courtyard only, I admit in rough weather they
+must sometimes be awkward, and when--as is always the case in Shansi
+in winter-time--the courtyard is covered with ice and snow, and the
+thermometer is far below zero for weeks at a time, it is impossible to
+go from bedroom to sitting-room without being well wrapped up. And yet,
+because China is not a damp country, it could never be as awkward as
+it would be in England, and for weeks at a time it is a charming
+arrangement. Staying there in April, I found it delightful. Buchanan and
+I had a room under a great tree just showing the first faint tinge of
+green, and I shall always be grateful for the kindly hospitality those
+young ladies gave me.
+
+From there we went out and saw T'ai Yuan Fu, and another kindly
+missionary engaged muleteers for me and made all arrangements for my
+journey across Shansi and Shensi and Kansu to Lan Chou Fu.
+
+But T'ai Yuan Fu is not a nice town to stay in.
+
+“The town,” said the missionaries, “is progressive and anti-foreign.”
+ It is. You feel somehow the difference in the attitude of the people
+the moment you set foot inside the walls. It seems to me that if trouble
+really came it would be an easy matter to seize the railway and cut off
+the foreign missionaries from all help, for it is at least a fortnight
+away in the mountains.
+
+They suffered cruelly at the Boxer time: forty men, women and little
+helpless children were butchered in cold blood in the yamen, and the
+archway leading to the hospital where Miss Coombs the schoolmistress
+was deliberately burned to death while trying to guard and shelter
+her helpless pupils still stands. In the yamen, with a refinement of
+torture, they cut to pieces the little children first, and then the
+women, the nuns of the Catholic Church the fierce soldiery dishonoured,
+and finally they slew all the men. Against the walls in the street stand
+two miserable stones that the Government were forced to put up to the
+memory of the foreigners thus ruthlessly done to death, but a deeper
+memorial is engraven on the hearts of the people. Some few years later
+the tree underneath which they were slain was blasted by lightning and
+half destroyed, and on that very spot, during the recent revolution, the
+Tao Tai of the province was killed.
+
+“A judgment!” said the superstitious people. “A judgment!” say even the
+educated.
+
+And during the late revolution the white people shared with the
+inhabitants a terribly anxious time. Shut up in the hospital with a
+raging mob outside, they waited for the place to be set on fire. The
+newest shops in the principal streets were being looted, the Manchu
+city--a little walled city within the great city--was destroyed, and
+though they opened the gates and told the Manchus they might escape,
+the mob hunted down the men as they fled and slew them, though, more
+merciful than Hsi An Fu, they let the women and children escape. Men's
+blood was up, the lust of killing was upon them, and the men and women
+behind the hospital walls trembled.
+
+“We made up our minds,” said a young missionary lady to me, “that if
+they fired the place we would rush out and mingle in the mob waiting
+to kill us. They looked awful. I can't tell you how they looked, but it
+would have been better than being burned like rats in a trap.”
+
+A Chinese crowd, to my Western eyes, unkempt, unwashed, always looks
+awful; what it must be like when they are out to kill I cannot imagine.
+
+And then she went on: “Do you know, I was not really as much afraid as
+I should have thought I would have been. There was too mueh to think
+about.” Oh, merciful God! I pray that always in such moments there may
+be “too much to think about.”
+
+The mob looted the city. They ruined the university. They destroyed the
+Manehus. But they spared the foreigners; and still there flourishes in
+the town a mission of the English Baptists and another of the Catholics,
+but when I was there the town had not yet settled down. There was
+unrest, and the missionaries kept their eyes anxiously on the south, on
+the movements of Pai Lang. We thought about him at Pao Ting Fu, but here
+the danger was just a little nearer, help just a little farther away.
+Besides, the people were different. They were not quite so subservient,
+not quite so friendly to the foreigner, it would take less to light the
+tinder.
+
+For myself, I was glad of the instinct that had impelled me to engage
+as servant a man of inches. I dared never walk in the streets alone as
+I had been accustomed to in Pao Ting Fu. It marks in my mind the
+jumping-off place. Here I left altogether the civilisation of the West
+and tasted the age-old civilisation of the East, the civilisation that
+was in full swing when my ancestors were naked savages hunting the deer
+and the bear and the wolf in the swamps and marshes of Northern Europe.
+I had thought I had reached that civilisation when I lived in Peking,
+when I dwelt alone in a temple in the mountains, when I went to Pao
+Ting Fu, but here in T'ai Yuan Fu the feeling deepened. Only the mission
+stations stood between me and this strange thing. The people in the
+streets looked at me askance, over the compound wall came the curious
+sounds of an ancient people at work, the shrieking of the greased
+wheel-barrows, the beating of gongs, the whir of the rattle of the
+embroidery silk seller, the tinkling of the bells that were hung round
+the necks of the donkeys and the mules, the shouting of the hucksters
+selling scones and meat balls, all the sounds of an industrious city,
+and I was an outsider, the alien who was something of a curiosity, but
+who anyhow was of no account. Frankly, I don't like being of no account.
+As a matter of fact, I shocked all Chinese ideas of correct deportment.
+When a well-bred Chinese gentleman arrives at a strange place, he does
+not look around him, he shows no curiosity whatever in his surroundings,
+he retires to his room, his meal is brought to him and he remains
+quietly in his resting-place till it is time for him to take his
+departure, and what applies to a man, applies, of course, in an
+exaggerated degree, to a woman. Now I had come to see China, and I made
+every effort in my power to see all I could. I tremble to think what
+the inhabitants of Shansi must have thought of me! Possibly, since I
+outraged all their canons of decency, I was lucky in that they only
+found me of no account.
+
+All the while I was in T'ai Yuan Fu I was exceedingly anxious about the
+measure of safety for a foreign woman outside the walls, and opinions
+differed as to the wisdom of my venture, but, on the whole, those I
+consulted thought I would be all right. They rather envied me, in fact,
+the power to go wandering, but on one point they were very sure: it was
+a pity Dr Edwards, the veteran missionary doctor, was not there, because
+he knew more about China and travelling there than all the rest of them
+put together. But he had gone out on his own account and was on the way
+to Hsi An Fu, the town I had given up as hopeless. He did not propose to
+approach it through the Tungkwan, but from the north, and they did not
+expect him to have any difficulty.
+
+Then I found I had not brought enough money with me and the missionaries
+lent me more, and they engaged muleteers with four mules and a donkey
+that were to take me across the thousand miles that lay between the
+capital of Shansi and that of Kansu. Two men were in charge, and the
+cost of getting there, everything included--the men to feed themselves
+and their animals and I only to be responsible for the feeding and
+lodging of my own servants--was exactly eighteen pounds. It has always
+seemed to me ridiculously cheap. Money must go a long way in China for
+it to be possible for two men to take four mules and a donkey laden a
+thousand miles, and then come back unladen and keep themselves by the
+way, for so small a sum.
+
+So I sent off my servants the day before, then Buchanan and I bade
+good-bye to the missionaries and went the first day's journey back along
+the line to Yu Tze, where the road started for the Yellow River, and
+as I left the train and was taken by Tsai Chih Fu and Mr Wang to the
+enclosure of the inn where they had spent the night I felt that I had
+indeed left the West behind, and the only companion and friend I had was
+James Buchanan. It was lucky he was a host in himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--THE FIRST SIGN OF UNREST
+
+I was to ride a pack-mule. Now riding a pack-mule at any time is an
+unpleasant way of getting along the road. I know no more uncomfortable
+method. It is not quite as comfortable as sitting upon a table with
+one's legs dangling, for the table is still, the mule is moving, and
+one's legs dangle on either side of his neck. There are neither reins
+nor stirrups, and the mule goes at his own sweet will, and in a very
+short time your back begins to ache, after a few hours that aching is
+intolerable. To get over this difficulty the missionary had cut the legs
+off a chair and suggested that, mounted on the pack, I might sit in it
+comfortably. I don't know whether I could, for the mule objected.
+
+It was a sunny morning with a bright blue sky above, and all seemed
+auspicious except my mule, who expressed in no measured language his
+dislike to that chair. Tsai Chih Fu had no sooner hoisted me into it
+than up he went on his hind legs and, using them as a pivot, stood
+on end pawing the air. Everybody in the inn-yard shrieked and yelled
+except, I hope, myself, and then Tsai Chih Fu, how I know not, rescued
+me from my unpleasant position, and thankfully I found myself upon
+the firm ground again. He was a true Chinese mule and objected to all
+innovations. He stood meekly enough once the chair was removed.
+
+I wanted to cross Asia and here I was faced with disaster at the very
+outset! Finally I was put upon the pack minus the chair, Buchanan was
+handed up to me and nestled down beside me, and the procession started.
+My heart sank. I don't mind acknowledging it now. I had at least
+a thousand miles to go, and within half-an-hour of the start I had
+thoroughly grasped the faet that of all modes of progression a pack-mule
+is the most abominable. There are no words at my command to express its
+discomforts.
+
+Very little did I see of the landscape of Shansi that day. I was engaged
+in hanging on to my pack and wondering how I could stick it out. We
+passed along the usual hopeless cart-track of China. I had eschewed
+Peking carts as being the very acme of misery, but I was beginning to
+reflect that anyhow a cart was comparatively passive misery while the
+back of a pack-mule was decidedly active. Buchanan was a good little
+dog, but he mentioned several times in the course of that day that he
+was uncomfortable and he thought I was doing a fool thing. I was much of
+his opinion.
+
+[Illustration: 0057]
+
+[Illustration: 0058]
+
+The day was never ending. All across a plain we went, with rough fields
+just showing green on either hand, through walled villages, through
+little towns, and I cared for nothing, I was too intent on holding on,
+on wishing the day would end, and at last, as the dusk was falling, the
+muleteer pointed out, clear-cut against the evening sky, the long wralls
+of a large town--Taiku. At last! At last!
+
+I was to stay the night at a large mission school kept by a Mr and Mrs
+Wolf, and I only longed for the comfort of a bed, any sort of a bed so
+long as it was flat and warm and kept still. We went on and on, we got
+into the suburbs of the town, and we appeared to go round and round,
+through an unending length of dark, narrow streets, full of ruts and
+holes, with the dim loom of houses on either side, and an occasional
+gleam of light from a dingy kerosene lamp or Chinese paper lantern
+showing through the paper windows.
+
+Again and again we stopped and spoke to men who were merely muffled
+shapeless figures in the darkness, and again we went on. I think now
+that in all probability neither Tsai Chih Fu nor Mr Wang understood
+enough of the dialect to make the muleteers or the people of whom we
+inquired understand where we wanted to go, but at last, more probably by
+good luck than good management, somebody, seeing I was a foreigner, sent
+us to the foreigners they knew, those who kept a school for a hundred
+and twenty-five boys in the lovely Flower Garden. It certainly was
+lovely, an old-world Chinese house, with little courtyards and ponds
+and terraces and flowers and trees--and that comfortable bed I had been
+desiring so long. As we entered the courtyard in the darkness and Tsai
+Chili Fu lifted me down, the bed was the only thing I could think of.
+
+[Illustration: 0057]
+
+[Illustration: 0058]
+
+[Illustration: 0059]
+
+And yet next day I started again--I wonder now I dared--and we skirted
+the walls of Taiku. We had gone round two sides and then, as I always do
+when I am dead-tired, I had a bad attack of breathlessness. Stay on that
+pack I knew I could not, so I made my master of transport lift me down,
+and I sat on a bank for the edification of all the small boys in the
+district who, even if they had known how ill I felt, probably would
+not have cared, and I deeided there and then that pack-mule riding was
+simply impossible and something would have to be done. Therefore, with
+great difficulty, I made my way baek to the mission school and asked Mr
+Wolf what he would recommend.
+
+Again were missionaries kindness itself to me. They sympathised with my
+trouble, they took me in and made me their guest, refusing to take any
+money for it, though they added to their kindness by allowing me to pay
+for the keep of my servants, and they strongly recommended that I should
+have a litter. A litter then I decided I would have.
+
+It is, I should think, the very earliest form of human conveyance. It
+consists of two long poles laid about as far apart as the shafts of an
+ordinary cart, in the middle is hung a coarse-meshed rope net, and over
+that a tilt of matting--the sort of stuff we see tea-chests covered
+with in this country. Into the net is tumbled all one's small
+impedimenta--clothes-bags, kettles, anything that will not conveniently
+go on mule-back; the bedding is put on top, rugs and cushions arranged
+to the future inmate's satisfaction, then you get inside and the
+available people about are commandeered to hoist the concern on to the
+backs of the couple of mules, who object very strongly. The head of the
+one behind is in the shafts, and the ends rest in his pack-saddle, and
+the hind quarters of the one in front are in the shafts, just as in an
+ordinary buggy. Of course there are no reins, and at first I felt very
+much at the mercy of the mules, though I am bound to say the big white
+mule who conducted my affairs seemed to thoroughly understand his
+business. Still it is uncomfortable, to say the least of it, to find
+yourself going, apparently quite unattended, down steep and rocky paths,
+or right into a rushing river. But on the whole a litter is a very
+comfortable way of travelling; after a pack-mule it was simply heaven,
+and I had no doubts whatever that I could comfortably do the thousand
+miles, lessened now, I think, by about thirty, that lay before me. If I
+reached Lan Chou Fu there would be time enough to think how I would go
+on farther. And here my muleteers had me. When I arranged for a litter,
+I paid them, of course, extra, and I said another mule was to be got to
+carry some of the loads. They accepted the money and agreed. But I may
+say that that other mule never materialised. I accepted the excuse when
+we left Taiku that there was no other mule to be hired, and by the time
+that excuse had worn thin I had so much else to think about that I bore
+up, though not even a donkey was added to our equipment.
+
+Money I took with me in lumps of silver, sycee--shoes, they called
+them--and a very unsatisfactory way it is of carrying cash. It is very
+heavy and there is no hiding the fact that you have got it. We changed
+little bits for our daily needs as we went along, just as little as
+we could, because the change in cash was an intolerable burden. On one
+occasion in Fen Chou Fu I gave Tsai Chih Fu a very small piece of silver
+to change and intimated that I would like to see the result. That piece
+of silver I reckon was worth about five shillings, but presently my
+master of transport and one of the muleteers came staggering in and
+laid before me rows and rows of cash strung on strings! I never felt
+so wealthy in my life. After that I never asked for my change. I was
+content to keep a sort of general eye on the expenditure, and I expect
+the only leakage was the accepted percentage which every servant levies
+on his master. 'When they might easily have cheated me, I found my
+servants showed always a most praiseworthy desire for my welfare. And
+yet Mr Wang did surprise me occasionally. While I was in Pao Ting Fu I
+had found it useful to learn to count in Chinese, so that roughly I knew
+what people at the food-stalls were charging me. On one occasion I saw
+some little cakes powdered with sesame seed that I thought I should like
+and I instructed Mr Wang to buy me one. I heard him ask the price and
+the man say three cash, and my interpreter turned to me and said that
+it was four! I was so surprised I said nothing. It may have been the
+regulation percentage, and twenty-five per cent is good anywhere, but
+at the moment it seemed to me extraordinary that a man who considered
+himself as belonging to the upper classes should find it worth his while
+to do me out of one cash, which was worth--no, I give it up. I don't
+know what it was worth. 10.53 dollars went to the pound when I was in
+Shansi and about thirteen hundred cash to the dollar, so I leave it to
+some better mathematician than I am to say what I was done out of on
+that occasion.
+
+There was another person who was very pleased with the litter and that
+was James Buchanan. Poor little man, just before we left the Flower
+Garden he was badly bitten by a dog, so badly he could no longer walk,
+and I had to carry him on a cushion alongside me in the litter. I never
+knew before how dearly one could love a dog, for I was terrified lest he
+should die and I should be alone in the world. He lay still and refused
+to eat, and every movement seemed to pain him, and whenever I struck
+a missionary--they were the only people, of course, with whom I could
+converse--they always suggested his back was broken.
+
+I remember at Ki Hsien, where I was entertained most hospitably, and
+where the missionary's wife was most sympathetic, he was so ill that I
+sat up all night with him and thought he would surely die. And yet in
+the morning he was still alive. He moaned when we lifted him into the
+litter and whined pitifully when I got out, as I had to several times to
+take photographs.
+
+“Don't leave me, don't leave me to the mercy of the Chinese,” he said,
+and greeted me with howls of joy when I returned. It was a great day for
+both of us when he got a little better and could put his pretty little
+black and white head round the tilt and keep his eye upon me while I
+worked. But really he was an ideal patient, such a good, patient little
+dog, so grateful for any attention that was paid him, and from that time
+he began to mend and by the time I reached Fen Chou Fu was almost his
+old gay happy little self again.
+
+Taiku is a dying town over two thousand years old, and I have before
+seen dead towns in China. Fewer and fewer grow the inhabitants, the
+grass grows in the streets, the bricks fall away from the walls, the
+houses fall down, until but a few shepherds or peasant farmers dwell
+where once were the busy haunts of merchants and tradesmen.
+
+From Taiku I went on across the rich Shansi plain. Now in the springtime
+in the golden sunshine the wheat was just above the ground, turning the
+land into one vivid green, the sky was a cloudless blue, and all was
+bathed in the golden sunshine of Northern China. The air was clear and
+invigorating as champagne. “Every prospect pleases,” as the hymn says,
+“and only man is vile.” He wasn't vile; really I think he was a very
+good fellow in his own way, which was in a dimension into which I
+have never and am never likely to enter, but he was certainly unclean,
+ignorant, a serf, poverty-stricken with a poverty we hardly conceive of
+in the West, and the farther away I found myself from T'ai Yuan Fu the
+more friendly did I find him. This country was not like England, where
+until the last four years has been in the memory of our fathers and our
+fathers' fathers only peace. Even now, now as I write, when the World
+War is on, an air raid is the worst that has befallen the home-staying
+citizens of Britain. But Shansi has been raided again and again. Still
+the land was tilled, well tilled; on every hand were men working hard,
+working from dawn to dark, and working, to a stranger's eyes, for the
+good of the community, for the fields are not divided by hedge or fence;
+there is an occasional poplar or elm, and there are graves everywhere,
+but there is nothing to show where Wang's land ends and Lui's begins.
+All through the cultivated land wanders, apparently without object, the
+zigzag track of sand and ruts and stones known as the Great South
+Road, impossible for anything with wheels but a Chinese cart, and often
+impossible for that. There are no wayside cottages, nothing save those
+few trees to break the monotony, only here and there is a village
+sheltering behind high walls, sometimes of mud, but generally of brick,
+and stout, substantial brick at that; and if, as is not infrequent,
+there is a farmhouse alone, it, too, is behind high brick walls, built
+like a baronial castle of mediaeval times, with a look-out tower and
+room behind the walls not only for the owner's family even unto the
+third and fourth generation, but for all his hinds and his dependents
+as well. The whole is built evidently with a view to defence, and built
+apparently to last for hundreds of years. For Shansi is worth raiding.
+There is oil and there is wheat in abundance. There is money too, much
+of which comes from Mongolia and Manchuria. The bankers (the Shansi men
+are called the Jews of China) wander across and trade far into Russian
+territory while still their home is in agricultural Shansi, and certain
+it is that any disturbances in these countries, even in Russia, affect
+the prosperity of Shansi. I wonder if the Russian Revolution has been
+felt there. Very probably.
+
+Shansi is rich in other things too not as yet appreciated by the
+Chinaman. She has iron and copper and coal that has barely been touched,
+for the popular feeling is against mining. They say that no part of the
+globe contains such stores of coal. I hesitate about quoting a German,
+but they told me that Baron Reichthoffen has said that this province has
+enough coal to supply the world for two thousand years at the present
+rate of consumption. I haven't the faintest notion whether the Baron's
+opinion is worth anything, but if it is, it is no wonder that Germany,
+with her eye for ever on the main chance, has felt deeply being thrust
+out of China.
+
+With ample coal, and with iron alongside it, what might not Shansi be
+worth to exploit!
+
+Ki Hsien is a little walled town five _li_ round. Roughly three _li_
+make a mile, but it is a little doubtful. For instance, from Taiku to Ki
+Hsien is fifty li, and that fifty _li_ is sixteen miles, from Ki Hsien
+to Ping Yao is also fifty li, but that is only fourteen English miles.
+The land, say the Chinese, explaining this discrepancy, was measured in
+time of famine when it wasn't of any value! A very Chinese explanation.
+
+The city of Ki Hsien is very, very crowded; there were hundreds of tiny
+courtyards and flat roofs. In the picture of the missionary's house I
+have not been able to get the roof in because the courtyard--and it
+was a fairly large courtyard as courtyards in the city go--was not
+big enough. I stood as far away as I possibly could. Mr and Mrs Falls
+belonged to the Chinese Inland Mission and the house they lived in was
+over three hundred years old. Like many of the houses in Shansi, it
+was two storeys high and, strangely enough, a thing I have never seen
+anywhere else, the floors upstairs were of brick.
+
+I do not know how I would like to live in such a crowded community, but
+it has its advantages on occasion. At the time of the revolution,
+when those missionaries who had come through the Boxer times were all
+troubled and anxious about their future, the Falls decided to stay on
+at their station, and a rich native doctor, a heathen, but a friend, who
+lived next door, commended that decision.
+
+“Why go away?” said he. “Your courtyard adjoins mine. If there is
+trouble we put up a ladder and you come over to us.”
+
+And there was hint of trouble then. As we sat at supper there came in
+the Chinese postman in his shabby uniform of dirty blue and white, with
+his large military cap pushed on the back of his head, and he brought
+to the Falls a letter from Dr Edwards, the missionary doctor all foreign
+T'ai Yuan Fu thought I ought to meet.
+
+When I was within reach of the Peking foreign daily papers they
+mentioned Pai Lang as one might mention a burglar in London, sandwiching
+him in between the last racing fixtures or the latest Cinema attraction,
+but from a little walled town within a day's march of Hsi An Fu the
+veteran missionary wrote very differently, and we in this other little
+walled town read breathlessly.
+
+White Wolf had surrounded Hsi An Fu, he said; it was impossible to get
+there and he was returning.
+
+The darkness had fallen, the lamp in the middle of the table threw a
+light on the letter and on the faces of the middle-aged missionary
+and his wife who pored over it. It might mean so much to them. It
+undoubtedly meant much to their friends in Hsi An Fu, and it meant much
+to me, the outsider who had but an hour ago walked into their lives.
+For I began to fear lest this robber might affect me after all, lest in
+coming north I was not going to outflank him. According to Dr Edwards,
+he had already taken a little walled city a hundred li--about a day's
+journey--north-west of Hsi An Fu, and when 'White Wolf took a town it
+meant murder and rapine. And sitting there in the old Chinese room these
+two people who knew China told me in no measured terms what might happen
+to a woman travelling alone in disturbed country.
+
+Missionaries, they said, never left their stations when the country was
+disturbed, they were safer at home, surrounded by their friends. Once
+the country is raided by a robber band--and remember this is no uncommon
+thing in China--all the bad characters in the country come to the fore,
+and robber bands that have nothing to do with the original one spring
+into existence, the cities shut their gates to all strangers, and
+passports are so much waste paper. Between ourselves, I have a feeling
+they always are in China. I could hardly tell the difference between
+mine and my agreement with my muleteers, and I have an uneasy feeling
+that occasionally the agreement was presented when it should have been
+the passport.
+
+Now no one could be certain whether Pai Lang intended to take Lan Chou
+Fu, but it looked as if that were his objective. If he took the city
+it would not be much good my getting there, because the bankers would
+certainly not be able to supply me with money; even if he only raided
+the country round, it would be so disturbed that my muleteers would be
+bound to take alarm. If they left me, and they certainly would leave me
+if they thought there was a chance of their mules being taken, I should
+be done. It would spell finish not only to the expedition but to my
+life. A foreigner, especially a woman without money and without friends,
+would be helpless in China. Why should the people help her? It takes
+them all they know to keep their own heads above water. And Kansu was
+always turbulent; it only wanted a match to set the fire alight. Air and
+Mrs Falls--bless them for their kindness and interest!--thought I should
+be mad to venture.
+
+[Illustration: 0068]
+
+[Illustration: 0069]
+
+[Illustration: 0070]
+
+So there in the sitting-room which had been planned for a merchant
+prince and had come into the possession of these two who desired to
+bring the religion of the West to China I sat and discussed this new
+obstacle. After coming so far, laying out so much money, could I turn
+back when danger did not directly press? I felt I could not. And yet my
+hosts pointed out to me that if danger did directly threaten I would not
+be able to get away. If Pai Lang did take Lan Chou Fu, or even if he
+did not, it might well be worth his while to turn east and raid fertile
+Shansi. In a little town like Ki Hsien there was loot well worth having.
+In the revolution a banker there was held to ransom, and paid, as the
+people put it, thirty times ten thousand taels (a tael is roughly three
+shillings, according to the price of silver), and they said it was but
+a trifle to him--a flea-bite, I believe, was the exact term--and I
+ean well believe, in the multitude of worse parasites that afflict the
+average Chinaman, a flea-bite means much less than it does in England.
+
+However, I didn't feel like giving up just yet, so I decided to go on to
+Fen Chou Fu, where was a big American mission, and see what they had to
+say about the matter. If then I had to flee, the missionaries would very
+likely be fleeing too, and I should have company.
+
+And the very next day I had what I took for a warning.
+
+It was a gorgeous day, a cloudless blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and
+I passed too many things of interest worth photographing. There were
+some extraordinary tombs, there was a quaint village gateway--the Gate
+of Everlasting Peace they call it--but I was glad to get back into my
+litter and hoped to stay there for a little, for getting out of a litter
+presents some difficulties unless you are very active indeed. It is
+a good long drop across the shafts on to the ground; the only other
+alternative is to drop down behind the mule's hind quarters and slip out
+under those shafts, but I never had sufficient confidence in my mule to
+do that, so that I generally ealled upon Tsài Chih Fu to lift me down.
+I had set out full of tremors, but taking photographs of the peaceful
+scenes soothed my ruffled nerves. I persuaded myself my fears had been
+born of the night and the dread of loneliness which sometimes overtakes
+me when I am in company and thinking of setting out alone, leaving
+kindly faces behind.
+
+And then I came upon it, the first sign of unrest.
+
+The winding road rose a little and I could see right ahead of us a great
+crowd of people evidently much agitated, and I called to Mr Wang to know
+what was the matter.
+
+“Repeat, please,” said he as usual, and then rode forward and came baek
+saying, “I do not know the word.”
+
+“What word?”
+
+“What is a lot of people and a dead man?”
+
+“Ah!” said I, jumping to conclusions unwarrantably, “that is a funeral.”
+
+“A funeral!” said he triumphantly. “I have learned a new word.”
+
+Mr Wang was always learning a new word and rejoicing over it, but, as I
+had hired him as a finished product, I hardly think it was unreasonable
+of me to be aggrieved, and to feel that I was paying him a salary for
+the pleasure of teaching him English. However, on this occasion his
+triumph was short-lived. .
+
+“Would you like to see the funeral?” he said.
+
+I intimated that I would. My stalwart master of transport lifted me down
+and the crowded people made a lane for me to pass through, and half of
+them turned their attention to me, for though there were missionaries in
+the big towns, a foreigner was a sight to these country people, and, Mr
+Wang going first, we arrived at a man with his head cut off! Mercifully
+he was mixed up with a good deal of matting and planks, but still there
+was no mistaking the poor dead feet in their worn Chinese shoes turned
+up to the sky.
+
+Considering we are mortal, it is extraordinary how seldom the ordinary
+person looks upon death. Always it comes with a shock. At least it did.
+I suppose this war has accustomed some of us to the sight, so that we
+take the result of the meeting of mortal man with his last friend on
+earth more as a matter of eourse, as indeed it should be taken. Of
+course I know this is one of the results of the war.
+
+My sister's son, staying with me after six months in hospital,
+consequent upon a wound at Gallipoli, came home from a stroll one day
+and reported that he had seen nothing, and then at dinner that night
+mentioned in a casual manner that he had seen two dead men being carried
+out of a large building and put in a motor ear.
+
+I said in astonishment:
+
+“They couldn't have been dead!”
+
+“Of course they were. Do you think I don't know dead men when I see
+them? I've seen plenty.”
+
+So many that the sight of a couple in the streets of a quiet little
+country town seemed not even an occasion for remark.
+
+But I was not even accustomed to thinking of dead men and I turned upon
+Mr Wang angrily:
+
+“But that isn't a funeral. That's a corpse,” and once more to my
+irritation he rejoiced over a new word.
+
+“Who killed him?” I asked.
+
+“They think an enemy has done this thing,” said he sententiously and
+unnecessarily, as, ignorant as I am of tilings Chinese, I should hardly
+think even they could have called it a friendly action. The body had
+been found the day before, and the people were much troubled about it.
+An official from Ping Yow--a coroner, I suppose we should call him--was
+coming out to inquire about it, and because the sun was already hot the
+people had raised a little screen of matting with a table and chairs
+where he could sit to hold inquiry.
+
+And here was the thing the missionaries had warned me against. Trouble,
+said they, always begins by the finding of dead bodies that cannot be
+accounted for, and this body was on the Great South Road. It might
+be only a case of common murder such as one might perchance meet in
+Piccadilly, possibly it was due to the bands of soldiers that were
+pouring into the country--to defend the crossings of the Yellow
+River, some people said--but it was to me an emphatic reminder that the
+warnings of Mr and Mrs Falls had not been given lightly, and I meditated
+upon it all the way to Ping Yow.
+
+All day long the soldiers had been pouring through Ki Hsien, all night
+long they poured through the suburbs of Ping Yow. Not through the town
+itself--the townspeople were not going to allow that if they could help
+themselves; and as it was evidently a forced march and the regiments
+were travelling by night, they could help themselves, for every city
+gate is shut at sundown. The China Inland Mission had a station at an
+old camel inn in the eastern suburb, and there the missionary's young
+wife was alone with five young children, babies all of them, and there I
+found her. I think she was very glad to see me, anyhow I was someone to
+discuss things with, and we two women talked and talked over our evening
+meal. She was a tall, pretty young woman--not even the ugly Chinese
+dress and her hair drawn back, not a hair out of place, Chinese fashion,
+could disguise her pathetic beauty. And she was a countrywoman of mine,
+born and brought up in the same state, Victoria, and her native town was
+Ararat, green and fresh among the hills. And how she talked Australia!
+What a beautiful land it was! And the people! The free, independent
+people! The women who walked easily and feared no man! To thoroughly
+appreciate a democratic country you should dwell in effete China.
+But she feared too, this woman, feared for herself and her five tiny
+children. It would be no easy job to get away. I told her of the dead
+man I had seen--how should I not tell her?--and she trembled.
+
+“Very likely it is the soldiers,” she said. “I am afraid of the Chinese
+soldiers.” And so am I in bulk, though taken singly they seem sueh
+harmless little chaps.
+
+“When the willow is green and the apricot yellow in the fifth moon,”
+ said a metrical inscription on a stone dug up at Nankin in that
+year--the fatal year 1914--“terrible things will happen in the land of
+Han.” Terrible things, it seems to me, always happen in the land of Han;
+but if it spoke for the great world beyond, truly the stone spoke truth,
+though we did not know it then.
+
+In the evening back from the country where he had been preaching for the
+last day or two came my Australian's husband, and there also came in to
+see the stranger two missionaries from the other side of the town.
+They sat there, these men and women of British race, dressed in the
+outlandish costume of the people around them--a foolish fashion, it
+seems to me, for a European in unadulterated Chinese dress looks as ugly
+and out of place as a Chinese in a stiff collar and a bowler hat. And
+all the evening we discussed the soldiers and the dead man I had seen,
+and opinions differed as to the portent.
+
+It is true, said one of them who had been in the country many years, and
+was a missionary pure and simple, with eyes for nothing but the work he
+had in hand--which is probably the way to work for success--that a
+dead body, particularly a dead body by the highroad, is often a sign of
+unrest, but again, quite as often it means no more than a dead body
+in any other place. If he had turned back for every dead body he had
+seen----
+
+Well, I thought I would not turn back either. Not yet, at least.
+
+Never was I sorrier for missionaries, I who have always written against
+missionaries, than I was for this young countrywoman of mine who never
+thought of being sorry for herself. It was a big ugly mission compound,
+the rooms, opening one into another, were plain and undecorated, and the
+little children as a great treat watered the flowers that struggled up
+among the stones of the dusty courtyard, and the very watering-can was
+made with Chinese ingenuity from an old kerosene tin. It seemed to me
+those little children would have had such a much better chance
+growing up in their mother's land, or in their father's land--he was a
+Canadian--among the free peoples of the earth. But who am I, to judge?
+No one in the world, it seems to me, wants help so much as the poorer
+Chinese, whose life is one long battle with disease and poverty; and
+perhaps these poorer missionaries help a little, a very little; but the
+poorer the mission the poorer the class they reach, and the sacrifice,
+as I saw it here, is so great.
+
+Next morning we arose early, and I breakfasted with my host and hostess
+and their five children. The children's grace rings in my ears yet,
+always I think it will ring there, the childish voices sung it with such
+fervour and such faith:
+
+               “Every day, every day, we bless Thee, we bless Thee,
+
+          We praise Thy Name, we praise Thy Name,
+
+               For ever and for ever!”
+
+There in the heart of China these little children, who had, it seemed to
+me, so very little to be grateful for, thanked their God with all their
+hearts, and when their elders with the same simple fervour went down on
+their knees and asked their God to guide and help the stranger and set
+her on her way, though it was against all my received canons of good
+taste, what could I do but be simply grateful.
+
+Ping Yow is a large town set in the midst of a wheatgrowing country, and
+it is built in the shape of a turtle, at least so I was told. I could
+see for myself that its walls were not the usual four-square set to the
+points of the compass, but seemed irregular, with many little towers
+upon them. These towers, it seems, were built in memory of the teachers
+of Confucius--this is the only intimation I have had that he
+had seventy-two; and there were over three thousand small
+excrescences--again I only repeat what I was told; I did not count them,
+and if I had I would surely have counted them wrong--like sentry-boxes
+in memory of his disciples. I do not know why Ping Yow thus dedicates
+itself to the memory of the great sage. It needs something to commend
+it, for it remains in my mind as a bare, ugly, crowded town, with an
+extra amount of dust and dirt and heat, and no green thing to break the
+monotony.
+
+And I set forth, and in spite of all I still faced West.
+
+[Illustration: 0079]
+
+[Illustration: 0080]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--A CITY UNDER THE HILLS
+
+In my wanderings across Shansi I came in contact with two missionary
+systems run with the same object in view but carried out in
+diametrically opposite ways. Of course I speak as an outsider. I
+criticise as one who only looks on, but after all it is an old saw that
+the onlooker sees most of the game. There are, of course, many missions
+in China, and I often feel that if the Chinaman were not by nature a
+philosopher he would sometimes be a little confused by salvation offered
+him by foreigners of all sects and classes, ranging from Roman Catholics
+to Seventh Day Adventists. Personally I have received much kindness
+from English Baptists, from the China Inland Mission and from American
+Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Amongst them all I--who frankly
+do not believe in missions, believing that the children at home
+should first be fed--found much to admire, much individual courage and
+sacrifice, but for the systems, I felt the American missions were the
+most efficient, far the most likely to attain the end in view.
+
+The Chinaman, to begin with, sees no necessity for his own conversion.
+Unlike the ordinary black man, he neither admires nor envies the white
+man, and is given to thinking his own ways are infinitely preferable.
+But the Chinaman is a man of sound common-sense, he immensely admires
+efficiency, he is a great believer in education, and when a mission
+comes to him fully equipped with doctors, nurses and hospitals, teachers
+and schools, he, once he has overcome his dread of anything new, begins
+to avail himself first of the doctor and the hospital, for the sore need
+of China is for medical attendance, and then of the schools. Then comes
+conversion. They tell me that there are many genuine converts. I have
+only noticed that the great rich American missions rake in converts by
+tens and twenties, where they come dribbling in in units to the faith
+missions, which offer no such advantages as medical attendance or
+tuition. The faith missionaries work hard enough. I have seen a woman
+just come in from a week's missionary tour in a district where, she
+explained, she had slept on the k'angs with the other women of the
+household, and she was stripping off her clothes most carefully and
+combing her long hair with a tooth-comb, because all women of the class
+she visited among were afflicted with those little parasites that we do
+not mention. The Chinese have a proverb that “the Empress herself has
+three,” so it is no shame. She thought nothing of her sacrifice, that
+was what she had come for, everyone else was prepared to do the same;
+but when so much is given I like to see great results, as in the
+American missions. They are rich, and the Chinaman, with a few glaring
+exceptions, is a very practical person. To ask him to change his faith
+for good that will work out in another world is asking rather much of
+him. If he is going to do so he feels he may as well have a God who will
+give him something in return for being outcast. At least that is the way
+I read the results. Look at Fen Chou, for instance, where the Americans
+are thriving and a power in the town, and look at Yung Ning Chou,
+farther west, where a Scandinavian faith mission has been established
+for over twenty years. They may have a few adherents in the country
+round, but in the city itself--a city of merchants--they have, I
+believe, not made a single convert.
+
+Of course the China Inland Mission does not lay itself out to be rich.
+However many subscriptions come in, the individual missionary gets no
+more than fifty pounds a year; if more money comes, more missionaries
+are established, if less, then the luckless individual missionary gets
+as much of the fifty pounds as funds allow. The Founder of the Faith was
+poor and lowly, therefore the missionaries must follow in His footsteps.
+I understand the reason, the nobility, that lies in the sacrifice
+implied when men and women give their lives for their faith, but not
+only do I like best the results of the American system, but I dislike
+exceedingly that a European should be poor in an Oriental country. If
+missionaries must go to China, I like them to go for the benefit of the
+Chinese and for the honour and glory of the race to which they belong,
+and not for the good of their own souls.
+
+I came into Fen Chou Fu and went straight to the large compound of the
+American missionaries, three men and three women from Oberlin College,
+Ohio. They had a hospital, they had a school, they had a kindergarten,
+the whole compound was a flourishing centre of industry. They teach
+their faith, for that is what they have come out for, but also they
+teach the manifold knowledge of the West. Sanitation and hygiene
+loom large in their curriculum, and heaven knows, without taking into
+consideration any future life, they must be a blessing to those men and
+women who under cruel conditions must see this life through. These six
+missionaries at Fen Chou Fu do their best to improve those conditions
+with a practical American common-sense and thoroughness that won my
+admiration.
+
+Fen Chou Fu, unlike T'ai Yuan Fu, is friendly, and has always been
+friendly, to the foreigner; even during the Boxer trouble they were
+loath to kill their missionaries, and when the order came that they were
+to be slain, declined to allow it to be done within their walls, but
+sent them out, and they were killed about seven miles outside the
+city--a very Chinese way of freeing themselves from blood-guiltiness.
+
+The town struck me as curiously peaceful after the unrest and the
+never-ending talk of riot, robbery and murder I had heard all along
+the road. The weather was getting warm and we all sat at supper on the
+verandah of Dr Watson's house, with the lamps shedding a subdued light
+on the table, and the sounds of the city coming to us softened by the
+distance, and Mr Watt Pye assured me he had been out in the country and
+there was nothing to fear, nothing. The Chinaman as he had seen him had
+many sins, at least errors of conduct that a missionary counts sin, but
+as far as he knew I might go safely to the Russian border. He had not
+been in the country very long, not, I fancy, a fifth of the time Dr
+Edwards had been there, but, listening to him, I hoped once more.
+
+The town is old. It was going as a city in 2205 b.c., and it is quite
+unlike any other I have come across in China. It is a small square city
+about nine _li_ round, and on each of the four sides are suburbs, also
+walled. Between them and the city are the gully-like roads leading to
+the gates. The eastern suburb is nearly twice as large as the main city,
+and is surrounded by a high brick wall, but the other suburbs have only
+walls like huge banks of clay, on the top the grass grows, and on my way
+in I was not surprised to see on top of this clay-bank a flock of sheep
+browsing. It seemed a very appropriate place for sheep, for at first
+sight there is nothing to show that this was the top of a town wall.
+
+When the Manehus drove out the Mings, the vanquished Imperial family
+took refuge in this western town and rebuilt the walls, which had been
+allowed to fall into disrepair, and they set about the job in a fashion
+worthy of Babylon itself. The bricks were made seven miles away in the
+hills, and passed from hand to hand down a long line of men till they
+reached their destination and were laid one on top of another to face
+the great clay-bank forty-six feet high that guards the city. According
+to Chinese ideas, the city needs guarding not from human enemies only.
+The mountains to the west and north overshadow it, and all manner of
+evil influences come from the north, and the people fear greatly
+their effect upon the town. It was possible it might never get a good
+magistrate, or that, having got one, he might die, and therefore they
+took every precaution they could to ward off such a calamity. Gods they
+put in their watch tower over the gate, and they sit there still, carved
+wooden figures, a great fat god--if a city is to be prosperous must not
+its god be prosperous too?--surrounded by lesser satellites. Some are
+fallen now, and the birds of the air roost upon them, and the dust and
+the cobwebs have gathered upon them, but not yet will they be cleared
+away. In a chamber below are rusty old-world cannon flung aside in a
+heap as so much useless lumber, and, below, all the busy traffic of
+the city passes in and out beneath the arches of the gateway. In that
+gateway are two upright stones between whieh all wheeled traffic must
+pass, the distance between these stones marking the length of the axle
+allowed by the narrow city streets. Any vehicle having a greater length
+of axle cannot pass in. No mere words can describe the awful condition
+of the roads of Shansi, and to lessen as far as possible the chance of
+an upset the country man makes his axle very wide, and, knowing this,
+the town man notifies at his gates the width of the vehicle that can
+pass in his streets. No other can enter.
+
+Besides the gods over the gateway, Fen Chou Fu, owing to its peculiar
+position under the hills, requires other guarding, and there are two
+tall bronze phoenixes on the wall close to the northern watch tower. I
+was quite pleased to make the acquaintance of a phoenix, as, though I
+have read about them, I had never met them before. In Fen Chou Fu it
+appears that a phoenix is between thirty and forty feet high, built like
+a comic representation of a chicken, with a long curly neck and a cock's
+comb upon his head. It would indeed be a churlish, evil spirit who was
+not moved to laughter at the sight. But though the form is crude, on
+the bronze bases and on the birds themselves are worked beautifully the
+details of a long story. Dragons and foxes and rabbits, and many strange
+symbols that I do not understand come into it, but how they help to
+guard the city, except by pleasing the gods or amusing the evil spirits,
+I must confess I cannot imagine. Certainly the city fathers omit
+the most necessary care: once the walls are finished, the mason is
+apparently never called in, and they are drifting to decay. Everywhere
+the bricks are falling out, and when I was there in the springtime the
+birds of the air found there a secure resting-place. There were crows
+and hawks and magpies and whistling kites popping in and out of the
+holes so made, in their beaks straws and twigs for the making of their
+nests. They would be secure probably in any case, for the Chinese love
+birds, but here they are doubly secure, for only with difficulty and by
+the aid of a long rope could any man possibly reach them.
+
+The ramps up to those walls were extremely steep--it was a
+heart-breaking process to get on top--but Buchanan and I, accompanied by
+the master of transport carrying the camera, and often by Mr Leete, one
+of the missionaries, took exercise there; for in a walled city in the
+narrow streets there is seldom enough air for my taste. The climate here
+is roughly summer and winter, for though so short a while ago it had
+been freezing at night, already it was very hot in the middle of
+the day, and the dust rose up from the narrow streets in clouds. A
+particularly bad cloud of dust generally indicated pigs, which travel a
+good deal in Northern China, even as sheep and cattle do in Australia.
+In Shantung a man sets out with a herd of pigs and travels them slowly
+west, very slowly, and they feed along the wayside, though what they
+feed on heaven only knows, for it looks to me as though there is
+nothing, still possibly they pick up something, and I suppose the idea
+is that they arrive at the various places in time for the harvest, or
+when grain and products are cheapest. There are inns solely given over
+to pigs and their drivers in Shansi, and the stench outside some of
+those in Fen Chou Fu was just a little taller than the average smell,
+and the average smell in a Chinese city is something to be always
+remembered. There were other things to be seen from the top of the wall
+too--long lines of camels bearing merchandise to and from the town,
+donkeys, mules, carts, all churning up the dust of the unkempt roadway,
+small-footed women seated in their doorways looking out upon the life of
+the streets, riding donkeys or peeping out of the tilts of the carts. I
+could see into the courtyards of the well-to-do, with their little
+ponds and bridges and gardens. All the life of the city lay beneath us.
+Possibly that is why one meets so very, very seldom any Chinese on the
+wall--it may be, it probably is, I should think, bad taste to look into
+your neighbour's courtyard.
+
+And the wall justified its existence, mediaeval and out of date as it
+seemed to me. There along the top at intervals were little heaps of
+good-sized stones, placed there by the magistrate in the revolution for
+the defence of the town. At first I smiled and thought how primeval, but
+looking down into the road nearly fifty feet below, I realised that a
+big stone flung by a good hefty fist from the top of that wall was a
+weapon by no means to be despised.
+
+But walls, if often a protection, are sometimes a danger in more ways
+than in shutting out the fresh air. The summer rains in North China are
+heavy, and Fen Chou Fu holds water like a bucket. The only outlets are
+the narrow gateways, and the waters rise and rise. A short time before I
+came there all the eastern quarter of the town was flooded so deep that
+a woman was drowned. At last the waters escaped through the eastern
+gate, only to be banked up by the great ash-heaps, the product of
+centuries, the waste rubbish of the town, that are just outside the wall
+of the eastern suburb. It took a long, long while for those flood waters
+to percolate through the gateway of the suburb and find a resting-place
+at last in a swamp the other side of that long-suffering town. I must
+confess that this is one of the drawbacks to a walled town that has
+never before occurred to me, though to stand there and look at those
+great gates, those solid walls, made me feel as if I had somehow
+wandered into the fourth dimension, so out of my world were they.
+
+There was a great fair in a Taoist temple and one day Mr Leete and
+I, with his teacher and my servant, attended. A wonderful thing is a
+Chinese fair in a temple. I do not yet understand the exact object of
+these fairs, though I have attended a good many of them. Whether they
+help the funds of the temple as a bazaar is supposed to help a church in
+this country, I cannot say. A temple in China usually consists of a set
+of buildings often in different courtyards behind one enclosing wall,
+and these buildings are not only temples to the gods, but living-rooms
+which are often let to suitable tenants, and, generally speaking, if
+the stranger knows his way about--I never did--he can get in a temple
+accommodation for himself and his servants, far superior accommodation
+to that offered in the inns. It costs a little more, but everything is
+so cheap that makes no difference to the foreigner. The Taoist temple
+the day I went there was simply humming with life; there were stalls
+everywhere, and crowds of people buying, selling or merely gossiping
+and looking on. I took a picture of some ladies of easy virtue with gay
+dresses and gaily painted faces, tottering about, poor things, on their
+maimed feet, and at the same spot, close against the altar of the god,
+I took a picture of the priest. With much hesitation he consented to
+stand. He had in his hand some fortune-telling sticks, but did not
+dare hold them while his portrait was being taken. However, Mr Leete's
+teacher was a bold, brave, enlightened man--in a foreign helmet--and he
+held the sticks, and the two came out in the picture together. I trust
+no subsequent harm came to the daring man.
+
+[Illustration: 0089]
+
+[Illustration: 0090]
+
+In Fen Chou Fu I could have walked about the town alone unmolested. I
+never did, because it would have been undignified and often awkward, as
+I could not speak the language, but the people were invariably friendly.
+On the whole, there was not very much to see. The sun poured down day
+after day in a cloudless sky, and the narrow streets, faced with stalls
+or blank grey brick walls enclosing the compounds, were dusty and
+uneven, with the ruts still there that had been made when the ground was
+softened by the summer rains of the year before. Away to the south-east
+was a great pagoda, the second tallest in China, a landmark that can be
+seen for many a long mile across the plain. This, like the phoenixes, is
+_feng shui_. I have never grasped the inwardness of pagodas, which are
+dotted in apparently a casual manner about the landscape. An immense
+amount of labour must have been expended upon them, and they do not
+appear to serve any useful purpose. This one at Fen Chou Fu is meant to
+balance after a fashion the phoenixes on the northern wall and afford
+protection for the southern approach to the city. I don't know that it
+was used for any other purpose. It stood there, tall and commanding,
+dwarfing everything else within sight. Neither do I know the purpose of
+the literary tower which stands on the southeast corner of the wall. It
+denotes that the town either has or hopes to have a literary man of high
+standing among its inhabitants. But to look for the use in all things
+Chinese would be foolish; much labour is expended on work that can be
+only for artistic purposes. To walk through a Chinese town, in spite of
+filth, in spite of neglect and disrepair, is to feel that the Chinaman
+is an artist to his finger-tips.
+
+The gate to the American church in Fen Chou Fu, for instance, was a
+circle, a thing of strange beauty. Imagine such a gate in an English
+town, and yet here it seemed quite natural and very beautiful. They had
+no bell, why I do not know, perhaps because every temple in China has
+a plenitude of bells hanging from its eaves and making the air musical
+when the faintest breath of wind stirs and missionaries are anxious to
+dissociate themselves in every way from practices they call idolatry,
+even when those practices seem to an outsider like myself rather
+attractive. At any rate, to summon the faithful to church a man beats a
+gong.
+
+But there is one institution of Fen Chou Fu which is decidedly
+utilitarian, and that is the wells in the northwestern corner. A
+Chinaman, I should say, certainly uses on the average less water than
+the majority of humanity; a bath when he is three days old, a bath when
+he is married, and after that he can comfortably last till he is dead,
+is the generally received idea of his ablutions, but he does want
+a little water to carry on life, and in this corner of the town are
+situated the wells which supply that necessary. It is rather brackish,
+but it is still drinkable, and it is all that the city gets. They were
+a never-ending source of interest to me. They were established in those
+far-away days before history began--perhaps the presence of the water
+here was the reason for the building of the town--and they have been
+here ever since. The mouths are builded over with masonry, and year in
+and year out have come those self-same carts with solid wheels, drawn
+by a harnessed ox or an ox and a mule, bearing the barrels to be filled
+with water. Down through all the ages those self-same men, dressed in
+blue cotton that has worn to a dingy drab, with a wisp of like stuff
+tied round their heads to protect them from the dust or the cold or the
+sun, have driven those oxen and drawn that water. Really and truly our
+own water, that comes to us, hot and cold, so easily by the turning of a
+tap, is much more wonderful and interesting, but that I take as a matter
+of course, while I never tired of watching those prehistoric carts. It
+was in rather a desolate corner of the town too. The high walls rose up
+and frowned upon it, the inside of the walls where there was no brick,
+only crumbling clay with shrubs and creepers just bursting into leaf and
+little paths that a goat or an active boy might negotiate meandering up
+to the top. And to get to that part I had to pass the ruins of the old
+yamen razed to the ground when the Government repented them of the
+Boxer atrocities, and razed so effectually that only the two gate-posts,
+fashioned like lions, Chinese architectural lions, survive. A curse is
+on the place, the people say; anyhow when I visited it fourteen years
+later no effort had been made to rebuild. Not for want of labour,
+surely. There are no trade unions in China, and daily from dawn to dark
+in Fen Chou Fu I saw the bricklayers' labourers trotting along, bringing
+supplies to the men who were building, in the streets I met men carrying
+water to the houses in buckets, and now in the springtime there was a
+never-ending supply of small boys, clad in trousers only, or without
+even those, bearing, slung from each end of a bamboo, supplies of
+firewood, or rather of such scraps as in any other land would have been
+counted scarce worth the cost of transport. Any day too I might expect
+to meet a coffin being borne along, not secretly and by night as we take
+one to a house, but proudly borne in the open daylight, for everyone
+knows a coffin is the most thoughtful and kindly as well as often the
+most expensive of gifts.
+
+While here I attended a wedding. Twice have I attended a Chinese
+wedding. The first was at Pao Ting Fu at Christmas time, and the
+contracting parties were an evangelist of the church who in his lay
+capacity was a strapping big laundryman and one of the girls in Miss
+Newton's school. They had never spoken to one another, that would have
+been a frightful breach of decorum, but as they went to the same church,
+where there was no screen between the men and the women, as there is in
+many Chinese churches, it is possible they knew each other by sight. It
+is curious how in some things the missionaries conform to Chinese ideas
+and in others decline to yield an inch. In Pao Ting Fu no church member
+was allowed to smoke, but the women were kept carefully in retirement,
+and the schoolmistress, herself an unmarried woman, and the doctor's
+wife arranged marriages for such of the girls as came under their
+guardianship. Of course I see the reason for that: in the present
+state of Chinese society no other method would be possible, for these
+schoolgirls, all the more because they had a little scholarship and
+education, unless their future had been arranged for, would have been a
+temptation and a prey for all the young men around, and even with their
+careful education--and it was a careful education; Miss Newton was a
+woman in a thousand, I always grudged her to the Chinese--were entirely
+unfitted to take care of themselves.
+
+Still it always made me smile to see these two women, middle-class
+Americans from Virginia, good-looking and kindly, with a keen sense of
+humour, gravely discussing the eligible young men around the mission and
+the girls who were most suitable for them. It was the most barefaced and
+open match-making I have ever seen. But generally, I believe, they were
+very successful, for this one thing is certain, they had the welfare of
+the girls at heart.
+
+And this was one of the matches they had arranged. It is on record that
+on this special occasion the bridegroom, with the consent and connivance
+of the schoolmistress, had written to the bride exhorting her to
+diligence, and pointing out how good a thing it was that a woman should
+be well read and cultured. And seeing that she came of very poor people
+she might well be counted one of the fortunate ones of the earth, for
+the bridegroom was educating her. The ignorance of the average Chinese
+woman in far higher circles than she came of is appalling.
+
+Christmas Day was chosen for the ceremony, and Christmas Day was a
+glorious winter's day, with golden sunshine for the bride, and the air,
+the keen, invigorating air of Northern China, was sparkling with frost.
+Now, in contrast to the next wedding I attended, this wedding was on
+so-called Western lines; but the Chinese is no slavish imitator, he
+changes, but he changes after his own fashion. The church was decorated
+by devout Chinese Christians with results which to 'Western eyes were
+a little weird and outré. Over the platform that in an Anglican church
+would be the altar was a bank of greenery, very pretty, with flowers
+dotted all over it, and on it Chinese characters in cotton wool, “Earth
+rejoices, heaven sings,” and across that again was a festoon of small
+flags of all nations, while from side to side of the church were
+slung garlands of gaily coloured paper in the five colours of the new
+republic, and when I think of the time and patience that went to
+the making of those garlands I was quite sorry they reminded me of
+fly-catchers. But the crowning decoration was the Chinese angel that
+hovered over all. This being was clad in white, a nurse's apron was
+used, girt in at the waist, foreign fashion, and I grieve to say they
+did not give her much breathing-space, though they tucked a pink flower
+in her belt. Great white paper wings were spread out behind, and from
+her head, framing the decidedly Mongolian countenance, were flowing
+golden curls, made by the ingenious decorators of singed cotton wool.
+
+One o'clock was fixed for the wedding, and at a quarter to one the
+church was full.
+
+They did not have the red chair for the bride. The consensus of opinion
+was against it. “It was given up now by the best people in Peking. They
+generally had carriages. And anyhow it was a ridiculous expense.” So
+it was deeided that the bride should walk. The church was only a
+stone's-throw from the schoolhouse where she lived. The bridegroom stood
+at the door on the men's side of the church, a tall, stalwart Chinaman,
+with his blaek hair sleek and oiled and cut short after the modern
+fashion. He was suitably clad in black silk. He reminded me of
+“William,” a doll of my childhood who was dressed in the remains of an
+old silk umbrella--this is saying nothing against the bridegroom, for
+“William” was an eminently superior doll, and always looked his very
+best if a little smug occasionally. But if a gentleman who has attained
+to the proud position of laundryman and evangelist, and is marrying the
+girl he has himself at great expense educated for the position, has not
+a right to look a little smug, I don't know who has. Beside him stood
+his special friend, the chief Chinese evangelist, who had himself been
+married four months before. At the organ sat the American doctor's
+pretty young wife, and as the word was passed, “The bride is coming!”
+ she struck up the wedding march, and all the women's eyes turned to
+the women's door, while the men, who would not commit such a breach of
+decorum as to look, stared steadily ahead.
+
+But the wedding march had been played over and over again before she
+did come, resplendent and veiled, after the foreign fashion, in white
+mosquito netting, with pink and blue flowers in her hair, and another
+bunch in her hand. The bridegroom had wished her to wear silk on this
+great occasion, so he had hired the clothes, a green silk skirt and a
+bronze satin brocade coat.
+
+A model of Chinese decorum was that bride. Her head under the white veil
+was bent, her eyes were glued to the ground, and not a muscle of her
+body moved as she progressed very slowly forward. Presumably she did put
+one foot before the other, but she had the appearance of an automaton in
+the hands of the women on either side--her mother, a stooping little old
+woman, and a tall young woman in a bright blue brocade, the wife of the
+bridegroom's special friend. Each grasped her by an arm just above
+the elbow and apparently propelled her up the aisle as if she were on
+wheels. Up the opposite aisle came the bridegroom, also with his head
+bent and his eyes glued to the ground and propelled forward in the same
+manner by his friend.
+
+They met, those two who had never met face to face before, before the
+minister, and he performed the short marriage ceremony, and as he said
+the closing words the Chinese evangelist became Master of Ceremonies.
+
+“The bridegroom and bride,” said he, “'will bow to each other once in
+the new style.”
+
+The bride and groom standing before the minister bowed deeply to each
+other in the new style.
+
+“They will bow a second time,” and they bowed again.
+
+“They will bow a third time,” and once more they bowed low.
+
+“They will now bow to the minister,” and they turned like well-drilled
+soldiers and bowed to the white-haired man who had married them.
+
+“They will now bow to the audience,” and they faced the people and
+bowed deeply, and everybody in that congregation rose and returned the
+salutation.
+
+“And now the audience will bow to the bride and bridegroom,” and
+with right good will the congregation, Chinese and the two or three
+foreigners, rose and saluted the newly married couple, also I presume in
+the new style.
+
+It was over, and to the strains of the wedding march they left the
+church, actually together, by way of the women's entrance. But the bride
+was not on the groom's arm. That would not have been in accord with
+Chinese ideas. The bridegroom marched a little ahead, propelled forward
+by his friend, as if he had no means of volition of his own--again
+I thought of “William,” long since departed and forgotten till this
+moment--and behind came the new wife, thrust forward in the same manner,
+still with her eyes on the floor and every muscle stiff as if she too
+had been a doll.
+
+“All the world loves a lover,” but in China, the land of ceremonies,
+there are no lovers. This man had gone further than most men in the
+wooing of his wife, and they were beginning life together with very fair
+chances of success. But even so the girl might not hope for a home of
+her own.
+
+That would have been most unseemly. The evangelist laundryman had not a
+mother, but his only sister was taking the place of mother-in-law, and
+he and his bride would live with her and her husband.
+
+[Illustration: 0099]
+
+[Illustration: 0100]
+
+The wedding I attended in Fen Chou Fu was quite a different affair. It
+was spring, or perhaps I should say early summer, the streets through
+which we drove to the old house of one of the Ming princes where dwelt
+the bridegroom with his mother were thick with dust, and the sun blazed
+down on us. The bridegroom belonged to a respectable well-to-do trading
+family, and he wanted a Christian wife because he himself is an active
+member of the church, but the Christian church at Fen Chou Fu has been
+bachelor so long, and the division between the sexes is so strait, that
+there are about fifty available girls to between eight and nine hundred
+young men, therefore he had to take what he could get, and what he could
+get was a pagan little girl about eighteen, for whom he paid thirty
+Mexican dollars, roughly a little under three pounds. I, a Greek, who
+do not care much what any man's religion is so long as he live a decent
+life, understand the desire of that man for a Christian wife, for
+that means here in the interior that she will have received a little
+education, will be able to read and write and do arithmetic, and will
+know something of cleanliness and hygiene.
+
+The great day arrived, and the missionaries and I were invited to the
+bridegroom's house for the ceremony and the feast that was to follow.
+The entertainment began about eight o'clock in the morning, but we
+arrived a little after noon, and we two women, Miss Grace Maccomaughey
+and I, were ushered through the courtyards till we came to the interior
+one, which was crowded with all manner of folks, some in festive array,
+some servants in the ordinary blue of the country, and some beggars
+in rags who were anticipating the scraps that fall from the rich man's
+table, and were having tea and cake already. Overhead the sky was shut
+out by all manner of flags and banners with inscriptions in Chinese
+characters upon them, and once inside, we made our way towards the house
+through a pressing crowd. Opposite the place that perhaps answered for
+a front door was a table draped in red, the colour of joy, and on the
+table were two long square candles of red wax with Chinese characters
+in gold upon them. They were warranted to burn a day and a night, and
+between them was a pretty dwarf plant quaintly gnarled and bearing
+innumerable white flowers. That table was artistic and pretty, but to
+its left was a great pile of coal, and, beside the coal, a stove and a
+long table at which a man, blue-clad, shaven and with a queue, was busy
+preparing the feast within sight of all. I could have wished the signs
+of hospitality had not been so much in evidence, for I could quite
+believe that cook had not been washed since he was three days old, and
+under the table was a large earthenware bowl full of extremely dirty
+water in which were being washed the bowls we would presently use.
+
+Out came the women of the household to greet us and conduct us to the
+bridal chamber, dark and draped with red and without any air to speak
+of. It was crowded to suffocation with women in gala costumes, with
+bands of black satin embroidered in flowers upon their heads, gay coats
+and loose trousers, smiling faces and the tiny feet of all Shansi. It
+was quite a relief to sit down on the _k'ang_ opposite to a stout and
+cheerful old lady with a beaming face who looked like a well-to-do
+farmer's wife. She was a childless widow, however, but she had attained
+to the proud position of Bible-woman, receiving a salary of four Mexican
+dollars a month, and consequently had a position and station of her
+own. In my experience there is nothing like being sure of one's own
+importance in the world. It is certainly conducive to happiness. I know
+the missionaries, bless them! would say I am taking a wrong view, but
+whatever the reason at the back of it all, to them is the honour of
+that happy, comfortable-looking Bible-woman. And there are so few
+happy-looking women in China!
+
+We sat on the _k'ang_ and waited for the bride, and we discoursed. My
+feet--I never can tuck them under me--clad in good substantial
+leather, looked very large beside the tiny ones around me, for even the
+Bible-woman's had been bound in her youth, and of course, though they
+were unbound now, the broken bones could never come straight, and
+the-flesh could not grow between the heel and the toes. She looked at my
+feet and I laughed, and she said sententiously, like a true Chinese:
+
+“The larger the feet the happier the woman.”
+
+I asked did it hurt when hers were bound.
+
+“It hurt like anything,” translated the missionary girl beside me, “but
+it is all right now.”
+
+The bride was long in coming, and shortly after four we heard the gongs
+and music and crackers that heralded her arrival, and we all went out
+to greet her, or rather to stare at her. First came the bridegroom, and
+that well-to-do tradesman was a sight worth coming out to see. He wore
+a most respectable black satin jacket and a very pretty blue silk
+petticoat; round his neck and crossed on his breast was a sash of
+orange-red silk, set off with a flaring magenta artificial chrysanthemum
+of no mean proportions, and on his head, and somewhat too small for him,
+was--a rare headgear in China--a hard black felt hat. From the brim of
+that, on either side, rose a wire archway across the crown, on which
+were strung ornaments of brass, and I am bound to say that the whole
+effect was striking.
+
+Before the bride came in to be married, out went two women to lift her
+veil and smear her face with onion. They explained that the bridegroom's
+mother should do this, but the fortune-teller had informed them that
+these two women would be antagonistic--which I think I could have
+foretold without the aid of any fortune-teller--therefore the rite was
+deputed to two other women, one of whom was the kindergarten teacher at
+the sehool. Then, with the teacher on one side and a lucky woman with
+husband and children living on the other, down through the crowd came
+the little bride to her marriage. She was clad in a red robe, much
+embroidered, which entirely hid her figure, so that whether she were
+fat or slim it was impossible to see, on her head was a brazen crown
+entirely covering it, and over her face was a veil of thick bright red
+silk. She could neither see nor be seen. Her feet were the tiniest I
+have ever seen, they looked about suitable for a baby of twelve months
+old. The tiny red shoes were decorated with little green tassels at the
+pointed toe and had little baby high heels, and though they say these
+feet were probably false, the real ones must have been wonderfully small
+if they were hidden in the manifold red bandages that purported to make
+the slender red ankles neat.
+
+Bride and bridegroom took their places in front of the minister, in
+front of the plant and alongside the coals, and it made my back ache to
+think of keeping any being standing for above a second on such feet.
+The service began, all in Chinese, of course, though the officiating
+minister was an American, a couple of hymns were sung, and the audience
+laughed aloud because she was married by her baby name, her mother
+having omitted to provide her with another.
+
+The good woman had yearned for a son so she had called this girl “Lead a
+brother.”
+
+Half-way through the ceremony the bridegroom lifted the veil. He gave
+it a hurried snatch, as if it were a matter of no moment, and hung it on
+one of the projections of the brazen crown, and then he and we saw the
+bride's face for the first time. They had done their best to spoil her
+beauty with carmine paint, but she had a nice little nose and a
+sweet little quivering mouth that was very lovable, and I think the
+bridegroom, though he never moved a muscle, must have been pleased with
+his bargain.
+
+When the service was ended, she and we, the principal guests, went back
+to the _k'ang_ in the bride chamber; her crown and outer red robe were
+taken off, all in public, and a small square box containing some of her
+trousseau was brought in, and every woman and child there in that stuffy
+little room dived into it and hauled out the silks and embroideries and
+little shoes and made audible comments on them.
+
+“H'm! it's only sham silk,” said one.
+
+“How old are you, new bride?” asked another.
+
+“She's not much to look at,” said a third, which was a shame, for with
+the paint washed off she must have been pretty though tired-looking.
+
+It was five o'clock before we went to the feast, all the women together,
+and all the men together, four or five at a table, and the bridegroom,
+without the absurd headgear, and his mother, in sober blue silk, came
+round at intervals and exhorted us to eat plenty.
+
+We had one little saucer each, a pair of chopsticks and a china spoon
+such as that with which my grandmother used to ladle out her tea, and
+they served for all the courses. It was lucky I had had nothing since
+seven in the morning, or I might not have felt equal to eating after I
+had seen the cooking and the washing-up arrangements. As it was, I
+was hungry enough not to worry over trifles. After she had sucked them
+audibly, my friend the Bible-woman helped me with her own chopsticks,
+and I managed to put up with that too. I tried a little wine. It
+was served in little bowls not as large as a very small salt-cellar,
+literally in thimblefuls, but one was too much for me. It tasted of
+fiery spirit and earth, and I felt my companion was not denying herself
+much when she proclaimed herself a teetotaller. What we ate heaven only
+knows, but much to my surprise I found it very good. Chinese when they
+have the opportunity are excellent cooks.
+
+The bride sat throughout the feast on the _k'ang_, her hands--three of
+her finger-nails were shielded with long silver shields--hidden under
+her lavender jacket and her plate piled before her, though etiquette
+required that she should refuse all food. They chaffed her and laughed
+at her, but she sat there with downcast eyes like a graven image. After
+the feast two or three men friends of the bridegroom were brought in,
+and to every one she had to rise and make an obeisance, and though the
+men and women hardly looked at or spoke to each other, it was evident
+that she was for this occasion a thing to be commented on, inspected
+and laughed at. She was bearing it very well, poor little girl, when Kan
+T'ai T'ai's cart--I was Kan T'ai T'ai--was announced, and we went home
+through the streets as the shades of evening were falling. I had
+fed bountifully and well, but the dissipation had worn me out, the
+airlessness of the rooms was terrible, and even the dust-laden air of
+the narrow street I drew into my lungs with a sigh of deep thankfulness.
+It was good to be in the free air again. Better still to remember,
+however I had railed against my fate at times, nothing that could ever
+happen to me would be quite as bad as the fate of the average Chinese
+woman.
+
+However, a new life was beginning for this girl in more ways than one.
+The bridegroom was going back to his business, that of a photographer
+in T'ai Yuan Fu, leaving his wife with his mother. She was to be sent to
+the school for married women opened by the missionaries, and, of
+course, her feet were to be unbound. Probably, I hope I do not do him an
+injustice, the bridegroom would not have objected to bound feet, but he
+did want an educated mother for his children, and the missionaries
+will take no woman with bound feet. They will do the best they can to
+retrieve the damage done, though she can never hope to be anything but
+a maimed cripple, but at least she in the future will be free from pain,
+into her darkened life will come a little knowledge and a little light,
+and certainly her daughters will have a happier life and a brighter
+outlook.
+
+Missions in China, if they are to do any good, are necessarily
+patriarchal. They look after their converts from the cradle to the
+grave. The kindergarten run by a Chinese girl under the maternal eye
+of young Miss Grace Maccomaughey was quite a pretty sight, with all the
+little tots in their quaint dresses of many colours and their hair done
+or their heads shaved in the absurd fashion which seems good to the
+proud Chinese parents--for Chinese parents are both proud and tender and
+loving, though their ways seem strange to us. But babies all the world
+over, yellow or black or white, are all lovable, and these babies at the
+kindergarten were delicious.
+
+“Beloved guest, beloved guest,” they sang in chorus when I came in and
+they were told to greet me. “Peace to thee, peace to thee.”
+
+And “Lao T'ai T'ai” they used to address me in shrill little voices as I
+went about the compound. Lao T'ai T'ai (I shouldn't like to swear I'd
+spelled it properly) means “Old lady”--that is, a woman of venerable
+years who is rich enough to keep a servant--and it was the first time in
+my life I had been so addressed, so I looked in the glass to see if I
+had developed grey hair or wrinkles--riding on a mule-pack would be
+enough to excuse anything--and then I remembered that if in doubt in
+China it is erring on the side of courtesy to consider your acquaintance
+old. I dare say to the children I was old. I remember as a very little
+girl a maiden aunt asking me how old I thought her, and I, knowing she
+was older than my mother, felt she must be quite tottery and suggested
+in all good faith she might be about ninety. I believe the lady had just
+attained her five and thirtieth year, and prided herself upon her
+youthful appearance. At any rate her attitude on this occasion taught me
+when guessing an age it is better to understate than to overestimate. At
+least in the West. Here in the East I was “Old lady” by courtesy.
+
+And they begin the important things of life early in China. At the
+kindergarten there were two little tots, a boy and a girl, engaged to be
+married. The boy was the son of one of the mission cooks and the girl
+was the daughter of his wife. He, a widower, sought a wife to look after
+his little boy, and he got this young widow cheap. Her price was thirty
+_tiaous_--that is, a little over one pound--and at first he said it was
+too much and he could not afford it, but when he heard she had a little
+girl he changed his mind and scraped together the money, for the child
+could be betrothed to his little son and save the expense of a wife
+later on.
+
+They were a quaint little pair, both in coats and trousers, shabby and
+old, evidently the children of poor people, and both with their heads
+shaven save for a tuft of hair here and there. The boy had his tufts cut
+short, while the girl's were allowed to grow as long as they would and
+were twisted into a plait. Such a happy little couple they were, always
+together, and in the games at the kindergarten when they had to pair
+these little ones always chose each other. Possibly the new wife in the
+home was a wise and discreet woman. She might be glad too at the thought
+that she need not part with her daughter. Anyhow I should think that in
+Fen Chou Fu in the future there would be one married couple between whom
+the sincerest affection will exist.
+
+I suppose Chinese husbands and wives are fond of each other
+occasionally, but the Chinaman looks upon wedded life from quite a
+different point of view from the Westerner. I remember hearing about a
+new-made widow who came to sympathise with a missionary recovering from
+a long illness. She was properly thanked, and then the missionary in her
+turn said in the vernacular:
+
+“And you too have suffered a bitterness. I am sorry.”
+
+“I?” incredulously, as much as to say, Who could think I had a sorrow?
+
+“Why, yes. You have lost your husband, haven't you?”
+
+“Call that a bitterness?” smiled the relict cheerfully, and her would-be
+consoler felt the ground cut away beneath her feet.
+
+But perhaps that sympathiser was not quite as much dismayed as another
+lady who offered her condolences upon a similar occasion. The new-made
+widow was a gay old thing, and she remarked blandly, with a toss of her
+head:
+
+“All, we don't worry about things like that when we've got the Gospel!”
+ which left that well-meaning teacher a little uncertain as to whether
+she had instructed her in the doctrines of her new faith quite
+correctly.
+
+Fen Chou Fu is a town that lends itself to reform, that asks for it.
+When I was there they had a magistrate who had been educated in Japan
+and was ready to back any measures for the good of the town. He was too
+much imbued with the spirit of modern thought to be a Christian, but
+he was full of admiration for many of the measures advocated by these
+enthusiastic young people from Oberlin College. There is a large
+Government school here--you may see the courtyards with their lily ponds
+and bridges from the wall--that has been in existence for hundreds of
+years, and this magistrate appealed to the missionaries to take it over
+and institute their modern methods. They might even, so he said, teach
+their own faith there. The only thing that stood in the way was want
+of funds, for though the school was endowed, money has still a way of
+sticking to the hands through which it passes in China. The missionaries
+were rather inclined, I think, to have hopes of his conversion, but I do
+not think it is very easy to convert the broad-minded man who sees the
+good in all creeds. This magistrate was anxious to help his people sunk
+in ignorance and was wise enough to use every means that came in his
+way, for he knows, knowing his own people, you will never Westernise
+a Chinaman. He will take all that is good--or bad--in the West that
+appeals to him, and he will mould it in his own way. This magistrate
+was building an industrial school for criminal boys close to the mission
+station and, more progressive than the West itself, he allowed his wife
+to sit on the bench beside him and try and sentence women proved guilty
+of crime.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--“MISERERE DOMINE!”
+
+As I have said more than once, it seems to me the most intolerable
+thing in life would be to be a Chinese woman. I remember when first I
+began to write about China I asked a friend of mine to look over my
+work and he objected to my making such a fuss about the condition of the
+women.
+
+“Why, people will think you are a suffragette!” said he, searching for
+some term of obloquy that he felt could not possibly apply to me.
+
+But I am a suffragist, an ardent suffragist, realising that a woman
+is most valuable neither as an angel nor as a slave, but as a useful
+citizen, and I saw then that he possibly knew little about the condition
+of his own women, and probably absolutely nothing at all about the
+condition of the women of the race who swarmed around him. Those he met
+would be dumb, and at any rate no right-minded woman begins upon her
+wrongs to a stranger. In any country it would be bad taste, in China no
+words can tell what shocking bad taste. I had to seek further afield for
+my information, and I got it from the medical missions. Now I went to
+China with a strong prejudice against missionaries, and I found there
+many people who backed me up. And then it occurred to me that I had
+better go to a mission station and see what manner of people were these
+I was judging so hastily and so finally.
+
+I went. And what I saw made me sorry that Great Britain and America, to
+say nothing of Scandinavia, should be deprived of the services of these
+men and women who are giving so much to an alien people. Of course I
+know that many missionaries have the “call,” a “vocation” I suppose the
+Catholics would call it.
+
+“It is a fine work,” said I, usually the unadmiring, “to teach these
+women, but I do not like coming in contact with them, however much I
+appreciate their virtues.”
+
+And the missionary girl looked at me pityingly.
+
+“Do you think,” said she, “we could come all this way to teach Chinese
+women reading, writing and arithmetic?”
+
+It seems to me a great thing to do; if it be only to teach them to wash,
+it is a great thing; but I who merely pitied would never have stayed
+there to better the condition of those unhappy women. To her and her
+comrades had come that mysterious call that comes to all peoples through
+all the ages, the Crying in the Wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the
+Lord. Make His paths straight,” and she thought more, far more, of it
+than I did of the undoubtedly good work I saw she was doing, saw as
+I never should have seen had I not gone in the ways untrodden by the
+tourist, or indeed by any white man.
+
+There are missionaries and missionaries, of course; there are even
+backsliders who, having learned the difficult tongue under the ægis of
+the missions, have taken up curio-buying or any other of the mercantile
+careers that loom so temptingly before the man who knows China; but in
+all classes of society there are backsliders, the great majority must
+not be judged by them. Neither must their narrowness be laid too mueh
+to heart when judging the missionary as a whole. Possibly only a fanatic
+can carry through whole-heartedly the work of a missionary at a remote
+station in China, and most fanatics are narrow. There are, too, the men
+and women who make it a business and a livelihood, who reckon they have
+house and income and position and servants in return for their services
+to the heathen, but they too are faithful and carry out their contracts.
+Having once seen the misery and poverty in which the great majority of
+Chinese dwell, I can say honestly that I think every mission station
+that I have seen is a centre from which radiates at least a hope of
+better things. They raise the standard of living, and though I care
+not what god a man worships, and cannot understand how any man can be
+brought to care, it is good that to these people sitting in darkness
+someone should point out that behind the world lies a great Force, God,
+Love, call it what you will, that is working for good. That the more
+educated Chinese has worked out a faith for himself, just as many in
+the West have done, I grant you, but still the majority of the people
+that I have seen sit in darkness and want help. From the missions they
+get it. Taken by and large, the Chinaman is a utilitarian person, and if
+the missions had not been helpful they would long ago have gone. And for
+the missionaries themselves--I speak of those in the outstations--not
+one, it seems to me, not one would stay among the Chinese unless he were
+sure that his God had sent him, for the life is hard, even for the rich
+missions there are many deprivations, and if therefore, being but human,
+they sometimes depict their God as merciful and loving in a way that
+seems small and petty, much must be forgiven them. They are doing their
+best.
+
+There is another side to it too for the West. These missionaries
+are conquering China by the system of peaceful penetration. They are
+persecuted, they suffer, are murdered often, but that does not drive
+them away. They come back again and again, and wherever the missionary
+succeeds in planting his foot the hatred to foreigners and things
+foreign, strong among the conservative Chinese, is weakened and finally
+broken down. China is a rich country, she is invaluable to the nations
+of the earth for purposes of trade, and though the missionary in many
+ways, if he were asked, would oppose the coming of the white man, he
+certainly is the pioneer.
+
+China is trying to reform herself, but the process is slow, and it seems
+to me in Shansi and in the parts of Chihli that I know it would be a
+long, long while before the good percolated to the proletariat, the
+Babylonish slaves, if it were not for the missionaries; and particularly
+do I admire the medical missionaries, for China is one huge sore.
+
+That is the word the woman doctor at Pao Ting Fu applied to it, and,
+attending her clinic of a morning, I was inclined to agree with her.
+Life is hard for everybody among the poor in China, but especially does
+it press upon the women. They came there into the clean sun-lit room and
+the reek of them went up to heaven--bald-headed, toothless old crones in
+wadded coats out of which all semblance of colour had long since passed,
+young girls and little children clad in the oldest of garments. There
+were so many with ingrowing eyelashes that the doctor had one particular
+day upon which she operated for this painful disfigurement, and she
+showed me how, by making a little nick--I'm afraid I can't use proper
+surgical terms--in the upper eyelid, she turned back the eyelashes and
+made them grow in the direction they are intended to grow, and saved the
+unfortunates' eyes. Why eyelashes should grow in in China I don't know.
+Perhaps it is my ignorance, but I have never heard of their behaving in
+such an unnatural fashion in any other part of the world, while in Pao
+Ting Fu this ailment seemed to be as common as influenza in London. Then
+there would be women with their mouths closed by sores, often so badly
+they could only live by suction, and more than once a new mouth had to
+be cut; there were cancerous growths--the woman depicted in the picture
+had waited twenty years before she could arrange to come under one
+hundred miles to the doctor--there were sores on the head, sores all
+over the body, all, I suppose, including the ingrowing eyelashes, caused
+by malnutrition, swollen glands, abscesses offensive and purulent, in
+fact in that clinic were collected such an array of human woes, ghastly,
+horrible, as well might make one wonder if the force behind all life
+could possibly be anything but devilish and cruel. Wherein could the
+good be found? Where?
+
+And yet there was good. Among these women moved the nurses. They were
+comely girls in blue coats and trousers, with their abundant black hair
+smoothly drawn back, neat white stockings and the daintiest of little
+shoes. Their delicate artistic hands used sponge and basin very capably,
+they were the greatest contrast to their patients, and yet they were
+truly Chinese, had sprung from the people to whom they now ministered,
+and one of them, though it was hardly observable, had an artificial
+foot. So had she suffered from foot-binding that her own had had to be
+amputated.
+
+Probably most of the ailments there treated were preventable, but worst
+of all were the bound feet and the ailments the women suffered from in
+consequence. It is not good manners to speak about a woman's feet,
+and the women themselves rarely refer to them, but naturally I was
+interested in the custom, and whenever the doctor got a “good” bound
+foot, which probably meant a very bad one, she sent over for me to come
+and see it. Anyone who has once seen a bound foot will never forget it.
+It always smelt abominably when first the bandages were taken off, and
+the first thing the nurses did was to provide a square kerosene tin of
+hot water in which to soak the foot well.
+
+Well washed, the feet might be looked at. Shansi especially is the home
+of the bound foot, most of the women have such small feet that they are
+confined for the greater part of their lives to the _k'ang_. I remember
+Dr Lewis in all seriousness saying that he thought on the whole a
+Chinese woman was better without her feet. And I'm inclined to think he
+was right. The toes, all except the big toe, are pressed back till they
+touch the heel, the bandage is put on and drawn tighter and tighter
+every day, and if the girl is healthy and big-boned, so much the worse
+for her. No matter the size of the girl, the foot must conform to the
+one standard. In Shansi when I was there the shoes were generally about
+four inches long, and I have taken shoes of that length off a tall and
+strapping woman who was tottering along with the aid of a stick. What
+she must have suffered to get her feet to that size is too terrible
+to imagine. She must have been suffering still for that matter. If the
+instep after the tightest binding still sticks up the girl's marriage
+chances are seriously interfered with, and then the mother or some
+feminine relative takes a meat-chopper and breaks the bone till she can
+bind the foot small enough. This information I got from the American
+lady who looks after the women in the mission in Fen Chou Fu; and at
+T'ai Yuan Fu the sister in the women's hospital added the gruesome
+detail that they sometimes pull off the little girls' toe-nails so that
+they may not interfere with the binding!
+
+And at the women's hospital at Pao Ting Fu I saw the finished product.
+The big toe stuck straight out, red, possibly because of the soaking
+in hot water--I never had courage to look at one unsoaked--and
+ghastly-looking, the other toes were pressed back against the heel
+and the heel went up and was exactly like the Cuban heels affected by
+smartly dressed women, only this time it had been worked in flesh
+and blood. The whole limb from the big toe to the knee was hard and
+immovable as stone. If you press ordinary flesh anywhere it pits, just
+yields a little, not so a Chinese woman's leg and foot. It is thin,
+perished, literally hard as marble. Once having seen a foot unbound, it
+is a wonder to me that any woman should walk at all. And yet they do.
+They hold out their arms and walk, balancing themselves, and they use a
+stick. Sometimes they walk on their heels, sometimes they try the toe,
+but once I realised what those bandages concealed it was a painful and
+dreadful thing to me to see a Chinese woman walking. In spite of the
+hardness of the flesh, or probably because of it, they get bad corns on
+the spot upon which they balance, and sores, very often tuberculous, eat
+into the foot.
+
+[Illustration: 0117]
+
+[Illustration: 0118]
+
+But the evil does not stop at the foot. In Shansi it seemed to me every
+woman's face was marked with the marks of patient suffering. Travelling
+I often got a glimpse of one peering out of a cart or litter at the
+foreigner, and that face invariably was patient, pallid and worn, for
+foot-binding brings no end of evils in its train. The doctor at Fen Chou
+Fu declared that nine-tenths of the women who came to him for treatment
+suffered from tuberculosis in some form or another, and this in a
+climate that in the winter must outrival in dryness Davos Platts. Not
+a few, too, develop spinal curvature low down in the back, and often
+because of the displacement of the organs they die in child-birth. A
+missionary in one of the little towns I passed through, a trained nurse,
+told me that when a woman suffered from what she (the woman) called
+leg-waist pains--the doctor called it osteomalacia--her case was
+hopeless, she could not give birth to a child. Often this nurse had been
+called in to such cases, and she could do nothing to help the suffering
+girl. She could only stand by and see her die. I could well believe
+these tales of suffering. In Fen Chou Fu and in Pao Ting Fu the women
+of the poorer classes freely walked the streets, and their crippled
+condition was patent to all eyes. But in some towns it is not considered
+seemly for any woman to be seen in the streets. Some reason established
+this custom long ago: the reason passes, but China is the most
+conservative of nations, and the custom remains. But the reason for
+foot-binding is not very clear. There is something sexual at the bottom
+of it, I believe, but why a sick and ailing woman should be supposed
+to welcome the embraces of her lord more readily than one abounding in
+health passes my understanding. Of course we remember that not so very
+long ago, in the reign of Victoria, practically the delicate woman
+who was always ailing was held up to universal admiration. Look at
+the swooning heroines of Dickens and Thackeray. But let no man put the
+compressed waist on the same plane as foot-binding. I have heard
+more than one man do so, but I unhesitatingly affirm they are wrong.
+Foot-binding is infinitely the worse crime. The pinched-in waist did not
+begin till the girl was at least well on in her teens, and it was
+only the extreme cases--and they did it of their own free will I
+presume--who kept up the pressure always. There was always the night for
+rest, whereas the Chinese women get no rest from torture.
+
+The missionaries at Fen Chou Fu, being very anxious to improve the
+status of the women, used to arrange to have lectures in their large
+hall to women only, and they raked the country-side for important people
+to address them on subjects that were, or rather that should be, of
+interest to women. They were not supposed to have anything to do with
+religion, but they discussed openly women's position, were told about
+hygiene and the care of children, and the magistrate's wife, she who had
+been educated in Japan, told them some home-truths about the position of
+women in China.
+
+“American women,” said she on one occasion, “go out into the world and
+help in the world's development. We Chinese stay at home and are dragged
+along by the men. The time has come when we must learn better things.”
+
+But I looked one day at over seventy women of the richer classes
+assembled to listen to a young and enthusiastic Chinese with modern
+views on the position of women and their equality with men. He was
+passionate, he was eloquent, he was desperately in earnest, but it was
+very evident he spoke to deaf ears. I do not think that any one of those
+women grasped, or cared for that matter, what he was saying. In the
+heart of China woman is very far from being the equal of man. These
+women were pets and toys, and they came to the mission station probably
+because it was the fashionable form of amusement just then, but they
+listened to what was being said with deaf ears and minds incapable
+of understanding. They were gaily clad in silks and satins, richly
+embroidered; their hair when it was abundant was oiled and elaborately
+dressed and decorated with gold and silver pins, and when it was scanty
+was hidden under embroidered silken bands; there was not a skirt amongst
+them, that was left to the lecturer, their blue and green and brilliant
+red trousers were rather narrow, their feet were of the very tiniest
+even in Shansi, and their faces, worn and suffering under their paint
+and powder, were vacant. Some of them had brought their babies, and only
+when a child cried, and they cried fairly frequently, did those faces
+light up. That was something they really did understand.
+
+And yet that enthusiastic young scholar in his voluminous petticoats,
+with his hair cut in the modern fashion, went on lecturing to them on
+the rights of women, the position women ought to occupy!
+
+But the position of women! Toys or slaves are they, toys and slaves have
+been their mothers and their grandmothers since the days before the
+dawn of history, and very, very slowly is the idea of the possibility of
+better things percolating through to the masses in China. It will come,
+I suppose, because already there are Government schools for women,
+though they are few and far between, and in some places, so far has
+the desire for freedom gone, the girls have banded themselves into
+societies, declaring that rather than marry a man they have never seen
+they will commit suicide, and more than one has taken her own life. But
+in the parts of Shansi and Chihli where I was so much light has not yet
+penetrated. The wife and mother has influence because any living
+thing with which we are closely associated--even if it be but a little
+dog--must needs influence us, but all the same the Chinese women are as
+a rule mere chattels, dependent entirely upon their menfolk. Amongst
+the Chinese the five happinesses are: old age, a son, riches, official
+position and a moustache; so slight a thing is a woman that she does not
+come in in this connection.
+
+“As far as the heavens are above the earth, so far am I,” disdainfully
+proclaimed a Chinese teacher, “above my wife.” And he only spoke as if
+stating a self-evident fact, a thing that could not be questioned. “How
+could she be my equal?” Just as I might have objected to being put on
+the same plane as my mule or my little dog. Indeed I doubt very much
+whether he gave the same consideration to his wife as I would do to my
+little dog, who is much beloved.
+
+This is not to say, of course, that the men don't consider the women.
+They do.
+
+I remember the gate-keeper at Pao Ting Fu mission paying up for his
+daughter's schooling. He was a jovial old soul, so old that I was
+surprised to hear he had a mother.
+
+“Short am I?” said he cheerfully. “Short? Oh, that dollar and a half!”
+ He paused to consider the matter, then added: “And I was thinking about
+borrowing a dollar from you. My mother's dying, and I want to buy her a
+skirt! Must be prepared, you know!”
+
+The old lady, said Miss Newton, had probably never owned such a luxury
+as a skirt in her life, but that was her son's way of being good to
+her, for the people have a proverb to the effect that the most important
+thing in life is to be buried well, an idea that isn't entirely unknown
+in Western and more enlightened lands. Poor old lady, whose one and
+only skirt came to her to be buried in, or perhaps it would be taken off
+before she was buried, for the Chinese are a careful people. I remember
+one frugal man who celebrated the funeral of his mother and the marriage
+of his son at the same time, so that the funeral baked meats did for
+the marriage feast, and the same musicians did for both. The coffin,
+of heavy black wood, tall as a mantelpiece, stood in the yard, with the
+eldest son and his wife clad in white as mourners, and the rest of
+the company made merry in the house over the bridal. It was the most
+exquisite piece of thrift, but the Chinaman is _par excellence_ an
+economist.
+
+It was in Pao Ting Fu that I met the only woman who made open complaint
+against the position of women, and she only did it because, poor thing,
+she was driven to it.
+
+She slipped through the mission compound gate while the gate-keeper was
+looking the other way, a miserable, unkempt woman with roughened hair
+and maimed feet. Her coat and trousers of the poorest blue cotton were
+old and soiled, and the child she carried in her arms was naked save
+for a little square of blue cotton tied round his body in front. She
+was simply a woman of the people, deadly poor where all just escape
+starvation, young and comely where many are unattractive, and she stood
+under the shade of the trees watching eagerly the mission family and
+their guest at breakfast on the porch! It was a June morning, the
+sunshine that would be too fierce later on now at 7 a.m. was golden, and
+a gentle breeze just whispered softly in the branches that China--even
+Pao Ting Fu--in the early summer morning was a delightful place.
+
+But eager watching eyes glued to every mouthful are distinctly
+disquieting, and in China, the land of punctilious etiquette, are rude.
+Besides, she had no business to be there, and the doctor's wife turned
+and spoke to her.
+
+“What custom is this?” said she, using the vernacular, “and how did you
+get in here?”
+
+“I ran past”--ran, save the mark, with those poor broken cramped
+feet--“when the gate-keeper was not looking. And it's not a day's hunger
+I have. For weeks when we have had a meal we have not known where the
+next was coming from.”
+
+“But you have a husband?”
+
+“And he was rich,” assented the woman, “but he has gambled it all away.”
+
+It was quite a likely story. Another woman working on the compound said
+it was true. She had a bad husband--_hi yah!_ a very bad husband. He
+beat her, often he beat her. Sometimes perhaps it was her fault, because
+she was bad-tempered. Who would not be bad-tempered with maimed feet, an
+empty stomach and two little hungry children? But often he beat her
+for no reason at all. And everyone knows that a Chinese husband has a
+perfect right to beat his wife. That he refrains from so doing is an act
+of grace on his part, but a woman of herself is merely his chattel. She
+has no rights.
+
+The hospital quilted bed-covers--_pel wos_, they called them--had to be
+unripped and washed. The pay was twenty-five _t'ung tzus_ a day and keep
+yourself. One hundred and thirty _t'ung tzus_ went to the dollar, and
+10-35 dollars went to the sovereign at that time, so that the work
+could not be considered overpaid; but this was China, and the women were
+apparently rising up out of the ground and clamouring for it. It was
+evidently looked upon as quite a recreation to sit under the trees on
+the grass in the mission compound and gossip and unpick quilts. The new
+recruit joined them and spent a happy day, sure of food for herself and
+her children for that day at least--not food perhaps such as we would
+appreciate, but at least a sufficiency of millet porridge.
+
+That day and the next she worked, and then on the third day at midday
+she went away for her meal and did not come back till after two o'clock
+in the afternoon. The doctor's wife was reproachful.
+
+“You have been away for over three hours. Why is this?”
+
+She was a true Chinese and found it difficult to give a direct answer.
+
+“I have been talking to my mother,” said she, rousing wrath where she
+might have gained sympathy.
+
+“What excuse is this?” said the doctor's wife. “You go away, and when
+I ask you why, you tell me you have been talking to your mother! Your
+mother should have more sense than to keep you from your work!”
+
+“But my husband has sold me!” protested the culprit and then we saw that
+her face was swollen with crying; “and I am a young woman and I don't
+know what to do when my husband sells me. He keeps the children and
+he sells me, and Tsao, the man who has bought me, is a bad man,” and
+dropping down to the ground she let the tears fall on to the work in her
+hands.
+
+“I am young and so I don't know what to do.” It was the burden of her
+song. It may be she is wailing still, for the story was unfinished when
+I left. She was young and she didn't know what to do. She would not have
+minded leaving her husband if only the man to whom she had been sold had
+been a better man, but he bore a worse reputation if anything than her
+husband, and ignorant, unlearned in all things of this world as she was,
+she and the women round her knew exactly what her fate would be. Tsao
+would sell her when he tired of her, and her next purchaser would do
+likewise, and as she gets older and her white teeth decay and her bright
+eyes fade and her comeliness wanes her money value will grow less and
+less, and beating and starvation will be her portion till death comes
+as a merciful release. But, as she kept repeating pathetically, she is
+young, and death is the goal at the end of a weary, weary, heartbreaking
+road.
+
+For her husband was quite within his rights. He could sell her. It may
+be, of course, he will be swayed by public opinion, and public opinion
+is against the disposing of a wife after this fashion.
+
+“Let her complain to the official,” suggested my assurance.
+
+But the wise women who knew rose up in horror at the depths of ignorance
+I was disclosing.
+
+“Go to the yamen and complain of her husband!”
+
+It is no crime for a man to sell his wife, but it is a deadly crime for
+a woman to speak evil of her husband! She was not yet handed over. All
+he would have to do would be to deny it, and then she would be convicted
+of this crime and to her other ills would be added the wrath of the
+official. No, something better than that must be thought of.
+
+She had been sold for a hundred _tiaou_--something under four
+pounds--and when the money was paid she would have to go to her new
+master, far away from all her friends.
+
+“_Hi yah!_” said the other women. “What a bad man!” So public opinion
+was against it!
+
+It would do no good to buy her freedom unless the purchaser were
+prepared to take upon himself the conduct of her future life. A woman
+must belong to somebody in China; she is, except in very exceptional
+cases and among the very advanced, considered incapable of guiding her
+own life, and pay this and the man would still regard her as his wife
+and sell her again.
+
+Then a woman wise with wisdom of the people arose.
+
+“There is only one thing to be done,” said she; “you must pretend you
+know nothing about it, and when Tsao comes, and you are sold, then make
+an excuse and run to the yamen. It may be the official will help, for it
+is a wicked thing.”
+
+“Run to the yamen!” on feet on which she could just totter. But the wise
+woman had taken that into consideration.
+
+“Mark well the way so you may hide in the turnings.”
+
+Such a forlorn, pitiful little hope! But with it she had to be content,
+and that night she held her peace and pretended she did not know
+the fate that hung over her, and when I left she was still ripping
+bed-covers with the other women. She had had no hand in bringing about
+her own fate, for she did not choose this man. She had never seen him
+till she was handed over on her marriage day by her parents.
+
+“What,” said the women at one place when a new missionary came to them,
+“forty and not married! What freedom! How did you manage it! What good
+fortune!”
+
+In China there is no respectable word, so I am told, to denote a
+bachelor, and there was almost never, at least under the old regime,
+such a thing as an old maid. Every woman must belong to someone, and
+few and far between are the families that can afford to keep unmarried
+daughters, so the women regard as eminently fortunate those foreign
+women they come across, missionary or otherwise, who are apparently free
+to guide their own lives.
+
+Of course the average husband would no more think of selling his wife
+than would an Englishman, but, unlike the Englishman, he knows that he
+has the right to do so should he so please, even as he has the right
+of life and death over her and his children. She is his chattel, to be
+faithful to her would simply be foolishness.
+
+They tell a story of an angry father found digging a hole in which he
+proposed to bury his son alive. That son had been insolent, and it was
+a terrible thing to have an insolent son. His mother wept, but to her
+tears the father paid no heed. A stranger passed along and questioned
+the little company, and finding in his heart pity for the woman and the
+lad, cast about how he might help them. He did not set about it as we of
+the West would have done.
+
+He commiserated with the father. It was a terrible thing to have an
+insolent son. Undoubtedly he deserved death. But it would be a bad thing
+to have no son to worship at the ancestral tablet.
+
+That was provided for, said the irate parent. He had two other sons.
+
+That was well! That was well! And of course they had sons?
+
+No, they were young. They had no sons yet.
+
+A-a-ah! And suppose anything happened by which they both should die?
+
+The stranger let that sink in. He had struck the right chord. It
+would be a terrible thing to have no son to worship at the ancestral
+tablet--to think that he by his own act----
+
+Chinese reasoning prevailed, and the son's life was spared.
+
+And yet the Chinese are fond of their children and, according to their
+lights, good to their wives. It is that under the patriarchal system
+children and women--a woman is always a child, a very ignorant child as
+a rule--have no rights. They are dependent upon the good will of their
+owners.
+
+And so the woman sitting waiting to see if her husband would complete
+the bargain and sell her had no rights. She was just a chattel in the
+eye of the law. And there was none to help. Miserere Domine! It was just
+possible public opinion would save her. It was her only hope. Miserere
+Domine! Miserere Domine!
+
+In Fen Chou Fu the missionaries had started an adult school for women.
+First it was started, as they themselves put it, to teach the Gospel,
+but then wisely they extended it and taught reading, writing and
+arithmetic, and very eager indeed were the pupils. It is only fair to
+say that very often husbands, or possibly fathers-in-law--for a woman
+belongs to the head of her husband's family, or at least owes allegiance
+to him--aided and abetted in every way, and when necessary sent the
+pupils twenty and thirty miles in carts and in litters from away in
+the mountains to attend. One woman with four little children, all under
+five, with another coming, was a most eager pupil. Her children were
+sent to the kindergarten, which is in charge of a young Chinese teacher
+educated by the missionaries.
+
+Again I do not say the Chinese are not doing something to ameliorate the
+condition of their women. I can only speak of what I saw, and what I saw
+was, here in Shansi, the wives of the most miserable peasants sunk in
+ignorance and hardly able to crawl from the _k'angs_ on which they spent
+their lives. The men do the cooking because the women are incapable, and
+the mortality among the children is terrible. A doctor told me that
+very often he had attended a woman at the birth of her thirteenth or
+fourteenth child and only one or two would be living!
+
+I don't know how many wives or concubines a man is allowed. Only the
+first one has any standing, and the number of the others is probably
+limited by his means. I remember hearing of one man, a Mr Feng, who had
+just married his second wife to another man because she was making his
+life too miserable for him. This was the man's side of the story; I had
+heard the woman's the last time. I wonder how the case is put on these
+occasions. Does a man say he is parting with the lady with extreme
+regret because the climate does not suit her, or because his first wife
+does not like her, or because a sudden reverse of fortune has compelled
+him to reduce his household? He surely would never have given the real
+reason. My friend Mr Farrer waxes enthusiastic over things Chinese, but
+I must say what I have seen of their domestic life repels me, and I
+am rather inclined to agree with a missionary of my acquaintance--a
+bachelor though--that it would give nervous prostration to a brazen
+statue.
+
+There can be little happiness where there is ignorance, and the majority
+of the women of Shansi anyhow are the ignorant slaves of ignorant
+slaves. Miserere Domine!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--BY MOUNTAIN AND RIVER
+
+Setting out on a long journey by road, moving along slowly, at the rate
+of thirty miles a day, I find I do not have the end in view in my mind
+all the time. I do subconsciously, of course, or I would never get on
+at all, but I take a point a couple of days ahead and concentrate
+on getting there. Having arrived so far, I am so pleased with the
+performance I can concentrate on the next couple of days ahead. So
+I pass on comfortably, with the invigorating feeling of, something
+accomplished.
+
+Fen Chou Fu, then, was one of my jumping-off places.
+
+And at Fen Chou Fu my muleteers began to complain. Looked at from a
+Western point of view, they ought to have complained long before, but
+their complaint was not what I expected. They sent my interpreter to say
+we were going the wrong way. This road would lead us out into a great
+bare place of sand. When the wind blew it would raise the sand in great
+clouds that would overwhelm us, and if the clouds gathered in the sky we
+should not be able to see the sun, we would not know in which direction
+to go and we should perish miserably. And having supplied me with this
+valuable and sinister information they stood back to watch it sink in.
+
+It didn't have the damping and depressing effect they doubtless
+expected. To begin with, I couldn't believe in a Chinese sky where you
+couldn't see the sun. The clouds might gather, but a few hours would
+suffice to disperse them, in my experience, and as for losing ourselves
+in the sand--well, I couldn't believe it possible. Always in China,
+where-ever I had been, there had been plenty of people of whom to ask
+the way, and though every man's radius was doubtless short, still at
+every yard there was somebody. It was like an endless chain.
+
+“Don't they want to go?” I asked Mr Wang.
+
+“Repeat, please,” said he, according to the approved formula.
+
+“Won't they go?” I felt I had better have the matter clear.
+
+“You say 'Go,' mus' go. You fear--you no go.”
+
+If I feared and wouldn't go on, I grasped, the money I paid them would
+be forfeit.
+
+“But I must go. I am not afraid.”
+
+“They say you go by Hsi An Fu. That be ploper.” And the listening
+muleteers smiled at me blandly.
+
+“But I cannot go by Hsi An Fu because of White Wolf.” I did not say that
+also it would be going round two sides of a triangle because that would
+not appeal to the Chinese mind.
+
+“They not knowing White Wolf,” said Mr Wang, shaking his head.
+
+“Well, I know White Wolf,” I said, departing a little from the truth,
+“and I am going across the river to Sui Te Chou.”
+
+“You say 'Go,'” said Mr Wang sorrowfully, “mus' go,” and he looked at
+the muleteers, and the muleteers looked at him sorrowfully and went
+off the verandah sorrowfully to prepare for the lonely road where there
+would be no people of whom to ask the way, only sand and no sun.
+
+There was plenty of sun when we started. It was a glorious summer
+morning when my little caravan went out of the northern gate into the
+mountains that threatened the town. It was unknown China now, China as
+she was in the time of the Cæsars, further back still in the time of
+the Babylonish kings, in the days before the first dynasty in Egypt. Out
+through the northern gate we went, by the clay-walled northern suburb,
+past great ash-heaps like little mountain ranges, the refuse of
+centuries, their softly rounded sides now tinged with the green of
+springtime, and almost at once my caravan was at the foot of the
+hills--hills carved into terraces by the daily toil of thousands, but
+looking as if they had been so carved by some giant hand. As we entered
+them as hills they promptly disappeared, for the road was sunken, and
+high over our heads rose the steep clay walls, shutting out all view
+save the bright strip of blue sky above.
+
+I here put it on record--I believe I have done it before, but it really
+cannot be repeated too often--that as a conveyance a mule litter leaves
+much to be desired. Sitting up there on my bedding among my cushions,
+with James Buchanan beside me, I was much more comfortable than I should
+have been in a Peking cart, but also I was much more helpless. A driver
+did take charge of the Peking cart, but the gentleman who sometimes led
+my mule litter more often felt that things were safer in the charge of
+the big white mule in front, and when the way was extremely steep or
+rough he abandoned it entirely to its discretion. The missionaries had
+told me whenever I came to a bad place to be sure and get out, because
+the Chinese mules are not surefooted enough to be always trusted. They
+are quite likely at a bad place to slip and go over. This was a cheering
+reflection when I found myself at the bad place abandoned to the tender
+mercies of those animals. The mule in the lead certainly was a capable
+beast, but again and again, as I told Mr Wang, I would have preferred
+that the muleteers should not put quite so much faith in him. I learned
+to say “B-r-rrr, b-r-r-rrr!” when I wanted him to stop, but I did
+not like to say it often, because I felt in a critical moment I might
+seriously hamper him to my own disadvantage. I told Mr Wang I was to
+be lifted out when we came to bad places, but that too was hardly
+practicable, for we came to many places that I certainly could not have
+negotiated on my own feet, and how the mules got a cumbersome litter
+down or up them passes my understanding. Thinking it over, the only
+advice I can give to anyone who wishes to follow in my footsteps is
+to shut his eyes as I did and trust to the mule. And we went down some
+places that were calculated to take the curl out of my hair.
+
+James Buchanan was a great comfort to me under these circumstances. He
+nestled down beside me--he had recovered from his accident before we
+left Fen Chou Fu--and he always assured me that everything would be all
+right. One thing he utterly declined to do, and that was to walk with
+the servants. I used to think it would be good for his health, but the
+wisdom of the little Pekinese at the British American Tobacco Factory
+had sunk in deep and he declined to trust himself with them unless I
+walked too, when he was wild with delight. Put out by himself, he would
+raise a pitiful wail.
