CHAPTER XXI.

A SUMMER TRIP TO CHINESE TIBET.[2]

Drying Prayerbooks Mountain.--Boys' Paradise.--Lolo Women.--Salt-carriers.--Great Rains.--Brick-tea Carriers.--Suspension Bridge.--Granite Mountains.--Tibetan Bridge.--Lamas.--Tibetan Women.--Caravanserai at Tachienlu.--Beautiful Young Men.--_Lamaserai._--Prayers?--Fierce Dogs.--Dress.--Trying for a Boat.

There are many summer trips that are a joy in the remembering, but a trip to Chinese Tibet had never fallen to the lot of any European woman before. And it was the more delightful, perhaps, because we never thought of anything of the kind when we started. But there is a drawback to living on a mountain-summit that it is such a climb to come back again when you go out; and our quarters on Mount Omi were not too comfortable! Only one small room for living and sleeping in, like a back room in a Canadian log-hut, and without a window to open, makes one restless after a time. So we thought we would gently stroll on to another sacred mountain, whose flat top was a very striking feature in the landscape. And we went down into what is called the Wilderness, where there are wild cattle and wild men, and for about a week wandered on, passing along by the boundary of the unconquered Lolos, and up the most magnificent ravine I have seen or can imagine, down which a torrent had swept but a week before from the Sai King, or Drying Prayerbooks Mountain, to which we were bound, drowning twenty-six people in one hamlet alone.

Climbing the Sai King was rather a formidable affair. But for the guidance of a young priest, returning from one of those begging excursions by means of which he had bought the whole mountain-summit, we never should have reached the top before darkness set in; and in the dark no man would dare to move upon the Sai King. For not only are there all manner of wild beasts, but the path leads along the narrow edge of a _col_, and then up staircases, till at last you arrive at three ladders, one of twenty-seven rungs, before you find yourself at the top of the awful precipices that girdle it all round, in a sort of park with firs and rhododendrons, the latter at least twenty feet high, moss hanging from them in garlands, as well as a foot deep upon the ground. It is a veritable boys' paradise (and as such I have described it at length in the _Nineteenth Century_ of January, 1896), with squirrels and deer and birds innumerable, large very sweet white strawberries in the greatest profusion, raspberries abundant, currants plentiful, mushrooms in bushels. There are glorious views from the brink of precipices, when you can break your way through the rhododendrons and look over, hearing the rivers murmuring some five or six thousand feet below, and seeing the Tibetan summits like a sea of mountains.

But I have mentioned nearly all there was to eat on the Sai King Shan, and our room was almost more cracks than room, so that we shivered inside it even when almost blinded by wood smoke. And when the wind howled and the rain poured in like a waterspout, it did occur to us to wonder what we should do if one of the ladders were carried away. Besides, by dint of thinking about it, the going down those ladders became increasingly terrible. I had paused in the middle of coming up, and, looking between my feet, had seen the mists moving and the cataract falling four thousand feet sheer below me, and through a rift in the clouds had caught a sight of the great precipice to the north, greater even than that on Omi. We found ourselves wondering whether it would be wise to look down and gaze on everything, if clear, when descending. When we had got as far as that, it seemed more prudent to go down at once. And it was then we saw from the bottom the great north precipice, that is the most glorious east end of a world's cathedral. Looked at from where one will, one could not but feel in comparison how poor was a temple made with hands. Yet there in the valley six thousand feet below was the chapel and priests' house, built by their own hands with their own money by the people of the wholly Christian village of Tatientze. And here, close to the summit of the mountain, where a cord used to hang over the precipice to get down by, was the cave where two Buddhist sisters, till last year, lived seven years "to purify their souls." There was a little platform in front of the cave where they could stand and look out upon the glories of the Creator's handiwork, if so minded. Did they stand there, those two sisters? Did they worship there? Did they in the end purify their souls? Or did they find it was a mistake, thus retiring from their kind? Their father used to send them rice, which was let down to them by the cord, and a stream poured over the precipice in a sort of waterfall hard by. And they only went away the year before because the tidings had come of their mother's death.

