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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77853 ***
+
+
+
+
+                     THE YANGTZE VALLEY AND BEYOND
+
+
+[Illustration: TIBETAN LAMAS MASKED FOR A RELIGIOUS DANCE.]
+
+
+
+
+                     THE YANGTZE VALLEY AND BEYOND
+ AN ACCOUNT OF JOURNEYS IN CHINA, CHIEFLY IN THE PROVINCE OF SZE CHUAN
+              AND AMONG THE MAN-TZE OF THE SOMO TERRITORY
+
+
+                          BY MRS. J. F. BISHOP
+                      (ISABELLA L. BIRD), F.R.G.S.
+
+       HONORARY FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY
+      HONORARY MEMBER OF THE ORIENTAL SOCIETY OF PEKING, ETC. ETC.
+
+                     WITH MAP AND 116 ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                       DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO
+                    THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY, K.G.
+
+                                 LONDON
+                     JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
+                                  1899
+
+
+                        DEDICATED BY PERMISSION
+                                 TO THE
+                      MARQUESS OF SALISBURY, K.G.
+           WITH THE AUTHOR’S PROFOUND RESPECT, AND ADMIRATION
+                OF THE NOBLE AND DISINTERESTED SERVICES
+                      WHICH HE HAS RENDERED TO THE
+                             BRITISH EMPIRE
+
+
+
+
+                                PREFACE
+
+
+These journeys in China [concluding in 1897], of which the following
+pages are the record, were undertaken for recreation and interest
+solely, after some months of severe travelling in Korea. I had no
+intention of writing a book, and it was not till I came home, and China
+came very markedly to the front, and friends urged upon me that my
+impressions of the Yangtze Valley might be a useful contribution to
+popular knowledge of that much-discussed region, that I began to arrange
+my materials in their present form. They consist of journal letters,
+photographs, and notes from a brief diary.
+
+In correcting them, and in the identification of places, not an easy
+matter, I have been much indebted to the late Captain Gill’s _River of
+Golden Sand_, _The Gorges of the Yangtze_, by Mr. A. Little, three
+papers on “Exploration in Western China,” by Mr. Colborne Baber, in the
+_Geographical Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_, and very
+specially to the official reports of H.B.M.’s Consuls at the Yangtze
+ports. I have denied myself the pleasure of reading any of the recent
+literature on China, and it was only when my task was done that I
+glanced over some of the later chapters in _The Break Up of China_, and
+_China in Transformation_. For a great part of my inland journey I have
+been unable to find any authorities to refer to, and as regards personal
+observation I agree sadly with the dictum of Socrates—“The body is a
+hindrance to acquiring knowledge, and sight and hearing are not to be
+trusted.”
+
+I cannot hope to escape errors, but I have made a laborious effort to be
+accurate, and I trust and believe that they are not of material
+importance, and that in the main this volume will be found to convey a
+truthful impression of the country and its people. The conflicting
+statements made on every subject by well-informed foreign residents in
+China, as elsewhere, constitute a difficulty for a traveller, and
+homogeneous as China is, yet with regard to very many customs, what is
+true in one region is not true in another. Even in the single province
+of SZE CHUAN there is a very marked unlikeness between one district and
+another in house and temple architecture, methods of transit, customs in
+trade, and in much else.
+
+I have dwelt at some length on “Beaten Tracks”—_i.e._, treaty ports and
+the Great River—though these have been described by many writers, for
+the reason that each one looks at them from a different standpoint, and
+helps to create a complete whole. The illustrations in this volume, with
+the exception of the reproductions of some Chinese drawings, and nine
+which friends have kindly permitted me to use, are from my own
+photographs. The spelling of place names needs an explanation. I have
+not the Chinese characters for them, and in many cases have only been
+able to represent by English letters the sounds as they reached my ear;
+but wherever possible, the transliteration given by Consul Playfair in
+his published list of Chinese Place Names has been adopted, and with
+regard to a few well-known cities the familiar but unscholarly spelling
+has been retained. To prevent confusion the names of provinces have been
+printed in capitals.
+
+I am painfully conscious of the many demerits of this volume, but
+recognising the extreme importance of increasing by every means the
+knowledge of, and interest in, China and its people, I venture to ask
+for it from the public the same kindly criticism with which my former
+records of Asiatic travel have been received, and to hope that it may be
+accepted as an honest attempt to make a contribution to the data on
+which public opinion on China and Chinese questions must be formed.
+
+                                                      ISABELLA L. BISHOP
+
+  _October, 1899._
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+
+          CHAPTER                                         PAGE
+               I. GEOGRAPHICAL AND INTRODUCTORY              1
+              II. “THE MODEL SETTLEMENT”                    15
+             III. HANGCHOW                                  29
+              IV. THE HANGCHOW MEDICAL MISSION HOSPITALS    44
+               V. SHANGHAI TO HANKOW (HANKAU)               55
+              VI. THE FOREIGNERS—HANKOW AND BRITISH TRADE   61
+             VII. CHINESE HANKOW (HANKAU)                   67
+            VIII. HANKOW TO ICHANG                          83
+              IX. ICHANG                                    95
+               X. THE UPPER YANGTZE                        104
+              XI. RAPIDS OF THE UPPER YANGTZE              114
+             XII. RAPIDS AND TRACKERS                      128
+            XIII. LIFE ON THE UPPER YANGTZE                138
+             XIV. THE YANGTZE AND KUEI FU                  150
+              XV. NEW YEAR’S DAY AT KUEI-CHOW FU           160
+             XVI. KUEI FU TO WAN HSIEN                     166
+            XVII. CHINESE CHARITIES                        181
+           XVIII. FROM WAN HSIEN TO SAN TSAN-PZU           194
+             XIX. SZE CHUAN TRAVELLING                     207
+              XX. SAN-TSAN-PU TO LIANG-SHAN HSIEN          214
+             XXI. LIANG-SHAN HSIEN TO HSIA-SHAN-PO         223
+            XXII. HSIA-SHAN-PO TO SIAO-KIAO                240
+           XXIII. SIAO-KIAO TO HSIEH-TIEN-TZE              249
+            XXIV. HSIEH-TIEN-TZE TO PAONING FU             264
+             XXV. PAONING FU AND SIN-TIEN-TZE              282
+            XXVI. SIN-TIEN-TZE TO TZE-TUNG HSIEN           296
+           XXVII. TZE-TUNG HSIEN TO KUAN HSIEN             316
+          XXVIII. KUAN HSIEN AND CHENGTU                   338
+            XXIX. KUAN HSIEN TO SIN-WEN-PING               361
+             XXX. SIN-WEN-PING TO LI-FAN TING              373
+            XXXI. LI-FAN TING TO TSA-KU-LAO                395
+           XXXII. THE “BEYOND”                             404
+          XXXIII. THE MAN-TZE, I-REN, OR SHAN-SHANG-REN    443
+           XXXIV. FROM SOMO TO CHENGTU FU                  455
+            XXXV. DOWNWARD BOUND                           460
+           XXXVI. LUCHOW TO CHUNG-KING FU                  477
+          XXXVII. THE JOURNEY’S END                        490
+         XXXVIII. THE OPIUM POPPY AND ITS USE              506
+           XXXIX. NOTES ON PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN CHINA    518
+                  CONCLUDING REMARKS                       530
+                  ITINERARY                                545
+                  APPENDICES                               546
+                  INDEX                                    549
+
+
+
+
+                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+ Tibetan Lamas masked for a Religious Dance (Lal Singh)   _Frontispiece_
+ Zig-zag Bridge and Tea House, Shanghai                               27
+ A _Pah_, or Haulover                                                 33
+ West Gate, Hangchow                                                  35
+ Pavilion in Imperial Garden, Si-hu                                   39
+ God of Thunder, Lin-yang                                             42
+ C.M.S. Mission Hospital, Hangchow                                    45
+ A Street in Hankow (John Thomson, F.R.G.S.)                          69
+ Hankow from Han Yang                                                 73
+ Coffins awaiting Burial                                              76
+ Female Beggar in Mat Hut                                             78
+ A Travelling Restaurant                                              80
+ Chinese Soldiers                                                     87
+ Military Officer                                                     88
+ A Fisherman and Plunge Net                                           90
+ The Tablet of Confucius                                              97
+ Entrance to Ichang Gorge                                            107
+ The Author’s Boat                                                   111
+ Bed of the Yangtze in Winter, Ta-tan Rapid                          116
+ The Hsin-tan                                                        120
+ Ping-shu Gorge, Hsin-tan                                            125
+ The Mitan Gorge                                                     129
+ Temple near Kueichow                                                133
+ Trackers’ Houses                                                    143
+ Author’s Trackers at Dinner                                         158
+ A Chinese Punchinello                                               161
+ Temple of Chang-fei                                                 167
+ Pagoda near Wan Hsien                                               169
+ Guest Hall, C.I.M., Wan Hsien                                       173
+ Bridge at Wan Hsien                                                 179
+ A Chinese Burial Charity                                            185
+ Baggage Coolies                                                     197
+ A Pai-fang                                                          199
+ Granite Dragon Pillar                                               203
+ Pass of Shen-kia-chao                                               215
+ Wayside Shrine                                                      218
+ A Chinese Chatsworth                                                225
+ Bridge and Inn of Shan-rang-sar                                     229
+ A Porcelain Temple                                                  233
+ The Water Buffalo                                                   235
+ Ordinary Covered Bridge                                             237
+ A Group of Kuans (Mandarins)                                        255
+ Lady’s Sedan Chair (Chinese Propriety) (Dr. Kinnear)                259
+ A Sze Chuan Farmhouse                                               267
+ A Sze Chuan Market-place                                            271
+ Pedagogue and Pupils                                                275
+ Recessed Divinities, Chia-ling River                                281
+ Temple of God of Literature, Paoning Fu                             283
+ The Right Rev. Bishop Cassels, D.D., Paoning Fu                     287
+ Chinese Protestant Episcopal Church, Paoning Fu                     289
+ C.I.M. Sanitarium, Sin-tien-tze                                     293
+ Entrance to a Market-place                                          297
+ Author’s arrival at a Chinese Inn                                   303
+ An Ox Mill                                                          306
+ A Hand Mill                                                         307
+ The Ta-lu                                                           309
+ Woman Reeling Silk                                                  317
+ The Rev. J. Heywood Horsburgh, M.A., in Travelling Dress            322
+ Water Mill, Chengtu Plain                                           325
+ Bridge at Mien-chuh                                                 328
+ Treadmill Field-pump (Captain Gill)                                 332
+ Wooden Bridge, Kuan Hsien                                           335
+ Roof of Erh-wang Temple                                             341
+ Oil Baskets and Wooden Purse                                        344
+ Barrow Traffic, Chengtu Plain                                       345
+ Poppy Field in Blossom                                              349
+ The White Opium Poppy (F. S. Mayers)                                351
+ The Author in Manchu Dress (Moffat, Edinburgh)                      353
+ Divinity in Wen-shu-yuan Temple, Chengtu                            359
+ Entrance to Grounds of City Temple, Kuan Hsien                      363
+ Double Roofed Bridge                                                368
+ Tibetan Rope Bridge (Captain Gill)                                  370
+ Human Pack Saddle for Timber                                        374
+ Bamboo Suspension Bridge, Weichou                                   379
+ Ancient Towers at Kanpo                                             383
+ Kan-chi                                                             387
+ Rock Temple, Li-fan Ting                                            391
+ Village of Wei-gua                                                  397
+ Street of Tsa-ku-lao                                                401
+ A Sugar-loaf Mountain, Siao Ho                                      405
+ Revolving Prayer-Cylinders                                          408
+ Bridle Track by the Siao Ho                                         411
+ View from Chuang Fang                                               414
+ Castle at Chu-ti                                                    416
+ Headman’s House, Chu-ti                                             417
+ Altar of Incense on Man-tze Roof                                    418
+ Sick unto Death                                                     420
+ Lama-serai and Headman’s House, Mia-ko                              421
+ Elephantiasis (Dr. Christie)                                        427
+ Chinese Officer and Spearmen, Mia-ko                                432
+ Village of Rong-kia                                                 434
+ Canyon of the Rong-kia                                              435
+ Square Tower, Somo                                                  438
+ Distant View of Somo                                                439
+ A Man-tze Village                                                   444
+ Somo Castle (back view)                                             447
+ Entrance and Judgment-seat, Somo Castle                             453
+ Heshui Hunter, and Notched Timbers                                  456
+ A Heshui Family, Ku-erh-kio                                         457
+ A Dragon Bridge                                                     459
+ Village on the Min                                                  462
+ West Gate, Chia-ling Fu                                             465
+ Frieze in Rock Dwelling, Min River                                  468
+ Boat on the Min (Dr. Causland)                                      469
+ Town on the Yangtze                                                 472
+ Suburb of Sui Fu                                                    473
+ Tsiang Ngan Hsien, with entrance to Rock Dwelling                   476
+ Pagoda near Luchow                                                  479
+ The Author’s _Wu-pan_                                               483
+ Method of carrying _Cash_ and Babies                                486
+ Fishing Village, Upper Yangtze                                      487
+ Wall of Chung-king, with Gate Towers                                491
+ Chung-king Soldiers, Customs Guard                                  494
+ Gala Head-dress, “Dog-faced” Woman (Dr. Kinnear)                    498
+ The Author’s last _Wu-pan_                                          500
+ “Stone Precious Castle,” Shi-pao-chai                               502
+
+
+
+
+                                ERRATA.
+
+
+  Page  2. Third line from bottom, for “140” read “263.”
+
+    „ 177. Footnote, third line from bottom, after “illustration” read
+             “on page 498.”
+
+    „ 415. Eleventh line from bottom, for “_Tu-sze_” read “_Tu-tze_.”
+
+    „ 495. Eighteenth line from top, for “88°” read “87°.”
+
+    „ 518. Eleventh line from bottom, for “six thousand” read “8875.”
+
+
+
+
+                           THE YANGTZE VALLEY
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+                     GEOGRAPHICAL AND INTRODUCTORY
+
+
+The events which have rendered the Yangtze Valley literally a “sphere of
+interest” throughout the British Empire lie outside the purview of these
+volumes. Few people, unless they have been compelled to the task by
+circumstances or interests, are fully acquainted with the magnitude and
+resources of the great basin which in the spring of 1898 was claimed as
+the British “sphere of influence,” and I honestly confess that it was
+only at the end of eight months (out of journeys of fifteen months in
+China) spent on the Yangtze, its tributaries, and the regions watered by
+them that I even began to learn their magnificent capabilities, and the
+energy, resourcefulness, capacities, and “backbone” of their enormous
+population.
+
+Geographically the Yangtze Valley, or drainage area, may be taken as
+extending from the 90th to the 122nd meridian of east longitude, and as
+including all or most of the important provinces of SZE CHUAN, HUPEH,
+HUNAN, KIANGSI, NGANHUI, KIANGSU, and HONAN, with considerable portions
+of CHE KIANG, KUEICHOW, and YUNNAN, and even includes the south-eastern
+drainage areas of KANSUH, SHENSI, and SHANTUNG. Geographically there can
+be no possible mistake about the limits of this basin.[1] Its area is
+estimated at about 650,000 square miles, and its population, one of the
+most peaceable and industrious on earth, at from 170,000,000 to
+180,000,000.
+
+The actual length of the Yangtze is unknown, but is believed not to
+exceed 3000 miles. Rising, according to the best geographical
+information, almost due north of Calcutta, its upper waters have been
+partially explored by Colonel Prjevalsky and Mr. Rockhill up to an
+altitude in the Tang-la mountains of 16,400 feet, and as far as lat. 34°
+43′ N. and long. 90° 48′ E.[2]
+
+It has thus been ascertained that the Great River, though not tracked
+actually to its source, rises on the south-east edge of the Central
+Asian steppes, and, after draining an extensive and little-known basin,
+pursues a tempestuous course under the name of the Chin Sha, hemmed in
+by parallel ranges, and raging through gigantic rifts in YUNNAN and
+South-western SZE CHUAN, which culminate in grandeur at the Sun Bridge,
+a mountain about 20,000 feet in altitude, “which abuts on the river in a
+precipice or precipices which must be 8000 feet above its waters”
+(Baber).
+
+It is not till these savage gorges are passed and the Chin Sha reaches
+Ping Shan, forty miles above Sui Fu, that it becomes serviceable to man.
+In long. 94° 48′ Colonel Prjevalsky describes it as a rapid torrent,
+with a depth of from five to seven feet, a bed, upwards of a mile wide,
+covered in summer, and a width in autumn of 750 feet at about 2800 miles
+from its mouth. In travelling from its supposed source to Ping Shan, a
+distance roughly estimated at 1500 miles, its fall must be fully 15,000
+feet (assuming that the altitude of its source is 16,400 feet),[3] while
+for the same distance (again roughly estimated) from Ping Shan to
+Shanghai the fall is only 1025 feet, and from Hankow to the sea, a
+distance of 600 miles, only an inch per mile.
+
+The Min or Fu appears to have its source in the Baian Kara range, called
+in Tibetan Maniak-tso,[4] and joins the Chin Sha at Sui Fu. While the
+Chin Sha is only navigable for about forty miles above this junction,
+the Min is navigable to Chengtu, about 266 miles from Sui Fu, and by
+another branch to Kuan Hsien, forty miles higher. I descended the Min
+from Chengtu to Sui Fu in a fair-sized boat at the very lowest of low
+water. As being navigable for a far greater distance, the Chinese
+geographers regard the Min as the true “Great River,” the superior
+length of the Chin Sha not being taken into account. It should be noted
+that the Chinese only give their great river the name of Yangtze for the
+two hundred miles of its tidal waters.[5]
+
+After the River of Golden Sand and the Min unite at Sui Fu, the Great
+River asserts its right to be regarded as the most important of Asiatic
+waterways by furnishing, by its main stream and the tributaries which
+thereafter enter it, routes easy of navigation through the rich and
+crowded centre of China, with Canton by the Fu-ling, with only two
+portages, and with Peking (Tientsin) itself by the Grand Canal, which it
+cuts in twain at Chin Kiang.
+
+It is only of the navigable affluents of the Yangtze that mention need
+be made here. The raging and tremendous torrents foaming through rifts
+as colossal as its own, and at present unexplored, lie rather within the
+province of the geographer.
+
+In estimating the importance of these affluents it must be remembered
+that the Yangtze, of which they are feeders, is not _an_ outlet, but
+_the_ outlet, for the commerce of SZE CHUAN, which, owing to its size,
+population, wealth, and resources, may be truly termed the empire
+province of China.
+
+On the north or left bank the Min, before uniting with the Chin Sha at
+Sui Fu, receives near the beautiful trading city of Chia-ling Fu the
+Tung or Tatu, a river with a volume of water so much larger than its own
+as to warrant the view taken by Mr. Baber and Mr. von Rosthorn that it
+ought to be considered the main stream, and the Ya, which is navigable
+for bamboo rafts up to Ya-chow, the centre of the brick tea trade with
+Tibet. After this the Yangtze at Lu-chow receives the To, which gives
+access to one of the richest regions of the province, and at Chungking,
+the trading capital, the Chia-ling.
+
+This is in itself a river of great importance, being navigable for over
+500 miles, actually into the province of Kansuh. It receives several
+noble navigable feeders, among the most important of which are the Ku,
+entering it a little above Ho-chow, the Honton or Fu, and the Pai Shui.
+It passes for much of its course through a rich and fertile region, and
+through a country which produces large quantities of salt, and it
+bisects the vast coal-fields which underlie Central SZE CHUAN. On the
+right or south bank above the gorges, at the picturesque city of
+Fu-chow, the Fu-ling, which has three aliases, enters the Yangtze. This
+is an affluent of much commercial importance, as being the first of a
+network of rivers by which, with only two portages, goods from the Far
+West can reach Canton, and as affording, with its connections the Yuan
+Ho and the Tungting lake, an alternative route to Hankow, by which the
+risks of the rapids are avoided.
+
+After the Yangtze enters the gorges, which at one point, at least,
+narrow it to a width of 150 yards, there are no affluents worthy of
+special notice until Ichang is passed, when the Han, navigable for cargo
+boats for 1200 miles of north-westerly windings from its mouth at
+Hankow, takes the first place, followed by the Yuan, Hsiang, Kan, Shu,
+and others, which join the Yangtze through the Tungting and Poyang
+lakes. These rivers, specially the Han, are themselves swelled by a
+great number of navigable feeders, which east of Sha-shih, in the Great
+Plain, are connected by a vast network of navigable canals, the
+differences in level being overcome by the ingenious contrivance called
+the _pah_. These natural and artificial waterways are among the chief
+elements of the prosperity of the Yangtze Valley, affording cheap
+transit for merchandise, land carriage in China, mile for mile, costing
+twenty times as much as water carriage.
+
+The time of the annual rise and fall of the Great River can be counted
+on with tolerable certainty. With regard to the rise, from what I saw
+and heard I am inclined to attach more importance to the swelling of its
+Yunnan affluents during the south-west monsoon than to the melting of
+those snows which, as seen from the stupendous precipice of Omi-shan,
+are one of the grandest sights on earth—the long and glittering barrier
+which secludes the last of the hermit nations.
+
+The rise of the Yangtze is from forty feet or thereabouts at Hankow to
+ninety feet and upwards at Chungking. During three months of the year
+the rush of the vast volume of water is so tremendous that traffic is
+mainly suspended, and even in early June many hundreds of the large
+junks are laid up until the autumn in quiet reaches between Chungking
+and Wan Hsien. The annual rise of the river as well as the rapids have
+to be taken into consideration in the discussion of the question as to
+whether steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze can be made commercially
+profitable.
+
+The actual rise, which is more reliable than that of the Nile, begins
+late in March, is at its height early in August, and then gradually
+falls until December or January. Late in June, when I descended the
+Great River, its enormous submerged area presented the same appearance
+on a large scale as the limited Nile valley—an expanse of muddy water,
+out of which low mounds, probably of great antiquity, rise, crested with
+trees and villages, with boats moored to the houses.
+
+The country in the neighbourhood of Shanghai is a fairly good example of
+the characteristics of the Great Plain. In ordinary dry weather the
+surface of the soil is not more than five feet above the water-level,
+and as seen from any pagoda the whole country, with the exception of the
+two or three low Tsing-pu hills, which are seldom visible, presents the
+aspect, familiar to dwellers in the fens, of a cultivated dead level,
+intersected by numerous canals and creeks and by embankments for the
+preservation of the fields from inundation. Much the same sort of view
+in winter may be seen from any elevated point for hundreds of miles,
+modified by a few ranges of hills of somewhat higher elevation, wider
+creeks, and shallow marshy lakes.
+
+It is not solely by deposits of rich alluvium brought down by the annual
+rise of the river that the soil of the Great Plain is gradually raised.
+The agency of dust storms is an important one, and these occur
+extensively throughout Northern and Central China, moving much material
+from place to place. I saw a dust storm at Kueichow which lasted for
+seven hours, burying some hovels and much agricultural country, and even
+producing a metamorphosis of the rocky bed of the Yangtze. Such storms
+have been observed as far east as Shanghai, but their occurrence at
+Kueichow shows that their area is not limited to the Great Plain or even
+to the region east of the mountain barrier between HUPEH and SZE CHUAN.
+
+It is not till the Yangtze reaches Sha-shih that its character
+completely changes. The first note of change is a great embankment,
+thirty feet high, which protects the region from inundation. Below
+Sha-shih the vast river becomes mixed up with a network of lakes and
+rivers, connected by canals, the area of the important Tungting lake
+being over 2000 square miles. The Han alone, with its many affluents and
+canals, disperses goods through the interior for 1200 miles north of its
+mouth at Hankow, but there are some difficult rapids to surmount. The
+Hsiang and the Yuan, uniting with the Yangtze at the Tungting lake, are
+navigable nearly as far to the south. The Kan, which unites with the
+Yangtze through the Poyang lake, which has an area of 1800 square miles,
+is navigable to the Mei-ling pass, near the Kwantung frontier.
+
+The delta of the river is indicated below Wu-sueh by even a greater
+labyrinth of tributaries, lakes, and canals, the area of the Tai Hu and
+the other lakes in the southern delta being estimated at 1200 square
+miles, and the length of the channels used for navigation and irrigation
+at 36,000 miles. In summer, after the spring crops have been removed,
+the whole region is under water. The population migrates to mounds, and
+the temporary villages communicate by boats.
+
+At Chinkiang the Grand Canal enters the Yangtze from Hangchow, and
+leaves it on the left bank, some miles away, for Tientsin. On that north
+bank engineering works, extending over a vast area of country, have been
+constructed, evidencing the former energy and skill of the Chinese.
+
+These have diverted the river Huai, which with its seventy-two
+tributaries form important commercial routes to North An Hui and Honan,
+from its natural course to the sea, and have compelled the bulk of its
+waters to discharge themselves into the Yangtze through openings in a
+large canal which runs nearly parallel with it for 140 miles. By means
+of innumerable artificial waterways, the excavation of some lakes, and
+the enlargement of others, the Huai no longer has any existence as a
+river east of the Grand Canal, most of this work having been carried out
+to prevent undue pressure on the bank of that great waterway at any one
+point south of the old course of the Hoang Ho.
+
+North of the canal, and parallel with the Yangtze, lies a parallelogram
+the extent of which is estimated by Père Gandar at 8876 square miles,
+and is one of the most productive rice-fields in China. This is below
+the water-level. It has immense dykes protecting it from the sea,
+pierced by eighteen drainage canals, but its chief drainage is into the
+Yangtze. Waterways under constant and careful supervision intersect this
+singular region. For the remaining distance the mighty flood of the
+Yangtze rolls majestically on through absolutely level country, in which
+in winter embankments and waterways are everywhere seen. The influence
+of the tide is felt for about 200 miles.
+
+There is an ancient Chinese proverb regarding the mouth of the Great
+River: “Lo, this mighty current hastens to its imperial audience with
+the ocean.” But opaque yellow water and mud flats, extending as far as
+the eye can reach, leave the imperial grandeur to the imagination.
+
+Tennyson’s description of the work of rivers as being “to sow the dust
+of continents to be,” applies forcibly to the Yangtze, which, after
+creating the vast alluvial plains which stretch from Sha-shih for 800
+miles to the ocean and endowing them in its annual overflow with
+sufficient fresh material to keep up an unsurpassed fertility, has yet
+enough to spare to discharge 770,000 feet of solid substance every
+second into the sea, according to scientific estimates. The Yangtze has
+done much to create, within comparatively recent years, at least the
+eastern portion of the province of Kiang Su and the island of Tsung-ming
+near Shanghai, capable of supporting a population of considerably over
+1,000,000 souls. Another marked instance of its power to create is shown
+near the treaty port of Chinkiang. The British fleet ascended the
+Yangtze, so recently as in 1842, by a channel south of the beautiful
+Golden Island. Now, instead of the channel, there is an expanse of
+wooded and cultivated land sprinkled with villages.
+
+Nearly a mile wide 600 miles from its mouth, nearly three-quarters of a
+mile at 1000, and 630 yards at 1500, with a volume of water which, at
+1000 miles from the sea, is estimated at 244 times that of the Thames at
+London Bridge, with a summer depth of ninety feet at Chungking and of
+ten feet at its few shallow places at Hankow when at its lowest winter
+level, with a capacity for a rise of forty feet before it overflows its
+banks, with an annual rise and fall more reliable than those of the
+Nile, with navigable tributaries penetrating the richest and most
+populous regions of China, navigable in the summer as far as Hankow for
+the largest ships in the world, and during the whole year to Ichang, 400
+miles farther, for fine river steamers carrying large cargoes, even the
+Upper Yangtze, that region of grandeur, perils, and surprises, is
+traversed annually by 7000 junks, employing a quarter of a million of
+men. During my own descent of the Min and Yangtze from Chengtu to
+Shanghai, a distance by the windings of the river of about 2000 miles, I
+was never out of sight of native traffic, and those who, like myself,
+have waited for two or three days at the foot of the great rapids for
+the turn to ascend, can form some idea of how vast that traffic is.
+
+The navigable portion of the Yangtze, as regarded from the sea,
+naturally divides itself into three stretches, the first, of 1000 miles,
+rolling as a broad turbid flood, traversed by several lines of steamers,
+through the deep grey alluvium of some of the richest and most populous
+provinces of China, mainly its own creation; the second, the region
+between Ichang and Kueichow Fu, through which hitherto goods have been
+carried by junks alone, in which it cleaves the confused mass of the
+HUPEH ranges by a series of magnificent gorges and tremendous cataracts;
+and the third, the long stretch of rapids and races between Kueichow Fu
+and Sui Fu at its junction with the Min.
+
+It is not possible to exaggerate the sublimity and risks of the
+navigation of the Upper Yangtze, especially at certain seasons. Of the
+vast fleet of junks which navigate its perilous waters, five hundred on
+an average are annually wrecked, and one-tenth of the enormous
+importation of cotton into Chungking arrives damaged by water. Yet so
+ample are the means of transport, and so low the freight considering the
+risks, that, according to Mr. von Rosthorn, of the Chinese Imperial
+Maritime Customs, foreign cottons are sold in SZE CHUAN at a barely
+appreciable advance on their price at Ichang, to which point they are
+brought by steam from the coast in eight days.
+
+The _Chinese Gazetteer_ notifies one thousand rapids and rocks between
+Ichang and Chungking, a distance of about 500 miles; and in winter this
+does not seem an outlandish estimate, but in early summer, with the
+water twenty-four and thirty feet higher, many of the vigorous rapids,
+alternating with smooth stretches of river only running three knots an
+hour, disappear, along with boulder-strewn shores, rocks, and islets,
+giving place to a broad and tremendous volume of water, swirling
+seawards at the rate of seven, eight, and ten knots an hour, forming
+many and dangerous whirlpools.
+
+Of the magnitude of the native traffic on the Lower Yangtze,
+undiminished by the various steamboat lines which keep up daily
+communication with Hankow, it is scarcely needful to write. In ascending
+it is evident to the traveller by the time that Chinkiang, the port of
+junction with the Grand Canal, is reached, that, broad as the river is,
+there is none too much “sea room” for the thousands of junks of every
+build, from every maritime and riverine province, fishing and cargo
+boats of every size and rig, rafts, lorchas, and cormorant boats, which
+throng its waters.
+
+The open ports of Wuhu and Kiu-kiang, each with its fleets of junks, and
+trade worth several millions sterling annually, and big cities such as
+Nanking, Yangchow, and Nganking, each with its highly organised
+mercantile and social life, and trade guilds and charities, are
+important and interesting; and it is seen in a rapid glance that large
+villages with numerous industries, rice, cotton, and silk culture
+predominating, abound, that everything is utilised, that every foot of
+ground capable of cultivation is bearing a crop, and that even the
+reed-beds of the irreclaimable swamps furnish materials for houses,
+roofs, fences, and fuel. It is seen that elaborate and successful
+engineering works have reclaimed large tracts of country and keep them
+drained, that a network of irrigating and navigable canals spreads over
+the whole level region, and that the traffic on these minor waterways is
+enormous.
+
+So ceaseless are the industries by land and water, that it is hardly a
+surprise to find them culminating 600 miles from the ocean in the
+“million-peopled” city of Hankow (Han Mouth), the greatest distributing
+centre for goods in China, with miles of craft moored in triple rows
+along the Han, itself navigable for 1200 miles.
+
+The empire province of SZE CHUAN, with the great navigable tributaries
+of the Yangtze, by which goods are conveyed at small cost to countless
+towns and villages, will be treated in some detail farther on. It is
+enough to remark here that it has about the area of France, that it has
+a population estimated by the Chinese census authorities at 70,000,000,
+and by none at less than 50,000,000; that it has a superb climate,
+ranging from the temperate to the sub-tropical; a rich soil, much of
+which, under careful cultivation, yields three and even four crops
+annually of most things which can be grown; forests of grand timber, the
+area of which has not even been estimated; rich mineral resources, and
+some of the most valuable and extensive coal-fields in the world. It
+cannot be repeated too often that for its export trade, estimated at
+£3,300,000, and its import trade, estimated at £2,400,000, the Yangtze
+is the _sole_ outlet and inlet.
+
+Such an exhibition of Chinese energy, industry, resourcefulness, and
+power of battling with difficulties is not to be seen anywhere to the
+same extent as on the Upper Yangtze, where the enormous bulk of the vast
+import trade has to be dragged up 500 miles of hills of water by the
+sheer force of man-power, at two or three of the worst rapids a junk of
+over one hundred tons requiring the haulage of nearly four hundred men.
+
+Waterways take the place of roads, which are usually infamous,
+throughout the Yangtze basin, but the bridges are marvels of solidity,
+and in many cases of beauty. The annual inundations on the Great Plain
+partly account for the badness of the roads, and constitute an expensive
+difficulty in the way of the forthcoming railroads.
+
+To write of the Yangtze Valley, the British “sphere of influence” (a
+phrase against which I protest), without any allusion to such an
+important factor as its inhabitants, would be a mistake, for sooner or
+later, in various ways, we shall have to reckon with them.
+
+The population throughout, from the ocean to the unexplored rifts of the
+Chin Sha, is homogeneous, that is Chinese, with the exception of certain
+tribes of the far west: the Sifan, Mantze, and Lolo. The Tartars or
+Manchu, who have supplied the throne with the present dynasty, whose
+fathers drove the Chinese before them like sheep, and who still garrison
+the great cities, have mainly degenerated into opium-smoking loafers,
+the agent in their downfall being hereditary pensions.
+
+Throughout this vast population, perhaps not over-estimated at
+180,000,000, with the exception of spasmodic and local rebellions now
+and then, law and order, prosperity (except in such disasters as floods
+or famines) and peace prevail, and that security for the gains of labour
+exists without which no country is great. The system of government, the
+written language, and the education are uniform, and the “three
+religions”—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism—are so mixed up together
+that there is little antagonism between them.
+
+The organisation of this valley population, social and mercantile, is a
+marvel, with its system of trade, trade guilds, trade unions, charities,
+banking and postal systems, and powerful trade combinations.
+
+In much talk about “open doors” and “spheres of influence” and
+“interest,” in much greed for ourselves, not always dexterously cloaked,
+and much jealousy and suspicion of our neighbours, and in much interest
+in the undignified scramble for concessions in which we have been taking
+our share at Peking, there is a risk of our coming to think only of
+markets, territory, and railroads, and of ignoring the men who, for two
+thousand years, have been making China worth scrambling for. It may be
+that we go forward with “a light heart,” along with other European
+empires, not hesitating, for the sake of commercial advantages, to break
+up in the case of a fourth of the human race the most ancient of earth’s
+existing civilisations, without giving any equivalent.
+
+In estimating the position occupied by the inhabitants of the Yangtze
+Valley, as of the rest of China, it is essential for us to see quite
+clearly that our Western ideas find themselves confronted, not with
+barbarism or with debased theories of morals, but with an elaborate and
+antique civilisation which yet is not decayed, and which, though
+imperfect, has many claims to our respect and even admiration. They meet
+with a perfectly organised social order, a system of government
+theoretically admirably suited to the country, combining the extremes of
+centralisation and decentralisation, and under which, in spite of its
+tremendous infamies of practice, the governed enjoy a large measure of
+peace and prosperity, a noteworthy amount of individual liberty and
+security for the gains of labour, and under which it is as possible for
+a peasant’s son to rise to high position as in the American Republic.[6]
+
+Western civilisation finds itself confronted also by a people at once
+grossly material and grossly superstitious, swayed at once by the hazy
+speculations and unintelligible metaphysic which in Chinese Buddhism
+have allied themselves with the most extravagant and childish
+superstitions, and by the dæmonism of Taoism, while over both tower the
+lofty ethics and profound agnosticism of Confucius. It finds a classical
+literature universally held in profound reverence, in which, according
+to all testimony, there is not a thought which could sully the purest
+mind, and an idolatry puerile, superstitious, and free from grand
+conceptions, but in which bloody sacrifices and the deification of vice
+have never had a part, or immoral rites a place.
+
+The human product of Chinese civilisation, religion, and government is
+to me the greatest of all enigmas, and so he remains to those who know
+him best. At once conservative and adaptable, the most local of peasants
+in his attachments, and the most cosmopolitan and successful of
+emigrants—sober, industrious, thrifty, orderly, peaceable, indifferent
+to personal comfort, possessing great physical vitality, cheerful,
+contented, persevering—his filial piety, tenacity, resourcefulness,
+power of combination, and respect for law and literature, place him in
+the van of Asiatic nations.
+
+The Chinese constitute an order by themselves, and their individuality
+cannot be read in the light of that of any other nation. The aspirations
+and modes of thinking by which we are ruled do not direct their aims.
+They are keen and alert, but unwilling to strike out new lines, and slow
+to be influenced in any matters. Their trading instincts are phenomenal.
+They are born bargainers, and would hardly think half an hour wasted if
+through chaffering they gained an advantage of half a _cash_, a coin
+forty of which are about one penny. They are suspicious, cunning, and
+corrupt; but it is needless to run through the established formula of
+their vices. Among the things which they lack are CONSCIENCE, and such
+an enlightened public opinion as shall sustain right and condemn wrong.
+
+Matthew Arnold has said that Greece perished for want of attention to
+conduct, and that the revelation which rules the world is the
+“pre-eminence of righteousness.” It may be that the western powers are
+not giving the Middle Kingdom a very desirable object-lesson.
+
+On the whole, as I hope to show to some extent in the following pages,
+throughout the Yangtze valley, from the great cities of Hangchow and
+Hankow to the trading cities of SZE-CHUAN, the traveller receives very
+definite impressions of the completeness of Chinese social and
+commercial organisation, the skill and carefulness of cultivation, the
+clever adaptation of means to ends—the existence of provincial
+patriotism, or, perhaps, more truly, of local public spirit, of the
+general prosperity, and of the backbone, power of combination,
+resourcefulness, and independence possessed by the race. It is not an
+effete or decaying people which we shall have to meet in serious
+competition when it shall have learned our sciences and some of our
+methods of manufacturing industry. Indeed, it is not improbable that
+chemistry, for instance, might be eagerly adapted by so ingenious a race
+to the perpetration of new and hitherto unthought-of frauds! But if the
+extraordinary energy, adaptability, and industry of the Chinese may be
+regarded from one point of view as the “Yellow Peril,” surely looked at
+from another they constitute the Yellow Hope, and it may be possible
+that an empire genuinely Christianised, but not denationalised, may yet
+be the dominant power in Eastern Asia.
+
+The Chinese are ignorant and superstitious beyond belief, but on the
+whole, with all their faults, I doubt whether any other Oriental race
+runs so straight.
+
+The Yangtze Basin is a magnificent sphere of interest for all the
+industrial nations for fair, if not friendly, rivalry, and to preserve
+the “open door” there, and throughout China, is a worthy object of
+ambition. To strengthen instead of to weaken the Central Government is
+undoubtedly the wisest policy to pursue, for in the weakness of the
+Peking Government lies the weakness and possible abrogation of all
+treaty obligations. It is its strength and capacity to fulfil its
+treaties which alone make them worth anything. In the weakening of the
+Central Government, and the disintegration of the empire, our treaty
+rights in the Yangtze Valley, for instance, would be worth as much as
+our sword could secure, and it cannot reach above Ichang, while if the
+integrity of the empire be preserved, and it is aided along judicious
+paths of reform, this vast basin, with its singular capabilities, and
+its population of 180,000,000, may become the widest arena for
+commercial rivalries that the world has ever seen.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+                         “THE MODEL SETTLEMENT”
+
+
+Those of my readers who have followed me through all or any of my eleven
+volumes of travels must be aware that my chief wish on arriving at a
+foreign settlement or treaty port in the East is to get out of it as
+soon as possible, and that I have not the remotest hankering after
+Anglo-Asiatic attractions. Nor is Shanghai, “The Model Settlement of the
+East,” an exception to the general rule, though I gratefully acknowledge
+the kindness and hospitality which I met with there, as everywhere, and
+recall with pleasure my many sojourns at the British Consulate as the
+guest of Mr. and Mrs. Lowndes Bullock.
+
+But as the outlet of the commerce of the Yangtze Valley, and as a
+foreign city which has risen on Chinese shores in little more than half
+a century to the position and importance of one of the great trading
+centres of the world—its exports and imports for 1898 being of the value
+of £37,680,875 sterling[7]—it claims such notice as I can give it, which
+is chiefly in the shape of impressions.
+
+I have reached Shanghai four times by Japanese steamers, three times in
+coasting steamers of American build, once in one of the superb vessels
+of the Canadian _Empress_ line, once from Hankow in a metamorphosed
+Dutch gunboat, and the last time, after nearly three and a half years of
+far eastern travel, in a small Korean Government steamer, her quaint,
+mysterious, and nearly unknown national flag exciting much speculation
+and interest as she steamed slowly up the river. Of these vessels, the
+_Empress of China_ alone discharged her passengers and cargo at
+Woo-sung, a railroad terminus twelve miles below Shanghai, and that not
+necessarily.
+
+Many hours before reaching port, the deep heavenly blue of the Pacific
+gradually changes into a turbid yellowish flood, well named the Yellow
+Sea, holding in suspension the rich wash of scarcely explored Central
+Asian mountain ranges, the red loam of the “Red Basin” of SZE CHUAN, and
+the grey and yellow alluvium of the Central Provinces of China, all
+carried to the ocean by the “Great River,” according to a careful
+scientific estimate, to the extent of 6,428,858,255 cubic feet a year,
+solid stuff enough to build an island ninety feet in depth and a mile
+square annually.
+
+Countless fishing-boats roll on the muddy waste; sailing vessels,
+steamers, and brown-sailed junks of every build show signs of
+convergence towards something, and before long a blink of land is
+visible, and a lightship indicates the mouth of the Yangtze Kiang and a
+navigable channel. It is long even then before anything definite
+presents itself, and I confess to being disappointed with the first
+features of the Asiatic mainland—two long, thin, yellow lines, hardly
+more solid-looking than the yellow water stretching along the horizon,
+growing gradually into low marshy banks, somewhat later topped with
+uninteresting foliage, through which there are glimpses of what looks
+like an interminable swamp. Then Woo-sung appears with its new railroad,
+godowns, whitewashed buildings, and big ships at anchor discharging
+cargo into lighters and native boats, and then the banks of the
+narrowing Huang-pu, the river of Shanghai, are indicated by habitations
+and small fields and signs of small industries.
+
+Within four miles of Shanghai the vivacity of the Huang-pu and its banks
+becomes overpowering, and the West asserts its ascendency over the
+slow-moving East. There are ranges of great godowns, wharves, building
+yards, graving docks, “works” of all descriptions, filatures, cotton
+mills, and all the symptoms in smoky chimneys and a ceaseless clang of
+the presence of capital and energy. After the war with Japan there was a
+rapid increase in the number of factories.
+
+The life and movement on the river become wonderful. The channel for
+large vessels, though narrow, shifting, and intricate, and the subject
+of years of doleful prophecies as to “silting up” and leaving Shanghai
+stranded, admits of the passage of our largest merchantmen, and
+successful dredging enables them to lie alongside the fine wharves at
+Hongkew. American three and four-masted and other sailing vessels are at
+anchor in mid-stream, or are proceeding up or down in charge of tugs.
+Monster liners under their own steam at times nearly fill up the
+channel, their officers yelling frantically at the small craft which
+recklessly cross their bows; great white, two-storeyed paddle arks from
+Ningpo and Hankow, local steamers, steam launches owned by the great
+firms, junks of all builds and sizes, manageable by their huge rudders,
+_sampans_, hooded boats, and native boats of all descriptions, lighters,
+and a shoal of nondescript craft make navigation tedious, if not
+perilous, while sirens and steam whistles sound continually. “The plot
+thickens.” Foreign _hongs_, warehouses, shipping offices, and hotels are
+passed in Hongkew, the American settlement, and gliding round Pu-tung
+Point, the steamer anchors abreast of the bund in a wholesomely rapid
+flow of water 2000 feet wide.
+
+I arrived in Shanghai the first time on a clear, bright autumn day. The
+sky was very blue, and the masses of exotic trees, the green, shaven
+lawns, the belated roses, and the clumps of chrysanthemums in the fine
+public gardens gave a great charm to the first view of the settlement.
+Two big, lofty, white hulks for bonded Indian opium are moored
+permanently in front of the gardens. Gunboats and larger war-vessels of
+all nations, all painted white, and the fine steamers of the Messageries
+Maritimes have their moorings a little higher up. Boats, with crews in
+familiar uniforms, and covered native boats gaily painted, the latter
+darting about like dragonflies, were plying ceaselessly, and as it was
+the turn of the tide, hundreds of junks were passing seawards under
+their big brown sails.
+
+On landing at the fine landing-stage, where kind friends received me and
+took me to the British Consul’s residence in the spacious grounds of the
+Consulate, I was at once impressed with the exquisite dress of the
+ladies, who were at least a half of the throng, and with the look of
+wealth and comfort which prevails.
+
+All along the British bund, for at least a mile from the Soochow Creek,
+which separates it from Hongkew, to the French settlement, are banks,
+hongs, hotels, and private houses of the most approved and massive
+Anglo-Oriental architecture, standing in large, shady gardens, the Hong
+Kong and Shanghai Bank, the “P. & O.” office, the Canadian-Pacific
+Railroad office, the fine counting-house and dwelling-house of the old
+and famous firm of Jardine, Matheson & Co., and the long façade of the
+British Consular buildings, with their wide sweep of lawns, being
+prominent.
+
+The broad carriage-road and fine flagged side-walk are truly
+cosmopolitan. Well-dressed men and women of all civilised nations, and
+of some which are not civilised, promenade gaily on the walk and in the
+garden. Single and two-horse carriages and buggies, open and closed,
+with coachmen and grooms in gay and often fantastic cotton liveries,
+dash along the drive. Hackney victorias abound, and there are
+_jinrickshas_ (from which foreigners drop the first syllable) in
+hundreds, with Chinese runners, and Shanghai wheelbarrows innumerable,
+some loaded with goods or luggage, while the coolies of others are
+trundling along from two to four Chinese men or women of the lower
+classes, seated on matted platforms on either side of the wheel, facing
+forwards.
+
+I was not prepared for the Chinese element being so much _en evidence_
+in the foreign settlement. It is not only that clerks and compradores
+dressed in rich silks on which the characters for happiness and
+longevity and the symbols of luck are brocaded are in numbers on the
+bund, and that all the servile classes, as may be expected, are Chinese,
+but that Chinese shops of high standing, such as Laou Kai Fook’s, are
+taking their places in fine streets which run back from the bund, that
+some of the handsomest carriages on the bund and the Bubbling Well Road,
+the fashionable afternoon drive of Shanghai, are owned and filled with
+Chinese, that Chinese ladies and children richly-dressed drive in the
+same fashion, and that of late, specially, wealthy Chinese have become
+keen competitors for British houses, and have even outbid foreigners for
+them. Is Shanghai menaced by the “Yellow Peril” as Malacca, Singapore,
+and Penang have been?
+
+A great trading Chinese city, with an estimated population of 200,000,
+has grown up within the foreign boundary, subject to foreign municipal
+laws and sanitary regulations, but so absolutely Chinese, that were it
+not for the wide streets and the absence of refuse-heaps and bad smells,
+one might think oneself in one of the great cities of the interior. The
+Chinese are quite capable of appreciating the comfort and equity of
+foreign rule, and the various advantages which they enjoy under it. They
+pay municipal taxes according to their rating, and “feu duty” for their
+land, which it is usual for them to hold in the name of a foreigner.
+They are under the jurisdiction of the Chinese Government, but civil
+cases in which foreigners are concerned and breaches of the peace are
+tried in what is known as the “Mixed Court,” an apparently satisfactory
+and workable arrangement, and serious criminal cases belong to the
+Chinese Shanghai magistrate.
+
+I soon began to learn why Shanghai is called, or calls itself, “The
+Model Settlement,” and to recognise the fitness of the name. The British
+and American settlements are governed by a Municipality elected by the
+ratepayers, consisting of nine gentlemen, who, assisted by a secretary
+and general staff, expend the sums provided by the ratepayers to the
+general satisfaction, arranging admirably for the health, security,
+comfort, and even enjoyment of the large foreign community, as well as
+for the order and well-being of the constantly increasing Chinese
+population, showing to the whole East what can be accomplished by an
+honest and thoroughly efficient British local administration. This body
+is, as it deserves to be, grandly housed.
+
+The more important streets are lighted with electricity, the others with
+gas. Mounted Sikh police patrol the suburban roads, and a mixed force of
+Europeans, Sikhs, and Chinese preserves order and security in the
+settlement by day and night. An expensive but successful drainage system
+keeps Shanghai sweet and wholesome. Water-carts are always at work in
+dry weather, and scavengers’ carts cleanse the streets three times
+daily. Waterworks three miles from city pollutions supply pure water
+abundantly, and keep up a very high pressure unfailingly. The band of
+thirty performers, which plays in the public gardens every afternoon in
+winter, and three evenings a week in summer, attracting nearly the whole
+foreign community to lounge under the trees or stroll on the smooth
+gravel walks, is the creature of the Municipality.
+
+Shanghai has two telegraph lines embracing London; daily papers well
+conducted, the _North China Daily News_ specially maintaining a
+deservedly high reputation; several magazines, and communication with
+Europe always once a week, and usually oftener, by well-appointed mail
+steamers of four lines. Telegraphic news from all parts of the world
+appears simultaneously in London and Shanghai; it is thoroughly in touch
+with Europe and America, and European politics and events in general are
+discussed with as much intelligence and almost as much zest as at home.
+Excellent libraries, and the large book-store of Messrs. Kelly & Walsh,
+cater for the intellectual needs of the population, but it is likely
+that the depressing climate in spring and summer, and the whirl of
+society and amusements in winter, indispose most of the residents for
+anything like stiff reading.
+
+The tremendous energy with which Shanghai amuses itself during seven
+months of the year is something phenomenal. It is even a fatigue to
+contemplate it. Various causes contribute to it on the part of the
+ladies. There is the Anglo-Saxon vitality which must find some outlet.
+Then there is the absence of household cares owing to the efficiency of
+Chinese cooks and “boys,” and ofttimes the absence of children also,
+owing to the need for home education; and there is also the lack of
+those benevolent outgoings among “the poor” which occupy usefully a
+portion of the time of leisured women at home. Then, owing to the
+imitative skill of Chinese tailors, who can construct the most elaborate
+gowns from fashion-plates for a few shillings, it is possible for women
+to have the pleasure of appearing in an infinite variety of elegant
+toilettes at a very small expense, and dress is certainly elevated into
+a fine art in Shanghai.
+
+Of the men I write tremblingly! Chinese tailors seem as successful as
+Chinese dressmakers, and the laundrymen equal both, no small matter when
+white linen suits are in question. May it be permitted to a traveller to
+remark that if men were to give to the learning of Chinese and of
+Chinese requirements and methods of business a little of the time which
+is lavished on sport and other amusements, there might possibly be less
+occasion for the complaint that large fortunes are no longer to be made
+in Chinese business.
+
+For indeed, from ignorance of the language and reliance on that limited
+and abominable vocabulary known as “Pidgun,” the British merchant must
+be more absolutely dependent on his Chinese compradore than he would
+care to be at home on his confidential clerk. Even in such lordly
+institutions as the British Banks on the bund it seems impossible to
+transact even such a simple affair as cashing a cheque without calling
+in the aid of a sleek, supercilious-looking, richly-dressed Chinese, a
+_shroff_ or _compradore_, who looks as if he knew the business of the
+bank and were capable of running it. It is different at the Yokohama
+Specie Bank, which has found a footing in Shanghai, in which the alert
+Japanese clerks manage their own affairs and speak Chinese. May I be
+forgiven?
+
+An extraordinary variety of amusements is crowded into every day. Then
+the community is most hospitable, as every visitor to Shanghai knows,
+and the arrival of every ship of war and eminent globe-trotter is the
+signal for a fresh outbreak of gaiety. Home diversions are reproduced,
+and others are superadded, such as paper hunts in the adjacent
+cotton-fields, house-boat picnics and pleasure excursions, and
+house-boat shooting excursions, lasting from three days to a week, for
+which special advantages exist, as the inland cotton-fields during the
+winter are alive with pheasants, partridges, quail, woodcock, and hares,
+while the watercourses abound with wild fowl. Pony races are a leading
+institution, with gentlemen riders of course. The morning gallops
+extract people from their beds at unwonted hours, and in spring and
+autumn the prospects of the stables make great inroads on conversation.
+But I will not go further. The very imperfect list given below gives
+some idea of the diversions which the community provides for itself.[8]
+Amateur theatricals are “the rage” in the winter, the amateur company
+providing several performances in a theatre built by a subscription of
+£5000, and holding over eight hundred persons, and the Fine Art Society
+gives an annual exhibition.
+
+The continual presence of strangers imparts a needed element of
+freshness to society, and a zest to amusements which might pall, and
+gives people an excuse, if any were needed, for enjoying themselves.
+Shanghai has become the metropolis of gaiety for the Far East, and a
+week at the Astor House, the great recreation looked forward to not only
+by the dwellers in the treaty ports of China and Japan, but by those who
+roast and dissolve on the rock at Hongkong, and its delirious whirl
+attracts people even from Singapore.
+
+But it would be quite an error to suppose that amusement crowds out the
+kindlier emotions. Europeans fall into distress constantly, some from
+misfortune, and some from fault, and many widows and orphans are left
+penniless. One may safely say that there is never a case of distress
+arising from any cause which is not immediately and amply relieved and
+planned for; and benevolence never wearies, the Ladies’ Benevolent
+Society doing a ceaseless good work. There is a Sailors’ Home and Rest
+in a very efficient and flourishing condition, with musical evenings
+frequently, at which ladies and gentlemen play and sing; and, without
+going further into detail, it may be said that the various useful
+organisations which our civilisation considers essential for a large
+community, from a fine general hospital downwards, have their place in
+Shanghai.
+
+Church accommodation is ample for the church-goers. The Protestant
+cathedral, a really beautiful edifice, built from the designs of Sir
+Gilbert Scott, is one of the greatest adornments of the settlement, and
+is the finest ecclesiastical building in the Far East.
+
+From the early days of Shanghai many Protestant missions, both European
+and American, have had mission houses in the settlement, the most
+important being the large, appropriate, and substantial headquarters of
+the China Inland Mission, the gift of Mr. Orr Ewing, with a home for a
+hundred missionaries, a hospital, goods and business departments, and
+postal arrangements. Dr. Muirhead, of the L.M.S., whose missionary zeal
+is unchilled in the winter of his age, and Dr. Edkins, of the same
+Society, whose Chinese scholarship and researches among things Chinese
+have won him a European fame, are well known to, and are much respected
+by, the foreign community. There is also a large Roman mission. British
+and American Bible Societies, and the English Religious Tract Society
+and others also have agents and depôts there, and much translation is
+done by missionaries, and by agencies which have for their noble object
+the diffusion of pure and useful western literature among the Chinese,
+and their elevation mentally and morally.
+
+There is a North China branch of the Royal Asiatic Society in Shanghai,
+with a fine library, regular meetings, and a journal, which gathers up a
+great deal of very valuable matter. If the size and material of the
+audience on the night when I had the honour of reading a paper before
+the Society may be regarded as an indication of the interest in its
+objects, it must be flourishing indeed.
+
+The topography of this metropolis is fully dealt with in various
+official and other volumes. The salient points which impress a newcomer
+are Hongkew, the American settlement, with its commercial activity, the
+Soochow creek, with its fine bridge, the handsome buildings of the
+British Consulate, the British Bund, with its fine retaining wall, the
+long line of handsome private and public buildings, and the glimpses of
+broad and handsome streets full of private residences which run from the
+bund towards the boundary.
+
+The French Bund is a continuation of the British; but the French
+settlement is small, markedly inferior, and gives one an impression of
+arrested development, the only noteworthy buildings being the Consulate,
+the Town Hall, and the large but plain Roman cathedral. As some
+compensation, the fine wharves at which the big Yangtze steamers load
+and discharge their cargoes are in this settlement, as well as the
+handsome and commodious premises of the Messageries Maritimes, beyond
+which stretch, far as the eye can reach, the crowded tiers of the
+Chinese shipping. The French boundary is an undesirable creek, running
+past the east gate of the native city, between which and the Huang-pu
+are crowded and unsavoury suburbs.
+
+It is apparent that France regards her concession as a colony rather
+than a settlement, and she has lately urged her claims for an extension
+of it in a most selfish and indefensible manner. The settlement has been
+frequently in very hot water, and a serious disagreement with the
+Chinese occurred so recently as 1898. Its Municipal Board was once
+forcibly dissolved by the French Consul for a difference of opinion, and
+some of its members were imprisoned.
+
+The English settlement makes a proud display of the wealth of the
+insular kingdom in the number of its stately buildings, the Consulate,
+the cathedral, the municipal buildings, the four-storeyed and
+elaborately-designed club house, the banks and shipping offices, and the
+massive mansions of historic firms, standing in their secluded grounds;
+though of the magnates of eastern commerce in the days of the rapid
+making of great fortunes almost none remain. British, too, in design,
+architecture, and arrangement, in all indeed but cost, is the
+magnificent pile of buildings in which the Imperial Maritime Customs and
+the new Post Office, under the same management, are housed.
+
+Shanghai in every way makes good her claim to be metropolitan as well as
+cosmopolitan, and, in spite of dark shadows, is a splendid example of
+what British energy, wealth, and organising power can accomplish.
+
+To us the name Shanghai[9] means alone the superb foreign settlement,
+with all the accessories of western luxury and civilisation, lying
+grandly for a mile and a half along the Huang-pu, the centre of Far
+Eastern commerce and gaiety, the “Charing Cross” of the Pacific—London
+on the Yellow Sea.
+
+But there was a Shanghai before Shanghai—a Shanghai which still exists,
+increases, and flourishes—a busy and unsavoury trading city, which leads
+its own life according to Chinese methods as independently as though no
+foreign settlement existed; and long before Mr. Pigou, of the H.E.I.C.,
+in 1756, drew up his memorandum, suggesting Shanghai as a desirable
+place for trade, Chinese intelligence had hit upon the same idea, and
+the port was a great resort of Chinese shipping, cargoes being
+discharged there and dispersed over the interior by the Yangtze and the
+Grand Canal. Yet it never rose higher than the rank of a third-rate
+city.
+
+It has a high wall three miles and a half in circuit, pierced by several
+narrow gateways and surrounded by a ditch twenty feet wide, and suburbs
+lying between it and the river with its tiers of native shipping as
+crowded as the city proper. This shipping, consisting of junks, lorchas,
+and native craft of extraordinary rig, lies, as Lu Hew said, “like the
+teeth of a comb.”
+
+To mention native Shanghai in foreign ears polite seems scarcely seemly;
+it brands the speaker as an outside barbarian, a person of “odd
+tendencies.” It is bad form to show any interest in it, and worse to
+visit it. Few of the lady residents in the settlement have seen it, and
+both men and women may live in Shanghai for years and leave it without
+making the acquaintance of their nearest neighbour. It is supposed that
+there is a risk of bringing back small-pox and other maladies, that the
+smells are unbearable, that the foul slush of the narrow alleys is over
+the boots, that the foreigner is rudely jostled by thousands of dirty
+coolies, that the explorer may be knocked down or hurt by loaded
+wheelbarrows going at a run; in short, that it is generally abominable.
+It is the one point on which the residents are obdurate and disobliging.
+
+I absolutely failed to get an escort until Mr. Fox, of H.M’s Consular
+Service, kindly offered to accompany me. I did not take back small-pox
+or any other malady, I was not rudely jostled by dirty coolies, nor was
+I hurt or knocked down by wheelbarrows. The slush and the smells were
+there, but the slush was not fouler nor the smells more abominable than
+in other big Chinese cities that I have walked through; and as a foreign
+woman is an every-day sight in the near neighbourhood, the people minded
+their own business and not mine, and I was even able to photograph
+without being overborne by the curious.
+
+Shanghai is a mean-looking and busy city; its crowds of toiling,
+trotting, bargaining, dragging, burden-bearing, shouting, and yelling
+men are its one imposing feature. Few women, and those of the poorer
+class, are to be seen. The streets, with houses built of slate-coloured,
+soft-looking brick, are only about eight feet wide, are paved with stone
+slabs, and are narrowed by innumerable stands, on which are displayed,
+cooked and raw and being cooked, the multifarious viands in which the
+omnivorous Chinese delight, an odour of garlic predominating. Even a
+wheelbarrow—the only conveyance possible—can hardly make its way in many
+places. True, a mandarin sweeps by in his gilded chair, carried at a
+run, with his imposing retinue, but his lictors clear the way by means
+not available to the general public.
+
+All the articles usually exposed for sale in Chinese cities are met with
+in Shanghai, and old porcelain, bronzes, brocades, and embroideries are
+displayed to attract strangers. Restaurants and tea houses of all grades
+abound, and noteworthy among the latter is the picturesque building on
+the Zig-Zag Bridge, shown in the illustration. The buildings and
+fantastic well-kept pleasure grounds of the Ching-hwang Miao, which may
+be called the Municipal Temple, the Confucian Temple, the Guild Hall of
+the resident natives of Chekiang, and the temple of the God of War, with
+its vigorous images begrimed with the smoke of the incense sticks of
+ages of worshippers, its throngs, its smoke, its ceaseless movement, and
+its din are the most salient features of this native hive.
+
+_Yamens_, of course, exist, and _yamen_ runners, for Shanghai has the
+distinction of being the residence of a Taotai, or Intendant of Circuit,
+and a magistrate, in whose hands the administration of justice is
+placed, involving responsibility for the interests of over 560,000
+Chinese, the estimated native population of the city and the
+settlements, the total population being estimated at 586,000.
+
+On returning to the light, broad, clean, well-paved, and sanitary
+streets of foreign Shanghai, I was less surprised than before that so
+many of its residents are unacquainted with the dark, crowded, dirty,
+narrow, foul, and reeking streets of the neighbouring city.
+
+[Illustration: ZIG-ZAG BRIDGE AND TEA HOUSE, SHANGHAI.]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III.
+                              HANGCHOW[10]
+
+
+A journey of 150 miles to visit friends in the ancient city of Hangchow
+required no other preparations than the hire of a boat and the engaging
+of a servant, who I was compelled to dismiss a few days later for gross
+dishonesty. 2755 steam launches, owned and run by Chinese, towing 7889
+passenger boats, carrying 605 foreign and 125,000 native passengers,
+entered and cleared in 1897 between Hangchow, Shanghai, and Soochow.
+
+Every evening one of these launches, towing a long string of native
+boats, leaves the Soochow creek below the British Consulate for the new
+treaty ports, opened as such only in 1896. My small bamboo-roofed boat,
+in which I could just stand upright, much decorated in the tawdry style
+of Chinese fourth-class fancy, and through which irremediable draughts
+coursed friskily, was the contemptible final joint of a tail of nine
+quaint and picturesque passage junks and family house-boats, a varnished
+procession of high-sterned, two-storeyed, many-windowed arks, squirming
+and snaking along at the stern of a noisy, asthmatic tow-boat. There
+were red flags flying, gongs crashing out dissonance, crackers
+exploding, poles with clothes drying on them pushed out of windows,
+incense sticks smouldering, and reports of firearms; and with this
+cheerful din, the usual accompaniment of Chinese movement, we started in
+the red twilight.
+
+I paid six dollars for my boat with three men, and five dollars fifty
+cents for towage, about 23_s._
+
+All day long the life on the two-storeyed open-sterned boat in front of
+mine was exposed to view. It was occupied by three generations, nine
+souls in all, under the rule of a grandmother. They rose early, lighted
+the fire and their incense sticks, kotowed to an idol in a gilded
+shrine, offered him a small bowl of rice, and cooked and ate their
+morning meal. The smell of their cooking drifted for much of the day
+into my boat, and “broth of abominable things was in their vessels.” The
+man sat in the bow smoking and making shoes. The grandmother lived below
+in blissful idleness and authority. The wife, a comely, healthy,
+broad-shouldered woman, with bound feet, worked and smoked all day, and
+contrived to steer the boat as she stooped over the fire or the wash-tub
+by holding its heavy tiller under her arm or chin or pressing her knee
+against it. Four young children lived a quiet life on a broad high
+shelf, from which they were lifted down for meals. A girl of thirteen
+helped her mother slightly. Cooking, washing, mending, eating, and
+watching my occupation with far less interest than I watched theirs,
+filled up their day. Evening brought fresh kotowing and burning of
+incense sticks, the opium lamp was lighted, the man passed into elysium,
+and they wrapped themselves in their wadded quilts and slept till
+sunrise.
+
+I learned their habits and knew their few “plenishings,” and perhaps, as
+they stared persistently at me, they were wondering how much I earned a
+day by writing and sewing, a question of much speculative interest to
+the Chinese.
+
+The country looked inviting in the first flush of early spring,
+although, like our own fens, it is a dead level. Houses, villages,
+mulberry plantations, temples, groves, large farmhouses, shrines, and
+_Pai fangs_ succeeded each other rapidly. Great lilac clusters of
+wistaria bloom hung over the water from every tree, the beans were in
+blossom, and the greenery was young and fresh. At times our curiously
+twisting procession passed through ancient water-streets of large
+cities, with the inevitable picturesqueness given by deep eaves,
+overhanging rooms and balconies, steep flights of stone stairs, and rows
+of armed junks full of soldiers or river police in brilliant, stagey
+uniforms. Several times we were delayed for an hour or more by the
+difficulty of getting through the crowded river streets _en route_.
+
+I have since learned by experience that China is a land of surprising
+bridges, but at that time it amazed me that we entered nearly every city
+under a fine arch, from fifteen to thirty feet in height, formed of
+blocks of granite cut to the curve of the bridge, the roadway attaining
+the summit by thirty-nine steps on each side. Or there are straight
+bridges, the piers being monoliths thirteen feet high, and the roadway
+massive blocks of stone thirty feet long.
+
+Part of the route is along the Grand Canal, that stupendous work,
+wonderful even in its dilapidation, which connects Hangchow with
+Tientsin. This part of it, which connects Imperial Hangchow with the
+flourishing port of Chinkiang on the Yangtze, was cut in 625 A.D., but
+never mapped till the work was undertaken by our own War Office in 1865.
+
+If the “nine thousand barks conveying tribute to the emperor,” as
+described by an ancient writer, no longer crowd its waters, I can
+testify that at the points where I touched it, such as Chinkiang, the
+laden fleets were so vast as to leave only a narrow lane of water
+available for traffic, and that on arriving at Tientsin from Tungchow my
+boat took two days and a half to make its way through the closely-jammed
+mass of cargo and passage boats at the terminus.
+
+The neighbourhood of the Grand Canal, which suffered terribly in the
+Taiping Rebellion, has recovered itself, and is again yielding its great
+harvests of rice and silk, the inexhaustible fertility of the Great
+Plain having effaced every trace of destruction. If the Grand Canal
+since the dilapidation caused by the outbreak of the Yellow River in
+1851 is far less valuable for through traffic than it was, it is still
+of immense importance as an artery for the commerce of the great
+provinces through which it passes. Lu Yew, a much-travelled mandarin of
+the twelfth century, the translated account of whose journey from
+Shanjin near Ning Po to Kueichow on the Upper Yangtze is a fascinating
+bit of literature, writes that at the sluice gates “the concourse of
+vessels was packed together like the teeth of a comb,” and so it is
+still in certain places. The bridges which span this canal are among the
+most striking and beautiful in all China—single arches, sometimes 220
+feet in span and 30 feet in height, piles of massive masonry, with
+massive decorations wherever any deviation has been permitted from the
+ordinary stately simplicity.
+
+Seven centuries ago Lu Yew commented on the remarkable industry of the
+population of this region, and noted that “both banks near the villages
+are covered with waterwheels pumping up the water, women and children
+alike exerting all their efforts, cattle in some cases being also at
+work.” The heredity of industry is still manifest. Not an idler was to
+be seen along river or canal. Every agricultural operation of the season
+was being carried on vigorously, even children of seven years old were
+carrying agricultural burdens on their shoulders. Women with robust
+infants strapped on their backs had their hands busy with the distaff,
+while working the waterwheels with their feet; and all along the
+waterways fishermen were busy with their great bamboo plunge nets. Lu
+Yew mentions the women as employed with both waterwheel and distaff in
+the twelfth century.
+
+On the morning of the second day from Shanghai the steam launch cast off
+her tail at the mouth of a narrow canal overarched with trees, up which
+my boat moved silently as far as a “lock,” by which we mounted into a
+broad waterway leading direct into Hangchow, encircling it on three
+sides and connected with other navigable canals, spanned by picturesque
+stone bridges, and giving easy access to most parts of the interior of
+the city.
+
+That which I have called a “lock,” properly a _pah_ or “haulover,” is an
+ingenious contrivance by which the difficulty of “negotiating” different
+levels in the same boat is skilfully adjusted. The illustration shows
+the principle and the mode of applying it in Chekiang, but various
+methods are adopted. The essential parts of the contrivance, as shown
+here, are a smooth stone slide, from the higher to the lower level, the
+middle of which is thickly coated with moist mud, two stout and tall
+uprights, two rude wooden windlasses, and stout bamboo ropes with strong
+iron hooks. In ascending, the boat is wound up to the higher level by a
+number of men at the windlasses, and in going down she is drawn to the
+verge and tipped over, descending with great velocity by her own
+impetus, the restraining rope at her stern scarcely moderating the
+violence of the plunge with which she takes a header into the water
+below, when everything not securely fastened breaks adrift, and a lather
+of foaming water surges round the surprised passenger’s feet. A few
+_cash_ are charged for the transfer.
+
+[Illustration: A _PAH_, OR HAULOVER.]
+
+I thought the canal entrance to Hangchow grand, although below the high
+blank walls of large private residences the grassy slopes are the resort
+of unpleasantly active pigs searching, and not vainly, for offal. The
+gunboats, or police junks, with their striped blue and white canopies
+and brilliant crews, and the lofty bridges are pleasing to the eye. At
+one of the latter Dr. Main, for eighteen years a C.M.S. missionary
+doctor in Hangchow, met me, and I was carried through a populous and
+dirty quarter, through a door in a high wall, and under a trellis from
+which hundreds of lilac wistaria clusters were hanging, into a large
+enclosure, partly lawns and partly rose borders, with an old-fashioned
+English house on one side, and on the other two the fine two-storeyed
+buildings of two of the crack hospitals of the East, with their
+outgrowths of leper hospitals for men and women, a home for leper
+children, and an opium refuge. It was a bewildering change from the
+crowds, dirt, and sordid bustle of the lower parts of a Chinese city to
+broad, smooth, shaven lawns, English trees and flowers, English
+buildings with their taste and completeness, and the refined quiet of an
+English home.
+
+This most ancient city, situated on the left bank of the shallow Ch’ien
+T’ang river, of which a magnificent description is given by Marco Polo
+under the name of Kinsai, though it has not fully recovered from the
+destruction wrought by the Taiping troops, is still handsome and
+dignified, and to my thinking, with its lovely environs, is the most
+attractive of the big Chinese cities.
+
+It is certainly one of the most important, as the capital of the rich
+and populous province of Chekiang, the centre of a great silk-producing
+district, and of the manufacture of the best silks, the sole source of
+the silk fabrics supplied to the Imperial Household, the southern
+terminus of the Grand Canal, and a great centre of Chinese culture and
+literature. It possesses the Ting Library, the finest private library in
+China, appropriately housed in buildings adjoining the “palace” of the
+Ting family. The arrangements for the storage and classification of
+books are admirable, and a very gentlemanly and intelligent son of the
+enlightened possessor is the enthusiastic and capable librarian. The
+treasures of this library are open freely to anyone who introduces
+himself by a card from an official. The collection of zoological and
+botanical books, superbly illustrated in the best style of Chinese wood
+engraving, is in itself a noble possession. Every part of a plant is
+figured, and the illustrations are almost photographically accurate,
+leading one to hope that the letterpress accompanying them has equal
+scientific merit!
+
+Hangchow is also important as a “residential” city, the chosen home of
+many retired merchants and mandarins. The homes, frequently palaces, of
+men of leisure and local patriotism adorn its streets, but their stately
+proportions and sumptuous decorations are concealed from vulgar view by
+high whitewashed walls, in which heavily-barred and massive gates give
+access to the interiors. The mansion of the Ting family, in which I took
+“afternoon tea,” with its lofty reception-rooms, piazzas, and courts,
+must cover two acres of ground. It is stately, but not comfortable, and
+the richly-carved blackwood chairs with panels of clouded grey marble
+for backs and seats, and table centres of the same, seem only fitted for
+the noon of a midsummer’s day. Besides the dwellings of the “leisured
+class” there are those of high officials, bankers, and wealthy tea and
+silk merchants, many of them extremely magnificent, the cost of one
+built by a wealthy banker being estimated at £100,000.
+
+[Illustration: WEST GATE, HANGCHOW]
+
+I wrote of dirt and sordid bustle. This is chiefly by the waterside, and
+is not surprising in a city of three-quarters of a million of
+inhabitants. The “west-end” streets are, however, broad, light, well
+flagged, and incredibly clean for China. Hangchow impresses one with a
+general sense of well-being. I did not see one beggar. The people are
+well clothed and fed, and I understood that except during epidemics
+there is no abject poverty. It is the grand centre for the trade of a
+hundred cities, and much of the tea and silk sold in Shanghai and Ningpo
+passes through it.
+
+Everything in the city and neighbourhood suggests silk. In all the
+adjacent country the mulberry tree is omnipresent, planted in every
+possible place along the creeks, on the ridges separating the fields, in
+plantations, acres in extent, and near villages, in nurseries each
+containing several thousand shoots, in expectation of a greatly
+increased demand for this staple product. There are 7000 handlooms for
+the weaving of silk in Hangchow, employing about 28,000 people, and 360
+of these looms under the inspection of an Imperial Commissioner work
+exclusively for the Imperial Household.
+
+Some of the silk shops rival that of Laou Kai Fook at Shanghai. In them
+are rich self-coloured silks in deep rich colourings and the most
+delicate shades, brocaded washing silks in various shades of indigo
+dyeing, and delicate mauves and French greys, which become more lustrous
+every time they are washed, heavy and very broad satins, plain and
+brocaded, and, what I admire more than all, heavy figured silks in
+colourings and shades unknown to us sold for Chinese masculine dress,
+and brocaded with symbolical bats, bees, spiders, stags’ heads, dragons
+for mandarins’ robes, and the highly decorative characters representing
+happiness and longevity. These quaint and beautiful fabrics are not
+exported to Europe, and are not shown to Europeans unless they ask for
+them. Fans exported to all parts of the empire are another great
+industry, and provide constant work for many thousand people. Elaborate
+furniture, silk and gold embroidering, and tinselled paper money for
+burning, to supply the dead with the means of comfortable existence, are
+also largely manufactured in this thriving capital.
+
+The situation of Hangchow is beautiful, separated only by a belt of
+clean sand from the bright waters of the Ch’ien T’ang river. The
+south-western portion is built on a hill, from which broad gleams of the
+sea are visible; and to the west, just outside the walls, is the Si Hu
+[Western Lake], famous throughout China, a lovely sheet of water,
+surrounded by attractive country houses, temples, and shrines, studded
+with wooded islands connected by ancient and noble causeways, the
+islands themselves crowned with decorative pavilions, some of which are
+Imperial, and are surrounded by the perfection of Chinese gardening, as
+in the case of the beautiful Imperial Library, with its ferneries,
+rockeries, quaint ponds, and flowering shrubs. This lovely lake, with
+its deep, wooded bays and inlets, its forest-clothed hills and ravines,
+its gay gondolas and pleasure boats, and its ideally perfect shores,
+which I saw over and over again in the glorious beauty of a Chinese
+spring, mirrors also in its silver waters a picturesque range of hills,
+bare and breezy, close to the city, on which stands, in an imposing
+position, a very ancient pagoda, while the lower hill-slopes are clothed
+with coniferous trees, bamboo, plum, peach, cherry, camphor, azalea,
+clematis, roses, honeysuckle, and maple. Near the lake is a deep, long
+dell, the cliffs of which are recessed for stone images, and which
+contains several famous temples, one the temple of the “Five Hundred
+Disciples,” who, larger than life-size, adorn its spacious corridors.
+The temples and shrines of this beautiful glen are visited daily by
+crowds from Hangchow, and have such a reputation for sanctity and
+efficacy as to attract 100,000 pilgrims annually. The dell is guarded by
+two colossal figures, under canopies, the gods of Wind and Thunder, very
+fine specimens of vigorous wood carving, and by an antique pagoda.
+
+Hangchow is also famous for the phenomenon of the “Hangchow bore,” seen
+at its best at the change of the monsoon, when an enormous mass of tidal
+water, suddenly confronted by the current of the river, uplifts its
+foaming crest to a height of from fifteen to twenty feet, and with a
+thunderous roar and fearful force rages down the narrow waterway as fast
+as a horse can gallop, affording a welcome distraction to the sightseers
+of Shanghai.
+
+[Illustration: PAVILION IN IMPERIAL GARDEN, SI-HU.]
+
+[Illustration: GOD OF THUNDER, LIN-YANG.]
+
+Hangchow is enclosed by a wall faced with hewn stone, about thirteen
+miles in circumference, from thirty to forty feet high, from twenty to
+thirty feet broad, and pierced by ten large gateways with massive gates.
+The houses are mainly two-storeyed. The business streets blaze with
+colour; the principal street is five miles long. The population,
+estimated at 700,000, cruelly diminished during the Taiping Rebellion,
+is rapidly increasing. The officials, merchants, and common people are
+unusually friendly to foreigners, who, before the recent opening of the
+port, were all missionaries. The cry “Foreign devil!” is never heard.
+Mr. Sundius, our consular officer, considers that these very
+satisfactory relations are due to the greater prosperity of the people,
+in consequence of the increased foreign demand for silk, and to the
+success of the exertions of the missionaries to win their respect and
+esteem.
+
+The new general and Japanese settlements are in an excellent position on
+the Grand Canal, four miles from the city wall. They are nearly a mile
+in length by half a mile in depth, and have a fine road and a bund sixty
+feet wide, hereafter to be turfed. The Japanese, who opened the port
+with their swords, have not been in any hurry to occupy it. It will be
+interesting to see how far foreigners will take advantage of the
+opening, and settle in this, one of the friendliest and most attractive
+of the Chinese cities. There is a well-known Chinese proverb, “Above is
+heaven, below are Hangchow and Suchow.”
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+                 THE HANGCHOW MEDICAL MISSION HOSPITALS
+
+
+The hospitals, and the dispensaries attached to them, are too important
+as a feature of Hangchow, and as an element in producing the remarkable
+goodwill towards foreigners which characterises it, to be dismissed at
+the tail of a chapter.
+
+These beneficent institutions treat between them over 14,000 new
+patients annually, afflicted with all manner of torments. The services
+of Dr. Main and his coadjutor, Dr. Kimber, are in request among
+officials, from the highest to the lowest. Mandarins of high rank,
+attended by their servants, are treated in the paying wards, and
+occasionally leave donations of 100 dollars in addition to their
+payments. Officials of every rank in the Chekiang province send to the
+British doctors for advice and medicines. Among the many marks of the
+approval with which the Viceroy and other highly-placed officials regard
+the medical work is their recent donation of an acre and a half of land
+in an excellent position for the site of a branch hospital. It is no
+disparagement to the work of Bishop Moule, who was absent during my
+visit, and the other British and American clerical missionaries, to
+express the opinion that the tact, _bonhomie_, and devotion of Dr. Main
+during the last eighteen years, are one cause of the friendliness to
+foreigners, the Chinese being as accessible to the influence of
+personality as other people are.
+
+The men’s and women’s hospitals, of which the illustration only shows
+portions, are of the latest and most approved European type. They are
+abreast of our best hospitals in lighting, ventilation, general
+sanitation, arrangement and organisation, and the facility of obtaining
+the celebrated Ningpo varnish, really a lacquer, which slowly sets with
+a very hard surface, reflecting much light and bearing a weekly rub with
+kerosene oil, greatly aids the sanitation. The purity of walls, floors,
+and bedding is so great as to make one long for a speck of comfortable
+dirt!
+
+[Illustration: C.M.S. MISSION HOSPITAL, HANGCHOW.]
+
+The men’s hospital buildings consist of four roomy and handsome general
+wards, eleven private paying wards, holding from one to three each, a
+range of rooms for the ward assistants, who are practically male nurses,
+students’ rooms, rooms for the three qualified assistants, a
+lecture-room with an anatomical [in lieu of the unattainable human]
+subject which cost a thousand dollars, a reception-room for mandarins
+with appropriate Chinese furniture, Dr. Main’s private room and medical
+library, a fine consulting-room and operating theatre, bathrooms, a room
+for patients’ clothing done up in numbered bundles after it has been
+washed, wardrobes for the clothing which is lent to them while in
+hospital, a cashier’s office, a large bottle-room, extensive storage,
+and an office for out-patients.
+
+On the street side and connected with the hospitals is a fine lofty room
+where any non-patient passers-by, who are either tired or curious, can
+rest and smoke, amusing themselves meantime with the transactions of the
+other half of the hall, a large and attractive “drug store,” fitted up
+in conventional English style, where not only medicines, but medical
+requisites of all kinds can be procured both by non-patients and
+foreigners. It has been remarked by Consuls Carles and Clement Allen in
+their official reports, that missionaries unconsciously help British
+trade by introducing articles for their own use, which commend
+themselves to the Chinese; and this drug store has created a demand for
+such British manufactures as condensed milk, meat extracts, rubber
+tubing, soap, and the like, condensed milk having “caught on” so firmly
+that several of the Chinese shops are now keeping it on sale.
+
+This rest room is also a street-chapel for preaching and discussion, and
+an office for inquiries of all kinds. There is also a large and handsome
+waiting-room for out-patients, decorated with scripture pictures, in
+which patriarchs and apostles appear in queues and Chinese dress, and an
+opium refuge—a mournful building full of bodily torment and mental
+depression. In the opinion of the doctor, “the cure” is seldom other
+than temporary, and could only be effected by building up the system for
+six months after leaving the refuge by tonics and nutritious diet.
+Besides these buildings there are large kitchens, storehouses, and a
+carpenter’s shop.
+
+The women’s hospital, the great central ward of which, with its
+highly-varnished floor, flowers, pictures, tables, chairs, and
+harmonium, looks like a pleasant double drawing-room in a large English
+mansion, is specially under Mrs. Main’s charge, and has head and junior
+nurses and a dispenser trained by herself. It is equally efficient and
+admirable.
+
+Besides the hospital staff of twenty-six persons, there are three native
+catechists who, along with Dr. Main, give Christian instruction in the
+hospital to those who are willing to receive it, one of them looking
+after patients in their homes, who, having become interested in
+Christianity, have returned to their villages within a radius of one
+hundred and fifty miles. Recently a patient, who had been for some weeks
+in the hospital, recounted what he had there heard of Christianity with
+such effect that over forty of his fellow-villagers, after some months,
+gave up their heathen practices and became Christians; and this after he
+had been beaten for his new beliefs on first going home.
+
+The hospital is also an efficient medical school, where the usual
+medical and surgical courses are given, along with clinical instruction,
+during a period of five years. This school has helped largely to win the
+favour of the mandarins, who have learned to appreciate Western surgery
+from the cures at the hospital. Some of these students, after
+graduation, have taken good positions in Shanghai and elsewhere. A few
+in going into practice in the province have somewhat dropped European
+medicine, and have resorted to Chinese drugs and the method of using
+them, but all adhere to Western surgery, the results of which in Chinese
+eyes are little short of miraculous, but possibly their mode of carrying
+out antiseptic treatment would hardly come up to Lord Lister’s standard!
+It is frequently believed by Chinese patients that the object of this
+treatment is to prevent devils from gaining entrance to the body by
+means of surgical wounds!
+
+Dr. Lu, a refined and cultured man, Dr. Main’s senior qualified
+assistant, a graduate of the hospital school, would anywhere be a
+remarkable man in his profession, first as a brilliant operative
+surgeon, and then for insight and accurate diagnosis. He has won the
+confidence of the resident foreigners. He is a skilful medical
+photographer, and his microscopic and physiological drawings are very
+beautiful and show great technical skill.
+
+The clock tower is a decorative feature of the building, and everything
+within moves with clockwork regularity. The hospital is in a high state
+of efficiency and spick-and-spanness, such as I have seldom seen
+equalled abroad, and never exceeded.[11] Such work, done with skill,
+love, and cheeriness, has an earthly reward, and Dr. Main is on most
+friendly terms with the leading mandarins, who have it in their power to
+help or hinder greatly. The hospital blazes with their red and gold
+votive tablets, and I doubt if they would refuse him anything which he
+thought it wise to ask. Almost the latest additions to a work which is
+always growing are convalescent homes in the finest position outside the
+city, on the breezy hill above the Si Hu [Western Lake].
+
+I have heard some grumbling at home at the expense at which this
+hospital is carried on, but perfection is not to be attained without
+outlay, and in my opinion the Hangchow hospital is a good investment. It
+is most desirable that Western methods of healing should be exhibited in
+their best aspects in the capital of this important province, and also
+that the medical school should be as well-equipped as is possible. The
+benefit of this and similar schools is incalculable. The linked systems
+of superstition and torture, which enter largely into Chinese medical
+treatment, are undermined, and rational Western surgery is demanded by
+the people. European treatment also assails the degrading belief in
+sorcery and demonism in its last resort—the sick-bed—showing processes
+of cure which work marvels of healing, altogether apart from witchcraft
+and incantations.
+
+Of the Medical Mission Hospital as a Christian agency I need scarcely
+write, as its name is significant of its work. I believe in medical
+missions, because they are the nearest approach now possible to the
+method pursued by the Founder of the Christian faith, and to the
+fulfilment of His command, “Heal and preach.” It is not, as some
+suppose, that the medical missionary takes advantage of men in their
+pain and distress to “poke at them” the claims of a foreign religion,
+though if he be an honest Christian he recognises that the soul needs
+enlightenment as much as the body needs healing. I have never seen a
+medical mission among the forty-seven that I have visited in which
+Christianity was “poked” at unwilling listeners, or in which, in the
+rare cases of men declining to hear of it in the dispensary
+waiting-room, it was in the very smallest degree to their disadvantage
+as patients.
+
+A fee of twenty-four _cash_ is charged for admission to the dispensary
+to foster a spirit of independence, and the charge in the paying wards
+is from two to ten dollars per month. Crowds of out-patients marshalled
+like an army, carefully trained assistants knowing and doing their duty,
+catechists, ward assistants, cashiers, photographers, cooks, gardeners,
+artisans, make up the crowd which in all the morning hours swarms over
+the staircases of the hospital and round the great entrance. The
+dispensary patients present a sorry spectacle, owing to the prevalence
+of skin diseases, superficial sores, and cavernous abscesses, from which
+the plasters with which the Chinese doctors had hermetically sealed them
+have been removed. Young and old, maimed, deaf, blind, loathsomely
+disfigured persons, meet together, and there are often cases of gunshot
+wounds, elephantiasis, and leprosy in the throng.
+
+But, wretched as the patients are, they are capable of being amused by
+Dr. Main’s jokes, and on one occasion when I was photographing four
+soldiers of the Viceroy’s guard in the hospital grounds the hilarity
+burst all bounds, and the distempered mass yelled with enjoyment. When I
+photographed the backs of the soldiers they shouted, “She pictures their
+backs because they ran away from the _wojen_” (dwarfs); and when Dr.
+Main displayed their brawny legs, they nearly danced with the fun of it,
+yelling, “Those are the legs they ran away on.” Not that the Viceroy’s
+guard had encountered the Japanese, but these people were near enough to
+Shanghai to have heard of the figure the Chinese troops had cut. A
+Chinese loves a joke, and, as I have often experienced, if he can only
+be made to laugh his hostility vanishes.
+
+One of these men, picturesquely uniformed in blue and crimson, was
+brought back an hour later at the point of death from opium, having
+attempted his life, not because he had been laughed at, but because of a
+tiff with his superior officer.
+
+As is well known, suicide is appallingly common in China; and in the
+great cities of Swatow, Mukden, and Hangchow, as a guest at medical
+mission houses, I have come much into contact with its various methods.
+In Mukden a frequent mode of taking life, specially among young wives,
+is biting off the heads of lucifer matches, though the death from
+phosphorus poisoning is known to be an agonising one. Swallowing gold
+leaf or chloride of magnesium, jumping down wells or into rapid rivers,
+taking lead, cutting the throat, and stabbing the abdomen have been
+popular modes of self-destruction. But these are rapidly giving place to
+suicide by opium owing to the facility with which it can be obtained,
+the easy death which results from it, and the certainty of its operation
+in the absence of the foreign doctor, his emetic, and his stomach-pump.
+Medical mission hospitals in China save the lives of hundreds of
+would-be suicides every year.
+
+So far as I have been able to ascertain, the causes of suicide in China
+are, not as in Europe, profound melancholia, heavy losses, or
+disappointment in love, but chiefly revenge and the desire to inflict
+serious injury on another. Suicide enables a Chinese to take a truly
+terrible revenge, for he believes that his spirit will malignantly haunt
+and injure the living; and the desire to save a suicide’s life arises in
+most cases not from humanity, but from the hope of averting such a
+direful catastrophe. If a master offends his servant or makes him “lose
+face,” or a shopkeeper his assistant or apprentice, the surest revenge
+is to die on his premises, for it not only involves the power of
+haunting and of inflicting daily injuries, but renders it necessary that
+the body should lie where death occurs until an official inquiry is
+made, which brings into the house the scandal and turmoil of a visit
+from a mandarin with a body of officials and retainers. It is quite
+common for a man or woman to walk into the courtyard of a person against
+whom he or she has a grudge, and take a fatal dose of opium there to
+ensure these desirable results!
+
+Among common incentives to suicide are the gusts of blind rage to which
+the Chinese of both sexes are subject, the cruelty of mothers-in-law,
+quarrels between husband and wife, failure to meet payments at the New
+Year, gambling losses, the desire to annoy a husband, the gambling or
+extravagant opium smoking of a husband, imputation of theft, having
+pawned the clothes of another and being unable to redeem them, being
+defrauded of money, childlessness, dread of divorce, being sold by a
+husband, abridgment of liberty, poverty, and the like. Opium, from the
+painless death it brings, is now resorted to on the most trivial
+occasions, and has largely increased the number of suicides. Though the
+reasons which I have given for self-destruction apply mostly to women,
+yet where statistics are obtainable men are largely in the majority, and
+revenge and the desire of inflicting injury are their great motives.
+
+Of course, there are very many risks and difficulties in the treatment
+of out-patients. Chinese medicines are administered bulkily, a pint or a
+quart at a time, and patients do not understand our concentrated and
+powerful doses. Hence dangerous and grotesque mistakes are continually
+made, such as the following:—
+
+_Patient_—“Doctor, when I took the medicine you gave me yesterday it
+made me very sick; it has given me diarrhœa and a severe pain in the
+stomach; my fingers and toes also feel very numb.”
+
+_Dr. Malcolm_ (looking at the bottle)—“Why, you have already almost
+finished the eight days’ medicine” (arsenic) “that I gave you yesterday.
+The wonder is that you are alive at all.”
+
+_Patient No. 2_ enters—“Where is the old boss of this shop? I want some
+foreign devil medicine to cure malaria.”
+
+_D._—“Allow me to tell you I am not a devil. You had better go home; and
+when you can come and ask respectfully for medicine we will give it
+you.”
+
+_P. No. 3_ enters, holding out her hands and asking the doctor to find
+out her disease by “comparing her pulses.”
+
+_D._—“Tell me what is the matter with you.”
+
+_P._—“My bones and muscles are sore all over.”
+
+_D._—“What was the cause of your trouble?”
+
+_P._—“It was brought on by a fit of anger.”
+
+_D._—“How long have you had it?”
+
+_P._—“From the time the heavens were opened, and the earth was split”
+(_i.e._ a very long time).
+
+The arms and shoulders of this woman were covered with pieces of green
+plaster, given her by the Chinese doctors. She proposed to throw these
+away and “to publish the doctor’s name abroad” if he cured her. So she
+received medicine with very full directions about taking it; these were
+not enough. She asked a string of questions such as if she must heat it
+before taking it, if she must keep the bottle tightly corked, if she
+must take it along with anything else, and lastly—
+
+_P._—“Shall I abstain from eating anything?”
+
+_D._—“No.”
+
+_P._ (greatly disappointed).—“What! shall I not forbid my mouth anything
+at all?”
+
+_D._ (jokingly).—“Yes. Do not talk too much; do not revile your
+neighbours; do not smoke opium; do not scatter lies.”
+
+The doctor getting worried, reiterates plain directions regarding the
+medicine, tells her they are very busy, and that she must not ask any
+more questions, and shows her out.
+
+_P._ (returning after a few minutes).—“Is the medicine to be taken
+inwardly, or rubbed on the outside?”
+
+Or a man comes in and describes “chills,” and a dose of quinine is
+prepared for him, when he smiles serenely and says, “To tell you the
+truth, it is not I that take the chills; it is my mother.”
+
+Another comes in, and describes with great minuteness and self-pity his
+symptoms, which are those of malarial fever. He will not take a dose of
+quinine in the dispensary, but wants to take it home, saying he will not
+“shake” till the next day. He is feigning sickness, in order to get
+quinine and sell it. Or an operation for cataract has been performed in
+one of the hospital wards, and the son of the patient comes to the
+doctor, begging him to go to his father, who says that his eye pains him
+so that he cannot stand it. The doctor finds that the bandage has been
+removed, and reproaches the son, who said that some friends came in to
+see if he could really see after being blind for so many years, and took
+off the bandage. The patient had rubbed the eye, the wound had burst
+open and was suppurating, and the man was blind for life.
+
+Some patients come to a hospital out of impudence, some in the hope of
+getting drugs to sell, others out of curiosity to see how the “foreign
+devil doctor” works, others to steal the clothes which are lent to
+in-patients, and others for a lark, pretending to have various diseases,
+but with these the Chinese assistants occasionally indulge in a lark on
+their own account, and turn on them a pretty vigorous current from the
+electric battery.[12]
+
+With so much vexatious expenditure of time, so much imposition and
+greed, and so many disappointments regarding interesting cases owing to
+the gross ignorance of the patients and their friends, there are many
+drawbacks in the life of a missionary doctor, and even in such
+long-established work as that at Hangchow, and with such admirable
+equipments and assistance, it cannot always be easy to preserve the
+courtesy, gentleness, patience, and forbearance which are among the
+essentials of success.
+
+Of the patients treated in Hangchow last year one thousand were
+in-patients. “Discharged cured” might be written against the great
+majority of their names, and those who were incurable were greatly
+benefited, as in the case of the lepers, whose “grievous wounds” are
+closed and healed, and whose pains are subdued.
+
+Certainly this great hospital is one of the sights of Hangchow, and no
+one could become acquainted with it without recognising that those who
+work it and support it are following closely in the footsteps of Him who
+came “not to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”[13]
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V.
+                      SHANGHAI TO HANKOW (HANKAU)
+
+
+From Hangchow I made a very interesting journey by canal and river to
+the important and historical city of Shao Hsing, with its beautiful
+environs, and from thence by inland waterways to Ningpo and its lovely
+lakes, passing through a region of great fertility, beauty, and
+prosperity. I must put on record that I made that journey without either
+a companion or servant, trusting entirely to the fidelity and goodwill
+of Chinese boatmen, and was not disappointed. At Ningpo the Commissioner
+of Customs kindly lent me the Customs tender, a fast-sailing lorcha, for
+a week, and engaging a servant, I visited the Chusan Archipelago in
+glorious weather, spending three days on the remarkable island of Putu,
+the Island of Priests, sacred to Kwan Yin, the goddess of mercy, and two
+at Tinghai, on the island of Chusan, where the graves of the four
+hundred British soldiers who died there during our occupation present a
+melancholy spectacle of neglect and disrepair. The region beyond Shao
+Hsing technically belongs to another drainage area than that of the
+Yangtze, and is therefore passed over without further remark. I returned
+from Ningpo to Shanghai by sea.
+
+The difficulties of getting a reliable interpreter servant who had not
+previously served Europeans and who was willing to face the possible
+risks and certain hardships of the journey I proposed were solved by the
+kindly intervention of friends, and I engaged a tall, very fine-looking,
+superior man named Be-dien, who abominated “pidgun,” spoke very fairly
+correct English, and increased his vocabulary daily during the journey.
+He was proud and had a bad temper, but served me faithfully, was never
+out of hearing of my whistle except by permission, showed great pluck,
+never grumbled when circumstances were adverse, and never deserted me in
+difficulties or even in perils.
+
+My other preparations consisted chiefly in buying an open bamboo
+armchair to be carried in, plenty of tea and curry powder, and in
+discarding most of my few possessions.[14] As nobody in Shanghai had
+travelled in the region which I hoped eventually to visit, there was no
+information about it to be gained, and I left for my journey of six or
+seven months remarkably free from encumbrances of every kind.
+
+Several foreign and one Chinese company own the eighteen fine steamers
+which keep up daily communication between Shanghai and Hankow, and
+dissipate the romance of travel by their white enamel, mirrors, gilding,
+and electric light. The _Poyang_, by which I was a passenger, and the
+only one, as far as Chinkiang, resembles most of the others, being of an
+American type, about 2000 tons burden, luxurious to a fault, and
+officered by efficient and courteous gentlemen.
+
+Sailing at night, the lumpy sea which is apt to prevail in the estuary
+of the Yangtze is got over comfortably, and by the following morning it
+is possible to believe that the expanse of muddy water is actually a
+river, for there are hazy outlines of brown shores.
+
+The first day on the river was cold and raw, as, indeed, were the days
+which followed it; the damp-laden air wrapped one round in its dismal
+chill. White enamel and mirrors were detestable. The only things which
+harmonised with the surroundings were the stove and the thick woollen
+carpet. Yet the mercury was at 45°—not bad for midwinter!
+
+After passing Silver Island, a wooded rock, on which is a fine temple,
+we reached Chinkiang, the first of the treaty ports on the Yangtze, and
+well situated at the junction of the Grand Canal with the river. On my
+two visits I thought it an attractive place. It has a fine bund and
+prosperous-looking foreign houses, with a British consulate on a hill
+above; trees abound. The concession[15] roads are broad and well kept. A
+row of fine hulks connected by bridges with the shore offers great
+facilities for the landing of goods and passengers. Sikh police are much
+_en evidence_, the hum of business greets one’s ears, traffic throngs
+the bund, the Grand Canal is choked with junks, and the rule regarding
+sub-letting to Chinese being honoured only in the breach, the concession
+is covered with godowns and Chinese residences, and judging from
+appearances only, one might think Chinkiang a busier port than Hankow,
+the great centre of commerce in Central China. The gross value of the
+trade of this port is, however, only about £4,000,000 sterling annually,
+but is advancing. One great export is ground-nut oil, which is carried
+and shipped in baskets lined with paper. Another, which accounts for
+nearly one-fourteenth of the value of the exports, is the dried perianth
+of certain lily flowers (_Hemerocallis graminea_ and _Hemerocallis
+flava_), which is greatly esteemed as a relish with meats, specially
+with pork.
+
+As tokens of the increasing prosperity of Chinkiang, it is interesting
+to note that recently two filatures, owned and managed by Chinese, were
+opened, the machinery in one of them being of Chinese manufacture, while
+the factory was erected without foreign aid. The hands employed are
+women, who work twelve hours daily, at 10½_d._ a day, Sunday being a
+holiday. The success of this, under native management, was considered
+dubious. A distillery, for distilling spirit from rice, is another sign
+of progress (or retrogression?), and our German rivals have done a very
+“neat thing” in starting an albumen factory, in which the albumen,
+dexterously separated from the yolks of the eggs, is made into slabs,
+which are sent to Germany for use in photography, the preparation of
+leather, and the printing of cotton, etc. The eggs are ducks’ eggs
+solely. The yolks undergo some preservative treatment, and after being
+packed in barrels are exported for use in confectionery and bar-rooms.
+My informant, Consul Carles, is silent on the use to which they are then
+applied, but doubtless it is well known to frequenters of such
+establishments.
+
+The workmen in out-of-doors trades, such as masons and carpenters, seem
+to comport themselves much like our own, at all seasons of the year
+drinking tea, resting, and smoking whenever it pleases them, taking a
+long siesta in summer, and in winter not beginning work till nine. The
+building trade is a guild,[16] and there are five large guilds in
+Chinkiang, with guild funds for the relief of widows and orphans of
+former members. There are various missions in Chinkiang, and some
+general stir, which may be expected in a city of 140,000 souls.
+
+The next day, which was raw and grim, and made the stove-side a magnet,
+we reached Wuhu, the ugliest, if I may be allowed to say so, of all the
+Yangtze ports, but its trade is not unprosperous, having more than
+doubled in the last ten years, its gross value as to the principal
+articles of export and import being now nearly £2,000,000 sterling a
+year.[17]
+
+There again the Germans have started an albumen factory, which employs
+fifty women and ten men. It takes 7000 eggs to produce 100 pounds of
+albumen. Feathers to the amount of £23,000 for the last year of returns
+were also exported to Germany for the making of feather beds.
+
+The most interesting export of Wuhu to the general reader is, however,
+“China ink,” which is largely produced in the province of NGANHUI. The
+small, black sticks, decorated with Chinese characters in gold, are
+known and appreciated by us all. From Wuhu it goes to all parts of China
+and of the world. In 1895 _two tons_ of it were exported from Shanghai
+to foreign countries. Nearly the whole of the writing done in the vast
+Chinese empire, as well as in Japan, Korea, Tonquin, and Annam, is done
+with this beautiful ink, which is rubbed down on a stone ink-slab, and
+applied with a sable brush. This is altogether apart from its value to
+the water-colour art of all nations. It is made from the oil expressed
+from the large seeds of the _Elœococca verrucosa_, sesamum oil, or colza
+oil, varnish, and pork fat, burned, the resulting lampblack being of
+various degrees of fineness according to the process adopted; gold leaf
+and musk are added. There are a dozen different grades, and the price
+varies from 2_s._ to 140_s._ per pound, a pound containing about thirty
+sticks.
+
+Various industries, including a steam flour mill, have been started by
+the Chinese in Wuhu, and it is a city of 80,000 people, but to a mere
+passer-by it is most uninteresting, and its busy streets had neither
+novelty nor picturesqueness enough to repay me for a struggle through
+the slush.
+
+That night, while we were dining, there was a tremendous bump, a crash,
+and a stoppage. The junk we cut into went down like a stone with all
+hands. Not a shout or cry was heard. Boats were lowered, and we hung
+about for an hour; it was not very dark. A Frenchman brutally remarked,
+“Good! there’ll be some yellow skins fewer.” That was all.
+
+The next day we reached Kiu-kiang, another treaty port, with a pretty,
+shady bund, and pleasant foreign houses in shady gardens, but it has a
+sleepy air for a city of 55,000 souls and a trade worth two millions and
+a quarter a year.
+
+Totally destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion in 1858–59, it has been
+rebuilt, is surrounded by a defensive wall six miles in circumference,
+and has regained more than its former prosperity, its imports having
+increased steadily for the last five years.
+
+I have mentioned only the treaty ports, but from Chinkiang westwards the
+great cities on or near the bank divide attention with the engineering
+works and the singular vagaries of build and rig in the countless craft
+on the river. Among the cities on or near the river are Yang Chow Fu,
+Nanking, the southern capital, with its ruined splendours and
+picturesqueness, Taiping Fu, the great and prosperous city of Nganking
+Fu, and many others, besides countless villages, which are apt to lead
+an amphibious existence. After leaving Kiu-kiang, the most prominent
+objects of interest are the Great and Little Orphans, picturesque rocks
+about 300 feet in height, rising direct from the bed of the river, and
+appropriated, as all picturesque sites are, by the Buddhists for
+religious purposes. The Great Orphan is near Hu-kow, a bluff on the
+river crowned by an inaccessible-looking building, half temple, half
+fortress, close to the junction of the important Poyang lake with the
+Yangtze, which is effected by a short, broad stream.
+
+A city on a dead level can scarcely be imposing, and Hankow is not
+impressive from the water. Some chimneys of Russian brick tea factories
+rise above the greenery of the bund, and on the right bank of the broad
+Yangtze, above a squalid suburb of Wu-Chang, appear some tall chimneys
+belonging to a Chinese cotton factory under native management, but
+differing from those at Shanghai in that no women or girls are employed,
+the Viceroy considering that such occupation for women is opposed to
+good morals and Confucian principles! On an elevation there is also a
+camp with crenelated walls, an abundance of fluttering silk banners, and
+various antiquated engines of war.
+
+The day was damp and grim, but the kindly welcomes, cordial hospitality,
+and big blazing fires at the British Consulate, where I was received,
+made amends for the external chill, and my visit to Hankow is among my
+many pleasant memories of China. Later in the day Dr. Griffith John
+called on me, the veteran missionary of the L.M.S., great as an
+evangelist, a Chinese writer and translator, and as an enthusiast. The
+L.M.S. has its mission buildings, which include a church, dispensaries,
+and hospitals, and the houses of its missionaries, in some of the
+pleasant shady streets which intersect the settlement. They have various
+agencies at work, and are full of hope as to the result. I understand
+that Dr. Griffith John, who has devoted his life to China and means to
+die there, partly from his devotion and partly from his literary gifts,
+is much respected by many of the official and upper classes, and has
+much influence.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+                THE FOREIGNERS—HANKOW AND BRITISH TRADE
+
+
+Hankow or Hanmouth, Wu-Chang Fu, the capital of HUPEH, and Han Yang
+would be one city were they not bisected by the broad, rolling Yangtze,
+nearly a mile wide, and its great tributary the Han. Hankow and Han Yang
+are on the north bank, and Wu-Chang on the south. The “congeries of
+cities,” as the three have been aptly termed, is about 600 miles from
+Shanghai. Till 1863 Hankow was an open city, but the dread of an attack
+by northern banditti that year led the Government to enclose it with a
+stone wall, four miles in circuit and thirteen feet in height, raised by
+a brick parapet to eighteen feet.
+
+Hankow considers that it has the finest bund in China, and I have no
+wish to dispute its assertion. In truth its length of 800 yards, its
+breadth of 80, its lofty and noble river wall and fine flights of stone
+stairs, ascending 40 feet from low water, its broad promenade and
+carriage-way and avenue of fine trees, with the “palatial” houses, very
+similar to those of Shanghai and Singapore, on the other side in large
+gardens and shaded by exotic trees, make it scarcely credible that the
+first authentic visit of Europeans to the city was that made by Lord
+Elgin in H.M.S. _Furious_ in 1858, and that the site for this stately
+British settlement was only chosen in 1861, the year in which the port
+was opened to foreign trade.
+
+Among the principal buildings are the British and French Consulates, the
+residence of the Commissioner of Customs, and the Municipal Buildings.
+There is a Municipal Council charged with the same functions as that at
+Shanghai, and Sikh policemen make a goodly show. Dead levels are not
+attractive unless they are bounded by the living ocean, and the bund is
+dull and gives one the impression that the British settlement has “seen
+better days.”
+
+The foreign community consists of the consuls and their staffs, the
+_employés_ of the Chinese Maritime Customs, a very few professional men,
+a large number of British and American missionaries, and the members of
+British and other European mercantile firms, Russians taking a very
+prominent position. The residents have carried their amusements with
+them, and amuse themselves on a small scale after the fashion of those
+at Shanghai. There is a popular club which welcomes passing visitors,
+and combines social attractions with a library, reading-room, and
+billiard-room, keeping in touch with the world by frequent telegrams.
+There is a creditable newspaper—the _Hankow Times_, which has papers on
+Chinese, social, and other subjects—an episcopal service, a hotel, a
+livery stable, and other necessaries of the British exile’s life.
+Kindness and cordial hospitality to strangers are not less
+characteristic of Hankow than of the less frequented ports.
+
+The climate is not an agreeable one. The summers, lasting from May till
+the middle of September, are hot and damp, and severe cases of malarial
+and typhoid fever are not unusual. The atmosphere is thick and stagnant,
+and there are swarms of mosquitoes. Some of the men residents pass the
+hottest summer nights on the bund to get the little air stirring on the
+river, and the Chinese sleep on their roofs and in the streets. The
+autumn months are very pleasant, the mercury falls to the freezing point
+in January, and after light frosts there is a damp, raw period till warm
+weather sets in again.
+
+Neither Hankow nor its neighbours have any special features of interest
+except their gigantic trade. The populations are not openly unfriendly;
+but Consul Carles, his wife, and I, although attended, had mud thrown at
+us at Han Yang.
+
+The glory of Hankow, as well as its terror, is the magnificent Yangtze,
+nearly a mile wide even in winter, rolling majestically past the bund,
+lashed into a dangerous fury by storms, or careering buoyantly before
+breezes; in summer, an inland sea fifty feet deep. In July and early
+August Hankow is at its worst, and the rise of the river is watched with
+much anxiety. The bund is occasionally submerged, boats ply between
+houses and offices, the foundations of buildings are softened, exercise
+is suspended, gardens are destroyed, much business stands still, frail
+native houses are swept away—as many of those perched on piles were,
+with much loss of life, in the summer rise of 1898—and thousands are
+deprived of shelter and livelihood, and when the water falls widespread
+distress and a malarious film of mud are left behind. The appearance of
+the SZE CHUAN water, the red product of the “Red Basin” of Richthofen,
+indicates to the Chinese intelligence the approaching subsidence of the
+water, and points to a fact of some scientific interest. During the
+ordinary summer rise the whole region, viewed from Pagoda Hill, has the
+dismal aspect of a turbid, swirling inland sea, above which many
+villages with trees appear, built on mounds, probably of ancient
+construction.
+
+Hankow is the most westerly port in which the Mexican dollar is actually
+current, and even in its back country copper _cash_ are preferred to
+either coined or uncoined silver. For western travel, over and above any
+amount of cash which the traveller can burden himself with, “sycee”
+silver is necessary, which can be obtained from the agency of the Hong
+Kong and Shanghai Bank, as well as “good paper”—Chinese drafts on
+Chinese merchants of repute in the far west. Silver “shoes,” as the
+uncouth lumps of silver obtained from the banks are called, are worth
+about fifty taels, but the tael itself is not of fixed value, the
+Haikwan tael, in which the Customs and some other accounts are kept,
+varying from the Shanghai tael, and that again from the Hankow tael, and
+so on.
+
+Nor is this all. The silver itself is unfortunately of variable quality.
+Hankow sycee is of 2½ per cent. higher “standard” than Shanghai sycee,
+and SZE CHUAN silver is of higher standard than that of Hankow, so that
+the traveller is subject to frequent losses on his bullion, besides
+suffering a good deal from delays and annoyances consequent on weighings
+and occasional testings, though the trained eye alone can usually detect
+the inferior “touch” of his silver. “Confusion worse confounded”
+describes the currency system, if “currency” is an applicable word, when
+once the simplicity of the Mexican dollar is left behind, and I ceased
+to be surprised at the employment of Chinese “shroffs” by foreign firms,
+for what but an Oriental intellect could unravel the mysteries of
+“touch,” the differences in the value of taels, the soundness and
+genuineness of _cash_, and the daily variations and entanglements of the
+exchanges?
+
+In a treaty port which has been open for thirty-nine years, and which in
+1898 had a net import trade of £3,422,669, and a net export trade of
+£4,643,048, and of which, so far as the import of foreign goods is
+concerned, the British share is one half, the stranger naturally expects
+to find British merchants piling up big fortunes, and the size and
+stateliness of the houses on the bund gives colour to this expectation.
+
+But, in fact, while the British firms in Hankow are merely branches of
+houses in Shanghai, their Chinese rivals, who have driven them out of
+the import trade, are Hankow merchants with branches in Shanghai. There
+are about eleven of these big native firms which supply the Hankow
+market with British cotton goods, and which have risen on the ruins of
+British competitors. These wealthy firms, dealing wholesale, supply the
+up-country merchants and local shopkeepers, buying goods through their
+branches in Shanghai, which employ Chinese brokers speaking “pidgun”
+English to buy the particular goods they want from the foreign
+importers. They keep well up to date regarding Shanghai auction sales,
+of which they get catalogues in Chinese, and are quick to seize on every
+small advantage. The British merchant was shortsighted enough totally to
+neglect to open up direct business relations with the up-country
+merchants, and was content to deal entirely with the Hankow native
+importer, to whom he left all the advantages of local connection and
+knowledge.[18]
+
+This unfortunate state of things does not seem likely to improve either
+in Hankow or elsewhere. Our methods of doing business are frank and
+open, and the Chinese merchants have become as well acquainted with
+foreign trade methods as are Europeans themselves, while of their
+customs in trade and their arrangements among themselves for conducting
+business we know scarcely anything, and have no organisations equivalent
+to those centred in the guilds. Whether it is too late to stem the tide
+which is gradually sweeping business out of foreign into native hands I
+know not, but though actual British trade may not suffer, the openings
+for young men in mercantile houses in China are diminishing yearly,
+unless capital, push, a preference for business over athletics, a
+working knowledge of the Chinese language and business methods, and a
+determination to succeed, should develop the trade and traffic of the
+Tungting lake, and turn to account the great possibilities for
+Lancashire trade in HUNAN, even though the ground lost in other
+directions can never be recovered.
+
+As to the trade of Hankow, naturally an interesting subject, I shall
+make very few remarks, the first being that in the year 1898, 550,000
+tons of British shipping entered the port, against 60,624 of all other
+nationalities, exclusive of the Chinese, Japan taking the lead among
+them with 32,099. Hankow has lost much of her once enormous tea trade,
+owing to deterioration in quality and the change of fashion in
+England.[19] Russian merchants now have the tea trade in their hands;
+they have factories for the production of “brick tea” at both Hankow and
+Kiu-kiang, while in 1898 five of the big steamers of the Russian
+Volunteer Fleet loaded tea direct for Odessa, and one steamer for St.
+Petersburg.
+
+German and Austrian firms have started several albumen factories in
+Hankow, the best of the product being used in photography; the Japanese
+are now running two steamers a week between it and Shanghai, and will
+not improbably “cut in” ahead of others for the trade and traffic of the
+lake and inland rivers. Numbers of these alert traders have come up the
+Yangtze, and in their practical way are spreading themselves through the
+country, finding out the requirements and tastes of the people, and
+quietly pushing their trade in small articles, while Japan is also going
+ahead with her larger exports, the quantity of her cotton yarn imported
+into Hankow having risen from 150 cwt. in 1895 to 260,332 in 1898,
+displacing Indian yarn to a considerable extent. Japanese merchants,
+like the German, do not despise _littles_ in trade, and are content with
+small profits, and most of what is known as the “muck and truck” trade
+is in their hands, in extending which they will prove formidable
+competitors of each other. Nor ought the competition of Japan in the
+larger branches of trade to be ignored by us, for to extend her markets
+is an absolute necessity of her existence, and the markets of China are
+a fair field for her commercial ambition.
+
+I cannot omit all mention of kerosene oil, the import of which increases
+“by leaps and bounds,” American taking the lead, and which is greatly
+diminishing the production of the native illuminating oils. This
+kerosene oil, imported from Russia, America, and Sumatra, to the
+quantity, in 1898, of 16,055,000 gallons, goes from Hankow through six
+provinces. It is one among the agents which are producing changes in the
+social life of China. I have seen the metamorphosis effected by it in
+the village life of the Highlands of Scotland and Korea, where the
+saucer of fish oil, with its smoky wick, and the dim, dull _andon_ have
+been replaced by the bright, cheerful “paraffin lamp,” a gathering point
+for the family, rendering industry and occupation possible. Chinese
+rooms are inconceivably dark, and smoking, sleeping, and gambling were
+the only possible modes of getting rid of the long winter evenings among
+the poorer classes till kerosene oil came upon the scene.
+
+Hankow has eight regular guilds, which are banks and cash shops, rice
+and grain dealers, clothiers and mercers, grocers and oilmen,
+ironmasters, wholesale dealers in copper and metals, dealers in KIANGSI
+china, and wholesale druggists, Hankow having one of the largest and
+best drug markets in China. It would be well if we realised the extreme
+importance of these and similar trade organisations. We may talk of
+spheres of interest and influence, and make commercial treaties giving
+us the advantages of the “most favoured nation” clause; but till we
+understand the power of the guilds, and can cope with them on terms of
+equality, and are “up to Chinese methods of business,” we shall continue
+to see what we are now seeing at Hankow and elsewhere, which I have
+already alluded to. There is much that is admirable in these guilds, and
+their trades-unionism, combinations, and systems of terrorism are as
+perfect as any machinery of the same kind in England. In any matters
+affecting the joint interests of a trade, the members or their delegates
+meet and consult. The rules of guilds are both light and severe, and no
+infringement of them is permitted without a corresponding penalty; these
+penalties vary from a feast and a theatrical entertainment being
+inflicted on the guilty person to expulsion from the guild in a flagrant
+case, which means the commercial ruin of the offender.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII.
+                        CHINESE HANKOW (HANKAU)
+
+
+It is a short step from the stately dulness of the bund to the crowds,
+colour, and noise of the native city—the “Million-peopled City,” the
+commercial centre of China, the greatest “distributing point” in the
+empire, the centre of the tea trade, which has fallen practically into
+Russian hands, and the greatest junk port in China.
+
+The city wall is imposing, with a crenelated parapet, forts at the
+corners, and tunnelled under double-roofed gate-towers for heavily
+bossed gates, which are closed from sunset to sunrise. The unpaved
+roadways are usually foul quagmires owing to the perpetual passage of
+water carriers; where big dogs of the colour of dirty flannel, with pink
+patches of hairlessness, wrangle over offal. The streets are from ten to
+twelve feet wide. The houses are high. Matting or blue cotton is
+stretched across from opposite roofs in summer to moderate the sun’s
+heat and glare; so the traffic is carried on in a curiously tinted
+twilight, flecked now and then by a vivid ray gleaming on the red and
+gold of the long, hanging shopboards, lighting up their flare and glare,
+and giving them a singular picturesqueness.
+
+The shape of the signboard and the different colours of the letters and
+face of the sign indicate different trades. The devising of a signboard
+is a very important matter; it may affect the luck of the shop. The name
+of the shopkeeper comes first, but in the case of a firm a word of good
+omen is substituted for the names, with a character signifying union. In
+both cases the top characters are followed by words of good omen,
+suggesting wealth, prosperity, and increase.
+
+Gold platers of ornaments use salmon-coloured boards with green
+characters, druggists gilded boards frequently traced with many lines,
+and large standard tablets which remain in their sockets at night, and
+there are a few other combinations of colour used by different traders
+for the sake of easy distinction; and on some signboards the articles
+sold within are carefully pictured, but black and gold and carnation-red
+and gold largely predominate, the gold being used for the highly
+decorative characters, the writing of which is a lucrative trade. An old
+signboard is a valuable piece of property, and if the business is sold
+fetches a high price, like the goodwill of a long-established business
+at home. An old-established druggist’s sign has sold for as much as 3000
+taels, about £450. In the winter, with the streets so decorated, with
+the overhead screens removed, the narrow strips of bright blue sky
+above, and the slant sunbeams touching gold and colour into marvellous
+brilliancy, Chinese cities, especially Canton and Foochow, have a nearly
+unrivalled picturesqueness.
+
+Of the crowded and semi-impassable state of such streets no adequate
+idea can be given. Though on my first visit to the native city the
+British Consul was walking beside me with an attendant, and my bearers
+wore the red-plumed hats and well-known liveries of the Consulate, I was
+often brought to a halt, more or less ignominious, or was roughly shaken
+by the impact of the burden of some hurrying coolie, while the chairmen
+threaded their way with difficulty through thousands of busy, blue-clad
+Chinese, all shouting or yelling, my bearers adding to the din by the
+yelling in chorus which is supposed to clear a passage for a chair.
+
+Among the meaner cotton-clad folk there were not wanting rich costumes
+of heavy brocaded silks and costly furs, worn probably by compradores
+and shopkeepers, who in the treaty ports are coming to vie with the
+highest officials in the splendid expensiveness of their dress.
+Occasionally yells louder than usual, and an attempt on the part of the
+crowd to pack itself to right and left, denoted the approach of a
+mandarin in a heavy, coloured and gilded official chair, with eight
+bearers, and many attendants in heavily plumed hats and red and black
+decorated dresses; the official himself sitting very erect within his
+chair, nearly always very pale and fat, with a thin moustache of long
+curved hairs, and that look of unutterable superciliousness and scorn
+which no Oriental of another race is equally successful in attaining.
+
+[Illustration: A STREET IN HANKOW.]
+
+The principal streets are flagged; the others are miry ways cut into
+deep ruts by wheelbarrows. “Ancient and fish-like smells” abound, and
+strong odours of garlic, putrid mustard, frizzling pork, and of the
+cooking of that most appetising dish, fish in a state of decomposition,
+drift out of the crowded eating-houses. If of the lower class, the
+culinary operations of restaurants are visible from the street, the
+utensils consisting of a row of pans set into brickwork, one or two iron
+pots, and a few earthenware dishes. Not a tipsy man or a man noisy with
+drink was to be seen. The Chinese have the virtue of using alcoholic
+liquor in great moderation, and almost altogether with their food.
+
+Oil in earthenware jars, each large enough to contain a man, or freshly
+arrived in the paper-lined wicker baskets in which it is shipped from
+SZE CHUAN, denotes the oil shops; parcels of tea done up in oiled paper,
+built up to a great height with surprising regularity, slabs of brick
+tea, and sacks of sugar denote the grocers; while rolls of carefully
+packed silk, which one longs to investigate, proclaim the prince of
+retail shopkeepers, the dealer in silks.
+
+There are bean cakes, melon seeds, dates, and drugs from the north and
+west, brought in by the great junks, with huge sweeps and Vandyke-brown
+sails, which crowd the Han. There are idol-makers with every sort and
+size of idol for home use and export, some of which find their way to
+Tibet and Turkestan, and receive perpetual worship in the homes and
+_gonpas_ of Ladak and Nubra; but none of them are treated with even
+scant respect until the ceremony takes place which invests them with the
+soul, represented by silver models of the “five viscera,” which are
+inserted at a door in the back. In the same quarter are dealers in the
+manifold paraphernalia of idol worship, in the tinsel, gold, and silver
+shoes burned in ancestor-worship, and in the very clever and in some
+cases life-size representations of elephants, tigers, horses, asses,
+cows, houses, carts, and many other things which are burned at funerals,
+adding to their great costliness, the sons of a merchant of average
+means often spending a thousand dollars on these mimicries.
+
+But while there are dealers in everything which can minister to the
+luxury or necessities of the “Million-peopled City,” many of the shops
+give a piteous notion of the poverty of their customers. And everywhere
+in these crowded streets not a thing is sold, from a valuable diamond
+down to a straw shoe, without the deafening din of bargaining, no seller
+asking what he means to take, and no purchaser offering what he
+eventually means to give, the poorest buyers, to whom time is money,
+thinking an hour not misspent if they get a reduction of half a _cash_.
+As all the bargaining, except in the case of the great shops, is done at
+the shop fronts, and the bargainers are men, and Chinese men, specially
+of the lower orders, shout at the top of their voices, the Babel in a
+Chinese commercial street is inconceivable.
+
+Enormous quantities of goods are everywhere waiting for transit, for
+Hankow is the greatest distributing centre in China, and the big
+steamers lying at the bund, or at anchor in the stream, and the thousand
+junks which crowd the waterways, seem barely sufficient for her gigantic
+commerce.
+
+Among the ghastly curiosities of Hankow, as of all big Chinese cities,
+are the coffin shops, which usually herd together in special quarters
+and are apt to use portions of the streets for their timberyards. In
+them are seen the great cumbrous coffins, at times ten and even twelve
+feet in length, which Chinese custom demands, of all grades and prices,
+from highly polished lacquer with characters raised or incised in gold
+to the roughly put together shell in which the tired coolie takes his
+last sleep. Many of the more costly are ordered as filial gifts from
+children to parents, and from grandchildren to grandparents, and take
+their lugubrious place, set up on end, among the decorations of the
+lofty vestibule by which rich men’s houses are entered, and where they
+may rest for years. As a body may remain for months or years unburied,
+waiting for the decision of the geomancers as to an auspicious place and
+date for the interment, the coffins are very carefully constructed, and
+are either lacquered or treated with the celebrated Ningpo varnish,
+which is practically impermeable both to air and moisture.
+
+The varnishers and lacquerers also herd together, and their trade, which
+is based on the _Rhus vernicifera_, is a very important one. The
+eating-houses—and from the number of them and the crowds which frequent
+them it might be supposed that nobody eats at home—the tobacconists, and
+the opium shops are scattered broadcast through the city, and each has
+its special _clientèle_.
+
+[Illustration: COFFINS AWAITING BURIAL.]
+
+[Illustration: HANKOW FROM HAN YANG.]
+
+Possibly there may have originally been a plan on which the Hankow
+streets were built, but it must have been outgrown for some centuries,
+and at present there is little suggestion of design; streets and alleys
+intersect each other in singular confusion, and only a practised hand
+can find any given point without irksome and delaying tergiversations.
+On the whole there is a tendency to arrive at the top of the river bank,
+where at low water (winter) a singular spectacle presents itself.
+
+The Han, an opaque, yellow, rapid flood, 200 yards wide, lies from forty
+to sixty feet below. Its summer rises have carried away its banks on the
+Hankow side, and the dense mass of ill-looking houses which formerly
+stood, as is the wont of houses, on the ground, have been undermined,
+and are now propped up on what it would be flattery to call piles, for
+they are only slender and casual poles lashed together till the
+requisite length is gained, some leaning one way, some another, while
+the dwellings they upbear owe their continued existence to their
+involuntary mutual support, and to the pestilent habit which such
+ramshackle buildings have everywhere of hanging together. Thousands of
+the poorer class of coolies live in these precarious abodes, which,
+however, are less unsavoury than some, for they have fresh air below and
+innumerable holes in the floors for the easy disposal of refuse. In the
+summer of 1898 a great many of these dwellings were carried away with
+much loss of life.
+
+Almost below these, on the mud slope above the river, are hundreds of
+mat huts, which have to be removed as the water rises. These are the
+miserable, peripatetic kennels of the very lowest dregs of the Chinese
+humanity of a large city. It is difficult to say how this large
+population lives. Doubtless the “odd jobs” which support it are mostly
+connected with junks, for below each house is moored some rotten leaky
+thing capable of floating, to which descent is made by iron spikes
+driven into the strongest of the piles. Here are the men who on these
+“odd jobs” perpetuate lives which are not worth living—the beggars,
+blind and seeing, with malformed and loathsome bodies; lepers with
+gaping sores and fingers and toes dropping off; the unsightly and
+unnatural who rely for their living on revolting the feelings of the
+passers-by; suffering women old and friendless, who prefer the free
+Bohemianism of beggary to the almshouse or refuge provided by Chinese
+charity; and hosts of others, the pariah _débris_ of Hankow. These
+wretched beings have one solace in life—the opium pipe—and they starve
+themselves to procure it.
+
+Flights of stone stairs, one of them at least of magnificent width and
+appearance, always crowded with water carriers splashing the contents of
+their pails, with coolies carrying burdens, and with passengers hurrying
+to and from the ferries, lead from the bank to the water. Through every
+opening in the dilapidations the river traffic is seen.
+
+[Illustration: FEMALE BEGGAR IN MAT HUT.]
+
+At least three miles of junks[20] and other craft lie two, three, and
+four deep (to quote Lu Hew again), “like the teeth of a comb,” of all
+sizes, colours, and builds, having but two features in common: a
+prominent eye on each side of the bows and sterns considerably higher
+than the bows. Every maritime province of China is represented on that
+crowded waterway. One could never weary of the spectacle. It represents
+the extent, the enterprise, the industry, and the conservatism of China,
+and with an unrivalled variety and picturesqueness.
+
+No junks interested me more than the great passage and salt boats, from
+seventy to one hundred tons burthen, with their lofty, many-windowed
+sterns like the galleys of Henry IV., their tall single masts and their
+big brown-umber sails of knitted cane or coarse canvas extended by an
+arrangement of bamboo, looking heavy enough to capsize a liner, and with
+hulls stained and oiled into the similitude of varnished pine, as coming
+from that Upper Yangtze for which I was bound. There were huge junks
+from the Fukien province, bringing to me recollections of Foochow and
+the Min river, piled high with bamboos and poles, and extended to a
+preposterous width by masses of the same lashed on both sides, the
+buoyancy of the cargo permitting as little as five inches of freeboard,
+gaily painted and decorated junks from Canton, with rows of
+carefully-tended plants on their high sterns, sombre craft from Tientsin
+and the north, junks from the Poyang and Tungting lakes, nondescript
+craft from inland streams and canals, alert tenders to the big junks,
+lorchas, some of them foreign-owned, doing homage to Chinese nautical
+experience by their Chinese rig, rafts, with their inhabitants,
+_sampans_ of all sizes, and huge junks heavily laden, crawling slowly
+down stream with their great sweeps, and the wild melancholy wail of the
+oarsmen—the Argonauts of Swatow or Ningpo.
+
+People who think it witty to ridicule everything Chinese poke fun at
+these junks and their “pig-tailed,” long-coated crews, but the handling
+of them is masterly; in emergencies there is no confusion, every man
+obeys orders, and the ease with which these apparently ungainly craft
+tack, with their complicated arrangement of bamboos stiffening their
+vast sails, is absolutely beautiful.
+
+The streets of Hankow, like those of most of the large trading cities,
+present a perpetual series of dramas. In them hundreds of people eat,
+sleep, bargain, gamble, cook, spin, and quarrel, while they are the
+sculleries, sinks, and sewers of a not inconsiderable portion of the
+population. They are the playgrounds of the children, if that can be
+called play which consists merely in rolling and tumbling over each
+other after the manner of puppies, the elder among them watching with
+greedy eyes the bargains of their seniors, eager cupidity and ofttimes
+precocious depravity written on faces which should be young.
+
+[Illustration: A TRAVELLING RESTAURANT.]
+
+Itinerant barbers pursue their essential calling, carrying their
+apparatus on their backs, and perambulating the streets with a curious
+cry. Their business is an enormous one in China, where hair is regarded
+as an enemy to be battled with. Once a week at least, the Chinese,
+however poor, must have the front and middle of his head smoothly
+shaven, or he looks like a convict, his face, I cannot say his beard,
+and his eyebrows, if he has any, trimmed, when he emerges from the
+barber’s hands a respectable member of the community. All these
+operations are conducted publicly under the eaves and gateways and at
+the street corners, with much shampooing, and dexterous manipulation of
+oddly shaped razors, which scrape rather than cut, the face of the
+client nevertheless wearing a look of serene contentment. The fees of
+the barber are an important item in the expenditure of a Chinese coolie.
+
+Many other industries are carried on in the streets, and the Government
+is lenient to all encroachments, so long as a mandarin’s chair and
+retinue can pass unhindered. Government is represented in this
+_congeries_ of cities by _yamens_, with picturesque curved roofs, and
+gateways with a certain stateliness, and courtyards usually filled with
+petitioners and their agents, prisoners awaiting trial, _yamen_ runners,
+who, from three to six hundred or more in number, hang about official
+residences; while clerks and writers carrying papers and dressed in
+expensive brocaded silks move haughtily among the common herd. The inner
+court is concealed by a plastered brick screen, on which is emblazoned
+in brilliant colouring a bold representation of the dragon of the Dragon
+Empire.
+
+Government in its military aspect is made apparent by a number of
+soldiers, usually in picturesque but stagey and unserviceable uniforms,
+in which blue and carnation-red predominate, who are encountered in the
+streets hanging round opium or tobacco shops, or gambling for _cash_, or
+attached slightly to some procession, or lounging at the city gates, or
+swaggering at the great entrance to the _yamen_, under the curse of
+abounding leisure. Their somewhat mediæval military equipments are
+supplemented with additions laughably grotesque, long fans attached to
+their girdles, and big paper umbrellas, occasionally gaudily decorated
+with mythical monsters, but oftener with proverbs or Confucian maxims.
+
+Hurry, crowds, business, the absence of the feminine element, and noise,
+are common to all Chinese cities. Drums and gongs are beaten, cymbals
+are clashed, bells ring, muskets are fired, crackers are exploded
+everywhere, beggars wail, there are street cries innumerable, the din of
+bargaining tongues rises high, and the air is full of the discordant
+roar of a multitude.
+
+In the centre of such surroundings, within hearing of the ceaseless din,
+and within smelling of the foul and ancient odour which pervades the
+city, the colony of English Wesleyan missionaries has placed itself in
+close contact with its medical missionary hospitals and dispensaries for
+men and women, its home and school for the blind, and its other
+missionary agencies, and not far off in a Chinese house, and living and
+dressing as a native, was one of the noblest and most sympathetic
+missionaries who ever sought the welfare of the Chinese, the Rev. David
+Hill, who died of typhus fever shortly after my first visit, genuinely
+mourned by those for whom he had sacrificed himself.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+                            HANKOW TO ICHANG
+
+
+I left Hankow, without seeing a gleam of sunshine upon it, by the
+deck-over-deck, American-built, stern-wheel steamer _Chang-wo_. She had
+some hundreds of Chinese and two China Inland missionaries on board
+below, and her very limited saloon accommodation was taken up by four
+Canadian missionaries returning to SZE CHUAN, and the inevitable baby.
+They had fled nearly a year before, after the destruction of their
+houses in the riots. I was greatly indebted to two of them. I had a
+cabin directly over the boiler. The floor was very hot, and even with
+the window open I could not get the temperature below 74°, and they gave
+me their cool room in exchange.
+
+The captain was kind and genial. He let me tone unlimited photographic
+prints in the saloon, ignoring the dishes and buckets involved in the
+process, and the engineer provided an unlimited supply of condensed
+water, free both from Yangtze mud and from the alum used to precipitate
+it. But he had a unique affluence of bad language, which neither the
+presence of clergy nor women sufficed to check, and which was brought
+out with slow, thrilling, and emphatically damnatory deliberation on the
+many occasions on which we ran on shoals.
+
+I had abundant occupation in writing, printing and toning photographs,
+learning a little from Mr. Endacott of the region for which I was
+finally bound, taking walks below past the Chinese cabins, where the
+inmates were reclining in the bliss of opium smoking, the faint, sickly
+smell of the drug drifting out at the open doors, or on the upper deck
+to watch the fleets of strange junks through which the _Chang-wo_
+steamed, howling and bellowing. Lumbering, unhandy craft they look, but
+they are handled with consummate skill.
+
+The Great River was at its lowest winter level, and its shores, so far
+as one could see them under these circumstances, were most monotonous,
+and then it was midwinter. We steamed for hours between high, grey
+mud-banks, ceaselessly eaten away by the rush of the current, gaining
+little beyond an idea of the vastness of the level country, the depth of
+the grey alluvium, and the extent of the commerce of which the Yangtze
+is the highway. To get deep water we were often close under the right
+bank, and had the _divertissement_ of being pelted with mud and with
+such names as “foreign devils” and “foreign dogs,” an amusement which
+one would have supposed would have palled upon the peasants in the years
+during which these steamers have been running.
+
+Our progress was not rapid, owing to shoals and changes in the channel,
+and the _Chang-wo_ anchored at night. Then, during the day, there was
+the frequent grinding sound of running on gravel, or the thud of
+touching a bank, or the buzz of a whirlpool created by ourselves in
+steering clear of a junk. All day long resounded the melancholy note of
+the Chinese leadsman calling out the soundings, varied by the sharp
+“Hard a-port!” or “Hard a-starboard!” of a European officer as some
+peril presented itself, or the low and terrible maledictions of the
+captain on all and sundry, as far back as the builders of the ship. The
+grounding was exasperating, losing us two hours at times. Quick as
+thought at every touch on shoal or mud-bank down clattered the anchor,
+and various skilled operations followed, which invariably resulted
+successfully, but at one time the navigation was so intricate, and the
+water shoaled for such a long distance, that, after getting off a bank
+after two hours’ tedious work, the steam launch was lowered to sound
+ahead, and direct us by signal flags.
+
+Still it was hard to get up any excitement over these mishaps, even
+though the captain enlarged on the risk of losing the wheel or the
+rudder. Very little diversified the monotony of the winter voyage, but
+when I returned in summer, and could look over the banks, a vast
+population and innumerable industries were to be seen.
+
+Yo-chow, a fortified monastery on a high promontory, once a place of
+considerable domination, and Yo-chow Fu, a large city near the junction
+of the Tungting Lake with the Yangtze, are the chief features of the
+featurelessness. This lake, a vast but imperfectly known sheet of water,
+surrounded by towns and villages, is of very great importance to the
+trade of the rich HUNAN province.
+
+The farther route lies among embanked watercourses, great flats of muddy
+land receiving alluvial accretions from each summer’s floods, and
+shallow meres with a wealth of wild fowl I never saw equalled, and
+abounding in fish, both fish and fowl being snared in great numbers by
+the nearly amphibious inhabitants, by many ingenious devices born of
+Chinese poverty.
+
+Among the many varieties of boats are pairs of large _sampans_, lashed
+together, and at once kept apart and connected by platforms, on which
+reeds are piled to the height of a haystack, the lowest part of the
+centre of the load being recessed and shored up for a sleeping and
+cooking place. These reeds, which are a speciality of the Yangtze for
+900 miles from its mouth, and attain a height of fifteen feet and over,
+are as invaluable to the people of this region as are the vast reed-beds
+of the Liao to those of Southern Manchuria, furnishing them with
+building, roofing, and fencing material, as well as with fuel. Quite a
+large part of the internal freighting business of this low-lying level
+is the transport of these reeds on sledges over the marshy ground, on
+four-wheeled wooden trucks, which might be called “trollies” if they had
+rails to run on, some dragged by men, and others by the quaint,
+appropriate water buffalo, as well as loaded on coupled boats.
+
+In the late afternoon of the third day from Hankow we anchored in the
+rushing mid-stream of the Yangtze, abreast of the treaty port of
+Sha-shih (Sand Market), opened by the treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895,
+and, as was fitting, first occupied by the Japanese. I was not
+prepossessed with the city either on the upward or downward journey.
+Communication with the shore is tedious, difficult, and not free from
+risk. Several of the boats which attempted to reach us were unable to
+“catch on,” and even a lighter, failing to make fast, was carried far
+astern and did not work her way back till the next morning.
+
+At low water Wan-cheng Ti, the great dyke, averaging 150 feet in width
+at the bottom, and twenty-five at the top, twenty feet high on the river
+side, and forty on the land side, which follows the Yangtze for
+twenty-five miles to the west of Sha-shih and thirty to the east,
+effectually conceals the town from view, only a seven-storeyed pagoda
+and the curved roofs of temples and _yamens_ appearing above the heads
+of the crowds which throng the roadway on the dyke-top.
+
+China must have been a greater country when this great public work was
+constructed than she is now, for this dyke where it protects Sha-shih is
+a noble, three-tiered, stone-faced construction, on the top of which are
+remnants of a stone balustrade; and broad, stately flights of stairs are
+let into the stonework at intervals, each tier of stairs being about
+twelve feet high. It must have been fully as impressive as the superb
+walls on the Chia-ling at Paoning Fu, which still remain a thing of
+grandeur and beauty.
+
+Sha-shih is pre-eminently and abominably dirty; and on this fine
+embankment dirt is in the ascendant, and dirt and bad smells assail the
+traveller on landing. Much of the refuse of the crowded city at the back
+is thrown over the river wall, accumulating in heaps which at low water
+conceal half of it. Steep steps lead up these vile mounds, and appear to
+be preferred to the stone stairs covered with slippery, black ooze.
+Below the heaps lie from one to two thousand junks with crews on an
+average of ten men each, and frequently the junkman’s wife and family in
+addition, giving an average floating population of 10,000.
+
+Beggars’ huts encroach on the top of the embankment; and when I write
+that hosts of gaunt, sore-eyed, mangy dogs, and black pigs each with a
+row of bristles standing up along his lean, curved back, and beggars,
+one mass of dirt and sores, are always routing and delving in the heaps,
+the reader will not be surprised that I did not find Sha-shih
+prepossessing. It has always had the reputation of being hostile to
+foreigners, which hostility expressed itself unpleasantly in a riot in
+May, 1898, when the China merchant’s, S. N. Co.’s premises ashore and
+afloat, the new buildings of the Imperial Customs, and the Japanese
+Consulate were destroyed. The three steamship agencies in 1898
+practically withdrew their agencies from the port, the British Consulate
+was withdrawn, Japan has taken no steps towards occupying her
+concession, foreign trade and passenger traffic have fallen off
+materially, and so far the port must be pronounced a failure.
+
+A noisy and dirty rabble follows a stranger; mud is thrown—and, as is
+the fashion of mud, some of it sticks—bad names are bandied about
+freely; the foreigner is conscious of a ferment which may or may not
+result in more active annoyance, and, after being nearly suffocated by
+the ill-mannered and malodorous crowd in a fruitless attempt to see the
+lions of the city, he retreats not reluctantly to his steamer, which, in
+my case, was detained by heavy fog until noon of the next day.
+
+[Illustration: CHINESE SOLDIERS.]
+
+(_From a Chinese Drawing._)
+
+But Sha-shih, though unprepossessing and unlikely to fulfil the
+expectations formed of it as a treaty port, is one of the most important
+cities on the Yangtze; nor is its importance a thing of yesterday. Two
+miles above it lies the _Fu_, or prefecture, of Ching-chou, of which it
+may be regarded as the trading suburb. All around are the remains of
+fortresses and cities, mounds, earthworks, and look-out terraces,
+ancient in the days when our fathers were painted savages, marking the
+sites of the strongholds and capital of the powerful kings of Ch’u in
+the early days of Chinese authentic history.
+
+[Illustration: MILITARY OFFICER.]
+
+(_From a Chinese Drawing._)
+
+Ching-chou Fu is grandly fortified, and is surrounded by a wide canal of
+great depth. It is the seat of a _taotai_, or intendant of a circuit,
+which includes Ichang, eighty miles off, and though not a provincial
+capital, is of such importance that it has a Manchu garrison of 12,000
+men(?), the largest Manchu force south of Peking, the Manchu military
+colony numbering 40,000 souls. The whole organisation of this colony is
+military, and it is kept separate from the civil population. Otherwise
+it has no interest, except that the women have unbound feet and wear
+long outer dresses, and that the men look lazy and demoralised. Besides
+this large garrison there are river and lake police, and a small body of
+militia under the command of a provincial general, and a thousand HUNAN
+“braves” trained in the rudiments of drill under a brigade-general.
+“Braves” are fighting mobile troops, whose superior qualities command
+superior pay. They receive four or five taels a month, while the common
+provincial soldier only gets one tael fifty cents. Now, as formerly,
+Ching-chou is regarded as one of the most important strategical
+positions in China.
+
+It has an estimated Chinese and Manchu population of 100,000, and
+Sha-shih an estimated population of 80,000, a temporary one averaging
+8000, and a boating one (as mentioned before) of, at the very least,
+10,000, nearly 200,000 in all. The distance to Ichang is 80 miles by
+land and 100 by water. To Hankow, with which the great trade of Sha-shih
+is done, it is 300 miles by water, and would be 135 by land, if there
+were land! No land carriage is possible, except in seasons of drought,
+much of that which poses as _terra firma_ on the maps being meres,
+relapsed agricultural lands, morasses, shallow lakes, fens,
+watercourses, and reed swamps, most productive wherever areas are
+drained and embanked.
+
+Among the interesting features of Sha-shih are a ninth century
+seven-storeyed pagoda, with eight faces, each face recessed on each
+storey, and containing a stone image of Buddha, and a dark and foul
+staircase, leading to a remarkable view from the top, and the imposing
+halls of the trade guilds, of which I failed to see the superb
+interiors, owing to the clamour and pressure of the rabble. In Sha-shih,
+as everywhere else, these guildhalls serve the purposes of banqueting
+halls, temples, and even theatres at times. They number thirteen, named
+from the provinces or cities of which their members are natives, and
+each has its patron deity. There are several charitable institutions,
+including two orphanages, one of which receives 220 orphans annually,
+and boards them out until the age of sixteen.
+
+Benevolence was considerably strained in the winter of 1896–97, when
+thousands of refugees flying from famine in SZE CHUAN received
+unwholesome and insanitary shelter in mat sheds outside Sha-shih, where
+a terrible and uninvestigated epidemic broke out, and was carried into
+the city and neighbourhood, so that during the spring and summer it was
+estimated that 17,000 perished in the city only. Nearly all the
+refugees, after being kept alive chiefly by the charitable, died, and
+were decently buried by those societies which in every Chinese city
+undertake this sacred duty for the bodies of strangers, and for those of
+the very poor. I am always glad to call attention to Chinese charities,
+for the continual reiteration of facts on the other side only tends to
+produce an unfair and one-sided impression of the Chinese character.
+
+[Illustration: A FISHERMAN AND PLUNGE NET.]
+
+(_From a Chinese Drawing._)
+
+Superstition had its say regarding this baleful epidemic, which
+unfortunately never came under skilled observation. It was attributed to
+a malignant black bird, of vast size, which was said to hover over the
+city. It had ten heads, but one had been cut off, and the severed neck
+bled profusely and continuously, and wherever the blood fell disease and
+death followed. A day was set apart for the propitiation of this
+malignant fowl, and fire crackers were burned before the door of every
+house.[21]
+
+The fish market is an excellent, though an uncleanly one, nets, angling,
+cormorants, lines with hooks, and great frame nets lowered and raised by
+pulleys, all being employed. Sturgeon, weighing from 500 to 700 pounds,
+are caught off the port. There are no unusual articles of diet to be
+seen, except Japanese seaweed, which is largely consumed in the belief
+that it counteracts the bad effects of the sulphur fumes proceeding from
+coal fires!
+
+The Roman Catholics and three Protestant missions hold property in the
+town, but mission work has to be conducted very cautiously owing to the
+strongly anti-foreign feeling. There are seventeen foreigners, including
+the Japanese consul, but not one foreign merchant, though two or three
+foreign firms have agencies.
+
+Foreign articles, few of which find any place in the customs returns,
+are to be bought in the shops. Very many of them are Japanese, owing to
+the energy or, as our merchants call it, the peddling and huckstering
+instincts of the Japanese traders, who through their trained
+Chinese-speaking agents find out what the people want and supply it to
+them. The cotton gins largely used in the neighbourhood are of Japanese
+make, and cheap clocks, kerosene lamps, towels, handkerchiefs, cotton
+umbrellas, cheap hardware, soaps, fancy articles of all descriptions,
+and cotton goods are poured into Sha-shih by that alert empire. Among
+English goods are rugs, blankets, and preserves and tinned milk and
+fruits. Most of the dealers in “assorted notions” are Cantonese.
+
+Cotton cloth, raw cotton, silk fabrics, and hides are the staple export
+of Sha-shih. There are few local industries besides the weaving of
+cotton. Pewter, “hubble bubbles,” household pewter ware, long bamboo
+pipes, not fashionable “down the river,” coarse silk twist for plaiting
+into the ends of queues, boiling salt out of old salt bags, a smoky and
+smelly process carried on owing to the monstrous price of Government
+salt, brick and tile making, and furniture-making, specially of carved
+and gilded bedsteads and cabinets, showy but somewhat trashy, I think
+exhaust the list. The annual export of raw cotton is estimated at
+9,000,000 pounds. Enormous quantities of it arrive to be woven at
+Sha-shih into a strong, durable, white cloth, fifteen and twelve inches
+wide, which I saw all over SZE CHUAN, and of which at least 20,000,000
+pounds are annually exported. Samples of this make and of English
+cottons were frequently shown to me by the women in SZE CHUAN villages,
+with a scornful laugh at the expense of the latter.
+
+Sha-shih is called “The Manchester of China.” In it this comparatively
+indestructible cloth is graded, packed, and shipped away, the adjacent
+country being the greatest centre of weaving in the empire. There are
+110 dealers in raw cotton in the city, and 114 shops deal in native
+cotton cloth, and there is a daily market for its sale in the early
+mornings. Silks, both plain and figured, are also produced in great
+quantities, and satin bed-covers, which are used all over China. Rich
+satins are also woven for altar cloths, bed and door hangings, and
+cushions.
+
+Sha-shih was the first point on my journey at which I encountered the
+money difficulties which press so severely on the traveller in China. My
+broken silver was of little use, and my dollars of none, copper _cash_
+and _cash_ notes forming the entire currency of the port. The merchants
+and shopkeepers calculate silver in Sha-shih taels, which vary from 6 to
+11 per cent. from the standard Haikwan, Hankow, and Shanghai taels, and
+the exchange between _cash_ and silver varies daily. There are about 130
+_cash_ shops in the town, nearly all of them issuing notes. Notes for
+1000 _cash_ abound, mostly issued by small Manchu shops in Ching-chou,
+for which change can hardly be obtained in Ching-chou itself. The _cash_
+shops issue notes for 1000, 5000, and 10,000 _cash_, but though those
+issued by the banks and pawnshops are current for thirty miles round,
+they are worthless at Ichang, as I found to my inconvenience. Each
+hundred _cash_ being strung separately on a wisp of straw or paper, and
+every string having to be counted over and examined for small or
+spurious _cash_, the purchase of 10,000, or about 23_s._ 3_d._, is a
+weighty matter in various senses, and is apt to take from two to three
+hours, including the time spent in bargaining about “the touch” of sycee
+silver procured at Hankow.
+
+I have dwelt so long, albeit so superficially, on Sha-shih because it is
+the most important of the treaty ports opened since the war, and because
+nothing is known of it by the general reader. Certainly the _couleur de
+rose_ expectations of an outburst of foreign trade have not been
+realised, nor, I think, are likely to be, unless the methods of commerce
+on the Yangtze undergo a radical change. The total trade for 1898 was
+only £24,444 in value, against £47,509 in 1897, but these figures only
+apply to the exports and imports passing through the Imperial Maritime
+Customs. For Sha-shih has not only one, but several, “back doors”
+through which her enormous commerce is poured, the principal one being a
+canal to Hankow, called at its western end the Pien-Ho, and which is not
+only free from the risks of the river, but is from sixty to seventy
+miles shorter. Altogether several routes to Hankow are practicable,
+either wholly by canal and lake, or partly by road and partly by canal,
+the water route being available during the whole year.
+
+The Chinese are rigid conservatives. Junks are always obtainable, and
+wait the convenience of their hirers, and their freight and passenger
+charges are much lower than those of the steamers. Certainly if I had
+not been hurried I should have preferred a junk! The canals pass through
+towns which offer facilities for both trading and dawdling, so that,
+although there are two _likin_ stations on the canal route to Hankow,
+the native trader finds that the junk has many advantages over the
+steamer. _Likin_ is charged on all goods landed at Sha-shih, and the
+Imperial Customs duty is, in fact, only an additional tax levied on
+goods conveyed by steamer. These inland routes are of the greatest
+commercial importance.
+
+Besides the canal and lake routes to Hankow, the great delta between the
+Yangtze and the Han is spotted with lakes connected by waterways, and in
+other directions there are available roads connecting Sha-shih with
+important trading cities. Among these are the great southern highway
+from SZE CHUAN, and the great north road leading by the Han and over the
+mountains to the capital of SHENSI, from which mule carts and mule
+litters, conveyances hardly known in Central China, descend into the
+Yangtze plain.
+
+All that region lies below the summer level of its rivers, and it is a
+problem on which no light is likely to be shed why a country so oddly
+circumstanced should have become a populous and powerful kingdom at a
+very early date, and why its chief city has continued to be one of the
+most important of military positions and of commercial centres in the
+Chinese Empire.
+
+Returning to the river voyage, after passing Yungtze, the western
+mountains appeared for the first time. The scenery changed rapidly. The
+river narrowed; some of its promontories were boulder-strewn; low,
+wooded knolls appeared above pleasant agricultural country, green with
+young wheat; and hills of conglomerate and limestone replaced the grey
+alluvium through which we had been steaming for nearly 1000 miles.
+Although much detained by fogs, we reached the Tiger Teeth gorge, ten
+miles below Ichang, in the early afternoon of the fifth day from Hankow.
+This gorge, which hardly deserves so thrilling a name, is a channel two
+miles long and about 700 yards wide, in the easternmost of those ranges
+through which the Yangtze has forced itself on its way to create the
+Great Plain. This range, rising to a height of 2600 feet, is broken up
+into peaks, one of which is crowned by an inaccessible-looking Buddhist
+monastery, this building, a fine pagoda, and great masses of
+conglomerate being the only noteworthy features until we reached Ichang
+in the glorifying light of a late afternoon sun.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+                                 ICHANG
+
+
+Unlike Sha-shih, the first view of Ichang, opened to foreign trade in
+1887, is very attractive. At low water it stands high on the river bank,
+on a conglomerate cliff above a great level sandbank, but in summer it
+loses whatever dignity it gains by height, and is nearly on the river
+level. A walled city of 35,000 people, gate towers, and temple roofs
+rise above the battlements and the mass of houses. Between the city and
+the river is a straggling suburb fairly clean, composed of small retail
+shops. On the river bank are the buildings and godowns of the Imperial
+Customs, including the Commissioner’s house and large garden, dainty
+dwellings for the staff of twelve Europeans, and a tennis ground, with a
+fine bund and broad flight of stone stairs in front. Near these are the
+large houses of the Scotch Church Mission, and beyond a new plain
+building put up by the China Inland Mission. The Roman Catholic
+buildings are the first to attract attention from the water. There are a
+few foreign hongs and godowns, and a customs pontoon moored in the
+stream. Behind the British Consulate, a substantial new building with a
+tennis lawn used for weekly hospitalities, breezy hills, much covered
+with grave mounds, roll up towards a mountainous region, and below, the
+Yangtze, with its perpetual rush and current, swirls in a superb flood
+half a mile wide.
+
+At the time of my first visit a British gunboat, a wholesome and not
+unneeded influence, lay at anchor opposite the town.
+
+The imposing feature of Ichang to my thinking is its multitude of junks
+of every build and size, lying closely packed along its shore for a mile
+and a half, their high castellated sterns making a goodly show. There
+lay in hundreds big SZE CHUAN junks, strongly built for the rapids,
+their stained and oiled woodwork looking like varnished pine, the junks
+bound up the river with their masts erect, the masts of those which had
+come down lashed along their sides. Big passenger boats there were too,
+for all passengers, as well as cargo, bound up the Yangtze must “change”
+at Ichang.
+
+On the opposite side are cliffs along the river front, backed by hills
+and fine mountains, among which are fantastic peaks and pyramids, one of
+them known as Pyramid Hill, exactly resembling the Great Pyramid in
+shape, and said to have the same height and area as its prototype. Its
+peculiar position and form were supposed or believed by the local
+geomancers to interfere with that mystery of mysteries the FUNG SHUI,
+and thus to act injuriously on the prosperity of Ichang, so the powers
+that were, it is said, built a monastery opposite, on the Ichang side of
+the river, at great expense, the priests of which have as their special
+business to pray that the disastrous influences of Pyramid Hill may be
+warded off from the city.
+
+The dead who people the hillsides far outnumber the living, and their
+abodes having the aspect of exaggerated mole-hills, lack the frequent
+stateliness of Chinese places of interment in some of the other
+provinces, being mostly circular mounds of earth and sod kept together
+by stones rudely built into them.
+
+Just before I arrived many of these stones had served a sinister
+purpose, and had been used as ammunition. On entering the house of Mr.
+Schjöltz, the Commissioner of Customs, who was my host at Ichang and
+later at Chungking, I was surprised to see cairns of stones which were
+nearly as big as a human head both in the hall and outside it, which had
+been collected in the dining and drawing-rooms after their windows had
+been smashed in an anti-foreign riot a few days before. During some
+festivities the Chinese cook of the gunboat _Esk_ accidentally shot a
+very popular Chinese officer. On this there was naturally a great
+ebullition of fury, specially as the cook was not given up to the
+Chinese authorities when they demanded him. The Customs buildings were
+guarded by Chinese soldiers, but the staff, who are all efficiently
+drilled, did sentry duty at night. This was the least serious of the
+many riots which have occurred in the treaty ports on the Yangtze in
+recent years.
+
+[Illustration: THE TABLET OF CONFUCIUS.]
+
+There are now about forty-five foreigners in Ichang, about twenty of
+them being missionaries. It is to be supposed that all of these have a
+sufficiency of serious occupation. Their amusements consist chiefly in
+tennis, shooting, and boating picnics to some of the picturesque ravines
+and rock temples off the main river, and to the Ichang gorge. The
+British Consul, Mr. Holland, and Mr. Woodruff, the Commissioner of
+Customs, throw their spacious gardens open constantly, and by the
+exercise of much hospitality do their best to alleviate what, it must be
+confessed, is the great monotony of life in a small and isolated foreign
+community.
+
+Unless people are students or specialists or hobbyists of some
+description, as I think every man and woman should be who goes to live
+in so very foreign a country as China, amusements are apt to pall. The
+winter evenings are long and dull, and those of summer hot and
+mosquito-infested. People soon gauge the mental and social possibilities
+of new-comers, and know exactly what their neighbours think on every
+subject which can arise, and have sounded their intellectual depths and
+_shallows_, and the arrival of a stranger and of the mail boat and the
+changes in the customs staff are the chief varieties in life. That this
+and several other of these small communities “get on” with little
+apparent friction is surely much to their credit. Some say that it is
+because they are chiefly masculine!
+
+In summer large vessels can make fast under the bund, but at low water
+they anchor in mid-stream, and how to get goods with due regard to
+economy from the steamers to the godowns when there is an average
+difference of forty feet between the summer and winter levels of the
+river is somewhat of a problem. Though in itself only a comparatively
+poor town in a mountainous country, the total value of the trade of
+Ichang for 1898 amounted to £2,298,437. All goods going west have to be
+transhipped at this port, and nearly all goods bound east, so that it is
+one of the busiest places on the river. It is a curious fact that, with
+enormous coal-fields only three or four days away, the river steamers
+1000 miles from the sea are burning Japanese coal!
+
+Ichang is the headquarters of a large Roman mission. Its head, Bishop
+Benjamin, with whom I had the pleasure of spending one afternoon, has
+been sixteen years in his present position without even a visit to
+Shanghai. His large, lofty room, though furnished with all absolute
+necessaries, is bare and severe, and contains nothing on which the eye
+can pleasurably rest. The Bishop is a most genial elderly man, with much
+charm of manner, thick iron-grey hair, and an unclerical moustache. As
+we walked down the lanes to the orphanage numbers of Chinese children,
+unmistakably delighted to see him, ran up to him, kissing his hands and
+struggling for positions in which they could hold on to his robe.
+
+With him I visited the orphanage and hospital, both under the charge of
+French and Belgian sisters, comely women with much grace and geniality
+of manner, in which the loving, all-embracing maternal instinct finds
+its winning expression. The hospital, which is on the ground floor, was
+crowded, indeed overcrowded, and, as is usual in Roman hospitals in
+China, the doctor and much of the medical treatment were Chinese, the
+aid of the foreign doctor (a medical missionary) being called in in
+surgical cases.
+
+The orphanage is a large building, with very lofty, well-ventilated
+rooms, constructed for four hundred, but there were only eighteen girls
+in it, who are instructed in the Christian faith, and in embroidery and
+other industrial occupations. The Bishop told me that the Chinese do
+not, as formerly, bring orphans and foundlings in numbers to their
+keeping; indeed, I gathered that in Ichang at least the day for this is
+past. I can only hazard a guess at the reasons. These may be the
+anti-foreign spirit which has been laboriously stirred up recently; the
+increasing competition of orphanages founded by charitable Chinese; the
+partial disappointment with the temporal results of conversion; and
+perhaps, above all, the excessive mortality which prevails in these
+institutions, very much owing to the fact that the infants are brought
+to them in great numbers either dying or suffering from disease, or in
+such a feeble and emaciated state that they are unable to assimilate
+their food. This mortality seems a matter of thankfulness rather than
+regret to the pious sisters, one of whom elsewhere, in speaking to me of
+a mortality of 1600 in the late summer, said with emotion, “So many,
+thank God, safe.”
+
+Besides the Bishop and his priest secretary there are French and Chinese
+fathers, a French professor, and a seminary with eight students, who
+study the Chinese classics and philosophy for ten years and theology for
+seven. These Roman missionaries appear to rely for the conversion of
+adults chiefly on native agency. A Belgian priest, who called on me,
+claimed 3000 converts in a region above the gorges, where he had worked
+for eleven years. It is well known that one cause of the successes of
+the Roman missionaries is the assistance given by them to litigants, and
+the pressure brought to bear upon magistrates at the instance of the
+French Minister in Peking in legal cases in which his co-religionists
+are concerned. This Catholic priest mentioned to me, as among the many
+trials of his missionary vocation, the case of a village in which nearly
+all the inhabitants placed themselves under Christian instruction with a
+view to baptism. These villagers had a suit against another village in
+which the possession of a certain piece of land was the point in
+dispute. French influence was brought to bear, and they gained their
+case, let us believe justly, after which they returned _en masse_ to
+their idolatrous practices.
+
+My Belgian visitor, in very vivid language, depicted the sufferings of
+educated men from the deprivations of their lives, and specially from
+the absolute solitude in which he and others are placed, living in one
+room of low-class Chinese houses. He was obviously a man of much culture
+and refinement, and felt the whole life acutely—the dark and filthy
+houses, the dirty food, the unceasing noisy talk in a foreign tongue,
+the lack of real privacy and quiet, the ingratitude of the Chinese, and,
+more than all, his own failure to love them. This, though my first, was
+not my last glimpse of the anguish of loneliness which these Roman
+missionaries endure. “Madness would be the certain result,” my visitor
+said, “but for the sustaining power of God, and the certainty that one
+is doing His work.”
+
+As I shall not return to the subject of Roman missions, I will refer
+briefly to four of the causes, in my opinion, of their undoubtedly
+growing unpopularity in SZE CHUAN and elsewhere, in spite of the
+assistance given to Christian litigants previously referred to.
+
+1. The exorbitant indemnity, out of all proportion to the losses
+sustained, demanded and obtained by M. Gerard, then French Minister at
+Peking, for damage done to mission property during the riots in SZE
+CHUAN in 1895.
+
+2. The claim of the Roman hierarchy [now conceded] to be placed on a
+level in position with the higher mandarins as to the number of their
+chair-bearers, etc., and the amount of personal reverence exacted by the
+clergy from a people essentially democratic.
+
+3. The non-admission of the heathen into Roman churches during the
+celebration of mass and other services, while the secrecy which attends
+the administration of the last rites of the Church is undoubtedly
+obnoxious to the lower orders among the Chinese, who have no conception
+of privacy.
+
+4. The opposite methods pursued by the Protestants of all denominations
+since their settlement in the far west a few years ago are doubtless
+working against the practices of the Roman missionaries.
+
+On the other hand, it is but just to say that the Chinese appreciate the
+celibacy, poverty, and asceticism of the Roman clergy. Every religious
+teacher, with one notable exception, who has made his mark in the East
+has been an ascetic, and when Orientals begin to seek after
+righteousness, rigid self-mortification is the method by which they hope
+to attain it.
+
+Wherever I have met with Roman missionaries I have found them living
+either like Bishop Benjamin and Bishop Meitel of Seoul, and like the
+sisters in Seoul, Peking, Ichang, and elsewhere, in bare, whitewashed
+rooms, with just enough tables and wooden chairs for use, or in the
+dirt, noise, and innumerable discomforts of native houses of the lower
+class, personally attending on the sick, and in China, Chinese in life,
+dress, style, and ways, rarely speaking their own language, knowing the
+ins and outs of the districts in which they live, their peculiarities of
+trade, and their political and social condition. Lonely men, having
+broken with friends and all home ties for the furtherance of
+Christianity, they live lives of isolation and self-sacrifice, forget
+all but the people by whom they are surrounded, identify themselves with
+their interests, and have no other expectation but that of living and
+dying among them.
+
+It must be admitted that the Chinese contrast this life of
+self-surrender with that of large numbers of Protestant missionaries
+living in comfortable, and what seem to them wealthy, homes in the
+treaty ports, surrounded by as many of the amenities of life as are
+usual in the simpler homes in foreign settlements, and with wives,
+children, friends, and society, not very often, as in the case of the
+Wesleyan missionaries at Hankow, living in the native cities among the
+Chinese, and going home with their families for a year or more once in
+five or seven years.[22]
+
+While admiring the self-denial and devotion of the Roman missionary
+priests, I do not express any opinion as to rival methods and merits,
+but only state facts which are forced upon every traveller, and purpose
+to return to the subject of Protestant missions later.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X.
+                           THE UPPER YANGTZE
+
+
+I was very impatient to be off on my western journey, but after the boat
+was engaged, the tracking ropes examined by experts at the customs, and
+my few stores—tea, curry powder, and rice—had been bought, I had four
+days of “hanging on.” The boatmen made various excuses for delay. One
+day it was that the _lao-pan_, or master, had not advanced them money
+wherewith to buy stores; another was a feast day; a third must be spent
+in paying debts or they would be detained; and on the fourth they said
+they must visit certain temples and make offerings for the success of
+the voyage! The weather was raw, grim, and sunless. I had had a fire day
+and night in my room at the customs, and a fireless, draughty boat was a
+shivery prospect, but things usually turn out far better than either
+prophecies or expectations, and this voyage was no exception.
+
+I was fortunate in being able to take as far as Wan Hsien Mr. Owen
+Stevenson, of the China Inland Mission, who had had ten years’
+experience in Yunnan, accompanied by Mr. Hicks, a new arrival; and they
+engaged the boat for the next stage to Chung-king, which gave Mr. S.
+some little hold on the _lao-pan_, who was a mean and shifty person,
+coerced into evil ways by a terrible wife, a virago, whose loud tongue
+was rarely silent, who had beaten her eldest boy to death a few months
+before, and of whom the remaining boy—a child of eight—lived in piteous
+terror, lest he should share the same fate. This family of five lived in
+the high stern cabin, but were apt to run over into parts of the boat
+which should have been _tabu_. The crew consisted of a pilot who is
+responsible for the navigation, a steersman, a cook, and sixteen
+trackers and rowers.
+
+The boat itself was a small house-boat of about twenty tons,
+flat-bottomed, with one tall mast and big sail, a projecting rudder, and
+a steering sweep on the bow. Her “passenger accommodation” consisted of
+a cabin the width of the boat, with a removable front, opening on the
+bow deck, where the sixteen boatmen rowed, smoked, ate, and slept round
+a central well in which a preternaturally industrious cook washed bowls,
+prepared food, cooked it, and apportioned it all day long, using a
+briquette fire. At night uprights and a mat roof were put up, and the
+toilers, after enjoying their supper, and their opium pipes at the
+stern, rolled themselves in wadded quilts and slept till daybreak.
+Passengers usually furnish this cabin, and put up curtains and
+photographs, and eat and sit there; but I had no superfluities, and my
+“furniture” consisted only of a carrying-chair, in which it was very
+delightful to sit and watch the grandeurs and surprises of the river.
+But gradually the trackers and the skipper’s family came to over run
+this cabin, and I constantly found the virago with her unwelcome baby
+girl, or a dirty, half-naked tracker in my chair, and the eight-year-old
+boy spent much of his time crouching in a corner out of reach of his
+mother’s tongue and fist.
+
+Abaft this were three small cabins, with windows “glazed” with paper,
+and a passage down the port side from the stern to the bow, on which I
+cannot say they “opened,” for they were open (!), and a partial privacy
+was only obtained by making a partition with a curtain. Abaft these was
+the steersman’s place, which was also a kitchen and opium den, where my
+servant cooked, and where the pilot and most of the crew were to be seen
+every night lying on the floor beside their opium lamps, passing into
+felicity. Abaft again, at a greater height, the skipper and his family
+lived. On the roof there were hen coops and great coils of bamboo rope
+for towing.
+
+It was an old boat, and the owner was not a man of substance. The paper
+on the windows was torn away; the window-frame of the cabin in which I
+slept, ate, and carried on my various occupations, had fallen out, the
+cracks in the partitions were half an inch wide; and as for many days
+the sun seldom shone and the mercury hung between 38° and 43°, and
+hugging a charcoal brazier was the only method of getting warm, and that
+a dubious one, the earliest weeks were a chilly period.
+
+On the afternoon of January 30th I embarked from the customs pontoon
+much exhilarated by the prospect before me, but we only crossed the
+river and lay all night in a tremendous noise among a number of big
+junks, the yells of the skipper’s baby being heard above the din. This
+man excused this last delay in starting by sending word from the shore
+that he was waiting for the mandarin’s permit, and would be ready to
+leave on the following daybreak.
+
+I was up at daybreak not to lose anything, but hour after hour passed,
+and no _lao-pan_ appeared, and at ten we started without him to meet him
+on the bank a few miles higher, when there was a tremendous row between
+him and the men. We were then in what looked like a mountain lake. No
+outlet was visible; mountains rose clear and grim against a dull grey
+sky. Snowflakes fell sparsely and gently in a perfectly still
+atmosphere. We cast off from the shore; the oars were plied to a wild
+chorus; what looked like a cleft in the rock appeared, and making an
+abrupt turn round a high rocky point in all the thrill of novelty and
+expectation, we were in the Ichang Gorge, the first and one of the
+grandest of those gigantic clefts through which the Great River, at
+times a mile in breadth, there compressed into a limit of from 400 to
+150 yards, has carved a passage through the mountains.
+
+The change from a lake-like stretch, with its light and movement, to a
+dark and narrow gorge black with the shadows of nearly perpendicular
+limestone cliffs broken up into buttresses and fantastic towers of
+curiously splintered and weathered rock, culminating in the “Pillar of
+Heaven,” a limestone pinnacle rising sheer from the water to a height of
+1800 feet, is so rapid as to bewilder the senses. The expression “_lost_
+in admiration” is a literally correct one. At once I saw the reason why
+the best descriptions, which are those of Captain Blakiston and Mr. A.
+Little, have a certain amount of “fuzziness,” and fail to convey a
+definite picture.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO ICHANG GORGE.]
+
+With a strong, fair wind our sail was set; the creak and swish of the
+oars was exchanged for the low music of the river as it parted under our
+prow; and the deep water (from fifty to a hundred feet), of a striking
+bottle-green colour, was unbroken by a swirl or ripple, and slid past in
+a grand, full volume. The stillness was profound, enlivened only as some
+big junk with lowered mast glided past us at great speed, the fifty or
+sixty men at the sweeps raising a wild chant in keeping with the scene.
+Scuds of snow, wild, white clouds whirling round pinnacles, and desolate
+snow-clothed mountains, apparently blocking further progress, added to
+the enchantment. Crevices in the rocks were full of maidenhair fern, and
+on many a narrow ledge clustered in profusion a delicate mauve primula,
+unabashed by the grandeur and the gloom. Streams tumbled over ledges at
+heights of 1000 feet. There are cliffs of extraordinary honeycombed
+rock, possibly the remains of the “potholes” of ages since, rock carved
+by the action of water and weather into shrines with pillared fronts,
+grottoes with quaint embellishments—gigantic old women gossiping
+together in big hats—colossal abutments, huge rock needles after the
+manner of Quiraing, while groups of stalactites constantly occur as
+straight and thick as small pines, supporting rock canopies festooned
+with maidenhair. Higher yet, surmounting rock ramparts 2000 feet high,
+are irregular battlemented walls of rock, perhaps twenty feet thick, and
+everywhere above and around are lofty summits sprinkled with pines, on
+which the snow lay in powder only, and “the snow clouds rolling dun”
+added to the sublimity of the scenery.
+
+It was always changing, too. If it were possible to be surfeited with
+turrets, battlements, and cathedral spires, and to weary of rock
+phantasies, the work of water, of solitudes and silences, and of the
+majestic dark green flow of the Great River, there were besides lateral
+clefts, each with its wall-sided torrent, with an occasional platform
+green with wheat, on which a brown-roofed village nestled among fruit
+trees, or a mountain, bisected by a chasm, looking ready to fall into
+the river, as some have already done, breaking up into piles of huge
+angular boulders, over which even the goat-footed trackers cannot climb.
+Then, wherever the cliffs are less absolutely perpendicular, there are
+minute platforms partially sustaining houses with their backs burrowing
+into the rock, and their fronts extended on beams fixed in the cliff,
+accessible only by bolts driven into the rock, where the small children
+are tied to posts to prevent them from falling over, and above, below,
+and around these dwellings are patches of careful culture, some of them
+_not larger than a bath towel_, to which the cultivators lower
+themselves with ropes, and there are small openings occasionally, where
+deep-eaved houses cluster on the flat tops of rocky spurs among the
+exquisite plumage of groves of the golden and green bamboo, among
+oranges and pommeloes with their shining greenery, and straight-stemmed
+palms with their great fan-like leaves. Already in these sheltered
+places mauve primulas were blooming amidst a profusion of maidenhair,
+and withered clusters and tresses showed what the glory of the spring
+had been and was yet to be when the skirts of these spurs would be
+aflame with azaleas, and clematis, and great white and yellow roses, and
+all the wealth of flowers and trailers of which these were only the
+vestiges.
+
+Another feature was boats large and small, and junks, some laboriously
+tracked or rowed like my own, when the wind failed, against the powerful
+stream, or descending, keeping the necessary steerage headway by crowds
+of standing men on the low deck, facing forwards, vigorously working
+great sweeps or _yulows_, five or ten at each, the gorge echoing all
+along its length to the rise and fall of the wild chants to which the
+rowers keep time and which are only endurable when softened by distance.
+After some hours of this region of magic and mystery, near sunset we
+emerged into open water, with broken picturesque shores, and at dusk
+tied up in a pebbly bay with glorious views of mountain and woodland,
+not far from the beautiful village of Nan-to, and the “needle” or
+“pillar” of heaven, well known to the dwellers in Ichang. The Ichang
+gorge is about twelve miles long; the Niu-kan, grander yet, about three;
+the Mitan about three and a half; the Wushan about twenty; and the
+Feng-hsiang, or “Wind-Box,” the last of the great gorges, about four.
+These are the great gorges.
+
+I halted for Sunday in this lovely bay, an arrangement much approved of
+by the trackers, who employed the holiday in washing their clothes,
+smoking a double quantity of opium, and making a distracting noise,
+aggravated by the ceaseless yells of the boat baby, yells of an
+objectionable heredity and undisciplined naughtiness, which at first
+imposed on my ignorant sympathies. Nevertheless I luxuriated in the
+quiet which one can obtain when a babel is unintelligible.
+
+[Illustration: THE AUTHOR’S BOAT.]
+
+In the afternoon the air was keen and bracing, the sky very blue, and
+the sunshine, after three weeks of gloom, had the charm of novelty. By
+the narrowest of paths I climbed a cleft down which a crystal rivulet
+fell in leaps, pausing to rest now and then in deep pools fringed with a
+profuse growth of maidenhair. Minute plots for rice rose in steps along
+it; its banks were masses of ferns, roses, and clematis, the beautiful
+“Connecticut running fern” being as common as is the _Filix mas_ with
+us. Higher rose the steep path; more glorious were the mountain views,
+more marvellous the forest of spires and pinnacles, more graceful the
+slender-stemmed palms, finer the contorted _Pinus sinensis_, more lush
+the dense foliage, bluer the sky above—not the China we picture to
+ourselves, of water, quaint bridges, curled roofs, and flat, formal
+gardens, but a Chinese Switzerland, sub-tropical, an intoxication, a
+dream!
+
+In such scenery it was appropriate to come upon a deep-eaved _châlet_ of
+brown wood, with surroundings, models of cleanliness, shady with
+magnificent bamboo and orange groves, through which were seen far below
+deep ravines and picturesque brown villages, and the broken sparkle of
+the Great River, with snowy mountains on the other side, and from the
+junks on its broad breast the rowers’ chant floated up harmoniously, and
+from the farmhouse, where the people seemed to be leading a rural,
+domestic life with guests about them, a man came out speaking politely,
+and hauled off a fierce dog, decidedly hostile to foreigners.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+                      RAPIDS OF THE UPPER YANGTZE
+
+
+On inquiring of Mr. Endacott, at Ichang, his ideas of occupation on the
+upward voyage, his reply was, “People have enough to do looking after
+their lives.” Certainly the perils of the rapids are great, and few
+people of whom I have heard have escaped without risks to life and loss
+or damage to property, either, like Consul Gardner, finding their boats
+disappear from under them, or like a missionary, who, coming down with
+his wife’s coffin, came to grief, the coffin taking a lonely and ghastly
+voyage to a point far below, or like many others whom I met who reached
+their destinations minus their possessions in whole or in part. Signs of
+disaster abounded. Above and below every rapid, junkmen were encamped on
+shore under the mats of their junks, and the shore was spread with
+cotton drying. There were masts above water, derelicts partially
+submerged in quiet reaches, or on some sandy beach being repaired, and
+gaunt skeletons lay here and there on the rocks which had proved fatal
+to them. The danger signal is to be seen above and below all the worst
+rapids in the shape of lifeboats, painted a brilliant red and inscribed
+with characters in white: showy things, as buoyant as corks, sitting on
+the raging water with the vexatious complacency of ducks, or darting
+into the turmoil of scud and foam where the confusion is at its worst,
+and there poising themselves with the calm fearlessness of a perfect
+knowledge of every rock and eddy.
+
+[Illustration: BED OF THE YANGTZE IN WINTER, TA-TAN RAPID.]
+
+I have found that many of the deterrent perils which are arrayed before
+the eyes of travellers about to begin a journey are greatly exaggerated,
+and often vanish altogether. Not so the perils of the Yangtze. They
+fully warrant the worst descriptions which have been given of them. The
+risks are many and serious, and cannot be provided against by any
+forethought. The slightest error in judging of distance on the part of
+the pilot, any hampering of the bow-sweep, a tow-rope breaking, a
+submerged boulder changing its place, and many other possibilities, and
+life and property are at the mercy of a raging flood, tearing downwards
+at the rate of from seven to eleven miles an hour. I have no personal
+perils to narrate. A rock twice knocked a hole in the bottom which took
+a day to repair, and in a collision our bow-sweep was fractured, which
+led to a severe quarrel lasting half a day; this was all. I never became
+used to the rapids, and always felt nervous at the foot of each, and
+preferred the risk of fracturing my limbs among the great boulders and
+shining rock faces of the shores to spending hours in a turmoil,
+watching the fraying of the tow-ropes.
+
+Before starting my boat’s crew made offerings and vows at their
+favourite temples, and on the first evening they slew a fowl as an
+offering to the river god, and smeared its blood over the bow-sweep and
+the fore part of the boat. My preparations were to pack my plates,
+films, and general photographic outfit, journals, a few necessaries, and
+a few things of fictitious value, in a waterproof bag, to be carried by
+my servant, along with my camera, at each rapid where we landed.
+
+The night at Lao-min-tze was too cold for sleep, and before dawn I heard
+the wild chant of the boatmen as great cargo boats, with from fifty to
+ninety rowers, swept down the stream. We untied at daylight, and, after
+passing the lovely village and valley of Nan-to, admired and wondered
+all day. It was one long glory and sublimity. A friend lately asked me
+if I whiled away the time by “walking on the river banks,” thinking,
+doubtless, of the level towing paths of the meadows of the Thames and
+Ouse. The accompanying illustration shows the banks of the Yangtze below
+Wan Hsien at their best, and the pleasant possibilities for strolling!
+
+The river-bed, there forty feet below its summer level, is an area of
+heaped, contorted rock-fragments, sharp-edged, through which one or more
+swirling streams or violent rapids pursue their course, the volume of
+water, even at that season, being tremendous. At its highest level these
+upper waters are practically non-navigable. Cliffs, mountain spurs, and
+noble mountains rise from this chaotic river-bed, and every sharp turn
+reveals some new beauty. The dark green pine is but a foil to the
+feathery foliage of the golden bamboo on the steep, terraced sides of
+tumbled heights; pleasant brown farmhouses are half seen among orange
+groves and orchards; grand temples, with noble specimens of the _Ficus
+religiosa_ in their grounds, lighten hill and glen sides with their
+walls of imperial red. Then suddenly the scene changes into one of
+Tibetan grandeur and savagery, and the mountains approach the river in
+stupendous precipices, walling in almost fathomless water. We tied up
+the second night in the last crimson and violet of the sunset, where the
+river narrowed and progress looked impossible, and crags and pinnacles,
+snow-covered, rose above the dark precipices.
+
+On that afternoon a red lifeboat suggested the first rapid, the Ta-tan,
+rather a _chipa_ or race than a rapid, though I believe sufficiently
+perilous at half high water. I landed and scrambled up to the top for a
+three hours’ wait, while three junks, each dragged up by fifty men, came
+up before mine, boats having to take their turn without favour. Even
+that ascent was an anxious sight, for sometimes the boat hung, ofttimes
+slipped back, and several times it looked doubtful whether the crowd of
+men attached to the tow-rope could get her up at all. This was the first
+sight of the trackers’ villages, which are a marked feature of the
+Yangtze. Each boat carries enough men to pull her up against the strong
+stream, but at a rapid she needs many more, and during the navigation
+season coolies from long distances migrate to the river and put up mat
+huts as close to it as possible, to which dealers in food, tobacco,
+_samshu_, and opium at once gravitate, along with sellers of bamboo
+tow-ropes. Nor are rough amusements wanting. Rough, dirty, noisy, these
+temporary settlements are. Their population is from forty or fifty to
+over 400 men. When the river rises the huts are removed, and the coolies
+return to other avocations. At the Hsin-tan rapid my little boat
+required seventy men, and some of the big junks took on 300 in addition
+to their crews of 120.
+
+The following day, after being hauled up the Kwa-tung rapid and enjoying
+superb scenery for some hours, a turn in the river revealed walls of
+perpendicular rock rising to a colossal height, estimated at from 1000
+to 2000 feet, the stupendous chasm of the Niu-kan gorge, to my thinking
+the grandest and most imposing of all, though a short one, and the same
+afternoon, in exquisitely brilliant sunshine, we arrived at the foot of
+the Hsin-tan rapid, then at its worst.
+
+[Illustration: THE HSIN-TAN.]
+
+This Hsin-tan in winter is the great bugbear of the Yangtze, the crux of
+forthcoming steam navigation, a waterfall with a boiling cataract below,
+a thing of awe and majesty, where the risks, turmoil, bargaining, and
+noise of the Upper River are centred. This great obstacle, which I
+wonder that any man even thought of surmounting, was formed about two
+hundred and fifty years ago by the descent of a rocky mountain-side into
+the river. It consists of what are three definite falls in the
+winter-time, the first caused by a great fan-shaped mass of big boulders
+deposited malignantly by a small stream which enters on the left bank,
+and the two others by great barriers of rock which lie athwart the
+river, above the higher of which, as is seen in the illustration, is a
+stretch of deep, calm water in peaceful contrast—the Ping-shu gorge. The
+cataracts extend for over a mile, and the fall is estimated at twenty
+feet.
+
+Above the Niu-kan gorge the mountains open out, and where their sides
+are broken up into spurs, and where the spurs are most picturesque, the
+romantic villages of Hsin-tan and Yao-tsai are scattered on carefully
+terraced heights and bold, rocky projections, villages with good houses
+and fine temples, and a pagoda among oranges and loquats. Many of the
+houses have such handsome curved roofs that one can scarcely tell which
+is house and which is temple, all looking as if some of the best bits of
+the shores of Como had been dropped down in HUPEH.
+
+Hsin-tan is a wild and beautiful village, and has an air of prosperity.
+Many junk owners have retired there to spend their days, and the
+comparative cleanliness and good repair are quite striking. One
+orange-embowered village on a spur has a temple with a pagoda built out
+over the edge of the cliff, without any obvious support. A village which
+might claim to be a town, at a height of fully 400 feet, is not only
+piled up on terraces, but the houses are built out from the cliff on
+timbers, and the flights of steps leading from terrace to terrace are so
+steep that I made no attempt to climb them. The colonnades in the street
+of shops and eating-houses which projects over the cliff reminded me of
+Varenna; indeed, there was a suggestion of Italy throughout, under an
+Italian sky.
+
+I sat on a ledge for two hours, every minute expecting to see my boat
+move up to the foot of the cataract, but she was immovable. Then we went
+into a low restaurant, and got some fourth-class Chinese food, and after
+long bargaining three live fowls and three eggs. Crowds, more curious
+than rude, pressed upon us, everywhere choking up the balconies and
+entrances of the eating-house, and asking no end of questions. The men
+asserted, as they did everywhere on the river, that with my binoculars
+and camera I could see the treasures of the mountains, the gold,
+precious stones, and golden cocks which lie deep down in the earth; that
+I kept a black devil in the camera, and that I liberated him at night,
+and that he dug up the golden cocks, and that the reason why my boat was
+low in the water was that it was ballasted with these auriferous fowls,
+and with the treasures of the hills! They further said that “foreign
+devils” with blue and grey eyes could see three feet into the earth, and
+that I had been looking for the root which transmutes the base metals
+into gold, and this, though according to them I had the treasures of the
+hills at my disposal! They were quite good-natured, however.
+
+The whole of a brilliant afternoon was spent on that height, which looks
+down on the deep-water channel by which big cargo boats ascend the
+rapids, small junks and native house-boats like mine taking a channel on
+the south side. During four hours, only two junks, which had partially
+discharged their cargoes, effected the ascent, though each of them was
+dragged up by 400 men. One big junk, after getting half-way up in three
+hours, jibbed, and though the trackers were stimulated by gongs and
+drums beaten frantically, she slowly slipped back to the point from
+which she started, and was there two days afterwards.
+
+At sunset, taking a boat across the still, strong water above the fall,
+after having a desperate scramble over boulders of great size, we
+reached my boat, which was then moored at the side of the cataract in an
+eddy below the opposite village. The _lao-pan_ said we should go up at
+daylight; and so we did, but it was the daylight of the third morning
+from that night, and I had ample opportunities for studying the Hsin-tan
+and its ways.
+
+Miserable nights they were. It was as bad as being in a rough sea, for
+we were in the swell of the cataract and within the sound of its swish
+and roar. The boat rolled and pitched; the great rudder creaked and
+banged; we thumped our neighbours, and they thumped us; there were
+unholy sounds of tom-toms, the weather relapsed, the wind howled, and
+above all the angry yells of the boat baby were heard. The splash of a
+“sea” came in at my open window and deluged my camp bed, and it was very
+cold.
+
+The next two days were disagreeable, even in such majestic and exciting
+surroundings. The boatmen turned us and our servants out at 10 a.m., and
+we stood about and sat on the great boulders on the bleak mountain-side
+in a bitterly cold, sunless wind each day till nearly five, deluded into
+the belief that our boat would move. A repulsive and ceaseless crowd of
+men and boys stood above, below, and behind us, though our position was
+strategically chosen. Mud was thrown and stuck; foul and bad names were
+used all day by successive crowds. I am hardened to most things, but the
+odour of that crowd made me uncomfortable. More than 1200 trackers, men
+and boys, notoriously the roughest class in China, were living in mat
+huts on the hillside, with all their foul and ofttimes vicious
+accessories. The crowds were coarse and brutal. Could these people ever
+have come “trailing clouds of glory”? Were they made in the image of
+God? Have we “all one Father”? I asked myself.
+
+A glorious sight the Hsin-tan is as seen from our point of vantage,
+half-way up the last cataract, a hill of raging water with a white
+waterfall at the top, sharp, black rocks pushing their vicious heads
+through the foam, and above, absolute calm. I never saw such exciting
+water scenes—the wild rush of the cataract; the great junks hauled up
+the channel on the north side by 400 men each, hanging trembling in the
+surges, or, as in one case, from a tow-rope breaking, spinning down the
+cataract at tremendous speed into frightful perils; while others, after
+a last tremendous effort, entered into the peace of the upper waters.
+Then there were big junks with masts lashed on their sides, bound
+downwards, and their passage was more exciting than all else. They come
+broadside on down the smooth slope of water above, then make the leap
+bow on, fifty, eighty, even a hundred rowers at the oars and _yulows_,
+standing facing forwards, and with shrieks and yells pulling for their
+lives. The plunge comes; the bow and fore part of the deck are lost in
+foam and spray, emerging but to be lost again as they flash by, then
+turning round and round, mere playthings of the cataract, but by skill
+and effort got bow on again in time to take the lesser rapid below. It
+is a sublime sight. _Wupans_ and _sampans_, making the same plunge, were
+lost sight of altogether in clouds of foam and spray, but appeared
+again. Red lifeboats, with their smart turbaned crews, dodged in the
+eddies trim and alert, crowds of half-naked trackers, struggling over
+the boulders with their 1200 feet of tow-rope, dragged, yelled, and
+chanted, and from each wild shore the mountains rose black and gaunt
+into a cold, grey sky.
+
+At this great cataract pilots are necessary. They are competent and
+respectable, licensed by the authorities, and their high charges, half a
+dollar for the half-hour which my small boat occupied in going up the
+fall, and a dollar for the five minutes taken by a big junk on the
+descent, enable them to live comfortably, and many of the pretty
+whitewashed houses of Hsin-tan in the dense shade of orange groves are
+theirs. They deserve high pay, for it is a most perilous business,
+involving remarkable nerve and sleight of eye, for a single turn too
+much or too little of the great bow-sweep, and all would be lost. Every
+junk which took the plunge over the rock barrier into the furious
+billows of the cataract below looked bound for destruction. A curious
+functionary came on board my boat, a well-dressed man carrying a white
+flag, on which was written, “Powers of the waters, give a lucky star for
+the journey.” He stood well forward, waving this flag regularly during
+the ascent to propitiate the river deities, and the cook threw rice on
+the billows with the same object. The pilot was a quiet, well-dressed
+man, giving orders by signals which were promptly obeyed. Indeed, the
+strict discipline to which these wild boatmen submit in perilous places
+is remarkable. The _lao-pan_ trusted neither his life nor his money to
+the boat, and he even brought the less valuable possessions of wife and
+children on shore.
+
+My boat had the twenty-fifth turn, and on the third day of detention she
+went up with seventy men at the ropes. It was an anxious half-hour of
+watching from the rocks, but there was no disaster, and I was glad to
+escape from the brutal crowd, as foul in language as in person, to the
+quiet of my cabin and the twilight stillness of the Ping-shu gorge. The
+whole ascent of the Hsin-tan rapids took my boat five hours and
+forty-five minutes.
+
+[Illustration: PING-SHU GORGE, HSIN-TAN.]
+
+No description can convey any idea of the noise and turmoil of the
+Hsin-tan. I realised it best by my hearing being affected for some days
+afterwards. The tremendous crash and roar of the cataract, above which
+the yells and shouts of hundreds of straining trackers are heard,
+mingled with the ceaseless beating of drums and gongs, some as signals,
+others to frighten evil spirits, make up a pandemonium which can never
+be forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII.
+                          RAPIDS AND TRACKERS
+
+
+A strong, fair wind took us swiftly and silently up the gorge of the
+“Military Code and the Precious Blade,” in which the water is said to be
+1200 feet deep (?), and with some tracking up minor rapids, and some
+working round corners with poles armed with steel hooks which are
+inserted into the crevices of the rocks, we passed through the sublime
+Mitan gorge into a comparatively open reach abounding in vicious-looking
+reefs and rocks, among very rocky mountains, villages on heights, and
+superb temples on crags, and at sunset made fast below the picturesque
+and nobly situated town of Kueichow, the first walled city on the Upper
+Yangtze.
+
+The Upper Yangtze is remarkable for the picturesque beauty of its cities
+at a distance, and their situations, almost invariably on irregular
+heights, backed by mountains, and with fine gardens and trees within
+their crenelated stone walls, which follow the contour of the site
+invariably, with one or more lofty pagodas denoting the approach, and
+with _yamen_ and temple roofs dominating the mass of houses are very
+imposing.
+
+One is only slowly convinced by experience that the interiors are not
+worth investigating. Dangerous reefs run out from below the walls of
+Kueichow, and as the river, if not an actual rapid, was at that time at
+least a _chipa_, it was not surprising not to find a single boat or junk
+there. Very few people came to our moorings, and the place looked dead.
+
+The next day we ascended one of the worst rapids, the Yeh-tan, of evil
+fame at certain seasons, the Niu-kau-tan, nearly as bad, the
+Heng-liang-tze, a minor rapid, and many _chipa_, only making ten miles
+in eleven hours. At times the cliffs and rocks were quite impracticable
+for people in European shoes, and I had reluctantly to stay in the boat
+during ascents, but the _lao-pan_ declined to carry passengers up the
+dreaded Yeh-tan.
+
+[Illustration: THE MITAN GORGE.]
+
+Above Kueichow there is a comparatively open reach with steep hills 1000
+feet high, cultivated in patches to their summits, then tinged with
+green, small villages with wooded surroundings occurring frequently.
+Though not called a gorge, even that part of the Yangtze has high cliffs
+with lateral openings, and there are numbers of small coal “workings” in
+the hills, mere holes, shored up with timber, about three feet high, out
+of which the glass showed strings of women and children creeping, with
+baskets of coal dust on their backs. From this reach onwards the people
+make “patent fuel” by mixing the coal dust with loam and clay and
+forming it into small cakes. The boatmen made great use of it from that
+point, and added clouds of smoke to the malodorousness of their cooking.
+
+Again I admired the resourceful energy which has surmounted the
+difficulties of the rapids. Narrow, steep flights of steps are in many
+places cut in the rock to facilitate tracking, as well as rock paths a
+foot or so wide, some only fifteen or twenty feet above the river,
+others at a giddy height on which the trackers looked no bigger than
+flies. The reader must bear in mind that all difficulties of getting up
+and down are largely increased by the river varying in height forty,
+fifty, and even sixty feet at different seasons, and there are water
+lines even seventy feet above the winter level. When I came down many of
+these paths and stairs were submerged several feet. On all of these, and
+indeed for much of the upward journey, the life of the tracker is in
+continual peril from losing his foothold owing to the slipperiness of
+the rock after rain, and from being dragged over and drowned by the
+backward tendencies of a heavy junk tugging at the end of 1200 feet of a
+heavy bamboo hawser as thick as an arm.
+
+The river at low water is thoroughly vicious above Kuei, and the pilot’s
+task is a severe one, even before reaching the Yeh-tan. At low water
+this is not so bad as the Hsin-tan; still, the hill of furious breakers
+with a smooth, narrow channel in the centre and a fierce whirlpool at
+the foot looked awful enough. The whole shore above the boulders, and
+indeed upon them, is covered with the mat huts of trackers and those who
+supply boats with provisions and bamboo ropes. A great bank covered with
+frightful boulders projects from the north shore, narrowing the river to
+a width of 150 yards. Mr. A. J. Little estimates the rush of the current
+round the point of that bank at from eight to ten knots an hour. Forty
+big cargo junks lay below it waiting their turn to ascend; and a
+thousand trackers were filling the air with their yells, while signal
+drums and gongs added to the din.
+
+My attention was occupied by a big junk dragged by 300 men, which in two
+hours made hardly perceptible progress, slipping back constantly, though
+the drums were frantically beaten and the gangers rushed madly along the
+lines of struggling trackers, bringing their bamboo whips down on them
+with more sound than force. Suddenly the junk shivered, both tow-ropes
+snapped, the lines of trackers went down on their faces, and in a moment
+the big craft was spinning down the rapid; and before she could be
+recovered by the bow-sweep she flew up into the air as if she had
+exploded, a mass of spars and planks with heads bobbing about in the
+breakers. Quick as thought the red lifeboats were on the spot; and if
+the drowning wretches as they scrambled over the gunwales did not bless
+this most efficient of the charities of China, I did most heartily, for
+of the fourteen or fifteen souls on board all were saved but three. This
+was one of two fatal disasters that I saw on the Yangtze, but, to judge
+from the enormous quantity of cotton drying at the Yeh-tan and the
+timbers wedged among the rocks, many a junk must have had a hole knocked
+in her bottom. Our own ascent, which took three hours, was successfully
+made.
+
+I had then had this boat for my home for a week, and various
+disagreeables grew apace. The _lao-pan_, the virago’s old husband, a
+small, fearfully lean man, with the leanest face I ever saw, just like
+very old, yellow, mildewed parchment strained over bones, sunken eyes,
+no teeth, and in the bitterly cold weather clad only in an old blue
+cotton garment, always blowing aside to show his emaciated form, was
+craftiness, greed, and avarice personified. Though “sair hodden doun” by
+his vigorous wife, he was capable of an attempt to repudiate his
+contract. He bargained and battled with the trackers at the rapids for
+hours to save a few _cash_, though by the delay he lost more than he
+saved; he ground the boatmen down, and gave them inferior rice; he would
+not spend a few _cash_ on patching his ragged sail; and at sunset near
+Kueichow he put in mysteriously to a creek where he mysteriously met a
+man with two big sacks, the contents of which were transferred with much
+mystery and secrecy to the shallow hold in which our luggage was kept.
+It turned out to be an investment in spurious _cash_, on which, if he
+got it safely to SZE CHUAN, he might make a puny profit; and for this he
+ran the risk, relying on a boat carrying foreigners not being searched
+at Kuei Fu. His hawk-like face was a study of pure avarice.
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE NEAR KUEICHOW.]
+
+The _tai-kung_ was a splendid fellow till he collapsed towards evening
+with the pangs of the opium craving. With his eyes fixed on the perils
+ahead, he never left the great bow-sweep except for the three meals a
+day, gave his orders tersely and quietly, and was master of the crew and
+the lean _lao-pan_. The trackers, who were troublesome from the first,
+broke out into rebellion, using violent language, forcing themselves
+into the front room, refusing to let us land (a breach of contract), and
+being insolent. Some of them looked too low to be human, just such men
+as would wreck and loot foreigners’ houses with violence. Mr. Stevenson
+was powerless with them, I think because they mistook his quietness and
+perfect self-control for weakness. They were absolutely masters, and
+decided about everything with and without motive. In that week I never
+saw a kind or good trait of character in them, and they misused a frail
+old man who was working his passage up. New faces appeared daily, till
+the number on board rose from sixteen to thirty-four (another breach of
+contract), but I could not grudge the _lao-pan_ the few dollars he made
+by it.
+
+The trackers would not take the trouble to put a plank for me to land
+by, which compelled me to land on a pole, and on one day this spar
+turned over, and I fell into the water between the boat and the shore,
+being extricated to live in wet clothes for the day in a windy
+temperature of 38°. I must add, however, that by the end of three weeks
+they became considerably humanised, so that I was able to show them my
+photographs taken on the Yangtze. They recognised their own boat with
+yells. They said pictures could only be seen with one eye, so they used
+one hand for holding down one eyelid and made a tube of the other. I
+told them not to touch, and they actually obeyed! To the end I landed
+over the swift water on a pole, but latterly they held a bamboo for a
+rail and gave me a rough haul when I got in!
+
+Poor fellows! I learned to pity them very much. Their ignorance and
+superstitions keep them in dread and terror of they know not what. They
+are so piteously poor, and work so hard even to keep body and soul
+together, and when the twelve hours day of dragging and risk is done
+there is nothing for them on a winter voyage on the bitterly cold nights
+but sleeping out of doors literally on a “plank bed.” They are rough and
+brutal, yet I admit, and that not reluctantly, that not one of them was
+ever drunk, that they worked hard, and that the cambric curtain which
+was my only partition from the passage was never pulled aside.
+
+After the great Yeh-tan, with its crowds and excitements, we ascended
+various ugly rapids and had some minor disasters. The big junks are
+attended by fine, smart tenders, in which they land and re-embark their
+trackers, an operation which may be necessary thirty times a day, but my
+small boat made up to the rocks for this purpose, the _lao-pan_ being
+too penurious to spend two or three _cash_ in hiring the punts which are
+available. We were landing the trackers at the foot of the “Cross Beam”
+rapid when a heavy cargo boat, unmanageable in the strong wind, came
+upon us and forced the bow-sweep, which projected twenty feet over the
+bow, among the rocks, where it snapped short off, the side hamper of the
+two boats at the same time locking them in an unwilling embrace.
+
+Both crews seized the iron-spiked bamboos used for poling, and with
+fearful yells and execrations and every sign of mad rage began a free
+fight, but Mr. Stevenson succeeded in preventing actual bloodshed, and
+after a delay of some hours the other boat repaired our steering spar
+for the time. A Chinese fight is apt to be nothing more than “much cry.”
+But our men insisted on going to law at the first convenient
+opportunity, so for two or three days we were always following that
+junk, hoping to be avenged on her at Kuei Fu.
+
+The following day was decidedly what the Chinese call an “unlucky day.”
+In China everything is ruled by a rigid etiquette. There are four things
+to be attended to on getting into a cart, and rigid rules govern the
+getting into a chair or boat. It is not only that one is regarded as an
+unmannerly boor for breaking them, but one draws down the vengeance of
+gods and demons. The day before I came off from the shore in a punt, and
+just as I was getting into my own boat, and had one foot on her and the
+other on the punt, the swift current carried the punt away, and in the
+scramble which followed I violated one of these rules.
+
+The first thing which happened was that the _lao-pan’s_ three-year-old
+daughter fell overboard, and was carried fast away by the current. The
+tender of a junk was being towed up astern of us, and a tracker, a
+strong swimmer, jumped over, and after a hard struggle saved the child
+and wrapped her in the clothes he had thrown off, warm with his vital
+warmth, going naked himself in the biting air. The virago went into one
+of those paroxysms which are common among the Chinese, and in which they
+occasionally die. She stamped, jumped, beat everyone within reach,
+execrated, raved, and foamed at the mouth.
