Part 14 (1/2)
After leaving the train at Feng-chen, the journey was like all others in north China; slow progress with a cart over atrocious roads which are either a ma.s.s of sticky mud or inches deep in fine brown dust. We had four days of it before we reached the mountains but the trip was full of interest to us both, for along the road there was an ever-changing picture of provincial life. To Harry it was especially illuminating because he had spent nineteen years in south China and had never before visited the north. He began to realize what every one soon learns who wanders much about the Middle Kingdom--that it is never safe to generalize in this strange land.
Conditions true of one region may be absolutely unknown a few hundred miles away. He was continually irritated to find that his perfect knowledge of the dialect of f.u.kien Province was utterly useless. He was well-nigh as helpless as though he had never been in China, for the languages of the north and the south are almost as unlike as are French and German. Even our ”boys” who were from Peking had some difficulty in making themselves understood, although we were not more than two hundred miles from the capital.
Instead of hills thickly clothed with sword gra.s.s, here the slopes were bare and brown. We were too far north for rice; corn, wheat, and _kaoliang_ took the place of paddy fields. Instead of brick-walled houses we found dwellings made of clay like the ”adobe”
of Mexico and Arizona. Sometimes whole villages were dug into the hillside and the natives were cave dwellers, spending their lives within the earth.
All north China is spread with _loess_. During the Glacial Period, about one hundred thousand years ago, when in Europe and America great rivers of ice were descending from the north, central and eastern Asia seems to have suffered a progressive dehydration. There was little moisture in the air so that ice could not be formed.
Instead, the climate was cold and dry, while violent winds carried the dust in whirling clouds for hundreds upon hundreds of miles, spreading it in ever thickening layers over the hills and plains.
Therefore, the ”Ice Age” for Europe and America was a ”Dust Age” for northeastern Asia.
The inns were a constant source of interest to us both. Their s.p.a.cious courtyards contrasted strangely with the filthy ”hotels” of southern China. In the north all the traffic is by cart, and there must be accommodation for hundreds of vehicles; in the south where goods are carried by boats, coolies, or on donkey back, extensive compounds are unnecessary. Each night, wherever we arrived, we found the courtyard teeming with life and motion. Line after line of laden carts wound in through the wide swinging gates and lined up in orderly array; there was the steady ”crunch, crunch, crunch” of feeding animals, shouts for the _jonggweda_ (landlord), and good-natured chaffing among the carters. In the great kitchen, which is also the sleeping room, over blazing fires fanned by bellows, pots of soup and macaroni were steaming. On the two great _kangs_ (bed platforms), heated from below by long flues radiating outward from the cooking fires, dozens of _mafus_ were noisily sucking in their food or already snoring contentedly, rolled in their dusty coats.
Many kinds of folk were there; rich merchants enveloped in splendid sable coats and traveling in padded carts; peddlers with packs of trinkets for the women; wandering doctors selling remedies of herbs, tonics made from deerhorns or tigers' teeth, and wonderful potions of ”dragons' bones.” Perhaps there was a Buddhist priest or two, a barber, or a tailor. Often a professional entertainer sat cross-legged on the _kang_ telling endless stories or singing for hours at a time in a high-pitched, nasal voice, accompanying himself upon a tiny snakeskin violin. It was like a stage drama of concentrated Chinese country life.
Among this polyglot a.s.sembly perhaps there may be a single man who has arrived with a pack upon his back. He is indistinguishable from the other travelers and mingles among the _mafus_, helping now and then to feed a horse or adjust a load. But his ears and eyes are open. He is a brigand scout who is there to learn what is pa.s.sing on the road. He hears all the gossip from neighboring towns as well as of those many miles away, for the inns are the newspapers of rural China, and it is every one's business to tell all he knows. The scout marks a caravan, then slips away into the mountains to report to the leader of his band. The attack may not take place for many days. While the unsuspecting _mafus_ are plodding on their way, the bands are hovering on the outskirts among the hills until the time is ripe to strike.
I have learned that these brigand scouts are my best protection, for when a foreigner arrives at a country inn all other subjects of conversation lose their interest. Everything about him is discussed and rediscussed, and the scouts discover all there is to know.
Probably the only things I ever carry which a bandit could use or dispose of readily, are arms and ammunition. But two or three guns are hardly worth the trouble which would follow the death of a foreigner. The brigands know that there would be no sham battle with Chinese soldiers in that event, for the Legations at Peking have a habit of demanding reparation from the Government and insisting that they get it.