Again we wandered on, or rather walked hard, for one day across the mountains, till we came to a village full of conquered Lolos, women fearless and frank as American girls, riding and walking with a grace I have never seen equalled; their men with elaborate ceremonial of politeness, but, alas! too much given to the delights of drink. We would gladly have learned more about them. But now we heard six days more would bring us to Tachienlu, in Chinese Tibet, and all our following were wild to get there, and to get fur coats, the Chinaman's ambition. As for ourselves, we wondered if it were worth while to go on, but we were certainly in no hurry as yet to get back to Chungking. Our last news from there was that it was 100° in the shade, and cholera worse than ever. Thirty thousand people, we learnt afterwards, died of it in the course of the summer, and it was worse still at Chengtu, the capital of the province, by which we had purposed returning.

Not at all particularly anxious for fur coats, not at all distinctly remembering what we had read of Tachienlu, we decided to go on if we could get ponies, and thus decide for ourselves if it were worth while. But now came the difficulty. With ponies grazing all round, we never could succeed in hiring one. Certainly they were very small, and we very big by comparison. Every one told us we must get ponies at Fulin. So to Fulin we pushed on. But this was thirty-six miles, over any number of passes, one seven thousand feet high, so we were obliged to stop a little short of it that night. Next day, however, we got there for breakfast. We had formed high expectations with regard to Fulin. For six days we had seen men staggering along under crushing weights of salt, two hundred pounds to each man, too much exhausted by their burdens even to look up. And they had all been bound for Fulin. People may not want to be missionaries in China, but I do not think any European could travel there and not wish to undo the heavy burdens, and I have seen no beasts of burthen whose sufferings have so moved my heart to pity as these salt-carriers. Salt is such a hard, uncompromising load, and it was so pitiful to notice how they had to protect it from being melted by the sweat that streamed down their poor backs. Then the passes were so high, and the paths so narrow and so wild, and the heat so great. It seemed as if any human heart must break, if it contemplated beforehand all it would have to undergo to carry one load of salt from Kiating to Fulin. Then, however often we calculated it, what they were paid, how many days they spent upon the journey, how many days going empty-handed back, we never could make out that the poor carriers were any the better off at the end of all their exertions. Of course they must be, or they would not make them; but it must be by a miserable pittance indeed. It appeared now, too, that Fulin, though well-to-do enough, was but the distributing centre for two very rich prosperous valleys and the country beyond, and there were no ponies to be had there. Later on in the day, however, when we really did succeed in hiring capital ponies, we no longer wondered that it had been difficult to get any for such a journey as we were undertaking. For what road there had ever been had been carried away in several places, and so had the bridges. The mountains looked exactly as if, according to the Chinese saying, a dragon had really turned round at the top, and clawed and scored and gashed the mountain-sides. All the people were going to market, as they always are in Szechuan, and in one place was a crowd busy remaking a bridge in order to get over, whilst farther on three of the strongest men of the company had stripped, and, holding hands, were cautiously trying fording. Then the others followed their example, and for a moment or two were carried off their legs by the furious stream. The hills were terrible, and, clambering up one, a mule in our company failed to establish its footing, and, turning over and over, reached the bottom dead. Just the moment before I had been wondering whether my tiny pony could make the final effort necessary to attain the top of that hill.

After Nitou, which proclaims on a stone tablet that it is the western boundary of the black-haired or Chinese race, Tibet seems to begin. We climbed a pass nine thousand feet high, then descended again for five miles, always in uninhabited country, full of flowers. Especially lovely in that September weather was the small but very luxuriant deep purple convolvulus twining round the acacia mimosas. Just as we passed out of the mist--it was unfortunately always misty at the tops of the passes--we met a Lama quite resplendent in crimson and old gold, and then passed troops of men carrying brick tea. One man carried seventeen bars, each weighing twenty pounds; others fifteen, thirteen, or eleven. A boy of fourteen, of ten, even one of seven, was carrying, the latter four half-bars, poor wee child! Just as we were sorrowing over the children, trees glorious with coral flowers flashed upon our sight. And on the second day after leaving Nitou we once more came upon the great Tung river, by the side of which we had before travelled for one whole afternoon, separated only by it from the unconquered Lolo country. Never a boat nor raft upon the Tung, except one to take people back into Lololand from a great theatrical performance, at which all the countryside had mustered. And once we saw a boat by the side of it, but hauled up high and dry. It was a round skin-boat, for all the world just like the coracles the ancient Britons used. We came also upon a terrible gully, descending by a severe slant directly into the river. A shower of stones was almost continuously rattling down, mixed with a little water; every now and then the shower slackened somewhat, and then first one and then another large stone would come down, wildly bounding from side to side; after that, the shower would be stronger than ever. When the erratic blocks came bounding down, no one put his feet in the footprints left by some one else across the shifting torrent of stones, that here constituted the whole of the great brick-tea road, the great main road between Peking and Lassa. At other times they paused behind a projecting rock, to watch for a good opportunity, and then ran for it. And the usual thing seemed to be to laugh. Our little dog had its misgivings in the middle, and paused, to be half kicked, half thrown across. For it was an anxious moment for our carrying coolies and the heavily laden brick-tea men. Meanwhile, our cook amused himself by pitching stones into the air, and it was eerie to observe that, wherever thrown, and however often they bounded, they all ended by falling into the deep, swift waters of the unnavigable Tung.

