The start for Jehol—Tuan—A Peking cart—Chinese roads—A great highway—Chances of camping out—“Room for ten thousand merchant guests”—Human occupancy—Dust of ages—Eyes at the window—Catering for the journey—The Chinese chicken, minced.

There were two places that I particularly wanted to go to when I could make up my mind to tear myself away from the charms of Peking. One was the Tungling, or Eastern Tombs, the tombs where the great Empress-Dowager and most of the Manchu Emperors were buried, and Jehol, the Hunting Palace of the Manchus, away to the north in Inner Mongolia, or on the outermost edge of the Province of Chihli, for boundaries are vague things in that out-of-the-way part of the world. I wondered if I could combine them both if instead of coming back to Peking after visiting the tombs I might make my way over the mountains to Jehol. With that end in view I instituted inquiries, only to find that while many people knew a man, or had heard of several men who had been, I never struck the knowledgeable man himself. The only thing was to start out on my own account, and I knew then I should soon arrive at the difficulties to be overcome, not the least of them was two hundred 152and eighty miles in a Peking cart. The only drawback to that arrangement was that if I didn\'t like the difficulties when I did meet them, there could be no drawing back. They would have to be faced.

Accordingly I engaged a servant with a rudimentary knowledge of English. When the matter we spoke of was of no importance, such as my dinner, I could generally understand him, when it was of importance, such as the difficulties of the way, I could not, but I guessed, or the events themselves as they unfolded became explanatory. This gentleman was a small person with noble views on the subject of squeeze, as it pertained to Missie\'s servant, and he wore on state occasions a long black coat of brocaded silk, slit at the sides, and on all occasions the short hairs that fringed the shaven front of his head stood up like a black horsehair halo. He was badly pock-marked, very cheerful, and an excellent servant, engineering me over difficulties so well that I had to forgive him the squeeze, though in small matters I was occasionally made aware I was paying not double the price, but seven times what it ought to have been. However one buys one\'s experience. He was my first servant and I paid him thirty dollars a month, so I was squeezed on that basis. A six months\' stay in China convinced me I could get as good a servant for fifteen dollars a month, and feel he was well paid.

His name was Tuan, pronounced as if it began with a “D,” and he engaged for me two Peking carts with a driver each, and two mules apiece. One was for myself and some of my luggage, the other took 153my servant, my humble kitchen utensils, and the rest of my baggage; and one Sunday morning in May, it is hardly necessary to say it was sunny, because a dull morning in May in Northern China is an exception hailed with joy, the carts appeared at the door of the “Wagons Lits,” and we were ready to start. At least everything was ready but me. I ached in every limb, and felt sure that I was just beginning an attack of influenza. What was to be done? I longed with a great longing for my peaceful bed. I did not want to go venturing forth into the, to me, unknown wilds of China, but I had engaged those carts at the rate of seven dollars a day for the two, and I felt that I really could not afford to linger. Possibly the fresh air might do me good. At any rate, I reflected thankfully, as I climbed into the foremost cart, no active exertion was required of me. And that only shows how remarkably little I knew about a Peking cart. A man and a girl of my acquaintance rose up early in the morning to accompany me the first ten miles on donkeys, we had tiffin together beneath the shade of some pine-trees in a graveyard, and then they wished me good-bye, and I started off with the comfortable feeling that arises from the parting good wishes of kind friends.

Now a Peking cart is a very venerable mode of progression. When our ancestors were lightly dressed in woad, and had no conception of any wheeled vehicle, the Chinese lady was paying her calls sitting in the back of a Peking cart, the seat of honour under the tilt, well out of the sight of the passers-by, while-her servant sat in front, the place of comfort, if such a word can be applied to anything 154pertaining to a Peking cart, for in spite of its long and aristocratic record if there is any mode of progression more wearying and uncomfortable I have not met it. It is simply a springless board set on a couple of wheels with a wagon tilt of blue cotton, if you are not imperial, over it, and a place for heavy luggage behind. The Chinaman sits on the floor and does not seem to mind, but the ordinary Westerner, such as I am, packs his bedding and all the cushions he can raise around him, and then resigns himself to his fate. It has one advantage people will tell you, it has nothing to break in it, but there are moments when it would be a mighty relief if something did break, for if the woodwork holds together, as it tosses you from side to side, you yourself are one sore, bruised mass. No, I cannot recommend a Peking cart, even on the smoothest road.

