FIFTH JOURNEY.

[R]

Yün-nan, The Link between India, and the Yangtze, by Major H.R. Davies, Cambridge University Press.

[S]

Literally "Eyes of the Earth"—the landlords.

[T]

A good deal of information in this chapter was obtained from an article by the Rev. C E Hicks, published in theChinese Recorderfor March, 1910. The portion quoted is taken bodily from this excellent article.

Revolting sights compensated for by scenery.Most eventful day in the trip.Buying a pony, and the reason for its purchase.Author's pony kicks him and breaks his arm.Chastising the animal, and narrow escape from death.Rider and pony a sorry sight.An uneasy night.Reappearance of malaria.Author nearly forced to give in.Heavy rain on a difficult road.At Ta-shui-tsing.Chasing frightened pony in the dead of night.Bad accommodation.Lepers and leprosy.Mining.At Kiang-ti.Two mandarins, and an amusing episode.Laying foundation of a long illness.The Kiang-ti Suspension Bridge.Hard climbing.Tiffin in the mountains.Sudden ascents and descents.Description of the country.Tame birds and what they do.A non-enterprising community.Pleasant travelling without perils.Majesty of the mountains of Yün-nan.

Whilst in this district, as will have been seen, one has to steel himself to face some of the most revolting sights it is possible to imagine, he is rewarded by the grandeur of the scenic pictures which mark the downward journey to Tong-ch'uan-fu.

The stages to Tong-ch'uan-fu were as follows:—

The Chao-t'ong plateau, magnificently level, runs out past the picturesquely-situated tower of Wang-hai-leo, from which one overlooks a stretch of water. A memorial arch, erected by the Li family of Chao-t'ong-fu, graces the main road farther on, and is probably one of the best of its kind in Yün-nan, comparing favorably with the best to be found in Szech'wan, where monumental architecture abounds. Perhaps the only building of interest in Chao-t'ong is the ancestral hall of the wealthy family mentioned above, the carving of which is magnificent.

At the end of the first day we camped at the Mohammedan village of T'ao-üen, literally "Peach Garden," but the peach trees might once have been, though now certainly they are not.

It was cold when we left, 38° F., hard frost. All the world seemed buttoned up and great-coated; the trees seemed wiry and cheerless; the legs of the pack-horses seemed brittle, and I felt so. Breath issued visibly from the mouth as I trudged along. My boy and I nearly came to blows in the early morning. I wanted to lie on; he did not. If he could not entertain himself for half an hour with his own thoughts, I, who could, thought it no fault of mine. I was a reasoning being, a rational creature, and thought it a fine way of spending a sensible, impartial half-hour. But I had to get up, and then came the benumbed fingers, a quivering body, a frozen towel, and a floor upon which the mud was frozen stiff. Little did he know that he was pulling me out to the most eventful and unfortunate day of my trip.

At Chao-t'ong I had bought a pony in case of emergency—one of those sturdy little brutes that never grow tired, cost little to keep, and are unexcelled for the amount of work they can get through every day in the week. Its color was black, a smooth, glossy black—the proverbial dark horse—and when dressed in its English saddle and bridle looked even smart enough for the use of the distinguished traveler, who smiled the smile of pleasant ownership as it was led on in front all day long, seeming to return a satanic grin for my foolishness at not riding it.[U]

The first I saw of it was when it was standing full on its hind legs pinning a man between the railings and a wall in a corner of the mission premises. It looked well. Truly, it was a blood beast!

On the second day out, whilst walking merrily along in the early morning, the little brute lifted its heels, lodged them most precisely on to my right forearm with considerable force—more forceful than affectionate—sending the stick which I carried thirty feet from me up the cliffs. The limb ached, and I felt sick. My boy—he had been a doctor's boy on one of the gunboats at Chung-king—thought it was bruised. I acquiesced, and sank fainting to a stone. On the strength of my boy's diagnosis we rubbed it, and found that it hurt still more. Then diving into a cottage, I brought out a piece of wood, three inches wide and twenty inches long, placed my arm on it, bade my boy take off one of my puttees from one of my legs, used it as a bandage, and trudged on again.

Not realizing that my arm was broken, in the evening I determined to chastise the animal in a manner becoming to my disgust. Mounting at the foot of a long hill, I laid on the stick as hard as I could, and found that my pony had a remarkable turn of speed. At the brow of the hill was a twenty-yard dip, at the base of which was a pond.