The next wonder was the celebrated bridge, three hundred feet long, and with hardly any drop in the nine iron chains of which it is composed. Planks were laid loosely upon the chains, starting up at each of the ponies' steps, and the whole bridge swayed like a ship at sea. Two guardians of the bridge at once rushed forward, and placed their arms under mine to support me across, taking for granted that I should be frightened. But looked upon as a yacht pitching and tossing, the bridge really did not make bad weather of it, so I preferred to walk alone and to notice how sea-sick our coolies looked. Just at that point the Tung vividly recalled the Rhine at Basle, but with probably a greater volume of water. That afternoon the scenery began to be as wild and gloomy as we had anticipated, granite mountains increasing in size and narrowing in upon us, the road taking sudden drops down precipitous gorges of four or five hundred feet, and then at once up again. There were prickly pears all about, and pomegranate-trees in hedges, the air full of thyme and peppermint and aromatic scents. Tibetan villages, just like the pictures, were visible on the far left bank of the Tung,--two-storied houses, with tiny holes for windows, and door uncomfortably high up, so that no one could get in, if once the entrance ladder were drawn up; roofs set so as apparently to let in a free current of air. Not a tree visible, not a man moving: there never is in the pictures! Impossible, however, to get across the Tung to look at them; and when isolated houses were visible on our side, it was always in inaccessible eyries.

The little pony I rode, not one of those excellent ponies we hired the first day for a few hours only, had come down twice on both knees with me on its back. It was evident its little legs might have been stronger. And as I rode along these granite precipices, my hands were hot with terror, until at last I could bear no more. For some time beforehand I had been looking at the road in front, curving round two headlands--granite precipice above, granite precipice below--the road overarched by the rock, and had wondered how all our party would get by. "We met one hundred and fifty people coming from that direction before our luncheon," I said to myself. "I know it because I counted them. And if anything, I left out some, when the road was too alarming. They must all have got by alive! And all these brick-tea men now coming along with us, of course they are all intending to get by alive. It can't be so bad!" But it was of no use! I could not ride along that road, with the pony slipping and stumbling among the stones, and sliding down the little descents at the corners with both its hind feet together. Yet the road was good for those parts, being all of granite and painfully chiselled out; so the pony-boy, a most lively youth of fifteen, was greatly shocked at my dismounting.

We slept that night where the Lu joins the Tung, cutting a granite mountain in half to do so, the half that is left standing towering some three or four thousand feet above our heads. The Lu is the fullest glacier stream I have ever seen. It has a great deal more water to carry than the Thames at Richmond, and sometimes it is compressed into a width of six yards, with a tremendous fall, coming straight, we are told, from a lake at the foot of the great glacier we saw first with such delight from the summit of sacred Omi, about a hundred miles away as the crow flies. All day we rode or walked up the defile, that would have been too solemn but for this rollicking glacier stream tumbling head over heels all the way down it, with side cataracts leaping down, equally overfull of foaming water, equally in hot haste to reach the Tung. The road was all the way so bad that at last my only surprise was to find that there were places the ponies could not manage, and that on one occasion they had, twice in five minutes, to ford a stream with the water well up to my feet, as they stumbled among the big boulders in order to avoid a bit of road that all the heavily laden brick-tea men had managed. It seemed too absurd that those ponies could not, they had done so much already. But at last the pony-boy waved his arm, as if to say, "There's Tachienlu! I've got you there at last! You can't get into trouble now, I think, along what we call the bit of smooth road in front. And I wash my hands of you!"