+
+Scarcely had this excitement subsided, when as we were sailing up with a
+stiff breeze we struck on a rock, knocking two holes in the bottom of
+the boat, and, as she began to fill, she was run ashore on a sandy
+beach, and the rest of the day was spent in repairs. Miserable repairs
+they were, owing to the stinginess of the _lao-pan_, and consisted
+chiefly in ramming cotton wool and tallow into the holes and coating the
+mixture with clay. After this, before she could be properly repaired, as
+it was the Chinese New Year holidays, it took four men baling night and
+day for forty-eight hours to keep the leakage down, and not only that,
+but as the deck on which the crew slept had to be taken up, I had to
+admit the trackers with their vermin and opium pipes into the “front
+room” next to mine.
+
+In this leaky condition we went up a very severe rapid, which took us
+four hours of desperate dragging. Sitting shivering for that time on a
+big boulder, I saw one of the many vicissitudes to be encountered in
+ascending the Great River. A great cargo junk was being hauled up with
+two hawsers, over 200 trackers, and the usual enormous din, the beating
+of drums and gongs, the clashing of cymbals, and the incessant letting
+off of crackers to intimidate the spirit of the rapid, when both ropes
+snapped, the trackers fell on their faces, and four hours’ labour was
+lost, for in a flash the junk was at the foot of the rapid, and the last
+sight I had of her was far below twirling round in a whirlpool with a
+red lifeboat in attendance.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIII.
+                       LIFE ON THE UPPER YANGTZE
+
+
+At this point, before entering on the empire province of SZE CHUAN, it
+is desirable to give a few facts and impressions regarding life on the
+Upper Yangtze, my experiences of which extended over five weeks
+altogether.
+
+The Upper River, with all its peculiarities, lies above Ichang. It must
+never be forgotten that it is the _sole_ highway for the vast commerce
+of the richest province of the Chinese Empire, with an area about the
+size of that of France, and a population estimated at from 50,000,000 to
+70,000,000. The nature and risks of this highway may be gathered from
+these and other descriptions of it. Except in the gorges and some few
+quiet intervals, it is a series of rapids and races, which at present
+are only surmounted by man force. Mr. A. J. Little’s success in 1898 in
+getting a large steam launch up to Chungking proves that a steamer can
+ascend, but not that steam navigation can be made commercially
+profitable, or that if it were it would be the ruin of junk navigation.
+
+A large up-river junk is from 80 to 120 feet long, from nine to twelve
+broad, and from 40 to over 100 tons burden.
+
+They are all alike in that they have low square bows, lofty sterns, flat
+bottoms, and single masts from thirty to forty feet high, carrying huge
+oblong sails, with which they can only sail with the wind aft. They are
+very frequently built at Wan of a cypress which abounds in its
+neighbourhood, and being stained with orpiment and oiled over that with
+the oil procured from the _Aleurites cordata_, they look like varnished
+pine, and have a very trim as well as picturesque appearance. The
+planking is about an inch thick. The holds are only from three to seven
+feet deep. A junk to carry fifty tons of goods can be built at Wan
+complete for £125, and a first-class junk to carry 100 tons or more for
+£200, about 2500 strings of _cash_. The holds are in compartments. The
+forward part is uncovered in the daytime, and the cook does his
+unceasing work in a well in the middle with a clay stove in it. At night
+a framework covered with bamboo mats is erected, under which the crew
+sleep. The high stern cabin is usually occupied by the _lao-pan_ and his
+family. A junk of 120 tons carries a crew of 120 men.
+
+In passage junks the open space forward is diminished as much as
+possible, most of the deck being housed over, but in cargo junks less
+than half is covered. In the big junks a sponson runs along each side,
+which is used both for poling and communication. Junks carry a spare
+mast and sweeps lashed outside. The helmsman stands inside, with his
+head and shoulders protected by a raised “wheelhouse,” in which he works
+with much skill and infinite patience a very long and clumsy tiller
+attached to a huge rudder, which often projects four feet from the
+stern. The roof of the housed portion is used for the monstrous coils of
+bamboo rope, ofttimes three inches in diameter and 1200 feet in length,
+which are used in tracking, and are coiled and uncoiled continually.
+These ropes only last one voyage.
+
+The lofty stern is frequently much decorated, and in all cases has a
+fascinating picturesqueness. Its square windows are of ground
+oyster-shell or paper, or even of stained glass. Occasionally it has a
+carved gallery with flowering plants in pots. Altogether a SZE CHUAN
+junk is an ingenious and noble construction, and the owners take great
+pride in them. Their stately appearance and apparently large size are
+deceptive as to their carrying capacity, which is small. I believe that
+no junk on the Upper Yangtze draws over seven feet, which necessarily
+gives a shallow hold, and the freeboard is of startling scantiness. The
+large tenders smartly handled, which land and re-embark the trackers,
+are really big _sampans_, and often have a curious rig—two masts like
+sheers, forty feet high amidships, with the width of the deck between
+them, the spar which carries the sail running on both.
+
+We call the junks “lumbering craft,” but no craft anywhere are more
+skilfully handled; none run such risks; no crews are better disciplined
+to act together and at a second’s notice in cases of emergency; no men
+work so desperately hard on such small pay and with such poor food; and
+it remains to be seen if vessels of any other build and management can
+supplant them in the carrying trade of the Upper Yangtze.
+
+Large fortunes are not made in junks; the losses are too heavy. But,
+judging from the comfortable houses of retired junk owners in many a
+pleasant place, a moderate competence for old age is in sight of all
+except the very unlucky. The wife and family usually live on board, and
+these wives seem to have a speciality of strident and powerful voices,
+which are heard above the roar of the rapids and the yells of the crews.
+
+As to the risks, the Chinese say that one junk in twenty is annually
+lost, and one in ten is stranded. Consul Bourne[23] states that
+one-tenth of the foreign goods shipped at Ichang arrives damaged by
+water, and Mr. A. J. Little estimates the loss of junks and merchandise
+since the formation of the Hing-lung-t’an, or “Glorious Rapid,” in 1896
+as eight per cent.[24] Consul Bourne, writing in December, 1896, says,
+“A hundred junks and 1000 lives have been already lost, we are told,
+_i.e._, since September 28th of the same year at that rapid.” Both the
+upward and downward passages are full of tremendous risks. On the upward
+passage in February I counted forty-one junks stranded at different
+points between Ichang and Wan Hsien, some breaking up, others being
+repaired, and all having to discharge their cargoes; and when I came
+down like a flash on high water towards the end of June, though it was
+impossible to count the stranded junks, they must have been nearly half
+of that number, even with the much-reduced summer traffic, and I saw one
+big junk strike a rock while flying down a rapid and disappear as if she
+had been blown up, her large crew, at the height of violent effort the
+moment before, with all its frantic and noisy accompaniments, perishing
+with her.
+
+Besides junks of various sizes, there are native house-boats, like mine,
+and others running up to four times its size, which carry passengers
+only, and _wupans_ and _sampans_—undecked boats with hooped bamboo
+roofs; these carry passengers or cargo. I have already described the
+arrangements of a house-boat. If the Upper Yangtze junks number from
+7000 to 8000, the men employed on them at the lowest estimate must be a
+quarter of a million, in addition to many thousands working in
+house-boats and smaller craft.
+
+Junks never anchor, and, indeed, carry no anchors, and choosing a
+mooring ground is a most important matter—not that there are not very
+many nooks and bays untouched by the current, but because of the
+caprices of the river, which often rises or falls, as I experienced, six
+or seven feet in a night, so that a careful watch must be kept in order
+to pay out or haul in line according to circumstances.
+
+Big junks sound their way towards the bank, rig out great wooden fenders
+fore and aft to prevent their sheering into shoaler water than they
+draw, and one of the “water trackers” plunges into the water with a
+line, which he makes fast to a stake on shore, the fenders, which are
+really massive poles or straight young pines, also being lashed to rocks
+or stakes.
+
+Junks bound west keep as close in shore as they can on the side freest
+from rocks and easiest for the trackers. When the wind is fair and
+strong they can stem the ordinary current with their huge sail only, and
+they take their trackers on board; but if the fair wind is light, it
+only gives the trackers an easier haul. At all rapids, races, and rocky
+points, the tow-line is in requisition. Eastward-bound junks lash their
+mast alongside at Chungking, and are rowed down, being steered by a
+prodigious bow-sweep. It is absolutely necessary that their speed should
+be in advance of that of the current, and at every rapid frantic efforts
+are required from the crew.
+
+Junks carry trackers in proportion to their tonnage, but a _lao-pan_, or
+skipper, usually part owner, the steersman, the _t’au-t’ai-kung_, or
+pilot, the _tai-kung_, or bowsman, the cook, and the _t’au-lao_, or head
+tracker, are indispensable. The pilot and steersman never leave the
+bow-sweep and rudder, except for meals, while the junk is in motion. The
+skipper’s functions are chiefly to buy food, bargain for extra trackers,
+pay wages, and stimulate the crew to frantic efforts in dangerous places
+by yells and gesticulations.
+
+The bowsman, or _tai-kung_, acting also as pilot in my small boat, is
+the most important man in a junk. I never ceased to admire mine, a tall,
+broad, well-made fellow, the personification of knowledge and
+carefulness, silent, alert, never flurried, hand and head steady, all
+that a pilot should be, until the moment when he collapsed with the
+opium craving, after which he might nightly be seen in a state of
+blissful vacuity lying beside his opium lamp. The work of the _tai-kung_
+is to lead with his skilled touch the eight or ten men who, in a big
+junk, work the bow-sweep, a timber, from thirty to forty feet long,
+projecting over the bow, without which no boat could ascend or descend
+rapids and races in safety. When this great spar is not in use he stands
+at the bow sounding with a long iron-shod bamboo pole, giving the junk a
+sheer-off from upstanding points or rocks, and signalling to the
+steersman in which direction sunken rocks lie, which his trained eye
+discovers by the eddies in the river. His responsibility for life and
+property is enormous, and he bears it nobly. The sweep is used to shoot
+the junk out into the current, and enable her to clear rocks which
+cannot be avoided by the steersman and rudder.
+
+Having slightly sketched the junks and the manner of navigating the
+Great River, I will conclude with a brief description of the “inhuman
+work” of the trackers, by far the worst of which is in the region of the
+gorges and the most severe of the rapids, extending for a hundred miles
+west of Ichang. Captain Blakiston, Captain Gill, and more lately Mr. A.
+J. Little in his delightful book, _Through the Yangtze Gorges_, have all
+expressed both sympathy with these men and their wonder at their
+hardihood, industry, and good-nature, and with my whole heart I endorse
+what these writers have said, and regard this class as typifying that
+extraordinary energy of the Chinese which has made and kept China what
+it is, and which carries the Chinese as thrifty and successful emigrants
+to every part of Eastern Asia and Western America.
+
+The crews, which in big junks number 120 men, are engaged at Ichang. For
+the upward voyage, lasting from thirty to fifty days, they get about
+four shillings and their food, which is three meals a day of rice, with
+cabbage fried in a liberal supply of grease, and a little fish or pork
+on rare occasions, and for coming down, which rarely takes more than ten
+days (I did it in a _wupan_ in a little over four), about eighteenpence
+and food, and indeed many crews work their passage down for food only.
+For this pittance these men do the hardest and riskiest work I have seen
+done in any country, “inhumanly hard,” as Consul Bourne calls it, week
+after week, from early dawn to sunset. The opening of Chungking as a
+treaty port and various other causes have tended however to raise their
+wages.
+
+[Illustration: TRACKERS HOUSES.]
+
+The larger number of these trackers are usually on shore hauling, being
+directed from the junk either by flag signals or drum beat, under the
+_tai-kung’s_ direction; a proportion remain on board to work the huge
+bow-sweep, at which I have seen as many as fifteen straining. A few
+attend the trackers to extricate the tow-rope from the rocks, in which
+it is constantly catching, and two or more _tai-wan-ti_, or water
+trackers, specially expert swimmers, and without clothing, run ahead of
+the tow-rope ready to plunge into the water and free it when it catches
+among rocks which cannot be reached from the shore. If tracking and
+sailing are both impossible, the trackers propel the junk by great oars,
+each worked by two men, twenty at a side, who face forwards, and mark
+time by a combined stamp and a wild chant.
+
+In descending, in order to keep steerage way on the junk in a current
+running from six to twelve knots an hour, every agency of progression is
+brought into play. The slinging of the mast alongside gives a lumbering,
+ungainly look. The deck is literally crowded with men, naked in summer,
+and in winter clothed in long blue cotton coats. Some are rowing face
+forwards; fifteen or more are straining for life at the bow-sweep;
+others are working the huge oars called _che_ (wheel), each of which
+demands the energies of ten men; others are toiling at _yu-lows_, big
+broad-bladed sculls, worked over the stern or parallel to the junk’s
+side—even women and children take part in the effort—the _lao-pan_ grows
+frantic, he yells, leaps, dances; drums and gongs are madly beaten, and
+yet, with all this frantic effort, it is all the junk can do to keep
+steerage way enough to clear the dangerous places, and not always that,
+as I saw on two occasions junks fly down rapids, strike rocks, and
+disappear as unconnected masses of timbers, as if exploded by dynamite.
+
+I saw over eighty big junks descend the great rapids, and it was such an
+exciting sight, with its accompaniments of deafening din, that I not
+only never wearied, but would have been glad to see eighty more.
+
+Where it is impossible to sail—and even with a fair wind there are few
+reaches except the gorges where it is possible—the trackers prefer the
+“inhuman work” of tracking to the slow headway made by the severe and
+monotonous toil of rowing, or of hugging the bank, and hooking the junk
+along by seizing with hooks on rings with staples driven into the rock
+for this purpose, or keeping her off with stout fenders while they pole
+her along with iron-spiked bamboo poles, which they drive into holes
+which have been made by this process in the course of ages in the hard
+conglomerate or granite.
+
+In small house-boats like mine the trackers are landed from the boat,
+but in junks from the attendant _sampan_. Except the _tai-wan-ti_, they
+wear short cotton drawers, and each man has a breast strap. The huge
+coil of plaited bamboo, frequently a quarter of a mile long, is landed
+after being passed over the mast-head, a man on board paying out or
+hauling in as is required. Small boats pass under the loftier tow-ropes
+of big ones, which often saves time, and often leads to noisy quarrels
+and entanglements. The trackers uncoil the rope, each man attaching it
+to his breast strap by a hitch, which can be cast off and rehitched in a
+moment.
+
+The drum beats in the junk, and the long string of men starts, marking
+time with a loud yell—“_Chor-chor_,” said to mean “Put your shoulder to
+it.” The trackers make a peculiar movement; their steps are very short,
+and with each they swing the arms and body forward, stooping so low to
+their work that their hands nearly touch the ground, and at a distance
+they look like quadrupeds.
+
+Away they go, climbing over the huge angular boulders of the river
+banks, sliding on their backs down spurs of smooth rock, climbing cliff
+walls on each other’s shoulders, or holding on with fingers and toes,
+sometimes on hands and knees, sometimes on shelving precipices where
+only their grass sandals save them from slipping into the foaming race
+below, now down close to the deep water, edging round a smooth cliff
+with hardly foothold for goats, then far above, dancing and shouting
+along the verge of a precipice, or on a narrow track cut in the rock 300
+feet above the river, on which narrow and broken ledge a man
+unencumbered and with a strong head would need to do his best to keep
+his feet. The reader must sympathetically bear in mind that these poor
+fellows who drag our commerce up the Yangtze amidst all these
+difficulties and perils, and many more, are attached to a heavy junk by
+a long and heavy rope, and are dragging her up against the force of a
+tremendous current, raging in billows, eddies, and whirlpools; that they
+are subject to frequent severe jerks; that occasionally their burden
+comes to a dead stop and hangs in the torrent for several minutes; that
+the tow-rope often snaps, throwing them on their faces and bare bodies
+on jagged and rough rocks; that they are continually in and out of the
+water; that they are running many chances daily of having their lives
+violently ended; and that they are doing all this mainly on rice!
+
+Their work is indicated from the junk either by the rapid beating of
+drums and gongs when they are to haul hard, or a slow rat-a-tat when
+they are to cease hauling, or by flag signalling, one man being told off
+on shore to watch the signals and communicate them to the trackers. An
+error would be as fatal as if within a ship’s length of a reef ahead an
+engineer were to mistake the order “Full speed astern” for “full speed
+ahead.”
+
+Occasionally rough steps help the men up and down spurs, and rock paths
+made by the pickaxe occur frequently. Many of these were thirty feet
+above the river when I went up, and were submerged when I came down.
+There is, however, one noble rock path, four feet broad, running for
+many miles at an even height, built, I believe, by a private individual
+as an act of benevolence to the trackers and for the “accumulation of
+merit.”
+
+At some points where the rapids are bad and the shores are big broken
+rocks, only fitted for goats to climb, and the junks hang or slip back,
+and the men give way, and several big junks, each with from 200 to 300
+trackers, are all making the slowest possible progress, gongs and drums
+are beaten frantically; bells are rung; firearms are let off; the
+hundreds of trackers on all-fours are yelling and bellowing; the
+overseers are vociferating like madmen, and rush wildly along the
+gasping and struggling lines of naked men, dancing, howling, leaping,
+and thrashing them with split bamboos, not much to their hurt. A
+tow-rope breaks, and the junk they are tugging at gyrates at immense
+speed to the foot of the rapid, the labour of hours being wasted in two
+or three minutes, if there is not a worse result.
+
+Among the many perils encountered by junks and trackers are the _chipa_
+or races, which are usually caused by a projecting point or spur of rock
+below which there is a smooth eddy. Arrived at the point and landing the
+trackers, the _tai-kung_ throws the boat’s head out into the current to
+get her clear of the point, with the bow-sweep, and with the strongest
+line in use, seventy or eighty trackers haul on it with all their force,
+men work with long poles to fend her off the rocks, and with her head on
+to the current the water foams and rages under her bow, but if all goes
+well, after a period of suspense she is dragged by main force round the
+point into smooth water, and then it is often the case that the cliffs
+are inaccessible; the trackers come on board and “claw” the junk along
+in deep water with claws on long boathooks, which they hook into the
+rocks, others fending her off.
+
+Things do not always go smoothly. I went up these races in my boat many
+times, and such small incidents happened as thumping a hole in the
+bottom on a small rock, the rope catching on a rock in the water and a
+bold swimmer having to go overboard to detach it, and the tow-rope
+holding fast round some point of rock or getting entangled in a crevice
+which looked inaccessible. It was horrible to see the poor fellows climb
+with bare feet up apparently smooth precipices, “holding on with their
+eyelids,” while the drum beat “Cease hauling,” and the junk hung tugging
+and quivering in the torrent and fraying the rope which was her one
+salvation. On two occasions where there was absolutely no foothold for a
+cat, a man was let down over the precipice by a rope under his arms to
+free the fast-fraying tow-line. These lines, hardened by the silica in
+the bamboo, have cut channels two, three, and four inches deep over many
+of the points, neat, smooth grooves in which they run easily.
+
+There is much more to be said about the trackers and their work, but the
+reader is weary, and I forbear. No work is more exposed to risks to limb
+and life. Many fall over the cliffs and are drowned; others break their
+limbs and are left on shore to take their chance—and a poor one it
+is—without splints or treatment; severe strains and hernia are common,
+produced by tremendous efforts in dragging, and it is no uncommon thing
+when a man falls that his thin naked body is dragged bumping over the
+rocks before he extricates himself. On every man almost are to be seen
+cuts, bruises, wounds, weals, bad sores from cutaneous disease, and a
+general look of inferior rice.
+
+These trackers may be the roughest class in China—for the work is
+“inhuman” and brutalising—but nevertheless they are good-natured in
+their way; free on the whole from crimes of violence; full of fun,
+antics, and frolic; clever at taking off foreigners; loving a joke; and
+with a keen sense of humour.
+
+Those who crowd in hundreds to the great rapids in the season for the
+chance of getting a few _cash_ for a haul are a rougher lot still. They
+bargain for the price of haulage with the _lao-pan_ through gangsmen,
+and very often where there is much competition, as at the Hsin-tan, get
+only about a penny for four hours’ hard work. Their mat camps are very
+boisterous at night. At the lesser rapids the _lao-pan_ goes ashore,
+dangling strings of _cash_, and as there is usually a village close by,
+he secures help, after some loud-tongued bargaining and wrangling,
+engaging even women and boys to tug at his ropes, and occasionally a
+woman with a baby on her back takes a turn at the dragging!
+
+That so vast a traffic is carried on under such difficulties is a
+marvel. Many of these are created on the upward passage by the necessity
+which hauled junks are under of taking the shallow inshore water, with
+its rocks, obvious and sunken, reefs, broken water, and whirlpools.
+Full-powered steamers, with suitable steering arrangements, ascending
+the smooth deep-water channel used in the descent, might escape the
+majority of the risks run by junks; but then a complete survey of the
+Upper Yangtze is required. So far as I could judge of the Great River
+between Sui Fu, at the junction of the River of Golden Sand and the Min,
+and Ichang, leaving out the gorges, there are very few reaches in which
+rapids, races, and rocky broken water are not to be met with. Indeed, it
+may be said that there is no tranquil water, and Admiral Ho, the
+superintendent of police for the Upper Yangtze, is probably not
+exaggerating when in his official _Yangtze Pilot_ he enumerates about a
+thousand perils to navigation. When I returned I realised that Mr.
+Endacott’s remark concerning occupation had much truth in it: “You’ll
+have enough to do looking after your life.”[25]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV.
+                        THE YANGTZE AND KUEI FU
+
+
+On February 7th we entered the solemn Wushan gorge, twenty miles long, a
+grand chasm from 330 to 600 yards in width, and walled in by
+perpendicular cliffs ofttimes 1000 feet in height, with lofty mountain
+spires and pinnacles then touched with snow above them. The “Witch’s
+Mountain Great Gorge” is uncanny, and the black gloom of a winter day,
+clouds swirling round the higher summits, and the long yells with which
+the boatmen besought the river god for a wind, with many vows and
+promises to pay, did not enliven it. Nor does the name “Iron Coffin
+Gorge,” given to a reach above, where iron chains are bolted into the
+cliffs fifty feet above the winter level of the river for the use of the
+junks bound west, cheer the situation.
+
+We were two days in this “dowie den,” and tied up for a third on Sunday,
+near the last inhabited village in HUPEH, Nan-mu yurh, “Cedar Garden,”
+situated on both sides of a deep glen apparently closed by a high
+mountain, a covered bridge connecting the two halves. It is a romantic
+place, quite worth the toilsome ascent of 517 steep stone steps which
+form the terraced street. The houses are surrounded by loquats, orange,
+and pomegranate, their dark, shining foliage with a background of snow.
+The people of this mountainous province are said to be poor, hardy, and
+industrious. A respectable merchant asked if we had heard when peace was
+going to be made? Such ignorance was phenomenal on this great highway of
+commerce! Some boatmen asked ours what we were doing tied up there when
+there was such a good wind, and the reply was that they had foreign
+devils as passengers, who, though they did no work and were always
+eating, must sleep one day in seven!
+
+Above this glen the walls of the gorge approach again; they are still of
+limestone with sandstone above, caverned at great heights, worn in
+places into colossal terraces, and singularly fluted by means of deep,
+vertical potholes, the outer halves of which have given way. Two narrow
+glens on each side of the river are the boundary between HUPEH and SZE
+CHUAN, but it was not till some hours later that we passed the first
+village of the empire province, Pei-shih, “Back to the Rock,” a long,
+straggling street, on an imposing limestone ledge, and possessing a fine
+Taoist temple. There is a small but nasty rapid below it, which took two
+hours to ascend. While scrambling along the shore I picked up a piece of
+pink granite, which at once raised a clamour, the people saying that a
+foreigner with blue or grey eyes not only sees three feet into the
+ground, but can look inside the stones, and that I had seen a jewel in
+this one. I threw it down, and they broke it open; and then, not finding
+anything, said that I had spirited it out of the stone by foreign magic.
+
+The current at the upper end of the Witch’s Gorge produced so much
+tedious delay that I was glad when we reached Wushan, the first city in
+SZE CHUAN, to which, for a considerable distance, we were _clawed_ along
+by hooks attached to the boatmen’s poles. Opposite Wushan is a small
+tributary, which brings down salt from brine wells near Ta-Ling, a
+district city, in boats which Mr. Little regards as exact copies of
+Venetian gondolas. Wushan is grey and picturesque, its walls following
+the contour of the hills on which it is built, enclosing fields,
+orchards, and beautiful trees. A fine temple to the God of Literature in
+a grove of evergreens on a steep mountain cone 1500 feet in height, and
+a lofty pagoda on the same peak are striking objects, but the town,
+though fairly clean, has no look of prosperity, and so far was
+disappointing.
+
+Toiling up the “Kitten” and “Get-down-from-horse” rapids, we reached the
+Feng Hsiang, or “Bellows,” or “Wind-Box” gorge, the last and one of the
+grandest of the great gorges, where the Great River is narrowed in
+places to 150 yards, by vertical walls of rock from 1500 to 2000 feet in
+height. There are both rapids and dangerous whirlpools, the presence of
+red lifeboats, as usual, denoting risk. My boat was dragged up inch by
+inch against a tremendous current, _clawed_ up in places where there was
+no foothold for trackers, and so terrible was the straining of these
+poor fellows on the rough and jagged rocks that I welcomed the opening
+out of the stupendous chasm, and our entrance upon a beautiful
+mountainous country, through which the Yangtze rolls through a valley
+covered, even in February, with all manner of crops in their freshest
+green. Just at the mouth, creating two channels—one 100 feet and the
+other 200 feet in width—lies a black, polished, square mass of rock
+known as the “Goose-tail” rock; it was fully forty feet above the water
+when I went up, but when I came down in June it was only just visible.
+When it is quite covered, the authorities at the city, five miles above,
+do not allow any junks to descend till it reappears. A remarkable rock
+ladder connected with early Chinese military history, a grand white
+limestone peak which curves majestically over the gorge, a fine temple
+on a cliff with gardens and courtyards—and then the almost painful
+drafts on the capacity for admiring and wondering which the previous
+eleven days had made came to an end.
+
+The scenery above the Wind-Box gorge, though less grand, is very varied,
+the valley and the lateral valleys for ever narrowing and broadening;
+the distant mountains forest-covered or snow-slashed; the spurs crowned
+with grand temples, below which picturesque villages cluster, and
+whitewashed, black-beamed, several-gabled, many-roofed, orange-embowered
+farmhouses; and every slope and level is cultivated to perfection, the
+bright yellow of the rape-seed blossom adding a charm to greenery which
+was never monotonous.
+
+After ascending some troublesome but minor rapids, much bothered all the
+time by a big cargo boat with seventy trackers of its own, which kept
+close behind us, always trying to pass its rope over the top of our
+mast, a quarrel being the inevitable consequence, we arrived in sight of
+what looked like a smoky manufacturing town, the first time I saw such a
+sight in China. Really the appearance was produced more by great jets
+and ebullitions of steam than by smoke, for the “manufacturers” were
+burning a local coal, much resembling anthracite. At low water there are
+great sand-banks below the city of Kuei Fu, or Kuei-chow Fu, where a
+number of salt boilers establish themselves for the winter months, who
+dig great brine pits in the sand and evaporate the product with coal.
+The process is rude, and the salt is a bad colour, but the product of
+this and many other similar wells is one of the chief exports of SZE
+CHUAN and a great source of revenue.[26]
+
+A great bank of boulders, a strong _chipa_, a highly cultivated region,
+the pleasant valley slopes of which rolled up into hills, pleasant
+farms, a general sunny smile, a grey-walled city of much
+picturesqueness, a great fleet of junks moored below it, a mat town to
+supply their needs, and we were at the city of Kueichow Fu.
+
+Ever since leaving Ichang we had been goading the _lao-pan_ to hurry, so
+that we might reach Wan by the Chinese New Year, which was quite
+possible, but he and all his trackers were determined that we should
+spend it at Kuei Fu, a favourite place with junkmen, so we had the bad
+luck of being detained there four days till noisy and gluttonous
+celebrations of the great festival were past. Not that we were honestly
+detained, or that the _lao-pan_ claimed this holiday, but he resorted to
+mean Oriental dodges to keep us. We arrived on February 10th, the New
+Year fell on the 13th, so one day the boat required serious repair,
+another stores must be laid in, the third the _lao-pan_ moved a few
+hundred yards and then said he must go to some village for a new
+tow-rope, and another day must be devoted to paying debts! Fortunately
+it was brilliant weather, though so cold that I had to sit wrapped in
+blankets with my feet in the bed. But then at home people do not usually
+sit in what is practically the open air with the temperature at 39°!
+
+Kuei Fu is a large city, with a very fine wall and noble gate towers,
+and imposing roofs of _yamens_ and temples are seen above the
+battlements. At that time it was very hostile to foreigners, and I made
+no attempt to enter its stately gates, but walked in the beautiful
+surroundings among large farmhouses, all _en fête_ for the season, with
+many wolfish dogs, aggressive and cowardly, and crops of wheat and
+barley already showing the ear stalks, and root crops with much juicy
+leafage, a farming paradise. Good paths bordered with the yellow
+fumitory, already in blossom, intersected the country, and owing to the
+recent dry weather, there was an agreeable aspect of cleanliness
+everywhere. I photographed a suburban temple with a porcelain front,
+where the priests, as is their wont, were quite polite, but on the way
+back we were “rushed” by a crowd of men and boys howling and shouting,
+and using the term _yang-kwei-tze_, “foreign devil,” very freely. No
+Protestant missionaries, and I was told no Roman either, have yet
+effected a lodgment in this city. Two Chinese telegraph clerks, both
+Christians, and speaking good English, paid us a visit, and told us that
+feeling had become so very much more hostile since the “disturbances”
+that there would certainly be a serious riot if we went into the town.
+
+Outside the walls little is to be seen except the salt boileries on the
+sand-banks; the manufacture of briquettes; the loading of junks for the
+low country with big lumps of anthracite coal, which sells for 9_s._
+6_d._ a ton at Kuei Fu, and is much used by the blacksmiths; the
+ceaseless procession of water carriers, each making the long steep
+trudge from the river to the city with two buckets for half a farthing;
+and the aqueduct, a great work of former days, about three miles long,
+which brings a supply of pure water down a stone channel from a strong
+spring which spouts from a hole in the rock at a height of 1500 feet or
+thereabouts. This good gift is not _pro bono publico_; the magistrate
+who constructed the work was ambitious only to have a private water
+supply. The paved path leading to the source passes over a steep hill
+which for more than a mile is a vast city of the dead, occupied by
+graves some of which are handsome stone structures closed by inscribed
+slabs of stone, standing on carefully-kept grass platforms, as in Korea,
+while the majority are circular grassed mounds held together by rubble.
+
+Kuei Fu or Kwei Hwan (_i.e._ “The Barrier of Kueichow”) is a decaying
+city, bolstered up into an appearance of grandeur by its position and
+its stately wall and gate towers. There all goods going up or down the
+Yangtze paid _likin_, a transit tax of about 5 per cent. on their value.
+As (according to Mr. Little) over 10,000 junks go up and down in the
+year, and each one is delayed for examination three or four days, a
+large extra-mural population made a living by supplying their needs.
+Some years ago the Kuei Fu Likin Office was the most valuable in China
+next to that of Canton, and the likin duties were the great source of
+SZE CHUAN revenue. The grand houses, with fine pleasure grounds, of
+which many can be seen from a height above the wall, testify to the
+fortunes made by officials in the days when they had the right to levy 5
+per cent. on a trade worth possibly £2,000,000 sterling.
+
+But we have “changed all that” by securing the opening of the treaty
+port of Chungking with the transit pass and chartered junk systems, to
+which all foreign imports can be carried on payment of duty to the
+Imperial Maritime Customs at Shanghai. Thus these rich dues go to
+Peking, and the “Four Streams Province” is the sufferer, and Kuei Fu
+really can only exact legal dues from junks carrying local merchandise
+and from salt junks. The reader will at once perceive the reason for the
+strong provincial hostility which is roused by the opening of new treaty
+ports, for each one, to a greater or less extent, enriches the Imperial
+Government at the expense of the provinces, and deprives a great number
+of officials of their “legitimate” perquisites or “squeezes,” in favour,
+as the people think, of highly salaried foreign customs employés.
+
+On two days, owing to the crowds on the shore, I did not leave the boat.
+In the bright sunshine, “light without heat,” the view was always
+delightful, as it changed from hour to hour, and disappeared at sunset
+in a blaze of colour—distant snow peaks burning red after the lower
+ranges had passed into ashy grey. The picturesque grey city, the
+magnificent opening of the Feng Hsiang, or “Wind-Box” gorge, the hill
+slopes in the vividness of their spring greens and yellows, the rapid,
+with its exciting risks and the life on the water, made a picture of
+which one could never weary.
+
+Yet five days of crouching and shivering in a six-foot square room,
+really a _stall_, with three sides only and no window, taxed both
+patience and resources, especially as the virago and the boat baby were
+more aggravating than usual, and the trackers ignored the existence of
+passengers. The _lao-pan_ gave himself up to the opium pipe, and was
+consequently obliterated. Be-dien, my servant, whose temper and pride
+were unslumbering, made himself unpleasant all round. It would require
+some very old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon words to describe the smell of the
+cooking of the New Year viands. Yet somehow I did not feel the least
+inclined to grumble, and my slender resources held out till the end.
+
+I had Baber’s incomparable papers on Far Western China to study and
+enjoy, a journal to “write up,” much mending and even making to
+accomplish, and, above all, there were photographic negatives to develop
+and print, and prints to tone, and the difficulties enhanced the zest of
+these processes and made me think, with a feeling of complacent
+superiority, of the amateurs who need “dark rooms,” sinks, water “laid
+on,” tables, and other luxuries. Night supplied me with a dark room; the
+majestic Yangtze was “laid on”; a box served for a table: all else can
+be dispensed with.
+
+I lined my “stall” with muslin curtains and newspapers, and finding that
+the light of the opium lamps still came in through the chinks, I tacked
+up my blankets and slept in my clothes and fur coat. With “water, water
+everywhere,” water was the great difficulty. The Yangtze holds any
+amount of fine mud in suspension, which for drinking purposes is usually
+precipitated with alum, and unless filtered, deposits a fine, even veil
+on the negative. I had only a pocket filter, which produced about three
+quarts of water a day, of which Be-dien invariably abstracted some for
+making tea, leaving me with only enough for a final wash, not always
+quite effectual, as the critic will see from some of the illustrations.
+
+I found that the most successful method of washing out “hypo” was to
+lean over the gunwale and hold the negative in the wash of the Great
+River, rapid even at the mooring place, and give it some final washes in
+the filtered water. This chilly arrangement was only possible when the
+trackers were ashore or smoking opium at the stern. Printing was a great
+difficulty, and I only overcame it by hanging the printing-frames over
+the side. When all these rough arrangements were successful, each print
+was a joy and a triumph, nor was there disgrace in failure.
+
+[Illustration: AUTHOR’S TRACKERS AT DINNER.]
+
+The day before the New Year was thoroughly unquiet. The population of
+the boat was excited by wine and pork money, and was fearfully noisy,
+shouting, yelling, quarrelling, stamping overhead, stamping along the
+passage outside my cambric curtain, stamping over the roof, sawing,
+hammering, and pounding rice. A mandarin’s boat tied up close to my
+window had engaged a “sing-song” boat, and I had all the noise from
+both, and many glimpses of the mandarin, a good-looking young man, in
+fur-lined brocaded silk. Like all others that I have seen of the higher
+official class, he looked immeasurably removed from the common people.
+The assumed passionlessness of his face expressed nothing but aloofness
+and scorn. One of the servants died in his boat after a few hours’
+illness, during which the beating of drums and gongs, and the letting
+off of crackers to frighten away the demon which was causing the
+trouble, were incessant and tremendous. We sailed in company, and
+shortly after leaving Kuei Fu one of the mandarin’s trackers, in a very
+minor rapid, was pulled into the river and drowned.
+
+I had an opportunity of taking an instantaneous photograph of my
+trackers at dinner. Their meals, which consist of inferior rice mixed
+with cabbage or other vegetables fried in oil, with a bit of fish or
+pork occasionally added, are worth watching. Each man takes a rough
+glazed earthenware bowl and fills it from the great pot on the fire. All
+squat round the well, and balancing their bowls on the tips of the
+fingers of the left hand close under the chin, the mouths are opened as
+wide as possible, and the food is shovelled in with the chopsticks as
+rapidly as though they were eating for a wager. When the mouth is
+apparently full they pack its contents into the cheeks with the
+chopsticks and begin again, packing any solid lumps into the cheeks
+neatly at once. When mastication and swallowing took place I never quite
+made out, but in an incredibly short time both bowls and cheeks were
+empty, and the eaters were smoking their pipes with an aspect of
+content. The boats, unless sailing, tie up for meals. The Chinese never,
+if they can help it, drink unboiled water, which saves them from many
+diseases, and these men drank the water in which the rice was cooked.
+
+On three such meals the poor fellows haul with all their strength for
+twelve hours daily, never shirking their work. They are rough, truly,
+but as the voyage went on their honest work, pluck, endurance,
+hardihood, sobriety, and good-nature won my sympathy and in some sort my
+admiration. They might be better clothed and fed if they were not opium
+smokers, but then where would be their nightly Elysium?
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XV.
+                     NEW YEAR’S DAY AT KUEI-CHOW FU
+
+
+New Year’s Day arrived at last, as cold and brilliant as if it were not
+belated by six weeks. I took a beautiful walk among prosperous farms
+where the people were all in gala dress. The houses were decked with
+flags and streamers, and even the buff dogs had knots of colour round
+their necks. From above the wall the grey city could be seen brilliantly
+decorated, and sounds of jubilation came up from it. The suburbs and the
+mat town on the river bank were gay and noisy, and much money was spent
+on crackers and explosives generally. The junks were decorated, and the
+“sing-song” boats blossomed into a blaze of colour. Everyone except my
+trackers appeared in new clothes, and threw off the old ones with
+rejoicing.
+
+This was my second New Year in China, and I had seen its approach as far
+back as Ichang, where, as everywhere, tables appeared in the streets a
+month beforehand, and all sorts of tempting articles were displayed upon
+them in a tempting manner. This is the time when things can be had
+cheap, and many articles of _bric-à-brac_ and embroidered dresses are
+for sale which are not obtainable at any other time. For in order to pay
+debts, a sacred obligation worthily honoured in the observance, many
+families are obliged to part with possessions long cherished. The crowds
+in the streets in gala dresses are enormous; children are gaily dressed,
+their quaint heads are decorated with flowers, and they receive presents
+of toys and _bon-bons_. The toy-shops drive a roaring trade.
+
+Red paper appears everywhere in long strips pasted on the lintels and
+doorposts of houses, emblazoned with the characters for happiness and
+longevity, and with formal sentences suitable for the festive occasion,
+many of which are written on tables in the streets which are provided
+with ink-brushes and ink-stones. Every shop is brilliant with these red
+papers pasted or suspended, and with _kin hwa_, or “golden flowers,”
+much made in Shao Hsing, being artificial flowers and leaves often of
+great size, of yellow tinsel on wires, making a goodly show. The
+“sing-song” boats were profusely decorated with these, and they are much
+used for the New Year offerings in temples, and for the annual
+redecoration of the household tablets. Thousands of vegetable wax
+candles, with paper wicks, varying in size from the thickness of a man’s
+leg to that of his finger, coloured vermilion, and painted with humorous
+and mythical pictures, and many other things used for offerings in the
+temples, and ribbons and streamers of all descriptions made the streets,
+even the mat streets outside Kuei Fu, gay.
+
+[Illustration: A CHINESE PUNCHINELLO.]
+
+For the three previous days unlimited scrubbing of clothes, persons,
+doors, chairs, shutters, and all woodwork went on; and though boats were
+not as universally turned out and cleaned as at Canton, where I spent a
+previous New Year, a good many of the smaller craft were beached and
+cleansed inside and out. Even the trackers scrubbed their faces, and
+appeared a paler yellow.
+
+Towards the evening of that day, between the din of gongs and the
+constant explosion at every door of strings of fireworks intended to
+expel evil spirits and prevent others from entering, the noise became
+exciting. This idea of expelling evil spirits and preventing their
+entrance at the incoming of the year is the same as is carried out in
+Korea by the burning in a potsherd at the house door of the hair of all
+the inmates, which, when cut off or falling out, is preserved for this
+purpose. The Chinese, like the Koreans, believe themselves surrounded by
+legions of demons, mainly malignant, who must either be frightened or
+propitiated.
+
+Religion plays a most conspicuous part in visits to the temples, and
+offerings. At all the farms near Kuei Fu, trees, fences, barns, and
+farming implements, as well as houses, had prayers pasted upon them. The
+junkmen, though not nearly to the same extent as in Kwantung, pasted
+paper prayers on oars, sweeps, mast, and rudder, and hung them over the
+boats’ sterns; and every house was purified by a religious ceremonial.
+New Year’s Day is kept as the birthday of the entire population, and a
+child born on the previous day enters his second year upon it. In the
+houses of well-to-do people such birthdays are great occasions; and
+abbots, monks, and priests assemble to do them honour, with much noise
+and many prayers, some read and others chanted from memory, after which
+the written prayers are burned and libations are poured out. It is the
+family and social ceremonies connected with idolatry and demonism at
+this season which are a special difficulty in the way of Christians.
+
+Among other religious duties, some persons, both men and women, burdened
+with the weight of the sins of the year, employ priests to intercede for
+them with the unseen powers, and fast, and give away much to the poor.
+The temples outside Kuei Fu were thronged for the days preceding the New
+Year with men and women, old and young; and in the midst of clouds of
+incense rich and poor prostrated themselves before the gods, burning
+gold and silver tinsel paper, while gongs, bells, drums, and cymbals
+kept up a ceaseless din.
+
+In the midst of the general winding up of all affairs, spiritual and
+temporal, and starting on the New Year clear, the great matter of debt
+is not forgotten. The paying of debts and settling of accounts is a
+highly praiseworthy custom, and one which we might introduce among
+ourselves with advantage. Although only a custom, it has all the force
+of law. If it can be avoided by any sacrifice, no debt is carried over
+New Year’s Day without either an actual settlement or an arrangement
+regarded as satisfactory by the creditor. To do otherwise would be to
+secure a blasted reputation. If men owe more than they can pay, custom
+compels them at this season to put all they have into the hands of their
+creditors and close their business concerns; and one among the causes of
+suicide is when men have not enough to pay their debts with. Interest on
+loans rises, the pawnbrokers’ warehouses are choke-full, and most kinds
+of commodities fall in value, while second-hand clothing and many other
+personal possessions are to be bought cheap. The future to a Chinese
+often consists of little more than his funeral and the New Year! People
+dread the difficulties, expense, and delays of resorting to law for the
+recovery of debts; and all are agreed on maintaining this wholesome
+custom, which has a great tendency to weed out from among traders the
+shifty and dishonest. I have heard that one method of compelling an
+unwilling debtor to pay his debts is to remove the door from his house
+or shop, so as to allow of the ingress of evil and malignant demons.
+This last resort is said never to fail!
+
+All the ceremonies which are to welcome the New Year, with the
+garnishing of the house with red paper, tinsel flowers, streamers, and
+the pictures, ornamenting of the ancestral shrine, and the general
+“redding up,” occupy much of the previous night; and the stillness of
+the first hours of the great day reminds one of an old-fashioned Scotch
+Sunday.
+
+Towards noon the streets begin to fill, as in America, with men with
+card-cases paying visits. All are well dressed, even to the coolies, for
+those who have not grand clothes hire them. Inside Kuei Fu sedan chairs
+were _en règle_; outside, men made their calls on foot, in many
+instances cards sufficing, inscribed with a device suggesting the three
+good wishes of children (_i.e._ sons), wealth or rank, and longevity.
+Men meeting in the streets greeted each other with profound respect, and
+with the good wish, “May the new joy be yours,” which reminded me of the
+Syrian salutation on the feast of the Epiphany, or with the words, “I
+respectfully wish you joy.” Universal politeness and good behaviour
+prevailed, and not a tipsy man was to be seen during the day or evening.
+
+Mourners remain within doors, and strips of blue paper mixed with red
+denote houses into which death has entered during the previous year.
+Be-dien told me that in the city, where there are many _literati_ and
+rich men, there were houses with all their woodwork covered with
+gold-sprinkled red paper, and on the lintels five slips expressing the
+desire of the owner for the “five blessings”: riches, health, love of
+virtue, longevity, and a natural death. Over some shops was a decorated
+slip, “May rich customers ever enter this door,” and in many stately
+vestibules, in which handsome presentation coffins were reared on end,
+there were costly scrolls inscribed with aphorisms and other
+sentences.[27]
+
+On New Year’s Day gods and ancestors receive prostrations, and are
+presented with gifts in the temples and in the clan or family ancestral
+halls. It would be a gross breach of etiquette and an unthinkable
+outrage if inferiors were not to pay their respects to superiors, pupils
+to salute their teachers, and children to prostrate themselves before
+their parents.
+
+When evening came, lanterns, transparencies, and fireworks appeared, and
+very effective coloured fires reddened the broad bosom of the Yangtze.
+Hilarious sounds proceeding from closed doors showed that, as in Korea
+at the same hour, sacrifices were being offered to departed parents, and
+that families were gathered at the final feast of the day. My trackers
+hung coloured lanterns from the matted roof and feasted on pork with
+wine, but there was no excess, and it was a real pleasure to see them
+get one good meal with time to enjoy it. Owing to the moderate use of
+intoxicants, and that chiefly with food, the three holidays of this
+universal festival pass by without turmoil or disgrace, and the
+population goes back to trade and work out of debt and not demoralised
+by its spell of social festivity.
+
+So the most ancient of the world’s existing civilisations comports
+itself on its great holiday, while our civilisation of yesterday,
+especially in Scotland, what with “first-footing,” “treating,” and
+general sociability, is apt to turn the holiday into a pandemonium.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI.
+                          KUEI FU TO WAN HSIEN
+
+
+The following morning my trackers, having no fumes of liquor to sleep
+off, were astir early. There was one long and strong rapid, Lao Ma (“Old
+Horse”), and a minor one, Miao Chitze “Temple Stairs”), where the water
+rushes furiously over a succession of steps with a clear but very rapid
+channel in the centre. Passenger boats turn out their fares there, and
+it was piteous to see the women with their bound feet hobbling and
+tumbling among boulders, where I, who am not a very bad climber, was
+glad to get the help of two men. Of course, the fathers and husbands
+gave them no assistance. The fierce cataract of Tung Yangtze, remarkable
+for a vigorous attempt which was made not very many years ago to
+overcome its difficulties by building a fine stone breakwater, now in
+decay, and a succession of _chipas_ and eddies, intervened between Kuei
+Fu and Yun-yang Hsien, or “Clouded Sun City,” on the bank of a fine
+gorge, its grey walls extending far up the mountain on the slope of
+which the city stands, high above the winter level of the river.
+
+These cities on the Yangtze are captivating to the eye, and the touches
+of colour given by the glazed green and yellow tiles of the curved roofs
+of their many fine temples relieve the otherwise monotonous grey. The
+“City of the Clouded Sun” is not lively, and has very little trade, but
+it is stately and clean, and its temples are well kept and imposing,
+specially the Temple of Longevity, which has a wall richly decorated in
+high relief, in which fine bronze tablets are inlaid.
+
+The glory of the city is, however, on the opposite bank—the Temple of
+Chang-fei, a warrior who died fighting for his country. The whole scene
+is beautiful, and it was most mortifying that the crowd which gathered
+round my camera, looking in at the lens and over my shoulder under the
+focussing cloth and shaking it violently, prevented me from getting a
+picture of it. Nature and art have combined in a perfect
+picturesqueness. On the flat vertical surface of a noble cliff rising
+from the boulder-strewn shore of the Yangtze are four characters—and
+what can be more decorative than Chinese characters “writ large”?—which
+are translated “Ethereal bell, one thousand ages.” This bell is believed
+by the people to ring of its own accord in case of a fire in the
+district.
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE OF CHANG-FEI.]
+
+Above it, and approached by a fine broad flight of 100 stone stairs, is
+a magnificent temple in perfect repair, and with its gorgeous
+decorations lately restored. It has three courts, one three-storeyed and
+two two-storeyed pavilions, their much-curled roofs tiled with glazed
+tiles of an exquisite green. Corridors, also roofed with green tiles and
+composed of elaborate and beautiful wooden fretwork with the peony for
+its motive, connect the courts. On one side of the temple is a deep
+narrow glen with fine trees and a waterfall, and over this a beautiful
+stone bridge has been thrown from the temple door. There are some noble
+specimens of the _Ficus religiosa_. There were large numbers of
+visitors, and a ferry-boat is continually crossing. A lovelier place for
+a religious picnic could not be found.[28]
+
+At Yun-yang we took in a relation of the _lao-pan_, a Romanist, employed
+by the French priest resident in the city as doctor to a dispensary.
+According to him, there are 300 Roman Christians in Yun-yang, who are
+quite free from molestation. There is no Protestant missionary there or
+in the country we passed through during the previous eighteen days. On
+the river bank, after Mr. Stevenson had been talking with a number of
+men about Christianity, an old man said to him, “Teacher, you say what
+is good, but it is not all true. You say we have never seen God. Then we
+can’t have injured Him, and so don’t need His forgiveness.”
+
+Above Yun-yang the country opens out, and the verdure and fertility are
+most charming. The bright red of the soil, the fresh green of the grain
+crops and sugarcane, and the brilliant yellow of the rape made a
+charming picture. Every now and then a noble specimen of the _Ficus
+religiosa_, with an altar and incense-burner below it, lent the contrast
+of its dark green foliage, and substantial farmhouses of “Brick Noggin,”
+each in a clump of bamboo, and fine temples in groves of evergreens gave
+an air of prosperity to the scene. I was not surprised at the encomiums
+which previous travellers have bestowed on this province.
+
+Rape is universally grown for the oil. The people have neither butter
+nor grease for cooking, and their diet would be incomplete without
+abundance of some oily substance. Imported and native kerosene may take
+its place as an illuminant, but for cooking purposes it will be always
+grown. In such a fertile and beautiful region the absence of animal life
+is curious. There is no pasturage, the roads are not made for draught,
+and the cheerfulness of horses, cattle, and sheep about a farmyard is
+unknown. Buff dogs, noisy and cowardly, and the hideous water buffalo,
+which looks like an antediluvian survival and has a singular aversion to
+foreigners, represent the domestic animals.
+
+[Illustration: PAGODA NEAR WAN HSIEN.]
+
+We were delayed considerably by head winds, involving much tracking and
+rowing, and thumped a hole in the boat’s bottom for the second time, on
+which she filled so fast that she had to be run ashore with all
+despatch, and the miserable attempts at repair delayed us for some
+hours, as no carpenter would work during the New Year holidays. For the
+next twenty-eight hours it took four men baling night and day to keep
+the water down.
+
+At a distance of nearly 1300 miles from its mouth the Yangtze is still a
+noble river, nobler yet when the summer rise covers the grand confusions
+of its rocky bed. The “Gorge of the Eight Cliffs,” a singular freak of
+nature, with perpendicular cliffs fluted like organ pipes, through which
+the river has cut a channel, said by the boatmen to be fathomless, about
+six miles long, through a bed of hard grey sandstone, detained us for a
+long time, and was bitterly cold and draughty. Above in a recess in the
+rock are carved three divinities in full canonicals, painted and gilded,
+called “The Three Water Guardians.” It is said that the reason that no
+boatmen will move in the dark is that these genii only guard the river
+by day.
+
+Tiresome rapids detained us again, and I climbed a height to look at
+some queer erections, which are seen at intervals of about three miles,
+on elevations along the river from Ichang to Chungking, making a goodly
+show. They are white towers, with a red sun painted on the front of
+each, and stand five in a row. The boatmen say that they are to mark
+distances, but, according to better authorities they are _yen-tun_, or
+“smoke towers,” and have served the purpose of giving alarm in unsettled
+times by fires of dry combustibles within. Apparently they have not been
+repaired for many years.
+
+On Ash Wednesday, February 19th, in the afternoon, a fine, white,
+nine-storeyed pagoda on a bank, and another on a high hill, announced
+the approach to a city. The river was narrowed by an insignificant
+gorge, then came a broad expanse of still water resembling a mountain
+lake, and then Wan appeared. That was one of the unforgettable views in
+China. The “Myriad City,” for position and appearance, should rank high
+among the cities of the world. The burst of its beauty as we came round
+an abrupt corner into the lake-like basin on which it stands, and were
+confronted with a stately city piled on cliffs and heights, a wall of
+rock on one side crowded with refuges and temples, with the broad river
+disappearing among mountains which were dissolving away in a blue mist,
+was quite overpowering.
+
+Its situation on a sharp bend of the Yangtze, backed at a distance of
+thirty miles by a range of mountains—built on cliffs, and in clusters
+round temple and pagoda-crowned hills, and surrounded by precipitous,
+truncated peaks of sandstone, from 700 to 1500 feet in height, rising
+out of woods through which torrents flash in foam, and from amidst
+garden cultivation, and surmounted by the picturesque, fortified refuges
+which are a feature of the region—is superb and impressive. Wan is the
+first of the prosperous cities of SZE CHUAN that I saw. It has doubled
+its population and trade in twenty years, and its fine streets and
+handsome shops, stately dwellings within large grounds, thriving
+industries, noble charities, and the fringe of junks for over two miles
+along its river shore, indicate a growing prosperity which is
+characteristic of nearly every city in SZE CHUAN which I afterwards
+visited.
+
+We tied up in a crowd of large junks lying in three tiers. Hundreds of
+coolies were loading and unloading them, and the noise was deafening.
+Leaving the furious babel of the boatmen, who were dissatisfied with
+their “wine money,” I walked the mile up to the China Inland Mission
+house, partly by a flight of 150 steep stone stairs, and up back
+streets, and being bareheaded and in Chinese dress, escaped a very great
+crowd. No European woman had walked up through Wan before, for it and
+its officials had been notoriously hostile to foreigners, and Dr.
+Morrison, of the _Times_, had been ill-treated there only six months
+before. I was much impressed by the good paving and cleanliness, and the
+substantial stone dwellings _en route_.
+
+Arriving at a fine Chinese gateway, with a porter’s lodge and an outer
+court, along which are servants’ quarters and cow stables, we passed
+into what is a truly beautiful paved inner court, one side a roofed-in
+open space used as a chapel, the other a lofty and handsome Chinese
+guest-room, as shown in the illustration, with an open front, and the
+living-rooms of the family. A third side is the women’s guest-room, and
+on the fourth are various rooms. Projecting upper storeys and balconies,
+all carving and fretwork, latticed and carved window-frames with paper
+panes, tall pillars, and irregular tiled roofs, make up a striking _tout
+ensemble_, in the midst of which Mr. and Mrs. Thompson and three ladies,
+all in Chinese dress, stood to welcome me. It was all so trim and
+handsome that there was a distinct unseemliness in bringing in my shabby
+travelling equipments, much the worse for two years’ hard wear, and I
+hurried them into retirement as soon as possible.
+
+[Illustration: GUEST HALL, C.I.M. WAN HSIEN.]
+
+The house is beautiful inside, the walls, roofs, and pillars of planed,
+unvarnished wood of a fine grain, all dovetailed or put together with
+wooden bolts. Downstairs the large fretwork windows, opening on pivots,
+are above a man’s head. All the furniture, with the exception of some
+presents, is Chinese, and is at once simple and tasteful. Upstairs are a
+number of low, irregular, quaint rooms. The one allotted to me was a
+large one, with a great fretwork window into the court, and another with
+a superb view of the city and down the river. It had access by a steep
+step-ladder to an open wooden tower with a pagoda roof and seats for use
+in the hot weather. This overlooks the houses of many neighbours, and is
+overlooked. From it are to be seen all the refuges on the surrounding
+hilltops, the circuit of the city wall, _yamens_, temples, and pagodas,
+the broad brown fringe of junks, and the gleaming silver of the Great
+River.
+
+From 9 a.m. till dusk there was a continuous stream of Chinese visitors,
+the men entering at one door and the women at another, and passing into
+their guest-rooms, where they were separately received by Mr. Thompson
+and Miss Ramsay. A Chinese is a dignified and sensitive man, and likes
+to be master of the situation. He is miserable in a foreign house, with
+its promiscuous oddities, and has no idea where or on what to sit, what
+position to take, and to what etiquette he is to conform himself, and
+has all the discomfort of a fish out of water. In a Chinese guest-room,
+on the contrary, there is an ordered and rigid stateliness. A few
+handsome scrolls from the classics or pictures decorate the walls. A
+handsome carved black wood table stands against the wall opposite the
+open front, and on both sides of it are ranged heavy black wood chairs,
+the highest being next the table. Elaborate lamps hang from the roof.
+
+No matter what the position of a Chinese is, whether he be mandarin,
+merchant, shopkeeper, or writer, he is absolutely certain which chair
+etiquette entitles him to take, and when tea and pipes are produced he
+is as serene and comfortable as in his own house.
+
+At that time, though missionaries had been settled at Wan for some
+years, and had been able to rent this beautiful house, there was not a
+Christian in the city. The ladies had only lately arrived, as it had
+been thought not a safe place for them. Even a month before my visit,
+when a deep well ran dry, a mob assembled outside the mission house
+threatening to burn it and to kill all the “foreign devils,” for they
+had tapped the well and had stolen the golden crab which was the “luck”
+of the city. The mob was eventually compelled to withdraw, but the
+mandarin, who only left as I was arriving, came to the house with the
+serious charge that the inmates had killed children in order to get
+their eyes, and that their bodies were in the tanks at the back!
+
+Mr. Thompson took him to the back, and the tanks were probed with a long
+pole, but the accusation was not disposed of by the resultlessness of
+the search, for foreign magic is believed to be equal to anything. The
+same official concerted the murder of the missionaries with the elders
+of the city, and Mr. Davies, who was then in Wan, was severely beaten.
+Compensation, however, was given him, which he bestowed on the local
+charities. A new chief magistrate had just arrived, with orders to treat
+the foreigners well, and all was changed. When Mr. Thompson called at
+the _yamen_ the mandarin conducted him to the seat of honour, escorted
+him to his chair on leaving, and returned the visit with a large retinue
+the next day. Of course the Chinese everywhere take their cue from the
+officials.
+
+So it came about that for several days I was able actually to walk about
+and to photograph with no worse trouble than the curiosity of the people
+in masculine crowds of a thousand or more. Four months before I was told
+that this would have been impossible. My camera would have been smashed,
+my open chair would have produced a riot, and I should have been stoned
+or severely beaten.
+
+The streams of visitors to the beautiful guest-halls never ceased by
+daylight. Miss Ramsay often received forty women at a time. All SZE
+CHUAN women have bound feet, and all wear trousers very much _en
+evidence_, those of the lower class women being wrapped round the ankles
+and tied, those of the upper class being wide and decorated. They asked
+hordes of questions about domestic and social matters from their own
+grotesquely different standpoint, and wanted to hear what the “Jesus
+religion” was like, and were quite unable to understand how people could
+pray “unless they had a god in the room.” One day Miss Ramsay, who had
+been for some years in China, explained to her guests various things
+concerning our Lord’s life and teachings, and an upper class woman, who
+seemed intelligent and interested, explained it in her way to the
+others. As she left, Miss R. said, “You’ll not forget what I have told
+you,” and she said very pleasantly, “Oh, no, I won’t; our gods are made
+of mud, and yours are made of wood!”
+
+The ignorance which many men of the literary class show is wonderful,
+and it comes out freely in conversations in the guest-hall. A very grand
+military mandarin asserted not only that Lin and the Black Flags had
+driven the Japanese out of Formosa, but that the Straits of Formosa had
+yawned wide in answer to vows and prayers addressed to the gods by Lin,
+and that the navies of Russia, England, France, and Japan had perished
+in a common destruction in the vortex! A picture representing this
+catastrophe was for sale in Wan.[29]
+
+They think that the Queen of England is tributary to China, that our
+Minister is in Peking to pay the tribute, and that the presents which
+the Queen sent to the Empress Dowager on her sixtieth birthday were the
+special tribute for the occasion.
+
+They also believed that the American commission which had lately been at
+Chengtu for the purpose of assessing the damage done to the property of
+Americans in the previous riots was sent to congratulate the new Viceroy
+on his appointment!
+
+Also many of the _literati_ say—and I had heard the same thing in the
+north—that outside of China there are five kingdoms united under one
+emperor, Jesus Christ, who rose from a peasant origin, that one is
+inhabited by dog-faced people,[30] and that in another, where each woman
+has two husbands, she has a hole in her chest, and that when they travel
+the husbands put a pole through it and carry her! They also say that the
+missionaries come and live in distant places like Wan and Paoning in
+order to find out the secret of China’s greatness and the way to destroy
+it by magic arts. A map of Asia hangs in the guest-hall, and Mr.
+Thompson overheard some of the guests saying to each other at different
+times, “Look at these ‘foreign devils’” (_yang-kwei-tze_); “they put
+China small on the map to deceive their god!”
+
+It is impossible to have patience with their ignorance because of their
+overweening self-conceit. It is passable in Africa, but not in these men
+with their literary degrees, and their elaborate culture “of sorts,” and
+two thousand years of civilisation behind them.
+
+Wan Hsien has a very large trade. Its shops are full of goods, native
+and foreign, and the traffic from the interior, as well as by junk, is
+enormous, but there are no returns, as it is not an open port. The
+actual city—_i.e_., the walled city—which contains the _yamens_ and
+other public buildings, is small, steep, and handsome. It has extended
+itself into large suburbs five miles in extent, of which the true city
+is the mere nucleus. They straggle along the river, high up on the
+cliffs above it, and two miles back, where they are arrested by a rocky
+barrier at a height in which is excavated and scaffolded a celebrated
+“Temple of the Three Religions,” at the top of 1570 fine stairs, a great
+place of pilgrimage. This back country, in which are few level acres, is
+exquisitely cultivated, and is crossed in several directions by flagged
+pathways, carried over ascents and descents by good stairs. These
+usually lead to lovely villages, built irregularly on torrent sides,
+among a great variety of useful trees.
+
+The city is divided into two parts by a river-bed, then nearly dry, but
+when I saw it in summer it contained a very respectable stream, which
+serves as the public laundry. I have never seen so beautiful a bridge as
+the lofty, single stone arch, with a house at the highest part, which
+spans the river-bed, and which seems to spring out of the rock without
+any visible abutments.
+
+Graceful pagodas and three-storeyed pavilions guard the approaches. The
+Feng Shui of Wan is considered perfect. Rich temples on heights above
+the river and the handsome temple called Chung-ku-lo (Drum and Bell
+Lodge), overlooking the small gorge below, with a large stage, under a
+fine three-storeyed pavilion, for the performance of the religious
+dramas, show that “The Three Religions” retain their hold on the people.
+The wealth of vegetation is wonderful. Not a barren or arid spot is to
+be seen from the water’s edge to the mountain summits which are the
+limits of vision. The shiny orange foliage, the dark formal cypress, the
+loquat and pomegranate, the gold of the plumed bamboo, the deep green of
+sugarcane, the freshness of the advancing grain crops, and the drapery
+of clematis and maidenhair on trees and rocks all delight the eyes. But
+the uniqueness of the neighbourhood of Wan consists in the number of its
+truncated sandstone hills, each bearing on its flat top a picturesque
+walled white village and fortification, to be a city of refuge in times
+of rebellion. These, rising out of a mass of greenery, with a look of
+inaccessibility about them, are a silent reference to unpleasant
+historic facts which distinguish Wan from other cities.
+
+[Illustration: BRIDGE AT WAN HSIEN.]
+
+It is not alone that junks fringe the shores, but they are very largely
+built at Wan, for the passage of the rapids, of a convenient
+material—the tough, formal cypress which grows on the adjacent hills.
+They must be at once light and strong, and more disposed to bend than to
+break. Many of their fittings have a local origin, and many rich junk
+builders and junk owners live at Wan.
+
+Foreign goods go up the river to Chungking, the westernmost treaty port,
+from twelve to twenty days higher up the river, and come down again to
+Wan. “The Province of the Four Streams” does not produce much cotton;
+and cotton yarn from Japan and India comes in large quantities into Wan
+to be woven there. In 1898 there were about 1000 handlooms. The cotton
+is woven into pieces about thirty feet long and sixteen inches broad,
+which take a man two days’ labour, from daylight till 9 p.m., to weave.
+A weaver’s wages with food come to about 600 _cash_, at present about
+1_s._ 6_d._ per week of six days. Can Lancashire compete with this in
+anything but the output?
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVII.
+                         CHINESE CHARITIES[31]
+
+
+As Moslems regard almsgiving as one of the “gates of heaven,” and
+practise it to a very remarkable extent, so the Chinese have placed
+benevolence foremost on the list of the “Five Constant Virtues.” The
+character which denotes it is said by the learned to be composed of the
+symbols for _man_ and _two_, by which is somewhat obscurely indicated,
+on the principle of the spark being the result of the contact of flint
+with steel, that benevolence should result from the contact of two human
+beings.
+
+That this is so in China is not the impression which the facts of daily
+life produce, and the popular view taken of Chinese character in this
+country is that it is cruel, brutal, heartless, and absolutely selfish
+and unconcerned about human misery. Among supporters of foreign missions
+this opinion would be found nearly universal; and, indeed, I have heard
+the non-existence of benevolence in the vast non-Christian empire of
+China brought forward as an argument in favour of such missions. So
+saturated is our atmosphere with the belief that the only charitable
+institutions in China are those founded by Protestant and Catholic
+missionaries, that nothing surprised me more than to find that the
+reverse is the case. Among the many intelligent and frivolous questions
+which have been put to me since I returned, the one, “Have the Chinese
+any charities?” has not been among them. It has been reserved for
+missionaries, and specially the late Rev. D. Hill, of Hankow, and the
+Rev. W. Lawton, of Chinkiang, to bring this most interesting subject
+under the notice of readers. The Rev. Arthur Smith gives a chapter of
+his clever and attractive book, _Chinese Characteristics_, to the same
+subject, and Dr. Wells Williams glances at it very briefly in _The
+Middle Kingdom_; but few out of the many lay writers on China have
+touched upon it. On my first visit in 1878, Dr. Henry, of Canton,
+pointed out to me asylums or almshouses for the blind, and for aged
+persons without sons; and on my recent visits, following this lead, I
+made such inquiries as were practicable on this subject, and now venture
+to present my too scanty notes to my readers.
+
+I have already remarked that the facts which lie on the surface of
+Chinese daily life do not give the impression of strong benevolent
+instincts. Wounded men are stripped of their uniforms and are left to
+perish on battlefields, because “wounded men are no use.” The ablest
+Chinese general in the late war wished to buy machine guns without the
+protective “mantle” at the consequently reduced price, and on being told
+by the German agent that this would risk a great sacrifice of life
+coolly replied, “We’ve plenty of men.” Yet this same man was most
+generous to the poor, established soup-kitchens in Mukden, his city,
+every winter, supplied the hospital with ice for the patients, and, even
+in the hurry of the last evening before he started with his brigade for
+the fatal field of Phyong-yang, arranged that the hospital should be
+supplied with ice during his absence.
+
+I have known a number of coolies refuse to get water from a river a few
+yards off to assuage the burning thirst of an apparently dying man of
+their number, who had carried a burden by their side for a fortnight,
+and had shared their hardships, on the ground that he was “no more any
+good,” and several similar instances, and what they do not practise
+themselves they fail to understand in others. I have been jeered at as a
+fool for laying a wet cloth on the brow of a man who had served me for
+some time and fell out on the road seriously ill, and yet more for
+having him carried in my chair rather than leave him to die on a
+mountain-side. On another occasion in SZE CHUAN, when I left my chair
+and walked up a part of the colossal staircase by which the road is
+carried over the Pass of Shen Kia-chao, my bearers showed the
+construction they put on my doing so by asking, “Does the foreign woman
+think us not strong enough to carry her?” Men of the lower class
+interpret ordinary humanity and consideration as arising from dread of
+them, and the traveller is daily coming across instances which look very
+like brutality, and most foreign residents speak of the Chinese as cruel
+and brutal.
+
+Some writers, especially the author of _Chinese Characteristics_, while
+admitting the existence of charities on a large scale, detract from the
+admiration which such works of benevolence would naturally command by
+pointing out that they are regarded as “practising virtue,” and are
+considered to be a means of “accumulating merit,” and in fact that the
+object generally in view is “not the benefit of the person on whom the
+‘benevolence’ terminates, but the extraction from the benefit conferred
+of a return benefit for the giver.” The Chinese are perhaps the most
+practical people on earth, and a curious system of moral bookkeeping
+adopted by many shows this feature of the national character in a very
+curious light. There are books inculcating the practice of “virtue,” and
+in these a regular debtor and creditor account is opened, in which an
+individual charges himself with all his bad acts and credits himself
+with all his good ones, and the balance between the two exhibits his
+moral position at any given time.
+
+Mr. A. Smith is a very acute observer, and has had lengthened
+opportunities of observation, and his conclusions as to the motives for
+benevolence must be received with respect. May it not, however, be
+hinted that an equally acute observer setting himself to dissect motives
+for largesse to charities after a residence of some years in England
+would consider himself warranted in referring a very considerable
+proportion of our benevolence to motives less worthy than the desire to
+“accumulate merit”?
+
+The problem of “the poor, and how to deal with them,” has received, and
+is receiving, various solutions in China, and probably there is not a
+city without one or more organisations for the relief of permanent and
+special needs. Foundlings, orphans, blind persons, the aged, strangers,
+drowning persons, the destitute, the dead, and various other classes are
+objects of organised benevolence. The methods are not our methods, but
+they are none the less praiseworthy.
+
+The care of the dead is imperative on every Chinese, but poverty steps
+in, a coffin is an unattainable luxury, and without help a proper
+interment is impossible. Hence in all cities there are benevolent guilds
+which supply coffins for those whose relations are too poor to buy them,
+and bury such in free cemeteries, providing, according to Chinese
+notions, all the accessories of a respectable funeral, with suitable
+offerings and the attendance of priests. Human bones which have become
+exposed from any cause are collected and reburied with suitable dignity,
+and bodies which have remained for years in coffins above ground waiting
+for the geomancers to decide on an auspicious day for the funeral, until
+all the relations are dead and the coffins are falling into decay, are
+supplied with new ones, and are suitably interred.
+
+A Chinese is all his life thinking of his burial and the ancestral
+rites. Among a people to whom a creditable interment means so much, the
+generous way in which these benevolent obsequies are conducted does more
+than we can understand to remove the bitterness of mourning. The
+accompanying illustration shows a neat “chapel” with a well-kept
+cemetery, where bones have been gathered, those of individuals being
+placed together, so far as indications allow of it, under neat coverings
+of concrete.
+
+In the great city of Chinkiang there are an orphan asylum and benevolent
+institute for girls, with five receiving offices, and a boarding-out as
+well as an asylum system, a benevolent institute with eighty boys above
+six, who are apprenticed when old enough, with five teachers in charge,
+and twenty free day schools for about three hundred boys, whose harsh
+voices, pitched high, may be heard twanging at the wisdom of the Chinese
+classics.
+
+Among the Chinkiang benevolent plans for adults there is one, well
+managed, of inestimable advantage to the struggling farmer or
+merchant—“The Bureau for Advancing Funds.” From it a poor man with
+security can borrow from 1000 to 5000 _cash_ ($1 to $5), which must be
+repaid in one hundred days by payments made every five days. He can
+borrow again up to a fourth time.
+
+[Illustration: A CHINESE BURIAL CHARITY.]
+
+There are two free dispensaries, with nine doctors in charge. They are
+open without fees every day, treating about 200 patients, who are not
+required to pay for their medicines. The Life-saving Institution, with a
+head office and two or three minor offices, has six well-equipped,
+well-manned boats always on the river near the port, and ten others
+dodging about above and below. I was in the steamer _Cores de Vries_
+when she cut down the s.s. _Hoi-how_ to the water’s edge abreast of
+Chinkiang, and I can answer for the trained alacrity with which several
+of these boats were at once on the spot, remaining by the _Cores de
+Vries_ even after she was run ashore. Their work is not only to save the
+drowning, but to remove dead bodies from the water, and these are
+afterwards buried with seemly rites by the Society in a well-kept
+private cemetery on the hill in which it has interred 175 rescued
+corpses within the last ten years. There is a free ferry, with thirteen
+big boats, for crossing the ofttimes stormy and dangerous Yangtze, which
+saves many lives of those who would otherwise be drowned by ferrying in
+cheap and unseaworthy craft. This is the richest of the benevolent
+institutions.
+
+It is interesting to learn how the actual beggars, who trade upon
+sympathy by their filthiness, deformities, and sores, are treated. A
+_Beggars’ Refuge_ and a _Home for the Aged_ exist for the same class.
+The Beggars’ Refuge was begun by a former Taotai. Of its ninety inmates
+about nine are women. It is not to be expected that it should be clean
+or sweet. I have seen one in another city which receives five hundred.
+The beggars are required to bring their clothes and wadded quilts with
+them, but all else is furnished, and in winter outsiders also receive
+rice there. Most of the inmates, unless disqualified by age or disease,
+spend their days begging in the streets.
+
+The rich merchants subscribe to keep up a winter “_soup kitchen_,” which
+feeds about a thousand people daily with rice, at a cost of thirty
+dollars a day, during the three coldest months. Besides this the General
+Benevolent Institution dispenses medicines during the summer, and rice
+tickets during the winter, and has charge of the “Invalid Home,” and
+also provides coffins for the dead poor. This society is richly endowed
+with land, owning 3000 _mow_.[32] The original 280 _mow_ came from the
+priests on Golden Island.
+
+Widows are not forgotten. Two associations take them in charge: the
+_Widows’ Relief Society_ and the _Widows’ Home_. The former has only
+funds sufficient for 300 pensioners, the lists being filled up as deaths
+occur. The latter is connected with the _Boys’ Orphanage_, and provides
+a home, food, and clothes for 200 widows. After once entering they are
+not allowed to go out unless offered a respectable home by a friend, or
+unless a son has grown to man’s estate. Any results of the sale of plain
+or fancy needlework are returned to the worker. This care of widows
+marks a great advance in China on the practice in India and some other
+Eastern countries.
+
+There are several free cemeteries outside the city, and one of recent
+origin for children, with a wall six feet high surrounding it, and a
+keeper in charge, in which 2000 children have been buried in the last
+four years. In Mukden I first became familiar with the custom, the
+growth of a superstitious belief, not of lack of maternal feeling, of
+rolling up the bodies of children in matting and “throwing them away,”
+_i.e._, putting the bundle where the dogs can devour the corpse, as a
+sort of offering to the “Heavenly Dog,” which is supposed to eat the sun
+at an eclipse. When foreigners began to settle in the Yangtze treaty
+ports it came to be currently believed that they asserted a claim
+against the dogs for these bodies, of which they “take out the eyes and
+the hearts to make medicine.” This was too much; hence this well-walled
+cemetery was provided. This accusation against foreigners, which is a
+frequent cause of anti-foreign riots, is current everywhere in the
+Yangtze Valley. I met with it in its worst form so far west as Kuan
+Hsien, on the Upper Min, and an angry cry of “Another child-eater!” was
+frequently raised against myself as I passed through the towns of SZE
+CHUAN. This goodly list does not exhaust the native charities of the
+first treaty port on the Yangtze.[33]
+
+I have dwelt in detail on the charities of Chinkiang because they are
+typical of those of other great cities; but the variety throughout the
+country is infinite, and includes many associations merely for the
+relief of suffering. In Wuhu a _Life-saving Association_ was established
+in 1874, with which have been associated, under the same managing staff,
+a gratuitous _Coffin Association_, to help the very poor to inter their
+relatives decently, and a _Free Ferry Association_, with big, well-found
+boats, to prevent the poor from risking their lives by crossing the
+Yangtze in small _sampans_. Large and substantial offices indicate the
+generous support given to the _Lifeboat Association_, with which are
+united a _Humane Society_ for restoring life to persons rescued from the
+water, and other kindred benevolent associations. This society, which
+has societies affiliated to it, and apparently under the same rules, at
+many of the riverine towns, has four lifeboats at Wuhu, about fifty feet
+long, ten broad, and fourteen tons burden, well manned and handled, able
+to face any weather, with crews under strict discipline, and ready to
+sally forth at a signal. They cruise up and down the river aiding junks
+in distress, rescuing the drowning, and recovering bodies for burial.
+
+If a rescued man is a stranger and destitute, he receives the loan of
+dry clothing, and shelter for three days; if he is ill, he has shelter
+and medical attendance so long as he requires them. Such destitute
+rescued persons are supplied with twenty cents for each thirty-three
+miles of their journey home. A recovered corpse is reported by the
+society to the authorities, who take charge of any property recovered
+with it until the relations are found. It is decently buried, and the
+usual ceremonial for the dead is provided at stated seasons.
+
+This society publishes its rules and accounts annually for general
+information. Its offices were built by donations from merchants. It
+receives a subscription of fifty taels a month from the inland customs,
+and its other funds are subscriptions, rentals of donated lands, and
+contributions of rice. The society has always a good balance in hand.
+Besides wages, it pays at Wuhu and the different sub-stations to the
+boatmen a reward of 1000 _cash_, or about a dollar, for every life
+saved, and from 300 to 500 _cash_ for every corpse.
+
+Another charity also provides coffins for destitute persons, and
+mat-shelters, often sadly needed, for burned-out families, and medical
+aid for the sick. This is supported chiefly by subscriptions from
+shopkeepers and gifts of coffin wood.
+
+A few years ago the Taotai, with the leading “gentry” and merchants,
+established an asylum for foundlings and the children of destitute
+parents, which has gradually come to include a charity school, an
+almshouse for aged and invalid poor, and a free hospital.
+
+Kukiang has several similar institutions, including a _Humane and
+Life-saving Institution_, established by the tea and opium merchants
+with the funds of their guilds. In Hankow there are more than twenty
+charities, supported at a cost of about 100,000 dollars annually. At Wan
+Hsien, above the gorges and the worst rapids, there are very noble
+charities, some of them carried on by the Scholars’ Guild and the head
+men of the city, and others by private individuals. Among these are soup
+kitchens and large donations of rice to the poor in the winter, and in
+the first month (February) allowances of rice and money to about fifty
+old people, and gifts of 1600 _cash_ each to about 100 poor widows. The
+Scholars’ Guild also supports a foundling hospital. I cannot overlook
+the noble benevolences of Hsing-fuh-sheo, a Wan merchant, not
+exceptionally wealthy, who, at a cost of over 8000 dollars a year,
+supports two dispensaries and a drug store, forty free schools, five
+preachers of the Sacred Edict, and besides, provides clothing and
+coffins for the dead poor, and wadded garments for the destitute in
+winter.[34]
+
+Among many other ways of showing benevolence is the provision of free
+vaccination to all who will apply for it; drugs and plasters are given
+by some to all applicants, and books known as “Virtue Books” are given
+away by others, or are exposed for sale at less than cost price. There
+are small associations for providing the neat, canopied, stone furnaces
+which are seen in all cities and many country places, for the burning of
+paper on which are written characters. Originally no doubt this practice
+was established to prevent any defilement of the sacred names of Buddha
+and Confucius, but a sanctity has come to attach to all written paper
+owing to the great reverence of the Chinese for literature, and paper is
+no longer collected by the priests, but by men paid by these societies
+for the purpose, who go round with bamboo tongs and bottle-mouthed
+baskets, rescuing the characters from desecration. The benevolence is
+not apparent to me, although the societies which undertake this work
+bear the name _Mutual Charitable Institutions_.
+
+Among other good works are the charitably aided provincial clubs for the
+care of those who become destitute at a distance from home, and who
+without such aid could not return, or who, having died afar from
+relatives, could not otherwise be taken home for burial. Among temporary
+charities partly Government-aided, but very much supported by private
+liberality, are the vast soup kitchens, very completely organised,
+which, on occasions of flood or famine, extend their benevolent and
+often judicious work over the whole afflicted region, and save thousands
+of lives. Then there are large donations of wadded winter clothing and
+wadded sleeping quilts made every year to the destitute; and societies,
+something in the nature of charitably aided savings banks, for the twin
+objects of enabling men to marry and to bury their parents creditably.
+
+Much kindness of a kind is shown to the streams of refugees who in bad
+years swarm all over parts of China in allowing them to camp with their
+families in barns and sheds, often giving them an evening meal. Enormous
+gifts are made to beggars, who, in all the large cities, are organised
+into such powerful guilds that they can coerce rather than plead, and
+can ensure that a steady stream of charity shall flow in their
+direction. In the case of both refugees and beggars, a prudent dread of
+the consequences of refusal is doubtless answerable for much of what
+poses as charity, and in this the Chinese and the Englishman are
+probably near of kin.
+
+In concluding this chapter, which brings additional evidence of the
+strong tendency to organise which exists among the Chinese, I will
+mention a few of the methods in which individuals carry out benevolent
+instincts or seek to “accumulate merit.” A Buddhist on a river bank pays
+a fisherman for the whole of the contents of his plunge-net, and returns
+the silver heap to the water; another buys a number of caged birds, and
+lets them fly. Some build sheds over roads, and provide them with seats
+for weary travellers; others make a road over a difficult pass, or build
+a bridge, or provide a free ferry for the poor and their cattle. A few
+men club together to provide free soup or tea for travellers, and erect
+a shed, putting in an old widow to keep the water boiling; or two or
+three priests, with the avowed object of securing merit, do the same
+thing at a temple; others provide seats for wayfarers on a steep hill.
+Some provide lamps glazed with thin layers of oyster shells fitted into
+a wooden framework, and either hang them from posts or fit them into
+recesses in pillars to warn travellers by night of dangerous places on
+the roads.
+
+I put forward my opinion on the subject of Chinese benevolence with much
+diffidence, laying the motive of the accumulation of merit on one side.
+The Chinese obviously fail in acts of unselfishness and of _personal_
+kindliness and goodwill. Their works of merit are very much on a large
+scale, for the benefit of human beings in masses, the individual being
+lost sight of. They involve little personal, wholesome contact between
+the giver and receiver, out of which love and gratitude may grow, and no
+personal self-denial, and in these respects place themselves on a par
+with much of our easy charity by proxy at home.
+
+It was a great surprise to me, as it will be to the more thoughtful
+among my readers, to find that organised charity on so large a scale
+exists in China. Among its defects, in addition to the lack, before
+mentioned, of kindly individual contact, are the neglect to foster
+independence by painstaking methods, and the system of peculation from
+which even benevolent funds do not escape, though it must be added that
+many Chinese gentlemen give much valuable time to securing their honest
+and efficient management.
+
+I have not been able to learn whether the benevolent instincts of
+Chinese women find any outlet. I have been asked by one to give some
+straw plaiting to a poor widow to do, and by another lady to employ an
+indigent woman in embroidering satin shoes. I have heard of ladies
+inviting old and poor women to tea once a week, and even oftener; and
+Mr. A. Smith narrates one such instance.
+
+It must be remarked that in China certain serious consequences may
+befall a man who performs an act of kindness individually, and that a
+dread of such a mishap renders men exceedingly reluctant to give aid and
+to save life under some circumstances. This possibility is apt to make
+the Chinese wary as to doing kindnesses personally. A missionary tells
+how a medical missionary living in one of the central provinces was
+asked by some native gentlemen to restore the sight of a beggar who was
+totally blind from cataract. The operation was successfully performed,
+but when the man regained his sight the same gentlemen came to the
+operator and told him that, as by the cure he had destroyed the beggar’s
+sole means of livelihood, it was then his duty to compensate him by
+taking him into his service!
+
+In conclusion, the Chinese classics teach benevolence: charity is
+required as a proof of sincere goodness; the Buddhist religious writings
+inculcate relief of sick persons and compassion to the poor, and the
+worship of the Goddess of Mercy, an increasingly popular cult in China,
+tends in the same humane direction. It must be remembered also that the
+divinities worshipped in China are not monsters of cruelty and
+incarnations of evil, but, on the contrary, that they may be credited
+with some of the virtues, and among them that of benevolence.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII.
+                     FROM WAN HSIEN TO SAN TSAN-PU
+
+
+Finding that it was impossible for any European to accompany me, I
+decided to venture on the journey of 300 miles to Paoning Fu alone, and
+to buy my own experience. The land journey developed into one of about
+1200 miles, and was accomplished with one serious mishap and one great
+disappointment. It was interesting throughout, and taught me much of the
+ways of the people, and the scenery alone would have repaid me for the
+hardships, which were many. My greatest difficulty consisted in having
+to disinter all information about the route and the industries and
+customs of the people, through the medium of two languages, out of the
+capacities of persons who neither observed nor thought accurately, nor
+were accustomed to impart what they knew: who were used to telling lies,
+and to whom I could furnish no reasons for telling the truth, while they
+might have several for deceiving me on some points. This digging into
+obtuseness and cunning is the hardest part of a traveller’s day. So far
+as I could make out before or since my journey, no British traveller or
+missionary has published an account of the country between Wan Hsien, on
+the Yangtze, and Kuan Hsien, north of the Chengtu Plain, nor can I find
+among the very valuable consular reports, to which I cannot too often
+express my debt, one which has done for this region of Central SZE CHUAN
+what Mr. Litton, of the consular service at Chungking, has lately done
+so admirably for Northern SZE CHUAN. Consequently on the greater part of
+my four months’ journey I had nothing by which to estimate the value of
+the facts which I supposed myself to have obtained.[35]
+
+The longer one travels the fewer preparations one makes, and the smaller
+is one’s kit. I got nothing at Wan except a large sheet doubly oiled
+with boiled linseed oil, and some additional curry powder, kindly
+furnished by my kind hosts from boxes of tinned eatables, sauces,
+arrowroot, and invalid comforts, which had just arrived, and the like of
+which were annually delivered, carriage free, at the door of every China
+Inland missionary, however remote, sent by the late Mr. Morton, of
+Aberdeen, a thoughtful gift, of great value to the recipients. The
+reader may be amused to learn the singular monotony of my diet. I had a
+cup of tea made from “tabloids,” and a plate of boiled flour, every
+morning before starting, tea on arriving, and for 146 days, at seven,
+curried fowl or eggs with rice. I got another Chinese cotton costume and
+some straw shoes, and for any other needs trusted to supplying them on
+the way.
+
+My servant had made himself persistently disagreeable from the
+beginning, and though a superior, fairly educated, and handsome man, he
+seemed helpless, useless, lazy, unwilling, and objectionable all round.
+The impression of my hosts and myself was that he wished to annoy me
+into sending him back from Wan, and Mr. Thompson thought that he would
+make my journey very difficult and unpleasant; but the choice lay
+between giving it up on the threshold and taking him, and I chose the
+latter.
+
+As the guest of a European, all the difficulties of arranging,
+bargaining, and paying are lifted off one and put upon a teacher or
+servant who is used to them, and after much chaffering a bargain was
+concluded by which three chair-bearers and four coolies were to take me
+and my baggage to Paoning Fu in nineteen days, a halt on Sundays being
+paid for at the rate of 25,000 _cash_. These men were not dealt with
+directly, but were engaged by contract with the manager of a transport
+_hong_, who is responsible for their good conduct and honesty. I may say
+at once that they behaved admirably; made the journey in two days less
+than the stipulated time; trudged cheerfully through rain and mud; never
+shirked their work; and were always sober, cheery, and obliging. I never
+met with other than the same behaviour on all the occasions when my
+coolies or boatmen were engaged from a _hong_.
+
+My light, comfortable bamboo chair had a well under the seat which
+contained my camera, and, including its sixteen pounds weight, carried
+forty pounds of luggage in addition to myself. It had bamboo poles
+fourteen feet long, and a footboard suspended by ropes. Rigid laws of
+etiquette govern the getting out and in. An open chair in SZE CHUAN,
+being a novelty, is an abomination, and accounts for much of the
+rudeness which I received. For some time past the provincial authorities
+have insisted on all travellers, missionaries included, being attended
+by two or more “_yamen_ runners,” (_chai-jen_) or soldiers, who are
+changed at every prefecture, where they deliver up the official letter
+which they carry. They were never of any use, and except once, whether
+soldiers or civilians, always ran away at the first symptoms of a
+disturbance, but neither were they any nuisance, and they were always
+apparently satisfied with the trifle I gave them.
+
+These _yamen_ runners are attached in great numbers to every magistracy,
+in large cities to the number of 1000 or more. They are “the great
+unpaid,” but manage to pick up a living, lawsuits being their great
+harvest, and the serving of writs one of their great occupations. They
+squeeze litigants, and are about as much detested by the people as
+bailiffs were by the men of Clare and Kerry.
+
+Thus equipped and wearing Chinese dress, which certainly blunts the edge
+of curiosity and greatly diminishes the intolerable feminine picking and
+feeling of one’s garments when they are of foreign material and make, I
+left the shelter and refinement of the hospitable mission house for a
+solitary plunge into the interior, Be-dien on foot, as sullen and
+disobliging as could be.
+
+Mr. Thompson kindly accompanied me for the first day’s journey to see
+that things worked smoothly, and we left early on a fine February
+morning, the air as soft and mild as that of an English April, passing
+through the very good-looking town and into the pretty open country on a
+good, flagged road, which was carried up and down hill by stone stairs.
+
+During most of the day we met a continuous stream of baggage coolies,
+each carrying a bamboo over his shoulder with a burden depending from
+either end, shifted frequently from one shoulder to the other. Those
+coming in—and the inward traffic did not slacken for some days—carried
+from 80 to 140 pounds each of opium, tobacco, indigo, or paper; and
+those going out were loaded with cotton yarn, piece goods, and salt, all
+carefully packed in oiled paper made from macerated bamboo, which is
+very tough and durable. These men, carrying the maximum load mentioned,
+walk about thirteen miles a day, and chair and luggage coolies about
+twenty-five. Occasionally I made thirty miles in a day, as my men were
+carrying only seventy pounds each.
+
+[Illustration: BAGGAGE COOLIES.]
+
+(_From a Chinese Drawing._)
+
+The coolies choose their own place for breakfast and the midday halt of
+one hour. The first day, even with Mr. Thompson to make things smooth
+for me, I wondered if I could endure it, and I never took kindly to it.
+The halting-place is a shed projecting over the road in a town or
+village street, black and grimy, with a clay floor, and rough tables and
+benches, receding into a dim twilight; a rough cooking apparatus and
+some coarse glazed pottery are the furnishings. On each table a bunch of
+malodorous chopsticks occupies a bamboo receptacle. An earthen bowl with
+water and a dirty rag are placed outside for the use of travellers, who
+frequently also rinse their mouths with hot water. One or more
+exceptionally dirty men are the waiters. Bowls of rice and rice water or
+weak tea are produced with praiseworthy rapidity, and the coolies shovel
+the food into their mouths with the air of famished men, and hold out
+their bowls for more. My chair that day and always was set down in front
+of the eating-house. I went inside and had some lunch, but the dirt,
+discomfort, and general odiousness were so great that I did not inflict
+the penance on myself a second time.
+
+People intending to be kind sometimes take pork, rice, or fish out of a
+common bowl and put it into yours, and to ensure cleanliness draw the
+chopsticks with which they perform the transference through their lips,
+giving them an energetic suck!
+
+SZE CHUAN is famous for the number and splendour of what are usually
+called “widows’ arches,” though they are also erected to pious sons or
+patriotic mandarins, specially military mandarins. At times the approach
+to a city is indicated, not only by pagodas, but by passing under
+several of these, and occasionally even a rambling, squalid village is
+entered by passing under an exceptionally handsome one, as was the case
+on my first day’s journey. I attempted to photograph it, and the
+_chai-jen_ made the crowd stand to right and left by a series of
+vigorous pushes, shouting the whole time, “In the name of the
+mandarin.”[36] But the people had too much curiosity to be anything but
+mobile.
+
+These arches, or _pai-fangs_, are put up frequently in glorification of
+widows who have remained faithful to the memory of their husbands, and
+who have devoted themselves to the comfort and interests of their
+parents-in-law and to good works. Through various channels the
+neighbourhood presents the virtues of the meritorious person to the
+Throne, and the Emperor’s consent to the erection is obtained. The whole
+affair lends some _éclat_ to the town or village. Many of these arches
+are extremely beautiful. Chinese carving in stone has much merit, even
+in such an intractable material as granite. The depth and sharpness of
+the cutting and the undercutting are remarkable, and the absolute
+_realism_. I never saw a bit of sculpture which showed a trace of
+imagination. The superb friezes which constantly decorate the
+superstructure of these arches represent in a most masterly fashion
+mandarins’ processions, mandarins administering justice, rich men’s
+banquets, interiors of rich men’s dwellings, and many other scenes of
+official and stately life, all rendered with photographic accuracy, and
+with a wonderful power of catching the expressions of the various faces.
+It is impossible not to admire the skill of the artists, and at the same
+time to wish for a trace of ideality in their art. In some places a
+superb arch enriched with marvels of sculpture straddles across a road
+which is nothing better than a disgraceful quagmire or a stone causeway
+in which some of the blocks are tilted up on end, while others have
+disappeared in the mud. The incongruity does not seem to afflict anyone.
+
+[Illustration: A PAI-FANG]
+
+But I must return from this digression on bad roads to the road on which
+I travelled on that and two or three subsequent days, which has the
+reputation of being one of the finest in China. It was built fifty-four
+years ago, and is in splendid repair. It was to lead from Wan Hsien to
+Chengtu Fu, but I failed to learn whether it fulfils its promise. It is
+never less than six feet wide, paved with transverse stone slabs,
+carried through the rice-fields on stone causeways, and over the bridges
+and up and down the innumerable hills by flights of stone stairs on
+fairly easy gradients, with stone railings and balustrades wherever
+there is any necessity for them. Streams are crossed by handsome stone
+bridges, with sharp lofty arches, and the whole is a fine engineering
+work.
+
+My journey began auspiciously with a dreamily fine day, which developed
+into a red and gold sunset of crystalline clearness and beauty. The
+scenery is entrancing. The valleys are deep and narrow, and each is
+threaded by a mountain torrent. The hills are truncated cones, each one
+crowned by a highly picturesque fortified village of refuge, and there
+were glimpses of distant mountain forms painted on the pale sky in
+deeper blue. Everything suggested peace and plenty. The cultivation is
+surprising, and its carefulness has extirpated most of the indigenous
+plants. It is carried up on terraces to the foot of the cliffs which
+support the refuges; it renders prolific strips on ledges only eighteen
+inches wide. Except on the road itself, there was not a vacant space on
+that day’s journey on which a man could lie down.
+
+The first crops, on soil which in that climate produces three and four
+annually, were in the ground: broad beans with a black and purple
+blossom with a white lip; rape for oil then in blossom grown on a large
+scale; opium encroaching on the rice lands, barley and wheat; various
+root crops, and peas in bud, though it was only February 24th. Even the
+tops of the narrow dykes separating the rice-fields were planted with
+single rows of beans.
+
+My coolies stopped several times for a drink and smoke, but did
+twenty-seven miles. Chair travelling is, I think, the easiest method of
+locomotion by land. My one objection to it is the constant shifting of
+the short bamboo carrying pole on which the long poles hang, from one
+shoulder of each bearer to the other. It has to be done simultaneously,
+involves a stoppage, occurs every hundred yards and under, and always
+gives the impression that the shoulder which is relieved is in
+unbearable pain. Chair-bearing is a trade by itself, and bearers have to
+be brought up to it. It is essential to keep step absolutely, and to be
+harmonious in all movements. Of my three bearers the strongest went
+behind. Two were opium smokers, and the third a vegetarian, who
+abstained from opium, tobacco, and _samshu_, and was on his way to be
+rich! There was ceaseless traffic, and as we penetrated further into the
+country, in addition to the goods before mentioned, the loads consisted
+of baskets of oil, bean cake, and coal and ironstone, showing that the
+sources of supply of the latter were not far off. About every half-mile
+the road passes under a roof with food booths on each side. There were
+many travellers in shabby closed chairs with short poles, hurried along
+by two men at a shambling trot. There are so many temples that the air
+is seldom free from the odour of incense. We met two dragon processions,
+consisting each of 100 men, and the undulating tail of the dragon was
+fifty feet long.
+
+Towards evening the hills became more mountainous, and were wooded with
+cypress and pine, and it was very lovely in the gold and violet light.
+We halted for the night at the large village of San-tsan-pu, where,
+though I had travelled for seven months in China, I had my first
+experience of a Chinese inn, and I did not like it, specially as I
+regarded it as the type of four or five coming months of similar
+quarters. I am not ashamed to say that a cowardly inclination to
+abbreviate my journey tempted me the whole evening. The SZE CHUAN inns
+have a good reputation; but I was not making the regular stages, and at
+all events they are inferior on that route, the one which gave me such a
+shock being one of the best. They are worse than the Persian ordinary
+_caravanserai_, or the Kurdistan _khan_, or even the Korean hostelry. I
+felt that I had degenerated into a sybarite, and must summon up all my
+pluck, and many a hearty meal and ten hours’ sleep I afterwards came to
+enjoy in dens which at first seemed foul and hopeless.
+
+[Illustration: GRANITE DRAGON PILLAR.]
+
+In the best inns there is a room known as the mandarin’s room, which can
+be had by paying for it, with a high roof, a boarded floor, a window,
+and a solemn-looking table and chairs; but these very rarely came my
+way. My introduction to the amenities of Chinese travelling was on this
+wise, and, as Mr. Thompson was with me, I was much better off than
+usual. I was carried through the open “restaurant,” fitted with rough
+benches and tables, into a roughly paved yard behind it, where, in the
+midst of abominations, was the inn well. Several rough doors round this
+yard gave admission into as many rooms without windows, several of which
+were already full. My chair was set down, and, after extricating myself
+from it according to the rules of etiquette, I was attempting to see it
+unpacked, when I was overborne by a shouting crowd of men and boys,
+which surged in after me, and I had to retire hastily into my room.
+
+It was long and narrow, and boarded off from others by partitions with
+remarkably open chinks, to which many pairs of sloping eyes were
+diligently applied; but I was able to baffle curiosity by tacking up
+cambric curtains brought for the purpose. The roof was high at one side
+and low at the other, and fortunately the wall did not come up to within
+two feet of it, though the air admitted could not by any euphemism be
+called “fresh.” The floor was a damp and irregular one of mud, partly
+over a cesspool, and with a strong tendency to puddles. On the other
+side of the outer boarding was the pigsty, which was well-occupied,
+judging from the many voices, bass and treble. There were two rough
+bedsteads, on which were mats covered with old straw, on which coolies
+lay down wadded quilts, and sleep four or more on a bed. It is needless
+to say that these beds are literally swarming with vermin of the worst
+sorts.
+
+The walls were black and slimy with the dirt and damp of many years; the
+paper with which the rafters had once been covered was hanging from them
+in tatters, and when the candle was lit beetles, “slaters,” cockroaches,
+and other abominable things crawled on the walls and dropped from the
+rafters, one pink, fleshy thing dropping upon, and putting out, the
+candle!
+
+I had arranged my plan of operations after my Korean experience, but
+sullen, disobliging, and apparently stupid Be-dien left me very much to
+carry it out myself. Between two of the bedsteads there was just space
+enough for my camp bed and chair without touching them. The oiled sheet
+was spread on the floor, and my “furniture” upon it, and two small oiled
+sheets were used for covering the beds, and on these my luggage, food,
+and etceteras were deposited. The tripod of my camera served for a
+candle stand, and on it I hung my clothes and boots at night, out of the
+way of rats. With these arrangements I successfully defied the legions
+of vermin which infest Korean and Chinese inns, and have not a solitary
+tale to tell of broken rest and general misery. With absolute security
+from vermin, all else can be cheerfully endured.
+
+A meal of curry, rice, and tea was not despicable, though I was
+conscious that my equipments and general manner of living were rougher
+than they had ever been before, and that I had reached “bed-rock,” to
+quote a telling bit of American slang.
+
+The inn, which was very full of travellers, quieted down before eight,
+when the slighter noises, such as pigs grunting, rats or mice gnawing,
+crickets chirping, beetles moving in straw, and other insect
+disturbances, made themselves very audible, and informed me that I was
+surrounded by a world of busy and predatory life, loving darkness; but
+while I thought upon it and on the solitary plunge into China which was
+to be made on the morrow I fell asleep, and never woke till Be-dien came
+to my door at seven the next morning with the information that there was
+no fire, and that he could not get me any breakfast! That was the first
+of five months of nights of solid sleep from 8 p.m. onwards. I only
+allowed myself half a candle per day, and after my journal letter was
+written there was no object for sitting up.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX.
+                          SZE CHUAN TRAVELLING
+
+
+The following day was misty, grey, and grim, and several of its
+successors were much like it. One of the local names of SZE CHUAN is
+“The Cloudy Province.” Kind, capable Mr. Thompson returned to Wan after
+giving the coolies various instructions intended for my benefit; and
+from thenceforth I depended on myself. The great event of the day was
+the complete change in Be-dien as soon as I was bereft of Europeans. His
+pride and temper always remained, and were liable to flare up, or die
+down into a mephitic state of sullenness, but from that morning till I
+left China he was active and attentive, was never without leave out of
+hearing of my whistle, was always at hand to help me over slippery and
+difficult places, showed great pluck, never grumbled, arranged and
+packed up my things, interpreted carefully, improved daily in English,
+always contrived to get hot water and food for me, and on the whole made
+a tolerable travelling servant.
+
+The travelling was without fatigue. I walked when it suited me, and for
+the rest might have been in an easy-chair in a drawing-room. The
+chair-bearers were energetic, and their “boss,” a great wag, kept them
+constantly laughing. Their good-nature never failed. One day when, to
+relieve them, I walked up a long flight of stairs over a pass, they
+asked, “Does the foreign woman think we are not strong enough to carry
+her?” The idea of a wish to be kind to them never entered their heads,
+yet we gradually came to understand each other a little; and I found my
+cloak put over my shoulders for me, a wooden stool brought for my feet,
+sundry little comforts attended to, and a growing interest in
+photography, reaching the extent of pointing out objects at times “to
+make pictures of”! By the end of the second day they had all shaken into
+my “ways,” and things went very smoothly.
+
+The day’s routine was a cup of tea and some flour stirabout at seven;
+but, though I was always ready and eager to start at eight, it was
+usually half-past, and often nine, before we got off. The coolies’ first
+breakfast was often late, and there was the haggling about the bill,
+neither side liking to give in. It was only a shilling for the board and
+lodging for myself and my servant! This included his supper and
+breakfast, my rice, and a room to myself, his share of the coolies’
+room, an iron lamp fixed on the wall, with an oil well and a wick in a
+spout encrusted with the soot and grime of years, and if I had a
+charcoal brazier, the charge was a farthing more. My other travelling
+expenses came to 4_s._ 6_d._ a day; 5_s._ 6_d._ covered everything,
+including a fowl for curry every third day.
+
+My bearers trudged along at an even pace, stopping two or three times
+for a drink and smoke at tea shops where others congregated, until the
+halt for dinner at a restaurant of more pretensions, outside of which I
+sat in my chair in the village street, the unwilling centre of a large
+and very dirty crowd, which had leisure to stand round me for an hour,
+staring, making remarks, laughing at my peculiarities, pressing closer
+and closer till there was hardly air to breathe, taking out my hairpins,
+and passing my gloves round and putting them on their dirty hands, on
+two occasions abstracting my spoon and slipping it into their sleeves,
+being in no wise abashed when they were detected. For at first I ate a
+little cold rice, but wearying of being a spectacle, and being convinced
+that as a general rule our insular habit is to eat too much, I gave up
+this moderate lunch, and contented myself with a morsel of chocolate
+eaten surreptitiously. On the rare occasions when the villagers wearied
+of their entertainment, even of gloves, which they thought were worn to
+conceal some desperate skin disease, and dropped off, small black pigs,
+with upright rows of bristles on their lean, curved spines, timidly took
+their place with expectations which were not realised, picking about,
+even under the poles of the chair, for fragments which they did not
+find, and even nibbling my straw shoes, and ancient and long-legged
+poultry were as odiously familiar.
+
+When they had fed and smoked, the men shouldered their burdens, and
+trudged on till about sunset, stopping, as in the morning, for smokes
+and drinks, I walking and photographing as it suited me. Sometimes we
+put up at a wayside inn, without even the privacy of a yard; this was in
+very small places, where the curiosity was not so overwhelming.
+
+In towns the case was different. The inn yard was often enclosed by
+planking and a wide door, within which there might be one, two, or three
+courts, possibly with flowers in pots and a little gaudy paint. Some of
+these inns accommodate over 200 travellers, with their baggage. Every
+room is full, and between money-changing, eating, “sing-song,” and
+gambling, and half-naked waiters rushing about with small trays, and
+numbers of men all shouting together, it is pretty lively. At the
+extreme end of the establishment is the “_kuan’s_ room,” with one for
+attendants on each side. The crowd which always gathered during my
+passage down the street rolled in at the doorway, blocking up the yard,
+shouting, ofttimes hooting, and fighting each other for a look at the
+foreigner. Fortunately doors in Chinese inns have strong wooden bolts,
+and when my baggage and I were once ensconced I was secure from
+intrusion, unless a few men and boys had run on ahead to take possession
+of the room before I entered it, or forced themselves in behind Be-dien
+when he brought my dinner. If it were merely a boarded wall, a row of
+patient eyes usually watched me for an hour, and with much
+gratification, for these rooms are dark with the door shut, and my
+candle revealed my barbarian proceedings.
+
+But worse than this was the slow scraping of holes in the plaster
+partition, when there was one, between my room and the next, accompanied
+by the peculiarly irritating sound of whispering, and eventually by the
+application of a succession of eyes to the hole, more whispering, and
+some giggling. It was always a temptation to apply the muzzle of a
+revolver or a syringe to the opening! Occasionally a big piece of
+plaster fell into my room and revealed the operators, who were more
+frequently well-dressed travellers than ignorant coolies. I used to
+whistle for Be-dien to hang up a curtain over the holes, after which
+there was peace for a time, and then the scraping and whispering began
+again, and often on both sides, till, tired and irritated, I used to put
+out the candle and lie down, frequently awaking in the morning to find
+myself in my travelling dress still, clutching my interrupted diary.
+When one arrived tired after being stared at and pressed upon several
+times in the day, beginning with the early morning, the fearful hubbub
+in the courtyard, lasting an hour or more, followed by these grating and
+rasping processes, was exhausting and exasperating.
+
+Also the landlord’s wife, and often a bevy of women with her, used to
+come in and pick over my things, which fortunately were few, and ask
+questions, beginning with, “What is your honourable age?” “Have you many
+sons?” When I confessed that I had none they expressed pity, and a
+contempt which Be-dien did not scruple to translate. “Why have you left
+your honourable country?” etc. But they soon tired of the trouble of
+interrogating me and talked to Be-dien, and when I asked what they were
+saying, I heard such remarks as these: “What ugly eyes she has, and
+straight eyebrows!” “Yes, but they see into the ground and where the
+gold is hid.” “Has she come for gold?” “What big feet she has!” (Their
+own were about three inches long.) “Why is her hair like wool?” and so
+on.
+
+These people had never seen lead pencils or fountain pens, and
+everywhere these and the foreign writing, and the fact that a woman
+could write, (for the gazers were more or less illiterate) attracted
+great attention. A pronged fork, which they thought must “prick the
+mouth and make it bleed,” was in their eyes a barbarism. I wore straw
+sandals over English tan shoes to avoid slipping, and this they regarded
+as a confession of foreign inferiority. I was wearing a Chinese woman’s
+dress with a Japanese _kurumaya’s_ hat, the one perfect travelling hat,
+and English gloves and shoes, and this _olla podrida_ was an annoyance
+to them. Their questions were very trivial, and their curiosity appeared
+singularly unintelligent, contrasting, in this respect, with that of the
+Japanese. It showed prodigious apathy for adults to spend hour after
+hour in focussing a stolid stare upon a person whose occupations offered
+no novelty or variety, being limited to eating and writing. The
+curiosity of the common people, though boorish, was not rude, but that
+of the class above them, and above all of men of the literary class, was
+brutal and insulting, and generally tended to excite hostility against
+the foreigner.
+
+I developed my negatives in my room at night, as it was almost always a
+perfect “dark room,” and the greatest of my annoyances was when a flash
+of white light showed that my neighbours had successfully worked a hole
+in the wall, and that my precious negative was hopelessly “fogged.”
+
+The indispensable _yamen_ runners are changed at every prefecture, and
+the passports are examined and copied. These runners are a queer lot.
+For this duty they get their travelling expenses and something over, and
+the _douceur_ which the traveller bestows. A formal official letter is
+their warrant. But on many occasions I found myself not with the escort
+I left the prefecture with, which truly was shabby enough, but with a
+couple of ragged beggars, to whom the letter with its advantages had
+been sold by the runners, who thus saved themselves a journey.
+Occasionally these substitutes strutted in front of my chair down a
+street waving the magistrate’s letter, the wind blowing their rags
+aside, showing the neglected and repulsive sores by which they excite
+the compassion of the charitable. The only useful purpose which the
+_yamen_ runners served was occasionally when it was growing late to run
+on ahead and engage “rooms,” and always to take the passport to the
+_yamen_. I write “the passport” because it deserved the definite article
+from its size, the grandeur of its seals, and the consideration it
+claimed for me, besides which it allowed of unlimited travel in the
+eighteen provinces, as well as in Mongolia and Manchuria, and was of
+such a nature as to produce an immediate change of manner in every
+official who read it! Besides this I had a correct and prosaic consular
+passport issued at Hankow, which I only once had occasion to use.
+
+The compulsory _chai-jen_ are, I think, a speciality of SZE CHUAN, and
+the compulsion rose out of unpleasant circumstances. I never learned
+that they forced the innkeepers to take less than the usual payment;
+indeed, I think that Chinese innkeepers are far too independent a class
+to be forced, nor, though they have the reputation of being brutal and
+truculent, did I see them maltreat anyone, but I much objected to being
+sold to the beggars and to being deserted on critical occasions. When
+soldiers were sent, and any trouble was threatened, they usually slipped
+off their brilliant coat cloaks and disappeared, and in reply to my
+subsequent remonstrances said, “What are four against two thousand?” a
+specious way of excusing themselves, for the mandarin’s letter is
+all-powerful even in a beggar’s hand.
+
+Money annoyances began early, and never ceased. Before leaving Wan Hsien
+I bought 10,000 _cash_, brass coins, about the size of a halfpenny,
+inscribed with Chinese characters, and with a square hole in the middle.
+By this they are threaded a hundred at a time on a piece of straw twist,
+and at that time (for the exchange fluctuates daily) the equivalent of
+two shillings weighed eight pounds! The eighteen shillings in _cash_
+with which I started weighed seventy-two pounds, and this had to be
+distributed among the coolies, the boss, or _fu-tou_, being responsible
+for the whole. But no reliance is to be placed on the _cash_ shop. There
+may be _cash_ wanting, small _cash_, spurious _cash_; consequently every
+string must be counted, and this operation frequently took more than an
+hour. A few _cash_ in each hundred are claimed for the “string.” On
+nearly every string small _cash_ used to be found, and the haggling and
+the counting occupied one of the best morning hours. This process, in
+common with everything which has to do with money, is intensely
+interesting to every Chinese, and the dullest wits are bright on the
+subject. Some villages would only receive small _cash_; others rejected
+it altogether.
+
+The silver was a greater nuisance than the brass. The silver shoes I got
+in Hankow had been broken up into four pieces each, but even then they
+were unmanageably big and had to be chopped again, usually by the
+village blacksmith with his heavy tools, and weighed again to make sure
+that all had been returned. Then the man to whom you pay over a fragment
+of your broken _sycee_, for which the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank was
+responsible, puts it first into the palm of one hand, then into the
+other, looks at it askance, and then says the “touch” is bad, it is
+inferior silver, and so on. This is after you have agreed to pay a
+certain weight in silver for an article, say half an ounce. Then it
+appears that not only is the “touch” inferior, but the ounce of that
+town is a heavier ounce than the ounce of the last, and that your scale
+is a bad one, and that the silver must be weighed in a “good scale,”
+_i.e._, the seller’s own; and between the “touch” and the varying
+weights, and the differing values of taels, and the charges for breaking
+and weighing and possibly for assaying the _sycee_, the bewildered
+traveller, who has three things always to think of—the number of _cash_
+to the tael, the quality of the silver, and the weight of the tael—would
+gladly compound by paying a much larger percentage than all this
+botheration really costs. One of the greatest aggravations is when the
+_cash_ strings break just as one is starting, and a thousand _cash_ roll
+over the inn yard and lose themselves in heaps and holes. Then the
+innkeeper exerts himself and clears the yard of the crowd, and a
+diligent search is instituted. It is useless to say “Never mind if a few
+are left behind,” for it is a point of honour with the _fu-tou_, who is
+responsible for everything, that not a _cash_ shall be missing.
+
+In this chapter I have endeavoured to glance at the most salient
+features of SZE CHUAN travel, leaving others to emerge _en route_.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XX.
+                    SAN-TSAN-PU TO LIANG-SHAN HSIEN
+
+
+The first two days passed uneventfully. I was set down to be stared at
+seven times a day, but the village people were inoffensive. We passed
+through rich and cultivated country, with many noble farmhouses with six
+or eight irregular roofs, handsome, roofed, entrance gates, deep eaves,
+and many gables of black beams and white plaster, as in Cheshire. Next
+pine-clothed hills appeared, and then the grand pass of Shen-kia-chao
+(2900 feet) lifted us above habitation and cultivation into a solitary
+mountain region of rock, scrub, torrents, and waterfalls. The road
+ascends the pass by 1140 steps on the edge of a precipice, which is
+fenced the whole way by granite uprights two feet high, carrying long
+granite rails eight inches square. Two chairs can pass along the whole
+length. The pass is grand and savage. There were brigands on the road,
+and it was patrolled by soldiers, small bodies of whom I met in their
+stagey uniforms, armed with lances with long pennons and short bows and
+arrows. These bows need a strong man’s strength to string them, and
+bow-and-arrow drill is a great military exercise. The price of rice had
+risen considerably, _cash_ was scarce, and as in some parts even of this
+prosperous province men do little more than keep body and soul together
+by their labour, even a slight rise means starvation and death, and it
+is fierce, cruel want which turns men into robbers in China, many of the
+stouter spirits preferring to prey on their neighbours in this fashion
+to depending on their charity. At one point on the pass where there were
+some trees, three criminals were hanging in cages with their feet not
+quite touching the ground. The _chai-jen_ said that they were to be
+starved to death. Not far off were two human heads which looked as if
+they had been there for some time, hanging in two cages, with a ghastly
+look of inquisitive intelligence on their faces.
+
+[Illustration: PASS OF SHEN-KIA-CHAO.]
+
+All had been robbers. Chinese justice is retributive, and takes little
+account of human life. We met a number of chained prisoners on their way
+to Wan, all with that peculiarly degraded and brutish look which a
+lavish growth of unkempt hair on the usually smoothly shaven head of a
+Chinese invariably produces. It was impossible not to pity these poor
+fellows, specially as they were most likely driven to their crimes by
+hunger, remembering as I did, and that vividly, the judgment-seat of the
+Naam-hoi magistrate at Canton, with a row of shivering prisoners
+kneeling on pounded glass on the stone floor in front of it, with their
+foreheads an inch from the ground. At this time China, with its crowds,
+its poverty, its risks of absolute famine from droughts or floods, its
+untellable horrors, its filth, its brutality, its venality, its
+grasping, clutching, and pitiless greed, and its political and religious
+hopelessness, sat upon me like a nightmare. There are other and better
+aspects which dawn on the traveller more slowly, and there is even a
+certain lovableness about the people. I only put down what were my
+impressions at the time.
+
+From the rugged summit of the Shen-kia-chao pass we dropped down into
+cultivated land, and at a large village I put up at an inn where I had a
+mandarin’s room, very shabby and ruinous, and with a leaky roof, which
+compelled me to shift my bed several times in the night, but as it had a
+window-frame from which all the paper had been torn off, it was airy,
+and with a bunch of incense sticks I overpowered the evil smells. The
+next morning there was a great row before I left, about _cash_ as usual,
+accusations of theft being freely bandied about. I was in my chair in
+the yard when it began, and soon a crowd of men were brandishing their
+arms (I don’t think the Chinese possess fists) in my face, shouting and
+yelling with a noise and apparent fury not to be imagined by anyone who
+has not seen an excited Chinese mob. They yelled into my ears and struck
+my chair with their tools to attract my attention, but I continued to
+sit facing them, never moving a muscle, as I was quite innocent of the
+cause of the quarrel, and at last they subsided and let me depart. I
+doubt much whether this and many similar ebullitions would have occurred
+if I had had a European man with me.
+
+It was a pleasant region through which we passed in the grey mist, of
+small rice-fields step above step in every little valley, the broadest
+steps at the bottom, of large, handsome farmhouses, large stone tombs in
+the hillsides, fine temples, wayside shrines, and _pai-lows_ or
+_pai-fangs_. These erections are finer and more numerous in SZE CHUAN
+than I have seen them elsewhere in China. Some villages on that day’s
+journey were approached under six stone portals, remarkable for their
+dignity and artistic perfection. Von Richthofen remarks upon some of the
+SZE CHUAN _pai-fangs_ as being “masterpieces of Chinese art.” I learned
+that some of them commemorate, as in Korea, the administrative virtues
+of local officials, but the genuine value of the tribute is dubious.
+
+[Illustration: WAYSIDE SHRINE.]
+
+I have no hard and fast theory regarding these portals. They would be an
+interesting subject for investigation. It is quite possible that the
+Chinese _pai-fang_ is an accretion on such primitive structures as the
+triliths of Stonehenge, the _coran_ of India—still, according to
+Fergusson, used in its ancient timber form at Hindu marriages—the
+_torii_ of Japan, still mostly of wood, and the slighter but nearly
+similar structure which marks the entrance to royal property in Korea.
+It is probable that the simpler forms in China are the most ancient, and
+that superb decoration of many examples belongs to the later centuries.
+I cannot see any reason for connecting the _pai-fang_ with the
+introduction of Buddhism into China. The _torii_ in Japan, the simplest
+existing form of the structure, is connected with Shinto, which existed
+centuries before Buddhism travelled to Japan from Korea.
+
+I always objected to halt at a city, but arriving at that of Liang-shan
+Hsien late on the afternoon of the third day from Wan, it was necessary
+to change the _chai-jen_ and get my passport copied. An imposing city it
+is, on a height, approached by a steep flight of stairs with a sharp
+turn under a deep picturesque gateway in a fine wall, about which are
+many picturesque and fantastic buildings. The gateway is almost a
+tunnel, and admits into a street fully a mile and a half long, and not
+more than ten feet wide, with shops, inns, brokers, temples with highly
+decorated fronts, and Government buildings “of sorts” along its whole
+length.
+
+I had scarcely time to take it in when men began to pour into the
+roadway from every quarter, hooting, and some ran ahead—always a bad
+sign. I proposed to walk, but the chairmen said it was not safe. The
+open chair, however, was equally an abomination. The crowd became dense
+and noisy; there was much hooting and yelling. I recognised many cries
+of _Yang kwei-tze!_ (foreign devil) and “_Child-eater!_” swelling into a
+roar; the narrow street became almost impassable; my chair was struck
+repeatedly with sticks; mud and unsavoury missiles were thrown with
+excellent aim; a well-dressed man, bolder or more cowardly than the
+rest, hit me a smart whack across my chest, which left a weal; others
+from behind hit me across the shoulders; the howling was infernal: it
+was an angry Chinese mob.[37] There was nothing for it but to sit up
+stolidly, and not to appear hurt, frightened, or annoyed, though I was
+all three.
+
+Unluckily the bearers were shoved to one side, and stumbling over some
+wicker oil casks (empty, however), knocked them over, when there was a
+scrimmage, in which they were nearly knocked down. One runner dived into
+an inn doorway, which the innkeeper closed in a fury, saying he would
+not admit a foreigner; but he shut the door on the chair, and I got out
+on the inside, the bearers and porters squeezing in after me, one
+chair-pole being broken in the crush. I was hurried to the top of a
+large inn yard and shoved into a room, or rather a dark shed. The
+innkeeper tried, I was told, to shut and bar the street-door, but it was
+burst open, and the whole of the planking torn down. The mob surged in
+1500 or 2000 strong, led by some _literati_, as I could see through the
+chinks.
+
+There was then a riot in earnest; the men had armed themselves with
+pieces of the doorway, and were hammering at the door and wooden front
+of my room, surging against the door to break it down, howling and
+yelling. _Yang-kwei-tze!_ had been abandoned as too mild, and the yells,
+as I learned afterwards, were such as “Beat her!” “Kill her!” “Burn
+her!” The last they tried to carry into effect. My den had a second
+wooden wall to another street, and the mob on that side succeeded in
+breaking a splinter out, through which they inserted some lighted
+matches, which fell on some straw and lighted it. It was damp, and I
+easily trod it out, and dragged a board over the hole. The place was all
+but pitch-dark, and was full of casks, boards, and chunks of wood. The
+door was secured by strong wooden bars. I sat down on something in front
+of the door with my revolver, intending to fire at the men’s legs if
+they got in, tried the bars every now and then, looked through the
+chinks, felt the position serious—darkness, no possibility of escaping,
+nothing of humanity to appeal to, no help, and a mob as pitiless as
+fiends. Indeed, the phrase, “hell let loose,” applied to the howls and
+their inspiration.
+
+They brought joists up wherewith to break in the door, and at every
+rush—and the rushes were made with a fiendish yell—I expected it to give
+way. At last the upper bar yielded, and the upper part of the door caved
+in a little. They doubled their efforts, and the door in another minute
+would have fallen in, when the joists were thrown down, and in the midst
+of a sudden silence there was the rush, like a swirl of autumn leaves,
+of many feet, and in a few minutes the yard was clear, and soldiers, who
+remained for the night, took up positions there. One of my men, after
+the riot had lasted for an hour, had run to the _yamen_ with the news
+that the people were “murdering a foreigner,” and the mandarin sent
+soldiers with orders for the tumult to cease, which he might have sent
+two hours before, as it can hardly be supposed that he did not know of
+it.
+
+The innkeeper, on seeing my special passport, was uneasy and apologetic,
+but his inn was crowded, he had no better room to give me, and I was too
+tired and shaken to seek another. I was half inclined to return to Wan,
+but, in fact, though there was much clamour and hooting in several
+places, I was only actually attacked once again, and am very glad that I
+persevered with my journey.
+
+Knowing that my safety was assured, I examined what seemed as if it
+might have been a death-trap, and found it was a lumber-room, black and
+ruinous, with a garret above, of the floor of which little remained but
+the joists. My floor was in big holes, with heaps and much rubbish of
+wood and plaster, and became sloppy in the night from leakage from the
+roof. There was just clear space enough for my camp bed. It was very
+cold and draughty, and after my candle was lighted rows of sloping eyes
+were perseveringly applied to the chinks on the street side, and two
+pairs to those on the other side. I should like to have done their
+owners some harmless mischief!
+
+The host’s wife came in to see me, and speaking apologetically of the
+riot, she said, “If a foreign woman went to your country, you’d kill
+her, wouldn’t you?” I have since quite understood what I have heard:
+that several foreign ladies have become “queer” and even insane as the
+result of frights received in riots, and that the wife of one British
+consul actually died as the result. Consul-General Jamieson truly says
+that no one who has heard the howling of an angry Chinese mob can ever
+forget it.
+
+The next morning opened in blessed quiet. There was hardly the usual
+crowd in the inn yard. Carpenters were busy repairing the demolished
+doorway. A new pole had been attached to my chair by the innkeeper.
+There were many soldiers in the street, through which I was carried in
+the rain without my hat. Not a remark was made. Hardly a head was
+turned. It was so perfectly quiet and orderly that after a time the
+_fu-tou_ suggested that I might put on my hat! The events of the day
+before would have appeared a hideous dream but that my shoulders were
+very sore and aching, and that two of the coolies who had been beaten
+for serving a foreigner bore some ugly traces of it. My nerves were
+somewhat shaken, and for some weeks I never entered the low-browed gate
+of a city without more or less apprehension.
+
+Liang-shan is an ancient and striking city. In the long, narrow main
+street, the houses turn deep-eaved gables, with great horned
+projections, to the roadway. There are many fine temples with their
+fronts profusely and elaborately decorated with dragons, divinities, and
+arabesques in coloured porcelain relief, or in deeply and admirably
+carved grey plaster, the effect of the latter closely resembling stone.
+The city manufactures paper from the _Brousonetia papyrifera_, both fine
+and coarse, printed cottons, figured silks, and large quantities of the
+imitation houses, horses, men, furniture, trunks, etc., which are burned
+to an extravagant extent at burials.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXI.
+                    LIANG-SHAN HSIEN TO HSIA-SHAN-PO
+
+
+It was a relief to get out into the open country, though for some time I
+felt shaken by the two hours’ tension of the day before. The drizzle in
+which I started soon developed into heavy rain, which lasted for nine
+hours, turning every rivulet into a tawny torrent. It was a very
+interesting journey even in the downpour. Liang-shan is on the western
+slope of one among a cluster of ranges, the steep eastern side of which
+I climbed the day before, and after passing through the town the road
+dips down into a rolling plain, extending widely in every direction, at
+that time a great inundated swamp of rice-fields of every size and
+shape, threaded by a narrow stone road, and abounding in small islands,
+frequently walled round, on which the large farmhouses stand, screened
+by bamboo and cypress groves, or temples, ofttimes red, with magnificent
+trees and priests’ dwellings surrounding them.
+
+A background of tall pines, cypresses, and bamboo threw into striking
+relief a temple of unusual appearance, with a fine canopy roof of glazed
+green tiles, the front rising from the water, the rest of the “island”
+enclosed by a wall of imperial red. I reached it by wading a hundred
+yards in very chilly water, and found a plain, square, open building of
+red sandstone, surrounded by a broad, stone platform. In the centre are
+two fine palms, in stone vases, and a severe _pai-fang_, on the north
+platform a plain stone altar, and a tablet with an incised inscription,
+and behind this a wall with incised inscriptions divided by pilasters;
+all is severely handsome and absolutely plain. It is a temple of
+Confucius, and the simplicity of the few which I was able to enter
+contrasts boldly with the crowded and grotesque monstrosities of the
+Buddhist and Taoist temples. Truly the “Great Teacher” was one of the
+greatest of men, for he has cast into a mould of iron for two thousand
+years the thought, social order, literature, government, and education
+of 400,000,000 of our race.
+
+Passing Sar-pu, a village composed almost entirely of fine temples, and
+through Chin-tai, where the temples are of great size, and the carved
+stone front of one of them of great beauty, under many highly decorated
+_pai-fangs_, and past some Chinese Chatsworths and Eatons, and large
+“brick noggin” farmhouses, we re-entered hills and afterwards mountains,
+crossing the beautiful pass of Fuh-ri-gan by a fine stone staircase of
+over 5000 broad, easy steps, with a handsome kerbstone, all in perfect
+repair! These stairs begin at the bridge and inn of Shan-rang-sar, more
+Tyrolese than Chinese in aspect. Indeed, every day I dropped some
+preconceived ideas of what Chinese scenery and buildings must be like,
+and I hope that my readers will drop theirs, if they are of willow plate
+origin, before they have finished this volume.
+
+I had now entered on the fringe of one of the richest coal regions in
+the world, seams of coal, practically inexhaustible, apparently
+underlying the whole surface of Central SZE CHUAN. Limestone mountains
+and cliffs, and caverned limestone with an infinite variety of ferns,
+had suggested the probable neighbourhood of coal, and in these mountains
+it is to be encountered everywhere. It crops out even in the redundant
+vegetation by the roadside, and near the mountain hamlets the children,
+with small baskets, hack it daily with rough knives, for cooking
+purposes. It appears in lumps along the beds of streams, in the sides of
+the tanks in which bamboo is macerated for paper, and in the
+mountain-sides, where small collieries, with most primitive “workings,”
+exist.
+
+My attention was several times attracted by sheds among the trees, and
+by men and boys crawling out of holes in the cliff side with baskets,
+the black contents of which they deposited in these. Also, occasionally
+scrambling up to a black orifice in the limestone, I came upon a
+“gallery,” four feet high, down which Lilliputian wagons, holding about
+one hundredweight each, descend from “workings” within along a tramway
+only twelve inches wide. From some holes boys crept out with small
+creels, holding not more than twenty-five pounds, roped on their backs,
+and little room to spare above them. All these “workings” between
+Liang-shan and Wen-kia-cha, sixty _li_,[38] were at a considerable
+height above the torrent, which dashed down what was frequently only a
+ravine, and all that could be seen were small borings just large enough
+to admit a man crawling, or, in some cases, the small trollies before
+mentioned.
+
+[Illustration: A CHINESE CHATSWORTH.]
+
+In that mountain region, in which I gathered from many symptoms that the
+people are specially superstitious, the coal seams are only worked on a
+level, not downwards, for fear of grazing the Dragon’s back and making
+him shake the earth, but they cannot say whether it is a universal
+dragon, the curves of whose tremendous spine are omnipresent, or a
+provincial or a local dragon! On the plain from which I had ascended
+fuel is scarce and dear, and strings of coolies, each carrying two
+hundredweight, supply it with coal from these mountains. Lump coal,
+burning with but little smoke or ash, is worth 2_s._ 6_d._ per ton at
+the “pit’s mouth,” and is retailed at from 4_s._ to 5_s._ per ton,
+according to distance, in the low country. Later I saw many collieries
+worked with some skill and with a very large “output.”
+
+Though it rained heavily all day, the atmosphere was fairly clear. That
+pass of Fuh-ri-gan is as beautiful as the finest parts of Japan, which
+it much resembles—lonely, romantic, shut in by high-peaked, fantastic
+mountains, forest-clothed to their summits, and cleft by deep ravines,
+with tumbling torrents, fern and lycopodium-fringed. In the forest there
+were six varieties of coniferæ, oaks, chestnuts, walnuts, the
+_Cunninghames Sinensis_ (?), a tree of great beauty and much utility,
+the fine evergreen _Hoangho_ (_Ficus infectoria_), the _Xylosma
+japonica_, with laurel-like leafage, and many others, including a
+leafless tree which was a mass of pink blossoms. Of evergreen shrubs and
+trailers I counted thirty-seven near the roadside!
+
+But the speciality of these passes is the bamboo. There are high hills
+forested to their summits with different varieties, a singular and
+beautiful sight, with an infinite variety of colour. There are the
+golden-plumed bamboo, with its golden stems and the golden light under
+its golden plumes, the plumed dark green and the plumed light green,
+full-plumed things of perfect beauty, as tall as forest trees of average
+height. There is also a feathery bamboo with branches pointing upwards,
+a creation of exquisite grace, light and delicate, with its stem as
+straight as an arrow, and attaining a height of fully seventy feet, all
+forming a dense but not an entangled mass. At one point, 1400 straight,
+broad “altar stairs, slope through darkness up to God,” a majestic
+sight, for from either side the great green and golden plumed bamboos
+droop gracefully to meet each other, and the staircase mounts upward in
+a golden twilight. Altogether that pass is a glory of trees, ferns, and
+trailers, mostly sub-tropical, and is noisy with the clash of torrents,
+though silent as to bird-life. During the whole day the only birds I saw
+were some blue jays.
+
+But not sub-tropical was the raw, damp, penetrating wind, which blew
+half a gale at the top of the pass, and pretty miserable was the inn in
+the fertile, green, malarious hole to which we made an abrupt descent of
+1500 feet. My stout “regulation” waterproof, which had withstood the
+storm and stress of many Asiatic journeys, had given way; the waterproof
+covers of most of the baggage, torn by rough usage, let the water
+through; and my cushions were soaked. I had only six inches to spare on
+either side of my stretcher in the absolutely dark and noxious hole in
+which I slept. The candle-wicks were wet, spluttered, and went out, and
+I had to eat in the darkness rendered visible by the inn lamp.
+
+But in such country places the people are quiet and harmless, and I sat
+for a long time in the open public space, where the black rafters
+dripped black slime. The attempt at a fire was in the centre of the clay
+floor, over which a big black pot hung from the roof. My drowned coolies
+huddled up in their wadded quilts, and I in a blanket, and two wretched,
+ragged, hatless, shoeless, half-clad _chai-jen_, were all trying to
+light the end of a green sapling with some damp straw. It was truly
+deplorable, squalor without picturesqueness, and failing to get warm, I
+went shivering to bed.
+
+The following morning was dry and fair, with a little feeble sunshine.
+Crossing the Sai-pei-tu Pass, at a height of 1720 feet, on which, as on
+the Fuh-ri-gan, there were several collieries, all respectful to the
+dragon’s back, we passed through very interesting country all day, at
+times fascinating from its novelty.
+
+[Illustration: BRIDGE AND INN OF SHAN-RANG-SAR.]
+
+Cities of refuge crowded on nearly inaccessible rocks can be seen miles
+away, one a special marvel, built anywhere and everywhere on an isolated
+rock, resembling Mont St. Michel, another with a striking temple of
+enormous size for its centre, with monastic buildings, fortifications,
+“brick noggin” houses, clinging as they can to the rock, piled one on
+another round it, the whole surrounded by an embattled wall following
+the contour of the rock. They are second in picturesqueness only to the
+lama-serais of Tibet.
+
+As the country became more open, besides these fortified refuges on
+rocky heights, which suggest possible peril, while the frequency with
+which solitary houses occur tells of complete security, there are great
+solitary temples with porcelain fronts in rich colouring, mandarins and
+landowners’ houses rivalling some of our renowned English homes in size
+and stateliness, distilleries, paper and flour mills; and every town and
+large village has its special industry—silk weaving, straw plaiting, hat
+making, dressing hides, iron or brass work, pottery and china,
+chair-making and bamboo furniture generally, indigo dyeing, carving and
+gilding idols, making the red paper enormously used for religious and
+festive purposes, and the imitation gold and silver coins and “shoes”
+burned as offerings to ancestors, etc.
+
+The weather became so grim that of the large mansions, splendid from a
+distance, I was only able to get a very poor photograph of one. The
+mandarin proprietor with many attendants came out to the high road, and
+asked me to “take” his family. I said I could not, for I could not
+finish the portraits in such weather in less than three or four days;
+and then he asked me to be his guest for those days, and he would give
+me a large room. I did not wish to pose as an itinerant photographer,
+and had grave doubts as to what my reception might really be in the
+women’s quarters, and I dreaded the stifling curiosity succeeded by the
+stagnation of dulness, so I excused myself.
+
+The stone bridges on the road are very fine, with piers terminating in
+bold carvings, frequently of dragons, but occasionally comically
+realistic, such as a man carrying an oil basket, a man yawning, a dog
+with his head between his legs, a woman combing a girl’s hair, and the
+like. Three and four arches with a bold spring are frequent; the
+parapets are decorated; and though the road may be only six feet wide,
+on the roadways of some of the bridges three carriages can drive
+abreast. There are other and older bridges in which the piers are heavy
+uprights of stone supporting stone flags occasionally twenty-five and
+even thirty feet long. The new, arched bridges, of which the province
+may well be proud, are sometimes built by subscription, but are often
+the public-spirited gift of a local magnate, whose name and good deed
+are recorded in stone. The wooden bridges, which I found always in good
+repair, are like those of Switzerland, and, like them, have substantial
+roofs frequently double and occasionally treble-tiered, often covered
+with glazed ridge and furrow tiles. Some of these roofs are lined with
+highly polished carnation-red lacquer, in which the names of the donors,
+with complimentary sentences, are deeply incised in gold. In some
+bridges the row of pillars supporting the roof is also lacquered and
+polished. There are several bridges which I crossed in SZE CHUAN of from
+eight to twelve lofty stone arches each, which for stability, beauty,
+span, height, and spring of the arches might compare, and scarcely
+unfavourably, with some of our finest English structures. In China I
+never once had, as in Persia, Korea, and Kashmir, to ford a stream
+because the bridge was either ruinous or too shaky to venture upon.
+
+The industries of the towns and villages produce a large amount of
+traffic on the roads. Strings of coolies going at a dog trot, carrying
+paper, salt, tobacco, dyed cottons, hats, and rush piths for lamps,
+passed us incessantly, but no beasts of burden, and only one saddle
+pony, which tripped rapidly down one of the longest flights of stairs
+with ease and agility. The woods are silent; the call of the handsome
+pheasant to his dowdy mate was the only bird note I heard. There is a
+great paucity of such animals as make our farmyards cheerful. I did not
+see horses or mules anywhere between Wan Hsien and Paoning Fu, or sheep.
+Fowls, geese, and ducks there were in abundance, a few cats, and many
+old dogs, the young ones having been mostly eaten early in the month.
+
+[Illustration: A PORCELAIN TEMPLE.]
+
+The water buffalo ploughs, harrows the rice swamps, turns the grain and
+oil mills, and does many other useful turns. I never saw him used as a
+beast of burden. It is hard to become reconciled to the appearance of
+the great “water ox,” with his mostly hairless, blackish-grey skin, in
+places with a pinkish hue, and his flat head, carried level with his
+uncouth, unwieldy body, his flat nose and curved flat horns, looking
+altogether like a survival from antediluvian days. Buffaloes are
+uncertain in their tempers, though usually very docile, and, like their
+owners, are liable to frenzies of fury when frightened.
+
+[Illustration: THE WATER BUFFALO.]
+
+On this route it was amusing to see very small children leading them out
+to feed on the grass which grows on the edges of the rice dykes, the
+children clambering on their backs and sitting there while they fed
+because there was no other dry land to sit on. They are extremely
+sensitive to the bites of insects, and, for this and other reasons,
+spend much of their leisure time lying in muddy pools which are dug for
+their benefit. A group of their grotesque, flat heads appearing above
+the water is truly comical. They are credited with a great aversion to
+what the Chinese call the “odour” of Europeans, and I have seen a herd
+of them “go for” a foreigner in such an unmistakably vindictive fashion
+that he took to his heels. The buffalo cow gives a small quantity of
+very rich milk with a peculiar flavour. The beef obtainable in SZE CHUAN
+is mostly buffalo, and is often the flesh of an animal which has
+rendered man many years of service.
+
+On that day’s journey the heralds of the short and glorious procession
+of the flowers appeared: plum, peach, and cherry blossom; violets grew
+in shady places; a clematis lighted up the margins of woods with pendent
+clusters of bright yellow bloom; pink and white fumitories made the
+roadside hedges gay; and there were a few others.
+
+The dampness was incredible, and as I had then made nearly two degrees
+north from Wan Hsien, the temperature had fallen, and the mercury hung
+at about 44°. I never knew so damp an atmosphere even in Japan. Ferns,
+mosses, trailers, and all the beauteous vegetation which revels in damp
+abounded. The leafage of the root crops was lush and succulent. There is
+no winter, and though only the last of February, the opium crop, which
+over much of the day’s journey was the principal crop, with maize sown
+between the rows, was eight inches high, and its lower leaves, which are
+used as food by the people and taste like spinach, were served to me
+that night for the first time as a vegetable. Travelling all day in such
+a damp, chilly atmosphere in wet clothes was a little trying. It is
+impossible to dry anything in the small, poor country inns.
+
+We passed through the town of Yun-i, with a street half a mile long, in
+which every house is given up to the making or staining of red and
+yellow paper, which is enormously used, especially at the New Year,
+which was just over. Everyone nearly was more or less smeared with these
+brilliant colours, and the stream outside the town was as red as blood.
+Hundreds of coolies were travelling both north and south with bales of
+this paper.
+
+I had various qualms as I passed through the low, dark gateway,
+specially when I saw men running ahead to collect a crowd, calling in at
+the shops and houses “A foreigner!” or “A foreign devil!” but though the
+crowd completely filled the street and was noisy, it was neither hostile
+nor a mob. One cause of the trouble at Liang-shan was that the
+_chai-jen_, instead of keeping with me, went off to the _yamen_. After
+that I insisted that one of them, when we reached a town or large
+village, should walk in front of my chair. At Yun-i a runner went before
+me striding fiercely, a ragged, scrofulous, shoeless, hatless, wretched
+little fellow, but as he carried the mandarin’s letter, when the people
+crowded and progress was impeded, he waved his arms and pushed them
+right and left, shouting the Chinese equivalent of “In the _kuan’s_
+name.”
+
+[Illustration: ORDINARY COVERED BRIDGE.]
+
+One great feature of that day’s journey was coal. Coal cropped up
+everywhere, and any cutting revealed a seam of coal. Over a
+hundredweight—100 catties—sold for forty _cash_ (about five farthings),
+picked lumps burning with a clear flame. Miners earn twenty _cash_ per
+100 catties, and can get 600 in a day. There is iron in the
+neighbourhood. From one hill I saw a considerable smoke, and the
+_chai-jen_ said it proceeded from large smelting works, but I only give
+this as hearsay. I observed that many articles which I had elsewhere
+seen made of wood are in this region made of iron, and that iron is
+liberally used on household and agricultural implements. In the
+peasants’ houses coal is burned in a hole in the middle of the floor,
+and the smoke finds its way out anywhere, as it used to do in Highland
+hovels.
+
+After a very varied day’s journey the damp cold became so paralysing,
+and the mist so thick, that I halted earlier than usual at the small
+mountain hamlet of Hsai-shan-po, where the wayside inn was new, indeed
+not finished, and consisted only of a central shed with a fire of
+bituminous coal burning with heavy smoke in a hole in the middle of the
+floor, and a room on either side, one occupied by the host, a “decent
+man,” and his well-behaved family. The partitions are lath and plaster,
+the walls beginning a foot from the ground and ending two feet from the
+roof, allowing the entrance of some light, much draught, many hens, a
+few young pigs, and great clouds of smoke.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXII.
+                       HSAI-SHAN-PO TO SIAO-KIAO
+
+
+It was partly to get Sunday’s rest in peace and quietness that I put up
+at this mountain hamlet. I could see to read and write without opening
+the door, and could move round my bed, and the smells were not so awful
+as usual. The central shed was full all day, and occasionally the women
+who came sent a polite request that I would exhibit myself to them, to
+which I always cheerfully responded.
+
+The “enormous size” of my feet, though my shoes are only threes,
+interested them greatly. I was much surprised to find that in SZE CHUAN,
+except among the Manchu or Tartar women and those of a degraded class,
+foot-binding is universal, and that the shoe of even the poorest and
+most hard-worked peasant woman does not exceed four inches in length.
+Though in walking these “golden lilies” look like hoofs, and the women
+hobble on their heels, I have seen them walk thirty _li_ in a day, and
+some have told me that they can walk sixty easily! Two women came to
+Hsia-shan-po from a village twenty-seven mountain _li_ away, merely out
+of curiosity to see me, and returned the same afternoon. The hobble
+looks as if it must be very painful, and is a sort of waddle also.
+
+So great an authority as Dr. Wells Williams writes, “The practice ... is
+more an inconvenient than a dangerous custom,” but I have never seen a
+hospital in China without some case or cases not only of extreme danger
+to the foot or great toe, but of ulcers or gangrene, involving absolute
+loss by amputation. It is fashion, of course. Hitherto a Chinese woman
+with “big feet” is either denationalised or vile; a girl with unbound
+feet would have no chance of marriage, and a bridegroom finding that his
+bride had large feet when he expected small ones, would be abundantly
+justified by public opinion in returning her at once to her parents.[39]
+It is essentially a native Chinese custom of extreme antiquity, and it
+is remarkable that the Manchu conquerors, who successfully imposed the
+“pigtail” and narrow sleeves on the conquered, have totally failed even
+to modify this barbarous custom.
+
+There is no definite age for beginning to bind the feet, but rich
+people’s girls usually have it done between four and five years, and
+poor people’s either at betrothal or between seven and nine years,
+according to local custom. The process is very much more painful at the
+latter age, and the treatment of the big toe is different. In the case
+of the younger child, four of the toes are doubled under the foot, the
+big toe is laid on the top, and the deformity is then tightly bandaged.
+In both cases in adult life, when the process is complete, there is a
+deep cleft across the sole of the foot between the heel and toes, which
+are forced close together. If skilfully bound, this cleft ought to be
+deep and narrow enough to hold a Mexican dollar. The foot-binding
+process is too well known to need any description.
+
+I saw the initial stage both at Canton and Hsia-shan-po. In the last
+case the girl was nearly ten, and was just betrothed to an elderly rich
+man. She suffered agonies, the toes were violently bent under the foot
+and bandaged in that position, and from the sounds I think that some of
+the tendons were ruptured. Yet both she and a small child at Canton
+consented willingly in order to get “rich husbands.” The lot of the
+women of the lower class is rough and severe, and it is not surprising
+that girls long to escape from it by making rich marriages, even though
+the escape be by such a path of pain. Then again the weak feminine
+nature desires to secure the admiration which in poetry, prose, and
+common speech is bestowed on the “golden lilies.”
+
+A woman has to bandage her feet every day of her life, or the “beauty”
+of the shape is lost, and the whole process of deforming them is carried
+out by carefully regulated bandaging. The Chinese women greatly object
+to show their uncovered feet. I have only twice seen them. They are very
+painful objects and the leg, the development of the muscles of the calf
+having been checked, tapers from the knee to the foot, and there are
+folds of superfluous skin. The bandages are not covered by stockings.
+The shoes worn are very soft, and where possible are of embroidered
+silk, with soles of stitched leather. The women make their own, and the
+peasant women sit outside their houses in the evenings stitching or
+embroidering them.
+
+As a set-off against the miseries of foot-binding is the extreme comfort
+of a Chinese woman’s dress in all classes, no corsets or waist-bands, or
+constraints of any kind, and possibly the full development of the figure
+which it allows mitigates or obviates the evils which we should think
+would result from altering its position on the lower limbs. So
+comfortable is Chinese costume, and such freedom does it give, that
+since I wore it in Manchuria and on this journey, I have not been able
+to take kindly to European dress.
+
+But in SZE CHUAN it varies from women’s dress, either Manchu or Chinese,
+as I had previously seen it worn. All Chinese women wear trousers, but
+they show very little, often not at all, below the neat petticoat, with
+its plain back and front and full kilted sides. But in SZE CHUAN (and it
+may be elsewhere) the feminine skirt is discarded, and the trousers,
+either of a sailor cut, or full and tightly swathed round what should be
+ankles, are worn with only the ordinary loose, wide-sleeved garment
+fastening at the side, reaching only to the knees above them. It is a
+hideous dress. The petticoat is only worn by outcasts, and this has
+compelled some of the missionary ladies, who wear Chinese dress, to
+adopt the wide trousers. I never became reconciled to them. The loose
+upper garment and half jacket, half sleeved cloak, is most convenient,
+as for changes of seasons only easily carried changes of underclothing
+are needed.
+
+After the disturbance at Liang-shan I took my revolver, which I had
+previously carried in the well of my chair, “into common wear,” putting
+it into a very pacific looking cotton bag, and attached it to my belt
+under this capacious garment, hoping devoutly that its six ball
+cartridges might always repose peacefully in their chambers. It is most
+unwise to let firearms be seen in Chinese travelling.
+
+From Hsia-shan-po onwards the country is less romantic. We had
+previously left the main road, and encountered Chinese roads at their
+worst, narrow dykes passing through flooded rice-fields, or through
+farms where the farmers gradually nibble the road away, or convey it
+tortuously through their own farmyards, or in a few cases absorb it
+altogether. The mud for days was deep. It was impossible to walk unless
+equipped with an arrangement which attached three spikes to the heel of
+the boot or sandal. The width of the road was usually twelve inches,
+enough for single file, but when two strings of men carrying chairs or
+burdens met, the difficulties were great, as there was always the risk
+of slipping off the road into two feet of chilly water and slime. So
+when my chair-bearers saw another chair in the distance they yelled as
+loud as they could, expecting the other chair to give place, and edge
+off where the strip of _terra firma_ happened to widen a little.
+
+On one occasion, however, we met a portly man in a closed chair,
+travelling with only two bearers, and, in spite of yells, he came
+straight on till our poles were nearly touching. The clamour was
+tremendous, my seven men and his two all shouting and screaming at once,
+as if in a perfect fury, while he sat in supercilious calm, I achieving
+the calm, but not the superciliousness. In the midst of the _fracas_ his
+chair and its bearers went over into the water. The noise was
+indescribable, and my bearers, whom I cannot acquit of having had
+something to do with the disaster, went off at a run with yells and
+peals of laughter, leaving the traveller floundering in the mire, not
+breathing, but roaring execrations.
+
+There are roads “of sorts” to every village and hamlet. The one I was
+travelling on was called by courtesy a main road. There was nothing
+“main” about it but the bridges, which were always in good repair, and
+four or five times its width. Had it been reduced to its present
+dimensions by successful nibblings, or were the bridges built in a
+glowing prophetic instinct, I wonder? The magistrate of the district is
+nominally responsible for keeping the roads in order, but responsibility
+is an elastic term in China. As in Korea, he has the power to order men
+out to work at repairs, but he rarely does so unless he gets notice of a
+forthcoming visit of a high official, for the people hate work without
+pay, and he avoids this method of becoming unpopular.
+
+Nothing could be worse than the road which I travelled for some days. To
+walk was to slide, wade, slip, and fall in the deep mud; to “ride” gave
+me the unpleasing spectacle of my coolies doing the same, exposing me to
+sundry abrupt changes of position, and the difficulty of passing chairs
+and laden porters on the road made progress slow and tiresome. Yet much
+produce was on the move, giving the impression that traffic would
+increase largely if there were better means of communication. One of the
+many needs of China is good roads. There are many rivers in SZE CHUAN,
+but its physical configuration usually prevents the linking of these by
+canals, as in the level eastern provinces, and these infamous roads
+hamper trade very considerably.
+
+Raw, cold, drizzling hours succeeded Hsia-shan-po. The country is less
+peopled, and the dwellings decidedly poorer; the corries with their
+large farmhouses disappeared, and there was even a stretch of gravelly,
+desolate scenery. Wherever the land is unfitted for rice culture the
+population becomes thin, as the price of this staff of life is so much
+enhanced by land carriage as to render it unattainable.
+
+I crossed the pretty pass of Kyin-pan-si, and ferried the Kiu Ho, a
+clear, bright stream. There is very much opium grown in that region, and
+some sugarcane, as well as all the usual cereals and root crops. “Small
+_cash_” appeared, and continued for three days the currency of the
+region, increasing the exasperation of all transactions. The Kiu Ho is
+navigable for fair-sized junks considerably above the point at which I
+crossed it, and there was much traffic in coal at Kiu Hsien, a
+prefectural city finely situated on the cliffs and hills above it.
+
+Incredible filth, indescribable odours, which ought to receive a strong
+Anglo-Saxon name, grime, forlornness, bustle, business, and discordant
+noises characterise Chinese cities, and the din of Kiu Hsien was
+deafening. I was carried from the river up a fine, new, broad flight of
+stone stairs, at the top of which a great crowd was in readiness to
+receive me, but the _chai-jen_, whose rags hardly covered them, and who
+turned out to be beggars to whom the right of escorting me had been
+sold, cleared the way, and turning aside at the deep, dark city gate,
+along a narrow street running under the wall, I was landed among the
+crowds and horrors of the yard of a Chinese city inn by no means of the
+first class. However, I got a room, which, though small, dirty, and
+tumbling to pieces, had an opening upon the roof of a lean-to, used for
+the malodorous purpose of drying vegetables, overhanging the river, and
+as I had both air and light I felt in Elysium.
+
+While I was eating my curry, as usual from a piece of millboard on my
+lap, with a Jaeger sheet pinned round my shoulders—for it was very
+cold—two _yamen_ officials, in rich brocaded silks and satins, entered,
+and asked to see my passport, which they copied, using my camp bed for a
+table. Be-dien was much offended, for it is outrageous, according to
+Chinese etiquette, for men to enter a woman’s room. They asked me why my
+passport gave me “rank,” and made me “equal to the consuls,” and how a
+woman could “belong to the _literati_,” to which questions, as at that
+time I was ignorant of the contents of the document, I could give no
+intelligent replies.
+
+They told me that Kiu Hsien has 100 schools (in China numbers are always
+round), and is the centre of a large trade in opium, tobacco, packing
+paper, and straw hats.
+
+Rooms in Chinese inns usually have good bolts, but this had none, and
+after dismissing Be-dien it cost me much time and labour to barricade
+the door. There was an instance of superstition on the day’s journey. I
+got out of the chair the wrong way, and the bearers were scared. They
+said it would cause them to die within a year, and they offered incense
+sticks at the next shrine to avert the calamity. In the morning I was in
+the family room at the inn when the morning devotions were performed to
+some gilded strips of paper inscribed with characters. The householder
+put before them some lighted incense sticks, and bowed three times.
+
+The circumstances of the next day’s journey were decidedly unfavourable.
+We had ten hours of an infamous road in a torrent of rain with a very
+cold wind. I could scarcely ease the bearers at all, for my leather
+shoes slipped so badly on the mud, that, even with a stout stick and
+Be-dien’s help, I could not keep on my feet. The road, which was a dyke
+between flooded rice-fields, never reached two feet in width. It had
+once been flagged, but some of the stones had disappeared altogether,
+some were tilted up, and others were tilted down, and it was truly
+horrible. The Chinese hate rain, and, above all, getting their feet wet,
+and I admired the jolly, manly way in which my poor fellows in their two
+thin cotton garments trudged through the driving rain and slippery slush
+till they had done twenty-two miles. When they reached at dusk, quite
+exhausted, the wretched village of Ching-sze-yao, there was no inn, and
+it was only after I had sat in the rain in the village roadway for an
+hour that the _chai-jen_ induced a man to take us into a deplorable
+place.
+
+Shelter it was not. The roof dripped from fifty points, and the walls,
+having shrunk from the joists, let in the cold wind all round. There was
+no fire but the fire-pots used for cooking, for the use of which there
+was much squabbling, and no light, except from a clay saucer of oil,
+over the rim of which some rush pith projected. I was wet to the knees,
+my canvas bed was soaked, and all else, from the spoiling of waterproof
+bags and covers by the hot sun of the two previous summers, but when I
+saw the coolies lying on damp straw in their undried garments, each with
+a fire-pot between his knees, and not a quilt to cover him, I felt very
+Mark Tapleyish, specially when the house-_frau_ brought me a fire-pot
+with which to warm my hands. The poverty and discomfort of this house
+typified the condition in which thousands of the Chinese peasantry live.
+They were good-natured people, not over-curious, and the children, who
+were eaten up by skin diseases, were gentle and docile.
+
+The next day, March 4th, was one of clear, grey twilight, without either
+wind or rain. In the last fifty miles the country had changed very
+considerably, and for the worse. The passes over the mountain ranges had
+brought us into the “Red Basin” of Richthofen, which is estimated as
+embracing about two-thirds of the province in extent, and, perhaps,
+eight or nine tenths of its wealth and population. It is supposed to
+have an area of about 100,000 square miles, and a population of from
+40,000,000 to 54,000,000. The soil everywhere is of a deep, bright,
+rich, red colour, and contrasts with the charm of the varied greenery
+which, in the absence of winter, the “Red Basin” produces during the
+whole year.
+
+Probably no part of China supports so large a population to the acre,
+and it is increasing so fast that thousands of men by unremitting toil
+only keep themselves and their families a little above starvation point,
+coolie labour being so redundant as to depress wages to the lowest
+level. The soil is most carefully cultivated, the soft, red rock being
+easily crumbled down by the peasants’ simple implements, and the whole
+surface is treated by the methods which we term “garden cultivation,”
+which in that beneficent climate, and with the Chinese habit of
+carefully preserving the refuse of towns and villages and spreading it
+on the land, so that the whole, both from plant and animal life, is
+returned to the soil, two, three, and sometimes even four crops are
+produced within the year!
+
+Within a few days’ journey lie the depopulated but fertile valleys of
+YUNNAN, a noble field for SZE CHUAN emigration; but it has not occurred
+to the Government to bear the considerable expense of deporting a few
+millions of the toilers of the “Red Basin” to the good lands calling for
+population, supplying them with seed, and supporting them for six
+months! The move would tax the resources of a better-organised
+administration.
+
+SZE CHUAN is a rich and superb province of boundless resources, and I
+believe, from what I saw and heard, that the trading and farming classes
+are very well off, and are able to afford many luxuries, but I certainly
+saw several overcrowded regions of the “Red Basin,” where the condition
+of the people deeply moved my sympathy and pity, for a docile, cheerful,
+industrious, harmless population, free, as rural poverty is apt to be,
+from crime and gross vice, is giving the utmost of its strength for a
+wage which never permits to man, wife, or child the comfortable
+sensation of satiety, and which when rice rises in price changes the
+habitual short commons into starvation.
+
+There were no more grand porcelain-fronted temples, large country
+mansions, and rich farmhouses, and instead of parallel ranges cleft by
+fine passes in the grey limestone, there is a singular formation, red
+sandstone hills and hummocks all more or less naturally terraced, as are
+also the sides of the many pear-shaped dells which lie among them; red
+cliffs, one above another, from fifteen to thirty feet high, supporting
+narrow strips of red soil about two feet deep; circular hills, also of
+some height, diminishing into truncated cones, with natural circular
+terraces, more or less aided by art, running regularly round them, and
+usually a single tree, tops what one is tempted to call the “erection.”
+There is a fatiguing conventionality about that part of the Red Basin.
+
+One may, indeed, regard the whole of this vast basin as a mass of low
+terraced hills and valleys of no width, destitute of any plains but the
+great Chengtu plain, free from floods owing to its configuration, and
+drained by fine navigable rivers, with many navigable ramifications,
+while coal, both hard and soft, is believed to underlie the whole. Salt,
+petroleum, and iron abound, and copper, silver, gold, and lead are found
+on the western border, as well as enormous quantities of nitrate of soda
+and sulphur.
+
+This great depression may be regarded as a sort of winter garden, over
+much of which the mercury rarely falls below 45°, and a canopy of clouds
+hanging over it all the winter keeps in the moist heat.[40] It is said
+that winter sunshine is so rare in Chungking that the dogs bark at the
+sun when they see it. For all the rich productions of this Red Basin,
+which have kept the balance of trade for years in favour of SZE CHUAN,
+there is, let me repeat, but the one outlet: the Yangtze.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIII.
+                      SIAO-KIAO TO HSIEH-TIEN-TZE
+
+
+The whole country is an undulating sea of green, patterned with red—in
+truth, rather monotonous for five days of journeying. The mud was
+abominable all the time, but with straw shoes and grippers I managed to
+do a good deal of walking. On several days my well-paid chairmen
+travelled “like gentlemen,” for labour is so abundant and cheap that
+they found plenty of coolies to carry my chair for forty _cash_ for four
+miles (about a penny), and even for less! Every house has its opium
+field, its bamboo and palm groves, fruit trees and cedars, while the
+_Rhus vernicifera_, or varnish tree, the _Aleurites cordata_, or oil
+tree, and the _Cupressus funebris_, which it is impossible to avoid
+calling “the Noah’s ark tree,” abound. The cultivation, except the
+ploughing for rice, is entirely by hand, and is so careful that it is
+easy to see that most of the indigenous plants have become extinct.
+Violas, fumitories, and the _anemone Japonica_, all of which grow
+profusely, but solely along the margins of the roads, were all that then
+or later I saw in the Red Basin; in fact, husbandry has made a clean
+sweep of “weeds.”
+
+The farmhouses in that region are of mud, with thatched roofs, and look
+poor. Straw plaiting and the making of the very large straw hats which
+the coolies wear in summer are the great industries. Bad, nay infamous,
+roads and small _cash_ for three days showed their power of crippling
+trade. Small villages were numerous, but on a journey of 185 _li_ the
+picturesque little town of King-mien-sze, on the rocky, picturesque,
+non-navigable King-Ho, which I ferried, was the only approach to a
+centre of population.
+
+When I reached the small town of Siao-kiao I found it greatly crowded
+with traders, and the innkeepers so unwilling to receive a foreigner
+that I had to urge my treaty rights, and then was only grudgingly
+accommodated. There was a very ugly rush, and then a riot, which lasted
+an hour and a half, at the very beginning of which my _chai-jen_ ran
+away. My door was broken down with much noise and yells of “Foreign
+devil!” “Horse-racer!” “Child-eater!” but an official arriving in the
+nick of time, prevented further damage. He ought to have appeared an
+hour and a half before. These rows are repulsive and unbearably
+fatiguing after a day’s journey, and always delayed my dinner
+unconscionably, which, as it was practically my only meal in the day,
+was trying. The entry in my diary for that evening was, “Wretched
+evening; riotous crowd; everything anxious and odious; noises; too cold
+to sleep.” My lamp sputtered and went out, and my matches were too damp
+to strike. It is objectionable to be in the dark, you know not where,
+with walls absolutely precarious, and in the midst of the coarse shouts
+of rough men to hear a feeble accompaniment of rats eating one’s few
+things. I object strongly to a mixed crowd blocking up my doorway or
+breaking in my door, for every one of the crowd knows better; even the
+most ignorant coolie knows well that to intrude into a woman’s room or
+in any way violate the privacy which is hers by immemorial usage and
+rigid etiquette is an outrage for which there is no forgiveness, judging
+from a Chinese standpoint.
+
+The mannerless, brutal, coarse, insolent, conceited, cowardly roughs of
+the Chinese towns, ignorant beyond all description, live in a state of
+filth which is indescribable and incredible, in an inconceivable
+beastliness of dirt, among odours which no existing words can describe,
+and actually call Japanese “_barbarian_ dwarfs”! I wondered daily more
+at the goodness of people who are missionaries to the Chinese in the
+interior cities, not at their coming out the first time, but at their
+_coming back, knowing what they come to_. The village people are quite
+different, and doubtless have attractive qualities; and it must be
+admitted that Christianity does produce an external refinement among
+those who receive it, which is very noticeable. Having relieved my
+hoarded disgusts by these remarks, I will proceed with my narrative.
+
+The days, though cold and very wet, were a great rest. There was not
+even the guiding a horse and preventing him from fighting, to distract
+the thoughts from dwelling on any topic I chose to concentrate them
+upon. My possessions, except my camera and plates, had been spoilt long
+ago, so there was nothing to be anxious about; and a few rolls more or
+less in the red mud did not matter, for my clothes were thickly
+plastered days before. I could not fare worse than I had done, so I was
+not anxious about the night’s halt; so during the day I revelled in
+freedom, leisure, and solitude; but when night came, and I sat shivering
+in some fœtid hole, not fit for a decent beast, with only a bamboo
+railing between it and the pigsty, I often thought Chinese travelling an
+utter abomination![41]
+
+Even the most monotonous part of the route had many interests and some
+novelties. It is a marvel how the intense homogeneity of China, its
+apparent inflexibility, and its actual grooviness, are incessantly
+disturbed by local custom. The race, it is true, is always the same, and
+the general features of the costume; every Chinese not a convict has a
+shaven head and a long queue, and every woman hobbles on deformed feet;
+but when it comes to environments they differ from day to day, and
+sometimes from hour to hour. Here in SZE CHUAN house architecture varies
+almost from day to day; each river has its own form of boat; in one
+district all loads are slung from the bamboo over the shoulder; in
+another they are carried in wicker creels fitted on wooden pack-saddles
+on human backs. In one prefecture the purse is a skin bag attached to
+the waist; in another it is a stout wooden cylinder tapering at both
+ends carried across the back, and so with many other things. Food varies
+with the locality, and crops with the soil. One district rejects large
+_cash_, and others small, while some use a mixture. Headgear varies
+greatly. Blue turbans are much worn. The shape of the straw hat
+indicates the district from which the wearer comes, and local fashion
+tyrannises even over baggage coolies. I wanted to give to each of mine
+one of the noble straw hats made near Kiao, but they “could not” wear
+them in Wan Hsien and its neighbourhood, any more than a fashionable
+English girl “could” wear a last season’s hat.
+
+In bridges the varieties are endless, and in _pai fangs_ and temple
+fronts. This ceaseless diversity in unity is very attractive in Chinese
+travelling, but it has its drawbacks, for on many occasions when, owing
+to weather or hurry or some other tyranny, I did not photograph some
+striking peculiarity I never met with it again. It also exposes the
+veracity of travellers to suspicion. One may describe some peculiarity
+which is universal in one region, such as the graceful circular or
+pointed arches of its bridges, while another, whose sole idea of a
+Chinese bridge is stone uprights carrying flat stone slabs such as the
+huge lumbering structure “which, with its wearisome but needful length,
+bestrides” the Min at Foo-chow, accuses him of having drawn upon his
+imagination for his facts.
+
+For three days of cold, grim, drizzly, or incredibly damp weather, in
+which natural terraces gave way to artificial, and hills to rolls, and
+roads occasionally disappeared altogether, and the dull green of the
+sugarcane at times overspread the country, and the scarcity of rice
+lands now and then involved a corresponding scarcity of people, we
+travelled so awful a road that it mattered little when it was altogether
+lost. It had long since degenerated into the slimy top of a rice dyke a
+few inches wide, with a flagstone tipping up now and then to show what
+it once claimed to be. The bad weather put a stop to traffic. The only
+chair we met in three days came to grief close to us. The bearers fell,
+the chair was smashed into matchwood, and its occupant, a somewhat
+pompous-looking merchant, was deposited in three feet of slush alive
+with frogs, a disaster which afforded my men cause for unbounded
+hilarity for the rest of the day.
+
+The road is so narrow because the farmers grudge every inch taken from
+their fields. As one is carried along, the chair hangs over the flooded
+rice land on either side, and when anyone is seen in the distance he is
+warned by a series of simultaneous yells to turn off on an intersecting
+dyke. On one of these days nearly eleven hours of hard travel only
+produced a result of eighteen miles! My men, though always wet to the
+skin and often falling as well as slipping, never flagged or grumbled,
+and trudged along joking and laughing, splendid “raw material”!
+
+The people were not hostile in this country region, and the rain
+repressed the curiosity which I found specially irksome during the hour
+I spent twice daily sitting in a village street while my men breakfasted
+and dined. I became daily more convinced that the mandarins have it in
+their power to repress any overt expression of anti-foreign feeling. At
+Kiao, when I left the inn yard where the riot occurred the evening
+before, though it was crowded, the people were perfectly orderly, and
+though the long, narrow street was lined with men standing three and
+four deep on each side, just leaving room for the chair to pass, no one
+spoke or moved.
+
+That same day the _chai-jen_ were changed at the neat little city of
+Ying-san Hsien, in the centre of a region where the chief industries are
+making bamboo baskets, and straw plait for hats, and I sat for an hour
+near the _yamen_ entrance, considering the extraordinary amount of
+business which custom imposes on a Chinese mandarin.
+
+We have a habit, partly warrantable—for the official class in China is
+the worst of “the classes”—of speaking of “the mandarins” as we might
+speak of “the wolves” or “the vultures,” a rough classification which,
+like similar methods, is by no means trustworthy. Mandarins are good and
+bad. The system under which they hold office has a strong tendency to
+make them bad. Nevertheless there are some good, just, honest men among
+them, who do the best they can for their districts during their terms of
+office, earn the esteem and gratitude of the people, and leave office as
+poor as they entered it. With regard to the bad, their opportunities for
+squeezing and oppressing are not so enormous as is often supposed, being
+limited by what I am inclined to call _the right of rebellion_. When an
+appeal to law comes to involve wholesale bribery, and taxation becomes
+grinding, then a local rebellion on a small or large scale occurs, the
+offending mandarin is driven out, the Throne quietly appoints a
+successor, and peace prevails once more.
+
+A system in which official salaries are not a “living wage” opens the
+door to large peculation, but withal China is not a heavily taxed
+country, and the people are anything but helpless in official hands. In
+spite of all the monstrous corruption which exists, general security and
+good order prevail, and China has been increasing in wealth and
+population for nearly two centuries.
+
+What we call mandarins (_kuans_) are all the magistrates subordinate
+through the intendants of circuits (_Taotai_) to the _Tsung-tuh_ of a
+province or provinces, the Governor-General, whom we call a Viceroy.
+They are prefects or head magistrates of departments, and magistrates
+for the subdivisions of departments. Under these, but not known as
+_kuans_, are mandarins’ secretaries, often very powerful persons,
+clerks, registrars, and an army of subordinates, for whom their
+superiors are responsible. The Chinese call the last “rats under the
+altar,” and fear them greatly. Indeed, it is said that the dread of
+getting into their clutches has a more deterrent effect on evil-doers
+than any prospect of punishment. Every mandarin, down to the smallest
+magistrate, has office secretaries for investigating cases, recording
+evidence, keeping accounts, filing papers, writing and transmitting
+despatches, and other formal functions.
+
+Theoretically the relation between magistrate and people is strictly
+paternal. Some degree of what we call corruption is inseparable from
+Oriental officialism, and when kept within moderate bounds does not
+disturb the filial feeling. The whole of a mandarin’s time is nominally
+at the service of the people of his district. Of some, perhaps of a
+goodly number throughout China, this devotion to local interests may be
+literally true. Access to his tribunal may ensure a fair trial, and
+probably in a majority of cases little injustice is done when a case
+once comes before him.
+
+A gong was hung up at the _yamen_ gate, where I have so long kept my
+readers shivering in the damp east wind. I am told that such a one hangs
+up at every similar gate, and that on hearing it the magistrate is bound
+to come out and attend to the complaint. But in practice a man has to
+bribe his way from the gate to the judgment-seat, and from the
+gatekeeper to the private secretary, and would be likely to be beaten if
+he touched the gong. Though the mandarin may be willing to decide
+justly, the underlings through whom alone approach to the judicial chair
+is possible do not share his scruples. A man who can afford to grease
+copiously the palms of runners, clerks, and secretaries, men unpaid or
+underpaid, is sure to see his petition on the top of the pile on the
+magistrate’s table, while the poorer litigant finds his delayed _sine
+die_.
+
+[Illustration: A GROUP OF _KUANS_ (MANDARINS).]
+
+It is chiefly on the underpaid and hard-worked magistracy of China that
+the existence of government depends. No men in mercantile positions work
+so hard as these officials, and if they are conscientious, all the worse
+for them. Their duties are most multifarious, and are both defined and
+undefined, executive, fiscal, judicial, and at times even military. They
+are responsible, not only for the taxes of their districts, but for
+their order and quietness, depending for much on subordinates whom they
+cannot trust, and during war, rebellion, and the floods and famines
+which occur with painful frequency are compelled to an almost sleepless
+vigilance, lest anything should go wrong, and they should be reported to
+the Throne. It is said truly that on the Hsien or Fu magistrate the work
+of at least six men devolves. He is at once tax commissioner, civil and
+criminal judge, coroner, treasurer, sheriff, and much besides, and he is
+supposed to have an exhaustive knowledge of everything within his
+bounds. And withal he must so dexterously regulate his squeezes as that
+it shall be possible for him to exist, for on his salary, attenuated as
+it is by forfeitures, he cannot.
+
+Into the midst of this amount of responsibility, multifarious duties,
+and overwork, comes the foreigner with his treaty rights, a new and
+difficult element to deal with, and who may be an arrogant, bullying,
+and ignorant person. I am not apologising for the crimes of mandarins. I
+have suffered much from the violence of Chinese mobs, permitted, as I
+believe, if not instigated, by officialism. But I have on several
+occasions declined to make a formal complaint and hamper a magistrate
+because of my sympathy with his difficulties. On the one side there are
+orders from Peking sent down through the Viceroy that foreigners
+travelling are to be protected, and that their rights under the treaties
+are to be secured to them; on the other there is the anti-foreign
+feeling which has been inflamed for years past by agitators, certain of
+the secret societies, and what are known as the “Hunan Tracts,” and
+which may be provoked into an explosion by any unintentional
+indiscretion of a foreigner, or, as in my case, by such an outrage on
+custom as travelling in an open chair! The riot occurs; the foreigner
+suffers in his person or goods; he lodges a complaint, is backed up by
+his consul; and the mandarin, who may have been miles away from the
+scene of the occurrence, is held responsible, and is possibly degraded.
+The large number of European and American missionaries who have become
+residents in SZE CHUAN during the last twelve years have also increased
+the evil considerably. So far as I saw and learned, these men and women,
+with a very few exceptions, are slaves to the scrupulosity of their
+observance of Chinese custom and etiquette so far as they know them, and
+to their anxiety to avoid giving offence in the country in which they
+live.
+
+But, to begin with, they are foreigners, “foreign devils”; their eyes,
+their complexions, their ways of sitting and carrying their hands are
+repulsive, and the belief, sometimes piteous, that they are
+“child-eaters,” and use the eyes and hearts of children in medicine, is
+now spread universally. Then they have come, if not, as many believe, as
+spies and political agents, to teach a foreign and Western religion,
+which is to subvert Chinese nationality, to wreck the venerated social
+order introduced by Confucius, to destroy the reverence and purity of
+domestic life and the loyalty to ancestors, and to introduce abominable
+customs.
+
+This is, I think, a faithful view of missionary aims from a Chinese
+standpoint, and, bearing in mind the extreme ignorance and intense
+conservatism of the Chinese, it is not wonderful that there should be
+continual small disturbances, or that these should have culminated in
+the great anti-missionary riots in SZE CHUAN in 1895, in which a large
+number of the missionaries had to fly, and many more owed their lives to
+the protection given them by the mandarins in their _yamens_.
+
+_I_ would not hold the mandarins responsible for the whole of these
+outbreaks, though they are and must be held so, but the difficulties of
+their position are much complicated by the presence within their
+jurisdictions of aliens whose aims are obnoxious to the majority of the
+people, and who are slowly creating, under the protection of treaties,
+societies with views at variance with established custom.
+
+Yet so great is the potency of a word from headquarters that I believe
+the SZE CHUAN mandarins are now doing their best to protect the
+missionaries, and wherever I went, and very specially at Paoning Fu, I
+heard of efficient protection given, even where the means at the
+magistrates’ disposal were very limited, and of consideration and
+friendliness shown, far in excess of any claims which could be made, and
+which went to the extreme verge of a prudent regard for official
+position.
+
+[Illustration: LADY’S SEDAN CHAIR (CHINESE PROPRIETY).]
+
+Some of my readers and friends will consider that in the above remarks I
+have played in another than the Vatican sense the part of “devil’s
+advocate.” So be it. I intended, as a matter of honesty and fair play,
+to “give the devil his due.” I am fully aware of the manifold iniquities
+of the mandarins, and regard the official system as the greatest curse
+of China, if for no other reason than that it makes it nearly impossible
+for an official to walk on a straight path. But I wished to note briefly
+a few extenuating circumstances, and to protest against that
+rough-and-ready and very misleading system of classification which lumps
+all mandarins together as an irredeemably bad lot. The system is
+infamous, but a traveller who has spent some years in travelling in
+Turkey, Persia, Kashmir, and Korea, is astonished to find that the
+Chinese are very far from being an oppressed people, and that even under
+this system they enjoy light taxation in spite of squeezes, security for
+the gains of labour, and a considerable amount of rational liberty. It
+is when a Chinese, either through his own fault or that of another,
+becomes a litigant that his misfortunes begin.
+
+In the hour I spent at the entrance of the _yamen_ of Ying-san Hsien 407
+people came and went—men of all sorts, many in chairs, but most on foot,
+and nearly all well dressed. All carried papers, and some big
+_dossiers_. Within, secretaries, clerks, and writers crossed and
+recrossed the courtyard rapidly and ceaselessly, and _chai-jen_, or
+messengers, bearing papers, were continually despatched. Much business,
+and that of all kinds, was undoubtedly transacted. There was nothing of
+the lazy loafing of a horde of dirty officials which distinguishes a
+Korean _yamen_. I was quite unmolested. Successive coolie crowds stood
+for a time regarding me with an apathetic stare, said nothing, and moved
+silently away. At last a very splendid person in brocaded silks and
+satins came out and handed me my passport, and we were able to proceed.
+
+One among my reasons for not making the regular stages was that in town
+inns a woman-traveller must shut herself up rigidly in her room from
+arrival until departure unless she desires to provoke a row, while in
+the small villages and hamlets, where I was frequently the only guest,
+when the coolies had had their supper I was able to spend an hour in the
+“house place” with the family, and at a very small expense become
+friendly with them, and the village headman and one or two more often
+dropped in, and, under the influence of tea and tobacco and the sight of
+some of the nearest local photographs, became quite conversational.
+Be-dien, whose knowledge of English was very fair, improved daily, and
+was, I think, painstaking; at all events, I made him so!
+
+On such evenings I heard a good deal about mandarins, taxes, industries,
+prices, carriage of goods, foreigners, missionaries, and other things,
+all purely local. Occasionally the consensus of opinion about a mandarin
+was that he was a very bad man, took bribes, exacted more than the
+“legitimate squeeze” in tax-collecting, decided cases always in favour
+of the rich, etc. Such must have been very bad cases on which all had
+reason to be agreed, or the men, owing to the strong distrust and
+suspicion of each other which prevail, would not have dared to speak out
+before each other. This is an element which must always be taken into
+consideration in judging of the probabilities of the accuracy of any
+statement which is made. On the whole, however, there were not many
+complaints uttered, and these were usually of the delays of law. Some
+mandarins were spoken of with something akin to enthusiasm. One had
+built a bridge, another had made a good road, a third had restored a
+temple, a fourth was “very charitable to the poor,” and in the last
+scarcity had diminished the luxury of his own table by a half that he
+might feed the poor, and so on.
+
+Anything like an enlightened idea on a subject not local was not to be
+hoped for. Few of these headmen had heard of the war, or of the peace of
+Shimonoseki, and those who had, believed that the “barbarian rebels” had
+been driven into the sea or into fiery holes in the ground. The immense
+indemnity paid to the Roman Catholics for their losses in “the riots”
+touched them more closely, and I heard a good deal said regarding the
+Roman missions which I will not repeat, and I will also “keep dark” the
+various criticisms, some of them most trenchant and amusing, which were
+made on our own missionaries, only wishing that
+
+                        “The giftie were gi’ed us
+                  To see ourselves as others see us.”
+
+The attempt to hammer out facts on these evenings was fatiguing and
+often disheartening, as, for instance, to decide which of six varying
+statements on one matter had the greatest aspect of probability, and was
+worth stowing away in my memory, but the interest of mixing in any
+fashion with the people far outweighed the discomfort of peasant
+accommodation, even when it was pretty bad. One night Be-dien, after
+surveying the inside of a very poor hovel, came out looking rueful, and
+said, “You won’t like your room to-night, Mrs. Bishop; _it’s the pigs’
+room!_” and truly seven pigs occupied a depression railed off in one
+corner of it.
+
+The second day after leaving Kiao we had heavy rain all day, and the
+road, which was a barely legible track, mostly on slippery mud hills,
+was so infamous that, as the bearers were constantly slipping and even
+falling, I had to do a good deal of being hauled and lifted along;
+walking it was not, for my feet slipped from under me at nearly every
+step. We passed through one vacant, forlorn city of refuge, and spent
+most of the day in a desolate, treeless, sparsely inhabited, red region,
+slithering along the side of a high, bleak, mountain ridge, the summit
+of which (an altitude of 2140 feet) we gained at dark to find a small
+and most miserable hamlet astride on the top of it. The houses were all
+shut, and the pouring rain kept everyone indoors. No wonder! The slush
+was over my ankles, and very cold.
+
+A broad gleam fell across the road, and we made our way to it, as wet as
+it was possible to be, and took, rather than asked, shelter in a big
+shed with a loft or platform at one side, fitfully lighted as well as
+filled with smoke by some branches which were being burned in a great
+clay furnace, apparently used for the making of iron pots. Several men
+were shovelling coal into the same, and there was a prospect of warmth.
+This shed was the front of the mouth and workings of a coal-pit. I was
+guided into some workings which appeared disused, where there were some
+pigs, a sunk water-trough in the sloppy clay floor, and an excavation
+two feet six inches wide by six feet long, into which my stretcher, six
+feet six inches long, was backed, and projected six inches outside!
+After a hot supper, I rolled myself, in my wet clothes, in a dry rug,
+and slept soundly till the torrent of rain slacked off at eight the
+following morning, when we got on the road again.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIV.
+                      HSIEH-TIEN-TZE TO PAONING FU
+
+
+The weather continued grim, cold, and damp, with a penetrating east
+wind. I felt the cold more than on any previous journey, even when for
+weeks at a time the mercury had registered 20° below zero, and on this
+occasion it never fell below 40° above, and on some of the “coldest”
+days was as high as 45°. Men who had them were wearing their handsome
+furs up to March 12th.
+
+After leaving the coal-pit and the bleak hillside, we descended to a
+region where the natural terrace formation of the hills was extensively
+aided by art, and the country looked as if it were covered with Roman
+camps.
+
+At the risk of wearying my readers, I must again remark on the
+singularity of the formation of this large portion of the Red Basin,
+which is continued in its most exaggerated form at least as far south as
+Shien Ching, on the Kialing, fully 270 _li_ south of Paoning. Looking
+down from any height, it is seen that the red sandstone has been
+decomposed into hundreds of small hills, from 200 to 300 feet high, with
+their sides worn into natural and very regular terraces, of which I have
+counted twenty-three one above another, while the actual hilltop is
+weathered into a most deceptive resemblance to a fort or ruined castle.
+
+Much of SZE CHUAN is remarkable for the scarcity of villages, but, on
+the other hand, it is dotted over both with large farmhouses, where the
+farmer and his dependants live in patriarchal style, surrounded by a
+roofed wall with a heavy gateway, and with large cottages, the walls of
+which, with their heavy black timbers and whitewashed walls, have a most
+distinct resemblance to the old Cheshire architecture, while the roofs,
+with a nearly even slope from the ridge-pole to the extremity of the
+deep eaves which form broad verandahs, have more kinship with that of
+the Swiss _châlet_ than with the typical Chinese roof, curving upwards
+at the corners.
+
+If the tradition be true which declares that in the early days of this
+dynasty people were sent in chains to colonise this fair province, it
+may be, as Mr. Baber suggests, that they had not the family and clan
+ties which lead men to herd together in the communities which are also a
+necessary element of safety in many circumstances. It was not till the
+Taiping outbreak that these scattered settlers, who had lived and
+multiplied for nearly two centuries under conditions of security, found
+it necessary to combine for mutual protection. It then occurred to them
+that the numerous precipitous, rocky hills of the region, if walled
+round near the top, would be impregnable refuges, and they subscribed
+money and labour, and carried out their idea, sprinkling the country
+with picturesque _chai-tzu_, or redoubts, to which they ascended in
+times of dread. It did not occur to them to build permanent dwellings
+and remain at these altitudes.
+
+In the purely agricultural parts of the province, where there are no
+local industries requiring concentration of population, such villages as
+are to be met with elsewhere, in which tenants, labourers, innkeepers,
+and proprietors, with shopkeepers and artisans, live in communities, are
+rarely met with. Out of the system of scattered dwellings and minute
+hamlets, trading arrangements for supplying the wants of the
+agricultural population have grown up, the like of which I have not seen
+elsewhere. These are the markets (_ch’ang_).
+
+In travelling along the roads one comes quite unexpectedly upon a long,
+narrow street with closed shop fronts, boarded-up restaurants, and
+deserted houses, and possibly a forlorn family with its dog and pig the
+only inhabitants. The first thought is that the population has been
+exterminated by a pestilence, but on inquiry the brief and simple
+explanation is given, “It’s not market day.”
+
+A few miles further, and the roads are thronged with country people in
+their best, carrying agricultural productions and full and empty
+baskets. The whole country is on the move to another long, narrow street
+closely resembling the first, but that the shop fronts are open, and
+full of Chinese and foreign goods; the tea shops are crammed; every
+house is full of goods and people; from 2000 to 5000 or 6000 are
+assembled; blacksmiths, joiners, barbers, tinkers, traders of all kinds,
+are busy; the shouting and the din of bargaining are tremendous, and
+between the goods and the buyers and sellers locomotion is slow and
+critical. Drug stores, in which “remedies for foreign smoke” are sold,
+occur everywhere.
+
+The shops in these streets are frequently owned by the neighbouring
+farmers, who let them to traders for the market days, which are fixed
+for the convenience of the district, and fall on the third or fifth or
+even seventh day, as the need may be. The gateway at each end of the
+street is often very highly decorated. Theatrical entertainments
+frequent these markets, and if the actors are well known and popular,
+4000 or 5000 people assemble for the play alone. The markets are the
+great gatherings for all purposes. If anything of public opinion of a
+local character exists, it is manufactured there. There official
+notifications are made, and bargains regarding the sale or rent of land
+are concluded. Family festivals even are often held there, and after
+marriage negotiations on the part of heads of families have been
+concluded the preliminaries are drawn up and ratified at the market.
+There the cottons of Lancashire undergo a searching criticism, and are
+weighed, handled, held up to the light by men who cannot be deceived as
+to the value of cotton, and are often found wanting. Into the vortex of
+the market is attracted all the news and gossip of the district. It is
+much like a fair, but I never saw any rowdyism or drunkenness on the
+road afterwards, and I never met with any really rough treatment in a
+market, though the crowding and curiosity made me always glad when it
+was not “market day.”
+
+On the afternoon of March 7th there was some hazy sunshine, and the
+effect was magical. The route lay partly along the Shanrang Ho, an
+affluent of the Ku-kiang, itself navigable up to, and for sixty _li_
+above Sing-king-pa Hsien, so report said.] Considerable fleets of
+colliers lay at different points, vessels carrying from ten to
+twenty-five tons, flat-bottomed. They were loading, in one case, from a
+coal-yard of half an acre at least in extent, fenced strongly and
+carefully with bamboo, in which the coal was piled in big, oblong blocks
+weighing two hundredweight each, to a height of seven feet, each block
+being carried from the pit by two men. The colliers are built in
+compartments, and very strongly, as there are severe rapids both above
+and below Sing-king-pa Hsien.
+
+[Illustration: A SZE CHUAN FARMHOUSE.]
+
+After ferrying this river, along with a number of Buddhist priests, we
+gradually attained high ground, and secured the granary of a new inn for
+my room. Being new, the place was clean and dry, and promised well for
+the next day’s halt, and most of the unpacking was done, when the trim,
+young hostess requested us to “move on.” She said her father-in-law was
+away, and he would be angry with her for receiving a foreigner. I did
+not care to assert “treaty rights” against the obvious anxiety of so
+prepossessing a young woman, and we repacked, and slithered along six
+more _li_ of bad roads till we came to a lone farming cottage on the top
+of a windy ridge, with a most extensive view, where I was very glad to
+remain for the next day, as I had had rather a severe week. From
+Sing-king-pa Hsien my _chai-jen_ were two young soldiers in the most
+brilliant of stagey uniforms, and I think that they must have been the
+reason of my exclusion from the previous inn. Among the many curious
+proofs of superstitious beliefs one occurred many times on the last days
+of the journey: a small arch made of bamboo stuck into the slush of a
+rice-field. This is done in cases of the illness of the owner, and it is
+believed that the offering will restore him.
+
+On this windy ridge of King-kiang-sze I slept in the granary, which I
+should have considered extreme luxury, as it was not dark when the door
+was shut, had it not been that it was only just built, and the mud on
+the walls was quite wet. The granary was detached from the house, open,
+as fortunately many Chinese rooms are, for two feet below the roof, and
+in several other directions, being in fact so draughty that no candle
+would keep alight in it.
+
+I stayed in bed all the next morning owing to severe chills, the
+consequence of living in wet clothes, but had to get up in the afternoon
+to gratify the curiosity of fully thirty women, who had hobbled in from
+the adjacent hamlets, some of them twenty _li_ away, to see “the foreign
+woman.” I feared that they would be greatly disappointed to see me in
+Chinese dress, but I found that they did not know that foreigners wore
+any other! My hair, “big feet,” shoes, and gloves were all a great
+amusement to them, and, above all, my light camp bed, which they were
+sure would not bear any weight, so they sat down on it back to back to
+the number of twelve!
+
+Of course they asked many questions, among others did we in our country
+make away with baby girls? I could not anywhere learn that infanticide
+prevails in any part of SZE CHUAN in which I travelled, and when I told
+these women of the extent to which it is practised in some parts of
+KWANTUNG, the remark was, “Couldn’t they sell them for a good price?”
+Undoubtedly many SZE CHUAN girls are sold to traders from Kansuh. These
+mothers mostly had large families. The children are not weaned till they
+are three, and often not till they are four and even five, years old. Of
+“bringing up by hand” they know nothing—condensed milk has not reached
+that primitive region. If a mother dies at the birth of her babe, the
+mothers of the hamlet take the joint responsibility of supplying the
+orphan with maternal nourishment. They asked me if I had many sons, and
+when I confessed that I had none, they expressed great sympathy, because
+there would be no one at my death to perform the ancestral rites. It is
+quite customary, on hearing of the absence of sons, for women to pump up
+tears as a conventional requirement, and this propriety was not
+neglected on this occasion. It occurred to them that I could not have a
+daughter-in-law, which in their thinking was a great deprivation, not on
+sentimental, but on purely practical grounds, the daughter-in-law being
+equivalent to the mother-in-law’s slave.
+
+Few of them had been to Paoning Fu, only two days’ journey off, and none
+to Wan Hsien. The markets of the neighbourhood were the boundaries of
+their horizon, and, the festivals of the divinities of their hamlets
+their gaieties. I like the Chinese women better than any Oriental women
+that I know. They have plenty of good stuff in them, and backbone. When
+they are Christianised they are thorough Christians. They have much
+kindness of heart; they are very modest; they are faithful wives, and
+after their fashion good mothers. I gave my visitors tea and sweetmeats
+all round, and they departed, having taught me far more than they
+learned from me.
+
+During the afternoon men with large shields slung across their backs,
+and carrying red staves, appeared, and there was at once a considerable
+fuss and a demand for my passport, the big seals of which made a
+salutary impression upon them. These officials were “census men,” and
+were engaged in numbering the houses. The taking of a census has not
+been a popular matter from time immemorial, and in the East an idea of
+increased taxation is always associated with it.
+
+[Illustration: A SZE CHUAN MARKET-PLACE.]
+
+Like many Chinese systems, the census system is admirable in theory, but
+frauds, lapses, and neglect render it inefficient. Every city and
+village is divided into “tithings,” or groups, of ten families each, and
+on every doorpost hangs, or ought to hang, a tablet, _mun-pai_,
+inscribed with the names of all the inmates of both sexes. If the head
+of a family omits to make an entry, or fails to register correctly the
+males of his household who are liable to public service, he may receive
+from eighty to a hundred blows. If the system were carried out,
+suspicious strangers could be easily caught, and local responsibility
+for any crime fixed without any trouble, but a householder finds it
+convenient to escape filling up the schedule by bribing the “shield men”
+with _cash_ equivalent to twopence-halfpenny.
+
+The next day, for a considerable distance, every house had blossomed
+into a brand-new _mun-pai_, which indicated the arrival of a new
+magistrate determined to enforce the law. The talk of the inn was that
+it heralded additional taxation.
+
+The next day’s journey to Heh-shui-tang was through varied and pretty
+country, much more populous, and with abounding water communication
+supplied by the Chia-ling, often in that region called the Paoning
+river, and its branches. The main traffic down the river is coal and
+salt. There are very many salt wells at a good height on the river bank.
+The brine is drawn by being pumped once a day, and that only when the
+river is low, and is evaporated by coal fires, the heavy yellow smoke
+giving the aspect of manufacturing industry. Salt is a Government
+monopoly. The Government buys all the salt which is produced, at a rate
+fixed by itself, and sends it all over the country for sale, making an
+enormous profit. It is said that the salt produced in SZE CHUAN brings
+in to the Government a revenue of £2,000,000 sterling! In some places
+the borings for salt extend to depths of nearly 3000 feet, as the result
+of the continuous operations of ten or twelve years, two feet a day
+being very satisfactory progress. “Fire wells” are often found near salt
+wells, and the “fire” is used for evaporating the salt. The product of
+the wells seen on that day’s journey is small, but fifty boats of about
+twelve tons were loading with it.
+
+At the pleasant and thriving little town of Nan-pu, which produces a
+very white salt, the mandarin was polite, and sent four gaily uniformed
+soldiers with me, who, however, shortly turned themselves into rather
+shabby civilians, showing, as on several other occasions, that the love
+of mufti is not confined to English officers. The mandarin’s secretary
+asked if I would like to see anything in Nan-pu. I could think of
+nothing in the little, quiet, trading town, but for the sake of
+politeness I said I should like to see a school.
+
+My men were at their midday meal, but bearers were provided, and I was
+soon deposited in the courtyard of an unpretending building, followed by
+a great crowd, which was kept from pressing on me by the mandarin’s
+“lictors.” The schoolroom contained several tables, some heavy benches,
+a teacher’s chair, a number of “ink-stones,” and thirty-three boys, from
+the ages of seven up to fourteen, who were all learning to read and
+write.
+
+Near the roof a Confucian tablet, surrounded by inscribed strips of red
+paper, stood in a niche, and on one side of the schoolroom there was a
+life-size figure of the God of Literature, with a wooden box half full
+of ashes in front, in which some incense sticks were smouldering. The
+teacher was a kindly-looking old man in conventional goggles. He had
+probably repeatedly failed to pass his literary examinations, and being
+unfit for manual labour, had become a pedagogue. He held something very
+like “taws” in his hand, but his pupils had no unwholesome awe of him.
+
+The boys were writing when I went in, _i.e._ tracing printed ideographs
+placed below thin paper with brushes filled with Chinese ink, which they
+rubbed on the ink-stones as required. The teacher went round, pointing
+out faults, and showing them how to hold their pens.
+
+After this they studied, as everywhere in the East, aloud, shouting
+their lessons at the top of very inharmonious voices, an audible
+assurance relied upon to convince the teacher that they were giving full
+attention to their tasks. As soon as any boy had mastered his lesson, he
+came up to the master and stood with his back towards him while he
+recited, so that the master might be sure that he was not glancing at
+the book which he held in his own hand. Mispronunciations were
+corrected. What I saw constitutes education in such a school, together
+with formal instruction in proprieties: bowing before the tablet of
+Confucius on entering the room, saluting the teacher, etc. Such a school
+may be called a primary school, and the larger proportion of scholars
+never go any farther. In villages and small towns the parents pay from
+three to six dollars a year to the teacher, to which are added small
+presents of food at stated intervals. The hours are long—from sunrise
+till ten and from eleven till five. Evening schools are occasionally
+opened for those who are occupied in the day. A pedagogue must be a man
+of good repute, “grave, learned, and patient,” and well acquainted with
+the Chinese classics.
+
+[Illustration: PEDAGOGUE AND PUPILS.]
+
+(_From a Chinese Drawing._)
+
+The monotonous reading and writing lessons and the tedium of memorising
+unmeaning sounds are continued for about two years, and when the pupils
+have become familiar with a few thousand forms and sounds, then the
+actual work of teaching begins; and the pedagogue, with the help of a
+commentary, explains the meaning of the words one by one, taking due
+care that they are all understood.
+
+This system, as pursued in the humble school at Nan-pu, is the basis of
+that vast fabric of education which has made China for two thousand
+years what she is, and has produced among the Chinese a greater
+veneration for letters than exists in any country on earth, letters and
+literary degrees, absolutely apart from the accidents of birth or
+wealth, being the only ladder by which a man, be he the son of prince or
+peasant, can attain official employment, honours, and emoluments, China
+being in fact the most truly democratic country in the world.
+
+It is easy to laugh at an education which for boys of all ranks consists
+solely in the knowledge of the ancient Chinese classics, and there is no
+doubt that it stunts individuality, belittles genius, fosters conceit,
+and produces incredible grooviness. But, on the other hand, there is no
+education, unless it might be one strictly Biblical, which furnishes the
+memory with so much wisdom for common life, and so many noble moral
+maxims. Whatever of righteousness, virtuous domestic life, filial
+virtue, charity, propriety—and just dealing exists among the Chinese,
+and they do exist—is owed to the permeation of the whole race by the
+teaching of the classics.[42]
+
+The six school books (classics in themselves) which are introductory to
+the study of the classics are, _The Trimetrical Classic_, arranged in
+178 double lines, the first of which contains the much-disputed
+doctrine, “Men at their birth are by nature radically good.” It
+inculcates filial and fraternal duties, and much besides, as the
+following extract shows: “Mutual affection of father and son; concord of
+man and wife; the older brother’s kindness, the younger one’s respect;
+order between seniors and juniors; friendship among associates; on the
+prince’s part regard, on the minister’s true loyalty; these ten moral
+duties are for ever binding among men.” This classic concludes with a
+number of fascinating incidents and motives for learning taken from the
+lives of ancient sages and statesmen. If a boy never goes farther than
+this, his memory is stored with excellent examples and principles.
+
+The second book is the _Century of Surnames_. The third is unique in the
+world, the _Millenary, or Thousand Character Classic_, which consists of
+exactly 1000 characters, no two of which are alike in meaning or form.
+It treats of many important subjects, and, like the _Trimetrical
+Classic_, abounds in praises of virtue and exhortations to rectitude.
+Its text is absolutely familiar to all the people, and a Christian
+preacher who shows himself acquainted with it is sure of an interested
+audience.
+
+The fourth school classic is called _Odes for Children_, and contains
+thirty-four stanzas of four lines each, chiefly in praise of literary
+life, such as this:—
+
+          “It is of the utmost importance to educate children;
+          Do not say that your families are poor,
+          For those who can handle well the pencil (pen),
+          Go where they will, need never ask for favours.”
+
+In all the school classics many examples are given of intelligent youths
+entering on life without advantages, who by application, virtuous
+conduct, and industry, have raised themselves to the highest offices in
+the empire.
+
+The fifth school classic is the _Canons of Filial Duty_, a book of 1903
+characters only, purporting to be a report of a conversation between the
+_Great Teacher_ (Confucius) and Tsang Tsan, a disciple. Whether it is
+actually what the Chinese believe it to be or not, its influence has
+been and is enormous, extending unweakened through a period of many
+centuries, and laying by its principles and maxims the foundations of
+the social order which prevails, not only in China, but in Japan and
+Korea. This paramount teaching begins with the sentence, “Filial duty is
+the root of virtue, and the stem from which instruction in the moral
+principle springs.” It contains an axiom which has great weight: “With
+the same love that they” (scholars) “serve their fathers, they should
+serve their mothers.” Many books have been written to illustrate these
+_Canons_, one a toy book, _The Twenty-four Filials_, containing
+twenty-four quaint and delightful stories of filial devotion. This is a
+most popular collection of tales, and the examples embroidered on satin,
+or painted on silk, or coarsely daubed on paper, are to be seen
+everywhere.[43]
+
+The sixth and last is the _Siao Hioh_, or _Juvenile Instructor_, a book
+whose influence is estimated as enormous. It has had fifty commentators,
+one of whom writes of it, “We confide in the _Siao Hioh_ as we do in the
+gods, and revere it as we do our parents.” It is in two books, divided
+into twenty chapters and 385 short sections. The first book treats of
+the elementary principles of education, of the duties we owe to
+ourselves in regard to demeanour, dress, food, and study, and of the
+duties which we owe to our kindred, rulers, and fellow-men, and it gives
+illustrative examples of the good results of obeying these maxims, taken
+from ancient history as far down as B.C. 249!
+
+The second book seems somewhat of a commentary on the first, or an
+elaboration of it. It gives a collection of virtuous and wise sayings of
+great men who lived after B.C. 200, and these are followed by a number
+of examples of conduct in distinguished persons, showing the effect of
+good principles and the advantage of following the teachings of the
+first book. The most elaborate rules of etiquette are laid down with a
+view of promoting mutual reverence, and the Chinese of to-day receives
+his guests at his outer door and conducts them, with the most careful
+attention to elaborate rules of precedence, through courts, and up
+flights of steps to his guest-hall, he and they moving their feet and
+accepting or declining attention in slavish accordance with the rules of
+this ancient classic.
+
+The Chinese of to-day, in thought, action, and etiquette, are the
+product of these school books. I see no possibility of spontaneity so
+long as education is _solely_ on these lines. In reading the
+translations of these classics, in spite of a certain insistence upon
+trifles, and perhaps of exaggeration of unimportant points, I have been
+enormously impressed by their admirable moral teaching as a whole.
+Virtue is inculcated by precept and example on every page, and with the
+solemn sanctions of antiquity. Deficiencies there are, but there is not
+a single thing in this curriculum which a man ought not to be the better
+for learning, or one thing which it would be desirable for him to
+forget. If he is unable to go farther, he is possessed of what may be
+called the kernel of the best literature of his country, and his
+national feeling is fostered by the fact that the noble truths and
+examples impressed on his mind are not of foreign origin, but have
+originated within the frontiers of the Middle Kingdom. The missionaries
+show at once their appreciation of the _Chinese classics_, as well as a
+judicious desire to conserve Chinese nationality and keep the pathway to
+official employment open, by giving great prominence to this classical
+teaching in their schools.
+
+“Villages had their schools, and districts their academies,” says the
+_Book of Rites_ (B.C. 1200), and I looked with reverence on the dirty,
+cobwebby walls of the little private school at Nan-pu as their
+historical successor.