+
+“Buchanan declines,” Mr Wang would say sententiously, and he would be
+lifted baek into the litter by my master of transport as if he were a
+prince of the blood at least. And if anyone thinks I make an absurd fuss
+about a little dog, I must remind him that I was entirely alone among an
+alien people, and the little dog's affection meant a tremendous deal
+to me. He took away all sense of loneliness. Looking back, I know now I
+could not have gone on, this book would never have been written, if it
+had not been for James Buchanan.
+
+Roughly the way to the Yellow River is through a chain of mountains,
+across a stony plateau in the centre of which is situated Yung Ning
+Chou, quite a busy commercial city, and across another chain of
+mountains through which the river forces its way. When first I entered
+the ditch in the loess my objective was Yung Ning Chou. I looked no
+farther. I wanted to get to that town in which seven Scandinavian
+missionaries in twenty years had not effected a single convert. The
+cliffs frowned overhead, and the effect to me was of wandering along an
+extremely stony way with many pitfalls in it to the chiming of many
+mule bells and an unceasing shouting of “_Ta, ta!_”--that is, “Beat,
+beat!”--a threat by which the muleteer exhorts his animals to do their
+best. Generally speaking, I couldn't see the man who had charge of
+me because he was some way behind and the tilt shut him from my view.
+Except for knowing that he was attending to his job and looking after
+me, I don't know that I pined to look upon him. His appearance was
+calculated to make me feel I had not wakened from a nightmare. Sometimes
+he wore a dirty rag over his head, but just as often he went in his
+plain beauty unadorned--that is to say, with all the front part of his
+head shaven and the back a mass of wild coarse black hair standing out
+at all angles. They had cut off his queue during the reforming fever at
+T'ai Yuan Fu and I presume he was doing the best he could till it should
+grow again. Certainly it was an awe-inspiring headpiece.
+
+[Illustration: 0135]
+
+[Illustration: 0136]
+
+And always we progressed to the clashing of bells, for on every possible
+point on the trappings of the four mules and the donkey that made up the
+caravan and on every available point on the harness of every mule and
+donkey that passed us was a brass bell. For, for all my muleteers had
+objected to going this way, it was a caravan route to the West, and it
+was seldom we did not see someone on the road. Here in this ditch in the
+loess I realised the stern necessity for these bells, for often the way
+was narrow and when we could hear another caravan coming we could make
+arrangements to pass or to allow them to pass. There were many caravans
+of ragged camels, and to these my animals objected with all the spirit
+a life on the roads had still left in them. When we met a string of
+them at close quarters in the loess my white mule in the lead nearly had
+hysterics, and his feelings were shared, so I judged by the behaviour of
+the litter, by his companion behind, and they both endeavoured to
+commit suicide by climbing the bank, having no respect whatever for my
+feelings.
+
+On these occasions, with clenched teeth and concentrated energy, my
+muleteer addressed himself to that leading mule:
+
+“Now! Who's your mother? You may count yourself as dead!”
+
+The mule evidently felt this was serious and made a desperate endeavour
+to get a little higher, and his attendant became sarcastic.
+
+“Call yourself a mule! Call yourself a lord, sir!”
+
+By the jangling of the bells and the yells of the rest of the company I
+knew that the other animals felt equally bad, and more than once I saw
+my luckless interpreter, who evidently was not much of a hand at sitting
+on a pack, ruefully picking himself up and shaking the dust from his
+person, his mule having flung him as a protest against the polluting of
+the road by a train of camels.
+
+The camels march along with a very supercilious air, but mules, horses
+and donkeys all fear them so much that there are special inns for them
+and they are supposed only to travel by night, but this rule is more
+honoured, I imagine, in the breach than in the observance. Most parts
+of the road I don't see that any caravan could pass along at night. The
+special inns do not present any difference to my unprejudiced eyes from
+the discomfort of an ordinary mule and donkey inn. I stopped at one one
+day in the loess for tiffin, and it consisted of a courtyard round which
+were rooms (_yaos_) that were simply caves with the mouths bricked up
+and doors in them. Inside, the caves were dark and airless, with for all
+furniture the universal, _k'ang_; a fireplace is either in the middle or
+at one of the ends, and the flues underneath carry the hot air under
+the _k'ang_ to warm it. I have never before or since seen such miserable
+dwelling-places as these _yaos_, and in the loess country I saw hundreds
+of them, inhabitated by thousands of people. Wu Ch'eng particularly
+commended itself to my notice because here I first realised that in
+expecting a room to myself I was asking too much of the country.
+
+We crossed the mountain pass the first day out of Fen Chou Fu. Steep it
+was, steep as the roof of a house, and we scrambled down the other
+side and, just as the dusk was falling, we came to Wu Ch'eng, a village
+mostly of _yaos_ in the mountain-side. Wu Ch'eng, where hundreds of
+people live and die, was short of most things that make life worth
+living: water was very scarce indeed, and there were no eggs there. It
+was necessary that our little company should move on with what speed we
+might. Also the inn only had one room.
+
+“The _k'ang_ is large,” said my interpreter, as if he thought that a
+woman who would come out on this journey would not mind sharing that
+_k'ang_ with all the other guests, the innkeeper and his servants. It
+was rather large. I looked into an earthen cave the end of which, about
+thirty feet away, I could hardly make out in the dim light. There were
+great cobwebs hanging from the ceiling--dimly I saw them by the light
+that filtered through the dirty paper that did duty for a window--and
+the high _k'ang_ occupied the whole length of the room, leaving a narrow
+passage with hard-beaten earth for a floor about two feet wide between
+the _k'ang_ and the left-hand wall. It was about as uninviting a room
+as I have ever seen. Also it was clearly impossible that Buchanan and I
+should turn out the rest of the company, so I decreed that I should have
+it to myself for half-an-hour for the purposes of washing and changing,
+for whieh privilege I paid about twenty cash, roughly a ha'penny, and
+then we slept in the litter, as we did on many other occasions, outside
+in the yard among the donkeys and mules. The last thing I saw was the
+bright stars peeping down at me, and the last thing I heard was the
+mules munching at their well-earned chaff, and I wakened to the same
+stars and the same sounds, for early retiring is conducive to early
+rising, and yet the muleteers were always before me and were feeding
+their beasts. Always I went through the same routine. I went to bed
+despairing and disgusted and a little afraid. I slept like the dead, if
+I slept outside, and I wakened to watch the sun rise and renew my hopes.
+
+There are hundreds, probably thousands, of villages like Wu Ch'eng in
+China. The winter in Shansi in the mountains is Arctic and no words can
+describe what must be the sufferings of these people; especially must
+the women suffer, for the poorest peasant binds his daughter's feet, his
+wife can hardly crawl. In Chihli you may see the women tottering round
+on their stumps grinding the corn, in Shansi lucky is the woman who can
+do so much. The ordinary peasant woman is equal to nothing but a little
+needlework, if she have anything to sew, or to making a little porridge,
+if she can do so without moving off the _k'ang_.
+
+The getting something for the men to cook must be a hard job. Potatoes
+are sold singly, other vegetables are cut in halves or quarters, a fowl
+is always sold by the joint. There may be people who do buy a whole
+fowl, but they are probably millionaires. I suppose a whole section of a
+community could not possibly exist on other folks' old clothes, but that
+is how the people of this part of Shansi looked as if they were clothed.
+They had not second-hand clothes or third-hand, they were apparently the
+remnants that the third buyer could find no use for.
+
+I shall never forget on one occasion seeing a ragged scarecrow bearing
+on the end of a pole a dead dog, not even an ordinary dead dog, but one
+all over sores, a most disgustingly diseased specimen. I asked Mr Wang
+what he was carrying that dog away for and that young gentleman looked
+at me in surprise. He would never get to the bottom of this foolish
+foreigner.
+
+“For eat,” said he simply!
+
+The people of the loess cannot afford to waste anything save the health
+of their women. A dog, a wonk, shares the scavenging work of the Chinese
+towns with the black and white crows, and doubtless the citizens do not
+care so much for eating them as they would a nice juicy leg of mutton,
+but they would no more throw away a wonk that had found life in a
+Chinese town too hard and simply died than I would yesterday's leg of
+mutton in favour of the tender chicken I prefer.
+
+This, the first camel inn I particularly noticed, was not far from
+Fen Chou Fu, and they told me how many years ago one of the medical
+missionaries touring the country found there the innkeeper's wife with
+one of her bound feet in a terrible condition. She had a little baby at
+her breast and she was suffering horribly--the foot was gangrenous. The
+doctor was troubled and puzzled as well. He had no appliances and no
+drugs, but left as they were, mother and baby, already half starved,
+were doomed. Therefore, like a brave man as he was, he took his courage
+in both hands, made a saw of a piece of scrap iron from an American
+packing-case and with this rude instrument and no anaesthetics he
+amputated that foot. And the woman survived, lived to see her child grow
+up, was living when I passed along that way, and I sat in her courtyard
+and had my tiffin of hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice washed down by
+tea. It was her son's courtyard then, possibly that very baby's whose
+life the missionary had saved by saving his mother's. For the Chinese
+have no milch cows or goats and know little about feeding infants
+artificially.
+
+Always at midday the litter was lifted off the mules' backs, my table
+and chair were produced from some recess among the packs, my blue cotton
+tablecloth was spread and Tsai Chih Fu armed himself with a frying-pan
+in which to warm the rice and offered it to me along with hard-boiled
+eggs of dubious age. The excellent master of transport was a bad cook,
+and it is not an exhilarating diet when it is served up three times
+a day for weeks with unfailing regularity. I never grew so weary of
+anything in my life, and occasionally I tried to vary it by buying
+little scones or cakes peppered with sesame seed, but I'm bound to say
+they were all nasty. It always seemed to me that an unfair amount
+of grit from the millstones had got into the flour. Chinese are
+connoisseurs in their cooking, but not in poor little villages in the
+mountains in Western Shansi, where they are content if they can fill
+their starving stomachs. To judge Chinese taste by the provisions of
+these mountaineers is as if we condemned the food of London, having
+sampled only those shops where a steak pudding can be had for fourpence.
+
+And all these little inns, these underground inns, very often had the
+most high-sounding names. “The Inn of Increasing Righteousness”--I hope
+it was, there was certainly nothing else to recommend it; but the “Inn
+of Ten Thousand Conveniences” really made the greatest claim upon my
+faith. The Ritz or the Carlton could hardly have claimed more than this
+cave with the hard-beaten earth for the floor of its one room and for
+all furnishing the _k'ang_ where landlord and guests slept in company.
+
+Yet all these uncomfortable inns between Fen Chou Fu and Yung Ning Chou
+were thronged. The roads outside were littered with the packs of the
+mules and donkeys, and inside the courtyard all was bustle, watering
+and feeding the animals and attending to the wants of the men, who
+apparently took most of their refreshment out of little basins with
+chopsticks and when they were very wealthy, or on great occasions, had
+tea without milk or sugar--which, of course, is the proper way to drink
+it--out of little handleless cups. I don't know that they had anything
+else to drink except hot water. I certainly never saw them drinking
+anything intoxicating, and I believe there are no public-houses in China
+proper.
+
+Every now and then the way through the loess widened a little and there
+was an archway with a tower above it and a crowded village behind.
+Always the villages were crowded. There was very often one or perhaps
+two trees shading the principal street, but other hints of garden or
+greenery there were none. The shops--open stalls--were packed together.
+And in these little villages it is all slum: there is no hint of country
+life, and the street was full of people, ragged people, mostly men and
+children. The men were in rags in all shades of blue, and blue worn
+and washed--at least possibly the washing is doubtful, we will say worn
+only--to dun dirt colour. It was not picturesque, but filthy, and the
+only hint of luxury was a pipe a yard long with a very tiny bowl which
+when not in use hung round their necks or stuck out behind from under
+their coats. Round their necks too would be hung a tiny brass tobacco
+box with hieroglyphics upon it which contained the evil-smelling
+compound they smoked. Sometimes they were at work in their alfresco
+kitchens--never have I seen so much cooking done in the open
+air--sometimes they were shoeing a mule, sometimes waiting for customers
+for their cotton goods, or their pottery ware, or their unappetising
+cooked stuff, and often they were nursing babies, little blaek-eyed
+bundles of variegated dirty rags which on inspection resolved themselves
+into a coat and trousers, whatever the age or the sex of the baby. And
+never have I seen so many family men. The Chinaman is a good father and
+is not ashamed to carry his baby. At least so I judge.
+
+Only occasionally was a woman or two to be seen, sitting on their
+doorsteps gossiping in the sun or the shade, according to the
+temperature. Men and women stared at the foreign woman with all their
+eyes, for foreigners are rather like snow in June in these parts, and
+my coming made me feel as if a menagerie had arrived in the villages
+so great and interested were the crowds that assembled to look at and
+comment on me.
+
+After we passed through the loess the track was up a winding ravine cut
+in past ages by the agency of water. From five hundred to a thousand
+feet above us towered the cliffs and at their feet trickled a tiny drain
+of water, not ankle-deep, that must once have come down a mighty flood
+to cut for itself such a way through the eternal hills. For this, unlike
+the road through the loess, is a broad way where many caravans might
+find room. And this trickle was the beginnings of a tributary to the
+Yellow River. Along its winding banks lay the caravan route.
+
+And many caravans were passing. No place in China is lonely. There were
+strings of camels, ragged and losing their coats--second-hand goods,
+Mark Twain calls them--there were strings of pack-mules and still longer
+strings of little donkeys, and there were many men with bamboos across
+their shoulders and loads slung from either end. Some of these men had
+come from Peking and were bound for far Kansu, the other side of Shensi;
+but as I went on fewer and fewer got the loads from Kansu, most of them
+stopped at Yung Ning Chou, the last walled town of any size this side of
+the river. Always, always through the loess, through the deep ravines,
+across the mountain passes, across the rocky plateau right away to the
+little mountain city was the stream coming and going, bearing Pekingese
+and Cantonese goods into the mountains, and coming back laden with
+wheat, which is the principal product of these places.
+
+Ask the drivers where they were going, camel, mule or donkey, and the
+answer was always the same, they were going east or west, which, of
+course, we could see for ourselves. There was no possibility of going
+any other way. Those in authority knew whither they were bound, but the
+ignorant drivers knew nothing but the direction. At least that is one
+explanation, the one I accepted at the time, afterwards I came to know
+it is a breach of good manners to exhibit curiosity in China, and quite
+likely my interpreter simply greeted the caravans and made his own
+answer to my question. It satisfied or at least silenced me and saved my
+face.
+
+One thing, however, grew more and more noticeable: the laden beasts were
+coming east, going west the pack-saddles were empty. Fear was upon the
+merchants and they would not send goods across the great river into
+turbulent Shensi.
+
+Already, so said my interpreter, and I judged the truth of his statement
+by the empty pack-saddles, they were fearing to send goods into the
+mountains at all. It was pleasant for me. I began to think. I had only
+Buchanan to consult, and he had one great drawback, he always agreed
+that what I thought was likely to be right. It is an attitude of mind
+that I greatly commend in my friends and desire to encourage, but there
+are occasions in life when a little perfectly disinterested advice would
+be most acceptable, and that I could not get. Badly I wanted to cross
+Asia, but I should not cross Asia if I were stopped by _tufeis_, which
+is the local term for robbers. Were these rumours anything, or were
+they manufactured by my interpreter? There were the warnings of the
+missionaries, and there were the empty pack-saddles, and the empty
+pack-saddles spoke loudly. Still I thought I might go on a little
+farther, and James Buchanan encouraged me.
+
+Truly the way to the great river through the mountains was hard. Taking
+all the difficulties in the lump, it would seem impossible to overcome
+them, but taking them one by one I managed it. And not the least of my
+troubles were the dogs.
+
+Here in the mountains was a very handsome breed of large white dogs with
+long hair, at least I am sure they would have been handsome if they had
+been well fed and well eared for. If it had not been for Buchanan, whose
+heart it would have broken, I should certainly have got a puppy to bring
+home with me. These dogs one and all waged war on my little friend,
+who had a great idea of his own importance and probably aggravated the
+ill-fed denizens of the inn-yards. He would go hectoring down a yard,
+head up, white plume waving, with a sort of “Well, here we are! Now what
+have you got to say for yourselves?” air about him, and in two seconds
+more a big white scarecrow of a dog would have him by the neck, dragging
+him across the yard, designing to slay him behind the drinking troughs.
+He would give one shriek for help, and I would fly to that dog's head,
+catch him by the ears or the ruff round his neck and be dragged along in
+my turn till Tsai Chih Fu the resourceful appeared on the scene with a
+billet of wood, and then the unfortunate beast would be banished from
+the yard or tied up till we had gone. I remembered often the warning
+I had received on the subject of hydrophobia, but I never had time to
+think of that till afterwards, when, of course, if anything had happened
+it would have been too late.
+
+There is one thing about a Chinese inn in the interior: it may be
+exceedingly uncomfortable, but it is also exceedingly cheap. A night's
+lodging as a rule costs forty cash. Eleven cash roughly is equal to a
+cent, and a cent, again roughly--it depends upon the price of silver--is
+a little less than a farthing. Forty cash, then, is hardly a penny.
+Hot water costs eight cash, eggs were six cash apiece and so were the
+wheaten scones I bought in place of the bread my servant could not make,
+and I could buy those last as low as three cash apiece. Of course
+I quite understand that I as a rich traveller paid top price for
+everything, probably twice or three times as much as the ordinary
+traveller; the missionaries, indeed, were shocked at the price I paid
+for eggs, and again I was always rooked in the matter of paper. For even
+though I preferred it, it often happened that it was impossible to sleep
+in my litter in the yard, it was too crowded with beasts--and it had to
+be very crowded--and then I stripped off the paper from the window of
+the room I occupied to let in the air, just a little air, and I was
+charged accordingly from thirty to eighty cash for my destructiveness.
+I found afterwards that a whole sheet of new paper can be had for ten
+cash, and the paper I destroyed was not half-a-sheet and was grimed with
+the dirt of ages! Glass, of course, in the mountains of Shansi is almost
+unknown and the windows are covered with white paper.
+
+After the mountains came a high stony plateau, not dangerous but
+difficult, for though this is a great trade route there was not an
+inch of smooth roadway, every step had to be carefully picked among the
+stones, and presently the stream that when we entered the mountains was
+a trickle a hand's-breadth across was now a river meandering among the
+stones. We began by stepping across it; wider it grew and there were
+stepping-stones for the walking muleteers; then the mules waded and the
+muleteers climbed on to the beasts or on to the front of the litter,
+which last proceeding made me very uncomfortable, for I remembered my
+special man was likely at most only to have been washed twice in his
+life, and I was very sure his clothes had never been washed at all and
+probably had never been taken off his back since last October. Finally
+we crossed by bridges, fairly substantial bridges three planks wide, but
+the mules required a deal of encouraging before they would trust them
+and always felt the boards gingerly with their hoofs first as if they
+distrusted the Chinaman and all his engineering works. The engineering
+was probably all right, but as the state of repair often left much to be
+desired I could hardly blame the mules for their caution. And one day we
+crossed that river twenty-six times!
+
+There is no charm in the country in Shansi beyond the sunshine and the
+invigorating air. There were fields, every patch of land that could
+possibly be made to grow a blade of wheat was most carefully tilled,
+there was not a weed, not a blade of grass out of place. In some
+fields the crops were springing green, in others the farmers were still
+ploughing, with a patient ox in the plough; but there were no divisions
+between these fields; there were no hedges; few and scanty trees; no
+gardens; no farmhouses, picturesque or otherwise. The peasants all live
+huddled together, literally in the hill-sides, and of the beauty of life
+there was none. It was toil, toil without remission and with never a
+day off. Even the blue sky and the sunshine and the invigorating dry
+air must be discounted by the dirt and darkness and airlessness of
+the houses and the underground _yaos_. The Chinese peasant's idea in
+building a house seems to be to get rid of the light and the air, the
+only two things I should have thought that make his life bearable. And
+in these dark and airless caves the crippled women spend their days.
+The younger women--I met them occasionally gaily clad and mounted on
+a donkey--looked waxen and had an air of suffering, and the older were
+lined and had a look of querulousness and irritability that was not on
+the men's faces. Many an old man have I seen whose face might stand for
+a model of prosperous, contented, peaceful old age looking back on a
+well-lived life, but never, never have I seen such a look on a woman's
+face.
+
+At last, after crossing a long bridge across the river, we came to Yung
+Ning Chou. The dark grey wall stood out against the blue sky and, unlike
+most Chinese cities that I have seen, there is no watch-tower over the
+gate. It has suburbs, suburbs like Fen Chou Fu enclosed in crumbling
+clay walls that are fast drifting to their inevitable end. They could
+not keep out a rabbit now, let alone a man, and yet they are entered
+through great brick gateways with a turn in them, and going under the
+archways I felt as usual as if I had gone back to Biblical days.
+The walls of the city proper, the crowded little city, are in better
+preservation, and tower high above the caravans that pass round them,
+for there are no inns in Yung Ning Chou and all caravans must stay in
+the eastern suburb. There are narrow, stony little streets of houses
+pressed close together, and the rough roadways are crowded with traffic:
+people, donkeys, laden mules and grunting camels are for ever passing
+to and fro. Looking up the principal street between the eastern and
+the western gate was like looking up a dark tunnel in which fluttered
+various notices, the shop signs, Chinese characters printed on white
+calico. Most of those signs, according to my interpreter's translation,
+bore a strong resemblance to one another. “Virtue and Abundance,” it
+seems they proclaimed to all who could read. But there was no one to
+tell me whether there was really any wealth in this little mountain
+city that is the same now as it probably was a thousand years ago. I
+wondered, I could not help wondering, whether it would be worth Pai
+Lang's while to attack. I wondered if he could get in if he did, for
+the walls were high and the gates, rising up straight and sheer
+without watch towers, such piles of masonry as might have been built by
+conquering Nineveh or Babylon. Here and there, though, in the walls
+the water had got under the clay and forced out the bricks in long deep
+cracks, and here if they were not carefully guarded were places that an
+invading force might storm, and in the suburbs and among the houses that
+clustered close under the protecting walls terrible things might be
+done. But the western gate, I should say, is well-nigh impregnable.
+Nobody but a Chinaman would have built a gate in such a place. It opens
+out on to a steep cliff that falls sheer sixty feet to the river below.
+Chinese towns are always built symmetrically; there should be at least
+one gate in each of the four walls, therefore a gate there is here. It
+seems to have occurred to no one that a gate is placed in those walls
+for the convenience of traffic, and that it is simple waste of time and
+labour to make a gate in a place by which no one could possibly pass.
+For that matter I should have thought a wall unnecessary on top of so
+steep a cliff.
+
+The Scandinavian missionaries who have faithfully worked Yung Ning
+Chou for the last twenty years with so little result were absent when I
+passed through. Only two of them live here, the rest are scattered over
+the mountains to the north, and when I was in Fen Chou Fu I met a woman,
+a Norwegian, who was on her way to join them. She remains in my mind a
+pathetic figure of sacrifice, a wistful woman who was giving of her very
+best and yet was haunted by the fear that all she was giving was of very
+little worth, surely the most bitter and sorrowful reflection in this
+world. She had worked in China as a missionary in her girlhood. She
+explained to me how hard it was for these northern peoples, for to learn
+Chinese they have first to learn English. Then she married, and after
+her little girl was born her husband died and so she took her treasure
+home to educate her in Norway. But she died and, feeling her duty was
+to the Chinese, back came the lonely mother, and when I met her she was
+setting out for the little walled city in the hills where she dwelt
+with some other women. A strangely lonely life, devoid of all pleasures,
+theirs must have been. I was struck with the little things that pleased
+this devoted woman, such little things, and we who may enjoy them
+every day go calmly on our way and never appreciate them. She wore the
+unbecoming Chinese dress, with her white hair drawn baek from her face,
+and her blue eyes looked out wistfully as if she were loath to give up
+hope that somewhere, somehow, in the world individual happiness, that
+would be for her alone, would come to her. During the revolution they,
+remembering the troubles and dangers of the Boxer time, had refugeed in
+Tientsin, and the days there were evidently marked with a white stone in
+her calendar.
+
+“It was so delightful,” she said in her pretty precise English, “to see
+the European children in the gardens.”
+
+How her heart went out to those children. They reminded her, I suppose,
+of the little girl she had left behind sleeping her last sleep among the
+Norwegian mountains.
+
+“Oh, the children!” she sighed. “It brought a lump in your throat to
+look at them!”
+
+It brought a lump in my throat to look at her as I saw her set out for
+her home with two little black-eyed Chinese girls crowded in the litter
+beside her. She was taking them home from the school at Fen Chou Fu.
+The loneliness of her life! The sacrifice of it! I wonder if those three
+women, shut away in that little walled town, made any converts. I doubt
+it, for theirs, like the Yung Ning Chou mission, was purely a faith
+mission.
+
+Unmarried women and widows were these three women. The Yung Ning Chou
+mission consists of four old bachelors and three old maids. Not for a
+moment do I suppose the majority of the Chinese believe they are what
+they are, men and women living the lives of ascetics, giving up all
+for their faith, and the absence of children in child-loving China must
+seriously handicap them in their efforts to spread their faith. Think of
+the weary years of those workers toiling so hopelessly in an alien land
+among a poor and alien population, whose first impulse is certainly to
+despise them. All honour to those workers even though they have failed
+in their object so far as human eye can see, and even though that object
+makes no appeal to people like me.
+
+[Illustration: 0155]
+
+[Illustration: 0156]
+
+[Illustration: 0157]
+
+And I passed on through Yung Ning Chou, on across the stony plateau, and
+at last, at a village called Liu Lin Chen, I was brought up with a sharp
+turn with a tale of Pai Lang.
+
+I was having my midday meal. Not that it was midday. It was four
+o'clock, and I had breakfasted at 6 a.m.; but time is of no account
+in China. Liu Lin Chen was the proper place at which to stop for the
+noonday rest, so we did not stop till we arrived there, though the
+badness of the road had delayed us. I was sitting in the inn-yard
+waiting for Tsai Chih Fu to bring me the eternal hard-boiled eggs and
+puffed rice when Mr Wang came up, accompanied by the two muleteers,
+and they--that is, the two muleteers--dropped down to the ground and
+clamoured, so I made out from his excited statements that the gates of
+Sui Te Chou had been closed for the last four days on account of Pai
+Lang! And Sui Te Chou was the first town I proposed to stop at after I
+crossed the river! If I would go to Lan Chou Fu and on through Sin Kiang
+to the Russian border through Sui Te Chou I must go. There was no other
+way. These days in the mountains had shown me that to stray from the
+caravan road was an utter impossibility. Had I been one of the
+country people conversant with the language I think it would have been
+impossible. As it was, I had my choice. I might go on or I might go
+back. Mr Wang apparently thought there should be no doubt in my mind.
+He evidently expected I would turn tail there and then, and I myself
+realised--I had been realising ever since round the table in the mission
+station at Ki Hsien we had read Dr Edwards' letter--that my journey
+across the continent was ended; but to turn tail in this ignominious
+fashion, having seen nothing, within, I suppose, twenty-five miles of
+the Yellow River, with the country about me as peaceful as the road in
+Kent in which I live at present, how could I? It was more peaceful,
+in fact, for now at night searchlights stream across the sky, within a
+furlong of my house bombs have been dropped and men have been killed,
+and by day and by night the house rocks as motors laden with armament
+and instruments of war thunder past. But there in Shansi in the fields
+the people worked diligently, in the village the archway over which they
+held theatrical representations was placarded with notices, and in the
+inn-yard where I sat the people went about attending to the animals as
+if there was nothing to be feared. And I felt lonely, and James Buchanan
+sat close beside me because at the other side of the very narrow yard a
+great big white dog with a fierce face and a patch of mange on his side
+looked at him threateningly.
+
+“I'll have none of your drawing-room dogs here,” said he.
+
+But Buchanan's difficulties were solved when he appealed to me. I--and
+I was feeling it horribly--had no one to appeal to. I must rely upon
+myself.
+
+And then to add to my woes it began to rain, soft, gentle spring rain,
+growing rain that must have been a godsend to the whole country-side.
+
+It stopped, and Mr Wang and the muleteers looked at me anxiously.
+
+“We will go on,” I said firmly, “to the Yellow River.”
+
+Their faces fell. I could see the disappointment, but still I judged I
+might go in safety so far.
+
+“Don't they want to go?” I asked Mr Wang.
+
+“Repeat, please,” said he. So I repeated, and he said as he had said
+before:
+
+“If you say 'Go,' mus' go.”
+
+And I said “Go.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--CHINA'S SORROW
+
+It is better, says a Chinese proverb, “to hear about a thing than to
+see it,” and truly on this journey I was much inclined to agree with
+that dictum.
+
+We were bound for Hsieh Ts'un. I can't pronounce it, and I should not
+like to swear to the spelling, but of one thing I am very sure, not one
+of the inhabitants could spell it, or even know it was wrongly set forth
+to the world, so I am fairly safe.
+
+We went under the archway with the theatrical notices at Liu Lin Chen,
+under the arched gateway of the village, out into the open country, and
+it began to rain again. It came down not exactly in torrents but good
+steady growing rain. The roads when they were not slippery stones were
+appalling quagmires, and my mule litter always seemed to be overhanging
+a precipice of some sort. I was not very comfortable when that precipice
+was only twenty feet deep, when it was more I fervently wished that I
+had not come to China. I wished it more than once, and it rained and it
+rained and it rained, silent, soaking, penetrating rain, and I saw the
+picturesque mountain country through a veil of mist.
+
+Hsieh Ts'un is a little dirty straggling village, and as we entered it
+through the usual archway with a watch tower above the setting sun broke
+through the thick clouds and his golden rays strcamed down upon the
+slippery wet cobblestones that paved the principal street. The golden
+sunlight and the gorgeous rainbow glorified things a little, and they
+needed glorifying. The principal inn, as usual, was a fairly large yard,
+roughly paved, but swimming now in dirty water; there were stalls for
+animals all round it, and there was a large empty shed where they stored
+lime. It was stone-paved, and the roof leaked like a sieve, but here I
+established myself, dodging as far as possible the holes in the roof and
+drawing across the front of the shed my litter as a sort of protection,
+for the inn, as usual with these mountain inns, had but one room.
+
+It was cold, it was dirty, and I realised how scarce foreigners must
+be when through the misty, soaking rain, which generally chokes off a
+Chinaman, crowds came to stand round and stare at me. I was stationary,
+so the women came, dirty, ragged, miserable-looking women, supporting
+themselves with sticks and holding up their babies to look at the
+stranger while she ate. By and by it grew so cold I felt I must really
+go to bed, and I asked Mr Wang to put it to the crowd that it was not
+courteous to stare at the foreign woman when she wished to be alone,
+and, O most courtly folk! every single one of those people went away.
+
+“You can have a bath,” said he, “no one will look”; and, all honour
+give I to those poor peasants of Western Shansi, I was undisturbed. I am
+afraid a lonely Chinese lady would hardly be received with such courtesy
+in an English village were the cases reversed.
+
+Next day the rain still teemed down. The fowls pecked about the yard,
+drenched and dripping; a miserable, mangy, cream-coloured dog or two
+came foraging for a dinner, and the people, holding wadded coats and
+oiled paper over their heads, came to look again at the show that had
+come to the town; but there was no break in the grey sky, and there was
+nothing to do but sit there shivering with cold, writing letters on my
+little travelling table and listening to my interpreter, who talked with
+the innkeeper and brought me at intervals that gentleman's views on the
+doings of Pai Lang.
+
+Those views varied hour by hour. At first he was sure he was attacking
+Sui Te Chou. That seemed to me sending the famous robber over
+the country too quickly. Then it was _tufeis_--that is, bands of
+robbers--that Sui Te Chou feared, and finally, boiled down, I came to
+the conclusion that Sui Te Chou had probably shut her gates because the
+country round was disturbed, and that she admitted no one who had not
+friends in the city or could not in some way guarantee his good faith.
+It served to show me my friends in Ki Hsien had been right, such
+disturbed country would be no place for a woman alone. I suppose it was
+the rain and the grey skies, but I must admit that day I was distinctly
+unhappy and more than a little afraid. I was alone among an alien
+people, who only regarded me as a cheap show; I had no one to take
+counsel with, my interpreter only irritated me and, to add to my misery,
+I was very cold. I have seldom put in a longer or more dreary day than
+I did at Hsieh Ts'un. There was absolutely nothing to do but watch the
+misty rain, for if I went outside and got wetter than I was already
+getting under the leaking roof--I wore my Burberry--I had no possible
+means of drying my clothes save by laying them on the hot _k'ang_ in the
+solitary living-room of the inn, and that was already inhabited by many
+humans and the parasites that preyed upon them. Therefore I stayed where
+I was, compared my feet with the stumps of the women who came to visit
+me--distinctly I was a woman's show--gave the grubby little children
+raisins, and wondered if there was any fear of Pai Lang coming along
+this way before I had time to turn back. If it kept on raining, would my
+muleteers compel me to stay here till Pai Lang swept down upon us?
+But no, that thought did not trouble me, first, because I momentarily
+expected it to clear up, and secondly, because I was very sure that
+any rain that kept me prisoner would also hold up Pai Lang. I could not
+believe in a Chinaman, even a robber, going out in the rain if he could
+help himself, any more than I could believe in it raining longer than a
+day in China.
+
+“The people are not afraid,” I said to my interpreter as I looked at
+a worn old woman in a much-patched blue cotton smock and trousers, her
+head protected from the rain by a wadded coat in the last stages of
+decrepitude; her feet made me shiver, and her finger-nails made me
+crawl, the odour that came from her was sickening, but she liked to see
+me write, and I guessed she had had but few pleasures in her weary life.
+
+“They not knowing yet,” said he; “only travellers know. They tell
+innkeeper.”
+
+Yes, certainly the travellers would know best.
+
+And all day long he came, bringing me various reports, and said that,
+according to the innkeeper, the last caravan that had passed through
+had gone back on its tracks. I might have remembered it. I did remember
+it--a long line of donkeys and mules.
+
+But the day passed, and the night passed, and the next day the sun came
+out warm and pleasant, and all my doubts were resolved. My journey was
+broken beyond hope, and I must go back, but turn I would not till I had
+looked upon the Yellow River.
+
+We started with all our paraphernalia. We were to turn in our tracks
+after tiffin, but Mr Wang and the muleteers were certain on that point,
+everything I possessed must be dragged across the mountains if I hoped
+to see it again, and I acquiesced, for I certainly felt until I got back
+to civilisation I could not do without any of my belongings.
+
+Almost immediately we left the village we began to ascend the mountain
+pass. Steeper and steeper it grew, and at last the opening in my mule
+litter was pointing straight up to the sky, and I, seeing there
+was nothing else for it, demanded to be lifted out and signified my
+intention of walking.
+
+There was one thing against this and that was an attack of
+breathlessness. Asthma always attacks me when I am tired or worried, and
+now, with a very steep mountain to cross and no means of doing it except
+on my own feet, it had its wicked way. My master of transport and Mr
+Wang, like perfectly correct Chinese servants, each put a hand under my
+elbows, and with Buchanan skirmishing around joyfully, rejoicing that
+for once his mistress was sensible, the little procession started. It
+was hard work, very hard work. When I could go no longer I sat down and
+waited till I felt equal to starting again. On the one hand the mountain
+rose up sheer and steep, on the other it dropped away into the gully
+beneath, only to rise again on the other side. And yet in the most
+inaccessible places were patches of cultivation and wheat growing. I
+cannot imagine how man or beast kept a footing on such a slant, and
+how they ploughed and sowed it passes my understanding. But most of the
+mountain-side was too much even for them, and then they turned loose
+their flocks, meek cream-coloured sheep and impudent black goats, to
+graze on the scanty mountain pastures. Of course they were in charge of
+a shepherd, for there were no fences, and the newly springing wheat must
+have been far more attractive than the scanty mountain grasses.
+
+And then I knew it was worth it all--the long trek from Fen Chou Fu,
+the dreary day at Hsieh Ts'un, the still more dreary nights, this stiff
+climb which took more breath than I had to spare--for the view when
+I arrived at a point of vantage was beautiful. These were strange
+mountains. The road before me rose at a very steep angle, and all around
+me were hill-sides whereon only a goat or a sheep might find foothold,
+but the general effect looked at from a distance was not of steepness.
+These were not mountains, rugged, savage, grand, they were gentle hills
+and dales that lay about me; I had come through them; there were more
+ahead; I could see them range after range, softly rounded, green and
+brown and then blue, beautiful for all there were no trees, in an
+atmosphere that was clear as a mirror after the rain of the day before.
+Beautiful, beautiful, with a tender entrancing loveliness, is that view
+over the country up in the hills that hem in the Yellow River as it
+passes between Shansi and Shensi. Is it possible there is never anyone
+to see it but these poor peasants who wring a hard livelihood from the
+soil, and who for all their toil, which lasts from daylight to dark all
+the year round, get from this rich soil just enough wheaten flour to
+keep the life in them, a hovel to dwell in, and a few unspeakable
+rags to cover their nakedness? As far as I could see, everyone was
+desperately poor, and yet these hills hold coal and iron in close
+proximity, wealth untold and unexploited. The pity of it! Unexploited,
+the people are poor to the verge of starvation; worked, the delicate
+loveliness of the country-side will vanish as the beauty of the Black
+Country has vanished, and can we be sure that the peasant will benefit?
+
+[Illustration: 0166]
+
+[Illustration: 0167]
+
+Still we went up and up, and the climbing of these gentle wooing hills
+I found hard. Steep it was, and at last, just when I felt I could not
+possibly go any farther, though the penalty were that I should turn back
+almost within sight of the river, I found that the original makers of
+the track had been of the same opinion, for here was the top of the pass
+with a tunnel bored through it, a tunnel perhaps a hundred feet long,
+carefully bricked, and when we, breathless and panting, walked through
+we came out on a little plateau with a narrow road wandering down a
+mountain-side as steep as the one we had just climbed. There was the
+most primitive of restaurants here, and the woman in charge--it was a
+woman, and her feet were not bound--proffered us a thin sort of drink
+like very tasteless barley water. At least now I know it was tasteless,
+then I found it was nectar, and I sat on a stone and drank it
+thankfully, gave not a thought to the dirt of the bowl that contained
+it, and drew long breaths and looked around me.
+
+The hills rose up on either hand and away in the distance where they
+opened out were the beautiful treeless hills of forbidden Shensi, just
+as alluring, just as peaceful as the hills I had come through. It was
+worth the long and toilsome journey, well worth even all my fears.
+
+Then we went down, down, but I did not dare get into my litter, the way
+was too steep, the chances of going over too great, for it seems the
+Chinese never make a road if by any chance they can get along without.
+They were driven to bore a tunnel through the mountains, but they never
+smooth or take away rocks as long as, by taking a little care, an animal
+can pass without the certainty of going over the cliff.
+
+And at last through a cleft in the hills I saw one of the world's great
+rivers and--was disappointed. The setting was ideal. The hills rose
+up steep and rugged, real mountains, on either side, pheasants called,
+rock-doves mourned, magpies chattered, overhead was a clear blue sky
+just flecked here and there with fleecy clouds, beyond again were the
+mountains of Shensi, the golden sunlight on their rounded tops, purple
+shadow in their swelling folds, far away in the distance they melted
+blue into the blue sky, close at hand they were green with the green
+of springtime, save where the plough had just turned up patches of rich
+brown soil, and at their foot rolled a muddy flood that looked neither
+decent water nor good sound earth, the mighty Hoang-Ho, the Yellow
+River, China's sorrow. China's sorrow indeed; for though here it was
+hemmed in by mountains, and might not shift its bed, it looked as if it
+were carrying the soul of the mountains away to the sea.
+
+There is a temple where the gully opens on to the river, a temple and
+a little village, and the temple was crowded with blue-clad,
+shabby-looking soldiers who promptly swarmed round me and wanted to
+look in my baggage, that heavy baggage we were hauling for safety over
+fourteen miles of mountain road. Presumably they were seeking arms. We
+managed to persuade them there were none, and that the loads contained
+nothing likely to disturb the peace, and then we went down to the river,
+crossing by a devious, rocky and unpleasant path simply reeking of human
+occupancy, and the inhabitants of that soldier village crowded round me
+and examined everything I wore and commented on everything I did.
+
+They were there to guard the crossing; and far from me be it to say they
+were not most efficient, but if so their looks belied them. They did not
+even look toy soldiers. No man was in full uniform. Apparently they
+wore odd bits, as if there were not enough clothes in the company to go
+round, and they were one and all dirty, touzly, untidy, and all
+smiling and friendly and good-tempered. I only picked them out from
+the surrounding country people--who were certainly dirty and
+poverty-stricken enough in all conscience--by the fact that the soldiers
+had abandoned the queue which the people around, like all these country
+people, still affect. The soldier wore his hair about four or five
+inches long, sticking out at all angles, rusty-black, unkempt and
+uncombed, and whether he ran to a cap or not, the result was equally
+unworkmanlike.
+
+I conclude Chun Pu is not a very important crossing. What the road is
+like on the Shensi side I do not know, but on the Shansi side I should
+think the pass we had just crossed was a very effective safeguard. He
+would be a bold leader who would venture to bring his men up that path
+in the face of half-a-dozen armed men, and they need not be very bold
+men either. Those soldiers did not look bold. They were kindly, though,
+and they had women and children with them--I conclude their own, for
+they nursed the grubby little children, all clad in grubby patches, very
+proudly, took such good care they had a good view of the show--me--that
+I could not but sympathise with their paternal affection and aid in
+every way in my power. Generally my good-will took the form of raisins.
+I was lavish now I had given up my journey, and my master of transport
+distributed with an air as if I were bestowing gold and silver.
+
+He set out my table on the cobble-stones of the inn-yard in the
+sunshine. I believe, had I been a really dignified traveller, I should
+have put up with the stuffiness and darkness of the inn's one room, but
+I felt the recurrent hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice, with a certain
+steamed scone which contained more of the millstone and less of the
+flour than was usual even with the scones of the country, were trials
+enough without trying to be dignified in discomfort.
+
+And while I had my meal everybody took it in turns to look through the
+finder of my camera, the women, small-footed, dirty creatures, much to
+the surprise of their menfolk, having precedence. Those women vowed they
+had never seen a foreigner before. Every one of them had bound feet,
+tiny feet on which they could just totter, and all were clad
+in extremely dirty, much-patched blue cotton faded into a dingy
+dirt-colour. Most of them wore tight-fitting coverings of black cloth to
+cover their scalps, often evidently to conceal their baldness, for many
+of them suffered from “expending too much heart.” Baldness is caused,
+say the Chinese half in fun, because the luckless man or woman has
+thought more of others than of themselves. I am afraid they do not
+believe it, or they may like to hide their good deeds, for they are
+anything but proud of being bald. Most of the mouths, too, here, and
+indeed all along the road, were badly formed and full of shockingly
+broken and decayed teeth, the women's particularly. Wheaten flour, which
+is the staple food of Shansi, is apparently not enough to make good
+teeth. The people were not of a markedly Mongolian type. Already it
+seemed as if the nations to the West were setting their seal upon them,
+and some of the younger girls, with thick black hair parted in the
+middle, a little colour in their cheeks, and somewhat pathetic,
+wistful-looking faces, would have been good-looking in any land.
+
+Then I had one more good look at the river, my farthest point west on
+the journey, the river I had come so far to see. It was all so peaceful
+in the afternoon sunlight that it seemed foolish not to go on. The hills
+of Shensi beckoned and all my fears fell from me. I wanted badly to
+go on. Then came reason. It was madness to risk the _tufeis_ with whom
+everyone was agreed Shensi swarmed. There in the brilliant sunshine,
+with the laughing people around me, I was not afraid, but when night
+fell--no, even if the soldiers would have allowed, which Mr Wang
+declared they would not--I dared not, and I turned sadly and regretfully
+and made my way back to Fen Chou Fu.
+
+Had I gone on I should have arrived in Russia with the war in full
+swing, so on the whole? am thankful I had to flee before the _tufeis_
+of Shensi. Perhaps when the world is at peace I shall essay that
+fascinating journey again. Only I shall look out for some companion, and
+even if I take the matchless master of transport I shall most certainly
+see to it that I have a good cook.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--LAST DAYS IN CHINA
+
+Well, I had failed! The horrid word kept ringing in my ears, the still
+more horrid thought was ever in my mind day and night as I retraced my
+footsteps, and I come of a family that does not like to fail.
+
+I wondered if it were possible to make my way along the great
+waterways of Siberia. There were mighty rivers there, I had seen them,
+little-known rivers, and it seemed to me that before going West again I
+might see something of them, and as my mules picked their way across the
+streams, along the stony paths, by the walled cities, through the busy
+little villages, already China was behind me, I was thinking of ways and
+means by which I might penetrate Siberia.
+
+At Fen Chou Fu they were kind, but I knew they thought I had given in
+too easily, that I had turned back at a shadow, but at T'ai Yuan Fu I
+met the veteran missionary, Dr Edwards, and I was comforted and did not
+feel so markedly that failure was branded all over me when he thanked
+God that his letter had had the effect of making me consider carefully
+my ways, for of one thing he was sure, there would have been but
+one ending to the expedition. To get to Lan Chou Fu would have been
+impossible.
+
+Still my mind was not quite at ease about the matter, and at intervals
+I wondered if I would not have gone on had I had a good cook. Rather
+a humiliating thought! It was a satisfaction when one day I met Mr
+Reginald Farrer, who had left Peking with Mr Purdom to botanise in Kansu
+ten days before I too had proposed to start West.
+
+“I often wondered,” said he, “what became of you and how you had got on.
+We thought perhaps you might have fallen into the hands of White Wolf
+and then------” He paused.
+
+Shensi, he declared, was a seething mass of unrest. It would have
+spelled death to cross to those peaceful hills I had looked at from
+the left bank of the Hoang-Ho. We discussed our travels, and we took
+diametrically opposite views of China. But it is impossible to have
+everything: one has to choose, and I prefer the crudeness of the new
+world, the rush and the scramble and the progress, to the calm of the
+Oriental. Very likely this is because I am a woman. In the East woman
+holds a subservient position, she has no individuality of her own, and
+I, coming from the newest new world, where woman has a very high place
+indeed, is counted a citizen, and a useful citizen, could hardly be
+expected to admire a state of society where her whole life is a torture
+and her position is regulated by her value to the man to whom she
+belongs. I put this to my friend when he was admiring the Chinese ladies
+and he laughed.
+
+“I admit,” said he, “that a young woman has a”--well, he used a very
+strong expression, but it wasn't strong enough--“of a time when she is
+young, but, if she has a son, when her husband dies see what a position
+she holds. That little old woman sitting on a _k'ang_ rules a whole
+community.”
+
+And then I gave it up because our points of view were East and West.
+But I am thankful that the Fates did not make me--a woman--a member of
+a nation where I could have no consideration, no chance of happiness, no
+great influence or power by my own effort, where recognition only came
+if I had borne a son who was still living and my husband was dead.
+
+[Illustration: 0176]
+
+[Illustration: 0177]
+
+[Illustration: 0178]
+
+On my way back to T'ai Yuan Fu I stayed at no mission station except
+at Fen Chou Fu; I went by a different route and spent the nights at
+miserable inns that kindly charged me a whole penny for lodging and
+allowed me to sleep in my litter in their yards, and about eighty _li_
+from Fen Chou Fu I came across evidences of another mission that would
+be _anathema maranatha_ to the Nonconformists with whom I had been
+staying. It is curious this schism between two bodies holding what
+purports to be the same faith. I remember a missionary, the wife of a
+doctor at Ping Ting Chou, who belonged to a sect called The Brethren,
+who spoke of the Roman Catholics as if they were in as much need of
+conversion as the ignorant Chinese around her. It made me smile; yet I
+strongly suspect that Mr Farrer will put me in the same category as I
+put my friend from Ping Ting Chou! However, here under the care of the
+Alsatian Fathers the country was most beautifully cultivated. The
+wheat was growing tall and lush in the land, emerald-green in the May
+sunshine; there were avenues of trees along the wayside clothed in the
+tender fresh green of spring, and I came upon a whole village, men and
+boys, busy making a bridge across a stream. Never in China have I seen
+such evidences of well-conducted agricultural industry; and the Fathers
+were militant too, for they were, and probably are, armed, and in the
+Boxer trouble held their station like a fort, and any missionaries
+fleeing who reached them had their lives saved. I found much to commend
+in that Roman Catholic mission, and felt they were as useful to the
+country people in their way as were the Americans to the people of the
+towns.
+
+Outside another little town the population seemed to be given over to
+the making of strawboard, and great banks were plastered with squares of
+it set out to dry, and every here and there a man was engaged in putting
+more pieces up. It wras rather a comical effect to see the side of a
+bank plastered with yellow squares of strawboard and the wheat springing
+on top.
+
+All along the route still went caravans of camels, mules and donkeys,
+and, strangest of all modes of conveyance, wheel-barrows, heavily laden
+too. A wheel-barrow in China carries goods on each side of a great
+wheel, a man holds up the shafts and wheels it, usually with a strap
+round his shoulders, and in front either another man or a donkey is
+harnessed to help with the traction. Hundreds of miles they go, over the
+roughest way, and the labour must be very heavy; but wherever I went
+in China this was impressed upon me, that man was the least important
+factor in any work of production. He might be used till he failed and
+then thrown lightly away without a qualm. There were plenty glad enough
+to take his place.
+
+I have been taken to task for comparing China to Babylon, but I must
+make some comparison to bring home things to my readers. This journey
+through the country in the warm spring sunshine was as unlike a journey
+anywhere that I have been in Europe, Africa or Australia as anything
+could possibly be. It was through an old land, old when Europe was
+young. I stopped at inns that were the disgusting product of the
+slums; I passed men working in the fields who were survivals of an old
+civilisation, and when I passed any house that was not a hovel it was
+secluded carefully, so that the owner and his womenkind might keep
+themselves apart from the proletariat, the serfs who laboured around
+them and for them.
+
+Within a day's journey of T'ai Yuan Fu I came to a little town, Tsui Su,
+where there was an extra vile inn with no courtyard that I could sleep
+in, only a room where the rats were numerous and so fierce that they
+drove Buchanan for refuge to my bed and the objectionable insects that
+I hustled off the _k'ang_ by means of powdered borax and Keating's,
+strewed over and under the ground sheet, crawled up the walls and
+dropped down upon me from the ceiling. Poor Buchanan and I spent a
+horrid night. I don't like rats anyway, and fierce and hungry rats on
+the spot are far worse for keeping off sleep than possible robbers in
+the future. All that night I dozed and waked and restrained Buchanan's
+energies and vowed I was a fool for coming to China, and then in the
+morning as usual I walked it all back, and was glad, for Mr Wang came
+to me and, after the best personally conducted Cook's tourist style,
+explained that here was a temple which “mus' see.”
+
+I didn't believe much in temples in these parts, but I went a little
+way back into the town and came to a really wonderful temple, built, I
+think, over nine warm springs--the sort of thing that weighed down the
+scales heavily on Mr Farrer's side. What has a nation that could produce
+such a temple to learn from the West? I shall never forget the carved
+dragons in red and gold that climbed the pillars at the principal
+entrance, the twisted trees, the shrines over the springs and the bronze
+figures that stood guard on the platform at the entrance gate. The
+steps up to that gate were worn and broken with the passing of many feet
+through countless years; the yellow tiles of the roof were falling and
+broken; from the figures had been torn or had fallen the arms that they
+once had borne; the whole place was typical of the decay which China
+allows to fall upon her holy places; but seen in the glamour of the
+early morning, with the grass springing underfoot, the trees in full
+leaf, the sunshine lighting the yellow roofs and the tender green of the
+trees, it was gorgeous. Then the clouds gathered and it began to rain,
+gentle, soft, warm, growing rain, and I left it shrouded in a seductive
+grey mist that veiled its imperfections and left me a 'memory only of
+one of the beautiful places of the earth that I am glad I have seen.
+
+At T'ai Yuan Fu I paid Mr Wang's fare back to Pao Ting Fu and bade him
+a glad farewell. There may be worse interpreters in China, but I really
+hope there are not many. He would have been a futile person in any
+country; he was a helpless product of age-old China. I believe he did
+get back safely, but I must confess to feeling on sending him away
+much as I should do were I to turn loose a baby of four to find his way
+across London. Indeed I have met many babies of four in Australia
+who struck me as being far more capable than the interpreter who had
+undertaken to see me across China.
+
+I was on the loose myself now. I was bent on going to Siberia; but the
+matter had to be arranged in my own mind first, and while I did so I
+lingered and spent a day or two at Hwailu; not that I wanted to see that
+town--somehow I had done with China--but because the personality of Mr
+and Mrs Green of the China Inland Mission interested me.
+
+Hwailu is a small walled city, exactly like hundreds of other little
+walled cities, with walls four-square to each point of the compass, and
+it is set where the hills begin to rise that divide Chihli from Shansi,
+and beyond the mission station is a square hill called Nursing Calf
+Fort. The hill has steep sides up which it is almost impossible to take
+any animal, but there are about one hundred acres of arable land on top,
+and this, with true Chinese thrift, could not be allowed to go untilled,
+so the story goes that while a calf was young a man carried it up on
+his back; there it grew to maturity, and with its help they ploughed the
+land and they reaped the crops. It is a truly Chinese story, and very
+likely it is true. It is exactly what the Chinese would do.
+
+At Hwailu, where they had lived for many years, Mr and Mrs Green were
+engaged in putting up a new church, and with them I came in contact with
+missionaries who had actually suffered almost to death at the hands of
+the Boxers. It was thrilling to listen to the tales of their sufferings,
+sitting there on the verandah of the mission house looking out on to the
+peaceful flowers and shrubs of the mission garden.
+
+When the Boxer trouble spread to Hwailu and it was manifest the mission
+house was no longer safe, they took refuge in a cave among the hills
+that surround the town. Their converts and friends--for they had many
+friends who were not converts--hardly dared come near them, and
+death was very close. It was damp and cold in the cave though it was
+summer-time, and by and by they had eaten all their food and drunk all
+their water, and their hearts were heavy, for they feared not only for
+themselves, but for what the little children must suffer.
+
+“I could not help it,” said Mrs Green, reproaching herself for being
+human. “I used to look at my children and wonder how the saints _could_
+rejoice in martyrdom!”
+
+When they were in despair and thinking of coming out and giving
+themselves up they heard hushed voices, and a hand at the opening of
+the cave offered five large wheaten scones. Some friends, again not
+converts, merely pagan friends, had remembered their sufferings.
+Still they looked at the scenes doubtfully, and though the little
+children--they were only four and six--held out their hands for them
+eagerly, they were obliged to implore them not to eat them, they
+would make them so desperately thirsty. But their Chinese friends were
+thoughtful as well as kind, and presently came the same soft voice
+again and a hand sending up a basketful of luscious cucumbers, cool and
+refreshing with their store of water.
+
+But they could not stay there for ever, and finally they made their way
+down to the river bank, the Ching River--the Clear River we called it,
+and I have also heard it translated the Dark Blue River, though it was
+neither dark, nor blue, nor clear, simply a muddy canal--and slowly made
+their way in the direction of Tientsin, hundreds of miles away. That
+story of the devoted little band's wanderings makes pitiful reading.
+Sometimes they went by boat, sometimes they crept along in the kaoliang
+and reeds, and at last they arrived at the outskirts of Hsi An--not
+the great city in Shensi, but a small walled town on the Ching River
+in Chihli. Western cities are as common in China as new towns in
+English-speaking lands--and here they, hearing a band was after them,
+hid themselves in the kaoliang, the grain that grows close and tall as
+a man. They were weary and worn and starved; they were well-nigh
+hopeless--at least I should have been hopeless--but still their faith
+upheld them. It was the height of summer and the sun poured down his
+rays, but towards evening the clouds gathered. If it rained they knew
+with little children they must leave their refuge.
+
+“But surely, I know,” said Mrs Green, “the dear Lord will never let it
+rain.”
+
+And as I looked at her I seemed to see the passionate yearning with
+which she looked at the little children that the rain must doom to a
+Chinese prison or worse. In among those thick kaoliang stalks they could
+not stay.
+
+It rained, the heavy rain that comes in the Chinese summer, and the
+fugitives crept out and gave themselves up.
+
+“It shows how ignorant we are, how unfit to judge for ourselves,” said
+the teller of the tale fervently, “for we fell into the hands of a
+comparatively merciful band, whereas presently the kaoliang was beaten
+by a ruthless set of men whom there would have been no escaping, and who
+certainly would have killed us.”
+
+But the tenderness of the most merciful band was a thing to be prayed
+against. They carried the children kindly enough--the worst of Chinamen
+seem to be good to children--but they constantly threatened their elders
+with death. They were going to their death, that they made very clear to
+them; and they slung them on poles by their hands and feet, and the pins
+came out of the women's long hair--there was another teacher, a girl,
+with them--and it trailed in the dust of the filthy Chinese paths. And
+Mr Green was faint and weary from a wound in his neck, but still they
+had no pity.
+
+Still these devoted people comforted each other. It was the will of the
+Lord. Always was He with them. They were taken to Pao Ting Fu, Pao
+Ting Fu that had just burned its own missionaries, and put in the gaol
+there--and, knowing a Chinese inn, I wonder what can be the awfulness
+of a Chinese gaol--and they were allowed no privacy. Mrs Green had
+dysentery; they had not even a change of clothes; but the soldiers were
+always in the rooms with them, or at any rate in the outer room, and
+this was done, of course, of _malice prepense_, for no one values the
+privacy of their women more than the Chinese. The girl got permission
+to go down to the river to wash their clothes, but a soldier always
+accompanied her, and always the crowds jeered and taunted as she went
+along in the glaring sunshine, feeling that nothing was hidden from
+these scornful people. Only strangely to the children were they kind;
+the soldiers used to give them copper coins so that they might buy
+little scones and cakes to eke out the scanty rations, and once--it
+brought home to me, perhaps as nothing else could, the deprivations of
+such a life--instead of buying the much-needed food the women bought
+a whole pennyworth of hairpins, for their long hair was about their
+shoulders, and though they brushed it to the best of their ability with
+their hands it was to them an unseemly thing.
+
+And before the order came--everything is ordered in China--that their
+lives were to be saved and they were to be sent to Tientsin the little
+maid who had done so much to cheer and alleviate their hard lot lay
+dying; the hardships and the coarse food had been too much for her. In
+the filth and misery of the ghastly Chinese prison she lay, and, bending
+over her, they picked the lice off her. Think of that, ye folk who guard
+your little ones tenderly and love them as these missionaries who feel
+called upon to convert the Chinese loved theirs.
+
+After all that suffering they went back, back to Hwailu and the
+desolated mission station under the Nursing Calf Fort, where they
+continue their work to this day, and so will continue it, I suppose,
+to the end, for most surely their sufferings and their endurance have
+fitted them for the work they have at heart as no one who has not so
+suffered and endured could be fitted. And so I think the whirligig of
+Time brings in his revenges.
+
+I walked through a tremendous dust-storm to the railway station at
+the other side of the town, and the woman who had suffered these awful
+things, and who was as sweet and charming and lovable a woman as I have
+ever met, walked with me and bade me God-speed on my journey, and when
+I parted from her I knew that among a class I--till I came to China--had
+always strenuously opposed I had found one whom I could not only
+respect, but whom I could love and admire.
+
+Going back to Pao Ting Fu was like going back to old friends. They had
+not received my letter. Mr Wang had not made his appearance, so when
+James Buchanan and I, attended by the master of transport, appeared upon
+the scene on a hot summer day we found the missionary party having their
+midday dinner on the verandah, and they received me--bless their kind
+hearts!--with open arms, and proceeded to explain to me how very wise a
+thing I had done in coming back. The moment I had left, they said, they
+had been uncomfortable in the part they had taken in forwarding me on my
+journey.
+
+It was very good of them. There are days we always remember all our
+lives--our wedding day and such-like--and that coming back on the warm
+summer's day out of the hot, dusty streets of the western suburb into
+the cool, clean, tree-shaded compound of the American missionaries at
+Pao Ting Fu is one of them. And that compound is one of the places in
+the world I much want to visit again.
+
+There is another day, too, I shall not lightly forget. We called it the
+last meeting of the Travellers' Club of Pao Ting Fu. There were only
+two members in the club, Mr Long and I and an honorary member, James
+Buchanan, and on this day the club decided to meet, and Mr Long asked me
+to dinner. He lived in the Chinese college in the northern suburb. His
+house was only about two miles away and it could be reached generally
+by going round by the farms and graves, mostly graves, that cover the
+ground by the rounded north-west corner of the wall of the city. Outside
+a city in China is ugly. True, the walls are strangely old-world and the
+moat is a relic of the past--useful in these modern times for disposing
+of unwanted puppies; Pao Ting Fu never seemed so hard up for food as
+Shansi--but otherwise the ground looks much as the deserted alluvial
+goldfields round Ballarat used to look in the days of my youth; the
+houses are ramshackle to the last degree, and all the fields, even when
+they are green with the growing grain, look unfinished. But round the
+north-west corner of Pao Ting Fu the graves predominate. There are
+thousands and thousands of them. And on that particular day it rained,
+it rained, and it rained, steady warm summer rain that only stopped
+and left the air fresh and washed about six o'clock in the evening.
+I ordered a rickshaw--a rickshaw in Pao Ting Fu is a very primitive
+conveyance; but it was pleasantly warm, and, with James Buchanan on my
+knee, in the last evening dress that remained to me and an embroidered
+Chinese jacket for an opera cloak, I set out. I had started early
+because on account of the rain the missionaries opined there might be a
+little difficulty with the roads. However, I did not worry much because
+I only had two miles to go, and I had walked it often in less than
+three-quarters of an hour. I was a little surprised when my rickshaw man
+elected to go through the town, but, as I could not speak the language,
+I was not in a position to remonstrate, and I knew we could not come
+back that way as at sundown all the gates shut save the western, and
+that only waits till the last train at nine o'clock.
+
+It was muddy, red, clayey mud in the western suburb when we started,
+but when we got into the northern part of the town I was reminded of the
+tribulations of Fen Chou Fu in the summer rains, for the water was up to
+our axles, the whole place was like a lake and the people were piling
+up dripping goods to get them out of the way of the very dirty flood. My
+man only paused to turn his trousers up round his thighs and then went
+on again--going through floods was apparently all in the contract--but
+we went very slowly indeed. Dinner was not until eight and I had given
+myself plenty of time, but I began to wonder whether we should arrive at
+that hour. Presently I knew we shouldn't.
+
+We went through the northern gate, and to my dismay the country in the
+fading light seemed under water. From side to side and far beyond the
+road was covered, and what those waters hid I trembled to think, for
+a road at any time in China is a doubtful proposition and by no means
+spells security. As likely as not there were deep holes in it. But
+apparently my coolie had no misgivings. In he went at his usual snail's
+pace and the water swirled up to the axles, up to the floor of the
+rickshaw, and when I had gathered my feet up on the seat and we were in
+the middle of the sheet of exceedingly dirty water the rickshaw coolie
+stopped and gave me to understand that he had done his darnedest and
+could do no more. He dropped the shafts and stood a little way off,
+wringing the water out of his garments. It wasn't dangerous, of course,
+but it was distinctly uncomfortable. I saw myself in evening dress
+wading through two feet of dirty water to a clayey, slippery bank at
+the side. I waited a little because the prospect did not please me, and
+though there were plenty of houses round, there was not a soul in sight.
+It was getting dark too, and it was after eight o'clock.
+
+Presently a figure materialised on that clayey bank and him I beckoned
+vehemently.
+
+Now Pao Ting Fu had seen foreigners, not many, but still foreigners,
+and they spell to it a little extra cash, so the gentleman on the bank
+tucked up his garments and came wading over. He and my original friend
+took a maddeningly long time discussing the situation, and then they
+proceeded to drag the rickshaw sideways to the bank. There was a narrow
+pathway along the top and they apparently decided that if they could get
+the conveyance up there we might proceed on our journey. First I had to
+step out, and it looked slippery enough to make me a little doubtful.
+As a preliminary I handed James Buchanan to the stranger, because, as he
+had to sit on my knee, I did not want him to get dirtier than necessary.
+Buchanan did not like the stranger, but he submitted with a bad grace
+till I, stepping out, slipped on the clay and fell flat on my back, when
+he promptly bit the man who was holding him and, getting away, expressed
+his sympathy by licking my face. Such a commotion as there was! My two
+men yelled in dismay. Buchanan barked furiously, and I had some ado to
+get on my feet again, for the path was very slippery. It was long past
+eight now and could I have gone back I would have done so, but clearly
+that was impossible, so by signs I engaged No. 2 man, whose wounds had
+to be salved--copper did it--to push behind, and we resumed our way....
+
+Briefly it was long after ten o'clock when I arrived at the college. My
+host had given me up as a bad job long before and, not being well, had
+gone to bed. There was nothing for it but to rouse him up, because I
+wanted to explain that I thought I had better have another man to take
+me home over the still worse road that I knew ran outside the city.
+
+He made me most heartily welcome and then explained to my dismay that
+the men utterly declined to go any farther, declared no rickshaw could
+get over the road to the western suburb and that I must have a cart.
+That was all very well, but where was I to get a cart at that time of
+night, with the city gates shut?
+
+Mr Long explained that his servant was a wise and resourceful man and
+would probably get one if I would come in and have dinner. So the two
+members of the Travellers' Club sat down to an excellent dinner--a
+Chinese cook doesn't spoil a dinner because you are two hours late--and
+we tried to take a flash-light photograph of the entertainment. Alas!
+I was not fortunate that day; something went wrong with the magnesium
+light and we burnt up most things. However, we ourselves were all right,
+and at two o'clock in the morning Mr Long's servant's uncle, or cousin,
+or some relative, arrived with a Peking cart and a good substantial
+mule. I confess I was a bit doubtful about the journey home because I
+knew the state of repair, or rather disrepair, of a couple of bridges
+we had to cross, but they were negotiated, and just as the dawn was
+beginning to break I arrived at the mission compound and rewarded the
+adventurous men who had had charge of me with what seemed to them much
+silver and to me very little. I have been to many dinners in my life,
+but the last meeting of the Travellers' Club at Pao Ting Fu remains
+engraved on my memory.
+
+Yet a little longer I waited in Pao Ting Fu before starting on my
+Siberian trip, for the start was to be made from Tientsin and the
+missionaries were going there in house-boats. They were bound for Pei Ta
+Ho for their summer holiday and the first stage of the journey was down
+the Ching River to Tientsin. I thought it would be rather a pleasant
+way of getting over the country, and it would be pleasant too to have
+company. I am not enamoured of my own society; I can manage alone, but
+company certainly has great charms.
+
+So I waited, and while I waited I bought curios.
+
+In Pao Ting Fu in the revolution there was a great deal of looting done,
+and when order reigned again it was as much as a man's life was worth
+to try and dispose of any of his loot. A foreigner who would take the
+things right out of the country was a perfect godsend, and once it was
+known I was buying, men waited for me the livelong day, and I only
+had to put my nose outside the house to be pounced upon by a would-be
+seller. I have had as many as nine men selling at once; they
+enlisted the servants, and china ranged round the kitchen floor, and
+embroideries, brass and mirrors were stowed away in the pantry. Indeed
+I and my followers must have been an awful nuisance to the missionaries.
+They knew no English, but as I could count a little in Chinese, when
+we could not get an interpreter we managed; and I expect I bought an
+immense amount of rubbish, but never in my life have I had greater
+satisfaction in spending money. More than ever was I pleased when I
+unpacked in England, and I have been pleased ever since.
+
+Those sellers were persistent. They said in effect that never before had
+they had such a chance and they were going to make the best of it. We
+engaged house-boats for our transit; we went down to those boats, we
+pushed off from the shore, and even then there were sellers bent on
+making the best of their last chance. I bought there on the boat a royal
+blue vase for two dollars and a quaint old brass mirror in a carved
+wooden frame also for two dollars, and then the boatmen cleared off the
+merchants and we started.
+
+I expect on the banks of the Euphrates or the Tigris in the days before
+the dawn of history men went backwards and forwards in boats like these
+we embarked in on the little river just outside the south gate of Pao
+Ting Fu. We had three boats. Dr and Mrs Lewis and their children had the
+largest, with their servants, and we all made arrangements to mess on
+board their boat. Miss Newton and a friend had another, with more of the
+servants, and I, like a millionaire, had one all to myself. I had parted
+with the master of transport at Pao Ting Fu, but Hsu Sen, one of the
+Lewis's servants, waited upon me and made up my bed in the open part of
+the boat under a little roof. The cabins were behind, low little places
+like rabbit hutches, with little windows and little doors through which
+I could get by going down on my knees. I used them only for my luggage,
+so was enabled to offer a passage to a sewing-woman who would be
+exceedingly useful to the missionaries. She had had her feet bound in
+her youth and was rather crippled in consequence, and she bought her own
+food, as I bought my water, at the wayside places as we passed. She
+was a foolish soul, like most Chinese women, and took great interest in
+Buchanan, offering him always a share of her own meals, which consisted
+apparently largely of cucumbers and the tasteless Chinese melon. Now
+James Buchanan was extremely polite, always accepting what was offered
+him, but he could not possibly eat cucumber and melon, and when I went
+to bed at night I often came in contact with something cold and clammy
+which invariably turned out to be fragments of the sewing-woman's meals
+bestowed upon my courtly little dog. I forgave him because of his good
+manners. There really was nowhere else to hide them.
+
+They were pleasant days we spent meandering down the river. We passed by
+little farms; we passed by villages, by fishing traps, by walled cities.
+Hsi An Fu, with the water of the river flowing at the foot of its
+castellated walls, was like a city of romance, and when we came upon
+little marketplaces by the water's edge the romance deepened, for
+we knew then how the people lived. Sometimes we paused and bought
+provisions; sometimes we got out and strolled along the banks in the
+pleasant summer weather. Never have I gone a more delightful or more
+unique voyage. And at last we arrived at Tientsin and I parted from my
+friends, and they went on to Pei Ta Ho and I to Astor House to prepare
+for my journey east and north.
+
+And so I left China, China where I had dwelt for sixteen months, China
+that has been civilised so long and is a world apart, and now I sit in
+my comfortable sitting-room in England and read what the papers say of
+China; and the China I know and the China of the newspapers is quite a
+different place. It is another world. China has come into the war. On
+our side, of course: the Chinaman is far too astute to meddle with a
+losing cause. But, after all, what do the peasants of Chihli and the
+cave-dwellers in the _yaos_ of Shansi know about a world's war? The
+very, very small section that rules China manages these affairs, and
+the mass of the population are exactly as they were in the days of the
+Cæsars, or before the first dynasty in Egypt for that matter.
+
+“China,” said one day to me a man who knew it well commercially, just
+before I left, “was never in so promising a condition. All the taxes are
+coming in and money was never so easy to get.”
+
+“There was a row over the new tax,” said a missionary sadly, in the part
+I know well, “in a little village beyond there. The village attacked the
+tax-collectors and the soldiers fell upon the villagers and thirteen men
+were killed. Oh, I know they say it is only nominal, but what is merely
+nominal to outsiders is their all to these poor villagers. They must pay
+the tax and starve, or resist and be killed.”
+
+He did not say they were between the devil and the deep sea, because he
+was a missionary, but I said it for him, and there were two cases like
+that which came within my ken during my last month in China.
+
+The fact of the matter is, I suppose, that outsiders can only judge
+generally, and China is true to type, the individual has never counted
+there and he does not count yet. What are a few thousand unpaid soldiers
+revolting in Kalgan? What a robber desolating Kansu? A score or two of
+villagers killed because they could not pay a tax? Absolutely nothing in
+the general crowd. I, being a woman, and a woman from the new nations
+of the south, cannot help feeling, and feeling strongly, the individual
+ought to count, that no nation can be really prosperous until the
+individual with but few exceptions is well-to-do and happy. I should
+like to rule out the “few exceptions,” but that would be asking too much
+of this present world. At least I like to think that most people have
+a chance of happiness, but I feel in China that not a tenth of the
+population has that.
+
+[Illustration: 0194]
+
+[Illustration: 0195]
+
+China left a curious impression upon my mind. The people are courteous
+and kindly, far more courteous than would be the same class of people
+in England, and yet I came back from the interior with a strong
+feeling that it is unsafe, not because of the general hostility of the
+people--they are not hostile--but because suffering and life count for
+so little. They themselves suffer and die by the thousand.
+
+“What! Bring a daughter-in-law to see the doctor in the middle of the
+harvest! Impossible!” And yet they knew she was suffering agony, that
+seeing the doctor was her only chance of sight! But she did not get it.
+They were harvesting and no one could be spared!
+
+What is the life then of a foreign barbarian more or less? These
+courteous, kindly, dirty folk who look upon one as a menagerie would
+look on with equal interest at one's death. They might stretch out
+a hand to help, just as a man in England might stop another from
+ill-treating a horse, though for one who would put himself out two
+would pass by with a shrug of the shoulders and a feeling that it wras
+no business of theirs. Every day of their lives the majority look upon
+the suffering of their women and think nothing of it. The desire of the
+average man is to have a wife who has so suffered. I do not know whether
+the keeping of the women in a state of subserviency has reacted upon
+the nation at large, but I should think it has hampered it beyond words.
+Nothing--nothing made me so ardent a believer in the rights of women as
+my visit to China.
+
+“Women in England,” said a man to me the other day, a foreigner, one
+of our Allies, “deserve the vote, but the Continental women are babies.
+They cannot have it.” So are the Chinese women babies, very helpless
+babies indeed, and I feel, and feel very strongly indeed, that until
+China educates her women, makes them an efficient half of the nation,
+not merely man's toy and his slave, China will always lag behind in the
+world's progress.
+
+Already China is split up into “spheres of influence.” Whether she likes
+it or not, she must realise that Russian misrule is paramount in
+the great steppes of the north; Japan rules to a great extent in
+the north-east, her railway from Mukden to Chang Ch'un is a model of
+efficiency; Britain counts her influence as the most important along
+the valley of the Yang Tze Kiang, and France has some say in Yunnan.
+I cannot help thinking that it would be a great day for China, for the
+welfare of her toiling millions, millions toiling without hope, if she
+were partitioned up among the stable nations of the earth--that is to
+say, between Japan, Britain and France. And having said so much, I refer
+my readers to Mr Farrer for the other point of view. It is diametrically
+opposed to mine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--KHARBIN AND VLADIVOSTOK
+
+At Tientsin I sweltered in the Astor House, and I put it on record that
+I found it hotter in Northern China than I did on the Guinea coast in
+West Africa. It was probably, of course, the conditions under which I
+lived, for the hotel had been so well arranged for the bitter winter
+it was impossible to get a thorough draught of air through any of
+the rooms. James Buchanan did not like it either, for in the British
+concessions in China dogs come under suspicion of hydrophobia and have
+always to be on the leash, wherefore, of course, I had to take the poor
+little chap out into the Chinese quarter before he could have a proper
+run, and he spent a great deal more time shut up in my bedroom than he
+or I liked.
+
+But Tientsin was a place apart, not exactly Chinese as I know
+China--certainly not Europe; it remains in my mind as a place where
+Chinese art learns to accommodate itself to European needs. All the
+nations of the world East and West meet there: in the British quarter
+were the Sikhs and other Indian nationalities, and in the French the
+streets were kept by Anamites in quaint peaked straw hats. I loved
+those streets of Tientsin that made me feel so safe and yet gave me a
+delightful feeling of adventure--adventure that cost me nothing; and I
+always knew I could go and dine with a friend or come back and exchange
+ideas with somebody who spoke my own tongue. But Tientsin wasn't any
+good to me as a traveller. It has been written about for the last sixty
+years or more. I went on.
+
+One night Buchanan and I, without a servant--we missed the servant we
+always had in China--wended our way down to the railway station and
+ensconced ourselves in a first-class carriage bound for Mukden. The
+train didn't start till some ungodly hour of the night, but as it was in
+the station I got permission to take my place early, and with rugs and
+cushions made myself comfortable and was sound asleep long before we
+started. When I wakened I was well on the way to my destination.
+
+I made friends with a British officer of Marines who, with his sister,
+was coming back across Russia. He had been learning Japanese, and I
+corrected another wrong impression. The British do sometimes learn a
+language other than their own. At Mukden we dined and had a bath. I find
+henceforth that all my stopping-places are punctuated by baths, or by
+the fact that a bath was not procurable. A night and day in the train
+made one desirable at Mukden, and a hotel run by capable Japanese made
+it a delight. The Japanese, as far as I could see, run Manchuria; must
+be more powerful than ever now Russia is out of it; Kharbin is Russian,
+Mukden Japanese. The train from there to Chang Ch'un is Japanese, and
+we all travelled in a large open carriage, clean and, considering how
+packed it was, fairly airy. There was room for everybody to lie down,
+just room, and the efficient Japanese parted me from my treasured James
+Buchanan and put him, howling miserably, into a big box--rather a dirty
+box; I suppose they don't think much of animals--in another compartment.
+I climbed over much luggage and crawled under a good deal more to see
+that all was right with him, and the Japanese guards looked upon me as
+a mild sort of lunatic and smiled contemptuously. I don't like being
+looked upon with contempt by Orientals, so I was a little ruffled when I
+came back to my own seat. Then I was amused.
+
+Naturally among such a crowd I made no attempt to undress for the night,
+merely contenting myself with taking off my boots. But the man next me,
+a Japanese naval officer, with whom I conversed in French, had quite
+different views. My French was rather bad and so was his in a different
+way, so we did not get on very fast. I fear I left him with the
+impression that I was an Austrian, for he never seemed to have heard
+of Australia. However, we showed each other our good will. Then he
+proceeded to undress. Never have I seen the process more nattily
+accomplished. How he slipped out of blue cloth and gold lace into a
+kimono I'm sure I don't know, though he did it under my very eyes, and
+then, with praiseworthy forethought, he took the links and studs out
+of his shirt and put them into a clean one ready for the morrow, stowed
+them both away in his little trunk, settled himself down on his couch
+and gave himself up to a cigarette and conversation. I smoked too--one
+of his cigarettes--and we both went to sleep amicably, and with the
+morning we arrived at Chang Ch'un, and poor little Buchanan made the
+welkin ring when he saw me and found himself caged in a barred box.
+However that was soon settled, and he told me how infinitely preferable
+from a dog's point of view are the free and easy trains of Russia and
+China to the well-managed ones of Japan.
+
+These towns on the great railway are weird little places, merely
+scattered houses and wide roads leading out into the great plain, and
+the railway comes out of the distance and goes away into the distance.
+And the people who inhabit them seem to be a conglomeration of nations,
+perhaps the residuum of all the nations. Here the marine officer and
+his sister and I fell into the hands of a strange-looking individual who
+might have been a cross between a Russian Pole and a Chinaman, with a
+dash of Korean thrown in, and he undertook to take us to a better hotel
+than that usually-frequented by visitors to Chang Ch'un. I confess I
+wonder what sort of people do visit Chang Ch'un, not the British tourist
+as a rule, and if the principal hotel is worse than the ramshackle place
+where we had breakfast, it must be bad. Still it was pleasant in the
+brilliant warm sunshine, even though it was lucky we had bathed the
+night before at Mukden, for the best they could do here was to show us
+into the most primitive of bedrooms, the very first effort in the way of
+a bedroom, I should think, after people had given up _k'angs_, and there
+I met a very small portion of water in a very small basin alongside an
+exceedingly frowsy bed and made an effort to wash away the stains of
+a night's travel. Now such a beginning to the day would effectually
+disgust me; then, fresh from the discomforts of Chinese travel, I found
+it all in the day's work.
+
+I found too that I had made a mistake and not brought enough money with
+me. Before I had paid for Buchanan's ticket I had parted with every
+penny I possessed and could not possibly get any more till I arrived
+at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank at Kharbin. I am rather given to a
+mistake of that sort; I always feel my money is so much safer in the
+bank's charge than in mine.
+
+We went on through fertile Manchuria and I saw the rich fields that
+coming out I had passed over at night. This train was Russian, and
+presently there came along a soldier, a forerunner of an officer
+inspecting passengers and carriages. Promptly his eye fell on Buchanan,
+who was taking an intelligent interest in the scenery--he always
+insisted on looking out of the window--and I, seeing he, the soldier,
+was troubled, tried to tell him my intentions were good and I would pay
+at Kharbin; but I don't think I made myself understood, for he looked
+wildly round the compartment, seized the little dog, pushed him in
+a corner and threw a cushion over him. Both Buchanan and I were so
+surprised we kept quite still, and the Russian officer looked in, saw a
+solitary woman holding out her ticket and passed on, and not till he
+was well out of the way did James Buchanan, who was a jewel, poke up his
+pretty little head and make a few remarks upon the enormity of smuggling
+little dogs without paying their fares, which was evidently what I was
+doing.
+
+We arrived at Kharbin about nine o'clock at night, and as I stepped out
+on to a platform, where all the nations of the earth, in dirty clothes,
+seemed yelling in chorus, a man came along and spoke to me in English.
+The soldier who had aided and abetted in the smuggling of Buchanan was
+standing beside me, evidently expecting some little remembrance, and I
+was meditating borrowing from the officer of Marines, though, as they
+were going on and I was not, I did not much like it. And the voice in
+English asked did I want a hotel. I did, of course. The man said he was
+the courier of the Grand Hotel, but he had a little place of his own
+which was much better and he could make me very comfortable. Then I
+explained I could not get any money till the bank opened next day and
+he spread out his hands as a Chinaman might have done. “No matter, no
+matter,” he would pay, his purse was mine.
+
+Would I go to his house?
+
+Could I do anything else under the circumstances? And I promptly took
+him at his word and asked for a rouble--Kharbin is China, but the rouble
+was the current coin--and paid off the soldier for his services. I bade
+farewell to my friends and in a ramshackle droshky went away through the
+streets of Kharbin, and we drove so far I wondered if I had done wisely.
+I had, as it turned out.
+
+But I heard afterwards that even in those days anything might have
+happened in Kharbin, where the population consists of Japanese and
+Chinese and Russians and an evil combination of all three, to say
+nothing of a sprinkling of rascals from all the nations of the earth.
+
+“There is not,” said a man who knew it well, “a decent Chinaman in the
+whole place.”
+
+In fact to all intents and purposes it is Russian. There were Russian
+students all in uniform in the streets, and bearded, belted drivers
+drove the droshkies with their extra horse in a trace beside the shafts,
+just as they did in Russia. Anyhow it seems to me the sins of Kharbin
+would be the vigorous primal sins of Russia, not the decadent sins of
+old-world China.
+
+Kharbin when I was there in 1914 had 60,000 inhabitants and 25,000
+Russian soldiers guarding the railway in the district. The Russian
+police forbade me to take photographs, and you might take your choice:
+Chinese _hung hu tzes_ or Russian brigands would rob and slay you on
+your very doorstep in the heart of the town. At least they would in
+1914, and things are probably worse now. All the signs are in Russian
+and, after the Chinese, looked to me at first as if I should be able to
+understand them, but closer inspection convinced me that the letters,
+though I knew their shape, had been out all night and were coming home
+in not quite the condition we would wish them to be. There is a Chinese
+town without a wall a little way over the plain--like all other Chinese
+towns, a place of dirt and smells--and there is a great river, the
+Sungari, a tributary of the Amur, on which I first met the magnificent
+river steamers of these parts. Badly I wanted to photograph them, but
+the Russian police said “No, no,” I would have to get a permit from
+the colonel in command before that could be allowed, and the colonel in
+command was away and was not expected back till the middle of next week,
+by which time I expected to be in Vladivostok, if not in Kharbarosvk,
+for Kharbin was hardly inviting as a place of sojourn for a traveller.
+Mr Poland, as he called himself, did his best for me. He gave me a
+fairly large room with a bed in it, a chair, a table and a broken-down
+wardrobe that would not open. He had the family washing cleared out of
+the bath, so that I bathed amidst the fluttering damp garments of his
+numerous progeny, but still there was a bath and a bath heater that with
+a certain expenditure of wood could be made to produce hot water; and
+if it was rather a terrifying machine to be locked up with at close
+quarters, still it did aid me to arrive at a certain degree of
+cleanliness, and I had been long enough in China not to be carping.
+
+But it is dull eating in your bedroom, and I knew I had not done wisely,
+for even if the principal hotel had been uncomfortable--I am not saying
+it was, because I never went there--it would have been more amusing to
+watch other folks than to be alone.
+
+The day after I arrived I called upon Mr Sly, the British consul, and I
+was amused to hear the very dubious sounds that came from his room when
+I was announced.
+
+I cleared the air by saying hastily: “I'm not a distressed British
+subject and I don't want any money,” though I'm bound to say he looked
+kind enough to provide me with the wherewithal had I wanted it. Then he
+shook his head and expressed his disapproval of my method of arrival.
+
+“The last man who fell into Kharbin like that,” said he, “I hunted for
+a week, and two days later I attended his funeral,” so badly had he been
+man-handled. But that man, it seems, had plenty of money; it was wisdom
+he lacked. My trouble was the other way, certainly as far as money was
+concerned. It would never have been worth anyone's while to harm me for
+the sake of my possessions. I had fallen into the hands of a Polish
+Jew named Polonetzky, though he called himself Poland to me, feeling, I
+suppose, my English tongue was not equal to the more complicated word,
+and he dwelt in the Dome Stratkorskaya--remember Kharbin is China--and
+I promised if he dealt well by me that I would recommend his
+boarding-house to all my friends bound for Kharbin. He did deal well by
+me. So frightened was he about me that he would not let me out of his
+sight, or if he were not in attendance his wife or his brother was
+turned on to look after me.
+
+“I am very good friends,” said he, “with Mr Sly at present. I do not
+want anything to happen.”
+
+Mr Sly, we found, knew one of my brothers and he very kindly asked me
+to dinner. That introduced me to the élite of the place, and after
+dinner--Chinese cooks are still excellent on the borders--we drove in
+his private carriage and ended the evening in the public gardens.
+The coachmen here are quite gorgeous affairs; no matter what their
+nondescript nationality--they are generally Russians, I think, though I
+have seen Chinamen, Tartars, driving like Jehu the son of Nimshi--they
+wear for full livery grey beaver hats with curly brims like Johnny
+Walker or the Corinthians in the days of the Regent. It took my breath
+away when I found myself bowling along behind two of these curly brimmed
+hats that I thought had passed away in the days of my grandfather.
+
+The gardens at Kharbin are a great institution. There in the summer's
+evening the paths were all lined with lamps; there were open-air
+restaurants; there were bands and fluttering flags; there were the most
+excellent ices and insidious drinks of all descriptions, and there were
+crowds of gaily dressed people--Monte Carlo in the heart of Central
+Asia! Kharbin in the summer is hot, very hot, and Kharbin in the winter
+is bitter cold. It is all ice and snow and has a temperature that ranges
+somewhere down to 40° Fahrenheit below zero, and this though the sun
+shines brilliantly. It is insidious cold that sneaks on you and takes
+you unawares, not like the bleak raw cold of England that makes the very
+most of itself. They told me a tale of a girl who had gone skating and
+when she came off the ice found that her feet were frozen, though she
+was unaware of her danger and had thought them all right. Dogs are often
+frozen in the streets and Chinamen too, for the Chinaman has a way of
+going to sleep in odd places, and many a one has slept his last sleep in
+the winter streets of Kharbin--the wide straggling streets with houses
+and gardens and vacant spaces just like the towns of Australia. A
+frontier town it is in effect. We have got beyond the teeming population
+of China.
+
+And then I prepared to go first east to Vladivostok and then north
+to Siberia, and I asked advice of both the British consul and my
+self-appointed courier, Mr Poland.
+
+Certainly he took care of me, and the day before I started east he
+handed me over to his wife and suggested she should take me to the
+market and buy necessaries for my journey. It was only a little over
+twenty-four hours so it did not seem to me a matter of much consequence,
+but I felt it would be interesting to walk through the market. It was.
+
+This class of market, I find, is very much alike all over the world
+because they sell the necessaries of life to the people and it is only
+varied by the difference of the local products. Kharbin market was
+a series of great sheds, and though most of the stalls were kept by
+Chinamen, it differed from a market in a Chinese town in the fact that
+huge quantities of butter and cheese and cream were for sale. Your true
+Chinaman is shocked at the European taste for milk and butter and cream.
+He thinks it loathsome, and many a man is unable to sit at table and
+watch people eat these delicacies. Just as, of course, he is shocked at
+the taste that would put before a diner a huge joint of beef or mutton.
+These things Chinese refinement disguises. I suspect the proletariat
+with whom I came in contact in Shansi would gladly eat anything, but
+I speak of the refined Chinaman. Here in this market, whether he was
+refined or not, he had got over these fancies and there was much butter
+and delicious soured cream for sale. My Polish Jewess and I laboured
+under the usual difficulty of language, but she made me understand I had
+better buy a basket for my provisions, a plate, a knife, a fork--I had
+left these things behind in China, not thinking I should want them--a
+tumbler and a couple of kettles. No self-respecting person, according to
+her, would dream of travelling in Siberia without at least a couple
+of kettles. I laid in two of blue enamel ware and I am bound to say I
+blessed her forethought many and many a time.
+
+Then we proceeded to buy provisions, and here I lost my way. She engaged
+a stray Chinaman, at least I think he was a Chinaman, with a dash of the
+gorilla in him, to carry the goods, and I thought she was provisioning
+her family against a siege or that perhaps there was only one market
+a month in Kharbin. Anyhow I did not feel called upon to interfere. It
+didn't seem any concern of mine and she had a large little family. We
+bought bread in large quantities, ten cucumbers, two pounds of butter,
+two pounds of cream--for these we bought earthenware jars--two dozen
+bananas, ten eggs and two pounds of tea. And then I discovered these
+were the provisions for my journey to Vladivostok, twenty-seven hours
+away! I never quite knew why I bought provisions at all, for the train
+stopped at stations where there were restaurants even though there was
+no restaurant car attached to it. Mr Sly warned me to travel first class
+and I had had no thought of doing aught else, for travelling is very
+cheap and very good in Russia, but Mr Poland thought differently.
+
+“I arrange,” said he, “I arrange, and you see if you are not
+comfortable.”
+
+I am bound to say I was, very comfortable, for Buchanan and I had a
+very nice second-class carriage all to ourselves. At every station a
+conductor appeared to know if I wanted boiling water, and we had any
+amount of good things to eat, for the ten eggs had been hard boiled
+by Mrs “Poland,” and the bread and butter and cream and cucumbers and
+bananas were as good as ever I have tasted. I also had two pounds of
+loaf sugar, German beet, I think, and some lemons.
+
+And so we went east through the wooded hills of Manchuria. They were
+covered with lush grass restfully green, and there were flowers, purple
+and white and yellow and red, lifting their starry faces to the cloudy
+sky, and a soft damp air blew in through the open window. Such a change
+it was after China, with its hard blue skies, brilliant sunshine and
+dry, invigorating air. But the Manchus were industrious as the Chinese
+themselves, and where there were fields the crops were tended
+as carefully as those in China proper, only in between were the
+pasture-lands and the flowers that were a delight to me, who had not
+seen a flower save those in pots since I came to China.
+
+I spread out my rugs and cushions and, taking off my clothes and getting
+into a kimono--also bought in the Kharbin market; a man's kimono as the
+women's are too narrow--I slept peacefully, and in the morning I found
+we had climbed to the top of the ridge, the watershed, the pleasant
+rain was falling softly, all around was the riotous green, and peasants,
+Russian and Chinese, came selling sweet red raspberries in little
+baskets of green twigs.
+
+And the flowers, the flowers of Siberia! After all I had heard about
+them, they were still something more beautiful than I could have hoped
+for; and then the rain passed, the life-giving rain, the rain that
+smoothed away all harshness and gave such a charm and a softness to the
+scenery. And it was vast. China was so crowded I never had a sense of
+vastness there; but this was like Australia, great stretches of land
+under the sky, green, rich lush green, and away in the distance was a
+dim line of blue hills. Then would come a little corrugated-iron-roofed
+town sprawled out over the mighty plain, a pathway to it across the
+surrounding green, and then the sun came out and the clouds threw great
+shadows and there was room to see the outline of their shapes on the
+green grass.
+
+There were Chinese still on the stations, but they were becoming more
+and more Russianised. They still wore queues, but they had belted
+Russian blouses and top-boots, and they mixed on friendly terms with
+flaxen-haired, blue-eyed Russians similarly attired. And the evening
+shadows gathered again and in the new world we steamed into Vladivostok.
+
+The Russians I came across did not appreciate fresh air. The porter of a
+hotel captured me and Buchanan, and when we arrived on a hot July night
+I was shown into a bedroom with double windows hermetically sealed and
+the cracks stopped up with cotton wool!
+
+I protested vehemently and the hotel porter looked at me in
+astonishment. Tear down those carefully stopped-up cracks! Perish the
+thought. However, I persuaded him down that cotton wool must come, and
+he pulled it down regretfully. I called at the British consulate next
+day and asked them to recommend me to the best hotel, but they told me
+I was already there and could not better myself, so I gave myself up
+to exploring the town in the Far East where now the Czech Slovaks have
+established themselves.
+
+It is a beautifully situated town set in the hills alongside a narrow
+arm of the sea, rather a grey sea with a grey sky overhead, and the
+hills around were covered with the luxuriant green of midsummer,
+midsummer in a land where it is winter almost to June. The principal
+buildings in Vladivostok are rather fine, but they are all along the
+shore, and once you go back you come into the hills where the wood-paved
+streets very often are mere flights of steps. It is because of that
+sheltered arm of the sea that here is a town at all.
+
+Along the shore are all manner of craft. The British fleet had come on
+a visit, and grey and grim the ships lay there on the grey sea, like a
+Turner picture, with, for a dash of colour, the Union Jacks. The Russian
+fleet was there too, welcoming their guests, and I took a boat manned
+by a native of the country, Mongolian evidently, with, of course, an
+unknown tongue, but whether he was Gold or Gilyak I know not. He was a
+good boatman, for a nasty little sea got up and James Buchanan told me
+several times he did not like the new turn our voyaging had taken, and
+then, poor little dog, he was violently sick. I know the torments of
+sea-sickness are not lightly to be borne, so after sailing round the
+fleets I went ashore and studied the shipping from the firm land.
+
+I was glad then that Mr Sly at Kharbin had insisted that I should see
+the Russian port. The whole picture was framed in green, soft tender
+green, edged with grey mist, and all the old forgotten ships of wood,
+the ships that perhaps were sailed by my grandfather in the old East
+India Company, seemed to have found a resting-place here. They were
+drawn up against the shore or they were going down the bay with all
+their sails set, and the sunlight breaking through the clouds touched
+the white sails and made them mountains of snow. There was shipbuilding
+going on too, naturally--for are there not great stores of timber in the
+forests behind?--and there were ships unloading all manner of things.
+Ships brought vegetables and fruit; ships brought meat; there were
+fishing-boats, hundreds of them close against each other along the
+shore, and on all the small ships, at the mast-heads, were little
+fluttering white butterflies of flags. What they were there for I do
+not know, or what they denoted. Oh, the general who commands the Czech
+Slovaks has a splendid base. I wish him all success. And here were the
+sealing-ships, the ships that presently would go up to the rookeries to
+bring away the pelts.
+
+One of my brothers was once navigating lieutenant on the British ship
+that guarded the rookeries “north of 53°,” and I remembered, as Buchanan
+and I walked along the shore, the tales he had told me of life in these
+parts. His particular ship had acquired two sheep, rather an acquisition
+for men who had lived long off the Chinese coast, and had a surfeit of
+chickens; so while they were eating one, thinking to save the other a
+long sea voyage they landed him on an island, giving him in charge of
+the man, an Aleut Indian, my brother called him, who ruled the little
+place. Coming back they were reduced to salt and tinned food, but they
+cheered themselves with thoughts of the mutton chops that should regale
+them when they met again their sheep. Alas for those sailor-men! They
+found the Indian, but the sheep was not forthcoming.
+
+His whilom guardian was most polite. He gave them to understand he was
+deeply grieved, but unfortunately he had been obliged to slay the sheep
+as he was killing the fowls!
+
+The ward-room mess realised all too late that mutton was appreciated in
+other places than on board his Majesty's ships.
+
+I thought all the races of the earth met in Kharbin, but I don't know
+that this port does not run it very close. There were Japanese, Chinese,
+Russians, Koreans in horsehair hats and white garments; there were the
+aboriginal natives of the country and there were numberless Germans.
+And then, in July, 1914, these people, I think, had no thought of the
+World's War.
+
+And here I came across a new way of carrying, for all the porters had
+chairs strapped upon their backs and the load, whatever it was, was
+placed upon the chair. Of all ways I have seen, that way strikes me as
+being the best, for the weight is most evenly distributed. Most of the
+porters, I believe, were Koreans, though they did not wear white; nor
+did they wear a hat of any description; their long black, hair was
+twisted up like a woman's, but they were vigorous and stalwart. We left
+weakness behind us in China. Here the people looked as if they were
+meat-fed, and though they might be dirty--they generally were--they all
+looked as if they had enough.
+
+Always the principal streets were thronged with people. At night the
+town all lighted up is like a crescent of sparkling diamonds flung
+against the hill-sides, and when I went to the railway station to take
+train for Kharbarosvk, thirty hours away, at the junction of the Ussuri
+and the Amur, that large and spacious building was a seething mass of
+people of apparently all classes and all nationalities, and they were
+giving voice to their feelings at the top of their lungs. Everybody, I
+should think, had a grievance and was makin the most of it. I had not
+my capable Mr Poland to arrange for me, so I went first class--the exact
+fare I have forgotten, but it was ridiculously low--and Buchanan and I
+had a compartment all to ourselves. Indeed I believe we were the only
+first-class passengers. I had my basket and my kettles and I had laid in
+store of provisions, and we went away back west for a couple of hours,
+and then north into the spacious green country where there was room and
+more than room for everybody.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREAT RIVERS
+
+All the afternoon we went back on our tracks along the main line, the
+sea on one side and the green country, riotous, lush, luxuriant, on the
+other, till at last we reached the head of the gulf and took our last
+look at the Northern Sea; grey like a silver shield it spread before us,
+and right down to the very water's edge came the vivid green. And then
+we turned inland, and presently we left the main line and went north.
+Above was the grey sky, and the air was soft and cool and delicious.
+I had had too much stimulation and I welcomed, as I had done the rains
+after the summer in my youth, the soft freshness of the Siberian summer.
+
+There were soldiers everywhere, tall, strapping, virile Russians; there
+were peasants in belted, blouses, with collars all of needlework; and
+there were Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and the natives of the country,
+men with a strong Mongolian cast of countenance. The country itself was
+strangely empty after teeming China, but these all travelled by train
+or were to be found on the railway stations and at the fishing stations
+that we passed, but apparently I was the only bloated aristocrat who
+travelled first class. In normal times this made travelling fairly easy
+in Russia, for it was very cheap and you could generally get a carriage
+to yourself.
+
+Oh! but it was lovely; the greenness of the country was a rest to eyes
+wearied with the dust and dirt of China. And there were trees--not trees
+denuded of all but enough timber to make a bare livelihood possible, but
+trees growing luxuriantly in abundant leaf after their own free will,
+oaks and firs and white-stemmed, graceful birches bending daintily
+before the soft breeze. At the stations the natives, exactly like
+Chinamen, dirty and in rags, brought strawberries for sale; and there
+were always flowers--purple vetches and gorgeous red poppies, tall
+foxgloves and blue spikes of larkspur. The very antithesis of China it
+was, for this was waste land and undeveloped. The very engines were run
+with wood, and there were stacks of wood by the wayside waiting to be
+burnt. I was sorry--I could not but be sorry. I have seen my own people
+cut down the great forests of Western Victoria, and here were people
+doing the same, with exactly the same wanton extravagance, and in this
+country, with its seven months of bitter winter, in all probability the
+trees take three times as long to come to maturity. But it is virgin
+land, this glorious fertile country, and was practically uninhabited
+till the Russian Government planted here and there bands of Cossacks
+who, they say, made no endeavour to develop the land. The Koreans and
+the Japanese and the Chinese came creeping in, but the Russians made
+an effort to keep them out. But still the population is scanty. Always,
+though it was before the war, there were soldiers--soldiers singly,
+soldiers in pairs, soldiers in little bands; a horseman appeared on a
+lonely road, he was a soldier; a man came along driving a cart, he was a
+soldier; but the people we saw were few, for the rigours of this lovely
+land in the winter are terrible, and this was the dreaded land where
+Russia sent her exiles a long, long way from home.
+
+Farther we went into the hills; a cuckoo called in the cool and dewy
+morning; there were lonely little cottages with wooden roofs and log
+walls; there were flowering creepers round the windows, and once I saw
+a woman's wistful face peeping out at the passing train, the new train
+that at last was bringing her nearer the old home and that yet seemed to
+emphasise the distance. We went along by a river, the Ussuri, that wound
+its way among the wooded green hills and by still pools of water that
+reflected in their depths the blue sky, soft with snow-white clouds. A
+glorious land this land of exile! At the next station we stopped at
+the people were seated at a table having a meal under the shade of the
+trees. Then there was a lonely cross of new wood; someone had been laid
+in his long last home in the wilderness and would never go back to
+Holy Russia again; and again I thought of the woman's wistful face that
+peered out of the flower-bordered window.
+
+This is a new line. Formerly the way to Kharbarosvk was down the Amur
+river from the west, and that, I suppose, is why all this country of the
+Amur Province south and east of the river is so lonely.
+
+As we neared Kharbarosvk came signs of settlement, the signs of
+settlement I had been accustomed to in Australia. There were tree
+stumps, more and more, and anything more desolate than a forest of
+newly cut tree stumps I don't know. It always spells to me ruthless
+destruction. I am sure it did here, for they cut down recklessly,
+sweeping all before them. It seemed to cry out, as all newly settled
+land that ever I have seen, and I have seen a good deal, the distaste of
+the people who here mean to make their homes. These are not our trees,
+they say; they are not beautiful like the trees of our own old home; let
+us cut them down, there are plenty; by and by when we have time, when
+we are settled, we will plant trees that really are worth growing. We
+shall not see them, of course, our children will benefit little; but
+they will be nice for our grandchildren, if we hold on so long. But
+no one believes they will stay so long; they hope to make money and go
+back. Meanwhile they want the timber, but they neglect to plant fresh
+trees.
+
+They wanted the timber to build Kharbarosvk. This is a town of the
+outposts, a frontier town; there are no towns like it in the British
+Isles, where they value their land and build towns compactly, but I have
+seen its counterpart many a time in Australia, and I know there must be
+its like in America and Canada. It straggled all along the river bank,
+and its wide streets, streets paved, or rather floored, here and there
+with planks of wood, were sparsely planted with houses. In one respect
+Australian towns of the frontier are much wiser. When there is a train
+they do build their stations with some regard for the comfort and
+convenience of the inhabitants. In Russia wherever I have been the
+railway station is a long distance, sometimes half-an-hour's drive, from
+the town it serves. I suppose it is one of the evils of the last bad
+regime and that in the future, the future which is for the people, it
+will be remedied, but it is difficult to see what purpose it serves. I
+had to get a droshky to the hotel. We drove first along a country road,
+then through the wide grass-grown streets of the town, and I arrived
+at the principal hotel, kept by a German on Russian lines, for the
+restaurant was perfectly distinct from the living-rooms. I put it on
+record it was an excellent restaurant; I remember that cold soup--the
+day was hot--and that most fragrant coffee still.
+
+From the windows of my bedroom I saw another of the world's great
+rivers. I looked away over a wide expanse of water sparkling in the
+sunshine: it was the junction of the Ussuri and the Amur, and it was
+like a great lake or the sea. It was very, very still, clear as glass,
+and the blue sky and white clouds were reflected in it, and there were
+green islands and low green banks. All was colour, but soft colour
+without outlines, like a Turner picture.
+
+The Amur is hard frozen for about five months of the year and for about
+two more is neither good solid ice nor navigable water. It is made by
+the joining of the Shilka and the Aigun in about lat. 53° N. 121° E.,
+and, counting in the Shilka, must be nearly three thousand miles in
+length, and close on two thousand miles have I now travelled. I
+don't know the Amur, of course, but at least I may claim to have been
+introduced to it, and that, I think, is more than the majority of
+Englishmen may do. And oh, it is a mighty river! At Kharbarosvk, over a
+thousand versts--about six hundred and forty miles--from the sea, it
+is at least a mile and a third wide, and towards the mouth, what with
+backwaters and swamps, it takes up sometimes about forty miles of
+country, while the main channel is often nearly three miles wide. It
+rises in the hills of Trans-Baikal--the Yablonoi Mountains we used to
+call them when I was at school. Really I think it is the watershed that
+runs up East Central Siberia and turns the waters to the shallow Sea of
+Okhotsk; and it cuts its way through wooded hills among rich land hardly
+as yet touched by agriculture, beautiful, lovely hills they are, steep
+and wooded. It climbs down into the flat country and then again, just
+before it reaches the sea, it is in the hills, colder hills this time,
+though the Amur falls into the sea on much the same parallel of latitude
+as that which sees it rise, only it seems to me that the farther you get
+east the colder and more extreme is the climate. For Nikolayeusk at the
+mouth is in the same latitude as London, but as a port it is closed for
+seven months of the year. True, the winter in Siberia is lovely, bright,
+clear cold, a hard, bright clearness, but the thermometer is often down
+below -40°
+
+Fahrenheit, and when that happens life is difficult for both man and
+beast. No wonder it is an empty river. The wonder to me is that there
+should be so much life as there is. For in those five months that it
+is open fine large steamers run from Nikolayeusk by Ivharbarosvk to
+Blagovesehensk, and smaller ones, but still rather fine, to Stretensk,
+where river navigation, for steamers of any size at any rate, ceases.