We rode on, past our last Tibetan bridge. How often they had haunted my childhood's dreams! And now I saw a woman seat herself astride the stick hanging from the cord drawn taut across the stream, and, resting one arm upon a very smooth piece of bamboo that runs along the cord, hold with the other hand a series of loops of cords hanging from it, and allow herself to be pulled across. I longed to do likewise, and went the length of seating myself on the stick; but the foaming torrent below meant certain death if one could not hold on, nor did I know at all what reception the Tibetan men on the other side might give me, so I got off again. People say it is easy enough to go as far as the slope of the cord is downwards, but very hard to pull oneself up the other side, and that just at the centre the impulse to let go is almost overmastering. We passed flagstaffs with lettered pieces of cloth hanging from them inscribed with prayers, passed rocks with prayers chiselled on their smooth surfaces, into the little frontier town at the junction of three valleys, with granite mountains hemming it in all round, one terminating in a sharp little granite pyramid, quite a feature in the view, and in what looked exactly like a fortress with three big cannon pointed in different directions.

We had already met one most exciting party of Tibetans, the men fine-looking, one even more than that, the women rosy and pleasant-faced and very short-skirted, but evidently all thinking it an excellent joke not to let me look at them, and such fleet mountaineers that, though I ran, I could not keep up with them, and they were all out of sight, merrily laughing, before we had half seen them. But now at Tachienlu far more wonderful people became visible. It was as if every wild tribe on the borders of China were represented, and a piece of the garment of each patched into the garment of every other. And in and out among them strode the Lamas, right arm and shoulder bared, like Roman senators in dull-red togas, their arms folded and their attitude defiant. A beggar passed singing, with a face like Irving's, only glorified. He had bare feet, but his face was sublime. Then strode by what looked like a tall Highlander, with a striped garment of many colours draped round him, boots of soft woollen coming to the knee, and edged with a coarse stuff of brilliant red and yellow. Next, two wild-looking men, with blue hats, that were hats and hoods all in one, slouched upon their heads, a red disc in the centre of each, their most luxuriant hair, in innumerable very fine plaits, twisted round and round, and fastened at one side with large red and yellow rings. Tibetan women, with fine, rather Irish features, black eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, were smiling on us from the doorsteps, their hair plaited with a red cord, and twisted in a most becoming coronal round their heads. They had large silver earrings with red coral drops, red cloth collars fastened by large silver clasps, always a lump of coral in the centre of the middle one, and a large turquoise in that on either side. They had silver châtelaines hanging from their waists, though often only a needlebook on the châtelaine, large silver bracelets and strings of coral beads on their arms, and their fingers covered with enormous rings.

Every one looked at us and smiled. Could anything be more different from the reception we were accustomed to in a Chinese city? Every one looked at us as if to say, "Are not you glad to have got here?" We felt more and more glad every minute, but a little bewildered too. It was all so strange; the streets were so full of corners and of strange-looking people, all looking and smiling at us. And they seemed to go on for ever. When were we going really to arrive?

But when we reached the caravanserai, or inn, where Baber stayed and Mr. Rockhill and all the foreigners, where Prince Henry of Orleans and Mr. Pratt were shut up as it were, the place looked so forbidding we hesitated to enter, till reassured by hearing the strident tones of our Chinese butler inside. The rooms actually upstairs--after we had gone up the staircase, embedded in filth and hair--were a most agreeable surprise, almost as good as an attic in a London East-End lodging-house at first sight. Buttered tea was served at once, and before many minutes were over the lady of the inn, a very handsome Tibetan, had invited me to a little repast in her private room: tea buttered, of course--and really very good--Tibetan cheese like very fresh cream-cheese, and _tsamba_, a kind of barley-meal, and excellent when kneaded into a ball with buttered tea. Lamas strode in and out of the courtyard, and stared, swinging praying-wheels. All manner of men and women looked in. It was quite enough to sit at the window and look down at the kaleidoscope below, for every one came in and gave us a glance. And that was just what we wanted to do to them. But they would not sell their praying-wheels, and the Lamas would not let me look at the amulets which they carry on their breasts in square cases, sometimes crusted with turquoises. Surely never was there a people more bejewelled. The dirtiest man we saw would have a jewel or two stuck in his hair, and as likely as not a huge ring on his finger.