+
+I asked the teacher how many of his thirty-three pupils were likely to
+go on with their education and compete at the examinations, and he
+replied, “Three,” holding up three fingers, on one of which was a
+carefully-tended nail an inch and a half long, that there might be no
+mistake. The parents of the pupils were poor, and would not be able to
+keep them at school for more than three years at the outside, while
+shopkeepers, farmers, and country gentlemen would not keep them there
+more than five years unless they meant to go on to the literary
+examinations. In the case of these well-to-do persons, several families
+living in the same street hire a well-qualified teacher at a stipulated
+salary to teach their boys, and the instruction is given in light,
+well-aired rooms. In such a school as I spent an hour in, the teacher
+provides and furnishes the room according to the number and position of
+his pupils. On a boy entering a school he receives his _shu-ming_, or
+“book name,” by which he is known during his future life.
+
+If I have conveyed what I wish to convey, clearly, it will be evident
+that Chinese education in the primary schools is limited to the teaching
+of virtue, duty, and etiquette. There is no provision for developing the
+intellectual powers, nor has general learning any place. There is a
+complete want of symmetry in the mental training, but if it fails to
+form broad and well-balanced minds, it must be admitted that the
+exaggeration is in the best direction in which distortion could occur.
+
+That night I felt profound regret at concluding the first stage of my
+journey, and the soft, dreamy sunshine of the next day increased it. The
+country is soft in its features, and very pretty and prosperous-looking,
+abounding in industries, and consequently in villages and small towns,
+and produces everything that is good for food. The road adheres pretty
+closely to the valley of the Chia-ling, which we ferried twice. Its
+water is translucent, and of an exquisitely beautiful peacock green. It
+is one of the great arteries of commerce of the Yangtze Valley, and
+though, like the Yangtze, obstructed by rapids and given to the
+production of great sand-banks, specially below Paoning Fu, it and its
+affluents afford invaluable means of communication.
+
+This river, uniting with the Yangtze at Chungking after receiving such
+fine tributaries as the Ku, the Fu, and the Pai-shui, is navigable for
+boats of 5000 catties up to the flourishing little town of
+Pai-shui-Chiang, actually over the border of KANSUH, and over 500 miles
+by water from Chungking. These big boats trade chiefly with Nan-pu,
+which produces salt, taking salt up and bringing coal down. There are
+smaller boats carrying 2000 catties, of which I saw many, which go right
+down to Chungking, carrying KANSUH tobacco, sheepskins, furs, and
+medicines. Mr. Litton, of H.B.M.’s Consular Service, saw seventy boats
+at one time moored off the city of Kuang Yuen, near the frontier of
+KANSUH.
+
+The country is much affected by the great sand-banks formed by the
+river, which become bound together by the fibrous roots of a
+sword-grass, and alter the channel, forming, after a few years of
+deposit, fine arable land. The road I travelled from Heh-shui-tang,
+after skirting the Chia-ling at a great height for many miles, under
+cliffs abounding in recessed temples, in which groups of divinities
+carved in the rock receive hourly worship from wayfarers, enters Paoning
+Fu by a pontoon bridge about 130 yards long.
+
+After the treelessness of much of the region I had traversed, and the
+comparatively poor soil and inferior dwellings, the view of Paoning and
+its surroundings was most charming in the soft afternoon sunshine. Built
+on rich alluvium, surrounded on three sides by a bend of the river, with
+temple roofs and gate towers rising out of dense greenery and a pink
+mist of peach blossom, with fair and fertile country rolling up to
+mountains in the north, dissolving in a blue haze, and with the
+peacock-green water of the Chia-ling for a foreground, the first view of
+this important city was truly attractive.
+
+In the distance appeared two Chinese gentlemen, one stout, the other
+tall and slender, whose walk as they approached gave me a suspicion that
+they were foreigners, and they proved to be Bishop Cassels, our youngest
+and one of our latest consecrated bishops, and his coadjutor, Mr.
+Williams, formerly vicar of St. Stephen’s, Leeds, who had come to
+welcome me. We ferried the Chia-ling, and passing through attractive
+suburbs, either green lanes with hedges, trees, and vegetable gardens,
+or narrow flagged roads, very clean, bounded by roofed walls and
+handsome gateways of private houses, we reached the China Inland Mission
+buildings, consisting of a neat church, very humble Chinese houses for
+the married and bachelor missionaries, guest-rooms, and servants’
+quarters, all cheerful, but greatly lacking privacy. This was a pleasant
+halt after a journey of 300 miles without a really untoward incident,
+except the riot at Liang-shan.
+
+[Illustration: RECESSED DIVINITIES, CHIA-LING RIVER.]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXV.
+                      PAONING FU AND SIN-TIEN-TZE
+
+
+Paoning Fu, where I spent a week, is, in spring at least, a very
+attractive city. There is a pleasant sleepiness about it. Trade is
+neither so active or so self-asserting as usual. There is obviously a
+leisured class with time to enjoy itself. Large fortunes are not made;
+45,000 taels is looked upon as wealth, and there are no millionaires to
+overshadow the small traders. Junks of eighteen tons and over can ascend
+to Paoning during much of the year. There is a considerable coal trade
+on the Tung river, and the city being in the centre of an important silk
+region, there is a degree of activity about the silk trade. There are
+such small industries as dyeing cottons, making wine and vinegar, and
+the export of pigs’ bristles and hides, but nothing is pursued very
+energetically. Among the population of about 20,000 there are a small
+number of Mohammedans, and wherever they exist beef and milk are
+attainable luxuries. In Paoning they cure and spice an excellent salt
+beef, which I found an agreeable variation from fowls on my further
+journey.
+
+Officially, Paoning Fu is an important city, having a _Taotai_, a
+prefect, and a hsien, and many of its beautiful “suburban villas” are
+the residences of retired and expectant mandarins. Its suburbs are quite
+charming, and its suburban roads are densely shaded by large mulberry
+trees and the _Aleurites cordata_. Farther outside, are several fine
+temples in large grounds, and the public library. Paoning proper, with
+the _yamen_ and other official residences, streets of shops, and private
+dwellings with large wooded gardens, is surrounded by a wall twenty feet
+high, in good repair, with a flagged walk, ten feet broad, on the top of
+it. From this the aspect of the city was idealised by a coloured mist of
+pink and white—peach, plum, apricot, and cherry blossom, flecked with
+crimson from the double flowers of hardy, decorative peach trees. There
+are four fine but dilapidated gateways.
+
+[Illustration: TEMPLE OF GOD OF LITERATURE, PAONING FU.]
+
+One of the gates was securely shut, and all persons who desired to enter
+or leave the city on that side were compelled to make a long _détour_.
+This closing of the north gate against the God of Rain is by a
+ceremonial act of the mandarin. Rain was in excess, and this was a
+significant hint to the rain god. Elsewhere I had seen the south gates
+of cities closed in drought against the God of Fire, who can only enter
+a city from that quarter. Fires are much dreaded during drought, when
+the timbers of houses are baked into a condition of perilous
+inflammability.
+
+Outside the walls of Paoning Fu, which supply a delightful walk, are
+fine clean turf banks, and a turfed trench or moat, and fine trees; and
+the river front on the west side is truly grand, a terrace twenty-five
+feet broad being supported by a noble stone wall in twenty-five tiers,
+with broad stone staircases descending from the terrace to the river,
+short green turf, clean white sand, and clear green water below.
+
+The finest of the suburban temples is dedicated to Went-zu, the God of
+Pestilence. I visited this with Mr. Williams. It was not possible to get
+any point of view on the level, for a photograph, and the chair-bearers
+suggested my taking one from the stage of an open temple theatre
+opposite, and brought a ladder to help me up with. In going back, a man
+of the literary class attacked Mr. Williams for this, and the next day
+the servants of the missionary ladies begged them not to go outside
+their house, for nothing was talked of in the streets and tea houses but
+this “outrage,” and the probable indignation of the gods, and the people
+were saying they would “kill all the foreigners.” Mr. Williams said that
+he had never heard such cries of “foreign devil,” and “foreign dog,” as
+at that time, and that it is observed that these cries and the hatred
+which prompts them increase the longer foreigners remain in a city.
+
+Paoning, so far as its population goes, is unfriendly to foreigners, and
+the mission houses were wrecked a year previously, and the missionaries,
+some of whom were married women with young children, escaped to the
+_yamen_, where they received shelter and protection for some time, the
+mandarins then and since having shown much friendliness and desire for
+their safety. It is a complex situation on both sides.
+
+Paoning is a great centre of China Inland Mission work. The directors of
+this body, which is undenominational, endeavour so far as is possible to
+group the missionaries of each ecclesiastical body together, and in this
+part of SZE CHUAN they all belong to the Church of England. Outside of
+the “sphere of interest” of the C.I.M. the Church Missionary Society has
+several mission stations, chiefly to the north and west of Paoning, and
+altogether in that region there are about sixty Anglican missionaries,
+several of them being university men, working on much the same lines.
+
+Dr. Cassels, who was one of the pioneers, and formerly well known as an
+athlete at Cambridge, had recently been consecrated bishop, and came
+from the splendours of his consecration in Westminster Abbey to take up
+the old, simple, hardworking life, to wear a queue and Chinese dress,
+and be simply the “chief pastor.” The native Christians gave him a
+cordial reception on his return, and presented him with the hat of a
+Master of Arts and high boots, which make a very seemly addition to the
+English episcopal dress, giving it the propriety which is necessary in
+Chinese eyes, and in mine the picturesque aspect of one of the marauding
+prelates of the Middle Ages, the good bishop having a burly, athletic
+physique! Since his return, several of the lay missionaries have been
+ordained deacons.
+
+The church, or cathedral, of which an illustration is given, was built
+almost entirely with Chinese money and gifts. It is Chinese in style,
+the chancel windows are “glazed” with coloured paper to simulate stained
+glass, and it is seated for two hundred. The persons represented as
+standing outside are Bishop Cassels, Mr. Williams, and the Chinese
+churchwarden. There are both churchwardens and sidesmen.
+
+[Illustration: THE RIGHT REV. BISHOP CASSELS, D.D., PAONING FU.]
+
+I witnessed a Chinese service at which nineteen persons of both sexes
+who had been confirmed on the previous Sunday received the Holy
+Communion. At matins, which followed, the church was crammed, and crowds
+stood outside, where they could both see and hear, this publicity
+contrasting with the Roman practice. The understanding that all should
+be silent during worship was adhered to. A Christian, formerly a
+Mohammedan of some means, and another, who had been a Taoist, read the
+lessons. The Bible, an Oriental book both in imagery and thought, is
+enjoyed and understood by Orientals, but I doubt much if it will be
+possible or even desirable to perpetuate the Prayer Book as it stands.
+It is so absolutely and intensely Western in its style, conceptions,
+metaphysic, and language of adoration, and, I think, is partly
+unintelligible as a manual of devotion. It contains any number of words
+which not only (as is to be expected) have no equivalents in the Eastern
+languages, but the ideas they express are unthinkable by the Eastern
+mind. Already many Eastern Christians are claiming an “Oriental Christ,
+not a Christ disguised in Western garb”—it may be that they will claim
+too a form of worship which shall be Oriental both in thought and
+expression, instead of one which represents to them in their most sacred
+moments an exotic creed.
+
+[Illustration: CHINESE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. PAONING FU.]
+
+The China Inland Mission has some very humble Chinese houses built round
+two compounds, in which two married couples, three bachelors, and, in
+the bishop’s house, two ladies were living, and at some distance off
+there is a ladies’ house, then occupied by five ladies. There are
+several guest-halls for Chinese visitors, class and school-rooms,
+porters’ and servants’ rooms. The furniture is all Chinese, and the
+whitewashed walls are decorated with Chinese scrolls chiefly.
+
+I never saw houses so destitute of privacy, or with such ceaseless
+coming and going. Life there simply means work, and work spells
+happiness apparently, for the workers were all cheerful, and even jolly.
+Studying Chinese, preaching, teaching, advising, helping, guiding,
+arranging, receiving, sending forth, doctoring, nursing, and befriending
+make the mission compounds absolute hives of industry. It was a great
+drawback that medical help was nearly 300 miles off, and that the one
+trained nurse in the two missions was not ubiquitous. Much needless
+suffering and risk to life were the results. Happily in one of the
+beautiful suburbs, a noble Chinese mansion, a palace in size and
+solidity, was for sale for an old song, the half of which was purchased,
+and after undergoing alterations was opened a few months after my visit
+with a mandarin’s procession and great ceremony as the “Henrietta Bird
+Memorial Hospital”—the men’s department under Dr. Pruen, a physician of
+ten years’ Chinese experience, and the women’s under Miss Gowers, who
+also had considerable experience. The other half and a separate
+courtyard adjoining have been bought for a dwelling for the bishop,
+where he may carry on his work with fewer interruptions.
+
+The ladies of this mission lead what I should think very hard lives,
+owing to their painful deference to Chinese etiquette, and their great
+desire to avoid doing anything which can give offence. As for instance,
+they never walk out without an elderly Chinese woman with them, or are
+carried except in closed chairs.
+
+I left this hive of industry, and devoted lives, and glowing
+hospitalities with Mr. and Mrs. Williams and their children for a few
+days at Sin-tien-tze, where the China Inland Mission has obtained a
+large farmhouse for a sanitarium and centre of country work at a height
+of 2870 feet. Paoning is only 1520. This, in lat. 31° 55′, was my
+farthest point north on my SZE CHUAN journey.
+
+Shortly after leaving Paoning the road mounts the northern hills, and
+keeps along a high barren ridge, or _liang-tsu_, for 130 _li_, the air
+becoming more bracing and delicious every hour. I have observed that in
+Western China an altitude of 3000 feet is equivalent, in the dryness and
+bracing qualities of the air, to 7000 feet in Japan.
+
+We stayed for a night in a large, rambling inn in a market-place when it
+was not market day, and were quiet. Long flights of stairs conduct
+travellers to the top of the ridge, which is often less than ten feet
+broad, and falls down in natural rock-supported terraces to the valleys
+below. At the close of the second day’s journey the cultivation nearly
+ceased, the hills were bare and rocky, the road a mere straggle; and
+where two or three ridges meet, on turning a corner round a pine-clothed
+knoll, we came upon a large, lonely house with a dead, blank wall round
+it, and were heartily welcomed by its inmates, three ladies, who for
+some time past have conducted a mission to the scattered houses and
+hamlets of the neighbourhood with remarkable success.
+
+A great gateway gives admission successively into two courts with their
+surrounding rooms. The common “sitting-room,” or, to use an Americanism,
+“living-room,” is extremely tasteful and pretty—pre-eminently a “lady’s
+room,” furnished with bamboo tables, chairs, a lounge, and foot-stools,
+and a folding screen covered with blue cotton, on which Christmas cards
+are prettily arranged. Blue cotton table-cloths, embroidered in white
+silk, covered the tables. The floor was matted. Chinese red scrolls hung
+on the whitewashed walls; there were books and flowering plants; and the
+room combined daintiness with solid comfort. Doors, with elaborate
+fretwork filled in with tissue paper, take the place of windows. The
+woodwork of all the rooms is varnished.
+
+[Illustration: C.I.M. SANITARIUM, SIN-TIEN-TZE.]
+
+I expressed admiration and some wonderment that “at such a distance”
+(possibly from civilisation) such pretty furniture could be procured. It
+may be that my hostess thought she read in my remark some hint at
+“missionary luxury,” for she very kindly offered to enlighten me as to
+the cost of furnishing in Western China. The substantial and
+good-looking chairs cost fourpence each, the lounge two-and-sixpence,
+and the rest in proportion; the whole coming to a trifle under nineteen
+shillings, and all was produced in the neighbourhood, material and
+labour costing almost nothing. During my five days’ visit the weather
+became bitterly cold, and snow fell for the greater part of two days,
+but did not lie. No efforts brought the temperature of my room up to
+40°, which was low for the 21st March, in lat. 31° 55′.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVI.
+                    SIN-TIEN-TZE TO TZE-TUNG HSIEN.
+
+
+On this second long journey, involving a distance of three hundred and
+thirty miles, I was persuaded into a slightly more luxurious style of
+travelling, _i.e._, I took an additional man, well acquainted with the
+province and its ways, who went on first, towards evening, cleaned out a
+room, and had hot water ready for tea. I got new oiled sheeting and an
+apron for the chair, and with some unleavened bread, curry for three
+days, a supply of Paoning smoked beef and some chocolate for lunch, I
+felt myself in luxury. Yet, with eight men, my expenses were only seven
+shillings per day.
+
+At Sin-tien-tze I had to quit my companions, who are as full of
+brightness, intelligence, and culture as they are of goodness. Mr.
+Williams walked with me through thawing snow the first eight miles to
+the great market-place of Shang-wa-li-tze, where, not being market day,
+the only living creature was a deformed cat. I had excellent cooking,
+and we made long journeys, accomplishing thirty miles on some days. The
+snow soon disappeared, and though the roads were slimy, straw shoes,
+grippers, and the cold, keen air enabled me to walk a good deal, which
+was very pleasant.
+
+At the first midday halt there was considerable confusion, for a young
+married woman had committed suicide with opium, and was lying apparently
+dead. In great fear of something—I know not what—the villagers appealed
+to me for remedies, which I succeeded in forcing down her throat, and
+also put plasters of hot vinegar and cayenne pepper behind her ears. I
+was proceeding to put them on the soles of her feet, but there were no
+soles, only a crumple of deformed toes, a cleft, and a heel. Then I
+tried for the calves of the legs, but there were no calves, only a bone,
+a few muscles, and a great bag of crinkled skin. I was more fortunate in
+finding that she had a back to her neck! I was told that it was a
+quarrel with her mother-in-law which had driven her to suicide. I had a
+bad quarter of an hour before she became conscious, for, had she died,
+the opium would have been acquitted, and the blame would have been laid
+on the foreigner. When she came sufficiently to herself to be herself,
+she was demented with rage, and tore and scratched everybody near her. I
+did not think that her husband was interested in her recovery.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO A MARKET-PLACE.]
+
+An idea, though possibly only a local one, is, that when a person
+commits suicide by opium, the spirit is refused entrance at the gate of
+Hades, because it has not completed its natural term of life, and it
+seeks, by inducing another to do the same, to transfer its crime to that
+person.
+
+The relations showed me the courtesy of offering me food, which I
+reluctantly ate out of coarse, unglazed basins: a strip or two of fat
+pork, some bean curd floating in grey sauce, some black beans, tasting
+like rotten cheese, some small onions, pickled dark brown, some rice,
+mixed with chopped cabbage, and some chopped capsicum.
+
+I had previously eaten bean curd, and old eggs which are an expensive
+delicacy, and formed part of a Chinese dinner given to me at the English
+Legation at Seoul. At the next village I saw the process of preparation.
+Ducks’ eggs alone are used, and they must be quite fresh. They are
+steeped in a solution of lime, with the addition of salt. The lime
+penetrates the shell and turns the white into a dark, bottle-green
+jelly, while the yolk becomes hard and nearly black. After this the egg
+is wrapped up in clay, which is dried by gentle heat. It will then keep
+a year or more. Such eggs are very good, indeed they are one of the few
+Chinese delicacies which I can eat with equanimity. The variety of food
+eaten by all classes in China is amazing. It would require four or five
+pages to put down what I have myself seen in the eating-houses and food
+shops on this journey.
+
+After leaving Sin-tien-tze, I entered a richer and more prosperous
+region, with a very productive soil, much mineral wealth, and important
+industries both in towns and villages; and the food shops reflected the
+prosperity. There was fresh pork everywhere. Every village seemed to
+have killed a pig that morning. In most places bread made of wheaten
+flour was to be got in the form of dumplings, leavened, but steamed, not
+baked. These make good toast. Bean curd is everywhere also, and is
+universally liked. It is pure white, as if made with milk, and resembles
+in insipidity unflavoured _blanc mange_, made with Carrageen moss. There
+is scarcely a hamlet in which it is not sold. The beans are ground
+between two millstones, the upper one having a hole in the centre. Into
+this the beans are poured along with water, and the thick white cream
+which results from the grinding is caught in a trough below. Plenty of
+gypsum and some salt are added, the cream is boiled, the froth is thrown
+away, and the residue, after undergoing considerable squeezing in a
+cloth, is poured into flat, deep trays to set; when cold it is cut up
+into bricks. Every traveller in China, Japan, and Korea makes
+acquaintance with this preparation. Beans are enormously used, fresh,
+and made into patties, and preserved in equal parts of brine and syrup,
+when they taste like hazel nuts.
+
+Patties, or pies, are universal, and the itinerant pieman frequents all
+markets and places where men congregate. Vegetable patties of beans,
+chopped cucumbers, vegetable eggs, and sweet potato are much liked, and
+so are patties of pork, and salt fish, and frog, but the last are
+somewhat of a luxury. Then there are cakes of wheaten flour containing
+chopped and fried onion, or a spoonful of treacle, and cakes of ground
+millet, with sugar-candy or scorched millet on the top, and the same
+pieman often sells bags of popcorn, melon seeds, and pieces of
+sugarcane.
+
+Water-melon seeds ought rather to be classed with amusements than with
+food. As in Persia, they are enormously used; it is difficult to write
+consumed. They descend to the poorest class, but chiefly on holidays.
+Their use implies leisure and sociability. I never saw a man eating them
+alone, except on a journey. They are a national custom. Where our men
+would enjoy themselves drinking wine or spirits, the Chinese play with
+melon seeds. Eating them seems a masculine amusement, and the higher a
+Chinese is in rank the more melon seeds he consumes. One dare not
+speculate on what the consumption of the Son of Heaven must be.
+Doubtless they serve the useful purpose of helping to supply the system
+with fatty matter.
+
+In some parts of SZE CHUAN water-melons appear to be grown entirely for
+their seeds. I have seen the cooling, delicious pulp thrown on the road,
+while the seeds are carefully preserved, and, as in Tibet the
+proprietors of apricot orchards allowed me to eat as many apricots as I
+liked, provided that I returned them the stones, so I have been allowed
+to eat melons, if I returned the seeds. Huc writes that on the rivers
+“huge junks may be seen loaded entirely” with these “deplorable
+futilities.” I do not pretend to such a remarkable vision, but at good
+inns I have seen parties of six or eight well-dressed merchants, with
+carefully-tended, pointed finger-nails an inch long, spending three or
+four hours in cracking melon seeds, plate after plate rapidly
+disappearing. Piles of shells of melon seeds some inches high often
+greeted me in inn rooms. Every wayside restaurant sells them. Groups of
+children sit apathetically in village streets eating them. They are
+served before, with, and after every meal, with tea and wine, and at all
+social gatherings. Men crack and eat them while they are bargaining or
+discussing business, or are travelling in sedan chairs. And the
+dexterity and rapidity with which they extract the small kernel from the
+tough shell is worthy of squirrels and apes. This consumption of melon
+seeds is a feature of the whole empire, and I really believe is, as a
+pleasure, second only to “foreign smoke.”
+
+Our ideas as to Chinese food are, on the whole, considerably astray. It
+is true that the rich spend much in pampering their appetites, that the
+foolish extravagance of providing meats, fruits, and vegetables, out of
+season at “dinner parties” prevails among them as among us, and that
+such delicacies as canine cutlets and hams, cat fricassees, bird’s-nest
+soup—a luxury so costly that it makes its appearance on foreign
+tables—stewed _holothuria_, and fricassee of snails, worms, or snakes
+are to be seen at ceremonious feasts. I have been myself in dog and cat
+restaurants in Canton, but they are only frequented by the extravagant.
+
+I think in addition to the enormous variety in Chinese articles of diet,
+multiplied a hundredfold by culinary art, the food is wholesome and well
+cooked, and that the cooking is cleanly, steaming being a very favourite
+method. Cleanly cooking and wholesome and excellent meals are often
+produced in dark and unsavoury surroundings, and those foreigners who
+travel much in the interior learn to find Chinese food palatable. My
+chief objection to it is the amount of vegetable oil used, and the
+prevalent flavour of garlic. The bulb well applied is an excellent
+condiment, but it is startling to meet with it in unexpected places, and
+everywhere.
+
+Rice, wheat, Italian milled and maize are the grains chiefly eaten, but
+rice is the staff of life, and is regarded as absolutely indispensable.
+But it is not eaten by itself, even by the poorest, but mixed with fried
+cabbage, or with such dainty relishes as rotten beans, or putrid
+mustard, or soy, or Chili sauce. Among common expressions, to “take a
+meal” is “to eat rice,” and the salutation equivalent to “How do you
+do?” is literally “Have you eaten rice?”[44]
+
+The Chinese list of culinary vegetables about quadruples ours, and with
+the exception of rice they are the great result of garden cultivation
+and heavy manuring, some of the root crops receiving individually at
+stated intervals a supply of liquid manure. Cucumbers, melons, and
+radishes weighing a pound each, are produced in enormous quantities.
+More than twenty sorts of peas and beans are cultivated—one monstrous
+bean being eaten with its soft squashy pod. Leaves are important
+articles of diet, beginning with the opium leaf. There are pig weed
+(_Chenopodium_), sow thistle (_Sonchus_), ginger, radishes, mustard,
+clover, shepherd’s purse, succory, sweet basil, lettuce, celery,
+dandelion, spinach, purslane, artemisia, amaranthus, tacca, and
+numberless others which have no English names. In addition to carrots,
+turnips, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes, sweet potatoes, enormously
+used, and “Irish potatoes” increasingly grown, they have aquatic edible
+roots, among others the big root of the _Nelumbium_, water-caltrops, and
+water-chestnuts.
+
+Onions, garlic, leeks, scallions, and chives are consumed both by rich
+and poor, and it is seldom possible to be out of their odour. Cabbage,
+broccoli, kale, colewort and cress are eaten enormously, both fresh and
+preserved, as well as musk and water-melons, pumpkins, squashes, gourds,
+tomatoes, and brinjals, besides many eccentric pods, of the names of
+which I have not a notion. One of the most delicious of all Chinese
+vegetables is the young shoot of the bamboo, which looks like huge
+asparagus, and is eaten boiled. The Chinese consume enormous quantities
+of pickled cabbage and onions, as well as candied roots and fruits, and
+others preserved in syrup. Even the common potato is dignified by this
+treatment.
+
+In the absence of butter and oily foods, the use of much oil in cooking
+is a physical necessity, but the European palate would require a long
+education before it could enjoy the strong flavours of some of the
+vegetable oils, such as castor oil, sesamum, and ground nut. Lard and
+pork fat are used also.
+
+Very little land in the Yangtze Valley is used for the rearing of
+animals for food. Pork is the principal meat used, and I suppose that
+every family possesses a pig. Beef is rarely obtainable, except where
+there are Mohammedans. I never saw mutton west of Ichang, or, indeed,
+sheep till I reached the mountains. Pork, fowls, geese, and ducks really
+represent animal food over much of SZE CHUAN. If young cats and dogs are
+bred for the table they are fed on rice. Locusts, grasshoppers,
+silkworms and grubs are eaten, being fried till they are crisp. In some
+cities human milk is sold for the diet of aged persons, great faith
+being placed in its nutritive qualities.
+
+Undoubtedly much of the grain, especially millet, which is grown between
+Sin-tien-tze and Mien-chuh is used for the distillation of spirits.
+There are no vines in SZE CHUAN, so what we call wine is unknown. There
+are water-white spirits distilled from both millet and barley, and a
+sort of beer like the Japanese _sake_ made from rice, from which spirits
+can be distilled. I never saw a drunken man in fifteen months of Chinese
+travelling, or heard mirth of which strong drink was the inspiration.
+Men take spirits in very small quantities, and almost invariably with
+their food. They never drink anything cold, which safeguards them from
+the worst results of the abominably contaminated water. They drink plain
+hot water, the water in which rice has been boiled, tea, and decoctions
+of various leaves.
+
+I have dwelt so long upon food, because for two hours of every day I had
+nothing to do but study it and inferior cooking as well, for several
+months, and saw infinite varieties of food in the different parts of the
+province at different seasons during my long journey. On the whole,
+except in times of scarcity, the Chinese is a fairly well-fed person.
+
+The journey of March 23 was along the top of a ridge over rocky ground,
+and along limestone terraces incapable of cultivation. There were no
+villages, and few houses, but we passed through two market-places of
+large size. The country, as seen from the ridge, is all low, undulating
+ranges, sprouting up now and then into conical protuberances, till
+suddenly, from an altitude of 2300 feet, there is a view of a narrow
+valley and an extraordinary bend of the Chia-ling. Then comes an abrupt
+and difficult descent of 800 feet, on ledges of rock and steep flights
+of broken stairs, and at its foot the small town of Mao-erh-tiao, with a
+very fine temple lately restored. Boats of twenty tons, salt laden, were
+lying in the clear, blue-green water along the bank. It was a delightful
+day’s journey, the sky very blue, the air dry and as keen as a knife,
+and I reached a fairly good inn where the curiosity was not
+overpowering. The coolies were, if possible, cheerier and better than
+those from whom I had reluctantly parted, and as they were not opium
+smokers they were able to feed themselves well, and thought nothing of
+travelling thirty miles a day at a good pace.
+
+[Illustration: AUTHOR’S ARRIVAL AT A CHINESE INN.]
+
+Other halcyon days followed, of keen air, light without heat, and
+country which, if not actually pretty, led one continually to believe
+that it was about to become so. The plumed bamboo and orange and
+pommeloe groves had vanished, and on the high altitudes which the road
+pursues, which are very barren and rocky, there was almost no
+cultivation, and on one day’s journey of twenty-three miles we only met
+four people, and passed eight houses and a small market-place.
+
+Whenever the elevation was lower, as at times where the road runs along
+the edges of limestone cliffs, there are deep valleys well wooded and
+cultivated, but the upland soil is very poor and bears scanty crops.
+What is called a road is only a narrow footpath, winding along the edges
+of wheat fields, through rocky clefts or ferny defiles, so narrow that
+the chair continually bumped both sides, or under cedars or other big
+trees, over the tops of which trailing red and white roses have grown,
+sending down streamers, then in the pink flush of their spring leafage,
+over the road. This beautiful climber, which grows with prodigious
+rapidity, also flourishes in Korea.
+
+There were pretty little bits, sweet, restful, rural scenes, great
+breezy sweeps, and freedom; no calling of “Foreign devil” and “Foreign
+dog.” The people were quite disposed to be friendly. On arriving one
+afternoon at a specially lofty hamlet, having learnt much caution as to
+the use of my camera, I asked if I might “make a picture” of a mill
+worked by a blindfolded buffalo-cow, as we had not any such mills in my
+country, and they were quite willing, and stopped the cow at the exact
+place I indicated. They were friendly enough to take me to another mill,
+at which two women grind, turning the upper stone by means of poles
+working in holes. The Chinese use a great deal of wheat flour; it can be
+purchased at all markets and large villages, and I never used any other.
+It is not a good colour, and owing to some defect in the millstones one
+is apt to be surprised by grits. After seeing the mills I showed the
+people a number of my photographs taken _en route_, to show them that I
+was not doing anything evil or hurtful, but they said, though quite
+good-naturedly, that it was “foreign magic.”
+
+At the same hamlet I got a room in a new inn which, though on the
+road-level on one side, was two storeys above a winding stream and some
+undulating agricultural country on the other. On that side it actually
+had a window and a view. The boards were new, and though the chinks were
+wide and the air which entered was keen, I congratulated myself heartily
+on such unusually pleasant surroundings. This was premature. When the
+bustle of unpacking was over, noises all too familiar made me look
+through the chinks of the floor, and I saw that I was over a pigsty the
+size of my room, inhabited by nine large, black sows.
+
+[Illustration: AN OX MILL.]
+
+It was the only night of my journey on which I had no sleep, and my
+servant, who had the next room to mine, said that he did not sleep after
+eleven, for the groaning, grunting, routing, and quarrelling were
+incessant. I had shared a room with pigs twice on the journey, but they
+were quiet by comparison. Looking through my floor at daylight, I saw
+that eighteen young pigs had been added to the family. This sleepless
+night was a bad preparation for an early start, and a long and very cold
+day’s journey.
+
+The road leaves Tien-kia-miao, a remarkably clean and attractive
+village, by a level bridge on twelve stone piers, and soon rises again
+to barren altitudes, looking down on well-cultivated valleys wooded with
+cedars. Along every rocky path men were crowding with their wares to a
+neighbouring market, bamboo hats and baskets, sugarcane, fowls, and
+straw shoes being the principal wares. It was some time since I had seen
+any foreign cottons exposed for sale in these markets.
+
+[Illustration: A HAND MILL.]
+
+The soil of the region I had traversed for a fortnight, except in the
+basin of Paoning, is poor and unfitted for rice, and the people are
+chiefly hardworking peasant farmers and coolies. Without having any
+mission from associated or dissociated Chambers of Commerce, my interest
+in the subject led me to make continual inquiries into the local trade
+and the requirements of the people, and something as to the latter was
+to be learned in conversation with the women.
+
+Apart from the general question of weight and make, the general verdict
+was that the widths of our cottons are wrong, and that widths above
+fifteen inches cut to waste in making Chinese clothing. Another
+complaint was that our goods, put up as they are in wrappers intended to
+impose on “semi-civilised” people, constantly make a display of colours
+which in China are “unlucky.” Another was that the printed cottons,
+besides offending in this respect, are coarse in pattern, colouring, and
+style, more fitted for outside barbarians than for the refined tastes of
+a civilised people! If these, which may appear minor matters, were
+attended to, there is probably an opening for both our white and printed
+cottons among the _middle and upper classes of Western China_. But I am
+not a convert to the roseate views which many people take of the
+enormous potentialities for our trade in SZE CHUAN if the means of
+communication are improved by steam on the Yangtze and other methods. It
+is not that our cottons are too dear, but that the great majority of the
+people don’t want them at any price. That is, that the strong, heavy,
+native cottons woven by hand, wear four times as long, and even when
+they are reduced to rags serve several useful purposes. A coolie will
+not buy a material which will only last a year, when, for the same price
+or less, he can get one which will last three, or even four years.
+
+[Illustration: THE TA-LU.]
+
+Coolies dispense with all clothing but cotton drawers in summer, and
+these must be strong to resist hard wear; and they say that our cottons
+are too cold for winter. This is obvious, for a yard of Chinese
+home-spun cotton cloth, fifteen inches wide, weighs over twice as much
+as a yard of British calico over thirty inches wide, and resists the
+wear and tear of hard manual labour and the ofttimes profuse
+perspiration of the labourer. More than two millions sterling worth of
+raw cotton and Sha-shih heavy home-spun cottons are supposed to be
+imported into SZE CHUAN annually, just because the wear requires, and
+must continue to require, the heavy make. Later, in Sin-tu Hsien, a
+prosperous town of 15,000 inhabitants, twelve miles north of Cheng-tu, I
+saw some Japanese cotton goods, fifteen inches wide, made on looms,
+which the alert cotton-spinners of Osaka had adapted for the Korean
+market, and which were of an equally heavy make with the Sha-shih goods,
+and scarcely to be distinguished from home-spun cloth. The shopkeeper
+highly approved of these goods, and said that if he could get them there
+would be a large demand for them. Possibly British “workhouse sheeting”
+of the same width might meet with similar approbation.
+
+At the hamlet of Lu-fang, where I was stopped by an official with a card
+from the district mandarin, who kept me waiting an hour while he copied
+my passport on a stone and provided fresh runners, the by-road by which
+I had journeyed for some days joined the Ta-lu, the great Imperial road
+from Pekin to Cheng-tu. I travelled along this westwards to Mien-chow. A
+thousand years ago it must have been a noble work. It is nominally
+sixteen feet wide, the actual flagged roadway measuring eight feet. The
+bridges are built solidly of stone. The ascents and descents are made by
+stone stairs. More than a millennium ago an emperor planted cedars at
+measured distances on both sides, the beautiful red-stemmed, weeping
+cedar of the province. Many of these have attained great size, several
+which I measured being from fourteen to sixteen feet in circumference
+five feet from the ground, and they actually darken the road.
+
+The first ascent from Lu-fang under this solemn shade is truly grand,
+nearly equalling the cryptomeria avenues which lead up to the shrines of
+Nik-ko, Japan. Each tree bears the Imperial seal, and the district
+magistrates count them annually. Many have fallen, many have hollow
+trunks, and there are great breaks without any at all. Still, where they
+do exist, the effect is magnificent. This road, like much else in China,
+is badly out of repair, many of its great flagstones having disappeared
+altogether. There was a great deal of traffic on it, and not a few
+saddle horses and mules were tripping easily up and down its stone
+staircases. It was quite cheerful to be once more on a travelled highway
+abounding in large villages and towns, with good inns and much
+prosperity.
+
+These were days of delightful travelling without any drawbacks. The
+weather was beautiful, the air sharp, and the people well-behaved. There
+was no fatigue or annoyance, the accommodation was fair, and there was
+literally nothing to complain of; the travelling was fit for a Sybarite.
+The soil is rich, and enormous quantities of opium were grown; indeed,
+in some long valleys there was no other crop. Wu-lien, where I slept one
+night, is the cleanest and prettiest little Chinese town that I
+saw—prettily situated, with a widish main street, good inns, fair shops,
+and singular cleanliness, and the people were very mannerly. It has a
+level stone bridge, supported on twelve stone piers decorated with
+finely-carved dragons’ heads.
+
+On the road from Wu-lien to the large town of Tze-tung Hsien there is
+some very pretty country, rich in agricultural wealth, and growing much
+opium, which unfortunately in good years pays better than any other
+crop, and is easy of transit. Wheat, which was only two or three inches
+above the ground on the high ridges, was bursting into ear in the
+valleys, and peas and beans were in their fragrant beauty. There was
+much pink and white mistiness of peach and plum, and yellow fluffiness
+of mimosa, and the people were astir and alert, performing spring
+pilgrimages to popular shrines, men and women in separate companies.
+
+There are two very fine and ancient temples of brown cedar to the gods
+of Literature and War in a cedar wood on the road, with most picturesque
+hilly surroundings, a lovely spot, and the tides of pilgrimage set
+strongly towards them. The God of War there as elsewhere is very
+attractive to women, as may be seen any day in his great temple in the
+native city of Shanghai. Perpetual incense burns on these altars, and
+the priests claim the round-numbered antiquity of two thousand years for
+the temples.
+
+There were very many companies of from ten to thirty well-dressed women
+on the road, some of whom had hobbled on their crippled-looking feet for
+fifteen miles, and were going back the same day; and many large bands of
+men, each led by a man with a gong, carrying a small table with incense
+sticks burning on it, the procession followed by another coolie loaded
+with red candles, large and small, with thick paper wicks, incense
+sticks, and red perforated paper for the God of War. His temple was
+crowded, and dense clouds of incense rolled from the open front into the
+atmosphere of heavenly blue. The God of Literature is chiefly worshipped
+by the _literati_, and there were only a few sedan chairs with their
+occupants and attendants at his splendid shrine.
+
+The Ta-lu failed to keep up its reputation. Its great flags were tilted
+up or down, in mud-holes, or had disappeared; its noble avenue was
+spasmodic and often non-existent for miles, leading to the prophecy that
+it would disappear altogether, as it did. But the vanished grandeur was
+made up for by the extraordinary traffic—baggage coolies, chair-bearers,
+sedan chairs, passengers on foot and on horseback, varied at times by
+marriage and funeral processions, or batches of criminals tied together
+by their queues, being led to justice. Of the numbers of weight-carrying
+coolies, divested of the upper garment, on the road, there were very few
+free from hard tumours or callosities on both shoulders, and many of
+them have deep, cracked wounds in their heels. A man carries a load five
+miles before he earns a bowl of rice.
+
+At intervals there were small huts, each sporting a military flag, and
+with halberds or lances with silk pennons leaning up against them.
+Sometimes these were in a village, but occasionally the flag, which is
+very showy, having a pennon end, and seen afar off, was only supported
+by a heap of stones on the roadside. There were no soldiers in uniform,
+but possibly the two or three peasants lying by every flag were men in
+mufti. Sometimes boys were carrying firearms of an ancient type, bows
+and arrows, or heavy swords. The people said that the flags were to
+frighten the rebels, and that the men were watching for them, but the
+region seemed in a state of profound peace.
+
+The peasants’ coffins on the road were those of the poorest class, and
+were carried at a run, merely wrapped up in blue cotton. A mandarin’s
+coffin on its way to Mien-chow was draped with blue kilted silk,
+tasselled at the four corners, and was carried by twenty men in
+red-tasselled hats, slung on a heavy beam, with a boldly carved dragon,
+an emblem of official position, at both ends. The coffin was surmounted
+(as were those of the peasants) by a tethered live cock. A cheap coffin
+costs from five to ten dollars, and from that up to two thousand. There
+is much trade done on the Chia-ling in coffin wood and coffins. I saw
+many junks loaded with both.
+
+At one place in China, where there was no inn, I slept in a room with a
+coffin which had been unburied for five years, because the geomancers
+had not decided on a lucky site or date for the interment, and for the
+whole time incense had been burned before it morning and evening. Of
+course if there is a family burial-place the services of the geomancer
+are seldom required except for the date of burial.
+
+The coffin of the mandarin on the Ta-lu was not on its way to interment,
+therefore the usual procession was dispensed with, but nearer Tze-tung
+Hsien we met a large funeral for which we had to leave the road.[45] On
+this occasion the corpse of a well-to-do merchant, unburied for a year,
+was being borne to the grave.
+
+In order to prevent any disagreeable consequences from interment being
+delayed for months or years, the coffin-boards are three or four inches
+thick, the body is covered with quicklime or is laid on a bed of lime or
+cotton, and afterwards the edges of the lid are closed with cement, and
+if the body is to remain in a dwelling-house, the whole is made
+air-tight by being covered with Ning-po varnish. A coffin is sometimes
+retained in a house by a defaulting tenant to prevent an ejectment for
+rent, and it is occasionally attached by creditors, in order to compel
+the relations to raise money to release it. So strong is the feeling in
+China regarding suitable burial, that a son if he has no other means
+will sell himself into slavery to provide the expenses, and burial clubs
+and charitable societies for providing the destitute with seemly
+funerals are numerous.
+
+On this occasion a band of music came first, then the monstrous coffin
+on a bier carried by at least forty men in red coats and scarves,
+covered by a canopy embroidered in gold thread, on which was tethered a
+living fowl. Behind came the ancestral tablet in a sedan chair, the
+sacrifice, and some red tablets, on which were inscribed in gold the
+offices held by the deceased, followed by the male mourners dressed in
+white. The eldest son, apparently sinking with grief, though it was a
+year old, was supported by two men. Women and children followed, wailing
+at intervals. A man preceded the whole, strewing paper money on the
+ground to buy the goodwill of such malignant or predatory spirits as
+might be loafing around.
+
+One man was loaded with crackers, another carried the libations which
+were to be poured out, and the rear of the procession, which was ten
+minutes in passing, was brought up by a great concourse of friends and
+neighbours, and a great number of bamboo and paper models, admirably
+executed, and many of them life-size, of horses with handsome saddles
+and trappings, mules carrying burdens, sedan chairs, houses, rich
+clothing, beds, tables, chairs, and all that the spirit can be supposed
+to want in the shadowy world to which it has gone. These, with a
+quantity of tinsel money, are burned at the grave, the tablet and
+sacrifice are carried back, the former to be placed in the ancestral
+hall, the latter to be feasted on or given to the poor. The ceremonies
+of the interment, as my readers are aware, only initiate the long years
+of ceremonial with which the dead are honoured in China.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVII.
+                      TZE-TUNG HSIEN TO KUAN HSIEN
+
+
+An hour after leaving the great temples of Ta-miao, with their throngs
+of pilgrims and the remarkable friendliness of the people, we came upon
+the walls, gates, and towers of Tze-tung Hsien, the approach to which is
+denoted by a graceful eleven-storeyed pagoda on a neighbouring hill. I
+had not been through a large walled city since the riot at Liang-shan,
+and I had to brace myself up for entering this one, which has a reputed
+population of 27,000 people. The inhabitants were very orderly however,
+and though the streets were greatly crowded, the people looked pleasant.
+The Liang-shan riot is known to all the mandarins, and obviously they
+have no wish for a repetition of it, and I adhere to my belief that they
+are in most, if not in all cases, able to prevent attacks on foreigners.
+
+Tze-tung Hsien is a clean and prosperous-looking city, with wide streets
+lined by good shops, in which the goods are more displayed than is
+usual. It is surrounded with well-cultivated country, and good country
+houses, and trades in vegetable oils, cottons, and raw and spun silk,
+some of the strong, coarse “oak silk” being brought in for manufacture.
+Oil is made from the seeds of the _aleurites cordata_, rape seed, pea
+nuts, and opium seed. Opium oil bears the highest price. The town has a
+stirring aspect, and its walls and gateways are in good repair. Outside,
+the Fou River is crossed by a noble stone bridge of nine arches with
+fine stone balustrades, carrying a flagged roadway eighteen feet broad.
+The centre arch is thirty feet high. It is the finest bridge that I had
+then seen in China. A grand temple outside the walls, and an elaborately
+carved triple-storeyed _pai-fang_, complete the attractions of this
+thriving city.
+
+[Illustration: WOMAN REELING SILK.]
+
+On the western route from Tze-tung Hsien the country becomes
+increasingly fertile, and the road more dilapidated. The cedars have
+disappeared, and the pavement is only four feet in width. The traffic in
+oil, cotton, and tobacco was great, and crowds of pilgrims, very
+respectable looking, with gongs, incense tables, and offerings, were
+trudging to the Ta-miao temples. They said that they were making
+offerings to the God of War for having driven the “barbarian rebels”
+into the sea! There were funerals, too, and a train of twelve led
+horses, each carrying a red flag, with on it a mandarin’s name and
+official titles. These were heavily laden with luggage, and in front
+there was the mandarin’s coffin, with a live cock upon it, carried by
+forty men.
+
+The prevalent impression left by this great road is that of toil and
+poverty. Rice had risen considerably in the previous three weeks, which
+meant to many millions that they would never get a full meal. The region
+I had entered is one of the most crowded parts of the Red Basin and of
+China, and I often asked myself, “Why are there so many Chinese?” They
+seem to come into the world just to bury their fathers. That night again
+I slept in a room with a huge coffin, which had been waiting interment
+for some years, and incense was regularly burned before it.
+
+On March 28th I reached Mien-chow, a city of about 60,000 souls, the
+largest that I had yet seen in SZE CHUAN. The journey from Paoning Fu
+had been most propitious in all respects, and the fine weather had come
+at last. I entered the city by a bridge of boats over the Fou, a great
+tributary of the Chia-ling. Mien-chow has a curious geographical
+situation. The Fou basin, in which it stands, though north of Chengtu
+and nearer the water parting, is on a lower level than the basin of the
+Min, from which it is divided by a low ridge. So Mien-chow is actually
+250 feet below Chengtu, its altitude being 1350 feet.
+
+It is a well-built and clean town, with a fine wall, and a river front
+well protected by a handsome bund of cobbles and concrete, with eight
+slanting faces. The Fou is navigable, and when the water is high, boats
+can descend to Chungking in six or seven days. There is an enormous
+wheelbarrow traffic from Mien-chow to the capital, principally of sugar
+and tobacco. The busy and crowded streets are lined with shops, in which
+every conceivable article in iron is displayed, from surgical
+instruments, to spades, ploughshares, and articles in wrought iron.
+There are fully half a mile of such shops. The great trade of Mien-chow,
+however, is in silk, and much cotton is woven in its neighbourhood. The
+shops display German and Japanese knick-knacks, foreign yarns, and
+printed cottons, besides Kansuh furs, brocades, silks, temple furniture,
+and drugs. The shops, with their varied, and in many cases costly,
+contents show that the neighbourhood has great purchasing power.
+
+The passage through the thronged streets took nearly an hour, but all
+was quiet. I was not allowed to go to an inn, but was most kindly
+received at the Church Mission House, a dark and not agreeably situated
+house in a crowded Chinese quarter, inhabited by the two ladies who,
+after four years of patience and difficulties, have effected a permanent
+lodgment in what is well known as a hostile city. They spent the first
+two years at an inn, and so little were they thought of, that the
+mandarin, when urged to take some action against them, replied, “What
+does it matter? they are only women!”
+
+During this time all their attempts to rent a house failed, because the
+officials threatened to beat and imprison anyone letting a house to a
+foreigner; but a fortnight before my visit a man ruined by opium smoking
+let them have for ten years the place into which they had just moved,
+close to the great temple of Confucius. Access to it is through an area
+inhabited by Chinese—a forlorn, dirty yard—and through an inner yard
+full of Chinese, who seemed to be always gambling or smoking opium, a
+third yard being the newly-acquired property, from which some of the
+Chinese had not yet cleared out. The two last courts are rented by the
+Church Missionary Society, and have subsequently been improved and made
+habitable, and “The Emily Clayton Memorial,” a dispensary with a
+surgical ward under Dr. Squibb, a qualified English doctor, has been
+opened in the outer of the two compounds.
+
+It was interesting to see what missionaries in China have to undergo in
+the initial stage of residence in a Chinese city. The house was utterly
+out of repair—dirty, broken—half the paper torn off the windows, and the
+eaves so deep and low that daylight could scarcely enter. There was an
+open guest-hall in the middle used constantly for classes and services;
+endless parties of Chinese passed in and out all day long, poking holes
+in the remaining windows, opening every door that was not locked, taking
+everything they could lay hands on; and the noise was only stilled from
+four to six a.m.—men shouting, babies screaming, dogs barking, squibs
+and crackers going off, temple bells, gongs, and drums beating—no rest,
+quiet, or privacy.
+
+[Illustration: THE REV. J. HEYWOOD HORSBURGH, M.A., IN TRAVELLING
+DRESS.]
+
+There were two services in the guest-hall on Sunday, conducted by Mr.
+Heywood Horsburgh, the superintendent of the Mission, and several
+classes for women also, but all in a distracting babel—men playing cards
+outside the throng, men and women sitting for a few minutes, some
+laughing scornfully, others talking in loud tones, some lighting their
+pipes, and a very few really interested. This is not the work which many
+who go out as missionaries on a wave of enthusiasm expect, but this is
+what these good people undergo day after day and month after month.
+
+The place where the two ladies spent two years, consisted of a
+guest-room at an inn in one of the most crowded of the city streets, a
+living-room through it, a kitchen through that, and for a sleeping-room,
+a loft above the living-room, reached by a ladder, just under the
+unlined tiles. There was no light in any room, except from a paper
+window, into the semi-dark passage. The floors were mud; wood, water,
+charcoal, and all things had to be carried in and out through the
+living-room; no privacy was possible; the temperature hung at about 100°
+for weeks in summer; there were the ceaseless visits of crowds of
+ill-bred Chinese women, staying for hours at a time; and without and in
+the inn, seldom pausing, there was the unimaginable din of a big Chinese
+city. Under these circumstances their love and patience had won twelve
+women to be Christians.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Cormack, of the China Inland Mission, and a thirteen
+months’ baby, arrived before I left, he very ill of malarial fever. They
+were swept out of Chengtu in the riots, losing all their possessions,
+and with this infant had been moving for seven months, having lastly
+been driven out of Kansuh by the Mohammedan rebellion. During the whole
+seven months they had never been in one place more than twelve days. It
+is a grave question whether married men and married women ought to be
+placed in regions of precarious security. Mr. Heywood Horsburgh’s house
+at Kuan Hsien had just been attacked and bored into by a number of
+burglars, and between the terror caused by this, and the hostile cries
+in the streets, which they understood too well, his delicate, sensitive
+young daughters, one of them twelve years old, had become so thoroughly
+nervous that the only possible cure was to take them home. I saw several
+ladies in Western China who, after escaping from mobs with their young
+children, were affected in the same way.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Horsburgh and I left Mien-chow on March 31st, a grey, dull
+day, but clear. We left the Ta-lu and travelled by infamous roads, often
+only a few inches wide, frequently on the top of rice dykes. Great
+mountains, snow-crested, spurs of the Tibetan ranges, loomed through the
+clouds to the north-west, while we journeyed through the eastern portion
+of the great Chengtu plain, the rich, well-watered soil green with
+barley and opium, and beautiful with miles of rape, largely grown for
+oil, rolling in canary yellow waves before a pleasant breeze. Large
+farmhouses had reappeared, farming hamlets, and big temples, all
+surrounded by fine trees. There are frequent water-mills of a very
+peculiar construction, said by experts to be the oldest form in the
+world, the wheel being placed horizontally just above the lower level of
+the water.
+
+Before we left the Ta-lu, the great highway to the capital, the
+wheelbarrow traffic was enormous. These “machines,” with a big wooden
+wheel placed so near the centre of gravity as to throw the weight of the
+load as little as possible on the driver’s shoulders, carry goods on
+platforms on either side and behind the wheel, which is solid. One man
+can propel five hundredweight. Heavy loads have one man to propel and
+another to drag them. They move in long files, their not altogether
+unmelodious creak being heard afar off, and the stone road is deeply
+grooved by their incessant passage.
+
+[Illustration: WATER MILL, CHENGTU PLAIN.]
+
+After two pleasant days’ journey we reached Mien-chuh Hsien, a town of
+50,000 people, according to the statement of the magistrate’s secretary.
+It is not a handsome town, but it has a beautiful modern bridge over a
+branch of the Fou, of six stone arches, a fine roof, iron balustrades,
+and a central roofed tower. It is a busy and prosperous city, with many
+fine temples and grand mountain views. The production of paper,
+especially coloured paper, is its speciality, but it also manufactures
+largely wood and horn combs, indigo, and fine wheaten flour. Much salt
+is made in the neighbourhood, and in the hills thirty _li_ off there are
+coal mines, producing coal which burns with a clear white flame, and
+little ash. There, as elsewhere, the missionaries have introduced
+English articles of utility, which have “caught on” among the Chinese.
+
+[Illustration: BRIDGE AT MIEN-CHUH.]
+
+A cordial welcome awaited us at the Church Missionary Society’s house.
+The initial stage, as I saw it at Mien-chow, was passed, and we were
+received into as trim a little home as one could see anywhere, or wish
+to see. Turning from the street, where the people did not molest even by
+curiosity, down a narrow alley and through a door, down a passage on one
+side of which is the guest-hall, we entered a small and very bright
+compound, cheery with pots of primulas and chrysanthemums, with five
+small cottage rooms round it, with paper windows, but light, cheerful,
+and homelike, with simple daintinesses, and a bright coal fire in a
+quaint corner fire-place. The place is just a few Chinese cottages,
+formerly used as a gambling den. Mr. and Mrs. Phillips, who have
+transmogrified it chiefly by their own handiwork, had only lately been
+able to rent it owing to the opposition of the mandarins, who can bring
+many threats and much pressure to bear on persons who would otherwise be
+willing to lease property to foreigners.
+
+The anti-Christian element everywhere seems a feeble one in the
+opposition. It is to foreigners, simply as such, that the objection is
+made, as “child-eaters” pre-eminently; and in Mien-chuh the people said
+that the missionaries wanted the houses for hellish purposes, and that
+they would dig under them and make a way to England, and that foreign
+soldiers would come by it and take their lands, and that they wanted
+lock-up rooms in which to hide the golden cocks which they dug out of
+the mountains by night!
+
+I left Mien-chuh with Mrs. Horsburgh on a somewhat unlucky journey,
+still travelling over the Chengtu plain in a westerly direction. The
+time of year for theatricals, which are a great passion with the
+Chinese, had begun. There is a large temple outside Mien-chuh, with the
+usual adjunct of a stage, richly decorated, with a massive canopy roof,
+for the “religious drama.” But on this day, being the festival of the
+god to whom the temple is dedicated, this was supplemented by temporary
+theatres and booths covering fully half an acre of the temple grounds,
+and the great court was crammed with a closely-wedged mass of Chinese,
+and the adjacent grounds and the road were such a crush of people that
+our chairs could hardly get through. There must have been from twelve to
+fifteen thousand present.
+
+These plays are got up by the priests, who send the neophytes round with
+a subscription paper, afterwards pasting the names of the donors,
+inscribed on red sheets, on the walls of the temple. The priests let the
+purlieus for the occasion for the sale of refreshments, and also for
+gambling tables and other evil purposes, and usually make a profit out
+of what is professedly a religious celebration. When the subscription
+list has been filled up, the priests engage the best talent that their
+funds will allow of.
+
+Theatrical companies in China retain their original strolling character,
+and there are few permanent theatres, the erection of the great sheds,
+in which several thousand can be accommodated, being a separate branch
+of the carpenter’s trade. A play usually lasts for three days, and the
+periods for sleeping and eating are wonderfully minimised. Business is
+suspended in the neighbourhood, and the people act as if the drama were
+the only thing worth living for. It is not etiquette for women of the
+upper classes to frequent the theatre, and private theatrical
+performances are given in rich men’s houses, but women of the lower
+classes, generally carrying babies, attend in large numbers and usually
+sit in the galleries. Lads perform the female parts, with grotesque
+success, transforming their feet into excellent representations of
+“golden lilies,” and hobbling and tottering to perfection.
+
+I have only been present at two Chinese plays. They interest me greatly,
+and it is on the stage alone that the gorgeous costumes of brocaded and
+embroidered silk of former dynasties are to be seen. The scenery is
+simple and imperfect. The orchestra fills up all pauses vigorously, and
+strikes a crashing noise at intervals during the play to add energy or
+fury to the performance. Ghosts or demons appear from a trap-door in the
+stage. The scenes are not divided by a curtain, and the play proceeds on
+its lengthened course with only intervals for sleep and eating. The
+imperfect scenery makes it necessary for the actor to state what part he
+is performing, and what the person he represents has been doing while
+off the stage. There are comic actors who have only to appear on the
+boards to convulse an audience with laughter, and tragic actors who are
+equally successful in making men (or women) weep. There is no applause
+in a Chinese theatre. Admiration is expressed by a loud and prolonged
+sigh, as if indicating that the tension had been too great, or by an
+utterance between a sigh and a groan. A crowd absorbed with theatricals
+is usually peaceable, and the police are always at hand, but in country
+places a play is apt to assemble the roughs of the neighbourhood, as I
+learned the next day to my cost.
+
+Chinese theatricals are very clever, for without anything which can be
+called scenery, and without a curtain, and with my own complete
+ignorance of the language, the actors by their admirable acting
+presented to my mind very distinct stories, in the one case of political
+intrigue, and in the other of military patriotism and self-sacrifice.
+The morals of the Chinese stage, so far as the sentiments of the plays
+are concerned, are said by severe critics to be good; the acting was
+quite unobjectionable when I was present, but I have understood that it
+is not invariably so. The earnestness of attention, and the delight on a
+sea of yellow faces at one of these theatrical representations are most
+interesting.
+
+As we journeyed westwards, the plain became more and more luxuriant, and
+the aspect of wealth and comfort more pronounced. The great farmhouses
+are enclosed by high walls, and are shaded by cedars or cypresses,
+bamboo groves and fruit trees, the latter in early April in all the
+beauty of blossom. Groves of superb timber failed to conceal the gold
+and colour of grand temples. There were water-mills, canalised streams
+with many branches,—from which everywhere peasants, with fans and
+umbrellas, were pumping water by the contrivance shown in the
+illustration on next page—and rivers with broad winter beds, two of them
+spanned by very fine roofed bridges, rafters and supports lacquered red,
+and decorated with tablets in black and red lacquer, bearing the names
+incised in gold of the public-spirited men who had restored them.
+
+In the afternoon an incident occurred which goes to show that the
+Chinese need a gospel of civilisation as well as of salvation. The road
+had left the rich and populous part of the plain, and had reached a
+broad and completely dry river-bed, full of round water-worn stones,
+crossed by a long covered bridge leading into the small town of
+Lo-kia-chan, at which, at the top of the sloping shingle bed of the
+river, a theatrical performance was proceeding before a crowd of some
+six thousand people. Mrs. Horsburgh proposed that we should not cross
+the bridge into the town, but should continue along the river bank
+opposite to it and cross the bed lower down. My idea usually is, and was
+then, to take “the bull by the horns,” but I deferred to her long
+experience, and she went on at some distance in front in a closed chair
+and in scrupulously accurate Chinese dress, I following in my open chair
+and in my _olla podrida_ costume—Chinese dress, European shoes, and a
+Japanese hat.
+
+[Illustration: TREADMILL FIELD-PUMP.]
+
+The crowd caught sight of my open chair, which, being a novelty, was an
+abomination, and fully two thousand men rushed down one shingle bank and
+up the other, brandishing sticks and porters’ poles, yelling, hooting,
+crying “Foreign devil,” and “Child-eater,” telling the bearers to put
+the chair down. In the distance I saw my runners proving their right to
+their name. When I afterwards remonstrated with them, they replied,
+“What could two men do against two thousand?” but a resource of power
+lay in the magistrate’s letter. Then there were stones thrown,
+ammunition being handy. Some hit the chair and bearers, and one knocked
+off my hat. The yells of “Foreign devil,” and “Foreign dog,” were
+tremendous. Volleys of stones hailed on the chair, and a big one hit me
+a severe blow at the back of my ear, knocking me forwards and stunning
+me.
+
+Be-dien said that I was insensible for “some time,” during which a
+“reason talker” harangued the crowd, saying it had done enough, and if
+it killed me, though I was only a woman, foreign soldiers would come and
+burn their houses and destroy their crops, and worse. This sapient
+reasoning had its effect. When I recovered my senses, the chair was set
+down in the midst of the crowd, which was still hooting and shouting,
+but no further violence was offered, and as the bearers carried me on,
+the crowd gradually thinned. I had a violent pain in my head, and the
+symptoms of concussion of the brain, and felt a mortifying inclination
+to cry. The cowards, as usual, attacked from behind.
+
+After three very painful hours, in which I should have been glad to lie
+down by the roadside, we reached the great, walled, district city of
+Peng Hsien, with wide, clean streets, fine shops, temples, and
+guildhalls, a flagged roadway curved in the centre, and stone sidewalks,
+and what is regarded as a great curiosity, a lofty pagoda riven in
+twain, each half standing up perfect. The city, the population of which
+is officially stated at 28,000, manufactures brass and iron goods, iron
+being mined in the neighbourhood, and coal not far off.
+
+Here, again, there was a display of rowdyism. “The city ran together,”
+and for half a mile I was the subject of insult, though not of actual
+violence. The street was nearly impassable from the crowds beating on my
+chair with sticks, hooting, yelling “Foreign devil,” “Foreign dog,”
+“Child-eater,” and worse, yelling into my ear, kicking the chair, and
+spitting. We were carried into a very fine inn, which ran very far back,
+its courtyards ending in a guest-hall, with oranges and lilies in pots
+in the middle, and a mandarin’s room of much pretension beyond.
+
+A masculine crowd filling the courts surged in after us, keeping up a
+frightful clamour. The innkeeper put me into the mandarin’s room, and
+begged me not to show myself; and Be-dien went to the _yamen_ to make a
+complaint regarding the outrage at Lo-kia-chan. As soon as he left, the
+crowd began to hoot and yell and thump the door. I got up and barricaded
+it with the heaviest furniture I could drag. Then they got a spade, or
+wedge, and began to force it open. I deplored my helpless
+condition—faint, giddy, and with a cracking headache, and an unmannerly
+crowd of men ready to burst in. The bolt and barricade were on the verge
+of yielding, when the mandarin’s secretary and another official arrived,
+and at once produced order.
+
+They interviewed Mrs. Horsburgh, who was really able to tell very
+little, and then I was unearthed, and gave my evidence with a bandaged
+head and a sense of unutterable confusion in my brain. The mandarin sent
+an apology for the rudeness in Peng Hsien, but partly excused the
+people, as they, he said, had never seen an open chair or a foreign hat
+before. The secretary said that they had sent to arrest the ringleaders
+of the disturbance at Lo-kia-chan, which I did not believe, but was glad
+of his courtesy. It was difficult for him to understand that I could be
+so severely hurt when there was no effusion of blood. Soldiers were
+posted in the courtyard for the night, and in the morning, besides
+runners, there were four soldiers at my door, who marched, two before
+and two behind my chair for the day’s journey to Kuan Hsien. I had a
+very bad night, and felt very ill the next day, with everything wavering
+before my eyes. I suffered much for a long time from this blow and the
+brain disturbance which followed, but I will dismiss the unpleasant
+subject from these pages by saying that I did not get over the effects
+for a year, and that it was my last experience of violence in China.
+
+Perfect quiet prevailed in the crowded street of Peng Hsien. The Chengtu
+plain grew richer and richer, the plumed bamboo and the cedars and
+_cupressus funebris_ round the great farmhouses grander, and towards
+afternoon snow-peaks, atmospherically uplifted to a colossal height,
+appeared above the clouds in the north, with craggy and wooded spurs
+below them, descending abruptly to the magnificent plain. Everywhere
+living waters in their musical rush echoed the name of the great man who
+before the Christian era turned the vast plain into a paradise. There
+was a covered bridge over a wide rushing river; a dirty, narrow suburban
+street, a narrow alley, and then a cheerful compound, in which a brown
+spotted _dendrobium_ was blooming profusely, shared by three Scotch
+missionaries of the China Inland Mission, and six of the Church
+Missionary Society, women predominating.
+
+[Illustration: WOODEN BRIDGE. KUAN HSIEN.]
+
+At the back of the house the clear, sparkling Min, just released from
+its long imprisonment in the mountains, sweeps past with a windy rush,
+and the mountain views are magnificent, specially where the early sun
+tinges the snow-peaks with pink. Why should I not go on, I asked myself,
+and see Tibetans, yaks, and aboriginal tribes, rope bridges, and
+colossal mountains, and break away from the narrow highways and the
+crowds, and curiosity, and oppressive grooviness of China proper?
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVIII.
+                         KUAN HSIEN AND CHENGTU
+
+
+Kuan Hsien (2347 feet, Gill) is one of the best-placed cities in China,
+at the north-west corner of the Chengtu plain, immediately below the
+mountains which wall it in on the north, and, indeed, scrambling over
+their spurs just at the fine gorge of the Couching Dragon, from whence
+the liberated Min bursts in strength to gladden the whole plain. The
+Mien-chuh road has not a fine entrance into the city—the Chengtu road,
+which I travelled three times, approaches Kuan under six fine
+_pai-fangs_, elaborately, and, indeed, beautifully decorated with
+carvings in high relief in a soft grey sandstone.
+
+Apart from its situation, it is an unattractive town, with narrow, dirty
+streets, small lifeless-looking shops, and a tendency to produce on all
+occasions a dirty crowd, which hangs on to a foreigner, and which on my
+arrival greeted me with—“Here’s another child-eater.” It has an outpost
+air, as if there were little beyond, and this is partly true. It has a
+possible population of 22,000. It is not a rich city, and its suburbs do
+not abound in rich men’s houses. But it is distinguished, first for
+being the starting point of the oldest and, perhaps, the most important
+engineering works in China; and secondly, as being a great emporium of
+the trade with Northern Tibet, which is at its height during the winter,
+when as many as five hundred Tibetans, with their yaks, are encamped
+outside its walls. The Tibetans exchange wool, furs, hides, musk,
+hartshorn, rhubarb, and many other drugs for tea, brass ware, and small
+quantities of silk and cotton. Tibetan drugs are famous all over China.
+The Tibetans, as I learned from personal observation in Western Tibet,
+are enormous tea drinkers. The tea churn is always in requisition, and
+Tibet takes annually from China 22,000,000 pounds. The wool, which helps
+largely to pay for the tea, and which is so abominably dirty that
+fifteen per cent. of it has to be washed away, comes from pasturages
+from 9000 to 12,000 feet in altitude.
+
+Musk is a most lucrative import. The small deer (_cervus moschus_), of
+which it is a secretion, is said to roam in large herds over the plains
+surrounding the Koko Nor. A single deer only produces a third of an
+ounce, and it sells for eighteen times its weight in silver at
+Chung-king, and is largely smuggled. Chengtu reeks with its intensely
+pungent odour. Rhubarb, the best quality of which grows not lower than
+9000 feet, is also a very valuable import, and other drugs are estimated
+at £95,000 annually, and are quintupled in value before they reach the
+central and eastern provinces. Aconite, a root largely used for
+poisoning in Western Tibet, is imported into China as a medicine,
+singular to say, criminal poisoning being very little known. Deer horns
+in the velvet, for medicinal uses, are also largely imported.
+
+Much of the trade is done at Matang, in the mountains, a savage hamlet
+which I afterwards visited, in the month of August; and very much more
+comes down from Sung-pan ting, about 570 _li_ to the north of Kuan,
+where it is chiefly in the hands of Mohammedan merchants, who act as
+go-betweens. Wool brought from Sung-pan to Chung-king has to pass six
+_likin_ barriers; so I understood from Mr. Grainger, of the China Inland
+Mission at Kuan Hsien, to whom I am much indebted for carefully gathered
+information on this and other local points of interest.
+
+The glory of Kuan is the temple in honour of Li Ping, a prefect in the
+aboriginal kingdom of Shu, the ancient SZE CHUAN, the great engineer,
+and his son, whose work has redeemed the noble plain of Chengtu from
+drought and flood for two thousand years. Just above Kuan Hsien there is
+a romantic gorge with lofty grey cliffs, down which one branch of the
+Min, a cold, crystal stream, rushes wildly; but still, rafts and boats,
+carrying lime and coal from above, make the passage, often to their own
+destruction. On the right bank, high on the cliff, is a picturesque
+temple in a romantic situation, with a beautiful roof of glazed, green
+tiles, erected in honour of Li Ping or his son, whose name has been so
+completely lost out of history that he is known only as “The Second
+Gentleman.”
+
+Above this perilous gorge the Min is about two hundred yards wide, with
+more or less mountainous banks heavily wooded, and at the point where
+the Tibetan road crosses it, on a very fine bamboo suspension bridge
+about 200 paces long, the grandest temple in China stands, on a wooded
+height finely terraced, and adorned with stately lines of cryptomeria
+and other exotic trees, one teak-tree in a courtyard being eighteen feet
+in circumference. These noble shrines, with their fine courtyards and
+the exquisitely beautiful pavilions and minarets which climb the cliff
+behind the temple, and are lost among the cryptomerias of the summit,
+are the most beautiful group of buildings that I saw in the far East,
+combining the grace and decorative witchery of the shrines of the
+Japanese Shoguns at Nikko, with a grandeur and stateliness of their own.
+
+This noble temple is scrupulously clean and in perfect repair.
+Magnificent objects of art, as well as tanks surrounded with exotic
+ferns, decorate its courtyards; living waters descend from the hill
+through the mouths of serpents carved in stone; noble flights of stone
+stairs lead to the grand entrance and from terrace to terrace; thirty
+Taoist priests keep lamps and incense ever burning before the shrines;
+an Imperial envoy from Peking visits the temple every year with gifts;
+and tens of thousands of pilgrims, from every part of the plain and
+beyond, bring their offerings and homage to these altars.
+
+The temple left on my memory an impression of beauty and majesty, which
+nature and art have combined to produce. Outside, glorious trees in
+whose dense leafage the lesser architectural beauties lose themselves,
+gurgling waters, flowering shrubs with heavy odours floating on the
+damp, still air, elaborately carved pinnacles and figures on the roofs,
+even the screens in front of the doors decorated with elaborate tracery;
+while the beauty of the interior is past description: columns of highly
+polished black lacquer, a roof, a perfect marvel of carving and lacquer,
+all available space occupied with honorary tablets, the gift of past
+viceroys, while the shrines are literally ablaze with gorgeously
+coloured lacquer and painting, and the banners presented by the emperors
+wave in front. The galleries facing the effigies of the great engineer
+and his son are carved most delicately with lacquered fretwork; and on
+pillars, galleries, and everywhere, where space admits of its decorative
+use, is Li Ping’s motto incised or inscribed in gold, “_Shen tao t’an ti
+tso yen_”—“Dig the bed deep, keep the banks low.”
+
+[Illustration: ROOF OF ERH-WANG TEMPLE.]
+
+Although there is a shrine to Li Ping in this splendid “Erh-Wang”
+temple, it was possibly erected in honour of “The Second Gentleman,” the
+temple to the father being (believed by Mr. Grainger) the more recent
+erection above the gorge of the Couching Dragon. Every Chinese Emperor,
+from the Tsin dynasty, 246 B.C., downwards, has conferred the posthumous
+title of _Wang_, or Prince, upon Li Ping and his son. A stone tablet in
+one of the temples records the story, which I learn from Mr. Grainger,
+who has translated the inscription.
+
+The Chengtu plain, which these deservedly honoured engineers may be said
+to have created, is the richest plain in China, and possibly in the
+world. It may be about 100 miles by seventy or eighty, with an area of
+about 2500 square miles. It produces three and even four crops a year.
+Its chief products are rice, silk, opium, tobacco, sugar, sweet
+potatoes, indigo, the paper mulberry, rape and other oils, maize, and
+cotton, along with roots and fruits of all kinds, both musk and
+water-melons being produced in fabulous quantities. From any height the
+plain looks like a forest of fruit trees, while clumps of cypress,
+cedar, and bamboo denote the whereabouts of the great temples and fine
+farmhouses with which it is studded.
+
+It has an estimated population of 4,000,000, and is sprinkled with
+cities, and flourishing marts, and large villages, Chengtu, the capital,
+having at least 400,000 people. Along the main roads the population may
+be said to constitute a prolonged village. The abundance of water power
+produces any number of flour and oil mills, the plain is intersected in
+all directions with roads which are thronged with traffic, and boats can
+reach the Yangtze from Kuan Hsien, Chengtu, and Chiang Kou.
+
+Oranges reappear in splendid groves, mixed up with the vivid foliage of
+the persimmon; mulberry trees are allowed to grow to their full height
+and amplitude; spinning and weaving are going on everywhere; the soil,
+absolutely destitute of weeds, looks as if it were cultivated with
+trowels and rakes, “tilled,” as Emerson felicitously said of England,
+“with a pencil instead of a plough.” There are frequent small temples,
+or rather shrines, to the God of the Soil, of solid masonry, the image
+being enclosed by open fretwork, in front of which the incense sticks
+smoulder ceaselessly, the long-drawn creak of the wheelbarrow is never
+silent during the daylight hours, agricultural energy and activity
+prevail, and the plain is a singular and, perhaps, unrivalled picture of
+rustic peace and security.
+
+[Illustration: OIL BASKETS AND WOODEN PURSE.]
+
+This population of four millions depends not only for its prosperity,
+but for its existence, on the irrigation works of Li Ping and “The
+Second Gentleman,” carried out long before the Christian era. Without
+these, as has been truly said, “the east and west of the plain would be
+a marsh, and the north a waterless desert,” and this great area with its
+boundless fertility and wealth, and its immunity from drought and flood
+for two thousand years, is the monument to the engineering genius of
+these two men, whose motto, “_Dig the bed deep, keep the banks low_,”
+had it been applied universally to rivers of insubordinate habits, would
+have saved the world from much desolation and loss.
+
+[Illustration: BARROW TRAFFIC, CHENGTU PLAIN.]
+
+With a faithfulness rare in China, Li Ping’s motto has been carried out
+for twenty-one centuries. The stone-bunded dykes are kept low and in
+repair, and in March the bed of the artificial Min, created by Li Ping,
+by cutting a gorge a hundred feet deep through the hard rock of the
+cliff above Kuan Hsien, and which has been closed by a barrier since the
+previous November, with its subsidiary channels, is carefully dug out,
+till the workmen reach two iron cylinders, sunk in the bed of the
+stream, which mark its proper level. The silt of the year, which is from
+five to six feet thick, is then removed. The whole plain contributes to
+this expensive work, and a high official, the _Shui Li Fu_, or “Prefect
+of the Waterways,” is responsible for it.
+
+In late March, or early April, there is a grand ceremony, sometimes
+attended by the Viceroy, when the winter dam is cut, and the strong
+torrent of the Min, seized upon by human skill, is divided and
+subdivided, twisted, curbed by dams and stone revetments, and is sent
+into innumerable canals and streams, till, aided by a fall of twelve
+feet to the mile, there is not a field which has not a continual supply,
+or an acre of the Chengtu plain in which the musical gurgle of the
+bright waters of the Tibetan uplands is not heard—waters so abundant
+that though drought may exist all round, this vast oasis remains a
+paradise of fertility and beauty.
+
+At Kuan Hsien, where I spent some little time recovering from the
+assault at Lo-kia-chan, and in projecting a further journey, the feeling
+of the people towards foreigners was definitely hostile. It had been
+originally opened to Christian teaching by a lady, who, after living
+alone there for a considerable time (but that was before “the riots,”
+the modern landmark in SZE CHUAN history), left for England during my
+visit, much regretted; but since the riots “the Jesus religion” had made
+very slow progress. Slanders against the missionaries were circulated
+and believed, and the special one that they stole and ate infants, or
+used their eyes and hearts for medicines, was disagreeably current in
+Kuan Hsien.
+
+The foreign ladies, four of whom had been hidden for eleven weeks of the
+hottest part of the previous summer, during the disturbances, in a room
+without a window, were very nervous, as was natural, starting when
+shouting was heard, not knowing what it might mean, and even those men
+who were hampered by wives and young families, at times looked anxious.
+No one who has heard the howling of a Chinese mob can forget it—it seems
+to come up direct from the bottomless pit! One of these young wives,
+during the disturbances, escaped through a window with her three infants
+to a ledge above the river while her husband kept the mob at bay.
+
+So when I left for Sin-tu Hsien and Chengtu I escorted a lady, whose
+nerves had received such a shock in the riots that she was afraid to
+travel alone. My escort was of little value, for the people of the
+villages were lavish of their infamous epithets, pulled away the blinds
+of her chair, pulled out her hairpins and terrified her, while I was
+ignored.
+
+It was a very long day, and when we reached Sing-fang Hsien, a busy
+town, long after dark, we had a pilgrimage from inn to inn, finding them
+all full, and the people hooted us all along the street till we found
+refuge in a hostel by no means “first-class.” The heat had set in
+fiercely, and the mercury was 83° in the shade. The following day, after
+a short journey in intense heat over the glorious and busy plain, we
+reached the house of Mr. Callum of the Church Missionary Society, at
+Sin-tu Hsien, a thriving town of about 15,000 people, with a pleasant
+promenade on its walls, and a very fine temple just outside them. The
+industry of this town, as of Kuan Hsien, is chiefly the making of straw
+sandals.
+
+The third day’s journey with Mr. and Mrs. Callum was still over the
+glorious plain, which became yet richer and more densely populated as we
+neared Chengtu, the restaurants, always crowded with coolies and
+travellers, almost lining the road, and the wheelbarrows making a nearly
+ceaseless procession.
+
+[Illustration: POPPY FIELD IN BLOSSOM. [_F. Mayers._]
+
+If one could disabuse oneself of the belief that opium is the curse of
+China and is likely to sap the persistent vitality of the race, there
+could have been nothing but unstinted admiration for the wonderful
+beauty of the crop in blossom, as I saw it in its glory on that sunny
+April day on the Chengtu plain, which in some places seemed to have no
+_raison d’être_ but its growth. The season had been without a drawback,
+and every leaf and flower had attained to its full maturity of
+loveliness. The blossoms were white—white fringed with rose-pink, white
+with white fringes, ruby-red, carmine, dark purple, pale mauve, and
+rose-pink. Waves of colour on slope and plain rolled before the breeze.
+Houses were almost submerged by the coloured billows. Far and near,
+along roads and streams, round stately temples and prosperous
+farmhouses, rippled and surged these millions of corollas, in all the
+glory of their brief and passionate existence—the April pulse of Nature
+throbbing through them most vigorously,—the poppy truly in the
+ascendant.
+
+[Illustration: THE WHITE OPIUM POPPY.]
+
+There is a remarkably fine stone bridge on that route to Chengtu, with
+dragons surmounting each pier, and very emphatic abutments. I had heard
+very much of Chengtu as being among the finest cities, “a second
+Peking,” etc. On entering it by the west gate, and the gates are very
+imposing, green glades lead into the Tartar quarter, a region of large,
+walled gardens, well wooded, and good-sized houses, frequently much
+decayed. In a street of shops several of the signs are written in
+Manchu. In this quarter it was refreshing to see the tall,
+healthy-looking women with “big feet,” long outer garments, and roses in
+their hair, as in Manchuria, standing at their doorways talking to their
+friends, both male and female, with something of the ease and freedom of
+Englishwomen.
+
+It was some distance along wide cleanly streets and through charming
+“residential suburbs,” as I must call them, though they are within the
+walls, to the “palatial residence” in which the members of the China
+Inland Mission have been quartered by the Viceroy at a low rent since
+the absolutely complete destruction of the mission premises in the
+riots, a destruction which was also complete in the case of the houses
+and hospitals of the various other missions, even the bricks of which
+the buildings were constructed being carried away. This house, in which
+I was most hospitably received, had been assigned by the Government to
+the American Commission which came from Peking to assess the losses
+incurred by their “nationals,” and there was glass in the windows and
+matting on the floors, and dainty muslin blinds and curtains everywhere.
+
+There is a large Romish mission, and American and Canadian missions
+besides the China Inland Mission, the Protestant missionaries living and
+working in much harmony, though in some respects, chiefly externals, on
+differing lines. Things had never settled down comfortably since the
+riots, and the official class at least was much embittered by the
+enormous damages claimed and obtained by the Roman mission. Stories of
+child-eating were current, and I am sure that the people believe that it
+is practised by the missionaries, for in going through Chengtu on later
+occasions I observed that when we foreigners entered one of the poorer
+streets many of the people picked up their infants and hurried with them
+into the houses; also there were children with red crosses on green
+patches stitched on the back of their clothing, this precaution being
+taken in the belief that foreigners respect the cross too much to do any
+harm to children wearing the emblem.
+
+I see little or no resemblance to Peking in Chengtu. Without emphasising
+the other essential points of difference, Chengtu is neat and clean, and
+a comparison of its odours with those of Peking is impossible, for those
+of musk overpower all else! Indeed, along with the tea, silk, opium, and
+cotton, which it imports from the rest of the province, its great trade
+is in the numerous wild products of Tibet—rhubarb, drugs, furs, and
+above all, musk.
+
+[Illustration: THE AUTHOR IN MANCHU DRESS.]
+
+It is a very prepossessing city; and its noble wall in admirable repair,
+the successor of one built in the third century B.C., is about fourteen
+miles in circuit, sixty-six feet broad at the base, forty at the top,
+and thirty-five feet high, while what may be regarded as a somewhat
+formidable “earthwork”—an inner embankment almost the width of the
+wall—supports it along almost its whole circuit. This structure, the top
+of which is a superb promenade, is faced with hard and very fine brick,
+and has eight bastions, which are pierced by four fine gates, rigorously
+guarded, for the purpose of exacting the native customs and _likin_,
+which are very hard on foreign imports.
+
+A stream, banked by stone revetments, runs through Chengtu from east to
+west, frequently bridged, and in one place spanned by three stone
+bridges, each of a single arch, close together. There are many moats and
+broad pieces of water, and the main river, about a hundred yards wide,
+is crossed by many bridges, one of them roofed, and lined on both sides
+by the stalls of hucksters; but the great stone bridge, half a mile
+long, with “a richly painted roof supported on marble pillars,”
+described by Marco Polo, has ceased to exist! Canals and streams abound,
+and are crowded with shipping of small size, chiefly plying to
+Chung-king and the ports west of it, cargo and passage junks, and
+_wupans_ with hooped bamboo roofs, in one of which I afterwards made the
+downward passage, and _sampans_. The waters were very low, and the craft
+much jammed together.
+
+The city has wide, well-paved streets, crossing each other at right
+angles, and the handsome shops make far more display than is usual in
+China, the jewellers’ shops specially, with their fine work in filigree
+silver, and even rich silk brocades are seen gleaming in the shadow in
+the handsome silk shops, as well as _pongees_, both of local
+manufacture, and costly furs, and the snowy Tibetan lambskin can be seen
+from the streets exposed for sale. Within, respectable, richly-dressed
+shopkeepers await customers, and serve them with due dignity, but make
+no attempt to ensnare them. Farther back, in the obscurity, is the
+representation on a large scale, frequently taking up the whole end of
+the shop, of _Dzai-zen-pusa_, the God of Wealth, the Japanese _Daikoku_,
+and the British Mammon, with an altar and incense before him. To him, as
+the “luck of the shop,” the merchant, his apprentices, and all his
+employees must offer worship morning and evening, and no cult is so
+universal.
+
+Chengtu has many scent shops, and most articles of Chinese manufacture
+are exposed at the shop fronts, but there was a very small display of
+foreign goods.
+
+The strange, wild figures of the trading Tibetans in the streets, the
+splendour of the trains of officials and _literati_, who ride horses
+almost concealed by expensive trappings, or are carried at a rapid run
+in carved and gilded sedans, with poles bent up high in the middle, so
+as to raise the magnate above the heads of the plebeian herd, and the
+air of prosperous business which pervades the streets, are all
+noteworthy. It is a city which owes absolutely nothing to European
+influence. The commercial arrangements by which its business
+arrangements are run, its posts, banks, and systems of transferring
+money are all solely Chinese. There, without difficulty, I cashed the
+draft I brought from a Chinese merchant at Hankow. Chengtu owes nothing
+to Europe, except a grudge for the excessive indemnity she has had to
+pay for indulging in the luxury of riots.
+
+The Viceroy, or Governor-General, is a very important official, and
+lives in great state, with a large military force at his disposal, as
+befits a man who represents Imperial power in a province as large as
+France and more populous, and who coerces or administers all Tibetan
+countries, and the wild borderland which I afterwards visited, which is
+neither Chinese nor Tibetan—and even the decennial tribute mission from
+distant Nepaul is allowed or forbidden to go on to Peking much at the
+Viceroy’s pleasure. A request was made to this great man for a letter
+which would further my journey, and it was promised by a fixed time, but
+I never got it.
+
+The crowded, busy streets of Chengtu fringe off into truly charming
+intra-mural suburbs, green and quiet, where deep gateways admit into
+beautiful gardens bright with flowers and shady with orange and other
+fruit trees. There are tanks full of water-plants brightened by the
+gleam of goldfish; the cool drip of falling water is heard;
+trellis-work, green with creepers or bright with the blossoms of
+scarlet-runners, shades the pathway; the scent of tea-roses floats on
+the sunny air; and all these groups of pleasant residences tell of
+affluent ease and the security in which it is enjoyed.
+
+The view from the city wall of the plain, with its beauty and fertility,
+with suggestions of snow peaks far away, is very striking. Some of the
+temples are very fine, specially the Wen-shu-yuan (literary college),
+situated near the north gate.[46]
+
+This grand building, dating at the latest from the thirteenth century
+(A.D.), has been rebuilt by several dynasties, and has gone on
+increasing in wealth and magnificence till its priests and monks are
+justly proud of its splendours, of which the severe heat, even in the
+green shades of its grandly timbered surroundings, on the day of my
+visit prevented me from seeing more than a half. They may be proud of
+its exquisite cleanliness, too. By the time I reached Chengtu I had come
+to think that Chinese temples are much maligned on this score, but
+certainly the Wen-shu-yuan and the “Prince’s Temple” above Kuan Hsien
+excel them all in this virtue, which is said to approach so closely to
+godliness. All the more remarkable is it here, because the temple is a
+“theological college” as well as a monastery, a large number of students
+for the priesthood bringing up the number of the inmates to one hundred
+and fifty.
+
+All the interstices between the smooth and well-laid flagstones of the
+courtyards are kept clean and free from grass; stonework, woodwork,
+gilding, paint and lacquer are all in perfect repair, and the fine roof
+is kept from the injuries caused by sparrows by a man who walks about
+the court with a cross-bow. The refectory opening from the court, with
+twenty-five tables set with tea, vegetables, and rice bowls for six
+each, for the vegetarian community, is as clean as all the rest; the
+wooden tables, chopsticks, and bowls all having that attractive look of
+well-scrubbed wood which we associate with an old-fashioned English
+farmhouse.
+
+It is not possible to say whether the course of study and devotion
+prescribed for both priests and students produces equal purity of soul.
+In the Chapel of Meditations, resembling those which I saw in the
+monasteries of Western Tibet, both orders must spend some hours of every
+day in front of the Buddhist images, striving by all means known to them
+to reach a state of holy ecstasy, in which they are blind to all
+impressions from the seen. It may be possible that the prolonged
+watching of the curling and ascending clouds of incense produces a
+condition approaching hypnotism.
+
+Severe guest-rooms, furnished according to the most rigid Chinese
+etiquette, chapels, some filled with costly gifts and curiosities, or
+with tablets to munificent donors, resplendent in gold on black lacquer,
+libraries of the religious classics, and picture galleries containing
+portraits of the deceased abbots, vestries for vestments, and
+dormitories occupy this fine pile of buildings. In the entrance portico,
+the idol photographed as an illustration recalled me to the fact that
+China is a stronghold of idolatry. On the other side the divinity looks
+like a douce, respectable English squire of the days of George III.
+
+[Illustration: DIVINITY IN WEN-SHU YUAN TEMPLE, CHENGTU.]
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIX.
+                       KUAN HSIEN TO SIN-WEN-PING
+
+
+Before I left Kuan for Chengtu I had decided on extending my journey up
+the Siao Ho, a western branch of the Min, on which the mountain town of
+Li-fan Ting is situated, into the mountainous borderland which lies
+between China proper and Tibet, the country of some of the reputed
+aboriginal tribes which concurrent rumour said were under the rule of a
+woman. At Kuan and Chengtu no information could be got regarding the
+country west of Li-fan, except that Tibetans trading to Kuan said that
+“everything could be got at Somo,” which appeared to be the residence of
+the ruler. As there was little use in undertaking such a journey without
+a more efficient interpreter than Be-dien, Mr. Horsburgh kindly
+suggested that Mr. Kay, a lay member of the Church Missionary Society,
+who has a considerable knowledge of colloquial Chinese, should accompany
+me. I had a hazy intention if things went well of attempting to get down
+to Ta-lien-lu by the Chin-chuan and Tatu river, returning to the Yangtze
+by Ya-chow and Chia-ling Fu, but the season was late for this.
+
+When I went to Chengtu I left my travelling arrangements to be made in
+my absence, simply indicating what they were to be, and that they were
+to be in writing. A favourite axiom of mine is the late General Gordon’s
+saying, “I am my own best servant,” and as a general rule I attend to
+the smallest details of a journey in advance myself, down to every
+strap, buckle, and horseshoe. On this occasion the suffering following
+the blow on my head and my journey to the capital had induced me to
+trust to others, who, however kind, were without travelling experience;
+and on returning I found that the travelling arrangement was the exact
+opposite of the one I had indicated, and that, instead of the coolies
+having been engaged from a hong with a written agreement, a servant had
+been allowed to make up a family party on indefinite lines!
+
+Two days of hot, heavy rain delayed the start, and gave ample
+opportunity for the exercise of those innumerable acts of thoughtful
+kindness which these small, isolated communities delight in showing to
+strangers, and which can never be forgotten. There were two
+disagreeables. Be-dien had been in a shocking sulky fit for two days,
+and would not answer anyone who spoke to him; and instead of the
+promised letter from the Viceroy came an indignant note from Mr. Vale,
+of Chengtu, saying that at the last moment it had been refused.
+
+On the third day the rain became a quiet downpour, tailing off at midday
+into a misty drizzle which continued; and as further waiting was
+undesirable, I started, in my three-bearer chair, with five porters, two
+_chai-jen_, Mr. Kay, his servant, and Be-dien. As my European clothing
+had fallen to pieces, I was dressed as a Chinese and wore straw shoes.
+My baggage was all waterproof, and instead of oblong Japanese baskets
+and bundles protected by oiled paper, I had two deep, square bamboo
+baskets as better fitted for the mountains, and no loose packages but my
+camera. Unfortunately, as preventing accurate observations, a year
+before I had sent home the instruments lent to me by the Royal
+Geographical Society; a pony had rolled on my hypsometer, and an aneroid
+barometer kindly lent to me was not reliable, and I had no means of
+ascertaining the amount of its unreliability before I left China.
+
+The beautiful gorge outside the city, and the grand Prince’s Temple were
+drowned in mist, out of which heavy odours of gardenia drifted. All the
+vegetation, under the genial influences of heat and moisture, was in
+full beauty, and there, as everywhere, vigorous plants of the Japanese
+anemone bordered the road. The climbing roses were in blossom, and,
+weighted with moisture, hung almost down to our heads. Rocks were matted
+over with the _hymenophyllum Wilsonianum_, as thick as the fleece of a
+sheep, and the hare’s-foot fern began to make its appearance along with
+the familiar _polypodium vulgare_.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO GROUNDS OF CITY TEMPLE, KUAN HSIEN.]
+
+We left Kuan by the west gate, near a very fine temple, to which the
+picturesque mass of lacquered pillars and roofs in the illustration is
+only the outer entrance. Passing above the divided waters of the Min,
+and Li Ping’s simple contrivances for preserving the banks, which
+consist far more frequently of long cylindrical baskets of bamboo
+network containing stones as big as a man’s head than stone revetments,
+we crossed the Min by a very fine bamboo suspension bridge, which
+scarcely vibrated more under our tread than did the old Menai bridge
+under a carriage.
+
+These bamboo bridges are a feature of the Upper Min, and are remarkably
+graceful, specially when thrown across at a considerable height. In the
+better class there is a covered bridge-house at each side and stone
+piers. Six bamboo ropes each as thick as a man’s arm are stretched very
+tightly across the river by strong windlasses firmly bedded, which are
+used for re-tightening the ropes as they “give.” These ropes are kept
+apart by battens of wood laced vertically in and out. The plank roadway
+is laid across the lower of the ropes, and follows their curve, which
+owing to the use of the windlasses for tightening up is not great. These
+bridges are renewed always once, and sometimes twice, a year, an
+operation taking two days and under. Owing to the extreme width of the
+river at the Kuan bridge, there are three or four spans with stone
+piers. Usually these suspension bridges are carried right across. The
+roadway is sometimes trying to the nerves, for planks tip up, or tip
+down, or disappear altogether, or show remarkable vivacity when the foot
+is placed upon them, and many a gaping hiatus, trying to any but the
+steadiest head, reveals the foam and fury below.
+
+The road follows the river at a height and dives into the mountains,
+which are at first of sandstone, with curious strata running up at right
+angles to the valley, and then of limestone. The valley is populous,
+smoky, and trafficky. Lime-kilns abound, and a considerable population
+is employed in working the coal seams, which occur chiefly in the
+sandstone; while hundreds of coolies, carrying both coal and lime, were
+moving towards Kuan, and many more were loading vessels and rafts,
+which, if they escape the risks of the gorge below, can reach Lu-chow on
+the Yangtze.
+
+At the end of nine miles, turning by a short cut up a romantic tributary
+of the Min, through a gorge of entrancing beauty, where forest trees and
+flowering shrubs were linked by an entanglement of flowering trailers,
+crossing a river by a covered bridge, we arrived at Fu-ki, where there
+was a quiet, pleasant inn, one of several of the same character on this
+route, where, instead of evil odours, the scent of syringa from the hill
+behind entered my room. It was very quiet and peaceful. There was no
+crowding or boring holes in the plaster, the river hummed monotonously
+below, the mercury was under 60°, and altogether it was a delightful
+change from the crowding, curiosity, noise, and blazing heat of the
+Chengtu plain.
+
+Again the next day we started in a steady downpour, which ceased at the
+top of the very pretty temple-crowned pass, over four thousand feet in
+altitude, of Niang-tze-ling, after which it was fine and cool. The road
+drops down from the pass to the deep canyon of the Min, which bifurcates
+at Weichou, and the river and mountain scenery become increasingly
+stupendous, reminding me greatly of the road from Kashmir to Tibet after
+it reaches the Indus. Two fine bamboo suspension bridges near the foot
+of the pass, others higher up, and a number of rope bridges of Tibetan
+pattern give both easy and difficult access to the other side. There was
+a decided Tibetan influence in the air, which I welcomed cordially. Red
+lamas passed us on pilgrimage to Omi Shan, and numbers of muleteers in
+sheepskins and rough woollen garb, their animals laden with Tibetan
+drugs, and, better than these, some “hairy cows” (yaks), which had not
+yet lost the free air of their mountain pastures, and executed many
+rampageous freaks on the narrow bridle path. Lamas and muleteers were
+all frank and friendly, asked where we were going, how long we had been
+on the road, enlightened us on their own movements, and cheerily wished
+us a good journey. Most of the mules had one or more prayer-flags
+standing up on their loads, for the Tibetans are one of the most
+externally religious peoples on earth.
+
+The Min[47] from the pass of Niang-tze-ling assumes the character which
+it retains more or less to the source of the Siao Ho or lesser branch.
+It is a fine, peacock-green river; then, though at low water, of
+considerable volume, booming, crashing, and foaming through canyons and
+gorges in a series of cataracts, hemmed in by cliffs and mountains so
+precipitous as rarely to leave level ground enough for a barley patch.
+
+The bridle track, a very good one on the whole, though there are some
+shelving rock slithers, has been cut, not blasted, in the rock, at times
+on steep declivities and at times on precipices, and follows the up and
+down left bank of the Min ascents and descents at a height with great
+fidelity. It is not broad enough for a loaded mule to pass a chair, and
+the sight of a caravan in the distance always caused much agitation and
+yelling, the Tibetan muleteers invariably drawing off on the first
+margin they could find, and greeting us with courtesies and good wishes
+as we passed them. I envied them the altitudes and freedom to which they
+would return from the cramping grooviness of China.
+
+Now and then the road is scaffolded, or steps are cut in the rock, or it
+passes under an arch of rock, or a bridge carries it across a lateral
+chasm down which a crystal torrent dashes, after turning two, three, or
+four rude mills placed in dizzy positions one above another. It is so
+severe that we only did thirteen miles in nine hours, and I saw plainly
+what I had suspected from the first, that one of the scratch team of
+bearers was not up to his work.
+
+The whole of the first fortnight’s journey was along the deep, wild
+gorge of the greater or lesser Min. It differs widely from ordinary
+Chinese travelling, and has a strong resemblance to the wild gorges of
+the Yangtze. The mountains rise from the river to a height of over 3000
+feet. Ghastly snow-cones look over them, their slopes, always steep,
+often break up into cliffs 400 or 500 feet high; the river has often not
+a yard of margin, and hurries along, crashing and booming, a thing of
+purposeless power and fury, which has never been tamed of mankind, its
+sea-green colouring a thing of beauty, and its crests and stretches of
+foam white as the snows which give it birth.
+
+These mountain-sides, as far as Weichou, are completely covered with
+greenery, dwarf ashes, oaks, chestnuts and beeches, big enough for use
+by the charcoal-burners. Coarse grasses, thistles, yellow roses, a very
+pretty yellow cistus, bryony, brambles, yellow jasmines and flowering
+creepers in abundance, all dwarf, with the barberry in blossom, covered
+the stony, broken hillsides. Three species of warm-scented artemisia and
+fuzzy brown balls of uncurling fronds of ferns were expanding in the
+crevices of the rocks, and the rocks themselves were often tinged
+rose-pink with the early leaves and delicate clasping fingers of
+Veitch’s _Ampelopsis_.
+
+It was a clear escape from the crowds of China. The traffic on the road
+was mostly Tibetan. There is little room for crops; an occasional patch
+among the rocks near the river, and small fields, then growing rape, and
+later starved barley, terraced great heights, where the mountain slope
+is less steep than usual. Small as the population is, it does not grow
+enough for its wants, so many of the men hunt the deer and wild boars on
+the mountains and sell the carcases in Kuan in the winter, and others
+trap the fur-bearing animals, which appear to be an inferior sable and
+marten.
+
+[Illustration: DOUBLE ROOFED BRIDGE.]
+
+There are a few hamlets on the road, which subsist chiefly by supplying
+the needs of travellers, but the restaurant was usually hidden away, and
+made no display on the “street.” Rice is scarce and not always
+attainable, and wherever we halted, instead of the appetising displays
+of ready-cooked viands which tempt the coolie appetite, there was rarely
+even a fire, and it was always an hour before anything was cooked. The
+inns, though much better than any I had been accustomed to, and often
+built of new boards, do not provide any fire in the mornings unless by
+special arrangement, and till this was understood I started without tea.
+Their stock of food was soon exhausted, even at the larger villages
+where we halted for the night, and the descent upon them of twelve
+hungry persons was manifestly unwelcome. Some of the hamlets are built
+at great heights, and are accessible by rugged paths and steps cut in
+the rock. The people are hardy, rough, and fairly friendly. The Chinese
+are, to my thinking, men of plains and rivers and slimy paths—a
+rice-eating people, associating with the water buffalo. Here they are
+abruptly metamorphosed into hardy mountaineers, hunters, maize and
+millet fed. Even the women, though still binding the feet, are
+independent in their air and movements, and perform feats in crossing
+rivers. The country is a cross between China and Tibet. However, there
+are no temples, and few shrines or other signs of religion.
+
+Fully one-third of the population is on the west side of the Min, cut
+off from the high road with its business and gaieties by a furious
+torrent, and in most cases too poor to construct bamboo suspension
+bridges. Their strong nerves enable them to get over the difficulty. I
+know of no sight in China which fascinated me so much as their rope
+bridges, which we met with on the second day, and which occur sometimes
+at frequent intervals, as far as Weichou, from which point I saw no more
+of them.
+
+The mountaineers stretch a plaited bamboo cable at a great height across
+the gorge, tighten it as well as they can, and secure each end round a
+round stone or a convenient rock. Sometimes a shed is built over the
+terminus and a shrine close by. Every mountaineer provides himself with
+two semi-cylinders of hard wood, often hinged, about a foot long. With
+perfect _sang-froid_ he places these on the cable, and binds them
+together with a rope. As if it were the most natural thing in the world,
+he proceeds to suspend himself from the cylinder by ropes passed under
+his knees, his waist, and the back of his neck; some dispensing with the
+last.
+
+He is then hanging under the rope, and, gripping it fast by the slide,
+he gives the solid earth a shove and casts off. No matter how tightly a
+long rope is strained, it must still “sag” considerably in the middle,
+and down the passenger rushes at tremendous speed, head foremost, down
+hill across the chasm, with an impetus which sends him a little way up
+the other slope. Then, letting go the cylinder, he puts his hands on the
+rope above his head, and hauls himself up hand over hand, slowly and
+laboriously. When he reaches land he detaches the cylinder, packs it and
+the rope into his basket, shoulders his burden—and both men and women
+continually carry small sacks or bundles of wood across—bows at the
+shrine, and goes his way.
+
+[Illustration: TIBETAN ROPE BRIDGE.]
+
+I saw a woman cross carrying a load on each side. It took her ten
+minutes to ascend from the middle of the rope, which must have been
+ninety feet above the torrent, to land. Her face was purple with the
+effort, and her hands must have been pretty sore, for she spit upon them
+several times during the crossing. Even children are trusted to these
+arrangements, which need considerably more nerve than the _Jhulas_ of
+the Himalayas. In some places to minimise the difficulty there are two
+rope bridges, each descending from a high to a low level.
+
+It is only occasionally at the mouth of one of the grand lateral gorges
+which open on the valley that there are any trees, and then they are
+very fine, specially walnuts and the exotic Zelkowa, and the _Salisburia
+adiantifolia_, with a few sturdy conifers, and the villages are
+surrounded by peaches, apricots, and the Japanese _loquat_ (_Eriobotrya
+Japonica_).
+
+It was a delightful day’s journey to Sin-wen-ping, and the keen mountain
+air and the novelty and freedom were full of zest. Solitary grandeur,
+the deafening din of the Min, the green crystal affluents which descend
+upon it down glorious gorges, the precipices rising a thousand feet from
+the water, the abrupt turns where progress seems blocked, and each
+mountain barrier is grander and loftier than the last, and then the
+majesty of the day’s journey culminates at a mountain village with a
+fine suspension bridge, beyond which the road looks only a thread along
+the side of a precipice.
+
+When the bearers reached Sin-wen-ping they said they would go no
+farther, for there was a “big wind” farther on, which would blow the
+chair into the river, and the porters said they could not carry the
+loads against it. Then it came out that Be-dien had left behind the
+lanterns which I bought a few days before; so the men carried their
+point of making a day of thirteen miles. Again I urged that the
+agreement with them should be put in writing; but it was not done, and I
+found later that it was on quite different lines from those I had laid
+down. I saw grave difficulties ahead, and should have been glad to ride
+and be rid of the men, but I had left my saddle in Korea.
+
+It was very cold in the inn, only half my room being roofed, and the
+mercury, which was 83° on the Chengtu Plain, was only 40°. It was
+invigorating and delicious. The people, too, were very friendly, and did
+not manifest their curiosity rudely. A runner arrived from the capital
+with a big official envelope addressed to me, containing letters with
+the Viceroy’s seal; but as they were addressed to the mandarins of Pi
+Hsien where I did not halt, and Kuan Hsien which I had left, and made no
+reference to the regions beyond, they did not promise to be useful. On
+the _yamen_ at Chengtu refusing the promised letters, Mr. Vale
+telegraphed to H.B.M.’s Consul at Chungking, and this was the result.
+The letters stated to the mandarins that at Liang-shan and Peng Hsien
+the mob had attempted by violence to break in my door, and that I had
+been attacked with stones, all within the Viceroyalty, and the Viceroy
+directed the _kuans_ to take efficient measures for my protection.
+
+[Illustration: HAND SLIDES FOR TIBETAN ROPE BRIDGE.]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXX.
+                      SIN-WEN-PING TO LI-FAN TING
+
+
+After leaving that quiet place, where the temperature was only 52° at
+7.30 a.m., we plunged at once into a wild part of the gorge, very thinly
+peopled and desolate, on which grim snow-peaks looked down from the head
+of every lateral cleft. The traffic on the road was altogether Tibetan,
+partly accounted for by the junction of the road to Mou-Kung Ting, a
+thousand _li_ away, with the Sung-pan Ting road, which we were
+following. There were large caravans of very big, powerful mules, loaded
+either with wool or with medicinal roots, and with a merry inclination
+to lunge at us with hoofs or teeth as we passed them; the rough, uncouth
+muleteers always cheerful and friendly as they exchanged with us their
+national salutation _zho_.
+
+One man at least in each caravan—every man having charge of four
+mules—can shoe his own beasts, and I had the luck, in consequence of a
+mule kicking off his shoe as we passed him, to see that the method is
+the same as in Western Tibet. They tie the fore and hind legs of the
+animal together, cast him, put a pole through the lashings, the ends of
+which are held by two men, and cold shoe him, paring the hoof only very
+slightly, using very long nails with tacket heads.
+
+The Mou-Kung Ting road is one of the great routes of Tibetan traffic, of
+which we saw much less after passing the junction.
+
+The gorge is very narrow, so narrow that at times the road is scaffolded
+over the water, or is carried by rough steps cut in the face of the
+precipices. We ascended 800 feet during the day. The traces of spring
+diminished, the hills were brown and bare, the apricots were hardly in
+blossom, the few trees were leafless, the people still wore their wadded
+clothes, and it was pleasant to walk a good deal. Yet here and there
+were thick carpets of a sky-blue dwarf iris, a fragile thing, looking
+misplaced among its rough surroundings, and patches of a blue bugloss,
+and dwarf shubberies of a barberry in blossom.
+
+[Illustration: HUMAN PACK SADDLE FOR TIMBER.]
+
+Things had changed. Thatched roofs had given place to thin slabs of
+stone, or rough boards held down by big stones. All ornament had
+disappeared. China seemed left behind at such a great distance, that
+every Chinese I saw looked as if he must be like myself, a foreigner.
+The men were hardy mountaineers, and carried their loads on pack
+saddles, striding like men, rather than at a dog trot, on the swinging
+bamboo. Even the women can shoulder packs and dangle from rope bridges,
+and the children have an air of freedom.
+
+A short day’s journey ended at the hamlet of Shuo-chiao, where the gorge
+opens out, and for a brief period the Min is vulgarised into various
+branches clattering and boiling among beds of Brobdingnagian shingle. It
+is a wild place, among high mountains, a single village street, a fine
+suspension bridge, a mill or two on the shingle, and goats on the ledgy
+slopes. The inn at the end of the street, where I spent two nights, was
+new, and hung over a branch of the river. My room, having no ceiling,
+was lofty. The boards were clean, and there were no bad smells. The
+noise of the river was tremendous. Besides the roar of the water, there
+was a sound of paving stones being thumped on paving stones, and a
+perpetual clatter of shingle. I had to shout as loud as I could to make
+my servant hear. But it was very restful. I was entirely ignored. No one
+intruded into my room, and when I took a walk unattended no one followed
+me.
+
+Food was scarce, and an inroad of twelve travellers involved much
+arrangement. Shuo-chiao is not a usual halting-place, and the stocks
+were low. The people fell back on making macaroni, and sandwiches with
+chopped garlic between layers of steamed paste. Macaroni is made of a
+very close dough of barley meal, very much kneaded, and rolled out on a
+clean table over and over again till it attains the desired toughness
+and thinness, when the operator cuts it into long and narrow strips,
+which are hung over a string to dry. When wanted these strips are
+boiled, and are eaten with chopped capsicum or onion.
+
+The following day’s journey to Weichou was novel and interesting. The
+sky was grey and threatened rain, and the snow-peaks loomed grimly
+through flurries of dark clouds. We ascended to a height of over 4300
+feet into a barren region, where winter lingered. The few villages have
+characteristics of their own; each consists of a long, clean, paved,
+narrow street, the houses built of stone, the walls with more or less of
+an inward slope, as if under Tibetan influence—all dwellings
+two-storeyed, the upper storey of dark wood, with carved, overhanging
+balconies with supporting beams also carved, and with very deep eaves
+with long and elaborately carved wooden pendants. Such villages are
+usually by torrent sides, with fruit trees, cedars, and poplars
+clustering about them, and are approached by picturesque bridges. The
+street terminates at either end with a decorative gateway, often with a
+small tower and wind bells.
+
+In many places where the Min has a narrow bank, there are ruined
+villages with only ruinous walls standing; and in each house there are
+one, two, or three graves. On one larger open space there are great
+numbers of graves, said to be those of soldiers who died fighting; and
+the whole of the slaughter and destruction is attributed by the
+villagers to the Taiping rebellion. This is plausible, but doubtful.
+
+In crevices there were minute fronds of the silver fern, which grows
+profusely all along the canyon; but nature was still asleep. Limestone
+and grey sandstone predominate, and the curiously marked strata are
+occasionally vertical. Basalt, however, appears in some of the lateral
+ravines, and pink granite; and the torrents which tumble over the latter
+are exquisite in their sparkle and purity. A traveller who, except on
+one day’s journey from Wan, has not tasted unboiled water for more than
+two years, would wish to be thirsty to drink of these icy and living
+waters.
+
+At Wen-chuan Hsien, a small prefectural town packed among high
+mountains, with a very poor but clean street, a picturesque entrance,
+and a fine Confucian Temple, I sat in the grey street while the _yamen_
+officials copied my passport at a table, and an old man, who seemed
+influential, kept the dirty and too often leprous crowd of men and boys
+from pressing on me too closely. Nothing is ever done privately in the
+East, and several men leant over the scribes, reading the
+imposing-looking document, when one exclaimed, with an air of
+consternation, “She is given rank!” Others exclaimed incredulously, “A
+woman can’t have rank!” But the scribes settled the point in my favour;
+and then there was a discussion as to how I had got rank—if it were
+literary rank, or if I were the wife of a great mandarin in my own
+country—a suggestion combated on the ground that I wore poor cotton
+clothing, and had no jewels. Wen-chuan is the most hopelessly dull
+official town that I saw in China.
+
+The night before, at Shuo-chiao, I was told that after passing Wen-chuan
+we should see the villages of the “Barbarians,” on the heights; and I
+heard a tale with which travellers bound for the aboriginal tribes have
+been plied from Marco Polo down to Captain Gill. The innkeeper said that
+these people would offer hospitality, but it was dangerous to eat with
+them, for they believed that if they poisoned a rich man his wealth
+would come to them without violence, and that they would think that I
+was rich (in spite of my poor cotton clothing), and would put poison in
+my food, and that in about three months I should die of a disease akin
+to dysentery! He also said that these tribes are ruled by a very great
+queen, who will not let any stranger enter her territory—obviously the
+same woman of whom I had heard rumours at intervals for some months
+previously.
+
+At last, and for fifteen _li_ before reaching Weichou, the objects of
+interest became novel and plentiful, startling in their novelty.
+Singular dwellings made their appearance, crowning hilltops or poised on
+ledges—isolated or in clusters. The earlier specimens have high, dead,
+stone walls, flat roofs, and an upper storey covering a third of the
+roof, but without a front wall. Before long such houses aggregated
+themselves into villages on great heights, and without any apparent
+means of access, though that they were inhabited was obvious from the
+patches of cultivation about them. Among them appear tall towers,
+sometimes to the number of seven; they are picturesque and fantastic
+beyond all imagination. Of course these are the dwellings of the Man-tze
+(Barbarians), supposed by most ethnologists to be the aborigines of
+Western China; and it was not a little disappointing, on turning the
+glass upon them, to see nothing but Chinese with their queues and blue
+cotton, and hobbling women loafing round such extraordinary habitations.
+I use the word _loafing_ advisedly. It is usually quite inapplicable to
+a Chinese, and among these mountains, as elsewhere, he has plenty of
+grit, but population is scanty, and competition has ceased to be keen,
+so he has leisure for a lounging study of the welfare of his crops and
+his pigs.
+
+So, among villages crowning rocky mountain-tops or clinging to scarcely
+accessible mountain-sides, some of them very Tibetan, others with
+definite characteristics of their own, the road finds itself at the
+small prefectural town of Weichou, at the junction of the Ta Ho and the
+Siao Ho (the Great and Little rivers), in a superb situation, much
+embellished by the unconscious art of the builder, with _yamens_ on
+rocky heights, and the grey city wall following the steep contours of
+the hills which surround the town. The north road on the left bank of
+the Ta Ho leads to Sung-pan Ting, and the west road, mostly along the
+right bank of the Siao Ho, to Li-fan Ting and beyond. Weichou is the
+town called by Captain Gill on his map Hsin-Pu-Kuan.
+
+At this point mules for the farther journey should have been engaged.
+
+It is a good sixty-five _li_ from Weichou to Li-fan Ting, and we left at
+6 a.m. My expectations were high, but they were more than fulfilled.
+From Weichou to Somo there is only one dull bit of about three miles. As
+far as Li-fan Ting the scenery is colossal and savage, Tibetan in its
+character, resembling somewhat the wild gorges of the Shayok; and,
+beyond Tsa-ku-lao, the westernmost official post of China in that
+direction, the grandeur and beauty exceed anything I have ever
+seen—Switzerland, Kashmir, and Tibet in one.
+
+Outside Weichou there are two suspension bridges, over which I had to
+walk. They were “on their last legs,” and were taken down when I came
+back. They vibrated, the wind swayed them unpleasantly, and as the loose
+planks were only laid at intervals, and some had disappeared, and the
+swinging structures hung like inverted arches over boiling surges, the
+crossing was not agreeable, and it is as little so when on this road the
+chair turns a corner of the narrow path on the edge of a precipice 500
+or 600 feet in depth, and hangs for an appreciable interval over the
+abyss below.
+
+The day was the most brilliant for three months, and the journey from
+first to last was magnificent, but the wind, which I found such a
+merciless foe in Central Asia, rose at the same hour, 9 a.m., and blew
+half a gale till near sunset, reaching its maximum of force at 2 p.m.,
+making photography impossible, several times nearly overturning the
+chair and its bearers, and filling eyes, nose, and mouth not only with
+gritty dust, but with irritating alkalis. This is the daily routine in
+these mountain valleys. On crossing the bridges we entered at once the
+gorge of the Siao Ho, or Li-fan River, in which we remained for twelve
+hours—a river flashing in cataracts, eddying in rapids, with never a
+quiet reach—a deep, clear, olive-green stream, its grand course
+accompanied by a deep undertone of a heavy booming in its caverned
+depths. Its career is through a rift among mountains, seven, eight, and
+nine thousand feet in height, broken up by stupendous chasms and
+precipices, and into red-brown, but seldom grey, peaks—the higher like
+needles, the lower crested by villages, to all appearance inaccessible;
+the mass riven asunder, laterally, in many places in so remarkable a
+manner as to show on one side the rock corresponding to the cleavage on
+the other, so that if the sides could be brought together they would be
+an exact fit.
+
+[Illustration: BAMBOO SUSPENSION BRIDGE, WEICHOU.]
+
+Occasionally the mountains and precipices recede sufficiently from the
+river to give scanty space for villages at their feet, with poplars and
+scanty crops of bearded wheat on sandy soil, and at the lateral openings
+alluvial fans occur, bearing fair crops of wheat and maize, as well as
+pear and apricot trees, just providing a scanty subsistence for a scanty
+population. Limestone, grey and red sandstone, and a very hard
+conglomerate are the predominant formations, but a granite with a pink
+tinge makes an occasional innovation, and the potholes in the river,
+where it was possible to investigate them, were found to be fashioned of
+grey granite. One remarkable feature of the region is the enormous
+quantity of nitrate of soda. Its efflorescence in places whitens the
+mountains as if with snow, and so checks vegetation as to reduce it to
+coarse plants of strong constitutions, with tough fibres and woolly
+leaves. Sulphur abounds also, and fragments of an iron ore, which I
+afterwards learned is brown hematite. There are nitre works at Weichou,
+and sulphur is supplied in small quantities for making powder, but the
+cost of land carriage is great, and it is chiefly used locally for
+tipping matches.
+
+The road is a great work of modern origin, and must have cost a large
+sum. It is in excellent repair. It is cut, not blasted, for much of the
+way out of solid rock. In places it is necessary to carry it out over
+the river on a wooden framework, supported on timbers driven into the
+river-bed, or to “scaffold” it by carrying it out on stakes driven
+horizontally into the rock. In one place a fine gallery, decorated with
+stone tablets to the man who presented the road to his district, has
+been cut through the rock, and wherever steps are necessary, they have
+been carefully made. At this distance of 2000 miles from the coast, and
+half that from the capital, it is somewhat surprising to find so marked
+a sign of civilisation as an excellent road in thorough repair.
+
+I cannot attempt to convey to the reader any idea of the glories and
+surprises of that long day’s journey. It was a perfect extravagance of
+grandeur of form and beauty of colouring, and the sky approached that of
+Central Asia in the brilliancy of its bright pure blue. Every outline
+was sharp, but the gorges were filled with a deep blue or purple
+atmosphere; the sunlight was intense. There was no dawn of spring on the
+bare rock faces of the mountains, no gloom of pine in any rift—grandeur
+and vastness are the characteristics of the scenery—peaks and precipices
+are piled on each other, and through the rare openings there were
+gleamings far away of sunlit cones of unsullied snow.
+
+There are villages on hilltops, on rocky peaks, reached by stairs cut in
+the rock, on ledges of precipices, into which the back rooms are
+excavated without obvious means of access, and villages where the houses
+are three, four, five, and even seven storeys high, clinging to steep
+mountain-sides, or hanging on to cliffs above tempestuous streams. These
+villages are on heights five, seven, and even nine thousand feet above
+the sea—barley and bearded wheat ripening in July at eleven thousand—and
+from one to three thousand feet above the Siao Ho. All are built of
+stone, all look more or less like fortifications, all have flat roofs,
+and most have brown wood rooms or galleries, much decorated with rude
+fretwork, supported on carved beams projecting from their upper storeys.
+
+Most of these villages possess mysterious-looking square stone towers,
+sloping very gently inwards from base to summit. These are from forty to
+ninety feet high. The bases of some of them are thirty feet square; the
+sides are pierced by narrow openings, wider, however, than loopholes.
+The doors are fifteen feet and upwards from the ground, and I did not
+see any with any present means of access. Some have lost many feet of
+their height, I suppose from age and weather, but many are perfect, and
+have projections near the roofs, which on a small scale are like the
+projecting rooms of the modern villages. Three and four in a single
+village is not an uncommon number, and occasionally there are as many as
+seven. At a distance they give the romantic villages in the ravines the
+prosaic aspect of smelting works, but they add a singular dignity and
+picturesqueness to those on the heights. They are built without mortar
+of blocks of undressed stone, “well and truly laid,” in spite of the
+difficulty of the inward slope, and the stones are of sufficient size to
+suggest an inquiry as to how they were elevated to their present
+positions. Those towers which are still perfect are roofed, which may
+account for their preservation. There are great numbers of them between
+Weichou and Li-fan Ting, after which they occur but rarely till the
+head-waters of the Chin-shuan are reached.
+
+As the Man-tze say that “their fathers and their fathers’ fathers never
+remember a time when they were free,” so they cannot remember any
+legends regarding the use of these towers, except that in “old times”
+fires were lighted on their roofs to recall absent villagers to the
+defence of their homes against an approaching enemy. Some think that
+they were granaries, but the so-called thinking of people in their stage
+of mental development is of little value.
+
+[Illustration: ANCIENT TOWERS AT KANPO.]
+
+Perhaps mine, in the absence of a greater array of facts, is not worth
+much more! It appears certain, from a consensus of testimony, that these
+buildings have two and three floors, reached by steps, _i.e_. notched
+timbers, like those which at this day lead up to Man-tze roofs. Very
+large, rough, earthen jars, which might have contained water, were shown
+to me as having been found in one of them. It is quite possible that at
+a late date the roofs were used for beacon fires, but from certain
+indications in a few cases I am inclined to believe that
+easily-removable approaches of stone and earth led up to the doors, by
+which stores could be taken up and cattle driven in, the final entrance,
+after the removal of these slopes, being made by means of notched
+timbers, easily drawn up into the building; and that the towers were
+refuges, in which the cattle were below and the people above, food for
+man and beast being stored in the same building. This theory accounts
+for the number of towers often found in the same village. It is quite
+possible that the chief or headman and each of the richer villagers
+possessed such a refuge. The style of building is far beyond the
+capacities of a “barbarous” people.
+
+Along the lower waters of the Siao Ho, all the Man-tze villages which
+have not been more or less destroyed—with the exception of a few which
+have been deserted, and are ready for occupation to-morrow, with the
+lands belonging to them, have been taken possession of by the Chinese,
+and evidently with much slaughter, for the number of graves is very
+great. Even the villages on the heights above that part of the river
+have not escaped Chinese absorption.
+
+At one time, and that not long ago, the aboriginal population must have
+been large, both to the south and west of Weichou, but not a Man-tze was
+to be seen within forty _li_ of it. Many a blackened ruin of a once
+happy Man-tze hamlet stirs the travellers’ wrath, and it is hardly less
+aggravating to find Chinese families comfortably living in the
+picturesque dwellings of the slaughtered or expatriated aborigines.
+There were many tales told of the treachery of the “Barbarians,” and of
+the necessity of extirpating them—such tales as are to be heard in
+America, Australia, and every land in which the stronger race has ousted
+the weaker one. When at Li-fan Ting my farther progress was vehemently
+opposed, I had some reason to think that the officials feared that when
+I was once fairly among the Man-tze I should hear other versions of
+these stories.
+
+About forty _li_ from Weichou, where the lateral clefts in the
+precipices are dark and savage, and rocky peaks crowned with fantastic
+lama-serais rise abruptly from rocky spurs, the villages on the heights
+become more numerous, and the presence for the first time of Man-tze
+inhabitants (who are rigid lamaistic Buddhists like the Tibetans) is
+denoted by long flags inscribed with Sanskrit characters on tall poles
+fluttering gaily in the strong east wind which blows down the canyon all
+day long. Occasionally a wooden bridge on the cantilever principle, like
+the Sanga bridges in India, of which many specimens are seen between the
+Zoji-la and Leh in Ladak, crosses the furious torrent. Most of the
+Man-tze villages are on the left bank of the Siao Ho, and by the
+destruction of these bridges, which are much out of repair, they could
+be rendered impregnable.
+
+These villages are indescribable. The cattle and fodder are kept below,
+and the windows and loopholes only begin from fifteen to twenty feet
+from the ground. Brown projecting rooms and balconies at a great height,
+the gay flutter of red and white prayer-flags, notched timbers giving
+access to roof above roof, fuel-stacks on roofs, towers suggesting peril
+and defence, and not seldom a headman’s house above, as large as a
+feudal castle, which it much resembles; while high above that, looking
+like an outgrowth of the rock, and only attained by flights of steep
+rock steps, crowning the peak which dominates every village, are almost
+invariably the piled-up temples, towers, and buildings of a lama-serai,
+with their colour and gloom, the flutter of their prayer-flags, and the
+sound of the incessant wild music of horns, drums, and gongs. An air of
+mystery pervades the whole, for with all this cheerful flutter of flags
+and the sound of music and the signs of industry it was very rarely that
+any inhabitants were to be seen, just the glint of a woman’s red
+petticoat now and then, or the red frock of a lama in relief against the
+grey rock.
+
+These tribes are not Tibetan, though they are down on most maps as
+“Tibetan tribes,” but in the extraordinary picturesqueness of their
+lama-serais and villages they reminded me vividly of the Shayok, and the
+fantastic monasteries of Deskyid and Hundar in the Tibetan Nubra Valley.
+
+It is a temptation to linger on that day’s journey. I did actually
+linger on it, for one of my bearers, as I expected, was quite unequal to
+his work, and I had to walk a good deal and allow of many halts for
+rest. The halting-places were magnificent, but food was scarce and dear,
+as every cattie of rice must be brought up from the low country.
+Although we ascended on that day 988 feet, the climate became
+perceptibly milder, and from what I observed later, it appears quite
+possible that in temperature each degree west is equal to a degree
+south. Grain crops, poplar, apricot, and pear trees were in their first
+vivid green, the silver fern was in its beauty, the golden fern was well
+advanced, the bugloss was in bloom, and in places where the canyon
+opened a little there were narrow lawns of the finest turf, on which the
+Tibetan traders camp in the season, on which red roses with coarse,
+woolly calices were already in blossom. There was no traffic, and even
+an unloaded pedestrian, unless he were a red lama telling his beads, or
+twirling his prayer-cylinder, was a rarity.
+
+In the late afternoon, at an abrupt and superb turn of the river, we
+crossed a cantilever bridge high above the torrent, on the other side of
+which is a fine village of extraordinary Man-tze houses, clinging to
+ledges of a conical peak crowned by a small temple and a very large and
+fantastic lama-serai. A tower, ninety feet high, very ancient, and in
+good repair, gives dignity to the picturesqueness of Ta-fan. The road
+attains the village by a steep, winding stairway of steps cut in the
+rock, and passes through a gateway into cool shadow created by high,
+massive, stone houses on either side. So massive are they, and so high
+are the windows above the ground, that they suggest memories of villages
+in the Engadine.
+
+I rested in a large house in which, as in the others, a Chinese was
+living with his family. These aborigines had grand ideas of habitations.
+I entered into a guest hall panelled with brown wood, with two rooms on
+each side and a large room behind. A gallery of brown wood, with rooms
+opening from it, runs round the hall at a height of about eight feet
+from the floor. It was very cool and clean, and I sat in a Chinese
+easy-chair, glad to be out of the bluster. My host, who was the headman,
+was a very courteous Chinese, and offered me wheaten cakes, honey, and
+tea. He said that all the houses in the canyon were built by “Tibetans,”
+though Chinese live in the lower villages; that if a Chinese builds a
+new house he builds it after the same fashion, for that nothing but
+Tibetan building—specially the inward slope of the very thick walls—can
+stand the tremendous winds. The village subsists less by agriculture,
+for which there is not sufficient irrigation, than by the Tibetan
+traffic in the trading season.
+
+The headman asked me why I was travelling to be murdered by the
+“Barbarians,” and evidently attached no value to my statement that it
+was to see the country. I wished then and elsewhere that I had been able
+to say that it was in order to write a book, for that would have given
+me “rank,” and would have been an intelligible explanation.
+
+[Illustration: KAN-CHI.]
+
+After leaving this village the mountains closed in again upon the pass,
+their forms growing in wild majesty; there were glimpses of snow-peaks
+with pines on their skirts, and where the shadow was bluest and deepest,
+and the peaks are loftiest and sharpest, on a small patch of partially
+level ground, separated from a very high and bare mountain, with
+precipices which Captain Gill estimates at 3000 feet in height, by the
+roaring river, stands the wild mountain town of Li-fan Ting, the
+residence of a small magistrate, though only possessing a population of
+five hundred.
+
+Before we actually reached it waves of sunset gold rolled down the pass,
+distant snow-cones blushed red, every peak took on purple or
+amethyst—there was a carnival of colour. The wind fell to a dead calm,
+there was a touch of frost in the dry air, when suddenly the whole glory
+of mountain and chasm died out, and the colour vanished, leaving only
+the distant snow-peaks burning red against a sky of tender green.
+
+This small, grey city, on whose expansion Nature places her veto, looks
+the final outpost of Chinese civilisation—the end of all things. A
+well-built, narrow, crenelated wall runs between Li-fan Ting and the
+river, hems it in, and then in a most fantastic way climbs the crests of
+two mountain spurs, which wall in a ravine behind the town, bare and
+rocky as all else is, looking like great flights of uncannily steep
+stairs, following the steep and irregular contour of the ground.
+
+A clear blue torrent, tumbling down at the back, thunders through the
+town, and is utilised for many Lilliputian water-mills, mostly with
+horizontal wheels, as on the plain. These mills are round, and look like
+small Martello towers, and only a man below the average height can stand
+upright in them. Poplars, willows, pear, and apricot trees contrast
+pleasantly with the bare mountain-sides, and soften the grey outlines of
+the small mountain town. Above Li-fan, and 2200 feet higher, is a
+Man-tze village, in which the people have made Chinese intermarriages,
+and have assimilated themselves to their conquerors.
+
+Li-fan has one long, narrow, grey street of two-storeyed houses, the
+upper storey with its balcony being of brown wood. It is very clean, but
+cleanliness is not much of a merit—indeed, it is a necessity of that
+altitude and in a dry atmosphere. It has no industry or trade of its
+own, and subsists almost entirely on the through trade from Tibet at
+certain seasons. It has a remarkable _yamen_, which, lacking space for
+lateral expansion, has developed skywards; a temple on a rock,
+brilliantly coloured; and a fine temple in the narrow street, rich in
+effective wood carving, and possessing a huge bas-relief of the Dragon.
+The rarefied air is singularly dry, and so it continues until the Pass
+of Peh-teo-shan, 70 _li_ to the westward, marks a decided change to
+humidity. On the nights of April 22nd and 23rd there were three and four
+degrees of frost.
+
+In this quaint town on the first day of the tenth month of each year,
+the mandarin, with all the pomp which Li-fan can muster, fires the
+biggest gun in the town at the opposite mountain to preserve “the luck
+of the place.” It is believed, at least by the people, that if this
+ceremony were not performed there would be tumults, followed by plague,
+pestilence, and famine, and that the town would be given up to bad luck.
+To save the luck some of the lamas make pilgrimages to an image cut in
+the rock at the base of the Snow Dragon, a grand mountain to the south
+of Li-fan.
+
+The inn, where unwillingly I spent two days, is not bad, and was quite
+free from smells. My room was at its extreme end, close to a crashing,
+booming torrent, to the mountain, and to the red temple, which, like the
+_yamen_, has developed skywards. It had two large holes in the floor,
+and two windows under the roof, from which all the paper was torn, so
+that the tremendous wind by day found easy entrance.
+
+As soon as we arrived the usual official visit was paid, and with much
+politeness of manner obstacles were thrown in the way of my further
+progress. Two _chai-jen_ were placed at my door, one of them sleeping
+across the threshold. Much consideration for the safety and comfort of a
+lady was expressed—a novelty in China. There were neither roads nor
+inns, it was said; the people were savages, the tribes were fighting, it
+was dangerous to proceed. The next morning the prospect for departure
+was badly clouded over. The veneer of politeness had disappeared, and
+the official manner had become dictatorial. Senior officials from the
+_yamen_ mounted guard, and a sentry was stationed at the inn gate. I was
+a prisoner in all but the name. _Chai-jen_ could not be provided, they
+said. The mandarin was absent, and no arrangements could be made till
+the Viceroy of SZE CHUAN had been communicated with. Going beyond Li-fan
+was a thing unheard of. All other foreigners had turned back,[48] they
+could not be responsible for me any farther. They bullied and threatened
+my men, and forbade the townspeople to give me supplies or porters.
+
+[Illustration: ROCK TEMPLE, LI-FAN TING.]
+
+The other difficulties, which I had foreseen from the first, came to a
+head. Owing to the want of a contract I was in the power of the
+chair-bearers. One of them was nearly incapable of carrying me, and not
+having recovered from the severe blow at Lo-kia-chan I was not capable
+of much walking. The only man in Li-fan who could carry a chair was
+engaged in that man’s place in the morning, but was “ill” at night. The
+authorities had forbidden him to go, and had taken the precaution of
+laying the same prohibition on the mules, though if I could have
+dispensed with the men I was prepared to make the journey on a pack
+saddle. Finally and fatally, Mr. Kay, who was very much in the power of
+the servant who had got the team together, when the men said that all
+must go or none would go, engaged them all for the whole journey, and
+under the circumstances we were then absolutely in their power so far as
+going forwards was concerned. Such a tribe of rice-eating men, carrying
+their loads from the shoulder, would, under any circumstances, have been
+unsuited to the journey. But what was done could not be undone, and
+there was “no use in crying over spilt milk.”
+
+The _chai-jen_ smoked their opium pipes across my door, but retained
+wits enough to pounce on me if I stirred, and even obtruded their
+unwelcome presence when I climbed on the roof to photograph. On the
+second evening the officials made a last effort to induce me to wait
+till they sent a runner to the capital and back.
+
+The last morning I woke everybody at 4.30, and was ready to leave at
+5.30; but it was not to be. The officials were already there frightening
+the coolies with stories, intimidating them, and threatening to have
+them beaten for disobedience, and there was a violent altercation
+between them and Mr. Kay, in which some very strong language was used on
+both sides, which did not mend matters. When I came out they tried to
+shut me into my room; but I managed to get into my chair. They told the
+bearers not to carry me. 1 told them to move on. The officials then
+tried to shut us in by closing parts of the outer door of the inn; but
+Mr. Kay opened them, and held them open till the frightened porters and
+my bearers had passed through. It was but fifty yards to the city gate.
+I feared they would close it, but they contented themselves with
+following us there, crying out, “We wash our hands of you!” and hurling
+at us the epithet “Foreign dogs!” as a parting missile, throwing down
+the gauntlet by sending us off without _chai-jen_, telling the brazen
+lie that the road I proposed to take was not in China!
+
+From this point there was the pleasurable excitement which attends a
+plunge into the unknown, for I had not been able to learn that
+missionary zeal, or geographical research, or commercial ambition had
+penetrated the regions beyond, or that any English traveller has given
+any description of it, and I only regret that my lack of scientific
+equipment should make my account of it meagre, and in some respects
+unsatisfactory.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXI.
+                       LI-FAN TING TO TSA-KU-LAO
+
+
+The sixty _li_ from Li-fan Ting to Tsa-ku-lao (spelled by Mr. von
+Rosthorn of the Imperial Customs in a letter to me Tsaku-nao) have much
+the same characteristics as those of the day before. The scenery is
+magnificent, and even more fantastic. Nitrate of soda, sulphur, and iron
+ore abound. Sandstone has disappeared, giving place to limestone,
+conglomerate, schistaceous rock, grey and pink granite, basalt, and
+mica. The Siao Ho, still a full-watered and vigorous stream,
+occasionally narrowed to forty feet, plunges over pink granite ledges in
+a series of cataracts as the canyon opens out, and there are smooth,
+green lawns, with much wealth of dwarf, crimson roses, and much gloom,
+in many graves and dismal remains of Man-tze houses partially destroyed.
+Some of the potholes in the river are remarkable for their size, and
+still contain the smoothly-rounded stones by the action of which they
+have been formed. Pine woods appeared on hill crests and on the northern
+slopes of mountains.
+
+Many Man-tze villages, now deserted, are ready for occupation, and
+others in romantic situations, now occupied by Chinese, are very
+striking architecturally, each with a Man-tze feudal castle piled on a
+rock above it. These villages were always built at the mouths of gorges
+where lateral torrents joining the Siao Ho formed alluvial fans with
+arable soil enough to support small populations. The picturesque stone
+houses, more like fortifications than dwellings, straggling up these
+gorges, perched on ledges of rock, harmonised most artistically with the
+wildness of the landscape, but it was impossible to photograph them
+owing to the tremendous wind.
+
+Four hours after leaving Li-fan we halted at the large village of
+Wei-gua, with a very large lama-serai, said to contain two hundred
+lamas, cresting the rock above it, and a fine castle in a dominant
+position. The illustration gives the lower and unpicturesque fragment of
+the village grouped round the remains of a large square tower. There we
+were overtaken by two _chai-jen_, the Li-fan officials having thought
+better of it, and an hour later by a third on horseback! This tardy
+courtesy roused my suspicions, and Mr. Kay and his servant went on ahead
+to obtain accommodation and make inquiries at Tsa-ku-lao, little
+thinking that the astute Li-fan officials had sent on a messenger in the
+morning to the local magistrate ordering that accommodation and
+transport should be refused! To this hour I am unaware of “the reason
+why.”
+
+After Mr. Kay went on, and the horseman arrived, I endeavoured to
+circumvent the _chai-jen_, for I had seen them, with much mystery, slip
+a letter into his hand, after which he tried to get in front of me. I
+jumped out of the chair, and set up my tripod on the narrow road, which
+he could not pass, and after a long attempt at photography, baffled by
+the wind, told him and the others to keep behind, and not to leave me.
+The horseman kept trying to get in front, but as the path is very narrow
+and mostly on the edge of a precipice, I managed to dodge him the whole
+way by holding a large umbrella first on one side, and then on the
+other!
+
+A few miles from Tsa-ku-lao the _chai-jen_ managed to pass me, and began
+to run towards a short cut, impassable for a chair. I sent Be-dien to
+stop them, and to my surprise he outran them, collared them, and held
+them till I came up, when I again ordered them behind the chair. Mr. Kay
+met me, saying that neither inn nor house would give us shelter, and
+that he had found that it would not do to make any inquiries about the
+farther route. However, we were received by a very good inn, where the
+people were very civil, and where I had an excellent room, with a large
+window looking on a mountain across a clean grassed space.
+
+[Illustration: VILLAGE OF WEI-GUA.]
+
+Soon after I got in difficulties began. Two officials arrived, and
+politely told many lies. They said that there were no places to sleep in
+on the road, that the snow on the passes was forty feet deep, and
+crevassed, that the tribes were fighting each other, that they were
+robbers and would rob us of everything, and repeated the Li-fan lie that
+the route is not in China, and that they could give us no protection. I
+produced a Chinese official map, and showed them that it lay far within
+the limits of the jurisdiction of the Viceroy of SZE CHUAN, and, being
+fairly roused, and determined to proceed at least to Somo, I produced my
+passport, telling them that it had been granted on an application made
+by the English Tsung-li _yamen_ at the request of the Grand Secretary
+(the Premier), and that they could see for themselves that it gave me
+rank, and enjoined on all mandarins not only not to put any obstructions
+in my way, but that, whether by land or water, every aid was to be
+given.
+
+I further said that if this obstruction were persisted in, I should
+write a formal statement of the case to the British Consul at Chungking,
+to be officially forwarded by him to the highest quarter, and that they
+knew what that would mean. On the top of all, I produced the Viceroy’s
+letter to the _kuans_ of Pi Hsien and Kuan Hsien. They were quite
+quenched, and said they would repeat this to the mandarin, and I should
+have his decision in an hour, and they bowed themselves out, taking my
+passport with them.
+
+They returned in half an hour, saying that the mandarin would send
+soldiers with us to the limits of his jurisdiction, but that then we
+should be among the “Barbarians.” This seemed like a victory, yet I felt
+by no means sure that we should not be prevented from hiring mules, and
+be delayed into returning. The next day a last effort was made to hinder
+my westward progress, with a vehemence which was almost piteous,
+entreaties being resorted to when threats failed, but all collapsed on a
+special clause in my passport being again pointed out to these
+secretaries.
+
+Tsa-ku-lao, the outpost of Chinese officialism, is gloriously situated
+at an altitude of about 6210 feet,[49] where the mountains swing apart,
+and at an abrupt bend of the river there are branching valleys and
+unencumbered heights. There are poplars and willows about the little
+town of 400 people, and a great Man-tze tower looks through them like an
+English church tower. One long, clean, narrow, and highly picturesque
+street, lined with shops vending gaily-coloured articles of Chinese
+manufacture, cuts the town in twain. Above it, where the houses are
+piled on ledges of rock in most artistic disorder, is a very large
+lama-serai, with a very quaint pagoda temple on a height above it. The
+houses in the street are two and three storeys high, with carved
+projecting upper rooms, and peaked roofs with deep eaves, from which
+depend carved wooden drops.
+
+At the western exit the road drops abruptly down through the picturesque
+gateway seen in the illustration by 500 feet of steep stone steps to a
+bridge, which connects the trading with the official town. In the latter
+the _yamen_ is an interesting-looking building in pure Tibetan style,
+with a Man-tze tower sixty feet high adjoining it. The population of
+Tsa-ku-lao is a mixed one, and many of the children show an agreeable
+departure from the Chinese physiognomy. The red woollen habits and
+peaked hats of the red lamas, the varied costumes of the tribesmen who
+were in the town for purposes of trade, and the thirteen differing
+styles of hats, the most interesting being made of a species of lichen,
+were a very pleasant variety.
+
+An agreeable variety it was, too, that the curiosity of the people for
+the first time in a journey of two years was tempered by politeness, for
+each batch of would-be sightseers, always women, sent in advance to know
+if I would receive them, and they always left after visits of
+conventional length, remarking that I must be tired!
+
+We spent two nights there, because the coolies heard such tales of the
+road that they engaged mules to carry their loads, the bamboo over the
+shoulder with its dependent burdens being unsuited to the exigencies of
+mountain climbing, and the mules were away on the mountain. During that
+day, in which I visited the quaint official town, and photographed the
+gateway amidst a crowd of red and yellow lamas, tribesmen, and Chinese,
+who fell back when they were asked to do so, I received about fifty
+visitors, so that their supposition that I was tired was not far wrong.
+Of this number three, obviously of the Tsa-ku-lao “upper ten,” had been
+in Kuan Hsien, a few had been in Weichou, but none had been in Matang or
+Somo, and they said that there were very high mountains to cross, and
+that the snow was very deep. No woman could get to Somo they thought.
+They had never seen a foreign woman, and Russia was the only foreign
+country that they knew by name.
+
+[Illustration: STREET OF TSA-KU-LAO.]
+
+Fine, strong, comely, healthy-looking women they were, with pleasant
+faces and manners, and minds narrowed to the interests of Tsa-ku-lao.
+Some of their children were really pretty. The court of the inn was
+always full of red and yellow lamas, muleteers in picturesque jackets
+and leggings, and hats like _sombreros_, Tibetans in sheepskins, and
+tribesmen whose physiognomies showed a complete departure from the
+Mongolian type. It was altogether exciting, and the keen air was bracing
+and stimulating. The picturesqueness of the little outpost town in the
+brilliant sunshine and under the clear blue sky was fascinating, and the
+friendliness and politeness of the people created a new atmosphere which
+it was pleasant to breathe. The sun went down in glory and colour, there
+was a perfect blaze of stars in the purple sky, and the mercury fell to
+the freezing point. The “Beyond” beckoned, and though I knew that the
+travelling arrangements must break down from their inherent
+unsuitability, I fell asleep prepared to follow.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXII.
+                              THE “BEYOND”
+
+
+The scanty hoar frost lay on the ground at five the next morning, and
+the sun rose, as he had set, in glory, flooding the canyons with a
+deluge of amber light. There was a considerable delay before starting,
+and to the last I feared the wiles of Chinese officialism; but it turned
+out to be only the usual difficulty of the first start with
+animals—weighing and adjusting loads and the like. There were three
+strong, whole-backed, pleasant-faced red mules, and the muleteer was
+equally pleasant, a Man-tze lama, quite a young man, who proffered
+hospitality for the next few days among his friends, inns having ceased.
+The thought of “poisoned feasts” never crossed my mind!
+
+The greater part of the bizarre population of the quaint mountain town
+escorted us to the gateway. Superb weather favoured our departure. The
+heat of the sun melted the snows towards midday, adding volume to the
+thunderous roll of the Siao Ho, above which, after descending to the
+water’s edge, the bridle track is carried over spurs and abutments of
+limestone. There is a decided change in the scenery. The river, no
+longer closely hemmed in by the walls of a tremendous cleft, is broader
+and stiller; there are shingle banks and stretches of cultivated land,
+and it cuts its way through the ranges instead of following their
+clefts. A marked feature of this stretch of the Siao Ho is the
+extraordinarily abrupt bends which it makes, and that at most of these a
+sugar-loaf peak, forest-clothed below, and naked rock above, rises sheer
+from the river-bed, possibly to a height of from 2000 to 3000 feet.
+Great openings allow of inspiring views of high, conical, snow-clothed
+peaks, heavily timbered below the snow; one group, called by the Chinese
+“The Throne of Snow,” consisting of a great central peak, with nine
+others of irregular altitudes surrounding it.
+
+[Illustration: A SUGAR-LOAF MOUNTAIN, SIAO HO.]
+
+Climbing the Peh-teo-shan spur by a long series of rocky, broken
+zigzags, cut on its side through a hazel wood, and reaching an altitude
+of about 9270 feet in advance of my men, I felt the joy of a “born
+traveller” as I watched the mules with their picturesque Man-tze
+muleteer, the eleven men no longer staggering under burdens, but
+jumping, laughing, and singing, some of them with leaves of an artemisia
+stuffed into their nostrils to prevent the bleeding from the nose which
+had troubled them since leaving Weichou, the two soldiers in their rags,
+and myself the worst ragamuffin of all. There were many such Elysian
+moments in this grand “Beyond.”
+
+The summit is thick with poles, some of them bearing flags inscribed in
+Tibetan characters in honour of the Spirit of the Pass, and there is a
+large cairn, to which my men added their quota of stones. Fifteen or
+sixteen hundred feet below, the river looks like a green silk cord
+interwoven with silver. There is a sharp bend and a widening, from which
+rise two conical peaks, forest-clothed and craggy. Lateral gorges run up
+from the river, walled in by high, frowning, forest-covered mountains,
+breaking into grey, bare peaks, and crags gleaming in the sunshine. To
+the north-west the canyon broadens. Mountains rise above mountains,
+forest-covered, except where their bare ribs and buttresses stand
+harshly out above the greenery, and above them great, sunlit, white
+clouds were massed, emphasising the blue gloom of pines; and far higher,
+raised by an atmospheric effect to an altitude which no mountains of
+this earth attain to, in the full sunshine of a glorious day, were three
+illuminated snow-peaks, whose height from the green and silver river,
+judged by the eye alone, might have been 30,000 feet! They might have
+been “the mountains of the land which is very far off,” for the lighted
+clouds below separated them from all other earthly things, and their
+dazzling summits are unprofaned by the foot of man.
+
+The descent to the river is long and steep, the sun was hot; the aridity
+and sparse vegetation of most of the road up to the pass are exchanged
+for comparative humidity and a wealth of small trees and flowers; the
+river broadens considerably, breaks up into several channels with
+shingle beds and tamarisk, till it and the canyon narrow together at a
+point where a wooden cantilever bridge is thrown across at a
+considerable height from two natural piers of rock.
+
+There, a very dirty Chinese village faces a Man-tze village of towers
+and lofty stone houses. After a halt, during which I sat on a stone in
+the broiling sunshine, much vexed by dust and the aggressiveness of both
+children and pigs, we crossed the bridge and shortly entered Paradise.
+There the hideous black pig was left behind! The river divides, each
+branch having its own glorious gorge apparently closed by snow-peaks.
+There are small fair lawns, on which nature has clumped maples and ilex;
+great forest trees coming down to the water, wreathed with roses and
+clematis; and a showy, detached temple—the only one in the region—the
+household or lama-serai house of worship from thenceforth taking the
+place of the public temple. At its entrance are two large prayer-wheels.
+
+[Illustration: REVOLVING PRAYER-CYLINDERS.]
+
+Close beside it the road passes under an arch, on each side of which are
+six prayer-cylinders, which revolve on being brushed by the hand; and
+near it is a much-decorated “prayer-wheel,” in a house of its own,
+bestriding a stream, worked by water power, the lama in attendance
+receiving so much for each revolution. This cylinder is twelve feet
+high, with a diameter of four feet, and is said to contain 100,000
+repetitions of the well-known Buddhist mantra “_Om mani padme hun_.”
+Beyond, there was a man engaged in making idols after the fashion
+described by Isaiah the prophet, a bridge of uncertain equipoise over
+one branch of the river, and a little farther on the main branch of the
+Siao Ho, descending from the north-west, is joined by streams of nearly
+equal volume from the south and north, coming down through canyons full
+of superb vegetation, above which rise, mostly in groups, peaks of
+unsullied snow.
+
+The vegetation above this meeting of the waters, and with few breaks for
+many a day’s journey, is tropical in its luxuriance. The canyon is very
+narrow. On the left the mountains descend to the torrent in a series of
+precipices. On the right a space, averaging twenty yards in width, gives
+room for the bridle path and for a perfect glory of vegetation. From
+this rise forest-clothed precipices and peaks as on the other side.
+Between them thunders the small river, narrower, but much fuller in
+volume than below, green with a greenness I have never seen before or
+since, and white with foam like unto driven snow, booming downwards with
+a fall of over sixty feet to the mile, its brilliant waters hasting to
+lose themselves 2000 miles away in the turbid Yellow Sea.
+
+Mosses and ferns soften the outlines of boulders and drape the trunks of
+fallen trees. Tree-stems are nearly hidden by ferns and orchids, only
+one of the latter, a purple and brown spotted _dendrobium_, being in
+blossom. A free-flowering, four-leaved white clematis, arching the road
+with its snowy clusters, looped the trees together, and a white daphne
+filled the air with its heavy fragrance. Large white peonies gleamed in
+shady places. White and yellow jasmine and yellow roses entwined the
+trunks of trees, and the flowering shrubs, mostly evergreens, were
+innumerable. Ivies and varieties of the _ampelopsis_ lent their familiar
+grace. Spring is fantastic there, and in freaks of colouring mimics the
+glories of autumn. Maples flaunt in crimson and purple, in pale green
+outlined in rose-red; the early fronds of the abundant hare’s-foot fern
+crimson the ground; there were scarlet, auburn, and “old gold” trees;
+and as to greens, there were the dark greens and blue-greens of seven
+varieties of pines, the shining dark greens of ilex, holly, and yew, the
+dull, dark greens of cedar and juniper, the shining light greens of
+birch and beech and many another deciduous tree, and the almost
+translucent pea-green of the feathery maple—red, purple, and green,
+alike admitting the vivid sunshine as through stained glass.
+
+The ground, concealed by mosses in every shade of green, gold, and
+auburn, by a crimson-cupped lichen, and the crimson of the young
+hare’s-foot fern, was starred with white and blue anemones, white and
+blue violets, yellow violas, primulas and lilies, white and yellow
+arabis, and patches of dwarf blue irises, while our own lily of the
+valley looked out modestly from under the shrubs, and I recognised
+lovingly among the beautiful exotic ferns our own oak and beech—our
+_filix mas_ and _Osmunda Regalis_, at no disadvantage among their
+foreign associates.
+
+So exquisitely beautiful were the details that it was hard to look up
+and take in the broader features of the unrivalled witchery of the
+scene, where the foliage of the maple lighted up the gloom of holly and
+ilex with its spring pinks and reds, where a species of poplar rivalled
+it in lemon-yellow, where the delicate foliage of the golden-barked
+birch was copper-red, and every shade approaching green was represented,
+from the glaucous blue of the balsam pine, and the dark blue-green of
+its coniferous brethren, to the pale _aqua marine_ of deciduous trees in
+clumps among the pine woods below the snow.
+
+For, piled above the forest-clothed cliffs and precipices which wall in
+the river, and blocking up every lateral opening, were countless peaks
+or splintered ranges, cleaving the blue sky with an absolute purity of
+whiteness. High up, in extraordinary situations of dubious access, are
+Man-tze villages, much like fortifications, their suggestion of human
+interests and flutter of prayer-flags giving life to the scene. The
+river sympathetically adapts itself to its changed surroundings. Its
+colouring is a vividly transparent green, to which it would be an
+injustice to liken an emerald. Over it drooped, from the contorted stems
+of trees covered with ferns, orchids, and trailers, long sprays of red
+and white climbing roses, and within the cool toss of its spray, film
+ferns and the beautiful _trichomanes radicans_ flourished in boundless
+profusion, almost transparent under the trickling sunshine. The river
+descends in falls and cataracts, in sheets and glints of foam, under
+bending trees, and trails of clematis and roses, pausing now and then in
+deep green pools in whose mirrors roses, clematis, and snow-peaks meet;
+but, its thunder-music, echoing from gorge and precipice, pauses never.
+
+[Illustration: BRIDLE TRACK BY THE SIAO-HO.]
+
+For hours we passed through this fairyland of beauty and fragrant and
+aromatic odours, which it is a luxury to recall; then the odorous air
+grew damp, the peaks flushed, the shadows on the road deepened, the
+canyon “swung open to the light,” through the great gates of the west
+the sunset glory rolled in waves of red and gold, and on a low hill
+bearing the name of Chuang-fang, and a few traces of cultivation, there
+was a lonely Man-tze dwelling.
+
+The host, as a relation of our intelligent and courteous young lama,
+made us very welcome, but his wife, a very handsome woman, on coming in
+from the hill with a load of wood, looked astonished to find a foreign
+woman and twelve men in possession of her house. That dwelling, typical
+of the poorer class of Man-tze houses, has two roofs, each reached by a
+deeply-notched tree-trunk, exactly like those used by the Ainu of Yezo.
+It has an entrance-chamber common to men, mules, and fowls, an inner
+room or kitchen, scarcely lighted, with a fire and “cooking range” on a
+raised hearth in the centre, from which the stinging wood smoke finds
+various outlets in the absence of a chimney. In the better houses, a
+hole in the roof into which a hollow log is cemented offers a more
+conventional exit. The fire is the place of family gathering and eating,
+and man, wife, and children eat together. These people possess the term
+“hearth-side.” The woman, though not young, was really beautiful, after
+a European type, and had very fine teeth, but her rich complexion was
+somewhat dulled by dirt; for these people, like the Tibetans, wash only
+“once a year”—_i.e._, very rarely.
+
+With much politeness I was escorted by her up the notched timbers to a
+first and then to a second roof, which, being the threshing-floor, was
+swept very, clean. At one end there was a high frame for drying maize
+upon, and at the other a roof supported on four posts, but with an open
+front, which is the granary. This space was divided by a great grain
+tray and my curtains, I occupying one end, and the servants, soldiers,
+and some of the coolies the other. The sharp frosty air was elixir, and
+the redgold of sunset and the rose-pink of sunrise on the snows which
+enclose the valley made a night in the open air very delightful.
+
+It was too windy for a candle, and my food, prepared in the smoke below,
+was eaten by the light of a nearly full moon in the delicious
+temperature of 30°. To be away from crowds, rowdyism, unmannerly
+curiosity, rice-fields, stenches—from slavery to custom, enforced by
+brutality, and from many a hateful thing—to be out of China proper, to
+be among mountains whose myriad snow-peaks glitter above the blue gloom
+of pine-filled depths, to breathe the rarer air of 8000 feet, to be
+free, and in a new uplifted world of semi-independent tribes, and fairly
+embarked on a journey, with Chinese officialism apparently successfully
+defied, and last, but not least, the complete disappearance of
+rheumatism from which I had suffered long and badly, made up an
+aggregate of good things. Anything might happen afterwards, but for that
+one day I had breathed the air of freedom, and had obtained memories of
+beauty such as would be a lifelong possession.
+
+[Illustration: VIEW FROM CHUANG FANG.]
+
+Sleep came in the middle of these pleasant thoughts, and I did not wake
+till sunrise, with its waves of rosy light rolling up the glen, began to
+take the chill off the frosty air. There was additional snow on the
+mountains, and the higher pine woods were hoary.
+
+These hospitable people do not receive payment for their hospitality,
+nor do they use money—silver being only appreciated for its use in
+jewellery, and copper not at all. The roof, or the guest-room, if there
+be one, is at the disposal of any reputable wayfarer; but he must bring
+his own food, for they have none to sell. Fortunately, I had needles,
+scissors, and reels of silk with me, which there and elsewhere made the
+hearts of many women glad.
+
+The scenery the following day was, if possible, more glorious than
+before, and the intense blue and singular _glitter_ of the sky. The road
+still pursues the right bank of the river, the canyon is slightly wider,
+and for most of the way seven snow-peaks are an apparent barrier. In the
+forests near the road there were nine species of pines and firs, and
+eight of maples, besides cedars, yew, juniper, elm, holly, oak, poplar,
+alder, ilex, plane, birch, pear, etc. A white honeysuckle added its
+exquisite fragrance to the aggregate of sweet odours. The woods were
+full of white peonies, sky-blue larkspur and aconite abounded, and
+yellow roses revelled in the sunshine on the smooth lawns by the river
+on which the Tibetan traders camp in the season. My coolies, having no
+loads to carry, were much excited about the peonies. The roots are an
+expensive drug in China, and the men said they could get a dollar each
+for them, so there was a great raid upon them.
+
+After crossing and recrossing the Siao Ho on wooden cantilever bridges,
+we reached Ku-erh-kio, a purely Man-tze village, piled on an abrupt
+height where a lateral gorge with a tributary stream debouches on the
+river. This was the last point to which I was attended by Chinese
+officialism, and the first where there was a representative of the
+_Tu-tze_ of Somo, the territory on which I then entered. There the
+soldiers from Tsa-ku-lao, jolly young fellows, delivered the mandarin’s
+letter to the _T’ou-jen_, or headman, and returned.
+
+A Man-tze official escort was at once provided, consisting not of armed
+and stalwart tribesmen, but of two handsome laughing girls, full of fun,
+who plied the distaff as they enlivened our way to Chu-ti. Nor was this
+fascinating escort a sham. Before starting each of the girls put on an
+extra petticoat. If molestation had been seriously threatened, after
+protesting and calling on all present to witness the deed, they would
+have taken off the additional garments, laying them solemnly (if such
+laughing maidens could be solemn) on the ground, there to remain till
+the outrage had been either atoned for or forgiven, the nearest man in
+authority being bound to punish the offender. Mr. Baker mentions a
+nearly similar custom among the Lolos of Yunnan. _En route_ we passed
+several Man-tze villages, and at each the people came out and brought us
+wooden cups of cold water, indulging in much fun with my men, as several
+of them could speak Chinese. Nearly all the women were handsome. They
+were loaded with silver and coral ornaments, plied the distaff as they
+joked, and were free, not to say bold, in their manners.
+
+[Illustration: CASTLE AT CHU-TI.]
+
+Chu-ti consists of two Chinese houses, a bridge, and a large Man-tze
+house, with some cultivation round it, on the left bank. There we were
+hospitably received by our muleteer’s elder brother, though when he saw
+the army of coolies he said he did not keep an inn, and begged that
+nothing might be stolen. I was at once provided with a clean room on the
+roof, “the best guest-room,” with a window-frame, in which was fixed a
+prayer-cylinder revolved by the wind, which whirred monotonously by day
+and night. Many of the people from a village on a height, which is only
+accessible by a series of ladders, spent the evening on the roof with
+much frolic and merriment. Of the foreigner they have no notion, and as
+I was clothed in brown wool they thought I was a Man-tze of another
+tribe. Some of the women were beautiful, and even in middle life they
+retain their good looks and fine complexions.
+
+[Illustration: HEADMAN’S HOUSE, CHU-TI.]
+
+[Illustration: ALTAR OF INCENSE ON MAN-TZE ROOF.]
+
+This stone dwelling, arranged, as are all the better class of houses,
+apparently for defence, has three floors, reached by steep, wide step
+ladders inside. Cattle, mules, fodder, and agricultural implements
+occupy the first, the family the second, and on two sides of its flat
+roof, which is protected by a parapet two feet high, are the family
+temple and guest-rooms. This flat roof, which is also the
+threshing-floor, is the general gathering-place, the wrestling-ground,
+and the place where the women weave their woollen stuffs on their
+portable looms. On the roofs of the temple and guest-rooms, which are
+partially covered for use as granaries, the men play cards, chess, and a
+game resembling _Go_. On all roofs, even of the poorest class, there is
+at the eastern corner a small clay furnace with a chimney, called “the
+altar of incense.” In this at sunrise, the householder, man or woman,
+looking eastwards, burns a bundle of the green twigs and foliage of the
+yew, of which two species are accessible. This may possibly be a relic
+of a nature-worship anterior to Buddhism. All well-to-do persons have a
+temple on the roof, as in Tibet, with images of the Buddhist triad
+against the wall, an altar with the usual emblems and offerings, a drum,
+gong, horn, and cymbals, and as many of the insignia of Buddhism as
+their means allow them to obtain. The householder can act as priest, and
+every man or woman can present his or her invocations and offerings, and
+in Man-tze homes there is scarcely an hour from sunrise to sunset in
+which the dull beat of the drum and “_Om mani padme hun_,” reiterated in
+a high-pitched monotone, are not heard.
+
+Snow-peaks above, and snow-peaks below, reddened gloriously at sunset
+and sunrise, the view from the roof was absolutely entrancing, and the
+first half of the next day’s march was even lovelier than before. At one
+of the finest parts some tribesmen were building a bridge, and from it
+some muleteers, chiefly girls, with much laughter, were driving some
+unladen mules through a very rough ford. Many of the men crossed, and
+asked for help in building their bridge, which I would willingly have
+given them, but that my silver was far behind on the mules. They became
+very obstreperous, and one put his arm across the road to prevent my
+chair from passing. We got on, however, for a few _li_, and waited there
+for the mules. _Chai-jen_ had ceased at Chu-ti.
+
+On the same morning the bearer who had always been unfit for his work,
+and who denied himself food in order to get opium, for he was an
+immoderate smoker, collapsed and fell by the roadside with a fluttering
+pulse and a temperature of 104°. I put him in my chair and walked as
+long as I could, and then he had to lie down, and I paid a man to stay
+with him. An hour passed, and no mules; and I was so afraid that the men
+at the bridge had robbed the muleteer, for they were a rough lot, that
+Mr. Kay went back. Another hour passed, and then the mules came all
+right, and the sick man, moaning and breathless, supported along by Mr.
+Kay, who is both strong and kind.
+
+Higher up the canyon opens out into a valley of divided streams and
+shingle beds, either absolutely bare, or covered with the _Hippophæ
+rhamnoides_ and a species of tamarisk. The receding mountain-sides are
+gashed by summer torrents, and the vegetation is scanty. There was a
+broad camping-ground among trees, and the coolies made fires and cooked
+their rice, a number of Somo women from a village on a height—nearly all
+of them handsome, in the Meg Merrilees style—looking timidly on.
+
+[Illustration: SICK UNTO DEATH.]
+
+The sick coolie was laid under a tree, and I put a wet
+pocket-handkerchief on his burning brow. Then latent Chinese brutality
+came out, showing that on these men the popular cult of Kwanyin, who is
+really a lovable creation, had no influence. There were five baggage
+coolies carrying nothing, and when I proposed that they should divide
+one mule’s load among them and let him ride, they refused. He had been
+working, sleeping, and eating with them for twelve days, yet when I
+asked if they were going to leave him there to die, they laughed and
+said, “Let him die; he’s of no use.” Though the water he craved for was
+only a few yards off they did not care to give him any. When appealed to
+again they said, “No matter; Mr. Kay can look after him.” And so he did,
+for when I had walked till I was exhausted that he might be carried, Mr.
+Kay nearly carried him for the remaining distance, and slept without his
+wadded gown in the keen frosty air, that he might have it. The others
+laughed at his sufferings, at me for bathing his head, and, above all,
+at my walking to let him ride.
+
+After we crossed to the right bank of the dwindling river a great number
+of Man-tze men and women met us, and escorted us up steep stony slopes
+to the large village of Mia-ko, with its many-storeyed houses, a feudal
+castle, and a lama-serai like an ugly factory, with 150 monks. We were
+received in the house of the _T’ou-jen_, the father of our muleteer, who
+has a patriarchal household of married sons and daughters with their
+children, and farms on a large scale.
+
+[Illustration: LAMA-SERAI AND HEADMAN’S HOUSE, MIA-KO.]
+
+The great treeless hillsides are well suited for agriculture, and though
+the altitude of Mia-ko is nearly 10,000 feet, wheat ripens in July. At
+that height, the Dover’s powder with which I dosed the coolie failed to
+produce its usual effect, nor was any other sudorific more successful.
+In the dry, rarefied air my umbrella split to pieces, shoes and other
+things cracked, screws fell out of my camera (one of Ross’s best), my
+air-cushion collapsed, a horn cup went to pieces spontaneously, and
+celluloid films became electric, and emitted sparks when they were
+separated!
+
+The soil of the mountain-sides is sandy, and potatoes, which have only
+lately been introduced, do well. There are many large villages scattered
+over these slopes, and the people have great flocks of brown goats and
+sheep, the latter a flop-eared, hornless, long-woolled breed, with fat
+tails weighing from three to six pounds. They also breed herds of _dzo_,
+a very valuable hybrid between the yak and cow, and capable of carrying
+80 lbs. more than either the horse or mule. The male is used for
+ploughing, and the female gives more milk than any other of the bovine
+race. Of it they make butter, which, as in Tibet, appears to become more
+valuable with years, and which is largely used, along with salt and
+soda, in the preparation of tea, which is churned in a wooden churn till
+it is as thick as chocolate. From the hair of the _dzo_ and yak the
+Man-tze make a heavy felt, used for cloaks in cold and wet weather, and
+for boots. As far as the divide, snow only lies for a few days at a
+time, and judging from description, the frost is never severe.
+
+Man-tze cultivation is rough and untidy as compared with Chinese.
+Indigenous flowers muster strong among the crops, and irrigation is not
+understood. Drought is the great enemy of agriculture, and the crops in
+this great valley were in urgent need of rain.
+
+In the late afternoon of our arrival Mia-ko was deserted, and a long
+procession of men and women, each carrying a heavy burden on the back,
+wound slowly up the hill to a point where it was reinforced by a
+similarly burdened company from our village, and the united force was
+met by a large body of lamas, including our muleteer, in their sacred
+vestments, chanting Sanskrit prayers. The burdens under which the people
+bent were the Buddhist scriptures, which, when complete, weigh 90 lbs.,
+and to carry this sacred load is regarded as an acceptable act of merit.
+Before the prolonged service ceased there was “a sound of abundance of
+rain,” the wind rose, the rain fell in torrents, and the soil of
+disintegrated granite imbibed it as if it never could be satisfied.
+
+Mia-ko is a noisy and cheerful village, and after Tibetan fashion, very
+religious. There is a low building on the hillside containing a number
+of revolving prayer-cylinders, ranged round it at a convenient height.
+Round this in the early morning the villagers go in procession turning
+the cylinders. With brief intervals all day long in my host’s family
+temple one or another repeated prayers in a monotone. On the roofs are
+tall poles, each surmounted by a trident, or a ball and crescent, or
+bearing narrow, white prayer-flags of their own length. Groups of poles
+with similar flags are erected in memory of the dead, whose ashes often
+rest below in small cinerary urns. It is “merit” to make clay
+medallions, with which portions of these ashes are frequently mixed, and
+to stamp them with Sakyamuni’s image, or to finger the clay deftly into
+models of _chod-tens_.
+
+We had any number of these jovial, laughing, frolicking people on the
+roof at night, men and women on terms of equality. They drink _chang_, a
+turbid barley beer, as the Tibetans do. We were detained for some days
+at Mia-ko. The mules were lost on the hills, and stories were current of
+two mighty robbers, who were making a part of the road dangerous, and
+were keeping the country in alarm, and who successfully evaded capture,
+though a reward of sixty taels (£9) was offered for them dead or alive.
+The _T’ou-jen_ was averse to our taking that route without an escort of
+ten spearmen, who had to be hunted up in the adjacent villages, and this
+took time. Into the midst of this detention dropped down a Chinese
+mounted officer, “a captain of a thousand,” with baggage and a mounted
+servant, and orders to keep me in view, whether to help or hinder I knew
+not, but strongly suspected the latter. Both carried swords and
+revolvers. This was most unwelcome, and the delicious sense of freedom
+in which I had been revelling vanished.
+
+The food question caused me uneasiness, though I was always assured that
+“everything was to be got at Somo.” The people would not sell us so much
+as an egg, and the detention made such a serious inroad on our supplies
+that I reduced myself to tea, and damper baked in the ashes and pullable
+into long strings.
+
+After the first curiosity, which was never vivid, was over the people
+pursued their usual avocations on the roof, reciting prayers, weaving,
+and making clothes in the day, and wrestling, fencing, and making a
+general frolic in the evening. Mia-ko is a very well-to-do village, and
+both sexes were loaded with silver jewellery.
+
+The Siao Ho makes a preposterous turn above it, and we took a short cut
+over the pass of Shi-Tze-Ping (10,917 ft.), rejoining the river twenty
+_li_ later. Heavy snow fell on the mountains during the previous night,
+whitening many of the lower hills, turning their shaggy pines into grey
+beards, and lying heavily on the superb coniferæ of the pass, where red
+and white rhododendrons and a large pink azalea were blooming profusely.
+At that elevation the mercury was 26° at 6 a.m., and as a strong
+north-east wind was blowing the cold was intense. At noon one thousand
+feet lower the mercury stood at 72°.
+
+From the summit there is a distant view of a long, snowy range, with a
+blunt and wavy outline, on which five peaks, evidently of great
+altitude, are superimposed. Hitherto the mountains, at least near the
+river, though dazzling white, had not reached the majesty of eternal
+snow, but on this range the guide said “it was always as it was then,”
+that the peaks were known as “the Snowy Mountains,” that the highest was
+called Tang-pa (sacred), and that the Great Gold River (Chin-shuan) rose
+among them. It was a pass of that range that we afterwards crossed, and
+it is probably identical with that mass of peaks and ranges marked on
+the Chinese maps as “Snowy Mountains,” running on the whole in a
+south-western direction between 29° and 32° N. lat. and 101° to 103° E.
+long. It is only possible to make a rough guess at the altitude of those
+peaks. In May Captain Gill found the snow line three degrees to the
+eastward of this point at an altitude of 13,000 feet, and estimates the
+limit of perpetual snow as at least 14,000 or 15,000 feet, which,
+allowing for the steady rise in temperature of every degree west in that
+latitude, would give a snow line of 15,000 or 16,000 feet above the sea
+level. Taking the snow line in the middle of May as a rough basis for
+calculation, I should estimate the height of the timber line at nearly
+13,000 feet, and the height of Tang-pa as 5000 feet above that.
+
+A steep descent of three hours through an entrancing forest brought us
+back to the Small River, there a full-watered, clear, green torrent,
+about forty yards wide, compressed within a narrow canyon, tumbling
+among gigantic boulders in glorious cataracts, forest trees of larger
+size than had been seen before bending over it, festooned with climbing
+roses and white and sulphur-yellow clematis, while all lovely things
+which revel in moisture and warmth—ferns, mosses, selaginellas, and the
+exquisite _Trichomanes radicans_—flourished along the margin of its
+turbulent waters. It was grander and far more beautiful than ever, and
+absolutely solitary.
+
+One feature of the vegetation west of Mia-ko is a pea-green trailer
+(possibly _Lycopodium Sieboldi_) with pendants eight and ten feet long,
+which takes possession of coniferous trees, dooming them to a slow
+death, but replacing their dark needles by a tint which in masses is
+very attractive. These trailers are used by the Man-tze for hats, much
+worn by lamas. Some of the red trunks of the conifers, branchless for
+fifty feet and more, measure from nineteen to twenty-one feet in
+circumference six feet from the ground, hollies seven feet, yew eleven,
+twelve, and even thirteen feet, and an umbrageous and very beautiful
+species of poplar from seventeen to twenty feet. Occasionally the canyon
+widens for a short distance, and there are smooth lawns, on which nature
+has planted artistically clumps of pines and birches, the latter,
+instead of white, with “old gold” bark, which they shed in spring.
+Almost the only flowers at that altitude were a dandelion, with a stalk
+an inch long, and a lovely, short-stalked, mauve primula, which in
+places carpeted the ground. Some of the canyon walls, rising
+forest-covered tier above tier, cannot be less than 3000 feet in height,
+and at that season their luxurious covering embraced every tint of
+yellow, red, and green.
+
+After fully forty _li_ the canyon broadens into a luxuriant valley,
+apparently closed at its western end by one of the great Tsu-ku-shan
+ranges, and the yak and _dzo_ fed in large numbers on the rich
+pasturages which confer prosperity on the Man-tze hamlet of Hang-Kia.
+This should have been the halting-place, and though there was apparently
+no accommodation the Chinese officer intended it to be so. High words
+were exchanged between him and Mr. Kay, who went back to hurry up the
+mules, while I sat in the roadway watching the snow which was then
+obviously falling on the pass, while it was raining below. To make a
+long story short, owing to unpropitious circumstances not worth
+narrating, and a loss of heads and tempers, my better judgment was
+overborne, and against it, and in spite of my showing that Matang could
+not be reached anyhow in less than eight hours, the order to start on
+this most foolhardy venture was given, and we left Hong-Kia at 3.15, the
+coolies and I not having fed since eleven, and reached the foot of the
+pass at 6.30. A few _li_ higher this branch of the Min rises as a
+vigorous spring under a rock.
+
+We ascended to a considerable height by a number of well-engineered
+zigzags, meeting Man-tze travellers armed with lances and short swords,
+and journeying in companies from dread of the notorious banditti. Some
+of my men had armed themselves with lances. As darkness came on the
+coolies were scared, and begged me to have the mule bells taken off.
+They started at every rock, and asked me to have my revolver ready!
+Their noses had been bleeding at intervals for some days, and at the
+altitude we had attained the hemorrhage in some cases was profuse, and
+was accompanied by vertigo, vomiting, and some bleeding from the mouth,
+and the baggage coolie who had most unwillingly taken the sick bearer’s
+place was at best a malcontent. When we got into mist, and broken shale,
+and snow, after stumbling and falling one after the other, they set the
+chair down, very reasonably I thought, and no arguments of Mr. Kay’s
+addressed either to mind or body induced them to carry it another step.
+
+It was then 8.30 and very dark. A snowstorm came on, dense and blinding,
+with a strong wind. I was dragged rather than helped along, by two men
+who themselves frequently fell, for we were on a steep slope, and the
+snow was drifting heavily. The guide constantly disappeared in the
+darkness. Be-dien, who was helping me, staggered and eventually fell,
+nearly fainting—he said for want of food, but it was “Pass Poison,” and
+he was revived by brandy. The men were groaning and falling in all
+directions, calling on their gods and making expensive vows, which were
+paid afterwards by burning cheap incense sticks, fear of the bandits
+having given way to fear for their lives—yet they had to be prevented
+from lying down in the snow to die.
+
+[Illustration: ELEPHANTIASIS.]
+
+_See page 442._
+
+Several times I sank in drifts up to my throat, my soaked clothes froze
+on me, the snow deepened, whirled, drifted, stung like pin points. But
+the awfulness of that lonely mountain-side cannot be conveyed in words:
+the ghastly light which came on, the swirling, blinding snow-clouds, the
+benumbing cold, the moans all round, for with others, as with myself,
+every breath was a moan, and the certainty that if the wind continued to
+rise we should all perish, for we were on the windward slope of the
+mountain. After three hours of this work, the moon, nearly at her full,
+rose, and revealed dimly through the driving snow-mist, the round,
+ghastly crest of the pass, which we reached and crossed soon after
+midnight, when the snow ceased. I have fought through severe blizzards
+in the Zagros and Kurdistan mountains, but on a good horse and by
+daylight, and not weakened by a blow. On the whole this was my worst
+experience of the kind.
+
+An hour’s descent in deep snow on the edge of a precipice, from below
+which came up the boom of tumbling water, brought us to a forest of the
+straightest and tallest pines I ever saw, glorious in the moonlight, and
+vocal with the crash of waters. Then I became aware that Mr. Kay, who is
+very absent, and the guide had disappeared. The coolies declined to
+carry me, and wanted to leave me there, and it was only after half an
+hour’s altercation between them and my servant, during which my wet
+clothing froze hard, that they took up the chair. The forest tracks were
+baffling, and the true track was soon lost in the snow, not to be
+recovered till at 2 a.m. we emerged on great, grassy slopes, and an hour
+later, my party, exhausted, shivering, starving, drenched to the skin,
+and all alike in frozen clothes, found a wretched shelter in the one
+room of a Chinese hovel with a sloping floor on the bleak,
+boulder-strewn hillside on which the forlorn village of Matang huddles
+at an altitude of over 9000 feet.
+
+The Pass of Tsu-ku-shan, which we had crossed, is the great water
+parting of that region, the waters on the east seeking the Min, and
+those on the west the Chin-shuan or Ta-kin Ho, both meeting in the
+Yangtze at Sui-fu, this glorious region being geographically in the
+Yangtze Valley. When I recrossed the pass, a very easy one, one hundred
+and twenty-four snow-peaks were visible from its summit. Its approximate
+altitude is 11,717 feet. It is a long, bare, unimpressive mountain wall.
+
+The hovel allowed of my pitching my camp bed behind a cambric screen,
+but there was no room for the wretched coolies to lie down, so they sat
+round a big, log fire, cooked their food, talked, and thawed and dried
+their frozen clothes. I thawed mine by rolling myself up in a blanket,
+but unlike them was unable to eat, or even drink tea for many hours, and
+lay there much stupefied until noon the next day, when we moved to what
+posed as an inn, a wooden stable ninety feet long, with stalls seven
+feet high for human beings on both sides, in one of which I was thankful
+to find solitude, a fire-bowl, and necessary rest for some days.
+
+The innkeeper and his wife, Kansuh Mohammedans, were kind. They gave me
+an egg, and took me to sit by their big log fire in their horrible
+kitchen, on the ground that we were worshippers of the same God. The
+fire was welcome, for there were heavy snowstorms, and on one day the
+mercury fell to 29°. Whether in storm or sunshine Matang, “out of the
+season,” is a ghastly place, a forlorn, unpicturesque village of low
+stone cabins, with rough, timber roofs kept down by stones. It is
+bisected by a torrent of the same name, a feeder of the Chin-shuan,
+rising on the pass above. There is a very good cantilever bridge. Its
+population of 170 includes a number of Chinese who have married Man-tze
+women. Snow lies there for six weeks.
+
+In July and August the scene changes, and Matang becomes a great
+international market. The inn is crammed with men and horses. Yaks and
+Tibetan tents cover the grassy slopes, Chinese dig on the mountains for
+medicinal roots, which are also brought from Tibet in incredible
+quantities, and are bought up chiefly by Mussulman traders, broken
+silver, the only currency accepted, passes freely from hand to hand,
+goods are bartered, and for two months the Chinese and Tibetan traders
+do a very large trade in cattle, horses, wool, hides, sheep, musk,
+rhubarb, hartshorn, and much besides.
+
+Some of the Matang Man-tze women were extremely beautiful, after the
+Madonna type. I twice secured a giggling group in front of my camera,
+but I no sooner put my head under the focussing cloth than there was a
+stampede, and partly in fun and partly in fear the laughing beauties
+fled like hares, so the reader must take their good looks on trust.
+
+Outside a hole near the roof, which served for a window, a genuine
+Tibetan dog was chained, as big as a small bear, with rusty brown wool,
+four inches long, and a superb face. His voice was more like a roar than
+a bark, and his growl was portentous. These dogs are very savage, and
+his owner said that he could kill a man by tearing open his throat,
+which is their method of attack. I got his owner, on whom he fawned
+foolishly, to measure him, and from the root of his bushy tail to his
+nose he measured four feet three inches. He kept a malignant watch on
+me, and I could not move in my room without provoking his fierce,
+resonant growl. These dogs shed their fur in the summer.
+
+[Illustration: CHINESE OFFICER AND SPEARMEN, MIA-KO.]
+
+After a detention, owing to snowstorms and difficulties of transport,
+which made a further serious inroad on the stores, we left Matang early
+in May, accompanied by the Chinese officer, who had wisely remained in
+the Hang-Kia valley, and ten stalwart spearmen from Mia-ko. I started on
+foot, accompanied by this escort, leaving the others to follow at their
+leisure; some of the baggage being on _yaks_, which having been as usual
+lost on the mountain, caused considerable delay. When our force was
+mustered it numbered twenty-five men. Two of the wild-looking tribesmen
+rode big yaks, monstrous in their winter coats; all were armed with
+lances, and short, broad-bladed swords, and a few carried long and
+much-decorated matchlock guns. Of course we saw nothing of the bandits,
+and when we had passed their beat the spearmen quietly disappeared,
+apparently ignorant of their right to _baksheesh_. The ghastly, grinning
+head of a third bandit hung in a cage in the village.
+
+The road, which is a singularly good one, crosses the Matang river by a
+good bridge, near its junction with a vigorous stream descending from
+the north-west, and then follows their united course in a southerly
+direction for forty _li_ to their union with the Rong-kia.
+
+The scenery on that day’s journey is the loveliest of all. This Matang
+river whose birth we had seen on that awful night on the pass, raging in
+cataracts, and great drifts of sunlit foam, and slowing at times into
+deep green eddies, makes the most abrupt and extraordinary turns, each
+one giving a new and glorious view. The canyon reminds me of some of the
+finest parts of the Rocky Mountains, but the abundance of deciduous
+trees and flowering shrubs, trailers, and plants, and the aquamarine
+“Fairy Moss,” hanging in five-feet streamers from the trees, give it an
+added beauty. Everything was draped in auburn, gold, and green. The pine
+forests are vast and magnificent, and through the purple madder of the
+leafless birches their terra-cotta stems gleamed. The dark, evergreen
+ilex and holly contrasted with the brilliant spring green of the
+elæagnus, hawthorn and willow; primulas, narcissus, and _scillae_
+starred the mossy ground, maidenhair and other ferns flourished on the
+tree trunks, trailers of a pure white clematis hung over the path,
+mosses and film ferns draped every harsh angle and every boulder out of
+sight, and gorgeous butterflies and dragonflies glanced like “living
+flashes of light.” Every vista at every turn above the dark pine forests
+is blocked by peaks, then in the dazzling purity of new-fallen snow.
+
+[Illustration: VILLAGE OF RONG-KIA.]
+
+Our course consisted of constant climbing over high steep spurs, which
+descend on the right bank of the river. There is one fine waterfall. In
+the afternoon a long and very severe ascent terminated at the top of a
+spur crowned by a village and a lama-serai above the confluence of four
+valleys and three streams, the Matang from the north, the Rong-kia from
+the east, and the Kin-ta from the south. These unite to form a broadish,
+full-watered river, very green, to which the Man-tze give the name,
+which I reproduce as Rong-kia, or “Silver Water,” but which the Chinese
+along its banks call the Ta Chin or Ta Kin-Shuan (Great Gold River),
+which, if they are correct, is the upper portion of the Tatu or Tung
+River.
+
+[Illustration: CANYON OF THE RONG-KIA.]
+
+After an ascent, and a halt at an extraordinary village of square
+towers, from each of which a single, brown wood room projected at the
+top, another steep ascent took us to the top of a spur, from which we
+looked down on the valley of the Rong-kia below its junction with the
+other streams, there a broad, swift river, free from rapids and
+cataracts, and bridged in several places.
+
+The first view of it sleeping in the soft sunshine of a May noon was one
+never to be forgotten. The valley is fully one mile wide, and nine miles
+long, and snow peaks apparently close its western extremity. All along
+the “Silver Water” there were wheat fields in the vivid green of spring;
+above were alpine lawns over which were sprinkled clumps of pine and
+birch, gradually thickening into forests, which clothed the skirts of
+mountains, snow-crested, and broken up here and there into pinnacles of
+naked rock. At short distances all down the valley are villages with
+towers and lama-serais on heights—villages among the fair meadows by the
+bright, swift river, with houses mounted on the tops of high towers,
+which they overhang, their windows from thirty to fifty feet from the
+ground—and stretching half-way across, a lofty, rocky spur, then violet
+against a sky of gold, developed into a massive, double-towered castle,
+the residence of the _Tu-tze_ of Somo, the lord of this fair land. In
+the late afternoon it looked like that enchanted region—
+
+               “Where falls not rain or hail or any snow,
+               Or ever wind blows loudly.”
+
+The warm spring sunshine blessed it, the river flashed through it in
+light, the sunset glory rolled down it in waves of gold, its beauty left
+nothing to be longed for.
+
+The Chinese officer rode up saying, “There is now no more fright,” (who
+was frightened I know not), and passed on to Somo, saying he was “going
+to make things smooth for us,” but, as I think, carrying orders to the
+_Tu-tze_ from headquarters to bar my further progress. The castle gained
+rather than lost, as we approached it by a bridge over a lateral stream
+near a fine specimen of an ancient tower, about eighty feet high. It
+occupies the greater part of a rocky spur or bluff, rising 390 feet
+above the river. A few mean houses cluster on ledges outside the castle
+wall.
+
+The spur is so precipitous on the east side as to look inaccessible, and
+is climbed with difficulty by anyone carrying a burden. At the foot of
+the rock there is a covered, open gateway, with revolving
+prayer-cylinders on both sides. The ascent is by steep zigzags, which we
+were an hour in climbing. The climb brought us into the centre of a
+Man-tze crowd, and of a cluster of mean and dirty Chinese hovels,
+huddling against the rocks, in which we were told that the _Tu-tze_ “had
+provided lodgings.” This was an insult. The lodging for the whole party
+was one small, dark, dirty room, filled with stinging wood smoke from a
+fire on the floor.
+
+[Illustration: SQUARE TOWER, SOMO.]
+
+I sat outside in the midst of a crowd which had no rudeness in it, while
+Mr. Kay, with sanguine impetuosity, went up “to see the _Tu-tze_” and
+claim fitting accommodation. He found both doors barred in his face, and
+two savage dogs on guard. Nothing daunted, he climbed a wall and dropped
+down into the outer court of the castle, and in the lion’s den itself
+obtained a good room for me on the roof of a Man-tze house within the
+great gate, high and breezy, and looking both up and down the valley.
+
+[Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF SOMO.]
+
+“Passports and recommendations are no use here,” replied the haughty
+ruler to a request for furtherance, and when a polite message was sent
+asking at what hour Mr. Kay might have the honour of an audience, the
+proposal was rudely negatived. The Chinese officer, who was entertained
+in the castle, had obviously done his work efficiently.
+
+Though Somo was nominally the goal of my journey, and I was more than
+satisfied to have reached it, I cherished a project of getting down to
+Ta-tien-lu (Darchendo) from Cho-ko-ki by a route only traversed
+previously, so far as Europeans are concerned, by Mr. von
+Rosthorn—involving a journey of twenty-one days. On making careful
+inquiries, however, I learned that a tribal war had broken out, and that
+the bridges over the Rong-kia had been destroyed, a fact which Mr. Kay
+verified by a long day’s journey of investigation. This involved two
+long days’ march on foot over a difficult mountain, and I was much
+prostrated, and also suffering from my heart from the severities of the
+night on the Tsu-ku-shan pass. In addition, the coolies, the bane of the
+journey, were breaking down from fever one after another, the stock of
+rice was nearly exhausted, and an order had been given that supplies and
+transport southwards were to be refused. I was too weak to make a
+resolute attempt to overcome these difficulties, which probably, as in
+the case of other would-be Tibetan travellers, were insurmountable, and
+every reader who is also a traveller will understand the indescribable
+reluctance with which I abandoned the Ta-tien-lu project. After it was
+given up, the _Tu-tze_ sent a present of salted goat, flour, honey, and
+ancient and hairy butter, which enabled me to give my men a good meal.
+
+The days passed quickly in learning as much as I was able to extract
+from the Man-tze elders regarding their customs. The _Tu-tze_ sent
+several times for my watch, and eventually sent a very big man with his
+own, a valuable old thing, with many rubies, which had stopped for
+years, and asked me to repair it! It was a very simple derangement, and
+I put it right, when he sent again asking if I could mend pianos, as he
+had one with broken strings! Then he sent for Be-dien, to whom he put
+many questions, and fascinated him. He told him that he could only
+protect us for forty _li_ farther, when we should reach the territory of
+the Cho-ko-ki, a hostile tribe. At one time Be-dien came into my room
+with an avalanche of “savages” behind him, one handsome young woman
+clinging to his arm, to his great annoyance, for he was a “very proper
+young man,” or posed as such.
+
+Throughout the Man-tze villages the absence of any painfully disfiguring
+diseases, goitre excepted, had been remarkable. In Somo, however, there
+was one Chinese with a tumour on his jaw as large as a supplementary
+head, and another suffering from severe elephantiasis, of which
+distressing malady an illustration is given on page 427.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIII.
+                 THE MAN-TZE, I-REN, OR SHAN-SHANG-REN
+
+
+In this chapter I put together such information as I was able to gather
+about the people to whom I have introduced my readers. I only give such
+statements as at least four persons were agreed upon, and confine my
+remarks to the four tribes of the Somo territory, estimated at 20,000
+souls, which are unified under the rule of the _Tu-tze_ of Somo.[50] The
+designation Man-tze or I-ren, which is simply Chinese for “barbarian,”
+is perforce accepted by these people from their conquerors. When
+questioned, however, they divided themselves into Somo, Cho-ko-ki,
+He-shui, and other tribes, and on being pressed further, they declared
+themselves Shan-shang-ren, or mountain people. They said that they had
+heard that in ancient times their fathers came from the setting sun, but
+they knew of no days when they and the Chinese did not live among each
+other. The tribal spirit is completely extinct among those tribes, who
+have accepted one ruler; but the Somo people hate the Sifans to the
+north-east and the Cho-ko-ki men to the south.
+
+The head of one or more tribes is called a _Tu-tze_. He is appointed
+directly by the Emperor of China, and for life; but a long-established
+custom has made the office practically hereditary, and in the absence of
+a son a daughter may be invested with it, as in the case of Somo, where
+in recent years, and for a considerable time, a woman sustained the
+dignity of the position. It is only in a case of flagrant misconduct
+that the Emperor would exercise his right of removing a Man-tze ruler.
+The _Tu-tze_ has absolute authority over his own tribesmen, including
+the power of life and death. The land is his, and the cultivator pays a
+tax of thirty per cent, of the produce, out of which the ruler
+contributes the annual tribute to China. The tribesmen are free to build
+anywhere without paying ground rent. Chinese under Man-tze rule have to
+obtain permission to build, are not allowed to make charcoal, and pay
+ground rent. In the case of the murder of a Chinese, the murderer may be
+taken into Chinese territory to be tried by a mandarin, but actually he
+is rarely caught, and the crime is usually compromised by the payment of
+blood-money by his relations. If a Chinese wishes for a Man-tze wife he
+must pay the _Tu-tze_ thirty taels (about £4 10_s._) for the privilege.
+
+[Illustration: A MAN-TZE VILLAGE.]
+
+Under the _Tu-tze_, and appointed by him, are village headmen or
+_T’ou-jen_, who usually hold office for life, and are frequently
+succeeded by their sons. They collect taxes, settle disputes, try small
+cases by tribal law, and meet the _Tu-tze_ once a month at his castle to
+report what has been going on, and to discuss what has to be done, and
+once a year to choose the tribal representatives who are to carry the
+tribute to Peking. China has done wisely in fringing her borders with
+quasi-independent tribes whose autonomy is guaranteed by custom, and
+whose love of the freedom they enjoy would convert men and women into a
+respectable guerilla force in case of invasion.
+
+The religion of the Man-tze is Buddhism or Lamaism of the Tibetan type.
+Except in Western Tibet I have never seen a country in which the
+externals of religion are so prominent. Nearly all the larger villages
+have lama-serais on heights above them; rock Buddhas, and Buddhas in
+relief on tablets are numerous; poles twenty feet long, with narrow
+prayer-flags of nearly the same length, flutter from every house-roof;
+groups of prayer-flags in memory of the dead are planted beside every
+village; a temple is prominent on the roof of every well-to-do house;
+and prayer-cylinders turned by water power or hand are common near the
+roads. Daily offerings are made in all dwellings; every second son is a
+lama; the formula, “_Om mani padme hun_,” is everywhere heard; the
+presence of lamas is essential for every act in the round of social and
+agricultural life; and literature is wholly confined to Buddhist
+classics. Prayer-wheels revolved by the wind are common in windows; and
+when people grow old, and dread such an unfortunate re-birth as a
+reappearance in the body of a horse, dog, or mule, a prayer-cylinder,
+revolved by swinging it, is constantly in their hands.
+
+The lamas receive large sums for prayers, and for such ceremonies, in
+cases of illness, as the reading of the Buddhist scriptures in the
+house, accompanied by chanting, blowing of great horns, and beating of
+drums. A death is their chief harvest, for, besides the fees paid to
+them for the services customary at death and burial, any good clothing
+which the deceased person has possessed is their perquisite, as well as
+the silver and coral head-ornaments of the women, which go to help to
+pay the expense of opening a passage for the soul into the other world.
+If the family wishes for these it must redeem them from the lamas.
+According to the wealth of the deceased is the time occupied in this
+arrangement. It may be three months or longer. In the case of the poor
+three days is the limit. A re-birth into the Western Heaven is reserved
+for lamas.
+
+They dispose of bodies after death by rules of their own. In a few very
+rare cases, where the horoscope of life, death, and the future is
+favourable, the corpse is buried “earth to earth” without coffin or
+clothing. Throwing the body into the river, or exposing it on a
+mountain-side to the fowls of the air, are also practised at their
+bidding; but cremation, accompanied by the recitation or chanting of the
+scriptures, is the usual method. Afterwards the ashes are placed in an
+earthen pot, which is buried, a prayer-flag or flags being erected on
+the spot. On the days of death and burial, as well as during the
+interval, there is weeping, but it is not prolonged or repeated, and
+ancestral worship is not practised. The clothing of a corpse is always
+removed immediately after death, and it remains naked until it is
+disposed of by one of these three methods.
+
+Among the noteworthy characteristics of Man-tze life is the position of
+women. They are not only on an equality with men, but receive
+considerable attention from them, and they share their interests and
+amusements everywhere. Men and women are always seen together. A woman
+can be anything, from a muleteer to a _Tu-tze_. Social intercourse
+between the sexes is absolutely unfettered. Boys and girls, youths and
+maidens, mix freely. Love-matches are the rule, and I saw many a
+handsome young face illuminated by a genuine love-light. The young
+people choose each other, and either of them may take the initiative.
+When they have settled the preliminaries, the prospective bridegroom
+sends a friend to the prospective bride’s parents, informing them of his
+wish to marry their daughter. Consent follows almost as a matter of
+course, the bridegroom sends a present of a bottle of wine to the
+bride’s father, and the courtship is fully recognised.
+
+[Illustration: SOMO CASTLE (BACK VIEW).]
+
+Next the lamas are consulted, to ascertain if the horoscopes of the
+youth and maiden fit. If not, the difficulty may be overcome by
+prolonged, vicarious chanting of the scriptures, and liberal fees. The
+lamas also choose an auspicious day for the marriage. The marriage
+ceremony consists in the bride and groom publicly joining hands,
+drinking wine from a double-spouted bowl, and accepting each other as
+husband and wife, after which there is a three days’ feast in the
+bride’s home. She and her husband then go to their own house, and there
+is another three days’ feast. There are no contracts of marriages for a
+limited period, as in Western Tibet. Whether the choice has been for
+good or ill, it is for life, divorce being permissible only in the case
+of childlessness, and the contract can only be cancelled by the
+_Tu-tze_. It would not be correct to infer from this that the Man-tze
+are a moral people. Their standard of morality is low, and the lives of
+the lamas have no tendency to raise it. Plurality of wives is an
+appendage of the position of the _Tu-tze_, and is, I think, the practice
+of rich men, but monogamy is the rule, and polyandry, though said to be
+the custom of the Sifans to the north, does not exist. No presents,
+except the bottle of wine previously mentioned, are made by the
+bridegroom to the bride’s father; but her parents, according to their
+wealth, endow her with cattle, horses, and fields, the last of which, to
+use our own phraseology, are “settled upon her.” A widow does not wear
+mourning, and is at liberty to make a second marriage. On the death of
+her husband, unless she remarries, she assumes complete control over his
+property, and at her death it is divided among the sons, who frequently,
+however, agree to live together and keep it intact. If there is trouble
+concerning property, the _T’ou-jen_ usually settles the matter, and if
+he fails to make an amicable arrangement, it is referred to the
+_Tu-tze_, whose decision is final.
+
+Good health is the patrimony of these people. There are a few lepers
+among them, and rheumatism is rather prevalent, but few maladies are
+known, and measles appears to be the only epidemic which affects
+children. I did not see one case of skin disease or deformity on the
+whole journey. They spoke of old age and what they call “exhaustion” as
+the usual causes of death. Goitre, however, is frightfully prevalent in
+many of the villages. In some, _seventy-five per cent._ of the people
+are afflicted by it, and it often begins in childhood. It does not seem
+to affect either the health or spirits. The people think that it comes
+from drinking snow-water, but it was specially common in some villages
+where the sources of the water supply are far below the snow. The lamas
+virtually prohibit all medicines not supplied by themselves, and it is
+only those Man-tze who have been corrupted by contact with Chinese
+civilisation who use any others. They incline to fatalism regarding
+illness, relying chiefly on amulets, charms, and religious ceremonies.
+“If a man is very ill he dies,” they say, “and when he is not he gets
+better.”
+
+They have a language of their own, but it is written in Tibetan
+characters, and all notices and inscriptions on tablets and signposts
+are in the same. In the villages nearest to China proper, many of the
+people speak Chinese as well as Man-tze, and the _T’ou-jen_ in all
+villages, but further west very few even of the elders understand it,
+and the _Tu-tze_ himself is unable to read the Chinese characters.
+
+The products of the Somo territory, so far as export goes, are _nil_.
+The magnificent timber is useless, as the rivers, from their abrupt
+bends and enormous boulders, in addition to their turbulence, do not
+admit of its being rafted down. So far as I could learn, there are no
+golden sands to tempt even the Chinese adventurer. Sulphur and nitrate
+of soda abound. The Man-tze grow wheat, barley, oats, maize, buckwheat,
+lentils, and a little hemp. In good years they raise enough for their
+requirements, but more frequently have to barter their cattle and coarse
+woollen cloth for food. Their transactions consist of barter only,
+silver being known solely for its use in personal adornment. There is no
+prospect for Manchester in that quarter. Pieces of red and green cloth
+for the decoration of boots are brought from Russia through Tibet, and
+these and the brass buttons on clothing are their only imports. Both
+sexes dress in woollen materials, spun, woven, and dyed by themselves,
+and sewn with their own hempen fibre.
+
+Their views are narrow, their ideas conservative, and their knowledge
+barely elementary. England is not a name to conjure with in their
+valleys. They know of China and Tibet, and have heard of Russia, but
+never of Britain. Of the war and the _wojen_ they were in complete
+ignorance. I found them hospitable, friendly, and polite, not
+extravagant in their curiosity, of easy morals, full of frolic and
+merriment, singularly affectionate to each other, taking this life
+easily and enjoying it, and trusting the next to the lamas.
+
+In the regrettable absence of photographs it is difficult to give any
+idea of their appearance. There are few under-sized men. They were a
+little taller than my coolies, who were the average height of Chinese.
+They are deep chested, as becomes mountaineers; their build is robust,
+and their muscular limbs betoken strength and agility. Their walk is
+firm and springy, and in wrestling and putting the stone—favourite
+amusements—the display of muscle is superb. The tribes vary as to good
+looks, though not as to physique, especially the women, some of whom
+have the oval face, regular features, and beauty of the brunette type
+which we associate with the Madonna, while others are plain, and
+resemble Neapolitans. The complexion is as dark as that of the natives
+of Southern Europe, but a trifle redder; the large dark eyes and
+eyebrows are level, the nose straight, the mouth usually small and
+thin-lipped, the foreheads high but not broad, and the ears large, and
+rendered unshapely by the weight of the earrings. The cheek-bones are
+not in any way remarkable. The characteristic of the Man-tze face is
+that it is European in feature and expression, and recalls the Latin
+races. Owing to a sort of timidity, and to the fashion of hair-dressing
+of both sexes, it was unfortunately impossible to procure any head
+measurements.
+
+The men shave their heads and wear cloth or fur caps, but some of the
+elders said that in former days all the hair was gathered above the
+forehead, and twisted into a horn wrapped up in a cotton cloth, and
+often “as long as a hand.” A similar style is mentioned by Mr. Baber as
+characteristic of the Lolos of Yunnan. The _coiffure_ of the women is
+most elaborate. The front hair is divided, and plaited into from twenty
+to thirty plaits not wider than a watchguard, and waxed down each side,
+considerably reducing the forehead. The back hair, with considerable
+additions, is divided and brought round the head in two massive coils
+over a folded blue cloth, which hangs a little over the brow. Strings of
+large coral beads are twisted round these coils, but at the sides only.
+The circumstances of a family are indicated by the size and beauty of
+the coral and silver of the headgear. Jewellery is largely worn by both
+sexes—earrings, necklets, chains of alternate coral and silver filigree
+beads, and bracelets set with large turquoise or red coral. The
+ornaments are often really beautiful and of fine workmanship. When I
+asked by whom they were made, they invariably replied, “By the Arabs.”
