In this chapter I put together such information as I was able to gather about the people to whom I have introduced my readers. I only give such statements as at least four persons were agreed upon, and confine my remarks to the four tribes of the Somo territory, estimated at 20,000 souls, which are unified under the rule of the Tu-tze of Some. The designation Man-tze or I-ren, which is simply Chinese for “barbarian,” is perforce accepted by these people from their conquerors. When questioned, however, they divided themselves into Somo, Cho-ko-ki, He-shui, and other tribes, and on being pressed further, they declared themselves Shan-shang-ren, or mountain people. They said that they had heard that in ancient times their fathers came from the setting sun, but they knew of no days when they and the Chinese did not live among each other. The tribal spirit is completely extinct among those tribes, who have accepted one ruler; but the Somo people hate the Sifans to the north-east and the Cho-ko-ki men to the south.

The head of one or more tribes is called a Tu-tze. He is appointed directly by the Emperor of China, and for life; but a long-established custom has made the office practically hereditary, and in the absence of a son a daughter may be invested with it, as in the case of Somo, where in recent years, and for a considerable time, a woman sustained the dignity of the position.

Paoning fu, where I spent a week, is, in spring at least, a very attractive city. There is a pleasant sleepiness about it. Trade is neither so active or so self-asserting as usual. There is obviously a leisured class with time to enjoy itself. Large fortunes are not made; 45,000 taels is looked upon as wealth, and there are no millionaires to overshadow the small traders. Junks of eighteen tons and over can ascend to Paoning during much of the year. There is a considerable coal trade on the Tung river, and the city being in the centre of an important silk region, there is a degree of activity about the silk trade. There are such small industries as dyeing cottons, making wine and vinegar, and the export of pigs' bristles and hides, but nothing is pursued very energetically. Among the population of about 20,000 there are a small number of Mohammedans, and wherever they exist beef and milk are attainable luxuries. In Paoning they cure and spice an excellent salt beef, which I found an agreeable variation from fowls on my further journey.

Officially, Paoning Fu is an important city, having a Taotai, a prefect, and a hsien, and many of its beautiful “suburban villas” are the residences of retired and expectant mandarins. Its suburbs are quite charming, and its suburban roads are densely shaded by large mulberry trees and the Aleurites cordata.

A journey of 150 miles to visit friends in the ancient city of Hangchow required no other preparations than the hire of a boat and the engaging of a servant, who I was compelled to dismiss a few days later for gross dishonesty. 2755 steam launches, owned and run by Chinese, towing 7889 passenger boats, carrying 605 foreign and 125,000 native passengers, entered and cleared in 1897 between Hangchow, Shanghai, and Soochow.

Every evening one of these launches, towing a long string of native boats, leaves the Soochow creek below the British Consulate for the new treaty ports, opened as such only in 1896. My small bamboo-roofed boat, in which I could just stand upright, much decorated in the tawdry style of Chinese fourth-class fancy, and through which irremediable draughts coursed friskily, was the contemptible final joint of a tail of nine quaint and picturesque passage junks and family houseboats, a varnished procession of high-sterned, two-storeyed, many-windowed arks, squirming and snaking along at the stern of a noisy, asthmatic tow-boat. There were red flags flying, gongs crashing out dissonance, crackers exploding, poles with clothes drying on them pushed out of windows, incense sticks smouldering, and reports of firearms; and with this cheerful din, the usual accompaniment of Chinese movement, we started in the red twilight.

I paid six dollars for my boat with three men, and five dollars fifty cents for towage, about 23s.

It is a short step from the stately dulness of the bund to the crowds, colour, and noise of the native city—the “Millionpeopled City,” the commercial centre of China, the greatest “distributing point” in the empire, the centre of the tea trade, which has fallen practically into Russian hands, and the greatest junk port in China.