Down, down, down we went, and, despite my full strength (with the left arm) at its mouth, the pony plunged in with a dull splash, only to find that his feet gave way under him in a clay bottom. He could not free himself to swim. Farther and farther we sank together, every second deeper into the mire, when just at the moment I felt the mud clinging about my waist, and I had visions of a horrible death away from all who knew me, I plunged madly to reach the side.

With one arm useless, it is still to me the one great wonder of my life how I escaped. Nothing short of miraculous; one of the times when one feels a special protection of Providence surrounding him.

Pulling the beast's head, after I had given myself a momentary shake, I succeeded in making him give a mighty lurch—then another—then another, and in a few seconds, after terrible struggling, he reached the bank. We made a sorry spectacle as we walked shamefacedly back to the inn, under the gaze of half a dozen grinning rustics, where my man was preparing the evening meal.

In the evening, on the advice of my general confidential companion, I submitted to a poultice being applied to my arm. It was bruised, so we put on the old-fashioned, hard-to-be-beaten poultice of bread. Whilst it was hot it was comfortable; when it was cold, I unrolled the bandage, threw the poultice to the floor, and in two minutes saw glistening in the moonlight the eyes of the rats which ate it.

Then I bade sweet Morpheus take me; but, although the pain prevented me from sleeping, I remember fainting. How long I lay I know not. Shuddering in every limb with pain and chilly fear, I at length awoke from a long swoon. Something had happened, but what? There was still the paper window, the same greasy saucer of thick oil and light being given by the same rush, the same rickety table, the same chair on which we had made the poultice—but what had happened? I rubbed my aching eyes and lifted myself in a half-sitting posture—a dream had dazzled me and scared my senses. And then I knew that it was malaria coming on again, and that I was once more her luckless victim.

Malignant malaria, mistress of men who court thee under tropic skies, and who, like me, are turned from thee bodily shattered and whimpering like a child, how much, how very much hast thou laid up for thyself in Hades!

Thank Heaven, I had superabundant energy and vitality, and despite contorted and distorted things dancing haphazard through my fevered brain, I determined not to go under, not to give in. My mind was a terrible tangle of combinations nevertheless—intricate, incongruous, inconsequent, monstrous; but still I plodded on. For the next four days, with my arm lying limp and lifeless at my side, and with recurring attacks of malaria, I walked on against the greatest odds, and it was not till I had reached Tong-ch'uan-fu that I learnt that the limb was fractured. Men may have seen more in four days and done more and risked more, but I think few travelers have been called upon to suffer more agony than befell the lot of the man who was crossing China on foot.

From T'ao-üen there is a stiff ascent, followed by a climb up steep stone steps and muddy mountain banks through black and barren country. The morning had been cold and frosty, but rain came on later, a thick, heavy deluge, which swished and swashed everything from its path as one toiled painfully up those slippery paths, made almost unnegotiable. But my imagination and my hope helped me to make my own sunshine. There is something, I think, not disagreeable in issuing forth during a good honest summer rain at home with a Burberry well buttoned and an umbrella over one's head; here in Yün-nan a coat made it too uncomfortable to walk, and the terrific wind would have blown an umbrella from one's grasp in a twinkling. If we are in the home humor, in the summer, we do not mind how drenching the rain is, and we may even take delight in getting our own legs splashed as we glance at the "very touching stockings" and the "very gentle and sensitive legs" of other weaker ones in the same plight. But here was I in a gale on the bleakest tableland one can find in this part of Yün-nan, and a sorry sight truly did I make as I trudged "two steps forward, one step back" in my bare feet, covered only with rough straw sandals, with trousers upturned above the knee, with teeth chattering in malarial shivers, endeavoring between-times to think of the pouring deluge as a benignant enemy fertilizing fields, purifying the streets of the horrid little villages in which we spent our nights, refreshing the air!

Shall I ever forget the day?

Just before sundown, drenched to the skin and suffering horribly from the blues, we reached one single hut, which I could justly look upon as a sort of evening companion; for here was a fire—albeit, a green wood fire—which looked gladly in my face, talked to me, and put life and comfort and warmth into me for the ten li yet remaining of the day's hard journey.