+
+The women wear woollen under-garments, short loose jackets with wide
+sleeves, and skirts reaching a few inches below the knees, as closely
+pleated as the kilt of a Highlander, sometimes exchanged indoors for a
+long, loose robe. Dark brown and madder-red predominate in apparel. They
+wear long leather boots, upon which are stitched up the front and sides
+decorative strips of scarlet and bright green cloth.
+
+The men wear a gabardine and girdle of native cloth, frequently dark
+red, over a woollen under-garment; leggings, and decorated leather boots
+or hempen shoes. The cloth or fur cap is often varied by the SZE CHUAN
+turban. They have no soap, and never wash. A corpse is designated as the
+“twice washed.” In the rarefied air of the high altitudes which they
+inhabit, some of the most unpleasant consequences of dirt are not
+apparent. I must add that every house in which I received hospitality
+was tolerably clean, and that I was not aware of the presence of vermin.
+
+There is a singular absence of bird-life in the Somo territory. A
+species of francolin and ringed pheasants were seen, the blue jay, the
+crow, and the ubiquitous magpie. The men said that there are boars,
+small bears, and deer in the forests, but that the trade in hartshorn
+and horns in the velvet for Chinese medicines had driven the latter
+back, “they knew not where.” There are also at least two species of
+monkeys, both large, and one with thick, long hair. The brown bear, the
+yellow wolf, the musk deer, the badger, and the otter are also found,
+but the Man-tze are not scientific in their descriptions.
+
+The _Tu-tze’s_ rule only extends for forty _li_ to the south of Somo. He
+is proud of his practically independent position, and when my servant
+interpreter presented my Chinese passport, and a letter from the Viceroy
+of SZE CHUAN, he said that he did not read Chinese, and that passports
+and Viceroys’ letters were of no use there!
+
+Somo castle, on its eastern side, is a most striking building, built
+into the rock of the spur on which it stands. It has a number of windows
+with decorative stone mullions, the lowest over twenty feet from the
+ground. Its many roofs are planted thick with prayer-flags, and
+projecting rooms and balconies of brown wood, with lattice-work fronts,
+hang from its eastern side over the precipice. The castle yard is
+spacious and singularly clean; the entrance is handsome, and is faced by
+a huge dragon, boldly and skilfully painted on a plastered stone screen.
+Poles with crowns from which yaks’ tails depend, and the trident, as in
+Western Tibet, surmount the entrance. The whole is most substantially
+built of stone, and I looked in vain for any trace of decay or
+disrepair. The altitude is about 7518 feet.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE AND JUDGMENT-SEAT. SOMO CASTLE.]
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXIV.
+                        FROM SOMO TO CHENGTU FU
+
+
+The refusal to sell food produced uncomfortable consequences. I bestowed
+my personal stores on the coolies, and being left with only a little
+chocolate, a few squares of soup, and a pound of flour, was often
+compelled to still the gnawings of hunger with peppermint lozenges; and
+what was worse, the men were on half-rations. Just before we left, the
+_Tu-tze_ sent a welcome present of half a bag of flour, and as supplies
+were not refused on the way down the worst was over. At Matang we were
+detained two days by a severe snowstorm, which glorified the pine
+forests on the skirts of the Tsu-ku-shan Pass, which was bare, pale, and
+uninteresting, and took four hours to cross even in the sunny daylight.
+From the summit about one hundred and twenty snow-peaks were visible,
+some rising sharply into a very blue sky, others with snow-clouds
+swirling round their ghastly crests—all clothed to a considerable
+altitude with interminable forests of pine, hoary with new-fallen snow,
+under the bright May sunshine.
+
+Passing through fine herds of yaks and _dzo_, and by villages and
+detached houses, we sought shelter in vain. The people were all “on the
+mountain,” and every house was locked. After a severe day of twelve
+hours we were directed off the road, through groves of fine Spanish
+chestnut trees, to an alp, on which is a small Man-tze house inhabited
+by one Chinese, where I slept on the roof, next two rows of humming
+prayer-cylinders, and in the morning had a glorious view of snow-peaks
+and forests.
+
+It is scarcely credible, but the downward journey was more gloriously
+beautiful than the upward. The peacock green, transparent Siao Ho, with
+its snow-white cataracts, thundered through the trees in a yet goodlier
+volume, between cliffs on which the great, red-stemmed pines are
+securely moored, flashed past velvet lawns starred with blue and white
+anemones, and pink and white peonies; past clumps of daphne giving forth
+hot-house odours in the warm sunshine, under the living scarlet of
+maples, through the blue gloom of colossal pines, every one of its
+innumerable bends giving a fresh view. The ice was half an inch thick
+every morning on the heights. We lodged in headmen’s houses, where at
+one halt I had a guest-room twenty-four feet long.
+
+[Illustration: HESHUI HUNTER, AND NOTCHED TIMBERS.]
+
+At Ku-erh-Kio, where after a journey of eleven hours I sat nearly two
+hours among dogs, pigs, and fowls, waiting for the people to return from
+the mountain and give us shelter, I slept for the last time on a roof
+under the stars, the earliest sight in the morning being glories of
+light and shade, of forest, cataract, and mountain, and the sparkle of a
+peak reddening in the sunrise, like unto the Matterhorn, which the
+people called Ja-ra (king of mountains).[51]
+
+[Illustration: A HESHUI FAMILY, KU-ERH-KIO.]
+
+A thirteen hours’ journey thence took us to Tsa-ku-lao. We were
+benighted and lost the road, and were “set in darkness in slippery
+places,” on lofty precipice ledges, and the coolies were so exhausted
+that they fell several times on the five hundred rocky steps by which
+the quaint border post is reached. Chinese inns, officialism, passport
+delays, and _chai-jen_ had to be endured again from that point. At
+Li-fan Ting the officials sent presents when we arrived, saying that
+they hoped I would forget their conduct, “and turn the light of my
+countenance once more upon them to vivify them.”
+
+The heat became severe as we descended; the vegetation near the road was
+limited to grey, dusty tufts of a species of artemisia; the winds were
+tremendous, and the Man-tze villages at great heights, where the people
+have neither horses, cattle, nor sheep, and depend solely on the
+rainfall for their crops, were praying for rain, and below Weichou,
+finding Sakyamuni deaf to their entreaties, were turning to the
+forgotten gods of the rivers and the hills.
+
+From an ethnological point of view the Man-tze deserve some attention,
+as they differ considerably from the Sifan to the north and the Lolos to
+the south. In religion and many customs they approach closely to the
+people of Western Tibet, while in appearance they differ most remarkably
+from both Tibetans and Chinese. Their handsome, oval faces;
+richly-coloured complexions; thick, straight eyebrows; large, level
+eyes, sometimes dark grey; broad, upright foreheads; moderate cheek
+bones; definite, though rather broad noses; thin lips, somewhat pointed
+chins, and white, regular teeth are far removed from any Mongolian
+characteristics, and it is impossible not to believe that these tribes
+are an offshoot of the Aryan race.
+
+During the week’s descent from Tsa-ku-lao, the winds were fearful,
+almost carrying my chair and bearers over a precipice, and the country
+was scorched, and afflicted with driving dust storms. The heat had then
+set in for the summer, the Yangtze was rising, and I was suffering so
+severely from the effects of the night’s “death-struggle” on the
+Tsu-ku-shan pass, that I was anxious to reach a cooler climate, so only
+rested a few days among the hospitalities of Kuan, and then crossed the
+Chengtu plain for the fourth time, doing forty miles in one day with the
+mercury at 93° in the shade, and arrived at Chengtu among very
+unpleasant demonstrations of hostility from the military students who
+were “up” for examination. Four of the examiners had passed me on the
+road, or rather I respectfully cleared off it to make way for, and
+contemplate them. Besides four bearers to each chair, a number of
+soldiers were roped on, and behind them came a train of twenty-six laden
+mules, and twenty-five laden porters, carrying, I doubt not, much
+besides personal baggage. I was told that these officials make large
+investments in SZE CHUAN drugs, on which, as they pay no taxes _en
+route_, and the unfortunate local officials bear the cost of carriage,
+they make great profits in Peking. Numbers of attendants are essential
+to dignity in the East. A mandarin going to pay a visit in his
+much-decorated chair is usually preceded and accompanied by an irregular
+procession of lictors with staves or whips, boys carrying red boards
+bearing the official’s name and style, and _chai-jen_ in red-tasselled
+official hats. The lictors push the people to one side, the boys shout,
+and the bearers yell. When the great man leaves his own _yamen_ three
+small mortars are fired, and if he visits an official, the same noisy
+process is repeated.
+
+Forced labour for relays of bearers, porters, and horses for the lesser
+dignitaries, is called for, and on a much-travelled main road this is a
+heavy burden on the villagers.
+
+[Illustration: A DRAGON BRIDGE.]
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXV.
+                             DOWNWARD BOUND
+
+
+The deep blue, glittering skies of the high altitudes were exchanged for
+the mist and dulness which have conferred upon SZE CHUAN the name of
+“The Cloudy Province,” and with the lower levels came mosquitoes and
+sandflies, and a day shade temperature from 82° to 93°, very little
+alleviated during the night. I left the capital in a small flat-bottomed
+_wupan_, drawing four inches of water, with a mat roof, and without
+doors at either end. Yet my cambric curtains were never lifted, and when
+I desired it I enjoyed complete privacy at the expense of partial
+asphyxiation. At that time, May 20, the water was so low that no bigger
+boat could make the passage, and numbers of small, trim house-boats were
+aground.
+
+It was the start for a river journey of over 2000 miles, the first
+thousand of which were accomplished in this and similar boats. It was a
+delightful and most propitious journey, and introduced me to many new
+beauties and interests, and to a most attractive area of prosperity. For
+the first day the boatmen made more use of their shoulders than of their
+oars, lifting and shoving the boat, which “drave heavily” over sand and
+shingle and often bumped like a cart over paving stones. For the ascent
+of the river breast-poles are used by men wading. From Chengtu Fu to Sui
+Fu the Min is called by the Chinese the Fu, from the three Fu cities on
+its banks. After Be-dien had shopped for three hours, the result being
+only a small bag of charcoal, we dropped down under a fine stone bridge
+of several arches to a pretty village with a pagoda, “a sweet place,”
+where we tied up for the night.
+
+[Illustration: VILLAGE ON THE MIN.]
+
+We joined the main river, not then more than eighty yards wide, below
+the An-shun Bridge, an antiquated or ancient structure, and spent a long
+day in battling with the shallows, and with the peasant farmers, who had
+thrown many dams of shingle in bamboo cages across the river to keep up
+the water for their own purposes. They refused to open a passage, though
+this only involved kicking away the stones between the cages and
+replacing them, demanded 2000 cash as toll, and seized on my boat, and
+with shod poles and much vociferation barred my progress several times.
+Native boats were passing through for thirty cash, and some thirty or
+forty at each dam were smashing against each other for the first turn.
+Eventually, when forty men got hold of my little _wupan_ and tried to
+intimidate me, I asked them to show me the paper authorising them to
+demand this toll, on which they collapsed.
+
+In a number of places there are rows of gigantic waterwheels, four or
+five together, from thirty to forty-five feet in diameter, by which all
+the adjacent country is bountifully irrigated. The sleepy hum of these
+huge wheels, the richness of the cultivation, and the fresh greens of
+the woodland, in which prosperous-looking villages basked drowsily in
+the summer sunshine, were all charming. But at times the water was so
+shallow that the boatmen had to precede my boat to work a channel for
+her, one of them leading her by the nose, and another pushing her from
+behind. This dragging, and the quarrels with the peasants about getting
+through their dams, occupied the first day.
+
+The next day was a rapture. A river locally called the Nan joins the Min
+at Chiang Ku, about sixteen miles below Chengtu, and after the junction
+water was abundant. Su-ma-tou, a busy place in lat. 30° 28′ (Baber), is
+the limit of navigation for large junks. At Peng-shan Hsien the river
+widens out after the union of all its perplexing subdivisions. Below
+Meichow, a large and busy place, the country breaks up into picturesque
+hills of no great height, divided by fertile valleys, through one of
+which I caught a momentary and only glimpse of the unrivalled majesty of
+Mount Omi.
+
+Villages embowered in fruit trees, of which the illustration is an
+average specimen, adorn the banks of the bright river. Young wheat,
+mustard and beans in blossom, with mulberry trees between the fields,
+clumps of bamboo, and pines cresting every knoll and hill, made up a
+lovely picture—a vision of peace, plenty, and prosperity. Indeed, the
+whole river journey from Chengtu to Chungking consists of a series of
+beautiful pictures, combined with varied and prosperous industries. It
+is a lovely part of China, and the white, timbered houses, the vividly
+red soil, and red sandstone rock, the dark, light, blue, and yellow
+greens, and the fascination of the smooth, fine lawns, which ofttimes
+slope down to the sparkling water, have a very special charm. The
+“Cloudy Province” failed to keep up its character, and if the sky was
+not very blue, the sunshine was brilliant. The gardenia, often a large
+shrub, grows profusely on the slopes, and it and the bean gave forth
+delicious odours. Strings of gardenia blossoms hang up at that season in
+all houses, every coolie sticks them into his hair, and even the beggars
+find a place for them among their rags. For a farthing a large basket of
+them can be bought.
+
+I reached Chia-ling Fu (1070 ft.), where I remained for some days, in
+eighty hours from Chengtu Fu, including stoppages—the estimated distance
+being about 130 miles. The approach to this attractive and important
+city from the north is extremely pretty, indeed beautiful. The country
+is very hilly, and great, red sandstone bluffs, heavily wooded, with
+pagodas and temples, and much carving in rock recesses, with scarlet
+azaleas and gardenia blossoming everywhere, would have riveted my
+admiration to the left bank had it not been for the overhanging red
+sandstone cliff and the picturesque houses of the city on the right.
+
+Chia-ling Fu, said to be a city of 50,000 souls, is a place of great
+importance commercially, as three large rivers—the Min, Ya, and
+Tatu—there form a junction, and for a brief space the river is like a
+lake. It is perhaps the greatest centre of sericulture and silk weaving
+in the province, and is also the eastern boundary of the white wax
+trade. Its white silks are remarkable for lustre and purity of colour.
+It is a rich city, and the capital of one of the most fertile and lovely
+regions on earth. It is besides the starting-point for most of the
+pilgrims to the temples of Omi-Shan and “The Glory of Buddha.” The city
+wall is of bright red sandstone, which is finished with a few courses of
+hard grey brick. The south gate was rigidly closed against the Fire God.
+A handsome, uphill, residential street, green and peaceful, leads to the
+west gate, and on this the China Inland Mission and Canadian Methodists
+have their mission houses. In Mr. Endacott’s garden are some specimens
+of the singular rock-dwellings so fully described by Mr. Baber in his
+papers on Western China. Chia-ling trades in opium and timber as well as
+in silk and white wax. Silk and umbrella shops are conspicuous. Every
+view from every point is beautiful.
+
+[Illustration: WEST GATE, CHIA-LING FU.]
+
+On the face of the cliff on the opposite side of the river is a figure
+in the rock, cut in very high relief, of Maitreya Buddha—truly colossal,
+being 380 feet in height. The nose is said to be nearly five feet long,
+and the head from thirty to forty feet high. Grass is allowed to grow on
+the head, eyebrows, upper lip, and ears, to represent hair. This figure
+is unfortunately partly concealed by the redundant vegetation which
+surrounds it. It is an interesting specimen of the religious art of
+about a thousand years ago.
+
+Leaving the hospitalities of Chia-ling Fu for a boat journey of 345
+miles, in a rather old and leaky little _wu-pan_, which, however, did
+133 miles in seventeen hours, I halted several times on the way down to
+visit some of the remarkable rock dwellings in the cliffs which in many
+places border the river. They are difficult of access, and besides
+tearing my stout Chinese dress to pieces, I was considerably bruised and
+scratched. I took ropes, grippers, and three men with me.[52]
+
+[Illustration: FRIEZE IN ROCK DWELLING, MIN RIVER.]
+
+At a farmhouse where I landed near the hamlet of Sing-an, there was a
+sandstone coffer, seven feet long, used as a cistern. The farmer sold me
+two axe-heads of a hard, green stone, with a dull polish, which he found
+along with the coffer while digging a buffalo pond. To the finest of the
+excavated dwellings that I visited, I descended, holding on to trees and
+rock projections with hands and grippers, having a rope round my waist.
+There was a rock platform in front of the opening, not now accessible
+from below. The face of the rock has been smoothed, and eaves which
+project two feet have been left. The four times recessed doorway is five
+feet six inches high. At one side of this, as well as in the doorways of
+the interior, there are the remains of stone pivots on which doors could
+be hung. Above the doorway is a frieze as represented in the
+illustration, eighteen inches in depth, which is repeated over a stone
+altar against the wall, and again over several recesses, one of which is
+obviously for a fire, and has a stone shelf above it, and the others
+were probably beds. Two doorways give access to rooms, one of which is
+14 ft. by 12 ft., the other 12 ft. by 12 ft. The former is nine feet
+high, and has a rounded roof, below which runs a deep and well-executed
+frieze carved with arabesques and curious human figures, the faces of
+which are certainly not Mongolian. In this room are both an altar and a
+stone tank. The outer room measures 30 ft. by 20 ft. 7 in., and is 7 ft.
+4 in. in height. In another of these singular excavations there are
+settees cut into the rock with a fashionable slope of seat and back, the
+front being actually rounded for comfort! In a third there is a curious
+arrangement resembling pigeon-holes for letters, and the frieze
+resembles one figured in Mr. Baber’s paper, and is what is known in
+heraldry as the “disc-and-label” pattern—a severe but very decorative
+ornament. In that dwelling there was an arrangement of holes in the
+doorway, showing that the doors had worked on some description of hinge.
+Over the lintel of one doorway is the trident symbol. All the dwellings
+(five) visited by me, had what must have been small sleeping chambers
+attached to them. The walls of the principal rooms show traces of
+careful finish, and some have obviously been panelled. There is a
+stately seemliness about these abodes, which implies that those who
+constructed and occupied them must have made some advances in
+civilisation, and have valued privacy.
+
+[Illustration: BOAT ON THE MIN.]
+
+The finest of them, so far as is known, both in size and decoration, is
+a day’s journey only from Sui Fu, but the access involves severe
+climbing, and risks which I did not care to run. These dwellings occur
+in great numbers, from a point not far above Chia-ling Fu down nearly to
+Luchow, a distance of fully 220 miles.
+
+The ever broadening and deepening Min, passing through lovely and
+prosperous country, took me rapidly to Sui Fu (Hsu-chow Fu), a large
+city with a population, according to the officials, of 150,000. It is
+well situated on a high, much wooded, rocky promontory between the Min
+or Fu and the Chin-sha, which there unite to form the great river known
+by us as the Yangtze, where a temple-crowned point of rock dominates the
+busy city. On the opposite side of the Min are fantastic mountains with
+singular rock forms, on one of which is the highly picturesque temple of
+“The Sleeping Buddha,” approached by steps cut in the rock below.
+
+The Chin-sha is only navigable to Ping-shan, a difficult forty miles
+above Sui Fu. It was rising fast, and its great volume of turbid water
+contrasted with the clear bright Min, which kept apart from it in
+disgust for some time. Sui Fu is a very lively place, being the great
+entrepôt of the large transit trade between SZE CHUAN and Northern
+YUNNAN, as well as a considerable distributing point.
+
+Above Ping-shan, the Lolo, tribes which the Chinese have failed to
+subdue in two thousand years, keep the country in a state of chronic
+insecurity, fatal to trade routes. Besides the transit trade, Sui Fu
+does a large business in silk, opium, and sugar. The “residential
+suburbs” are full of good houses in wooded grounds, extending far up the
+Min, their owners reaching their pleasure boats by handsome flights of
+stone stairs. The American Baptists and the China Inland Mission do
+mission work in Sui-Fu, and a great deal of valuable medical work.
+Though “child-eating,” as elsewhere, is believed in, the people are not
+unfriendly, and the mandarin was specially courteous. Before I left he
+sent round to all the street officers to say that, whether I went
+through the city in a chair or on foot, there was to be no crowding,
+following, or staring. He sent four _chai-jen_ in official hats to walk
+in front of me, and go down with me to Luchow, and two petty officers to
+see that no one interfered with my camera, on pain of being beaten.
+
+I left Sui Fu on the glorious evening of a blazing day, and once more,
+after a land journey in SZE CHUAN of nearly 1200 miles, was afloat on
+the Yangtze—there a deep, broad river, flowing among low, pretty hills,
+much wooded, and terraced for cultivation.
+
+[Illustration: TOWN ON THE YANGTZE.]
+
+[Illustration: SUBURB OF SUI FU.]
+
+[Illustration: TSIANG NGAN HSIEN, WITH ENTRANCE TO ROCK DWELLING.]
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXVI.
+                        LUCHOW TO CHUNG-KING FU
+
+
+On the brilliant afternoon of the day after leaving Sui Fu, I reached
+Luchow, an important trading city, with a reputed population of 130,000.
+It is prettily situated on rising ground at the confluence of the
+Yangtze and To rivers. The latter drains a considerable area, and by it
+and its connections cargo boats of about fifteen tons can reach the
+Great River from Kuan Hsien. Luchow appears to be a quiet, fairly well
+governed, busy city. One great industry is the making of umbrellas, and
+it has a large trade in sugar and other SZE CHUAN products. According to
+its own officials, eighty per cent. of its male population are opium
+smokers. In good shops, there and elsewhere, opium pipes are supplied
+gratuitously to customers in back rooms, just as cups of tea are in
+Japan. The China Inland Mission has both men’s and women’s work in
+Luchow, and I was hospitably received in the mission house. The mercury
+was 93°, and no one could sleep at night.
+
+The people are not what would be called hostile, yet they curse Mr.
+James, the missionary, in the streets, and believe that all the five are
+“child-eaters,” and that the comeliness of the ladies is preserved by
+the use of children’s brains! This scandalous accusation is current
+everywhere in SZE CHUAN. Even at quiet Chia-ling Fu, when two beggar
+boys were brought into the compound to be photographed, the report
+spread like wildfire through the city that they been taken in for the
+purpose of being fatted for eating! The hostility to foreigners has
+increased rapidly in many parts of the province. Mr. A. J. Little,
+writing from SZE CHUAN some years ago, mentions that the phrase “Foreign
+devil,” and other opprobrious epithets applied to foreigners elsewhere,
+were unknown, and other travellers have mentioned the same thing. Now, a
+language rich in abominable terms is ransacked for the worst, to hurl at
+the foreigner.
+
+I left Luchow on May 30th in great heat, and contrary to custom,
+travelled till nine o’clock, making fast to a snag in a broad reach or
+bay of shallow water. The mercury stood at 91° at four p.m., and the men
+suffered from the heat. I have observed that sunstroke is far more to be
+dreaded in damp than in dry climates. It is common in SZE CHUAN among
+the Chinese. The boatmen called it _lei-su_, “death from exhaustion.”
+They feared it, and well they might, for their shaven heads were only
+protected by small towels. The blue turban, much worn in the province,
+may have originated in an instinct of defence. The Chinese suffer
+greatly from mosquitoes. I have seen curtains of a heavy, green canvas
+even in poor men’s houses, but men as poor as my boatmen have no
+protection, and, being compelled by the heat to sleep naked, their
+bodies are covered with inflamed lumps from mosquito bites. They are
+very patient. They suffered so much from this cause that in the stifling
+twilights, when thousands of these pests were abroad, I almost grudged
+myself the immunity gained by sitting under a mosquito net made by
+attaching a net roof and curtains to a Chinese umbrella frame.
+
+The men fanned themselves as long as they could keep awake. As the heat
+increased the use of the fan became universal among men. Coolies fanned
+themselves at the treadmill pump, bearers as they ran along with chairs,
+porters with loads, travellers on horseback and on foot, men working and
+resting, shopkeepers at their doors, mandarins in their chairs and on
+the judgment-seat, and sentries on guard. Soldiers marching to meet an
+enemy fan themselves on the march, as I saw in Manchuria during the
+Japanese war, and the bloody field of Phyong-yang was strewn with the
+fans of the dead and dying Chinese. Fan-making is one of the great
+industries of China. Nearly 2,000,000 fans were imported into Chung-king
+in 1897.
+
+[Illustration: PAGODA NEAR LUCHOW.]
+
+Except for the heat, the downward journey was quite delightful; the
+country is so fertile and beautiful, and has such an air of prosperity.
+So long as we were in motion there was a draught, as the boat was quite
+open, but the still nights were stifling, specially with the curtains
+down. The boatmen were harmless, good-natured, obliging fellows. They
+tied up whenever I wanted to land if it were at all possible, and though
+they were obliged to pass from bow to stern through my “room,” they
+always asked leave to do so if the curtains were down. The lovely
+country was a very great charm. The variety of scenery, trees, flowers,
+and cultivated plants was endless, and new industries were constantly
+becoming prominent. The only matter for regret was that the rush of the
+fast-rising river carried us all too swiftly past much that was worthy
+of observation.
+
+A visit to a coal-mine interested me greatly. The mine was in a
+hillside, three miles from the river, and employed eighty men. The
+manager said that the output was the equivalent of forty tons daily. The
+men got sevenpence per day, with rice, broad beans, cucumbers, and tea.
+Each hewer and carrier (in pairs) must deliver at the pit’s mouth daily
+the equivalent of a ton. The pay with food comes to tenpence per day,
+and the actual cost in labour of a ton is twentypence. The mine is
+extremely well ventilated by three revolving fans, which drive the air
+into it through bamboo tubing. The men work in two shifts of twelve
+hours per day of twenty-four hours, eating their rice in the mine three
+times daily. Every tenth day is pay-day and a holiday. Each carrier
+burns nine ounces of Tung oil daily, and each hewer six, the lamps being
+attached to the brow by a band round the head. There was a bath for the
+miners, which in the dim light appeared to be a stone coffer, supplied
+with hot water. The tunnel by which the workings are reached, and down
+which the coal is carried in wheeled baskets running on a wooden
+tramway, is six feet high, and about six hundred feet long. I could do
+no more than glance at the workings. The coal seam was about four feet
+thick, the galleries very low, and the hewers lay on their sides and
+hacked the coal sidewise. It appeared to be a fairly hard bituminous
+coal, and there is a great demand for it at the town of Peh-Shi, where,
+after land and river transit, it sells at seven shillings per ton. The
+manager, an intelligent and fairly polite man, told me that hard coal is
+also found in the neighbourhood, but is much more expensive to work.
+This coal-mine appeared well appointed, and the miners well fed and
+cheery. They seemed to have less consideration for the Dragon’s back
+than those on the Paoning route!
+
+The night after leaving Luchow, while tied up to a snag in a broad and
+shallow reach, all in my boat were wakened out of a sound sleep by what
+might have been the “crack of doom.” There was a sound as if all the
+cannon of the universe had been fired close to the _wu-pan_ on either
+side, accompanied by a hiss in the water, a glare of blue light, a gust
+which lifted the boat, and stripped off some of the mats of the roof,
+and then a torrent of rain. By the next morning the Yangtze had risen
+twelve feet, and our snag had “gone under,” forcing us to seek the
+familiar protection of the shore.
+
+Among many storms, one only, at St. Paul, Minnesota, has fixed itself in
+my memory. That was in a hotel lighted by gas and full of people. This
+was out in a lonely place in “darkness which could be felt,” among men
+of another race and speech, in a frail craft. The thunder, not rolling,
+but bursting like explosions; the ceaselessness and vividness of the
+forked lightning; the otherwise pitch darkness of the night; the hot and
+mephitic atmosphere; the occasional terrific gusts of wind, threatening
+to blow the half-unroofed boat to pieces; the roar of the rain, the
+loneliness and mystery of our position; the silence from human movement
+and speech; the hours it all lasted; the surprise after every tremendous
+explosion to find myself alive, and the fear that some of the men were
+killed, made that night an awful memory.
+
+During the whole storm no one spoke or moved hand or foot. I felt
+paralysed, a sensation, as I afterwards found, common to all Europeans
+who passed through the same experience. The boatmen, who were lying in
+the water, never stirred. When the explosion gave place to magnificent
+rolls, and the rain moderated, the men spent an hour in baling the boat.
+All the matches were afloat and much else, and our food was mostly
+spoiled. A thousand waterfalls tumbled down the hillsides, the stony or
+sandy river banks were no more, of a few riverine villages the roofs
+alone were to be seen, fields in numbers with their growing crops had
+slid bodily down the slopes, leaving great patches of naked rock behind,
+and the Yangtze, a broad, turbid, terra-cotta flood, was rioting over
+the submerged confusions of its rocky bed in swirls and violent eddies.
+
+[Illustration: THE AUTHOR’S _WU-PAN_.]
+
+After hurrying through a less beautiful and much devastated region,
+landing only at Shih-men, on the left bank, where there is a fine temple
+with five green-tiled roofs, and much fishing is done, the scenery again
+changed, and for four hundred miles is a succession of indescribably
+beautiful pictures, combining hill and valley, rock and woodland, with a
+greenery and fertility of which no word-painting could give any idea.
+Towns and villages, piled on knolls, looked out from among fruit trees;
+and temples and pagodas on heights lent their infinite picturesqueness.
+
+One of the most beautifully situated towns is the unwalled town of
+Peh-Shih, with a (reputed) population of 11,000. Timbered white houses
+run steeply up diverging limestone cliffs; every outline is broken by
+the configuration of the ground; the ornamental and economic trees are
+superb; the density of their foliage was phenomenal. The centre of the
+town, which has no room for expansion, is picturesquely crowded with
+striking temples and guildhalls, much enriched with gold and colour. The
+great industry of the town is “wine” making. Wine is exported on a large
+scale in forty-gallon jars, which come down on bamboo rafts from
+Lu-chien, where they are made, and these afterwards take the wine up the
+Ya and other turbulent rivers. A fleet of these quaint constructions and
+a great number of junks lay along the shore, and there was an air of
+prosperous business about the town.
+
+The roof of my boat had to be refitted with mats, some of which had been
+blown off in the storm, and I took a long inland walk, and without
+molestation! The cultivation was marvellous. I have no space to dwell
+upon the infinite variety of the crops or on the trees of all climates
+which were flourishing in juxtaposition,[53] or upon the striking fact
+that there, 1600 miles up the river, the social and commercial
+organisation, and the arrangements for what the Chinese regard as
+comfort and convenience, were as complete as in Che-kiang. A little
+later it might have occurred to me that this beautiful and prosperous
+region is claimed as in the British “sphere of influence.” Carefulness
+and thrift were shown by what was to me a novelty. All along the river
+shore people were fishing from rocks with nets, for straws, twigs, and
+bits of wood to use for their cooking fires.
+
+[Illustration: METHOD OF CARRYING _CASH_ AND BABIES.]
+
+I reached Chung-king, the westernmost of the treaty ports, and the
+commercial metropolis of SZE CHUAN early the next morning (June 1st),
+after coming slightly to grief in a rapid above it, and remained there
+during three grey, steamy, misty days, in which the mercury was almost
+steady at 87°. Between Chung-king and Sui Fu, if not higher, steam
+navigation at that season appeared perfectly practicable. The junk and
+raft traffic is very large. Coal and lime are found in abundance near
+Chung-king, and at Pa-Ko-Shan, five miles below Sui Fu, and also twenty
+miles above it. Specimens of this coal brought to England have been
+pronounced to be suitable for steam purposes.[54]
+
+[Illustration: FISHING VILLAGE, UPPER YANGTZE.]
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVII.
+                           THE JOURNEY’S END
+
+
+Whether Chung-king (altitude 1050 ft.) is approached from above or
+below, it is a most striking city. It is surprising to find, 1500 miles
+inland, a town of from 400,000 to 500,000 people, including 2500
+Mohammedans, as the commercial capital of Western China, one of the
+busiest cities of the empire. Its founders chose a site on which there
+is no room for expansion, and its warehouses, guildhalls, hongs, shops,
+and the dwellings of rich and poor, are packed upon a steep sandstone
+reef or peninsula lying between the Yangtze and its great northern
+tributary, the Chia-ling, and rising from 100 to 400 feet above the
+winter level of these rivers. As I descended upon it down a somewhat
+turbulent rapid, which half filled the boat and drowned a fowl, it
+reminded me of Quebec, and made me think of the packed condition of
+Edinburgh when it was yet a walled city.
+
+[Illustration: WALL OF CHUNG-KING, WITH GATE TOWERS.]
+
+A noble-looking, grey city it is, with towers, pavilions, and temples
+rising above its massive, irregular, crenelated grey wall, with broad,
+steep, and crowded flights of stone stairs, twenty feet broad, leading
+up from the river to the gates, with an amphitheatre of wooded and
+richly cultivated hills rising steeply 1600 feet from the water for its
+background; the fleets of big junks, and craft of all descriptions,
+which lie crowded along its shores and in every adjacent bay and reach,
+and the life and movement on land and water, combining to form a noble
+and most striking spectacle. Nor is Chung-king as a city “alone in its
+glory,” for on the Yangtze, just below its junction with the Chia-ling,
+which divides it from Chung-king, stands the walled city of Limin-fu,
+its white houses covering a number of hills and cliffs, and at its feet
+hundreds of junks. Another city, Kiang-peh, completes the trio. These
+cities, with their commercial organisation owing nothing to Europe, I
+think more than all others, gave me an idea of what China _is_ and
+_must_ be.
+
+[Illustration: CHUNG-KING SOLDIERS, CUSTOMS GUARD.]
+
+Chung-king Fu has often been described in detail, and I will only give a
+few impressions of it. Passing to the Taiping gate up a flight of stone
+stairs, always sloppy from the passage of water carriers, and crowded
+with cotton-laden coolies, I reached the house of the Commissioner of
+Customs by steep streets cut in the rock. The Customs House, infinitely
+picturesque, is on a small rock plateau, with only four feet of space
+between it and the rock behind. The view is ideally picturesque, with
+the pagoda and gardens of a Guild of Benevolence below the plateau, and
+the great flood of the Yangtze, then two-thirds of a mile wide, rolling
+between the city and the fine hills on the further shore. But space is
+lacking. The Chinese soldiers who guard the Commissioner seemed to block
+up the little that there is, and trees and trailers there and everywhere
+in the hot, moist climate of Chung-king, choke up every foot of ground.
+The mercury stood at 87° during my three days’ visit; there was no
+sunshine for the dogs to bark at, and the moist air was absolutely
+still. As compared with many or most, the “grounds” of that house are
+spacious!
+
+Chung-king was opened as a treaty port in 1891, but the China Inland
+Mission rented a house there in 1877, and were followed by missionaries
+of other societies, who, however, all had to fly from a severe riot nine
+years later. Mr. Archibald Little settled there as a merchant eight
+years before the opening—a rare instance of mercantile pluck with few
+imitators, and now, besides the foreigners on the Consular and Customs’
+staffs, there are other “venturers,” chiefly “transients,” and about
+thirty missionaries of different societies, with mission chapels,
+schools, and hospitals. The English and German steamers, which are to be
+placed on the route from Ichang next year (1900), will doubtless
+stimulate foreign settlement, and will bring Chung-king within the
+globe-trotter’s sphere. If specially-built gunboats can “patrol” the
+upper Yangtze, outbreaks of hostility to foreigners will doubtless
+cease, and the quarrels will be among the foreign nationalities, each
+anxious to circumvent the others in the matter of concessions.
+
+Below the huge reef on which Chung-king stands, is a town of mat and
+bamboo houses outside the wall. As the Yangtze rises some ninety feet in
+summer above its winter level, and was rising fast when I arrived on
+June 1st, this town had mostly disappeared, and the highest remnant was
+being carried away hurriedly on men’s backs, each hour of removal giving
+an added dignity to the grand, grey city, looking down on the grand,
+yellow-ochre flood. In Chung-king, as in many another city of the upper
+Yangtze, the harmony between man’s work and nature is yet unbroken, and
+the evil day of foreign inartistic antagonisms, incongruities, and
+uglinesses has not yet dawned.
+
+This commercial capital has a great present, which we are hoping to
+improve upon to our advantage.[55] It is connected by water with nearly
+every considerable town in the province, and wholesale trade is by boat.
+Exports bound east must pass it, and also the imports brought up to pay
+for them. For foreign goods it is the sole wholesale market in SZE
+CHUAN, and is so for provincial trade to a great extent, and the
+province, it must be repeated, is as large as France, and vastly more
+populous. To it the merchants and shopkeepers of the whole population of
+from 55,000,000 to 70,000,000, which includes Tibetan tribes, Lolos, and
+a few so-called “dog faces,” resort to make their purchases.
+
+[Illustration: GALA HEAD-DRESS, “DOG-FACED” WOMAN.]
+
+(_See also page 177._)
+
+Mr. A. J. Little is the only British merchant resident in Chung-king.
+The Chinese merchants deal directly with Shanghai through their own men.
+More than half of the buyers sent down have an interest in the business.
+They deal with the Chinese importers, and pay ready money in Shanghai,
+but sell to the provincial merchants on long credit, the rate of
+interest being 14⅖ per cent. per annum on foreign cotton goods. The
+seller naturally wishes payment to be deferred, and the buyer desires to
+hasten it, as he receives the same percentage as discount. Exchange
+between Chung-king and Shanghai is always in favour of Chung-king, and
+when the Yangtze is in its summer flood, 1000 taels in Shanghai can
+often be bought in Chung-king for 880.
+
+The intricacies of Chinese business at Chung-king are appalling.
+Excessive subtlety and ingenuity characterise all the trade rules and
+customs, and even the “Blackburn Commission,” aided by the experience of
+Mr. Bourne, found it a work of much labour to master their
+complications! It is scarcely wonderful that the average British
+merchant, who knows nothing better than _Pidgun_, instead of following
+in the steps of our bold “Merchant Venturers,” sticks at Shanghai.[56]
+
+At Chung-king, more almost than elsewhere, I was impressed with the
+completeness of Chinese commercial organisation. It may be too complex,
+and lacking in initiative, to serve our purposes, but it serves their
+own, and I heard there, as elsewhere, that the high standard of
+commercial honour and probity which has been worked out, renders
+dealings with Chinese merchants very satisfactory.
+
+Eight of the other provinces are represented by guilds in this great
+trading city, with their handsome guildhalls, and rigid laws of
+association. There are an abundance of exchange banks (banks selling
+drafts on distant places), seventeen of which are in the hands of men
+from SHAN-SI, which has a speciality for banking talent, and there are
+over twenty large _cash_ shops or local banks, which exchange _cash_
+against silver and _vice versâ_. These banks do not make advances on
+goods, but lend on personal security at from ten to twelve per cent. per
+annum, and employ agents who hang about the business quarter, learning
+the proceedings of customers, so as to gauge their credit. A bank would
+lend as much as 200,000 taels to a merchant on personal security only.
+They have very rigorous methods of ensuring the honesty of _employés_.
+
+[Illustration: THE AUTHOR’S LAST _WU-PAN_.]
+
+It was with great regret that I left Chung-king on my last _wu-pan_
+voyage. There were few, if any, small house-boats on the berth, and the
+big ones would only go down at an enormous price, because of the
+difficulty and profitlessness of the return. Foreigners of the two
+services, as well as merchants, regard a _wu-pan_ as we regard a
+steerage passage, and even my kind host declined to connive at my
+proceedings, but Mr. Willett, of the China Inland Mission, befriended
+me; the _wu-pan_ was engaged, and I left Chung-king on a sultry June
+afternoon, with the mercury at 88°, and never regretted my firmness on
+the subject of a boat, for I was thoroughly comfortable, could create
+draughts at will, and my boatmen were quiet and most obliging, and were
+ready to land me at any place where landing was practicable.
+
+The force and volume of the river, which had then risen about forty-five
+feet above its winter level, were tremendous. Its low-water width at
+Chung-king, according to Blakiston, is 800 yards, but it was then about
+two-thirds of a mile wide, a swirling, leaping, yellow flood, laden with
+the mud with which it enriches the Great Plain. Caught in its torrent,
+the _wu-pan_, with two men rowing easily, descended at great speed. When
+we reached rapids, five men pulled frantically with yells which posed as
+songs, to keep steerage way on her, and we went down like a flash—down
+smooth hills of water, where rapids had been obliterated; down leaping
+races, where they had been created; past hideous whirlpools, where to
+have been sucked in would have been destruction; past temples, pagodas,
+and grey cities on heights; past villages gleaming white midst dense
+greenery; past hill, valley, woodland, garden cultivation, and signs of
+industry and prosperity; past junks laid up for the summer in quiet
+reaches, and junks with frantic crews, straining at the sweeps, chanting
+wildly, bound downwards like ourselves; and still for days the Great
+River hurried us remorselessly along. There was no time to take in
+anything. A pagoda or city scarcely appeared before it vanished—a rapid
+scarcely tossed up its angry crests ahead, before we had left it astern;
+one fair dissolving view was all too rapidly exchanged for another; and
+we were tying up among the many hundred junks which fringed the shore of
+the “Myriad City,” which is as beautiful from above as from below,
+before I realised that we were half-way thither.
+
+But in this delirious whirl there were episodes of rest, when I landed
+on green and flowery shores above the submerged boulders, or below
+picturesque cities and temples, and had leisure either to enjoy detail
+or to loathe it. The latter was my mental attitude when I landed with my
+_chai-jen_ (rather an infliction in a small boat) at the important town
+of Fu-chow, where a clear stream, about 200 yards broad, and navigable
+for 200 miles, joins the turbid Yangtze. There are many queer crafts on
+the branches of the Yangtze. The navigation of some of these rivers is
+so intricate and dangerous, that the owners of these risky constructions
+are obliged to consent to provide coffins for their crews in case of
+disaster, and there are colliers built for _one_ down-river voyage,
+after which they are broken up; but the queerest of all crafts are the
+_Wai-pi-Ku_—the “twisting stern” junks used for the navigation of the
+Fu-ling, locally known as the Kung-tan Ho, or “River of the Rapid of
+Kung.” I saw one of these at Wan, and thought it was a junk which had
+had a severe accident! The sight of forty or fifty large junks at
+Fu-chow, each one with her high stern twisted a quarter round, so that
+the stern deck is at right angles to the quarter deck, was absolutely
+laughable. The stern deck is nearly perpendicular, and is climbed by
+rungs. These extraordinary boats are without rudders. My boatmen said
+that none but “twisted stern” junks could twist through the whirlpools
+and reefs of the river. It was not very wise for me to enter Fu-chow,
+and as I was followed by an immense and not over polite crowd I did not
+dare to use my camera on the _Wai-pi-Ku_.
+
+Fu-chow is perhaps the most picturesque city on the Yangtze, built on
+ledges of rock, tier above tier, at the head of a reach so enclosed by
+steep hills as to look like a lake. There is a fine pagoda on a height
+near it, and it abounds in large temples in commanding positions. The
+deep gateway in the thick wall is scarcely more than eight feet high.
+The narrow street into which it leads was thronged, and even women were
+carrying creels, either loaded with coal dust, or small children. I
+managed to dodge the fast accumulating crowd, and get on the wall, from
+which the view up the Fu-ling is magnificent. My visit, however, was
+rather “a fearful joy.”
+
+The city appears full of temples, literary monuments, and public
+buildings, but it has an air of neglect and decay, and it and its
+suburbs are dirty and malodorous. It is a great junk port, and at times,
+though not, I think, increasingly, the Fu-ling is used for the transit
+of goods both to Hankow and Canton. The latter city can be reached by
+this method with only two portages(?). There are large mat and bamboo
+suburbs below one part of the wall, but very little of them was left,
+owing to the rapid rise of the river, which also had led to the removal
+of many of the mat villages of the trackers. Fu-chow again looked
+glorious from below. A tremendous whirlpool, in which, sometimes,
+descending junks are caught to their destruction, is formed in summer
+near the city. We went uncomfortably near its vortex.
+
+[Illustration: “STONE PRECIOUS CASTLE,” SHI-PAO-CHAI.]
+
+I landed also at Shih-pao-chai (“Stone Precious Castle”), a place of
+pilgrimage. The south-east side of the rock (not given in the
+illustration) has a nine-storeyed pavilion, resting on a very strikingly
+decorated temple built against it, through which access to the summit is
+gained. On the flat top there is a temple of three courts. The pavilion
+building has curved and decorated roofs, and looks like a magnificent
+eleven-storeyed pagoda. A large village lies at its feet. My films were
+spotted with damp, and would have failed anyhow, owing to the
+overpowering curiosity of the people. This rock and its talus are about
+300 feet in height.
+
+A glorious sunset and a morning of crystalline purity in a bay above the
+“Wind-box Gorge”; a rapid swirl through the solemnity and grandeur of
+the gorges which I ascended slowly and toilsomely six months before; the
+Yeh-tan, fierce and perilous; the Hsin-tan, a mere water-slide, down
+which my _wu-pan_ slipped easily; a lovely walk up the Nan-po glen, and
+in fifty-six hours from Chung-king, exclusive of stoppages, the boat
+emerged from the Ichang gorge upon the broad reach of eddying water, on
+which the pleasant treaty port of Ichang is situated.
+
+After receiving hospitality for a few days at the British Consulate I
+left Ichang, and found the mirrors, enamel, and gilding of one of the
+fine river steamers very distasteful after a thousand miles in a
+_wu-pan_. Hankow, though by no means at its worst, was damp and sultry,
+with a temperature over 90°, and alive with mosquitoes. Even on the
+voyage down to Shanghai, which was devoid of any incident,—except that
+five minutes after leaving Chin-kiang we cut the anchored steamer
+_Hai-how_, tea-laden for Canton, down to the water’s edge—the damp heat
+was severe, and even the breeze was hot.
+
+It was the end of June when I reached Shanghai, to find it sweltering in
+a “hot wave,” sunless and moist. My journey on the whole had been one of
+extreme variety and interest, and I was truly thankful for the freedom
+from any serious accident which I had enjoyed, and for the deep and
+probably abiding interest in China and the Chinese which it had given
+me, along with new views of the physical characteristics of the country,
+and of the resourcefulness and energy of its inhabitants.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+                    THE OPIUM POPPY AND ITS USE[57]
+
+
+My acquaintance with the opium poppy began in the month of February on
+the journey from Wan Hsien to Paoning Fu. It is a very handsome plant.
+It is expensive to grow. It has to be attended to eight times, and needs
+heavy manuring. It is exposed to so many risks before the juice is
+secured that the growth is much of a speculation, and many Chinese
+regard it as being as risky as gambling. Besides its cultivation for
+sale, on a majority of farms it is grown for home use, as tobacco is,
+for smoking. It is a winter crop, and is succeeded by rice, maize,
+cotton, beans, etc. Certain crops can be planted between the rows of the
+poppies. Much oil, bearing a high price, is made from the seed. The
+lower leaves, which are abundant, are used in some quarters to feed
+pigs, and also as a vegetable. They were served up to me as such twice,
+and tasted like spinach. In some places the heavy stalks are dug into
+the ground; in others they are used as fuel, and after serving this
+purpose their ashes provide lye for the indigo dyers. It appears from
+much concurrent testimony, that in spite of heavy manuring the crop
+exhausts the ground.
+
+The area devoted to the poppy in SZE CHUAN is enormous, and owing to the
+high price of the drug and its easy transport its culture is encroaching
+on the rice and arable lands. The consequences of the extension of its
+cultivation are serious. It is admitted by the natives of SZE CHUAN that
+one great reason of the deficient food supply which led to the famine
+and distress in the eastern part of the province in 1897, was the giving
+of so much ground to the poppy that there was no longer a margin left on
+which to feed the population in years of a poor harvest.
+
+I shall not touch on the history of the growth and use of opium in
+China. The authorities evidently regarded the introduction of both as a
+grave peril, and they were prohibited under Imperial decrees. I learn on
+what I regard as very reliable authority, that sixty years ago, when
+Cantonese brought opium cough pills into KWEICHOW and YUNNAN, and the
+consumers found themselves unable to give up the medicine, that the
+authorities were most active in suppressing its use, and even inflicted
+the punishment of death on many of the refractory in YUNNAN. It was then
+and later smuggled about the country in coffins!
+
+Now, on many of the SZE CHUAN roads opium houses are as common as gin
+shops in our London slums. I learned from Chinese sources that in
+several of the large cities of the province eighty per cent. of the men
+and forty per cent. of the women are opium smokers; but this must not be
+understood to mean that they are opium “wrecks,” for there is a vast
+amount of “moderate” opium smoking in China. In my boat on the Yangtze
+fourteen out of sixteen very poor trackers smoked opium, and among my
+chair and baggage coolies it was rare to find one who did not smoke, and
+who did not collapse about the same hour daily with the so-called
+unbearable craving.
+
+The stern of my boat was a downright opium den at night, with fourteen
+ragged men curled up on their quilts, with their opium lamps beside
+them, in the height of sensuous felicity, dreaming such Elysian dreams
+as never visit the toiling day of a Chinese coolie, and incapable of
+rousing themselves to meet an emergency until the effect of the pipe
+passed off. Farther astern still, the _lao-pan_ and his shrieking virago
+of a wife lay in the same blissful case, the toothless, mummied face of
+the _lao-pan_, expressive in the daytime of nothing but fiendish greed,
+with its muscles relaxed, and its deep, hard lines smoothed out. Some of
+these men, whose thin, worn, cotton rags were ill-fitted to meet the
+cold, sold most of them at Wan, rather than undergo what appeared to be
+literally the _agonies_ of abstinence. On my inland journey I heard
+incidentally of many men who had sold both wives and children in order
+to obtain the drug, and at Paoning Fu of a man and his wife who, having
+previously parted with house, furniture, and all they had, to gratify
+their craving, at the time of my visit sold their only child, a nice
+girl of fourteen, educated in the Mission School, to some brutal Kansuh
+fur traders, who were returning home. It is quite usual when a man
+desires a house and land which are the property of an opium smoker, for
+him to wait with true Chinese patience for one, two, or three years,
+certain that the owner will sooner or later part with it for an old song
+to satisfy his opium craving when he has sold all else. It is common for
+the Chinese to say, “If you want to be revenged on your enemy you need
+not strike him, or go to law with him—you have only to entice him into
+smoking opium.”
+
+The Chinese condemn all but most moderate opium smoking and gambling as
+twin vices, and not a voice is raised in defence of either of them, even
+by the smokers themselves. The opium habit is regarded as a disease, for
+the cure of which many smokers voluntarily place themselves in opium
+refuges at some expense, and at a great cost of suffering, and in the
+market towns, thronged with native traders, there is to be seen on many
+stalls among innumerable native drugs and commodities, a package
+labelled “Remedy for Foreign Smoke,” “foreign smoke” being the usual
+name for opium in Western China. I was impressed with the existence of a
+curious sort of conscience, if it can be called such, among the devotees
+of opium, which leads them to consider themselves as moral criminals.
+The Chinese generally believe that if a man takes to the opium habit it
+will be to the impoverishment and ruin of his family, and that it will
+prevent him from fulfilling one of the first of Confucian obligations,
+the support of his parents in their old age. The consensus of opinion
+among smokers and non-smokers, as to the crime of opium smoking and its
+woeful results, leads me to believe that it brings about the
+impoverishment and ruin of families to an enormous extent. Chinese said
+several times to me that the reason the Japanese beat them was that they
+were more vigorous men, owing to the rigid exclusion of opium from
+Japan.
+
+In May I saw the crop harvested. Women and children are the chief
+operators. In the morning longitudinal incisions are made in the seed
+vessel, the juice exudes, and by the evening is hard enough to be
+scraped into cups, after which it turns black, and after a few days’
+exposure is ready for packing. Heavy rain or a strong west wind during
+this process is very injurious. Maize, tobacco, and cotton have been
+previously planted, and make a good appearance as soon as the poppy
+stalks have been cleared away.
+
+Eight years ago it was rather exceptional for women and children to
+smoke, but the Chinese estimate that in SZE CHUAN and other
+opium-producing regions from forty to sixty per cent. are now smokers.
+Where opium is not grown the habit is chiefly confined to the cities,
+but it is rapidly spreading.
+
+Its existence is obvious among the lower classes from the exceeding
+poverty which it entails. Millions of the working classes earn barely
+enough to provide them with what, even to their limited notions, are the
+necessaries of life, and the money spent on opium is withdrawn from
+these. Hence the confirmed opium smoker among the poor is apt to look
+half starved and ragged. Still I am bound to say that I did not
+encounter any of those awful specimens of physical wreckage that I saw
+some years ago in the Malay States from the same cause.
+
+Among the well-to-do and well-nourished classes the evils of opium are
+doubtless more moral than physical; among the masses both evils are
+combined. The lower orders of officials and “_yamen_ runners,” with
+their unlimited leisure, are generally smokers. Among my official
+escorts in SZE CHUAN, numbering in all 143 men, all but two were
+devotees of opium, and I was constantly delayed and inconvenienced by
+it. My coolies frequently broke down under the craving, and that at
+times as inconvenient to themselves as to me. In two towns I had to wait
+two hours to get my passport copied because the writers at the _yamen_
+were in the blissful haziness produced by the pipe.
+
+So far as I have seen, the passionate craving for the drug, called by
+the Chinese the “_Yin_,” (which appears to be the coming on of severe
+depression after the stimulant of the pipe has passed off), involves
+great suffering, and total abstinence, whether voluntary or enforced,
+produces an anguish which the enfeebled will of the immoderate smoker is
+powerless to contend with. The craving grows, till at the end of
+eighteen months from the commencement of the habit, or even less, the
+smoker, unless he can gratify it, becomes unable to do his work.
+
+He feels disinclined to move, miserable all over, especially at the
+stomach and between the shoulders, his joints and bones ache badly, he
+perspires freely, he trembles with a sense of weakness, and if he cannot
+get the drug, he believes that he will die. I cannot learn how soon a
+man comes to consider himself a victim of the habit. Those who place
+themselves in opium refuges with the hope of cure, endure agonies which
+they describe to be “as if wolves were gnawing at their vitals,” and
+would, if permitted, tear off their skin to relieve the severe internal
+suffering.
+
+On my SZE CHUAN journey we were benighted on a desolate hillside, and
+had to spend the night in the entrance to a coal-pit, cold, wet, and
+badly fed. My coolies had relied on being able to buy opium, and though
+they were comparatively moderate smokers, they suffered so much that
+some of them were rolling on the ground in their pain. Dr. Main, of
+Hangchow, thinks that very few can be cured in opium refuges, which they
+enter for twenty-one days, for the debility, stomachic disorder, and
+depression which follow the disuse of the drug are so great, that six
+months of tonics and good feeding would be necessary to set them on
+their feet again. On the contrary, the poor wretch, low in purse,
+depressed, feeble, trembling, leaves the shelter of the refuge to be
+tempted at once to a smoke by old associates, while in cities like
+Hangchow and Fuchow from eight hundred to a thousand registered opium
+shops display their seductions, and he turns aside to the only physical
+and mental comfort that he knows.
+
+I have little doubt that in the early months of the habit there is a
+widespread desire to abandon it. Opium refuges, in spite of the fair
+payment which is asked for, are always crowded. The shops and markets
+abound in native and foreign remedies for “foreign smoke.” The native
+cures all contain opium, chiefly in the form of ashes, and the foreign,
+which are white, contain morphia. The attempts at self-cure number tens
+of thousands, and are very piteous, but in many cases it is merely the
+exchange of the opium habit for the morphia habit, and at this time
+morphia lozenges are making great headway in China, as an easy and
+unsuspected means, specially in travelling, of obtaining the sensations
+which have become essential to existence. The importation of morphia
+into China is now enormous—135,283 ounces in 1898. It is sold
+everywhere, and in the great west, as well as nearer the seaboard, shops
+are opened which sell a few articles as a blind, for the lucrative sale
+of the much-prized morphia pill or lozenge. Among the native cures which
+I have heard of the only one which seems at all efficacious is the
+so-called “Tea Extract,” _Scutellaria vicidula_. The _Jsai li_ sect,
+which makes abstinence from opium one of its tenets, uses this cure
+invariably, but the ordinary smoker is unwilling to face the severe
+suffering which it entails.
+
+Smokers, I have learned, may be divided into three classes: first, the
+upper class, not driven by failure of means or sense of duty to abandon
+an indulgence which they can well afford, and which they do not enjoy to
+excess; second, the respectable class of small merchants, innkeepers,
+shopkeepers, business men, and the like, who find their families pinched
+and themselves losing caste by reason of their habit; third, the
+class—which the Chinese estimate to consist of forty per cent. of the
+whole in the cities, and twenty per cent. in the country—which has
+drifted beyond hope, and is continually recruited from those above it.
+In this are found thieves, beggars, actors, the infamous, the lost and
+submerged, the men who have sold lands, houses, wives, and children, and
+live for opium only, much as the most degraded of our dipsomaniacs live
+for spirits.
+
+Besides these, there are many who are not obliged to have recourse to
+selling and pawning to get along, but who curtail such things as the
+education of their children, and flowers for their wives’ heads, and
+who, from having eaten meat twice daily, eat it only once, or substitute
+for it a purely vegetable diet, which must contain much honey and sugar
+to relieve the heat and dryness of the mouth which the pipe produces.
+Then there are large numbers of smokers who have barely enough to feed
+themselves upon, who must eat in order to work, and who have not one
+_cash_ left for opium. These borrow right and left, and part with all
+they can pledge for anything, borrowing every year from fresh lenders,
+and paying back a fraction of the old debts till they can borrow no
+longer, and drop into the submerged class aforesaid. Among these are
+seen the ragged, mummied wretches, who _kotow_ to former acquaintances,
+and beg from them the ashes of their opium pipes, even drinking these
+with hot water to satisfy the craving.
+
+Rich smokers smoke what is known as “Canton opium,” the import from
+India, which they compare to a coal fire, and the native drug to a wood
+one. But the manufacture of the latter is improving rapidly; and as it
+is increasingly used to mix with the Indian, a generation is growing up
+in the upper class which knows only the mixed drug, and apparently only
+the old, rich smokers use pure Indian opium, the consumption of which
+has fallen off enormously, though in 1898 the value of the Indian import
+was £4,388,385.
+
+The mysteries of the preparation and the varieties of the product baffle
+the non-smoker. Both Chinese and Indian opium are now largely prepared
+with the ashes of the drug already once smoked, much of it flowing, only
+imperfectly burned, into the receiver of the pipe. In the strongest
+prepared opium, four ounces of ashes of the first degree are added to
+every ten of crude opium. Ashes of the second and even the third burning
+are also used. Many of the poorer classes have to content themselves
+with a smoke of opium ashes only, and the lowest of all users of the
+drug have to satisfy themselves with eating or drinking the ashes of the
+third burning.
+
+There is a class which can afford to buy the pure drug, but which finds
+that it does not satisfy the craving, but this is merged in a far larger
+one of old and inveterate rich smokers of one tael’s weight per day, who
+smoke not even the very best prepared Indian drug, for their craving
+needs far stronger stimulation, but ashes of the first degree. Such men
+give the prepared extract, weight for weight, value for value, for the
+ashes, and contract with opium shops to be supplied with all their ashes
+of the first burning. For the rich, inveterate smoker an ounce of
+prepared extract is mixed with six ounces of ashes of the first degree.
+This habit has in Chinese a specific bad name.
+
+Pure opium appears to be seldom sold, as it fails to satisfy the craving
+of the practised smoker. It is not only that ashes are mixed with the
+fresh drug, but that they are reboiled, and after being made up with
+treacle to the proper consistence are resmoked, and their ashes are then
+eaten by the poorest class.
+
+Morphia, the active principle of opium, not being consumed in the smoke
+owing to its lack of volatility, the eating of the ashes, which contain
+seven per cent. and upwards of it, has a very serious effect. The fact
+that opium is smoked three times makes it impossible to estimate either
+the quantity consumed or the amount spent on the indulgence, but these
+are, of course, greatly in excess of that indicated by any possible
+returns.
+
+Among the adjuncts of opium smoking used by rich smokers is what is
+called “water tobacco,” supposed erroneously to be all washed in the
+water of the Yellow river. It is retailed in thin cakes of a brick-red
+colour, and is said to be mixed with arsenic, and that its excessive
+use, with or without opium, is dangerous to health.[58] This tobacco is
+invariably smoked in “water pipes” by the upper classes in SZE CHUAN.
+
+In the chapter on the Hangchow Hospital I have mentioned the impetus
+given to suicide by the painlessness of death by opium, and will not
+refer to it again. In this chapter I have only touched upon such
+mysteries and results of opium smoking as I have seen in my limited
+experience, or have heard of directly from Chinese through my
+interpreters, or facts stated in a careful paper, _The Use of Opium_, by
+Dr. Dudgeon, of Peking. Except for the quotation of a remark of Dr.
+Main, of Hangchow, on opium refuges, I have not obtained any of my
+material from missionaries.[59]
+
+From all that I have seen and heard among the Chinese themselves, I have
+come to believe that even moderate opium smoking involves enormous
+risks, and that excessive smoking brings in its train commercial,
+industrial, and moral ruin and physical deterioration, and this on a
+scale so large as to threaten the national well-being and the physical
+future of the race.
+
+The most common reasons which the Chinese give for contracting the habit
+are pain, love of pleasure, sociability, and the want of occupation.
+They say that a moderate use of the pipe “advances the transaction of
+business, stimulates the bargaining instinct, facilitates the striking
+of bargains, and enables men to talk about secret and important matters
+which without it they would lack courage to speak of.”
+
+It is strangely true that in this industrial nation there are hundreds
+of thousands of people with little or nothing to do. There are the wives
+of the wealthy, retired, and expectant mandarins, leisured men of
+various classes, _literati_ waiting for employment, the great army of
+priests and monks, and the hangers-on of _yamens_, besides which there
+are Government officials whose duties occupy them only one day in a
+month. These remarks apply chiefly to urban populations.
+
+Outside of commercial pursuits an overpowering shadow of dulness rests
+on Chinese as upon much of Oriental life. The lack of an enlightened
+native press, and of anything deserving the name of contemporary
+literature; the grooviness of thought and action; the trammels of a
+rigid etiquette; the absence of athletics, and even of ordinary
+exercise; the paucity of recreations, other than the play and the
+restaurants, which are ofttimes associated with opium shops and vicious
+resorts; and the fact that the learned having committed the classics to
+memory, by which they have rendered themselves eligible for office, have
+no farther motive for study—all make the blissful dreams and the
+oblivion of the opium pipe greatly to be desired.
+
+It is obvious that opium has come to “stay.” So lately as 1859, in SZE
+CHUAN, which now exports opium annually to the value of nearly
+£2,000,000, the penalty for growing it was death, in spite of which the
+white poppy fields were seen in conspicuous places along the Great
+River; and in 1868 an Imperial edict against its cultivation was
+supplemented by a proclamation to the same effect by the Viceroy of the
+province, and both have remained dead letters.
+
+At all times the beautiful _Papaver somniferum_ has been regarded as the
+enemy of China. There are no apologists for the use of opium except
+among foreigners. The smokers themselves are ashamed of their slavery.
+All alike condemn it, and regard opium as a curse as well as a vice, and
+from all which came under my own observation in fifteen months, I fully
+agree with them.
+
+I will conclude this chapter with a few extracts from officials whose
+knowledge of the evils which are following the constantly increasing use
+of the drug, cannot be gainsaid. The first quotation is from the British
+Consul at Tainan, Formosa. Consul Hirst says:—
+
+  “As long as China remains a nation of opium smokers there is not the
+  least reason to fear that she will become a military power of any
+  importance, as the habit saps the energies and vitality of the
+  nation.”
+
+The next is from Consul Bourne, who accompanied the “Blackburn
+Commission” to the west and south of China, in the winter and spring of
+1896–97. Mr. Bourne believes that the provinces of YUNNAN and KUEI-CHOW
+raise opium annually to the amount of about three millions sterling.
+
+  “There is no doubt,” he writes, “that here (Kuei-chow) the officials
+  tried to stop the cultivation of the poppy, but this must have been
+  very difficult, because an export such as opium, light in weight for
+  its value, is just what these provinces, with their wretched means of
+  communication, want. To-day, without opium, Yunnan and Kuei-chow would
+  have no means of paying for imports. Unfortunately,” he says, writing
+  of YUNNAN, “opium has become almost the medium of exchange in this
+  province, as I explained in a former report.”
+
+Writing on the deplorable condition of YUNNAN (p. 58), he says:—
+
+  “After Yang-kai, poppy fills the whole cultivated area, covering the
+  valley with white and purple (this is in the province of Yunnan), a
+  gorgeous spectacle to the eye, though not agreeable to the mind, for
+  one must attribute chiefly to opium, I think, the extraordinary
+  failure of this province to recover from the devastation of the
+  rebellion.
+
+  “The drug is so cheap and handy that the men almost all smoke, and
+  most women, especially among the agriculturists, who tend the poppy
+  and collect and sell the juice—the class that is elsewhere the
+  backbone of China, if, indeed, China can be said to have a backbone. I
+  was assured by an English missionary who has long resided in the
+  province, and in whose judgment I have great confidence, that in
+  eastern and western circuits (Tao) of the province, which embrace more
+  than two-thirds of its area, 80 per cent. of the men and 60 per cent.
+  of the women smoke opium. In the southern circuit the habit is not
+  quite so general. He had no doubt that the vice had a very bad effect
+  on the race. At all events, every traveller must be struck by the
+  great extent to which the fertile valleys—the only land well
+  cultivated—are monopolised by the poppy; by the apathy and laziness of
+  the people; and by the very slow recovery, during twenty-five years,
+  from the losses of the rebellion. Another bad result of opium being so
+  ready at hand is the frequency of suicides, especially among women.”
+
+At the close of 1898, a book was published by H. E. Chang Chih-tung, who
+is described by foreigners long resident in China as having been for
+many years one of the most influential statesmen in the country, and as
+standing second to no official in the empire for ability, honesty,
+disinterestedness, and patriotism. He has filled in succession three of
+the most important Viceroyalties in the empire. He deals with the opium
+habit as with a huge national evil. Under the heading “The Expulsion of
+the Poison,” he writes thus:—
+
+  (1) “Deplorable indeed is the injury done by opium! It is [as] the
+  Deluge of the present day or [an invasion of] some fierce beasts, but
+  the danger [arising from it] is greater than [the danger arising from]
+  those things.... The injury done by opium is that of a stream of
+  poison flowing on for more than a hundred years, and diffusing itself
+  in twenty-two provinces. The sufferers from this injury amount to
+  untold millions. Its consequences are insidious and seductive, and the
+  limit has not yet been reached. It destroys men’s abilities, it
+  weakens the vigour of the soldier, it wastes their wealth,[60] until
+  it results at length in China being what she is to-day. This
+  destruction affects the ability of civilians and soldiers alike. The
+  injury is worse than any waste of wealth. Men’s wills are weakened,
+  their physical strength is reduced. In the management of business they
+  lack industry, they cannot journey any distance, their expenditure
+  becomes extravagant, their children are few. After a few tens of years
+  it will result in China becoming altogether the laughing-stock of the
+  world.”
+
+  (2) “Shanghai and Yangchow both have associations for breaking off the
+  opium habit. Their general object may be said to be that each member
+  should control his dependents. As for the opium smokers, masters will
+  not employ them as servants, teachers will not have them as scholars,
+  generals will not take them as soldiers, farmers will not use them as
+  labourers, merchants will not employ them as assistants, foremen will
+  not have them for workmen.”
+
+The writer concludes by saying:—
+
+  “If Confucius and Mencius were to live again, and were to teach the
+  empire ... they would certainly begin by [teaching men] to break off
+  opium.”
+
+How is China to emancipate herself from this rapidly increasing habit,
+which is threatening to sap the hitherto remarkable energy of the race?
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXIX.
+                 NOTES ON PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN CHINA
+
+
+Two thousand four hundred and fifty-eight Protestant workers (including
+wives) represent the missionary energies and the many divisions of
+Christendom. The native Protestant communicants number 80,632.[61]
+
+The shock which China received through her defeat by Japan has produced,
+among other results, a disposition to make inquiries regarding the God,
+faith, and learning of those “Western Barbarians” from whom Japan
+received the art of war. Although hostility to Christianity as a
+destructive and socially disintegrating power has been recently
+evidenced by the anti-Christian riots at Kien-ing and elsewhere, the
+spirit of inquiry gathers volume, and expresses itself in large
+gatherings in street-chapels and churches, the thronging to mission
+schools, and the avidity with which Christian literature is purchased.
+Those who profess themselves ready to abandon heathenism and connect
+themselves with Christianity are more than the missionaries can
+instruct. In MANCHURIA there are six thousand inquirers in connection
+with the Scotch and Irish missions. In the FU-KIEN province the movement
+towards Christianity is on so extensive a scale as to attract the
+serious attention of the provincial authorities, as well as emphatic
+recognition by our own consuls. In one mission alone of the American
+Board, in another province, the number of inquirers into the Christian
+religion is estimated at 12,000.
+
+The growing influence of Christianity, however, cannot be measured
+either by the numbers of communicants or inquirers. For many years past,
+large numbers of Christian men and women have been scattered through
+nearly all the provinces of China, making their homes among the Chinese,
+with the avowed object of promulgating what is known as the “_Jesus
+Religion_.” Their methods of propagandism—preaching, conversation,
+schools, dispensaries, hospitals, and the circulation of Christian
+literature only differ slightly. Their knowledge of Chinese is
+necessarily imperfect, and they often make grotesque and even serious
+blunders. As their methods and mistakes in the language are much alike,
+so too are their lives. The keenest Chinese critic finds no difference
+in conduct and the motives which rule it, between the Scotch
+missionaries in MANCHURIA, the China Inland Mission and Canadian, etc.,
+in SZE CHUAN, the Church Missionary Society in the FU-KIEN Province, and
+the German and American in KWANTUNG. These 2500 men and women are seen
+under the “fierce light” of criticism which beats upon them, whether at
+home or abroad, to lead pure, just, truthful, kind, honest, virtuous,
+patient lives, restraining temper and suffering long. These lives preach
+a higher standard of living than is inculcated by the highest Chinese
+teaching, and by slow degrees produce results which cannot be tabulated.
+The fame of the foreign teacher’s payment of wages agreed upon, without
+drawbacks, his truthfulness, justice, kind treatment of servants,[62]
+control of temper, and accessibility, travels far, and each life so
+lived is an influence making for righteousness in the neighbourhood,
+exciting inquiry into the “Jesus Religion” and foreign learning, and
+exercising a distinct influence on surrounding morality in certain
+directions.
+
+The direct part of missionary work need scarcely be touched upon. It
+consists in awakening the conscience to a sense of sin, by the preaching
+of “righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come.” It dwells upon the
+justice and love of God, on the atonement of Christ, on that Divine
+Fatherhood before whose infinite compassions there is not a stranger, an
+alien, a foreigner; on the “one sacrifice for sin once offered”; and
+teaches that the purpose of the sacrifice, and of law and gospel, is,
+that men may live “soberly, righteously, and godly in this present
+world,” in preparation for a stainless and endless life. It teaches that
+the morality of the Great Teacher is but a “shadow of good things to
+come”—of the higher and perfect morality demanded by the Divine law, and
+that the power outside ourselves which “makes for righteousness” and
+“helps our infirmities,” is the power of God; that “God is love,” and
+yearns over His wandering children; that He has “showed man what is
+good,” and that “His only begotten Son,” who in some mysterious manner
+“bore our sins in His own body on the tree,” is “He who is alive for
+evermore,” and “ever liveth to make intercession,” and that He “hath
+abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through His
+Gospel.”
+
+This, in brief, is the teaching of all Protestant missionaries in China,
+to whatever church they belong, and with one or two exceptions all
+regard baptism as an obligatory confession of faith, and as the evidence
+of a complete break with the beliefs and practices of heathenism.
+
+Under such teaching 80,000 Chinese in 1898 were making a public
+profession of the Christian faith. Many annually lapse; the greater
+number owing to family influence, and difficulties in the abandonment of
+the time and custom-honoured social observances connected with idolatry;
+some because they find the moral restraints of Christianity too hard for
+them, and others because they hoped for worldly advantages which they
+failed to obtain. A large number of professing converts are employed by
+missionaries as servants, gatekeepers, teachers, printers, translators,
+and writers, of whose sincerity it may not always be possible to judge,
+as foreign employment is much coveted.
+
+But after putting these and other dubious converts aside, there remains
+a large body of native Christians, gathered into societies, which after
+long and careful inquiry I believe to be fully up to the average mark of
+our churches at home in essential knowledge, and above it in practice,
+specially in propagandist zeal and liberality—societies of men and
+women, in which the virtues of purity, honesty, self-denial, and charity
+are apparent. These converts contribute liberally out of their poverty
+to Christian objects, specially for the advancement of Christianity in
+their own country, in some regions contributing 6_s._ per head per
+annum. These Christian societies are constantly showing an increasing
+disposition to help themselves by the building of church edifices, as at
+Paoning Fu and elsewhere, and by contributing the entire support of not
+a few of their own pastors.
+
+A large number of these converts are earnest and successful
+propagandists, and the very large increase in the number of Christians
+during the last five years is mainly owing to the zeal, earnestness, and
+devotion of Chinese converts, both men and women, who owe their
+conversion and instruction, as well as guidance and inspiration, to the
+foreign teachers. In Manchuria a few years ago the senior missionary
+told me that out of between three thousand and four thousand converts he
+estimated that not more than twenty had received Christianity directly
+from the European missionaries, and the same proportion holds good with
+regard to the 8875 inquirers at the present date. In Che-kiang the
+present Bishop of Victoria estimated the number of converts through the
+work of Chinese as 80 per cent. of the whole.
+
+These societies, in the beginning very small, and numbering from ten up
+to over four hundred members, are gradually crystallising into
+brotherhoods, with a very strong bond of union and definite aims of
+their own. They show in a marked degree the strong Chinese tendency to
+combination and association, and may be regarded as guilds. At present
+among the communicants there is a strong desire to conserve the purity
+of the churches by a careful exercise of discipline. Members who fall
+back into evil ways, as many do, are “suspended,” and if incorrigible
+are sloughed off, and it certainly would not be possible for such abuses
+as disgraced the church of Corinth to exist in the infant churches of
+China.
+
+In brief these Christian societies are earnest in propagandism, zealous
+for purity and discipline, liberal in their contributions, desirous for
+instruction, docile and teachable, and apparently increasingly anxious
+to translate Christian doctrine into righteous living. These bodies in
+very many places are slowly exercising an influence in favour of
+righteousness, and are thus among the many influences which are tending
+to undermine the old superstitions.
+
+If China is to be Christianised, or even largely leavened by
+Christianity, it must inevitably be by native agency under foreign
+instruction and guidance. The foreigner remains a foreigner in his
+imperfect and often grotesque use of the language, in his inability to
+comprehend Chinese modes of thinking and acting, and in a hundred other
+ways, while a well-instructed Chinese teacher knows his countrymen and
+what will appeal to them, how to make “points,” and how to clinch an
+argument by a popular quotation from their own classics. He knows their
+weakness and strength, their devious ways and crooked motives, and their
+unspeakable darkness and superstition, and is not likely to be either
+too suspicious or too confiding. He presents Christianity without the
+Western flavour. It is in the earnest enthusiasm of the Chinese converts
+for the propagation of the faith that the great hope for China lies.
+
+Until now Christianity has made very slow progress. Among the special
+obstacles are: First, the national vanity, and the contempt for anything
+introduced by the foreign barbarians. Second, the posthumous influence
+of Confucius, whose moral teaching, negative and defective as it is on
+some points, is regarded as final, and his maxims as perfect in their
+adaptation to the needs of society and government for all time. Third,
+the Chinese language itself, with its absence of an alphabet, the
+peculiar inflections and tones, the guttural and aspirated modulations
+which must be carefully observed, and the necessity of creating a
+vocabulary which shall rationally express the Christian ideas, and yet
+not be offensive to a critical and literary people. Fourth, the
+carefulness and universality of home education in superstitious and
+idolatrous beliefs and practices, children being taught from early
+infancy that reverence for the divinities of the Chinese Pantheon, shown
+according to established forms, is necessary to success in life.
+
+Fifth, greater than all these special obstacles combined, is that of
+ancestor-worship, the actual and universal cult of the Empire. To
+abandon idolatrous worship and practices is easy, but withdrawal from
+the worship of the ancestral tablets, with its rites and sacrifices,
+brands a man as a reprobate and a brute. These rites represent
+reverence, sacredness, and filial piety; they have the sanction of
+immemorial usage and of the earliest memories of home, and the first act
+of worship recorded is the worship of ancestors by the Emperor Shun on
+his accession, in the dawn of Chinese history.
+
+The practice probably took its rise in a tender and beautiful filial
+feeling, but apparently it has come to be largely inspired by fear. A
+Chinese truly “passes the time of his sojourning here in fear,” and is
+in slavery not only to the terror of a dim and demon-haunted future, but
+to the present dread of the evils wherewith he may be afflicted in this
+life by the malevolence of the dissatisfied spirits of his ancestors.
+Dr. Yates, a very careful student of things Chinese, in an able paper on
+ancestor-worship, states that, including the cost of the festivals for
+the destitute dead, the enormous sum of 151,752,000 dollars is annually
+expended by the Chinese in quieting the spirits of the departed, and
+securing the living from their malignant action. If this worship ever
+dies, it will die hard.
+
+Islam is absolutely intolerant of every form of ancestor-worship. The
+Roman Catholic missions, as my readers are aware, were agitated by a
+controversy as to concessions on this subject from 1610 to 1758, when
+Pope Benedict XIV. rejected all compromise. Protestant missions take the
+same course.
+
+While making careful inquiries into mission work, both from the workers
+and from outsiders, and comparing the present status and conduct of
+Chinese converts with what they were when I was in China twenty years
+ago, I formed certain opinions on Protestant missions in China, which I
+now place briefly before my readers. At this time missions constitute so
+important a factor in the awakening of the empire, that no sensible or
+thoughtful person can ignore them without sacrificing his reputation for
+both sense and thoughtfulness. If I venture to write of myself at all in
+connection with the subject, it is but to say that I am not an
+enthusiast regarding foreign missions, but soberly believe that to
+“teach all nations” is the path of duty and of hope.
+
+During the earlier period of my eight years of Asiatic travel the
+subject was of little or no interest to me. I may even have enjoyed the
+cheap sneers at missions and missionaries which often pass for wit in
+Anglo-Asiatic communities, among persons who have never given the work
+and its methods one half-hour of serious attention and investigation,
+and in travelling, wherever possible, I gave mission stations a wide
+berth.
+
+On my later journeys, however, which brought me often for months at a
+time into touch with the daily life of the peoples, their condition even
+at the best impressed me as being so deplorable all round, that I became
+a convert to the duty of using the great means by which it can be
+elevated. To pass on to these nations the blessings which we owe to
+Christianity—our eternal hope, our knowledge of the Divine Fatherhood,
+our Christian ideals of manhood and womanhood, our best conceptions of
+the sanctities of domestic life and of the duties involved in social
+relationships, our political liberties, the position of women, the
+incorruptible majesty of our equal laws, the reformatory nature of our
+punishments, the public opinion permeated by Christianity which sustains
+right and condemns wrong, and a thousand things besides, which have come
+to us through centuries of the “Jesus Religion”—is undoubtedly our
+bounden duty. It is surely the height of unchristian selfishness to sit
+down contentedly among our own good things, and practically to regard
+China merely as an area for trade. Is it not also the height of
+disloyalty and disobedience to our nominal Master, whose last command,
+ringing down through centuries of selfishness, we have been satisfied to
+leave unfulfilled?
+
+I was influenced not so much by seeing the good work done by
+missionaries, as the tremendous need for it and the hopelessness of the
+religious systems of Asia. Several of the Asiatic faiths, and notably
+Buddhism, started with noble conceptions and a morality far in advance
+of their age. But the good has been mainly lost out of them in their
+passage down the centuries, and Buddhism in China, aiming at
+eclecticism, absorbed so much of the dæmonism, nature-worship, and
+heathenism of the country, that in the number and puerility of its
+superstitions, its alliance with sorcery, its temples crowded with
+monstrous and grotesque idols, the immorality of its priests, and the
+absence of the teaching of righteousness, it is now much on a level with
+the idolatries of barbarous nations. There is nothing to arrest the
+further downward descent of these systems, so effete, and yet so
+powerful as interwoven with the whole social life of the nation. _There
+is no resurrection power in any one of them_, and to the men who here
+and there are athirst for righteousness, and are groping after Him “who
+is not far from every one of us,” they offer neither guidance nor help.
+
+That there are such seekers is certain. Among the many “secret
+societies” of China, a “good few” are mainly religious, and a great
+number of the Christian converts in North China have been in their
+membership. An attempt to attain righteousness is their characteristic,
+and something may be learned from them of self-denial and aspiration.
+Their efforts all take more or less of an ascetic direction.
+
+Among them are “Vegetarians,” who abstain from meat with the object of
+“rectifying the heart, accumulating merit, and thus avoiding calamities
+in this world and retributive pains in the next.” Several others are
+pledged to abstain from gambling and the use of opium, wine, and
+tobacco. The chief teaching of another is the duty of maintaining a
+patient spirit under injuries.
+
+The books of the religious secret societies contain the best maxims and
+the highest moral teaching of “The Three Religions.” They exhort to
+chastity, benevolence, carefulness in speech, self-denial, good works,
+the _conservation of the mental energies by rest and reflection_, the
+cultivation of the heart, and to much besides which is good. In alliance
+with the good are idolatrous rites, incantations, divination, and many
+grossly superstitious and puerile practices. It is believed that even
+the best among these societies are not altogether free from seditious
+tendencies, _i.e._, the accomplishment of reform by destruction. But
+after making due allowance for what is foolish and evil, it is evident
+that in these unsatisfied spiritual instincts and cravings after
+righteousness, and above all in the substitution of a dissatisfied and
+earnest spirit for the self-satisfied complacency of the Confucianist,
+and the stolid materialism of the average Chinese, Christianity has
+allies not to be despised.
+
+Up to this time (1899) the slow success which has been won has been
+almost entirely among the lower classes, and it has not been possible,
+by the methods hitherto pursued, to reach the _literati_, who in China
+are the leaders of a people whose reverence for letters is phenomenal.
+
+Of the 2458 Protestant missionaries, including wives (many of whom are
+incapacitated for work by maternal duties), accredited to China, a large
+number are always at home “on furlough.” Promising Christian work is
+often broken up by the departure of the missionary. A substitute may or
+may not be appointed, but the “personal equation” counts for much in
+China as elsewhere. The force available for actual work ought not to
+include the large number of new missionaries, who must inevitably spend
+the first year or two in learning to speak Chinese, during which period
+they are useful chiefly by lives of consistent righteousness. Throughout
+my long journeys I never saw a mission station, except perhaps Paoning
+Fu, which was not undermanned, _i.e._, in which mission work was not
+seriously crippled and denied its natural expansion by lack of men.
+
+In this time of inquiry into Western religion and science it becomes
+more and more important that missionaries, both men and _women_, should
+study the difficult language carefully, so as to fit themselves for
+conversation with the _literati_, and not be content with a limited
+command of the colloquial speech of coolies. It is being recognised in
+most influential quarters that if our trade is to expand, clerks and
+others going into mercantile life in China must begin the study of
+Chinese here under competent Chinese teachers. It might possibly be
+desirable for intending missionaries to do the same, and it would have
+the advantage of testing in each case the capacity for learning a
+difficult language, the incapacity being under present methods only
+discovered when it is too late to draw back. It appears very important
+that medical missionaries should have an undisturbed year after arriving
+in China for the study of the language.
+
+Women’s work has grown, and is growing so rapidly in China that its
+regulation needs serious consideration. Admirable as much of it is, and
+might be, it is beset with special difficulties. The fact of a young
+unmarried woman living anywhere but under her father’s roof, exposes her
+character to the grossest imputations, which are hurled at her in the
+streets, and which can only be lived down by scrupulous carefulness. The
+Chinese etiquette, which prescribes the conduct seemly for women, and
+limits the freedom of social intercourse between the sexes, certainly
+tends to propriety, and though to our thinking tiresome, no young
+foreign woman attempting to teach a foreign religion can violate its
+leading rules without injury to her work.
+
+For instance, it is improper for a woman to “ride” in an open chair, to
+receive men visitors at her house, or to shake hands with men, or to
+walk through the street of a town or village or to visit at native
+houses unattended by a middle-aged Chinese woman. It is not only
+improper but scandalous for a woman to be seen in a tight bodice, or any
+other fashion which shows her figure, and a foreign girl lays herself
+open to remarks which I scarcely think she would like to hear, when she
+appears in a fly-away hat, bent up and bent down, on which birds,
+insects, feathers, grasses, and flowers have been dumped down
+indiscriminately! The Mission Board of one large and successful Mission
+has found it desirable to issue rules for missionaries regarding dress
+and etiquette, and the China Inland Mission everywhere, and the Church
+Missionary Society missionaries in SZE CHUAN have solved the difficulty
+by adopting Chinese costume, the only Oriental dress which Europeans can
+wear with seemliness and dignity. I think it would add much to the
+safety of female missionaries, and to the respect in which they are
+held, if those missionary societies which object to Chinese costume
+would agree upon neat, simple uniforms for summer and winter, fulfilling
+the Chinese demand for propriety, and the European demand for
+tastefulness, and which should indicate at once that the wearer belongs
+to a large and important international union, and cannot be insulted
+with impunity.
+
+Again it is necessary for young women to remember that a yellow skin
+makes no difference, and that any familiarity of manner or carelessness
+in deportment, which would be unsuitable here, is ten times more
+unsuitable in the case of Chinese men, such as servants, teachers, and
+“native helpers.” In one province in which lady missionaries are
+specially numerous the violations of etiquette by some of them have been
+regarded as so likely to lead to outbreaks that the attention of our
+Foreign Office has been called to the subject. The openings for the work
+of sensible “godly” women are very great, but as a large proportion of
+those who go out are young and inexperienced, and the number is
+increasing, it is desirable that the whole subject should be
+reconsidered, and that women’s work and general conduct should have the
+advantage of experienced and effectual supervision for the protection of
+the workers, and the prevention of those hindrances to the work which
+arise out of ignorance and inexperience, and in a few cases out of
+self-conceit and self-will.
+
+Having ventured on these criticisms and suggestions, I must add that
+much of the wisest, most loving, most self-denying, and most successful
+work that I saw done in China was done by women.
+
+My earliest ideas of missionary work were taken from a picture which
+represented a white man standing under a tree, preaching to an earnest,
+quiet, and dark-visaged crowd. Crowds gather round the foreign preacher
+in China, but this is often a temporary phase, with curiosity for its
+leading motive. His appearance, mistakes in speech, and attitudes are
+satirised, jeered at, and mimicked. One of the most popular theatrical
+performances in Shanghai a few years ago was a clever farce,
+representing a foreign missionary preaching to a crowd of Chinese.
+
+Preaching is not a Chinese mode of instruction. Confucianism, still the
+great force in China, never had a preacher, and was propagated solely by
+books. It is said that there is not a lecture-hall in the empire. The
+Chinese methods of influencing are chiefly literary, catechetical, and
+conversational. The results of preaching have not been what was once
+hoped for, nor what they have been in some other countries. Many
+missionaries have told me that even the Chinese preaching in the “street
+chapels” is not fruitful in results.
+
+It is possible that the introduction of Western modes of evangelising,
+not applicable to China, was at least premature, and has been the cause
+of much failure and disappointment. The foreign element, whether in
+methods, church architecture, house building, or the ignoring of Chinese
+custom, though partly inevitable, must always tend to represent
+Christianity as a “foreign religion,” and to perpetuate it but as a
+sickly exotic. It is, I think, of great importance that Christianity
+should ally itself with all that is not evil in the national life, that
+it should uphold Chinese nationality, that it should incorporate Chinese
+methods of instruction with our own, and conserve all customs which are
+not contrary to its spirit. The teachings of experience have not been
+thrown away, and many missionaries have come to see that these are the
+lines of progress.
+
+Those competent to judge have no doubt that Christianity is about to
+make great progress in China. With this, many questions already emerging
+will come to the front, and among the foremost is that of native agency
+in foreign pay. There is on one side the certainty that China can only
+be Christianised by the Chinese, and on the other the risks connected
+with the worldly or mercenary element, which have been fatal to many
+such persons whose sincerity had not been suspected. Here again
+experience is teaching useful lessons, one being that Christianity is
+never so extensively and rapidly propagated as by the spontaneous
+efforts and renovated lives of private Christians.
+
+Among other questions are: How far the differences between Western
+churches are to be perpetuated in China; the place of the Chinese
+classics and of English in missionary schools; the obligation of the
+Sabbath; the attitude of Christianity to certain Chinese customs, and to
+any modified form of ancestor-worship; social intercourse between
+foreigners and Chinese; the social and pecuniary position of a native
+pastorate; the self-government of churches; and in Anglican missions the
+retention of the Prayer Book, as it at present stands, as the sole
+manual for public worship.
+
+In conclusion I think that there is now an “open door” for the gospel in
+China, and that the prospect for Christianity is fairer than at any
+former period, but that if the Christian nations fail to realise their
+obligations to enter that door promptly and in force, with an army of
+earnest and well-equipped teachers, China may follow the example of
+Japan, and accept Western civilisation, while rejecting the Christian
+religion.
+
+“Talk,” said Mr. Gladstone on one occasion, “about the question of the
+day; there is but one question, and that is the gospel. It can and will
+correct everything needing correction.”
+
+It may be that the gospel will yet bring about the regeneration of
+China.
+
+
+
+
+                           CONCLUDING REMARKS
+
+
+The subjects of our political and trade relations with China have been
+so ably and exhaustively treated by Lord Charles Beresford, M.P., and
+Mr. Colquhoun, and have been threshed out by so many other writers, that
+in these brief remarks I shall chiefly confine myself to the Chinese
+people and to my impressions of them, received in fifteen months of
+journeyings in three of the most important years in modern Chinese
+history.[63]
+
+I doubt very much whether China is “breaking up.” _If_ she breaks up it
+will be owing to the policy of the great European nations in making her
+“lose face,” and thereby weakening the authority of the Central
+Government over the provinces, local risings and possible
+disintegrations being the result. The “sphere of influence” policy, if
+pursued in earnest, would undoubtedly break up the empire.
+
+In the three years in which I was travelling, off and on, in China, the
+Dragon Throne reeled, but righted itself, and the Government survived
+the Japanese war, the heavy indemnity, the loss of the suzerainty of
+Korea, and the aggressions of Russia. It extinguished, in blood, the
+serious Mohammedan rebellion in KANSUH, and has lately brought about the
+collapse of the rebellion in SZE CHUAN. The bond of union which connects
+the provinces with each other and with Peking has survived all these
+mishaps, and if it is broken, I believe it will be by foreign
+interference, and by the shifting and opportunist policy, enormous
+ambitions, and ill-concealed rivalries of certain foreign powers.
+
+Nor do I believe that China is “in decay.” I have travelled more than
+8000 miles in the empire, and have seen, in some regions, roads, canals,
+temples,[64] and some ancient public works, falling into disrepair. The
+Oriental throughout Asia prefers construction to renovation, and
+alongside of these decaying works there are new temples, new pagodas,
+new and handsome bridges, new _pai-fangs_, new bunds, and new works,
+rather of private than public origin.
+
+The reader who has followed the foregoing chapters with any degree of
+interest can scarcely think that SZE CHUAN, at least, is in decay.
+Commercial and industrial energy is not decaying, the vast fleets of
+junks are not rotting in harbours and reaches; industry, thrift,
+resourcefulness, and the complete organisation both of labour and
+commerce, meet the traveller at every turn. Mercantile credit stands
+high, contracts are kept, labour is docile, teachable, and intelligent,
+its earnings are secure, and, on the whole, law and order prevail.
+
+Nor is it like “decay” that in 1898—in spite of a political situation
+full of menace, of sporadic rebellions which largely checked business in
+their localities, of the serious news from Peking in September, which
+disorganised the trade of the northern ports, and of the disasters in
+connection with the Yellow River—the elasticity was such that the value
+of the import trade exceeded all previous records, while that of the
+export trade exceeded that of every previous year except 1897, the total
+volume of trade being the highest on record.
+
+There was no export of silver, but a net import of Hk. Tls. 4,722,025,
+and there was no scarcity of it in any part of the country. China met
+the whole of her obligations without any depletion of her currency, and
+imported nothing that she did not obtain in exchange for exports.[65]
+The importance of stimulating the Chinese export trade is apt to be
+overlooked. China will only purchase from foreign countries that for
+which she can pay with her own products. The verdict of the
+Inspector-General of Maritime Customs in China on the commercial
+situation for 1898 is, “No doubt the Government is hard pressed for
+funds, but _the country grows wealthier every year_.”[66]
+
+Among the reasons given for the alleged “decay” of China is its
+“over-population.” It is true that there are seriously congested areas,
+even in SZE CHUAN, but if we take 400,000,000, the extreme estimate of
+the population, it is but ten times that of Great Britain, while the
+area of the empire is from sixteen to eighteen times as great.
+
+What is “in decay” is the administration of government. The people are
+straight, but officialism is corrupt.[67]
+
+The subject has been fully dwelt upon in other books, with which I
+suppose my readers to be acquainted. The theory of the Chinese
+Government is one of the best ever devised by the wit of man. Against
+every possible abuse apparent safeguards were provided. The enjoyment of
+property and life was secured to the people. The laws in the main were
+just, concise, and of equal pressure. The right of rising against a
+corrupt and oppressive official was guaranteed. Literary examinations
+were made the entrance to official life. Inferior birth was no bar to
+the attainment of high position. The laws of the country embodied the
+highest teaching of political ethics which it had received. The
+patriarchal theory of government was never so systematised, or acted
+upon for so long, and with so much consistency. The ethical teaching and
+the laws based upon it remain, and the strongest power in China to-day
+is Confucius; but the admirable theory of government has proved weak in
+presence of the neglected factor of the downward tendency of human
+nature in a pagan nation. The infamies of Chinese administration to-day
+have been riveted upon China by centuries of political retrogression,
+and the gradual lowering of the standard of public virtue in the absence
+of a wholesome public opinion. Certain forms of bribery, corruption, and
+peculation have obtained the force of custom, seven-tenths of the
+revenue is arrested by the “three hands” of officials, all sums allotted
+for public works, repairs, and military and naval equipment, suffer
+enormous depletion _en route_ to their destinations, so that in the
+Japanese war “a straight people with a corrupt Government” were easily
+subdued by “a corrupt people with a straight Government.”[68]
+
+One of the heaviest indictments against the system is, that under it it
+is hardly possible for a good man to be rigidly honest, and there are
+good men: and there are mandarins who, after a long and laborious period
+of office, actually live and die poor. A well-meaning man, finding
+himself entangled in the meshes of this system, is greatly to be pitied.
+Custom is all in favour of peculation, and however much such men would
+welcome a way of escape, to break with custom is as hard as to break off
+the opium habit. Another difficulty besets the well-intentioned man—his
+knowledge that his best efforts will certainly be frustrated by the
+unscrupulous clerks and retainers of his _yamen_.
+
+In Chapter XXIII. I just touched on the very laborious life of a
+mandarin, who has to perform the work of six men, and rarely gets a
+holiday. For this amount of work he is virtually unpaid, far more than
+his wretchedly insufficient salary being expended on the necessary state
+of his office. These nominal salaries are the deadly upas tree, which
+has cast its fatal shadow over Chinese official life. They are the
+_crux_ of the situation. They make peculation and corruption all but an
+absolute necessity. Short periods of office, paying for appointments,
+the evil custom of making presents to official superiors, the practice
+that, after paying into the Imperial Exchequer the fixed quota of
+taxation for his district, the magistrate can appropriate all that he
+can squeeze beyond it, subject to liberal gifts to the high officials of
+his province, are only a few of the evils of the Chinese administrative
+system. It is chiefly out of this margin squeezed out of the people that
+the fortunes of the higher officials are made.[69]
+
+Every writer on China exposes the iniquities of the system, and they
+come more or less to the ears and under the observation of every
+traveller. They affect a fourth of the human race, and have brought the
+most ancient of existing empires into the position of a “sick
+man”—helpless, appealing, with voracious Western nations gnawing at his
+extremities, and prepared to prey upon his vitals.
+
+But China bristles with contradictions. The “sick man” ought to be “in
+decay,” but he is not. His innate cheeriness is scarcely clouded by our
+repeated assertions that he ought to be dead, and he faces the future
+which we prophesy for him without misgiving! On the whole, peace, order,
+and a fair amount of prosperity prevail throughout the empire. The gains
+of labour are secure, taxation, even with the squeezes attending it, is
+rarely oppressive in the country, and in the towns is extremely light.
+The phrase “ground down” does not apply to the Chinese peasant. There is
+complete religious toleration. Guilds, trades unions, and other
+combinations carry out their systems unimpeded, and the Chinese genius
+for association is absolutely unfettered. The Chinese practically in
+actual life are one of the freest peoples on earth!
+
+The reader may be staggered by what appears a monstrous paradox, in face
+of the opinions regarding the infamies of administration previously
+expressed, but if a single statement is applicable to the whole empire
+it is this, that freedom is the birthright of the people, that they
+possess “inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
+happiness,” and that China is one of the most democratic countries on
+earth. The Government, feeble and evasive in its dealings with
+foreigners, when it sets its mind on something among its own people, is
+quite capable of carrying out its will, and is not nearly so impotent as
+many suppose. Yet it habitually plays only a most minute part in the
+economy of national life, and a Chinese may live and die without any
+other contact with it than the payment of land-tax. He is free in all
+trades and industries: to make money and to keep it: to emigrate and to
+return with his gains: free to rise from the peasant’s hut to place and
+dignity: to become a millionaire, and confer princely gifts upon his
+province: free in his religion and his amusements: and in his social and
+commercial life.
+
+I have not space, knowledge, or ability to enter into the inwardness of
+these extraordinary contradictions, and would only remark that we have
+to deal in China not with a mass of downtrodden serfs, but with a nation
+of free men.
+
+I may be permitted, however, very diffidently to point out a few of the
+reasons which, in my opinion, militate against the evils of
+administration, and tend to the stability of the country. First among
+these is the village system. In China the unit is not the individual but
+the family, indivisible and sacred, the members of which are bound to
+each other in life and death by indissoluble ties, of the strength of
+which we cannot form a conception. Villages consist of groups of such
+families, with their headmen and elders, who are responsible for each
+individual, the step above them being the _hsien_, or district
+magistrate, who may be regarded as the administrative unit. The Chinese
+have a genius for self-government, and are by no means the “dumb, driven
+cattle” which some suppose them to be. The villages are self-governing,
+and no official dares to trench on their hereditary privileges. Every
+successive dynasty has found itself bound to protect them in these, and
+no “Son of Heaven” who called them in question could occupy the Dragon
+Throne for six months.
+
+These privileges, which by established custom have become actual rights,
+consist primarily in the complete control of local affairs, the
+possession of lands, and absolute freedom for trade and industry. Among
+the many advantages of the village system is, that it enables villagers
+in countless civil cases to avoid the serious evils of litigation in the
+_yamens_ by the simple method of referring them to arbitration before
+their headmen and elders.
+
+Among other causes which tend to counterbalance the evils of the
+administration, is the system of strict surveillance and mutual
+responsibility, under which no man stands alone, and which as a vast
+network holds China together. This has its own evils, one of which is
+_mutual distrust_, which has, however, the good result of preventing men
+from combining intelligently against the Government. The system makes
+government easy, and certainly does not tend to disintegration.
+
+Besides these there are the recognised right of rebellion when
+grievances become intolerable; the execution of a species of lynch law
+on culpable officials, which often takes the place of memorials to the
+Throne, and courts of appeal; a certain dread on the part of magistrates
+of being reported for corruption or inefficiency by the many spies of
+the Central Government, or by the Censors, who, though said not to be
+altogether free from venality, can, on occasion, be most remarkably
+outspoken; the general education of the people in the principles on
+which government is based; the genius for association which gives
+strength to the weak; and the universal training both at home and school
+in “The Five Duties of Man,” which are: (1) Loyalty to the Sovereign,
+(2) piety to parents, (3) submissiveness to elders, (4) harmony between
+husband and wife, (5) fidelity to friends.[70]
+
+This is the empire which we speak of “partitioning” and “breaking up,”
+with as little emotion as if it were an ant’s nest, with all its
+singular contradictions, and emphatic antagonisms of good and evil.
+
+There is a wide difference between bullying, in diplomatic language
+“applying strong pressure,” and making righteous and politic demands
+upon China. Nothing could be better for herself than the drastic reforms
+suggested by Lord C. Beresford, but some of them involve what I think
+would be an unwarrantable interference with her internal organisation.
+Among righteous demands may certainly be placed the fulfilment of treaty
+obligations—the giving security to the lives and property of foreigners
+throughout the empire, which can only be attained by the formation of an
+efficient army, or _gendarmerie_, well disciplined, drilled, armed, and
+paid, and _mobile_—giving foreigners the right to live for trade
+purposes in the interior (a right only conceded by Japan in July, 1899),
+and an equable rearrangement of _likin_ and _loti-shui_.[71]
+
+_Likin_ and _loti-shui_ are obnoxious taxes, and hamper trade
+effectively, and the abuses of the system are very great, but abrupt and
+sweeping changes would be very dangerous. It must be remembered that the
+provincial governments have lost seriously through the operations of the
+Imperial Maritime Customs (see p. 155), and rely mainly on _likin_ for
+their revenue, that its abolition would involve a resort to direct
+taxation, which would be intolerable to a people accustomed to indirect,
+and would certainly lead to very serious risings in the West River and
+Yangtze valleys. Official needs, established custom, and the relations
+of the masses to custom, render the forcing of abrupt fiscal changes of
+this nature upon the Chinese most impolitic, risking the disorganisation
+and break up of China.
+
+By bullying the Central Government it is made to “lose face” with its
+subjects, and its authority is by so much weakened. The value of our
+treaties absolutely depends on the power of the Government to give
+effect to them. The sole security of the Chinese bondholder, and for the
+sums invested, or to be invested in the railroads of the future, is the
+integrity and cohesion of the Chinese Empire. Touch this integrity,
+whether by active claims for “spheres of influence,” with consequent
+disintegration, the enforced abolition of _likin_, or any policy of
+pressure, and our treaties will be but waste paper. With regard to most
+arrangements, however desirable in the way of reform they may be, the
+word “insist,” pointing to coercion, should be blotted out of the
+vocabulary of discussion.
+
+I am still a believer in the justice and expediency of the “Open Door”
+policy, as opposed to what I think is the fatal alternative policy of
+“spheres of influence.” Many who would “rush” reforms in China, and are
+impatient of delay, and are perhaps bitten by the “lust of domination,”
+assert that it is too late for it, but I fail to see the reasons for
+such a “counsel of despair.” The Marquess of Salisbury, at the end of
+June, 1898, said: “If I am asked what our policy in China is, my answer
+is very simple. It is to maintain the Chinese Empire, to prevent it
+falling into ruins, to invite it into paths of reform, and to give it
+every assistance which we are able to give it, to perfect its defence or
+to increase its commercial prosperity. _By so doing we shall be aiding
+its cause and our own._”[72] This announcement of policy has not been
+recalled.
+
+In the meantime it is impossible for China, pressed on every side, and
+vaguely conscious that she stands at the “parting of the ways,” that
+“the old order” is changing, and that she is in the grip of new forces,
+to collect herself with a view to the reforms from which she cannot hope
+to escape, and she falls back on her old idea of statesmanship—the
+playing off one foreign country against another. After a career of
+empire of two thousand years, in which she has increased in wealth and
+population up to the present time, she finds herself at the dawn of a
+new century, confronted by problems of which her classics and her
+experience offer no solution, and the greatest of these is the
+FOREIGNER.
+
+In concluding this chapter, it is worth while to consider whether there
+are any indications of reform from within, and whether the phrase, “The
+awakening of China,” represents fact or not.
+
+Our mechanical inventions, steamers, railroads, gas, telegraphs,
+electric light, steam machinery, dredgers, artillery, torpedoes, arms of
+precision, submarine telegraphy, steam printing, photography—our
+surgery, the beauty and “up-keep” of our foreign settlements, and their
+admirable municipal government, and our obvious wealth, have all been
+emissaries knocking the conceit out of those who come in contact with
+them. Chinese now work telegraph lines, own and run steam launches in
+large numbers, enter our hospitals as medical students, and take
+admirable photographs, nearly perfect in _technique_, only lacking in
+artistic feeling. Factories owned and run by Chinese are springing up
+here and there, and may eventually be successful. One of the great
+passenger lines on the Lower Yangtze belongs to the “Chinese Merchants’
+Company.”
+
+Inland, for many years, foreign families have been living lives
+elsewhere described—of different nationalities, but all worshippers of
+one invisible God. Such persons have introduced into remote regions
+kerosene lamps—which are doing much to alter social life in China, soap,
+lucifer matches and vesta lights, condensed milk and tinned provisions,
+sewing machines—enormously adopted by tailors, and much else, the
+utility of all of which has been recognised, and which have compelled
+the Chinese to admit the ability of the “barbarians.”
+
+It is known, at least to the Chinese within fifty miles of the coast,
+and up the Yangtze, on which Japanese steam lines are now running, that
+the Japanese, who received from themselves the Chinese classics
+centuries ago, have adopted the political and legal systems, industries,
+and naval and military methods of foreigners; that they have a straight
+Government, which no foreign power dares to bully; that they have been
+received on equal terms into the family of nations, and that their
+methods of warfare, before which China collapsed, were foreign methods.
+The fact that a yellow people, venerating and teaching their own
+classics, with a social order founded on Confucian principles, and with
+Chinese as its official language, has adopted, to a great extent,
+Western civilisation, and with manifest advantage, has produced a
+remarkable effect since the war.
+
+Last, but very far from being least, as it affects the brain of the
+country and its natural leaders, is the circulation of the scientific,
+historical, and Christian literature of the West. This is the Western
+ferment which may “leaven the whole lump.” This circulation received an
+enormous impulse when the reform edicts of the Emperor were promulgated,
+making a knowledge of Western learning imperative on students, and has
+not been greatly affected by the subsequent retrograde movement. It
+cannot be doubted that those edicts, premature and unwise as some of
+them were, were the direct result of the foreign literature which the
+Emperor had previously been reading with avidity.
+
+The larger portion of this literature, which I believe is destined to
+reform and transform China, has been published by a society founded
+twelve years ago by some of the leading men in China, and named the
+“Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge.” Sir
+Robert Hart, G.C.M.G., is its president in China, and Mr. Timothy
+Richards, an enthusiast about the language and people, and an optimist
+about the future of the empire, is its secretary and inspiring spirit.
+
+The literature for which the demand is now greater than the supply,
+consists of distinctly Christian books, such as _Butler’s Analogy_; _a
+Life of Christ_; _Christianity, and the Progress of Nations_; scientific
+books, as on _Agricultural Chemistry_ and _Astronomy_; books on economic
+subjects, such as _Productive and Non-Productive Labour_, _The Relation
+of Education to National Progress_, etc., and some of our best standard
+books are now in circulation, together with such special literature as
+_Essays for the Times_, _The Renaissance of China_, _Progress of China’s
+Neighbours_, a periodical called _A Review of the Times_, and various
+others. The drift of the desire for knowledge is shown by the very large
+sale of Mackenzie’s _History of the Nineteenth Century_, and of a
+_History of the Japanese War_; _Sixty Years of Queen Victoria’s Reign_
+being also much in demand.
+
+These books and many others, circulating largely among the _literati_,
+at once creating and expressing aspirations, all present in some form or
+other that higher ideal which produced those reformers, greatly led by
+Kang Yen-Wei, who advocated political, commercial, educational, and
+religious reform in 1898, rendering it memorable in Chinese history as a
+year in which men showed that the welfare of their country was dearer to
+them than life itself.
+
+A few instances taken at random show how the Western leaven is working.
+Large sums have been subscribed by the Chinese for the object of
+teaching Western languages and learning, specially in the ports. Two
+wealthy Chinese offered to raise 10,000 dollars for the enlargement of
+the Women’s Hospital in Shanghai, if Dr. Reifsnyder, the lady medical
+missionary, would consent to teach Western medicine to Chinese girls. A
+Cantonese, one of the managers of the China Merchants’ Co., was so
+impressed by Mr. Richards’ translation of Mackenzie’s _History of the
+Nineteenth Century_, that he bought a hundred copies, and sent them to
+the leading mandarins in Peking.
+
+A HUNAN gentleman, visiting Shanghai two years ago, met with the
+“C.L.S.” magazine, _Review of the Times_, and was so impressed with its
+helpfulness to China, that he ordered two hundred copies, and
+distributed them monthly in HUNAN to those who had specially opposed
+foreigners and Christianity. These men, in their turn, ordered a
+complete set of the “C.L.S.” books, and read them for two years in order
+to be sure of their contents. Recently the Literary Chancellor of the
+province wrote to the “C.L.S.” to the effect that China must reform, and
+on the lines indicated in the Society’s publications, and in the name of
+the governor and gentry of HUNAN invited the Chinese editor to become a
+professor in the college of the provincial capital.[73]
+
+The volume on _Agricultural Chemistry_ has been very largely read. Early
+in 1899 the Viceroy of Nanking and others raised £50,000 for an
+agricultural college, and invited Mr. Bentley, the author of the book,
+an American missionary, to be its head. The Viceroy in Central China,
+Chang-Chih-Tung, whose views on the use of opium I have previously
+quoted, actually sympathised with the Yangtze anti-foreign riots in
+1891, but by 1894 had been so profoundly influenced by the study of
+Western literature that he sent a large donation to the “C.L.S.,” and
+has lately published a book in which he strongly advocates the immediate
+adoption of a modern system of education.
+
+It is not alone among the older men that our literature is producing
+marked effects here and there, but the literary students in considerable
+numbers are fired with the desire for Western learning. Fifteen hundred
+applied for entrance to the new Peking University, of which the learned
+Rev. W. Martin, author of _A Cycle of Cathay_, is principal.
+Occasionally foreign literature produces almost grotesque effects. A
+_Hsien_ magistrate, having read Dr. Faber’s _Civilization, East and
+West_, was much impressed by the chapter on our Western treatment of
+prisoners, and at once set his own to work at spinning, weaving, and
+basket-making, to the intense amusement of the retainers of the _yamen_.
+
+In SZE CHUAN I saw few, if any, indications of the awakening which
+undoubtedly exists. A foreign traveller, whether he speak Chinese or
+not, does not see below the surface, and the province is far away from
+the centres in which the Western leaven is working most energetically,
+but in several places where I halted the mandarin sent to inquire if I
+had any “foreign books?” Kuei-chow is one of the most anti-foreign of
+the provinces, and it is noteworthy that lately her governor has sent to
+the “C.L.S.” for 1000 dollars’ worth of Western literature.
+
+I think that there is no doubt that the leaven of Western thought is
+working surely though slowly among the literary class, and that the
+reform movement, scotched, but not killed, by the strong measures of the
+Empress Dowager, grew out of it.
+
+Two causes favour the spread of Western literature; first that the four
+hundred millions of the empire possess one written language, and second,
+that there are 200 examination centres in China, and that at each, from
+5000 to 10,000 students, the mandarins, lawyers, and leaders of the
+future, a million in all, are under examination every year. Our best
+literature, and our Christian literature, supplied to these centres
+reaches the most influential homes in the country. Mr. Archibald Little,
+the pioneer of steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze, and himself a
+Chinese scholar, strongly urges the supply of “C.L.S.” literature to all
+these centres. He considers that the mental revolution now proceeding,
+and the reform movement, are largely due to the influence of books, and
+even says that in the circulation of Western literature he sees the
+great hope for the “Open Door!”
+
+That irresistible forces are beginning to drive China out of her conceit
+and seclusion is evident. Ten years ago there were only two or three
+papers in the vernacular besides the official _Peking Gazette_. To-day
+there are over seventy, and native journalism is actively developing.
+Through the press the Young China Party—the creation of Anglo-Chinese
+schools and foreign influence, chiefly in the ports—gives expression to
+those feelings of unrest and discontent which its wider outlook on
+affairs produces. Through it the younger _literati_, awakened to a new
+conception of patriotism by contact with Western thought, denounce the
+ignorance and corruption of the magistracy, and urge as a remedy the
+introduction of mathematics and political economy into the provincial
+examinations! The Viceroy, ChangChih-Tung, not only founded a paper
+“which was to engage the sympathies of the literary class in the work of
+progress and reform, and to interest its readers in questions of
+international and general importance,”[74] but made its support
+compulsory in all the _yamens_ and libraries in the _Hu_ provinces. Its
+staff is said to be composed of men who combine broad views with
+classical scholarship, and it is reputed to have great influence with
+the upper classes, even though the reforming Viceroy has had to withdraw
+his official support from it.
+
+It is too early to write of the probable influence of the coming
+railroads. It is easy to take an exaggerated view, but undoubtedly rapid
+communication is a great foe to darkness and ignorance. Everywhere there
+are indications of a change in the “classes” which lead the “masses.”
+There is a Chinese saying, that “if you wish to irrigate a piece of land
+you must first carry the water to the highest level, so, if you wish to
+enlighten a nation, you must begin with its leaders.” Very important and
+valuable inquiries have been made into all subjects connected with
+trade; but this mental change, which will probably exercise an enormous
+influence on trade and our relations with China, has been singularly
+overlooked.
+
+It is perhaps best that there should be no abrupt rupture with the past.
+The reform edicts, though abrogated, have kindled a flame; and though
+there may be suspended progress, China can never really go back any
+more, for the forces which have been set in motion have never yet
+suffered defeat. “The mills of God grind slowly,” but they grind
+inexorably. Let us be patient with our ancient ally, and “invite” rather
+than bully her into “paths of reform.” I fear much that the desperate
+determination of the European nations to secure her potentialities of
+trade by fair means or foul, may be driving her to her doom, and that in
+the clash and turmoil the symptoms of an increasing desire for reform
+from within—a reform which would slowly give us all we can righteously
+ask—are being overlooked or ignored.
+
+Into her archaic and unreformed Orientalism the Western leaven has
+fallen for good or evil. Rudely awakened by the Japanese victories out
+of her long sleep, China, half dismayed and wholly dazed, with much loss
+of “face,” and shaken confidence in the methods of diplomacy which have
+served her so well in the past, finds herself confronted by an array of
+powerful, grasping, ambitious, and not always over-scrupulous powers,
+bent, it may be, on over-reaching her and each other, ringing with
+barbarian hands the knell of the customs and polity which are the legacy
+of Confucius, clamouring for ports and concessions, and bewildering her
+with reforms, suggestions, and demands, of which she sees neither the
+expediency nor the necessity.
+
+In this turmoil, and with the European nations thundering at her gates,
+it is impossible for China to attempt any reforms which would not from
+the nature of the case be piecemeal and superficial. The reform of an
+administration like hers needs the prolonged and careful consideration
+of the best minds in the empire, with such skilled and disinterested
+foreign advice as was given by Sir Harry Parkes to Japan when she
+embarked on her new career.
+
+It must be remembered that the remodelling of the administrative system
+of China is beset with difficulties which have not existed in any other
+country, and which are accentuated by the vast population and area of
+the empire. Chinese statesmen (if there be such) have to consider what
+reforms could be carried out with the approval of the masses, _i.e._,
+without bringing about a revolution. The very abuses of administration
+have gained something of the sanctity which attends on custom among this
+singular people. It is most important that those who have to deal with
+Chinese affairs should be able to obtain such information as would
+enable them to make a just estimate of the strength and probable
+diffusion of the desire for reform among the _literati_, at whose feet
+the masses lie with a genuine reverence.
+
+China is certainly at the dawn of a new era. Whether the twentieth
+century shall place her where she ought to be, in the van of Oriental
+nations, or whether it shall witness her disintegration and decay,
+depends very largely on the statesmanship and influence of Great
+Britain.
+
+
+
+
+                               ITINERARY
+
+
+                                                       _Li._[75]
+          Wan Hsien to San-tsan-pu                            65
+                       Ting-tsiao                             63
+                       Liang-shan Hsien                       50
+                       Wen-kia-cha                            60
+                       Chai-shih-kiao                         60
+                       Hsia-shan-po                           73
+                       Kiu Hsien                              60
+                       Ching-sze-yao                          60
+                       Siao-kiao                              65
+                       Sha-shih-pu                            55
+                       Hsieh-tien-tze                         75
+                       King-kiang-sze                         65
+                       Heh-shui-tang                          65
+                       PAONING FU                             65
+                       Hsia-wu-li-tze                         40
+                       Sin-tien-tze                           90
+                       Mao-erh-tiao                           90
+                       Tien-kia-miao                          70
+                       Wu-lien                               115
+                       Tze-tung Hsien                         80
+                       Cheng-hsiang-po                        80
+                       Mienchow                               43
+                       Lun-gan (?)                            90
+                       Mienchuh                               70
+                       Shuang-tu-ti                           45
+                       Peng Hsien                             80
+                       Kuan Hsien                             70
+                       Sin-fan Hsien                         105
+                       Sin-tu Hsien                           30
+                       CHENG-TU FU                            40
+                       Kuan Hsien                            120
+                       Fu-ki                                  30
+                       Sin-wen-ping                           60
+                       Shuo-chiao                             40
+                       Wei-cheo                               60
+                       Li-fan Ting                            65
+                       Tsa-ku-lao                             60
+                       Chuang-fang                            60
+                       Chu-ti                                 45
+                       Miao-ko                                50
+                       Matang                                105
+                       Somo                                   60
+        Cheng-tu Fu to Shanghai, by water, 2000 miles.
+
+
+
+
+                               APPENDICES
+
+
+                              APPENDIX A.
+
+The Rules of the Chinese Guilds are too long and elaborate for insertion
+in this appendix, and condensation would do them an injustice.
+
+
+                            APPENDIX B.[76]
+
+
+                         1. NET VALUE OF TOTAL
+                         TRADE OF PORTS IN THE
+                         YANGTZE BASIN, 1898.
+                                        £
+                         Shanghai   13,296,643
+                         Chungking   2,614,031
+                         Ichang        194,359
+                         Sha-shih       25,666
+                         Hankow      8,065,717
+                         Kiukiang    2,625,083
+                         Wuhu        1,527,079
+                         Chinkiang   3,471,532
+                         Soochow       229,113
+                         Hangchow    1,199,022
+                                         —————
+                                   £33,248,245
+                                   ===========
+
+
+                       2. TRADE OF SHANGHAI, 1898.
+   _Foreign Goods_—                                £             £
+ Total import                                               =19,073,534=
+   Less re-exported—
+   (_a_) To foreign countries and Hongkong         745,000
+   (_b_) To Chinese ports (chiefly to
+     northern and Yangtze ports)                13,914,558
+                                                ——————————
+                                                14,659,558
+   Making net total foreign imports            =4,413,976=
+   _Native Produce_—
+ Imported (chiefly from northern and Yangtze
+   ports, Ningpo, Swatow, Canton, and                       =11,413,637=
+   Hangchow)
+   Less re-exported to foreign countries and
+     Chinese     ports                           9,724,673
+                                                ——————————
+   Making net total Native imports             =1,688,964=
+   Native produce of local origin exported                   =7,193,704=
+     to foreign countries                      =4,676,674=
+   Ditto to Chinese ports                      =2,517,029=       „
+                                                ——————————    ——————————
+ Gross value of trade of Shanghai                          =£37,680,875=
+ Net     „        „         „                =£13,296,643=    ==========
+                                                ==========
+
+
+                        3. TOTAL NET IMPORT OF
+                         OPIUM INTO CHINA FOR
+                                 1898.
+                        Quantity 6,638,333 lbs.
+                        Value        £4,388,365
+
+           4. TOTAL VALUE OF FOREIGN TRADE OF CHINA IN 1898.
+                 = Hk. Taels 368,616,483 = £55,292,472.
+
+
+           5. SHARE OF ENGLAND IN CHINA’S TRADE FOR 1898.[77]
+                             I. _Shipping._
+ ───────────────────┬───────────┬───────────┬───────────────────────────
+        Flag.       │Entries and│ Tonnage.  │    Percentages of Tonnage.
+                    │Clearances.│           │
+ ───────────────────┼───────────┼───────────┼─────────────┬─────────────
+          „         │     „     │     „     │    (A.)     │    (B.)
+                    │           │           │  Including  │  Excluding
+                    │           │           │  Chinese.   │  Chinese.
+ British            │     22,609│ 21,265,966│        62·12│        81·65
+ Chinese            │     23,547│  8,187,572│        23·92│
+ Other nationalities│      6,505│  4,780,042│        13·96│        18·35
+ ───────────────────┼───────────┼───────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
+                    │     52,661│ 34,253,580│          100│          100
+ ───────────────────┴───────────┴───────────┴─────────────┴─────────────
+
+
+                              II. _Trade._
+ ───────────────────┬───────────┬─────────┬───────────┬─────────────────
+        Flag.       │   Total   │ Transit │  Total.   │ Percentages of
+                    │  Values   │ Trade.  │           │     Value.
+                    │ Foreign & │         │           │
+                    │   Coast   │         │           │
+                    │  Trade.   │         │           │
+ ───────────────────┼───────────┼─────────┼───────────┼────────┬────────
+                    │     £     │    £    │     £     │  (A.)  │  (B.)
+ British            │ 76,236,290│2,695,437│ 78,931,727│   51·88│   79·40
+ Chinese            │ 50,163,445│2,410,663│ 52,574,108│   34·56│
+ Other nationalities│ 19,385,235│1,217,343│ 20,602,578│   13·56│   20·60
+ ───────────────────┼───────────┼─────────┼───────────┼────────┼────────
+                    │145,784,970│6,323,443│152,108,413│     100│     100
+ ───────────────────┴───────────┴─────────┴───────────┴────────┴────────
+
+
+        6. PRINCIPAL IMPORTS INTO CHINA FROM FOREIGN COUNTRIES,
+                               1898.[78]
+                                      Quantity.        Value.
+        Opium                         6,638,000 lbs.  £4,388,385
+        Cotton goods                                  11,642,824
+        Raw cotton                   30,534,000 lbs.     425,959
+        Woollen Goods                                    478,525
+        Metals                                         1,468,061
+        Matches (mainly Japanese)   11,352,304 gross     389,561
+        Oil (Kerosene)            96,882,126 gallons   1,787,205
+        Sugar                            10,793 tons   2,029,267
+        Other imports                                  8,827,113
+                                                     ———————————
+                  Total                              £31,436,900
+                                                     ===========
+
+
+         7. PRINCIPAL EXPORTS FROM CHINA TO FOREIGN COUNTRIES,
+                               1898.[78]
+                                      Quantity.        Value.
+        Silk, of all kinds           35,651,333 lbs.  £8,415,584
+        Tea     „      „            205,146,667 lbs.   4,331,922
+        Other Exports                                 11,108,066
+                                                     ———————————
+                  Total                              £23,855,572
+                                                     ===========
+
+
+
+
+                                 INDEX
+
+
+                         A.
+
+ Aconite, Trade in, 339.
+
+ _Agricultural Chemistry_, Circulation of the vol. on, 541.
+
+ Albumen factories, 65.
+
+ Allen, Consul Clement, his report on mission hospitals, 47.
+
+ Altar of Incense, An, 418.
+
+ American Baptists, The, 471.
+
+ Ancestor-worship, 522.
+
+ An Hui, North, 6.
+
+ An-shun Bridge, The, 460.
+
+
+                         B.
+
+ Baber, Mr., 3, 265, 451;
+   his papers on Western China, 156;
+   on rock-dwellings, 467.
+
+ Baggage coolies, 196.
+
+ Baian Kara range, The, 2.
+
+ Baker, Mr., 416.
+
+ Bamboo suspension bridges, 378.
+
+ “Barbarians,” Villages of the, 376, 377, 382–385.
+
+ Barbers, Itinerant, 80.
+
+ Be-dien, The author’s interpreter, 55, 155;
+   his character, 207.
+
+ Beggars, Treatment of, 187.
+
+ “Bellows” gorge. See Feng Hsiang.
+
+ Benevolent guilds, 182.
+
+ Benjamin, Bishop, 99, 100, 102.
+
+ Beresford, M.P., Lord Charles, 530;
+   his suggested reforms, 536.
+
+ Blakiston, Captain, his description of the “Pillar of Heaven,” 106;
+   of trackers, 142.
+
+ Bourne, Consul, 140, 142, 149 (note), 496 (note), 499;
+   on opium smoking, 515.
+
+ Brick tea factories, 65.
+
+ Bridges, 231, 232, 252.
+
+ British Merchant, Dependence of the, upon the Chinese compradore, 20,
+    21;
+   decrease of his trade, 64.
+
+ Buffalo, The water, 232, 235.
+
+ Bullock, Mr. and Mrs., 15.
+
+
+                         C.
+
+ Callum, Mr., 348.
+
+ Canadian Mission, The, 519.
+
+ _Canons of Filial Duty_, The, 277.
+
+ “Canton opium,” 512.
+
+ Carles, Consul, 188 (note);
+   on missionaries helping trade, 47.
+
+ Cassels, Bishop, 281, 286.
+
+ Census, The taking of a, 270.
+
+ _Century of Surnames_, The, 277.
+
+ Chai-jen, 211, 390, 393, 396.
+
+ Chair travelling, 202.
+
+ Chang, 423.
+
+ Chang Chih-tung, H. E., on opium smoking, 516;
+   on education, 541;
+   influence of Western literature on, 541.
+
+ Chang-fei, The temple of, 166, 167, 168 (note).
+
+ _Chang-wo_, The s.s., 83.
+
+ Chapel of Meditations, The, 358.
+
+ Che, 145.
+
+ Che-kiang, Province of, 1;
+   use of _pahs_ or haulovers in, 32;
+   Christian converts in, 521.
+
+ Chengtu, 2, 8, 351, 352, 458, 463;
+   musk trade of, 339;
+   canals and bridges of, 355;
+   population of, 343;
+   temples of, 357;
+   wall of, 355.
+
+ Chengtu plain, The, 194, 324, 329, 334, 347, 458;
+   products of, 343, 348.
+
+ Chia-ling Fu, 3, 464, 477.
+
+ Chia-ling river, The, 3, 273, 280, 281, 314;
+   affluents of, 4;
+   walls on, 86.
+
+ Chiang-Ku, 463.
+
+ Ch’ien Tang river, The, 34.
+
+ China, administration of Government in, 532;
+   books most in demand in, 540;
+   contradictions in, 534;
+   examination centres in, 542;
+   maritime customs of, 155, 531;
+   newspapers in, 542;
+   population of, 532;
+   trade of, 531, 546–548;
+   travelling necessaries in, 56 (note);
+   village system in, 535;
+   Western literature in, 539–542.
+
+ “China ink,” 58.
+
+ China Inland Mission, The, 471, 477, 495, 519, 527.
+
+ Chinese brutality, 420;
+   Buddhism and Western civilisation, 12;
+   charities, 181–193;
+   civilisation, 12;
+   classics, 276–279;
+   cotton factory, 59;
+   curiosity, 210;
+   currency, 92;
+   delicacies, 298;
+   divinities, 193;
+   drinks and food, 300, 302;
+   education, 274 _et seq._;
+   energy and skill, 6, 10;
+   genius for self-government, 535;
+   guest-room, 175;
+   inns, 202, 205;
+   justice, 214;
+   medicines, 52;
+   mob, 219;
+   proverb, 7;
+   roads, 243;
+   social and commercial organisation, 13;
+   theatricals, 330;
+   towns, 250;
+   trading instincts, 12;
+   views of humanity, 182;
+   women, 242, 270.
+
+ Chinese bondholder, Security of the, 537.
+
+ _Chinese Gazetteer_, The, 8.
+
+ “Chinese Merchants’ Company,” The, 538.
+
+ Ching-chou Fu, 87–89.
+
+ Ching-sze-yao, 246.
+
+ Chinkiang, 3, 9;
+   benevolent institutions in, 184 _et seq._;
+   British concessions at, 56 (and note), 57;
+   grand canal at, 6;
+   guilds and trade of, 57, 58;
+   influence of the Yangtze river at, 7;
+   situation of, 56.
+
+ Chin Sha river, The, 471;
+   source and course of, 2;
+   junction with the Min, 2, 3;
+   navigable portion of, 2.
+
+ Chin-shuan river, The, 429.
+
+ Chin-tai, 224.
+
+ _Chipa_, 118, 128, 147.
+
+ _Chod-tens_, 423.
+
+ Cho-ko-ki tribe, The, 442, 443.
+
+ Christian converts, 524.
+
+ Christianity, Influence of, 48, 518, 522, 529.
+
+ Chuang-fang, 413.
+
+ Chungking, 3, 463, 486;
+   effect of opening as a treaty port, 142, 155, 180;
+   importation of cotton into, 8;
+   Mr. Little’s voyage to, 138;
+   position of, 490;
+   products of, 490;
+   rapids near, 8;
+   rise of the Yangtze at, 4, 5, 7;
+   trade of, 339, 496, 499;
+   union of Chia-ling and Yangtze at, 280.
+
+ Chung-ku-lo temple, The, 179.
+
+ Church Missionary Society’s Mission, 286, 519, 527.
+
+ Chusan archipelago, The, 55.
+
+ Chu-ti, 415, 416.
+
+ Classics, Chinese school, 276, 277.
+
+ “Cloudy Province,” The, 460, 464.
+
+ Coal-mine, A visit to a, 481.
+
+ Coffins, 313.
+
+ Colquhoun, Mr., 530, 536 (note).
+
+ Confucianism, 11, 12, 528, 532.
+
+ _Cores de Vries_, The s.s., 184.
+
+ Cormack, Mr. and Mrs., 323.
+
+ Cottons, English, 308.
+
+ Couching Dragon, Gorge of the, 338.
+
+ “Cross Beam” rapid, The, 136.
+
+ “Cycle of Cathay,” A, 541.
+
+
+                         D.
+
+ Davies, Mr., 176.
+
+ Dudgeon, Dr., 513.
+
+ Dust storms, Agency of, 5.
+
+ _Dzai-zen-pusa_, or the God of Wealth, 356.
+
+ Dzo, Herds of, 422, 425, 455.
+
+
+                         E.
+
+ Educated, Ignorance of the, 177.
+
+ Education in China, 274 _et seq._
+
+ “Eight Cliffs,” Gorge of the, 171.
+
+ Elephantiasis, A case of, 442.
+
+ Elgin, Lord, his visit to Hankow, 61.
+
+ “Emily Clayton Memorial,” The, 320.
+
+ Endacott, Mr., 83, 114, 149;
+   rock-dwellings in his garden, 467.
+
+ Erh-Wang temple, The, 340.
+
+ _Esk_, the gunboat, Accident on, 96.
+
+
+                         F.
+
+ Faber’s _Civilization East and West_, Dr., 541.
+
+ Fans, Export and manufacture of, 37, 478;
+   use of, 478.
+
+ Feng Hsiang gorge, The, 110, 151, 155, 505.
+
+ Fire wells, 273.
+
+ “Five Duties of Man,” The, 536.
+
+ “Five Hundred Disciples,” Temple of the, 38.
+
+ Foot-binding, The practice of, 240.
+
+ “Foreign smoke,” 508.
+
+ Fou river, The, 316, 319.
+
+ Fox, Mr., escorts the author over native Shanghai, 25.
+
+ Fu river, The, 280.
+
+ Fu-chow, 4, 501, 502.
+
+ Fuh-ri-gan pass, 224, 227.
+
+ Fu-ki, 366.
+
+ Fu-kien, Christianity in, 518.
+
+ Fu-ling river, The, 3, 4, 501, 502.
+
+ Funeral ceremonies, 314.
+
+ Fung Shui mystery, The, 96.
+
+
+                         G.
+
+ Gandar, Père, 6.
+
+ Gardner, Consul, 114.
+
+ Gerard, M., 101.
+
+ “Get-down-from-horse” rapid, The, 151.
+
+ Gill, Capt., 142, 357 (note), 377, 389, 393 (note), 424, 457 (note).
+
+ “Glorious Rapid,” The, 140.
+
+ “Glory of Buddha,” Pilgrimage to the, 464.
+
+ Goitre, Prevalence of, 442, 449.
+
+ “Goose-tail” rock, The, 152.
+
+ Government administration, Corruption of, 532.
+
+ Gowers, Miss, 291.
+
+ Grainger, Mr., 339, 343.
+
+ Grand Canal, The, 3;
+   at Chinkiang, 6;
+   between Hangchow and Chinkiang, 31.
+
+ “Great Gold River,” The, 424, 434, 514.
+
+ Great Plain, The, 4;
+   characteristics of, 5;
+   dust storms in, 5;
+   annual inundations on, 10, 501.
+
+ Guilds, 58, 66, 499, 534.
+
+
+                         H.
+
+ Han river, The, 4;
+   trade on, 6, 9;
+   at Hankow, 77.
+
+ Hangchow, 29–54;
+   the entrance to, 33;
+   silk looms at, 37;
+   situation of, 38;
+   the “bore,” 38;
+   wall of, 43;
+   population of, 43;
+   Japanese settlement in, 43;
+   the Medical Mission Hospitals at, 44–54.
+
+ Hang-kia, 425.
+
+ Hankow, 4, 505;
+   rise of the Yangtze at, 4, 7, 8, 62;
+   communication with, 9;
+   first impressions of, 59;
+   the Bund, 61;
+   Lord Elgin’s visit to, 61;
+   chief buildings in, 61;
+   foreign community in, 62;
+   climate of, 62;
+   currency in, 63;
+   trade in, 63, 64, 65, 66;
+   loss of English trade in, 64;
+   guilds of, 66;
+   native quarter, 67;
+   the wall and streets of, 67, 68;
+   coffin shops of, 72;
+   the harbour of, 78, 79;
+   English Wesleyan missionaries in, 81;
+   charities at, 189.
+
+ _Hankow Times_, The, 62.
+
+ Han Yang, 61.
+
+ Hart, G.C.M.G., Sir Robert, 540.
+
+ Heng-liang-tze rapid, The, 128.
+
+ “Henrietta Bird” Hospital, The, 291.
+
+ Henry of Canton, Dr., 182.
+
+ Hicks, Mr., 104.
+
+ Hill, Rev. David, 82, 181.
+
+ Hing-lung-t’an rapid, The, 140.
+
+ Hirst, Consul, on opium smoking, 515.
+
+ Hoang Ho, The, 6.
+
+ Ho, Admiral, 149.
+
+ Ho-chow, 4.
+
+ Holland, Mr., 99.
+
+ Honan, Province of, 1, 6.
+
+ Hongkew, the American settlement of Shanghai, 17.
+
+ Honton, or Fu river, The, 4.
+
+ Horsburgh, Rev. Heywood, 323, 324, 361.
+
+ Hsai-shan-po, 239.
+
+ Hsiang river, The, 4;
+   trade on, 6.
+
+ Hsin-tan rapid, The, 118, 121, 123, 127, 505.
+
+ Hsin-tan village, 121.
+
+ Huai and its tributaries, Commercial routes on the, 6.
+
+ Huang-pu river, Trade on the, 16, 24.
+
+ Hunan, Province of, 1;
+   possibilities for Lancashire trade in, 65.
+
+ “Hunan Tracts,” The, 257.
+
+ Hunan “braves,” 88.
+
+ Hupeh province, 1.
+
+ —— ranges, The, 8.
+
+
+                         I.
+
+ Ichang, 4, 505;
+   cotton imports into, 8;
+   first view of, 95;
+   foreigners in, 96;
+   junks at, 95;
+   mission buildings at, 95;
+   rapids near, 8;
+   Roman missions at, 99–101;
+   the Yangtze at, 8.
+
+ Ichang gorge, The, 106, 109, 505.
+
+ Idols, Dealers in, 71.
+
+ Indian opium, Use of, 512.
+
+ Inland mission work, 285 _et seq._
+
+ —— sanitarium, 292.
+
+ I-ren, The. See Mantze.
+
+ “Iron Coffin Gorge,” The, 150.
+
+ Itinerary, The author’s, 545.
+
+
+                         J.
+
+ James, Mr., 477.
+
+ Jamieson, Consul-General, 221.
+
+ Japanese commercial activity, 65, 91;
+   adoption of Chinese classics and Western methods, 539.
+
+ Ja-ra Peak, The, 457.
+
+ Jardine, Matheson, and Co., 18.
+
+ John, Dr. Griffith, 60.
+
+ Jsai li Sect, The, 511.
+
+ Junks, 79, 95, 138–149;
+   at Fu-chow, 502.
+
+ _Juvenile Instructor_, The, 278.
+
+
+                         K.
+
+ Kanpo, Towers at, 383.
+
+ Kan river, The, 4;
+   junction with the Yangtze, 6.
+
+ Kansuh, S.E. drainage area of, 1, 3;
+   the Mohammedan rebellion in, 530;
+   trade of, 280.
+
+ Kay, Mr., 361, 362, 393, 394, 396, 419, 420, 425, 429, 438, 441.
+
+ Kelly and Walsh, Book-store of, 20.
+
+ Kerosene oil, Import of, 66.
+
+ Kiang-peh, 490.
+
+ Kiangsi china, 66.
+
+ —— Province of, 1.
+
+ Kiangsu, Province of, 1;
+   influence of the Yangtze on, 7.
+
+ Kien-ing, Anti-Christian riots at, 518.
+
+ Kimber, Dr., 44, 54 (note).
+
+ _Kin hwa_, or “golden flowers,” 161.
+
+ King Ho stream, The, 249.
+
+ King-kiang-sze, 269.
+
+ King-mien-sze, 249.
+
+ Kin-ta river, The, 434.
+
+ “Kitten” rapid, The, 151.
+
+ Kiu-ho river, The, 244.
+
+ Kiu Hsien, 244.
+
+ Kiu-kiang, 9, 59.
+
+ Koko Nor, The, 339.
+
+ Ku river, The, 4, 280.
+
+ Kuan, 458.
+
+ Kuang Yuen, 280.
+
+ Kuan Hsien, 2, 338;
+   the city temple of, 362;
+   hostility to foreigners, 347.
+
+ Kueichow, 31, 128.
+
+ —— Province of, 1;
+   import of opium into, 507, 515;
+   demand for Western literature in, 542.
+
+ —— City, dust storm in, 5.
+
+ Kueichow Fu, or Kuei Fu, 8, 152–165;
+   inhabitants’ hostility to foreigners, 153;
+   value of _Likin_ at, 154;
+   New Year’s Day at, 160–165.
+
+ Ku-erh-kio, 415, 456.
+
+ Kukiang, Benevolent institutions at, 189.
+
+ Kung-tan river, 501.
+
+ _Kwan Yin_, the goddess of Mercy, 55.
+
+ Kwa-tung rapid, The, 118.
+
+ Kyin-pan-si pass, 244.
+
+
+                         L.
+
+ Lamas, Earnings of, 445.
+
+ Lao-ma, or “Old Horse” rapid, 166.
+
+ Lao-min-tze, 117.
+
+ Lao-pan, or skipper, The, 104, 124, 141, 145, 149.
+
+ Lawton, Rev. W., 181, 188 (note).
+
+ Liang-shan Hsien, 219, 222.
+
+ Li-fan Ting, 361, 377, 382, 384, 389, 457;
+   a custom at, 390.
+
+ _Likin_, 93, 537;
+   at Kuei Fu, 154, 155.
+
+ Limin-fu, 490.
+
+ Li Ping, Temple of, 339, 343;
+   irrigation works of, 344.
+
+ Literary examinations, 532.
+
+ Literati and Christianity, The, 525;
+   Western literature chiefly circulated amongst, 540;
+   its influence, 542, 544.
+
+ Literature, The god of, 312, 313.
+
+ —— of the West, Circulation of, 539–542.
+
+ Little, Mr. A., at Chung-King, 495;
+   his description of the “Pillar of Heaven,” 106;
+   estimate of volume of water in Yeh-tan rapid, 132;
+   his voyage on the Yangtze, 138;
+   estimate of the loss of junks, 140;
+   on Sze Chuan, 477;
+   on trackers, 142;
+   on the influence of books, 542.
+
+ —— Mrs. Archibald, 241 (note).
+
+ Litton, Mr., 280;
+   his report on Sze Chuan, 11 (note), 194;
+   on the use of “water tobacco,” 513 (note).
+
+ Lo-kia-chan, 331;
+   assault on the author at, 332.
+
+ Lolo tribes, The, 471.
+
+ Longevity, The temple of, 166.
+
+ Loti-shui, 537.
+
+ Louvets, Mons., 518 (note).
+
+ Lu, Dr., 48.
+
+ Lu-chien, 485.
+
+ Lu-chow, 3, 477.
+
+ Lu-fang, 311.
+
+ Lu Yew, the traveller, 31, 32.
+
+
+                         M.
+
+ Mackenzie’s _History of the Nineteenth Century_, 540.
+
+ Main, Dr., 33, 44, 48, 49, 50, 54 (note), 510, 513.
+
+ Maitreya Buddha, Figure of, 467.
+
+ Malcolm, Dr., 54 (note).
+
+ Manchuria, Scottish and Irish missions in, 518.
+
+ Mandarins or _kuans_, 253, 533.
+
+ Mantze cultivation, 422;
+   custom, 415;
+   dwellings, 377, 382–386, 389, 395, 408, 410, 413, 415;
+   hospitality, 413.
+
+ Mantze, The, absence of disease amongst, 442;
+   burials amongst, 445;
+   character of, 450;
+   customs of, 444;
+   dress of, 451;
+   language of, 449;
+   maladies and morals of, 449;
+   position of women amongst, 446;
+   religion of, 445;
+   trade and commerce of, 450.
+
+ Mao-erh-tiao, 302.
+
+ Martin, Rev. W., 541.
+
+ Matang, 339, 430, 455;
+   beauty of Mantze women at, 430.
+
+ Matang river, The, 433, 434.
+
+ Meadows, Mr., 534 (note).
+
+ Medical missions, 44–54.
+
+ Meichow, 463.
+
+ Mei-ling pass, The, 6.
+
+ Meitel, Bishop, 102.
+
+ Melon seeds, Games with, 299.
+
+ Mia-ko, 421–423.
+
+ Miao Chitze, or “Temple Stairs” rapid, 166.
+
+ _Middle Kingdom_, Dr. W. Williams’s, 276 (note), 314 (note).
+
+ Mien-chow, 319;
+   temple of Confucius at, 320.
+
+ Mien-chuh Hsien, 324;
+   C.M.S. House at, 329.
+
+ “Military Code,” Gorge of the, 128.
+
+ _Millenary_, The, 277.
+
+ Min, or Fu river, 337, 338, 339, 340, 460;
+   source of the, 2;
+   navigable waters of, 2;
+   junction with the River of Golden Sand, 3;
+   importance in the eyes of Chinese geographers, 3;
+   affluents of, 3;
+   traffic on, 8;
+   bamboo bridges over, 365;
+   character of, 366;
+   branches of, 374, 426;
+   villages on, 375;
+   junction with the Ya and Tatu, 464;
+   rock-dwellings on, 467, 468, 471.
+
+ Min gorge, The, 367.
+
+ Mission hospitals, 44–54;
+   Dr. Christie’s at Mukden, 49 (note);
+   patients in, 52.
+
+ Missionaries, Attitude of Chinese towards, 528;
+   protection afforded to, 258;
+   troubles of, 320.
+
+ Mitan gorge, The, 110, 128.
+
+ Money annoyances, 212.
+
+ Morphia, Importation of, 510.
+
+ Morrison, Dr., of the _Times_, 172.
+
+ Mosquitoes, 478.
+
+ Mou-kung Ting road, The, 373.
+
+ Moule, Bishop, 44.
+
+ Mount Omi, 463.
+
+ Mukden, 533 (note);
+   suicides in, 51.
+
+ Musk trade, 339.
+
+
+                         N.
+
+ Nan river, The, 463.
+
+ Nanking, 9, 59.
+
+ Nan-mu-yurh, 150.
+
+ Nan-po glen, The, 505.
+
+ Nan-pu, 274, 280.
+
+ Nan-to, 110, 117.
+
+ Nganhui, Province of, 1;
+   manufacture of “China ink” in, 58.
+
+ Nganking, 9, 59.
+
+ Niang-tze-ling pass, 366.
+
+ Ningpo, 55.
+
+ —— varnish, 44, 72.
+
+ Nitrate of soda, 381.
+
+ Niu-kan gorge, The, 110, 118.
+
+ Niu-kau-tan rapid, The, 128.
+
+
+                         O.
+
+ _Odes for Children_, 277.
+
+ Official visiting, 459.
+
+ Omi-shan precipice, The, 4;
+   pilgrimages to, 366, 464.
+
+ “Open door” Policy, The, 537.
+
+ Opium poppy and its use, 348, 506–517.
+
+ Orphan rocks, The, 59.
+
+
+                         P.
+
+ _Pah_, The, or haulover, 4, 32.
+
+ _Pai-fangs_, 198, 218, 252.
+
+ Pai-shui Chiang, 280.
+
+ ——river, The, 4, 280.
+
+ Pa-ko-shan, 490.
+
+ Paoning Fu, 86, 280, 282;
+   solitary journey to, 194;
+   result of using opium at, 507;
+   church building at, 520;
+   mission stations at, 526.
+
+ Parkes, Sir Harry, 544.
+
+ Passport difficulties, 397, 399.
+
+ Passports, 211, 441, 452.
+
+ Peh-shi, Trade in coal at, 481;
+   trees at, 485 (note).
+
+ Peh-teo-shan pass, 390, 405.
+
+ Pei-shih, 151.
+
+ Peking Government, Weakness of the, 13, 14.
+
+ Peng Hsien, 333, 334.
+
+ Peng-shan Hsien, 463.
+
+ Phillips, Mr. and Mrs., 329.
+
+ Photographic difficulties, 156.
+
+ Pigou, Mr., 24.
+
+ “Pillar of Heaven,” The, 106.
+
+ Ping Shan, 2, 471.
+
+ Ping-shu gorge, The, 121, 124.
+
+ _Poyang_, The s.s., 56;
+   runs down a junk, 59.
+
+ Poyang lake, The, 4;
+   area of, 6.
+
+ Prayer-flags, 445.
+
+ —— wheels, 408, 422, 445.
+
+ “Prince’s Temple,” The, 357.
+
+ Prjevalsky, Colonel, his exploration of the Yangtze, 2.
+
+ Protestant missionaries, 102, 518 _et seq._
+
+ Pruen, Dr., 291.
+
+ Putu, The Island of, 55.
+
+ Pu-tung Point, 17.
+
+ Pyramid Hill, 96.
+
+
+                         R.
+
+ Railroads, Probable influence of, 543.
+
+ Ramsay, Miss, 175–177.
+
+ “Red Basin,” The, 16, 63, 246, 247, 248, 264.
+
+ Reed-beds of the Yangtze, 85.
+
+ Reifsnyder, Dr., 540.
+
+ Religious dramas, 329.
+
+ _Review of the Times_, The, 541.
+
+ Rhubarb, Importation of, 339.
+
+ Rice-fields, 7.
+
+ Richards, Mr. Timothy, 540.
+
+ _River of Golden Sand_, Captain Gill’s, 357 (note).
+
+ Rock-dwellings, 467, 468, 471.
+
+ Roman missions, 99–103, 523.
+
+ Rong-Kia river, The, 433, 434.
+
+ Rope bridges, 369.
+
+ Rosthorn, Mr. Von, 3, 8, 395, 441.
+
+
+                         S.
+
+ Sai-pei-tu pass, 228.
+
+ Salisbury, The Marquess of, on England’s policy in China, 538.
+
+ Salt boilers, 152.
+
+ —— wells, 273.
+
+ Sampans, 85, 124, 140.
+
+ San-tsan-pu, 202.
+
+ Sar-pu, 224.
+
+ Schjöltz, Mr., 96.
+
+ Secret societies, 524.
+
+ Shan-Shang-Ren. See Mantze.
+
+ Shanghai, Astor House at, 21;
+   author’s return to, 505;
+   Benevolent Society at, 22;
+   British and American settlements in, 19, 23;
+   Chinese element in, 18, 24–26;
+   country round, 5, 15, 16;
+   French settlement in, 23;
+   hospitality in, 21;
+   impressions upon landing at, 17;
+   Ladies’ Benevolent Society at, 22;
+   missions at, 22;
+   why called “the model settlement,” 19;
+   municipality of, 19;
+   Royal Asiatic Society’s branch at, 23;
+   Sailors’ Home of Rest, at, 22;
+   Women’s Hospital in, 540.
+
+ Shang-wa-li-tze market-place, 296.
+
+ Shanjin, 31.
+
+ Shan-rang Ho river, The, 266.
+
+ Shan-rang-sar, 224.
+
+ Shan-si, Banking talent in, 499.
+
+ Shantung, S.E. drainage area of, 1.
+
+ Shao Hsing, 55, 161.
+
+ Sha-shih, 4, 85, 86, 87;
+   character of the Yangtze at, 6;
+   commercial routes from, 93;
+   cottons of, 308;
+   fish market at, 90;
+   missions in, 91;
+   pagoda at, 89;
+   population of, 89;
+   refugees at, 89;
+   trade of, 91, 92.
+
+ Shen-kia-chao, Pass of, 214.
+
+ Shensi, trade route to, 93.
+
+ Shensi, S.E. drainage area of, 1.
+
+ Shih-men, 482.
+
+ Shi-Tze-Ping pass, 424.
+
+ Shih-pao-chai, 502.
+
+ _Shui Li Fu_, or “Prefect of the Waterways,” The, 347.
+
+ Shun, The Emperor, 522.
+
+ Shuo-chiao, 374;
+   scarcity of food at, 375.
+
+ Shu river, The, 4.
+
+ _Siao Hioh_, The, 278.
+
+ Siao-Ho, The, 361, 366, 377, 384, 395, 404, 409, 424, 455;
+   gorge of, 378.
+
+ Siao-Kiao, 249.
+
+ Sifans, The, 443, 449.
+
+ Si-hu, 38, 49.
+
+ Silk, Manufacture of, 37.
+
+ Silver Island, 56.
+
+ Sing-an hamlet, 467.
+
+ Sing-fang Hsien, 348.
+
+ Sing-king-pa Hsien, 266.
+
+ Sin-tien-tze, 292, 296.
+
+ Sin-tu Hsien, 311, 348.
+
+ Sin-wen-ping, 371.
+
+ “Sleeping Buddha,” Temple of the, 471.
+
+ Small River, The, 424.
+
+ Smith’s _Chinese Characteristics_, Rev. Arthur, 181, 183, 192.
+
+ Snowstorm, A blinding, 426.
+
+ “Snowy Mountains,” The, 424.
+
+ Soil, god of the, Shrines to the, 344.
+
+ Soldiers, 81.
+
+ Somo, 377, 441;
+   absence of bird-life in, 452;
+   the people of, 443;
+   product of, 450.
+
+ —— Castle, 452.
+
+ Spearmen, An escort of, 433.
+
+ “Sphere of Influence” Policy, The, 530, 537.
+
+ Squibb, Dr., 320.
+
+ Stevenson, Mrs. Owen, 104, 135, 136, 168.
+
+ Su-chow creek; 17, 23, 29.
+
+ Suicide in China, 51.
+
+ Sui-fu, 2, 3, 429, 471;
+   rapids between and Kueichow Fu, 8.
+
+ Su-ma-tou, 463.
+
+ Sun Bridge mountain, The, 2.
+
+ Sundius, Mr., 43.
+
+ Sung-pan-ting, 339.
+
+ —— road, 373.
+
+ Sunstroke in Sze Chuan, 478.
+
+ Superstitions, 122, 162, 188.
+
+ Sze Chuan, Area, climate, population, etc., of, 9–11, 532;
+   coal-fields of, 4, 224, 239;
+   cotton fabrics of, 8, 91;
+   exports from, 149 (note);
+   fanaticism in, 477;
+   famine in, 89;
+   demand for foreign books in, 542;
+   inns in, 251 (note);
+   junks of, 95, 138–149;
+   markets of, 265, 266;
+   objection to open chairs in, 196;
+   oil trade of, 71;
+   opium exports from, 514;
+   _pai-fangs_ of, 198;
+   prevalence of sunstroke in, 478;
+   poppy cultivation in, 506;
+   province of, 1, 194;
+   the rebellion in, 530;
+   “Red Basin” of, 16, 63, 246–248, 264;
+   resources of, 3, 247, 531;
+   revenue, sources of, 155;
+   sale of drugs in, 459;
+   sale of girls in, 270;
+   salt exports from, 153;
+   silver of, 63;
+   travelling in, 207;
+   villages in, 264;
+   women of, 176;
+   women’s dress in, 242.
+
+
+                         T.
+
+ Ta Chin, or Ta Kin-Shuan River, 434.
+
+ Ta-fan, 386.
+
+ Ta-ho, The, 377.
+
+ Tai-hu lake, Area of the, 6.
+
+ _Tai-kung_, or bowsman, The, 141, 142, 145, 147.
+
+ Taiping Fu, 59.
+
+ Taiping Rebellion, The, 31, 59.
+
+ _Tai-wan-ti_, The, 145.
+
+ Ta-Kin Ho river, The, 429.
+
+ Ta-ling, 151.
+
+ Ta-lu road, The, 311, 313.
+
+ Ta-miao, Temples of, 316.
+
+ Tang-pa mountain, The, 424.
+
+ Taoism, 11, 12.
+
+ Ta-tan rapid, The, 118.
+
+ Tatu, or Tung river, The, 434, 464.
+
+ Ta-tien-lu, 441.
+
+ _T’au-lao_, or head tracker, 141.
+
+ _T’au-tai-kung_, or pilot, 141.
+
+ “Tea Extract,” 511.
+
+ Theatrical companies, 330.
+
+ Thompson, Mr. and Mrs., 175, 176, 190 (note), 196, 205, 207.
+
+ “Three Religions,” The, 525;
+   temple of, 178.
+
+ “Three Water Guardians,” The, 171.
+
+ “Throne of Snow,” The, 404.
+
+ Tibetan dogs, 430.
+
+ —— drugs, 338.
+
+ Tien-kia-miao, 307.
+
+ Tiger Teeth gorge, 94.
+
+ Ting-hai, 55.
+
+ Ting Library, The, 34.
+
+ Torii of Japan, The, 219.
+
+ To river, 3.
+
+ _T’ou-jen_, The, 444.
+
+ Towers, Ancient, 383.
+
+ Trackers, 132, 135, 136, 141, 142, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149;
+   clothing of, 146;
+   at dinner, 159.
+
+ Trackers’ villages, 118, 123.
+
+ Trade requirements, 308.
+
+ Travelling outfit, 195.
+
+ _Trimetrical Classic_, The, 276.
+
+ Tsa-ku-lao, 395, 457;
+   population of, 400;
+   situation of, 399.
+
+ Tsing-pu hills, The, 5.
+
+ Tsu-ku-shan pass, 429, 455.
+
+ Tsung-ming, The island of, 7.
+
+ Tung or Tatu river, The, 3, 282.
+
+ Tungting lake, The, 4;
+   junction of the Hsiang and Yuan at, 6;
+   traffic on, 64, 65, 84.
+
+ Tung Yangtze cataract, 166.
+
+ _Tu-tze_, The, 443.
+
+ _Twenty-four Filials_, The, 277.
+
+ Tze-tung Hsien, 312, 316.
+
+
+                         U.
+
+ _Use of Opium_, by Dr. Dudgeon, 513.
+
+
+                         V.
+
+ Vale, Mr., of Chengtu, 362, 372.
+
+ Vegetarians, 525.
+
+ Village system, The, 535.
+
+
+                         W.
+
+ _Wai-pi-ku_ boats, 501.
+
+ Wan-cheng Ti Dyke, 85, 86.
+
+ Wan Hsien, 104;
+   charities of, 190;
+   China Inland Mission house at, 172;
+   cotton trade of, 180;
+   first sight of, 171;
+   junk-building at, 138, 179;
+   population and trade of, 172, 178;
+   temple of, 178, 179;
+   the Yangtze at, 5.
+
+ War, The God of, 312.
+
+ “Water tobacco,” The use of, 513.
+
+ Waterwheels on the Min, 463.
+
+ Weichou, 366, 367, 369, 377, 378, 382;
+   nitre works at, 381.
+
+ Wei-gua, 395.
+
+ Wen-chuan Hsien, 376.
+
+ Wen-shu-Yuan Temple, 357.
+
+ Went-Zu, Temple of, 285.
+
+ Wesleyan missionaries, 102.
+
+ Wheelbarrow traffic, 324.
+
+ Widows, care of, 187, 188.
+
+ Widows’ arches, 198.
+
+ Willett, Mr., 500.
+
+ Williams, Rev. E. O., 281, 285, 296.
+
+ —— Dr. Wells, 164 (note), 182, 240, 276 (note).
+
+ “Wind-box” gorge. See Feng Hsiang.
+
+ “Witch’s Mountain” gorge, The, 150, 151.
+
+ Women’s work in China, 526.
+
+ Woodruff, Mr., 99.
+
+ Woo-sung, 15, 16.
+
+ Wu-chang, 59, 61.
+
+ Wuhu, 9;
+   trade of, 58;
+   benevolent institutions at, 188.
+
+ Wu-lien, 312.
+
+ _Wupans_, 124, 140, 460, 482, 500.
+
+ Wushan, 151.
+
+ —— gorge, The, 110, 150.
+
+ Wu-sueh, 6.
+
+
+                         Y.
+
+ Ya, The, 3, 464, 485.
+
+ Ya-chow, the centre of the brick tea trade, 3.
+
+ Yak, Herds of, 425, 455.
+
+ _Yamen_ runners, 81, 196, 211.
+
+ _Yamens_, 26, 81, 261.
+
+ Yangchow, 9, 59.
+
+ Yangtze Kiang, Mouth of the, 16.
+
+ Yangtze river, alluvial deposit of, 7, 16;
+   annual rise and fall of, 4, 5, 496;
+   ascent of British fleet up, 7;
+   change in character of, 6;
+   craft on, 501;
+   a flood on, 482;
+   at Ichang, 95;
+   influence of the tide on, 7;
+   junction with the To, 477;
+   length of, 2;
+   navigable affluents of, 3, 4, 471;
+   navigable portion of, 8;
+   reed-beds in, 85;
+   source of, 2;
+   at Sui Fu, 471, 472;
+   trade on, 8, 9, 10;
+   various names of, 3;
+   volume of water in, 7.
+
+ Yangtze, The Lower, trade on, 9.
+
+ —— The Upper, bed of, 117;
+   coal workings on, 131;
+   life on, 138;
+   perils on, 149;
+   rapids of, 114 _et seq._;
+   steam navigation on, 5;
+   trackers on, 118 _et seq._;
+   trade on, 8, 9, 10;
+   travelling on, 104.
+
+ _Yangtze Pilot_, The, 149.
+
+ Yangtze valley, Bridges in, 10;
+   British treaty rights in, 14;
+   commerce of, 15;
+   drainage area, 1;
+   inhabitants of, 10, 11;
+   as a “sphere of interest,” 13.
+
+ Yao-tsai village, 121.
+
+ Yates, Dr., 523.
+
+ Yeh-tan rapid, The, 128, 131, 505.
+
+ Yellow river, Outbreak of the, 31.
+
+ Yellow Sea, The, 16.
+
+ _Yen-tun_, or “smoke towers,” 171.
+
+ “_Yin_,” The, 509.
+
+ Ying-san Hsien, 253, 261.
+
+ Yo-chow monastery, 84.
+
+ Yo-chow Fu city, 84.
+
+ Yokohama Specie Bank, Shanghai, 21.
+
+ Yuan Ho, The river, 4;
+   trade on, 6.
+
+ _Yulows_, 110, 145.
+
+ Yungtze, 93.
+
+ Yun-i, 236.
+
+ Yun-Yang Hsien, 166;
+   Roman Christians at, 168.
+
+ Yunnan, Province of, 1;
+   valleys of, 247;
+   importation of opium into, 507, 515.
+
+
+                                PLYMOUTH
+                        WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON
+                                PRINTERS
+
+[Illustration:
+
+  SKETCH MAP OF THE YANGTZE BASIN SHOWING M^{RS}. BISHOP’S ROUTE.
+
+  Stanford’s Geog^l Estab^t, London.
+
+  _The red line indicates the Author’s route_
+
+  London: John Murray, Albemarle Street.
+]
+
+-----
+
+Footnote 1:
+
+  Politically, as H.M.’s Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
+  defined it in the House of Commons on May 9th, 1899, it is “the
+  provinces adjoining the Yangtze River and Honan and Che Kiang.”
+
+Footnote 2:
+
+  The lowest latitude which it is believed to reach is 26° N., east of
+  its junction with the Yalung at its great southerly bend, and its
+  junction with the ocean is in lat. 31° N.
+
+Footnote 3:
+
+  _The Geographical Journal_, September, 1898, p. 227: “The Yangtze
+  Chiang,” W. R. CARLES, H.B.M.’s Consul at Swatow.
+
+Footnote 4:
+
+  _Land of the Lamas_, p. 218.
+
+Footnote 5:
+
+  It is the Mur-usu (“Tortuous River”) in Tibet, the Chin or Kin Sha
+  where it is the boundary between Tibet and China, and from the
+  junction of the Yalung to Sui Fu the Chin Ho. Between Sui Fu and Wan
+  Hsien it is called the Ta Ho (“Great River”) and the Min Chiang. At
+  and below Sha-shih it is the Ching Chiang, and below Hankow for 400
+  miles it is called the Chiang, Ch’ang Chiang (“Long River”), or
+  Ta-Kuan Chiang (“Great Official River”).
+
+Footnote 6:
+
+  Lest it should be supposed that I am taking an unduly favourable view
+  of the position of the Chinese, and especially of the Chinese of Sze
+  Chuan, under their government, I fortify my opinion by quoting that of
+  Mr. Litton, British acting consul at Chungking. He writes in his
+  official report to our Foreign Office, presented to both Houses of
+  Parliament in May, 1899, thus:—“The government, though obstructive and
+  unintelligent, is not as a rule actively oppressive; one may travel
+  for days in West China without seeing any signs of that reserve of
+  force which we associate with the policeman round the corner. The
+  country people of Sze Chuan manage their own affairs through their
+  headmen, and get on very well in spite of, rather than because of, the
+  central government at Chengtu. So long as a native keeps out of the
+  law courts, and does not attempt any startling innovations on the
+  customs of his ancestors, he finds in the general love of law and
+  order very fair security that he will enjoy the fruit of his labour.”
+  This general disposition towards law and order, though it may have
+  something to do with race, is undoubtedly on the whole the result of
+  the teachings of Confucius.
+
+Footnote 7:
+
+  For Shanghai and the other open ports, it is the gross value of trade,
+  exports and imports, including re-exports, which is given in this
+  volume.
+
+Footnote 8:
+
+  Yachting Club, Golf Club, Athletic Club, Lawn Tennis Club, Polo Club,
+  Volunteer Club, Boating Club, Bowling Club, Swimming Club, Cricket
+  Club, Blackbird Club, Drag Hound Club, Steeplechase Club, Racquet
+  Club, Racing Club, Rifle Club, Fives Court, Gymnasium, Fire Flies
+  Society, Lurderfatel Society, Amateur Dramatic Company; and of a
+  graver cast, the Philharmonic and Photographic Societies, the Royal
+  Asiatic Society, the Fine Art Society, etc., etc. (List by W. S.
+  Percival, Esq.)
+
+Footnote 9:
+
+  Situated a few miles from the junction of the Huang-pu with the
+  Yangtze, in lat. 31° 10′ N. and long. 121° 30′ E., nearly on the same
+  parallel as Charleston and Alexandria, the port is the great outlet of
+  the commerce of the rich and populous provinces of Central China, and
+  the sole outlet of that of Sze Chuan, besides communicating by
+  waterways with Hangchow, Soochow, and other great cities on the Grand
+  Canal, and with cities innumerable by canals innumerable.
+
+Footnote 10:
+
+  Hangchow, though not geographically in the drainage area of the
+  Yangtze, as the capital of Chekiang, which has been declared
+  officially to be within our “sphere of interest” in the Yangtze
+  Valley, is treated of here as being specially interesting. Of Ningpo,
+  Wenchow, and Soochow, open ports in the same province, merely the
+  _net_ value of their total net trade for 1898 is given, along with
+  that of Hangchow:—
+
+                          Ningpo   £2,162,780
+                          Wenchow     215,669
+                          Soochow     229,113
+                          Hangchow  1,199,022
+
+Footnote 11:
+
+  Another of the crack mission hospitals of the East, of which I had
+  lengthened opportunities of judging, is Dr. Christie’s hospital at
+  Mukden, Manchuria, which has been largely instrumental in bringing
+  about similar results in the friendliness of the officials and people.
+
+Footnote 12:
+
+  In a paper called _Medical Missions at Home and Abroad_ for 1898, p.
+  70, the reader will find such experiences very graphically told by Dr.
+  Malcolm.
+
+Footnote 13:
+
+  These hospitals and dispensaries under the care of Dr. Main and Dr.
+  Kimber treated 47,000 patients in 1898, of which number 1000 were
+  in-patients, and besides these 187 would-be suicides received back the
+  unwelcome gift of life. These benevolent Christian institutions
+  comprise hospitals for men and women, an opium refuge, three leper
+  hospitals, two convalescent homes, and a home for the children of
+  lepers.
+
+Footnote 14:
+
+  In China the necessaries of existence, food, clothing, shoes,
+  waterproofs, and travelling-trunks and baskets are always to be
+  procured, and there, as everywhere, if a traveller uses native
+  arrangements, he has much less difficulty in getting them handled or
+  repaired.
+
+Footnote 15:
+
+  Concession is not, as is supposed by many, a synonym for settlement. A
+  concession is a piece of land leased by the Queen’s Government and let
+  to Western merchants, a stipulation being made that the land is not to
+  be sub-let to Chinese, while a settlement is an area within which
+  Europeans may lease land directly from the native proprietors. In both
+  cases the Queen’s Government stipulates for the right of policing and
+  controlling the land, and delegates it to a council of resident
+  merchants.
+
+Footnote 16:
+
+  A specimen of guild rules is given in Appendix A.
+
+Footnote 17:
+
+  For brief statistics of the trade of the Yangtze open ports see
+  Appendix B.
+
+Footnote 18:
+
+  For minor causes of the loss of the import trade see _Trade of Central
+  and Southern China_, BOURNE, Foreign Office, May, 1898.
+
+Footnote 19:
+
+  In 1868 the average consumption of tea per head of the population of
+  the United Kingdom was 3·52 lbs., of which 93 per cent. was Chinese
+  tea, and 7 per cent. Indian. Since that date the consumption has risen
+  to an average of 5·73 per head of the population, but only 11 per
+  cent. is Chinese tea, while the tea grown in India and Ceylon is 89
+  per cent.
+
+Footnote 20:
+
+  “There is no harbour in the world where one may see so many craft as
+  at Hankow. Anchored in several rows, they reach for miles along the
+  river banks.”—Consul BULLOCK, _The Geography of China_.
+
+Footnote 21:
+
+  Foreign Office Report No. 2086, May, 1898.
+
+Footnote 22:
+
+  It is usual for the missionaries of the China Inland Mission and for
+  those of the SZE CHUAN mission of the C.M.S. to live in Chinese houses
+  actually among the city populations, a course which is considerably
+  criticised on grounds of health and safety.
+
+Footnote 23:
+
+  Diplomatic and Consular Reports, No. 458, China, Foreign Office, May,
+  1898.
+
+Footnote 24:
+
+  _Through the Yangtze Gorges_, A. J. LITTLE, p. 246.
+
+Footnote 25:
+
+  Consul Bourne “risks” an estimate of the value of goods exported from
+  Sze Chuan by this route at £3,300,000 annually, while imports coming
+  up the rapids and passing through the Imperial Customs amounted to
+  £1,776,586 in 1897. The freight on cotton goods from Ichang to
+  Chungking is estimated at £3 8_s._ 6_d._ per ton, a scarcely
+  appreciable increase in cost on every yard after a transit of 500
+  miles.
+
+Footnote 26:
+
+  These pits are reported as producing 132 lbs. of salt daily each.
+  Captain Gill learned at Kuei Fu that SZE CHUAN salt brings in a
+  revenue of about £2,000,000 sterling annually, but this seems
+  incredible, as it would make the annual salt production of the
+  province about 237,946 tons.
+
+Footnote 27:
+
+  Dr. WELLS WILLIAMS, on p. 812 of _The Middle Kingdom_, vol. i., says
+  that a literary man would have such a sentence as—
+
+  “May I be so learned as to secrete in my mind three myriads of
+     volumes”;
+  “May I know the affairs of the world for six thousand years.”
+
+  While a shopkeeper would adorn his door with such mottoes as these—
+
+    “May profits be like the morning sun rising on the clouds”;
+    “May wealth increase like the morning tide which brings the rain”;
+    “Manage your occupation according to truth and loyalty.”
+    “Hold on to benevolence and rectitude in all your trading.”
+
+  Dr. Williams adds that the influence of these and countless similar
+  mottoes which are to be seen throughout the land is inestimable, and
+  is usually for good. At all events it is better to have a high ideal
+  than a low one.
+
+Footnote 28:
+
+  Although the Temple of Chang-fei stands 200 feet above the river at
+  low water, the one which preceded it was carried away in a great flood
+  in 1870, when the water actually rose to the height of the present
+  roof. The present gorgeous structure cost 10,000 taels.
+
+Footnote 29:
+
+  The volume from which this picture was taken and enlarged was printed
+  in Shanghai.
+
+Footnote 30:
+
+  This term “dog-faced” apparently does not bear the meaning which we
+  put on it, for the woman in the illustration on page 496 with a
+  head-dress of solid silver and heavy white silk from the mountains of
+  FU KIEN is a member of what the Fu-chow Chinese call “dog-faced”
+  tribes.
+
+Footnote 31:
+
+  The charities of China have been several times alluded to, and it
+  seems fitting before leaving Wan Hsien, where they are both numerous
+  and active, to devote a special chapter to them. The sketch is an
+  imperfect and limited one, but it may help to point the way to a field
+  of very interesting inquiry.
+
+Footnote 32:
+
+  A mow, roughly speaking, is about one-seventh of an acre.
+
+Footnote 33:
+
+  I am indebted for most of the foregoing facts to Mr. W. R. Carles,
+  lately H.B.M.’s consul at Chinkiang, and to the very careful
+  investigations made by the Rev. W. W. Lawton for the Christian
+  Literary Association of Chinkiang.
+
+Footnote 34:
+
+  For these very interesting facts regarding Wan, I am indebted to my
+  host there, Mr. Thompson, of the China Inland Mission. Statistics are
+  not available.
+
+Footnote 35:
+
+  I must also mention, in extenuation of sundry faults of which I am
+  conscious, that I went to Western China solely for interest and
+  pleasure, and not with any intention of writing a book, and that,
+  instead of having careful and copious notes, I have only journal
+  letters to rely upon.
+
+Footnote 36:
+
+  This word, which we apply universally to Chinese officials, is
+  Portuguese. The Chinese designation is _kuan_.
+
+Footnote 37:
+
+  I was told afterwards that a foreign missionary in an open chair had
+  passed through not long before, and being annoyed at the curiosity and
+  crowding of the people, had gone with a complaint to the _yamen_, and
+  it was supposed by some of my friends that they were avenging this on
+  me.
+
+Footnote 38:
+
+  I cannot give the local distances in English miles, because, though
+  the Chinese _li_ is 1818 English feet, the _li_ of the mountain and
+  the plain, and even of the good and bad road, differ in length.
+
+Footnote 39:
+
+  I was present at a “drawing-room meeting” in Shanghai when Mrs.
+  Archibald Little, of Chungking, took the humane initiative of
+  establishing an “Anti-Footbinding Society,” which has now many
+  branches, and is undoubtedly commending its aims to many men of the
+  intelligent classes. The mission schools for girls are in general
+  absolutely against the crippling process, and the wives of many of the
+  younger Christians have “big feet.”
+
+Footnote 40:
+
+  See Mr. Bourne’s Report on the Trade of Central and Southern China,
+  Foreign Office, May, 1898.
+
+Footnote 41:
+
+  I must repeat that there are very good inns in SZE CHUAN in the
+  cities, _i.e._ good for China, and at the regular stages, but, besides
+  that I was avoiding cities because of the rough element which they
+  contain, I was travelling less than the usual distance daily, and had
+  to put up with the Chinese equivalent of the “hedge alehouse”
+  accommodation, which the ordinary travelling Chinese would have
+  disdained.
+
+Footnote 42:
+
+  These are all attainable in scholarly translations, and, along with
+  chapter ix. of Dr. Wells Williams’ invaluable volumes, _The Middle
+  Kingdom_, should be read by everyone who takes more than a merely
+  superficial or commercial interest in China.
+
+Footnote 43:
+
+  A translation of these is given in the _Chinese Repository_ (vol. vi.,
+  p. 131).
+
+Footnote 44:
+
+  Dr. WELLS WILLIAMS, _Middle Kingdom_.
+
+Footnote 45:
+
+  Funeral ceremonies and superstitions are given in detail in _The
+  Middle Kingdom_, vol. ii., p. 244.
+
+Footnote 46:
+
+  A detailed description of this building is given by Captain Gill in
+  _The River of Golden Sand_, vol. ii., p. 13. Chengtu has been often
+  visited, and two or three times described by English travellers, so
+  that I consider myself exonerated from giving more than mere notes of
+  my impressions of it.
+
+Footnote 47:
+
+  The fall of the Min between its bifurcation at Weichou and Kuan Hsien,
+  taking the altitudes of these two towns as the basis of the
+  calculation and the Chinese _li_ at its average length, is
+  twenty-seven feet to the mile, but from Weichou to Li-fan Ting it is
+  no less than forty-five feet to the mile.
+
+Footnote 48:
+
+  I could not hear of any but Captain Gill, and three Russians a few
+  months before, and all had reasons of their own for doing so.
+
+Footnote 49:
+
+  A pony had rolled on my hypsometer, and I spent much of the day at
+  Li-fan in constructing another with the aid of a tinsmith. It was but
+  a rude construction, but as it made the height of Li-fan come to
+  within ten feet of that given by Captain Gill, I venture to present
+  the altitudes of Tsa-ku-lao and a few other places as approximations
+  to the truth.
+
+Footnote 50:
+
+  In this case a _Tu-tze_ is a tribal chief, recognised as such by the
+  Chinese Government.
+
+Footnote 51:
+
+  Captain Gill met with a mountain of the same name on his Tibetan
+  journey, so it would appear that Ja-ra is a Tibetan name. I could not
+  unearth any Chinese name for the mountain.
+
+Footnote 52:
+
+  A careful and deeply interesting account of these excavations is given
+  by Mr. Baber in “A Journey of Exploration in Western _Sze Chuan_.” See
+  _Supplementary Papers_, vol. i., _Royal Geographical Society_.
+
+Footnote 53:
+
+  Among the trees and plants behind Peh-Shih, which were interesting as
+  growing in one locality, were: the orange, pommeloe, pomegranate,
+  apricot, peach, apple, pear, plum, persimmon (_Diospyros Virginiana_),
+  loquat (_Eriobotrya Japonica_), date-plum (_Diospyros Kaki_), the
+  Chinese date tree (_Rhamnus Theezans_), walnut, Spanish chestnuts, the
+  _Ficus religiosa_, palms, bamboos, cypresses, pines, the “varnish
+  tree” (_Rhus-vernicifera_), the Tung oil tree (_Aleurites cordata_),
+  mulberry, oak, the _Cudrania triloba_, much used for feeding young
+  silkworms, a hibiscus, plane, the _Sterculia platinifolia_, the
+  _Paulonia Imperialis_, three varieties of soap trees (_Acacia negata_,
+  _Gymnocladus Sinensis_, and _Gleditschia Sinensis_), the tallow tree,
+  and very many others, my specimens of which were so destroyed by damp
+  as to render subsequent botanical identification impossible. Hemp was
+  considerably grown, and of two economic shrubs, both new to me, there
+  were several patches, the _Boehmeria nivea_, from the fibre of which
+  grass cloth is manufactured, and the _Fatsia papyrifera_, from the
+  pith of which rice paper is made.
+
+Footnote 54:
+
+  The estimated distance to Cheng-tu by the windings of the rivers is:—
+
+                 Chung-king to Luchow        125 miles.
+                 Luchow to Sui Fu             87   „
+                 Sui Fu to Chia-ling Fu      130   „
+                 Chia-ling Fu to Cheng-tu Fu 133   „
+                                             ———
+                            Total            475 miles.
+
+Footnote 55:
+
+  Mr. Bourne estimates the imports of cotton and cotton goods as
+  follows:—
+
+                Raw cotton                      £500,000
+                Native piece goods, home spun  1,000,000
+                Indian yarn                      600,000
+                Lancashire cottons               300,000
+                                              ——————————
+                                              £2,400,000
+
+  And the exports, which are chiefly raw or half-manufactured produce,
+  as follows:—
+
+ Opium                                                        £1,800,000
+ Salt                                                            300,000
+ Drugs                                                           400,000
+ Silk                                                            200,000
+ Miscellaneous articles, insect wax, tobacco, sugar, musk,       600,000
+   wool-skins, hides, feathers, bristles, etc.
+                                                              ——————————
+                                                              £3,300,000
+
+  The returns for 1898, not yet out, are expected to show a very
+  considerable increase.
+
+Footnote 56:
+
+  Readers are referred to sections 28 to 33 of Mr. Bourne’s report on
+  _The Trade of Central and Southern China_, May, 1898. (Eyre and
+  Spottiswoode.)
+
+Footnote 57:
+
+  In order to avoid the fragmentariness of references to the Opium Poppy
+  and Protestant Missions, at intervals throughout this volume, I have
+  adopted the more convenient arrangement of giving a chapter on each of
+  these subjects.
+
+Footnote 58:
+
+  _Report of a Journey to North Sze Chuan_, 1898. By Mr. G. J. L.
+  LITTON, of H.B.M.’s Chinese Consular Service.
+
+Footnote 59:
+
+  This is not from any distrust of the accuracy of their facts, for no
+  foreigners know the lives and ways of the Chinese so well as they do,
+  but simply because many people think that they are prejudiced.
+
+Footnote 60:
+
+  “This year the value of foreign goods imported amounted to more than
+  eighty million [taels]. The export of Chinese products might be about
+  fifty million [taels] or more. The foreign drug [_i.e._, opium] was
+  valued at more than thirty million [taels]. Thus there was a leakage.
+  China is not impoverished by commerce, but the impoverishment comes
+  from the consumption of opium.”
+
+Footnote 61:
+
+  In _Les Missions Catholiques_, vol. xxiii. (1891), M. Louvets returns
+  the number of Roman Catholic converts in Pechili, Manchuria, Mongolia,
+  and Shantung as 73,620 in 1870, and in 1890, including 2000 in Kansuh,
+  as 155,900.
+
+Footnote 62:
+
+  A servant of my own, not a Christian, gave a quaint reason for liking
+  to serve missionaries—“I never get boots at my head in the foreign
+  teachers’ houses.”
+
+Footnote 63:
+
+  If I seem to pronounce opinions _ex cathedrâ_ on very insufficient
+  bases, it is owing to the avoidance of the constant repetition of the
+  modest phrase “I think,” which in nearly all cases must be understood.
+
+Footnote 64:
+
+  Hundreds of temples, however, had undergone recent and thorough
+  repair.
+
+Footnote 65:
+
+  See Appendix B.
+
+Footnote 66:
+
+  _Imperial Maritime Customs. Report on the Trade of China for 1898._
+  King & Son. London.
+
+Footnote 67:
+
+  A couplet from a well-known anonymous lampoon, largely current as an
+  expression of popular opinion, is translated thus:—
+
+                    “Three hands has every magistrate,
+                    And every officer three feet.”
+
+  (The hands to clutch at bribes, the feet to run away from the enemy!)
+
+Footnote 68:
+
+  In Mukden, early in that war, I saw Chinese regiments of remarkably
+  fine physique marching to their doom, armed with matchlock and “Tower”
+  guns, and pikes, the money which should have provided them with modern
+  rifles having enriched the officials who had the spending of it. The
+  modern rifles with which some of the rank and file were armed were of
+  all patterns, so cartridges of a dozen different makes and sizes were
+  dumped down on the ground in a vacant space in the city, without any
+  attempt at classification, and the soldiers fitted them to their arms,
+  sometimes throwing eight or ten back on the heap before finding one to
+  suit the weapon. The commissariat officials were grossly dishonest,
+  and where stores had accumulated, sold them for their own benefit. It
+  is a common practice for a military mandarin to draw pay for 800 men,
+  having only 400 with the colours, and, on an inspection day, to
+  impress 400 coolies of the city, put them into uniforms, and parade
+  them with the soldiers.
+
+Footnote 69:
+
+  Mr. Meadows states that the highest mandarins get about ten times and
+  the lowest about fifty times the amount of their legal incomes by
+  means of “squeezes.”
+
+Footnote 70:
+
+  Since writing the above pages I have read Mr. A. R. COLQUHOUN’S
+  chapters on “Government and Administration,” “The Chinese People,” and
+  “Chinese Democracy,” in which I find views similar to my own stated
+  with great force, breadth, and intimate knowledge. The last chapter
+  concludes with these important words: “It is only fitful glimpses
+  which strangers are able to obtain of the inner working of Chinese
+  national life—quite insufficient to form a coherent theory of the
+  whole ... but the data ascertained seem sufficient to warrant the
+  inference of a vast, self-governed, law-abiding society, costing
+  practically nothing to maintain, and having nothing to apprehend save
+  natural calamities and national upheavals.”
+
+Footnote 71:
+
+  Many people think that _likin_, an inland tax, levied by the
+  provincial authorities on foreign goods in transit (_loti-shui_ being
+  a terminal tax), is an illegal blackmail, but it rests on precisely
+  the same foundation as every other Chinese ordinance—an Imperial
+  Decree—and its legality was certainly recognised by the British and
+  German Governments when they accepted seven _likin_ collectorates as
+  collateral security for the last Anglo-German loan.
+
+Footnote 72:
+
+  The italics are my own.—I. L. B.
+
+Footnote 73:
+
+  It was what are known as the “Hunan Tracts,” an infamous literature
+  circulated throughout the Empire, which accuses Christians of the
+  vilest crimes, and urges the populace to expel them, which have been
+  the cause of several of the anti-foreign riots. Now HUNAN is welcoming
+  Western learning and Christian teachers.
+
+Footnote 74:
+
+  _Times’_ Shanghai correspondent.
+
+Footnote 75:
+
+  The Chinese _li_ is 1814 English feet, but the mountain and the plain
+  _li_ differ in length.
+
+Footnote 76:
+
+  These tables were kindly prepared for this volume by W. H. Wilkinson,
+  Esq., H.B.M. Consul at Ningpo, from the Trade Report for 1898 of the
+  Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. The Haikwan tael, in which the
+  Customs accounts are kept, has been taken at 3_s._, as a fairer
+  current equivalent than the ²⁄₁₀–⁵⁄₈ average, by the advice of Mr.
+  Jamieson, C.M.G., late Consul-General at Shanghai.
+
+Footnote 77:
+
+  Note that these figures include trade conducted by Chinese, or under
+  the Chinese flag, passing through the Maritime Customs.
+
+Footnote 78:
+
+  These tables, giving an excess of imports over exports, will be seen
+  not to tally with my statement in the final chapter. In other years
+  similar tables have given rise to the belief that China is being
+  denuded of silver to pay for the balance, and is drifting towards
+  bankruptcy. But the Inspector-General, in the Customs Report for 1898,
+  from which these figures are taken, points out that, taking into
+  account the value of the gold exported from China, of the tea sent to
+  Siberia and Russia _viâ_ the Han River, of the twenty million pounds
+  of tea exported annually to Tibet, of the junk traffic to Korea and
+  the South, and of other exports of which the Customs take no
+  cognizance, there is an actual excess of exports over imports, as was
+  shown by careful statistics in 1897. He also points out as a positive
+  proof that the nation is well able to pay its way, that the Government
+  remittances to Europe for the service of loans, amounting in 1898 to
+  about Hk. Tls. 18,000,000, were made through foreign banks by the
+  medium of bills of exchange against exports.—I. L. B.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+
+ ● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+ ● Corrected the Errata.
+ ● Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last
+     chapter.
+ ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
+ ● Enclosed bold font in =equals=.
+ ● The caret (^) serves as a superscript indicator, applicable to
+     individual characters (like 2^d) and even entire phrases (like
+     1^{st}).
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77853 ***
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77853 ***</div>
+
+<div class='tnotes covernote'>
+
+<p class='c000'><strong>Transcriber’s Note:</strong></p>
+
+<p class='c000'>New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter ph1'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c001'>
+    <div>THE YANGTZE VALLEY AND BEYOND</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div id='Frontispiece' class='c002 figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/frontispiece.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>TIBETAN LAMAS MASKED FOR A RELIGIOUS DANCE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='titlepage'>
+
+<div>
+  <h1 class='c003'>THE YANGTZE VALLEY AND BEYOND<br> <span class='large'>AN ACCOUNT OF JOURNEYS IN CHINA, CHIEFLY IN THE PROVINCE OF SZE CHUAN AND AMONG THE MAN-TZE OF THE SOMO TERRITORY</span></h1>
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c002'>
+    <div><span class='xlarge'><span class='sc'>By</span> MRS. J. F. BISHOP</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>(ISABELLA L. BIRD), F.R.G.S.</span></div>
+    <div class='c004'><span class='xsmall'>HONORARY FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY</span></div>
+    <div><span class='xsmall'>HONORARY MEMBER OF THE ORIENTAL SOCIETY OF PEKING, ETC. ETC.</span></div>
+    <div class='c004'><span class='small'>WITH MAP AND 116 ILLUSTRATIONS</span></div>
+    <div class='c004'><span class='small'>DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO</span></div>
+    <div><span class='xlarge'>THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY, K.G.</span></div>
+    <div class='c004'>LONDON</div>
+    <div>JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET</div>
+    <div>1899</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c002'>
+    <div><span class='small'>DEDICATED BY PERMISSION</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>TO THE</span></div>
+    <div>MARQUESS OF SALISBURY, K.G.</div>
+    <div><span class='small'>WITH THE AUTHOR’S PROFOUND RESPECT, AND ADMIRATION</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>OF THE NOBLE AND DISINTERESTED SERVICES</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>WHICH HE HAS RENDERED TO THE</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>BRITISH EMPIRE</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>PREFACE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>These journeys in China [concluding in 1897], of which the
+following pages are the record, were undertaken for recreation
+and interest solely, after some months of severe travelling
+in Korea. I had no intention of writing a book, and it was not
+till I came home, and China came very markedly to the front, and
+friends urged upon me that my impressions of the Yangtze
+Valley might be a useful contribution to popular knowledge of
+that much-discussed region, that I began to arrange my materials
+in their present form. They consist of journal letters, photographs,
+and notes from a brief diary.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In correcting them, and in the identification of places, not an
+easy matter, I have been much indebted to the late Captain Gill’s
+<cite>River of Golden Sand</cite>, <cite>The Gorges of the Yangtze</cite>, by Mr. A.
+Little, three papers on “Exploration in Western China,” by
+Mr. Colborne Baber, in the <cite>Geographical Journal of the Royal
+Geographical Society</cite>, and very specially to the official reports of
+H.B.M.’s Consuls at the Yangtze ports. I have denied myself
+the pleasure of reading any of the recent literature on China,
+and it was only when my task was done that I glanced over
+some of the later chapters in <cite>The Break Up of China</cite>, and <cite>China
+in Transformation</cite>. For a great part of my inland journey I have
+been unable to find any authorities to refer to, and as regards
+personal observation I agree sadly with the dictum of Socrates—“The
+body is a hindrance to acquiring knowledge, and sight and
+hearing are not to be trusted.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I cannot hope to escape errors, but I have made a laborious
+effort to be accurate, and I trust and believe that they are
+not of material importance, and that in the main this volume
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_x'>x</span>will be found to convey a truthful impression of the country
+and its people. The conflicting statements made on every subject
+by well-informed foreign residents in China, as elsewhere, constitute
+a difficulty for a traveller, and homogeneous as China is, yet with
+regard to very many customs, what is true in one region is not
+true in another. Even in the single province of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> there
+is a very marked unlikeness between one district and another in
+house and temple architecture, methods of transit, customs in
+trade, and in much else.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have dwelt at some length on “Beaten Tracks”—<i>i.e.</i>, treaty
+ports and the Great River—though these have been described
+by many writers, for the reason that each one looks at them from
+a different standpoint, and helps to create a complete whole. The
+illustrations in this volume, with the exception of the reproductions
+of some Chinese drawings, and nine which friends have kindly
+permitted me to use, are from my own photographs. The spelling
+of place names needs an explanation. I have not the Chinese
+characters for them, and in many cases have only been able to
+represent by English letters the sounds as they reached my ear;
+but wherever possible, the transliteration given by Consul Playfair
+in his published list of Chinese Place Names has been adopted,
+and with regard to a few well-known cities the familiar but
+unscholarly spelling has been retained. To prevent confusion the
+names of provinces have been printed in capitals.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I am painfully conscious of the many demerits of this volume,
+but recognising the extreme importance of increasing by every
+means the knowledge of, and interest in, China and its people,
+I venture to ask for it from the public the same kindly criticism
+with which my former records of Asiatic travel have been received,
+and to hope that it may be accepted as an honest attempt to make
+a contribution to the data on which public opinion on China and
+Chinese questions must be formed.</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-r'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>ISABELLA L. BISHOP</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c008'><i>October, 1899.</i></p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class='table0'>
+<colgroup>
+<col class='colwidth15'>
+<col class='colwidth75'>
+<col class='colwidth9'>
+</colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c009'>CHAPTER</th>
+    <th class='c010'>&#160;</th>
+    <th class='c011'>PAGE</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>I.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Geographical and Introductory</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>II.</td>
+    <td class='c010'>“<span class='sc'>The Model Settlement</span>”</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_15'>15</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>III.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Hangchow</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_29'>29</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>IV.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>The Hangchow Medical Mission Hospitals</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_44'>44</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>V.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Shanghai To Hankow</span> (<span class='sc'>Hankau</span>)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_55'>55</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>VI.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>The Foreigners—Hankow and British Trade</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_61'>61</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>VII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Chinese Hankow</span> (<span class='sc'>Hankau</span>)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_67'>67</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>VIII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Hankow to Ichang</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_83'>83</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>IX.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Ichang</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_95'>95</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>X.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>The Upper Yangtze</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_104'>104</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XI.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Rapids of the Upper Yangtze</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_114'>114</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Rapids and Trackers</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_128'>128</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XIII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Life on the Upper Yangtze</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_138'>138</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XIV.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>The Yangtze and Kuei Fu</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_150'>150</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XV.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>New Year’s Day at Kuei-chow Fu</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_160'>160</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XVI.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Kuei Fu to Wan Hsien</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_166'>166</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XVII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Chinese Charities</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_181'>181</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XVIII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>From Wan Hsien to San Tsan-Pzu</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_194'>194</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XIX.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Sze Chuan Travelling</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_207'>207</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XX.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>San-tsan-pu to Liang-shan Hsien</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_214'>214</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXI.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Liang-shan Hsien to Hsia-shan-po</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_223'>223</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Hsia-shan-po to Siao-kiao</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_240'>240</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXIII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Siao-kiao to Hsieh-tien-tze</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_249'>249</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXIV.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Hsieh-tien-tze to Paoning Fu</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_264'>264</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xii'>xii</span>XXV.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Paoning Fu and Sin-tien-tze</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_282'>282</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXVI.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Sin-tien-tze to Tze-tung Hsien</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_296'>296</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXVII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Tze-tung Hsien to Kuan Hsien</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_316'>316</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXVIII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Kuan Hsien and Chengtu</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_338'>338</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXIX.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Kuan Hsien to Sin-wen-ping</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_361'>361</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXX.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Sin-wen-ping to Li-fan Ting</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_373'>373</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXXI.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Li-fan Ting to Tsa-ku-lao</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_395'>395</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXXII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>The “Beyond”</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_404'>404</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXXIII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>The Man-tze, I-ren, or Shan-shang-ren</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_443'>443</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXXIV.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>From Somo to Chengtu Fu</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_455'>455</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXXV.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Downward Bound</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_460'>460</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXXVI.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Luchow to Chung-king Fu</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_477'>477</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXXVII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>The Journey’s End</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_490'>490</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXXVIII.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>The Opium Poppy and its Use</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_506'>506</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>XXXIX.</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Notes on Protestant Missions in China</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_518'>518</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Concluding Remarks</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_530'>530</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Itinerary</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_545'>545</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Appendices</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_546'>546</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Index</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_549'>549</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_xiii'>xiii</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class='table0'>
+<colgroup>
+<col class='colwidth67'>
+<col class='colwidth32'>
+</colgroup>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c010'></th>
+    <th class='c011'>PAGE</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Tibetan Lamas masked for a Religious Dance (Lal Singh)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><i><a href='#Frontispiece'>Frontispiece</a></i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Zig-zag Bridge and Tea House, Shanghai</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_27'>27</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A <i>Pah</i>, or Haulover</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_33'>33</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>West Gate, Hangchow</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_35'>35</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Pavilion in Imperial Garden, Si-hu</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_39'>39</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>God of Thunder, Lin-yang</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_42'>42</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>C.M.S. Mission Hospital, Hangchow</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_45'>45</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Street in Hankow (John Thomson, <span class='fss'>F.R.G.S.</span>)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_69'>69</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Hankow from Han Yang</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_73'>73</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Coffins awaiting Burial</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_76'>76</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Female Beggar in Mat Hut</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_78'>78</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Travelling Restaurant</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_80'>80</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Chinese Soldiers</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_87'>87</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Military Officer</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_88'>88</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Fisherman and Plunge Net</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_90'>90</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>The Tablet of Confucius</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_97'>97</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Entrance to Ichang Gorge</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_107'>107</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>The Author’s Boat</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_111'>111</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Bed of the Yangtze in Winter, Ta-tan Rapid</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_116'>116</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>The Hsin-tan</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_120'>120</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Ping-shu Gorge, Hsin-tan</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_125'>125</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>The Mitan Gorge</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_129'>129</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Temple near Kueichow</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_133'>133</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Trackers’ Houses</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_143'>143</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Author’s Trackers at Dinner</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_158'>158</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Chinese Punchinello</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_161'>161</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Temple of Chang-fei</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_167'>167</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Pagoda near Wan Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_169'>169</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Guest Hall, C.I.M., Wan Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_173'>173</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Bridge at Wan Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_179'>179</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Chinese Burial Charity</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_185'>185</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Baggage Coolies</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_197'>197</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Pai-fang</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_199'>199</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Granite Dragon Pillar</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_203'>203</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Pass of Shen-kia-chao</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_215'>215</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Wayside Shrine</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_218'>218</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xiv'>xiv</span>A Chinese Chatsworth</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_225'>225</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Bridge and Inn of Shan-rang-sar</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_229'>229</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Porcelain Temple</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_233'>233</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>The Water Buffalo</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_235'>235</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Ordinary Covered Bridge</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_237'>237</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Group of Kuans (Mandarins)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_255'>255</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Lady’s Sedan Chair (Chinese Propriety) (Dr. Kinnear)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_259'>259</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Sze Chuan Farmhouse</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_267'>267</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Sze Chuan Market-place</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_271'>271</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Pedagogue and Pupils</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_275'>275</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Recessed Divinities, Chia-ling River</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_281'>281</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Temple of God of Literature, Paoning Fu</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_283'>283</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>The Right Rev. Bishop Cassels, <span class='fss'>D.D.</span>, Paoning Fu</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_287'>287</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Chinese Protestant Episcopal Church, Paoning Fu</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_289'>289</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>C.I.M. Sanitarium, Sin-tien-tze</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_293'>293</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Entrance to a Market-place</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_297'>297</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Author’s arrival at a Chinese Inn</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_303'>303</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>An Ox Mill</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_306'>306</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Hand Mill</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_307'>307</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>The Ta-lu</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_309'>309</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Woman Reeling Silk</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_317'>317</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>The Rev. J. Heywood Horsburgh, <span class='fss'>M.A.</span>, in Travelling Dress</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_322'>322</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Water Mill, Chengtu Plain</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_325'>325</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Bridge at Mien-chuh</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_328'>328</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Treadmill Field-pump (Captain Gill)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_332'>332</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Wooden Bridge, Kuan Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_335'>335</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Roof of Erh-wang Temple</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_341'>341</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Oil Baskets and Wooden Purse</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_344'>344</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Barrow Traffic, Chengtu Plain</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_345'>345</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Poppy Field in Blossom</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_349'>349</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>The White Opium Poppy (F. S. Mayers)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_351'>351</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>The Author in Manchu Dress (Moffat, Edinburgh)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_353'>353</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Divinity in Wen-shu-yuan Temple, Chengtu</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_359'>359</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Entrance to Grounds of City Temple, Kuan Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_363'>363</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Double Roofed Bridge</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_368'>368</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Tibetan Rope Bridge (Captain Gill)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_370'>370</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Human Pack Saddle for Timber</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_374'>374</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Bamboo Suspension Bridge, Weichou</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_379'>379</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Ancient Towers at Kanpo</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_383'>383</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Kan-chi</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_387'>387</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Rock Temple, Li-fan Ting</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_391'>391</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Village of Wei-gua</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_397'>397</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Street of Tsa-ku-lao</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_401'>401</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Sugar-loaf Mountain, Siao Ho</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_405'>405</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='pageno' id='Page_xv'>xv</span>Revolving Prayer-Cylinders</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_408'>408</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Bridle Track by the Siao Ho</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_411'>411</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>View from Chuang Fang</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_414'>414</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Castle at Chu-ti</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_416'>416</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Headman’s House, Chu-ti</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_417'>417</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Altar of Incense on Man-tze Roof</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_418'>418</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Sick unto Death</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_420'>420</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Lama-serai and Headman’s House, Mia-ko</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_421'>421</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Elephantiasis (Dr. Christie)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_427'>427</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Chinese Officer and Spearmen, Mia-ko</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_432'>432</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Village of Rong-kia</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_434'>434</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Canyon of the Rong-kia</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_435'>435</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Square Tower, Somo</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_438'>438</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Distant View of Somo</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_439'>439</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Man-tze Village</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_444'>444</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Somo Castle (back view)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_447'>447</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Entrance and Judgment-seat, Somo Castle</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_453'>453</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Heshui Hunter, and Notched Timbers</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_456'>456</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Heshui Family, Ku-erh-kio</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_457'>457</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>A Dragon Bridge</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_459'>459</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Village on the Min</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_462'>462</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>West Gate, Chia-ling Fu</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_465'>465</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Frieze in Rock Dwelling, Min River</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_468'>468</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Boat on the Min (Dr. Causland)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_469'>469</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Town on the Yangtze</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_472'>472</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Suburb of Sui Fu</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_473'>473</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Tsiang Ngan Hsien, with entrance to Rock Dwelling</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_476'>476</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Pagoda near Luchow</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_479'>479</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>The Author’s <i>Wu-pan</i></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_483'>483</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Method of carrying <i>Cash</i> and Babies</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_486'>486</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Fishing Village, Upper Yangtze</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_487'>487</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Wall of Chung-king, with Gate Towers</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_491'>491</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Chung-king Soldiers, Customs Guard</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_494'>494</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Gala Head-dress, “Dog-faced” Woman (Dr. Kinnear)</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_498'>498</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>The Author’s last <i>Wu-pan</i></td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_500'>500</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>“Stone Precious Castle,” Shi-pao-chai</td>
+    <td class='c011'><a href='#Page_502'>502</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_xvii'>xvii</span>
+  <h2 id='ERRATA' class='c005'>ERRATA.</h2>
+</div>
+
+ <dl class='dl_1 c002'>
+    <dt>Page  2.</dt>
+    <dd>Third line from bottom, for “140” read “263.”
+    </dd>
+    <dt>  „ 177.</dt>
+    <dd>Footnote, third line from bottom, after “illustration” read             “on page <a href='#Page_498'>498</a>.”
+    </dd>
+    <dt>  „ 415.</dt>
+    <dd>Eleventh line from bottom, for “<i>Tu-sze</i>” read “<i>Tu-tze</i>.”
+    </dd>
+    <dt>  „ 495.</dt>
+    <dd>Eighteenth line from top, for “88°” read “87°.”
+    </dd>
+    <dt>  „ 518.</dt>
+    <dd>Eleventh line from bottom, for “six thousand” read “8875.”