There were five flagstaffs hung with prayers on our inn, besides a long cord, hung with them, stretched across the roof. People were muttering "Om Mani Padmi Hum" as they passed along the street; and as the last sound at night was the Lamas' trumpets calling to prayers, so we were roused before dawn by the men in the room below us reciting continuously "Om Mani Padmi Hum" over and over again for two hours at least. One began to say it oneself: "The jewel is in the lotus,"--a pretty saying enough, which might mean anything. But, alas! we could see no more of the Tibetans at their devotions. At the first _lamaserai_ we visited the temple doors were closed, and the Lamas signified by gestures that no key could be found to open them. They were not uncivil there, although rather peremptorily forbidding me to use my eyeglass till they had themselves examined it, to see what effect it might have on the brilliantly coloured pictures in the temple porch. They also forbade me to photograph, yet allowed me to do so in the end, and acquiesced in my going upstairs to get a better place for the camera. There I saw that the door of each Lama's room, giving on the colonnade running round the courtyard, was locked and padlocked with a padlock of such portentous size as to suggest many thoughts. Only one door downstairs had been open, where a very small Lama was repeating his lessons out of what looked like a most beautifully written and illuminated book; for, the paper in the window being torn out, we could see all over the room, which looked like a particularly dirty, dilapidated little stable. But when I asked the small boy's leave to go in, wishing to examine his book, he sprang to the doorway, and the attitude into which he threw himself, forbidding me to enter, was superb. It said "Avaunt, Satanas!" and indicated that all the lightnings of heaven would fall, if I took but one step forward. And, though amused, I could not but admire the little boy for so pluckily standing his ground. But when another little Lama, on our coolies somewhat roughly ordering him to keep clear of the camera, threw himself into an attitude of boxing, it seemed so ridiculous that, just to test him, I laughed, then clenched my fist, and made as if I would fight too; on which he laughed heartily, showing he could quite understand a joke.

Most of the buildings at Tachienlu appeared in the last stage of decay, especially the temples. One was so full of birds' droppings that we imagined they could never have been cleared away since the day it was built. Two fierce dogs were chained across the threshold; and though I found I could just squeeze myself in out of reach of either, I noticed none of our Chinese coolies cared to follow. Tibetan dogs are noted for their fierceness, and are one of the great difficulties of travel in Tibet. There were boys burning something that had a horrible smell in the great incense-burner in front, while a priest, attended by a boy, was beating a gong and chanting within. This was the only sign of worship we came across. But the passageway between the back and front temple was all hung with oblong bits of paper, on which prayers were written. One day we met two very wild-looking Tibetans, each bent under a load of three huge pieces of slate inscribed with prayers; and presently we met a string of Tibetan women, bent more than double under loads of five, six, or even as many as seven bars of brick tea, each weighing twenty pounds. The world often seems rather topsy-turvy to a traveller.

A dark door like a house door, a dark passage merely partitioned off from a shop, then an alley-way that seemed to be used as a slaughter-house, led up to Kwanyin's temple, a very conspicuous and rather coquettish building on a hill overlooking the town. When we got there, followed by a crowd of the usual tiresome little Chinese boys, and also by two most beautiful Tibetans, on pushing open the door we found numbers of neglected prayers hanging from the rafters, old broken beams lying in a heap, a staircase so rickety that no one liked to go up it, and, at the top of it, a barred door, sufficiently saying "Not at home." One of the Tibetans had such a quantity of hair, and such ringlets, that one of our coolies, with Chinese insolence, touched it to see if it was real. The Tibetan was elderly, and evidently well seasoned to the world, and only laughed at the liberty. But his companion--a beautiful youth, with a face of that feminine type that one only sees now in old books of beauty, arched eyebrows delicately pencilled, aquiline nose, features all too delicate for this workaday world--blushed vividly, and looked so unutterably pained that I longed to apologise, only we lacked a mutual language. He had himself a yet more inordinate quantity of hair, some of which must have been horse-hair, frizzed and raised so as to simulate the high pompadour style; but I think the ringlets that shadowed his translucent complexion must have been his own.