The city wall is imposing, with a crenelated parapet, forts at the corners, and tunnelled under double-roofed gate-towers for heavily bossed gates, which are closed from sunset to sunrise. The unpaved roadways are usually foul quagmires owing to the perpetual passage of water carriers; where big dogs of the colour of dirty flannel, with pink patches of hairlessness, wrangle over offal. The streets are from ten to twelve feet wide. The houses are high. Matting or blue cotton is stretched across from opposite roofs in summer to moderate the sun's heat and glare; so the traffic is carried on in a curiously tinted twilight, flecked now and then by a vivid ray gleaming on the red and gold of the long, hanging shopboards, lighting up their flare and glare, and giving them a singular picturesqueness.

The shape of the signboard and the different colours of the letters and face of the sign indicate different trades. The devising of a signboard is a very important matter; it may affect the luck of the shop.

At this point, before entering on the empire province of Sze Chuan, it is desirable to give a few facts and impressions regarding life on the Upper Yangtze, my experiences of which extended over five weeks altogether.

The Upper River, with all its peculiarities, lies above Ichang. It must never be forgotten that it is the sole highway for the vast commerce of the richest province of the Chinese Empire, with an area about the size of that of France, and a population estimated at from 50,000,000 to 70,000,000. The nature and risks of this highway may be gathered from these and other descriptions of it. Except in the gorges and some few quiet intervals, it is a series of rapids and races, which at present are only surmounted by man force. Mr. A. J. Little's success in 1898 in getting a large steam launch up to Chungking proves that a steamer can ascend, but not that steam navigation can be made commercially profitable, or that if it were it would be the ruin of junk navigation.

A large up-river junk is from 80 to 120 feet long, from nine to twelve broad, and from 40 to over 100 tons burden.

They are all alike in that they have low square bows, lofty sterns, flat bottoms, and single masts from thirty to forty feet high, carrying huge oblong sails, with which they can only sail with the wind aft.

Whether Chung-king (altitude 1050 ft.) is approached from above or below, it is a most striking city. It is surprising to find, 1500 miles inland, a town of from 400,000 to 500,000 people, including 2500 Mohammedans, as the commercial capital of Western China, one of the busiest cities of the empire. Its founders chose a site on which there is no room for expansion, and its warehouses, guildhalls, hongs, shops, and the dwellings of rich and poor, are packed upon a steep sandstone reef or peninsula lying between the Yangtze and its great northern tributary, the Chia-ling, and rising from 100 to 400 feet above the winter level of these rivers. As I descended upon it down a somewhat turbulent rapid, which half filled the boat and drowned a fowl, it reminded me of Quebec, and made me think of the packed condition of Edinburgh when it was yet a walled city.

A noble-looking, grey city it is, with towers, pavilions, and temples rising above its massive, irregular, crenelated grey wall, with broad, steep, and crowded flights of stone stairs, twenty feet broad, leading up from the river to the gates, with an amphitheatre of wooded and richly cultivated hills rising steeply 1600 feet from the water for its background; the fleets of big junks, and craft of all descriptions, which lie crowded along its shores and in every adjacent bay and reach, and the life and movement on land and water, combining to form a noble and most striking spectacle.

Those of my readers who have followed me through all or any of my eleven volumes of travels must be aware that my chief wish on arriving at a foreign settlement or treaty port in the East is to get out of it as soon as possible, and that I have not the remotest hankering after Anglo-Asiatic attractions. Nor is Shanghai, “The Model Settlement of the East.” an exception to the general rule, though I gratefully acknowledge the kindness and hospitality which I met with there, as everywhere, and recall with pleasure my many sojourns at the British Consulate as the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Lowndes Bullock.

But as the outlet of the commerce of the Yangtze Valley, and as a foreign city which has risen on Chinese shores in little more than half a century to the position and importance of one of the great trading centres of the world—its exports and imports for 1898 being of the value of £37,680,875 sterling—it claims such notice as I can give it, which is chiefly in the shape of impressions.