+There are the two months, April-May, September-October, when the river
+cannot be used at all, and there are the winter months when it may be,
+and is to a certain extent, used as a road, but with the thermometer
+down far below zero no one is particularly keen on travelling. It has
+its disadvantages. So most of the travelling is done in the summer
+months and in 1914 the steamers were crowded. Now, I suppose, they are
+fighting there. It is a country well worth fighting for.
+
+It was a curious contrast, the lonely empty river and the packed
+steamer. It was an event when we passed another; two made a crowd;
+and very, very seldom did we pass more than two in a day. But it was
+delightful moving along, the great crowded steamer but a puny thing on
+the wide river, the waters still and clear, reflecting the blue sky and
+the soft white clouds and the low banks far, far away. When there were
+hills they were generally closer, as if the river had had more trouble
+in cutting a passage and therefore had not had time to spread itself as
+it did in the plain country. The hills were densely wooded, mostly with
+dark firs, with an occasional deciduous tree showing up brightly among
+the dark foliage, and about Blagovesehensk there is a beautiful oak
+known as the velvet oak, the wood of which is much sought for making
+furniture. However dense the forest, every here and there would be a
+wide swath of green bare of trees--a fire brake; for these forests in
+the summer burn fiercely, and coming back I saw the valleys thick with
+the curling blue wood smoke, smelt the aromatic smell of the burning fir
+woods, and at night saw the hills outlined in flames. It was a gorgeous
+sight, but it is desperately destructive for the country, especially
+a country where the wood grows so slowly. But at first there were no
+fires, and what struck me was the vastness and the loneliness of the
+mighty river. I had the same feeling on the Congo in the tropics, a
+great and lonely river with empty banks, but that was for a distance
+under two hundred miles. Here in the north the great lonely river went
+wandering on for ten times as far, and still the feeling when one stood
+apart from the steamer was of loneliness and grandeur. Man was such a
+small thing here. At night a little wind sighed over the waters or swept
+down between the hills; round the bows the water rose white; there was a
+waste of tossing water all round, under a lowering sky, and the far-away
+banks were lost in the gloom. A light would appear, perhaps two lights
+shining out of the darkness, but they only emphasised the loneliness. A
+wonderful river!
+
+The navigation of the river is a profession in itself. There is a school
+for the navigators at Blagoveschensk where they are properly trained.
+All along we came across the red beacons that mark the way, while beside
+them in the daytime we could see the cabins of the lonely men who tended
+them.
+
+Truly a voyage down the Amur in summer is not to be easily forgotten,
+and yet, sitting here writing about it in my garden in Kent, I sometimes
+wonder did I dream it all, the vastness and the loneliness and the
+grandeur that is so very different from the orchard land wherein is
+set my home. You do not see orchards on the Amur, the climate is too
+rigorous, and I doubt if they grow much beyond berries, a blue berry in
+large quantities, raspberries, and coming back we bought cucumbers.
+
+Oh, but it was lovely on that river. Dearly should I like to share its
+delights with a companion who could discuss it with me, but somehow it
+seems to be my lot to travel alone.
+
+Not, of course, that I was really alone. Though the steamers were
+few, perhaps because they were few, they were crowded. There were two
+companies on the river, the Sormovo or quick-sailing company, and the
+Amur Company; and I hereby put it on record that the Amur Company is
+much the best. The _John Cockerill_, named after some long-dead
+English engineer who was once on the Amur, is one of the best and most
+comfortable.
+
+At Kharbarosvk, finding the steamer did not leave till the evening of
+the next day, I had naturally gone to a hotel. It seemed the obvious
+thing to do. But I was wrong. The great Russian steamship companies,
+with a laudable desire to keep passengers and make them comfortable,
+always allow a would-be traveller to spend at least two days on board
+in the ports, paying, of course, for his food. And I, who had only come
+about thirty-six hours too soon, had actually put up at a hotel, with
+the _John Cockerill_ lying at the wharf. The Russo-Asiatic Bank,
+as represented by a woman clerk, the only one there who could speak
+English, was shocked at my extravagance and said so. These women clerks
+were a little surprise for me, for in 1914 I was not accustomed to
+seeing women in banks, but here in Eastern Siberia--in Vladivostok,
+Kharbarosvk, and all the towns of the Amur--they were as usual as the
+men.
+
+The _John Cockerill_ surprised me as much as I surprised the bank clerk.
+To begin with, I didn't realise it was the _John Cockerill_, for I could
+not read the Russian letters, and at first I did not recognise the name
+as pronounced by the Russians. She was a very gorgeous, comfortable
+ship, with a dining saloon and a lounge gorgeous in green velvet. And
+yet she was not a post steamer, but spent most of her time drawing
+barges laden with cargo, and stopped to discharge and take in at all
+manner of lonely little ports on the great river. She was a big steamer,
+divided into four classes, and was packed with passengers: Russians
+in the first, second and third class, with an occasional German or
+Japanese, and in the fourth an extraordinary medley of poorer Russians,
+Chinese and Gilyaks and Golds, the aboriginals of the country, men with
+a Mongolian east of countenance, long coarse blaek hair, very often
+beards, and dirty--the ordinary poor Chinaman is clean and tidy beside
+them.
+
+But the first class was luxurious. We had electric light and hot and
+cold water. The cabins were not to hold more than two, and you brought
+your own bedding. I dare say it could have been hired on the steamer,
+but the difficulty of language always stood in my way, and once away
+from the seaboard in North-Eastern Asia the only other European language
+beside Russian that is likely to be understood is German, and I have no
+German. I was lucky enough on the _John Cockerill_ to find the wife of
+a Russian colonel who spoke a little English. She, with her husband, was
+taking a summer holiday by journeying up to Nikolayeusk, and she very
+kindly took Buchanan and me under her wing and interpreted for us. It
+was very nice for me, and the only thing I had to complain of on that
+steamer was the way in which the night watch promenading the deek shut
+my window and slammed to the shutters. They did it every night, with a
+care for my welfare I could have done without. In a river steamer
+the cabins are all in the centre with the deck round, and the watch
+evidently could not understand how any woman could really desire to
+sleep under an open window. I used to get up early in the morning and
+walk round the decks, and I found that first and second class invariably
+shut their windows tight, though the nights were always just pleasantly
+cool, and consequently those passages between the cabins smelt like
+a menagerie, and an ill-kept menagerie at that. They say Russians age
+early and invariably they are of a pallid complexion. I do not wonder,
+now that I have seen their dread of fresh air. Again and again I was
+told: “Draughts are not good!” Draughts! I'd rather sleep in a hurricane
+than in the hermetically sealed boxes in which those passengers stowed
+themselves on board the river steamers. On the _John Cockerill_ the
+windows of the dining saloon and the lounge did open, but on the steamer
+on which I went up the river, the _Kanovina_, one of the “Sormovo”
+ Company, and the mail steamer, there was only one saloon in the first
+class. We had our meals and we lived there. It was a fine large room
+placed for'ard in the ship's bows, with beautiful large windows of glass
+through which we could see excellently the scenery; but those windows
+were fast; they would not open; they were not made to open. The
+atmosphere was always thick when I went in for breakfast in the morning,
+and I used to make desperate efforts to get the little windows that ran
+round the top opened. I could not do it myself, as you had to get on the
+roof of the saloon, the deck where the look-out stood, and anyhow they
+were only little things, a foot high by two feet broad. But such an
+innovation was evidently regarded as dangerous. Besides the fact that
+draughts were bad, I have been assured that perhaps it was going to
+rain--the rain couldn't come in both sides--and at night I was assured
+they couldn't be opened because the lights would be confusing to other
+steamers!
+
+Nobody seemed to mind an atmosphere you could have cut with a knife. I
+am sure if the walls had been taken away it would have stood there in
+a solid block--a dark-coloured, high-smelling block, I should think. I
+gave up trying to do good to a community against its will and used to
+carry my meals outside and have them on the little tables that were
+dotted about the deck.
+
+After all, bar that little difficulty about the air--and certainly if
+right goes with the majority I have no cause of complaint, I was in a
+minority of one--those steamers made the most comfortable and cheapest
+form of travelling I have ever undertaken. From Kharbarosvk to
+Nikolayeusk for over three days' voyage my fare with a first-class cabin
+to myself was twelve roubles--about one pound four shillings. I came
+back by the mail steamer and it was fifteen roubles--about one pound
+ten shillings. This, of course, does not include food. Food on a
+Russian steamer you buy as you would on a railway train. You may make
+arrangements with the restaurant and have breakfast, luncheon, afternoon
+tea and dinner for so much a day; or you may have each meal separate
+and pay for it as you have it; or you may buy your food at the various
+stopping-places, get your kettles filled with hot water for a trifling
+tip, and feed yourself in the privacy of your own cabin. I found
+the simplest way, having no servant, was to pay so much a day--five
+shillings on the big steamers, four shillings on the smaller one--and
+live as I would do at a hotel. The food was excellent on the Amur
+Company's ships. We had chicken and salmon--not much salmon, it was too
+cheap--and sturgeon. Sturgeon, that prince of fish, was a treat,
+and caviare was as common as marmalade used to be on a British
+breakfast-table. It was generally of the red variety that we do not see
+here and looked not unlike clusters of red currants, only I don't know
+that I have ever seen currants in such quantities. I enjoyed it very
+much till one day, looking over the railing into the stern of the boat,
+where much of the food was roughly prepared--an unwise thing to do--I
+saw an extremely dirty woman of the country, a Gilyak, in an extremely
+dirty garment, with her dirty bare arms plunged to the elbow in the red
+caviare she was preparing for the table. Then I discovered for a little
+while that I didn't much fancy caviare. But I wish I had some of that
+nice red caviare now.
+
+The second class differed but little from the first. There was not so
+much decoration about the saloons, and on the _John Cockerill_, where
+the first class had two rooms, they had only one; and the food was much
+the same, only not so many courses. There was plenty, and they only paid
+three shillings a day for the four meals. The people were much the
+same as we in the first class, and I met a girl from Samara, in Central
+Russia, who spoke a little French. She was a teacher and was going
+to Nikolayeusk for a holiday exactly as I have seen teachers here in
+England go to Switzerland.
+
+But between the first and second and the third and fourth class was a
+great gulf fixed. They were both on the lower deck, the third under the
+first and the fourth under the second, while amidships between them were
+the kitchens and the engines and the store of wood for fuel. The third
+had no cabins, but the people went to bed and apparently spent their
+days in places like old-fashioned dinner-wagons; and they bought their
+own food, either from the steamer or at the various stopping-places, and
+ate it on their beds, for they had no saloon. The fourth class was still
+more primitive. The passengers, men, women and children, were packed
+away upon shelves rising in three tiers, one above the other, and the
+place of each man and woman was marked out by posts. There was no effort
+made to provide separate accommodation for men and women. As far as I
+could see, they all herded together like cattle.
+
+The ship was crowded. The Russian colonel's wife and I used to walk up
+and down the long decks for exercise, with Buchanan in attendance, she
+improving her English and I learning no Russian. It is evidently quite
+the custom for the people of the great towns of the Amur to make every
+summer an excursion up the river, and the poorer people, the third and
+fourth class, go up to Nikolayeusk for the fishing. Hence those shelves
+crowded with dirty folk. There were troughs for washing outside the
+fourth class, I discovered, minor editions of our luxurious bathrooms
+in the first class, but I am bound to say they did not have much use.
+Washing even in this hot weather, and it certainly was pleasantly
+warm, was more honoured in the breach than in the observance. The only
+drawback to the bathrooms in the first class, from my point of view, was
+their want of air. They were built so that apparently there was no means
+of getting fresh air into them, and I always regarded myself as a very
+plucky woman when in the interests of cleanliness I had a bath. The
+hot water and the airlessness always brought me to such a condition of
+faintness that I generally had to rush out and lie on the couch in my
+cabin to recover, and then if somebody outside took it upon them to bang
+to the window I was reduced to the last gasp.
+
+The _John Cockerill_ was run like a man-of-war. The bells struck the
+hours and half-hours, the captain and officers were clad in white and
+brass-bound, and the men were in orthodox sailor's rig. One man came
+and explained to me--he spoke no tongue that I could understand, but his
+meaning was obvious--that Buchanan was not allowed on the first-class
+deck, the rules and regulations, so said the colonel's wife, said he
+was not; but no one seemed to object, so I thought to smooth matters
+by paying half-a-rouble; then I found that every sailor I came across
+apparently made the same statement, and having listened to one or two,
+at last I decided to part with no more cash, and it was, I suppose,
+agreed that Buchanan had paid his footing, for they troubled me no more
+about him.
+
+Three or four times a day we pulled up at some little wayside place,
+generally only two or three log-houses with painted doors or windows, an
+occasional potato patch and huge stacks of wood to replenish the fuel
+of the steamer, and with much yelling they put out a long gangway,
+and while the wood was brought on board we all went ashore to see
+the country. The country was always exactly alike, vast and green and
+lonely, the sparse human habitations emphasising that vastness and
+loneliness. The people were few. The men wore belted blouses and high
+boots and very often, though it was summer, fur caps, and the women very
+voluminous and very dirty skirts with unbelted blouses, a shawl across
+their shoulders and a kerchief on their unkempt hair. They were dirty;
+they were untidy; they were uneducated; they belonged to the very
+poorest classes; and I think I can safely say that all the way from
+Kharbarosvk to Nikolayeusk the only attempt at farming I saw was in a
+few scattered places where the grass had been cut and tossed up into
+haycocks. And yet those people impressed upon me a sense of their
+virility and strength, a feeling that I had never had when moving among
+the Chinese, where every inch of land--bar the graves--is turned to good
+account. Was it the condition of the women? I wonder. I know I never saw
+one of those stalwart women pounding along on her big flat feet without
+a feeling of gladness and thankfulness. Here at least was good material.
+It was crude and rough, of course, but it was there waiting for the
+wheel of the potter. Shall we find the potter in the turmoil of the
+revolution and the war?
+
+We went on, north, north with a little of east, and it grew cooler and
+the twilight grew longer. I do not know how other people do, but I count
+my miles and realise distances from some distance I knew well in my
+youth. So I know that from Kharbarosvk to Nikolaycusk is a little
+farther away than is Melbourne from Sydney; and always we went by way of
+the great empty land, by way of the great empty river. Sometimes far
+in the distance we could see the blue hills; sometimes the hills were
+close; but always it was empty, because the few inhabitants, the house
+or two at the little stopping-places where were the piles of wood for
+the steamer, but emphasised the loneliness and emptiness. You could have
+put all the people we saw in a street of a suburb of London and lost
+them, and I suppose the distance traversed was as far as from London to
+Aberdeen. It was a beautiful land, a land with a wondrous charm, but it
+is waiting for the colonist who will dare the rigours of the winter and
+populate it.
+
+At last we steamed up to the port of Nikolayeusk, set at the entrance of
+the shallow Sea of Okhotsk, right away in the east of the world. When I
+set foot upon the wharf among all the barrels with which it was packed I
+could hardly believe I had come so far east, so far away from my regular
+beat. One of my brothers always declares I sent him to sea because my
+sex prevented me from going, and yet here I was, in spite of that grave
+disadvantage, in as remote a corner of the earth as even he might have
+hoped to attain.
+
+It was a July day, sunny and warm. They had slain an Austrian archduke
+in Serbia and the world was on the verge of the war of the ages, but
+I knew nothing of all that. I stepped off the steamer and proceeded to
+investigate Nikolayeusk, well satisfied with the point at which I had
+arrived.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI--THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
+
+Nikolayeusk seemed to me the ends of the earth. I hardly know why it
+should have done so, for I arrived there by way of a very comfortable
+steamer and I have made my way to very much more ungetatable places. I
+suppose the explanation is that all the other places I have visited I
+had looked up so long on the map that when I arrived I only felt I was
+attaining the goal I had set out to reach, whereas I must admit I had
+never heard of Nikolayeusk till Mr Sly, the British consul, sketched
+it out as the end of my itinerary on the Siberian rivers, and ten days
+later I found myself in the Far Eastern town. I remember one of my
+brothers writing to me once from Petropaulovski:
+
+“I always said my address would some day be Kamseatkha and here I am!”
+
+Well, I never said my address would be Nikolayeusk because I had never
+heard of it, but here I was nevertheless. The weather was warm, the sun
+poured down from a cloudless blue sky, and in the broad, grass-grown
+streets, such streets have I seen in Australian towns, when the faint
+breeze stirred the yellow dust rose on the air. And the town straggled
+all along the northern side of the river, a town of low, one-storeyed
+wooden houses for the most part, with an occasional two-storeyed house
+and heavy shutters to all the windows. There was a curious absence
+of stone, and the streets when they were paved at all were, as in
+Kharbarosvk, lines of planks, sometimes three, sometimes five planks
+wide, with a waste of dust or mud or grass, as the case might be, on
+either side.
+
+The Russians I found kindness itself. In Vladivostok I had met a man
+who knew one of my brothers--I sometimes wonder if I could get to such
+a remote corner of the earth that I should not meet someone who knew
+one of these ubiquitous brothers of mine--and this good friend, having
+sampled the family, took me on trust and found someone else who
+would give me a letter to the manager of the Russo-Asiatic Bank at
+Nikolayeusk. This was a godsend, for Mr Pauloff spoke excellent English,
+and he and his corresponding clerk, a Russian lady of middle age who had
+spent a long time in France, took me in hand and showed me the sights.
+Madame Schulmann and I and Buchanan drove all over the town in one of
+the most ancient victorias I have ever seen--the most ancient are in
+Saghalien, which is beyond the ends of the earth--and she very kindly
+took me to a meal at the principal hotel. I was staying on board the
+steamer while I looked around me. The visit with this lady decided me
+not to go there. It wras about four o'clock in the afternoon, so I don't
+know whether our meal was dinner or tea or luncheon; we had good soup,
+I remember, and nice wine, to say nothing of excellent coffee, but the
+atmosphere left much to be desired. I don't suppose the windows ever
+had been opened since the place was built, and no one seemed to see any
+necessity for opening them. My hostess smiled at my distress. She said
+she liked fresh air herself but that for a whole year she had lodged in
+a room where the windows would not open. She had wanted to have one of
+the panes--not the window, just one of the panes--made to open to admit
+fresh air, and had offered to do it at her own expense, but her landlord
+refused. It would spoil the look of the room. She advised me strongly
+if I wanted fresh air to stay as long as I could on board the steamer at
+the wharf, and I decided to take her advice.
+
+The Russo-Asiatic Bank was not unlike the banks I have seen in
+Australian townships, in that it was built of wood of one storey and the
+manager and his wife lived on the premises, but the roof was far more
+ornamental than Australia could stand and gave the touch of the East
+that made for romance. The manager was good enough to ask me to dinner
+and to include Buchanan in the invitation because I did not like to
+leave the poor little chap shut up in my cabin. This was really dinner,
+called so, and we had it at five o'clock of a hot summer's afternoon,
+a very excellent dinner, with delicious sour cream in the soup
+and excellent South Australian wine, not the stuff that passes for
+Australian wine in England and that so many people take medicinally, but
+really good wine, such as Australians themselves drink. The house was
+built with a curious lack of partitions that made for spaciousness, so
+that you wandered from one room to another, hardly knowing that you had
+gone from the sitting-room to the bedroom, and James Buchanan going on a
+voyage of discovery unfortunately found the cradle, to the dismay of his
+mistress. He stood and looked at it and barked.
+
+“Gracious me! What's this funny thing! I've never seen anything like it
+before!”
+
+Neither had I; but I was covered with shame when a wail proclaimed the
+presence of the son and heir.
+
+Naturally I expressed myself--truly--charmed with the town, and Mr
+Pauloff smiled and nodded at his wife, who spoke no English.
+
+“She hates it,” said he; “she has never been well since we came here.”
+
+She was white, poor little girl, as the paper on which this is written,
+and very frail-looking, but it never seemed to occur to anyone that it
+would be well to open the double windows, and so close was the air of
+the room that it made me feel sick and faint.
+
+“She never goes out,” said her husband. “She is not well enough.”
+
+I believe there was a time in our grandmothers' days when we too dreaded
+the fresh air.
+
+And in this the town differed markedly from any Australian towns I have
+known. The double windows were all tight shut these warm July days, with
+all the cracks stopped up with cotton wool, with often decorations of
+coloured ribbons or paper wandering across the space between. Also there
+were very heavy shutters, and I thought these must be to shut out the
+winter storms, but M. Pauloff did not seem to think much of the winter
+storms, though he admitted they had some bad blizzards and regularly the
+thermometer went down below -40° Fahrenheit.
+
+“No,” he said, “we shut them at night, at four in the winter and at nine
+in the summer. Leave them open you cannot.”
+
+“But why?” I thought it was some device for keeping out still more air.
+
+“There is danger,” said he--“danger from men.”
+
+“Do they steal?” said I, surprised.
+
+“And kill,” he added with conviction.
+
+It seems that when the Japanese invaded Saghalien, the great island
+which lies opposite the mouth of the Amur, they liberated at least
+thirty thousand convicts, and they burnt the records so that no one
+could prove anything against them, and the majority of these convicts
+were unluckily not all suffering political prisoners, but criminals,
+many of them of the deepest dye. These first made Saghalien an
+unwholesome place to live in, but gradually they migrated to the
+mainland, and Nikolayeusk and other towns of Eastern Siberia are by no
+means safe places in consequence. Madame Schulmann told me that many
+a time men were killed in the open streets and that going back to her
+lodgings on the dark winter evenings she was very much afraid and always
+tried to do it in daylight.
+
+Nikolayeusk is officially supposed to have thirteen thousand
+inhabitants, but really in the winter-time, says Mr Pauloff, they shrink
+to ten thousand, while in the summer they rise to over forty thousand,
+everybody coming for the fishing, the great salmon fisheries.
+
+“Here is noting,” said he, “noting--only fish.”
+
+And this remark he made at intervals. He could not reiterate it too
+often, as if he were warning me against expecting too much from this
+remote corner of the world. But indeed the fish interested me. The
+summer fishing was on while I was there, but that, it seems, is as
+nothing to the autumn fishing, when the fish rush into the wide river in
+solid blocks. The whole place then is given over to the fishing and the
+other trades that fishing calls into being to support it. All the summer
+the steamers coming down the river are crowded, and they bring great
+cargoes of timber; the wharves when I was there were covered with
+barrels and packing-cases containing, according to Mr Pauloff, “only
+air.” These were for the fish. And now, when the humble mackerel costs
+me at least ninepence or a shilling, I remember with longing the days
+when I used to see a man like a Chinaman, but not a Chinaman, a bamboo
+across his shoulder, and from each end a great fresh salmon slung, a
+salmon that was nearly as long as the bearer, and I could have bought
+the two for ten kopecks!
+
+He that will not when he may!
+
+But great as the trade was down the river, most eatables--groceries,
+flour and such-like things--came from Shanghai, and the ships that
+brought them took back wood to be made into furniture, and there
+was, when I was there, quite a flourishing trade in frozen meat with
+Australia, Nikolayeusk requiring about two hundred and forty thousand
+pounds in the year. In winter, of course, all the provisions are frozen;
+the milk is poured into basins, a stick is stuck in it and it freezes
+round it, so that a milk-seller instead of having a large can has an
+array of sticks on top of which is the milk frozen hard as a stone.
+Milk, meat, eggs, all provisions are frozen from October to May.
+
+I do not know what Nikolayeusk is doing now war and revolution have
+reached it. At least they have brought it into touch with the outer
+world.
+
+And having got so far I looked longingly out over the harbour and
+wondered whether I might not go to Saghalien.
+
+Mr Pauloff laughed at my desires. If there was nothing to see in
+Nikolayeusk, there was less than nothing in Saghalien. It was dead. It
+never had been much and the Japanese invasion had killed it. Not that he
+harboured any animosity against the Japanese. Russians and Japanese, he
+declared, were on very friendly terms, and though they invaded Saghalien
+they did not disgrace their occupation by any atrocities. The Russian,
+everybody declared in Nikolayeusk, bridges the gulf between the white
+man and the yellow. Russian and Chinese peasants will work side by side
+in friendliest fashion; they will occupy the same boardinghouses; the
+Russian woman does not object to the Chinese as a husband, and the
+Russian takes a Chinese wife. Of course these are the peasant classes.
+The Russian authorities made very definite arrangements for keeping out
+Chinese from Siberia, as I saw presently when I went back up the river.
+
+But the more I thought of it the more determined I was not to go
+back till I had gone as far east as I possibly could go. The Russian
+Volunteer fleet I found called at Alexandrovsk regularly during the
+months the sea was open, making Nikolayeusk its most northern port of
+call. I could go by the steamer going down and be picked up by the one
+coming north. It would give me a couple of days in the island, and Mr
+Pauloff was of opinion that a couple of days would be far too long.
+
+But the _John Cockerill_ was going back and Buchanan and I must find
+another roof and a resting-place. According to the inhabitants, it would
+not be safe to sleep in the streets, and I had conceived a distinct
+distaste for the hotel. But the _Erivan_ lay in the stream and to
+that we transferred ourselves and our belongings, where the mate spoke
+English with a strong Glasgow accent and the steward had a smattering.
+It was only a smattering, however. I had had a very early lunch and
+no afternoon tea, so when I got on board at six in the evening I
+was decidedly hungry and demanded food, or rather when food might be
+expected. The steward was in a dilemma. It was distinctly too early for
+dinner, he considered, and too late for tea. He scratched his head.
+
+“Lunch!” said he triumphantly, and ushered me into the saloon, where
+hung large photographs of the Tsar, the Tsarina and the good-looking
+little Tsarevitch. In the corner was an ikon, St Nicolas, I think, who
+protects sailors. And there at six o'clock in the evening I meekly sat
+down to luncheon all by myself.
+
+Lying there I had a lovely view of the town. At night, like Vladivostok,
+it lay like a ring of diamonds along the shore of the river; and in
+the daytime the softly rounded green hills, the grey-blue sky and the
+grey-blue sea with the little white wavelets, and the little town just
+a line between the green and the blue, with the spires and domes of the
+churches and other public buildings, green and blue and red and white,
+made a view that was worth coming so far to see. There were ships in the
+bay too--not very big ships; but a ship always has an attraction: it has
+come from the unknown; it is about to go into the unknown--and as I sat
+on deck there came to me the mate with the Scots accent and explained
+all about the ships in sight.
+
+The place was a fort and they were going to make it a great harbour, to
+fill it up till the great ships should lie along the shore. It will
+take a good time, for we lay a long way out, but he never doubted the
+possibility; and meantime the goods come to the ships in the lighters
+in which they have already come down the river, and they are worked by
+labourers getting, according to the mate, twelve shillings a day.
+
+“Dey carry near as much as we do,” said he.
+
+Then there were other ships: a ship for fish, summer fish, for Japan,
+sealers for the rookeries, and ships loading timber for Kamseatkha. I
+thought I would like to emulate my brother and go there, and the Russky
+mate thought it would be quite possible, only very uncomfortable. It
+would take three months, said he, and it was rather late in the season
+now. Besides, these ships load themselves so with timber that there
+is only a narrow space on deck to walk on, and they are packed with
+passengers, mostly labourers, going up for the short summer season.
+
+My old trouble, want of air, followed me on board the _Erivan_. On deck
+it was cool, at night the thermometer registered about 55° Fahrenheit,
+but in my cabin Buehanan and I gasped with the thermometer at over 90°,
+and that with the port, a very small one, open. That stuffiness was
+horrible. The bathroom looked like a boiler with a tightfitting iron
+door right amidships, and having looked at it I had not the courage
+to shut myself in and take a bath. It seemed as if it would be burying
+myself alive. As it was, sleep down below I could not, and I used to
+steal up on deck and with plenty of rugs and cushions lay myself out
+along the seats and sleep in the fresh air; but a seat really does leave
+something to be desired in the way of luxury.
+
+But the early mornings were delightful. The first faint light showed a
+mist hanging over the green hills marking out their outlines, green
+and blue and grey; then it was all grey mist; but to the east was the
+crimson of the dawn, and we left our moorings early one morning and
+steamed into that crimson. The sun rose among silver and grey clouds,
+and rose again and again as we passed along the river and the mountains
+hid him from sight. There were long streaks of silver on the broad
+river; slowly the fir-clad hills emerged from the mist and the air was
+moist and fragrant; the scent of the sea and the fragrance of the pines
+was in it. A delicious, delicate northern sunrise it was; never before
+or since have I seen such a sunrise. Never again can I possibly see one
+more beautiful.
+
+And the great river widened. There were little settlements, the
+five-pointed tents of the Russian soldiers and many places for catching
+fish. No wonder the fish--fish is always salmon here--like this great
+-wide river. The brownish water flowed on swiftly and the morning
+wind whipped it into never-ending ripples that caught the sunlight. A
+wonderful river! A delightful river! I have grown enthusiastic over
+many rivers. I know the Murray in my own land and the great rivers of
+tropical Africa, the Congo, the Gambia, the Volta, grand and lovely
+all of them. I felt I had looked upon the glory of the Lord when I had
+looked upon them, but there was something in the tender beauty of the
+Amur, the summer beauty veiled in mist, the beauty that would last so
+short a time, that was best of all.
+
+Meanwhile the passengers and officers of the _Erivan_ were much
+exercised in their minds over me. What could an Englishwoman want
+in Saghalien? To my surprise I found that none had ever stayed there
+before, though it was on record that one had once landed there from a
+steamer. The mate was scathing in his remarks.
+
+“Dere are skeeters,” said he, “big ones, I hear,” and he rolled his
+“r's” like a true Scotsman.
+
+“But where can I stay?” He shook his head.
+
+“In de hotel you cannot stay. It is impossible.” That I could quite
+believe, but all the same, if the hotel was impossible, where could I
+stay?
+
+However, here I was, and I did not intend to go back to Vladivostok by
+sea. At Alexandrosvk, the town of Saghalien, I proposed to land and I
+felt it was no good worrying till I got there.
+
+We entered De Castries Bay in a soft grey mist, a mist that veiled
+the mountains behind. Then the mist lifted and showed us the string of
+islands that guard the mouth of the bay, strung in a line like jewels
+set in the sea, and the hills on them were all crowned with firs; and
+then the mist dropped again, veiling all things.
+
+It was a lonely place, where I, being a foreigner, was not allowed to
+land, and we did not go close up to the shore, but the shore came to us
+in great white whale-boats. Many peasants and soldiers got off here, and
+I saw saws and spades in the bundles, the bundles of emigrants. There
+were a few women amongst them, women with hard, elemental faces, so
+different from the Chinese, that were vacuous and refined. I remembered
+the women who had listened to the lecturer at Fen Chou Fu and I drew
+a long sigh of relief. It was refreshing to look at those big-hipped
+women, with their broad, strong feet and their broad, strong hands and
+the little dirty kerchiefs over their heads. Elemental, rough, rude, but
+I was glad of them. One was suckling a child in the boat, calmly, as if
+it were the most natural thing to do, and somehow it was good to see it.
+The beginning of life.
+
+The morning brought a dense mist, and as it cleared away it showed us
+a sparkling, smooth sea, greyish-blue like the skies above it, and a
+little wooden town nestling against fir-clad hills. We had arrived at
+Alexandrosvk and I wondered what would become of me.
+
+And then once again I learned what a kind place is this old world of
+ours that we abuse so often. I had gone on board that steamer without
+any introduction whatever, with only my passport to show that I was a
+respectable member of society. I knew nobody and saw no reason
+whatever why anyone should trouble themselves about me. But we
+carried distinguished passengers on board the _Erivan_. There was the
+Vice-Governor of Saghalien, his wife and son, with the soldiers in
+attendance, and a good-looking young fellow with short-cropped hair and
+dreamy eyes who was the Assistant Chief of Police of the island, and
+this man, by command of the Governor, took me in charge.
+
+Never again shall I hear of the Russian police without thinking of the
+deep debt of gratitude that I owe to Vladimir Merokushoff of Saghalien.
+
+I do not think as a rule that people land from steamers at Alexandrosvk
+on to red tapestry carpets under fluttering bruiting to the strains of
+a band. But we did; and the Chief of Police--he spoke no language but
+Russian--motioned me to wait a moment, and when the Governor had been
+safely despatched to his home he appeared on the scene with a victoria
+and drove me and Buchanan to the police station, a charming little
+one-storeyed building buried in greenery, and there he established us.
+Buchanan he appreciated as a dog likes to be appreciated, and he gave
+up to me his own bedroom, where the top pane of the window had actually
+been made to open. His sitting-room was a very bower of growing plants,
+and when I went to bed that night he brought his elderly working
+housekeeper, a plain-faced woman whom he called “Stera,” and made
+her bring her bed and lay it across my door, which opened into the
+sitting-room. It was no good my protesting; there she had to sleep. Poor
+old thing, she must have been glad my stay was not long. Every day she
+wore a blue skirt and a drab-coloured blouse, unbelted, and her grey
+hair twisted up into an untidy knot behind, but she was an excellent
+cook. That young man got himself into his everyday holland summer coat
+and to entertain me proceeded to lay in enough provisions to supply a
+hungry school. He showed me the things first to see if I liked them, as
+if I wouldn't have liked shark when people were so kind. But as a matter
+of fact everything was very good. He produced a large tin of crawling
+crayfish, and when I had expressed not only my approval but my delight,
+they appeared deliciously red and white for dinner, and then I found
+they were only _sakouska_--that is, the _hors d'ouvre_ that the Russians
+take to whet their appetites. I have often lived well, but never better
+than when I, a stranger and a sojourner, was taken in charge by the
+hospitable Russian police, who would not let me pay one penny for my
+board and lodging. We fed all day long. I had only to come in for a
+bottle of wine or beer to be produced. I was given a _gens d'arme_ to
+carry my camera and another to take care of Buchanan. Never surely was
+stranger so well done as I by hospitable Saghalien. The policeman
+made me understand he was an author and presented me with a couple of
+pamphlets he had written on Saghalien and its inhabitants, but though
+I treasure them I cannot read them. Then the Japanese photographer was
+sent for and he and I were taken sitting side by side on the bench in
+his leafy porch, and, to crown all, because I could speak no Russian, he
+sent for two girls who had been educated in Japan and who spoke English
+almost as well as I did myself, though they had never before spoken to
+an Englishwoman. Marie and Lariss Borodin were they, and their father
+kept the principal store in Alexandrosvk. They were dainty, pretty,
+dark-eyed girls and they were a godsend to me. They had a tea in my
+honour and introduced me to the manager of the coal mine of Saghalien
+and took care I should have all the information about the island it was
+in their power to supply.
+
+There were then about five thousand people there, one thousand in
+Alexandrosvk itself, but they were going daily, for the blight of the
+convict was over the beautiful land. The best coal mine is closed down
+on fire and the one whose manager I met was leased to a company by the
+year and worked by Chinese on most primitive lines. There is gold,
+he told me, this business man who surprised me by his lavish use of
+perfume, but he did not know whether it would pay for working--gold
+and coal as well would be almost too much good luck for one island--and
+there is naphtha everywhere on the east coast, but as it has never been
+struck they think that the main vein must come up somewhere under the
+sea. Still it is there waiting for the enterprising man who shall work
+it.
+
+Saghalien used to be as bad as Nikolayeusk, they told me, after the
+Japanese had evacuated the northern part; but now the most enterprising
+section of the convicts had betaken themselves to the mainland, and
+though the free settlers were few and far between, and the most of the
+people I saw were convicts, they were the harmless ones with all the
+devilment gone out of them.
+
+Alexandrosvk is a place of empty houses. When the Japanese came the
+people fled, leaving everything exactly as it was; and though the
+Japanese behaved with admirable restraint, considering they came as
+an invading army, many of these people never came back again, and the
+alertness in a bad cause which had sent many of the convicts there
+against their will sent them away again as soon as they were free. All
+down by the long wooden pier which stretches out into the sea are great
+wooden storehouses and barracks, empty, and a monument, if they needed
+it, to the courteous manner in which the Japanese make war. They had
+burnt the museum, they told me, and opened the prison doors and burnt
+the prison, but the other houses they had spared. And so there were
+many, many empty houses in Alexandrosvk.
+
+All the oldest carriages in the world have drifted to Saghalien.
+
+They are decrepit in Western Siberia, they are worse, if possible, in
+the East, but in the island of Saghalien I really don't know how they
+hold together. Perhaps they are not wanted very often. I hired the most
+archaic victoria I have ever seen and the two girls came for a drive
+with me all round the town and its neighbourhood. It was a drive to be
+remembered. The early summer was in all its full freshness, the red and
+white cows stood knee-deep in grass that was green and lush everywhere.
+There were fir-trees on the hills and on every spur of the hills, and
+there were hedges with dog-roses blossoming all over them; there were
+fields of dark blue iris; there were little red tiger lilies and a
+spiked heliotrope flower like veronica, only each bloom grew on a single
+stalk of its own; there were purple vetches and white spiræa growing in
+marshy places, and the land was thick with sweet-scented clover among
+which the bees were humming, and in a little village there was a Greek
+church that, set in its emerald-green field, was a very riot of colour.
+There were balls on the roof of royal blue, the roof itself was of pale
+green, the walls were of brown logs untouched by paint and the window
+edges were picked out in white. I photographed that picturesque little
+church, as I did the peasant women standing at the doors of their log
+huts and the queer old shandrydan in which we drove, but alas! all my
+photographs perished miserably in Russia. The girls wondered that I
+liked town and country so much, that I saw so much beauty in everything.
+
+“Ah! Madame,” they sighed, “but you can go away tomorrow! If only we
+could go!”
+
+They had been educated at a convent and they produced the English books
+they had read. They were very apologetic but they had found them rather
+tame. Had I read them? I smiled, for they all turned out to be the
+immortal works of Charles Garvice!
+
+And we had tea in the dining-room, where father slept because they were
+rather crowded, the store took up so much room; and it was a very nice
+tea too, with raspberry jam in saucers, which we ate Russian
+fashion with a spoon, and the roses in the garden tapped against the
+window-panes, asking to come in and join us, and Buchanan got what his
+soul loved, plenty of cake. They apologised because there was no fruit.
+No fruit save berries ripen in Saghalien and the strawberries would not
+be ready till well on in August. No words of mine can tell how kind they
+were to the stranger.
+
+I went back in the long twilight that was so cool and restful and sat
+outside the leafy shaded police station and killed mosquitoes, for the
+mate had heard aright, there were “skeeters” and to spare, the sort to
+which Mark Twain took a gun. I watched the grey mist creeping slowly
+down, down the beautiful mountains, and when it had enveloped them the
+night was come and it was time to go in and have dinner and go to bed.
+
+Perhaps it would not do to stay long in Saghalien. There is nothing to
+do. She lies a Sleeping Beauty waiting the kiss of the Prince. Will this
+war awaken her? The short time I was there I enjoyed every moment.
+
+The people seemed nondescript. The upper class were certainly Russians,
+and all the men wore military caps and had their hair clipped so close
+it looked shaven, but it would be utterly impossible to say to what
+nationality the peasant belonged. There were flaxen-haired Russians
+certainly, but then there were dark-bearded men, a Mongolian type, and
+there were many thrifty Chinese with queues, in belted blouses and
+high boots, generally keeping little eating-shops. There may have been
+Japanese, probably there were, seeing they hold the lower half of the
+island, but I did not notice them, and there is, I am afraid, in that
+place which is so full of possibilities absolutely nothing for that
+go-ahead nation to do.
+
+My pretty girls complained dreadfully. They looked after the shop and
+then there was nothing. In the winter they said they had skating and
+they liked the winter best, but the really bad time in places like
+Saghalien and Nikolayeusk were the two months when it was neither
+winter nor summer. Then their only means of communication with the
+outside world, the river and the sea, was too full of ice to admit of
+navigation and yet was not solid enough for dog-sled, so that if the
+telegraph broke down, and it very often did, they are entirely cut off
+from the world. Saghalien, of course, is worse off than the town, for on
+the mainland presumably there are roads of sorts that can be negotiated
+in case of necessity, but the island is entirely isolated. In the winter
+the mails take five days coming across the frozen sea from the mainland,
+and often when there are storms they take much longer. Fancy living on
+an island that stretches over nearly ten degrees of latitude, which
+for five months in the year gets its mails by dog-sled and for two goes
+without them altogether! On the whole, there may be drawbacks to living
+in Saghalien!
+
+I left it at nine o'clock in the evening, after the darkness had fallen,
+and the police officer and the pretty girls saw me on board the steamer
+which was to take me back to Nikolayeusk.
+
+They loaded me with flowers and they were full of regrets.
+
+“Oh, Madame, Madame, how lucky you are to get away from Saghalien!”
+
+But I said truly enough that I felt my luck lay in getting there. And
+now that I sit in my garden in Kent and watch the beans coming into
+blossom and the roses into bloom, look at the beds gay with red
+poppies and violas, cream and purple, or wander round and calculate the
+prospects of fruit on the cherry and the pear trees, I am still more
+glad to think that I know what manner of island that is that lies so far
+away in the Eastern world that it is almost West.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII--FACING WEST
+
+On the 25th July 1914, at nine o'clock in the evening, I left
+Saghalien, and as the ship steamed away from the loom of the land into
+the night I knew that at last, after eighteen months of voyaging in the
+East, I had turned my face homeward. I had enjoyed it, but I wanted to
+go home, and in my notebook I see evidences of this longing. At last
+I was counting the days--one day to Nikolayeusk, three days to
+Kharbarosvk, three days more to Blagoveschensk--and I was out in my
+calculations in the very beginning. The ships of the Volunteer fleet
+take their time, and we took three days wandering along the island of
+Saghalien and calling at ports I should think mail steamer had never
+before called at before we turned again towards the mainland.
+
+And yet in a way it was interesting, for I saw some of the inhabitants
+of the island, the aboriginal inhabitants, I should never have otherwise
+seen. Gilyaks they are, and the water seems their element. They have the
+long straight black hair of the Mongolian, and sometimes they were
+clad in furs--ragged and old and worn, the very last remains of
+furs--sometimes merely in dirty clothes, the cast-offs of far-away
+nations.
+
+They live by the fish. There is nothing else.
+
+I tried hard to photograph these aborigines, using all sorts of guile to
+get them into focus. I produced cigarettes, I offered sugar, but as soon
+as they found out what I was about they at once fled, even though their
+boat was fastened against the gangway and it meant abandoning somebody
+who was on board. I did eventually get some photographs, but they shared
+the fate of the rest of my Russian pictures, and I am sorry, for I do
+not suppose I shall ever again have the chance of photographing the
+Gilyak in his native haunts. He belongs to a dying race, they told me,
+and there are few children amongst them.
+
+And though we lay long at De Castries Bay they would not let me take
+pictures there at all. It was forbidden, so I was reduced to doing the
+best I could through my cabin port. In Alexandrosvk the police officer
+had aided and abetted my picture-making, but in Nikolayeusk it was a
+forbidden pastime, for the town, for purposes of photography, was a
+fort, and when I boarded the _Kanovina_ on the river, the post steamer
+bound for Blagoveschensk, I met with more difficulties.
+
+There was on board a Mrs Marie Skibitsky and her husband, the headmaster
+of the Nikolayeusk “Real” School, and she spoke very good English and
+was a kind friend to me. Through her came a message from the captain to
+the effect that though he did not mind my photographing himself, it
+was forbidden in Russia, and he begged me not to do it when anyone was
+looking on. That made it pretty hopeless, for the ship was crowded and
+there was always not one person but probably a score of people taking a
+very great interest. The captain was not brass-bound as he had been in
+the _John Cockerill_, but he and all his officers were clad in khaki,
+with military caps, and it was sometime before I realised them as the
+ship's officers. The captain looked to me like a depressed corporal who
+was having difficulties with his sergeant, and the ship, though they
+charged us three roubles more for the trip to Blagoveschensk than the
+Amur Company would have done, was dirty and ill-kept. It was in her I
+met the saloon the windows of which would not open, and the water in my
+cabin had gone wrong, and when I insisted that I could not be happy till
+I had some, it was brought me in a teapot! They never struck the hours
+on this steamer as they had done on the _John Cockerill_, and gone was
+the excellent cook, and the food consisted largely of meat, of which I
+am bound to say there was any quantity.
+
+But in spite of all drawbacks the ship was crowded; there were many
+officers and their wives on board, and there were many officers on board
+with women who were not their 'wives. These last were so demonstrative
+that I always took them for honeymoon couples till at last a Cossack
+officer whom I met farther on explained:
+
+“Not 'wives. Oh no! It is always so! It is just the steamer!”
+
+Whether these little irregularities were to be set down to the
+discomforts of the steamer or to the seductive air of the river, I do
+not know. Perhaps I struck a particularly amorous company. I am bound to
+say no one but me appeared to be embarrassed. It seemed to be all in the
+day's work.
+
+It was pleasant going up the river again and having beside me one who
+could explain things to me. Every day it grew warmer, for not only was
+the short northern summer reaching its zenith, but we were now going
+south again. And Mrs Skibitsky sat beside me and rubbed up her English
+and told me how in two years' time she proposed to bring her daughters
+to England to give them an English education, and I promised to look out
+for her and show her the ropes and how she could best manage in London.
+In two years' time! And we neither of us knew that we were on the
+threshold of the greatest war in the world's history.
+
+I took the breaking out of that war so calmly.
+
+We arrived at Kharbarosvk. I parted from Mrs Skibitsky, who was going to
+Vladivostok, and next day I looked up my friend the colonel's wife with
+whom I had travelled on the _John Cockerill_. She received me with open
+arms, but the household cat flew and spat and stated in no measured
+terms what she thought of Buchanan. The lady caught the cat before I
+realised what was happening and in a moment she had scored with her
+talons great red lines that spouted blood on her mistress's arms. She
+looked at them calmly, went into the kitchen, rubbed butter on her
+wounds and came back smiling as if nothing in the world had happened.
+But it was not nothing. I admired her extremely for a very brave woman.
+Presently her husband came in and she just drew down her sleeves to
+cover her torn arms and said not a word to him. He was talking earnestly
+and presently she said to me:
+
+“There is war!”
+
+I thought she meant between Buehanan and the cat and I smiled feebly,
+because I was very much ashamed of the trouble I and my dog had caused,
+but she said again:
+
+“There is war! Between Austria and Serbia!”
+
+It did not seem to concern me. I don't know that I had ever realised
+Serbia as a distinct nationality at all before, and she knew so little
+English and I knew no Russian at all, so that we were not able to
+discuss the matter much, though it was evident that the colonel was very
+much excited. That, I thought, might be natural. He was a soldier. War
+was his business, though here, I think, he was engaged in training boys.
+
+After the midday meal--_déjeuner_, I think we called it--she and I went
+for a walk, and presently down the wide streets of Kharbarosvk came a
+little procession of four led by a wooden-legged man bearing a Russian
+naval flag, the blue St Andrew's Cross on a white ground. I looked at
+them.
+
+They meant nothing to me in that great, empty street where the new
+little trees were just beginning to take root and the new red-brick post
+office dominated all minor buildings among many empty spaces.
+
+“They want war! They ask for war!” said my friend. I was witnessing my
+first demonstration against Germany! And I thought no more of it than I
+do of the children playing in the streets of this Kentish village!
+
+She saw me on to the steamer and bade me farewell, and then my troubles
+began. Not a single person on that steamer spoke English. However, I
+had always found the Russians so kind that the faet that we could not
+understand one another when the going was straight did not seem to
+matter very much. But I had not reckoned with the Russians at war.
+
+At Kharbarosvk the river forms the Chinese-Russian boundary and a little
+beyond it reaches its most southern point, about lat. 48°. But the China
+that was on our left was not the China that I knew. This was Manchuria,
+green and fresh as Siberia itself, and though there was little or no
+agriculture beyond perhaps a patch of vegetables here and there, on both
+sides of the broad river was a lovely land of hills and lush grass and
+trees. Here were firs and pines and cedars, whose sombreness contrasted
+with the limes and elms, the poplars and dainty birches with whieh they
+were interspersed. The Russian towns were small, the merest villages,
+with here and there a church with the painted ball-like domes they
+affect, and though the houses were of unpainted logs, always the windows
+and doors were painted white.
+
+And at every little town were great piles of wood waiting for the
+steamer, and whenever we stopped men hastily set to work bringing in
+loads of wood to replace that which we had burnt. And we burnt lavishly.
+Even the magnificent forests of Siberia will not stand this drain on
+them long.
+
+The other day when the National Service papers came round one was sent
+to a dear old “Sister” who for nearly all her life has been working for
+the Church in an outlying district of London. She is past work now, but
+she can still go and talk to the old and sick and perhaps give advice
+about the babies, but that is about the extent of her powers. She
+looked at the paper and as in duty bound filled it in, giving her age
+as seventy. What was her surprise then to receive promptly from the
+Department a suggestion that she should volunteer for service on the
+land, and offering her, by way of inducement, good wages, a becoming
+hat and high boots! That branch of the Department has evidently become
+rather mechanical. Now the Russians all the way from Saghalien to
+Petrograd treated me with sueh unfailing kindness that I was in danger
+of writing of them in the stereotyped fashion in which the National
+Service Department sent out its papers. Luckily they themselves saved
+me from such an error. There were three memorable, never-to-be-forgotten
+days when the Russians did not treat me with kindness.
+
+The warmest and pleasantest days of my trip on the Amur we went through
+lovely scenery: the river was very wide, the blue sky was reflected in
+its blue waters and the green, tree-clad hills on either side opened
+out and showed beyond mountains in the distance, purple and blue and
+alluring. It was the height of summer-time, summer at its best, a green,
+moist summer. We hugged the Russian bank, and the Manchurian bank seemed
+very far away, only it was possible to see that wherever the Russians
+had planted a little town on the other side was a Chinese town much
+bigger. The Russian were very little towns, and all the inhabitants, it
+seemed, turned out to meet us, who were their only link with the outside
+world.
+
+The minute the steamer came close enough ropes were flung ashore to moor
+it, and a gangway was run out very often--and it was an anxious moment
+for me with Buchanan standing on the end, for he was always the first
+to put dainty little paws on the gangway, and there he stood while
+it swayed this way and that before it could make up its mind where to
+finally settle down. Then there was a rush, and a stream of people going
+ashore for exercise passed a stream of people coming on board to sell
+goods. Always these took the form of eatables. Butter, bread, meat,
+milk, berries they had for sale, and the third and fourth class
+passengers bought eagerly.
+
+I followed Buchanan ashore, but I seldom bought anything unless the
+berries tempted me. There were strawberries, raspberries and a blue
+berry which sometimes was very sweet and pleasant.
+
+At first the people had been very kind and taken a great deal of
+interest in the stranger and her pretty little dog, but after we left
+Kharbarosvk and I had no one to appeal to a marked change came over
+things. If I wanted to take a photograph, merely a photograph of the
+steamer lying against the bank, my camera was rudely snatched away and
+I was given to understand in a manner that did not require me to know
+Russian that if I did that again it would be worse for me. Poor little
+Buchanan was kicked and chunks of wood were flung at him. As I passed
+along the lower decks to and from the steamer I was rudely hustled, and
+on shore not only did the people crowd around me in a hostile manner,
+but to my disgust they spat upon me.
+
+I could not understand the change, for even in the first-class saloon
+the people looked at me askance. And I had ten days of the river before
+I reached Stretensk, where I was to join the train. It is terrible to
+be alone among hostile people, and I kept Buchanan close beside me for
+company and because I did not know what might happen to him. If this had
+been China I should not have been surprised, but Russia, that had always
+been so friendly. I was mightily troubled.
+
+And then came the explanation, the very simple explanation.
+
+Just as the river narrowed between the hills and looked more like a
+river, and turned north, there came on board at a tiny wayside town a
+tall young Cossack officer, a _soinik_ of Cossacks, he called himself.
+He wore a khaki jacket and cap, and dark blue breeches and riding-boots.
+He had a great scar across his forehead, caused by a Chinese sword, and
+he had pleasant blue eyes and a row of nice white teeth. He was tall and
+goodly to look upon, and as I sat at afternoon tea at a little table on
+deck he came swaggering along the deck and stood before me with one hand
+on a deck-chair.
+
+“Madame, is it permitted?” he asked in French.
+
+Of course Madame permitted and ealled for another glass and offered
+him some of her tea and cake. Possibly he had plenty of his own, but no
+matter, it was good to entertain someone in friendly fashion again after
+being an outcast for three days. And it took a little while to find out
+what was wrong, he was so very polite.
+
+“Madame understands we are at war?”
+
+Madame opened her eyes in astonishment. What could a war in the Balkan
+Provinces have to do with her treatment on the Amur river thousands of
+miles in the East?
+
+However, she said she did.
+
+“And Madame knows------” He paused, and then very kindly abandoned his
+people. “Madame sees the people are bad?”
+
+Madame quite agreed. They were bad. I had quite an appetite for my tea
+now that this nice young man was sympathising with me on the abominable
+behaviour of his countrymen.
+
+He spread out his hands as if deprecating the opinion of sueh foolish
+people. “They think--on the ship--and on the shore--that Madame is a
+GERMAN!”
+
+So it was out, and it took me a moment to realise it, so little had I
+realised the war.
+
+“A German!” I did not put it in capital letters as he had done. I had
+not yet learned to hate the Germans.
+
+“A--spy!”
+
+“Oh, good gracious!” And then I flew for my passports.
+
+In vain that young man protested it was not necessary. He had felt sure
+from the moment he set eyes upon her that Madame was no German. He had
+told the captain--so the depressed corporal had been taking an interest
+in me--she might be French, or even from the north of Spain, but
+certainly not German. But I insisted on his looking at my passports and
+being in a position to swear that I was British, and from that moment we
+were friends and he constituted himself my champion.
+
+“The people are bad,” he told me. “Madame, they are angry and they are
+bad. They may harm you. Here I go ashore with you; at Blagoveschensk
+you get a protection order from the Governor written in Russian so that
+somebody may read.”
+
+Then he told me about the war. Russia and France were fighting Germany.
+He had come from Tsitsihar, on the Mongolian border, across Manchuria,
+and before that he had come from Kodbo, right in the heart of the great
+Western Mongolian mountains, and he was going as fast as he could to
+Chita, and thence he supposed to the front.
+
+“C'est gai a la guerre, Madame, c'est gai!” I hope so. I earnestly hope
+he found it so, for he was a good fellow and awfully good to me.
+
+He was a little disquieting too, for now it dawned upon me it would be
+impossible to go back through Germany with Germany at war with Russia,
+and my friend was equally sure it would be almost impossible to go by
+way of St Petersburg, as we called Petrograd then. Anyhow we were still
+in the Amur Province, in Eastern Siberia, so I did not worry much. Now
+that the people were friendly once more it all seemed so far away, and
+whenever we went ashore my Cossack friend explained matters.
+
+But he was a little troubled.
+
+“Madame, why does not England come in?” he asked again and again, and I,
+who had seen no papers since I left Tientsin, and only _The North China
+Herald_ then, could not imagine what England had to do with it. The idea
+of a world war was out of the question.
+
+It was more interesting now going up the beautiful river, narrowed till
+it really did look like a river. I could see both banks quite plainly.
+My friend had been stationed here a year or two before, and he told me
+that there were many tigers in the woods, and wild boar and bear, but
+not very many wolves. And the tigers were beautiful and fierce and
+dangerous, northern tigers that could stand the rigours of the winter,
+and they did not wait to be attacked, they attacked you. There was a
+German professor in Blagoveschensk a year or two ago who had gone out
+butterfly-hunting, which one would think was a harmless and safe enough
+pastime to satisfy even a conscientious objector, and a tiger had got
+on his tracks and eaten him incontinently. They found only his butterfly
+net and the buttons of his coat when they went in search of him.
+
+The plague had broken out during this officer's stay on the river,
+and the authorities had drawn a cordon of Cossacks round to keep the
+terrified, plague-stricken people from fleeing and spreading the disease
+yet farther, and he pointed out to me the house in which he and two
+comrades had lived. It was merely a roof pitched at a steep angle, and
+the low walls were embedded in earth; only on the side facing the river
+was a little window--it did not open--and a door. A comfortless-looking
+place it was.
+
+“But why the earth piled up against the sides?” I asked. It was
+sprouting grass now and yellow buttercups and looked gay and pretty, the
+only attractive thing about the place.
+
+“Madame, for the cold,” said he, “for the cold.” And remembering
+what they had told me about the cold of Kharbin, what I myself had
+experienced at Manchuria on the way out in much the same latitude as
+this, I could quite well believe that even sunk in the earth this poor
+little hut was not a very good protection against the cold.
+
+The river widened again, winding its way across a plateau. On the
+Chinese side were great oak forests where my Cossack told me were many
+pig that gave them good hunting and many bees, but this was not China
+as I knew it. It was inhabited, he said, by nomad tribes who were great
+horsemen, and we saw occasional villages and--a rare sight--cattle, red
+and white, standing knee-deep in the clear water. Particularly was I
+struck by the cattle, for in all those thousands of miles of travel
+I could count on my fingers--the fingers of one hand would be too
+many--the numbers of times I saw herds of cattle. Once was in Saghalien,
+and twice, I think, here, curiously enough, for the pure Chinese does
+not use milk or butter on the Chinese side of the river. Of course there
+must have been cows somewhere, for there was plenty of milk, cream and
+butter for sale, but they were not in evidence from the river.
+
+On the Russian side the landing-places did not change much, only now
+among the women hawkers were Chinese in belted blouses, green, yellow,
+blue, pink, red; they rioted in colour as they never did in their own
+land, and they all wore sea-boots.
+
+And still over twelve hundred miles from the sea it was a great
+river. And then at last I saw what I had been looking for ever since I
+embarked--fields of corn, corn ripe for the harvest. This was all this
+lovely land needed, a field of corn; but again it was not on the Russian
+side, but on the Chinese.
+
+The spires and domes of Blagoveschensk, the capital of the Amur
+Province, came into view. All along the Russian bank of the river lay
+this city of Eastern Siberia. Its buildings stood out against the clear
+sky behind it, and approaching it was like coming up to a great port.
+The river, I should think, was at least a mile wide. I am not very good
+at judging distances, but it gave me the impression of a very wide river
+set here in the midst of a plain--that is, of course, a plateau, for we
+had come through the hills.
+
+And here my Cossack friend came to bid me good-bye and to impress upon
+me once again to go straight to the Governor for that protection order.
+He was sorry he could not see me through, but his orders were to go
+to Chita as fast as he could, and someone would speak English at
+Blagoveschensk, for it was a great city, and then he asked for the last
+time:
+
+“But, Madame, why does not England come in?”
+
+And then the question that had troubled me so was answered, for as we
+touched the shore men came on board wild with excitement, shouting,
+yelling, telling the war news, that very day, that very moment, it
+seemed, England had come in!
+
+And I appeared to be the only representative of Britain in that corner
+of the world! Never was there such a popular person. The sailor-men who
+worked the ship, the poorer third and fourth class passengers all came
+crowding to look at the Englishwoman. I had only got to say “Anglisky”
+ to have everyone bowing down before me and kissing my hand, and
+my Cossack friend as he bade me good-bye seemed to think it hardly
+necessary to go to the Governor except that a member of a great Allied
+nation ought to be properly received.
+
+But I had been bitten once, and I determined to make things as safe as
+I could for the future. So I got a droshky--a sort of tumble-down
+victoria, held together with pieces of string, and driven by a man who
+might have been Russian or might have been Chinese--and Buchanan and
+I went through the dusty, sunny streets of the capital of the Amur
+Province to the viceregal residence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII--THE UPPER REACHES OF THE AMUR
+
+Blagoveschensk is built on much the same lines as all the other
+Siberian towns that I have seen, a wooden town mostly of one-storeyed
+houses straggling over the plain in wide streets that cut one another
+at right angles. Again it was not at all unlike an Australian town, a
+frontier town to all intents and purposes. The side-roads were deep in
+dust, and the principal shop, a great store, a sort of mild imitation of
+Harrod's, where you could buy everything from a needle to an anchor--I
+bought a dog-collar with a bell for Buchanan--was run by Germans. It was
+a specimen of Germany's success in peaceful penetration. It seemed as if
+she were throwing away the meat for the shadow, for they were interning
+all those assistants--400 of them. Now probably they form the nucleus of
+the Bolshevist force helping Germany.
+
+The Governor's house was on the outskirts of the town, and it was
+thronged with people, men mostly, and Buchanan and I were passed from
+one room to another, evidently by people who had not the faintest
+notion of what we wanted. Everybody said “Bonjour,” and the Governor and
+everybody else kissed my hand. I said I was “Anglisky,” and it seemed
+as if everybody in consequence came to look at me. But it didn't advance
+matters at all.
+
+I began to be hungry and tired, and various people tried questions upon
+me, but nothing definite happened. At last, after about two hours, when
+I was seriously thinking of giving up in despair, a tall, good-looking
+officer in khaki came in. He put his heels together and kissed my hand
+as courteously as the rest had done, and then informed me in excellent
+English that he was the Boundary Commissioner and they had sent for him
+because there was an Englishwoman arrived, and, while very desirous of
+being civil to the representative of their new Ally, nobody could make
+out what on earth she was doing here and what she wanted!
+
+I told my story and it was easy enough then. He admired Buchanan
+properly, drove us both to his house, introduced me to his wife and made
+me out a most gorgeous protection order written in Russian. I have it
+still, but I never had occasion to use it.
+
+Opposite Blagoveschensk is a Chinese town which is called Sakalin,
+though the maps never give it that name, and in Vladivostok and Peking
+they call it various other names. But its right name is Sakalin, I know,
+for I stayed there for the best part of a week.
+
+At Sakalin the head of the Chinese Customs is a Dane, Paul Barentzen,
+and to him and his wife am I greatly beholden. I had been given letters
+to them, and I asked my friend the kindly Russian Boundary Commissioner
+if he knew them. He did. He explained to me I must have a permit to
+cross the river and he would give me one for a week. A week seemed
+overlong, but he explained the Russian Government did not allow free
+traffic across the river and it was just as well to have a permit that
+would cover the whole of my stay. Even now, though I did stay my week, I
+have not fathomed the reason of these elaborate precautions, because
+it must be impossible to guard every little landing-place on the long,
+long, lonely river--there must be hundreds of places where it is easy
+enough to cross--only I suppose every stranger is liable sooner or later
+to be called upon to give an account of himself.
+
+The ferries that crossed the Amur to the Chinese side were great boats
+built to carry a large number of passengers, but the arrangements
+for getting across the river did justice to both Chinese and Russian
+mismanagement. Unlike the efficient Japanese, both these nations,
+it seems to me, arrive at the end in view with the minimum amount of
+trouble to those in authority--that is to say, the maximum of trouble
+to everybody concerned. The ferry-boats owing to local politics had a
+monopoly, and therefore went at their own sweet will just exactly when
+they pleased. There was a large and busy traffic, but the boats
+never went oftener than once an hour, and the approaches were just as
+primitive as they possibly could be. There was one little shed with a
+seat running round where if you were fortunate you could sit down with
+the Chinese hawkers and wait for the arrival of the boat. And when it
+did come the passengers, after a long, long wait, came climbing up the
+rough path up the bank looking as if they had been searched to the
+skin. They let me through on the Chinese side and I found without
+any difficulty my way to Mr Paul Barentzen's house, a two-storeyed,
+comfortable house, and received a warm invitation from him and his wife
+to stay with them.
+
+It was a chance not to be missed. I was getting very weary, I was tired
+in every bone, so a chance like this to stay with kindly people who
+spoke my own language, on the very outskirts of the Chinese Empire, was
+not to be lightly missed, and I accepted with gratitude, a gratitude I
+feel strongly. Mr Barentzen was a Dane, but he spoke as good English as
+I do, and if possible was more British. His wife was English. And that
+night he celebrated the coming into the war of Britain. He asked me
+and the Russian Boundary Commissioner and his wife and another Russian
+gentleman all to dinner in the gardens at Blagoveschensk.
+
+The place was a blaze of light, there were flags and lamps and bands
+everywhere, the whole city was _en fête_ to do honour to the new
+addition to the Grande Entente. When we were tired of walking about the
+gardens we went inside to the principal restaurant that was packed with
+people dining, while on a stage various singers discoursed sweet music
+and waved the flags of the Allies. But the British flag had not got as
+far as the capital of the Amur Province. Indeed much farther west than
+that I found it represented by a red flag with black crosses drawn on
+it, very much at the taste of the artist, and “Anglisky” written boldly
+across it to make up for any deficiency.
+
+Mr Barentzen had foreseen this difficulty and had provided us all with
+nice little silk specimens of the Union Jack to wear pinned on our
+breasts. About ten o'clock we sat down to a most excellent dinner,
+with sturgeon and sour cream and caviare and all the good tilings that
+Eastern Siberia produces. A packed room also dined, while the people on
+the stage sang patriotic songs, and we were all given silk programmes
+as souvenirs. They sang the Belgian, the French and the Russian national
+anthems, and at last we asked for the British.
+
+Very courteously the conductor sent back word to say he was very sorry
+but the British national anthem was also a German hymn and if he dared
+play it the people would tear him to pieces. Remembering my tribulations
+a little way down the river, I quite believed him, so I suggested as an
+alternative _Rule, Britannia_, but alas! he had never heard of it. It
+was a deadlock, and we looked at one another.
+
+Then the tall Russian who was the other guest pushed his chair from
+the table, stood up, and saluting, whistled _Rule, Britannia!_ How the
+people applauded! And so Britain entered the war in Far Eastern Siberia.
+
+We certainly did not go home till morning that day. For that matter, I
+don't think you are supposed to cross the river at night, not ordinary
+folk, Customs officials may have special privileges. At any rate I came
+back to my bunk on the steamer and an anxious little dog just as the
+day was breaking, and next day I crossed to Sakalin and stayed with the
+Barentzens.
+
+The Russians then took so much trouble to keep the Chinese on their own
+side of the river that the Russian officers and civil servants, much to
+the chagrin of their wives, were nowhere in the province allowed to have
+Chinese servants. The fee for a passport had been raised to, I think,
+twelve roubles, so it was no longer worth a Chinaman's while to get one
+to hawk a basket of vegetables, and the mines on the Zeya, a tributary
+of the Amur on the Russian side, had fallen off in their yield because
+cheap labour was no longer possible. The people who did get passports
+were the Chinese prostitutes, though a Chinese woman has not a separate
+identity in China and is not allowed a passport of her own. However,
+there are ways of getting over that. A man applied for a passport and it
+was granted him. He handed it over to the woman for a consideration, and
+on the other side any Chinese document was, as a rule, all one to the
+Russian official. Remembering my own experience and how I had difficulty
+in deciding between my passport and my agreement with my muleteers, I
+could quite believe this story.
+
+Blagoveschensk is a regular frontier town and, according to Mr
+Barentzen, is unsafe. On the first occasion that I crossed the river
+with him I produced a hundred-rouble note. Almost before I had laid it
+down it was snatched up by the Chinese Commissioner of Customs.
+
+“Are you mad?” said he, and he crumpled up the note in his hand and
+held out for my acceptance a rouble. I tried to explain that not having
+change, and finding it a little awkward, I thought that this would be a
+good opportunity to get it, as I felt sure the man at receipt of custom
+must have plenty.
+
+“I dare say,” said my host sarcastically. “I don't want to take away
+anybody's character, but I'll venture to say there are at least ten
+men within hail”--there was a crowd round--“who would joyfully cut your
+throat for ten roubles.”
+
+He enlarged upon that theme later. We used to sit out on the balcony of
+his house looking out, not over the river, but over the town of Sakalin,
+and there used to come in the men from the B.A.T. Factory, a Russian in
+top-boots who spoke excellent English and a young American named Hyde.
+They told me tales, well, something like the stories I used to listen
+to in my childhood's days when we talked about “the breaking out of the
+gold” in Australia, tales of men who had washed much gold and then
+were lured away and murdered for their riches. Certainly they did not
+consider Blagoveschensk or Sakalin towns in which a woman could safely
+wander. In fact all the Siberian towns that they knew came under the
+ban.
+
+But of course mostly we talked about the war and how maddening it was
+only to get scraps of news through the telegraph. The young American was
+keen, I remember. I wonder if he really had patience to wait till his
+country came in. He talked then in the first week of the war of making
+his way back to Canada and seeing if he could enlist there, for even
+then we felt sure that the Outer Dominions would want to help the
+Motherland. And the Germans were round Liège--would they take it?
+Association is a curious thing. Whenever I hear of Liège I cannot
+help thinking, not of the Belgian city, but of a comfortable seat on a
+balcony with the shadows falling and the lights coming out one by one
+on the bath-houses that are dotted about a little town on the very
+outskirts of the Chinese Empire--the lights of the town. There are the
+sounds and the smells of the Chinese town mingling with the voices of
+the talkers and the fragrance of the coffee, and the air is close with
+the warmth of August. There comes back to me the remembrance of the
+keen young American who wanted to fight Germany and the young Russian in
+top-boots who was very much afraid he would only be used to guard German
+prisoners.
+
+Sakalin was cosmopolitan, but it had a leaning toward Russia, hence the
+bath-houses, an idea foreign to Chinese civilisation; and when I got a
+piece of grit in my eye which refused to come out it was to a Japanese
+doctor I went, accompanied by my host's Chinese servant, who, having
+had the trouble stated by me in English, explained it to another man in
+Chinese, who in his turn told the doctor what was the matter in Russian.
+Luckily that man of medicine was very deft and I expect he could have
+managed very well without any explanation at all. I have the greatest
+respect for the Japanese leech I visited in Sakalin.
+
+On the Sunday we had a big picnic. The Russian Boundary Commissioner
+came across with his wife and little girls, Mrs Barentzen took
+her little girl and the Chinese Tao Tai lent us the light of his
+countenance. He was the feature of the entertainment, for he was a very
+big man, both literally and socially, and could not move without a large
+following, so that an escort of mounted police took charge of us. The
+proper portly Chinaman of whom this retinue was in honour spoke no
+English, but smiled at me benevolently, and wore a petticoat and a
+Russian military cap! The picnic was by a little brook about seven miles
+from the town and I shall always remember it because of the lush grass,
+waist-high, and the lovely flowers. I had looked at the Siberian flowers
+from the steamer when they were ungetatable, I had gathered them with
+joy in Saghalien, and now here they were again just to my hand. In June
+they told me there were abundant lilies of the valley, and I regretted
+I had not been there in June. Truly I feel it would be a delight to
+see lilies of the valley growing wild, but as it was, the flowers were
+beautiful enough, and there were heaps of them. There were very fine
+Canterbury bells, a glorious violet flower and magnificent white
+poppies. Never have I gathered more lovely flowers, never before have I
+seen them growing wild in such amazing abundance. No one is more truly
+artistic than the average Chinese, and I think the Tao Tai must have
+enjoyed himself, though it is against the canons of good taste in China
+to look about you.
+
+Presently I was asking the chief magistrate's good offices for Buchanan,
+for he, my treasured Buchanan, was lost. In the Barentzens' house
+there was, of course, as in all well-regulated Chinese houses run by
+foreigners, a bathroom attached to every bedroom, and when I wanted a
+bath the servants filled with warm water the half of a large barrel,
+which made a very excellent bath-tub. And having bathed myself, I bathed
+Buchanan, whose white coat got very dirty in the dusty Chinese streets.
+He ran away downstairs and I lingered for a moment to put on my dress,
+and when I came down he was gone. High and low I hunted; I went up and
+down the street calling his name, and I knew he would have answered, he
+always did, had he been within hearing. All the Customs men were turned
+out and I went to the Chinese Tao Tai, who promptly put on all the
+police. But Buchanan was gone for a night and I was in despair. Mr
+Barentzen's head boy shook his head.
+
+“Master saying,” said he, “mus' get back that dog.” So I realised I was
+making a fuss, but for the moment I did not care. The Tao Tai gave it
+as his opinion that he had not been stolen. There were many little dogs
+like him in the town, said he, no one would steal one, which only shows
+a Chinese magistrate may not be infallible, for I was sure Buchanan
+would not stay away from me of his own free will.
+
+And then at last the servants turned up triumphant, Buchanan, in the
+arms of the head boy, wild with delight at seeing his mistress again.
+The police had searched everywhere, but the servants, with their
+master's injunction in mind and my reward to be earned, had made further
+inquiries and found that a little boy had been seen taking the dog into
+a certain house occupied by an official, the man who was responsible for
+the cleaning of the streets. This was the first intimation I ever had
+that the Chinese did clean their streets: I had thought that they
+left that job to the “wonks” and the scavenger crows. The police made
+inquiries. No, there was no little dog there. But the servants--wise
+Chinese servants--made friends with the people round, and they said:
+“Watch. There is a dog.” So a junior servant was put to watch, and when
+the gate of the compound was opened he stole in, and there was poor
+little James Buchanan tied up to a post. That servant seized the dog and
+fled home in triumph.
+
+The T'ai T'ai (the official's wife), said the people round, had wanted
+the pretty little dog.
+
+I was so delighted to get my little friend back that I should have been
+content to leave things there. Not so Mr Barentzen. He sent for that
+official, and there in his drawing-room he and I interviewed a portly
+Chinese gentleman in grey petticoats, a long pigtail, a little black
+silk cap and the tips of the silver shields that encased the long nails
+of his little fingers just showing beyond his voluminous sleeves.
+
+“An officious servant,” he said. He was extremely sorry the Commissioner
+of Customs and his friend had been put to so much inconvenience. The
+servant had already been dismissed. And so we bowed him out, face was
+saved, and all parties were satisfied. It was very Chinese. And yet we
+knew, and we knew that he must have known we knew, that it was really
+his wife who received the little dog that everyone concerned must have
+realised was valuable and must have been stolen.
+
+Here in Sakai in I heard about the doings of the only wolves that came
+into my wanderings. In the little river harbour were many small steamers
+flying the Russian flag and loading great barrels with the ends painted
+bright red. These barrels, explained the Customs Commissioner, contained
+spirits which the Russians were desirous of smuggling into Russian
+territory. The Chinese had not the least objection to their leaving
+China after they had paid export duty. They were taken up and down the
+river and finally landed at some small port whence they were smuggled
+across. The trade was a very big one. The men engaged in it were known
+as the wolves of the Amur and were usually Caucasians and Jews. In
+1913, the last year of which I have statistics, no less than twenty-five
+thousand pounds export was paid on these spirits, and in the years
+before it used to be greater. I wonder whether with the relaxing of
+discipline consequent on the war and the revolution the receipts for the
+export have not gone up.
+
+The wide river was beautiful here, and Blagovesehensk, lying across the
+water, with its spires and domes, all the outlines softened, standing
+against the evening sky, might have been some town of pictured Italy. I
+am glad I have seen it. I dare not expiate on Mr Barentzen's kindness.
+My drastic critic, drastic and so invaluable, says that I have already
+overloaded this book with tales of people's kindness, so I can only say
+I stayed there a week and then took passage on the smaller steamer which
+was bound up the Amur and the Shilka to Stretensk and the railway.
+
+I had, however, one regret. I had inadvertently taken my plates and
+films on which I had all my pictures of the Amur and Saghalien across
+the Sakalin and I could not take them back again. The Russian rule was
+very strict. No photographs were allowed. Everything crossing the river
+must be examined. Now to examine my undeveloped films and plates would
+be to ruin them. I interviewed a Japanese photographer on the Sakalin
+side, but he appeared to be a very tyro in the art of developing, and
+finally very reluctantly I decided to leave them for Mr Barentzen to
+send home when he got the chance. He did not get that chance till the
+middle of 1916, and I regret to state that when we came to develop them
+every single one of them was ruined.
+
+The steamer that I embarked on now was considerably smaller, for the
+river was narrowing. The deck that ran round the cabins was only thirty
+inches wide and crowded with children; worse, when James Buchanan and
+I went for our daily promenades we found the way disputed by women,
+mothers, or nursemaids, I know not whieh, propelling the children who
+could not walk in wheeled chairs, and they thought Buchanan had been
+brought there for their special benefit, a view which the gentleman
+himself did not share. However, he was my only means of communication
+with them, for they had no English or French.
+
+But I was lucky, for one of the mates, brass-bound and in spotless
+white, like so many Russians had served in British ships and spoke
+English very well with a slight Scots accent. With him I used to hold
+daily conversations and always we discussed the war. But he shook his
+head over it. It was not possible to get much news at the little wayside
+places at which we stopped. There were no papers--the Russian peasant
+under the beneficent rule of the Tsar was not encouraged to learn to
+read--and for his part he, the mate, put no faith in the telegrams. All
+would be well, of course, but we must wait till we came to some large
+and influential place for news upon which we could rely.
+
+But that large and influential place was long in coming, in fact I may
+say it never materialised while I was on the river. There are at least
+eleven towns marked on the way between Blagoveschensk and Stretensk, but
+even the town at the junction where the Aigun and the Shilka merge into
+the Amur is but a tiny frontier village, and the rest as I know the
+river banks are only a few log huts inhabited by peasants who apparently
+keep guard over and supply the stacks of wood needed by the steamers.
+
+It was a lovely river now going north, north and then west, or rather
+we went north, the river flowed the other way, it was narrower and wound
+between wooded hills and it was very lonely. There were occasional, very
+occasional, little settlements, on the Chinese side I do not remember
+even a hut, though it was a lovely green land and the river, clear as
+crystal, reflected on its breast the trees and rocks among which we made
+our way.
+
+Once on the Russian side we landed from a boat a woman with two little
+children and innumerable bundles. They had been down, I suppose, to
+visit the centre of civilisation at Blagoveschensk and now were
+coming home. In the dusk of the evening we left her there looking down
+thoughtfully at her encumbrances, not a living creature in sight, not
+a sign of man's handiwork anywhere. I hoped there were no tigers about,
+but she has always lived in my memory as an unfinished story. I suppose
+we all of us have those unfinished stories in our lives, not stories
+left unfinished because they are so long drawn out we could not possibly
+wait for developments, but stories that must finish suddenly, only
+we are withdrawn. Once I looked from a railway carriage window in the
+Midlands and I saw a bull chasing a woman; she was running, screaming
+for all she was worth, for a fence, but whether she reached it or not
+I have no means of knowing. Another time I saw also from a railway
+carriage window two men, mother naked, chasing each other across the
+greensward and left them there because the train went on. Of course I
+have often enough seen men without clothes in the tropics, but in the
+heart of England they are out of the picture and want explaining.
+That explanation I shall never get. Nor is it likely I shall ever know
+whether that unknown woman and her little children ever reached their
+unknown home.
+
+We were luxuriously fed upon that little steamer. The Russian tea with
+lemon and the bread and butter were delicious, and we had plenty of
+cream, though gone was the red caviare that farther east had been so
+common. But I was tired and at last feeling lonely. I began to count the
+days till I should reach home.
+
+On the Amur the weather had been gorgeous, but when we entered the
+Shilka we were north of 53° again and well into the mountains, and
+the next morning I awoke to a grey day. It rained and it rained, not
+tropical rain, but soft, penetrating rain; the fir-clad hills on either
+side were veiled in a silvery mist. The river wound so that as we looked
+ahead we seemed to be sailing straight into the hills. The way looked
+blocked with hills, sometimes all mist-covered, sometimes with the green
+showing alluringly through the mist, and occasionally, when the mist
+lifted and the sun came out, in all the gullies would linger little grey
+cloudlets, as if caught before they could get away and waiting there
+screened by the hills till the mist should fall again. Occasionally
+there were lonely houses, still more occasionally little settlements of
+log huts with painted windows hermetically sealed, and once or twice a
+field of corn ripe for the harvest but drowned by the persistent rain.
+But the air was soft and delicious, divine; only in the cabins on board
+the crowded steamer was it pestilential. The mate told me how, six weeks
+before, on his last trip up, an Englishman had come selling reapers and
+binders, and he thought that now I had made my appearance the English
+were rather crowding the Amur.
+
+Sometimes when we stopped the passengers went ashore and went berrying,
+returning with great branches laden with fruit, and I and Buchanan too
+walked a little way, keeping the steamer 'well in sight, and rejoicing
+in the flowers and the green and the rich, fresh smell of moist earth. I
+do not know that ever in my life do I remember enjoying rain so much.
+Of course in my youth in Australia I had always welcomed the life-giving
+rain, but thirteen years in England, where I yearned for the sunshine,
+had somehow dimmed those memories, and now once again the rain on the
+river brought me joy. The mist was a thing of beauty, and when a ray of
+sunshine found its way into a green, mist-veiled valley, illuminating
+its lovely loneliness, then indeed I knew that the earth was the Lord's
+and the fullness thereof.
+
+Sometimes we passed rafts upon the river. They were logs bound together
+in great parallelograms and worked with twelve long sweeps fixed at each
+end. Twelve men at least went to each raft, and there were small houses
+built of grass and canvas and wood. They were taking the wood down to
+Nikolayeusk to be shipped to Shanghai and other parts of the world for
+furniture, for these great forests of birch and elm and fir and oak must
+be a mine of wealth to their owners. I do not know whether the wood is
+cut on any system, and whether the presence of these great rafts had
+anything to do with the many dead trees I saw in the forests, their
+white stems standing up ghostlike against the green hill-side.
+
+I have no record of these lovely places. My camera was locked away now
+in my suit-case, for it was war, and Russia, rightly, would allow no
+photographs.
+
+Seven days after we left Blagoveschensk we reached Stretensk and I came
+in contact for the first time with the World's War.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV--MOBILISING IN EASTERN SIBERIA
+
+At Stretensk I awakened to the fact that I was actually in Siberia,
+nay, that I had travelled over about two thousand miles of Siberia, that
+dark and gloomy land across which--I believed in my youth--tramped long
+lines of prisoners in chains, sometimes amidst the snow and ice of a
+bitter winter, sometimes with the fierce sun beating down upon them, but
+always hopeless, always hungry, weary, heartbroken, a sacrifice to the
+desire for political liberty that was implanted in the hearts of an
+enslaved people.
+
+It is an extraordinary thing that, though for many years I had believed
+Saghalien was a terrible island, a sort of inferno for political
+prisoners, something like Van Diemen's Land used to be in the old
+convict days one hundred and ten years ago, only that in the Asiatic
+island the conditions were still more cruel and it was hopeless to think
+of escaping, while I was actually in that beautiful island I was so
+taken up with its charm, it was so extremely unlike the place of which I
+had a picture in my mind's eye, that I hardly connected the two. All
+up the Amur river was a new land, a land crying out for pioneers,
+pastoralists and farmers, so that the thought that was uppermost in my
+mind was of the contrast between it and the old land of China, where I
+had spent so long a time; but at Stretensk I suddenly remembered
+this was Siberia, the very heart of Siberia, where men had suffered
+unutterable things, might still be so suffering for all I knew, and I
+stepped off the steamer and prepared to explore, with a feeling that at
+any moment I might come across the heavy logs that made up the walls of
+a prison, might see the armed sentries, clad to the eyes in furs, who
+tramped amidst the snow. But this was August and it was fiercely hot, so
+the snow and the sentries clad in furs were ruled out, and presently
+as Buchanan and I walked about the town even the lonely prison built of
+logs had to go too. There may have been a prison, probably there was,
+but it did not dominate the picture. Not here should I find the Siberia
+I had been familiar with from my youth up.
+
+Stretensk is like all other Siberian towns that I have seen. The houses
+are mostly of one storey and of wood, of logs; the streets are wide and
+straight, cutting each other at right angles, and the whole is flung out
+upon the plain; it is really, I think, rather high among the mountains,
+but you do not get the sensation of hills as you do from the steamer.
+
+The rain had cleared away and it was very hot, though we had started
+out very early because I was determined to go west if possible that very
+afternoon; We went gingerly because the dangers of Siberian towns
+for one who looked fairly prosperous had been impressed upon me at
+Blagoveschensk, and I hesitated about going far from the steamer, where
+the mate could speak English. Still we went. I was not going to miss the
+Siberia of my dreams if I could help it.
+
+I saw something more wonderful than the Siberia of my dreams.
+
+In consequence of the ceaseless rain the roads between the log-houses
+with their painted windows were knee-deep in mud, a quagmire that looked
+impassable. In the air was the sound of martial music, and up and
+down in what would have been reckless fashion but for the restraining
+glue-like mud galloped officers and their orderlies. It was the war, the
+first I had seen of it. The war was taking the place of the political
+exiles, and instead of seeing Siberia as a background for the exiles as
+I had dreamed of it for so many years, I saw it busy with preparations
+for war. The roads were like sloughs out of which it would have been
+impossible to get had I ever ventured in. Naturally I did not venture,
+but took all sorts of long rounds to get to the places I wanted to
+reach. It is not a bad way of seeing a town.
+
+The heavily built houses, built to defy the Siberian winter, might have
+come out of Nikolayeusk or Kharbarosvk, and though the sun poured down
+out of a cloudless sky, and I was gasping in a thin Shantung silk, they
+were hermetically sealed, and the cotton wool between the double windows
+was decorated with the usual gay ribbons. I dare say they were cool
+enough inside, but they must have been intolerably stuffy. The sidewalks
+too had dried quickly in the fierce sunshine. They were the usual
+Siberian sidewalks, with long lines of planks like flooring. Had
+they ever been trodden, I wonder, by the forced emigrant looking with
+hopeless longing back to the West. Finally we wandered into the gardens,
+where I doubt not, judging by the little tables and many seats,
+there was the usual gay throng at night, but now early in the morning
+everything looked dishevelled, and I could not find anyone to supply me
+with the cool drink of which I stood so badly in need, and at last we
+made our way back to the steamer, where the mate, having got over the
+struggle of arrival--for this was the farthest the steamer went--kindly
+found time enough to give himself to my affairs. I wanted a droshky to
+take me to the train, and as nowhere about had I seen any signs of a
+railway station I wanted to know where it was.
+
+The mate laughed and pointed far away down the river on the other side.
+I really ought to have known my Siberia better by now. Railways are not
+constructed for the convenience of the townsfolk. There was nothing
+else for it. I had to get there somehow, and as the train left somewhere
+between five and six, about noon, with the mate's assistance, I engaged
+a droshky. The carriages that are doing a last stage in this country
+are not quite so elderly here as they are in Saghalien, but that is
+not saying much for them. The one the mate engaged for me had a sturdy
+little ungroomed horse in the shafts and another running in a trace
+alongside. On the seat was packed all my baggage, two small suit-cases
+and a large canvas sack into which I dumped rugs, cushions and all odds
+and ends, including my precious kettles, and the rough little unkempt
+horses towed us down through the sea of mud to the ferry, and then I saw
+the scene had indeed shifted. It was not long lines of exiles bearing
+chains I met, that was all in the past, at least for an outsider like
+me, but here in the heart of Asia Russia in her might was collecting her
+forces for a spring. The great flat ferry was crossing and recrossing,
+and down the swamp that courtesy called a road came endless streams of
+square khaki-coloured carts, driven by men in flat caps and belted
+khaki blouses, big fair men, often giants with red, sun-tanned faces and
+lint-white hair, men who shouted and laughed and sang and threw up their
+caps, who were sober as judges and yet were wild with excitement; they
+were going to the war. I could not understand one word they said, but
+there is no mistaking gladness, and these men were delighted with their
+lot. I wondered was it a case of the prisoner freed or was it that life
+under the old regime in a Russian village was dull to monotony and to
+these recruits was coming the chance of their lifetime.
+
+Some will never come east again, never whether in love or hate will they
+see the steppes and the flowers and the golden sunshine and the snow of
+Siberia, they have left their bones on those battle-fields; but some, I
+hope, will live to see the regeneration of Russia, when every man shall
+have a chance of freedom and happiness. I suppose this revolution was in
+the air as cart after cart drove on to the ferry and the men yelled and
+shouted in their excitement. A small company of men who were going east
+looked at them tolerantly--I'm sure it was tolerantly--and then they too
+caught the infection and yelled in chorus.
+
+I watched it all with interest.
+
+Then half-an-hour passed and still they came; an hour, and I grew a
+little worried, for they were still pouring over. Two hours--I comforted
+myself, the train did not start till late in the afternoon--three horns,
+and there was no cessation in the stream. And of course I could make no
+one understand. It looked as if I might wait here all night. At last
+a man who was manifestly an officer came galloping along and him I
+addressed in French.
+
+“Is it possible to cross on the ferry?”
+
+He was very courteous.
+
+“It is not possible to cross, Madame. It is not possible. The soldiers
+come first.”
+
+I took another look at the good-humoured, strapping, fair-haired
+soldiers in khaki, with their khaki-coloured carts. The ferry crossing
+was laden with them, hundreds of others were waiting, among them numbers
+of country people. They had bundles and laden baskets and looked people
+who had shopped and wanted to go home again. Were these exiles? I did
+not know. They looked simple peasants. Whoever they were, there did not
+seem much chance for them or me, and I said the one Russian word I
+knew, “steamer,” and indicated that I wanted to go back there. Much as
+I wanted to go home, tired as I was of travelling, I decided I would
+postpone my railway journey for a day and take advantage of that
+comfortable Russian custom that allows you to live on a steamer for
+two days while she is in port. The _ishvornik_ nodded, back we went
+helter-skelter to the wharf and--the steamer was gone!
+
+I have had some bad moments in my life, but that one stands out still.
+Why, I hardly know, for sitting here in my garden it does not seem a
+very terrible thing. I had plenty of money in my pocket and there were
+hotels in the town. But no! more than ever, safe here in Kent, do I
+dread a Siberian hotel! Then I was distinctly afraid. I might so easily
+have disappeared and no one would have asked questions for months to
+come. I tried to tell the boy I wanted to go to one of those dreaded
+hotels--I felt I would have to risk it, for I certainly could not spend
+the night in a droshky--and I could not make him understand. Perhaps, as
+in Saghalien, there were no hotels to accommodate a woman of my class,
+or perhaps, as is most probable, they were all full of soldiers, anyhow
+he only looked at me blankly, and Buchanan and I looked at each other.
+Buchanan anyhow had no fears. He was quite sure I could take care of
+him. I looked at the boy again and then, as if he had suddenly had an
+inspiration, he drove me back to the place opposite the ferry whence we
+had come. The soldiers were there still, crowds and crowds of them,
+with their little carts and horses, and they were amusing themselves by
+stealing each other's fodder; the ferry had come back, but there were no
+soldiers on it, only the country people were crowding down. I had been
+forbidden to go upon it, and never should I have dreamt of disobeying
+orders, but my driver had different views. He waited till no officer was
+looking, seized my baggage and flung it down on the great ferry right
+in front of the military stores, beside the refreshment stall where they
+were selling sausages and bread in round rings such as peasants eat, and
+tea and lemonade. I had not expected to find so commonplace a thing on
+a river in Siberia. Now I had sat in that dilapidated carriage for
+over four hours and I was weary to death, also I could not afford to be
+parted from my luggage, so I put Buchanan under my arm--it was too muddy
+for him to walk--and followed as fast as I could. My good angel prompted
+me to pay that driver well. I paid him twice what the mate had said it
+ought to cost me if I waited half-a-day, and never have I laid out money
+to better advantage. He turned to a big man who was standing by, a man
+in sea-boots, a red belted blouse and the tall black Astrakhan cap that
+I have always associated in my own mind 'with Circassians, and spoke to
+him, saying “Anglisky.” Evidently he said it might be worth his while to
+look after me. I don't know whether this gentleman was a Caucasian, one
+of the “wolves of the Amur,” but whoever he was, he was a very hefty and
+capable individual, with a very clear idea of what a foreign lady ought
+to do, and he promptly constituted himself my guardian.
+
+After all, the world, take it on the whole, is a very kindly, honest
+place. So many times have I been stranded when I might quite easily have
+been stripped of everything, and always some good Samaritan has come
+to my aid, and the reward, though I did my best, has never been
+commensurate with the services rendered.
+
+The ferry across the Shilka at Stretensk is a great affair, like a young
+paddock afloat, and beside the horses and carts upon it were a number
+of country people with their bundles. I sat there a little uncomfortably
+because I did not know what would happen, only I was determined not to
+be parted from my baggage. Presently the huge float drifted off, amidst
+wild shouts and yells. When I was there, a great deal in Russia was
+done to the accompaniment of much shouting, and I rather fancy that this
+ferry was going off on an unauthorised jaunt of its own. The Shilka is a
+broad river here, a fortnight's steamer journey from its mouth, but the
+ferry came to a full stop in the middle of the stream and a motor boat
+which did not look as if it could hold half the people came alongside.
+
+“Skurry! Skurry!” was the cry, and the people began leaping overboard
+into the boat. The military were getting rid summarily of their civilian
+crowd. In a few seconds that boat was packed to the gunwales and I was
+looking over at it. I had Buchanan under my arm; he was always a good
+little dog at critical moments, understanding it was his part to keep
+quiet and give as little trouble as possible. In my other hand I had my
+despatch-case, and, being anything but acrobatic by temperament, I felt
+it was hopeless to think of getting into it. If the penalty for not
+doing so had been death, I do not think I could have managed it.
+However, I didn't have a say in the matter. The big Russian in the red
+blouse picked me up and dropped me, little dog, box and all, into the
+boat, right on top of the people already there. First I was on top, and
+then, still hanging on to my little dog, I slipped down a little, but my
+feet found no foothold; I was wedged between the screaming people. After
+me, with my luggage on his shoulder, came my guardian, and he somehow
+seemed to find a very precarious foothold on the gunwale, and he made me
+understand he wanted two roubles for our fares. If he had asked for ten
+he would have got it, but how I managed to get at my money to this day I
+do not know. The boat rocked and swayed in a most alarming manner, and I
+thought to myself, Well, we are on top now, but presently the boat will
+upset and then we shall certainly be underneath. I gathered that the
+passengers were disputing with the boatman as to the price to be paid
+for the passage across, though this was unwise, for the ferry was
+threatening momentarily to crush us against the rocky bank. He was
+asking sixty kopecks--a little over a shilling--and with one voice they
+declared that forty was enough. Considering the crowd, forty I should
+have thought would have paid him excellently. That I had given my
+guardian more did not trouble me, because any extra he earned was more
+than justified, for one thing was certain, I could never have tackled
+the job by myself.
+
+Just as I was growing desperate and Buchanan began to mention that he
+was on the verge of suffocation the difficulty of the fares was settled
+and we made for the bank. But we did not go to the usual landing-stage;
+that, I presume, was forbidden as sacred to the soldiers, and we drew up
+against a steep, high bank faced with granite.
+
+“Skurry! Skurry!” And more than ever was haste necessary, for it
+looked as if the great ferry would certainly crush us. The people began
+scrambling up. But I was helpless. Whatever happened, I knew I could
+never climb that wall. I could only clutch my little dog and await
+events. My guardian was quite equal to the situation. The boat had
+cleared a little and there was room to move, and, dropping the baggage,
+he picked me up like a baby and tossed me, dog and all, up on to the
+bank above. Whether that boat got clear away from the ferry I do not
+know. When I visited the place next morning there were no remains, so
+I presume she did, but at the time I was giving all my attention to
+catching a train.
+
+My guardian engaged a boy to carry the lighter baggage, and shouldering
+the rest himself, he took me by the arm and fairly raeed me up the steep
+incline to the railway station that was a seething mass of khaki-clad
+men.
+
+“Billet! Billet!” said he, raping the sweat from his streaming face
+and making a way for me among the thronging recruits. There was a train
+coming in and he evidently intended I should catch it.
+
+Such a crowd it was, and in the railway station confusion was worse
+confounded. It was packed with people--people of the poorer class--and
+with soldiers, and everyone was giving his opinion of things in general
+at the top of his voice. My stalwart guardian elbowed a way to the
+pigeon-hole, still crying, “Billet! Billet!” and I, seeing I wanted
+a ticket to Petrograd, produced a hundred-rouble note. The man inside
+pushed it away with contumely and declined it in various unknown
+tongues. I offered it again, and again it was thrust rudely aside, my
+guardian becoming vehement in his protests, though what he said I have
+not the faintest idea. I offered it a third time, then a man standing
+beside me whisked it away and whisked me away too.
+
+“Madame, are you mad?” he asked, as Mr Barentzen had asked over a
+week before, but he spoke in French, very Russian French. And then he
+proceeded to explain volubly that all around were thieves, robbers and
+assassins--oh! the land of suffering exiles--the mobilisation had called
+them up, and any one of them would cut my throat for a good deal less
+than a ten-pound note. And he promptly shoved the offending cash in his
+pocket. It was the most high-handed proceeding I have ever taken
+part in, and I looked at him in astonishment. He was a man in a green
+uniform, wearing a military cap with pipings of white and magenta, and
+the white and magenta were repeated on the coat and trousers. On the
+whole, the effect was reassuring. A gentleman so attired was really too
+conspicuous to be engaged in any very nefarious occupation.
+
+He proceeded to explain that by that train I could not go.
+
+It was reserved for the troops. They were turning out the people already
+in it. This in a measure explained the bedlam in the station. The people
+who did not want to be landed here and the people who wanted to get away
+were comparing notes, and there were so many of them they had to do it
+at the top of their voices.
+
+“When does the next train go?” I asked.
+
+My new friend looked dubious. “Possibly to-morrow night,” said he. That
+was cheering.
+
+“And where is there a hotel?”
+
+He pointed across the river to Stretensk.
+
+“Are there none this side?”
+
+“No, Madame, not one.”
+
+I debated. Cross that river again after all it had cost me to get here I
+could not.
+
+“But where can I stay?”
+
+He looked round as if he were offering palatial quarters.
+
+“Here, Madame, here.”
+
+In the railway station; there was nothing else for it; and in that
+railway station I waited till the train came in the following evening.
+
+That little matter settled, I turned to reward my first friend for his
+efforts on my behalf, and I felt five roubles was little enough. My new
+friend was very scornful, a rouble was ample, he considered. He had my
+ten-pound note in his pocket, and I am afraid I was very conscious
+that he had not yet proved himself, whereas the other man had done me
+yeoman's service, and never have I parted with ten shillings with more
+satisfaction. They were certainly earned.
+
+After, I set myself to make the best of the situation. The station was
+crowded with all sorts and conditions of people, and a forlorn crowd
+they looked, and curious was the flotsam and jetsam that were their
+belongings. Of course there was the usual travellers' baggage, but
+there were other things too I did not expect to come across in a railway
+station in Siberia. There was a sewing-machine; there was the trumpet
+part of a gramophone; there was the back of a piano with all the wires
+showing; there was a dressmaker's stand, the stuffed form of a woman,
+looking forlorn and out of place among the bundles of the soldiers.
+
+But the people accepted it as all in the day's work, watched the
+soldiers getting into the carriages from which they were debarred, and
+waved their hands and cheered them, though the first train that started
+for anywhere did not leave till one-fifteen a.m. next morning. They
+were content that the soldiers should be served first. They
+settled themselves in little companies on the open platform, in the
+refreshment-room, in the waiting-rooms, fathers, mothers, children and
+dogs, and they solaced themselves with kettles of tea, black bread and
+sausages.
+
+It was all so different from what I had expected, so very different, but
+the first effect was to bring home to me forcibly the fact that there
+was a great struggle going on in the West, and Eastern Siberia was being
+drawn into the whirlpool, sending her best, whether they were the exiles
+of my dreams or the thieves and robbers my newest friend had called
+them, to help in the struggle! To wait a night and day in a railway
+station was surely a little sacrifice to what some must make. How
+cheerfully and patiently that Siberian crowd waited! There were no
+complaints, no moans, only here and there a woman buried her head in her
+shawl and wept for her nearest and dearest, gone to the war, gone out
+into the unknown, and she might never see him again, might never even
+know what became of him. Truly “They also serve who only stand and
+wait.”
+
+I went into the refreshment-room to get some food, and had soup with
+sour cream in it, and ate chicken and bread and butter and cucumber and
+drank _kvass_ as a change from the eternal tea. I watched the people
+on the platform and as the shades of night fell began to wonder where I
+should sleep. I would have chosen the platform, but it looked as if
+it might rain, so I went into the ladies' waiting-room, dragged a
+seat across the open window, and spread out my rugs and cushions and
+established myself there. I wanted to have first right to that window,
+for the night up in the hills here was chilly and I felt sure somebody
+would come in and want to shut it. My intuitions were correct. Buchanan
+and I kept that open window against a crowd. Everybody who came in--and
+the room was soon packed--wanted to shut it. They stretched over me and
+I arose from my slumbers and protested. For, in addition to a crowd,
+the sanitary arrangements were abominable, and what the atmosphere would
+have been like with the window shut I tremble to think. I remembered the
+tales of the pestilential resthouses into which the travelling exiles
+had been thrust, and I was thankful for that window, thankful too that
+it was summer-time, for in winter I suppose we would have had to shut
+it. At last one woman pulled at my rugs and said--though I could not
+understand her language her meaning was plain enough--that it was all
+very well for me, I had plenty of rugs, it was they who had nothing.
+It was a fair complaint, so with many qualms I shared my rugs and the
+summer night slowly wore to morning.
+
+And morning brought its own difficulties. Russian washing arrangements
+to me are always difficult. I had met them first in Kharbin in the house
+of Mr Poland. I wrestled with the same thing in the house of the Chief
+of Police in Saghalien, and I met it in an aggravated form here in the
+railway station waiting-room. A Russian basin has not a plug--it is
+supposed to be cleaner to wash in running water--and the tap is a twirly
+affair with two spouts, and on pressing a little lever water gushes
+out of both and, theoretically, you may direct it where you please.
+Practically I found that while I was directing one stream of water down
+on to my hands, the other hit me in the eye or the ear, and when I got
+that right the first took advantage of inattention and deluged me round
+the waist. It may be my inexperience, but I do not like Russian basins.
+It was running water with a vengeance, it all ran away.
+
+However, I did the best I could, and after, as my face was a little
+rough and sore from the hot sun of the day before, I took out a jar of
+hazeline cream and began to rub it on my cheeks. This proceeding aroused
+intense interest in the women around. What they imagined the cream was
+for I don't know, but one and all they came and begged some, and as long
+as that pot held out every woman within range had hazeline cream daubed
+on her weather-beaten cheeks, and they omitted to rub it off, apparently
+considering it ornamental. However, hazeline cream is a pleasant
+preparation.
+
+Having dressed, Buchanan and I had the long day before us, and I did not
+dare leave the railway station to explore because I was uneasy about my
+luggage. I had had it put in the corner of the refreshment-room and as
+far as I could see no one was responsible for it, and as people were
+coming and going the livelong day I felt bound to keep an eye upon it.
+I also awaited with a good deal of interest the gentleman with the
+variegated uniform and my ten-pound note. He came at last, and explained
+in French that he had got the change but he could not give it to me till
+the train came in because of the thieves and robbers, as if he would
+insist upon tearing the veil of romance I had mapped round Siberia. And
+God forgive me that I doubted the honesty of a very kindly, courteous
+gentleman.
+
+It was a long, long day because there was really nothing to do save to
+walk about for Buchanan's benefit, and I diversified things by taking
+odd meals in the refreshment-room whenever I felt I really must do
+something. But I was very tired. I began to feel I had been travelling
+too long, and I really think if it had not been for Buchanan's sympathy
+I should have wept. No one seemed at all certain when the next train
+west might be expected, opinions, judging by fingers pointing at the
+clock, varying between two o'clock in the afternoon and three o'clock
+next morning. However, as the evening shadows were beginning to fall
+a train did come in, and my friend in uniform, suddenly appearing,
+declared it was the western train. Taking me by the hand, he led me into
+a carriage and, shutting the door and drawing down the blinds, placed in
+my hands change for my ten-pound note.
+
+“Guard your purse, Madame,” said he, “guard your purse. There are
+thieves and robbers everywhere!”
+
+So all the way across Siberia had I been warned of the unsafe condition
+of the country. At Kharbin, at Nikolayeusk, at Blagoveschensk men
+whose good faith I could not doubt assured me that a ten-pound note and
+helplessness was quite likely to spell a sudden and ignominious end to
+my career, and this was in the days when no one doubted the power of the
+Tsar, a bitter commentary surely on an autocracy. What the condition of
+Siberia must be now, with rival factions fighting up and down the land,
+and released German prisoners throwing the weight of their strength in
+with the Bolshevists, I tremble to think.
+
+When he made sure I had carefully hidden my money and thoroughly
+realised the gravity of the situation, my friend offered to get my
+ticket, a second-class ticket, he suggested. I demurred. I am not rich
+and am not above saving my pennies, but a first-class ticket was so
+cheap, and ensured so much more privacy, that a second-class was an
+economy I did not feel inclined to make. He pointed round the carriage
+in which we were seated. Was this not good enough for anyone? It was.
+I had to admit it, and the argument was clinched by the fact that there
+was not a first-class carriage on the train. The ticket only cost about
+five pounds and another pound bought a ticket for Buchanan. We got
+in--my friend in need got in with me, that misjudged friend; it seemed
+he was the stationmaster at a little place a little way down the
+line--and we were fairly off on our road to the West.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV--ON A RUSSIAN MILITARY TRAIN
+
+I was in the train at last, fairly on my way home, and I was glad. But
+I wasn't glad for very long. I began to wish myself back in the railway
+station at Stretensk, where at least I had fresh air. At first I had the
+window open and a corner seat. There are only two people on a seat in a
+Russian long-distance train, because when night falls they let down the
+seat above, which makes a bunk for the second person. But I was
+second class and my compartment opened without a door into the other
+compartments in the carriage, also two more bunks appeared crossways,
+and they were all filled with people. We were four women, two men who
+smoked, a baby who cried, and my little dog. I spread out my rugs and
+cushions, and when I wanted the window open the majority were against
+me. Not only was the window shut, but every ventilating arrangement was
+tightly closed also, and presently the atmosphere was pestilential.
