Читать книгу Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them - Archibald Mrs. Little - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Boat-travel.—Vegetation.—Trackers.—Terrace of the Sun.—Gold Diamond Mountain.—Meng Liang's Ladder.—Great Szechuan Road.—Steamer Voyage.—Chinese Hades.—Caves.

Of all ways of travel, surely boat-travel is the most luxurious. For one thing, it is accounted roughing it; and that means that there is no bother about toilets: the easiest boots and gloves, the warmest and most comfortable of clothes, are the appropriate wear. But that seems to be the whole of the roughing of it. For naturally each boat-traveller takes care to start with a favourite chair and a comfortable bed; and it is his cook's business to provide the most recherché of little repasts whenever wanted. What else is he there for? Nor do soufflés and pheasants taste any the worse because the supply of fresh air is unlimited, and the cabin as cosy as nothing but a perfectly well-built house, or a boat floating in water warmer than the surrounding air, can be. The first time we went up to Chungking, we had a sleeping-cabin and sitting-cabin, each 9 ft. 4 in. by 7 ft. 7 in., the former well warmed by a most conveniently arranged kitchen adjoining, with a plentiful supply of warm water for our travelling-bath. Thus our only drawback was that the wind was always favourable; and whereas our captain had been bound over to pay us six shillings a day for every day over the agreed-upon twenty-two between Ichang and Chungking, we were equally bound to pay him six shillings a day extra for every day under.

BOW OF TRAVELLING-BOAT.

By Mrs. Archibald Little.

My first trip up the Gorges was, however, very different. To give its impressions in their freshness, I will quote from a letter written at the time:

"June 20th, 1887.

"It depends, I suppose, a good deal upon how much people like or dislike the journey, whether it is worth while to come half round the world, and then steam a thousand nautical miles into the interior of China, in order to visit the Gorges of the Yangtse; but we have just returned from a five-days' trip, and what I have seen far surpasses my anticipations. Indeed, in all my travels, I know no country more altogether delightful. Although it is June, one of the worst seasons for going there, we have been able to walk about all day long, and without getting tired too. The air felt fresh, and, oh! so fragrant with delicious flowers. The feature of the region, of course, is the precipices. I should guess the precipices at nothing under two thousand feet, and perhaps not more than that sheer down, as far as I have seen: sometimes dolomitic white limestone, which always reminds me of dead men's bones, sometimes weathered a rich yellow-brown. The grandeur and massiveness of the bastions, and towers of rock, and overhanging pinnacles, and projecting isolated blocks, or pillars, standing bolt upright in fine relief against the sky, are not picturesque like the scenery round Méran, not exciting like some of the Alpine scenery in Switzerland, but awe-inspiring and sublime.

ENTRANCE TO YANGTSE GORGES.

By Mrs. Archibald Little.

"Then the vegetation is enchanting. Nearly every flower, great big glorious butterfly, and brilliantly coloured bird is unknown to me; and till people have walked through a country where this is the case, they cannot imagine what a zest it adds to an expedition. But just to tell of those I recognise will show how charming it is. Fancy bamboos in feathery tufts, and palms, everywhere, not tall, but very graceful; chestnut-trees in full flower; plums laden with the rosiest fruit—but very bitter we found them; walnut-trees with huge leaves and nuts; orange-trees; most beautiful, perhaps, of all, the tallow-tree, rather like the lilac in leaf, but each leaf set on a very long stalk, so that the slightest breath sets it quivering, a light bright green in colour, each shoot tipped at the end with almost scarlet young leaves, and the whole tree, a tall well-grown tree too, covered with yellowish tassel-like flowers. Most lovely is the general effect. And in the autumn, they tell me, it is even finer, taking the same brilliant tints as the maple in Canada. I never know if I like this tree or the soap-tree best. The latter is like an oak in general effect, but more graceful, and grows quite big. But I am keeping the best to the last. Fancy blue larkspurs, and yellow jasmine, and glorious coloured oleanders, and begonias, virgin lilies, and yet taller white lilies, and gardenias, and sunflowers, all growing wild, and most luxuriantly. I was quite excited when I first saw waxen-leaved begonias cuddling into the crevices of a rock by the wayside; and exclaimed aloud when a turn of the path revealed a whole bank of dwarf sunflowers, golden in the sun. These, too, are only the flowers I can name. There are numbers more, and so fragrant! And among them all enormous swallow-tailed butterflies, and a very pretty breed of white goats, with dear little kids, disport themselves. Grand though the Gorges are, one does not feel saddened or depressed by them, as I was afraid of being. It is like seeing a whole troop of graceful loving grandchildren climbing up some grand old man's knee.