+    </dd>
+    </dl>
+
+<div class='chapter ph1'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c001'>
+    <div>THE YANGTZE VALLEY</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<div>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_1'>1</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER I.<br> <span class='c012'>GEOGRAPHICAL AND INTRODUCTORY</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>The events which have rendered the Yangtze Valley literally
+a “sphere of interest” throughout the British Empire lie
+outside the purview of these volumes. Few people, unless they
+have been compelled to the task by circumstances or interests,
+are fully acquainted with the magnitude and resources of the
+great basin which in the spring of 1898 was claimed as the
+British “sphere of influence,” and I honestly confess that it was
+only at the end of eight months (out of journeys of fifteen months
+in China) spent on the Yangtze, its tributaries, and the regions
+watered by them that I even began to learn their magnificent
+capabilities, and the energy, resourcefulness, capacities, and “backbone”
+of their enormous population.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Geographically the Yangtze Valley, or drainage area, may be
+taken as extending from the 90th to the 122nd meridian of east
+longitude, and as including all or most of the important provinces
+of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, <span class='sc'>Hupeh</span>, <span class='sc'>Hunan</span>, <span class='sc'>Kiangsi</span>, <span class='sc'>Nganhui</span>, <span class='sc'>Kiangsu</span>,
+and <span class='sc'>Honan</span>, with considerable portions of <span class='sc'>Che Kiang</span>, <span class='sc'>Kueichow</span>,
+and <span class='sc'>Yunnan</span>, and even includes the south-eastern drainage
+areas of <span class='sc'>Kansuh</span>, <span class='sc'>Shensi</span>, and <span class='sc'>Shantung</span>. Geographically there
+can be no possible mistake about the limits of this basin.<a id='r1'></a><a href='#f1' class='c013'><sup>[1]</sup></a> Its
+area is estimated at about 650,000 square miles, and its population,
+one of the most peaceable and industrious on earth, at from
+170,000,000 to 180,000,000.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_2'>2</span>The actual length of the Yangtze is unknown, but is believed
+not to exceed 3000 miles. Rising, according to the best geographical
+information, almost due north of Calcutta, its upper
+waters have been partially explored by Colonel Prjevalsky and
+Mr. Rockhill up to an altitude in the Tang-la mountains of 16,400
+feet, and as far as lat. 34° 43′ N. and long. 90° 48′ E.<a id='r2'></a><a href='#f2' class='c013'><sup>[2]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It has thus been ascertained that the Great River, though
+not tracked actually to its source, rises on the south-east edge of
+the Central Asian steppes, and, after draining an extensive and
+little-known basin, pursues a tempestuous course under the name
+of the Chin Sha, hemmed in by parallel ranges, and raging through
+gigantic rifts in <span class='sc'>Yunnan</span> and South-western <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, which
+culminate in grandeur at the Sun Bridge, a mountain about 20,000
+feet in altitude, “which abuts on the river in a precipice or
+precipices which must be 8000 feet above its waters” (Baber).</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is not till these savage gorges are passed and the Chin Sha
+reaches Ping Shan, forty miles above Sui Fu, that it becomes
+serviceable to man. In long. 94° 48′ Colonel Prjevalsky
+describes it as a rapid torrent, with a depth of from five to
+seven feet, a bed, upwards of a mile wide, covered in summer, and
+a width in autumn of 750 feet at about 2800 miles from its mouth.
+In travelling from its supposed source to Ping Shan, a distance
+roughly estimated at 1500 miles, its fall must be fully 15,000 feet
+(assuming that the altitude of its source is 16,400 feet),<a id='r3'></a><a href='#f3' class='c013'><sup>[3]</sup></a> while for
+the same distance (again roughly estimated) from Ping Shan to
+Shanghai the fall is only 1025 feet, and from Hankow to the sea,
+a distance of 600 miles, only an inch per mile.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Min or Fu appears to have its source in the Baian Kara
+range, called in Tibetan Maniak-tso,<a id='r4'></a><a href='#f4' class='c013'><sup>[4]</sup></a> and joins the Chin Sha at
+Sui Fu. While the Chin Sha is only navigable for about forty
+miles above this junction, the Min is navigable to Chengtu, about
+266 miles from Sui Fu, and by another branch to Kuan Hsien, forty
+miles higher. I descended the Min from Chengtu to Sui Fu in
+a fair-sized boat at the very lowest of low water. As being navigable
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span>for a far greater distance, the Chinese geographers regard the
+Min as the true “Great River,” the superior length of the Chin
+Sha not being taken into account. It should be noted that the
+Chinese only give their great river the name of Yangtze for the
+two hundred miles of its tidal waters.<a id='r5'></a><a href='#f5' class='c013'><sup>[5]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After the River of Golden Sand and the Min unite at Sui Fu, the
+Great River asserts its right to be regarded as the most important
+of Asiatic waterways by furnishing, by its main stream and the
+tributaries which thereafter enter it, routes easy of navigation
+through the rich and crowded centre of China, with Canton by
+the Fu-ling, with only two portages, and with Peking (Tientsin)
+itself by the Grand Canal, which it cuts in twain at Chin
+Kiang.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is only of the navigable affluents of the Yangtze that mention
+need be made here. The raging and tremendous torrents foaming
+through rifts as colossal as its own, and at present unexplored, lie
+rather within the province of the geographer.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In estimating the importance of these affluents it must be
+remembered that the Yangtze, of which they are feeders, is not
+<i>an</i> outlet, but <i>the</i> outlet, for the commerce of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, which,
+owing to its size, population, wealth, and resources, may be truly
+termed the empire province of China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the north or left bank the Min, before uniting with the Chin
+Sha at Sui Fu, receives near the beautiful trading city of Chia-ling
+Fu the Tung or Tatu, a river with a volume of water so much larger
+than its own as to warrant the view taken by Mr. Baber and Mr.
+von Rosthorn that it ought to be considered the main stream, and
+the Ya, which is navigable for bamboo rafts up to Ya-chow, the
+centre of the brick tea trade with Tibet. After this the Yangtze at
+Lu-chow receives the To, which gives access to one of the richest
+regions of the province, and at Chungking, the trading capital,
+the Chia-ling.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This is in itself a river of great importance, being navigable for
+over 500 miles, actually into the province of Kansuh. It receives
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>several noble navigable feeders, among the most important of
+which are the Ku, entering it a little above Ho-chow, the
+Honton or Fu, and the Pai Shui. It passes for much of its course
+through a rich and fertile region, and through a country which
+produces large quantities of salt, and it bisects the vast coal-fields
+which underlie Central <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>. On the right or south bank
+above the gorges, at the picturesque city of Fu-chow, the Fu-ling,
+which has three aliases, enters the Yangtze. This is an affluent of
+much commercial importance, as being the first of a network of
+rivers by which, with only two portages, goods from the Far West
+can reach Canton, and as affording, with its connections the Yuan
+Ho and the Tungting lake, an alternative route to Hankow, by
+which the risks of the rapids are avoided.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After the Yangtze enters the gorges, which at one point, at
+least, narrow it to a width of 150 yards, there are no affluents
+worthy of special notice until Ichang is passed, when the Han,
+navigable for cargo boats for 1200 miles of north-westerly windings
+from its mouth at Hankow, takes the first place, followed by the
+Yuan, Hsiang, Kan, Shu, and others, which join the Yangtze
+through the Tungting and Poyang lakes. These rivers, specially
+the Han, are themselves swelled by a great number of navigable
+feeders, which east of Sha-shih, in the Great Plain, are connected by
+a vast network of navigable canals, the differences in level being
+overcome by the ingenious contrivance called the <i>pah</i>. These
+natural and artificial waterways are among the chief elements of
+the prosperity of the Yangtze Valley, affording cheap transit for
+merchandise, land carriage in China, mile for mile, costing twenty
+times as much as water carriage.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The time of the annual rise and fall of the Great River can
+be counted on with tolerable certainty. With regard to the rise,
+from what I saw and heard I am inclined to attach more importance
+to the swelling of its Yunnan affluents during the south-west
+monsoon than to the melting of those snows which, as seen from
+the stupendous precipice of Omi-shan, are one of the grandest
+sights on earth—the long and glittering barrier which secludes
+the last of the hermit nations.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The rise of the Yangtze is from forty feet or thereabouts at
+Hankow to ninety feet and upwards at Chungking. During three
+months of the year the rush of the vast volume of water is so
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>tremendous that traffic is mainly suspended, and even in early June
+many hundreds of the large junks are laid up until the autumn
+in quiet reaches between Chungking and Wan Hsien. The annual
+rise of the river as well as the rapids have to be taken into
+consideration in the discussion of the question as to whether
+steam navigation on the Upper Yangtze can be made commercially
+profitable.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The actual rise, which is more reliable than that of the Nile,
+begins late in March, is at its height early in August, and then
+gradually falls until December or January. Late in June, when I
+descended the Great River, its enormous submerged area presented
+the same appearance on a large scale as the limited Nile valley—an
+expanse of muddy water, out of which low mounds, probably
+of great antiquity, rise, crested with trees and villages, with boats
+moored to the houses.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The country in the neighbourhood of Shanghai is a fairly good
+example of the characteristics of the Great Plain. In ordinary
+dry weather the surface of the soil is not more than five feet above
+the water-level, and as seen from any pagoda the whole country,
+with the exception of the two or three low Tsing-pu hills, which
+are seldom visible, presents the aspect, familiar to dwellers in the
+fens, of a cultivated dead level, intersected by numerous canals and
+creeks and by embankments for the preservation of the fields from
+inundation. Much the same sort of view in winter may be seen
+from any elevated point for hundreds of miles, modified by a few
+ranges of hills of somewhat higher elevation, wider creeks, and
+shallow marshy lakes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is not solely by deposits of rich alluvium brought down by
+the annual rise of the river that the soil of the Great Plain is
+gradually raised. The agency of dust storms is an important one,
+and these occur extensively throughout Northern and Central
+China, moving much material from place to place. I saw a dust storm
+at Kueichow which lasted for seven hours, burying some
+hovels and much agricultural country, and even producing a metamorphosis
+of the rocky bed of the Yangtze. Such storms have
+been observed as far east as Shanghai, but their occurrence at
+Kueichow shows that their area is not limited to the Great Plain
+or even to the region east of the mountain barrier between <span class='sc'>Hupeh</span>
+and <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>It is not till the Yangtze reaches Sha-shih that its character
+completely changes. The first note of change is a great embankment,
+thirty feet high, which protects the region from inundation.
+Below Sha-shih the vast river becomes mixed up with a network of
+lakes and rivers, connected by canals, the area of the important
+Tungting lake being over 2000 square miles. The Han alone, with
+its many affluents and canals, disperses goods through the interior
+for 1200 miles north of its mouth at Hankow, but there are some
+difficult rapids to surmount. The Hsiang and the Yuan, uniting
+with the Yangtze at the Tungting lake, are navigable nearly as far
+to the south. The Kan, which unites with the Yangtze through the
+Poyang lake, which has an area of 1800 square miles, is navigable
+to the Mei-ling pass, near the Kwantung frontier.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The delta of the river is indicated below Wu-sueh by even a
+greater labyrinth of tributaries, lakes, and canals, the area of the
+Tai Hu and the other lakes in the southern delta being estimated
+at 1200 square miles, and the length of the channels used for
+navigation and irrigation at 36,000 miles. In summer, after the
+spring crops have been removed, the whole region is under water.
+The population migrates to mounds, and the temporary villages
+communicate by boats.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At Chinkiang the Grand Canal enters the Yangtze from
+Hangchow, and leaves it on the left bank, some miles away,
+for Tientsin. On that north bank engineering works, extending
+over a vast area of country, have been constructed, evidencing
+the former energy and skill of the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These have diverted the river Huai, which with its seventy-two
+tributaries form important commercial routes to North An Hui
+and Honan, from its natural course to the sea, and have compelled
+the bulk of its waters to discharge themselves into the Yangtze
+through openings in a large canal which runs nearly parallel with
+it for 140 miles. By means of innumerable artificial waterways,
+the excavation of some lakes, and the enlargement of others,
+the Huai no longer has any existence as a river east
+of the Grand Canal, most of this work having been carried out
+to prevent undue pressure on the bank of that great waterway
+at any one point south of the old course of the Hoang Ho.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>North of the canal, and parallel with the Yangtze, lies a
+parallelogram the extent of which is estimated by Père Gandar
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>at 8876 square miles, and is one of the most productive rice-fields
+in China. This is below the water-level. It has immense dykes
+protecting it from the sea, pierced by eighteen drainage canals,
+but its chief drainage is into the Yangtze. Waterways under
+constant and careful supervision intersect this singular region.
+For the remaining distance the mighty flood of the Yangtze rolls
+majestically on through absolutely level country, in which in
+winter embankments and waterways are everywhere seen. The
+influence of the tide is felt for about 200 miles.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There is an ancient Chinese proverb regarding the mouth of
+the Great River: “Lo, this mighty current hastens to its imperial
+audience with the ocean.” But opaque yellow water and mud
+flats, extending as far as the eye can reach, leave the imperial
+grandeur to the imagination.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Tennyson’s description of the work of rivers as being “to sow
+the dust of continents to be,” applies forcibly to the Yangtze,
+which, after creating the vast alluvial plains which stretch from
+Sha-shih for 800 miles to the ocean and endowing them in its
+annual overflow with sufficient fresh material to keep up an
+unsurpassed fertility, has yet enough to spare to discharge
+770,000 feet of solid substance every second into the sea,
+according to scientific estimates. The Yangtze has done much
+to create, within comparatively recent years, at least the eastern
+portion of the province of Kiang Su and the island of Tsung-ming
+near Shanghai, capable of supporting a population of
+considerably over 1,000,000 souls. Another marked instance of
+its power to create is shown near the treaty port of Chinkiang.
+The British fleet ascended the Yangtze, so recently as in 1842,
+by a channel south of the beautiful Golden Island. Now, instead
+of the channel, there is an expanse of wooded and cultivated land
+sprinkled with villages.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Nearly a mile wide 600 miles from its mouth, nearly three-quarters
+of a mile at 1000, and 630 yards at 1500, with a volume of
+water which, at 1000 miles from the sea, is estimated at 244 times
+that of the Thames at London Bridge, with a summer depth
+of ninety feet at Chungking and of ten feet at its few shallow
+places at Hankow when at its lowest winter level, with a capacity
+for a rise of forty feet before it overflows its banks, with an
+annual rise and fall more reliable than those of the Nile, with navigable
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>tributaries penetrating the richest and most populous regions of
+China, navigable in the summer as far as Hankow for the largest
+ships in the world, and during the whole year to Ichang, 400 miles
+farther, for fine river steamers carrying large cargoes, even the
+Upper Yangtze, that region of grandeur, perils, and surprises, is
+traversed annually by 7000 junks, employing a quarter of a million
+of men. During my own descent of the Min and Yangtze from
+Chengtu to Shanghai, a distance by the windings of the river of
+about 2000 miles, I was never out of sight of native traffic, and
+those who, like myself, have waited for two or three days at
+the foot of the great rapids for the turn to ascend, can form
+some idea of how vast that traffic is.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The navigable portion of the Yangtze, as regarded from the sea,
+naturally divides itself into three stretches, the first, of 1000 miles,
+rolling as a broad turbid flood, traversed by several lines of
+steamers, through the deep grey alluvium of some of the richest
+and most populous provinces of China, mainly its own creation;
+the second, the region between Ichang and Kueichow Fu,
+through which hitherto goods have been carried by junks alone,
+in which it cleaves the confused mass of the <span class='sc'>Hupeh</span> ranges by a
+series of magnificent gorges and tremendous cataracts; and the
+third, the long stretch of rapids and races between Kueichow Fu
+and Sui Fu at its junction with the Min.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is not possible to exaggerate the sublimity and risks of the
+navigation of the Upper Yangtze, especially at certain seasons.
+Of the vast fleet of junks which navigate its perilous waters, five
+hundred on an average are annually wrecked, and one-tenth of
+the enormous importation of cotton into Chungking arrives
+damaged by water. Yet so ample are the means of transport, and
+so low the freight considering the risks, that, according to Mr. von
+Rosthorn, of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, foreign
+cottons are sold in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> at a barely appreciable advance
+on their price at Ichang, to which point they are brought by steam
+from the coast in eight days.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The <cite>Chinese Gazetteer</cite> notifies one thousand rapids and rocks
+between Ichang and Chungking, a distance of about 500
+miles; and in winter this does not seem an outlandish estimate,
+but in early summer, with the water twenty-four and thirty
+feet higher, many of the vigorous rapids, alternating with smooth
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>stretches of river only running three knots an hour, disappear,
+along with boulder-strewn shores, rocks, and islets, giving place
+to a broad and tremendous volume of water, swirling seawards at
+the rate of seven, eight, and ten knots an hour, forming many
+and dangerous whirlpools.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Of the magnitude of the native traffic on the Lower Yangtze,
+undiminished by the various steamboat lines which keep up daily
+communication with Hankow, it is scarcely needful to write. In
+ascending it is evident to the traveller by the time that Chinkiang,
+the port of junction with the Grand Canal, is reached,
+that, broad as the river is, there is none too much “sea room” for
+the thousands of junks of every build, from every maritime and
+riverine province, fishing and cargo boats of every size and rig,
+rafts, lorchas, and cormorant boats, which throng its waters.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The open ports of Wuhu and Kiu-kiang, each with its fleets
+of junks, and trade worth several millions sterling annually, and
+big cities such as Nanking, Yangchow, and Nganking, each
+with its highly organised mercantile and social life, and trade
+guilds and charities, are important and interesting; and it is seen
+in a rapid glance that large villages with numerous industries, rice,
+cotton, and silk culture predominating, abound, that everything is
+utilised, that every foot of ground capable of cultivation is bearing
+a crop, and that even the reed-beds of the irreclaimable swamps
+furnish materials for houses, roofs, fences, and fuel. It is seen that
+elaborate and successful engineering works have reclaimed large
+tracts of country and keep them drained, that a network of irrigating
+and navigable canals spreads over the whole level region,
+and that the traffic on these minor waterways is enormous.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So ceaseless are the industries by land and water, that it is
+hardly a surprise to find them culminating 600 miles from the
+ocean in the “million-peopled” city of Hankow (Han Mouth),
+the greatest distributing centre for goods in China, with miles of
+craft moored in triple rows along the Han, itself navigable for
+1200 miles.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The empire province of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, with the great navigable
+tributaries of the Yangtze, by which goods are conveyed at small
+cost to countless towns and villages, will be treated in some
+detail farther on. It is enough to remark here that it has about the area
+of France, that it has a population estimated by the Chinese
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>census authorities at 70,000,000, and by none at less than 50,000,000;
+that it has a superb climate, ranging from the temperate to the
+sub-tropical; a rich soil, much of which, under careful cultivation,
+yields three and even four crops annually of most things which
+can be grown; forests of grand timber, the area of which has not
+even been estimated; rich mineral resources, and some of the
+most valuable and extensive coal-fields in the world. It cannot
+be repeated too often that for its export trade, estimated at
+£3,300,000, and its import trade, estimated at £2,400,000, the
+Yangtze is the <i>sole</i> outlet and inlet.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Such an exhibition of Chinese energy, industry, resourcefulness,
+and power of battling with difficulties is not to be seen anywhere
+to the same extent as on the Upper Yangtze, where the enormous
+bulk of the vast import trade has to be dragged up 500 miles
+of hills of water by the sheer force of man-power, at two or three
+of the worst rapids a junk of over one hundred tons requiring
+the haulage of nearly four hundred men.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Waterways take the place of roads, which are usually infamous,
+throughout the Yangtze basin, but the bridges are marvels of
+solidity, and in many cases of beauty. The annual inundations
+on the Great Plain partly account for the badness of the roads,
+and constitute an expensive difficulty in the way of the forthcoming
+railroads.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>To write of the Yangtze Valley, the British “sphere of influence”
+(a phrase against which I protest), without any allusion to such an
+important factor as its inhabitants, would be a mistake, for sooner
+or later, in various ways, we shall have to reckon with them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The population throughout, from the ocean to the unexplored
+rifts of the Chin Sha, is homogeneous, that is Chinese, with the
+exception of certain tribes of the far west: the Sifan, Mantze, and
+Lolo. The Tartars or Manchu, who have supplied the throne with
+the present dynasty, whose fathers drove the Chinese before them
+like sheep, and who still garrison the great cities, have mainly
+degenerated into opium-smoking loafers, the agent in their downfall
+being hereditary pensions.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Throughout this vast population, perhaps not over-estimated
+at 180,000,000, with the exception of spasmodic and local
+rebellions now and then, law and order, prosperity (except in
+such disasters as floods or famines) and peace prevail, and that
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>security for the gains of labour exists without which no country
+is great. The system of government, the written language, and
+the education are uniform, and the “three religions”—Confucianism,
+Buddhism, and Taoism—are so mixed up together
+that there is little antagonism between them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The organisation of this valley population, social and mercantile,
+is a marvel, with its system of trade, trade guilds, trade unions,
+charities, banking and postal systems, and powerful trade combinations.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In much talk about “open doors” and “spheres of influence” and
+“interest,” in much greed for ourselves, not always dexterously
+cloaked, and much jealousy and suspicion of our neighbours, and
+in much interest in the undignified scramble for concessions in
+which we have been taking our share at Peking, there is a risk of
+our coming to think only of markets, territory, and railroads, and
+of ignoring the men who, for two thousand years, have been making
+China worth scrambling for. It may be that we go forward with
+“a light heart,” along with other European empires, not hesitating,
+for the sake of commercial advantages, to break up in the case of
+a fourth of the human race the most ancient of earth’s existing
+civilisations, without giving any equivalent.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In estimating the position occupied by the inhabitants of the
+Yangtze Valley, as of the rest of China, it is essential for us to see
+quite clearly that our Western ideas find themselves confronted, not
+with barbarism or with debased theories of morals, but with an
+elaborate and antique civilisation which yet is not decayed, and
+which, though imperfect, has many claims to our respect and even
+admiration. They meet with a perfectly organised social order, a
+system of government theoretically admirably suited to the country,
+combining the extremes of centralisation and decentralisation,
+and under which, in spite of its tremendous infamies of practice,
+the governed enjoy a large measure of peace and prosperity, a
+noteworthy amount of individual liberty and security for the gains
+of labour, and under which it is as possible for a peasant’s son to
+rise to high position as in the American Republic.<a id='r6'></a><a href='#f6' class='c013'><sup>[6]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>Western civilisation finds itself confronted also by a people at
+once grossly material and grossly superstitious, swayed at once by
+the hazy speculations and unintelligible metaphysic which in
+Chinese Buddhism have allied themselves with the most extravagant
+and childish superstitions, and by the dæmonism of
+Taoism, while over both tower the lofty ethics and profound
+agnosticism of Confucius. It finds a classical literature universally
+held in profound reverence, in which, according to all testimony,
+there is not a thought which could sully the purest mind, and an
+idolatry puerile, superstitious, and free from grand conceptions, but
+in which bloody sacrifices and the deification of vice have never
+had a part, or immoral rites a place.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The human product of Chinese civilisation, religion, and government
+is to me the greatest of all enigmas, and so he remains
+to those who know him best. At once conservative and adaptable,
+the most local of peasants in his attachments, and the most cosmopolitan
+and successful of emigrants—sober, industrious, thrifty,
+orderly, peaceable, indifferent to personal comfort, possessing great
+physical vitality, cheerful, contented, persevering—his filial piety,
+tenacity, resourcefulness, power of combination, and respect for
+law and literature, place him in the van of Asiatic nations.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Chinese constitute an order by themselves, and their
+individuality cannot be read in the light of that of any other
+nation. The aspirations and modes of thinking by which
+we are ruled do not direct their aims. They are keen and
+alert, but unwilling to strike out new lines, and slow to be influenced
+in any matters. Their trading instincts are phenomenal.
+They are born bargainers, and would hardly think half an hour
+wasted if through chaffering they gained an advantage of half
+a <i>cash</i>, a coin forty of which are about one penny. They are
+suspicious, cunning, and corrupt; but it is needless to run through
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>the established formula of their vices. Among the things which
+they lack are <span class='fss'>CONSCIENCE</span>, and such an enlightened public
+opinion as shall sustain right and condemn wrong.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Matthew Arnold has said that Greece perished for want of
+attention to conduct, and that the revelation which rules the
+world is the “pre-eminence of righteousness.” It may be that
+the western powers are not giving the Middle Kingdom a very
+desirable object-lesson.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the whole, as I hope to show to some extent in the following
+pages, throughout the Yangtze valley, from the great cities of
+Hangchow and Hankow to the trading cities of <span class='sc'>Sze-chuan</span>, the
+traveller receives very definite impressions of the completeness of
+Chinese social and commercial organisation, the skill and carefulness
+of cultivation, the clever adaptation of means to ends—the
+existence of provincial patriotism, or, perhaps, more truly, of
+local public spirit, of the general prosperity, and of the backbone,
+power of combination, resourcefulness, and independence possessed
+by the race. It is not an effete or decaying people which we shall
+have to meet in serious competition when it shall have learned
+our sciences and some of our methods of manufacturing industry.
+Indeed, it is not improbable that chemistry, for instance, might
+be eagerly adapted by so ingenious a race to the perpetration of
+new and hitherto unthought-of frauds! But if the extraordinary
+energy, adaptability, and industry of the Chinese may be regarded
+from one point of view as the “Yellow Peril,” surely looked at
+from another they constitute the Yellow Hope, and it may be
+possible that an empire genuinely Christianised, but not denationalised,
+may yet be the dominant power in Eastern Asia.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Chinese are ignorant and superstitious beyond belief, but
+on the whole, with all their faults, I doubt whether any other
+Oriental race runs so straight.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Yangtze Basin is a magnificent sphere of interest for all
+the industrial nations for fair, if not friendly, rivalry, and to
+preserve the “open door” there, and throughout China, is a worthy
+object of ambition. To strengthen instead of to weaken the
+Central Government is undoubtedly the wisest policy to pursue,
+for in the weakness of the Peking Government lies the weakness
+and possible abrogation of all treaty obligations. It is its strength
+and capacity to fulfil its treaties which alone make them worth
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>anything. In the weakening of the Central Government, and
+the disintegration of the empire, our treaty rights in the Yangtze
+Valley, for instance, would be worth as much as our sword could
+secure, and it cannot reach above Ichang, while if the integrity
+of the empire be preserved, and it is aided along judicious paths
+of reform, this vast basin, with its singular capabilities, and its
+population of 180,000,000, may become the widest arena for
+commercial rivalries that the world has ever seen.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER II.<br> <span class='c012'>“THE MODEL SETTLEMENT”</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>Those of my readers who have followed me through all
+or any of my eleven volumes of travels must be aware
+that my chief wish on arriving at a foreign settlement or treaty
+port in the East is to get out of it as soon as possible, and that
+I have not the remotest hankering after Anglo-Asiatic attractions.
+Nor is Shanghai, “The Model Settlement of the East,” an exception
+to the general rule, though I gratefully acknowledge the
+kindness and hospitality which I met with there, as everywhere,
+and recall with pleasure my many sojourns at the British Consulate
+as the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Lowndes Bullock.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But as the outlet of the commerce of the Yangtze Valley, and
+as a foreign city which has risen on Chinese shores in little more
+than half a century to the position and importance of one of
+the great trading centres of the world—its exports and imports
+for 1898 being of the value of £37,680,875 sterling<a id='r7'></a><a href='#f7' class='c013'><sup>[7]</sup></a>—it claims
+such notice as I can give it, which is chiefly in the shape of
+impressions.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have reached Shanghai four times by Japanese steamers,
+three times in coasting steamers of American build, once in one
+of the superb vessels of the Canadian <i>Empress</i> line, once from
+Hankow in a metamorphosed Dutch gunboat, and the last time,
+after nearly three and a half years of far eastern travel, in a
+small Korean Government steamer, her quaint, mysterious, and
+nearly unknown national flag exciting much speculation and
+interest as she steamed slowly up the river. Of these vessels,
+the <i>Empress of China</i> alone discharged her passengers and cargo
+at Woo-sung, a railroad terminus twelve miles below Shanghai,
+and that not necessarily.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>Many hours before reaching port, the deep heavenly blue of
+the Pacific gradually changes into a turbid yellowish flood, well
+named the Yellow Sea, holding in suspension the rich wash of
+scarcely explored Central Asian mountain ranges, the red loam
+of the “Red Basin” of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, and the grey and yellow
+alluvium of the Central Provinces of China, all carried to the
+ocean by the “Great River,” according to a careful scientific
+estimate, to the extent of 6,428,858,255 cubic feet a year, solid
+stuff enough to build an island ninety feet in depth and a mile
+square annually.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Countless fishing-boats roll on the muddy waste; sailing
+vessels, steamers, and brown-sailed junks of every build show
+signs of convergence towards something, and before long a blink
+of land is visible, and a lightship indicates the mouth of the
+Yangtze Kiang and a navigable channel. It is long even then
+before anything definite presents itself, and I confess to being
+disappointed with the first features of the Asiatic mainland—two
+long, thin, yellow lines, hardly more solid-looking than the yellow
+water stretching along the horizon, growing gradually into low
+marshy banks, somewhat later topped with uninteresting foliage,
+through which there are glimpses of what looks like an interminable
+swamp. Then Woo-sung appears with its new railroad,
+godowns, whitewashed buildings, and big ships at anchor discharging
+cargo into lighters and native boats, and then the banks
+of the narrowing Huang-pu, the river of Shanghai, are indicated
+by habitations and small fields and signs of small industries.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Within four miles of Shanghai the vivacity of the Huang-pu
+and its banks becomes overpowering, and the West asserts its
+ascendency over the slow-moving East. There are ranges of
+great godowns, wharves, building yards, graving docks, “works”
+of all descriptions, filatures, cotton mills, and all the symptoms
+in smoky chimneys and a ceaseless clang of the presence of
+capital and energy. After the war with Japan there was a rapid
+increase in the number of factories.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The life and movement on the river become wonderful. The
+channel for large vessels, though narrow, shifting, and intricate,
+and the subject of years of doleful prophecies as to “silting up”
+and leaving Shanghai stranded, admits of the passage of our
+largest merchantmen, and successful dredging enables them to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>lie alongside the fine wharves at Hongkew. American three and
+four-masted and other sailing vessels are at anchor in mid-stream,
+or are proceeding up or down in charge of tugs. Monster liners
+under their own steam at times nearly fill up the channel, their
+officers yelling frantically at the small craft which recklessly cross
+their bows; great white, two-storeyed paddle arks from Ningpo
+and Hankow, local steamers, steam launches owned by the great
+firms, junks of all builds and sizes, manageable by their huge
+rudders, <i>sampans</i>, hooded boats, and native boats of all descriptions,
+lighters, and a shoal of nondescript craft make navigation
+tedious, if not perilous, while sirens and steam whistles sound
+continually. “The plot thickens.” Foreign <i>hongs</i>, warehouses,
+shipping offices, and hotels are passed in Hongkew, the American
+settlement, and gliding round Pu-tung Point, the steamer anchors
+abreast of the bund in a wholesomely rapid flow of water 2000
+feet wide.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I arrived in Shanghai the first time on a clear, bright autumn
+day. The sky was very blue, and the masses of exotic trees, the
+green, shaven lawns, the belated roses, and the clumps of chrysanthemums
+in the fine public gardens gave a great charm to the
+first view of the settlement. Two big, lofty, white hulks for
+bonded Indian opium are moored permanently in front of the
+gardens. Gunboats and larger war-vessels of all nations, all
+painted white, and the fine steamers of the Messageries Maritimes
+have their moorings a little higher up. Boats, with crews in
+familiar uniforms, and covered native boats gaily painted, the
+latter darting about like dragonflies, were plying ceaselessly, and
+as it was the turn of the tide, hundreds of junks were passing
+seawards under their big brown sails.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On landing at the fine landing-stage, where kind friends received
+me and took me to the British Consul’s residence in the spacious
+grounds of the Consulate, I was at once impressed with the exquisite
+dress of the ladies, who were at least a half of the throng,
+and with the look of wealth and comfort which prevails.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All along the British bund, for at least a mile from the Soochow
+Creek, which separates it from Hongkew, to the French settlement,
+are banks, hongs, hotels, and private houses of the most approved
+and massive Anglo-Oriental architecture, standing in large, shady
+gardens, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, the “P. &#38; O.” office,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>the Canadian-Pacific Railroad office, the fine counting-house and
+dwelling-house of the old and famous firm of Jardine, Matheson
+&#38; Co., and the long façade of the British Consular buildings,
+with their wide sweep of lawns, being prominent.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The broad carriage-road and fine flagged side-walk are truly
+cosmopolitan. Well-dressed men and women of all civilised
+nations, and of some which are not civilised, promenade gaily
+on the walk and in the garden. Single and two-horse carriages
+and buggies, open and closed, with coachmen and grooms in
+gay and often fantastic cotton liveries, dash along the drive.
+Hackney victorias abound, and there are <i>jinrickshas</i> (from which
+foreigners drop the first syllable) in hundreds, with Chinese
+runners, and Shanghai wheelbarrows innumerable, some loaded
+with goods or luggage, while the coolies of others are trundling
+along from two to four Chinese men or women of the lower
+classes, seated on matted platforms on either side of the wheel,
+facing forwards.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I was not prepared for the Chinese element being so much
+<i>en evidence</i> in the foreign settlement. It is not only that clerks
+and compradores dressed in rich silks on which the characters for
+happiness and longevity and the symbols of luck are brocaded
+are in numbers on the bund, and that all the servile classes, as
+may be expected, are Chinese, but that Chinese shops of high
+standing, such as Laou Kai Fook’s, are taking their places in
+fine streets which run back from the bund, that some of the
+handsomest carriages on the bund and the Bubbling Well
+Road, the fashionable afternoon drive of Shanghai, are owned
+and filled with Chinese, that Chinese ladies and children richly-dressed
+drive in the same fashion, and that of late, specially,
+wealthy Chinese have become keen competitors for British houses,
+and have even outbid foreigners for them. Is Shanghai menaced
+by the “Yellow Peril” as Malacca, Singapore, and Penang
+have been?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A great trading Chinese city, with an estimated population of
+200,000, has grown up within the foreign boundary, subject to foreign
+municipal laws and sanitary regulations, but so absolutely Chinese,
+that were it not for the wide streets and the absence of refuse-heaps
+and bad smells, one might think oneself in one of the great cities
+of the interior. The Chinese are quite capable of appreciating the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span>comfort and equity of foreign rule, and the various advantages
+which they enjoy under it. They pay municipal taxes according
+to their rating, and “feu duty” for their land, which it is usual
+for them to hold in the name of a foreigner. They are under
+the jurisdiction of the Chinese Government, but civil cases in which
+foreigners are concerned and breaches of the peace are tried
+in what is known as the “Mixed Court,” an apparently satisfactory
+and workable arrangement, and serious criminal cases
+belong to the Chinese Shanghai magistrate.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I soon began to learn why Shanghai is called, or calls itself,
+“The Model Settlement,” and to recognise the fitness of the name.
+The British and American settlements are governed by a Municipality
+elected by the ratepayers, consisting of nine gentlemen,
+who, assisted by a secretary and general staff, expend the sums
+provided by the ratepayers to the general satisfaction, arranging
+admirably for the health, security, comfort, and even enjoyment of
+the large foreign community, as well as for the order and well-being
+of the constantly increasing Chinese population, showing to
+the whole East what can be accomplished by an honest and
+thoroughly efficient British local administration. This body is, as
+it deserves to be, grandly housed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The more important streets are lighted with electricity, the
+others with gas. Mounted Sikh police patrol the suburban roads,
+and a mixed force of Europeans, Sikhs, and Chinese preserves
+order and security in the settlement by day and night. An
+expensive but successful drainage system keeps Shanghai sweet
+and wholesome. Water-carts are always at work in dry weather,
+and scavengers’ carts cleanse the streets three times daily. Waterworks
+three miles from city pollutions supply pure water abundantly,
+and keep up a very high pressure unfailingly. The band of
+thirty performers, which plays in the public gardens every afternoon
+in winter, and three evenings a week in summer, attracting
+nearly the whole foreign community to lounge under the trees
+or stroll on the smooth gravel walks, is the creature of the
+Municipality.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Shanghai has two telegraph lines embracing London; daily
+papers well conducted, the <cite>North China Daily News</cite> specially
+maintaining a deservedly high reputation; several magazines, and
+communication with Europe always once a week, and usually
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_20'>20</span>oftener, by well-appointed mail steamers of four lines. Telegraphic
+news from all parts of the world appears simultaneously
+in London and Shanghai; it is thoroughly in touch with Europe
+and America, and European politics and events in general are
+discussed with as much intelligence and almost as much zest as at
+home. Excellent libraries, and the large book-store of Messrs.
+Kelly &#38; Walsh, cater for the intellectual needs of the population,
+but it is likely that the depressing climate in spring and summer,
+and the whirl of society and amusements in winter, indispose most
+of the residents for anything like stiff reading.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The tremendous energy with which Shanghai amuses itself
+during seven months of the year is something phenomenal. It
+is even a fatigue to contemplate it. Various causes contribute
+to it on the part of the ladies. There is the Anglo-Saxon vitality
+which must find some outlet. Then there is the absence of household
+cares owing to the efficiency of Chinese cooks and “boys,”
+and ofttimes the absence of children also, owing to the need for
+home education; and there is also the lack of those benevolent
+outgoings among “the poor” which occupy usefully a portion
+of the time of leisured women at home. Then, owing to the
+imitative skill of Chinese tailors, who can construct the most
+elaborate gowns from fashion-plates for a few shillings, it is
+possible for women to have the pleasure of appearing in an infinite
+variety of elegant toilettes at a very small expense, and dress is
+certainly elevated into a fine art in Shanghai.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Of the men I write tremblingly! Chinese tailors seem as
+successful as Chinese dressmakers, and the laundrymen equal
+both, no small matter when white linen suits are in question.
+May it be permitted to a traveller to remark that if men were
+to give to the learning of Chinese and of Chinese requirements
+and methods of business a little of the time which is lavished on
+sport and other amusements, there might possibly be less occasion
+for the complaint that large fortunes are no longer to be made in
+Chinese business.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For indeed, from ignorance of the language and reliance on that
+limited and abominable vocabulary known as “Pidgun,” the British
+merchant must be more absolutely dependent on his Chinese compradore
+than he would care to be at home on his confidential clerk.
+Even in such lordly institutions as the British Banks on the bund
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span>it seems impossible to transact even such a simple affair as cashing
+a cheque without calling in the aid of a sleek, supercilious-looking,
+richly-dressed Chinese, a <i>shroff</i> or <i>compradore</i>, who looks as if he
+knew the business of the bank and were capable of running it.
+It is different at the Yokohama Specie Bank, which has found a
+footing in Shanghai, in which the alert Japanese clerks manage
+their own affairs and speak Chinese. May I be forgiven?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>An extraordinary variety of amusements is crowded into every
+day. Then the community is most hospitable, as every visitor to
+Shanghai knows, and the arrival of every ship of war and eminent
+globe-trotter is the signal for a fresh outbreak of gaiety. Home
+diversions are reproduced, and others are superadded, such as
+paper hunts in the adjacent cotton-fields, house-boat picnics and
+pleasure excursions, and house-boat shooting excursions, lasting
+from three days to a week, for which special advantages exist,
+as the inland cotton-fields during the winter are alive with
+pheasants, partridges, quail, woodcock, and hares, while the watercourses
+abound with wild fowl. Pony races are a leading institution,
+with gentlemen riders of course. The morning gallops
+extract people from their beds at unwonted hours, and in spring
+and autumn the prospects of the stables make great inroads on
+conversation. But I will not go further. The very imperfect list
+given below gives some idea of the diversions which the community
+provides for itself.<a id='r8'></a><a href='#f8' class='c013'><sup>[8]</sup></a> Amateur theatricals are “the rage” in the
+winter, the amateur company providing several performances in
+a theatre built by a subscription of £5000, and holding over
+eight hundred persons, and the Fine Art Society gives an annual
+exhibition.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The continual presence of strangers imparts a needed element
+of freshness to society, and a zest to amusements which might
+pall, and gives people an excuse, if any were needed, for enjoying
+themselves. Shanghai has become the metropolis of gaiety
+for the Far East, and a week at the Astor House, the great
+recreation looked forward to not only by the dwellers in the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>treaty ports of China and Japan, but by those who roast and
+dissolve on the rock at Hongkong, and its delirious whirl attracts
+people even from Singapore.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But it would be quite an error to suppose that amusement
+crowds out the kindlier emotions. Europeans fall into distress
+constantly, some from misfortune, and some from fault, and many
+widows and orphans are left penniless. One may safely say that
+there is never a case of distress arising from any cause which is
+not immediately and amply relieved and planned for; and benevolence
+never wearies, the Ladies’ Benevolent Society doing a
+ceaseless good work. There is a Sailors’ Home and Rest in a
+very efficient and flourishing condition, with musical evenings
+frequently, at which ladies and gentlemen play and sing; and,
+without going further into detail, it may be said that the various
+useful organisations which our civilisation considers essential for
+a large community, from a fine general hospital downwards, have
+their place in Shanghai.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Church accommodation is ample for the church-goers. The
+Protestant cathedral, a really beautiful edifice, built from the
+designs of Sir Gilbert Scott, is one of the greatest adornments
+of the settlement, and is the finest ecclesiastical building in the
+Far East.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>From the early days of Shanghai many Protestant missions,
+both European and American, have had mission houses in the
+settlement, the most important being the large, appropriate, and
+substantial headquarters of the China Inland Mission, the gift of
+Mr. Orr Ewing, with a home for a hundred missionaries, a hospital,
+goods and business departments, and postal arrangements. Dr.
+Muirhead, of the L.M.S., whose missionary zeal is unchilled in
+the winter of his age, and Dr. Edkins, of the same Society, whose
+Chinese scholarship and researches among things Chinese have
+won him a European fame, are well known to, and are much
+respected by, the foreign community. There is also a large
+Roman mission. British and American Bible Societies, and the
+English Religious Tract Society and others also have agents
+and depôts there, and much translation is done by missionaries,
+and by agencies which have for their noble object the diffusion
+of pure and useful western literature among the Chinese, and
+their elevation mentally and morally.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>There is a North China branch of the Royal Asiatic Society
+in Shanghai, with a fine library, regular meetings, and a journal,
+which gathers up a great deal of very valuable matter. If the
+size and material of the audience on the night when I had the
+honour of reading a paper before the Society may be regarded
+as an indication of the interest in its objects, it must be flourishing
+indeed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The topography of this metropolis is fully dealt with in various
+official and other volumes. The salient points which impress a
+newcomer are Hongkew, the American settlement, with its commercial
+activity, the Soochow creek, with its fine bridge, the
+handsome buildings of the British Consulate, the British Bund,
+with its fine retaining wall, the long line of handsome private
+and public buildings, and the glimpses of broad and handsome
+streets full of private residences which run from the bund towards
+the boundary.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The French Bund is a continuation of the British; but the
+French settlement is small, markedly inferior, and gives one an
+impression of arrested development, the only noteworthy buildings
+being the Consulate, the Town Hall, and the large but
+plain Roman cathedral. As some compensation, the fine wharves
+at which the big Yangtze steamers load and discharge their
+cargoes are in this settlement, as well as the handsome and
+commodious premises of the Messageries Maritimes, beyond
+which stretch, far as the eye can reach, the crowded tiers of the
+Chinese shipping. The French boundary is an undesirable creek,
+running past the east gate of the native city, between which
+and the Huang-pu are crowded and unsavoury suburbs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is apparent that France regards her concession as a colony
+rather than a settlement, and she has lately urged her claims for
+an extension of it in a most selfish and indefensible manner. The
+settlement has been frequently in very hot water, and a serious
+disagreement with the Chinese occurred so recently as 1898.
+Its Municipal Board was once forcibly dissolved by the French
+Consul for a difference of opinion, and some of its members were
+imprisoned.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The English settlement makes a proud display of the wealth
+of the insular kingdom in the number of its stately buildings, the
+Consulate, the cathedral, the municipal buildings, the four-storeyed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>and elaborately-designed club house, the banks and shipping
+offices, and the massive mansions of historic firms, standing in
+their secluded grounds; though of the magnates of eastern
+commerce in the days of the rapid making of great fortunes
+almost none remain. British, too, in design, architecture, and
+arrangement, in all indeed but cost, is the magnificent pile of
+buildings in which the Imperial Maritime Customs and the new
+Post Office, under the same management, are housed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Shanghai in every way makes good her claim to be metropolitan
+as well as cosmopolitan, and, in spite of dark shadows,
+is a splendid example of what British energy, wealth, and organising
+power can accomplish.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>To us the name Shanghai<a id='r9'></a><a href='#f9' class='c013'><sup>[9]</sup></a> means alone the superb foreign
+settlement, with all the accessories of western luxury and civilisation,
+lying grandly for a mile and a half along the Huang-pu,
+the centre of Far Eastern commerce and gaiety, the “Charing
+Cross” of the Pacific—London on the Yellow Sea.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But there was a Shanghai before Shanghai—a Shanghai which
+still exists, increases, and flourishes—a busy and unsavoury
+trading city, which leads its own life according to Chinese methods
+as independently as though no foreign settlement existed; and
+long before Mr. Pigou, of the H.E.I.C., in 1756, drew up his
+memorandum, suggesting Shanghai as a desirable place for trade,
+Chinese intelligence had hit upon the same idea, and the port
+was a great resort of Chinese shipping, cargoes being discharged
+there and dispersed over the interior by the Yangtze and the
+Grand Canal. Yet it never rose higher than the rank of a third-rate
+city.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It has a high wall three miles and a half in circuit, pierced by
+several narrow gateways and surrounded by a ditch twenty feet
+wide, and suburbs lying between it and the river with its tiers
+of native shipping as crowded as the city proper. This shipping,
+consisting of junks, lorchas, and native craft of extraordinary rig,
+lies, as Lu Hew said, “like the teeth of a comb.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>To mention native Shanghai in foreign ears polite seems
+scarcely seemly; it brands the speaker as an outside barbarian,
+a person of “odd tendencies.” It is bad form to show any
+interest in it, and worse to visit it. Few of the lady residents
+in the settlement have seen it, and both men and women may
+live in Shanghai for years and leave it without making the
+acquaintance of their nearest neighbour. It is supposed that
+there is a risk of bringing back small-pox and other maladies,
+that the smells are unbearable, that the foul slush of the narrow
+alleys is over the boots, that the foreigner is rudely jostled by
+thousands of dirty coolies, that the explorer may be knocked
+down or hurt by loaded wheelbarrows going at a run; in short,
+that it is generally abominable. It is the one point on which the
+residents are obdurate and disobliging.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I absolutely failed to get an escort until Mr. Fox, of H.M’s
+Consular Service, kindly offered to accompany me. I did not
+take back small-pox or any other malady, I was not rudely
+jostled by dirty coolies, nor was I hurt or knocked down by
+wheelbarrows. The slush and the smells were there, but the
+slush was not fouler nor the smells more abominable than in other
+big Chinese cities that I have walked through; and as a foreign
+woman is an every-day sight in the near neighbourhood, the
+people minded their own business and not mine, and I was even
+able to photograph without being overborne by the curious.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Shanghai is a mean-looking and busy city; its crowds of
+toiling, trotting, bargaining, dragging, burden-bearing, shouting,
+and yelling men are its one imposing feature. Few women, and
+those of the poorer class, are to be seen. The streets, with houses
+built of slate-coloured, soft-looking brick, are only about eight
+feet wide, are paved with stone slabs, and are narrowed by innumerable
+stands, on which are displayed, cooked and raw and
+being cooked, the multifarious viands in which the omnivorous
+Chinese delight, an odour of garlic predominating. Even a
+wheelbarrow—the only conveyance possible—can hardly make
+its way in many places. True, a mandarin sweeps by in his
+gilded chair, carried at a run, with his imposing retinue, but
+his lictors clear the way by means not available to the general
+public.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All the articles usually exposed for sale in Chinese cities are
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>met with in Shanghai, and old porcelain, bronzes, brocades, and
+embroideries are displayed to attract strangers. Restaurants
+and tea houses of all grades abound, and noteworthy among the
+latter is the picturesque building on the Zig-Zag Bridge, shown
+in the illustration. The buildings and fantastic well-kept pleasure
+grounds of the Ching-hwang Miao, which may be called the
+Municipal Temple, the Confucian Temple, the Guild Hall of
+the resident natives of Chekiang, and the temple of the God
+of War, with its vigorous images begrimed with the smoke of
+the incense sticks of ages of worshippers, its throngs, its smoke,
+its ceaseless movement, and its din are the most salient features
+of this native hive.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>Yamens</i>, of course, exist, and <i>yamen</i> runners, for Shanghai has
+the distinction of being the residence of a Taotai, or Intendant
+of Circuit, and a magistrate, in whose hands the administration
+of justice is placed, involving responsibility for the interests of
+over 560,000 Chinese, the estimated native population of the city
+and the settlements, the total population being estimated at
+586,000.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On returning to the light, broad, clean, well-paved, and sanitary
+streets of foreign Shanghai, I was less surprised than before that
+so many of its residents are unacquainted with the dark, crowded,
+dirty, narrow, foul, and reeking streets of the neighbouring city.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>
+<img src='images/p027_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>ZIG-ZAG BRIDGE AND TEA HOUSE, SHANGHAI.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER III.<br> <span class='c012'>HANGCHOW<a id='r10'></a><a href='#f10' class='c013'><sup>[10]</sup></a></span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>A journey of 150 miles to visit friends in the ancient city
+of Hangchow required no other preparations than the hire
+of a boat and the engaging of a servant, who I was compelled
+to dismiss a few days later for gross dishonesty. 2755 steam
+launches, owned and run by Chinese, towing 7889 passenger boats,
+carrying 605 foreign and 125,000 native passengers, entered and
+cleared in 1897 between Hangchow, Shanghai, and Soochow.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Every evening one of these launches, towing a long string of
+native boats, leaves the Soochow creek below the British Consulate
+for the new treaty ports, opened as such only in 1896. My small
+bamboo-roofed boat, in which I could just stand upright, much
+decorated in the tawdry style of Chinese fourth-class fancy, and
+through which irremediable draughts coursed friskily, was the
+contemptible final joint of a tail of nine quaint and picturesque
+passage junks and family house-boats, a varnished procession of
+high-sterned, two-storeyed, many-windowed arks, squirming and
+snaking along at the stern of a noisy, asthmatic tow-boat. There
+were red flags flying, gongs crashing out dissonance, crackers
+exploding, poles with clothes drying on them pushed out of
+windows, incense sticks smouldering, and reports of firearms; and
+with this cheerful din, the usual accompaniment of Chinese movement,
+we started in the red twilight.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_30'>30</span>I paid six dollars for my boat with three men, and five dollars
+fifty cents for towage, about 23<i>s.</i></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All day long the life on the two-storeyed open-sterned boat
+in front of mine was exposed to view. It was occupied by three
+generations, nine souls in all, under the rule of a grandmother.
+They rose early, lighted the fire and their incense sticks, kotowed
+to an idol in a gilded shrine, offered him a small bowl of rice,
+and cooked and ate their morning meal. The smell of their
+cooking drifted for much of the day into my boat, and “broth
+of abominable things was in their vessels.” The man sat in the
+bow smoking and making shoes. The grandmother lived below
+in blissful idleness and authority. The wife, a comely, healthy,
+broad-shouldered woman, with bound feet, worked and smoked
+all day, and contrived to steer the boat as she stooped over the
+fire or the wash-tub by holding its heavy tiller under her arm
+or chin or pressing her knee against it. Four young children
+lived a quiet life on a broad high shelf, from which they were
+lifted down for meals. A girl of thirteen helped her mother
+slightly. Cooking, washing, mending, eating, and watching my
+occupation with far less interest than I watched theirs, filled
+up their day. Evening brought fresh kotowing and burning of
+incense sticks, the opium lamp was lighted, the man passed
+into elysium, and they wrapped themselves in their wadded quilts
+and slept till sunrise.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I learned their habits and knew their few “plenishings,” and
+perhaps, as they stared persistently at me, they were wondering
+how much I earned a day by writing and sewing, a question of
+much speculative interest to the Chinese.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The country looked inviting in the first flush of early spring,
+although, like our own fens, it is a dead level. Houses, villages,
+mulberry plantations, temples, groves, large farmhouses, shrines,
+and <i>Pai fangs</i> succeeded each other rapidly. Great lilac clusters
+of wistaria bloom hung over the water from every tree, the beans
+were in blossom, and the greenery was young and fresh. At times
+our curiously twisting procession passed through ancient water-streets
+of large cities, with the inevitable picturesqueness given by
+deep eaves, overhanging rooms and balconies, steep flights of stone
+stairs, and rows of armed junks full of soldiers or river police in
+brilliant, stagey uniforms. Several times we were delayed for an
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span>hour or more by the difficulty of getting through the crowded river
+streets <i>en route</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have since learned by experience that China is a land of surprising
+bridges, but at that time it amazed me that we entered
+nearly every city under a fine arch, from fifteen to thirty feet
+in height, formed of blocks of granite cut to the curve of the
+bridge, the roadway attaining the summit by thirty-nine steps on
+each side. Or there are straight bridges, the piers being monoliths
+thirteen feet high, and the roadway massive blocks of stone thirty
+feet long.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Part of the route is along the Grand Canal, that stupendous
+work, wonderful even in its dilapidation, which connects Hangchow
+with Tientsin. This part of it, which connects Imperial
+Hangchow with the flourishing port of Chinkiang on the Yangtze,
+was cut in 625 <span class='fss'>A.D.</span>, but never mapped till the work was undertaken
+by our own War Office in 1865.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If the “nine thousand barks conveying tribute to the emperor,”
+as described by an ancient writer, no longer crowd its waters, I
+can testify that at the points where I touched it, such as Chinkiang,
+the laden fleets were so vast as to leave only a narrow
+lane of water available for traffic, and that on arriving at Tientsin
+from Tungchow my boat took two days and a half to make its
+way through the closely-jammed mass of cargo and passage boats
+at the terminus.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The neighbourhood of the Grand Canal, which suffered terribly
+in the Taiping Rebellion, has recovered itself, and is again
+yielding its great harvests of rice and silk, the inexhaustible
+fertility of the Great Plain having effaced every trace of destruction.
+If the Grand Canal since the dilapidation caused by the
+outbreak of the Yellow River in 1851 is far less valuable for
+through traffic than it was, it is still of immense importance as
+an artery for the commerce of the great provinces through which
+it passes. Lu Yew, a much-travelled mandarin of the twelfth
+century, the translated account of whose journey from Shanjin
+near Ning Po to Kueichow on the Upper Yangtze is a fascinating
+bit of literature, writes that at the sluice gates “the concourse of
+vessels was packed together like the teeth of a comb,” and so
+it is still in certain places. The bridges which span this canal
+are among the most striking and beautiful in all China—single
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>arches, sometimes 220 feet in span and 30 feet in height, piles of
+massive masonry, with massive decorations wherever any deviation
+has been permitted from the ordinary stately simplicity.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Seven centuries ago Lu Yew commented on the remarkable
+industry of the population of this region, and noted that “both
+banks near the villages are covered with waterwheels pumping
+up the water, women and children alike exerting all their
+efforts, cattle in some cases being also at work.” The heredity
+of industry is still manifest. Not an idler was to be seen
+along river or canal. Every agricultural operation of the
+season was being carried on vigorously, even children of seven
+years old were carrying agricultural burdens on their shoulders.
+Women with robust infants strapped on their backs had their
+hands busy with the distaff, while working the waterwheels
+with their feet; and all along the waterways fishermen were
+busy with their great bamboo plunge nets. Lu Yew mentions
+the women as employed with both waterwheel and distaff in the
+twelfth century.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the morning of the second day from Shanghai the steam
+launch cast off her tail at the mouth of a narrow canal overarched
+with trees, up which my boat moved silently as far as a “lock,”
+by which we mounted into a broad waterway leading direct into
+Hangchow, encircling it on three sides and connected with other
+navigable canals, spanned by picturesque stone bridges, and
+giving easy access to most parts of the interior of the city.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That which I have called a “lock,” properly a <i>pah</i> or “haulover,”
+is an ingenious contrivance by which the difficulty of “negotiating”
+different levels in the same boat is skilfully adjusted.
+The illustration shows the principle and the mode of applying
+it in Chekiang, but various methods are adopted. The essential
+parts of the contrivance, as shown here, are a smooth stone slide,
+from the higher to the lower level, the middle of which is thickly
+coated with moist mud, two stout and tall uprights, two rude
+wooden windlasses, and stout bamboo ropes with strong iron
+hooks. In ascending, the boat is wound up to the higher level
+by a number of men at the windlasses, and in going down she
+is drawn to the verge and tipped over, descending with great
+velocity by her own impetus, the restraining rope at her stern
+scarcely moderating the violence of the plunge with which she
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>takes a header into the water below, when everything not securely
+fastened breaks adrift, and a lather of foaming water surges round
+the surprised passenger’s feet. A few <i>cash</i> are charged for the
+transfer.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p033_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A <i>PAH</i>, OR HAULOVER.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>I thought the canal entrance to Hangchow grand, although
+below the high blank walls of large private residences the grassy
+slopes are the resort of unpleasantly active pigs searching, and
+not vainly, for offal. The gunboats, or police junks, with their
+striped blue and white canopies and brilliant crews, and the lofty
+bridges are pleasing to the eye. At one of the latter Dr. Main,
+for eighteen years a C.M.S. missionary doctor in Hangchow, met
+me, and I was carried through a populous and dirty quarter,
+through a door in a high wall, and under a trellis from which
+hundreds of lilac wistaria clusters were hanging, into a large
+enclosure, partly lawns and partly rose borders, with an old-fashioned
+English house on one side, and on the other two the
+fine two-storeyed buildings of two of the crack hospitals of the
+East, with their outgrowths of leper hospitals for men and women,
+a home for leper children, and an opium refuge. It was a
+bewildering change from the crowds, dirt, and sordid bustle of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>the lower parts of a Chinese city to broad, smooth, shaven lawns,
+English trees and flowers, English buildings with their taste and
+completeness, and the refined quiet of an English home.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This most ancient city, situated on the left bank of the shallow
+Ch’ien T’ang river, of which a magnificent description is given
+by Marco Polo under the name of Kinsai, though it has not
+fully recovered from the destruction wrought by the Taiping troops,
+is still handsome and dignified, and to my thinking, with its
+lovely environs, is the most attractive of the big Chinese cities.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is certainly one of the most important, as the capital of the
+rich and populous province of Chekiang, the centre of a great
+silk-producing district, and of the manufacture of the best silks,
+the sole source of the silk fabrics supplied to the Imperial Household,
+the southern terminus of the Grand Canal, and a great
+centre of Chinese culture and literature. It possesses the Ting
+Library, the finest private library in China, appropriately housed
+in buildings adjoining the “palace” of the Ting family. The
+arrangements for the storage and classification of books are
+admirable, and a very gentlemanly and intelligent son of the
+enlightened possessor is the enthusiastic and capable librarian.
+The treasures of this library are open freely to anyone who
+introduces himself by a card from an official. The collection of
+zoological and botanical books, superbly illustrated in the best style
+of Chinese wood engraving, is in itself a noble possession. Every
+part of a plant is figured, and the illustrations are almost photographically
+accurate, leading one to hope that the letterpress
+accompanying them has equal scientific merit!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Hangchow is also important as a “residential” city, the chosen
+home of many retired merchants and mandarins. The homes,
+frequently palaces, of men of leisure and local patriotism adorn
+its streets, but their stately proportions and sumptuous decorations
+are concealed from vulgar view by high whitewashed walls, in
+which heavily-barred and massive gates give access to the
+interiors. The mansion of the Ting family, in which I took
+“afternoon tea,” with its lofty reception-rooms, piazzas, and courts,
+must cover two acres of ground. It is stately, but not comfortable,
+and the richly-carved blackwood chairs with panels of clouded
+grey marble for backs and seats, and table centres of the same,
+seem only fitted for the noon of a midsummer’s day. Besides
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>the dwellings of the “leisured class” there are those of high
+officials, bankers, and wealthy tea and silk merchants, many of
+them extremely magnificent, the cost of one built by a wealthy
+banker being estimated at £100,000.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p035_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>WEST GATE, HANGCHOW</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>I wrote of dirt and sordid bustle. This is chiefly by the waterside,
+and is not surprising in a city of three-quarters of a million
+of inhabitants. The “west-end” streets are, however, broad, light,
+well flagged, and incredibly clean for China. Hangchow impresses
+one with a general sense of well-being. I did not see
+one beggar. The people are well clothed and fed, and I
+understood that except during epidemics there is no abject
+poverty. It is the grand centre for the trade of a hundred cities,
+and much of the tea and silk sold in Shanghai and Ningpo passes
+through it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Everything in the city and neighbourhood suggests silk. In
+all the adjacent country the mulberry tree is omnipresent, planted
+in every possible place along the creeks, on the ridges separating
+the fields, in plantations, acres in extent, and near villages, in
+nurseries each containing several thousand shoots, in expectation
+of a greatly increased demand for this staple product. There
+are 7000 handlooms for the weaving of silk in Hangchow, employing
+about 28,000 people, and 360 of these looms under the
+inspection of an Imperial Commissioner work exclusively for the
+Imperial Household.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Some of the silk shops rival that of Laou Kai Fook at
+Shanghai. In them are rich self-coloured silks in deep rich
+colourings and the most delicate shades, brocaded washing silks
+in various shades of indigo dyeing, and delicate mauves and
+French greys, which become more lustrous every time they are
+washed, heavy and very broad satins, plain and brocaded, and,
+what I admire more than all, heavy figured silks in colourings and
+shades unknown to us sold for Chinese masculine dress, and brocaded
+with symbolical bats, bees, spiders, stags’ heads, dragons for
+mandarins’ robes, and the highly decorative characters representing
+happiness and longevity. These quaint and beautiful fabrics are
+not exported to Europe, and are not shown to Europeans unless
+they ask for them. Fans exported to all parts of the empire
+are another great industry, and provide constant work for many
+thousand people. Elaborate furniture, silk and gold embroidering,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>and tinselled paper money for burning, to supply the dead with
+the means of comfortable existence, are also largely manufactured
+in this thriving capital.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The situation of Hangchow is beautiful, separated only by a
+belt of clean sand from the bright waters of the Ch’ien T’ang
+river. The south-western portion is built on a hill, from which
+broad gleams of the sea are visible; and to the west, just outside
+the walls, is the Si Hu [Western Lake], famous throughout China,
+a lovely sheet of water, surrounded by attractive country houses,
+temples, and shrines, studded with wooded islands connected by
+ancient and noble causeways, the islands themselves crowned with
+decorative pavilions, some of which are Imperial, and are surrounded
+by the perfection of Chinese gardening, as in the case of
+the beautiful Imperial Library, with its ferneries, rockeries, quaint
+ponds, and flowering shrubs. This lovely lake, with its deep,
+wooded bays and inlets, its forest-clothed hills and ravines, its gay
+gondolas and pleasure boats, and its ideally perfect shores, which
+I saw over and over again in the glorious beauty of a Chinese
+spring, mirrors also in its silver waters a picturesque range of hills,
+bare and breezy, close to the city, on which stands, in an imposing
+position, a very ancient pagoda, while the lower hill-slopes
+are clothed with coniferous trees, bamboo, plum, peach, cherry,
+camphor, azalea, clematis, roses, honeysuckle, and maple. Near
+the lake is a deep, long dell, the cliffs of which are recessed for
+stone images, and which contains several famous temples, one the
+temple of the “Five Hundred Disciples,” who, larger than life-size,
+adorn its spacious corridors. The temples and shrines of this
+beautiful glen are visited daily by crowds from Hangchow, and
+have such a reputation for sanctity and efficacy as to attract
+100,000 pilgrims annually. The dell is guarded by two colossal
+figures, under canopies, the gods of Wind and Thunder, very fine
+specimens of vigorous wood carving, and by an antique pagoda.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Hangchow is also famous for the phenomenon of the “Hangchow
+bore,” seen at its best at the change of the monsoon, when
+an enormous mass of tidal water, suddenly confronted by the
+current of the river, uplifts its foaming crest to a height of from
+fifteen to twenty feet, and with a thunderous roar and fearful force
+rages down the narrow waterway as fast as a horse can gallop,
+affording a welcome distraction to the sightseers of Shanghai.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>
+<img src='images/p039_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>PAVILION IN IMPERIAL GARDEN, SI-HU.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>
+<img src='images/p042_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>GOD OF THUNDER, LIN-YANG.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>Hangchow is enclosed by a wall faced with hewn stone, about
+thirteen miles in circumference, from thirty to forty feet high, from
+twenty to thirty feet broad, and pierced by ten large gateways
+with massive gates. The houses are mainly two-storeyed. The
+business streets blaze with colour; the principal street is five miles
+long. The population, estimated at 700,000, cruelly diminished
+during the Taiping Rebellion, is rapidly increasing. The officials,
+merchants, and common people are unusually friendly to foreigners,
+who, before the recent opening of the port, were all missionaries.
+The cry “Foreign devil!” is never heard. Mr. Sundius, our
+consular officer, considers that these very satisfactory relations
+are due to the greater prosperity of the people, in consequence
+of the increased foreign demand for silk, and to the success of
+the exertions of the missionaries to win their respect and esteem.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The new general and Japanese settlements are in an excellent
+position on the Grand Canal, four miles from the city wall. They
+are nearly a mile in length by half a mile in depth, and have a
+fine road and a bund sixty feet wide, hereafter to be turfed. The
+Japanese, who opened the port with their swords, have not been
+in any hurry to occupy it. It will be interesting to see how far
+foreigners will take advantage of the opening, and settle in this,
+one of the friendliest and most attractive of the Chinese cities.
+There is a well-known Chinese proverb, “Above is heaven, below
+are Hangchow and Suchow.”</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER IV.<br> <span class='c012'>THE HANGCHOW MEDICAL MISSION HOSPITALS</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>The hospitals, and the dispensaries attached to them, are
+too important as a feature of Hangchow, and as an element
+in producing the remarkable goodwill towards foreigners which
+characterises it, to be dismissed at the tail of a chapter.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These beneficent institutions treat between them over 14,000
+new patients annually, afflicted with all manner of torments. The
+services of Dr. Main and his coadjutor, Dr. Kimber, are in request
+among officials, from the highest to the lowest. Mandarins of
+high rank, attended by their servants, are treated in the paying
+wards, and occasionally leave donations of 100 dollars in addition
+to their payments. Officials of every rank in the Chekiang
+province send to the British doctors for advice and medicines.
+Among the many marks of the approval with which the Viceroy
+and other highly-placed officials regard the medical work is their
+recent donation of an acre and a half of land in an excellent
+position for the site of a branch hospital. It is no disparagement
+to the work of Bishop Moule, who was absent during my
+visit, and the other British and American clerical missionaries,
+to express the opinion that the tact, <i>bonhomie</i>, and devotion of
+Dr. Main during the last eighteen years, are one cause of the
+friendliness to foreigners, the Chinese being as accessible to the
+influence of personality as other people are.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The men’s and women’s hospitals, of which the illustration only
+shows portions, are of the latest and most approved European
+type. They are abreast of our best hospitals in lighting,
+ventilation, general sanitation, arrangement and organisation,
+and the facility of obtaining the celebrated Ningpo varnish,
+really a lacquer, which slowly sets with a very hard surface,
+reflecting much light and bearing a weekly rub with kerosene
+oil, greatly aids the sanitation. The purity of walls, floors, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>bedding is so great as to make one long for a speck of comfortable
+dirt!</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p045_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>C.M.S. MISSION HOSPITAL, HANGCHOW.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>The men’s hospital buildings consist of four roomy and
+handsome general wards, eleven private paying wards, holding
+from one to three each, a range of rooms for the ward assistants,
+who are practically male nurses, students’ rooms, rooms for the
+three qualified assistants, a lecture-room with an anatomical [in
+lieu of the unattainable human] subject which cost a thousand
+dollars, a reception-room for mandarins with appropriate Chinese
+furniture, Dr. Main’s private room and medical library, a fine
+consulting-room and operating theatre, bathrooms, a room for
+patients’ clothing done up in numbered bundles after it has been
+washed, wardrobes for the clothing which is lent to them while in
+hospital, a cashier’s office, a large bottle-room, extensive storage,
+and an office for out-patients.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the street side and connected with the hospitals is a fine
+lofty room where any non-patient passers-by, who are either
+tired or curious, can rest and smoke, amusing themselves
+meantime with the transactions of the other half of the hall,
+a large and attractive “drug store,” fitted up in conventional
+English style, where not only medicines, but medical requisites
+of all kinds can be procured both by non-patients
+and foreigners. It has been remarked by Consuls Carles and
+Clement Allen in their official reports, that missionaries unconsciously
+help British trade by introducing articles for their own
+use, which commend themselves to the Chinese; and this drug
+store has created a demand for such British manufactures as
+condensed milk, meat extracts, rubber tubing, soap, and the
+like, condensed milk having “caught on” so firmly that several
+of the Chinese shops are now keeping it on sale.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This rest room is also a street-chapel for preaching and discussion,
+and an office for inquiries of all kinds. There is also a
+large and handsome waiting-room for out-patients, decorated with
+scripture pictures, in which patriarchs and apostles appear in
+queues and Chinese dress, and an opium refuge—a mournful
+building full of bodily torment and mental depression. In the
+opinion of the doctor, “the cure” is seldom other than temporary,
+and could only be effected by building up the system for six
+months after leaving the refuge by tonics and nutritious diet.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>Besides these buildings there are large kitchens, storehouses, and
+a carpenter’s shop.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The women’s hospital, the great central ward of which, with
+its highly-varnished floor, flowers, pictures, tables, chairs, and
+harmonium, looks like a pleasant double drawing-room in a large
+English mansion, is specially under Mrs. Main’s charge, and has
+head and junior nurses and a dispenser trained by herself. It
+is equally efficient and admirable.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Besides the hospital staff of twenty-six persons, there are three
+native catechists who, along with Dr. Main, give Christian instruction
+in the hospital to those who are willing to receive it, one
+of them looking after patients in their homes, who, having become
+interested in Christianity, have returned to their villages within
+a radius of one hundred and fifty miles. Recently a patient, who
+had been for some weeks in the hospital, recounted what he had
+there heard of Christianity with such effect that over forty of his
+fellow-villagers, after some months, gave up their heathen practices
+and became Christians; and this after he had been beaten for his
+new beliefs on first going home.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The hospital is also an efficient medical school, where the usual
+medical and surgical courses are given, along with clinical instruction,
+during a period of five years. This school has helped largely
+to win the favour of the mandarins, who have learned to appreciate
+Western surgery from the cures at the hospital. Some of these
+students, after graduation, have taken good positions in Shanghai
+and elsewhere. A few in going into practice in the province have
+somewhat dropped European medicine, and have resorted to
+Chinese drugs and the method of using them, but all adhere to
+Western surgery, the results of which in Chinese eyes are little
+short of miraculous, but possibly their mode of carrying out
+antiseptic treatment would hardly come up to Lord Lister’s
+standard! It is frequently believed by Chinese patients that the
+object of this treatment is to prevent devils from gaining entrance
+to the body by means of surgical wounds!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Dr. Lu, a refined and cultured man, Dr. Main’s senior qualified
+assistant, a graduate of the hospital school, would anywhere be a
+remarkable man in his profession, first as a brilliant operative
+surgeon, and then for insight and accurate diagnosis. He has won
+the confidence of the resident foreigners. He is a skilful medical
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span>photographer, and his microscopic and physiological drawings are
+very beautiful and show great technical skill.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The clock tower is a decorative feature of the building, and
+everything within moves with clockwork regularity. The hospital
+is in a high state of efficiency and spick-and-spanness, such as I
+have seldom seen equalled abroad, and never exceeded.<a id='r11'></a><a href='#f11' class='c013'><sup>[11]</sup></a> Such
+work, done with skill, love, and cheeriness, has an earthly reward,
+and Dr. Main is on most friendly terms with the leading mandarins,
+who have it in their power to help or hinder greatly. The hospital
+blazes with their red and gold votive tablets, and I doubt if they
+would refuse him anything which he thought it wise to ask.
+Almost the latest additions to a work which is always growing
+are convalescent homes in the finest position outside the city, on
+the breezy hill above the Si Hu [Western Lake].</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have heard some grumbling at home at the expense at which
+this hospital is carried on, but perfection is not to be attained
+without outlay, and in my opinion the Hangchow hospital is a
+good investment. It is most desirable that Western methods of
+healing should be exhibited in their best aspects in the capital
+of this important province, and also that the medical school should
+be as well-equipped as is possible. The benefit of this and similar
+schools is incalculable. The linked systems of superstition and
+torture, which enter largely into Chinese medical treatment, are
+undermined, and rational Western surgery is demanded by the
+people. European treatment also assails the degrading belief in
+sorcery and demonism in its last resort—the sick-bed—showing
+processes of cure which work marvels of healing, altogether apart
+from witchcraft and incantations.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Of the Medical Mission Hospital as a Christian agency I need
+scarcely write, as its name is significant of its work. I believe in
+medical missions, because they are the nearest approach now
+possible to the method pursued by the Founder of the Christian
+faith, and to the fulfilment of His command, “Heal and preach.”
+It is not, as some suppose, that the medical missionary takes
+advantage of men in their pain and distress to “poke at them” the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>claims of a foreign religion, though if he be an honest Christian he
+recognises that the soul needs enlightenment as much as the body
+needs healing. I have never seen a medical mission among the
+forty-seven that I have visited in which Christianity was “poked”
+at unwilling listeners, or in which, in the rare cases of men declining
+to hear of it in the dispensary waiting-room, it was in the
+very smallest degree to their disadvantage as patients.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A fee of twenty-four <i>cash</i> is charged for admission to the dispensary
+to foster a spirit of independence, and the charge in the
+paying wards is from two to ten dollars per month. Crowds of
+out-patients marshalled like an army, carefully trained assistants
+knowing and doing their duty, catechists, ward assistants, cashiers,
+photographers, cooks, gardeners, artisans, make up the crowd which
+in all the morning hours swarms over the staircases of the hospital
+and round the great entrance. The dispensary patients present
+a sorry spectacle, owing to the prevalence of skin diseases, superficial
+sores, and cavernous abscesses, from which the plasters with
+which the Chinese doctors had hermetically sealed them have been
+removed. Young and old, maimed, deaf, blind, loathsomely disfigured
+persons, meet together, and there are often cases of gunshot
+wounds, elephantiasis, and leprosy in the throng.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But, wretched as the patients are, they are capable of being
+amused by Dr. Main’s jokes, and on one occasion when I was
+photographing four soldiers of the Viceroy’s guard in the hospital
+grounds the hilarity burst all bounds, and the distempered mass
+yelled with enjoyment. When I photographed the backs of the
+soldiers they shouted, “She pictures their backs because they ran
+away from the <i>wojen</i>” (dwarfs); and when Dr. Main displayed
+their brawny legs, they nearly danced with the fun of it, yelling,
+“Those are the legs they ran away on.” Not that the Viceroy’s
+guard had encountered the Japanese, but these people were near
+enough to Shanghai to have heard of the figure the Chinese
+troops had cut. A Chinese loves a joke, and, as I have often
+experienced, if he can only be made to laugh his hostility
+vanishes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One of these men, picturesquely uniformed in blue and crimson,
+was brought back an hour later at the point of death from opium,
+having attempted his life, not because he had been laughed at, but
+because of a tiff with his superior officer.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>As is well known, suicide is appallingly common in China; and
+in the great cities of Swatow, Mukden, and Hangchow, as a guest
+at medical mission houses, I have come much into contact with
+its various methods. In Mukden a frequent mode of taking life,
+specially among young wives, is biting off the heads of lucifer
+matches, though the death from phosphorus poisoning is known
+to be an agonising one. Swallowing gold leaf or chloride of
+magnesium, jumping down wells or into rapid rivers, taking lead,
+cutting the throat, and stabbing the abdomen have been popular
+modes of self-destruction. But these are rapidly giving place
+to suicide by opium owing to the facility with which it can be
+obtained, the easy death which results from it, and the certainty
+of its operation in the absence of the foreign doctor, his emetic,
+and his stomach-pump. Medical mission hospitals in China save
+the lives of hundreds of would-be suicides every year.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So far as I have been able to ascertain, the causes of suicide
+in China are, not as in Europe, profound melancholia, heavy
+losses, or disappointment in love, but chiefly revenge and the
+desire to inflict serious injury on another. Suicide enables a
+Chinese to take a truly terrible revenge, for he believes that his
+spirit will malignantly haunt and injure the living; and the desire
+to save a suicide’s life arises in most cases not from humanity, but
+from the hope of averting such a direful catastrophe. If a master
+offends his servant or makes him “lose face,” or a shopkeeper his
+assistant or apprentice, the surest revenge is to die on his premises,
+for it not only involves the power of haunting and of inflicting
+daily injuries, but renders it necessary that the body should lie
+where death occurs until an official inquiry is made, which brings
+into the house the scandal and turmoil of a visit from a mandarin
+with a body of officials and retainers. It is quite common for
+a man or woman to walk into the courtyard of a person against
+whom he or she has a grudge, and take a fatal dose of opium
+there to ensure these desirable results!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among common incentives to suicide are the gusts of blind
+rage to which the Chinese of both sexes are subject, the cruelty
+of mothers-in-law, quarrels between husband and wife, failure
+to meet payments at the New Year, gambling losses, the desire
+to annoy a husband, the gambling or extravagant opium smoking
+of a husband, imputation of theft, having pawned the clothes
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>of another and being unable to redeem them, being defrauded
+of money, childlessness, dread of divorce, being sold by a husband,
+abridgment of liberty, poverty, and the like. Opium, from the
+painless death it brings, is now resorted to on the most trivial
+occasions, and has largely increased the number of suicides.
+Though the reasons which I have given for self-destruction apply
+mostly to women, yet where statistics are obtainable men are
+largely in the majority, and revenge and the desire of inflicting
+injury are their great motives.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Of course, there are very many risks and difficulties in the
+treatment of out-patients. Chinese medicines are administered
+bulkily, a pint or a quart at a time, and patients do not understand
+our concentrated and powerful doses. Hence dangerous
+and grotesque mistakes are continually made, such as the
+following:—</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>Patient</i>—“Doctor, when I took the medicine you gave me
+yesterday it made me very sick; it has given me diarrhœa and
+a severe pain in the stomach; my fingers and toes also feel very
+numb.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>Dr. Malcolm</i> (looking at the bottle)—“Why, you have already
+almost finished the eight days’ medicine” (arsenic) “that I gave
+you yesterday. The wonder is that you are alive at all.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>Patient No. 2</i> enters—“Where is the old boss of this shop?
+I want some foreign devil medicine to cure malaria.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>D.</i>—“Allow me to tell you I am not a devil. You had better
+go home; and when you can come and ask respectfully for
+medicine we will give it you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>P. No. 3</i> enters, holding out her hands and asking the doctor to
+find out her disease by “comparing her pulses.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>D.</i>—“Tell me what is the matter with you.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>P.</i>—“My bones and muscles are sore all over.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>D.</i>—“What was the cause of your trouble?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>P.</i>—“It was brought on by a fit of anger.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>D.</i>—“How long have you had it?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>P.</i>—“From the time the heavens were opened, and the earth
+was split” (<i>i.e.</i> a very long time).</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The arms and shoulders of this woman were covered with pieces
+of green plaster, given her by the Chinese doctors. She proposed
+to throw these away and “to publish the doctor’s name abroad”
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>if he cured her. So she received medicine with very full directions
+about taking it; these were not enough. She asked a string
+of questions such as if she must heat it before taking it, if she
+must keep the bottle tightly corked, if she must take it along
+with anything else, and lastly—</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>P.</i>—“Shall I abstain from eating anything?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>D.</i>—“No.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>P.</i> (greatly disappointed).—“What! shall I not forbid my
+mouth anything at all?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>D.</i> (jokingly).—“Yes. Do not talk too much; do not revile
+your neighbours; do not smoke opium; do not scatter lies.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The doctor getting worried, reiterates plain directions regarding
+the medicine, tells her they are very busy, and that she must not
+ask any more questions, and shows her out.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>P.</i> (returning after a few minutes).—“Is the medicine to be
+taken inwardly, or rubbed on the outside?”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Or a man comes in and describes “chills,” and a dose of
+quinine is prepared for him, when he smiles serenely and says,
+“To tell you the truth, it is not I that take the chills; it is my
+mother.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Another comes in, and describes with great minuteness and
+self-pity his symptoms, which are those of malarial fever. He
+will not take a dose of quinine in the dispensary, but wants
+to take it home, saying he will not “shake” till the next day.
+He is feigning sickness, in order to get quinine and sell it. Or
+an operation for cataract has been performed in one of the
+hospital wards, and the son of the patient comes to the doctor,
+begging him to go to his father, who says that his eye pains
+him so that he cannot stand it. The doctor finds that the
+bandage has been removed, and reproaches the son, who said
+that some friends came in to see if he could really see after being
+blind for so many years, and took off the bandage. The patient
+had rubbed the eye, the wound had burst open and was suppurating,
+and the man was blind for life.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Some patients come to a hospital out of impudence, some in
+the hope of getting drugs to sell, others out of curiosity to see
+how the “foreign devil doctor” works, others to steal the clothes
+which are lent to in-patients, and others for a lark, pretending
+to have various diseases, but with these the Chinese assistants
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>occasionally indulge in a lark on their own account, and turn
+on them a pretty vigorous current from the electric battery.<a id='r12'></a><a href='#f12' class='c013'><sup>[12]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With so much vexatious expenditure of time, so much imposition
+and greed, and so many disappointments regarding interesting
+cases owing to the gross ignorance of the patients and their
+friends, there are many drawbacks in the life of a missionary
+doctor, and even in such long-established work as that at Hangchow,
+and with such admirable equipments and assistance, it
+cannot always be easy to preserve the courtesy, gentleness,
+patience, and forbearance which are among the essentials of
+success.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Of the patients treated in Hangchow last year one thousand
+were in-patients. “Discharged cured” might be written against
+the great majority of their names, and those who were incurable
+were greatly benefited, as in the case of the lepers, whose
+“grievous wounds” are closed and healed, and whose pains are
+subdued.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Certainly this great hospital is one of the sights of Hangchow,
+and no one could become acquainted with it without recognising
+that those who work it and support it are following closely in the
+footsteps of Him who came “not to destroy men’s lives, but to
+save them.”<a id='r13'></a><a href='#f13' class='c013'><sup>[13]</sup></a></p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER V.<br> <span class='c012'>SHANGHAI TO HANKOW (HANKAU)</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>From Hangchow I made a very interesting journey by canal
+and river to the important and historical city of Shao
+Hsing, with its beautiful environs, and from thence by inland
+waterways to Ningpo and its lovely lakes, passing through a
+region of great fertility, beauty, and prosperity. I must put on
+record that I made that journey without either a companion or
+servant, trusting entirely to the fidelity and goodwill of Chinese
+boatmen, and was not disappointed. At Ningpo the Commissioner
+of Customs kindly lent me the Customs tender, a fast-sailing
+lorcha, for a week, and engaging a servant, I visited the
+Chusan Archipelago in glorious weather, spending three days
+on the remarkable island of Putu, the Island of Priests, sacred
+to Kwan Yin, the goddess of mercy, and two at Tinghai, on the
+island of Chusan, where the graves of the four hundred British
+soldiers who died there during our occupation present a melancholy
+spectacle of neglect and disrepair. The region beyond Shao
+Hsing technically belongs to another drainage area than that
+of the Yangtze, and is therefore passed over without further
+remark. I returned from Ningpo to Shanghai by sea.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The difficulties of getting a reliable interpreter servant who had
+not previously served Europeans and who was willing to face the
+possible risks and certain hardships of the journey I proposed
+were solved by the kindly intervention of friends, and I engaged a
+tall, very fine-looking, superior man named Be-dien, who abominated
+“pidgun,” spoke very fairly correct English, and increased
+his vocabulary daily during the journey. He was proud and had
+a bad temper, but served me faithfully, was never out of hearing
+of my whistle except by permission, showed great pluck, never
+grumbled when circumstances were adverse, and never deserted
+me in difficulties or even in perils.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>My other preparations consisted chiefly in buying an open
+bamboo armchair to be carried in, plenty of tea and curry powder,
+and in discarding most of my few possessions.<a id='r14'></a><a href='#f14' class='c013'><sup>[14]</sup></a> As nobody in
+Shanghai had travelled in the region which I hoped eventually
+to visit, there was no information about it to be gained, and I
+left for my journey of six or seven months remarkably free from
+encumbrances of every kind.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Several foreign and one Chinese company own the eighteen fine
+steamers which keep up daily communication between Shanghai
+and Hankow, and dissipate the romance of travel by their white
+enamel, mirrors, gilding, and electric light. The <i>Poyang</i>, by which
+I was a passenger, and the only one, as far as Chinkiang,
+resembles most of the others, being of an American type, about
+2000 tons burden, luxurious to a fault, and officered by efficient
+and courteous gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Sailing at night, the lumpy sea which is apt to prevail in the
+estuary of the Yangtze is got over comfortably, and by the following
+morning it is possible to believe that the expanse of muddy
+water is actually a river, for there are hazy outlines of brown shores.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The first day on the river was cold and raw, as, indeed, were the
+days which followed it; the damp-laden air wrapped one round in
+its dismal chill. White enamel and mirrors were detestable. The
+only things which harmonised with the surroundings were the stove
+and the thick woollen carpet. Yet the mercury was at 45°—not
+bad for midwinter!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After passing Silver Island, a wooded rock, on which is a fine
+temple, we reached Chinkiang, the first of the treaty ports on the
+Yangtze, and well situated at the junction of the Grand Canal with
+the river. On my two visits I thought it an attractive place. It
+has a fine bund and prosperous-looking foreign houses, with a
+British consulate on a hill above; trees abound. The concession<a id='r15'></a><a href='#f15' class='c013'><sup>[15]</sup></a>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>roads are broad and well kept. A row of fine hulks connected by
+bridges with the shore offers great facilities for the landing of
+goods and passengers. Sikh police are much <i>en evidence</i>, the hum
+of business greets one’s ears, traffic throngs the bund, the Grand
+Canal is choked with junks, and the rule regarding sub-letting to
+Chinese being honoured only in the breach, the concession is
+covered with godowns and Chinese residences, and judging from
+appearances only, one might think Chinkiang a busier port than
+Hankow, the great centre of commerce in Central China. The
+gross value of the trade of this port is, however, only about
+£4,000,000 sterling annually, but is advancing. One great export
+is ground-nut oil, which is carried and shipped in baskets lined with
+paper. Another, which accounts for nearly one-fourteenth of the
+value of the exports, is the dried perianth of certain lily flowers
+(<i>Hemerocallis graminea</i> and <i>Hemerocallis flava</i>), which is greatly
+esteemed as a relish with meats, specially with pork.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As tokens of the increasing prosperity of Chinkiang, it is
+interesting to note that recently two filatures, owned and managed
+by Chinese, were opened, the machinery in one of them being of
+Chinese manufacture, while the factory was erected without foreign
+aid. The hands employed are women, who work twelve hours
+daily, at 10½<i>d.</i> a day, Sunday being a holiday. The success of
+this, under native management, was considered dubious. A distillery,
+for distilling spirit from rice, is another sign of progress
+(or retrogression?), and our German rivals have done a very
+“neat thing” in starting an albumen factory, in which the albumen,
+dexterously separated from the yolks of the eggs, is made
+into slabs, which are sent to Germany for use in photography, the
+preparation of leather, and the printing of cotton, etc. The eggs
+are ducks’ eggs solely. The yolks undergo some preservative
+treatment, and after being packed in barrels are exported for
+use in confectionery and bar-rooms. My informant, Consul
+Carles, is silent on the use to which they are then applied, but
+doubtless it is well known to frequenters of such establishments.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The workmen in out-of-doors trades, such as masons and
+carpenters, seem to comport themselves much like our own, at
+all seasons of the year drinking tea, resting, and smoking whenever
+it pleases them, taking a long siesta in summer, and in
+winter not beginning work till nine. The building trade is a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>guild,<a id='r16'></a><a href='#f16' class='c013'><sup>[16]</sup></a> and there are five large guilds in Chinkiang, with guild
+funds for the relief of widows and orphans of former members.
+There are various missions in Chinkiang, and some general stir,
+which may be expected in a city of 140,000 souls.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next day, which was raw and grim, and made the stove-side
+a magnet, we reached Wuhu, the ugliest, if I may be
+allowed to say so, of all the Yangtze ports, but its trade is not
+unprosperous, having more than doubled in the last ten years, its
+gross value as to the principal articles of export and import being
+now nearly £2,000,000 sterling a year.<a id='r17'></a><a href='#f17' class='c013'><sup>[17]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There again the Germans have started an albumen factory,
+which employs fifty women and ten men. It takes 7000 eggs
+to produce 100 pounds of albumen. Feathers to the amount of
+£23,000 for the last year of returns were also exported to
+Germany for the making of feather beds.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The most interesting export of Wuhu to the general reader is,
+however, “China ink,” which is largely produced in the province of
+<span class='sc'>Nganhui</span>. The small, black sticks, decorated with Chinese characters
+in gold, are known and appreciated by us all. From Wuhu it
+goes to all parts of China and of the world. In 1895 <i>two tons</i>
+of it were exported from Shanghai to foreign countries. Nearly
+the whole of the writing done in the vast Chinese empire, as well
+as in Japan, Korea, Tonquin, and Annam, is done with this
+beautiful ink, which is rubbed down on a stone ink-slab, and
+applied with a sable brush. This is altogether apart from its
+value to the water-colour art of all nations. It is made from
+the oil expressed from the large seeds of the <i>Elœococca verrucosa</i>,
+sesamum oil, or colza oil, varnish, and pork fat, burned, the resulting
+lampblack being of various degrees of fineness according to
+the process adopted; gold leaf and musk are added. There are
+a dozen different grades, and the price varies from 2<i>s.</i> to 140<i>s.</i> per
+pound, a pound containing about thirty sticks.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Various industries, including a steam flour mill, have been
+started by the Chinese in Wuhu, and it is a city of 80,000 people,
+but to a mere passer-by it is most uninteresting, and its busy
+streets had neither novelty nor picturesqueness enough to repay
+me for a struggle through the slush.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>That night, while we were dining, there was a tremendous
+bump, a crash, and a stoppage. The junk we cut into went
+down like a stone with all hands. Not a shout or cry was
+heard. Boats were lowered, and we hung about for an hour;
+it was not very dark. A Frenchman brutally remarked, “Good!
+there’ll be some yellow skins fewer.” That was all.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next day we reached Kiu-kiang, another treaty port, with
+a pretty, shady bund, and pleasant foreign houses in shady
+gardens, but it has a sleepy air for a city of 55,000 souls and a
+trade worth two millions and a quarter a year.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Totally destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion in 1858–59,
+it has been rebuilt, is surrounded by a defensive wall six miles
+in circumference, and has regained more than its former prosperity,
+its imports having increased steadily for the last five
+years.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have mentioned only the treaty ports, but from Chinkiang
+westwards the great cities on or near the bank divide attention
+with the engineering works and the singular vagaries of build
+and rig in the countless craft on the river. Among the cities on
+or near the river are Yang Chow Fu, Nanking, the southern
+capital, with its ruined splendours and picturesqueness, Taiping
+Fu, the great and prosperous city of Nganking Fu, and many
+others, besides countless villages, which are apt to lead an
+amphibious existence. After leaving Kiu-kiang, the most prominent
+objects of interest are the Great and Little Orphans,
+picturesque rocks about 300 feet in height, rising direct from the
+bed of the river, and appropriated, as all picturesque sites are,
+by the Buddhists for religious purposes. The Great Orphan
+is near Hu-kow, a bluff on the river crowned by an inaccessible-looking
+building, half temple, half fortress, close to the junction
+of the important Poyang lake with the Yangtze, which is effected
+by a short, broad stream.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A city on a dead level can scarcely be imposing, and Hankow is
+not impressive from the water. Some chimneys of Russian brick
+tea factories rise above the greenery of the bund, and on the right
+bank of the broad Yangtze, above a squalid suburb of Wu-Chang,
+appear some tall chimneys belonging to a Chinese cotton factory
+under native management, but differing from those at Shanghai
+in that no women or girls are employed, the Viceroy considering
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>that such occupation for women is opposed to good morals and
+Confucian principles! On an elevation there is also a camp with
+crenelated walls, an abundance of fluttering silk banners, and
+various antiquated engines of war.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The day was damp and grim, but the kindly welcomes, cordial
+hospitality, and big blazing fires at the British Consulate, where I
+was received, made amends for the external chill, and my visit to
+Hankow is among my many pleasant memories of China. Later
+in the day Dr. Griffith John called on me, the veteran missionary
+of the L.M.S., great as an evangelist, a Chinese writer and translator,
+and as an enthusiast. The L.M.S. has its mission buildings,
+which include a church, dispensaries, and hospitals, and the houses
+of its missionaries, in some of the pleasant shady streets which
+intersect the settlement. They have various agencies at work, and
+are full of hope as to the result. I understand that Dr. Griffith
+John, who has devoted his life to China and means to die there,
+partly from his devotion and partly from his literary gifts, is much
+respected by many of the official and upper classes, and has much
+influence.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER VI.<br> <span class='c012'>THE FOREIGNERS—HANKOW AND BRITISH TRADE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>Hankow or Hanmouth, Wu-Chang Fu, the capital of
+<span class='sc'>Hupeh</span>, and Han Yang would be one city were they not
+bisected by the broad, rolling Yangtze, nearly a mile wide, and
+its great tributary the Han. Hankow and Han Yang are on the
+north bank, and Wu-Chang on the south. The “congeries of
+cities,” as the three have been aptly termed, is about 600 miles
+from Shanghai. Till 1863 Hankow was an open city, but the
+dread of an attack by northern banditti that year led the Government
+to enclose it with a stone wall, four miles in circuit and
+thirteen feet in height, raised by a brick parapet to eighteen feet.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Hankow considers that it has the finest bund in China, and
+I have no wish to dispute its assertion. In truth its length of
+800 yards, its breadth of 80, its lofty and noble river wall and
+fine flights of stone stairs, ascending 40 feet from low water, its
+broad promenade and carriage-way and avenue of fine trees, with
+the “palatial” houses, very similar to those of Shanghai and
+Singapore, on the other side in large gardens and shaded by
+exotic trees, make it scarcely credible that the first authentic
+visit of Europeans to the city was that made by Lord Elgin in
+H.M.S. <i>Furious</i> in 1858, and that the site for this stately British
+settlement was only chosen in 1861, the year in which the port
+was opened to foreign trade.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among the principal buildings are the British and French
+Consulates, the residence of the Commissioner of Customs, and
+the Municipal Buildings. There is a Municipal Council charged
+with the same functions as that at Shanghai, and Sikh policemen
+make a goodly show. Dead levels are not attractive unless they
+are bounded by the living ocean, and the bund is dull and gives
+one the impression that the British settlement has “seen better
+days.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>The foreign community consists of the consuls and their staffs,
+the <i>employés</i> of the Chinese Maritime Customs, a very few professional
+men, a large number of British and American missionaries,
+and the members of British and other European mercantile
+firms, Russians taking a very prominent position. The residents
+have carried their amusements with them, and amuse themselves
+on a small scale after the fashion of those at Shanghai. There
+is a popular club which welcomes passing visitors, and combines
+social attractions with a library, reading-room, and billiard-room,
+keeping in touch with the world by frequent telegrams. There
+is a creditable newspaper—the <cite>Hankow Times</cite>, which has papers
+on Chinese, social, and other subjects—an episcopal service, a hotel,
+a livery stable, and other necessaries of the British exile’s life.
+Kindness and cordial hospitality to strangers are not less characteristic
+of Hankow than of the less frequented ports.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The climate is not an agreeable one. The summers, lasting
+from May till the middle of September, are hot and damp, and
+severe cases of malarial and typhoid fever are not unusual. The
+atmosphere is thick and stagnant, and there are swarms of
+mosquitoes. Some of the men residents pass the hottest summer
+nights on the bund to get the little air stirring on the river, and
+the Chinese sleep on their roofs and in the streets. The autumn
+months are very pleasant, the mercury falls to the freezing point
+in January, and after light frosts there is a damp, raw period till
+warm weather sets in again.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Neither Hankow nor its neighbours have any special features
+of interest except their gigantic trade. The populations are not
+openly unfriendly; but Consul Carles, his wife, and I, although
+attended, had mud thrown at us at Han Yang.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The glory of Hankow, as well as its terror, is the magnificent
+Yangtze, nearly a mile wide even in winter, rolling majestically
+past the bund, lashed into a dangerous fury by storms, or careering
+buoyantly before breezes; in summer, an inland sea fifty feet deep.
+In July and early August Hankow is at its worst, and the rise of
+the river is watched with much anxiety. The bund is occasionally
+submerged, boats ply between houses and offices, the foundations
+of buildings are softened, exercise is suspended, gardens are destroyed,
+much business stands still, frail native houses are swept
+away—as many of those perched on piles were, with much loss
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span>of life, in the summer rise of 1898—and thousands are deprived
+of shelter and livelihood, and when the water falls widespread
+distress and a malarious film of mud are left behind. The appearance
+of the <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> water, the red product of the “Red
+Basin” of Richthofen, indicates to the Chinese intelligence the
+approaching subsidence of the water, and points to a fact of some
+scientific interest. During the ordinary summer rise the whole
+region, viewed from Pagoda Hill, has the dismal aspect of a
+turbid, swirling inland sea, above which many villages with trees
+appear, built on mounds, probably of ancient construction.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Hankow is the most westerly port in which the Mexican dollar
+is actually current, and even in its back country copper <i>cash</i> are
+preferred to either coined or uncoined silver. For western travel,
+over and above any amount of cash which the traveller can burden
+himself with, “sycee” silver is necessary, which can be obtained
+from the agency of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, as well
+as “good paper”—Chinese drafts on Chinese merchants of repute
+in the far west. Silver “shoes,” as the uncouth lumps of silver
+obtained from the banks are called, are worth about fifty taels,
+but the tael itself is not of fixed value, the Haikwan tael, in
+which the Customs and some other accounts are kept, varying
+from the Shanghai tael, and that again from the Hankow tael,
+and so on.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Nor is this all. The silver itself is unfortunately of variable
+quality. Hankow sycee is of 2½ per cent. higher “standard” than
+Shanghai sycee, and <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> silver is of higher standard than
+that of Hankow, so that the traveller is subject to frequent losses
+on his bullion, besides suffering a good deal from delays and
+annoyances consequent on weighings and occasional testings,
+though the trained eye alone can usually detect the inferior
+“touch” of his silver. “Confusion worse confounded” describes
+the currency system, if “currency” is an applicable word, when
+once the simplicity of the Mexican dollar is left behind, and I
+ceased to be surprised at the employment of Chinese “shroffs”
+by foreign firms, for what but an Oriental intellect could unravel
+the mysteries of “touch,” the differences in the value of taels, the
+soundness and genuineness of <i>cash</i>, and the daily variations and
+entanglements of the exchanges?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In a treaty port which has been open for thirty-nine years, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>which in 1898 had a net import trade of £3,422,669, and a net
+export trade of £4,643,048, and of which, so far as the import of
+foreign goods is concerned, the British share is one half, the
+stranger naturally expects to find British merchants piling up
+big fortunes, and the size and stateliness of the houses on the
+bund gives colour to this expectation.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But, in fact, while the British firms in Hankow are merely
+branches of houses in Shanghai, their Chinese rivals, who have
+driven them out of the import trade, are Hankow merchants
+with branches in Shanghai. There are about eleven of these
+big native firms which supply the Hankow market with British
+cotton goods, and which have risen on the ruins of British competitors.
+These wealthy firms, dealing wholesale, supply the up-country
+merchants and local shopkeepers, buying goods through
+their branches in Shanghai, which employ Chinese brokers speaking
+“pidgun” English to buy the particular goods they want from the
+foreign importers. They keep well up to date regarding Shanghai
+auction sales, of which they get catalogues in Chinese, and are
+quick to seize on every small advantage. The British merchant
+was shortsighted enough totally to neglect to open up direct
+business relations with the up-country merchants, and was content
+to deal entirely with the Hankow native importer, to whom he left
+all the advantages of local connection and knowledge.<a id='r18'></a><a href='#f18' class='c013'><sup>[18]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This unfortunate state of things does not seem likely to improve
+either in Hankow or elsewhere. Our methods of doing business
+are frank and open, and the Chinese merchants have become as well
+acquainted with foreign trade methods as are Europeans themselves,
+while of their customs in trade and their arrangements among
+themselves for conducting business we know scarcely anything,
+and have no organisations equivalent to those centred in the
+guilds. Whether it is too late to stem the tide which is gradually
+sweeping business out of foreign into native hands I know not,
+but though actual British trade may not suffer, the openings for
+young men in mercantile houses in China are diminishing yearly,
+unless capital, push, a preference for business over athletics, a
+working knowledge of the Chinese language and business methods,
+and a determination to succeed, should develop the trade and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>traffic of the Tungting lake, and turn to account the great possibilities
+for Lancashire trade in <span class='sc'>Hunan</span>, even though the ground
+lost in other directions can never be recovered.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As to the trade of Hankow, naturally an interesting subject,
+I shall make very few remarks, the first being that in the year
+1898, 550,000 tons of British shipping entered the port, against
+60,624 of all other nationalities, exclusive of the Chinese, Japan
+taking the lead among them with 32,099. Hankow has lost
+much of her once enormous tea trade, owing to deterioration in
+quality and the change of fashion in England.<a id='r19'></a><a href='#f19' class='c013'><sup>[19]</sup></a> Russian merchants
+now have the tea trade in their hands; they have factories
+for the production of “brick tea” at both Hankow and Kiu-kiang,
+while in 1898 five of the big steamers of the Russian Volunteer
+Fleet loaded tea direct for Odessa, and one steamer for St. Petersburg.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>German and Austrian firms have started several albumen factories
+in Hankow, the best of the product being used in photography; the
+Japanese are now running two steamers a week between it and
+Shanghai, and will not improbably “cut in” ahead of others for the
+trade and traffic of the lake and inland rivers. Numbers of these
+alert traders have come up the Yangtze, and in their practical way
+are spreading themselves through the country, finding out the
+requirements and tastes of the people, and quietly pushing their
+trade in small articles, while Japan is also going ahead with her
+larger exports, the quantity of her cotton yarn imported into Hankow
+having risen from 150 cwt. in 1895 to 260,332 in 1898, displacing
+Indian yarn to a considerable extent. Japanese merchants, like
+the German, do not despise <i>littles</i> in trade, and are content with
+small profits, and most of what is known as the “muck and truck”
+trade is in their hands, in extending which they will prove formidable
+competitors of each other. Nor ought the competition of
+Japan in the larger branches of trade to be ignored by us, for
+to extend her markets is an absolute necessity of her existence,
+and the markets of China are a fair field for her commercial
+ambition.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>I cannot omit all mention of kerosene oil, the import of which
+increases “by leaps and bounds,” American taking the lead, and
+which is greatly diminishing the production of the native illuminating
+oils. This kerosene oil, imported from Russia, America,
+and Sumatra, to the quantity, in 1898, of 16,055,000 gallons,
+goes from Hankow through six provinces. It is one among the
+agents which are producing changes in the social life of China. I
+have seen the metamorphosis effected by it in the village life of
+the Highlands of Scotland and Korea, where the saucer of fish oil,
+with its smoky wick, and the dim, dull <i>andon</i> have been replaced
+by the bright, cheerful “paraffin lamp,” a gathering point for
+the family, rendering industry and occupation possible. Chinese
+rooms are inconceivably dark, and smoking, sleeping, and gambling
+were the only possible modes of getting rid of the long
+winter evenings among the poorer classes till kerosene oil came
+upon the scene.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Hankow has eight regular guilds, which are banks and cash shops,
+rice and grain dealers, clothiers and mercers, grocers and oilmen,
+ironmasters, wholesale dealers in copper and metals, dealers in
+<span class='sc'>Kiangsi</span> china, and wholesale druggists, Hankow having one of the
+largest and best drug markets in China. It would be well if we
+realised the extreme importance of these and similar trade organisations.
+We may talk of spheres of interest and influence, and
+make commercial treaties giving us the advantages of the “most
+favoured nation” clause; but till we understand the power of the
+guilds, and can cope with them on terms of equality, and are “up
+to Chinese methods of business,” we shall continue to see what we
+are now seeing at Hankow and elsewhere, which I have already
+alluded to. There is much that is admirable in these guilds, and
+their trades-unionism, combinations, and systems of terrorism are
+as perfect as any machinery of the same kind in England. In
+any matters affecting the joint interests of a trade, the members
+or their delegates meet and consult. The rules of guilds are both
+light and severe, and no infringement of them is permitted without
+a corresponding penalty; these penalties vary from a feast
+and a theatrical entertainment being inflicted on the guilty person
+to expulsion from the guild in a flagrant case, which means the
+commercial ruin of the offender.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER VII.<br> <span class='c012'>CHINESE HANKOW (HANKAU)</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>It is a short step from the stately dulness of the bund to the
+crowds, colour, and noise of the native city—the “Million-peopled
+City,” the commercial centre of China, the greatest
+“distributing point” in the empire, the centre of the tea trade,
+which has fallen practically into Russian hands, and the greatest
+junk port in China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The city wall is imposing, with a crenelated parapet, forts at
+the corners, and tunnelled under double-roofed gate-towers for
+heavily bossed gates, which are closed from sunset to sunrise.
+The unpaved roadways are usually foul quagmires owing to the
+perpetual passage of water carriers; where big dogs of the colour
+of dirty flannel, with pink patches of hairlessness, wrangle over
+offal. The streets are from ten to twelve feet wide. The houses
+are high. Matting or blue cotton is stretched across from opposite
+roofs in summer to moderate the sun’s heat and glare; so the
+traffic is carried on in a curiously tinted twilight, flecked now and
+then by a vivid ray gleaming on the red and gold of the long,
+hanging shopboards, lighting up their flare and glare, and giving
+them a singular picturesqueness.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The shape of the signboard and the different colours of the
+letters and face of the sign indicate different trades. The devising
+of a signboard is a very important matter; it may affect the
+luck of the shop. The name of the shopkeeper comes first, but
+in the case of a firm a word of good omen is substituted for
+the names, with a character signifying union. In both cases
+the top characters are followed by words of good omen, suggesting
+wealth, prosperity, and increase.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Gold platers of ornaments use salmon-coloured boards with
+green characters, druggists gilded boards frequently traced with
+many lines, and large standard tablets which remain in their
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>sockets at night, and there are a few other combinations of colour
+used by different traders for the sake of easy distinction; and
+on some signboards the articles sold within are carefully pictured,
+but black and gold and carnation-red and gold largely predominate,
+the gold being used for the highly decorative characters,
+the writing of which is a lucrative trade. An old signboard is
+a valuable piece of property, and if the business is sold fetches
+a high price, like the goodwill of a long-established business
+at home. An old-established druggist’s sign has sold for as
+much as 3000 taels, about £450. In the winter, with the
+streets so decorated, with the overhead screens removed, the
+narrow strips of bright blue sky above, and the slant sunbeams
+touching gold and colour into marvellous brilliancy, Chinese
+cities, especially Canton and Foochow, have a nearly unrivalled
+picturesqueness.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Of the crowded and semi-impassable state of such streets no
+adequate idea can be given. Though on my first visit to the native
+city the British Consul was walking beside me with an attendant,
+and my bearers wore the red-plumed hats and well-known liveries
+of the Consulate, I was often brought to a halt, more or less
+ignominious, or was roughly shaken by the impact of the burden
+of some hurrying coolie, while the chairmen threaded their way
+with difficulty through thousands of busy, blue-clad Chinese, all
+shouting or yelling, my bearers adding to the din by the yelling
+in chorus which is supposed to clear a passage for a chair.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among the meaner cotton-clad folk there were not wanting rich
+costumes of heavy brocaded silks and costly furs, worn probably
+by compradores and shopkeepers, who in the treaty ports are
+coming to vie with the highest officials in the splendid expensiveness
+of their dress. Occasionally yells louder than usual, and an
+attempt on the part of the crowd to pack itself to right and left,
+denoted the approach of a mandarin in a heavy, coloured and
+gilded official chair, with eight bearers, and many attendants in
+heavily plumed hats and red and black decorated dresses; the
+official himself sitting very erect within his chair, nearly always
+very pale and fat, with a thin moustache of long curved hairs, and
+that look of unutterable superciliousness and scorn which no
+Oriental of another race is equally successful in attaining.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>
+<img src='images/p069_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A STREET IN HANKOW.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>The principal streets are flagged; the others are miry ways
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>cut into deep ruts by wheelbarrows. “Ancient and fish-like
+smells” abound, and strong odours of garlic, putrid mustard,
+frizzling pork, and of the cooking of that most appetising dish,
+fish in a state of decomposition, drift out of the crowded eating-houses.
+If of the lower class, the culinary operations of restaurants
+are visible from the street, the utensils consisting of a row of
+pans set into brickwork, one or two iron pots, and a few earthenware
+dishes. Not a tipsy man or a man noisy with drink was
+to be seen. The Chinese have the virtue of using alcoholic
+liquor in great moderation, and almost altogether with their
+food.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Oil in earthenware jars, each large enough to contain a man,
+or freshly arrived in the paper-lined wicker baskets in which it
+is shipped from <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, denotes the oil shops; parcels of tea
+done up in oiled paper, built up to a great height with surprising
+regularity, slabs of brick tea, and sacks of sugar denote the
+grocers; while rolls of carefully packed silk, which one longs to
+investigate, proclaim the prince of retail shopkeepers, the dealer
+in silks.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are bean cakes, melon seeds, dates, and drugs from the
+north and west, brought in by the great junks, with huge sweeps
+and Vandyke-brown sails, which crowd the Han. There are idol-makers
+with every sort and size of idol for home use and export,
+some of which find their way to Tibet and Turkestan, and receive
+perpetual worship in the homes and <i>gonpas</i> of Ladak and Nubra;
+but none of them are treated with even scant respect until the
+ceremony takes place which invests them with the soul, represented
+by silver models of the “five viscera,” which are inserted at a door
+in the back. In the same quarter are dealers in the manifold
+paraphernalia of idol worship, in the tinsel, gold, and silver shoes
+burned in ancestor-worship, and in the very clever and in some
+cases life-size representations of elephants, tigers, horses, asses,
+cows, houses, carts, and many other things which are burned at
+funerals, adding to their great costliness, the sons of a merchant
+of average means often spending a thousand dollars on these
+mimicries.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But while there are dealers in everything which can minister
+to the luxury or necessities of the “Million-peopled City,” many
+of the shops give a piteous notion of the poverty of their customers.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>And everywhere in these crowded streets not a thing
+is sold, from a valuable diamond down to a straw shoe, without
+the deafening din of bargaining, no seller asking what he means
+to take, and no purchaser offering what he eventually means to
+give, the poorest buyers, to whom time is money, thinking an hour
+not misspent if they get a reduction of half a <i>cash</i>. As all the
+bargaining, except in the case of the great shops, is done at the
+shop fronts, and the bargainers are men, and Chinese men, specially
+of the lower orders, shout at the top of their voices, the Babel in
+a Chinese commercial street is inconceivable.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Enormous quantities of goods are everywhere waiting for
+transit, for Hankow is the greatest distributing centre in China,
+and the big steamers lying at the bund, or at anchor in the
+stream, and the thousand junks which crowd the waterways, seem
+barely sufficient for her gigantic commerce.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among the ghastly curiosities of Hankow, as of all big Chinese
+cities, are the coffin shops, which usually herd together in special
+quarters and are apt to use portions of the streets for their timberyards.
+In them are seen the great cumbrous coffins, at times ten
+and even twelve feet in length, which Chinese custom demands, of
+all grades and prices, from highly polished lacquer with characters
+raised or incised in gold to the roughly put together shell in which
+the tired coolie takes his last sleep. Many of the more costly are
+ordered as filial gifts from children to parents, and from grandchildren
+to grandparents, and take their lugubrious place, set up
+on end, among the decorations of the lofty vestibule by which rich
+men’s houses are entered, and where they may rest for years.
+As a body may remain for months or years unburied, waiting for
+the decision of the geomancers as to an auspicious place and date
+for the interment, the coffins are very carefully constructed, and
+are either lacquered or treated with the celebrated Ningpo varnish,
+which is practically impermeable both to air and moisture.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The varnishers and lacquerers also herd together, and their
+trade, which is based on the <i>Rhus vernicifera</i>, is a very important
+one. The eating-houses—and from the number of them and
+the crowds which frequent them it might be supposed that nobody
+eats at home—the tobacconists, and the opium shops are scattered
+broadcast through the city, and each has its special <i>clientèle</i>.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>
+<img src='images/p073_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>COFFINS AWAITING BURIAL.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>
+<img src='images/p076_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>HANKOW FROM HAN YANG.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Possibly there may have originally been a plan on which the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>Hankow streets were built, but it must have been outgrown for
+some centuries, and at present there is little suggestion of design;
+streets and alleys intersect each other in singular confusion, and
+only a practised hand can find any given point without irksome
+and delaying tergiversations. On the whole there is a tendency to
+arrive at the top of the river bank, where at low water (winter) a
+singular spectacle presents itself.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Han, an opaque, yellow, rapid flood, 200 yards wide, lies
+from forty to sixty feet below. Its summer rises have carried
+away its banks on the Hankow side, and the dense mass of ill-looking
+houses which formerly stood, as is the wont of houses, on
+the ground, have been undermined, and are now propped up on
+what it would be flattery to call piles, for they are only slender and
+casual poles lashed together till the requisite length is gained, some
+leaning one way, some another, while the dwellings they upbear
+owe their continued existence to their involuntary mutual support,
+and to the pestilent habit which such ramshackle buildings have
+everywhere of hanging together. Thousands of the poorer class
+of coolies live in these precarious abodes, which, however, are less
+unsavoury than some, for they have fresh air below and innumerable
+holes in the floors for the easy disposal of refuse. In the
+summer of 1898 a great many of these dwellings were carried
+away with much loss of life.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Almost below these, on the mud slope above the river, are
+hundreds of mat huts, which have to be removed as the water
+rises. These are the miserable, peripatetic kennels of the very
+lowest dregs of the Chinese humanity of a large city. It is difficult
+to say how this large population lives. Doubtless the “odd jobs”
+which support it are mostly connected with junks, for below each
+house is moored some rotten leaky thing capable of floating, to
+which descent is made by iron spikes driven into the strongest of
+the piles. Here are the men who on these “odd jobs” perpetuate
+lives which are not worth living—the beggars, blind and seeing,
+with malformed and loathsome bodies; lepers with gaping sores
+and fingers and toes dropping off; the unsightly and unnatural
+who rely for their living on revolting the feelings of the passers-by;
+suffering women old and friendless, who prefer the free Bohemianism
+of beggary to the almshouse or refuge provided by
+Chinese charity; and hosts of others, the pariah <i>débris</i> of Hankow.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>These wretched beings have one solace in life—the opium pipe—and
+they starve themselves to procure it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Flights of stone stairs, one of them at least of magnificent width
+and appearance, always crowded with water carriers splashing the
+contents of their pails, with coolies carrying burdens, and with
+passengers hurrying to and from the ferries, lead from the bank to
+the water. Through every opening in the dilapidations the river
+traffic is seen.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p078_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>FEMALE BEGGAR IN MAT HUT.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>At least three miles of junks<a id='r20'></a><a href='#f20' class='c013'><sup>[20]</sup></a> and other craft lie two, three, and
+four deep (to quote Lu Hew again), “like the teeth of a comb,” of
+all sizes, colours, and builds, having but two features in common: a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>prominent eye on each side of the bows and sterns considerably
+higher than the bows. Every maritime province of China is represented
+on that crowded waterway. One could never weary of the
+spectacle. It represents the extent, the enterprise, the industry,
+and the conservatism of China, and with an unrivalled variety and
+picturesqueness.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>No junks interested me more than the great passage and salt
+boats, from seventy to one hundred tons burthen, with their lofty,
+many-windowed sterns like the galleys of Henry IV., their tall
+single masts and their big brown-umber sails of knitted cane or
+coarse canvas extended by an arrangement of bamboo, looking
+heavy enough to capsize a liner, and with hulls stained and
+oiled into the similitude of varnished pine, as coming from that
+Upper Yangtze for which I was bound. There were huge junks
+from the Fukien province, bringing to me recollections of Foochow
+and the Min river, piled high with bamboos and poles, and
+extended to a preposterous width by masses of the same lashed
+on both sides, the buoyancy of the cargo permitting as little as
+five inches of freeboard, gaily painted and decorated junks from
+Canton, with rows of carefully-tended plants on their high sterns,
+sombre craft from Tientsin and the north, junks from the Poyang
+and Tungting lakes, nondescript craft from inland streams
+and canals, alert tenders to the big junks, lorchas, some of them
+foreign-owned, doing homage to Chinese nautical experience by
+their Chinese rig, rafts, with their inhabitants, <i>sampans</i> of all sizes,
+and huge junks heavily laden, crawling slowly down stream with
+their great sweeps, and the wild melancholy wail of the oarsmen—the
+Argonauts of Swatow or Ningpo.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>People who think it witty to ridicule everything Chinese poke
+fun at these junks and their “pig-tailed,” long-coated crews, but
+the handling of them is masterly; in emergencies there is no
+confusion, every man obeys orders, and the ease with which these
+apparently ungainly craft tack, with their complicated arrangement
+of bamboos stiffening their vast sails, is absolutely beautiful.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The streets of Hankow, like those of most of the large trading
+cities, present a perpetual series of dramas. In them hundreds
+of people eat, sleep, bargain, gamble, cook, spin, and quarrel, while
+they are the sculleries, sinks, and sewers of a not inconsiderable
+portion of the population. They are the playgrounds of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>children, if that can be called play which consists merely in
+rolling and tumbling over each other after the manner of puppies,
+the elder among them watching with greedy eyes the bargains
+of their seniors, eager cupidity and ofttimes precocious depravity
+written on faces which should be young.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p080_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A TRAVELLING RESTAURANT.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Itinerant barbers pursue their essential calling, carrying their
+apparatus on their backs, and perambulating the streets with a
+curious cry. Their business is an enormous one in China, where
+hair is regarded as an enemy to be battled with. Once a week
+at least, the Chinese, however poor, must have the front and
+middle of his head smoothly shaven, or he looks like a convict,
+his face, I cannot say his beard, and his eyebrows, if he has any,
+trimmed, when he emerges from the barber’s hands a respectable
+member of the community. All these operations are conducted
+publicly under the eaves and gateways and at the street corners,
+with much shampooing, and dexterous manipulation of oddly
+shaped razors, which scrape rather than cut, the face of the client
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span>nevertheless wearing a look of serene contentment. The fees of
+the barber are an important item in the expenditure of a Chinese
+coolie.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Many other industries are carried on in the streets, and the
+Government is lenient to all encroachments, so long as a mandarin’s
+chair and retinue can pass unhindered. Government is
+represented in this <i>congeries</i> of cities by <i>yamens</i>, with picturesque
+curved roofs, and gateways with a certain stateliness, and courtyards
+usually filled with petitioners and their agents, prisoners
+awaiting trial, <i>yamen</i> runners, who, from three to six hundred or
+more in number, hang about official residences; while clerks and
+writers carrying papers and dressed in expensive brocaded silks
+move haughtily among the common herd. The inner court is
+concealed by a plastered brick screen, on which is emblazoned
+in brilliant colouring a bold representation of the dragon of the
+Dragon Empire.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Government in its military aspect is made apparent by a
+number of soldiers, usually in picturesque but stagey and unserviceable
+uniforms, in which blue and carnation-red predominate,
+who are encountered in the streets hanging round opium or
+tobacco shops, or gambling for <i>cash</i>, or attached slightly to
+some procession, or lounging at the city gates, or swaggering
+at the great entrance to the <i>yamen</i>, under the curse of abounding
+leisure. Their somewhat mediæval military equipments are supplemented
+with additions laughably grotesque, long fans attached
+to their girdles, and big paper umbrellas, occasionally gaudily
+decorated with mythical monsters, but oftener with proverbs or
+Confucian maxims.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Hurry, crowds, business, the absence of the feminine element,
+and noise, are common to all Chinese cities. Drums and gongs
+are beaten, cymbals are clashed, bells ring, muskets are fired,
+crackers are exploded everywhere, beggars wail, there are street
+cries innumerable, the din of bargaining tongues rises high, and
+the air is full of the discordant roar of a multitude.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the centre of such surroundings, within hearing of the ceaseless
+din, and within smelling of the foul and ancient odour which
+pervades the city, the colony of English Wesleyan missionaries
+has placed itself in close contact with its medical missionary
+hospitals and dispensaries for men and women, its home and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>school for the blind, and its other missionary agencies, and not
+far off in a Chinese house, and living and dressing as a native,
+was one of the noblest and most sympathetic missionaries who
+ever sought the welfare of the Chinese, the Rev. David Hill,
+who died of typhus fever shortly after my first visit, genuinely
+mourned by those for whom he had sacrificed himself.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER VIII.<br> <span class='c012'>HANKOW TO ICHANG</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>I left Hankow, without seeing a gleam of sunshine upon
+it, by the deck-over-deck, American-built, stern-wheel steamer
+<i>Chang-wo</i>. She had some hundreds of Chinese and two China
+Inland missionaries on board below, and her very limited saloon
+accommodation was taken up by four Canadian missionaries
+returning to <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, and the inevitable baby. They had
+fled nearly a year before, after the destruction of their houses
+in the riots. I was greatly indebted to two of them. I had a
+cabin directly over the boiler. The floor was very hot, and even
+with the window open I could not get the temperature below 74°,
+and they gave me their cool room in exchange.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The captain was kind and genial. He let me tone unlimited
+photographic prints in the saloon, ignoring the dishes and buckets
+involved in the process, and the engineer provided an unlimited
+supply of condensed water, free both from Yangtze mud and from
+the alum used to precipitate it. But he had a unique affluence of
+bad language, which neither the presence of clergy nor women
+sufficed to check, and which was brought out with slow, thrilling,
+and emphatically damnatory deliberation on the many occasions on
+which we ran on shoals.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had abundant occupation in writing, printing and toning
+photographs, learning a little from Mr. Endacott of the region
+for which I was finally bound, taking walks below past the
+Chinese cabins, where the inmates were reclining in the bliss of
+opium smoking, the faint, sickly smell of the drug drifting out
+at the open doors, or on the upper deck to watch the fleets of
+strange junks through which the <i>Chang-wo</i> steamed, howling and
+bellowing. Lumbering, unhandy craft they look, but they are
+handled with consummate skill.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Great River was at its lowest winter level, and its shores,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>so far as one could see them under these circumstances, were most
+monotonous, and then it was midwinter. We steamed for hours
+between high, grey mud-banks, ceaselessly eaten away by the
+rush of the current, gaining little beyond an idea of the vastness
+of the level country, the depth of the grey alluvium, and the
+extent of the commerce of which the Yangtze is the highway.
+To get deep water we were often close under the right bank,
+and had the <i>divertissement</i> of being pelted with mud and with
+such names as “foreign devils” and “foreign dogs,” an amusement
+which one would have supposed would have palled upon the
+peasants in the years during which these steamers have been
+running.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Our progress was not rapid, owing to shoals and changes in the
+channel, and the <i>Chang-wo</i> anchored at night. Then, during the
+day, there was the frequent grinding sound of running on gravel,
+or the thud of touching a bank, or the buzz of a whirlpool created
+by ourselves in steering clear of a junk. All day long resounded
+the melancholy note of the Chinese leadsman calling out the
+soundings, varied by the sharp “Hard a-port!” or “Hard a-starboard!”
+of a European officer as some peril presented itself,
+or the low and terrible maledictions of the captain on all and
+sundry, as far back as the builders of the ship. The grounding
+was exasperating, losing us two hours at times. Quick as thought
+at every touch on shoal or mud-bank down clattered the anchor,
+and various skilled operations followed, which invariably resulted
+successfully, but at one time the navigation was so intricate, and
+the water shoaled for such a long distance, that, after getting off
+a bank after two hours’ tedious work, the steam launch was lowered
+to sound ahead, and direct us by signal flags.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Still it was hard to get up any excitement over these mishaps,
+even though the captain enlarged on the risk of losing the wheel
+or the rudder. Very little diversified the monotony of the winter
+voyage, but when I returned in summer, and could look over the
+banks, a vast population and innumerable industries were to
+be seen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Yo-chow, a fortified monastery on a high promontory, once
+a place of considerable domination, and Yo-chow Fu, a large city
+near the junction of the Tungting Lake with the Yangtze, are
+the chief features of the featurelessness. This lake, a vast but
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>imperfectly known sheet of water, surrounded by towns and
+villages, is of very great importance to the trade of the rich
+<span class='sc'>Hunan</span> province.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The farther route lies among embanked watercourses, great
+flats of muddy land receiving alluvial accretions from each
+summer’s floods, and shallow meres with a wealth of wild fowl
+I never saw equalled, and abounding in fish, both fish and fowl
+being snared in great numbers by the nearly amphibious inhabitants,
+by many ingenious devices born of Chinese poverty.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among the many varieties of boats are pairs of large <i>sampans</i>,
+lashed together, and at once kept apart and connected by platforms,
+on which reeds are piled to the height of a haystack, the
+lowest part of the centre of the load being recessed and shored
+up for a sleeping and cooking place. These reeds, which are
+a speciality of the Yangtze for 900 miles from its mouth,
+and attain a height of fifteen feet and over, are as invaluable to
+the people of this region as are the vast reed-beds of the Liao
+to those of Southern Manchuria, furnishing them with building,
+roofing, and fencing material, as well as with fuel. Quite a large
+part of the internal freighting business of this low-lying level
+is the transport of these reeds on sledges over the marshy ground,
+on four-wheeled wooden trucks, which might be called “trollies”
+if they had rails to run on, some dragged by men, and others
+by the quaint, appropriate water buffalo, as well as loaded on
+coupled boats.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the late afternoon of the third day from Hankow we
+anchored in the rushing mid-stream of the Yangtze, abreast of the
+treaty port of Sha-shih (Sand Market), opened by the treaty
+of Shimonoseki in 1895, and, as was fitting, first occupied by
+the Japanese. I was not prepossessed with the city either on the
+upward or downward journey. Communication with the shore
+is tedious, difficult, and not free from risk. Several of the boats
+which attempted to reach us were unable to “catch on,” and even
+a lighter, failing to make fast, was carried far astern and did not
+work her way back till the next morning.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At low water Wan-cheng Ti, the great dyke, averaging
+150 feet in width at the bottom, and twenty-five at the top,
+twenty feet high on the river side, and forty on the land side,
+which follows the Yangtze for twenty-five miles to the west of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>Sha-shih and thirty to the east, effectually conceals the town from
+view, only a seven-storeyed pagoda and the curved roofs of
+temples and <i>yamens</i> appearing above the heads of the crowds
+which throng the roadway on the dyke-top.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>China must have been a greater country when this great public
+work was constructed than she is now, for this dyke where it
+protects Sha-shih is a noble, three-tiered, stone-faced construction,
+on the top of which are remnants of a stone balustrade; and broad,
+stately flights of stairs are let into the stonework at intervals, each
+tier of stairs being about twelve feet high. It must have been
+fully as impressive as the superb walls on the Chia-ling at Paoning
+Fu, which still remain a thing of grandeur and beauty.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Sha-shih is pre-eminently and abominably dirty; and on this
+fine embankment dirt is in the ascendant, and dirt and bad smells
+assail the traveller on landing. Much of the refuse of the crowded
+city at the back is thrown over the river wall, accumulating in
+heaps which at low water conceal half of it. Steep steps lead
+up these vile mounds, and appear to be preferred to the stone stairs
+covered with slippery, black ooze. Below the heaps lie from one
+to two thousand junks with crews on an average of ten men each,
+and frequently the junkman’s wife and family in addition, giving
+an average floating population of 10,000.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Beggars’ huts encroach on the top of the embankment; and
+when I write that hosts of gaunt, sore-eyed, mangy dogs, and
+black pigs each with a row of bristles standing up along his lean,
+curved back, and beggars, one mass of dirt and sores, are always
+routing and delving in the heaps, the reader will not be surprised
+that I did not find Sha-shih prepossessing. It has always had the
+reputation of being hostile to foreigners, which hostility expressed
+itself unpleasantly in a riot in May, 1898, when the China
+merchant’s, S. N. Co.’s premises ashore and afloat, the new
+buildings of the Imperial Customs, and the Japanese Consulate
+were destroyed. The three steamship agencies in 1898 practically
+withdrew their agencies from the port, the British Consulate was
+withdrawn, Japan has taken no steps towards occupying her
+concession, foreign trade and passenger traffic have fallen off
+materially, and so far the port must be pronounced a failure.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A noisy and dirty rabble follows a stranger; mud is thrown—and,
+as is the fashion of mud, some of it sticks—bad names are
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>bandied about freely; the foreigner is conscious of a ferment
+which may or may not result in more active annoyance, and,
+after being nearly suffocated by the ill-mannered and malodorous
+crowd in a fruitless attempt to see the lions of the city, he retreats
+not reluctantly to his steamer, which, in my case, was detained
+by heavy fog until noon of the next day.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p087_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>CHINESE SOLDIERS.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>(<i>From a Chinese Drawing.</i>)</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But Sha-shih, though unprepossessing and unlikely to fulfil
+the expectations formed of it as a treaty port, is one of the
+most important cities on the Yangtze; nor is its importance a
+thing of yesterday. Two miles above it lies the <i>Fu</i>, or prefecture,
+of Ching-chou, of which it may be regarded as the trading suburb.
+All around are the remains of fortresses and cities, mounds, earthworks,
+and look-out terraces, ancient in the days when our fathers
+were painted savages, marking the sites of the strongholds and
+capital of the powerful kings of Ch’u in the early days of Chinese
+authentic history.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>
+<img src='images/p088_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>MILITARY OFFICER.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>(<i>From a Chinese Drawing.</i>)</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Ching-chou Fu is grandly fortified, and is surrounded by a wide
+canal of great depth. It is the seat of a <i>taotai</i>, or intendant of
+a circuit, which includes Ichang, eighty miles off, and though
+not a provincial capital, is of such importance that it has a
+Manchu garrison of 12,000 men(?), the largest Manchu force
+south of Peking, the Manchu military colony numbering 40,000
+souls. The whole organisation of this colony is military, and it
+is kept separate from the civil population. Otherwise it has
+no interest, except that the women have unbound feet and wear
+long outer dresses, and that the men look lazy and demoralised.
+Besides this large garrison there are river and lake police, and
+a small body of militia under the command of a provincial general,
+and a thousand <span class='sc'>Hunan</span> “braves” trained in the rudiments of
+drill under a brigade-general. “Braves” are fighting mobile troops,
+whose superior qualities command superior pay. They receive
+four or five taels a month, while the common provincial soldier
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>only gets one tael fifty cents. Now, as formerly, Ching-chou
+is regarded as one of the most important strategical positions in
+China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It has an estimated Chinese and Manchu population of 100,000,
+and Sha-shih an estimated population of 80,000, a temporary one
+averaging 8000, and a boating one (as mentioned before) of, at the
+very least, 10,000, nearly 200,000 in all. The distance to Ichang
+is 80 miles by land and 100 by water. To Hankow, with which
+the great trade of Sha-shih is done, it is 300 miles by water, and
+would be 135 by land, if there were land! No land carriage is
+possible, except in seasons of drought, much of that which poses
+as <i>terra firma</i> on the maps being meres, relapsed agricultural
+lands, morasses, shallow lakes, fens, watercourses, and reed
+swamps, most productive wherever areas are drained and embanked.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among the interesting features of Sha-shih are a ninth century
+seven-storeyed pagoda, with eight faces, each face recessed on each
+storey, and containing a stone image of Buddha, and a dark
+and foul staircase, leading to a remarkable view from the top,
+and the imposing halls of the trade guilds, of which I failed to
+see the superb interiors, owing to the clamour and pressure of
+the rabble. In Sha-shih, as everywhere else, these guildhalls serve
+the purposes of banqueting halls, temples, and even theatres at
+times. They number thirteen, named from the provinces or cities
+of which their members are natives, and each has its patron deity.
+There are several charitable institutions, including two orphanages,
+one of which receives 220 orphans annually, and boards them out
+until the age of sixteen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Benevolence was considerably strained in the winter of 1896–97,
+when thousands of refugees flying from famine in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>
+received unwholesome and insanitary shelter in mat sheds outside
+Sha-shih, where a terrible and uninvestigated epidemic broke out,
+and was carried into the city and neighbourhood, so that during
+the spring and summer it was estimated that 17,000 perished
+in the city only. Nearly all the refugees, after being kept alive
+chiefly by the charitable, died, and were decently buried by those
+societies which in every Chinese city undertake this sacred
+duty for the bodies of strangers, and for those of the very
+poor. I am always glad to call attention to Chinese charities,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>for the continual reiteration of facts on the other side only tends
+to produce an unfair and one-sided impression of the Chinese
+character.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p090_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A FISHERMAN AND PLUNGE NET.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>(<i>From a Chinese Drawing.</i>)</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Superstition had its say regarding this baleful epidemic, which
+unfortunately never came under skilled observation. It was
+attributed to a malignant black bird, of vast size, which was said
+to hover over the city. It had ten heads, but one had been cut
+off, and the severed neck bled profusely and continuously, and
+wherever the blood fell disease and death followed. A day was
+set apart for the propitiation of this malignant fowl, and fire
+crackers were burned before the door of every house.<a id='r21'></a><a href='#f21' class='c013'><sup>[21]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The fish market is an excellent, though an uncleanly one,
+nets, angling, cormorants, lines with hooks, and great frame nets
+lowered and raised by pulleys, all being employed. Sturgeon,
+weighing from 500 to 700 pounds, are caught off the port. There
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>are no unusual articles of diet to be seen, except Japanese seaweed,
+which is largely consumed in the belief that it counteracts
+the bad effects of the sulphur fumes proceeding from coal fires!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Roman Catholics and three Protestant missions hold
+property in the town, but mission work has to be conducted
+very cautiously owing to the strongly anti-foreign feeling. There
+are seventeen foreigners, including the Japanese consul, but
+not one foreign merchant, though two or three foreign firms have
+agencies.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Foreign articles, few of which find any place in the customs
+returns, are to be bought in the shops. Very many of them are
+Japanese, owing to the energy or, as our merchants call it, the
+peddling and huckstering instincts of the Japanese traders, who
+through their trained Chinese-speaking agents find out what the
+people want and supply it to them. The cotton gins largely used
+in the neighbourhood are of Japanese make, and cheap clocks,
+kerosene lamps, towels, handkerchiefs, cotton umbrellas, cheap
+hardware, soaps, fancy articles of all descriptions, and cotton
+goods are poured into Sha-shih by that alert empire. Among
+English goods are rugs, blankets, and preserves and tinned milk
+and fruits. Most of the dealers in “assorted notions” are
+Cantonese.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Cotton cloth, raw cotton, silk fabrics, and hides are the staple export
+of Sha-shih. There are few local industries besides the weaving
+of cotton. Pewter, “hubble bubbles,” household pewter ware,
+long bamboo pipes, not fashionable “down the river,” coarse silk
+twist for plaiting into the ends of queues, boiling salt out of old
+salt bags, a smoky and smelly process carried on owing to the
+monstrous price of Government salt, brick and tile making, and
+furniture-making, specially of carved and gilded bedsteads and
+cabinets, showy but somewhat trashy, I think exhaust the list.
+The annual export of raw cotton is estimated at 9,000,000 pounds.
+Enormous quantities of it arrive to be woven at Sha-shih into a
+strong, durable, white cloth, fifteen and twelve inches wide, which
+I saw all over <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, and of which at least 20,000,000
+pounds are annually exported. Samples of this make and of
+English cottons were frequently shown to me by the women in
+<span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> villages, with a scornful laugh at the expense of
+the latter.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>Sha-shih is called “The Manchester of China.” In it this comparatively
+indestructible cloth is graded, packed, and shipped
+away, the adjacent country being the greatest centre of weaving
+in the empire. There are 110 dealers in raw cotton in the city, and
+114 shops deal in native cotton cloth, and there is a daily market
+for its sale in the early mornings. Silks, both plain and figured,
+are also produced in great quantities, and satin bed-covers, which
+are used all over China. Rich satins are also woven for altar
+cloths, bed and door hangings, and cushions.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Sha-shih was the first point on my journey at which I encountered
+the money difficulties which press so severely on the
+traveller in China. My broken silver was of little use, and my
+dollars of none, copper <i>cash</i> and <i>cash</i> notes forming the entire
+currency of the port. The merchants and shopkeepers calculate
+silver in Sha-shih taels, which vary from 6 to 11 per cent. from
+the standard Haikwan, Hankow, and Shanghai taels, and the
+exchange between <i>cash</i> and silver varies daily. There are about
+130 <i>cash</i> shops in the town, nearly all of them issuing notes.
+Notes for 1000 <i>cash</i> abound, mostly issued by small Manchu shops
+in Ching-chou, for which change can hardly be obtained in Ching-chou
+itself. The <i>cash</i> shops issue notes for 1000, 5000, and 10,000
+<i>cash</i>, but though those issued by the banks and pawnshops are
+current for thirty miles round, they are worthless at Ichang, as I
+found to my inconvenience. Each hundred <i>cash</i> being strung
+separately on a wisp of straw or paper, and every string having
+to be counted over and examined for small or spurious <i>cash</i>, the
+purchase of 10,000, or about 23<i>s.</i> 3<i>d.</i>, is a weighty matter in various
+senses, and is apt to take from two to three hours, including the
+time spent in bargaining about “the touch” of sycee silver
+procured at Hankow.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have dwelt so long, albeit so superficially, on Sha-shih because
+it is the most important of the treaty ports opened since the
+war, and because nothing is known of it by the general reader.
+Certainly the <i>couleur de rose</i> expectations of an outburst of foreign
+trade have not been realised, nor, I think, are likely to be, unless
+the methods of commerce on the Yangtze undergo a radical
+change. The total trade for 1898 was only £24,444 in value,
+against £47,509 in 1897, but these figures only apply to the
+exports and imports passing through the Imperial Maritime
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>Customs. For Sha-shih has not only one, but several, “back
+doors” through which her enormous commerce is poured, the
+principal one being a canal to Hankow, called at its western
+end the Pien-Ho, and which is not only free from the risks of the
+river, but is from sixty to seventy miles shorter. Altogether
+several routes to Hankow are practicable, either wholly by canal
+and lake, or partly by road and partly by canal, the water route
+being available during the whole year.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Chinese are rigid conservatives. Junks are always obtainable,
+and wait the convenience of their hirers, and their freight and
+passenger charges are much lower than those of the steamers.
+Certainly if I had not been hurried I should have preferred a
+junk! The canals pass through towns which offer facilities for
+both trading and dawdling, so that, although there are two <i>likin</i>
+stations on the canal route to Hankow, the native trader finds that
+the junk has many advantages over the steamer. <i>Likin</i> is charged
+on all goods landed at Sha-shih, and the Imperial Customs duty is,
+in fact, only an additional tax levied on goods conveyed by
+steamer. These inland routes are of the greatest commercial
+importance.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Besides the canal and lake routes to Hankow, the great delta
+between the Yangtze and the Han is spotted with lakes connected
+by waterways, and in other directions there are available roads
+connecting Sha-shih with important trading cities. Among these
+are the great southern highway from <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, and the great
+north road leading by the Han and over the mountains to the
+capital of <span class='sc'>Shensi</span>, from which mule carts and mule litters, conveyances
+hardly known in Central China, descend into the
+Yangtze plain.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All that region lies below the summer level of its rivers, and
+it is a problem on which no light is likely to be shed why a
+country so oddly circumstanced should have become a populous and
+powerful kingdom at a very early date, and why its chief city has
+continued to be one of the most important of military positions
+and of commercial centres in the Chinese Empire.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Returning to the river voyage, after passing Yungtze, the
+western mountains appeared for the first time. The scenery
+changed rapidly. The river narrowed; some of its promontories
+were boulder-strewn; low, wooded knolls appeared above pleasant
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>agricultural country, green with young wheat; and hills of conglomerate
+and limestone replaced the grey alluvium through
+which we had been steaming for nearly 1000 miles. Although
+much detained by fogs, we reached the Tiger Teeth gorge, ten
+miles below Ichang, in the early afternoon of the fifth day from
+Hankow. This gorge, which hardly deserves so thrilling a name,
+is a channel two miles long and about 700 yards wide, in the
+easternmost of those ranges through which the Yangtze has
+forced itself on its way to create the Great Plain. This range,
+rising to a height of 2600 feet, is broken up into peaks, one of
+which is crowned by an inaccessible-looking Buddhist monastery,
+this building, a fine pagoda, and great masses of conglomerate
+being the only noteworthy features until we reached Ichang in the
+glorifying light of a late afternoon sun.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER IX.<br> <span class='c012'>ICHANG</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>Unlike Sha-shih, the first view of Ichang, opened to foreign
+trade in 1887, is very attractive. At low water it stands
+high on the river bank, on a conglomerate cliff above a great
+level sandbank, but in summer it loses whatever dignity it
+gains by height, and is nearly on the river level. A walled
+city of 35,000 people, gate towers, and temple roofs rise above
+the battlements and the mass of houses. Between the city and
+the river is a straggling suburb fairly clean, composed of small
+retail shops. On the river bank are the buildings and godowns
+of the Imperial Customs, including the Commissioner’s
+house and large garden, dainty dwellings for the staff of
+twelve Europeans, and a tennis ground, with a fine bund and
+broad flight of stone stairs in front. Near these are the large
+houses of the Scotch Church Mission, and beyond a new plain
+building put up by the China Inland Mission. The Roman
+Catholic buildings are the first to attract attention from the
+water. There are a few foreign hongs and godowns, and a
+customs pontoon moored in the stream. Behind the British
+Consulate, a substantial new building with a tennis lawn used
+for weekly hospitalities, breezy hills, much covered with grave
+mounds, roll up towards a mountainous region, and below, the
+Yangtze, with its perpetual rush and current, swirls in a superb
+flood half a mile wide.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At the time of my first visit a British gunboat, a wholesome
+and not unneeded influence, lay at anchor opposite the town.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The imposing feature of Ichang to my thinking is its multitude
+of junks of every build and size, lying closely packed along its
+shore for a mile and a half, their high castellated sterns making
+a goodly show. There lay in hundreds big <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> junks,
+strongly built for the rapids, their stained and oiled woodwork
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>looking like varnished pine, the junks bound up the river with
+their masts erect, the masts of those which had come down lashed
+along their sides. Big passenger boats there were too, for all
+passengers, as well as cargo, bound up the Yangtze must “change”
+at Ichang.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the opposite side are cliffs along the river front, backed
+by hills and fine mountains, among which are fantastic peaks
+and pyramids, one of them known as Pyramid Hill, exactly
+resembling the Great Pyramid in shape, and said to have the
+same height and area as its prototype. Its peculiar position
+and form were supposed or believed by the local geomancers
+to interfere with that mystery of mysteries the <span class='sc'>Fung Shui</span>, and
+thus to act injuriously on the prosperity of Ichang, so the powers
+that were, it is said, built a monastery opposite, on the Ichang side
+of the river, at great expense, the priests of which have as their
+special business to pray that the disastrous influences of Pyramid
+Hill may be warded off from the city.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The dead who people the hillsides far outnumber the living, and
+their abodes having the aspect of exaggerated mole-hills, lack the
+frequent stateliness of Chinese places of interment in some of the
+other provinces, being mostly circular mounds of earth and sod
+kept together by stones rudely built into them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Just before I arrived many of these stones had served a sinister
+purpose, and had been used as ammunition. On entering the
+house of Mr. Schjöltz, the Commissioner of Customs, who was my
+host at Ichang and later at Chungking, I was surprised to see
+cairns of stones which were nearly as big as a human head both in
+the hall and outside it, which had been collected in the dining
+and drawing-rooms after their windows had been smashed in an
+anti-foreign riot a few days before. During some festivities the
+Chinese cook of the gunboat <i>Esk</i> accidentally shot a very popular
+Chinese officer. On this there was naturally a great ebullition of
+fury, specially as the cook was not given up to the Chinese
+authorities when they demanded him. The Customs buildings
+were guarded by Chinese soldiers, but the staff, who are all
+efficiently drilled, did sentry duty at night. This was the least
+serious of the many riots which have occurred in the treaty ports
+on the Yangtze in recent years.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>
+<img src='images/p097_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>THE TABLET OF CONFUCIUS.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are now about forty-five foreigners in Ichang, about
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>twenty of them being missionaries. It is to be supposed that
+all of these have a sufficiency of serious occupation. Their amusements
+consist chiefly in tennis, shooting, and boating picnics to
+some of the picturesque ravines and rock temples off the main river,
+and to the Ichang gorge. The British Consul, Mr. Holland, and
+Mr. Woodruff, the Commissioner of Customs, throw their spacious
+gardens open constantly, and by the exercise of much hospitality
+do their best to alleviate what, it must be confessed, is the great
+monotony of life in a small and isolated foreign community.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Unless people are students or specialists or hobbyists of some
+description, as I think every man and woman should be who goes
+to live in so very foreign a country as China, amusements are apt
+to pall. The winter evenings are long and dull, and those of summer
+hot and mosquito-infested. People soon gauge the mental and
+social possibilities of new-comers, and know exactly what their
+neighbours think on every subject which can arise, and have
+sounded their intellectual depths and <i>shallows</i>, and the arrival
+of a stranger and of the mail boat and the changes in the customs
+staff are the chief varieties in life. That this and several other
+of these small communities “get on” with little apparent friction
+is surely much to their credit. Some say that it is because they
+are chiefly masculine!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In summer large vessels can make fast under the bund, but at
+low water they anchor in mid-stream, and how to get goods with
+due regard to economy from the steamers to the godowns when
+there is an average difference of forty feet between the summer
+and winter levels of the river is somewhat of a problem. Though
+in itself only a comparatively poor town in a mountainous country,
+the total value of the trade of Ichang for 1898 amounted to
+£2,298,437. All goods going west have to be transhipped at
+this port, and nearly all goods bound east, so that it is one of
+the busiest places on the river. It is a curious fact that, with
+enormous coal-fields only three or four days away, the river
+steamers 1000 miles from the sea are burning Japanese coal!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Ichang is the headquarters of a large Roman mission. Its head,
+Bishop Benjamin, with whom I had the pleasure of spending
+one afternoon, has been sixteen years in his present position
+without even a visit to Shanghai. His large, lofty room, though
+furnished with all absolute necessaries, is bare and severe, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>contains nothing on which the eye can pleasurably rest. The
+Bishop is a most genial elderly man, with much charm of manner,
+thick iron-grey hair, and an unclerical moustache. As we walked
+down the lanes to the orphanage numbers of Chinese children,
+unmistakably delighted to see him, ran up to him, kissing his hands
+and struggling for positions in which they could hold on to his
+robe.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With him I visited the orphanage and hospital, both under the
+charge of French and Belgian sisters, comely women with much
+grace and geniality of manner, in which the loving, all-embracing
+maternal instinct finds its winning expression. The hospital, which
+is on the ground floor, was crowded, indeed overcrowded, and, as
+is usual in Roman hospitals in China, the doctor and much of the
+medical treatment were Chinese, the aid of the foreign doctor (a
+medical missionary) being called in in surgical cases.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The orphanage is a large building, with very lofty, well-ventilated
+rooms, constructed for four hundred, but there were only eighteen
+girls in it, who are instructed in the Christian faith, and in embroidery
+and other industrial occupations. The Bishop told me
+that the Chinese do not, as formerly, bring orphans and foundlings
+in numbers to their keeping; indeed, I gathered that in Ichang at
+least the day for this is past. I can only hazard a guess at the
+reasons. These may be the anti-foreign spirit which has been
+laboriously stirred up recently; the increasing competition of
+orphanages founded by charitable Chinese; the partial disappointment
+with the temporal results of conversion; and perhaps,
+above all, the excessive mortality which prevails in these institutions,
+very much owing to the fact that the infants are brought to
+them in great numbers either dying or suffering from disease,
+or in such a feeble and emaciated state that they are unable to
+assimilate their food. This mortality seems a matter of thankfulness
+rather than regret to the pious sisters, one of whom elsewhere,
+in speaking to me of a mortality of 1600 in the late summer, said
+with emotion, “So many, thank God, safe.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Besides the Bishop and his priest secretary there are French
+and Chinese fathers, a French professor, and a seminary with eight
+students, who study the Chinese classics and philosophy for ten
+years and theology for seven. These Roman missionaries appear
+to rely for the conversion of adults chiefly on native agency. A
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>Belgian priest, who called on me, claimed 3000 converts in a region
+above the gorges, where he had worked for eleven years. It is
+well known that one cause of the successes of the Roman missionaries
+is the assistance given by them to litigants, and the pressure
+brought to bear upon magistrates at the instance of the French
+Minister in Peking in legal cases in which his co-religionists are
+concerned. This Catholic priest mentioned to me, as among the
+many trials of his missionary vocation, the case of a village in
+which nearly all the inhabitants placed themselves under Christian
+instruction with a view to baptism. These villagers had a suit
+against another village in which the possession of a certain piece
+of land was the point in dispute. French influence was brought
+to bear, and they gained their case, let us believe justly, after
+which they returned <i>en masse</i> to their idolatrous practices.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>My Belgian visitor, in very vivid language, depicted the sufferings
+of educated men from the deprivations of their lives, and
+specially from the absolute solitude in which he and others are
+placed, living in one room of low-class Chinese houses. He was
+obviously a man of much culture and refinement, and felt the
+whole life acutely—the dark and filthy houses, the dirty food,
+the unceasing noisy talk in a foreign tongue, the lack of real
+privacy and quiet, the ingratitude of the Chinese, and, more than
+all, his own failure to love them. This, though my first, was not
+my last glimpse of the anguish of loneliness which these Roman
+missionaries endure. “Madness would be the certain result,” my
+visitor said, “but for the sustaining power of God, and the certainty
+that one is doing His work.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As I shall not return to the subject of Roman missions, I will
+refer briefly to four of the causes, in my opinion, of their undoubtedly
+growing unpopularity in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> and elsewhere, in
+spite of the assistance given to Christian litigants previously
+referred to.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>1. The exorbitant indemnity, out of all proportion to the losses
+sustained, demanded and obtained by M. Gerard, then French
+Minister at Peking, for damage done to mission property during
+the riots in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> in 1895.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>2. The claim of the Roman hierarchy [now conceded] to be
+placed on a level in position with the higher mandarins as to
+the number of their chair-bearers, etc., and the amount of personal
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>reverence exacted by the clergy from a people essentially
+democratic.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>3. The non-admission of the heathen into Roman churches
+during the celebration of mass and other services, while the
+secrecy which attends the administration of the last rites of the
+Church is undoubtedly obnoxious to the lower orders among the
+Chinese, who have no conception of privacy.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>4. The opposite methods pursued by the Protestants of all
+denominations since their settlement in the far west a few years
+ago are doubtless working against the practices of the Roman
+missionaries.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the other hand, it is but just to say that the Chinese appreciate
+the celibacy, poverty, and asceticism of the Roman clergy.
+Every religious teacher, with one notable exception, who has made
+his mark in the East has been an ascetic, and when Orientals
+begin to seek after righteousness, rigid self-mortification is the
+method by which they hope to attain it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Wherever I have met with Roman missionaries I have found
+them living either like Bishop Benjamin and Bishop Meitel
+of Seoul, and like the sisters in Seoul, Peking, Ichang, and elsewhere,
+in bare, whitewashed rooms, with just enough tables and
+wooden chairs for use, or in the dirt, noise, and innumerable discomforts
+of native houses of the lower class, personally attending
+on the sick, and in China, Chinese in life, dress, style, and ways,
+rarely speaking their own language, knowing the ins and outs
+of the districts in which they live, their peculiarities of trade, and
+their political and social condition. Lonely men, having broken
+with friends and all home ties for the furtherance of Christianity,
+they live lives of isolation and self-sacrifice, forget all but the
+people by whom they are surrounded, identify themselves with
+their interests, and have no other expectation but that of living
+and dying among them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It must be admitted that the Chinese contrast this life of self-surrender
+with that of large numbers of Protestant missionaries
+living in comfortable, and what seem to them wealthy, homes in
+the treaty ports, surrounded by as many of the amenities of life
+as are usual in the simpler homes in foreign settlements, and with
+wives, children, friends, and society, not very often, as in the case
+of the Wesleyan missionaries at Hankow, living in the native cities
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>among the Chinese, and going home with their families for a year
+or more once in five or seven years.<a id='r22'></a><a href='#f22' class='c013'><sup>[22]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>While admiring the self-denial and devotion of the Roman
+missionary priests, I do not express any opinion as to rival
+methods and merits, but only state facts which are forced upon
+every traveller, and purpose to return to the subject of Protestant
+missions later.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER X.<br> <span class='c012'>THE UPPER YANGTZE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>I was very impatient to be off on my western journey, but
+after the boat was engaged, the tracking ropes examined by
+experts at the customs, and my few stores—tea, curry powder, and
+rice—had been bought, I had four days of “hanging on.” The
+boatmen made various excuses for delay. One day it was that
+the <i>lao-pan</i>, or master, had not advanced them money wherewith
+to buy stores; another was a feast day; a third must be spent in
+paying debts or they would be detained; and on the fourth they
+said they must visit certain temples and make offerings for the
+success of the voyage! The weather was raw, grim, and sunless.
+I had had a fire day and night in my room at the customs, and
+a fireless, draughty boat was a shivery prospect, but things usually
+turn out far better than either prophecies or expectations, and this
+voyage was no exception.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I was fortunate in being able to take as far as Wan Hsien Mr.
+Owen Stevenson, of the China Inland Mission, who had had ten
+years’ experience in Yunnan, accompanied by Mr. Hicks, a new
+arrival; and they engaged the boat for the next stage to Chung-king,
+which gave Mr. S. some little hold on the <i>lao-pan</i>, who was
+a mean and shifty person, coerced into evil ways by a terrible
+wife, a virago, whose loud tongue was rarely silent, who had
+beaten her eldest boy to death a few months before, and of whom
+the remaining boy—a child of eight—lived in piteous terror, lest
+he should share the same fate. This family of five lived in the
+high stern cabin, but were apt to run over into parts of the boat
+which should have been <i>tabu</i>. The crew consisted of a pilot who
+is responsible for the navigation, a steersman, a cook, and sixteen
+trackers and rowers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The boat itself was a small house-boat of about twenty tons,
+flat-bottomed, with one tall mast and big sail, a projecting rudder,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>and a steering sweep on the bow. Her “passenger accommodation”
+consisted of a cabin the width of the boat, with a removable
+front, opening on the bow deck, where the sixteen boatmen rowed,
+smoked, ate, and slept round a central well in which a preternaturally
+industrious cook washed bowls, prepared food, cooked
+it, and apportioned it all day long, using a briquette fire. At
+night uprights and a mat roof were put up, and the toilers, after
+enjoying their supper, and their opium pipes at the stern, rolled
+themselves in wadded quilts and slept till daybreak. Passengers
+usually furnish this cabin, and put up curtains and photographs,
+and eat and sit there; but I had no superfluities, and my “furniture”
+consisted only of a carrying-chair, in which it was very
+delightful to sit and watch the grandeurs and surprises of the
+river. But gradually the trackers and the skipper’s family came
+to over run this cabin, and I constantly found the virago with her
+unwelcome baby girl, or a dirty, half-naked tracker in my chair,
+and the eight-year-old boy spent much of his time crouching in a
+corner out of reach of his mother’s tongue and fist.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Abaft this were three small cabins, with windows “glazed” with
+paper, and a passage down the port side from the stern to the bow,
+on which I cannot say they “opened,” for they were open (!), and a
+partial privacy was only obtained by making a partition with
+a curtain. Abaft these was the steersman’s place, which was also a
+kitchen and opium den, where my servant cooked, and where the
+pilot and most of the crew were to be seen every night lying
+on the floor beside their opium lamps, passing into felicity. Abaft
+again, at a greater height, the skipper and his family lived. On
+the roof there were hen coops and great coils of bamboo rope
+for towing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was an old boat, and the owner was not a man of substance.
+The paper on the windows was torn away; the window-frame
+of the cabin in which I slept, ate, and carried on my various
+occupations, had fallen out, the cracks in the partitions were half
+an inch wide; and as for many days the sun seldom shone and
+the mercury hung between 38° and 43°, and hugging a charcoal
+brazier was the only method of getting warm, and that a dubious
+one, the earliest weeks were a chilly period.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the afternoon of January 30th I embarked from the customs
+pontoon much exhilarated by the prospect before me, but we only
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>crossed the river and lay all night in a tremendous noise among
+a number of big junks, the yells of the skipper’s baby being heard
+above the din. This man excused this last delay in starting by
+sending word from the shore that he was waiting for the
+mandarin’s permit, and would be ready to leave on the following
+daybreak.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I was up at daybreak not to lose anything, but hour after hour
+passed, and no <i>lao-pan</i> appeared, and at ten we started without
+him to meet him on the bank a few miles higher, when there
+was a tremendous row between him and the men. We were then
+in what looked like a mountain lake. No outlet was visible;
+mountains rose clear and grim against a dull grey sky. Snowflakes
+fell sparsely and gently in a perfectly still atmosphere. We
+cast off from the shore; the oars were plied to a wild chorus;
+what looked like a cleft in the rock appeared, and making an
+abrupt turn round a high rocky point in all the thrill of novelty
+and expectation, we were in the Ichang Gorge, the first and one
+of the grandest of those gigantic clefts through which the Great
+River, at times a mile in breadth, there compressed into a limit
+of from 400 to 150 yards, has carved a passage through the
+mountains.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The change from a lake-like stretch, with its light and movement,
+to a dark and narrow gorge black with the shadows of
+nearly perpendicular limestone cliffs broken up into buttresses
+and fantastic towers of curiously splintered and weathered rock,
+culminating in the “Pillar of Heaven,” a limestone pinnacle rising
+sheer from the water to a height of 1800 feet, is so rapid as to
+bewilder the senses. The expression “<i>lost</i> in admiration” is a
+literally correct one. At once I saw the reason why the best
+descriptions, which are those of Captain Blakiston and Mr. A.
+Little, have a certain amount of “fuzziness,” and fail to convey
+a definite picture.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>
+<img src='images/p107_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>ENTRANCE TO ICHANG GORGE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>With a strong, fair wind our sail was set; the creak and swish
+of the oars was exchanged for the low music of the river as it
+parted under our prow; and the deep water (from fifty to
+a hundred feet), of a striking bottle-green colour, was unbroken
+by a swirl or ripple, and slid past in a grand, full volume. The
+stillness was profound, enlivened only as some big junk with
+lowered mast glided past us at great speed, the fifty or sixty
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span>men at the sweeps raising a wild chant in keeping with the scene.
+Scuds of snow, wild, white clouds whirling round pinnacles, and
+desolate snow-clothed mountains, apparently blocking further progress,
+added to the enchantment. Crevices in the rocks were
+full of maidenhair fern, and on many a narrow ledge clustered
+in profusion a delicate mauve primula, unabashed by the grandeur
+and the gloom. Streams tumbled over ledges at heights of 1000
+feet. There are cliffs of extraordinary honeycombed rock, possibly
+the remains of the “potholes” of ages since, rock carved by
+the action of water and weather into shrines with pillared fronts,
+grottoes with quaint embellishments—gigantic old women gossiping
+together in big hats—colossal abutments, huge rock needles
+after the manner of Quiraing, while groups of stalactites constantly
+occur as straight and thick as small pines, supporting rock
+canopies festooned with maidenhair. Higher yet, surmounting
+rock ramparts 2000 feet high, are irregular battlemented walls of
+rock, perhaps twenty feet thick, and everywhere above and around
+are lofty summits sprinkled with pines, on which the snow lay in
+powder only, and “the snow clouds rolling dun” added to the sublimity
+of the scenery.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was always changing, too. If it were possible to be surfeited
+with turrets, battlements, and cathedral spires, and to weary of
+rock phantasies, the work of water, of solitudes and silences, and
+of the majestic dark green flow of the Great River, there were
+besides lateral clefts, each with its wall-sided torrent, with an
+occasional platform green with wheat, on which a brown-roofed
+village nestled among fruit trees, or a mountain, bisected
+by a chasm, looking ready to fall into the river, as some have
+already done, breaking up into piles of huge angular boulders,
+over which even the goat-footed trackers cannot climb. Then,
+wherever the cliffs are less absolutely perpendicular, there are
+minute platforms partially sustaining houses with their backs
+burrowing into the rock, and their fronts extended on beams
+fixed in the cliff, accessible only by bolts driven into the
+rock, where the small children are tied to posts to prevent
+them from falling over, and above, below, and around these dwellings
+are patches of careful culture, some of them <i>not larger
+than a bath towel</i>, to which the cultivators lower themselves
+with ropes, and there are small openings occasionally, where
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>deep-eaved houses cluster on the flat tops of rocky spurs among
+the exquisite plumage of groves of the golden and green bamboo,
+among oranges and pommeloes with their shining greenery, and
+straight-stemmed palms with their great fan-like leaves. Already
+in these sheltered places mauve primulas were blooming amidst a
+profusion of maidenhair, and withered clusters and tresses showed
+what the glory of the spring had been and was yet to be when the
+skirts of these spurs would be aflame with azaleas, and clematis,
+and great white and yellow roses, and all the wealth of flowers
+and trailers of which these were only the vestiges.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Another feature was boats large and small, and junks, some
+laboriously tracked or rowed like my own, when the wind
+failed, against the powerful stream, or descending, keeping
+the necessary steerage headway by crowds of standing men on
+the low deck, facing forwards, vigorously working great sweeps
+or <i>yulows</i>, five or ten at each, the gorge echoing all along its
+length to the rise and fall of the wild chants to which the rowers
+keep time and which are only endurable when softened by
+distance. After some hours of this region of magic and mystery,
+near sunset we emerged into open water, with broken picturesque
+shores, and at dusk tied up in a pebbly bay with glorious views
+of mountain and woodland, not far from the beautiful village
+of Nan-to, and the “needle” or “pillar” of heaven, well known
+to the dwellers in Ichang. The Ichang gorge is about twelve
+miles long; the Niu-kan, grander yet, about three; the Mitan
+about three and a half; the Wushan about twenty; and the
+Feng-hsiang, or “Wind-Box,” the last of the great gorges, about
+four. These are the great gorges.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I halted for Sunday in this lovely bay, an arrangement much
+approved of by the trackers, who employed the holiday in washing
+their clothes, smoking a double quantity of opium, and making a
+distracting noise, aggravated by the ceaseless yells of the boat
+baby, yells of an objectionable heredity and undisciplined
+naughtiness, which at first imposed on my ignorant sympathies.
+Nevertheless I luxuriated in the quiet which one can obtain when
+a babel is unintelligible.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>
+<img src='images/p111_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>THE AUTHOR’S BOAT.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the afternoon the air was keen and bracing, the sky very
+blue, and the sunshine, after three weeks of gloom, had the charm
+of novelty. By the narrowest of paths I climbed a cleft down
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>which a crystal rivulet fell in leaps, pausing to rest now and then
+in deep pools fringed with a profuse growth of maidenhair.
+Minute plots for rice rose in steps along it; its banks were
+masses of ferns, roses, and clematis, the beautiful “Connecticut
+running fern” being as common as is the <i>Filix mas</i> with us.
+Higher rose the steep path; more glorious were the mountain
+views, more marvellous the forest of spires and pinnacles, more
+graceful the slender-stemmed palms, finer the contorted <i>Pinus
+sinensis</i>, more lush the dense foliage, bluer the sky above—not
+the China we picture to ourselves, of water, quaint bridges, curled
+roofs, and flat, formal gardens, but a Chinese Switzerland, sub-tropical,
+an intoxication, a dream!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In such scenery it was appropriate to come upon a deep-eaved
+<i>châlet</i> of brown wood, with surroundings, models of cleanliness,
+shady with magnificent bamboo and orange groves, through
+which were seen far below deep ravines and picturesque brown
+villages, and the broken sparkle of the Great River, with snowy
+mountains on the other side, and from the junks on its broad breast
+the rowers’ chant floated up harmoniously, and from the farmhouse,
+where the people seemed to be leading a rural, domestic life with
+guests about them, a man came out speaking politely, and hauled
+off a fierce dog, decidedly hostile to foreigners.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XI.<br> <span class='c012'>RAPIDS OF THE UPPER YANGTZE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>On inquiring of Mr. Endacott, at Ichang, his ideas of occupation
+on the upward voyage, his reply was, “People have
+enough to do looking after their lives.” Certainly the perils of the
+rapids are great, and few people of whom I have heard have escaped
+without risks to life and loss or damage to property, either, like
+Consul Gardner, finding their boats disappear from under them, or
+like a missionary, who, coming down with his wife’s coffin, came
+to grief, the coffin taking a lonely and ghastly voyage to a point
+far below, or like many others whom I met who reached their
+destinations minus their possessions in whole or in part. Signs
+of disaster abounded. Above and below every rapid, junkmen
+were encamped on shore under the mats of their junks, and the
+shore was spread with cotton drying. There were masts above
+water, derelicts partially submerged in quiet reaches, or on
+some sandy beach being repaired, and gaunt skeletons lay here
+and there on the rocks which had proved fatal to them. The
+danger signal is to be seen above and below all the worst rapids
+in the shape of lifeboats, painted a brilliant red and inscribed
+with characters in white: showy things, as buoyant as corks, sitting
+on the raging water with the vexatious complacency of ducks, or
+darting into the turmoil of scud and foam where the confusion is
+at its worst, and there poising themselves with the calm fearlessness
+of a perfect knowledge of every rock and eddy.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>
+<img src='images/p116_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>BED OF THE YANGTZE IN WINTER, TA-TAN RAPID.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have found that many of the deterrent perils which are arrayed
+before the eyes of travellers about to begin a journey are greatly
+exaggerated, and often vanish altogether. Not so the perils of the
+Yangtze. They fully warrant the worst descriptions which have
+been given of them. The risks are many and serious, and cannot
+be provided against by any forethought. The slightest error in
+judging of distance on the part of the pilot, any hampering of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>bow-sweep, a tow-rope breaking, a submerged boulder changing
+its place, and many other possibilities, and life and property are
+at the mercy of a raging flood, tearing downwards at the rate
+of from seven to eleven miles an hour. I have no personal perils
+to narrate. A rock twice knocked a hole in the bottom which
+took a day to repair, and in a collision our bow-sweep was
+fractured, which led to a severe quarrel lasting half a day; this
+was all. I never became used to the rapids, and always felt
+nervous at the foot of each, and preferred the risk of fracturing
+my limbs among the great boulders and shining rock faces of
+the shores to spending hours in a turmoil, watching the fraying
+of the tow-ropes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Before starting my boat’s crew made offerings and vows at their
+favourite temples, and on the first evening they slew a fowl as an
+offering to the river god, and smeared its blood over the bow-sweep
+and the fore part of the boat. My preparations were to pack my
+plates, films, and general photographic outfit, journals, a few
+necessaries, and a few things of fictitious value, in a waterproof
+bag, to be carried by my servant, along with my camera, at each
+rapid where we landed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The night at Lao-min-tze was too cold for sleep, and before
+dawn I heard the wild chant of the boatmen as great cargo boats,
+with from fifty to ninety rowers, swept down the stream. We
+untied at daylight, and, after passing the lovely village and valley
+of Nan-to, admired and wondered all day. It was one long glory
+and sublimity. A friend lately asked me if I whiled away the
+time by “walking on the river banks,” thinking, doubtless, of the
+level towing paths of the meadows of the Thames and Ouse.
+The accompanying illustration shows the banks of the Yangtze
+below Wan Hsien at their best, and the pleasant possibilities for
+strolling!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The river-bed, there forty feet below its summer level, is an
+area of heaped, contorted rock-fragments, sharp-edged, through
+which one or more swirling streams or violent rapids pursue their
+course, the volume of water, even at that season, being tremendous.
+At its highest level these upper waters are practically non-navigable.
+Cliffs, mountain spurs, and noble mountains rise from
+this chaotic river-bed, and every sharp turn reveals some new
+beauty. The dark green pine is but a foil to the feathery foliage
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>of the golden bamboo on the steep, terraced sides of tumbled
+heights; pleasant brown farmhouses are half seen among orange
+groves and orchards; grand temples, with noble specimens of the
+<i>Ficus religiosa</i> in their grounds, lighten hill and glen sides with
+their walls of imperial red. Then suddenly the scene changes
+into one of Tibetan grandeur and savagery, and the mountains
+approach the river in stupendous precipices, walling in almost
+fathomless water. We tied up the second night in the last crimson
+and violet of the sunset, where the river narrowed and progress
+looked impossible, and crags and pinnacles, snow-covered, rose
+above the dark precipices.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On that afternoon a red lifeboat suggested the first rapid, the
+Ta-tan, rather a <i>chipa</i> or race than a rapid, though I believe
+sufficiently perilous at half high water. I landed and scrambled
+up to the top for a three hours’ wait, while three junks, each
+dragged up by fifty men, came up before mine, boats having to
+take their turn without favour. Even that ascent was an anxious
+sight, for sometimes the boat hung, ofttimes slipped back, and
+several times it looked doubtful whether the crowd of men
+attached to the tow-rope could get her up at all. This was the
+first sight of the trackers’ villages, which are a marked feature of
+the Yangtze. Each boat carries enough men to pull her up
+against the strong stream, but at a rapid she needs many more,
+and during the navigation season coolies from long distances
+migrate to the river and put up mat huts as close to it as possible,
+to which dealers in food, tobacco, <i>samshu</i>, and opium at once
+gravitate, along with sellers of bamboo tow-ropes. Nor are rough
+amusements wanting. Rough, dirty, noisy, these temporary settlements
+are. Their population is from forty or fifty to over 400
+men. When the river rises the huts are removed, and the coolies
+return to other avocations. At the Hsin-tan rapid my little boat
+required seventy men, and some of the big junks took on 300 in
+addition to their crews of 120.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The following day, after being hauled up the Kwa-tung rapid
+and enjoying superb scenery for some hours, a turn in the river
+revealed walls of perpendicular rock rising to a colossal height,
+estimated at from 1000 to 2000 feet, the stupendous chasm of the
+Niu-kan gorge, to my thinking the grandest and most imposing of
+all, though a short one, and the same afternoon, in exquisitely
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>brilliant sunshine, we arrived at the foot of the Hsin-tan rapid, then
+at its worst.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p120_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>THE HSIN-TAN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>This Hsin-tan in winter is the great bugbear of the Yangtze, the
+crux of forthcoming steam navigation, a waterfall with a boiling
+cataract below, a thing of awe and majesty, where the risks,
+turmoil, bargaining, and noise of the Upper River are centred.
+This great obstacle, which I wonder that any man even thought of
+surmounting, was formed about two hundred and fifty years ago
+by the descent of a rocky mountain-side into the river. It consists
+of what are three definite falls in the winter-time, the first caused
+by a great fan-shaped mass of big boulders deposited malignantly
+by a small stream which enters on the left bank, and the two
+others by great barriers of rock which lie athwart the river, above
+the higher of which, as is seen in the illustration, is a stretch of
+deep, calm water in peaceful contrast—the Ping-shu gorge. The
+cataracts extend for over a mile, and the fall is estimated at
+twenty feet.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Above the Niu-kan gorge the mountains open out, and where
+their sides are broken up into spurs, and where the spurs are
+most picturesque, the romantic villages of Hsin-tan and Yao-tsai
+are scattered on carefully terraced heights and bold, rocky projections,
+villages with good houses and fine temples, and a pagoda
+among oranges and loquats. Many of the houses have such
+handsome curved roofs that one can scarcely tell which is house
+and which is temple, all looking as if some of the best bits of the
+shores of Como had been dropped down in <span class='sc'>Hupeh</span>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Hsin-tan is a wild and beautiful village, and has an air of prosperity.
+Many junk owners have retired there to spend their days,
+and the comparative cleanliness and good repair are quite striking.
+One orange-embowered village on a spur has a temple with a
+pagoda built out over the edge of the cliff, without any obvious
+support. A village which might claim to be a town, at a height of
+fully 400 feet, is not only piled up on terraces, but the houses are
+built out from the cliff on timbers, and the flights of steps leading
+from terrace to terrace are so steep that I made no attempt to
+climb them. The colonnades in the street of shops and eating-houses
+which projects over the cliff reminded me of Varenna;
+indeed, there was a suggestion of Italy throughout, under an
+Italian sky.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>I sat on a ledge for two hours, every minute expecting to see
+my boat move up to the foot of the cataract, but she was immovable.
+Then we went into a low restaurant, and got some
+fourth-class Chinese food, and after long bargaining three live
+fowls and three eggs. Crowds, more curious than rude, pressed
+upon us, everywhere choking up the balconies and entrances of
+the eating-house, and asking no end of questions. The men
+asserted, as they did everywhere on the river, that with my
+binoculars and camera I could see the treasures of the mountains,
+the gold, precious stones, and golden cocks which lie deep down
+in the earth; that I kept a black devil in the camera, and that I
+liberated him at night, and that he dug up the golden cocks, and
+that the reason why my boat was low in the water was that it was
+ballasted with these auriferous fowls, and with the treasures of the
+hills! They further said that “foreign devils” with blue and grey
+eyes could see three feet into the earth, and that I had been looking
+for the root which transmutes the base metals into gold, and
+this, though according to them I had the treasures of the hills at
+my disposal! They were quite good-natured, however.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The whole of a brilliant afternoon was spent on that height,
+which looks down on the deep-water channel by which big cargo
+boats ascend the rapids, small junks and native house-boats like
+mine taking a channel on the south side. During four hours, only
+two junks, which had partially discharged their cargoes, effected
+the ascent, though each of them was dragged up by 400 men.
+One big junk, after getting half-way up in three hours, jibbed, and
+though the trackers were stimulated by gongs and drums beaten
+frantically, she slowly slipped back to the point from which she
+started, and was there two days afterwards.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At sunset, taking a boat across the still, strong water above the
+fall, after having a desperate scramble over boulders of great size,
+we reached my boat, which was then moored at the side of the
+cataract in an eddy below the opposite village. The <i>lao-pan</i> said
+we should go up at daylight; and so we did, but it was the daylight
+of the third morning from that night, and I had ample
+opportunities for studying the Hsin-tan and its ways.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Miserable nights they were. It was as bad as being in a rough
+sea, for we were in the swell of the cataract and within the sound
+of its swish and roar. The boat rolled and pitched; the great
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>rudder creaked and banged; we thumped our neighbours, and
+they thumped us; there were unholy sounds of tom-toms, the
+weather relapsed, the wind howled, and above all the angry yells
+of the boat baby were heard. The splash of a “sea” came in
+at my open window and deluged my camp bed, and it was very
+cold.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next two days were disagreeable, even in such majestic and
+exciting surroundings. The boatmen turned us and our servants
+out at 10 a.m., and we stood about and sat on the great boulders
+on the bleak mountain-side in a bitterly cold, sunless wind each
+day till nearly five, deluded into the belief that our boat would
+move. A repulsive and ceaseless crowd of men and boys stood
+above, below, and behind us, though our position was strategically
+chosen. Mud was thrown and stuck; foul and bad names were
+used all day by successive crowds. I am hardened to most things,
+but the odour of that crowd made me uncomfortable. More than
+1200 trackers, men and boys, notoriously the roughest class in
+China, were living in mat huts on the hillside, with all their foul
+and ofttimes vicious accessories. The crowds were coarse and
+brutal. Could these people ever have come “trailing clouds of
+glory”? Were they made in the image of God? Have we “all
+one Father”? I asked myself.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A glorious sight the Hsin-tan is as seen from our point of
+vantage, half-way up the last cataract, a hill of raging water with
+a white waterfall at the top, sharp, black rocks pushing their vicious
+heads through the foam, and above, absolute calm. I never saw
+such exciting water scenes—the wild rush of the cataract; the
+great junks hauled up the channel on the north side by 400 men
+each, hanging trembling in the surges, or, as in one case, from a
+tow-rope breaking, spinning down the cataract at tremendous speed
+into frightful perils; while others, after a last tremendous effort,
+entered into the peace of the upper waters. Then there were
+big junks with masts lashed on their sides, bound downwards,
+and their passage was more exciting than all else. They come
+broadside on down the smooth slope of water above, then make
+the leap bow on, fifty, eighty, even a hundred rowers at the oars
+and <i>yulows</i>, standing facing forwards, and with shrieks and yells
+pulling for their lives. The plunge comes; the bow and fore part
+of the deck are lost in foam and spray, emerging but to be lost
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>again as they flash by, then turning round and round, mere playthings
+of the cataract, but by skill and effort got bow on again
+in time to take the lesser rapid below. It is a sublime sight.
+<i>Wupans</i> and <i>sampans</i>, making the same plunge, were lost sight
+of altogether in clouds of foam and spray, but appeared again.
+Red lifeboats, with their smart turbaned crews, dodged in the
+eddies trim and alert, crowds of half-naked trackers, struggling
+over the boulders with their 1200 feet of tow-rope, dragged,
+yelled, and chanted, and from each wild shore the mountains
+rose black and gaunt into a cold, grey sky.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At this great cataract pilots are necessary. They are competent
+and respectable, licensed by the authorities, and their
+high charges, half a dollar for the half-hour which my small boat
+occupied in going up the fall, and a dollar for the five minutes
+taken by a big junk on the descent, enable them to live comfortably,
+and many of the pretty whitewashed houses of Hsin-tan in the
+dense shade of orange groves are theirs. They deserve high pay,
+for it is a most perilous business, involving remarkable nerve and
+sleight of eye, for a single turn too much or too little of the great
+bow-sweep, and all would be lost. Every junk which took the
+plunge over the rock barrier into the furious billows of the cataract
+below looked bound for destruction. A curious functionary came
+on board my boat, a well-dressed man carrying a white flag, on
+which was written, “Powers of the waters, give a lucky star for
+the journey.” He stood well forward, waving this flag regularly
+during the ascent to propitiate the river deities, and the cook
+threw rice on the billows with the same object. The pilot was
+a quiet, well-dressed man, giving orders by signals which were
+promptly obeyed. Indeed, the strict discipline to which these
+wild boatmen submit in perilous places is remarkable. The
+<i>lao-pan</i> trusted neither his life nor his money to the boat, and
+he even brought the less valuable possessions of wife and children
+on shore.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>My boat had the twenty-fifth turn, and on the third day of
+detention she went up with seventy men at the ropes. It was
+an anxious half-hour of watching from the rocks, but there
+was no disaster, and I was glad to escape from the brutal crowd,
+as foul in language as in person, to the quiet of my cabin and the
+twilight stillness of the Ping-shu gorge. The whole ascent of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>the Hsin-tan rapids took my boat five hours and forty-five
+minutes.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p125_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>PING-SHU GORGE, HSIN-TAN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>No description can convey any idea of the noise and turmoil of
+the Hsin-tan. I realised it best by my hearing being affected
+for some days afterwards. The tremendous crash and roar of
+the cataract, above which the yells and shouts of hundreds of
+straining trackers are heard, mingled with the ceaseless beating of
+drums and gongs, some as signals, others to frighten evil spirits,
+make up a pandemonium which can never be forgotten.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XII.<br> <span class='c012'>RAPIDS AND TRACKERS</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>A strong, fair wind took us swiftly and silently up the
+gorge of the “Military Code and the Precious Blade,” in
+which the water is said to be 1200 feet deep (?), and with some
+tracking up minor rapids, and some working round corners with
+poles armed with steel hooks which are inserted into the crevices
+of the rocks, we passed through the sublime Mitan gorge into
+a comparatively open reach abounding in vicious-looking reefs
+and rocks, among very rocky mountains, villages on heights,
+and superb temples on crags, and at sunset made fast below
+the picturesque and nobly situated town of Kueichow, the first
+walled city on the Upper Yangtze.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Upper Yangtze is remarkable for the picturesque beauty
+of its cities at a distance, and their situations, almost invariably on
+irregular heights, backed by mountains, and with fine gardens and
+trees within their crenelated stone walls, which follow the contour
+of the site invariably, with one or more lofty pagodas denoting
+the approach, and with <i>yamen</i> and temple roofs dominating the
+mass of houses are very imposing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One is only slowly convinced by experience that the interiors
+are not worth investigating. Dangerous reefs run out from below
+the walls of Kueichow, and as the river, if not an actual rapid,
+was at that time at least a <i>chipa</i>, it was not surprising not to find a
+single boat or junk there. Very few people came to our moorings,
+and the place looked dead.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next day we ascended one of the worst rapids, the Yeh-tan,
+of evil fame at certain seasons, the Niu-kau-tan, nearly as bad, the
+Heng-liang-tze, a minor rapid, and many <i>chipa</i>, only making ten
+miles in eleven hours. At times the cliffs and rocks were quite
+impracticable for people in European shoes, and I had reluctantly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>to stay in the boat during ascents, but the <i>lao-pan</i> declined to
+carry passengers up the dreaded Yeh-tan.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p129_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>THE MITAN GORGE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>Above Kueichow there is a comparatively open reach with
+steep hills 1000 feet high, cultivated in patches to their summits,
+then tinged with green, small villages with wooded surroundings
+occurring frequently. Though not called a gorge, even that
+part of the Yangtze has high cliffs with lateral openings, and there
+are numbers of small coal “workings” in the hills, mere holes,
+shored up with timber, about three feet high, out of which the
+glass showed strings of women and children creeping, with baskets
+of coal dust on their backs. From this reach onwards the people
+make “patent fuel” by mixing the coal dust with loam and clay
+and forming it into small cakes. The boatmen made great use
+of it from that point, and added clouds of smoke to the malodorousness
+of their cooking.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Again I admired the resourceful energy which has surmounted
+the difficulties of the rapids. Narrow, steep flights of steps are
+in many places cut in the rock to facilitate tracking, as well as
+rock paths a foot or so wide, some only fifteen or twenty feet
+above the river, others at a giddy height on which the trackers
+looked no bigger than flies. The reader must bear in mind that all
+difficulties of getting up and down are largely increased by the
+river varying in height forty, fifty, and even sixty feet at different
+seasons, and there are water lines even seventy feet above the
+winter level. When I came down many of these paths and stairs
+were submerged several feet. On all of these, and indeed for
+much of the upward journey, the life of the tracker is in continual
+peril from losing his foothold owing to the slipperiness of the rock
+after rain, and from being dragged over and drowned by the backward
+tendencies of a heavy junk tugging at the end of 1200 feet
+of a heavy bamboo hawser as thick as an arm.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The river at low water is thoroughly vicious above Kuei, and
+the pilot’s task is a severe one, even before reaching the Yeh-tan.
+At low water this is not so bad as the Hsin-tan; still, the hill of
+furious breakers with a smooth, narrow channel in the centre and a
+fierce whirlpool at the foot looked awful enough. The whole shore
+above the boulders, and indeed upon them, is covered with the
+mat huts of trackers and those who supply boats with provisions
+and bamboo ropes. A great bank covered with frightful boulders
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>projects from the north shore, narrowing the river to a width
+of 150 yards. Mr. A. J. Little estimates the rush of the current
+round the point of that bank at from eight to ten knots an hour.
+Forty big cargo junks lay below it waiting their turn to ascend;
+and a thousand trackers were filling the air with their yells, while
+signal drums and gongs added to the din.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>My attention was occupied by a big junk dragged by 300
+men, which in two hours made hardly perceptible progress,
+slipping back constantly, though the drums were frantically
+beaten and the gangers rushed madly along the lines of struggling
+trackers, bringing their bamboo whips down on them with more
+sound than force. Suddenly the junk shivered, both tow-ropes
+snapped, the lines of trackers went down on their faces, and in
+a moment the big craft was spinning down the rapid; and before
+she could be recovered by the bow-sweep she flew up into the air
+as if she had exploded, a mass of spars and planks with heads
+bobbing about in the breakers. Quick as thought the red lifeboats
+were on the spot; and if the drowning wretches as they
+scrambled over the gunwales did not bless this most efficient
+of the charities of China, I did most heartily, for of the fourteen
+or fifteen souls on board all were saved but three. This was one
+of two fatal disasters that I saw on the Yangtze, but, to judge
+from the enormous quantity of cotton drying at the Yeh-tan and
+the timbers wedged among the rocks, many a junk must have
+had a hole knocked in her bottom. Our own ascent, which took
+three hours, was successfully made.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had then had this boat for my home for a week, and various
+disagreeables grew apace. The <i>lao-pan</i>, the virago’s old husband,
+a small, fearfully lean man, with the leanest face I ever saw, just
+like very old, yellow, mildewed parchment strained over bones,
+sunken eyes, no teeth, and in the bitterly cold weather clad only
+in an old blue cotton garment, always blowing aside to show his
+emaciated form, was craftiness, greed, and avarice personified.
+Though “sair hodden doun” by his vigorous wife, he was capable
+of an attempt to repudiate his contract. He bargained and
+battled with the trackers at the rapids for hours to save a few
+<i>cash</i>, though by the delay he lost more than he saved; he ground
+the boatmen down, and gave them inferior rice; he would not
+spend a few <i>cash</i> on patching his ragged sail; and at sunset near
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>Kueichow he put in mysteriously to a creek where he mysteriously
+met a man with two big sacks, the contents of which were transferred
+with much mystery and secrecy to the shallow hold in
+which our luggage was kept. It turned out to be an investment
+in spurious <i>cash</i>, on which, if he got it safely to <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, he
+might make a puny profit; and for this he ran the risk, relying
+on a boat carrying foreigners not being searched at Kuei Fu. His
+hawk-like face was a study of pure avarice.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p133_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>TEMPLE NEAR KUEICHOW.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>The <i>tai-kung</i> was a splendid fellow till he collapsed towards
+evening with the pangs of the opium craving. With his eyes fixed
+on the perils ahead, he never left the great bow-sweep except for
+the three meals a day, gave his orders tersely and quietly, and was
+master of the crew and the lean <i>lao-pan</i>. The trackers, who were
+troublesome from the first, broke out into rebellion, using violent
+language, forcing themselves into the front room, refusing to let us
+land (a breach of contract), and being insolent. Some of them
+looked too low to be human, just such men as would wreck and
+loot foreigners’ houses with violence. Mr. Stevenson was powerless
+with them, I think because they mistook his quietness and perfect
+self-control for weakness. They were absolutely masters, and
+decided about everything with and without motive. In that week
+I never saw a kind or good trait of character in them, and they
+misused a frail old man who was working his passage up. New
+faces appeared daily, till the number on board rose from sixteen to
+thirty-four (another breach of contract), but I could not grudge the
+<i>lao-pan</i> the few dollars he made by it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The trackers would not take the trouble to put a plank for me
+to land by, which compelled me to land on a pole, and on one day
+this spar turned over, and I fell into the water between the boat
+and the shore, being extricated to live in wet clothes for the day in
+a windy temperature of 38°. I must add, however, that by the end
+of three weeks they became considerably humanised, so that I was
+able to show them my photographs taken on the Yangtze. They
+recognised their own boat with yells. They said pictures could
+only be seen with one eye, so they used one hand for holding
+down one eyelid and made a tube of the other. I told them not
+to touch, and they actually obeyed! To the end I landed over the
+swift water on a pole, but latterly they held a bamboo for a rail
+and gave me a rough haul when I got in!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_136'>136</span>Poor fellows! I learned to pity them very much. Their ignorance
+and superstitions keep them in dread and terror of they
+know not what. They are so piteously poor, and work so hard
+even to keep body and soul together, and when the twelve hours
+day of dragging and risk is done there is nothing for them on a
+winter voyage on the bitterly cold nights but sleeping out of
+doors literally on a “plank bed.” They are rough and brutal, yet
+I admit, and that not reluctantly, that not one of them was ever
+drunk, that they worked hard, and that the cambric curtain which
+was my only partition from the passage was never pulled aside.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After the great Yeh-tan, with its crowds and excitements, we
+ascended various ugly rapids and had some minor disasters. The
+big junks are attended by fine, smart tenders, in which they land
+and re-embark their trackers, an operation which may be necessary
+thirty times a day, but my small boat made up to the rocks for
+this purpose, the <i>lao-pan</i> being too penurious to spend two or three
+<i>cash</i> in hiring the punts which are available. We were landing the
+trackers at the foot of the “Cross Beam” rapid when a heavy
+cargo boat, unmanageable in the strong wind, came upon us and
+forced the bow-sweep, which projected twenty feet over the bow,
+among the rocks, where it snapped short off, the side hamper of the
+two boats at the same time locking them in an unwilling embrace.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Both crews seized the iron-spiked bamboos used for poling, and
+with fearful yells and execrations and every sign of mad rage
+began a free fight, but Mr. Stevenson succeeded in preventing
+actual bloodshed, and after a delay of some hours the other boat
+repaired our steering spar for the time. A Chinese fight is apt to
+be nothing more than “much cry.” But our men insisted on
+going to law at the first convenient opportunity, so for two or three
+days we were always following that junk, hoping to be avenged on
+her at Kuei Fu.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The following day was decidedly what the Chinese call an
+“unlucky day.” In China everything is ruled by a rigid
+etiquette. There are four things to be attended to on getting
+into a cart, and rigid rules govern the getting into a chair or boat.
+It is not only that one is regarded as an unmannerly boor for
+breaking them, but one draws down the vengeance of gods and
+demons. The day before I came off from the shore in a punt, and
+just as I was getting into my own boat, and had one foot on her
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span>and the other on the punt, the swift current carried the punt away,
+and in the scramble which followed I violated one of these rules.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The first thing which happened was that the <i>lao-pan’s</i> three-year-old
+daughter fell overboard, and was carried fast away
+by the current. The tender of a junk was being towed up
+astern of us, and a tracker, a strong swimmer, jumped over,
+and after a hard struggle saved the child and wrapped her in
+the clothes he had thrown off, warm with his vital warmth, going
+naked himself in the biting air. The virago went into one of
+those paroxysms which are common among the Chinese, and
+in which they occasionally die. She stamped, jumped, beat
+everyone within reach, execrated, raved, and foamed at the
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Scarcely had this excitement subsided, when as we were
+sailing up with a stiff breeze we struck on a rock, knocking
+two holes in the bottom of the boat, and, as she began to fill,
+she was run ashore on a sandy beach, and the rest of the day
+was spent in repairs. Miserable repairs they were, owing to the
+stinginess of the <i>lao-pan</i>, and consisted chiefly in ramming cotton
+wool and tallow into the holes and coating the mixture with clay.
+After this, before she could be properly repaired, as it was the
+Chinese New Year holidays, it took four men baling night and day
+for forty-eight hours to keep the leakage down, and not only that,
+but as the deck on which the crew slept had to be taken up, I
+had to admit the trackers with their vermin and opium pipes into
+the “front room” next to mine.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In this leaky condition we went up a very severe rapid, which
+took us four hours of desperate dragging. Sitting shivering for
+that time on a big boulder, I saw one of the many vicissitudes to be
+encountered in ascending the Great River. A great cargo junk
+was being hauled up with two hawsers, over 200 trackers,
+and the usual enormous din, the beating of drums and gongs,
+the clashing of cymbals, and the incessant letting off of crackers
+to intimidate the spirit of the rapid, when both ropes snapped,
+the trackers fell on their faces, and four hours’ labour was lost, for
+in a flash the junk was at the foot of the rapid, and the last sight I
+had of her was far below twirling round in a whirlpool with a red
+lifeboat in attendance.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_138'>138</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XIII.<br> <span class='c012'>LIFE ON THE UPPER YANGTZE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>At this point, before entering on the empire province of <span class='sc'>Sze
+Chuan</span>, it is desirable to give a few facts and impressions
+regarding life on the Upper Yangtze, my experiences of which
+extended over five weeks altogether.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Upper River, with all its peculiarities, lies above Ichang.
+It must never be forgotten that it is the <i>sole</i> highway for the vast
+commerce of the richest province of the Chinese Empire, with an
+area about the size of that of France, and a population estimated
+at from 50,000,000 to 70,000,000. The nature and risks of this
+highway may be gathered from these and other descriptions of it.
+Except in the gorges and some few quiet intervals, it is a series of
+rapids and races, which at present are only surmounted by man
+force. Mr. A. J. Little’s success in 1898 in getting a large steam
+launch up to Chungking proves that a steamer can ascend, but not
+that steam navigation can be made commercially profitable, or that
+if it were it would be the ruin of junk navigation.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A large up-river junk is from 80 to 120 feet long, from nine to
+twelve broad, and from 40 to over 100 tons burden.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>They are all alike in that they have low square bows, lofty
+sterns, flat bottoms, and single masts from thirty to forty feet
+high, carrying huge oblong sails, with which they can only sail with
+the wind aft. They are very frequently built at Wan of a cypress
+which abounds in its neighbourhood, and being stained with
+orpiment and oiled over that with the oil procured from the
+<i>Aleurites cordata</i>, they look like varnished pine, and have a very
+trim as well as picturesque appearance. The planking is about an
+inch thick. The holds are only from three to seven feet deep. A
+junk to carry fifty tons of goods can be built at Wan complete for
+£125, and a first-class junk to carry 100 tons or more for £200,
+about 2500 strings of <i>cash</i>. The holds are in compartments.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span>The forward part is uncovered in the daytime, and the cook does
+his unceasing work in a well in the middle with a clay stove in
+it. At night a framework covered with bamboo mats is erected,
+under which the crew sleep. The high stern cabin is usually occupied
+by the <i>lao-pan</i> and his family. A junk of 120 tons carries a
+crew of 120 men.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In passage junks the open space forward is diminished as much
+as possible, most of the deck being housed over, but in cargo
+junks less than half is covered. In the big junks a sponson runs
+along each side, which is used both for poling and communication.
+Junks carry a spare mast and sweeps lashed outside. The helmsman
+stands inside, with his head and shoulders protected by a
+raised “wheelhouse,” in which he works with much skill and
+infinite patience a very long and clumsy tiller attached to a huge
+rudder, which often projects four feet from the stern. The roof of
+the housed portion is used for the monstrous coils of bamboo
+rope, ofttimes three inches in diameter and 1200 feet in length,
+which are used in tracking, and are coiled and uncoiled continually.
+These ropes only last one voyage.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The lofty stern is frequently much decorated, and in all cases
+has a fascinating picturesqueness. Its square windows are of
+ground oyster-shell or paper, or even of stained glass. Occasionally
+it has a carved gallery with flowering plants in pots.
+Altogether a <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> junk is an ingenious and noble construction,
+and the owners take great pride in them. Their stately
+appearance and apparently large size are deceptive as to their
+carrying capacity, which is small. I believe that no junk on
+the Upper Yangtze draws over seven feet, which necessarily
+gives a shallow hold, and the freeboard is of startling scantiness.
+The large tenders smartly handled, which land and re-embark
+the trackers, are really big <i>sampans</i>, and often have a curious rig—two
+masts like sheers, forty feet high amidships, with the width
+of the deck between them, the spar which carries the sail running
+on both.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We call the junks “lumbering craft,” but no craft anywhere are
+more skilfully handled; none run such risks; no crews are better
+disciplined to act together and at a second’s notice in cases
+of emergency; no men work so desperately hard on such small
+pay and with such poor food; and it remains to be seen if vessels
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>of any other build and management can supplant them in the
+carrying trade of the Upper Yangtze.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Large fortunes are not made in junks; the losses are too heavy.
+But, judging from the comfortable houses of retired junk owners
+in many a pleasant place, a moderate competence for old age
+is in sight of all except the very unlucky. The wife and family
+usually live on board, and these wives seem to have a speciality
+of strident and powerful voices, which are heard above the roar
+of the rapids and the yells of the crews.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As to the risks, the Chinese say that one junk in twenty is
+annually lost, and one in ten is stranded. Consul Bourne<a id='r23'></a><a href='#f23' class='c013'><sup>[23]</sup></a> states
+that one-tenth of the foreign goods shipped at Ichang arrives
+damaged by water, and Mr. A. J. Little estimates the loss of junks
+and merchandise since the formation of the Hing-lung-t’an, or
+“Glorious Rapid,” in 1896 as eight per cent.<a id='r24'></a><a href='#f24' class='c013'><sup>[24]</sup></a> Consul Bourne,
+writing in December, 1896, says, “A hundred junks and 1000
+lives have been already lost, we are told, <i>i.e.</i>, since September 28th
+of the same year at that rapid.” Both the upward and downward
+passages are full of tremendous risks. On the upward passage in
+February I counted forty-one junks stranded at different points
+between Ichang and Wan Hsien, some breaking up, others being
+repaired, and all having to discharge their cargoes; and when
+I came down like a flash on high water towards the end of June,
+though it was impossible to count the stranded junks, they must
+have been nearly half of that number, even with the much-reduced
+summer traffic, and I saw one big junk strike a rock
+while flying down a rapid and disappear as if she had been
+blown up, her large crew, at the height of violent effort the moment
+before, with all its frantic and noisy accompaniments, perishing
+with her.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Besides junks of various sizes, there are native house-boats, like
+mine, and others running up to four times its size, which carry
+passengers only, and <i>wupans</i> and <i>sampans</i>—undecked boats with
+hooped bamboo roofs; these carry passengers or cargo. I have
+already described the arrangements of a house-boat. If the Upper
+Yangtze junks number from 7000 to 8000, the men employed on
+them at the lowest estimate must be a quarter of a million, in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>addition to many thousands working in house-boats and smaller
+craft.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Junks never anchor, and, indeed, carry no anchors, and choosing
+a mooring ground is a most important matter—not that there are
+not very many nooks and bays untouched by the current, but
+because of the caprices of the river, which often rises or falls, as
+I experienced, six or seven feet in a night, so that a careful watch
+must be kept in order to pay out or haul in line according to
+circumstances.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Big junks sound their way towards the bank, rig out great
+wooden fenders fore and aft to prevent their sheering into shoaler
+water than they draw, and one of the “water trackers” plunges
+into the water with a line, which he makes fast to a stake on
+shore, the fenders, which are really massive poles or straight
+young pines, also being lashed to rocks or stakes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Junks bound west keep as close in shore as they can on the
+side freest from rocks and easiest for the trackers. When the wind
+is fair and strong they can stem the ordinary current with their
+huge sail only, and they take their trackers on board; but if
+the fair wind is light, it only gives the trackers an easier haul.
+At all rapids, races, and rocky points, the tow-line is in requisition.
+Eastward-bound junks lash their mast alongside at Chungking,
+and are rowed down, being steered by a prodigious bow-sweep.
+It is absolutely necessary that their speed should be in advance
+of that of the current, and at every rapid frantic efforts are required
+from the crew.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Junks carry trackers in proportion to their tonnage, but a
+<i>lao-pan</i>, or skipper, usually part owner, the steersman, the <i>t’au-t’ai-kung</i>,
+or pilot, the <i>tai-kung</i>, or bowsman, the cook, and the
+<i>t’au-lao</i>, or head tracker, are indispensable. The pilot and steersman
+never leave the bow-sweep and rudder, except for meals, while the
+junk is in motion. The skipper’s functions are chiefly to buy food,
+bargain for extra trackers, pay wages, and stimulate the crew to
+frantic efforts in dangerous places by yells and gesticulations.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The bowsman, or <i>tai-kung</i>, acting also as pilot in my small boat,
+is the most important man in a junk. I never ceased to admire
+mine, a tall, broad, well-made fellow, the personification of knowledge
+and carefulness, silent, alert, never flurried, hand and head
+steady, all that a pilot should be, until the moment when he collapsed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>with the opium craving, after which he might nightly be
+seen in a state of blissful vacuity lying beside his opium lamp.
+The work of the <i>tai-kung</i> is to lead with his skilled touch the
+eight or ten men who, in a big junk, work the bow-sweep, a timber,
+from thirty to forty feet long, projecting over the bow, without
+which no boat could ascend or descend rapids and races in safety.