And the roads in China are not smooth. We all know the description of the snakes in Ireland, “There are no snakes,” and if in the same manner could be described the roads in China, blessed would the roads in China be, but as China is a densely populated country there are so-called roads, upon which the people move about, but I have seldom met one that was any better than the surrounding country, and very, very often on this journey did I meet roads where it was ease and luxury to move off them on to the neighbouring ploughed field. The receipt for a road there in the north seems to be: Take a piece of the country that is really too bad to plough or to use for any agricultural purposes whatever, that a mountain torrent, in fact, has given up as too much for the water, 155upset a stone wall over it, a stone wall with good large stones in it, take care they never for a moment lie evenly, and you have your road.



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Leaving Peking for the Eastern Tombs you go for the first two or three hours along a paved way of magnificent proportions, planned and laid out as a great highway should be. The great stones with which it is paved were probably put there by slave labour, how many hundred years ago I do not know, but the blocks are uneven now, some of them are gone altogether, though how a huge block of stone could possibly disappear passes my understanding, and whenever the carter could, he took the cart down beside the road, where at least the dust made a cushion for the nail-studded wheels, and the jarring and the jolting were not quite so terrible.

It takes as long to get beyond the environs of Peking in a cart as it does to get out of London in a motor-car. First we passed through the Babylonish gate, and the great walls were behind us, then, outside the city, all looking dusty, dirty, and khaki-coloured in the brilliant sunshine, were numerous small houses, and the wayside was lined with booths on which were things for sale, green vegetables and salads looking inviting, if I could have forgotten the danger of enteric, unappetising-looking meat, bones, the backbones of sheep from which all flesh had been taken, eggs, piles of cakes and small pies, shoes, clothes, samovars, everything a poor man in a primitive community can possibly require, and along the roadway came an endless array of people, clad for the most part in blue cotton, men walking, men with loads slung from a 156bamboo across their shoulders, donkeys laden with baskets, with sacks of grain, with fat Chinese on their backs, with small-footed women being transported from one place to another; there were Peking carts, there were mules, there were ponies; and this busy throng is almost the same as it was a couple of thousand years ago. I wondered; could I have taken a peep at the outskirts of London in the days of Elizabeth of happy memory, would it not have been like this? But no. The sky here is bright and clear, the sunshine hot, and the faces of the moving crowd are yellow and oriental. This crowd is like the men who toiled round the quarries of Babylon or Nineveh, and it is perhaps more satisfied with itself and its position in the universe than any like company of people anywhere in the world. That impression was forced upon me as I stayed in Peking, it grew and grew as I got farther away from the great city, and out into the country.

But it was a long, long while before I could feel I was really in the country. There was the khaki-coloured land, there were the khaki-coloured houses built of mud apparently, with graceful, tiled roofs, and blue-clad people everywhere, and everywhere at work. Always the fields were most beautifully tilled, there were no fences, the Chinese is too civilised to need a fence, and when you see stone walls it is only because, since they can\'t be dropped off the planet into space, the stones must be disposed of somehow, here and there the kaoliang was coming up like young wheat, in vivid green patches that were a relief from the general dust, and occasionally there were trees, willow or poplar or fir, delightful to look upon, that marked a graveyard, 157and then, just as I was beginning to hope I was out in the country, a walled town would loom up.

And in the dusk of the evening we stopped and met for the first time the discomforts of a Chinese inn.

We had started rather late, and I had spent so much time bidding farewell to my friends, that we did not reach the town we had intended to, but put up at a small ............