No doubt engineering may succeed in removing some of the obstacles and in minifying the dangers of this pa.s.sage. Steam, too, may supply another mode of traction to take the place of these teams of men.

A still revolution is in prospect, namely a ship ca.n.a.l or railway.

The latter, perhaps, might be made to lift the junks bodily out of the water and transport them beyond the rapids. Two cities, however, would suffer somewhat by this change in the mode of navigation, namely, Ichang at the foot and Chungking at the head of the rapids.

The latter is the chief river port of Szechuen, a province having four times the average area.

The great province of Szechuen, if it only had the advantages of a seacoast, would take the lead in importance. As it is, it is deemed sufficiently important, like Chihli, to have a viceroy of its own. The name signifies the "four rivers," and the province has as many ranges of mountains. One of them, the Omeshan, is celebrated for its beauty and majesty. The mountains give the province a great variety of climate, and the rivers supply means of transportation and irrigation. Its people, too, are more uniform in language and character than those of most other regions. Their language partakes of the Northern mandarin. Near the end of the Ming dynasty the whole population is said to have been destroyed in the fratricidal wars of that sanguinary period. The population accordingly is comparatively spa.r.s.e, and the cities are said to present a new and prosperous aspect. Above Szechuen [Page 52]

lie the two provinces of Kweichau and Yunnan, forming one viceroyalty under the name of Yunkwei.

Kweichau has the reputation of being the poorest province in China, with a very spa.r.s.e population, nearly one-half of whom are aborigines, called _shans_, _lolos_, and _miaotzes_.

Yunnan (signifying not "cloudy south," but "south of the cloudy mountains") is next in area to Szechuen. Its resources are as yet undeveloped, and it certainly has a great future. Its climate, if it may be said to have one, is reputed to be unhealthful, and among its hills are many deep gorges which the Chinese say are full of _chang chi_, "poisonous gases" which are fatal to men and animals--like the Grotto del Cane in Italy. But these gorges and cliffs abound in better things also. They are rich in unexploited coal measures and they contain also many mines of the purest copper ore. The river that washes its borders here bears the name of Kinsha, the river of "golden sands." Some of its rivers have the curious peculiarity of flowing the reverse way, that is, to the west and south instead of toward the eastern sea. The Chinese accordingly call the province "Tiensheng" the country of the "converse streams."

Within the borders of Yunnan there are said to be more than a hundred tribes of aborigines all more or less akin to those of Kweichau and Burma, but each under its own separate chief. Some of them are fine-looking, vigorous people; but the Chinese describe them as living in a state of utter savagery. Missionaries, however, have recently begun work for them; and we may hope that, as for the Karens of [Page 53]

Burma, a better day will soon dawn on the Yunnan aborigines.

The French, having colonies on the border, are naturally desirous of exploiting the provinces of this southern belt, and China is intensely suspicious of encroachment from that quarter.

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CHAPTER XI

NORTHWESTERN PROVINCES

_Shansi--Shensi--Earliest Known Home of the Chinese--Kansuh_

Of the three northwestern provinces, the richest is Shansi. More favoured in climate and soil than the other members of the group, its population is more dense. Divided from Chihli by a range of hills, its whole surface is hilly, but not mountainous. The highlands give variety to its temperature--condensing the moisture and supplying water for irrigation. The valleys are extremely fertile, and of them it may be said in the words of Job, "As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and underneath it is turned up as it were fire."

Not only do the fields yield fine crops of wheat and millet, but there are extensive coal measures of excellent quality. Iron ore also is found in great abundance. Mining enterprises have accordingly been carried on from ancient times, and they have now, with the advent of steam, acquired a fresh impetus. It follows, of course, that the province is prolific of bankers. Shansi bankers monopolise the business of finance in all the adjacent provinces.

Next on the west comes the province of Shensi, from _shen_, a "strait or pa.s.s" (not _shan_ a "hill"), and _si_, "west."