And at night, about 8:30 p.m., we at last reached the top of the hill, actually the summit of a mountain pass, at the dirty little village of Ta-shui-tsing. Not for long, however, could I rest; for I heard yells and screams and laughs. That pony again! Every one of my men were afraid of it, for at the slightest invitation it pawed with its front feet and landed man after man into the gutter, and if that failed it stood upright and cuddled them around the neck. Now I found it had run—saddle, bridle and all—and none volunteered to chase. So at 9:30, weary and bearing the burden of a terrible day, which laid the foundation of a long illness to be recorded later, I found it my unpleasant duty to patrol the hill from top to bottom, lighting my slippery way with a Chinese lantern, chasing the pony silhouetted on the sky-line. Ta-shui-tsing is a dreary spot with no inn accommodation at all,[V]a place depopulated and laid waste, gloomy and melancholy. I managed, however, after promising a big fee, to get into a small mud-house, where the people were not unkindly disposed. I ate my food, slept as much as I could in the few hours before the appearing of the earliest dawn on the bench allotted to me, feeling thankful that to me had been allowed even this scanty lodging. But I could not conscientiously recommend the place to future travelers—a dirty little village with its dirty people and its dirty atmosphere. At the top of the pass the wind nearly removed my ears as I took a final glance at the mountain refuge. Mountains here run south-west and north-east, and are grand to look upon.

The poorest people were lepers, the beggars were all dead long ago. In Yün-nan province leprosy afflicts thousands, a disease which the Chinese, not without reason, dread terribly, for no known remedy exists. Burning the patient alive, which used often to be resorted to, is even now looked upon as the only true remedy. Cases have been known where the patient, having been stupefied with opium, has been locked in a house, which has then been set on fire, and its inmate cremated on the spot.

Mining used to be carried on here, so they told me; but I was not long in concluding that, whatever was the product, it has not materially affected the world's output, nor had it greatly enriched the laborers in the field. When I got into civilization I found that coal of a sulphurous nature was the booty of ancient days. There may be coal yet, as is most probable, but the natives seemed far too apathetic and weary of life to care whether it is there or not.

Passing Ta-shui-tsing, the descent narrows to a splendid view of dark mountain and green and beautiful valley. We were now traveling away from several ranges of lofty mountains, whose peaks appeared vividly above the drooping rain-filled clouds, onwards to a range immediately opposite, up whose slopes we toiled all day, passingen routeonly one uninhabited hamlet, to which the people flee in time of trouble. After a weary tramp of another twenty-five li—the Yün-nan li, mind you, the most unreliable quantity in all matters geographical in the country—I asked irritatedly, as all travelers must have asked before me, "Then, in the name of Heaven, where is Kiang-ti?"[W]It should come into view behind the terrible steep decline when one is within only about a hundred yards. It is roughly four thousand feet below Ta-shui-tsing.

Kiang-ti is an important stopping place, with but one forlorn street, with two or three forlorn inns, the best of which has its best room immediately over the filthiest stables, emitting a stench which was almost unbearable, that I have seen in China. It literally suffocates one as it comes up in wafts through the wide gaps in the wood floor of the room. There are no mosquitoes here, but of a certain winged insect of various species, whose distinguishing characteristics are that the wings are transparent and have no cases or covers, there was a formidable army. I refer to the common little fly. There was the house fly, the horse fly, the dangerous blue-bottle, the impecunious blow fly, the indefatigable buzzer, and others. One's delicate skin got beset with flies: they got in one's ears, in one's eyes, up one's nose, down one's throat, in one's coffee, in one's bed; they bade fair to devour one within an hour or two, and brought forth inward curses and many swishes of the 'kerchief.

The village seemed a death-trap.

Glancing comprehensively at one another as I entered the higher end of the town, a party of reveling tea-drinkers hastily pulled some cash from their satchels to settle accounts, and made a general rush into the street, where they awaited noisily the approach of a strangely wondrous and imposing spectacle, one that had not been seen in those parts for many days. The tramper, tired as he could be, at length approached, but the crowd had increased so enormously that the road was completely blocked. Tradesmen with their portable workshops, pedlars with their cumbersome gear and pack-horses could not pass, but had to wait for their turn; there were not even any tortuous by-streets in this place whereby they might reach their destination. Children lost themselves in the crush, and went about crying for their mothers. A party of travelers, newly arrived from the south by caravan route, got wedged with their worn-out horses and mules in the thick of the mob, and could not move an inch. As far as the eye could reach the blue-clad throng heaved restlessly to and fro under the blaze of the brilliant sun which harassed everyone in the valley, and, moving slowly and majestically in the midst of them all, came the foreigner. As they caught sight of me, my sandalled feet, and the retinue following on wearily in the wake, the populace set up an ecstatic yell of ferocious applause and turned their faces towards the inn, in the doorway of which one of my soldier-men was holding forth on points of more or less delicacy respecting my good or bad nature and my British connection. At that moment, the huge human mass began to move in one predetermined direction, and then a couple of mandarins in their chairs joined the swarming rabble. I had to sit down on the step for five minutes whilst my boy, with commendable energy, cleared these two mandarins, who had come from Chen-tu and were on their way to the capital, out of the best room, because his master wanted it.