+When this great spar is not in use he stands at the bow sounding
+with a long iron-shod bamboo pole, giving the junk a sheer-off
+from upstanding points or rocks, and signalling to the steersman in
+which direction sunken rocks lie, which his trained eye discovers
+by the eddies in the river. His responsibility for life and property
+is enormous, and he bears it nobly. The sweep is used to shoot
+the junk out into the current, and enable her to clear rocks which
+cannot be avoided by the steersman and rudder.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Having slightly sketched the junks and the manner of navigating
+the Great River, I will conclude with a brief description
+of the “inhuman work” of the trackers, by far the worst of which
+is in the region of the gorges and the most severe of the rapids,
+extending for a hundred miles west of Ichang. Captain Blakiston,
+Captain Gill, and more lately Mr. A. J. Little in his delightful
+book, <cite>Through the Yangtze Gorges</cite>, have all expressed both
+sympathy with these men and their wonder at their hardihood,
+industry, and good-nature, and with my whole heart I endorse
+what these writers have said, and regard this class as typifying
+that extraordinary energy of the Chinese which has made and
+kept China what it is, and which carries the Chinese as thrifty
+and successful emigrants to every part of Eastern Asia and
+Western America.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The crews, which in big junks number 120 men, are engaged at
+Ichang. For the upward voyage, lasting from thirty to fifty days,
+they get about four shillings and their food, which is three meals
+a day of rice, with cabbage fried in a liberal supply of grease, and
+a little fish or pork on rare occasions, and for coming down, which
+rarely takes more than ten days (I did it in a <i>wupan</i> in a little
+over four), about eighteenpence and food, and indeed many crews
+work their passage down for food only. For this pittance these
+men do the hardest and riskiest work I have seen done in any
+country, “inhumanly hard,” as Consul Bourne calls it, week after
+week, from early dawn to sunset. The opening of Chungking
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>as a treaty port and various other causes have tended however to
+raise their wages.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p143_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>TRACKERS HOUSES.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>The larger number of these trackers are usually on shore hauling,
+being directed from the junk either by flag signals or drum beat,
+under the <i>tai-kung’s</i> direction; a proportion remain on board to
+work the huge bow-sweep, at which I have seen as many as fifteen
+straining. A few attend the trackers to extricate the tow-rope
+from the rocks, in which it is constantly catching, and two or more
+<i>tai-wan-ti</i>, or water trackers, specially expert swimmers, and without
+clothing, run ahead of the tow-rope ready to plunge into the
+water and free it when it catches among rocks which cannot be
+reached from the shore. If tracking and sailing are both impossible,
+the trackers propel the junk by great oars, each worked
+by two men, twenty at a side, who face forwards, and mark time
+by a combined stamp and a wild chant.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In descending, in order to keep steerage way on the junk in a
+current running from six to twelve knots an hour, every agency of
+progression is brought into play. The slinging of the mast alongside
+gives a lumbering, ungainly look. The deck is literally
+crowded with men, naked in summer, and in winter clothed in
+long blue cotton coats. Some are rowing face forwards; fifteen or
+more are straining for life at the bow-sweep; others are working the
+huge oars called <i>che</i> (wheel), each of which demands the energies
+of ten men; others are toiling at <i>yu-lows</i>, big broad-bladed
+sculls, worked over the stern or parallel to the junk’s side—even
+women and children take part in the effort—the <i>lao-pan</i> grows
+frantic, he yells, leaps, dances; drums and gongs are madly beaten,
+and yet, with all this frantic effort, it is all the junk can do to keep
+steerage way enough to clear the dangerous places, and not always
+that, as I saw on two occasions junks fly down rapids, strike rocks,
+and disappear as unconnected masses of timbers, as if exploded
+by dynamite.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I saw over eighty big junks descend the great rapids, and it was
+such an exciting sight, with its accompaniments of deafening din,
+that I not only never wearied, but would have been glad to see
+eighty more.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Where it is impossible to sail—and even with a fair wind there
+are few reaches except the gorges where it is possible—the trackers
+prefer the “inhuman work” of tracking to the slow headway made
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>by the severe and monotonous toil of rowing, or of hugging the
+bank, and hooking the junk along by seizing with hooks on rings
+with staples driven into the rock for this purpose, or keeping her
+off with stout fenders while they pole her along with iron-spiked
+bamboo poles, which they drive into holes which have been made
+by this process in the course of ages in the hard conglomerate
+or granite.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In small house-boats like mine the trackers are landed from
+the boat, but in junks from the attendant <i>sampan</i>. Except the
+<i>tai-wan-ti</i>, they wear short cotton drawers, and each man has a
+breast strap. The huge coil of plaited bamboo, frequently a
+quarter of a mile long, is landed after being passed over the
+mast-head, a man on board paying out or hauling in as is required.
+Small boats pass under the loftier tow-ropes of big ones, which
+often saves time, and often leads to noisy quarrels and entanglements.
+The trackers uncoil the rope, each man attaching it to
+his breast strap by a hitch, which can be cast off and rehitched in
+a moment.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The drum beats in the junk, and the long string of men starts,
+marking time with a loud yell—“<i>Chor-chor</i>,” said to mean “Put
+your shoulder to it.” The trackers make a peculiar movement;
+their steps are very short, and with each they swing the arms and
+body forward, stooping so low to their work that their hands nearly
+touch the ground, and at a distance they look like quadrupeds.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Away they go, climbing over the huge angular boulders of the
+river banks, sliding on their backs down spurs of smooth rock,
+climbing cliff walls on each other’s shoulders, or holding on with
+fingers and toes, sometimes on hands and knees, sometimes on
+shelving precipices where only their grass sandals save them from
+slipping into the foaming race below, now down close to the deep
+water, edging round a smooth cliff with hardly foothold for goats,
+then far above, dancing and shouting along the verge of a precipice,
+or on a narrow track cut in the rock 300 feet above the river, on
+which narrow and broken ledge a man unencumbered and with a
+strong head would need to do his best to keep his feet. The
+reader must sympathetically bear in mind that these poor fellows
+who drag our commerce up the Yangtze amidst all these difficulties
+and perils, and many more, are attached to a heavy junk by
+a long and heavy rope, and are dragging her up against the force
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>of a tremendous current, raging in billows, eddies, and whirlpools;
+that they are subject to frequent severe jerks; that occasionally
+their burden comes to a dead stop and hangs in the torrent for
+several minutes; that the tow-rope often snaps, throwing them on
+their faces and bare bodies on jagged and rough rocks; that they
+are continually in and out of the water; that they are running
+many chances daily of having their lives violently ended; and that
+they are doing all this mainly on rice!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Their work is indicated from the junk either by the rapid beating
+of drums and gongs when they are to haul hard, or a slow rat-a-tat
+when they are to cease hauling, or by flag signalling, one man
+being told off on shore to watch the signals and communicate
+them to the trackers. An error would be as fatal as if within
+a ship’s length of a reef ahead an engineer were to mistake the
+order “Full speed astern” for “full speed ahead.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Occasionally rough steps help the men up and down spurs, and
+rock paths made by the pickaxe occur frequently. Many of these
+were thirty feet above the river when I went up, and were submerged
+when I came down. There is, however, one noble rock path, four
+feet broad, running for many miles at an even height, built, I
+believe, by a private individual as an act of benevolence to the
+trackers and for the “accumulation of merit.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At some points where the rapids are bad and the shores are big
+broken rocks, only fitted for goats to climb, and the junks hang or
+slip back, and the men give way, and several big junks, each with
+from 200 to 300 trackers, are all making the slowest possible
+progress, gongs and drums are beaten frantically; bells are rung;
+firearms are let off; the hundreds of trackers on all-fours are yelling
+and bellowing; the overseers are vociferating like madmen, and
+rush wildly along the gasping and struggling lines of naked men,
+dancing, howling, leaping, and thrashing them with split bamboos,
+not much to their hurt. A tow-rope breaks, and the junk they are
+tugging at gyrates at immense speed to the foot of the rapid, the
+labour of hours being wasted in two or three minutes, if there is
+not a worse result.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among the many perils encountered by junks and trackers are
+the <i>chipa</i> or races, which are usually caused by a projecting point
+or spur of rock below which there is a smooth eddy. Arrived at
+the point and landing the trackers, the <i>tai-kung</i> throws the boat’s
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>head out into the current to get her clear of the point, with the
+bow-sweep, and with the strongest line in use, seventy or eighty
+trackers haul on it with all their force, men work with long poles
+to fend her off the rocks, and with her head on to the current the
+water foams and rages under her bow, but if all goes well, after a
+period of suspense she is dragged by main force round the point
+into smooth water, and then it is often the case that the cliffs are
+inaccessible; the trackers come on board and “claw” the junk
+along in deep water with claws on long boathooks, which they
+hook into the rocks, others fending her off.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Things do not always go smoothly. I went up these races in
+my boat many times, and such small incidents happened as thumping
+a hole in the bottom on a small rock, the rope catching on
+a rock in the water and a bold swimmer having to go overboard to
+detach it, and the tow-rope holding fast round some point of rock
+or getting entangled in a crevice which looked inaccessible. It was
+horrible to see the poor fellows climb with bare feet up apparently
+smooth precipices, “holding on with their eyelids,” while the drum
+beat “Cease hauling,” and the junk hung tugging and quivering in
+the torrent and fraying the rope which was her one salvation. On
+two occasions where there was absolutely no foothold for a cat, a
+man was let down over the precipice by a rope under his arms to
+free the fast-fraying tow-line. These lines, hardened by the silica
+in the bamboo, have cut channels two, three, and four inches deep
+over many of the points, neat, smooth grooves in which they
+run easily.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There is much more to be said about the trackers and their
+work, but the reader is weary, and I forbear. No work is more
+exposed to risks to limb and life. Many fall over the cliffs and
+are drowned; others break their limbs and are left on shore to
+take their chance—and a poor one it is—without splints or
+treatment; severe strains and hernia are common, produced by
+tremendous efforts in dragging, and it is no uncommon thing
+when a man falls that his thin naked body is dragged bumping
+over the rocks before he extricates himself. On every man almost
+are to be seen cuts, bruises, wounds, weals, bad sores from
+cutaneous disease, and a general look of inferior rice.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These trackers may be the roughest class in China—for the work
+is “inhuman” and brutalising—but nevertheless they are good-natured
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>in their way; free on the whole from crimes of violence;
+full of fun, antics, and frolic; clever at taking off foreigners; loving
+a joke; and with a keen sense of humour.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Those who crowd in hundreds to the great rapids in the season
+for the chance of getting a few <i>cash</i> for a haul are a rougher lot
+still. They bargain for the price of haulage with the <i>lao-pan</i>
+through gangsmen, and very often where there is much competition,
+as at the Hsin-tan, get only about a penny for four hours’
+hard work. Their mat camps are very boisterous at night. At the
+lesser rapids the <i>lao-pan</i> goes ashore, dangling strings of <i>cash</i>, and
+as there is usually a village close by, he secures help, after some
+loud-tongued bargaining and wrangling, engaging even women and
+boys to tug at his ropes, and occasionally a woman with a baby on
+her back takes a turn at the dragging!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That so vast a traffic is carried on under such difficulties is
+a marvel. Many of these are created on the upward passage by
+the necessity which hauled junks are under of taking the shallow
+inshore water, with its rocks, obvious and sunken, reefs, broken
+water, and whirlpools. Full-powered steamers, with suitable
+steering arrangements, ascending the smooth deep-water channel
+used in the descent, might escape the majority of the risks
+run by junks; but then a complete survey of the Upper
+Yangtze is required. So far as I could judge of the Great
+River between Sui Fu, at the junction of the River of Golden
+Sand and the Min, and Ichang, leaving out the gorges, there are
+very few reaches in which rapids, races, and rocky broken water
+are not to be met with. Indeed, it may be said that there is no
+tranquil water, and Admiral Ho, the superintendent of police for
+the Upper Yangtze, is probably not exaggerating when in his
+official <i>Yangtze Pilot</i> he enumerates about a thousand perils to
+navigation. When I returned I realised that Mr. Endacott’s
+remark concerning occupation had much truth in it: “You’ll have
+enough to do looking after your life.”<a id='r25'></a><a href='#f25' class='c013'><sup>[25]</sup></a></p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XIV.<br> <span class='c012'>THE YANGTZE AND KUEI FU</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>On February 7th we entered the solemn Wushan gorge,
+twenty miles long, a grand chasm from 330 to 600 yards in
+width, and walled in by perpendicular cliffs ofttimes 1000 feet
+in height, with lofty mountain spires and pinnacles then touched
+with snow above them. The “Witch’s Mountain Great Gorge”
+is uncanny, and the black gloom of a winter day, clouds swirling
+round the higher summits, and the long yells with which the
+boatmen besought the river god for a wind, with many vows and
+promises to pay, did not enliven it. Nor does the name “Iron
+Coffin Gorge,” given to a reach above, where iron chains are bolted
+into the cliffs fifty feet above the winter level of the river for the
+use of the junks bound west, cheer the situation.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We were two days in this “dowie den,” and tied up for a third
+on Sunday, near the last inhabited village in <span class='sc'>Hupeh</span>, Nan-mu
+yurh, “Cedar Garden,” situated on both sides of a deep glen
+apparently closed by a high mountain, a covered bridge connecting
+the two halves. It is a romantic place, quite worth the toilsome
+ascent of 517 steep stone steps which form the terraced street.
+The houses are surrounded by loquats, orange, and pomegranate,
+their dark, shining foliage with a background of snow. The
+people of this mountainous province are said to be poor, hardy,
+and industrious. A respectable merchant asked if we had heard
+when peace was going to be made? Such ignorance was phenomenal
+on this great highway of commerce! Some boatmen asked
+ours what we were doing tied up there when there was such
+a good wind, and the reply was that they had foreign devils as
+passengers, who, though they did no work and were always eating,
+must sleep one day in seven!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Above this glen the walls of the gorge approach again; they
+are still of limestone with sandstone above, caverned at great
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>heights, worn in places into colossal terraces, and singularly fluted
+by means of deep, vertical potholes, the outer halves of which
+have given way. Two narrow glens on each side of the river are
+the boundary between <span class='sc'>Hupeh</span> and <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, but it was not
+till some hours later that we passed the first village of the empire
+province, Pei-shih, “Back to the Rock,” a long, straggling street,
+on an imposing limestone ledge, and possessing a fine Taoist
+temple. There is a small but nasty rapid below it, which took
+two hours to ascend. While scrambling along the shore I picked
+up a piece of pink granite, which at once raised a clamour, the
+people saying that a foreigner with blue or grey eyes not only sees
+three feet into the ground, but can look inside the stones, and that
+I had seen a jewel in this one. I threw it down, and they broke
+it open; and then, not finding anything, said that I had spirited
+it out of the stone by foreign magic.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The current at the upper end of the Witch’s Gorge produced
+so much tedious delay that I was glad when we reached Wushan,
+the first city in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, to which, for a considerable distance,
+we were <i>clawed</i> along by hooks attached to the boatmen’s poles.
+Opposite Wushan is a small tributary, which brings down salt
+from brine wells near Ta-Ling, a district city, in boats which Mr.
+Little regards as exact copies of Venetian gondolas. Wushan
+is grey and picturesque, its walls following the contour of the
+hills on which it is built, enclosing fields, orchards, and beautiful
+trees. A fine temple to the God of Literature in a grove of
+evergreens on a steep mountain cone 1500 feet in height, and a
+lofty pagoda on the same peak are striking objects, but the town,
+though fairly clean, has no look of prosperity, and so far was
+disappointing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Toiling up the “Kitten” and “Get-down-from-horse” rapids, we
+reached the Feng Hsiang, or “Bellows,” or “Wind-Box” gorge, the
+last and one of the grandest of the great gorges, where the Great
+River is narrowed in places to 150 yards, by vertical walls of rock
+from 1500 to 2000 feet in height. There are both rapids and
+dangerous whirlpools, the presence of red lifeboats, as usual,
+denoting risk. My boat was dragged up inch by inch against
+a tremendous current, <i>clawed</i> up in places where there was no
+foothold for trackers, and so terrible was the straining of these
+poor fellows on the rough and jagged rocks that I welcomed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>the opening out of the stupendous chasm, and our entrance upon
+a beautiful mountainous country, through which the Yangtze rolls
+through a valley covered, even in February, with all manner
+of crops in their freshest green. Just at the mouth, creating two
+channels—one 100 feet and the other 200 feet in width—lies a
+black, polished, square mass of rock known as the “Goose-tail”
+rock; it was fully forty feet above the water when I went
+up, but when I came down in June it was only just visible.
+When it is quite covered, the authorities at the city, five miles
+above, do not allow any junks to descend till it reappears. A
+remarkable rock ladder connected with early Chinese military
+history, a grand white limestone peak which curves majestically
+over the gorge, a fine temple on a cliff with gardens and courtyards—and
+then the almost painful drafts on the capacity for
+admiring and wondering which the previous eleven days had
+made came to an end.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The scenery above the Wind-Box gorge, though less grand,
+is very varied, the valley and the lateral valleys for ever narrowing
+and broadening; the distant mountains forest-covered or snow-slashed;
+the spurs crowned with grand temples, below which
+picturesque villages cluster, and whitewashed, black-beamed,
+several-gabled, many-roofed, orange-embowered farmhouses; and
+every slope and level is cultivated to perfection, the bright yellow
+of the rape-seed blossom adding a charm to greenery which was
+never monotonous.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After ascending some troublesome but minor rapids, much
+bothered all the time by a big cargo boat with seventy trackers of
+its own, which kept close behind us, always trying to pass its rope
+over the top of our mast, a quarrel being the inevitable consequence,
+we arrived in sight of what looked like a smoky manufacturing
+town, the first time I saw such a sight in China. Really the
+appearance was produced more by great jets and ebullitions of
+steam than by smoke, for the “manufacturers” were burning a
+local coal, much resembling anthracite. At low water there are
+great sand-banks below the city of Kuei Fu, or Kuei-chow Fu,
+where a number of salt boilers establish themselves for the winter
+months, who dig great brine pits in the sand and evaporate the
+product with coal. The process is rude, and the salt is a bad
+colour, but the product of this and many other similar wells is
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>one of the chief exports of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> and a great source of
+revenue.<a id='r26'></a><a href='#f26' class='c013'><sup>[26]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A great bank of boulders, a strong <i>chipa</i>, a highly cultivated
+region, the pleasant valley slopes of which rolled up into hills,
+pleasant farms, a general sunny smile, a grey-walled city of much
+picturesqueness, a great fleet of junks moored below it, a mat
+town to supply their needs, and we were at the city of Kueichow
+Fu.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Ever since leaving Ichang we had been goading the <i>lao-pan</i> to
+hurry, so that we might reach Wan by the Chinese New Year,
+which was quite possible, but he and all his trackers were determined
+that we should spend it at Kuei Fu, a favourite place with
+junkmen, so we had the bad luck of being detained there four
+days till noisy and gluttonous celebrations of the great festival
+were past. Not that we were honestly detained, or that the
+<i>lao-pan</i> claimed this holiday, but he resorted to mean Oriental
+dodges to keep us. We arrived on February 10th, the New
+Year fell on the 13th, so one day the boat required serious repair,
+another stores must be laid in, the third the <i>lao-pan</i> moved a
+few hundred yards and then said he must go to some village for a
+new tow-rope, and another day must be devoted to paying debts!
+Fortunately it was brilliant weather, though so cold that I had
+to sit wrapped in blankets with my feet in the bed. But then
+at home people do not usually sit in what is practically the
+open air with the temperature at 39°!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Kuei Fu is a large city, with a very fine wall and noble
+gate towers, and imposing roofs of <i>yamens</i> and temples are seen
+above the battlements. At that time it was very hostile to
+foreigners, and I made no attempt to enter its stately gates,
+but walked in the beautiful surroundings among large farmhouses,
+all <i>en fête</i> for the season, with many wolfish dogs,
+aggressive and cowardly, and crops of wheat and barley already
+showing the ear stalks, and root crops with much juicy leafage,
+a farming paradise. Good paths bordered with the yellow
+fumitory, already in blossom, intersected the country, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>owing to the recent dry weather, there was an agreeable aspect
+of cleanliness everywhere. I photographed a suburban temple
+with a porcelain front, where the priests, as is their wont, were
+quite polite, but on the way back we were “rushed” by a
+crowd of men and boys howling and shouting, and using the
+term <i>yang-kwei-tze</i>, “foreign devil,” very freely. No Protestant
+missionaries, and I was told no Roman either, have yet effected
+a lodgment in this city. Two Chinese telegraph clerks, both
+Christians, and speaking good English, paid us a visit, and
+told us that feeling had become so very much more hostile
+since the “disturbances” that there would certainly be a serious
+riot if we went into the town.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Outside the walls little is to be seen except the salt boileries on
+the sand-banks; the manufacture of briquettes; the loading of junks
+for the low country with big lumps of anthracite coal, which sells
+for 9<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a ton at Kuei Fu, and is much used by the blacksmiths;
+the ceaseless procession of water carriers, each making the long
+steep trudge from the river to the city with two buckets for half
+a farthing; and the aqueduct, a great work of former days, about
+three miles long, which brings a supply of pure water down a
+stone channel from a strong spring which spouts from a hole in
+the rock at a height of 1500 feet or thereabouts. This good gift
+is not <i>pro bono publico</i>; the magistrate who constructed the work
+was ambitious only to have a private water supply. The paved
+path leading to the source passes over a steep hill which for more
+than a mile is a vast city of the dead, occupied by graves some of
+which are handsome stone structures closed by inscribed slabs
+of stone, standing on carefully-kept grass platforms, as in Korea,
+while the majority are circular grassed mounds held together by
+rubble.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Kuei Fu or Kwei Hwan (<i>i.e.</i> “The Barrier of Kueichow”) is a
+decaying city, bolstered up into an appearance of grandeur by its
+position and its stately wall and gate towers. There all goods
+going up or down the Yangtze paid <i>likin</i>, a transit tax of about
+5 per cent. on their value. As (according to Mr. Little) over
+10,000 junks go up and down in the year, and each one is
+delayed for examination three or four days, a large extra-mural
+population made a living by supplying their needs. Some
+years ago the Kuei Fu Likin Office was the most valuable in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>China next to that of Canton, and the likin duties were the
+great source of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> revenue. The grand houses, with
+fine pleasure grounds, of which many can be seen from a height
+above the wall, testify to the fortunes made by officials in the
+days when they had the right to levy 5 per cent. on a trade
+worth possibly £2,000,000 sterling.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But we have “changed all that” by securing the opening of the
+treaty port of Chungking with the transit pass and chartered
+junk systems, to which all foreign imports can be carried on
+payment of duty to the Imperial Maritime Customs at Shanghai.
+Thus these rich dues go to Peking, and the “Four Streams
+Province” is the sufferer, and Kuei Fu really can only exact
+legal dues from junks carrying local merchandise and from salt
+junks. The reader will at once perceive the reason for the
+strong provincial hostility which is roused by the opening of new
+treaty ports, for each one, to a greater or less extent, enriches
+the Imperial Government at the expense of the provinces, and
+deprives a great number of officials of their “legitimate” perquisites
+or “squeezes,” in favour, as the people think, of highly
+salaried foreign customs employés.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On two days, owing to the crowds on the shore, I did not leave
+the boat. In the bright sunshine, “light without heat,” the view
+was always delightful, as it changed from hour to hour, and disappeared
+at sunset in a blaze of colour—distant snow peaks
+burning red after the lower ranges had passed into ashy grey.
+The picturesque grey city, the magnificent opening of the Feng
+Hsiang, or “Wind-Box” gorge, the hill slopes in the vividness
+of their spring greens and yellows, the rapid, with its exciting
+risks and the life on the water, made a picture of which one
+could never weary.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Yet five days of crouching and shivering in a six-foot square
+room, really a <i>stall</i>, with three sides only and no window, taxed
+both patience and resources, especially as the virago and the boat
+baby were more aggravating than usual, and the trackers ignored
+the existence of passengers. The <i>lao-pan</i> gave himself up to the
+opium pipe, and was consequently obliterated. Be-dien, my
+servant, whose temper and pride were unslumbering, made himself
+unpleasant all round. It would require some very old-fashioned
+Anglo-Saxon words to describe the smell of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span>cooking of the New Year viands. Yet somehow I did not feel
+the least inclined to grumble, and my slender resources held out
+till the end.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had Baber’s incomparable papers on Far Western China to
+study and enjoy, a journal to “write up,” much mending and
+even making to accomplish, and, above all, there were photographic
+negatives to develop and print, and prints to tone, and
+the difficulties enhanced the zest of these processes and made
+me think, with a feeling of complacent superiority, of the amateurs
+who need “dark rooms,” sinks, water “laid on,” tables, and other
+luxuries. Night supplied me with a dark room; the majestic
+Yangtze was “laid on”; a box served for a table: all else can
+be dispensed with.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I lined my “stall” with muslin curtains and newspapers, and
+finding that the light of the opium lamps still came in through
+the chinks, I tacked up my blankets and slept in my clothes and
+fur coat. With “water, water everywhere,” water was the great
+difficulty. The Yangtze holds any amount of fine mud in suspension,
+which for drinking purposes is usually precipitated with alum,
+and unless filtered, deposits a fine, even veil on the negative. I
+had only a pocket filter, which produced about three quarts of
+water a day, of which Be-dien invariably abstracted some for
+making tea, leaving me with only enough for a final wash, not
+always quite effectual, as the critic will see from some of the
+illustrations.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I found that the most successful method of washing out “hypo”
+was to lean over the gunwale and hold the negative in the wash
+of the Great River, rapid even at the mooring place, and give
+it some final washes in the filtered water. This chilly arrangement
+was only possible when the trackers were ashore or smoking
+opium at the stern. Printing was a great difficulty, and I only
+overcame it by hanging the printing-frames over the side. When
+all these rough arrangements were successful, each print was a joy
+and a triumph, nor was there disgrace in failure.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>
+<img src='images/p158_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>AUTHOR’S TRACKERS AT DINNER.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>The day before the New Year was thoroughly unquiet. The
+population of the boat was excited by wine and pork money, and
+was fearfully noisy, shouting, yelling, quarrelling, stamping overhead,
+stamping along the passage outside my cambric curtain,
+stamping over the roof, sawing, hammering, and pounding rice. A
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>mandarin’s boat tied up close to my window had engaged a “sing-song”
+boat, and I had all the noise from both, and many glimpses
+of the mandarin, a good-looking young man, in fur-lined brocaded
+silk. Like all others that I have seen of the higher official class, he
+looked immeasurably removed from the common people. The
+assumed passionlessness of his face expressed nothing but aloofness
+and scorn. One of the servants died in his boat after a few
+hours’ illness, during which the beating of drums and gongs, and
+the letting off of crackers to frighten away the demon which was
+causing the trouble, were incessant and tremendous. We sailed in
+company, and shortly after leaving Kuei Fu one of the mandarin’s
+trackers, in a very minor rapid, was pulled into the river and
+drowned.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had an opportunity of taking an instantaneous photograph of
+my trackers at dinner. Their meals, which consist of inferior rice
+mixed with cabbage or other vegetables fried in oil, with a bit of
+fish or pork occasionally added, are worth watching. Each man
+takes a rough glazed earthenware bowl and fills it from the great
+pot on the fire. All squat round the well, and balancing their
+bowls on the tips of the fingers of the left hand close under the
+chin, the mouths are opened as wide as possible, and the food is
+shovelled in with the chopsticks as rapidly as though they were
+eating for a wager. When the mouth is apparently full they pack
+its contents into the cheeks with the chopsticks and begin again,
+packing any solid lumps into the cheeks neatly at once. When
+mastication and swallowing took place I never quite made out,
+but in an incredibly short time both bowls and cheeks were empty,
+and the eaters were smoking their pipes with an aspect of content.
+The boats, unless sailing, tie up for meals. The Chinese never, if
+they can help it, drink unboiled water, which saves them from
+many diseases, and these men drank the water in which the rice
+was cooked.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On three such meals the poor fellows haul with all their strength
+for twelve hours daily, never shirking their work. They are rough,
+truly, but as the voyage went on their honest work, pluck, endurance,
+hardihood, sobriety, and good-nature won my sympathy and
+in some sort my admiration. They might be better clothed and
+fed if they were not opium smokers, but then where would be
+their nightly Elysium?</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XV.<br> <span class='c012'>NEW YEAR’S DAY AT KUEI-CHOW FU</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>New Year’s Day arrived at last, as cold and brilliant as if it
+were not belated by six weeks. I took a beautiful walk
+among prosperous farms where the people were all in gala dress.
+The houses were decked with flags and streamers, and even the buff
+dogs had knots of colour round their necks. From above the wall
+the grey city could be seen brilliantly decorated, and sounds of
+jubilation came up from it. The suburbs and the mat town on the
+river bank were gay and noisy, and much money was spent on
+crackers and explosives generally. The junks were decorated, and
+the “sing-song” boats blossomed into a blaze of colour. Everyone
+except my trackers appeared in new clothes, and threw off the
+old ones with rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This was my second New Year in China, and I had seen its
+approach as far back as Ichang, where, as everywhere, tables
+appeared in the streets a month beforehand, and all sorts of
+tempting articles were displayed upon them in a tempting manner.
+This is the time when things can be had cheap, and many articles
+of <i>bric-à-brac</i> and embroidered dresses are for sale which are not
+obtainable at any other time. For in order to pay debts, a
+sacred obligation worthily honoured in the observance, many
+families are obliged to part with possessions long cherished. The
+crowds in the streets in gala dresses are enormous; children are
+gaily dressed, their quaint heads are decorated with flowers, and
+they receive presents of toys and <i>bon-bons</i>. The toy-shops drive
+a roaring trade.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Red paper appears everywhere in long strips pasted on the
+lintels and doorposts of houses, emblazoned with the characters
+for happiness and longevity, and with formal sentences suitable
+for the festive occasion, many of which are written on tables in
+the streets which are provided with ink-brushes and ink-stones.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>Every shop is brilliant with these red papers pasted or suspended,
+and with <i>kin hwa</i>, or “golden flowers,” much made in Shao
+Hsing, being artificial flowers and leaves often of great size, of
+yellow tinsel on wires, making a goodly show. The “sing-song”
+boats were profusely decorated with these, and they are much used
+for the New Year offerings in temples, and for the annual redecoration
+of the household tablets. Thousands of vegetable wax
+candles, with paper wicks, varying in size from the thickness
+of a man’s leg to that of his finger, coloured vermilion, and
+painted with humorous and mythical pictures, and many other
+things used for offerings in the temples, and ribbons and streamers
+of all descriptions made the streets, even the mat streets outside
+Kuei Fu, gay.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p161_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A CHINESE PUNCHINELLO.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>For the three previous days unlimited scrubbing of clothes,
+persons, doors, chairs, shutters, and all woodwork went on; and
+though boats were not as universally turned out and cleaned as
+at Canton, where I spent a previous New Year, a good many
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>of the smaller craft were beached and cleansed inside and out.
+Even the trackers scrubbed their faces, and appeared a paler
+yellow.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Towards the evening of that day, between the din of gongs and
+the constant explosion at every door of strings of fireworks
+intended to expel evil spirits and prevent others from entering,
+the noise became exciting. This idea of expelling evil spirits
+and preventing their entrance at the incoming of the year is the
+same as is carried out in Korea by the burning in a potsherd at
+the house door of the hair of all the inmates, which, when cut
+off or falling out, is preserved for this purpose. The Chinese,
+like the Koreans, believe themselves surrounded by legions of
+demons, mainly malignant, who must either be frightened or propitiated.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Religion plays a most conspicuous part in visits to the temples,
+and offerings. At all the farms near Kuei Fu, trees, fences, barns,
+and farming implements, as well as houses, had prayers pasted
+upon them. The junkmen, though not nearly to the same extent
+as in Kwantung, pasted paper prayers on oars, sweeps, mast, and
+rudder, and hung them over the boats’ sterns; and every house
+was purified by a religious ceremonial. New Year’s Day is kept
+as the birthday of the entire population, and a child born on
+the previous day enters his second year upon it. In the houses
+of well-to-do people such birthdays are great occasions; and
+abbots, monks, and priests assemble to do them honour, with
+much noise and many prayers, some read and others chanted
+from memory, after which the written prayers are burned and
+libations are poured out. It is the family and social ceremonies
+connected with idolatry and demonism at this season which are
+a special difficulty in the way of Christians.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among other religious duties, some persons, both men and
+women, burdened with the weight of the sins of the year, employ
+priests to intercede for them with the unseen powers, and fast, and
+give away much to the poor. The temples outside Kuei Fu were
+thronged for the days preceding the New Year with men and
+women, old and young; and in the midst of clouds of incense
+rich and poor prostrated themselves before the gods, burning gold
+and silver tinsel paper, while gongs, bells, drums, and cymbals
+kept up a ceaseless din.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>In the midst of the general winding up of all affairs, spiritual
+and temporal, and starting on the New Year clear, the great matter
+of debt is not forgotten. The paying of debts and settling of
+accounts is a highly praiseworthy custom, and one which we
+might introduce among ourselves with advantage. Although only
+a custom, it has all the force of law. If it can be avoided by
+any sacrifice, no debt is carried over New Year’s Day without
+either an actual settlement or an arrangement regarded as satisfactory
+by the creditor. To do otherwise would be to secure a
+blasted reputation. If men owe more than they can pay, custom
+compels them at this season to put all they have into the hands
+of their creditors and close their business concerns; and one
+among the causes of suicide is when men have not enough to
+pay their debts with. Interest on loans rises, the pawnbrokers’
+warehouses are choke-full, and most kinds of commodities fall in
+value, while second-hand clothing and many other personal possessions
+are to be bought cheap. The future to a Chinese often
+consists of little more than his funeral and the New Year! People
+dread the difficulties, expense, and delays of resorting to law
+for the recovery of debts; and all are agreed on maintaining this
+wholesome custom, which has a great tendency to weed out from
+among traders the shifty and dishonest. I have heard that one
+method of compelling an unwilling debtor to pay his debts is
+to remove the door from his house or shop, so as to allow of the
+ingress of evil and malignant demons. This last resort is said
+never to fail!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All the ceremonies which are to welcome the New Year, with
+the garnishing of the house with red paper, tinsel flowers, streamers,
+and the pictures, ornamenting of the ancestral shrine, and the
+general “redding up,” occupy much of the previous night; and
+the stillness of the first hours of the great day reminds one
+of an old-fashioned Scotch Sunday.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Towards noon the streets begin to fill, as in America, with men
+with card-cases paying visits. All are well dressed, even to the
+coolies, for those who have not grand clothes hire them. Inside
+Kuei Fu sedan chairs were <i>en règle</i>; outside, men made their
+calls on foot, in many instances cards sufficing, inscribed with
+a device suggesting the three good wishes of children (<i>i.e.</i> sons),
+wealth or rank, and longevity. Men meeting in the streets
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>greeted each other with profound respect, and with the good wish,
+“May the new joy be yours,” which reminded me of the Syrian
+salutation on the feast of the Epiphany, or with the words, “I
+respectfully wish you joy.” Universal politeness and good
+behaviour prevailed, and not a tipsy man was to be seen during
+the day or evening.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mourners remain within doors, and strips of blue paper mixed
+with red denote houses into which death has entered during the
+previous year. Be-dien told me that in the city, where there are
+many <i>literati</i> and rich men, there were houses with all their woodwork
+covered with gold-sprinkled red paper, and on the lintels
+five slips expressing the desire of the owner for the “five
+blessings”: riches, health, love of virtue, longevity, and a natural
+death. Over some shops was a decorated slip, “May rich customers
+ever enter this door,” and in many stately vestibules, in
+which handsome presentation coffins were reared on end, there
+were costly scrolls inscribed with aphorisms and other sentences.<a id='r27'></a><a href='#f27' class='c013'><sup>[27]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On New Year’s Day gods and ancestors receive prostrations,
+and are presented with gifts in the temples and in the clan or
+family ancestral halls. It would be a gross breach of etiquette
+and an unthinkable outrage if inferiors were not to pay their
+respects to superiors, pupils to salute their teachers, and children
+to prostrate themselves before their parents.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When evening came, lanterns, transparencies, and fireworks
+appeared, and very effective coloured fires reddened the broad
+bosom of the Yangtze. Hilarious sounds proceeding from closed
+doors showed that, as in Korea at the same hour, sacrifices were
+being offered to departed parents, and that families were gathered
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>at the final feast of the day. My trackers hung coloured lanterns
+from the matted roof and feasted on pork with wine, but there
+was no excess, and it was a real pleasure to see them get one good
+meal with time to enjoy it. Owing to the moderate use of intoxicants,
+and that chiefly with food, the three holidays of this
+universal festival pass by without turmoil or disgrace, and the
+population goes back to trade and work out of debt and not
+demoralised by its spell of social festivity.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So the most ancient of the world’s existing civilisations comports
+itself on its great holiday, while our civilisation of yesterday,
+especially in Scotland, what with “first-footing,” “treating,”
+and general sociability, is apt to turn the holiday into a
+pandemonium.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XVI.<br> <span class='c012'>KUEI FU TO WAN HSIEN</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>The following morning my trackers, having no fumes of liquor
+to sleep off, were astir early. There was one long and strong
+rapid, Lao Ma (“Old Horse”), and a minor one, Miao Chitze
+“Temple Stairs”), where the water rushes furiously over a succession
+of steps with a clear but very rapid channel in the centre.
+Passenger boats turn out their fares there, and it was piteous to see
+the women with their bound feet hobbling and tumbling among
+boulders, where I, who am not a very bad climber, was glad to get
+the help of two men. Of course, the fathers and husbands gave
+them no assistance. The fierce cataract of Tung Yangtze, remarkable
+for a vigorous attempt which was made not very many years
+ago to overcome its difficulties by building a fine stone breakwater,
+now in decay, and a succession of <i>chipas</i> and eddies, intervened
+between Kuei Fu and Yun-yang Hsien, or “Clouded Sun City,”
+on the bank of a fine gorge, its grey walls extending far up the
+mountain on the slope of which the city stands, high above the
+winter level of the river.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These cities on the Yangtze are captivating to the eye, and the
+touches of colour given by the glazed green and yellow tiles of the
+curved roofs of their many fine temples relieve the otherwise
+monotonous grey. The “City of the Clouded Sun” is not lively,
+and has very little trade, but it is stately and clean, and its temples
+are well kept and imposing, specially the Temple of Longevity,
+which has a wall richly decorated in high relief, in which fine
+bronze tablets are inlaid.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The glory of the city is, however, on the opposite bank—the
+Temple of Chang-fei, a warrior who died fighting for his country.
+The whole scene is beautiful, and it was most mortifying that
+the crowd which gathered round my camera, looking in at the
+lens and over my shoulder under the focussing cloth and shaking
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>it violently, prevented me from getting a picture of it. Nature
+and art have combined in a perfect picturesqueness. On the flat
+vertical surface of a noble cliff rising from the boulder-strewn
+shore of the Yangtze are four characters—and what can be more
+decorative than Chinese characters “writ large”?—which are
+translated “Ethereal bell, one thousand ages.” This bell is
+believed by the people to ring of its own accord in case of a
+fire in the district.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p167_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>TEMPLE OF CHANG-FEI.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Above it, and approached by a fine broad flight of 100 stone
+stairs, is a magnificent temple in perfect repair, and with its
+gorgeous decorations lately restored. It has three courts, one
+three-storeyed and two two-storeyed pavilions, their much-curled
+roofs tiled with glazed tiles of an exquisite green. Corridors, also
+roofed with green tiles and composed of elaborate and beautiful
+wooden fretwork with the peony for its motive, connect the courts.
+On one side of the temple is a deep narrow glen with fine trees
+and a waterfall, and over this a beautiful stone bridge has been
+thrown from the temple door. There are some noble specimens
+of the <i>Ficus religiosa</i>. There were large numbers of visitors, and a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>ferry-boat is continually crossing. A lovelier place for a religious
+picnic could not be found.<a id='r28'></a><a href='#f28' class='c013'><sup>[28]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At Yun-yang we took in a relation of the <i>lao-pan</i>, a Romanist,
+employed by the French priest resident in the city as doctor to a
+dispensary. According to him, there are 300 Roman Christians in
+Yun-yang, who are quite free from molestation. There is no
+Protestant missionary there or in the country we passed through
+during the previous eighteen days. On the river bank, after Mr.
+Stevenson had been talking with a number of men about Christianity,
+an old man said to him, “Teacher, you say what is good, but
+it is not all true. You say we have never seen God. Then we
+can’t have injured Him, and so don’t need His forgiveness.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Above Yun-yang the country opens out, and the verdure and
+fertility are most charming. The bright red of the soil, the fresh
+green of the grain crops and sugarcane, and the brilliant yellow of
+the rape made a charming picture. Every now and then a noble
+specimen of the <i>Ficus religiosa</i>, with an altar and incense-burner
+below it, lent the contrast of its dark green foliage, and substantial
+farmhouses of “Brick Noggin,” each in a clump of
+bamboo, and fine temples in groves of evergreens gave an air of
+prosperity to the scene. I was not surprised at the encomiums
+which previous travellers have bestowed on this province.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Rape is universally grown for the oil. The people have neither
+butter nor grease for cooking, and their diet would be incomplete
+without abundance of some oily substance. Imported and native
+kerosene may take its place as an illuminant, but for cooking
+purposes it will be always grown. In such a fertile and beautiful
+region the absence of animal life is curious. There is no pasturage,
+the roads are not made for draught, and the cheerfulness of horses,
+cattle, and sheep about a farmyard is unknown. Buff dogs, noisy
+and cowardly, and the hideous water buffalo, which looks like an
+antediluvian survival and has a singular aversion to foreigners,
+represent the domestic animals.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>
+<img src='images/p169_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>PAGODA NEAR WAN HSIEN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>We were delayed considerably by head winds, involving much
+tracking and rowing, and thumped a hole in the boat’s bottom for
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>the second time, on which she filled so fast that she had to
+be run ashore with all despatch, and the miserable attempts at
+repair delayed us for some hours, as no carpenter would work
+during the New Year holidays. For the next twenty-eight
+hours it took four men baling night and day to keep the water
+down.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At a distance of nearly 1300 miles from its mouth the Yangtze
+is still a noble river, nobler yet when the summer rise covers the
+grand confusions of its rocky bed. The “Gorge of the Eight
+Cliffs,” a singular freak of nature, with perpendicular cliffs fluted
+like organ pipes, through which the river has cut a channel, said
+by the boatmen to be fathomless, about six miles long, through a
+bed of hard grey sandstone, detained us for a long time, and was
+bitterly cold and draughty. Above in a recess in the rock are
+carved three divinities in full canonicals, painted and gilded, called
+“The Three Water Guardians.” It is said that the reason that no
+boatmen will move in the dark is that these genii only guard the
+river by day.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Tiresome rapids detained us again, and I climbed a height to
+look at some queer erections, which are seen at intervals of about
+three miles, on elevations along the river from Ichang to Chungking,
+making a goodly show. They are white towers, with a red sun
+painted on the front of each, and stand five in a row. The boatmen
+say that they are to mark distances, but, according to better
+authorities they are <i>yen-tun</i>, or “smoke towers,” and have served
+the purpose of giving alarm in unsettled times by fires of dry
+combustibles within. Apparently they have not been repaired
+for many years.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On Ash Wednesday, February 19th, in the afternoon, a fine,
+white, nine-storeyed pagoda on a bank, and another on a high hill,
+announced the approach to a city. The river was narrowed by
+an insignificant gorge, then came a broad expanse of still water
+resembling a mountain lake, and then Wan appeared. That was
+one of the unforgettable views in China. The “Myriad City,” for
+position and appearance, should rank high among the cities of the
+world. The burst of its beauty as we came round an abrupt
+corner into the lake-like basin on which it stands, and were confronted
+with a stately city piled on cliffs and heights, a wall of
+rock on one side crowded with refuges and temples, with the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>broad river disappearing among mountains which were dissolving
+away in a blue mist, was quite overpowering.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Its situation on a sharp bend of the Yangtze, backed at a
+distance of thirty miles by a range of mountains—built on cliffs,
+and in clusters round temple and pagoda-crowned hills, and surrounded
+by precipitous, truncated peaks of sandstone, from 700
+to 1500 feet in height, rising out of woods through which torrents
+flash in foam, and from amidst garden cultivation, and surmounted
+by the picturesque, fortified refuges which are a feature of the
+region—is superb and impressive. Wan is the first of the prosperous
+cities of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> that I saw. It has doubled its population
+and trade in twenty years, and its fine streets and handsome
+shops, stately dwellings within large grounds, thriving industries,
+noble charities, and the fringe of junks for over two miles along
+its river shore, indicate a growing prosperity which is characteristic
+of nearly every city in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> which I afterwards
+visited.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We tied up in a crowd of large junks lying in three tiers.
+Hundreds of coolies were loading and unloading them, and the
+noise was deafening. Leaving the furious babel of the boatmen,
+who were dissatisfied with their “wine money,” I walked the
+mile up to the China Inland Mission house, partly by a flight
+of 150 steep stone stairs, and up back streets, and being bareheaded
+and in Chinese dress, escaped a very great crowd. No
+European woman had walked up through Wan before, for it and
+its officials had been notoriously hostile to foreigners, and Dr.
+Morrison, of the <cite>Times</cite>, had been ill-treated there only six months
+before. I was much impressed by the good paving and cleanliness,
+and the substantial stone dwellings <i>en route</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Arriving at a fine Chinese gateway, with a porter’s lodge and an
+outer court, along which are servants’ quarters and cow stables, we
+passed into what is a truly beautiful paved inner court, one side a
+roofed-in open space used as a chapel, the other a lofty and handsome
+Chinese guest-room, as shown in the illustration, with an
+open front, and the living-rooms of the family. A third side is
+the women’s guest-room, and on the fourth are various rooms.
+Projecting upper storeys and balconies, all carving and fretwork,
+latticed and carved window-frames with paper panes, tall pillars,
+and irregular tiled roofs, make up a striking <i>tout ensemble</i>, in the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>midst of which Mr. and Mrs. Thompson and three ladies, all in
+Chinese dress, stood to welcome me. It was all so trim and
+handsome that there was a distinct unseemliness in bringing in
+my shabby travelling equipments, much the worse for two
+years’ hard wear, and I hurried them into retirement as soon as
+possible.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p173_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>GUEST HALL, C.I.M. WAN HSIEN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>The house is beautiful inside, the walls, roofs, and pillars of
+planed, unvarnished wood of a fine grain, all dovetailed or put
+together with wooden bolts. Downstairs the large fretwork
+windows, opening on pivots, are above a man’s head. All the
+furniture, with the exception of some presents, is Chinese, and
+is at once simple and tasteful. Upstairs are a number of low,
+irregular, quaint rooms. The one allotted to me was a large one,
+with a great fretwork window into the court, and another with a
+superb view of the city and down the river. It had access by a
+steep step-ladder to an open wooden tower with a pagoda roof
+and seats for use in the hot weather. This overlooks the houses of
+many neighbours, and is overlooked. From it are to be seen all
+the refuges on the surrounding hilltops, the circuit of the city wall,
+<i>yamens</i>, temples, and pagodas, the broad brown fringe of junks,
+and the gleaming silver of the Great River.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>From 9 a.m. till dusk there was a continuous stream of Chinese
+visitors, the men entering at one door and the women at another,
+and passing into their guest-rooms, where they were separately
+received by Mr. Thompson and Miss Ramsay. A Chinese is a
+dignified and sensitive man, and likes to be master of the situation.
+He is miserable in a foreign house, with its promiscuous oddities,
+and has no idea where or on what to sit, what position to take,
+and to what etiquette he is to conform himself, and has all the
+discomfort of a fish out of water. In a Chinese guest-room, on
+the contrary, there is an ordered and rigid stateliness. A few
+handsome scrolls from the classics or pictures decorate the walls.
+A handsome carved black wood table stands against the wall
+opposite the open front, and on both sides of it are ranged
+heavy black wood chairs, the highest being next the table.
+Elaborate lamps hang from the roof.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>No matter what the position of a Chinese is, whether he be
+mandarin, merchant, shopkeeper, or writer, he is absolutely certain
+which chair etiquette entitles him to take, and when tea and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>pipes are produced he is as serene and comfortable as in his own
+house.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At that time, though missionaries had been settled at Wan for
+some years, and had been able to rent this beautiful house, there
+was not a Christian in the city. The ladies had only lately
+arrived, as it had been thought not a safe place for them. Even
+a month before my visit, when a deep well ran dry, a mob
+assembled outside the mission house threatening to burn it and
+to kill all the “foreign devils,” for they had tapped the well
+and had stolen the golden crab which was the “luck” of the
+city. The mob was eventually compelled to withdraw, but the
+mandarin, who only left as I was arriving, came to the house
+with the serious charge that the inmates had killed children in
+order to get their eyes, and that their bodies were in the tanks at
+the back!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mr. Thompson took him to the back, and the tanks were
+probed with a long pole, but the accusation was not disposed
+of by the resultlessness of the search, for foreign magic is believed
+to be equal to anything. The same official concerted the murder
+of the missionaries with the elders of the city, and Mr. Davies,
+who was then in Wan, was severely beaten. Compensation, however,
+was given him, which he bestowed on the local charities. A
+new chief magistrate had just arrived, with orders to treat the
+foreigners well, and all was changed. When Mr. Thompson called
+at the <i>yamen</i> the mandarin conducted him to the seat of honour,
+escorted him to his chair on leaving, and returned the visit with a
+large retinue the next day. Of course the Chinese everywhere
+take their cue from the officials.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So it came about that for several days I was able actually to
+walk about and to photograph with no worse trouble than the
+curiosity of the people in masculine crowds of a thousand or more.
+Four months before I was told that this would have been impossible.
+My camera would have been smashed, my open chair
+would have produced a riot, and I should have been stoned or
+severely beaten.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The streams of visitors to the beautiful guest-halls never ceased
+by daylight. Miss Ramsay often received forty women at a time.
+All <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> women have bound feet, and all wear trousers
+very much <i>en evidence</i>, those of the lower class women being
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>wrapped round the ankles and tied, those of the upper class
+being wide and decorated. They asked hordes of questions about
+domestic and social matters from their own grotesquely different
+standpoint, and wanted to hear what the “Jesus religion” was
+like, and were quite unable to understand how people could pray
+“unless they had a god in the room.” One day Miss Ramsay,
+who had been for some years in China, explained to her guests
+various things concerning our Lord’s life and teachings, and an
+upper class woman, who seemed intelligent and interested, explained
+it in her way to the others. As she left, Miss R. said,
+“You’ll not forget what I have told you,” and she said very
+pleasantly, “Oh, no, I won’t; our gods are made of mud, and
+yours are made of wood!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The ignorance which many men of the literary class show is
+wonderful, and it comes out freely in conversations in the guest-hall.
+A very grand military mandarin asserted not only that Lin
+and the Black Flags had driven the Japanese out of Formosa, but
+that the Straits of Formosa had yawned wide in answer to vows
+and prayers addressed to the gods by Lin, and that the navies of
+Russia, England, France, and Japan had perished in a common
+destruction in the vortex! A picture representing this catastrophe
+was for sale in Wan.<a id='r29'></a><a href='#f29' class='c013'><sup>[29]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>They think that the Queen of England is tributary to China, that
+our Minister is in Peking to pay the tribute, and that the presents
+which the Queen sent to the Empress Dowager on her sixtieth
+birthday were the special tribute for the occasion.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>They also believed that the American commission which had
+lately been at Chengtu for the purpose of assessing the damage
+done to the property of Americans in the previous riots was sent
+to congratulate the new Viceroy on his appointment!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Also many of the <i>literati</i> say—and I had heard the same thing
+in the north—that outside of China there are five kingdoms united
+under one emperor, Jesus Christ, who rose from a peasant origin,
+that one is inhabited by dog-faced people,<a id='r30'></a><a href='#f30' class='c013'><sup>[30]</sup></a> and that in another,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>where each woman has two husbands, she has a hole in her chest,
+and that when they travel the husbands put a pole through it
+and carry her! They also say that the missionaries come and
+live in distant places like Wan and Paoning in order to find
+out the secret of China’s greatness and the way to destroy
+it by magic arts. A map of Asia hangs in the guest-hall,
+and Mr. Thompson overheard some of the guests saying to
+each other at different times, “Look at these ‘foreign devils’”
+(<i>yang-kwei-tze</i>); “they put China small on the map to deceive
+their god!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is impossible to have patience with their ignorance because of
+their overweening self-conceit. It is passable in Africa, but not in
+these men with their literary degrees, and their elaborate culture
+“of sorts,” and two thousand years of civilisation behind them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Wan Hsien has a very large trade. Its shops are full of goods,
+native and foreign, and the traffic from the interior, as well as by
+junk, is enormous, but there are no returns, as it is not an open
+port. The actual city—<i>i.e</i>., the walled city—which contains the
+<i>yamens</i> and other public buildings, is small, steep, and handsome.
+It has extended itself into large suburbs five miles in extent, of
+which the true city is the mere nucleus. They straggle along the
+river, high up on the cliffs above it, and two miles back, where
+they are arrested by a rocky barrier at a height in which is
+excavated and scaffolded a celebrated “Temple of the Three
+Religions,” at the top of 1570 fine stairs, a great place of
+pilgrimage. This back country, in which are few level acres,
+is exquisitely cultivated, and is crossed in several directions by
+flagged pathways, carried over ascents and descents by good
+stairs. These usually lead to lovely villages, built irregularly on
+torrent sides, among a great variety of useful trees.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The city is divided into two parts by a river-bed, then nearly dry,
+but when I saw it in summer it contained a very respectable
+stream, which serves as the public laundry. I have never seen so
+beautiful a bridge as the lofty, single stone arch, with a house
+at the highest part, which spans the river-bed, and which seems to
+spring out of the rock without any visible abutments.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Graceful pagodas and three-storeyed pavilions guard the approaches.
+The Feng Shui of Wan is considered perfect. Rich
+temples on heights above the river and the handsome temple
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>called Chung-ku-lo (Drum and Bell Lodge), overlooking the small
+gorge below, with a large stage, under a fine three-storeyed pavilion,
+for the performance of the religious dramas, show that “The Three
+Religions” retain their hold on the people. The wealth of vegetation
+is wonderful. Not a barren or arid spot is to be seen from the
+water’s edge to the mountain summits which are the limits of
+vision. The shiny orange foliage, the dark formal cypress, the
+loquat and pomegranate, the gold of the plumed bamboo, the
+deep green of sugarcane, the freshness of the advancing grain
+crops, and the drapery of clematis and maidenhair on trees and
+rocks all delight the eyes. But the uniqueness of the neighbourhood
+of Wan consists in the number of its truncated sandstone
+hills, each bearing on its flat top a picturesque walled white village
+and fortification, to be a city of refuge in times of rebellion.
+These, rising out of a mass of greenery, with a look of inaccessibility
+about them, are a silent reference to unpleasant historic facts
+which distinguish Wan from other cities.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p179_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>BRIDGE AT WAN HSIEN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is not alone that junks fringe the shores, but they are very
+largely built at Wan, for the passage of the rapids, of a convenient
+material—the tough, formal cypress which grows on the adjacent
+hills. They must be at once light and strong, and more disposed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>to bend than to break. Many of their fittings have a local origin,
+and many rich junk builders and junk owners live at Wan.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Foreign goods go up the river to Chungking, the westernmost
+treaty port, from twelve to twenty days higher up the river, and
+come down again to Wan. “The Province of the Four Streams”
+does not produce much cotton; and cotton yarn from Japan and
+India comes in large quantities into Wan to be woven there. In
+1898 there were about 1000 handlooms. The cotton is woven into
+pieces about thirty feet long and sixteen inches broad, which take
+a man two days’ labour, from daylight till 9 p.m., to weave. A
+weaver’s wages with food come to about 600 <i>cash</i>, at present about
+1<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> per week of six days. Can Lancashire compete with this
+in anything but the output?</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XVII.<br> <span class='c012'>CHINESE CHARITIES<a id='r31'></a><a href='#f31' class='c013'><sup>[31]</sup></a></span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>As Moslems regard almsgiving as one of the “gates of heaven,”
+and practise it to a very remarkable extent, so the Chinese
+have placed benevolence foremost on the list of the “Five Constant
+Virtues.” The character which denotes it is said by the learned to
+be composed of the symbols for <i>man</i> and <i>two</i>, by which is somewhat
+obscurely indicated, on the principle of the spark being the
+result of the contact of flint with steel, that benevolence should
+result from the contact of two human beings.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That this is so in China is not the impression which the facts
+of daily life produce, and the popular view taken of Chinese
+character in this country is that it is cruel, brutal, heartless, and
+absolutely selfish and unconcerned about human misery. Among
+supporters of foreign missions this opinion would be found nearly
+universal; and, indeed, I have heard the non-existence of benevolence
+in the vast non-Christian empire of China brought forward
+as an argument in favour of such missions. So saturated is our
+atmosphere with the belief that the only charitable institutions in
+China are those founded by Protestant and Catholic missionaries,
+that nothing surprised me more than to find that the reverse is the
+case. Among the many intelligent and frivolous questions which
+have been put to me since I returned, the one, “Have the Chinese
+any charities?” has not been among them. It has been reserved
+for missionaries, and specially the late Rev. D. Hill, of Hankow,
+and the Rev. W. Lawton, of Chinkiang, to bring this most
+interesting subject under the notice of readers. The Rev. Arthur
+Smith gives a chapter of his clever and attractive book, <cite>Chinese
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>Characteristics</cite>, to the same subject, and Dr. Wells Williams
+glances at it very briefly in <cite>The Middle Kingdom</cite>; but few
+out of the many lay writers on China have touched upon it. On
+my first visit in 1878, Dr. Henry, of Canton, pointed out to
+me asylums or almshouses for the blind, and for aged persons
+without sons; and on my recent visits, following this lead, I made
+such inquiries as were practicable on this subject, and now venture
+to present my too scanty notes to my readers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have already remarked that the facts which lie on the surface
+of Chinese daily life do not give the impression of strong benevolent
+instincts. Wounded men are stripped of their uniforms
+and are left to perish on battlefields, because “wounded men
+are no use.” The ablest Chinese general in the late war wished
+to buy machine guns without the protective “mantle” at the
+consequently reduced price, and on being told by the German
+agent that this would risk a great sacrifice of life coolly replied,
+“We’ve plenty of men.” Yet this same man was most generous
+to the poor, established soup-kitchens in Mukden, his city, every
+winter, supplied the hospital with ice for the patients, and, even
+in the hurry of the last evening before he started with his brigade
+for the fatal field of Phyong-yang, arranged that the hospital
+should be supplied with ice during his absence.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have known a number of coolies refuse to get water from a
+river a few yards off to assuage the burning thirst of an apparently
+dying man of their number, who had carried a burden by their side
+for a fortnight, and had shared their hardships, on the ground that
+he was “no more any good,” and several similar instances, and
+what they do not practise themselves they fail to understand in
+others. I have been jeered at as a fool for laying a wet cloth on
+the brow of a man who had served me for some time and fell out
+on the road seriously ill, and yet more for having him carried
+in my chair rather than leave him to die on a mountain-side. On
+another occasion in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, when I left my chair and walked
+up a part of the colossal staircase by which the road is carried
+over the Pass of Shen Kia-chao, my bearers showed the construction
+they put on my doing so by asking, “Does the foreign woman
+think us not strong enough to carry her?” Men of the lower class
+interpret ordinary humanity and consideration as arising from
+dread of them, and the traveller is daily coming across instances
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span>which look very like brutality, and most foreign residents speak of
+the Chinese as cruel and brutal.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Some writers, especially the author of <cite>Chinese Characteristics</cite>,
+while admitting the existence of charities on a large scale, detract
+from the admiration which such works of benevolence would
+naturally command by pointing out that they are regarded as
+“practising virtue,” and are considered to be a means of “accumulating
+merit,” and in fact that the object generally in view is “not
+the benefit of the person on whom the ‘benevolence’ terminates,
+but the extraction from the benefit conferred of a return benefit
+for the giver.” The Chinese are perhaps the most practical people
+on earth, and a curious system of moral bookkeeping adopted by
+many shows this feature of the national character in a very curious
+light. There are books inculcating the practice of “virtue,” and in
+these a regular debtor and creditor account is opened, in which an
+individual charges himself with all his bad acts and credits himself
+with all his good ones, and the balance between the two exhibits
+his moral position at any given time.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mr. A. Smith is a very acute observer, and has had lengthened
+opportunities of observation, and his conclusions as to the motives
+for benevolence must be received with respect. May it not, however,
+be hinted that an equally acute observer setting himself to
+dissect motives for largesse to charities after a residence of some
+years in England would consider himself warranted in referring a
+very considerable proportion of our benevolence to motives less
+worthy than the desire to “accumulate merit”?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The problem of “the poor, and how to deal with them,” has
+received, and is receiving, various solutions in China, and probably
+there is not a city without one or more organisations for the relief
+of permanent and special needs. Foundlings, orphans, blind
+persons, the aged, strangers, drowning persons, the destitute, the
+dead, and various other classes are objects of organised benevolence.
+The methods are not our methods, but they are none the
+less praiseworthy.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The care of the dead is imperative on every Chinese, but poverty
+steps in, a coffin is an unattainable luxury, and without help a
+proper interment is impossible. Hence in all cities there are
+benevolent guilds which supply coffins for those whose relations
+are too poor to buy them, and bury such in free cemeteries, providing,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_184'>184</span>according to Chinese notions, all the accessories of a
+respectable funeral, with suitable offerings and the attendance of
+priests. Human bones which have become exposed from any
+cause are collected and reburied with suitable dignity, and bodies
+which have remained for years in coffins above ground waiting for
+the geomancers to decide on an auspicious day for the funeral,
+until all the relations are dead and the coffins are falling into
+decay, are supplied with new ones, and are suitably interred.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A Chinese is all his life thinking of his burial and the ancestral
+rites. Among a people to whom a creditable interment means so
+much, the generous way in which these benevolent obsequies are
+conducted does more than we can understand to remove the bitterness
+of mourning. The accompanying illustration shows a neat
+“chapel” with a well-kept cemetery, where bones have been
+gathered, those of individuals being placed together, so far as
+indications allow of it, under neat coverings of concrete.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the great city of Chinkiang there are an orphan asylum
+and benevolent institute for girls, with five receiving offices, and
+a boarding-out as well as an asylum system, a benevolent
+institute with eighty boys above six, who are apprenticed when
+old enough, with five teachers in charge, and twenty free day
+schools for about three hundred boys, whose harsh voices, pitched
+high, may be heard twanging at the wisdom of the Chinese
+classics.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among the Chinkiang benevolent plans for adults there is
+one, well managed, of inestimable advantage to the struggling
+farmer or merchant—“The Bureau for Advancing Funds.” From
+it a poor man with security can borrow from 1000 to 5000 <i>cash</i>
+($1 to $5), which must be repaid in one hundred days by payments
+made every five days. He can borrow again up to a fourth
+time.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span>
+<img src='images/p185_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A CHINESE BURIAL CHARITY.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are two free dispensaries, with nine doctors in charge.
+They are open without fees every day, treating about 200
+patients, who are not required to pay for their medicines. The
+Life-saving Institution, with a head office and two or three minor
+offices, has six well-equipped, well-manned boats always on the
+river near the port, and ten others dodging about above and below.
+I was in the steamer <i>Cores de Vries</i> when she cut down the
+s.s. <i>Hoi-how</i> to the water’s edge abreast of Chinkiang, and I can
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>answer for the trained alacrity with which several of these boats
+were at once on the spot, remaining by the <i>Cores de Vries</i> even
+after she was run ashore. Their work is not only to save the
+drowning, but to remove dead bodies from the water, and these are
+afterwards buried with seemly rites by the Society in a well-kept
+private cemetery on the hill in which it has interred 175 rescued
+corpses within the last ten years. There is a free ferry, with
+thirteen big boats, for crossing the ofttimes stormy and dangerous
+Yangtze, which saves many lives of those who would otherwise
+be drowned by ferrying in cheap and unseaworthy craft. This
+is the richest of the benevolent institutions.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is interesting to learn how the actual beggars, who trade upon
+sympathy by their filthiness, deformities, and sores, are treated.
+A <cite>Beggars’ Refuge</cite> and a <i>Home for the Aged</i> exist for the same
+class. The Beggars’ Refuge was begun by a former Taotai.
+Of its ninety inmates about nine are women. It is not to be
+expected that it should be clean or sweet. I have seen one in
+another city which receives five hundred. The beggars are required
+to bring their clothes and wadded quilts with them, but
+all else is furnished, and in winter outsiders also receive rice
+there. Most of the inmates, unless disqualified by age or disease,
+spend their days begging in the streets.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The rich merchants subscribe to keep up a winter “<i>soup kitchen</i>,”
+which feeds about a thousand people daily with rice, at a cost of
+thirty dollars a day, during the three coldest months. Besides this
+the General Benevolent Institution dispenses medicines during the
+summer, and rice tickets during the winter, and has charge of the
+“Invalid Home,” and also provides coffins for the dead poor. This
+society is richly endowed with land, owning 3000 <i>mow</i>.<a id='r32'></a><a href='#f32' class='c013'><sup>[32]</sup></a> The
+original 280 <i>mow</i> came from the priests on Golden Island.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Widows are not forgotten. Two associations take them in
+charge: the <i>Widows’ Relief Society</i> and the <i>Widows’ Home</i>.
+The former has only funds sufficient for 300 pensioners, the
+lists being filled up as deaths occur. The latter is connected
+with the <i>Boys’ Orphanage</i>, and provides a home, food, and
+clothes for 200 widows. After once entering they are not allowed
+to go out unless offered a respectable home by a friend, or unless
+a son has grown to man’s estate. Any results of the sale of plain
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>or fancy needlework are returned to the worker. This care of
+widows marks a great advance in China on the practice in India
+and some other Eastern countries.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are several free cemeteries outside the city, and one
+of recent origin for children, with a wall six feet high surrounding
+it, and a keeper in charge, in which 2000 children have
+been buried in the last four years. In Mukden I first became
+familiar with the custom, the growth of a superstitious belief,
+not of lack of maternal feeling, of rolling up the bodies of
+children in matting and “throwing them away,” <i>i.e.</i>, putting the
+bundle where the dogs can devour the corpse, as a sort of offering
+to the “Heavenly Dog,” which is supposed to eat the sun at
+an eclipse. When foreigners began to settle in the Yangtze
+treaty ports it came to be currently believed that they asserted
+a claim against the dogs for these bodies, of which they “take
+out the eyes and the hearts to make medicine.” This was too
+much; hence this well-walled cemetery was provided. This accusation
+against foreigners, which is a frequent cause of anti-foreign
+riots, is current everywhere in the Yangtze Valley. I
+met with it in its worst form so far west as Kuan Hsien, on
+the Upper Min, and an angry cry of “Another child-eater!” was
+frequently raised against myself as I passed through the towns
+of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>. This goodly list does not exhaust the native
+charities of the first treaty port on the Yangtze.<a id='r33'></a><a href='#f33' class='c013'><sup>[33]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have dwelt in detail on the charities of Chinkiang because
+they are typical of those of other great cities; but the variety
+throughout the country is infinite, and includes many associations
+merely for the relief of suffering. In Wuhu a <i>Life-saving Association</i>
+was established in 1874, with which have been associated,
+under the same managing staff, a gratuitous <i>Coffin Association</i>,
+to help the very poor to inter their relatives decently, and a
+<i>Free Ferry Association</i>, with big, well-found boats, to prevent
+the poor from risking their lives by crossing the Yangtze in small
+<i>sampans</i>. Large and substantial offices indicate the generous
+support given to the <i>Lifeboat Association</i>, with which are united
+a <i>Humane Society</i> for restoring life to persons rescued from the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>water, and other kindred benevolent associations. This society,
+which has societies affiliated to it, and apparently under the
+same rules, at many of the riverine towns, has four lifeboats at
+Wuhu, about fifty feet long, ten broad, and fourteen tons burden,
+well manned and handled, able to face any weather, with crews
+under strict discipline, and ready to sally forth at a signal.
+They cruise up and down the river aiding junks in distress,
+rescuing the drowning, and recovering bodies for burial.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If a rescued man is a stranger and destitute, he receives the
+loan of dry clothing, and shelter for three days; if he is ill, he
+has shelter and medical attendance so long as he requires them.
+Such destitute rescued persons are supplied with twenty cents
+for each thirty-three miles of their journey home. A recovered
+corpse is reported by the society to the authorities, who take
+charge of any property recovered with it until the relations are
+found. It is decently buried, and the usual ceremonial for the
+dead is provided at stated seasons.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This society publishes its rules and accounts annually for
+general information. Its offices were built by donations from
+merchants. It receives a subscription of fifty taels a month from
+the inland customs, and its other funds are subscriptions, rentals
+of donated lands, and contributions of rice. The society has
+always a good balance in hand. Besides wages, it pays at Wuhu
+and the different sub-stations to the boatmen a reward of
+1000 <i>cash</i>, or about a dollar, for every life saved, and from 300
+to 500 <i>cash</i> for every corpse.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Another charity also provides coffins for destitute persons, and
+mat-shelters, often sadly needed, for burned-out families, and
+medical aid for the sick. This is supported chiefly by subscriptions
+from shopkeepers and gifts of coffin wood.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A few years ago the Taotai, with the leading “gentry” and
+merchants, established an asylum for foundlings and the children
+of destitute parents, which has gradually come to include a charity
+school, an almshouse for aged and invalid poor, and a free
+hospital.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Kukiang has several similar institutions, including a <i>Humane
+and Life-saving Institution</i>, established by the tea and opium
+merchants with the funds of their guilds. In Hankow there are
+more than twenty charities, supported at a cost of about 100,000
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>dollars annually. At Wan Hsien, above the gorges and the worst
+rapids, there are very noble charities, some of them carried on
+by the Scholars’ Guild and the head men of the city, and others
+by private individuals. Among these are soup kitchens and large
+donations of rice to the poor in the winter, and in the first month
+(February) allowances of rice and money to about fifty old people,
+and gifts of 1600 <i>cash</i> each to about 100 poor widows. The
+Scholars’ Guild also supports a foundling hospital. I cannot
+overlook the noble benevolences of Hsing-fuh-sheo, a Wan
+merchant, not exceptionally wealthy, who, at a cost of over
+8000 dollars a year, supports two dispensaries and a drug store,
+forty free schools, five preachers of the Sacred Edict, and besides,
+provides clothing and coffins for the dead poor, and wadded
+garments for the destitute in winter.<a id='r34'></a><a href='#f34' class='c013'><sup>[34]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among many other ways of showing benevolence is the provision
+of free vaccination to all who will apply for it; drugs
+and plasters are given by some to all applicants, and books known
+as “Virtue Books” are given away by others, or are exposed
+for sale at less than cost price. There are small associations for
+providing the neat, canopied, stone furnaces which are seen in
+all cities and many country places, for the burning of paper on
+which are written characters. Originally no doubt this practice
+was established to prevent any defilement of the sacred names
+of Buddha and Confucius, but a sanctity has come to attach to
+all written paper owing to the great reverence of the Chinese
+for literature, and paper is no longer collected by the priests,
+but by men paid by these societies for the purpose, who go round
+with bamboo tongs and bottle-mouthed baskets, rescuing the
+characters from desecration. The benevolence is not apparent
+to me, although the societies which undertake this work bear
+the name <i>Mutual Charitable Institutions</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among other good works are the charitably aided provincial
+clubs for the care of those who become destitute at a distance
+from home, and who without such aid could not return, or
+who, having died afar from relatives, could not otherwise be
+taken home for burial. Among temporary charities partly Government-aided,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>but very much supported by private liberality, are the
+vast soup kitchens, very completely organised, which, on occasions
+of flood or famine, extend their benevolent and often judicious
+work over the whole afflicted region, and save thousands of lives.
+Then there are large donations of wadded winter clothing and
+wadded sleeping quilts made every year to the destitute; and
+societies, something in the nature of charitably aided savings
+banks, for the twin objects of enabling men to marry and to
+bury their parents creditably.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Much kindness of a kind is shown to the streams of refugees
+who in bad years swarm all over parts of China in allowing them
+to camp with their families in barns and sheds, often giving
+them an evening meal. Enormous gifts are made to beggars,
+who, in all the large cities, are organised into such powerful guilds
+that they can coerce rather than plead, and can ensure that a
+steady stream of charity shall flow in their direction. In the case
+of both refugees and beggars, a prudent dread of the consequences
+of refusal is doubtless answerable for much of what poses as
+charity, and in this the Chinese and the Englishman are probably
+near of kin.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In concluding this chapter, which brings additional evidence
+of the strong tendency to organise which exists among the
+Chinese, I will mention a few of the methods in which individuals
+carry out benevolent instincts or seek to “accumulate
+merit.” A Buddhist on a river bank pays a fisherman for the
+whole of the contents of his plunge-net, and returns the silver
+heap to the water; another buys a number of caged birds, and
+lets them fly. Some build sheds over roads, and provide them
+with seats for weary travellers; others make a road over a difficult
+pass, or build a bridge, or provide a free ferry for the poor and
+their cattle. A few men club together to provide free soup or
+tea for travellers, and erect a shed, putting in an old widow to
+keep the water boiling; or two or three priests, with the avowed
+object of securing merit, do the same thing at a temple; others
+provide seats for wayfarers on a steep hill. Some provide lamps
+glazed with thin layers of oyster shells fitted into a wooden framework,
+and either hang them from posts or fit them into recesses
+in pillars to warn travellers by night of dangerous places on the
+roads.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>I put forward my opinion on the subject of Chinese benevolence
+with much diffidence, laying the motive of the accumulation
+of merit on one side. The Chinese obviously fail in acts
+of unselfishness and of <i>personal</i> kindliness and goodwill. Their
+works of merit are very much on a large scale, for the benefit
+of human beings in masses, the individual being lost sight of.
+They involve little personal, wholesome contact between the giver
+and receiver, out of which love and gratitude may grow, and no
+personal self-denial, and in these respects place themselves on a
+par with much of our easy charity by proxy at home.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was a great surprise to me, as it will be to the more
+thoughtful among my readers, to find that organised charity on
+so large a scale exists in China. Among its defects, in addition
+to the lack, before mentioned, of kindly individual contact, are the
+neglect to foster independence by painstaking methods, and the
+system of peculation from which even benevolent funds do not
+escape, though it must be added that many Chinese gentlemen
+give much valuable time to securing their honest and efficient
+management.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have not been able to learn whether the benevolent instincts
+of Chinese women find any outlet. I have been asked by one
+to give some straw plaiting to a poor widow to do, and by another
+lady to employ an indigent woman in embroidering satin shoes. I
+have heard of ladies inviting old and poor women to tea once
+a week, and even oftener; and Mr. A. Smith narrates one such
+instance.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It must be remarked that in China certain serious consequences
+may befall a man who performs an act of kindness individually, and
+that a dread of such a mishap renders men exceedingly reluctant to
+give aid and to save life under some circumstances. This possibility
+is apt to make the Chinese wary as to doing kindnesses personally.
+A missionary tells how a medical missionary living in
+one of the central provinces was asked by some native gentlemen
+to restore the sight of a beggar who was totally blind from
+cataract. The operation was successfully performed, but when
+the man regained his sight the same gentlemen came to the
+operator and told him that, as by the cure he had destroyed the
+beggar’s sole means of livelihood, it was then his duty to compensate
+him by taking him into his service!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>In conclusion, the Chinese classics teach benevolence: charity is
+required as a proof of sincere goodness; the Buddhist religious
+writings inculcate relief of sick persons and compassion to the
+poor, and the worship of the Goddess of Mercy, an increasingly
+popular cult in China, tends in the same humane direction. It
+must be remembered also that the divinities worshipped in China
+are not monsters of cruelty and incarnations of evil, but, on the
+contrary, that they may be credited with some of the virtues,
+and among them that of benevolence.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XVIII.<br> <span class='c012'>FROM WAN HSIEN TO SAN TSAN-PU</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>Finding that it was impossible for any European to accompany
+me, I decided to venture on the journey of 300 miles
+to Paoning Fu alone, and to buy my own experience. The
+land journey developed into one of about 1200 miles, and was
+accomplished with one serious mishap and one great disappointment.
+It was interesting throughout, and taught me much of the
+ways of the people, and the scenery alone would have repaid me
+for the hardships, which were many. My greatest difficulty consisted
+in having to disinter all information about the route and the
+industries and customs of the people, through the medium of two
+languages, out of the capacities of persons who neither observed
+nor thought accurately, nor were accustomed to impart what they
+knew: who were used to telling lies, and to whom I could furnish
+no reasons for telling the truth, while they might have several
+for deceiving me on some points. This digging into obtuseness
+and cunning is the hardest part of a traveller’s day. So far as I
+could make out before or since my journey, no British traveller
+or missionary has published an account of the country between
+Wan Hsien, on the Yangtze, and Kuan Hsien, north of the
+Chengtu Plain, nor can I find among the very valuable consular
+reports, to which I cannot too often express my debt, one which
+has done for this region of Central <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> what Mr. Litton, of
+the consular service at Chungking, has lately done so admirably for
+Northern <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>. Consequently on the greater part of my
+four months’ journey I had nothing by which to estimate the value
+of the facts which I supposed myself to have obtained.<a id='r35'></a><a href='#f35' class='c013'><sup>[35]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>The longer one travels the fewer preparations one makes, and
+the smaller is one’s kit. I got nothing at Wan except a large sheet
+doubly oiled with boiled linseed oil, and some additional curry
+powder, kindly furnished by my kind hosts from boxes of tinned
+eatables, sauces, arrowroot, and invalid comforts, which had just
+arrived, and the like of which were annually delivered, carriage
+free, at the door of every China Inland missionary, however remote,
+sent by the late Mr. Morton, of Aberdeen, a thoughtful gift, of
+great value to the recipients. The reader may be amused to learn
+the singular monotony of my diet. I had a cup of tea made from
+“tabloids,” and a plate of boiled flour, every morning before starting,
+tea on arriving, and for 146 days, at seven, curried fowl or
+eggs with rice. I got another Chinese cotton costume and some
+straw shoes, and for any other needs trusted to supplying them
+on the way.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>My servant had made himself persistently disagreeable from the
+beginning, and though a superior, fairly educated, and handsome
+man, he seemed helpless, useless, lazy, unwilling, and objectionable
+all round. The impression of my hosts and myself was that he
+wished to annoy me into sending him back from Wan, and Mr.
+Thompson thought that he would make my journey very difficult
+and unpleasant; but the choice lay between giving it up on the
+threshold and taking him, and I chose the latter.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As the guest of a European, all the difficulties of arranging,
+bargaining, and paying are lifted off one and put upon a teacher
+or servant who is used to them, and after much chaffering a bargain
+was concluded by which three chair-bearers and four coolies were
+to take me and my baggage to Paoning Fu in nineteen days, a
+halt on Sundays being paid for at the rate of 25,000 <i>cash</i>. These
+men were not dealt with directly, but were engaged by contract
+with the manager of a transport <i>hong</i>, who is responsible for their
+good conduct and honesty. I may say at once that they behaved
+admirably; made the journey in two days less than the stipulated
+time; trudged cheerfully through rain and mud; never shirked
+their work; and were always sober, cheery, and obliging. I never
+met with other than the same behaviour on all the occasions when
+my coolies or boatmen were engaged from a <i>hong</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>My light, comfortable bamboo chair had a well under the seat
+which contained my camera, and, including its sixteen pounds
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>weight, carried forty pounds of luggage in addition to myself. It
+had bamboo poles fourteen feet long, and a footboard suspended
+by ropes. Rigid laws of etiquette govern the getting out and in.
+An open chair in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, being a novelty, is an abomination,
+and accounts for much of the rudeness which I received. For
+some time past the provincial authorities have insisted on all
+travellers, missionaries included, being attended by two or more
+“<i>yamen</i> runners,” (<i>chai-jen</i>) or soldiers, who are changed at every
+prefecture, where they deliver up the official letter which they
+carry. They were never of any use, and except once, whether
+soldiers or civilians, always ran away at the first symptoms of a
+disturbance, but neither were they any nuisance, and they were
+always apparently satisfied with the trifle I gave them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These <i>yamen</i> runners are attached in great numbers to every
+magistracy, in large cities to the number of 1000 or more. They
+are “the great unpaid,” but manage to pick up a living, lawsuits
+being their great harvest, and the serving of writs one of their
+great occupations. They squeeze litigants, and are about as much
+detested by the people as bailiffs were by the men of Clare and
+Kerry.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Thus equipped and wearing Chinese dress, which certainly
+blunts the edge of curiosity and greatly diminishes the intolerable
+feminine picking and feeling of one’s garments when they
+are of foreign material and make, I left the shelter and refinement
+of the hospitable mission house for a solitary plunge into the
+interior, Be-dien on foot, as sullen and disobliging as could be.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mr. Thompson kindly accompanied me for the first day’s journey
+to see that things worked smoothly, and we left early on a fine
+February morning, the air as soft and mild as that of an English
+April, passing through the very good-looking town and into the
+pretty open country on a good, flagged road, which was carried up
+and down hill by stone stairs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>During most of the day we met a continuous stream of baggage
+coolies, each carrying a bamboo over his shoulder with a burden
+depending from either end, shifted frequently from one shoulder
+to the other. Those coming in—and the inward traffic did not
+slacken for some days—carried from 80 to 140 pounds each of
+opium, tobacco, indigo, or paper; and those going out were loaded
+with cotton yarn, piece goods, and salt, all carefully packed in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>oiled paper made from macerated bamboo, which is very tough
+and durable. These men, carrying the maximum load mentioned,
+walk about thirteen miles a day, and chair and luggage coolies
+about twenty-five. Occasionally I made thirty miles in a day, as
+my men were carrying only seventy pounds each.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p197_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>BAGGAGE COOLIES.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>(<i>From a Chinese Drawing.</i>)</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The coolies choose their own place for breakfast and the midday
+halt of one hour. The first day, even with Mr. Thompson to
+make things smooth for me, I wondered if I could endure it, and I
+never took kindly to it. The halting-place is a shed projecting
+over the road in a town or village street, black and grimy, with a
+clay floor, and rough tables and benches, receding into a dim
+twilight; a rough cooking apparatus and some coarse glazed
+pottery are the furnishings. On each table a bunch of malodorous
+chopsticks occupies a bamboo receptacle. An earthen bowl
+with water and a dirty rag are placed outside for the use of
+travellers, who frequently also rinse their mouths with hot water.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>One or more exceptionally dirty men are the waiters. Bowls
+of rice and rice water or weak tea are produced with praiseworthy
+rapidity, and the coolies shovel the food into their mouths with
+the air of famished men, and hold out their bowls for more.
+My chair that day and always was set down in front of the
+eating-house. I went inside and had some lunch, but the dirt,
+discomfort, and general odiousness were so great that I did not
+inflict the penance on myself a second time.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>People intending to be kind sometimes take pork, rice, or fish
+out of a common bowl and put it into yours, and to ensure
+cleanliness draw the chopsticks with which they perform the
+transference through their lips, giving them an energetic suck!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> is famous for the number and splendour of what
+are usually called “widows’ arches,” though they are also erected
+to pious sons or patriotic mandarins, specially military mandarins.
+At times the approach to a city is indicated, not only by pagodas,
+but by passing under several of these, and occasionally even a
+rambling, squalid village is entered by passing under an exceptionally
+handsome one, as was the case on my first day’s journey.
+I attempted to photograph it, and the <i>chai-jen</i> made the crowd stand
+to right and left by a series of vigorous pushes, shouting the whole
+time, “In the name of the mandarin.”<a id='r36'></a><a href='#f36' class='c013'><sup>[36]</sup></a> But the people had too
+much curiosity to be anything but mobile.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These arches, or <i>pai-fangs</i>, are put up frequently in glorification
+of widows who have remained faithful to the memory of their
+husbands, and who have devoted themselves to the comfort and
+interests of their parents-in-law and to good works. Through
+various channels the neighbourhood presents the virtues of the
+meritorious person to the Throne, and the Emperor’s consent to
+the erection is obtained. The whole affair lends some <i>éclat</i> to
+the town or village. Many of these arches are extremely beautiful.
+Chinese carving in stone has much merit, even in such an
+intractable material as granite. The depth and sharpness of the
+cutting and the undercutting are remarkable, and the absolute
+<i>realism</i>. I never saw a bit of sculpture which showed a trace
+of imagination. The superb friezes which constantly decorate
+the superstructure of these arches represent in a most masterly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>fashion mandarins’ processions, mandarins administering justice,
+rich men’s banquets, interiors of rich men’s dwellings, and many
+other scenes of official and stately life, all rendered with photographic
+accuracy, and with a wonderful power of catching the
+expressions of the various faces. It is impossible not to admire
+the skill of the artists, and at the same time to wish for a trace of
+ideality in their art. In some places a superb arch enriched with
+marvels of sculpture straddles across a road which is nothing
+better than a disgraceful quagmire or a stone causeway in which
+some of the blocks are tilted up on end, while others have disappeared
+in the mud. The incongruity does not seem to afflict
+anyone.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p199_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A PAI-FANG</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>But I must return from this digression on bad roads to the road
+on which I travelled on that and two or three subsequent days,
+which has the reputation of being one of the finest in China. It
+was built fifty-four years ago, and is in splendid repair. It was to
+lead from Wan Hsien to Chengtu Fu, but I failed to learn whether
+it fulfils its promise. It is never less than six feet wide, paved
+with transverse stone slabs, carried through the rice-fields on stone
+causeways, and over the bridges and up and down the innumerable
+hills by flights of stone stairs on fairly easy gradients, with
+stone railings and balustrades wherever there is any necessity for
+them. Streams are crossed by handsome stone bridges, with sharp
+lofty arches, and the whole is a fine engineering work.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>My journey began auspiciously with a dreamily fine day, which
+developed into a red and gold sunset of crystalline clearness and
+beauty. The scenery is entrancing. The valleys are deep and
+narrow, and each is threaded by a mountain torrent. The hills are
+truncated cones, each one crowned by a highly picturesque fortified
+village of refuge, and there were glimpses of distant mountain forms
+painted on the pale sky in deeper blue. Everything suggested
+peace and plenty. The cultivation is surprising, and its carefulness
+has extirpated most of the indigenous plants. It is carried
+up on terraces to the foot of the cliffs which support the refuges;
+it renders prolific strips on ledges only eighteen inches wide.
+Except on the road itself, there was not a vacant space on that
+day’s journey on which a man could lie down.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The first crops, on soil which in that climate produces three and
+four annually, were in the ground: broad beans with a black and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>purple blossom with a white lip; rape for oil then in blossom
+grown on a large scale; opium encroaching on the rice lands,
+barley and wheat; various root crops, and peas in bud, though it
+was only February 24th. Even the tops of the narrow dykes
+separating the rice-fields were planted with single rows of beans.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>My coolies stopped several times for a drink and smoke, but did
+twenty-seven miles. Chair travelling is, I think, the easiest
+method of locomotion by land. My one objection to it is the
+constant shifting of the short bamboo carrying pole on which the
+long poles hang, from one shoulder of each bearer to the other. It
+has to be done simultaneously, involves a stoppage, occurs every
+hundred yards and under, and always gives the impression that
+the shoulder which is relieved is in unbearable pain. Chair-bearing
+is a trade by itself, and bearers have to be brought up to it. It is
+essential to keep step absolutely, and to be harmonious in all
+movements. Of my three bearers the strongest went behind.
+Two were opium smokers, and the third a vegetarian, who abstained
+from opium, tobacco, and <i>samshu</i>, and was on his way
+to be rich! There was ceaseless traffic, and as we penetrated
+further into the country, in addition to the goods before mentioned,
+the loads consisted of baskets of oil, bean cake, and
+coal and ironstone, showing that the sources of supply of the
+latter were not far off. About every half-mile the road passes
+under a roof with food booths on each side. There were many
+travellers in shabby closed chairs with short poles, hurried along
+by two men at a shambling trot. There are so many temples
+that the air is seldom free from the odour of incense. We met
+two dragon processions, consisting each of 100 men, and the
+undulating tail of the dragon was fifty feet long.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Towards evening the hills became more mountainous, and were
+wooded with cypress and pine, and it was very lovely in the gold
+and violet light. We halted for the night at the large village
+of San-tsan-pu, where, though I had travelled for seven months
+in China, I had my first experience of a Chinese inn, and I did not
+like it, specially as I regarded it as the type of four or five coming
+months of similar quarters. I am not ashamed to say that a
+cowardly inclination to abbreviate my journey tempted me the
+whole evening. The <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> inns have a good reputation;
+but I was not making the regular stages, and at all events they
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>are inferior on that route, the one which gave me such a shock
+being one of the best. They are worse than the Persian ordinary
+<i>caravanserai</i>, or the Kurdistan <i>khan</i>, or even the Korean hostelry.
+I felt that I had degenerated into a sybarite, and must summon
+up all my pluck, and many a hearty meal and ten hours’ sleep
+I afterwards came to enjoy in dens which at first seemed foul and
+hopeless.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p203_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>GRANITE DRAGON PILLAR.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>In the best inns there is a room known as the mandarin’s room,
+which can be had by paying for it, with a high roof, a boarded
+floor, a window, and a solemn-looking table and chairs; but these
+very rarely came my way. My introduction to the amenities
+of Chinese travelling was on this wise, and, as Mr. Thompson
+was with me, I was much better off than usual. I was carried
+through the open “restaurant,” fitted with rough benches and
+tables, into a roughly paved yard behind it, where, in the midst
+of abominations, was the inn well. Several rough doors round
+this yard gave admission into as many rooms without windows,
+several of which were already full. My chair was set down,
+and, after extricating myself from it according to the rules of
+etiquette, I was attempting to see it unpacked, when I was overborne
+by a shouting crowd of men and boys, which surged in
+after me, and I had to retire hastily into my room.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was long and narrow, and boarded off from others by
+partitions with remarkably open chinks, to which many pairs
+of sloping eyes were diligently applied; but I was able to baffle
+curiosity by tacking up cambric curtains brought for the purpose.
+The roof was high at one side and low at the other, and fortunately
+the wall did not come up to within two feet of it, though
+the air admitted could not by any euphemism be called “fresh.”
+The floor was a damp and irregular one of mud, partly over
+a cesspool, and with a strong tendency to puddles. On the other
+side of the outer boarding was the pigsty, which was well-occupied,
+judging from the many voices, bass and treble. There
+were two rough bedsteads, on which were mats covered with
+old straw, on which coolies lay down wadded quilts, and sleep
+four or more on a bed. It is needless to say that these beds
+are literally swarming with vermin of the worst sorts.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The walls were black and slimy with the dirt and damp
+of many years; the paper with which the rafters had once been
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>covered was hanging from them in tatters, and when the candle
+was lit beetles, “slaters,” cockroaches, and other abominable things
+crawled on the walls and dropped from the rafters, one pink,
+fleshy thing dropping upon, and putting out, the candle!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had arranged my plan of operations after my Korean experience,
+but sullen, disobliging, and apparently stupid Be-dien
+left me very much to carry it out myself. Between two of the
+bedsteads there was just space enough for my camp bed and
+chair without touching them. The oiled sheet was spread on
+the floor, and my “furniture” upon it, and two small oiled sheets
+were used for covering the beds, and on these my luggage, food,
+and etceteras were deposited. The tripod of my camera served
+for a candle stand, and on it I hung my clothes and boots
+at night, out of the way of rats. With these arrangements I
+successfully defied the legions of vermin which infest Korean
+and Chinese inns, and have not a solitary tale to tell of broken
+rest and general misery. With absolute security from vermin,
+all else can be cheerfully endured.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A meal of curry, rice, and tea was not despicable, though I was
+conscious that my equipments and general manner of living were
+rougher than they had ever been before, and that I had reached
+“bed-rock,” to quote a telling bit of American slang.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The inn, which was very full of travellers, quieted down before
+eight, when the slighter noises, such as pigs grunting, rats or mice
+gnawing, crickets chirping, beetles moving in straw, and other
+insect disturbances, made themselves very audible, and informed
+me that I was surrounded by a world of busy and predatory
+life, loving darkness; but while I thought upon it and on the
+solitary plunge into China which was to be made on the morrow
+I fell asleep, and never woke till Be-dien came to my door at
+seven the next morning with the information that there was no
+fire, and that he could not get me any breakfast! That was
+the first of five months of nights of solid sleep from 8 p.m.
+onwards. I only allowed myself half a candle per day, and after
+my journal letter was written there was no object for sitting up.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XIX.<br> <span class='c012'>SZE CHUAN TRAVELLING</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>The following day was misty, grey, and grim, and several
+of its successors were much like it. One of the local names
+of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> is “The Cloudy Province.” Kind, capable Mr.
+Thompson returned to Wan after giving the coolies various
+instructions intended for my benefit; and from thenceforth I depended
+on myself. The great event of the day was the complete
+change in Be-dien as soon as I was bereft of Europeans.
+His pride and temper always remained, and were liable to flare
+up, or die down into a mephitic state of sullenness, but from
+that morning till I left China he was active and attentive, was
+never without leave out of hearing of my whistle, was always
+at hand to help me over slippery and difficult places, showed
+great pluck, never grumbled, arranged and packed up my things,
+interpreted carefully, improved daily in English, always contrived
+to get hot water and food for me, and on the whole made a
+tolerable travelling servant.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The travelling was without fatigue. I walked when it suited
+me, and for the rest might have been in an easy-chair in a
+drawing-room. The chair-bearers were energetic, and their “boss,”
+a great wag, kept them constantly laughing. Their good-nature
+never failed. One day when, to relieve them, I walked up a long
+flight of stairs over a pass, they asked, “Does the foreign woman
+think we are not strong enough to carry her?” The idea of a
+wish to be kind to them never entered their heads, yet we
+gradually came to understand each other a little; and I found my
+cloak put over my shoulders for me, a wooden stool brought for
+my feet, sundry little comforts attended to, and a growing interest
+in photography, reaching the extent of pointing out objects at
+times “to make pictures of”! By the end of the second day they
+had all shaken into my “ways,” and things went very smoothly.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>The day’s routine was a cup of tea and some flour stirabout
+at seven; but, though I was always ready and eager to start
+at eight, it was usually half-past, and often nine, before we got
+off. The coolies’ first breakfast was often late, and there was the
+haggling about the bill, neither side liking to give in. It was
+only a shilling for the board and lodging for myself and my
+servant! This included his supper and breakfast, my rice, and
+a room to myself, his share of the coolies’ room, an iron lamp
+fixed on the wall, with an oil well and a wick in a spout encrusted
+with the soot and grime of years, and if I had a charcoal
+brazier, the charge was a farthing more. My other travelling
+expenses came to 4<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> a day; 5<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> covered everything,
+including a fowl for curry every third day.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>My bearers trudged along at an even pace, stopping two or three
+times for a drink and smoke at tea shops where others congregated,
+until the halt for dinner at a restaurant of more pretensions,
+outside of which I sat in my chair in the village street, the unwilling
+centre of a large and very dirty crowd, which had leisure
+to stand round me for an hour, staring, making remarks, laughing
+at my peculiarities, pressing closer and closer till there was hardly
+air to breathe, taking out my hairpins, and passing my gloves
+round and putting them on their dirty hands, on two occasions
+abstracting my spoon and slipping it into their sleeves, being in no
+wise abashed when they were detected. For at first I ate a little
+cold rice, but wearying of being a spectacle, and being convinced
+that as a general rule our insular habit is to eat too much, I gave
+up this moderate lunch, and contented myself with a morsel of
+chocolate eaten surreptitiously. On the rare occasions when the
+villagers wearied of their entertainment, even of gloves, which
+they thought were worn to conceal some desperate skin disease,
+and dropped off, small black pigs, with upright rows of bristles on
+their lean, curved spines, timidly took their place with expectations
+which were not realised, picking about, even under the poles
+of the chair, for fragments which they did not find, and even
+nibbling my straw shoes, and ancient and long-legged poultry
+were as odiously familiar.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When they had fed and smoked, the men shouldered their
+burdens, and trudged on till about sunset, stopping, as in the
+morning, for smokes and drinks, I walking and photographing
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>as it suited me. Sometimes we put up at a wayside inn, without
+even the privacy of a yard; this was in very small places, where
+the curiosity was not so overwhelming.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In towns the case was different. The inn yard was often
+enclosed by planking and a wide door, within which there might
+be one, two, or three courts, possibly with flowers in pots and a
+little gaudy paint. Some of these inns accommodate over 200
+travellers, with their baggage. Every room is full, and between
+money-changing, eating, “sing-song,” and gambling, and half-naked
+waiters rushing about with small trays, and numbers of
+men all shouting together, it is pretty lively. At the extreme
+end of the establishment is the “<i>kuan’s</i> room,” with one for
+attendants on each side. The crowd which always gathered during
+my passage down the street rolled in at the doorway, blocking up
+the yard, shouting, ofttimes hooting, and fighting each other for
+a look at the foreigner. Fortunately doors in Chinese inns have
+strong wooden bolts, and when my baggage and I were once
+ensconced I was secure from intrusion, unless a few men and
+boys had run on ahead to take possession of the room before I
+entered it, or forced themselves in behind Be-dien when he brought
+my dinner. If it were merely a boarded wall, a row of patient
+eyes usually watched me for an hour, and with much gratification,
+for these rooms are dark with the door shut, and my candle
+revealed my barbarian proceedings.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But worse than this was the slow scraping of holes in the
+plaster partition, when there was one, between my room and the
+next, accompanied by the peculiarly irritating sound of whispering,
+and eventually by the application of a succession of eyes to the
+hole, more whispering, and some giggling. It was always a
+temptation to apply the muzzle of a revolver or a syringe to
+the opening! Occasionally a big piece of plaster fell into my
+room and revealed the operators, who were more frequently well-dressed
+travellers than ignorant coolies. I used to whistle for
+Be-dien to hang up a curtain over the holes, after which there
+was peace for a time, and then the scraping and whispering
+began again, and often on both sides, till, tired and irritated, I
+used to put out the candle and lie down, frequently awaking in
+the morning to find myself in my travelling dress still, clutching
+my interrupted diary. When one arrived tired after being stared
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>at and pressed upon several times in the day, beginning with the
+early morning, the fearful hubbub in the courtyard, lasting an hour
+or more, followed by these grating and rasping processes, was
+exhausting and exasperating.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Also the landlord’s wife, and often a bevy of women with her,
+used to come in and pick over my things, which fortunately were
+few, and ask questions, beginning with, “What is your honourable
+age?” “Have you many sons?” When I confessed that I
+had none they expressed pity, and a contempt which Be-dien
+did not scruple to translate. “Why have you left your honourable
+country?” etc. But they soon tired of the trouble of interrogating
+me and talked to Be-dien, and when I asked what
+they were saying, I heard such remarks as these: “What ugly
+eyes she has, and straight eyebrows!” “Yes, but they see into
+the ground and where the gold is hid.” “Has she come for
+gold?” “What big feet she has!” (Their own were about three
+inches long.) “Why is her hair like wool?” and so on.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These people had never seen lead pencils or fountain pens, and
+everywhere these and the foreign writing, and the fact that a
+woman could write, (for the gazers were more or less illiterate)
+attracted great attention. A pronged fork, which they thought
+must “prick the mouth and make it bleed,” was in their eyes a
+barbarism. I wore straw sandals over English tan shoes to avoid
+slipping, and this they regarded as a confession of foreign
+inferiority. I was wearing a Chinese woman’s dress with a
+Japanese <i>kurumaya’s</i> hat, the one perfect travelling hat, and
+English gloves and shoes, and this <i>olla podrida</i> was an annoyance
+to them. Their questions were very trivial, and their curiosity
+appeared singularly unintelligent, contrasting, in this respect, with
+that of the Japanese. It showed prodigious apathy for adults
+to spend hour after hour in focussing a stolid stare upon a person
+whose occupations offered no novelty or variety, being limited to
+eating and writing. The curiosity of the common people, though
+boorish, was not rude, but that of the class above them, and above
+all of men of the literary class, was brutal and insulting, and
+generally tended to excite hostility against the foreigner.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I developed my negatives in my room at night, as it was almost
+always a perfect “dark room,” and the greatest of my annoyances
+was when a flash of white light showed that my neighbours had
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>successfully worked a hole in the wall, and that my precious
+negative was hopelessly “fogged.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The indispensable <i>yamen</i> runners are changed at every prefecture,
+and the passports are examined and copied. These
+runners are a queer lot. For this duty they get their travelling
+expenses and something over, and the <i>douceur</i> which the traveller
+bestows. A formal official letter is their warrant. But on many
+occasions I found myself not with the escort I left the prefecture
+with, which truly was shabby enough, but with a couple of ragged
+beggars, to whom the letter with its advantages had been sold
+by the runners, who thus saved themselves a journey. Occasionally
+these substitutes strutted in front of my chair down a street
+waving the magistrate’s letter, the wind blowing their rags aside,
+showing the neglected and repulsive sores by which they excite
+the compassion of the charitable. The only useful purpose which
+the <i>yamen</i> runners served was occasionally when it was growing
+late to run on ahead and engage “rooms,” and always to take
+the passport to the <i>yamen</i>. I write “the passport” because it
+deserved the definite article from its size, the grandeur of its
+seals, and the consideration it claimed for me, besides which
+it allowed of unlimited travel in the eighteen provinces, as well
+as in Mongolia and Manchuria, and was of such a nature as to
+produce an immediate change of manner in every official who
+read it! Besides this I had a correct and prosaic consular
+passport issued at Hankow, which I only once had occasion
+to use.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The compulsory <i>chai-jen</i> are, I think, a speciality of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>,
+and the compulsion rose out of unpleasant circumstances. I
+never learned that they forced the innkeepers to take less than
+the usual payment; indeed, I think that Chinese innkeepers are
+far too independent a class to be forced, nor, though they have
+the reputation of being brutal and truculent, did I see them
+maltreat anyone, but I much objected to being sold to the beggars
+and to being deserted on critical occasions. When soldiers were
+sent, and any trouble was threatened, they usually slipped off their
+brilliant coat cloaks and disappeared, and in reply to my subsequent
+remonstrances said, “What are four against two thousand?”
+a specious way of excusing themselves, for the mandarin’s letter
+is all-powerful even in a beggar’s hand.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>Money annoyances began early, and never ceased. Before
+leaving Wan Hsien I bought 10,000 <i>cash</i>, brass coins, about the
+size of a halfpenny, inscribed with Chinese characters, and with
+a square hole in the middle. By this they are threaded a hundred
+at a time on a piece of straw twist, and at that time (for the
+exchange fluctuates daily) the equivalent of two shillings weighed
+eight pounds! The eighteen shillings in <i>cash</i> with which I started
+weighed seventy-two pounds, and this had to be distributed among
+the coolies, the boss, or <i>fu-tou</i>, being responsible for the whole.
+But no reliance is to be placed on the <i>cash</i> shop. There may
+be <i>cash</i> wanting, small <i>cash</i>, spurious <i>cash</i>; consequently every
+string must be counted, and this operation frequently took more
+than an hour. A few <i>cash</i> in each hundred are claimed for the
+“string.” On nearly every string small <i>cash</i> used to be found,
+and the haggling and the counting occupied one of the best
+morning hours. This process, in common with everything which
+has to do with money, is intensely interesting to every Chinese,
+and the dullest wits are bright on the subject. Some villages
+would only receive small <i>cash</i>; others rejected it altogether.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The silver was a greater nuisance than the brass. The silver
+shoes I got in Hankow had been broken up into four pieces each,
+but even then they were unmanageably big and had to be chopped
+again, usually by the village blacksmith with his heavy tools, and
+weighed again to make sure that all had been returned. Then the
+man to whom you pay over a fragment of your broken <i>sycee</i>, for
+which the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank was responsible, puts it
+first into the palm of one hand, then into the other, looks at it
+askance, and then says the “touch” is bad, it is inferior silver, and
+so on. This is after you have agreed to pay a certain weight in
+silver for an article, say half an ounce. Then it appears that
+not only is the “touch” inferior, but the ounce of that town is
+a heavier ounce than the ounce of the last, and that your scale is a
+bad one, and that the silver must be weighed in a “good scale,” <i>i.e.</i>,
+the seller’s own; and between the “touch” and the varying weights,
+and the differing values of taels, and the charges for breaking
+and weighing and possibly for assaying the <i>sycee</i>, the bewildered
+traveller, who has three things always to think of—the number of
+<i>cash</i> to the tael, the quality of the silver, and the weight of the
+tael—would gladly compound by paying a much larger percentage
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>than all this botheration really costs. One of the greatest aggravations
+is when the <i>cash</i> strings break just as one is starting, and
+a thousand <i>cash</i> roll over the inn yard and lose themselves in
+heaps and holes. Then the innkeeper exerts himself and clears
+the yard of the crowd, and a diligent search is instituted. It is
+useless to say “Never mind if a few are left behind,” for it is a
+point of honour with the <i>fu-tou</i>, who is responsible for everything,
+that not a <i>cash</i> shall be missing.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In this chapter I have endeavoured to glance at the most salient
+features of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> travel, leaving others to emerge <i>en route</i>.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XX.<br> <span class='c012'>SAN-TSAN-PU TO LIANG-SHAN HSIEN</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>The first two days passed uneventfully. I was set down to
+be stared at seven times a day, but the village people were
+inoffensive. We passed through rich and cultivated country, with
+many noble farmhouses with six or eight irregular roofs, handsome,
+roofed, entrance gates, deep eaves, and many gables of black beams
+and white plaster, as in Cheshire. Next pine-clothed hills appeared,
+and then the grand pass of Shen-kia-chao (2900 feet) lifted us
+above habitation and cultivation into a solitary mountain region of
+rock, scrub, torrents, and waterfalls. The road ascends the pass by
+1140 steps on the edge of a precipice, which is fenced the whole
+way by granite uprights two feet high, carrying long granite rails
+eight inches square. Two chairs can pass along the whole length.
+The pass is grand and savage. There were brigands on the road,
+and it was patrolled by soldiers, small bodies of whom I met
+in their stagey uniforms, armed with lances with long pennons and
+short bows and arrows. These bows need a strong man’s strength
+to string them, and bow-and-arrow drill is a great military exercise.
+The price of rice had risen considerably, <i>cash</i> was scarce, and as in
+some parts even of this prosperous province men do little more than
+keep body and soul together by their labour, even a slight rise
+means starvation and death, and it is fierce, cruel want which turns
+men into robbers in China, many of the stouter spirits preferring
+to prey on their neighbours in this fashion to depending on their
+charity. At one point on the pass where there were some trees,
+three criminals were hanging in cages with their feet not quite
+touching the ground. The <i>chai-jen</i> said that they were to be
+starved to death. Not far off were two human heads which looked
+as if they had been there for some time, hanging in two cages,
+with a ghastly look of inquisitive intelligence on their faces.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>
+<img src='images/p215_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>PASS OF SHEN-KIA-CHAO.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>All had been robbers. Chinese justice is retributive, and takes
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span>little account of human life. We met a number of chained prisoners
+on their way to Wan, all with that peculiarly degraded and
+brutish look which a lavish growth of unkempt hair on the usually
+smoothly shaven head of a Chinese invariably produces. It was
+impossible not to pity these poor fellows, specially as they were
+most likely driven to their crimes by hunger, remembering as I did,
+and that vividly, the judgment-seat of the Naam-hoi magistrate at
+Canton, with a row of shivering prisoners kneeling on pounded
+glass on the stone floor in front of it, with their foreheads an inch
+from the ground. At this time China, with its crowds, its poverty,
+its risks of absolute famine from droughts or floods, its untellable
+horrors, its filth, its brutality, its venality, its grasping, clutching,
+and pitiless greed, and its political and religious hopelessness, sat
+upon me like a nightmare. There are other and better aspects
+which dawn on the traveller more slowly, and there is even a
+certain lovableness about the people. I only put down what were
+my impressions at the time.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>From the rugged summit of the Shen-kia-chao pass we dropped
+down into cultivated land, and at a large village I put up at an inn
+where I had a mandarin’s room, very shabby and ruinous, and with
+a leaky roof, which compelled me to shift my bed several times in
+the night, but as it had a window-frame from which all the paper
+had been torn off, it was airy, and with a bunch of incense sticks I
+overpowered the evil smells. The next morning there was a great
+row before I left, about <i>cash</i> as usual, accusations of theft being
+freely bandied about. I was in my chair in the yard when it began,
+and soon a crowd of men were brandishing their arms (I don’t
+think the Chinese possess fists) in my face, shouting and yelling
+with a noise and apparent fury not to be imagined by anyone who
+has not seen an excited Chinese mob. They yelled into my ears
+and struck my chair with their tools to attract my attention, but I
+continued to sit facing them, never moving a muscle, as I was quite
+innocent of the cause of the quarrel, and at last they subsided and
+let me depart. I doubt much whether this and many similar
+ebullitions would have occurred if I had had a European man
+with me.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was a pleasant region through which we passed in the grey
+mist, of small rice-fields step above step in every little valley, the
+broadest steps at the bottom, of large, handsome farmhouses,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_218'>218</span>large stone tombs in the hillsides, fine temples, wayside shrines,
+and <i>pai-lows</i> or <i>pai-fangs</i>. These erections are finer and more
+numerous in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> than I have seen them elsewhere in
+China. Some villages on that day’s journey were approached
+under six stone portals, remarkable for their dignity and artistic
+perfection. Von Richthofen remarks upon some of the <span class='sc'>Sze
+Chuan</span> <i>pai-fangs</i> as being “masterpieces of Chinese art.” I
+learned that some of them commemorate, as in Korea, the administrative
+virtues of local officials, but the genuine value of
+the tribute is dubious.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p218_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>WAYSIDE SHRINE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have no hard and fast theory regarding these portals. They
+would be an interesting subject for investigation. It is quite
+possible that the Chinese <i>pai-fang</i> is an accretion on such
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>primitive structures as the triliths of Stonehenge, the <i>coran</i> of
+India—still, according to Fergusson, used in its ancient timber
+form at Hindu marriages—the <i>torii</i> of Japan, still mostly of
+wood, and the slighter but nearly similar structure which marks
+the entrance to royal property in Korea. It is probable that
+the simpler forms in China are the most ancient, and that superb
+decoration of many examples belongs to the later centuries.
+I cannot see any reason for connecting the <i>pai-fang</i> with the
+introduction of Buddhism into China. The <i>torii</i> in Japan, the
+simplest existing form of the structure, is connected with Shinto,
+which existed centuries before Buddhism travelled to Japan from
+Korea.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I always objected to halt at a city, but arriving at that of
+Liang-shan Hsien late on the afternoon of the third day from
+Wan, it was necessary to change the <i>chai-jen</i> and get my passport
+copied. An imposing city it is, on a height, approached by a
+steep flight of stairs with a sharp turn under a deep picturesque
+gateway in a fine wall, about which are many picturesque and
+fantastic buildings. The gateway is almost a tunnel, and admits
+into a street fully a mile and a half long, and not more than
+ten feet wide, with shops, inns, brokers, temples with highly
+decorated fronts, and Government buildings “of sorts” along its
+whole length.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had scarcely time to take it in when men began to pour
+into the roadway from every quarter, hooting, and some ran
+ahead—always a bad sign. I proposed to walk, but the chairmen
+said it was not safe. The open chair, however, was equally an
+abomination. The crowd became dense and noisy; there was
+much hooting and yelling. I recognised many cries of <i>Yang
+kwei-tze!</i> (foreign devil) and “<i>Child-eater!</i>” swelling into a roar;
+the narrow street became almost impassable; my chair was struck
+repeatedly with sticks; mud and unsavoury missiles were thrown
+with excellent aim; a well-dressed man, bolder or more cowardly
+than the rest, hit me a smart whack across my chest, which left
+a weal; others from behind hit me across the shoulders; the
+howling was infernal: it was an angry Chinese mob.<a id='r37'></a><a href='#f37' class='c013'><sup>[37]</sup></a> There
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>was nothing for it but to sit up stolidly, and not to appear hurt,
+frightened, or annoyed, though I was all three.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Unluckily the bearers were shoved to one side, and stumbling
+over some wicker oil casks (empty, however), knocked them over,
+when there was a scrimmage, in which they were nearly knocked
+down. One runner dived into an inn doorway, which the innkeeper
+closed in a fury, saying he would not admit a foreigner;
+but he shut the door on the chair, and I got out on the inside, the
+bearers and porters squeezing in after me, one chair-pole being
+broken in the crush. I was hurried to the top of a large inn yard
+and shoved into a room, or rather a dark shed. The innkeeper
+tried, I was told, to shut and bar the street-door, but it was
+burst open, and the whole of the planking torn down. The
+mob surged in 1500 or 2000 strong, led by some <i>literati</i>, as I
+could see through the chinks.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There was then a riot in earnest; the men had armed themselves
+with pieces of the doorway, and were hammering at the door
+and wooden front of my room, surging against the door to break
+it down, howling and yelling. <i>Yang-kwei-tze!</i> had been abandoned
+as too mild, and the yells, as I learned afterwards, were such as
+“Beat her!” “Kill her!” “Burn her!” The last they tried to carry
+into effect. My den had a second wooden wall to another street,
+and the mob on that side succeeded in breaking a splinter out,
+through which they inserted some lighted matches, which fell
+on some straw and lighted it. It was damp, and I easily trod
+it out, and dragged a board over the hole. The place was all
+but pitch-dark, and was full of casks, boards, and chunks of
+wood. The door was secured by strong wooden bars. I sat
+down on something in front of the door with my revolver, intending
+to fire at the men’s legs if they got in, tried the bars every
+now and then, looked through the chinks, felt the position serious—darkness,
+no possibility of escaping, nothing of humanity to
+appeal to, no help, and a mob as pitiless as fiends. Indeed, the
+phrase, “hell let loose,” applied to the howls and their inspiration.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>They brought joists up wherewith to break in the door, and at
+every rush—and the rushes were made with a fiendish yell—I expected
+it to give way. At last the upper bar yielded, and the upper
+part of the door caved in a little. They doubled their efforts, and the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>door in another minute would have fallen in, when the joists were
+thrown down, and in the midst of a sudden silence there was the
+rush, like a swirl of autumn leaves, of many feet, and in a few
+minutes the yard was clear, and soldiers, who remained for the night,
+took up positions there. One of my men, after the riot had lasted
+for an hour, had run to the <i>yamen</i> with the news that the people
+were “murdering a foreigner,” and the mandarin sent soldiers with
+orders for the tumult to cease, which he might have sent two
+hours before, as it can hardly be supposed that he did not know
+of it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The innkeeper, on seeing my special passport, was uneasy and
+apologetic, but his inn was crowded, he had no better room to give
+me, and I was too tired and shaken to seek another. I was half
+inclined to return to Wan, but, in fact, though there was much
+clamour and hooting in several places, I was only actually
+attacked once again, and am very glad that I persevered with
+my journey.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Knowing that my safety was assured, I examined what seemed
+as if it might have been a death-trap, and found it was a lumber-room,
+black and ruinous, with a garret above, of the floor of
+which little remained but the joists. My floor was in big holes,
+with heaps and much rubbish of wood and plaster, and became
+sloppy in the night from leakage from the roof. There was just
+clear space enough for my camp bed. It was very cold and
+draughty, and after my candle was lighted rows of sloping eyes
+were perseveringly applied to the chinks on the street side, and
+two pairs to those on the other side. I should like to have done
+their owners some harmless mischief!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The host’s wife came in to see me, and speaking apologetically
+of the riot, she said, “If a foreign woman went to your country,
+you’d kill her, wouldn’t you?” I have since quite understood
+what I have heard: that several foreign ladies have become
+“queer” and even insane as the result of frights received in
+riots, and that the wife of one British consul actually died as
+the result. Consul-General Jamieson truly says that no one
+who has heard the howling of an angry Chinese mob can ever
+forget it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next morning opened in blessed quiet. There was hardly
+the usual crowd in the inn yard. Carpenters were busy repairing
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>the demolished doorway. A new pole had been attached to
+my chair by the innkeeper. There were many soldiers in the
+street, through which I was carried in the rain without my hat.
+Not a remark was made. Hardly a head was turned. It was
+so perfectly quiet and orderly that after a time the <i>fu-tou</i>
+suggested that I might put on my hat! The events of the day
+before would have appeared a hideous dream but that my
+shoulders were very sore and aching, and that two of the coolies
+who had been beaten for serving a foreigner bore some ugly traces
+of it. My nerves were somewhat shaken, and for some weeks
+I never entered the low-browed gate of a city without more or
+less apprehension.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Liang-shan is an ancient and striking city. In the long, narrow
+main street, the houses turn deep-eaved gables, with great horned
+projections, to the roadway. There are many fine temples with
+their fronts profusely and elaborately decorated with dragons,
+divinities, and arabesques in coloured porcelain relief, or in deeply
+and admirably carved grey plaster, the effect of the latter closely
+resembling stone. The city manufactures paper from the
+<i>Brousonetia papyrifera</i>, both fine and coarse, printed cottons,
+figured silks, and large quantities of the imitation houses, horses,
+men, furniture, trunks, etc., which are burned to an extravagant
+extent at burials.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXI.<br> <span class='c012'>LIANG-SHAN HSIEN TO HSIA-SHAN-PO</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>It was a relief to get out into the open country, though for
+some time I felt shaken by the two hours’ tension of the
+day before. The drizzle in which I started soon developed into
+heavy rain, which lasted for nine hours, turning every rivulet into
+a tawny torrent. It was a very interesting journey even in the
+downpour. Liang-shan is on the western slope of one among a
+cluster of ranges, the steep eastern side of which I climbed the
+day before, and after passing through the town the road dips down
+into a rolling plain, extending widely in every direction, at that
+time a great inundated swamp of rice-fields of every size and
+shape, threaded by a narrow stone road, and abounding in small
+islands, frequently walled round, on which the large farmhouses
+stand, screened by bamboo and cypress groves, or temples, ofttimes
+red, with magnificent trees and priests’ dwellings surrounding
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A background of tall pines, cypresses, and bamboo threw into
+striking relief a temple of unusual appearance, with a fine canopy
+roof of glazed green tiles, the front rising from the water, the rest
+of the “island” enclosed by a wall of imperial red. I reached it
+by wading a hundred yards in very chilly water, and found a plain,
+square, open building of red sandstone, surrounded by a broad,
+stone platform. In the centre are two fine palms, in stone vases,
+and a severe <i>pai-fang</i>, on the north platform a plain stone altar,
+and a tablet with an incised inscription, and behind this a wall
+with incised inscriptions divided by pilasters; all is severely handsome
+and absolutely plain. It is a temple of Confucius, and the
+simplicity of the few which I was able to enter contrasts
+boldly with the crowded and grotesque monstrosities of the
+Buddhist and Taoist temples. Truly the “Great Teacher” was
+one of the greatest of men, for he has cast into a mould of iron
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>for two thousand years the thought, social order, literature, government,
+and education of 400,000,000 of our race.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Passing Sar-pu, a village composed almost entirely of fine
+temples, and through Chin-tai, where the temples are of great
+size, and the carved stone front of one of them of great beauty,
+under many highly decorated <i>pai-fangs</i>, and past some Chinese
+Chatsworths and Eatons, and large “brick noggin” farmhouses,
+we re-entered hills and afterwards mountains, crossing the beautiful
+pass of Fuh-ri-gan by a fine stone staircase of over 5000 broad,
+easy steps, with a handsome kerbstone, all in perfect repair!
+These stairs begin at the bridge and inn of Shan-rang-sar, more
+Tyrolese than Chinese in aspect. Indeed, every day I dropped
+some preconceived ideas of what Chinese scenery and buildings
+must be like, and I hope that my readers will drop theirs, if
+they are of willow plate origin, before they have finished this
+volume.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had now entered on the fringe of one of the richest coal
+regions in the world, seams of coal, practically inexhaustible,
+apparently underlying the whole surface of Central <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>.
+Limestone mountains and cliffs, and caverned limestone with
+an infinite variety of ferns, had suggested the probable neighbourhood
+of coal, and in these mountains it is to be encountered
+everywhere. It crops out even in the redundant vegetation by
+the roadside, and near the mountain hamlets the children, with
+small baskets, hack it daily with rough knives, for cooking purposes.
+It appears in lumps along the beds of streams, in the
+sides of the tanks in which bamboo is macerated for paper, and
+in the mountain-sides, where small collieries, with most primitive
+“workings,” exist.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>My attention was several times attracted by sheds among the
+trees, and by men and boys crawling out of holes in the cliff side
+with baskets, the black contents of which they deposited in these.
+Also, occasionally scrambling up to a black orifice in the limestone,
+I came upon a “gallery,” four feet high, down which Lilliputian
+wagons, holding about one hundredweight each, descend from
+“workings” within along a tramway only twelve inches wide. From
+some holes boys crept out with small creels, holding not more than
+twenty-five pounds, roped on their backs, and little room to spare
+above them. All these “workings” between Liang-shan and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>Wen-kia-cha, sixty <i>li</i>,<a id='r38'></a><a href='#f38' class='c013'><sup>[38]</sup></a> were at a considerable height above the
+torrent, which dashed down what was frequently only a ravine,
+and all that could be seen were small borings just large enough
+to admit a man crawling, or, in some cases, the small trollies before
+mentioned.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p225_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A CHINESE CHATSWORTH.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>In that mountain region, in which I gathered from many
+symptoms that the people are specially superstitious, the coal
+seams are only worked on a level, not downwards, for fear of
+grazing the Dragon’s back and making him shake the earth, but
+they cannot say whether it is a universal dragon, the curves of
+whose tremendous spine are omnipresent, or a provincial or a local
+dragon! On the plain from which I had ascended fuel is scarce
+and dear, and strings of coolies, each carrying two hundredweight,
+supply it with coal from these mountains. Lump coal, burning
+with but little smoke or ash, is worth 2<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> per ton at the “pit’s
+mouth,” and is retailed at from 4<i>s.</i> to 5<i>s.</i> per ton, according to
+distance, in the low country. Later I saw many collieries worked
+with some skill and with a very large “output.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Though it rained heavily all day, the atmosphere was fairly
+clear. That pass of Fuh-ri-gan is as beautiful as the finest parts
+of Japan, which it much resembles—lonely, romantic, shut in by
+high-peaked, fantastic mountains, forest-clothed to their summits,
+and cleft by deep ravines, with tumbling torrents, fern and
+lycopodium-fringed. In the forest there were six varieties of
+coniferæ, oaks, chestnuts, walnuts, the <i>Cunninghames Sinensis</i> (?),
+a tree of great beauty and much utility, the fine evergreen
+<i>Hoangho</i> (<i>Ficus infectoria</i>), the <i>Xylosma japonica</i>, with laurel-like
+leafage, and many others, including a leafless tree which was
+a mass of pink blossoms. Of evergreen shrubs and trailers I
+counted thirty-seven near the roadside!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But the speciality of these passes is the bamboo. There are
+high hills forested to their summits with different varieties, a
+singular and beautiful sight, with an infinite variety of colour.
+There are the golden-plumed bamboo, with its golden stems and
+the golden light under its golden plumes, the plumed dark green
+and the plumed light green, full-plumed things of perfect beauty,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>as tall as forest trees of average height. There is also a feathery
+bamboo with branches pointing upwards, a creation of exquisite
+grace, light and delicate, with its stem as straight as an arrow,
+and attaining a height of fully seventy feet, all forming a dense
+but not an entangled mass. At one point, 1400 straight, broad
+“altar stairs, slope through darkness up to God,” a majestic sight,
+for from either side the great green and golden plumed bamboos
+droop gracefully to meet each other, and the staircase mounts
+upward in a golden twilight. Altogether that pass is a glory
+of trees, ferns, and trailers, mostly sub-tropical, and is noisy with
+the clash of torrents, though silent as to bird-life. During the
+whole day the only birds I saw were some blue jays.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But not sub-tropical was the raw, damp, penetrating wind, which
+blew half a gale at the top of the pass, and pretty miserable was
+the inn in the fertile, green, malarious hole to which we made
+an abrupt descent of 1500 feet. My stout “regulation” waterproof,
+which had withstood the storm and stress of many Asiatic
+journeys, had given way; the waterproof covers of most of the
+baggage, torn by rough usage, let the water through; and my
+cushions were soaked. I had only six inches to spare on either
+side of my stretcher in the absolutely dark and noxious hole in
+which I slept. The candle-wicks were wet, spluttered, and went
+out, and I had to eat in the darkness rendered visible by the inn
+lamp.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But in such country places the people are quiet and harmless,
+and I sat for a long time in the open public space, where the
+black rafters dripped black slime. The attempt at a fire was
+in the centre of the clay floor, over which a big black pot hung
+from the roof. My drowned coolies huddled up in their wadded
+quilts, and I in a blanket, and two wretched, ragged, hatless,
+shoeless, half-clad <i>chai-jen</i>, were all trying to light the end of
+a green sapling with some damp straw. It was truly deplorable,
+squalor without picturesqueness, and failing to get warm, I went
+shivering to bed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The following morning was dry and fair, with a little feeble
+sunshine. Crossing the Sai-pei-tu Pass, at a height of 1720 feet,
+on which, as on the Fuh-ri-gan, there were several collieries, all
+respectful to the dragon’s back, we passed through very interesting
+country all day, at times fascinating from its novelty.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span>
+<img src='images/p229_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>BRIDGE AND INN OF SHAN-RANG-SAR.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span>Cities of refuge crowded on nearly inaccessible rocks can be
+seen miles away, one a special marvel, built anywhere and everywhere
+on an isolated rock, resembling Mont St. Michel, another
+with a striking temple of enormous size for its centre, with
+monastic buildings, fortifications, “brick noggin” houses, clinging
+as they can to the rock, piled one on another round it, the whole
+surrounded by an embattled wall following the contour of the
+rock. They are second in picturesqueness only to the lama-serais
+of Tibet.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As the country became more open, besides these fortified
+refuges on rocky heights, which suggest possible peril, while the
+frequency with which solitary houses occur tells of complete
+security, there are great solitary temples with porcelain fronts in
+rich colouring, mandarins and landowners’ houses rivalling some
+of our renowned English homes in size and stateliness, distilleries,
+paper and flour mills; and every town and large village has
+its special industry—silk weaving, straw plaiting, hat making,
+dressing hides, iron or brass work, pottery and china, chair-making
+and bamboo furniture generally, indigo dyeing, carving
+and gilding idols, making the red paper enormously used for
+religious and festive purposes, and the imitation gold and silver
+coins and “shoes” burned as offerings to ancestors, etc.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The weather became so grim that of the large mansions,
+splendid from a distance, I was only able to get a very poor
+photograph of one. The mandarin proprietor with many attendants
+came out to the high road, and asked me to “take” his
+family. I said I could not, for I could not finish the portraits
+in such weather in less than three or four days; and then he asked
+me to be his guest for those days, and he would give me a large
+room. I did not wish to pose as an itinerant photographer, and
+had grave doubts as to what my reception might really be in
+the women’s quarters, and I dreaded the stifling curiosity succeeded
+by the stagnation of dulness, so I excused myself.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The stone bridges on the road are very fine, with piers terminating
+in bold carvings, frequently of dragons, but occasionally
+comically realistic, such as a man carrying an oil basket, a man
+yawning, a dog with his head between his legs, a woman combing
+a girl’s hair, and the like. Three and four arches with a bold
+spring are frequent; the parapets are decorated; and though
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>the road may be only six feet wide, on the roadways of some
+of the bridges three carriages can drive abreast. There are other
+and older bridges in which the piers are heavy uprights of stone
+supporting stone flags occasionally twenty-five and even thirty
+feet long. The new, arched bridges, of which the province may
+well be proud, are sometimes built by subscription, but are often
+the public-spirited gift of a local magnate, whose name and good
+deed are recorded in stone. The wooden bridges, which I found
+always in good repair, are like those of Switzerland, and, like
+them, have substantial roofs frequently double and occasionally
+treble-tiered, often covered with glazed ridge and furrow tiles.
+Some of these roofs are lined with highly polished carnation-red
+lacquer, in which the names of the donors, with complimentary
+sentences, are deeply incised in gold. In some bridges the row
+of pillars supporting the roof is also lacquered and polished.
+There are several bridges which I crossed in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> of from
+eight to twelve lofty stone arches each, which for stability, beauty,
+span, height, and spring of the arches might compare, and
+scarcely unfavourably, with some of our finest English structures.
+In China I never once had, as in Persia, Korea, and Kashmir, to
+ford a stream because the bridge was either ruinous or too shaky
+to venture upon.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The industries of the towns and villages produce a large amount
+of traffic on the roads. Strings of coolies going at a dog trot,
+carrying paper, salt, tobacco, dyed cottons, hats, and rush piths
+for lamps, passed us incessantly, but no beasts of burden, and only
+one saddle pony, which tripped rapidly down one of the longest
+flights of stairs with ease and agility. The woods are silent; the
+call of the handsome pheasant to his dowdy mate was the only
+bird note I heard. There is a great paucity of such animals as
+make our farmyards cheerful. I did not see horses or mules
+anywhere between Wan Hsien and Paoning Fu, or sheep. Fowls,
+geese, and ducks there were in abundance, a few cats, and many
+old dogs, the young ones having been mostly eaten early in the
+month.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>
+<img src='images/p233_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A PORCELAIN TEMPLE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>The water buffalo ploughs, harrows the rice swamps, turns the
+grain and oil mills, and does many other useful turns. I never saw
+him used as a beast of burden. It is hard to become reconciled to
+the appearance of the great “water ox,” with his mostly hairless,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>blackish-grey skin, in places with a pinkish hue, and his flat head,
+carried level with his uncouth, unwieldy body, his flat nose and
+curved flat horns, looking altogether like a survival from antediluvian
+days. Buffaloes are uncertain in their tempers, though
+usually very docile, and, like their owners, are liable to frenzies of
+fury when frightened.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p235_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>THE WATER BUFFALO.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>On this route it was amusing to see very small children leading
+them out to feed on the grass which grows on the edges of the
+rice dykes, the children clambering on their backs and sitting there
+while they fed because there was no other dry land to sit on.
+They are extremely sensitive to the bites of insects, and, for this
+and other reasons, spend much of their leisure time lying in muddy
+pools which are dug for their benefit. A group of their grotesque,
+flat heads appearing above the water is truly comical. They are
+credited with a great aversion to what the Chinese call the “odour”
+of Europeans, and I have seen a herd of them “go for” a foreigner
+in such an unmistakably vindictive fashion that he took to his
+heels. The buffalo cow gives a small quantity of very rich milk
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>with a peculiar flavour. The beef obtainable in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> is
+mostly buffalo, and is often the flesh of an animal which has
+rendered man many years of service.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On that day’s journey the heralds of the short and glorious procession
+of the flowers appeared: plum, peach, and cherry blossom;
+violets grew in shady places; a clematis lighted up the margins of
+woods with pendent clusters of bright yellow bloom; pink and
+white fumitories made the roadside hedges gay; and there were a
+few others.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The dampness was incredible, and as I had then made nearly
+two degrees north from Wan Hsien, the temperature had fallen, and
+the mercury hung at about 44°. I never knew so damp an atmosphere
+even in Japan. Ferns, mosses, trailers, and all the beauteous
+vegetation which revels in damp abounded. The leafage of the
+root crops was lush and succulent. There is no winter, and though
+only the last of February, the opium crop, which over much of the
+day’s journey was the principal crop, with maize sown between the
+rows, was eight inches high, and its lower leaves, which are used as
+food by the people and taste like spinach, were served to me that
+night for the first time as a vegetable. Travelling all day in such
+a damp, chilly atmosphere in wet clothes was a little trying. It is
+impossible to dry anything in the small, poor country inns.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We passed through the town of Yun-i, with a street half a mile
+long, in which every house is given up to the making or staining of
+red and yellow paper, which is enormously used, especially at the
+New Year, which was just over. Everyone nearly was more or less
+smeared with these brilliant colours, and the stream outside the
+town was as red as blood. Hundreds of coolies were travelling
+both north and south with bales of this paper.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had various qualms as I passed through the low, dark gateway,
+specially when I saw men running ahead to collect a crowd, calling
+in at the shops and houses “A foreigner!” or “A foreign devil!”
+but though the crowd completely filled the street and was noisy, it
+was neither hostile nor a mob. One cause of the trouble at
+Liang-shan was that the <i>chai-jen</i>, instead of keeping with me,
+went off to the <i>yamen</i>. After that I insisted that one of them,
+when we reached a town or large village, should walk in front of
+my chair. At Yun-i a runner went before me striding fiercely, a
+ragged, scrofulous, shoeless, hatless, wretched little fellow, but as
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>he carried the mandarin’s letter, when the people crowded and
+progress was impeded, he waved his arms and pushed them right
+and left, shouting the Chinese equivalent of “In the <i>kuan’s</i> name.”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p237_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>ORDINARY COVERED BRIDGE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>One great feature of that day’s journey was coal. Coal cropped
+up everywhere, and any cutting revealed a seam of coal. Over a
+hundredweight—100 catties—sold for forty <i>cash</i> (about five farthings),
+picked lumps burning with a clear flame. Miners earn
+twenty <i>cash</i> per 100 catties, and can get 600 in a day. There is
+iron in the neighbourhood. From one hill I saw a considerable
+smoke, and the <i>chai-jen</i> said it proceeded from large smelting
+works, but I only give this as hearsay. I observed that many
+articles which I had elsewhere seen made of wood are in this
+region made of iron, and that iron is liberally used on household
+and agricultural implements. In the peasants’ houses coal is
+burned in a hole in the middle of the floor, and the smoke finds
+its way out anywhere, as it used to do in Highland hovels.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After a very varied day’s journey the damp cold became so
+paralysing, and the mist so thick, that I halted earlier than usual at
+the small mountain hamlet of Hsai-shan-po, where the wayside inn
+was new, indeed not finished, and consisted only of a central shed
+with a fire of bituminous coal burning with heavy smoke in a hole
+in the middle of the floor, and a room on either side, one occupied
+by the host, a “decent man,” and his well-behaved family. The
+partitions are lath and plaster, the walls beginning a foot from the
+ground and ending two feet from the roof, allowing the entrance of
+some light, much draught, many hens, a few young pigs, and great
+clouds of smoke.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXII.<br> <span class='c012'>HSAI-SHAN-PO TO SIAO-KIAO</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>It was partly to get Sunday’s rest in peace and quietness
+that I put up at this mountain hamlet. I could see to read
+and write without opening the door, and could move round my
+bed, and the smells were not so awful as usual. The central shed
+was full all day, and occasionally the women who came sent a
+polite request that I would exhibit myself to them, to which I
+always cheerfully responded.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The “enormous size” of my feet, though my shoes are only
+threes, interested them greatly. I was much surprised to find
+that in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, except among the Manchu or Tartar women
+and those of a degraded class, foot-binding is universal, and that
+the shoe of even the poorest and most hard-worked peasant
+woman does not exceed four inches in length. Though in
+walking these “golden lilies” look like hoofs, and the women
+hobble on their heels, I have seen them walk thirty <i>li</i> in a day,
+and some have told me that they can walk sixty easily! Two
+women came to Hsia-shan-po from a village twenty-seven
+mountain <i>li</i> away, merely out of curiosity to see me, and
+returned the same afternoon. The hobble looks as if it must
+be very painful, and is a sort of waddle also.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So great an authority as Dr. Wells Williams writes, “The
+practice&#160;... is more an inconvenient than a dangerous custom,”
+but I have never seen a hospital in China without some case or
+cases not only of extreme danger to the foot or great toe, but
+of ulcers or gangrene, involving absolute loss by amputation.
+It is fashion, of course. Hitherto a Chinese woman with “big
+feet” is either denationalised or vile; a girl with unbound
+feet would have no chance of marriage, and a bridegroom finding
+that his bride had large feet when he expected small ones, would
+be abundantly justified by public opinion in returning her at once
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>to her parents.<a id='r39'></a><a href='#f39' class='c013'><sup>[39]</sup></a> It is essentially a native Chinese custom of
+extreme antiquity, and it is remarkable that the Manchu conquerors,
+who successfully imposed the “pigtail” and narrow sleeves
+on the conquered, have totally failed even to modify this barbarous
+custom.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There is no definite age for beginning to bind the feet, but
+rich people’s girls usually have it done between four and five years,
+and poor people’s either at betrothal or between seven and nine
+years, according to local custom. The process is very much
+more painful at the latter age, and the treatment of the big
+toe is different. In the case of the younger child, four of the
+toes are doubled under the foot, the big toe is laid on the top,
+and the deformity is then tightly bandaged. In both cases in
+adult life, when the process is complete, there is a deep cleft
+across the sole of the foot between the heel and toes, which
+are forced close together. If skilfully bound, this cleft ought
+to be deep and narrow enough to hold a Mexican dollar. The
+foot-binding process is too well known to need any description.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I saw the initial stage both at Canton and Hsia-shan-po. In
+the last case the girl was nearly ten, and was just betrothed to
+an elderly rich man. She suffered agonies, the toes were violently
+bent under the foot and bandaged in that position, and from the
+sounds I think that some of the tendons were ruptured. Yet both
+she and a small child at Canton consented willingly in order to get
+“rich husbands.” The lot of the women of the lower class is rough
+and severe, and it is not surprising that girls long to escape from it
+by making rich marriages, even though the escape be by such a
+path of pain. Then again the weak feminine nature desires to
+secure the admiration which in poetry, prose, and common speech
+is bestowed on the “golden lilies.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A woman has to bandage her feet every day of her life, or
+the “beauty” of the shape is lost, and the whole process of
+deforming them is carried out by carefully regulated bandaging.
+The Chinese women greatly object to show their uncovered feet.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span>I have only twice seen them. They are very painful objects
+and the leg, the development of the muscles of the calf having
+been checked, tapers from the knee to the foot, and there are
+folds of superfluous skin. The bandages are not covered by
+stockings. The shoes worn are very soft, and where possible
+are of embroidered silk, with soles of stitched leather. The
+women make their own, and the peasant women sit outside their
+houses in the evenings stitching or embroidering them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As a set-off against the miseries of foot-binding is the extreme
+comfort of a Chinese woman’s dress in all classes, no corsets
+or waist-bands, or constraints of any kind, and possibly the full
+development of the figure which it allows mitigates or obviates
+the evils which we should think would result from altering its
+position on the lower limbs. So comfortable is Chinese costume,
+and such freedom does it give, that since I wore it in Manchuria
+and on this journey, I have not been able to take kindly to European
+dress.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> it varies from women’s dress, either Manchu
+or Chinese, as I had previously seen it worn. All Chinese women
+wear trousers, but they show very little, often not at all, below
+the neat petticoat, with its plain back and front and full kilted
+sides. But in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> (and it may be elsewhere) the feminine
+skirt is discarded, and the trousers, either of a sailor cut, or
+full and tightly swathed round what should be ankles, are worn
+with only the ordinary loose, wide-sleeved garment fastening at the
+side, reaching only to the knees above them. It is a hideous
+dress. The petticoat is only worn by outcasts, and this has compelled
+some of the missionary ladies, who wear Chinese dress, to
+adopt the wide trousers. I never became reconciled to them.
+The loose upper garment and half jacket, half sleeved cloak, is
+most convenient, as for changes of seasons only easily carried
+changes of underclothing are needed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After the disturbance at Liang-shan I took my revolver, which
+I had previously carried in the well of my chair, “into common
+wear,” putting it into a very pacific looking cotton bag, and
+attached it to my belt under this capacious garment, hoping
+devoutly that its six ball cartridges might always repose peacefully
+in their chambers. It is most unwise to let firearms be
+seen in Chinese travelling.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span>From Hsia-shan-po onwards the country is less romantic. We
+had previously left the main road, and encountered Chinese roads
+at their worst, narrow dykes passing through flooded rice-fields, or
+through farms where the farmers gradually nibble the road away,
+or convey it tortuously through their own farmyards, or in a few
+cases absorb it altogether. The mud for days was deep. It was
+impossible to walk unless equipped with an arrangement which
+attached three spikes to the heel of the boot or sandal. The
+width of the road was usually twelve inches, enough for single
+file, but when two strings of men carrying chairs or burdens
+met, the difficulties were great, as there was always the risk of
+slipping off the road into two feet of chilly water and slime.
+So when my chair-bearers saw another chair in the distance they
+yelled as loud as they could, expecting the other chair to give
+place, and edge off where the strip of <i>terra firma</i> happened to
+widen a little.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On one occasion, however, we met a portly man in a closed
+chair, travelling with only two bearers, and, in spite of yells, he
+came straight on till our poles were nearly touching. The clamour
+was tremendous, my seven men and his two all shouting and
+screaming at once, as if in a perfect fury, while he sat in supercilious
+calm, I achieving the calm, but not the superciliousness.
+In the midst of the <i>fracas</i> his chair and its bearers went over into
+the water. The noise was indescribable, and my bearers, whom I
+cannot acquit of having had something to do with the disaster, went
+off at a run with yells and peals of laughter, leaving the traveller
+floundering in the mire, not breathing, but roaring execrations.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are roads “of sorts” to every village and hamlet. The
+one I was travelling on was called by courtesy a main road.
+There was nothing “main” about it but the bridges, which were
+always in good repair, and four or five times its width. Had it
+been reduced to its present dimensions by successful nibblings, or
+were the bridges built in a glowing prophetic instinct, I wonder?
+The magistrate of the district is nominally responsible for keeping
+the roads in order, but responsibility is an elastic term in China.
+As in Korea, he has the power to order men out to work at
+repairs, but he rarely does so unless he gets notice of a forthcoming
+visit of a high official, for the people hate work without
+pay, and he avoids this method of becoming unpopular.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_244'>244</span>Nothing could be worse than the road which I travelled for
+some days. To walk was to slide, wade, slip, and fall in the deep
+mud; to “ride” gave me the unpleasing spectacle of my coolies
+doing the same, exposing me to sundry abrupt changes of position,
+and the difficulty of passing chairs and laden porters on the road
+made progress slow and tiresome. Yet much produce was on the
+move, giving the impression that traffic would increase largely if
+there were better means of communication. One of the many
+needs of China is good roads. There are many rivers in <span class='sc'>Sze
+Chuan</span>, but its physical configuration usually prevents the linking
+of these by canals, as in the level eastern provinces, and these
+infamous roads hamper trade very considerably.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Raw, cold, drizzling hours succeeded Hsia-shan-po. The country
+is less peopled, and the dwellings decidedly poorer; the corries
+with their large farmhouses disappeared, and there was even a
+stretch of gravelly, desolate scenery. Wherever the land is unfitted
+for rice culture the population becomes thin, as the price of
+this staff of life is so much enhanced by land carriage as to render
+it unattainable.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I crossed the pretty pass of Kyin-pan-si, and ferried the Kiu
+Ho, a clear, bright stream. There is very much opium grown in
+that region, and some sugarcane, as well as all the usual cereals
+and root crops. “Small <i>cash</i>” appeared, and continued for three
+days the currency of the region, increasing the exasperation of all
+transactions. The Kiu Ho is navigable for fair-sized junks considerably
+above the point at which I crossed it, and there was
+much traffic in coal at Kiu Hsien, a prefectural city finely situated
+on the cliffs and hills above it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Incredible filth, indescribable odours, which ought to receive a
+strong Anglo-Saxon name, grime, forlornness, bustle, business, and
+discordant noises characterise Chinese cities, and the din of Kiu
+Hsien was deafening. I was carried from the river up a fine, new,
+broad flight of stone stairs, at the top of which a great crowd was
+in readiness to receive me, but the <i>chai-jen</i>, whose rags hardly
+covered them, and who turned out to be beggars to whom the
+right of escorting me had been sold, cleared the way, and turning
+aside at the deep, dark city gate, along a narrow street running
+under the wall, I was landed among the crowds and horrors of the
+yard of a Chinese city inn by no means of the first class. However,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span>I got a room, which, though small, dirty, and tumbling to
+pieces, had an opening upon the roof of a lean-to, used for the
+malodorous purpose of drying vegetables, overhanging the river,
+and as I had both air and light I felt in Elysium.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>While I was eating my curry, as usual from a piece of millboard
+on my lap, with a Jaeger sheet pinned round my shoulders—for
+it was very cold—two <i>yamen</i> officials, in rich brocaded
+silks and satins, entered, and asked to see my passport, which
+they copied, using my camp bed for a table. Be-dien was
+much offended, for it is outrageous, according to Chinese
+etiquette, for men to enter a woman’s room. They asked me
+why my passport gave me “rank,” and made me “equal to
+the consuls,” and how a woman could “belong to the <i>literati</i>,”
+to which questions, as at that time I was ignorant of the contents
+of the document, I could give no intelligent replies.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>They told me that Kiu Hsien has 100 schools (in China numbers
+are always round), and is the centre of a large trade in opium,
+tobacco, packing paper, and straw hats.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Rooms in Chinese inns usually have good bolts, but this had
+none, and after dismissing Be-dien it cost me much time and
+labour to barricade the door. There was an instance of superstition
+on the day’s journey. I got out of the chair the wrong
+way, and the bearers were scared. They said it would cause
+them to die within a year, and they offered incense sticks at
+the next shrine to avert the calamity. In the morning I was
+in the family room at the inn when the morning devotions were
+performed to some gilded strips of paper inscribed with characters.
+The householder put before them some lighted incense sticks, and
+bowed three times.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The circumstances of the next day’s journey were decidedly
+unfavourable. We had ten hours of an infamous road in a
+torrent of rain with a very cold wind. I could scarcely ease
+the bearers at all, for my leather shoes slipped so badly on the
+mud, that, even with a stout stick and Be-dien’s help, I could
+not keep on my feet. The road, which was a dyke between
+flooded rice-fields, never reached two feet in width. It had
+once been flagged, but some of the stones had disappeared altogether,
+some were tilted up, and others were tilted down, and
+it was truly horrible. The Chinese hate rain, and, above all,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span>getting their feet wet, and I admired the jolly, manly way in
+which my poor fellows in their two thin cotton garments trudged
+through the driving rain and slippery slush till they had done
+twenty-two miles. When they reached at dusk, quite exhausted,
+the wretched village of Ching-sze-yao, there was no inn, and
+it was only after I had sat in the rain in the village roadway
+for an hour that the <i>chai-jen</i> induced a man to take us into a
+deplorable place.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Shelter it was not. The roof dripped from fifty points, and
+the walls, having shrunk from the joists, let in the cold wind all
+round. There was no fire but the fire-pots used for cooking,
+for the use of which there was much squabbling, and no light,
+except from a clay saucer of oil, over the rim of which some
+rush pith projected. I was wet to the knees, my canvas bed
+was soaked, and all else, from the spoiling of waterproof bags
+and covers by the hot sun of the two previous summers, but when
+I saw the coolies lying on damp straw in their undried garments,
+each with a fire-pot between his knees, and not a quilt to cover
+him, I felt very Mark Tapleyish, specially when the house-<i>frau</i>
+brought me a fire-pot with which to warm my hands. The
+poverty and discomfort of this house typified the condition in
+which thousands of the Chinese peasantry live. They were
+good-natured people, not over-curious, and the children, who were
+eaten up by skin diseases, were gentle and docile.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next day, March 4th, was one of clear, grey twilight,
+without either wind or rain. In the last fifty miles the country
+had changed very considerably, and for the worse. The passes
+over the mountain ranges had brought us into the “Red Basin”
+of Richthofen, which is estimated as embracing about two-thirds
+of the province in extent, and, perhaps, eight or nine tenths of
+its wealth and population. It is supposed to have an area of
+about 100,000 square miles, and a population of from 40,000,000
+to 54,000,000. The soil everywhere is of a deep, bright, rich, red
+colour, and contrasts with the charm of the varied greenery which,
+in the absence of winter, the “Red Basin” produces during the
+whole year.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Probably no part of China supports so large a population to
+the acre, and it is increasing so fast that thousands of men by
+unremitting toil only keep themselves and their families a little
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span>above starvation point, coolie labour being so redundant as to
+depress wages to the lowest level. The soil is most carefully
+cultivated, the soft, red rock being easily crumbled down by the
+peasants’ simple implements, and the whole surface is treated
+by the methods which we term “garden cultivation,” which in
+that beneficent climate, and with the Chinese habit of carefully
+preserving the refuse of towns and villages and spreading it on
+the land, so that the whole, both from plant and animal life,
+is returned to the soil, two, three, and sometimes even four crops
+are produced within the year!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Within a few days’ journey lie the depopulated but fertile
+valleys of <span class='sc'>Yunnan</span>, a noble field for <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> emigration;
+but it has not occurred to the Government to bear the considerable
+expense of deporting a few millions of the toilers of
+the “Red Basin” to the good lands calling for population, supplying
+them with seed, and supporting them for six months! The
+move would tax the resources of a better-organised administration.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> is a rich and superb province of boundless resources,
+and I believe, from what I saw and heard, that the
+trading and farming classes are very well off, and are able to
+afford many luxuries, but I certainly saw several overcrowded
+regions of the “Red Basin,” where the condition of the people
+deeply moved my sympathy and pity, for a docile, cheerful,
+industrious, harmless population, free, as rural poverty is apt to
+be, from crime and gross vice, is giving the utmost of its strength
+for a wage which never permits to man, wife, or child the comfortable
+sensation of satiety, and which when rice rises in price
+changes the habitual short commons into starvation.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were no more grand porcelain-fronted temples, large
+country mansions, and rich farmhouses, and instead of parallel
+ranges cleft by fine passes in the grey limestone, there is a singular
+formation, red sandstone hills and hummocks all more or less
+naturally terraced, as are also the sides of the many pear-shaped
+dells which lie among them; red cliffs, one above another, from
+fifteen to thirty feet high, supporting narrow strips of red soil
+about two feet deep; circular hills, also of some height, diminishing
+into truncated cones, with natural circular terraces, more or
+less aided by art, running regularly round them, and usually a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>single tree, tops what one is tempted to call the “erection.” There
+is a fatiguing conventionality about that part of the Red Basin.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One may, indeed, regard the whole of this vast basin as a mass
+of low terraced hills and valleys of no width, destitute of any
+plains but the great Chengtu plain, free from floods owing to
+its configuration, and drained by fine navigable rivers, with many
+navigable ramifications, while coal, both hard and soft, is believed
+to underlie the whole. Salt, petroleum, and iron abound, and
+copper, silver, gold, and lead are found on the western border,
+as well as enormous quantities of nitrate of soda and sulphur.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This great depression may be regarded as a sort of winter
+garden, over much of which the mercury rarely falls below
+45°, and a canopy of clouds hanging over it all the winter keeps
+in the moist heat.<a id='r40'></a><a href='#f40' class='c013'><sup>[40]</sup></a> It is said that winter sunshine is so rare
+in Chungking that the dogs bark at the sun when they see it.
+For all the rich productions of this Red Basin, which have kept
+the balance of trade for years in favour of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, there
+is, let me repeat, but the one outlet: the Yangtze.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXIII.<br> <span class='c012'>SIAO-KIAO TO HSIEH-TIEN-TZE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>The whole country is an undulating sea of green, patterned
+with red—in truth, rather monotonous for five days of
+journeying. The mud was abominable all the time, but with
+straw shoes and grippers I managed to do a good deal of walking.
+On several days my well-paid chairmen travelled “like gentlemen,”
+for labour is so abundant and cheap that they found plenty
+of coolies to carry my chair for forty <i>cash</i> for four miles (about
+a penny), and even for less! Every house has its opium field, its
+bamboo and palm groves, fruit trees and cedars, while the <i>Rhus
+vernicifera</i>, or varnish tree, the <i>Aleurites cordata</i>, or oil tree, and
+the <i>Cupressus funebris</i>, which it is impossible to avoid calling “the
+Noah’s ark tree,” abound. The cultivation, except the ploughing
+for rice, is entirely by hand, and is so careful that it is easy
+to see that most of the indigenous plants have become extinct.
+Violas, fumitories, and the <i>anemone Japonica</i>, all of which grow
+profusely, but solely along the margins of the roads, were all
+that then or later I saw in the Red Basin; in fact, husbandry
+has made a clean sweep of “weeds.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The farmhouses in that region are of mud, with thatched roofs,
+and look poor. Straw plaiting and the making of the very large
+straw hats which the coolies wear in summer are the great
+industries. Bad, nay infamous, roads and small <i>cash</i> for three
+days showed their power of crippling trade. Small villages were
+numerous, but on a journey of 185 <i>li</i> the picturesque little town
+of King-mien-sze, on the rocky, picturesque, non-navigable King-Ho,
+which I ferried, was the only approach to a centre of
+population.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When I reached the small town of Siao-kiao I found it greatly
+crowded with traders, and the innkeepers so unwilling to receive
+a foreigner that I had to urge my treaty rights, and then was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>only grudgingly accommodated. There was a very ugly rush,
+and then a riot, which lasted an hour and a half, at the very
+beginning of which my <i>chai-jen</i> ran away. My door was broken
+down with much noise and yells of “Foreign devil!” “Horse-racer!”
+“Child-eater!” but an official arriving in the nick of time,
+prevented further damage. He ought to have appeared an hour
+and a half before. These rows are repulsive and unbearably
+fatiguing after a day’s journey, and always delayed my dinner
+unconscionably, which, as it was practically my only meal in the
+day, was trying. The entry in my diary for that evening was,
+“Wretched evening; riotous crowd; everything anxious and
+odious; noises; too cold to sleep.” My lamp sputtered and
+went out, and my matches were too damp to strike. It is
+objectionable to be in the dark, you know not where, with walls
+absolutely precarious, and in the midst of the coarse shouts
+of rough men to hear a feeble accompaniment of rats eating one’s
+few things. I object strongly to a mixed crowd blocking up my
+doorway or breaking in my door, for every one of the crowd
+knows better; even the most ignorant coolie knows well that to
+intrude into a woman’s room or in any way violate the privacy
+which is hers by immemorial usage and rigid etiquette is an
+outrage for which there is no forgiveness, judging from a Chinese
+standpoint.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The mannerless, brutal, coarse, insolent, conceited, cowardly
+roughs of the Chinese towns, ignorant beyond all description,
+live in a state of filth which is indescribable and incredible, in an
+inconceivable beastliness of dirt, among odours which no existing
+words can describe, and actually call Japanese “<i>barbarian</i> dwarfs”!
+I wondered daily more at the goodness of people who are
+missionaries to the Chinese in the interior cities, not at their
+coming out the first time, but at their <i>coming back, knowing
+what they come to</i>. The village people are quite different, and
+doubtless have attractive qualities; and it must be admitted that
+Christianity does produce an external refinement among those
+who receive it, which is very noticeable. Having relieved my
+hoarded disgusts by these remarks, I will proceed with my
+narrative.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The days, though cold and very wet, were a great rest. There
+was not even the guiding a horse and preventing him from
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>fighting, to distract the thoughts from dwelling on any topic I
+chose to concentrate them upon. My possessions, except my
+camera and plates, had been spoilt long ago, so there was nothing
+to be anxious about; and a few rolls more or less in the red
+mud did not matter, for my clothes were thickly plastered days
+before. I could not fare worse than I had done, so I was not
+anxious about the night’s halt; so during the day I revelled in
+freedom, leisure, and solitude; but when night came, and I sat
+shivering in some fœtid hole, not fit for a decent beast, with only
+a bamboo railing between it and the pigsty, I often thought
+Chinese travelling an utter abomination!<a id='r41'></a><a href='#f41' class='c013'><sup>[41]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Even the most monotonous part of the route had many interests
+and some novelties. It is a marvel how the intense homogeneity
+of China, its apparent inflexibility, and its actual grooviness, are
+incessantly disturbed by local custom. The race, it is true, is
+always the same, and the general features of the costume; every
+Chinese not a convict has a shaven head and a long queue, and
+every woman hobbles on deformed feet; but when it comes to environments
+they differ from day to day, and sometimes from hour to
+hour. Here in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> house architecture varies almost from
+day to day; each river has its own form of boat; in one district
+all loads are slung from the bamboo over the shoulder; in another
+they are carried in wicker creels fitted on wooden pack-saddles on
+human backs. In one prefecture the purse is a skin bag attached
+to the waist; in another it is a stout wooden cylinder tapering at
+both ends carried across the back, and so with many other things.
+Food varies with the locality, and crops with the soil. One district
+rejects large <i>cash</i>, and others small, while some use a mixture.
+Headgear varies greatly. Blue turbans are much worn. The
+shape of the straw hat indicates the district from which the wearer
+comes, and local fashion tyrannises even over baggage coolies. I
+wanted to give to each of mine one of the noble straw hats made
+near Kiao, but they “could not” wear them in Wan Hsien and
+its neighbourhood, any more than a fashionable English girl
+“could” wear a last season’s hat.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span>In bridges the varieties are endless, and in <i>pai fangs</i> and temple
+fronts. This ceaseless diversity in unity is very attractive in
+Chinese travelling, but it has its drawbacks, for on many
+occasions when, owing to weather or hurry or some other
+tyranny, I did not photograph some striking peculiarity I never
+met with it again. It also exposes the veracity of travellers to
+suspicion. One may describe some peculiarity which is universal
+in one region, such as the graceful circular or pointed arches of its
+bridges, while another, whose sole idea of a Chinese bridge is stone
+uprights carrying flat stone slabs such as the huge lumbering
+structure “which, with its wearisome but needful length, bestrides”
+the Min at Foo-chow, accuses him of having drawn upon his
+imagination for his facts.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For three days of cold, grim, drizzly, or incredibly damp weather,
+in which natural terraces gave way to artificial, and hills to rolls,
+and roads occasionally disappeared altogether, and the dull green
+of the sugarcane at times overspread the country, and the scarcity
+of rice lands now and then involved a corresponding scarcity of
+people, we travelled so awful a road that it mattered little when
+it was altogether lost. It had long since degenerated into the
+slimy top of a rice dyke a few inches wide, with a flagstone tipping
+up now and then to show what it once claimed to be. The bad
+weather put a stop to traffic. The only chair we met in three days
+came to grief close to us. The bearers fell, the chair was smashed
+into matchwood, and its occupant, a somewhat pompous-looking
+merchant, was deposited in three feet of slush alive with frogs,
+a disaster which afforded my men cause for unbounded hilarity
+for the rest of the day.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The road is so narrow because the farmers grudge every inch
+taken from their fields. As one is carried along, the chair hangs
+over the flooded rice land on either side, and when anyone is seen
+in the distance he is warned by a series of simultaneous yells
+to turn off on an intersecting dyke. On one of these days nearly
+eleven hours of hard travel only produced a result of eighteen
+miles! My men, though always wet to the skin and often falling
+as well as slipping, never flagged or grumbled, and trudged along
+joking and laughing, splendid “raw material”!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The people were not hostile in this country region, and the rain
+repressed the curiosity which I found specially irksome during the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>hour I spent twice daily sitting in a village street while my men
+breakfasted and dined. I became daily more convinced that the
+mandarins have it in their power to repress any overt expression of
+anti-foreign feeling. At Kiao, when I left the inn yard where the
+riot occurred the evening before, though it was crowded, the people
+were perfectly orderly, and though the long, narrow street was
+lined with men standing three and four deep on each side, just
+leaving room for the chair to pass, no one spoke or moved.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That same day the <i>chai-jen</i> were changed at the neat little city
+of Ying-san Hsien, in the centre of a region where the chief industries
+are making bamboo baskets, and straw plait for hats, and
+I sat for an hour near the <i>yamen</i> entrance, considering the extraordinary
+amount of business which custom imposes on a Chinese
+mandarin.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We have a habit, partly warrantable—for the official class in
+China is the worst of “the classes”—of speaking of “the mandarins”
+as we might speak of “the wolves” or “the vultures,” a rough
+classification which, like similar methods, is by no means trustworthy.
+Mandarins are good and bad. The system under which
+they hold office has a strong tendency to make them bad. Nevertheless
+there are some good, just, honest men among them, who
+do the best they can for their districts during their terms of office,
+earn the esteem and gratitude of the people, and leave office as
+poor as they entered it. With regard to the bad, their opportunities
+for squeezing and oppressing are not so enormous as is
+often supposed, being limited by what I am inclined to call <i>the
+right of rebellion</i>. When an appeal to law comes to involve wholesale
+bribery, and taxation becomes grinding, then a local rebellion
+on a small or large scale occurs, the offending mandarin is driven
+out, the Throne quietly appoints a successor, and peace prevails
+once more.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A system in which official salaries are not a “living wage” opens
+the door to large peculation, but withal China is not a heavily
+taxed country, and the people are anything but helpless in official
+hands. In spite of all the monstrous corruption which exists,
+general security and good order prevail, and China has been
+increasing in wealth and population for nearly two centuries.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>What we call mandarins (<i>kuans</i>) are all the magistrates
+subordinate through the intendants of circuits (<i>Taotai</i>) to the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span><i>Tsung-tuh</i> of a province or provinces, the Governor-General,
+whom we call a Viceroy. They are prefects or head magistrates
+of departments, and magistrates for the subdivisions of departments.
+Under these, but not known as <i>kuans</i>, are mandarins’
+secretaries, often very powerful persons, clerks, registrars, and an
+army of subordinates, for whom their superiors are responsible.
+The Chinese call the last “rats under the altar,” and fear them
+greatly. Indeed, it is said that the dread of getting into their
+clutches has a more deterrent effect on evil-doers than any prospect
+of punishment. Every mandarin, down to the smallest magistrate,
+has office secretaries for investigating cases, recording evidence,
+keeping accounts, filing papers, writing and transmitting despatches,
+and other formal functions.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Theoretically the relation between magistrate and people is
+strictly paternal. Some degree of what we call corruption is
+inseparable from Oriental officialism, and when kept within
+moderate bounds does not disturb the filial feeling. The whole
+of a mandarin’s time is nominally at the service of the people
+of his district. Of some, perhaps of a goodly number throughout
+China, this devotion to local interests may be literally true.
+Access to his tribunal may ensure a fair trial, and probably in
+a majority of cases little injustice is done when a case once comes
+before him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A gong was hung up at the <i>yamen</i> gate, where I have so long
+kept my readers shivering in the damp east wind. I am told
+that such a one hangs up at every similar gate, and that on
+hearing it the magistrate is bound to come out and attend to
+the complaint. But in practice a man has to bribe his way from
+the gate to the judgment-seat, and from the gatekeeper to the
+private secretary, and would be likely to be beaten if he touched
+the gong. Though the mandarin may be willing to decide justly,
+the underlings through whom alone approach to the judicial chair
+is possible do not share his scruples. A man who can afford to
+grease copiously the palms of runners, clerks, and secretaries,
+men unpaid or underpaid, is sure to see his petition on the top
+of the pile on the magistrate’s table, while the poorer litigant finds
+his delayed <i>sine die</i>.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>
+<img src='images/p255_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A GROUP OF <i>KUANS</i> (MANDARINS).</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is chiefly on the underpaid and hard-worked magistracy of
+China that the existence of government depends. No men in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>mercantile positions work so hard as these officials, and if they
+are conscientious, all the worse for them. Their duties are most
+multifarious, and are both defined and undefined, executive, fiscal,
+judicial, and at times even military. They are responsible, not
+only for the taxes of their districts, but for their order and
+quietness, depending for much on subordinates whom they cannot
+trust, and during war, rebellion, and the floods and famines which
+occur with painful frequency are compelled to an almost sleepless
+vigilance, lest anything should go wrong, and they should be
+reported to the Throne. It is said truly that on the Hsien or Fu
+magistrate the work of at least six men devolves. He is at once
+tax commissioner, civil and criminal judge, coroner, treasurer,
+sheriff, and much besides, and he is supposed to have an exhaustive
+knowledge of everything within his bounds. And withal
+he must so dexterously regulate his squeezes as that it shall be
+possible for him to exist, for on his salary, attenuated as it is
+by forfeitures, he cannot.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Into the midst of this amount of responsibility, multifarious
+duties, and overwork, comes the foreigner with his treaty rights,
+a new and difficult element to deal with, and who may be an
+arrogant, bullying, and ignorant person. I am not apologising
+for the crimes of mandarins. I have suffered much from the
+violence of Chinese mobs, permitted, as I believe, if not instigated,
+by officialism. But I have on several occasions declined to make
+a formal complaint and hamper a magistrate because of my
+sympathy with his difficulties. On the one side there are orders
+from Peking sent down through the Viceroy that foreigners
+travelling are to be protected, and that their rights under the
+treaties are to be secured to them; on the other there is the
+anti-foreign feeling which has been inflamed for years past by
+agitators, certain of the secret societies, and what are known
+as the “Hunan Tracts,” and which may be provoked into an
+explosion by any unintentional indiscretion of a foreigner, or,
+as in my case, by such an outrage on custom as travelling in an
+open chair! The riot occurs; the foreigner suffers in his person
+or goods; he lodges a complaint, is backed up by his consul; and
+the mandarin, who may have been miles away from the scene
+of the occurrence, is held responsible, and is possibly degraded.
+The large number of European and American missionaries who
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>have become residents in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> during the last twelve years
+have also increased the evil considerably. So far as I saw and
+learned, these men and women, with a very few exceptions, are
+slaves to the scrupulosity of their observance of Chinese custom
+and etiquette so far as they know them, and to their anxiety
+to avoid giving offence in the country in which they live.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But, to begin with, they are foreigners, “foreign devils”; their
+eyes, their complexions, their ways of sitting and carrying their
+hands are repulsive, and the belief, sometimes piteous, that they
+are “child-eaters,” and use the eyes and hearts of children in
+medicine, is now spread universally. Then they have come, if
+not, as many believe, as spies and political agents, to teach a
+foreign and Western religion, which is to subvert Chinese nationality,
+to wreck the venerated social order introduced by Confucius,
+to destroy the reverence and purity of domestic life and the
+loyalty to ancestors, and to introduce abominable customs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This is, I think, a faithful view of missionary aims from a
+Chinese standpoint, and, bearing in mind the extreme ignorance
+and intense conservatism of the Chinese, it is not wonderful that
+there should be continual small disturbances, or that these should
+have culminated in the great anti-missionary riots in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>
+in 1895, in which a large number of the missionaries had to fly,
+and many more owed their lives to the protection given them by
+the mandarins in their <i>yamens</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>I</i> would not hold the mandarins responsible for the whole of
+these outbreaks, though they are and must be held so, but the
+difficulties of their position are much complicated by the presence
+within their jurisdictions of aliens whose aims are obnoxious to
+the majority of the people, and who are slowly creating, under
+the protection of treaties, societies with views at variance with
+established custom.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Yet so great is the potency of a word from headquarters that
+I believe the <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> mandarins are now doing their best
+to protect the missionaries, and wherever I went, and very
+specially at Paoning Fu, I heard of efficient protection given,
+even where the means at the magistrates’ disposal were very
+limited, and of consideration and friendliness shown, far in excess
+of any claims which could be made, and which went to the
+extreme verge of a prudent regard for official position.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span>
+<img src='images/p259_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>LADY’S SEDAN CHAIR (CHINESE PROPRIETY).</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>Some of my readers and friends will consider that in the above
+remarks I have played in another than the Vatican sense the
+part of “devil’s advocate.” So be it. I intended, as a matter
+of honesty and fair play, to “give the devil his due.” I am
+fully aware of the manifold iniquities of the mandarins, and
+regard the official system as the greatest curse of China, if for
+no other reason than that it makes it nearly impossible for an
+official to walk on a straight path. But I wished to note briefly
+a few extenuating circumstances, and to protest against that
+rough-and-ready and very misleading system of classification
+which lumps all mandarins together as an irredeemably bad lot.
+The system is infamous, but a traveller who has spent some years
+in travelling in Turkey, Persia, Kashmir, and Korea, is astonished
+to find that the Chinese are very far from being an oppressed
+people, and that even under this system they enjoy light taxation
+in spite of squeezes, security for the gains of labour, and a
+considerable amount of rational liberty. It is when a Chinese,
+either through his own fault or that of another, becomes a litigant
+that his misfortunes begin.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the hour I spent at the entrance of the <i>yamen</i> of Ying-san
+Hsien 407 people came and went—men of all sorts, many in
+chairs, but most on foot, and nearly all well dressed. All carried
+papers, and some big <i>dossiers</i>. Within, secretaries, clerks, and
+writers crossed and recrossed the courtyard rapidly and ceaselessly,
+and <i>chai-jen</i>, or messengers, bearing papers, were continually
+despatched. Much business, and that of all kinds, was undoubtedly
+transacted. There was nothing of the lazy loafing
+of a horde of dirty officials which distinguishes a Korean <i>yamen</i>.
+I was quite unmolested. Successive coolie crowds stood for a
+time regarding me with an apathetic stare, said nothing, and
+moved silently away. At last a very splendid person in brocaded
+silks and satins came out and handed me my passport, and we
+were able to proceed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One among my reasons for not making the regular stages was
+that in town inns a woman-traveller must shut herself up rigidly
+in her room from arrival until departure unless she desires to
+provoke a row, while in the small villages and hamlets, where
+I was frequently the only guest, when the coolies had had their
+supper I was able to spend an hour in the “house place” with
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>the family, and at a very small expense become friendly with
+them, and the village headman and one or two more often dropped
+in, and, under the influence of tea and tobacco and the sight of
+some of the nearest local photographs, became quite conversational.
+Be-dien, whose knowledge of English was very fair,
+improved daily, and was, I think, painstaking; at all events, I
+made him so!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On such evenings I heard a good deal about mandarins, taxes,
+industries, prices, carriage of goods, foreigners, missionaries, and
+other things, all purely local. Occasionally the consensus of
+opinion about a mandarin was that he was a very bad man,
+took bribes, exacted more than the “legitimate squeeze” in tax-collecting,
+decided cases always in favour of the rich, etc. Such
+must have been very bad cases on which all had reason to be
+agreed, or the men, owing to the strong distrust and suspicion
+of each other which prevail, would not have dared to speak
+out before each other. This is an element which must always
+be taken into consideration in judging of the probabilities of
+the accuracy of any statement which is made. On the whole,
+however, there were not many complaints uttered, and these
+were usually of the delays of law. Some mandarins were spoken
+of with something akin to enthusiasm. One had built a bridge,
+another had made a good road, a third had restored a temple,
+a fourth was “very charitable to the poor,” and in the last scarcity
+had diminished the luxury of his own table by a half that he
+might feed the poor, and so on.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Anything like an enlightened idea on a subject not local was
+not to be hoped for. Few of these headmen had heard of the
+war, or of the peace of Shimonoseki, and those who had, believed
+that the “barbarian rebels” had been driven into the sea or into
+fiery holes in the ground. The immense indemnity paid to the
+Roman Catholics for their losses in “the riots” touched them
+more closely, and I heard a good deal said regarding the Roman
+missions which I will not repeat, and I will also “keep dark”
+the various criticisms, some of them most trenchant and amusing,
+which were made on our own missionaries, only wishing that</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c014'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line in6'>“The giftie were gi’ed us</div>
+      <div class='line'>To see ourselves as others see us.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>The attempt to hammer out facts on these evenings was
+fatiguing and often disheartening, as, for instance, to decide
+which of six varying statements on one matter had the greatest
+aspect of probability, and was worth stowing away in my memory,
+but the interest of mixing in any fashion with the people far
+outweighed the discomfort of peasant accommodation, even when
+it was pretty bad. One night Be-dien, after surveying the inside of
+a very poor hovel, came out looking rueful, and said, “You won’t
+like your room to-night, Mrs. Bishop; <i>it’s the pigs’ room!</i>” and
+truly seven pigs occupied a depression railed off in one corner of it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The second day after leaving Kiao we had heavy rain all day,
+and the road, which was a barely legible track, mostly on slippery
+mud hills, was so infamous that, as the bearers were constantly
+slipping and even falling, I had to do a good deal of being
+hauled and lifted along; walking it was not, for my feet slipped
+from under me at nearly every step. We passed through one
+vacant, forlorn city of refuge, and spent most of the day in a
+desolate, treeless, sparsely inhabited, red region, slithering along
+the side of a high, bleak, mountain ridge, the summit of which (an
+altitude of 2140 feet) we gained at dark to find a small and most
+miserable hamlet astride on the top of it. The houses were all
+shut, and the pouring rain kept everyone indoors. No wonder!
+The slush was over my ankles, and very cold.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A broad gleam fell across the road, and we made our way to
+it, as wet as it was possible to be, and took, rather than asked,
+shelter in a big shed with a loft or platform at one side, fitfully
+lighted as well as filled with smoke by some branches which
+were being burned in a great clay furnace, apparently used for
+the making of iron pots. Several men were shovelling coal into
+the same, and there was a prospect of warmth. This shed
+was the front of the mouth and workings of a coal-pit. I was
+guided into some workings which appeared disused, where there
+were some pigs, a sunk water-trough in the sloppy clay floor, and
+an excavation two feet six inches wide by six feet long, into which
+my stretcher, six feet six inches long, was backed, and projected
+six inches outside! After a hot supper, I rolled myself, in my
+wet clothes, in a dry rug, and slept soundly till the torrent of rain
+slacked off at eight the following morning, when we got on the
+road again.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXIV.<br> <span class='c012'>HSIEH-TIEN-TZE TO PAONING FU</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>The weather continued grim, cold, and damp, with a penetrating
+east wind. I felt the cold more than on any
+previous journey, even when for weeks at a time the mercury
+had registered 20° below zero, and on this occasion it never fell
+below 40° above, and on some of the “coldest” days was as high
+as 45°. Men who had them were wearing their handsome furs
+up to March 12th.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After leaving the coal-pit and the bleak hillside, we descended
+to a region where the natural terrace formation of the hills was
+extensively aided by art, and the country looked as if it were
+covered with Roman camps.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At the risk of wearying my readers, I must again remark on the
+singularity of the formation of this large portion of the Red
+Basin, which is continued in its most exaggerated form at least
+as far south as Shien Ching, on the Kialing, fully 270 <i>li</i> south
+of Paoning. Looking down from any height, it is seen that the
+red sandstone has been decomposed into hundreds of small hills,
+from 200 to 300 feet high, with their sides worn into natural
+and very regular terraces, of which I have counted twenty-three
+one above another, while the actual hilltop is weathered into a
+most deceptive resemblance to a fort or ruined castle.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Much of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> is remarkable for the scarcity of villages,
+but, on the other hand, it is dotted over both with large farmhouses,
+where the farmer and his dependants live in patriarchal style,
+surrounded by a roofed wall with a heavy gateway, and with large
+cottages, the walls of which, with their heavy black timbers and
+whitewashed walls, have a most distinct resemblance to the old
+Cheshire architecture, while the roofs, with a nearly even slope
+from the ridge-pole to the extremity of the deep eaves which form
+broad verandahs, have more kinship with that of the Swiss
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span><i>châlet</i> than with the typical Chinese roof, curving upwards at the
+corners.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If the tradition be true which declares that in the early days of
+this dynasty people were sent in chains to colonise this fair
+province, it may be, as Mr. Baber suggests, that they had not
+the family and clan ties which lead men to herd together in the
+communities which are also a necessary element of safety in many
+circumstances. It was not till the Taiping outbreak that these
+scattered settlers, who had lived and multiplied for nearly two
+centuries under conditions of security, found it necessary to combine
+for mutual protection. It then occurred to them that the
+numerous precipitous, rocky hills of the region, if walled round
+near the top, would be impregnable refuges, and they subscribed
+money and labour, and carried out their idea, sprinkling the
+country with picturesque <i>chai-tzu</i>, or redoubts, to which they
+ascended in times of dread. It did not occur to them to build
+permanent dwellings and remain at these altitudes.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the purely agricultural parts of the province, where there
+are no local industries requiring concentration of population, such
+villages as are to be met with elsewhere, in which tenants,
+labourers, innkeepers, and proprietors, with shopkeepers and
+artisans, live in communities, are rarely met with. Out of
+the system of scattered dwellings and minute hamlets, trading
+arrangements for supplying the wants of the agricultural population
+have grown up, the like of which I have not seen elsewhere.
+These are the markets (<i>ch’ang</i>).</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In travelling along the roads one comes quite unexpectedly
+upon a long, narrow street with closed shop fronts, boarded-up
+restaurants, and deserted houses, and possibly a forlorn family
+with its dog and pig the only inhabitants. The first thought is
+that the population has been exterminated by a pestilence, but
+on inquiry the brief and simple explanation is given, “It’s not
+market day.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A few miles further, and the roads are thronged with country
+people in their best, carrying agricultural productions and full and
+empty baskets. The whole country is on the move to another
+long, narrow street closely resembling the first, but that the shop
+fronts are open, and full of Chinese and foreign goods; the tea shops
+are crammed; every house is full of goods and people; from
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>2000 to 5000 or 6000 are assembled; blacksmiths, joiners, barbers,
+tinkers, traders of all kinds, are busy; the shouting and the din of
+bargaining are tremendous, and between the goods and the buyers
+and sellers locomotion is slow and critical. Drug stores, in which
+“remedies for foreign smoke” are sold, occur everywhere.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The shops in these streets are frequently owned by the neighbouring
+farmers, who let them to traders for the market days, which
+are fixed for the convenience of the district, and fall on the third or
+fifth or even seventh day, as the need may be. The gateway at
+each end of the street is often very highly decorated. Theatrical
+entertainments frequent these markets, and if the actors are well
+known and popular, 4000 or 5000 people assemble for the play
+alone. The markets are the great gatherings for all purposes. If
+anything of public opinion of a local character exists, it is manufactured
+there. There official notifications are made, and bargains
+regarding the sale or rent of land are concluded. Family festivals
+even are often held there, and after marriage negotiations on the
+part of heads of families have been concluded the preliminaries
+are drawn up and ratified at the market. There the cottons of
+Lancashire undergo a searching criticism, and are weighed,
+handled, held up to the light by men who cannot be deceived as
+to the value of cotton, and are often found wanting. Into the
+vortex of the market is attracted all the news and gossip of the
+district. It is much like a fair, but I never saw any rowdyism or
+drunkenness on the road afterwards, and I never met with any
+really rough treatment in a market, though the crowding and
+curiosity made me always glad when it was not “market day.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the afternoon of March 7th there was some hazy sunshine,
+and the effect was magical. The route lay partly along the Shanrang
+Ho, an affluent of the Ku-kiang, itself navigable up to, and
+for sixty <i>li</i> above Sing-king-pa Hsien, so report said.] Considerable
+fleets of colliers lay at different points, vessels carrying
+from ten to twenty-five tons, flat-bottomed. They were loading, in
+one case, from a coal-yard of half an acre at least in extent, fenced
+strongly and carefully with bamboo, in which the coal was piled in
+big, oblong blocks weighing two hundredweight each, to a height
+of seven feet, each block being carried from the pit by two men.
+The colliers are built in compartments, and very strongly, as there
+are severe rapids both above and below Sing-king-pa Hsien.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>
+<img src='images/p267_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A SZE CHUAN FARMHOUSE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>After ferrying this river, along with a number of Buddhist
+priests, we gradually attained high ground, and secured the
+granary of a new inn for my room. Being new, the place was
+clean and dry, and promised well for the next day’s halt, and most
+of the unpacking was done, when the trim, young hostess requested
+us to “move on.” She said her father-in-law was away, and he
+would be angry with her for receiving a foreigner. I did not care
+to assert “treaty rights” against the obvious anxiety of so prepossessing
+a young woman, and we repacked, and slithered along
+six more <i>li</i> of bad roads till we came to a lone farming cottage on
+the top of a windy ridge, with a most extensive view, where I was
+very glad to remain for the next day, as I had had rather a severe
+week. From Sing-king-pa Hsien my <i>chai-jen</i> were two young
+soldiers in the most brilliant of stagey uniforms, and I think that
+they must have been the reason of my exclusion from the previous
+inn. Among the many curious proofs of superstitious beliefs one
+occurred many times on the last days of the journey: a small arch
+made of bamboo stuck into the slush of a rice-field. This is done
+in cases of the illness of the owner, and it is believed that the
+offering will restore him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On this windy ridge of King-kiang-sze I slept in the granary,
+which I should have considered extreme luxury, as it was not dark
+when the door was shut, had it not been that it was only just
+built, and the mud on the walls was quite wet. The granary
+was detached from the house, open, as fortunately many Chinese
+rooms are, for two feet below the roof, and in several other
+directions, being in fact so draughty that no candle would keep
+alight in it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I stayed in bed all the next morning owing to severe chills,
+the consequence of living in wet clothes, but had to get up in the
+afternoon to gratify the curiosity of fully thirty women, who had
+hobbled in from the adjacent hamlets, some of them twenty <i>li</i>
+away, to see “the foreign woman.” I feared that they would be
+greatly disappointed to see me in Chinese dress, but I found that
+they did not know that foreigners wore any other! My hair, “big
+feet,” shoes, and gloves were all a great amusement to them, and,
+above all, my light camp bed, which they were sure would not bear
+any weight, so they sat down on it back to back to the number of
+twelve!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>Of course they asked many questions, among others did we in
+our country make away with baby girls? I could not anywhere
+learn that infanticide prevails in any part of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> in which
+I travelled, and when I told these women of the extent to which
+it is practised in some parts of <span class='sc'>Kwantung</span>, the remark was,
+“Couldn’t they sell them for a good price?” Undoubtedly many
+<span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> girls are sold to traders from Kansuh. These mothers
+mostly had large families. The children are not weaned till they
+are three, and often not till they are four and even five, years old.
+Of “bringing up by hand” they know nothing—condensed milk
+has not reached that primitive region. If a mother dies at the
+birth of her babe, the mothers of the hamlet take the joint responsibility
+of supplying the orphan with maternal nourishment. They
+asked me if I had many sons, and when I confessed that I had
+none, they expressed great sympathy, because there would be
+no one at my death to perform the ancestral rites. It is quite
+customary, on hearing of the absence of sons, for women to pump
+up tears as a conventional requirement, and this propriety was not
+neglected on this occasion. It occurred to them that I could
+not have a daughter-in-law, which in their thinking was a great
+deprivation, not on sentimental, but on purely practical grounds,
+the daughter-in-law being equivalent to the mother-in-law’s slave.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Few of them had been to Paoning Fu, only two days’ journey
+off, and none to Wan Hsien. The markets of the neighbourhood
+were the boundaries of their horizon, and, the festivals of the
+divinities of their hamlets their gaieties. I like the Chinese
+women better than any Oriental women that I know. They have
+plenty of good stuff in them, and backbone. When they are
+Christianised they are thorough Christians. They have much
+kindness of heart; they are very modest; they are faithful wives,
+and after their fashion good mothers. I gave my visitors tea
+and sweetmeats all round, and they departed, having taught me
+far more than they learned from me.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>During the afternoon men with large shields slung across their
+backs, and carrying red staves, appeared, and there was at once a
+considerable fuss and a demand for my passport, the big seals of
+which made a salutary impression upon them. These officials
+were “census men,” and were engaged in numbering the houses.
+The taking of a census has not been a popular matter from time
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>immemorial, and in the East an idea of increased taxation is
+always associated with it.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p271_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A SZE CHUAN MARKET-PLACE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span>Like many Chinese systems, the census system is admirable in
+theory, but frauds, lapses, and neglect render it inefficient. Every
+city and village is divided into “tithings,” or groups, of ten
+families each, and on every doorpost hangs, or ought to hang,
+a tablet, <i>mun-pai</i>, inscribed with the names of all the inmates of
+both sexes. If the head of a family omits to make an entry,
+or fails to register correctly the males of his household who are
+liable to public service, he may receive from eighty to a hundred
+blows. If the system were carried out, suspicious strangers could
+be easily caught, and local responsibility for any crime fixed
+without any trouble, but a householder finds it convenient to
+escape filling up the schedule by bribing the “shield men” with
+<i>cash</i> equivalent to twopence-halfpenny.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next day, for a considerable distance, every house had
+blossomed into a brand-new <i>mun-pai</i>, which indicated the arrival
+of a new magistrate determined to enforce the law. The talk of
+the inn was that it heralded additional taxation.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next day’s journey to Heh-shui-tang was through varied
+and pretty country, much more populous, and with abounding
+water communication supplied by the Chia-ling, often in that region
+called the Paoning river, and its branches. The main traffic
+down the river is coal and salt. There are very many salt wells
+at a good height on the river bank. The brine is drawn by being
+pumped once a day, and that only when the river is low, and
+is evaporated by coal fires, the heavy yellow smoke giving the
+aspect of manufacturing industry. Salt is a Government monopoly.
+The Government buys all the salt which is produced, at a rate
+fixed by itself, and sends it all over the country for sale, making an
+enormous profit. It is said that the salt produced in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>
+brings in to the Government a revenue of £2,000,000 sterling!
+In some places the borings for salt extend to depths of nearly
+3000 feet, as the result of the continuous operations of ten or twelve
+years, two feet a day being very satisfactory progress. “Fire
+wells” are often found near salt wells, and the “fire” is used for
+evaporating the salt. The product of the wells seen on that
+day’s journey is small, but fifty boats of about twelve tons were
+loading with it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span>At the pleasant and thriving little town of Nan-pu, which
+produces a very white salt, the mandarin was polite, and sent four
+gaily uniformed soldiers with me, who, however, shortly turned
+themselves into rather shabby civilians, showing, as on several
+other occasions, that the love of mufti is not confined to
+English officers. The mandarin’s secretary asked if I would like
+to see anything in Nan-pu. I could think of nothing in the
+little, quiet, trading town, but for the sake of politeness I said
+I should like to see a school.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>My men were at their midday meal, but bearers were provided,
+and I was soon deposited in the courtyard of an unpretending
+building, followed by a great crowd, which was kept from pressing
+on me by the mandarin’s “lictors.” The schoolroom contained
+several tables, some heavy benches, a teacher’s chair, a number
+of “ink-stones,” and thirty-three boys, from the ages of seven
+up to fourteen, who were all learning to read and write.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Near the roof a Confucian tablet, surrounded by inscribed strips
+of red paper, stood in a niche, and on one side of the schoolroom
+there was a life-size figure of the God of Literature, with a wooden
+box half full of ashes in front, in which some incense sticks were
+smouldering. The teacher was a kindly-looking old man in conventional
+goggles. He had probably repeatedly failed to pass his
+literary examinations, and being unfit for manual labour, had
+become a pedagogue. He held something very like “taws” in
+his hand, but his pupils had no unwholesome awe of him.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The boys were writing when I went in, <i>i.e.</i> tracing printed
+ideographs placed below thin paper with brushes filled with
+Chinese ink, which they rubbed on the ink-stones as required.
+The teacher went round, pointing out faults, and showing them
+how to hold their pens.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After this they studied, as everywhere in the East, aloud,
+shouting their lessons at the top of very inharmonious voices, an
+audible assurance relied upon to convince the teacher that they
+were giving full attention to their tasks. As soon as any boy
+had mastered his lesson, he came up to the master and stood with
+his back towards him while he recited, so that the master might
+be sure that he was not glancing at the book which he held in
+his own hand. Mispronunciations were corrected. What I saw
+constitutes education in such a school, together with formal
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>instruction in proprieties: bowing before the tablet of Confucius
+on entering the room, saluting the teacher, etc. Such a school
+may be called a primary school, and the larger proportion of
+scholars never go any farther. In villages and small towns the
+parents pay from three to six dollars a year to the teacher, to
+which are added small presents of food at stated intervals. The
+hours are long—from sunrise till ten and from eleven till five.
+Evening schools are occasionally opened for those who are occupied
+in the day. A pedagogue must be a man of good repute,
+“grave, learned, and patient,” and well acquainted with the Chinese
+classics.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p275_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>PEDAGOGUE AND PUPILS.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>(<i>From a Chinese Drawing.</i>)</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The monotonous reading and writing lessons and the tedium
+of memorising unmeaning sounds are continued for about two
+years, and when the pupils have become familiar with a few
+thousand forms and sounds, then the actual work of teaching
+begins; and the pedagogue, with the help of a commentary,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_276'>276</span>explains the meaning of the words one by one, taking due care
+that they are all understood.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This system, as pursued in the humble school at Nan-pu, is the
+basis of that vast fabric of education which has made China for two
+thousand years what she is, and has produced among the Chinese
+a greater veneration for letters than exists in any country on earth,
+letters and literary degrees, absolutely apart from the accidents
+of birth or wealth, being the only ladder by which a man, be
+he the son of prince or peasant, can attain official employment,
+honours, and emoluments, China being in fact the most truly
+democratic country in the world.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is easy to laugh at an education which for boys of all ranks
+consists solely in the knowledge of the ancient Chinese classics,
+and there is no doubt that it stunts individuality, belittles genius,
+fosters conceit, and produces incredible grooviness. But, on the
+other hand, there is no education, unless it might be one strictly
+Biblical, which furnishes the memory with so much wisdom for
+common life, and so many noble moral maxims. Whatever of
+righteousness, virtuous domestic life, filial virtue, charity, propriety—and
+just dealing exists among the Chinese, and they do
+exist—is owed to the permeation of the whole race by the teaching
+of the classics.<a id='r42'></a><a href='#f42' class='c013'><sup>[42]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The six school books (classics in themselves) which are introductory
+to the study of the classics are, <cite>The Trimetrical Classic</cite>,
+arranged in 178 double lines, the first of which contains the
+much-disputed doctrine, “Men at their birth are by nature
+radically good.” It inculcates filial and fraternal duties, and
+much besides, as the following extract shows: “Mutual affection
+of father and son; concord of man and wife; the older
+brother’s kindness, the younger one’s respect; order between
+seniors and juniors; friendship among associates; on the prince’s
+part regard, on the minister’s true loyalty; these ten moral
+duties are for ever binding among men.” This classic concludes
+with a number of fascinating incidents and motives
+for learning taken from the lives of ancient sages and statesmen.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span>If a boy never goes farther than this, his memory is stored with
+excellent examples and principles.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The second book is the <cite>Century of Surnames</cite>. The third is
+unique in the world, the <cite>Millenary, or Thousand Character Classic</cite>,
+which consists of exactly 1000 characters, no two of which are
+alike in meaning or form. It treats of many important subjects,
+and, like the <cite>Trimetrical Classic</cite>, abounds in praises of virtue and
+exhortations to rectitude. Its text is absolutely familiar to all
+the people, and a Christian preacher who shows himself acquainted
+with it is sure of an interested audience.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The fourth school classic is called <cite>Odes for Children</cite>, and contains
+thirty-four stanzas of four lines each, chiefly in praise of
+literary life, such as this:—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c014'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“It is of the utmost importance to educate children;</div>
+      <div class='line'>Do not say that your families are poor,</div>
+      <div class='line'>For those who can handle well the pencil (pen),</div>
+      <div class='line'>Go where they will, need never ask for favours.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>In all the school classics many examples are given of intelligent
+youths entering on life without advantages, who by application,
+virtuous conduct, and industry, have raised themselves to the
+highest offices in the empire.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The fifth school classic is the <cite>Canons of Filial Duty</cite>, a book
+of 1903 characters only, purporting to be a report of a conversation
+between the <cite>Great Teacher</cite> (Confucius) and Tsang Tsan,
+a disciple. Whether it is actually what the Chinese believe it
+to be or not, its influence has been and is enormous, extending
+unweakened through a period of many centuries, and laying by its
+principles and maxims the foundations of the social order which
+prevails, not only in China, but in Japan and Korea. This
+paramount teaching begins with the sentence, “Filial duty is
+the root of virtue, and the stem from which instruction in the
+moral principle springs.” It contains an axiom which has great
+weight: “With the same love that they” (scholars) “serve their
+fathers, they should serve their mothers.” Many books have been
+written to illustrate these <cite>Canons</cite>, one a toy book, <cite>The Twenty-four
+Filials</cite>, containing twenty-four quaint and delightful stories of
+filial devotion. This is a most popular collection of tales, and
+the examples embroidered on satin, or painted on silk, or coarsely
+daubed on paper, are to be seen everywhere.<a id='r43'></a><a href='#f43' class='c013'><sup>[43]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>The sixth and last is the <i>Siao Hioh</i>, or <i>Juvenile Instructor</i>, a
+book whose influence is estimated as enormous. It has had fifty
+commentators, one of whom writes of it, “We confide in the
+<i>Siao Hioh</i> as we do in the gods, and revere it as we do our
+parents.” It is in two books, divided into twenty chapters and
+385 short sections. The first book treats of the elementary
+principles of education, of the duties we owe to ourselves in
+regard to demeanour, dress, food, and study, and of the duties
+which we owe to our kindred, rulers, and fellow-men, and it gives
+illustrative examples of the good results of obeying these maxims,
+taken from ancient history as far down as <span class='fss'>B.C.</span> 249!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The second book seems somewhat of a commentary on the first,
+or an elaboration of it. It gives a collection of virtuous and wise
+sayings of great men who lived after <span class='fss'>B.C.</span> 200, and these are
+followed by a number of examples of conduct in distinguished
+persons, showing the effect of good principles and the advantage
+of following the teachings of the first book. The most elaborate
+rules of etiquette are laid down with a view of promoting mutual
+reverence, and the Chinese of to-day receives his guests at his
+outer door and conducts them, with the most careful attention to
+elaborate rules of precedence, through courts, and up flights of
+steps to his guest-hall, he and they moving their feet and accepting
+or declining attention in slavish accordance with the rules of this
+ancient classic.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Chinese of to-day, in thought, action, and etiquette, are the
+product of these school books. I see no possibility of spontaneity
+so long as education is <i>solely</i> on these lines. In reading the translations
+of these classics, in spite of a certain insistence upon trifles,
+and perhaps of exaggeration of unimportant points, I have been
+enormously impressed by their admirable moral teaching as a
+whole. Virtue is inculcated by precept and example on every
+page, and with the solemn sanctions of antiquity. Deficiencies
+there are, but there is not a single thing in this curriculum which
+a man ought not to be the better for learning, or one thing which
+it would be desirable for him to forget. If he is unable to go
+farther, he is possessed of what may be called the kernel of the
+best literature of his country, and his national feeling is fostered
+by the fact that the noble truths and examples impressed on his
+mind are not of foreign origin, but have originated within the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span>frontiers of the Middle Kingdom. The missionaries show at once
+their appreciation of the <i>Chinese classics</i>, as well as a judicious
+desire to conserve Chinese nationality and keep the pathway to
+official employment open, by giving great prominence to this
+classical teaching in their schools.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Villages had their schools, and districts their academies,” says
+the <cite>Book of Rites</cite> (<span class='fss'>B.C.</span> 1200), and I looked with reverence on the
+dirty, cobwebby walls of the little private school at Nan-pu as
+their historical successor.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I asked the teacher how many of his thirty-three pupils were
+likely to go on with their education and compete at the examinations,
+and he replied, “Three,” holding up three fingers, on one of
+which was a carefully-tended nail an inch and a half long, that
+there might be no mistake. The parents of the pupils were poor,
+and would not be able to keep them at school for more than three
+years at the outside, while shopkeepers, farmers, and country
+gentlemen would not keep them there more than five years
+unless they meant to go on to the literary examinations. In
+the case of these well-to-do persons, several families living in the
+same street hire a well-qualified teacher at a stipulated salary to
+teach their boys, and the instruction is given in light, well-aired
+rooms. In such a school as I spent an hour in, the teacher provides
+and furnishes the room according to the number and position of
+his pupils. On a boy entering a school he receives his <i>shu-ming</i>,
+or “book name,” by which he is known during his future life.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If I have conveyed what I wish to convey, clearly, it will be
+evident that Chinese education in the primary schools is limited to
+the teaching of virtue, duty, and etiquette. There is no provision
+for developing the intellectual powers, nor has general learning any
+place. There is a complete want of symmetry in the mental training,
+but if it fails to form broad and well-balanced minds, it must
+be admitted that the exaggeration is in the best direction in which
+distortion could occur.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That night I felt profound regret at concluding the first stage of
+my journey, and the soft, dreamy sunshine of the next day increased
+it. The country is soft in its features, and very pretty
+and prosperous-looking, abounding in industries, and consequently
+in villages and small towns, and produces everything that is good
+for food. The road adheres pretty closely to the valley of the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>Chia-ling, which we ferried twice. Its water is translucent, and of
+an exquisitely beautiful peacock green. It is one of the great
+arteries of commerce of the Yangtze Valley, and though, like the
+Yangtze, obstructed by rapids and given to the production of great
+sand-banks, specially below Paoning Fu, it and its affluents afford
+invaluable means of communication.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This river, uniting with the Yangtze at Chungking after receiving
+such fine tributaries as the Ku, the Fu, and the Pai-shui, is
+navigable for boats of 5000 catties up to the flourishing little town
+of Pai-shui-Chiang, actually over the border of <span class='sc'>Kansuh</span>, and over
+500 miles by water from Chungking. These big boats trade
+chiefly with Nan-pu, which produces salt, taking salt up and
+bringing coal down. There are smaller boats carrying 2000
+catties, of which I saw many, which go right down to Chungking,
+carrying <span class='sc'>Kansuh</span> tobacco, sheepskins, furs, and medicines.
+Mr. Litton, of H.B.M.’s Consular Service, saw seventy boats at one
+time moored off the city of Kuang Yuen, near the frontier of
+<span class='sc'>Kansuh</span>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The country is much affected by the great sand-banks formed
+by the river, which become bound together by the fibrous roots
+of a sword-grass, and alter the channel, forming, after a few years
+of deposit, fine arable land. The road I travelled from Heh-shui-tang,
+after skirting the Chia-ling at a great height for many miles,
+under cliffs abounding in recessed temples, in which groups of
+divinities carved in the rock receive hourly worship from wayfarers,
+enters Paoning Fu by a pontoon bridge about 130 yards
+long.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After the treelessness of much of the region I had traversed,
+and the comparatively poor soil and inferior dwellings, the view
+of Paoning and its surroundings was most charming in the soft
+afternoon sunshine. Built on rich alluvium, surrounded on three
+sides by a bend of the river, with temple roofs and gate towers
+rising out of dense greenery and a pink mist of peach blossom,
+with fair and fertile country rolling up to mountains in the
+north, dissolving in a blue haze, and with the peacock-green water
+of the Chia-ling for a foreground, the first view of this important
+city was truly attractive.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the distance appeared two Chinese gentlemen, one stout, the
+other tall and slender, whose walk as they approached gave me a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span>suspicion that they were foreigners, and they proved to be
+Bishop Cassels, our youngest and one of our latest consecrated
+bishops, and his coadjutor, Mr. Williams, formerly vicar of
+St. Stephen’s, Leeds, who had come to welcome me. We ferried
+the Chia-ling, and passing through attractive suburbs, either green
+lanes with hedges, trees, and vegetable gardens, or narrow flagged
+roads, very clean, bounded by roofed walls and handsome gateways
+of private houses, we reached the China Inland Mission
+buildings, consisting of a neat church, very humble Chinese houses
+for the married and bachelor missionaries, guest-rooms, and
+servants’ quarters, all cheerful, but greatly lacking privacy. This
+was a pleasant halt after a journey of 300 miles without a
+really untoward incident, except the riot at Liang-shan.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p281_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>RECESSED DIVINITIES, CHIA-LING RIVER.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXV.<br> <span class='c012'>PAONING FU AND SIN-TIEN-TZE</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>Paoning Fu, where I spent a week, is, in spring at least, a
+very attractive city. There is a pleasant sleepiness about
+it. Trade is neither so active or so self-asserting as usual. There
+is obviously a leisured class with time to enjoy itself. Large
+fortunes are not made; 45,000 taels is looked upon as wealth, and
+there are no millionaires to overshadow the small traders. Junks
+of eighteen tons and over can ascend to Paoning during much of
+the year. There is a considerable coal trade on the Tung river, and
+the city being in the centre of an important silk region, there is
+a degree of activity about the silk trade. There are such small
+industries as dyeing cottons, making wine and vinegar, and the
+export of pigs’ bristles and hides, but nothing is pursued very
+energetically. Among the population of about 20,000 there are a
+small number of Mohammedans, and wherever they exist beef and
+milk are attainable luxuries. In Paoning they cure and spice an
+excellent salt beef, which I found an agreeable variation from
+fowls on my further journey.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Officially, Paoning Fu is an important city, having a <i>Taotai</i>, a
+prefect, and a hsien, and many of its beautiful “suburban villas” are
+the residences of retired and expectant mandarins. Its suburbs
+are quite charming, and its suburban roads are densely shaded by
+large mulberry trees and the <i>Aleurites cordata</i>. Farther outside,
+are several fine temples in large grounds, and the public library.
+Paoning proper, with the <i>yamen</i> and other official residences,
+streets of shops, and private dwellings with large wooded
+gardens, is surrounded by a wall twenty feet high, in good repair,
+with a flagged walk, ten feet broad, on the top of it. From this
+the aspect of the city was idealised by a coloured mist of pink
+and white—peach, plum, apricot, and cherry blossom, flecked
+with crimson from the double flowers of hardy, decorative peach
+trees. There are four fine but dilapidated gateways.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>
+<img src='images/p283_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>TEMPLE OF GOD OF LITERATURE, PAONING FU.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span>One of the gates was securely shut, and all persons who desired
+to enter or leave the city on that side were compelled to make
+a long <i>détour</i>. This closing of the north gate against the God
+of Rain is by a ceremonial act of the mandarin. Rain was in
+excess, and this was a significant hint to the rain god. Elsewhere
+I had seen the south gates of cities closed in drought against
+the God of Fire, who can only enter a city from that quarter.
+Fires are much dreaded during drought, when the timbers of
+houses are baked into a condition of perilous inflammability.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Outside the walls of Paoning Fu, which supply a delightful
+walk, are fine clean turf banks, and a turfed trench or moat, and
+fine trees; and the river front on the west side is truly grand, a
+terrace twenty-five feet broad being supported by a noble
+stone wall in twenty-five tiers, with broad stone staircases
+descending from the terrace to the river, short green turf, clean
+white sand, and clear green water below.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The finest of the suburban temples is dedicated to Went-zu,
+the God of Pestilence. I visited this with Mr. Williams. It was
+not possible to get any point of view on the level, for a photograph,
+and the chair-bearers suggested my taking one from the
+stage of an open temple theatre opposite, and brought a ladder
+to help me up with. In going back, a man of the literary class
+attacked Mr. Williams for this, and the next day the servants
+of the missionary ladies begged them not to go outside their
+house, for nothing was talked of in the streets and tea houses
+but this “outrage,” and the probable indignation of the
+gods, and the people were saying they would “kill all the
+foreigners.” Mr. Williams said that he had never heard such
+cries of “foreign devil,” and “foreign dog,” as at that time, and
+that it is observed that these cries and the hatred which prompts
+them increase the longer foreigners remain in a city.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Paoning, so far as its population goes, is unfriendly to foreigners,
+and the mission houses were wrecked a year previously, and the
+missionaries, some of whom were married women with young
+children, escaped to the <i>yamen</i>, where they received shelter and
+protection for some time, the mandarins then and since having
+shown much friendliness and desire for their safety. It is a
+complex situation on both sides.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Paoning is a great centre of China Inland Mission work. The
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_286'>286</span>directors of this body, which is undenominational, endeavour so
+far as is possible to group the missionaries of each ecclesiastical
+body together, and in this part of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> they all belong
+to the Church of England. Outside of the “sphere of interest”
+of the C.I.M. the Church Missionary Society has several mission
+stations, chiefly to the north and west of Paoning, and altogether
+in that region there are about sixty Anglican missionaries, several
+of them being university men, working on much the same lines.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Dr. Cassels, who was one of the pioneers, and formerly well
+known as an athlete at Cambridge, had recently been consecrated
+bishop, and came from the splendours of his consecration in
+Westminster Abbey to take up the old, simple, hardworking
+life, to wear a queue and Chinese dress, and be simply the
+“chief pastor.” The native Christians gave him a cordial
+reception on his return, and presented him with the hat of a
+Master of Arts and high boots, which make a very seemly addition
+to the English episcopal dress, giving it the propriety which is
+necessary in Chinese eyes, and in mine the picturesque aspect
+of one of the marauding prelates of the Middle Ages, the good
+bishop having a burly, athletic physique! Since his return, several
+of the lay missionaries have been ordained deacons.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The church, or cathedral, of which an illustration is given, was
+built almost entirely with Chinese money and gifts. It is Chinese
+in style, the chancel windows are “glazed” with coloured paper to
+simulate stained glass, and it is seated for two hundred. The
+persons represented as standing outside are Bishop Cassels, Mr.