+I grew desperate. I wandered out of the carriage and got on to the
+platform at the end, where the cold wind--for all it was August--cut me
+like a knife. The people objected to that cold wind coming in, and the
+next time I wandered out for a breath of fresh air I found the door
+barred and no prayers of mine would open it. In that carriage the people
+were packed like sardines, but though I was three-quarters suffocated
+no one else seemed at all the worse. I couldn't have looked at breakfast
+next morning, but the rest of the company preened themselves and fed
+cheerfully from the baskets they carried. Then at last I found a student
+going to a Western Siberian university who spoke a little French and
+through him I told the authorities that if I could not be transferred
+to a first-class carriage I was to be left behind at the next station. I
+had spent a night in a station and I knew all about it; it wasn't nice,
+but it was infinitely preferable to a night in a crowded second-class
+carriage.
+
+After a little while the train master came and with the aid of the
+student informed me that there would be a first-class carriage a little
+farther on and if there was room I should go in it, also we would know
+in an hour or so.
+
+So I bore up, and at a little town in the hills I was taken to a
+first-class compartment. There were three--that is, six bunks--making
+up half of a second-class carriage, and they were most luxurious, with
+mirrors and washing arrangements complete. The one I entered was already
+occupied by a very stout woman who, though we did not know any tongue in
+common, made me understand she was going to a place we would reach next
+morning for an operation, and she apologised--most unnecessarily but
+most courteously--for making me take the top bunk. She had a big Irish
+setter with her whom she called “Box”--“Anglisky,” as she said--and
+“Box” was by no means as courteous and friendly as his mistress, and not
+only objected to Buchanan's presence but said so in no measured terms.
+I had to keep my little dog up on the top bunk all the time, where
+he peered over and whimpered protestingly at intervals. There was one
+drawback, and so kind and hospitable was my stable companion that I
+hardly liked to mention it, but the atmosphere in that compartment you
+could have cut with a knife. Wildly I endeavoured to open the windows,
+and she looked at me in astonishment. But I was so vehement that the
+student was once more brought along to interpret, and then everybody
+took a turn at trying to open that window. I must say I think it was
+exceedingly kind and hospitable of them, for these people certainly
+shrank from the dangers of a draught quite as much as I did from the
+stuffiness of a shut window. But it was all to no purpose. That window
+had evidently never been opened since the carriage was made and it held
+on gallantly to the position it had taken up. They consulted together,
+and at length the student turned to me:
+
+“Calm yourself, Madame, calm yourself; a man will come with an
+instrument.” And three stations farther down the line a man did appear
+with an instrument and opened that window, and I drew in deep breaths of
+exceedingly dusty fresh air.
+
+The lady in possession and I shared our breakfast. She made the tea, and
+she also cleaned out the kettle by the simple process of emptying the
+tea leaves into the wash-hand basin. That, as far as I saw, was the
+only use she made of the excellent washing arrangements supplied by
+the railway. But it is not for me to carp, she was so kind, and bravely
+stood dusty wind blowing through the compartment all night just because
+I did not like stuffiness. And when she was gone, O luxury! Buchanan and
+I had the carriage to ourselves all the way to Irkutsk.
+
+And this was Siberia. We were going West, slowly it is true, but with
+wonderful swiftness I felt when I remembered--and how should I not
+remember every moment of the time?--that this was the great and
+sorrowful road along which the exiles used to march, that the summer
+sun would scorch them, these great plains would be snow-covered and the
+biting, bitter wind would freeze them long before they reached their
+destination. I looked ahead into the West longingly; but I was going
+there, would be there in less than a fortnight at the most, while their
+reluctant feet had taken them slowly, the days stretched into weeks, the
+weeks into months, and they were still tramping east into an exile that
+for all they knew would be lifelong. Ah! but this road must have been
+watered with blood and tears. Every river, whether they were ferried
+over it or went across on the ice, must have seemed an added barrier to
+the man or woman thinking of escape; every forest would mean for them
+either shelter or danger, possibly both, for I had not forgotten the
+tigers of the Amur and the bears and wolves that are farther west. And
+yet the steppes, those hopeless plains, must have afforded still less
+chance of escape.
+
+Oh! my early ideas were right after all. Nature was jailer enough here
+in Siberia. Men did escape, we know, but many more must have perished
+in the attempt, and many, many must have resigned themselves to their
+bitter fate, for surely all the forces of earth and air and sky had
+ranged themselves on the side of the Tsar. This beautiful country, and
+men had marched along it in chains!
+
+At Chita, greatly to my surprise, my _sotnik_ of Cossacks joined the
+train, and we greeted eaeh other as old friends. Indeed I was pleased to
+see his smiling face again, and Buchanan benefited largely, for many
+a time when I was not able to take him out for a little run our friend
+came along and did it for us.
+
+The platforms at Siberian stations are short and this troop train,
+packed with soldiers, was long, so that many a time our carriage never
+drew up at the platform at all. This meant that the carriage was usually
+five feet from the ground, and often more. I am a little woman and
+five feet was all I could manage, when it was more it was beyond me. Of
+course I could have dropped down, but it would have been impossible to
+haul myself up again, to say nothing of getting Buchanan on board. A
+Russian post train--and this troop train was managed to all intents and
+purposes as a post train--stops at stations along the line so that the
+passengers may get food, and five minutes before it starts it rings a
+“Make ready” bell one minute before it rings a second bell, “Take your
+seats,” and with a third bell off the train goes. And it would have gone
+inexorably even though I, having climbed down, had been unable to climb
+up again. Deeply grateful then were Buehanan and I to the _sotnik_ of
+Cossacks, who recognised our limitations and never forgot us.
+
+I liked these Russian post trains far better than the train _de luxe_,
+with its crowd and its comforts and its cosmopolitan atmosphere. A
+Russian post train in those days had an atmosphere of its own. It was
+also much cheaper. From Stretensk to Petrograd, including Buehanan, the
+cost was a little over nine pounds for the tickets, and I bought my food
+by the way. It was excellent and very cheap. All the things I had bought
+in Kharbin, especially the kettles, came into use once more. The moment
+the train stopped out tumbled the soldiers, crowds and crowds of them,
+and raced for the provision stalls and for the large boilers full of
+water that are a feature of every Russian station on the overland line.
+These boilers are always enclosed in a building just outside the railway
+station, and the spouts for the boiling water, two, three and sometimes
+four in a row, come out through the walls. Beside every spout is an iron
+handle which, being pulled, brings the boiling water gushing out.
+Russia even in those days before the revolution struck me as strangely
+democratic, for the soldiers, the non-commissioned officers, the
+officers and everyone else on the train mingled in the struggle for hot
+water. I could never have got mine filled, but my Cossack friend always
+remembered me and if he did not come himself sent someone to get my
+kettles. Indeed everyone vied in being kind to the Englishwoman, to
+show, I think, their good will to the only representative of the Allied
+nation on the train.
+
+It was at breakfast-time one warm morning I first made the acquaintance
+of “that very great officer,” as the others called him, the captain of
+the _Askold_. He was in full naval uniform, and at that time I was not
+accustomed to seeing naval officers in uniform outside their ships, and
+he was racing along the platform, a little teapot in one hand, intent
+on filling it with hot water to make coffee. He was not ashamed to
+pause and come to the assistance of a foreigner whom he considered the
+peasants were shamefully overcharging. They actually wanted her to pay a
+farthing a piece for their largest cucumbers! He spoke French and so we
+were able to communicate, and he was kind enough to take an interest in
+me and declare that he himself would provide me with cucumbers. He got
+me four large ones and when I wanted to repay him he laughed and said
+it was hardly necessary as they only cost a halfpenny! He had the
+compartment next to mine and that morning he sent me in a glass of
+coffee--we didn't run to cups on that train. Excellent coffee it was
+too. Indeed I was overwhelmed with provisions. One woman does not want
+very much to eat, but unless I supplied myself liberally and made it
+patent to all that I had enough and more than enough I was sure to be
+supplied by my neighbours out of friendship for my nation. From the
+Cossack officer, from a Hussar officer and his wife who had come up
+from Ugra in Mongolia, and from the captain of the _Askold_ I was always
+receiving presents. Chickens, smoked fish--very greasy, in a sheet of
+paper, eaten raw and very excellent--raspberries and blue berries, to
+say nothing of cucumbers, were rained upon me.
+
+At some stations there was a buffet and little tables set about
+where the first and second class passengers could sit down and have
+_déjeuner_, or dinner, but oftener, especially in the East, we all
+dashed out, first, second and third class, and at little stalls presided
+over by men with kerchiefs on their heads and sturdy bare feet, women
+that were a joy to me after the effete women of China, bought what we
+wanted, took it back with us into the carriages and there ate it. I had
+all my table things in a basket, including a little saucer for Buchanan.
+It was an exceedingly economical arrangement, and I have seldom enjoyed
+food more. The bread and butter was excellent. You could buy fine white
+bread, and bread of varying quality to the coarse black bread eaten by
+the peasant, and I am bound to say I very much like fine white bread.
+There was delicious cream; there were raspberries and blue berries to
+be bought for a trifle; there were lemons for the tea; there was German
+beet sugar; there were roast chickens at sixpence apiece, little pasties
+very excellent for twopence-halfpenny, and rapchicks, a delicious little
+bird a little larger than a partridge, could be bought for fivepence,
+and sometimes there was plenty of honey. Milk, if a bottle were
+provided, could be had for a penny-farthing a quart, and my neighbours
+soon saw that I did not commit the extravagance of paying three times as
+much for it, which was what it cost if you bought the bottle.
+
+The English, they said, were very rich! and they were confirmed in their
+belief when they found how I bought milk. Hard-boiled eggs were to be
+had in any quantity, two and sometimes three for a penny-farthing. I am
+reckoning the kopeck as a farthing. These were first-class prices, the
+soldiers bought much more cheaply. Enough meat to last a man a day could
+be bought for a penny-farthing, and good meat too--such meat nowadays I
+should pay at least five shillings for.
+
+Was all this abundance because the exiles had tramped wearily across the
+steppes? How much hand had they had in the settling of the country? I
+asked myself the question many times, but nowhere found an answer. The
+stations were generally crowded, but the country round was as empty as
+it had been along the Amur.
+
+And the train went steadily on. Very slowly though--we only went at the
+rate of three hundred versts a day, why, I do not know. There we stuck
+at platforms where there was nothing to do but walk up and down and look
+at the parallel rails coming out of the East on the horizon and running
+away into the West on the horizon again.
+
+“We shall never arrive,” I said impatiently.
+
+“Ah! Madame, we arrive, we arrive,” said the Hussar officer, and he
+spoke a little sadly. And then I remembered that for him arrival meant
+parting with his comely young wife and his little son. They had with
+them a fox-terrier whom I used to ask into my compartment to play with
+Buchanan, and they called him “Sport.”
+
+“An English name,” they said smilingly. If ever I have a fox-terrier
+I shall call him “Sport,” in kindly remembrance of the owners of the
+little friend I made on that long, long journey across the Old World.
+And the Hussar officer's wife, I put it on record, liked fresh air as
+much as I did myself. As I walked up and down the train, even though
+it was warm summer weather, I always knew our two carriages because in
+spite of the dust we had our windows open. The rest of the passengers
+shut theirs most carefully. The second class were packed, and the third
+class were simply on top of one another--I should not think they could
+have inserted another baby--and the reek that came from the open doors
+and that hung about the people that came out of them was disgusting.
+
+I used to ask my Cossack friend to tea sometimes--I could always buy
+cakes by the wayside--and he was the only person I ever met who took
+salt with his tea. He assured me the Mongolians always did so, but I
+must say though I have tried tea in many ways I don't like that custom.
+
+In Kobdo, ten thousand feet among the mountains in the west of Mongolia,
+was a great lama, and the Cossack was full of this man's prophecy.
+
+Three emperors, said the lama, would fight. One would be overwhelmed and
+utterly destroyed, the other would lose immense sums of money, and the
+third would have great glory.
+
+“The Tsar, Madame,” said my friend, “the Tsar, of course, is the third.”
+
+I wonder what part he took in the revolution. He was a Balt, a man from
+the Baltic Provinces, heart and soul with the Poles, and he did not even
+call himself a Russian. Well, the Tsar has been overwhelmed, but which
+is the one who is to have great glory? After all, the present is no very
+great time for kings and emperors. I am certainly not taking any stock
+in them as a whole. Perhaps that lama meant the President of the United
+States!
+
+We went round Lake Baikal, and the Holy Sea, that I had seen before one
+hard plain of glittering ice, lay glittering now, beautiful still in the
+August sunshine. There were white sails on it and a steamer or two, and
+men were feverishly working at alterations on the railway. The Angara
+ran swiftly, a mighty river, and we steamed along it into the Irkutsk
+station, which is by no means Irkutsk, for the town is--Russian
+fashion--four miles away on the other side of the river.
+
+At Irkutsk it seemed to me we began to be faintly Western again. And the
+exiles who had come so far I suppose abandoned hope here. All that they
+loved--all their life--lay behind. I should have found it hard to turn
+back and go east myself now. What must that facing east have been for
+them?
+
+They turned us out of the train, and Buchanan and I were ruefully
+surveying our possessions, heaped upon the platform, wondering how on
+earth we were to get them taken to the cloakroom and how we should
+get them out again supposing they were taken, when the captain of the
+_Askold_ appeared with a porter.
+
+“Would Madame permit,” he asked, not as if he were conferring a favour,
+“that her luggage be put with mine in the cloakroom?”
+
+Madame could have hugged him. Already the dusk was falling, the
+soft, warm dusk, and the people were hastening to the town or to the
+refreshment-rooms. There would be no train that night, said my kind
+friend, some time in the morning perhaps, but certainly not that night.
+I sighed. Again I was adrift, and it was not a comfortable feeling.
+
+If Madame desired to dine---- Madame did desire to dine.
+
+Then if Madame permits---- Of course Madame permitted.
+
+She was most grateful. And we dined together at the same table outside
+the station restaurant--I like that fashion of dining outside--under the
+brilliant glare of the electric light. He arranged everything for me,
+even to getting some supper for Buchanan. And I forgot the exiles who
+had haunted me, forgot this was Siberia. Here in the restaurant, save
+for the Tartar waiters, it might almost have been France.
+
+“Perhaps,” said my companion courteously as we were having coffee,
+“Madame would care to come to my hotel. I could interpret for her and
+here no one speaks anything but Russian.”
+
+Again I could have hugged him. I intimated my dressing-bag was in the
+cloakroom, but he smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“For one night!”
+
+He himself had nothing, so there and then we got into one of the usual
+decrepit landaus and went to the town, to Irkutsk on the Angara, in the
+heart of Siberia. If in my girlish days when I studied the atlas of the
+world so carefully I could have known that one day I should be driving
+into Irkutsk, that map would have been glorified for ever and a day;
+but I could never have realised, never, that it would be set in a summer
+land, warm as my own country, and that I should feel it a great step on
+towards the civilisation of the West.
+
+It was night, and here and there clustering electric lights glittered
+like diamonds, making darker the spaces in between. In the morning I saw
+that the capital of Eastern Siberia, like all the other towns of that
+country, is a regular frontier town. There were the same wide streets
+grass-grown at the edges, great houses and small houses side by side,
+and empty spaces where as yet there were no houses. We went to the
+Central Hotel.
+
+“I do not go to an expensive hotel,” my companion told me, “this is a
+moderate one.”
+
+But if it were moderate it certainly was a very large and nice hotel.
+Russian hotels do not as a rule provide food, the restaurant is
+generally separate, but we had already dined. That naval officer made
+all arrangements for me. He even explained to an astonished chamber-maid
+with her hair done in two long plaits that I must have all the windows
+open and when I tried for a bath did his best for me. But again, he
+explained, Russians as a rule go to a bath-house, and there was only
+one bathroom in this hotel; it had been engaged for two hours by a
+gentleman, and he thought, seeing I should have to start early in the
+morning, it might be rather late for me to have a bath then, but if I
+liked in the morning it would be at my service.
+
+If anyone had told me in the old days that going to Irkutsk I should be
+deeply interested in a bath!
+
+I engaged that bath for an hour in the morning as that seemed to be the
+correct thing to do. Then I went to bed and heartily envied Buchanan,
+who did not have to bother about toilet arrangements.
+
+In the morning early there was a knock at the door and when I said “Come
+in,” half expecting tea, there was my naval officer in full uniform
+smilingly declaring my bath was ready, he had paid the bill, and I could
+pay him back when we were on board the train. The chamber-maid, with
+her hair still done in two plaits--I rather fancy she had slept in
+them--conducted me to the bathroom, and I pass over the difficulty of
+doing without brush and comb and tooth-brush. But I washed the dust
+out of my hair, and when I was as tidy as I could manage I joined
+the captain of the _Askold_ and we drove back through the town to the
+railway station.
+
+The station was a surging mass of people all talking at once, and all,
+I suppose, objurgating the railway management, but we two had breakfast
+together in the pleasant sunlight. We had fresh rolls and butter and
+coffee and cream and honey--I ask no better breakfast when these things
+are good--and meanwhile people, officials, came and went, discussing
+evidently some important matter with my friend. He departed for a
+moment, and then the others that I had known came up, my Cossack friend
+and the Hussar officer, and told me that the outgoing train was a
+military train, it would be impossible for a woman, a civilian and a
+foreigner at that, to go on it. I said the captain of the _Askold_ had
+assured me I could, and they shook their heads and then said hopefully,
+well, he was a very great officer, the captain of a ship, and I realised
+that no lesser authority could possibly have managed this thing for
+me. And even he was doubtful, for when he came back and resumed his
+interrupted breakfast he said:
+
+“The train is full. The military authorities will not allow you on
+board.”
+
+That really did seem to me tragedy at the moment. I forgot the sorrowful
+people who would gladly enough have stayed their journey at Irkutsk. But
+their faces were set East. I forgot that after all a day or two out of a
+life would not matter very much, or rather I think I hated to part from
+these kindly friends I had made on the train. I suppose I looked my
+disappointment.
+
+“Wait. Wait. It is not yet finished,” said my friend kindly. “They give
+me two compartments”--I felt then he was indeed “a very great officer,”
+ for the people were packed in that train, tier upon tier, like herrings
+in a barrel--“and I cannot sleep in four bunks. It is ridiculous.”
+
+That may have been, but it was kindness itself of him to establish a
+stranger in one of those compartments. It was most comfortable, and
+Buchanan and I being established, and my luggage having come safely to
+hand, I proceeded to make the most of the brush and comb that had come
+once more into my possession, and I felt that the world was a very good
+place indeed as we sped across the green plain in the sunny morning. I
+could hardly believe that this goodly land was the one to which I had
+always been accustomed to think men went as to a living death.
+
+And then I forgot other folks' troubles in my own, for envious eyes were
+cast upon the spare bunk in my compartment. No one would have dreamt of
+interfering had the sailor insisted upon having all four for himself,
+but since he had parted with the rights of one compartment to a foreign
+woman, it was evident that other people, crowded out, began to think
+of their own comfort. Various people interviewed me. I am afraid
+I understood thoroughly what they wanted, but I did not understand
+Russian, and I made the most of that disability. Also all my friends who
+spoke French kept out of the way, so I suppose they did not wish to
+aid and abet in upsetting my comfort. At last a most extraordinary
+individual with a handkerchief tied round his neck in lieu of a collar
+and a little tourist cap on the back of his head was brought, and he
+informed me in French that there was a doctor in the hospital section
+of the train who had not been in bed for a week, they could not turn
+the soldiers out, they must have rest, would I allow him to sleep in my
+compartment?
+
+“Madame,” he said, and the officials standing round emphasised the
+remark, if it needed emphasis, “it is war time. The train is for the
+soldiers.”
+
+Certainly I was here on sufferance. They had a right to turn me out if
+they liked. So the doctor came and turned in in the top bunk, and his
+long-drawn snores took away from my sense of privacy.
+
+I don't think he liked it very much, for presently he was succeeded by
+a train official, very drunk, though I am bound to say he was the only
+drunken man I saw on all that long train journey from Stretensk to
+Petrograd. It was a little unlucky we were at such close quarters.
+Everyone, too, was very apologetic.
+
+He was a good fellow. It was an unfortunate accident and he would be
+very much ashamed.
+
+I suppose he was, for the next day he too disappeared and his place
+was taken by a professor from one of the Siberian universities who was
+seeking radium. He was a nice old gentleman who had learned English
+but had never had the chance of hearing it spoken. Where he went in the
+daytime I do not know, probably to a friend's compartment, and Buchanan
+and I had the place to ourselves. We could and did invite the Cossack
+officer and the Hussar officer and his belongings and the naval man to
+tea, and we had great games with the little fox-terrier “Sport” from
+next door, but when night fell the professor turned up and notified me
+he was about to go to bed. Then he retired and I went to bed first on
+the lower seat. He knocked, came in and climbed up to his bunk, and
+we discoursed on the affairs of the world, I correcting his curious
+pronunciation. He really was a man of the world; he was the sort of man
+I had expected to meet in Siberia, only I had never imagined him as free
+and sharing a railway compartment with me. I should have expected to
+find him toiling across the plains with the chains that bound his ankles
+hitched to his belt for convenience of carrying. But he looked and
+he spoke as any other cultivated old gentleman might have spoken,
+and looking back I see that his views of the war, given in the end of
+August, 1914, were quite the soundest I have ever listened to.
+
+“The Allies will win,” he used to say, “yes, they will win.” And he
+shook his head. “But it will be a long war, and the place will be
+drenched in blood first. Two years, three years, I think four years.” I
+wonder if he foresaw the chaos that would fall upon Russia.
+
+These views were very different from those held by the other men.
+
+“Madame,” the Cossack would say, laughing, “do you know a good hotel in
+Berlin?”
+
+I looked up surprised. “Because,” he went on, “I engage a room there. We
+go to Berlin!”
+
+“Peace dictated at Berlin,” said they all again and again, “peace
+dictated at Berlin.” This was during the first onward rush of the
+Russians. Then there came a setback, two towns were taken and the
+Germans demanded an indemnity of twenty thousand pounds apiece.
+
+“Very well,” said the Cossack grimly, and the Hussar nodded his head.
+“They have set the tune. Now we know what to ask.”
+
+But the professor looked grave. “Many towns will fall,” said he.
+
+Another thing that struck me was the friendly relations of the officers
+with those under them. As the only representative of their Western
+Ally on the train, I was something of a curiosity, and soldiers and
+non-commissioned officers liked to make excuse to look at me. I only
+wished I had been a little smarter and better-looking for the sake of my
+country, for I had had no new clothes since the end of 1912. However, I
+had to make the best of it, and the men came to me on the platforms or
+to my compartment without fear. If by chance they knew a little French
+they spoke to me, helped out by their officers if their vocabulary ran
+short.
+
+“Madame, Madame,” said an old non-commissioned officer, “would you be
+so good as to tell me how to pronounce the English 'zee'? I teach myself
+French, now I teach myself English.”
+
+Well, they had all been good to me and I had no means of repaying their
+kindness save vicariously, so I took him in hand and with the aid of a
+booklet published by the Wagons Lit Train du Luxe describing the journey
+across Siberia we wrestled with the difficulties of the English “th.”
+
+It was a long long journey. We crept across the great steppes, we
+lingered by stations, sometimes there were lakes, sometimes great
+rivers, but always the great plains. Far as the eye could see rolled the
+extent of green under the clear blue sky; often we saw herds of cattle
+and mobs of horses, and again and again companies of soldiers, and
+yet so vast is the country the sensation left upon the stranger is of
+emptiness, of a rich and fertile land crying out for inhabitants. I
+looked at it from the train with eager eyes, but I began to understand
+how there had grown up in my mind the picture of this lovely land as
+a dark and terrible place. To the prisoners who came here this plain,
+whether it were green and smiling, or whether it were deep in white
+snow, could only have been the barrier that cut them off from home and
+hope, from all that made life dear. How could they take up their broken
+lives here, they who for the most part were dwellers in the cities?
+
+Here was a regiment of soldiers; it was nothing, nothing, set in the
+vast plain. The buttercups and daisies and purple vetches were trampled
+down for a great space where men had been exercising or camping; but it
+was nothing. There were wide stretches of country where the cattle were
+peacefully feeding and where the flowers turned up smiling faces to the
+blue sky for miles and miles, making me forget that this had been the
+land of shadowed lives in the past and that away in the West men were
+fighting for their very existence, locked in a death-grip such as the
+world has never before seen.
+
+It was well there was something to look out upon, for that train was
+horrid. I realised something of the horrors of the post-houses in which
+the prisoners had been locked at night. We could get good food at every
+station, but in the train we were too close on the ground and the
+reek of us went up to heaven. I felt as if the atmosphere of the train
+desecrated the fresh, clear air of the great plain over which we passed,
+as if we must breed disease. The journey seemed interminable, and what
+I should do when it ended I did not know, for opinion was fairly
+unanimous: they were sure I could not get to England!
+
+With many apologies the captain of the _Askold_ permitted himself to ask
+how I was off for money. I was a total stranger, met on a train, and a
+foreigner! I told him I had a little over forty pounds and if that were
+not enough I had thought to be able to send to London for more.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+“I doubt if even letters can get through.”
+
+And I sighed that then I did not know what I should do, for I had no
+friends in Petrograd.
+
+“Pardon, Madame,” said he remonstrantly, and he gave me the address of
+his wife and daughters. He told me to go and see them; he assured me
+that everybody in Russia now wanted to learn English, that I would have
+no difficulty in getting pupils and so do myself very comfortably “till
+we make a passage to England again.”
+
+Just before we reached Cheliabynsk he came and told me that he had heard
+there was a west-bound express with one place vacant, a ship awaited him
+and speed was very necessary, therefore he was leaving this train. Then
+at one of the greater stopping-places he bowed low over my hand, bade me
+farewell, made a dash and caught the express. I have never either seen
+or heard of him since, but he remains in my mind as one of the very
+kindly men I have met on my way through the world.
+
+At Cheliabynsk we spent the livelong day, for there the main part of the
+train went on to Moscow with the soldiers, while we who wanted to go
+to Petrograd caught a train in the evening. I was glad to find that the
+Hussar officer and the Cossack were both bound for Petrograd. And here
+we came in touch once more with the West. There was a bookstall, and
+though I could not buy an English paper I could and did buy an English
+book, one of John Galsworthy's in the Tauchnitz edition. It was a great
+delight to come in contact once more with something I could read. There
+was a big refreshment-room here with all manner of delectable things to
+eat, only we had passed beyond the sturgeon, and caviare was no longer
+to be had save at a price that was prohibitive to a woman who had had as
+much as she could eat and who anyhow was saving her pennies in case of
+contingencies.
+
+But one thing I did have, and that was a bath. In fact the whole train
+bathed. Near the station was a long row of bath-houses, but each one
+I visited--and they all seemed unpleasant places--was crowded with
+soldiers. After a third attempt to get taken in my Cossack friend met
+me and was shocked at the idea of my going to such a place; if I would
+trust him he would take me to a proper place after _déjeuner_.
+
+Naturally I trusted him gladly, and we got into one of the usual
+broken-down landaus and drove away to the other side of the town to a
+row of quite superior bath-houses. My friend declared he knew the
+place well, he had been stationed here in “the last revolution,” as if
+revolutions came as regularly as the seasons.
+
+It was a gorgeous bath-house. That young man bought me soap; he bought
+me some sort of loofah for scrubbing; he escorted me to three large
+rooms which I engaged for a couple of hours and, much to the surprise of
+the people, having had the windows opened, he left me, assuring me that
+the carriage should return for me in two hours. There was plenty of hot
+water, plenty of cold, and any amount of towels, and both Buchanan and
+I washed the grime of the journey from us and then rested on the sofa in
+the retiring-room. I read John Galsworthy and punctually to the moment
+I descended to the street, clean and refreshed, and there our carriage
+awaited us.
+
+We bought water-melons on our way back to the train, for the streets
+were heaped up with the great dark green melons with the pink flesh that
+I had not seen since I left Australia. Autumn was on the land and here
+were watermelons proof thereof.
+
+Ever as we went west the cornfields increased. Most of the wheat was cut
+and standing in golden-brown stooks waiting to be garnered by old men
+and boys and sturdy country women and those who were left of her young
+men, for Russia had by no means called out her last lines in 1914. There
+were still great patches of forest, primeval forest, of dense fir, and I
+remembered that here must be the haunts of the wolves and the bear with
+which I had always associated Russia. More, though why I know not,
+my mind flew back to the times of the nomad hordes who, coming out of
+Central Asia, imposed their rule upon the fair-haired Aryan race that
+had settled upon the northern plain of Europe. Those forests for me
+spelled Romance; they took away from the feeling of commonplaceness that
+the breaking down of my preconceived ideas of Siberia had engendered.
+Almost anything might happen in a land that held such forests, and such
+rivers. Not that I was allowed to see much of the rivers now. Someone
+always came in and drew down the blinds in my compartment--I had one to
+myself since leaving Cheliabynsk--and told me I must not go out on
+the platform whenever we crossed a bridge. They were evidently taking
+precautions against spying though they were too polite to say so. There
+were big towns with stations packed to overflowing. At Perm we met some
+German prisoners of war, and there were soldiers, soldiers everywhere,
+and at last one day in the first week in September we steamed into
+Petrograd.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI--THE WAYS OF THE FINNS
+
+It was evening and we had arrived at Petrograd. For many years I
+had wanted to see the northern capital. I had thought of it as a town
+planned by a genius, slowly growing amid surrounding swamps, and in
+my childhood I had pictured that genius as steadily working as a
+carpenter--in a white paper cap--having always in his mind's eye the
+town that was to grow on the Baltic Sea, the seaport that should give
+his country free access to the civilisation of the West. He was a great
+hero of mine because of his efficiency; after all I see no reason why I
+should dethrone him now that I realise he had the faults of his time and
+his position.
+
+But in life I find things always come differently to what one pictures
+them. The little necessities of life will crop up and must be attended
+to first and foremost. The first thought that came to me was that I had
+to part with the friends I had made on the journey. Right away from the
+borders of China the Cossack officer and I had travelled together; I had
+met the Hussar officer and his wife soon after I had joined the train,
+and we seemed to have come out of one world into another together. It
+made a bond, and I for one was sorry to part. They were going to their
+own friends or to a Russian hotel, and the general consensus of opinion
+was that I would be more comfortable in a hotel where there were English
+or at least French people.
+
+“Go to the Grand Hotel, Madame,” suggested the Hussar officer's wife,
+she who spoke perfect French.
+
+So Buchanan and I loaded our belongings on to a droshky that looked
+smart after the ones I had been accustomed to in Asia, bade farewell to
+our friends “till after the war”--the Cossack was coming to England then
+“to buy a dog”--and drove to the Grand Hotel.
+
+The Grand Hotel spoke perfect English, looked at me and--declined to
+take me because I had a little dog. I was very much astonished,
+but clearly I couldn't abandon Buehanan, so I went on to the Hotel
+d'Angleterre, which also declined. I went from hotel to hotel and
+they all said the same thing, they could not think of taking in anyone
+accompanied by a dog. It was growing dark--it was dark, and after a
+fortnight on the train I was weary to death. How could I think of the
+glories of the Russian capital when I was wondering where I could find
+a resting-place? I couldn't turn Buchanan adrift in the streets, I
+couldn't camp in the streets myself, and the hotel porters who could
+speak English had no suggestions to make as to where I could bestow my
+little friend in safety. Six hotels we went to and everyone was firm and
+polite, they could not take a dog. At last a hotel porter had a great
+idea, the Hotel Astoria would take dogs.
+
+“Why on earth didn't someone tell me so before?” I said, and promptly
+went to the Hotel Astoria. It was rather like going to the Hotel Ritz,
+and though I should like to stay at the Hotel Ritz I would not recommend
+it to anyone who was fearing an unlimited stay in the country, who had
+only forty pounds to her credit and was not at all sure she could get
+any more. Still the Hotel Astoria took little dogs, actually welcomed
+them, and charged four shillings a day for their keep. I forgot Peter
+the Great and the building of the capital of Russia, revelling in the
+comforts of a delightful room all mirrors, of a bathroom attached and
+a dinner that it was worth coming half across the world to meet. My
+spirits rose and I began to be quite sure that all difficulties would
+pass away, I should be able to get back to England and there would be
+no need for that desperate economy. It was delightful to go to bed in
+a still bed between clean white sheets, to listen to the rain upon the
+window and to know that for this night at least all was well. I had seen
+no English papers; I knew nothing about the war, and it is a fact one's
+own comfort is very apt to colour one's views of life. Buchanan agreed
+with me this was a very pleasant world--as a rule I do find the world
+pleasant--it was impossible anything could go wrong in it.
+
+And the next day I received a snub--a snub from my own people.
+
+I went to the British Consulate full of confidence. Every foreigner I
+had met all across the world had been so pleased to see me, had been so
+courteous and kind, had never counted the cost when I wanted help, so
+that I don't know what I didn't expect from my own countrymen. I looked
+forward very mueh to meeting them. And the young gentleman in office
+snubbed me properly. He wasn't wanting any truck with foolish women who
+crossed continents; he didn't care one scrap whether I had come from
+Saghalien or just walked down the Nevsky Prospekt; I was a nuisance
+anyway, his manner gave me to understand, since I disturbed his peace
+and quiet, and the sooner I took myself out of the country the better
+he would be pleased. He just condescended to explain where I could get a
+ticket straight through to Newcastle-on-Tyne; people were doing it every
+day; he didn't know anything about the war, and his manner gave me to
+understand that it wasn't his business to supply travellers with news.
+I walked out of that office with all the jauntiness taken out of me.
+Possibly, I have thought since, he was depressed at the news from
+France, perhaps someone was jeering him because he had not joined up, or
+else he had wanted to join up and was not allowed. It was unlucky that
+my first Englishman after so long should be such a churlish specimen. I
+felt that unless my necessity was dire indeed I should not apply to the
+British Consulate for help in an emergency. I did not recover till I
+went to the company who sold through tickets, across Finland, across
+Sweden and Norway, across the North Sea to Newcastle-on-Tyne. There I
+bought a ticket for fifteen pounds which was to carry me the whole
+way. It was a Swedish company, I think, and the office was packed with
+people, Poles, Letts, Lithuanians and Russians, who were naturalised
+Americans and who wanted to go home. Everybody took the deepest interest
+in Buchanan, so much interest that the man in charge asked me if I was
+going to take him, I said “Of eourse,” and he shook his head.
+
+“You will never get him through Sweden. They are most strict.”
+
+Poor Buchanan! Despair seized me. Having been to the British Consulate,
+I knew it was no use seeking advice there. I suppose I was too tired or
+I should have remembered that Americans are always kind and helpful and
+gone there or even dared the British Embassy. But these ideas occurred
+to me too late.
+
+You may travel the world over and the places you visit will often remain
+in your mind as pleasant or otherwise not because of any of their own
+attributes, but because of the emotions you have suffered in them. Here
+was I in St Petrograd, and instead of exploring streets and canals and
+cathedrals and palaces my whole thoughts were occupied with the fate
+of my little dog. I “had given my heart to a dog to tear” and I was
+suffering in consequence. All the while I was in Petrograd--and I stayed
+there three days looking for a way out--my thoughts were given to James
+Buchanan. I discussed the matter with the authorities in the hotel who
+could speak English, and finally Buchanan and I made a peregrination to
+the Swedish Consulate. And though the Swedish Consulate was a deal more
+civil and more interested in me and my doings than the English, in
+the matter of a dog, even a nice little dog like Buchanan, they were
+firm--through Sweden he could not go.
+
+I read in the paper the other day that the world might be divided into
+men and women and people-who-hate-dogs, and these last will wonder what
+I was making such a fuss about, but the men and women will understand.
+My dear little companion and friend had made the lonely places pleasant
+for me and I could not get him out of the country save by turning round
+and going back across Europe, Asia and America!
+
+I went back to the place where I had bought my ticket. They also were
+sympathetic. Everyone in the office was interested in the tribulations
+of the cheerful little black and white dog who sat on the counter and
+wagged a friendly tail. I had many offers to take care of him for me,
+and the consensus of opinion was that he might be smuggled! And many
+tales were told me of dogs taken across the borders in overcoats and
+muffs, or drugged in baskets.
+
+That last appealed to me. Buchanan was just too big to cany hidden
+easily, but he might be drugged and covered up in a basket. I went back
+to the Astoria and sent for a vet. Also I bought a highly ornamental
+basket. The porter thought I was cruel. He thought I might leave the dog
+with him till after the war, but he translated the vet's opinion for me,
+and the vet gave me some sulphonal. He assured me the little dog would
+be all right, and I tried to put worrying thoughts away from me and to
+see Petrograd, the capital of the Tsars.
+
+But I had seen too much. There comes a moment, however keen you are on
+seeing the world, when you want to see no new thing, when you want only
+to close your eyes and rest, and I had arrived at that moment. The wide
+and busy streets intersected with canals, the broad expanse of the Neva,
+the cathedral and the Winter Palace were nothing to me; even the wrecked
+German Embassy did not stir me.
+
+I was glad then when the fourth morning found me on the Finland station.
+The Finland station was crowded and the Finland train, with only second
+and third class carnages and bound for Raumo, was crowded also, and it
+appeared it did not know its way very well as the line had only just
+been opened to meet the traffic west diverted from Germany. A fortnight
+before no one had ever heard of Raumo.
+
+And now for me the whole outlook was changed. This was no military
+train, packed as it was, but a train of men, women and children
+struggling to get out of the country, the flotsam and jetsam that come
+to the surface at the beginning of a war. And I heard again for the
+first time since I left Tientsin, worlds away, English spoken that was
+not addressed to me. To be sure it was English with an accent, the very
+peculiar accent that belongs to Russians, Lithuanians, Poles and Letts
+Americanised, and with it mingled the nasal tones of a young musician
+from Central Russia who spoke the language of his adopted land with a
+most exaggerated accent and the leisurely, cultivated tones of Oxford.
+
+I had come from the East to the West!
+
+The carriage was open from end to end and they would not allow Buchanan
+to enter it. He, poor little man, in the gorgeous basket that he
+objected to strongly, was banished to the luggage-van, and because the
+carriage was hot, and also because I felt he would be lonely separated
+from me, I went there and kept him company.
+
+And in that van I met another Russian naval officer and deepened my
+obligations to the Russian navy. He sat down beside me on one of the
+boxes, a tall, broad-shouldered, fair man who looked like a Viking with
+his moustache shaved off. I found to my joy he spoke English, and I
+confided to him my difficulties with regard to breakfast. I was so old
+a traveller by now I had learned the wisdom of considering carefully the
+commissariat. He was going to the forts on the Finnish border of which
+he was in command, but before he left the train we would arrive at a
+refreshment-room, and he undertook to arrange matters for me. And so he
+did.
+
+Petrograd does not get up early, at least the Hotel Astoria did not, and
+the most I could manage before I left was a cup of coffee, but I made
+up for it at that first refreshment-room. The naval officer took entire
+charge and, revelling in his importance, I not only had a very good
+breakfast but made the most of my chances and, filling up my basket with
+a view to future comforts, bought good things so that I might be able
+to exchange civilities with my fellow-passengers on the way to Raumo. I
+had eggs and sausages and new bread and scones and a plentiful supply
+of fruit, to say nothing of sugar and lemons and cream and meat for
+Buehanan--the naval man looking on smiling--and when I had really done
+myself well I turned to him and demanded what I ought to pay.
+
+“Nothing, Madame. In Russia when a gentleman takes a lady for
+refreshment he pays!”
+
+Imagine my horror! And I had stocked my basket so lavishly!
+
+My protests were useless. I was escorted back to our luggage-van and
+my thoughts led gently from the coffee and eggs I had consumed and the
+sausages and bread I had stowed away in my basket to the state of the
+war as it struck the Russian naval mind.
+
+Had I heard about the sea fight in the Mediterranean? Not heard about
+the little _Gloucester_ attacking the _Goeben_, the little _Gloucester_
+that the big German battleship could have eaten! A dwarf and a giant!
+Madame! Madame! It was a sea fight that will go down through the ages!
+Russia was ringing with it!
+
+“Do you know anyone in the English navy?”
+
+I said I had two brothers in the senior service, a little later and I
+might have said three.
+
+“Then tell them,” said he earnestly, “we Russian sailors are proud to be
+Allies of a nation that breeds such men as manned the _Gloucester!_”
+
+The Finnish border was soon reached and he left us, and the day went
+on and discipline I suppose relaxed, for I brought Buchanan into the
+carriage and made friends with the people who surrounded me. And then
+once again did I bless the foresight of the Polish Jewess in Kharbin who
+had impressed upon me the necessity for two kettles. They were a godsend
+in that carriage. We commandeered glasses, we got hot water at wayside
+stations and I made tea for all within reach, and a cup of tea to a
+thirsty traveller, especially if that traveller be a woman, is certainly
+a road to that traveller's good graces.
+
+Finland is curiously different from Russia. They used to believe in the
+old sailing-ship days that every Finn was a magician. Whether they are
+magicians or not, they have a beautiful country, though its beauty is
+as different from that of the Amur as the Thames is from the Murray
+in far-away Australia. Gone were the wide spaces of the earth and the
+primitive peoples. We wandered through cultivated lands, we passed lake
+and river and woods, crossed a wonderful salmon river, skirted Finland's
+inland sea: here and there was a castle dominating the farmhouses and
+little towns, the trees were turning, just touched gently by Autumn's
+golden fingers, and I remembered I had watched the tender green of
+the spring awakening on the other side of the world, more, I had been
+travelling ever since. It made me feel weary--weary. And yet it was good
+to note the difference in these lands that I had journeyed over. The air
+here was clear, clear as it had been in China; it had that curious
+charm that is over scenery viewed through a looking-glass, a charm I can
+express in no other words. Unlike the great rivers of Russia, the little
+rivers brawled over the stones, companionable little streams that 'made
+you feel you might own them, on their banks spend a pleasant afternoon,
+returning to a cosy fire and a cheery home when the dusk was falling.
+
+And this evening, our first day out, we, the little company in my
+carriage, fell into trouble.
+
+We spoke among us many tongues, English, French, German, Polish,
+Russian, Lettish, and one whose tongue was polyglot thought in Yiddish
+and came from the streets, the “mean streets” of London, but not one
+amongst us spoke Finnish, the language of the magicians, or could even
+understand one word of it. This was unfortunate, for the Films either
+spoke no language but their own or had a grudge against us and declined
+to understand us. That didn't prevent them from turning us out that
+night in a railway station in the heart of Finland and leaving us to
+discover for ourselves that every hotel in the little town was full
+to overflowing! Once more I was faced with it--a night in a railway
+station. But my predicament was not so bad shared with others who spoke
+my language. There was the Oxford man and the musician with a twang,
+there was the wife of an American lawyer with her little boy and the
+wife of an American doctor with her little girls--they all spoke English
+of sorts, used it habitually--and there were four Austrian girls making
+their way back to some place in Hungary. Of course, technically, they
+were our enemies, while the Americans were neutral, but we all went in
+together. The Russian-American musician had been in Leipsic and was most
+disgustingly full of the mighty strength of Germany.
+
+The refreshment-rooms were shut, the whole place was in darkness, but
+it was a mild night, with a gorgeous September moon sailing out into the
+clear sky, and personally I should not have minded spreading my rugs and
+sleeping outside. I should have liked it, in fact, but the tales of the
+insecurity of Siberia still lingered in my consciousness, and when the
+Oxford man said that one of the porters would put us up in his house I
+gladly went along with all the others and, better still, took along my
+bundles of rugs and cushions.
+
+The places that I have slept in! That porter had a quaint little wooden
+house set in a garden and the whole place might have been lifted bodily
+out of Hans Andersen. We had the freedom of the kitchen, a very clean
+kitchen, and we made tea there and ate what we had brought in our
+baskets. The Austrian girls had a room to themselves, I lent my rugs to
+the young men and they made shift with them in the entrance porch, and
+the best sitting-room was turned over to the women and children and me.
+Two very small beds were put up very close together and into them
+got the two women and three children, and I was accommodated with a
+remarkably Lilliputian sofa. I am not a big woman, but it would not hold
+me, and as for Buchanan, he looked at me in disgust, said a bed was a
+proper place for a dog and promptly jumped on it. But it was full to
+overflowing of women and children sleeping the sleep of the utterly
+weary and he as promptly jumped off again and the next moment was
+sitting up in front of my sofa with his little front paws hanging down.
+He was a disgusted dog. He always begged when he wanted me to give him
+something, and now he begged to show me he was really in need of a bed.
+There were great uncurtained windows on two sides of that room, there
+were flowers and ferns in pots growing in it, and the full moon strcamed
+in and showed me everything: the crowded, rather gimcrack furniture, the
+bucket that contained water for us to wash in in the morning, the bed
+full of sleeping women and children and the little black and white dog
+sitting up in protest against what he considered the discomforts of
+the situation. What I found hard to bear were the hermetically sealed
+windows--the women had been afraid of draughts for the children--so as
+soon as that night wore through and daylight came stealing through the
+windows I dressed quietly and, stepping across the sleeping young men at
+the door, went outside with Buchanan to explore Finland.
+
+Our porter evidently ran some sort of tea gardens, for there were large
+swings set up, swings that would hold four and six people at once, and
+we tried them, much to Buchanan's discomfiture. We went for a walk up
+the street, a country town street of little wooden houses set in little
+gardens, and over all lay a Sabbath calm. It was Sunday, and the people
+slept, and the autumn sunlight made the whole place glorious. There is
+such rest and peace about the autumn: everything has been accomplished
+and now is the fullness of time. I never know which season I like best,
+each has its own beauty, but I shall always think of Finland as a land
+of little things, charming little things bathed in the autumn sunlight.
+
+When the whole party were awake we found some difficulty in getting
+something to eat. The porter could not supply us, and at the station,
+where they were vigorously sweeping--the Finns are very clean--they
+utterly declined to open the first-class refreshment-rooms. We could
+only get something to eat in the third-class. There was a great feeling
+of camaraderie and good-fellowship among us all, and here I remember the
+lawyer's wife insisted upon us all having breakfast at her expense, for
+according to her she owed us all something. It was she who added to our
+party the Yiddish woman, a fat, square little person hung round with
+innumerable bundles, carrying as she did a month's provisions, enough to
+last her across to America, for she was a very strict Jew and could eat
+nothing but _kosher_ killed meat and _kosher_ bread, whatever that may
+be. I know it made her a care, for a month's provisions make something
+of a parcel, and when bedding and a certain amount of clothing has to be
+carried as well, and no porters are available, the resulting baggage
+is apt to be a nuisance. All along the line this fat little person was
+liable to come into view, toiling under the weight of her many bundles.
+She would be found jammed in a doorway; she would subside exhausted in
+the middle of a railway platform--the majority of her bundles would be
+retrieved as they fell downstairs--or she blocked the little gateway
+through which passengers were admitted one by one, and the resulting
+bad language in all the tongues of Northern Europe probably caused the
+Recording Angel a good deal of unnecessary trouble. But the Oxford
+man and the musician were always ready to help her, and she must have
+blessed the day the American lawyer's wife added her to a party which
+had such kindly, helpful young men among its members.
+
+I found presently that the Oxford man and I were the moneyed members of
+the party, the only ones who were paying our way; the others, far richer
+people than I, I daresay, had been caught in the whirlpool of the war
+and were being passed on from one American consul to another, unable
+to get money from their own country. Apparently this was rather an
+unpleasant process, meaning a certain scarcity of cash, as an American
+consul naturally cannot afford to spend lavishly on his distressed
+subjects. It was the irony of fate that some of them were evidently not
+accustomed to looking too carefully after the pennies.
+
+It took us two days to cross Finland, and towards the end of the
+journey, after we had got out to have tea at a wayside station that
+blossomed out into ham and tea and bread and honey, we made friends with
+a certain Finn whose father had been a Scotsman. At last we were able to
+communicate with the people of the country! Also I'm afraid we told him
+in no measured terms that we did not think much of his compatriots.
+That was rather a shame, for he was exceedingly kind. He was going to
+England, he told us, to buy sheepskins for the Russian army, and he took
+great interest in my trouble about Buchanan. He examined him carefully,
+came to the conclusion he was a perfectly healthy little dog and
+suggested I should lend him to him till we reached Sweden, as he was
+perfectly well known to the authorities, and Finnish dogs would be
+allowed to enter Sweden, while a dog that had come from Russia would
+certainly be barred. I loved that man for his kindly interest and I
+handed over Buchanan in his basket without a qualm.
+
+We were really quite a goodly company when in the dusk of the evening
+we steamed into Raumo. The station seemed deserted, but we didn't worry
+much about that, as our new Finnish friend suggested the best thing to
+do was to go straight down to the steamer, the _Uleaborg_, a Finnish
+ship, and have our dinner and spend the night there. Even if she did not
+go that night, and he did not think she would, we could rest and sleep
+comfortably. We all agreed, and as the train went on down to the wharf
+we appointed him our delegate to go on board and see what arrangements
+he could make for us. The minute the train stopped, off he went, and
+Buchanan went with him. I was getting easier in my mind about Buchanan
+now, the thought of drugging him had been spoiling my pleasure in the
+scenery. And then we waited.
+
+It began to rain, and through the mist which hid the moonlight to-night
+we could see the loom of the ships; they were all white and the lights
+from the cabin ports showed dim through the misty rain. The wharf was
+littered with goods, barrels and bales, and as there was more than one
+steamer, and apparently no one to guide us, or the Scots Finn had not
+returned, we tackled the Russian _gens d'arme_ who seemed to be in
+charge of the wharf and who was leaning up against the train.
+
+“Can you speak Finnish?”
+
+“Ah! now you have my secret first shot,” said he, with a smile. He,
+their guardian, was no more equal to communicating with these people
+than we were. And then, to our dismay, before our messenger could
+return, the train which considered not a parcel of refugees put on steam
+and started back to Raumo!
+
+A dozen voices were raised in frantic protest, but we might as well have
+spared our breath, the train naturally paid no attention to us, but went
+back at full speed to the town proper. It was a comfort when it stopped,
+for, for all we knew, it might have gone straight back to Petrograd
+itself. And Buchanan, shut up in a basket, was left behind, I knew not
+where! They dumped us on that station, bag and baggage, in the rain. We
+were worse off here than we were at the wharf, for there the steamer and
+comfort at least loomed in the distance. Here was only a bare and empty
+station, half-a-dozen men who looked at us as if we were so many wild
+beasts on show, and a telephone to the wharf which we were allowed to
+use as long as we pleased, but as far as I could gather the only result
+was a flow of bad language in many tongues. We might be of many nations,
+but one and all were we agreed in our dislike of the Finns and all
+things Finnish. If I remember rightly, in the Middle Ages, most people
+feared and disliked magicians.
+
+We managed to get our baggage into the hall of the station, whieh was
+dimly lighted by electric lights, and in anticipation of our coming they
+had filled up the station water-carafes. But that was all the provision
+they had made. If there was a refreshment-room it had been locked up
+long ago, and as far as we could make out, now our interpreter had gone,
+there were no hotels or boarding-houses. Our Scots Finn had said it was
+impossible to stay in Raumo. We looked at one another in a dismay in
+which there was, after all, something comic. This that had befallen us
+was the sort of aggravating thing a mischievous magician would cause
+to happen. We were tired and hungry and bad-tempered, and I for one was
+anxious about my little dog and I began to seek, with cash in my hand,
+somebody who would find me Buchanan.
+
+How I made my wants known I don't now realise, but money does wonders,
+and presently there came in a man bearing his basket and a rapturous
+little dog was let out into the room. Where he had been I have not the
+faintest idea, and I could not ask, only I gathered that the man who
+brought him professed himself perfectly willing to go on fetching little
+dogs all night at the same rate, and the musician remarked in his high
+nasal twang that he supposed it was no good expecting any more sympathy
+from Mrs Gaunt, she was content now she had her little dog. As a
+matter of fact, now that my mind was at ease, I was equal to giving my
+attention to other people's woes.
+
+We tackled the men round us.
+
+Where was our messenger?
+
+No one knew.
+
+Where could we get something to eat?
+
+Blank stare. They were not accustomed to foreigners yet at Raumo. The
+station had only just been opened. The musician took out his violin
+and its wailing tones went echoing and re-echoing through the hall. The
+audience looked as if they thought we had suddenly gone mad, and one man
+came forward and by signs told us we must leave the station. That was
+all very well, we were not enamoured of the station, but the port we
+judged to be at least four miles off, and no one was prepared to start
+down an unknown road in the dark and pouring rain. There was a long
+consultation, and we hoped it meant food, but it didn't. Out of a
+wilderness of words we at last arrived at the interesting fact that if
+we cared to subscribe five marks one of these gentlemen was prepared to
+conduct us to the police station. There appeared to be no wild desire on
+the part of any of us to go to the police station, the violin let out a
+screech of scornful derision, and one of the officials promptly turned
+off the electric lights and left us in darkness!
+
+There were many of us, and vexations shared are amusing. We laughed,
+how we laughed, and the violin went wailing up and down the octaves. No
+wonder the Finns looked at us askance. Even the darkness did not turn us
+out, for we had nowhere else to go, and finally a man who spoke English
+turned up, the agent for the Swedish steamer. He had thought there would
+be no passengers and had gone to bed, to be roused up, I presume by the
+stationmaster, as the only person likely to be capable of dealing with
+these troublesome people who were disturbing the peace of this Finnish
+village.
+
+We flew at him--there were about a dozen of us--and showed our tickets
+for the Finnish steamer, and he smiled in a superior manner and said we
+should be captured by Germans.
+
+We didn't believe much in the Germans, for we had many of us come
+through a country which certainly believed itself invulnerable. Then
+a woman travelling with her two daughters, Americans of the Americans,
+though their mother spoke English with a most extraordinary accent,
+proclaimed aloud that if there was a Swedish steamer she was going by it
+as she was afraid of “dose Yarmans.” She and her daughters would give up
+their tickets and go by the Swedish steamer. Protest was useless. If
+we liked to break up the party we could. She was not going by the
+_Uleaborg_. Besides, where were we to sleep that night? The Finnish
+steamer was three or four miles away down at the wharf and we were here
+along with the Swedish agent.
+
+The Swedish agent seized the opening thus given. There were no hotels;
+there were no boarding-houses; no, it was not possible to get anything
+to eat at that hour of the night. Something to drink? Well, in surprised
+tones, there was surely plenty of water in the station--there was--and
+he would arrange for a train for us to sleep in. The train at ten
+o'clock next morning would take us down to the steamer.
+
+We retired to that train. Only one of the carriages was lighted, and
+that by general consent we gave up to the lady whose fear of the Germans
+had settled our affairs for us, and she in return asked us to share
+what provisions we had left. We pooled our stores--I don't think I
+had anything left, but the others shared with me--and we dined, not
+unsatisfactorily, off sardines, black bread, sausages and apples. The
+only person left out of the universal friendliness was the Yiddish lady.
+Out of her plenty she did not offer to share.
+
+“She cannot,” said the musician. “She is saving for the voyage to
+America. You see, she can eat none of the shipboard food.” He too came
+of the same strict order of Jew, and his grandparents, with whom he
+had been staying in Little Russia, had provided him with any amount of
+sausage made of _kosher_ meat, but when he was away from his own people
+he was evidently anything but strict and ate what pleased him. He shared
+with the rest of us. Possibly he was right about the Yiddish woman,
+and I suppose it did not really do us any harm to go short till next
+morning, but it looked very greedy, and I still wonder at the nerve of
+a woman who could sit down and eat sausage and bread and all manner
+of such-like things while within a stone's-throw of her people who had
+helped her in every way they could were cutting up apples and pears into
+quarters and audibly wishing they had a little more bread. The Oxford
+man and musician had always helped her, but she could not find it in her
+heart to spare them one crumb. I admire her nerve. In America I doubt
+not she will acquire wealth.
+
+After supper Buchanan and I retired to a dark carriage, wrapped
+ourselves in my eiderdown and slept till with break of day two capable
+but plain Finnish damsels came in to clean the train. I think the
+sailors' ideas must have been wrong: every Finn cannot be a magician
+else they would not allow all their women to be so plain. I arose and
+dressed and prepared to go out and see if Raumo could produce coffee
+and rolls, but as I was starting the violinist in the next compartment
+protested.
+
+“I wouldn't. Guess you haven't got the hang of these Finnish trains. It
+might take it into its head to go on. Can't you wait till we reach the
+steamer.”
+
+I gave the matter my consideration, and while I was considering the
+train did take it into its head to go on four hours before its appointed
+time. On it went, and at last in the fresh northern dewy morning, with
+the sun just newly risen, sending his long low rays streaming across the
+dancing waters of the bay, we steamed up to the wharf, and there lay the
+white ships that were bound for Sweden, the other side of the Baltic.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII--CAPTURED BY GERMANS
+
+But we couldn't get on the steamer at once. For some reason or other
+there were Customs delays and everything we possessed had to be examined
+before we were allowed to leave the country, but--and we hailed them
+with delight--under the goods sheds were set out little tables where we
+could buy coffee and rolls and butter and eggs. It was autumn now, and
+for all the sunshine here in such high latitudes there was a nip in the
+air and the hot coffee was welcome. We met, too, our friend of the night
+before, the Scots Finn, but the glamour had departed from him and we
+paid no attention to his suggestion that the _Goathied_, the Swedish
+steamer, was very much smaller than the _Uleaborg_ and that there was
+a wind getting up and we would all be deadly sick. We said we preferred
+being sick to being captured by the Germans. And he laughed at us. There
+was no need to fear the Germans in the Baltic so far north.
+
+It was midday before we were allowed on board the little white ship,
+but still she lingered. I was weary, weary, even the waiting seemed a
+weariness so anxious was I to end my long journeying and get home. And
+then suddenly I felt very near it, for my ears were greeted by the good
+broad Doric of Scotland, and there came trooping on board five and fifty
+men, part of the crews of four English ships that had been caught by the
+tide of war and laid up at Petrograd and Kronstadt. An opportunity had
+been found and they were going back by way of Sweden, leaving their
+ships behind till after the war. We did not think the war _could_ last
+very long on board that steamer.
+
+The Scotsmen had evidently been expected, for on the deck in the bows
+of the little steamer--she was only about three hundred tons--were laid
+long tables spread with ample supplies of boiled sausages, suet pudding
+and potatoes, and very appetising it looked, though in all my wanderings
+I had never met boiled sausages before. Down to the feast sat the
+sailor-men, and our Yiddish friend voiced aloud my feelings.
+
+“Anglisky,” said she unexpectedly, “nice Anglisky boys. Guten appetite,
+nice Anglisky boys!”
+
+They were very cheery, poor boys, and though they were not accustomed to
+her sort in Leith, they received her remarks with appreciative grins.
+
+As we started the captain came down upon me.
+
+“Who does that dog belong to?” he asked angrily. Everyone on board spoke
+English. And before I could answer--I wasn't particularly anxious to
+answer--he added: “He can't be landed in Sweden.”
+
+My heart sank. What would they do to my poor little dog? I was
+determined they shouldn't harm him unless they harmed me first, and if
+he had to go back to Russia--well, I would go too; but the thought of
+going back made me very miserable, and I made solemn vows to myself
+that if I by some miracle got through safely, never, never again would I
+travel with a dog.
+
+And while I was thinking about it there came along a junior officer,
+mate, purser, he might have been the cook for all I know, and he said:
+“If you have bought this dog in Finland, or even on board the steamer,
+he can land.”
+
+It was light in darkness, and I do not mind stating that where my dog is
+concerned I have absolutely no morals, if it is to save him from
+pain. He had been my close companion for over a year and I knew he was
+perfectly healthy.
+
+“I will give you a good price for him,” said I. “He is a pretty little
+dog.”
+
+“Wait,” he said, “wait. By and by I see.”
+
+Just as we got out of the bay the captain announced that he was not
+going to Stockholm at all, but to Gefle, farther north. Why, he did not
+know. Such were his orders. In ordinary times to find yourself being
+landed at Liverpool, say, when you had booked for London might be
+upsetting, but in war time it is all in the day's work, and sailors and
+crowded passengers only laughed.
+
+“Let's awa',” said the sailors. “Let's awa'.”
+
+The air was clear and clean, clean as if every speck of dust had been
+washed away by the rain of the preceding night; the little islands at
+the mouth of the bay stood out green and fresh in the blue sea, but the
+head wind broke it up into little waves, and the ship was empty of cargo
+and tossed about like a cork. The blue sea and snow-white clouds, the
+sunlight on the dancing waves mattered not to us; all we wanted, those
+of us who were not in favour of drowning at once and so ending
+our misery, was to land in Sweden. Buchanan sat up looking at me
+reproachfully, then he too subsided and was violently sick, and I
+watched the passengers go one by one below to hide their misery, even
+those who had vowed they never were sea-sick. I stayed on deck because I
+felt I was happier there in the fresh air, and so I watched the sunset.
+It was a gorgeous sunset; the clouds piled themselves one upon the other
+and the red sun stained them deepest crimson. It was so striking that I
+forgot my sea-sick qualms.
+
+And then suddenly I became aware there were more ships upon the sea
+than ours, one in particular, a black, low-lying craft, was steaming
+all round us, sending out defiant hoots. There were three other ships
+farther off, and I went to the rail to look over the darkening sea.
+
+Between us and the sunset was the low-lying craft, so close I could see
+the gaiters of a man in uniform who stood on a platform a little higher
+than his fellows; the little decks were crowded with men and a long gun
+was pointed at us. It was all black, clean-cut, silhouetted against the
+crimson sunset.
+
+We were slowed down, barely moving, the waves slop-slopped against our
+sides, and the passengers came scrambling up.
+
+“Germans! Yarmans!” they cried, and from the torpedo boat came a voice
+through a megaphone.
+
+“What are you doing with all those fine young men on board?” it asked in
+excellent English, the language of the sea.
+
+The black torpedo boat was lying up against us.
+
+Sea-sickness was forgotten, and the violinist came to me.
+
+“They are going to take the young men,” he said, and he was sorry and
+yet pleased, because all the time he had been full of the might of the
+Germans.
+
+I thought of the Oxford man in the very prime of his manhood.
+
+“Have you told him?”
+
+“Guess I didn't dare,” said he.
+
+“Well, I think you'd better, or I'll go myself. They are going to search
+the ship and he won't like being taken unawares.”
+
+So he went down, and presently they came up together. The Oxford man
+had been very sea-sick and he thought all the row was caused by the ship
+having struck a mine, and he felt so ill that if things were to end
+that way he was accepting it calmly, but being captured by Germans was
+a different matter. He was the only Englishman in the first class, and
+when we heard they were coming for the young men we felt sure he would
+have to go.
+
+Leaning over the rail of the _Goathied_, we could look down upon the
+black decks of the torpedo boat, blacker than ever now in the dusk of
+the evening, for the sun sank and the darkness was coming quickly. A
+rope ladder was flung over and up came a couple of German officers. They
+spoke perfect English, and they talked English all the time. They went
+below, demanded the passenger list and studied it carefully.
+
+“We must take those Englishmen,” said the leader, and then he went
+through every cabin to see that none was concealed.
+
+The captain made remonstrance, as much remonstrance as an unarmed
+man can make with three cruisers looking on and a torpedo boat close
+alongside.
+
+“It is war,” said the German curtly, and in the dusk he ranged the
+sailor-men along the decks, all fifty-five of them, and picked out
+those between the ages of nineteen and forty. Indeed one luckless lad of
+seventeen was taken, but he was a strapping fellow and they said if he
+was not twenty-one he looked it.
+
+It was tragic. Of course there must have been treachery at work or how
+should the German squadron have known that the Englishmen were crossing
+at this very hour? But a few moments before they had been counting
+on getting home and now they were bound for a German prison! In the
+gathering darkness they stood on the decks, and the short, choppy sea
+beat the iron torpedo boat against the ship's side, and the captain
+in the light from a lantern hung against the little house looked the
+picture of despair.
+
+“She cannot stand it! She cannot stand it much longer!”
+
+Crash! Crash! Crash!
+
+“She cannot stand it! She was never built for it! And she is old now!”
+
+But the German paid no attention. The possible destruction of
+a passenger ship was as nothing weighed in the balance with the
+acquirement of six and thirty fighting men.
+
+They were so quiet. They handed letters and small bundles and sometimes
+some of their pay to their comrades or to the passengers looking on and
+they dropped down that ladder. No one but a sailor could have gone down,
+for the ships heaved up and down, and sometimes they were bumping and
+sometimes there was a wide belt of heaving dark water between them,
+bridged only by that frail ladder. One by one they went, landing on the
+hostile deck, and were greeted with what were manifestly jeers at their
+misfortune. The getting down was difficult and more than once a bundle
+was dropped into the sea and there went up a sigh that was like a wail,
+for the passengers looking on thought the man was gone, and I do not
+think there would have been any hope for him between the ships.
+
+Darker and darker it grew. On the _Goathied_ there were the lighted
+decks, but below on the torpedo boat the men were dim figures, German
+and English undiscernible in the gloom. On the horizon loomed the sombre
+bulk of the cruisers, eaeh with a bright light aloft, and all around
+was the heaving sea, the white tops of the choppy waves showing sinister
+against the darker hollows.
+
+“Anglisky boys! Anglisky boys!” wailed the Yiddish woman, and her voice
+cut into the waiting silence. It was their dirge, the dirge for the
+long, long months of imprisonment that lay before them. And we were
+hoping for a short war! I could hear the Oxford man drawing a long
+breath occasionally, steeling himself against the moment when his turn
+would come.
+
+It never came. Why, I do not know. Perhaps they did not realise his
+nationality, for being a Scotsman he had entered himself as “British” on
+the passenger list, and “British” was not such a well-known word as the
+sons of Britain gathering from all corners of the earth to fight the
+common foe have made it to-day.
+
+“Puir chappies! Puir chappies! A'm losin' guid comrades,” sighed an
+elderly man leaning over the side and shouting a farewell to “Andra'.”
+
+I murmured something about “after the war,” but he cut me short sternly.
+The general opinion was that they would be put to stoke German warships
+and as the British were sure to beat them they would go down and be
+ingloriously lost. The thought must have been a bitter one to the men on
+that torpedo boat. And they took it like heroes.
+
+The last man was gone, and as the torpedo boat drew away a sort of
+moan went up from the bereft passenger ship and we went on our way, the
+captain relieved that we were free before a hole had been knocked in our
+side.
+
+He was so thankful that no worse thing had befallen him that he became
+quite communicative.
+
+“They are gone to take the _Uleaborg_,” he said, “and they will blow her
+up and before to-morrow morning Raumo will be in flames!”
+
+In those days Sweden had great faith in the might of Germany. I hope
+that faith is getting a little shaken at last. Still that captain
+declared his intention of warning all the ships he could. There were two
+Finnish ships of which he knew that he said were coming out of Stockholm
+that night and he was going to look for them and warn them.
+
+And so the night was alive with brilliant electric light signals and
+wild hootings from the steam siren, and he found them at last, all
+honour to him for a kindly sailor-man, and the Finnish ships were warned
+and went back to Sweden.
+
+But no matter how sorry one is for the sufferings of others, the feeling
+does not in any way tend to lessen one's own private woes. Rather are
+they deepened because sympathy and help is not so easily come by when
+men's thoughts are occupied by more--to them more--important matters.
+And so I could not go to sleep because of my anxiety about my little
+dog. Only for the moment did the taking of the men and my pity for them
+drive the thought of his predicament from my mind.
+
+We were nearing Sweden, every moment was bringing us closer, and as yet
+I had made no arrangements for his safety. He lay curled up on the seat,
+hiding his little snub nose and his little white paws with his bushy
+tail, for the autumn night was chilly, and I lay fearing a prison for
+him too, when he would think his mistress whom he had trusted had failed
+him. All the crew were so excited over the kidnapping of the men that my
+meditated nefarious transaction was thrust into the background. It was
+hopeless to think that any one of them would give ear to the woes of
+a little dog, so at last, very reluctantly, I gave him, much to his
+surprise, a sulphonal tablet. I dozed a little and when by my watch it
+was four o'clock Buchanan was as lively as a cricket. Sulphonal did not
+seem to have affected him in any way. I gave him another, and he said it
+was extremely nasty and he was surprised at my conduct, but otherwise it
+made no difference to him.
+
+In the grey of the early morning we drew up to the wharf and were
+told to get all our belongings on to the lower deck for the Customs to
+examine them, and Buchanan was as cheerful and as wide awake as if he
+had not swallowed two sulphonal tablets. With a sinking heart I gave him
+another, put him in his basket and, carrying it down to the appointed
+place, threw a rug over it and piled my two suit-cases on top of it. How
+thankful I was there was such a noisy crowd, going over and over again
+in many tongues the events of the night. They wrangled too about their
+luggage and about their places, and above all their din I could hear
+poor little James Buchanan whining and whimpering and asking why his
+mistress was treating him so badly.
+
+Then came the Customs officer and my heart stood still. He poked an
+investigatory hand into my suit-case and asked me--I understood him
+quite well--to show him what was underneath. I could hear Buchanan if he
+could not, and I pretended that I thought he wanted to know what was at
+the bottom of my suit-case and I turned over the things again and again.
+He grew impatient, but luckily so did all the people round, and as a
+woman dragged him away by force to look at her things so that she could
+get them ashore I noticed with immense relief that the sailors were
+beginning to take the things to the wharf. Luckily I had taken care the
+night before to get some Swedish money--I was taking no chances--and a
+little palm oil made that sailor prompt to attend to my wants. Blessings
+on the confusion that reigned around! Two minutes later on Swedish
+soil I was piling my gear on a little hand-cart with a lot of luggage
+belonging to the people with whom I had come across Finland and it was
+bound to the railway station.
+
+“You have left your umbrella,” cried the violinist.
+
+“I don't care,” said I. I had lost my only remaining hat for that
+matter, goodness knows what had become of it, but I was not going to put
+myself within range of those Customs men again. What did I care about
+appearances! I had passed the very worst milestone on my journey when I
+got James Buchanan into Sweden; I had awakened from the nightmare that
+had haunted me ever since I had taken my ticket in Petrograd, and I
+breathed freely.
+
+At the railway station we left our luggage, but I got Buchanan's basket,
+and we all went across the road to a restaurant just waking to business,
+for we badly wanted breakfast. I loved those passengers. I shall always
+think of them with gratitude. They were all so kind and sympathetic and
+the restaurant folks, who were full of the seizing of the Englishmen on
+a Swedish ship--so are joys and sorrows mingled--must have thought
+we were a little mad when we all stood round and, before ordering
+breakfast, opened a basket and let out a pretty little black and white
+dog.
+
+And then I'm sorry to say we laughed, even I laughed, laughed with
+relief, though I there and then took a vow never again to drug a dog,
+for poor little James Buchanan was drunk. He wobbled as he walked, and
+he could not make up his mind to lie down like a sensible dog and sleep
+if off; he was conversational and silly and had to be restrained. Poor
+little James Buchanan! But he was a Swedish dog, and I ate my breakfast
+with appetite, and we all speculated as to what had become of the Scots
+Finn who had failed me.
+
+Gefle reminded me of Hans Andersen even more than Finland had done. It
+had neat streets and neat houses and neat trees and neat and fair-haired
+women, and Gefle was seething with excitement because the _Goathied_
+had been stopped. It was early days then, and Sweden had not become
+accustomed to the filibustering ways of the German, so every poster had
+the tale writ large upon it, in every place they were talking about it,
+and we, the passengers who walked about the streets, were the observed
+of all observers.
+
+I was nearing the end of my long journey, very near now, and it did not
+seem to me to matter much what I did. We were all--the new friends I had
+made on the way from Petrograd--pretty untidy and travel-stained, and
+if I wore a lace veil on my hair, the violinist had a huge rent in his
+shoe, and, having no money to buy more, he went into a shoe-shop and had
+it mended. I, with Buchanan a little recovered, sat beside him while it
+was done.
+
+And in the afternoon we went by train through the neat and tidy country,
+Selma Lagerlof's country, to Stockholm. I felt as if I were resting,
+rested, because I was anxious no longer about Buchanan, who slumbered
+peacefully on my knee; and if anybody thinks I am making an absurd fuss
+about a little dog, let them remember he had been my faithful companion
+and friend in far corners of the earth when there were none but
+alien faces around me, and had stood many a time between me and utter
+loneliness and depression.
+
+We discussed these sturdy Swedes. The Chicago woman's daughter, with the
+pertness and aptness of the American flapper, summed them up quickly.
+
+“The men are handsome,” she said, looking round, “but the women--well,
+the women lack something--I call them tame.”
+
+And I knew she had hit them off to a “T.” After that I never looked at
+a neat and tidy Swedish woman with her hair, that was fair without that
+touch of red that makes for gold--gives life--coiled at the back of
+her head and her mild eyes looking out placidly on the world around her
+without feeling that I too call her tame.
+
+Stockholm for the most of us was the parting of the ways. The American
+consul took charge of the people who had come across Finland with us
+and the Oxford man and I alone went to the Continental Hotel, which, I
+believe, is the best hotel in that city. We had an evening meal together
+in a room that reminded me very much of the sort of places we used to
+call coffee palaces in Melbourne when I was a girl, and I met here again
+for the first time for many a long day tea served in cups with milk and
+cream. It was excellent, and I felt I was indeed nearing home. Things
+were getting commonplace and the adventure was going out of life. But I
+was tired and I didn't want adventure any more. There comes a time when
+we have a surfeit of it.
+
+I remember my sister once writing from her home somewhere in the Malay
+jungle that her husband was away and it was awkward because every night
+a leopard came and took up his position under the house, and though she
+believed he was only after the fowls she didn't like it because of the
+children. If ever she complains that she hasn't had enough adventure
+in her life I remind her of that and she says that is not the sort of
+adventure she has craved. That is always the way. The adventure is
+not always in the form we want. I seemed to have had plenty, but I was
+weary. I wanted to sit in a comfortable English garden in the autumn
+sunshine and forget that such things as trains and ships--perish the
+thought of a mule litter--existed. I counted the hours. It couldn't be
+long now. We came down into the hall to find that I had been entered on
+the board containing the names of the hotel guests as the Oxford man's
+wife. Poor young man! It was a little rough on him, for I hadn't even a
+hat, and I felt I looked dilapidated.
+
+I was too. That night in the sleeper crossing to Christiania the woman
+who had the bottom berth spoke excellent English. She was going to some
+baths and she gave some advice.
+
+“You are very ill, Madame,” said she, “very ill.”
+
+I said no, I was only a little tired.
+
+“I think,” she went on, “you are very ill, and if you are wise when you
+get to Christiania you will go to the Hotel Victoria and go to bed.”
+
+I was horrified. Because I felt I must go to England as quickly as
+possible, and I said so.
+
+“The train does not go to Bergen till night,” said she. “Stay in bed all
+day.” And then as we crossed the border a Customs officer came into the
+carriage. Now I could easily have hidden Buchanan, but I thought as
+a Swedish dog all his troubles were over, and he sat up there looking
+pertly at the uniformed man and saying “What are you doing here?”
+
+“Have you got a certificate of health for that dog?” asked the man
+sternly.
+
+I said “No,” remembering how very carefully I had kept him out of the
+way of anybody likely to be interested in his health.
+
+“Then,” said he, “you must telegraph to the police at Christiania. They
+will meet you and take him to a veterinary surgeon.”
+
+“And after?” I asked, trembling, my Swedish friend translating.
+
+“If his health is good they give him back to you. You take a room at
+a hotel and if his health is good he will be allowed to skip about the
+streets.”
+
+I felt pretty sure he would be allowed to skip about the streets and
+I took a room at the Victoria, the Oxford man kindly seeing us
+through--they put us down as Mr and Mrs Gaunt here--and James Buchanan,
+who had been taken possession of by the police at the station, came back
+to me, accompanied by a Norwegian policeman who demanded five shillings
+and gave me a certificate that he was a perfectly healthy little dog.
+
+I want to go back to Norway when I am not tired and fed up with
+travelling, for Christiania struck me as a dear little home-like town
+that one could love; and the railway journey across the Dovrefield and
+even the breakfast baskets that came in in the early morning were things
+to be remembered. I saw snow up in those mountains, whether the first
+snow of the coming winter or snow left over from the winter before, I
+do not know, but the views were lovely, and I asked myself why I went
+wandering in far-away places when there were places like this so close
+at home and so easily reached. So near home. We were so near home. I
+could think of nothing else. I told Buchanan about it and he licked my
+hand sympathetically and told me always to remember that wherever I was
+was good enough for him. And then we arrived at Bergen, a little wooden
+city set at the head of a fiord among the hills, and we went on board
+the _Haakon VII._, bound for Newcastle-on-Tyne.
+
+And then the most memorable thing happened, the most memorable thing
+in what for me was a wondrous journey. All across the Old World we had
+come, almost from the very farthest corner of the Old World, a wonderful
+journey not to be lightly undertaken nor soon forgotten. And yet as I
+went on board that ship I felt what a very little thing it was. I have
+been feeling it ever since. A Norwegian who spoke good English was
+there, going back to London, and, talking to another man, he mentioned
+in a casual manner something about the English contingent that had
+landed on the Continent.
+
+It startled me. Not in my lifetime, nor in the lifetime of my father,
+indeed I think my grandfathers must have been very little boys when the
+last English troops landed in France.
+
+“English troops!” I cried in astonishment.
+
+The Norwegian turned to me, smiling.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “But of course they are only evidence of good will.
+Their use is negligible!”
+
+And I agreed. I actually agreed. Britain's rôle, it seemed to me, was on
+the sea!
+
+And in four years I have seen Britain grow into a mighty military power.
+I have seen the men of my own people come crowding across the ocean to
+help the Motherland; I have seen my sister's young son pleased to be a
+soldier in that army, just one of the proud and humble crowd that go to
+uphold Britain's might. And all this has grown since I stood there at
+the head of the Norwegian fiord with the western sun sparkling on the
+little wavelets and heard a friendly foreigner talk about the little
+army that was “negligible.”
+
+I was tired. I envied those who could work and exert themselves, but I
+could do nothing. If the future of the nation had depended on me I could
+have done nothing. I was coming back to strenuous times and I longed
+for rest. I wanted a house of my own; I wanted a seat in the garden; I
+wanted to see the flowers grow, to listen to the birds singing in the
+trees. All that our men are fighting for to keep sacred and safe, I
+longed for.
+
+And I have had it, thanks to those fighting men who have sacrificed
+themselves for me, I have had it. It is good to sit in the garden
+where the faithful little friend I shall never forget has his last
+resting-place; it is good to see the roses grow, to listen to the lark
+and the cuckoo and the thrush; but there is something in our race that
+cannot keep still for long, the something, I suppose, that sent my
+grandfather to the sea, my father to Australia, and scattered his sons
+and daughters all over the world. I had a letter from a soldier brother
+the other day. The war holds him, of course, but nevertheless he wrote,
+quoting:
+
+          “Salt with desire of travel
+
+               Are my lips; and the wind's wild singing
+
+          Lifts my heart to the ocean
+
+               And the sight of the great ships swinging.”
+
+
+And my heart echoed: “And I too! And I too!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Broken Journey, Illustrated, by Mary Gaunt
+
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>A Broken Journey, Illustrated, by Mary Gaunt</title>
+    <meta content="pg2html (binary v0.17)" />
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Broken Journey, Illustrated, by Mary Gaunt
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world 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.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+Title: A Broken Journey, Illustrated
+       Wanderings from the Hoang-Ho Yo the Island of Saghalien
+              and the Upper Reaches of The Amur River
+
+Author: Mary Gaunt
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2017 [EBook #54402]
+Last Updated: March 12, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BROKEN JOURNEY, ILLUSTRATED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger from page images generously
+provided by the Internet Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      A BROKEN JOURNEY
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      Wanderings from the Hoang-Ho yo the Island of Saghalien and the Upper
+      Reaches of The Amur River
+    </h3>
+    <h2>
+      By Mary Gaunt
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Author Of &ldquo;Alone In West Africa&rdquo; &ldquo;A Woman In China,&rdquo; Etc.
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      London
+    </h4>
+    <h4>
+      T. Werner Laurie Ltd.
+    </h4>
+    <h3>
+      1919
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0001.jpg" alt="0001 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0001.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0008.jpg" alt="0008 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0008.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0009.jpg" alt="0009 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0009.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <h3>
+      TO MY
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      SISTER AND BROTHERS
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE DAYS BEFORE WE
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      WANDERED
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <b>CONTENTS</b>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_FORE"> FOREWORD </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> A BROKEN JOURNEY </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I&mdash;THE LURE OF THE UNKNOWN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II&mdash;TRUCULENT T'AI YUAN FU </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III&mdash;THE FIRST SIGN OF UNREST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV&mdash;A CITY UNDER THE HILLS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V&mdash;&ldquo;MISERERE DOMINE!&rdquo; </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI&mdash;BY MOUNTAIN AND RIVER </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII&mdash;CHINA'S SORROW </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII&mdash;LAST DAYS IN CHINA </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX&mdash;KHARBIN AND VLADIVOSTOK </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X&mdash;ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREAT RIVERS
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI&mdash;THE ENDS OF THE EARTH </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII&mdash;FACING WEST </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII&mdash;THE UPPER REACHES OF THE AMUR
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV&mdash;MOBILISING IN EASTERN SIBERIA
+      </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV&mdash;ON A RUSSIAN MILITARY TRAIN </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI&mdash;THE WAYS OF THE FINNS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p class="toc">
+      <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII&mdash;CAPTURED BY GERMANS </a>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_FORE" id="link2H_FORE"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      FOREWORD
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      I have to thank my friend Mrs Lang for the drastic criticism which once
+      more has materially helped me to write this book. Other people also have I
+      to thank, but so great was the kindness I received everywhere I can only
+      hope each one will see in this book some token of my sincere gratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Gaunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary Haven, New Eltham, Kent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      A BROKEN JOURNEY
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I&mdash;THE LURE OF THE UNKNOWN
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">E</span>ach time I begin a
+      book of travel I search for the reasons that sent me awandering.
+      Foolishness, for I ought to know by this time the wander fever was born in
+      my blood; it is in the blood of my sister and brothers. We were brought up
+      in an inland town in Victoria, Australia, and the years have seen us
+      roaming all over the world. I do not think any of us has been nearer the
+      North Pole than Petropaulovski, or to the South Pole than Cape Horn&mdash;children
+      of a sub-tropical clime, we do not like the cold&mdash;but in many
+      countries in between have we wandered. The sailors by virtue of their
+      profession have had the greater opportunities, but the other five have
+      made a very good second best of it, and always there has been among us a
+      very understanding sympathy 'with the desire that is planted in each and
+      all to visit the remote corners of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Anybody can go on the beaten track. It only requires money to take a
+      railway or steamer ticket, and though we by no means despise comfort&mdash;indeed,
+      because we know something of the difficulties that beset the traveller
+      beyond the bounds of civilisation, we appreciate it the more highly&mdash;still
+      there is something else beyond comfort in life. Wherein lies the call of
+      the Unknown? To have done something that no one else has done&mdash;or
+      only accomplished with difficulty? Where lies the charm? I cannot put it
+      into words&mdash;only it is there, the &ldquo;something calling&mdash;beyond the
+      mountains,&rdquo; the &ldquo;Come and find me&rdquo; of Kipling. That voice every one of the
+      Gaunts hears, and we all sympathise when another one goes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And that voice I heard loudly in China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come and find me! Come and find me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The livelong day I heard it, and again and again and yet again I tried to
+      stifle it, for you who have read my <i>Woman in China</i> will know that
+      travelling there leaves much to be desired. To say it is uncomfortable is
+      to put it in the mildest terms. Everything that I particularly dislike in
+      life have I met travelling in China; everything that repells me; and yet,
+      having unwisely invested $10 (about £1) in an atlas of China, the voice
+      began to ring in my ears day and night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was living in an American Presbyterian mission station in the western
+      suburb of the walled town of Pao Ting Fu, just beyond European influence,
+      the influence of the Treaty Ports and the Legation quarter of Peking. I
+      wanted to see something of the real China, to get material for a novel&mdash;not
+      a novel concerning the Chinese; for I have observed that no successful
+      novel in English deals with anybody but the British or the Americans; the
+      other peoples come in as subordinates&mdash;and the local colour was best
+      got on the spot. There was plenty in Pao Ting Fu, goodness knows. It had
+      suffered severely in the Boxer trouble. In the northern suburb, just about
+      a mile from where we lived, was a tomb, or monument rather, that had been
+      raised to the missionaries massacred then. They have made a garden plot
+      where those burning houses stood, they have planted trees and flowers, and
+      set up memorial tablets in the Chinese style, and the mission has moved to
+      the western suburb, just under the frowning walls of the town, and&mdash;is
+      doubly strong. A God-given fervour, say the missionaries, sends them
+      forth.'Who am I to judge? But I see that same desire to go forth in
+      myself, that same disregard of danger, when it is not immediate&mdash;I
+      know I should be horribly scared if it materialised&mdash;and I cannot
+      claim for myself it is God-given, save perhaps that all our desires are
+      God-given.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So there in the comfortable mission station I studied the local colour,
+      corrected my last book of China, and instead of planning the novel, looked
+      daily at the atlas of China, till there grew up in me a desire to cross
+      Asia, not by train to the north as I had already done, as thousands of
+      people used to do every year, but by the caravan route, across Shensi and
+      Kansu and Sinkiang to Andijan in Asiatic Russia, the terminus of the
+      Caspian Railway. Thousands and thousands of people go slowly along that
+      way too, but the majority do not go all the way, and they do not belong to
+      the class or nation whose comings and goings are recorded. In fact, you
+      may count on the fingers of one hand the people who know anything of that
+      road. The missionaries, particularly the womenkind, did not take very
+      cheerful view's about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I wanted to die,&rdquo; said one woman, meeting me as I was going round the
+      compound one day in the early spring of 1914, &ldquo;I would choose some easier
+      way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the doctor there was keenly interested. He would have liked to have
+      gone himself, but his duty kept him alongside his patients and his
+      hospital in Pao Ting Fu, and though he pulled himself up every now and
+      then, remembering I was only a woman and probably couldn't do it, he could
+      not but take as great an interest in that map and ways and means as I did
+      myself. Then there was Mr Long, a professor at the big Chinese college in
+      the northern suburb&mdash;he was young and enthusiastic and as interested
+      as Dr Lewis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He too knew something about travel in unknown China, for he had been one
+      of the band of white men who had made their way over the mountains of
+      Shansi and Shensi in the depths of winter to go to the rescue of the
+      missionaries in Sui Te Chou and all the little towns down to Hsi An Fu at
+      the time of the Revolution. Yes, he knew something of the difficulties of
+      Chinese travel, and he thought I could do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The only danger would be robbers, and&mdash;well, you know, there
+      mightn't be robbers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Peking&mdash;the Peking of the Legations&mdash;that, I knew, held
+      different view's. I wrote to an influential man who had been in China over
+      ten years, who spoke the language well, and he was against it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was very much interested&rdquo; (wrote he) &ldquo;to read of your intention to do
+      that trek across country. You ask my opinion about it, but I can only give
+      you the same advice that <i>Punch</i> gave many years ago, and that is, <i>don't</i>.
+      You must realise that the travelling will be absolutely awful and the cost
+      is very great indeed. You have not yet forgotten your trip to Jehol, I
+      hope, and the roughness of the road. The trip you contemplate will make
+      the little journey to Jehol look like a Sunday morning walk in Hyde Park,
+      particularly as regards travelling comfort, to say nothing about the
+      danger of the journey as regards hostile tribes on the southern and
+      western borders of Tibet. You will be passing near the Lolo country, and I
+      can assure you that the Lolos are <i>not</i> a set of gentlemen within the
+      meaning of the Act. They are distinctly hostile to foreigners, and many
+      murders have taken place in their country that have not been published
+      because of the inability of the Chinese troops to stand up against these
+      people. What the peoples are like farther north I do not know, but I
+      understand the Tibetans are not particularly trustworthy, and it will
+      follow that the people living on their borders will inherit a good many of
+      their vices and few of their virtues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you have really made up your mind to go, however, just let me know,
+      and I will endeavour to hunt up all the information that it is possible to
+      collect as to the best route to take, etc., though I repeat I would not
+      advise the journey, and the Geographical Society can go to the deuce.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This not because he despised the Geographical Society by any means, but
+      because I had advanced as one reason for going across Asia the desire to
+      win my spurs so and be an acceptable member.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; wrote a woman, &ldquo;think of that poor young Brooke. The Tibetans
+      cut his throat with a sharp stone, which is a pleasant little way they
+      have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the man's opinion was worth having, but the woman's is a specimen of
+      the loose way people are apt to reason&mdash;I do it myself&mdash;when
+      they deal with the unknown. The &ldquo;poor young Brooke&rdquo; never went near Tibet,
+      and was murdered about a thousand miles distant from the route I intended
+      to take. It was something as if a traveller bound to the Hebrides was
+      warned against dangers to be met upon the Rhone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One man who had travelled extensively in Mongolia was strongly against the
+      journey, but declared that &ldquo;Purdom knew a great deal more about travelling
+      in China&rdquo; than he did, and if &ldquo;Purdom&rdquo; said I might got&mdash;well then, I
+      might. Mr Purdom and Mr Reginald Farrer were going west to the borders of
+      Tibet botanising, and one night I dined with them, and Mr Purdom was
+      optimistic and declared if I was prepared for discomfort and perhaps
+      hardship he thought I might go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So it was decided, and thereupon those who knew took me in hand and gave
+      me all advice about travelling in China, how to minimise discomfort, what
+      to take and what to leave behind. One thing they were all agreed upon. The
+      Chinese, as a rule, are the most peaceable people upon earth, the only
+      thing I had to fear was a chance band of robbers, and if I fell into their
+      hands&mdash;well, it would probably be finish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Chinese are fiendishly cruel,&rdquo; said my friend of Mongolian travel;
+      &ldquo;keep your last cartridge for yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I intimated that a pistol was quite beyond me, that that way of going out
+      did not appeal to me, and anyhow I'd be sure to bungle it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then have something made up at the chemist's and keep it always on your
+      person. You do not know how desperately you may need it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I may say here that these remarks made no impression upon me whatever. I
+      suppose in most of us the feeling is strong that nothing bad could
+      possibly happen. It happens to other people, we know, but to us&mdash;impossible!
+      I have often wondered how near I could get to danger without feeling that
+      it really threatened&mdash;pretty close, I suspect. It is probably a
+      matter of experience. I cannot cross a London road with equanimity&mdash;but
+      then twice have I been knocked down and rather badly hurt&mdash;but I
+      gaily essayed to cross Asia by way of China, and would quite certainly as
+      gaily try again did I get the chance. Only next time I propose to take a
+      good cook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To some, of course, the unknown is always full of danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The folks who walked about Peking without a qualm warned me I would die of
+      indigestion, I would be unable to drink the water, the filth would be
+      unspeakable, hydrophobia raged, and &ldquo;when you are bitten, promptly cut
+      deep into the place and insert a chloride of mercury tabloid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That last warning made me laugh. It reminded me of the time when as a
+      little girl, living in a country where deadly snakes swarmed&mdash;my
+      eldest brother killed sixty in a week, I remember, in our garden&mdash;I
+      used to think it would be extremely dangerous to go to Europe because
+      there were there mad dogs, things we never had in Australia! I think it
+      was the reference to hydrophobia and the chloride of mercury tabloid
+      helped me to put things in their proper prospective and made me realise
+      that I was setting out on a difficult journey with a possible danger of
+      robbers; but a possible danger is the thing we risk every day we travel in
+      a railway train or on an electric tramcar. I am always ready for possible
+      risks, it is when they become probable I bar them, so I set about my
+      preparations with a quiet mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A servant. I decided I must have a tall servant and strong, because so
+      often in China I found I had to be lifted, and I had suffered from having
+      too small a man on my former journeys. The missionaries provided me with a
+      new convert of theirs, a tall strapping Northern Chinaman, who was a mason
+      by trade. Tsai Chih Fu, we called him&mdash;that is to say, he came of the
+      Tsai family; and the Chih Fu&mdash;I'm by no means sure that I spell it
+      right&mdash;meant a &ldquo;master workman.&rdquo; He belonged to a large firm of
+      masons, but as he had never made a dollar a day at his trade, my offer of
+      that sum put him at my service, ready to go out into the unknown. He was a
+      fine-looking man, dignified and courteous, and I had and have the greatest
+      respect for him. He could not read or write, of course. Now a man who
+      cannot read or write here in the West we look upon with contempt, but it
+      would be impossible to look upon Tsai Chih Fu with contempt. He was a
+      responsible person, a man who would count in any company. He belonged to
+      another era and another civilisation, but he was a man of weight. A master
+      of transport in Babylon probably closely resembled my servant Tsai Chih
+      Fu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0027.jpg" alt="0027 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0027.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      My interpreter, Wang Hsien&mdash;that is, Mr Wang&mdash;was of quite a
+      different order. He was little and slight, with long artistic hands, of
+      the incapable artistic order, and he was a fool in any language; but good
+      interpreters are exceedingly difficult to get. He used to come and see me
+      every day for a fortnight before we started, and I must say my heart sank
+      when the simplest remark, probably a greeting, or a statement as to the
+      weather, was met with a &ldquo;Repeat, please.&rdquo; I found this was the invariable
+      formula and it was not conducive to brisk conversation. On my way through
+      the country things were apt to vanish before I had made Mr Wang understand
+      that I was asking, and was really in search of, information. He had his
+      black hair cut short in the progressive foreign fashion (it looked as if
+      he had had a basin put on his head&mdash;a good large one&mdash;and the
+      hair snipped off round), and he wore a long blue cotton gown buttoned to
+      his feet. Always he spoke with a silly giggle. Could I have chosen, which
+      I could not, he would have been about the very last man I should have
+      taken on a strenuous journey as guide, philosopher and friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there was another member of the party, a most important member,
+      without whom I should not have dreamt of stirring&mdash;my little black
+      and white k'ang dog, James Buehanan, who loved me as no one in the world
+      has ever loved me, thought everything I did was perfect, and declared he
+      was willing to go with me to the ends of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I began my preparations. One thing only was clear, everyone was agreed
+      upon it, all my goods must be packed in canvas bags, because it is
+      impossible to travel by mule, or cart, or litter with one's clothes in
+      ordinary boxes. And I had, through the kindness of Messrs Forbes &amp;
+      Company, to make arrangements with Chinese bankers, who have probably been
+      making the same arrangements since before the dawn of history, to get
+      money along the proposed route. These things I managed satisfactorily; it
+      was over the stores that, as usual, I made mistakes. The fact of the
+      matter is that the experience gained in one country is not always useful
+      for the next. When first I travelled in Africa I took many &ldquo;chop&rdquo; boxes
+      that were weighty and expensive of transport, and contained much tinned
+      meat that in a warm, moist climate I did not want. I found I could live
+      quite happily on biscuits and fruit and eggs, with such relishes as
+      anchovy paste or a few Bologna sausages for a change. My expensive tinned
+      foods I bestowed upon my servants and carriers, greatly to my own regret.
+      I went travelling in China, in Northern Chihli and Inner Mongolia, I dwelt
+      apart from all foreigners in a temple in the western hills, and I found
+      with a good cook I lived very comfortably off the country, with just the
+      addition of a few biscuits, tea, condensed milk, coffee and raisins,
+      therefore I persuaded myself I could go west with few stores and do
+      exactly the same. Thus I added considerably to my own discomfort. The
+      excellent master of transport was a bad cook, and a simple diet of
+      hard-boiled eggs, puffed rice and tea, with raisins for dessert, however
+      good in itself, is apt to pall when it is served up three times a day for
+      weeks with unfailing regularity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, I didn't know that at the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at last all was ready. I had written to all the mission stations as
+      far west as Tihwa, in Sinkiang, announcing my coming. I had provided
+      myself with a folding table and chair&mdash;they both, I found, were given
+      to fold at inconvenient moments&mdash;some enamel plates, a couple of
+      glasses, a knife and fork, rudimentary kitchen utensils, bedding,
+      cushions, rugs, etc., and all was ready. I was to start the next week, ten
+      days after Mr Purdom and Mr Farrer had set out, for Honan, when there came
+      a telegram from Hsi An Fu:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Delay journey&rdquo; (it read).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;White wolf in Shensi. Shorrocks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Was there ever such country? News that a robber was holding up the road
+      could be sent by telegram!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      China rather specialises in robbers, but White Wolf was considerably worse
+      than the average gentleman of the road. He defied the Government in 1914,
+      but the last time we of the mission station had heard of him he was making
+      things pleasant for the peaceful inhabitants of Anhwei, to the east, and
+      the troops were said to have him &ldquo;well in hand.&rdquo; But in China you never
+      know exactly where you are, and now he was in Shensi!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I read that telegram in the pleasant March sunshine. I looked up at the
+      boughs of the &ldquo;water chestnuts,&rdquo; where the buds were beginning to swell,
+      and I wondered what on earth I should do. The roads now were as good as
+      they were ever likely to be, hard after the long winter and not yet broken
+      up by the summer rains. We discussed the matter from all points that day
+      at the midday dinner. The missionaries had a splendid cook, a Chinese who
+      had had his kitchen education finished in a French family, and with a few
+      good American recipes thrown in the combination makes a craftsman fit for
+      the Savoy, and all for ten Mexican dollars a month! Never again do I
+      expect to meet such salads, sweet and savoury! And here was I doing my
+      best to leave the flesh-pots of Egypt. It seemed foolish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I contented my soul with what patience I might for a week, and then I
+      telegraphed to Honan Fu, at which place I expected to be well away from
+      the railway. Honan Fu answered promptly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The case is hopeless. Hsi An Fu threatened. Advise you go by T'ai Yuan
+      Fu.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the road from Honan Fu to Hsi An Fu is always dangerous. It is through
+      the loess, sunken many feet below the level of the surrounding country,
+      and at the best of times is infested with stray robbers who, from the
+      cliffs above, roll down missiles on the carts beneath, kill the mules and
+      hold the travellers at their mercy. The carters go in large bodies and are
+      always careful to find themselves safe in the inn-yards before the dusk
+      has fallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These were the everyday dangers of the way such as men have faced for
+      thousands of years; if you add to them an organised robber band and a
+      large body of soldiers in pursuit, clearly that road is no place for a
+      solitary foreign woman, with only a couple of attendants, a little dog,
+      and for all arms a small pistol and exactly thirteen cartridges&mdash;all
+      I could get, for it is difficult to buy ammunition in China. Then to
+      clinch matters came another telegram from Hsi An Fu, in cipher this time:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do not come&rdquo; (it said).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The country is very much disturbed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From Anhwei to Shensi the brigands had operated. They had burned and
+      looted and outraged by order of Pai Lang (White Wolf), leaving behind them
+      ruined homes and desolated hearths, and when the soldiers came after them,
+      so said Rumour of the many tongues, White Wolf, who was rich by then, left
+      money on the roads and so bribed the avenging army to come over to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to the ordinary peaceful inhabitant&mdash;and curiously enough the
+      ordinary Chinese is extremely peaceful&mdash;it is not a matter of much
+      moment whether it be Pai Lang or the soldier who is hunting him who falls
+      upon the country. The inhabitants are sure to suffer. Both bandit and
+      soldier must have food, so both loot and outrage impartially, for the
+      unpaid soldiery&mdash;I hope I shall not be sued for libel, but most of
+      the soldiery when I was in China appeared to be unpaid&mdash;loot just as
+      readily as do the professional bandits. A robber band alone is a heavy
+      load for a community to carry, and a robber band pursued by soldiers more
+      than doubles the burden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still the soldiers held Tungkwan, the gate into Shensi, the mountains on
+      either side blocked the way, and Hsi An Fu breathed for a moment till it
+      was discovered that Pai Lang in strategy was equal to anyone who had been
+      sent against him. He had taken the old and difficult route through the
+      mountains and had come out west of the narrow pass of Tungkwan and, when I
+      became interested in him, was within a day's march of Hsi An Fu, the town
+      that is the capital of the province of Shensi and was the capital of China
+      many hundreds of years ago. It is a walled city, but the people feared and
+      so did the members of the English Baptist Mission sheltering behind those
+      walls. And, naturally, they feared, for the Society of the Elder Brethren
+      had joined Pai Lang, and the Society of Elder Brethren always has been and
+      is markedly anti-foreign. This was the situation, growing daily a little
+      worse, and we foreigners looked on; and the Government organs in Peking
+      told one day how a certain Tao Tai had been punished and degraded because
+      he had been slack in putting down White Wolf and possibly the next day
+      declared the power of White Wolf was broken and he was in full retreat. I
+      don't know how many times I read the power of White Wolf had been broken
+      and yet in the end I was regretfully obliged to acknowledge that he was
+      stronger than ever. Certainly Pai Lang turned my face north sooner than I
+      intended, for the idea of being a target for rocks and stones and billets
+      of wood at the bottom of a deep ditch from which there could be no escape
+      did not commend itself to me. True, in loess country, as I afterwards
+      found, there are no stones, no rocks and no wood. I can't speak for the
+      road through Tungkwan, for I didn't dare it. But, even if there were no
+      stones, loose earth&mdash;and there is an unlimited quantity of that
+      commodity in Northern China&mdash;flung down from a height would be
+      exceedingly unpleasant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course it all might have been rumour&mdash;it wasn't, I found out
+      afterwards; but unfortunately the only way to find out at the time was by
+      going to see for myself, and if it had been true&mdash;well, in all
+      probability I shouldn't have come back. That missionary evidently realised
+      how keen I was when he suggested that I should go by T'ai Yuan Fu, the
+      capital of Shansi, and I determined to take his advice. There was a way, a
+      little-known way, across the mountains, across Shansi, by Sui Te Chou in
+      Shensi, and thence into Kansu, which would eventually land me in Lan Chou
+      Fu if I cared to risk it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This time I asked Mr Long's advice. He and the little band of nine
+      rescuers who had ridden hot haste to the aid of the Shensi missionaries
+      during the revolution had taken this road, and they had gone in the depths
+      of winter when the country was frozen hard and the thermometer was more
+      often below zero, very far below zero, than not. If they had accomplished
+      it when pressed for time in the great cold, I thought' in all probability
+      I might manage it now at the best time of the year and at my leisure. Mr
+      Long, who would have liked to have gone himself, thought so too, and
+      eventually I set off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The missionaries were goodness itself to me. Dr Mackay, in charge of the
+      Women's Hospital, set me up with all sorts of simple drugs that I might
+      require and that I could manage, and one day in the springtime, when the
+      buds on the trees in the compound were just about to burst, and full of
+      the promise of the life that was coming, I, with most of the missionaries
+      to wish me &ldquo;Godspeed,&rdquo; and with James Buchanan under my arm, my giggling
+      interpreter and my master of transport following with my gear, took train
+      to T'ai Yuan Fu, a walled city that is set in the heart of a fertile
+      plateau surrounded by mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great adventure had begun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II&mdash;TRUCULENT T'AI YUAN FU
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>ut you mayn't go
+      to T'ai Yuan Fu in one day. The southern train puts you down at Shih Chia
+      Chuang&mdash;the village of the Stone Family&mdash;and there you must stay
+      till 7.40 a.m. next morning, when the French railway built through the
+      mountains that divide Shansi from Shensi takes you on to its terminus at
+      T'ai Yuan Fu. There is a little Chinese inn at Shih Chia Chuang that by
+      this time has become accustomed to catering for the foreigner, but those
+      who are wise beg the hospitality of the British American Tobacco Company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I craved that hospitality, and two kindly young men came to the station
+      through a dust-storm to meet me and took me off to their house that,
+      whether it was intended to or not, with great cool stone balconies, looked
+      like a fort. But they lived on perfectly friendly terms with people. Why
+      not? To a great number of the missionaries the B.A.T. is <i>anathema
+      maranatha</i>, though many of the members rival in pluck and endurance the
+      missionaries themselves. And why is it a crime for a man or a woman to
+      smoke? Many of the new teachers make it so and thus lay an added burden on
+      shoulders already heavily weighted. Personally I should encourage smoking,
+      because it is the one thing people who are far apart as the Poles might
+      have in common.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And goodness knows they have so few things. Even with the animals the
+      &ldquo;East is East and West is West&rdquo; feeling is most marked. Here at the B.A.T.