I have reached Shanghai four times by Japanese steamers, three times in coasting steamers of American build, once in one of the superb vessels of the Canadian Empress line, once from Hankow in a metamorphosed Dutch gunboat, and the last time, after nearly three and a half years of far eastern travel, in a small Korean Government steamer, her quaint, mysterious, and nearly unknown national flag exciting much speculation and interest as she steamed slowly up the river.

A strong, fair wind took us swiftly and silently up the gorge of the “Military Code and the Precious Blade,” in which the water is said to be 1200 feet deep (?), and with some tracking up minor rapids, and some working round corners with poles armed with steel hooks which are inserted into the crevices of the rocks, we passed through the sublime Mitan gorge into a comparatively open reach abounding in vicious-looking reefs and rocks, among very rocky mountains, villages on heights, and superb temples on crags, and at sunset made fast below the picturesque and nobly situated town of Kueichow, the first walled city on the Upper Yangtze.

The Upper Yangtze is remarkable for the picturesque beauty of its cities at a distance, and their situations, almost invariably on irregular heights, backed by mountains, and with fine gardens and trees within their crenelated stone walls, which follow the contour of the site invariably, with one or more lofty pagodas denoting the approach, and with yamen and temple roofs dominating the mass of houses are very imposing.

One is only slowly convinced by experience that the interiors are not worth investigating. Dangerous reefs run out from below the walls of Kueichow, and as the river, if not an actual rapid, was at that time at least a chipa, it was not surprising not to find a single boat or junk there.

It was partly to get Sunday's rest in peace and quietness that I put up at this mountain hamlet. I could see to read and write without opening the door, and could move round my bed, and the smells were not so awful as usual. The central shed was full all day, and occasionally the women who came sent a polite request that I would exhibit myself to them, to which I always cheerfully responded.

The “enormous size” of my feet, though my shoes are only threes, interested them greatly. I was much surprised to find that in Sze Chuan, except among the Manchu or Tartar women and those of a degraded class, foot-binding is universal, and that the shoe of even the poorest and most hard-worked peasant woman does not exceed four inches in length. Though in walking these “golden lilies” look like hoofs, and the women hobble on their heels, I have seen them walk thirty li in a day, and some have told me that they can walk sixty easily! Two women came to Hsia-shan-po from a village twenty-seven mountain li away, merely out of curiosity to see me, and returned the same afternoon. The hobble looks as if it must be very painful, and is a sort of waddle also.

On this second long journey, involving a distance of three hundred and thirty miles, I was persuaded into a slightly more luxurious style of travelling, i.e., I took an additional man, well acquainted with the province and its ways, who went on first, towards evening, cleaned out a room, and had hot water ready for tea. I got new oiled sheeting and an apron for the chair, and with some unleavened bread, curry for three days, a supply of Paoning smoked beef and some chocolate for lunch, I felt myself in luxury. Yet, with eight men, my expenses were only seven shillings per day.

At Sin-tien-tze I had to quit my companions, who are as full of brightness, intelligence, and culture as they are of goodness. Mr. Williams walked with me through thawing snow the first eight miles to the great market-place of Shang-wa-li-tze, where, not being market day, the only living creature was a deformed cat. I had excellent cooking, and we made long journeys, accomplishing thirty miles on some days. The snow soon disappeared, and though the roads were slimy, straw shoes, grippers, and the cold, keen air enabled me to walk a good deal, which was very pleasant.

At the first midday halt there was considerable confusion, for a young married woman had committed suicide with opium, and was lying apparently dead.