+Williams, and the Chinese churchwarden. There are both churchwardens
+and sidesmen.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span>
+<img src='images/p287_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>THE RIGHT REV. BISHOP CASSELS, D.D., PAONING FU.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>I witnessed a Chinese service at which nineteen persons of both
+sexes who had been confirmed on the previous Sunday received
+the Holy Communion. At matins, which followed, the church
+was crammed, and crowds stood outside, where they could both
+see and hear, this publicity contrasting with the Roman practice.
+The understanding that all should be silent during worship was
+adhered to. A Christian, formerly a Mohammedan of some
+means, and another, who had been a Taoist, read the lessons.
+The Bible, an Oriental book both in imagery and thought, is
+enjoyed and understood by Orientals, but I doubt much if it
+will be possible or even desirable to perpetuate the Prayer Book
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_289'>289</span>as it stands. It is so absolutely and intensely Western in its
+style, conceptions, metaphysic, and language of adoration, and,
+I think, is partly unintelligible as a manual of devotion. It
+contains any number of words which not only (as is to be expected)
+have no equivalents in the Eastern languages, but the
+ideas they express are unthinkable by the Eastern mind. Already
+many Eastern Christians are claiming an “Oriental Christ, not a
+Christ disguised in Western garb”—it may be that they will claim
+too a form of worship which shall be Oriental both in thought
+and expression, instead of one which represents to them in their
+most sacred moments an exotic creed.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p289_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>CHINESE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. PAONING FU.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_291'>291</span>The China Inland Mission has some very humble Chinese
+houses built round two compounds, in which two married couples,
+three bachelors, and, in the bishop’s house, two ladies were living,
+and at some distance off there is a ladies’ house, then occupied
+by five ladies. There are several guest-halls for Chinese visitors,
+class and school-rooms, porters’ and servants’ rooms. The furniture
+is all Chinese, and the whitewashed walls are decorated with
+Chinese scrolls chiefly.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I never saw houses so destitute of privacy, or with such ceaseless
+coming and going. Life there simply means work, and work
+spells happiness apparently, for the workers were all cheerful, and
+even jolly. Studying Chinese, preaching, teaching, advising,
+helping, guiding, arranging, receiving, sending forth, doctoring,
+nursing, and befriending make the mission compounds absolute
+hives of industry. It was a great drawback that medical help
+was nearly 300 miles off, and that the one trained nurse in the
+two missions was not ubiquitous. Much needless suffering and
+risk to life were the results. Happily in one of the beautiful suburbs,
+a noble Chinese mansion, a palace in size and solidity, was for
+sale for an old song, the half of which was purchased, and after
+undergoing alterations was opened a few months after my visit
+with a mandarin’s procession and great ceremony as the “Henrietta
+Bird Memorial Hospital”—the men’s department under Dr. Pruen,
+a physician of ten years’ Chinese experience, and the women’s
+under Miss Gowers, who also had considerable experience. The
+other half and a separate courtyard adjoining have been bought
+for a dwelling for the bishop, where he may carry on his work
+with fewer interruptions.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_292'>292</span>The ladies of this mission lead what I should think very hard
+lives, owing to their painful deference to Chinese etiquette, and
+their great desire to avoid doing anything which can give offence.
+As for instance, they never walk out without an elderly Chinese
+woman with them, or are carried except in closed chairs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I left this hive of industry, and devoted lives, and glowing
+hospitalities with Mr. and Mrs. Williams and their children for
+a few days at Sin-tien-tze, where the China Inland Mission has
+obtained a large farmhouse for a sanitarium and centre of country
+work at a height of 2870 feet. Paoning is only 1520. This,
+in lat. 31° 55′, was my farthest point north on my <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>
+journey.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Shortly after leaving Paoning the road mounts the northern
+hills, and keeps along a high barren ridge, or <i>liang-tsu</i>, for 130 <i>li</i>,
+the air becoming more bracing and delicious every hour. I have
+observed that in Western China an altitude of 3000 feet is
+equivalent, in the dryness and bracing qualities of the air, to
+7000 feet in Japan.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We stayed for a night in a large, rambling inn in a market-place
+when it was not market day, and were quiet. Long flights of
+stairs conduct travellers to the top of the ridge, which is often
+less than ten feet broad, and falls down in natural rock-supported
+terraces to the valleys below. At the close of the second day’s
+journey the cultivation nearly ceased, the hills were bare and
+rocky, the road a mere straggle; and where two or three ridges
+meet, on turning a corner round a pine-clothed knoll, we came
+upon a large, lonely house with a dead, blank wall round it,
+and were heartily welcomed by its inmates, three ladies, who
+for some time past have conducted a mission to the scattered
+houses and hamlets of the neighbourhood with remarkable
+success.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A great gateway gives admission successively into two courts
+with their surrounding rooms. The common “sitting-room,” or,
+to use an Americanism, “living-room,” is extremely tasteful and
+pretty—pre-eminently a “lady’s room,” furnished with bamboo
+tables, chairs, a lounge, and foot-stools, and a folding screen
+covered with blue cotton, on which Christmas cards are prettily
+arranged. Blue cotton table-cloths, embroidered in white silk,
+covered the tables. The floor was matted. Chinese red scrolls
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_293'>293</span>hung on the whitewashed walls; there were books and flowering
+plants; and the room combined daintiness with solid comfort.
+Doors, with elaborate fretwork filled in with tissue paper, take
+the place of windows. The woodwork of all the rooms is
+varnished.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p293_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>C.I.M. SANITARIUM, SIN-TIEN-TZE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_295'>295</span>I expressed admiration and some wonderment that “at such
+a distance” (possibly from civilisation) such pretty furniture could
+be procured. It may be that my hostess thought she read in
+my remark some hint at “missionary luxury,” for she very kindly
+offered to enlighten me as to the cost of furnishing in Western
+China. The substantial and good-looking chairs cost fourpence
+each, the lounge two-and-sixpence, and the rest in proportion; the
+whole coming to a trifle under nineteen shillings, and all was produced
+in the neighbourhood, material and labour costing almost
+nothing. During my five days’ visit the weather became bitterly
+cold, and snow fell for the greater part of two days, but did not
+lie. No efforts brought the temperature of my room up to 40°,
+which was low for the 21st March, in lat. 31° 55′.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_296'>296</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXVI.<br> <span class='c012'>SIN-TIEN-TZE TO TZE-TUNG HSIEN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>On this second long journey, involving a distance of three
+hundred and thirty miles, I was persuaded into a slightly
+more luxurious style of travelling, <i>i.e.</i>, I took an additional man,
+well acquainted with the province and its ways, who went on first,
+towards evening, cleaned out a room, and had hot water ready
+for tea. I got new oiled sheeting and an apron for the chair, and
+with some unleavened bread, curry for three days, a supply of
+Paoning smoked beef and some chocolate for lunch, I felt myself
+in luxury. Yet, with eight men, my expenses were only seven
+shillings per day.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At Sin-tien-tze I had to quit my companions, who are as full
+of brightness, intelligence, and culture as they are of goodness.
+Mr. Williams walked with me through thawing snow the first eight
+miles to the great market-place of Shang-wa-li-tze, where, not
+being market day, the only living creature was a deformed cat.
+I had excellent cooking, and we made long journeys, accomplishing
+thirty miles on some days. The snow soon disappeared, and
+though the roads were slimy, straw shoes, grippers, and the cold,
+keen air enabled me to walk a good deal, which was very
+pleasant.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At the first midday halt there was considerable confusion, for a
+young married woman had committed suicide with opium, and
+was lying apparently dead. In great fear of something—I know
+not what—the villagers appealed to me for remedies, which I
+succeeded in forcing down her throat, and also put plasters of hot
+vinegar and cayenne pepper behind her ears. I was proceeding
+to put them on the soles of her feet, but there were no soles, only
+a crumple of deformed toes, a cleft, and a heel. Then I tried for
+the calves of the legs, but there were no calves, only a bone, a few
+muscles, and a great bag of crinkled skin. I was more fortunate
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_297'>297</span>in finding that she had a back to her neck! I was told that it was
+a quarrel with her mother-in-law which had driven her to suicide.
+I had a bad quarter of an hour before she became conscious, for,
+had she died, the opium would have been acquitted, and the
+blame would have been laid on the foreigner. When she came
+sufficiently to herself to be herself, she was demented with rage,
+and tore and scratched everybody near her. I did not think that
+her husband was interested in her recovery.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p297_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>ENTRANCE TO A MARKET-PLACE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>An idea, though possibly only a local one, is, that when a person
+commits suicide by opium, the spirit is refused entrance at the
+gate of Hades, because it has not completed its natural term of
+life, and it seeks, by inducing another to do the same, to transfer
+its crime to that person.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_298'>298</span>The relations showed me the courtesy of offering me food,
+which I reluctantly ate out of coarse, unglazed basins: a strip
+or two of fat pork, some bean curd floating in grey sauce, some
+black beans, tasting like rotten cheese, some small onions, pickled
+dark brown, some rice, mixed with chopped cabbage, and some
+chopped capsicum.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I had previously eaten bean curd, and old eggs which are an
+expensive delicacy, and formed part of a Chinese dinner given to
+me at the English Legation at Seoul. At the next village I saw
+the process of preparation. Ducks’ eggs alone are used, and
+they must be quite fresh. They are steeped in a solution
+of lime, with the addition of salt. The lime penetrates the shell
+and turns the white into a dark, bottle-green jelly, while the yolk
+becomes hard and nearly black. After this the egg is wrapped
+up in clay, which is dried by gentle heat. It will then keep a
+year or more. Such eggs are very good, indeed they are one
+of the few Chinese delicacies which I can eat with equanimity.
+The variety of food eaten by all classes in China is amazing. It
+would require four or five pages to put down what I have myself
+seen in the eating-houses and food shops on this journey.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After leaving Sin-tien-tze, I entered a richer and more prosperous
+region, with a very productive soil, much mineral wealth,
+and important industries both in towns and villages; and the
+food shops reflected the prosperity. There was fresh pork
+everywhere. Every village seemed to have killed a pig that
+morning. In most places bread made of wheaten flour was to
+be got in the form of dumplings, leavened, but steamed, not
+baked. These make good toast. Bean curd is everywhere
+also, and is universally liked. It is pure white, as if made
+with milk, and resembles in insipidity unflavoured <i>blanc mange</i>,
+made with Carrageen moss. There is scarcely a hamlet in
+which it is not sold. The beans are ground between two millstones,
+the upper one having a hole in the centre. Into
+this the beans are poured along with water, and the thick white
+cream which results from the grinding is caught in a trough
+below. Plenty of gypsum and some salt are added, the cream
+is boiled, the froth is thrown away, and the residue, after undergoing
+considerable squeezing in a cloth, is poured into flat, deep
+trays to set; when cold it is cut up into bricks. Every traveller
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_299'>299</span>in China, Japan, and Korea makes acquaintance with this preparation.
+Beans are enormously used, fresh, and made into
+patties, and preserved in equal parts of brine and syrup, when
+they taste like hazel nuts.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Patties, or pies, are universal, and the itinerant pieman
+frequents all markets and places where men congregate. Vegetable
+patties of beans, chopped cucumbers, vegetable eggs, and
+sweet potato are much liked, and so are patties of pork, and salt
+fish, and frog, but the last are somewhat of a luxury. Then there
+are cakes of wheaten flour containing chopped and fried onion,
+or a spoonful of treacle, and cakes of ground millet, with sugar-candy
+or scorched millet on the top, and the same pieman often
+sells bags of popcorn, melon seeds, and pieces of sugarcane.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Water-melon seeds ought rather to be classed with amusements
+than with food. As in Persia, they are enormously used; it is
+difficult to write consumed. They descend to the poorest class,
+but chiefly on holidays. Their use implies leisure and sociability.
+I never saw a man eating them alone, except on a journey.
+They are a national custom. Where our men would enjoy themselves
+drinking wine or spirits, the Chinese play with melon seeds.
+Eating them seems a masculine amusement, and the higher a
+Chinese is in rank the more melon seeds he consumes. One dare
+not speculate on what the consumption of the Son of Heaven
+must be. Doubtless they serve the useful purpose of helping
+to supply the system with fatty matter.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In some parts of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> water-melons appear to be grown
+entirely for their seeds. I have seen the cooling, delicious pulp
+thrown on the road, while the seeds are carefully preserved, and,
+as in Tibet the proprietors of apricot orchards allowed me to eat as
+many apricots as I liked, provided that I returned them the stones,
+so I have been allowed to eat melons, if I returned the seeds.
+Huc writes that on the rivers “huge junks may be seen loaded
+entirely” with these “deplorable futilities.” I do not pretend
+to such a remarkable vision, but at good inns I have seen parties
+of six or eight well-dressed merchants, with carefully-tended,
+pointed finger-nails an inch long, spending three or four hours
+in cracking melon seeds, plate after plate rapidly disappearing.
+Piles of shells of melon seeds some inches high often greeted
+me in inn rooms. Every wayside restaurant sells them. Groups
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_300'>300</span>of children sit apathetically in village streets eating them. They
+are served before, with, and after every meal, with tea and wine,
+and at all social gatherings. Men crack and eat them while
+they are bargaining or discussing business, or are travelling in
+sedan chairs. And the dexterity and rapidity with which they
+extract the small kernel from the tough shell is worthy of squirrels
+and apes. This consumption of melon seeds is a feature of the
+whole empire, and I really believe is, as a pleasure, second only to
+“foreign smoke.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Our ideas as to Chinese food are, on the whole, considerably
+astray. It is true that the rich spend much in pampering their
+appetites, that the foolish extravagance of providing meats,
+fruits, and vegetables, out of season at “dinner parties” prevails
+among them as among us, and that such delicacies as canine
+cutlets and hams, cat fricassees, bird’s-nest soup—a luxury so
+costly that it makes its appearance on foreign tables—stewed
+<i>holothuria</i>, and fricassee of snails, worms, or snakes are to be seen at
+ceremonious feasts. I have been myself in dog and cat restaurants
+in Canton, but they are only frequented by the extravagant.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I think in addition to the enormous variety in Chinese
+articles of diet, multiplied a hundredfold by culinary art, the
+food is wholesome and well cooked, and that the cooking is
+cleanly, steaming being a very favourite method. Cleanly cooking
+and wholesome and excellent meals are often produced in
+dark and unsavoury surroundings, and those foreigners who travel
+much in the interior learn to find Chinese food palatable. My
+chief objection to it is the amount of vegetable oil used, and the
+prevalent flavour of garlic. The bulb well applied is an excellent
+condiment, but it is startling to meet with it in unexpected
+places, and everywhere.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Rice, wheat, Italian milled and maize are the grains chiefly
+eaten, but rice is the staff of life, and is regarded as absolutely
+indispensable. But it is not eaten by itself, even by the poorest,
+but mixed with fried cabbage, or with such dainty relishes as
+rotten beans, or putrid mustard, or soy, or Chili sauce. Among
+common expressions, to “take a meal” is “to eat rice,” and the
+salutation equivalent to “How do you do?” is literally “Have
+you eaten rice?”<a id='r44'></a><a href='#f44' class='c013'><sup>[44]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_301'>301</span>The Chinese list of culinary vegetables about quadruples ours,
+and with the exception of rice they are the great result of garden
+cultivation and heavy manuring, some of the root crops receiving
+individually at stated intervals a supply of liquid manure.
+Cucumbers, melons, and radishes weighing a pound each, are
+produced in enormous quantities. More than twenty sorts of
+peas and beans are cultivated—one monstrous bean being eaten
+with its soft squashy pod. Leaves are important articles of diet,
+beginning with the opium leaf. There are pig weed (<i>Chenopodium</i>),
+sow thistle (<i>Sonchus</i>), ginger, radishes, mustard, clover,
+shepherd’s purse, succory, sweet basil, lettuce, celery, dandelion,
+spinach, purslane, artemisia, amaranthus, tacca, and numberless
+others which have no English names. In addition to carrots,
+turnips, parsnips, Jerusalem artichokes, sweet potatoes, enormously
+used, and “Irish potatoes” increasingly grown, they have aquatic
+edible roots, among others the big root of the <i>Nelumbium</i>, water-caltrops,
+and water-chestnuts.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Onions, garlic, leeks, scallions, and chives are consumed both by
+rich and poor, and it is seldom possible to be out of their odour.
+Cabbage, broccoli, kale, colewort and cress are eaten enormously,
+both fresh and preserved, as well as musk and water-melons,
+pumpkins, squashes, gourds, tomatoes, and brinjals, besides many
+eccentric pods, of the names of which I have not a notion. One
+of the most delicious of all Chinese vegetables is the young shoot
+of the bamboo, which looks like huge asparagus, and is eaten
+boiled. The Chinese consume enormous quantities of pickled
+cabbage and onions, as well as candied roots and fruits, and others
+preserved in syrup. Even the common potato is dignified by this
+treatment.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the absence of butter and oily foods, the use of much oil in
+cooking is a physical necessity, but the European palate would
+require a long education before it could enjoy the strong flavours
+of some of the vegetable oils, such as castor oil, sesamum, and
+ground nut. Lard and pork fat are used also.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Very little land in the Yangtze Valley is used for the rearing
+of animals for food. Pork is the principal meat used, and I
+suppose that every family possesses a pig. Beef is rarely obtainable,
+except where there are Mohammedans. I never saw mutton
+west of Ichang, or, indeed, sheep till I reached the mountains.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_302'>302</span>Pork, fowls, geese, and ducks really represent animal food over
+much of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>. If young cats and dogs are bred for the
+table they are fed on rice. Locusts, grasshoppers, silkworms and
+grubs are eaten, being fried till they are crisp. In some cities
+human milk is sold for the diet of aged persons, great faith being
+placed in its nutritive qualities.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Undoubtedly much of the grain, especially millet, which is
+grown between Sin-tien-tze and Mien-chuh is used for the distillation
+of spirits. There are no vines in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, so what we
+call wine is unknown. There are water-white spirits distilled
+from both millet and barley, and a sort of beer like the Japanese
+<i>sake</i> made from rice, from which spirits can be distilled. I never
+saw a drunken man in fifteen months of Chinese travelling, or
+heard mirth of which strong drink was the inspiration. Men
+take spirits in very small quantities, and almost invariably with
+their food. They never drink anything cold, which safeguards
+them from the worst results of the abominably contaminated
+water. They drink plain hot water, the water in which rice has
+been boiled, tea, and decoctions of various leaves.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have dwelt so long upon food, because for two hours of every
+day I had nothing to do but study it and inferior cooking as well,
+for several months, and saw infinite varieties of food in the
+different parts of the province at different seasons during my
+long journey. On the whole, except in times of scarcity, the
+Chinese is a fairly well-fed person.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The journey of March 23 was along the top of a ridge over
+rocky ground, and along limestone terraces incapable of cultivation.
+There were no villages, and few houses, but we passed through
+two market-places of large size. The country, as seen from the
+ridge, is all low, undulating ranges, sprouting up now and then
+into conical protuberances, till suddenly, from an altitude of 2300
+feet, there is a view of a narrow valley and an extraordinary
+bend of the Chia-ling. Then comes an abrupt and difficult descent
+of 800 feet, on ledges of rock and steep flights of broken stairs,
+and at its foot the small town of Mao-erh-tiao, with a very fine
+temple lately restored. Boats of twenty tons, salt laden, were
+lying in the clear, blue-green water along the bank. It was a
+delightful day’s journey, the sky very blue, the air dry and as keen
+as a knife, and I reached a fairly good inn where the curiosity
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_303'>303</span>was not overpowering. The coolies were, if possible, cheerier
+and better than those from whom I had reluctantly parted,
+and as they were not opium smokers they were able to feed
+themselves well, and thought nothing of travelling thirty miles
+a day at a good pace.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p303_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>AUTHOR’S ARRIVAL AT A CHINESE INN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_305'>305</span>Other halcyon days followed, of keen air, light without heat,
+and country which, if not actually pretty, led one continually
+to believe that it was about to become so. The plumed bamboo
+and orange and pommeloe groves had vanished, and on the high
+altitudes which the road pursues, which are very barren and rocky,
+there was almost no cultivation, and on one day’s journey of
+twenty-three miles we only met four people, and passed eight
+houses and a small market-place.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Whenever the elevation was lower, as at times where the road
+runs along the edges of limestone cliffs, there are deep valleys
+well wooded and cultivated, but the upland soil is very poor and
+bears scanty crops. What is called a road is only a narrow footpath,
+winding along the edges of wheat fields, through rocky
+clefts or ferny defiles, so narrow that the chair continually bumped
+both sides, or under cedars or other big trees, over the tops of
+which trailing red and white roses have grown, sending down
+streamers, then in the pink flush of their spring leafage, over
+the road. This beautiful climber, which grows with prodigious
+rapidity, also flourishes in Korea.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were pretty little bits, sweet, restful, rural scenes, great
+breezy sweeps, and freedom; no calling of “Foreign devil”
+and “Foreign dog.” The people were quite disposed to be
+friendly. On arriving one afternoon at a specially lofty hamlet,
+having learnt much caution as to the use of my camera, I asked
+if I might “make a picture” of a mill worked by a blindfolded
+buffalo-cow, as we had not any such mills in my country, and
+they were quite willing, and stopped the cow at the exact place
+I indicated. They were friendly enough to take me to another
+mill, at which two women grind, turning the upper stone by
+means of poles working in holes. The Chinese use a great deal of
+wheat flour; it can be purchased at all markets and large villages,
+and I never used any other. It is not a good colour, and owing
+to some defect in the millstones one is apt to be surprised by
+grits. After seeing the mills I showed the people a number of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_306'>306</span>my photographs taken <i>en route</i>, to show them that I was not
+doing anything evil or hurtful, but they said, though quite good-naturedly,
+that it was “foreign magic.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At the same hamlet I got a room in a new inn which, though
+on the road-level on one side, was two storeys above a winding
+stream and some undulating agricultural country on the other.
+On that side it actually had a window and a view. The boards
+were new, and though the chinks were wide and the air which
+entered was keen, I congratulated myself heartily on such unusually
+pleasant surroundings. This was premature. When the
+bustle of unpacking was over, noises all too familiar made me look
+through the chinks of the floor, and I saw that I was over a
+pigsty the size of my room, inhabited by nine large, black sows.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p306_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>AN OX MILL.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was the only night of my journey on which I had no sleep,
+and my servant, who had the next room to mine, said that he
+did not sleep after eleven, for the groaning, grunting, routing,
+and quarrelling were incessant. I had shared a room with pigs
+twice on the journey, but they were quiet by comparison.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_307'>307</span>Looking through my floor at daylight, I saw that eighteen young
+pigs had been added to the family. This sleepless night was a
+bad preparation for an early start, and a long and very cold day’s
+journey.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The road leaves Tien-kia-miao, a remarkably clean and
+attractive village, by a level bridge on twelve stone piers, and
+soon rises again to barren altitudes, looking down on well-cultivated
+valleys wooded with cedars. Along every rocky path men were
+crowding with their wares to a neighbouring market, bamboo hats
+and baskets, sugarcane, fowls, and straw shoes being the principal
+wares. It was some time since I had seen any foreign cottons
+exposed for sale in these markets.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p307_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A HAND MILL.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>The soil of the region I had traversed for a fortnight, except
+in the basin of Paoning, is poor and unfitted for rice, and the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_308'>308</span>people are chiefly hardworking peasant farmers and coolies.
+Without having any mission from associated or dissociated
+Chambers of Commerce, my interest in the subject led me to
+make continual inquiries into the local trade and the requirements
+of the people, and something as to the latter was to be learned in
+conversation with the women.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Apart from the general question of weight and make, the
+general verdict was that the widths of our cottons are wrong,
+and that widths above fifteen inches cut to waste in making
+Chinese clothing. Another complaint was that our goods, put
+up as they are in wrappers intended to impose on “semi-civilised”
+people, constantly make a display of colours which in China
+are “unlucky.” Another was that the printed cottons, besides
+offending in this respect, are coarse in pattern, colouring, and style,
+more fitted for outside barbarians than for the refined tastes of a
+civilised people! If these, which may appear minor matters, were
+attended to, there is probably an opening for both our white
+and printed cottons among the <i>middle and upper classes of Western
+China</i>. But I am not a convert to the roseate views which many
+people take of the enormous potentialities for our trade in
+<span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> if the means of communication are improved by
+steam on the Yangtze and other methods. It is not that our
+cottons are too dear, but that the great majority of the people
+don’t want them at any price. That is, that the strong, heavy,
+native cottons woven by hand, wear four times as long, and even
+when they are reduced to rags serve several useful purposes.
+A coolie will not buy a material which will only last a year, when,
+for the same price or less, he can get one which will last three, or
+even four years.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_309'>309</span>
+<img src='images/p309_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>THE TA-LU.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Coolies dispense with all clothing but cotton drawers in summer,
+and these must be strong to resist hard wear; and they say that
+our cottons are too cold for winter. This is obvious, for a yard of
+Chinese home-spun cotton cloth, fifteen inches wide, weighs over
+twice as much as a yard of British calico over thirty inches wide,
+and resists the wear and tear of hard manual labour and the
+ofttimes profuse perspiration of the labourer. More than two
+millions sterling worth of raw cotton and Sha-shih heavy home-spun
+cottons are supposed to be imported into <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>
+annually, just because the wear requires, and must continue to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_311'>311</span>require, the heavy make. Later, in Sin-tu Hsien, a prosperous
+town of 15,000 inhabitants, twelve miles north of Cheng-tu, I saw
+some Japanese cotton goods, fifteen inches wide, made on looms,
+which the alert cotton-spinners of Osaka had adapted for the
+Korean market, and which were of an equally heavy make with
+the Sha-shih goods, and scarcely to be distinguished from home-spun
+cloth. The shopkeeper highly approved of these goods, and
+said that if he could get them there would be a large demand
+for them. Possibly British “workhouse sheeting” of the same
+width might meet with similar approbation.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At the hamlet of Lu-fang, where I was stopped by an official
+with a card from the district mandarin, who kept me waiting an
+hour while he copied my passport on a stone and provided fresh
+runners, the by-road by which I had journeyed for some days
+joined the Ta-lu, the great Imperial road from Pekin to Cheng-tu.
+I travelled along this westwards to Mien-chow. A thousand years
+ago it must have been a noble work. It is nominally sixteen feet
+wide, the actual flagged roadway measuring eight feet. The
+bridges are built solidly of stone. The ascents and descents are
+made by stone stairs. More than a millennium ago an emperor
+planted cedars at measured distances on both sides, the beautiful
+red-stemmed, weeping cedar of the province. Many of these have
+attained great size, several which I measured being from fourteen
+to sixteen feet in circumference five feet from the ground, and they
+actually darken the road.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The first ascent from Lu-fang under this solemn shade is truly
+grand, nearly equalling the cryptomeria avenues which lead up to
+the shrines of Nik-ko, Japan. Each tree bears the Imperial
+seal, and the district magistrates count them annually. Many
+have fallen, many have hollow trunks, and there are great breaks
+without any at all. Still, where they do exist, the effect is
+magnificent. This road, like much else in China, is badly out of
+repair, many of its great flagstones having disappeared altogether.
+There was a great deal of traffic on it, and not a few saddle horses
+and mules were tripping easily up and down its stone staircases.
+It was quite cheerful to be once more on a travelled highway
+abounding in large villages and towns, with good inns and much
+prosperity.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These were days of delightful travelling without any drawbacks.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_312'>312</span>The weather was beautiful, the air sharp, and the people
+well-behaved. There was no fatigue or annoyance, the accommodation
+was fair, and there was literally nothing to complain
+of; the travelling was fit for a Sybarite. The soil is rich, and
+enormous quantities of opium were grown; indeed, in some long
+valleys there was no other crop. Wu-lien, where I slept one
+night, is the cleanest and prettiest little Chinese town that I
+saw—prettily situated, with a widish main street, good inns, fair
+shops, and singular cleanliness, and the people were very mannerly.
+It has a level stone bridge, supported on twelve stone
+piers decorated with finely-carved dragons’ heads.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the road from Wu-lien to the large town of Tze-tung
+Hsien there is some very pretty country, rich in agricultural
+wealth, and growing much opium, which unfortunately in good
+years pays better than any other crop, and is easy of transit.
+Wheat, which was only two or three inches above the ground
+on the high ridges, was bursting into ear in the valleys, and peas
+and beans were in their fragrant beauty. There was much pink
+and white mistiness of peach and plum, and yellow fluffiness of
+mimosa, and the people were astir and alert, performing spring
+pilgrimages to popular shrines, men and women in separate
+companies.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are two very fine and ancient temples of brown cedar
+to the gods of Literature and War in a cedar wood on the road,
+with most picturesque hilly surroundings, a lovely spot, and the
+tides of pilgrimage set strongly towards them. The God of War
+there as elsewhere is very attractive to women, as may be seen
+any day in his great temple in the native city of Shanghai.
+Perpetual incense burns on these altars, and the priests claim
+the round-numbered antiquity of two thousand years for the
+temples.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There were very many companies of from ten to thirty well-dressed
+women on the road, some of whom had hobbled on their
+crippled-looking feet for fifteen miles, and were going back the
+same day; and many large bands of men, each led by a man
+with a gong, carrying a small table with incense sticks burning
+on it, the procession followed by another coolie loaded with red
+candles, large and small, with thick paper wicks, incense sticks,
+and red perforated paper for the God of War. His temple was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_313'>313</span>crowded, and dense clouds of incense rolled from the open front
+into the atmosphere of heavenly blue. The God of Literature
+is chiefly worshipped by the <i>literati</i>, and there were only a few
+sedan chairs with their occupants and attendants at his splendid
+shrine.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Ta-lu failed to keep up its reputation. Its great flags were
+tilted up or down, in mud-holes, or had disappeared; its noble
+avenue was spasmodic and often non-existent for miles, leading
+to the prophecy that it would disappear altogether, as it did.
+But the vanished grandeur was made up for by the extraordinary
+traffic—baggage coolies, chair-bearers, sedan chairs, passengers
+on foot and on horseback, varied at times by marriage and
+funeral processions, or batches of criminals tied together by
+their queues, being led to justice. Of the numbers of weight-carrying
+coolies, divested of the upper garment, on the road,
+there were very few free from hard tumours or callosities on
+both shoulders, and many of them have deep, cracked wounds
+in their heels. A man carries a load five miles before he earns
+a bowl of rice.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At intervals there were small huts, each sporting a military
+flag, and with halberds or lances with silk pennons leaning
+up against them. Sometimes these were in a village, but
+occasionally the flag, which is very showy, having a pennon
+end, and seen afar off, was only supported by a heap of stones
+on the roadside. There were no soldiers in uniform, but possibly
+the two or three peasants lying by every flag were men in mufti.
+Sometimes boys were carrying firearms of an ancient type, bows
+and arrows, or heavy swords. The people said that the flags
+were to frighten the rebels, and that the men were watching for
+them, but the region seemed in a state of profound peace.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The peasants’ coffins on the road were those of the poorest
+class, and were carried at a run, merely wrapped up in blue
+cotton. A mandarin’s coffin on its way to Mien-chow was
+draped with blue kilted silk, tasselled at the four corners, and
+was carried by twenty men in red-tasselled hats, slung on a heavy
+beam, with a boldly carved dragon, an emblem of official position,
+at both ends. The coffin was surmounted (as were those of the
+peasants) by a tethered live cock. A cheap coffin costs from five
+to ten dollars, and from that up to two thousand. There is much
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_314'>314</span>trade done on the Chia-ling in coffin wood and coffins. I saw
+many junks loaded with both.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At one place in China, where there was no inn, I slept in a
+room with a coffin which had been unburied for five years, because
+the geomancers had not decided on a lucky site or date
+for the interment, and for the whole time incense had been
+burned before it morning and evening. Of course if there is
+a family burial-place the services of the geomancer are seldom
+required except for the date of burial.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The coffin of the mandarin on the Ta-lu was not on its way to
+interment, therefore the usual procession was dispensed with,
+but nearer Tze-tung Hsien we met a large funeral for
+which we had to leave the road.<a id='r45'></a><a href='#f45' class='c013'><sup>[45]</sup></a> On this occasion the corpse
+of a well-to-do merchant, unburied for a year, was being borne
+to the grave.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In order to prevent any disagreeable consequences from interment
+being delayed for months or years, the coffin-boards are
+three or four inches thick, the body is covered with quicklime or is
+laid on a bed of lime or cotton, and afterwards the edges of the
+lid are closed with cement, and if the body is to remain in a
+dwelling-house, the whole is made air-tight by being covered with
+Ning-po varnish. A coffin is sometimes retained in a house
+by a defaulting tenant to prevent an ejectment for rent, and it
+is occasionally attached by creditors, in order to compel the
+relations to raise money to release it. So strong is the feeling
+in China regarding suitable burial, that a son if he has no other
+means will sell himself into slavery to provide the expenses, and
+burial clubs and charitable societies for providing the destitute
+with seemly funerals are numerous.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On this occasion a band of music came first, then the monstrous
+coffin on a bier carried by at least forty men in red coats and
+scarves, covered by a canopy embroidered in gold thread, on
+which was tethered a living fowl. Behind came the ancestral
+tablet in a sedan chair, the sacrifice, and some red tablets, on
+which were inscribed in gold the offices held by the deceased,
+followed by the male mourners dressed in white. The eldest son,
+apparently sinking with grief, though it was a year old, was
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_315'>315</span>supported by two men. Women and children followed, wailing
+at intervals. A man preceded the whole, strewing paper money
+on the ground to buy the goodwill of such malignant or predatory
+spirits as might be loafing around.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One man was loaded with crackers, another carried the libations
+which were to be poured out, and the rear of the procession, which
+was ten minutes in passing, was brought up by a great concourse
+of friends and neighbours, and a great number of bamboo and
+paper models, admirably executed, and many of them life-size, of
+horses with handsome saddles and trappings, mules carrying
+burdens, sedan chairs, houses, rich clothing, beds, tables, chairs,
+and all that the spirit can be supposed to want in the shadowy
+world to which it has gone. These, with a quantity of tinsel
+money, are burned at the grave, the tablet and sacrifice are
+carried back, the former to be placed in the ancestral hall, the
+latter to be feasted on or given to the poor. The ceremonies of
+the interment, as my readers are aware, only initiate the long
+years of ceremonial with which the dead are honoured in
+China.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_316'>316</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXVII.<br> <span class='c012'>TZE-TUNG HSIEN TO KUAN HSIEN</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>An hour after leaving the great temples of Ta-miao, with their
+throngs of pilgrims and the remarkable friendliness of the
+people, we came upon the walls, gates, and towers of Tze-tung
+Hsien, the approach to which is denoted by a graceful eleven-storeyed
+pagoda on a neighbouring hill. I had not been through
+a large walled city since the riot at Liang-shan, and I had
+to brace myself up for entering this one, which has a reputed
+population of 27,000 people. The inhabitants were very orderly
+however, and though the streets were greatly crowded, the people
+looked pleasant. The Liang-shan riot is known to all the
+mandarins, and obviously they have no wish for a repetition of
+it, and I adhere to my belief that they are in most, if not in all
+cases, able to prevent attacks on foreigners.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Tze-tung Hsien is a clean and prosperous-looking city, with
+wide streets lined by good shops, in which the goods are more
+displayed than is usual. It is surrounded with well-cultivated
+country, and good country houses, and trades in vegetable oils,
+cottons, and raw and spun silk, some of the strong, coarse “oak
+silk” being brought in for manufacture. Oil is made from the
+seeds of the <i>aleurites cordata</i>, rape seed, pea nuts, and opium
+seed. Opium oil bears the highest price. The town has a stirring
+aspect, and its walls and gateways are in good repair. Outside,
+the Fou River is crossed by a noble stone bridge of nine arches
+with fine stone balustrades, carrying a flagged roadway eighteen
+feet broad. The centre arch is thirty feet high. It is the finest
+bridge that I had then seen in China. A grand temple outside
+the walls, and an elaborately carved triple-storeyed <i>pai-fang</i>,
+complete the attractions of this thriving city.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_317'>317</span>
+<img src='images/p317_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>WOMAN REELING SILK.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the western route from Tze-tung Hsien the country becomes
+increasingly fertile, and the road more dilapidated. The cedars
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_319'>319</span>have disappeared, and the pavement is only four feet in width.
+The traffic in oil, cotton, and tobacco was great, and crowds of
+pilgrims, very respectable looking, with gongs, incense tables, and
+offerings, were trudging to the Ta-miao temples. They said that
+they were making offerings to the God of War for having driven
+the “barbarian rebels” into the sea! There were funerals, too,
+and a train of twelve led horses, each carrying a red flag, with
+on it a mandarin’s name and official titles. These were heavily
+laden with luggage, and in front there was the mandarin’s coffin,
+with a live cock upon it, carried by forty men.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The prevalent impression left by this great road is that of toil
+and poverty. Rice had risen considerably in the previous three
+weeks, which meant to many millions that they would never get
+a full meal. The region I had entered is one of the most crowded
+parts of the Red Basin and of China, and I often asked myself,
+“Why are there so many Chinese?” They seem to come into
+the world just to bury their fathers. That night again I slept in
+a room with a huge coffin, which had been waiting interment for
+some years, and incense was regularly burned before it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On March 28th I reached Mien-chow, a city of about 60,000
+souls, the largest that I had yet seen in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>. The journey
+from Paoning Fu had been most propitious in all respects, and
+the fine weather had come at last. I entered the city by a bridge
+of boats over the Fou, a great tributary of the Chia-ling. Mien-chow
+has a curious geographical situation. The Fou basin, in
+which it stands, though north of Chengtu and nearer the water
+parting, is on a lower level than the basin of the Min, from which
+it is divided by a low ridge. So Mien-chow is actually 250 feet
+below Chengtu, its altitude being 1350 feet.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is a well-built and clean town, with a fine wall, and a river front
+well protected by a handsome bund of cobbles and concrete, with
+eight slanting faces. The Fou is navigable, and when the water is
+high, boats can descend to Chungking in six or seven days.
+There is an enormous wheelbarrow traffic from Mien-chow to the
+capital, principally of sugar and tobacco. The busy and crowded
+streets are lined with shops, in which every conceivable article in
+iron is displayed, from surgical instruments, to spades, ploughshares,
+and articles in wrought iron. There are fully half a mile
+of such shops. The great trade of Mien-chow, however, is in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_320'>320</span>silk, and much cotton is woven in its neighbourhood. The
+shops display German and Japanese knick-knacks, foreign yarns,
+and printed cottons, besides Kansuh furs, brocades, silks, temple
+furniture, and drugs. The shops, with their varied, and in many
+cases costly, contents show that the neighbourhood has great
+purchasing power.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The passage through the thronged streets took nearly an hour,
+but all was quiet. I was not allowed to go to an inn, but was
+most kindly received at the Church Mission House, a dark and
+not agreeably situated house in a crowded Chinese quarter, inhabited
+by the two ladies who, after four years of patience and
+difficulties, have effected a permanent lodgment in what is well
+known as a hostile city. They spent the first two years at an inn,
+and so little were they thought of, that the mandarin, when urged
+to take some action against them, replied, “What does it matter?
+they are only women!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>During this time all their attempts to rent a house failed, because
+the officials threatened to beat and imprison anyone letting
+a house to a foreigner; but a fortnight before my visit a man
+ruined by opium smoking let them have for ten years the place
+into which they had just moved, close to the great temple of Confucius.
+Access to it is through an area inhabited by Chinese—a
+forlorn, dirty yard—and through an inner yard full of Chinese,
+who seemed to be always gambling or smoking opium, a third
+yard being the newly-acquired property, from which some of the
+Chinese had not yet cleared out. The two last courts are rented
+by the Church Missionary Society, and have subsequently been
+improved and made habitable, and “The Emily Clayton
+Memorial,” a dispensary with a surgical ward under Dr. Squibb,
+a qualified English doctor, has been opened in the outer of the
+two compounds.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was interesting to see what missionaries in China have to
+undergo in the initial stage of residence in a Chinese city. The
+house was utterly out of repair—dirty, broken—half the paper
+torn off the windows, and the eaves so deep and low that daylight
+could scarcely enter. There was an open guest-hall in the
+middle used constantly for classes and services; endless parties
+of Chinese passed in and out all day long, poking holes in the
+remaining windows, opening every door that was not locked,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_322'>322</span>taking everything they could lay hands on; and the noise was
+only stilled from four to six a.m.—men shouting, babies screaming,
+dogs barking, squibs and crackers going off, temple bells, gongs,
+and drums beating—no rest, quiet, or privacy.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p322_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>THE REV. J. HEYWOOD HORSBURGH, M.A., IN TRAVELLING DRESS.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_323'>323</span>There were two services in the guest-hall on Sunday, conducted
+by Mr. Heywood Horsburgh, the superintendent of the
+Mission, and several classes for women also, but all in a distracting
+babel—men playing cards outside the throng, men and women
+sitting for a few minutes, some laughing scornfully, others talking
+in loud tones, some lighting their pipes, and a very few really
+interested. This is not the work which many who go out as
+missionaries on a wave of enthusiasm expect, but this is what
+these good people undergo day after day and month after month.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The place where the two ladies spent two years, consisted of
+a guest-room at an inn in one of the most crowded of the city
+streets, a living-room through it, a kitchen through that, and for
+a sleeping-room, a loft above the living-room, reached by a ladder,
+just under the unlined tiles. There was no light in any room,
+except from a paper window, into the semi-dark passage. The
+floors were mud; wood, water, charcoal, and all things had to be
+carried in and out through the living-room; no privacy was
+possible; the temperature hung at about 100° for weeks in summer;
+there were the ceaseless visits of crowds of ill-bred Chinese women,
+staying for hours at a time; and without and in the inn, seldom
+pausing, there was the unimaginable din of a big Chinese city.
+Under these circumstances their love and patience had won
+twelve women to be Christians.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mr. and Mrs. Cormack, of the China Inland Mission, and a
+thirteen months’ baby, arrived before I left, he very ill of malarial
+fever. They were swept out of Chengtu in the riots, losing all
+their possessions, and with this infant had been moving for seven
+months, having lastly been driven out of Kansuh by the Mohammedan
+rebellion. During the whole seven months they had
+never been in one place more than twelve days. It is a grave
+question whether married men and married women ought to
+be placed in regions of precarious security. Mr. Heywood
+Horsburgh’s house at Kuan Hsien had just been attacked and
+bored into by a number of burglars, and between the terror
+caused by this, and the hostile cries in the streets, which they
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_324'>324</span>understood too well, his delicate, sensitive young daughters, one
+of them twelve years old, had become so thoroughly nervous that
+the only possible cure was to take them home. I saw several
+ladies in Western China who, after escaping from mobs with
+their young children, were affected in the same way.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mr. and Mrs. Horsburgh and I left Mien-chow on March 31st,
+a grey, dull day, but clear. We left the Ta-lu and travelled by
+infamous roads, often only a few inches wide, frequently on the
+top of rice dykes. Great mountains, snow-crested, spurs of the
+Tibetan ranges, loomed through the clouds to the north-west,
+while we journeyed through the eastern portion of the great
+Chengtu plain, the rich, well-watered soil green with barley and
+opium, and beautiful with miles of rape, largely grown for oil,
+rolling in canary yellow waves before a pleasant breeze. Large
+farmhouses had reappeared, farming hamlets, and big temples, all
+surrounded by fine trees. There are frequent water-mills of a
+very peculiar construction, said by experts to be the oldest form
+in the world, the wheel being placed horizontally just above the
+lower level of the water.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Before we left the Ta-lu, the great highway to the capital, the
+wheelbarrow traffic was enormous. These “machines,” with a
+big wooden wheel placed so near the centre of gravity as to throw
+the weight of the load as little as possible on the driver’s shoulders,
+carry goods on platforms on either side and behind the wheel,
+which is solid. One man can propel five hundredweight. Heavy
+loads have one man to propel and another to drag them. They
+move in long files, their not altogether unmelodious creak being
+heard afar off, and the stone road is deeply grooved by their
+incessant passage.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_325'>325</span>
+<img src='images/p325_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>WATER MILL, CHENGTU PLAIN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>After two pleasant days’ journey we reached Mien-chuh Hsien,
+a town of 50,000 people, according to the statement of the magistrate’s
+secretary. It is not a handsome town, but it has a beautiful
+modern bridge over a branch of the Fou, of six stone arches, a
+fine roof, iron balustrades, and a central roofed tower. It is a
+busy and prosperous city, with many fine temples and grand
+mountain views. The production of paper, especially coloured
+paper, is its speciality, but it also manufactures largely wood and
+horn combs, indigo, and fine wheaten flour. Much salt is made
+in the neighbourhood, and in the hills thirty <i>li</i> off there are coal
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_328'>328</span>mines, producing coal which burns with a clear white flame, and
+little ash. There, as elsewhere, the missionaries have introduced
+English articles of utility, which have “caught on” among the
+Chinese.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p328_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>BRIDGE AT MIEN-CHUH.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_329'>329</span>A cordial welcome awaited us at the Church Missionary
+Society’s house. The initial stage, as I saw it at Mien-chow,
+was passed, and we were received into as trim a little home as
+one could see anywhere, or wish to see. Turning from the street,
+where the people did not molest even by curiosity, down a narrow
+alley and through a door, down a passage on one side of which
+is the guest-hall, we entered a small and very bright compound,
+cheery with pots of primulas and chrysanthemums, with five
+small cottage rooms round it, with paper windows, but light,
+cheerful, and homelike, with simple daintinesses, and a bright
+coal fire in a quaint corner fire-place. The place is just a few
+Chinese cottages, formerly used as a gambling den. Mr. and Mrs.
+Phillips, who have transmogrified it chiefly by their own handiwork,
+had only lately been able to rent it owing to the opposition
+of the mandarins, who can bring many threats and much pressure
+to bear on persons who would otherwise be willing to lease
+property to foreigners.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The anti-Christian element everywhere seems a feeble one in
+the opposition. It is to foreigners, simply as such, that the
+objection is made, as “child-eaters” pre-eminently; and in Mien-chuh
+the people said that the missionaries wanted the houses
+for hellish purposes, and that they would dig under them and
+make a way to England, and that foreign soldiers would come
+by it and take their lands, and that they wanted lock-up rooms
+in which to hide the golden cocks which they dug out of the
+mountains by night!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I left Mien-chuh with Mrs. Horsburgh on a somewhat unlucky
+journey, still travelling over the Chengtu plain in a westerly
+direction. The time of year for theatricals, which are a great
+passion with the Chinese, had begun. There is a large temple
+outside Mien-chuh, with the usual adjunct of a stage, richly
+decorated, with a massive canopy roof, for the “religious drama.”
+But on this day, being the festival of the god to whom the temple
+is dedicated, this was supplemented by temporary theatres and
+booths covering fully half an acre of the temple grounds, and the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_330'>330</span>great court was crammed with a closely-wedged mass of Chinese,
+and the adjacent grounds and the road were such a crush of people
+that our chairs could hardly get through. There must have been
+from twelve to fifteen thousand present.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These plays are got up by the priests, who send the neophytes
+round with a subscription paper, afterwards pasting the names
+of the donors, inscribed on red sheets, on the walls of the temple.
+The priests let the purlieus for the occasion for the sale of refreshments,
+and also for gambling tables and other evil purposes, and
+usually make a profit out of what is professedly a religious
+celebration. When the subscription list has been filled up, the
+priests engage the best talent that their funds will allow of.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Theatrical companies in China retain their original strolling
+character, and there are few permanent theatres, the erection of
+the great sheds, in which several thousand can be accommodated,
+being a separate branch of the carpenter’s trade. A play usually
+lasts for three days, and the periods for sleeping and eating are
+wonderfully minimised. Business is suspended in the neighbourhood,
+and the people act as if the drama were the only thing worth
+living for. It is not etiquette for women of the upper classes to
+frequent the theatre, and private theatrical performances are given
+in rich men’s houses, but women of the lower classes, generally
+carrying babies, attend in large numbers and usually sit in the
+galleries. Lads perform the female parts, with grotesque success,
+transforming their feet into excellent representations of “golden
+lilies,” and hobbling and tottering to perfection.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have only been present at two Chinese plays. They interest
+me greatly, and it is on the stage alone that the gorgeous costumes
+of brocaded and embroidered silk of former dynasties are to be
+seen. The scenery is simple and imperfect. The orchestra fills
+up all pauses vigorously, and strikes a crashing noise at intervals
+during the play to add energy or fury to the performance. Ghosts
+or demons appear from a trap-door in the stage. The scenes are
+not divided by a curtain, and the play proceeds on its lengthened
+course with only intervals for sleep and eating. The imperfect
+scenery makes it necessary for the actor to state what part he
+is performing, and what the person he represents has been doing
+while off the stage. There are comic actors who have only to
+appear on the boards to convulse an audience with laughter, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_331'>331</span>tragic actors who are equally successful in making men (or
+women) weep. There is no applause in a Chinese theatre.
+Admiration is expressed by a loud and prolonged sigh, as if
+indicating that the tension had been too great, or by an utterance
+between a sigh and a groan. A crowd absorbed with theatricals
+is usually peaceable, and the police are always at hand, but in
+country places a play is apt to assemble the roughs of the neighbourhood,
+as I learned the next day to my cost.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Chinese theatricals are very clever, for without anything which
+can be called scenery, and without a curtain, and with my own
+complete ignorance of the language, the actors by their admirable
+acting presented to my mind very distinct stories, in the one case
+of political intrigue, and in the other of military patriotism and
+self-sacrifice. The morals of the Chinese stage, so far as the
+sentiments of the plays are concerned, are said by severe critics
+to be good; the acting was quite unobjectionable when I was
+present, but I have understood that it is not invariably so. The
+earnestness of attention, and the delight on a sea of yellow faces
+at one of these theatrical representations are most interesting.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As we journeyed westwards, the plain became more and more
+luxuriant, and the aspect of wealth and comfort more pronounced.
+The great farmhouses are enclosed by high walls, and are shaded
+by cedars or cypresses, bamboo groves and fruit trees, the latter
+in early April in all the beauty of blossom. Groves of superb
+timber failed to conceal the gold and colour of grand temples.
+There were water-mills, canalised streams with many branches,—from
+which everywhere peasants, with fans and umbrellas, were
+pumping water by the contrivance shown in the illustration on next
+page—and rivers with broad winter beds, two of them spanned
+by very fine roofed bridges, rafters and supports lacquered red, and
+decorated with tablets in black and red lacquer, bearing the names
+incised in gold of the public-spirited men who had restored
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the afternoon an incident occurred which goes to show that
+the Chinese need a gospel of civilisation as well as of salvation.
+The road had left the rich and populous part of the plain, and had
+reached a broad and completely dry river-bed, full of round water-worn
+stones, crossed by a long covered bridge leading into the small
+town of Lo-kia-chan, at which, at the top of the sloping shingle
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_332'>332</span>bed of the river, a theatrical performance was proceeding before a
+crowd of some six thousand people. Mrs. Horsburgh proposed
+that we should not cross the bridge into the town, but should
+continue along the river bank opposite to it and cross the bed
+lower down. My idea usually is, and was then, to take “the bull
+by the horns,” but I deferred to her long experience, and she went
+on at some distance in front in a closed chair and in scrupulously
+accurate Chinese dress, I following in my open chair and in my
+<i>olla podrida</i> costume—Chinese dress, European shoes, and a
+Japanese hat.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p332_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>TREADMILL FIELD-PUMP.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>The crowd caught sight of my open chair, which, being a novelty,
+was an abomination, and fully two thousand men rushed down
+one shingle bank and up the other, brandishing sticks and porters’
+poles, yelling, hooting, crying “Foreign devil,” and “Child-eater,”
+telling the bearers to put the chair down. In the distance I saw
+my runners proving their right to their name. When I afterwards
+remonstrated with them, they replied, “What could two men do
+against two thousand?” but a resource of power lay in the magistrate’s
+letter. Then there were stones thrown, ammunition being
+handy. Some hit the chair and bearers, and one knocked off my
+hat. The yells of “Foreign devil,” and “Foreign dog,” were
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_333'>333</span>tremendous. Volleys of stones hailed on the chair, and a big one
+hit me a severe blow at the back of my ear, knocking me forwards
+and stunning me.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Be-dien said that I was insensible for “some time,” during which
+a “reason talker” harangued the crowd, saying it had done enough,
+and if it killed me, though I was only a woman, foreign soldiers
+would come and burn their houses and destroy their crops, and
+worse. This sapient reasoning had its effect. When I recovered my
+senses, the chair was set down in the midst of the crowd, which
+was still hooting and shouting, but no further violence was offered,
+and as the bearers carried me on, the crowd gradually thinned.
+I had a violent pain in my head, and the symptoms of concussion
+of the brain, and felt a mortifying inclination to cry. The cowards,
+as usual, attacked from behind.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After three very painful hours, in which I should have been
+glad to lie down by the roadside, we reached the great, walled,
+district city of Peng Hsien, with wide, clean streets, fine shops,
+temples, and guildhalls, a flagged roadway curved in the centre,
+and stone sidewalks, and what is regarded as a great curiosity,
+a lofty pagoda riven in twain, each half standing up perfect. The
+city, the population of which is officially stated at 28,000, manufactures
+brass and iron goods, iron being mined in the neighbourhood,
+and coal not far off.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Here, again, there was a display of rowdyism. “The city ran
+together,” and for half a mile I was the subject of insult, though
+not of actual violence. The street was nearly impassable from
+the crowds beating on my chair with sticks, hooting, yelling
+“Foreign devil,” “Foreign dog,” “Child-eater,” and worse, yelling
+into my ear, kicking the chair, and spitting. We were carried into
+a very fine inn, which ran very far back, its courtyards ending in
+a guest-hall, with oranges and lilies in pots in the middle, and a
+mandarin’s room of much pretension beyond.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A masculine crowd filling the courts surged in after us, keeping
+up a frightful clamour. The innkeeper put me into the mandarin’s
+room, and begged me not to show myself; and Be-dien went to
+the <i>yamen</i> to make a complaint regarding the outrage at Lo-kia-chan.
+As soon as he left, the crowd began to hoot and yell and
+thump the door. I got up and barricaded it with the heaviest
+furniture I could drag. Then they got a spade, or wedge, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_334'>334</span>began to force it open. I deplored my helpless condition—faint,
+giddy, and with a cracking headache, and an unmannerly crowd of
+men ready to burst in. The bolt and barricade were on the verge
+of yielding, when the mandarin’s secretary and another official
+arrived, and at once produced order.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>They interviewed Mrs. Horsburgh, who was really able to tell
+very little, and then I was unearthed, and gave my evidence with
+a bandaged head and a sense of unutterable confusion in my
+brain. The mandarin sent an apology for the rudeness in Peng
+Hsien, but partly excused the people, as they, he said, had never
+seen an open chair or a foreign hat before. The secretary said
+that they had sent to arrest the ringleaders of the disturbance
+at Lo-kia-chan, which I did not believe, but was glad of his
+courtesy. It was difficult for him to understand that I could be
+so severely hurt when there was no effusion of blood. Soldiers
+were posted in the courtyard for the night, and in the morning,
+besides runners, there were four soldiers at my door, who marched,
+two before and two behind my chair for the day’s journey to
+Kuan Hsien. I had a very bad night, and felt very ill the next
+day, with everything wavering before my eyes. I suffered much
+for a long time from this blow and the brain disturbance which
+followed, but I will dismiss the unpleasant subject from these
+pages by saying that I did not get over the effects for a year,
+and that it was my last experience of violence in China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Perfect quiet prevailed in the crowded street of Peng Hsien.
+The Chengtu plain grew richer and richer, the plumed bamboo
+and the cedars and <i>cupressus funebris</i> round the great farmhouses
+grander, and towards afternoon snow-peaks, atmospherically uplifted
+to a colossal height, appeared above the clouds in the north,
+with craggy and wooded spurs below them, descending abruptly
+to the magnificent plain. Everywhere living waters in their
+musical rush echoed the name of the great man who before the
+Christian era turned the vast plain into a paradise. There was
+a covered bridge over a wide rushing river; a dirty, narrow
+suburban street, a narrow alley, and then a cheerful compound,
+in which a brown spotted <i>dendrobium</i> was blooming profusely,
+shared by three Scotch missionaries of the China Inland Mission,
+and six of the Church Missionary Society, women predominating.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_335'>335</span>
+<img src='images/p335_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>WOODEN BRIDGE. KUAN HSIEN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_337'>337</span>At the back of the house the clear, sparkling Min, just released
+from its long imprisonment in the mountains, sweeps past with
+a windy rush, and the mountain views are magnificent, specially
+where the early sun tinges the snow-peaks with pink. Why
+should I not go on, I asked myself, and see Tibetans, yaks, and
+aboriginal tribes, rope bridges, and colossal mountains, and break
+away from the narrow highways and the crowds, and curiosity, and
+oppressive grooviness of China proper?</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_338'>338</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXVIII.<br> <span class='c012'>KUAN HSIEN AND CHENGTU</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>Kuan Hsien (2347 feet, Gill) is one of the best-placed
+cities in China, at the north-west corner of the Chengtu
+plain, immediately below the mountains which wall it in on the
+north, and, indeed, scrambling over their spurs just at the fine
+gorge of the Couching Dragon, from whence the liberated Min
+bursts in strength to gladden the whole plain. The Mien-chuh
+road has not a fine entrance into the city—the Chengtu road,
+which I travelled three times, approaches Kuan under six fine
+<i>pai-fangs</i>, elaborately, and, indeed, beautifully decorated with
+carvings in high relief in a soft grey sandstone.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Apart from its situation, it is an unattractive town, with narrow,
+dirty streets, small lifeless-looking shops, and a tendency to
+produce on all occasions a dirty crowd, which hangs on to a
+foreigner, and which on my arrival greeted me with—“Here’s
+another child-eater.” It has an outpost air, as if there were little
+beyond, and this is partly true. It has a possible population
+of 22,000. It is not a rich city, and its suburbs do not abound
+in rich men’s houses. But it is distinguished, first for being the
+starting point of the oldest and, perhaps, the most important
+engineering works in China; and secondly, as being a great
+emporium of the trade with Northern Tibet, which is at its
+height during the winter, when as many as five hundred Tibetans,
+with their yaks, are encamped outside its walls. The Tibetans
+exchange wool, furs, hides, musk, hartshorn, rhubarb, and many
+other drugs for tea, brass ware, and small quantities of silk and
+cotton. Tibetan drugs are famous all over China. The Tibetans,
+as I learned from personal observation in Western Tibet, are
+enormous tea drinkers. The tea churn is always in requisition,
+and Tibet takes annually from China 22,000,000 pounds. The
+wool, which helps largely to pay for the tea, and which is so
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_339'>339</span>abominably dirty that fifteen per cent. of it has to be washed
+away, comes from pasturages from 9000 to 12,000 feet in altitude.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Musk is a most lucrative import. The small deer (<i>cervus
+moschus</i>), of which it is a secretion, is said to roam in large
+herds over the plains surrounding the Koko Nor. A single
+deer only produces a third of an ounce, and it sells for eighteen
+times its weight in silver at Chung-king, and is largely smuggled.
+Chengtu reeks with its intensely pungent odour. Rhubarb, the
+best quality of which grows not lower than 9000 feet, is also
+a very valuable import, and other drugs are estimated at £95,000
+annually, and are quintupled in value before they reach the
+central and eastern provinces. Aconite, a root largely used for
+poisoning in Western Tibet, is imported into China as a medicine,
+singular to say, criminal poisoning being very little known.
+Deer horns in the velvet, for medicinal uses, are also largely
+imported.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Much of the trade is done at Matang, in the mountains, a
+savage hamlet which I afterwards visited, in the month of
+August; and very much more comes down from Sung-pan ting,
+about 570 <i>li</i> to the north of Kuan, where it is chiefly in the
+hands of Mohammedan merchants, who act as go-betweens.
+Wool brought from Sung-pan to Chung-king has to pass six
+<i>likin</i> barriers; so I understood from Mr. Grainger, of the China
+Inland Mission at Kuan Hsien, to whom I am much indebted
+for carefully gathered information on this and other local points
+of interest.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The glory of Kuan is the temple in honour of Li Ping, a prefect
+in the aboriginal kingdom of Shu, the ancient <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, the great
+engineer, and his son, whose work has redeemed the noble plain
+of Chengtu from drought and flood for two thousand years. Just
+above Kuan Hsien there is a romantic gorge with lofty grey cliffs,
+down which one branch of the Min, a cold, crystal stream, rushes
+wildly; but still, rafts and boats, carrying lime and coal from
+above, make the passage, often to their own destruction. On the
+right bank, high on the cliff, is a picturesque temple in a romantic
+situation, with a beautiful roof of glazed, green tiles, erected in
+honour of Li Ping or his son, whose name has been so completely
+lost out of history that he is known only as “The Second
+Gentleman.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_340'>340</span>Above this perilous gorge the Min is about two hundred yards
+wide, with more or less mountainous banks heavily wooded, and
+at the point where the Tibetan road crosses it, on a very fine
+bamboo suspension bridge about 200 paces long, the grandest
+temple in China stands, on a wooded height finely terraced, and
+adorned with stately lines of cryptomeria and other exotic trees,
+one teak-tree in a courtyard being eighteen feet in circumference.
+These noble shrines, with their fine courtyards and the exquisitely
+beautiful pavilions and minarets which climb the cliff behind the
+temple, and are lost among the cryptomerias of the summit, are
+the most beautiful group of buildings that I saw in the far East,
+combining the grace and decorative witchery of the shrines of the
+Japanese Shoguns at Nikko, with a grandeur and stateliness of
+their own.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This noble temple is scrupulously clean and in perfect repair.
+Magnificent objects of art, as well as tanks surrounded with
+exotic ferns, decorate its courtyards; living waters descend from
+the hill through the mouths of serpents carved in stone; noble
+flights of stone stairs lead to the grand entrance and from terrace
+to terrace; thirty Taoist priests keep lamps and incense ever
+burning before the shrines; an Imperial envoy from Peking visits
+the temple every year with gifts; and tens of thousands of
+pilgrims, from every part of the plain and beyond, bring their
+offerings and homage to these altars.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The temple left on my memory an impression of beauty and
+majesty, which nature and art have combined to produce. Outside,
+glorious trees in whose dense leafage the lesser architectural beauties
+lose themselves, gurgling waters, flowering shrubs with heavy
+odours floating on the damp, still air, elaborately carved pinnacles
+and figures on the roofs, even the screens in front of the doors
+decorated with elaborate tracery; while the beauty of the interior
+is past description: columns of highly polished black lacquer, a
+roof, a perfect marvel of carving and lacquer, all available space
+occupied with honorary tablets, the gift of past viceroys, while
+the shrines are literally ablaze with gorgeously coloured lacquer
+and painting, and the banners presented by the emperors wave
+in front. The galleries facing the effigies of the great engineer
+and his son are carved most delicately with lacquered fretwork;
+and on pillars, galleries, and everywhere, where space admits of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_341'>341</span>its decorative use, is Li Ping’s motto incised or inscribed in gold,
+“<i>Shen tao t’an ti tso yen</i>”—“Dig the bed deep, keep the banks
+low.”</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p341_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>ROOF OF ERH-WANG TEMPLE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_343'>343</span>Although there is a shrine to Li Ping in this splendid “Erh-Wang”
+temple, it was possibly erected in honour of “The Second
+Gentleman,” the temple to the father being (believed by Mr.
+Grainger) the more recent erection above the gorge of the
+Couching Dragon. Every Chinese Emperor, from the Tsin
+dynasty, 246 <span class='fss'>B.C.</span>, downwards, has conferred the posthumous
+title of <i>Wang</i>, or Prince, upon Li Ping and his son. A stone
+tablet in one of the temples records the story, which I learn
+from Mr. Grainger, who has translated the inscription.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Chengtu plain, which these deservedly honoured engineers
+may be said to have created, is the richest plain in China, and
+possibly in the world. It may be about 100 miles by seventy
+or eighty, with an area of about 2500 square miles. It produces
+three and even four crops a year. Its chief products are rice,
+silk, opium, tobacco, sugar, sweet potatoes, indigo, the paper
+mulberry, rape and other oils, maize, and cotton, along with roots
+and fruits of all kinds, both musk and water-melons being produced
+in fabulous quantities. From any height the plain looks
+like a forest of fruit trees, while clumps of cypress, cedar, and
+bamboo denote the whereabouts of the great temples and fine
+farmhouses with which it is studded.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It has an estimated population of 4,000,000, and is sprinkled
+with cities, and flourishing marts, and large villages, Chengtu, the
+capital, having at least 400,000 people. Along the main roads
+the population may be said to constitute a prolonged village.
+The abundance of water power produces any number of flour
+and oil mills, the plain is intersected in all directions with roads
+which are thronged with traffic, and boats can reach the Yangtze
+from Kuan Hsien, Chengtu, and Chiang Kou.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Oranges reappear in splendid groves, mixed up with the vivid
+foliage of the persimmon; mulberry trees are allowed to grow
+to their full height and amplitude; spinning and weaving are
+going on everywhere; the soil, absolutely destitute of weeds, looks
+as if it were cultivated with trowels and rakes, “tilled,” as
+Emerson felicitously said of England, “with a pencil instead of
+a plough.” There are frequent small temples, or rather shrines,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_344'>344</span>to the God of the Soil, of solid masonry, the image being enclosed
+by open fretwork, in front of which the incense sticks smoulder
+ceaselessly, the long-drawn creak of the wheelbarrow is never
+silent during the daylight hours, agricultural energy and activity
+prevail, and the plain is a singular and, perhaps, unrivalled picture
+of rustic peace and security.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p344_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>OIL BASKETS AND WOODEN PURSE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>This population of four millions depends not only for its
+prosperity, but for its existence, on the irrigation works of Li
+Ping and “The Second Gentleman,” carried out long before the
+Christian era. Without these, as has been truly said, “the east
+and west of the plain would be a marsh, and the north a waterless
+desert,” and this great area with its boundless fertility and wealth,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_345'>345</span>and its immunity from drought and flood for two thousand years,
+is the monument to the engineering genius of these two men,
+whose motto, “<i>Dig the bed deep, keep the banks low</i>,” had it been
+applied universally to rivers of insubordinate habits, would have
+saved the world from much desolation and loss.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p345_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>BARROW TRAFFIC, CHENGTU PLAIN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_347'>347</span>With a faithfulness rare in China, Li Ping’s motto has been
+carried out for twenty-one centuries. The stone-bunded dykes
+are kept low and in repair, and in March the bed of the artificial
+Min, created by Li Ping, by cutting a gorge a hundred feet
+deep through the hard rock of the cliff above Kuan Hsien, and
+which has been closed by a barrier since the previous November,
+with its subsidiary channels, is carefully dug out, till the workmen
+reach two iron cylinders, sunk in the bed of the stream, which
+mark its proper level. The silt of the year, which is from five
+to six feet thick, is then removed. The whole plain contributes
+to this expensive work, and a high official, the <i>Shui Li Fu</i>, or
+“Prefect of the Waterways,” is responsible for it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In late March, or early April, there is a grand ceremony, sometimes
+attended by the Viceroy, when the winter dam is cut, and the
+strong torrent of the Min, seized upon by human skill, is divided
+and subdivided, twisted, curbed by dams and stone revetments,
+and is sent into innumerable canals and streams, till, aided by
+a fall of twelve feet to the mile, there is not a field which has not
+a continual supply, or an acre of the Chengtu plain in which the
+musical gurgle of the bright waters of the Tibetan uplands is
+not heard—waters so abundant that though drought may exist
+all round, this vast oasis remains a paradise of fertility and
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At Kuan Hsien, where I spent some little time recovering from
+the assault at Lo-kia-chan, and in projecting a further journey,
+the feeling of the people towards foreigners was definitely hostile.
+It had been originally opened to Christian teaching by a lady,
+who, after living alone there for a considerable time (but that was
+before “the riots,” the modern landmark in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> history),
+left for England during my visit, much regretted; but since the
+riots “the Jesus religion” had made very slow progress. Slanders
+against the missionaries were circulated and believed, and the
+special one that they stole and ate infants, or used their eyes and
+hearts for medicines, was disagreeably current in Kuan Hsien.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_348'>348</span>The foreign ladies, four of whom had been hidden for eleven
+weeks of the hottest part of the previous summer, during the disturbances,
+in a room without a window, were very nervous, as was
+natural, starting when shouting was heard, not knowing what it
+might mean, and even those men who were hampered by wives and
+young families, at times looked anxious. No one who has heard
+the howling of a Chinese mob can forget it—it seems to come up
+direct from the bottomless pit! One of these young wives, during
+the disturbances, escaped through a window with her three infants
+to a ledge above the river while her husband kept the mob at
+bay.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So when I left for Sin-tu Hsien and Chengtu I escorted a lady,
+whose nerves had received such a shock in the riots that she was
+afraid to travel alone. My escort was of little value, for the
+people of the villages were lavish of their infamous epithets,
+pulled away the blinds of her chair, pulled out her hairpins and
+terrified her, while I was ignored.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was a very long day, and when we reached Sing-fang Hsien,
+a busy town, long after dark, we had a pilgrimage from inn to inn,
+finding them all full, and the people hooted us all along the street
+till we found refuge in a hostel by no means “first-class.” The heat
+had set in fiercely, and the mercury was 83° in the shade. The
+following day, after a short journey in intense heat over the
+glorious and busy plain, we reached the house of Mr. Callum of
+the Church Missionary Society, at Sin-tu Hsien, a thriving town
+of about 15,000 people, with a pleasant promenade on its walls,
+and a very fine temple just outside them. The industry of this
+town, as of Kuan Hsien, is chiefly the making of straw sandals.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The third day’s journey with Mr. and Mrs. Callum was still
+over the glorious plain, which became yet richer and more densely
+populated as we neared Chengtu, the restaurants, always crowded
+with coolies and travellers, almost lining the road, and the wheelbarrows
+making a nearly ceaseless procession.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_349'>349</span>
+<img src='images/p349_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>POPPY FIELD IN BLOSSOM.      <span class='right'>[<i>F. Mayers.</i></span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_350'>350</span>If one could disabuse oneself of the belief that opium is the
+curse of China and is likely to sap the persistent vitality of the
+race, there could have been nothing but unstinted admiration for
+the wonderful beauty of the crop in blossom, as I saw it in its
+glory on that sunny April day on the Chengtu plain, which in
+some places seemed to have no <i>raison d’être</i> but its growth. The
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_351'>351</span>season had been without a drawback, and every leaf and flower
+had attained to its full maturity of loveliness. The blossoms were
+white—white fringed with rose-pink, white with white fringes,
+ruby-red, carmine, dark purple, pale mauve, and rose-pink.
+Waves of colour on slope and plain rolled before the breeze.
+Houses were almost submerged by the coloured billows. Far and
+near, along roads and streams, round stately temples and
+prosperous farmhouses, rippled and surged these millions of
+corollas, in all the glory of their brief and passionate existence—the
+April pulse of Nature throbbing through them most vigorously,—the
+poppy truly in the ascendant.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p351_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>THE WHITE OPIUM POPPY.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>There is a remarkably fine stone bridge on that route to
+Chengtu, with dragons surmounting each pier, and very emphatic
+abutments. I had heard very much of Chengtu as being among
+the finest cities, “a second Peking,” etc. On entering it by the
+west gate, and the gates are very imposing, green glades lead into
+the Tartar quarter, a region of large, walled gardens, well wooded,
+and good-sized houses, frequently much decayed. In a street of
+shops several of the signs are written in Manchu. In this quarter
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_352'>352</span>it was refreshing to see the tall, healthy-looking women with “big
+feet,” long outer garments, and roses in their hair, as in Manchuria,
+standing at their doorways talking to their friends, both male and
+female, with something of the ease and freedom of Englishwomen.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was some distance along wide cleanly streets and through
+charming “residential suburbs,” as I must call them, though they
+are within the walls, to the “palatial residence” in which the
+members of the China Inland Mission have been quartered by the
+Viceroy at a low rent since the absolutely complete destruction of
+the mission premises in the riots, a destruction which was also
+complete in the case of the houses and hospitals of the various
+other missions, even the bricks of which the buildings were constructed
+being carried away. This house, in which I was most
+hospitably received, had been assigned by the Government to
+the American Commission which came from Peking to assess the
+losses incurred by their “nationals,” and there was glass in the
+windows and matting on the floors, and dainty muslin blinds
+and curtains everywhere.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There is a large Romish mission, and American and Canadian
+missions besides the China Inland Mission, the Protestant
+missionaries living and working in much harmony, though in
+some respects, chiefly externals, on differing lines. Things had
+never settled down comfortably since the riots, and the official
+class at least was much embittered by the enormous damages
+claimed and obtained by the Roman mission. Stories of child-eating
+were current, and I am sure that the people believe that
+it is practised by the missionaries, for in going through Chengtu
+on later occasions I observed that when we foreigners entered
+one of the poorer streets many of the people picked up their
+infants and hurried with them into the houses; also there were
+children with red crosses on green patches stitched on the back
+of their clothing, this precaution being taken in the belief that
+foreigners respect the cross too much to do any harm to children
+wearing the emblem.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I see little or no resemblance to Peking in Chengtu. Without
+emphasising the other essential points of difference, Chengtu is
+neat and clean, and a comparison of its odours with those of
+Peking is impossible, for those of musk overpower all else!
+Indeed, along with the tea, silk, opium, and cotton, which it
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_353'>353</span>imports from the rest of the province, its great trade is in the
+numerous wild products of Tibet—rhubarb, drugs, furs, and above
+all, musk.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p353_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>THE AUTHOR IN MANCHU DRESS.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_355'>355</span>It is a very prepossessing city; and its noble wall in admirable
+repair, the successor of one built in the third century <span class='fss'>B.C</span>., is
+about fourteen miles in circuit, sixty-six feet broad at the base,
+forty at the top, and thirty-five feet high, while what may be
+regarded as a somewhat formidable “earthwork”—an inner
+embankment almost the width of the wall—supports it along
+almost its whole circuit. This structure, the top of which is a
+superb promenade, is faced with hard and very fine brick, and
+has eight bastions, which are pierced by four fine gates, rigorously
+guarded, for the purpose of exacting the native customs and
+<i>likin</i>, which are very hard on foreign imports.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A stream, banked by stone revetments, runs through Chengtu
+from east to west, frequently bridged, and in one place spanned
+by three stone bridges, each of a single arch, close together.
+There are many moats and broad pieces of water, and the main
+river, about a hundred yards wide, is crossed by many bridges,
+one of them roofed, and lined on both sides by the stalls of
+hucksters; but the great stone bridge, half a mile long, with
+“a richly painted roof supported on marble pillars,” described
+by Marco Polo, has ceased to exist! Canals and streams abound,
+and are crowded with shipping of small size, chiefly plying to
+Chung-king and the ports west of it, cargo and passage junks, and
+<i>wupans</i> with hooped bamboo roofs, in one of which I afterwards
+made the downward passage, and <i>sampans</i>. The waters were very
+low, and the craft much jammed together.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The city has wide, well-paved streets, crossing each other at
+right angles, and the handsome shops make far more display than
+is usual in China, the jewellers’ shops specially, with their fine
+work in filigree silver, and even rich silk brocades are seen
+gleaming in the shadow in the handsome silk shops, as well as
+<i>pongees</i>, both of local manufacture, and costly furs, and the snowy
+Tibetan lambskin can be seen from the streets exposed for sale.
+Within, respectable, richly-dressed shopkeepers await customers,
+and serve them with due dignity, but make no attempt to ensnare
+them. Farther back, in the obscurity, is the representation on
+a large scale, frequently taking up the whole end of the shop,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_356'>356</span>of <i>Dzai-zen-pusa</i>, the God of Wealth, the Japanese <i>Daikoku</i>, and
+the British Mammon, with an altar and incense before him. To
+him, as the “luck of the shop,” the merchant, his apprentices, and
+all his employees must offer worship morning and evening, and no
+cult is so universal.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Chengtu has many scent shops, and most articles of Chinese
+manufacture are exposed at the shop fronts, but there was a very
+small display of foreign goods.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The strange, wild figures of the trading Tibetans in the streets,
+the splendour of the trains of officials and <i>literati</i>, who ride horses
+almost concealed by expensive trappings, or are carried at a rapid
+run in carved and gilded sedans, with poles bent up high in the
+middle, so as to raise the magnate above the heads of the plebeian
+herd, and the air of prosperous business which pervades the
+streets, are all noteworthy. It is a city which owes absolutely
+nothing to European influence. The commercial arrangements by
+which its business arrangements are run, its posts, banks, and
+systems of transferring money are all solely Chinese. There,
+without difficulty, I cashed the draft I brought from a Chinese
+merchant at Hankow. Chengtu owes nothing to Europe, except
+a grudge for the excessive indemnity she has had to pay for indulging
+in the luxury of riots.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Viceroy, or Governor-General, is a very important official,
+and lives in great state, with a large military force at his disposal,
+as befits a man who represents Imperial power in a province as
+large as France and more populous, and who coerces or administers
+all Tibetan countries, and the wild borderland which
+I afterwards visited, which is neither Chinese nor Tibetan—and
+even the decennial tribute mission from distant Nepaul is allowed
+or forbidden to go on to Peking much at the Viceroy’s pleasure.
+A request was made to this great man for a letter which would
+further my journey, and it was promised by a fixed time, but I
+never got it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The crowded, busy streets of Chengtu fringe off into truly
+charming intra-mural suburbs, green and quiet, where deep gateways
+admit into beautiful gardens bright with flowers and shady
+with orange and other fruit trees. There are tanks full of
+water-plants brightened by the gleam of goldfish; the cool drip
+of falling water is heard; trellis-work, green with creepers or
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_357'>357</span>bright with the blossoms of scarlet-runners, shades the pathway;
+the scent of tea-roses floats on the sunny air; and all these groups
+of pleasant residences tell of affluent ease and the security in which
+it is enjoyed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The view from the city wall of the plain, with its beauty and
+fertility, with suggestions of snow peaks far away, is very striking.
+Some of the temples are very fine, specially the Wen-shu-yuan
+(literary college), situated near the north gate.<a id='r46'></a><a href='#f46' class='c013'><sup>[46]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This grand building, dating at the latest from the thirteenth
+century (<span class='fss'>A.D.</span>), has been rebuilt by several dynasties, and has gone
+on increasing in wealth and magnificence till its priests and monks
+are justly proud of its splendours, of which the severe heat, even
+in the green shades of its grandly timbered surroundings, on the
+day of my visit prevented me from seeing more than a half. They
+may be proud of its exquisite cleanliness, too. By the time I
+reached Chengtu I had come to think that Chinese temples are
+much maligned on this score, but certainly the Wen-shu-yuan and
+the “Prince’s Temple” above Kuan Hsien excel them all in this
+virtue, which is said to approach so closely to godliness. All the
+more remarkable is it here, because the temple is a “theological
+college” as well as a monastery, a large number of students for
+the priesthood bringing up the number of the inmates to one
+hundred and fifty.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>All the interstices between the smooth and well-laid flagstones
+of the courtyards are kept clean and free from grass; stonework,
+woodwork, gilding, paint and lacquer are all in perfect repair, and
+the fine roof is kept from the injuries caused by sparrows by a
+man who walks about the court with a cross-bow. The refectory
+opening from the court, with twenty-five tables set with tea,
+vegetables, and rice bowls for six each, for the vegetarian community,
+is as clean as all the rest; the wooden tables, chopsticks,
+and bowls all having that attractive look of well-scrubbed wood
+which we associate with an old-fashioned English farmhouse.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is not possible to say whether the course of study and
+devotion prescribed for both priests and students produces equal
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_358'>358</span>purity of soul. In the Chapel of Meditations, resembling those
+which I saw in the monasteries of Western Tibet, both orders
+must spend some hours of every day in front of the Buddhist
+images, striving by all means known to them to reach a state of
+holy ecstasy, in which they are blind to all impressions from the
+seen. It may be possible that the prolonged watching of the
+curling and ascending clouds of incense produces a condition
+approaching hypnotism.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Severe guest-rooms, furnished according to the most rigid
+Chinese etiquette, chapels, some filled with costly gifts and
+curiosities, or with tablets to munificent donors, resplendent in
+gold on black lacquer, libraries of the religious classics, and
+picture galleries containing portraits of the deceased abbots,
+vestries for vestments, and dormitories occupy this fine pile of
+buildings. In the entrance portico, the idol photographed as
+an illustration recalled me to the fact that China is a stronghold
+of idolatry. On the other side the divinity looks like a douce,
+respectable English squire of the days of George III.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_359'>359</span>
+<img src='images/p359_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>DIVINITY IN WEN-SHU YUAN TEMPLE, CHENGTU.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_361'>361</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXIX.<br> <span class='c012'>KUAN HSIEN TO SIN-WEN-PING</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>Before I left Kuan for Chengtu I had decided on extending
+my journey up the Siao Ho, a western branch of the Min,
+on which the mountain town of Li-fan Ting is situated, into the
+mountainous borderland which lies between China proper and
+Tibet, the country of some of the reputed aboriginal tribes which
+concurrent rumour said were under the rule of a woman. At
+Kuan and Chengtu no information could be got regarding the
+country west of Li-fan, except that Tibetans trading to Kuan
+said that “everything could be got at Somo,” which appeared to
+be the residence of the ruler. As there was little use in undertaking
+such a journey without a more efficient interpreter than
+Be-dien, Mr. Horsburgh kindly suggested that Mr. Kay, a lay
+member of the Church Missionary Society, who has a considerable
+knowledge of colloquial Chinese, should accompany me. I had a
+hazy intention if things went well of attempting to get down to
+Ta-lien-lu by the Chin-chuan and Tatu river, returning to the
+Yangtze by Ya-chow and Chia-ling Fu, but the season was late
+for this.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When I went to Chengtu I left my travelling arrangements
+to be made in my absence, simply indicating what they were
+to be, and that they were to be in writing. A favourite axiom
+of mine is the late General Gordon’s saying, “I am my own best
+servant,” and as a general rule I attend to the smallest details
+of a journey in advance myself, down to every strap, buckle,
+and horseshoe. On this occasion the suffering following the
+blow on my head and my journey to the capital had induced
+me to trust to others, who, however kind, were without travelling
+experience; and on returning I found that the travelling arrangement
+was the exact opposite of the one I had indicated, and
+that, instead of the coolies having been engaged from a hong
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_362'>362</span>with a written agreement, a servant had been allowed to make
+up a family party on indefinite lines!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Two days of hot, heavy rain delayed the start, and gave ample
+opportunity for the exercise of those innumerable acts of thoughtful
+kindness which these small, isolated communities delight in
+showing to strangers, and which can never be forgotten. There
+were two disagreeables. Be-dien had been in a shocking sulky
+fit for two days, and would not answer anyone who spoke to
+him; and instead of the promised letter from the Viceroy came
+an indignant note from Mr. Vale, of Chengtu, saying that at
+the last moment it had been refused.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the third day the rain became a quiet downpour, tailing
+off at midday into a misty drizzle which continued; and as further
+waiting was undesirable, I started, in my three-bearer chair, with
+five porters, two <i>chai-jen</i>, Mr. Kay, his servant, and Be-dien.
+As my European clothing had fallen to pieces, I was dressed
+as a Chinese and wore straw shoes. My baggage was all
+waterproof, and instead of oblong Japanese baskets and bundles
+protected by oiled paper, I had two deep, square bamboo baskets
+as better fitted for the mountains, and no loose packages but
+my camera. Unfortunately, as preventing accurate observations,
+a year before I had sent home the instruments lent to me by
+the Royal Geographical Society; a pony had rolled on my
+hypsometer, and an aneroid barometer kindly lent to me was
+not reliable, and I had no means of ascertaining the amount
+of its unreliability before I left China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The beautiful gorge outside the city, and the grand Prince’s
+Temple were drowned in mist, out of which heavy odours of
+gardenia drifted. All the vegetation, under the genial influences
+of heat and moisture, was in full beauty, and there, as everywhere,
+vigorous plants of the Japanese anemone bordered the road.
+The climbing roses were in blossom, and, weighted with moisture,
+hung almost down to our heads. Rocks were matted over with
+the <i>hymenophyllum Wilsonianum</i>, as thick as the fleece of a sheep,
+and the hare’s-foot fern began to make its appearance along with
+the familiar <i>polypodium vulgare</i>.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_363'>363</span>
+<img src='images/p363_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>ENTRANCE TO GROUNDS OF CITY TEMPLE, KUAN HSIEN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>We left Kuan by the west gate, near a very fine temple, to
+which the picturesque mass of lacquered pillars and roofs in the
+illustration is only the outer entrance. Passing above the divided
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_365'>365</span>waters of the Min, and Li Ping’s simple contrivances for preserving
+the banks, which consist far more frequently of long
+cylindrical baskets of bamboo network containing stones as big
+as a man’s head than stone revetments, we crossed the Min by
+a very fine bamboo suspension bridge, which scarcely vibrated
+more under our tread than did the old Menai bridge under a
+carriage.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These bamboo bridges are a feature of the Upper Min, and are
+remarkably graceful, specially when thrown across at a considerable
+height. In the better class there is a covered bridge-house
+at each side and stone piers. Six bamboo ropes each as thick as
+a man’s arm are stretched very tightly across the river by strong
+windlasses firmly bedded, which are used for re-tightening the
+ropes as they “give.” These ropes are kept apart by battens
+of wood laced vertically in and out. The plank roadway is laid
+across the lower of the ropes, and follows their curve, which owing
+to the use of the windlasses for tightening up is not great. These
+bridges are renewed always once, and sometimes twice, a year,
+an operation taking two days and under. Owing to the extreme
+width of the river at the Kuan bridge, there are three or four
+spans with stone piers. Usually these suspension bridges are
+carried right across. The roadway is sometimes trying to the
+nerves, for planks tip up, or tip down, or disappear altogether,
+or show remarkable vivacity when the foot is placed upon them,
+and many a gaping hiatus, trying to any but the steadiest head,
+reveals the foam and fury below.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The road follows the river at a height and dives into the
+mountains, which are at first of sandstone, with curious strata
+running up at right angles to the valley, and then of limestone.
+The valley is populous, smoky, and trafficky. Lime-kilns abound,
+and a considerable population is employed in working the coal
+seams, which occur chiefly in the sandstone; while hundreds of
+coolies, carrying both coal and lime, were moving towards Kuan,
+and many more were loading vessels and rafts, which, if they
+escape the risks of the gorge below, can reach Lu-chow on
+the Yangtze.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At the end of nine miles, turning by a short cut up a romantic
+tributary of the Min, through a gorge of entrancing beauty,
+where forest trees and flowering shrubs were linked by an
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_366'>366</span>entanglement of flowering trailers, crossing a river by a covered
+bridge, we arrived at Fu-ki, where there was a quiet, pleasant inn,
+one of several of the same character on this route, where, instead
+of evil odours, the scent of syringa from the hill behind entered
+my room. It was very quiet and peaceful. There was no crowding
+or boring holes in the plaster, the river hummed monotonously
+below, the mercury was under 60°, and altogether it was a delightful
+change from the crowding, curiosity, noise, and blazing
+heat of the Chengtu plain.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Again the next day we started in a steady downpour, which
+ceased at the top of the very pretty temple-crowned pass, over
+four thousand feet in altitude, of Niang-tze-ling, after which it
+was fine and cool. The road drops down from the pass to the
+deep canyon of the Min, which bifurcates at Weichou, and the
+river and mountain scenery become increasingly stupendous,
+reminding me greatly of the road from Kashmir to Tibet after
+it reaches the Indus. Two fine bamboo suspension bridges near
+the foot of the pass, others higher up, and a number of rope
+bridges of Tibetan pattern give both easy and difficult access
+to the other side. There was a decided Tibetan influence in
+the air, which I welcomed cordially. Red lamas passed us on
+pilgrimage to Omi Shan, and numbers of muleteers in sheepskins
+and rough woollen garb, their animals laden with Tibetan
+drugs, and, better than these, some “hairy cows” (yaks), which
+had not yet lost the free air of their mountain pastures, and
+executed many rampageous freaks on the narrow bridle path.
+Lamas and muleteers were all frank and friendly, asked where
+we were going, how long we had been on the road, enlightened
+us on their own movements, and cheerily wished us a good
+journey. Most of the mules had one or more prayer-flags
+standing up on their loads, for the Tibetans are one of the most
+externally religious peoples on earth.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Min<a id='r47'></a><a href='#f47' class='c013'><sup>[47]</sup></a> from the pass of Niang-tze-ling assumes the character
+which it retains more or less to the source of the Siao Ho or
+lesser branch. It is a fine, peacock-green river; then, though
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_367'>367</span>at low water, of considerable volume, booming, crashing, and
+foaming through canyons and gorges in a series of cataracts,
+hemmed in by cliffs and mountains so precipitous as rarely to
+leave level ground enough for a barley patch.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The bridle track, a very good one on the whole, though there
+are some shelving rock slithers, has been cut, not blasted, in the
+rock, at times on steep declivities and at times on precipices,
+and follows the up and down left bank of the Min ascents and
+descents at a height with great fidelity. It is not broad enough
+for a loaded mule to pass a chair, and the sight of a caravan
+in the distance always caused much agitation and yelling, the
+Tibetan muleteers invariably drawing off on the first margin
+they could find, and greeting us with courtesies and good wishes
+as we passed them. I envied them the altitudes and freedom
+to which they would return from the cramping grooviness of
+China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now and then the road is scaffolded, or steps are cut in the
+rock, or it passes under an arch of rock, or a bridge carries it
+across a lateral chasm down which a crystal torrent dashes, after
+turning two, three, or four rude mills placed in dizzy positions one
+above another. It is so severe that we only did thirteen miles in
+nine hours, and I saw plainly what I had suspected from the first,
+that one of the scratch team of bearers was not up to his work.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The whole of the first fortnight’s journey was along the deep,
+wild gorge of the greater or lesser Min. It differs widely from
+ordinary Chinese travelling, and has a strong resemblance to the
+wild gorges of the Yangtze. The mountains rise from the river
+to a height of over 3000 feet. Ghastly snow-cones look over
+them, their slopes, always steep, often break up into cliffs 400 or
+500 feet high; the river has often not a yard of margin, and
+hurries along, crashing and booming, a thing of purposeless
+power and fury, which has never been tamed of mankind, its
+sea-green colouring a thing of beauty, and its crests and stretches
+of foam white as the snows which give it birth.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These mountain-sides, as far as Weichou, are completely covered
+with greenery, dwarf ashes, oaks, chestnuts and beeches, big enough
+for use by the charcoal-burners. Coarse grasses, thistles, yellow
+roses, a very pretty yellow cistus, bryony, brambles, yellow jasmines
+and flowering creepers in abundance, all dwarf, with the barberry
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_368'>368</span>in blossom, covered the stony, broken hillsides. Three species of
+warm-scented artemisia and fuzzy brown balls of uncurling fronds
+of ferns were expanding in the crevices of the rocks, and the rocks
+themselves were often tinged rose-pink with the early leaves and
+delicate clasping fingers of Veitch’s <i>Ampelopsis</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was a clear escape from the crowds of China. The traffic on
+the road was mostly Tibetan. There is little room for crops; an
+occasional patch among the rocks near the river, and small fields,
+then growing rape, and later starved barley, terraced great heights,
+where the mountain slope is less steep than usual. Small as the
+population is, it does not grow enough for its wants, so many of
+the men hunt the deer and wild boars on the mountains and sell
+the carcases in Kuan in the winter, and others trap the fur-bearing
+animals, which appear to be an inferior sable and marten.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p368_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>DOUBLE ROOFED BRIDGE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>There are a few hamlets on the road, which subsist chiefly
+by supplying the needs of travellers, but the restaurant was
+usually hidden away, and made no display on the “street.” Rice is
+scarce and not always attainable, and wherever we halted, instead
+of the appetising displays of ready-cooked viands which tempt
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_369'>369</span>the coolie appetite, there was rarely even a fire, and it was always
+an hour before anything was cooked. The inns, though much
+better than any I had been accustomed to, and often built of new
+boards, do not provide any fire in the mornings unless by special
+arrangement, and till this was understood I started without
+tea. Their stock of food was soon exhausted, even at the larger
+villages where we halted for the night, and the descent upon them
+of twelve hungry persons was manifestly unwelcome. Some
+of the hamlets are built at great heights, and are accessible
+by rugged paths and steps cut in the rock. The people are
+hardy, rough, and fairly friendly. The Chinese are, to my
+thinking, men of plains and rivers and slimy paths—a rice-eating
+people, associating with the water buffalo. Here they are
+abruptly metamorphosed into hardy mountaineers, hunters, maize
+and millet fed. Even the women, though still binding the feet,
+are independent in their air and movements, and perform feats
+in crossing rivers. The country is a cross between China and
+Tibet. However, there are no temples, and few shrines or other
+signs of religion.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Fully one-third of the population is on the west side of the
+Min, cut off from the high road with its business and gaieties
+by a furious torrent, and in most cases too poor to construct
+bamboo suspension bridges. Their strong nerves enable them
+to get over the difficulty. I know of no sight in China which
+fascinated me so much as their rope bridges, which we met with
+on the second day, and which occur sometimes at frequent
+intervals, as far as Weichou, from which point I saw no more
+of them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The mountaineers stretch a plaited bamboo cable at a great
+height across the gorge, tighten it as well as they can, and secure
+each end round a round stone or a convenient rock. Sometimes
+a shed is built over the terminus and a shrine close by. Every
+mountaineer provides himself with two semi-cylinders of hard
+wood, often hinged, about a foot long. With perfect <i>sang-froid</i>
+he places these on the cable, and binds them together with a
+rope. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he
+proceeds to suspend himself from the cylinder by ropes passed
+under his knees, his waist, and the back of his neck; some
+dispensing with the last.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_370'>370</span>He is then hanging under the rope, and, gripping it fast by the
+slide, he gives the solid earth a shove and casts off. No matter
+how tightly a long rope is strained, it must still “sag” considerably
+in the middle, and down the passenger rushes at tremendous
+speed, head foremost, down hill across the chasm, with an
+impetus which sends him a little way up the other slope. Then,
+letting go the cylinder, he puts his hands on the rope above his
+head, and hauls himself up hand over hand, slowly and laboriously.
+When he reaches land he detaches the cylinder, packs it and the
+rope into his basket, shoulders his burden—and both men and
+women continually carry small sacks or bundles of wood across—bows
+at the shrine, and goes his way.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p370_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>TIBETAN ROPE BRIDGE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>I saw a woman cross carrying a load on each side. It took her
+ten minutes to ascend from the middle of the rope, which must
+have been ninety feet above the torrent, to land. Her face was
+purple with the effort, and her hands must have been pretty sore,
+for she spit upon them several times during the crossing. Even
+children are trusted to these arrangements, which need considerably
+more nerve than the <i>Jhulas</i> of the Himalayas. In some
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_371'>371</span>places to minimise the difficulty there are two rope bridges, each
+descending from a high to a low level.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is only occasionally at the mouth of one of the grand lateral
+gorges which open on the valley that there are any trees, and then
+they are very fine, specially walnuts and the exotic Zelkowa,
+and the <i>Salisburia adiantifolia</i>, with a few sturdy conifers, and
+the villages are surrounded by peaches, apricots, and the Japanese
+<i>loquat</i> (<i>Eriobotrya Japonica</i>).</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was a delightful day’s journey to Sin-wen-ping, and the keen
+mountain air and the novelty and freedom were full of zest.
+Solitary grandeur, the deafening din of the Min, the green crystal
+affluents which descend upon it down glorious gorges, the precipices
+rising a thousand feet from the water, the abrupt turns
+where progress seems blocked, and each mountain barrier is
+grander and loftier than the last, and then the majesty of the
+day’s journey culminates at a mountain village with a fine suspension
+bridge, beyond which the road looks only a thread along
+the side of a precipice.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>When the bearers reached Sin-wen-ping they said they would
+go no farther, for there was a “big wind” farther on, which would
+blow the chair into the river, and the porters said they could not
+carry the loads against it. Then it came out that Be-dien had
+left behind the lanterns which I bought a few days before; so
+the men carried their point of making a day of thirteen miles.
+Again I urged that the agreement with them should be put in
+writing; but it was not done, and I found later that it was on quite
+different lines from those I had laid down. I saw grave difficulties
+ahead, and should have been glad to ride and be rid of the men,
+but I had left my saddle in Korea.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was very cold in the inn, only half my room being roofed,
+and the mercury, which was 83° on the Chengtu Plain, was only
+40°. It was invigorating and delicious. The people, too, were
+very friendly, and did not manifest their curiosity rudely. A
+runner arrived from the capital with a big official envelope
+addressed to me, containing letters with the Viceroy’s seal;
+but as they were addressed to the mandarins of Pi Hsien
+where I did not halt, and Kuan Hsien which I had left, and
+made no reference to the regions beyond, they did not promise
+to be useful. On the <i>yamen</i> at Chengtu refusing the promised
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_372'>372</span>letters, Mr. Vale telegraphed to H.B.M.’s Consul at Chungking,
+and this was the result. The letters stated to the
+mandarins that at Liang-shan and Peng Hsien the mob had
+attempted by violence to break in my door, and that I had
+been attacked with stones, all within the Viceroyalty, and the
+Viceroy directed the <i>kuans</i> to take efficient measures for my
+protection.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p372_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>HAND SLIDES FOR TIBETAN ROPE BRIDGE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_373'>373</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXX.<br> <span class='c012'>SIN-WEN-PING TO LI-FAN TING</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>After leaving that quiet place, where the temperature was
+only 52° at 7.30 a.m., we plunged at once into a wild part
+of the gorge, very thinly peopled and desolate, on which grim
+snow-peaks looked down from the head of every lateral cleft.
+The traffic on the road was altogether Tibetan, partly accounted
+for by the junction of the road to Mou-Kung Ting, a thousand
+<i>li</i> away, with the Sung-pan Ting road, which we were following.
+There were large caravans of very big, powerful mules, loaded
+either with wool or with medicinal roots, and with a merry
+inclination to lunge at us with hoofs or teeth as we passed
+them; the rough, uncouth muleteers always cheerful and friendly
+as they exchanged with us their national salutation <i>zho</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One man at least in each caravan—every man having charge of
+four mules—can shoe his own beasts, and I had the luck, in consequence
+of a mule kicking off his shoe as we passed him, to
+see that the method is the same as in Western Tibet. They
+tie the fore and hind legs of the animal together, cast him, put
+a pole through the lashings, the ends of which are held by two
+men, and cold shoe him, paring the hoof only very slightly, using
+very long nails with tacket heads.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Mou-Kung Ting road is one of the great routes of Tibetan
+traffic, of which we saw much less after passing the junction.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The gorge is very narrow, so narrow that at times the road is
+scaffolded over the water, or is carried by rough steps cut in the
+face of the precipices. We ascended 800 feet during the day.
+The traces of spring diminished, the hills were brown and bare,
+the apricots were hardly in blossom, the few trees were leafless,
+the people still wore their wadded clothes, and it was pleasant to
+walk a good deal. Yet here and there were thick carpets of a
+sky-blue dwarf iris, a fragile thing, looking misplaced among its
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_374'>374</span>rough surroundings, and patches of a blue bugloss, and dwarf
+shubberies of a barberry in blossom.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p374_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>HUMAN PACK SADDLE FOR TIMBER.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Things had changed. Thatched roofs had given place to thin
+slabs of stone, or rough boards held down by big stones. All
+ornament had disappeared. China seemed left behind at such a
+great distance, that every Chinese I saw looked as if he must be
+like myself, a foreigner. The men were hardy mountaineers, and
+carried their loads on pack saddles, striding like men, rather than
+at a dog trot, on the swinging bamboo. Even the women can
+shoulder packs and dangle from rope bridges, and the children
+have an air of freedom.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A short day’s journey ended at the hamlet of Shuo-chiao,
+where the gorge opens out, and for a brief period the Min is
+vulgarised into various branches clattering and boiling among beds
+of Brobdingnagian shingle. It is a wild place, among high mountains,
+a single village street, a fine suspension bridge, a mill or
+two on the shingle, and goats on the ledgy slopes. The inn
+at the end of the street, where I spent two nights, was new, and
+hung over a branch of the river. My room, having no ceiling,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_375'>375</span>was lofty. The boards were clean, and there were no bad smells.
+The noise of the river was tremendous. Besides the roar of the
+water, there was a sound of paving stones being thumped on
+paving stones, and a perpetual clatter of shingle. I had to shout
+as loud as I could to make my servant hear. But it was very
+restful. I was entirely ignored. No one intruded into my room,
+and when I took a walk unattended no one followed me.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Food was scarce, and an inroad of twelve travellers involved
+much arrangement. Shuo-chiao is not a usual halting-place, and
+the stocks were low. The people fell back on making macaroni,
+and sandwiches with chopped garlic between layers of steamed
+paste. Macaroni is made of a very close dough of barley meal,
+very much kneaded, and rolled out on a clean table over and over
+again till it attains the desired toughness and thinness, when the
+operator cuts it into long and narrow strips, which are hung over
+a string to dry. When wanted these strips are boiled, and are
+eaten with chopped capsicum or onion.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The following day’s journey to Weichou was novel and interesting.
+The sky was grey and threatened rain, and the snow-peaks
+loomed grimly through flurries of dark clouds. We ascended to
+a height of over 4300 feet into a barren region, where winter
+lingered. The few villages have characteristics of their own;
+each consists of a long, clean, paved, narrow street, the houses
+built of stone, the walls with more or less of an inward slope, as
+if under Tibetan influence—all dwellings two-storeyed, the upper
+storey of dark wood, with carved, overhanging balconies with
+supporting beams also carved, and with very deep eaves with
+long and elaborately carved wooden pendants. Such villages are
+usually by torrent sides, with fruit trees, cedars, and poplars
+clustering about them, and are approached by picturesque
+bridges. The street terminates at either end with a decorative
+gateway, often with a small tower and wind bells.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In many places where the Min has a narrow bank, there are
+ruined villages with only ruinous walls standing; and in each
+house there are one, two, or three graves. On one larger open
+space there are great numbers of graves, said to be those of
+soldiers who died fighting; and the whole of the slaughter and
+destruction is attributed by the villagers to the Taiping rebellion.
+This is plausible, but doubtful.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_376'>376</span>In crevices there were minute fronds of the silver fern, which
+grows profusely all along the canyon; but nature was still asleep.
+Limestone and grey sandstone predominate, and the curiously
+marked strata are occasionally vertical. Basalt, however, appears
+in some of the lateral ravines, and pink granite; and the torrents
+which tumble over the latter are exquisite in their sparkle and
+purity. A traveller who, except on one day’s journey from Wan,
+has not tasted unboiled water for more than two years, would wish
+to be thirsty to drink of these icy and living waters.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At Wen-chuan Hsien, a small prefectural town packed among
+high mountains, with a very poor but clean street, a picturesque
+entrance, and a fine Confucian Temple, I sat in the grey street
+while the <i>yamen</i> officials copied my passport at a table, and an old
+man, who seemed influential, kept the dirty and too often leprous
+crowd of men and boys from pressing on me too closely. Nothing
+is ever done privately in the East, and several men leant over the
+scribes, reading the imposing-looking document, when one exclaimed,
+with an air of consternation, “She is given rank!” Others
+exclaimed incredulously, “A woman can’t have rank!” But the
+scribes settled the point in my favour; and then there was a
+discussion as to how I had got rank—if it were literary rank,
+or if I were the wife of a great mandarin in my own country—a
+suggestion combated on the ground that I wore poor cotton
+clothing, and had no jewels. Wen-chuan is the most hopelessly
+dull official town that I saw in China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The night before, at Shuo-chiao, I was told that after passing
+Wen-chuan we should see the villages of the “Barbarians,” on the
+heights; and I heard a tale with which travellers bound for the
+aboriginal tribes have been plied from Marco Polo down to
+Captain Gill. The innkeeper said that these people would offer
+hospitality, but it was dangerous to eat with them, for they
+believed that if they poisoned a rich man his wealth would come
+to them without violence, and that they would think that I was
+rich (in spite of my poor cotton clothing), and would put poison
+in my food, and that in about three months I should die of a
+disease akin to dysentery! He also said that these tribes are
+ruled by a very great queen, who will not let any stranger enter
+her territory—obviously the same woman of whom I had heard
+rumours at intervals for some months previously.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_377'>377</span>At last, and for fifteen <i>li</i> before reaching Weichou, the objects
+of interest became novel and plentiful, startling in their novelty.
+Singular dwellings made their appearance, crowning hilltops or
+poised on ledges—isolated or in clusters. The earlier specimens
+have high, dead, stone walls, flat roofs, and an upper storey
+covering a third of the roof, but without a front wall. Before
+long such houses aggregated themselves into villages on great
+heights, and without any apparent means of access, though that
+they were inhabited was obvious from the patches of cultivation
+about them. Among them appear tall towers, sometimes to the
+number of seven; they are picturesque and fantastic beyond all
+imagination. Of course these are the dwellings of the Man-tze
+(Barbarians), supposed by most ethnologists to be the aborigines
+of Western China; and it was not a little disappointing, on
+turning the glass upon them, to see nothing but Chinese with
+their queues and blue cotton, and hobbling women loafing round
+such extraordinary habitations. I use the word <i>loafing</i> advisedly.
+It is usually quite inapplicable to a Chinese, and among these
+mountains, as elsewhere, he has plenty of grit, but population is
+scanty, and competition has ceased to be keen, so he has leisure
+for a lounging study of the welfare of his crops and his pigs.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So, among villages crowning rocky mountain-tops or clinging
+to scarcely accessible mountain-sides, some of them very Tibetan,
+others with definite characteristics of their own, the road finds
+itself at the small prefectural town of Weichou, at the junction of
+the Ta Ho and the Siao Ho (the Great and Little rivers), in a
+superb situation, much embellished by the unconscious art of the
+builder, with <i>yamens</i> on rocky heights, and the grey city wall
+following the steep contours of the hills which surround the town.
+The north road on the left bank of the Ta Ho leads to Sung-pan
+Ting, and the west road, mostly along the right bank of the Siao
+Ho, to Li-fan Ting and beyond. Weichou is the town called by
+Captain Gill on his map Hsin-Pu-Kuan.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At this point mules for the farther journey should have been
+engaged.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is a good sixty-five <i>li</i> from Weichou to Li-fan Ting, and we
+left at 6 a.m. My expectations were high, but they were more
+than fulfilled. From Weichou to Somo there is only one dull
+bit of about three miles. As far as Li-fan Ting the scenery is
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_378'>378</span>colossal and savage, Tibetan in its character, resembling somewhat
+the wild gorges of the Shayok; and, beyond Tsa-ku-lao,
+the westernmost official post of China in that direction, the
+grandeur and beauty exceed anything I have ever seen—Switzerland,
+Kashmir, and Tibet in one.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Outside Weichou there are two suspension bridges, over which
+I had to walk. They were “on their last legs,” and were taken
+down when I came back. They vibrated, the wind swayed them
+unpleasantly, and as the loose planks were only laid at intervals,
+and some had disappeared, and the swinging structures hung like
+inverted arches over boiling surges, the crossing was not agreeable,
+and it is as little so when on this road the chair turns a corner of
+the narrow path on the edge of a precipice 500 or 600 feet in
+depth, and hangs for an appreciable interval over the abyss
+below.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The day was the most brilliant for three months, and the
+journey from first to last was magnificent, but the wind, which I
+found such a merciless foe in Central Asia, rose at the same hour,
+9 a.m., and blew half a gale till near sunset, reaching its maximum
+of force at 2 p.m., making photography impossible, several times
+nearly overturning the chair and its bearers, and filling eyes, nose,
+and mouth not only with gritty dust, but with irritating alkalis.
+This is the daily routine in these mountain valleys. On crossing
+the bridges we entered at once the gorge of the Siao Ho, or Li-fan
+River, in which we remained for twelve hours—a river flashing in
+cataracts, eddying in rapids, with never a quiet reach—a deep,
+clear, olive-green stream, its grand course accompanied by a deep
+undertone of a heavy booming in its caverned depths. Its career
+is through a rift among mountains, seven, eight, and nine thousand
+feet in height, broken up by stupendous chasms and precipices,
+and into red-brown, but seldom grey, peaks—the higher like
+needles, the lower crested by villages, to all appearance inaccessible;
+the mass riven asunder, laterally, in many places in so
+remarkable a manner as to show on one side the rock corresponding
+to the cleavage on the other, so that if the sides could be
+brought together they would be an exact fit.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_379'>379</span>
+<img src='images/p379_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>BAMBOO SUSPENSION BRIDGE, WEICHOU.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Occasionally the mountains and precipices recede sufficiently from
+the river to give scanty space for villages at their feet, with poplars
+and scanty crops of bearded wheat on sandy soil, and at the lateral
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_381'>381</span>openings alluvial fans occur, bearing fair crops of wheat and maize,
+as well as pear and apricot trees, just providing a scanty subsistence
+for a scanty population. Limestone, grey and red
+sandstone, and a very hard conglomerate are the predominant
+formations, but a granite with a pink tinge makes an occasional
+innovation, and the potholes in the river, where it was possible to
+investigate them, were found to be fashioned of grey granite.
+One remarkable feature of the region is the enormous quantity of
+nitrate of soda. Its efflorescence in places whitens the mountains
+as if with snow, and so checks vegetation as to reduce it to coarse
+plants of strong constitutions, with tough fibres and woolly leaves.
+Sulphur abounds also, and fragments of an iron ore, which I afterwards
+learned is brown hematite. There are nitre works at Weichou,
+and sulphur is supplied in small quantities for making
+powder, but the cost of land carriage is great, and it is chiefly
+used locally for tipping matches.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The road is a great work of modern origin, and must have cost
+a large sum. It is in excellent repair. It is cut, not blasted, for
+much of the way out of solid rock. In places it is necessary to
+carry it out over the river on a wooden framework, supported on
+timbers driven into the river-bed, or to “scaffold” it by carrying it
+out on stakes driven horizontally into the rock. In one place a
+fine gallery, decorated with stone tablets to the man who presented
+the road to his district, has been cut through the rock, and wherever
+steps are necessary, they have been carefully made. At this
+distance of 2000 miles from the coast, and half that from the
+capital, it is somewhat surprising to find so marked a sign of
+civilisation as an excellent road in thorough repair.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I cannot attempt to convey to the reader any idea of the glories
+and surprises of that long day’s journey. It was a perfect extravagance
+of grandeur of form and beauty of colouring, and the sky
+approached that of Central Asia in the brilliancy of its bright
+pure blue. Every outline was sharp, but the gorges were filled
+with a deep blue or purple atmosphere; the sunlight was intense.
+There was no dawn of spring on the bare rock faces of the
+mountains, no gloom of pine in any rift—grandeur and vastness
+are the characteristics of the scenery—peaks and precipices are
+piled on each other, and through the rare openings there were
+gleamings far away of sunlit cones of unsullied snow.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_382'>382</span>There are villages on hilltops, on rocky peaks, reached by
+stairs cut in the rock, on ledges of precipices, into which the
+back rooms are excavated without obvious means of access, and
+villages where the houses are three, four, five, and even seven
+storeys high, clinging to steep mountain-sides, or hanging on to
+cliffs above tempestuous streams. These villages are on heights
+five, seven, and even nine thousand feet above the sea—barley and
+bearded wheat ripening in July at eleven thousand—and from one
+to three thousand feet above the Siao Ho. All are built of stone,
+all look more or less like fortifications, all have flat roofs, and most
+have brown wood rooms or galleries, much decorated with rude
+fretwork, supported on carved beams projecting from their upper
+storeys.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Most of these villages possess mysterious-looking square stone
+towers, sloping very gently inwards from base to summit. These
+are from forty to ninety feet high. The bases of some of them
+are thirty feet square; the sides are pierced by narrow openings,
+wider, however, than loopholes. The doors are fifteen feet and
+upwards from the ground, and I did not see any with any present
+means of access. Some have lost many feet of their height, I
+suppose from age and weather, but many are perfect, and have
+projections near the roofs, which on a small scale are like the projecting
+rooms of the modern villages. Three and four in a single
+village is not an uncommon number, and occasionally there are as
+many as seven. At a distance they give the romantic villages in
+the ravines the prosaic aspect of smelting works, but they add
+a singular dignity and picturesqueness to those on the heights.
+They are built without mortar of blocks of undressed stone, “well
+and truly laid,” in spite of the difficulty of the inward slope, and
+the stones are of sufficient size to suggest an inquiry as to how
+they were elevated to their present positions. Those towers which
+are still perfect are roofed, which may account for their preservation.
+There are great numbers of them between Weichou and
+Li-fan Ting, after which they occur but rarely till the head-waters
+of the Chin-shuan are reached.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As the Man-tze say that “their fathers and their fathers’ fathers
+never remember a time when they were free,” so they cannot remember
+any legends regarding the use of these towers, except
+that in “old times” fires were lighted on their roofs to recall
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_383'>383</span>absent villagers to the defence of their homes against an approaching
+enemy. Some think that they were granaries, but
+the so-called thinking of people in their stage of mental development
+is of little value.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p383_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>ANCIENT TOWERS AT KANPO.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Perhaps mine, in the absence of a greater array of facts, is not
+worth much more! It appears certain, from a consensus of testimony,
+that these buildings have two and three floors, reached by
+steps, <i>i.e</i>. notched timbers, like those which at this day lead up to
+Man-tze roofs. Very large, rough, earthen jars, which might have
+contained water, were shown to me as having been found in one
+of them. It is quite possible that at a late date the roofs were
+used for beacon fires, but from certain indications in a few cases
+I am inclined to believe that easily-removable approaches of stone
+and earth led up to the doors, by which stores could be taken up
+and cattle driven in, the final entrance, after the removal of these
+slopes, being made by means of notched timbers, easily drawn up
+into the building; and that the towers were refuges, in which the
+cattle were below and the people above, food for man and beast
+being stored in the same building. This theory accounts for the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_384'>384</span>number of towers often found in the same village. It is quite
+possible that the chief or headman and each of the richer
+villagers possessed such a refuge. The style of building is far
+beyond the capacities of a “barbarous” people.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Along the lower waters of the Siao Ho, all the Man-tze villages
+which have not been more or less destroyed—with the exception of
+a few which have been deserted, and are ready for occupation to-morrow,
+with the lands belonging to them, have been taken possession
+of by the Chinese, and evidently with much slaughter, for the
+number of graves is very great. Even the villages on the heights
+above that part of the river have not escaped Chinese absorption.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At one time, and that not long ago, the aboriginal population
+must have been large, both to the south and west of Weichou,
+but not a Man-tze was to be seen within forty <i>li</i> of it. Many a
+blackened ruin of a once happy Man-tze hamlet stirs the travellers’
+wrath, and it is hardly less aggravating to find Chinese families
+comfortably living in the picturesque dwellings of the slaughtered
+or expatriated aborigines. There were many tales told of the
+treachery of the “Barbarians,” and of the necessity of extirpating
+them—such tales as are to be heard in America, Australia, and
+every land in which the stronger race has ousted the weaker one.
+When at Li-fan Ting my farther progress was vehemently opposed,
+I had some reason to think that the officials feared that when I
+was once fairly among the Man-tze I should hear other versions
+of these stories.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>About forty <i>li</i> from Weichou, where the lateral clefts in the
+precipices are dark and savage, and rocky peaks crowned with
+fantastic lama-serais rise abruptly from rocky spurs, the villages
+on the heights become more numerous, and the presence for
+the first time of Man-tze inhabitants (who are rigid lamaistic
+Buddhists like the Tibetans) is denoted by long flags inscribed
+with Sanskrit characters on tall poles fluttering gaily in the strong
+east wind which blows down the canyon all day long. Occasionally
+a wooden bridge on the cantilever principle, like the Sanga
+bridges in India, of which many specimens are seen between
+the Zoji-la and Leh in Ladak, crosses the furious torrent. Most
+of the Man-tze villages are on the left bank of the Siao Ho, and
+by the destruction of these bridges, which are much out of repair,
+they could be rendered impregnable.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_385'>385</span>These villages are indescribable. The cattle and fodder are
+kept below, and the windows and loopholes only begin from
+fifteen to twenty feet from the ground. Brown projecting rooms
+and balconies at a great height, the gay flutter of red and white
+prayer-flags, notched timbers giving access to roof above roof,
+fuel-stacks on roofs, towers suggesting peril and defence, and
+not seldom a headman’s house above, as large as a feudal castle,
+which it much resembles; while high above that, looking like
+an outgrowth of the rock, and only attained by flights of steep
+rock steps, crowning the peak which dominates every village,
+are almost invariably the piled-up temples, towers, and buildings
+of a lama-serai, with their colour and gloom, the flutter of their
+prayer-flags, and the sound of the incessant wild music of horns,
+drums, and gongs. An air of mystery pervades the whole, for
+with all this cheerful flutter of flags and the sound of music and
+the signs of industry it was very rarely that any inhabitants were
+to be seen, just the glint of a woman’s red petticoat now and then,
+or the red frock of a lama in relief against the grey rock.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These tribes are not Tibetan, though they are down on most
+maps as “Tibetan tribes,” but in the extraordinary picturesqueness
+of their lama-serais and villages they reminded me vividly of the
+Shayok, and the fantastic monasteries of Deskyid and Hundar
+in the Tibetan Nubra Valley.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is a temptation to linger on that day’s journey. I did
+actually linger on it, for one of my bearers, as I expected, was
+quite unequal to his work, and I had to walk a good deal and
+allow of many halts for rest. The halting-places were magnificent,
+but food was scarce and dear, as every cattie of rice must be
+brought up from the low country. Although we ascended on
+that day 988 feet, the climate became perceptibly milder, and
+from what I observed later, it appears quite possible that in
+temperature each degree west is equal to a degree south. Grain
+crops, poplar, apricot, and pear trees were in their first vivid
+green, the silver fern was in its beauty, the golden fern was
+well advanced, the bugloss was in bloom, and in places where
+the canyon opened a little there were narrow lawns of the finest
+turf, on which the Tibetan traders camp in the season, on which
+red roses with coarse, woolly calices were already in blossom.
+There was no traffic, and even an unloaded pedestrian, unless
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_386'>386</span>he were a red lama telling his beads, or twirling his prayer-cylinder,
+was a rarity.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the late afternoon, at an abrupt and superb turn of the
+river, we crossed a cantilever bridge high above the torrent, on the
+other side of which is a fine village of extraordinary Man-tze
+houses, clinging to ledges of a conical peak crowned by a small
+temple and a very large and fantastic lama-serai. A tower, ninety
+feet high, very ancient, and in good repair, gives dignity to the
+picturesqueness of Ta-fan. The road attains the village by a
+steep, winding stairway of steps cut in the rock, and passes
+through a gateway into cool shadow created by high, massive,
+stone houses on either side. So massive are they, and so high
+are the windows above the ground, that they suggest memories of
+villages in the Engadine.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I rested in a large house in which, as in the others, a Chinese
+was living with his family. These aborigines had grand ideas
+of habitations. I entered into a guest hall panelled with brown
+wood, with two rooms on each side and a large room behind.
+A gallery of brown wood, with rooms opening from it, runs
+round the hall at a height of about eight feet from the floor.
+It was very cool and clean, and I sat in a Chinese easy-chair,
+glad to be out of the bluster. My host, who was the headman,
+was a very courteous Chinese, and offered me wheaten
+cakes, honey, and tea. He said that all the houses in the
+canyon were built by “Tibetans,” though Chinese live in the lower
+villages; that if a Chinese builds a new house he builds it after
+the same fashion, for that nothing but Tibetan building—specially
+the inward slope of the very thick walls—can stand the tremendous
+winds. The village subsists less by agriculture, for which there
+is not sufficient irrigation, than by the Tibetan traffic in the trading
+season.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The headman asked me why I was travelling to be murdered
+by the “Barbarians,” and evidently attached no value to my
+statement that it was to see the country. I wished then and
+elsewhere that I had been able to say that it was in order to
+write a book, for that would have given me “rank,” and would
+have been an intelligible explanation.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_387'>387</span>
+<img src='images/p387_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>KAN-CHI.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>After leaving this village the mountains closed in again upon
+the pass, their forms growing in wild majesty; there were glimpses
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_389'>389</span>of snow-peaks with pines on their skirts, and where the shadow
+was bluest and deepest, and the peaks are loftiest and sharpest,
+on a small patch of partially level ground, separated from a very
+high and bare mountain, with precipices which Captain Gill
+estimates at 3000 feet in height, by the roaring river, stands the
+wild mountain town of Li-fan Ting, the residence of a small
+magistrate, though only possessing a population of five hundred.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Before we actually reached it waves of sunset gold rolled down
+the pass, distant snow-cones blushed red, every peak took on
+purple or amethyst—there was a carnival of colour. The wind
+fell to a dead calm, there was a touch of frost in the dry air, when
+suddenly the whole glory of mountain and chasm died out, and
+the colour vanished, leaving only the distant snow-peaks burning
+red against a sky of tender green.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This small, grey city, on whose expansion Nature places her
+veto, looks the final outpost of Chinese civilisation—the end of all
+things. A well-built, narrow, crenelated wall runs between Li-fan
+Ting and the river, hems it in, and then in a most fantastic way
+climbs the crests of two mountain spurs, which wall in a ravine
+behind the town, bare and rocky as all else is, looking like great
+flights of uncannily steep stairs, following the steep and irregular
+contour of the ground.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A clear blue torrent, tumbling down at the back, thunders
+through the town, and is utilised for many Lilliputian water-mills,
+mostly with horizontal wheels, as on the plain. These mills are
+round, and look like small Martello towers, and only a man below
+the average height can stand upright in them. Poplars, willows,
+pear, and apricot trees contrast pleasantly with the bare mountain-sides,
+and soften the grey outlines of the small mountain town.
+Above Li-fan, and 2200 feet higher, is a Man-tze village, in which
+the people have made Chinese intermarriages, and have assimilated
+themselves to their conquerors.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Li-fan has one long, narrow, grey street of two-storeyed houses,
+the upper storey with its balcony being of brown wood. It is very
+clean, but cleanliness is not much of a merit—indeed, it is a
+necessity of that altitude and in a dry atmosphere. It has no
+industry or trade of its own, and subsists almost entirely on the
+through trade from Tibet at certain seasons. It has a remarkable
+<i>yamen</i>, which, lacking space for lateral expansion, has developed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_390'>390</span>skywards; a temple on a rock, brilliantly coloured; and a fine
+temple in the narrow street, rich in effective wood carving, and
+possessing a huge bas-relief of the Dragon. The rarefied air is
+singularly dry, and so it continues until the Pass of Peh-teo-shan,
+70 <i>li</i> to the westward, marks a decided change to humidity. On
+the nights of April 22nd and 23rd there were three and four
+degrees of frost.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In this quaint town on the first day of the tenth month of each
+year, the mandarin, with all the pomp which Li-fan can muster,
+fires the biggest gun in the town at the opposite mountain to
+preserve “the luck of the place.” It is believed, at least by the
+people, that if this ceremony were not performed there would be
+tumults, followed by plague, pestilence, and famine, and that the
+town would be given up to bad luck. To save the luck some
+of the lamas make pilgrimages to an image cut in the rock at
+the base of the Snow Dragon, a grand mountain to the south of
+Li-fan.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The inn, where unwillingly I spent two days, is not bad, and
+was quite free from smells. My room was at its extreme end,
+close to a crashing, booming torrent, to the mountain, and to the
+red temple, which, like the <i>yamen</i>, has developed skywards. It
+had two large holes in the floor, and two windows under the roof,
+from which all the paper was torn, so that the tremendous wind
+by day found easy entrance.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>As soon as we arrived the usual official visit was paid, and with
+much politeness of manner obstacles were thrown in the way
+of my further progress. Two <i>chai-jen</i> were placed at my door,
+one of them sleeping across the threshold. Much consideration
+for the safety and comfort of a lady was expressed—a novelty in
+China. There were neither roads nor inns, it was said; the people
+were savages, the tribes were fighting, it was dangerous to proceed.
+The next morning the prospect for departure was badly clouded
+over. The veneer of politeness had disappeared, and the official
+manner had become dictatorial. Senior officials from the <i>yamen</i>
+mounted guard, and a sentry was stationed at the inn gate. I
+was a prisoner in all but the name. <i>Chai-jen</i> could not be provided,
+they said. The mandarin was absent, and no arrangements
+could be made till the Viceroy of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> had been communicated
+with. Going beyond Li-fan was a thing unheard of.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_391'>391</span>All other foreigners had turned back,<a id='r48'></a><a href='#f48' class='c013'><sup>[48]</sup></a> they could not be responsible
+for me any farther. They bullied and threatened my men,
+and forbade the townspeople to give me supplies or porters.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p391_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>ROCK TEMPLE, LI-FAN TING.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_393'>393</span>The other difficulties, which I had foreseen from the first,
+came to a head. Owing to the want of a contract I was in
+the power of the chair-bearers. One of them was nearly incapable
+of carrying me, and not having recovered from the severe
+blow at Lo-kia-chan I was not capable of much walking. The
+only man in Li-fan who could carry a chair was engaged in
+that man’s place in the morning, but was “ill” at night. The
+authorities had forbidden him to go, and had taken the precaution
+of laying the same prohibition on the mules, though if I could
+have dispensed with the men I was prepared to make the journey
+on a pack saddle. Finally and fatally, Mr. Kay, who was very
+much in the power of the servant who had got the team together,
+when the men said that all must go or none would go, engaged
+them all for the whole journey, and under the circumstances
+we were then absolutely in their power so far as going forwards
+was concerned. Such a tribe of rice-eating men, carrying their
+loads from the shoulder, would, under any circumstances, have
+been unsuited to the journey. But what was done could not be
+undone, and there was “no use in crying over spilt milk.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The <i>chai-jen</i> smoked their opium pipes across my door, but
+retained wits enough to pounce on me if I stirred, and even
+obtruded their unwelcome presence when I climbed on the roof
+to photograph. On the second evening the officials made a
+last effort to induce me to wait till they sent a runner to the
+capital and back.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The last morning I woke everybody at 4.30, and was ready
+to leave at 5.30; but it was not to be. The officials were already
+there frightening the coolies with stories, intimidating them, and
+threatening to have them beaten for disobedience, and there
+was a violent altercation between them and Mr. Kay, in which
+some very strong language was used on both sides, which did
+not mend matters. When I came out they tried to shut me
+into my room; but I managed to get into my chair. They
+told the bearers not to carry me. 1 told them to move on. The
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_394'>394</span>officials then tried to shut us in by closing parts of the outer
+door of the inn; but Mr. Kay opened them, and held them open
+till the frightened porters and my bearers had passed through.
+It was but fifty yards to the city gate. I feared they would close
+it, but they contented themselves with following us there, crying
+out, “We wash our hands of you!” and hurling at us the epithet
+“Foreign dogs!” as a parting missile, throwing down the gauntlet
+by sending us off without <i>chai-jen</i>, telling the brazen lie that the
+road I proposed to take was not in China!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>From this point there was the pleasurable excitement which
+attends a plunge into the unknown, for I had not been
+able to learn that missionary zeal, or geographical research, or
+commercial ambition had penetrated the regions beyond, or that
+any English traveller has given any description of it, and I only
+regret that my lack of scientific equipment should make my
+account of it meagre, and in some respects unsatisfactory.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_395'>395</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXXI.<br> <span class='c012'>LI-FAN TING TO TSA-KU-LAO</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>The sixty <i>li</i> from Li-fan Ting to Tsa-ku-lao (spelled by Mr.
+von Rosthorn of the Imperial Customs in a letter to me
+Tsaku-nao) have much the same characteristics as those of
+the day before. The scenery is magnificent, and even more
+fantastic. Nitrate of soda, sulphur, and iron ore abound. Sandstone
+has disappeared, giving place to limestone, conglomerate,
+schistaceous rock, grey and pink granite, basalt, and mica. The
+Siao Ho, still a full-watered and vigorous stream, occasionally
+narrowed to forty feet, plunges over pink granite ledges in a series
+of cataracts as the canyon opens out, and there are smooth, green
+lawns, with much wealth of dwarf, crimson roses, and much
+gloom, in many graves and dismal remains of Man-tze houses
+partially destroyed. Some of the potholes in the river are
+remarkable for their size, and still contain the smoothly-rounded
+stones by the action of which they have been formed. Pine woods
+appeared on hill crests and on the northern slopes of mountains.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Many Man-tze villages, now deserted, are ready for occupation,
+and others in romantic situations, now occupied by Chinese, are
+very striking architecturally, each with a Man-tze feudal castle
+piled on a rock above it. These villages were always built at
+the mouths of gorges where lateral torrents joining the Siao
+Ho formed alluvial fans with arable soil enough to support small
+populations. The picturesque stone houses, more like fortifications
+than dwellings, straggling up these gorges, perched on ledges of
+rock, harmonised most artistically with the wildness of the landscape,
+but it was impossible to photograph them owing to the
+tremendous wind.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Four hours after leaving Li-fan we halted at the large village
+of Wei-gua, with a very large lama-serai, said to contain two
+hundred lamas, cresting the rock above it, and a fine castle in a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_396'>396</span>dominant position. The illustration gives the lower and unpicturesque
+fragment of the village grouped round the remains
+of a large square tower. There we were overtaken by two
+<i>chai-jen</i>, the Li-fan officials having thought better of it, and an
+hour later by a third on horseback! This tardy courtesy roused
+my suspicions, and Mr. Kay and his servant went on ahead
+to obtain accommodation and make inquiries at Tsa-ku-lao,
+little thinking that the astute Li-fan officials had sent on a
+messenger in the morning to the local magistrate ordering that
+accommodation and transport should be refused! To this hour
+I am unaware of “the reason why.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After Mr. Kay went on, and the horseman arrived, I endeavoured
+to circumvent the <i>chai-jen</i>, for I had seen them, with
+much mystery, slip a letter into his hand, after which he tried
+to get in front of me. I jumped out of the chair, and set up
+my tripod on the narrow road, which he could not pass, and
+after a long attempt at photography, baffled by the wind, told
+him and the others to keep behind, and not to leave me. The
+horseman kept trying to get in front, but as the path is very
+narrow and mostly on the edge of a precipice, I managed to
+dodge him the whole way by holding a large umbrella first on
+one side, and then on the other!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A few miles from Tsa-ku-lao the <i>chai-jen</i> managed to pass
+me, and began to run towards a short cut, impassable for a
+chair. I sent Be-dien to stop them, and to my surprise he outran
+them, collared them, and held them till I came up, when
+I again ordered them behind the chair. Mr. Kay met me, saying
+that neither inn nor house would give us shelter, and that he
+had found that it would not do to make any inquiries about
+the farther route. However, we were received by a very good
+inn, where the people were very civil, and where I had an excellent
+room, with a large window looking on a mountain across a clean
+grassed space.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_397'>397</span>
+<img src='images/p397_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>VILLAGE OF WEI-GUA.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Soon after I got in difficulties began. Two officials arrived,
+and politely told many lies. They said that there were no
+places to sleep in on the road, that the snow on the passes was
+forty feet deep, and crevassed, that the tribes were fighting each
+other, that they were robbers and would rob us of everything,
+and repeated the Li-fan lie that the route is not in China, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_399'>399</span>that they could give us no protection. I produced a Chinese
+official map, and showed them that it lay far within the limits
+of the jurisdiction of the Viceroy of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, and, being fairly
+roused, and determined to proceed at least to Somo, I produced
+my passport, telling them that it had been granted on an application
+made by the English Tsung-li <i>yamen</i> at the request of the
+Grand Secretary (the Premier), and that they could see for
+themselves that it gave me rank, and enjoined on all mandarins
+not only not to put any obstructions in my way, but that, whether
+by land or water, every aid was to be given.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I further said that if this obstruction were persisted in, I should
+write a formal statement of the case to the British Consul at
+Chungking, to be officially forwarded by him to the highest
+quarter, and that they knew what that would mean. On the
+top of all, I produced the Viceroy’s letter to the <i>kuans</i> of
+Pi Hsien and Kuan Hsien. They were quite quenched, and
+said they would repeat this to the mandarin, and I should have
+his decision in an hour, and they bowed themselves out, taking my
+passport with them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>They returned in half an hour, saying that the mandarin would
+send soldiers with us to the limits of his jurisdiction, but that
+then we should be among the “Barbarians.” This seemed like
+a victory, yet I felt by no means sure that we should not be
+prevented from hiring mules, and be delayed into returning.
+The next day a last effort was made to hinder my westward
+progress, with a vehemence which was almost piteous, entreaties
+being resorted to when threats failed, but all collapsed on a
+special clause in my passport being again pointed out to these
+secretaries.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Tsa-ku-lao, the outpost of Chinese officialism, is gloriously
+situated at an altitude of about 6210 feet,<a id='r49'></a><a href='#f49' class='c013'><sup>[49]</sup></a> where the mountains
+swing apart, and at an abrupt bend of the river there are branching
+valleys and unencumbered heights. There are poplars and willows
+about the little town of 400 people, and a great Man-tze tower
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_400'>400</span>looks through them like an English church tower. One long,
+clean, narrow, and highly picturesque street, lined with shops
+vending gaily-coloured articles of Chinese manufacture, cuts the
+town in twain. Above it, where the houses are piled on ledges of
+rock in most artistic disorder, is a very large lama-serai, with a
+very quaint pagoda temple on a height above it. The houses in
+the street are two and three storeys high, with carved projecting
+upper rooms, and peaked roofs with deep eaves, from which
+depend carved wooden drops.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At the western exit the road drops abruptly down through the
+picturesque gateway seen in the illustration by 500 feet of steep
+stone steps to a bridge, which connects the trading with the
+official town. In the latter the <i>yamen</i> is an interesting-looking
+building in pure Tibetan style, with a Man-tze tower sixty feet
+high adjoining it. The population of Tsa-ku-lao is a mixed one,
+and many of the children show an agreeable departure from the
+Chinese physiognomy. The red woollen habits and peaked hats
+of the red lamas, the varied costumes of the tribesmen who were
+in the town for purposes of trade, and the thirteen differing styles
+of hats, the most interesting being made of a species of lichen,
+were a very pleasant variety.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>An agreeable variety it was, too, that the curiosity of the people
+for the first time in a journey of two years was tempered by
+politeness, for each batch of would-be sightseers, always women,
+sent in advance to know if I would receive them, and they always
+left after visits of conventional length, remarking that I must be
+tired!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We spent two nights there, because the coolies heard such tales
+of the road that they engaged mules to carry their loads, the
+bamboo over the shoulder with its dependent burdens being
+unsuited to the exigencies of mountain climbing, and the mules
+were away on the mountain. During that day, in which I visited
+the quaint official town, and photographed the gateway amidst
+a crowd of red and yellow lamas, tribesmen, and Chinese, who
+fell back when they were asked to do so, I received about fifty
+visitors, so that their supposition that I was tired was not far
+wrong. Of this number three, obviously of the Tsa-ku-lao
+“upper ten,” had been in Kuan Hsien, a few had been in Weichou,
+but none had been in Matang or Somo, and they said that
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_401'>401</span>there were very high mountains to cross, and that the snow was
+very deep. No woman could get to Somo they thought. They
+had never seen a foreign woman, and Russia was the only foreign
+country that they knew by name.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p401_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>STREET OF TSA-KU-LAO.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_403'>403</span>Fine, strong, comely, healthy-looking women they were, with
+pleasant faces and manners, and minds narrowed to the interests
+of Tsa-ku-lao. Some of their children were really pretty. The
+court of the inn was always full of red and yellow lamas, muleteers
+in picturesque jackets and leggings, and hats like <i>sombreros</i>,
+Tibetans in sheepskins, and tribesmen whose physiognomies
+showed a complete departure from the Mongolian type. It was
+altogether exciting, and the keen air was bracing and stimulating.
+The picturesqueness of the little outpost town in the brilliant
+sunshine and under the clear blue sky was fascinating, and the
+friendliness and politeness of the people created a new atmosphere
+which it was pleasant to breathe. The sun went down in glory
+and colour, there was a perfect blaze of stars in the purple sky, and
+the mercury fell to the freezing point. The “Beyond” beckoned,
+and though I knew that the travelling arrangements must break
+down from their inherent unsuitability, I fell asleep prepared to
+follow.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_404'>404</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXXII.<br> <span class='c012'>THE “BEYOND”</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>The scanty hoar frost lay on the ground at five the next
+morning, and the sun rose, as he had set, in glory, flooding
+the canyons with a deluge of amber light. There was a considerable
+delay before starting, and to the last I feared the wiles of
+Chinese officialism; but it turned out to be only the usual difficulty
+of the first start with animals—weighing and adjusting loads and
+the like. There were three strong, whole-backed, pleasant-faced
+red mules, and the muleteer was equally pleasant, a Man-tze lama,
+quite a young man, who proffered hospitality for the next few
+days among his friends, inns having ceased. The thought of
+“poisoned feasts” never crossed my mind!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The greater part of the bizarre population of the quaint
+mountain town escorted us to the gateway. Superb weather
+favoured our departure. The heat of the sun melted the snows
+towards midday, adding volume to the thunderous roll of the
+Siao Ho, above which, after descending to the water’s edge, the
+bridle track is carried over spurs and abutments of limestone.
+There is a decided change in the scenery. The river, no longer
+closely hemmed in by the walls of a tremendous cleft, is broader
+and stiller; there are shingle banks and stretches of cultivated
+land, and it cuts its way through the ranges instead of following
+their clefts. A marked feature of this stretch of the Siao Ho is
+the extraordinarily abrupt bends which it makes, and that at most
+of these a sugar-loaf peak, forest-clothed below, and naked rock
+above, rises sheer from the river-bed, possibly to a height of from
+2000 to 3000 feet. Great openings allow of inspiring views of
+high, conical, snow-clothed peaks, heavily timbered below the
+snow; one group, called by the Chinese “The Throne of Snow,”
+consisting of a great central peak, with nine others of irregular
+altitudes surrounding it.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_405'>405</span>
+<img src='images/p405_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A SUGAR-LOAF MOUNTAIN, SIAO HO.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_407'>407</span>Climbing the Peh-teo-shan spur by a long series of rocky,
+broken zigzags, cut on its side through a hazel wood, and reaching
+an altitude of about 9270 feet in advance of my men, I felt
+the joy of a “born traveller” as I watched the mules with their
+picturesque Man-tze muleteer, the eleven men no longer staggering
+under burdens, but jumping, laughing, and singing, some of
+them with leaves of an artemisia stuffed into their nostrils to
+prevent the bleeding from the nose which had troubled them
+since leaving Weichou, the two soldiers in their rags, and myself
+the worst ragamuffin of all. There were many such Elysian
+moments in this grand “Beyond.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The summit is thick with poles, some of them bearing flags
+inscribed in Tibetan characters in honour of the Spirit of the
+Pass, and there is a large cairn, to which my men added their
+quota of stones. Fifteen or sixteen hundred feet below, the
+river looks like a green silk cord interwoven with silver. There
+is a sharp bend and a widening, from which rise two conical
+peaks, forest-clothed and craggy. Lateral gorges run up from
+the river, walled in by high, frowning, forest-covered mountains,
+breaking into grey, bare peaks, and crags gleaming in the sunshine.
+To the north-west the canyon broadens. Mountains
+rise above mountains, forest-covered, except where their bare
+ribs and buttresses stand harshly out above the greenery, and
+above them great, sunlit, white clouds were massed, emphasising
+the blue gloom of pines; and far higher, raised by an atmospheric
+effect to an altitude which no mountains of this earth attain
+to, in the full sunshine of a glorious day, were three illuminated
+snow-peaks, whose height from the green and silver river, judged
+by the eye alone, might have been 30,000 feet! They might
+have been “the mountains of the land which is very far off,”
+for the lighted clouds below separated them from all other
+earthly things, and their dazzling summits are unprofaned by the
+foot of man.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The descent to the river is long and steep, the sun was hot; the
+aridity and sparse vegetation of most of the road up to the pass
+are exchanged for comparative humidity and a wealth of small
+trees and flowers; the river broadens considerably, breaks up into
+several channels with shingle beds and tamarisk, till it and the
+canyon narrow together at a point where a wooden cantilever
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_408'>408</span>bridge is thrown across at a considerable height from two natural
+piers of rock.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There, a very dirty Chinese village faces a Man-tze village
+of towers and lofty stone houses. After a halt, during which
+I sat on a stone in the broiling sunshine, much vexed by dust
+and the aggressiveness of both children and pigs, we crossed
+the bridge and shortly entered Paradise. There the hideous black
+pig was left behind! The river divides, each branch having its
+own glorious gorge apparently closed by snow-peaks. There are
+small fair lawns, on which nature has clumped maples and ilex;
+great forest trees coming down to the water, wreathed with roses
+and clematis; and a showy, detached temple—the only one in the
+region—the household or lama-serai house of worship from thenceforth
+taking the place of the public temple. At its entrance
+are two large prayer-wheels.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p408_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>REVOLVING PRAYER-CYLINDERS.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Close beside it the road passes under an arch, on each side
+of which are six prayer-cylinders, which revolve on being brushed
+by the hand; and near it is a much-decorated “prayer-wheel,” in a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_409'>409</span>house of its own, bestriding a stream, worked by water power, the
+lama in attendance receiving so much for each revolution. This
+cylinder is twelve feet high, with a diameter of four feet, and
+is said to contain 100,000 repetitions of the well-known Buddhist
+mantra “<i>Om mani padme hun</i>.” Beyond, there was a man engaged
+in making idols after the fashion described by Isaiah the prophet,
+a bridge of uncertain equipoise over one branch of the river, and
+a little farther on the main branch of the Siao Ho, descending
+from the north-west, is joined by streams of nearly equal volume
+from the south and north, coming down through canyons full
+of superb vegetation, above which rise, mostly in groups, peaks
+of unsullied snow.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The vegetation above this meeting of the waters, and with few
+breaks for many a day’s journey, is tropical in its luxuriance. The
+canyon is very narrow. On the left the mountains descend to
+the torrent in a series of precipices. On the right a space, averaging
+twenty yards in width, gives room for the bridle path and
+for a perfect glory of vegetation. From this rise forest-clothed
+precipices and peaks as on the other side. Between them thunders
+the small river, narrower, but much fuller in volume than below,
+green with a greenness I have never seen before or since, and
+white with foam like unto driven snow, booming downwards with
+a fall of over sixty feet to the mile, its brilliant waters hasting
+to lose themselves 2000 miles away in the turbid Yellow Sea.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mosses and ferns soften the outlines of boulders and drape
+the trunks of fallen trees. Tree-stems are nearly hidden by ferns
+and orchids, only one of the latter, a purple and brown spotted
+<i>dendrobium</i>, being in blossom. A free-flowering, four-leaved white
+clematis, arching the road with its snowy clusters, looped the trees
+together, and a white daphne filled the air with its heavy fragrance.
+Large white peonies gleamed in shady places. White and yellow
+jasmine and yellow roses entwined the trunks of trees, and the
+flowering shrubs, mostly evergreens, were innumerable. Ivies and
+varieties of the <i>ampelopsis</i> lent their familiar grace. Spring is
+fantastic there, and in freaks of colouring mimics the glories of
+autumn. Maples flaunt in crimson and purple, in pale green
+outlined in rose-red; the early fronds of the abundant hare’s-foot
+fern crimson the ground; there were scarlet, auburn, and “old
+gold” trees; and as to greens, there were the dark greens and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_410'>410</span>blue-greens of seven varieties of pines, the shining dark greens of
+ilex, holly, and yew, the dull, dark greens of cedar and juniper,
+the shining light greens of birch and beech and many another
+deciduous tree, and the almost translucent pea-green of the
+feathery maple—red, purple, and green, alike admitting the vivid
+sunshine as through stained glass.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The ground, concealed by mosses in every shade of green, gold,
+and auburn, by a crimson-cupped lichen, and the crimson of the
+young hare’s-foot fern, was starred with white and blue anemones,
+white and blue violets, yellow violas, primulas and lilies, white and
+yellow arabis, and patches of dwarf blue irises, while our own
+lily of the valley looked out modestly from under the shrubs,
+and I recognised lovingly among the beautiful exotic ferns our
+own oak and beech—our <i>filix mas</i> and <i>Osmunda Regalis</i>, at no
+disadvantage among their foreign associates.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So exquisitely beautiful were the details that it was hard to
+look up and take in the broader features of the unrivalled witchery
+of the scene, where the foliage of the maple lighted up the gloom
+of holly and ilex with its spring pinks and reds, where a species
+of poplar rivalled it in lemon-yellow, where the delicate foliage
+of the golden-barked birch was copper-red, and every shade
+approaching green was represented, from the glaucous blue of
+the balsam pine, and the dark blue-green of its coniferous
+brethren, to the pale <i>aqua marine</i> of deciduous trees in clumps
+among the pine woods below the snow.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For, piled above the forest-clothed cliffs and precipices which
+wall in the river, and blocking up every lateral opening, were
+countless peaks or splintered ranges, cleaving the blue sky with
+an absolute purity of whiteness. High up, in extraordinary
+situations of dubious access, are Man-tze villages, much like
+fortifications, their suggestion of human interests and flutter of
+prayer-flags giving life to the scene. The river sympathetically
+adapts itself to its changed surroundings. Its colouring is a vividly
+transparent green, to which it would be an injustice to liken an
+emerald. Over it drooped, from the contorted stems of trees
+covered with ferns, orchids, and trailers, long sprays of red and
+white climbing roses, and within the cool toss of its spray, film
+ferns and the beautiful <i>trichomanes radicans</i> flourished in boundless
+profusion, almost transparent under the trickling sunshine. The
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_411'>411</span>river descends in falls and cataracts, in sheets and glints of foam,
+under bending trees, and trails of clematis and roses, pausing
+now and then in deep green pools in whose mirrors roses, clematis,
+and snow-peaks meet; but, its thunder-music, echoing from gorge
+and precipice, pauses never.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p411_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>BRIDLE TRACK BY THE SIAO-HO.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_413'>413</span>For hours we passed through this fairyland of beauty and
+fragrant and aromatic odours, which it is a luxury to recall; then
+the odorous air grew damp, the peaks flushed, the shadows on
+the road deepened, the canyon “swung open to the light,” through
+the great gates of the west the sunset glory rolled in waves of red
+and gold, and on a low hill bearing the name of Chuang-fang, and
+a few traces of cultivation, there was a lonely Man-tze dwelling.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The host, as a relation of our intelligent and courteous young
+lama, made us very welcome, but his wife, a very handsome woman,
+on coming in from the hill with a load of wood, looked astonished
+to find a foreign woman and twelve men in possession of her house.
+That dwelling, typical of the poorer class of Man-tze houses, has
+two roofs, each reached by a deeply-notched tree-trunk, exactly
+like those used by the Ainu of Yezo. It has an entrance-chamber
+common to men, mules, and fowls, an inner room or kitchen,
+scarcely lighted, with a fire and “cooking range” on a raised
+hearth in the centre, from which the stinging wood smoke finds
+various outlets in the absence of a chimney. In the better houses,
+a hole in the roof into which a hollow log is cemented offers a
+more conventional exit. The fire is the place of family gathering
+and eating, and man, wife, and children eat together. These people
+possess the term “hearth-side.” The woman, though not young,
+was really beautiful, after a European type, and had very fine teeth,
+but her rich complexion was somewhat dulled by dirt; for these
+people, like the Tibetans, wash only “once a year”—<i>i.e.</i>, very
+rarely.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>With much politeness I was escorted by her up the notched
+timbers to a first and then to a second roof, which, being the
+threshing-floor, was swept very, clean. At one end there was a
+high frame for drying maize upon, and at the other a roof supported
+on four posts, but with an open front, which is the granary.
+This space was divided by a great grain tray and my curtains, I
+occupying one end, and the servants, soldiers, and some of the
+coolies the other. The sharp frosty air was elixir, and the redgold
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_414'>414</span>of sunset and the rose-pink of sunrise on the snows which
+enclose the valley made a night in the open air very delightful.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was too windy for a candle, and my food, prepared in the
+smoke below, was eaten by the light of a nearly full moon in the
+delicious temperature of 30°. To be away from crowds, rowdyism,
+unmannerly curiosity, rice-fields, stenches—from slavery to
+custom, enforced by brutality, and from many a hateful thing—to
+be out of China proper, to be among mountains whose myriad
+snow-peaks glitter above the blue gloom of pine-filled depths, to
+breathe the rarer air of 8000 feet, to be free, and in a new uplifted
+world of semi-independent tribes, and fairly embarked on a journey,
+with Chinese officialism apparently successfully defied, and last, but
+not least, the complete disappearance of rheumatism from which I
+had suffered long and badly, made up an aggregate of good things.
+Anything might happen afterwards, but for that one day I had
+breathed the air of freedom, and had obtained memories of beauty
+such as would be a lifelong possession.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p414_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>VIEW FROM CHUANG FANG.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Sleep came in the middle of these pleasant thoughts, and I did
+not wake till sunrise, with its waves of rosy light rolling up the
+glen, began to take the chill off the frosty air. There was additional
+snow on the mountains, and the higher pine woods were hoary.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_415'>415</span>These hospitable people do not receive payment for their hospitality,
+nor do they use money—silver being only appreciated for its
+use in jewellery, and copper not at all. The roof, or the guest-room,
+if there be one, is at the disposal of any reputable wayfarer;
+but he must bring his own food, for they have none to sell.
+Fortunately, I had needles, scissors, and reels of silk with me,
+which there and elsewhere made the hearts of many women
+glad.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The scenery the following day was, if possible, more glorious
+than before, and the intense blue and singular <i>glitter</i> of the sky.
+The road still pursues the right bank of the river, the canyon is
+slightly wider, and for most of the way seven snow-peaks are an
+apparent barrier. In the forests near the road there were nine
+species of pines and firs, and eight of maples, besides cedars, yew,
+juniper, elm, holly, oak, poplar, alder, ilex, plane, birch, pear, etc.
+A white honeysuckle added its exquisite fragrance to the aggregate
+of sweet odours. The woods were full of white peonies,
+sky-blue larkspur and aconite abounded, and yellow roses revelled
+in the sunshine on the smooth lawns by the river on which the
+Tibetan traders camp in the season. My coolies, having no loads
+to carry, were much excited about the peonies. The roots are
+an expensive drug in China, and the men said they could get a
+dollar each for them, so there was a great raid upon them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After crossing and recrossing the Siao Ho on wooden cantilever
+bridges, we reached Ku-erh-kio, a purely Man-tze village, piled
+on an abrupt height where a lateral gorge with a tributary stream
+debouches on the river. This was the last point to which I was
+attended by Chinese officialism, and the first where there was a
+representative of the <i>Tu-tze</i> of Somo, the territory on which I
+then entered. There the soldiers from Tsa-ku-lao, jolly young
+fellows, delivered the mandarin’s letter to the <i>T’ou-jen</i>, or headman,
+and returned.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A Man-tze official escort was at once provided, consisting not
+of armed and stalwart tribesmen, but of two handsome laughing
+girls, full of fun, who plied the distaff as they enlivened our way
+to Chu-ti. Nor was this fascinating escort a sham. Before starting
+each of the girls put on an extra petticoat. If molestation had
+been seriously threatened, after protesting and calling on all present
+to witness the deed, they would have taken off the additional
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_416'>416</span>garments, laying them solemnly (if such laughing maidens could
+be solemn) on the ground, there to remain till the outrage had
+been either atoned for or forgiven, the nearest man in authority
+being bound to punish the offender. Mr. Baker mentions a nearly
+similar custom among the Lolos of Yunnan. <i>En route</i> we passed
+several Man-tze villages, and at each the people came out and
+brought us wooden cups of cold water, indulging in much fun
+with my men, as several of them could speak Chinese. Nearly
+all the women were handsome. They were loaded with silver and
+coral ornaments, plied the distaff as they joked, and were free, not
+to say bold, in their manners.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p416_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>CASTLE AT CHU-TI.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Chu-ti consists of two Chinese houses, a bridge, and a large
+Man-tze house, with some cultivation round it, on the left bank.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_417'>417</span>There we were hospitably received by our muleteer’s elder brother,
+though when he saw the army of coolies he said he did not keep
+an inn, and begged that nothing might be stolen. I was at once
+provided with a clean room on the roof, “the best guest-room,”
+with a window-frame, in which was fixed a prayer-cylinder revolved
+by the wind, which whirred monotonously by day and
+night. Many of the people from a village on a height, which is
+only accessible by a series of ladders, spent the evening on the
+roof with much frolic and merriment. Of the foreigner they have
+no notion, and as I was clothed in brown wool they thought I was
+a Man-tze of another tribe. Some of the women were beautiful,
+and even in middle life they retain their good looks and fine
+complexions.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p417_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>HEADMAN’S HOUSE, CHU-TI.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_418'>418</span>
+<img src='images/p418_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>ALTAR OF INCENSE ON MAN-TZE ROOF.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>This stone dwelling, arranged, as are all the better class of
+houses, apparently for defence, has three floors, reached by steep,
+wide step ladders inside. Cattle, mules, fodder, and agricultural
+implements occupy the first, the family the second, and on two
+sides of its flat roof, which is protected by a parapet two feet high,
+are the family temple and guest-rooms. This flat roof, which is
+also the threshing-floor, is the general gathering-place, the wrestling-ground,
+and the place where the women weave their woollen
+stuffs on their portable looms. On the roofs of the temple and
+guest-rooms, which are partially covered for use as granaries, the
+men play cards, chess, and a game resembling <i>Go</i>. On all roofs,
+even of the poorest class, there is at the eastern corner a small
+clay furnace with a chimney, called “the altar of incense.” In this
+at sunrise, the householder, man or woman, looking eastwards,
+burns a bundle of the green twigs and foliage of the yew, of which
+two species are accessible. This may possibly be a relic of a
+nature-worship anterior to Buddhism. All well-to-do persons
+have a temple on the roof, as in Tibet, with images of the Buddhist
+triad against the wall, an altar with the usual emblems and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_419'>419</span>offerings, a drum, gong, horn, and cymbals, and as many of the
+insignia of Buddhism as their means allow them to obtain. The
+householder can act as priest, and every man or woman can
+present his or her invocations and offerings, and in Man-tze homes
+there is scarcely an hour from sunrise to sunset in which the dull
+beat of the drum and “<i>Om mani padme hun</i>,” reiterated in a high-pitched
+monotone, are not heard.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Snow-peaks above, and snow-peaks below, reddened gloriously at
+sunset and sunrise, the view from the roof was absolutely entrancing,
+and the first half of the next day’s march was even lovelier
+than before. At one of the finest parts some tribesmen were
+building a bridge, and from it some muleteers, chiefly girls, with
+much laughter, were driving some unladen mules through a very
+rough ford. Many of the men crossed, and asked for help in
+building their bridge, which I would willingly have given them,
+but that my silver was far behind on the mules. They became
+very obstreperous, and one put his arm across the road to prevent
+my chair from passing. We got on, however, for a few <i>li</i>, and
+waited there for the mules. <i>Chai-jen</i> had ceased at Chu-ti.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On the same morning the bearer who had always been unfit
+for his work, and who denied himself food in order to get opium,
+for he was an immoderate smoker, collapsed and fell by the
+roadside with a fluttering pulse and a temperature of 104°. I put
+him in my chair and walked as long as I could, and then he
+had to lie down, and I paid a man to stay with him. An hour
+passed, and no mules; and I was so afraid that the men at the
+bridge had robbed the muleteer, for they were a rough lot, that
+Mr. Kay went back. Another hour passed, and then the mules
+came all right, and the sick man, moaning and breathless, supported
+along by Mr. Kay, who is both strong and kind.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Higher up the canyon opens out into a valley of divided
+streams and shingle beds, either absolutely bare, or covered with
+the <i>Hippophæ rhamnoides</i> and a species of tamarisk. The receding
+mountain-sides are gashed by summer torrents, and the vegetation
+is scanty. There was a broad camping-ground among trees,
+and the coolies made fires and cooked their rice, a number
+of Somo women from a village on a height—nearly all of them
+handsome, in the Meg Merrilees style—looking timidly on.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_420'>420</span>
+<img src='images/p420_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>SICK UNTO DEATH.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>The sick coolie was laid under a tree, and I put a wet pocket-handkerchief
+on his burning brow. Then latent Chinese brutality
+came out, showing that on these men the popular cult of Kwanyin,
+who is really a lovable creation, had no influence. There
+were five baggage coolies carrying nothing, and when I proposed
+that they should divide one mule’s load among them and let him
+ride, they refused. He had been working, sleeping, and eating
+with them for twelve days, yet when I asked if they were going
+to leave him there to die, they laughed and said, “Let him die;
+he’s of no use.” Though the water he craved for was only a few
+yards off they did not care to give him any. When appealed
+to again they said, “No matter; Mr. Kay can look after him.”
+And so he did, for when I had walked till I was exhausted that
+he might be carried, Mr. Kay nearly carried him for the remaining
+distance, and slept without his wadded gown in the keen frosty
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_421'>421</span>air, that he might have it. The others laughed at his sufferings,
+at me for bathing his head, and, above all, at my walking to
+let him ride.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After we crossed to the right bank of the dwindling river a
+great number of Man-tze men and women met us, and escorted
+us up steep stony slopes to the large village of Mia-ko, with
+its many-storeyed houses, a feudal castle, and a lama-serai like
+an ugly factory, with 150 monks. We were received in the house
+of the <i>T’ou-jen</i>, the father of our muleteer, who has a patriarchal
+household of married sons and daughters with their children, and
+farms on a large scale.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p421_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>LAMA-SERAI AND HEADMAN’S HOUSE, MIA-KO.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>The great treeless hillsides are well suited for agriculture, and
+though the altitude of Mia-ko is nearly 10,000 feet, wheat ripens
+in July. At that height, the Dover’s powder with which I dosed
+the coolie failed to produce its usual effect, nor was any other
+sudorific more successful. In the dry, rarefied air my umbrella
+split to pieces, shoes and other things cracked, screws fell out of
+my camera (one of Ross’s best), my air-cushion collapsed, a horn
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_422'>422</span>cup went to pieces spontaneously, and celluloid films became
+electric, and emitted sparks when they were separated!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The soil of the mountain-sides is sandy, and potatoes, which
+have only lately been introduced, do well. There are many large
+villages scattered over these slopes, and the people have great
+flocks of brown goats and sheep, the latter a flop-eared, hornless,
+long-woolled breed, with fat tails weighing from three to six
+pounds. They also breed herds of <i>dzo</i>, a very valuable hybrid
+between the yak and cow, and capable of carrying 80 lbs. more
+than either the horse or mule. The male is used for ploughing,
+and the female gives more milk than any other of the bovine race.
+Of it they make butter, which, as in Tibet, appears to become
+more valuable with years, and which is largely used, along with
+salt and soda, in the preparation of tea, which is churned in a
+wooden churn till it is as thick as chocolate. From the hair of
+the <i>dzo</i> and yak the Man-tze make a heavy felt, used for cloaks in
+cold and wet weather, and for boots. As far as the divide, snow
+only lies for a few days at a time, and judging from description,
+the frost is never severe.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Man-tze cultivation is rough and untidy as compared with
+Chinese. Indigenous flowers muster strong among the crops,
+and irrigation is not understood. Drought is the great enemy
+of agriculture, and the crops in this great valley were in urgent
+need of rain.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the late afternoon of our arrival Mia-ko was deserted, and
+a long procession of men and women, each carrying a heavy
+burden on the back, wound slowly up the hill to a point where it
+was reinforced by a similarly burdened company from our village,
+and the united force was met by a large body of lamas, including
+our muleteer, in their sacred vestments, chanting Sanskrit prayers.
+The burdens under which the people bent were the Buddhist
+scriptures, which, when complete, weigh 90 lbs., and to carry this
+sacred load is regarded as an acceptable act of merit. Before the
+prolonged service ceased there was “a sound of abundance of
+rain,” the wind rose, the rain fell in torrents, and the soil of disintegrated
+granite imbibed it as if it never could be satisfied.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mia-ko is a noisy and cheerful village, and after Tibetan fashion,
+very religious. There is a low building on the hillside containing
+a number of revolving prayer-cylinders, ranged round it at a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_423'>423</span>convenient height. Round this in the early morning the villagers
+go in procession turning the cylinders. With brief intervals all
+day long in my host’s family temple one or another repeated
+prayers in a monotone. On the roofs are tall poles, each surmounted
+by a trident, or a ball and crescent, or bearing narrow,
+white prayer-flags of their own length. Groups of poles with
+similar flags are erected in memory of the dead, whose ashes often
+rest below in small cinerary urns. It is “merit” to make clay
+medallions, with which portions of these ashes are frequently
+mixed, and to stamp them with Sakyamuni’s image, or to finger
+the clay deftly into models of <i>chod-tens</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We had any number of these jovial, laughing, frolicking people
+on the roof at night, men and women on terms of equality.
+They drink <i>chang</i>, a turbid barley beer, as the Tibetans do. We
+were detained for some days at Mia-ko. The mules were lost
+on the hills, and stories were current of two mighty robbers, who
+were making a part of the road dangerous, and were keeping the
+country in alarm, and who successfully evaded capture, though
+a reward of sixty taels (£9) was offered for them dead or alive.
+The <i>T’ou-jen</i> was averse to our taking that route without an escort
+of ten spearmen, who had to be hunted up in the adjacent villages,
+and this took time. Into the midst of this detention dropped
+down a Chinese mounted officer, “a captain of a thousand,” with
+baggage and a mounted servant, and orders to keep me in view,
+whether to help or hinder I knew not, but strongly suspected the
+latter. Both carried swords and revolvers. This was most unwelcome,
+and the delicious sense of freedom in which I had been
+revelling vanished.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The food question caused me uneasiness, though I was always
+assured that “everything was to be got at Somo.” The people
+would not sell us so much as an egg, and the detention made such
+a serious inroad on our supplies that I reduced myself to tea, and
+damper baked in the ashes and pullable into long strings.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After the first curiosity, which was never vivid, was over the
+people pursued their usual avocations on the roof, reciting
+prayers, weaving, and making clothes in the day, and wrestling,
+fencing, and making a general frolic in the evening. Mia-ko is
+a very well-to-do village, and both sexes were loaded with silver
+jewellery.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_424'>424</span>The Siao Ho makes a preposterous turn above it, and we took
+a short cut over the pass of Shi-Tze-Ping (10,917 ft.), rejoining
+the river twenty <i>li</i> later. Heavy snow fell on the mountains
+during the previous night, whitening many of the lower hills,
+turning their shaggy pines into grey beards, and lying heavily
+on the superb coniferæ of the pass, where red and white rhododendrons
+and a large pink azalea were blooming profusely. At
+that elevation the mercury was 26° at 6 a.m., and as a strong
+north-east wind was blowing the cold was intense. At noon
+one thousand feet lower the mercury stood at 72°.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>From the summit there is a distant view of a long, snowy range,
+with a blunt and wavy outline, on which five peaks, evidently
+of great altitude, are superimposed. Hitherto the mountains,
+at least near the river, though dazzling white, had not reached
+the majesty of eternal snow, but on this range the guide said
+“it was always as it was then,” that the peaks were known as
+“the Snowy Mountains,” that the highest was called Tang-pa
+(sacred), and that the Great Gold River (Chin-shuan) rose among
+them. It was a pass of that range that we afterwards crossed,
+and it is probably identical with that mass of peaks and ranges
+marked on the Chinese maps as “Snowy Mountains,” running
+on the whole in a south-western direction between 29° and 32°
+N. lat. and 101° to 103° E. long. It is only possible to make a
+rough guess at the altitude of those peaks. In May Captain Gill
+found the snow line three degrees to the eastward of this point at
+an altitude of 13,000 feet, and estimates the limit of perpetual snow
+as at least 14,000 or 15,000 feet, which, allowing for the steady
+rise in temperature of every degree west in that latitude, would
+give a snow line of 15,000 or 16,000 feet above the sea level.
+Taking the snow line in the middle of May as a rough basis
+for calculation, I should estimate the height of the timber line
+at nearly 13,000 feet, and the height of Tang-pa as 5000 feet
+above that.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A steep descent of three hours through an entrancing forest
+brought us back to the Small River, there a full-watered, clear,
+green torrent, about forty yards wide, compressed within a narrow
+canyon, tumbling among gigantic boulders in glorious cataracts,
+forest trees of larger size than had been seen before bending over
+it, festooned with climbing roses and white and sulphur-yellow
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_425'>425</span>clematis, while all lovely things which revel in moisture and
+warmth—ferns, mosses, selaginellas, and the exquisite <i>Trichomanes
+radicans</i>—flourished along the margin of its turbulent waters. It
+was grander and far more beautiful than ever, and absolutely
+solitary.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One feature of the vegetation west of Mia-ko is a pea-green
+trailer (possibly <i>Lycopodium Sieboldi</i>) with pendants eight and ten
+feet long, which takes possession of coniferous trees, dooming
+them to a slow death, but replacing their dark needles by a tint
+which in masses is very attractive. These trailers are used by the
+Man-tze for hats, much worn by lamas. Some of the red trunks
+of the conifers, branchless for fifty feet and more, measure from
+nineteen to twenty-one feet in circumference six feet from the
+ground, hollies seven feet, yew eleven, twelve, and even thirteen
+feet, and an umbrageous and very beautiful species of poplar from
+seventeen to twenty feet. Occasionally the canyon widens for a
+short distance, and there are smooth lawns, on which nature
+has planted artistically clumps of pines and birches, the latter,
+instead of white, with “old gold” bark, which they shed in spring.
+Almost the only flowers at that altitude were a dandelion, with
+a stalk an inch long, and a lovely, short-stalked, mauve primula,
+which in places carpeted the ground. Some of the canyon walls,
+rising forest-covered tier above tier, cannot be less than 3000 feet
+in height, and at that season their luxurious covering embraced
+every tint of yellow, red, and green.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After fully forty <i>li</i> the canyon broadens into a luxuriant valley,
+apparently closed at its western end by one of the great Tsu-ku-shan
+ranges, and the yak and <i>dzo</i> fed in large numbers on
+the rich pasturages which confer prosperity on the Man-tze hamlet
+of Hang-Kia. This should have been the halting-place, and
+though there was apparently no accommodation the Chinese
+officer intended it to be so. High words were exchanged between
+him and Mr. Kay, who went back to hurry up the mules, while
+I sat in the roadway watching the snow which was then obviously
+falling on the pass, while it was raining below. To make a long
+story short, owing to unpropitious circumstances not worth
+narrating, and a loss of heads and tempers, my better judgment
+was overborne, and against it, and in spite of my showing that
+Matang could not be reached anyhow in less than eight hours,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_426'>426</span>the order to start on this most foolhardy venture was given, and
+we left Hong-Kia at 3.15, the coolies and I not having fed since
+eleven, and reached the foot of the pass at 6.30. A few <i>li</i> higher
+this branch of the Min rises as a vigorous spring under a rock.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>We ascended to a considerable height by a number of well-engineered
+zigzags, meeting Man-tze travellers armed with lances
+and short swords, and journeying in companies from dread of the
+notorious banditti. Some of my men had armed themselves with
+lances. As darkness came on the coolies were scared, and begged
+me to have the mule bells taken off. They started at every rock,
+and asked me to have my revolver ready! Their noses had
+been bleeding at intervals for some days, and at the altitude we
+had attained the hemorrhage in some cases was profuse, and
+was accompanied by vertigo, vomiting, and some bleeding from the
+mouth, and the baggage coolie who had most unwillingly taken
+the sick bearer’s place was at best a malcontent. When we got
+into mist, and broken shale, and snow, after stumbling and falling
+one after the other, they set the chair down, very reasonably I
+thought, and no arguments of Mr. Kay’s addressed either to mind
+or body induced them to carry it another step.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was then 8.30 and very dark. A snowstorm came on, dense
+and blinding, with a strong wind. I was dragged rather than
+helped along, by two men who themselves frequently fell, for
+we were on a steep slope, and the snow was drifting heavily.
+The guide constantly disappeared in the darkness. Be-dien, who
+was helping me, staggered and eventually fell, nearly fainting—he
+said for want of food, but it was “Pass Poison,” and he was
+revived by brandy. The men were groaning and falling in all
+directions, calling on their gods and making expensive vows, which
+were paid afterwards by burning cheap incense sticks, fear of the
+bandits having given way to fear for their lives—yet they had
+to be prevented from lying down in the snow to die.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_427'>427</span>
+<img src='images/p427_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>ELEPHANTIASIS.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='right'><i>See page <a href='#Page_442'>442</a>.</i></span></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Several times I sank in drifts up to my throat, my soaked
+clothes froze on me, the snow deepened, whirled, drifted, stung
+like pin points. But the awfulness of that lonely mountain-side
+cannot be conveyed in words: the ghastly light which came on,
+the swirling, blinding snow-clouds, the benumbing cold, the moans
+all round, for with others, as with myself, every breath was a moan,
+and the certainty that if the wind continued to rise we should
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_429'>429</span>all perish, for we were on the windward slope of the mountain.
+After three hours of this work, the moon, nearly at her full, rose,
+and revealed dimly through the driving snow-mist, the round,
+ghastly crest of the pass, which we reached and crossed soon after
+midnight, when the snow ceased. I have fought through severe
+blizzards in the Zagros and Kurdistan mountains, but on a good
+horse and by daylight, and not weakened by a blow. On the
+whole this was my worst experience of the kind.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>An hour’s descent in deep snow on the edge of a precipice, from
+below which came up the boom of tumbling water, brought us to
+a forest of the straightest and tallest pines I ever saw, glorious
+in the moonlight, and vocal with the crash of waters. Then I
+became aware that Mr. Kay, who is very absent, and the guide
+had disappeared. The coolies declined to carry me, and wanted
+to leave me there, and it was only after half an hour’s altercation
+between them and my servant, during which my wet clothing
+froze hard, that they took up the chair. The forest tracks were
+baffling, and the true track was soon lost in the snow, not to be
+recovered till at 2 a.m. we emerged on great, grassy slopes, and
+an hour later, my party, exhausted, shivering, starving, drenched to
+the skin, and all alike in frozen clothes, found a wretched shelter in
+the one room of a Chinese hovel with a sloping floor on the bleak,
+boulder-strewn hillside on which the forlorn village of Matang
+huddles at an altitude of over 9000 feet.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Pass of Tsu-ku-shan, which we had crossed, is the great
+water parting of that region, the waters on the east seeking the Min,
+and those on the west the Chin-shuan or Ta-kin Ho, both meeting
+in the Yangtze at Sui-fu, this glorious region being geographically
+in the Yangtze Valley. When I recrossed the pass, a very easy
+one, one hundred and twenty-four snow-peaks were visible from its
+summit. Its approximate altitude is 11,717 feet. It is a long,
+bare, unimpressive mountain wall.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The hovel allowed of my pitching my camp bed behind a
+cambric screen, but there was no room for the wretched coolies
+to lie down, so they sat round a big, log fire, cooked their food,
+talked, and thawed and dried their frozen clothes. I thawed mine
+by rolling myself up in a blanket, but unlike them was unable
+to eat, or even drink tea for many hours, and lay there much
+stupefied until noon the next day, when we moved to what posed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_430'>430</span>as an inn, a wooden stable ninety feet long, with stalls seven feet
+high for human beings on both sides, in one of which I was thankful
+to find solitude, a fire-bowl, and necessary rest for some days.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The innkeeper and his wife, Kansuh Mohammedans, were
+kind. They gave me an egg, and took me to sit by their big
+log fire in their horrible kitchen, on the ground that we were
+worshippers of the same God. The fire was welcome, for there
+were heavy snowstorms, and on one day the mercury fell to 29°.
+Whether in storm or sunshine Matang, “out of the season,” is a
+ghastly place, a forlorn, unpicturesque village of low stone cabins,
+with rough, timber roofs kept down by stones. It is bisected by
+a torrent of the same name, a feeder of the Chin-shuan, rising
+on the pass above. There is a very good cantilever bridge. Its
+population of 170 includes a number of Chinese who have married
+Man-tze women. Snow lies there for six weeks.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In July and August the scene changes, and Matang becomes
+a great international market. The inn is crammed with men and
+horses. Yaks and Tibetan tents cover the grassy slopes, Chinese
+dig on the mountains for medicinal roots, which are also brought
+from Tibet in incredible quantities, and are bought up chiefly
+by Mussulman traders, broken silver, the only currency accepted,
+passes freely from hand to hand, goods are bartered, and for two
+months the Chinese and Tibetan traders do a very large trade in
+cattle, horses, wool, hides, sheep, musk, rhubarb, hartshorn, and
+much besides.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Some of the Matang Man-tze women were extremely beautiful,
+after the Madonna type. I twice secured a giggling group in front
+of my camera, but I no sooner put my head under the focussing
+cloth than there was a stampede, and partly in fun and partly
+in fear the laughing beauties fled like hares, so the reader must
+take their good looks on trust.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Outside a hole near the roof, which served for a window, a
+genuine Tibetan dog was chained, as big as a small bear, with
+rusty brown wool, four inches long, and a superb face. His voice
+was more like a roar than a bark, and his growl was portentous.
+These dogs are very savage, and his owner said that he could
+kill a man by tearing open his throat, which is their method of
+attack. I got his owner, on whom he fawned foolishly, to measure
+him, and from the root of his bushy tail to his nose he measured four
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_432'>432</span>feet three inches. He kept a malignant watch on me, and I could
+not move in my room without provoking his fierce, resonant growl.
+These dogs shed their fur in the summer.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p432_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>CHINESE OFFICER AND SPEARMEN, MIA-KO.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_433'>433</span>After a detention, owing to snowstorms and difficulties of
+transport, which made a further serious inroad on the stores, we
+left Matang early in May, accompanied by the Chinese officer,
+who had wisely remained in the Hang-Kia valley, and ten stalwart
+spearmen from Mia-ko. I started on foot, accompanied by this
+escort, leaving the others to follow at their leisure; some of the
+baggage being on <i>yaks</i>, which having been as usual lost on the
+mountain, caused considerable delay. When our force was mustered
+it numbered twenty-five men. Two of the wild-looking tribesmen
+rode big yaks, monstrous in their winter coats; all were armed
+with lances, and short, broad-bladed swords, and a few carried
+long and much-decorated matchlock guns. Of course we saw
+nothing of the bandits, and when we had passed their beat the
+spearmen quietly disappeared, apparently ignorant of their right
+to <i>baksheesh</i>. The ghastly, grinning head of a third bandit hung
+in a cage in the village.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The road, which is a singularly good one, crosses the Matang
+river by a good bridge, near its junction with a vigorous stream
+descending from the north-west, and then follows their united
+course in a southerly direction for forty <i>li</i> to their union with the
+Rong-kia.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The scenery on that day’s journey is the loveliest of all. This
+Matang river whose birth we had seen on that awful night on the
+pass, raging in cataracts, and great drifts of sunlit foam, and slowing
+at times into deep green eddies, makes the most abrupt and
+extraordinary turns, each one giving a new and glorious view.
+The canyon reminds me of some of the finest parts of the Rocky
+Mountains, but the abundance of deciduous trees and flowering
+shrubs, trailers, and plants, and the aquamarine “Fairy Moss,”
+hanging in five-feet streamers from the trees, give it an added
+beauty. Everything was draped in auburn, gold, and green. The
+pine forests are vast and magnificent, and through the purple
+madder of the leafless birches their terra-cotta stems gleamed.
+The dark, evergreen ilex and holly contrasted with the brilliant
+spring green of the elæagnus, hawthorn and willow; primulas,
+narcissus, and <i>scillae</i> starred the mossy ground, maidenhair and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_434'>434</span>other ferns flourished on the tree trunks, trailers of a pure white
+clematis hung over the path, mosses and film ferns draped every
+harsh angle and every boulder out of sight, and gorgeous butterflies
+and dragonflies glanced like “living flashes of light.” Every
+vista at every turn above the dark pine forests is blocked by
+peaks, then in the dazzling purity of new-fallen snow.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p434_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>VILLAGE OF RONG-KIA.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Our course consisted of constant climbing over high steep spurs,
+which descend on the right bank of the river. There is one
+fine waterfall. In the afternoon a long and very severe ascent
+terminated at the top of a spur crowned by a village and a lama-serai
+above the confluence of four valleys and three streams, the
+Matang from the north, the Rong-kia from the east, and the
+Kin-ta from the south. These unite to form a broadish, full-watered
+river, very green, to which the Man-tze give the name,
+which I reproduce as Rong-kia, or “Silver Water,” but which
+the Chinese along its banks call the Ta Chin or Ta Kin-Shuan
+(Great Gold River), which, if they are correct, is the upper portion
+of the Tatu or Tung River.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_435'>435</span>
+<img src='images/p435_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>CANYON OF THE RONG-KIA.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_437'>437</span>After an ascent, and a halt at an extraordinary village of square
+towers, from each of which a single, brown wood room projected
+at the top, another steep ascent took us to the top of a spur,
+from which we looked down on the valley of the Rong-kia below
+its junction with the other streams, there a broad, swift river,
+free from rapids and cataracts, and bridged in several places.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The first view of it sleeping in the soft sunshine of a May
+noon was one never to be forgotten. The valley is fully one
+mile wide, and nine miles long, and snow peaks apparently
+close its western extremity. All along the “Silver Water”
+there were wheat fields in the vivid green of spring; above
+were alpine lawns over which were sprinkled clumps of pine
+and birch, gradually thickening into forests, which clothed the
+skirts of mountains, snow-crested, and broken up here and there
+into pinnacles of naked rock. At short distances all down the
+valley are villages with towers and lama-serais on heights—villages
+among the fair meadows by the bright, swift river, with houses
+mounted on the tops of high towers, which they overhang,
+their windows from thirty to fifty feet from the ground—and
+stretching half-way across, a lofty, rocky spur, then violet against a
+sky of gold, developed into a massive, double-towered castle, the
+residence of the <i>Tu-tze</i> of Somo, the lord of this fair land. In the
+late afternoon it looked like that enchanted region—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c014'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Where falls not rain or hail or any snow,</div>
+      <div class='line'>Or ever wind blows loudly.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>The warm spring sunshine blessed it, the river flashed through
+it in light, the sunset glory rolled down it in waves of gold,
+its beauty left nothing to be longed for.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Chinese officer rode up saying, “There is now no more
+fright,” (who was frightened I know not), and passed on to Somo,
+saying he was “going to make things smooth for us,” but, as
+I think, carrying orders to the <i>Tu-tze</i> from headquarters to bar my
+further progress. The castle gained rather than lost, as we
+approached it by a bridge over a lateral stream near a fine
+specimen of an ancient tower, about eighty feet high. It occupies
+the greater part of a rocky spur or bluff, rising 390 feet above
+the river. A few mean houses cluster on ledges outside the castle
+wall.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_438'>438</span>The spur is so precipitous on the east side as to look inaccessible,
+and is climbed with difficulty by anyone carrying a burden. At
+the foot of the rock there is a covered, open gateway, with revolving
+prayer-cylinders on both sides. The ascent is by steep
+zigzags, which we were an hour in climbing. The climb brought
+us into the centre of a Man-tze crowd, and of a cluster of
+mean and dirty Chinese hovels, huddling against the rocks, in
+which we were told that the <i>Tu-tze</i> “had provided lodgings.”
+This was an insult. The lodging for the whole party was one
+small, dark, dirty room, filled with stinging wood smoke from a fire
+on the floor.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p438_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>SQUARE TOWER, SOMO.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>I sat outside in the midst of a crowd which had no rudeness
+in it, while Mr. Kay, with sanguine impetuosity, went up “to see
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_439'>439</span>the <i>Tu-tze</i>” and claim fitting accommodation. He found both
+doors barred in his face, and two savage dogs on guard. Nothing
+daunted, he climbed a wall and dropped down into the outer court
+of the castle, and in the lion’s den itself obtained a good room for
+me on the roof of a Man-tze house within the great gate, high
+and breezy, and looking both up and down the valley.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p439_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>DISTANT VIEW OF SOMO.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_441'>441</span>“Passports and recommendations are no use here,” replied the
+haughty ruler to a request for furtherance, and when a polite
+message was sent asking at what hour Mr. Kay might have the
+honour of an audience, the proposal was rudely negatived. The
+Chinese officer, who was entertained in the castle, had obviously
+done his work efficiently.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Though Somo was nominally the goal of my journey, and I
+was more than satisfied to have reached it, I cherished a project
+of getting down to Ta-tien-lu (Darchendo) from Cho-ko-ki by
+a route only traversed previously, so far as Europeans are concerned,
+by Mr. von Rosthorn—involving a journey of twenty-one
+days. On making careful inquiries, however, I learned that a
+tribal war had broken out, and that the bridges over the Rong-kia
+had been destroyed, a fact which Mr. Kay verified by a long day’s
+journey of investigation. This involved two long days’ march
+on foot over a difficult mountain, and I was much prostrated, and
+also suffering from my heart from the severities of the night on
+the Tsu-ku-shan pass. In addition, the coolies, the bane of the
+journey, were breaking down from fever one after another, the
+stock of rice was nearly exhausted, and an order had been given
+that supplies and transport southwards were to be refused. I was
+too weak to make a resolute attempt to overcome these difficulties,
+which probably, as in the case of other would-be Tibetan travellers,
+were insurmountable, and every reader who is also a traveller will
+understand the indescribable reluctance with which I abandoned
+the Ta-tien-lu project. After it was given up, the <i>Tu-tze</i> sent a
+present of salted goat, flour, honey, and ancient and hairy butter,
+which enabled me to give my men a good meal.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The days passed quickly in learning as much as I was able
+to extract from the Man-tze elders regarding their customs. The
+<i>Tu-tze</i> sent several times for my watch, and eventually sent a very
+big man with his own, a valuable old thing, with many rubies,
+which had stopped for years, and asked me to repair it! It was a
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_442'>442</span>very simple derangement, and I put it right, when he sent again
+asking if I could mend pianos, as he had one with broken strings!
+Then he sent for Be-dien, to whom he put many questions, and
+fascinated him. He told him that he could only protect us for
+forty <i>li</i> farther, when we should reach the territory of the Cho-ko-ki,
+a hostile tribe. At one time Be-dien came into my room
+with an avalanche of “savages” behind him, one handsome young
+woman clinging to his arm, to his great annoyance, for he was
+a “very proper young man,” or posed as such.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Throughout the Man-tze villages the absence of any painfully
+disfiguring diseases, goitre excepted, had been remarkable. In
+Somo, however, there was one Chinese with a tumour on his jaw
+as large as a supplementary head, and another suffering from
+severe elephantiasis, of which distressing malady an illustration is
+given on page <a href='#Page_427'>427</a>.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_443'>443</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXXIII.<br> <span class='c012'>THE MAN-TZE, I-REN, OR SHAN-SHANG-REN</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>In this chapter I put together such information as I was able
+to gather about the people to whom I have introduced my
+readers. I only give such statements as at least four persons were
+agreed upon, and confine my remarks to the four tribes of the
+Somo territory, estimated at 20,000 souls, which are unified under
+the rule of the <i>Tu-tze</i> of Somo.<a id='r50'></a><a href='#f50' class='c013'><sup>[50]</sup></a> The designation Man-tze or
+I-ren, which is simply Chinese for “barbarian,” is perforce
+accepted by these people from their conquerors. When questioned,
+however, they divided themselves into Somo, Cho-ko-ki, He-shui,
+and other tribes, and on being pressed further, they declared
+themselves Shan-shang-ren, or mountain people. They said that
+they had heard that in ancient times their fathers came from the
+setting sun, but they knew of no days when they and the Chinese
+did not live among each other. The tribal spirit is completely
+extinct among those tribes, who have accepted one ruler; but the
+Somo people hate the Sifans to the north-east and the Cho-ko-ki
+men to the south.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The head of one or more tribes is called a <i>Tu-tze</i>. He is
+appointed directly by the Emperor of China, and for life; but a
+long-established custom has made the office practically hereditary,
+and in the absence of a son a daughter may be invested with
+it, as in the case of Somo, where in recent years, and for a
+considerable time, a woman sustained the dignity of the position.
+It is only in a case of flagrant misconduct that the Emperor would
+exercise his right of removing a Man-tze ruler. The <i>Tu-tze</i> has
+absolute authority over his own tribesmen, including the power
+of life and death. The land is his, and the cultivator pays a tax
+of thirty per cent, of the produce, out of which the ruler contributes
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_444'>444</span>the annual tribute to China. The tribesmen are free to
+build anywhere without paying ground rent. Chinese under
+Man-tze rule have to obtain permission to build, are not allowed
+to make charcoal, and pay ground rent. In the case of the
+murder of a Chinese, the murderer may be taken into Chinese
+territory to be tried by a mandarin, but actually he is rarely
+caught, and the crime is usually compromised by the payment
+of blood-money by his relations. If a Chinese wishes for a
+Man-tze wife he must pay the <i>Tu-tze</i> thirty taels (about £4 10<i>s.</i>)
+for the privilege.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p444_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A MAN-TZE VILLAGE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Under the <i>Tu-tze</i>, and appointed by him, are village headmen
+or <i>T’ou-jen</i>, who usually hold office for life, and are frequently
+succeeded by their sons. They collect taxes, settle disputes, try
+small cases by tribal law, and meet the <i>Tu-tze</i> once a month at
+his castle to report what has been going on, and to discuss what
+has to be done, and once a year to choose the tribal representatives
+who are to carry the tribute to Peking. China has done
+wisely in fringing her borders with quasi-independent tribes
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_445'>445</span>whose autonomy is guaranteed by custom, and whose love of the
+freedom they enjoy would convert men and women into a respectable
+guerilla force in case of invasion.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The religion of the Man-tze is Buddhism or Lamaism of the
+Tibetan type. Except in Western Tibet I have never seen a
+country in which the externals of religion are so prominent. Nearly
+all the larger villages have lama-serais on heights above them;
+rock Buddhas, and Buddhas in relief on tablets are numerous; poles
+twenty feet long, with narrow prayer-flags of nearly the same
+length, flutter from every house-roof; groups of prayer-flags in
+memory of the dead are planted beside every village; a temple is
+prominent on the roof of every well-to-do house; and prayer-cylinders
+turned by water power or hand are common near the
+roads. Daily offerings are made in all dwellings; every second
+son is a lama; the formula, “<i>Om mani padme hun</i>,” is everywhere
+heard; the presence of lamas is essential for every act in the
+round of social and agricultural life; and literature is wholly
+confined to Buddhist classics. Prayer-wheels revolved by the
+wind are common in windows; and when people grow old, and
+dread such an unfortunate re-birth as a reappearance in the body
+of a horse, dog, or mule, a prayer-cylinder, revolved by swinging
+it, is constantly in their hands.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The lamas receive large sums for prayers, and for such
+ceremonies, in cases of illness, as the reading of the Buddhist
+scriptures in the house, accompanied by chanting, blowing of great
+horns, and beating of drums. A death is their chief harvest, for,
+besides the fees paid to them for the services customary at death
+and burial, any good clothing which the deceased person has
+possessed is their perquisite, as well as the silver and coral head-ornaments
+of the women, which go to help to pay the expense of
+opening a passage for the soul into the other world. If the
+family wishes for these it must redeem them from the lamas.
+According to the wealth of the deceased is the time occupied in
+this arrangement. It may be three months or longer. In the
+case of the poor three days is the limit. A re-birth into the
+Western Heaven is reserved for lamas.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>They dispose of bodies after death by rules of their own. In
+a few very rare cases, where the horoscope of life, death, and the
+future is favourable, the corpse is buried “earth to earth” without
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_446'>446</span>coffin or clothing. Throwing the body into the river, or exposing
+it on a mountain-side to the fowls of the air, are also practised at
+their bidding; but cremation, accompanied by the recitation or
+chanting of the scriptures, is the usual method. Afterwards the
+ashes are placed in an earthen pot, which is buried, a prayer-flag
+or flags being erected on the spot. On the days of death and
+burial, as well as during the interval, there is weeping, but it is not
+prolonged or repeated, and ancestral worship is not practised.
+The clothing of a corpse is always removed immediately after
+death, and it remains naked until it is disposed of by one of these
+three methods.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among the noteworthy characteristics of Man-tze life is the
+position of women. They are not only on an equality with men,
+but receive considerable attention from them, and they share their
+interests and amusements everywhere. Men and women are
+always seen together. A woman can be anything, from a muleteer
+to a <i>Tu-tze</i>. Social intercourse between the sexes is absolutely
+unfettered. Boys and girls, youths and maidens, mix freely.
+Love-matches are the rule, and I saw many a handsome young face
+illuminated by a genuine love-light. The young people choose
+each other, and either of them may take the initiative. When they
+have settled the preliminaries, the prospective bridegroom sends
+a friend to the prospective bride’s parents, informing them of his
+wish to marry their daughter. Consent follows almost as a matter
+of course, the bridegroom sends a present of a bottle of wine to
+the bride’s father, and the courtship is fully recognised.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_447'>447</span>
+<img src='images/p447_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>SOMO CASTLE (<span class='sc'>Back View</span>).</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Next the lamas are consulted, to ascertain if the horoscopes of
+the youth and maiden fit. If not, the difficulty may be overcome
+by prolonged, vicarious chanting of the scriptures, and liberal fees.
+The lamas also choose an auspicious day for the marriage. The
+marriage ceremony consists in the bride and groom publicly
+joining hands, drinking wine from a double-spouted bowl, and
+accepting each other as husband and wife, after which there is
+a three days’ feast in the bride’s home. She and her husband
+then go to their own house, and there is another three days’ feast.
+There are no contracts of marriages for a limited period, as in
+Western Tibet. Whether the choice has been for good or ill, it is
+for life, divorce being permissible only in the case of childlessness,
+and the contract can only be cancelled by the <i>Tu-tze</i>. It would
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_449'>449</span>not be correct to infer from this that the Man-tze are a moral
+people. Their standard of morality is low, and the lives of the
+lamas have no tendency to raise it. Plurality of wives is an
+appendage of the position of the <i>Tu-tze</i>, and is, I think, the
+practice of rich men, but monogamy is the rule, and polyandry,
+though said to be the custom of the Sifans to the north,
+does not exist. No presents, except the bottle of wine previously
+mentioned, are made by the bridegroom to the bride’s
+father; but her parents, according to their wealth, endow her
+with cattle, horses, and fields, the last of which, to use our own
+phraseology, are “settled upon her.” A widow does not wear
+mourning, and is at liberty to make a second marriage. On the
+death of her husband, unless she remarries, she assumes complete
+control over his property, and at her death it is divided among
+the sons, who frequently, however, agree to live together and keep
+it intact. If there is trouble concerning property, the <i>T’ou-jen</i>
+usually settles the matter, and if he fails to make an amicable
+arrangement, it is referred to the <i>Tu-tze</i>, whose decision is final.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Good health is the patrimony of these people. There are a
+few lepers among them, and rheumatism is rather prevalent, but
+few maladies are known, and measles appears to be the only
+epidemic which affects children. I did not see one case of skin
+disease or deformity on the whole journey. They spoke of old
+age and what they call “exhaustion” as the usual causes of death.
+Goitre, however, is frightfully prevalent in many of the villages.
+In some, <i>seventy-five per cent.</i> of the people are afflicted by it, and
+it often begins in childhood. It does not seem to affect either the
+health or spirits. The people think that it comes from drinking
+snow-water, but it was specially common in some villages where
+the sources of the water supply are far below the snow. The
+lamas virtually prohibit all medicines not supplied by themselves,
+and it is only those Man-tze who have been corrupted by contact
+with Chinese civilisation who use any others. They incline to
+fatalism regarding illness, relying chiefly on amulets, charms, and
+religious ceremonies. “If a man is very ill he dies,” they say,
+“and when he is not he gets better.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>They have a language of their own, but it is written in Tibetan
+characters, and all notices and inscriptions on tablets and signposts
+are in the same. In the villages nearest to China proper,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_450'>450</span>many of the people speak Chinese as well as Man-tze, and the
+<i>T’ou-jen</i> in all villages, but further west very few even of the
+elders understand it, and the <i>Tu-tze</i> himself is unable to read
+the Chinese characters.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The products of the Somo territory, so far as export goes, are
+<i>nil</i>. The magnificent timber is useless, as the rivers, from their
+abrupt bends and enormous boulders, in addition to their
+turbulence, do not admit of its being rafted down. So far as
+I could learn, there are no golden sands to tempt even the
+Chinese adventurer. Sulphur and nitrate of soda abound. The
+Man-tze grow wheat, barley, oats, maize, buckwheat, lentils, and
+a little hemp. In good years they raise enough for their requirements,
+but more frequently have to barter their cattle and coarse
+woollen cloth for food. Their transactions consist of barter only,
+silver being known solely for its use in personal adornment. There
+is no prospect for Manchester in that quarter. Pieces of red and
+green cloth for the decoration of boots are brought from Russia
+through Tibet, and these and the brass buttons on clothing are
+their only imports. Both sexes dress in woollen materials, spun,
+woven, and dyed by themselves, and sewn with their own hempen
+fibre.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Their views are narrow, their ideas conservative, and their knowledge
+barely elementary. England is not a name to conjure with
+in their valleys. They know of China and Tibet, and have heard
+of Russia, but never of Britain. Of the war and the <i>wojen</i> they
+were in complete ignorance. I found them hospitable, friendly,
+and polite, not extravagant in their curiosity, of easy morals, full
+of frolic and merriment, singularly affectionate to each other,
+taking this life easily and enjoying it, and trusting the next to
+the lamas.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the regrettable absence of photographs it is difficult to give
+any idea of their appearance. There are few under-sized men.
+They were a little taller than my coolies, who were the average
+height of Chinese. They are deep chested, as becomes mountaineers;
+their build is robust, and their muscular limbs betoken
+strength and agility. Their walk is firm and springy, and in
+wrestling and putting the stone—favourite amusements—the
+display of muscle is superb. The tribes vary as to good looks,
+though not as to physique, especially the women, some of whom
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_451'>451</span>have the oval face, regular features, and beauty of the brunette
+type which we associate with the Madonna, while others are plain,
+and resemble Neapolitans. The complexion is as dark as that
+of the natives of Southern Europe, but a trifle redder; the large
+dark eyes and eyebrows are level, the nose straight, the mouth
+usually small and thin-lipped, the foreheads high but not broad,
+and the ears large, and rendered unshapely by the weight of
+the earrings. The cheek-bones are not in any way remarkable.
+The characteristic of the Man-tze face is that it is European in
+feature and expression, and recalls the Latin races. Owing to
+a sort of timidity, and to the fashion of hair-dressing of both
+sexes, it was unfortunately impossible to procure any head
+measurements.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The men shave their heads and wear cloth or fur caps, but
+some of the elders said that in former days all the hair was
+gathered above the forehead, and twisted into a horn wrapped
+up in a cotton cloth, and often “as long as a hand.” A similar
+style is mentioned by Mr. Baber as characteristic of the Lolos
+of Yunnan. The <i>coiffure</i> of the women is most elaborate. The
+front hair is divided, and plaited into from twenty to thirty plaits
+not wider than a watchguard, and waxed down each side, considerably
+reducing the forehead. The back hair, with considerable
+additions, is divided and brought round the head in two massive
+coils over a folded blue cloth, which hangs a little over the brow.
+Strings of large coral beads are twisted round these coils, but
+at the sides only. The circumstances of a family are indicated by
+the size and beauty of the coral and silver of the headgear.
+Jewellery is largely worn by both sexes—earrings, necklets, chains
+of alternate coral and silver filigree beads, and bracelets set with
+large turquoise or red coral. The ornaments are often really
+beautiful and of fine workmanship. When I asked by whom they
+were made, they invariably replied, “By the Arabs.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The women wear woollen under-garments, short loose jackets
+with wide sleeves, and skirts reaching a few inches below the
+knees, as closely pleated as the kilt of a Highlander, sometimes
+exchanged indoors for a long, loose robe. Dark brown and
+madder-red predominate in apparel. They wear long leather
+boots, upon which are stitched up the front and sides decorative
+strips of scarlet and bright green cloth.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_452'>452</span>The men wear a gabardine and girdle of native cloth, frequently
+dark red, over a woollen under-garment; leggings, and decorated
+leather boots or hempen shoes. The cloth or fur cap is often
+varied by the <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> turban. They have no soap, and never
+wash. A corpse is designated as the “twice washed.” In the
+rarefied air of the high altitudes which they inhabit, some of the
+most unpleasant consequences of dirt are not apparent. I must
+add that every house in which I received hospitality was tolerably
+clean, and that I was not aware of the presence of vermin.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There is a singular absence of bird-life in the Somo territory.
+A species of francolin and ringed pheasants were seen, the blue
+jay, the crow, and the ubiquitous magpie. The men said that
+there are boars, small bears, and deer in the forests, but that
+the trade in hartshorn and horns in the velvet for Chinese
+medicines had driven the latter back, “they knew not where.”
+There are also at least two species of monkeys, both large, and
+one with thick, long hair. The brown bear, the yellow wolf, the
+musk deer, the badger, and the otter are also found, but the
+Man-tze are not scientific in their descriptions.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The <i>Tu-tze’s</i> rule only extends for forty <i>li</i> to the south of Somo.
+He is proud of his practically independent position, and when my
+servant interpreter presented my Chinese passport, and a letter
+from the Viceroy of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, he said that he did not read
+Chinese, and that passports and Viceroys’ letters were of no use
+there!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Somo castle, on its eastern side, is a most striking building,
+built into the rock of the spur on which it stands. It has a
+number of windows with decorative stone mullions, the lowest
+over twenty feet from the ground. Its many roofs are planted
+thick with prayer-flags, and projecting rooms and balconies of
+brown wood, with lattice-work fronts, hang from its eastern side
+over the precipice. The castle yard is spacious and singularly
+clean; the entrance is handsome, and is faced by a huge dragon,
+boldly and skilfully painted on a plastered stone screen. Poles
+with crowns from which yaks’ tails depend, and the trident, as
+in Western Tibet, surmount the entrance. The whole is most
+substantially built of stone, and I looked in vain for any trace
+of decay or disrepair. The altitude is about 7518 feet.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_453'>453</span>
+<img src='images/p453_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>ENTRANCE AND JUDGMENT-SEAT. SOMO CASTLE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_455'>455</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXXIV.<br> <span class='c012'>FROM SOMO TO CHENGTU FU</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>The refusal to sell food produced uncomfortable consequences.