Then we went on to the great _lamaserai_, some distance from the town upon the Lassa road. We walked between walls of prayer-slates on either hand, with prayers streaming to the wind on all the hilltops and on every point of vantage; and having crossed the Chinese parade-ground, with a very beautiful weeping-willow and an avenue of specially fine alders of a local variety, saw a temple all golden points and golden balls outside, and attached to it a long melancholy building rather like a workhouse, but for tall, narrow baskets in all the windows ablaze with Tibetan Glory--a brilliant orange marigold. Several little boy Lamas sat on the doorstep playing with a dead rat, which they were pulling about by a string, one little crimson-clad boy screaming with delight at the dead creature's antics. We had just been warned to take up our little dog because of the fierce dogs inside, and the little Lamas now laughed and cried out at the sight of a dog being carried.

There were many coloured cylinders on each side of the entrance gate--prayer-wheels--and it was curious to notice the expression of one of these children, when, thinking I was imitating him, I turned one of the cylinders the wrong way. He shrieked, and the expression of concentrated rage in his knotted eyebrows was a revelation to me. I hastened to turn the cylinder the right way with a smile, and the little fellow was pacified, while all the children set off running--as it appeared afterwards--to announce our coming, and have their own fierce dogs shut up.

We found ourselves in a very large courtyard--a long parallelogram--handsomely, indeed gorgeously, painted. Opposite to the entrance gate were the closed doors of the temple, with no way of opening them visible, brilliantly coloured pictures on either side of them. The summits of the temple were so heavily gilded as to look like solid gold, so also were two deer about the size of collie dogs, sitting one on each side of a large golden disc, curiously worked, placed on the temple front above the door. On the top of the temple were several of those curious Tibetan ornaments of which I neither know the name nor the purpose. Two looked like very tall, narrow, golden flower-pots, handsomely ornamented; two like sticks with ropes hanging down all round them, girt transversely with white paper bands. Could they possibly be meant for state umbrellas? The cords were black, and looked as if made of hair. The front of the temple was of stone, painted red, but the top of it looked as if it consisted of billets of wood all laid close together, of a dull red-brown. There was a brilliantly painted colonnade, with outside staircase leading at intervals to an upper verandah, all round the courtyard, excepting just where stood the temple; and to its left a specially gaudy house. In front of this latter was again a collection of black hanging ropes, and on the top of this a _human skull_!

While I was noticing all these details, Lamas all in crimson, each with the right arm bare, continued to troop into the courtyard and into the verandah above, from which at first they looked down, making eyes and smiling the Lama's smile upon a woman. But suddenly, as a loud voice, with the tone of authority, became audible in the distance, the smiles vanished, and the Lamas stood round quite expressionless with folded arms. I had just stepped forward to examine more carefully that human skull, startled by the horror of it amidst all the gorgeous colouring around, when the blood rushed to my heart, as there came a sound, and close upon the sound two large Tibetan dogs sprang out through an inner gateway and made straight for me.

It passed through my mind at once, that it was useless to try to quell Tibetan dogs, as one so often quells Chinese dogs. I remembered that they are said never to let go, and I knew now at once that voice in authority had been ordering the dogs to be loosed. Sick with terror, I yet thrust the iron point of my alpenstock into the jaws of the foremost dog; but the fierce creature, although with such tremendous leverage against it, tore it from my grasp, and shook the long stick in its teeth as if it had been a straw. My husband sprang forward to the rescue, though still holding our own little dog in his arms. One of our coolies, a really brave, strong ex-soldier, followed him, and together the two managed somehow to beat off the dogs, and then we all ran for it. My recollection is that to the last not a Lama--and there must have been at least forty of them standing round, all draped in crimson--moved a muscle even of his countenance. We had bowed politely on entering, and asked leave; but we did not bow as we came away thus hurriedly to the sound of more and more dogs baying in the distance.

There were shrines full of little clay pyramids covered with images of Buddha; there were more and finer prayer-slates by the principal entrance, by which we came out. But whether the Lamas ever pray, God knows, I don't!