As he finished speaking, there came a loud crashing noise and a shout—my pony had landed out just once again, and banged in one side of a chair belonging to these traveling officials. They met me with noisy and derisive greetings, which were returned with a straight and penetrating look.

No less than fifty degrees was the thermometrical difference in Ta-shui-tsing and Kiang-ti. Here it was stifling. Cattle stood in stagnant water, ducks were envied, my room with the sun on it became intolerable, and I sought refuge by the river; my butter was too liquid to spread; coolies were tired as they rested outside the tea-houses, having not a cash to spend; my pony stood wincing, giving sharp shivers to his skin, and moving his tail to clear off the flies and his hind legs to clear off men. As for myself, I could have done with an iced soda or a claret cup.

Very early in the morning, despite malaria shivers, I made my way over the beautiful suspension bridge which here graces the Niu Lan,[X]a tributary of the Yangtze, up to the high hills beyond.

This bridge at Kiang-ti is one hundred and fifty feet by twelve, protected at one end by a couple of monkeys carved in stone, whilst the opposite end is guarded by what are supposed to be, I believe, a couple of lions—and not a bad representation of them either, seeing that the workmen had no original near at hand to go by.

From here the ascent over a second range of mountains is made by tortuous paths that wind along the sides of the hills high above the stream below, and at other times along the river-bed. The river is followed in a steep ascent, a sort of climbing terrace, from which the water leaps in delightful cascades and waterfalls. A four-hour climb brings one, after terrific labor, to the mouth of the picturesque pass of Ya-ko-t'ang at 7,500 feet. In the quiet of the mountains I took my midday meal; there was about the place an awe-inspiring stillness. It was grand but lonely, weird rather than peaceful, so that one was glad to descend again suddenly to the river, tracing it through long stretches of plain and barren valley, after which narrow paths lead up again to the small village of Yi-che-shïn, considerably below Ya-ko-t'ang. It is the sudden descents and ascents which astonish one in traveling in this region, and whether climbing or dropping, one always reaches a plain or upland which would delude one into believing that he is almost at sea-level, were it not for the towering mountains that all around keep one hemmed in in a silent stillness, and the rarefied air. Yi-che-shïn, for instance, standing at this altitude of considerably over 6,000 feet, is in the center of a tableland, on which are numerous villages, around which the fragrance of the broad bean in flower and the splendid fertility now and again met with makes it extremely pleasant to walk—it is almost a series of English cottage gardens. Here the weather was like July in England—or what one likes to imagine July should be in England—dumb, dreaming, hot, lazy, luxurious weather, in which one should do as he pleases, and be pleased with what he does. As I toiled along, my useless limb causing me each day more trouble, I felt I should like to lie down on the grass, with stones 'twixt head and shoulders for my pillow, and repose, as Nature was reposing, in sovereign strength. But I was getting weaker! I saw, as I passed, gardens of purple and gold and white splendor; the sky was at its bluest, the clouds were full, snowy, mountainous.

Then on again to varying scenes.

Inns were not frequent, and were poor and wretched. The country was all red sandstone, and devoid of all timber, till, descending into a lovely valley, the path crossed an obstructing ridge, and then led out into a beautiful park all green and sweet. The country was full of color. It put a good taste in one's mouth, it impressed one as a heaven-sent means of keeping one cheerful in sad dilemma. The gardens, the fields, the skies, the mountains, the sunset, the light itself—all were full of color, and earth and heaven seemed of one opinion in the harmony of the reds, the purples, the drabs, the blacks, the browns, the bright blues, and the yellows. Birds were as tame as they were in the Great Beginning; they came under the table as I ate, and picked up the crumbs without fear. Peasant people sat under great cedars, planted to give shade to the travelers, and bade one feel at home in his lonely pilgrimage. Then one felt a peculiar feeling—this feeling will arise in any traveler—when, surmounting some hill range in the desert road, one descries, lying far below, embosomed in its natural bulwarks, the fair village, the resting-place, the little dwelling-place of men, where one is to sleep. But when towards nightfall, as the good red sun went down, I was led, weary and done-up, into one of the worst inns it had been my misfortune to encounter, a thousand other thoughts and feelings united in common anathema to the unenterprising community.