As a _raison d'etre_ for our trip Caldwell and I had been hunting ducks, geese, and pheasants industriously along the way, and not even the ”boys” knew our real destination.
We had looked forward with great eagerness to the Tai Hai, a large lake, where it was said that water fowl congregated in thousands during the spring and fall. We reached the lake the second night after leaving Feng-cheng. Darkness had just closed about us when we crossed the summit of a high mountain range and descended into a narrow, winding cut which eventually led us out upon the flat plains of the Tai Hai basin. While we were in the pa.s.s a dozen flocks of geese slipped by above our heads, flying very low, the ”wedges”
showing black against the starlit sky.
With much difficulty we found an inn close beside the lake and, after a late supper, snuggled into our fur bags to be lulled to sleep by that music most dear to a sportsman's heart, the subdued clamor of thousands of waterfowl settling themselves for the night.
At daylight we dressed hurriedly and ran to the lake sh.o.r.e. Harry took a station away from the water at the base of the hills, while I dropped behind three conical mounds which the natives had constructed to obtain salt by evaporation.
I was hardly in position before two geese came straight for me.
Waiting until they were almost above my head, I knocked down both with a right and left. The shots put thousands of birds in motion.
Flock after flock of geese rose into the air, and long lines of ducks skimmed close to the surface, settling away from sh.o.r.e or on the mud flats near the water's edge.
No more birds came near me, and in fifteen minutes I returned to the inn for breakfast. Harry appeared shortly after with only a mallard duck, for he had guessed wrong as to the direction of the flight, and was entirely out of the shooting.
When the carts had started at eight o'clock Harry and I rode down the sh.o.r.e of the lake to the south, with Chen to hold our horses.
The mud flats were dotted with hundreds of ruddy sheldrakes, their beautiful bodies glowing red and gold in the sunlight. A hundred yards from sh.o.r.e half a dozen swans drifted about like floating snow banks, and ducks and geese by thousands rose or settled in the lake.
We saw a flock of mallards alight in the short marsh gra.s.s and when I fired at least five hundred greenheads, yellow-nibs, and pintails rose in a brown cloud.
Crouched behind the salt mounds, we had splendid shooting and then rode on to join the carts, our ponies loaded with ducks and geese.
The road swung about to the north, and we saw geese in tens of thousands coming into the lake across the mountain pa.s.ses from their summer breeding grounds in Mongolia and far Siberia. Regiment after regiment swept past, circled away to the west, and dropped into the water as though at the command of a field marshal.
Although we were following the main road to Kwei-hua-cheng, a city of considerable importance not far from the mountains which contained the sheep, we had no intention of going there. Neither did we wish to pa.s.s through any place where there might be soldiers, so on the last day's march we left the highway and followed an unimportant trail to the tiny village of Wu-s.h.i.+-tu, which nestles against the mountain's base. Here we made our camp in a Chinese house and obtained two Mongol hunters. We had hoped to live in tents, but there was not a stick of wood for fuel. The natives burn either coal or gra.s.s and twigs, but these would not keep us warm in an open camp.
About the village rose a chaotic ma.s.s of saw-toothed mountains cut, to the east, by a stupendous gorge. We stood silent with awe, when we first climbed a winding, white trail to the summit of the mountain and gazed into the abysmal depths. My eye followed an eagle which floated across the chasm to its perch on a projecting crag; thence, down the sheer face of the cliff a thousand feet to the stream which has carved this colossal canon from the living rock.
Like a s.h.i.+ning silver tracing it twisted and turned, foaming over rocks and running in smooth, green sheets between vertical walls of granite. To the north we looked across at a splendid panorama of saw-toothed peaks and ragged pinnacles tinted with delicate shades of pink and lavender. Beneath our feet were slabs of pure white marble and great blocks of greenish feldspar. Among the peaks were deep ravines and, farther to the east, rolling uplands carpeted with gra.s.s. There the sheep are found.
We killed only one goral and a roebuck during the first two days, for a violent gale made hunting well-nigh impossible. On the third morning the sun rose in a sky as blue as the waters of a tropic sea, and not a breath of air stirred the silver poplar leaves as we crossed the rocky stream bed to the base of the mountains north of camp. Fifteen hundred feet above us towered a ragged granite ridge which must be crossed ere we could gain entrance to the gra.s.sy valleys beyond the barrier.