The following morning my trackers, having no fumes of liquor to sleep off, were astir early. There was one long and strong rapid, Lao Ma (“Old Horse”), and a minor one, Miao Chitze (“Temple Stairs”), where the water rushes furiously over a succession of steps with a clear but very rapid channel in the centre. Passenger boats turn out their fares there, and it was piteous to see the women with their bound feet hobbling and tumbling among boulders, where I, who am not a very bad climber, was glad to get the help of two men. Of course, the fathers and husbands gave them no assistance. The fierce cataract of Tung Yangtze, remarkable for a vigorous attempt which was made not very many years ago to overcome its difficulties by building a fine stone breakwater, now in decay, and a succession of chipas and eddies, intervened between Kuei Fu and Yun-yang Hsien, or “Clouded Sun City,” on the bank of a fine gorge, its grey walls extending far up the mountain on the slope of which the city stands, high above the winter level of the river.

These cities on the Yangtze are captivating to the eye, and the touches of colour given by the glazed green and yellow tiles of the curved roofs of their many fine temples relieve the otherwise monotonous grey.

I left Hankow, without seeing a gleam of sunshine upon it, by the deck-over-deck, American-built, stern-wheel steamer Chang-wo. She had some hundreds of Chinese and two China Inland missionaries on board below, and her very limited saloon accommodation was taken up by four Canadian missionaries returning to Sze Chuan, and the inevitable baby. They had fled nearly a year before, after the destruction of their houses in the riots. I was greatly indebted to two of them. I had a cabin directly over the boiler. The floor was very hot, and even with the window open I could not get the temperature below 74”, and they gave me their cool room in exchange.

The captain was kind and genial. He let me tone unlimited photographic prints in the saloon, ignoring the dishes and buckets involved in the process, and the engineer provided an unlimited supply of condensed water, free both from Yangtze mud and from the alum used to precipitate it. But he had a unique affluence of bad language, which neither the presence of clergy nor women sufficed to check, and which was brought out with slow, thrilling, and emphatically damnatory deliberation on the many occasions on which we ran on shoals.

I had abundant occupation in writing, printing and toning photographs, learning a little from Mr. Endacott of the region for which I was finally bound, taking walks below past the Chinese cabins, where the inmates were reclining in the bliss of opium smoking, the faint, the faint, sickly smell of the drug drifting out at the open doors, or on the upper deck to watch the fleets of strange junks through which the Chang-wo steamed, howling and bellowing.

My acquaintance with the opium poppy began in the month of February on the journey from Wan Hsien to Paoning Fu. It is a very handsome plant. It is expensive to grow. It has to be attended to eight times, and needs heavy manuring. It is exposed to so many risks before the juice is secured that the growth is much of a speculation, and many Chinese regard it as being as risky as gambling. Besides its cultivation for sale, on a majority of farms it is grown for home use, as tobacco is, for smoking. It is a winter crop, and is succeeded by rice, maize, cotton, beans, etc. Certain crops can be planted between the rows of the poppies. Much oil, bearing a high price, is made from the seed. The lower leaves, which are abundant, are used in some quarters to feed pigs, and also as a vegetable. They were served up to me as such twice, and tasted like spinach. In some places the heavy stalks are dug into the ground; in others they are used as fuel, and after serving this purpose their ashes provide lye for the indigo dyers. It appears from much concurrent testimony, that in spite of heavy manuring the crop exhausts the ground.

The area devoted to the poppy in Sze Chuan is enormous, and owing to the high price of the drug and its easy transport its culture is encroaching on the rice and arable lands.

The events which have rendered the Yangtze Valley literally a “sphere of interest” throughout the British Empire lie outside the purview of these volumes. Few people, unless they have been compelled to the task by circumstances or interests, are fully acquainted with the magnitude and resources of the great basin which in the spring of 1898 was claimed as the British “sphere of influence,” and I honestly confess that it was only at the end of eight months (out of journeys of fifteen months in China) spent on the Yangtze, its tributaries, and the regions watered by them that I even began to learn their magnificent capabilities, and the energy, resourcefulness, capacities, and “backbone” of their enormous population.

