Part 24 (1/2)
A cruel road, almost vertical and negotiated by a twining zigzag path, has brought me down, after infinite labor, from the mountains over 4,000 feet below my highest point reached yesterday, and I now stand in the middle of the bridge gazing at the silent green stream flowing between cliffs of wall-like steepness. I am resting, for I have to climb again immediately to over 8,000 feet. This bridge has a wooden base swinging on iron chains, and is connected with the cliffs by bulwarks of solid masonry. It is hard to believe that I am 4,000 feet above the mouth of the river. To my left, as I look down the torrent, there are tea-shops and a temple alongside a most decorative b.u.t.tress on which the carving is elaborate. At the far end, just before entering the miniature tunnel branching out to a paved roadway leading upwards, my coolies are sitting in truly Asiatic style admiring huge Chinese characters hacked into the side of the natural rock, descriptive of the whole business, and under a sheltering roof are also two age-worn memorial tablets in gilt. My men's patriotic thermometer has risen almost to bursting-point, and in admiring the work of the ancients they feel that they have a legitimate excuse for a long delay.
At a temple called P'ing-p'o-t'ang we drank tea, and prepared ourselves for the worst climb experienced in our long overland tramp.
The Mekong is at this point just 4,000 feet above sea level, as has been said; the point in front of us, running up perpendicularly to a narrow pa.s.s in the mountains, leads on to Shui-chai (6,700 feet), and on again to Tali-shao, itself 7,800 feet high, the mountains on which it occupies a ledge being much higher. For slipperiness and general hazards this road baffles description. It leads up step by step, but not regular steps, not even as regularity goes in China.
”There are two small arched bridges in the journey. On the first I sit down and gaze far away down to the s.h.i.+ning river below, and must ascend again in the wake of my panting men.... Where the road is not natural rock, it is composed of huge fragments of stone in the rough state, smooth as the face of a mirror, haphazardly placed at such dangerous spots as to show that no idea of building was employed when the road was made. Sometimes one steps twenty inches from one stone to another, and were it not that the pathway is winding, although the turning and twisting makes unending toil, progress in the ascent would be impossible.... Mules are pa.s.sing me--puffing, panting, perspiring. Poor brutes! One has fallen, and in rolling has dragged another with him, and there the twain lie motionless on those horrid stones while the exhausted muleteers raise their loads to allow them slowly to regain their feet. There are some hundreds of them now on the hill.”
This description was made in shorthand notes in my notebook as I ascended. And I find again:--
”I have seen one or two places in Szech'wan like this, but the danger is incomparably less and the road infinitely superior. We pull and pant and puff up, up, up, around each bend, and my men can scarce go forward.
Huge pieces of rock have fallen from the cliff, and well-nigh block the way, and just ahead a landslip has carried off part of our course. The road is indescribably difficult because it is so slippery and one can get no foothold. My pony, carrying nothing but the little flesh which bad food has enabled him to keep, has been down on his knees four times, and once he rolled so much that I thought that he must surely go over the ravine.... Rocks overhang me as I pa.s.s. If one should drop!... But one does not mind the toil when he looks upon his men. In the midst of their intense labor my men's squeals of songs echo through the mountains as the perspiration runs down their uncovered backs; they chaff each other and utmost good feeling prevails. Poor Shanks is nearly done, but still laughs loudly.... A natural pathway more difficult of progress I cannot conceive anywhere in the world; and yet this is a so-called paved road, the road over which all the trade of the western part of this great province, all the imports from Burma, are regularly carried.
Should the road ever be discarded, that is if the railway ever comes over this route, only a long tunnel through the mountain would serve its purpose.... We have just sat down and fraternized with the man carrying the mails to Tali-fu, and now we are working steadily for the top, around corners where the breeze comes with delicious freshness. Here we are on a road now leading through a widening gorge to Shui-chai, and as I cross the narrow pa.s.s I see the river down below looking like a snake waiting for its prey.”
Roads are needed far more than railways.
Being hungry, we sat down at Shui-chai to feed on rice at a place where a man minded the baby while the woman attended to the food. Over my head hung sausages--my men swore that they were sausages, although for my life I could see no resemblance to that article of food--things of 1 1/2 inches in circ.u.mference and from 12 to 60 inches long, doubled up and hung up for sale over a bamboo to dry and harden in the sun. Hams there were, and dried bacon, and dirty brown biscuits, and uninviting pickled cabbage. By the side of the table where I sat was a wooden pun of unwashed rice bowls, against which lay the filthy domestic dog.
Outside, the narrow street was lined to the farthest point of vantage by kindly people, curious to see their own feeding implements in the incapable hands of the barbarian from the Western lands, and the conversation waxed loud and excited in general hazards regarding my presence in their city.
Stenches were rife; they nearly choked one.
A little boy yelled out to his mother in complaint of the food he had been given by a feminine twelve-year-old, his sister. The mother immediately became furious beyond all control. She s.n.a.t.c.hed a bamboo to belabor the girl, and in chasing her knocked over the pun of pots aforesaid. The place became a Bedlam. Men rose from their seats, and with their mouths full of rice expostulated in vainest mediation, waving their chopsticks in the air, and whilst the mother turned upon them in grossest abuse the daughter cleared out at the back of the premises. I left the irate parent brandis.h.i.+ng the bamboo; her voice was heard beyond the town.