As we passed back into the town again, from the shop from which a handsome woman, beautifully bejewelled, had gone out that morning with her handmaid to do her own washing in the pure glacier stream, we heard a jolly laugh ring out from the same jovial Lama we had left there talking to my handsome friend as we passed out.

The Roman Catholic priests here say that the people believe in nothing except their Lamas, and we feel a little inclined to think, if they believe in them, it is no wonder that they believe in nothing else. Whatever any one may think of missions in China--and I am grieved as well as greatly surprised to find how little interest people generally take in them--every one must wish well to missionaries to Tibet; for the priesthood must have an extraordinarily paralysing effect, that this physically gifted people, still with princes of their own, should have sunk under Chinese control, in spite of the impregnable natural fastnesses of their mountains, and the defence established by their climate. Whilst we were there, in September, the thermometer varied from 56° to 60°, but the winds blew so keenly off the glaciers that many people were wearing heavy furs, and the price of them had already gone up.

Buying, indeed, we found most exhausting work at Tachienlu. At home, when one feels like buying, one goes to the shops; but the people who have anything to sell drop in at Tachienlu from early morning till late, late at night, merry rosy little maidens with a keen eye to business, or wonderfully withered old crones. They ask any price at first; then just as they are going away say quietly, "What would you like to give?" after which they stand out by the hour for an additional half-rupee for themselves, to give which a rupee has to be carefully cut in two. An aged chieftain, with a most beautiful prayer-wheel and rosary, both of which, he says, are heirlooms and cannot be sold, brings a beautifully embroidered red leather saddle-cloth for sale; while a Tibetan from the interior brings first a Lama's bell, then cymbals, then woollen clothes of soft, rich colours, and little serving-maids appear with cast-off clothes, expecting us to buy them all. It is interesting to notice how very fashionable is a Tibetan lady's dress--a sleeveless gown, that opens down the front like a tea-gown, a skirt with box pleats so tiny and so near together as to be almost on the top of one another, carefully fastened down so as to lie quite flat, and lined at the bottom with a broad false hem of coarse linen, so as to avoid unnecessary weight. Yet even as it is, the weight of this silk skirt is prodigious. Over this is worn a jacket, and over this an apron girt round rather below the waist with a variety of girdles. But it is hard to say what a Tibetan girl really does wear, for the seventeen-year-old daughter of the inn, finding herself rather coming to pieces, began rectifying her toilette in my presence, and I lost count of the garment below garment that appeared in the process, all girdled rather below the waist. The finish of the toilette, even in ordinary life, seems to be an unlimited supply of jewellery and dirt, the finger-nails, besides being deeply grimed, being also tinged with red. The men wear turquoises in their hair, and often one gigantic earring, besides rosaries and big amulet-cases. And the general effect is so brilliant one rather loses sight of the dirt. But indeed, after travelling through China, it would be difficult to be much struck by dirt anywhere.

It is very trying that they have such a very quick perception of a camera. I have spent hours with a detective half hidden behind a pile of woollens at our window, and tried every expedient. But they are said to think the photographer gets their soul from them, and then has two to enjoy, whilst they themselves are left soulless. At last, however, after a great deal of coaxing, six Tibetan women stood up in a row, encouraged to do so by the elder daughter of the inn, who is married--though probably after the Tibetan fashion--to a rich Yunnan merchant, who occupied one wing of the courtyard, filling it with beautiful wild men, but himself absorbed in his opium-pipe. I was afraid to place them, or do anything beyond asking the aged chieftain to leave off turning his prayer-wheel for the one second while I took them, although I longed to arrange them a little, and was disappointed that the daughter of the inn had not put on any of the grand clothes and jewellery she had exhibited to me.

The last day or two the yaks were coming into town in droves to fetch the brick tea away. All those we saw were black, although the yaks' tails for sale were white. They were rather like Highland cattle for size, and seemed very quiet, although looking so fierce, with long bushy manes and tails, and long shaggy hair down their front legs. The last day we were at Tachienlu we got a perfectly clear view of the snowy mountains and glacier to the south, as we stood outside the north gate beyond the magnificent alders there. All that day we rode down the narrow granite defile that leads up from the Tung, and then we heard it really would be possible to cross the river and see the Tibetan villages on its left bank, if we could walk for two miles higher up to where there was a boat.