Tea was bad, rice we could not get, and all night long the detestable smells from the wood fires choked our throats and blinded our eyes; glad, therefore, was I, despite the heavy rain, to take a hurried and early departure the next morning, descending a thousand feet to a river, rising quite as suddenly to a height of 8,500 feet.

Now the road went over a mountain broad and flat, where traveling in the sun was extremely pleasant—or, rather, would have been had I been fit. Pack-horses, laden clumsily with their heavy loads of Puerh tea, Manchester goods, oil and native exports from Yün-nan province, passed us on the mountain-side, and sometimes numbers of these willing but ill-treated animals were seen grazing in the hollows, by the wayside, their backs in almost every instance cruelly lacerated by the continuous rubbing of the wooden frames on which their loads were strapped. For cruelty to animals China stands an easy first; love of animals does not enter into their sympathies at all. I found this not to be the case among the Miao and the I-pien, however; and the tribes across the Yangtze below Chao-t'ong, locally called the Pa-pu, are, as a matter of fact, fond of horses, and some of them capable horsemen.

The journey across these mountains has no perils. One may step aside a few feet with no fear of falling a few thousand, a danger so common in most of the country from Sui-fu downwards. The scenery is magnificent—range after range of mountains in whatever direction you look, nothing but mountains of varying altitudes. And the patches of wooded slopes, alternating with the red earth and more fertile green plots through which streams flow, with rolling waterfalls, picturesque nooks and winding pathways, make pictures to which only the gifted artist's brush could do justice. Often, gazing over the sunlit landscape, in this land "South of the Clouds," one is held spellbound by the intense beauty of this little-known province, and one wonders what all this grand scenery, untouched and unmarred by the hand of man, would become were it in the center of a continent covered by the ubiquitous globe-trotter.

No country in the world more than West China possesses mountains of combined majesty and grace. Rocks, everywhere arranged in masses of a rude and gigantic character, have a ruggedness tempered by a singular airiness of form and softness of environment, in a climate favorable in some parts to the densest vegetation, and in others wild and barren. One is always in sight of mountains rising to fourteen thousand feet or more, and constantly scaling difficult pathways seven or eight or nine thousand feet above the sea. And in the loneliness of a country where nothing has altered very much the handiwork of God, an awe-inspiring silence pervades everything. Bold, grey cliffs shoot up here through a mass of verdure and of foliage, and there white cottages, perched in seemingly inaccessible positions, glisten in the sun on the colored mountain-sides. You saunter through stony hollows, along straight passes, traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls of rocks, now winding through broken, shaggy chasms and huge, wandering fragments, now suddenly emerging into some emerald valley, where Peace, long established, seems to repose sweetly in the bosom of Strength. Everywhere beauty alternates wonderfully with grandeur. Valleys close in abruptly, intersected by huge mountain masses, the stony water-worn ascent of which is hardly passable.

Yes, Yün-nan is imperatively a country first of mountains, then of lakes. The scenery, embodying truly Alpine magnificence with the minute sylvan beauty of Killarney or of Devonshire, is nowhere excelled in the length and breadth of the Empire.

FOOTNOTES:

[U]

The incredulous of my readers may question, and rightly so, "Then where did he get his saddle?" So I must explain that I met just out of Sui-fu a Danish gentleman (also a traveler) who wished to sell a pony and its trappings. As I had the arrangement with my boy that I would provide him with a conveyance, and did not like the idea of seeing him continually in a chair and his wealthy master trotting along on foot, I bought it for my boy's use. He used the saddle until we reached Chao-t'ong.

[V]

A new inn has been built since.—E.J.D.

[W]

Pronounced Djang-di. Famous throughout Western China for its terrible hill, one of the most difficult pieces of country in the whole of the west.

[X]

This river, the Niu Lan, comes from near Yang-lin, one day's march from Yün-nan-fu. It is being followed down by two American engineers as the probable route for a new railway, which it is proposed should come out to the Yangtze some days north of Kiang-ti.