But I was not allowed to leave the town. All the intellect of the place had a.s.sembled in one of the shops, into which I was gently drawn by the coat sleeve by a good-natured, well-dressed humpback, and all of the men a.s.sembled began an examination as to who the dignitary was, his honorable age, the number of the wives, sons and daughters he possessed, with inevitable questioning into the concerns of his patriarchal forbears. Accordingly I once again searched the archives of my elastic memory, and there found all information readily accessible, so that in a few moments, by the aid of Bailer's _Primer_, I had explained that I was a stranger within their gates, wafted thither by circ.u.mstances extraordinarily auspicious, and had satisfied them concerning my parentage, birthplace, prospects and pursuits, with introspective anecdotal references to various deceased members of my family tree. I did not tell them the truth--that I was a pilgrim from a far country, footsore and travel-soiled, that I had been well-nigh poisoned by their bad cooking and blistered with their bug-bites!
I rose to go. Like automotons, everyone in the company rose with me. The humpback again caught me, this time by both hands, and warmly pressed me to stay and ”uan” (”play”) a little. ”Great Brother,” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, ”why journeyest thou wearisomely towards Yung-ch'ang? Tarry here.” And he had pushed me back again into my chair, he had re-filled my teacup, and invited me to tell more tales of antiquarian relations.h.i.+p. And finally I was allowed to go. Greater hospitality could not have been shown me anywhere in the world.
The day had been hard going. We pursued our way unheedingly, as men knowing not whither we went; and at 4:00 p.m., fearing that we should not be able to make Ban-chiao, where we intended stopping, I decided to go no farther than Tali-shao. The evening was one of the happiest I spent in my journeys, although personal comfort was entirely lacking.
The place is made up of just a few hovels; people were hostile, and turned a deaf ear to my men's entreaties for shelter. For very helplessness I laughed aloud. I screamed with laughter, and the folk gathered to see me almost in hysterics. They soon began to smile, then to laugh, and seeing the effect, I laughed still louder, and soon had the whole village with tears of laughter making furrows down their unwashed faces, laughing as a pack of hyenas. At last a kind old woman gave way to my boy's persuasions, beckoning us to follow her into a house. Here we found a young girl of about nine summers in charge. It was all rare fun. There was nothing to eat, and so the men went one here and another there buying supplies for the night. Another cleared out the room, and made it a little habitable. The bull-dog coolie cooked the rice, Shanks boiled eggs and cut up the pork into small slices, another fed the pony, and then we fed ourselves.
In the evening a wood fire was kindled in the corner near my bed, and we all sat round on the mud floor--stools there were none--to tell yarns.
My confederates were out for a spree. We smoked and drank tea and yarned. Suddenly a stick would be thrust over my shoulder to the fire: it was merely a man's pipe going to the fire for a light. Chinese never use matches; it is a waste when there are so many fires about. If on the road a man wants to light his pipe, he walks into a home and gets it from the fire. No one minds. No notice is taken of the intrusion.
Everybody is polite, and the man may not utter a word. At a wayside food-shop a man may go behind to where the cooking is being conducted, poke his pipe into the embers, and walk out pulling at it, all as naturally as if that man were in his own house. An Englishman would have a rough time of it if he had to go down on his hands and knees and pull away at a pipe from a fire on the floor.
No father, no mother, no elder brother had the little girl in charge.
She was left without friends entirely, and a man must have been a hard man indeed were he to steel his heart against such a helpless little one. I called her to me, gave her a little present, and comforted her as she cried for the very knowledge that an Englishman would do a kind act to a little waif such as herself. She was in the act of giving back the money to me, when Lao Chang, with pleasant apt.i.tude, interposed, explained that foreigners occasionally develop generous moods, and that she had better stop crying and lock the money away. She did this, but the poor little mite nearly broke her heart.
Ban-chiao, which we reached early the next morning, is a considerable town, where most of the people earn their livelihood at dyeing. Those who do not dye drink tea and pa.s.s rude remarks about itinerant magnates, such as the author. I pa.s.sed over the once fine, rough-planked bridge at the end of the town.
In the evening we are at Yung-ch'ang. Here I saw for the first time in my life a man carrying a _cangue,_ and a horrible, sickening feeling seized me as I tramped through the densely-packed street and watched the poor fellow. The mob were evidently clamoring for his death, and were prepared to make sport of his torments. There is nothing more glorious to a brutal populace than the physical agony of a helpless fellow-creature, nothing which produces more mirth than the despair, the pain, the writhing of a miserable, condemned wretch.
Great drops of sweat bathed his brow, and as one, looked on one felt that he might pray that his hot and throbbing blood might rush in merciful full force to a vital center of his brain, so that he might fall into oblivion. The jeers and the mockery of a pitiless mult.i.tude seemed too awful, no matter what the man's crime had been.
Yung-ch'ang (5,500 feet) is as well known as any city in Far Western China. I stayed here for two days' rest, the only disturbing element being a wretch of a mother-in-law who made unbearable the life of her son's wife, a girl of about eighteen, who has probably by this time taken opium, if she has been able to get hold of it, and so ended a miserable existence.
On a return visit this mother-in-law, as soon as she caught sight of me, ran to fetch an empty tooth-powder tin, a small black safety pin, and two inches of lead pencil I had left behind me on the previous visit. I have made more than one visit to Yung-ch'ang, and the people have always treated me well.