+      they had a small pekinese as a pet. She made a friend of James Buchanan in
+      a high and haughty manner, but she declined to accompany him outside the
+      premises. Once she had been stolen and had spent over three months in a
+      Chinese house. Then one day her master saw her and, making good his claim,
+      took her home with him. Since that time nothing would induce her to go
+      beyond the front door. She said in effect that she got all the exercise
+      she needed in the courtyard, and if it did spoil her figure, she preferred
+      a little weight to risking the tender mercies of a Chinese household, and
+      I'm sure she told Buchanan, who, having the sacred V-shaped mark on his
+      forehead, was reckoned very beautiful and was much admired by the Chinese,
+      that he had better take care and not fall into alien hands. Buchanan as a
+      puppy of two months old had been bought in the streets of Peking, and when
+      we started on our journey must have been nearly ten months old, but he had
+      entirely forgotten his origin and regarded all Chinese with suspicion. He
+      tolerated the master of transport as a follower of whom we had need.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Small dog,&rdquo; Mr Wang called him, and looked upon him doubtfully, but
+      really not as doubtfully as Buchanan looked at him. He was a peaceful,
+      friendly little dog, but I always thought he did not bite Mr Wang simply
+      because he despised him so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those two young men were more than good to me. They gave me refreshment,
+      plenty of hot water to wash away the ravages of the dust-storm, and good
+      company, and as we sat and talked&mdash;of White Wolf, of course&mdash;there
+      came to us the tragedy of a life, a woman who had not the instincts of
+      Buchanan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foreign women are scarce at Shih Chia Chuang; one a month is something to
+      remark upon, one a week is a crowd, so that when, as we sat in the big
+      sitting-room talking, the door opened and a foreign woman stood there,
+      everyone rose to his feet in astonishment. Mr Long, who had been up the
+      line, stood beside her, and behind her was a Chinaman with a half-caste
+      baby in his arms. She was young and tall and rather pretty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0037.jpg" alt="0037 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0037.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0038.jpg" alt="0038 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0038.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I bring you a lady in distress,&rdquo; said Mr Long rather hastily, explaining
+      matters. &ldquo;I met Mrs Chang on the train. She has miscalculated her
+      resources and has not left herself enough money to get to Peking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The woman began to explain; but it is an awkward thing to explain to
+      strangers that you have no money and are without any credentials. I
+      hesitated. Eventually I hope I should have helped her, but my charity and
+      kindliness were by no means as ready and spontaneous as those of my
+      gallant young host. He never hesitated a moment. You would have thought
+      that women and babies without any money were his everyday business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, sure,&rdquo; said he in his pleasant American voice, &ldquo;if I can be of any
+      assistance. But you can't go to-day, Mrs Chang; of course you will stay
+      with us&mdash;oh yes, yes; indeed we should be very much hurt if you
+      didn't; and you will let me lend you some money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so she was established among us, this woman who had committed the
+      unpardonable sin of the East, the sin against her race, the sin for which
+      there is no atoning. It is extraordinary after all these years, after all
+      that has been said and written, that Englishwomen, women of good class and
+      standing, will so outrage all the laws of decency and good taste. This
+      woman talked. She did not like the Chinese, she would not associate with
+      them; her husband, of course, was different. He was good to her; but it
+      was hard to get work in these troubled times, harder still to get paid for
+      it, and he had gone away in search of it, so she was going for a holiday
+      to Peking and&mdash;here she tumed|to the young men and talked about the
+      society and the dances and the amusement she expected to have among the
+      foreigners in the capital, she who for so long had been cut off from such
+      joys in the heart of China among an alien people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We listened. What could we say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;People in England don't really understand,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;what being in
+      exile means. They don't understand the craving to go home and speak to
+      one's own people; but being in Peking will be something like being in
+      England.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We other five never even looked at each other, because we knew, and we
+      could hardly believe, that she had not yet realised that in marrying a
+      Chinese, even one who had been brought up in England, she had exiled
+      herself effectually. The Chinese look down upon her, they will have none
+      of her, and among the foreigners she is outcast. These young men who had
+      come to her rescue with such right good will&mdash;&ldquo;I could not see a
+      foreign woman in distress among Chinese&rdquo;&mdash;will pass her in the street
+      with a bow, will not see her if they can help themselves, will certainly
+      object that anyone they care about should see them talking to her, and
+      their attitude but reflects that of the majority of the foreigners in
+      China. Her little child may not go to the same sehool as the foreign
+      children, even as it may not go to the same school as the Chinese. She has
+      committed the one error that outclasses her, and she is going to pay for
+      it in bitterness all the days of her life. And everyone in that room,
+      while we pitied her, held, and held strongly, that the attitude of the
+      community, foreign and Chinese, was one to be upheld.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet,&rdquo; and yet
+      here and there one still comes across a foolish woman who wrecks her life
+      because she never seems to have heard of this dictum. She talked and
+      talked, and told us how good was her husband to her, and we listeners said
+      afterwards she &ldquo;doth protest too much,&rdquo; she was convincing herself, not
+      us, and that, of course, seeing he was a Chinaman, he was disappointed
+      that the baby was a girl, and that his going off alone was the beginning
+      of the end, and we were thankful that she was &ldquo;the only girl her mother
+      had got,&rdquo; and so she could go back to her when the inevitable happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pity of it! When will the stay-at-home English learn that the very
+      worst thing one of their women can do with her life is to wed an Oriental?
+      But when I think of that misguided woman in that remote Chinese village I
+      shall always think too of those gallant young gentlemen, perfect in
+      courteous kindliness, who ran the B.A.T. in Shih Chia Chuang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day Buchanan and I and our following boarded the luxurious little
+      mountain railway and went to T'ai Yuan Fu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This railway, to me, who know nothing of such things, is a very marvel of
+      engineering skill. There are great rugged mountains, steep and rocky, and
+      the train winds its way through them, clinging along the sides of
+      precipices, running through dark tunnels and cuttings that tower high
+      overhead and going round such curves that the engine and the guard's van
+      of a long train are going in exactly opposite directions. A wonderful
+      railway, and doubly was I interested in it because before ever I came to
+      China I had heard about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When there are disturbances in China it is always well for the foreign
+      element to flee while there is yet time, for the sanctity of human life is
+      not yet thoroughly grasped there, and there is always the chance that the
+      foreigner may be killed first and his harmlessness, or even his value,
+      discovered later. So in the revolution in the winter of 1910-1911, though
+      all train traffic had stopped, the missionaries from T'ai Yuan Fu and
+      those from the country beyond fled down this railway. A friend of mine, an
+      artist, happened to be staying at a mission station in the mountains and
+      made one of the party. It was the depth of a Shansi winter, a Continental
+      winter, with the thermometer generally below -15° at the warmest part of
+      the day, and the little band of fugitives came fleeing down this line on
+      trollies worked by the men of the party. They stayed the nights at the
+      deserted railway stations, whence all the officials had fled, and the
+      country people in their faded blue cotton wadded coats came and looked at
+      them and, pointing their fingers at them exactly as I have seen the folks
+      in the streets of London do at a Chinaman or an Arab in an outlandish
+      dress, remarked that these people were going to their death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Death! Death!&rdquo; sounded on all sides. They, the country people, were
+      peaceful souls; they would not have killed them themselves; they merely
+      looked upon them as an interesting exhibit because they were foreign and
+      they were going to die. That the audience were wrong the people on show
+      were not quite as sure as they would have liked to be, and a single-line
+      railway through mountainous country is by no means easy to negotiate on a
+      trolly. They came to places where the line was carried upon trestles; they
+      could see a river winding its way at the bottom of a rocky ravine far
+      below them, and the question would be how to get across. It required more
+      nerve than most of them had to walk across the skeleton bridge. The
+      procedure seems to have been to give each trolly a good hard push, to
+      spring upon it and to trust to Providence to get safely across to the firm
+      earth upon the other side. The tunnels too, and the sharp curves, were
+      hair-raising, for they knew nothing of what was happening at the other end
+      of the line, and for all they could say they might have come full butt
+      upon a train rushing up in the other direction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eventually they did get through, but with considerable hardship, and I
+      should hesitate to say how many days that little company went without
+      taking off their clothes. I thought of them whenever our train went into a
+      tunnel, and I thought too of the gay girl who told me the story and who
+      had dwelt not upon the discomfort and danger, but upon the excitement and
+      exhilaration that comes with danger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I lived,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;I lived,&rdquo; and my heart went out to her. It is that
+      spirit in this &ldquo;nation of shopkeepers&rdquo; that is helping us to beat the
+      Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The scenery through which we went is beautiful&mdash;it would be beautiful
+      in any land&mdash;and this in China, where I expected not so much beauty
+      as industry. There were evidences of industry in plenty on every side.
+      These people were brethren of the bandits who turned me north and they are
+      surely the most industrious in the world. Wherever among these stony hills
+      there was a patch of ground fit for cultivation, though it was tiny as a
+      pocket handkerchief, it was cultivated. Everywhere I saw people at work in
+      the fields, digging, weeding, ploughing with a dry cow or a dry cow and a
+      donkey hitched to the primitive plough, or guiding trains of donkeys or
+      mules carrying merchandise along the steep and narrow paths, and more than
+      once I saw strings of camels, old-world camels that took me back before
+      the days of written history. They kept to the valleys and evidently made
+      their way along the river beds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through mountain sidings and tunnels we came at length to the curious
+      loess country, where the friable land is cut into huge terraces that make
+      the high hills look like pyramids carved in great clay-coloured steps, and
+      now in April the green crops were already springing; another month and
+      they would be banks of waving green. The people are poor, their faces were
+      browned by the sun and the wind, their garments were scanty and ragged,
+      and the original blue was faded till the men and the clothes were all the
+      same monotonous clay colour of the surrounding country. The women I saw
+      here were few, and only afterwards I found the reason. The miserably poor
+      peasant of Shansi binds the feet of his women so effectually that to the
+      majority movement is a physical impossibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We climbed up and up through the mountains into the loess country, and at
+      last we were on the plateau, about four thousand feet above the sea-level,
+      whereon is T'ai Yuan Fu, the capital of the province. There are other
+      towns here too, little walled eities, and the train drew up at the
+      stations outside the grey brick walls, the most ancient and the most
+      modern, Babylon and Crewe meeting. Oh, I understand the need of those
+      walled eities now I have heard so much about Pai Lang. There is a certain
+      degree of safety behind those grey walls, so long as the robber bands are
+      small and the great iron-bound gates ean keep them out, but dire is the
+      fate of the city into which the enemy has penetrated, has fastened the
+      gates and holds the people in a trap behind their own walls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But these people were at peace; they were thinking of no robbers. Pai Lang
+      was about five hundred miles away and the station platforms were crowded
+      with would-be travellers with their belongings in bundles, and over the
+      fence that shut off the platform hung a vociferating crowd waving white
+      banners on which were inscribed in black characters the signs of the
+      various inns, while each banner-bearer at the top of his voice advocated
+      the charms of his own employer's establishment. The queue was forbidden
+      for the moment, but many of these ragged touts and many of the other
+      peasants still wore their heads shaven in front, for the average Chinaman,
+      especially he of the poorer classes, is loath to give up the fashions of
+      his forefathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every railway platform was pandemonium, for every person on that platform
+      yelled and shrieked at the top of his voice. On the main line every
+      station was guarded by untidy, unkempt-looking soldiers armed with rifles,
+      but there on this little mountain railway the only guards were policemen,
+      equally unkempt, clad in very dusty black and white and armed with
+      stout-looking bludgeons. They stood along the line at regular intervals,
+      good-natured-looking men, and I wondered whether they would really be any
+      good in an emergency, or whether they would not take the line of least
+      resistance and join the attacking force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All across the cultivated plain we went, where not an inch of ground is
+      wasted, and at half-past five in the evening we arrived at T'ai Yuan Fu&mdash;arrived,
+      that is, at the station outside the little South Gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      T'ai Yuan Fu is a great walled city eight miles round, with five gates in
+      the walls, gates that contrast strangely with the modern-looking
+      macadamised road which goes up from the station. I don't know why I should
+      feel that way, for they certainly had paved roads even in the days before
+      history. Outside the walls are neat, perhaps forty feet high and of grey
+      brick, and inside you see how these city walls are made, for they are the
+      unfinished clay banks that have been faced in front, and when I was there
+      in the springtime the grass upon them was showing everywhere and the
+      shrubs were bursting into leaf. But those banks gave me a curious feeling
+      of being behind the scenes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0047.jpg" alt="0047 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0047.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      I was met at the station by some of the ladies of the English Baptist
+      Mission who had come to welcome me and to offer me, a total stranger to
+      them, kindly hospitality, and we walked through the gate to the mission
+      inside the walls. It was only a short walk, short and dusty, but it was
+      thronged. All the roadway was crowded with rickshaws and carts waiting in
+      a long line their turn to go underneath the gateway over which frowned a
+      typical many-roofed Chinese watch tower, and as cart or rickshaw came up
+      the men along with it were stopped by the dusty soldiery in black and grey
+      and interrogated as to their business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I got out on to the platform I had looked up at the ancient walls
+      clear-cut against the bright blue sky, and the women meeting me looked
+      askance at Tsai Chih Fu, who, a lordly presence, stood behind me, with
+      James Buchanan in his arms, a little black satin cap on his head and his
+      pigtail hanging down his back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is some little commotion in the town,&rdquo; said Miss Franklin. &ldquo;They
+      are cutting off queues.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The master of transport smiled tolerantly when they told him, and, taking
+      off his cap, he wound his tightly round his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; he said in the attitude of a man of the world, &ldquo;some people do
+      not wear them now. But I have always worn one, and I like it,&rdquo; and his
+      manner said he would like to see the person who would dare dictate to him
+      in what manner he should wear his hair. He could certainly have put up a
+      good fight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not needed. He passed through unchallenged; he was a quietly
+      dressed man who did not court notice and his strapping inches were in his
+      favour. He might well be passed over when there were so many slighter men
+      more easily tackled. One man riding along in a rickshaw I saw put up a
+      splendid fight. At last he was hauled out of his carriage and his little
+      round cap tossed off his head, and then it was patent his queue could not
+      be cut, for he was bald as a billiard ball! The Chinese do understand a
+      joke, even a mob. They yelled and howled with laughter, and we heard it
+      echoing and re-echoing as we passed under the frowning archway, tramping
+      across many a dusty coil of coarse black hair roughly shorn from the heads
+      of the luckless adherents to the old fashion. The missionaries said that
+      Tsai Chih Fu must be the only man in T'ai Yuan Fu with a pigtail and that
+      it would be very useful to us as we went farther west, where they had not
+      yet realised the revolution. They doubted if he would be able to keep it
+      on so strict was the rule, but he did&mdash;a tribute, I take it, to the
+      force of my &ldquo;master of transport.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The ladies lived in a Chinese house close under the walls. There is a
+      great charm about these houses built round courtyards in the Chinese
+      style; there is always plenty of air and sunshine, though, as most of the
+      rooms open into the courtyard only, I admit in rough weather they must
+      sometimes be awkward, and when&mdash;as is always the case in Shansi in
+      winter-time&mdash;the courtyard is covered with ice and snow, and the
+      thermometer is far below zero for weeks at a time, it is impossible to go
+      from bedroom to sitting-room without being well wrapped up. And yet,
+      because China is not a damp country, it could never be as awkward as it
+      would be in England, and for weeks at a time it is a charming arrangement.
+      Staying there in April, I found it delightful. Buchanan and I had a room
+      under a great tree just showing the first faint tinge of green, and I
+      shall always be grateful for the kindly hospitality those young ladies
+      gave me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From there we went out and saw T'ai Yuan Fu, and another kindly missionary
+      engaged muleteers for me and made all arrangements for my journey across
+      Shansi and Shensi and Kansu to Lan Chou Fu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But T'ai Yuan Fu is not a nice town to stay in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The town,&rdquo; said the missionaries, &ldquo;is progressive and anti-foreign.&rdquo; It
+      is. You feel somehow the difference in the attitude of the people the
+      moment you set foot inside the walls. It seems to me that if trouble
+      really came it would be an easy matter to seize the railway and cut off
+      the foreign missionaries from all help, for it is at least a fortnight
+      away in the mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They suffered cruelly at the Boxer time: forty men, women and little
+      helpless children were butchered in cold blood in the yamen, and the
+      archway leading to the hospital where Miss Coombs the schoolmistress was
+      deliberately burned to death while trying to guard and shelter her
+      helpless pupils still stands. In the yamen, with a refinement of torture,
+      they cut to pieces the little children first, and then the women, the nuns
+      of the Catholic Church the fierce soldiery dishonoured, and finally they
+      slew all the men. Against the walls in the street stand two miserable
+      stones that the Government were forced to put up to the memory of the
+      foreigners thus ruthlessly done to death, but a deeper memorial is
+      engraven on the hearts of the people. Some few years later the tree
+      underneath which they were slain was blasted by lightning and half
+      destroyed, and on that very spot, during the recent revolution, the Tao
+      Tai of the province was killed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A judgment!&rdquo; said the superstitious people. &ldquo;A judgment!&rdquo; say even the
+      educated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And during the late revolution the white people shared with the
+      inhabitants a terribly anxious time. Shut up in the hospital with a raging
+      mob outside, they waited for the place to be set on fire. The newest shops
+      in the principal streets were being looted, the Manchu city&mdash;a little
+      walled city within the great city&mdash;was destroyed, and though they
+      opened the gates and told the Manchus they might escape, the mob hunted
+      down the men as they fled and slew them, though, more merciful than Hsi An
+      Fu, they let the women and children escape. Men's blood was up, the lust
+      of killing was upon them, and the men and women behind the hospital walls
+      trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We made up our minds,&rdquo; said a young missionary lady to me, &ldquo;that if they
+      fired the place we would rush out and mingle in the mob waiting to kill
+      us. They looked awful. I can't tell you how they looked, but it would have
+      been better than being burned like rats in a trap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A Chinese crowd, to my Western eyes, unkempt, unwashed, always looks
+      awful; what it must be like when they are out to kill I cannot imagine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then she went on: &ldquo;Do you know, I was not really as much afraid as I
+      should have thought I would have been. There was too mueh to think about.&rdquo;
+       Oh, merciful God! I pray that always in such moments there may be &ldquo;too
+      much to think about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mob looted the city. They ruined the university. They destroyed the
+      Manehus. But they spared the foreigners; and still there flourishes in the
+      town a mission of the English Baptists and another of the Catholics, but
+      when I was there the town had not yet settled down. There was unrest, and
+      the missionaries kept their eyes anxiously on the south, on the movements
+      of Pai Lang. We thought about him at Pao Ting Fu, but here the danger was
+      just a little nearer, help just a little farther away. Besides, the people
+      were different. They were not quite so subservient, not quite so friendly
+      to the foreigner, it would take less to light the tinder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For myself, I was glad of the instinct that had impelled me to engage as
+      servant a man of inches. I dared never walk in the streets alone as I had
+      been accustomed to in Pao Ting Fu. It marks in my mind the jumping-off
+      place. Here I left altogether the civilisation of the West and tasted the
+      age-old civilisation of the East, the civilisation that was in full swing
+      when my ancestors were naked savages hunting the deer and the bear and the
+      wolf in the swamps and marshes of Northern Europe. I had thought I had
+      reached that civilisation when I lived in Peking, when I dwelt alone in a
+      temple in the mountains, when I went to Pao Ting Fu, but here in T'ai Yuan
+      Fu the feeling deepened. Only the mission stations stood between me and
+      this strange thing. The people in the streets looked at me askance, over
+      the compound wall came the curious sounds of an ancient people at work,
+      the shrieking of the greased wheel-barrows, the beating of gongs, the whir
+      of the rattle of the embroidery silk seller, the tinkling of the bells
+      that were hung round the necks of the donkeys and the mules, the shouting
+      of the hucksters selling scones and meat balls, all the sounds of an
+      industrious city, and I was an outsider, the alien who was something of a
+      curiosity, but who anyhow was of no account. Frankly, I don't like being
+      of no account. As a matter of fact, I shocked all Chinese ideas of correct
+      deportment. When a well-bred Chinese gentleman arrives at a strange place,
+      he does not look around him, he shows no curiosity whatever in his
+      surroundings, he retires to his room, his meal is brought to him and he
+      remains quietly in his resting-place till it is time for him to take his
+      departure, and what applies to a man, applies, of course, in an
+      exaggerated degree, to a woman. Now I had come to see China, and I made
+      every effort in my power to see all I could. I tremble to think what the
+      inhabitants of Shansi must have thought of me! Possibly, since I outraged
+      all their canons of decency, I was lucky in that they only found me of no
+      account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the while I was in T'ai Yuan Fu I was exceedingly anxious about the
+      measure of safety for a foreign woman outside the walls, and opinions
+      differed as to the wisdom of my venture, but, on the whole, those I
+      consulted thought I would be all right. They rather envied me, in fact,
+      the power to go wandering, but on one point they were very sure: it was a
+      pity Dr Edwards, the veteran missionary doctor, was not there, because he
+      knew more about China and travelling there than all the rest of them put
+      together. But he had gone out on his own account and was on the way to Hsi
+      An Fu, the town I had given up as hopeless. He did not propose to approach
+      it through the Tungkwan, but from the north, and they did not expect him
+      to have any difficulty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I found I had not brought enough money with me and the missionaries
+      lent me more, and they engaged muleteers with four mules and a donkey that
+      were to take me across the thousand miles that lay between the capital of
+      Shansi and that of Kansu. Two men were in charge, and the cost of getting
+      there, everything included&mdash;the men to feed themselves and their
+      animals and I only to be responsible for the feeding and lodging of my own
+      servants&mdash;was exactly eighteen pounds. It has always seemed to me
+      ridiculously cheap. Money must go a long way in China for it to be
+      possible for two men to take four mules and a donkey laden a thousand
+      miles, and then come back unladen and keep themselves by the way, for so
+      small a sum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I sent off my servants the day before, then Buchanan and I bade
+      good-bye to the missionaries and went the first day's journey back along
+      the line to Yu Tze, where the road started for the Yellow River, and as I
+      left the train and was taken by Tsai Chih Fu and Mr Wang to the enclosure
+      of the inn where they had spent the night I felt that I had indeed left
+      the West behind, and the only companion and friend I had was James
+      Buchanan. It was lucky he was a host in himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III&mdash;THE FIRST SIGN OF UNREST
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was to ride a
+      pack-mule. Now riding a pack-mule at any time is an unpleasant way of
+      getting along the road. I know no more uncomfortable method. It is not
+      quite as comfortable as sitting upon a table with one's legs dangling, for
+      the table is still, the mule is moving, and one's legs dangle on either
+      side of his neck. There are neither reins nor stirrups, and the mule goes
+      at his own sweet will, and in a very short time your back begins to ache,
+      after a few hours that aching is intolerable. To get over this difficulty
+      the missionary had cut the legs off a chair and suggested that, mounted on
+      the pack, I might sit in it comfortably. I don't know whether I could, for
+      the mule objected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a sunny morning with a bright blue sky above, and all seemed
+      auspicious except my mule, who expressed in no measured language his
+      dislike to that chair. Tsai Chih Fu had no sooner hoisted me into it than
+      up he went on his hind legs and, using them as a pivot, stood on end
+      pawing the air. Everybody in the inn-yard shrieked and yelled except, I
+      hope, myself, and then Tsai Chih Fu, how I know not, rescued me from my
+      unpleasant position, and thankfully I found myself upon the firm ground
+      again. He was a true Chinese mule and objected to all innovations. He
+      stood meekly enough once the chair was removed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wanted to cross Asia and here I was faced with disaster at the very
+      outset! Finally I was put upon the pack minus the chair, Buchanan was
+      handed up to me and nestled down beside me, and the procession started. My
+      heart sank. I don't mind acknowledging it now. I had at least a thousand
+      miles to go, and within half-an-hour of the start I had thoroughly grasped
+      the faet that of all modes of progression a pack-mule is the most
+      abominable. There are no words at my command to express its discomforts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very little did I see of the landscape of Shansi that day. I was engaged
+      in hanging on to my pack and wondering how I could stick it out. We passed
+      along the usual hopeless cart-track of China. I had eschewed Peking carts
+      as being the very acme of misery, but I was beginning to reflect that
+      anyhow a cart was comparatively passive misery while the back of a
+      pack-mule was decidedly active. Buchanan was a good little dog, but he
+      mentioned several times in the course of that day that he was
+      uncomfortable and he thought I was doing a fool thing. I was much of his
+      opinion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0057.jpg" alt="0057 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0057.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0058.jpg" alt="0058 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0058.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      The day was never ending. All across a plain we went, with rough fields
+      just showing green on either hand, through walled villages, through little
+      towns, and I cared for nothing, I was too intent on holding on, on wishing
+      the day would end, and at last, as the dusk was falling, the muleteer
+      pointed out, clear-cut against the evening sky, the long wralls of a large
+      town&mdash;Taiku. At last! At last!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was to stay the night at a large mission school kept by a Mr and Mrs
+      Wolf, and I only longed for the comfort of a bed, any sort of a bed so
+      long as it was flat and warm and kept still. We went on and on, we got
+      into the suburbs of the town, and we appeared to go round and round,
+      through an unending length of dark, narrow streets, full of ruts and
+      holes, with the dim loom of houses on either side, and an occasional gleam
+      of light from a dingy kerosene lamp or Chinese paper lantern showing
+      through the paper windows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again and again we stopped and spoke to men who were merely muffled
+      shapeless figures in the darkness, and again we went on. I think now that
+      in all probability neither Tsai Chih Fu nor Mr Wang understood enough of
+      the dialect to make the muleteers or the people of whom we inquired
+      understand where we wanted to go, but at last, more probably by good luck
+      than good management, somebody, seeing I was a foreigner, sent us to the
+      foreigners they knew, those who kept a school for a hundred and
+      twenty-five boys in the lovely Flower Garden. It certainly was lovely, an
+      old-world Chinese house, with little courtyards and ponds and terraces and
+      flowers and trees&mdash;and that comfortable bed I had been desiring so
+      long. As we entered the courtyard in the darkness and Tsai Chili Fu lifted
+      me down, the bed was the only thing I could think of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0012" id="linkimage-0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0059.jpg" alt="0059 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0059.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      And yet next day I started again&mdash;I wonder now I dared&mdash;and we
+      skirted the walls of Taiku. We had gone round two sides and then, as I
+      always do when I am dead-tired, I had a bad attack of breathlessness. Stay
+      on that pack I knew I could not, so I made my master of transport lift me
+      down, and I sat on a bank for the edification of all the small boys in the
+      district who, even if they had known how ill I felt, probably would not
+      have cared, and I deeided there and then that pack-mule riding was simply
+      impossible and something would have to be done. Therefore, with great
+      difficulty, I made my way baek to the mission school and asked Mr Wolf
+      what he would recommend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again were missionaries kindness itself to me. They sympathised with my
+      trouble, they took me in and made me their guest, refusing to take any
+      money for it, though they added to their kindness by allowing me to pay
+      for the keep of my servants, and they strongly recommended that I should
+      have a litter. A litter then I decided I would have.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is, I should think, the very earliest form of human conveyance. It
+      consists of two long poles laid about as far apart as the shafts of an
+      ordinary cart, in the middle is hung a coarse-meshed rope net, and over
+      that a tilt of matting&mdash;the sort of stuff we see tea-chests covered
+      with in this country. Into the net is tumbled all one's small impedimenta&mdash;clothes-bags,
+      kettles, anything that will not conveniently go on mule-back; the bedding
+      is put on top, rugs and cushions arranged to the future inmate's
+      satisfaction, then you get inside and the available people about are
+      commandeered to hoist the concern on to the backs of the couple of mules,
+      who object very strongly. The head of the one behind is in the shafts, and
+      the ends rest in his pack-saddle, and the hind quarters of the one in
+      front are in the shafts, just as in an ordinary buggy. Of course there are
+      no reins, and at first I felt very much at the mercy of the mules, though
+      I am bound to say the big white mule who conducted my affairs seemed to
+      thoroughly understand his business. Still it is uncomfortable, to say the
+      least of it, to find yourself going, apparently quite unattended, down
+      steep and rocky paths, or right into a rushing river. But on the whole a
+      litter is a very comfortable way of travelling; after a pack-mule it was
+      simply heaven, and I had no doubts whatever that I could comfortably do
+      the thousand miles, lessened now, I think, by about thirty, that lay
+      before me. If I reached Lan Chou Fu there would be time enough to think
+      how I would go on farther. And here my muleteers had me. When I arranged
+      for a litter, I paid them, of course, extra, and I said another mule was
+      to be got to carry some of the loads. They accepted the money and agreed.
+      But I may say that that other mule never materialised. I accepted the
+      excuse when we left Taiku that there was no other mule to be hired, and by
+      the time that excuse had worn thin I had so much else to think about that
+      I bore up, though not even a donkey was added to our equipment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Money I took with me in lumps of silver, sycee&mdash;shoes, they called
+      them&mdash;and a very unsatisfactory way it is of carrying cash. It is
+      very heavy and there is no hiding the fact that you have got it. We
+      changed little bits for our daily needs as we went along, just as little
+      as we could, because the change in cash was an intolerable burden. On one
+      occasion in Fen Chou Fu I gave Tsai Chih Fu a very small piece of silver
+      to change and intimated that I would like to see the result. That piece of
+      silver I reckon was worth about five shillings, but presently my master of
+      transport and one of the muleteers came staggering in and laid before me
+      rows and rows of cash strung on strings! I never felt so wealthy in my
+      life. After that I never asked for my change. I was content to keep a sort
+      of general eye on the expenditure, and I expect the only leakage was the
+      accepted percentage which every servant levies on his master. 'When they
+      might easily have cheated me, I found my servants showed always a most
+      praiseworthy desire for my welfare. And yet Mr Wang did surprise me
+      occasionally. While I was in Pao Ting Fu I had found it useful to learn to
+      count in Chinese, so that roughly I knew what people at the food-stalls
+      were charging me. On one occasion I saw some little cakes powdered with
+      sesame seed that I thought I should like and I instructed Mr Wang to buy
+      me one. I heard him ask the price and the man say three cash, and my
+      interpreter turned to me and said that it was four! I was so surprised I
+      said nothing. It may have been the regulation percentage, and twenty-five
+      per cent is good anywhere, but at the moment it seemed to me extraordinary
+      that a man who considered himself as belonging to the upper classes should
+      find it worth his while to do me out of one cash, which was worth&mdash;no,
+      I give it up. I don't know what it was worth. 10.53 dollars went to the
+      pound when I was in Shansi and about thirteen hundred cash to the dollar,
+      so I leave it to some better mathematician than I am to say what I was
+      done out of on that occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was another person who was very pleased with the litter and that was
+      James Buchanan. Poor little man, just before we left the Flower Garden he
+      was badly bitten by a dog, so badly he could no longer walk, and I had to
+      carry him on a cushion alongside me in the litter. I never knew before how
+      dearly one could love a dog, for I was terrified lest he should die and I
+      should be alone in the world. He lay still and refused to eat, and every
+      movement seemed to pain him, and whenever I struck a missionary&mdash;they
+      were the only people, of course, with whom I could converse&mdash;they
+      always suggested his back was broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember at Ki Hsien, where I was entertained most hospitably, and where
+      the missionary's wife was most sympathetic, he was so ill that I sat up
+      all night with him and thought he would surely die. And yet in the morning
+      he was still alive. He moaned when we lifted him into the litter and
+      whined pitifully when I got out, as I had to several times to take
+      photographs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't leave me, don't leave me to the mercy of the Chinese,&rdquo; he said, and
+      greeted me with howls of joy when I returned. It was a great day for both
+      of us when he got a little better and could put his pretty little black
+      and white head round the tilt and keep his eye upon me while I worked. But
+      really he was an ideal patient, such a good, patient little dog, so
+      grateful for any attention that was paid him, and from that time he began
+      to mend and by the time I reached Fen Chou Fu was almost his old gay happy
+      little self again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Taiku is a dying town over two thousand years old, and I have before seen
+      dead towns in China. Fewer and fewer grow the inhabitants, the grass grows
+      in the streets, the bricks fall away from the walls, the houses fall down,
+      until but a few shepherds or peasant farmers dwell where once were the
+      busy haunts of merchants and tradesmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Taiku I went on across the rich Shansi plain. Now in the springtime
+      in the golden sunshine the wheat was just above the ground, turning the
+      land into one vivid green, the sky was a cloudless blue, and all was
+      bathed in the golden sunshine of Northern China. The air was clear and
+      invigorating as champagne. &ldquo;Every prospect pleases,&rdquo; as the hymn says,
+      &ldquo;and only man is vile.&rdquo; He wasn't vile; really I think he was a very good
+      fellow in his own way, which was in a dimension into which I have never
+      and am never likely to enter, but he was certainly unclean, ignorant, a
+      serf, poverty-stricken with a poverty we hardly conceive of in the West,
+      and the farther away I found myself from T'ai Yuan Fu the more friendly
+      did I find him. This country was not like England, where until the last
+      four years has been in the memory of our fathers and our fathers' fathers
+      only peace. Even now, now as I write, when the World War is on, an air
+      raid is the worst that has befallen the home-staying citizens of Britain.
+      But Shansi has been raided again and again. Still the land was tilled,
+      well tilled; on every hand were men working hard, working from dawn to
+      dark, and working, to a stranger's eyes, for the good of the community,
+      for the fields are not divided by hedge or fence; there is an occasional
+      poplar or elm, and there are graves everywhere, but there is nothing to
+      show where Wang's land ends and Lui's begins. All through the cultivated
+      land wanders, apparently without object, the zigzag track of sand and ruts
+      and stones known as the Great South Road, impossible for anything with
+      wheels but a Chinese cart, and often impossible for that. There are no
+      wayside cottages, nothing save those few trees to break the monotony, only
+      here and there is a village sheltering behind high walls, sometimes of
+      mud, but generally of brick, and stout, substantial brick at that; and if,
+      as is not infrequent, there is a farmhouse alone, it, too, is behind high
+      brick walls, built like a baronial castle of mediaeval times, with a
+      look-out tower and room behind the walls not only for the owner's family
+      even unto the third and fourth generation, but for all his hinds and his
+      dependents as well. The whole is built evidently with a view to defence,
+      and built apparently to last for hundreds of years. For Shansi is worth
+      raiding. There is oil and there is wheat in abundance. There is money too,
+      much of which comes from Mongolia and Manchuria. The bankers (the Shansi
+      men are called the Jews of China) wander across and trade far into Russian
+      territory while still their home is in agricultural Shansi, and certain it
+      is that any disturbances in these countries, even in Russia, affect the
+      prosperity of Shansi. I wonder if the Russian Revolution has been felt
+      there. Very probably.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shansi is rich in other things too not as yet appreciated by the Chinaman.
+      She has iron and copper and coal that has barely been touched, for the
+      popular feeling is against mining. They say that no part of the globe
+      contains such stores of coal. I hesitate about quoting a German, but they
+      told me that Baron Reichthoffen has said that this province has enough
+      coal to supply the world for two thousand years at the present rate of
+      consumption. I haven't the faintest notion whether the Baron's opinion is
+      worth anything, but if it is, it is no wonder that Germany, with her eye
+      for ever on the main chance, has felt deeply being thrust out of China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With ample coal, and with iron alongside it, what might not Shansi be
+      worth to exploit!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ki Hsien is a little walled town five <i>li</i> round. Roughly three <i>li</i>
+      make a mile, but it is a little doubtful. For instance, from Taiku to Ki
+      Hsien is fifty li, and that fifty <i>li</i> is sixteen miles, from Ki
+      Hsien to Ping Yao is also fifty li, but that is only fourteen English
+      miles. The land, say the Chinese, explaining this discrepancy, was
+      measured in time of famine when it wasn't of any value! A very Chinese
+      explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The city of Ki Hsien is very, very crowded; there were hundreds of tiny
+      courtyards and flat roofs. In the picture of the missionary's house I have
+      not been able to get the roof in because the courtyard&mdash;and it was a
+      fairly large courtyard as courtyards in the city go&mdash;was not big
+      enough. I stood as far away as I possibly could. Mr and Mrs Falls belonged
+      to the Chinese Inland Mission and the house they lived in was over three
+      hundred years old. Like many of the houses in Shansi, it was two storeys
+      high and, strangely enough, a thing I have never seen anywhere else, the
+      floors upstairs were of brick.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know how I would like to live in such a crowded community, but it
+      has its advantages on occasion. At the time of the revolution, when those
+      missionaries who had come through the Boxer times were all troubled and
+      anxious about their future, the Falls decided to stay on at their station,
+      and a rich native doctor, a heathen, but a friend, who lived next door,
+      commended that decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why go away?&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Your courtyard adjoins mine. If there is trouble
+      we put up a ladder and you come over to us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And there was hint of trouble then. As we sat at supper there came in the
+      Chinese postman in his shabby uniform of dirty blue and white, with his
+      large military cap pushed on the back of his head, and he brought to the
+      Falls a letter from Dr Edwards, the missionary doctor all foreign T'ai
+      Yuan Fu thought I ought to meet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I was within reach of the Peking foreign daily papers they mentioned
+      Pai Lang as one might mention a burglar in London, sandwiching him in
+      between the last racing fixtures or the latest Cinema attraction, but from
+      a little walled town within a day's march of Hsi An Fu the veteran
+      missionary wrote very differently, and we in this other little walled town
+      read breathlessly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      White Wolf had surrounded Hsi An Fu, he said; it was impossible to get
+      there and he was returning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The darkness had fallen, the lamp in the middle of the table threw a light
+      on the letter and on the faces of the middle-aged missionary and his wife
+      who pored over it. It might mean so much to them. It undoubtedly meant
+      much to their friends in Hsi An Fu, and it meant much to me, the outsider
+      who had but an hour ago walked into their lives. For I began to fear lest
+      this robber might affect me after all, lest in coming north I was not
+      going to outflank him. According to Dr Edwards, he had already taken a
+      little walled city a hundred li&mdash;about a day's journey&mdash;north-west
+      of Hsi An Fu, and when 'White Wolf took a town it meant murder and rapine.
+      And sitting there in the old Chinese room these two people who knew China
+      told me in no measured terms what might happen to a woman travelling alone
+      in disturbed country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Missionaries, they said, never left their stations when the country was
+      disturbed, they were safer at home, surrounded by their friends. Once the
+      country is raided by a robber band&mdash;and remember this is no uncommon
+      thing in China&mdash;all the bad characters in the country come to the
+      fore, and robber bands that have nothing to do with the original one
+      spring into existence, the cities shut their gates to all strangers, and
+      passports are so much waste paper. Between ourselves, I have a feeling
+      they always are in China. I could hardly tell the difference between mine
+      and my agreement with my muleteers, and I have an uneasy feeling that
+      occasionally the agreement was presented when it should have been the
+      passport.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now no one could be certain whether Pai Lang intended to take Lan Chou Fu,
+      but it looked as if that were his objective. If he took the city it would
+      not be much good my getting there, because the bankers would certainly not
+      be able to supply me with money; even if he only raided the country round,
+      it would be so disturbed that my muleteers would be bound to take alarm.
+      If they left me, and they certainly would leave me if they thought there
+      was a chance of their mules being taken, I should be done. It would spell
+      finish not only to the expedition but to my life. A foreigner, especially
+      a woman without money and without friends, would be helpless in China. Why
+      should the people help her? It takes them all they know to keep their own
+      heads above water. And Kansu was always turbulent; it only wanted a match
+      to set the fire alight. Air and Mrs Falls&mdash;bless them for their
+      kindness and interest!&mdash;thought I should be mad to venture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0013" id="linkimage-0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0068.jpg" alt="0068 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0068.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0014" id="linkimage-0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0069.jpg" alt="0069 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0069.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0015" id="linkimage-0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0070.jpg" alt="0070 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0070.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      So there in the sitting-room which had been planned for a merchant prince
+      and had come into the possession of these two who desired to bring the
+      religion of the West to China I sat and discussed this new obstacle. After
+      coming so far, laying out so much money, could I turn back when danger did
+      not directly press? I felt I could not. And yet my hosts pointed out to me
+      that if danger did directly threaten I would not be able to get away. If
+      Pai Lang did take Lan Chou Fu, or even if he did not, it might well be
+      worth his while to turn east and raid fertile Shansi. In a little town
+      like Ki Hsien there was loot well worth having. In the revolution a banker
+      there was held to ransom, and paid, as the people put it, thirty times ten
+      thousand taels (a tael is roughly three shillings, according to the price
+      of silver), and they said it was but a trifle to him&mdash;a flea-bite, I
+      believe, was the exact term&mdash;and I ean well believe, in the multitude
+      of worse parasites that afflict the average Chinaman, a flea-bite means
+      much less than it does in England.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, I didn't feel like giving up just yet, so I decided to go on to
+      Fen Chou Fu, where was a big American mission, and see what they had to
+      say about the matter. If then I had to flee, the missionaries would very
+      likely be fleeing too, and I should have company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the very next day I had what I took for a warning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a gorgeous day, a cloudless blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and I
+      passed too many things of interest worth photographing. There were some
+      extraordinary tombs, there was a quaint village gateway&mdash;the Gate of
+      Everlasting Peace they call it&mdash;but I was glad to get back into my
+      litter and hoped to stay there for a little, for getting out of a litter
+      presents some difficulties unless you are very active indeed. It is a good
+      long drop across the shafts on to the ground; the only other alternative
+      is to drop down behind the mule's hind quarters and slip out under those
+      shafts, but I never had sufficient confidence in my mule to do that, so
+      that I generally ealled upon Tsài Chih Fu to lift me down. I had set out
+      full of tremors, but taking photographs of the peaceful scenes soothed my
+      ruffled nerves. I persuaded myself my fears had been born of the night and
+      the dread of loneliness which sometimes overtakes me when I am in company
+      and thinking of setting out alone, leaving kindly faces behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I came upon it, the first sign of unrest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The winding road rose a little and I could see right ahead of us a great
+      crowd of people evidently much agitated, and I called to Mr Wang to know
+      what was the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Repeat, please,&rdquo; said he as usual, and then rode forward and came baek
+      saying, &ldquo;I do not know the word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What word?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is a lot of people and a dead man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said I, jumping to conclusions unwarrantably, &ldquo;that is a funeral.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A funeral!&rdquo; said he triumphantly. &ldquo;I have learned a new word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr Wang was always learning a new word and rejoicing over it, but, as I
+      had hired him as a finished product, I hardly think it was unreasonable of
+      me to be aggrieved, and to feel that I was paying him a salary for the
+      pleasure of teaching him English. However, on this occasion his triumph
+      was short-lived. .
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would you like to see the funeral?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I intimated that I would. My stalwart master of transport lifted me down
+      and the crowded people made a lane for me to pass through, and half of
+      them turned their attention to me, for though there were missionaries in
+      the big towns, a foreigner was a sight to these country people, and, Mr
+      Wang going first, we arrived at a man with his head cut off! Mercifully he
+      was mixed up with a good deal of matting and planks, but still there was
+      no mistaking the poor dead feet in their worn Chinese shoes turned up to
+      the sky.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Considering we are mortal, it is extraordinary how seldom the ordinary
+      person looks upon death. Always it comes with a shock. At least it did. I
+      suppose this war has accustomed some of us to the sight, so that we take
+      the result of the meeting of mortal man with his last friend on earth more
+      as a matter of eourse, as indeed it should be taken. Of course I know this
+      is one of the results of the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My sister's son, staying with me after six months in hospital, consequent
+      upon a wound at Gallipoli, came home from a stroll one day and reported
+      that he had seen nothing, and then at dinner that night mentioned in a
+      casual manner that he had seen two dead men being carried out of a large
+      building and put in a motor ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said in astonishment:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They couldn't have been dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course they were. Do you think I don't know dead men when I see them?
+      I've seen plenty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So many that the sight of a couple in the streets of a quiet little
+      country town seemed not even an occasion for remark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was not even accustomed to thinking of dead men and I turned upon Mr
+      Wang angrily:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that isn't a funeral. That's a corpse,&rdquo; and once more to my
+      irritation he rejoiced over a new word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who killed him?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They think an enemy has done this thing,&rdquo; said he sententiously and
+      unnecessarily, as, ignorant as I am of tilings Chinese, I should hardly
+      think even they could have called it a friendly action. The body had been
+      found the day before, and the people were much troubled about it. An
+      official from Ping Yow&mdash;a coroner, I suppose we should call him&mdash;was
+      coming out to inquire about it, and because the sun was already hot the
+      people had raised a little screen of matting with a table and chairs where
+      he could sit to hold inquiry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here was the thing the missionaries had warned me against. Trouble,
+      said they, always begins by the finding of dead bodies that cannot be
+      accounted for, and this body was on the Great South Road. It might be only
+      a case of common murder such as one might perchance meet in Piccadilly,
+      possibly it was due to the bands of soldiers that were pouring into the
+      country&mdash;to defend the crossings of the Yellow River, some people
+      said&mdash;but it was to me an emphatic reminder that the warnings of Mr
+      and Mrs Falls had not been given lightly, and I meditated upon it all the
+      way to Ping Yow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All day long the soldiers had been pouring through Ki Hsien, all night
+      long they poured through the suburbs of Ping Yow. Not through the town
+      itself&mdash;the townspeople were not going to allow that if they could
+      help themselves; and as it was evidently a forced march and the regiments
+      were travelling by night, they could help themselves, for every city gate
+      is shut at sundown. The China Inland Mission had a station at an old camel
+      inn in the eastern suburb, and there the missionary's young wife was alone
+      with five young children, babies all of them, and there I found her. I
+      think she was very glad to see me, anyhow I was someone to discuss things
+      with, and we two women talked and talked over our evening meal. She was a
+      tall, pretty young woman&mdash;not even the ugly Chinese dress and her
+      hair drawn back, not a hair out of place, Chinese fashion, could disguise
+      her pathetic beauty. And she was a countrywoman of mine, born and brought
+      up in the same state, Victoria, and her native town was Ararat, green and
+      fresh among the hills. And how she talked Australia! What a beautiful land
+      it was! And the people! The free, independent people! The women who walked
+      easily and feared no man! To thoroughly appreciate a democratic country
+      you should dwell in effete China. But she feared too, this woman, feared
+      for herself and her five tiny children. It would be no easy job to get
+      away. I told her of the dead man I had seen&mdash;how should I not tell
+      her?&mdash;and she trembled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very likely it is the soldiers,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I am afraid of the Chinese
+      soldiers.&rdquo; And so am I in bulk, though taken singly they seem sueh
+      harmless little chaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When the willow is green and the apricot yellow in the fifth moon,&rdquo; said
+      a metrical inscription on a stone dug up at Nankin in that year&mdash;the
+      fatal year 1914&mdash;&ldquo;terrible things will happen in the land of Han.&rdquo;
+       Terrible things, it seems to me, always happen in the land of Han; but if
+      it spoke for the great world beyond, truly the stone spoke truth, though
+      we did not know it then.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the evening back from the country where he had been preaching for the
+      last day or two came my Australian's husband, and there also came in to
+      see the stranger two missionaries from the other side of the town. They
+      sat there, these men and women of British race, dressed in the outlandish
+      costume of the people around them&mdash;a foolish fashion, it seems to me,
+      for a European in unadulterated Chinese dress looks as ugly and out of
+      place as a Chinese in a stiff collar and a bowler hat. And all the evening
+      we discussed the soldiers and the dead man I had seen, and opinions
+      differed as to the portent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true, said one of them who had been in the country many years, and
+      was a missionary pure and simple, with eyes for nothing but the work he
+      had in hand&mdash;which is probably the way to work for success&mdash;that
+      a dead body, particularly a dead body by the highroad, is often a sign of
+      unrest, but again, quite as often it means no more than a dead body in any
+      other place. If he had turned back for every dead body he had seen&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I thought I would not turn back either. Not yet, at least.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never was I sorrier for missionaries, I who have always written against
+      missionaries, than I was for this young countrywoman of mine who never
+      thought of being sorry for herself. It was a big ugly mission compound,
+      the rooms, opening one into another, were plain and undecorated, and the
+      little children as a great treat watered the flowers that struggled up
+      among the stones of the dusty courtyard, and the very watering-can was
+      made with Chinese ingenuity from an old kerosene tin. It seemed to me
+      those little children would have had such a much better chance growing up
+      in their mother's land, or in their father's land&mdash;he was a Canadian&mdash;among
+      the free peoples of the earth. But who am I, to judge? No one in the
+      world, it seems to me, wants help so much as the poorer Chinese, whose
+      life is one long battle with disease and poverty; and perhaps these poorer
+      missionaries help a little, a very little; but the poorer the mission the
+      poorer the class they reach, and the sacrifice, as I saw it here, is so
+      great.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning we arose early, and I breakfasted with my host and hostess
+      and their five children. The children's grace rings in my ears yet, always
+      I think it will ring there, the childish voices sung it with such fervour
+      and such faith:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      &ldquo;Every day, every day, we bless Thee, we bless Thee,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent10">
+      We praise Thy Name, we praise Thy Name,
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      For ever and for ever!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There in the heart of China these little children, who had, it seemed to
+      me, so very little to be grateful for, thanked their God with all their
+      hearts, and when their elders with the same simple fervour went down on
+      their knees and asked their God to guide and help the stranger and set her
+      on her way, though it was against all my received canons of good taste,
+      what could I do but be simply grateful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ping Yow is a large town set in the midst of a wheatgrowing country, and
+      it is built in the shape of a turtle, at least so I was told. I could see
+      for myself that its walls were not the usual four-square set to the points
+      of the compass, but seemed irregular, with many little towers upon them.
+      These towers, it seems, were built in memory of the teachers of Confucius&mdash;this
+      is the only intimation I have had that he had seventy-two; and there were
+      over three thousand small excrescences&mdash;again I only repeat what I
+      was told; I did not count them, and if I had I would surely have counted
+      them wrong&mdash;like sentry-boxes in memory of his disciples. I do not
+      know why Ping Yow thus dedicates itself to the memory of the great sage.
+      It needs something to commend it, for it remains in my mind as a bare,
+      ugly, crowded town, with an extra amount of dust and dirt and heat, and no
+      green thing to break the monotony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I set forth, and in spite of all I still faced West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0016" id="linkimage-0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0079.jpg" alt="0079 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0079.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0017" id="linkimage-0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0080.jpg" alt="0080 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0080.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV&mdash;A CITY UNDER THE HILLS
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n my wanderings
+      across Shansi I came in contact with two missionary systems run with the
+      same object in view but carried out in diametrically opposite ways. Of
+      course I speak as an outsider. I criticise as one who only looks on, but
+      after all it is an old saw that the onlooker sees most of the game. There
+      are, of course, many missions in China, and I often feel that if the
+      Chinaman were not by nature a philosopher he would sometimes be a little
+      confused by salvation offered him by foreigners of all sects and classes,
+      ranging from Roman Catholics to Seventh Day Adventists. Personally I have
+      received much kindness from English Baptists, from the China Inland
+      Mission and from American Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Amongst
+      them all I&mdash;who frankly do not believe in missions, believing that
+      the children at home should first be fed&mdash;found much to admire, much
+      individual courage and sacrifice, but for the systems, I felt the American
+      missions were the most efficient, far the most likely to attain the end in
+      view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chinaman, to begin with, sees no necessity for his own conversion.
+      Unlike the ordinary black man, he neither admires nor envies the white
+      man, and is given to thinking his own ways are infinitely preferable. But
+      the Chinaman is a man of sound common-sense, he immensely admires
+      efficiency, he is a great believer in education, and when a mission comes
+      to him fully equipped with doctors, nurses and hospitals, teachers and
+      schools, he, once he has overcome his dread of anything new, begins to
+      avail himself first of the doctor and the hospital, for the sore need of
+      China is for medical attendance, and then of the schools. Then comes
+      conversion. They tell me that there are many genuine converts. I have only
+      noticed that the great rich American missions rake in converts by tens and
+      twenties, where they come dribbling in in units to the faith missions,
+      which offer no such advantages as medical attendance or tuition. The faith
+      missionaries work hard enough. I have seen a woman just come in from a
+      week's missionary tour in a district where, she explained, she had slept
+      on the k'angs with the other women of the household, and she was stripping
+      off her clothes most carefully and combing her long hair with a
+      tooth-comb, because all women of the class she visited among were
+      afflicted with those little parasites that we do not mention. The Chinese
+      have a proverb that &ldquo;the Empress herself has three,&rdquo; so it is no shame.
+      She thought nothing of her sacrifice, that was what she had come for,
+      everyone else was prepared to do the same; but when so much is given I
+      like to see great results, as in the American missions. They are rich, and
+      the Chinaman, with a few glaring exceptions, is a very practical person.
+      To ask him to change his faith for good that will work out in another
+      world is asking rather much of him. If he is going to do so he feels he
+      may as well have a God who will give him something in return for being
+      outcast. At least that is the way I read the results. Look at Fen Chou,
+      for instance, where the Americans are thriving and a power in the town,
+      and look at Yung Ning Chou, farther west, where a Scandinavian faith
+      mission has been established for over twenty years. They may have a few
+      adherents in the country round, but in the city itself&mdash;a city of
+      merchants&mdash;they have, I believe, not made a single convert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course the China Inland Mission does not lay itself out to be rich.
+      However many subscriptions come in, the individual missionary gets no more
+      than fifty pounds a year; if more money comes, more missionaries are
+      established, if less, then the luckless individual missionary gets as much
+      of the fifty pounds as funds allow. The Founder of the Faith was poor and
+      lowly, therefore the missionaries must follow in His footsteps. I
+      understand the reason, the nobility, that lies in the sacrifice implied
+      when men and women give their lives for their faith, but not only do I
+      like best the results of the American system, but I dislike exceedingly
+      that a European should be poor in an Oriental country. If missionaries
+      must go to China, I like them to go for the benefit of the Chinese and for
+      the honour and glory of the race to which they belong, and not for the
+      good of their own souls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I came into Fen Chou Fu and went straight to the large compound of the
+      American missionaries, three men and three women from Oberlin College,
+      Ohio. They had a hospital, they had a school, they had a kindergarten, the
+      whole compound was a flourishing centre of industry. They teach their
+      faith, for that is what they have come out for, but also they teach the
+      manifold knowledge of the West. Sanitation and hygiene loom large in their
+      curriculum, and heaven knows, without taking into consideration any future
+      life, they must be a blessing to those men and women who under cruel
+      conditions must see this life through. These six missionaries at Fen Chou
+      Fu do their best to improve those conditions with a practical American
+      common-sense and thoroughness that won my admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fen Chou Fu, unlike T'ai Yuan Fu, is friendly, and has always been
+      friendly, to the foreigner; even during the Boxer trouble they were loath
+      to kill their missionaries, and when the order came that they were to be
+      slain, declined to allow it to be done within their walls, but sent them
+      out, and they were killed about seven miles outside the city&mdash;a very
+      Chinese way of freeing themselves from blood-guiltiness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The town struck me as curiously peaceful after the unrest and the
+      never-ending talk of riot, robbery and murder I had heard all along the
+      road. The weather was getting warm and we all sat at supper on the
+      verandah of Dr Watson's house, with the lamps shedding a subdued light on
+      the table, and the sounds of the city coming to us softened by the
+      distance, and Mr Watt Pye assured me he had been out in the country and
+      there was nothing to fear, nothing. The Chinaman as he had seen him had
+      many sins, at least errors of conduct that a missionary counts sin, but as
+      far as he knew I might go safely to the Russian border. He had not been in
+      the country very long, not, I fancy, a fifth of the time Dr Edwards had
+      been there, but, listening to him, I hoped once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The town is old. It was going as a city in 2205 b.c., and it is quite
+      unlike any other I have come across in China. It is a small square city
+      about nine <i>li</i> round, and on each of the four sides are suburbs,
+      also walled. Between them and the city are the gully-like roads leading to
+      the gates. The eastern suburb is nearly twice as large as the main city,
+      and is surrounded by a high brick wall, but the other suburbs have only
+      walls like huge banks of clay, on the top the grass grows, and on my way
+      in I was not surprised to see on top of this clay-bank a flock of sheep
+      browsing. It seemed a very appropriate place for sheep, for at first sight
+      there is nothing to show that this was the top of a town wall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Manehus drove out the Mings, the vanquished Imperial family took
+      refuge in this western town and rebuilt the walls, which had been allowed
+      to fall into disrepair, and they set about the job in a fashion worthy of
+      Babylon itself. The bricks were made seven miles away in the hills, and
+      passed from hand to hand down a long line of men till they reached their
+      destination and were laid one on top of another to face the great
+      clay-bank forty-six feet high that guards the city. According to Chinese
+      ideas, the city needs guarding not from human enemies only. The mountains
+      to the west and north overshadow it, and all manner of evil influences
+      come from the north, and the people fear greatly their effect upon the
+      town. It was possible it might never get a good magistrate, or that,
+      having got one, he might die, and therefore they took every precaution
+      they could to ward off such a calamity. Gods they put in their watch tower
+      over the gate, and they sit there still, carved wooden figures, a great
+      fat god&mdash;if a city is to be prosperous must not its god be prosperous
+      too?&mdash;surrounded by lesser satellites. Some are fallen now, and the
+      birds of the air roost upon them, and the dust and the cobwebs have
+      gathered upon them, but not yet will they be cleared away. In a chamber
+      below are rusty old-world cannon flung aside in a heap as so much useless
+      lumber, and, below, all the busy traffic of the city passes in and out
+      beneath the arches of the gateway. In that gateway are two upright stones
+      between whieh all wheeled traffic must pass, the distance between these
+      stones marking the length of the axle allowed by the narrow city streets.
+      Any vehicle having a greater length of axle cannot pass in. No mere words
+      can describe the awful condition of the roads of Shansi, and to lessen as
+      far as possible the chance of an upset the country man makes his axle very
+      wide, and, knowing this, the town man notifies at his gates the width of
+      the vehicle that can pass in his streets. No other can enter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides the gods over the gateway, Fen Chou Fu, owing to its peculiar
+      position under the hills, requires other guarding, and there are two tall
+      bronze phoenixes on the wall close to the northern watch tower. I was
+      quite pleased to make the acquaintance of a phoenix, as, though I have
+      read about them, I had never met them before. In Fen Chou Fu it appears
+      that a phoenix is between thirty and forty feet high, built like a comic
+      representation of a chicken, with a long curly neck and a cock's comb upon
+      his head. It would indeed be a churlish, evil spirit who was not moved to
+      laughter at the sight. But though the form is crude, on the bronze bases
+      and on the birds themselves are worked beautifully the details of a long
+      story. Dragons and foxes and rabbits, and many strange symbols that I do
+      not understand come into it, but how they help to guard the city, except
+      by pleasing the gods or amusing the evil spirits, I must confess I cannot
+      imagine. Certainly the city fathers omit the most necessary care: once the
+      walls are finished, the mason is apparently never called in, and they are
+      drifting to decay. Everywhere the bricks are falling out, and when I was
+      there in the springtime the birds of the air found there a secure
+      resting-place. There were crows and hawks and magpies and whistling kites
+      popping in and out of the holes so made, in their beaks straws and twigs
+      for the making of their nests. They would be secure probably in any case,
+      for the Chinese love birds, but here they are doubly secure, for only with
+      difficulty and by the aid of a long rope could any man possibly reach
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ramps up to those walls were extremely steep&mdash;it was a
+      heart-breaking process to get on top&mdash;but Buchanan and I, accompanied
+      by the master of transport carrying the camera, and often by Mr Leete, one
+      of the missionaries, took exercise there; for in a walled city in the
+      narrow streets there is seldom enough air for my taste. The climate here
+      is roughly summer and winter, for though so short a while ago it had been
+      freezing at night, already it was very hot in the middle of the day, and
+      the dust rose up from the narrow streets in clouds. A particularly bad
+      cloud of dust generally indicated pigs, which travel a good deal in
+      Northern China, even as sheep and cattle do in Australia. In Shantung a
+      man sets out with a herd of pigs and travels them slowly west, very
+      slowly, and they feed along the wayside, though what they feed on heaven
+      only knows, for it looks to me as though there is nothing, still possibly
+      they pick up something, and I suppose the idea is that they arrive at the
+      various places in time for the harvest, or when grain and products are
+      cheapest. There are inns solely given over to pigs and their drivers in
+      Shansi, and the stench outside some of those in Fen Chou Fu was just a
+      little taller than the average smell, and the average smell in a Chinese
+      city is something to be always remembered. There were other things to be
+      seen from the top of the wall too&mdash;long lines of camels bearing
+      merchandise to and from the town, donkeys, mules, carts, all churning up
+      the dust of the unkempt roadway, small-footed women seated in their
+      doorways looking out upon the life of the streets, riding donkeys or
+      peeping out of the tilts of the carts. I could see into the courtyards of
+      the well-to-do, with their little ponds and bridges and gardens. All the
+      life of the city lay beneath us. Possibly that is why one meets so very,
+      very seldom any Chinese on the wall&mdash;it may be, it probably is, I
+      should think, bad taste to look into your neighbour's courtyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the wall justified its existence, mediaeval and out of date as it
+      seemed to me. There along the top at intervals were little heaps of
+      good-sized stones, placed there by the magistrate in the revolution for
+      the defence of the town. At first I smiled and thought how primeval, but
+      looking down into the road nearly fifty feet below, I realised that a big
+      stone flung by a good hefty fist from the top of that wall was a weapon by
+      no means to be despised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But walls, if often a protection, are sometimes a danger in more ways than
+      in shutting out the fresh air. The summer rains in North China are heavy,
+      and Fen Chou Fu holds water like a bucket. The only outlets are the narrow
+      gateways, and the waters rise and rise. A short time before I came there
+      all the eastern quarter of the town was flooded so deep that a woman was
+      drowned. At last the waters escaped through the eastern gate, only to be
+      banked up by the great ash-heaps, the product of centuries, the waste
+      rubbish of the town, that are just outside the wall of the eastern suburb.
+      It took a long, long while for those flood waters to percolate through the
+      gateway of the suburb and find a resting-place at last in a swamp the
+      other side of that long-suffering town. I must confess that this is one of
+      the drawbacks to a walled town that has never before occurred to me,
+      though to stand there and look at those great gates, those solid walls,
+      made me feel as if I had somehow wandered into the fourth dimension, so
+      out of my world were they.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a great fair in a Taoist temple and one day Mr Leete and I, with
+      his teacher and my servant, attended. A wonderful thing is a Chinese fair
+      in a temple. I do not yet understand the exact object of these fairs,
+      though I have attended a good many of them. Whether they help the funds of
+      the temple as a bazaar is supposed to help a church in this country, I
+      cannot say. A temple in China usually consists of a set of buildings often
+      in different courtyards behind one enclosing wall, and these buildings are
+      not only temples to the gods, but living-rooms which are often let to
+      suitable tenants, and, generally speaking, if the stranger knows his way
+      about&mdash;I never did&mdash;he can get in a temple accommodation for
+      himself and his servants, far superior accommodation to that offered in
+      the inns. It costs a little more, but everything is so cheap that makes no
+      difference to the foreigner. The Taoist temple the day I went there was
+      simply humming with life; there were stalls everywhere, and crowds of
+      people buying, selling or merely gossiping and looking on. I took a
+      picture of some ladies of easy virtue with gay dresses and gaily painted
+      faces, tottering about, poor things, on their maimed feet, and at the same
+      spot, close against the altar of the god, I took a picture of the priest.
+      With much hesitation he consented to stand. He had in his hand some
+      fortune-telling sticks, but did not dare hold them while his portrait was
+      being taken. However, Mr Leete's teacher was a bold, brave, enlightened
+      man&mdash;in a foreign helmet&mdash;and he held the sticks, and the two
+      came out in the picture together. I trust no subsequent harm came to the
+      daring man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0018" id="linkimage-0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0089.jpg" alt="0089 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0089.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0019" id="linkimage-0019"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0090.jpg" alt="0090 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0090.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      In Fen Chou Fu I could have walked about the town alone unmolested. I
+      never did, because it would have been undignified and often awkward, as I
+      could not speak the language, but the people were invariably friendly. On
+      the whole, there was not very much to see. The sun poured down day after
+      day in a cloudless sky, and the narrow streets, faced with stalls or blank
+      grey brick walls enclosing the compounds, were dusty and uneven, with the
+      ruts still there that had been made when the ground was softened by the
+      summer rains of the year before. Away to the south-east was a great
+      pagoda, the second tallest in China, a landmark that can be seen for many
+      a long mile across the plain. This, like the phoenixes, is <i>feng shui</i>.
+      I have never grasped the inwardness of pagodas, which are dotted in
+      apparently a casual manner about the landscape. An immense amount of
+      labour must have been expended upon them, and they do not appear to serve
+      any useful purpose. This one at Fen Chou Fu is meant to balance after a
+      fashion the phoenixes on the northern wall and afford protection for the
+      southern approach to the city. I don't know that it was used for any other
+      purpose. It stood there, tall and commanding, dwarfing everything else
+      within sight. Neither do I know the purpose of the literary tower which
+      stands on the southeast corner of the wall. It denotes that the town
+      either has or hopes to have a literary man of high standing among its
+      inhabitants. But to look for the use in all things Chinese would be
+      foolish; much labour is expended on work that can be only for artistic
+      purposes. To walk through a Chinese town, in spite of filth, in spite of
+      neglect and disrepair, is to feel that the Chinaman is an artist to his
+      finger-tips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gate to the American church in Fen Chou Fu, for instance, was a
+      circle, a thing of strange beauty. Imagine such a gate in an English town,
+      and yet here it seemed quite natural and very beautiful. They had no bell,
+      why I do not know, perhaps because every temple in China has a plenitude
+      of bells hanging from its eaves and making the air musical when the
+      faintest breath of wind stirs and missionaries are anxious to dissociate
+      themselves in every way from practices they call idolatry, even when those
+      practices seem to an outsider like myself rather attractive. At any rate,
+      to summon the faithful to church a man beats a gong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But there is one institution of Fen Chou Fu which is decidedly
+      utilitarian, and that is the wells in the northwestern corner. A Chinaman,
+      I should say, certainly uses on the average less water than the majority
+      of humanity; a bath when he is three days old, a bath when he is married,
+      and after that he can comfortably last till he is dead, is the generally
+      received idea of his ablutions, but he does want a little water to carry
+      on life, and in this corner of the town are situated the wells which
+      supply that necessary. It is rather brackish, but it is still drinkable,
+      and it is all that the city gets. They were a never-ending source of
+      interest to me. They were established in those far-away days before
+      history began&mdash;perhaps the presence of the water here was the reason
+      for the building of the town&mdash;and they have been here ever since. The
+      mouths are builded over with masonry, and year in and year out have come
+      those self-same carts with solid wheels, drawn by a harnessed ox or an ox
+      and a mule, bearing the barrels to be filled with water. Down through all
+      the ages those self-same men, dressed in blue cotton that has worn to a
+      dingy drab, with a wisp of like stuff tied round their heads to protect
+      them from the dust or the cold or the sun, have driven those oxen and
+      drawn that water. Really and truly our own water, that comes to us, hot
+      and cold, so easily by the turning of a tap, is much more wonderful and
+      interesting, but that I take as a matter of course, while I never tired of
+      watching those prehistoric carts. It was in rather a desolate corner of
+      the town too. The high walls rose up and frowned upon it, the inside of
+      the walls where there was no brick, only crumbling clay with shrubs and
+      creepers just bursting into leaf and little paths that a goat or an active
+      boy might negotiate meandering up to the top. And to get to that part I
+      had to pass the ruins of the old yamen razed to the ground when the
+      Government repented them of the Boxer atrocities, and razed so effectually
+      that only the two gate-posts, fashioned like lions, Chinese architectural
+      lions, survive. A curse is on the place, the people say; anyhow when I
+      visited it fourteen years later no effort had been made to rebuild. Not
+      for want of labour, surely. There are no trade unions in China, and daily
+      from dawn to dark in Fen Chou Fu I saw the bricklayers' labourers trotting
+      along, bringing supplies to the men who were building, in the streets I
+      met men carrying water to the houses in buckets, and now in the springtime
+      there was a never-ending supply of small boys, clad in trousers only, or
+      without even those, bearing, slung from each end of a bamboo, supplies of
+      firewood, or rather of such scraps as in any other land would have been
+      counted scarce worth the cost of transport. Any day too I might expect to
+      meet a coffin being borne along, not secretly and by night as we take one
+      to a house, but proudly borne in the open daylight, for everyone knows a
+      coffin is the most thoughtful and kindly as well as often the most
+      expensive of gifts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While here I attended a wedding. Twice have I attended a Chinese wedding.
+      The first was at Pao Ting Fu at Christmas time, and the contracting
+      parties were an evangelist of the church who in his lay capacity was a
+      strapping big laundryman and one of the girls in Miss Newton's school.
+      They had never spoken to one another, that would have been a frightful
+      breach of decorum, but as they went to the same church, where there was no
+      screen between the men and the women, as there is in many Chinese
+      churches, it is possible they knew each other by sight. It is curious how
+      in some things the missionaries conform to Chinese ideas and in others
+      decline to yield an inch. In Pao Ting Fu no church member was allowed to
+      smoke, but the women were kept carefully in retirement, and the
+      schoolmistress, herself an unmarried woman, and the doctor's wife arranged
+      marriages for such of the girls as came under their guardianship. Of
+      course I see the reason for that: in the present state of Chinese society
+      no other method would be possible, for these schoolgirls, all the more
+      because they had a little scholarship and education, unless their future
+      had been arranged for, would have been a temptation and a prey for all the
+      young men around, and even with their careful education&mdash;and it was a
+      careful education; Miss Newton was a woman in a thousand, I always grudged
+      her to the Chinese&mdash;were entirely unfitted to take care of
+      themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still it always made me smile to see these two women, middle-class
+      Americans from Virginia, good-looking and kindly, with a keen sense of
+      humour, gravely discussing the eligible young men around the mission and
+      the girls who were most suitable for them. It was the most barefaced and
+      open match-making I have ever seen. But generally, I believe, they were
+      very successful, for this one thing is certain, they had the welfare of
+      the girls at heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this was one of the matches they had arranged. It is on record that on
+      this special occasion the bridegroom, with the consent and connivance of
+      the schoolmistress, had written to the bride exhorting her to diligence,
+      and pointing out how good a thing it was that a woman should be well read
+      and cultured. And seeing that she came of very poor people she might well
+      be counted one of the fortunate ones of the earth, for the bridegroom was
+      educating her. The ignorance of the average Chinese woman in far higher
+      circles than she came of is appalling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christmas Day was chosen for the ceremony, and Christmas Day was a
+      glorious winter's day, with golden sunshine for the bride, and the air,
+      the keen, invigorating air of Northern China, was sparkling with frost.
+      Now, in contrast to the next wedding I attended, this wedding was on
+      so-called Western lines; but the Chinese is no slavish imitator, he
+      changes, but he changes after his own fashion. The church was decorated by
+      devout Chinese Christians with results which to 'Western eyes were a
+      little weird and outré. Over the platform that in an Anglican church would
+      be the altar was a bank of greenery, very pretty, with flowers dotted all
+      over it, and on it Chinese characters in cotton wool, &ldquo;Earth rejoices,
+      heaven sings,&rdquo; and across that again was a festoon of small flags of all
+      nations, while from side to side of the church were slung garlands of
+      gaily coloured paper in the five colours of the new republic, and when I
+      think of the time and patience that went to the making of those garlands I
+      was quite sorry they reminded me of fly-catchers. But the crowning
+      decoration was the Chinese angel that hovered over all. This being was
+      clad in white, a nurse's apron was used, girt in at the waist, foreign
+      fashion, and I grieve to say they did not give her much breathing-space,
+      though they tucked a pink flower in her belt. Great white paper wings were
+      spread out behind, and from her head, framing the decidedly Mongolian
+      countenance, were flowing golden curls, made by the ingenious decorators
+      of singed cotton wool.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One o'clock was fixed for the wedding, and at a quarter to one the church
+      was full.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They did not have the red chair for the bride. The consensus of opinion
+      was against it. &ldquo;It was given up now by the best people in Peking. They
+      generally had carriages. And anyhow it was a ridiculous expense.&rdquo; So it
+      was deeided that the bride should walk. The church was only a
+      stone's-throw from the schoolhouse where she lived. The bridegroom stood
+      at the door on the men's side of the church, a tall, stalwart Chinaman,
+      with his blaek hair sleek and oiled and cut short after the modern
+      fashion. He was suitably clad in black silk. He reminded me of &ldquo;William,&rdquo;
+       a doll of my childhood who was dressed in the remains of an old silk
+      umbrella&mdash;this is saying nothing against the bridegroom, for
+      &ldquo;William&rdquo; was an eminently superior doll, and always looked his very best
+      if a little smug occasionally. But if a gentleman who has attained to the
+      proud position of laundryman and evangelist, and is marrying the girl he
+      has himself at great expense educated for the position, has not a right to
+      look a little smug, I don't know who has. Beside him stood his special
+      friend, the chief Chinese evangelist, who had himself been married four
+      months before. At the organ sat the American doctor's pretty young wife,
+      and as the word was passed, &ldquo;The bride is coming!&rdquo; she struck up the
+      wedding march, and all the women's eyes turned to the women's door, while
+      the men, who would not commit such a breach of decorum as to look, stared
+      steadily ahead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the wedding march had been played over and over again before she did
+      come, resplendent and veiled, after the foreign fashion, in white mosquito
+      netting, with pink and blue flowers in her hair, and another bunch in her
+      hand. The bridegroom had wished her to wear silk on this great occasion,
+      so he had hired the clothes, a green silk skirt and a bronze satin brocade
+      coat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A model of Chinese decorum was that bride. Her head under the white veil
+      was bent, her eyes were glued to the ground, and not a muscle of her body
+      moved as she progressed very slowly forward. Presumably she did put one
+      foot before the other, but she had the appearance of an automaton in the
+      hands of the women on either side&mdash;her mother, a stooping little old
+      woman, and a tall young woman in a bright blue brocade, the wife of the
+      bridegroom's special friend. Each grasped her by an arm just above the
+      elbow and apparently propelled her up the aisle as if she were on wheels.
+      Up the opposite aisle came the bridegroom, also with his head bent and his
+      eyes glued to the ground and propelled forward in the same manner by his
+      friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They met, those two who had never met face to face before, before the
+      minister, and he performed the short marriage ceremony, and as he said the
+      closing words the Chinese evangelist became Master of Ceremonies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The bridegroom and bride,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;'will bow to each other once in the
+      new style.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bride and groom standing before the minister bowed deeply to each
+      other in the new style.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will bow a second time,&rdquo; and they bowed again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will bow a third time,&rdquo; and once more they bowed low.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will now bow to the minister,&rdquo; and they turned like well-drilled
+      soldiers and bowed to the white-haired man who had married them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will now bow to the audience,&rdquo; and they faced the people and bowed
+      deeply, and everybody in that congregation rose and returned the
+      salutation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now the audience will bow to the bride and bridegroom,&rdquo; and with
+      right good will the congregation, Chinese and the two or three foreigners,
+      rose and saluted the newly married couple, also I presume in the new
+      style.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was over, and to the strains of the wedding march they left the church,
+      actually together, by way of the women's entrance. But the bride was not
+      on the groom's arm. That would not have been in accord with Chinese ideas.
+      The bridegroom marched a little ahead, propelled forward by his friend, as
+      if he had no means of volition of his own&mdash;again I thought of
+      &ldquo;William,&rdquo; long since departed and forgotten till this moment&mdash;and
+      behind came the new wife, thrust forward in the same manner, still with
+      her eyes on the floor and every muscle stiff as if she too had been a
+      doll.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the world loves a lover,&rdquo; but in China, the land of ceremonies, there
+      are no lovers. This man had gone further than most men in the wooing of
+      his wife, and they were beginning life together with very fair chances of
+      success. But even so the girl might not hope for a home of her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That would have been most unseemly. The evangelist laundryman had not a
+      mother, but his only sister was taking the place of mother-in-law, and he
+      and his bride would live with her and her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0020" id="linkimage-0020"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0099.jpg" alt="0099 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0099.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0021" id="linkimage-0021"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0100.jpg" alt="0100 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0100.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      The wedding I attended in Fen Chou Fu was quite a different affair. It was
+      spring, or perhaps I should say early summer, the streets through which we
+      drove to the old house of one of the Ming princes where dwelt the
+      bridegroom with his mother were thick with dust, and the sun blazed down
+      on us. The bridegroom belonged to a respectable well-to-do trading family,
+      and he wanted a Christian wife because he himself is an active member of
+      the church, but the Christian church at Fen Chou Fu has been bachelor so
+      long, and the division between the sexes is so strait, that there are
+      about fifty available girls to between eight and nine hundred young men,
+      therefore he had to take what he could get, and what he could get was a
+      pagan little girl about eighteen, for whom he paid thirty Mexican dollars,
+      roughly a little under three pounds. I, a Greek, who do not care much what
+      any man's religion is so long as he live a decent life, understand the
+      desire of that man for a Christian wife, for that means here in the
+      interior that she will have received a little education, will be able to
+      read and write and do arithmetic, and will know something of cleanliness
+      and hygiene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The great day arrived, and the missionaries and I were invited to the
+      bridegroom's house for the ceremony and the feast that was to follow. The
+      entertainment began about eight o'clock in the morning, but we arrived a
+      little after noon, and we two women, Miss Grace Maccomaughey and I, were
+      ushered through the courtyards till we came to the interior one, which was
+      crowded with all manner of folks, some in festive array, some servants in
+      the ordinary blue of the country, and some beggars in rags who were
+      anticipating the scraps that fall from the rich man's table, and were
+      having tea and cake already. Overhead the sky was shut out by all manner
+      of flags and banners with inscriptions in Chinese characters upon them,
+      and once inside, we made our way towards the house through a pressing
+      crowd. Opposite the place that perhaps answered for a front door was a
+      table draped in red, the colour of joy, and on the table were two long
+      square candles of red wax with Chinese characters in gold upon them. They
+      were warranted to burn a day and a night, and between them was a pretty
+      dwarf plant quaintly gnarled and bearing innumerable white flowers. That
+      table was artistic and pretty, but to its left was a great pile of coal,
+      and, beside the coal, a stove and a long table at which a man, blue-clad,
+      shaven and with a queue, was busy preparing the feast within sight of all.
+      I could have wished the signs of hospitality had not been so much in
+      evidence, for I could quite believe that cook had not been washed since he
+      was three days old, and under the table was a large earthenware bowl full
+      of extremely dirty water in which were being washed the bowls we would
+      presently use.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Out came the women of the household to greet us and conduct us to the
+      bridal chamber, dark and draped with red and without any air to speak of.
+      It was crowded to suffocation with women in gala costumes, with bands of
+      black satin embroidered in flowers upon their heads, gay coats and loose
+      trousers, smiling faces and the tiny feet of all Shansi. It was quite a
+      relief to sit down on the <i>k'ang</i> opposite to a stout and cheerful
+      old lady with a beaming face who looked like a well-to-do farmer's wife.
+      She was a childless widow, however, but she had attained to the proud
+      position of Bible-woman, receiving a salary of four Mexican dollars a
+      month, and consequently had a position and station of her own. In my
+      experience there is nothing like being sure of one's own importance in the
+      world. It is certainly conducive to happiness. I know the missionaries,
+      bless them! would say I am taking a wrong view, but whatever the reason at
+      the back of it all, to them is the honour of that happy,
+      comfortable-looking Bible-woman. And there are so few happy-looking women
+      in China!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We sat on the <i>k'ang</i> and waited for the bride, and we discoursed. My
+      feet&mdash;I never can tuck them under me&mdash;clad in good substantial
+      leather, looked very large beside the tiny ones around me, for even the
+      Bible-woman's had been bound in her youth, and of course, though they were
+      unbound now, the broken bones could never come straight, and the-flesh
+      could not grow between the heel and the toes. She looked at my feet and I
+      laughed, and she said sententiously, like a true Chinese:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The larger the feet the happier the woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I asked did it hurt when hers were bound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It hurt like anything,&rdquo; translated the missionary girl beside me, &ldquo;but it
+      is all right now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The bride was long in coming, and shortly after four we heard the gongs
+      and music and crackers that heralded her arrival, and we all went out to
+      greet her, or rather to stare at her. First came the bridegroom, and that
+      well-to-do tradesman was a sight worth coming out to see. He wore a most
+      respectable black satin jacket and a very pretty blue silk petticoat;
+      round his neck and crossed on his breast was a sash of orange-red silk,
+      set off with a flaring magenta artificial chrysanthemum of no mean
+      proportions, and on his head, and somewhat too small for him, was&mdash;a
+      rare headgear in China&mdash;a hard black felt hat. From the brim of that,
+      on either side, rose a wire archway across the crown, on which were strung
+      ornaments of brass, and I am bound to say that the whole effect was
+      striking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the bride came in to be married, out went two women to lift her
+      veil and smear her face with onion. They explained that the bridegroom's
+      mother should do this, but the fortune-teller had informed them that these
+      two women would be antagonistic&mdash;which I think I could have foretold
+      without the aid of any fortune-teller&mdash;therefore the rite was deputed
+      to two other women, one of whom was the kindergarten teacher at the
+      sehool. Then, with the teacher on one side and a lucky woman with husband
+      and children living on the other, down through the crowd came the little
+      bride to her marriage. She was clad in a red robe, much embroidered, which
+      entirely hid her figure, so that whether she were fat or slim it was
+      impossible to see, on her head was a brazen crown entirely covering it,
+      and over her face was a veil of thick bright red silk. She could neither
+      see nor be seen. Her feet were the tiniest I have ever seen, they looked
+      about suitable for a baby of twelve months old. The tiny red shoes were
+      decorated with little green tassels at the pointed toe and had little baby
+      high heels, and though they say these feet were probably false, the real
+      ones must have been wonderfully small if they were hidden in the manifold
+      red bandages that purported to make the slender red ankles neat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bride and bridegroom took their places in front of the minister, in front
+      of the plant and alongside the coals, and it made my back ache to think of
+      keeping any being standing for above a second on such feet. The service
+      began, all in Chinese, of course, though the officiating minister was an
+      American, a couple of hymns were sung, and the audience laughed aloud
+      because she was married by her baby name, her mother having omitted to
+      provide her with another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The good woman had yearned for a son so she had called this girl &ldquo;Lead a
+      brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Half-way through the ceremony the bridegroom lifted the veil. He gave it a
+      hurried snatch, as if it were a matter of no moment, and hung it on one of
+      the projections of the brazen crown, and then he and we saw the bride's
+      face for the first time. They had done their best to spoil her beauty with
+      carmine paint, but she had a nice little nose and a sweet little quivering
+      mouth that was very lovable, and I think the bridegroom, though he never
+      moved a muscle, must have been pleased with his bargain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the service was ended, she and we, the principal guests, went back to
+      the <i>k'ang</i> in the bride chamber; her crown and outer red robe were
+      taken off, all in public, and a small square box containing some of her
+      trousseau was brought in, and every woman and child there in that stuffy
+      little room dived into it and hauled out the silks and embroideries and
+      little shoes and made audible comments on them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;H'm! it's only sham silk,&rdquo; said one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How old are you, new bride?&rdquo; asked another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's not much to look at,&rdquo; said a third, which was a shame, for with the
+      paint washed off she must have been pretty though tired-looking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was five o'clock before we went to the feast, all the women together,
+      and all the men together, four or five at a table, and the bridegroom,
+      without the absurd headgear, and his mother, in sober blue silk, came
+      round at intervals and exhorted us to eat plenty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had one little saucer each, a pair of chopsticks and a china spoon such
+      as that with which my grandmother used to ladle out her tea, and they
+      served for all the courses. It was lucky I had had nothing since seven in
+      the morning, or I might not have felt equal to eating after I had seen the
+      cooking and the washing-up arrangements. As it was, I was hungry enough
+      not to worry over trifles. After she had sucked them audibly, my friend
+      the Bible-woman helped me with her own chopsticks, and I managed to put up
+      with that too. I tried a little wine. It was served in little bowls not as
+      large as a very small salt-cellar, literally in thimblefuls, but one was
+      too much for me. It tasted of fiery spirit and earth, and I felt my
+      companion was not denying herself much when she proclaimed herself a
+      teetotaller. What we ate heaven only knows, but much to my surprise I
+      found it very good. Chinese when they have the opportunity are excellent
+      cooks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bride sat throughout the feast on the <i>k'ang</i>, her hands&mdash;three
+      of her finger-nails were shielded with long silver shields&mdash;hidden
+      under her lavender jacket and her plate piled before her, though etiquette
+      required that she should refuse all food. They chaffed her and laughed at
+      her, but she sat there with downcast eyes like a graven image. After the
+      feast two or three men friends of the bridegroom were brought in, and to
+      every one she had to rise and make an obeisance, and though the men and
+      women hardly looked at or spoke to each other, it was evident that she was
+      for this occasion a thing to be commented on, inspected and laughed at.
+      She was bearing it very well, poor little girl, when Kan T'ai T'ai's cart&mdash;I
+      was Kan T'ai T'ai&mdash;was announced, and we went home through the
+      streets as the shades of evening were falling. I had fed bountifully and
+      well, but the dissipation had worn me out, the airlessness of the rooms
+      was terrible, and even the dust-laden air of the narrow street I drew into
+      my lungs with a sigh of deep thankfulness. It was good to be in the free
+      air again. Better still to remember, however I had railed against my fate
+      at times, nothing that could ever happen to me would be quite as bad as
+      the fate of the average Chinese woman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, a new life was beginning for this girl in more ways than one. The
+      bridegroom was going back to his business, that of a photographer in T'ai
+      Yuan Fu, leaving his wife with his mother. She was to be sent to the
+      school for married women opened by the missionaries, and, of course, her
+      feet were to be unbound. Probably, I hope I do not do him an injustice,
+      the bridegroom would not have objected to bound feet, but he did want an
+      educated mother for his children, and the missionaries will take no woman
+      with bound feet. They will do the best they can to retrieve the damage
+      done, though she can never hope to be anything but a maimed cripple, but
+      at least she in the future will be free from pain, into her darkened life
+      will come a little knowledge and a little light, and certainly her
+      daughters will have a happier life and a brighter outlook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Missions in China, if they are to do any good, are necessarily
+      patriarchal. They look after their converts from the cradle to the grave.
+      The kindergarten run by a Chinese girl under the maternal eye of young
+      Miss Grace Maccomaughey was quite a pretty sight, with all the little tots
+      in their quaint dresses of many colours and their hair done or their heads
+      shaved in the absurd fashion which seems good to the proud Chinese parents&mdash;for
+      Chinese parents are both proud and tender and loving, though their ways
+      seem strange to us. But babies all the world over, yellow or black or
+      white, are all lovable, and these babies at the kindergarten were
+      delicious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beloved guest, beloved guest,&rdquo; they sang in chorus when I came in and
+      they were told to greet me. &ldquo;Peace to thee, peace to thee.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And &ldquo;Lao T'ai T'ai&rdquo; they used to address me in shrill little voices as I
+      went about the compound. Lao T'ai T'ai (I shouldn't like to swear I'd
+      spelled it properly) means &ldquo;Old lady&rdquo;&mdash;that is, a woman of venerable
+      years who is rich enough to keep a servant&mdash;and it was the first time
+      in my life I had been so addressed, so I looked in the glass to see if I
+      had developed grey hair or wrinkles&mdash;riding on a mule-pack would be
+      enough to excuse anything&mdash;and then I remembered that if in doubt in
+      China it is erring on the side of courtesy to consider your acquaintance
+      old. I dare say to the children I was old. I remember as a very little
+      girl a maiden aunt asking me how old I thought her, and I, knowing she was
+      older than my mother, felt she must be quite tottery and suggested in all
+      good faith she might be about ninety. I believe the lady had just attained
+      her five and thirtieth year, and prided herself upon her youthful
+      appearance. At any rate her attitude on this occasion taught me when
+      guessing an age it is better to understate than to overestimate. At least
+      in the West. Here in the East I was &ldquo;Old lady&rdquo; by courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they begin the important things of life early in China. At the
+      kindergarten there were two little tots, a boy and a girl, engaged to be
+      married. The boy was the son of one of the mission cooks and the girl was
+      the daughter of his wife. He, a widower, sought a wife to look after his
+      little boy, and he got this young widow cheap. Her price was thirty <i>tiaous</i>&mdash;that
+      is, a little over one pound&mdash;and at first he said it was too much and
+      he could not afford it, but when he heard she had a little girl he changed
+      his mind and scraped together the money, for the child could be betrothed
+      to his little son and save the expense of a wife later on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were a quaint little pair, both in coats and trousers, shabby and
+      old, evidently the children of poor people, and both with their heads
+      shaven save for a tuft of hair here and there. The boy had his tufts cut
+      short, while the girl's were allowed to grow as long as they would and
+      were twisted into a plait. Such a happy little couple they were, always
+      together, and in the games at the kindergarten when they had to pair these
+      little ones always chose each other. Possibly the new wife in the home was
+      a wise and discreet woman. She might be glad too at the thought that she
+      need not part with her daughter. Anyhow I should think that in Fen Chou Fu
+      in the future there would be one married couple between whom the sincerest
+      affection will exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose Chinese husbands and wives are fond of each other occasionally,
+      but the Chinaman looks upon wedded life from quite a different point of
+      view from the Westerner. I remember hearing about a new-made widow who
+      came to sympathise with a missionary recovering from a long illness. She
+      was properly thanked, and then the missionary in her turn said in the
+      vernacular:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you too have suffered a bitterness. I am sorry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I?&rdquo; incredulously, as much as to say, Who could think I had a sorrow?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes. You have lost your husband, haven't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call that a bitterness?&rdquo; smiled the relict cheerfully, and her would-be
+      consoler felt the ground cut away beneath her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But perhaps that sympathiser was not quite as much dismayed as another
+      lady who offered her condolences upon a similar occasion. The new-made
+      widow was a gay old thing, and she remarked blandly, with a toss of her
+      head:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All, we don't worry about things like that when we've got the Gospel!&rdquo;
+       which left that well-meaning teacher a little uncertain as to whether she
+      had instructed her in the doctrines of her new faith quite correctly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fen Chou Fu is a town that lends itself to reform, that asks for it. When
+      I was there they had a magistrate who had been educated in Japan and was
+      ready to back any measures for the good of the town. He was too much
+      imbued with the spirit of modern thought to be a Christian, but he was
+      full of admiration for many of the measures advocated by these
+      enthusiastic young people from Oberlin College. There is a large
+      Government school here&mdash;you may see the courtyards with their lily
+      ponds and bridges from the wall&mdash;that has been in existence for
+      hundreds of years, and this magistrate appealed to the missionaries to
+      take it over and institute their modern methods. They might even, so he
+      said, teach their own faith there. The only thing that stood in the way
+      was want of funds, for though the school was endowed, money has still a
+      way of sticking to the hands through which it passes in China. The
+      missionaries were rather inclined, I think, to have hopes of his
+      conversion, but I do not think it is very easy to convert the broad-minded
+      man who sees the good in all creeds. This magistrate was anxious to help
+      his people sunk in ignorance and was wise enough to use every means that
+      came in his way, for he knows, knowing his own people, you will never
+      Westernise a Chinaman. He will take all that is good&mdash;or bad&mdash;in
+      the West that appeals to him, and he will mould it in his own way. This
+      magistrate was building an industrial school for criminal boys close to
+      the mission station and, more progressive than the West itself, he allowed
+      his wife to sit on the bench beside him and try and sentence women proved
+      guilty of crime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V&mdash;&ldquo;MISERERE DOMINE!&rdquo;
+     </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>s I have said more
+      than once, it seems to me the most intolerable thing in life would be to
+      be a Chinese woman. I remember when first I began to write about China I
+      asked a friend of mine to look over my work and he objected to my making
+      such a fuss about the condition of the women.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, people will think you are a suffragette!&rdquo; said he, searching for
+      some term of obloquy that he felt could not possibly apply to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I am a suffragist, an ardent suffragist, realising that a woman is
+      most valuable neither as an angel nor as a slave, but as a useful citizen,
+      and I saw then that he possibly knew little about the condition of his own
+      women, and probably absolutely nothing at all about the condition of the
+      women of the race who swarmed around him. Those he met would be dumb, and
+      at any rate no right-minded woman begins upon her wrongs to a stranger. In
+      any country it would be bad taste, in China no words can tell what
+      shocking bad taste. I had to seek further afield for my information, and I
+      got it from the medical missions. Now I went to China with a strong
+      prejudice against missionaries, and I found there many people who backed
+      me up. And then it occurred to me that I had better go to a mission
+      station and see what manner of people were these I was judging so hastily
+      and so finally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went. And what I saw made me sorry that Great Britain and America, to
+      say nothing of Scandinavia, should be deprived of the services of these
+      men and women who are giving so much to an alien people. Of course I know
+      that many missionaries have the &ldquo;call,&rdquo; a &ldquo;vocation&rdquo; I suppose the
+      Catholics would call it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a fine work,&rdquo; said I, usually the unadmiring, &ldquo;to teach these
+      women, but I do not like coming in contact with them, however much I
+      appreciate their virtues.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the missionary girl looked at me pityingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;we could come all this way to teach Chinese
+      women reading, writing and arithmetic?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems to me a great thing to do; if it be only to teach them to wash,
+      it is a great thing; but I who merely pitied would never have stayed there
+      to better the condition of those unhappy women. To her and her comrades
+      had come that mysterious call that comes to all peoples through all the
+      ages, the Crying in the Wilderness, &ldquo;Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make
+      His paths straight,&rdquo; and she thought more, far more, of it than I did of
+      the undoubtedly good work I saw she was doing, saw as I never should have
+      seen had I not gone in the ways untrodden by the tourist, or indeed by any
+      white man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are missionaries and missionaries, of course; there are even
+      backsliders who, having learned the difficult tongue under the ægis of the
+      missions, have taken up curio-buying or any other of the mercantile
+      careers that loom so temptingly before the man who knows China; but in all
+      classes of society there are backsliders, the great majority must not be
+      judged by them. Neither must their narrowness be laid too mueh to heart
+      when judging the missionary as a whole. Possibly only a fanatic can carry
+      through whole-heartedly the work of a missionary at a remote station in
+      China, and most fanatics are narrow. There are, too, the men and women who
+      make it a business and a livelihood, who reckon they have house and income
+      and position and servants in return for their services to the heathen, but
+      they too are faithful and carry out their contracts. Having once seen the
+      misery and poverty in which the great majority of Chinese dwell, I can say
+      honestly that I think every mission station that I have seen is a centre
+      from which radiates at least a hope of better things. They raise the
+      standard of living, and though I care not what god a man worships, and
+      cannot understand how any man can be brought to care, it is good that to
+      these people sitting in darkness someone should point out that behind the
+      world lies a great Force, God, Love, call it what you will, that is
+      working for good. That the more educated Chinese has worked out a faith
+      for himself, just as many in the West have done, I grant you, but still
+      the majority of the people that I have seen sit in darkness and want help.
+      From the missions they get it. Taken by and large, the Chinaman is a
+      utilitarian person, and if the missions had not been helpful they would
+      long ago have gone. And for the missionaries themselves&mdash;I speak of
+      those in the outstations&mdash;not one, it seems to me, not one would stay
+      among the Chinese unless he were sure that his God had sent him, for the
+      life is hard, even for the rich missions there are many deprivations, and
+      if therefore, being but human, they sometimes depict their God as merciful
+      and loving in a way that seems small and petty, much must be forgiven
+      them. They are doing their best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is another side to it too for the West. These missionaries are
+      conquering China by the system of peaceful penetration. They are
+      persecuted, they suffer, are murdered often, but that does not drive them
+      away. They come back again and again, and wherever the missionary succeeds
+      in planting his foot the hatred to foreigners and things foreign, strong
+      among the conservative Chinese, is weakened and finally broken down. China
+      is a rich country, she is invaluable to the nations of the earth for
+      purposes of trade, and though the missionary in many ways, if he were
+      asked, would oppose the coming of the white man, he certainly is the
+      pioneer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      China is trying to reform herself, but the process is slow, and it seems
+      to me in Shansi and in the parts of Chihli that I know it would be a long,
+      long while before the good percolated to the proletariat, the Babylonish
+      slaves, if it were not for the missionaries; and particularly do I admire
+      the medical missionaries, for China is one huge sore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is the word the woman doctor at Pao Ting Fu applied to it, and,
+      attending her clinic of a morning, I was inclined to agree with her. Life
+      is hard for everybody among the poor in China, but especially does it
+      press upon the women. They came there into the clean sun-lit room and the
+      reek of them went up to heaven&mdash;bald-headed, toothless old crones in
+      wadded coats out of which all semblance of colour had long since passed,
+      young girls and little children clad in the oldest of garments. There were
+      so many with ingrowing eyelashes that the doctor had one particular day
+      upon which she operated for this painful disfigurement, and she showed me
+      how, by making a little nick&mdash;I'm afraid I can't use proper surgical
+      terms&mdash;in the upper eyelid, she turned back the eyelashes and made
+      them grow in the direction they are intended to grow, and saved the
+      unfortunates' eyes. Why eyelashes should grow in in China I don't know.
+      Perhaps it is my ignorance, but I have never heard of their behaving in
+      such an unnatural fashion in any other part of the world, while in Pao
+      Ting Fu this ailment seemed to be as common as influenza in London. Then
+      there would be women with their mouths closed by sores, often so badly
+      they could only live by suction, and more than once a new mouth had to be
+      cut; there were cancerous growths&mdash;the woman depicted in the picture
+      had waited twenty years before she could arrange to come under one hundred
+      miles to the doctor&mdash;there were sores on the head, sores all over the
+      body, all, I suppose, including the ingrowing eyelashes, caused by
+      malnutrition, swollen glands, abscesses offensive and purulent, in fact in
+      that clinic were collected such an array of human woes, ghastly, horrible,
+      as well might make one wonder if the force behind all life could possibly
+      be anything but devilish and cruel. Wherein could the good be found?
+      Where?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet there was good. Among these women moved the nurses. They were
+      comely girls in blue coats and trousers, with their abundant black hair
+      smoothly drawn back, neat white stockings and the daintiest of little
+      shoes. Their delicate artistic hands used sponge and basin very capably,
+      they were the greatest contrast to their patients, and yet they were truly
+      Chinese, had sprung from the people to whom they now ministered, and one
+      of them, though it was hardly observable, had an artificial foot. So had
+      she suffered from foot-binding that her own had had to be amputated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Probably most of the ailments there treated were preventable, but worst of
+      all were the bound feet and the ailments the women suffered from in
+      consequence. It is not good manners to speak about a woman's feet, and the
+      women themselves rarely refer to them, but naturally I was interested in
+      the custom, and whenever the doctor got a &ldquo;good&rdquo; bound foot, which
+      probably meant a very bad one, she sent over for me to come and see it.
+      Anyone who has once seen a bound foot will never forget it. It always
+      smelt abominably when first the bandages were taken off, and the first
+      thing the nurses did was to provide a square kerosene tin of hot water in
+      which to soak the foot well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well washed, the feet might be looked at. Shansi especially is the home of
+      the bound foot, most of the women have such small feet that they are
+      confined for the greater part of their lives to the <i>k'ang</i>. I
+      remember Dr Lewis in all seriousness saying that he thought on the whole a
+      Chinese woman was better without her feet. And I'm inclined to think he
+      was right. The toes, all except the big toe, are pressed back till they
+      touch the heel, the bandage is put on and drawn tighter and tighter every
+      day, and if the girl is healthy and big-boned, so much the worse for her.
+      No matter the size of the girl, the foot must conform to the one standard.
+      In Shansi when I was there the shoes were generally about four inches
+      long, and I have taken shoes of that length off a tall and strapping woman
+      who was tottering along with the aid of a stick. What she must have
+      suffered to get her feet to that size is too terrible to imagine. She must
+      have been suffering still for that matter. If the instep after the
+      tightest binding still sticks up the girl's marriage chances are seriously
+      interfered with, and then the mother or some feminine relative takes a
+      meat-chopper and breaks the bone till she can bind the foot small enough.
+      This information I got from the American lady who looks after the women in
+      the mission in Fen Chou Fu; and at T'ai Yuan Fu the sister in the women's
+      hospital added the gruesome detail that they sometimes pull off the little
+      girls' toe-nails so that they may not interfere with the binding!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at the women's hospital at Pao Ting Fu I saw the finished product. The
+      big toe stuck straight out, red, possibly because of the soaking in hot
+      water&mdash;I never had courage to look at one unsoaked&mdash;and
+      ghastly-looking, the other toes were pressed back against the heel and the
+      heel went up and was exactly like the Cuban heels affected by smartly
+      dressed women, only this time it had been worked in flesh and blood. The
+      whole limb from the big toe to the knee was hard and immovable as stone.
+      If you press ordinary flesh anywhere it pits, just yields a little, not so
+      a Chinese woman's leg and foot. It is thin, perished, literally hard as
+      marble. Once having seen a foot unbound, it is a wonder to me that any
+      woman should walk at all. And yet they do. They hold out their arms and
+      walk, balancing themselves, and they use a stick. Sometimes they walk on
+      their heels, sometimes they try the toe, but once I realised what those
+      bandages concealed it was a painful and dreadful thing to me to see a
+      Chinese woman walking. In spite of the hardness of the flesh, or probably
+      because of it, they get bad corns on the spot upon which they balance, and
+      sores, very often tuberculous, eat into the foot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0022" id="linkimage-0022"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0117.jpg" alt="0117 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0117.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0023" id="linkimage-0023"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0118.jpg" alt="0118 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0118.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      But the evil does not stop at the foot. In Shansi it seemed to me every
+      woman's face was marked with the marks of patient suffering. Travelling I
+      often got a glimpse of one peering out of a cart or litter at the
+      foreigner, and that face invariably was patient, pallid and worn, for
+      foot-binding brings no end of evils in its train. The doctor at Fen Chou
+      Fu declared that nine-tenths of the women who came to him for treatment
+      suffered from tuberculosis in some form or another, and this in a climate
+      that in the winter must outrival in dryness Davos Platts. Not a few, too,
+      develop spinal curvature low down in the back, and often because of the
+      displacement of the organs they die in child-birth. A missionary in one of
+      the little towns I passed through, a trained nurse, told me that when a
+      woman suffered from what she (the woman) called leg-waist pains&mdash;the
+      doctor called it osteomalacia&mdash;her case was hopeless, she could not
+      give birth to a child. Often this nurse had been called in to such cases,
+      and she could do nothing to help the suffering girl. She could only stand
+      by and see her die. I could well believe these tales of suffering. In Fen
+      Chou Fu and in Pao Ting Fu the women of the poorer classes freely walked
+      the streets, and their crippled condition was patent to all eyes. But in
+      some towns it is not considered seemly for any woman to be seen in the
+      streets. Some reason established this custom long ago: the reason passes,
+      but China is the most conservative of nations, and the custom remains. But
+      the reason for foot-binding is not very clear. There is something sexual
+      at the bottom of it, I believe, but why a sick and ailing woman should be
+      supposed to welcome the embraces of her lord more readily than one
+      abounding in health passes my understanding. Of course we remember that
+      not so very long ago, in the reign of Victoria, practically the delicate
+      woman who was always ailing was held up to universal admiration. Look at
+      the swooning heroines of Dickens and Thackeray. But let no man put the
+      compressed waist on the same plane as foot-binding. I have heard more than
+      one man do so, but I unhesitatingly affirm they are wrong. Foot-binding is
+      infinitely the worse crime. The pinched-in waist did not begin till the
+      girl was at least well on in her teens, and it was only the extreme cases&mdash;and
+      they did it of their own free will I presume&mdash;who kept up the
+      pressure always. There was always the night for rest, whereas the Chinese
+      women get no rest from torture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The missionaries at Fen Chou Fu, being very anxious to improve the status
+      of the women, used to arrange to have lectures in their large hall to
+      women only, and they raked the country-side for important people to
+      address them on subjects that were, or rather that should be, of interest
+      to women. They were not supposed to have anything to do with religion, but
+      they discussed openly women's position, were told about hygiene and the
+      care of children, and the magistrate's wife, she who had been educated in
+      Japan, told them some home-truths about the position of women in China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;American women,&rdquo; said she on one occasion, &ldquo;go out into the world and
+      help in the world's development. We Chinese stay at home and are dragged
+      along by the men. The time has come when we must learn better things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I looked one day at over seventy women of the richer classes assembled
+      to listen to a young and enthusiastic Chinese with modern views on the
+      position of women and their equality with men. He was passionate, he was
+      eloquent, he was desperately in earnest, but it was very evident he spoke
+      to deaf ears. I do not think that any one of those women grasped, or cared
+      for that matter, what he was saying. In the heart of China woman is very
+      far from being the equal of man. These women were pets and toys, and they
+      came to the mission station probably because it was the fashionable form
+      of amusement just then, but they listened to what was being said with deaf
+      ears and minds incapable of understanding. They were gaily clad in silks
+      and satins, richly embroidered; their hair when it was abundant was oiled
+      and elaborately dressed and decorated with gold and silver pins, and when
+      it was scanty was hidden under embroidered silken bands; there was not a
+      skirt amongst them, that was left to the lecturer, their blue and green
+      and brilliant red trousers were rather narrow, their feet were of the very
+      tiniest even in Shansi, and their faces, worn and suffering under their
+      paint and powder, were vacant. Some of them had brought their babies, and
+      only when a child cried, and they cried fairly frequently, did those faces
+      light up. That was something they really did understand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet that enthusiastic young scholar in his voluminous petticoats, with
+      his hair cut in the modern fashion, went on lecturing to them on the
+      rights of women, the position women ought to occupy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the position of women! Toys or slaves are they, toys and slaves have
+      been their mothers and their grandmothers since the days before the dawn
+      of history, and very, very slowly is the idea of the possibility of better
+      things percolating through to the masses in China. It will come, I
+      suppose, because already there are Government schools for women, though
+      they are few and far between, and in some places, so far has the desire
+      for freedom gone, the girls have banded themselves into societies,
+      declaring that rather than marry a man they have never seen they will
+      commit suicide, and more than one has taken her own life. But in the parts
+      of Shansi and Chihli where I was so much light has not yet penetrated. The
+      wife and mother has influence because any living thing with which we are
+      closely associated&mdash;even if it be but a little dog&mdash;must needs
+      influence us, but all the same the Chinese women are as a rule mere
+      chattels, dependent entirely upon their menfolk. Amongst the Chinese the
+      five happinesses are: old age, a son, riches, official position and a
+      moustache; so slight a thing is a woman that she does not come in in this
+      connection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as the heavens are above the earth, so far am I,&rdquo; disdainfully
+      proclaimed a Chinese teacher, &ldquo;above my wife.&rdquo; And he only spoke as if
+      stating a self-evident fact, a thing that could not be questioned. &ldquo;How
+      could she be my equal?&rdquo; Just as I might have objected to being put on the
+      same plane as my mule or my little dog. Indeed I doubt very much whether
+      he gave the same consideration to his wife as I would do to my little dog,
+      who is much beloved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is not to say, of course, that the men don't consider the women. They
+      do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember the gate-keeper at Pao Ting Fu mission paying up for his
+      daughter's schooling. He was a jovial old soul, so old that I was
+      surprised to hear he had a mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Short am I?&rdquo; said he cheerfully. &ldquo;Short? Oh, that dollar and a half!&rdquo; He
+      paused to consider the matter, then added: &ldquo;And I was thinking about
+      borrowing a dollar from you. My mother's dying, and I want to buy her a
+      skirt! Must be prepared, you know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old lady, said Miss Newton, had probably never owned such a luxury as
+      a skirt in her life, but that was her son's way of being good to her, for
+      the people have a proverb to the effect that the most important thing in
+      life is to be buried well, an idea that isn't entirely unknown in Western
+      and more enlightened lands. Poor old lady, whose one and only skirt came
+      to her to be buried in, or perhaps it would be taken off before she was
+      buried, for the Chinese are a careful people. I remember one frugal man
+      who celebrated the funeral of his mother and the marriage of his son at
+      the same time, so that the funeral baked meats did for the marriage feast,
+      and the same musicians did for both. The coffin, of heavy black wood, tall
+      as a mantelpiece, stood in the yard, with the eldest son and his wife clad
+      in white as mourners, and the rest of the company made merry in the house
+      over the bridal. It was the most exquisite piece of thrift, but the
+      Chinaman is <i>par excellence</i> an economist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in Pao Ting Fu that I met the only woman who made open complaint
+      against the position of women, and she only did it because, poor thing,
+      she was driven to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She slipped through the mission compound gate while the gate-keeper was
+      looking the other way, a miserable, unkempt woman with roughened hair and
+      maimed feet. Her coat and trousers of the poorest blue cotton were old and
+      soiled, and the child she carried in her arms was naked save for a little
+      square of blue cotton tied round his body in front. She was simply a woman
+      of the people, deadly poor where all just escape starvation, young and
+      comely where many are unattractive, and she stood under the shade of the
+      trees watching eagerly the mission family and their guest at breakfast on
+      the porch! It was a June morning, the sunshine that would be too fierce
+      later on now at 7 a.m. was golden, and a gentle breeze just whispered
+      softly in the branches that China&mdash;even Pao Ting Fu&mdash;in the
+      early summer morning was a delightful place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But eager watching eyes glued to every mouthful are distinctly
+      disquieting, and in China, the land of punctilious etiquette, are rude.