Yün-nan's chequered career.Switzerland of China.At Hong-sh[=i]h-ai.China's Golden Age in the past.The conservative instinct of the Chinese.How to quiet coolies.Roads.Dangers of ordinary travel in wet season.K'ung-shan and its mines.Tong-ch'uan-fu, an important mining centre.English and German machinery.Methods of smelting.Protestants and Romanists in Yün-nan.Arrival at Tong-ch'uan-fu.Missionaries set author's broken arm.Trio of Europeans.Author starts for the provincial capital.Abandoning purpose of crossing China on foot.Arm in splints.Curious incident.At Lai-t'eo-po.Malaria returns.Serious illness of author.Delirium.Devotion of the missionaries.Death expected. Innkeeper's curious attitude.Recovery.After-effects of malaria. Patient stays in Tong-ch'uan-fu for several months.Then completes his walking tour.

Yün-nan has had a checkered career ever since it became a part of the empire. In the thirteenth century Kublai Khan, the invincible warrior, annexed this Switzerland to China; and how great his exploits must have been at the time of this addition to the land of the Manchus might be gathered from the fact that all the tribes of the Siberian ice-fields, the deserts of Asia, together with the country between China and the Caspian Sea, acknowledged his potent sway—or at least so tradition says. She is sometimes right.

My journey continuing across more undulating country brought me at length to Hong-shïh-ai (Red Stone Cliff), a tiny hamlet hidden away completely in a deep recess in the mountain-side, settled in a narrow gorge, the first house of which cannot be seen until within a few yards of entry. Inn accommodation, as was usual, was by no means good. It is characteristic of these small places that the greater the traffic the worse, invariably, is the accommodation offered. Travelers are continually staying here, but not one Chinese in the population is enterprising enough to open a decent inn. They have no money to start it, I suppose.

But it is true of the Chinese, to a greater degree than of any other nation, that their Golden Age is in the past. Sages of antiquity spoke with deep reverence of the more ancient ancients of the ages, and revered all that they said and did. And the rural Chinese to-day says that what did for the sages of olden times must do for him to-day. The conservative instinct leads the Chinese to attach undue importance to precedent, and therefore the people at Hong-shïh-ai, knowing that the village has been in the same pitiable condition for generations, live by conservatism, and make no effort whatever to improve matters.

Fire in the inn was kindled in the hollow of the ground. There was no ventilation; the wood they burned was, as usual, green; smoke was suffocating. My men talked well on into the night, and kept me from sleeping, even if pain would have allowed me to. I spoke strongly, and they, thinking I was swearing at them, desisted for fear that I should heap upon their ancestors a few of the reviling thoughts I entertained for them.

I should like to say a word here about the roads in this province, or perhaps the absence of roads. They had been execrable, the worst I had met, aggravated by heavy rains. With all the reforms to which the province of Yün-nan is endeavoring to direct its energies, it has not yet learned that one of the first assets of any district or country is good roads. But this is true of the whole of the Middle Kingdom. The contracted quarters in which the Chinese live compel them to do most of their work in the street, and, even in a city provided with but the narrowest passages, these slender avenues are perpetually choked by the presence of peripatetic vendors of every kind of article of common sale in China, and by itinerant craftsmen who have no other shop than the street. In the capital city of the province, even, it is a matter of some difficulty to the European to walk down the rough-paved street after a shower of rain, so slippery do the slabs of stone become; and he has to be alive always to the lumbering carts, whose wheels are more solid than circular, pulled by bullocks as in the days long before the dawn of the Christian Era. The wider the Chinese street the more abuses can it be put to, so that travel in the broad streets of the towns is quite as difficult as in the narrow alleys; and as these streets are never repaired, or very rarely, they become worse than no roads at all—that is, in dry weather.

This refers to the paved road, which, no matter what its faults, is certainly passable, and in wet weather is a boon. There is, however, another kind of road—a mud road, and with a vengeance muddy.

An ordinary mud or earth road is usually only wide enough for a couple of coolies to pass, and in this province, as it is often necessary (especially in the Yün-nan-fu district) for one cart to pass another, the farmer, to prevent trespass on his crops, digs around them deep ditches, resembling those which are dug for the reception of gas mains. In the rainy season the fields are drained into the roads, which at times are constantly under water, and beyond Yün-nan-fu, on my way to Tali-fu, I often found it easier and more speedy to tramp bang across a rice field, taking no notice of where the road ought to be. By the time the road has sunk a few feet below the level of the adjacent land, it is liable to be absolutely useless as a thoroughfare; it is actually a canal, but can be neither navigated nor crossed. There are some roads removed a little from the main roads which are quite dangerous, and it is not by any means an uncommon thing to hear of men with their loads being washed away by rivers where in the dry season there had been the roads.