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Here was the earliest home of the Chinese race of which there is any record. On the Yellow River, which here forms the boundary of two provinces, stands the city of Si-ngan where the Chou dynasty set up its throne in the twelfth century B. C. Since that date many dynasties have made it the seat of empire. Their palaces have disappeared; but most of them have left monumental inscriptions from which a connected history might be extracted. To us the most interesting monument is a stone, erected about 800 A. D. to commemorate the introduction of Christianity by some Nestorian missionaries from western Asia.

The province of Kansuh is comparatively barren. Its boundaries extend far out into regions peopled by Mongol tribes; and the neighbourhood of great deserts gives it an arid climate unfavourable to agriculture. Many of its inhabitants are immigrants from Central Asia and profess the Mohammedan faith. It is almost surrounded by the Yellow River, like a picture set in a gilded frame, reminding one of that river of paradise which "encompa.s.seth the whole land of Havilah where there is gold." Whether there is gold in Kansuh we have yet to learn; but no doubt some grains of the precious metal might be picked up amongst its shifting sands.

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CHAPTER XII

OUTLYING TERRITORIES

_Manchuria--Mongolia--Turkestan--Tibet, the Roof of the World--Journey of Huc and Gabet._

Beyond the eastern extremity of the Great Wall, bounded on the west by Mongolia, on the north by the Amur, on the east by the Russian seaboard, and on the south by Korea and the Gulf of Pechili, lies the home of the Manchus--the race now dominant in the Chinese Empire. China claims it, just as Great Britain claimed Normandy, because her conquerors came from that region; and now that two of her neighbours have exhausted themselves in fighting for it, she will take good care that neither of them shall filch the jewel from her crown.

That remarkable achievement, the conquest of China by a few thousand semi-civilised Tartars, is treated in the second part of this work.

Manchuria consists of three regions now denominated provinces, Shengking, Kairin, and Helungkiang. They are all under one governor-general whose seat is at Mukden, a city sacred in the eyes of every Manchu, because there are the tombs of the fathers of the dynasty.

The native population of Manchuria having been drafted off to garrison and colonise the conquered [Page 57]

country, their deserted districts were thrown open to Chinese settlers.

The population of the three provinces is mainly Chinese, and, a.s.similated in government to those of China, they are reckoned as completing the number of twenty-one. Opulent in grain-fields, forests, and minerals, with every facility for commerce, no part of the empire has a brighter future. So thinly peopled is its northern portion that it continues to be a vast hunting-ground which supplies the Chinese market with sables and tiger-skins besides other peltries.

The tiger-skins are particularly valuable as having longer and richer fur than those of Bengal.

Of the Manchus as a people, I shall speak later on.[*] Those remaining in their original habitat are extremely rude and ignorant; yet even these hitherto neglected regions are now coming under the enlightening influence of a system of government schools.

[Footnote *: Part II. page 140 and 142; part III, pages 267-280]

Mongolia, the largest division of Tartary, if not of the Empire, is scarcely better known than the mountain regions of Tibet, a large portion of its area being covered with deserts as uninviting and as seldom visited as the African Sahara. One route, however, has been well trodden by Russian travellers, namely, that lying between Kiachta and Peking.

In the reign of Kanghi the Russians were granted the privilege of establishing an ecclesiastical mission to minister to a Cossack garrison which the Emperor had captured at Albazin trespa.s.sing on his grounds. Like another Nebuchadnezzar, he transplanted them to the soil of China. He also permitted the Russians [Page 58]

to bring tribute to the "Son of Heaven" once in ten years. That implied a right to trade, so that the Russians, like other envoys, in Chinese phrase "came lean and went away fat." But they were not allowed to leave the beaten track: they were merchants, not travellers. Not till the removal of the taboo within the last half-century have these outlying dependencies been explored by men like Richthofen and Sven Hedin. Formerly the makers of maps garnished those unknown regions

"With caravans for want of towns."

Sooth to say, there are no towns, except Urga, a shrine for pilgrimage, the residence of a living Buddha, and Kiachta and Kalgan, terminal points of the caravan route already referred to.

Kiachta is a double town--one-half of it on each side of the Russo-Chinese boundary--presenting in striking contrast the magnificence of a Russian city and the poverty and filth of a Tartar encampment.