+I bestowed my personal stores on the coolies, and being left
+with only a little chocolate, a few squares of soup, and a pound of
+flour, was often compelled to still the gnawings of hunger with
+peppermint lozenges; and what was worse, the men were on
+half-rations. Just before we left, the <i>Tu-tze</i> sent a welcome
+present of half a bag of flour, and as supplies were not refused
+on the way down the worst was over. At Matang we were
+detained two days by a severe snowstorm, which glorified the
+pine forests on the skirts of the Tsu-ku-shan Pass, which was
+bare, pale, and uninteresting, and took four hours to cross even
+in the sunny daylight. From the summit about one hundred and
+twenty snow-peaks were visible, some rising sharply into a very
+blue sky, others with snow-clouds swirling round their ghastly
+crests—all clothed to a considerable altitude with interminable
+forests of pine, hoary with new-fallen snow, under the bright
+May sunshine.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Passing through fine herds of yaks and <i>dzo</i>, and by villages
+and detached houses, we sought shelter in vain. The people
+were all “on the mountain,” and every house was locked. After
+a severe day of twelve hours we were directed off the road,
+through groves of fine Spanish chestnut trees, to an alp, on
+which is a small Man-tze house inhabited by one Chinese, where
+I slept on the roof, next two rows of humming prayer-cylinders,
+and in the morning had a glorious view of snow-peaks and
+forests.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is scarcely credible, but the downward journey was more
+gloriously beautiful than the upward. The peacock green, transparent
+Siao Ho, with its snow-white cataracts, thundered through
+the trees in a yet goodlier volume, between cliffs on which the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_456'>456</span>great, red-stemmed pines are securely moored, flashed past velvet
+lawns starred with blue and white anemones, and pink and white
+peonies; past clumps of daphne giving forth hot-house odours in
+the warm sunshine, under the living scarlet of maples, through
+the blue gloom of colossal pines, every one of its innumerable
+bends giving a fresh view. The ice was half an inch thick every
+morning on the heights. We lodged in headmen’s houses, where
+at one halt I had a guest-room twenty-four feet long.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p456_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>HESHUI HUNTER, AND NOTCHED TIMBERS.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>At Ku-erh-Kio, where after a journey of eleven hours I sat
+nearly two hours among dogs, pigs, and fowls, waiting for the
+people to return from the mountain and give us shelter, I slept
+for the last time on a roof under the stars, the earliest sight
+in the morning being glories of light and shade, of forest,
+cataract, and mountain, and the sparkle of a peak reddening in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_457'>457</span>the sunrise, like unto the Matterhorn, which the people called
+Ja-ra (king of mountains).<a id='r51'></a><a href='#f51' class='c013'><sup>[51]</sup></a></p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p457_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A HESHUI FAMILY, KU-ERH-KIO.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>A thirteen hours’ journey thence took us to Tsa-ku-lao. We
+were benighted and lost the road, and were “set in darkness in
+slippery places,” on lofty precipice ledges, and the coolies were
+so exhausted that they fell several times on the five hundred
+rocky steps by which the quaint border post is reached. Chinese
+inns, officialism, passport delays, and <i>chai-jen</i> had to be endured
+again from that point. At Li-fan Ting the officials sent presents
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_458'>458</span>when we arrived, saying that they hoped I would forget their
+conduct, “and turn the light of my countenance once more
+upon them to vivify them.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The heat became severe as we descended; the vegetation near
+the road was limited to grey, dusty tufts of a species of artemisia;
+the winds were tremendous, and the Man-tze villages
+at great heights, where the people have neither horses, cattle, nor
+sheep, and depend solely on the rainfall for their crops, were
+praying for rain, and below Weichou, finding Sakyamuni deaf
+to their entreaties, were turning to the forgotten gods of the rivers
+and the hills.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>From an ethnological point of view the Man-tze deserve some
+attention, as they differ considerably from the Sifan to the north
+and the Lolos to the south. In religion and many customs they
+approach closely to the people of Western Tibet, while in
+appearance they differ most remarkably from both Tibetans and
+Chinese. Their handsome, oval faces; richly-coloured complexions;
+thick, straight eyebrows; large, level eyes, sometimes
+dark grey; broad, upright foreheads; moderate cheek bones;
+definite, though rather broad noses; thin lips, somewhat pointed
+chins, and white, regular teeth are far removed from any
+Mongolian characteristics, and it is impossible not to believe that
+these tribes are an offshoot of the Aryan race.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>During the week’s descent from Tsa-ku-lao, the winds were
+fearful, almost carrying my chair and bearers over a precipice,
+and the country was scorched, and afflicted with driving dust storms.
+The heat had then set in for the summer, the Yangtze
+was rising, and I was suffering so severely from the effects of the
+night’s “death-struggle” on the Tsu-ku-shan pass, that I was
+anxious to reach a cooler climate, so only rested a few days
+among the hospitalities of Kuan, and then crossed the Chengtu
+plain for the fourth time, doing forty miles in one day with the
+mercury at 93° in the shade, and arrived at Chengtu among very
+unpleasant demonstrations of hostility from the military students
+who were “up” for examination. Four of the examiners had
+passed me on the road, or rather I respectfully cleared off it
+to make way for, and contemplate them. Besides four bearers
+to each chair, a number of soldiers were roped on, and behind
+them came a train of twenty-six laden mules, and twenty-five
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_459'>459</span>laden porters, carrying, I doubt not, much besides personal
+baggage. I was told that these officials make large investments
+in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> drugs, on which, as they pay no taxes <i>en route</i>,
+and the unfortunate local officials bear the cost of carriage, they
+make great profits in Peking. Numbers of attendants are
+essential to dignity in the East. A mandarin going to pay a
+visit in his much-decorated chair is usually preceded and accompanied
+by an irregular procession of lictors with staves or whips,
+boys carrying red boards bearing the official’s name and style,
+and <i>chai-jen</i> in red-tasselled official hats. The lictors push the
+people to one side, the boys shout, and the bearers yell. When
+the great man leaves his own <i>yamen</i> three small mortars are
+fired, and if he visits an official, the same noisy process is
+repeated.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Forced labour for relays of bearers, porters, and horses for the
+lesser dignitaries, is called for, and on a much-travelled main
+road this is a heavy burden on the villagers.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p459_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>A DRAGON BRIDGE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_460'>460</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXXV.<br> <span class='c012'>DOWNWARD BOUND</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>The deep blue, glittering skies of the high altitudes were
+exchanged for the mist and dulness which have conferred
+upon <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> the name of “The Cloudy Province,” and
+with the lower levels came mosquitoes and sandflies, and a day
+shade temperature from 82° to 93°, very little alleviated during
+the night. I left the capital in a small flat-bottomed <i>wupan</i>,
+drawing four inches of water, with a mat roof, and without doors
+at either end. Yet my cambric curtains were never lifted, and
+when I desired it I enjoyed complete privacy at the expense of
+partial asphyxiation. At that time, May 20, the water was so
+low that no bigger boat could make the passage, and numbers
+of small, trim house-boats were aground.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was the start for a river journey of over 2000 miles, the first
+thousand of which were accomplished in this and similar boats.
+It was a delightful and most propitious journey, and introduced
+me to many new beauties and interests, and to a most attractive
+area of prosperity. For the first day the boatmen made more
+use of their shoulders than of their oars, lifting and shoving the
+boat, which “drave heavily” over sand and shingle and often
+bumped like a cart over paving stones. For the ascent of the river
+breast-poles are used by men wading. From Chengtu Fu to Sui
+Fu the Min is called by the Chinese the Fu, from the three Fu
+cities on its banks. After Be-dien had shopped for three hours,
+the result being only a small bag of charcoal, we dropped down
+under a fine stone bridge of several arches to a pretty village with
+a pagoda, “a sweet place,” where we tied up for the night.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_462'>462</span>
+<img src='images/p462_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>VILLAGE ON THE MIN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>We joined the main river, not then more than eighty yards
+wide, below the An-shun Bridge, an antiquated or ancient structure,
+and spent a long day in battling with the shallows, and with
+the peasant farmers, who had thrown many dams of shingle in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_463'>463</span>bamboo cages across the river to keep up the water for their own
+purposes. They refused to open a passage, though this only involved
+kicking away the stones between the cages and replacing
+them, demanded 2000 cash as toll, and seized on my boat, and with
+shod poles and much vociferation barred my progress several
+times. Native boats were passing through for thirty cash, and
+some thirty or forty at each dam were smashing against each
+other for the first turn. Eventually, when forty men got hold
+of my little <i>wupan</i> and tried to intimidate me, I asked them to
+show me the paper authorising them to demand this toll, on which
+they collapsed.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In a number of places there are rows of gigantic waterwheels,
+four or five together, from thirty to forty-five feet in diameter,
+by which all the adjacent country is bountifully irrigated. The
+sleepy hum of these huge wheels, the richness of the cultivation,
+and the fresh greens of the woodland, in which prosperous-looking
+villages basked drowsily in the summer sunshine, were
+all charming. But at times the water was so shallow that the
+boatmen had to precede my boat to work a channel for her, one
+of them leading her by the nose, and another pushing her from
+behind. This dragging, and the quarrels with the peasants about
+getting through their dams, occupied the first day.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next day was a rapture. A river locally called the Nan
+joins the Min at Chiang Ku, about sixteen miles below Chengtu,
+and after the junction water was abundant. Su-ma-tou, a busy
+place in lat. 30° 28′ (Baber), is the limit of navigation for large
+junks. At Peng-shan Hsien the river widens out after the union of
+all its perplexing subdivisions. Below Meichow, a large and busy
+place, the country breaks up into picturesque hills of no great
+height, divided by fertile valleys, through one of which I caught
+a momentary and only glimpse of the unrivalled majesty of
+Mount Omi.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Villages embowered in fruit trees, of which the illustration
+is an average specimen, adorn the banks of the bright river.
+Young wheat, mustard and beans in blossom, with mulberry
+trees between the fields, clumps of bamboo, and pines cresting
+every knoll and hill, made up a lovely picture—a vision of peace,
+plenty, and prosperity. Indeed, the whole river journey from
+Chengtu to Chungking consists of a series of beautiful pictures,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_464'>464</span>combined with varied and prosperous industries. It is a lovely
+part of China, and the white, timbered houses, the vividly red
+soil, and red sandstone rock, the dark, light, blue, and yellow
+greens, and the fascination of the smooth, fine lawns, which
+ofttimes slope down to the sparkling water, have a very special
+charm. The “Cloudy Province” failed to keep up its character,
+and if the sky was not very blue, the sunshine was brilliant.
+The gardenia, often a large shrub, grows profusely on the slopes,
+and it and the bean gave forth delicious odours. Strings of
+gardenia blossoms hang up at that season in all houses, every
+coolie sticks them into his hair, and even the beggars find a
+place for them among their rags. For a farthing a large basket
+of them can be bought.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I reached Chia-ling Fu (1070 ft.), where I remained for some
+days, in eighty hours from Chengtu Fu, including stoppages—the
+estimated distance being about 130 miles. The approach to this
+attractive and important city from the north is extremely pretty,
+indeed beautiful. The country is very hilly, and great, red
+sandstone bluffs, heavily wooded, with pagodas and temples,
+and much carving in rock recesses, with scarlet azaleas and
+gardenia blossoming everywhere, would have riveted my admiration
+to the left bank had it not been for the overhanging
+red sandstone cliff and the picturesque houses of the city on the
+right.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Chia-ling Fu, said to be a city of 50,000 souls, is a place of
+great importance commercially, as three large rivers—the Min,
+Ya, and Tatu—there form a junction, and for a brief space
+the river is like a lake. It is perhaps the greatest centre of
+sericulture and silk weaving in the province, and is also the
+eastern boundary of the white wax trade. Its white silks are
+remarkable for lustre and purity of colour. It is a rich city, and
+the capital of one of the most fertile and lovely regions on earth.
+It is besides the starting-point for most of the pilgrims to the
+temples of Omi-Shan and “The Glory of Buddha.” The city wall
+is of bright red sandstone, which is finished with a few courses
+of hard grey brick. The south gate was rigidly closed against
+the Fire God. A handsome, uphill, residential street, green and
+peaceful, leads to the west gate, and on this the China Inland
+Mission and Canadian Methodists have their mission houses. In
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_465'>465</span>Mr. Endacott’s garden are some specimens of the singular rock-dwellings
+so fully described by Mr. Baber in his papers on
+Western China. Chia-ling trades in opium and timber as well
+as in silk and white wax. Silk and umbrella shops are conspicuous.
+Every view from every point is beautiful.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p465_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>WEST GATE, CHIA-LING FU.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_467'>467</span>On the face of the cliff on the opposite side of the river is a
+figure in the rock, cut in very high relief, of Maitreya Buddha—truly
+colossal, being 380 feet in height. The nose is said to
+be nearly five feet long, and the head from thirty to forty feet
+high. Grass is allowed to grow on the head, eyebrows, upper
+lip, and ears, to represent hair. This figure is unfortunately
+partly concealed by the redundant vegetation which surrounds
+it. It is an interesting specimen of the religious art of about
+a thousand years ago.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Leaving the hospitalities of Chia-ling Fu for a boat journey
+of 345 miles, in a rather old and leaky little <i>wu-pan</i>, which,
+however, did 133 miles in seventeen hours, I halted several
+times on the way down to visit some of the remarkable rock
+dwellings in the cliffs which in many places border the river.
+They are difficult of access, and besides tearing my stout Chinese
+dress to pieces, I was considerably bruised and scratched. I took
+ropes, grippers, and three men with me.<a id='r52'></a><a href='#f52' class='c013'><sup>[52]</sup></a></p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_468'>468</span>
+<img src='images/p468_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>FRIEZE IN ROCK DWELLING, MIN RIVER.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>At a farmhouse where I landed near the hamlet of Sing-an,
+there was a sandstone coffer, seven feet long, used as a cistern.
+The farmer sold me two axe-heads of a hard, green stone, with
+a dull polish, which he found along with the coffer while digging
+a buffalo pond. To the finest of the excavated dwellings that
+I visited, I descended, holding on to trees and rock projections
+with hands and grippers, having a rope round my waist. There
+was a rock platform in front of the opening, not now accessible
+from below. The face of the rock has been smoothed, and eaves
+which project two feet have been left. The four times recessed
+doorway is five feet six inches high. At one side of this, as well
+as in the doorways of the interior, there are the remains of stone
+pivots on which doors could be hung. Above the doorway is
+a frieze as represented in the illustration, eighteen inches in depth,
+which is repeated over a stone altar against the wall, and again
+over several recesses, one of which is obviously for a fire, and has
+a stone shelf above it, and the others were probably beds. Two
+doorways give access to rooms, one of which is 14 ft. by 12 ft., the
+other 12 ft. by 12 ft. The former is nine feet high, and has a
+rounded roof, below which runs a deep and well-executed frieze
+carved with arabesques and curious human figures, the faces of
+which are certainly not Mongolian. In this room are both an
+altar and a stone tank. The outer room measures 30 ft. by
+20 ft. 7 in., and is 7 ft. 4 in. in height. In another of these
+singular excavations there are settees cut into the rock with a
+fashionable slope of seat and back, the front being actually
+rounded for comfort! In a third there is a curious arrangement
+resembling pigeon-holes for letters, and the frieze resembles one
+figured in Mr. Baber’s paper, and is what is known in heraldry
+as the “disc-and-label” pattern—a severe but very decorative
+ornament. In that dwelling there was an arrangement of holes
+in the doorway, showing that the doors had worked on some
+description of hinge. Over the lintel of one doorway is the
+trident symbol. All the dwellings (five) visited by me, had what
+must have been small sleeping chambers attached to them. The
+walls of the principal rooms show traces of careful finish, and
+some have obviously been panelled. There is a stately seemliness
+about these abodes, which implies that those who constructed
+and occupied them must have made some advances in
+civilisation, and have valued privacy.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_469'>469</span>
+<img src='images/p469_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>BOAT ON THE MIN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_471'>471</span>The finest of them, so far as is known, both in size and decoration,
+is a day’s journey only from Sui Fu, but the access involves
+severe climbing, and risks which I did not care to run. These
+dwellings occur in great numbers, from a point not far above
+Chia-ling Fu down nearly to Luchow, a distance of fully 220
+miles.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The ever broadening and deepening Min, passing through
+lovely and prosperous country, took me rapidly to Sui Fu
+(Hsu-chow Fu), a large city with a population, according to
+the officials, of 150,000. It is well situated on a high, much
+wooded, rocky promontory between the Min or Fu and the
+Chin-sha, which there unite to form the great river known by
+us as the Yangtze, where a temple-crowned point of rock dominates
+the busy city. On the opposite side of the Min are fantastic
+mountains with singular rock forms, on one of which is the highly
+picturesque temple of “The Sleeping Buddha,” approached by
+steps cut in the rock below.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Chin-sha is only navigable to Ping-shan, a difficult forty
+miles above Sui Fu. It was rising fast, and its great volume of
+turbid water contrasted with the clear bright Min, which kept
+apart from it in disgust for some time. Sui Fu is a very lively
+place, being the great entrepôt of the large transit trade between
+<span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> and Northern <span class='sc'>Yunnan</span>, as well as a considerable
+distributing point.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Above Ping-shan, the Lolo, tribes which the Chinese have
+failed to subdue in two thousand years, keep the country in
+a state of chronic insecurity, fatal to trade routes. Besides
+the transit trade, Sui Fu does a large business in silk, opium,
+and sugar. The “residential suburbs” are full of good houses
+in wooded grounds, extending far up the Min, their owners
+reaching their pleasure boats by handsome flights of stone stairs.
+The American Baptists and the China Inland Mission do mission
+work in Sui-Fu, and a great deal of valuable medical work.
+Though “child-eating,” as elsewhere, is believed in, the people
+are not unfriendly, and the mandarin was specially courteous.
+Before I left he sent round to all the street officers to say that,
+whether I went through the city in a chair or on foot, there was
+to be no crowding, following, or staring. He sent four <i>chai-jen</i>
+in official hats to walk in front of me, and go down with me to
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_472'>472</span>Luchow, and two petty officers to see that no one interfered
+with my camera, on pain of being beaten.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I left Sui Fu on the glorious evening of a blazing day, and
+once more, after a land journey in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> of nearly
+1200 miles, was afloat on the Yangtze—there a deep, broad river,
+flowing among low, pretty hills, much wooded, and terraced for
+cultivation.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p472_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>TOWN ON THE YANGTZE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_473'>473</span>
+<img src='images/p473_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>SUBURB OF SUI FU.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_476'>476</span>
+<img src='images/p476_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>TSIANG NGAN HSIEN, WITH ENTRANCE TO ROCK DWELLING.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_477'>477</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXXVI.<br> <span class='c012'>LUCHOW TO CHUNG-KING FU</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>On the brilliant afternoon of the day after leaving Sui Fu, I
+reached Luchow, an important trading city, with a reputed
+population of 130,000. It is prettily situated on rising ground
+at the confluence of the Yangtze and To rivers. The latter drains
+a considerable area, and by it and its connections cargo boats of
+about fifteen tons can reach the Great River from Kuan Hsien.
+Luchow appears to be a quiet, fairly well governed, busy city.
+One great industry is the making of umbrellas, and it has a large
+trade in sugar and other <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> products. According to its
+own officials, eighty per cent. of its male population are opium
+smokers. In good shops, there and elsewhere, opium pipes are
+supplied gratuitously to customers in back rooms, just as cups of
+tea are in Japan. The China Inland Mission has both men’s and
+women’s work in Luchow, and I was hospitably received in the
+mission house. The mercury was 93°, and no one could sleep at
+night.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The people are not what would be called hostile, yet they
+curse Mr. James, the missionary, in the streets, and believe that
+all the five are “child-eaters,” and that the comeliness of the
+ladies is preserved by the use of children’s brains! This scandalous
+accusation is current everywhere in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>. Even at
+quiet Chia-ling Fu, when two beggar boys were brought into the
+compound to be photographed, the report spread like wildfire
+through the city that they been taken in for the purpose of
+being fatted for eating! The hostility to foreigners has increased
+rapidly in many parts of the province. Mr. A. J. Little, writing
+from <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> some years ago, mentions that the phrase
+“Foreign devil,” and other opprobrious epithets applied to
+foreigners elsewhere, were unknown, and other travellers have
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_478'>478</span>mentioned the same thing. Now, a language rich in abominable
+terms is ransacked for the worst, to hurl at the foreigner.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I left Luchow on May 30th in great heat, and contrary to
+custom, travelled till nine o’clock, making fast to a snag in a
+broad reach or bay of shallow water. The mercury stood at
+91° at four p.m., and the men suffered from the heat. I have
+observed that sunstroke is far more to be dreaded in damp than
+in dry climates. It is common in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> among the Chinese.
+The boatmen called it <i>lei-su</i>, “death from exhaustion.” They
+feared it, and well they might, for their shaven heads were only
+protected by small towels. The blue turban, much worn in the
+province, may have originated in an instinct of defence. The
+Chinese suffer greatly from mosquitoes. I have seen curtains of
+a heavy, green canvas even in poor men’s houses, but men as poor
+as my boatmen have no protection, and, being compelled by the
+heat to sleep naked, their bodies are covered with inflamed lumps
+from mosquito bites. They are very patient. They suffered so
+much from this cause that in the stifling twilights, when thousands
+of these pests were abroad, I almost grudged myself the immunity
+gained by sitting under a mosquito net made by attaching
+a net roof and curtains to a Chinese umbrella frame.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The men fanned themselves as long as they could keep awake.
+As the heat increased the use of the fan became universal among
+men. Coolies fanned themselves at the treadmill pump, bearers
+as they ran along with chairs, porters with loads, travellers on
+horseback and on foot, men working and resting, shopkeepers at
+their doors, mandarins in their chairs and on the judgment-seat,
+and sentries on guard. Soldiers marching to meet an enemy fan
+themselves on the march, as I saw in Manchuria during the
+Japanese war, and the bloody field of Phyong-yang was strewn
+with the fans of the dead and dying Chinese. Fan-making is
+one of the great industries of China. Nearly 2,000,000 fans were
+imported into Chung-king in 1897.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_479'>479</span>
+<img src='images/p479_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>PAGODA NEAR LUCHOW.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Except for the heat, the downward journey was quite delightful;
+the country is so fertile and beautiful, and has such an air of
+prosperity. So long as we were in motion there was a draught,
+as the boat was quite open, but the still nights were stifling,
+specially with the curtains down. The boatmen were harmless,
+good-natured, obliging fellows. They tied up whenever I wanted
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_481'>481</span>to land if it were at all possible, and though they were obliged to
+pass from bow to stern through my “room,” they always asked
+leave to do so if the curtains were down. The lovely country was
+a very great charm. The variety of scenery, trees, flowers, and
+cultivated plants was endless, and new industries were constantly
+becoming prominent. The only matter for regret was that the
+rush of the fast-rising river carried us all too swiftly past much
+that was worthy of observation.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A visit to a coal-mine interested me greatly. The mine was in
+a hillside, three miles from the river, and employed eighty men.
+The manager said that the output was the equivalent of forty tons
+daily. The men got sevenpence per day, with rice, broad beans,
+cucumbers, and tea. Each hewer and carrier (in pairs) must
+deliver at the pit’s mouth daily the equivalent of a ton. The pay
+with food comes to tenpence per day, and the actual cost in labour
+of a ton is twentypence. The mine is extremely well ventilated
+by three revolving fans, which drive the air into it through bamboo
+tubing. The men work in two shifts of twelve hours per day of
+twenty-four hours, eating their rice in the mine three times daily.
+Every tenth day is pay-day and a holiday. Each carrier burns
+nine ounces of Tung oil daily, and each hewer six, the lamps
+being attached to the brow by a band round the head. There was
+a bath for the miners, which in the dim light appeared to be a
+stone coffer, supplied with hot water. The tunnel by which the
+workings are reached, and down which the coal is carried in
+wheeled baskets running on a wooden tramway, is six feet high,
+and about six hundred feet long. I could do no more than glance
+at the workings. The coal seam was about four feet thick, the
+galleries very low, and the hewers lay on their sides and hacked
+the coal sidewise. It appeared to be a fairly hard bituminous
+coal, and there is a great demand for it at the town of Peh-Shi,
+where, after land and river transit, it sells at seven shillings per
+ton. The manager, an intelligent and fairly polite man, told me
+that hard coal is also found in the neighbourhood, but is much
+more expensive to work. This coal-mine appeared well appointed,
+and the miners well fed and cheery. They seemed to have less
+consideration for the Dragon’s back than those on the Paoning
+route!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The night after leaving Luchow, while tied up to a snag in
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_482'>482</span>a broad and shallow reach, all in my boat were wakened out
+of a sound sleep by what might have been the “crack of doom.”
+There was a sound as if all the cannon of the universe had
+been fired close to the <i>wu-pan</i> on either side, accompanied by a
+hiss in the water, a glare of blue light, a gust which lifted the
+boat, and stripped off some of the mats of the roof, and then
+a torrent of rain. By the next morning the Yangtze had risen
+twelve feet, and our snag had “gone under,” forcing us to seek
+the familiar protection of the shore.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among many storms, one only, at St. Paul, Minnesota, has
+fixed itself in my memory. That was in a hotel lighted by gas
+and full of people. This was out in a lonely place in “darkness
+which could be felt,” among men of another race and speech,
+in a frail craft. The thunder, not rolling, but bursting like
+explosions; the ceaselessness and vividness of the forked lightning;
+the otherwise pitch darkness of the night; the hot and mephitic
+atmosphere; the occasional terrific gusts of wind, threatening to
+blow the half-unroofed boat to pieces; the roar of the rain, the
+loneliness and mystery of our position; the silence from human
+movement and speech; the hours it all lasted; the surprise after
+every tremendous explosion to find myself alive, and the fear
+that some of the men were killed, made that night an awful
+memory.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>During the whole storm no one spoke or moved hand or
+foot. I felt paralysed, a sensation, as I afterwards found, common
+to all Europeans who passed through the same experience. The
+boatmen, who were lying in the water, never stirred. When the
+explosion gave place to magnificent rolls, and the rain moderated,
+the men spent an hour in baling the boat. All the matches were
+afloat and much else, and our food was mostly spoiled. A
+thousand waterfalls tumbled down the hillsides, the stony or
+sandy river banks were no more, of a few riverine villages the
+roofs alone were to be seen, fields in numbers with their growing
+crops had slid bodily down the slopes, leaving great patches of
+naked rock behind, and the Yangtze, a broad, turbid, terra-cotta
+flood, was rioting over the submerged confusions of its rocky bed
+in swirls and violent eddies.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_483'>483</span>
+<img src='images/p483_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>THE AUTHOR’S <i>WU-PAN</i>.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>After hurrying through a less beautiful and much devastated
+region, landing only at Shih-men, on the left bank, where there
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_485'>485</span>is a fine temple with five green-tiled roofs, and much fishing is
+done, the scenery again changed, and for four hundred miles is a
+succession of indescribably beautiful pictures, combining hill and
+valley, rock and woodland, with a greenery and fertility of which
+no word-painting could give any idea. Towns and villages, piled
+on knolls, looked out from among fruit trees; and temples and
+pagodas on heights lent their infinite picturesqueness.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One of the most beautifully situated towns is the unwalled
+town of Peh-Shih, with a (reputed) population of 11,000. Timbered
+white houses run steeply up diverging limestone cliffs; every outline
+is broken by the configuration of the ground; the ornamental
+and economic trees are superb; the density of their foliage was
+phenomenal. The centre of the town, which has no room for
+expansion, is picturesquely crowded with striking temples and
+guildhalls, much enriched with gold and colour. The great
+industry of the town is “wine” making. Wine is exported on
+a large scale in forty-gallon jars, which come down on bamboo
+rafts from Lu-chien, where they are made, and these afterwards
+take the wine up the Ya and other turbulent rivers. A fleet of
+these quaint constructions and a great number of junks lay
+along the shore, and there was an air of prosperous business
+about the town.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The roof of my boat had to be refitted with mats, some of
+which had been blown off in the storm, and I took a long inland
+walk, and without molestation! The cultivation was marvellous.
+I have no space to dwell upon the infinite variety of the crops or
+on the trees of all climates which were flourishing in juxtaposition,<a id='r53'></a><a href='#f53' class='c013'><sup>[53]</sup></a>
+or upon the striking fact that there, 1600 miles up the river, the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_486'>486</span>social and commercial organisation, and the arrangements for
+what the Chinese regard as comfort and convenience, were as
+complete as in Che-kiang. A little later it might have occurred
+to me that this beautiful and prosperous region is claimed as in
+the British “sphere of influence.” Carefulness and thrift were
+shown by what was to me a novelty. All along the river shore
+people were fishing from rocks with nets, for straws, twigs, and
+bits of wood to use for their cooking fires.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p486_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>METHOD OF CARRYING <i>CASH</i> AND BABIES.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>I reached Chung-king, the westernmost of the treaty ports, and
+the commercial metropolis of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> early the next morning
+(June 1st), after coming slightly to grief in a rapid above it, and
+remained there during three grey, steamy, misty days, in which
+the mercury was almost steady at 87°. Between Chung-king and
+Sui Fu, if not higher, steam navigation at that season appeared
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_487'>487</span>perfectly practicable. The junk and raft traffic is very large.
+Coal and lime are found in abundance near Chung-king, and
+at Pa-Ko-Shan, five miles below Sui Fu, and also twenty miles
+above it. Specimens of this coal brought to England have been
+pronounced to be suitable for steam purposes.<a id='r54'></a><a href='#f54' class='c013'><sup>[54]</sup></a></p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<img src='images/p487_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>FISHING VILLAGE, UPPER YANGTZE.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_490'>490</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXXVII.<br> <span class='c012'>THE JOURNEY’S END</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>Whether Chung-king (altitude 1050 ft.) is approached
+from above or below, it is a most striking city. It is surprising
+to find, 1500 miles inland, a town of from 400,000 to 500,000
+people, including 2500 Mohammedans, as the commercial capital
+of Western China, one of the busiest cities of the empire. Its
+founders chose a site on which there is no room for expansion,
+and its warehouses, guildhalls, hongs, shops, and the dwellings
+of rich and poor, are packed upon a steep sandstone reef or
+peninsula lying between the Yangtze and its great northern
+tributary, the Chia-ling, and rising from 100 to 400 feet above
+the winter level of these rivers. As I descended upon it down
+a somewhat turbulent rapid, which half filled the boat and
+drowned a fowl, it reminded me of Quebec, and made me think
+of the packed condition of Edinburgh when it was yet a walled
+city.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_491'>491</span>
+<img src='images/p491_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>WALL OF CHUNG-KING, WITH GATE TOWERS.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>A noble-looking, grey city it is, with towers, pavilions, and
+temples rising above its massive, irregular, crenelated grey
+wall, with broad, steep, and crowded flights of stone stairs,
+twenty feet broad, leading up from the river to the gates, with an
+amphitheatre of wooded and richly cultivated hills rising steeply
+1600 feet from the water for its background; the fleets of big
+junks, and craft of all descriptions, which lie crowded along its
+shores and in every adjacent bay and reach, and the life and
+movement on land and water, combining to form a noble and
+most striking spectacle. Nor is Chung-king as a city “alone in
+its glory,” for on the Yangtze, just below its junction with the
+Chia-ling, which divides it from Chung-king, stands the walled
+city of Limin-fu, its white houses covering a number of hills
+and cliffs, and at its feet hundreds of junks. Another city,
+Kiang-peh, completes the trio. These cities, with their commercial
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_494'>494</span>organisation owing nothing to Europe, I think more than
+all others, gave me an idea of what China <i>is</i> and <i>must</i> be.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p494_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>CHUNG-KING SOLDIERS, CUSTOMS GUARD.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_495'>495</span>Chung-king Fu has often been described in detail, and I will
+only give a few impressions of it. Passing to the Taiping gate
+up a flight of stone stairs, always sloppy from the passage of
+water carriers, and crowded with cotton-laden coolies, I reached
+the house of the Commissioner of Customs by steep streets cut
+in the rock. The Customs House, infinitely picturesque, is on
+a small rock plateau, with only four feet of space between it
+and the rock behind. The view is ideally picturesque, with the
+pagoda and gardens of a Guild of Benevolence below the plateau,
+and the great flood of the Yangtze, then two-thirds of a mile
+wide, rolling between the city and the fine hills on the further
+shore. But space is lacking. The Chinese soldiers who guard
+the Commissioner seemed to block up the little that there is, and
+trees and trailers there and everywhere in the hot, moist climate
+of Chung-king, choke up every foot of ground. The mercury
+stood at 87° during my three days’ visit; there was no sunshine
+for the dogs to bark at, and the moist air was absolutely still.
+As compared with many or most, the “grounds” of that house are
+spacious!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Chung-king was opened as a treaty port in 1891, but the
+China Inland Mission rented a house there in 1877, and were
+followed by missionaries of other societies, who, however, all had
+to fly from a severe riot nine years later. Mr. Archibald Little
+settled there as a merchant eight years before the opening—a
+rare instance of mercantile pluck with few imitators, and now,
+besides the foreigners on the Consular and Customs’ staffs, there
+are other “venturers,” chiefly “transients,” and about thirty
+missionaries of different societies, with mission chapels, schools,
+and hospitals. The English and German steamers, which are
+to be placed on the route from Ichang next year (1900), will
+doubtless stimulate foreign settlement, and will bring Chung-king
+within the globe-trotter’s sphere. If specially-built gunboats
+can “patrol” the upper Yangtze, outbreaks of hostility to
+foreigners will doubtless cease, and the quarrels will be among
+the foreign nationalities, each anxious to circumvent the others
+in the matter of concessions.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Below the huge reef on which Chung-king stands, is a town
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_496'>496</span>of mat and bamboo houses outside the wall. As the Yangtze
+rises some ninety feet in summer above its winter level, and
+was rising fast when I arrived on June 1st, this town had mostly
+disappeared, and the highest remnant was being carried away
+hurriedly on men’s backs, each hour of removal giving an added
+dignity to the grand, grey city, looking down on the grand, yellow-ochre
+flood. In Chung-king, as in many another city of the
+upper Yangtze, the harmony between man’s work and nature is
+yet unbroken, and the evil day of foreign inartistic antagonisms,
+incongruities, and uglinesses has not yet dawned.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This commercial capital has a great present, which we are
+hoping to improve upon to our advantage.<a id='r55'></a><a href='#f55' class='c013'><sup>[55]</sup></a> It is connected by
+water with nearly every considerable town in the province, and
+wholesale trade is by boat. Exports bound east must pass it,
+and also the imports brought up to pay for them. For foreign
+goods it is the sole wholesale market in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, and is so for
+provincial trade to a great extent, and the province, it must be
+repeated, is as large as France, and vastly more populous. To
+it the merchants and shopkeepers of the whole population of from
+55,000,000 to 70,000,000, which includes Tibetan tribes, Lolos, and
+a few so-called “dog faces,” resort to make their purchases.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_498'>498</span>
+<img src='images/p497_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>GALA HEAD-DRESS, “DOG-FACED” WOMAN.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>(<i>See also page <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>.</i>)</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Mr. A. J. Little is the only British merchant resident in Chung-king.
+The Chinese merchants deal directly with Shanghai
+through their own men. More than half of the buyers sent
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_499'>499</span>down have an interest in the business. They deal with the
+Chinese importers, and pay ready money in Shanghai, but sell
+to the provincial merchants on long credit, the rate of interest
+being 14⅖ per cent. per annum on foreign cotton goods. The seller
+naturally wishes payment to be deferred, and the buyer desires to
+hasten it, as he receives the same percentage as discount. Exchange
+between Chung-king and Shanghai is always in favour
+of Chung-king, and when the Yangtze is in its summer flood,
+1000 taels in Shanghai can often be bought in Chung-king
+for 880.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The intricacies of Chinese business at Chung-king are appalling.
+Excessive subtlety and ingenuity characterise all the trade rules
+and customs, and even the “Blackburn Commission,” aided by the
+experience of Mr. Bourne, found it a work of much labour to
+master their complications! It is scarcely wonderful that the
+average British merchant, who knows nothing better than <i>Pidgun</i>,
+instead of following in the steps of our bold “Merchant Venturers,”
+sticks at Shanghai.<a id='r56'></a><a href='#f56' class='c013'><sup>[56]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At Chung-king, more almost than elsewhere, I was impressed
+with the completeness of Chinese commercial organisation. It
+may be too complex, and lacking in initiative, to serve our
+purposes, but it serves their own, and I heard there, as elsewhere,
+that the high standard of commercial honour and probity which
+has been worked out, renders dealings with Chinese merchants
+very satisfactory.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Eight of the other provinces are represented by guilds in this
+great trading city, with their handsome guildhalls, and rigid laws
+of association. There are an abundance of exchange banks
+(banks selling drafts on distant places), seventeen of which are
+in the hands of men from <span class='sc'>Shan-si</span>, which has a speciality for
+banking talent, and there are over twenty large <i>cash</i> shops or
+local banks, which exchange <i>cash</i> against silver and <i>vice versâ</i>.
+These banks do not make advances on goods, but lend on personal
+security at from ten to twelve per cent. per annum, and employ
+agents who hang about the business quarter, learning the proceedings
+of customers, so as to gauge their credit. A bank would
+lend as much as 200,000 taels to a merchant on personal security
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_500'>500</span>only. They have very rigorous methods of ensuring the honesty
+of <i>employés</i>.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id002'>
+<img src='images/p500_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>THE AUTHOR’S LAST <i>WU-PAN</i>.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was with great regret that I left Chung-king on my last
+<i>wu-pan</i> voyage. There were few, if any, small house-boats on the
+berth, and the big ones would only go down at an enormous
+price, because of the difficulty and profitlessness of the return.
+Foreigners of the two services, as well as merchants, regard a
+<i>wu-pan</i> as we regard a steerage passage, and even my kind host
+declined to connive at my proceedings, but Mr. Willett, of the
+China Inland Mission, befriended me; the <i>wu-pan</i> was engaged,
+and I left Chung-king on a sultry June afternoon, with the
+mercury at 88°, and never regretted my firmness on the subject
+of a boat, for I was thoroughly comfortable, could create draughts
+at will, and my boatmen were quiet and most obliging, and were
+ready to land me at any place where landing was practicable.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The force and volume of the river, which had then risen about
+forty-five feet above its winter level, were tremendous. Its low-water
+width at Chung-king, according to Blakiston, is 800 yards,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_501'>501</span>but it was then about two-thirds of a mile wide, a swirling, leaping,
+yellow flood, laden with the mud with which it enriches the Great
+Plain. Caught in its torrent, the <i>wu-pan</i>, with two men rowing
+easily, descended at great speed. When we reached rapids, five
+men pulled frantically with yells which posed as songs, to keep
+steerage way on her, and we went down like a flash—down
+smooth hills of water, where rapids had been obliterated; down
+leaping races, where they had been created; past hideous whirlpools,
+where to have been sucked in would have been destruction;
+past temples, pagodas, and grey cities on heights; past villages
+gleaming white midst dense greenery; past hill, valley, woodland,
+garden cultivation, and signs of industry and prosperity; past
+junks laid up for the summer in quiet reaches, and junks with
+frantic crews, straining at the sweeps, chanting wildly, bound
+downwards like ourselves; and still for days the Great River
+hurried us remorselessly along. There was no time to take in
+anything. A pagoda or city scarcely appeared before it vanished—a
+rapid scarcely tossed up its angry crests ahead, before we had
+left it astern; one fair dissolving view was all too rapidly exchanged
+for another; and we were tying up among the many
+hundred junks which fringed the shore of the “Myriad City,”
+which is as beautiful from above as from below, before I realised
+that we were half-way thither.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But in this delirious whirl there were episodes of rest, when
+I landed on green and flowery shores above the submerged
+boulders, or below picturesque cities and temples, and had leisure
+either to enjoy detail or to loathe it. The latter was my mental
+attitude when I landed with my <i>chai-jen</i> (rather an infliction in a
+small boat) at the important town of Fu-chow, where a clear
+stream, about 200 yards broad, and navigable for 200 miles, joins
+the turbid Yangtze. There are many queer crafts on the branches
+of the Yangtze. The navigation of some of these rivers is so
+intricate and dangerous, that the owners of these risky constructions
+are obliged to consent to provide coffins for their crews
+in case of disaster, and there are colliers built for <i>one</i> down-river
+voyage, after which they are broken up; but the queerest of
+all crafts are the <i>Wai-pi-Ku</i>—the “twisting stern” junks used for
+the navigation of the Fu-ling, locally known as the Kung-tan Ho,
+or “River of the Rapid of Kung.” I saw one of these at Wan, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_502'>502</span>thought it was a junk which had had a severe accident! The
+sight of forty or fifty large junks at Fu-chow, each one with her
+high stern twisted a quarter round, so that the stern deck is at
+right angles to the quarter deck, was absolutely laughable. The
+stern deck is nearly perpendicular, and is climbed by rungs.
+These extraordinary boats are without rudders. My boatmen
+said that none but “twisted stern” junks could twist through the
+whirlpools and reefs of the river. It was not very wise for me to
+enter Fu-chow, and as I was followed by an immense and not
+over polite crowd I did not dare to use my camera on the
+<i>Wai-pi-Ku</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Fu-chow is perhaps the most picturesque city on the Yangtze,
+built on ledges of rock, tier above tier, at the head of a reach so
+enclosed by steep hills as to look like a lake. There is a fine pagoda
+on a height near it, and it abounds in large temples in commanding
+positions. The deep gateway in the thick wall is scarcely
+more than eight feet high. The narrow street into which it leads
+was thronged, and even women were carrying creels, either
+loaded with coal dust, or small children. I managed to dodge the
+fast accumulating crowd, and get on the wall, from which the view
+up the Fu-ling is magnificent. My visit, however, was rather
+“a fearful joy.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The city appears full of temples, literary monuments, and
+public buildings, but it has an air of neglect and decay, and it
+and its suburbs are dirty and malodorous. It is a great junk
+port, and at times, though not, I think, increasingly, the Fu-ling
+is used for the transit of goods both to Hankow and Canton.
+The latter city can be reached by this method with only two
+portages(?). There are large mat and bamboo suburbs below
+one part of the wall, but very little of them was left, owing to
+the rapid rise of the river, which also had led to the removal of
+many of the mat villages of the trackers. Fu-chow again looked
+glorious from below. A tremendous whirlpool, in which, sometimes,
+descending junks are caught to their destruction, is formed
+in summer near the city. We went uncomfortably near its
+vortex.</p>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_503'>503</span>
+<img src='images/p503_ill.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>“STONE PRECIOUS CASTLE,” SHI-PAO-CHAI.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>I landed also at Shih-pao-chai (“Stone Precious Castle”), a
+place of pilgrimage. The south-east side of the rock (not given
+in the illustration) has a nine-storeyed pavilion, resting on a very
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_505'>505</span>strikingly decorated temple built against it, through which access
+to the summit is gained. On the flat top there is a temple of
+three courts. The pavilion building has curved and decorated
+roofs, and looks like a magnificent eleven-storeyed pagoda. A
+large village lies at its feet. My films were spotted with damp,
+and would have failed anyhow, owing to the overpowering
+curiosity of the people. This rock and its talus are about 300
+feet in height.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A glorious sunset and a morning of crystalline purity in a bay
+above the “Wind-box Gorge”; a rapid swirl through the solemnity
+and grandeur of the gorges which I ascended slowly and toilsomely
+six months before; the Yeh-tan, fierce and perilous; the
+Hsin-tan, a mere water-slide, down which my <i>wu-pan</i> slipped
+easily; a lovely walk up the Nan-po glen, and in fifty-six hours
+from Chung-king, exclusive of stoppages, the boat emerged from
+the Ichang gorge upon the broad reach of eddying water, on
+which the pleasant treaty port of Ichang is situated.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>After receiving hospitality for a few days at the British Consulate
+I left Ichang, and found the mirrors, enamel, and gilding
+of one of the fine river steamers very distasteful after a thousand
+miles in a <i>wu-pan</i>. Hankow, though by no means at its worst,
+was damp and sultry, with a temperature over 90°, and alive with
+mosquitoes. Even on the voyage down to Shanghai, which was
+devoid of any incident,—except that five minutes after leaving
+Chin-kiang we cut the anchored steamer <i>Hai-how</i>, tea-laden for
+Canton, down to the water’s edge—the damp heat was severe, and
+even the breeze was hot.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It was the end of June when I reached Shanghai, to find it
+sweltering in a “hot wave,” sunless and moist. My journey on
+the whole had been one of extreme variety and interest, and I
+was truly thankful for the freedom from any serious accident which
+I had enjoyed, and for the deep and probably abiding interest in
+China and the Chinese which it had given me, along with new
+views of the physical characteristics of the country, and of the
+resourcefulness and energy of its inhabitants.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_506'>506</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXXVIII.<br> <span class='c012'>THE OPIUM POPPY AND ITS USE<a id='r57'></a><a href='#f57' class='c013'><sup>[57]</sup></a></span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>My acquaintance with the opium poppy began in the month
+of February on the journey from Wan Hsien to Paoning
+Fu. It is a very handsome plant. It is expensive to grow.
+It has to be attended to eight times, and needs heavy manuring.
+It is exposed to so many risks before the juice is secured that
+the growth is much of a speculation, and many Chinese regard
+it as being as risky as gambling. Besides its cultivation for
+sale, on a majority of farms it is grown for home use, as tobacco
+is, for smoking. It is a winter crop, and is succeeded by rice,
+maize, cotton, beans, etc. Certain crops can be planted between
+the rows of the poppies. Much oil, bearing a high price, is made
+from the seed. The lower leaves, which are abundant, are used
+in some quarters to feed pigs, and also as a vegetable. They were
+served up to me as such twice, and tasted like spinach. In some
+places the heavy stalks are dug into the ground; in others they
+are used as fuel, and after serving this purpose their ashes provide
+lye for the indigo dyers. It appears from much concurrent
+testimony, that in spite of heavy manuring the crop exhausts
+the ground.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The area devoted to the poppy in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> is enormous,
+and owing to the high price of the drug and its easy transport
+its culture is encroaching on the rice and arable lands. The
+consequences of the extension of its cultivation are serious. It is
+admitted by the natives of <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> that one great reason
+of the deficient food supply which led to the famine and distress
+in the eastern part of the province in 1897, was the giving of so
+much ground to the poppy that there was no longer a margin left
+on which to feed the population in years of a poor harvest.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_507'>507</span>I shall not touch on the history of the growth and use of opium
+in China. The authorities evidently regarded the introduction of
+both as a grave peril, and they were prohibited under Imperial
+decrees. I learn on what I regard as very reliable authority, that
+sixty years ago, when Cantonese brought opium cough pills into
+<span class='sc'>Kweichow</span> and <span class='sc'>Yunnan</span>, and the consumers found themselves
+unable to give up the medicine, that the authorities were most
+active in suppressing its use, and even inflicted the punishment
+of death on many of the refractory in <span class='sc'>Yunnan</span>. It was then
+and later smuggled about the country in coffins!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Now, on many of the <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> roads opium houses are as
+common as gin shops in our London slums. I learned from
+Chinese sources that in several of the large cities of the province
+eighty per cent. of the men and forty per cent. of the women
+are opium smokers; but this must not be understood to mean
+that they are opium “wrecks,” for there is a vast amount of
+“moderate” opium smoking in China. In my boat on the
+Yangtze fourteen out of sixteen very poor trackers smoked opium,
+and among my chair and baggage coolies it was rare to find
+one who did not smoke, and who did not collapse about the
+same hour daily with the so-called unbearable craving.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The stern of my boat was a downright opium den at night,
+with fourteen ragged men curled up on their quilts, with their
+opium lamps beside them, in the height of sensuous felicity,
+dreaming such Elysian dreams as never visit the toiling day of
+a Chinese coolie, and incapable of rousing themselves to meet
+an emergency until the effect of the pipe passed off. Farther
+astern still, the <i>lao-pan</i> and his shrieking virago of a wife lay
+in the same blissful case, the toothless, mummied face of the
+<i>lao-pan</i>, expressive in the daytime of nothing but fiendish greed,
+with its muscles relaxed, and its deep, hard lines smoothed out.
+Some of these men, whose thin, worn, cotton rags were ill-fitted
+to meet the cold, sold most of them at Wan, rather than undergo
+what appeared to be literally the <i>agonies</i> of abstinence. On
+my inland journey I heard incidentally of many men who had
+sold both wives and children in order to obtain the drug, and
+at Paoning Fu of a man and his wife who, having previously
+parted with house, furniture, and all they had, to gratify their
+craving, at the time of my visit sold their only child, a nice
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_508'>508</span>girl of fourteen, educated in the Mission School, to some brutal
+Kansuh fur traders, who were returning home. It is quite usual
+when a man desires a house and land which are the property
+of an opium smoker, for him to wait with true Chinese patience
+for one, two, or three years, certain that the owner will sooner
+or later part with it for an old song to satisfy his opium craving
+when he has sold all else. It is common for the Chinese to
+say, “If you want to be revenged on your enemy you need not
+strike him, or go to law with him—you have only to entice him
+into smoking opium.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The Chinese condemn all but most moderate opium smoking
+and gambling as twin vices, and not a voice is raised in defence
+of either of them, even by the smokers themselves. The opium
+habit is regarded as a disease, for the cure of which many
+smokers voluntarily place themselves in opium refuges at
+some expense, and at a great cost of suffering, and in the
+market towns, thronged with native traders, there is to be
+seen on many stalls among innumerable native drugs and
+commodities, a package labelled “Remedy for Foreign Smoke,”
+“foreign smoke” being the usual name for opium in Western
+China. I was impressed with the existence of a curious sort of
+conscience, if it can be called such, among the devotees of opium,
+which leads them to consider themselves as moral criminals. The
+Chinese generally believe that if a man takes to the opium habit
+it will be to the impoverishment and ruin of his family, and that
+it will prevent him from fulfilling one of the first of Confucian
+obligations, the support of his parents in their old age. The consensus
+of opinion among smokers and non-smokers, as to the crime
+of opium smoking and its woeful results, leads me to believe
+that it brings about the impoverishment and ruin of families to
+an enormous extent. Chinese said several times to me that the
+reason the Japanese beat them was that they were more vigorous
+men, owing to the rigid exclusion of opium from Japan.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In May I saw the crop harvested. Women and children are
+the chief operators. In the morning longitudinal incisions are
+made in the seed vessel, the juice exudes, and by the evening
+is hard enough to be scraped into cups, after which it turns black,
+and after a few days’ exposure is ready for packing. Heavy rain
+or a strong west wind during this process is very injurious.
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_509'>509</span>Maize, tobacco, and cotton have been previously planted, and
+make a good appearance as soon as the poppy stalks have been
+cleared away.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Eight years ago it was rather exceptional for women and
+children to smoke, but the Chinese estimate that in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>
+and other opium-producing regions from forty to sixty per cent.
+are now smokers. Where opium is not grown the habit is chiefly
+confined to the cities, but it is rapidly spreading.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Its existence is obvious among the lower classes from the
+exceeding poverty which it entails. Millions of the working
+classes earn barely enough to provide them with what, even to
+their limited notions, are the necessaries of life, and the money
+spent on opium is withdrawn from these. Hence the confirmed
+opium smoker among the poor is apt to look half starved and
+ragged. Still I am bound to say that I did not encounter any
+of those awful specimens of physical wreckage that I saw some
+years ago in the Malay States from the same cause.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among the well-to-do and well-nourished classes the evils of
+opium are doubtless more moral than physical; among the masses
+both evils are combined. The lower orders of officials and “<i>yamen</i>
+runners,” with their unlimited leisure, are generally smokers.
+Among my official escorts in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, numbering in all 143
+men, all but two were devotees of opium, and I was constantly
+delayed and inconvenienced by it. My coolies frequently broke
+down under the craving, and that at times as inconvenient to
+themselves as to me. In two towns I had to wait two hours
+to get my passport copied because the writers at the <i>yamen</i> were
+in the blissful haziness produced by the pipe.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>So far as I have seen, the passionate craving for the drug, called
+by the Chinese the “<i>Yin</i>,” (which appears to be the coming on of
+severe depression after the stimulant of the pipe has passed off),
+involves great suffering, and total abstinence, whether voluntary
+or enforced, produces an anguish which the enfeebled will of the
+immoderate smoker is powerless to contend with. The craving
+grows, till at the end of eighteen months from the commencement
+of the habit, or even less, the smoker, unless he can gratify it,
+becomes unable to do his work.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>He feels disinclined to move, miserable all over, especially at
+the stomach and between the shoulders, his joints and bones
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_510'>510</span>ache badly, he perspires freely, he trembles with a sense of weakness,
+and if he cannot get the drug, he believes that he will die.
+I cannot learn how soon a man comes to consider himself a
+victim of the habit. Those who place themselves in opium
+refuges with the hope of cure, endure agonies which they describe
+to be “as if wolves were gnawing at their vitals,” and
+would, if permitted, tear off their skin to relieve the severe
+internal suffering.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On my <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> journey we were benighted on a desolate
+hillside, and had to spend the night in the entrance to a coal-pit,
+cold, wet, and badly fed. My coolies had relied on being able to
+buy opium, and though they were comparatively moderate
+smokers, they suffered so much that some of them were rolling
+on the ground in their pain. Dr. Main, of Hangchow, thinks that
+very few can be cured in opium refuges, which they enter for
+twenty-one days, for the debility, stomachic disorder, and depression
+which follow the disuse of the drug are so great, that
+six months of tonics and good feeding would be necessary to
+set them on their feet again. On the contrary, the poor wretch,
+low in purse, depressed, feeble, trembling, leaves the shelter of
+the refuge to be tempted at once to a smoke by old associates,
+while in cities like Hangchow and Fuchow from eight hundred
+to a thousand registered opium shops display their seductions,
+and he turns aside to the only physical and mental comfort that
+he knows.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have little doubt that in the early months of the habit there
+is a widespread desire to abandon it. Opium refuges, in spite
+of the fair payment which is asked for, are always crowded. The
+shops and markets abound in native and foreign remedies for
+“foreign smoke.” The native cures all contain opium, chiefly
+in the form of ashes, and the foreign, which are white, contain
+morphia. The attempts at self-cure number tens of thousands,
+and are very piteous, but in many cases it is merely the exchange
+of the opium habit for the morphia habit, and at this time morphia
+lozenges are making great headway in China, as an easy and
+unsuspected means, specially in travelling, of obtaining the sensations
+which have become essential to existence. The importation
+of morphia into China is now enormous—135,283 ounces in 1898.
+It is sold everywhere, and in the great west, as well as nearer the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_511'>511</span>seaboard, shops are opened which sell a few articles as a blind,
+for the lucrative sale of the much-prized morphia pill or lozenge.
+Among the native cures which I have heard of the only one
+which seems at all efficacious is the so-called “Tea Extract,”
+<i>Scutellaria vicidula</i>. The <i>Jsai li</i> sect, which makes abstinence
+from opium one of its tenets, uses this cure invariably, but the
+ordinary smoker is unwilling to face the severe suffering which
+it entails.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Smokers, I have learned, may be divided into three classes:
+first, the upper class, not driven by failure of means or sense of
+duty to abandon an indulgence which they can well afford, and
+which they do not enjoy to excess; second, the respectable class
+of small merchants, innkeepers, shopkeepers, business men, and the
+like, who find their families pinched and themselves losing caste
+by reason of their habit; third, the class—which the Chinese
+estimate to consist of forty per cent. of the whole in the cities,
+and twenty per cent. in the country—which has drifted beyond
+hope, and is continually recruited from those above it. In this
+are found thieves, beggars, actors, the infamous, the lost and
+submerged, the men who have sold lands, houses, wives, and
+children, and live for opium only, much as the most degraded
+of our dipsomaniacs live for spirits.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Besides these, there are many who are not obliged to have
+recourse to selling and pawning to get along, but who curtail
+such things as the education of their children, and flowers for
+their wives’ heads, and who, from having eaten meat twice daily,
+eat it only once, or substitute for it a purely vegetable diet, which
+must contain much honey and sugar to relieve the heat and
+dryness of the mouth which the pipe produces. Then there are
+large numbers of smokers who have barely enough to feed themselves
+upon, who must eat in order to work, and who have not
+one <i>cash</i> left for opium. These borrow right and left, and part
+with all they can pledge for anything, borrowing every year from
+fresh lenders, and paying back a fraction of the old debts till
+they can borrow no longer, and drop into the submerged class
+aforesaid. Among these are seen the ragged, mummied wretches,
+who <i>kotow</i> to former acquaintances, and beg from them the ashes
+of their opium pipes, even drinking these with hot water to satisfy
+the craving.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_512'>512</span>Rich smokers smoke what is known as “Canton opium,” the
+import from India, which they compare to a coal fire, and the
+native drug to a wood one. But the manufacture of the latter
+is improving rapidly; and as it is increasingly used to mix with
+the Indian, a generation is growing up in the upper class which
+knows only the mixed drug, and apparently only the old, rich
+smokers use pure Indian opium, the consumption of which has
+fallen off enormously, though in 1898 the value of the Indian
+import was £4,388,385.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The mysteries of the preparation and the varieties of the
+product baffle the non-smoker. Both Chinese and Indian opium
+are now largely prepared with the ashes of the drug already once
+smoked, much of it flowing, only imperfectly burned, into the
+receiver of the pipe. In the strongest prepared opium, four
+ounces of ashes of the first degree are added to every ten of
+crude opium. Ashes of the second and even the third burning
+are also used. Many of the poorer classes have to content
+themselves with a smoke of opium ashes only, and the lowest
+of all users of the drug have to satisfy themselves with eating
+or drinking the ashes of the third burning.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There is a class which can afford to buy the pure drug, but
+which finds that it does not satisfy the craving, but this is
+merged in a far larger one of old and inveterate rich smokers
+of one tael’s weight per day, who smoke not even the very best
+prepared Indian drug, for their craving needs far stronger
+stimulation, but ashes of the first degree. Such men give the
+prepared extract, weight for weight, value for value, for the
+ashes, and contract with opium shops to be supplied with all
+their ashes of the first burning. For the rich, inveterate smoker
+an ounce of prepared extract is mixed with six ounces of ashes
+of the first degree. This habit has in Chinese a specific bad
+name.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Pure opium appears to be seldom sold, as it fails to satisfy
+the craving of the practised smoker. It is not only that ashes
+are mixed with the fresh drug, but that they are reboiled, and
+after being made up with treacle to the proper consistence are
+resmoked, and their ashes are then eaten by the poorest class.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Morphia, the active principle of opium, not being consumed in
+the smoke owing to its lack of volatility, the eating of the ashes,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_513'>513</span>which contain seven per cent. and upwards of it, has a very
+serious effect. The fact that opium is smoked three times
+makes it impossible to estimate either the quantity consumed
+or the amount spent on the indulgence, but these are, of course,
+greatly in excess of that indicated by any possible returns.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among the adjuncts of opium smoking used by rich smokers
+is what is called “water tobacco,” supposed erroneously to be
+all washed in the water of the Yellow river. It is retailed in
+thin cakes of a brick-red colour, and is said to be mixed with
+arsenic, and that its excessive use, with or without opium, is
+dangerous to health.<a id='r58'></a><a href='#f58' class='c013'><sup>[58]</sup></a> This tobacco is invariably smoked in
+“water pipes” by the upper classes in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the chapter on the Hangchow Hospital I have mentioned
+the impetus given to suicide by the painlessness of death by
+opium, and will not refer to it again. In this chapter I have
+only touched upon such mysteries and results of opium smoking
+as I have seen in my limited experience, or have heard of
+directly from Chinese through my interpreters, or facts stated
+in a careful paper, <cite>The Use of Opium</cite>, by Dr. Dudgeon, of
+Peking. Except for the quotation of a remark of Dr. Main, of
+Hangchow, on opium refuges, I have not obtained any of my
+material from missionaries.<a id='r59'></a><a href='#f59' class='c013'><sup>[59]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>From all that I have seen and heard among the Chinese
+themselves, I have come to believe that even moderate opium
+smoking involves enormous risks, and that excessive smoking
+brings in its train commercial, industrial, and moral ruin and
+physical deterioration, and this on a scale so large as to
+threaten the national well-being and the physical future of the
+race.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The most common reasons which the Chinese give for contracting
+the habit are pain, love of pleasure, sociability, and
+the want of occupation. They say that a moderate use of the
+pipe “advances the transaction of business, stimulates the bargaining
+instinct, facilitates the striking of bargains, and enables men
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_514'>514</span>to talk about secret and important matters which without it they
+would lack courage to speak of.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is strangely true that in this industrial nation there are
+hundreds of thousands of people with little or nothing to do.
+There are the wives of the wealthy, retired, and expectant mandarins,
+leisured men of various classes, <i>literati</i> waiting for
+employment, the great army of priests and monks, and the
+hangers-on of <i>yamens</i>, besides which there are Government
+officials whose duties occupy them only one day in a month.
+These remarks apply chiefly to urban populations.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Outside of commercial pursuits an overpowering shadow of
+dulness rests on Chinese as upon much of Oriental life. The
+lack of an enlightened native press, and of anything deserving
+the name of contemporary literature; the grooviness of thought
+and action; the trammels of a rigid etiquette; the absence of
+athletics, and even of ordinary exercise; the paucity of recreations,
+other than the play and the restaurants, which are ofttimes
+associated with opium shops and vicious resorts; and the fact
+that the learned having committed the classics to memory, by
+which they have rendered themselves eligible for office, have
+no farther motive for study—all make the blissful dreams and
+the oblivion of the opium pipe greatly to be desired.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is obvious that opium has come to “stay.” So lately as
+1859, in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, which now exports opium annually to
+the value of nearly £2,000,000, the penalty for growing it was
+death, in spite of which the white poppy fields were seen in
+conspicuous places along the Great River; and in 1868 an
+Imperial edict against its cultivation was supplemented by a
+proclamation to the same effect by the Viceroy of the province,
+and both have remained dead letters.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At all times the beautiful <i>Papaver somniferum</i> has been
+regarded as the enemy of China. There are no apologists for
+the use of opium except among foreigners. The smokers themselves
+are ashamed of their slavery. All alike condemn it, and
+regard opium as a curse as well as a vice, and from all which came
+under my own observation in fifteen months, I fully agree with
+them.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I will conclude this chapter with a few extracts from officials
+whose knowledge of the evils which are following the constantly
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_515'>515</span>increasing use of the drug, cannot be gainsaid. The first quotation
+is from the British Consul at Tainan, Formosa. Consul Hirst
+says:—</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>“As long as China remains a nation of opium smokers there is not the
+least reason to fear that she will become a military power of any importance,
+as the habit saps the energies and vitality of the nation.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The next is from Consul Bourne, who accompanied the
+“Blackburn Commission” to the west and south of China, in
+the winter and spring of 1896–97. Mr. Bourne believes that the
+provinces of <span class='sc'>Yunnan</span> and <span class='sc'>Kuei-chow</span> raise opium annually
+to the amount of about three millions sterling.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>“There is no doubt,” he writes, “that here (Kuei-chow) the officials
+tried to stop the cultivation of the poppy, but this must have been very
+difficult, because an export such as opium, light in weight for its value,
+is just what these provinces, with their wretched means of communication,
+want. To-day, without opium, Yunnan and Kuei-chow would have
+no means of paying for imports. Unfortunately,” he says, writing of
+<span class='sc'>Yunnan</span>, “opium has become almost the medium of exchange in this
+province, as I explained in a former report.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Writing on the deplorable condition of <span class='sc'>Yunnan</span> (p. 58), he
+says:—</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>“After Yang-kai, poppy fills the whole cultivated area, covering the
+valley with white and purple (this is in the province of Yunnan), a
+gorgeous spectacle to the eye, though not agreeable to the mind, for one
+must attribute chiefly to opium, I think, the extraordinary failure of this
+province to recover from the devastation of the rebellion.</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>“The drug is so cheap and handy that the men almost all smoke, and
+most women, especially among the agriculturists, who tend the poppy and
+collect and sell the juice—the class that is elsewhere the backbone of
+China, if, indeed, China can be said to have a backbone. I was assured
+by an English missionary who has long resided in the province, and in
+whose judgment I have great confidence, that in eastern and western
+circuits (Tao) of the province, which embrace more than two-thirds of
+its area, 80 per cent. of the men and 60 per cent. of the women smoke
+opium. In the southern circuit the habit is not quite so general. He
+had no doubt that the vice had a very bad effect on the race. At all
+events, every traveller must be struck by the great extent to which the
+fertile valleys—the only land well cultivated—are monopolised by the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_516'>516</span>poppy; by the apathy and laziness of the people; and by the very slow
+recovery, during twenty-five years, from the losses of the rebellion.
+Another bad result of opium being so ready at hand is the frequency of
+suicides, especially among women.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>At the close of 1898, a book was published by H. E. Chang
+Chih-tung, who is described by foreigners long resident in China
+as having been for many years one of the most influential statesmen
+in the country, and as standing second to no official in the
+empire for ability, honesty, disinterestedness, and patriotism. He
+has filled in succession three of the most important Viceroyalties
+in the empire. He deals with the opium habit as with a huge
+national evil. Under the heading “The Expulsion of the Poison,”
+he writes thus:—</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>(1) “Deplorable indeed is the injury done by opium! It is [as] the
+Deluge of the present day or [an invasion of] some fierce beasts, but the
+danger [arising from it] is greater than [the danger arising from] those
+things.... The injury done by opium is that of a stream of poison
+flowing on for more than a hundred years, and diffusing itself in twenty-two
+provinces. The sufferers from this injury amount to untold millions.
+Its consequences are insidious and seductive, and the limit has not yet
+been reached. It destroys men’s abilities, it weakens the vigour of the
+soldier, it wastes their wealth,<a id='r60'></a><a href='#f60' class='c013'><sup>[60]</sup></a> until it results at length in China being
+what she is to-day. This destruction affects the ability of civilians and
+soldiers alike. The injury is worse than any waste of wealth. Men’s
+wills are weakened, their physical strength is reduced. In the management
+of business they lack industry, they cannot journey any distance,
+their expenditure becomes extravagant, their children are few. After a
+few tens of years it will result in China becoming altogether the laughing-stock
+of the world.”</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>(2) “Shanghai and Yangchow both have associations for breaking off
+the opium habit. Their general object may be said to be that each
+member should control his dependents. As for the opium smokers,
+masters will not employ them as servants, teachers will not have them as
+scholars, generals will not take them as soldiers, farmers will not use them
+as labourers, merchants will not employ them as assistants, foremen will
+not have them for workmen.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_517'>517</span>The writer concludes by saying:—</p>
+
+<p class='c008'>“If Confucius and Mencius were to live again, and were to teach the
+empire&#160;... they would certainly begin by [teaching men] to break off
+opium.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>How is China to emancipate herself from this rapidly increasing
+habit, which is threatening to sap the hitherto remarkable energy
+of the race?</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_518'>518</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CHAPTER XXXIX.<br> <span class='c012'>NOTES ON PROTESTANT MISSIONS IN CHINA</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>Two thousand four hundred and fifty-eight Protestant workers
+(including wives) represent the missionary energies and the
+many divisions of Christendom. The native Protestant communicants
+number 80,632.<a id='r61'></a><a href='#f61' class='c013'><sup>[61]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The shock which China received through her defeat by Japan
+has produced, among other results, a disposition to make inquiries
+regarding the God, faith, and learning of those “Western
+Barbarians” from whom Japan received the art of war. Although
+hostility to Christianity as a destructive and socially disintegrating
+power has been recently evidenced by the anti-Christian riots at
+Kien-ing and elsewhere, the spirit of inquiry gathers volume, and
+expresses itself in large gatherings in street-chapels and churches,
+the thronging to mission schools, and the avidity with which
+Christian literature is purchased. Those who profess themselves
+ready to abandon heathenism and connect themselves with
+Christianity are more than the missionaries can instruct. In
+<span class='sc'>Manchuria</span> there are six thousand inquirers in connection with
+the Scotch and Irish missions. In the <span class='sc'>Fu-kien</span> province the
+movement towards Christianity is on so extensive a scale as to
+attract the serious attention of the provincial authorities, as well
+as emphatic recognition by our own consuls. In one mission
+alone of the American Board, in another province, the number
+of inquirers into the Christian religion is estimated at 12,000.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The growing influence of Christianity, however, cannot be
+measured either by the numbers of communicants or inquirers.
+For many years past, large numbers of Christian men and women
+have been scattered through nearly all the provinces of China,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_519'>519</span>making their homes among the Chinese, with the avowed object
+of promulgating what is known as the “<i>Jesus Religion</i>.” Their
+methods of propagandism—preaching, conversation, schools, dispensaries,
+hospitals, and the circulation of Christian literature only
+differ slightly. Their knowledge of Chinese is necessarily imperfect,
+and they often make grotesque and even serious blunders.
+As their methods and mistakes in the language are much alike,
+so too are their lives. The keenest Chinese critic finds no
+difference in conduct and the motives which rule it, between
+the Scotch missionaries in <span class='sc'>Manchuria</span>, the China Inland Mission
+and Canadian, etc., in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, the Church Missionary Society
+in the <span class='sc'>Fu-kien</span> Province, and the German and American in
+<span class='sc'>Kwantung</span>. These 2500 men and women are seen under the
+“fierce light” of criticism which beats upon them, whether at
+home or abroad, to lead pure, just, truthful, kind, honest, virtuous,
+patient lives, restraining temper and suffering long. These lives
+preach a higher standard of living than is inculcated by the
+highest Chinese teaching, and by slow degrees produce results
+which cannot be tabulated. The fame of the foreign teacher’s
+payment of wages agreed upon, without drawbacks, his truthfulness,
+justice, kind treatment of servants,<a id='r62'></a><a href='#f62' class='c013'><sup>[62]</sup></a> control of temper, and
+accessibility, travels far, and each life so lived is an influence
+making for righteousness in the neighbourhood, exciting inquiry
+into the “Jesus Religion” and foreign learning, and exercising
+a distinct influence on surrounding morality in certain directions.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The direct part of missionary work need scarcely be touched
+upon. It consists in awakening the conscience to a sense of sin,
+by the preaching of “righteousness, temperance, and judgment
+to come.” It dwells upon the justice and love of God, on the
+atonement of Christ, on that Divine Fatherhood before whose
+infinite compassions there is not a stranger, an alien, a foreigner;
+on the “one sacrifice for sin once offered”; and teaches that the
+purpose of the sacrifice, and of law and gospel, is, that men may
+live “soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world,” in
+preparation for a stainless and endless life. It teaches that the
+morality of the Great Teacher is but a “shadow of good things
+to come”—of the higher and perfect morality demanded by the
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_520'>520</span>Divine law, and that the power outside ourselves which “makes
+for righteousness” and “helps our infirmities,” is the power of
+God; that “God is love,” and yearns over His wandering children;
+that He has “showed man what is good,” and that “His only
+begotten Son,” who in some mysterious manner “bore our sins in
+His own body on the tree,” is “He who is alive for evermore,” and
+“ever liveth to make intercession,” and that He “hath abolished
+death, and brought life and immortality to light through His
+Gospel.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This, in brief, is the teaching of all Protestant missionaries in
+China, to whatever church they belong, and with one or two
+exceptions all regard baptism as an obligatory confession of faith,
+and as the evidence of a complete break with the beliefs and
+practices of heathenism.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Under such teaching 80,000 Chinese in 1898 were making a
+public profession of the Christian faith. Many annually lapse;
+the greater number owing to family influence, and difficulties in
+the abandonment of the time and custom-honoured social observances
+connected with idolatry; some because they find the moral
+restraints of Christianity too hard for them, and others because
+they hoped for worldly advantages which they failed to obtain.
+A large number of professing converts are employed by missionaries
+as servants, gatekeepers, teachers, printers, translators, and
+writers, of whose sincerity it may not always be possible to judge,
+as foreign employment is much coveted.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But after putting these and other dubious converts aside, there
+remains a large body of native Christians, gathered into societies,
+which after long and careful inquiry I believe to be fully up to
+the average mark of our churches at home in essential knowledge,
+and above it in practice, specially in propagandist zeal and
+liberality—societies of men and women, in which the virtues
+of purity, honesty, self-denial, and charity are apparent. These
+converts contribute liberally out of their poverty to Christian
+objects, specially for the advancement of Christianity in their own
+country, in some regions contributing 6<i>s.</i> per head per annum.
+These Christian societies are constantly showing an increasing
+disposition to help themselves by the building of church edifices,
+as at Paoning Fu and elsewhere, and by contributing the entire
+support of not a few of their own pastors.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_521'>521</span>A large number of these converts are earnest and successful
+propagandists, and the very large increase in the number of
+Christians during the last five years is mainly owing to the zeal,
+earnestness, and devotion of Chinese converts, both men and
+women, who owe their conversion and instruction, as well as
+guidance and inspiration, to the foreign teachers. In Manchuria
+a few years ago the senior missionary told me that out of between
+three thousand and four thousand converts he estimated that not
+more than twenty had received Christianity directly from the
+European missionaries, and the same proportion holds good with
+regard to the 8875 inquirers at the present date. In
+Che-kiang the present Bishop of Victoria estimated the number
+of converts through the work of Chinese as 80 per cent. of the
+whole.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These societies, in the beginning very small, and numbering
+from ten up to over four hundred members, are gradually crystallising
+into brotherhoods, with a very strong bond of union and
+definite aims of their own. They show in a marked degree
+the strong Chinese tendency to combination and association,
+and may be regarded as guilds. At present among the communicants
+there is a strong desire to conserve the purity of the
+churches by a careful exercise of discipline. Members who fall
+back into evil ways, as many do, are “suspended,” and if incorrigible
+are sloughed off, and it certainly would not be possible
+for such abuses as disgraced the church of Corinth to exist in the
+infant churches of China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In brief these Christian societies are earnest in propagandism,
+zealous for purity and discipline, liberal in their contributions,
+desirous for instruction, docile and teachable, and apparently increasingly
+anxious to translate Christian doctrine into righteous
+living. These bodies in very many places are slowly exercising
+an influence in favour of righteousness, and are thus among the
+many influences which are tending to undermine the old superstitions.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>If China is to be Christianised, or even largely leavened by
+Christianity, it must inevitably be by native agency under foreign
+instruction and guidance. The foreigner remains a foreigner in
+his imperfect and often grotesque use of the language, in his
+inability to comprehend Chinese modes of thinking and acting,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_522'>522</span>and in a hundred other ways, while a well-instructed Chinese
+teacher knows his countrymen and what will appeal to them,
+how to make “points,” and how to clinch an argument by a
+popular quotation from their own classics. He knows their
+weakness and strength, their devious ways and crooked motives,
+and their unspeakable darkness and superstition, and is not
+likely to be either too suspicious or too confiding. He presents
+Christianity without the Western flavour. It is in the earnest
+enthusiasm of the Chinese converts for the propagation of the
+faith that the great hope for China lies.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Until now Christianity has made very slow progress. Among
+the special obstacles are: First, the national vanity, and the
+contempt for anything introduced by the foreign barbarians.
+Second, the posthumous influence of Confucius, whose moral
+teaching, negative and defective as it is on some points, is
+regarded as final, and his maxims as perfect in their adaptation
+to the needs of society and government for all time. Third, the
+Chinese language itself, with its absence of an alphabet, the
+peculiar inflections and tones, the guttural and aspirated modulations
+which must be carefully observed, and the necessity of
+creating a vocabulary which shall rationally express the Christian
+ideas, and yet not be offensive to a critical and literary people.
+Fourth, the carefulness and universality of home education in
+superstitious and idolatrous beliefs and practices, children being
+taught from early infancy that reverence for the divinities of the
+Chinese Pantheon, shown according to established forms, is necessary
+to success in life.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Fifth, greater than all these special obstacles combined, is that
+of ancestor-worship, the actual and universal cult of the Empire.
+To abandon idolatrous worship and practices is easy, but withdrawal
+from the worship of the ancestral tablets, with its rites
+and sacrifices, brands a man as a reprobate and a brute. These
+rites represent reverence, sacredness, and filial piety; they have
+the sanction of immemorial usage and of the earliest memories
+of home, and the first act of worship recorded is the worship
+of ancestors by the Emperor Shun on his accession, in the dawn
+of Chinese history.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The practice probably took its rise in a tender and beautiful
+filial feeling, but apparently it has come to be largely inspired
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_523'>523</span>by fear. A Chinese truly “passes the time of his sojourning here
+in fear,” and is in slavery not only to the terror of a dim and
+demon-haunted future, but to the present dread of the evils
+wherewith he may be afflicted in this life by the malevolence of
+the dissatisfied spirits of his ancestors. Dr. Yates, a very careful
+student of things Chinese, in an able paper on ancestor-worship,
+states that, including the cost of the festivals for the destitute dead,
+the enormous sum of 151,752,000 dollars is annually expended by
+the Chinese in quieting the spirits of the departed, and securing
+the living from their malignant action. If this worship ever dies,
+it will die hard.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Islam is absolutely intolerant of every form of ancestor-worship.
+The Roman Catholic missions, as my readers are aware, were
+agitated by a controversy as to concessions on this subject from
+1610 to 1758, when Pope Benedict XIV. rejected all compromise.
+Protestant missions take the same course.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>While making careful inquiries into mission work, both from
+the workers and from outsiders, and comparing the present status
+and conduct of Chinese converts with what they were when I was
+in China twenty years ago, I formed certain opinions on Protestant
+missions in China, which I now place briefly before my readers.
+At this time missions constitute so important a factor in the awakening
+of the empire, that no sensible or thoughtful person can ignore
+them without sacrificing his reputation for both sense and thoughtfulness.
+If I venture to write of myself at all in connection with
+the subject, it is but to say that I am not an enthusiast regarding
+foreign missions, but soberly believe that to “teach all nations” is
+the path of duty and of hope.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>During the earlier period of my eight years of Asiatic travel
+the subject was of little or no interest to me. I may even have
+enjoyed the cheap sneers at missions and missionaries which often
+pass for wit in Anglo-Asiatic communities, among persons who
+have never given the work and its methods one half-hour of
+serious attention and investigation, and in travelling, wherever
+possible, I gave mission stations a wide berth.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>On my later journeys, however, which brought me often for
+months at a time into touch with the daily life of the peoples,
+their condition even at the best impressed me as being so
+deplorable all round, that I became a convert to the duty of
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_524'>524</span>using the great means by which it can be elevated. To pass on to
+these nations the blessings which we owe to Christianity—our
+eternal hope, our knowledge of the Divine Fatherhood, our
+Christian ideals of manhood and womanhood, our best conceptions
+of the sanctities of domestic life and of the duties
+involved in social relationships, our political liberties, the position
+of women, the incorruptible majesty of our equal laws, the reformatory
+nature of our punishments, the public opinion permeated
+by Christianity which sustains right and condemns wrong, and
+a thousand things besides, which have come to us through centuries
+of the “Jesus Religion”—is undoubtedly our bounden duty. It is
+surely the height of unchristian selfishness to sit down contentedly
+among our own good things, and practically to regard China
+merely as an area for trade. Is it not also the height of disloyalty
+and disobedience to our nominal Master, whose last command,
+ringing down through centuries of selfishness, we have been satisfied
+to leave unfulfilled?</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I was influenced not so much by seeing the good work done by
+missionaries, as the tremendous need for it and the hopelessness
+of the religious systems of Asia. Several of the Asiatic
+faiths, and notably Buddhism, started with noble conceptions and
+a morality far in advance of their age. But the good has been
+mainly lost out of them in their passage down the centuries,
+and Buddhism in China, aiming at eclecticism, absorbed so much
+of the dæmonism, nature-worship, and heathenism of the country,
+that in the number and puerility of its superstitions, its alliance
+with sorcery, its temples crowded with monstrous and grotesque
+idols, the immorality of its priests, and the absence of the
+teaching of righteousness, it is now much on a level with the
+idolatries of barbarous nations. There is nothing to arrest the
+further downward descent of these systems, so effete, and yet
+so powerful as interwoven with the whole social life of the
+nation. <i>There is no resurrection power in any one of them</i>, and
+to the men who here and there are athirst for righteousness,
+and are groping after Him “who is not far from every one of us,”
+they offer neither guidance nor help.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That there are such seekers is certain. Among the many
+“secret societies” of China, a “good few” are mainly religious, and
+a great number of the Christian converts in North China have
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_525'>525</span>been in their membership. An attempt to attain righteousness
+is their characteristic, and something may be learned from them of
+self-denial and aspiration. Their efforts all take more or less of
+an ascetic direction.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among them are “Vegetarians,” who abstain from meat with
+the object of “rectifying the heart, accumulating merit, and thus
+avoiding calamities in this world and retributive pains in the next.”
+Several others are pledged to abstain from gambling and the use
+of opium, wine, and tobacco. The chief teaching of another is
+the duty of maintaining a patient spirit under injuries.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The books of the religious secret societies contain the best
+maxims and the highest moral teaching of “The Three Religions.”
+They exhort to chastity, benevolence, carefulness in speech, self-denial,
+good works, the <i>conservation of the mental energies by rest
+and reflection</i>, the cultivation of the heart, and to much besides
+which is good. In alliance with the good are idolatrous rites,
+incantations, divination, and many grossly superstitious and
+puerile practices. It is believed that even the best among these
+societies are not altogether free from seditious tendencies, <i>i.e.</i>, the
+accomplishment of reform by destruction. But after making due
+allowance for what is foolish and evil, it is evident that in these
+unsatisfied spiritual instincts and cravings after righteousness, and
+above all in the substitution of a dissatisfied and earnest spirit for
+the self-satisfied complacency of the Confucianist, and the stolid
+materialism of the average Chinese, Christianity has allies not
+to be despised.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Up to this time (1899) the slow success which has been won
+has been almost entirely among the lower classes, and it has not
+been possible, by the methods hitherto pursued, to reach the
+<i>literati</i>, who in China are the leaders of a people whose reverence
+for letters is phenomenal.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Of the 2458 Protestant missionaries, including wives (many of
+whom are incapacitated for work by maternal duties), accredited to
+China, a large number are always at home “on furlough.” Promising
+Christian work is often broken up by the departure of the
+missionary. A substitute may or may not be appointed, but the
+“personal equation” counts for much in China as elsewhere. The
+force available for actual work ought not to include the large
+number of new missionaries, who must inevitably spend the first
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_526'>526</span>year or two in learning to speak Chinese, during which period they
+are useful chiefly by lives of consistent righteousness. Throughout
+my long journeys I never saw a mission station, except perhaps
+Paoning Fu, which was not undermanned, <i>i.e.</i>, in which mission
+work was not seriously crippled and denied its natural expansion
+by lack of men.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In this time of inquiry into Western religion and science it
+becomes more and more important that missionaries, both men
+and <i>women</i>, should study the difficult language carefully, so as to
+fit themselves for conversation with the <i>literati</i>, and not be content
+with a limited command of the colloquial speech of coolies. It
+is being recognised in most influential quarters that if our trade
+is to expand, clerks and others going into mercantile life in China
+must begin the study of Chinese here under competent Chinese
+teachers. It might possibly be desirable for intending missionaries
+to do the same, and it would have the advantage of testing in each
+case the capacity for learning a difficult language, the incapacity
+being under present methods only discovered when it is too late
+to draw back. It appears very important that medical missionaries
+should have an undisturbed year after arriving in China
+for the study of the language.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Women’s work has grown, and is growing so rapidly in China
+that its regulation needs serious consideration. Admirable as
+much of it is, and might be, it is beset with special difficulties.
+The fact of a young unmarried woman living anywhere but under
+her father’s roof, exposes her character to the grossest imputations,
+which are hurled at her in the streets, and which can only be lived
+down by scrupulous carefulness. The Chinese etiquette, which
+prescribes the conduct seemly for women, and limits the freedom
+of social intercourse between the sexes, certainly tends to propriety,
+and though to our thinking tiresome, no young foreign
+woman attempting to teach a foreign religion can violate its
+leading rules without injury to her work.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>For instance, it is improper for a woman to “ride” in an open
+chair, to receive men visitors at her house, or to shake hands with
+men, or to walk through the street of a town or village or to visit
+at native houses unattended by a middle-aged Chinese woman. It
+is not only improper but scandalous for a woman to be seen in
+a tight bodice, or any other fashion which shows her figure, and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_527'>527</span>a foreign girl lays herself open to remarks which I scarcely think
+she would like to hear, when she appears in a fly-away hat, bent
+up and bent down, on which birds, insects, feathers, grasses, and
+flowers have been dumped down indiscriminately! The Mission
+Board of one large and successful Mission has found it desirable
+to issue rules for missionaries regarding dress and etiquette,
+and the China Inland Mission everywhere, and the Church
+Missionary Society missionaries in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> have solved
+the difficulty by adopting Chinese costume, the only Oriental
+dress which Europeans can wear with seemliness and dignity.
+I think it would add much to the safety of female missionaries,
+and to the respect in which they are held, if those
+missionary societies which object to Chinese costume would agree
+upon neat, simple uniforms for summer and winter, fulfilling the
+Chinese demand for propriety, and the European demand for
+tastefulness, and which should indicate at once that the wearer
+belongs to a large and important international union, and cannot
+be insulted with impunity.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Again it is necessary for young women to remember that a
+yellow skin makes no difference, and that any familiarity of
+manner or carelessness in deportment, which would be unsuitable
+here, is ten times more unsuitable in the case of Chinese men,
+such as servants, teachers, and “native helpers.” In one province
+in which lady missionaries are specially numerous the violations
+of etiquette by some of them have been regarded as so likely
+to lead to outbreaks that the attention of our Foreign Office has
+been called to the subject. The openings for the work of sensible
+“godly” women are very great, but as a large proportion of those
+who go out are young and inexperienced, and the number is
+increasing, it is desirable that the whole subject should be reconsidered,
+and that women’s work and general conduct should
+have the advantage of experienced and effectual supervision for
+the protection of the workers, and the prevention of those hindrances
+to the work which arise out of ignorance and inexperience,
+and in a few cases out of self-conceit and self-will.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Having ventured on these criticisms and suggestions, I must
+add that much of the wisest, most loving, most self-denying, and
+most successful work that I saw done in China was done by
+women.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_528'>528</span>My earliest ideas of missionary work were taken from a picture
+which represented a white man standing under a tree, preaching
+to an earnest, quiet, and dark-visaged crowd. Crowds gather
+round the foreign preacher in China, but this is often a temporary
+phase, with curiosity for its leading motive. His appearance,
+mistakes in speech, and attitudes are satirised, jeered at, and
+mimicked. One of the most popular theatrical performances in
+Shanghai a few years ago was a clever farce, representing a foreign
+missionary preaching to a crowd of Chinese.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Preaching is not a Chinese mode of instruction. Confucianism,
+still the great force in China, never had a preacher, and was
+propagated solely by books. It is said that there is not a lecture-hall
+in the empire. The Chinese methods of influencing are
+chiefly literary, catechetical, and conversational. The results of
+preaching have not been what was once hoped for, nor what they
+have been in some other countries. Many missionaries have told
+me that even the Chinese preaching in the “street chapels” is
+not fruitful in results.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is possible that the introduction of Western modes of evangelising,
+not applicable to China, was at least premature, and has
+been the cause of much failure and disappointment. The foreign
+element, whether in methods, church architecture, house building,
+or the ignoring of Chinese custom, though partly inevitable, must
+always tend to represent Christianity as a “foreign religion,” and
+to perpetuate it but as a sickly exotic. It is, I think, of great
+importance that Christianity should ally itself with all that is not
+evil in the national life, that it should uphold Chinese nationality,
+that it should incorporate Chinese methods of instruction with our
+own, and conserve all customs which are not contrary to its spirit.
+The teachings of experience have not been thrown away, and
+many missionaries have come to see that these are the lines of
+progress.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Those competent to judge have no doubt that Christianity is
+about to make great progress in China. With this, many questions
+already emerging will come to the front, and among the foremost
+is that of native agency in foreign pay. There is on one side the
+certainty that China can only be Christianised by the Chinese, and
+on the other the risks connected with the worldly or mercenary
+element, which have been fatal to many such persons whose
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_529'>529</span>sincerity had not been suspected. Here again experience is teaching
+useful lessons, one being that Christianity is never so extensively
+and rapidly propagated as by the spontaneous efforts and
+renovated lives of private Christians.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among other questions are: How far the differences between
+Western churches are to be perpetuated in China; the place of
+the Chinese classics and of English in missionary schools; the
+obligation of the Sabbath; the attitude of Christianity to certain
+Chinese customs, and to any modified form of ancestor-worship;
+social intercourse between foreigners and Chinese; the social and
+pecuniary position of a native pastorate; the self-government of
+churches; and in Anglican missions the retention of the Prayer
+Book, as it at present stands, as the sole manual for public
+worship.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In conclusion I think that there is now an “open door” for the
+gospel in China, and that the prospect for Christianity is fairer
+than at any former period, but that if the Christian nations fail
+to realise their obligations to enter that door promptly and in
+force, with an army of earnest and well-equipped teachers, China
+may follow the example of Japan, and accept Western civilisation,
+while rejecting the Christian religion.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>“Talk,” said Mr. Gladstone on one occasion, “about the question
+of the day; there is but one question, and that is the gospel. It
+can and will correct everything needing correction.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It may be that the gospel will yet bring about the regeneration
+of China.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_530'>530</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>CONCLUDING REMARKS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class='drop-capa0_0_8 c006'>The subjects of our political and trade relations with China
+have been so ably and exhaustively treated by Lord
+Charles Beresford, <span class='fss'>M.P.</span>, and Mr. Colquhoun, and have been
+threshed out by so many other writers, that in these brief
+remarks I shall chiefly confine myself to the Chinese people
+and to my impressions of them, received in fifteen months
+of journeyings in three of the most important years in modern
+Chinese history.<a id='r63'></a><a href='#f63' class='c013'><sup>[63]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I doubt very much whether China is “breaking up.” <i>If</i> she
+breaks up it will be owing to the policy of the great European
+nations in making her “lose face,” and thereby weakening the
+authority of the Central Government over the provinces, local
+risings and possible disintegrations being the result. The
+“sphere of influence” policy, if pursued in earnest, would undoubtedly
+break up the empire.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the three years in which I was travelling, off and on, in
+China, the Dragon Throne reeled, but righted itself, and the
+Government survived the Japanese war, the heavy indemnity,
+the loss of the suzerainty of Korea, and the aggressions of
+Russia. It extinguished, in blood, the serious Mohammedan
+rebellion in <span class='sc'>Kansuh</span>, and has lately brought about the collapse
+of the rebellion in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>. The bond of union which
+connects the provinces with each other and with Peking has
+survived all these mishaps, and if it is broken, I believe it
+will be by foreign interference, and by the shifting and opportunist
+policy, enormous ambitions, and ill-concealed rivalries of
+certain foreign powers.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Nor do I believe that China is “in decay.” I have travelled
+more than 8000 miles in the empire, and have seen, in some
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_531'>531</span>regions, roads, canals, temples,<a id='r64'></a><a href='#f64' class='c013'><sup>[64]</sup></a> and some ancient public works,
+falling into disrepair. The Oriental throughout Asia prefers
+construction to renovation, and alongside of these decaying
+works there are new temples, new pagodas, new and handsome
+bridges, new <i>pai-fangs</i>, new bunds, and new works, rather
+of private than public origin.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The reader who has followed the foregoing chapters with
+any degree of interest can scarcely think that <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, at
+least, is in decay. Commercial and industrial energy is not
+decaying, the vast fleets of junks are not rotting in harbours
+and reaches; industry, thrift, resourcefulness, and the complete
+organisation both of labour and commerce, meet the traveller
+at every turn. Mercantile credit stands high, contracts are kept,
+labour is docile, teachable, and intelligent, its earnings are
+secure, and, on the whole, law and order prevail.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Nor is it like “decay” that in 1898—in spite of a political
+situation full of menace, of sporadic rebellions which largely
+checked business in their localities, of the serious news from
+Peking in September, which disorganised the trade of the
+northern ports, and of the disasters in connection with the
+Yellow River—the elasticity was such that the value of the
+import trade exceeded all previous records, while that of
+the export trade exceeded that of every previous year except
+1897, the total volume of trade being the highest on record.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There was no export of silver, but a net import of Hk. Tls.
+4,722,025, and there was no scarcity of it in any part of the
+country. China met the whole of her obligations without any
+depletion of her currency, and imported nothing that she did not
+obtain in exchange for exports.<a id='r65'></a><a href='#f65' class='c013'><sup>[65]</sup></a> The importance of stimulating
+the Chinese export trade is apt to be overlooked. China will only
+purchase from foreign countries that for which she can pay with
+her own products. The verdict of the Inspector-General of
+Maritime Customs in China on the commercial situation for 1898
+is, “No doubt the Government is hard pressed for funds, but <i>the
+country grows wealthier every year</i>.”<a id='r66'></a><a href='#f66' class='c013'><sup>[66]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_532'>532</span>Among the reasons given for the alleged “decay” of China is
+its “over-population.” It is true that there are seriously congested
+areas, even in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span>, but if we take 400,000,000, the extreme
+estimate of the population, it is but ten times that of Great
+Britain, while the area of the empire is from sixteen to eighteen
+times as great.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>What is “in decay” is the administration of government. The
+people are straight, but officialism is corrupt.<a id='r67'></a><a href='#f67' class='c013'><sup>[67]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The subject has been fully dwelt upon in other books, with
+which I suppose my readers to be acquainted. The theory of the
+Chinese Government is one of the best ever devised by the wit
+of man. Against every possible abuse apparent safeguards were
+provided. The enjoyment of property and life was secured to
+the people. The laws in the main were just, concise, and of equal
+pressure. The right of rising against a corrupt and oppressive
+official was guaranteed. Literary examinations were made the
+entrance to official life. Inferior birth was no bar to the attainment
+of high position. The laws of the country embodied the
+highest teaching of political ethics which it had received. The
+patriarchal theory of government was never so systematised, or
+acted upon for so long, and with so much consistency. The
+ethical teaching and the laws based upon it remain, and the
+strongest power in China to-day is Confucius; but the admirable
+theory of government has proved weak in presence of the
+neglected factor of the downward tendency of human nature
+in a pagan nation. The infamies of Chinese administration
+to-day have been riveted upon China by centuries of political
+retrogression, and the gradual lowering of the standard of public
+virtue in the absence of a wholesome public opinion. Certain
+forms of bribery, corruption, and peculation have obtained the
+force of custom, seven-tenths of the revenue is arrested by the
+“three hands” of officials, all sums allotted for public works,
+repairs, and military and naval equipment, suffer enormous
+depletion <i>en route</i> to their destinations, so that in the Japanese
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_533'>533</span>war “a straight people with a corrupt Government” were easily
+subdued by “a corrupt people with a straight Government.”<a id='r68'></a><a href='#f68' class='c013'><sup>[68]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>One of the heaviest indictments against the system is, that
+under it it is hardly possible for a good man to be rigidly honest,
+and there are good men: and there are mandarins who, after a
+long and laborious period of office, actually live and die poor. A
+well-meaning man, finding himself entangled in the meshes of
+this system, is greatly to be pitied. Custom is all in favour of
+peculation, and however much such men would welcome a way of
+escape, to break with custom is as hard as to break off the opium
+habit. Another difficulty besets the well-intentioned man—his
+knowledge that his best efforts will certainly be frustrated by the
+unscrupulous clerks and retainers of his <i>yamen</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In Chapter XXIII. I just touched on the very laborious life of a
+mandarin, who has to perform the work of six men, and rarely
+gets a holiday. For this amount of work he is virtually unpaid,
+far more than his wretchedly insufficient salary being expended
+on the necessary state of his office. These nominal salaries are
+the deadly upas tree, which has cast its fatal shadow over
+Chinese official life. They are the <i>crux</i> of the situation. They
+make peculation and corruption all but an absolute necessity.
+Short periods of office, paying for appointments, the evil custom
+of making presents to official superiors, the practice that, after
+paying into the Imperial Exchequer the fixed quota of taxation
+for his district, the magistrate can appropriate all that he can
+squeeze beyond it, subject to liberal gifts to the high officials
+of his province, are only a few of the evils of the Chinese
+administrative system. It is chiefly out of this margin squeezed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_534'>534</span>out of the people that the fortunes of the higher officials are
+made.<a id='r69'></a><a href='#f69' class='c013'><sup>[69]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Every writer on China exposes the iniquities of the system, and
+they come more or less to the ears and under the observation
+of every traveller. They affect a fourth of the human race, and
+have brought the most ancient of existing empires into the
+position of a “sick man”—helpless, appealing, with voracious
+Western nations gnawing at his extremities, and prepared to prey
+upon his vitals.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>But China bristles with contradictions. The “sick man” ought
+to be “in decay,” but he is not. His innate cheeriness is scarcely
+clouded by our repeated assertions that he ought to be dead, and
+he faces the future which we prophesy for him without misgiving!
+On the whole, peace, order, and a fair amount of prosperity prevail
+throughout the empire. The gains of labour are secure, taxation,
+even with the squeezes attending it, is rarely oppressive in the
+country, and in the towns is extremely light. The phrase “ground
+down” does not apply to the Chinese peasant. There is complete
+religious toleration. Guilds, trades unions, and other combinations
+carry out their systems unimpeded, and the Chinese genius for
+association is absolutely unfettered. The Chinese practically in
+actual life are one of the freest peoples on earth!</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The reader may be staggered by what appears a monstrous
+paradox, in face of the opinions regarding the infamies of administration
+previously expressed, but if a single statement is applicable
+to the whole empire it is this, that freedom is the birthright of the
+people, that they possess “inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the
+pursuit of happiness,” and that China is one of the most democratic
+countries on earth. The Government, feeble and evasive in
+its dealings with foreigners, when it sets its mind on something
+among its own people, is quite capable of carrying out its will, and
+is not nearly so impotent as many suppose. Yet it habitually
+plays only a most minute part in the economy of national life, and
+a Chinese may live and die without any other contact with it than
+the payment of land-tax. He is free in all trades and industries:
+to make money and to keep it: to emigrate and to return with his
+gains: free to rise from the peasant’s hut to place and dignity:
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_535'>535</span>to become a millionaire, and confer princely gifts upon his
+province: free in his religion and his amusements: and in his social
+and commercial life.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I have not space, knowledge, or ability to enter into the inwardness
+of these extraordinary contradictions, and would only remark
+that we have to deal in China not with a mass of downtrodden
+serfs, but with a nation of free men.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I may be permitted, however, very diffidently to point out a
+few of the reasons which, in my opinion, militate against the evils
+of administration, and tend to the stability of the country. First
+among these is the village system. In China the unit is not the
+individual but the family, indivisible and sacred, the members of
+which are bound to each other in life and death by indissoluble
+ties, of the strength of which we cannot form a conception.
+Villages consist of groups of such families, with their headmen
+and elders, who are responsible for each individual, the
+step above them being the <i>hsien</i>, or district magistrate, who may
+be regarded as the administrative unit. The Chinese have a
+genius for self-government, and are by no means the “dumb,
+driven cattle” which some suppose them to be. The villages
+are self-governing, and no official dares to trench on their
+hereditary privileges. Every successive dynasty has found itself
+bound to protect them in these, and no “Son of Heaven” who
+called them in question could occupy the Dragon Throne for six
+months.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These privileges, which by established custom have become
+actual rights, consist primarily in the complete control of local
+affairs, the possession of lands, and absolute freedom for trade
+and industry. Among the many advantages of the village
+system is, that it enables villagers in countless civil cases to
+avoid the serious evils of litigation in the <i>yamens</i> by the simple
+method of referring them to arbitration before their headmen and
+elders.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Among other causes which tend to counterbalance the evils
+of the administration, is the system of strict surveillance and
+mutual responsibility, under which no man stands alone, and
+which as a vast network holds China together. This has its
+own evils, one of which is <i>mutual distrust</i>, which has, however,
+the good result of preventing men from combining intelligently
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_536'>536</span>against the Government. The system makes government easy,
+and certainly does not tend to disintegration.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Besides these there are the recognised right of rebellion when
+grievances become intolerable; the execution of a species of
+lynch law on culpable officials, which often takes the place
+of memorials to the Throne, and courts of appeal; a certain
+dread on the part of magistrates of being reported for corruption
+or inefficiency by the many spies of the Central Government, or
+by the Censors, who, though said not to be altogether free
+from venality, can, on occasion, be most remarkably outspoken;
+the general education of the people in the principles on which
+government is based; the genius for association which gives
+strength to the weak; and the universal training both at home
+and school in “The Five Duties of Man,” which are: (1) Loyalty
+to the Sovereign, (2) piety to parents, (3) submissiveness to elders,
+(4) harmony between husband and wife, (5) fidelity to friends.<a id='r70'></a><a href='#f70' class='c013'><sup>[70]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>This is the empire which we speak of “partitioning” and
+“breaking up,” with as little emotion as if it were an ant’s
+nest, with all its singular contradictions, and emphatic antagonisms
+of good and evil.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>There is a wide difference between bullying, in diplomatic
+language “applying strong pressure,” and making righteous and
+politic demands upon China. Nothing could be better for herself
+than the drastic reforms suggested by Lord C. Beresford, but
+some of them involve what I think would be an unwarrantable
+interference with her internal organisation. Among righteous
+demands may certainly be placed the fulfilment of treaty obligations—the
+giving security to the lives and property of foreigners
+throughout the empire, which can only be attained by the
+formation of an efficient army, or <i>gendarmerie</i>, well disciplined,
+drilled, armed, and paid, and <i>mobile</i>—giving foreigners the right
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_537'>537</span>to live for trade purposes in the interior (a right only conceded
+by Japan in July, 1899), and an equable rearrangement of <i>likin</i>
+and <i>loti-shui</i>.<a id='r71'></a><a href='#f71' class='c013'><sup>[71]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'><i>Likin</i> and <i>loti-shui</i> are obnoxious taxes, and hamper trade
+effectively, and the abuses of the system are very great, but
+abrupt and sweeping changes would be very dangerous. It
+must be remembered that the provincial governments have lost
+seriously through the operations of the Imperial Maritime Customs
+(see p. <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>), and rely mainly on <i>likin</i> for their revenue, that
+its abolition would involve a resort to direct taxation, which
+would be intolerable to a people accustomed to indirect, and
+would certainly lead to very serious risings in the West River
+and Yangtze valleys. Official needs, established custom, and the
+relations of the masses to custom, render the forcing of abrupt
+fiscal changes of this nature upon the Chinese most impolitic,
+risking the disorganisation and break up of China.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>By bullying the Central Government it is made to “lose face”
+with its subjects, and its authority is by so much weakened.
+The value of our treaties absolutely depends on the power of
+the Government to give effect to them. The sole security of
+the Chinese bondholder, and for the sums invested, or to be
+invested in the railroads of the future, is the integrity and cohesion
+of the Chinese Empire. Touch this integrity, whether
+by active claims for “spheres of influence,” with consequent
+disintegration, the enforced abolition of <i>likin</i>, or any policy of
+pressure, and our treaties will be but waste paper. With regard
+to most arrangements, however desirable in the way of reform
+they may be, the word “insist,” pointing to coercion, should be
+blotted out of the vocabulary of discussion.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I am still a believer in the justice and expediency of the
+“Open Door” policy, as opposed to what I think is the fatal
+alternative policy of “spheres of influence.” Many who would
+“rush” reforms in China, and are impatient of delay, and are
+perhaps bitten by the “lust of domination,” assert that it is too
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_538'>538</span>late for it, but I fail to see the reasons for such a “counsel of
+despair.” The Marquess of Salisbury, at the end of June, 1898,
+said: “If I am asked what our policy in China is, my answer is
+very simple. It is to maintain the Chinese Empire, to prevent it
+falling into ruins, to invite it into paths of reform, and to give
+it every assistance which we are able to give it, to perfect its
+defence or to increase its commercial prosperity. <i>By so doing
+we shall be aiding its cause and our own.</i>”<a id='r72'></a><a href='#f72' class='c013'><sup>[72]</sup></a> This announcement
+of policy has not been recalled.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In the meantime it is impossible for China, pressed on every
+side, and vaguely conscious that she stands at the “parting of
+the ways,” that “the old order” is changing, and that she is in
+the grip of new forces, to collect herself with a view to the
+reforms from which she cannot hope to escape, and she falls
+back on her old idea of statesmanship—the playing off one
+foreign country against another. After a career of empire of
+two thousand years, in which she has increased in wealth and
+population up to the present time, she finds herself at the dawn
+of a new century, confronted by problems of which her classics
+and her experience offer no solution, and the greatest of these
+is the <span class='fss'>FOREIGNER</span>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In concluding this chapter, it is worth while to consider whether
+there are any indications of reform from within, and whether the
+phrase, “The awakening of China,” represents fact or not.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Our mechanical inventions, steamers, railroads, gas, telegraphs,
+electric light, steam machinery, dredgers, artillery, torpedoes, arms
+of precision, submarine telegraphy, steam printing, photography—our
+surgery, the beauty and “up-keep” of our foreign settlements,
+and their admirable municipal government, and our obvious
+wealth, have all been emissaries knocking the conceit out of
+those who come in contact with them. Chinese now work telegraph
+lines, own and run steam launches in large numbers, enter
+our hospitals as medical students, and take admirable photographs,
+nearly perfect in <i>technique</i>, only lacking in artistic feeling.
+Factories owned and run by Chinese are springing up here and
+there, and may eventually be successful. One of the great
+passenger lines on the Lower Yangtze belongs to the “Chinese
+Merchants’ Company.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'><span class='pageno' id='Page_539'>539</span>Inland, for many years, foreign families have been living lives
+elsewhere described—of different nationalities, but all worshippers
+of one invisible God. Such persons have introduced into remote
+regions kerosene lamps—which are doing much to alter social
+life in China, soap, lucifer matches and vesta lights, condensed
+milk and tinned provisions, sewing machines—enormously adopted
+by tailors, and much else, the utility of all of which has been
+recognised, and which have compelled the Chinese to admit the
+ability of the “barbarians.”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is known, at least to the Chinese within fifty miles of the
+coast, and up the Yangtze, on which Japanese steam lines
+are now running, that the Japanese, who received from themselves
+the Chinese classics centuries ago, have adopted the
+political and legal systems, industries, and naval and military
+methods of foreigners; that they have a straight Government,
+which no foreign power dares to bully; that they have been
+received on equal terms into the family of nations, and that
+their methods of warfare, before which China collapsed, were
+foreign methods. The fact that a yellow people, venerating
+and teaching their own classics, with a social order founded
+on Confucian principles, and with Chinese as its official language,
+has adopted, to a great extent, Western civilisation, and with
+manifest advantage, has produced a remarkable effect since the
+war.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Last, but very far from being least, as it affects the brain
+of the country and its natural leaders, is the circulation of the
+scientific, historical, and Christian literature of the West. This
+is the Western ferment which may “leaven the whole lump.”
+This circulation received an enormous impulse when the reform
+edicts of the Emperor were promulgated, making a knowledge
+of Western learning imperative on students, and has not been
+greatly affected by the subsequent retrograde movement. It
+cannot be doubted that those edicts, premature and unwise as
+some of them were, were the direct result of the foreign literature
+which the Emperor had previously been reading with avidity.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The larger portion of this literature, which I believe is destined
+to reform and transform China, has been published by a society
+founded twelve years ago by some of the leading men in China,
+and named the “Society for the Diffusion of Christian and
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_540'>540</span>General Knowledge.” Sir Robert Hart, <span class='fss'>G.C.M.G.</span>, is its president
+in China, and Mr. Timothy Richards, an enthusiast about the
+language and people, and an optimist about the future of the
+empire, is its secretary and inspiring spirit.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The literature for which the demand is now greater than the
+supply, consists of distinctly Christian books, such as <cite>Butler’s
+Analogy</cite>; <i>a Life of Christ</i>; <cite>Christianity, and the Progress of
+Nations</cite>; scientific books, as on <cite>Agricultural Chemistry</cite> and
+<cite>Astronomy</cite>; books on economic subjects, such as <cite>Productive
+and Non-Productive Labour</cite>, <cite>The Relation of Education to
+National Progress</cite>, etc., and some of our best standard books
+are now in circulation, together with such special literature as
+<cite>Essays for the Times</cite>, <cite>The Renaissance of China</cite>, <cite>Progress of
+China’s Neighbours</cite>, a periodical called <cite>A Review of the Times</cite>,
+and various others. The drift of the desire for knowledge is
+shown by the very large sale of Mackenzie’s <cite>History of the
+Nineteenth Century</cite>, and of a <cite>History of the Japanese War</cite>;
+<cite>Sixty Years of Queen Victoria’s Reign</cite> being also much in
+demand.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>These books and many others, circulating largely among the
+<i>literati</i>, at once creating and expressing aspirations, all present
+in some form or other that higher ideal which produced those
+reformers, greatly led by Kang Yen-Wei, who advocated political,
+commercial, educational, and religious reform in 1898, rendering
+it memorable in Chinese history as a year in which men showed
+that the welfare of their country was dearer to them than life
+itself.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A few instances taken at random show how the Western leaven
+is working. Large sums have been subscribed by the Chinese
+for the object of teaching Western languages and learning, specially
+in the ports. Two wealthy Chinese offered to raise 10,000 dollars
+for the enlargement of the Women’s Hospital in Shanghai, if
+Dr. Reifsnyder, the lady medical missionary, would consent to
+teach Western medicine to Chinese girls. A Cantonese, one of
+the managers of the China Merchants’ Co., was so impressed by
+Mr. Richards’ translation of Mackenzie’s <cite>History of the Nineteenth
+Century</cite>, that he bought a hundred copies, and sent them to the
+leading mandarins in Peking.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>A <span class='sc'>Hunan</span> gentleman, visiting Shanghai two years ago, met
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_541'>541</span>with the “C.L.S.” magazine, <cite>Review of the Times</cite>, and was
+so impressed with its helpfulness to China, that he ordered
+two hundred copies, and distributed them monthly in <span class='sc'>Hunan</span>
+to those who had specially opposed foreigners and Christianity.
+These men, in their turn, ordered a complete set of the
+“C.L.S.” books, and read them for two years in order to be
+sure of their contents. Recently the Literary Chancellor of the
+province wrote to the “C.L.S.” to the effect that China must
+reform, and on the lines indicated in the Society’s publications,
+and in the name of the governor and gentry of <span class='sc'>Hunan</span> invited
+the Chinese editor to become a professor in the college of the
+provincial capital.<a id='r73'></a><a href='#f73' class='c013'><sup>[73]</sup></a></p>
+
+<p class='c007'>The volume on <cite>Agricultural Chemistry</cite> has been very largely
+read. Early in 1899 the Viceroy of Nanking and others raised
+£50,000 for an agricultural college, and invited Mr. Bentley,
+the author of the book, an American missionary, to be its head.
+The Viceroy in Central China, Chang-Chih-Tung, whose views
+on the use of opium I have previously quoted, actually sympathised
+with the Yangtze anti-foreign riots in 1891, but by 1894 had
+been so profoundly influenced by the study of Western literature
+that he sent a large donation to the “C.L.S.,” and has lately
+published a book in which he strongly advocates the immediate
+adoption of a modern system of education.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is not alone among the older men that our literature is
+producing marked effects here and there, but the literary students
+in considerable numbers are fired with the desire for Western
+learning. Fifteen hundred applied for entrance to the new Peking
+University, of which the learned Rev. W. Martin, author of <cite>A
+Cycle of Cathay</cite>, is principal. Occasionally foreign literature
+produces almost grotesque effects. A <i>Hsien</i> magistrate, having
+read Dr. Faber’s <cite>Civilization, East and West</cite>, was much impressed
+by the chapter on our Western treatment of prisoners, and at
+once set his own to work at spinning, weaving, and basket-making,
+to the intense amusement of the retainers of the <i>yamen</i>.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> I saw few, if any, indications of the awakening
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_542'>542</span>which undoubtedly exists. A foreign traveller, whether he speak
+Chinese or not, does not see below the surface, and the province
+is far away from the centres in which the Western leaven is
+working most energetically, but in several places where I halted
+the mandarin sent to inquire if I had any “foreign books?”
+Kuei-chow is one of the most anti-foreign of the provinces, and
+it is noteworthy that lately her governor has sent to the “C.L.S.”
+for 1000 dollars’ worth of Western literature.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>I think that there is no doubt that the leaven of Western thought
+is working surely though slowly among the literary class, and that
+the reform movement, scotched, but not killed, by the strong
+measures of the Empress Dowager, grew out of it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Two causes favour the spread of Western literature; first that the
+four hundred millions of the empire possess one written language,
+and second, that there are 200 examination centres in China, and
+that at each, from 5000 to 10,000 students, the mandarins, lawyers,
+and leaders of the future, a million in all, are under examination
+every year. Our best literature, and our Christian literature,
+supplied to these centres reaches the most influential homes in
+the country. Mr. Archibald Little, the pioneer of steam navigation
+on the Upper Yangtze, and himself a Chinese scholar,
+strongly urges the supply of “C.L.S.” literature to all these
+centres. He considers that the mental revolution now proceeding,
+and the reform movement, are largely due to the influence of
+books, and even says that in the circulation of Western literature
+he sees the great hope for the “Open Door!”</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>That irresistible forces are beginning to drive China out of
+her conceit and seclusion is evident. Ten years ago there were
+only two or three papers in the vernacular besides the official
+<cite>Peking Gazette</cite>. To-day there are over seventy, and native
+journalism is actively developing. Through the press the Young
+China Party—the creation of Anglo-Chinese schools and foreign
+influence, chiefly in the ports—gives expression to those feelings
+of unrest and discontent which its wider outlook on affairs
+produces. Through it the younger <i>literati</i>, awakened to a new
+conception of patriotism by contact with Western thought, denounce
+the ignorance and corruption of the magistracy, and urge
+as a remedy the introduction of mathematics and political
+economy into the provincial examinations! The Viceroy, ChangChih-Tung,
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_543'>543</span>not only founded a paper “which was to engage
+the sympathies of the literary class in the work of progress and
+reform, and to interest its readers in questions of international
+and general importance,”<a id='r74'></a><a href='#f74' class='c013'><sup>[74]</sup></a> but made its support compulsory in
+all the <i>yamens</i> and libraries in the <i>Hu</i> provinces. Its staff is said
+to be composed of men who combine broad views with classical
+scholarship, and it is reputed to have great influence with the
+upper classes, even though the reforming Viceroy has had to
+withdraw his official support from it.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is too early to write of the probable influence of the coming
+railroads. It is easy to take an exaggerated view, but undoubtedly
+rapid communication is a great foe to darkness and
+ignorance. Everywhere there are indications of a change in the
+“classes” which lead the “masses.” There is a Chinese saying,
+that “if you wish to irrigate a piece of land you must first carry
+the water to the highest level, so, if you wish to enlighten a
+nation, you must begin with its leaders.” Very important and
+valuable inquiries have been made into all subjects connected
+with trade; but this mental change, which will probably exercise
+an enormous influence on trade and our relations with China, has
+been singularly overlooked.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It is perhaps best that there should be no abrupt rupture with
+the past. The reform edicts, though abrogated, have kindled a
+flame; and though there may be suspended progress, China
+can never really go back any more, for the forces which have
+been set in motion have never yet suffered defeat. “The mills
+of God grind slowly,” but they grind inexorably. Let us be
+patient with our ancient ally, and “invite” rather than bully
+her into “paths of reform.” I fear much that the desperate
+determination of the European nations to secure her potentialities
+of trade by fair means or foul, may be driving her to her
+doom, and that in the clash and turmoil the symptoms of an
+increasing desire for reform from within—a reform which would
+slowly give us all we can righteously ask—are being overlooked
+or ignored.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>Into her archaic and unreformed Orientalism the Western
+leaven has fallen for good or evil. Rudely awakened by the
+Japanese victories out of her long sleep, China, half dismayed
+<span class='pageno' id='Page_544'>544</span>and wholly dazed, with much loss of “face,” and shaken confidence
+in the methods of diplomacy which have served her so
+well in the past, finds herself confronted by an array of powerful,
+grasping, ambitious, and not always over-scrupulous powers, bent,
+it may be, on over-reaching her and each other, ringing with
+barbarian hands the knell of the customs and polity which are
+the legacy of Confucius, clamouring for ports and concessions,
+and bewildering her with reforms, suggestions, and demands, of
+which she sees neither the expediency nor the necessity.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>In this turmoil, and with the European nations thundering at
+her gates, it is impossible for China to attempt any reforms
+which would not from the nature of the case be piecemeal and
+superficial. The reform of an administration like hers needs
+the prolonged and careful consideration of the best minds in
+the empire, with such skilled and disinterested foreign advice as
+was given by Sir Harry Parkes to Japan when she embarked
+on her new career.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>It must be remembered that the remodelling of the administrative
+system of China is beset with difficulties which have not
+existed in any other country, and which are accentuated by the
+vast population and area of the empire. Chinese statesmen
+(if there be such) have to consider what reforms could be
+carried out with the approval of the masses, <i>i.e.</i>, without bringing
+about a revolution. The very abuses of administration have
+gained something of the sanctity which attends on custom among
+this singular people. It is most important that those who have
+to deal with Chinese affairs should be able to obtain such
+information as would enable them to make a just estimate
+of the strength and probable diffusion of the desire for reform
+among the <i>literati</i>, at whose feet the masses lie with a genuine
+reverence.</p>
+
+<p class='c007'>China is certainly at the dawn of a new era. Whether the
+twentieth century shall place her where she ought to be, in the
+van of Oriental nations, or whether it shall witness her disintegration
+and decay, depends very largely on the statesmanship
+and influence of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_545'>545</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>ITINERARY</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table class='table1'>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c009'></th>
+    <th class='c010'>&#160;</th>
+    <th class='c011'><i>Li.</i><a id='r75'></a><a href='#f75' class='c013'><sup>[75]</sup></a></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>Wan Hsien to</td>
+    <td class='c010'>San-tsan-pu</td>
+    <td class='c011'>65</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Ting-tsiao</td>
+    <td class='c011'>63</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Liang-shan Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'>50</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Wen-kia-cha</td>
+    <td class='c011'>60</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Chai-shih-kiao</td>
+    <td class='c011'>60</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Hsia-shan-po</td>
+    <td class='c011'>73</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Kiu Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'>60</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Ching-sze-yao</td>
+    <td class='c011'>60</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Siao-kiao</td>
+    <td class='c011'>65</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Sha-shih-pu</td>
+    <td class='c011'>55</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Hsieh-tien-tze</td>
+    <td class='c011'>75</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>King-kiang-sze</td>
+    <td class='c011'>65</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Heh-shui-tang</td>
+    <td class='c011'>65</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Paoning Fu</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'>65</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Hsia-wu-li-tze</td>
+    <td class='c011'>40</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Sin-tien-tze</td>
+    <td class='c011'>90</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Mao-erh-tiao</td>
+    <td class='c011'>90</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Tien-kia-miao</td>
+    <td class='c011'>70</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Wu-lien</td>
+    <td class='c011'>115</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Tze-tung Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'>80</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Cheng-hsiang-po</td>
+    <td class='c011'>80</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Mienchow</td>
+    <td class='c011'>43</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Lun-gan (?)</td>
+    <td class='c011'>90</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Mienchuh</td>
+    <td class='c011'>70</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Shuang-tu-ti</td>
+    <td class='c011'>45</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Peng Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'>80</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Kuan Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'>70</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Sin-fan Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'>105</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Sin-tu Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'>30</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'><span class='sc'>Cheng-tu Fu</span></td>
+    <td class='c011'>40</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Kuan Hsien</td>
+    <td class='c011'>120</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Fu-ki</td>
+    <td class='c011'>30</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Sin-wen-ping</td>
+    <td class='c011'>60</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Shuo-chiao</td>
+    <td class='c011'>40</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Wei-cheo</td>
+    <td class='c011'>60</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Li-fan Ting</td>
+    <td class='c011'>65</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Tsa-ku-lao</td>
+    <td class='c011'>60</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Chuang-fang</td>
+    <td class='c011'>60</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Chu-ti</td>
+    <td class='c011'>45</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Miao-ko</td>
+    <td class='c011'>50</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Matang</td>
+    <td class='c011'>105</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Somo</td>
+    <td class='c011'>60</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c009'>Cheng-tu Fu to</td>
+    <td class='c015' colspan='2'>Shanghai, by water, 2000 miles.</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_546'>546</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>APPENDICES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<h3 class='c016'>APPENDIX A.</h3>
+
+<p class='c017'>The Rules of the Chinese Guilds are too long and elaborate for insertion in
+this appendix, and condensation would do them an injustice.</p>
+
+<h3 class='c018'>APPENDIX B.<a id='r76'></a><a href='#f76' class='c013'><sup>[76]</sup></a></h3>
+
+<table class='table1'>
+  <tr><th class='c019' colspan='2'>1. <span class='sc'>Net Value of Total Trade of Ports in the Yangtze Basin, 1898.</span></th></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c010'></th>
+    <th class='c020'>£</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Shanghai</td>
+    <td class='c011'>13,296,643</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Chungking</td>
+    <td class='c011'>2,614,031</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Ichang</td>
+    <td class='c011'>194,359</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Sha-shih</td>
+    <td class='c011'>25,666</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Hankow</td>
+    <td class='c011'>8,065,717</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Kiukiang</td>
+    <td class='c011'>2,625,083</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Wuhu</td>
+    <td class='c011'>1,527,079</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Chinkiang</td>
+    <td class='c011'>3,471,532</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Soochow</td>
+    <td class='c011'>229,113</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Hangchow</td>
+    <td class='c011'>1,199,022</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'><hr></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'>£33,248,245</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'><hr class='double'></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<table class='table1'>
+  <tr><td class='c019' colspan='4'><span class='pageno' id='Page_547'>547</span></td></tr>
+  <tr><th class='c019' colspan='4'>2. <span class='sc'>Trade of Shanghai, 1898.</span></th></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'><i>Foreign Goods</i>—</td>
+    <td class='c021'>£</td>
+    <td class='c022'>£</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010' colspan='2'>Total import</td>
+    <td class='c023'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c024'><strong>19,073,534</strong></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Less re-exported—</td>
+    <td class='c023'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c024'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>(<i>a</i>) To foreign countries and Hongkong</td>
+    <td class='c023'>745,000</td>
+    <td class='c024'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>(<i>b</i>) To Chinese ports (chiefly to northern and Yangtze ports)</td>
+    <td class='c023'>13,914,558</td>
+    <td class='c024'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c023'><hr></td>
+    <td class='c024'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c023'>14,659,558</td>
+    <td class='c024'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Making net total foreign imports</td>
+    <td class='c023'><strong>4,413,976</strong></td>
+    <td class='c024'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'><i>Native Produce</i>—</td>
+    <td class='c023'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c024'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010' colspan='2'>Imported (chiefly from northern and Yangtze ports, Ningpo, Swatow, Canton, and Hangchow)</td>
+    <td class='c023'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c024'><strong>11,413,637</strong></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Less re-exported to foreign countries and Chinese     ports</td>
+    <td class='c023'>9,724,673</td>
+    <td class='c024'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c023'><hr></td>
+    <td class='c024'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Making net total Native imports</td>
+    <td class='c023'><strong>1,688,964</strong></td>
+    <td class='c024'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Native produce of local origin exported to foreign countries</td>
+    <td class='c023'><strong>4,676,674</strong></td>
+    <td class='c024 bbt' rowspan='2'><strong>7,193,704</strong></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>Ditto to Chinese ports</td>
+    <td class='c023'><strong>2,517,029</strong></td>
+    
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c023'><hr></td>
+    <td class='c024'><hr></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010' colspan='2'>Gross value of trade of Shanghai</td>
+    <td class='c023'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c024'><strong>£37,680,875</strong></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010' colspan='2'>Net     „        „         „</td>
+    <td class='c023'><strong>£13,296,643</strong></td>
+    <td class='c024'><hr class='double'></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c023'><hr class='double'></td>
+    <td class='c024'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<table class='table1'>
+  <tr><th class='c019' colspan='2'>3. <span class='sc'>Total Net Import of Opium into China for 1898.</span></th></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Quantity</td>
+    <td class='c011'>6,638,333 lbs.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Value</td>
+    <td class='c011'>£4,388,365</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+  <div class='nf-center'>
+    <div>4. <span class='sc'>Total Value of Foreign Trade of China in 1898.</span></div>
+    <div>= Hk. Taels 368,616,483 = £55,292,472.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<table class='table2'>
+  <tr><th class='c019' colspan='5'>5. <span class='sc'>Share of England in China’s Trade for 1898.</span><a id='r77'></a><a href='#f77' class='c013'><sup>[77]</sup></a></th></tr>
+  <tr><th class='c019' colspan='5'>I. <i>Shipping.</i></th></tr>
+  <tr>
+ <th class='btt bbt c025 bbt' rowspan='2'>Flag.</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt blt c025 bbt' rowspan='2'>Entries and Clearances.</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt blt c025 bbt' rowspan='2'>Tonnage.</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt blt c026' colspan='2'>Percentages of Tonnage.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    
+ 
+ 
+ <th class='blt c025'>(<span class='fss'>A.</span>) Including Chinese.</th>
+ <th class='blt c028'>(<span class='fss'>B.</span>) Excluding Chinese.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c027'>British</td>
+ <td class='blt c026'>22,609</td>
+ <td class='blt c026'>21,265,966</td>
+ <td class='blt c026'>62·12</td>
+ <td class='blt c029'>81·65</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c027'>Chinese</td>
+ <td class='blt c026'>23,547</td>
+ <td class='blt c026'>8,187,572</td>
+ <td class='blt c026'>23·92</td>
+ <td class='blt c029'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='bbt c027'>Other nationalities</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c026'>6,505</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c026'>4,780,042</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c026'>13·96</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c029'>18·35</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='bbt c027'>&#160;</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c026'>52,661</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c026'>34,253,580</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c026'>100</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c029'>100</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<table class='table2'>
+  <tr><td class='c019' colspan='6'><span class='pageno' id='Page_548'>548</span></td></tr>
+  <tr><th class='c019' colspan='6'>II. <i>Trade.</i></th></tr>
+  <tr>
+ <th class='btt bbt brt c025'>Flag.</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt brt c025'>Total Values Foreign &#38; Coast Trade.</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt c025'>Transit Trade.</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt blt c025'>Total.</th>
+ <th class='btt bbt blt c025' colspan='2'>Percentages of Value.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <th class='brt c030'></th>
+ <th class='brt c025'>£</th>
+    <th class='c025'>£</th>
+ <th class='blt c025'>£</th>
+ <th class='blt c025'>(<span class='fss'>A.</span>)</th>
+ <th class='blt c025'>(<span class='fss'>B.</span>)</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c030'>British</td>
+ <td class='brt c026'>76,236,290</td>
+    <td class='c026'>2,695,437</td>
+ <td class='blt c026'>78,931,727</td>
+ <td class='blt c026'>51·88</td>
+ <td class='blt c026'>79·40</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='brt c030'>Chinese</td>
+ <td class='brt c026'>50,163,445</td>
+    <td class='c026'>2,410,663</td>
+ <td class='blt c026'>52,574,108</td>
+ <td class='blt c026'>34·56</td>
+ <td class='blt c026'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='bbt brt c030'>Other nationalities</td>
+ <td class='bbt brt c026'>19,385,235</td>
+ <td class='bbt c026'>1,217,343</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c026'>20,602,578</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c026'>13·56</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c026'>20·60</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+ <td class='bbt brt c030'>&#160;</td>
+ <td class='bbt brt c026'>145,784,970</td>
+ <td class='bbt c026'>6,323,443</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c026'>152,108,413</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c026'>100</td>
+ <td class='bbt blt c026'>100</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<table class='table1'>
+  <tr><th class='c019' colspan='3'>6. <span class='sc'>Principal Imports into China from Foreign Countries, 1898.</span><a id='r78'></a><a href='#f78' class='c013'><sup>[78]</sup></a></th></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c010'></th>
+    <th class='c031'>Quantity.</th>
+    <th class='c020'>Value.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Opium</td>
+    <td class='c009'>6,638,000 lbs.</td>
+    <td class='c011'>£4,388,385</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Cotton goods</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'>11,642,824</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Raw cotton</td>
+    <td class='c009'>30,534,000 lbs.</td>
+    <td class='c011'>425,959</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Woollen Goods</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'>478,525</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Metals</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'>1,468,061</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Matches (mainly Japanese)</td>
+    <td class='c009'>11,352,304 gross</td>
+    <td class='c011'>389,561</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Oil (Kerosene)</td>
+    <td class='c009'>96,882,126 gallons</td>
+    <td class='c011'>1,787,205</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Sugar</td>
+    <td class='c009'>10,793 tons</td>
+    <td class='c011'>2,029,267</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Other imports</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'>8,827,113</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'><hr></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>Total</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'>£31,436,900</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'><hr class='double'></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr><th class='c019' colspan='3'>7. <span class='sc'>Principal Exports from China to Foreign Countries, 1898.</span>[78]</th></tr>
+  <tr>
+    <th class='c010'></th>
+    <th class='c031'>Quantity.</th>
+    <th class='c020'>Value.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Silk, of all kinds</td>
+    <td class='c009'>35,651,333 lbs.</td>
+    <td class='c011'>£8,415,584</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Tea     „      „</td>
+    <td class='c009'>205,146,667 lbs.</td>
+    <td class='c011'>4,331,922</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Other Exports</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'>11,108,066</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'><hr></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>Total</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'>£23,855,572</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c009'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'><hr class='double'></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class='chapter'>
+  <span class='pageno' id='Page_549'>549</span>
+  <h2 class='c005'>INDEX</h2>
+</div>
+
+<ul class='index c002'>
+  <li class='center'>A.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Aconite, Trade in, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><cite>Agricultural Chemistry</cite>, Circulation of the vol. on, <a href='#Page_541'>541</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Albumen factories, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Allen, Consul Clement, his report on mission hospitals, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Altar of Incense, An, <a href='#Page_418'>418</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>American Baptists, The, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ancestor-worship, <a href='#Page_522'>522</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>An Hui, North, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>An-shun Bridge, The, <a href='#Page_460'>460</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>B.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Baber, Mr., <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_451'>451</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>his papers on Western China, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>;</li>
+      <li>on rock-dwellings, <a href='#Page_467'>467</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Baggage coolies, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Baian Kara range, The, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Baker, Mr., <a href='#Page_416'>416</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Bamboo suspension bridges, <a href='#Page_378'>378</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Barbarians,” Villages of the, <a href='#Page_376'>376</a>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>, <a href='#Page_382'>382</a>–385.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Barbers, Itinerant, <a href='#Page_80'>80</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Be-dien, The author’s interpreter, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>his character, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Beggars, Treatment of, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Bellows” gorge. See Feng Hsiang.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Benevolent guilds, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Benjamin, Bishop, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>, <a href='#Page_100'>100</a>, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Beresford, <span class='fss'>M.P.</span>, Lord Charles, <a href='#Page_530'>530</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>his suggested reforms, <a href='#Page_536'>536</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Blakiston, Captain, his description of the “Pillar of Heaven,” <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>of trackers, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Bourne, Consul, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a> (note), <a href='#Page_496'>496</a> (note), <a href='#Page_499'>499</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>on opium smoking, <a href='#Page_515'>515</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Brick tea factories, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Bridges, <a href='#Page_231'>231</a>, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>British Merchant, Dependence of the, upon the Chinese compradore, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>decrease of his trade, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Buffalo, The water, <a href='#Page_232'>232</a>, <a href='#Page_235'>235</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Bullock, Mr. and Mrs., <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>C.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Callum, Mr., <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Canadian Mission, The, <a href='#Page_519'>519</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><cite>Canons of Filial Duty</cite>, The, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Canton opium,” <a href='#Page_512'>512</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Carles, Consul, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a> (note);
+    <ul>
+      <li>on missionaries helping trade, <a href='#Page_47'>47</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Cassels, Bishop, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Census, The taking of a, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><cite>Century of Surnames</cite>, The, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chai-jen, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>, <a href='#Page_390'>390</a>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a>, <a href='#Page_396'>396</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chair travelling, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chang, <a href='#Page_423'>423</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chang Chih-tung, H. E., on opium smoking, <a href='#Page_516'>516</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>on education, <a href='#Page_541'>541</a>;</li>
+      <li>influence of Western literature on, <a href='#Page_541'>541</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chang-fei, The temple of, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>, <a href='#Page_167'>167</a>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a> (note).</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Chang-wo</i>, The s.s., <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chapel of Meditations, The, <a href='#Page_358'>358</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Che, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Che-kiang, Province of, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>use of <i>pahs</i> or haulovers in, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>;</li>
+      <li>Christian converts in, <a href='#Page_521'>521</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chengtu, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_351'>351</a>, <a href='#Page_352'>352</a>, <a href='#Page_458'>458</a>, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>musk trade of, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>;</li>
+      <li>canals and bridges of, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>;</li>
+      <li>population of, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>;</li>
+      <li>temples of, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>;</li>
+      <li>wall of, <a href='#Page_355'>355</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chengtu plain, The, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>, <a href='#Page_458'>458</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>products of, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chia-ling Fu, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chia-ling river, The, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>, <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>affluents of, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>;</li>
+      <li>walls on, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chiang-Ku, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><span class='pageno' id='Page_550'>550</span>Ch’ien Tang river, The, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>China, administration of Government in, <a href='#Page_532'>532</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>books most in demand in, <a href='#Page_540'>540</a>;</li>
+      <li>contradictions in, <a href='#Page_534'>534</a>;</li>
+      <li>examination centres in, <a href='#Page_542'>542</a>;</li>
+      <li>maritime customs of, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_531'>531</a>;</li>
+      <li>newspapers in, <a href='#Page_542'>542</a>;</li>
+      <li>population of, <a href='#Page_532'>532</a>;</li>
+      <li>trade of, <a href='#Page_531'>531</a>, <a href='#Page_546'>546</a>–548;</li>
+      <li>travelling necessaries in, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a> (note);</li>
+      <li>village system in, <a href='#Page_535'>535</a>;</li>
+      <li>Western literature in, <a href='#Page_539'>539</a>–542.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>“China ink,” <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>China Inland Mission, The, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>, <a href='#Page_495'>495</a>, <a href='#Page_519'>519</a>, <a href='#Page_527'>527</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chinese brutality, <a href='#Page_420'>420</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>Buddhism and Western civilisation, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>;</li>
+      <li>charities, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>–193;</li>
+      <li>civilisation, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>;</li>
+      <li>classics, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>–279;</li>
+      <li>cotton factory, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>;</li>
+      <li>curiosity, <a href='#Page_210'>210</a>;</li>
+      <li>currency, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>;</li>
+      <li>delicacies, <a href='#Page_298'>298</a>;</li>
+      <li>divinities, <a href='#Page_193'>193</a>;</li>
+      <li>drinks and food, <a href='#Page_300'>300</a>, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>;</li>
+      <li>education, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a> <i>et seq.</i>;</li>
+      <li>energy and skill, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>;</li>
+      <li>genius for self-government, <a href='#Page_535'>535</a>;</li>
+      <li>guest-room, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>;</li>
+      <li>inns, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>;</li>
+      <li>justice, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>;</li>
+      <li>medicines, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>;</li>
+      <li>mob, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>;</li>
+      <li>proverb, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>;</li>
+      <li>roads, <a href='#Page_243'>243</a>;</li>
+      <li>social and commercial organisation, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>;</li>
+      <li>theatricals, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>;</li>
+      <li>towns, <a href='#Page_250'>250</a>;</li>
+      <li>trading instincts, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>;</li>
+      <li>views of humanity, <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>;</li>
+      <li>women, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chinese bondholder, Security of the, <a href='#Page_537'>537</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><cite>Chinese Gazetteer</cite>, The, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Chinese Merchants’ Company,” The, <a href='#Page_538'>538</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ching-chou Fu, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>–89.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ching-sze-yao, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chinkiang, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>benevolent institutions in, <a href='#Page_184'>184</a> <i>et seq.</i>;</li>
+      <li>British concessions at, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a> (and note), <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>;</li>
+      <li>grand canal at, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>;</li>
+      <li>guilds and trade of, <a href='#Page_57'>57</a>, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>;</li>
+      <li>influence of the Yangtze river at, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>;</li>
+      <li>situation of, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chin Sha river, The, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>source and course of, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>;</li>
+      <li>junction with the Min, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>;</li>
+      <li>navigable portion of, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chin-shuan river, The, <a href='#Page_429'>429</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chin-tai, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Chipa</i>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Chod-tens</i>, <a href='#Page_423'>423</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Cho-ko-ki tribe, The, <a href='#Page_442'>442</a>, <a href='#Page_443'>443</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Christian converts, <a href='#Page_524'>524</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Christianity, Influence of, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_518'>518</a>, <a href='#Page_522'>522</a>, <a href='#Page_529'>529</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chuang-fang, <a href='#Page_413'>413</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chungking, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a>, <a href='#Page_486'>486</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>effect of opening as a treaty port, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>;</li>
+      <li>importation of cotton into, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>;</li>
+      <li>Mr. Little’s voyage to, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>;</li>
+      <li>position of, <a href='#Page_490'>490</a>;</li>
+      <li>products of, <a href='#Page_490'>490</a>;</li>
+      <li>rapids near, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>;</li>
+      <li>rise of the Yangtze at, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>;</li>
+      <li>trade of, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>, <a href='#Page_496'>496</a>, <a href='#Page_499'>499</a>;</li>
+      <li>union of Chia-ling and Yangtze at, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chung-ku-lo temple, The, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Church Missionary Society’s Mission, <a href='#Page_286'>286</a>, <a href='#Page_519'>519</a>, <a href='#Page_527'>527</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chusan archipelago, The, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Chu-ti, <a href='#Page_415'>415</a>, <a href='#Page_416'>416</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Classics, Chinese school, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Cloudy Province,” The, <a href='#Page_460'>460</a>, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Coal-mine, A visit to a, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Coffins, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Colquhoun, Mr., <a href='#Page_530'>530</a>, <a href='#Page_536'>536</a> (note).</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Confucianism, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>, <a href='#Page_528'>528</a>, <a href='#Page_532'>532</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Cores de Vries</i>, The s.s., <a href='#Page_184'>184</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Cormack, Mr. and Mrs., <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Cottons, English, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Couching Dragon, Gorge of the, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Cross Beam” rapid, The, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Cycle of Cathay,” A, <a href='#Page_541'>541</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>D.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Davies, Mr., <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Dudgeon, Dr., <a href='#Page_513'>513</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Dust storms, Agency of, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Dzai-zen-pusa</i>, or the God of Wealth, <a href='#Page_356'>356</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Dzo, Herds of, <a href='#Page_422'>422</a>, <a href='#Page_425'>425</a>, <a href='#Page_455'>455</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>E.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Educated, Ignorance of the, <a href='#Page_177'>177</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Education in China, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Eight Cliffs,” Gorge of the, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Elephantiasis, A case of, <a href='#Page_442'>442</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Elgin, Lord, his visit to Hankow, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Emily Clayton Memorial,” The, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Endacott, Mr., <a href='#Page_83'>83</a>, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>rock-dwellings in his garden, <a href='#Page_467'>467</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Erh-Wang temple, The, <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Esk</i>, the gunboat, Accident on, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>F.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Faber’s <cite>Civilization East and West</cite>, Dr., <a href='#Page_541'>541</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Fans, Export and manufacture of, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>, <a href='#Page_478'>478</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>use of, <a href='#Page_478'>478</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Feng Hsiang gorge, The, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>, <a href='#Page_505'>505</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><span class='pageno' id='Page_551'>551</span>Fire wells, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Five Duties of Man,” The, <a href='#Page_536'>536</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Five Hundred Disciples,” Temple of the, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Foot-binding, The practice of, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Foreign smoke,” <a href='#Page_508'>508</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Fou river, The, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Fox, Mr., escorts the author over native Shanghai, <a href='#Page_25'>25</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Fu river, The, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Fu-chow, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_501'>501</a>, <a href='#Page_502'>502</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Fuh-ri-gan pass, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_227'>227</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Fu-ki, <a href='#Page_366'>366</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Fu-kien, Christianity in, <a href='#Page_518'>518</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Fu-ling river, The, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_501'>501</a>, <a href='#Page_502'>502</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Funeral ceremonies, <a href='#Page_314'>314</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Fung Shui mystery, The, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>G.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Gandar, Père, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Gardner, Consul, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Gerard, M., <a href='#Page_101'>101</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Get-down-from-horse” rapid, The, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Gill, Capt., <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a> (note), <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a> (note), <a href='#Page_424'>424</a>, <a href='#Page_457'>457</a> (note).</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Glorious Rapid,” The, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Glory of Buddha,” Pilgrimage to the, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Goitre, Prevalence of, <a href='#Page_442'>442</a>, <a href='#Page_449'>449</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Goose-tail” rock, The, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Government administration, Corruption of, <a href='#Page_532'>532</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Gowers, Miss, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Grainger, Mr., <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Grand Canal, The, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>at Chinkiang, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>;</li>
+      <li>between Hangchow and Chinkiang, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Great Gold River,” The, <a href='#Page_424'>424</a>, <a href='#Page_434'>434</a>, <a href='#Page_514'>514</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Great Plain, The, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>characteristics of, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>;</li>
+      <li>dust storms in, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>;</li>
+      <li>annual inundations on, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#Page_501'>501</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Guilds, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>, <a href='#Page_499'>499</a>, <a href='#Page_534'>534</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>H.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Han river, The, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>trade on, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>;</li>
+      <li>at Hankow, <a href='#Page_77'>77</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hangchow, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>–54;
+    <ul>
+      <li>the entrance to, <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>;</li>
+      <li>silk looms at, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>;</li>
+      <li>situation of, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>;</li>
+      <li>the “bore,” <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>;</li>
+      <li>wall of, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>;</li>
+      <li>population of, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>;</li>
+      <li>Japanese settlement in, <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>;</li>
+      <li>the Medical Mission Hospitals at, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>–54.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hang-kia, <a href='#Page_425'>425</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hankow, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_505'>505</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>rise of the Yangtze at, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>;</li>
+      <li>communication with, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>;</li>
+      <li>first impressions of, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>;</li>
+      <li>the Bund, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>;</li>
+      <li>Lord Elgin’s visit to, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>;</li>
+      <li>chief buildings in, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>;</li>
+      <li>foreign community in, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>;</li>
+      <li>climate of, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>;</li>
+      <li>currency in, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>;</li>
+      <li>trade in, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>;</li>
+      <li>loss of English trade in, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>;</li>
+      <li>guilds of, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>;</li>
+      <li>native quarter, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>;</li>
+      <li>the wall and streets of, <a href='#Page_67'>67</a>, <a href='#Page_68'>68</a>;</li>
+      <li>coffin shops of, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>;</li>
+      <li>the harbour of, <a href='#Page_78'>78</a>, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>;</li>
+      <li>English Wesleyan missionaries in, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>;</li>
+      <li>charities at, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'><cite>Hankow Times</cite>, The, <a href='#Page_62'>62</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Han Yang, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hart, <span class='fss'>G.C.M.G.</span>, Sir Robert, <a href='#Page_540'>540</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Heng-liang-tze rapid, The, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Henrietta Bird” Hospital, The, <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Henry of Canton, Dr., <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hicks, Mr., <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hill, Rev. David, <a href='#Page_82'>82</a>, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hing-lung-t’an rapid, The, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hirst, Consul, on opium smoking, <a href='#Page_515'>515</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hoang Ho, The, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ho, Admiral, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ho-chow, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Holland, Mr., <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Honan, Province of, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hongkew, the American settlement of Shanghai, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Honton, or Fu river, The, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Horsburgh, Rev. Heywood, <a href='#Page_323'>323</a>, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hsai-shan-po, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hsiang river, The, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>trade on, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hsin-tan rapid, The, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>, <a href='#Page_127'>127</a>, <a href='#Page_505'>505</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hsin-tan village, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Huai and its tributaries, Commercial routes on the, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Huang-pu river, Trade on the, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hunan, Province of, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>possibilities for Lancashire trade in, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Hunan Tracts,” The, <a href='#Page_257'>257</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hunan “braves,” <a href='#Page_88'>88</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Hupeh province, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— ranges, The, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>I.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ichang, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_505'>505</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>cotton imports into, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>;</li>
+      <li>first view of, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>;</li>
+      <li>foreigners in, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>;</li>
+      <li>junks at, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>;</li>
+      <li>mission buildings at, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>;</li>
+      <li>rapids near, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>;</li>
+      <li>Roman missions at, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>–101;</li>
+      <li>the Yangtze at, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'><span class='pageno' id='Page_552'>552</span>Ichang gorge, The, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>, <a href='#Page_109'>109</a>, <a href='#Page_505'>505</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Idols, Dealers in, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Indian opium, Use of, <a href='#Page_512'>512</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Inland mission work, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— sanitarium, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>I-ren, The. See Mantze.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Iron Coffin Gorge,” The, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Itinerary, The author’s, <a href='#Page_545'>545</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>J.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>James, Mr., <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Jamieson, Consul-General, <a href='#Page_221'>221</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Japanese commercial activity, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>adoption of Chinese classics and Western methods, <a href='#Page_539'>539</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ja-ra Peak, The, <a href='#Page_457'>457</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Jardine, Matheson, and Co., <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>John, Dr. Griffith, <a href='#Page_60'>60</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Jsai li Sect, The, <a href='#Page_511'>511</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Junks, <a href='#Page_79'>79</a>, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>–149;
+    <ul>
+      <li>at Fu-chow, <a href='#Page_502'>502</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Juvenile Instructor</i>, The, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>K.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kanpo, Towers at, <a href='#Page_383'>383</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kan river, The, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>junction with the Yangtze, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kansuh, S.E. drainage area of, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>the Mohammedan rebellion in, <a href='#Page_530'>530</a>;</li>
+      <li>trade of, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kay, Mr., <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>, <a href='#Page_362'>362</a>, <a href='#Page_393'>393</a>, <a href='#Page_394'>394</a>, <a href='#Page_396'>396</a>, <a href='#Page_419'>419</a>, <a href='#Page_420'>420</a>, <a href='#Page_425'>425</a>, <a href='#Page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#Page_438'>438</a>, <a href='#Page_441'>441</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kelly and Walsh, Book-store of, <a href='#Page_20'>20</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kerosene oil, Import of, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kiang-peh, <a href='#Page_490'>490</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kiangsi china, <a href='#Page_66'>66</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— Province of, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kiangsu, Province of, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>influence of the Yangtze on, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kien-ing, Anti-Christian riots at, <a href='#Page_518'>518</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kimber, Dr., <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a> (note).</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Kin hwa</i>, or “golden flowers,” <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>King Ho stream, The, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>King-kiang-sze, <a href='#Page_269'>269</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>King-mien-sze, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kin-ta river, The, <a href='#Page_434'>434</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Kitten” rapid, The, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kiu-ho river, The, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kiu Hsien, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kiu-kiang, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Koko Nor, The, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ku river, The, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kuan, <a href='#Page_458'>458</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kuang Yuen, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kuan Hsien, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>the city temple of, <a href='#Page_362'>362</a>;</li>
+      <li>hostility to foreigners, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kueichow, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— Province of, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>import of opium into, <a href='#Page_507'>507</a>, <a href='#Page_515'>515</a>;</li>
+      <li>demand for Western literature in, <a href='#Page_542'>542</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— City, dust storm in, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kueichow Fu, or Kuei Fu, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>–165;
+    <ul>
+      <li>inhabitants’ hostility to foreigners, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>;</li>
+      <li>value of <i>Likin</i> at, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>;</li>
+      <li>New Year’s Day at, <a href='#Page_160'>160</a>–165.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ku-erh-kio, <a href='#Page_415'>415</a>, <a href='#Page_456'>456</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kukiang, Benevolent institutions at, <a href='#Page_189'>189</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kung-tan river, <a href='#Page_501'>501</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Kwan Yin</i>, the goddess of Mercy, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kwa-tung rapid, The, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Kyin-pan-si pass, <a href='#Page_244'>244</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>L.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Lamas, Earnings of, <a href='#Page_445'>445</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Lao-ma, or “Old Horse” rapid, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Lao-min-tze, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Lao-pan, or skipper, The, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Lawton, Rev. W., <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a> (note).</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Liang-shan Hsien, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>, <a href='#Page_222'>222</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Li-fan Ting, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>, <a href='#Page_382'>382</a>, <a href='#Page_384'>384</a>, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a>, <a href='#Page_457'>457</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>a custom at, <a href='#Page_390'>390</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Likin</i>, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>, <a href='#Page_537'>537</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>at Kuei Fu, <a href='#Page_154'>154</a>, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Limin-fu, <a href='#Page_490'>490</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Li Ping, Temple of, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>, <a href='#Page_343'>343</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>irrigation works of, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Literary examinations, <a href='#Page_532'>532</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Literati and Christianity, The, <a href='#Page_525'>525</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>Western literature chiefly circulated amongst, <a href='#Page_540'>540</a>;</li>
+      <li>its influence, <a href='#Page_542'>542</a>, <a href='#Page_544'>544</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Literature, The god of, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— of the West, Circulation of, <a href='#Page_539'>539</a>–542.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Little, Mr. A., at Chung-King, <a href='#Page_495'>495</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>his description of the “Pillar of Heaven,” <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>;</li>
+      <li>estimate of volume of water in Yeh-tan rapid, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>;</li>
+      <li>his voyage on the Yangtze, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>;</li>
+      <li>estimate of the loss of junks, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>;</li>
+      <li>on Sze Chuan, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>;</li>
+      <li>on trackers, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>;</li>
+      <li>on the influence of books, <a href='#Page_542'>542</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— Mrs. Archibald, <a href='#Page_241'>241</a> (note).</li>
+  <li class='c032'><span class='pageno' id='Page_553'>553</span>Litton, Mr., <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>his report on Sze Chuan, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a> (note), <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>;</li>
+      <li>on the use of “water tobacco,” <a href='#Page_513'>513</a> (note).</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Lo-kia-chan, <a href='#Page_331'>331</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>assault on the author at, <a href='#Page_332'>332</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Lolo tribes, The, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Longevity, The temple of, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Loti-shui, <a href='#Page_537'>537</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Louvets, Mons., <a href='#Page_518'>518</a> (note).</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Lu, Dr., <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Lu-chien, <a href='#Page_485'>485</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Lu-chow, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Lu-fang, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Lu Yew, the traveller, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>M.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mackenzie’s <cite>History of the Nineteenth Century</cite>, <a href='#Page_540'>540</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Main, Dr., <a href='#Page_33'>33</a>, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_48'>48</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>, <a href='#Page_50'>50</a>, <a href='#Page_54'>54</a> (note), <a href='#Page_510'>510</a>, <a href='#Page_513'>513</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Maitreya Buddha, Figure of, <a href='#Page_467'>467</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Malcolm, Dr., <a href='#Page_54'>54</a> (note).</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Manchuria, Scottish and Irish missions in, <a href='#Page_518'>518</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mandarins or <i>kuans</i>, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_533'>533</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mantze cultivation, <a href='#Page_422'>422</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>custom, <a href='#Page_415'>415</a>;</li>
+      <li>dwellings, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>, <a href='#Page_382'>382</a>–386, <a href='#Page_389'>389</a>, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>, <a href='#Page_408'>408</a>, <a href='#Page_410'>410</a>, <a href='#Page_413'>413</a>, <a href='#Page_415'>415</a>;</li>
+      <li>hospitality, <a href='#Page_413'>413</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mantze, The, absence of disease amongst, <a href='#Page_442'>442</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>burials amongst, <a href='#Page_445'>445</a>;</li>
+      <li>character of, <a href='#Page_450'>450</a>;</li>
+      <li>customs of, <a href='#Page_444'>444</a>;</li>
+      <li>dress of, <a href='#Page_451'>451</a>;</li>
+      <li>language of, <a href='#Page_449'>449</a>;</li>
+      <li>maladies and morals of, <a href='#Page_449'>449</a>;</li>
+      <li>position of women amongst, <a href='#Page_446'>446</a>;</li>
+      <li>religion of, <a href='#Page_445'>445</a>;</li>
+      <li>trade and commerce of, <a href='#Page_450'>450</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mao-erh-tiao, <a href='#Page_302'>302</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Martin, Rev. W., <a href='#Page_541'>541</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Matang, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>, <a href='#Page_430'>430</a>, <a href='#Page_455'>455</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>beauty of Mantze women at, <a href='#Page_430'>430</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Matang river, The, <a href='#Page_433'>433</a>, <a href='#Page_434'>434</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Meadows, Mr., <a href='#Page_534'>534</a> (note).</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Medical missions, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>–54.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Meichow, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mei-ling pass, The, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Meitel, Bishop, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Melon seeds, Games with, <a href='#Page_299'>299</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mia-ko, <a href='#Page_421'>421</a>–423.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Miao Chitze, or “Temple Stairs” rapid, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Middle Kingdom</i>, Dr. W. Williams’s, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a> (note), <a href='#Page_314'>314</a> (note).</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mien-chow, <a href='#Page_319'>319</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>temple of Confucius at, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mien-chuh Hsien, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>C.M.S. House at, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Military Code,” Gorge of the, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><cite>Millenary</cite>, The, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Min, or Fu river, <a href='#Page_337'>337</a>, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>, <a href='#Page_340'>340</a>, <a href='#Page_460'>460</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>source of the, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>;</li>
+      <li>navigable waters of, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>;</li>
+      <li>junction with the River of Golden Sand, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>;</li>
+      <li>importance in the eyes of Chinese geographers, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>;</li>
+      <li>affluents of, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>;</li>
+      <li>traffic on, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>;</li>
+      <li>bamboo bridges over, <a href='#Page_365'>365</a>;</li>
+      <li>character of, <a href='#Page_366'>366</a>;</li>
+      <li>branches of, <a href='#Page_374'>374</a>, <a href='#Page_426'>426</a>;</li>
+      <li>villages on, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>;</li>
+      <li>junction with the Ya and Tatu, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a>;</li>
+      <li>rock-dwellings on, <a href='#Page_467'>467</a>, <a href='#Page_468'>468</a>, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Min gorge, The, <a href='#Page_367'>367</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mission hospitals, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>–54;
+    <ul>
+      <li>Dr. Christie’s at Mukden, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a> (note);</li>
+      <li>patients in, <a href='#Page_52'>52</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Missionaries, Attitude of Chinese towards, <a href='#Page_528'>528</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>protection afforded to, <a href='#Page_258'>258</a>;</li>
+      <li>troubles of, <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mitan gorge, The, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Money annoyances, <a href='#Page_212'>212</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Morphia, Importation of, <a href='#Page_510'>510</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Morrison, Dr., of the <cite>Times</cite>, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mosquitoes, <a href='#Page_478'>478</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mou-kung Ting road, The, <a href='#Page_373'>373</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Moule, Bishop, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mount Omi, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Mukden, <a href='#Page_533'>533</a> (note);
+    <ul>
+      <li>suicides in, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Musk trade, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>N.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Nan river, The, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Nanking, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Nan-mu-yurh, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Nan-po glen, The, <a href='#Page_505'>505</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Nan-pu, <a href='#Page_274'>274</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Nan-to, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Nganhui, Province of, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>manufacture of “China ink” in, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Nganking, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Niang-tze-ling pass, <a href='#Page_366'>366</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ningpo, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— varnish, <a href='#Page_44'>44</a>, <a href='#Page_72'>72</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Nitrate of soda, <a href='#Page_381'>381</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Niu-kan gorge, The, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Niu-kau-tan rapid, The, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c002'><span class='pageno' id='Page_554'>554</span>%center%O.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><cite>Odes for Children</cite>, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Official visiting, <a href='#Page_459'>459</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Omi-shan precipice, The, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>pilgrimages to, <a href='#Page_366'>366</a>, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Open door” Policy, The, <a href='#Page_537'>537</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Opium poppy and its use, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>, <a href='#Page_506'>506</a>–517.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Orphan rocks, The, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>P.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Pah</i>, The, or haulover, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_32'>32</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Pai-fangs</i>, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>, <a href='#Page_218'>218</a>, <a href='#Page_252'>252</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Pai-shui Chiang, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>——river, The, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Pa-ko-shan, <a href='#Page_490'>490</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Paoning Fu, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_280'>280</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>solitary journey to, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>;</li>
+      <li>result of using opium at, <a href='#Page_507'>507</a>;</li>
+      <li>church building at, <a href='#Page_520'>520</a>;</li>
+      <li>mission stations at, <a href='#Page_526'>526</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Parkes, Sir Harry, <a href='#Page_544'>544</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Passport difficulties, <a href='#Page_397'>397</a>, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Passports, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>, <a href='#Page_441'>441</a>, <a href='#Page_452'>452</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Peh-shi, Trade in coal at, <a href='#Page_481'>481</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>trees at, <a href='#Page_485'>485</a> (note).</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Peh-teo-shan pass, <a href='#Page_390'>390</a>, <a href='#Page_405'>405</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Pei-shih, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Peking Government, Weakness of the, <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Peng Hsien, <a href='#Page_333'>333</a>, <a href='#Page_334'>334</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Peng-shan Hsien, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Phillips, Mr. and Mrs., <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Photographic difficulties, <a href='#Page_156'>156</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Pigou, Mr., <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Pillar of Heaven,” The, <a href='#Page_106'>106</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ping Shan, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ping-shu gorge, The, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Poyang</i>, The s.s., <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>runs down a junk, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Poyang lake, The, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>area of, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Prayer-flags, <a href='#Page_445'>445</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— wheels, <a href='#Page_408'>408</a>, <a href='#Page_422'>422</a>, <a href='#Page_445'>445</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Prince’s Temple,” The, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Prjevalsky, Colonel, his exploration of the Yangtze, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Protestant missionaries, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>, <a href='#Page_518'>518</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
+  <li class='c032'>Pruen, Dr., <a href='#Page_291'>291</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Putu, The Island of, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Pu-tung Point, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Pyramid Hill, <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>R.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Railroads, Probable influence of, <a href='#Page_543'>543</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ramsay, Miss, <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>–177.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Red Basin,” The, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>, <a href='#Page_248'>248</a>, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Reed-beds of the Yangtze, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Reifsnyder, Dr., <a href='#Page_540'>540</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Religious dramas, <a href='#Page_329'>329</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><cite>Review of the Times</cite>, The, <a href='#Page_541'>541</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Rhubarb, Importation of, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Rice-fields, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Richards, Mr. Timothy, <a href='#Page_540'>540</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><cite>River of Golden Sand</cite>, Captain Gill’s, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a> (note).</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Rock-dwellings, <a href='#Page_467'>467</a>, <a href='#Page_468'>468</a>, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Roman missions, <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>–103, <a href='#Page_523'>523</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Rong-Kia river, The, <a href='#Page_433'>433</a>, <a href='#Page_434'>434</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Rope bridges, <a href='#Page_369'>369</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Rosthorn, Mr. Von, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>, <a href='#Page_441'>441</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>S.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sai-pei-tu pass, <a href='#Page_228'>228</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Salisbury, The Marquess of, on England’s policy in China, <a href='#Page_538'>538</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Salt boilers, <a href='#Page_152'>152</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— wells, <a href='#Page_273'>273</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sampans, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>San-tsan-pu, <a href='#Page_202'>202</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sar-pu, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Schjöltz, Mr., <a href='#Page_96'>96</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Secret societies, <a href='#Page_524'>524</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shan-Shang-Ren. See Mantze.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shanghai, Astor House at, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>author’s return to, <a href='#Page_505'>505</a>;</li>
+      <li>Benevolent Society at, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>;</li>
+      <li>British and American settlements in, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>;</li>
+      <li>Chinese element in, <a href='#Page_18'>18</a>, <a href='#Page_24'>24</a>–26;</li>
+      <li>country round, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>;</li>
+      <li>French settlement in, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>;</li>
+      <li>hospitality in, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>;</li>
+      <li>impressions upon landing at, <a href='#Page_17'>17</a>;</li>
+      <li>Ladies’ Benevolent Society at, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>;</li>
+      <li>missions at, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>;</li>
+      <li>why called “the model settlement,” <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>;</li>
+      <li>municipality of, <a href='#Page_19'>19</a>;</li>
+      <li>Royal Asiatic Society’s branch at, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>;</li>
+      <li>Sailors’ Home of Rest, at, <a href='#Page_22'>22</a>;</li>
+      <li>Women’s Hospital in, <a href='#Page_540'>540</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shang-wa-li-tze market-place, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shanjin, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shan-rang Ho river, The, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shan-rang-sar, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shan-si, Banking talent in, <a href='#Page_499'>499</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><span class='pageno' id='Page_555'>555</span>Shantung, S.E. drainage area of, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shao Hsing, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>, <a href='#Page_161'>161</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sha-shih, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>, <a href='#Page_87'>87</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>character of the Yangtze at, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>;</li>
+      <li>commercial routes from, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>;</li>
+      <li>cottons of, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>;</li>
+      <li>fish market at, <a href='#Page_90'>90</a>;</li>
+      <li>missions in, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>;</li>
+      <li>pagoda at, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>;</li>
+      <li>population of, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>;</li>
+      <li>refugees at, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>;</li>
+      <li>trade of, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>, <a href='#Page_92'>92</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shen-kia-chao, Pass of, <a href='#Page_214'>214</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shensi, trade route to, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shensi, S.E. drainage area of, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shih-men, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shi-Tze-Ping pass, <a href='#Page_424'>424</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shih-pao-chai, <a href='#Page_502'>502</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Shui Li Fu</i>, or “Prefect of the Waterways,” The, <a href='#Page_347'>347</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shun, The Emperor, <a href='#Page_522'>522</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shuo-chiao, <a href='#Page_374'>374</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>scarcity of food at, <a href='#Page_375'>375</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Shu river, The, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Siao Hioh</i>, The, <a href='#Page_278'>278</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Siao-Ho, The, <a href='#Page_361'>361</a>, <a href='#Page_366'>366</a>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>, <a href='#Page_384'>384</a>, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>, <a href='#Page_404'>404</a>, <a href='#Page_409'>409</a>, <a href='#Page_424'>424</a>, <a href='#Page_455'>455</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>gorge of, <a href='#Page_378'>378</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Siao-Kiao, <a href='#Page_249'>249</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sifans, The, <a href='#Page_443'>443</a>, <a href='#Page_449'>449</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Si-hu, <a href='#Page_38'>38</a>, <a href='#Page_49'>49</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Silk, Manufacture of, <a href='#Page_37'>37</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Silver Island, <a href='#Page_56'>56</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sing-an hamlet, <a href='#Page_467'>467</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sing-fang Hsien, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sing-king-pa Hsien, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sin-tien-tze, <a href='#Page_292'>292</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sin-tu Hsien, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>, <a href='#Page_348'>348</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sin-wen-ping, <a href='#Page_371'>371</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Sleeping Buddha,” Temple of the, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Small River, The, <a href='#Page_424'>424</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Smith’s <cite>Chinese Characteristics</cite>, Rev. Arthur, <a href='#Page_181'>181</a>, <a href='#Page_183'>183</a>, <a href='#Page_192'>192</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Snowstorm, A blinding, <a href='#Page_426'>426</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Snowy Mountains,” The, <a href='#Page_424'>424</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Soil, god of the, Shrines to the, <a href='#Page_344'>344</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Soldiers, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Somo, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>, <a href='#Page_441'>441</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>absence of bird-life in, <a href='#Page_452'>452</a>;</li>
+      <li>the people of, <a href='#Page_443'>443</a>;</li>
+      <li>product of, <a href='#Page_450'>450</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— Castle, <a href='#Page_452'>452</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Spearmen, An escort of, <a href='#Page_433'>433</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Sphere of Influence” Policy, The, <a href='#Page_530'>530</a>, <a href='#Page_537'>537</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Squibb, Dr., <a href='#Page_320'>320</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Stevenson, Mrs. Owen, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Su-chow creek; 17, <a href='#Page_23'>23</a>, <a href='#Page_29'>29</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Suicide in China, <a href='#Page_51'>51</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sui-fu, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>rapids between and Kueichow Fu, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Su-ma-tou, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sun Bridge mountain, The, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sundius, Mr., <a href='#Page_43'>43</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sung-pan-ting, <a href='#Page_339'>339</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— road, <a href='#Page_373'>373</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sunstroke in Sze Chuan, <a href='#Page_478'>478</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Superstitions, <a href='#Page_122'>122</a>, <a href='#Page_162'>162</a>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Sze Chuan, Area, climate, population, etc., of, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>–11, <a href='#Page_532'>532</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>coal-fields of, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_224'>224</a>, <a href='#Page_239'>239</a>;</li>
+      <li>cotton fabrics of, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_91'>91</a>;</li>
+      <li>exports from, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a> (note);</li>
+      <li>fanaticism in, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>;</li>
+      <li>famine in, <a href='#Page_89'>89</a>;</li>
+      <li>demand for foreign books in, <a href='#Page_542'>542</a>;</li>
+      <li>inns in, <a href='#Page_251'>251</a> (note);</li>
+      <li>junks of, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>–149;</li>
+      <li>markets of, <a href='#Page_265'>265</a>, <a href='#Page_266'>266</a>;</li>
+      <li>objection to open chairs in, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>;</li>
+      <li>oil trade of, <a href='#Page_71'>71</a>;</li>
+      <li>opium exports from, <a href='#Page_514'>514</a>;</li>
+      <li><i>pai-fangs</i> of, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>;</li>
+      <li>prevalence of sunstroke in, <a href='#Page_478'>478</a>;</li>
+      <li>poppy cultivation in, <a href='#Page_506'>506</a>;</li>
+      <li>province of, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>, <a href='#Page_194'>194</a>;</li>
+      <li>the rebellion in, <a href='#Page_530'>530</a>;</li>
+      <li>“Red Basin” of, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>, <a href='#Page_246'>246</a>–248, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>;</li>
+      <li>resources of, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>, <a href='#Page_531'>531</a>;</li>
+      <li>revenue, sources of, <a href='#Page_155'>155</a>;</li>
+      <li>sale of drugs in, <a href='#Page_459'>459</a>;</li>
+      <li>sale of girls in, <a href='#Page_270'>270</a>;</li>
+      <li>salt exports from, <a href='#Page_153'>153</a>;</li>
+      <li>silver of, <a href='#Page_63'>63</a>;</li>
+      <li>travelling in, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>;</li>
+      <li>villages in, <a href='#Page_264'>264</a>;</li>
+      <li>women of, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>;</li>
+      <li>women’s dress in, <a href='#Page_242'>242</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='center'>T.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ta Chin, or Ta Kin-Shuan River, <a href='#Page_434'>434</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ta-fan, <a href='#Page_386'>386</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ta-ho, The, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tai-hu lake, Area of the, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Tai-kung</i>, or bowsman, The, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Taiping Fu, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Taiping Rebellion, The, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Tai-wan-ti</i>, The, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ta-Kin Ho river, The, <a href='#Page_429'>429</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ta-ling, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ta-lu road, The, <a href='#Page_311'>311</a>, <a href='#Page_313'>313</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ta-miao, Temples of, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tang-pa mountain, The, <a href='#Page_424'>424</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Taoism, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>, <a href='#Page_12'>12</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ta-tan rapid, The, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tatu, or Tung river, The, <a href='#Page_434'>434</a>, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ta-tien-lu, <a href='#Page_441'>441</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>T’au-lao</i>, or head tracker, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>T’au-tai-kung</i>, or pilot, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><span class='pageno' id='Page_556'>556</span>“Tea Extract,” <a href='#Page_511'>511</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Theatrical companies, <a href='#Page_330'>330</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Thompson, Mr. and Mrs., <a href='#Page_175'>175</a>, <a href='#Page_176'>176</a>, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a> (note), <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_205'>205</a>, <a href='#Page_207'>207</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Three Religions,” The, <a href='#Page_525'>525</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>temple of, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Three Water Guardians,” The, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Throne of Snow,” The, <a href='#Page_404'>404</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tibetan dogs, <a href='#Page_430'>430</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— drugs, <a href='#Page_338'>338</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tien-kia-miao, <a href='#Page_307'>307</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tiger Teeth gorge, <a href='#Page_94'>94</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ting-hai, <a href='#Page_55'>55</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ting Library, The, <a href='#Page_34'>34</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Torii of Japan, The, <a href='#Page_219'>219</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>To river, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>T’ou-jen</i>, The, <a href='#Page_444'>444</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Towers, Ancient, <a href='#Page_383'>383</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Trackers, <a href='#Page_132'>132</a>, <a href='#Page_135'>135</a>, <a href='#Page_136'>136</a>, <a href='#Page_141'>141</a>, <a href='#Page_142'>142</a>, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>, <a href='#Page_147'>147</a>, <a href='#Page_148'>148</a>, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>clothing of, <a href='#Page_146'>146</a>;</li>
+      <li>at dinner, <a href='#Page_159'>159</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Trackers’ villages, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a>, <a href='#Page_123'>123</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Trade requirements, <a href='#Page_308'>308</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Travelling outfit, <a href='#Page_195'>195</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><cite>Trimetrical Classic</cite>, The, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tsa-ku-lao, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>, <a href='#Page_457'>457</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>population of, <a href='#Page_400'>400</a>;</li>
+      <li>situation of, <a href='#Page_399'>399</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tsing-pu hills, The, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tsu-ku-shan pass, <a href='#Page_429'>429</a>, <a href='#Page_455'>455</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tsung-ming, The island of, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tung or Tatu river, The, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_282'>282</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tungting lake, The, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>junction of the Hsiang and Yuan at, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>;</li>
+      <li>traffic on, <a href='#Page_64'>64</a>, <a href='#Page_65'>65</a>, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tung Yangtze cataract, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Tu-tze</i>, The, <a href='#Page_443'>443</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Twenty-four Filials</i>, The, <a href='#Page_277'>277</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Tze-tung Hsien, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>, <a href='#Page_316'>316</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>U.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><cite>Use of Opium</cite>, by Dr. Dudgeon, <a href='#Page_513'>513</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>V.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Vale, Mr., of Chengtu, <a href='#Page_362'>362</a>, <a href='#Page_372'>372</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Vegetarians, <a href='#Page_525'>525</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Village system, The, <a href='#Page_535'>535</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>W.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Wai-pi-ku</i> boats, <a href='#Page_501'>501</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Wan-cheng Ti Dyke, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>, <a href='#Page_86'>86</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Wan Hsien, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>charities of, <a href='#Page_190'>190</a>;</li>
+      <li>China Inland Mission house at, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>;</li>
+      <li>cotton trade of, <a href='#Page_180'>180</a>;</li>
+      <li>first sight of, <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>;</li>
+      <li>junk-building at, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>;</li>
+      <li>population and trade of, <a href='#Page_172'>172</a>, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>;</li>
+      <li>temple of, <a href='#Page_178'>178</a>, <a href='#Page_179'>179</a>;</li>
+      <li>the Yangtze at, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>War, The God of, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Water tobacco,” The use of, <a href='#Page_513'>513</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Waterwheels on the Min, <a href='#Page_463'>463</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Weichou, <a href='#Page_366'>366</a>, <a href='#Page_367'>367</a>, <a href='#Page_369'>369</a>, <a href='#Page_377'>377</a>, <a href='#Page_378'>378</a>, <a href='#Page_382'>382</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>nitre works at, <a href='#Page_381'>381</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Wei-gua, <a href='#Page_395'>395</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Wen-chuan Hsien, <a href='#Page_376'>376</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Wen-shu-Yuan Temple, <a href='#Page_357'>357</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Went-Zu, Temple of, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Wesleyan missionaries, <a href='#Page_102'>102</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Wheelbarrow traffic, <a href='#Page_324'>324</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Widows, care of, <a href='#Page_187'>187</a>, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Widows’ arches, <a href='#Page_198'>198</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Willett, Mr., <a href='#Page_500'>500</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Williams, Rev. E. O., <a href='#Page_281'>281</a>, <a href='#Page_285'>285</a>, <a href='#Page_296'>296</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— Dr. Wells, <a href='#Page_164'>164</a> (note), <a href='#Page_182'>182</a>, <a href='#Page_240'>240</a>, <a href='#Page_276'>276</a> (note).</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Wind-box” gorge. See Feng Hsiang.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“Witch’s Mountain” gorge, The, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Women’s work in China, <a href='#Page_526'>526</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Woodruff, Mr., <a href='#Page_99'>99</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Woo-sung, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Wu-chang, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>, <a href='#Page_61'>61</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Wuhu, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>trade of, <a href='#Page_58'>58</a>;</li>
+      <li>benevolent institutions at, <a href='#Page_188'>188</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Wu-lien, <a href='#Page_312'>312</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Wupans</i>, <a href='#Page_124'>124</a>, <a href='#Page_140'>140</a>, <a href='#Page_460'>460</a>, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a>, <a href='#Page_500'>500</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Wushan, <a href='#Page_151'>151</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— gorge, The, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_150'>150</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Wu-sueh, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>.</li>
+  <li class='center'>Y.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ya, The, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_464'>464</a>, <a href='#Page_485'>485</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ya-chow, the centre of the brick tea trade, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yak, Herds of, <a href='#Page_425'>425</a>, <a href='#Page_455'>455</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Yamen</i> runners, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_196'>196</a>, <a href='#Page_211'>211</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Yamens</i>, <a href='#Page_26'>26</a>, <a href='#Page_81'>81</a>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yangchow, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_59'>59</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yangtze Kiang, Mouth of the, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yangtze river, alluvial deposit of, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>annual rise and fall of, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>, <a href='#Page_496'>496</a>;</li>
+      <li>ascent of British fleet up, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>;</li>
+      <li>change in character of, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>;</li>
+      <li>craft on, <a href='#Page_501'>501</a>;</li>
+      <li>a flood on, <a href='#Page_482'>482</a>;</li>
+      <li>at Ichang, <a href='#Page_95'>95</a>;</li>
+      <li>influence of the tide on, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>;</li>
+      <li><span class='pageno' id='Page_557'>557</span>junction with the To, <a href='#Page_477'>477</a>;</li>
+      <li>length of, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>;</li>
+      <li>navigable affluents of, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a>;</li>
+      <li>navigable portion of, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>;</li>
+      <li>reed-beds in, <a href='#Page_85'>85</a>;</li>
+      <li>source of, <a href='#Page_2'>2</a>;</li>
+      <li>at Sui Fu, <a href='#Page_471'>471</a>, <a href='#Page_472'>472</a>;</li>
+      <li>trade on, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>;</li>
+      <li>various names of, <a href='#Page_3'>3</a>;</li>
+      <li>volume of water in, <a href='#Page_7'>7</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yangtze, The Lower, trade on, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>—— The Upper, bed of, <a href='#Page_117'>117</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>coal workings on, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>;</li>
+      <li>life on, <a href='#Page_138'>138</a>;</li>
+      <li>perils on, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>;</li>
+      <li>rapids of, <a href='#Page_114'>114</a> <i>et seq.</i>;</li>
+      <li>steam navigation on, <a href='#Page_5'>5</a>;</li>
+      <li>trackers on, <a href='#Page_118'>118</a> <i>et seq.</i>;</li>
+      <li>trade on, <a href='#Page_8'>8</a>, <a href='#Page_9'>9</a>, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>;</li>
+      <li>travelling on, <a href='#Page_104'>104</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Yangtze Pilot</i>, The, <a href='#Page_149'>149</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yangtze valley, Bridges in, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>British treaty rights in, <a href='#Page_14'>14</a>;</li>
+      <li>commerce of, <a href='#Page_15'>15</a>;</li>
+      <li>drainage area, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>;</li>
+      <li>inhabitants of, <a href='#Page_10'>10</a>, <a href='#Page_11'>11</a>;</li>
+      <li>as a “sphere of interest,” <a href='#Page_13'>13</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yao-tsai village, <a href='#Page_121'>121</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yates, Dr., <a href='#Page_523'>523</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yeh-tan rapid, The, <a href='#Page_128'>128</a>, <a href='#Page_131'>131</a>, <a href='#Page_505'>505</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yellow river, Outbreak of the, <a href='#Page_31'>31</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yellow Sea, The, <a href='#Page_16'>16</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Yen-tun</i>, or “smoke towers,” <a href='#Page_171'>171</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>“<i>Yin</i>,” The, <a href='#Page_509'>509</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Ying-san Hsien, <a href='#Page_253'>253</a>, <a href='#Page_261'>261</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yo-chow monastery, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yo-chow Fu city, <a href='#Page_84'>84</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yokohama Specie Bank, Shanghai, <a href='#Page_21'>21</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yuan Ho, The river, <a href='#Page_4'>4</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>trade on, <a href='#Page_6'>6</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'><i>Yulows</i>, <a href='#Page_110'>110</a>, <a href='#Page_145'>145</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yungtze, <a href='#Page_93'>93</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yun-i, <a href='#Page_236'>236</a>.</li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yun-Yang Hsien, <a href='#Page_166'>166</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>Roman Christians at, <a href='#Page_168'>168</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+  <li class='c032'>Yunnan, Province of, <a href='#Page_1'>1</a>;
+    <ul>
+      <li>valleys of, <a href='#Page_247'>247</a>;</li>
+      <li>importation of opium into, <a href='#Page_507'>507</a>, <a href='#Page_515'>515</a>.</li>
+    </ul>
+  </li>
+</ul>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c002'>
+    <div><span class='small'>PLYMOUTH</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON</span></div>
+    <div><span class='small'>PRINTERS</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<div  class='figcenter id001'>
+<a href='images/p559_map_hr.jpg'><img src='images/p559_map.jpg' alt='' class='ig001'></a>
+<div class='ic001'>
+<p>SKETCH MAP OF THE YANGTZE BASIN SHOWING M<sup>RS</sup>. BISHOP’S ROUTE.<br>  <br>  <span class='right'>Stanford’s Geog<sup>l</sup> Estab<sup>t</sup>, London.</span><br>  <br>  <span class='left'><i>The red line indicates the Author’s route</i></span><br>  <br>  London: John Murray, Albemarle Street.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='c033'>
+<div class='footnote' id='f1'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r1'>1</a>. Politically, as H.M.’s Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs defined it in the
+House of Commons on May 9th, 1899, it is “the provinces adjoining the Yangtze River
+and Honan and Che Kiang.”</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f2'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r2'>2</a>. The lowest latitude which it is believed to reach is 26° N., east of its junction with
+the Yalung at its great southerly bend, and its junction with the ocean is in lat. 31° N.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f3'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r3'>3</a>. <cite>The Geographical Journal</cite>, September, 1898, p. 227: “The Yangtze Chiang,”
+<span class='sc'>W. R. Carles</span>, H.B.M.’s Consul at Swatow.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f4'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r4'>4</a>. <cite>Land of the Lamas</cite>, p. 218.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f5'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r5'>5</a>. It is the Mur-usu (“Tortuous River”) in Tibet, the Chin or Kin Sha where it
+is the boundary between Tibet and China, and from the junction of the Yalung to Sui
+Fu the Chin Ho. Between Sui Fu and Wan Hsien it is called the Ta Ho (“Great
+River”) and the Min Chiang. At and below Sha-shih it is the Ching Chiang, and
+below Hankow for 400 miles it is called the Chiang, Ch’ang Chiang (“Long River”), or
+Ta-Kuan Chiang (“Great Official River”).</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f6'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r6'>6</a>. Lest it should be supposed that I am taking an unduly favourable view of the
+position of the Chinese, and especially of the Chinese of Sze Chuan, under their
+government, I fortify my opinion by quoting that of Mr. Litton, British acting consul at
+Chungking. He writes in his official report to our Foreign Office, presented to both
+Houses of Parliament in May, 1899, thus:—“The government, though obstructive and
+unintelligent, is not as a rule actively oppressive; one may travel for days in West China
+without seeing any signs of that reserve of force which we associate with the policeman
+round the corner. The country people of Sze Chuan manage their own affairs through
+their headmen, and get on very well in spite of, rather than because of, the central
+government at Chengtu. So long as a native keeps out of the law courts, and does not
+attempt any startling innovations on the customs of his ancestors, he finds in the general
+love of law and order very fair security that he will enjoy the fruit of his labour.” This
+general disposition towards law and order, though it may have something to do with
+race, is undoubtedly on the whole the result of the teachings of Confucius.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f7'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r7'>7</a>. For Shanghai and the other open ports, it is the gross value of trade, exports and
+imports, including re-exports, which is given in this volume.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f8'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r8'>8</a>. Yachting Club, Golf Club, Athletic Club, Lawn Tennis Club, Polo Club, Volunteer
+Club, Boating Club, Bowling Club, Swimming Club, Cricket Club, Blackbird Club,
+Drag Hound Club, Steeplechase Club, Racquet Club, Racing Club, Rifle Club, Fives
+Court, Gymnasium, Fire Flies Society, Lurderfatel Society, Amateur Dramatic Company;
+and of a graver cast, the Philharmonic and Photographic Societies, the Royal
+Asiatic Society, the Fine Art Society, etc., etc. (List by W. S. Percival, Esq.)</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f9'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r9'>9</a>. Situated a few miles from the junction of the Huang-pu with the Yangtze, in
+lat. 31° 10′ N. and long. 121° 30′ E., nearly on the same parallel as Charleston and
+Alexandria, the port is the great outlet of the commerce of the rich and populous
+provinces of Central China, and the sole outlet of that of Sze Chuan, besides communicating
+by waterways with Hangchow, Soochow, and other great cities on the
+Grand Canal, and with cities innumerable by canals innumerable.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f10'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r10'>10</a>. Hangchow, though not geographically in the drainage area of the Yangtze, as the
+capital of Chekiang, which has been declared officially to be within our “sphere of
+interest” in the Yangtze Valley, is treated of here as being specially interesting. Of
+Ningpo, Wenchow, and Soochow, open ports in the same province, merely the <i>net</i>
+value of their total net trade for 1898 is given, along with that of Hangchow:—</p>
+
+<table class='table3'>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Ningpo</td>
+    <td class='c011'>£2,162,780</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Wenchow</td>
+    <td class='c011'>215,669</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Soochow</td>
+    <td class='c011'>229,113</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Hangchow</td>
+    <td class='c011'>1,199,022</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f11'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r11'>11</a>. Another of the crack mission hospitals of the East, of which I had lengthened
+opportunities of judging, is Dr. Christie’s hospital at Mukden, Manchuria, which has
+been largely instrumental in bringing about similar results in the friendliness of the
+officials and people.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f12'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r12'>12</a>. In a paper called <cite>Medical Missions at Home and Abroad</cite> for 1898, p. 70, the
+reader will find such experiences very graphically told by Dr. Malcolm.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f13'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r13'>13</a>. These hospitals and dispensaries under the care of Dr. Main and Dr. Kimber
+treated 47,000 patients in 1898, of which number 1000 were in-patients, and besides
+these 187 would-be suicides received back the unwelcome gift of life. These benevolent
+Christian institutions comprise hospitals for men and women, an opium refuge, three
+leper hospitals, two convalescent homes, and a home for the children of lepers.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f14'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r14'>14</a>. In China the necessaries of existence, food, clothing, shoes, waterproofs, and
+travelling-trunks and baskets are always to be procured, and there, as everywhere, if
+a traveller uses native arrangements, he has much less difficulty in getting them handled
+or repaired.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f15'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r15'>15</a>. Concession is not, as is supposed by many, a synonym for settlement. A concession
+is a piece of land leased by the Queen’s Government and let to Western merchants, a
+stipulation being made that the land is not to be sub-let to Chinese, while a settlement is
+an area within which Europeans may lease land directly from the native proprietors. In
+both cases the Queen’s Government stipulates for the right of policing and controlling
+the land, and delegates it to a council of resident merchants.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f16'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r16'>16</a>. A specimen of guild rules is given in Appendix A.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f17'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r17'>17</a>. For brief statistics of the trade of the Yangtze open ports see Appendix B.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f18'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r18'>18</a>. For minor causes of the loss of the import trade see <cite>Trade of Central and Southern
+China</cite>, <span class='sc'>Bourne</span>, Foreign Office, May, 1898.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f19'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r19'>19</a>. In 1868 the average consumption of tea per head of the population of the United
+Kingdom was 3·52 lbs., of which 93 per cent. was Chinese tea, and 7 per cent. Indian.
+Since that date the consumption has risen to an average of 5·73 per head of the population,
+but only 11 per cent. is Chinese tea, while the tea grown in India and Ceylon is
+89 per cent.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f20'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r20'>20</a>. “There is no harbour in the world where one may see so many craft as at Hankow.
+Anchored in several rows, they reach for miles along the river banks.”—Consul <span class='sc'>Bullock</span>,
+<cite>The Geography of China</cite>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f21'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r21'>21</a>. Foreign Office Report No. 2086, May, 1898.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f22'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r22'>22</a>. It is usual for the missionaries of the China Inland Mission and for those of the
+<span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> mission of the C.M.S. to live in Chinese houses actually among the city
+populations, a course which is considerably criticised on grounds of health and safety.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f23'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r23'>23</a>. Diplomatic and Consular Reports, No. 458, China, Foreign Office, May, 1898.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f24'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r24'>24</a>. <cite>Through the Yangtze Gorges</cite>, <span class='sc'>A. J. Little</span>, p. 246.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f25'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r25'>25</a>. Consul Bourne “risks” an estimate of the value of goods exported from Sze Chuan
+by this route at £3,300,000 annually, while imports coming up the rapids and passing
+through the Imperial Customs amounted to £1,776,586 in 1897. The freight on cotton
+goods from Ichang to Chungking is estimated at £3 8<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i> per ton, a scarcely
+appreciable increase in cost on every yard after a transit of 500 miles.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f26'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r26'>26</a>. These pits are reported as producing 132 lbs. of salt daily each. Captain Gill learned
+at Kuei Fu that <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> salt brings in a revenue of about £2,000,000 sterling
+annually, but this seems incredible, as it would make the annual salt production of the
+province about 237,946 tons.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f27'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r27'>27</a>. Dr. <span class='sc'>Wells Williams</span>, on p. 812 of <cite>The Middle Kingdom</cite>, vol. i., says that a
+literary man would have such a sentence as—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c014'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“May I be so learned as to secrete in my mind three myriads of volumes”;</div>
+      <div class='line'>“May I know the affairs of the world for six thousand years.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>While a shopkeeper would adorn his door with such mottoes as these—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c014'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“May profits be like the morning sun rising on the clouds”;</div>
+      <div class='line'>“May wealth increase like the morning tide which brings the rain”;</div>
+      <div class='line'>“Manage your occupation according to truth and loyalty.”</div>
+      <div class='line'>“Hold on to benevolence and rectitude in all your trading.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c007'>Dr. Williams adds that the influence of these and countless similar mottoes which are
+to be seen throughout the land is inestimable, and is usually for good. At all events it
+is better to have a high ideal than a low one.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f28'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r28'>28</a>. Although the Temple of Chang-fei stands 200 feet above the river at low water,
+the one which preceded it was carried away in a great flood in 1870, when the water
+actually rose to the height of the present roof. The present gorgeous structure cost
+10,000 taels.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f29'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r29'>29</a>. The volume from which this picture was taken and enlarged was printed in
+Shanghai.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f30'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r30'>30</a>. This term “dog-faced” apparently does not bear the meaning which we put on it,
+for the woman in the illustration on page <a href='#Page_496'>496</a> with a head-dress of solid silver and heavy white silk
+from the mountains of <span class='sc'>Fu Kien</span> is a member of what the Fu-chow Chinese call “dog-faced”
+tribes.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f31'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r31'>31</a>. The charities of China have been several times alluded to, and it seems fitting
+before leaving Wan Hsien, where they are both numerous and active, to devote a special
+chapter to them. The sketch is an imperfect and limited one, but it may help to
+point the way to a field of very interesting inquiry.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f32'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r32'>32</a>. A mow, roughly speaking, is about one-seventh of an acre.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f33'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r33'>33</a>. I am indebted for most of the foregoing facts to Mr. W. R. Carles, lately
+H.B.M.’s consul at Chinkiang, and to the very careful investigations made by the
+Rev. W. W. Lawton for the Christian Literary Association of Chinkiang.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f34'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r34'>34</a>. For these very interesting facts regarding Wan, I am indebted to my host there,
+Mr. Thompson, of the China Inland Mission. Statistics are not available.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f35'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r35'>35</a>. I must also mention, in extenuation of sundry faults of which I am conscious, that
+I went to Western China solely for interest and pleasure, and not with any intention of
+writing a book, and that, instead of having careful and copious notes, I have only journal
+letters to rely upon.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f36'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r36'>36</a>. This word, which we apply universally to Chinese officials, is Portuguese. The
+Chinese designation is <i>kuan</i>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f37'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r37'>37</a>. I was told afterwards that a foreign missionary in an open chair had passed through
+not long before, and being annoyed at the curiosity and crowding of the people, had gone
+with a complaint to the <i>yamen</i>, and it was supposed by some of my friends that they
+were avenging this on me.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f38'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r38'>38</a>. I cannot give the local distances in English miles, because, though the Chinese <i>li</i>
+is 1818 English feet, the <i>li</i> of the mountain and the plain, and even of the good and bad
+road, differ in length.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f39'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r39'>39</a>. I was present at a “drawing-room meeting” in Shanghai when Mrs. Archibald
+Little, of Chungking, took the humane initiative of establishing an “Anti-Footbinding
+Society,” which has now many branches, and is undoubtedly commending its aims to
+many men of the intelligent classes. The mission schools for girls are in general
+absolutely against the crippling process, and the wives of many of the younger Christians
+have “big feet.”</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f40'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r40'>40</a>. See Mr. Bourne’s Report on the Trade of Central and Southern China, Foreign
+Office, May, 1898.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f41'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r41'>41</a>. I must repeat that there are very good inns in <span class='sc'>Sze Chuan</span> in the cities, <i>i.e.</i>
+good for China, and at the regular stages, but, besides that I was avoiding cities because
+of the rough element which they contain, I was travelling less than the usual distance
+daily, and had to put up with the Chinese equivalent of the “hedge alehouse” accommodation,
+which the ordinary travelling Chinese would have disdained.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f42'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r42'>42</a>. These are all attainable in scholarly translations, and, along with chapter ix.
+of Dr. Wells Williams’ invaluable volumes, <cite>The Middle Kingdom</cite>, should be read
+by everyone who takes more than a merely superficial or commercial interest in
+China.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f43'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r43'>43</a>. A translation of these is given in the <cite>Chinese Repository</cite> (vol. vi., p. 131).</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f44'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r44'>44</a>. Dr. <span class='sc'>Wells Williams</span>, <cite>Middle Kingdom</cite>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f45'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r45'>45</a>. Funeral ceremonies and superstitions are given in detail in <cite>The Middle Kingdom</cite>,
+vol. ii., p. 244.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f46'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r46'>46</a>. A detailed description of this building is given by Captain Gill in <cite>The River of
+Golden Sand</cite>, vol. ii., p. 13. Chengtu has been often visited, and two or three times
+described by English travellers, so that I consider myself exonerated from giving more
+than mere notes of my impressions of it.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f47'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r47'>47</a>. The fall of the Min between its bifurcation at Weichou and Kuan Hsien, taking
+the altitudes of these two towns as the basis of the calculation and the Chinese <i>li</i> at its
+average length, is twenty-seven feet to the mile, but from Weichou to Li-fan Ting it is
+no less than forty-five feet to the mile.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f48'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r48'>48</a>. I could not hear of any but Captain Gill, and three Russians a few months before,
+and all had reasons of their own for doing so.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f49'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r49'>49</a>. A pony had rolled on my hypsometer, and I spent much of the day at Li-fan in
+constructing another with the aid of a tinsmith. It was but a rude construction, but as
+it made the height of Li-fan come to within ten feet of that given by Captain Gill, I
+venture to present the altitudes of Tsa-ku-lao and a few other places as approximations
+to the truth.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f50'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r50'>50</a>. In this case a <i>Tu-tze</i> is a tribal chief, recognised as such by the Chinese Government.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f51'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r51'>51</a>. Captain Gill met with a mountain of the same name on his Tibetan journey, so
+it would appear that Ja-ra is a Tibetan name. I could not unearth any Chinese name
+for the mountain.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f52'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r52'>52</a>. A careful and deeply interesting account of these excavations is given by Mr.
+Baber in “A Journey of Exploration in Western <i>Sze Chuan</i>.” See <cite>Supplementary
+Papers</cite>, vol. i., <i>Royal Geographical Society</i>.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f53'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r53'>53</a>. Among the trees and plants behind Peh-Shih, which were interesting as growing in
+one locality, were: the orange, pommeloe, pomegranate, apricot, peach, apple, pear,
+plum, persimmon (<i>Diospyros Virginiana</i>), loquat (<i>Eriobotrya Japonica</i>), date-plum
+(<i>Diospyros Kaki</i>), the Chinese date tree (<i>Rhamnus Theezans</i>), walnut, Spanish chestnuts,
+the <i>Ficus religiosa</i>, palms, bamboos, cypresses, pines, the “varnish tree” (<i>Rhus-vernicifera</i>),
+the Tung oil tree (<i>Aleurites cordata</i>), mulberry, oak, the <i>Cudrania triloba</i>,
+much used for feeding young silkworms, a hibiscus, plane, the <i>Sterculia platinifolia</i>,
+the <i>Paulonia Imperialis</i>, three varieties of soap trees (<i>Acacia negata</i>, <i>Gymnocladus
+Sinensis</i>, and <i>Gleditschia Sinensis</i>), the tallow tree, and very many others, my specimens
+of which were so destroyed by damp as to render subsequent botanical identification
+impossible. Hemp was considerably grown, and of two economic shrubs, both new to
+me, there were several patches, the <i>Boehmeria nivea</i>, from the fibre of which grass cloth
+is manufactured, and the <i>Fatsia papyrifera</i>, from the pith of which rice paper is made.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f54'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r54'>54</a>. The estimated distance to Cheng-tu by the windings of the rivers is:—</p>
+
+<table class='table3'>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Chung-king to Luchow</td>
+    <td class='c009'>125</td>
+    <td class='c020'>miles.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Luchow to Sui Fu</td>
+    <td class='c009'>87</td>
+    <td class='c020'>„</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Sui Fu to Chia-ling Fu</td>
+    <td class='c009'>130</td>
+    <td class='c020'>„</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Chia-ling Fu to Cheng-tu Fu</td>
+    <td class='c009'>133</td>
+    <td class='c020'>„</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c009'><hr></td>
+    <td class='c020'>&#160;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c031'>Total</td>
+    <td class='c009'>475</td>
+    <td class='c020'>miles.</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f55'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r55'>55</a>. Mr. Bourne estimates the imports of cotton and cotton goods as follows:—</p>
+
+<table class='table3'>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Raw cotton</td>
+    <td class='c011'>£500,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Native piece goods, home spun</td>
+    <td class='c011'>1,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Indian yarn</td>
+    <td class='c011'>600,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Lancashire cottons</td>
+    <td class='c011'>300,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'><hr></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'>£2,400,000</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class='c007'>And the exports, which are chiefly raw or half-manufactured produce, as follows:—</p>
+
+<table class='table3'>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Opium</td>
+    <td class='c011'>£1,800,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Salt</td>
+    <td class='c011'>300,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Drugs</td>
+    <td class='c011'>400,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Silk</td>
+    <td class='c011'>200,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>Miscellaneous articles, insect wax, tobacco, sugar, musk, wool-skins, hides, feathers, bristles, etc.</td>
+    <td class='c011'>600,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'><hr></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class='c010'>&#160;</td>
+    <td class='c011'>£3,300,000</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class='c007'>The returns for 1898, not yet out, are expected to show a very considerable increase.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f56'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r56'>56</a>. Readers are referred to sections 28 to 33 of Mr. Bourne’s report on <cite>The Trade of
+Central and Southern China</cite>, May, 1898. (Eyre and Spottiswoode.)</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f57'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r57'>57</a>. In order to avoid the fragmentariness of references to the Opium Poppy and
+Protestant Missions, at intervals throughout this volume, I have adopted the more
+convenient arrangement of giving a chapter on each of these subjects.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f58'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r58'>58</a>. <cite>Report of a Journey to North Sze Chuan</cite>, 1898. By Mr. <span class='sc'>G. J. L. Litton</span>, of
+H.B.M.’s Chinese Consular Service.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f59'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r59'>59</a>. This is not from any distrust of the accuracy of their facts, for no foreigners know
+the lives and ways of the Chinese so well as they do, but simply because many people
+think that they are prejudiced.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f60'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r60'>60</a>. “This year the value of foreign goods imported amounted to more than eighty
+million [taels]. The export of Chinese products might be about fifty million [taels] or
+more. The foreign drug [<i>i.e.</i>, opium] was valued at more than thirty million [taels].
+Thus there was a leakage. China is not impoverished by commerce, but the impoverishment
+comes from the consumption of opium.”</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f61'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r61'>61</a>. In <cite>Les Missions Catholiques</cite>, vol. xxiii. (1891), M. Louvets returns the number
+of Roman Catholic converts in Pechili, Manchuria, Mongolia, and Shantung as 73,620
+in 1870, and in 1890, including 2000 in Kansuh, as 155,900.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f62'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r62'>62</a>. A servant of my own, not a Christian, gave a quaint reason for liking to serve
+missionaries—“I never get boots at my head in the foreign teachers’ houses.”</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f63'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r63'>63</a>. If I seem to pronounce opinions <i>ex cathedrâ</i> on very insufficient bases, it is
+owing to the avoidance of the constant repetition of the modest phrase “I think,”
+which in nearly all cases must be understood.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f64'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r64'>64</a>. Hundreds of temples, however, had undergone recent and thorough repair.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f65'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r65'>65</a>. See Appendix B.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f66'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r66'>66</a>. <cite>Imperial Maritime Customs. Report on the Trade of China for 1898.</cite> King &#38; Son.
+London.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f67'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r67'>67</a>. A couplet from a well-known anonymous lampoon, largely current as an expression
+of popular opinion, is translated thus:—</p>
+
+<div class='lg-container-b c014'>
+  <div class='linegroup'>
+    <div class='group'>
+      <div class='line'>“Three hands has every magistrate,</div>
+      <div class='line'>And every officer three feet.”</div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='c034'>(The hands to clutch at bribes, the feet to run away from the enemy!)</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f68'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r68'>68</a>. In Mukden, early in that war, I saw Chinese regiments of remarkably fine physique
+marching to their doom, armed with matchlock and “Tower” guns, and pikes, the
+money which should have provided them with modern rifles having enriched the officials
+who had the spending of it. The modern rifles with which some of the rank and file
+were armed were of all patterns, so cartridges of a dozen different makes and sizes were
+dumped down on the ground in a vacant space in the city, without any attempt at
+classification, and the soldiers fitted them to their arms, sometimes throwing eight or ten
+back on the heap before finding one to suit the weapon. The commissariat officials were
+grossly dishonest, and where stores had accumulated, sold them for their own benefit.
+It is a common practice for a military mandarin to draw pay for 800 men, having only
+400 with the colours, and, on an inspection day, to impress 400 coolies of the city, put
+them into uniforms, and parade them with the soldiers.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f69'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r69'>69</a>. Mr. Meadows states that the highest mandarins get about ten times and the lowest
+about fifty times the amount of their legal incomes by means of “squeezes.”</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f70'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r70'>70</a>. Since writing the above pages I have read Mr. <span class='sc'>A. R. Colquhoun’s</span> chapters on
+“Government and Administration,” “The Chinese People,” and “Chinese Democracy,”
+in which I find views similar to my own stated with great force, breadth, and
+intimate knowledge. The last chapter concludes with these important words: “It
+is only fitful glimpses which strangers are able to obtain of the inner working of
+Chinese national life—quite insufficient to form a coherent theory of the whole&#160;... but
+the data ascertained seem sufficient to warrant the inference of a vast, self-governed,
+law-abiding society, costing practically nothing to maintain, and having nothing to
+apprehend save natural calamities and national upheavals.”</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f71'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r71'>71</a>. Many people think that <i>likin</i>, an inland tax, levied by the provincial authorities on
+foreign goods in transit (<i>loti-shui</i> being a terminal tax), is an illegal blackmail, but it
+rests on precisely the same foundation as every other Chinese ordinance—an Imperial
+Decree—and its legality was certainly recognised by the British and German Governments
+when they accepted seven <i>likin</i> collectorates as collateral security for the last
+Anglo-German loan.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f72'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r72'>72</a>. The italics are my own.—I. L. B.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f73'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r73'>73</a>. It was what are known as the “Hunan Tracts,” an infamous literature circulated
+throughout the Empire, which accuses Christians of the vilest crimes, and urges the
+populace to expel them, which have been the cause of several of the anti-foreign riots.
+Now <span class='sc'>Hunan</span> is welcoming Western learning and Christian teachers.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f74'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r74'>74</a>. <cite>Times’</cite> Shanghai correspondent.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f75'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r75'>75</a>. The Chinese <i>li</i> is 1814 English feet, but the mountain and the plain <i>li</i> differ in
+length.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f76'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r76'>76</a>. These tables were kindly prepared for this volume by W. H. Wilkinson, Esq.,
+H.B.M. Consul at Ningpo, from the Trade Report for 1898 of the Chinese Imperial
+Maritime Customs. The Haikwan tael, in which the Customs accounts are kept, has
+been taken at 3<i>s.</i>, as a fairer current equivalent than the ²⁄₁₀–⁵⁄₈ average, by the advice of
+Mr. Jamieson, C.M.G., late Consul-General at Shanghai.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f77'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r77'>77</a>. Note that these figures include trade conducted by Chinese, or under the Chinese
+flag, passing through the Maritime Customs.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='footnote' id='f78'>
+<p class='c007'><a href='#r78'>78</a>. These tables, giving an excess of imports over exports, will be seen not to tally
+with my statement in the final chapter. In other years similar tables have given
+rise to the belief that China is being denuded of silver to pay for the balance, and
+is drifting towards bankruptcy. But the Inspector-General, in the Customs Report for
+1898, from which these figures are taken, points out that, taking into account the
+value of the gold exported from China, of the tea sent to Siberia and Russia <i>viâ</i> the
+Han River, of the twenty million pounds of tea exported annually to Tibet, of the
+junk traffic to Korea and the South, and of other exports of which the Customs take
+no cognizance, there is an actual excess of exports over imports, as was shown by careful
+statistics in 1897. He also points out as a positive proof that the nation is well
+able to pay its way, that the Government remittances to Europe for the service of
+loans, amounting in 1898 to about Hk. Tls. 18,000,000, were made through foreign
+banks by the medium of bills of exchange against exports.—I. L. B.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='pbb'>
+ <hr class='pb c004'>
+</div>
+<div class='tnotes x-ebookmaker'>
+
+<div class='chapter ph2'>
+
+<div class='nf-center-c0'>
+<div class='nf-center c001'>
+    <div>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+ <ul class='ul_1 c002'>
+    <li>Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+
+    </li>
+    <li>Corrected the <a href='#ERRATA'>Errata</a>.
+
+    </li>
+    <li>Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter.
+    </li>
+  </ul>
+
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77853 ***</div>
+  </body>
+  <!-- created with ppgen.py 3.57i (with regex) on 2026-01-09 18:59:38 GMT -->
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