My husband was suffering from neuralgia, but he very heroically consented to my going without him, a proceeding which our Chinese servant so highly condemned, that he became almost violent before I started early next day with all four of the _yamen_ runners, sent by the Chinese Government to protect us, and one of our soldier coolies to protect me from the _yamen_ runners. As the Tung would not be passable again till we reached the city of the great chain bridge, I had thus a long day to look forward to through unknown country; and knowing how the Tibetans feel about photography, there was a certain amount of anxiety about the proceeding. But what a disappointment awaited me! We walked the longest two miles ever human being walked, till we came to the place where the boat was on the _other_ side of the river. The coolie had run on ahead to hail it. But in spite of his shouting no one moved in the village opposite. We had been warned that nothing would induce the people to come across with the boat till they had breakfasted, so we sat down and waited.

We saw a man and boy come out to till the ground. The boy lay on his back, and looked at us and sang to himself. All four _yamen_ runners shouted, and waved strings of cash. A shepherd came out with a herd of goats, another with cows and goats. We judged by the smoke that breakfasts were preparing. We even saw one man come out upon his flat roof with what we decided to be an after-breakfast pipe. We thought he must come now. Yes! Surely there was some one coming to the boat! No, it was a man with a basket on his back, evidently wanting to cross to our side. He sat down and waited. Presently another man came out and sat down beside him. They became quite happy, those two--setting to at once in what probably is a never-ending occupation for them, hunting 'mid their rags for vermin! Two other moving bundles of rags came slowly down and joined them--one apparently a man, the other looking rather like a woman. They also sat and hunted! At last the boy moved; he went to the village, we thought, to call some one. Our hopes rose. All my men shouted together. A man came to the water's edge! Another! They looked at us. They looked at the boat. They felt the boat, but they did not push it into the water; and they went away. We were in despair. We made feints of going, and then came back again. At last there was nothing for it but to go really. The beggars in their rags on the other side got uneasy then. They even shouted to us, begging us to stop; but it was of no use. Hours afterwards, as we coasted a granite headland, we saw that boat still high and dry. I would so gladly have risked my life in it.

But now, besides retracing our long two miles--now under a burning sun--we had twenty-two miles to get over in order to join the rest of our party and get shelter for the night. It was a comfort to find some more coolies with lanterns sent to meet us before we had to cross the chain bridge, for there are often planks missing in it and others with great holes in them. We went across in a phalanx. I held on to the coolie on my left, he reached an arm out to secure the man with the light, and the coolie on my other side supported my elbow. It seemed we got on best when we all went in step together, although I should not have thought so. On arriving, we found that, when our carrying coolies had crossed, some _yamen_ runners had attacked them, and in the scuffle that ensued the fur coat of the coolie, who had gone with me, had been stolen out of a basket. So my husband was just starting for the _yamen_ to tell the tale. "I know all about it," said the magistrate, "and it is quite true they were _yamen_ runners, who acted very wrongly. You want them punished? Behold!" And the curtain behind him was drawn back, and there were two men with their heads in _cangues_. But the coolie from whom the coat had been stolen stood up before the magistrate, and stoutly maintained those were not the men. "How could you know in the confusion?" asked the magistrate. "Can you identify the men? If so, and these are not the right ones, I will punish the others also."

So there we were, but not the fur coat! What a comfort it was, though, to rest after that long, hot day! And how luxurious to be carried next day in a sedan-chair along the beautiful banks of the swift-flowing Tung! Then six days' travelling, against time now, along the great brick-tea road, through scenes of varying beauty, among gigantic ferns and waxen begonias nestling into the walls, past long ranges of black-and-white farm-buildings, shadowed by large, beautiful shade-trees; a day and a half on a bamboo raft down the exceedingly pretty but turbulent Ya, with the waves washing up to our knees at all the bad rapids; after which five days down the conjoined rivers Ya, Tung, and Yangtse; and then home in Chungking again, after the most adventurous and by far the most varied and interesting summer outing that it has yet fallen to my lot to make.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Reproduced from the _Cornhill Magazine_ by the kind permission of the Editor.