The great lines of Chinese travel, so often impassable, might be made permanently passable if the governor of a province chose to compel the several district magistrates along the line to see that these important arteries are kept free from standing water, with ditches in good order at all seasons. But for the village roads—during my travels over which I have come across very few that could from a Western standpoint be called roads—there is absolutely no hope until such time as the Chinese village may come dimly to the apprehension that what is for the advantage of the one is for the advantage of all, and that wise expenditure is the truest economy—an idea of which it has at the present moment as little conception as of the average thought of the Englishman.

A hundred li to the east of Hong-shiïh-ai, over two impassable mountain ranges, are some considerable mines, with antiquated brass and copper smelting works, and this place, K'ung-shan by name, with Tong-ch'uan-fu, forms an important center. As is well known, all copper of Yün-nan goes to Peking as the Government monopoly, excepting the enormous amount stolen and smuggled into every town in the province.[Y]

The smelting is of the roughest, though they are at the present moment laying in English machinery, and the Chinese in charge is under the impression that he can speak English; he, however, makes a hopeless jargon of it. This mining locality is sunk in the deepest degradation. Men and women live more as wild beasts than as human beings, and should any be unfortunate enough to die, their corpses are allowed to lie in the mines. Who is there that could give his time and energy to the removal of a dead man? Tong-ch'uan-fu should become an important town if the rich mineral country of which it is the pivot were properly opened up. Several times I have visited the works in this city, which, under the charge of a small mandarin from Szech'wan, can boast only the most primitive and inadequate machinery, of German make. A huge engine was running as a kind of pump for the accumulation of air, which was passed through a long thin pipe to the three furnaces in the outer courtyard. The furnaces were mud-built, and were fed with charcoal (the most expensive fuel in the district), the maximum of pure metal being only 1,300 catties per day. The ore, which has been roughly smelted once, is brought from K'ung-shan, is finely smelted here, then conveyed most of the way to Peking by pack-mule, the expense in thus handling, from the time it leaves the mine to its destination at Peking, being several times its market value. Nothing but copper is sought from the ore, and a good deal of the gold and silver known to be contained is lost.

I passed an old French priest as I was going to Tong-ch'uan-fu the next day. He was very pleased to see me, and at a small place we had a few minutes' chat whilst we sipped our tea. In Yün-nan, I found that the Protestants and the Romanists, although seeing very little of each other, went their own way, maintaining an attitude of more or less friendly indifference one towards the other.

The last day's march to Tong-ch'uan-fu is perhaps the most interesting of this stage of my journey. Climbing over boulders and stony steps, I reached an altitude of 8,500 feet, whence thirty li of pleasant going awaited us all the way to Lang-wang-miao (Temple of the Dragon King). Here I sat down and strained my eyes to catch the glimpse of the compact little walled city, where I hoped my broken arm would be set by the European missionaries. The traveler invariably hastens his pace here, expecting to run down the hill and across the plain in a very short space; but as the time passed, and I slowly wended my way along the difficult paths through the rice fields, I began to realize that I had been duped, and that it was farther than it seemed. Two blushing damsels, maids goodly to look upon, gave me the sweetest of smiles as I strode across the bodies of some fat pigs which roamed at large in the outskirts of the city, the only remembrance I have to mar the cleanliness of the place.

At Tong-ch'uan-fu the Rev. A. Evans and his extremely hospitable wife set my arm and did everything they could—as much as a brother and sister could have done—to help me, and to make my short stay with them a most happy remembrance. It was, however, destined that I should be their guest for many months, as shall hereinafter be explained.

A trio of Europeans might have been seen on the morning of Monday, May 10, 1909, leaving Tong-ch'uan-fu on the road to Yün-nan-fu, whither the author was bound. Mr. and Mrs. Evans, who, as chance would have it, were going to Ch'u-tsing-fu, were to accompany me for two days before turning off in a southerly direction when leaving the prefecture.

It was a fine spring morning, balmy and bonny. It was decided that I should ride a pony, and this I did, abandoning my purpose of crossing China on foot with some regret. I was not yet fit, had my broken arm in splints, but rejoiced that at Yün-nan-fu I should be able to consult a European medical man. Comparatively an unproductive task—and perhaps a false and impossible one—would it be for me to detail the happenings of the few days next ensuing. I should be able not to look at things themselves, but merely at the shadow of things—and it would serve no profitable end.