+      Besides, she had no business to be there, and the doctor's wife turned and
+      spoke to her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What custom is this?&rdquo; said she, using the vernacular, &ldquo;and how did you
+      get in here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ran past&rdquo;&mdash;ran, save the mark, with those poor broken cramped feet&mdash;&ldquo;when
+      the gate-keeper was not looking. And it's not a day's hunger I have. For
+      weeks when we have had a meal we have not known where the next was coming
+      from.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you have a husband?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he was rich,&rdquo; assented the woman, &ldquo;but he has gambled it all away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite a likely story. Another woman working on the compound said it
+      was true. She had a bad husband&mdash;<i>hi yah!</i> a very bad husband.
+      He beat her, often he beat her. Sometimes perhaps it was her fault,
+      because she was bad-tempered. Who would not be bad-tempered with maimed
+      feet, an empty stomach and two little hungry children? But often he beat
+      her for no reason at all. And everyone knows that a Chinese husband has a
+      perfect right to beat his wife. That he refrains from so doing is an act
+      of grace on his part, but a woman of herself is merely his chattel. She
+      has no rights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hospital quilted bed-covers&mdash;<i>pel wos</i>, they called them&mdash;had
+      to be unripped and washed. The pay was twenty-five <i>t'ung tzus</i> a day
+      and keep yourself. One hundred and thirty <i>t'ung tzus</i> went to the
+      dollar, and 10-35 dollars went to the sovereign at that time, so that the
+      work could not be considered overpaid; but this was China, and the women
+      were apparently rising up out of the ground and clamouring for it. It was
+      evidently looked upon as quite a recreation to sit under the trees on the
+      grass in the mission compound and gossip and unpick quilts. The new
+      recruit joined them and spent a happy day, sure of food for herself and
+      her children for that day at least&mdash;not food perhaps such as we would
+      appreciate, but at least a sufficiency of millet porridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That day and the next she worked, and then on the third day at midday she
+      went away for her meal and did not come back till after two o'clock in the
+      afternoon. The doctor's wife was reproachful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have been away for over three hours. Why is this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a true Chinese and found it difficult to give a direct answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been talking to my mother,&rdquo; said she, rousing wrath where she
+      might have gained sympathy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What excuse is this?&rdquo; said the doctor's wife. &ldquo;You go away, and when I
+      ask you why, you tell me you have been talking to your mother! Your mother
+      should have more sense than to keep you from your work!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But my husband has sold me!&rdquo; protested the culprit and then we saw that
+      her face was swollen with crying; &ldquo;and I am a young woman and I don't know
+      what to do when my husband sells me. He keeps the children and he sells
+      me, and Tsao, the man who has bought me, is a bad man,&rdquo; and dropping down
+      to the ground she let the tears fall on to the work in her hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am young and so I don't know what to do.&rdquo; It was the burden of her
+      song. It may be she is wailing still, for the story was unfinished when I
+      left. She was young and she didn't know what to do. She would not have
+      minded leaving her husband if only the man to whom she had been sold had
+      been a better man, but he bore a worse reputation if anything than her
+      husband, and ignorant, unlearned in all things of this world as she was,
+      she and the women round her knew exactly what her fate would be. Tsao
+      would sell her when he tired of her, and her next purchaser would do
+      likewise, and as she gets older and her white teeth decay and her bright
+      eyes fade and her comeliness wanes her money value will grow less and
+      less, and beating and starvation will be her portion till death comes as a
+      merciful release. But, as she kept repeating pathetically, she is young,
+      and death is the goal at the end of a weary, weary, heartbreaking road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For her husband was quite within his rights. He could sell her. It may be,
+      of course, he will be swayed by public opinion, and public opinion is
+      against the disposing of a wife after this fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let her complain to the official,&rdquo; suggested my assurance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the wise women who knew rose up in horror at the depths of ignorance I
+      was disclosing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to the yamen and complain of her husband!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It is no crime for a man to sell his wife, but it is a deadly crime for a
+      woman to speak evil of her husband! She was not yet handed over. All he
+      would have to do would be to deny it, and then she would be convicted of
+      this crime and to her other ills would be added the wrath of the official.
+      No, something better than that must be thought of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She had been sold for a hundred <i>tiaou</i>&mdash;something under four
+      pounds&mdash;and when the money was paid she would have to go to her new
+      master, far away from all her friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Hi yah!</i>&rdquo; said the other women. &ldquo;What a bad man!&rdquo; So public opinion
+      was against it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would do no good to buy her freedom unless the purchaser were prepared
+      to take upon himself the conduct of her future life. A woman must belong
+      to somebody in China; she is, except in very exceptional cases and among
+      the very advanced, considered incapable of guiding her own life, and pay
+      this and the man would still regard her as his wife and sell her again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then a woman wise with wisdom of the people arose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is only one thing to be done,&rdquo; said she; &ldquo;you must pretend you know
+      nothing about it, and when Tsao comes, and you are sold, then make an
+      excuse and run to the yamen. It may be the official will help, for it is a
+      wicked thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run to the yamen!&rdquo; on feet on which she could just totter. But the wise
+      woman had taken that into consideration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mark well the way so you may hide in the turnings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a forlorn, pitiful little hope! But with it she had to be content,
+      and that night she held her peace and pretended she did not know the fate
+      that hung over her, and when I left she was still ripping bed-covers with
+      the other women. She had had no hand in bringing about her own fate, for
+      she did not choose this man. She had never seen him till she was handed
+      over on her marriage day by her parents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What,&rdquo; said the women at one place when a new missionary came to them,
+      &ldquo;forty and not married! What freedom! How did you manage it! What good
+      fortune!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In China there is no respectable word, so I am told, to denote a bachelor,
+      and there was almost never, at least under the old regime, such a thing as
+      an old maid. Every woman must belong to someone, and few and far between
+      are the families that can afford to keep unmarried daughters, so the women
+      regard as eminently fortunate those foreign women they come across,
+      missionary or otherwise, who are apparently free to guide their own lives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course the average husband would no more think of selling his wife than
+      would an Englishman, but, unlike the Englishman, he knows that he has the
+      right to do so should he so please, even as he has the right of life and
+      death over her and his children. She is his chattel, to be faithful to her
+      would simply be foolishness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They tell a story of an angry father found digging a hole in which he
+      proposed to bury his son alive. That son had been insolent, and it was a
+      terrible thing to have an insolent son. His mother wept, but to her tears
+      the father paid no heed. A stranger passed along and questioned the little
+      company, and finding in his heart pity for the woman and the lad, cast
+      about how he might help them. He did not set about it as we of the West
+      would have done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He commiserated with the father. It was a terrible thing to have an
+      insolent son. Undoubtedly he deserved death. But it would be a bad thing
+      to have no son to worship at the ancestral tablet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was provided for, said the irate parent. He had two other sons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was well! That was well! And of course they had sons?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No, they were young. They had no sons yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A-a-ah! And suppose anything happened by which they both should die?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger let that sink in. He had struck the right chord. It would be
+      a terrible thing to have no son to worship at the ancestral tablet&mdash;to
+      think that he by his own act&mdash;&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chinese reasoning prevailed, and the son's life was spared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet the Chinese are fond of their children and, according to their
+      lights, good to their wives. It is that under the patriarchal system
+      children and women&mdash;a woman is always a child, a very ignorant child
+      as a rule&mdash;have no rights. They are dependent upon the good will of
+      their owners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the woman sitting waiting to see if her husband would complete the
+      bargain and sell her had no rights. She was just a chattel in the eye of
+      the law. And there was none to help. Miserere Domine! It was just possible
+      public opinion would save her. It was her only hope. Miserere Domine!
+      Miserere Domine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Fen Chou Fu the missionaries had started an adult school for women.
+      First it was started, as they themselves put it, to teach the Gospel, but
+      then wisely they extended it and taught reading, writing and arithmetic,
+      and very eager indeed were the pupils. It is only fair to say that very
+      often husbands, or possibly fathers-in-law&mdash;for a woman belongs to
+      the head of her husband's family, or at least owes allegiance to him&mdash;aided
+      and abetted in every way, and when necessary sent the pupils twenty and
+      thirty miles in carts and in litters from away in the mountains to attend.
+      One woman with four little children, all under five, with another coming,
+      was a most eager pupil. Her children were sent to the kindergarten, which
+      is in charge of a young Chinese teacher educated by the missionaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again I do not say the Chinese are not doing something to ameliorate the
+      condition of their women. I can only speak of what I saw, and what I saw
+      was, here in Shansi, the wives of the most miserable peasants sunk in
+      ignorance and hardly able to crawl from the <i>k'angs</i> on which they
+      spent their lives. The men do the cooking because the women are incapable,
+      and the mortality among the children is terrible. A doctor told me that
+      very often he had attended a woman at the birth of her thirteenth or
+      fourteenth child and only one or two would be living!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't know how many wives or concubines a man is allowed. Only the first
+      one has any standing, and the number of the others is probably limited by
+      his means. I remember hearing of one man, a Mr Feng, who had just married
+      his second wife to another man because she was making his life too
+      miserable for him. This was the man's side of the story; I had heard the
+      woman's the last time. I wonder how the case is put on these occasions.
+      Does a man say he is parting with the lady with extreme regret because the
+      climate does not suit her, or because his first wife does not like her, or
+      because a sudden reverse of fortune has compelled him to reduce his
+      household? He surely would never have given the real reason. My friend Mr
+      Farrer waxes enthusiastic over things Chinese, but I must say what I have
+      seen of their domestic life repels me, and I am rather inclined to agree
+      with a missionary of my acquaintance&mdash;a bachelor though&mdash;that it
+      would give nervous prostration to a brazen statue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There can be little happiness where there is ignorance, and the majority
+      of the women of Shansi anyhow are the ignorant slaves of ignorant slaves.
+      Miserere Domine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI&mdash;BY MOUNTAIN AND RIVER
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>etting out on a
+      long journey by road, moving along slowly, at the rate of thirty miles a
+      day, I find I do not have the end in view in my mind all the time. I do
+      subconsciously, of course, or I would never get on at all, but I take a
+      point a couple of days ahead and concentrate on getting there. Having
+      arrived so far, I am so pleased with the performance I can concentrate on
+      the next couple of days ahead. So I pass on comfortably, with the
+      invigorating feeling of, something accomplished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fen Chou Fu, then, was one of my jumping-off places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at Fen Chou Fu my muleteers began to complain. Looked at from a
+      Western point of view, they ought to have complained long before, but
+      their complaint was not what I expected. They sent my interpreter to say
+      we were going the wrong way. This road would lead us out into a great bare
+      place of sand. When the wind blew it would raise the sand in great clouds
+      that would overwhelm us, and if the clouds gathered in the sky we should
+      not be able to see the sun, we would not know in which direction to go and
+      we should perish miserably. And having supplied me with this valuable and
+      sinister information they stood back to watch it sink in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It didn't have the damping and depressing effect they doubtless expected.
+      To begin with, I couldn't believe in a Chinese sky where you couldn't see
+      the sun. The clouds might gather, but a few hours would suffice to
+      disperse them, in my experience, and as for losing ourselves in the sand&mdash;well,
+      I couldn't believe it possible. Always in China, where-ever I had been,
+      there had been plenty of people of whom to ask the way, and though every
+      man's radius was doubtless short, still at every yard there was somebody.
+      It was like an endless chain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't they want to go?&rdquo; I asked Mr Wang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Repeat, please,&rdquo; said he, according to the approved formula.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won't they go?&rdquo; I felt I had better have the matter clear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say 'Go,' mus' go. You fear&mdash;you no go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      If I feared and wouldn't go on, I grasped, the money I paid them would be
+      forfeit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I must go. I am not afraid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They say you go by Hsi An Fu. That be ploper.&rdquo; And the listening
+      muleteers smiled at me blandly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I cannot go by Hsi An Fu because of White Wolf.&rdquo; I did not say that
+      also it would be going round two sides of a triangle because that would
+      not appeal to the Chinese mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They not knowing White Wolf,&rdquo; said Mr Wang, shaking his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I know White Wolf,&rdquo; I said, departing a little from the truth, &ldquo;and
+      I am going across the river to Sui Te Chou.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say 'Go,'&rdquo; said Mr Wang sorrowfully, &ldquo;mus' go,&rdquo; and he looked at the
+      muleteers, and the muleteers looked at him sorrowfully and went off the
+      verandah sorrowfully to prepare for the lonely road where there would be
+      no people of whom to ask the way, only sand and no sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was plenty of sun when we started. It was a glorious summer morning
+      when my little caravan went out of the northern gate into the mountains
+      that threatened the town. It was unknown China now, China as she was in
+      the time of the Cæsars, further back still in the time of the Babylonish
+      kings, in the days before the first dynasty in Egypt. Out through the
+      northern gate we went, by the clay-walled northern suburb, past great
+      ash-heaps like little mountain ranges, the refuse of centuries, their
+      softly rounded sides now tinged with the green of springtime, and almost
+      at once my caravan was at the foot of the hills&mdash;hills carved into
+      terraces by the daily toil of thousands, but looking as if they had been
+      so carved by some giant hand. As we entered them as hills they promptly
+      disappeared, for the road was sunken, and high over our heads rose the
+      steep clay walls, shutting out all view save the bright strip of blue sky
+      above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I here put it on record&mdash;I believe I have done it before, but it
+      really cannot be repeated too often&mdash;that as a conveyance a mule
+      litter leaves much to be desired. Sitting up there on my bedding among my
+      cushions, with James Buchanan beside me, I was much more comfortable than
+      I should have been in a Peking cart, but also I was much more helpless. A
+      driver did take charge of the Peking cart, but the gentleman who sometimes
+      led my mule litter more often felt that things were safer in the charge of
+      the big white mule in front, and when the way was extremely steep or rough
+      he abandoned it entirely to its discretion. The missionaries had told me
+      whenever I came to a bad place to be sure and get out, because the Chinese
+      mules are not surefooted enough to be always trusted. They are quite
+      likely at a bad place to slip and go over. This was a cheering reflection
+      when I found myself at the bad place abandoned to the tender mercies of
+      those animals. The mule in the lead certainly was a capable beast, but
+      again and again, as I told Mr Wang, I would have preferred that the
+      muleteers should not put quite so much faith in him. I learned to say
+      &ldquo;B-r-rrr, b-r-r-rrr!&rdquo; when I wanted him to stop, but I did not like to say
+      it often, because I felt in a critical moment I might seriously hamper him
+      to my own disadvantage. I told Mr Wang I was to be lifted out when we came
+      to bad places, but that too was hardly practicable, for we came to many
+      places that I certainly could not have negotiated on my own feet, and how
+      the mules got a cumbersome litter down or up them passes my understanding.
+      Thinking it over, the only advice I can give to anyone who wishes to
+      follow in my footsteps is to shut his eyes as I did and trust to the mule.
+      And we went down some places that were calculated to take the curl out of
+      my hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      James Buchanan was a great comfort to me under these circumstances. He
+      nestled down beside me&mdash;he had recovered from his accident before we
+      left Fen Chou Fu&mdash;and he always assured me that everything would be
+      all right. One thing he utterly declined to do, and that was to walk with
+      the servants. I used to think it would be good for his health, but the
+      wisdom of the little Pekinese at the British American Tobacco Factory had
+      sunk in deep and he declined to trust himself with them unless I walked
+      too, when he was wild with delight. Put out by himself, he would raise a
+      pitiful wail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buchanan declines,&rdquo; Mr Wang would say sententiously, and he would be
+      lifted baek into the litter by my master of transport as if he were a
+      prince of the blood at least. And if anyone thinks I make an absurd fuss
+      about a little dog, I must remind him that I was entirely alone among an
+      alien people, and the little dog's affection meant a tremendous deal to
+      me. He took away all sense of loneliness. Looking back, I know now I could
+      not have gone on, this book would never have been written, if it had not
+      been for James Buchanan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Roughly the way to the Yellow River is through a chain of mountains,
+      across a stony plateau in the centre of which is situated Yung Ning Chou,
+      quite a busy commercial city, and across another chain of mountains
+      through which the river forces its way. When first I entered the ditch in
+      the loess my objective was Yung Ning Chou. I looked no farther. I wanted
+      to get to that town in which seven Scandinavian missionaries in twenty
+      years had not effected a single convert. The cliffs frowned overhead, and
+      the effect to me was of wandering along an extremely stony way with many
+      pitfalls in it to the chiming of many mule bells and an unceasing shouting
+      of &ldquo;<i>Ta, ta!</i>&rdquo;&mdash;that is, &ldquo;Beat, beat!&rdquo;&mdash;a threat by which
+      the muleteer exhorts his animals to do their best. Generally speaking, I
+      couldn't see the man who had charge of me because he was some way behind
+      and the tilt shut him from my view. Except for knowing that he was
+      attending to his job and looking after me, I don't know that I pined to
+      look upon him. His appearance was calculated to make me feel I had not
+      wakened from a nightmare. Sometimes he wore a dirty rag over his head, but
+      just as often he went in his plain beauty unadorned&mdash;that is to say,
+      with all the front part of his head shaven and the back a mass of wild
+      coarse black hair standing out at all angles. They had cut off his queue
+      during the reforming fever at T'ai Yuan Fu and I presume he was doing the
+      best he could till it should grow again. Certainly it was an awe-inspiring
+      headpiece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0024" id="linkimage-0024"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0135.jpg" alt="0135 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0135.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0025" id="linkimage-0025"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0136.jpg" alt="0136 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0136.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      And always we progressed to the clashing of bells, for on every possible
+      point on the trappings of the four mules and the donkey that made up the
+      caravan and on every available point on the harness of every mule and
+      donkey that passed us was a brass bell. For, for all my muleteers had
+      objected to going this way, it was a caravan route to the West, and it was
+      seldom we did not see someone on the road. Here in this ditch in the loess
+      I realised the stern necessity for these bells, for often the way was
+      narrow and when we could hear another caravan coming we could make
+      arrangements to pass or to allow them to pass. There were many caravans of
+      ragged camels, and to these my animals objected with all the spirit a life
+      on the roads had still left in them. When we met a string of them at close
+      quarters in the loess my white mule in the lead nearly had hysterics, and
+      his feelings were shared, so I judged by the behaviour of the litter, by
+      his companion behind, and they both endeavoured to commit suicide by
+      climbing the bank, having no respect whatever for my feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On these occasions, with clenched teeth and concentrated energy, my
+      muleteer addressed himself to that leading mule:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now! Who's your mother? You may count yourself as dead!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The mule evidently felt this was serious and made a desperate endeavour to
+      get a little higher, and his attendant became sarcastic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call yourself a mule! Call yourself a lord, sir!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      By the jangling of the bells and the yells of the rest of the company I
+      knew that the other animals felt equally bad, and more than once I saw my
+      luckless interpreter, who evidently was not much of a hand at sitting on a
+      pack, ruefully picking himself up and shaking the dust from his person,
+      his mule having flung him as a protest against the polluting of the road
+      by a train of camels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The camels march along with a very supercilious air, but mules, horses and
+      donkeys all fear them so much that there are special inns for them and
+      they are supposed only to travel by night, but this rule is more honoured,
+      I imagine, in the breach than in the observance. Most parts of the road I
+      don't see that any caravan could pass along at night. The special inns do
+      not present any difference to my unprejudiced eyes from the discomfort of
+      an ordinary mule and donkey inn. I stopped at one one day in the loess for
+      tiffin, and it consisted of a courtyard round which were rooms (<i>yaos</i>)
+      that were simply caves with the mouths bricked up and doors in them.
+      Inside, the caves were dark and airless, with for all furniture the
+      universal, <i>k'ang</i>; a fireplace is either in the middle or at one of
+      the ends, and the flues underneath carry the hot air under the <i>k'ang</i>
+      to warm it. I have never before or since seen such miserable
+      dwelling-places as these <i>yaos</i>, and in the loess country I saw
+      hundreds of them, inhabitated by thousands of people. Wu Ch'eng
+      particularly commended itself to my notice because here I first realised
+      that in expecting a room to myself I was asking too much of the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We crossed the mountain pass the first day out of Fen Chou Fu. Steep it
+      was, steep as the roof of a house, and we scrambled down the other side
+      and, just as the dusk was falling, we came to Wu Ch'eng, a village mostly
+      of <i>yaos</i> in the mountain-side. Wu Ch'eng, where hundreds of people
+      live and die, was short of most things that make life worth living: water
+      was very scarce indeed, and there were no eggs there. It was necessary
+      that our little company should move on with what speed we might. Also the
+      inn only had one room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The <i>k'ang</i> is large,&rdquo; said my interpreter, as if he thought that a
+      woman who would come out on this journey would not mind sharing that <i>k'ang</i>
+      with all the other guests, the innkeeper and his servants. It was rather
+      large. I looked into an earthen cave the end of which, about thirty feet
+      away, I could hardly make out in the dim light. There were great cobwebs
+      hanging from the ceiling&mdash;dimly I saw them by the light that filtered
+      through the dirty paper that did duty for a window&mdash;and the high <i>k'ang</i>
+      occupied the whole length of the room, leaving a narrow passage with
+      hard-beaten earth for a floor about two feet wide between the <i>k'ang</i>
+      and the left-hand wall. It was about as uninviting a room as I have ever
+      seen. Also it was clearly impossible that Buchanan and I should turn out
+      the rest of the company, so I decreed that I should have it to myself for
+      half-an-hour for the purposes of washing and changing, for whieh privilege
+      I paid about twenty cash, roughly a ha'penny, and then we slept in the
+      litter, as we did on many other occasions, outside in the yard among the
+      donkeys and mules. The last thing I saw was the bright stars peeping down
+      at me, and the last thing I heard was the mules munching at their
+      well-earned chaff, and I wakened to the same stars and the same sounds,
+      for early retiring is conducive to early rising, and yet the muleteers
+      were always before me and were feeding their beasts. Always I went through
+      the same routine. I went to bed despairing and disgusted and a little
+      afraid. I slept like the dead, if I slept outside, and I wakened to watch
+      the sun rise and renew my hopes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are hundreds, probably thousands, of villages like Wu Ch'eng in
+      China. The winter in Shansi in the mountains is Arctic and no words can
+      describe what must be the sufferings of these people; especially must the
+      women suffer, for the poorest peasant binds his daughter's feet, his wife
+      can hardly crawl. In Chihli you may see the women tottering round on their
+      stumps grinding the corn, in Shansi lucky is the woman who can do so much.
+      The ordinary peasant woman is equal to nothing but a little needlework, if
+      she have anything to sew, or to making a little porridge, if she can do so
+      without moving off the <i>k'ang</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The getting something for the men to cook must be a hard job. Potatoes are
+      sold singly, other vegetables are cut in halves or quarters, a fowl is
+      always sold by the joint. There may be people who do buy a whole fowl, but
+      they are probably millionaires. I suppose a whole section of a community
+      could not possibly exist on other folks' old clothes, but that is how the
+      people of this part of Shansi looked as if they were clothed. They had not
+      second-hand clothes or third-hand, they were apparently the remnants that
+      the third buyer could find no use for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall never forget on one occasion seeing a ragged scarecrow bearing on
+      the end of a pole a dead dog, not even an ordinary dead dog, but one all
+      over sores, a most disgustingly diseased specimen. I asked Mr Wang what he
+      was carrying that dog away for and that young gentleman looked at me in
+      surprise. He would never get to the bottom of this foolish foreigner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For eat,&rdquo; said he simply!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people of the loess cannot afford to waste anything save the health of
+      their women. A dog, a wonk, shares the scavenging work of the Chinese
+      towns with the black and white crows, and doubtless the citizens do not
+      care so much for eating them as they would a nice juicy leg of mutton, but
+      they would no more throw away a wonk that had found life in a Chinese town
+      too hard and simply died than I would yesterday's leg of mutton in favour
+      of the tender chicken I prefer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This, the first camel inn I particularly noticed, was not far from Fen
+      Chou Fu, and they told me how many years ago one of the medical
+      missionaries touring the country found there the innkeeper's wife with one
+      of her bound feet in a terrible condition. She had a little baby at her
+      breast and she was suffering horribly&mdash;the foot was gangrenous. The
+      doctor was troubled and puzzled as well. He had no appliances and no
+      drugs, but left as they were, mother and baby, already half starved, were
+      doomed. Therefore, like a brave man as he was, he took his courage in both
+      hands, made a saw of a piece of scrap iron from an American packing-case
+      and with this rude instrument and no anaesthetics he amputated that foot.
+      And the woman survived, lived to see her child grow up, was living when I
+      passed along that way, and I sat in her courtyard and had my tiffin of
+      hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice washed down by tea. It was her son's
+      courtyard then, possibly that very baby's whose life the missionary had
+      saved by saving his mother's. For the Chinese have no milch cows or goats
+      and know little about feeding infants artificially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Always at midday the litter was lifted off the mules' backs, my table and
+      chair were produced from some recess among the packs, my blue cotton
+      tablecloth was spread and Tsai Chih Fu armed himself with a frying-pan in
+      which to warm the rice and offered it to me along with hard-boiled eggs of
+      dubious age. The excellent master of transport was a bad cook, and it is
+      not an exhilarating diet when it is served up three times a day for weeks
+      with unfailing regularity. I never grew so weary of anything in my life,
+      and occasionally I tried to vary it by buying little scones or cakes
+      peppered with sesame seed, but I'm bound to say they were all nasty. It
+      always seemed to me that an unfair amount of grit from the millstones had
+      got into the flour. Chinese are connoisseurs in their cooking, but not in
+      poor little villages in the mountains in Western Shansi, where they are
+      content if they can fill their starving stomachs. To judge Chinese taste
+      by the provisions of these mountaineers is as if we condemned the food of
+      London, having sampled only those shops where a steak pudding can be had
+      for fourpence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all these little inns, these underground inns, very often had the most
+      high-sounding names. &ldquo;The Inn of Increasing Righteousness&rdquo;&mdash;I hope it
+      was, there was certainly nothing else to recommend it; but the &ldquo;Inn of Ten
+      Thousand Conveniences&rdquo; really made the greatest claim upon my faith. The
+      Ritz or the Carlton could hardly have claimed more than this cave with the
+      hard-beaten earth for the floor of its one room and for all furnishing the
+      <i>k'ang</i> where landlord and guests slept in company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet all these uncomfortable inns between Fen Chou Fu and Yung Ning Chou
+      were thronged. The roads outside were littered with the packs of the mules
+      and donkeys, and inside the courtyard all was bustle, watering and feeding
+      the animals and attending to the wants of the men, who apparently took
+      most of their refreshment out of little basins with chopsticks and when
+      they were very wealthy, or on great occasions, had tea without milk or
+      sugar&mdash;which, of course, is the proper way to drink it&mdash;out of
+      little handleless cups. I don't know that they had anything else to drink
+      except hot water. I certainly never saw them drinking anything
+      intoxicating, and I believe there are no public-houses in China proper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every now and then the way through the loess widened a little and there
+      was an archway with a tower above it and a crowded village behind. Always
+      the villages were crowded. There was very often one or perhaps two trees
+      shading the principal street, but other hints of garden or greenery there
+      were none. The shops&mdash;open stalls&mdash;were packed together. And in
+      these little villages it is all slum: there is no hint of country life,
+      and the street was full of people, ragged people, mostly men and children.
+      The men were in rags in all shades of blue, and blue worn and washed&mdash;at
+      least possibly the washing is doubtful, we will say worn only&mdash;to dun
+      dirt colour. It was not picturesque, but filthy, and the only hint of
+      luxury was a pipe a yard long with a very tiny bowl which when not in use
+      hung round their necks or stuck out behind from under their coats. Round
+      their necks too would be hung a tiny brass tobacco box with hieroglyphics
+      upon it which contained the evil-smelling compound they smoked. Sometimes
+      they were at work in their alfresco kitchens&mdash;never have I seen so
+      much cooking done in the open air&mdash;sometimes they were shoeing a
+      mule, sometimes waiting for customers for their cotton goods, or their
+      pottery ware, or their unappetising cooked stuff, and often they were
+      nursing babies, little blaek-eyed bundles of variegated dirty rags which
+      on inspection resolved themselves into a coat and trousers, whatever the
+      age or the sex of the baby. And never have I seen so many family men. The
+      Chinaman is a good father and is not ashamed to carry his baby. At least
+      so I judge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only occasionally was a woman or two to be seen, sitting on their
+      doorsteps gossiping in the sun or the shade, according to the temperature.
+      Men and women stared at the foreign woman with all their eyes, for
+      foreigners are rather like snow in June in these parts, and my coming made
+      me feel as if a menagerie had arrived in the villages so great and
+      interested were the crowds that assembled to look at and comment on me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After we passed through the loess the track was up a winding ravine cut in
+      past ages by the agency of water. From five hundred to a thousand feet
+      above us towered the cliffs and at their feet trickled a tiny drain of
+      water, not ankle-deep, that must once have come down a mighty flood to cut
+      for itself such a way through the eternal hills. For this, unlike the road
+      through the loess, is a broad way where many caravans might find room. And
+      this trickle was the beginnings of a tributary to the Yellow River. Along
+      its winding banks lay the caravan route.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And many caravans were passing. No place in China is lonely. There were
+      strings of camels, ragged and losing their coats&mdash;second-hand goods,
+      Mark Twain calls them&mdash;there were strings of pack-mules and still
+      longer strings of little donkeys, and there were many men with bamboos
+      across their shoulders and loads slung from either end. Some of these men
+      had come from Peking and were bound for far Kansu, the other side of
+      Shensi; but as I went on fewer and fewer got the loads from Kansu, most of
+      them stopped at Yung Ning Chou, the last walled town of any size this side
+      of the river. Always, always through the loess, through the deep ravines,
+      across the mountain passes, across the rocky plateau right away to the
+      little mountain city was the stream coming and going, bearing Pekingese
+      and Cantonese goods into the mountains, and coming back laden with wheat,
+      which is the principal product of these places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ask the drivers where they were going, camel, mule or donkey, and the
+      answer was always the same, they were going east or west, which, of
+      course, we could see for ourselves. There was no possibility of going any
+      other way. Those in authority knew whither they were bound, but the
+      ignorant drivers knew nothing but the direction. At least that is one
+      explanation, the one I accepted at the time, afterwards I came to know it
+      is a breach of good manners to exhibit curiosity in China, and quite
+      likely my interpreter simply greeted the caravans and made his own answer
+      to my question. It satisfied or at least silenced me and saved my face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One thing, however, grew more and more noticeable: the laden beasts were
+      coming east, going west the pack-saddles were empty. Fear was upon the
+      merchants and they would not send goods across the great river into
+      turbulent Shensi.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already, so said my interpreter, and I judged the truth of his statement
+      by the empty pack-saddles, they were fearing to send goods into the
+      mountains at all. It was pleasant for me. I began to think. I had only
+      Buchanan to consult, and he had one great drawback, he always agreed that
+      what I thought was likely to be right. It is an attitude of mind that I
+      greatly commend in my friends and desire to encourage, but there are
+      occasions in life when a little perfectly disinterested advice would be
+      most acceptable, and that I could not get. Badly I wanted to cross Asia,
+      but I should not cross Asia if I were stopped by <i>tufeis</i>, which is
+      the local term for robbers. Were these rumours anything, or were they
+      manufactured by my interpreter? There were the warnings of the
+      missionaries, and there were the empty pack-saddles, and the empty
+      pack-saddles spoke loudly. Still I thought I might go on a little farther,
+      and James Buchanan encouraged me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Truly the way to the great river through the mountains was hard. Taking
+      all the difficulties in the lump, it would seem impossible to overcome
+      them, but taking them one by one I managed it. And not the least of my
+      troubles were the dogs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here in the mountains was a very handsome breed of large white dogs with
+      long hair, at least I am sure they would have been handsome if they had
+      been well fed and well eared for. If it had not been for Buchanan, whose
+      heart it would have broken, I should certainly have got a puppy to bring
+      home with me. These dogs one and all waged war on my little friend, who
+      had a great idea of his own importance and probably aggravated the ill-fed
+      denizens of the inn-yards. He would go hectoring down a yard, head up,
+      white plume waving, with a sort of &ldquo;Well, here we are! Now what have you
+      got to say for yourselves?&rdquo; air about him, and in two seconds more a big
+      white scarecrow of a dog would have him by the neck, dragging him across
+      the yard, designing to slay him behind the drinking troughs. He would give
+      one shriek for help, and I would fly to that dog's head, catch him by the
+      ears or the ruff round his neck and be dragged along in my turn till Tsai
+      Chih Fu the resourceful appeared on the scene with a billet of wood, and
+      then the unfortunate beast would be banished from the yard or tied up till
+      we had gone. I remembered often the warning I had received on the subject
+      of hydrophobia, but I never had time to think of that till afterwards,
+      when, of course, if anything had happened it would have been too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is one thing about a Chinese inn in the interior: it may be
+      exceedingly uncomfortable, but it is also exceedingly cheap. A night's
+      lodging as a rule costs forty cash. Eleven cash roughly is equal to a
+      cent, and a cent, again roughly&mdash;it depends upon the price of silver&mdash;is
+      a little less than a farthing. Forty cash, then, is hardly a penny. Hot
+      water costs eight cash, eggs were six cash apiece and so were the wheaten
+      scones I bought in place of the bread my servant could not make, and I
+      could buy those last as low as three cash apiece. Of course I quite
+      understand that I as a rich traveller paid top price for everything,
+      probably twice or three times as much as the ordinary traveller; the
+      missionaries, indeed, were shocked at the price I paid for eggs, and again
+      I was always rooked in the matter of paper. For even though I preferred
+      it, it often happened that it was impossible to sleep in my litter in the
+      yard, it was too crowded with beasts&mdash;and it had to be very crowded&mdash;and
+      then I stripped off the paper from the window of the room I occupied to
+      let in the air, just a little air, and I was charged accordingly from
+      thirty to eighty cash for my destructiveness. I found afterwards that a
+      whole sheet of new paper can be had for ten cash, and the paper I
+      destroyed was not half-a-sheet and was grimed with the dirt of ages!
+      Glass, of course, in the mountains of Shansi is almost unknown and the
+      windows are covered with white paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the mountains came a high stony plateau, not dangerous but
+      difficult, for though this is a great trade route there was not an inch of
+      smooth roadway, every step had to be carefully picked among the stones,
+      and presently the stream that when we entered the mountains was a trickle
+      a hand's-breadth across was now a river meandering among the stones. We
+      began by stepping across it; wider it grew and there were stepping-stones
+      for the walking muleteers; then the mules waded and the muleteers climbed
+      on to the beasts or on to the front of the litter, which last proceeding
+      made me very uncomfortable, for I remembered my special man was likely at
+      most only to have been washed twice in his life, and I was very sure his
+      clothes had never been washed at all and probably had never been taken off
+      his back since last October. Finally we crossed by bridges, fairly
+      substantial bridges three planks wide, but the mules required a deal of
+      encouraging before they would trust them and always felt the boards
+      gingerly with their hoofs first as if they distrusted the Chinaman and all
+      his engineering works. The engineering was probably all right, but as the
+      state of repair often left much to be desired I could hardly blame the
+      mules for their caution. And one day we crossed that river twenty-six
+      times!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no charm in the country in Shansi beyond the sunshine and the
+      invigorating air. There were fields, every patch of land that could
+      possibly be made to grow a blade of wheat was most carefully tilled, there
+      was not a weed, not a blade of grass out of place. In some fields the
+      crops were springing green, in others the farmers were still ploughing,
+      with a patient ox in the plough; but there were no divisions between these
+      fields; there were no hedges; few and scanty trees; no gardens; no
+      farmhouses, picturesque or otherwise. The peasants all live huddled
+      together, literally in the hill-sides, and of the beauty of life there was
+      none. It was toil, toil without remission and with never a day off. Even
+      the blue sky and the sunshine and the invigorating dry air must be
+      discounted by the dirt and darkness and airlessness of the houses and the
+      underground <i>yaos</i>. The Chinese peasant's idea in building a house
+      seems to be to get rid of the light and the air, the only two things I
+      should have thought that make his life bearable. And in these dark and
+      airless caves the crippled women spend their days. The younger women&mdash;I
+      met them occasionally gaily clad and mounted on a donkey&mdash;looked
+      waxen and had an air of suffering, and the older were lined and had a look
+      of querulousness and irritability that was not on the men's faces. Many an
+      old man have I seen whose face might stand for a model of prosperous,
+      contented, peaceful old age looking back on a well-lived life, but never,
+      never have I seen such a look on a woman's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, after crossing a long bridge across the river, we came to Yung
+      Ning Chou. The dark grey wall stood out against the blue sky and, unlike
+      most Chinese cities that I have seen, there is no watch-tower over the
+      gate. It has suburbs, suburbs like Fen Chou Fu enclosed in crumbling clay
+      walls that are fast drifting to their inevitable end. They could not keep
+      out a rabbit now, let alone a man, and yet they are entered through great
+      brick gateways with a turn in them, and going under the archways I felt as
+      usual as if I had gone back to Biblical days. The walls of the city
+      proper, the crowded little city, are in better preservation, and tower
+      high above the caravans that pass round them, for there are no inns in
+      Yung Ning Chou and all caravans must stay in the eastern suburb. There are
+      narrow, stony little streets of houses pressed close together, and the
+      rough roadways are crowded with traffic: people, donkeys, laden mules and
+      grunting camels are for ever passing to and fro. Looking up the principal
+      street between the eastern and the western gate was like looking up a dark
+      tunnel in which fluttered various notices, the shop signs, Chinese
+      characters printed on white calico. Most of those signs, according to my
+      interpreter's translation, bore a strong resemblance to one another.
+      &ldquo;Virtue and Abundance,&rdquo; it seems they proclaimed to all who could read.
+      But there was no one to tell me whether there was really any wealth in
+      this little mountain city that is the same now as it probably was a
+      thousand years ago. I wondered, I could not help wondering, whether it
+      would be worth Pai Lang's while to attack. I wondered if he could get in
+      if he did, for the walls were high and the gates, rising up straight and
+      sheer without watch towers, such piles of masonry as might have been built
+      by conquering Nineveh or Babylon. Here and there, though, in the walls the
+      water had got under the clay and forced out the bricks in long deep
+      cracks, and here if they were not carefully guarded were places that an
+      invading force might storm, and in the suburbs and among the houses that
+      clustered close under the protecting walls terrible things might be done.
+      But the western gate, I should say, is well-nigh impregnable. Nobody but a
+      Chinaman would have built a gate in such a place. It opens out on to a
+      steep cliff that falls sheer sixty feet to the river below. Chinese towns
+      are always built symmetrically; there should be at least one gate in each
+      of the four walls, therefore a gate there is here. It seems to have
+      occurred to no one that a gate is placed in those walls for the
+      convenience of traffic, and that it is simple waste of time and labour to
+      make a gate in a place by which no one could possibly pass. For that
+      matter I should have thought a wall unnecessary on top of so steep a
+      cliff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Scandinavian missionaries who have faithfully worked Yung Ning Chou
+      for the last twenty years with so little result were absent when I passed
+      through. Only two of them live here, the rest are scattered over the
+      mountains to the north, and when I was in Fen Chou Fu I met a woman, a
+      Norwegian, who was on her way to join them. She remains in my mind a
+      pathetic figure of sacrifice, a wistful woman who was giving of her very
+      best and yet was haunted by the fear that all she was giving was of very
+      little worth, surely the most bitter and sorrowful reflection in this
+      world. She had worked in China as a missionary in her girlhood. She
+      explained to me how hard it was for these northern peoples, for to learn
+      Chinese they have first to learn English. Then she married, and after her
+      little girl was born her husband died and so she took her treasure home to
+      educate her in Norway. But she died and, feeling her duty was to the
+      Chinese, back came the lonely mother, and when I met her she was setting
+      out for the little walled city in the hills where she dwelt with some
+      other women. A strangely lonely life, devoid of all pleasures, theirs must
+      have been. I was struck with the little things that pleased this devoted
+      woman, such little things, and we who may enjoy them every day go calmly
+      on our way and never appreciate them. She wore the unbecoming Chinese
+      dress, with her white hair drawn baek from her face, and her blue eyes
+      looked out wistfully as if she were loath to give up hope that somewhere,
+      somehow, in the world individual happiness, that would be for her alone,
+      would come to her. During the revolution they, remembering the troubles
+      and dangers of the Boxer time, had refugeed in Tientsin, and the days
+      there were evidently marked with a white stone in her calendar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was so delightful,&rdquo; she said in her pretty precise English, &ldquo;to see
+      the European children in the gardens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      How her heart went out to those children. They reminded her, I suppose, of
+      the little girl she had left behind sleeping her last sleep among the
+      Norwegian mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the children!&rdquo; she sighed. &ldquo;It brought a lump in your throat to look
+      at them!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It brought a lump in my throat to look at her as I saw her set out for her
+      home with two little black-eyed Chinese girls crowded in the litter beside
+      her. She was taking them home from the school at Fen Chou Fu. The
+      loneliness of her life! The sacrifice of it! I wonder if those three
+      women, shut away in that little walled town, made any converts. I doubt
+      it, for theirs, like the Yung Ning Chou mission, was purely a faith
+      mission.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Unmarried women and widows were these three women. The Yung Ning Chou
+      mission consists of four old bachelors and three old maids. Not for a
+      moment do I suppose the majority of the Chinese believe they are what they
+      are, men and women living the lives of ascetics, giving up all for their
+      faith, and the absence of children in child-loving China must seriously
+      handicap them in their efforts to spread their faith. Think of the weary
+      years of those workers toiling so hopelessly in an alien land among a poor
+      and alien population, whose first impulse is certainly to despise them.
+      All honour to those workers even though they have failed in their object
+      so far as human eye can see, and even though that object makes no appeal
+      to people like me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0026" id="linkimage-0026"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0155.jpg" alt="0155 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0155.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0027" id="linkimage-0027"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0156.jpg" alt="0156 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0156.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0028" id="linkimage-0028"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0157.jpg" alt="0157 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0157.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      And I passed on through Yung Ning Chou, on across the stony plateau, and
+      at last, at a village called Liu Lin Chen, I was brought up with a sharp
+      turn with a tale of Pai Lang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was having my midday meal. Not that it was midday. It was four o'clock,
+      and I had breakfasted at 6 a.m.; but time is of no account in China. Liu
+      Lin Chen was the proper place at which to stop for the noonday rest, so we
+      did not stop till we arrived there, though the badness of the road had
+      delayed us. I was sitting in the inn-yard waiting for Tsai Chih Fu to
+      bring me the eternal hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice when Mr Wang came
+      up, accompanied by the two muleteers, and they&mdash;that is, the two
+      muleteers&mdash;dropped down to the ground and clamoured, so I made out
+      from his excited statements that the gates of Sui Te Chou had been closed
+      for the last four days on account of Pai Lang! And Sui Te Chou was the
+      first town I proposed to stop at after I crossed the river! If I would go
+      to Lan Chou Fu and on through Sin Kiang to the Russian border through Sui
+      Te Chou I must go. There was no other way. These days in the mountains had
+      shown me that to stray from the caravan road was an utter impossibility.
+      Had I been one of the country people conversant with the language I think
+      it would have been impossible. As it was, I had my choice. I might go on
+      or I might go back. Mr Wang apparently thought there should be no doubt in
+      my mind. He evidently expected I would turn tail there and then, and I
+      myself realised&mdash;I had been realising ever since round the table in
+      the mission station at Ki Hsien we had read Dr Edwards' letter&mdash;that
+      my journey across the continent was ended; but to turn tail in this
+      ignominious fashion, having seen nothing, within, I suppose, twenty-five
+      miles of the Yellow River, with the country about me as peaceful as the
+      road in Kent in which I live at present, how could I? It was more
+      peaceful, in fact, for now at night searchlights stream across the sky,
+      within a furlong of my house bombs have been dropped and men have been
+      killed, and by day and by night the house rocks as motors laden with
+      armament and instruments of war thunder past. But there in Shansi in the
+      fields the people worked diligently, in the village the archway over which
+      they held theatrical representations was placarded with notices, and in
+      the inn-yard where I sat the people went about attending to the animals as
+      if there was nothing to be feared. And I felt lonely, and James Buchanan
+      sat close beside me because at the other side of the very narrow yard a
+      great big white dog with a fierce face and a patch of mange on his side
+      looked at him threateningly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll have none of your drawing-room dogs here,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Buchanan's difficulties were solved when he appealed to me. I&mdash;and
+      I was feeling it horribly&mdash;had no one to appeal to. I must rely upon
+      myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then to add to my woes it began to rain, soft, gentle spring rain,
+      growing rain that must have been a godsend to the whole country-side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It stopped, and Mr Wang and the muleteers looked at me anxiously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will go on,&rdquo; I said firmly, &ldquo;to the Yellow River.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Their faces fell. I could see the disappointment, but still I judged I
+      might go in safety so far.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't they want to go?&rdquo; I asked Mr Wang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Repeat, please,&rdquo; said he. So I repeated, and he said as he had said
+      before:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you say 'Go,' mus' go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And I said &ldquo;Go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII&mdash;CHINA'S SORROW
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t is better, says
+      a Chinese proverb, &ldquo;to hear about a thing than to see it,&rdquo; and truly on
+      this journey I was much inclined to agree with that dictum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were bound for Hsieh Ts'un. I can't pronounce it, and I should not like
+      to swear to the spelling, but of one thing I am very sure, not one of the
+      inhabitants could spell it, or even know it was wrongly set forth to the
+      world, so I am fairly safe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went under the archway with the theatrical notices at Liu Lin Chen,
+      under the arched gateway of the village, out into the open country, and it
+      began to rain again. It came down not exactly in torrents but good steady
+      growing rain. The roads when they were not slippery stones were appalling
+      quagmires, and my mule litter always seemed to be overhanging a precipice
+      of some sort. I was not very comfortable when that precipice was only
+      twenty feet deep, when it was more I fervently wished that I had not come
+      to China. I wished it more than once, and it rained and it rained and it
+      rained, silent, soaking, penetrating rain, and I saw the picturesque
+      mountain country through a veil of mist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hsieh Ts'un is a little dirty straggling village, and as we entered it
+      through the usual archway with a watch tower above the setting sun broke
+      through the thick clouds and his golden rays strcamed down upon the
+      slippery wet cobblestones that paved the principal street. The golden
+      sunlight and the gorgeous rainbow glorified things a little, and they
+      needed glorifying. The principal inn, as usual, was a fairly large yard,
+      roughly paved, but swimming now in dirty water; there were stalls for
+      animals all round it, and there was a large empty shed where they stored
+      lime. It was stone-paved, and the roof leaked like a sieve, but here I
+      established myself, dodging as far as possible the holes in the roof and
+      drawing across the front of the shed my litter as a sort of protection,
+      for the inn, as usual with these mountain inns, had but one room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was cold, it was dirty, and I realised how scarce foreigners must be
+      when through the misty, soaking rain, which generally chokes off a
+      Chinaman, crowds came to stand round and stare at me. I was stationary, so
+      the women came, dirty, ragged, miserable-looking women, supporting
+      themselves with sticks and holding up their babies to look at the stranger
+      while she ate. By and by it grew so cold I felt I must really go to bed,
+      and I asked Mr Wang to put it to the crowd that it was not courteous to
+      stare at the foreign woman when she wished to be alone, and, O most
+      courtly folk! every single one of those people went away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can have a bath,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;no one will look&rdquo;; and, all honour give I
+      to those poor peasants of Western Shansi, I was undisturbed. I am afraid a
+      lonely Chinese lady would hardly be received with such courtesy in an
+      English village were the cases reversed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day the rain still teemed down. The fowls pecked about the yard,
+      drenched and dripping; a miserable, mangy, cream-coloured dog or two came
+      foraging for a dinner, and the people, holding wadded coats and oiled
+      paper over their heads, came to look again at the show that had come to
+      the town; but there was no break in the grey sky, and there was nothing to
+      do but sit there shivering with cold, writing letters on my little
+      travelling table and listening to my interpreter, who talked with the
+      innkeeper and brought me at intervals that gentleman's views on the doings
+      of Pai Lang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those views varied hour by hour. At first he was sure he was attacking Sui
+      Te Chou. That seemed to me sending the famous robber over the country too
+      quickly. Then it was <i>tufeis</i>&mdash;that is, bands of robbers&mdash;that
+      Sui Te Chou feared, and finally, boiled down, I came to the conclusion
+      that Sui Te Chou had probably shut her gates because the country round was
+      disturbed, and that she admitted no one who had not friends in the city or
+      could not in some way guarantee his good faith. It served to show me my
+      friends in Ki Hsien had been right, such disturbed country would be no
+      place for a woman alone. I suppose it was the rain and the grey skies, but
+      I must admit that day I was distinctly unhappy and more than a little
+      afraid. I was alone among an alien people, who only regarded me as a cheap
+      show; I had no one to take counsel with, my interpreter only irritated me
+      and, to add to my misery, I was very cold. I have seldom put in a longer
+      or more dreary day than I did at Hsieh Ts'un. There was absolutely nothing
+      to do but watch the misty rain, for if I went outside and got wetter than
+      I was already getting under the leaking roof&mdash;I wore my Burberry&mdash;I
+      had no possible means of drying my clothes save by laying them on the hot
+      <i>k'ang</i> in the solitary living-room of the inn, and that was already
+      inhabited by many humans and the parasites that preyed upon them.
+      Therefore I stayed where I was, compared my feet with the stumps of the
+      women who came to visit me&mdash;distinctly I was a woman's show&mdash;gave
+      the grubby little children raisins, and wondered if there was any fear of
+      Pai Lang coming along this way before I had time to turn back. If it kept
+      on raining, would my muleteers compel me to stay here till Pai Lang swept
+      down upon us? But no, that thought did not trouble me, first, because I
+      momentarily expected it to clear up, and secondly, because I was very sure
+      that any rain that kept me prisoner would also hold up Pai Lang. I could
+      not believe in a Chinaman, even a robber, going out in the rain if he
+      could help himself, any more than I could believe in it raining longer
+      than a day in China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people are not afraid,&rdquo; I said to my interpreter as I looked at a
+      worn old woman in a much-patched blue cotton smock and trousers, her head
+      protected from the rain by a wadded coat in the last stages of
+      decrepitude; her feet made me shiver, and her finger-nails made me crawl,
+      the odour that came from her was sickening, but she liked to see me write,
+      and I guessed she had had but few pleasures in her weary life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They not knowing yet,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;only travellers know. They tell
+      innkeeper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, certainly the travellers would know best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And all day long he came, bringing me various reports, and said that,
+      according to the innkeeper, the last caravan that had passed through had
+      gone back on its tracks. I might have remembered it. I did remember it&mdash;a
+      long line of donkeys and mules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the day passed, and the night passed, and the next day the sun came
+      out warm and pleasant, and all my doubts were resolved. My journey was
+      broken beyond hope, and I must go back, but turn I would not till I had
+      looked upon the Yellow River.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We started with all our paraphernalia. We were to turn in our tracks after
+      tiffin, but Mr Wang and the muleteers were certain on that point,
+      everything I possessed must be dragged across the mountains if I hoped to
+      see it again, and I acquiesced, for I certainly felt until I got back to
+      civilisation I could not do without any of my belongings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost immediately we left the village we began to ascend the mountain
+      pass. Steeper and steeper it grew, and at last the opening in my mule
+      litter was pointing straight up to the sky, and I, seeing there was
+      nothing else for it, demanded to be lifted out and signified my intention
+      of walking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was one thing against this and that was an attack of breathlessness.
+      Asthma always attacks me when I am tired or worried, and now, with a very
+      steep mountain to cross and no means of doing it except on my own feet, it
+      had its wicked way. My master of transport and Mr Wang, like perfectly
+      correct Chinese servants, each put a hand under my elbows, and with
+      Buchanan skirmishing around joyfully, rejoicing that for once his mistress
+      was sensible, the little procession started. It was hard work, very hard
+      work. When I could go no longer I sat down and waited till I felt equal to
+      starting again. On the one hand the mountain rose up sheer and steep, on
+      the other it dropped away into the gully beneath, only to rise again on
+      the other side. And yet in the most inaccessible places were patches of
+      cultivation and wheat growing. I cannot imagine how man or beast kept a
+      footing on such a slant, and how they ploughed and sowed it passes my
+      understanding. But most of the mountain-side was too much even for them,
+      and then they turned loose their flocks, meek cream-coloured sheep and
+      impudent black goats, to graze on the scanty mountain pastures. Of course
+      they were in charge of a shepherd, for there were no fences, and the newly
+      springing wheat must have been far more attractive than the scanty
+      mountain grasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I knew it was worth it all&mdash;the long trek from Fen Chou Fu,
+      the dreary day at Hsieh Ts'un, the still more dreary nights, this stiff
+      climb which took more breath than I had to spare&mdash;for the view when I
+      arrived at a point of vantage was beautiful. These were strange mountains.
+      The road before me rose at a very steep angle, and all around me were
+      hill-sides whereon only a goat or a sheep might find foothold, but the
+      general effect looked at from a distance was not of steepness. These were
+      not mountains, rugged, savage, grand, they were gentle hills and dales
+      that lay about me; I had come through them; there were more ahead; I could
+      see them range after range, softly rounded, green and brown and then blue,
+      beautiful for all there were no trees, in an atmosphere that was clear as
+      a mirror after the rain of the day before. Beautiful, beautiful, with a
+      tender entrancing loveliness, is that view over the country up in the
+      hills that hem in the Yellow River as it passes between Shansi and Shensi.
+      Is it possible there is never anyone to see it but these poor peasants who
+      wring a hard livelihood from the soil, and who for all their toil, which
+      lasts from daylight to dark all the year round, get from this rich soil
+      just enough wheaten flour to keep the life in them, a hovel to dwell in,
+      and a few unspeakable rags to cover their nakedness? As far as I could
+      see, everyone was desperately poor, and yet these hills hold coal and iron
+      in close proximity, wealth untold and unexploited. The pity of it!
+      Unexploited, the people are poor to the verge of starvation; worked, the
+      delicate loveliness of the country-side will vanish as the beauty of the
+      Black Country has vanished, and can we be sure that the peasant will
+      benefit?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0029" id="linkimage-0029"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0166.jpg" alt="0166 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0166.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0030" id="linkimage-0030"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0167.jpg" alt="0167 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0167.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      Still we went up and up, and the climbing of these gentle wooing hills I
+      found hard. Steep it was, and at last, just when I felt I could not
+      possibly go any farther, though the penalty were that I should turn back
+      almost within sight of the river, I found that the original makers of the
+      track had been of the same opinion, for here was the top of the pass with
+      a tunnel bored through it, a tunnel perhaps a hundred feet long, carefully
+      bricked, and when we, breathless and panting, walked through we came out
+      on a little plateau with a narrow road wandering down a mountain-side as
+      steep as the one we had just climbed. There was the most primitive of
+      restaurants here, and the woman in charge&mdash;it was a woman, and her
+      feet were not bound&mdash;proffered us a thin sort of drink like very
+      tasteless barley water. At least now I know it was tasteless, then I found
+      it was nectar, and I sat on a stone and drank it thankfully, gave not a
+      thought to the dirt of the bowl that contained it, and drew long breaths
+      and looked around me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hills rose up on either hand and away in the distance where they
+      opened out were the beautiful treeless hills of forbidden Shensi, just as
+      alluring, just as peaceful as the hills I had come through. It was worth
+      the long and toilsome journey, well worth even all my fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we went down, down, but I did not dare get into my litter, the way
+      was too steep, the chances of going over too great, for it seems the
+      Chinese never make a road if by any chance they can get along without.
+      They were driven to bore a tunnel through the mountains, but they never
+      smooth or take away rocks as long as, by taking a little care, an animal
+      can pass without the certainty of going over the cliff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at last through a cleft in the hills I saw one of the world's great
+      rivers and&mdash;was disappointed. The setting was ideal. The hills rose
+      up steep and rugged, real mountains, on either side, pheasants called,
+      rock-doves mourned, magpies chattered, overhead was a clear blue sky just
+      flecked here and there with fleecy clouds, beyond again were the mountains
+      of Shensi, the golden sunlight on their rounded tops, purple shadow in
+      their swelling folds, far away in the distance they melted blue into the
+      blue sky, close at hand they were green with the green of springtime, save
+      where the plough had just turned up patches of rich brown soil, and at
+      their foot rolled a muddy flood that looked neither decent water nor good
+      sound earth, the mighty Hoang-Ho, the Yellow River, China's sorrow.
+      China's sorrow indeed; for though here it was hemmed in by mountains, and
+      might not shift its bed, it looked as if it were carrying the soul of the
+      mountains away to the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a temple where the gully opens on to the river, a temple and a
+      little village, and the temple was crowded with blue-clad, shabby-looking
+      soldiers who promptly swarmed round me and wanted to look in my baggage,
+      that heavy baggage we were hauling for safety over fourteen miles of
+      mountain road. Presumably they were seeking arms. We managed to persuade
+      them there were none, and that the loads contained nothing likely to
+      disturb the peace, and then we went down to the river, crossing by a
+      devious, rocky and unpleasant path simply reeking of human occupancy, and
+      the inhabitants of that soldier village crowded round me and examined
+      everything I wore and commented on everything I did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were there to guard the crossing; and far from me be it to say they
+      were not most efficient, but if so their looks belied them. They did not
+      even look toy soldiers. No man was in full uniform. Apparently they wore
+      odd bits, as if there were not enough clothes in the company to go round,
+      and they were one and all dirty, touzly, untidy, and all smiling and
+      friendly and good-tempered. I only picked them out from the surrounding
+      country people&mdash;who were certainly dirty and poverty-stricken enough
+      in all conscience&mdash;by the fact that the soldiers had abandoned the
+      queue which the people around, like all these country people, still
+      affect. The soldier wore his hair about four or five inches long, sticking
+      out at all angles, rusty-black, unkempt and uncombed, and whether he ran
+      to a cap or not, the result was equally unworkmanlike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I conclude Chun Pu is not a very important crossing. What the road is like
+      on the Shensi side I do not know, but on the Shansi side I should think
+      the pass we had just crossed was a very effective safeguard. He would be a
+      bold leader who would venture to bring his men up that path in the face of
+      half-a-dozen armed men, and they need not be very bold men either. Those
+      soldiers did not look bold. They were kindly, though, and they had women
+      and children with them&mdash;I conclude their own, for they nursed the
+      grubby little children, all clad in grubby patches, very proudly, took
+      such good care they had a good view of the show&mdash;me&mdash;that I
+      could not but sympathise with their paternal affection and aid in every
+      way in my power. Generally my good-will took the form of raisins. I was
+      lavish now I had given up my journey, and my master of transport
+      distributed with an air as if I were bestowing gold and silver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He set out my table on the cobble-stones of the inn-yard in the sunshine.
+      I believe, had I been a really dignified traveller, I should have put up
+      with the stuffiness and darkness of the inn's one room, but I felt the
+      recurrent hard-boiled eggs and puffed rice, with a certain steamed scone
+      which contained more of the millstone and less of the flour than was usual
+      even with the scones of the country, were trials enough without trying to
+      be dignified in discomfort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And while I had my meal everybody took it in turns to look through the
+      finder of my camera, the women, small-footed, dirty creatures, much to the
+      surprise of their menfolk, having precedence. Those women vowed they had
+      never seen a foreigner before. Every one of them had bound feet, tiny feet
+      on which they could just totter, and all were clad in extremely dirty,
+      much-patched blue cotton faded into a dingy dirt-colour. Most of them wore
+      tight-fitting coverings of black cloth to cover their scalps, often
+      evidently to conceal their baldness, for many of them suffered from
+      &ldquo;expending too much heart.&rdquo; Baldness is caused, say the Chinese half in
+      fun, because the luckless man or woman has thought more of others than of
+      themselves. I am afraid they do not believe it, or they may like to hide
+      their good deeds, for they are anything but proud of being bald. Most of
+      the mouths, too, here, and indeed all along the road, were badly formed
+      and full of shockingly broken and decayed teeth, the women's particularly.
+      Wheaten flour, which is the staple food of Shansi, is apparently not
+      enough to make good teeth. The people were not of a markedly Mongolian
+      type. Already it seemed as if the nations to the West were setting their
+      seal upon them, and some of the younger girls, with thick black hair
+      parted in the middle, a little colour in their cheeks, and somewhat
+      pathetic, wistful-looking faces, would have been good-looking in any land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then I had one more good look at the river, my farthest point west on the
+      journey, the river I had come so far to see. It was all so peaceful in the
+      afternoon sunlight that it seemed foolish not to go on. The hills of
+      Shensi beckoned and all my fears fell from me. I wanted badly to go on.
+      Then came reason. It was madness to risk the <i>tufeis</i> with whom
+      everyone was agreed Shensi swarmed. There in the brilliant sunshine, with
+      the laughing people around me, I was not afraid, but when night fell&mdash;no,
+      even if the soldiers would have allowed, which Mr Wang declared they would
+      not&mdash;I dared not, and I turned sadly and regretfully and made my way
+      back to Fen Chou Fu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had I gone on I should have arrived in Russia with the war in full swing,
+      so on the whole? am thankful I had to flee before the <i>tufeis</i> of
+      Shensi. Perhaps when the world is at peace I shall essay that fascinating
+      journey again. Only I shall look out for some companion, and even if I
+      take the matchless master of transport I shall most certainly see to it
+      that I have a good cook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII&mdash;LAST DAYS IN CHINA
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>ell, I had failed!
+      The horrid word kept ringing in my ears, the still more horrid thought was
+      ever in my mind day and night as I retraced my footsteps, and I come of a
+      family that does not like to fail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wondered if it were possible to make my way along the great waterways of
+      Siberia. There were mighty rivers there, I had seen them, little-known
+      rivers, and it seemed to me that before going West again I might see
+      something of them, and as my mules picked their way across the streams,
+      along the stony paths, by the walled cities, through the busy little
+      villages, already China was behind me, I was thinking of ways and means by
+      which I might penetrate Siberia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Fen Chou Fu they were kind, but I knew they thought I had given in too
+      easily, that I had turned back at a shadow, but at T'ai Yuan Fu I met the
+      veteran missionary, Dr Edwards, and I was comforted and did not feel so
+      markedly that failure was branded all over me when he thanked God that his
+      letter had had the effect of making me consider carefully my ways, for of
+      one thing he was sure, there would have been but one ending to the
+      expedition. To get to Lan Chou Fu would have been impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still my mind was not quite at ease about the matter, and at intervals I
+      wondered if I would not have gone on had I had a good cook. Rather a
+      humiliating thought! It was a satisfaction when one day I met Mr Reginald
+      Farrer, who had left Peking with Mr Purdom to botanise in Kansu ten days
+      before I too had proposed to start West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I often wondered,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;what became of you and how you had got on.
+      We thought perhaps you might have fallen into the hands of White Wolf and
+      then&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shensi, he declared, was a seething mass of unrest. It would have spelled
+      death to cross to those peaceful hills I had looked at from the left bank
+      of the Hoang-Ho. We discussed our travels, and we took diametrically
+      opposite views of China. But it is impossible to have everything: one has
+      to choose, and I prefer the crudeness of the new world, the rush and the
+      scramble and the progress, to the calm of the Oriental. Very likely this
+      is because I am a woman. In the East woman holds a subservient position,
+      she has no individuality of her own, and I, coming from the newest new
+      world, where woman has a very high place indeed, is counted a citizen, and
+      a useful citizen, could hardly be expected to admire a state of society
+      where her whole life is a torture and her position is regulated by her
+      value to the man to whom she belongs. I put this to my friend when he was
+      admiring the Chinese ladies and he laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I admit,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;that a young woman has a&rdquo;&mdash;well, he used a very
+      strong expression, but it wasn't strong enough&mdash;&ldquo;of a time when she
+      is young, but, if she has a son, when her husband dies see what a position
+      she holds. That little old woman sitting on a <i>k'ang</i> rules a whole
+      community.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I gave it up because our points of view were East and West. But I
+      am thankful that the Fates did not make me&mdash;a woman&mdash;a member of
+      a nation where I could have no consideration, no chance of happiness, no
+      great influence or power by my own effort, where recognition only came if
+      I had borne a son who was still living and my husband was dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0031" id="linkimage-0031"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0176.jpg" alt="0176 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0176.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0032" id="linkimage-0032"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0177.jpg" alt="0177 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0177.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      On my way back to T'ai Yuan Fu I stayed at no mission station except at
+      Fen Chou Fu; I went by a different route and spent the nights at miserable
+      inns that kindly charged me a whole penny for lodging and allowed me to
+      sleep in my litter in their yards, and about eighty <i>li</i> from Fen
+      Chou Fu I came across evidences of another mission that would be <i>anathema
+      maranatha</i> to the Nonconformists with whom I had been staying. It is
+      curious this schism between two bodies holding what purports to be the
+      same faith. I remember a missionary, the wife of a doctor at Ping Ting
+      Chou, who belonged to a sect called The Brethren, who spoke of the Roman
+      Catholics as if they were in as much need of conversion as the ignorant
+      Chinese around her. It made me smile; yet I strongly suspect that Mr
+      Farrer will put me in the same category as I put my friend from Ping Ting
+      Chou! However, here under the care of the Alsatian Fathers the country was
+      most beautifully cultivated. The wheat was growing tall and lush in the
+      land, emerald-green in the May sunshine; there were avenues of trees along
+      the wayside clothed in the tender fresh green of spring, and I came upon a
+      whole village, men and boys, busy making a bridge across a stream. Never
+      in China have I seen such evidences of well-conducted agricultural
+      industry; and the Fathers were militant too, for they were, and probably
+      are, armed, and in the Boxer trouble held their station like a fort, and
+      any missionaries fleeing who reached them had their lives saved. I found
+      much to commend in that Roman Catholic mission, and felt they were as
+      useful to the country people in their way as were the Americans to the
+      people of the towns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Outside another little town the population seemed to be given over to the
+      making of strawboard, and great banks were plastered with squares of it
+      set out to dry, and every here and there a man was engaged in putting more
+      pieces up. It wras rather a comical effect to see the side of a bank
+      plastered with yellow squares of strawboard and the wheat springing on
+      top.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All along the route still went caravans of camels, mules and donkeys, and,
+      strangest of all modes of conveyance, wheel-barrows, heavily laden too. A
+      wheel-barrow in China carries goods on each side of a great wheel, a man
+      holds up the shafts and wheels it, usually with a strap round his
+      shoulders, and in front either another man or a donkey is harnessed to
+      help with the traction. Hundreds of miles they go, over the roughest way,
+      and the labour must be very heavy; but wherever I went in China this was
+      impressed upon me, that man was the least important factor in any work of
+      production. He might be used till he failed and then thrown lightly away
+      without a qualm. There were plenty glad enough to take his place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been taken to task for comparing China to Babylon, but I must make
+      some comparison to bring home things to my readers. This journey through
+      the country in the warm spring sunshine was as unlike a journey anywhere
+      that I have been in Europe, Africa or Australia as anything could possibly
+      be. It was through an old land, old when Europe was young. I stopped at
+      inns that were the disgusting product of the slums; I passed men working
+      in the fields who were survivals of an old civilisation, and when I passed
+      any house that was not a hovel it was secluded carefully, so that the
+      owner and his womenkind might keep themselves apart from the proletariat,
+      the serfs who laboured around them and for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within a day's journey of T'ai Yuan Fu I came to a little town, Tsui Su,
+      where there was an extra vile inn with no courtyard that I could sleep in,
+      only a room where the rats were numerous and so fierce that they drove
+      Buchanan for refuge to my bed and the objectionable insects that I hustled
+      off the <i>k'ang</i> by means of powdered borax and Keating's, strewed
+      over and under the ground sheet, crawled up the walls and dropped down
+      upon me from the ceiling. Poor Buchanan and I spent a horrid night. I
+      don't like rats anyway, and fierce and hungry rats on the spot are far
+      worse for keeping off sleep than possible robbers in the future. All that
+      night I dozed and waked and restrained Buchanan's energies and vowed I was
+      a fool for coming to China, and then in the morning as usual I walked it
+      all back, and was glad, for Mr Wang came to me and, after the best
+      personally conducted Cook's tourist style, explained that here was a
+      temple which &ldquo;mus' see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I didn't believe much in temples in these parts, but I went a little way
+      back into the town and came to a really wonderful temple, built, I think,
+      over nine warm springs&mdash;the sort of thing that weighed down the
+      scales heavily on Mr Farrer's side. What has a nation that could produce
+      such a temple to learn from the West? I shall never forget the carved
+      dragons in red and gold that climbed the pillars at the principal
+      entrance, the twisted trees, the shrines over the springs and the bronze
+      figures that stood guard on the platform at the entrance gate. The steps
+      up to that gate were worn and broken with the passing of many feet through
+      countless years; the yellow tiles of the roof were falling and broken;
+      from the figures had been torn or had fallen the arms that they once had
+      borne; the whole place was typical of the decay which China allows to fall
+      upon her holy places; but seen in the glamour of the early morning, with
+      the grass springing underfoot, the trees in full leaf, the sunshine
+      lighting the yellow roofs and the tender green of the trees, it was
+      gorgeous. Then the clouds gathered and it began to rain, gentle, soft,
+      warm, growing rain, and I left it shrouded in a seductive grey mist that
+      veiled its imperfections and left me a 'memory only of one of the
+      beautiful places of the earth that I am glad I have seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At T'ai Yuan Fu I paid Mr Wang's fare back to Pao Ting Fu and bade him a
+      glad farewell. There may be worse interpreters in China, but I really hope
+      there are not many. He would have been a futile person in any country; he
+      was a helpless product of age-old China. I believe he did get back safely,
+      but I must confess to feeling on sending him away much as I should do were
+      I to turn loose a baby of four to find his way across London. Indeed I
+      have met many babies of four in Australia who struck me as being far more
+      capable than the interpreter who had undertaken to see me across China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was on the loose myself now. I was bent on going to Siberia; but the
+      matter had to be arranged in my own mind first, and while I did so I
+      lingered and spent a day or two at Hwailu; not that I wanted to see that
+      town&mdash;somehow I had done with China&mdash;but because the personality
+      of Mr and Mrs Green of the China Inland Mission interested me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hwailu is a small walled city, exactly like hundreds of other little
+      walled cities, with walls four-square to each point of the compass, and it
+      is set where the hills begin to rise that divide Chihli from Shansi, and
+      beyond the mission station is a square hill called Nursing Calf Fort. The
+      hill has steep sides up which it is almost impossible to take any animal,
+      but there are about one hundred acres of arable land on top, and this,
+      with true Chinese thrift, could not be allowed to go untilled, so the
+      story goes that while a calf was young a man carried it up on his back;
+      there it grew to maturity, and with its help they ploughed the land and
+      they reaped the crops. It is a truly Chinese story, and very likely it is
+      true. It is exactly what the Chinese would do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Hwailu, where they had lived for many years, Mr and Mrs Green were
+      engaged in putting up a new church, and with them I came in contact with
+      missionaries who had actually suffered almost to death at the hands of the
+      Boxers. It was thrilling to listen to the tales of their sufferings,
+      sitting there on the verandah of the mission house looking out on to the
+      peaceful flowers and shrubs of the mission garden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Boxer trouble spread to Hwailu and it was manifest the mission
+      house was no longer safe, they took refuge in a cave among the hills that
+      surround the town. Their converts and friends&mdash;for they had many
+      friends who were not converts&mdash;hardly dared come near them, and death
+      was very close. It was damp and cold in the cave though it was
+      summer-time, and by and by they had eaten all their food and drunk all
+      their water, and their hearts were heavy, for they feared not only for
+      themselves, but for what the little children must suffer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not help it,&rdquo; said Mrs Green, reproaching herself for being
+      human. &ldquo;I used to look at my children and wonder how the saints <i>could</i>
+      rejoice in martyrdom!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When they were in despair and thinking of coming out and giving themselves
+      up they heard hushed voices, and a hand at the opening of the cave offered
+      five large wheaten scones. Some friends, again not converts, merely pagan
+      friends, had remembered their sufferings. Still they looked at the scenes
+      doubtfully, and though the little children&mdash;they were only four and
+      six&mdash;held out their hands for them eagerly, they were obliged to
+      implore them not to eat them, they would make them so desperately thirsty.
+      But their Chinese friends were thoughtful as well as kind, and presently
+      came the same soft voice again and a hand sending up a basketful of
+      luscious cucumbers, cool and refreshing with their store of water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But they could not stay there for ever, and finally they made their way
+      down to the river bank, the Ching River&mdash;the Clear River we called
+      it, and I have also heard it translated the Dark Blue River, though it was
+      neither dark, nor blue, nor clear, simply a muddy canal&mdash;and slowly
+      made their way in the direction of Tientsin, hundreds of miles away. That
+      story of the devoted little band's wanderings makes pitiful reading.
+      Sometimes they went by boat, sometimes they crept along in the kaoliang
+      and reeds, and at last they arrived at the outskirts of Hsi An&mdash;not
+      the great city in Shensi, but a small walled town on the Ching River in
+      Chihli. Western cities are as common in China as new towns in
+      English-speaking lands&mdash;and here they, hearing a band was after them,
+      hid themselves in the kaoliang, the grain that grows close and tall as a
+      man. They were weary and worn and starved; they were well-nigh hopeless&mdash;at
+      least I should have been hopeless&mdash;but still their faith upheld them.
+      It was the height of summer and the sun poured down his rays, but towards
+      evening the clouds gathered. If it rained they knew with little children
+      they must leave their refuge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But surely, I know,&rdquo; said Mrs Green, &ldquo;the dear Lord will never let it
+      rain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And as I looked at her I seemed to see the passionate yearning with which
+      she looked at the little children that the rain must doom to a Chinese
+      prison or worse. In among those thick kaoliang stalks they could not stay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It rained, the heavy rain that comes in the Chinese summer, and the
+      fugitives crept out and gave themselves up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It shows how ignorant we are, how unfit to judge for ourselves,&rdquo; said the
+      teller of the tale fervently, &ldquo;for we fell into the hands of a
+      comparatively merciful band, whereas presently the kaoliang was beaten by
+      a ruthless set of men whom there would have been no escaping, and who
+      certainly would have killed us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the tenderness of the most merciful band was a thing to be prayed
+      against. They carried the children kindly enough&mdash;the worst of
+      Chinamen seem to be good to children&mdash;but they constantly threatened
+      their elders with death. They were going to their death, that they made
+      very clear to them; and they slung them on poles by their hands and feet,
+      and the pins came out of the women's long hair&mdash;there was another
+      teacher, a girl, with them&mdash;and it trailed in the dust of the filthy
+      Chinese paths. And Mr Green was faint and weary from a wound in his neck,
+      but still they had no pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still these devoted people comforted each other. It was the will of the
+      Lord. Always was He with them. They were taken to Pao Ting Fu, Pao Ting Fu
+      that had just burned its own missionaries, and put in the gaol there&mdash;and,
+      knowing a Chinese inn, I wonder what can be the awfulness of a Chinese
+      gaol&mdash;and they were allowed no privacy. Mrs Green had dysentery; they
+      had not even a change of clothes; but the soldiers were always in the
+      rooms with them, or at any rate in the outer room, and this was done, of
+      course, of <i>malice prepense</i>, for no one values the privacy of their
+      women more than the Chinese. The girl got permission to go down to the
+      river to wash their clothes, but a soldier always accompanied her, and
+      always the crowds jeered and taunted as she went along in the glaring
+      sunshine, feeling that nothing was hidden from these scornful people. Only
+      strangely to the children were they kind; the soldiers used to give them
+      copper coins so that they might buy little scones and cakes to eke out the
+      scanty rations, and once&mdash;it brought home to me, perhaps as nothing
+      else could, the deprivations of such a life&mdash;instead of buying the
+      much-needed food the women bought a whole pennyworth of hairpins, for
+      their long hair was about their shoulders, and though they brushed it to
+      the best of their ability with their hands it was to them an unseemly
+      thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And before the order came&mdash;everything is ordered in China&mdash;that
+      their lives were to be saved and they were to be sent to Tientsin the
+      little maid who had done so much to cheer and alleviate their hard lot lay
+      dying; the hardships and the coarse food had been too much for her. In the
+      filth and misery of the ghastly Chinese prison she lay, and, bending over
+      her, they picked the lice off her. Think of that, ye folk who guard your
+      little ones tenderly and love them as these missionaries who feel called
+      upon to convert the Chinese loved theirs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all that suffering they went back, back to Hwailu and the desolated
+      mission station under the Nursing Calf Fort, where they continue their
+      work to this day, and so will continue it, I suppose, to the end, for most
+      surely their sufferings and their endurance have fitted them for the work
+      they have at heart as no one who has not so suffered and endured could be
+      fitted. And so I think the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I walked through a tremendous dust-storm to the railway station at the
+      other side of the town, and the woman who had suffered these awful things,
+      and who was as sweet and charming and lovable a woman as I have ever met,
+      walked with me and bade me God-speed on my journey, and when I parted from
+      her I knew that among a class I&mdash;till I came to China&mdash;had
+      always strenuously opposed I had found one whom I could not only respect,
+      but whom I could love and admire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Going back to Pao Ting Fu was like going back to old friends. They had not
+      received my letter. Mr Wang had not made his appearance, so when James
+      Buchanan and I, attended by the master of transport, appeared upon the
+      scene on a hot summer day we found the missionary party having their
+      midday dinner on the verandah, and they received me&mdash;bless their kind
+      hearts!&mdash;with open arms, and proceeded to explain to me how very wise
+      a thing I had done in coming back. The moment I had left, they said, they
+      had been uncomfortable in the part they had taken in forwarding me on my
+      journey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was very good of them. There are days we always remember all our lives&mdash;our
+      wedding day and such-like&mdash;and that coming back on the warm summer's
+      day out of the hot, dusty streets of the western suburb into the cool,
+      clean, tree-shaded compound of the American missionaries at Pao Ting Fu is
+      one of them. And that compound is one of the places in the world I much
+      want to visit again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is another day, too, I shall not lightly forget. We called it the
+      last meeting of the Travellers' Club of Pao Ting Fu. There were only two
+      members in the club, Mr Long and I and an honorary member, James Buchanan,
+      and on this day the club decided to meet, and Mr Long asked me to dinner.
+      He lived in the Chinese college in the northern suburb. His house was only
+      about two miles away and it could be reached generally by going round by
+      the farms and graves, mostly graves, that cover the ground by the rounded
+      north-west corner of the wall of the city. Outside a city in China is
+      ugly. True, the walls are strangely old-world and the moat is a relic of
+      the past&mdash;useful in these modern times for disposing of unwanted
+      puppies; Pao Ting Fu never seemed so hard up for food as Shansi&mdash;but
+      otherwise the ground looks much as the deserted alluvial goldfields round
+      Ballarat used to look in the days of my youth; the houses are ramshackle
+      to the last degree, and all the fields, even when they are green with the
+      growing grain, look unfinished. But round the north-west corner of Pao
+      Ting Fu the graves predominate. There are thousands and thousands of them.
+      And on that particular day it rained, it rained, and it rained, steady
+      warm summer rain that only stopped and left the air fresh and washed about
+      six o'clock in the evening. I ordered a rickshaw&mdash;a rickshaw in Pao
+      Ting Fu is a very primitive conveyance; but it was pleasantly warm, and,
+      with James Buchanan on my knee, in the last evening dress that remained to
+      me and an embroidered Chinese jacket for an opera cloak, I set out. I had
+      started early because on account of the rain the missionaries opined there
+      might be a little difficulty with the roads. However, I did not worry much
+      because I only had two miles to go, and I had walked it often in less than
+      three-quarters of an hour. I was a little surprised when my rickshaw man
+      elected to go through the town, but, as I could not speak the language, I
+      was not in a position to remonstrate, and I knew we could not come back
+      that way as at sundown all the gates shut save the western, and that only
+      waits till the last train at nine o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was muddy, red, clayey mud in the western suburb when we started, but
+      when we got into the northern part of the town I was reminded of the
+      tribulations of Fen Chou Fu in the summer rains, for the water was up to
+      our axles, the whole place was like a lake and the people were piling up
+      dripping goods to get them out of the way of the very dirty flood. My man
+      only paused to turn his trousers up round his thighs and then went on
+      again&mdash;going through floods was apparently all in the contract&mdash;but
+      we went very slowly indeed. Dinner was not until eight and I had given
+      myself plenty of time, but I began to wonder whether we should arrive at
+      that hour. Presently I knew we shouldn't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went through the northern gate, and to my dismay the country in the
+      fading light seemed under water. From side to side and far beyond the road
+      was covered, and what those waters hid I trembled to think, for a road at
+      any time in China is a doubtful proposition and by no means spells
+      security. As likely as not there were deep holes in it. But apparently my
+      coolie had no misgivings. In he went at his usual snail's pace and the
+      water swirled up to the axles, up to the floor of the rickshaw, and when I
+      had gathered my feet up on the seat and we were in the middle of the sheet
+      of exceedingly dirty water the rickshaw coolie stopped and gave me to
+      understand that he had done his darnedest and could do no more. He dropped
+      the shafts and stood a little way off, wringing the water out of his
+      garments. It wasn't dangerous, of course, but it was distinctly
+      uncomfortable. I saw myself in evening dress wading through two feet of
+      dirty water to a clayey, slippery bank at the side. I waited a little
+      because the prospect did not please me, and though there were plenty of
+      houses round, there was not a soul in sight. It was getting dark too, and
+      it was after eight o'clock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently a figure materialised on that clayey bank and him I beckoned
+      vehemently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now Pao Ting Fu had seen foreigners, not many, but still foreigners, and
+      they spell to it a little extra cash, so the gentleman on the bank tucked
+      up his garments and came wading over. He and my original friend took a
+      maddeningly long time discussing the situation, and then they proceeded to
+      drag the rickshaw sideways to the bank. There was a narrow pathway along
+      the top and they apparently decided that if they could get the conveyance
+      up there we might proceed on our journey. First I had to step out, and it
+      looked slippery enough to make me a little doubtful. As a preliminary I
+      handed James Buchanan to the stranger, because, as he had to sit on my
+      knee, I did not want him to get dirtier than necessary. Buchanan did not
+      like the stranger, but he submitted with a bad grace till I, stepping out,
+      slipped on the clay and fell flat on my back, when he promptly bit the man
+      who was holding him and, getting away, expressed his sympathy by licking
+      my face. Such a commotion as there was! My two men yelled in dismay.
+      Buchanan barked furiously, and I had some ado to get on my feet again, for
+      the path was very slippery. It was long past eight now and could I have
+      gone back I would have done so, but clearly that was impossible, so by
+      signs I engaged No. 2 man, whose wounds had to be salved&mdash;copper did
+      it&mdash;to push behind, and we resumed our way....
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Briefly it was long after ten o'clock when I arrived at the college. My
+      host had given me up as a bad job long before and, not being well, had
+      gone to bed. There was nothing for it but to rouse him up, because I
+      wanted to explain that I thought I had better have another man to take me
+      home over the still worse road that I knew ran outside the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He made me most heartily welcome and then explained to my dismay that the
+      men utterly declined to go any farther, declared no rickshaw could get
+      over the road to the western suburb and that I must have a cart. That was
+      all very well, but where was I to get a cart at that time of night, with
+      the city gates shut?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr Long explained that his servant was a wise and resourceful man and
+      would probably get one if I would come in and have dinner. So the two
+      members of the Travellers' Club sat down to an excellent dinner&mdash;a
+      Chinese cook doesn't spoil a dinner because you are two hours late&mdash;and
+      we tried to take a flash-light photograph of the entertainment. Alas! I
+      was not fortunate that day; something went wrong with the magnesium light
+      and we burnt up most things. However, we ourselves were all right, and at
+      two o'clock in the morning Mr Long's servant's uncle, or cousin, or some
+      relative, arrived with a Peking cart and a good substantial mule. I
+      confess I was a bit doubtful about the journey home because I knew the
+      state of repair, or rather disrepair, of a couple of bridges we had to
+      cross, but they were negotiated, and just as the dawn was beginning to
+      break I arrived at the mission compound and rewarded the adventurous men
+      who had had charge of me with what seemed to them much silver and to me
+      very little. I have been to many dinners in my life, but the last meeting
+      of the Travellers' Club at Pao Ting Fu remains engraved on my memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet a little longer I waited in Pao Ting Fu before starting on my Siberian
+      trip, for the start was to be made from Tientsin and the missionaries were
+      going there in house-boats. They were bound for Pei Ta Ho for their summer
+      holiday and the first stage of the journey was down the Ching River to
+      Tientsin. I thought it would be rather a pleasant way of getting over the
+      country, and it would be pleasant too to have company. I am not enamoured
+      of my own society; I can manage alone, but company certainly has great
+      charms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I waited, and while I waited I bought curios.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Pao Ting Fu in the revolution there was a great deal of looting done,
+      and when order reigned again it was as much as a man's life was worth to
+      try and dispose of any of his loot. A foreigner who would take the things
+      right out of the country was a perfect godsend, and once it was known I
+      was buying, men waited for me the livelong day, and I only had to put my
+      nose outside the house to be pounced upon by a would-be seller. I have had
+      as many as nine men selling at once; they enlisted the servants, and china
+      ranged round the kitchen floor, and embroideries, brass and mirrors were
+      stowed away in the pantry. Indeed I and my followers must have been an
+      awful nuisance to the missionaries. They knew no English, but as I could
+      count a little in Chinese, when we could not get an interpreter we
+      managed; and I expect I bought an immense amount of rubbish, but never in
+      my life have I had greater satisfaction in spending money. More than ever
+      was I pleased when I unpacked in England, and I have been pleased ever
+      since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those sellers were persistent. They said in effect that never before had
+      they had such a chance and they were going to make the best of it. We
+      engaged house-boats for our transit; we went down to those boats, we
+      pushed off from the shore, and even then there were sellers bent on making
+      the best of their last chance. I bought there on the boat a royal blue
+      vase for two dollars and a quaint old brass mirror in a carved wooden
+      frame also for two dollars, and then the boatmen cleared off the merchants
+      and we started.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I expect on the banks of the Euphrates or the Tigris in the days before
+      the dawn of history men went backwards and forwards in boats like these we
+      embarked in on the little river just outside the south gate of Pao Ting
+      Fu. We had three boats. Dr and Mrs Lewis and their children had the
+      largest, with their servants, and we all made arrangements to mess on
+      board their boat. Miss Newton and a friend had another, with more of the
+      servants, and I, like a millionaire, had one all to myself. I had parted
+      with the master of transport at Pao Ting Fu, but Hsu Sen, one of the
+      Lewis's servants, waited upon me and made up my bed in the open part of
+      the boat under a little roof. The cabins were behind, low little places
+      like rabbit hutches, with little windows and little doors through which I
+      could get by going down on my knees. I used them only for my luggage, so
+      was enabled to offer a passage to a sewing-woman who would be exceedingly
+      useful to the missionaries. She had had her feet bound in her youth and
+      was rather crippled in consequence, and she bought her own food, as I
+      bought my water, at the wayside places as we passed. She was a foolish
+      soul, like most Chinese women, and took great interest in Buchanan,
+      offering him always a share of her own meals, which consisted apparently
+      largely of cucumbers and the tasteless Chinese melon. Now James Buchanan
+      was extremely polite, always accepting what was offered him, but he could
+      not possibly eat cucumber and melon, and when I went to bed at night I
+      often came in contact with something cold and clammy which invariably
+      turned out to be fragments of the sewing-woman's meals bestowed upon my
+      courtly little dog. I forgave him because of his good manners. There
+      really was nowhere else to hide them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were pleasant days we spent meandering down the river. We passed by
+      little farms; we passed by villages, by fishing traps, by walled cities.
+      Hsi An Fu, with the water of the river flowing at the foot of its
+      castellated walls, was like a city of romance, and when we came upon
+      little marketplaces by the water's edge the romance deepened, for we knew
+      then how the people lived. Sometimes we paused and bought provisions;
+      sometimes we got out and strolled along the banks in the pleasant summer
+      weather. Never have I gone a more delightful or more unique voyage. And at
+      last we arrived at Tientsin and I parted from my friends, and they went on
+      to Pei Ta Ho and I to Astor House to prepare for my journey east and
+      north.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so I left China, China where I had dwelt for sixteen months, China
+      that has been civilised so long and is a world apart, and now I sit in my
+      comfortable sitting-room in England and read what the papers say of China;
+      and the China I know and the China of the newspapers is quite a different
+      place. It is another world. China has come into the war. On our side, of
+      course: the Chinaman is far too astute to meddle with a losing cause. But,
+      after all, what do the peasants of Chihli and the cave-dwellers in the <i>yaos</i>
+      of Shansi know about a world's war? The very, very small section that
+      rules China manages these affairs, and the mass of the population are
+      exactly as they were in the days of the Cæsars, or before the first
+      dynasty in Egypt for that matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;China,&rdquo; said one day to me a man who knew it well commercially, just
+      before I left, &ldquo;was never in so promising a condition. All the taxes are
+      coming in and money was never so easy to get.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There was a row over the new tax,&rdquo; said a missionary sadly, in the part I
+      know well, &ldquo;in a little village beyond there. The village attacked the
+      tax-collectors and the soldiers fell upon the villagers and thirteen men
+      were killed. Oh, I know they say it is only nominal, but what is merely
+      nominal to outsiders is their all to these poor villagers. They must pay
+      the tax and starve, or resist and be killed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not say they were between the devil and the deep sea, because he
+      was a missionary, but I said it for him, and there were two cases like
+      that which came within my ken during my last month in China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fact of the matter is, I suppose, that outsiders can only judge
+      generally, and China is true to type, the individual has never counted
+      there and he does not count yet. What are a few thousand unpaid soldiers
+      revolting in Kalgan? What a robber desolating Kansu? A score or two of
+      villagers killed because they could not pay a tax? Absolutely nothing in
+      the general crowd. I, being a woman, and a woman from the new nations of
+      the south, cannot help feeling, and feeling strongly, the individual ought
+      to count, that no nation can be really prosperous until the individual
+      with but few exceptions is well-to-do and happy. I should like to rule out
+      the &ldquo;few exceptions,&rdquo; but that would be asking too much of this present
+      world. At least I like to think that most people have a chance of
+      happiness, but I feel in China that not a tenth of the population has
+      that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0034" id="linkimage-0034"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0194.jpg" alt="0194 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0194.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><a name="linkimage-0035" id="linkimage-0035"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div class="fig" style="width:50%;">
+      <img src="images/0195.jpg" alt="0195 " width="100%" /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h5>
+      <a href="images/0195.jpg"><img src="images/enlarge.jpg" alt="" /> </a>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      China left a curious impression upon my mind. The people are courteous and
+      kindly, far more courteous than would be the same class of people in
+      England, and yet I came back from the interior with a strong feeling that
+      it is unsafe, not because of the general hostility of the people&mdash;they
+      are not hostile&mdash;but because suffering and life count for so little.
+      They themselves suffer and die by the thousand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! Bring a daughter-in-law to see the doctor in the middle of the
+      harvest! Impossible!&rdquo; And yet they knew she was suffering agony, that
+      seeing the doctor was her only chance of sight! But she did not get it.
+      They were harvesting and no one could be spared!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is the life then of a foreign barbarian more or less? These
+      courteous, kindly, dirty folk who look upon one as a menagerie would look
+      on with equal interest at one's death. They might stretch out a hand to
+      help, just as a man in England might stop another from ill-treating a
+      horse, though for one who would put himself out two would pass by with a
+      shrug of the shoulders and a feeling that it wras no business of theirs.
+      Every day of their lives the majority look upon the suffering of their
+      women and think nothing of it. The desire of the average man is to have a
+      wife who has so suffered. I do not know whether the keeping of the women
+      in a state of subserviency has reacted upon the nation at large, but I
+      should think it has hampered it beyond words. Nothing&mdash;nothing made
+      me so ardent a believer in the rights of women as my visit to China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Women in England,&rdquo; said a man to me the other day, a foreigner, one of
+      our Allies, &ldquo;deserve the vote, but the Continental women are babies. They
+      cannot have it.&rdquo; So are the Chinese women babies, very helpless babies
+      indeed, and I feel, and feel very strongly indeed, that until China
+      educates her women, makes them an efficient half of the nation, not merely
+      man's toy and his slave, China will always lag behind in the world's
+      progress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already China is split up into &ldquo;spheres of influence.&rdquo; Whether she likes
+      it or not, she must realise that Russian misrule is paramount in the great
+      steppes of the north; Japan rules to a great extent in the north-east, her
+      railway from Mukden to Chang Ch'un is a model of efficiency; Britain
+      counts her influence as the most important along the valley of the Yang
+      Tze Kiang, and France has some say in Yunnan. I cannot help thinking that
+      it would be a great day for China, for the welfare of her toiling
+      millions, millions toiling without hope, if she were partitioned up among
+      the stable nations of the earth&mdash;that is to say, between Japan,
+      Britain and France. And having said so much, I refer my readers to Mr
+      Farrer for the other point of view. It is diametrically opposed to mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX&mdash;KHARBIN AND VLADIVOSTOK
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t Tientsin I
+      sweltered in the Astor House, and I put it on record that I found it
+      hotter in Northern China than I did on the Guinea coast in West Africa. It
+      was probably, of course, the conditions under which I lived, for the hotel
+      had been so well arranged for the bitter winter it was impossible to get a
+      thorough draught of air through any of the rooms. James Buchanan did not
+      like it either, for in the British concessions in China dogs come under
+      suspicion of hydrophobia and have always to be on the leash, wherefore, of
+      course, I had to take the poor little chap out into the Chinese quarter
+      before he could have a proper run, and he spent a great deal more time
+      shut up in my bedroom than he or I liked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tientsin was a place apart, not exactly Chinese as I know China&mdash;certainly
+      not Europe; it remains in my mind as a place where Chinese art learns to
+      accommodate itself to European needs. All the nations of the world East
+      and West meet there: in the British quarter were the Sikhs and other
+      Indian nationalities, and in the French the streets were kept by Anamites
+      in quaint peaked straw hats. I loved those streets of Tientsin that made
+      me feel so safe and yet gave me a delightful feeling of adventure&mdash;adventure
+      that cost me nothing; and I always knew I could go and dine with a friend
+      or come back and exchange ideas with somebody who spoke my own tongue. But
+      Tientsin wasn't any good to me as a traveller. It has been written about
+      for the last sixty years or more. I went on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One night Buchanan and I, without a servant&mdash;we missed the servant we
+      always had in China&mdash;wended our way down to the railway station and
+      ensconced ourselves in a first-class carriage bound for Mukden. The train
+      didn't start till some ungodly hour of the night, but as it was in the
+      station I got permission to take my place early, and with rugs and
+      cushions made myself comfortable and was sound asleep long before we
+      started. When I wakened I was well on the way to my destination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I made friends with a British officer of Marines who, with his sister, was
+      coming back across Russia. He had been learning Japanese, and I corrected
+      another wrong impression. The British do sometimes learn a language other
+      than their own. At Mukden we dined and had a bath. I find henceforth that
+      all my stopping-places are punctuated by baths, or by the fact that a bath
+      was not procurable. A night and day in the train made one desirable at
+      Mukden, and a hotel run by capable Japanese made it a delight. The
+      Japanese, as far as I could see, run Manchuria; must be more powerful than
+      ever now Russia is out of it; Kharbin is Russian, Mukden Japanese. The
+      train from there to Chang Ch'un is Japanese, and we all travelled in a
+      large open carriage, clean and, considering how packed it was, fairly
+      airy. There was room for everybody to lie down, just room, and the
+      efficient Japanese parted me from my treasured James Buchanan and put him,
+      howling miserably, into a big box&mdash;rather a dirty box; I suppose they
+      don't think much of animals&mdash;in another compartment. I climbed over
+      much luggage and crawled under a good deal more to see that all was right
+      with him, and the Japanese guards looked upon me as a mild sort of lunatic
+      and smiled contemptuously. I don't like being looked upon with contempt by
+      Orientals, so I was a little ruffled when I came back to my own seat. Then
+      I was amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally among such a crowd I made no attempt to undress for the night,
+      merely contenting myself with taking off my boots. But the man next me, a
+      Japanese naval officer, with whom I conversed in French, had quite
+      different views. My French was rather bad and so was his in a different
+      way, so we did not get on very fast. I fear I left him with the impression
+      that I was an Austrian, for he never seemed to have heard of Australia.
+      However, we showed each other our good will. Then he proceeded to undress.
+      Never have I seen the process more nattily accomplished. How he slipped
+      out of blue cloth and gold lace into a kimono I'm sure I don't know,
+      though he did it under my very eyes, and then, with praiseworthy
+      forethought, he took the links and studs out of his shirt and put them
+      into a clean one ready for the morrow, stowed them both away in his little
+      trunk, settled himself down on his couch and gave himself up to a
+      cigarette and conversation. I smoked too&mdash;one of his cigarettes&mdash;and
+      we both went to sleep amicably, and with the morning we arrived at Chang
+      Ch'un, and poor little Buchanan made the welkin ring when he saw me and
+      found himself caged in a barred box. However that was soon settled, and he
+      told me how infinitely preferable from a dog's point of view are the free
+      and easy trains of Russia and China to the well-managed ones of Japan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These towns on the great railway are weird little places, merely scattered
+      houses and wide roads leading out into the great plain, and the railway
+      comes out of the distance and goes away into the distance. And the people
+      who inhabit them seem to be a conglomeration of nations, perhaps the
+      residuum of all the nations. Here the marine officer and his sister and I
+      fell into the hands of a strange-looking individual who might have been a
+      cross between a Russian Pole and a Chinaman, with a dash of Korean thrown
+      in, and he undertook to take us to a better hotel than that
+      usually-frequented by visitors to Chang Ch'un. I confess I wonder what
+      sort of people do visit Chang Ch'un, not the British tourist as a rule,
+      and if the principal hotel is worse than the ramshackle place where we had
+      breakfast, it must be bad. Still it was pleasant in the brilliant warm
+      sunshine, even though it was lucky we had bathed the night before at
+      Mukden, for the best they could do here was to show us into the most
+      primitive of bedrooms, the very first effort in the way of a bedroom, I
+      should think, after people had given up <i>k'angs</i>, and there I met a
+      very small portion of water in a very small basin alongside an exceedingly
+      frowsy bed and made an effort to wash away the stains of a night's travel.
+      Now such a beginning to the day would effectually disgust me; then, fresh
+      from the discomforts of Chinese travel, I found it all in the day's work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found too that I had made a mistake and not brought enough money with
+      me. Before I had paid for Buchanan's ticket I had parted with every penny
+      I possessed and could not possibly get any more till I arrived at the Hong
+      Kong and Shanghai Bank at Kharbin. I am rather given to a mistake of that
+      sort; I always feel my money is so much safer in the bank's charge than in
+      mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went on through fertile Manchuria and I saw the rich fields that coming
+      out I had passed over at night. This train was Russian, and presently
+      there came along a soldier, a forerunner of an officer inspecting
+      passengers and carriages. Promptly his eye fell on Buchanan, who was
+      taking an intelligent interest in the scenery&mdash;he always insisted on
+      looking out of the window&mdash;and I, seeing he, the soldier, was
+      troubled, tried to tell him my intentions were good and I would pay at
+      Kharbin; but I don't think I made myself understood, for he looked wildly
+      round the compartment, seized the little dog, pushed him in a corner and
+      threw a cushion over him. Both Buchanan and I were so surprised we kept
+      quite still, and the Russian officer looked in, saw a solitary woman
+      holding out her ticket and passed on, and not till he was well out of the
+      way did James Buchanan, who was a jewel, poke up his pretty little head
+      and make a few remarks upon the enormity of smuggling little dogs without
+      paying their fares, which was evidently what I was doing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We arrived at Kharbin about nine o'clock at night, and as I stepped out on
+      to a platform, where all the nations of the earth, in dirty clothes,
+      seemed yelling in chorus, a man came along and spoke to me in English. The
+      soldier who had aided and abetted in the smuggling of Buchanan was
+      standing beside me, evidently expecting some little remembrance, and I was
+      meditating borrowing from the officer of Marines, though, as they were
+      going on and I was not, I did not much like it. And the voice in English
+      asked did I want a hotel. I did, of course. The man said he was the
+      courier of the Grand Hotel, but he had a little place of his own which was
+      much better and he could make me very comfortable. Then I explained I
+      could not get any money till the bank opened next day and he spread out
+      his hands as a Chinaman might have done. &ldquo;No matter, no matter,&rdquo; he would
+      pay, his purse was mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Would I go to his house?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could I do anything else under the circumstances? And I promptly took him
+      at his word and asked for a rouble&mdash;Kharbin is China, but the rouble
+      was the current coin&mdash;and paid off the soldier for his services. I
+      bade farewell to my friends and in a ramshackle droshky went away through
+      the streets of Kharbin, and we drove so far I wondered if I had done
+      wisely. I had, as it turned out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I heard afterwards that even in those days anything might have
+      happened in Kharbin, where the population consists of Japanese and Chinese
+      and Russians and an evil combination of all three, to say nothing of a
+      sprinkling of rascals from all the nations of the earth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is not,&rdquo; said a man who knew it well, &ldquo;a decent Chinaman in the
+      whole place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In fact to all intents and purposes it is Russian. There were Russian
+      students all in uniform in the streets, and bearded, belted drivers drove
+      the droshkies with their extra horse in a trace beside the shafts, just as
+      they did in Russia. Anyhow it seems to me the sins of Kharbin would be the
+      vigorous primal sins of Russia, not the decadent sins of old-world China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Kharbin when I was there in 1914 had 60,000 inhabitants and 25,000 Russian
+      soldiers guarding the railway in the district. The Russian police forbade
+      me to take photographs, and you might take your choice: Chinese <i>hung hu
+      tzes</i> or Russian brigands would rob and slay you on your very doorstep
+      in the heart of the town. At least they would in 1914, and things are
+      probably worse now. All the signs are in Russian and, after the Chinese,
+      looked to me at first as if I should be able to understand them, but
+      closer inspection convinced me that the letters, though I knew their
+      shape, had been out all night and were coming home in not quite the
+      condition we would wish them to be. There is a Chinese town without a wall
+      a little way over the plain&mdash;like all other Chinese towns, a place of
+      dirt and smells&mdash;and there is a great river, the Sungari, a tributary
+      of the Amur, on which I first met the magnificent river steamers of these
+      parts. Badly I wanted to photograph them, but the Russian police said &ldquo;No,
+      no,&rdquo; I would have to get a permit from the colonel in command before that
+      could be allowed, and the colonel in command was away and was not expected
+      back till the middle of next week, by which time I expected to be in
+      Vladivostok, if not in Kharbarosvk, for Kharbin was hardly inviting as a
+      place of sojourn for a traveller. Mr Poland, as he called himself, did his
+      best for me. He gave me a fairly large room with a bed in it, a chair, a
+      table and a broken-down wardrobe that would not open. He had the family
+      washing cleared out of the bath, so that I bathed amidst the fluttering
+      damp garments of his numerous progeny, but still there was a bath and a
+      bath heater that with a certain expenditure of wood could be made to
+      produce hot water; and if it was rather a terrifying machine to be locked
+      up with at close quarters, still it did aid me to arrive at a certain
+      degree of cleanliness, and I had been long enough in China not to be
+      carping.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it is dull eating in your bedroom, and I knew I had not done wisely,
+      for even if the principal hotel had been uncomfortable&mdash;I am not
+      saying it was, because I never went there&mdash;it would have been more
+      amusing to watch other folks than to be alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day after I arrived I called upon Mr Sly, the British consul, and I
+      was amused to hear the very dubious sounds that came from his room when I
+      was announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cleared the air by saying hastily: &ldquo;I'm not a distressed British subject
+      and I don't want any money,&rdquo; though I'm bound to say he looked kind enough
+      to provide me with the wherewithal had I wanted it. Then he shook his head
+      and expressed his disapproval of my method of arrival.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The last man who fell into Kharbin like that,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I hunted for a
+      week, and two days later I attended his funeral,&rdquo; so badly had he been
+      man-handled. But that man, it seems, had plenty of money; it was wisdom he
+      lacked. My trouble was the other way, certainly as far as money was
+      concerned. It would never have been worth anyone's while to harm me for
+      the sake of my possessions. I had fallen into the hands of a Polish Jew
+      named Polonetzky, though he called himself Poland to me, feeling, I
+      suppose, my English tongue was not equal to the more complicated word, and
+      he dwelt in the Dome Stratkorskaya&mdash;remember Kharbin is China&mdash;and
+      I promised if he dealt well by me that I would recommend his
+      boarding-house to all my friends bound for Kharbin. He did deal well by
+      me. So frightened was he about me that he would not let me out of his
+      sight, or if he were not in attendance his wife or his brother was turned
+      on to look after me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am very good friends,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;with Mr Sly at present. I do not want
+      anything to happen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr Sly, we found, knew one of my brothers and he very kindly asked me to
+      dinner. That introduced me to the élite of the place, and after dinner&mdash;Chinese
+      cooks are still excellent on the borders&mdash;we drove in his private
+      carriage and ended the evening in the public gardens. The coachmen here
+      are quite gorgeous affairs; no matter what their nondescript nationality&mdash;they
+      are generally Russians, I think, though I have seen Chinamen, Tartars,
+      driving like Jehu the son of Nimshi&mdash;they wear for full livery grey
+      beaver hats with curly brims like Johnny Walker or the Corinthians in the
+      days of the Regent. It took my breath away when I found myself bowling
+      along behind two of these curly brimmed hats that I thought had passed
+      away in the days of my grandfather.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gardens at Kharbin are a great institution. There in the summer's
+      evening the paths were all lined with lamps; there were open-air
+      restaurants; there were bands and fluttering flags; there were the most
+      excellent ices and insidious drinks of all descriptions, and there were
+      crowds of gaily dressed people&mdash;Monte Carlo in the heart of Central
+      Asia! Kharbin in the summer is hot, very hot, and Kharbin in the winter is
+      bitter cold. It is all ice and snow and has a temperature that ranges
+      somewhere down to 40° Fahrenheit below zero, and this though the sun
+      shines brilliantly. It is insidious cold that sneaks on you and takes you
+      unawares, not like the bleak raw cold of England that makes the very most
+      of itself. They told me a tale of a girl who had gone skating and when she
+      came off the ice found that her feet were frozen, though she was unaware
+      of her danger and had thought them all right. Dogs are often frozen in the
+      streets and Chinamen too, for the Chinaman has a way of going to sleep in
+      odd places, and many a one has slept his last sleep in the winter streets
+      of Kharbin&mdash;the wide straggling streets with houses and gardens and
+      vacant spaces just like the towns of Australia. A frontier town it is in
+      effect. We have got beyond the teeming population of China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I prepared to go first east to Vladivostok and then north to
+      Siberia, and I asked advice of both the British consul and my
+      self-appointed courier, Mr Poland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly he took care of me, and the day before I started east he handed
+      me over to his wife and suggested she should take me to the market and buy
+      necessaries for my journey. It was only a little over twenty-four hours so
+      it did not seem to me a matter of much consequence, but I felt it would be
+      interesting to walk through the market. It was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This class of market, I find, is very much alike all over the world
+      because they sell the necessaries of life to the people and it is only
+      varied by the difference of the local products. Kharbin market was a
+      series of great sheds, and though most of the stalls were kept by
+      Chinamen, it differed from a market in a Chinese town in the fact that
+      huge quantities of butter and cheese and cream were for sale. Your true
+      Chinaman is shocked at the European taste for milk and butter and cream.