"But the Yangtse certainly does appear a very wicked river, bristling with rocks and whirlpools, just as its shores bristle with precipices. We had a very light boat, and an absurdly large crew—eight men besides the head man. And with all their exertions, they could only get us up against the rushing, whirling current at the rate of a mile an hour. But the river ran so fast, and the men worked so hard, and the shores were so varied, ever opening out some new, narrow defile, down which a torrent had cut its way—always cut quite deep—that one had no sense at all of going slowly, but just the contrary. The men had long bamboos with hooks at the end, and with these they would hook on to the rocks, and claw us up against the current; for we always kept quite close to the side, so as, as far as possible, to keep out of the rush of the river, and profit by occasional eddies. Then at other times they would bound on to the shore, scampering and giving tongue like a pack of beagles let loose, and tow the boat along, occasionally bending almost double in their efforts.

"I thought at first I would walk along the path with the trackers. Oh the foolish English idea! At times the trackers bounded along over loose boulders, or over ledges of rock, where the limestone strata made a fairly smooth surface; but at others they, with their bare feet and hands well used, had all they could do to find a footing. During these mauvais pas, or when they were ferried across in a boat, or waded through the river, those left on board would claw the rocks, or work the yulohs, very long and rather unmanageable oars. The oddest thing was the intense delight the men seemed to take in their work. But, of course, tracking our light boat was a very different thing from dragging a heavily laden junk. Hundreds of men are said to be lost in these rapids every year. And it really seems too dangerous work to put men to year in year out. Think of the tow-line breaking! During the little time we have been away, we saw one junk wrecked, and two drifting down-stream unmanageable, their tow-lines having broken, and nearly all their men being ashore. And the farthest point we got to was only fifteen miles from Ichang; so we got back down-stream in two hours. We did not go farther, because our captain said it was just then too dangerous to take our house-boat past the three terrible whirlpools of Nantor; and, of course, half the pleasure of the trip was in landing every now and then, and walking up the wild, narrow glens to different points of view. One day we walked from ten to seven to the Terrace of the Sun, where there is a small Taoist temple on a little ledge of rock just big enough to hold it, at the top of a mountain quite two thousand feet high, and with a sheer precipice on one side. Another day we walked from half-past six till half-past five to the Gold Diamond Mountain, where there is a Buddhist temple on a slightly larger plateau, with a spring on the top of the mountain, and a wonderful panoramic view. It is over a thousand feet higher than the other, and to get to it you walk along a quite narrow path with precipices on both sides. Do you realise that in China there are no railings and no roads, nothing but narrow paths like English field-paths? I never really believed it till I came here. And the agriculturists are always encroaching upon even the narrow paths there are, planting Indian corn and a few beans or something, on the chance that the passer-by will not tread upon them.

"The people are greatly interested in seeing a European woman. The women flock round, and beg me to take off my gloves and my hat, that they may see how my hair is done, and the colour of my hands. Then some old woman is sure to squeeze my feet, to see if there is really a foot filling up all those big boots: for, of course, all the women here have small feet—that is, they have them bandaged up; and astonishingly well they get along upon their hoof-like feet. They are very friendly, and bring out chairs and benches before their cottage doors, and beg us to sit down, and offer us tea, or, if they have not got that ready, hot water. But the children cry with terror if I touch them or go too near; and one little boy in a school we went into simply trembled with fear all the time I stood near him to hear him read. Sometimes also the dogs run away without barking, they are so afraid: a great comfort this is, for the barking of the dogs, and the loathsome-looking pigs at each cottage, and the smells, are the great objection to going through the often lovely-looking—from a distance—villages. Hoang San Tung, on its terrace nearly a hundred feet above the river, with all its curved roofs, looked really like a flight of doves settled down there, the wings not quite folded yet; and several of the others are very picturesque from a distance. But the smells of Ping Shan Pa obliged us to change our anchorage, there being no reason why we should endure them. There were fireflies there; but not such glorious ones as at Shih Pai, where they cast long trails of light upon the river, and were the most luminous I have ever seen. I do hope there will be soon a steamer running to transport people safely and easily to this delightful region. No boats were able to come down while we were up the river; and of some machinery for the Viceroy of Szechuan, that came up here on the previous voyage of the steamer in which we travelled, we have heard already that two boatloads are lost, and it is just as likely as not that the loss of these may make the rest useless.

"Seeing these ranges of mountains, across which it would, indeed, be difficult to make roads, and across which there certainly are none, I better realise how completely the rich and productive province of Szechuan—the size of France—is cut off from the rest of the world. Yet it will be sad if steamers introduce an unappreciative crowd to the grand solitudes of the ravines and precipices, the rocks and rapids of the Yangtse. Now one can pick one's hands full of flowers, without thinking one is spoiling any one else's enjoyment. Now one is away from letters and papers, from all the 'warstle and the wear o't,' and can enjoy the health-giving breezes and the grandeur of the scenery quite undisturbed. It does not require to have lived perspiring and almost clotheless through the tea-season at Hankow to enjoy such a trip; but now I begin to realise more than I did at the time what Hankow is, with its willow-shaded Bund, and its painted tea-chests flying along on the shoulders of coolies, and agitated buyers and sellers, and no 'mountain and water' beauty, as the Chinese call the beauty of landscape, only its mirages and its sunsets."