The whole country is called in Chinese "the land of gra.s.s." Its inhabitants have sheepfolds and cattle ranches, but neither fields nor houses, unless tents and temporary huts may be so designated.

To this day, nomadic in their habits, they migrate from place to place with their flocks and herds as the exigencies of water and pasturage may require.

Lines of demarcation exist for large tracts belonging to a tribe, but no minor divisions such as individual holdings. The members of a clan all enjoy their grazing range in common, and hold themselves ready to fight for the rights of their chieftain. b.l.o.o.d.y feuds lasting for generations, such as would rival those of [Page 59]

the Scottish clans, are not of infrequent occurrence. Their Manchu overlord treats these tribal conflicts with sublime indifference, as he does the village wars in China.

The Mongolian chiefs, or "princes" as they are called, are forty-eight in number. The "forty-eight princes" is a phrase as familiar to the Chinese ear as the "eighteen provinces" is to ours. Like the Manchus they are arranged in groups under eight banners. Some of them took part in the conquest, but the Manchus are too suspicious to permit them to do garrison duty in the Middle Kingdom, lest the memories of Kublai Khan and his glory should be awakened. They are, however, held liable to military service. Seng Ko Lin Sin ("Sam Collinson" as the British dubbed him), a Lama prince, headed the northern armies against the Tai-ping rebels and afterwards suffered defeat at the hands of the British and French before the gates of Peking.

In the winter the Mongol princes come with their clansmen to revel in the delights of Cambalu, the city of the great Khan, as they have continued to call Peking ever since the days of Kublai, whose magnificence has been celebrated by Marco Polo. Their camping-ground is the Mongolian Square which is crowded with tabernacles built of bamboo and covered with felt. In a sort of bazaar may be seen pyramids of b.u.t.ter and cheese, two commodities that are abominations to the Chinese of the south, but are much appreciated by Chinese in Peking as well as by the Manchus. One may see also mountains of venison perfectly fresh; the frozen carca.s.ses of "yellow sheep"

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(really not sheep, but antelopes); then come wild boars in profusion, along with badgers, hares, and troops of live dogs--the latter only needing to be wild to make them edible. This will give some faint idea of Mongolia's contribution to the luxuries of the metropolis.

Devout Buddhist as he is, the average Mongol deems abstinence from animal food a degree of sanct.i.ty unattainable by him.

Mongols of the common cla.s.ses are clad in dirty sheepskins. Their gentry and priesthood dress themselves in the spoils of wolf or fox--more costly but not more clean. Furs, felt, and woollen fabrics of the coa.r.s.est texture may also be noticed. Raiment of camel's hair, strapped with a leathern girdle after the manner of John the Baptist, may be seen any day, and the wearers are not regarded as objects of commiseration.

Their camel, too, is wonderfully adapted to its habitat. Provided with two humps, it carries a natural saddle; and, clothed in long wool, yellow, brown or black, it looks in winter a lordly beast.

Its fleece is never shorn, but is shed in summer. At that season the poor naked animal is the most pitiable of creatures. In the absence of railways and carriage roads, it fills the place of the ship of the desert and performs the heaviest tasks, such as the transporting of coals and salt. Most docile of slaves, at a word from its master it kneels down and quietly accepts its burden.

At Peking there is a lamasary where four hundred Mongol monks are maintained in idleness at the expense of the Emperor. Their manners are those of highwaymen. They have been known to lay rough [Page 61]

hands on visitors in order to extort a charitable dole; and, if rumour may be trusted, their morals are far from exemplary.

My knowledge of the Mongols is derived chiefly from what I have seen of them in Peking. I have also had a glimpse of their country at Kalgan, beyond the Great Wall. A few lines from a caravan song by the Rev. Mark Williams give a picture of a long journey by those slow coaches:

"Inching along, we are inching along, At the pace of a snail, we are inching along, Our horses are hardy, our camels are strong, We all shall reach Urga by inching along.

"The things that are common, all men will despise; But these in the desert we most highly prize.

For water is worth more than huge bags of gold And argols than diamonds of value untold."