+      He thinks it loathsome, and many a man is unable to sit at table and watch
+      people eat these delicacies. Just as, of course, he is shocked at the
+      taste that would put before a diner a huge joint of beef or mutton. These
+      things Chinese refinement disguises. I suspect the proletariat with whom I
+      came in contact in Shansi would gladly eat anything, but I speak of the
+      refined Chinaman. Here in this market, whether he was refined or not, he
+      had got over these fancies and there was much butter and delicious soured
+      cream for sale. My Polish Jewess and I laboured under the usual difficulty
+      of language, but she made me understand I had better buy a basket for my
+      provisions, a plate, a knife, a fork&mdash;I had left these things behind
+      in China, not thinking I should want them&mdash;a tumbler and a couple of
+      kettles. No self-respecting person, according to her, would dream of
+      travelling in Siberia without at least a couple of kettles. I laid in two
+      of blue enamel ware and I am bound to say I blessed her forethought many
+      and many a time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then we proceeded to buy provisions, and here I lost my way. She engaged a
+      stray Chinaman, at least I think he was a Chinaman, with a dash of the
+      gorilla in him, to carry the goods, and I thought she was provisioning her
+      family against a siege or that perhaps there was only one market a month
+      in Kharbin. Anyhow I did not feel called upon to interfere. It didn't seem
+      any concern of mine and she had a large little family. We bought bread in
+      large quantities, ten cucumbers, two pounds of butter, two pounds of cream&mdash;for
+      these we bought earthenware jars&mdash;two dozen bananas, ten eggs and two
+      pounds of tea. And then I discovered these were the provisions for my
+      journey to Vladivostok, twenty-seven hours away! I never quite knew why I
+      bought provisions at all, for the train stopped at stations where there
+      were restaurants even though there was no restaurant car attached to it.
+      Mr Sly warned me to travel first class and I had had no thought of doing
+      aught else, for travelling is very cheap and very good in Russia, but Mr
+      Poland thought differently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I arrange,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I arrange, and you see if you are not comfortable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I am bound to say I was, very comfortable, for Buchanan and I had a very
+      nice second-class carriage all to ourselves. At every station a conductor
+      appeared to know if I wanted boiling water, and we had any amount of good
+      things to eat, for the ten eggs had been hard boiled by Mrs &ldquo;Poland,&rdquo; and
+      the bread and butter and cream and cucumbers and bananas were as good as
+      ever I have tasted. I also had two pounds of loaf sugar, German beet, I
+      think, and some lemons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so we went east through the wooded hills of Manchuria. They were
+      covered with lush grass restfully green, and there were flowers, purple
+      and white and yellow and red, lifting their starry faces to the cloudy
+      sky, and a soft damp air blew in through the open window. Such a change it
+      was after China, with its hard blue skies, brilliant sunshine and dry,
+      invigorating air. But the Manchus were industrious as the Chinese
+      themselves, and where there were fields the crops were tended as carefully
+      as those in China proper, only in between were the pasture-lands and the
+      flowers that were a delight to me, who had not seen a flower save those in
+      pots since I came to China.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I spread out my rugs and cushions and, taking off my clothes and getting
+      into a kimono&mdash;also bought in the Kharbin market; a man's kimono as
+      the women's are too narrow&mdash;I slept peacefully, and in the morning I
+      found we had climbed to the top of the ridge, the watershed, the pleasant
+      rain was falling softly, all around was the riotous green, and peasants,
+      Russian and Chinese, came selling sweet red raspberries in little baskets
+      of green twigs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the flowers, the flowers of Siberia! After all I had heard about them,
+      they were still something more beautiful than I could have hoped for; and
+      then the rain passed, the life-giving rain, the rain that smoothed away
+      all harshness and gave such a charm and a softness to the scenery. And it
+      was vast. China was so crowded I never had a sense of vastness there; but
+      this was like Australia, great stretches of land under the sky, green,
+      rich lush green, and away in the distance was a dim line of blue hills.
+      Then would come a little corrugated-iron-roofed town sprawled out over the
+      mighty plain, a pathway to it across the surrounding green, and then the
+      sun came out and the clouds threw great shadows and there was room to see
+      the outline of their shapes on the green grass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were Chinese still on the stations, but they were becoming more and
+      more Russianised. They still wore queues, but they had belted Russian
+      blouses and top-boots, and they mixed on friendly terms with
+      flaxen-haired, blue-eyed Russians similarly attired. And the evening
+      shadows gathered again and in the new world we steamed into Vladivostok.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Russians I came across did not appreciate fresh air. The porter of a
+      hotel captured me and Buchanan, and when we arrived on a hot July night I
+      was shown into a bedroom with double windows hermetically sealed and the
+      cracks stopped up with cotton wool!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I protested vehemently and the hotel porter looked at me in astonishment.
+      Tear down those carefully stopped-up cracks! Perish the thought. However,
+      I persuaded him down that cotton wool must come, and he pulled it down
+      regretfully. I called at the British consulate next day and asked them to
+      recommend me to the best hotel, but they told me I was already there and
+      could not better myself, so I gave myself up to exploring the town in the
+      Far East where now the Czech Slovaks have established themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a beautifully situated town set in the hills alongside a narrow arm
+      of the sea, rather a grey sea with a grey sky overhead, and the hills
+      around were covered with the luxuriant green of midsummer, midsummer in a
+      land where it is winter almost to June. The principal buildings in
+      Vladivostok are rather fine, but they are all along the shore, and once
+      you go back you come into the hills where the wood-paved streets very
+      often are mere flights of steps. It is because of that sheltered arm of
+      the sea that here is a town at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Along the shore are all manner of craft. The British fleet had come on a
+      visit, and grey and grim the ships lay there on the grey sea, like a
+      Turner picture, with, for a dash of colour, the Union Jacks. The Russian
+      fleet was there too, welcoming their guests, and I took a boat manned by a
+      native of the country, Mongolian evidently, with, of course, an unknown
+      tongue, but whether he was Gold or Gilyak I know not. He was a good
+      boatman, for a nasty little sea got up and James Buchanan told me several
+      times he did not like the new turn our voyaging had taken, and then, poor
+      little dog, he was violently sick. I know the torments of sea-sickness are
+      not lightly to be borne, so after sailing round the fleets I went ashore
+      and studied the shipping from the firm land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was glad then that Mr Sly at Kharbin had insisted that I should see the
+      Russian port. The whole picture was framed in green, soft tender green,
+      edged with grey mist, and all the old forgotten ships of wood, the ships
+      that perhaps were sailed by my grandfather in the old East India Company,
+      seemed to have found a resting-place here. They were drawn up against the
+      shore or they were going down the bay with all their sails set, and the
+      sunlight breaking through the clouds touched the white sails and made them
+      mountains of snow. There was shipbuilding going on too, naturally&mdash;for
+      are there not great stores of timber in the forests behind?&mdash;and
+      there were ships unloading all manner of things. Ships brought vegetables
+      and fruit; ships brought meat; there were fishing-boats, hundreds of them
+      close against each other along the shore, and on all the small ships, at
+      the mast-heads, were little fluttering white butterflies of flags. What
+      they were there for I do not know, or what they denoted. Oh, the general
+      who commands the Czech Slovaks has a splendid base. I wish him all
+      success. And here were the sealing-ships, the ships that presently would
+      go up to the rookeries to bring away the pelts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of my brothers was once navigating lieutenant on the British ship that
+      guarded the rookeries &ldquo;north of 53°,&rdquo; and I remembered, as Buchanan and I
+      walked along the shore, the tales he had told me of life in these parts.
+      His particular ship had acquired two sheep, rather an acquisition for men
+      who had lived long off the Chinese coast, and had a surfeit of chickens;
+      so while they were eating one, thinking to save the other a long sea
+      voyage they landed him on an island, giving him in charge of the man, an
+      Aleut Indian, my brother called him, who ruled the little place. Coming
+      back they were reduced to salt and tinned food, but they cheered
+      themselves with thoughts of the mutton chops that should regale them when
+      they met again their sheep. Alas for those sailor-men! They found the
+      Indian, but the sheep was not forthcoming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His whilom guardian was most polite. He gave them to understand he was
+      deeply grieved, but unfortunately he had been obliged to slay the sheep as
+      he was killing the fowls!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ward-room mess realised all too late that mutton was appreciated in
+      other places than on board his Majesty's ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought all the races of the earth met in Kharbin, but I don't know that
+      this port does not run it very close. There were Japanese, Chinese,
+      Russians, Koreans in horsehair hats and white garments; there were the
+      aboriginal natives of the country and there were numberless Germans. And
+      then, in July, 1914, these people, I think, had no thought of the World's
+      War.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here I came across a new way of carrying, for all the porters had
+      chairs strapped upon their backs and the load, whatever it was, was placed
+      upon the chair. Of all ways I have seen, that way strikes me as being the
+      best, for the weight is most evenly distributed. Most of the porters, I
+      believe, were Koreans, though they did not wear white; nor did they wear a
+      hat of any description; their long black, hair was twisted up like a
+      woman's, but they were vigorous and stalwart. We left weakness behind us
+      in China. Here the people looked as if they were meat-fed, and though they
+      might be dirty&mdash;they generally were&mdash;they all looked as if they
+      had enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Always the principal streets were thronged with people. At night the town
+      all lighted up is like a crescent of sparkling diamonds flung against the
+      hill-sides, and when I went to the railway station to take train for
+      Kharbarosvk, thirty hours away, at the junction of the Ussuri and the
+      Amur, that large and spacious building was a seething mass of people of
+      apparently all classes and all nationalities, and they were giving voice
+      to their feelings at the top of their lungs. Everybody, I should think,
+      had a grievance and was makin the most of it. I had not my capable Mr
+      Poland to arrange for me, so I went first class&mdash;the exact fare I
+      have forgotten, but it was ridiculously low&mdash;and Buchanan and I had a
+      compartment all to ourselves. Indeed I believe we were the only
+      first-class passengers. I had my basket and my kettles and I had laid in
+      store of provisions, and we went away back west for a couple of hours, and
+      then north into the spacious green country where there was room and more
+      than room for everybody.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER X&mdash;ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREAT RIVERS
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>ll the afternoon
+      we went back on our tracks along the main line, the sea on one side and
+      the green country, riotous, lush, luxuriant, on the other, till at last we
+      reached the head of the gulf and took our last look at the Northern Sea;
+      grey like a silver shield it spread before us, and right down to the very
+      water's edge came the vivid green. And then we turned inland, and
+      presently we left the main line and went north. Above was the grey sky,
+      and the air was soft and cool and delicious. I had had too much
+      stimulation and I welcomed, as I had done the rains after the summer in my
+      youth, the soft freshness of the Siberian summer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were soldiers everywhere, tall, strapping, virile Russians; there
+      were peasants in belted, blouses, with collars all of needlework; and
+      there were Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and the natives of the country, men
+      with a strong Mongolian cast of countenance. The country itself was
+      strangely empty after teeming China, but these all travelled by train or
+      were to be found on the railway stations and at the fishing stations that
+      we passed, but apparently I was the only bloated aristocrat who travelled
+      first class. In normal times this made travelling fairly easy in Russia,
+      for it was very cheap and you could generally get a carriage to yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! but it was lovely; the greenness of the country was a rest to eyes
+      wearied with the dust and dirt of China. And there were trees&mdash;not
+      trees denuded of all but enough timber to make a bare livelihood possible,
+      but trees growing luxuriantly in abundant leaf after their own free will,
+      oaks and firs and white-stemmed, graceful birches bending daintily before
+      the soft breeze. At the stations the natives, exactly like Chinamen, dirty
+      and in rags, brought strawberries for sale; and there were always flowers&mdash;purple
+      vetches and gorgeous red poppies, tall foxgloves and blue spikes of
+      larkspur. The very antithesis of China it was, for this was waste land and
+      undeveloped. The very engines were run with wood, and there were stacks of
+      wood by the wayside waiting to be burnt. I was sorry&mdash;I could not but
+      be sorry. I have seen my own people cut down the great forests of Western
+      Victoria, and here were people doing the same, with exactly the same
+      wanton extravagance, and in this country, with its seven months of bitter
+      winter, in all probability the trees take three times as long to come to
+      maturity. But it is virgin land, this glorious fertile country, and was
+      practically uninhabited till the Russian Government planted here and there
+      bands of Cossacks who, they say, made no endeavour to develop the land.
+      The Koreans and the Japanese and the Chinese came creeping in, but the
+      Russians made an effort to keep them out. But still the population is
+      scanty. Always, though it was before the war, there were soldiers&mdash;soldiers
+      singly, soldiers in pairs, soldiers in little bands; a horseman appeared
+      on a lonely road, he was a soldier; a man came along driving a cart, he
+      was a soldier; but the people we saw were few, for the rigours of this
+      lovely land in the winter are terrible, and this was the dreaded land
+      where Russia sent her exiles a long, long way from home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Farther we went into the hills; a cuckoo called in the cool and dewy
+      morning; there were lonely little cottages with wooden roofs and log
+      walls; there were flowering creepers round the windows, and once I saw a
+      woman's wistful face peeping out at the passing train, the new train that
+      at last was bringing her nearer the old home and that yet seemed to
+      emphasise the distance. We went along by a river, the Ussuri, that wound
+      its way among the wooded green hills and by still pools of water that
+      reflected in their depths the blue sky, soft with snow-white clouds. A
+      glorious land this land of exile! At the next station we stopped at the
+      people were seated at a table having a meal under the shade of the trees.
+      Then there was a lonely cross of new wood; someone had been laid in his
+      long last home in the wilderness and would never go back to Holy Russia
+      again; and again I thought of the woman's wistful face that peered out of
+      the flower-bordered window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a new line. Formerly the way to Kharbarosvk was down the Amur
+      river from the west, and that, I suppose, is why all this country of the
+      Amur Province south and east of the river is so lonely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we neared Kharbarosvk came signs of settlement, the signs of settlement
+      I had been accustomed to in Australia. There were tree stumps, more and
+      more, and anything more desolate than a forest of newly cut tree stumps I
+      don't know. It always spells to me ruthless destruction. I am sure it did
+      here, for they cut down recklessly, sweeping all before them. It seemed to
+      cry out, as all newly settled land that ever I have seen, and I have seen
+      a good deal, the distaste of the people who here mean to make their homes.
+      These are not our trees, they say; they are not beautiful like the trees
+      of our own old home; let us cut them down, there are plenty; by and by
+      when we have time, when we are settled, we will plant trees that really
+      are worth growing. We shall not see them, of course, our children will
+      benefit little; but they will be nice for our grandchildren, if we hold on
+      so long. But no one believes they will stay so long; they hope to make
+      money and go back. Meanwhile they want the timber, but they neglect to
+      plant fresh trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They wanted the timber to build Kharbarosvk. This is a town of the
+      outposts, a frontier town; there are no towns like it in the British
+      Isles, where they value their land and build towns compactly, but I have
+      seen its counterpart many a time in Australia, and I know there must be
+      its like in America and Canada. It straggled all along the river bank, and
+      its wide streets, streets paved, or rather floored, here and there with
+      planks of wood, were sparsely planted with houses. In one respect
+      Australian towns of the frontier are much wiser. When there is a train
+      they do build their stations with some regard for the comfort and
+      convenience of the inhabitants. In Russia wherever I have been the railway
+      station is a long distance, sometimes half-an-hour's drive, from the town
+      it serves. I suppose it is one of the evils of the last bad regime and
+      that in the future, the future which is for the people, it will be
+      remedied, but it is difficult to see what purpose it serves. I had to get
+      a droshky to the hotel. We drove first along a country road, then through
+      the wide grass-grown streets of the town, and I arrived at the principal
+      hotel, kept by a German on Russian lines, for the restaurant was perfectly
+      distinct from the living-rooms. I put it on record it was an excellent
+      restaurant; I remember that cold soup&mdash;the day was hot&mdash;and that
+      most fragrant coffee still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the windows of my bedroom I saw another of the world's great rivers.
+      I looked away over a wide expanse of water sparkling in the sunshine: it
+      was the junction of the Ussuri and the Amur, and it was like a great lake
+      or the sea. It was very, very still, clear as glass, and the blue sky and
+      white clouds were reflected in it, and there were green islands and low
+      green banks. All was colour, but soft colour without outlines, like a
+      Turner picture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Amur is hard frozen for about five months of the year and for about
+      two more is neither good solid ice nor navigable water. It is made by the
+      joining of the Shilka and the Aigun in about lat. 53° N. 121° E., and,
+      counting in the Shilka, must be nearly three thousand miles in length, and
+      close on two thousand miles have I now travelled. I don't know the Amur,
+      of course, but at least I may claim to have been introduced to it, and
+      that, I think, is more than the majority of Englishmen may do. And oh, it
+      is a mighty river! At Kharbarosvk, over a thousand versts&mdash;about six
+      hundred and forty miles&mdash;from the sea, it is at least a mile and a
+      third wide, and towards the mouth, what with backwaters and swamps, it
+      takes up sometimes about forty miles of country, while the main channel is
+      often nearly three miles wide. It rises in the hills of Trans-Baikal&mdash;the
+      Yablonoi Mountains we used to call them when I was at school. Really I
+      think it is the watershed that runs up East Central Siberia and turns the
+      waters to the shallow Sea of Okhotsk; and it cuts its way through wooded
+      hills among rich land hardly as yet touched by agriculture, beautiful,
+      lovely hills they are, steep and wooded. It climbs down into the flat
+      country and then again, just before it reaches the sea, it is in the
+      hills, colder hills this time, though the Amur falls into the sea on much
+      the same parallel of latitude as that which sees it rise, only it seems to
+      me that the farther you get east the colder and more extreme is the
+      climate. For Nikolayeusk at the mouth is in the same latitude as London,
+      but as a port it is closed for seven months of the year. True, the winter
+      in Siberia is lovely, bright, clear cold, a hard, bright clearness, but
+      the thermometer is often down below -40°
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Fahrenheit, and when that happens life is difficult for both man and
+      beast. No wonder it is an empty river. The wonder to me is that there
+      should be so much life as there is. For in those five months that it is
+      open fine large steamers run from Nikolayeusk by Ivharbarosvk to
+      Blagovesehensk, and smaller ones, but still rather fine, to Stretensk,
+      where river navigation, for steamers of any size at any rate, ceases.
+      There are the two months, April-May, September-October, when the river
+      cannot be used at all, and there are the winter months when it may be, and
+      is to a certain extent, used as a road, but with the thermometer down far
+      below zero no one is particularly keen on travelling. It has its
+      disadvantages. So most of the travelling is done in the summer months and
+      in 1914 the steamers were crowded. Now, I suppose, they are fighting
+      there. It is a country well worth fighting for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a curious contrast, the lonely empty river and the packed steamer.
+      It was an event when we passed another; two made a crowd; and very, very
+      seldom did we pass more than two in a day. But it was delightful moving
+      along, the great crowded steamer but a puny thing on the wide river, the
+      waters still and clear, reflecting the blue sky and the soft white clouds
+      and the low banks far, far away. When there were hills they were generally
+      closer, as if the river had had more trouble in cutting a passage and
+      therefore had not had time to spread itself as it did in the plain
+      country. The hills were densely wooded, mostly with dark firs, with an
+      occasional deciduous tree showing up brightly among the dark foliage, and
+      about Blagovesehensk there is a beautiful oak known as the velvet oak, the
+      wood of which is much sought for making furniture. However dense the
+      forest, every here and there would be a wide swath of green bare of trees&mdash;a
+      fire brake; for these forests in the summer burn fiercely, and coming back
+      I saw the valleys thick with the curling blue wood smoke, smelt the
+      aromatic smell of the burning fir woods, and at night saw the hills
+      outlined in flames. It was a gorgeous sight, but it is desperately
+      destructive for the country, especially a country where the wood grows so
+      slowly. But at first there were no fires, and what struck me was the
+      vastness and the loneliness of the mighty river. I had the same feeling on
+      the Congo in the tropics, a great and lonely river with empty banks, but
+      that was for a distance under two hundred miles. Here in the north the
+      great lonely river went wandering on for ten times as far, and still the
+      feeling when one stood apart from the steamer was of loneliness and
+      grandeur. Man was such a small thing here. At night a little wind sighed
+      over the waters or swept down between the hills; round the bows the water
+      rose white; there was a waste of tossing water all round, under a lowering
+      sky, and the far-away banks were lost in the gloom. A light would appear,
+      perhaps two lights shining out of the darkness, but they only emphasised
+      the loneliness. A wonderful river!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The navigation of the river is a profession in itself. There is a school
+      for the navigators at Blagoveschensk where they are properly trained. All
+      along we came across the red beacons that mark the way, while beside them
+      in the daytime we could see the cabins of the lonely men who tended them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Truly a voyage down the Amur in summer is not to be easily forgotten, and
+      yet, sitting here writing about it in my garden in Kent, I sometimes
+      wonder did I dream it all, the vastness and the loneliness and the
+      grandeur that is so very different from the orchard land wherein is set my
+      home. You do not see orchards on the Amur, the climate is too rigorous,
+      and I doubt if they grow much beyond berries, a blue berry in large
+      quantities, raspberries, and coming back we bought cucumbers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh, but it was lovely on that river. Dearly should I like to share its
+      delights with a companion who could discuss it with me, but somehow it
+      seems to be my lot to travel alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not, of course, that I was really alone. Though the steamers were few,
+      perhaps because they were few, they were crowded. There were two companies
+      on the river, the Sormovo or quick-sailing company, and the Amur Company;
+      and I hereby put it on record that the Amur Company is much the best. The
+      <i>John Cockerill</i>, named after some long-dead English engineer who was
+      once on the Amur, is one of the best and most comfortable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Kharbarosvk, finding the steamer did not leave till the evening of the
+      next day, I had naturally gone to a hotel. It seemed the obvious thing to
+      do. But I was wrong. The great Russian steamship companies, with a
+      laudable desire to keep passengers and make them comfortable, always allow
+      a would-be traveller to spend at least two days on board in the ports,
+      paying, of course, for his food. And I, who had only come about thirty-six
+      hours too soon, had actually put up at a hotel, with the <i>John Cockerill</i>
+      lying at the wharf. The Russo-Asiatic Bank, as represented by a woman
+      clerk, the only one there who could speak English, was shocked at my
+      extravagance and said so. These women clerks were a little surprise for
+      me, for in 1914 I was not accustomed to seeing women in banks, but here in
+      Eastern Siberia&mdash;in Vladivostok, Kharbarosvk, and all the towns of
+      the Amur&mdash;they were as usual as the men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>John Cockerill</i> surprised me as much as I surprised the bank
+      clerk. To begin with, I didn't realise it was the <i>John Cockerill</i>,
+      for I could not read the Russian letters, and at first I did not recognise
+      the name as pronounced by the Russians. She was a very gorgeous,
+      comfortable ship, with a dining saloon and a lounge gorgeous in green
+      velvet. And yet she was not a post steamer, but spent most of her time
+      drawing barges laden with cargo, and stopped to discharge and take in at
+      all manner of lonely little ports on the great river. She was a big
+      steamer, divided into four classes, and was packed with passengers:
+      Russians in the first, second and third class, with an occasional German
+      or Japanese, and in the fourth an extraordinary medley of poorer Russians,
+      Chinese and Gilyaks and Golds, the aboriginals of the country, men with a
+      Mongolian east of countenance, long coarse blaek hair, very often beards,
+      and dirty&mdash;the ordinary poor Chinaman is clean and tidy beside them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the first class was luxurious. We had electric light and hot and cold
+      water. The cabins were not to hold more than two, and you brought your own
+      bedding. I dare say it could have been hired on the steamer, but the
+      difficulty of language always stood in my way, and once away from the
+      seaboard in North-Eastern Asia the only other European language beside
+      Russian that is likely to be understood is German, and I have no German. I
+      was lucky enough on the <i>John Cockerill</i> to find the wife of a
+      Russian colonel who spoke a little English. She, with her husband, was
+      taking a summer holiday by journeying up to Nikolayeusk, and she very
+      kindly took Buchanan and me under her wing and interpreted for us. It was
+      very nice for me, and the only thing I had to complain of on that steamer
+      was the way in which the night watch promenading the deek shut my window
+      and slammed to the shutters. They did it every night, with a care for my
+      welfare I could have done without. In a river steamer the cabins are all
+      in the centre with the deck round, and the watch evidently could not
+      understand how any woman could really desire to sleep under an open
+      window. I used to get up early in the morning and walk round the decks,
+      and I found that first and second class invariably shut their windows
+      tight, though the nights were always just pleasantly cool, and
+      consequently those passages between the cabins smelt like a menagerie, and
+      an ill-kept menagerie at that. They say Russians age early and invariably
+      they are of a pallid complexion. I do not wonder, now that I have seen
+      their dread of fresh air. Again and again I was told: &ldquo;Draughts are not
+      good!&rdquo; Draughts! I'd rather sleep in a hurricane than in the hermetically
+      sealed boxes in which those passengers stowed themselves on board the
+      river steamers. On the <i>John Cockerill</i> the windows of the dining
+      saloon and the lounge did open, but on the steamer on which I went up the
+      river, the <i>Kanovina</i>, one of the &ldquo;Sormovo&rdquo; Company, and the mail
+      steamer, there was only one saloon in the first class. We had our meals
+      and we lived there. It was a fine large room placed for'ard in the ship's
+      bows, with beautiful large windows of glass through which we could see
+      excellently the scenery; but those windows were fast; they would not open;
+      they were not made to open. The atmosphere was always thick when I went in
+      for breakfast in the morning, and I used to make desperate efforts to get
+      the little windows that ran round the top opened. I could not do it
+      myself, as you had to get on the roof of the saloon, the deck where the
+      look-out stood, and anyhow they were only little things, a foot high by
+      two feet broad. But such an innovation was evidently regarded as
+      dangerous. Besides the fact that draughts were bad, I have been assured
+      that perhaps it was going to rain&mdash;the rain couldn't come in both
+      sides&mdash;and at night I was assured they couldn't be opened because the
+      lights would be confusing to other steamers!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nobody seemed to mind an atmosphere you could have cut with a knife. I am
+      sure if the walls had been taken away it would have stood there in a solid
+      block&mdash;a dark-coloured, high-smelling block, I should think. I gave
+      up trying to do good to a community against its will and used to carry my
+      meals outside and have them on the little tables that were dotted about
+      the deck.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, bar that little difficulty about the air&mdash;and certainly if
+      right goes with the majority I have no cause of complaint, I was in a
+      minority of one&mdash;those steamers made the most comfortable and
+      cheapest form of travelling I have ever undertaken. From Kharbarosvk to
+      Nikolayeusk for over three days' voyage my fare with a first-class cabin
+      to myself was twelve roubles&mdash;about one pound four shillings. I came
+      back by the mail steamer and it was fifteen roubles&mdash;about one pound
+      ten shillings. This, of course, does not include food. Food on a Russian
+      steamer you buy as you would on a railway train. You may make arrangements
+      with the restaurant and have breakfast, luncheon, afternoon tea and dinner
+      for so much a day; or you may have each meal separate and pay for it as
+      you have it; or you may buy your food at the various stopping-places, get
+      your kettles filled with hot water for a trifling tip, and feed yourself
+      in the privacy of your own cabin. I found the simplest way, having no
+      servant, was to pay so much a day&mdash;five shillings on the big
+      steamers, four shillings on the smaller one&mdash;and live as I would do
+      at a hotel. The food was excellent on the Amur Company's ships. We had
+      chicken and salmon&mdash;not much salmon, it was too cheap&mdash;and
+      sturgeon. Sturgeon, that prince of fish, was a treat, and caviare was as
+      common as marmalade used to be on a British breakfast-table. It was
+      generally of the red variety that we do not see here and looked not unlike
+      clusters of red currants, only I don't know that I have ever seen currants
+      in such quantities. I enjoyed it very much till one day, looking over the
+      railing into the stern of the boat, where much of the food was roughly
+      prepared&mdash;an unwise thing to do&mdash;I saw an extremely dirty woman
+      of the country, a Gilyak, in an extremely dirty garment, with her dirty
+      bare arms plunged to the elbow in the red caviare she was preparing for
+      the table. Then I discovered for a little while that I didn't much fancy
+      caviare. But I wish I had some of that nice red caviare now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The second class differed but little from the first. There was not so much
+      decoration about the saloons, and on the <i>John Cockerill</i>, where the
+      first class had two rooms, they had only one; and the food was much the
+      same, only not so many courses. There was plenty, and they only paid three
+      shillings a day for the four meals. The people were much the same as we in
+      the first class, and I met a girl from Samara, in Central Russia, who
+      spoke a little French. She was a teacher and was going to Nikolayeusk for
+      a holiday exactly as I have seen teachers here in England go to
+      Switzerland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But between the first and second and the third and fourth class was a
+      great gulf fixed. They were both on the lower deck, the third under the
+      first and the fourth under the second, while amidships between them were
+      the kitchens and the engines and the store of wood for fuel. The third had
+      no cabins, but the people went to bed and apparently spent their days in
+      places like old-fashioned dinner-wagons; and they bought their own food,
+      either from the steamer or at the various stopping-places, and ate it on
+      their beds, for they had no saloon. The fourth class was still more
+      primitive. The passengers, men, women and children, were packed away upon
+      shelves rising in three tiers, one above the other, and the place of each
+      man and woman was marked out by posts. There was no effort made to provide
+      separate accommodation for men and women. As far as I could see, they all
+      herded together like cattle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ship was crowded. The Russian colonel's wife and I used to walk up and
+      down the long decks for exercise, with Buchanan in attendance, she
+      improving her English and I learning no Russian. It is evidently quite the
+      custom for the people of the great towns of the Amur to make every summer
+      an excursion up the river, and the poorer people, the third and fourth
+      class, go up to Nikolayeusk for the fishing. Hence those shelves crowded
+      with dirty folk. There were troughs for washing outside the fourth class,
+      I discovered, minor editions of our luxurious bathrooms in the first
+      class, but I am bound to say they did not have much use. Washing even in
+      this hot weather, and it certainly was pleasantly warm, was more honoured
+      in the breach than in the observance. The only drawback to the bathrooms
+      in the first class, from my point of view, was their want of air. They
+      were built so that apparently there was no means of getting fresh air into
+      them, and I always regarded myself as a very plucky woman when in the
+      interests of cleanliness I had a bath. The hot water and the airlessness
+      always brought me to such a condition of faintness that I generally had to
+      rush out and lie on the couch in my cabin to recover, and then if somebody
+      outside took it upon them to bang to the window I was reduced to the last
+      gasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The <i>John Cockerill</i> was run like a man-of-war. The bells struck the
+      hours and half-hours, the captain and officers were clad in white and
+      brass-bound, and the men were in orthodox sailor's rig. One man came and
+      explained to me&mdash;he spoke no tongue that I could understand, but his
+      meaning was obvious&mdash;that Buchanan was not allowed on the first-class
+      deck, the rules and regulations, so said the colonel's wife, said he was
+      not; but no one seemed to object, so I thought to smooth matters by paying
+      half-a-rouble; then I found that every sailor I came across apparently
+      made the same statement, and having listened to one or two, at last I
+      decided to part with no more cash, and it was, I suppose, agreed that
+      Buchanan had paid his footing, for they troubled me no more about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three or four times a day we pulled up at some little wayside place,
+      generally only two or three log-houses with painted doors or windows, an
+      occasional potato patch and huge stacks of wood to replenish the fuel of
+      the steamer, and with much yelling they put out a long gangway, and while
+      the wood was brought on board we all went ashore to see the country. The
+      country was always exactly alike, vast and green and lonely, the sparse
+      human habitations emphasising that vastness and loneliness. The people
+      were few. The men wore belted blouses and high boots and very often,
+      though it was summer, fur caps, and the women very voluminous and very
+      dirty skirts with unbelted blouses, a shawl across their shoulders and a
+      kerchief on their unkempt hair. They were dirty; they were untidy; they
+      were uneducated; they belonged to the very poorest classes; and I think I
+      can safely say that all the way from Kharbarosvk to Nikolayeusk the only
+      attempt at farming I saw was in a few scattered places where the grass had
+      been cut and tossed up into haycocks. And yet those people impressed upon
+      me a sense of their virility and strength, a feeling that I had never had
+      when moving among the Chinese, where every inch of land&mdash;bar the
+      graves&mdash;is turned to good account. Was it the condition of the women?
+      I wonder. I know I never saw one of those stalwart women pounding along on
+      her big flat feet without a feeling of gladness and thankfulness. Here at
+      least was good material. It was crude and rough, of course, but it was
+      there waiting for the wheel of the potter. Shall we find the potter in the
+      turmoil of the revolution and the war?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went on, north, north with a little of east, and it grew cooler and the
+      twilight grew longer. I do not know how other people do, but I count my
+      miles and realise distances from some distance I knew well in my youth. So
+      I know that from Kharbarosvk to Nikolaycusk is a little farther away than
+      is Melbourne from Sydney; and always we went by way of the great empty
+      land, by way of the great empty river. Sometimes far in the distance we
+      could see the blue hills; sometimes the hills were close; but always it
+      was empty, because the few inhabitants, the house or two at the little
+      stopping-places where were the piles of wood for the steamer, but
+      emphasised the loneliness and emptiness. You could have put all the people
+      we saw in a street of a suburb of London and lost them, and I suppose the
+      distance traversed was as far as from London to Aberdeen. It was a
+      beautiful land, a land with a wondrous charm, but it is waiting for the
+      colonist who will dare the rigours of the winter and populate it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last we steamed up to the port of Nikolayeusk, set at the entrance of
+      the shallow Sea of Okhotsk, right away in the east of the world. When I
+      set foot upon the wharf among all the barrels with which it was packed I
+      could hardly believe I had come so far east, so far away from my regular
+      beat. One of my brothers always declares I sent him to sea because my sex
+      prevented me from going, and yet here I was, in spite of that grave
+      disadvantage, in as remote a corner of the earth as even he might have
+      hoped to attain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a July day, sunny and warm. They had slain an Austrian archduke in
+      Serbia and the world was on the verge of the war of the ages, but I knew
+      nothing of all that. I stepped off the steamer and proceeded to
+      investigate Nikolayeusk, well satisfied with the point at which I had
+      arrived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XI&mdash;THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">N</span>ikolayeusk seemed
+      to me the ends of the earth. I hardly know why it should have done so, for
+      I arrived there by way of a very comfortable steamer and I have made my
+      way to very much more ungetatable places. I suppose the explanation is
+      that all the other places I have visited I had looked up so long on the
+      map that when I arrived I only felt I was attaining the goal I had set out
+      to reach, whereas I must admit I had never heard of Nikolayeusk till Mr
+      Sly, the British consul, sketched it out as the end of my itinerary on the
+      Siberian rivers, and ten days later I found myself in the Far Eastern
+      town. I remember one of my brothers writing to me once from
+      Petropaulovski:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I always said my address would some day be Kamseatkha and here I am!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I never said my address would be Nikolayeusk because I had never
+      heard of it, but here I was nevertheless. The weather was warm, the sun
+      poured down from a cloudless blue sky, and in the broad, grass-grown
+      streets, such streets have I seen in Australian towns, when the faint
+      breeze stirred the yellow dust rose on the air. And the town straggled all
+      along the northern side of the river, a town of low, one-storeyed wooden
+      houses for the most part, with an occasional two-storeyed house and heavy
+      shutters to all the windows. There was a curious absence of stone, and the
+      streets when they were paved at all were, as in Kharbarosvk, lines of
+      planks, sometimes three, sometimes five planks wide, with a waste of dust
+      or mud or grass, as the case might be, on either side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Russians I found kindness itself. In Vladivostok I had met a man who
+      knew one of my brothers&mdash;I sometimes wonder if I could get to such a
+      remote corner of the earth that I should not meet someone who knew one of
+      these ubiquitous brothers of mine&mdash;and this good friend, having
+      sampled the family, took me on trust and found someone else who would give
+      me a letter to the manager of the Russo-Asiatic Bank at Nikolayeusk. This
+      was a godsend, for Mr Pauloff spoke excellent English, and he and his
+      corresponding clerk, a Russian lady of middle age who had spent a long
+      time in France, took me in hand and showed me the sights. Madame Schulmann
+      and I and Buchanan drove all over the town in one of the most ancient
+      victorias I have ever seen&mdash;the most ancient are in Saghalien, which
+      is beyond the ends of the earth&mdash;and she very kindly took me to a
+      meal at the principal hotel. I was staying on board the steamer while I
+      looked around me. The visit with this lady decided me not to go there. It
+      wras about four o'clock in the afternoon, so I don't know whether our meal
+      was dinner or tea or luncheon; we had good soup, I remember, and nice
+      wine, to say nothing of excellent coffee, but the atmosphere left much to
+      be desired. I don't suppose the windows ever had been opened since the
+      place was built, and no one seemed to see any necessity for opening them.
+      My hostess smiled at my distress. She said she liked fresh air herself but
+      that for a whole year she had lodged in a room where the windows would not
+      open. She had wanted to have one of the panes&mdash;not the window, just
+      one of the panes&mdash;made to open to admit fresh air, and had offered to
+      do it at her own expense, but her landlord refused. It would spoil the
+      look of the room. She advised me strongly if I wanted fresh air to stay as
+      long as I could on board the steamer at the wharf, and I decided to take
+      her advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Russo-Asiatic Bank was not unlike the banks I have seen in Australian
+      townships, in that it was built of wood of one storey and the manager and
+      his wife lived on the premises, but the roof was far more ornamental than
+      Australia could stand and gave the touch of the East that made for
+      romance. The manager was good enough to ask me to dinner and to include
+      Buchanan in the invitation because I did not like to leave the poor little
+      chap shut up in my cabin. This was really dinner, called so, and we had it
+      at five o'clock of a hot summer's afternoon, a very excellent dinner, with
+      delicious sour cream in the soup and excellent South Australian wine, not
+      the stuff that passes for Australian wine in England and that so many
+      people take medicinally, but really good wine, such as Australians
+      themselves drink. The house was built with a curious lack of partitions
+      that made for spaciousness, so that you wandered from one room to another,
+      hardly knowing that you had gone from the sitting-room to the bedroom, and
+      James Buchanan going on a voyage of discovery unfortunately found the
+      cradle, to the dismay of his mistress. He stood and looked at it and
+      barked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gracious me! What's this funny thing! I've never seen anything like it
+      before!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither had I; but I was covered with shame when a wail proclaimed the
+      presence of the son and heir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally I expressed myself&mdash;truly&mdash;charmed with the town, and
+      Mr Pauloff smiled and nodded at his wife, who spoke no English.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She hates it,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;she has never been well since we came here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She was white, poor little girl, as the paper on which this is written,
+      and very frail-looking, but it never seemed to occur to anyone that it
+      would be well to open the double windows, and so close was the air of the
+      room that it made me feel sick and faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She never goes out,&rdquo; said her husband. &ldquo;She is not well enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I believe there was a time in our grandmothers' days when we too dreaded
+      the fresh air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in this the town differed markedly from any Australian towns I have
+      known. The double windows were all tight shut these warm July days, with
+      all the cracks stopped up with cotton wool, with often decorations of
+      coloured ribbons or paper wandering across the space between. Also there
+      were very heavy shutters, and I thought these must be to shut out the
+      winter storms, but M. Pauloff did not seem to think much of the winter
+      storms, though he admitted they had some bad blizzards and regularly the
+      thermometer went down below -40° Fahrenheit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we shut them at night, at four in the winter and at nine
+      in the summer. Leave them open you cannot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why?&rdquo; I thought it was some device for keeping out still more air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is danger,&rdquo; said he&mdash;&ldquo;danger from men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do they steal?&rdquo; said I, surprised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And kill,&rdquo; he added with conviction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems that when the Japanese invaded Saghalien, the great island which
+      lies opposite the mouth of the Amur, they liberated at least thirty
+      thousand convicts, and they burnt the records so that no one could prove
+      anything against them, and the majority of these convicts were unluckily
+      not all suffering political prisoners, but criminals, many of them of the
+      deepest dye. These first made Saghalien an unwholesome place to live in,
+      but gradually they migrated to the mainland, and Nikolayeusk and other
+      towns of Eastern Siberia are by no means safe places in consequence.
+      Madame Schulmann told me that many a time men were killed in the open
+      streets and that going back to her lodgings on the dark winter evenings
+      she was very much afraid and always tried to do it in daylight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nikolayeusk is officially supposed to have thirteen thousand inhabitants,
+      but really in the winter-time, says Mr Pauloff, they shrink to ten
+      thousand, while in the summer they rise to over forty thousand, everybody
+      coming for the fishing, the great salmon fisheries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is noting,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;noting&mdash;only fish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this remark he made at intervals. He could not reiterate it too often,
+      as if he were warning me against expecting too much from this remote
+      corner of the world. But indeed the fish interested me. The summer fishing
+      was on while I was there, but that, it seems, is as nothing to the autumn
+      fishing, when the fish rush into the wide river in solid blocks. The whole
+      place then is given over to the fishing and the other trades that fishing
+      calls into being to support it. All the summer the steamers coming down
+      the river are crowded, and they bring great cargoes of timber; the wharves
+      when I was there were covered with barrels and packing-cases containing,
+      according to Mr Pauloff, &ldquo;only air.&rdquo; These were for the fish. And now,
+      when the humble mackerel costs me at least ninepence or a shilling, I
+      remember with longing the days when I used to see a man like a Chinaman,
+      but not a Chinaman, a bamboo across his shoulder, and from each end a
+      great fresh salmon slung, a salmon that was nearly as long as the bearer,
+      and I could have bought the two for ten kopecks!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He that will not when he may!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But great as the trade was down the river, most eatables&mdash;groceries,
+      flour and such-like things&mdash;came from Shanghai, and the ships that
+      brought them took back wood to be made into furniture, and there was, when
+      I was there, quite a flourishing trade in frozen meat with Australia,
+      Nikolayeusk requiring about two hundred and forty thousand pounds in the
+      year. In winter, of course, all the provisions are frozen; the milk is
+      poured into basins, a stick is stuck in it and it freezes round it, so
+      that a milk-seller instead of having a large can has an array of sticks on
+      top of which is the milk frozen hard as a stone. Milk, meat, eggs, all
+      provisions are frozen from October to May.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not know what Nikolayeusk is doing now war and revolution have
+      reached it. At least they have brought it into touch with the outer world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And having got so far I looked longingly out over the harbour and wondered
+      whether I might not go to Saghalien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr Pauloff laughed at my desires. If there was nothing to see in
+      Nikolayeusk, there was less than nothing in Saghalien. It was dead. It
+      never had been much and the Japanese invasion had killed it. Not that he
+      harboured any animosity against the Japanese. Russians and Japanese, he
+      declared, were on very friendly terms, and though they invaded Saghalien
+      they did not disgrace their occupation by any atrocities. The Russian,
+      everybody declared in Nikolayeusk, bridges the gulf between the white man
+      and the yellow. Russian and Chinese peasants will work side by side in
+      friendliest fashion; they will occupy the same boardinghouses; the Russian
+      woman does not object to the Chinese as a husband, and the Russian takes a
+      Chinese wife. Of course these are the peasant classes. The Russian
+      authorities made very definite arrangements for keeping out Chinese from
+      Siberia, as I saw presently when I went back up the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the more I thought of it the more determined I was not to go back till
+      I had gone as far east as I possibly could go. The Russian Volunteer fleet
+      I found called at Alexandrovsk regularly during the months the sea was
+      open, making Nikolayeusk its most northern port of call. I could go by the
+      steamer going down and be picked up by the one coming north. It would give
+      me a couple of days in the island, and Mr Pauloff was of opinion that a
+      couple of days would be far too long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the <i>John Cockerill</i> was going back and Buchanan and I must find
+      another roof and a resting-place. According to the inhabitants, it would
+      not be safe to sleep in the streets, and I had conceived a distinct
+      distaste for the hotel. But the <i>Erivan</i> lay in the stream and to
+      that we transferred ourselves and our belongings, where the mate spoke
+      English with a strong Glasgow accent and the steward had a smattering. It
+      was only a smattering, however. I had had a very early lunch and no
+      afternoon tea, so when I got on board at six in the evening I was
+      decidedly hungry and demanded food, or rather when food might be expected.
+      The steward was in a dilemma. It was distinctly too early for dinner, he
+      considered, and too late for tea. He scratched his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lunch!&rdquo; said he triumphantly, and ushered me into the saloon, where hung
+      large photographs of the Tsar, the Tsarina and the good-looking little
+      Tsarevitch. In the corner was an ikon, St Nicolas, I think, who protects
+      sailors. And there at six o'clock in the evening I meekly sat down to
+      luncheon all by myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lying there I had a lovely view of the town. At night, like Vladivostok,
+      it lay like a ring of diamonds along the shore of the river; and in the
+      daytime the softly rounded green hills, the grey-blue sky and the
+      grey-blue sea with the little white wavelets, and the little town just a
+      line between the green and the blue, with the spires and domes of the
+      churches and other public buildings, green and blue and red and white,
+      made a view that was worth coming so far to see. There were ships in the
+      bay too&mdash;not very big ships; but a ship always has an attraction: it
+      has come from the unknown; it is about to go into the unknown&mdash;and as
+      I sat on deck there came to me the mate with the Scots accent and
+      explained all about the ships in sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place was a fort and they were going to make it a great harbour, to
+      fill it up till the great ships should lie along the shore. It will take a
+      good time, for we lay a long way out, but he never doubted the
+      possibility; and meantime the goods come to the ships in the lighters in
+      which they have already come down the river, and they are worked by
+      labourers getting, according to the mate, twelve shillings a day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dey carry near as much as we do,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there were other ships: a ship for fish, summer fish, for Japan,
+      sealers for the rookeries, and ships loading timber for Kamseatkha. I
+      thought I would like to emulate my brother and go there, and the Russky
+      mate thought it would be quite possible, only very uncomfortable. It would
+      take three months, said he, and it was rather late in the season now.
+      Besides, these ships load themselves so with timber that there is only a
+      narrow space on deck to walk on, and they are packed with passengers,
+      mostly labourers, going up for the short summer season.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My old trouble, want of air, followed me on board the <i>Erivan</i>. On
+      deck it was cool, at night the thermometer registered about 55°
+      Fahrenheit, but in my cabin Buehanan and I gasped with the thermometer at
+      over 90°, and that with the port, a very small one, open. That stuffiness
+      was horrible. The bathroom looked like a boiler with a tightfitting iron
+      door right amidships, and having looked at it I had not the courage to
+      shut myself in and take a bath. It seemed as if it would be burying myself
+      alive. As it was, sleep down below I could not, and I used to steal up on
+      deck and with plenty of rugs and cushions lay myself out along the seats
+      and sleep in the fresh air; but a seat really does leave something to be
+      desired in the way of luxury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the early mornings were delightful. The first faint light showed a
+      mist hanging over the green hills marking out their outlines, green and
+      blue and grey; then it was all grey mist; but to the east was the crimson
+      of the dawn, and we left our moorings early one morning and steamed into
+      that crimson. The sun rose among silver and grey clouds, and rose again
+      and again as we passed along the river and the mountains hid him from
+      sight. There were long streaks of silver on the broad river; slowly the
+      fir-clad hills emerged from the mist and the air was moist and fragrant;
+      the scent of the sea and the fragrance of the pines was in it. A
+      delicious, delicate northern sunrise it was; never before or since have I
+      seen such a sunrise. Never again can I possibly see one more beautiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the great river widened. There were little settlements, the
+      five-pointed tents of the Russian soldiers and many places for catching
+      fish. No wonder the fish&mdash;fish is always salmon here&mdash;like this
+      great -wide river. The brownish water flowed on swiftly and the morning
+      wind whipped it into never-ending ripples that caught the sunlight. A
+      wonderful river! A delightful river! I have grown enthusiastic over many
+      rivers. I know the Murray in my own land and the great rivers of tropical
+      Africa, the Congo, the Gambia, the Volta, grand and lovely all of them. I
+      felt I had looked upon the glory of the Lord when I had looked upon them,
+      but there was something in the tender beauty of the Amur, the summer
+      beauty veiled in mist, the beauty that would last so short a time, that
+      was best of all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile the passengers and officers of the <i>Erivan</i> were much
+      exercised in their minds over me. What could an Englishwoman want in
+      Saghalien? To my surprise I found that none had ever stayed there before,
+      though it was on record that one had once landed there from a steamer. The
+      mate was scathing in his remarks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dere are skeeters,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;big ones, I hear,&rdquo; and he rolled his &ldquo;r's&rdquo;
+       like a true Scotsman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where can I stay?&rdquo; He shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In de hotel you cannot stay. It is impossible.&rdquo; That I could quite
+      believe, but all the same, if the hotel was impossible, where could I
+      stay?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, here I was, and I did not intend to go back to Vladivostok by
+      sea. At Alexandrosvk, the town of Saghalien, I proposed to land and I felt
+      it was no good worrying till I got there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We entered De Castries Bay in a soft grey mist, a mist that veiled the
+      mountains behind. Then the mist lifted and showed us the string of islands
+      that guard the mouth of the bay, strung in a line like jewels set in the
+      sea, and the hills on them were all crowned with firs; and then the mist
+      dropped again, veiling all things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a lonely place, where I, being a foreigner, was not allowed to
+      land, and we did not go close up to the shore, but the shore came to us in
+      great white whale-boats. Many peasants and soldiers got off here, and I
+      saw saws and spades in the bundles, the bundles of emigrants. There were a
+      few women amongst them, women with hard, elemental faces, so different
+      from the Chinese, that were vacuous and refined. I remembered the women
+      who had listened to the lecturer at Fen Chou Fu and I drew a long sigh of
+      relief. It was refreshing to look at those big-hipped women, with their
+      broad, strong feet and their broad, strong hands and the little dirty
+      kerchiefs over their heads. Elemental, rough, rude, but I was glad of
+      them. One was suckling a child in the boat, calmly, as if it were the most
+      natural thing to do, and somehow it was good to see it. The beginning of
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The morning brought a dense mist, and as it cleared away it showed us a
+      sparkling, smooth sea, greyish-blue like the skies above it, and a little
+      wooden town nestling against fir-clad hills. We had arrived at
+      Alexandrosvk and I wondered what would become of me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then once again I learned what a kind place is this old world of ours
+      that we abuse so often. I had gone on board that steamer without any
+      introduction whatever, with only my passport to show that I was a
+      respectable member of society. I knew nobody and saw no reason whatever
+      why anyone should trouble themselves about me. But we carried
+      distinguished passengers on board the <i>Erivan</i>. There was the
+      Vice-Governor of Saghalien, his wife and son, with the soldiers in
+      attendance, and a good-looking young fellow with short-cropped hair and
+      dreamy eyes who was the Assistant Chief of Police of the island, and this
+      man, by command of the Governor, took me in charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Never again shall I hear of the Russian police without thinking of the
+      deep debt of gratitude that I owe to Vladimir Merokushoff of Saghalien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I do not think as a rule that people land from steamers at Alexandrosvk on
+      to red tapestry carpets under fluttering bruiting to the strains of a
+      band. But we did; and the Chief of Police&mdash;he spoke no language but
+      Russian&mdash;motioned me to wait a moment, and when the Governor had been
+      safely despatched to his home he appeared on the scene with a victoria and
+      drove me and Buchanan to the police station, a charming little
+      one-storeyed building buried in greenery, and there he established us.
+      Buchanan he appreciated as a dog likes to be appreciated, and he gave up
+      to me his own bedroom, where the top pane of the window had actually been
+      made to open. His sitting-room was a very bower of growing plants, and
+      when I went to bed that night he brought his elderly working housekeeper,
+      a plain-faced woman whom he called &ldquo;Stera,&rdquo; and made her bring her bed and
+      lay it across my door, which opened into the sitting-room. It was no good
+      my protesting; there she had to sleep. Poor old thing, she must have been
+      glad my stay was not long. Every day she wore a blue skirt and a
+      drab-coloured blouse, unbelted, and her grey hair twisted up into an
+      untidy knot behind, but she was an excellent cook. That young man got
+      himself into his everyday holland summer coat and to entertain me
+      proceeded to lay in enough provisions to supply a hungry school. He showed
+      me the things first to see if I liked them, as if I wouldn't have liked
+      shark when people were so kind. But as a matter of fact everything was
+      very good. He produced a large tin of crawling crayfish, and when I had
+      expressed not only my approval but my delight, they appeared deliciously
+      red and white for dinner, and then I found they were only <i>sakouska</i>&mdash;that
+      is, the <i>hors d'ouvre</i> that the Russians take to whet their
+      appetites. I have often lived well, but never better than when I, a
+      stranger and a sojourner, was taken in charge by the hospitable Russian
+      police, who would not let me pay one penny for my board and lodging. We
+      fed all day long. I had only to come in for a bottle of wine or beer to be
+      produced. I was given a <i>gens d'arme</i> to carry my camera and another
+      to take care of Buchanan. Never surely was stranger so well done as I by
+      hospitable Saghalien. The policeman made me understand he was an author
+      and presented me with a couple of pamphlets he had written on Saghalien
+      and its inhabitants, but though I treasure them I cannot read them. Then
+      the Japanese photographer was sent for and he and I were taken sitting
+      side by side on the bench in his leafy porch, and, to crown all, because I
+      could speak no Russian, he sent for two girls who had been educated in
+      Japan and who spoke English almost as well as I did myself, though they
+      had never before spoken to an Englishwoman. Marie and Lariss Borodin were
+      they, and their father kept the principal store in Alexandrosvk. They were
+      dainty, pretty, dark-eyed girls and they were a godsend to me. They had a
+      tea in my honour and introduced me to the manager of the coal mine of
+      Saghalien and took care I should have all the information about the island
+      it was in their power to supply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were then about five thousand people there, one thousand in
+      Alexandrosvk itself, but they were going daily, for the blight of the
+      convict was over the beautiful land. The best coal mine is closed down on
+      fire and the one whose manager I met was leased to a company by the year
+      and worked by Chinese on most primitive lines. There is gold, he told me,
+      this business man who surprised me by his lavish use of perfume, but he
+      did not know whether it would pay for working&mdash;gold and coal as well
+      would be almost too much good luck for one island&mdash;and there is
+      naphtha everywhere on the east coast, but as it has never been struck they
+      think that the main vein must come up somewhere under the sea. Still it is
+      there waiting for the enterprising man who shall work it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Saghalien used to be as bad as Nikolayeusk, they told me, after the
+      Japanese had evacuated the northern part; but now the most enterprising
+      section of the convicts had betaken themselves to the mainland, and though
+      the free settlers were few and far between, and the most of the people I
+      saw were convicts, they were the harmless ones with all the devilment gone
+      out of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alexandrosvk is a place of empty houses. When the Japanese came the people
+      fled, leaving everything exactly as it was; and though the Japanese
+      behaved with admirable restraint, considering they came as an invading
+      army, many of these people never came back again, and the alertness in a
+      bad cause which had sent many of the convicts there against their will
+      sent them away again as soon as they were free. All down by the long
+      wooden pier which stretches out into the sea are great wooden storehouses
+      and barracks, empty, and a monument, if they needed it, to the courteous
+      manner in which the Japanese make war. They had burnt the museum, they
+      told me, and opened the prison doors and burnt the prison, but the other
+      houses they had spared. And so there were many, many empty houses in
+      Alexandrosvk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the oldest carriages in the world have drifted to Saghalien.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They are decrepit in Western Siberia, they are worse, if possible, in the
+      East, but in the island of Saghalien I really don't know how they hold
+      together. Perhaps they are not wanted very often. I hired the most archaic
+      victoria I have ever seen and the two girls came for a drive with me all
+      round the town and its neighbourhood. It was a drive to be remembered. The
+      early summer was in all its full freshness, the red and white cows stood
+      knee-deep in grass that was green and lush everywhere. There were
+      fir-trees on the hills and on every spur of the hills, and there were
+      hedges with dog-roses blossoming all over them; there were fields of dark
+      blue iris; there were little red tiger lilies and a spiked heliotrope
+      flower like veronica, only each bloom grew on a single stalk of its own;
+      there were purple vetches and white spiræa growing in marshy places, and
+      the land was thick with sweet-scented clover among which the bees were
+      humming, and in a little village there was a Greek church that, set in its
+      emerald-green field, was a very riot of colour. There were balls on the
+      roof of royal blue, the roof itself was of pale green, the walls were of
+      brown logs untouched by paint and the window edges were picked out in
+      white. I photographed that picturesque little church, as I did the peasant
+      women standing at the doors of their log huts and the queer old shandrydan
+      in which we drove, but alas! all my photographs perished miserably in
+      Russia. The girls wondered that I liked town and country so much, that I
+      saw so much beauty in everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Madame,&rdquo; they sighed, &ldquo;but you can go away tomorrow! If only we could
+      go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They had been educated at a convent and they produced the English books
+      they had read. They were very apologetic but they had found them rather
+      tame. Had I read them? I smiled, for they all turned out to be the
+      immortal works of Charles Garvice!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And we had tea in the dining-room, where father slept because they were
+      rather crowded, the store took up so much room; and it was a very nice tea
+      too, with raspberry jam in saucers, which we ate Russian fashion with a
+      spoon, and the roses in the garden tapped against the window-panes, asking
+      to come in and join us, and Buchanan got what his soul loved, plenty of
+      cake. They apologised because there was no fruit. No fruit save berries
+      ripen in Saghalien and the strawberries would not be ready till well on in
+      August. No words of mine can tell how kind they were to the stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went back in the long twilight that was so cool and restful and sat
+      outside the leafy shaded police station and killed mosquitoes, for the
+      mate had heard aright, there were &ldquo;skeeters&rdquo; and to spare, the sort to
+      which Mark Twain took a gun. I watched the grey mist creeping slowly down,
+      down the beautiful mountains, and when it had enveloped them the night was
+      come and it was time to go in and have dinner and go to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps it would not do to stay long in Saghalien. There is nothing to do.
+      She lies a Sleeping Beauty waiting the kiss of the Prince. Will this war
+      awaken her? The short time I was there I enjoyed every moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The people seemed nondescript. The upper class were certainly Russians,
+      and all the men wore military caps and had their hair clipped so close it
+      looked shaven, but it would be utterly impossible to say to what
+      nationality the peasant belonged. There were flaxen-haired Russians
+      certainly, but then there were dark-bearded men, a Mongolian type, and
+      there were many thrifty Chinese with queues, in belted blouses and high
+      boots, generally keeping little eating-shops. There may have been
+      Japanese, probably there were, seeing they hold the lower half of the
+      island, but I did not notice them, and there is, I am afraid, in that
+      place which is so full of possibilities absolutely nothing for that
+      go-ahead nation to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My pretty girls complained dreadfully. They looked after the shop and then
+      there was nothing. In the winter they said they had skating and they liked
+      the winter best, but the really bad time in places like Saghalien and
+      Nikolayeusk were the two months when it was neither winter nor summer.
+      Then their only means of communication with the outside world, the river
+      and the sea, was too full of ice to admit of navigation and yet was not
+      solid enough for dog-sled, so that if the telegraph broke down, and it
+      very often did, they are entirely cut off from the world. Saghalien, of
+      course, is worse off than the town, for on the mainland presumably there
+      are roads of sorts that can be negotiated in case of necessity, but the
+      island is entirely isolated. In the winter the mails take five days coming
+      across the frozen sea from the mainland, and often when there are storms
+      they take much longer. Fancy living on an island that stretches over
+      nearly ten degrees of latitude, which for five months in the year gets its
+      mails by dog-sled and for two goes without them altogether! On the whole,
+      there may be drawbacks to living in Saghalien!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I left it at nine o'clock in the evening, after the darkness had fallen,
+      and the police officer and the pretty girls saw me on board the steamer
+      which was to take me back to Nikolayeusk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They loaded me with flowers and they were full of regrets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Madame, Madame, how lucky you are to get away from Saghalien!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But I said truly enough that I felt my luck lay in getting there. And now
+      that I sit in my garden in Kent and watch the beans coming into blossom
+      and the roses into bloom, look at the beds gay with red poppies and
+      violas, cream and purple, or wander round and calculate the prospects of
+      fruit on the cherry and the pear trees, I am still more glad to think that
+      I know what manner of island that is that lies so far away in the Eastern
+      world that it is almost West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XII&mdash;FACING WEST
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>n the 25th July
+      1914, at nine o'clock in the evening, I left Saghalien, and as the ship
+      steamed away from the loom of the land into the night I knew that at last,
+      after eighteen months of voyaging in the East, I had turned my face
+      homeward. I had enjoyed it, but I wanted to go home, and in my notebook I
+      see evidences of this longing. At last I was counting the days&mdash;one
+      day to Nikolayeusk, three days to Kharbarosvk, three days more to
+      Blagoveschensk&mdash;and I was out in my calculations in the very
+      beginning. The ships of the Volunteer fleet take their time, and we took
+      three days wandering along the island of Saghalien and calling at ports I
+      should think mail steamer had never before called at before we turned
+      again towards the mainland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet in a way it was interesting, for I saw some of the inhabitants of
+      the island, the aboriginal inhabitants, I should never have otherwise
+      seen. Gilyaks they are, and the water seems their element. They have the
+      long straight black hair of the Mongolian, and sometimes they were clad in
+      furs&mdash;ragged and old and worn, the very last remains of furs&mdash;sometimes
+      merely in dirty clothes, the cast-offs of far-away nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They live by the fish. There is nothing else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I tried hard to photograph these aborigines, using all sorts of guile to
+      get them into focus. I produced cigarettes, I offered sugar, but as soon
+      as they found out what I was about they at once fled, even though their
+      boat was fastened against the gangway and it meant abandoning somebody who
+      was on board. I did eventually get some photographs, but they shared the
+      fate of the rest of my Russian pictures, and I am sorry, for I do not
+      suppose I shall ever again have the chance of photographing the Gilyak in
+      his native haunts. He belongs to a dying race, they told me, and there are
+      few children amongst them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And though we lay long at De Castries Bay they would not let me take
+      pictures there at all. It was forbidden, so I was reduced to doing the
+      best I could through my cabin port. In Alexandrosvk the police officer had
+      aided and abetted my picture-making, but in Nikolayeusk it was a forbidden
+      pastime, for the town, for purposes of photography, was a fort, and when I
+      boarded the <i>Kanovina</i> on the river, the post steamer bound for
+      Blagoveschensk, I met with more difficulties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was on board a Mrs Marie Skibitsky and her husband, the headmaster
+      of the Nikolayeusk &ldquo;Real&rdquo; School, and she spoke very good English and was
+      a kind friend to me. Through her came a message from the captain to the
+      effect that though he did not mind my photographing himself, it was
+      forbidden in Russia, and he begged me not to do it when anyone was looking
+      on. That made it pretty hopeless, for the ship was crowded and there was
+      always not one person but probably a score of people taking a very great
+      interest. The captain was not brass-bound as he had been in the <i>John
+      Cockerill</i>, but he and all his officers were clad in khaki, with
+      military caps, and it was sometime before I realised them as the ship's
+      officers. The captain looked to me like a depressed corporal who was
+      having difficulties with his sergeant, and the ship, though they charged
+      us three roubles more for the trip to Blagoveschensk than the Amur Company
+      would have done, was dirty and ill-kept. It was in her I met the saloon
+      the windows of which would not open, and the water in my cabin had gone
+      wrong, and when I insisted that I could not be happy till I had some, it
+      was brought me in a teapot! They never struck the hours on this steamer as
+      they had done on the <i>John Cockerill</i>, and gone was the excellent
+      cook, and the food consisted largely of meat, of which I am bound to say
+      there was any quantity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in spite of all drawbacks the ship was crowded; there were many
+      officers and their wives on board, and there were many officers on board
+      with women who were not their 'wives. These last were so demonstrative
+      that I always took them for honeymoon couples till at last a Cossack
+      officer whom I met farther on explained:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not 'wives. Oh no! It is always so! It is just the steamer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Whether these little irregularities were to be set down to the discomforts
+      of the steamer or to the seductive air of the river, I do not know.
+      Perhaps I struck a particularly amorous company. I am bound to say no one
+      but me appeared to be embarrassed. It seemed to be all in the day's work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was pleasant going up the river again and having beside me one who
+      could explain things to me. Every day it grew warmer, for not only was the
+      short northern summer reaching its zenith, but we were now going south
+      again. And Mrs Skibitsky sat beside me and rubbed up her English and told
+      me how in two years' time she proposed to bring her daughters to England
+      to give them an English education, and I promised to look out for her and
+      show her the ropes and how she could best manage in London. In two years'
+      time! And we neither of us knew that we were on the threshold of the
+      greatest war in the world's history.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I took the breaking out of that war so calmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We arrived at Kharbarosvk. I parted from Mrs Skibitsky, who was going to
+      Vladivostok, and next day I looked up my friend the colonel's wife with
+      whom I had travelled on the <i>John Cockerill</i>. She received me with
+      open arms, but the household cat flew and spat and stated in no measured
+      terms what she thought of Buchanan. The lady caught the cat before I
+      realised what was happening and in a moment she had scored with her talons
+      great red lines that spouted blood on her mistress's arms. She looked at
+      them calmly, went into the kitchen, rubbed butter on her wounds and came
+      back smiling as if nothing in the world had happened. But it was not
+      nothing. I admired her extremely for a very brave woman. Presently her
+      husband came in and she just drew down her sleeves to cover her torn arms
+      and said not a word to him. He was talking earnestly and presently she
+      said to me:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is war!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought she meant between Buehanan and the cat and I smiled feebly,
+      because I was very much ashamed of the trouble I and my dog had caused,
+      but she said again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is war! Between Austria and Serbia!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It did not seem to concern me. I don't know that I had ever realised
+      Serbia as a distinct nationality at all before, and she knew so little
+      English and I knew no Russian at all, so that we were not able to discuss
+      the matter much, though it was evident that the colonel was very much
+      excited. That, I thought, might be natural. He was a soldier. War was his
+      business, though here, I think, he was engaged in training boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the midday meal&mdash;<i>déjeuner</i>, I think we called it&mdash;she
+      and I went for a walk, and presently down the wide streets of Kharbarosvk
+      came a little procession of four led by a wooden-legged man bearing a
+      Russian naval flag, the blue St Andrew's Cross on a white ground. I looked
+      at them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They meant nothing to me in that great, empty street where the new little
+      trees were just beginning to take root and the new red-brick post office
+      dominated all minor buildings among many empty spaces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They want war! They ask for war!&rdquo; said my friend. I was witnessing my
+      first demonstration against Germany! And I thought no more of it than I do
+      of the children playing in the streets of this Kentish village!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She saw me on to the steamer and bade me farewell, and then my troubles
+      began. Not a single person on that steamer spoke English. However, I had
+      always found the Russians so kind that the faet that we could not
+      understand one another when the going was straight did not seem to matter
+      very much. But I had not reckoned with the Russians at war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Kharbarosvk the river forms the Chinese-Russian boundary and a little
+      beyond it reaches its most southern point, about lat. 48°. But the China
+      that was on our left was not the China that I knew. This was Manchuria,
+      green and fresh as Siberia itself, and though there was little or no
+      agriculture beyond perhaps a patch of vegetables here and there, on both
+      sides of the broad river was a lovely land of hills and lush grass and
+      trees. Here were firs and pines and cedars, whose sombreness contrasted
+      with the limes and elms, the poplars and dainty birches with whieh they
+      were interspersed. The Russian towns were small, the merest villages, with
+      here and there a church with the painted ball-like domes they affect, and
+      though the houses were of unpainted logs, always the windows and doors
+      were painted white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And at every little town were great piles of wood waiting for the steamer,
+      and whenever we stopped men hastily set to work bringing in loads of wood
+      to replace that which we had burnt. And we burnt lavishly. Even the
+      magnificent forests of Siberia will not stand this drain on them long.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The other day when the National Service papers came round one was sent to
+      a dear old &ldquo;Sister&rdquo; who for nearly all her life has been working for the
+      Church in an outlying district of London. She is past work now, but she
+      can still go and talk to the old and sick and perhaps give advice about
+      the babies, but that is about the extent of her powers. She looked at the
+      paper and as in duty bound filled it in, giving her age as seventy. What
+      was her surprise then to receive promptly from the Department a suggestion
+      that she should volunteer for service on the land, and offering her, by
+      way of inducement, good wages, a becoming hat and high boots! That branch
+      of the Department has evidently become rather mechanical. Now the Russians
+      all the way from Saghalien to Petrograd treated me with sueh unfailing
+      kindness that I was in danger of writing of them in the stereotyped
+      fashion in which the National Service Department sent out its papers.
+      Luckily they themselves saved me from such an error. There were three
+      memorable, never-to-be-forgotten days when the Russians did not treat me
+      with kindness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The warmest and pleasantest days of my trip on the Amur we went through
+      lovely scenery: the river was very wide, the blue sky was reflected in its
+      blue waters and the green, tree-clad hills on either side opened out and
+      showed beyond mountains in the distance, purple and blue and alluring. It
+      was the height of summer-time, summer at its best, a green, moist summer.
+      We hugged the Russian bank, and the Manchurian bank seemed very far away,
+      only it was possible to see that wherever the Russians had planted a
+      little town on the other side was a Chinese town much bigger. The Russian
+      were very little towns, and all the inhabitants, it seemed, turned out to
+      meet us, who were their only link with the outside world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The minute the steamer came close enough ropes were flung ashore to moor
+      it, and a gangway was run out very often&mdash;and it was an anxious
+      moment for me with Buchanan standing on the end, for he was always the
+      first to put dainty little paws on the gangway, and there he stood while
+      it swayed this way and that before it could make up its mind where to
+      finally settle down. Then there was a rush, and a stream of people going
+      ashore for exercise passed a stream of people coming on board to sell
+      goods. Always these took the form of eatables. Butter, bread, meat, milk,
+      berries they had for sale, and the third and fourth class passengers
+      bought eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I followed Buchanan ashore, but I seldom bought anything unless the
+      berries tempted me. There were strawberries, raspberries and a blue berry
+      which sometimes was very sweet and pleasant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At first the people had been very kind and taken a great deal of interest
+      in the stranger and her pretty little dog, but after we left Kharbarosvk
+      and I had no one to appeal to a marked change came over things. If I
+      wanted to take a photograph, merely a photograph of the steamer lying
+      against the bank, my camera was rudely snatched away and I was given to
+      understand in a manner that did not require me to know Russian that if I
+      did that again it would be worse for me. Poor little Buchanan was kicked
+      and chunks of wood were flung at him. As I passed along the lower decks to
+      and from the steamer I was rudely hustled, and on shore not only did the
+      people crowd around me in a hostile manner, but to my disgust they spat
+      upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I could not understand the change, for even in the first-class saloon the
+      people looked at me askance. And I had ten days of the river before I
+      reached Stretensk, where I was to join the train. It is terrible to be
+      alone among hostile people, and I kept Buchanan close beside me for
+      company and because I did not know what might happen to him. If this had
+      been China I should not have been surprised, but Russia, that had always
+      been so friendly. I was mightily troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then came the explanation, the very simple explanation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as the river narrowed between the hills and looked more like a river,
+      and turned north, there came on board at a tiny wayside town a tall young
+      Cossack officer, a <i>soinik</i> of Cossacks, he called himself. He wore a
+      khaki jacket and cap, and dark blue breeches and riding-boots. He had a
+      great scar across his forehead, caused by a Chinese sword, and he had
+      pleasant blue eyes and a row of nice white teeth. He was tall and goodly
+      to look upon, and as I sat at afternoon tea at a little table on deck he
+      came swaggering along the deck and stood before me with one hand on a
+      deck-chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, is it permitted?&rdquo; he asked in French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course Madame permitted and ealled for another glass and offered him
+      some of her tea and cake. Possibly he had plenty of his own, but no
+      matter, it was good to entertain someone in friendly fashion again after
+      being an outcast for three days. And it took a little while to find out
+      what was wrong, he was so very polite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame understands we are at war?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame opened her eyes in astonishment. What could a war in the Balkan
+      Provinces have to do with her treatment on the Amur river thousands of
+      miles in the East?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, she said she did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Madame knows&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&rdquo; He paused, and then very kindly
+      abandoned his people. &ldquo;Madame sees the people are bad?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame quite agreed. They were bad. I had quite an appetite for my tea now
+      that this nice young man was sympathising with me on the abominable
+      behaviour of his countrymen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He spread out his hands as if deprecating the opinion of sueh foolish
+      people. &ldquo;They think&mdash;on the ship&mdash;and on the shore&mdash;that
+      Madame is a GERMAN!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So it was out, and it took me a moment to realise it, so little had I
+      realised the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A German!&rdquo; I did not put it in capital letters as he had done. I had not
+      yet learned to hate the Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A&mdash;spy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, good gracious!&rdquo; And then I flew for my passports.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain that young man protested it was not necessary. He had felt sure
+      from the moment he set eyes upon her that Madame was no German. He had
+      told the captain&mdash;so the depressed corporal had been taking an
+      interest in me&mdash;she might be French, or even from the north of Spain,
+      but certainly not German. But I insisted on his looking at my passports
+      and being in a position to swear that I was British, and from that moment
+      we were friends and he constituted himself my champion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The people are bad,&rdquo; he told me. &ldquo;Madame, they are angry and they are
+      bad. They may harm you. Here I go ashore with you; at Blagoveschensk you
+      get a protection order from the Governor written in Russian so that
+      somebody may read.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he told me about the war. Russia and France were fighting Germany. He
+      had come from Tsitsihar, on the Mongolian border, across Manchuria, and
+      before that he had come from Kodbo, right in the heart of the great
+      Western Mongolian mountains, and he was going as fast as he could to
+      Chita, and thence he supposed to the front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;C'est gai a la guerre, Madame, c'est gai!&rdquo; I hope so. I earnestly hope he
+      found it so, for he was a good fellow and awfully good to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a little disquieting too, for now it dawned upon me it would be
+      impossible to go back through Germany with Germany at war with Russia, and
+      my friend was equally sure it would be almost impossible to go by way of
+      St Petersburg, as we called Petrograd then. Anyhow we were still in the
+      Amur Province, in Eastern Siberia, so I did not worry much. Now that the
+      people were friendly once more it all seemed so far away, and whenever we
+      went ashore my Cossack friend explained matters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was a little troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, why does not England come in?&rdquo; he asked again and again, and I,
+      who had seen no papers since I left Tientsin, and only <i>The North China
+      Herald</i> then, could not imagine what England had to do with it. The
+      idea of a world war was out of the question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was more interesting now going up the beautiful river, narrowed till it
+      really did look like a river. I could see both banks quite plainly. My
+      friend had been stationed here a year or two before, and he told me that
+      there were many tigers in the woods, and wild boar and bear, but not very
+      many wolves. And the tigers were beautiful and fierce and dangerous,
+      northern tigers that could stand the rigours of the winter, and they did
+      not wait to be attacked, they attacked you. There was a German professor
+      in Blagoveschensk a year or two ago who had gone out butterfly-hunting,
+      which one would think was a harmless and safe enough pastime to satisfy
+      even a conscientious objector, and a tiger had got on his tracks and eaten
+      him incontinently. They found only his butterfly net and the buttons of
+      his coat when they went in search of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The plague had broken out during this officer's stay on the river, and the
+      authorities had drawn a cordon of Cossacks round to keep the terrified,
+      plague-stricken people from fleeing and spreading the disease yet farther,
+      and he pointed out to me the house in which he and two comrades had lived.
+      It was merely a roof pitched at a steep angle, and the low walls were
+      embedded in earth; only on the side facing the river was a little window&mdash;it
+      did not open&mdash;and a door. A comfortless-looking place it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why the earth piled up against the sides?&rdquo; I asked. It was sprouting
+      grass now and yellow buttercups and looked gay and pretty, the only
+      attractive thing about the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, for the cold,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;for the cold.&rdquo; And remembering what they
+      had told me about the cold of Kharbin, what I myself had experienced at
+      Manchuria on the way out in much the same latitude as this, I could quite
+      well believe that even sunk in the earth this poor little hut was not a
+      very good protection against the cold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The river widened again, winding its way across a plateau. On the Chinese
+      side were great oak forests where my Cossack told me were many pig that
+      gave them good hunting and many bees, but this was not China as I knew it.
+      It was inhabited, he said, by nomad tribes who were great horsemen, and we
+      saw occasional villages and&mdash;a rare sight&mdash;cattle, red and
+      white, standing knee-deep in the clear water. Particularly was I struck by
+      the cattle, for in all those thousands of miles of travel I could count on
+      my fingers&mdash;the fingers of one hand would be too many&mdash;the
+      numbers of times I saw herds of cattle. Once was in Saghalien, and twice,
+      I think, here, curiously enough, for the pure Chinese does not use milk or
+      butter on the Chinese side of the river. Of course there must have been
+      cows somewhere, for there was plenty of milk, cream and butter for sale,
+      but they were not in evidence from the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Russian side the landing-places did not change much, only now among
+      the women hawkers were Chinese in belted blouses, green, yellow, blue,
+      pink, red; they rioted in colour as they never did in their own land, and
+      they all wore sea-boots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And still over twelve hundred miles from the sea it was a great river. And
+      then at last I saw what I had been looking for ever since I embarked&mdash;fields
+      of corn, corn ripe for the harvest. This was all this lovely land needed,
+      a field of corn; but again it was not on the Russian side, but on the
+      Chinese.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spires and domes of Blagoveschensk, the capital of the Amur Province,
+      came into view. All along the Russian bank of the river lay this city of
+      Eastern Siberia. Its buildings stood out against the clear sky behind it,
+      and approaching it was like coming up to a great port. The river, I should
+      think, was at least a mile wide. I am not very good at judging distances,
+      but it gave me the impression of a very wide river set here in the midst
+      of a plain&mdash;that is, of course, a plateau, for we had come through
+      the hills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here my Cossack friend came to bid me good-bye and to impress upon me
+      once again to go straight to the Governor for that protection order. He
+      was sorry he could not see me through, but his orders were to go to Chita
+      as fast as he could, and someone would speak English at Blagoveschensk,
+      for it was a great city, and then he asked for the last time:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Madame, why does not England come in?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the question that had troubled me so was answered, for as we
+      touched the shore men came on board wild with excitement, shouting,
+      yelling, telling the war news, that very day, that very moment, it seemed,
+      England had come in!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I appeared to be the only representative of Britain in that corner of
+      the world! Never was there such a popular person. The sailor-men who
+      worked the ship, the poorer third and fourth class passengers all came
+      crowding to look at the Englishwoman. I had only got to say &ldquo;Anglisky&rdquo; to
+      have everyone bowing down before me and kissing my hand, and my Cossack
+      friend as he bade me good-bye seemed to think it hardly necessary to go to
+      the Governor except that a member of a great Allied nation ought to be
+      properly received.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I had been bitten once, and I determined to make things as safe as I
+      could for the future. So I got a droshky&mdash;a sort of tumble-down
+      victoria, held together with pieces of string, and driven by a man who
+      might have been Russian or might have been Chinese&mdash;and Buchanan and
+      I went through the dusty, sunny streets of the capital of the Amur
+      Province to the viceregal residence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIII&mdash;THE UPPER REACHES OF THE AMUR
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>lagoveschensk is
+      built on much the same lines as all the other Siberian towns that I have
+      seen, a wooden town mostly of one-storeyed houses straggling over the
+      plain in wide streets that cut one another at right angles. Again it was
+      not at all unlike an Australian town, a frontier town to all intents and
+      purposes. The side-roads were deep in dust, and the principal shop, a
+      great store, a sort of mild imitation of Harrod's, where you could buy
+      everything from a needle to an anchor&mdash;I bought a dog-collar with a
+      bell for Buchanan&mdash;was run by Germans. It was a specimen of Germany's
+      success in peaceful penetration. It seemed as if she were throwing away
+      the meat for the shadow, for they were interning all those assistants&mdash;400
+      of them. Now probably they form the nucleus of the Bolshevist force
+      helping Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Governor's house was on the outskirts of the town, and it was thronged
+      with people, men mostly, and Buchanan and I were passed from one room to
+      another, evidently by people who had not the faintest notion of what we
+      wanted. Everybody said &ldquo;Bonjour,&rdquo; and the Governor and everybody else
+      kissed my hand. I said I was &ldquo;Anglisky,&rdquo; and it seemed as if everybody in
+      consequence came to look at me. But it didn't advance matters at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I began to be hungry and tired, and various people tried questions upon
+      me, but nothing definite happened. At last, after about two hours, when I
+      was seriously thinking of giving up in despair, a tall, good-looking
+      officer in khaki came in. He put his heels together and kissed my hand as
+      courteously as the rest had done, and then informed me in excellent
+      English that he was the Boundary Commissioner and they had sent for him
+      because there was an Englishwoman arrived, and, while very desirous of
+      being civil to the representative of their new Ally, nobody could make out
+      what on earth she was doing here and what she wanted!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told my story and it was easy enough then. He admired Buchanan properly,
+      drove us both to his house, introduced me to his wife and made me out a
+      most gorgeous protection order written in Russian. I have it still, but I
+      never had occasion to use it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opposite Blagoveschensk is a Chinese town which is called Sakalin, though
+      the maps never give it that name, and in Vladivostok and Peking they call
+      it various other names. But its right name is Sakalin, I know, for I
+      stayed there for the best part of a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Sakalin the head of the Chinese Customs is a Dane, Paul Barentzen, and
+      to him and his wife am I greatly beholden. I had been given letters to
+      them, and I asked my friend the kindly Russian Boundary Commissioner if he
+      knew them. He did. He explained to me I must have a permit to cross the
+      river and he would give me one for a week. A week seemed overlong, but he
+      explained the Russian Government did not allow free traffic across the
+      river and it was just as well to have a permit that would cover the whole
+      of my stay. Even now, though I did stay my week, I have not fathomed the
+      reason of these elaborate precautions, because it must be impossible to
+      guard every little landing-place on the long, long, lonely river&mdash;there
+      must be hundreds of places where it is easy enough to cross&mdash;only I
+      suppose every stranger is liable sooner or later to be called upon to give
+      an account of himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ferries that crossed the Amur to the Chinese side were great boats
+      built to carry a large number of passengers, but the arrangements for
+      getting across the river did justice to both Chinese and Russian
+      mismanagement. Unlike the efficient Japanese, both these nations, it seems
+      to me, arrive at the end in view with the minimum amount of trouble to
+      those in authority&mdash;that is to say, the maximum of trouble to
+      everybody concerned. The ferry-boats owing to local politics had a
+      monopoly, and therefore went at their own sweet will just exactly when
+      they pleased. There was a large and busy traffic, but the boats never went
+      oftener than once an hour, and the approaches were just as primitive as
+      they possibly could be. There was one little shed with a seat running
+      round where if you were fortunate you could sit down with the Chinese
+      hawkers and wait for the arrival of the boat. And when it did come the
+      passengers, after a long, long wait, came climbing up the rough path up
+      the bank looking as if they had been searched to the skin. They let me
+      through on the Chinese side and I found without any difficulty my way to
+      Mr Paul Barentzen's house, a two-storeyed, comfortable house, and received
+      a warm invitation from him and his wife to stay with them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a chance not to be missed. I was getting very weary, I was tired in
+      every bone, so a chance like this to stay with kindly people who spoke my
+      own language, on the very outskirts of the Chinese Empire, was not to be
+      lightly missed, and I accepted with gratitude, a gratitude I feel
+      strongly. Mr Barentzen was a Dane, but he spoke as good English as I do,
+      and if possible was more British. His wife was English. And that night he
+      celebrated the coming into the war of Britain. He asked me and the Russian
+      Boundary Commissioner and his wife and another Russian gentleman all to
+      dinner in the gardens at Blagoveschensk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place was a blaze of light, there were flags and lamps and bands
+      everywhere, the whole city was <i>en fête</i> to do honour to the new
+      addition to the Grande Entente. When we were tired of walking about the
+      gardens we went inside to the principal restaurant that was packed with
+      people dining, while on a stage various singers discoursed sweet music and
+      waved the flags of the Allies. But the British flag had not got as far as
+      the capital of the Amur Province. Indeed much farther west than that I
+      found it represented by a red flag with black crosses drawn on it, very
+      much at the taste of the artist, and &ldquo;Anglisky&rdquo; written boldly across it
+      to make up for any deficiency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr Barentzen had foreseen this difficulty and had provided us all with
+      nice little silk specimens of the Union Jack to wear pinned on our
+      breasts. About ten o'clock we sat down to a most excellent dinner, with
+      sturgeon and sour cream and caviare and all the good tilings that Eastern
+      Siberia produces. A packed room also dined, while the people on the stage
+      sang patriotic songs, and we were all given silk programmes as souvenirs.
+      They sang the Belgian, the French and the Russian national anthems, and at
+      last we asked for the British.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very courteously the conductor sent back word to say he was very sorry but
+      the British national anthem was also a German hymn and if he dared play it
+      the people would tear him to pieces. Remembering my tribulations a little
+      way down the river, I quite believed him, so I suggested as an alternative
+      <i>Rule, Britannia</i>, but alas! he had never heard of it. It was a
+      deadlock, and we looked at one another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the tall Russian who was the other guest pushed his chair from the
+      table, stood up, and saluting, whistled <i>Rule, Britannia!</i> How the
+      people applauded! And so Britain entered the war in Far Eastern Siberia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We certainly did not go home till morning that day. For that matter, I
+      don't think you are supposed to cross the river at night, not ordinary
+      folk, Customs officials may have special privileges. At any rate I came
+      back to my bunk on the steamer and an anxious little dog just as the day
+      was breaking, and next day I crossed to Sakalin and stayed with the
+      Barentzens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Russians then took so much trouble to keep the Chinese on their own
+      side of the river that the Russian officers and civil servants, much to
+      the chagrin of their wives, were nowhere in the province allowed to have
+      Chinese servants. The fee for a passport had been raised to, I think,
+      twelve roubles, so it was no longer worth a Chinaman's while to get one to
+      hawk a basket of vegetables, and the mines on the Zeya, a tributary of the
+      Amur on the Russian side, had fallen off in their yield because cheap
+      labour was no longer possible. The people who did get passports were the
+      Chinese prostitutes, though a Chinese woman has not a separate identity in
+      China and is not allowed a passport of her own. However, there are ways of
+      getting over that. A man applied for a passport and it was granted him. He
+      handed it over to the woman for a consideration, and on the other side any
+      Chinese document was, as a rule, all one to the Russian official.
+      Remembering my own experience and how I had difficulty in deciding between
+      my passport and my agreement with my muleteers, I could quite believe this
+      story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blagoveschensk is a regular frontier town and, according to Mr Barentzen,
+      is unsafe. On the first occasion that I crossed the river with him I
+      produced a hundred-rouble note. Almost before I had laid it down it was
+      snatched up by the Chinese Commissioner of Customs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo; said he, and he crumpled up the note in his hand and held
+      out for my acceptance a rouble. I tried to explain that not having change,
+      and finding it a little awkward, I thought that this would be a good
+      opportunity to get it, as I felt sure the man at receipt of custom must
+      have plenty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I dare say,&rdquo; said my host sarcastically. &ldquo;I don't want to take away
+      anybody's character, but I'll venture to say there are at least ten men
+      within hail&rdquo;&mdash;there was a crowd round&mdash;&ldquo;who would joyfully cut
+      your throat for ten roubles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He enlarged upon that theme later. We used to sit out on the balcony of
+      his house looking out, not over the river, but over the town of Sakalin,
+      and there used to come in the men from the B.A.T. Factory, a Russian in
+      top-boots who spoke excellent English and a young American named Hyde.
+      They told me tales, well, something like the stories I used to listen to
+      in my childhood's days when we talked about &ldquo;the breaking out of the gold&rdquo;
+       in Australia, tales of men who had washed much gold and then were lured
+      away and murdered for their riches. Certainly they did not consider
+      Blagoveschensk or Sakalin towns in which a woman could safely wander. In
+      fact all the Siberian towns that they knew came under the ban.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But of course mostly we talked about the war and how maddening it was only
+      to get scraps of news through the telegraph. The young American was keen,
+      I remember. I wonder if he really had patience to wait till his country
+      came in. He talked then in the first week of the war of making his way
+      back to Canada and seeing if he could enlist there, for even then we felt
+      sure that the Outer Dominions would want to help the Motherland. And the
+      Germans were round Liège&mdash;would they take it? Association is a
+      curious thing. Whenever I hear of Liège I cannot help thinking, not of the
+      Belgian city, but of a comfortable seat on a balcony with the shadows
+      falling and the lights coming out one by one on the bath-houses that are
+      dotted about a little town on the very outskirts of the Chinese Empire&mdash;the
+      lights of the town. There are the sounds and the smells of the Chinese
+      town mingling with the voices of the talkers and the fragrance of the
+      coffee, and the air is close with the warmth of August. There comes back
+      to me the remembrance of the keen young American who wanted to fight
+      Germany and the young Russian in top-boots who was very much afraid he
+      would only be used to guard German prisoners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sakalin was cosmopolitan, but it had a leaning toward Russia, hence the
+      bath-houses, an idea foreign to Chinese civilisation; and when I got a
+      piece of grit in my eye which refused to come out it was to a Japanese
+      doctor I went, accompanied by my host's Chinese servant, who, having had
+      the trouble stated by me in English, explained it to another man in
+      Chinese, who in his turn told the doctor what was the matter in Russian.
+      Luckily that man of medicine was very deft and I expect he could have
+      managed very well without any explanation at all. I have the greatest
+      respect for the Japanese leech I visited in Sakalin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Sunday we had a big picnic. The Russian Boundary Commissioner came
+      across with his wife and little girls, Mrs Barentzen took her little girl
+      and the Chinese Tao Tai lent us the light of his countenance. He was the
+      feature of the entertainment, for he was a very big man, both literally
+      and socially, and could not move without a large following, so that an
+      escort of mounted police took charge of us. The proper portly Chinaman of
+      whom this retinue was in honour spoke no English, but smiled at me
+      benevolently, and wore a petticoat and a Russian military cap! The picnic
+      was by a little brook about seven miles from the town and I shall always
+      remember it because of the lush grass, waist-high, and the lovely flowers.
+      I had looked at the Siberian flowers from the steamer when they were
+      ungetatable, I had gathered them with joy in Saghalien, and now here they
+      were again just to my hand. In June they told me there were abundant
+      lilies of the valley, and I regretted I had not been there in June. Truly
+      I feel it would be a delight to see lilies of the valley growing wild, but
+      as it was, the flowers were beautiful enough, and there were heaps of
+      them. There were very fine Canterbury bells, a glorious violet flower and
+      magnificent white poppies. Never have I gathered more lovely flowers,
+      never before have I seen them growing wild in such amazing abundance. No
+      one is more truly artistic than the average Chinese, and I think the Tao
+      Tai must have enjoyed himself, though it is against the canons of good
+      taste in China to look about you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Presently I was asking the chief magistrate's good offices for Buchanan,
+      for he, my treasured Buchanan, was lost. In the Barentzens' house there
+      was, of course, as in all well-regulated Chinese houses run by foreigners,
+      a bathroom attached to every bedroom, and when I wanted a bath the
+      servants filled with warm water the half of a large barrel, which made a
+      very excellent bath-tub. And having bathed myself, I bathed Buchanan,
+      whose white coat got very dirty in the dusty Chinese streets. He ran away
+      downstairs and I lingered for a moment to put on my dress, and when I came
+      down he was gone. High and low I hunted; I went up and down the street
+      calling his name, and I knew he would have answered, he always did, had he
+      been within hearing. All the Customs men were turned out and I went to the
+      Chinese Tao Tai, who promptly put on all the police. But Buchanan was gone
+      for a night and I was in despair. Mr Barentzen's head boy shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Master saying,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;mus' get back that dog.&rdquo; So I realised I was
+      making a fuss, but for the moment I did not care. The Tao Tai gave it as
+      his opinion that he had not been stolen. There were many little dogs like
+      him in the town, said he, no one would steal one, which only shows a
+      Chinese magistrate may not be infallible, for I was sure Buchanan would
+      not stay away from me of his own free will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then at last the servants turned up triumphant, Buchanan, in the arms
+      of the head boy, wild with delight at seeing his mistress again. The
+      police had searched everywhere, but the servants, with their master's
+      injunction in mind and my reward to be earned, had made further inquiries
+      and found that a little boy had been seen taking the dog into a certain
+      house occupied by an official, the man who was responsible for the
+      cleaning of the streets. This was the first intimation I ever had that the
+      Chinese did clean their streets: I had thought that they left that job to
+      the &ldquo;wonks&rdquo; and the scavenger crows. The police made inquiries. No, there
+      was no little dog there. But the servants&mdash;wise Chinese servants&mdash;made
+      friends with the people round, and they said: &ldquo;Watch. There is a dog.&rdquo; So
+      a junior servant was put to watch, and when the gate of the compound was
+      opened he stole in, and there was poor little James Buchanan tied up to a
+      post. That servant seized the dog and fled home in triumph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The T'ai T'ai (the official's wife), said the people round, had wanted the
+      pretty little dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was so delighted to get my little friend back that I should have been
+      content to leave things there. Not so Mr Barentzen. He sent for that
+      official, and there in his drawing-room he and I interviewed a portly
+      Chinese gentleman in grey petticoats, a long pigtail, a little black silk
+      cap and the tips of the silver shields that encased the long nails of his
+      little fingers just showing beyond his voluminous sleeves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An officious servant,&rdquo; he said. He was extremely sorry the Commissioner
+      of Customs and his friend had been put to so much inconvenience. The
+      servant had already been dismissed. And so we bowed him out, face was
+      saved, and all parties were satisfied. It was very Chinese. And yet we
+      knew, and we knew that he must have known we knew, that it was really his
+      wife who received the little dog that everyone concerned must have
+      realised was valuable and must have been stolen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here in Sakai in I heard about the doings of the only wolves that came
+      into my wanderings. In the little river harbour were many small steamers
+      flying the Russian flag and loading great barrels with the ends painted
+      bright red. These barrels, explained the Customs Commissioner, contained
+      spirits which the Russians were desirous of smuggling into Russian
+      territory. The Chinese had not the least objection to their leaving China
+      after they had paid export duty. They were taken up and down the river and
+      finally landed at some small port whence they were smuggled across. The
+      trade was a very big one. The men engaged in it were known as the wolves
+      of the Amur and were usually Caucasians and Jews. In 1913, the last year
+      of which I have statistics, no less than twenty-five thousand pounds
+      export was paid on these spirits, and in the years before it used to be
+      greater. I wonder whether with the relaxing of discipline consequent on
+      the war and the revolution the receipts for the export have not gone up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wide river was beautiful here, and Blagovesehensk, lying across the
+      water, with its spires and domes, all the outlines softened, standing
+      against the evening sky, might have been some town of pictured Italy. I am
+      glad I have seen it. I dare not expiate on Mr Barentzen's kindness. My
+      drastic critic, drastic and so invaluable, says that I have already
+      overloaded this book with tales of people's kindness, so I can only say I
+      stayed there a week and then took passage on the smaller steamer which was
+      bound up the Amur and the Shilka to Stretensk and the railway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had, however, one regret. I had inadvertently taken my plates and films
+      on which I had all my pictures of the Amur and Saghalien across the
+      Sakalin and I could not take them back again. The Russian rule was very
+      strict. No photographs were allowed. Everything crossing the river must be
+      examined. Now to examine my undeveloped films and plates would be to ruin
+      them. I interviewed a Japanese photographer on the Sakalin side, but he
+      appeared to be a very tyro in the art of developing, and finally very
+      reluctantly I decided to leave them for Mr Barentzen to send home when he
+      got the chance. He did not get that chance till the middle of 1916, and I
+      regret to state that when we came to develop them every single one of them
+      was ruined.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The steamer that I embarked on now was considerably smaller, for the river
+      was narrowing. The deck that ran round the cabins was only thirty inches
+      wide and crowded with children; worse, when James Buchanan and I went for
+      our daily promenades we found the way disputed by women, mothers, or
+      nursemaids, I know not whieh, propelling the children who could not walk
+      in wheeled chairs, and they thought Buchanan had been brought there for
+      their special benefit, a view which the gentleman himself did not share.
+      However, he was my only means of communication with them, for they had no
+      English or French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I was lucky, for one of the mates, brass-bound and in spotless white,
+      like so many Russians had served in British ships and spoke English very
+      well with a slight Scots accent. With him I used to hold daily
+      conversations and always we discussed the war. But he shook his head over
+      it. It was not possible to get much news at the little wayside places at
+      which we stopped. There were no papers&mdash;the Russian peasant under the
+      beneficent rule of the Tsar was not encouraged to learn to read&mdash;and
+      for his part he, the mate, put no faith in the telegrams. All would be
+      well, of course, but we must wait till we came to some large and
+      influential place for news upon which we could rely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that large and influential place was long in coming, in fact I may say
+      it never materialised while I was on the river. There are at least eleven
+      towns marked on the way between Blagoveschensk and Stretensk, but even the
+      town at the junction where the Aigun and the Shilka merge into the Amur is
+      but a tiny frontier village, and the rest as I know the river banks are
+      only a few log huts inhabited by peasants who apparently keep guard over
+      and supply the stacks of wood needed by the steamers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a lovely river now going north, north and then west, or rather we
+      went north, the river flowed the other way, it was narrower and wound
+      between wooded hills and it was very lonely. There were occasional, very
+      occasional, little settlements, on the Chinese side I do not remember even
+      a hut, though it was a lovely green land and the river, clear as crystal,
+      reflected on its breast the trees and rocks among which we made our way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once on the Russian side we landed from a boat a woman with two little
+      children and innumerable bundles. They had been down, I suppose, to visit
+      the centre of civilisation at Blagoveschensk and now were coming home. In
+      the dusk of the evening we left her there looking down thoughtfully at her
+      encumbrances, not a living creature in sight, not a sign of man's
+      handiwork anywhere. I hoped there were no tigers about, but she has always
+      lived in my memory as an unfinished story. I suppose we all of us have
+      those unfinished stories in our lives, not stories left unfinished because
+      they are so long drawn out we could not possibly wait for developments,
+      but stories that must finish suddenly, only we are withdrawn. Once I
+      looked from a railway carriage window in the Midlands and I saw a bull
+      chasing a woman; she was running, screaming for all she was worth, for a
+      fence, but whether she reached it or not I have no means of knowing.
+      Another time I saw also from a railway carriage window two men, mother
+      naked, chasing each other across the greensward and left them there
+      because the train went on. Of course I have often enough seen men without
+      clothes in the tropics, but in the heart of England they are out of the
+      picture and want explaining. That explanation I shall never get. Nor is it
+      likely I shall ever know whether that unknown woman and her little
+      children ever reached their unknown home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were luxuriously fed upon that little steamer. The Russian tea with
+      lemon and the bread and butter were delicious, and we had plenty of cream,
+      though gone was the red caviare that farther east had been so common. But
+      I was tired and at last feeling lonely. I began to count the days till I
+      should reach home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Amur the weather had been gorgeous, but when we entered the Shilka
+      we were north of 53° again and well into the mountains, and the next
+      morning I awoke to a grey day. It rained and it rained, not tropical rain,
+      but soft, penetrating rain; the fir-clad hills on either side were veiled
+      in a silvery mist. The river wound so that as we looked ahead we seemed to
+      be sailing straight into the hills. The way looked blocked with hills,
+      sometimes all mist-covered, sometimes with the green showing alluringly
+      through the mist, and occasionally, when the mist lifted and the sun came
+      out, in all the gullies would linger little grey cloudlets, as if caught
+      before they could get away and waiting there screened by the hills till
+      the mist should fall again. Occasionally there were lonely houses, still
+      more occasionally little settlements of log huts with painted windows
+      hermetically sealed, and once or twice a field of corn ripe for the
+      harvest but drowned by the persistent rain. But the air was soft and
+      delicious, divine; only in the cabins on board the crowded steamer was it
+      pestilential. The mate told me how, six weeks before, on his last trip up,
+      an Englishman had come selling reapers and binders, and he thought that
+      now I had made my appearance the English were rather crowding the Amur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes when we stopped the passengers went ashore and went berrying,
+      returning with great branches laden with fruit, and I and Buchanan too
+      walked a little way, keeping the steamer 'well in sight, and rejoicing in
+      the flowers and the green and the rich, fresh smell of moist earth. I do
+      not know that ever in my life do I remember enjoying rain so much. Of
+      course in my youth in Australia I had always welcomed the life-giving
+      rain, but thirteen years in England, where I yearned for the sunshine, had
+      somehow dimmed those memories, and now once again the rain on the river
+      brought me joy. The mist was a thing of beauty, and when a ray of sunshine
+      found its way into a green, mist-veiled valley, illuminating its lovely
+      loneliness, then indeed I knew that the earth was the Lord's and the
+      fullness thereof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sometimes we passed rafts upon the river. They were logs bound together in
+      great parallelograms and worked with twelve long sweeps fixed at each end.