Suffice it to say that two days out, about midday, a special messenger from the capital stopped Mr. Evans and handed him a letter. It was to tell him that his going to Ch'u-tsing-fu would be of no use, as the gentleman he was on his way to meet would not arrive, owing to altered plans. After consulting his wife, he hesitated whether they should go back to Tong-ch'uan-fu, or come on to the capital with me. The latter course was decided upon, as I was so far from well—I learned this some time afterwards. And now the story need not be lengthened.

At Lai-t'eo-po (see first section of the second book of this volume), malaria came back, and an abnormal temperature made me delirious. The following day I could not move, and it was not until I had been there six days that I was again able to be moved. During this time, Mr. and Mrs. Evans nursed me day and night, relieving each other for rest, in a terrible Chinese inn—not a single moment did they leave me. The third day they feared I was dying, and a message to that effect was sent to the capital, informing the consul. Meanwhile malaria played fast and loose, and promised a pitiable early dissolution. My kind, devoted friends were fearful lest the innkeeper would have turned me out into the roadway to die—the foreigner's spirit would haunt the place for ever and a day were I allowed to die inside.

But I recovered.

It was a graver, older, less exuberant walker across China that presently arose from his flea-ridden bed of sickness, and began to make a languid personal introspection. I had developed a new sensitiveness, the sensitiveness of an alien in an alien land, in the hands of new-made, faithful friends. Without them I should have been a waif of all the world, helpless in the midst of unconquerable surroundings, leading to an inevitable destiny of death. I seemed declimatized, denationalized, a luckless victim of fate and morbid fancy.

It was malaria and her workings, from which there was no escape.

Malaria is supposed by the natives of the tropic belt to be sent to Europeans by Providence as a chastening for the otherwise insupportable energy of the white man. Malignant malaria is one of Nature's watch-dogs, set to guard her shrine of peace and ease and to punish woeful intruders. And she had brought me to China to punish me. As is her wont, Nature milked the manhood out of me, racked me with aches and pains, shattered me with chills, scorched me with fever fires, pursued me with despairing visions, and hag-rode me without mercy. Accursed newspapers, with their accursed routine, came back to me; all the stories and legends that I had ever heard, all the facts that I had ever learnt, came to me in a fashion wonderfully contorted and distorted; sensations welded together in ghastly, brain-stretching conglomerates, instinct with individuality and personality, human but torturingly inhuman, crowded in upon me. The barriers dividing the world of ideas, sensations, and realities seemed to have been thrown down, and all rushed into my brain like a set of hungry foxhounds. The horror of effort and the futility of endeavor permeated my very soul. My weary, helpless brain was filled with hordes of unruly imaginings; I was masterless, panic-driven, maddened, and had to abide for weeks—yea, months—with a fever-haunted soul occupying a fever-rent and weakened body.

At Yün-nan-fu, whither I arrived in due course after considerable struggling, dysentery laid me up again, and threatened to pull me nearer to the last great brink. For weeks, as the guest of my friend, Mr. C.A. Fleischmann, I stayed here recuperating, and subsequently, on the advice of my medical attendant, Dr. A. Feray, I went back to Tong-ch'uan-fu, among the mountains, and spent several happy months with Mr. and Mrs. Evans.

Had it not been for their brotherly and sisterly zeal in nursing me, which never flagged throughout my illness, future travelers might have been able to point to a little grave-mound on the hill-tops, and have given a chance thought to an adventurer whom the fates had handled roughly. But there was more in this than I could see; my destiny was then slowly shaping.

Throughout the rains, and well on into the winter, I stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Evans, and then continued my walking tour, as is hereafter recorded.

During this period of convalescence I studied the Chinese language and traveled considerably in the surrounding country. Tong-ch'uan-fu is a city of many scholars, and it was not at all difficult for me to find a satisfactory teacher. He was an old man, with a straggly beard, about 70 years of age, and from him I learned much about life in general, in addition to his tutoring in Chinese. I had the advantage also of close contact with the missionaries with whom I was living, and on many occasions was traveling companion of Samuel Pollard, one of the finest Chinese linguists in China at that time. So that with a greatly increased knowledge of Chinese, I was henceforth able to hold my own anywhere. During this period, too, many days were profitably passed at the Confucian Temple, a picture of which is given in this volume.

END OF BOOK I.

FOOTNOTES:

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