Geographically the Yangtze Valley, or drainage area, may be taken as extending from the 90th to the 122nd meridian of east longitude, and as including all or most of the important provinces of Sze Chuan, Hupeh, Hunan, Kiangsi, Nganhui, Kiangsu, and Honan, with considerable portions of Che Kiang, Kueichow, and Yunnan, and even includes the south-eastern drainage areas of Kansuh, Shensi, and Shantung. Geographically there can be no possible mistake about the limits of this basin. Its area is estimated at about 650,000 square miles, and its population, one of the most peaceable and industrious on earth, at from 170,000,000 to 180,000,000.

Kuan hsien (2347 feet, Gill) is one of the best-placed cities in China, at the north-west corner of the Chengtu plain, immediately below the mountains which wall it in on the north, and, indeed, scrambling over their spurs just at the fine gorge of the Couching Dragon, from whence the liberated Min bursts in strength to gladden the whole plain. The Mien-chuh road has not a fine entrance into the city—the Chengtu road, which I travelled three times, approaches Kuan under six fine pai-fangs, elaborately, and, indeed, beautifully decorated with carvings in high relief in a soft grey sandstone.

Apart from its situation, it is an unattractive town, with narrow, dirty streets, small lifeless-looking shops, and a tendency to produce on all occasions a dirty crowd, which hangs on to a foreigner, and which on my arrival greeted me with—“Here's another child-eater.” It has an outpost air, as if there were little beyond, and this is partly true. It has a possible population of 22,000. It is not a rich city, and its suburbs do not abound in rich men's houses. But it is distinguished, first for being the starting point of the oldest and, perhaps, the most important engineering works in China; and secondly, as being a great emporium of the trade with Northern Tibet, which is at its height during the winter, when as many as five hundred Tibetans, with their yaks, are encamped outside its walls.

New year's day arrived at last, as cold and brilliant as if it were not belated by six weeks. I took a beautiful walk among prosperous farms where the people were all in gala dress. The houses were decked with flags and streamers, and even the buff dogs had knots of colour round their necks. From above the wall the grey city could be seen brilliantly decorated, and sounds of jubilation came up from it. The suburbs and the mat town on the river bank were gay and noisy, and much money was spent on crackers and explosives generally. The junks were decorated, and the “sing-song” boats blossomed into a blaze of colour. Everyone except my trackers appeared in new clothes, and threw off the old ones with rejoicing.

This was my second New Year in China, and I had seen its approach as far back as Ichang, where, as everywhere, tables appeared in the streets a month beforehand, and all sorts of tempting articles were displayed upon them in a tempting manner. This is the time when things can be had cheap, and many articles of bric-à-brac and embroidered dresses are for sale which are not obtainable at any other time. For in order to pay debts, a sacred obligation worthily honoured in the observance, many families are obliged to part with possessions long cherished.

Hankow or Hanmouth, Wu-Chang Fu, the capital of Hupeh, and Han Yang would be one city were they not bisected by the broad, rolling Yangtze, nearly a mile wide, and its great tributary the Han. Hankow and Han Yang are on the north bank, and Wu-Chang on the south. The “congeries of cities,” as the three have been aptly termed, is about 600 miles from Shanghai. Till 1863 Hankow was an open city, but the dread of an attack by northern banditti that year led the Government to enclose it with a stone wall, four miles in circuit and thirteen feet in height, raised by a brick parapet to eighteen feet.

Hankow considers that it has the finest bund in China, and I have no wish to dispute its assertion. In truth its length of 800 yards, its breadth of 80, its lofty and noble river wall and fine flights of stone stairs, ascending 40 feet from low water, its broad promenade and carriage-way and avenue of fine trees, with the “palatial” houses, very similar to those of Shanghai and Singapore, on the other side in large gardens and shaded by exotic trees, make it scarcely credible that the first authentic visit of Europeans to the city was that made by Lord Elgin in H.M.S. Furious in 1858, and that the site for this stately British settlement was only chosen in 1861, the year in which the port was opened to foreign trade.

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.