+      Twelve men at least went to each raft, and there were small houses built
+      of grass and canvas and wood. They were taking the wood down to
+      Nikolayeusk to be shipped to Shanghai and other parts of the world for
+      furniture, for these great forests of birch and elm and fir and oak must
+      be a mine of wealth to their owners. I do not know whether the wood is cut
+      on any system, and whether the presence of these great rafts had anything
+      to do with the many dead trees I saw in the forests, their white stems
+      standing up ghostlike against the green hill-side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have no record of these lovely places. My camera was locked away now in
+      my suit-case, for it was war, and Russia, rightly, would allow no
+      photographs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seven days after we left Blagoveschensk we reached Stretensk and I came in
+      contact for the first time with the World's War.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XIV&mdash;MOBILISING IN EASTERN SIBERIA
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>t Stretensk I
+      awakened to the fact that I was actually in Siberia, nay, that I had
+      travelled over about two thousand miles of Siberia, that dark and gloomy
+      land across which&mdash;I believed in my youth&mdash;tramped long lines of
+      prisoners in chains, sometimes amidst the snow and ice of a bitter winter,
+      sometimes with the fierce sun beating down upon them, but always hopeless,
+      always hungry, weary, heartbroken, a sacrifice to the desire for political
+      liberty that was implanted in the hearts of an enslaved people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is an extraordinary thing that, though for many years I had believed
+      Saghalien was a terrible island, a sort of inferno for political
+      prisoners, something like Van Diemen's Land used to be in the old convict
+      days one hundred and ten years ago, only that in the Asiatic island the
+      conditions were still more cruel and it was hopeless to think of escaping,
+      while I was actually in that beautiful island I was so taken up with its
+      charm, it was so extremely unlike the place of which I had a picture in my
+      mind's eye, that I hardly connected the two. All up the Amur river was a
+      new land, a land crying out for pioneers, pastoralists and farmers, so
+      that the thought that was uppermost in my mind was of the contrast between
+      it and the old land of China, where I had spent so long a time; but at
+      Stretensk I suddenly remembered this was Siberia, the very heart of
+      Siberia, where men had suffered unutterable things, might still be so
+      suffering for all I knew, and I stepped off the steamer and prepared to
+      explore, with a feeling that at any moment I might come across the heavy
+      logs that made up the walls of a prison, might see the armed sentries,
+      clad to the eyes in furs, who tramped amidst the snow. But this was August
+      and it was fiercely hot, so the snow and the sentries clad in furs were
+      ruled out, and presently as Buchanan and I walked about the town even the
+      lonely prison built of logs had to go too. There may have been a prison,
+      probably there was, but it did not dominate the picture. Not here should I
+      find the Siberia I had been familiar with from my youth up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stretensk is like all other Siberian towns that I have seen. The houses
+      are mostly of one storey and of wood, of logs; the streets are wide and
+      straight, cutting each other at right angles, and the whole is flung out
+      upon the plain; it is really, I think, rather high among the mountains,
+      but you do not get the sensation of hills as you do from the steamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rain had cleared away and it was very hot, though we had started out
+      very early because I was determined to go west if possible that very
+      afternoon; We went gingerly because the dangers of Siberian towns for one
+      who looked fairly prosperous had been impressed upon me at Blagoveschensk,
+      and I hesitated about going far from the steamer, where the mate could
+      speak English. Still we went. I was not going to miss the Siberia of my
+      dreams if I could help it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw something more wonderful than the Siberia of my dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In consequence of the ceaseless rain the roads between the log-houses with
+      their painted windows were knee-deep in mud, a quagmire that looked
+      impassable. In the air was the sound of martial music, and up and down in
+      what would have been reckless fashion but for the restraining glue-like
+      mud galloped officers and their orderlies. It was the war, the first I had
+      seen of it. The war was taking the place of the political exiles, and
+      instead of seeing Siberia as a background for the exiles as I had dreamed
+      of it for so many years, I saw it busy with preparations for war. The
+      roads were like sloughs out of which it would have been impossible to get
+      had I ever ventured in. Naturally I did not venture, but took all sorts of
+      long rounds to get to the places I wanted to reach. It is not a bad way of
+      seeing a town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heavily built houses, built to defy the Siberian winter, might have
+      come out of Nikolayeusk or Kharbarosvk, and though the sun poured down out
+      of a cloudless sky, and I was gasping in a thin Shantung silk, they were
+      hermetically sealed, and the cotton wool between the double windows was
+      decorated with the usual gay ribbons. I dare say they were cool enough
+      inside, but they must have been intolerably stuffy. The sidewalks too had
+      dried quickly in the fierce sunshine. They were the usual Siberian
+      sidewalks, with long lines of planks like flooring. Had they ever been
+      trodden, I wonder, by the forced emigrant looking with hopeless longing
+      back to the West. Finally we wandered into the gardens, where I doubt not,
+      judging by the little tables and many seats, there was the usual gay
+      throng at night, but now early in the morning everything looked
+      dishevelled, and I could not find anyone to supply me with the cool drink
+      of which I stood so badly in need, and at last we made our way back to the
+      steamer, where the mate, having got over the struggle of arrival&mdash;for
+      this was the farthest the steamer went&mdash;kindly found time enough to
+      give himself to my affairs. I wanted a droshky to take me to the train,
+      and as nowhere about had I seen any signs of a railway station I wanted to
+      know where it was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mate laughed and pointed far away down the river on the other side. I
+      really ought to have known my Siberia better by now. Railways are not
+      constructed for the convenience of the townsfolk. There was nothing else
+      for it. I had to get there somehow, and as the train left somewhere
+      between five and six, about noon, with the mate's assistance, I engaged a
+      droshky. The carriages that are doing a last stage in this country are not
+      quite so elderly here as they are in Saghalien, but that is not saying
+      much for them. The one the mate engaged for me had a sturdy little
+      ungroomed horse in the shafts and another running in a trace alongside. On
+      the seat was packed all my baggage, two small suit-cases and a large
+      canvas sack into which I dumped rugs, cushions and all odds and ends,
+      including my precious kettles, and the rough little unkempt horses towed
+      us down through the sea of mud to the ferry, and then I saw the scene had
+      indeed shifted. It was not long lines of exiles bearing chains I met, that
+      was all in the past, at least for an outsider like me, but here in the
+      heart of Asia Russia in her might was collecting her forces for a spring.
+      The great flat ferry was crossing and recrossing, and down the swamp that
+      courtesy called a road came endless streams of square khaki-coloured
+      carts, driven by men in flat caps and belted khaki blouses, big fair men,
+      often giants with red, sun-tanned faces and lint-white hair, men who
+      shouted and laughed and sang and threw up their caps, who were sober as
+      judges and yet were wild with excitement; they were going to the war. I
+      could not understand one word they said, but there is no mistaking
+      gladness, and these men were delighted with their lot. I wondered was it a
+      case of the prisoner freed or was it that life under the old regime in a
+      Russian village was dull to monotony and to these recruits was coming the
+      chance of their lifetime.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some will never come east again, never whether in love or hate will they
+      see the steppes and the flowers and the golden sunshine and the snow of
+      Siberia, they have left their bones on those battle-fields; but some, I
+      hope, will live to see the regeneration of Russia, when every man shall
+      have a chance of freedom and happiness. I suppose this revolution was in
+      the air as cart after cart drove on to the ferry and the men yelled and
+      shouted in their excitement. A small company of men who were going east
+      looked at them tolerantly&mdash;I'm sure it was tolerantly&mdash;and then
+      they too caught the infection and yelled in chorus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I watched it all with interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then half-an-hour passed and still they came; an hour, and I grew a little
+      worried, for they were still pouring over. Two hours&mdash;I comforted
+      myself, the train did not start till late in the afternoon&mdash;three
+      horns, and there was no cessation in the stream. And of course I could
+      make no one understand. It looked as if I might wait here all night. At
+      last a man who was manifestly an officer came galloping along and him I
+      addressed in French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible to cross on the ferry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was very courteous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not possible to cross, Madame. It is not possible. The soldiers
+      come first.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I took another look at the good-humoured, strapping, fair-haired soldiers
+      in khaki, with their khaki-coloured carts. The ferry crossing was laden
+      with them, hundreds of others were waiting, among them numbers of country
+      people. They had bundles and laden baskets and looked people who had
+      shopped and wanted to go home again. Were these exiles? I did not know.
+      They looked simple peasants. Whoever they were, there did not seem much
+      chance for them or me, and I said the one Russian word I knew, &ldquo;steamer,&rdquo;
+       and indicated that I wanted to go back there. Much as I wanted to go home,
+      tired as I was of travelling, I decided I would postpone my railway
+      journey for a day and take advantage of that comfortable Russian custom
+      that allows you to live on a steamer for two days while she is in port.
+      The <i>ishvornik</i> nodded, back we went helter-skelter to the wharf and&mdash;the
+      steamer was gone!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have had some bad moments in my life, but that one stands out still.
+      Why, I hardly know, for sitting here in my garden it does not seem a very
+      terrible thing. I had plenty of money in my pocket and there were hotels
+      in the town. But no! more than ever, safe here in Kent, do I dread a
+      Siberian hotel! Then I was distinctly afraid. I might so easily have
+      disappeared and no one would have asked questions for months to come. I
+      tried to tell the boy I wanted to go to one of those dreaded hotels&mdash;I
+      felt I would have to risk it, for I certainly could not spend the night in
+      a droshky&mdash;and I could not make him understand. Perhaps, as in
+      Saghalien, there were no hotels to accommodate a woman of my class, or
+      perhaps, as is most probable, they were all full of soldiers, anyhow he
+      only looked at me blankly, and Buchanan and I looked at each other.
+      Buchanan anyhow had no fears. He was quite sure I could take care of him.
+      I looked at the boy again and then, as if he had suddenly had an
+      inspiration, he drove me back to the place opposite the ferry whence we
+      had come. The soldiers were there still, crowds and crowds of them, with
+      their little carts and horses, and they were amusing themselves by
+      stealing each other's fodder; the ferry had come back, but there were no
+      soldiers on it, only the country people were crowding down. I had been
+      forbidden to go upon it, and never should I have dreamt of disobeying
+      orders, but my driver had different views. He waited till no officer was
+      looking, seized my baggage and flung it down on the great ferry right in
+      front of the military stores, beside the refreshment stall where they were
+      selling sausages and bread in round rings such as peasants eat, and tea
+      and lemonade. I had not expected to find so commonplace a thing on a river
+      in Siberia. Now I had sat in that dilapidated carriage for over four hours
+      and I was weary to death, also I could not afford to be parted from my
+      luggage, so I put Buchanan under my arm&mdash;it was too muddy for him to
+      walk&mdash;and followed as fast as I could. My good angel prompted me to
+      pay that driver well. I paid him twice what the mate had said it ought to
+      cost me if I waited half-a-day, and never have I laid out money to better
+      advantage. He turned to a big man who was standing by, a man in sea-boots,
+      a red belted blouse and the tall black Astrakhan cap that I have always
+      associated in my own mind 'with Circassians, and spoke to him, saying
+      &ldquo;Anglisky.&rdquo; Evidently he said it might be worth his while to look after
+      me. I don't know whether this gentleman was a Caucasian, one of the
+      &ldquo;wolves of the Amur,&rdquo; but whoever he was, he was a very hefty and capable
+      individual, with a very clear idea of what a foreign lady ought to do, and
+      he promptly constituted himself my guardian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After all, the world, take it on the whole, is a very kindly, honest
+      place. So many times have I been stranded when I might quite easily have
+      been stripped of everything, and always some good Samaritan has come to my
+      aid, and the reward, though I did my best, has never been commensurate
+      with the services rendered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ferry across the Shilka at Stretensk is a great affair, like a young
+      paddock afloat, and beside the horses and carts upon it were a number of
+      country people with their bundles. I sat there a little uncomfortably
+      because I did not know what would happen, only I was determined not to be
+      parted from my baggage. Presently the huge float drifted off, amidst wild
+      shouts and yells. When I was there, a great deal in Russia was done to the
+      accompaniment of much shouting, and I rather fancy that this ferry was
+      going off on an unauthorised jaunt of its own. The Shilka is a broad river
+      here, a fortnight's steamer journey from its mouth, but the ferry came to
+      a full stop in the middle of the stream and a motor boat which did not
+      look as if it could hold half the people came alongside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Skurry! Skurry!&rdquo; was the cry, and the people began leaping overboard into
+      the boat. The military were getting rid summarily of their civilian crowd.
+      In a few seconds that boat was packed to the gunwales and I was looking
+      over at it. I had Buchanan under my arm; he was always a good little dog
+      at critical moments, understanding it was his part to keep quiet and give
+      as little trouble as possible. In my other hand I had my despatch-case,
+      and, being anything but acrobatic by temperament, I felt it was hopeless
+      to think of getting into it. If the penalty for not doing so had been
+      death, I do not think I could have managed it. However, I didn't have a
+      say in the matter. The big Russian in the red blouse picked me up and
+      dropped me, little dog, box and all, into the boat, right on top of the
+      people already there. First I was on top, and then, still hanging on to my
+      little dog, I slipped down a little, but my feet found no foothold; I was
+      wedged between the screaming people. After me, with my luggage on his
+      shoulder, came my guardian, and he somehow seemed to find a very
+      precarious foothold on the gunwale, and he made me understand he wanted
+      two roubles for our fares. If he had asked for ten he would have got it,
+      but how I managed to get at my money to this day I do not know. The boat
+      rocked and swayed in a most alarming manner, and I thought to myself,
+      Well, we are on top now, but presently the boat will upset and then we
+      shall certainly be underneath. I gathered that the passengers were
+      disputing with the boatman as to the price to be paid for the passage
+      across, though this was unwise, for the ferry was threatening momentarily
+      to crush us against the rocky bank. He was asking sixty kopecks&mdash;a
+      little over a shilling&mdash;and with one voice they declared that forty
+      was enough. Considering the crowd, forty I should have thought would have
+      paid him excellently. That I had given my guardian more did not trouble
+      me, because any extra he earned was more than justified, for one thing was
+      certain, I could never have tackled the job by myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as I was growing desperate and Buchanan began to mention that he was
+      on the verge of suffocation the difficulty of the fares was settled and we
+      made for the bank. But we did not go to the usual landing-stage; that, I
+      presume, was forbidden as sacred to the soldiers, and we drew up against a
+      steep, high bank faced with granite.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Skurry! Skurry!&rdquo; And more than ever was haste necessary, for it looked as
+      if the great ferry would certainly crush us. The people began scrambling
+      up. But I was helpless. Whatever happened, I knew I could never climb that
+      wall. I could only clutch my little dog and await events. My guardian was
+      quite equal to the situation. The boat had cleared a little and there was
+      room to move, and, dropping the baggage, he picked me up like a baby and
+      tossed me, dog and all, up on to the bank above. Whether that boat got
+      clear away from the ferry I do not know. When I visited the place next
+      morning there were no remains, so I presume she did, but at the time I was
+      giving all my attention to catching a train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My guardian engaged a boy to carry the lighter baggage, and shouldering
+      the rest himself, he took me by the arm and fairly raeed me up the steep
+      incline to the railway station that was a seething mass of khaki-clad men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Billet! Billet!&rdquo; said he, raping the sweat from his streaming face and
+      making a way for me among the thronging recruits. There was a train coming
+      in and he evidently intended I should catch it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such a crowd it was, and in the railway station confusion was worse
+      confounded. It was packed with people&mdash;people of the poorer class&mdash;and
+      with soldiers, and everyone was giving his opinion of things in general at
+      the top of his voice. My stalwart guardian elbowed a way to the
+      pigeon-hole, still crying, &ldquo;Billet! Billet!&rdquo; and I, seeing I wanted a
+      ticket to Petrograd, produced a hundred-rouble note. The man inside pushed
+      it away with contumely and declined it in various unknown tongues. I
+      offered it again, and again it was thrust rudely aside, my guardian
+      becoming vehement in his protests, though what he said I have not the
+      faintest idea. I offered it a third time, then a man standing beside me
+      whisked it away and whisked me away too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, are you mad?&rdquo; he asked, as Mr Barentzen had asked over a week
+      before, but he spoke in French, very Russian French. And then he proceeded
+      to explain volubly that all around were thieves, robbers and assassins&mdash;oh!
+      the land of suffering exiles&mdash;the mobilisation had called them up,
+      and any one of them would cut my throat for a good deal less than a
+      ten-pound note. And he promptly shoved the offending cash in his pocket.
+      It was the most high-handed proceeding I have ever taken part in, and I
+      looked at him in astonishment. He was a man in a green uniform, wearing a
+      military cap with pipings of white and magenta, and the white and magenta
+      were repeated on the coat and trousers. On the whole, the effect was
+      reassuring. A gentleman so attired was really too conspicuous to be
+      engaged in any very nefarious occupation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He proceeded to explain that by that train I could not go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was reserved for the troops. They were turning out the people already
+      in it. This in a measure explained the bedlam in the station. The people
+      who did not want to be landed here and the people who wanted to get away
+      were comparing notes, and there were so many of them they had to do it at
+      the top of their voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When does the next train go?&rdquo; I asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My new friend looked dubious. &ldquo;Possibly to-morrow night,&rdquo; said he. That
+      was cheering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And where is there a hotel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He pointed across the river to Stretensk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are there none this side?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Madame, not one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I debated. Cross that river again after all it had cost me to get here I
+      could not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But where can I stay?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked round as if he were offering palatial quarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Madame, here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the railway station; there was nothing else for it; and in that railway
+      station I waited till the train came in the following evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That little matter settled, I turned to reward my first friend for his
+      efforts on my behalf, and I felt five roubles was little enough. My new
+      friend was very scornful, a rouble was ample, he considered. He had my
+      ten-pound note in his pocket, and I am afraid I was very conscious that he
+      had not yet proved himself, whereas the other man had done me yeoman's
+      service, and never have I parted with ten shillings with more
+      satisfaction. They were certainly earned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After, I set myself to make the best of the situation. The station was
+      crowded with all sorts and conditions of people, and a forlorn crowd they
+      looked, and curious was the flotsam and jetsam that were their belongings.
+      Of course there was the usual travellers' baggage, but there were other
+      things too I did not expect to come across in a railway station in
+      Siberia. There was a sewing-machine; there was the trumpet part of a
+      gramophone; there was the back of a piano with all the wires showing;
+      there was a dressmaker's stand, the stuffed form of a woman, looking
+      forlorn and out of place among the bundles of the soldiers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the people accepted it as all in the day's work, watched the soldiers
+      getting into the carriages from which they were debarred, and waved their
+      hands and cheered them, though the first train that started for anywhere
+      did not leave till one-fifteen a.m. next morning. They were content that
+      the soldiers should be served first. They settled themselves in little
+      companies on the open platform, in the refreshment-room, in the
+      waiting-rooms, fathers, mothers, children and dogs, and they solaced
+      themselves with kettles of tea, black bread and sausages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all so different from what I had expected, so very different, but
+      the first effect was to bring home to me forcibly the fact that there was
+      a great struggle going on in the West, and Eastern Siberia was being drawn
+      into the whirlpool, sending her best, whether they were the exiles of my
+      dreams or the thieves and robbers my newest friend had called them, to
+      help in the struggle! To wait a night and day in a railway station was
+      surely a little sacrifice to what some must make. How cheerfully and
+      patiently that Siberian crowd waited! There were no complaints, no moans,
+      only here and there a woman buried her head in her shawl and wept for her
+      nearest and dearest, gone to the war, gone out into the unknown, and she
+      might never see him again, might never even know what became of him. Truly
+      &ldquo;They also serve who only stand and wait.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I went into the refreshment-room to get some food, and had soup with sour
+      cream in it, and ate chicken and bread and butter and cucumber and drank
+      <i>kvass</i> as a change from the eternal tea. I watched the people on the
+      platform and as the shades of night fell began to wonder where I should
+      sleep. I would have chosen the platform, but it looked as if it might
+      rain, so I went into the ladies' waiting-room, dragged a seat across the
+      open window, and spread out my rugs and cushions and established myself
+      there. I wanted to have first right to that window, for the night up in
+      the hills here was chilly and I felt sure somebody would come in and want
+      to shut it. My intuitions were correct. Buchanan and I kept that open
+      window against a crowd. Everybody who came in&mdash;and the room was soon
+      packed&mdash;wanted to shut it. They stretched over me and I arose from my
+      slumbers and protested. For, in addition to a crowd, the sanitary
+      arrangements were abominable, and what the atmosphere would have been like
+      with the window shut I tremble to think. I remembered the tales of the
+      pestilential resthouses into which the travelling exiles had been thrust,
+      and I was thankful for that window, thankful too that it was summer-time,
+      for in winter I suppose we would have had to shut it. At last one woman
+      pulled at my rugs and said&mdash;though I could not understand her
+      language her meaning was plain enough&mdash;that it was all very well for
+      me, I had plenty of rugs, it was they who had nothing. It was a fair
+      complaint, so with many qualms I shared my rugs and the summer night
+      slowly wore to morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And morning brought its own difficulties. Russian washing arrangements to
+      me are always difficult. I had met them first in Kharbin in the house of
+      Mr Poland. I wrestled with the same thing in the house of the Chief of
+      Police in Saghalien, and I met it in an aggravated form here in the
+      railway station waiting-room. A Russian basin has not a plug&mdash;it is
+      supposed to be cleaner to wash in running water&mdash;and the tap is a
+      twirly affair with two spouts, and on pressing a little lever water gushes
+      out of both and, theoretically, you may direct it where you please.
+      Practically I found that while I was directing one stream of water down on
+      to my hands, the other hit me in the eye or the ear, and when I got that
+      right the first took advantage of inattention and deluged me round the
+      waist. It may be my inexperience, but I do not like Russian basins. It was
+      running water with a vengeance, it all ran away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, I did the best I could, and after, as my face was a little rough
+      and sore from the hot sun of the day before, I took out a jar of hazeline
+      cream and began to rub it on my cheeks. This proceeding aroused intense
+      interest in the women around. What they imagined the cream was for I don't
+      know, but one and all they came and begged some, and as long as that pot
+      held out every woman within range had hazeline cream daubed on her
+      weather-beaten cheeks, and they omitted to rub it off, apparently
+      considering it ornamental. However, hazeline cream is a pleasant
+      preparation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having dressed, Buchanan and I had the long day before us, and I did not
+      dare leave the railway station to explore because I was uneasy about my
+      luggage. I had had it put in the corner of the refreshment-room and as far
+      as I could see no one was responsible for it, and as people were coming
+      and going the livelong day I felt bound to keep an eye upon it. I also
+      awaited with a good deal of interest the gentleman with the variegated
+      uniform and my ten-pound note. He came at last, and explained in French
+      that he had got the change but he could not give it to me till the train
+      came in because of the thieves and robbers, as if he would insist upon
+      tearing the veil of romance I had mapped round Siberia. And God forgive me
+      that I doubted the honesty of a very kindly, courteous gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a long, long day because there was really nothing to do save to
+      walk about for Buchanan's benefit, and I diversified things by taking odd
+      meals in the refreshment-room whenever I felt I really must do something.
+      But I was very tired. I began to feel I had been travelling too long, and
+      I really think if it had not been for Buchanan's sympathy I should have
+      wept. No one seemed at all certain when the next train west might be
+      expected, opinions, judging by fingers pointing at the clock, varying
+      between two o'clock in the afternoon and three o'clock next morning.
+      However, as the evening shadows were beginning to fall a train did come
+      in, and my friend in uniform, suddenly appearing, declared it was the
+      western train. Taking me by the hand, he led me into a carriage and,
+      shutting the door and drawing down the blinds, placed in my hands change
+      for my ten-pound note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guard your purse, Madame,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;guard your purse. There are thieves
+      and robbers everywhere!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So all the way across Siberia had I been warned of the unsafe condition of
+      the country. At Kharbin, at Nikolayeusk, at Blagoveschensk men whose good
+      faith I could not doubt assured me that a ten-pound note and helplessness
+      was quite likely to spell a sudden and ignominious end to my career, and
+      this was in the days when no one doubted the power of the Tsar, a bitter
+      commentary surely on an autocracy. What the condition of Siberia must be
+      now, with rival factions fighting up and down the land, and released
+      German prisoners throwing the weight of their strength in with the
+      Bolshevists, I tremble to think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he made sure I had carefully hidden my money and thoroughly realised
+      the gravity of the situation, my friend offered to get my ticket, a
+      second-class ticket, he suggested. I demurred. I am not rich and am not
+      above saving my pennies, but a first-class ticket was so cheap, and
+      ensured so much more privacy, that a second-class was an economy I did not
+      feel inclined to make. He pointed round the carriage in which we were
+      seated. Was this not good enough for anyone? It was. I had to admit it,
+      and the argument was clinched by the fact that there was not a first-class
+      carriage on the train. The ticket only cost about five pounds and another
+      pound bought a ticket for Buchanan. We got in&mdash;my friend in need got
+      in with me, that misjudged friend; it seemed he was the stationmaster at a
+      little place a little way down the line&mdash;and we were fairly off on
+      our road to the West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XV&mdash;ON A RUSSIAN MILITARY TRAIN
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> was in the train
+      at last, fairly on my way home, and I was glad. But I wasn't glad for very
+      long. I began to wish myself back in the railway station at Stretensk,
+      where at least I had fresh air. At first I had the window open and a
+      corner seat. There are only two people on a seat in a Russian
+      long-distance train, because when night falls they let down the seat
+      above, which makes a bunk for the second person. But I was second class
+      and my compartment opened without a door into the other compartments in
+      the carriage, also two more bunks appeared crossways, and they were all
+      filled with people. We were four women, two men who smoked, a baby who
+      cried, and my little dog. I spread out my rugs and cushions, and when I
+      wanted the window open the majority were against me. Not only was the
+      window shut, but every ventilating arrangement was tightly closed also,
+      and presently the atmosphere was pestilential. I grew desperate. I
+      wandered out of the carriage and got on to the platform at the end, where
+      the cold wind&mdash;for all it was August&mdash;cut me like a knife. The
+      people objected to that cold wind coming in, and the next time I wandered
+      out for a breath of fresh air I found the door barred and no prayers of
+      mine would open it. In that carriage the people were packed like sardines,
+      but though I was three-quarters suffocated no one else seemed at all the
+      worse. I couldn't have looked at breakfast next morning, but the rest of
+      the company preened themselves and fed cheerfully from the baskets they
+      carried. Then at last I found a student going to a Western Siberian
+      university who spoke a little French and through him I told the
+      authorities that if I could not be transferred to a first-class carriage I
+      was to be left behind at the next station. I had spent a night in a
+      station and I knew all about it; it wasn't nice, but it was infinitely
+      preferable to a night in a crowded second-class carriage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a little while the train master came and with the aid of the student
+      informed me that there would be a first-class carriage a little farther on
+      and if there was room I should go in it, also we would know in an hour or
+      so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So I bore up, and at a little town in the hills I was taken to a
+      first-class compartment. There were three&mdash;that is, six bunks&mdash;making
+      up half of a second-class carriage, and they were most luxurious, with
+      mirrors and washing arrangements complete. The one I entered was already
+      occupied by a very stout woman who, though we did not know any tongue in
+      common, made me understand she was going to a place we would reach next
+      morning for an operation, and she apologised&mdash;most unnecessarily but
+      most courteously&mdash;for making me take the top bunk. She had a big
+      Irish setter with her whom she called &ldquo;Box&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Anglisky,&rdquo; as she said&mdash;and
+      &ldquo;Box&rdquo; was by no means as courteous and friendly as his mistress, and not
+      only objected to Buchanan's presence but said so in no measured terms. I
+      had to keep my little dog up on the top bunk all the time, where he peered
+      over and whimpered protestingly at intervals. There was one drawback, and
+      so kind and hospitable was my stable companion that I hardly liked to
+      mention it, but the atmosphere in that compartment you could have cut with
+      a knife. Wildly I endeavoured to open the windows, and she looked at me in
+      astonishment. But I was so vehement that the student was once more brought
+      along to interpret, and then everybody took a turn at trying to open that
+      window. I must say I think it was exceedingly kind and hospitable of them,
+      for these people certainly shrank from the dangers of a draught quite as
+      much as I did from the stuffiness of a shut window. But it was all to no
+      purpose. That window had evidently never been opened since the carriage
+      was made and it held on gallantly to the position it had taken up. They
+      consulted together, and at length the student turned to me:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Calm yourself, Madame, calm yourself; a man will come with an
+      instrument.&rdquo; And three stations farther down the line a man did appear
+      with an instrument and opened that window, and I drew in deep breaths of
+      exceedingly dusty fresh air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lady in possession and I shared our breakfast. She made the tea, and
+      she also cleaned out the kettle by the simple process of emptying the tea
+      leaves into the wash-hand basin. That, as far as I saw, was the only use
+      she made of the excellent washing arrangements supplied by the railway.
+      But it is not for me to carp, she was so kind, and bravely stood dusty
+      wind blowing through the compartment all night just because I did not like
+      stuffiness. And when she was gone, O luxury! Buchanan and I had the
+      carriage to ourselves all the way to Irkutsk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this was Siberia. We were going West, slowly it is true, but with
+      wonderful swiftness I felt when I remembered&mdash;and how should I not
+      remember every moment of the time?&mdash;that this was the great and
+      sorrowful road along which the exiles used to march, that the summer sun
+      would scorch them, these great plains would be snow-covered and the
+      biting, bitter wind would freeze them long before they reached their
+      destination. I looked ahead into the West longingly; but I was going
+      there, would be there in less than a fortnight at the most, while their
+      reluctant feet had taken them slowly, the days stretched into weeks, the
+      weeks into months, and they were still tramping east into an exile that
+      for all they knew would be lifelong. Ah! but this road must have been
+      watered with blood and tears. Every river, whether they were ferried over
+      it or went across on the ice, must have seemed an added barrier to the man
+      or woman thinking of escape; every forest would mean for them either
+      shelter or danger, possibly both, for I had not forgotten the tigers of
+      the Amur and the bears and wolves that are farther west. And yet the
+      steppes, those hopeless plains, must have afforded still less chance of
+      escape.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Oh! my early ideas were right after all. Nature was jailer enough here in
+      Siberia. Men did escape, we know, but many more must have perished in the
+      attempt, and many, many must have resigned themselves to their bitter
+      fate, for surely all the forces of earth and air and sky had ranged
+      themselves on the side of the Tsar. This beautiful country, and men had
+      marched along it in chains!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Chita, greatly to my surprise, my <i>sotnik</i> of Cossacks joined the
+      train, and we greeted eaeh other as old friends. Indeed I was pleased to
+      see his smiling face again, and Buchanan benefited largely, for many a
+      time when I was not able to take him out for a little run our friend came
+      along and did it for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The platforms at Siberian stations are short and this troop train, packed
+      with soldiers, was long, so that many a time our carriage never drew up at
+      the platform at all. This meant that the carriage was usually five feet
+      from the ground, and often more. I am a little woman and five feet was all
+      I could manage, when it was more it was beyond me. Of course I could have
+      dropped down, but it would have been impossible to haul myself up again,
+      to say nothing of getting Buchanan on board. A Russian post train&mdash;and
+      this troop train was managed to all intents and purposes as a post train&mdash;stops
+      at stations along the line so that the passengers may get food, and five
+      minutes before it starts it rings a &ldquo;Make ready&rdquo; bell one minute before it
+      rings a second bell, &ldquo;Take your seats,&rdquo; and with a third bell off the
+      train goes. And it would have gone inexorably even though I, having
+      climbed down, had been unable to climb up again. Deeply grateful then were
+      Buehanan and I to the <i>sotnik</i> of Cossacks, who recognised our
+      limitations and never forgot us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I liked these Russian post trains far better than the train <i>de luxe</i>,
+      with its crowd and its comforts and its cosmopolitan atmosphere. A Russian
+      post train in those days had an atmosphere of its own. It was also much
+      cheaper. From Stretensk to Petrograd, including Buehanan, the cost was a
+      little over nine pounds for the tickets, and I bought my food by the way.
+      It was excellent and very cheap. All the things I had bought in Kharbin,
+      especially the kettles, came into use once more. The moment the train
+      stopped out tumbled the soldiers, crowds and crowds of them, and raced for
+      the provision stalls and for the large boilers full of water that are a
+      feature of every Russian station on the overland line. These boilers are
+      always enclosed in a building just outside the railway station, and the
+      spouts for the boiling water, two, three and sometimes four in a row, come
+      out through the walls. Beside every spout is an iron handle which, being
+      pulled, brings the boiling water gushing out. Russia even in those days
+      before the revolution struck me as strangely democratic, for the soldiers,
+      the non-commissioned officers, the officers and everyone else on the train
+      mingled in the struggle for hot water. I could never have got mine filled,
+      but my Cossack friend always remembered me and if he did not come himself
+      sent someone to get my kettles. Indeed everyone vied in being kind to the
+      Englishwoman, to show, I think, their good will to the only representative
+      of the Allied nation on the train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was at breakfast-time one warm morning I first made the acquaintance of
+      &ldquo;that very great officer,&rdquo; as the others called him, the captain of the <i>Askold</i>.
+      He was in full naval uniform, and at that time I was not accustomed to
+      seeing naval officers in uniform outside their ships, and he was racing
+      along the platform, a little teapot in one hand, intent on filling it with
+      hot water to make coffee. He was not ashamed to pause and come to the
+      assistance of a foreigner whom he considered the peasants were shamefully
+      overcharging. They actually wanted her to pay a farthing a piece for their
+      largest cucumbers! He spoke French and so we were able to communicate, and
+      he was kind enough to take an interest in me and declare that he himself
+      would provide me with cucumbers. He got me four large ones and when I
+      wanted to repay him he laughed and said it was hardly necessary as they
+      only cost a halfpenny! He had the compartment next to mine and that
+      morning he sent me in a glass of coffee&mdash;we didn't run to cups on
+      that train. Excellent coffee it was too. Indeed I was overwhelmed with
+      provisions. One woman does not want very much to eat, but unless I
+      supplied myself liberally and made it patent to all that I had enough and
+      more than enough I was sure to be supplied by my neighbours out of
+      friendship for my nation. From the Cossack officer, from a Hussar officer
+      and his wife who had come up from Ugra in Mongolia, and from the captain
+      of the <i>Askold</i> I was always receiving presents. Chickens, smoked
+      fish&mdash;very greasy, in a sheet of paper, eaten raw and very excellent&mdash;raspberries
+      and blue berries, to say nothing of cucumbers, were rained upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At some stations there was a buffet and little tables set about where the
+      first and second class passengers could sit down and have <i>déjeuner</i>,
+      or dinner, but oftener, especially in the East, we all dashed out, first,
+      second and third class, and at little stalls presided over by men with
+      kerchiefs on their heads and sturdy bare feet, women that were a joy to me
+      after the effete women of China, bought what we wanted, took it back with
+      us into the carriages and there ate it. I had all my table things in a
+      basket, including a little saucer for Buchanan. It was an exceedingly
+      economical arrangement, and I have seldom enjoyed food more. The bread and
+      butter was excellent. You could buy fine white bread, and bread of varying
+      quality to the coarse black bread eaten by the peasant, and I am bound to
+      say I very much like fine white bread. There was delicious cream; there
+      were raspberries and blue berries to be bought for a trifle; there were
+      lemons for the tea; there was German beet sugar; there were roast chickens
+      at sixpence apiece, little pasties very excellent for twopence-halfpenny,
+      and rapchicks, a delicious little bird a little larger than a partridge,
+      could be bought for fivepence, and sometimes there was plenty of honey.
+      Milk, if a bottle were provided, could be had for a penny-farthing a
+      quart, and my neighbours soon saw that I did not commit the extravagance
+      of paying three times as much for it, which was what it cost if you bought
+      the bottle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The English, they said, were very rich! and they were confirmed in their
+      belief when they found how I bought milk. Hard-boiled eggs were to be had
+      in any quantity, two and sometimes three for a penny-farthing. I am
+      reckoning the kopeck as a farthing. These were first-class prices, the
+      soldiers bought much more cheaply. Enough meat to last a man a day could
+      be bought for a penny-farthing, and good meat too&mdash;such meat nowadays
+      I should pay at least five shillings for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was all this abundance because the exiles had tramped wearily across the
+      steppes? How much hand had they had in the settling of the country? I
+      asked myself the question many times, but nowhere found an answer. The
+      stations were generally crowded, but the country round was as empty as it
+      had been along the Amur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the train went steadily on. Very slowly though&mdash;we only went at
+      the rate of three hundred versts a day, why, I do not know. There we stuck
+      at platforms where there was nothing to do but walk up and down and look
+      at the parallel rails coming out of the East on the horizon and running
+      away into the West on the horizon again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall never arrive,&rdquo; I said impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Madame, we arrive, we arrive,&rdquo; said the Hussar officer, and he spoke
+      a little sadly. And then I remembered that for him arrival meant parting
+      with his comely young wife and his little son. They had with them a
+      fox-terrier whom I used to ask into my compartment to play with Buchanan,
+      and they called him &ldquo;Sport.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An English name,&rdquo; they said smilingly. If ever I have a fox-terrier I
+      shall call him &ldquo;Sport,&rdquo; in kindly remembrance of the owners of the little
+      friend I made on that long, long journey across the Old World. And the
+      Hussar officer's wife, I put it on record, liked fresh air as much as I
+      did myself. As I walked up and down the train, even though it was warm
+      summer weather, I always knew our two carriages because in spite of the
+      dust we had our windows open. The rest of the passengers shut theirs most
+      carefully. The second class were packed, and the third class were simply
+      on top of one another&mdash;I should not think they could have inserted
+      another baby&mdash;and the reek that came from the open doors and that
+      hung about the people that came out of them was disgusting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I used to ask my Cossack friend to tea sometimes&mdash;I could always buy
+      cakes by the wayside&mdash;and he was the only person I ever met who took
+      salt with his tea. He assured me the Mongolians always did so, but I must
+      say though I have tried tea in many ways I don't like that custom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Kobdo, ten thousand feet among the mountains in the west of Mongolia,
+      was a great lama, and the Cossack was full of this man's prophecy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three emperors, said the lama, would fight. One would be overwhelmed and
+      utterly destroyed, the other would lose immense sums of money, and the
+      third would have great glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Tsar, Madame,&rdquo; said my friend, &ldquo;the Tsar, of course, is the third.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I wonder what part he took in the revolution. He was a Balt, a man from
+      the Baltic Provinces, heart and soul with the Poles, and he did not even
+      call himself a Russian. Well, the Tsar has been overwhelmed, but which is
+      the one who is to have great glory? After all, the present is no very
+      great time for kings and emperors. I am certainly not taking any stock in
+      them as a whole. Perhaps that lama meant the President of the United
+      States!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We went round Lake Baikal, and the Holy Sea, that I had seen before one
+      hard plain of glittering ice, lay glittering now, beautiful still in the
+      August sunshine. There were white sails on it and a steamer or two, and
+      men were feverishly working at alterations on the railway. The Angara ran
+      swiftly, a mighty river, and we steamed along it into the Irkutsk station,
+      which is by no means Irkutsk, for the town is&mdash;Russian fashion&mdash;four
+      miles away on the other side of the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Irkutsk it seemed to me we began to be faintly Western again. And the
+      exiles who had come so far I suppose abandoned hope here. All that they
+      loved&mdash;all their life&mdash;lay behind. I should have found it hard
+      to turn back and go east myself now. What must that facing east have been
+      for them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They turned us out of the train, and Buchanan and I were ruefully
+      surveying our possessions, heaped upon the platform, wondering how on
+      earth we were to get them taken to the cloakroom and how we should get
+      them out again supposing they were taken, when the captain of the <i>Askold</i>
+      appeared with a porter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would Madame permit,&rdquo; he asked, not as if he were conferring a favour,
+      &ldquo;that her luggage be put with mine in the cloakroom?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Madame could have hugged him. Already the dusk was falling, the soft, warm
+      dusk, and the people were hastening to the town or to the
+      refreshment-rooms. There would be no train that night, said my kind
+      friend, some time in the morning perhaps, but certainly not that night. I
+      sighed. Again I was adrift, and it was not a comfortable feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Madame desired to dine&mdash;&mdash; Madame did desire to dine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then if Madame permits&mdash;&mdash; Of course Madame permitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was most grateful. And we dined together at the same table outside the
+      station restaurant&mdash;I like that fashion of dining outside&mdash;under
+      the brilliant glare of the electric light. He arranged everything for me,
+      even to getting some supper for Buchanan. And I forgot the exiles who had
+      haunted me, forgot this was Siberia. Here in the restaurant, save for the
+      Tartar waiters, it might almost have been France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps,&rdquo; said my companion courteously as we were having coffee, &ldquo;Madame
+      would care to come to my hotel. I could interpret for her and here no one
+      speaks anything but Russian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again I could have hugged him. I intimated my dressing-bag was in the
+      cloakroom, but he smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For one night!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He himself had nothing, so there and then we got into one of the usual
+      decrepit landaus and went to the town, to Irkutsk on the Angara, in the
+      heart of Siberia. If in my girlish days when I studied the atlas of the
+      world so carefully I could have known that one day I should be driving
+      into Irkutsk, that map would have been glorified for ever and a day; but I
+      could never have realised, never, that it would be set in a summer land,
+      warm as my own country, and that I should feel it a great step on towards
+      the civilisation of the West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was night, and here and there clustering electric lights glittered like
+      diamonds, making darker the spaces in between. In the morning I saw that
+      the capital of Eastern Siberia, like all the other towns of that country,
+      is a regular frontier town. There were the same wide streets grass-grown
+      at the edges, great houses and small houses side by side, and empty spaces
+      where as yet there were no houses. We went to the Central Hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not go to an expensive hotel,&rdquo; my companion told me, &ldquo;this is a
+      moderate one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But if it were moderate it certainly was a very large and nice hotel.
+      Russian hotels do not as a rule provide food, the restaurant is generally
+      separate, but we had already dined. That naval officer made all
+      arrangements for me. He even explained to an astonished chamber-maid with
+      her hair done in two long plaits that I must have all the windows open and
+      when I tried for a bath did his best for me. But again, he explained,
+      Russians as a rule go to a bath-house, and there was only one bathroom in
+      this hotel; it had been engaged for two hours by a gentleman, and he
+      thought, seeing I should have to start early in the morning, it might be
+      rather late for me to have a bath then, but if I liked in the morning it
+      would be at my service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If anyone had told me in the old days that going to Irkutsk I should be
+      deeply interested in a bath!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I engaged that bath for an hour in the morning as that seemed to be the
+      correct thing to do. Then I went to bed and heartily envied Buchanan, who
+      did not have to bother about toilet arrangements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning early there was a knock at the door and when I said &ldquo;Come
+      in,&rdquo; half expecting tea, there was my naval officer in full uniform
+      smilingly declaring my bath was ready, he had paid the bill, and I could
+      pay him back when we were on board the train. The chamber-maid, with her
+      hair still done in two plaits&mdash;I rather fancy she had slept in them&mdash;conducted
+      me to the bathroom, and I pass over the difficulty of doing without brush
+      and comb and tooth-brush. But I washed the dust out of my hair, and when I
+      was as tidy as I could manage I joined the captain of the <i>Askold</i>
+      and we drove back through the town to the railway station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The station was a surging mass of people all talking at once, and all, I
+      suppose, objurgating the railway management, but we two had breakfast
+      together in the pleasant sunlight. We had fresh rolls and butter and
+      coffee and cream and honey&mdash;I ask no better breakfast when these
+      things are good&mdash;and meanwhile people, officials, came and went,
+      discussing evidently some important matter with my friend. He departed for
+      a moment, and then the others that I had known came up, my Cossack friend
+      and the Hussar officer, and told me that the outgoing train was a military
+      train, it would be impossible for a woman, a civilian and a foreigner at
+      that, to go on it. I said the captain of the <i>Askold</i> had assured me
+      I could, and they shook their heads and then said hopefully, well, he was
+      a very great officer, the captain of a ship, and I realised that no lesser
+      authority could possibly have managed this thing for me. And even he was
+      doubtful, for when he came back and resumed his interrupted breakfast he
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The train is full. The military authorities will not allow you on board.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That really did seem to me tragedy at the moment. I forgot the sorrowful
+      people who would gladly enough have stayed their journey at Irkutsk. But
+      their faces were set East. I forgot that after all a day or two out of a
+      life would not matter very much, or rather I think I hated to part from
+      these kindly friends I had made on the train. I suppose I looked my
+      disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait. Wait. It is not yet finished,&rdquo; said my friend kindly. &ldquo;They give me
+      two compartments&rdquo;&mdash;I felt then he was indeed &ldquo;a very great officer,&rdquo;
+       for the people were packed in that train, tier upon tier, like herrings in
+      a barrel&mdash;&ldquo;and I cannot sleep in four bunks. It is ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That may have been, but it was kindness itself of him to establish a
+      stranger in one of those compartments. It was most comfortable, and
+      Buchanan and I being established, and my luggage having come safely to
+      hand, I proceeded to make the most of the brush and comb that had come
+      once more into my possession, and I felt that the world was a very good
+      place indeed as we sped across the green plain in the sunny morning. I
+      could hardly believe that this goodly land was the one to which I had
+      always been accustomed to think men went as to a living death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I forgot other folks' troubles in my own, for envious eyes were
+      cast upon the spare bunk in my compartment. No one would have dreamt of
+      interfering had the sailor insisted upon having all four for himself, but
+      since he had parted with the rights of one compartment to a foreign woman,
+      it was evident that other people, crowded out, began to think of their own
+      comfort. Various people interviewed me. I am afraid I understood
+      thoroughly what they wanted, but I did not understand Russian, and I made
+      the most of that disability. Also all my friends who spoke French kept out
+      of the way, so I suppose they did not wish to aid and abet in upsetting my
+      comfort. At last a most extraordinary individual with a handkerchief tied
+      round his neck in lieu of a collar and a little tourist cap on the back of
+      his head was brought, and he informed me in French that there was a doctor
+      in the hospital section of the train who had not been in bed for a week,
+      they could not turn the soldiers out, they must have rest, would I allow
+      him to sleep in my compartment?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; he said, and the officials standing round emphasised the remark,
+      if it needed emphasis, &ldquo;it is war time. The train is for the soldiers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly I was here on sufferance. They had a right to turn me out if
+      they liked. So the doctor came and turned in in the top bunk, and his
+      long-drawn snores took away from my sense of privacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I don't think he liked it very much, for presently he was succeeded by a
+      train official, very drunk, though I am bound to say he was the only
+      drunken man I saw on all that long train journey from Stretensk to
+      Petrograd. It was a little unlucky we were at such close quarters.
+      Everyone, too, was very apologetic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was a good fellow. It was an unfortunate accident and he would be very
+      much ashamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose he was, for the next day he too disappeared and his place was
+      taken by a professor from one of the Siberian universities who was seeking
+      radium. He was a nice old gentleman who had learned English but had never
+      had the chance of hearing it spoken. Where he went in the daytime I do not
+      know, probably to a friend's compartment, and Buchanan and I had the place
+      to ourselves. We could and did invite the Cossack officer and the Hussar
+      officer and his belongings and the naval man to tea, and we had great
+      games with the little fox-terrier &ldquo;Sport&rdquo; from next door, but when night
+      fell the professor turned up and notified me he was about to go to bed.
+      Then he retired and I went to bed first on the lower seat. He knocked,
+      came in and climbed up to his bunk, and we discoursed on the affairs of
+      the world, I correcting his curious pronunciation. He really was a man of
+      the world; he was the sort of man I had expected to meet in Siberia, only
+      I had never imagined him as free and sharing a railway compartment with
+      me. I should have expected to find him toiling across the plains with the
+      chains that bound his ankles hitched to his belt for convenience of
+      carrying. But he looked and he spoke as any other cultivated old gentleman
+      might have spoken, and looking back I see that his views of the war, given
+      in the end of August, 1914, were quite the soundest I have ever listened
+      to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Allies will win,&rdquo; he used to say, &ldquo;yes, they will win.&rdquo; And he shook
+      his head. &ldquo;But it will be a long war, and the place will be drenched in
+      blood first. Two years, three years, I think four years.&rdquo; I wonder if he
+      foresaw the chaos that would fall upon Russia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These views were very different from those held by the other men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame,&rdquo; the Cossack would say, laughing, &ldquo;do you know a good hotel in
+      Berlin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I looked up surprised. &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; he went on, &ldquo;I engage a room there. We
+      go to Berlin!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Peace dictated at Berlin,&rdquo; said they all again and again, &ldquo;peace dictated
+      at Berlin.&rdquo; This was during the first onward rush of the Russians. Then
+      there came a setback, two towns were taken and the Germans demanded an
+      indemnity of twenty thousand pounds apiece.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said the Cossack grimly, and the Hussar nodded his head.
+      &ldquo;They have set the tune. Now we know what to ask.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the professor looked grave. &ldquo;Many towns will fall,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another thing that struck me was the friendly relations of the officers
+      with those under them. As the only representative of their Western Ally on
+      the train, I was something of a curiosity, and soldiers and
+      non-commissioned officers liked to make excuse to look at me. I only
+      wished I had been a little smarter and better-looking for the sake of my
+      country, for I had had no new clothes since the end of 1912. However, I
+      had to make the best of it, and the men came to me on the platforms or to
+      my compartment without fear. If by chance they knew a little French they
+      spoke to me, helped out by their officers if their vocabulary ran short.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Madame, Madame,&rdquo; said an old non-commissioned officer, &ldquo;would you be so
+      good as to tell me how to pronounce the English 'zee'? I teach myself
+      French, now I teach myself English.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, they had all been good to me and I had no means of repaying their
+      kindness save vicariously, so I took him in hand and with the aid of a
+      booklet published by the Wagons Lit Train du Luxe describing the journey
+      across Siberia we wrestled with the difficulties of the English &ldquo;th.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a long long journey. We crept across the great steppes, we lingered
+      by stations, sometimes there were lakes, sometimes great rivers, but
+      always the great plains. Far as the eye could see rolled the extent of
+      green under the clear blue sky; often we saw herds of cattle and mobs of
+      horses, and again and again companies of soldiers, and yet so vast is the
+      country the sensation left upon the stranger is of emptiness, of a rich
+      and fertile land crying out for inhabitants. I looked at it from the train
+      with eager eyes, but I began to understand how there had grown up in my
+      mind the picture of this lovely land as a dark and terrible place. To the
+      prisoners who came here this plain, whether it were green and smiling, or
+      whether it were deep in white snow, could only have been the barrier that
+      cut them off from home and hope, from all that made life dear. How could
+      they take up their broken lives here, they who for the most part were
+      dwellers in the cities?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here was a regiment of soldiers; it was nothing, nothing, set in the vast
+      plain. The buttercups and daisies and purple vetches were trampled down
+      for a great space where men had been exercising or camping; but it was
+      nothing. There were wide stretches of country where the cattle were
+      peacefully feeding and where the flowers turned up smiling faces to the
+      blue sky for miles and miles, making me forget that this had been the land
+      of shadowed lives in the past and that away in the West men were fighting
+      for their very existence, locked in a death-grip such as the world has
+      never before seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was well there was something to look out upon, for that train was
+      horrid. I realised something of the horrors of the post-houses in which
+      the prisoners had been locked at night. We could get good food at every
+      station, but in the train we were too close on the ground and the reek of
+      us went up to heaven. I felt as if the atmosphere of the train desecrated
+      the fresh, clear air of the great plain over which we passed, as if we
+      must breed disease. The journey seemed interminable, and what I should do
+      when it ended I did not know, for opinion was fairly unanimous: they were
+      sure I could not get to England!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With many apologies the captain of the <i>Askold</i> permitted himself to
+      ask how I was off for money. I was a total stranger, met on a train, and a
+      foreigner! I told him I had a little over forty pounds and if that were
+      not enough I had thought to be able to send to London for more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I doubt if even letters can get through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And I sighed that then I did not know what I should do, for I had no
+      friends in Petrograd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon, Madame,&rdquo; said he remonstrantly, and he gave me the address of his
+      wife and daughters. He told me to go and see them; he assured me that
+      everybody in Russia now wanted to learn English, that I would have no
+      difficulty in getting pupils and so do myself very comfortably &ldquo;till we
+      make a passage to England again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just before we reached Cheliabynsk he came and told me that he had heard
+      there was a west-bound express with one place vacant, a ship awaited him
+      and speed was very necessary, therefore he was leaving this train. Then at
+      one of the greater stopping-places he bowed low over my hand, bade me
+      farewell, made a dash and caught the express. I have never either seen or
+      heard of him since, but he remains in my mind as one of the very kindly
+      men I have met on my way through the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Cheliabynsk we spent the livelong day, for there the main part of the
+      train went on to Moscow with the soldiers, while we who wanted to go to
+      Petrograd caught a train in the evening. I was glad to find that the
+      Hussar officer and the Cossack were both bound for Petrograd. And here we
+      came in touch once more with the West. There was a bookstall, and though I
+      could not buy an English paper I could and did buy an English book, one of
+      John Galsworthy's in the Tauchnitz edition. It was a great delight to come
+      in contact once more with something I could read. There was a big
+      refreshment-room here with all manner of delectable things to eat, only we
+      had passed beyond the sturgeon, and caviare was no longer to be had save
+      at a price that was prohibitive to a woman who had had as much as she
+      could eat and who anyhow was saving her pennies in case of contingencies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But one thing I did have, and that was a bath. In fact the whole train
+      bathed. Near the station was a long row of bath-houses, but each one I
+      visited&mdash;and they all seemed unpleasant places&mdash;was crowded with
+      soldiers. After a third attempt to get taken in my Cossack friend met me
+      and was shocked at the idea of my going to such a place; if I would trust
+      him he would take me to a proper place after <i>déjeuner</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally I trusted him gladly, and we got into one of the usual
+      broken-down landaus and drove away to the other side of the town to a row
+      of quite superior bath-houses. My friend declared he knew the place well,
+      he had been stationed here in &ldquo;the last revolution,&rdquo; as if revolutions
+      came as regularly as the seasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a gorgeous bath-house. That young man bought me soap; he bought me
+      some sort of loofah for scrubbing; he escorted me to three large rooms
+      which I engaged for a couple of hours and, much to the surprise of the
+      people, having had the windows opened, he left me, assuring me that the
+      carriage should return for me in two hours. There was plenty of hot water,
+      plenty of cold, and any amount of towels, and both Buchanan and I washed
+      the grime of the journey from us and then rested on the sofa in the
+      retiring-room. I read John Galsworthy and punctually to the moment I
+      descended to the street, clean and refreshed, and there our carriage
+      awaited us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We bought water-melons on our way back to the train, for the streets were
+      heaped up with the great dark green melons with the pink flesh that I had
+      not seen since I left Australia. Autumn was on the land and here were
+      watermelons proof thereof.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ever as we went west the cornfields increased. Most of the wheat was cut
+      and standing in golden-brown stooks waiting to be garnered by old men and
+      boys and sturdy country women and those who were left of her young men,
+      for Russia had by no means called out her last lines in 1914. There were
+      still great patches of forest, primeval forest, of dense fir, and I
+      remembered that here must be the haunts of the wolves and the bear with
+      which I had always associated Russia. More, though why I know not, my mind
+      flew back to the times of the nomad hordes who, coming out of Central
+      Asia, imposed their rule upon the fair-haired Aryan race that had settled
+      upon the northern plain of Europe. Those forests for me spelled Romance;
+      they took away from the feeling of commonplaceness that the breaking down
+      of my preconceived ideas of Siberia had engendered. Almost anything might
+      happen in a land that held such forests, and such rivers. Not that I was
+      allowed to see much of the rivers now. Someone always came in and drew
+      down the blinds in my compartment&mdash;I had one to myself since leaving
+      Cheliabynsk&mdash;and told me I must not go out on the platform whenever
+      we crossed a bridge. They were evidently taking precautions against spying
+      though they were too polite to say so. There were big towns with stations
+      packed to overflowing. At Perm we met some German prisoners of war, and
+      there were soldiers, soldiers everywhere, and at last one day in the first
+      week in September we steamed into Petrograd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVI&mdash;THE WAYS OF THE FINNS
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was evening and
+      we had arrived at Petrograd. For many years I had wanted to see the
+      northern capital. I had thought of it as a town planned by a genius,
+      slowly growing amid surrounding swamps, and in my childhood I had pictured
+      that genius as steadily working as a carpenter&mdash;in a white paper cap&mdash;having
+      always in his mind's eye the town that was to grow on the Baltic Sea, the
+      seaport that should give his country free access to the civilisation of
+      the West. He was a great hero of mine because of his efficiency; after all
+      I see no reason why I should dethrone him now that I realise he had the
+      faults of his time and his position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in life I find things always come differently to what one pictures
+      them. The little necessities of life will crop up and must be attended to
+      first and foremost. The first thought that came to me was that I had to
+      part with the friends I had made on the journey. Right away from the
+      borders of China the Cossack officer and I had travelled together; I had
+      met the Hussar officer and his wife soon after I had joined the train, and
+      we seemed to have come out of one world into another together. It made a
+      bond, and I for one was sorry to part. They were going to their own
+      friends or to a Russian hotel, and the general consensus of opinion was
+      that I would be more comfortable in a hotel where there were English or at
+      least French people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to the Grand Hotel, Madame,&rdquo; suggested the Hussar officer's wife, she
+      who spoke perfect French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Buchanan and I loaded our belongings on to a droshky that looked smart
+      after the ones I had been accustomed to in Asia, bade farewell to our
+      friends &ldquo;till after the war&rdquo;&mdash;the Cossack was coming to England then
+      &ldquo;to buy a dog&rdquo;&mdash;and drove to the Grand Hotel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Grand Hotel spoke perfect English, looked at me and&mdash;declined to
+      take me because I had a little dog. I was very much astonished, but
+      clearly I couldn't abandon Buehanan, so I went on to the Hotel
+      d'Angleterre, which also declined. I went from hotel to hotel and they all
+      said the same thing, they could not think of taking in anyone accompanied
+      by a dog. It was growing dark&mdash;it was dark, and after a fortnight on
+      the train I was weary to death. How could I think of the glories of the
+      Russian capital when I was wondering where I could find a resting-place? I
+      couldn't turn Buchanan adrift in the streets, I couldn't camp in the
+      streets myself, and the hotel porters who could speak English had no
+      suggestions to make as to where I could bestow my little friend in safety.
+      Six hotels we went to and everyone was firm and polite, they could not
+      take a dog. At last a hotel porter had a great idea, the Hotel Astoria
+      would take dogs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why on earth didn't someone tell me so before?&rdquo; I said, and promptly went
+      to the Hotel Astoria. It was rather like going to the Hotel Ritz, and
+      though I should like to stay at the Hotel Ritz I would not recommend it to
+      anyone who was fearing an unlimited stay in the country, who had only
+      forty pounds to her credit and was not at all sure she could get any more.
+      Still the Hotel Astoria took little dogs, actually welcomed them, and
+      charged four shillings a day for their keep. I forgot Peter the Great and
+      the building of the capital of Russia, revelling in the comforts of a
+      delightful room all mirrors, of a bathroom attached and a dinner that it
+      was worth coming half across the world to meet. My spirits rose and I
+      began to be quite sure that all difficulties would pass away, I should be
+      able to get back to England and there would be no need for that desperate
+      economy. It was delightful to go to bed in a still bed between clean white
+      sheets, to listen to the rain upon the window and to know that for this
+      night at least all was well. I had seen no English papers; I knew nothing
+      about the war, and it is a fact one's own comfort is very apt to colour
+      one's views of life. Buchanan agreed with me this was a very pleasant
+      world&mdash;as a rule I do find the world pleasant&mdash;it was impossible
+      anything could go wrong in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the next day I received a snub&mdash;a snub from my own people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went to the British Consulate full of confidence. Every foreigner I had
+      met all across the world had been so pleased to see me, had been so
+      courteous and kind, had never counted the cost when I wanted help, so that
+      I don't know what I didn't expect from my own countrymen. I looked forward
+      very mueh to meeting them. And the young gentleman in office snubbed me
+      properly. He wasn't wanting any truck with foolish women who crossed
+      continents; he didn't care one scrap whether I had come from Saghalien or
+      just walked down the Nevsky Prospekt; I was a nuisance anyway, his manner
+      gave me to understand, since I disturbed his peace and quiet, and the
+      sooner I took myself out of the country the better he would be pleased. He
+      just condescended to explain where I could get a ticket straight through
+      to Newcastle-on-Tyne; people were doing it every day; he didn't know
+      anything about the war, and his manner gave me to understand that it
+      wasn't his business to supply travellers with news. I walked out of that
+      office with all the jauntiness taken out of me. Possibly, I have thought
+      since, he was depressed at the news from France, perhaps someone was
+      jeering him because he had not joined up, or else he had wanted to join up
+      and was not allowed. It was unlucky that my first Englishman after so long
+      should be such a churlish specimen. I felt that unless my necessity was
+      dire indeed I should not apply to the British Consulate for help in an
+      emergency. I did not recover till I went to the company who sold through
+      tickets, across Finland, across Sweden and Norway, across the North Sea to
+      Newcastle-on-Tyne. There I bought a ticket for fifteen pounds which was to
+      carry me the whole way. It was a Swedish company, I think, and the office
+      was packed with people, Poles, Letts, Lithuanians and Russians, who were
+      naturalised Americans and who wanted to go home. Everybody took the
+      deepest interest in Buchanan, so much interest that the man in charge
+      asked me if I was going to take him, I said &ldquo;Of eourse,&rdquo; and he shook his
+      head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will never get him through Sweden. They are most strict.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Buchanan! Despair seized me. Having been to the British Consulate, I
+      knew it was no use seeking advice there. I suppose I was too tired or I
+      should have remembered that Americans are always kind and helpful and gone
+      there or even dared the British Embassy. But these ideas occurred to me
+      too late.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You may travel the world over and the places you visit will often remain
+      in your mind as pleasant or otherwise not because of any of their own
+      attributes, but because of the emotions you have suffered in them. Here
+      was I in St Petrograd, and instead of exploring streets and canals and
+      cathedrals and palaces my whole thoughts were occupied with the fate of my
+      little dog. I &ldquo;had given my heart to a dog to tear&rdquo; and I was suffering in
+      consequence. All the while I was in Petrograd&mdash;and I stayed there
+      three days looking for a way out&mdash;my thoughts were given to James
+      Buchanan. I discussed the matter with the authorities in the hotel who
+      could speak English, and finally Buchanan and I made a peregrination to
+      the Swedish Consulate. And though the Swedish Consulate was a deal more
+      civil and more interested in me and my doings than the English, in the
+      matter of a dog, even a nice little dog like Buchanan, they were firm&mdash;through
+      Sweden he could not go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I read in the paper the other day that the world might be divided into men
+      and women and people-who-hate-dogs, and these last will wonder what I was
+      making such a fuss about, but the men and women will understand. My dear
+      little companion and friend had made the lonely places pleasant for me and
+      I could not get him out of the country save by turning round and going
+      back across Europe, Asia and America!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went back to the place where I had bought my ticket. They also were
+      sympathetic. Everyone in the office was interested in the tribulations of
+      the cheerful little black and white dog who sat on the counter and wagged
+      a friendly tail. I had many offers to take care of him for me, and the
+      consensus of opinion was that he might be smuggled! And many tales were
+      told me of dogs taken across the borders in overcoats and muffs, or
+      drugged in baskets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That last appealed to me. Buchanan was just too big to cany hidden easily,
+      but he might be drugged and covered up in a basket. I went back to the
+      Astoria and sent for a vet. Also I bought a highly ornamental basket. The
+      porter thought I was cruel. He thought I might leave the dog with him till
+      after the war, but he translated the vet's opinion for me, and the vet
+      gave me some sulphonal. He assured me the little dog would be all right,
+      and I tried to put worrying thoughts away from me and to see Petrograd,
+      the capital of the Tsars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I had seen too much. There comes a moment, however keen you are on
+      seeing the world, when you want to see no new thing, when you want only to
+      close your eyes and rest, and I had arrived at that moment. The wide and
+      busy streets intersected with canals, the broad expanse of the Neva, the
+      cathedral and the Winter Palace were nothing to me; even the wrecked
+      German Embassy did not stir me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was glad then when the fourth morning found me on the Finland station.
+      The Finland station was crowded and the Finland train, with only second
+      and third class carnages and bound for Raumo, was crowded also, and it
+      appeared it did not know its way very well as the line had only just been
+      opened to meet the traffic west diverted from Germany. A fortnight before
+      no one had ever heard of Raumo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now for me the whole outlook was changed. This was no military train,
+      packed as it was, but a train of men, women and children struggling to get
+      out of the country, the flotsam and jetsam that come to the surface at the
+      beginning of a war. And I heard again for the first time since I left
+      Tientsin, worlds away, English spoken that was not addressed to me. To be
+      sure it was English with an accent, the very peculiar accent that belongs
+      to Russians, Lithuanians, Poles and Letts Americanised, and with it
+      mingled the nasal tones of a young musician from Central Russia who spoke
+      the language of his adopted land with a most exaggerated accent and the
+      leisurely, cultivated tones of Oxford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I had come from the East to the West!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The carriage was open from end to end and they would not allow Buchanan to
+      enter it. He, poor little man, in the gorgeous basket that he objected to
+      strongly, was banished to the luggage-van, and because the carriage was
+      hot, and also because I felt he would be lonely separated from me, I went
+      there and kept him company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in that van I met another Russian naval officer and deepened my
+      obligations to the Russian navy. He sat down beside me on one of the
+      boxes, a tall, broad-shouldered, fair man who looked like a Viking with
+      his moustache shaved off. I found to my joy he spoke English, and I
+      confided to him my difficulties with regard to breakfast. I was so old a
+      traveller by now I had learned the wisdom of considering carefully the
+      commissariat. He was going to the forts on the Finnish border of which he
+      was in command, but before he left the train we would arrive at a
+      refreshment-room, and he undertook to arrange matters for me. And so he
+      did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Petrograd does not get up early, at least the Hotel Astoria did not, and
+      the most I could manage before I left was a cup of coffee, but I made up
+      for it at that first refreshment-room. The naval officer took entire
+      charge and, revelling in his importance, I not only had a very good
+      breakfast but made the most of my chances and, filling up my basket with a
+      view to future comforts, bought good things so that I might be able to
+      exchange civilities with my fellow-passengers on the way to Raumo. I had
+      eggs and sausages and new bread and scones and a plentiful supply of
+      fruit, to say nothing of sugar and lemons and cream and meat for Buehanan&mdash;the
+      naval man looking on smiling&mdash;and when I had really done myself well
+      I turned to him and demanded what I ought to pay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing, Madame. In Russia when a gentleman takes a lady for refreshment
+      he pays!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Imagine my horror! And I had stocked my basket so lavishly!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My protests were useless. I was escorted back to our luggage-van and my
+      thoughts led gently from the coffee and eggs I had consumed and the
+      sausages and bread I had stowed away in my basket to the state of the war
+      as it struck the Russian naval mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had I heard about the sea fight in the Mediterranean? Not heard about the
+      little <i>Gloucester</i> attacking the <i>Goeben</i>, the little <i>Gloucester</i>
+      that the big German battleship could have eaten! A dwarf and a giant!
+      Madame! Madame! It was a sea fight that will go down through the ages!
+      Russia was ringing with it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know anyone in the English navy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said I had two brothers in the senior service, a little later and I
+      might have said three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then tell them,&rdquo; said he earnestly, &ldquo;we Russian sailors are proud to be
+      Allies of a nation that breeds such men as manned the <i>Gloucester!</i>&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Finnish border was soon reached and he left us, and the day went on
+      and discipline I suppose relaxed, for I brought Buchanan into the carriage
+      and made friends with the people who surrounded me. And then once again
+      did I bless the foresight of the Polish Jewess in Kharbin who had
+      impressed upon me the necessity for two kettles. They were a godsend in
+      that carriage. We commandeered glasses, we got hot water at wayside
+      stations and I made tea for all within reach, and a cup of tea to a
+      thirsty traveller, especially if that traveller be a woman, is certainly a
+      road to that traveller's good graces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finland is curiously different from Russia. They used to believe in the
+      old sailing-ship days that every Finn was a magician. Whether they are
+      magicians or not, they have a beautiful country, though its beauty is as
+      different from that of the Amur as the Thames is from the Murray in
+      far-away Australia. Gone were the wide spaces of the earth and the
+      primitive peoples. We wandered through cultivated lands, we passed lake
+      and river and woods, crossed a wonderful salmon river, skirted Finland's
+      inland sea: here and there was a castle dominating the farmhouses and
+      little towns, the trees were turning, just touched gently by Autumn's
+      golden fingers, and I remembered I had watched the tender green of the
+      spring awakening on the other side of the world, more, I had been
+      travelling ever since. It made me feel weary&mdash;weary. And yet it was
+      good to note the difference in these lands that I had journeyed over. The
+      air here was clear, clear as it had been in China; it had that curious
+      charm that is over scenery viewed through a looking-glass, a charm I can
+      express in no other words. Unlike the great rivers of Russia, the little
+      rivers brawled over the stones, companionable little streams that 'made
+      you feel you might own them, on their banks spend a pleasant afternoon,
+      returning to a cosy fire and a cheery home when the dusk was falling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this evening, our first day out, we, the little company in my
+      carriage, fell into trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We spoke among us many tongues, English, French, German, Polish, Russian,
+      Lettish, and one whose tongue was polyglot thought in Yiddish and came
+      from the streets, the &ldquo;mean streets&rdquo; of London, but not one amongst us
+      spoke Finnish, the language of the magicians, or could even understand one
+      word of it. This was unfortunate, for the Films either spoke no language
+      but their own or had a grudge against us and declined to understand us.
+      That didn't prevent them from turning us out that night in a railway
+      station in the heart of Finland and leaving us to discover for ourselves
+      that every hotel in the little town was full to overflowing! Once more I
+      was faced with it&mdash;a night in a railway station. But my predicament
+      was not so bad shared with others who spoke my language. There was the
+      Oxford man and the musician with a twang, there was the wife of an
+      American lawyer with her little boy and the wife of an American doctor
+      with her little girls&mdash;they all spoke English of sorts, used it
+      habitually&mdash;and there were four Austrian girls making their way back
+      to some place in Hungary. Of course, technically, they were our enemies,
+      while the Americans were neutral, but we all went in together. The
+      Russian-American musician had been in Leipsic and was most disgustingly
+      full of the mighty strength of Germany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The refreshment-rooms were shut, the whole place was in darkness, but it
+      was a mild night, with a gorgeous September moon sailing out into the
+      clear sky, and personally I should not have minded spreading my rugs and
+      sleeping outside. I should have liked it, in fact, but the tales of the
+      insecurity of Siberia still lingered in my consciousness, and when the
+      Oxford man said that one of the porters would put us up in his house I
+      gladly went along with all the others and, better still, took along my
+      bundles of rugs and cushions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The places that I have slept in! That porter had a quaint little wooden
+      house set in a garden and the whole place might have been lifted bodily
+      out of Hans Andersen. We had the freedom of the kitchen, a very clean
+      kitchen, and we made tea there and ate what we had brought in our baskets.
+      The Austrian girls had a room to themselves, I lent my rugs to the young
+      men and they made shift with them in the entrance porch, and the best
+      sitting-room was turned over to the women and children and me. Two very
+      small beds were put up very close together and into them got the two women
+      and three children, and I was accommodated with a remarkably Lilliputian
+      sofa. I am not a big woman, but it would not hold me, and as for Buchanan,
+      he looked at me in disgust, said a bed was a proper place for a dog and
+      promptly jumped on it. But it was full to overflowing of women and
+      children sleeping the sleep of the utterly weary and he as promptly jumped
+      off again and the next moment was sitting up in front of my sofa with his
+      little front paws hanging down. He was a disgusted dog. He always begged
+      when he wanted me to give him something, and now he begged to show me he
+      was really in need of a bed. There were great uncurtained windows on two
+      sides of that room, there were flowers and ferns in pots growing in it,
+      and the full moon strcamed in and showed me everything: the crowded,
+      rather gimcrack furniture, the bucket that contained water for us to wash
+      in in the morning, the bed full of sleeping women and children and the
+      little black and white dog sitting up in protest against what he
+      considered the discomforts of the situation. What I found hard to bear
+      were the hermetically sealed windows&mdash;the women had been afraid of
+      draughts for the children&mdash;so as soon as that night wore through and
+      daylight came stealing through the windows I dressed quietly and, stepping
+      across the sleeping young men at the door, went outside with Buchanan to
+      explore Finland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our porter evidently ran some sort of tea gardens, for there were large
+      swings set up, swings that would hold four and six people at once, and we
+      tried them, much to Buchanan's discomfiture. We went for a walk up the
+      street, a country town street of little wooden houses set in little
+      gardens, and over all lay a Sabbath calm. It was Sunday, and the people
+      slept, and the autumn sunlight made the whole place glorious. There is
+      such rest and peace about the autumn: everything has been accomplished and
+      now is the fullness of time. I never know which season I like best, each
+      has its own beauty, but I shall always think of Finland as a land of
+      little things, charming little things bathed in the autumn sunlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the whole party were awake we found some difficulty in getting
+      something to eat. The porter could not supply us, and at the station,
+      where they were vigorously sweeping&mdash;the Finns are very clean&mdash;they
+      utterly declined to open the first-class refreshment-rooms. We could only
+      get something to eat in the third-class. There was a great feeling of
+      camaraderie and good-fellowship among us all, and here I remember the
+      lawyer's wife insisted upon us all having breakfast at her expense, for
+      according to her she owed us all something. It was she who added to our
+      party the Yiddish woman, a fat, square little person hung round with
+      innumerable bundles, carrying as she did a month's provisions, enough to
+      last her across to America, for she was a very strict Jew and could eat
+      nothing but <i>kosher</i> killed meat and <i>kosher</i> bread, whatever
+      that may be. I know it made her a care, for a month's provisions make
+      something of a parcel, and when bedding and a certain amount of clothing
+      has to be carried as well, and no porters are available, the resulting
+      baggage is apt to be a nuisance. All along the line this fat little person
+      was liable to come into view, toiling under the weight of her many
+      bundles. She would be found jammed in a doorway; she would subside
+      exhausted in the middle of a railway platform&mdash;the majority of her
+      bundles would be retrieved as they fell downstairs&mdash;or she blocked
+      the little gateway through which passengers were admitted one by one, and
+      the resulting bad language in all the tongues of Northern Europe probably
+      caused the Recording Angel a good deal of unnecessary trouble. But the
+      Oxford man and the musician were always ready to help her, and she must
+      have blessed the day the American lawyer's wife added her to a party which
+      had such kindly, helpful young men among its members.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I found presently that the Oxford man and I were the moneyed members of
+      the party, the only ones who were paying our way; the others, far richer
+      people than I, I daresay, had been caught in the whirlpool of the war and
+      were being passed on from one American consul to another, unable to get
+      money from their own country. Apparently this was rather an unpleasant
+      process, meaning a certain scarcity of cash, as an American consul
+      naturally cannot afford to spend lavishly on his distressed subjects. It
+      was the irony of fate that some of them were evidently not accustomed to
+      looking too carefully after the pennies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It took us two days to cross Finland, and towards the end of the journey,
+      after we had got out to have tea at a wayside station that blossomed out
+      into ham and tea and bread and honey, we made friends with a certain Finn
+      whose father had been a Scotsman. At last we were able to communicate with
+      the people of the country! Also I'm afraid we told him in no measured
+      terms that we did not think much of his compatriots. That was rather a
+      shame, for he was exceedingly kind. He was going to England, he told us,
+      to buy sheepskins for the Russian army, and he took great interest in my
+      trouble about Buchanan. He examined him carefully, came to the conclusion
+      he was a perfectly healthy little dog and suggested I should lend him to
+      him till we reached Sweden, as he was perfectly well known to the
+      authorities, and Finnish dogs would be allowed to enter Sweden, while a
+      dog that had come from Russia would certainly be barred. I loved that man
+      for his kindly interest and I handed over Buchanan in his basket without a
+      qualm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were really quite a goodly company when in the dusk of the evening we
+      steamed into Raumo. The station seemed deserted, but we didn't worry much
+      about that, as our new Finnish friend suggested the best thing to do was
+      to go straight down to the steamer, the <i>Uleaborg</i>, a Finnish ship,
+      and have our dinner and spend the night there. Even if she did not go that
+      night, and he did not think she would, we could rest and sleep
+      comfortably. We all agreed, and as the train went on down to the wharf we
+      appointed him our delegate to go on board and see what arrangements he
+      could make for us. The minute the train stopped, off he went, and Buchanan
+      went with him. I was getting easier in my mind about Buchanan now, the
+      thought of drugging him had been spoiling my pleasure in the scenery. And
+      then we waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It began to rain, and through the mist which hid the moonlight to-night we
+      could see the loom of the ships; they were all white and the lights from
+      the cabin ports showed dim through the misty rain. The wharf was littered
+      with goods, barrels and bales, and as there was more than one steamer, and
+      apparently no one to guide us, or the Scots Finn had not returned, we
+      tackled the Russian <i>gens d'arme</i> who seemed to be in charge of the
+      wharf and who was leaning up against the train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you speak Finnish?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! now you have my secret first shot,&rdquo; said he, with a smile. He, their
+      guardian, was no more equal to communicating with these people than we
+      were. And then, to our dismay, before our messenger could return, the
+      train which considered not a parcel of refugees put on steam and started
+      back to Raumo!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A dozen voices were raised in frantic protest, but we might as well have
+      spared our breath, the train naturally paid no attention to us, but went
+      back at full speed to the town proper. It was a comfort when it stopped,
+      for, for all we knew, it might have gone straight back to Petrograd
+      itself. And Buchanan, shut up in a basket, was left behind, I knew not
+      where! They dumped us on that station, bag and baggage, in the rain. We
+      were worse off here than we were at the wharf, for there the steamer and
+      comfort at least loomed in the distance. Here was only a bare and empty
+      station, half-a-dozen men who looked at us as if we were so many wild
+      beasts on show, and a telephone to the wharf which we were allowed to use
+      as long as we pleased, but as far as I could gather the only result was a
+      flow of bad language in many tongues. We might be of many nations, but one
+      and all were we agreed in our dislike of the Finns and all things Finnish.
+      If I remember rightly, in the Middle Ages, most people feared and disliked
+      magicians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We managed to get our baggage into the hall of the station, whieh was
+      dimly lighted by electric lights, and in anticipation of our coming they
+      had filled up the station water-carafes. But that was all the provision
+      they had made. If there was a refreshment-room it had been locked up long
+      ago, and as far as we could make out, now our interpreter had gone, there
+      were no hotels or boarding-houses. Our Scots Finn had said it was
+      impossible to stay in Raumo. We looked at one another in a dismay in which
+      there was, after all, something comic. This that had befallen us was the
+      sort of aggravating thing a mischievous magician would cause to happen. We
+      were tired and hungry and bad-tempered, and I for one was anxious about my
+      little dog and I began to seek, with cash in my hand, somebody who would
+      find me Buchanan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How I made my wants known I don't now realise, but money does wonders, and
+      presently there came in a man bearing his basket and a rapturous little
+      dog was let out into the room. Where he had been I have not the faintest
+      idea, and I could not ask, only I gathered that the man who brought him
+      professed himself perfectly willing to go on fetching little dogs all
+      night at the same rate, and the musician remarked in his high nasal twang
+      that he supposed it was no good expecting any more sympathy from Mrs
+      Gaunt, she was content now she had her little dog. As a matter of fact,
+      now that my mind was at ease, I was equal to giving my attention to other
+      people's woes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We tackled the men round us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where was our messenger?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where could we get something to eat?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blank stare. They were not accustomed to foreigners yet at Raumo. The
+      station had only just been opened. The musician took out his violin and
+      its wailing tones went echoing and re-echoing through the hall. The
+      audience looked as if they thought we had suddenly gone mad, and one man
+      came forward and by signs told us we must leave the station. That was all
+      very well, we were not enamoured of the station, but the port we judged to
+      be at least four miles off, and no one was prepared to start down an
+      unknown road in the dark and pouring rain. There was a long consultation,
+      and we hoped it meant food, but it didn't. Out of a wilderness of words we
+      at last arrived at the interesting fact that if we cared to subscribe five
+      marks one of these gentlemen was prepared to conduct us to the police
+      station. There appeared to be no wild desire on the part of any of us to
+      go to the police station, the violin let out a screech of scornful
+      derision, and one of the officials promptly turned off the electric lights
+      and left us in darkness!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were many of us, and vexations shared are amusing. We laughed, how
+      we laughed, and the violin went wailing up and down the octaves. No wonder
+      the Finns looked at us askance. Even the darkness did not turn us out, for
+      we had nowhere else to go, and finally a man who spoke English turned up,
+      the agent for the Swedish steamer. He had thought there would be no
+      passengers and had gone to bed, to be roused up, I presume by the
+      stationmaster, as the only person likely to be capable of dealing with
+      these troublesome people who were disturbing the peace of this Finnish
+      village.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We flew at him&mdash;there were about a dozen of us&mdash;and showed our
+      tickets for the Finnish steamer, and he smiled in a superior manner and
+      said we should be captured by Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We didn't believe much in the Germans, for we had many of us come through
+      a country which certainly believed itself invulnerable. Then a woman
+      travelling with her two daughters, Americans of the Americans, though
+      their mother spoke English with a most extraordinary accent, proclaimed
+      aloud that if there was a Swedish steamer she was going by it as she was
+      afraid of &ldquo;dose Yarmans.&rdquo; She and her daughters would give up their
+      tickets and go by the Swedish steamer. Protest was useless. If we liked to
+      break up the party we could. She was not going by the <i>Uleaborg</i>.
+      Besides, where were we to sleep that night? The Finnish steamer was three
+      or four miles away down at the wharf and we were here along with the
+      Swedish agent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Swedish agent seized the opening thus given. There were no hotels;
+      there were no boarding-houses; no, it was not possible to get anything to
+      eat at that hour of the night. Something to drink? Well, in surprised
+      tones, there was surely plenty of water in the station&mdash;there was&mdash;and
+      he would arrange for a train for us to sleep in. The train at ten o'clock
+      next morning would take us down to the steamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We retired to that train. Only one of the carriages was lighted, and that
+      by general consent we gave up to the lady whose fear of the Germans had
+      settled our affairs for us, and she in return asked us to share what
+      provisions we had left. We pooled our stores&mdash;I don't think I had
+      anything left, but the others shared with me&mdash;and we dined, not
+      unsatisfactorily, off sardines, black bread, sausages and apples. The only
+      person left out of the universal friendliness was the Yiddish lady. Out of
+      her plenty she did not offer to share.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She cannot,&rdquo; said the musician. &ldquo;She is saving for the voyage to America.
+      You see, she can eat none of the shipboard food.&rdquo; He too came of the same
+      strict order of Jew, and his grandparents, with whom he had been staying
+      in Little Russia, had provided him with any amount of sausage made of <i>kosher</i>
+      meat, but when he was away from his own people he was evidently anything
+      but strict and ate what pleased him. He shared with the rest of us.
+      Possibly he was right about the Yiddish woman, and I suppose it did not
+      really do us any harm to go short till next morning, but it looked very
+      greedy, and I still wonder at the nerve of a woman who could sit down and
+      eat sausage and bread and all manner of such-like things while within a
+      stone's-throw of her people who had helped her in every way they could
+      were cutting up apples and pears into quarters and audibly wishing they
+      had a little more bread. The Oxford man and musician had always helped
+      her, but she could not find it in her heart to spare them one crumb. I
+      admire her nerve. In America I doubt not she will acquire wealth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After supper Buchanan and I retired to a dark carriage, wrapped ourselves
+      in my eiderdown and slept till with break of day two capable but plain
+      Finnish damsels came in to clean the train. I think the sailors' ideas
+      must have been wrong: every Finn cannot be a magician else they would not
+      allow all their women to be so plain. I arose and dressed and prepared to
+      go out and see if Raumo could produce coffee and rolls, but as I was
+      starting the violinist in the next compartment protested.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wouldn't. Guess you haven't got the hang of these Finnish trains. It
+      might take it into its head to go on. Can't you wait till we reach the
+      steamer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I gave the matter my consideration, and while I was considering the train
+      did take it into its head to go on four hours before its appointed time.
+      On it went, and at last in the fresh northern dewy morning, with the sun
+      just newly risen, sending his long low rays streaming across the dancing
+      waters of the bay, we steamed up to the wharf, and there lay the white
+      ships that were bound for Sweden, the other side of the Baltic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER XVII&mdash;CAPTURED BY GERMANS
+    </h2>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>ut we couldn't get
+      on the steamer at once. For some reason or other there were Customs delays
+      and everything we possessed had to be examined before we were allowed to
+      leave the country, but&mdash;and we hailed them with delight&mdash;under
+      the goods sheds were set out little tables where we could buy coffee and
+      rolls and butter and eggs. It was autumn now, and for all the sunshine
+      here in such high latitudes there was a nip in the air and the hot coffee
+      was welcome. We met, too, our friend of the night before, the Scots Finn,
+      but the glamour had departed from him and we paid no attention to his
+      suggestion that the <i>Goathied</i>, the Swedish steamer, was very much
+      smaller than the <i>Uleaborg</i> and that there was a wind getting up and
+      we would all be deadly sick. We said we preferred being sick to being
+      captured by the Germans. And he laughed at us. There was no need to fear
+      the Germans in the Baltic so far north.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was midday before we were allowed on board the little white ship, but
+      still she lingered. I was weary, weary, even the waiting seemed a
+      weariness so anxious was I to end my long journeying and get home. And
+      then suddenly I felt very near it, for my ears were greeted by the good
+      broad Doric of Scotland, and there came trooping on board five and fifty
+      men, part of the crews of four English ships that had been caught by the
+      tide of war and laid up at Petrograd and Kronstadt. An opportunity had
+      been found and they were going back by way of Sweden, leaving their ships
+      behind till after the war. We did not think the war <i>could</i> last very
+      long on board that steamer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Scotsmen had evidently been expected, for on the deck in the bows of
+      the little steamer&mdash;she was only about three hundred tons&mdash;were
+      laid long tables spread with ample supplies of boiled sausages, suet
+      pudding and potatoes, and very appetising it looked, though in all my
+      wanderings I had never met boiled sausages before. Down to the feast sat
+      the sailor-men, and our Yiddish friend voiced aloud my feelings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anglisky,&rdquo; said she unexpectedly, &ldquo;nice Anglisky boys. Guten appetite,
+      nice Anglisky boys!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were very cheery, poor boys, and though they were not accustomed to
+      her sort in Leith, they received her remarks with appreciative grins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As we started the captain came down upon me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who does that dog belong to?&rdquo; he asked angrily. Everyone on board spoke
+      English. And before I could answer&mdash;I wasn't particularly anxious to
+      answer&mdash;he added: &ldquo;He can't be landed in Sweden.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      My heart sank. What would they do to my poor little dog? I was determined
+      they shouldn't harm him unless they harmed me first, and if he had to go
+      back to Russia&mdash;well, I would go too; but the thought of going back
+      made me very miserable, and I made solemn vows to myself that if I by some
+      miracle got through safely, never, never again would I travel with a dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And while I was thinking about it there came along a junior officer, mate,
+      purser, he might have been the cook for all I know, and he said: &ldquo;If you
+      have bought this dog in Finland, or even on board the steamer, he can
+      land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was light in darkness, and I do not mind stating that where my dog is
+      concerned I have absolutely no morals, if it is to save him from pain. He
+      had been my close companion for over a year and I knew he was perfectly
+      healthy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will give you a good price for him,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;He is a pretty little
+      dog.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;wait. By and by I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Just as we got out of the bay the captain announced that he was not going
+      to Stockholm at all, but to Gefle, farther north. Why, he did not know.
+      Such were his orders. In ordinary times to find yourself being landed at
+      Liverpool, say, when you had booked for London might be upsetting, but in
+      war time it is all in the day's work, and sailors and crowded passengers
+      only laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's awa',&rdquo; said the sailors. &ldquo;Let's awa'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The air was clear and clean, clean as if every speck of dust had been
+      washed away by the rain of the preceding night; the little islands at the
+      mouth of the bay stood out green and fresh in the blue sea, but the head
+      wind broke it up into little waves, and the ship was empty of cargo and
+      tossed about like a cork. The blue sea and snow-white clouds, the sunlight
+      on the dancing waves mattered not to us; all we wanted, those of us who
+      were not in favour of drowning at once and so ending our misery, was to
+      land in Sweden. Buchanan sat up looking at me reproachfully, then he too
+      subsided and was violently sick, and I watched the passengers go one by
+      one below to hide their misery, even those who had vowed they never were
+      sea-sick. I stayed on deck because I felt I was happier there in the fresh
+      air, and so I watched the sunset. It was a gorgeous sunset; the clouds
+      piled themselves one upon the other and the red sun stained them deepest
+      crimson. It was so striking that I forgot my sea-sick qualms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then suddenly I became aware there were more ships upon the sea than
+      ours, one in particular, a black, low-lying craft, was steaming all round
+      us, sending out defiant hoots. There were three other ships farther off,
+      and I went to the rail to look over the darkening sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between us and the sunset was the low-lying craft, so close I could see
+      the gaiters of a man in uniform who stood on a platform a little higher
+      than his fellows; the little decks were crowded with men and a long gun
+      was pointed at us. It was all black, clean-cut, silhouetted against the
+      crimson sunset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were slowed down, barely moving, the waves slop-slopped against our
+      sides, and the passengers came scrambling up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Germans! Yarmans!&rdquo; they cried, and from the torpedo boat came a voice
+      through a megaphone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you doing with all those fine young men on board?&rdquo; it asked in
+      excellent English, the language of the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The black torpedo boat was lying up against us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sea-sickness was forgotten, and the violinist came to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are going to take the young men,&rdquo; he said, and he was sorry and yet
+      pleased, because all the time he had been full of the might of the
+      Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought of the Oxford man in the very prime of his manhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you told him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess I didn't dare,&rdquo; said he.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think you'd better, or I'll go myself. They are going to search
+      the ship and he won't like being taken unawares.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So he went down, and presently they came up together. The Oxford man had
+      been very sea-sick and he thought all the row was caused by the ship
+      having struck a mine, and he felt so ill that if things were to end that
+      way he was accepting it calmly, but being captured by Germans was a
+      different matter. He was the only Englishman in the first class, and when
+      we heard they were coming for the young men we felt sure he would have to
+      go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaning over the rail of the <i>Goathied</i>, we could look down upon the
+      black decks of the torpedo boat, blacker than ever now in the dusk of the
+      evening, for the sun sank and the darkness was coming quickly. A rope
+      ladder was flung over and up came a couple of German officers. They spoke
+      perfect English, and they talked English all the time. They went below,
+      demanded the passenger list and studied it carefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must take those Englishmen,&rdquo; said the leader, and then he went through
+      every cabin to see that none was concealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain made remonstrance, as much remonstrance as an unarmed man can
+      make with three cruisers looking on and a torpedo boat close alongside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is war,&rdquo; said the German curtly, and in the dusk he ranged the
+      sailor-men along the decks, all fifty-five of them, and picked out those
+      between the ages of nineteen and forty. Indeed one luckless lad of
+      seventeen was taken, but he was a strapping fellow and they said if he was
+      not twenty-one he looked it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was tragic. Of course there must have been treachery at work or how
+      should the German squadron have known that the Englishmen were crossing at
+      this very hour? But a few moments before they had been counting on getting
+      home and now they were bound for a German prison! In the gathering
+      darkness they stood on the decks, and the short, choppy sea beat the iron
+      torpedo boat against the ship's side, and the captain in the light from a
+      lantern hung against the little house looked the picture of despair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She cannot stand it! She cannot stand it much longer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Crash! Crash! Crash!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She cannot stand it! She was never built for it! And she is old now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the German paid no attention. The possible destruction of a passenger
+      ship was as nothing weighed in the balance with the acquirement of six and
+      thirty fighting men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were so quiet. They handed letters and small bundles and sometimes
+      some of their pay to their comrades or to the passengers looking on and
+      they dropped down that ladder. No one but a sailor could have gone down,
+      for the ships heaved up and down, and sometimes they were bumping and
+      sometimes there was a wide belt of heaving dark water between them,
+      bridged only by that frail ladder. One by one they went, landing on the
+      hostile deck, and were greeted with what were manifestly jeers at their
+      misfortune. The getting down was difficult and more than once a bundle was
+      dropped into the sea and there went up a sigh that was like a wail, for
+      the passengers looking on thought the man was gone, and I do not think
+      there would have been any hope for him between the ships.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Darker and darker it grew. On the <i>Goathied</i> there were the lighted
+      decks, but below on the torpedo boat the men were dim figures, German and
+      English undiscernible in the gloom. On the horizon loomed the sombre bulk
+      of the cruisers, eaeh with a bright light aloft, and all around was the
+      heaving sea, the white tops of the choppy waves showing sinister against
+      the darker hollows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anglisky boys! Anglisky boys!&rdquo; wailed the Yiddish woman, and her voice
+      cut into the waiting silence. It was their dirge, the dirge for the long,
+      long months of imprisonment that lay before them. And we were hoping for a
+      short war! I could hear the Oxford man drawing a long breath occasionally,
+      steeling himself against the moment when his turn would come.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It never came. Why, I do not know. Perhaps they did not realise his
+      nationality, for being a Scotsman he had entered himself as &ldquo;British&rdquo; on
+      the passenger list, and &ldquo;British&rdquo; was not such a well-known word as the
+      sons of Britain gathering from all corners of the earth to fight the
+      common foe have made it to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Puir chappies! Puir chappies! A'm losin' guid comrades,&rdquo; sighed an
+      elderly man leaning over the side and shouting a farewell to &ldquo;Andra'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I murmured something about &ldquo;after the war,&rdquo; but he cut me short sternly.
+      The general opinion was that they would be put to stoke German warships
+      and as the British were sure to beat them they would go down and be
+      ingloriously lost. The thought must have been a bitter one to the men on
+      that torpedo boat. And they took it like heroes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last man was gone, and as the torpedo boat drew away a sort of moan
+      went up from the bereft passenger ship and we went on our way, the captain
+      relieved that we were free before a hole had been knocked in our side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was so thankful that no worse thing had befallen him that he became
+      quite communicative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are gone to take the <i>Uleaborg</i>,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and they will blow
+      her up and before to-morrow morning Raumo will be in flames!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In those days Sweden had great faith in the might of Germany. I hope that
+      faith is getting a little shaken at last. Still that captain declared his
+      intention of warning all the ships he could. There were two Finnish ships
+      of which he knew that he said were coming out of Stockholm that night and
+      he was going to look for them and warn them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the night was alive with brilliant electric light signals and wild
+      hootings from the steam siren, and he found them at last, all honour to
+      him for a kindly sailor-man, and the Finnish ships were warned and went
+      back to Sweden.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But no matter how sorry one is for the sufferings of others, the feeling
+      does not in any way tend to lessen one's own private woes. Rather are they
+      deepened because sympathy and help is not so easily come by when men's
+      thoughts are occupied by more&mdash;to them more&mdash;important matters.
+      And so I could not go to sleep because of my anxiety about my little dog.
+      Only for the moment did the taking of the men and my pity for them drive
+      the thought of his predicament from my mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were nearing Sweden, every moment was bringing us closer, and as yet I
+      had made no arrangements for his safety. He lay curled up on the seat,
+      hiding his little snub nose and his little white paws with his bushy tail,
+      for the autumn night was chilly, and I lay fearing a prison for him too,
+      when he would think his mistress whom he had trusted had failed him. All
+      the crew were so excited over the kidnapping of the men that my meditated
+      nefarious transaction was thrust into the background. It was hopeless to
+      think that any one of them would give ear to the woes of a little dog, so
+      at last, very reluctantly, I gave him, much to his surprise, a sulphonal
+      tablet. I dozed a little and when by my watch it was four o'clock Buchanan
+      was as lively as a cricket. Sulphonal did not seem to have affected him in
+      any way. I gave him another, and he said it was extremely nasty and he was
+      surprised at my conduct, but otherwise it made no difference to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the grey of the early morning we drew up to the wharf and were told to
+      get all our belongings on to the lower deck for the Customs to examine
+      them, and Buchanan was as cheerful and as wide awake as if he had not
+      swallowed two sulphonal tablets. With a sinking heart I gave him another,
+      put him in his basket and, carrying it down to the appointed place, threw
+      a rug over it and piled my two suit-cases on top of it. How thankful I was
+      there was such a noisy crowd, going over and over again in many tongues
+      the events of the night. They wrangled too about their luggage and about
+      their places, and above all their din I could hear poor little James
+      Buchanan whining and whimpering and asking why his mistress was treating
+      him so badly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the Customs officer and my heart stood still. He poked an
+      investigatory hand into my suit-case and asked me&mdash;I understood him
+      quite well&mdash;to show him what was underneath. I could hear Buchanan if
+      he could not, and I pretended that I thought he wanted to know what was at
+      the bottom of my suit-case and I turned over the things again and again.
+      He grew impatient, but luckily so did all the people round, and as a woman
+      dragged him away by force to look at her things so that she could get them
+      ashore I noticed with immense relief that the sailors were beginning to
+      take the things to the wharf. Luckily I had taken care the night before to
+      get some Swedish money&mdash;I was taking no chances&mdash;and a little
+      palm oil made that sailor prompt to attend to my wants. Blessings on the
+      confusion that reigned around! Two minutes later on Swedish soil I was
+      piling my gear on a little hand-cart with a lot of luggage belonging to
+      the people with whom I had come across Finland and it was bound to the
+      railway station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have left your umbrella,&rdquo; cried the violinist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't care,&rdquo; said I. I had lost my only remaining hat for that matter,
+      goodness knows what had become of it, but I was not going to put myself
+      within range of those Customs men again. What did I care about
+      appearances! I had passed the very worst milestone on my journey when I
+      got James Buchanan into Sweden; I had awakened from the nightmare that had
+      haunted me ever since I had taken my ticket in Petrograd, and I breathed
+      freely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the railway station we left our luggage, but I got Buchanan's basket,
+      and we all went across the road to a restaurant just waking to business,
+      for we badly wanted breakfast. I loved those passengers. I shall always
+      think of them with gratitude. They were all so kind and sympathetic and
+      the restaurant folks, who were full of the seizing of the Englishmen on a
+      Swedish ship&mdash;so are joys and sorrows mingled&mdash;must have thought
+      we were a little mad when we all stood round and, before ordering
+      breakfast, opened a basket and let out a pretty little black and white
+      dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then I'm sorry to say we laughed, even I laughed, laughed with relief,
+      though I there and then took a vow never again to drug a dog, for poor
+      little James Buchanan was drunk. He wobbled as he walked, and he could not
+      make up his mind to lie down like a sensible dog and sleep if off; he was
+      conversational and silly and had to be restrained. Poor little James
+      Buchanan! But he was a Swedish dog, and I ate my breakfast with appetite,
+      and we all speculated as to what had become of the Scots Finn who had
+      failed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gefle reminded me of Hans Andersen even more than Finland had done. It had
+      neat streets and neat houses and neat trees and neat and fair-haired
+      women, and Gefle was seething with excitement because the <i>Goathied</i>
+      had been stopped. It was early days then, and Sweden had not become
+      accustomed to the filibustering ways of the German, so every poster had
+      the tale writ large upon it, in every place they were talking about it,
+      and we, the passengers who walked about the streets, were the observed of
+      all observers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was nearing the end of my long journey, very near now, and it did not
+      seem to me to matter much what I did. We were all&mdash;the new friends I
+      had made on the way from Petrograd&mdash;pretty untidy and travel-stained,
+      and if I wore a lace veil on my hair, the violinist had a huge rent in his
+      shoe, and, having no money to buy more, he went into a shoe-shop and had
+      it mended. I, with Buchanan a little recovered, sat beside him while it
+      was done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in the afternoon we went by train through the neat and tidy country,
+      Selma Lagerlof's country, to Stockholm. I felt as if I were resting,
+      rested, because I was anxious no longer about Buchanan, who slumbered
+      peacefully on my knee; and if anybody thinks I am making an absurd fuss
+      about a little dog, let them remember he had been my faithful companion
+      and friend in far corners of the earth when there were none but alien
+      faces around me, and had stood many a time between me and utter loneliness
+      and depression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We discussed these sturdy Swedes. The Chicago woman's daughter, with the
+      pertness and aptness of the American flapper, summed them up quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The men are handsome,&rdquo; she said, looking round, &ldquo;but the women&mdash;well,
+      the women lack something&mdash;I call them tame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And I knew she had hit them off to a &ldquo;T.&rdquo; After that I never looked at a
+      neat and tidy Swedish woman with her hair, that was fair without that
+      touch of red that makes for gold&mdash;gives life&mdash;coiled at the back
+      of her head and her mild eyes looking out placidly on the world around her
+      without feeling that I too call her tame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stockholm for the most of us was the parting of the ways. The American
+      consul took charge of the people who had come across Finland with us and
+      the Oxford man and I alone went to the Continental Hotel, which, I
+      believe, is the best hotel in that city. We had an evening meal together
+      in a room that reminded me very much of the sort of places we used to call
+      coffee palaces in Melbourne when I was a girl, and I met here again for
+      the first time for many a long day tea served in cups with milk and cream.
+      It was excellent, and I felt I was indeed nearing home. Things were
+      getting commonplace and the adventure was going out of life. But I was
+      tired and I didn't want adventure any more. There comes a time when we
+      have a surfeit of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I remember my sister once writing from her home somewhere in the Malay
+      jungle that her husband was away and it was awkward because every night a
+      leopard came and took up his position under the house, and though she
+      believed he was only after the fowls she didn't like it because of the
+      children. If ever she complains that she hasn't had enough adventure in
+      her life I remind her of that and she says that is not the sort of
+      adventure she has craved. That is always the way. The adventure is not
+      always in the form we want. I seemed to have had plenty, but I was weary.
+      I wanted to sit in a comfortable English garden in the autumn sunshine and
+      forget that such things as trains and ships&mdash;perish the thought of a
+      mule litter&mdash;existed. I counted the hours. It couldn't be long now.
+      We came down into the hall to find that I had been entered on the board
+      containing the names of the hotel guests as the Oxford man's wife. Poor
+      young man! It was a little rough on him, for I hadn't even a hat, and I
+      felt I looked dilapidated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was too. That night in the sleeper crossing to Christiania the woman who
+      had the bottom berth spoke excellent English. She was going to some baths
+      and she gave some advice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are very ill, Madame,&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;very ill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I said no, I was only a little tired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think,&rdquo; she went on, &ldquo;you are very ill, and if you are wise when you
+      get to Christiania you will go to the Hotel Victoria and go to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was horrified. Because I felt I must go to England as quickly as
+      possible, and I said so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The train does not go to Bergen till night,&rdquo; said she. &ldquo;Stay in bed all
+      day.&rdquo; And then as we crossed the border a Customs officer came into the
+      carriage. Now I could easily have hidden Buchanan, but I thought as a
+      Swedish dog all his troubles were over, and he sat up there looking pertly
+      at the uniformed man and saying &ldquo;What are you doing here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you got a certificate of health for that dog?&rdquo; asked the man
+      sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I said &ldquo;No,&rdquo; remembering how very carefully I had kept him out of the way
+      of anybody likely to be interested in his health.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;you must telegraph to the police at Christiania. They
+      will meet you and take him to a veterinary surgeon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And after?&rdquo; I asked, trembling, my Swedish friend translating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If his health is good they give him back to you. You take a room at a
+      hotel and if his health is good he will be allowed to skip about the
+      streets.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I felt pretty sure he would be allowed to skip about the streets and I
+      took a room at the Victoria, the Oxford man kindly seeing us through&mdash;they
+      put us down as Mr and Mrs Gaunt here&mdash;and James Buchanan, who had
+      been taken possession of by the police at the station, came back to me,
+      accompanied by a Norwegian policeman who demanded five shillings and gave
+      me a certificate that he was a perfectly healthy little dog.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I want to go back to Norway when I am not tired and fed up with
+      travelling, for Christiania struck me as a dear little home-like town that
+      one could love; and the railway journey across the Dovrefield and even the
+      breakfast baskets that came in in the early morning were things to be
+      remembered. I saw snow up in those mountains, whether the first snow of
+      the coming winter or snow left over from the winter before, I do not know,
+      but the views were lovely, and I asked myself why I went wandering in
+      far-away places when there were places like this so close at home and so
+      easily reached. So near home. We were so near home. I could think of
+      nothing else. I told Buchanan about it and he licked my hand
+      sympathetically and told me always to remember that wherever I was was
+      good enough for him. And then we arrived at Bergen, a little wooden city
+      set at the head of a fiord among the hills, and we went on board the <i>Haakon
+      VII.</i>, bound for Newcastle-on-Tyne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And then the most memorable thing happened, the most memorable thing in
+      what for me was a wondrous journey. All across the Old World we had come,
+      almost from the very farthest corner of the Old World, a wonderful journey
+      not to be lightly undertaken nor soon forgotten. And yet as I went on
+      board that ship I felt what a very little thing it was. I have been
+      feeling it ever since. A Norwegian who spoke good English was there, going
+      back to London, and, talking to another man, he mentioned in a casual
+      manner something about the English contingent that had landed on the
+      Continent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It startled me. Not in my lifetime, nor in the lifetime of my father,
+      indeed I think my grandfathers must have been very little boys when the
+      last English troops landed in France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;English troops!&rdquo; I cried in astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Norwegian turned to me, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;But of course they are only evidence of good will. Their
+      use is negligible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And I agreed. I actually agreed. Britain's rôle, it seemed to me, was on
+      the sea!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in four years I have seen Britain grow into a mighty military power. I
+      have seen the men of my own people come crowding across the ocean to help
+      the Motherland; I have seen my sister's young son pleased to be a soldier
+      in that army, just one of the proud and humble crowd that go to uphold
+      Britain's might. And all this has grown since I stood there at the head of
+      the Norwegian fiord with the western sun sparkling on the little wavelets
+      and heard a friendly foreigner talk about the little army that was
+      &ldquo;negligible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I was tired. I envied those who could work and exert themselves, but I
+      could do nothing. If the future of the nation had depended on me I could
+      have done nothing. I was coming back to strenuous times and I longed for
+      rest. I wanted a house of my own; I wanted a seat in the garden; I wanted
+      to see the flowers grow, to listen to the birds singing in the trees. All
+      that our men are fighting for to keep sacred and safe, I longed for.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I have had it, thanks to those fighting men who have sacrificed
+      themselves for me, I have had it. It is good to sit in the garden where
+      the faithful little friend I shall never forget has his last
+      resting-place; it is good to see the roses grow, to listen to the lark and
+      the cuckoo and the thrush; but there is something in our race that cannot
+      keep still for long, the something, I suppose, that sent my grandfather to
+      the sea, my father to Australia, and scattered his sons and daughters all
+      over the world. I had a letter from a soldier brother the other day. The
+      war holds him, of course, but nevertheless he wrote, quoting:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent10">
+      &ldquo;Salt with desire of travel
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      Are my lips; and the wind's wild singing
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent10">
+      Lifts my heart to the ocean
+    </p>
+    <p class="indent15">
+      And the sight of the great ships swinging.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And my heart echoed: &ldquo;And I too! And I too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's A Broken Journey, Illustrated, by Mary Gaunt
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+</pre>
+
+  </body>
+</html>
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