Chapter XXXIV: From Somo to Chengtu Fu

The refusal to sell food produced uncomfortable consequences. I bestowed my personal stores on the coolies, and being left with only a little chocolate, a few squares of soup, and a pound of flour, was often compelled to still the gnawings of hunger with peppermint lozenges; and what was worse, the men were on half-rations. Just before we left, the _Tu-tze_ sent a welcome present of half a bag of flour, and as supplies were not refused on the way down the worst was over. At Matang we were detained two days by a severe snowstorm, which glorified the pine forests on the skirts of the Tsu-ku-shan Pass, which was bare, pale, and uninteresting, and took four hours to cross even in the sunny daylight. From the summit about one hundred and twenty snow-peaks were visible, some rising sharply into a very blue sky, others with snow-clouds swirling round their ghastly crests—all clothed to a considerable altitude with interminable forests of pine, hoary with new-fallen snow, under the bright May sunshine.

Passing through fine herds of yaks and _dzo_, and by villages and detached houses, we sought shelter in vain. The people were all “on the mountain,” and every house was locked. After a severe day of twelve hours we were directed off the road, through groves of fine Spanish chestnut trees, to an alp, on which is a small Man-tze house inhabited by one Chinese, where I slept on the roof, next two rows of humming prayer-cylinders, and in the morning had a glorious view of snow-peaks and forests.

It is scarcely credible, but the downward journey was more gloriously beautiful than the upward. The peacock green, transparent Siao Ho, with its snow-white cataracts, thundered through the trees in a yet goodlier volume, between cliffs on which the great, red-stemmed pines are securely moored, flashed past velvet lawns starred with blue and white anemones, and pink and white peonies; past clumps of daphne giving forth hot-house odours in the warm sunshine, under the living scarlet of maples, through the blue gloom of colossal pines, every one of its innumerable bends giving a fresh view. The ice was half an inch thick every morning on the heights. We lodged in headmen’s houses, where at one halt I had a guest-room twenty-four feet long.

At Ku-erh-Kio, where after a journey of eleven hours I sat nearly two hours among dogs, pigs, and fowls, waiting for the people to return from the mountain and give us shelter, I slept for the last time on a roof under the stars, the earliest sight in the morning being glories of light and shade, of forest, cataract, and mountain, and the sparkle of a peak reddening in the sunrise, like unto the Matterhorn, which the people called Ja-ra (king of mountains).[51]

A thirteen hours’ journey thence took us to Tsa-ku-lao. We were benighted and lost the road, and were “set in darkness in slippery places,” on lofty precipice ledges, and the coolies were so exhausted that they fell several times on the five hundred rocky steps by which the quaint border post is reached. Chinese inns, officialism, passport delays, and _chai-jen_ had to be endured again from that point. At Li-fan Ting the officials sent presents when we arrived, saying that they hoped I would forget their conduct, “and turn the light of my countenance once more upon them to vivify them.”

The heat became severe as we descended; the vegetation near the road was limited to grey, dusty tufts of a species of artemisia; the winds were tremendous, and the Man-tze villages at great heights, where the people have neither horses, cattle, nor sheep, and depend solely on the rainfall for their crops, were praying for rain, and below Weichou, finding Sakyamuni deaf to their entreaties, were turning to the forgotten gods of the rivers and the hills.

From an ethnological point of view the Man-tze deserve some attention, as they differ considerably from the Sifan to the north and the Lolos to the south. In religion and many customs they approach closely to the people of Western Tibet, while in appearance they differ most remarkably from both Tibetans and Chinese. Their handsome, oval faces; richly-coloured complexions; thick, straight eyebrows; large, level eyes, sometimes dark grey; broad, upright foreheads; moderate cheek bones; definite, though rather broad noses; thin lips, somewhat pointed chins, and white, regular teeth are far removed from any Mongolian characteristics, and it is impossible not to believe that these tribes are an offshoot of the Aryan race.

During the week’s descent from Tsa-ku-lao, the winds were fearful, almost carrying my chair and bearers over a precipice, and the country was scorched, and afflicted with driving dust storms. The heat had then set in for the summer, the Yangtze was rising, and I was suffering so severely from the effects of the night’s “death-struggle” on the Tsu-ku-shan pass, that I was anxious to reach a cooler climate, so only rested a few days among the hospitalities of Kuan, and then crossed the Chengtu plain for the fourth time, doing forty miles in one day with the mercury at 93° in the shade, and arrived at Chengtu among very unpleasant demonstrations of hostility from the military students who were “up” for examination. Four of the examiners had passed me on the road, or rather I respectfully cleared off it to make way for, and contemplate them. Besides four bearers to each chair, a number of soldiers were roped on, and behind them came a train of twenty-six laden mules, and twenty-five laden porters, carrying, I doubt not, much besides personal baggage. I was told that these officials make large investments in SZE CHUAN drugs, on which, as they pay no taxes _en route_, and the unfortunate local officials bear the cost of carriage, they make great profits in Peking. Numbers of attendants are essential to dignity in the East. A mandarin going to pay a visit in his much-decorated chair is usually preceded and accompanied by an irregular procession of lictors with staves or whips, boys carrying red boards bearing the official’s name and style, and _chai-jen_ in red-tasselled official hats. The lictors push the people to one side, the boys shout, and the bearers yell. When the great man leaves his own _yamen_ three small mortars are fired, and if he visits an official, the same noisy process is repeated.

Forced labour for relays of bearers, porters, and horses for the lesser dignitaries, is called for, and on a much-travelled main road this is a heavy burden on the villagers.